The Project Gutenberg eBook of History for ready reference, Volume 2, El Dorado to Greaves

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Title: History for ready reference, Volume 2, El Dorado to Greaves

Author: J. N. Larned

Illustrator: Alan C. Reiley

Release date: December 1, 2021 [eBook #66861]

Most recently updated: April 5, 2022

Language: English

Credits: Don Kostuch

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY FOR READY REFERENCE, VOLUME 2, EL DORADO TO GREAVES ***

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HISTORY FOR READY REFERENCE

FROM THE BEST HISTORIANS, BIOGRAPHERS, SPECIALISTS

THEIR OWN WORDS IN A COMPLETE SYSTEM OF HISTORY

FOR ALL USES, EXTENDING TO ALL COUNTRIES AND SUBJECTS,

AND REPRESENTING FOR BOTH READERS AND STUDENTS THE BETTER AND

NEWER LITERATURE OF HISTORY IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

BY J.N.LARNED

WITH NUMEROUS HISTORICAL MAPS FROM ORIGINAL STUDIES

AND DRAWINGS BY ALAN C. REILEY

IN FIVE VOLUMES

VOLUME II-EL DORADO TO GREAVES

SPRINGFIELD, MASS.

THE C. A. NICHOLS CO., PUBLISHERS

MDCCCXCV

COPYRIGHT, 1894.

BY J. N. LARNED.

The Riversider Press, Cambridge, Mass, U. S. A.

Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.

LIST OF MAPS.

Map of Europe at the close of the Tenth Century, ... To follow page 1020

Map of Europe in 1768,                           ... To follow page 1086

Four maps of France,

A. D. 1154, 1180, 1814 and 1860,               ... To follow page 1168

Two maps of Central Europe, A. D. 848 and 888,   ... On page 1404

Map of Germany at the Peace of Westphalia,       ... To follow page 1486

Maps of Germany, A. D. 1815 and 1866;

of the Netherlands, 1880-1889; and

of the Zollverein,                          ... To follow page 1540

LOGICAL OUTLINES, IN COLORS.

English history, ... To follow page 730

French history,  ... To follow page 1158

German history, ... To follow page 1428

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES.

The Fifth Century, ...  On page 1433

The Sixth Century, ... On page 1434

{769}

EL DORADO,

The quest of.

"When the Spaniards had conquered and pillaged the civilized

empires on the table lands of Mexico, Bogota, and Peru, they

began to look round for new scenes of conquest, new sources of

wealth; the wildest rumours were received as facts, and the

forests and savannas, extending for thousands of square miles

to the eastward of the cordilleras of the Andes, were covered,

in imagination, with populous kingdoms, and cities filled with

gold. The story of El Dorado, of a priest or king smeared with

oil and then coated with gold dust, probably originated in a

custom which prevailed among the civilized Indians of the

plateau of Bogota; but El Dorado was placed, by the credulous

adventurers, in a golden city amidst the impenetrable forests

of the centre of South America, and, as search after search

failed, his position was moved further and further to the

eastward, in the direction of Guiana. El Dorado, the phantom

god of gold and silver, appeared in many forms. ... The

settlers at Quito and in Northern Peru talked of the golden

empire of the Omaguas, while those in Cuzco and Charcas dreamt

of the wealthy cities of Paytiti and Enim, on the banks of a

lake far away, to the eastward of the Andes. These romantic

fables, so firmly believed in those old days led to the

exploration of vast tracts of country, by the fearless

adventurers of the sixteenth century, portions of which have

never been traversed since, even to this day. The most famous

searches after El Dorado were undertaken from the coast of

Venezuela, and the most daring leaders of these wild

adventures were German knights."

C. R. Markham,

Introduction to Simon's Account of the

Expedition of Ursua and Aguirre

(Hakluyt Society 1861).

"There were, along the whole coast of the Spanish Main,

rumours of an inland country which abounded with gold. These

rumours undoubtedly related to the kingdoms of Bogota and

Tunja, now the Nuevo Reyno de Granada. Belalcazar, who was in

quest of this country from Quito, Federman, who came from

Venezuela, and Gonzalo Ximenez de Quesada, who sought it by

way of the River Madalena, and who effected its conquest, met

here. But in these countries also there were rumours of a rich

land at a distance; similar accounts prevailed in Peru; in

Peru they related to the Nuevo Reyno, there they related to

Peru; and thus adventurers from both sides were allured to

continue the pursuit after the game was taken. An imaginary

kingdom was soon shaped out as the object of their quest, and

stories concerning it were not more easily invented than

believed. It was said that a younger brother of Atabalipa

fled, after the destruction of the Incas, took with him the

main part of their treasures, and founded a greater empire

than that of which his family had been deprived. Sometimes the

imaginary Emperor was called the Great Paytite, sometimes the

Great Moxo, sometimes the Enim or Great Paru. An impostor at

Lima affirmed that he had been in his capital, the city of

Manoa, where not fewer than 3,000 workmen were employed in the

silversmiths' street; he even produced a map of the country,

in which he had marked a hill of gold, another of silver, and

a third of salt. ... This imaginary kingdom obtained the name

of El Dorado from the fashion of its Lord, which has the merit

of being in savage costume. His body was anointed every

morning with a certain fragrant gum of great price, and gold

dust was then blown upon him, through a tube, till he was

covered with it: the whole was washed off at night. This the

barbarian thought a more magnificent and costly attire than

could be afforded by any other potentate in the world, and

hence the Spaniards called him El Dorado, or the Gilded One. A

history of all the expeditions which were undertaken for the

conquest of his kingdom would form a volume not less

interesting than extraordinary."

R. Southey,

History of Brazil,

volume 1, chapter 12.

The most tragical and thrilling of the stories of the seekers

after El Dorado is that which Mr. Markham introduces in the

quotation above, and which Southey has told with full details

in The Expedition of Orsua; and the Crimes of Aguirre.   The most famous of the expeditions were those in which Sir

Walter Raleigh engaged, and two of which he personally led--in

1595, and in 1617-18. Released from his long imprisonment in

the Tower to undertake the latter, he returned from it, broken

and shamed, to be sent to the scaffold as a victim sacrificed

to the malignant resentment of Spain. How far Raleigh shared

in the delusion of his age respecting El Dorado, and how far

he made use of it merely to promote a great scheme for the

"expansion of England," are questions that will probably

remain forever in dispute.

Sir Walter Raleigh,

Discoverie of the Large, Rich and

Beautiful Empire of Guiana

(Hakluyt Society 1848).

ALSO IN:

J. A. Van Heuvel,

El Dorado.

E. Edwards,

Life of Raleigh,

volume 1, chapters 10 and 25.

P. F. Tytler,

Life of Raleigh,

chapters 3 and 6.

E. Gosse,

Raleigh,

chapters 4 and 9.

A. F. Bandelier,

The gilded man.

ELECTORAL COLLEGE, The Germanic:

Its rise and constitution.

Its secularization and extinction.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1125-1152,

and 1347-1493;

also, 1801-1803,

and 1805-1806.

ELECTORAL COMMISSION, The.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1876-1877.

ELECTORS,

Presidential, of the United States of America.

See PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

ELECTRICAL DISCOVERY AND INVENTION.

"Electricity, through its etymology at least, traces its

lineage back to Homeric times. In the Odyssey reference is

made to the 'necklace hung with bits of amber' presented by

the Phœnician traders to the Queen of Syra. Amber was highly

prized by the ancients, having been extensively used as an

ornamental gem, and many curious theories were suggested as to

its origin. Some of these, although mythical, were singularly

near the truth, and it is an interesting coincidence that in

the well-known myth concerning the ill-fated and rash youth

who so narrowly escaped wrecking the solar chariot and the

terrestrial sphere, amber, the first known source of

electricity, and the thunder-bolts of Jupiter are linked

together. It is not unlikely that this substance was indebted,

for some of the romance that clung to it through ages, to the

fact that when rubbed it attracts light bodies. This property

it was known to possess in the earliest times: it is the one

single experiment in electricity which has come down to us

from the remotest antiquity. ... The power of certain fishes,

notably what is known as the 'torpedo,' to produce

electricity, was known at an early period, and was commented

on by Pliny and Aristotle.

{770}

... Up to the sixteenth [century] there seems to have been no

attempt to study electrical phenomena in a really scientific

manner. Isolated facts which almost thrust themselves upon

observers, were noted, and, in common with a host of other

natural phenomena, were permitted to stand alone, with no

attempt at classification, generalization, or examination

through experiment. ... Dr. Gilbert can justly be called the

creator of the science of electricity and magnetism. His

experiments were prodigious in number, and many of his

conclusions were correct and lasting. To him we are indebted

for the name 'electricity,' which he bestowed upon the power

or property which amber exhibited in attracting light bodies,

borrowing the name from the substance itself, in order to

define one of its attributes. ... This application of

experiment to the study of electricity, begun by Gilbert three

hundred years ago, was industriously pursued by those who came

after him, and the next two centuries witnessed a rapid

development of science. Among the earlier students of this

period were the English philosopher, Robert Boyle, and the

celebrated burgomaster of Magdeburg, Otto von Guericke. The

latter first noted the sound and light accompanying electrical

excitation. These were afterwards independently discovered by

Dr. Wall, an Englishman, who made the somewhat prophetic

observation, 'This light and crackling seems in some degree to

represent thunder and lightning.' Sir Isaac Newton made a few

experiments in electricity, which he exhibited to the Royal

Society. ... Francis Hawksbee was an active and useful

contributor to experimental investigation, and he also called

attention to the resemblance between the electric spark and

lightning. The most ardent student of electricity in the early

years of the eighteenth century was Stephen Gray. He performed

a multitude of experiments, nearly all of which added

something to the rapidly accumulating stock of knowledge, but

doubtless his most important contribution was his discovery of

the distinction between conductors and non-conductors. ...

Some of Gray's papers fell into the hands of Dufay, an officer

of the French army, who, after several years' service, had

resigned his post to devote himself to scientific pursuits.

... His most important discovery was the existence of two

distinct species of electricity, which he named 'vitreous' and

'resinous.' ... A very important advance was made in 1745 in

the invention of the Leyden jar or phial. As has so many times

happened in the history of scientific discovery, it seems

tolerably certain that this interesting device was hit upon by

at least three persons, working independently of each other.

One Cuneus, a monk named Kleist, and Professor Muschenbroeck,

of Leyden, are all accredited with the discovery. ... Sir

William Watson perfected it by adding the outside metallic

coating, and was by its aid enabled to fire gunpowder and

other inflammables."

T. C. Mendenhall,

A Century of Electricity,

chapter 1.

ELECTRICITY: A. D. 1745-1747.

Franklin's identification of Electricity with Lightning.

"In 1745 Mr. Peter Collinson of the Royal Society sent a

[Leyden] jar to the Library Society of Philadelphia, with

instructions how to use it. This fell into the hands of

Benjamin Franklin, who at once began a series of electrical

experiments. On March 28, 1747, Franklin began his famous

letters to Collinson. ... In these letters he propounded the

single-fluid theory of electricity, and referred all electric

phenomena to its accumulation in bodies in quantities more

than their natural share, or to its being withdrawn from them

so as to leave them minus their proper portion." Meantime,

numerous experiments with the Leyden jar had convinced

Franklin of the identity of lightning and electricity, and he

set about the demonstration of the fact. "The account given by

Dr. Stuber of Philadelphia, an intimate personal friend of

Franklin, and published in one of the earliest editions of the

works of the great philosopher, is as follows:--'The plan

which he had originally proposed was to erect on some high

tower, or other elevated place, a sentry-box, from which

should rise a pointed iron rod, insulated by being fixed in a

cake of resin. Electrified clouds passing over this would, he

conceived, impart to it a portion of their electricity, which

would be rendered evident to the senses by sparks being

emitted when a key, a knuckle, or other conductor was

presented to it. Philadelphia at this time offered no

opportunity of trying an experiment of this kind. Whilst

Franklin was waiting for the erection of a spire, it occurred

to him that he might have more ready access to the region of

clouds by means of a common kite. He prepared one by attaching

two cross-sticks to a silk handkerchief, which would not

suffer so much from the rain as paper. To his upright stick

was fixed an iron point. The string was, as usual, of hemp,

except the lower end, which was silk. Where the hempen string

terminated, a key was fastened. With this apparatus, on the

appearance of a thunder-gust approaching, he went into the

common, accompanied by his son, to whom alone he communicated

his intentions, well knowing the ridicule which, too generally

for the interest of science, awaits unsuccessful experiments in

philosophy. He placed himself under a shed to avoid the rain.

His kite was raised. A thunder-cloud passed over it. No signs

of electricity appeared. He almost despaired of success, when

suddenly he observed the loose fibres of his string move

toward an erect position. He now pressed his knuckle to the

key, and received a strong spark. How exquisite must his

sensations have been at this moment! On his experiment

depended the fate of his theory. Doubt and despair had begun

to prevail, when the fact was ascertained in so clear a

manner, that even the most incredulous could no longer

withhold their assent. Repeated sparks were drawn from the

key, a phial was charged, a shock given, and all the

experiments made which are usually performed with

electricity.' And thus the identity of lightning and

electricity was proved. ... Franklin's proposition to erect

lightning rods which would convey the lightning to the ground,

and so protect the buildings to which they were attached, found

abundant opponents. ... Nevertheless, public opinion became

settled ... that they did protect buildings. ... Then the

philosophers raised a new controversy as to whether the

conductors should be blunt or pointed; Franklin, Cavendish,

and Watson advocating points, and Wilson blunt ends. ... The

logic of experiment, however, showed the advantage of pointed

conductors; and people persisted then in preferring them, as

they have done ever since."

{771}

P. Benjamin,

The Age of Electricity,

chapter 3.

ELECTRICITY: A. D. 1753-1820.

The beginnings of the Electric Telegraph.

"The first actual suggestion of an electric telegraph was made

in an anonymous letter published in the Scots Magazine at

Edinburgh, February 17th, 1753. The letter is initialed 'C.

M.,' and many attempts have been made to discover the author's

identity. ... The suggestions made in this letter were that a

set of twenty-six wires should be stretched upon insulated

supports between the two places which it was desired to put in

connection, and at each end of every wire a metallic ball was

to be suspended, having under it a letter of the alphabet

inscribed upon a piece of paper. ... The message was to be

read off at the receiving station by observing the letters

which were successively attracted by their corresponding

balls, as soon as the wires attached to the latter received a

charge from the distant conductor. In 1787 Monsieur Lomond, of

Paris, made the very important step of reducing the twenty-six

wires to one, and indicating the different letters by various

combinations of simple movements of an indicator, consisting

of a pith-ball suspended by means of a thread from a conductor

in contact with the wire. ... In the year 1790 Chappe, the

inventor of the semaphore, or optico-mechanical telegraph,

which was in practical use previous to the introduction of the

electric telegraph, devised a means of communication,

consisting of two clocks regulated so that the second hands

moved in unison, and pointed at the same instant to the same

figures. ... In the early form of the apparatus, the exact

moment at which the observer at the receiving station should

read off the figure to which the hand pointed was indicated by

means of a sound signal produced by the primitive method of

striking a copper stew pan, but the inventor soon adopted the

plan of giving electrical signals instead of sound signals.

... In 1795 Don Francisco Salva ... suggested ... that instead

of twenty-six wires being used, one for each letter, six or

eight wires· only should be employed, each charged by a Leyden

jar, and that different letters should be formed by means of

various combinations of signals from these. ... Mr.

(afterwards Sir Francis) Ronalds ... took up the subject of

telegraphy in the year 1816, and published an account of his

experiments in 1823," based on the same idea as that of

Chappe. ... "Ronalds drew up a sort of telegraphic code by

which words, and sometimes even complete sentences, could be

transmitted by only three discharges. ... Ronalds completely

proved the practicability of his plan, not only on [a] short

underground line, .... but also upon an overhead line some

eight miles in length, constructed by carrying a telegraph

wire backwards and forwards over a wooden frame-work erected

in his garden at Hammersmith. ... The first attempt to employ

voltaic electricity in telegraphy was made by Don Francisco

Salva, whose frictional telegraph has already been referred

to. On the 14th of May, 1800, Salva read a paper on 'Galvanism

and its application to Telegraphy' before the Academy of Sciences

at Barcelona, in which he described a number of experiments

which he had made in telegraphing over a line some 310 metres

in length. ... A few years later he applied the then recent

discovery of the Voltaic pile to the same purpose, the

liberation of bubbles of gas by the decomposition of water at

the receiving station being the method adopted for indicating

the passage of the signals. A telegraph of a very similar

character was devised by Sömmering, and described in a paper

communicated by the inventor to the Munich Academy of Sciences

in 1809. Sömmering used a set of thirty-five wires corresponding

to the twenty-five letters of the German alphabet and the ten

numerals. ... Oersted's discovery of the action of the

electric current upon a suspended magnetic needle provided a

new and much more hopeful method of applying the electric

current to telegraphy. The great French astronomer Laplace

appears to have been the first to suggest this application of

Oersted's discovery, and he was followed shortly afterwards by

Ampere, who in the year 1820 read a paper before the Paris

Academy of Sciences."

G. W. De Tunzelmann,

Electricity in Modern Life,

chapter 9.

ELECTRICITY: A. D. 1786-1800.

Discoveries of Galvani and Volta.

"The fundamental experiment which led to the discovery of

dynamical electricity [1786] is due to Galvani, professor of

anatomy in Bologna. Occupied with investigations on the

influence of electricity on the nervous excitability of

animals, and especially of the frog, he observed that when the

lumbar nerves of a dead frog were connected with the crural

muscles by a metallic circuit, the latter became briskly

contracted. ... Galvani had some time before observed that the

electricity of machines produced in dead frogs analogous

contractions, and he attributed the phenomena first described

to an electricity inherent in the animal. He assumed that this

electricity, which he called vital fluid, passed from the

nerves to the muscles by the metallic arc, and was thus the

cause of contraction. This theory met with great support,

especially among physiologists, but it was not without

opponents. The most considerable of these was Alexander Volta,

professor of physics in Pavia. Galvani's attention had been

exclusively devoted to the nerves and muscles of the frog;

Volta's was directed upon the connecting metal. Resting on the

observation, which Galvani had also made, that the contraction

is more energetic when the connecting arc is composed of two

metals than where there is only one, Volta attributed to the

metals the active part in the phenomenon of contraction. He

assumed that the disengagement of electricity was due to their

contact, and that the animal parts only officiated as

conductors, and at the same time as a very sensitive

electroscope. By means of the then recently invented

electroscope, Volta devised several modes of showing the

disengagement of electricity on the contact of metals. ... A

memorable controversy arose between Galvani and Volta. The

latter was led to give greater extension to his contact

theory, and propounded the principle that when two

heterogeneous substances are placed in contact, one of them

always assumes the positive and the other the negative

electrical condition. In this form Volta's theory obtained the

assent of the principal philosophers of his time."

A. Ganot,

Elementary Treatise on Physics;

translated by Atkinson, book 10, chapter 1.

Volta's theory, however, though somewhat misleading, did not

prevent his making what was probably the greatest step in the

science up to this time, in the invention (about 1800) of the

Voltaic pile, the first generator of electrical energy by

chemical means, and the forerunner of the vast number of types

of the modern "battery."

{772}

ELECTRICITY: A. D. 1810-1890.

The Arc light.

"The earliest instance of applying Electricity to the

production of light was in 1810, by Sir Humphrey Davy, who

found that when the points of two carbon rods whose other ends

were connected by wires with a powerful primary battery were

brought into contact, and then drawn a little way apart, the

Electric current still continued to jump across the gap,

forming what is now termed an Electric Arc. ... Various

contrivances have been devised for automatically regulating

the position of the two carbons. As early as 1847, a lamp was

patented by Staite, in which the carbon rods were fed together

by clockwork. ... Similar devices were produced by Foucault

and others, but the first really successful arc lamp was

Serrin's, patented in 1857, which has not only itself survived

until the present day, but has had its main features

reproduced in many other lamps. ... The Jablochkoff Candle

(1876), in which the arc was formed between the ends of a pair

of carbon rods placed side by side, and separated by a layer of

insulating material, which slowly consumed as the carbons

burnt down, did good service in accustoming the public to the

new illuminant. Since then the inventions by Brush,

Thomson-Houston, and others have done much to bring about its

adoption for lighting large rooms, streets, and spaces out of

doors."

J. B. Verity,

Electricity up to Date for Light, Power, and Traction,

chapter 3.

ELECTRICITY: A. D. 1820-1825.

Oersted, Ampere, and the discovery of the Electro-Magnet.

"There is little chance ... that the discoverer of the magnet,

or the discoverer and inventor of the magnetic needle, will

ever be known by name, or that even the locality and date of

the discovery will ever be determined [see COMPASS]. ... The

magnet and magnetism received their first scientific treatment

at the hands of Dr. Gilbert. During the two centuries

succeeding the publication of his work, the science of

magnetism was much cultivated. ... The development of the

science went along parallel with that of the science of

electricity ... although the latter was more fruitful in novel

discoveries and unexpected applications than the former. It is

not to be imagined that the many close resemblances of the two

classes of phenomena were allowed to pass unnoticed. ... There

was enough resemblance to suggest an intimate relation; and

the connecting link was sought for by many eminent

philosophers during the last years of the eighteenth and the

earlier years of the present century."

T. C. Mendenhall,

A Century of Electricity,

chapter 3.

"The effect which an electric current, flowing in a wire, can

exercise upon a neighbouring compass needle was discovered by

Oersted in 1820. This first announcement of the possession of

magnetic properties by an electric current was followed

speedily by the researches of Ampere, Arago, Davy, and by the

devices of several other experimenters, including De la Rive's

floating battery and coil, Schweigger's multiplier, Cumming's

galvanometer, Faraday's apparatus for rotation of a permanent

magnet, Marsh's vibrating pendulum and Barlow's rotating

star-wheel. But it was not until 1825 that the electromagnet

was invented. Arago announced, on 25th September 1820, that a

copper wire uniting the poles of a voltaic cell, and

consequently traversed by an electric current, could attract

iron filings to itself laterally. In the same communication he

described how he had succeeded in communicating permanent

magnetism to steel needles laid at right angles to the copper

wire, and how, on showing this experiment to Ampere, the

latter had suggested that the magnetizing action would be more

intense if for the straight copper wire there were substituted

one wrapped in a helix, in the centre of which the steel

needle might be placed. This suggestion was at once carried

out by the two philosophers. 'A copper wire wound in a helix

was terminated by two rectilinear portions which could be

adapted, at will, to the opposite poles of a powerful

horizontal voltaic pile; a steel needle wrapped up in paper

was introduced into the helix.' 'Now, after some minutes'

sojourn in the helix, the steel needle had received a

sufficiently strong dose of magnetism.' Arago then wound upon

a little glass tube some short helices, each about 2¼ inches

long, coiled alternately right-handedly and left-handedly, and

found that on introducing into the glass tube a steel wire, he

was able to produce 'consequent poles' at the places where the

winding was reversed. Ampère, on October 23rd, 1820, read a

memoir, claiming that these facts confirmed his theory of

magnetic actions. Davy had, also, in 1820, surrounded with

temporary coils of wire the steel needles upon which he was

experimenting, and had shown that the flow of electricity

around the coil could confer magnetic power upon the steel

needles. ... The electromagnet, in the form which can first

claim recognition ... was devised by William Sturgeon, and is

described by him in the paper which he contributed to the

Society of Arts in 1825."

S. P. Thompson,

The Electromagnet,

chapter 1.

ELECTRICITY: A. D. 1825-1874.

The Perfected Telegraph.

"The European philosophers kept on groping. At the end of five

years [after Oersted's discovery], one of them reached an

obstacle which he made up his mind was so entirely

insurmountable, that it rendered the electric telegraph an

impossibility for all future time. This was [1825] Mr. Peter

Barlow, fellow of the Royal Society, who had encountered the

question whether the lengthening of the conducting wire would

produce any effect in diminishing the energy of the current

transmitted, and had undertaken to resolve the problem. ... 'I

found [he said] such a considerable diminution with only 200

feet of wire as at once to convince me of the impracticability

of the scheme.' ... The year following the announcement of

Barlow's conclusions, a young graduate of the Albany (N. Y.)

Academy--by name Joseph Henry--was appointed to the

professorship of mathematics in that institution. Henry there

began the series of scientific investigations which is now

historic. ... Up to that time, electro-magnets had been made

with a single coil of naked wire wound spirally around the

core, with large intervals between the strands. The core was

insulated as a whole: the wire was not insulated at all.

Professor Schweigger, who had previously invented the

multiplying galvanometer, had covered his wires with silk.

Henry followed this idea, and, instead of a single coil of

wire, used several. ... Barlow had said that the gentle

current of the galvanic battery became so weakened, after

traversing 200 feet of wire, that it was idle to consider the

possibility of making it pass over even a mile of conductor

and then affect a magnet.

{773}

Henry's reply was to point out that the trouble lay in the way

Barlow's magnet was made. ... Make the magnet so that the

diminished current will exercise its full effect. Instead of

using one short coil, through which the current can easily

slip, and do nothing, make a coil of many turns; that

increases the magnetic field: make it of fine wire, and of

higher resistance. And then, to prove the truth of his

discovery, Henry put up the first electro-magnetic telegraph

ever constructed. In the academy at Albany, in 1831, he

suspended 1,060 feet of bell-wire, with a battery at one end

and one of his magnets at the other; and he made the magnet

attract and release its armature. The armature struck a bell,

and so made the signals. Annihilating distance in this way was

only one part of Henry's discovery. He had also found, that,

to obtain the greatest dynamic effect close at hand, the

battery should be composed of a very few cells of large

surface, combined with a coil or coils of short coarse wire

around the magnet,--conditions just the reverse of those

necessary when the magnet was to be worked at a distance. Now,

he argued, suppose the magnet with the coarse short coil, and

the large-surface battery, be put at the receiving station;

and the current coming over the line be used simply to make

and break the circuit of that local battery. ... This is the

principle of the telegraphic 'relay.' In 1835 Henry worked a

telegraph-line in that way at Princeton. And thus the

electro-magnetic telegraph was completely invented and

demonstrated. There was nothing left to do, but to put up the

posts, string the lines, and attach the instruments."

P. Benjamin,

The Age of Electricity,

chapter 11.

"At last we leave the territory of theory and experiment and

come to that of practice. 'The merit of inventing the modern

telegraph, and applying it on a large scale for public use,

is, beyond all question, due to Professor Morse of the United

States.' So writes Sir David Brewster, and the best

authorities on the question substantially agree with him. ...

Leaving for future consideration Morse's telegraph, which was

not introduced until five years after the time when he was

impressed with the notion of its feasibility, we may mention

the telegraph of Gauss and Weber of Göttingen. In 1833, they

erected a telegraphic wire between the Astronomical and

Magnetical Observatory of Göttingen, and the Physical Cabinet

of the University, for the purpose of carrying intelligence

from the one locality to the other. To these great

philosophers, however, rather the theory than the practice of

Electric Telegraphy was indebted. Their apparatus was so

improved as to be almost a new invention by Steinheil of

Munich, who, in 1837 ... succeeded in sending a current from

one end to the other of a wire 36,000 feet in length, the

action of which caused two needles to vibrate from side to

side, and strike a bell at each movement. To Steinheil the

honour is due of having discovered the important and

extraordinary fact that the earth might be used as a part of

the circuit of an electric current. The introduction of the

Electric Telegraph into England dates from the same year as

that in which Steinheil's experiments took place. William

Fothergill Cooke, a gentleman who held a commission in the

Indian army, returned from India on leave of absence, and

afterwards, because of his bad health, resigned his

commission, and went to Heidelberg to study anatomy. In 1836,

Professor Mönke, of Heidelberg, exhibited an

electro-telegraphic experiment, 'in which electric currents,

passing along a conducting wire, conveyed signals to a distant

station by the deflexion of a magnetic needle enclosed in

Schweigger's galvanometer or multiplier.' ... Cooke was so

struck with this experiment, that he immediately resolved to

apply it to purposes of higher utility than the illustration

of a lecture. ... In a short time he produced two telegraphs

of different construction. When his plans were completed, he

came to England, and in February, 1837, having consulted

Faraday and Dr. Roget on the construction of the

electric-magnet employed in a part of his apparatus, the

latter gentleman advised him to apply to Professor Wheatstone.

... The result of the meeting of Cooke and Wheatstone was that

they resolved to unite their several discoveries; and in the

month of May 1837, they took out their first patent 'for

improvements in giving signals and sounding alarms in distant

places by means of electric currents transmitted through

metallic circuits.' ... By-and-by, as might probably have been

anticipated, difficulties arose between Cooke and Wheatstone,

as to whom the main credit of introducing the Electric

Telegraph into England was due. Mr. Cooke accused Wheatstone

(with a certain amount of justice, it should seem) of entirely

ignoring his claims; and in doing so Mr. Cooke appears to have

rather exaggerated his own services. Most will readily agree

to the wise words of Mr. Sabine: "It was once a popular

fallacy in England that Messrs. Cooke and Wheatstone were the

original inventors of the Electric Telegraph. The Electric

Telegraph had, properly speaking, no inventor; it grew up as

we have seen little by little."

H. J. Nicoll,

Great Movements,

pages 424-429.

"In the latter part of the year 1832, Samuel F. B. Morse, an

American artist, while on a voyage from France to the United

States, conceived the idea of an electromagnetic telegraph

which should consist of the following parts, viz: A single

circuit of conductors from some suitable generator of

electricity; a system of signs, consisting of dots or points

and spaces to represent numerals; a method of causing the

electricity to mark or imprint these signs upon a strip or

ribbon of paper by the mechanical action of an electro-magnet

operating upon the paper by means of a lever, armed at one end

with a pen or pencil; and a method of moving the paper ribbon

at a uniform rate by means of clock-work to receive the

characters. ... In the autumn of the year 1835 he constructed

the first rude working model of his invention. ... The first

public exhibition ... was on the 2d of September, 1837, on

which occasion the marking was successfully effected through

one third of a mile of wire. Immediately afterwards a

recording instrument was constructed ... which was

subsequently employed upon the first experimental line between

Washington and Baltimore. This line was constructed in 1843-44

under an appropriation by Congress, and was completed by May

of the latter year. On the 27th of that month the first

despatch was transmitted from Washington to Baltimore. ... The

experimental line was originally constructed with two wires,

as Morse was not at that time acquainted with the discovery of

Steinheil, that the earth might be used to complete the circuit.

{774}

Accident, however, soon demonstrated this fact. ... The

following year (1845) telegraph lines began to be built over

other routes. ... In October, 1851, a convention of deputies

from the German States of Austria, Prussia, Bavaria,

Würtemberg and Saxony, met at Vienna, for the purpose of

establishing a common and uniform telegraphic system, under

the name of the German-Austrian Telegraph Union. The various

systems of telegraphy then in use were subjected to the most

thorough examination and discussion. The convention decided

with great unanimity that the Morse system was practically far

superior to all others, and it was accordingly adopted. Prof.

Steinheil, although himself ... the inventor of a telegraphic

system, with a magnanimity that does him high honor, strongly

urged upon the convention the adoption of the American

system." ... The first of the printing telegraphs was patented

in the United States by Royal E. House, in 1846. The Hughes

printing telegraph, a remarkable piece of mechanism, was

patented by David E. Hughes, of Kentucky, in 1855. A system

known as the automatic method, in which the signals

representing letters are transmitted over the line through the

instrumentality of mechanism, was originated by Alexander Bain

of Edinburgh, whose first patents were taken out in 1846. An

autographic telegraph, transmitting despatches in the

reproduced hand-writing of the sender, was brought out in

1850, by F. C. Bakewell, of London. The same result was

afterwards accomplished with variations of method by Charles

Cros, of Paris, Abbé Caseli, of Florence, and others; but none

of these inventions has been extensively used. "The

possibility of making use of a single wire for the

simultaneous transmission of two or more communications seems

to have first suggested itself to Moses G. Farmer, of Boston,

about the year 1852." The problem was first solved with

partial success by Dr. Gintl, on the line between Prague and

Vienna, in 1853, but more perfectly by Carl Frischen, of

Hanover, in the following year. Other inventors followed in

the same field, among them Thomas A. Edison, of New Jersey,

who was led by his experiments finally, in 1874 to devise a

system "which was destined to furnish the basis of the first

practical solution of the curious and interesting problem of

quadruplex telegraphy."

G. B. Prescott,

Electricity and the Electric Telegraph,

chapter 29-40.

ELECTRICITY: A. D. 1831-1872.

Dynamo

Electrical Machines, and Electric Motors.

"The discovery of induction by Faraday, in 1831, gave rise to

the construction of magneto-electro machines. The first of

such machines that was ever made was probably a machine that

never came into practical use, the description of which was

given in a letter, signed 'P. M.,' and directed to Faraday,

published in the Philosophical Magazine of 2nd August, 1832.

We learn from this description that the essential parts of

this machine were six horse-shoe magnets attached to a disc,

which rotated in front of six coils of wire wound on bobbins."

Sept. 3rd, 1832, Pixii constructed a machine in which a single

horse-shoe magnet was made to rotate before two soft iron

cores, wound with wire. In this machine he introduced the

commutator, an essential element in all modern continuous

current machines. "Almost at the same time, Ritchie, Saxton,

and Clarke constructed similar machines. Clarke's is the best

known, and is still popular in the small and portable

'medical' machines so commonly sold. ... A larger machine

[was] constructed by Stöhrer (1843), on the same plan as

Clarke's, but with six coils instead of two, and three

compound magnets instead of one. ... The machines, constructed

by Nollet (1849) and Shepard (1856) had still more magnets and

coils. Shepard's machine was modified by Van Malderen, and was

called the Alliance machine. ... Dr. Werner Siemens, while

considering how the inducing effect of the magnet can be most

thoroughly utilised, and how to arrange the coils in the most

efficient manner for this purpose, was led in 1857 to devise

the cylindrical armature. ... Sinsteden in 1851 pointed out

that the current of the generator may itself be utilised to

excite the magnetism of the field magnets. ... Wilde [in 1863]

carried out this suggestion by using a small steel permanent

magnet and larger electro magnets. ... The next great

improvement of these machines arose from the discovery of what

may be called the dynamo-electric principle. This principle

may be stated as follows:--For the generation of currents by

magneto-electric induction it is not necessary that the

machine should be furnished with permanent magnets; the

residual or temporary magnetism of soft iron quickly rotating

is sufficient for the purpose. ... In 1867 the principle was

clearly enunciated and used simultaneously, but independently,

by Siemens and by Wheatstone. ... It was in February, 1867,

that Dr. C. W. Siemens' classical paper on the conversion of

dynamical into electrical energy without the aid of permanent

magnetism was read before the Royal Society. Strangely enough,

the discovery of the same principle was enunciated at the same

meeting of the Society by Sir Charles Wheatstone. ... The

starting-point of a great improvement in dynamo-electric

machines, was the discovery by Pacinotti of the ring armature

... in 1860. ... Gramme, in 1871, modified the ring armature,

and constructed the first machine, in which he made use of the

Gramme ring and the dynamic principle. In 1872,

Hefner-Alteneck, of the firm of Siemens and Halske,

constructed a machine in which the Gramme ring is replaced by

a drum armature, that is to say, by a cylinder round which

wire is wound. ... Either the Pacinotti-Gramme ring armature,

or the Hefner-Alteneck drum armature, is now adopted by nearly

all constructors of dynamo-electric machines, the parts

varying of course in minor details." The history of the dynamo

since has been one of a gradual perfection of parts, resulting

in the production of a great number of types, which can not

here even be mentioned.

A. R. von Urbanitzky,

Electricity in the Service of Man,

pages 227-242.

S. P. Thompson,

Dynamo Electrical Machines.

ELECTRICITY:

Electric Motors.

It has been known for forty years that every form of electric

motor which operated on the principle of mutual mechanical

force between a magnet and a conducting wire or coil could

also be made to act as a generator of induced currents by the

reverse operation of producing the motion mechanically. And

when, starting from the researches of Siemens, Wilde, Nollet,

Holmes and Gramme, the modern forms of magneto-electric and

dynamo-electric machines began to come into commercial use, it

was discovered that any one of the modern machines designed as

a generator of currents constituted a far more efficient

electric motor than any of the previous forms which had been

designed specially as motors.

{775}

It required no new discovery of the law of reversibility to

enable the electrician to understand this; but to convince the

world required actual experiment."

A. Guillemin, Electricity and Magnetism,

part 2, chapter 10, section 3.

ELECTRICITY: A. D. 1835-1889.

The Electric Railway.

"Thomas Davenport, a poor blacksmith of Brandon, Vt.,

constructed what might be termed the first electric railway.

The invention was crude and of little practical value, but the

idea was there. In 1835 he exhibited in Springfield,

Massachusetts, a small model electric engine running upon a

circular track, the circuit being furnished by primary

batteries carried in the car. Three years later, Robert

Davidson, of Aberdeen, Scotland, began his experiments in this

direction. ... He constructed quite a powerful motor, which

was mounted upon a truck. Forty battery cells, carried on the

car, furnished power to propel the motor. The battery elements

were composed of amalgamated zinc and iron plates, the

exciting liquid being dilute sulphuric acid. This locomotive

was run successfully on several steam railroads in Scotland,

the speed attained was four miles an hour, but this machine

was afterwards destroyed by some malicious person or persons

while it was being taken home to Aberdeen. In 1849 Moses

Farmer exhibited an electric engine which drew a small car

containing two persons. In 1851, Dr. Charles Grafton Page, of

Salem, Massachusetts, perfected an electric engine of

considerable power. On April 29 of that year the engine was

attached to a car and a trip was made from Washington to

Bladensburg, over the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad track. The

highest speed attained was nineteen miles an hour. The

electric power was furnished by one hundred Grove cells

carried on the engine. ... The same year, Thomas Hall, of

Boston, Mass., built a small electric locomotive called the

Volta. The current was furnished by two Grove battery cells

which were conducted to the rails, thence through the wheels

of the locomotive to the motor. This was the first instance of

the current being supplied to the motor on a locomotive from a

stationary source. It was exhibited at the Charitable

Mechanics fair by him in 1860. ... In 1879, Messrs. Siemen and

Halske, of Berlin, constructed and operated an electric

railway at the Industrial Exposition. A third rail placed in

the centre of the two outer rails, supplied the current, which

was taken up into the motor through a sliding contact under

the locomotive. ... In 1880 Thomas A. Edison constructed an

experimental road near his laboratory in Menlo Park, N. J. The

power from the locomotive was transferred to the car by belts

running to and from the shafts of each. The current was taken

from and returned through the rails. Early in the year of 1881

the Lichterfelde, Germany, electric railway was put into

operation. It is a third rail system and is still running at

the present time. This may be said to be the first commercial

electric railway constructed. In 1883 the Daft Electric

Company equipped and operated quite successfully an electric

system on the Saratoga & Mt. McGregor Railroad, at Saratoga,

N. Y." During the next five or six years numerous electric

railroads, more or less experimental, were built." October 31,

1888, the Council Bluffs & Omaha Railway and Bridge Company

was first operated by electricity, they using the

Thomson-Houston system. The same year the Thomson-Houston Co.

equipped the Highland Division of the Lynn & Boston Horse

Railway at Lynn, Massachusetts. Horse railways now began to be

equipped with electricity all over the world, and especially

in the United States. In February, 1889, the Thomson-Houston

Electric Co. had equipped the line from Bowdoin Square,

Boston, to Harvard Square, Cambridge, of the West End Railway

with electricity and operated twenty cars, since which time it

has increased its electrical apparatus, until now it is the

largest electric railway line in the world."

E. Trevert,

Electric Railway Engineering,

appendix A.

ELECTRICITY: A. D. 1841-1880.

The Incandescent Electric Light.

"While the arc lamp is well adapted for lighting large areas

requiring a powerful, diffused light, similar to sunlight, and

hence is suitable for outdoor illumination, and for workshops,

stores, public buildings, and factories, especially those

where colored fabrics are produced, its use in ordinary

dwellings, or for a desk light in offices, is impractical, a

softer, steadier, and more economical light being required.

Various attempts to modify the arc-light by combining it with

the incandescent were made in the earlier stages of electric

lighting. ... The first strictly incandescent lamp was

invented in 1841 by Frederick de Molyens of Cheltenham,

England, and was constructed on the simple principle of the

incandescence produced by the high resistance of a platinum

wire to the passage of the electric current. In 1849 Petrie

employed iridium for the same purpose, also alloys of iridium

and platinum, and iridium and carbon. In 1845 J. W. Starr of

Cincinnati first proposed the use of carbon, and, associated

with King, his English agent, produced, through the financial

aid of the philanthropist Peabody, an incandescent lamp. ...

In all these early experiments, the battery was the source of

electric supply; and the comparatively small current required

for the incandescent light as compared with that required for

the arc light, was an argument in favor of the former. ...

Still, no substantial progress was made with either system

till the invention of the dynamo resulted in the practical

development of both systems, that of the incandescent

following that of the arc. Among the first to make

incandescent lighting a practical success were Sawyer and Man

of New York, and Edison. For a long time, Edison experimented

with platinum, using fine platinum wire coiled into a spiral,

so as to concentrate the heat, and produce incandescence; the

same current producing only a red heat when the wire, whether

of platinum or other metal, is stretched out. ... Failing to

obtain satisfactory results from platinum, Edison turned his

attention to carbon, the superiority of which as an

incandescent illuminant had already been demonstrated; but its

rapid consumption, as shown by the Reynier and similar lamps,

being unfavorable to its use as compared with the durability

of platinum and iridium, the problem was, to secure the

superior illumination of the carbon, and reduce or prevent its

consumption. As this consumption was due chiefly to oxidation,

it was questionable whether the superior illumination were not

due to the same cause, and whether, if the carbon were inclosed

in a glass globe, from which oxygen was eliminated, the same

illumination could be obtained.

{776}

Another difficulty of equal magnitude was to obtain a

sufficiently perfect vacuum, and maintain it in a hermetically

sealed globe inclosing the carbon, and at the same time

maintain electric connection with the generator through the

glass by a metal conductor, subject to expansion and

contraction different from that of the glass, by the change of

temperature due to the passage of the electric current. Sawyer

and Man attempted to solve this problem by filling the globe

with nitrogen, thus preventing combustion by eliminating the

oxygen. ... The results obtained by this method, which at one

time attracted a great deal of attention, were not

sufficiently satisfactory to become practical; and Edison and

others gave their preference to the vacuum method, and sought

to overcome the difficulties connected with it. The invention

of the mercurial air pump, with its subsequent improvements,

made it possible to obtain a sufficiently perfect vacuum, and

the difficulty of introducing the current into the interior of

the globe was overcome by imbedding a fine platinum wire in

the glass, connecting the inclosed carbon with the external

circuit; the expansion and contraction of the platinum not

differing sufficiently from that of the glass, in so fine a

wire, as to impair the vacuum. ... The carbons made by Edison

under his first patent in 1879, were obtained from brown paper

or cardboard. ... They were very fragile and short-lived, and

consequently were soon abandoned. In 1880 he patented the

process which, with some modifications, he still adheres to.

In this process he uses filaments of bamboo, which are taken

from the interior, fibrous portion of the plant."

P. Atkinson,

Elements of Electric Lighting,

chapter 8.

ELECTRICITY: A. D. 1854-1866.

The Atlantic Cable.

"Cyrus Field ... established a company in America (in 1854),

which ... obtained the right of landing cables in Newfoundland

for fifty years. Soundings were made in 1856 between Ireland

and Newfoundland, showing a maximum depth of 4,400 metres.

Having succeeded after several attempts in laying a cable

between Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, Field founded the

Atlantic Telegraph Company in England. ... The length of the

... cable [used] was 4,000 kilometres, and was carried by the

two ships Agamemnon and Niagara. The distance between the two

stations on the coasts was 2,640 kilometres. The laying of the

cable commenced on the 7th of August, 1857, at Valentia

(Ireland); on the third day the cable broke at a depth of

3,660 metres, and the expedition had to return. A second

expedition was sent in 1858; the two ships met each other

half-way, the ends of the cable were joined, and the lowering

of it commenced in both directions; 149 kilometres were thus

lowered, when a fault in the cable was discovered. It had,

therefore, to be brought on board again, and was broken during

the process. After it had been repaired, and when 476

kilometres had been already laid, another fault was

discovered, which caused another breakage; this time it was

impossible to repair it, and the expedition was again

unsuccessful, and had to return. In spite of the repeated

failures, two ships were again sent out in the same year, and

this time one end of the cable was landed in Ireland, and the

other at Newfoundland. The length of the sunk cable was 3,745

kilometres. Field's first telegram was sent on the 7th of

August, from America to Ireland. The insulation of the cable,

however, became more defective every day, and failed

altogether on the 1st of September. From the experience

obtained, it was concluded that it was possible to lay a

trans-Atlantic cable, and the company, after consulting a

number of professional men, again set to work. ... The Great

Eastern was employed in laying this cable. This ship, which is

211 metres long, 25 metres broad, and 16 metres in height,

carried a crew of 500 men, of which 120 were electricians and

engineers, 179 mechanics and stokers, and 115 sailors. The

management of all affairs relating to the laying of the cable

was entrusted to Canning. The coast cable was laid on the 21st

of July, and the end of it was connected with the Atlantic

cable on the 23rd. After 1,326 kilometres had been laid, a

fault was discovered, an iron wire was found stuck right

across the cable, and Canning considered the mischief to have

been done with a malevolent purpose. On the 2nd of August,

2,196 kilometres of cable were sunk, when another fault was

discovered. While the cable was being repaired it broke, and

attempts to recover it at the time were all unsuccessful; in

consequence of this the Great Eastern had to return without

having completed the task. A new company, the Anglo-American

Telegraph Company, was formed in 1866, and at once entrusted

Messrs. Glass, Elliott and Company with the construction of a

new cable of 3,000 kilometres. Different arrangements were

made for the outer envelope of the cable, and the Great

Eastern was once more equipped to give effect to the

experiments which had just been made. The new expedition was

not only to lay a new cable, but also to take up the end of

the old one, and join it to a new piece, and thus obtain a

second telegraph line. The sinking again commenced in Ireland

on the 13th of July, 1866, and it was finished on the 27th. On

the 4th of August, 1866, the Trans-Atlantic Telegraph Line was

declared open."

A. R. von Urbanitzky,

Electricity in the Service of Man,

pages 767-768.

ELECTRICITY: A. D. 1876-1892.

The Telephone.

"The first and simplest of all magnetic telephones is the Bell

Telephone." In "the first form of this instrument, constructed

by Professor Graham Bell, in 1876 ... a harp of steel rods was

attached to the poles of a permanent magnet. ... When we sing

into a piano, certain of the strings of the instrument are set

in vibration sympathetically by the action of the voice with

different degrees of amplitude, and a sound, which is an

approximation to the vowel uttered, is produced from the

piano. Theory shows that, had the piano a much larger number

of strings to the octave, the vowel sounds would be perfectly

reproduced. It was upon this principle that Bell constructed

his first telephone. The expense of constructing such an

apparatus, however, deterred Bell from making the attempt, and

he sought to simplify the apparatus before proceeding further in

this direction. After many experiments with more, or less

unsatisfactory results, he constructed the instrument ...

which he exhibited at Philadelphia in 1876. In this apparatus,

the transmitter was formed by an electro-magnet, through which

a current flowed, and a membrane, made of gold-beater's skin,

on which was placed as a sort of armature, a piece of soft

iron, which thus vibrated in front of the electro-magnet when

the membrane was thrown into sonorous vibration.

{777}

... It is quite clear that when we speak into a Bell

transmitter only a small fraction of the energy of the

sonorous vibrations of the voice can be converted into

electric currents, and that these currents must be extremely

weak. Edison applied himself to discover some means by which

he could increase the strength of these currents. Elisha Gray

had proposed to use the variation of resistance of a fine

platinum wire attached to a diaphragm dipping into water, and

hoped that the variation of extent of surface in contact would

so vary the strength of current as to reproduce sonorous

vibrations; but there is no record of this experiment having

been tried. Edison proposed to utilise the fact that the

resistance of carbon varied under pressure. He had

independently discovered this peculiarity of carbon, but it

had been previously described by Du Moncel. ... The first

carbon transmitter was constructed in 1878 by Edison."

W. H. Preece, and J. Maier,

The Telephone,

chapter 3-4.

In a pamphlet distributed at the Columbian Exposition,

Chicago, 1893, entitled "Exhibit of the American Bell

Telephone Co.," the following statements are made: "At the

Centennial Exposition, in Philadelphia, in 1876, was given the

first general public exhibition of the telephone by its

inventor, Alexander Graham Bell. To-day, seventeen years

later, more than half a million instruments are in daily use

in the United States alone, six hundred million talks by

telephone are held every year, and the human voice is carried

over a distance of twelve hundred miles without loss of sound

or syllable. The first use of the telephone for business

purposes was over a single wire connecting only two

telephones. At once the need of general inter-communication

made itself felt. In the cities and larger towns exchanges

were established and all the subscribers to any one exchange

were enabled to talk to one another through a central office.

Means were then devised to connect two or more exchanges by

trunk lines, thus affording means of communication between all

the subscribers of all the exchanges so connected. This work

has been pushed forward until now have been gathered into what

may be termed one great exchange all the important cities from

Augusta on the east to Milwaukee on the west, and from

Burlington and Buffalo on the north to Washington on the

south, bringing more than one half the people of this country

and a much larger proportion of the business interests, within

talking distance of one another. ... The lines which connect

Chicago with Boston, via New York, are of copper wire of extra

size. It is about one sixth of an inch in diameter, and weighs

435 pounds to the mile. Hence each circuit contains 1,044,000

pounds of copper. ... In the United States there are over a

quarter of a million exchange subscribers, and ... these make

use of the telephone to carry on 600,000,000 conversations

annually. There is hardly a city or town of 5,000 inhabitants

that has not its Telephone Exchange, and these are so knit

together by connecting lines that intercommunication is

constant." The number of telephones in use in the United

States, on the 20th of December in each year since the first

introduction, is given as follows;

1877, 5,187;

1878, 17,567;

1879, 52,517;

1880, 123,380;

1881, 180,592;

1882, 237,728;

1883, 298,580;

1884, 325,574;

1885, 330,040;

1886, 353,518;

1887, 380,277;

1888, 411,511;

1889, 444,861;

1890, 483,790;

1891, 512,407;

1892, 552,720.

----------End: Electricity----------

ELEPHANT, Order of the.

A Danish order of knighthood instituted in 1693 by

King Christian V.

ELEPHANTINE.

See EGYPT: THE OLD EMPIRE AND THE MIDDLE EMPIRE.

ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES, The.

Among the ancient Greeks, "the mysteries were a source of

faith and hope to the initiated, as are the churches of modern

times. Secret doctrines, regarded as holy, and to be kept with

inviolable fidelity, were handed down in these brotherhoods,

and no doubt were fondly believed to contain a saving grace by

those who were admitted, amidst solemn and imposing rites,

under the veil of midnight, to hear the tenets of the ancient

faith, and the promises of blessings to come to those who,

with sincerity of heart and pious trust, took the obligations

upon them. The Eleusinian mysteries were the most imposing and

venerable. Their origin extended back into a mythical

antiquity, and they were among the few forms of Greek worship

which were under the superintendence of hereditary

priesthoods. Thirlwall thinks that 'they were the remains of a

worship which preceded the rise of the Hellenic mythology and

its attendant rites, grounded on a view of Nature less

fanciful, more earnest, and better fitted to awaken both

philosophical thought and religious feeling.' This conclusion

is still further confirmed by the moral and religious tone of

the poets,--such as Æschylus,--whose ideas on justice, sin and

retribution are as solemn and elevated as those of a Hebrew

prophet. The secrets, whatever they were, were never revealed

in express terms; but Isocrates uses some remarkable

expressions, when speaking of their importance to the

condition of man. 'Those who are initiated,' says he

'entertain sweeter hopes of eternal life'; and how could this

be the case, unless there were imparted at Eleusis the

doctrine of eternal life, and some idea of its state and

circumstances more compatible with an elevated conception of

the Deity and of the human soul than the vague and shadowy

images which haunted the popular mind. The Eleusinian

communion embraced the most eminent men from every part of

Greece,--statesmen, poets, philosophers, and generals; and

when Greece became a part of the Roman Empire, the greatest

minds of Rome drew instruction and consolation from its

doctrines. The ceremonies of initiation--which took place

every year in the early autumn, a beautiful season in

Attica--were a splendid ritual, attracting visitors from every

part of the world. The processions moving from Athens to

Eleusis over the Sacred Way, sometimes numbered twenty or

thirty thousand people, and the exciting scenes were well

calculated to leave a durable impression on susceptible minds.

... The formula of the dismissal, after the initiation was

over, consisted in the mysterious words 'konx,' 'ompax'; and

this is the only Eleusinian secret that has illuminated the

world from the recesses of the temple of Demeter and

Persephone. But it is a striking illustration of the value

attached to these rites and doctrines, that, in moments of

extremest peril--as of impending shipwreck, or massacre by a

victorious enemy,--men asked one another, 'Are you initiated?'

as if this were the anchor of their hopes for another life."

{778}

C. C. Felton,

Greece, Ancient and Modern,

chapter 2, lecture 10.

"The Eleusinian mysteries continued to be celebrated during

the whole of the second half of the fourth century, till they

were put an end to by the destruction of the temple at

Eleusis, and by the devastation of Greece in the invasion of

the Goths under Alaric in 395."

See GOTHS: A. D. 395.

W. Smith,

Note to Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,

chapter 25.

ALSO IN:

R. Brown,

The Great Dionysiak Myth,

chapter 6, section. 2.

J. J. I. von Dollinger,

The Gentile and the Jew,

book 3 (volume 1).

See, also, ELEUSIS.

ELEUSIS.

Eleusis was originally one of the twelve confederate townships

into which Attica was said to have been divided before the

time of Theseus. It "was advantageously situated [about

fourteen miles Northwest of Athens] on a height, at a small

distance from the shore of an extensive bay, to which there is

access only through narrow channels, at the two extremities of

the island of Salamis: its position was important, as

commanding the shortest and most level route by land from

Athens to the Isthmus by the pass which leads at the foot of

Mount Cerata along the shore to Megara. ... Eleusis was built

at the eastern end of a low rocky hill, which lies parallel to

the sea-shore. ... The eastern extremity of the hill was

levelled artificially for the reception of the Hierum of Ceres

and the other sacred buildings. Above these are the traces of an

Acropolis. A triangular space of about 500 yards each side,

lying between the hill and the shore, was occupied by the town

of Eleusis. ... To those who approached Eleusis from Athens,

the sacred buildings standing on the eastern extremity of the

height concealed the greater part of the town, and on a nearer

approach presented a succession of magnificent objects, well

calculated to heighten the solemn grandeur of the ceremonies

and the awe and reverence of the Mystæ in their initiation.

... In the plurality of enclosures, in the magnificence of the

pylæ or gateways, in the absence of any general symmetry of

plan, in the small auxiliary temples, we recognize a great

resemblance between the sacred buildings of Eleusis and the

Egyptian Hiera of Thebes and Philæ. And this resemblance is

the more remarkable, as the Demeter of Attica was the Isis of

Egypt. We cannot suppose, however, that the plan of all these

buildings was even thought of when the worship of Ceres was

established at Eleusis. They were the progressive creation of

successive ages. ... Under the Roman Empire ... it was

fashionable among the higher order of Romans to pass some time

at Athens in the study of philosophy and to be initiated in

the Eleusinian mysteries. Hence Eleusis became at that time

one of the most frequented places in Greece; and perhaps it

was never so populous as under the emperors of the first two

centuries of our æra. During the two following centuries, its

mysteries were the chief support of declining polytheism, and

almost the only remaining bond of national union among the

Greeks; but at length the destructive visit of the Goths in

the year 396, the extinction of paganism and the ruin of

maritime commerce, left Eleusis deprived of every source of

prosperity, except those which are inseparable from its

fertile plain, its noble bay, and its position on the road

from Attica to the Isthmus. ... The village still preserves

the ancient name, no further altered than is customary in

Romaic conversions."

W. M. Leake,

Topography of Athens;

volume 2: The Demi, section 5.

ELGIN, Lord.

The Indian administration of.

See INDIA: A. D. 1862-1876.

ELIS.

Elis was an ancient Greek state, occupying the country on the

western coast of Peloponnesus, adjoining Arcadia, and between

Messenia at the south and Achaia on the north. It was noted

for the fertility of its soil and the rich yield of its

fisheries. But Elis owed greater importance to the inclusion

within its territory of the sacred ground of Olympia, where

the celebration of the most famous festival of Zeus came to be

established at an early time. The Elians had acquired Olympia

by conquest of the city and territory of Pisa, to which it

originally belonged, and the presidency of the Olympic games

was always disputed with them by the latter. Elis was the

close ally of Sparta down to the year B. C. 421, when a bitter

quarrel arose between them, and Elis suffered heavily in the

wars which ensued. It was afterwards at war with the

Arcadians, and joined the Ætolian League against the Achaian

League. The city of Elis was one of the most splendid in

Greece; but little now remains, even of ruins, to indicate its

departed glories.

See, also, OLYMPIC GAMES.

ELISII, The.

See LYGIANS.

ELIZABETH,

Czarina of Russia, A. D. 1741-1761..

Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, and the Thirty Years War.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1618-1620; 1620; 1621-1623;

1631-1632, and 1648.

Elizabeth, Queen of England, A. D. 1558-1603.

Elizabeth Farnese, Queen of Spain.

See ITALY: A. D. 1715-1735; and

SPAIN: A. D. 1713-1725, and 1726-1731.

ELIZABETH, N. J.

The first settlement of.

See NEW JERSEY: A. D. 1664-1667.

ELK HORN, OR PEA RIDGE, Battle of.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1862 (JANUARY-MARCH: MISSOURI-ARKANSAS).

ELKWATER, OR CHEAT SUMMIT, Battle of.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1861 (AUGUST-DECEMBER: WEST VIRGINIA).

ELLANDUM, Battle of.

Decisive victory of Ecgberht, the West Saxon king, over the

Mercians, A. D. 823.

ELLEBRI, The.

See IRELAND, TRIBES OF EARLY CELTIC INHABITANTS.

ELLENBOROUGH, Lord, The Indian administration of.

See INDIA: A. D. 1836-1845.

ELLSWORTH, Colonel, The death of.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1861 (MAY: VIRGINIA).

ELMET.

A small kingdom of the Britons which was swallowed up in the

English kingdom of Northumbria early in the seventh century.

It answered, roughly speaking, to the present West-Riding of

Yorkshire. ... Leeds "preserves the name of Loidis, by which

Elmet seems also to have been known."

J. R. Green, The Making of England, page 254.

ELMIRA, N. Y. (then Newtown).

General Sullivan's Battle with the Senecas.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1779 (AUGUST-SEPTEMBER).

ELSASS.

See ALSACE.

ELTEKEH, Battle of.

A victory won by the Assyrian, Sennacherib, over the

Egyptians, before the disaster befell his army which is

related in 2 Kings xix. 35. Sennacherib's own account of the

battle has been found among the Assyrian records.

{779}

A. H. Sayce,

Fresh Light from the Ancient Monuments,

chapter 6.

ELUSATES, The.

See AQUITAINE, TRIBES OF ANCIENT.

ELVIRA, Battle of(1319).

See SPAIN: A. D. 1273-1460.

ELY, The Camp of Refuge at.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1069-1071.

ELYMAIS.

See ELAM.

ELYMEIA.

See MACEDONIA.

ELYMIANS, The.

See SICILY: EARLY INHABITANTS.

ELYSIAN FIELDS.

See CANARY ISLANDS.

ELZEVIRS.

See PRINTING: A. D. 1617-1680.

EMANCIPATION, Catholic.

See IRELAND: A. D. 1811-1829.

EMANCIPATION, Compensated;

Proposal of President Lincoln.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1862 (MARCH).

EMANCIPATION, Prussian Edict of.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1807-1808.

EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATIONS,

President Lincoln's.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1862 (SEPTEMBER), and 1863 (JANUARY).

EMANUEL,

King of Portugal, A. D. 1495-1521.

Emanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy, A. D. 1553-1580.

EMBARGO OF 1807, The American.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1804-1809, and 1808.

EMERICH, King of Hungary, A. D. 1196-1204.

EMERITA AUGUSTA.

A colony of Roman veterans settled in Spain, B. C. 27, by the

emperor Augustus. It is identified with modern Merida, in

Estremadura.

C. Merivale, History of the Romans, chapter 34, note.

EMESSA.

Capture by the Arabs (A. D. 636).

See MAHOMETAN CONQUEST: A. D. 632-639.

ÉMIGRÉS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1789-1791;

1791 (JULY-SEPTEMBER); and 1791-1792.

EMITES, The.

See JEWS: EARLY HEBREW HISTORY.

EMMAUS, Battle of.

Defeat of a Syrian army under Gorgias by Judas Maccabæus,

B. C. 166.

Josephus, Antiquity of the Jews, book 12, chapter 7.

EMMENDINGEN, Battle of.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1796 (APRIL-OCTOBER). .

EMMET INSURRECTION, The.

See IRELAND: A. D. 1801-1803.

EMPEROR.

A title derived from the Roman title Imperator.

See IMPERATOR.

EMPORIA, The.

See CARTHAGE, THE DOMINION OF.

ENCOMIENDAS.

See SLAVERY, MODERN: OF THE INDIANS;

also, REPARTIMIENTOS.

ENCUMBERED ESTATES ACT, The.

See IRELAND: A. D. 1843-1848.

ENCYCLICAL AND SYLLABUS OF 1864, The.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1864.

ENCYCLOPÆDISTS, The.

"French literature had never been so brilliant as in the

second half of the 18th century. Buffon, Diderot, D'Alembert,

Rousseau, Duclos, Condillac, Helvetius, Holbach, Raynal,

Condorcet, Mably, and many others adorned it, and the

'Encyclopædia,' which was begun in 1751 under the direction of

Diderot, became the focus of an intellectual influence which

has rarely been equalled. The name and idea were taken from a

work published by Ephraim Chambers in Dublin, in 1728. A noble

preliminary discourse was written by D'Alembert; and all the

best pens in France were enlisted in the enterprise, which was

constantly encouraged and largely assisted by Voltaire. Twice

it was suppressed by authority, but the interdict was again

raised. Popular favour now ran with an irresistible force in

favour of the philosophers, and the work was brought to its

conclusion in 1771."

W. E. H. Lecky, History of England in the 18th Century,

chapter. 20 (volume 5).

ALSO IN:

J. Morley,

Diderot and the Encyclopædists,

chapter 5 (volume 1).

E. J. Lowell,

The Eve of the French Revolution,

chapter 16.

ENDICOTT, John, and the Colony of Massachusetts Bay.

See MASSACHUSETTS: A. D. 1623-1629, and after.

ENDIDJAN, Battle of (1876).

See RUSSIA: A. D. 1859-1876.

ENGADINE, The.

See SWITZERLAND: A. D. 1396-1499.

ENGEN, Battle of (1800).

See FRANCE: A. D. 1800-1801 (MAY-FEBRUARY).

ENGERN, Duchy of.

See SAXONY: THE OLD DUCHY.

ENGHIEN, Duc d',

The abduction and execution of.

See FRANCE: 1804-1805.

ENGLAND:

Before the coming of the English.

The Celtic and Roman periods.

See BRITAIN.

ENGLAND: A. D.449-547.

The three tribes of the English conquest.

The naming of the country.

"It was by ... three tribes [from Northwestern Germany], the

Saxons, the Angles, and the Jutes, that southern Britain was

conquered and colonized in the fifth and sixth centuries,

according to the most ancient testimony. ... Of the three, the

Angli almost if not altogether pass away into the migration:

the Jutes and the Saxons, although migrating in great numbers,

had yet a great part to play in their own homes and in other

regions besides Britain; the former at a later period in the

train and under the name of the Danes; the latter in German

history from the eighth century to the present day."

W. Stubbs,

Constitutional History of England,

volume 1, chapter 3.

"Among the Teutonic settlers in Britain some tribes stand out

conspicuously; Angles, Saxons, and Jutes stand out

conspicuously above all. The Jutes led the way; from the

Angles the land and the united nation took their name; the

Saxons gave us the name by which our Celtic neighbours have

ever known us. But there is no reason to confine the area from

which our forefathers came to the space which we should mark

on the map as the land of the continental Angles, Saxons, and

Jutes. So great a migration is always likely to be swollen by

some who are quite alien to the leading tribe; it is always

certain to be swollen by many who are of stocks akin to the

leading tribe, but who do not actually belong to it.

{780}

As we in Britain are those who stayed behind at the time of

the second great migration of our people [to America], so I

venture to look on all our Low-Dutch kinsfolk on the continent

of Europe as those who stayed behind at the time of the first

great migration of our people. Our special hearth and cradle

is doubtless to be found in the immediate marchland of Germany

and Denmark, but the great common home of our people is to be

looked on as stretching along the whole of that long coast

where various dialects of the Low-Dutch tongue are spoken. If

Angles and Saxons came, we know that Frisians came also, and

with Frisians as an element among us, it is hardly too bold to

claim the whole Netherlands as in the widest sense Old

England, as the land of one part of the kinsfolk who stayed

behind. Through that whole region, from the special Anglian

corner far into what is now northern France, the true tongue

of the people, sometimes overshadowed by other tongues, is

some dialect or other of that branch of the great Teutonic

family which is essentially the same as our own speech. From

Flanders to Sleswick the natural tongue is one which differs

from English only as the historical events of fourteen hundred

years of separation have inevitably made the two tongues--two

dialects, I should rather say, of the same tongue--to differ.

From these lands we came as a people. That was our first

historical migration. Our remote forefathers must have made

endless earlier migrations as parts of the great Aryan body,

as parts of the smaller Teutonic body. But our voyage from the

Low-Dutch mainland to the isle of Britain was our first

migration as a people. ... Among the Teutonic tribes which

settled in Britain, two, the Angles and the Saxons, stood out

foremost. These two between them occupied by far the greater

part of the land that was occupied at all. Each of these two

gave its name to the united nation, but each gave it on

different lips. The Saxons were the earlier invaders; they had

more to do with the Celtic remnant which abode in the land. On

the lips then of the Celtic inhabitants of Britain, the whole

of the Teutonic inhabitants of Britain were known from the

beginning, and are known still, as Saxons. But, as the various

Teutonic settlements drew together, as they began to have

common national feelings and to feel the need of a common

national name, the name which they chose was not the same as

that by which their Celtic neighbours called them. They did

not call themselves Saxons and their land Saxony; they called

themselves English and their land England. I used the word

Saxony in all seriousness; it is a real name for the Teutonic

part of Britain, and it is an older name than the name

England. But it is a name used only from the outside by Celtic

neighbours and enemies; it was not used from the inside by the

Teutonic people themselves. In their mouths, as soon as they

took to themselves a common name, that name was English; as

soon as they gave their land a common name, that name was

England. ... And this is the more remarkable, because the age

when English was fully established as the name of the people,

and England as the name of the land, was an age of Saxon

supremacy, an age when a Saxon state held the headship of

England and of Britain, when Saxon kings grew step by step to

be kings of the English and lords of the whole British island.

In common use then, the men of the tenth and eleventh

centuries knew themselves by no name but English."

E. A. Freeman,

The English People in its Three Homes

(Lectures to American Audiences,

pages 30-31, and 45-47).

See ANGLES AND JUTES, and SAXONS.

ENGLAND: A. D. 449-473.

The Beginning of English history.

The conquest of Kent by the Jutes.

"In the year 449 or 450 a band of warriors was drawn to the

shores of Britain by the usual pledges of land and pay. The

warriors were Jutes, men of a tribe which has left its name to

Jutland, at the extremity of the peninsula that projects from

the shores of North-Germany, but who were probably akin to the

race that was fringing the opposite coast of Scandinavia and

settling in the Danish Isles. In three 'keels'--so ran the

legend of their conquest--and with their Ealdormen, Hengest

and Horsa, at their head, these Jutes landed at Ebbsfleet in

the Isle of Thanet. With the landing of Hengest and his

war-band English history begins. ... In the first years that

followed after their landing, Jute and Briton fought side by

side; and the Picts are said to have been scattered to the

winds in a great battle on the eastern coast of Britain. But

danger from the Pict was hardly over when danger came from the

Jutes themselves. Their numbers probably grew fast as the news

of their settlement in Thanet spread among their fellow

pirates who were haunting the channel; and with the increase

of their number must have grown the difficulty of supplying

them with rations and pay. The dispute which rose over these

questions was at last closed by Hengest's men with a threat of

war." The threat was soon executed; the forces of the Jutes

were successfully transferred from their island camp to the

main shore, and the town of Durovernum (occupying the site of

modern Canterbury) was the first to experience their rage.

"The town was left in blackened and solitary ruin as the

invaders pushed along the road to London. No obstacle seems to

have checked their march from the Stour to the Medway." At

Aylesford (A. D. 455), the lowest ford crossing the Medway,

"the British leaders must have taken post for the defence of

West Kent; but the Chronicle of the conquering people tells

... only that Horsa fell in the moment of victory; and the

flint-heap of Horsted which has long preserved his name ...

was held in aftertime to mark his grave. ... The victory of

Aylesford was followed by a political change among the

assailants, whose loose organization around ealdormen was

exchanged for a stricter union. Aylesford, we are told, was no

sooner won than 'Hengest took to the kingdom, and Ælle, his

son.' ... The two kings pushed forward in 457 from the Medway

to the conquest of West Kent." Another battle at the passage

of the Cray was another victory for the invaders, and, "as the

Chronicle of their conquerors tells us, the Britons' forsook

Kent-land and fled with much fear to London.' ... If we trust

British tradition, the battle at Crayford was followed by a

political revolution in Britain itself.  ... It would seem ...

that the Romanized Britons rose in revolt under Aurelius

Ambrosianus, a descendant of the last Roman general who

claimed the purple as an Emperor in Britain. ... The

revolution revived for a while the energy of the province."

The Jutes were driven back into the Isle of Thanet, and held

there, apparently, for some years, with the help of the strong

fortresses of Richborough and Reculver, guarding the two

mouths of the inlet which then parted Thanet from the

mainland.

{781}

"In 465 however the petty conflicts which had gone on along

the shores of the Wantsum made way for a decisive struggle.

... The overthrow of the Britons at Wipped'sfleet was so

terrible that all hope of preserving the bulk of Kent seems

from this moment to have been abandoned; and ... no further

struggle disturbed the Jutes in its conquest and settlement.

It was only along its southern shore that the Britons now held

their ground. ... A final victory of the Jutes in 473 may mark

the moment when they reached the rich pastures which the Roman

engineers had reclaimed from Romney Marsh. ... With this

advance to the mouth of the Weald the work of Hengest's men

came to an end; nor did the Jutes from this time play any

important part in the attack on the island, for their

after-gains were limited to the Isle of Wight and a few

districts on the Southampton Water."

J. R. Green,

The Making of England,

chapter 1.

ALSO IN:

J. M. Lappenberg,

History of England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings,

volume 1, pages 67-101.

-----------------------------------------------------------

A Logical Outline of English History

IN WHICH THE DOMINANT CONDITIONS AND

INFLUENCES ARE DISTINGUISHED BY COLORS.

Physical or material (Orange).

Ethnological (Dark Blue).

Social and political (Green).

Intellectual, moral and religious (Tan).

Foreign (Black).

5th-7th centuries.

Conquest: and settlement by Saxons, Angles and Jutes.

The Island of Britain, separated from the Continent of Europe

by a narrow breadth of sea, which makes friendly commerce easy

and hostile invasion difficult;--its soil in great part

excellent; its northern climate tempered by the humid warmth

of the Gulf Stream; its conditions good for breeding a robust

population, strongly fed upon corn and meats; holding,

moreover, in store, for later times, a rare deposit of iron

and coal, of tin and potter's clay, and other minerals of like

utility; was occupied and possessed by tribes from Northern

Europe, of the strongest race in history; already schooled in

courage and trained to enterprise by generations of sea-faring

adventure; uncorrupted by any mercenary contact with the

decaying civilization of Rome, but ready for the knowledge it

could give.

7th-11th Centuries.

Fused, after much warring with one another and with their

Danish kin, into a nation of Englishmen, they lived, for five

centuries, an isolated life, until their insular and

independent character had become deeply ingrained, and the

primitive system of their social and political

organization--their Townships, their Hundreds, their Shires,

and the popular Moots, or courts, which determined and

administered law in each--was rooted fast; though their king's

power waxed and the nobles and the common people drew farther

apart.

A. D. 1066.--Norman conquest.

Then they were mastered (in the last successful invasion that

their Island ever knew) by another people, sprung from their

own stock, but whose blood had been warmed and whose wit had

been quickened by Latin and Gallic influences in the country

of the Franks.

11th-18th Centuries.

A new social and political system now formed itself in England

as the result:--Feudalism modified by the essential democracy

inherent in Old English institutions--producing a stout

commonality to daunt the lords, and a strong aristocracy to

curb the king.

A. D. 1215. Magna Oharta.

English royalty soon weakened itself yet more by ambitious

strivings to maintain and extend a wide dominion over-sea, in

Normandy and Aquitaine; and was helpless to resist when barons

and commons came together to demand the signing and sealing of

the Great Charter of Englishmen's rights.

A. D. 1265-1295--Parliament.

Out of the conditions which gave birth to Magna Charta there

followed, soon, the development of the English Parliament as a

representative legislature, from the Curia Regis of the Normans

and the Witenagemot of the older English time.

A. D. 1337-1453--The Hundred Years War.

From the woful wars of a hundred years with France, which

another century brought upon it, the nation, as a whole,

suffered detriment, no doubt, and it progress was hindered in

many ways; but politically the people took some good from

the troubled times, because their kings were more dependant on

them for money and men.

A. D. 1453-1485--War of the Roses

So likewise, they were bettered in some ways by the dreadful

civil Wars of the Roses, which distracted England for thirty

years. The nobles well-nigh perished, as an order, in these

wars, while the middle-class people at large suffered relatively

little, in numbers or estate.

A. D. 1348--The Great Plague.

But, previously, the great Plague, by diminishing the ranks of

the laboring class, had raised wages and the standard of living

among them, and had helped, with other causes, to multiply the

small landowners and tenant farmers of the country, increasing

the independent common class.

A. D. 1327-1377--Immigration of Flemish weavers.

Moreover, from the time of Edward III., who encouraged Flemish

weavers to settle in England and to teach their art to his

people, manufactures began to thrive; trade extended; towns

grew in population and wealth, and the great burgher

middle-class rose rapidly to importance and weight in the

land.

A. D. 1485-1603--Absolutism of the Tudors.

But the commons of England were not prepared to make use of

the actual power which they held. The nobles had led them in

the past; it needed time to raise leaders among themselves,

and time to organize their ranks. Hence no new checks on

royalty were ready to replace those constraints which had been

broken by the ruin of great houses in the civil wars, and the

crown made haste to improve its opportunity for grasping

power. There followed, under the Tudors, a period of

absolutism greater than England had known before.

15th-16th Centuries--Renaissance.

But this endured only for the time of the education of the

commons, who conned the lessons of the age with eagerness and

with understanding. The new learning from Greece and Rome; the

new world knowledge that had been found in the West; the new

ideas which the new art of the printer had furnished with

wings,--all these had now gained their most fertile planting

in the English mind. Their flower was the splendid literature

of the Elizabethan age; they ripened fruits more substantial

at a later day.

The intellectual development of the nation tended first toward

a religious independence, which produced two successive

revolts--from Roman Papacy and from the Anglican Episcopacy

that succeeded it.

This religious new departure of the English people gave

direction to a vast expansion of their energies in the outside

world. It led them into war with Spain, and sent forth Drake

and Hawkins and the Buccaneers, to train the sailors and pilot

the merchant adventurers who would soon make England mistress

of all the wide seas.

A. D. 1608-1688.

The Stuarts.

The Civil War.

The Commonwealth.

The Revolution.

Then, when these people, strong, prosperous and intelligent,

had come to be ripely sufficient for self-government, there

fell to them a foolish race of kings, who challenged them to a

struggle which stripped royalty of all but its fictions, and

established the sovereignty of England in its House of Commons

for all time.

18th-19th Centuries.

Science

Invention.

Material progress.

Economic enlightenment.

Unassailable in its island,--taking part in the great wars of

the 18th century by its fleets and its subsidies

chiefly,--busy with its undisturbed labors at home,--vigorous

in its conquests, its settlements and its trade, which it

pushed into the farthest parts of the earth,--creating wealth

and protecting it from spoliation and from waste,--the English

nation now became the industrial and economic school of the

age. It produced the mechanical inventions which first opened

a new era in the life of mankind on the material side; it

attained to the splendid enlightenment of freedom in trade; it

made England the workshop and mart of the world, and it spread

her Empire to every Continent, through all the seas.

--------- End: A Logical Outline of English History --------------------

ENGLAND: A. D. 477-527.

The conquests of the Saxons.

The founding of the kingdoms of Sussex, Wessex and Essex.

"Whilst the Jutes were conquering Kent, their kindred took

part in the war. Ship after ship sailed from the North Sea,

filled with eager warriors. The Saxons now arrived--Ella and

his three sons landed in the ancient territory of the Regni

(A. D. 477-491). The Britons were defeated with great

slaughter, and driven into the forest of Andreade, whose

extent is faintly indicated by the wastes and commons of the

Weald. A general confederacy of the Kings and 'Tyrants' of the

Britons was formed against the invaders, but fresh

reinforcements arrived from Germany; the city of

Andreades-Ceastre was taken by storm, all its inhabitants were

slain and the buildings razed to the ground, so that its site

is now entirely unknown. From this period the kingdom of the

South Saxons was established in the person of Ella; and though

ruling only over the narrow boundary of modern Sussex, he was

accepted as the first of the Saxon Bretwaldas, or Emperors of

the Isle of Britain. Encouraged, perhaps, by the good tidings

received from Ella, another band of Saxons, commanded by

Cerdic and his son Cynric, landed on the neighbouring shore,

in the modern Hampshire (A. D. 494). At first they made but

little progress. They were opposed by the Britons; but

Geraint, whom the Saxon Chroniclers celebrate for his

nobility, and the British Bards extol for his beauty and

valour, was slain (A. D. 501). The death of the Prince of the

'Woodlands of Dyfnaint,' or Damnonia, may have been avenged,

but the power of the Saxons overwhelmed all opposition; and

Cerdic, associating his son Cynric in the dignity, became the

King of the territory which he gained. Under Cynric and his

son Ceaulin, the Saxons slowly, yet steadily, gained ground.

The utmost extent of their dominions towards the North cannot

be ascertained; but they had conquered the town of Bedford;

and it was probably in consequence of their geographical

position (A. D. 571) with respect to the countries of the

Middle and East Saxons, that the name of the West Saxons was

given to this colony. The tract north of the Thames was soon

lost; but on the south of that river and of the Severn, the

successors of Cerdic, Kings of Wessex, continued to extend

their dominions. The Hampshire Avon, which retains its old

Celtic name, signifying 'the Water,' seems at first to have

been their boundary. Beyond this river, the British princes of

Damnonia retained their power; and it was long before the

country as far as the Exe became a Saxon March-land, or

border. About the time that the Saxons under Cerdic and Cynric

were successfully warring against the Britons, another colony

was seen to establish itself in the territory or kingdom

which, from its geographical position, obtained the name of

East Saxony; but whereof the district of the Middle Saxons,

now Middlesex, formed a part. London, as you well know, is

locally included in Middle Saxony; and the Kings of Essex, and

the other sovereigns who afterwards acquired the country,

certainly possessed many extensive rights of sovereignty in

the city. Yet, I doubt much whether London was ever

incorporated in any Anglo-Saxon kingdom; and I think we must

view it as a weak, tributary, vassal state, not very well able

to resist the usurpations of the supreme Lord or Suzerain,

Æscwin, or Ercenwine, who was the first King of the East

Saxons (A. D. 527). His son Sleda was married to Ricola,

daughter to Ethelbert of Kent, who afterwards appears as the

superior, or sovereign of the country; and though Sleda was

King, yet Ethelbert joined in all important acts of

government. This was the fate of Essex--it is styled a

kingdom, but it never enjoyed any political independence,

being always subject to the adjoining kings."

F. Palgrave,

History of the Anglo Saxons,

chapter 2.

"The descents of [the West Saxons], Cerdic and Cynric, in 495

at the mouth of the Itchen, and a fresh descent on Portchester

in 501, can have been little more than plunder raids; and

though in 508 a far more serious conflict ended in the fall of

5,000 Britons and their chief, it was not till 514 that the

tribe whose older name seems to have been that of the

Gewissas, but who were to be more widely known as the West

Saxons, actually landed with a view to definite conquest."

J. R. Green,

The Making of England,

chapter 3.

"The greatness of Sussex did not last beyond the days of its

founder Ælle, the first Bretwalda. Whatever importance Essex,

or its offshoot, Middlesex, could claim as containing the

great city of London was of no long duration. We soon find

London fluctuating between the condition of an independent

commonwealth, and that of a dependency of the Mercian Kings.

Very different was the destiny of the third Saxon Kingdom.

Wessex has grown into England, England into Great Britain,

Great Britain into the United Kingdom, the United Kingdom into

the British Empire. Every prince who has ruled England before

and since the eleventh century [the interval of the Danish

kings, Harold, son of Godwine, and William the Conqueror, who

were not of the West Saxon house] has had the blood of Cerdic

the West Saxon in his veins. At the close of the sixth century

Wessex had risen to high importance among the English

Kingdoms, though the days of its permanent supremacy were

still far distant."

E. A. Freeman,

History of the Norman Conquest of England,

chapter 2, section 1.

{782}

ENGLAND: A. D. 547-633.

The conquests of the Angles.

The founding of their kingdoms.

Northwards of the East Saxons was established the kingdom of

the East Angles, in which a northern and a southern people

(Northfolc and Suthfolc) were distinguished. It is probable

that, even during the last period of the Roman sway, Germans

were settled in this part of Britain; a supposition that gains

probability from several old Saxon sagas, which have reference

to East Anglia at a period anterior to the coming of Hengest

and Horsa. The land of the Gyrwas, containing 1,200 hides ...

comprised the neighbouring marsh districts of Ely and

Huntingdonshire, almost as far as Lincoln. Of the East Angles

Wehwa, or Wewa, or more commonly his son Uffa, or Wuffa, from

whom his race derived their patronymic of Uffings or Wuffings,

is recorded as the first king. The neighbouring states of

Mercia originated in the marsh districts of the Lindisware, or

inhabitants of Lindsey (Lindesig), the northern part of

Lincolnshire. With these were united the Middle Angles. This

kingdom, divided by the Trent into a northern and a southern

portion, gradually extended itself to the borders of Wales.

Among the states which it comprised was the little Kingdom of

the Hwiccas, conterminous with the later diocese of Worcester,

or the counties of Gloucester, Worcester, and a part of

Warwick. This state, together with that of the Hecanas, bore

the common Germanic appellation of the land of the Magesætas.

... The country to the north of the Humber had suffered the

most severely from the inroads of the Picts and Scots. It

became at an early period separated into two British states,

the names of which were retained for some centuries, viz.:

Deifyr (Deora rice), afterwards Latinized into Deira,

extending from the Humber to the Tyne, and Berneich (Beorna

rice), afterwards Bernicia, from the Tyne to the Clyde. Here

also the settlements of the German races appear anterior to

the date given in the common accounts of the first Anglian

kings of those territories, in the middle of the sixth

century."

J. M. Lappenberg,

History of England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings (Thorpe),

volume 1, pages 112-117.

The three Anglian kingdoms of Northumberland, Mercia and East

Anglia, "are altogether much larger than the Saxon and Jutish

Kingdoms, so you see very well why the land was called

'England' and not 'Saxony.' ... 'Saxonia' does occur now and

then, and it was really an older name than 'Anglia,' but it

soon went quite out of use. ... But some say that there were

either Jutes or Saxons in the North of England as soon or

sooner than there were in the south. If so, there is another

reason why the Scotch Celts as well as the Welsh, call us

Saxons. It is not unlikely that there may have been some small

Saxon or Jutish settlements there very early, but the great

Kingdom of Northumberland was certainly founded by Ida the

Angle in 547. It is more likely that there were some Teutonic

settlements there before him, because the Chronicle does not

say of him, as it does of Hengest, Cissa and Cerdie, that he

came into the land by the sea, but only that he began the

Kingdom. ... You must fully understand that in the old times

Northumberland meant the whole land north of the Humber,

reaching as far as the Firth of Forth. It thus takes in part

of what is now Scotland, including the city of Edinburgh, that

is Eadwinesburh, the town of the great Northumbrian King

Eadwine, or Edwin [Edwin of Deira, A. D. 617-633]. ... You

must not forget that Lothian and all that part of Scotland was

part of Northumberland, and that the people there are really

English, and still speak a tongue which has changed less from

the Old-English than the tongue of any other part of England.

And the real Scots, the Gael in the Highlands, call the

Lowland Scots 'Saxons,' just as much as they do the people of

England itself. This Northumbrian Kingdom was one of the

greatest Kingdoms in England, but it was often divided into

two, Beornicia [or Bernicia] and Deira, the latter of which

answered pretty nearly to Yorkshire. The chief city was the

old Roman town of Eboracum, which in Old-English is Eoforwic,

and which we cut short into York. York was for a long time the

greatest town in the North of England. There are now many

others much larger, but York is still the second city in

England in rank, and it gives its chief magistrate the title

of Lord-Mayor, as London· does, while in other cities and

towns the chief magistrate is merely the Mayor, without any

Lord. ... The great Anglian Kingdom of the Mercians, that is

the Marchmen, the people on the march or frontier, seems to

have been the youngest of all, and to have grown up gradually

by joining together several smaller states, including all the

land which the West Saxons had held north of the Thames. Such

little tribes or states were the Lindesfaras and the Gainas in

Lincolnshire, the Magesætas in Herefordshire, the Hwiccas in

Gloucester, Worcester, and part of Warwick, and several

others. ... When Mercia was fully joined under one King, it

made one of the greatest states in England, and some of the

Mercian Kings were very powerful princes. It was chiefly an

Anglian Kingdom; and the Kings were of an Anglian stock, but

among the Hwiccas and in some of the other shires in southern

and western Mercia, most of the people must really have been

Saxons."

E. A. Freeman,

Old English History for Children,

chapter 5.

ENGLAND: A. D. 560.

Ethelbert becomes king of Kent.

ENGLAND: A. D. 593.

Ethelfrith becomes king of Northumbria.

ENGLAND: A. D. 597-685.

The conversion of the English.

"It happened that certain Saxon children were to be sold for

slaves at the marketplace at Rome; when Divine Providence, the

great clock-keeper of time, ordering not only hours, but even

instants (Luke ii. 38), to his own honour, so disposed it,

that Gregory, afterwards first bishop of Rome of that name,

was present to behold them. It grieved the good man to see the

disproportion betwixt the faces and fortunes, the complexions

and conditions, of these children, condemned to a servile

estate, though carrying liberal looks, so legible was

ingenuity in their faces. It added more to his sorrow, when he

conceived that those youths were twice vassals, bought by

their masters, and 'sold under sin' (Romans vii. 14), servants

in their bodies, and slaves in their souls to Satan; which

occasioned the good man to enter into further inquiry with the

merchants (which set them to sale) what they were and whence

they came, according to this ensuing dialogue:

Gregory.--'Whence come these captives?'

Merchants.--'From the isle of Britain.'

Gregory.--'Are those islanders Christians?'

Merchants.--'O no, they are Pagans.'

Gregory.--'It is sad that the author of darkness should

possess men with so bright faces. But what is the name of

their particular nation?'

Merchants.--'They are called Angli.'

Gregory.--'And well may, for their "angel like faces"; it

becometh such to be coheirs with the angels in heaven. In what

province of England did they live?'

Merchants.--'In Deira.'

Gregory.--'They are to be freed de Dei irâ, "from the anger of

God." How call ye the king of that country?'

Merchants.--'Ella.'

Gregory.--'Surely hallelujah ought to be sung in his kingdom

to the praise of that God who created all things.'

{783}

Thus Gregory's gracious heart set the sound of every word to

the time of spiritual goodness. Nor can his words be justly

censured for levity, if we consider how, in that age, the

elegance of poetry consisted in rhythm, and the eloquence of

prose in allusions. And which was the main, where his pleasant

conceits did end, there his pious endeavours began; which did

not terminate in a verbal jest, but produce real effects,

which ensued hereupon."

Thomas Fuller,

The Church History of Britain,

book 2, section 1.

In 590 the good Gregory became Bishop of Rome, or Pope, and

six years later, still retaining the interest awakened in him

by the captive English youth, he dispatched a band of

missionary monks to Britain, with their prior, Augustine, at

their head. Once they turned back, affrighted by what they

heard of the ferocity of the new heathen possessors of the

once-Christian island of Britain; but Gregory laid his

commands upon them again, and in the spring of 597 they

crossed the channel from Gaul, landing at Ebbsfleet, in the

Isle of Thanet, where the Jutish invaders had made their first

landing, a century and a half before. They found Ethelbert of

Kent, the most powerful of the English kings at that time,

already prepared to receive them with tolerance, if not with

favor, through the influence of a Christian wife--queen

Bertha, of the royal family of the Franks. The conversion and

baptism of the Kentish king and court, and the acceptance of

the new faith by great numbers of the people followed quickly.

In November of the same year, 597, Augustine returned to Gaul

to receive his consecration as "Archbishop of the English,"

establishing the See of Canterbury, with the primacy which has

remained in it to the present day. The East Saxons were the

next to bow to the cross and in 604 a bishop, Mellitus, was

sent to London. This ended Augustine's work--and Gregory's--

for both died that year. Then followed an interval of little

progress in the work of the mission, and, afterwards, a

reaction towards idolatry which threatened to destroy it

altogether. But just at this time of discouragement in the

south, a great triumph of Christianity was brought about in

Northumberland, and due, there, as in Kent, to the influence

of a Christian queen. Edwin, the king, with many of his nobles

and his people, were baptised on Easter Eve, A. D. 627, and a new

center of missionary work was established at York. There, too,

an appalling reverse occurred, when Northumberland was

overrun, in 633, by Penda, the heathen king of Mercia; but the

kingdom rallied, and the Christian Church was reestablished,

not wholly, as before, under the patronage and rule of Rome,

but partly by a mission from the ancient Celtic Church, which

did not acknowledge the supremacy of Rome. In the end,

however, the Roman forms of Christianity prevailed, throughout

Britain, as elsewhere in western Europe. Before the end of the

7th century the religion of the Cross was established firmly

in all parts of the island, the South Saxons being the latest

to receive it. In the 8th century English missionaries were

laboring zealously for the conversion of their Saxon and

Frisian brethren on the continent.

G. F. Maclear,

Conversion of the West; The English.

ALSO IN:

The Venerable Bede,

Ecclesiastical History.

H. Soames,

The Anglo Saxon Church.

R. C. Jenkins,

Canterbury,

chapter 2.

ENGLAND:

End of the 6th. Century.

The extent, the limits and the character

of the Teutonic conquest.

"Before the end of the 6th century the Teutonic dominion

stretched from the German ocean to the Severn, and from the

English Channel to the Firth of Forth. The northern part of

the island was still held by Picts and Scots, Celtic tribes,

whose exact ethnical relation to each other hardly concerns

us. And the whole west side of the island, including not only

modern Wales, but the great Kingdom of Strathclyde, stretching

from Dumbarton to Chester, and the great peninsula containing

Cornwall, Devon and part of Somerset, was still in the hands

of independent Britons. The struggle had been a long and

severe one, and the natives often retained possession of a

defensible district long after the surrounding country had

been occupied by the invaders. It is therefore probable that,

at the end of the 6th century and even later, there may have

been within the English frontier inaccessible points where

detached bodies of Welshmen still retained a precarious

independence. It is probable also that, within the same

frontier, there still were Roman towns, tributary to the

conquerors rather than occupied by them. But by the end of the

6th century even these exceptions must have been few. The work

of the Conquest, as a whole, was accomplished. The Teutonic

settlers had occupied by far the greater part of the territory

which they ever were, in the strictest sense, to occupy. The

complete supremacy of the island was yet to be won; but that

was to be won, when it was won, by quite another process. The

English Conquest of Britain differed in several important

respects from every other settlement of a Teutonic people

within the limits of the Roman Empire. ... Though the literal

extirpation of a nation is an impossibility, there is every

reason to believe that the Celtic inhabitants of those parts

of Britain which had become English at the 6th century had

been as nearly extirpated as a nation can be. The women would

doubtless be largely spared, but as far as the male sex is

concerned, we may feel sure that death, emigration or personal

slavery were the only alternatives which the vanquished found

at the hands of our fathers. The nature of the small Celtic

element in our language would of itself prove the fact. Nearly

every Welsh word which has found its way into English

expresses some small domestic matter, such as women and slaves

would be concerned with."

E. A. Freeman,

History of the Norman Conquest of England,

chapter 2, section 1.

"A glance at the map shows that the mass of the local

nomenclature of England begins with the Teutonic conquest,

while the mass of the local nomenclature of France is older

than the Teutonic conquest. And, if we turn from the names on

the map to the living speech of men, there is the most

obvious, but the most important, of all facts, the fact that

Englishmen speak English and that Frenchmen speak French.

{784}

That is to say, in Gaul the speech of Rome lived through the

Teutonic conquest, while in Britain it perished in the

Teutonic conquest, if it had not passed away before. And

behind this is the fact, very much less obvious, a good deal

less important, but still very important, that in Gaul tongues

older than Latin live on only in corners as mere survivals,

while in Britain, while Latin has utterly vanished, a tongue

older than Latin still lives on as the common speech of an

appreciable part of the land. Here then is the final result

open to our own eyes. And it is a final result which could not

have come to pass unless the Teutonic conquest of Britain had

been something of an utterly different character from the

Teutonic conquest of Gaul--unless the amount of change, of

destruction, of havoc of every kind, above all, of slaughter

and driving out of the existing inhabitants, had been far

greater in Britain than it was in Gaul. If the Angles and

Saxons in Britain had been only as the Goths in Spain, or even

as the Franks in Gaul, it is inconceivable that the final

results should have been so utterly different in the two

cases. There is the plain fact: Gaul remained a Latin-speaking

land; England became a Teutonic-speaking land. The obvious

inference is that, while in Gaul the Teutonic conquest led to

no general displacement of the inhabitants, in England it did

lead to such a general displacement. In Gaul the Franks simply

settled among a subject people, among whom they themselves

were gradually merged; in Britain the Angles and Saxons slew

or drove out the people whom they found in the land, and

settled it again as a new people."

E. A. Freeman,

The English People in its Three Homes

(Lectures to American Audiences),

pages 114-115.

"Almost to the close of the 6th century the English conquest

of Britain was a sheer dispossession of the conquered people;

and, so far as the English sword in these earlier days

reached, Britain became England, a land, that is, not of

Britons, but of Englishmen. There is no need to believe that

the clearing of the land meant the general slaughter of the

men who held it, or to account for such a slaughter by

supposed differences between the temper of the English and

those of other conquerors. ... The displacement of the

conquered people was only made possible by their own stubborn

resistance, and by the slow progress of the conquerors in the

teeth of it. Slaughter no doubt there was on the battlefield

or in towns like Anderida, whose long defence woke wrath in

their besiegers. But for the most part the Britons cannot have

been slaughtered; they were simply defeated and drew back."

J. R. Green,

The Making of England,

chapter 4.

The view strongly stated above, as to the completeness of the

erasure of Romano-British society and influence from the whole

of England except its southwestern and north· western

counties, by the English conquest, is combated as strongly by

another less prominent school of recent historians,

represented, for example, by Mr. Henry C. Coote (The Romans of

Britain) and by Mr. Charles H. Pearson, who says: "We know

that fugitives from Britain settled largely during the 5th

century in Armorica and in Ireland; and we may perhaps accept

the legend of St. Ursula as proof that the flight, in some

instances, was directed to the more civilized parts of the

continent. But even the pious story of the 11,000 virgins is

sober and credible by the side of that history which assumes

that some million men and women were slaughtered or made

homeless by a few ship-loads of conquerors."

C. H. Pearson,

History of England during the Early and Middle Ages,

volume 1, chapter 6.

The opinion maintained by Prof. Freeman and Mr. Green (and, no

less, by Dr. Stubbs) is the now generally accepted one.

ENGLAND: 7th Century.

The so-called "Heptarchy."

"The old notion of an Heptarchy, of a regular system of seven

Kingdoms, united under the regular supremacy of a single

over-lord, is a dream which has passed away before the light

of historic criticism. The English Kingdoms in Britain were

ever fluctuating, alike in their number and in their relations

to one another. The number of perfectly independent states was

sometimes greater and sometimes less than the mystical seven,

and, till the beginning of the ninth century, the whole nation

did not admit the regular supremacy of any fixed and permanent

over-lord. Yet it is no less certain that, among the mass of

smaller and more obscure principalities, seven Kingdoms do

stand out in a marked way, seven Kingdoms of which it is

possible to recover something like a continuous history, seven

Kingdoms which alone supplied candidates for the dominion of

the whole island." These seven kingdoms were Kent, Sussex,

Essex, Wessex, East Anglia, Northumberland and Mercia.

E. A. Freeman,

History of the Norman Conquest of England,

chapter 2.

"After the territorial boundaries had become more settled,

there appeared at the commencement of the seventh century

seven or eight greater and smaller kingdoms. ... Historians

have described this condition of things as the Heptarchy,

disregarding the early disappearance of Sussex, and the

existence of still smaller kingdoms. But this grouping was

neither based upon equality, nor destined to last for any

length of time. It was the common interest of these smaller

states to withstand the sudden and often dangerous invasions

of their western and northern neighbours; and, accordingly,

whichever king was capable of successfully combating the

common foe, acquired for the time a certain superior rank,

which some historians denote by the title of Bretwalda. By

this name can only be understood an actual and recognized

temporary superiority; first ascribed to Ælla of Sussex, and

later passing to Northumbria, until Wessex finally attains a

real and lasting supremacy. It was geographical position which

determined these relations of superiority. The small kingdoms

in the west were shielded by the greater ones of

Northumberland, Mercia and Wessex, as though by

crescent-shaped forelands--which in their struggles with the

Welsh kingdoms, with Strathclyde and Cumbria, with Picts and

Scots, were continually in a state of martial activity. And so

the smaller western kingdoms followed the three warlike ones;

and round these Anglo-Saxon history revolved for two whole

centuries, until in Wessex we find a combination of most of

the conditions which are necessary to the existence of a great

State."

R. Gneist,

History of the English Constitution,

chapter 3.

ENGLAND: A. D. 617.

Edwin becomes king of Northumbria.

ENGLAND: A. D. 634.

Oswald becomes king of Northumbria.

ENGLAND: A. D. 655.

Oswi becomes king of Northumbria.

{785}

ENGLAND: A. D. 670.

Egfrith becomes king of Northumbria.

ENGLAND: A. D. 688.

Ini becomes king of the West Saxons.

ENGLAND: A. D. 716.

Ethelbald becomes king of Mercia.

ENGLAND: A. D. 758.

Offa becomes king of Mercia.

ENGLAND: A. D. 794.

Cenwulf becomes king of Mercia.

ENGLAND: A. D. 800.

Accession of the West Saxon king Ecgberht.

ENGLAND: A. D. 800-836.

The supremacy of Wessex.

The first king of all the English.

"And now I have come to the reign of Ecgberht, the great

Bretwalda. He was an Ætheling of the blood of Cerdic, and he

is said to have been the son of Ealhmund, and Ealhmund is said

to have been an Under-king of Kent. For the old line of the

Kings of Kent had come to an end and Kent was now sometimes

under Wessex and sometimes under Mercia. ... When Beorhtric

died in 800, he [Ecgberht] was chosen King of the West-Saxons.

He reigned until 836, and in that time he brought all the

English Kingdoms, and the greater part of Britain, more or

less under his power. The southern part of the island, all

Kent, Sussex, and Essex, he joined on to his own Kingdom, and

set his sons or other Æthelings to reign over them as his

Under-kings. But Northumberland, Mercia, and East-Anglia were

not brought so completely under his power as this. Their Kings

submitted to Ecgberht and acknowledged him as their over-lord,

but they went on reigning in their own Kingdoms, and

assembling their own Wise Men, just as they did before. They

became what in after times was called his 'vassals,' what in

English was called being his 'men.' ... Besides the English

Kings, Ecgberht brought the Welsh, both in Wales and in

Cornwall, more completely under his power. ... So King

Ecgberht was Lord from the Irish Sea to the German Ocean, and

from the English Channel to the Firth of Forth. So it is not

wonderful if, in his charters, he not only called himself King

of the West-Saxons or King of the West-Saxons and Kentishmen,

but sometimes 'Rex Anglorum,' or 'King of the English.' But

amidst all this glory there were signs of great evils at hand.

The Danes came several times."

E. A. Freeman,

Old English History for Children,

chapter 7.

ENGLAND: A. D. 836.

Accession of the West Saxon king Ethelwulf.

ENGLAND: A. D. 855-880.

Conquests and settlements of the Danes.

The heroic struggle of Alfred the Great.

The "Peace of Wedmore" and the "Danelaw."

King Alfred's character and reign.

"The Danish invasions of England ... fall naturally into three

periods, each of which finds its parallel in the course of the

English Conquest of Britain. ... We first find a period in

which the object of the invaders seems to be simple plunder.

They land, they harry the country, they fight, if need be, to

secure their booty, but whether defeated or victorious, they

equally return to their ships, and sail away with what they

have gathered. This period includes the time from the first

recorded invasion [A. D. 787] till the latter half of the

ninth century. Next comes a time in which the object of the

Northmen is clearly no longer mere plunder, but settlement.

... In the reign of Æthelwulf the son of Ecgberht it is

recorded that the heathen men wintered for the first time in

the Isle of Sheppey [A. D. 855]. This marks the transition

from the first to the second period of their invasions. ... It

was not however till about eleven years from this time that

the settlement actually began. Meanwhile the sceptre of the

West-Saxons passed from one hand to another. ... Four sons of

Æthelwulf reigned in succession, and the reigns of the first

three among them [Ethelbald, A. D. 858, Ethelberht, 860,

Ethelred, 866] make up together only thirteen years. In the

reign of the third of these princes, Æthelred I., the second

period of the invasions fairly begins. Five years were spent

by the Northmen in ravaging and conquering the tributary

Kingdoms. Northumberland, still disputed between rival Kings,

fell an easy prey [867-869], and one or two puppet princes did

not scruple to receive a tributary crown at the hands of the

heathen invaders. They next entered Mercia [868], they seized

Nottingham, and the West-Saxon King hastening to the relief of

his vassals, was unable to dislodge them from that stronghold.

East Anglia was completely conquered [866-870] and its King

Eadmund died a martyr. At last the full storm of invasion

burst upon Wessex itself [871]. King Æthelred, the first of a

long line of West-Saxon hero-Kings, supported by his greater

brother Ælfred [Alfred the Great] met the invaders in battle

after battle with varied success. He died and Ælfred

succeeded, in the thick of the struggle. In this year [871],

the last of Æthelred and the first of Ælfred, nine pitched

battles, besides smaller engagements, were fought with the

heathens on West-Saxon ground. At last peace was made; the

Northmen retreated to London, within the Mercian frontier;

Wessex was for the moment delivered, but the supremacy won by

Ecgberht was lost. For a few years Wessex was subjected to

nothing more than temporary incursions, but Northumberland and

part of Mercia were systematically occupied by the Northmen,

and the land was divided among them. ... At last the Northmen,

now settled in a large part of the island, made a second

attempt to add Wessex itself to their possessions [878]. For a

moment the land seemed conquered; Ælfred himself lay hid in the

marshes of Somersetshire; men might well deem that the Empire

of Ecgberht and the Kingdom of Cerdic itself, had vanished for

ever. But the strong heart of the most renowned of Englishmen,

the saint, the scholar, the hero, and the lawgiver, carried

his people safely through this most terrible of dangers.

Within the same year the Dragon of Wessex was again victorious

[at the battle of Ethandun, or Edington], and the Northmen

were driven to conclude a peace which Englishmen, fifty years

sooner, would have deemed the lowest depth of degradation, but

which might now be fairly looked upon as honourable and even

as triumphant. By the terms of the Peace of Wedmore the

Northmen were to evacuate Wessex and the part of Mercia

south-west of Watling-Street; they, or at least their chiefs,

were to submit to baptism, and they were to receive the whole

land beyond Watling-Street as vassals of the West-Saxon King.

... The exact boundary started from the Thames, along the Lea

to its source, then right to Bedford and along the Ouse till

it meets Watling-Street, then along Watling-Street to the

Welsh border. See Ælfred and Guthrum's Peace,' Thorpe's 'Laws

and Institutes,' i. 152. This frontier gives London to the

English; but it seems that Ælfred did not obtain full

possession of London till 886."

{786}

The territory thus conceded to the Danes, which included all

northeastern England from the Thames to the Tyne, was

thenceforth known by the name of the Danelagh or Danelaw,

signifying the country subject to the law of the Danes. The

Peace of Wedmore ended the second period of the Danish

invasions. The third period, which was not opened until a full

century later, embraced the actual conquest of the whole of

England by a Danish king and its temporary annexation to the

dominions of the Danish crown.

E. A. Freeman,

History of the Norman Conquest of England,

chapter 2, with foot-note.

"Now that peace was restored, and the Danes driven out of his

domains, it remained to be seen whether Alfred was as good a

ruler as he was a soldier. ... What did he see? The towns,

even London itself, pillaged, ruined, or burnt down; the

monasteries destroyed; the people wild and lawless; ignorance,

roughness, insecurity everywhere. It is almost incredible with

what a brave heart he set himself to repair all this; how his

great and noble aims were still before him; how hard he

strove, and how much he achieved. First of all he seems to

have sought for helpers. Like most clever men, he was good at

reading characters. He soon saw who would be true, brave, wise

friends, and he collected these around him. Some of them he

fetched from over the sea, from France and Germany; our friend

Asser from Wales, or, as he calls his country, 'Western

Britain,' while England, he calls 'Saxony.' He says he first

saw Alfred 'in a royal vill, which is called Dene' in Sussex.

'He received me with kindness, and asked me eagerly to devote

myself to his service, and become his friend; to leave

everything which I possessed on the left or western bank of

the Severn, and promised that he would give more than an

equivalent for it in his own dominions. I replied that I could

not rashly and incautiously promise such things; for it seemed

to be unjust that I should leave those sacred places in which

I had been bred, educated, crowned, and ordained for the sake

of any earthly honour and power, unless upon compulsion. Upon

this he said, "If you cannot accede to this, at least let me

have your service in part; spend six months of the year with

me here, and the other six months in Britain."' And to this

after a time Asser consented. What were the principal things

he turned his mind to after providing for the defence of his

kingdom, and collecting his friends and counsellors about him?

Law--justice--religion--education. He collected and studied

the old laws of his nation; what he thought good he kept, what

he disapproved he left out. He added others, especially the

ten commandments and some other parts of the law of Moses.

Then he laid them all before his Witan, or wise men, and with

their approval published them. ... The state of justice in

England was dreadful at this time. ... Alfred's way of curing

this was by inquiring into all cases, as far as he possibly

could, himself; and Asser says he did this 'especially for the

sake of the poor, to whose interest, day and night, he ever

was wonderfully attentive; for in the whole kingdom the poor,

besides him, had few or no protectors.' ... When he found that

the judges had made mistakes through ignorance, he rebuked them,

and told them they must either grow wiser or give up their

posts; and soon the old earls and other judges, who had been

unlearned from their cradles, began to study diligently. ...

For reviving and spreading religion among his people he used

the best means that he knew of; that is, he founded new

monasteries and restored old ones, and did his utmost to get

good bishops and clergymen. For his own part, he strove to

practise in all ways what he taught to others. ... Education

was in a still worse condition than everything else. ... All

the schools had been broken up. Alfred says that when he began

to reign there were very few clergymen south of the Humber who

could even understand the Prayer-book. (That was still in

Latin, as the Roman missionaries had brought it.) And south of

the Thames he could not remember one. His first care was to

get better-educated clergy and bishops. And next to get the

laymen taught also. ... He founded monasteries and schools,

and restored the old ones which had been ruined. He had a

school in his court for his own children and the children of

his nobles. But at the very outset a most serious difficulty

confronted Alfred. Where was he to get books? At this time, as

far as we can judge, there can only have been one, or at most

two books in the English language--the long poem of Cædmon

about the creation of the world, &c., and the poem of Beowulf

about warriors and fiery dragons. There were many English

ballads and songs, but whether these were written down I do

not know. There was no book of history, not even English

history; no book of geography, no religious books, no

philosophy. Bede, who had written so many books, had written

them all in Latin. ... So when they had a time of  'stillness'

the king and his learned friends set to work and translated

books into English; and Alfred, who was as modest and candid

as he was wise, put into the preface of one of his

translations that he hoped, if anyone knew Latin better than

he did, that he would not blame him, for he could but do

according to his ability. ... Beside all this, he had a great

many other occupations. Asser, who often lived with him for

months at a time, gives us an account of his busy life.

Notwithstanding his infirmities and other hindrances, 'he

continued to carry on the government, and to exercise hunting

in all its branches; to teach his workers in gold and

artificers of all kinds, his falconers, hawkers, and

dog-keepers; to build houses, majestic and good, beyond all

the precedents of his ancestors, by his new mechanical

inventions; to recite the Saxon books (Asser, being a

Welshman, always calls the English, Saxon), and especially to

learn by heart the Saxon poems, and to make others learn them;

he never desisted from studying most diligently to the best of

his ability; he attended the mass and other daily services of

religion; he was frequent in psalm-singing and prayer;  ... he

bestowed alms and largesses on both natives and foreigners of

all countries; he was affable and pleasant to all, and

curiously eager to investigate things unknown.'"

M. J. Guest,

Lectures on the History of England,

lecture 9.

"It is no easy task for anyone who has been studying his

[Alfred's] life and works to set reasonable bounds to their

reverence, and enthusiasm, for the man. Lest the reader should

think my estimate tainted with the proverbial weakness of

biographers for their heroes; let them turn to the words in

which the earliest, and the last of the English historians of

that time, sum up the character of Alfred.

{787}

Florence of Worcester, writing in the century after his death,

speaks of him as 'that famous, warlike, victorious king; the

zealous protector of widows, scholars, orphans and the poor;

skilled in the Saxon poets; affable and liberal to all;

endowed with prudence, fortitude, justice, and temperance;

most patient under the infirmity which he daily suffered; a

most stern inquisitor in executing justice; vigilant and

devoted in the service of God.' Mr. Freeman, in his 'History

of the Norman Conquest,' has laid down the portrait in bold

and lasting colours, in a passage as truthful as it is

eloquent, which those who are familiar with it will be glad to

meet again, while those who do not know it will be grateful to me

for substituting for any poor words of my own. 'Alfred, the

unwilling author of these great changes, is the most perfect

character in history. He is a singular instance of a prince

who has become a hero of romance, who, as such, has had

countless imaginary exploits attributed to him, but to whose

character romance has done no more than justice, and who

appears in exactly the same light in history and in fable. No

other man on record has ever so thoroughly united all the

virtues both of the ruler and of the private man. In no other

man on record were so many virtues disfigured by so little

alloy. A saint without superstition, a scholar without

ostentation, a warrior all whose wars were fought in the

defence of his country, a conqueror whose laurels were never

stained by cruelty, a prince never cast down by adversity,

never lifted up to insolence in the day of triumph--there is

no other name in history to compare with his. Saint Lewis

comes nearest to him in the union of a more than monastic

piety with the highest civil, military, and domestic virtues.

Both of them stand forth in honourable contrast to the abject

superstition of some other royal saints, who were so selfishly

engaged in the care of their own souls that they refused

either to raise up heirs for their throne, or to strike a blow

on behalf of their people. But even in Saint Lewis we see a

disposition to forsake an immediate sphere of duty for the

sake of distant and unprofitable, however pious and glorious,

undertakings. The true duties of the King of the French

clearly lay in France, and not in Egypt or Tunis. No such

charge lies at the door of the great King of the West Saxons.

With an inquiring spirit which took in the whole world, for

purposes alike of scientific inquiry and of Christian

benevolence, Alfred never forgot that his first duty was to

his own people. He forestalled our own age in sending

expeditions to explore the Northern Ocean, and in sending alms

to the distant Churches of India; but he neither forsook his

crown, like some of his predecessors, nor neglected his

duties, like some of his successors. The virtue of Alfred,

like the virtue of Washington, consisted in no marvellous

displays of super-human genius, but in the simple,

straightforward discharge of the duty of the moment. But

Washington, soldier, statesman, and patriot, like Alfred, has

no claim to Alfred's further characters of saint and scholar.

William the Silent, too, has nothing to set against Alfred's

literary merits; and in his career, glorious as it is, there

is an element of intrigue and chicanery utterly alien to the

noble simplicity of both Alfred and Washington. The same union

of zeal for religion and learning with the highest gifts of

the warrior and the statesman is found, on a wider field of

action, in Charles the Great. But even Charles cannot aspire

to the pure glory of Alfred. Amidst all the splendour of

conquest and legislation, we cannot be blind to an alloy of

personal ambition, of personal vice, to occasional unjust

aggressions and occasional acts of cruelty. Among our own

later princes, the great Edward alone can bear for a moment

the comparison with his glorious ancestor. And, when tried by

such a standard, even the great Edward fails. Even in him we

do not see the same wonderful union of gifts and virtues which

so seldom meet together; we cannot acquit Edward of occasional

acts of violence, of occasional recklessness as to means; we

cannot attribute to him the pure, simple, almost childlike

disinterestedness which marks the character of Alfred.' Let

Wordsworth, on behalf of the poets of England, complete the

picture:

'Behold a pupil of the monkish gown,

The pious Alfred, king to justice dear!

Lord of the harp and liberating spear;

Mirror of princes! Indigent renown

Might range the starry ether for a crown

Equal to his deserts, who, like the year,

Pours forth his bounty, like the day doth cheer,

And awes like night, with mercy-tempered frown.

Ease from this noble miser of his time

No moment steals; pain narrows not his cares--

Though small his kingdom as a spark or gem,

Of Alfred boasts remote Jerusalem,

And Christian India, through her widespread clime,

In sacred converse gifts with Alfred shares.'"

Thomas Hughes,

Alfred the Great,

chapter 24.

ALSO IN:

R. Pauli,

Life of Alfred the Great.

Asser,

Life of Alfred.

See, also, NORMANS, and EDUCATION, MEDIÆVAL.

ENGLAND: A. D. 901.

Accession of the West Saxon king Edward, called The Elder.

ENGLAND: A. D. 925.

Accession of the West Saxon king Ethelstan.

ENGLAND: A. D. 938.

The battle of Brunnaburgh.

Alfred the Great, dying in 901, was succeeded by his son,

Edward, and Edward, in turn, was followed, A. D. 925, by his

son Athelstane, or Æthalsten. In the reign of Athelstane a

great league was formed against him by the Northumbrian Danes

with the Scots, with the Danes of Dublin and with the Britons

of Strathclyde and Cumbria. Athelstane defeated the

confederates in a mighty battle, celebrated in one of the

finest of Old-English war-songs, and also in one of the Sagas

of the Norse tongue, as the Battle of Brunnaburgh or

Brunanburh, but the site of which is unknown. "Five Kings and

seven northern Iarls or earls fell in the strife. ...

Constantine the Scot fled to the north, mourning his

fair-haired son, who perished in the slaughter. Anlaf [or

Olaf, the leader of the Danes or Ostmen of Dublin], with a sad

and scattered remnant of his forces, escaped to Ireland. ...

The victory was so decisive that, during the remainder of the

reign of Athelstane, no enemy dared to rise up against him;

his supremacy was acknowledged without contest, and his glory

extended to distant realms."

F. Palgrave,

History of the Anglo-Saxons,

chapter 10.

Mr. Skene is of opinion that the battle of Brunnaburgh was

fought at Aldborough, near York.

W. F. Skene,

Celtic Scotland,

volume 1, page 357.

ENGLAND: A. D. 940.

Accession of the West Saxon king Edmund.

ENGLAND: A. D. 946.

Accession of the West Saxon king Edred.

ENGLAND: A. D. 955.

Accession of the West Saxon king Edwig.

{788}

ENGLAND: A. D. 958.

Accession of the West Saxon king Edgar.

ENGLAND: A. D. 958.

Completed union of the realm.

Increase of kingly authority.

Approach towards feudalism.

Rise of the Witenagemot.

Decline of the Freemen.

"Before Alfred's son Edward died, the whole of Mercia was

incorporated with his immediate dominions. The way in which

the thing was done was more remarkable than the thing itself.

Like the Romans, he made the fortified towns the means of

upholding his power. But unlike the Romans, he did not

garrison them with colonists from amongst his own immediate

dependents. He filled them, as Henry the Fowler did afterwards

in Saxony, with free townsmen, whose hearts were at one with

their fellow countrymen around. Before he died in 924, the

Danish chiefs in the land beyond the Humber had acknowledged

his overlordship, and even the Celts of Wales and Scotland had

given in their submission in some form which they were not

likely to interpret too strictly. His son and his two

grandsons, Athelstan, Edmund, and Edred completed the work,

and when after the short and troubled interval of Edwy's rule

in Wessex, Edgar united the undivided realm under his sway in

958, he had no internal enemies to suppress. He allowed the

Celtic Scottish King who had succeeded to the inheritance of

the Pictish race to possess the old Northumbrian land north of

the Tweed, where they and their descendants learned the habits

and speech of Englishmen. But he treated him and the other

Celtic kings distinctly as his inferiors, though it was

perhaps well for him that he did not attempt to impose upon

them any very tangible tokens of his supremacy. The story of

his being rowed by eight kings on the Dee is doubtless only a

legend by which the peaceful king was glorified in the

troubled times which followed. Such a struggle, so

successfully conducted, could not fail to be accompanied by a

vast increase of that kingly authority which had been on the

growth from the time of its first establishment. The

hereditary ealdormen, the representatives of the old kingly

houses, had passed away. The old tribes, or--where their

limitations had been obliterated by the tide of Danish

conquest, as was the case in central and northern England--the

new artificial divisions which had taken their place, were now

known as shires, and the very name testified that they were

regarded only as parts of a greater whole. The shire mote

still continued the tradition of the old popular assemblies.

At its head as presidents of its deliberations were the

ealdorman and the bishop, each of them owing their appointment

to the king, and it was summoned by the shire-reeve or

sheriff, himself even more directly an officer of the king,

whose business it was to see that all the royal dues were paid

within the shire. In the more general concerns of the kingdom,

the king consulted with his Witan, whose meetings were called

the Witenagemot, a body, which, at least for all ordinary

purposes, was composed not of any representatives of the

shire-motes, but of his own dependents, the ealdormen, the

bishops, and a certain number of thegns whose name, meaning

'servants', implied at least at first, that they either were

or had at one time been in some way in the employment of the

king. ... The necessities of war ... combined with the

sluggishness of the mass of the population to favour the

growth of a military force, which would leave the tillers of

the soil to their own peaceful occupations. As the conditions

which make a standing army possible on a large scale did not

yet exist, such a force must be afforded by a special class,

and that class must be composed of those who either had too

much land to till themselves, or, having no land at all, were

released from the bonds which tied the cultivator to the soil,

in other words, it must be composed of a landed aristocracy

and its dependents. In working out this change, England was

only aiming at the results which similar conditions were

producing on the Continent. But just as the homogeneousness of

the population drew even the foreign element of the church

into harmony with the established institutions, so it was with

the military aristocracy. It grouped itself round the king,

and it supplemented, instead of overthrowing, the old popular

assemblies. Two classes of men, the eorls and the gesiths, had

been marked out from their fellows at the time of the

conquest. The thegn of Edgar's day differed from both, but he

had some of the distinguishing marks of either. He was not

like the gesith, a mere personal follower of the king. He did

not, like the eorl, owe his position to his birth. Yet his

relation to the king was a close one, and he had a hold upon

the land as firm as that of the older eorl. He may, perhaps,

best be described as a gesith, who had acquired the position

of an eorl without entirely throwing off his own

characteristics. ... There can be little doubt that the change

began in the practice of granting special estates in the

folkland, or common undivided land, to special persons. At

first this land was doubtless held to be the property of the

tribe. [This is now questioned by Vinogradoff and others. See

FOLCLAND.]  ... When the king rose above the tribes, he

granted it himself with the consent of his Witan. A large

portion was granted to churches and monasteries. But a large

portion went in privates estates, or book land, as it was

called, from the book or charter which conveyed them to the

king's own gesiths, or to members of his own family. The

gesith thus ceased to be a mere member of the king's military

household. He became a landowner as well, with special duties.

to perform to the king. ... He had special jurisdiction given

him over his tenants and serfs, exempting him and them from

the authority of the hundred mote, though they still remained,

except in very exceptional cases, under the authority of the

shire mote. ... Even up to the Norman conquest this change was

still going on. To the end, indeed, the old constitutional

forms were not broken down. The hundred mote was not

abandoned, where freemen enough remained to fill it. Even

where all the land of a hundred had passed under the

protection of a lord there was little outward change. ...

There was thus no actual breach of continuity in the nation.

The thegnhood pushed its roots down, as it were, amongst the

free classes. Nevertheless there was a danger of such a breach

of continuity coming about. The freemen entered more and more

largely into a condition of' dependence, and there was a great

risk lest such a condition of dependence should become a

condition of servitude. Here and there, by some extraordinary

stroke of luck, a freeman might rise to be a thegn. But the

condition of the class to which he belonged was deteriorating

every day.

{789}

The downward progress to serfdom was too easy to take, and by

large masses of the population it was already taken. Below the

increasing numbers of the serfs was to be found the lower

class of slaves, who were actually the property of their

masters. The Witenagemot was in reality a select body of

thegns, if the bishops, who held their lands in much the same

way, be regarded as thegns. In was rather an inchoate House of

Lords, than an inchoate Parliament, after our modern ideas. It

was natural that a body of men which united a great part of

the wealth with almost all the influence in the kingdom should

be possessed of high constitutional powers. The Witenagemot

elected the king, though as yet they always chose him out of

the royal family, which was held to have sprung from the god

Woden. There were even cases in which they deposed unworthy

kings."

S. R. Gardiner and J. B. Mullinger,

Introduction to the Study of English History,

part 1, chapter 2, section 16-21.

ENGLAND: A. D. 975.

Accession of the West Saxon king Edward, called The Martyr.

ENGLAND: A. D. 979.

Accession of the West Saxon king Ethelred, called The Unready.

ENGLAND: A. D. 979-1016.

The Danish conquest.

"Then [A. D. 979] commenced one of the longest and most

disastrous reigns of the Saxon kings, with the accession of

Ethelred II., justly styled Ethelred the Unready. The Northmen

now renewed their plundering and conquering expeditions

against England; while England had a worthless waverer for her

ruler, and many of her chief men turned traitors to their king

and country. Always a laggart in open war, Ethelred tried in

1001 the cowardly and foolish policy of buying off the enemies

whom he dared not encounter. The tax called Dane-gelt was then

levied to provide 'a tribute for the Danish men on account of

the great terror which they caused.' To pay money thus was in

effect to hire the enemy to renew the war. In 1002 Ethelred

tried the still more weak and wicked measure of ridding

himself of his enemies by treacherous massacre. Great numbers

of Danes were now living in England, intermixed with the

Anglo-Saxon population. Ethelred resolved to relieve himself

from all real or supposed danger of these Scandinavian

settlers taking part with their invading kinsmen, by sending

secret orders throughout his dominions for the putting to

death of every Dane, man, woman, and child, on St. Brice's

Day, Nov. 13. This atrocious order was executed only in

Southern England, that is, in the West-Saxon territories; but

large numbers of the Danish race were murdered there while

dwelling in full security among their Saxon neighbours. ...

Among the victims was a royal Danish lady, named Gunhilde, who

was sister of Sweyn, king of Denmark, and who had married and

settled in England. ... The news of the massacre of St. Brice

soon spread over the Continent, exciting the deepest

indignation against the English and their king. Sweyn

collected in Denmark a larger fleet and army than the north

had ever before sent forth, and solemnly vowed to conquer

England or perish in the attempt. He landed on the south coast

of Devon, obtained possession of Exeter by the treachery of

its governor, and then marched through western and southern

England, marking every shire with fire, famine and slaughter;

but he was unable to take London, which was defended against

the repeated attacks of the Danes with strong courage and

patriotism, such as seemed to have died out in the rest of

Saxon England. In 1013, the wretched king Ethelred fled the

realm and sought shelter in Normandy. Sweyn was acknowledged

king in all the northern and western shires, but he died in

1014, while his vow of conquest was only partly accomplished.

The English now sent for Ethelred back from Normandy,

promising loyalty to him as their lawful king, 'provided he

would rule over them more justly than he had done before.'

Ethelred willingly promised amendment, and returned to reign

amidst strife and misery for two years more. His implacable

enemy, Sweyn, was indeed dead; but the Danish host which Sweyn

had led thither was still in England, under the command of

Sweyn's son, Canute [or Cnut], a prince equal in military

prowess to his father, and far superior to him and to all

other princes of the time in statesmanship and general

ability. Ethelred died in 1016, while the war with Canute was

yet raging. Ethelred's son, Edmund, surnamed Ironside, was

chosen king by the great council then assembled in London, but

great numbers of the Saxons made their submission to Canute.

The remarkable personal valour of Edmund, strongly aided by

the bravery of his faithful Londoners, maintained the war for

nearly a year, when Canute agreed to a compromise, by which he

and Edmund divided the land between them. But within a few

months after this, the royal Ironside died by the hand of an

assassin, and Canute obtained the whole realm of the English

race. A Danish dynasty was now [A. D. 1016] established in

England for three reigns."

Sir E. S. Creasy,

History of England,

volume 1, chapter 5.

ALSO IN:

J. M. Lappenberg,

England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings,

volume 2, pages 151-233.

See, also, MALDEN, and ASSANDUN, BATTLES OF.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1016.

Accession and death of King Edmund Ironside.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1016-1042.

The Reign of the Danish kings.

"Cnut's rule was not as terrible as might have been feared. He

was perfectly unscrupulous in striking down the treacherous

and mischievous chieftains who had made a trade of Ethelred's

weakness and the country's divisions. But he was wise and

strong enough to rule, not by increasing but by allaying those

divisions. Resting his power upon his Scandinavian kingdoms

beyond the sea, upon his Danish countrymen in England, and his

Danish huscarles, or specially trained soldiers in his

service, he was able, without even the appearance of weakness,

to do what in him lay to bind Dane and Englishman together as

common instruments of his power. Fidelity counted more with

him than birth. To bring England itself into unity was beyond

his power. The device which he hit upon was operative only in

hands as strong as his own. There were to be four great earls,

deriving their name from the Danish word jarl, centralizing

the forces of government in Wessex, in Mercia, in East Anglia,

and in Northumberland. With Cnut the four were officials of

the highest class. They were there because he placed them

there. They would cease to be there if he so willed it. But it

could hardly be that it would always be so. Some day or

another, unless a great catastrophe swept away Cnut and his

creation, the earldoms would pass into territorial

sovereignties and the divisions of England would be made

evident openly."

S. R. Gardiner and J. B. Mullinger,

Introduction to the Study of English History,

chapter 2, section 25.

{790}

"He [Canute] ruled nominally at least, a larger European

dominion than any English sovereign has ever done; and perhaps

also a more homogeneous one. No potentate of the time came

near him except the king of Germany, the emperor, with whom he

was allied as an equal. The king of the Norwegians, the Danes,

and a great part of the Swedes, was in a position to found a

Scandinavian empire with Britain annexed. Canute's division of

his dominions on his death-bed, showed that he saw this to be

impossible; Norway, for a century and a half after his strong

hand was removed, was broken up amongst an anarchical crew of

piratic and blood-thirsty princes, nor could Denmark be

regarded as likely to continue united with England. The

English nation was too much divided and demoralised to retain

hold on Scandinavia, even if the condition of the latter had

allowed it. Hence Canute determined that during his life, as

after his death, the nations should be governed on their own

principles. ... The four nations of the English,

Northumbrians, East Angles, Mercians and West Saxons, might,

each under their own national leader, obey a sovereign who was

strong enough to enforce peace amongst them. The great

earldoms of Canute's reign were perhaps a nearer approach to a

feudal division of England than anything which followed the

Norman Conquest. ... And the extent to which this creation of

the four earldoms affected the history of the next

half-century cannot be exaggerated. The certain tendency of

such an arrangement to become hereditary, and the certain

tendency of the hereditary occupation of great fiefs

ultimately to overwhelm the royal power, are well

exemplified. ... The Norman Conquest restored national unity

at a tremendous temporary sacrifice, just as the Danish

Conquest in other ways, and by a reverse process, had helped

to create it."

W. Stubbs,

Constitutional History of England,

chapter 7, section 77.

Canute died in 1035. He was succeeded by his two sons, Harold

Harefoot (1035-1040) and Harthacnute or Hardicanute

(1040-1042), after which the Saxon line of kings was

momentarily restored.

E. A. Freeman,

History of the Norman Conquest of England,

chapter 6.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1035.

Accession of Harold, son of Cnut.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1040.

Accession of Harthacnut, or Hardicanute.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1042.

Accession of Edward the Confessor.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1042-1066.

The last of the Saxon kings.

"The love which Canute had inspired by his wise and

conciliatory rule was dissipated by the bad government of his

sons, Harold and Harthacnut, who ruled in turn. After seven

years of misgovernment, or rather anarchy, England, freed from

the hated rule  of Harthacnut by his death, returned to its

old line of kings, and 'all folk chose Edward [surnamed The

Confessor, son of Ethelred the Unready] to king,' as was his

right by birth. Not that he was, according to our ideas, the

direct heir, since Edward, the son of Edmund Ironside, still

lived, an exile in Hungary. But the Saxons, by choosing Edward

the Confessor, reasserted for the last time their right to

elect that one of the hereditary line who was most available.

With the reign of Edward the Confessor the Norman Conquest

really began. We have seen the connection between England and

Normandy begun by the marriage of Ethelred the Unready to Emma

the daughter of Richard the Fearless, and cemented by the

refuge offered to the English exiles in the court of the

Norman duke. Edward had long found a home there in Canute's

time. ... Brought up under Norman influence, Edward had

contracted the ideas and sympathies of his adopted home. On

his election to the English throne the French tongue became

the language of the court, Norman favourites followed in his

train, to be foisted into important offices of State and

Church, and thus inaugurate that Normanizing policy which was

to draw on the Norman Conquest. Had it not been for this,

William would never have had any claim on England." The

Normanizing policy of king Edward roused the opposition of a

strong English party, headed by the great West-Saxon Earl

Godwine, who had been lifted from an obscure origin to vast

power in England by the favor of Canute, and whose son Harold

held the earldom of East Anglia. "Edward, raised to the throne

chiefly through the influence of Godwine, shortly married his

daughter, and at first ruled England leaning on the

assistance, and almost overshadowed by the power of the great

earl." But Edward was Norman at heart and Godwine was

thoroughly English; whence quarrels were not long in arising.

They came to the crisis in 1051, by reason of a bloody tumult

at Dover, provoked by insolent conduct on the part of a train

of French visitors returning home from Edward's Court. Godwine

was commanded to punish the townsmen of Dover and refused,

whereupon the king obtained a sentence of outlawry, not only

against the earl, but against his sons. "Godwine, obliged to

bow before the united power of his enemies, was forced to fly

the land. He went to Flanders with his son Swegen, while

Harold and Leofwine went to Ireland, to be well received by

Dermot king of Leinster. Many Englishmen seem to have followed

him in his exile: for a year the foreign party was triumphant,

and the first stage of the Norman Conquest complete. It was at

this important crisis that William [Duke of Normandy], secure

at home, visited his cousin Edward. ... Friendly relations we

may be sure had existed between, the two cousins, and if, as

is not improbable, William had begun to hope that he might

some day succeed to the English throne, what more favourable

opportunity for a visit could have been found? Edward had lost

all hopes of ever having any children. ... William came, and

it would seem, gained all that he desired. For this most

probably was the date of some promise on Edward's part that

William should succeed him on his death. The whole question is

beset with difficulties. The Norman chroniclers alone mention

it, and give no dates. Edward had no right to will away his

crown, the disposition of which lay with King and Witenagemot

(or assembly of Wise Men, the grandees of the country), and

his last act was to reverse the promise, if ever given, in

favour of Harold, Godwine's son. But were it not for some such

promise, it is hard to see how William could have subsequently

made the Normans and the world believe in the sacredness of

his claim. ... William returned to Normandy; but next year

Edward was forced to change his policy." Godwine and his sons

returned to England, with a fleet at their backs; London

declared for them, and the king submitted himself to a

reconciliation.

{791}

"The party of Godwine once more ruled supreme, and no mention

was made of the gift of the crown to William. Godwine, indeed,

did not long survive his restoration, but dying the year

after, 1053, left his son Harold Earl of the West-Saxons and

the most important man in England." King Edward the Confessor

lived yet thirteen years after this time, during which period

Earl Harold grew continually in influence and conspicuous

headship of the English party. In 1062 it was Harold's

misfortune to be shipwrecked on the coast of France, and he

was made captive. Duke William of Normandy intervened in his

behalf and obtained his release; and "then, as the price of

his assistance, extorted an oath from Harold, soon to be used

against him. Harold, it is said, became his man, promised to

marry 'William's daughter Adela, to place Dover at once in

William's hands, and support his claim to the English throne

on Edward's death. By a stratagem of William's the oath was

unwittingly taken on holy relics, hidden by the duke under the

table on which Harold laid hands to swear, whereby, according

to the notions of those days, the oath was rendered more

binding." But two years later, when Edward the Confessor died,

the English Witenagemot chose Harold to be king, disregarding

Edward's promise and Harold's oath to the Duke of Normandy.

A. H. Johnson,

The Normans in Europe,

chapters 10 and 12.

ALSO IN:

E. A. Freeman,

History of the Norman Conquest of England,

chapters 7-10.

J. R. Green,

The Conquest of England,

chapter 10.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1066.

Election and coronation of Harold.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1066 (spring and summer).

Preparations of Duke William to enforce his claim to the

English crown.

On receiving news of Edward's death and of Harold's acceptance

of the crown, Duke William of Normandy lost no time in

demanding from Harold the performance of the engagements to

which he had pledged himself by his oath. Harold answered that

the oath had no binding effect, by reason of the compulsion

under which it was given; that the crown of England was not

his to bestow, and that, being the chosen king, he could not

marry without consent of the Witenagemot. When the Duke had

this reply he proceeded with vigor to secure from his own

knights and barons the support he would need for the enforcing

of his rights, as he deemed them, to the sovereignty of the

English realm. A great parliament of the Norman barons was

held at Lillebonne, for the consideration of the matter. "In

this memorable meeting there was much diversity of opinion.

The Duke could not command his vassals to cross the sea; their

tenures did not compel them to such service. William could

only request their aid to fight his battles in England: many

refused to engage in this dangerous expedition, and great

debates arose. ...William, who could not restore order,

withdrew into another apartment: and, calling the barons to

him one by one, he argued and reasoned with each of these

sturdy vassals separately, and apart from the others. He

exhausted all the arts of persuasion;--their present courtesy,

he engaged, should not be tamed into a precedent, ... and the

fertile fields of England should be the recompense of their

fidelity. Upon this prospect of remuneration, the barons

assented. ... William did not confine himself to his own

subjects. All the adventurers and adventurous spirits of the

neighbouring states were invited to join his standard. ... To

all, such promises were made as should best incite them to the

enterprise--lands,--liveries,--money,--according to their

rank and degree; and the port of St. Pierre-sur-Dive was

appointed as the place where all the forces should assemble.

William had discovered four most valid reasons for the

prosecution of his offensive warfare against a neighbouring

people:--the bequest made by his cousin;--the perjury of

Harold;--the expulsion of the Normans, at the instigation, as

he alleged, of Godwin;--and, lastly, the massacre of the Danes

by Ethelred on St. Brice's Day. The alleged perjury of Harold

enabled William to obtain the sanction of the Papal See.

Alexander, the Roman Pontiff, allowed, nay, even urged him to

punish the crime, provided England, when conquered, should be

held as the fief of St. Peter. ... Hildebrand, Archdeacon of

the Church of Rome, afterwards the celebrated Pope Gregory

VII., greatly assisted by the support which he gave to the

decree. As a visible token of protection, the Pope transmitted

to William the consecrated banner, the Gonfanon of St. Peter,

and a precious ring, in which a relic of the chief of the

Apostles was enclosed."

Sir F. Palgrave,

History of Normandy and England,

volume 3, pages 300-303.

"William convinced, or seemed to convince, all men out of

England and Scandinavia that his claim to the English crown

was just and holy, and that it was a good work to help him to

assert it in arms. ... William himself doubtless thought his

own claim the better; he deluded himself as he deluded others.

But we are more concerned with William as a statesman; and if

it be statesmanship to adapt means to ends, whatever the ends

may be, if it be statesmanship to make men believe the worse

cause is the better, then no man ever showed higher

statesmanship than William showed in his great pleading before

all Western Christendom. ... Others had claimed crowns; none

had taken such pains to convince all mankind that the claim

was a good one. Such an appeal to public opinion marks on one

side a great advance."

E. A. Freeman,

William the Conqueror,

chapter 6.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1066 (September).

The invasion of Tostig and Harold Hardrada and their

overthrow at Stamford Bridge.

"Harold [the English king], as one of his misfortunes, had to

face two powerful armies, in distant parts of the kingdom,

almost at the same time. Rumours concerning the intentions and

preparations of the Duke of Normandy soon reached England.

During the greater part of the summer, Harold, at the head of

a large naval and military force, had been on the watch along

the English coast. But months passed away and no enemy became

visible. William, it was said, had been apprised of the

measures which had been taken to meet him. ... Many supposed

that, on various grounds, the enterprise had been abandoned.

Provisions also, for so great an army, became scarce. The men

began to disperse; and Harold, disbanding the remainder,

returned to London. But the news now came that Harold

Hardrada, king of Norway, had landed in the north, and was

ravaging the country in conjunction with Tostig, Harold's

elder brother. This event came from one of those domestic

feuds which did so much at this juncture to weaken the power

of the English.

{792}

Tostig had exercised his authority in Northumbria [as earl] in

the most arbitrary manner, and had perpetrated atrocious

crimes in furtherance of his objects. The result was an amount

of disaffection which seems to have put it out of the power of

his friends to sustain him. He had married a daughter of

Baldwin, count of Flanders, and so became brother-in-law to

the duke of Normandy. His brother Harold, as he affirmed, had

not done a brother's part towards him, and he was more

disposed, in consequence, to side with the Norman than with

the Saxon in the approaching struggle. The army with which he

now appeared consisted mostly of Norwegians and Flemings, and

their avowed object was to divide not less than half the

kingdom between them. ... [The young Mercian earls Edwin and

Morcar] summoned their forces ... to repel the invasion under

Tostig. Before Harold could reach the north, they hazarded an

engagement at a place named Fulford, on the Ouse, not far from

Bishopstoke. Their measures, however, were not wisely taken.

They were defeated with great loss. The invaders seem to have

regarded this victory as deciding the fate of that part of the

kingdom. They obtained hostages at York, and then moved to

Stamford Bridge, where they began the work of dividing the

northern parts of England between them. But in the midst of

these proceedings clouds of dust were seen in the distance.

The first thought was, that the multitude which seemed to be

approaching must be friends. But the illusion was soon at an

end. The dust raised was by the march of an army of West

Saxons under the command of Harold."

R. Vaughan,

Revolutions of English History,

book 3, chapter 1.

"Of the details of that awful day [Sept. 25, 1066] we have no

authentic record. We have indeed a glorious description [in

the Heimskringla of Snorro Sturleson], conceived in the

highest spirit of the warlike poetry of the North; but it is a

description which, when critically examined, proves to be

hardly more worthy of belief than a battle-piece in the Iliad.

... At least we know that the long struggle of that day was

crowned by complete victory on the side of England. The

leaders of the invading host lay each man ready for all that

England had to give him, his seven feet of English ground.

There Harold of Norway, the last of the ancient Sea-Kings,

yielded up that fiery soul which had braved death in so many

forms and in so many lands. ... There Tostig, the son of

Godwine, an exile and a traitor, ended, in crime and sorrow a

life which had begun with promises not less bright than that

of his royal brother. ... The whole strength of the Northern

army was broken; a few only escaped by flight, and found means

to reach the ships at Riccall."

E. A. Freeman,

History of the Norman Conquest of England,

chapter 14, section. 4.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1066 (October).

The Norman invasion and battle of Senlac or Hastings.

The battle of Stamford-bridge was fought on Monday, September

25, A. D. 1066. Three days later, on the Thursday, September

28, William of Normandy landed his more formidable army of

invasion at Pevensey, on the extreme southeastern coast. The

news of  William's landing reached Harold, at York, on the

following Sunday, it is thought, and his victorious but worn

and wasted army was led instantly back, by forced marches,

over the route it had traversed no longer than the week

before. Waiting at London a few days for fresh musters to join

him, the English king set out from that city October 12, and

arrived on the following day at a point seven miles from the

camp which his antagonist had entrenched at Hastings. Meantime

the Normans had been cruelly ravaging the coast country, by

way of provoking attack. Harold felt himself driven by the

devastation they committed to face the issue of battle without

waiting for a stronger rally. "Advancing near enough to the coast

to check William's ravages, he intrenched himself on the hill

of Senlac, a low spur of the Sussex Downs, near Hastings, in a

position which covered London, and forced the Norman army to

concentrate. With a host subsisting by pillage, to concentrate

is to starve, and no alternative was left to William but a

decisive victory or ruin. Along the higher ground that leads

from Hastings the Duke led his men in the dim dawn of an

October morning to the mound of Telham. It was from this

point, that the Normans saw the host of the English gathered

thickly behind a rough trench and a stockade on the height of

Senlac. Marshy ground covered their right. ... A general

charge of the Norman foot opened the battle; in front rode the

minstrel Taillefer, tossing his sword in the air and catching

it again while he chanted the song of Roland. He was the first

of the host who struck a blow, and he was the first to fall.

The charge broke vainly on the stout stockade behind which the

English warriors plied axe and javelin with fierce cries of 'Out,

Out,' and the repulse of the Norman footmen was followed by

the repulse of the Norman horse. Again and again the Duke

rallied and led them to the fatal stockade. ... His Breton

troops, entangled in the marshy ground on his left, broke in

disorder, and a cry arose, as the panic spread through the

army, that the Duke was slain. 'I live,' shouted William as he

tore off his helmet, 'and by God's help will conquer yet.'

Maddened by repulse, the Duke spurred right at the standard;

unhorsed, his terrible mace struck down Gyrth, the King's

brother, and stretched Leofwine, a second of Godwine's sons,

beside him; again dismounted, a blow from his hand hurled to

the ground an unmannerly rider who would not lend him his

steed. Amid the roar and tumult of the battle he turned the

flight he had arrested into the means of victory. Broken as

the stockade was by his desperate onset, the shield-wall of

the warriors behind it still held the Normans at bay, when

William by a feint of flight drew a part of the English force

from their post of vantage. Turning on his disorderly

pursuers, the Duke cut them to pieces, broke through the

abandoned line, and was master of the central plateau, while

French and Bretons made good their ascent on either flank. At

three the hill seemed won, at six the fight still raged around

the standard, where Harold's hus-carls stood stubbornly at bay

on the spot marked afterward by the high altar of Battle

Abbey. An order from the Duke at last brought his archers to

the front, and their arrow-flight told heavily on the dense

masses crowded around the King. As the sun went down, a shaft

pierced Harold's right eye; he fell between the royal ensigns,

and the battle closed with a desperate mélée over his corpse."

J. R. Green,

A Short History of the English People,

chapter 2, section 4.

ALSO IN:

E. A. Freeman,

History of the Norman Conquest of England,

chapter 15, section 4.

E. S. Creasy,

Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World,

chapter 8.

Wace,

Roman de Rou,

translated by Sir A. Malet.

{793}

England: A. D. 1066-1071.

The Finishing of the Norman Conquest.

"It must be well understood that this great victory [of

Senlac] did not make Duke William King nor put him in

possession of the whole land. He still held only part of

Sussex, and the people of the rest of the kingdom showed as

yet no mind to submit to him. If England had had a leader left

like Harold or Gyrth, William might have had to fight as many

battles as Cnut had, and that with much less chance of winning

in the end. For a large part of England fought willingly on

Cnut's side, while William had no friends in England at all,

except a few Norman settlers. William did not call himself

King till he was regularly crowned more than two months later,

and even then he had real possession only of about a third of

the kingdom. It was more than three years before he had full

possession of all. Still the great fight on Senlac none the

less settled the fate of England. For after that fight William

never met with any general resistance. ... During the year 1067

William made no further conquests; all western and northern

England remained unsubdued; but, except in Kent and

Herefordshire, there was no fighting in any part of the land

which had really submitted. The next two years were the time

in which all England was really conquered. The former part of

1068 gave him the West. The latter part of that year gave him

central and northern England as far as Yorkshire, the extreme

north and northwest being still unsubdued. The attempt to win

Durham in the beginning of 1069 led to two revolts at York.

Later in the year all the north and west was again in arms,

and the Danish fleet [of King Swegen, in league with the

English patriots] came. But the revolts were put down one by

one, and the great winter campaign of 1069-1070 conquered the

still unsubdued parts, ending with the taking of Chester.

Early in 1070 the whole land was for the first time in

Williams's possession; there was no more fighting, and he was

able to give his mind to the more peaceful part of his

schemes, what we may call the conquest of the native Church by

the appointment of foreign bishops. But in the summer of 1070

began the revolt of the Fenland, and the defence of Ely, which

lasted till the autumn of 1071. After that William was full

King everywhere without dispute. There was no more national

resistance; there was no revolt of any large part of the

country. ... The conquest of the land, as far as fighting

goes, was now finished."

E. A. Freeman,

Short History of the Norman Conquest of England,

chapter 8, section 9; chapter 10, section 16.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1067-1087.

The spoils of the Conquest.

"The Norman army ... remained concentrated around London [in

the winter of 1067], and upon the southern and eastern coasts

nearest Gaul. The partition of the wealth of the invaded

territory now almost solely occupied them. Commissioners went

over the whole extent of country in which the army had left

garrisons; they took an exact inventory of property of every

kind, public and private, carefully registering every

particular. ... A close inquiry was made into the names of all

the English partisans of Harold, who had either died in

battle, or survived the defeat, or by involuntary delays had

been prevented from joining the royal standard. All the

property of these three classes of men, lands, revenues,

furniture, houses, were confiscated; the children of the first

class were declared forever disinherited; the second class,

were, in like manner, wholly dispossessed of their  estates

and property of every kind, and, says one of the Norman

writers, were only too grateful for being allowed to retain

their lives. Lastly, those who had not taken up arms were also

despoiled of all they possessed, for having had the intention

of taking up arms; but, by special grace, they were allowed to

entertain the hope that after many long years of obedience and

devotion to the foreign power, not they, indeed, but their

sons, might perhaps obtain from their new masters some portion

of their paternal heritage. Such was the law of the conquest,

according to the unsuspected testimony of a man nearly

contemporary with and of the race of the conquerors [Richard

Lenoir or Noirot, bishop of Ely in the 12th century]. The

immense product of this universal spoliation became the pay of

those adventurers of every nation who had enrolled under the

banner of the duke of Normandy. ... Some received their pay in

money, others had stipulated that they should have a Saxon

wife, and William, says the Norman chronicle, gave them in

marriage noble dames, great heiresses, whose husbands had

fallen in the battle. One, only, among the knights who had

accompanied the conqueror, claimed neither lands, gold, nor

wife, and would accept none of the spoils of the conquered.

His name was Guilbert Fitz-Richard: he said that he had

accompanied his lord to England because such was his duty, but

that stolen goods had no attraction for him."

A. Thierry,

History of the Conquest of England by the Normans,

book 4.

"Though many confiscations took place, in order to gratify the

Norman army, yet the mass of property was left in the hands of

its former possessors. Offices of high trust were bestowed

upon Englishmen, even upon those whose family renown might

have raised the most aspiring thoughts. But, partly through

the insolence and injustice of William's Norman vassals,

partly through the suspiciousness natural to a man conscious

of having overturned the national government, his yoke soon

became more heavy. The English were oppressed; they rebelled,

were subdued, and oppressed again. ... An extensive spoliation

of property accompanied these revolutions. It appears by the

great national survey of Domesday Book, completed near the

close of the Conqueror's reign, that the tenants in capite of

the crown were generally foreigners. ... But inferior

freeholders were much less disturbed in their estates than the

higher. ... The valuable labours of Sir Henry Ellis, in

presenting us with a complete analysis of Domesday Book,

afford an opportunity, by his list of mesne tenants at the

time of the survey, to form some approximation to the relative

numbers of English and foreigners holding manors under the

immediate vassals of the crown. ... Though I will not now

affirm or deny that they were a majority, they [the English]

form a large proportion of nearly 8,000 mesne tenants, who are

summed up by the diligence of Sir Henry Ellis. ...

{794}

This might induce us to suspect that, great as the spoliation

must appear in modern times, and almost completely as the

nation was excluded from civil power in the commonwealth,

there is some exaggeration in the language of those writers

who represent them as universal reduced to a state of penury

and servitude. And this suspicion may be in some degree just.

Yet those writers, and especial the most English in feeling of

them all, M. Thierry, are warranted by the language of

contemporary authorities."

H. Hallam,

The Middle Ages.

chapter 8, part 2.

"By right of conquest William claimed nothing. He had come to

take his crown, and he had unluckily met with some opposition

in taking it. The crown-lands of King Edward passed of course

to his successor. As for the lands of other men, in William's

theory all was forfeited to the crown. The lawful heir had

been driven to seek his kingdom in arms; no Englishman had

helped him; many Englishmen had fought against him. All then

were directly or indirectly traitors. The King might lawfully

deal with the lands of all as his own. ... After the general

redemption of lands, gradually carried out as William's power

advanced, no general blow was dealt at Englishmen as such. ...

Though the land had never seen so great a confiscation, or one

so largely for the behoof of foreigners, yet there was nothing

new in the thing itself. ... Confiscation of land was the

every-day punishment for various public and private crimes.

... Once granting the original wrong of his coming at all and

bringing a host of strangers with him, there is singularly

little to blame in the acts of the Conqueror."

E. A. Freeman,

William the Conqueror,

pages 102-104, 126.

"After each effort [of revolt] the royal hand was laid on more

heavily: more and more land changed owners, and with the

change of owners the title changed. The complicated and

unintelligible irregularities of the Anglo-Saxon tenures were

exchanged for the simple and uniform feudal theory. ... It was

not the change from alodial to feudal so much as from

confusion to order. The actual amount of dispossession was no

doubt greatest in the higher ranks."

W. Stubbs,

Constitutional History of England,

chapter 9, section. 95.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1069-1071.

The Camp of Refuge in the Fens.

"In the northern part of Cambridgeshire there is a vast extent

of low and marshy land, intersected in every direction by

rivers. All the waters from the centre of England which do not

flow into the Thames or the Trent, empty themselves into these

marshes, which in the latter end of autumn overflow, cover the

land, and are charged with fogs and vapours. A portion of this

damp and swampy country was then, as now, called the Isle of

Ely; another the Isle of Thorney, a third the Isle of

Croyland. This district, almost a moving bog, impracticable

for cavalry and for soldiers heavily armed, had more than once

served as a refuge for the Saxons in the time of the Danish

conquest; towards the close of the year 1069 it became the

rendezvous of several bands of patriots from various quarters,

assembling against the Normans. Former chieftains, now

dispossessed of their lands, successively repaired hither with

their clients, some by land, others by water, by the mouths of

the rivers. They here constructed entrenchments of earth and

wood, and established an extensive armed station, which took

the name of the Camp of Refuge. The foreigners at first

hesitated to attack them amidst their rushes and willows, and

thus gave them time to transmit messages in every direction,

at home and abroad, to the friends of old England. Become

powerful, they undertook a partisan war by land and by sea,

or, as the conquerors called it, robbery and piracy."

A. Thierry,

History of the Conquest of England by the Normans,

book 4.

"Against the new tyranny the free men of the Danelagh and of

Northumbria rose. If Edward the descendant of Cerdic had been

little to them, William the descendant of Rollo was still

less. ... So they rose, and fought; too late, it may be, and

without unity or purpose; and they were worsted by an enemy

who had both unity and purpose; whom superstition, greed, and

feudal discipline kept together, at least in England, in one

compact body of unscrupulous and terrible confederates. And

theirs was a land worth fighting for--a good land and large:

from Humber mouth inland to the Trent and merry Sherwood,

across to Chester and the Dee, round by Leicester and the five

burghs of the Danes; eastward again to Huntingdon and

Cambridge (then a poor village on the site of an old Roman

town); and then northward again into the wide fens, the land

of the Girvii, where the great central plateau of England

slides into the sea, to form, from the rain and river washings

of eight shires, lowlands of a fertility inexhaustible,

because ever-growing to this day. Into those fens, as into a

natural fortress, the Anglo-Danish noblemen crowded down

instinctively from the inland to make their last stand against

the French. ... Most gallant of them all, and their leader in

the fatal struggle against William, was Hereward the Wake,

Lord of Bourne and ancestor of that family of Wake, the arms

of whom appear on the cover of this book."

C. Kingsley,

Hereward the Wake,

Prelude.

The defence of the Camp of Refuge was maintained until

October, 1071, when the stronghold is said to have been

betrayed by the monks of Ely, who grew tired of the

disturbance of their peace. But Hereward did not submit. He

made his escape and various accounts are given of his

subsequent career and his fate.

E. A. Freeman,

History of the Norman Conquest of England,

chapter 20, section 1.

ALSO IN:

C. M. Yonge,

Cameos from English History,

first series, chapter 8.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1085-1086.

The Domesday Survey and Domesday Book.

"The distinctive characteristic of the Norman kings [of

England] was their exceeding greed, and the administrative

system was so directed as to insure the exaction of the

highest possible imposts. From this bent originated the great

registration that William [the Conqueror] caused to be taken

of all lands, whether holden in fee or at rent; as well as the

census of the entire population. The respective registers were

preserved in the Cathedral of Winchester, and by the Norman

were designated 'Ie grand rôle,' 'Ie rôle royal,' 'Ie rôle de

Winchester'; but by the Saxons were termed 'the Book of the

Last Judgment,' 'Doomesdaege Boc,' 'Doomsday Book.'"

E. Fischel,

The English Constitution,

chapter 1.

For a different statement see the following: "The recently

attempted invasion from Denmark seems to have impressed the

king with the desirability of· an accurate knowledge of his

resources, military and fiscal, both of which were based upon

the land. The survey was completed in the remarkably short

space of a single year [1085-1086]. In each shire the

commissioners made their inquiries by the oaths of the

sheriffs, the barons and their Norman retainers, the parish

priests, the reeves and six ceorls of each township.

{795}

The result of their labours was a minute description of all

the lands of the kingdom, with the exception of the four

northern counties of Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmoreland

and Durham, and part of what is now Lancashire. It enumerates

the tenants-in-chief, under tenants, freeholders, villeins,

and serfs, describes the nature and obligations of the

tenures, the value in the time of King Eadward, at the

conquest, and at the date of the survey, and, which gives the

key to the whole inquiry, informs the king whether any advance

in the valuation could be made. ... The returns were

transmitted to Winchester, digested, and recorded in two

volumes which have descended to posterity under the name of

Domesday Book. The name itself is probably derived from Domus

Dei, the appellation of a chapel or vault of the cathedral at

Winchester in which the survey was at first deposited."

T. P. Taswell-Langmead,

English Constitutional History,

chapter 2.

"Of the motives which induced the Conqueror and his council to

undertake the Survey we have very little reliable information,

and much that has been written on the subject savours more of

a deduction from the result than of a knowledge of the

immediate facts. We have the statement from the Chartulary of

St. Mary's, Worcester, of the appointment of the Commissioners

by the king himself to make the Survey. We have also the

heading of the 'Inquisitio Eliensis' which purports to give,

and probably does truly give, the items of the articles of

inquiry, which sets forth as follows:

I. What is the manor called?

II. Who held it in the time of King Edward?

III. Who now holds it?

IV. How many hides?

V. What teams are there in demesne?

VI. What teams of the men?

VII. What villans?

VIII. What cottagers?

IX. What bondmen?

X. What freemen and what sokemen?

XI. What woods?

XII. What meadow?

XIII. What pastures?

XIV. What mills?

XV. What fisheries?

XVI. What is added or taken away?

XVII. What the whole was worth together, and what now?

XVIII. How much each freeman or sokeman had or has?

All this to be estimated three times, viz. in the time of King

Edward, and when King William gave it, and how it is now, and

if more can be had for it than has been had. This document is,

I think, the best evidence we have of the form of the inquiry,

and it tallies strictly with the form of the various returns

as we now have them. ... An external evidence failing, we are

driven back to the Record itself for evidence of the

Conqueror's intention in framing it, and anyone who carefully

studies it will be driven to the inevitable conclusion that it

was framed and designed in the spirit of perfect equity. Long

before the Conquest, in the period between the death of Alfred

and that of Edward the Confessor, the kingdom had been rapidly

declining into a state of disorganisation and decay. The

defence of the kingdom and the administration of justice and

keeping of the peace could not be maintained by the king's

revenues. The tax of Danegeld, instituted by Ethelred at first

to buy peace of the Danes, and afterwards to maintain the

defence of the kingdom, had more and more come to be levied

unequally and unfairly. The Church had obtained enormous

remissions of its liability, and its possessions were

constantly increasing. Powerful subjects had obtained further

remission, and the tax had come to be irregularly collected

and was burdensome upon the smaller holders and their poor

tenants, while the nobility and the Church escaped with a

small share in the burden. In short the tax had come to be

collected upon an old and uncorrected assessment. It had

probably dwindled in amount, and at last had been ultimately

remitted by Edward the Confessor. Anarchy and confusion

appears to have reigned throughout the realm. The Conqueror

was threatened with foreign invasion, and pressed on all sides

by complaints of unfair taxation on the part of his subjects.

Estates had been divided and subdivided, and the incidence of

the tax was unequal and unjust. He had to face the

difficulties before him and to count the resources of his

kingdom for its defence, and the means of doing so were not at

hand. In this situation his masterly and order-loving Norman

mind instituted this great inquiry, but ordered it to be taken

(as I maintain the study of the Book will show) in the most

public and open manner, and with the utmost impartiality, with

the view of levying the taxes of the kingdom equally and

fairly upon all. The articles of his inquiry show that he was

prepared to study the resources of his kingdom and consider

the liability of his subjects from every possible point of

view."

Stuart Moore,

On the Study of Domesday Book

(Domesday Studies, volume 1).

"Domesday Book is a vast mine of materials for the social and

economical history of our country, a mine almost

inexhaustible, and to a great extent as yet unworked. Among

national documents it is unique. There is nothing that

approaches it in interest and value except the Landnámabók,

which records the names of the original settlers in Iceland

and the designations they bestowed upon the places where they

settled, and tells us how the island was taken up and

apportioned among them. Such a document for England,

describing the way in which our forefathers divided the

territory they conquered, and how 'they called the lands after

their own names,' would indeed be priceless. But the Domesday

Book does, indirectly, supply materials for the history of the

English as well as of the Norman Conquest, for it records not

only how the lands of England were divided among the Norman

host which conquered at Senlac, but it gives us also the names

of the Saxon and Danish holders who possessed the lands before

the great battle which changed all the future history of

England, and enables us to trace the extent of the transfer of

the land from Englishmen to Normans; it shows how far the

earlier owners were reduced to tenants, and by its enumeration

of the classes of population--freemen, sokemen, villans,

cottiers, and slaves--it indicates the nature and extent of

the earlier conquests. Thus we learn that in the West of

England slaves were numerous, while in the East they were

almost unknown, and hence we gather that in the districts

first subdued the British population was exterminated or

driven off, while in the West it was reduced to servitude."

I. Taylor,

Domesday Survivals

(Domesday Studies, volume 1).

ALSO IN:

E. A. Freeman,

History of the Norman Conquest,

chapters 21-22 and appendix A in volume 5.

W. de Gray Birch,

Domesday Book.

F. W. Maitland,

Domesday Book (Dict. Pol. Econ.).

{796}

ENGLAND: A. D. 1087-1135.

The sons of the Conqueror and their reigns.

William the Conqueror, when he died, left Normandy and Maine

to his elder son Robert, the English crown to his stronger

son, William, called Rufus, or the Red, and only a legacy of

£5,000 to his third son, Henry, called Beauclerc, or The

Scholar. The Conqueror's half-brother, Odo, soon began to

persuade the Norman barons in England to displace William

Rufus and plant Robert on the English throne. "The claim of

Robert to succeed his father in England, was supported by the

respected rights of primogeniture. But the Anglo-Saxon crown

had always been elective. ... Primogeniture ... gave at that

time no right to the crown of England, independent of the

election of its parliamentary assembly. Having secured this

title, the power of Rufus rested on the foundation most

congenial with the feelings and institutions of the nation,

and from their partiality received a popular support, which

was soon experienced to be impregnable. The danger compelled

the king to court his people by promises to diminish their

grievances; which drew 30,000 knights spontaneously to his

banners, happy to have got a sovereign distinct from hated

Normandy. The invasion of Robert, thus resisted by the English

people, effected nothing but some temporary devastations. ...

The state of Normandy, under Robert's administration, for some

time furnished an ample field for his ambitious uncle's

activity. It continued to exhibit a negligent government in

its most vicious form. ... Odo's politics only facilitated the

Reannexation of Normandy to England. But this event was not

completed in William's reign. When he retorted the attempt of

Robert, by an invasion of Normandy, the great barons of both

countries found themselves endangered by the conflict, and

combined their interest to persuade their respective

sovereigns to a fraternal pacification. The most important

article of their reconciliation provided, that if either

should die without issue, the survivor should inherit his

dominions. Hostilities were then abandoned; mutual courtesies

ensued; and Robert visited England as his brother's guest. The

mind of William the Red King, was cast in no common mould. It

had all the greatness and the defects of the chivalric

character, in its strong but rudest state. Impetuous, daring,

original, magnanimous, and munificent; it was also harsh,

tyrannical, and selfish; conceited of its own powers, loose in

its moral principles, and disdaining consequences. ... While

Lanfranc lived, William had a counsellor whom he respected,

and whose good opinion he was careful to preserve. ... The

death of Lanfranc removed the only man whose wisdom and

influence could have meliorated the king's ardent, but

undisciplined temper. It was his misfortune, on this event, to

choose for his favourite minister, an able, but an

unprincipled man. ... The minister advised the king, on the

death of every prelate, to seize all his temporal possessions.

... The great revenues obtained from this violent innovation,

tempted both the king and his minister to increase its

productiveness, by deferring the nomination of every new

prelate for an indefinite period. Thus he kept many

bishoprics, and among them the see of Canterbury, vacant for

some years; till a severe illness alarming his conscience, he

suddenly appointed Anselm to the dignity; ... His disagreement

with Anselm soon began. The prelate injudiciously began the

battle by asking the king to restore, not only the possessions

of his see, which were enjoyed by Lanfranc--a fair

request--but also the lands which had before that time

belonged to it; a demand that, after so many years alteration

of property, could not be complied with without great

disturbance of other persons. Anselm also exacted of the king

that in all things which concerned the church, his counsels

should be taken in preference to every other. ... Though

Anselm, as a literary man, was an honour and a benefit to his

age, yet his monastic and studious habits prevented him from

having that social wisdom, that knowledge of human nature,

that discreet use of his own virtuous firmness, and that mild

management of turbulent power, which might have enabled him to

have exerted much of the influence of Lanfranc over the mind

of his sovereign. ... Anselm, seeing the churches and abbeys

oppressed in their property, by the royal orders, resolved to

visit Rome, and to concert with the pope the measures most

adapted to overawe the king. ... William threatened, that if

he did go to Rome, he would seize all the possessions of the

archbishopric. Anselm declared, that he would rather travel

naked and on foot, than desist from his resolution; and he

went to Dover with his pilgrim's staff and wallet. He was

searched before his departure, that he might carry away no

money, and was at last allowed to sail. But the king

immediately executed his threat, and sequestered all his lands

and property. This was about three years before the end of the

reign. ... Anselm continued in Italy till William's death. The

possession of Normandy was a leading object of William's

ambition, and he gradually attained a preponderance in it. His

first invasion compelled Robert to make some cessions; these were

increased on his next attack: and when Robert determined to

join the Crusaders, he mortgaged the whole of Normandy to

William for three years, for 10,000 marks. He obtained the

usual success of a powerful invasion in Wales. The natives

were overpowered on the plains, but annoyed the invaders in

their mountains. He marched an army against Malcolm, king of

Scotland, to punish his incursions. Robert advised the

Scottish king to conciliate William; Malcolm yielded to his

counsel and accompanied Robert to the English court, but on

his return, was treacherously attacked by Mowbray, the earl of

Northumbria, and killed. William regretted the perfidious

cruelty of the action. ... The government of William appears

to have been beneficial, both to England and Normandy. To the

church it was oppressive. ... He had scarcely reigned twelve

years, when he fell by a violent death." He was hunting with a

few attendants in the New Forest. "It happened that, his friends

dispersing in pursuit of game, he was left alone, as some

authorities intimate, with Walter Tyrrel, a noble knight, whom

he had brought out of France, and admitted to his table, and

to whom he was much attached. As the sun was about to set, a

stag passed before the king, who discharged an arrow at it.

... At the same moment, another stag crossing, Walter Tyrrel

discharged an arrow at it. At this precise juncture, a shaft

struck the king, and buried itself in his breast. He fell,

without a word, upon the arrow, and expired on the spot. ...

It seems to be a questionable point, whether Walter Tyrrel

actually shot the king. That opinion was certainly the most

prevalent at the time, both here and in France. ...

{797}

None of the authorities intimate a belief of a purposed

assassination; and, therefore, it would be unjust now to

impute it to anyone. ... Henry was hunting in a different part

of the New Forest when Rufus fell. ... He left the body to the

casual charity of the passing rustic, and rode precipitately

to Winchester, to seize the royal treasure. ... He obtained

the treasure, and proceeding hastily to London, was on the

following Sunday, the third day after William's death, elected

king, and crowned. ... He began his reign by removing the

unpopular agents of his unfortunate brother. He recalled

Anselm, and conciliated the clergy. He gratified the nation,

by abolishing the oppressive exactions of the previous reign.

He assured many benefits to the barons, and by a charter,

signed on the day of his coronation, restored to the people

their Anglo-Saxon laws and privileges, as amended by his

father; a measure which ended the pecuniary oppressions of his

brother, and which favoured the growing liberties of the

nation. The Conqueror had noticed Henry's expanding intellect

very early; had given him the best education which the age

could supply. ... He became the most learned monarch of his

day, and acquired and deserved the surname of Beauclerc, or

fine scholar. No wars, no cares of state, could afterwards

deprive him of his love of literature. The nation soon felt

the impulse and the benefit of their sovereign's intellectual

taste. He acceded at the age of 32, and gratified the nation

by marrying and crowning Mathilda, daughter of the sister of

Edgar Etheling by Malcolm the king of Scotland, who had been

waylaid and killed."

S. Turner,

History of England during the Middle Ages,

volume 1, chapters 5-6.

The Norman lords, hating the "English ways" of Henry, were

soon in rebellion, undertaking to put Robert of Normandy (who

had returned from the Crusade) in his place. The quarrel went

on till the battle of Tenchebray, 1106, in which Robert was

defeated and taken prisoner. He was imprisoned for life. The

duchy and the kingdom were again united. The war in Normandy

led to a war with Louis king of France, who had espoused

Robert's cause. It was ended by the battle of Brêmule, 1119,

where the French suffered a bad defeat. In Henry's reign all

south Wales was conquered; but the north Welsh princes held

out. Another expedition against them was preparing, when, in

1135, Henry fell ill at the Castle of Lions in Normandy, and

died.

E. A. Freeman,

The Reign of William Rufus and accession of Henry I.

ALSO IN:

Sir F. Palgrave,

History of Normandy and England,

volume 4.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1135-1154.

The miserable reign of Stephen.

Civil war, anarchy and wretchedness in England.

The transition to hereditary monarchy.

After the death of William the Conqueror, the English throne

was occupied in succession by two of his sons, William II., or

William Rufus (1087-1100), and Henry I., or Henry Beauclerk

(1100-1135). The latter outlived his one legitimate son, and

bequeathed the crown at his death to his daughter, Matilda,

widow of the Emperor Henry V. of Germany and now wife of

Geoffrey, Count of Anjou. This latter marriage had been very

unpopular, both in England and Normandy, and a strong party

refused to recognize the Empress Matilda, as she was commonly

called. This party maintained the superior claims of the

family of Adela, daughter of William the Conqueror, who had

married the Earl of Blois. Naturally their choice would have

fallen upon Theobald of Blois, the eldest of Adela's sons; but

his more enterprising younger brother Stephen supplanted him.

Hastening to England, and winning the favour of the citizens

of London, Stephen secured the royal treasure and persuaded a

council of peers to elect him king. A most grievous civil war

ensued, which lasted for nineteen terrible years, during which

long period there was anarchy and great wretchedness in

England. "The land was filled with castles, and the castles

with armed banditti, who seem to have carried on their

extortions under colour of the military commands bestowed by

Stephen on every petty castellan. Often the very belfries of

churches were fortified. On the poor lay the burden of

building these strongholds; the rich suffered in their

donjeons. Many were starved to death, and these were the

happiest. Others were flung into cellars filled with reptiles,

or hung up by the thumbs till they told where their treasures

were concealed, or crippled in frames which did not suffer

them to move, or held just resting on the ground by sharp iron

collars round the neck. The Earl of Essex used to send out

spies who begged from door to door, and then reported in what

houses wealth was still left; the alms-givers were presently

seized and imprisoned. The towns that could no longer pay the

blackmail demanded from them were burned. ... Sometimes the

peasants, maddened by misery, crowded to the roads that led

from a field of battle, and smote down the fugitives without

any distinction of sides. The bishops cursed vainly, when the

very churches were burned and monks robbed. 'To till the

ground was to plough the sea; the earth bare no corn, for the

land was all laid waste by such deeds, and men said openly

that Christ slept, and his saints. Such things, and more than

we can say, suffered we nineteen winters for our sins' (A. S.

Chronicle). ... Many soldiers, sickened with the unnatural

war, put on the white cross and sailed for a nobler

battle-field in the East." As Matilda's son Henry--afterwards

Henry II.--grew to manhood, the feeling in his favor gained

strength and his party made head against the weak and

incompetent Stephen. Finally, in 1153, peace was brought about

under an agreement "that Stephen should wear the crown till

his death, and Henry receive the homage of the lords and towns

of the realm as heir apparent." Stephen died the next year and

Henry came to the throne with little further dispute.

C. H. Pearson,

History of England During the Early and Middle Ages,

chapter 28.

"Stephen, as a king, was an admitted failure. I cannot,

however, but view with suspicion the causes assigned to his

failure by often unfriendly chroniclers. That their criticisms

had some foundation it would not be possible to deny. But in

the first place, had he enjoyed better fortune, we should have

heard less of his incapacity, and in the second, these writers,

not enjoying the same stand-point as ourselves, were, I think,

somewhat inclined to mistake effects for causes. ... His

weakness throughout his reign ... was due to two causes, each

supplementing the other.

{798}

These were--(1) the essentially unsatisfactory character of

his position, as resting, virtually, on a compact that he

should be king so long only as he gave satisfaction to those

who had placed him on the throne; (2) the existence of a rival

claim, hanging over him from the first, like the sword of

Damocles, and affording a lever by which the malcontents could

compel him to adhere to the original understanding, or even to

submit to further demands. ... The position of his opponents

throughout his reign would seem to have rested on two

assumptions. The first, that a breach, on his part, of the

'contract' justified ipso facto revolt on theirs; the second,

that their allegiance to the king was a purely feudal

relation, and, as such, could be thrown off at any moment by

performing the famous diffidatio. This essential feature of

continental feudalism had been rigidly excluded by the

Conqueror. He had taken advantage, as is well known, of his

position as an English king, to extort an allegiance from his

Norman followers more absolute than he could have claimed as

their feudal lord. It was to Stephen's peculiar position that

was due the introduction for a time of this pernicious

principle into England. ... Passing now to the other point,

the existence of a rival claim, we approach a subject of great

interest, the theory of the succession to the English Crown at

what may be termed the crisis of transition from the principle

of election (within the royal house) to that of hereditary

right according to feudal rules. For the right view on this

subject, we turn, as ever, to Dr. Stubbs, who, with his usual

sound judgment, writes thus of the Norman period:--'The crown

then continued to be elective. ... But whilst the elective

principle was maintained in its fulness where it was necessary

or possible to maintain it, it is quite certain that the right

of inheritance, and inheritance as primogeniture, was

recognized as coordinate. ... The measures taken by Henry I.

for securing the crown to his own children, whilst they prove

the acceptance of the hereditary principle, prove also the

importance of strengthening it by the recognition of the

elective theory.' Mr. Freeman, though writing with a strong

bias in favour of the elective theory, is fully justified in

his main argument, namely, that Stephen 'was no usurper in the

sense in which the word is vulgarly used.' He urges,

apparently with perfect truth, that Stephen's offence, in the

eyes of his contemporaries, lay in his breaking his solemn

oath, and not in his supplanting a rightful heir. And he aptly

suggests that the wretchedness of his reign may have hastened

the growth of that new belief in the divine right of the heir

to the throne, which first appears under Henry II., and in the

pages of William of Newburgh. So far as Stephen is concerned the

case is clear enough. But we have also to consider the

Empress. On what did she base her claim? I think that, as

implied in Dr. Stubbs' words, she based it on a double, not a

single, ground. She claimed the kingdom as King Henry's

daughter ('regis Henrici filia '), but she claimed it further

because the succession had been assured to her by oath ('sibi

juratum') as such. It is important to observe that the oath in

question can in no way be regarded in the light of an

election. ... The Empress and her partisans must have largely,

to say the least, based their claim on her right to the throne

as her father's heir, and ... she and they appealed to the

oath as the admission and recognition of that right, rather

than as partaking in any way whatever of the character of a

free election. ... The sex of the Empress was the drawback to

her claim. Had her brother lived, there can be little question

that he would, as a matter of course, have succeeded his

father at his death. Or again, had Henry II. been old enough

to succeed his grandfather, he would, we may be sure, have

done so. ... Broadly speaking, to sum up the evidence here

collected, it tends to the belief that the obsolescence of the

right of election to the English crown presents considerable

analogy to that of canonical election in the case of English

bishoprics. In both cases a free election degenerated into a

mere assent to a choice already made. We see the process of

change already in full operation when Henry I. endeavours to

extort beforehand from the magnates their assent to his

daughter's succession, and when they subsequently complain of

this attempt to dictate to them on the subject. We catch sight

of it again when his daughter bases her claim to the crown,

not on any free election, but on her rights as her father's

heir, confirmed by the above assent. We see it, lastly, when

Stephen, though owing his crown to election, claims to rule by

Divine right ('Dei gratia'), and attempts to reduce that

election to nothing more than a national 'assent' to his

succession. Obviously, the whole question turned on whether

the election was to be held first, or was to be a mere

ratification of a choice already made. ... In comparing

Stephen with his successor the difference between their

circumstances has been insufficiently allowed for. At

Stephen's accession, thirty years of legal and financial

oppression had rendered unpopular the power of the Crown, and

had led to an impatience of official restraint which opened

the path to a feudal reaction: at the accession of Henry, on

the contrary, the evils of an enfeebled administration and of

feudalism run mad had made all men eager for the advent of a

strong king, and had prepared them to welcome the introduction

of his centralizing administrative reforms. He anticipated the

position of the house of Tudor at the close of the Wars of the

Roses, and combined with it the advantages which Charles II.

derived from the Puritan tyranny. Again, Stephen was hampered

from the first by his weak position as a king on sufferance,

whereas Henry came to his work unhampered by compact or

concession. Lastly, Stephen was confronted throughout by a

rival claimant, who formed a splendid rallying-point for all

the discontent in his realm: but Henry reigned for as long as

Stephen without a rival to trouble him; and when he found at

length a rival in his own son, a claim far weaker than that

which had threatened his predecessor seemed likely for a time

to break his power as effectually as the followers of the

Empress had broken that of Stephen. He may only, indeed, have

owed his escape to that efficient administration which years

of strength and safety had given him the time to construct. It

in no way follows from these considerations that Henry was not

superior to Stephen; but it does, surely, suggest itself that

Stephen's disadvantages were great, and that had he enjoyed

better fortune, we might have heard less of his defects."

J. H. Round,

Geoffrey de Mandeville,

chapter. 1.

ALSO IN:

Mrs. J. R. Green,

Henry the Second,

chapter 1.

See, also,

STANDARD, BATTLE OF THE (A. D. 1137).

{799}

ENGLAND: A. D. 1154-1189.

Henry II., the first of the Angevin kings (Plantagenets)

and his empire.

Henry II., who came to the English throne on Stephen's death,

was already, by the death of his father, Geoffrey, Count of

Anjou, the head of the great house of Anjou, in France. From

his father he inherited Anjou, Touraine and Maine; through his

mother, Matilda, daughter of Henry I., he received the dukedom

of Normandy as well as the kingdom of England; by marriage

with Eleanor, of Aquitaine, or Guienne, he added to his empire

the princely domain which included Gascony, Poitou, Saintonge,

Perigord, Limousin, Angoumois, with claims of suzerainty over

Auvergne and Toulouse. "Henry found himself at twenty-one

ruler of dominions such as no king before him had ever dreamed

of uniting. He was master of both sides of the English

Channel, and by his alliance with his uncle, the Count of

Flanders, he had command of the French coast from the Scheldt

to the Pyrenees, while his claims on Toulouse would carry him

to the shores of the Mediterranean. His subjects told with

pride how 'his empire reached from the Arctic Ocean to the

Pyrenees'; there was no monarch save the Emperor himself who

ruled over such vast domains. ... His aim [a few years Inter]

seems to have been to rival in some sort the Empire of the

West, and to reign as an over-king, with sub-kings of his

various provinces, and England as one of them, around him. He

was connected with all the great ruling houses. ... England

was forced out of her old isolation; her interest in the world

without was suddenly awakened. English scholars thronged the

foreign universities; English chroniclers questioned

travellers, scholars, ambassadors, as to what was passing

abroad.' The influence of English learning and English

statecraft made itself felt all over Europe. Never, perhaps,

in all the history of England was there a time when Englishmen

played so great a part abroad." The king who gathered this

wide, incongruous empire under his sceptre, by mere

circumstances of birth and marriage, proved strangely equal,

in many respects, to its greatness. "He was a foreign king who

never spoke the English tongue, who lived and moved for the

most part in a foreign camp, surrounded with a motley host of

Brabançons and hirelings. ... It was under the rule of a

foreigner such as this, however, that the races of conquerors

and conquered in England first learnt to feel that they were

one. It was by his power that England, Scotland and Ireland

were brought to some vague acknowledgement of a common

suzerain lord, and the foundations laid of the United Kingdom

of Great Britain and Ireland. It was he who abolished

feudalism as a system of government, and left it little more

than a system of land tenure. It was he who defined the

relations established between Church and State, and decreed

that in England churchman as well as baron was to be held

under the Common Law. ... His reforms established the judicial

system whose main outlines have been preserved to our own day.

It was through his 'Constitutions' and his 'Assizes' that it

came to pass that over all the world the English-speaking

races are governed by English and not by Roman law. It was by

his genius for government that the servants of the royal

household became transformed into Ministers of State. It was

he who gave England a foreign policy which decided our

continental relations for seven hundred years. The impress

which the personality of Henry II. left upon his time meets us

wherever we turn."

Mrs. J. R. Green,

Henry the Second,

chapters 1-2.

Henry II. and his two sons, Richard I. (Cœur de Lion), and

John, are distinguished, sometimes, as the Angevin kings, or

kings of the House of Anjou, and sometimes as the

Plantagenets, the latter name being derived from a boyish

habit ascribed to Henry's father, Count Geoffrey, of "adorning

his cap with a sprig of 'plantagenista,' the broom which in

early summer makes the open country of Anjou and Maine a blaze

of living gold." Richard retained and ruled the great realm of

his father; but John lost most of his foreign inheritance,

including Normandy, and became the unwilling benefactor of

England by stripping her kings of alien interests and alien

powers and bending their necks to Magna Charta.

K. Norgate,

England under the Angevin Kings.

ALSO IN:

W. Stubbs,

The Early Plantagenets.

See, also,

AQUITAINE (GUIENNE): A. D. 1137-1152;

IRELAND: A. D. 1169-1175.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1162-1170.

Conflict of King and Church.

The Constitutions of Clarendon.

Murder of Archbishop Becket.

"Archbishop Theobald was at first the King's chief favourite

and adviser, but his health and his influence declining,

Becket [the Archdeacon of Canterbury] was found apt for

business as well as amusement, and gradually became intrusted

with the exercise of all the powers of the crown. ... The

exact time of his appointment as Chancellor has not been

ascertained, the records of the transfer of the Great Seal not

beginning till a subsequent reign, and old biographers being

always quite careless about dates. But he certainly had this

dignity soon after Henry's accession. ... Becket continued

Chancellor till the year 1162, without any abatement in his

favour with the King, or in the power which he possessed, or

in the energy he displayed, or in the splendour of his career.

... In April, 1161, Archbishop Theobald died. Henry declared

that Becket should succeed,--no doubt counting upon his

co-operation in carrying on the policy hitherto pursued in

checking the encroachments of the clergy and of the see of

Rome. ... The same opinion of Becket's probable conduct was

generally entertained, and a cry was raised that 'the Church

was in danger.' The English bishops sent a representation to

Henry against the appointment, and the electors long refused

to obey his mandate, saying that 'it was indecent that a man

who was rather a soldier than a priest, and who had devoted

himself to hunting and falconry instead of the study of the

Holy Scriptures, should be placed in the chair of St.

Augustine.' ... The universal expectation was, that Becket

would now attempt the part so successfully played by Cardinal

Wolsey in a succeeding age; that, Chancellor and Archbishop,

he would continue the minister and personal friend of the

King; that he would study to support and extend all the

prerogatives of the Crown, which he himself was to exercise;

and that in the palaces of which he was now master he would

live with increased magnificence and luxury. ... Never was

there so wonderful a transformation. Whether from a

predetermined purpose, or from a sudden change of inclination,

he immediately became in every respect an altered man.

{800}

Instead of the stately and fastidious courtier, was seen the

humble and squalid penitent. Next [to] his skin he wore

hair-cloth, populous with vermin; he lived upon roots, and his

drink was water, rendered nauseous by an infusion of fennel.

By way of further penance and mortification, he frequently

inflicted stripes on his naked back. ... He sent the Great

Seal to Henry, in Normandy, with this short message, 'I desire

that you will provide yourself with another Chancellor, as I

find myself hardly sufficient for the duties of one office,

and much less of two.' The fond patron, who had been so eager

for his elevation, was now grievously disappointed and

alarmed. ... He at once saw that he had been deceived in his

choice. ... The grand struggle which the Church was then

making was, that all churchmen should be entirely exempted

from the jurisdiction of the secular courts, whatever crime

they might have committed. ... Henry, thinking that he had a

favourable opportunity for bringing the dispute to a crisis,

summoned an assembly of all the prelates at Westminster, and

himself put to them this plain question: 'Whether they were

willing to submit to the ancient laws and customs of the

kingdom?' Their reply, framed by Becket, was: 'We are willing,

saving our own order.' ... The King, seeing what was

comprehended in the reservation, retired with evident marks of

displeasure, deprived Becket of the government of Eye and

Berkhamstead, and all the appointments which he held at the

pleasure of the Crown, and uttered threats as to seizing the

temporalities of all the bishops, since they would not

acknowledge their allegiance to him as the head of the state.

The legate of Pope Alexander, dreading a breach with so

powerful a prince at so unseasonable a juncture, advised

Becket to submit for the moment; and he with his brethren,

retracting the saving clause, absolutely promised 'to observe

the laws and customs of the kingdom.' To avoid all future

dispute, Henry resolved to follow up his victory by having

these laws and customs, as far as the Church was concerned,

reduced into a code, to be sanctioned by the legislature, and

to be specifically acknowledged by all the bishops. This was

the origin of the famous 'Constitutions of Clarendon.'''

Becket left the kingdom (1164). Several years later he made

peace with Henry and returned to Canterbury; but soon he again

displeased the King, who cried in a rage, 'Who will rid me of

this turbulent priest?' Four knights who were present

immediately went to Canterbury, where they slew the Archbishop

in the cathedral (December 29, 1170). "The government tried to

justify or palliate the murder. The Archbishop of York likened

Thomas à Becket to Pharaoh, who died by the Divine vengeance,

as a punishment for his hardness of heart; and a proclamation

was issued, forbidding anyone to speak of Thomas of Canterbury

as a martyr: but the feelings of men were too strong to be

checked by authority; pieces of linen which had been dipped in

his blood were preserved as relics; from the time of his death

it was believed that miracles were worked at his tomb; thither

flocked hundreds of thousands, in spite of the most violent

threats of punishment; at the end of two years he was

canonised at Rome; and, till the breaking out of the

Reformation, St. Thomas of Canterbury, for pilgrimages and

prayers, was the most distinguished Saint in England."

Lord Campbell,

Lives of the Lord Chancellors,

chapter 3.

"What did Henry II. propose to do with a clerk who was accused

of a crime? ... Without doing much violence to the text, it is

possible to put two different interpretations upon that famous

clause in the Constitutions of Clarendon which deals with

criminous clerks. ... According to what seems to be the

commonest opinion, we might comment upon this clause in some

such words as these:--Offences of which a clerk may be accused

are of two kinds. They are temporal or they are

ecclesiastical. Under the former head fall murder, robbery,

larceny, rape, and the like; under the latter, incontinence,

heresy, disobedience to superiors, breach of rules relating to

the conduct of divine service, and so forth. If charged with

an offence of the temporal kind, the clerk must stand his

trial in the king's court; his trial, his sentence, will be

like that of a layman. For an ecclesiastical offence, on the

other hand, he will be tried in the court Christian. The king

reserves to his court the right to decide what offences are

temporal, what ecclesiastical; also he asserts the right to

send delegates to supervise the proceedings of the spiritual

tribunals. ... Let us attempt a rival commentary. The author

of this clause is not thinking of two different classes of

offences. The purely ecclesiastical offences are not in

debate. No one doubts that for these a man will be tried in

and punished by the spiritual court. He is thinking of the

grave crimes, of murder and the like. Now every such crime is

a breach of temporal law, and it is also a breach of canon

law. The clerk who commits murder breaks the king's peace, but

he also infringes the divine law, and--no canonist will doubt

this--ought to be degraded. Very well. A clerk is accused of

such a crime. He is summoned before the king's court, and he

is to answer there--let us mark this word respondere--for what

he ought to answer for there. What ought he to answer for

there? The breach of the king's peace and the felony. When he

has answered, ... then, without any trial, he is to be sent to

the ecclesiastical court. In that court he will have to answer

as an ordained clerk accused of homicide, and in that court

there will be a trial (res ibi tractabitur). If the spiritual

court convicts him it will degrade him, and thenceforth the

church must no longer protect him. He will be brought back

into the king's court, ... and having been brought back, no

longer a clerk but a mere layman, he will be sentenced

(probably without any further trial) to the layman's

punishment, death or mutilation. The scheme is this:

accusation and plea in the temporal court; trial, conviction,

degradation, in the ecclesiastical court; sentence in the

temporal court to the layman's punishment. This I believe to

be the meaning of the clause."

F. W. Maitland,

Henry II. and the Criminous Clerks

(English Historical Review, April, 1892),

pages 224-226.

The Assize of Clarendon, sometimes confused with the

Constitutions of Clarendon, was an important decree approved

two years later. It laid down the principles on which the

administration of justice was to be carried out, in twenty-two

articles drawn up for the use of the judges.

Mrs. J. R Green,

Henry the Second,

chapters 5-6.

{801}

"It may not be without instruction to remember that the

Constitutions of Clarendon, which Becket spent his life in

opposing, and of which his death procured the suspension, are

now incorporated in the English law, and are regarded, without

a dissentient voice, as among the wisest and most necessary of

English institutions; that the especial point for which he

surrendered his life was not the independence of the clergy

from the encroachments of the Crown, but the personal and now

forgotten question of the superiority of the see of Canterbury

to the see of York."

A. P. Stanley,

Historical Memorials of Canterbury,

page 124.

ALSO IN:

W. Stubbs,

Constitutional History of England,

chapter 12, sections 139-141.

W. Stubbs,

Select Charters,

part 4.

J. C. Robertson,

Becket.

J. A. Giles,

Life and Letters of Thomas à Becket.

R. H. Froude,

History of the Contest between Archbishop

Thomas à Becket and Henry II.

(Remains, part 2, volume 2).

J. A. Froude,

Life and Times of Thomas Becket.

C. H. Pearson,

History of England during the Early and Middle Ages,

volume 1, chapter 29.

See, also,

BENEFIT OF CLERGY,

and JURY, TRIAL BY.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1189.

Accession of King Richard I. (called Cœur de Lion).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1189-1199.

Reign of Richard Cœur de Lion.

His Crusade and campaigns in France.

"The Third Crusade [see CRUSADES: A. D. 1188-1192], undertaken

for the deliverance of Palestine from the disasters brought

upon the Crusaders' Kingdom by Saladin, was the first to be

popular in England. ... Richard joined the Crusade in the very

first year of his reign, and every portion of his subsequent

career was concerned with its consequences. Neither in the

time of William Rufus nor of Stephen had the First or Second

Crusades found England sufficiently settled for such

expeditions. ... But the patronage of the Crusades was a

hereditary distinction in the Angevin family now reigning in

England: they had founded the kingdom of Palestine; Henry II.

himself had often prepared to set out; and Richard was

confidently expected by the great body of his subjects to

redeem the family pledge. ... Wholly inferior in statesmanlike

qualities to his father as he was, the generosity,

munificence, and easy confidence of his character made him an

almost perfect representative of the chivalry of that age. He

was scarcely at all in England, but his fine exploits both by

land and sea have made him deservedly a favourite. The

depreciation of him which is to be found in certain modern

books must in all fairness be considered a little mawkish. A

King who leaves behind him such an example of apparently

reckless, but really prudent valour, of patience under jealous

ill-treatment, and perseverance in the face of extreme

difficulties, shining out as the head of the manhood of his

day, far above the common race of kings and emperors,--such a

man leaves a heritage of example as well as glory, and incites

posterity to noble deeds. His great moral fault was his

conduct to Henry, and for this he was sufficiently punished;

but his parents must each bear their share of the blame. ...

The interest of English affairs during Richard's absence

languishes under the excitement which attends his almost

continuous campaigns. ... Both on the Crusade and in France

Richard was fighting the battle of the House which the English

had very deliberately placed upon its throne; and if the war

was kept off its shores, if the troubles of Stephen's reign

were not allowed to recur, the country had no right to

complain of a taxation or a royal ransom which times of peace

enabled it, after all, to bear tolerably well. ... The great

maritime position of the Plantagenets made these sovereigns

take to the sea."

M. Burrows,

Commentaries on the History of England,

book 1, chapter 18.

Richard "was a bad king; his great exploits, his military

skill, his splendour and extravagance, his poetical tastes,

his adventurous spirit, do not serve to cloak his entire want

of sympathy, or even consideration for his people. He was no

Englishman. ... His ambition was that of a mere warrior."

W. Stubbs,

Constitutional History of England,

section. 150 (volume 1).

ALSO IN:

K. Norgate,

England under the Angevin Kings,

volume 2, chapter 7-8.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1199.

Accession of King John.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1205.

The loss of Normandy and its effects.

In 1202 Philip Augustus, king of France, summoned John of

England, as Duke of Normandy (therefore the feudal vassal of

the French crown) to appear for trial on certain grave charges

before the august court of the Peers of France. John refused

to obey the summons; his French fiefs were declared forfeited,

and the armies of the French king took possession of them (see

FRANCE: A. D. 1180-1224). This proved to be a lasting

separation of Normandy from England,--except as it was

recovered momentarily long afterwards in the conquests of

Henry V. "The Norman barons had had no choice but between John

and Philip. For the first time since the Conquest there was no

competitor, son, brother, or more distant kinsman, for their

allegiance. John could neither rule nor defend them. Bishops

and barons alike welcomed or speedily accepted their new lord.

The families that had estates on both sides of the Channel

divided into two branches, each of which made terms for

itself; or having balanced their interests in the two

kingdoms, threw in their lot with one or other, and renounced

what they could not save. Almost immediately Normandy settles

down into a quiet province of France. ... For England the

result of the separation was more important still. Even within

the reign of John it became clear that the release of the

barons from their connexion with the continent was all that

was wanted to make them Englishmen. With the last vestiges of

the Norman inheritances vanished the last idea of making

England a feudal kingdom. The Great Charter was won by men who

were maintaining, not the cause of a class, as had been the

case in every civil war since 1070, but the cause of a nation.

From the year 1203 the king stood before the English people

face to face."

W. Stubbs,

Constitutional History of England,

chapter 12, section 152.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1180-1224.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1205-1213.

King John's quarrel with the Pope and the Church.

On the death, in 1205, of Archbishop Hubert, of Canterbury,

who had long been chief minister of the crown, a complicated

quarrel over the appointment to the vacant see arose between

the monks of the cathedral, the suffragan bishops of the

province, King John, and the powerful Pope Innocent III. Pope

Innocent put forward as his candidate the afterwards famous

Stephen Langton, secured his election in a somewhat irregular

way (A. D. 1207), and consecrated him with his own hands. King

John, bent on filling the primacy with a creature of his own,

resisted the papal action with more fury than discretion, and

proceeded to open war with the whole Church.

{802}

"The monks of Canterbury were driven from their monastery, and

when, in the following year, an interdict which the Pope had

intrusted to the Bishops of London, Ely and Worcester, was

published, his hostility to the Church became so extreme that

almost all the bishops fled; the Bishops of Winchester,

Durham, and Norwich, two of whom belonged to the ministerial

body, being the only prelates left in England. The interdict

was of the severest form; all services of the Church, with the

exception of baptism and extreme unction, being forbidden,

while the burial of the dead was allowed only in unconsecrated

ground; its effect was however, weakened by the conduct of

some of the monastic orders, who claimed exemption from its

operation, and continued their services. The king's anger knew

no bounds. The clergy were put beyond the protection of the

law; orders were issued to drive them from their benefices,

and lawless acts committed at their expense met with no

punishment. ... Though acting thus violently, John showed the

weakness of his character by continued communication with the

Pope, and occasional fitful acts of favour to the Church; so

much so, that, in the following year, Langton prepared to come

over to England, and, upon the continued obstinacy of the

king, Innocent, feeling sure of his final victory, did not

shrink from issuing his threatened excommunication. John had

hoped to be able to exclude the knowledge of this step from

the island ... ; but the rumour of it soon got abroad, and its

effect was great. ... In a state of nervous excitement, and

mistrusting his nobles, the king himself perpetually moved to

and fro in his kingdom, seldom staying more than a few days in

one place. None the less did he continue his old line of policy.

... In 1211 a league of excommunicated leaders was formed,

including all the princes of the North of Europe; Ferrand of

Flanders, the Duke of Brabant, John, and Otho [John's Guelphic

Saxon nephew, who was one of two contestants for the imperial

crown in Germany], were all members of it, and it was chiefly

organized by the activity of Reinald of Dammartin, Count of

Boulogne. The chief enemy of these confederates was Philip of

France; and John thought he saw in this league the means of

revenge against his old enemy. To complete the line of

demarcation between the two parties, Innocent, who was greatly

moved by the description of the disorders and persecutions in

England, declared John's crown forfeited, and intrusted the

carrying out of the sentence to Philip. In 1213 armies were

collected on both sides. Philip was already on the Channel,

and John had assembled a large army on Barhamdown, not far

from Canterbury." But, at the last moment, when the French

king was on the eve of embarking his forces for the invasion

of England, John submitted himself abjectly to Pandulf, the

legate of the Pope. He not only surrendered to all that he had

contended against, but went further, to the most shameful

extreme. "On the 15th of May, at Dover, he formally resigned

the crowns of England and Ireland into the hands of Pandulf,

and received them again as the Pope's feudatory."

J. F. Bright,

History of England (3d edition),

volume 1, pages 130-134.

ALSO IN:

C. H. Pearson,

History of England during the Early and Middle Ages,

volume 2, chapter 2.

E. F. Henderson,

Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages,

Book 4, number 5.

See, also, BOUVINES, BATTLE OF.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1206-1230.

Attempts of John and Henry III. to recover Anjou and Maine.

See ANJOU: A. D. 1206-1442.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1215.

Magna Carta.

"It is to the victory of Bouvines that England owes her Great

Charter [see BOUVINES]. ... John sailed for Poitou with the

dream of a great victory which should lay Philip [of France]

and the barons alike at his feet. He returned from his defeat

to find the nobles no longer banded together in secret

conspiracies, but openly united in a definite claim of liberty

and law. The author of this great change was the new

Archbishop [Langton] whom Innocent had set on the throne of

Canterbury. ... In a private meeting of the barons at St.

Paul's, he produced the Charter of Henry I., and the

enthusiasm with which it was welcomed showed the sagacity with

which the Primate had chosen his ground for the coming

struggle. All hope, however, hung on the fortunes of the

French campaign; it was the victory at Bouvines that broke the

spell of terror, and within a few days of the king's landing

the barons again met at St. Edmundsbury. ... At Christmas they

presented themselves in arms before the king and preferred their

claim. The few months that followed showed John that he stood

alone in the land. ... At Easter the barons again gathered in

arms at Brackley and renewed their claim. 'Why do they not ask

for my kingdom?' cried John in a burst of passion; but the

whole country rose as one man at his refusal. London threw

open her gates to the army of the barons, now organized under

Robert Fitz-Walter, 'the marshal of the army of God and the

holy Church.' The example of the capital was at once followed

by Exeter and Lincoln; promises of aid came from Scotland and

Wales; the northern nobles marched hastily to join their

comrades in London. With seven horsemen in his train John

found himself face to face with a nation in arms. ... Nursing

wrath in his heart the tyrant bowed to necessity, and summoned

the barons to a conference at Runnymede. An island in the

Thames between Staines and Windsor had been chosen as the

place of conference: the king encamped on one bank, while the

barons covered the marshy flat, still known by the name of

Runnymede, on the other. Their delegates met in the island

between them. ... The Great Charter was discussed, agreed to,

and signed in a single day [June 15, A. D. 1215]. One copy of

it still remains in the British Museum, injured by age and

fire, but with the royal seal still hanging from the brown,

shriveled parchment."

J. R Green,

Short History of the England People,

chapter 3, sections 2-3.

"As this was the first effort towards a legal government, so

is it beyond comparison the most important event in our

history, except that, Revolution without which its benefits

would have been rapidly annihilated. The constitution of

England has indeed no single date from which its duration is

to be reckoned. The institutions of positive law, the far more

important changes which time has wrought in the order of

society, during six hundred years subsequent to the Great

Charter, have undoubtedly lessened its direct application to

our present circumstances. But it is still the key-stone of

English liberty. All that has since been obtained is little

more than as confirmation or commentary. ... The essential

clauses of Magna Charta are those which protect the personal

liberty and property of all freemen, by giving security from

arbitrary imprisonment and arbitrary spoliation.

{803}

'No freeman (says the 29th chapter of Henry III.'s charter,

which, as the existing law, I quote in preference to that of

John, the variations not being very material) shall be taken

or imprisoned, or be disseised of his freehold, or liberties,

or free customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any otherwise

destroyed; nor will we pass upon him, nor send upon, but by

lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land. We

will sell to no man, we will not deny or delay to any man,

justice or right.' It is obvious that these words, interpreted

by any honest court of law, convey an ample security for the

two main rights of civil society."

H. Hallam,

The Middle Ages,

chapter 8, part 2.

"The Great Charter, although drawn up in the form of a royal

grant, was really a treaty between the king and his subjects.

... It is the collective people who really form the other high

contracting party in the great capitulation,--the three

estates of the realm, not, it is true, arranged in order

according to their profession or rank, but not the less

certainly combined in one national purpose, and securing by

one bond the interests and rights of each other, severally and

all together. ... The barons maintain and secure the right of

the whole people as against themselves as well as against

their master. Clause by clause the rights of the commons are

provided for as well as the rights of the nobles. ... The

knight is protected against the compulsory exaction of his

services, and the horse and cart of the freeman against the

irregular requisition even of the sheriff. ... The Great

Charter is the first great public act of the nation, after it

has realised its own identity. ... The whole of the

constitutional history of England is little more than a

commentary on Magna Carta."

W. Stubbs,

Constitutional History of England,

chapter 12, section 155.

The following is the text of Magna Carta;

"John, by the Grace of God, King of England, Lord of Ireland,

Duke of Normandy, Aquitaine, and Count of Anjou, to his

Archbishops, Bishops, Abbots, Earls, Barons, Justiciaries,

Foresters, Sheriffs, Governors, Officers, and to all Bailiffs,

and his faithful subjects, greeting. Know ye, that we, in the

presence of God, and for the salvation of our soul, and the

souls of all our ancestors and heirs, and unto the honour of

God and the advancement of Holy Church, and amendment of our

Realm, by advice of our venerable Fathers, Stephen, Archbishop

of Canterbury, Primate of all England and Cardinal of the Holy

Roman Church; Henry, Archbishop of Dublin; William, of London;

Peter, of Winchester; Jocelin, of Bath and Glastonbury; Hugh,

of Lincoln; Walter, of Worcester; William, of Coventry;

Benedict, of Rochester--Bishops; of Master Pandulph,

Sub-Deacon and Familiar of our Lord the Pope; Brother Aymeric,

Master of the Knights-Templars in England; and of the noble

Persons, William Marescall, Earl of Pembroke; William, Earl of

Salisbury; William, Earl of Warren; William, Earl of Arundel;

Alan de Galloway, Constable of Scotland; Warin FitzGerald,

Peter FitzHerbert, and Hubert de Burgh, Seneschal of Poitou;

Hugh de Neville, Matthew FitzHerbert, Thomas Basset, Alan

Basset, Philip of Albiney, Robert de Roppell, John Mareschal,

John FitzHugh, and others, our liegemen, have, in the first

place, granted to God, and by this our present Charter

confirmed, for us and our heirs forever;

1. That the Church of England shall be free, and have her

whole rights, and her liberties inviolable; and we will have

them so observed, that it may appear thence that the freedom

of elections, which is reckoned chief and indispensable to the

English Church, and which we granted and confirmed by our

Charter, and obtained the confirmation of the same from our

Lord the Pope Innocent III., before the discord between us and

our barons, was granted of mere free will; which Charter we

shall observe, and we do will it to be faithfully observed by

our heirs for ever.

2. We also have granted to all the freemen of our kingdom, for

us and for our heirs for ever, all the underwritten liberties,

to be had and holden by them and their heirs, of us and our

heirs for ever; If any of our earls, or barons, or others, who

hold of us in chief by military service, shall die, and at the

time of his death his heir shall be of full age, and owe a

relief, he shall have his inheritance by the ancient

relief--that is to say, the heir or heirs of an earl, for a

whole earldom, by a hundred pounds; the heir or heirs of a

baron, for a whole barony, by a hundred pounds; the heir or

heirs of a knight, for a whole knight's fee, by a hundred

shillings at most; and whoever oweth less shall give less,

according to the ancient custom of fees.

3. But if the heir of any such shall be under age, and shall

be in ward, when he comes of age he shall have his inheritance

without relief and without fine.

4. The keeper of the land of such an heir being under age,

shall take of the land of the heir none but reasonable issues,

reasonable customs, and reasonable services, and that without

destruction and waste of his men and his goods; and if we

commit the custody of any such lands to the sheriff, or any

other who is answerable to us for the issues of the land, and

he shall make destruction and waste of the lands which he hath

in custody, we will take of him amends, and the land shall be

committed to two lawful and discreet men of that fee, who

shall answer for the issues to us, or to him to whom we shall

assign them; and if we sell or give to anyone the custody of

any such lands, and he therein make destruction or waste, he

shall lose the same custody, which shall be committed to two

lawful and discreet men of that fee, who shall in like manner

answer to us as aforesaid.

5. But the keeper, so long as he shall have the custody of the

land, shall keep up the houses, parks, warrens, ponds, mills,

and other things pertaining to the land, out of the issues of

the same land; and shall deliver to the heir, when he comes of

full age, his whole land, stocked with ploughs and carriages,

according as the time of wainage shall require, and the issues

of the land can reasonably bear.

6. Heirs shall be married without disparagement, and so that

before matrimony shall be contracted, those who are near in

blood to the heir shall have notice.

7. A widow, after the death of her husband, shall forthwith

and without difficulty have her marriage and inheritance; nor

shall she give anything for her dower, or her marriage, of her

inheritance, which her husband and she held at the day of his

death; and she may remain in the mansion house of her husband

forty days after his death, within which time her dower shall

be assigned.

8. No widow shall be distrained to marry herself, so long as

she has a mind to live without a husband; but yet she shall

give security that she will not marry without our assent, if

she hold of us; or without the consent of the lord of whom she

holds, if she hold of another.

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9. Neither we nor our bailiffs shall seize any land or rent

for any debt so long as the chattels of the debtor are

sufficient to pay the debt; nor shall the sureties of the

debtor be distrained so long as the principal debtor has

sufficient to pay the debt; and if the principal debtor shall

fail in the payment of the debt, not having wherewithal to pay

it, then the sureties shall answer the debt; and if they will

they shall have the lands and rents of the debtor, until they

shall be satisfied for the debt which they paid for him,

unless the principal debtor can show himself acquitted thereof

against the said sureties.

10. If anyone have borrowed anything of the Jews, more or

less, and die before the debt be satisfied, there shall be no

interest paid for that debt, so long as the heir is under age,

of whomsoever he may hold; and if the debt falls into our

hands, we will only take the chattel mentioned in the deed.

11. And if anyone shall die indebted to the Jews, his wife

shall have her dower and pay nothing of that debt; and if the

deceased left children under age, they shall have necessaries

provided for them, according to the tenement of the deceased;

and out of the residue the debt shall be paid, saving,

however, the service due to the lords, and in like manner

shall it be done touching debts due to others than the Jews.

12. No scutage or aid shall be imposed in our kingdom, unless

by the general council of our kingdom; except for ransoming

our person, making our eldest son a knight, and once for

marrying our eldest daughter; and for these there shall be

paid no more than a reasonable aid. In like manner it shall be

concerning the aids of the City of London.

13. And the City of London shall have all its ancient

liberties and free customs, as well by land as by water:

furthermore, we will and grant that all other cities and

boroughs, and towns and ports, shall have all their liberties

and free customs.

14. And for holding the general council of the kingdom

concerning the assessment of aids, except in the three cases

aforesaid, and for the assessing of scutages, we shall cause

to be summoned the archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, and

greater barons of the realm, singly by our letters. And

furthermore, we shall cause to be summoned generally, by our

sheriffs and bailiffs, all others who hold of us in chief, for

a certain day, that is to say, forty days before their meeting

at least, and to a certain place; and in all letters of such

summons we will declare the cause of such summons. And summons

being thus made, the business shall proceed on the day

appointed, according to the advice of such as shall be

present, although all that were summoned come not.

15. We will not for the future grant to anyone that he may

take aid of his own free tenants, unless to ransom his body,

and to make his eldest son a knight, and once to marry his

eldest daughter; and for this there shall be only paid a

reasonable aid.

16. No man shall be distrained to perform more service for a

knight's fee, or other free tenement, than is due from thence.

17. Common pleas shall not follow our court, but shall be

holden in some place certain.

18. Trials upon the Writs of Novel Disseisin, and of Mort

d'ancestor, and of Darrein Presentment, shall not be taken but

in their proper counties, and after this manner: We, or if we

should be out of the realm, our chief justiciary, will send

two justiciaries through every county four times a year, who,

with four knights of each county, chosen by the county, shall

hold the said assizes in the county, on the day, and at the

place appointed.

19. And if any matters cannot be determined on the day

appointed for holding the assizes in each county, so many of

the knights and freeholders as have been at the assizes

aforesaid shall stay to decide them as is necessary, according

as there is more or less business.

20. A freeman shall not be amerced for a small offence, but

only according to the degree of the offence; and for a great

crime according to the heinousness of it, saving to him his

contenement; and after the same manner a merchant, saving to

him his merchandise. And a villein shall be amerced after the

same manner, saving to him his wainage, if he falls under our

mercy; and none of the aforesaid amerciaments shall be

assessed but by the oath of honest men in the neighbourhood.

21. Earls and barons shall not be amerced but by their peers,

and after the degree of the offence.

22. No ecclesiastical person shall be amerced for his lay

tenement, but according to the proportion of the others

aforesaid, and not according to the value of his

ecclesiastical benefice.

23. Neither a town nor any tenant shall be distrained to make

bridges or embankments, unless that anciently and of right

they are bound to do it.

24. No sheriff, constable, coroner, or other our bailiffs,

shall hold "Pleas of the Crown."

25. All counties, hundreds, wapentakes, and trethings, shall

stand at the old rents, without any increase, except in our

demesne manors.

26. If anyone holding of us a lay fee die, and the sheriff, or

our bailiffs, show our letters patent of summons for debt

which the dead man did owe to us, it shall be lawful for the

sheriff or our bailiff to attach and register the chattels of

the dead, found upon his lay fee, to the amount of the debt,

by the view of lawful men, so as nothing be removed until our

whole clear debt be paid; and the rest shall be left to the

executors to fulfil the testament of the dead; and if there be

nothing due from him to us, all the chattels shall go to the

use of the dead, saving to his wife and children their

reasonable shares.

27. If any freeman shall die intestate, his chattels shall be

distributed by the hands of his nearest relations and friends,

by view of the Church, saving to everyone his debts which the

deceased owed to him.

28. No constable or bailiff of ours shall take corn or other

chattels of any man unless he presently give him money for it,

or hath respite of payment by the good-will of the seller.

29. No constable shall distrain any knight to give money for

castle-guard, if he himself will do it in his person, or by

another able man, in case he cannot do it through any

reasonable cause. And if we have carried or sent him into the

army, he shall be free from such guard for the time he shall

be in the army by our command.

30. No sheriff or bailiff of ours, or any other, shall take

horses or carts of any freeman for carriage, without the

assent of the said freeman.

31. Neither shall we nor our bailiffs take any man's timber

for our castles or other uses, unless by the consent of the

owner of the timber.

32. We will retain the lands of those convicted of felony only

one year and a day, and then they shall be delivered to the

lord of the fee.

33. All kydells (wears) for the time to come shall be put down

in the rivers of Thames and Medway, and throughout all

England, except upon the seacoast.

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34. The writ which is called prœcipe, for the future, shall

not be made out to anyone, of any tenement, whereby a freeman

may lose his court.

35. There shall be one measure of wine and one of ale through

our whole realm; and one measure of corn, that is to say, the

London quarter; and one breadth of dyed cloth, and russets,

and haberjeets, that is to say, two ells within the lists; and

it shall be of weights as it is of measures.

36. Nothing from henceforth shall be given or taken for a writ

of inquisition of life or limb, but it shall be granted

freely, and not denied.

37. If any do hold of us by fee-farm, or by socage, or by

burgage, and he hold also lands of any other by knight's

service, we will not have the custody of the heir or land,

which is holden of another man's fee by reason of that

fee-farm, socage, or burgage; neither will we have the custody

of the fee-farm, or socage, or burgage, unless knight's

service was due to us out of the same fee-farm. We will not

have the custody of an heir, nor of any land which he holds of

another by knight's service, by reason of any petty serjeanty

by which he holds of us, by the service of paying a knife, an

arrow, or the like.

38. No bailiff from henceforth shall put any man to his law

upon his own bare saying, without credible witnesses to prove

it.

39. No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or disseised, or

outlawed, or banished, or any ways destroyed, nor will we pass

upon him, nor will we send upon him, unless by the lawful

judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land.

40. We will sell to no man, we will not deny to any man,

either justice or right.

41. All merchants shall have safe and secure conduct, to go

out of, and to come into England, and to stay there and to

pass as well by land as by water, for buying and selling by

the ancient and allowed customs, without any unjust tolls;

except in time of war, or when they are of any nation at war

with us. And if there be found any such in our land, in the

beginning of the war, they shall be attached, without damage

to their bodies or goods, until it be known unto us, or our

chief justiciary, how our merchants be treated in the nation

at war with us; and if ours be safe there, the others shall be

safe in our dominions.

42. It shall be lawful, for the time to come, for anyone to go

out of our kingdom, and return safely and securely by land or

by water, saving his allegiance to us; unless in time of war,

by some short space, for the common benefit of the realm,

except prisoners and outlaws, according to the law of the

land, and people in war with us, and merchants who shall be

treated as is above mentioned.

43. If any man hold of any escheat, as of the honour of

Wallingford, Nottingham, Boulogne, Lancaster, or of other

escheats which be in our hands, and are baronies, and die, his

heir shall give no other relief, and perform no other service

to us than he would to the baron, if it were in the baron's

hand; and we will hold it after the same manner as the baron

held it.

44. Those men who dwell without the forest from henceforth

shall not come before our justiciaries of the forest, upon

common summons, but such as are impleaded, or are sureties for

any that are attached for something concerning the forest.

45. We will not make any justices, constables, sheriffs, or

bailiffs, but of such as know the law of the realm and mean

duly to observe it.

46. All barons who have founded abbeys, which they hold by

charter from the kings of England, or by ancient tenure, shall

have the keeping of them, when vacant, as they ought to have.

47. All forests that have been made forests in our time shall

forthwith be disforested; and the same shall be done with the

water-banks that have been fenced in by us in our time.

48. All evil customs concerning forests, warrens, foresters,

and warreners, sheriffs and their officers, water-banks and

their keepers, shall forthwith be inquired into in each

county, by twelve sworn knights of the same county, chosen by

creditable persons of the same county; and within forty days

after the said inquest be utterly abolished, so as never to be

restored: so as we are first acquainted therewith, or our

justiciary, if we should not be in England.

49. We will immediately give up all hostages and charters

delivered unto us by our English subjects, as securities for

their keeping the peace, and yielding us faithful service.

50. We will entirely remove from their bailiwicks the

relations of Gerard de Atheyes, so that for the future they

shall have no bailiwick in England; we will also remove

Engelard de Cygony, Andrew, Peter, and Gyon, from the

Chancery; Gyon de Cygony, Geoffrey de Martyn, and his

brothers; Philip Mark, and his brothers, and his nephew,

Geoffrey, and their whole retinue.

51. As soon as peace is restored, we will send out of the

kingdom all foreign knights, cross-bowmen, and stipendiaries,

who are come with horses and arms to the molestation of our

people.

52. If anyone has been dispossessed or deprived by us, without

the lawful judgment of his peers, of his lands, castles,

liberties, or right, we will forthwith restore them to him;

and if any dispute arise upon this head, let the matter be

decided by the five-and-twenty barons hereafter mentioned, for

the preservation of the peace. And for all those things of

which any person has, without the lawful judgment of his

peers, been dispossessed or deprived, either by our father

King Henry, or our brother King Richard, and which we have in

our hands, or are possessed by others, and we are bound to

warrant and make good, we shall have a respite till the term

usually allowed the crusaders; excepting those things about

which there is a plea depending, or whereof an inquest hath

been made, by our order before we undertook the crusade; but

as soon as we return from our expedition, or if perchance we

tarry at home and do not make our expedition, we will

immediately cause full justice to be administered therein.

53. The same respite we shall have, and in the same manner,

about administering justice, disafforesting or letting

continue the forests, which Henry our father, and our brother

Richard, have afforested; and the same concerning the wardship

of the lands which are in another's fee, but the wardship of

which we have hitherto had, by reason of a fee held of us by

knight's service; and for the abbeys founded in any other fee

than our own, in which the lord of the fee says he has a

right; and when we return from our expedition, or if we tarry

at home, and do not make our expedition, we will immediately

do full justice to all the complainants in this behalf.

54. No man shall be taken or imprisoned upon the appeal of a

woman, for the death of any other than her husband.

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55. All unjust and illegal fines made by us, and all

amerciaments imposed unjustly and contrary to the law of the

land, shall be entirely given up, or else be left to the

decision of the five-and-twenty barons hereafter mentioned for

the preservation of the peace, or of the major part of them,

together with the aforesaid Stephen, Archbishop of Canterbury,

if he can be present, and others whom he shall think fit to

invite; and if he cannot be present, the business shall

notwithstanding go on without him; but so that if one or more

of the aforesaid five-and-twenty barons be plaintiffs in the

same cause, they shall be set aside as to what concerns this

particular affair, and others be chosen in their room, out of

the said five-and-twenty, and sworn by the rest to decide the

matter.

56. If we have disseised or dispossessed the Welsh of any

lands, liberties, or other things, without the legal judgment

of their peers, either in England or in Wales, they shall be

immediately restored to them; and if any dispute arise upon

this head, the matter shall be determined in the Marches by

the judgment of their peers; for tenements in England

according to the law of England, for tenements in Wales

according to the law of Wales, for tenements of the Marches

according to the law of the Marches: the same shall the Welsh

do to us and our subjects.

57. As for all those things of which a Welshman hath, without

the lawful judgment of his peers, been disseised or deprived

of by King Henry our father, or our brother King Richard, and

which we either have in our hands or others are possessed of,

and we are obliged to warrant it, we shall have a respite till

the time generally allowed the crusaders; excepting those

things about which a suit is depending, or whereof an inquest

has been made by our order, before we undertook the crusade:

but when we return, or if we stay at home without performing

our expedition, we will immediately do them full justice,

according to the laws of the Welsh and of the parts before

mentioned.

58. We will without delay dismiss the son of Llewellin, and

all the Welsh hostages, and release them from the engagements

they have entered into with us for the preservation of the

peace.

59. We will treat with Alexander, King of Scots, concerning

the restoring his sisters and hostages, and his right and

liberties, in the same form and manner as we shall do to the

rest of our barons of England; unless by the charters which we

have from his father, William, late King of Scots, it ought to

be otherwise; and this shall be left to the determination of

his peers in our court.

60. All the aforesaid customs and liberties, which we have

granted to be holden in our kingdom, as much as it belongs to

us, all people of our kingdom, as well clergy as laity, shall

observe, as far as they are concerned, towards their

dependents.

61. And whereas, for the honour of God and the amendment of

our kingdom, and for the better quieting the discord that has

arisen between us and our barons, we have granted all these

things aforesaid; willing to render them firm and lasting, we

do give and grant our subjects the underwritten security,

namely that the barons may choose five-and-twenty barons of

the kingdom, whom they think convenient; who shall take care,

with all their might, to hold and observe, and cause to be

observed, the peace and liberties we have granted them, and by

this our present Charter confirmed in this manner; that is to

say, that if we, our justiciary, our bailiffs, or any of our

officers, shall in any circumstance have failed in the

performance of them towards any person, or shall have broken

through any of these articles of peace and security, and the

offence be notified to four barons chosen out of the

five-and-twenty before mentioned, the said four barons shall

repair to us, or our justiciary, if we are out of the realm,

and, laying open the grievance, shall petition to have it

redressed without delay: and if it be not redressed by us, or

if we should chance to be out of the realm, if it should not

be redressed by our justiciary within forty days, reckoning

from the time it has been notified to us, or to our justiciary

(if we should be out of the realm), the four barons aforesaid

shall lay the cause before the rest of the five-and-twenty

barons; and the said five-and-twenty barons, together with the

community of the whole kingdom, shall distrain and distress us

in all the ways in which they shall be able, by seizing our

castles, lands, possessions, and in any other manner they can,

till the grievance is redressed, according to their pleasure;

saving harmless our own person, and the persons of our Queen

and children; and when it is redressed, they shall behave to

us as before. And any person whatsoever in the kingdom may

swear that he will obey the orders of the five-and-twenty

barons aforesaid in the execution of the premises, and will

distress us, jointly with them, to the utmost of his power;

and we give public and free liberty to anyone that shall

please to swear to this, and never will hinder any person from

taking the same oath.

62. As for all those of our subjects who will not, of their

own accord, swear to join the five-and-twenty barons in

distraining and distressing us, we will issue orders to make

them take the same oath as aforesaid. And if anyone of the

five-and-twenty barons dies, or goes out of the kingdom, or is

hindered any other way from carrying the things aforesaid into

execution, the rest of the said five-and-twenty barons may

choose another in his room, at their discretion, who shall be

sworn in like manner as the rest. In all things that are

committed to the execution of these five-and-twenty barons,

if, when they are all assembled together, they should happen

to disagree about any matter, and some of them, when summoned,

will not or cannot come, whatever is agreed upon, or enjoined,

by the major part of those that are present shall be reputed

as firm and valid as if all the five-and-twenty had given

their consent; and the aforesaid five-and-twenty shall swear

that all the premises they shall faithfully observe, and cause

with all their power to be observed. And we will procure

nothing from anyone, by ourselves nor by another, whereby any

of these concessions and liberties may be revoked or lessened;

and if any such thing shall have been obtained, let it be null

and void; neither will we ever make use of it either by

ourselves or any other. And all the ill-will, indignations,

and rancours that have arisen between us and our subjects, of

the clergy and laity, from the first breaking out of the

dissensions between us, we do fully remit and forgive:

moreover, all trespasses occasioned by the said dissensions,

from Easter in the sixteenth year of our reign till the

restoration of peace and tranquillity, we hereby entirely

remit to all, both clergy and laity, and as far as in us lies

do fully forgive. We have, moreover, caused to be made for

them the letters patent testimonial of Stephen, Lord

Archbishop of Canterbury, Henry, Lord Archbishop of Dublin,

and the bishops aforesaid, as also of Master Pandulph, for the

security and concessions aforesaid.

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63. Wherefore we will and firmly enjoin, that the Church of

England be free, and that all men in our kingdom have and hold

all the aforesaid liberties, rights, and concessions, truly

and peaceably, freely and quietly, fully and wholly to

themselves and their heirs, of us and our heirs, in all things

and places, for ever, as is aforesaid. It is also sworn, as

well on our part as on the part of the barons, that all the

things aforesaid shall be observed in good faith, and without

evil subtilty. Given under our hand, in the presence of the

witnesses above named, and many others, in the meadow called

Runingmede, between Windsor and Staines, the 15th day of June,

in the 17th year of our reign."

W. Stubbs,

Select Charters,

part 5.

Old South Leaflets,

General Series,

number 5.

Also IN:

E. F. Henderson,

Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages,

book 1, number 7.

C. H. Pearson,

History of England during the Early and Middle Ages,

volume 2, chapter 3.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1216-1274.

Character and reign of Henry III.

The Barons' War.

Simon de Montfort and the evolution of the English Parliament.

King John died October 17,1216. "His legitimate successor was

a child of nine years of age. For the first time since the

Conquest the personal government was in the hands of a minor.

In that stormy time the great Earl of Pembroke undertook the

government, as Protector. ... At the Council of Bristol, with

general approbation and even with that of the papal legate,

Magna Charta was confirmed, though with the omission of

certain articles. ... After some degree of tranquillity had

been restored, a second confirmation of the Great Charter took

place in the autumn of 1217, with the omission of the clauses

referring to the estates, but with the grant of a new charta

de foresta, introducing a vigorous administration of the

forest laws. In 9 Henry III. Magna Charta was again confirmed,

and this is the form in which it afterwards took its place

among the statutes of the realm. Two years later, Henry III.

personally assumes the reins of government at the Parliament

of Oxford (1227), and begins his rule without confirming the

two charters. At first the tutorial government still

continues, which had meanwhile, even after the death of the

great Earl of Pembroke (1219), remained in a fairly orderly

condition. The first epoch of sixteen years of this reign must

therefore be regarded purely as a government by the nobility

under the name of Henry III. The regency had succeeded in

removing the dominant influence of the Roman Curia by the

recall of the papal legate, Pandulf, to Rome (1221), and in

getting rid of the dangerous foreign mercenary soldiery

(1224). ... With the disgraceful dismissal of the chief

justiciary, Hubert de Burgh, there begins a second epoch of a

personal rule of Henry III. (1232-1252), which for twenty

continuous years, presents the picture of a confused and

undecided struggle between the king and his foreign favourites

and personal adherents on the one side, and the great barons,

and with them soon the prelates, on the other. ... In 21 Henry

III. the King finds himself, in consequence of pressing money

embarrassments, again compelled to make a solemn confirmation

of the charter, in which once more the clauses relating to the

estates are omitted. Shortly afterwards, as had happened just

one hundred years previously in France, the name

'parliamentum' occurs for the first time (Chron. Dunst., 1244;

Matth. Paris, 1246), and curiously enough, Henry III. himself,

in a writ addressed to the Sheriff of Northampton, designates

with this term the assembly which originated the Magna Charta.

... The name 'parliament,' now occurs more frequently, but

does not supplant the more definite terms concilium,

colloquium, etc. In the meanwhile the relations with the

Continent became complicated, in consequence of the family

connections of the mother and wife of the King, and the greed

of the papal envoys. ... From the year 1244 onwards, neither a

chief justice nor a chancellor, nor even a treasurer, is

appointed, but the administration of the country is conducted

at the Court by the clerks of the offices."

R. Gneist,

History of the English Constitution,

volume 1, pages 313-321.

"Nothing is so hard to realise as chaos; and nothing nearer to

chaos can be conceived than the government of Henry III. Henry

was, like all the Plantagenets, clever; like very few of them,

he was devout; and if the power of conceiving a great policy

would constitute a great King, he would certainly have been

one. ... He aimed at making the Crown virtually independent of

the barons. ... His connexion with Louis IX., whose

brother-in-law he became, was certainly a misfortune to him.

In France the royal power had during the last fifty years been

steadily on the advance; in England it had as steadily

receded; and Henry was ever hearing from the other side of the

Channel maxims of government and ideas of royal authority

which were utterly inapplicable to the actual state of his own

kingdom. This, like a premature Stuart, Henry was incapable of

perceiving; a King he was, and a King he would be, in his own

sense of the word. It is evident that with such a task before

him, he needed for the most shadowy chance of success, an iron

strength of will, singular self-control, great forethought and

care in collecting and husbanding his resources, a rare talent

for administration, the sagacity to choose and the

self-reliance to trust his counsellors. And not one of these

various qualities did Henry possess. ... Henry had imbibed

from the events and the tutors of his early childhood two

maxims of state, and two alone: to trust Rome, and to distrust

the barons of England. ... He filled the places of trust and

power about himself with aliens, to whom the maintenance of

Papal influence was like an instinct of self-preservation.

Thus were definitely formed the two great parties out of whose

antagonism the War of the Barons arose, under whose influence

the relations between the crown and people of England were

remodelled, and out of whose enduring conflict rose,

indirectly, the political principles which contributed so

largely to bring about the Reformation of the English Church.

The few years which followed the fall of Hubert de Burgh were

the heyday of Papal triumph. And no triumph could have been

worse used. ... Thus was the whole country lying a prey to the

ecclesiastical aliens maintained by the Pope, and to the lay

aliens maintained by the King, ... when Simon de Montfort

became ... inseparably intermixed with the course of our

history. ... In the year 1258 opened the first act of the

great drama which has made the name of Simon de Montfort

immortal. ... The Barons of England, at Leicester's

suggestion, had leagued for the defence of their rights. They

appeared armed at the Great Council. ...

{808}

They required as the condition of their assistance that the

general reformation of the realm should be entrusted to a

Commission of twenty-four members, half to be chosen by the

crown, and half by themselves. For the election of this body,

primarily, and for a more explicit statement of grievances,

the Great Council was to meet again at Oxford on the 11th of

June, 1258. When the Barons came, they appeared at the head of

their retainers. The invasion of the Welsh was the plea; but

the real danger was nearer home. They seized on the Cinque

Ports; the unrenewed truce with France was the excuse; they

remembered too vividly King John and his foreign mercenaries.

They then presented their petition. This was directed to the

redress of various abuses. ... To each and every clause the

King gave his inevitable assent. One more remarkable

encroachment was made upon the royal prerogative; the election

in Parliament of a chief justiciar. ... The chief justiciar

was the first officer of the Crown. He was not a mere chief

justice, after the fashion of the present day, but the

representative of the Crown in its high character of the

fountain of justice. ... But the point upon which the barons

laid the greatest stress, from the beginning to the end of

their struggle, was the question of the employment of aliens.

That the strongest castles and the fairest lands of England

should be in the hands of foreigners, was an insult to the

national spirit which no free people could fail to resent. ...

England for the English, the great war cry of the barons, went

home to the heart of the humblest. ... The great question of

the constitution of Parliament was not heard at Oxford; it

emerged into importance when the struggle grew fiercer, and

the barons found it necessary to gather allies round them. ...

One other measure completed the programme of the barons;

namely, the appointment, already referred to, of a committee

of twenty-four. ... It amounted to placing the crown under the

control of a temporary Council of Regency [see OXFORD,

PROVISIONS OF]. ... Part of the barons' work was simple

enough. The justiciar was named, and the committee of

twenty-four. To expel the foreigners was less easy. Simon de

Montfort, himself an alien by birth, resigned the two castles

which he held, and called upon the rest to follow. They simply

refused. ... But the barons were in arms, and prepared to use

them. The aliens, with their few English supporters, fled to

Winchester, where the castle was in the hands of the foreign

bishop Aymer. They were besieged, brought to terms, and

exiled. The barons were now masters of the situation. ...

Among the prerogatives of the crown which passed to the Oxford

Commission not the least valuable, for the hold which it gave

on the general government of the country, was the right to

nominate the sheriffs. In 1261 the King, who had procured a

Papal bull to abrogate the Provisions of Oxford, and an army

of mercenaries to give the bull effect, proceeded to expel the

sheriffs who had been placed in office by the barons. The

reply of the barons was most memorable; it was a direct appeal

to the order below their own. They summoned three knights

elected from each county in England to meet them at St. Albans

to discuss the state of the realm. It was clear that the day

of the House of Commons could not be far distant, when at such

a crisis an appeal to the knights of the shire could be made,

and evidently made with success. For a moment, in this great

move, the whole strength of the barons was united; but

differences soon returned, and against divided counsels the

crown steadily prevailed. In June, 1262, we find peace

restored. The more moderate of the barons had acquiesced in

the terms offered by Henry; Montfort, who refused them, was

abroad in voluntary exile. ... Suddenly, in July, the Earl of

Gloucester died, and the sole leadership of the barons passed

into the hands of Montfort. With this critical event opens the

last act in the career of the great Earl. In October he returns

privately to England. The whole winter is passed in the

patient reorganising of the party, and the preparation for a

decisive struggle. Montfort, fervent, eloquent, and devoted,

swayed with despotic influence the hearts of the younger

nobles (and few in those days lived to be grey), and taught

them to feel that the Provisions of Oxford were to them what

the Great Charter had been to their fathers. They were drawn

together with an unanimity unknown before. ... They demanded

the restoration of the Great Provisions. The King refused, and

in May, 1263, the barons appealed to arms. ... Henry, with a

reluctant hand, subscribed once more to the Provisions of

Oxford, with a saving clause, however, that they should be

revised in the coming Parliament. On the 9th of September,

accordingly, Parliament was assembled. ... The King and the

barons agreed to submit their differences to the arbitration

of Louis of France. ... Louis IX. had done more than any one

king of France to enlarge the royal prerogative; and Louis was

the brother-in-law of Henry. His award, given at Amiens on the

23d of January, 1264. was, as we should have expected,

absolutely in favour of the King. The whole Provisions of

Oxford were, in his view, an invasion of the royal power. ...

The barons were astounded. ... They at once said that the

question of the employment of aliens was never meant to be

included. ... The appeal was made once again to the sword.

Success for a moment inclined to the royal side, but it was

only for a moment; and on the memorable field of Lewes the

genius of Leicester prevailed. ... With the two kings of

England and of the Romans prisoners in his hands, Montfort

dictated the terms of the so-called Mise of Lewes. ... Subject

to the approval of Parliament, all differences were to be

submitted once more to French arbitration. ... On the 23d of

June the Parliament met. It was no longer a Great Council,

after the fashion of previous assemblies; it included four

knights, elected by each English county. This Parliament gave

such sanction as it was able to the exceptional authority of

Montfort, and ordered that until the proposed arbitration

could be carried out, the King's council should consist of

nine persons, to be named by the Bishop of Chichester, and the

Earls of Gloucester and Leicester. The effect was to give

Simon for the time despotic power. ... It was at length agreed

that all questions whatever, the employment of aliens alone

excepted, should be referred to the Bishop of London, the

justiciar Hugh le Despenser, Charles of Anjou, and the Abbot

of Bec. If on any point they could not agree, the Archbishop

of Rouen was to act as referee. ... It was ... not simply the

expedient of a revolutionary chief in difficulties, but the

expression of a settled and matured policy, when, in December

1264, [Montfort] issued in the King's name the ever-memorable

writs which summoned the first complete Parliament which ever

met in England.

{809}

The earls, barons, and bishops received their summons as of

course; and with them the deans of cathedral churches, an

unprecedented number of abbots and priors, two knights from

every shire, and two citizens or burgesses from every city or

borough in England. Of their proceedings we know but little;

but they appear to have appointed Simon de Montfort to the

office of Justiciar of England, and to have thus made him in

rank, what he had before been in power, the first subject in

the realm. ... Montfort ... had now gone so far, he had

exercised such extraordinary powers, he had done so many

things which could never really be pardoned, that perhaps his

only chance of safety lay in the possession of some such

office as this. It is certain, moreover, that something which

passed in this Parliament, or almost exactly at the time of

its meeting, did cause deep offence to a considerable section

of the barons. ... Difficulties were visibly gathering thicker

around him, and he was evidently conscious that disaffection

was spreading fast. ... Negotiations went forward, not very

smoothly, for the release of Prince Edward. They were

terminated in May by his escape. It was the signal for a

royalist rising. Edward took the command of the Welsh border;

before the middle of June he had made the border his own. On

the 29th Gloucester opened its gates to him. He had many

secret friends. He pushed fearlessly eastward, and surprised

the garrison of Kenilworth, commanded by Simon, the Earl's

second son. The Earl himself lay at Evesham, awaiting the

troops which his son was to bring up from Kenilworth. ... On

the fatal field of Evesham, fighting side by side to the last,

fell the Earl himself, his eldest son Henry, Despenser the

late Justiciar, Lord Basset of Drayton, one of his firmest

friends, and a host of minor name. With them, to all

appearance, fell the cause for which they had fought."

Simon de Montfort

(Quarterly Review, January, 1866).

See PARLIAMENT, THE ENGLISH:

EARLY STAGES OF ITS EVOLUTION.

"Important as this assembly [the Parliament of 1264] is in the

history of the constitution, it was not primarily and

essentially a constitutional assembly. It was not a general

convention of the tenants in chief or of the three estates,

but a parliamentary assembly of the supporters of the existing

government."

W. Stubbs,

Constitutional History of England,

chapter 14, section 177 (volume 2).

ALSO IN:

W. Stubbs,

The Early Plantagenets.

G. W. Prothero,

Life of Simon de Montfort,

chapter 11-12.

H. Blaauw,

The Barons' War.

C. H. Pearson,

England, Early and Middle Ages,

volume 2.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1271.

Crusade of Prince Edward:

See CRUSADES: A. D. 1270-1271.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1272.

Accession of King Edward I.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1275-1295.

Development of Parliamentary representation under Edward 1.

"Happily, Earl Simon [de Montfort] found a successor, and more

than a successor, in the king's [Henry III.'s] son. ... Edward

I. stood on the vantage ground of the throne. ... He could do

that easily and without effort which Simon could only do

laboriously, and with the certainty of rousing opposition.

Especially was this the case with the encouragement given by

the two men to the growing aspirations after parliamentary

representation. Earl Simon's assemblies were instruments of

warfare. Edward's assemblies were invitations to peace. ...

Barons and prelates, knights and townsmen, came together only

to support a king who took the initiative so wisely, and who,

knowing what was best for all, sought the good of his kingdom

without thought of his own ease. Yet even so, Edward was too

prudent at once to gather together such a body as that which

Earl Simon had planned. He summoned, indeed, all the

constituent parts of Simon's parliament, but he seldom

summoned them to meet in one place or at one time. Sometimes

the barons and prelates met apart from the townsmen or the

knights, sometimes one or the other class met entirely alone.

... In this way, during the first twenty years of Edward's

reign, the nation rapidly grew in that consciousness of

national unity which would one day transfer the function of

regulation from the crown to the representatives of the

people."

S. R. Gardiner and J. B. Mullinger,

Introduction to the Study of English History,

chapter 4, section 17.

"In 1264 Simon de Montfort had called up from both shires and

boroughs representatives to aid him in the new work of

government. That part of Earl Simon's work had not been

lasting. The task was left for Edward I. to be advanced by

gradual safe steps, but to be thoroughly completed, as a part

of a definite and orderly arrangement, according to which the

English parliament was to be the perfect representation of the

Three Estates of the Realm, assembled for purposes of

taxation, legislation and united political action. ...

Edward's first parliament, in 1275, enabled him to pass a

great statute of legal reform, called the Statute of

Westminster the First, and to exact the new custom on wool;

another assembly, the same year, granted him a fifteenth. ...

There is no evidence that the commons of either town or county

were represented. ... In 1282, when the expenses of the Welsh

war were becoming heavy, Edward again tried the plan of

obtaining money from the towns and counties by separate

negotiation; but as that did not provide him with funds

sufficient for his purpose, he called together, early in 1283,

two great assemblies, one at York and another at Northampton,

in which four knights from each shire and four members from

each city and borough were ordered to attend; the cathedral

and conventual clergy also of the two provinces were

represented at the same places by their elected proctors. At

these assemblies there was no attendance of the barons; they

were with the king in Wales; but the commons made a grant of

one-thirtieth on the understanding that the lords should do

the same. Another assembly was held at Shrewsbury the same

year, 1283, to witness the trial of David of Wales; to this

the bishops and clergy were not called, but twenty towns and

all the counties were ordered to send representatives. Another

step was taken in 1290: knights of the shire were again

summoned; but still much remained to be done before a perfect

parliament was constituted. Counsel was wanted for

legislation, consent was wanted for taxation. The lords were

summoned in May, and did their work in June and July, granting

a feudal aid and passing the statute 'Quia Emptores,' but the

knights only came to vote or to promise a tax, after a law had

been passed; and the towns were again taxed by special

commissions. In 1294, ... under the alarm of war with France,

an alarm which led Edward into several breaches of

constitutional law, he went still further, assembling the

clergy by their representatives in August, and the shires by

their representative knights in October.

{810}

The next year, 1295, witnessed the first summons of a perfect

and model parliament; the clergy represented by their bishops,

deans, archdeacons, and elected proctors; the barons summoned

severally in person by the king's special writ, and the

commons summoned by writs addressed to the sheriffs, directing

them to send up two elected knights from each shire, two

elected citizens from each city, and two elected burghers from

each borough. The writ by which the prelates were called to

this parliament contained a famous sentence taken from the

Roman law, 'That which touches all should be approved by all,'

a maxim which might serve as a motto for Edward's

constitutional scheme, however slowly it grew upon him, now

permanently and consistently completed."

W. Stubbs,

The Early Plantagenets,

chapter 10.

"Comparing the history of the following ages with that of the

past, we can scarcely doubt that Edward had a definite idea of

government before his eyes, or that that idea was successful

because it approved itself to the genius and grew out of the

habits of the people. Edward saw, in fact, what the nation was

capable of, and adapted his constitutional reforms to that

capacity. But although we may not refuse him the credit of

design, it may still be questioned whether the design was

altogether voluntary, whether it was not forced upon him by

circumstances and developed by a series of careful

experiments. ... The design, as interpreted by the result, was

the creation of a national parliament, composed of the three

estates. ... This design was perfected in 1295. It was not the

result of compulsion, but the consummation of a growing policy.

... But the close union of 1295 was followed by the compulsion

of 1297: out of the organic completeness of the constitution

sprang the power of resistance, and out of the resistance the

victory of the principles, which Edward might guide, but which

he failed to coerce."

W. Stubbs,

Constitutional History of England,

chapter 15, section 244

and chapter 14, section 180-182.

W. Stubbs,

Select Charters,

part 7.

"The 13th century was above all things the age of the lawyer

and the legislator. The revived study of Roman law had been

one of the greatest results of the intellectual renaissance of

the twelfth century. The enormous growth of the universities

in the early part of the thirteenth century was in no small

measure due to the zeal, ardour and success of their legal

faculties. From Bologna there flowed all over Europe a great

impulse towards the systematic and scientific study of the

Civil Law of Rome. ... The northern lawyers were inspired by

their emulation of the civilians and canonists to look at the

rude chaos of feudal custom with more critical eyes. They

sought to give it more system and method, to elicit its

leading principles, and to coordinate its clashing rules into

a harmonious body of doctrine worthy to be put side by side

with the more pretentious edifices of the Civil and Canon Law.

In this spirit Henry de Bracton wrote the first systematic

exposition of English law in the reign of Henry III. The

judges and lawyers of the reign of Edward sought to put the

principles of Bracton into practice. Edward himself strove

with no small success to carry on the same great work by new

legislation. ... His well-known title of the 'English

Justinian' is not so absurd as it appears at first sight. He

did not merely resemble Justinian in being a great legislator.

Like the famous codifier of the Roman law, Edward stood at the

end of a long period of legal development, and sought to arrange

and systematise what had gone before him. Some of his great

laws are almost in form attempts at the systematic

codification of various branches of feudal custom. ... Edward

was greedy for power, and a constant object of his legislation

was the exaltation of the royal prerogative. But he nearly

always took a broad and comprehensive view of his authority,

and thoroughly grasped the truth that the best interests of

king and kingdom were identical. He wished to rule the state,

but was willing to take his subjects into partnership with

him, if they in return recognised his royal rights. ... The

same principles which influenced Edward as a lawgiver stand

out clearly in his relations to every class of his subjects.

... It was the greatest work of Edward's life to make a

permanent and ordinary part of the machinery of English

government, what in his father's time had been but the

temporary expedient of a needy taxgatherer or the last

despairing effort of a revolutionary partisan. Edward I.

is--so much as one man can be--the creator of the historical

English constitution. It is true that the materials were ready

to his hand. But before he came to the throne the parts of the

constitution, though already roughly worked out, were

ill-defined and ill-understood. Before his death the national

council was no longer regarded as complete unless it contained

a systematic representation of the three estates. All over

Europe the thirteenth century saw the establishment of a

system of estates. The various classes of the community, which

had a separate social status and a common political interest,

became organised communities, and sent their representatives

to swell the council of the nation. By Edward's time there had

already grown up in England some rough anticipation of the

three estates of later history. ... It was with no intention

of diminishing his power, but rather with the object of

enlarging it, that Edward called the nation into some sort of

partnership with him. The special clue to this aspect of his

policy is his constant financial embarrassment. He found that

he could get larger and more cheerful subsidies if he laid his

financial condition before the representatives of his people.

... The really important thing was that Edward, like Montfort,

brought shire and borough representatives together in a single

estate, and so taught the country gentry, the lesser

landowners, who, in a time when direct participation in

politics was impossible for a lower class, were the real

constituencies of the shire members, to look upon their

interests as more in common with the traders of lower social

status than with the greater landlords with whom in most

continental countries the lesser gentry were forced to

associate their lot. The result strengthened the union of

classes, prevented the growth of the abnormally numerous

privileged nobility of most foreign countries, and broadened

and deepened the main current of the national life."

T. F. Tout,

Edward the First,

chapter 7-8.

{811}

"There was nothing in England which answered to the 'third

estate' in France--a class, that is to say, both isolated and

close, composed exclusively of townspeople, enjoying no

commerce with the rural population (except such as consisted

in the reception of fugitives), and at once detesting and

dreading the nobility by whom it was surrounded. In England

the contrary was the case. The townsfolk and the other classes

in each county were thrown together upon numberless occasions;

a long period of common activity created a cordial

understanding between the burghers on the one hand and their

neighbours the knights and landowners on the other, and

finally prepared the way for the fusion of the two classes."

E. Boutmy,

The English Constitution,

chapter 3.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1279.

The Statute of Mortmain.

"For many years past, the great danger to the balance of power

appeared to come from the regular clergy, who, favoured by the

success of the mendicant orders, were adding house to house

and field to field. Never dying out like families, and rarely

losing by forfeitures, the monasteries might well nigh

calculate the time, when all the soil of England should be

their own. ... Accordingly, one of the first acts of the

barons under Henry III. had been to enact, that no fees should

be aliened to religious persons or corporations. Edward

re-enacted and strengthened this by various provisions in the

famous Statute of Mortmain. The fee illegally aliened was now

to be forfeited to the chief lord under the King; and if, by

collusion or neglect, the lord omitted to claim his right, the

crown might enter upon it. Never was statute more unpopular

with the class at whom it was aimed, more ceaselessly eluded,

or more effectual. ... Once the clergy seem to have meditated

open resistance, for, in 1281, we find the king warning the

bishops, who were then in convocation at Lambeth, as they

loved their baronies, to discuss nothing that appertained to

the crown, or the king's person, or his council. The warning

appears to have proved effectual, and the clergy found less

dangerous employment in elaborating subtle evasions of the

obnoxious law. At first fictitious recoveries were practised;

an abbey bringing a suit against a would-be donor, who

permitted judgment against him to go by default. When this was

prohibited, special charters of exemption were procured. Once

an attempt was made to smuggle a dispensing bill through

parliament. One politic abbot in the 15th century encouraged

his friends to make bequests of land, suffered them to

escheat, and then begged them back of the crown, playing on

the religious feelings of Henry VI. Yet it is strong proof of

the salutary terror which the Statute of Mortmain inspired

that even then the abbot was not quieted, and procured an Act

of Parliament to purge him from any consequences of his

illegal practices. In fact, the fear, lest astute crown

lawyers should involve a rich foundation in wholesale

forfeitures, seems sometimes to have hampered its members in

the exercise of their undoubted rights as citizens."

C. H. Pearson,

History of England during the Early and Middle Ages,

volume 2, chapter 9.

ALSO IN:

E. F. Henderson,

Select Historical Documents.

K. E. Digby,

Law of Real Property (4th edition).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1282-1284.

Subjugation of Wales.

See WALES: A. D. 1282-1284.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1290-1305.

Conquest of Scotland by Edward I.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1290-1305.

ENGLAND: 14th Century.

Immigration of Flemish artisans.

The founding of English manufactures.

See FLANDERS: A. D. 1335-1337.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1306-1393.

Resistance to the Pope.

"For one hundred and fifty years succeeding the Conquest, the

right of nominating the archbishops, bishops, and mitred

abbots had been claimed and exercised by the king. This right

had been specially confirmed by the Constitutions of

Clarendon, which also provided that the revenues of vacant

sees should belong to the Crown. But John admitted all the

Papal claims, surrendering even his kingdom to the Pope, and

receiving it back as a fief of the Holy See. By the Great

Charter the Church recovered its liberties; the right of free

election being specially conceded to the cathedral chapters

and the religious houses. Every election was, however, subject

to the approval of the Pope, who also claimed a right of veto

on institutions to the smaller church benefices. ... Under

Henry III. the power thus vested in the Pope and foreign

superiors of the monastic orders was greatly abused, and soon

degenerated into a mere channel for draining money into the

Roman exchequer. Edward I. firmly withstood the exactions of

the Pope, and reasserted the independence of both Church and

Crown. ... In the reign of the great Edward began a series of

statutes passed to check the aggressions of the Pope and

restore the independence of the national church. The first of

the series was passed in 1306-7. ... This statute was

confirmed under Edward III. in the 4th, and again in the 5th

year of his reign; and in the 25th of his reign [A. D. 1351],

roused 'by the grievous complaints of all the commons of his

realm,' the King and Parliament passed the famous Statute of

Provisors, aimed directly at the Pope, and emphatically

forbidding his nominations to English benefices. ... Three

years afterwards it was found necessary to pass a statute

forbidding citations to the court of Rome--[the prelude to the

Statute of Præmunire, described below]. ... In 1389, there was an

expectation that the Pope was about to attempt to enforce his

claims, by excommunicating those who rejected them. ... The

Parliament at once passed a highly penal statute. ... Matters

were shortly afterwards brought to a crisis by Boniface IX.,

who after declaring the statutes enacted by the English

Parliament null and void, granted to an Italian cardinal a

prebendal stall at Wells, to which the king had already

presented. Cross suits were at once instituted by the two

claimants in the Papal and English courts. A decision was

given by the latter, in favour of the king's nominee, and the

bishops, having agreed to support the Crown, were forthwith

excommunicated by the Pope. The Commons were now roused to the

highest pitch of indignation,"--and the final great Statute of

Præmunire was passed, A. D. 1393. "The firm and resolute

attitude assumed by the country caused Boniface to yield; 'and

for the moment,' observes Mr. Froude, 'and indeed for ever

under this especial form, the wave of papal encroachment was

rolled back.'"

T. P. Taswell-Langmead,

English Constitutional History,

chapter 11.

"The great Statute of Provisors, passed in 1351, was a very

solemn expression of the National determination not to give

way to the pope's usurpation of patronage. ... All persons

procuring or accepting papal promotions were to be arrested.

... In 1352 the purchasers of Provisions were declared

outlaws; in 1365 another act repeated the prohibitions and

penalties; and in 1390 the parliament of Richard II. rehearsed

and confirmed the statute. By this act, forfeiture and

banishment were decreed against future transgressors."

{812}

The Statute of Præmunire as enacted finally in 1393, provided

that "all persons procuring in the court of Rome or elsewhere

such translations, processes, sentences of excommunication,

bulls, instruments or other things which touch the king, his

crown, regality or realm, should suffer the penalties of

præmunire"--which included imprisonment and forfeiture of

goods. "The name præmunire which marks this form of

legislation is taken from the opening word of the writ by

which the sheriff is charged to summon the delinquent."

W. Stubbs,

Constitutional History of England,

chapter 19, section 715-716.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1307.

Accession of King Edward II.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1310-1311.

The Ordainers.

"At the parliament which met in March 1310 [reign of Edward

II.] a new scheme of reform was promulgated, which was framed

on the model of that of 1258 and the Provisions of Oxford. It

was determined that the task of regulating the affairs of the

realm and of the king's household should be committed to an

elected body of twenty-one members, or Ordainers, the chief of

whom was Archbishop Winchelsey. ... The Ordainers were

empowered to remain in office until Michaelmas 1311, and to

make ordinances for the good of the realm, agreeable to the

tenour of the king's coronation oath. The whole administration

of the kingdom thus passed into their hands. ... The Ordainers

immediately on their appointment issued six articles directing

the observance of the charters, the careful collection of the

customs, and the arrest of the foreign merchants; but the

great body of the ordinances was reserved for the parliament

which met in August 1311. The famous document or statute known

as the Ordinances of 1311 contained forty-one clauses, all

aimed at existing abuses."

W. Stubbs,

The Early Plantagenets,

chapter 12.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1314-1328.

Bannockburn and the recovery of Scottish independence.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1314; 1314-1328.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1327.

Accession of King Edward III.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1328.

The Peace of Northampton with Scotland.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1328.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1328-1360.

The pretensions and wars of Edward III. in France.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1328-1339; and 1337-1360.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1332-1370.

The wars of Edward III. with Scotland.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1332-1333, and 1333-1370.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1333-1380.

The effects of the war in France.

"A period of great wars is generally favourable to the growth

of a nobility. Men who equipped large bodies of troops for the

Scotch or French wars, or who had served with distinction in

them, naturally had a claim for reward at the hands of their

sovereign. ... The 13th century had broken up estates all over

England and multiplied families of the upper class; the 14th

century was consolidating properties again, and establishing a

broad division between a few powerful nobles and the mass of

the community. But if the gentry, as an order, lost a little

in relative importance by the formation of a class of great

nobles, more distinct than had existed before, the middle

classes of England, its merchants and yeomen, gained very much

in importance by the war. Under the firm rule of the 'King of

the Sea,' as his subjects lovingly called Edward III., our

commerce expanded. Englishmen rose to an equality with the

merchants of the Hanse Towns, the Genoese, or the Lombards,

and England for a time overflowed with treasure. The first

period of war, ending with the capture of Calais, secured our

coasts; the second, terminated by the peace of Brétigny,

brought the plunder of half [of] France into the English

markets; and even when Edward's reign had closed on defeat and

bankruptcy, and our own shores were ravaged by hostile fleets,

it was still possible for private adventurers to retaliate

invasion upon the enemy. ... The romance of foreign conquest,

of fortunes lightly gained and lightly lost, influenced

English enterprise for many years to come. ... The change to

the lower orders during the reign arose rather from the

frequent pestilences, which reduced the number of working men

and made labour valuable, than from any immediate

participation in the war. In fact, English serfs, as a rule,

did not serve in Edward's armies. They could not be

men-at-arms or archers for want of training and equipment; and

for the work of light-armed troops and foragers, the Irish and

Welsh seem to have been preferred. The opportunity of the

serfs came with the Black Death, while districts were

depopulated, and everywhere there was a want of hands to till

the fields and get in the crops. The immediate effect was

unfortunate. ... The indifference of late years, when men were

careless if their villans stayed on the property or emigrated,

was succeeded by a sharp inquisition after fugitive serfs, and

constant legislation to bring them back to their masters. ...

The leading idea of the legislator was that the labourer,

whose work had doubled or trebled in value, was to receive the

same wages as in years past; and it was enacted that he might

be paid in kind, and, at last, that in all cases of contumacy

he should be imprisoned without the option of a fine. ... The

French war contributed in many ways to heighten the feeling of

English nationality. Our trade, our language and our Church

received a new and powerful influence. In the early years of

Edward III.'s reign, Italian merchants were the great

financiers of England, farming the taxes and advancing loans

to the Crown. Gradually the instinct of race, the influence of

the Pope, and geographical position, contributed, with the

mistakes of Edward's policy, to make France the head, as it

were, of a confederation of Latin nations. Genoese ships

served in the French fleet, Genoese bowmen fought at Crécy,

and English privateers retorted on Genoese commerce throughout

the course of the reign. In 1376 the Commons petitioned that

all Lombards might be expelled [from] the kingdom, bringing

amongst other charges against them that they were French

spies. The Florentines do not seem to have been equally

odious, but the failure of the great firm of the Bardi in

1345, chiefly through its English engagements, obliged Edward

to seek assistance elsewhere; and he transferred the privilege

of lending to the crown to the merchants of the rising Hanse

Towns."

C. H. Pearson,

English History in the Fourteenth Century,

chapter 9.

"We may trace the destructive nature of the war with France in

the notices of adjoining parishes thrown into one for want of

sufficient inhabitants, 'of people impoverished by frequent

taxation of our lord the king,' until they had fled, of

churches allowed to fall into ruin because there were none to

worship within their walls, and of religious houses

extinguished because the monks and nuns had died, and none bad

been found to supply their places. ...

{813}

To the poverty of the country and the consequent inability of

the nation to maintain the costly wars of Edward III., are

attributed the enactments of sumptuary laws, which were passed

because men who spent much on their table and dress were

unable 'to help their liege lord' in the battle field."

W. Denton,

England in the 15th Century,

introduction, part 2.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1318-1349.

The Black Death and its effects.

"The plague of 1349 ... produced in every country some marked

social changes. ... In England the effects of the plague are

historically prominent chiefly among the lower classes of

society. The population was diminished to an extent to which

it is impossible now even to approximate, but which bewildered

and appalled the writers of the time; whole districts were

thrown out of cultivation, whole parishes depopulated, the

number of labourers was so much diminished that on the one

hand the survivors demanded an extravagant rate of wages, and

even combined to enforce it, whilst on the other hand the

landowners had to resort to every antiquated claim of service

to get their estates cultivated at all; the whole system of

farming was changed in consequence, the great landlords and

the monastic corporations ceased to manage their estates by

farming stewards, and after a short interval, during which the

lands with the stock on them were let to the cultivator on

short leases, the modern system of letting was introduced, and

the permanent distinction between the farmer and the labourer

established."

W. Stubbs,

Constitutional History of England,

chapter 16, section 259.

"On the first of August 1348 the disease appeared in the

seaport towns of Dorsetshire, and travelled slowly westwards

and northwards, through Devonshire and Somersetshire to

Bristol. In order, if possible, to arrest its progress, all

intercourse with the citizens of Bristol was prohibited by the

authorities of the county of Gloucester. These precautions

were however taken in vain; the Plague continued to Oxford,

and, travelling slowly in the same measured way, reached

London by the first of November. It appeared in Norwich on the

first of January, and thence spread northwards. ... The

mortality was enormous. Perhaps from one-third to one-half the

population fell victims to the disease. Adam of Monmouth says

that only a tenth of the population survived. Similar

amplifications are found in all the chroniclers. We are told

that 60,000 persons perished in Norwich between January and

July 1349. No doubt Norwich was at that time the second city

in the kingdom, but the number is impossible. ... It is stated

that in England the weight of the calamity fell on the poor,

and that the higher classes were less severely affected. But

Edward's daughter Joan fell a victim to it and three

archbishops of Canterbury perished in the same year. ... All

contemporary writers inform us that the immediate consequence

of the Plague was a dearth of labour, and excessive

enhancement of wages, and thereupon a serious loss to the

landowners. To meet this scarcity the king issued a

proclamation directed to the sheriffs of the several counties,

which forbad the payment of higher than the customary wages,

under the penalties of amercement. But the king's mandate was

every where disobeyed. ... Many of the labourers were thrown

into prison; many to avoid punishment fled to the forests, but

were occasionally captured and fined; and all were constrained

to disavow under oath that they would take higher than

customary wages for the future."

J. E. T. Rogers,

History of Agriculture and Prices in England,

volume 1,  chapter 15.

ALSO IN:

F. A. Gasquet,

The Great Pestilence.

W. Longman,

Edward III.,

volume 1; chapter 10.

A. Jessop,

The Coming of the Friars, &c.,

chapter 4-5.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1350-1400.

Chaucer and his relations to English language and literature.

"At the time when the conflict between church and state was

most violent, and when Wyclif was beginning to draw upon

himself the eyes of patriots, there was considerable talk at

the English court about a young man named Geoffrey Chaucer,

who belonged to the king's household, and who both by his

personality and his connections enjoyed the favor of the royal

family. ... On many occasions, even thus early, he had

appeared as a miracle of learning to those about him--he read

Latin as easily as French; he spoke a more select English than

others; and it was known that he had composed, or, as the

expression then was, 'made,' many beautiful English verses.

The young poet belonged to a well-to-do middle-class family

who had many far-reaching connections, and even some influence

with the court. ... Even as a boy he may have heard his

father, John Chaucer, the vintner of Thames Street, London,

telling of the marvelous voyage he had made to Antwerp and

Cologne in the brilliant suite of Edward III. in 1338. When a

youth of sixteen or seventeen, Geoffrey served as a page or

squire to Elizabeth, duchess of Ulster, first wife of Lionel,

duke of Clarence, and daughter-in-law of the king. He bore

arms when about nineteen years of age, and went to France in

1359, in the army commanded by Edward III. ... This epoch

formed a sort of 'Indian summer' to the age of chivalry, and

its spirit found expression in great deeds of war as well as

in the festivals and manners of the court. The ideal which men

strove to realize did not quite correspond to the spirit of

the former age. On the whole, people had become more worldly

and practical, and were generally anxious to protect the real

interests of life from the unwarranted interference of

romantic aspirations. The spirit of chivalry no longer formed

a fundamental element, but only an ornament of life--an

ornament, indeed, which was made much of, and which was looked

upon with a sentiment partaking of enthusiasm. ... In the

midst of this outside world of motley pomp and throbbing life

Geoffrey could observe the doings of high and low in various

situations. He was early initiated into court intrigues, and

even into many political secrets, and found opportunities of

studying the human type in numerous individuals and according

to the varieties developed by rank in life, education, age,

and sex. ... Nothing has been preserved from his early

writings. ... The fact is very remarkable that from the first,

or at least from a very early period, Chaucer wrote in the

English language--however natural this may seem to succeeding

ages in 'The Father of English Poetry.' The court of Edward

III. favored the language as well as the literature of France;

a considerable number of French poets and 'menestrels' were in

the service and pay of the English king.

{814}

Queen Philippa, in particular, showing herself in this a true

daughter of her native Hainault, formed the centre of a

society cultivating the French language and poetry. She had in

her personal service Jean Froissart, one of the most eminent

representatives of that language and poetry; like herself he

belonged to one of the most northern districts of the

French-speaking territory; he had made himself a great name,

as a prolific and clever writer of erotic and allegoric

trifles, before he sketched out in his famous chronicle the

motley-colored, vivid picture of that eventful age. We also

see in this period young Englishmen of rank and education

trying their flight on the French Parnassus. ... To these

Anglo-French poets there belonged also a Kentishman of noble

family, named John Gower. Though some ten years the senior of

Chaucer, he had probably met him about this time. They were

certainly afterwards very intimately acquainted. Gower ... had

received a very careful education, and loved to devote the

time he could spare from the management of his estates to

study and poetry. His learning was in many respects greater

than Chaucer's. He had studied the Latin poets so diligently

that he could easily express himself in their language, and he

was equally good at writing French verses, which were able to

pass muster, at least in England. ... But, Chaucer did not let

himself be led astray by examples such as these. It is

possible that he would have found writing in French no easy

task, even if he had attempted it. At any rate his bourgeois

origin, and the seriousness of his vocation as poet, threw a

determining weight into the scale and secured his fidelity to

the English language with a commendable consistency."

B. Ten Brink,

History of English Literature,

book 4, chapter 4 (volume 2, part 1).

"English was not taught in the schools, but French only, until

after the accession of Richard II., or possibly the latter

years of Edward III., and Latin was always studied through the

French. Up to this period, then, as there were no standards of

literary authority, and probably no written collections of

established forms, or other grammatical essays, the language

had no fixedness or uniformity, and hardly deserved to be

called a written speech. ... From this Babylonish confusion of

speech, the influence and example of Chaucer did more to

rescue his native tongue than any other single cause; and if

we compare his dialect with that of any writer of an earlier

date, we shall find that in compass, flexibility,

expressiveness, grace, and all the higher qualities of

poetical diction, he gave it at once the utmost perfection

which the materials at his hand would permit of. The English

writers of the fourteenth century had an advantage which was

altogether peculiar to their age and country. At all previous

periods, the two languages had co-existed, in a great degree

independently of each other, with little tendency to intermix;

but in the earlier part of that century, they began to

coalesce, and this process was going on with a rapidity that

threatened a predominance of the French, if not a total

extinction of the Saxon element. ... When the national spirit

was aroused, and impelled to the creation of a national

literature, the poet or prose writer, in selecting his

diction, had almost two whole vocabularies before him. That

the syntax should be English, national feeling demanded; but

French was so familiar and habitual to all who were able to

read, that probably the scholarship of the day would scarcely

have been able to determine, with respect to a large

proportion of the words in common use, from which of the two

great wells of speech they had proceeded. Happily, a great

arbiter arose at the critical moment of severance of the two

peoples and dialects, to preside over the division of the

common property, and to determine what share of the

contributions of France should be permanently annexed to the

linguistic inheritance of Englishmen. Chaucer did not

introduce into the English language words which it had

rejected as aliens before, but out of those which had been

already received, he invested the better portion with the

rights of citizenship, and stamped them with the mint-mark of

English coinage. In this way, he formed a vocabulary, which,

with few exceptions, the taste and opinion of succeeding

generations has approved; and a literary diction was thus

established, which, in all the qualities required for the

poetic art, had at that time no superior in the languages of

modern Europe. The soundness of Chaucer's judgment, the nicety

of his philological appreciation, and the delicacy of his

sense of adaptation to the actual wants of the English people,

are sufficiently proved by the fact that, of the Romance words

found in his writings, not much above one hundred have been

suffered to become obsolete, while a much larger number of

Anglo-Saxon words employed by him have passed altogether out

of use. ... In the three centuries which elapsed between the

Conquest and the noon-tide of Chaucer's life, a large

proportion of the Anglo-Saxon dialect of religion, of moral

and intellectual discourse, and of taste, had become utterly

obsolete, and unknown. The place of the lost words had been

partly supplied by the importation of Continental terms; but

the new words came without the organic power of composition

and derivation which belonged to those they had supplanted.

Consequently, they were incapable of those modifications of

form and extensions of meaning which the Anglo-Saxon roots

could so easily assume, and which fitted them for the

expression of the new shades of thought and of sentiment born

of every hour in a mind and an age like those of Chaucer."

G. P. Marsh,

Origin and History of the English Language,

lecture 9.

ALSO IN:

T. R. Lounsbury,

Studies in Chaucer.

A. W. Ward,

Chaucer.

W. Godwin,

Life of Geoffrey Chaucer.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1360-1414.

The Lollards.

"The Lollards were the earliest 'Protestants' of England. They

were the followers of John Wyclif, but before his time the

nickname of Lollard had been known on the continent. A little

brotherhood of pious people had sprung up in Holland, about

the year 1300, who lived in a half-monastic fashion and

devoted themselves to helping the poor in the burial of their

dead; and, from the low chants they sang at the

funerals--lollen being the old word for such singing--they

were called Lollards. The priests and friars hated them and

accused them of heresy, and a Walter Lollard, probably one of

them, was burnt in 1322 at Cologne as a heretic, and gradually

the name became a nickname for such people. So when Wyclif's

simple priests' were preaching the new doctrines, the name

already familiar in Holland and Germany, was given to them,

and gradually became the name for that whole movement of

religious reformation which grew up from the seed Wyclif

sowed."

B. Herford,

Story of Religion in England,

chapter 16.

{815}

"A turning point arrived in the history of the reforming party

at the accession of the house of Lancaster. King Henry the

Fourth was not only a devoted son of the Church, but he owed

his success in no slight measure to the assistance of the

Churchmen, and above all to that of Archbishop Arundel. It was

felt that the new dynasty and the hierarchy stood or fell

together. A mixture of religious and political motives led to

the passing of the well-known statute 'De hæretico comburendo'

in 1401 and thenceforward Lollardy was a capital offence."

R. L. Poole,

Wycliffe and Movements for Reform,

chapter 8.

"The abortive insurrection of the Lollards at the commencement

of Henry V. 's reign, under the leadership of Sir John

Oldcastle, had the effect of adding to the penal laws already

in existence against the sect." This gave to Lollardy a

political character and made the Lollards enemies against the

State, as is evident from the king's proclamation in which it

was asserted "that the insurgents intended to 'destroy him,

his brothers and several of the spiritual and temporal lords,

to confiscate the possessions of the Church, to secularize the

religious orders, to divide the realm into confederate

districts, and to appoint Sir John Oldcastle president of the

commonwealth.'"

T. P. Taswell-Langmead,

English Constitutional History (4th edition),

chapter 11.

"The early life of Wycliffe is obscure. ... He emerges into

distinct notice in 1360, ten years subsequent to the passing

of the first Statute of Provisors, having then acquired a

great Oxford reputation as a lecturer in divinity. ... He was

a man of most simple life; austere in appearance; with bare

feet and russet mantle. As a soldier of Christ, he saw in his

Great Master and his Apostles the patterns whom he was bound

to imitate. By the contagion of example he gathered about him

other men who thought as he did; and gradually, under his

captaincy, these 'poor priests' as they were called--vowed to

poverty because Christ was poor--vowed to accept no benefice

... spread out over the country as an army of missionaries, to

preach the faith which they found in the Bible--to preach, not of

relics and of indulgences, but of repentance and of the grace

of God. They carried with them copies of the Bible which

Wycliffe had translated, ... and they refused to recognize the

authority of the bishops, or their right to silence them. If

this had been all, and perhaps if Edward III. had been

succeeded by a prince less miserably incapable than his

grandson Richard, Wycliffe might have made good his ground;

the movement of the parliament against the pope might have

united in a common stream with the spiritual move against the

church at home, and the Reformation have been antedated by a

century. He was summoned to answer for himself before the

Archbishop of Canterbury in 1377. He appeared in court

supported by the presence of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster,

the eldest of Edward's surviving sons, and the authorities

were unable to strike him behind so powerful a shield. But the

'poor priests' had other doctrines. ... His [Wycliffe's]

theory of property, and his study of the character of Christ,

had led him to the near confines of Anabaptism." The rebellion

of Wat Tyler, which occurred in 1381, cast odium upon all such

opinions. "So long as Wycliffe lived, his own lofty character was

a guarantee for the conduct of his immediate disciples; and

although his favour had far declined, a party in the state

remained attached to him, with sufficient influence to prevent

the adoption of extreme measures against the 'poor priests.'

... They were left unmolested for the next twenty years. ...

On the settlement of the country under Henry IV. they fell

under the general ban which struck down all parties who had

shared in the late disturbances."

J. A. Froude,

History of England,

chapter 6.

"Wycliffe's translation of the Bible itself created a new era,

and gave birth to what may be said never to have existed till

then--a popular theology. ... It is difficult in our day to

imagine the impression such a book must have produced in an

age which had scarcely anything in the way of popular

literature, and which had been accustomed to regard the

Scriptures as the special property of the learned. It was

welcomed with an enthusiasm which could not be restrained, and

read with avidity both by priests and laymen. ... The homely

wisdom, blended with eternal truth, which has long since

enriched our vernacular speech with a multitude of proverbs,

could not thenceforth be restrained in its circulation by mere

pious awe or time-honoured prejudice. Divinity was discussed

in ale-houses. Popular preachers made war upon old prejudices.

and did much to shock that sense of reverence which belonged

to an earlier generation. A new school had arisen with a

theology of its own, warning the people against the delusive

preaching of the friars, and asserting loudly its own claims

to be true and evangelical, on the ground that it possessed

the gospel in the English tongue. Appealing to such an

authority in their favour, the eloquence of the new teachers

made a marvellous impression. Their followers increased with

extraordinary rapidity. By the estimate of an opponent they

soon numbered half the population, and you could hardly see

two persons in the street but one of them was a Wycliffite.

... They were supported by the powerful influence of John of

Gaunt, who shielded not only Wycliffe himself, but even the

most violent of the fanatics. And, certainly, whatever might

have been Wycliffe's own view, doctrines were promulgated by

his reputed followers that were distinctly subversive of

authority. John Ball fomented the insurrection of Wat Tyler,

by preaching the natural equality of men. ... But the

popularity of Lollardy was short-lived. The extravagance to

which it led soon alienated the sympathies of the people, and

the sect fell off in numbers almost as rapidly as it had

risen."

J. Gairdner,

Studies in English History, 1-2.

"Wyclif ... was not without numerous followers, and the

Lollardism which sprang out of his teaching was a living force

in England for some time to come. But it was weak through its

connection with subversive social doctrines. He himself stood

aloof from such doctrines, but he could not prevent his

followers from mingling in the social fray. It was perhaps

their merit that they did so. The established constitutional

order was but another name for oppression and wrong to the

lower classes. But as yet the lower classes were not

sufficiently advanced in moral and political training to make

it safe to entrust them with the task of righting their own

wrongs as they would have attempted to right them if they had

gained the mastery. It had nevertheless become impossible to

leave the peasants to be once more goaded by suffering into

rebellion. The attempt, if it had been made, to enforce

absolute labour-rents was tacitly abandoned, and gradually

during the next century the mass of the villeins passed into

the position of freemen.

{816}

For the moment, nobles and prelates, landowners and clergy,

banded themselves together to form one great party of

resistance. The church came to be but an outwork of the

baronage."

S. R. Gardiner and J. B. Mullinger,

Introduction to the Study of English History,

part 1, chapter 5, sections 14-15.

ALSO IN

L. Sergeant,

John Wyclif.

G. Lechler,

John Wiclif and his English Precursors.

See, also,

BOHEMIA; A. D. 1405-1415,

and BEGUINES.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1377.

Accession of King Richard II.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1377-1399.

The character and reign of Richard II.

"Richard II. was a far superior man to many of the weaker

kings of England; but being self-willed and unwarlike, he was

unfitted for the work which the times required. Yet, on a

closer inspection than the traditional view of the reign has

generally encouraged, we cannot but observe that the finer

qualities which came out in certain crises of his reign appear

to have frequently influenced his conduct: we know that he was

not an immoral man, that he was an excellent husband to an

excellent wife, and that he had devoted friends, willing to

lay down their lives for him when there was nothing whatever

left for them to gain. ... Richard, who had been brought up in

the purple quite as much as Edward II., was kept under

restraint by his uncles, and not being judiciously guided in

the arts of government, fell, like his prototype, into the

hands of favourites. His brilliant behaviour in the

insurrection of 1381 indicated much more than mere possession

of the Plantagenet courage and presence of mind. He showed a

real sympathy with the villeins who had undeniable grievances.

... His instincts were undoubtedly for freedom and

forgiveness, and there is no proof, nor even probability, that

he intended to use the villeins against his enemies. His early

and happy marriage with Anne of Bohemia ought, one might

think, to have saved him from the vice of favouritism; but he

was at least more fortunate than Edward II. in not being cast

under the spell of a Gaveston. When we consider the effect of

such a galling government as that of his uncle Gloucester, and

his cousin Derby, afterwards Henry IV., who seems to have been

pushing Gloucester on from the first, we can hardly be

surprised that he should require some friend to lean upon. The

reign is, in short, from one, and perhaps the truest, point of

view, a long duel between the son of the Black Prince and the

son of John of Gaunt. One or other of them must inevitably

perish. A handsome and cultivated youth, who showed himself at

fifteen every inch a king, who was married at sixteen, and led

his own army to Scotland at eighteen, required a different

treatment from that which he received. He was a man, and

should have been dealt with as such. His lavish and

reprehensible grants to his favourites were made the excuse

for Gloucester's violent interference in 1386, but there is

good ground for believing that the movement was encouraged by

the anti-Wicliffite party, which had taken alarm at the

sympathy with the Reformers shown at this time by Richard and

Anne."

M. Burrows,

Commentaries on the History of England,

book 2, chapter 5.

ALSO IN:

J. R. Green,

History of the English People,

book 4, chapter 4 (volume 1).

C. H. Pearson,

English History in the 14th Century,

chapter 10-12.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1381.

Wat Tyler's Rebellion.

"In June 1381 there broke out in England the formidable

insurrection known as Wat Tyler's Rebellion. The movement

seems to have begun among the bondmen of Essex and of Kent;

but it spread at once to the counties of Sussex Hertford,

Cambridge, Suffolk and Norfolk. The peasantry, armed with

bludgeons and rusty swords, first occupied the roads by which

pilgrims went to Canterbury, and made everyone swear that he

would be true to king Richard and not accept a king named

John. This, of course, was aimed at the government of John of

Gaunt [Duke of Lancaster], ... to whom the people attributed

every grievance they had to complain of. The principal, or at

least the immediate cause of offence arose out of a poll-tax

which had been voted in the preceding year."

J. Gairdner,

Houses of Lancaster and York,

chapter 2.

The leaders of the insurgents were Wat the Tyler, who had been

a soldier, John Ball, a priest and preacher of democratic and

socialistic doctrines, and one known as Jack Straw. They made

their way to London. "It ought to have been easy to keep them

out of the city, as the only approach to it was by London

Bridge, and the mayor and chief citizens proposed to defend

it. But the Londoners generally, and even three of the

aldermen, were well inclined to the rebels, and declared that

they would not let the gates be shut against their friends and

neighbours, and would kill the mayor himself if he attempted

to do it. So on the evening of Wednesday, June 13, the

insurgents began to stream in across the bridge, and next

morning marched their whole body across the river, and

proceeded at once to the Savoy, the splendid palace of the

Duke of Lancaster. Proclamation was made that any one found

stealing the smallest article would be beheaded; and the place

was then wrecked and burned with all the formalities of a

solemn act of justice. Gold and silver plate was shattered

with battle-axes and thrown into the Thames; rings and smaller

jewels were brayed in mortars; silk and embroidered dresses

were trampled under feet and torn up. Then the Temple was

burned with all its muniments. The poet Gower was among the

lawyers who had to save their lives by flight, and he passed

several nights in the woods of Essex, covered with grass and

leaves and living on acorns. Then the great house of the

Hospitallers at Clerkenwell was destroyed, taking seven days

to burn." The young king (Richard II.) and his court and

council had taken refuge in the Tower. The insurgents now

threatened to storm their stronghold if the king did not come

out and speak to them. The king consented and appointed a

rendezvous at Mile End. He kept the appointment and met his

turbulent subjects with so much courage and tact and so many

promises, that he persuaded a great number to disperse to

their homes. But while this pacific interview took place, Wat

Tyler, John Ball, and some 400 of their followers burst into

the Tower, determined to find the archbishop of Canterbury and

the Lord Treasurer, Sir Robert de Hales, who were the most

obnoxious ministers. "So great was the general consternation

that the soldiers dared not raise a hand while these ruffians

searched the different rooms, not sparing even the king's

bedroom, running spears into the beds, asked the king's mother

to kiss them, and played insolent jokes on the chief officers.

{817}

Unhappily they were not long in finding the archbishop, who

had said mass in the chapel, and was kneeling at the altar in

expectation of their approach." The Lord Treasurer was also

found, and both he and the archbishop were summarily beheaded

by the mob. "Murder now became the order of the day, and

foreigners were among the chief victims; thirteen Flemings

were dragged out of one church and beheaded, seventeen out of

another, and altogether it is said 400 perished. Many private

enmities were revenged by the London rabble on this day." On

the next day, June 15, the king, with an armed escort, went to

the camp of the insurgents, at Smithfield, and opened

negotiations with Tyler, offering successively three forms of

a new charter of popular rights and liberties, all of which

were rejected. Finally, Tyler was invited to a personal

conference, and there, in the midst of the king's party, on

some provocation or pretended provocation in his words or

bearing, the popular leader was struck from his horse and

killed. King Richard immediately rode out before the ranks of

the rebels, while they were still dazed by the suddenness and

audacity of the treacherous blow, crying "I will be your

leader; follow me." The thoughtless mob followed and soon

found itself surrounded by bodies of troops whose courage had

revived. The king now commanded the trembling peasants "to

fall on their knees, cut the strings of their bows, and leave

the city and its neighbourhood, under pain of death, before

nightfall. This command was instantly obeyed." Meantime and

afterwards there were many lesser risings in various parts of

the country, all of which were suppressed, with such rigorous

prosecutions in the courts that 1,500 persons are said to have

suffered judicially.

C. H. Pearson,

English History in the Fourteenth Century,

chapter 10.

The Wat Tyler insurrection proved disastrous in its effect on

the work of Church reform which Wyclif was then pursuing. "Not

only was the power of the Lancastrian party, on which Wyclif

had relied, for the moment annihilated, but the quarrel

between the Baronage and Church, on which his action had

hitherto been grounded, was hushed in the presence of a common

danger. Much of the odium of the outbreak, too, fell on the

Reformer. ... John Ball, who had figured in the front rank of

the revolt, was claimed as one of his adherents. ... Whatever

belief such charges might gain, it is certain that from this

moment all plans for the reorganization of the Church were

confounded in the general odium which attached to the projects

of the socialist peasant leaders."

J. R. Green,

Short History of the English People,

chapter 5, section 3.

"When Parliament assembled it proved itself as hostile as the

crown to the conceding any of the demands of the people; both

were faithful to all the records of history in similar cases;

they would have belied all experience if, being victorious,

they had consented to the least concession to the vanquished.

The upper classes repudiated the recognition of the rights of

the poor to a degree, which in our time would be considered

sheer insanity. The king had annulled, by proclamation to the

sheriffs, the charters of manumission which he had granted to

the insurgents, and this revocation was warmly approved by

both Lords and Commons, who, not satisfied with saying that

such enfranchisement could not be made without their consent,

added, that they would never give that consent, even to save

themselves from perishing altogether in one day. There was, it

is true, a vague rumour about the propriety and wisdom of

abolishing villanage; but the notion was scouted, and the

owners of serfs showed that they neither doubted the right by

which they held their fellow-creatures in a state of slavery,

nor would hesitate to increase the severity of the laws

affecting them. They now passed a law by which 'all riots and

rumours, and other such things were turned into high treason';

this law was most vaguely expressed, and would probably

involve those who made it in inextricable difficulties. It was

self-apparent, that this Parliament acted under the impulses

of panic, and of revenge for recent injuries. ... It might be

said that the citizens of the municipalities wrote their

charters of enfranchisement with the very blood of their lords

and bishops; yet, during the worst days of oppression, the

serfs of the cities had never suffered the cruel excesses of

tyranny endured by the country people till the middle of the

fifteenth century. And, nevertheless, the long struggles of

the townships, despite the bloodshed and cruelties of the

citizens, are ever considered and narrated as glorious

revolutions, whilst the brief efforts of the peasants for

vengeance, which were drowned in their own blood, have

remained as a stigma flung in the face of the country

populations whenever they utter a word claiming some

amelioration in their condition. Whence the injustice? The

bourgeoisie was victorious and successful. The rural

populations were vanquished and trampled upon. The

bourgeoisie, therefore, has had its poets, historians, and

flatterers, whilst the poor peasant, rude, untutored, and

ignorant, never had a lyre nor a voice to bewail his

lamentable sorrows and sufferings."

Prof. De Vericour,

Wat Tyler

(Royal Historical Society, Transactions,

number 8, volume 2).

ALSO IN:

G. Lechler,

John Wiclif,

chapter 9, section 3.

C. Knight,

Popular History of England,

volume 2, chapter 1.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1383.

The Bishop of Norwich's Crusade in Flanders.

See FLANDERS: A. D. 1383.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1388.

The Merciless or Wonderful Parliament.

See PARLIAMENT, THE WONDERFUL.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1399.

Accession of King Henry IV.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1399-1471.

House of Lancaster.

This name is given in English history to the family which

became royal in the person of Henry of Bolingbroke, Duke of

Lancaster, who deposed his cousin, Richard II., or forced him

to abdicate the throne, and who was crowned king (Henry IV.),

Oct. 11, 1399, with what seemed to be the consent of the

nation. He not only claimed to be the next in succession to

Richard, but he put forward a claim of descent through his

mother, more direct than Richard's had been, from Henry III.

"In point of fact Henry was not the next in succession. His

father, John of Gaunt [or John of Ghent, in which city he was

born], was the fourth son of Edward III., and there were

descendants of that king's third son, Lionel Duke of Clarence,

living. ... At one time Richard himself had designated as his

successor the nobleman who really stood next to him in the

line of descent. This was Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, the

same who was killed by the rebels in Ireland. This Roger had

left a son Edmund to inherit his title, but Edmund was a mere

child, and the inconvenience of another minority could not

have been endured."

J. Gairdner,

Houses of Lancaster and York,

chapter 2.

{818}

As for Henry's pretensions through his mother, they were

founded upon what Mr. Gairdner calls an "idle story," that

"the eldest son of Henry III. was not king Edward, but his

brother Edmund Crouchback, Earl of Lancaster, who was commonly

reputed the second son; and that this Edmund had been

purposely set aside on account of his personal deformity. The

plain fact of the matter was that Edmund Crouchback was six

years younger than his brother Edward I.; and that his surname

Crouchback had not the smallest reference to personal

deformity, but only implied that he wore the cross upon his

back as a crusader." Mr. Wylie (History of England under Henry

IV., volume 1, chapter 1) represents that this latter claim

was put forward under the advice of the leading jurists of the

time, to give the appearance of a legitimate succession;

whereas Henry took his real title from the will and assent of

the nation. Henry IV. was succeeded by his vigorous son, Henry

V. and he in turn by a feeble son, Henry VI., during whose

reign England was torn by intrigues and factions, ending in

the lamentable civil wars known as the "Wars of the Roses,"

the deposition of Henry VI. and the acquisition of the throne

by the "House of York," in the persons of Edward IV. and

Richard III. It was a branch of the House of Lancaster that

reappeared, after the death of Richard III. in the royal

family better known as the Tudors.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1400-1436.

Relations with Scotland.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1400-1436.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1402-1413.

Owen Glendower's Rebellion in Wales.

See WALES: A. D.1402-1413.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1403.

Hotspur's Rebellion.

The earl of Northumberland and his son, Henry Percy, called

"Hotspur," had performed great services for Henry IV., in

establishing and maintaining him upon the throne. "At the

outset of his reign their opposition would have been fatal to

him; their adhesion ensured his victory. He had rewarded them

with territory and high offices of trust, and they had by

faithful services ever since increased their claims to

gratitude and consideration. ... Both father and son were

high-spirited, passionate, suspicious men, who entertained an

exalted sense of their own services and could not endure the

shadow of a slight. Up to this time [early in 1403] not a

doubt had been cast on their fidelity. Northumberland was

still the king's chief agent in Parliament, his most valued

commander in the field, his Mattathias. It has been thought

that Hotspur's grudge against the king began with the notion

that the release of his brother-in-law, Edmund Mortimer [taken

prisoner, the year before, by the Welsh], had been neglected

by the king, or was caused by Henry's claim to deal with the

prisoners taken at Homildon; the defenders of the Percies

alleged that they had been deceived by Henry in the first

instance, and only needed to be persuaded that Richard lived

in order to desert the king. It is more probable that they

suspected Henry's friendship, and were exasperated by his

compulsory economies. ... Yet Henry seems to have conceived no

suspicion. ... Northumberland and Hotspur were writing for

increased forces [for the war with Scotland]. ... On the 10th

of July Henry had reached Northamptonshire on his way

northwards; on the 17th he heard that Hotspur with his uncle

the earl of Worcester were in arms in Shropshire. They raised

no cry of private wrongs, but proclaimed themselves the

vindicators of national right: their object was to correct the

evils of the administration, to enforce the employment of wise

counsellors, and the proper expenditure of public money. ...

The report ran like wildfire through the west that Richard was

alive, and at Chester. Hotspur's army rose to 14,000 men, and

not suspecting the strength and promptness of the king, he sat

down with his uncle and his prisoner, the earl of Douglas,

before Shrewsbury. Henry showed himself equal to the need.

From Burton-on-Trent, where on July 17 he summoned the forces

of the shires to join him, he marched into Shropshire, and

offered to parley with the insurgents. The earl of Worcester

went between the camps, but he was either an impolitic or a

treacherous envoy, and the negotiations ended in mutual

exasperation. On the 21st the battle of Shrewsbury was fought;

Hotspur was slain; Worcester was taken and beheaded two days

after. The old earl, who may or may not have been cognizant of

his son's intentions from the first, was now marching to his

succour. The earl of Westmoreland, his brother-in-law, met him

and drove him back to Warkworth. But all danger was over. On

the 11th of August he met the king at York, and submitted to

him."

W. Stubbs,

Constitutional History of England,

chapter 18, section 632.

ALSO IN:

J. H. Wylie,

History of England under Henry IV.,

volume 1, chapter 25.

W. Shakespeare,

King Henry IV.,

part 1.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1413.

Accession of King Henry V.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1413-1422.

Parliamentary gains under Henry V.

"What the sword had won the sword should keep, said Henry V.

on his accession; but what was meant by the saying has its

comment in the fact that, in the year which witnessed his

victory at Agincourt, he yielded to the House of Commons the

most liberal measure of legislation which until then it had

obtained. The dazzling splendour of his conquests in France

had for the time cast into the shade every doubt or question

of his title, but the very extent of those gains upon the

French soil established more decisively the worse than

uselessness of such acquisitions to the English throne. The

distinction of Henry's reign in constitutional history will

always be, that from it dates that power, indispensable to a

free and limited monarchy, called Privilege of Parliament; the

shield and buckler under which all the battles of liberty and

good government were fought in the after time. Not only were

its leading safeguards now obtained, but at once so firmly

established, that against the shock of incessant resistance in

later years they stood perfectly unmoved. Of the awful right

of impeachment, too, the same is to be said. It was won in the

same reign, and was never afterwards lost."

J. Forster,

Historical and Biographical Essays,

volume 1, page 207.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1415-1422.

Conquests of Henry V. in France.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1415; and 1417-1422.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1422.

Accession of King Henry VI.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1431-1453.

Loss of English conquests and possessions in France.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1431-1453,

and AQUITAINE: A. D. 1360-1453.

{819}

ENGLAND: A. D. 1450.

Cade's Rebellion.

A formidable rebellion broke out in Kent, under the leadership

of one Jack Cade, A. D. 1450. Overtaxation, the bad management

of the council, the extortion of the subordinate officers, the

injustice of the king's bench, the abuse of the right of

purveyance, the "enquestes" and amercements, and the

illegitimate control of elections were the chief causes of the

rising of 1450. "The rising was mainly political, only one

complaint was economical, not a single one was religious. We

find not a single demand for new legislation. ... The movement

was by no means of a distinctly plebeian or disorderly

character, but was a general and organized rising of the

people at large. It was a political upheaval. We find no trace

of socialism or of democracy. ... The commons in 1450 arose

against Lancaster and in favor of York. Their rising was the

first great struggle in the Wars of the Roses."

Kriehn,

Rising in 1450,

Chapter IV., VII.

Cade and his rebels took possession of London; but they were

beaten in a battle and forced to quit the city. Cade and some

followers continued to be turbulent and soon afterwards he was

killed.

J. Gairdner,

Houses of Lancaster and York,

chapter 7, section 6.

ALSO IN:

C. M. Yonge,

Cameos from English History,

3d series, chapter 7.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1455.

Demoralized state of the nation.

Effects of the wars in France.

"The whole picture of the times is very depressing on the

moral if not on the material side. There are few more pitiful

episodes in history than the whole tale of the reign of Henry

VI., the most unselfish and well-intentioned king that ever

sat upon the English throne--a man of whom not even his

enemies and oppressors could find an evil word to say; the

troubles came, as they confessed, 'all because of his false

lords, and never of him.' We feel that there must have been

something wrong with the heart of a nation that could see

unmoved the meek and holy king torn from wife and child, sent

to wander in disguise up and down the kingdom for which he had

done his poor best, and finally doomed to pine for five years a

prisoner in the fortress where he had so long held his royal

Court. Nor is our first impression concerning the

demoralisation of England wrong. Every line that we read bears

home to us more and more the fact that the nation had fallen

on evil times. First and foremost among the causes of its

moral deterioration was the wretched French War, a war begun

in the pure spirit of greed and ambition,--there was not even

the poor excuse that had existed in the time of Edward

III.--carried on by the aid of hordes of debauched foreign

mercenaries ... and persisted in long after it had become

hopeless, partly from misplaced national pride, partly because

of the personal interests of the ruling classes. Thirty-five

years of a war that was as unjust as it was unfortunate had

both soured and demoralised the nation. ... When the final

catastrophe came and the fights of Formigny [or Fourmigny] and

Chatillon [Castillon] ended the chapter of our disasters, the

nation began to cast about for a scapegoat on whom to lay the

burden of its failures. ... At first the unfortunate Suffolk

and Somerset had the responsibility laid upon them. A little

later the outcry became more bold and fixed upon the

Lancastrian dynasty itself as being to blame not only for

disaster abroad, but for want of governance at home. If King

Henry had understood the charge, and possessed the wit to

answer it, he might fairly have replied that his subjects must

fit the burden upon their own backs, not upon his. The war had

been weakly conducted, it was true; but weakly because the men

and money for it were grudged. ... At home, the bulwarks of

social order seemed crumbling away. Private wars, riot, open

highway robbery, murder, abduction, armed resistance to the

law, prevailed on a scale that had been unknown since the

troublous times of Edward II.--we might almost say since the

evil days of Stephen. But it was not the Crown alone that

should have been blamed for the state of the realm. The nation

had chosen to impose over-stringent constitutional checks on

the kingly power before it was ripe for self-government, and

the Lancastrian house sat on the throne because it had agreed

to submit to those checks. If the result of the experiment was

disastrous, both parties to the contract had to bear their

share of the responsibility. But a nation seldom allows that

it has been wrong; and Henry of Windsor had to serve as a

scapegoat for all the misfortunes of the realm, because Henry

of Bolingbroke had committed his descendants to the unhappy

compact. Want of a strong central government was undoubtedly

the complaint under which England was labouring in the middle

of the 15th century, and all the grievances against which

outcry was made were but symptoms of one latent disease. ...

All these public troubles would have been of comparatively

small importance if the heart of the nation had been sound.

The phenomenon which makes the time so depressing is the

terrible decay in private morals since the previous century.

... There is no class or caste in England which comes well out

of the scrutiny. The Church, which had served as the conscience

of the nation in better times, had become dead to spiritual

things. It no longer produced either men of saintly life or

learned theologians or patriotic statesmen. ... The baronage

of England had often been unruly, but it had never before

developed the two vices which distinguished it in the times of

the Two Roses--a taste for indiscriminate bloodshed and a turn

for political apostacy. ... Twenty years spent in contact with

French factions, and in command of the godless mercenaries who

formed the bulk of the English armies, had taught our nobles

lessons of cruelty and faithlessness such as they had not

before imbibed. ... The knights and squires showed on a

smaller scale all the vices of the nobility. Instead of

holding together and maintaining a united loyalty to the

Crown, they bound themselves by solemn sealed bonds and the

reception of 'liveries' each to the baron whom he preferred.

This fatal system, by which the smaller landholder agreed on

behalf of himself and his tenants to follow his greater

neighbour in peace and war, had ruined the military system of

England, and was quite as dangerous as the ancient feudalism.

... If the gentry constituted themselves the voluntary

followers of the baronage, and aided their employers to keep

England unhappy, the class of citizens and burgesses took a

very different line of conduct. If not actively mischievous,

they were solidly inert. They refused to entangle themselves

in politics at all. They submitted impassively to each ruler

in turn, when they had ascertained that their own persons and

property were not endangered by so doing. A town, it has been

remarked, seldom or never stood a siege during the Wars of the

Roses, for no town ever refused to open its gates to any

commander with an adequate force who asked for entrance."

C. W. Oman,

Warwick the King-maker,

chapter 1.

{820}

ENGLAND: A. D. 1455-1471.

The Wars of the Roses.

Beginning with a battle fought at St. Albans on the 23d of

May, 1455, England was kept in a pitiable state of civil war,

with short intervals of troubled peace, during thirty years.

The immediate cause of trouble was in the feebleness of King

Henry VI., who succeeded to the throne while an infant, and

whose mind, never strong, gave way under the trials of his

position when he came to manhood. The control of the

government, thus weakly commanded, became a subject of strife

between successive factions. The final leaders in such

contests were Queen Margaret of Anjou, the energetic consort

of the helpless king (with the king himself sometimes in a

condition of mind to cooperate with her), on one side, and, on

the other side, the Duke of York, who traced his lineage to

Edward III., and who had strong claims to the throne if Henry

should leave no heir. The battle at St. Albans was a victory

for the Yorkists and placed them in power for the next two

years, the Duke of York being named Protector. In 1456 the

king recovered so far as to resume the reigns of government,

and in 1459 there was a new rupture between the factions. The

queen's adherents were beaten in the battle of Bloreheath,

September 23d of that year; but defections in the ranks of the

Yorkists soon obliged the latter to disperse and their

leaders, York, Warwick and Salisbury, fled to Ireland and to

Calais. In June, 1460, the earls of Warwick, Salisbury and

March (the latter being the eldest son of the Duke of York)

returned to England and gathered an army speedily, the city of

London opening its gates to them. The king's forces were

defeated at Northampton (July 10) and the king taken prisoner.

A parliament was summoned and assembled in October. Then the Duke

of York came over from Ireland, took possession of the royal

palace and laid before parliament a solemn claim to the crown.

After much discussion a compromise was agreed upon, under

which Henry VI. should reign undisturbed during his life and

the Duke of York should be his undisputed successor. This was

embodied in an act of parliament and received the assent of

the king; but queen Margaret who had retired into the north,

refused to surrender the rights of her infant son, and a

strong party sustained her. The Duke of York attacked these

Lancastrian forces rashly, at Wakefield, Dec. 30, 1460, and

was slain on the field of a disastrous defeat. The queen's

army, then, marching towards London, defeated the Earl of

Warwick at St. Albans, February 17, 1461 (the second battle of

the war at that place), and recovered possession of the person

of the king. But Edward, Earl of March (now become Duke of

York, by the death of his father), who had just routed a

Lancastrian force at Mortimer's Cross, in Wales, joined his

forces with those of Warwick and succeeded in occupying

London, which steadily favored his cause. Calling together a

council of lords, Edward persuaded them to declare King Henry

deposed, on the ground that he had broken the agreement made

with the late Duke of York. The next step was to elect Edward

king, and he assumed the royal title and state at once. The

new king lost no time in marching northwards against the army

of the deposed sovereign, which lay near York. On the 27th of

March the advanced division of the Lancastrians was defeated

at Ferrybridge, and, two days later, their main body was

almost destroyed in the fearful battle of Towton,--said to

have been the bloodiest encounter that ever took place on

English soil. King Henry took refuge in Scotland and Queen

Margaret repaired to France. In 1464 Henry reappeared in the

north with a body of Scots and refugees and there were risings

in his favor in Northumberland, which the Yorkists crushed in

the successive battles of Hedgeley Moor and Hexham. The

Yorkist king (Edward IV.) now reigned without much disturbance

ntil 1470, when he quarreled with the powerful Earl of Warwick--

the "king-maker," whose strong hand had placed him on the

throne. Warwick then passed to the other side, offering his

services to Queen Margaret and leading an expedition which

sailed from Harfleur in September, convoyed by a French fleet.

Edward found himself unprepared to resist the Yorkist risings

which welcomed Warwick and he fled to Holland, seeking aid

from his brother-in-law, the Duke of Burgundy. For nearly six

months, the kingdom was in the hands of Warwick and the

Lancastrians; the unfortunate Henry VI., released from

captivity in the Tower, was once more seated on the throne.

But on the 14th of March, 1471, Edward reappeared in England,

landing at Ravenspur, professing that he came only to recover

his dukedom of York. As he moved southwards he gathered a

large force of supporters and soon reassumed the royal title

and pretensions. London opened its gates to him, and, on the

14th of April--exactly one month after his landing--he

defeated his opponents at Barnet, where Warwick, "the

king-maker"--the last of the great feudal barons--was slain.

Henry, again a captive, was sent back to the Tower. But

Henry's dauntless queen, who landed at Weymouth, with a body

of French allies on the very day of the disastrous Barnet

fight, refused to submit. Cornwall and Devon were true to her

cause and gave her an army with which she fought the last

battle of the war at Tewksbury on the 4th of May. Defeated and

taken prisoner, her young son slain--whether in the battle or

after it is unknown--the long contention of Margaret of Anjou

ended on that bloody field. A few days later, when the

triumphant Yorkist King Edward entered London, his poor,

demented Lancastrian rival died suddenly and suspiciously in

the Tower. The two parties in the long contention had each

assumed the badge of a rose--the Yorkists a white rose, the

Lancastrians a red one. Hence the name of the Wars of the

Roses. "As early as the time of John of Ghent, the rose was

used as an heraldic emblem, and when he married Blanche, the

daughter of the Duke of Lancaster, he used the red rose for a

device. Edmund of Langley, his brother, the fifth son of

Edward III., adopted the white rose in opposition to him; and

their followers afterwards maintained these distinctions in

the bloody wars of the fifteenth century. There is, however,

no authentic account of the precise period when these badges

were first adopted."

Mrs. Hookham,

Life and Times of Margaret of Anjou,

volume 2, chapter 1.

ALSO IN:

J. Gairdner,

Houses of Lancaster and York.

Sir J. Ramsay,

Lancaster and York.

C. W. Oman;

Warwick, the King-maker,

chapter 5-17.

See, also,

TOWTON, BARNET, and TEWKSBURY.

{821}

The effects of the Wars of the Roses.

"It is astonishing to observe the rapidity with which it [the

English nation] had settled down to order in the reign of

Henry VII. after so many years of civil dissension. It would

lead us to infer that those wars were the wars of a class, and

not of the nation; and that the effects of them have been

greatly exaggerated. With the single exception of Cade's

rebellion, they had nothing in common with the revolutions of

later or earlier times. They were not wars against classes,

against forms of government, against the order or the

institutions of the nation. It was the rivalry of two

aristocratic factions struggling for superiority, neither of

them hoping or desiring, whichever obtained the upper hand, to

introduce momentous changes in the State or its

administration. The main body of the people took little

interest in the struggle; in the towns at least there was no

intermission of employment. The war passed over the nation,

ruffling the surface, toppling down high cliffs here and

there, washing away ancient landmarks, attracting the

imagination of the spectator by the mightiness of its waves,

and the noise of its thunders; but the great body below the

surface remained unmoved. No famines, no plagues, consequent

on the intermittance of labour caused by civil war, are

recorded; even the prices of land and provisions scarcely

varied more than they have been known to do in times of

profoundest peace. But the indirect and silent operation of

these conflicts was much more remarkable. It reft into

fragments the confederated ranks of a powerful territorial

aristocracy, which had hitherto bid defiance to the King,

however popular, however energetic. Henceforth the position of

the Sovereign in the time of the Tudors, in relation to all

classes of the people, became very different from what it had

been; the royal supremacy was no longer a theory; but a fact.

Another class had sprung up on the decay of the ancient

nobility. The great towns had enjoyed uninterrupted

tranquility, and even flourished, under the storm that was

scourging the aristocracy and the rural districts. Their

population had increased by numbers whom fear or the horrors

of war had induced to find shelter behind stone walls. The

diminution of agricultural labourers converted into soldiers

by the folly of their lords had turned corn-lands into

pasture, requiring less skill, less capital, and less labour."

J. S. Brewer,

The Reign of Henry VIII.,

volume 1, chapter 2.

"Those who would estimate the condition of England aright

should remember that the War of the Roses was only a

repetition on a large scale of those private wars which

distracted almost every county, and, indeed, by taking away

all sense of security, disturbed almost every manor and every

class of society during the same century. ... The lawless

condition of English society in the 15th century resembled

that of Ireland in as recent a date as the beginning of the

19th century. ... In both countries women were carried off,

sometimes at night; they were first violated, then dragged to

the altar in their night-dress and compelled to marry their

captors. ... Children were seized and thrown into a dungeon

until ransomed by their parents."

W. Denton,

England in the 15th Century,

chapter 3.

"The Wars of the Roses which filled the second half of the

15th century furnished the barons with an arena in which their

instincts of violence had freer play than ever; it was they

who, under the pretext of dynastic interests which had ceased

to exist, of their own free choice prolonged the struggle.

Altogether unlike the Italian condottieri, the English barons

showed no mercy to their own order; they massacred and

exterminated each other freely, while they were careful to

spare the commonalty. Whole families were extinguished or

submerged in the nameless mass of the nation, and their

estates by confiscation or escheat helped to swell the royal

domain. When Henry VII. had stifled the last movements of

rebellion and had punished, through the Star Chamber, those

nobles who were still suspected of maintaining armed bands,

the baronage was reduced to a very low ebb; not more than

twenty-nine lay peers were summoned by the king to his first

Parliament. The old Norman feudal nobility existed no longer;

the heroic barons of the great charter barely survived in the

persons of a few doubtful descendants; their estates were

split up or had been forfeited to the Crown. A new class came

forward to fill the gap, that rural middle class which was

formed ... by the fusion of the knights with the free

landowners. It had already taken the lead in the House of

Commons, and it was from its ranks that Henry VII. chose

nearly all the new peers. A peerage renewed almost throughout,

ignorant of the habits and traditions of the earlier nobility,

created in large batches, closely dependent on the monarch who

had raised it from little or nothing and who had endowed it

with his bounty--this is the phenomenon which confronts us at

the end of the fifteenth century."

E. Boutmy,

The English Constitution,

chapter 5.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1461.

Accession of King Edward IV.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1461-1485.

House of York.

The House of York, which triumphed in the Wars of the Roses,

attaining the throne in the person of Edward IV. (A. D. 1461),

derived its claim to the crown through descent, in the female

line, from Lionel, Duke of Clarence, the third son of Edward

III. (the second son who lived to manhood and left children);

while the House of Lancaster traced its lineage to John of

Gaunt, a younger son of the same king Edward III., but the

line of Lancastrian succession was through males. "Had the

crown followed the course of hereditary succession, it would

have devolved on the posterity of Lionel. ... By the decease

of that prince without male issue, his possessions and

pretensions fell to his daughter Philippa, who by a singular

combination of circumstances had married Roger Mortimer earl

of March, the male representative of the powerful baron who

was attainted and executed for the murder of Edward II., the

grandfather of the duke of Clarence. The son of that potent

delinquent had been restored to his honours and estates at an

advanced period in the reign of Edward III. ... Edmund, his

grandson, had espoused Philippa of Clarence. Roger Mortimer,

the fourth in descent from the regicide, was lord lieutenant

of Ireland and was considered, or, according to some writers,

declared to be heir of the crown in the early part of

Richard's reign. Edmund Mortimer, earl of March, in whom the

hereditary claim to the crown was vested at the deposition of

Richard, was then only an infant of ten years of age. ...

{822}

Dying without issue, the pretensions to the crown, which he

inherited through the duke of Clarence, devolved on his sister

Anne Mortimer, who espoused Richard of York earl of Cambridge,

the grandson of Edward III. by his fourth [fifth] son Edmund

of Langley duke of York." Edward IV. was the grandson of this

Anne Mortimer and Richard of York.

Sir J. Mackintosh,

History of England,

volume 1, pages 338-339.

The House of York occupied the throne but twenty-four years.

On the death of Edward IV., in 1483, the crown was secured by

his brother, Richard, duke of Gloucester, who caused Edward's

two sons to be murdered in the Tower. The elder of these

murdered princes is named in the list of English kings as

Edward V.; but he cannot be said to have reigned. Richard III.

was overthrown and slain on Bosworth field in 1485.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1471-1485.

The New Monarchy.

The rise of Absolutism and the decline of Parliamentary

government.

"If we use the name of the New Monarchy to express the

character of the English sovereignty from the time of Edward

IV. to the time of Elizabeth, it is because the character of

the monarchy during this period was something wholly new in

our history. There is no kind of sibilantly between the

kingship of the Old English, of the Norman, the Angevin, or

the Plantagenet sovereigns, and the kingship of the Tudors.

... What the Great Rebellion in its final result actually did

was to wipe away every trace of the New Monarchy, and to take

up again the thread of our political development just where it

had been snapped by the Wars of the Roses. ... The founder of

the New Monarchy was Edward IV. ... While jesting with

aldermen, or dallying with his mistresses, or idling over the

new pages from the printing press [Caxton's] at Westminster,

Edward was silently laying the foundations of an absolute rule

which Henry VII. did little more than develop and consolidate.

The almost total discontinuance of Parliamentary life was in

itself a revolution. Up to this moment the two Houses had

played a part which became more and more prominent in the

government of the realm. ... Under Henry VI. an important step

in constitutional progress had been made by abandoning the old

form of presenting the requests of the Parliament in the form

of petitions which were subsequently moulded into statutes by

the Royal Councils; the statute itself, in its final form, was

now presented for the royal assent, and the Crown was deprived

of its former privilege of modifying it. Not only does this

progress cease, but the legislative activity of Parliament

itself comes abruptly to an end. ... The necessity for

summoning the two Houses had, in fact, been removed by the

enormous tide of wealth which the confiscation of the civil

war poured into the royal treasury. ... It was said that

nearly a fifth of the land had passed into the royal

possession at one period or another of the civil war. Edward

added to his resources by trading on a vast scale. ... The

enterprises he had planned against France ... enabled Edward

not only to increase his hoard, but to deal a deadly blow at

liberty. Setting aside the usage of loans sanctioned by the

authority of Parliament, Edward called before him the

merchants of the city and requested from each a present or

benevolence in proportion to the need. Their compliance with

his prayer was probably aided by his popularity with the

merchant class; but the system of benevolence was soon to be

developed into the forced loans of Wolsey and the ship-money

of Charles I."

J. R. Green,

Short History of the English People,

chapter 6, section 3.

ALSO IN:

W. Stubbs,

Constitutional History of England,

chapter 18, section 696.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1474.

Treaty with the Hanseatic League.

See HANSA TOWNS.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1476.

Introduction of Printing by Caxton.

See PRINTING, &c.: A. D. 1476-1491.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1483-1485.

Murder of the young king, Edward V.

Accession of Richard III.

The battle of Bosworth and the fall of the House of York.

On the death of Edward IV., in 1483, his crafty and

unscrupulous brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, gathered

quickly into his hands the reins of power, proceeding with

consummate audacity and ruthlessness to sweep every strong

rival out of his path. Contenting himself for a few weeks,

only, with the title of Protector, he soon disputed the

validity of his brother Edward's marriage, caused an

obsequious Parliament to set aside the young sons whom the

latter had left, declaring them to be illegitimate, and placed

the crown on his own head. The little princes (King Edward V.,

and Richard, Duke of York), immured in the Tower, were

murdered presently at their uncle's command, and Richard III.

appeared, for the time, to have triumphed in his ambitious

villainy. But, popular as he made himself in many cunning

ways, his deeds excited a horror which united Lancastrians

with the party of York in a common detestation. Friends of

Henry, Earl of Richmond, then in exile, were not slow to take

advantage of this feeling. Henry could claim descent from the

same John of Gaunt, son of Edward III., to whom the House of

Lancaster traced its lineage; but his family--the

Beauforts--sprang from the mistress, not the wife, of the

great Duke of Lancaster, and had only been legitimated by act

of Parliament. The Lancastrians, however, were satisfied with

the royalty of his blood, and the Yorkists were made content

by his promise to marry a daughter of Edward IV. On this

understanding being arranged, Henry came over from Brittany to

England, landing at Milford Haven on the 7th or 8th of August,

1485, and advancing through Wales, being joined by great

numbers as he moved. Richard, who had no lack of courage,

marched quickly to meet him, and the two forces joined battle

on Bosworth Field, in Leicestershire, on Sunday, August 21. At

the outset of the fighting Richard was deserted by a large

division of his army and saw that his fate was sealed. He

plunged, with despairing rage, into the thickest of the

struggle and was slain. His crowned helmet, which he had worn,

was found by Sir Reginald Bray, battered and broken, under a

hawthorn bush, and placed on the head of his rival, who soon

attained a more solemn coronation, as Henry VII.

C. M. Yonge,

Cameos from English History,

3d Series, chapters 19-20.

"I must record my impression that a minute study of the facts

of Richard's life has tended more and more to convince me of

the general fidelity of the portrait with which we have been

made familiar by Shakespeare and Sir Thomas More. I feel quite

ashamed, at this day, to think how I mused over this subject

long ago, wasting a great deal of time, ink and paper, in

fruitless efforts to satisfy even my own mind that traditional

black was real historical white, or at worst a kind of grey.

...

{823}

Both the character and personal appearance of Richard III.

have furnished matter of controversy. But with regard to the

former the day has now gone by when it was possible to doubt

the evidence at least of his principal crime; and that he was

regarded as a tyrant by his subjects seems almost equally

indisputable. At the same time he was not destitute of better

qualities. ... As king he seems really to have studied his

country's welfare, passed good laws, endeavoured to put an end

to extortion, declined the free gifts offered to him by

several towns, and declared he would rather have the hearts of

his subjects than their money. His munificence was especially

shown in religious foundations. ... His hypocrisy was not of

the vulgar kind which seeks to screen habitual baseness of

motive by habitual affectation of virtue. His best and his

worst deeds were alike too well known to be either concealed

or magnified; at least, soon after he became king, all doubt

upon the subject must have been removed. ... His ingratiating

manners, together with the liberality of his disposition, seem

really to have mitigated to a considerable extent the alarms

created by his fitful deeds of violence. The reader will not

require to be reminded of Shakespeare's portrait of a murderer

who could cajole the woman whom he had most exasperated and

made a widow into marrying himself. That Richard's ingenuity

was equal to this extraordinary feat we do not venture to

assert; but that he had a wonderful power of reassuring those

whom he had most intimidated and deceiving those who knew him

best there can be very little doubt. ... His taste in building

was magnificent and princely. ... There is scarcely any

evidence of Richard's [alleged] deformity to be derived from

original portraits. The number of portraits of Richard which

seem to be contemporary is greater than might have been

expected. ... The face in all the portraits is a remarkable

one, full of energy and decision, yet gentle and sad-looking,

suggesting the idea not so much of a tyrant as of a mind

accustomed to unpleasant thoughts. Nowhere do we find depicted

the warlike hard-favoured visage attributed to him by Sir

Thomas More. ... With such a one did the long reign of the

Plantagenets terminate. The fierce spirit and the valour of

the race never showed more strongly than at the close. The

Middle Ages, too, as far as England was concerned, may be said

to have passed away with Richard III."

J. Gairdner,

History of the Life, and Reign of Richard The Third,

introduction and chapter 6.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1485.

Accession of King Henry VII.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1485-1528.

The Sweating Sickness.

See SWEATING SICKNESS.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1485-1603.

The Tudors.

The Tudor family, which occupied the English throne from the

accession of Henry VII., 1485, until the death of Elizabeth,

1603, took its name, but not its royal lineage, from Sir Owen

Tudor, a handsome Welsh chieftain, who won the heart and the

hand of the young widow of Henry V., Catherine of France. The

eldest son of that marriage, made Earl of Richmond, married in

his turn Margaret Beaufort, great-granddaughter to John of

Gaunt, or Ghent, who was one of the sons of Edward III. From

this latter union came Henry of Richmond, as he was known, who

disputed the crown with Richard III. and made his claim good

on Bosworth Field, where the hated Richard was killed. Henry's

pretensions were based on the royal descent of his

mother--derived, however, through John of Gaunt's mistress--

and the dynasty which he founded was closely related in origin

to the Lancastrian line. Henry of Richmond strengthened his

hold upon the crown, though not his title to it, by marrying

Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV., thus joining the white rose

to the red. He ascended the throne as Henry VII., A. D. 1485;

was succeeded by his son, Henry VIII., in 1509, and the latter

by his three children, in order as follows: Edward VI., 1547;

Mary, 1553; Elizabeth, 1558. The Tudor family became extinct

on the death of Queen Elizabeth, in 1603. "They [the Tudors]

reigned in England, without a successful rising against them,

for upwards of a hundred years; but not more by a studied

avoidance of what might so provoke the country, than by the

most resolute repression of every effort, on the part of what

remained of the peerage and great families, to make head

against the throne. They gave free indulgence to their tyranny

only within the circle of the court, while they unceasingly

watched and conciliated the temper of the people. The work

they had to do, and which by more scrupulous means was not

possible to be done, was one of paramount necessity; the

dynasty uninterruptedly endured for only so long as was

requisite to its thorough completion; and to each individual

sovereign the particular task might seem to have been

specially assigned. It was Henry's to spurn, renounce and

utterly cast off, the Pope's authority, without too suddenly

revolting the people's usages and habits; to arrive at blessed

results by ways that a better man might have held to be

accursed; during the momentous change in progress to keep in

necessary check both the parties it affected; to persecute

with an equal hand the Romanist and the Lutheran; to send the

Protestant to the stake for resisting Popery, and the Roman

Catholic to the scaffold for not admitting himself to be Pope;

while he meantime plundered the monasteries, hunted down and

rooted out the priests, alienated the abbey lands, and glutted

himself and his creatures with that enormous spoil. It was

Edward's to become the ready and undoubting instrument of

Cranmer's design, and, with all the inexperience and more than

the obstinacy of youth, so to force upon the people his

compromise of doctrine and observance, as to render possible,

even perhaps unavoidable, his elder sister's reign. It was

Mary's to undo the effect of that precipitate eagerness of the

Reformers, by lighting the fires of Smithfield; and

opportunely to arrest the waverers from Protestantism, by

exhibiting in their excess the very worst vices, the cruel

bigotry, the hateful intolerance, the spiritual slavery, of

Rome. It was Elizabeth's finally and forever to uproot that

slavery from amongst us, to champion all over the world a new

and nobler faith, and immovably to establish in England the

Protestant religion."

J. Forster,

Historical and Biographical Essays,

pages 221-222.

ALSO IN:

S. R. Gardiner and J. B. Mullinger,

Introduction to the Study of English History,

chapter 6.

C. E. Moberly,

The Early Tudors.

{824}

ENGLAND: A. D. 1487-1497.

The Rebellions of Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck.

Although Henry VII., soon after he attained the throne,

married Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV., and thus

united the two rival houses, the Yorkists were discontented

with his rule. "With the help of Margaret of Burgundy, Edward

IV. 's sister, and James IV. of Scotland, they actually set up

two impostors, one after the other, to claim the throne. There

was a real heir of the House of York still alive--young

Edward, Earl of Warwick [son of the Duke of Clarence, brother

to Edward IV.],  ... and Henry had taken the precaution to

keep him in the Tower. But in 1487 a sham Earl of Warwick

appeared in Ireland, and being supported by the Earl of

Kildare, was actually crowned in Dublin Cathedral. Henry soon

put down the imposture by showing the real earl to the people

of London, and defeating the army of the pretended earl at

Stoke, near Newark, June, 1487. He proved to be a lad named

Lambert Simnel, the son of a joiner at Oxford, and he became a

scullion in the king's kitchen." In 1492 another pretender of

like character was brought forward. "A young man, called

Perkin Warbeck, who proved afterwards to be a native of

Tournay, pretended that he was Richard, Duke of York, the

younger of the two little princes in the Tower, and that he

had escaped when his brother Edward V. was murdered. He

persuaded the king of France and Margaret of Burgundy to

acknowledge him, and was not only received at the foreign

courts, but, after failing in Ireland, he went to Scotland,

where James IV. married him to his own cousin Catharine

Gordon, and helped him to invade England in 1496. The invasion

was defeated however, by the Earl of Surrey, and then Perkin

went back to Ireland, where the people had revolted against

the heavy taxes. There he raised an army and marched to

Exeter, but meeting the king's troops at Taunton, he lost

courage, and fled to the Abbey of Beaulieu, where he was taken

prisoner, and sent to the Tower in 1497." In 1501 both Perkin

Warbeck and the young Earl of Warwick were executed.

A. B. Buckley,

History of England for Beginners,

chapter 13.

ALSO IN:

J. Gairdner, Story of Perkin Warbeck

(appendix to Life of Richard III.).

C. M, Yonge,

Cameos from English History,

3d series, chapters 21 and 24.

J. Gairdner,

Henry VII.,

chapters 4 and 7.

ENGLAND: 15th-16th Centuries.

The Renaissance.

Life in "Merry England."

Preludes to the Elizabethan Age of literature.

"Toward the close of the fifteenth century ... commerce and

the woollen trade made a sudden advance, and such an enormous

one that corn-fields were changed into pasture-lands, 'whereby

the inhabitants of the said town (Manchester) have gotten and

come into riches and wealthy livings,' so that in 1553, 40,000

pieces of cloth were exported in English ships. It was already

the England which we see to-day, a land of meadows, green,

intersected by hedgerows, crowded with cattle, abounding in

ships, a manufacturing, opulent land, with a people of

beef-eating toilers, who enrich it while they enrich

themselves. They improved agriculture to such an extent, that

in half a century the produce of an acre was doubled. They

grew so rich, that at the beginning of the reign of Charles I.

the Commons represented three times the wealth of the Upper

House. The ruin of Antwerp by the Duke of Parma sent to

England 'the third part of the merchants and manufacturers,

who made silk, damask, stockings, taffetas, and serges.'  The

defeat of the Armada and the decadence of Spain opened the

seas to their merchants. The toiling hive, who would dare,

attempt, explore, act in unison, and always with profit, was

about to reap its advantages and set out on its voyages,

buzzing over the universe. At the base and on the summit of

society, in all ranks of life, in all grades of human

condition, this new welfare became visible. ... It is not when

all is good, but when all is better, that they see the bright

side of life, and are tempted to make a holiday of it. This is

why at this period they did make a holiday of it, a splendid

show, so like a picture that it fostered painting in Italy, so

like a representation, that it produced the drama in England.

Now that the battle-axe and sword of the civil wars had beaten

down the independent nobility, and the abolition of the law of

maintenance had destroyed the petty royalty of each great

feudal baron, the lords quitted their sombre castles,

battlemented fortresses, surrounded by stagnant water, pierced

with narrow windows, a sort of stone breast-plates of no use

but to preserve the life of their masters. They flock into new

palaces, with vaulted roofs and turrets, covered with

fantastic and manifold ornaments, adorned with terraces and

vast staircases, with gardens, fountains, statues, such as

were the palaces of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, half Gothic and

half Italian, whose convenience, grandeur, and beauty

announced already habits of society and the taste for

pleasure. They came to court and abandoned their old manners;

the four meals which scarcely sufficed their former voracity

were reduced to two; gentlemen soon became refined, placing

their glory in the elegance and singularity of their

amusements and their clothes. ... To vent the feelings, to

satisfy the heart and eyes, to set free boldly on all the

roads of existence the pack of appetites and instincts, this

was the craving which the manners of the time betrayed. It was

'merry England,' as they called it then. It was not yet stern

and constrained. It expanded widely, freely, and rejoiced to

find itself so expanded. No longer at court only was the drama

found but in the village. Strolling companies betook

themselves thither, and the country folk supplied any

deficiencies when necessary. Shakspeare saw, before he

depicted them, stupid fellows, carpenters, joiners,

bellow-menders, play Pyramus and Thisbe, represent the lion

roaring as gently as possible, and the wall, by stretching out

their hands. Every holiday was a pageant, in which

townspeople, workmen, and children bore their parts. ... A few

sectarians, chiefly in the towns and of the people, clung

gloomily to the Bible. But the court and the men of the world

sought their teachers and their heroes from pagan Greece and

Rome. About 1490 they began to read the classics; one after

the other they translated them; it was soon the fashion to

read them in the original. Elizabeth, Jane Grey, the Duchess

of Norfolk, the Countess of Arundel, many other ladies, were

conversant with Plato, Xenophon, and Cicero in the original,

and appreciated them. Gradually, by an insensible change, men

were raised to the level of the great and healthy minds who

had freely handled ideas of all kinds fifteen centuries ago.

They comprehended not only their language, but their thought;

they did not repeat lessons from, but held conversations with

them; they were their equals, and found in them intellects as

manly as their own. ...

{825}

Across the train of hooded school men and sordid cavillers the

two adult and thinking ages were united, and the moderns,

silencing the infantine or snuffling voices of the middle-age,

condescended only to converse with the noble ancients. They

accepted their gods, at least they understand them, and keep

them by their side. In poems, festivals, tapestries, almost

all ceremonies they appear, not restored by pedantry merely,

but kept alive by sympathy, and glorified by the arts of an

age as flourishing and almost as profound as that of their

earliest birth. After the terrible night of the middle-age,

and the dolorous legends of spirits and the damned, it was a

delight to see again Olympus shining upon us from Greece; its

heroic and beautiful deities once more ravishing the heart of

men, they raised and instructed this young world by speaking

to it the language of passion and genius; and the age of

strong deeds, free sensuality, bold invention, had only to

follow its own bent, in order to discover in them the eternal

promoters of liberty and beauty. Nearer still was another

paganism, that of Italy; the more seductive because more

modern, and because it circulates fresh sap in an ancient

stock; the more attractive, because more sensuous and present,

with its worship of force and genius, of pleasure and

voluptuousness. ... At that time Italy clearly led in every

thing, and civilisation was to be drawn thence as from its

spring. What is this civilisation which is thus imposed on the

whole of Europe, whence every science and every elegance

comes, whose laws are obeyed in every court, in which Surrey,

Sidney, Spenser, Shakspeare sought their models and their

materials? It was pagan in its elements and its birth; in its

language, which is but slightly different from Latin; in its

Latin traditions and recollections, which no gap has come to

interrupt; in its constitution, whose old municipal life first

led and absorbed the feudal life; in the genius of its race,

in which energy and enjoyment always abounded."

H. A. Taine,

History of English Literature,

book 2, chapter 1 (volume 1).

"The intellectual movement, to which we give the name of

Renaissance, expressed itself in England mainly through the

Drama. Other races in that era of quickened activity, when

modern man regained the consciousness of his own strength and

goodliness after centuries of mental stagnation and social

depression, threw their energies into the plastic arts and

scholarship. The English found a similar outlet for their

pent-up forces in the Drama. The arts and literature of Greece

and Rome had been revealed by Italy to Europe. Humanism had

placed the present once more in a vital relation to the past.

The navies of Portugal and Spain had discovered new continents

beyond the ocean; the merchants of Venice and Genoa had

explored the farthest East. Copernicus had revolutionised

astronomy, and the telescope was revealing fresh worlds beyond

the sun. The Bible had been rescued from the mortmain of the

Church; scholars studied it in the language of its authors,

and the people read it in their own tongue. In this rapid

development of art, literature, science, and discovery, the

English had hitherto taken but little part. But they were

ready to reap what other men had sown. Unfatigued by the

labours of the pioneer, unsophisticated by the pedantries and

sophistries of the schools, in the freshness of their youth

and vigour, they surveyed the world unfolded to them. For more

than half a century they freely enjoyed the splendour of this

spectacle, until the struggle for political and religious

liberty replunged them in the hard realities of life. During

that eventful period of spiritual disengagement from absorbing

cares, the race was fully conscious of its national

importance. It had shaken off the shackles of oppressive

feudalism, the trammels of ecclesiastical tyranny. It had not

yet passed under the Puritan yoke, or felt the encroachments

of despotic monarchy. It was justly proud of the Virgin Queen,

with whose idealised personality the people identified their

newly acquired sense of greatness. ... What in those fifty

years they saw with the clairvoyant eyes of artists, the poets

wrote. And what they wrote, remains imperishable. It is the

portrait of their age, the portrait of an age in which

humanity stood self-revealed, a miracle and marvel to its own

admiring curiosity. England was in a state of transition when

the Drama came to perfection. That was one of those rare

periods when the past and the future are both coloured by

imagination, and both shed a glory on the present. The

medieval order was in dissolution; the modern order was in

process of formation. Yet the old state of things had not

faded from memory and usage; the new had not assumed despotic

sway. Men stood then, as it were, between two dreams--a dream

of the past, thronged with sinister and splendid

reminiscences; a dream of the future, bright with unlimited

aspirations and indefinite hopes. Neither the retreating

forces of the Middle Ages nor the advancing forces of the

modern era pressed upon them with the iron weight of

actuality. The brutalities of feudalism had been softened; but

the chivalrous sentiment remained to inspire the Surreys and

the Sidneys of a milder epoch. ... What distinguished the

English at this epoch from the nations of the South was not

refinement of manners, sobriety, or self-control. On the

contrary they retained an unenviable character for more than

common savagery. ... Erasmus describes the filth of their

houses, and the sicknesses engendered in their cities by bad

ventilation. What rendered the people superior to Italians and

Spaniards was the firmness of their moral fibre, the sweetness

of their humanity, a more masculine temper, less vitiated

instincts and sophisticated intellects, a law-abiding and

religious conscience, contempt for treachery and baseness,

intolerance of political or ecclesiastical despotism combined

with fervent love of home and country. They were coarse, but

not vicious; pleasure-loving, but not licentious; violent, but

not cruel; luxurious but not effeminate. Machiavelli was a

name of loathing to them. Sidney, Essex, Raleigh, More, and

Drake were popular heroes; and whatever may be thought of

these men, they certainly counted no Marquis of Pescara, no

Duke of Valentino, no Malatesta Baglioni, no Cosimo de' Medici

among them. The Southern European type betrayed itself but

faintly in politicians like Richard Cromwell and Robert

Dudley. . . . Affectations of foreign vices were only a

varnish on the surface of society. The core of the nation

remained sound and wholesome. Nor was the culture which the

English borrowed from less unsophisticated nations, more than

superficial. The incidents of Court gossip show how savage was

the life beneath.

{826}

Queen Elizabeth spat, in the presence of her nobles, at a

gentleman who had displeased her; struck Essex on the cheek;

drove Burleigh blubbering from her apartment. Laws in merry

England were executed with uncompromising severity. Every

township had its gallows; every village its stocks,

whipping-post and pillory. Here and there, heretics were

burned upon the market-place; and the block upon Tower Hill

was seldom dry. ... Men and women who read Plato, or discussed

the elegancies of Petrarch, suffered brutal practical jokes,

relished the obscenities of jesters, used the grossest

language of the people. Carrying farms and acres on their

backs in the shape of costly silks and laces, they lay upon

rushes filthy with the vomit of old banquets. Glittering in

suits of gilt and jewelled mail, they jostled with

town-porters in the stench of the bear-gardens, or the bloody

bull-pit. The church itself was not respected. The nave of old

S. Paul's became a rendezvous for thieves and prostitutes. ...

It is difficult, even by noting an infinity of such

characteristics, to paint the many-coloured incongruities of

England at that epoch. Yet in the midst of this confusion rose

cavaliers like Sidney, philosophers like Bacon, poets like

Spenser; men in whom all that is pure, elevated, subtle,

tender, strong, wise, delicate and learned in our modern

civilisation displayed itself. And the masses of the people

were still in harmony with these high strains. They formed the

audience of Shakspere. They wept for Desdemona, adored Imogen,

listened with Jessica to music in the moon-light at Belmont,

wandered with Rosalind through woodland glades of Arden. Such

was the society of which our theatre became the mirror."

J. A. Symonds,

Shakspere's Predecessors in the English Drama,

chapter 2, section 1, 2, and 5.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1497.

Cabot's discovery of the North American Continent.

See AMERICA: A. D. 1497.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1498.

Voyage and discoveries of Sebastian Cabot.

Ground of English claims in the New World.

See AMERICA: A. D. 1498.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1502.

The marriage which brought the Stuarts to the English throne.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1502.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1509.

The character and reign of Henry VII.

"As a king, Bacon tells us that he was 'a wonder for wise

men.' Few indeed were the councillors that shared his

confidence, but the wise men, competent to form an estimate of

his statesmanship, had but one opinion of his consummate

wisdom. Foreigners were greatly struck with the success that

attended his policy. Ambassadors were astonished at the

intimate knowledge he displayed of the affairs of their own

countries. From the most unpropitious beginnings, a proscribed

man and an exile, he had won his way in evil times to a throne

beset with dangers; he had pacified his own country, cherished

commerce, formed strong alliances over Europe, and made his

personal influence felt by the rulers of France, Spain, Italy,

and the Netherlands as that of a man who could turn the scale

in matters of the highest importance to their own domestic

welfare. ... From first to last his policy was essentially his

own; for though he knew well how to choose the ablest

councillors, he asked or took their advice only to such an

extent as he himself deemed expedient. ... No one can

understand his reign, or that of his son, or, we might add, of

his granddaughter Queen Elizabeth, without appreciating the

fact that, however well served with councillors, the sovereign

was in those days always his own Prime Minister. ... Even the

legislation of the reign must be regarded as in large measure

due to Henry himself. We have no means, it is true, of knowing

how much of it originated in his own mind; but that it was all

discussed with him in Council and approved before it was

passed we have every reason to believe. For he never appears

to have put the royal veto upon any Bill, as constitutional

usage both before and after his days allowed. He gave his

assent to all the enactments sent up to him for approval,

though he sometimes added to them provisos of his own. And

Bacon, who knew the traditions of those times, distinctly

attributes the good legislation of his days to the king

himself. 'In that part, both of justice and policy, which is

the most durable part, and cut, as it were, in brass or

marble, the making of good laws, he did excel.' This

statement, with but slight variations in the wording, appears

again and again throughout the History; and elsewhere it is

said that he was the best lawgiver to this nation after Edward

I. ... The parliaments, indeed, that Henry summoned were only

seven in number, and seldom did anyone of them last over a

year, so that during a reign of nearly twenty-four years many

years passed away without a Parliament at all. But even in

those scanty sittings many Acts were passed to meet evils that

were general subjects of complaint. ... He could scarcely be

called a learned man, yet he was a lover of learning, and gave

his children an excellent education. His Court was open to

scholars. ... He was certainly religious after the fashion of

his day. ... His religious foundations and bequests perhaps do

not necessarily imply anything more than conventional feeling.

But we must not overlook the curious circumstance that he once

argued with a heretic at the stake at Canterbury and got him

to renounce his heresy. It is melancholy to add that he did

not thereupon release him from the punishment to which he had

been sentenced; but the fact seems to show that he was afraid

of encouraging insincere conversions by such leniency. During

the last two or three years of the 15th century there was a

good deal of procedure against heretics, but on the whole, we

are told, rather by penances than by fire. Henry had no desire

to see the old foundations of the faith disturbed. His zeal

for the Church was recognised by no less than three Popes in

his time, who each sent him a sword and a cap of maintenance.

... To commerce and adventure he was always a good friend. By

his encouragement Sebastian Cabot sailed from Bristol and

discovered Newfoundland--The New Isle, as it at first was

called. Four years earlier Columbus had first set foot on the

great western continent, and had not his brother been taken by

pirates at sea, it is supposed that he too might have made his

great discovery under Henry's patronage."

James Gairdner,

Henry the Seventh,

chapter 13.

ALSO IN:

Lord Bacon,

History of the Reign of King Henry VII.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1509,

Accession of King Henry VIII.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1151-1513.

Enlisted In the Holy League of Pope Julius II. against France.

See ITALY: A. D. 1510-1513.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1513.

Henry's invasion of France.

The victory of the Battle of the Spurs.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1513-1515.

{827}

ENGLAND: A. D. 1513-1529.

The ministry of Cardinal Wolsey.

From 1513 to 1529, Thomas Wolsey, who became Archbishop of

York in 1514, and Cardinal in 1515, was the minister who

guided the policy of Henry VIII., so far as that head-strong

and absolute monarch could be guided at all. "England was

going through a crisis, politically, socially, and

intellectually, when Wolsey undertook the management of

affairs. ... We must regret that he put foreign policy in the

first place, and reserved his constructive measures for

domestic affairs. ... Yet even here we may doubt if the

measures of the English Reformation would have been possible

if Wolsey's mind had not inspired the king and the nation with

a heightened consciousness of England's power and dignity.

Wolsey's diplomacy at least tore away all illusions about Pope

and Emperor, and the opinion of Europe, and taught Henry VIII.

the measure of his own strength. It was impossible that

Wolsey's powerful hand should not leave its impression upon

everything which it touched. If Henry VIII. inherited a strong

monarchy, Wolsey made the basis of monarchical power still

stronger. ... Wolsey saw in the royal power the only possible

means of holding England together and guiding it through the

dangers of impending change. ... Wolsey was in no sense a

constitutional minister, nor did he pay much heed to

constitutional forms. Parliament was only summoned once during

the time that he was in office, and then he tried to browbeat

Parliament and set aside its privileges. In his view the only

function of Parliament was to grant money for the king's

needs. The king should say how much he needed, and Parliament

ought only to advise how this sum might be most conveniently

raised. ... He was unwise in his attempt to force the king's

will upon Parliament as an unchangeable law of its action.

Henry VIII. looked and learned from Wolsey's failure, and when

he took the management of Parliament into his own hands he

showed himself a consummate master of that craft. ... He was

so skilful that Parliament at last gave him even the power

over the purse, and Henry, without raising a murmur, imposed

taxes which Wolsey would not have dared to suggest. ... Where

Wolsey would have made the Crown independent of Parliament,

Henry VIII. reduced Parliament to be a willing instrument of

the royal will. ... Henry ... clothed his despotism with the

appearance of paternal solicitude. He made the people think

that he lived for them, and that their interests were his,

whereas Wolsey endeavoured to convince the people that the

king alone could guard their interests, and that their only

course was to put entire confidence in him. Henry saw that men

were easier to cajole than to convince. ... In spite of the

disadvantage of a royal education, Henry was a more thorough

Englishman than Wolsey, though Wolsey sprang from the people.

It was Wolsey's teaching, however, that prepared Henry for his

task. The king who could use a minister like Wolsey and then

throw him away when he was no longer useful, felt that there

was no limitation to his self-sufficiency. ... For politics in

the largest sense, comprising all the relations of the nation

at home and abroad, Wolsey had a capacity which amounted to

genius, and it is doubtful if this can be said of any other

Englishman. ... Taking England as he found her, he aimed at

developing all her latent possibilities, and leading Europe to

follow in her train. ... He made England for a time the centre

of European politics, and gave her an influence far higher

than she could claim on material grounds. ... He was indeed a

political artist, who worked with a free hand and a certain

touch.. ... He was, though he knew it not, fitted to serve

England, but not to serve the English king. He had the aims of

a national statesman, not of a royal servant. Wolsey's

misfortune was that his lot was cast on days when the career

of a statesman was not distinct from that of a royal servant."

M. Creighton,

Cardinal Wolsey,

chapters 8 and 11.

ALSO IN:

J. S. Brewer,

The Reign of Henry VIII.

J. A. Froude,

History of  England from the Fall of Wolsey,

chapters 1-2.

G. Cavendish,

Life of Wolsey.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1514.

Marriage of the king's sister with Louis XII. of France.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1513-1515.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1516-1517.

Intrigues against France.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1516-1517.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1519.

Candidacy of Henry VIII. for the imperial crown.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1519.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1520-1521.

Rivalry of the Emperor and the French King

for the English alliance.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1520-1523.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1525.

The king changes sides in European politics and breaks his

alliance with the Emperor.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1525-1526.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1527.

New alliance with France and Venice against Charles V.

Formal renunciation of the claim of the English kings to the

crown of France.

See ITALY: A. D. 1527-1529.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1527-1534.

Henry VIII. and the Divorce question.

The rupture with Rome.

Henry VIII. owed his crown to the early death of his brother

Arthur, whose widow, Catharine of Aragon, the daughter of

Ferdinand, and consequently the aunt of Charles V. [emperor],

Henry was enabled to marry through a dispensation obtained by

Henry VII. from Pope Julius II.,--marriage with the wife of a

deceased brother being forbidden by the laws of the Church.

Henry was in his twelfth year when the marriage was concluded,

but it was not consummated until the death of his father. ...

The question of Henry's divorce from Catharine soon became a

subject of discussion, and the effort to procure the annulling

of the marriage from the pope was prosecuted for a number of

years. Henry professed, and perhaps with sincerity, that he

had long been troubled with doubts of the validity of the

marriage, as being contrary to the divine law, and therefore

not within the limit of the pope's dispensing power. The death

of a number of his children, leaving only a single daughter,

Mary, had been interpreted by some as a mark of the

displeasure of God. At the same time the English people, in

the fresh recollection of the long dynastic struggle, were

anxious on account of the lack of a male heir to the throne.

On the queen's side it was asserted that it was competent for

the pope to authorize a marriage with a brother's widow, and

that no doubt could possibly exist in the present case, since,

according to her testimony, her marriage with Arthur had never

been completed. The eagerness of Henry to procure the divorce

increased with his growing passion for Anne Boleyn. The

negotiations with Rome dragged slowly on. Catharine was six

years older than himself, and had lost her charms.

{828}

He was enamored of this young English girl, fresh from the

court of France. He resolved to break the marriage bond with

the Spanish princess who had been his faithful wife for nearly

twenty years. It was not without reason that the king became

more and more incensed at the dilatory and vacillating course

of the pope. ... Henry determined to lay the question of the

validity of his marriage before the universities of Europe,

and this he did, making a free use of bribery abroad and of

menaces at home. Meantime, he took measures to cripple the

authority of the pope and of the clergy in England. In these

proceedings he was sustained by a popular feeling, the growth

of centuries, against foreign ecclesiastical interference and

clerical control in civil affairs. The fall of Wolsey was the

effect of his failure to procure the divorce, and of the

enmity of Anne Boleyn and her family. ... In order to convict

of treason this minister, whom he had raised to the highest

pinnacle of power, the king did not scruple to avail himself

of the ancient statute of præmunire, which Wolsey was accused

of having transgressed by acting as the pope's legate in

England--it was dishonestly alleged, without the royal

license. Early in 1531 the king charged the whole body of the

clergy with having incurred the penalties of the same law by

submitting to Wolsey in his legatine character. Assembled in

convocation, they were obliged to implore his pardon, and

obtained it only in return for a large sum of money. In their

petition he was styled, in obedience to his dictation, 'The

Protector and Supreme Head of the Church and Clergy of

England,' to which was added, after long debate, at the

suggestion of Archbishop Warham--'as far as is permitted by

the law of Christ.' The Church, prostrate though it was at the

feet of the despotic king, showed some degree of self-respect

in inserting this amendment. Parliament forbade the

introduction of papal bulls into England. The king was

authorized if he saw fit, to withdraw the annats--first-fruits

of benefices--from the pope. Appeals to Rome were forbidden.

The retaliatory measures of Henry did not move the pope to

recede from his position. On or about January 25, 1533, the

king was privately married to Anne Boleyn. ... In 1534 Henry

was conditionally excommunicated by Clement VII. The papal

decree deposing him from the throne, and absolving his

subjects from their allegiance, did not follow until 1538, and

was issued by Paul III. Clement's bull was sent forth on the

23 of March. On the 23 of November Parliament passed the Act

of Supremacy, without the qualifying clause which the clergy

had attached to their vote. The king was, moreover, clothed

with full power and authority to repress and amend all such

errors, heresies, and abuses as 'by any manner of spiritual

authority or jurisdiction ought or may lawfully be reformed.'

Thus a visitatorial function of vast extent was recognized as

belonging to him. In 1532 convocation was driven to engage not

'to enact or promulge or put in execution' any measures

without the royal license, and to promise to change or to

abrogate any of the 'provincial constitutions' which he should

judge inconsistent with his prerogative. The clergy were thus

stripped of all power to make laws. A mixed commission, which

Parliament ordained for the revision of the whole canon law,

was not appointed in this reign. The dissolution of the king's

marriage thus dissolved the union of England with the papacy."

G. P. Fisher,

History of the Christian Church,

period 8, chapter 6.

ALSO IN:

J. S. Brewer,

The Reign of Henry VIII.,

volume 2, chapters 27-35.

J. A. Froude,

History of England,

volume 1, chapter 2.

S. H. Burke,

Historical Portraits of the Tudor Dynasty,

volume 1, chapters 8-25.

J. Lingard,

History of England,

volume 6, chapter 3.

T. E. Bridgett,

Life and Writings of Sir T. More.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1529-1535.

The execution of Sir Thomas More.

On the 25th of October, 1529, the king, by delivering the

great seal to Sir Thomas More, constituted him Lord

Chancellor. In making this appointment, Henry "hoped to

dispose his chancellor to lend his authority to the projects

of divorce and second marriage, which now agitated the king's

mind, and were the main objects of his policy. ... To pursue

this subject through the long negotiations and discussions

which it occasioned during six years, would be to lead us far

from the life of Sir Thomas More. ... All these proceedings

terminated in the sentence of nullity in the case of Henry's

marriage with Catherine, pronounced by Cranmer, the espousal

of Anne Boleyn by the king, and the rejection of the papal

jurisdiction by the kingdom, which still, however, adhered to

the doctrines of the Roman catholic church. The situation of

More during a great part of these memorable events was

embarrassing. The great offices to which he was raised by the

king, the personal favour hitherto constantly shown to him,

and the natural tendency of his gentle and quiet disposition,

combined to disincline him to resistance against the wishes of

his friendly master. On the other hand, his growing dread and

horror of heresy, with its train of disorders; his belief that

universal anarchy would be the inevitable result of religious

dissension, and the operation of seven years' controversy for

the Catholic church, in heating his mind on all subjects

involving the extent of her authority, made him recoil from

designs which were visibly tending towards disunion with the

Roman pontiff. ... Henry used every means of procuring an

opinion favourable to his wishes from his chancellor, who

excused himself as unmeet for such matters, having never

professed the study of divinity. ... But when the progress

towards the marriage was so far advanced that he saw how soon

the active co-operation of a chancellor must be required, he

made suit to 'his singular dear friend,' the duke of Norfolk,

to procure his discharge from this office. The duke, often

solicited by More, then obtained, by importunate suit, a clear

discharge for the chancellor. ... The king directed Norfolk,

when he installed his successor, to declare publicly, that his

majesty had with pain yielded to the prayers of sir Thomas

More, by the removal of such a magistrate. .... It must be

owned that Henry felt the weight of this great man's opinion,

and tried every possible means to obtain at least the

appearance of his spontaneous approbation. ... The king ...

sent the archbishop of Canterbury, the chancellor, the duke of

Norfolk, and Cromwell, to attempt the conversion of More.

Audley reminded More of the king's special favour and many

benefits. More admitted them; but modestly added, that his

highness had most graciously declared that on this matter More

should be molested no more.

{829}

When in the end they saw that no persuasion could move him,

they then said, 'that the king's highness had given them in

commandment, if they could by no gentleness win him, in the

king's name with ingratitude to charge him, that never was

servant to his master so villainous, nor subject to his prince

so traitorous as he.'. . . By a tyrannical edict, mis-called a

law, in the same session of 1533-4, it was made high treason,

after the 1st of May, 1534, by writing, print, deed, or act,

to do or to procure, or cause to be done or procured, anything

to the prejudice, slander, disturbance, or derogation of the

king's lawful matrimony with queen Anne. If the same offences

were committed by words, they were only misprision. The same

act enjoined all persons to take an oath to maintain the whole

contents of the statute, and an obstinate refusal to make such

oath was subjected to the penalties of misprision. ... Sir T.

More was summoned to appear before these commissioners at

Lambeth, on Monday the 13th of April, 1534. ... After having

read the statute and the form of the oath, he declared his

readiness to swear that he would maintain and defend the order

of succession to the crown as established by parliament. He

disclaimed all censure of those who had imposed, or on those

who had taken, the oath, but declared it to be impossible that

he should swear to the whole contents of it, without offending

against his own conscience. ... He never more returned to his

house, being committed to the custody of the abbot of

Westminster, in which he continued four days; and at the end

of that time he was conveyed to the Tower on Friday the 17th

of April, 1534. ... On the 6th of May, 1535, almost

immediately after the defeat of every attempt to practise on

his firmness, More was brought to trial at Westminster, and it

will scarcely be doubted, that no such culprit stood at any

European bar for a thousand years. ... It is lamentable that

the records of the proceedings against such a man should be

scanty. We do not certainly know the specific offence of which

he was convicted. ... On Tuesday, the 6th of July (St.

Thomas's eve), 1535, sir Thomas Pope, 'his singular good

friend,' came to him early with a message from the king and

council, to say that he should die before nine o'clock of the

same morning. ... The lieutenant brought him to the scaffold,

which was so weak that it was ready to fall, on which he said,

merrily, 'Master Lieutenant, I pray you see me safe up, and

for my coming down let me shift for myself.' When he laid his

head on the block he desired the executioner to wait till he

had removed his beard, for that had never offended his

highness."

Sir J. Mackintosh,

Sir Thomas More

(Cabinet Cyclopedia:

Eminent British Statesmen, volume 1).

ALSO IN:

S. R. Gardiner,

Historical Biographies,

chapter 3.

T. E. Bridgett,

Life and Writings of Sir Thomas More,

chapters 12-24.

S. H. Burke,

Historical Portraits of the Tudor Dynasty,

volume 1, chapter 29.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1531-1563,

The genesis of the Church of England.

"Henry VIII. attempted to constitute an Anglican Church

differing from the Roman Catholic Church on the point of the

supremacy, and on that point alone. His success in this

attempt was extraordinary. The force of his character, the

singularly favorable situation in which he stood with respect

to foreign powers, the immense wealth which the spoliation of

the ah beys placed at his disposal, and the support of that

class which still halted between two opinions, enabled him to

bid defiance to both the extreme parties, to burn as heretics

those who avowed the tenets of the Reformers, and to hang as

traitors those who owned the authority of the Pope. But

Henry's system died with him. Had his life been prolonged, he

would have found it difficult to maintain a position assailed

with equal fury by all who were zealous either for the new or

for the old opinions. The ministers who held the royal

prerogatives in trust for his infant son could not venture to

persist in so hazardous a policy; nor could Elizabeth venture

to return to it. It was necessary to make a choice. The

government must either submit to Rome, or must obtain the aid

of the Protestants. The government and the Protestants had

only one thing in common, hatred of the Papal power. The

English reformers were eager to go as far as their brethren on

the Continent. They unanimously condemned as Antichristian

numerous dogmas and practices to which Henry had stubbornly

adhered, and which Elizabeth reluctantly abandoned. Many felt

a strong repugnance even to things indifferent which had

formed part of the polity or ritual of the mystical Babylon.

Thus Bishop Hooper, who died manfully at Gloucester for his

religion, long refused to wear the episcopal vestments. Bishop

Ridley, a martyr of still greater renown, pulled down the

ancient altars of his diocese, and ordered the Eucharist to be

administered in the middle of churches, at tables which the

Papists irreverently termed oyster boards. Bishop Jewel

pronounced the clerical garb to be a stage dress, a fool's

coat, a relique of the Amorites, and promised that he would

spare no labour to extirpate such degrading absurdities.

Archbishop Grindal long hesitated about accepting a mitre from

dislike of what he regarded as the mummery of consecration.

Bishop Parkhurst uttered a fervent prayer that the Church of

England would propose to herself the Church of Zurich as the

absolute pattern of a Christian community. Bishop Ponet was of

opinion that the word Bishop should be abandoned to the

Papist, and that the chief officers of the purified church

should be called Superintendents. When it is considered that

none of these prelates belonged to the extreme section of the

Protestant party, it cannot be doubted that, if the general

sense of that party had been followed, the work of reform

would have been carried on as unsparingly in England as in

Scotland. But, as the government needed the support of the

Protestants, so the Protestants needed the protection of the

government. Much was therefore given up on both sides: an

union was effected; and the fruit of that union was the Church

of England."

Lord Macaulay,

History of England,

chapter 1.

"The Reformation in England was, singular amongst the great

religious movements of the sixteenth century. It was the least

heroic of them all--the least swayed by religious passion, or

moulded and governed by spiritual and theological necessities.

From a general point of view, it looks at first little more

than a great political change. The exigencies of royal

passion, and the dubious impulses of statecraft, seem its

moving and really powerful springs. But, regarded more

closely, we recognise a significant train both of religious

and critical forces at work. The lust and avarice of Henry,

the policy of Cromwell, and the vacillations of the leading

clergy, attract prominent notice; but there may be traced

beneath the surface a wide-spread evangelical fervour amongst

the people, and, above all, a genuine spiritual earnestness

and excitement of thought at the universities.

{830}

These higher influences preside at the first birth of the

movement. They are seen in active operation long before the

reforming task was taken up by the Court and the bishops."

J. Tulloch,

Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy

in England in the 17th Century,

volume 1, chapter 2.

"The miserable fate of Anne Boleyn wins our compassion, and

the greatness to which her daughter attained has been in some

degree reflected back upon herself. Had she died a natural

death, and had she not been the mother of Queen Elizabeth, we

should have estimated her character at a very low value

indeed. Protestantism might still, with its usual unhistorical

partizanship, have gilded over her immoralities; but the

Church of England must ever look upon Anne Boleyn with

downcast eyes full of sorrow and shame. By the influence of

her charms, Henry was induced to take those steps which ended

in setting the Church of England free from an uncatholic yoke:

but that such a result should be produced by such an influence

is a fact which must constrain us to think that the land was

guilty of many sins, and that it was these national sins which

prevented better instruments from being raised up for so

righteous an object."

J. H. Blunt,

The Reformation of the Church of England,

pages 197-198.

"Cranmer's work might never have been carried out, there might

have been no English Bible, no Ten Articles or 'Institution,'

no reforming Primers, nor Proclamations against Ceremonies,

had it not been for the tact, boldness and skill of Thomas

Crumwell, who influenced the King more directly and constantly

than Cranmer, and who knew how to make his influence

acceptable by an unprincipled confiscation and an absurd

exaggeration of the royal supremacy. Crumwell knew that in his

master's heart there was a dislike and contempt of the clergy.

... It is probable that Crumwell's policy was simply

irreligious, and only directed towards preserving his

influence with the King; but as the support of the reforming

part of the nation was a useful factor in it, he was thus led

to push forward religious information in conjunction with

Cranmer. It has been before said that purity and

disinterestedness are not to be looked for in all the actors

in the English Reformation. To this it may be added that

neither in the movement itself nor in those who took part in

it is to be found complete consistency. This, indeed, is not

to be wondered at. Men were feeling their way along untrodden

paths, without any very clear perception of the end at which

they were aiming, or any perfect understanding of the

situation. The King had altogether misapprehended the meaning

of his supremacy. A host of divines whose views as to the

distinction between the secular and the spiritual had been

confused by the action of the Popes, helped to mislead him.

The clergy, accustomed to be crushed and humiliated by the

Popes, submitted to be crushed and humiliated by the King; and

as the tide of his autocratic temper ebbed and flowed, yielded

to each change. Hence there was action and reaction throughout

the reign. But in this there were obvious advantages for the

Church. The gradual process accustomed men's thoughts to a

reformation which should not be drastic or iconoclastic, but

rather conservative and deliberate."

G. G, Perry,

History of the Reformation in England,

chapter 5.

"With regard to the Church of England, its foundations rest

upon the rock of Scripture, not upon the character of the King

by whom they were laid. This, however, must be affirmed in

justice to Henry, that mixed as the motives were which first

induced him to disclaim the Pope's authority, in all the

subsequent measures he acted sincerely, knowing the importance

of the work in which he had engaged, and prosecuting it

sedulously and conscientiously, even when most erroneous. That

religion should have had so little influence upon his moral

conduct will not appear strange, if we consider what the

religion was wherein he was trained up;--nor if we look at the

generality of men even now, under circumstances immeasurably

more fortunate than those in which he was placed. Undeniable

proofs remain of the learning, ability, and diligence, with

which he applied himself to the great business of weeding out

superstition, and yet preserving what he believed to be the

essentials of Christianity untouched. This praise (and it is

no light one) is his due: and it is our part to be thankful to

that all-ruling Providence, which rendered even his passions

and his vices subservient to this important end."

R. Southey,

The Book of the Church,

chapter 12.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1535-1539.

The suppression of the Monasteries.

"The enormous, and in a great measure ill-gotten, opulence of

the regular clergy had long since excited jealousy in every

part of Europe. ... A writer much inclined to partiality

towards the monasteries says that they held [in England]

one-fifth part of the kingdom; no insignificant patrimony. ...

As they were in general exempted from episcopal visitation,

and intrusted with the care of their own discipline, such

abuses had gradually prevailed and gained strength by

connivance as we may naturally expect in corporate bodies of

men leading almost of necessity useless and indolent lives,

and in whom very indistinct views of moral obligations were

combined with a great facility of violating them. The vices

that for many ages had been supposed to haunt the monasteries,

had certainly not left their precincts in that of Henry VIII.

Wolsey, as papal legate, at the instigation of Fox, bishop of

Hereford, a favourer of the Reformation, commenced a

visitation of the professed as well as secular clergy in 1523,

in consequence of the general complaint against their manners.

... Full of anxious zeal for promoting education, the noblest

part of his character, he obtained bulls from Rome suppressing

many convents (among which was that of St. Frideswide at

Oxford), in order to erect and endow a new college in that

university, his favourite work, which after his fall was more

completely established by the name of Christ Church. A few

more were afterwards extinguished through his instigation; and

thus the prejudice against interference with this species of

property was somewhat worn off, and men's minds gradually

prepared for the sweeping confiscations of Cromwell [Thomas

Cromwell, who succeeded Wolsey as chief minister of Henry

VIII.]. The king indeed was abundantly willing to replenish

his exchequer by violent means, and to avenge himself on those

who gainsayed his supremacy; but it was this able statesman

who, prompted both by the natural appetite of ministers for

the subjects' money and by a secret partiality towards the

Reformation, devised and

carried on with complete success, if not with the utmost

prudence, a measure of no inconsiderable hazard and

difficulty. ...

{831}

It was necessary, by exposing the gross corruptions of

monasteries, both to intimidate the regular clergy, and to

excite popular indignation against them. It is not to be

doubted that in the visitation of these foundations, under the

direction of Cromwell, as lord vice-gerent of the king's

ecclesiastical supremacy, many things were done in an

arbitrary manner, and much was unfairly represented. Yet the

reports of these visitors are so minute and specific that it

is rather a preposterous degree of incredulity to reject their

testimony whenever it bears hard on the regulars. ... The

dread of these visitors soon induced a number of abbots to

make surrenders to the king; a step of very questionable

legality. But in the next session the smaller convents, whose

revenues were less than £200 a year, were suppressed by act of

parliament, to the number of 376, and their estates vested in

the crown. This summary spoliation led to the great northern

rebellion soon afterwards," headed by Robert Ask, a gentleman

of Yorkshire, and assuming the title of a Pilgrimage of Grace.

H. Hallam,

Constitutional History of England,

chapter 2.

"Far from benefiting the cause of the monastic houses, the

immediate effect of the Pilgrimage of Grace was to bring ruin

on those monasteries which had as yet been spared. For their

complicity or alleged complicity in it, twelve abbots were

hanged, drawn and quartered, and their houses were seized by

the Crown. Every means was employed by a new set of

Commissioners to bring about the surrender of others of the

greater abbeys. The houses were visited, and their pretended

relics and various tricks to encourage the devotion of the

people were exposed. Surrenders went rapidly on during the

years 1537 and 1538, and it became necessary to obtain a new

Act of Parliament to vest the property of the later surrenders

in the Crown. ... Nothing, indeed, can be more tragical than

the way in which the greater abbeys were destroyed on

manufactured charges and for imaginary crimes. These houses

had been described in the first Act of Parliament as 'great

and honourable,' wherein 'religion was right well kept and

observed.' Yet now they were pitilessly destroyed. A revenue

of about £131,607 is computed to have thus come to the Crown,

while the movables are valued at £400,000. How was this vast

sum of money expended?

(1) By the Act for the suppression of the greater monasteries

the King was empowered to erect six new sees, with their deans

and chapters, namely, Westminster, Oxford, Chester,

Gloucester, Bristol and Peterborough. ...

(2) Some monasteries were turned into collegiate churches, and

many of the abbey churches ... were assigned as parish

churches.

(3) Some grammar schools were erected.

(4) A considerable sum is said to have been spent in making

roads and in fortifying the coasts of the Channel.

(5) But by far the greater part of the monastic property

passed into the hands of the nobility and gentry, either by

purchase at very easy rates, or by direct gift from the Crown.

...

The monks and nuns ejected from the monasteries had small

pensions assigned to them, which are said to have been

regularly paid; but to many of them the sudden return into a

world with which they had become utterly unacquainted, and in

which they had no part to play, was a terrible hardship, ...

greatly increased by the Six Article Law, which ... made the

marriage of the secularized 'religious' illegal under heavy

penalties."

G. G. Perry,

History of the Reformation in England,

chapter 4.

"The religious bodies, instead of uniting in their common

defence, seem to have awaited singly their fate with the

apathy of despair. A few houses only, through the agency of

their friends, sought to purchase the royal favour with offers

of money and lands; but the rapacity of the king refused to

accept a part when the whole was at his mercy."

J. Lingard,

History of England,

volume 6, chapter 4.

Some of the social results of the suppression "may be summed

up in a few words. The creation of a large class of poor to

whose poverty was attached the stigma of crime; the division

of class from class, the rich mounting up to place and power,

the poor sinking to lower depths; destruction of custom as a

check upon the exactions of landlords; the loss by the poor of

those foundations at schools and universities intended for

their children, and the passing away of ecclesiastical tithes

into the hands of lay owners."

F. A. Gasquet,

Henry VIII. and the English Monasteries,

volume 2, page 523.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1536-1543.

Trial and execution of Anne Boleyn.

Her successors, the later wives of Henry VIII.

Anne Boleyn had been secretly married to the king in January,

1533, and had been crowned on Whitsunday of that year. "The

princess Elizabeth, the only surviving child, was born on the

7th of September following. ... The death of Catherine, which

happened at Kimbolton on the 29th of January, 1536, seemed to

leave queen Anne in undisturbed possession of her splendid

seat." But the fickle king had now "cast his affections on

Jane Seymour, the daughter of Sir John Seymour, a young lady

then of the Queen's bed-chamber, as Anne herself had been in

that of Catherine." Having lost her charms in the eyes of the

lustful despot who had wedded her, her influence was gone--

and her safety. Charges were soon brought against the

unfortunate woman, a commission (her own father included in

it) appointed to inquire into her alleged misdeeds, and "on

the 10th of May an indictment for high treason was found by

the grand jury of Westminster against the Lady Anne, Queen of

England; Henry Norris, groom of the stole; Sir Francis Weston

and William Brereton, gentlemen of the privy chamber; and Mark

Smeaton, a performer on musical instruments, and a person 'of

low degree,' promoted to be a groom of the chamber for his

skill in the fine art which he professed. It charges the queen

with having, by all sorts of bribes, gifts, caresses, and

impure blandishments, which are described with unblushing

coarseness in the barbarous Latinity of the indictment,

allured these members of the royal household into a course of

criminal connection with her, which had been carried on for

three years. It included also George Boleyn viscount Rochford,

the brother of Anne, as enticed by the same lures and snares

with the rest of the accused, so as to have become the

accomplice of his sister, by sharing her treachery and

infidelity to the king. It is hard to believe that Anne could

have dared to lead a life so unnaturally dissolute, without

such vices being more early and very generally known in a

watchful and adverse court.

{832}

It is still more improbable that she should in every instance

be the seducer. ... Norris, Weston, Brereton, and Smeaton were

tried before a commission of oyer and terminer at Westminster,

on the 12th of May, two days after the bill against them was

found. They all, except Smeaton, firmly denied their guilt to

the last moment. On Smeaton's confession it must be observed

that we know not how it was obtained, how far it extended, or

what were the conditions of it. ... On the 12th of May, the

four commoners were condemned to die. Their sentence was

carried into effect amidst the plaints of the bystanders. ...

On the 15th of May, queen Anne and her brother Rochford were

tried." The place of trial was in the Tower, "which concealed

from the public eye whatever might be wanting in justice."

Condemnation duly followed, and the unhappy queen was executed

May 19, 1536. The king lost little time in wedding Jane

Seymour. "She died in childbed of Edward VI. on the 13th of

October, 1537. The next choice made by or for Henry, who

remained a widower for the period of more than two years," was

the "princess Anne, sister of the duke of Cleves, a

considerable prince on the lower Rhine. ... The pencil of

Holbein was employed to paint this lady for the king, who,

pleased by the execution, gave the flattering artist credit

for a faithful likeness. He met her at Dover, and almost

immediately betrayed his disappointment. Without descending

into disgusting particulars, it is necessary to state that,

though the marriage was solemnised, the king treated the

princess of Cleves as a friend." At length, by common action

of an obsequious parliament and a more obsequious convocation

of the church, the marriage was declared to be annulled, for

reasons not specified. The consent of the repudiated wife was

"insured by a liberal income of £3,000 a year, and she lived

for 16 years in England with the title of princess Anne of

Cleves. ... This annulment once more displayed the triumph of

an English lady over a foreign princess." The lady who now

captivated the brutally amorous monarch was lady Catherine

Howard, niece to the duke of Norfolk, who became queen on the

8th of August, 1540. In the following November, the king

received such information of lady Catherine's dissolute life

before marriage "as immediately caused a rigid inquiry into

her behaviour. ... The confessions of Catherine and of lady

Rochford, upon which they were attainted in parliament, and

executed in the Tower on the 14th of February, are not said to

have been at any time questioned. ... On the 10th of July,

1543, Henry wedded Catherine Parr, the widow of Lord Latimer,

a lady of mature age," who survived him.

Sir J. Mackintosh,

History of England (L. L. C.),

volume 2, chapters 7-8.

ALSO IN:

P. Friedmann,

Ann Boleyn.

H. W. Herbert,

Memoirs of Henry VIII. and his Six Wives.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1539.

The Reformation checked.

The Six Articles.

"Yielding to the pressure of circumstances, he [Henry VIII.]

had allowed the Reformers to go further than he really

approved. The separation from the Church of Rome, the

absorption by the Crown of the powers of the Papacy, the unity

of authority over both Church and State centred in himself, had

been his objects. In doctrinal matters he clung to the Church

of which he had once been the champion. He had gained his

objects because he had the feeling of the nation with him. In

his eagerness he had even countenanced some steps of doctrinal

reform. But circumstances had changed. ... Without detriment

to his position he could follow his natural inclinations. He

listened, therefore, to the advice of the reactionary party,

of which Norfolk was the head. They were full of bitterness

against the upstart Cromwell, and longed to overthrow him as

they had overthrown Wolsey. The first step in their triumph

was the bill of the Six Articles, carried in the Parliament of

1539. These laid down and fenced round with extraordinary

severity the chief points of the Catholic religion at that

time questioned by the Protestants. The bill enacted, first,

'that the natural body and blood of Jesus Christ were present

in the Blessed Sacrament,' and that 'after consecration there

remained no substance of bread and wine, nor any other but the

substance of Christ'; whoever, by word or writing, denied this

article was a heretic, and to be burned. Secondly, the

Communion in both kinds was not necessary, both body and blood

being present in each element; thirdly, priests might not

marry; fourthly, vows of chastity by man or woman ought to be

observed; fifthly, private masses ought to be continued;

sixthly, auricular confession must be retained. Whoever wrote

or spoke against these ... Articles, on the first offence his

property was forfeited; on the second offence he was a felon,

and was put to death. Under this 'whip with six strings' the

kingdom continued for the rest of the reign. The Bishops at

first made wild work with it. Five hundred persons are said to

have been arrested in a fortnight; the king had twice to

interfere and grant pardons. It is believed that only

twenty-eight persons actually suffered death under it."

J. F. Bright,

History of England,

volume 2, page 411.

ALSO IN:

J. H. Blunt,

Reformation of the Church of England,

volume 1, chapter 8-9.

S. H. Burke,

Men and Women of the English Reformation,

volume 2, pages 17-24.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1542-1547.

Alliance with Charles V. against Francis I.

Capture and restoration of Boulogne.

Treaty of Guines.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1532-1547.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1544-1548.

The wooing of Mary Queen of Scots.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1544-1548.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1547.

Accession of King Edward VI.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1547-1553.

The completing of the Reformation.

Henry VIII., dying on the 28th of January, 1547, was succeeded

by his son Edward,--child of Jane Seymour,--then only nine

years old. By the will of his father, the young king (Edward

VI.) was to attain his majority at eighteen, and the

government of his kingdom, in the meantime, was entrusted to a

body of sixteen executors, with a second body of twelve

councillors to assist with their advice. "But the first act of

the executors and counsellors was to depart from the

destination of the late king in a material article. No sooner

were they met, than it was suggested that the government would

lose its dignity for want of some head who might represent the

royal majesty." The suggestion was opposed by none except the

chancellor, Wriothesley,--soon afterwards raised to the

peerage as Earl of Southampton. "It being therefore agreed to

name a protector, the choice fell of course on the Earl of

Hertford [afterwards Duke of Somerset], who, as he was the

king's maternal uncle, was strongly interested in his safety."

{833}

The protector soon manifested an ambition to exercise his

almost royal authority without any constraint, and, having

found means to remove his principal opponent, Southampton,

from the chancellorship, and to send him into disgrace, he

procured a patent from the infant king which gave him

unbounded power. With this power in his hand he speedily

undertook to carry the work of church reform far beyond the

intentions of Henry VIII. "The extensive authority and

imperious character of Henry had retained the partisans of

both religions in subjection; but upon his demise, the hopes

of the Protestants, and the fears of the Catholics began to

revive, and the zeal of these parties produced every where

disputes and animosities, the usual preludes to more fatal

divisions. The protector had long been regarded as a secret

partisan of the reformers; and being now freed from restraint,

he scrupled not to discover his intention of correcting all

abuses in the ancient religion, and of adopting still more of

the Protestant innovations. He took care that all persons

intrusted with the king's education should be attached to the

same principles; and as the young prince discovered a zeal for

every kind of literature, especially the theological, far

beyond his tender years, all men foresaw, in the course of his

reign, the total abolition of the Catholic faith in England;

and they early began to declare themselves in favour of those

tenets which were likely to become in the end entirely

prevalent. After Southhampton's fall, few members of the

council seemed to retain any attachment to the Romish

communion; and most of the counsellors appeared even sanguine

in forwarding the progress of the reformation. The riches

which most of them had acquired from the spoils of the clergy,

induced them to widen the breach between England and Rome; and by

establishing a contrariety of speculative tenets, as well as

of discipline and worship, to render a coalition with the

mother church altogether impracticable. Their rapacity, also,

the chief source of their reforming spirit, was excited by the

prospect of pillaging the secular, as they had already done

the regular clergy; and they knew, that while any share of the

old principles remained, or any regard to the ecclesiastics,

they could never hope to succeed in that enterprise. The

numerous and burdensome superstitions with which the Romish

church was loaded had thrown many of the reformers, by the

spirit of opposition, into an enthusiastic strain of devotion;

and all rites, ceremonies, pomp, order, and extreme

observances were zealously proscribed by them, as hindrances

to their spiritual contemplations, and obstructions to their

immediate converse with heaven."

D. Hume,

History of England,

volume 3, chapter 34.

"'This year' [1547] says a contemporary, 'the Archbishop of

Canterbury [Cranmer] did eat meat openly in Lent in the hall

of Lambeth, the like of which was never seen since England was

a Christian country.' This significant act was followed by a

rapid succession of sweeping changes. The legal prohibitions

of Lollardry were removed; the Six Articles were repealed; a

royal injunction removed all pictures and images from the

churches; priests were permitted to marry; the new communion

which had taken the place of the mass was ordered to be

administered in both kinds, and in the English tongue; an

English Book of Common Prayer, the Liturgy, which with slight

alterations is still used in the Church of England, replaced

the missal and breviary, from which its contents are mainly

drawn; a new catechism embodied the doctrines of Cranmer and

his friends; and a Book of Homilies compiled in the same sense

was appointed to be read in churches. ... The power of

preaching was restricted by the issue of licenses only to the

friends of the Primate. ... The assent of the nobles about the

Court was won by the suppression of chantries and religious

guilds, and by glutting their greed with the last spoils of

the Church. German and Italian mercenaries were introduced to

stamp out the wider popular discontent which broke out in the

East, in the West, and in the Midland counties. ... The rule

of the upstart nobles who formed the Council of Regency became

simply a rule of terror. 'The greater part of the people,' one

of their creatures, Cecil, avowed, 'is not in favour of

defending this cause, but of aiding its adversaries, the

greater part of the nobles who absent themselves from court,

all the bishops save three or four, almost all the judges and

lawyers, almost all the justices of the peace, the priests who

can move their flocks any way; for the whole of the commonalty

is in such a state of irritation that it will easily follow

any stir towards change.' But with their triumph over the

revolt, Cranmer and his colleagues advanced yet more boldly in

the career of innovation. ... The Forty-two Articles of

Religion, which were now [1552] introduced, though since

reduced by omissions to thirty-nine, have remained to this day

the formal standard of doctrine in the English Church."

J. R. Green,

Short History of the English People,

chapter 7, section 1.

ALSO IN:

J. Strype,

Memorials of Cranmer,

book 2.

G. Burnet,

History of the Reformation of Church of England,

volume 2, book 1.

L. Von Ranke,

History of England,

book 2, chapter 6.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1548.

First Act for encouragement of Newfoundland fisheries.

See NEWFOUNDLAND: A. D. 1501-1578.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1553.

The right of succession to the throne,

on the death of Edward VI.

"If Henry VII. be considered as the stock of a new dynasty, it

is clear that on mere principles of hereditary right, the

crown would descend, first, to the issue of Henry VIII.;

secondly, to those of [his elder sister] Margaret Tudor, queen

of Scots; thirdly, to those of [his younger sister] Mary

Tudor, queen of France. The title of Edward was on all

principles equally undisputed; but Mary and Elizabeth might be

considered as excluded by the sentence of nullity, which had

been pronounced in the case of Catharine and in that of Anne

Boleyn, both which sentences had been confirmed in parliament.

They had been expressly pronounced to be illegitimate

children. Their hereditary right of succession seemed thus to

be taken away, and their pretensions rested solely on the

conditional settlement of the crown on them, made by their

father's will, in pursuance of authority granted to him by act

of parliament. After Elizabeth Henry had placed the

descendants of Mary, queen of France, passing by the progeny

of his eldest sister Margaret. Mary of France, by her second

marriage with Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk, had two

daughters,--lady Frances, who wedded Henry Grey, marquis of

Dorset, created duke of Suffolk; and lady Elinor, who espoused

Henry Clifford, earl of Cumberland.

{834}

Henry afterwards settled the crown by his will on the heirs of

these two ladies successively, passing over his nieces

themselves in silence. Northumberland obtained the hand of

lady Jane Grey, the eldest daughter of Grey duke of Suffolk,

by lady Frances Brandon, for lord Guilford Dudley, the

admiral's son. The marriage was solemnised in May, 1553, and

the fatal right of succession claimed by the house of Suffolk

devolved on the excellent and unfortunate lady Jane."

Sir J. Mackintosh,

History of England,

volume 2, chapter 9.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1553.

Accession of Queen Mary.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1553.

The doubtful conflict of religions.

"Great as was the number of those whom conviction or self

interest enlisted under the Protestant banner, it appears

plain that the Reformation moved on with too precipitate a

step for the majority. The new doctrines prevailed in London,

in many large towns, and in the eastern counties. But in the

north and west of England, the body of the people were

strictly Catholics. The clergy, though not very scrupulous

about conforming to the innovations, were generally averse to

most of them. And, in spite of the church lands, I imagine

that most of the nobility, if not the gentry, inclined to the

same persuasion. ... An historian, whose bias was certainly

not unfavourable to Protestantism [Burnet, iii. 190, 196]

confesses that all endeavours were too weak to overcome the

aversion of the people towards reformation, and even intimates

that German troops were sent for from Calais on account of the

bigotry with which the bulk of the nation adhered to the old

superstition. This is somewhat an humiliating admission, that

the protestant faith was imposed upon our ancestors by a

foreign army. ... It is certain that the re-establishment of

popery on Mary's accession must have been acceptable to a

large part, or perhaps to the majority, of the nation."

H. Hallam,

Constitutional History of England,

volume 1, chapter 2.

"Eight weeks and upwards passed between the proclaiming of

Mary queen and the Parliament by her assembled; during which

time two religions were together set on foot, Protestantism

and Popery; the former hoping to be continued, the latter

labouring to be restored. ... No small justling was there

betwixt the zealous promoters of these contrary religions. The

Protestants had possession on their side, and the protection

of the laws lately made by King Edward, and still standing in

free and full force unrepealed. ... The Papists put their

ceremonies in execution, presuming on the queen's private

practice and public countenance. ... Many which were neuters

before, conceiving to which side the queen inclined, would not

expect, but prevent her authority in alteration: so that

superstition generally got ground in the kingdom. Thus it is

in the evening twilight, wherein light and darkness at first

may seem very equally matched, but the latter within little

time doth solely prevail."

T. Fuller,

Church History of Britain,

book 8, section 1, ¶ 5.

ALSO IN:

J. II. Blunt, Reformation of the Church of England,

volume 1; chapters 8-9.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1554.

Wyat's Insurrection.

Queen Mary's marriage with Philip of Spain was opposed with

great bitterness of popular feeling, especially in London and

its neighborhood. Risings were undertaken in Kent, Devonshire,

and the Midland counties, intended for the frustration of the

marriage scheme; but they were ill-planned and soon

suppressed. That in Kent, led by Sir Thomas Wyat, threatened

to be formidable at first, and the Queen's troops retreated

before it. Wyat, however, lost his opportunity for securing

London, by delays, and his followers dispersed. He was taken

prisoner and executed. "Four hundred persons are said to have

suffered for this rebellion."

D. Hume,

History of England,

chapter 36.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1555-1558.

The restoration of Romanism.

The persecution of Protestants by Queen Mary.

"An attempt was made, by authority of King Edward's will, to

set aside both his sisters from the succession, and raise Lady

Jane Grey to the throne, who had lately been married to one of

Northumberland's sons. This was Northumberland's doing; he was

actuated by ambition, and the other members of the government

assented to it, believing, like the late young King, that it

was necessary for the preservation of the Protestant faith.

Cranmer opposed the measure, but yielded. ... But the

principles of succession were in fact well ascertained at that

time, and, what was of more consequence, they were established

in public opinion. Nor could the intended change be supported

on the ground of religion, for popular feeling was decidedly

against the Reformation. Queen Mary obtained possession of her

rightful throne without the loss of a single life, so

completely did the nation acknowledge her claim; and an after

insurrection, rashly planned and worse conducted, served only

to hasten the destruction of the Lady Jane and her husband.

... If any person may be excused for hating the Reformation,

it was Mary. She regarded it as having arisen in this country

from her mother's wrongs, and enabled the King to complete an

iniquitous and cruel divorce. It had exposed her to

inconvenience, and even danger, under her father's reign, to

vexation and restraint under her brother; and, after having

been bastardized in consequence of it, ... an attempt had been

made to deprive her of the inheritance, because she continued

to profess the Roman Catholic faith. ... Had the religion of

the country been settled, she might have proved a good and

beneficent, as well as conscientious, queen. But she delivered

her conscience to the direction of cruel men; and, believing

it her duty to act up to the worst principles of a persecuting

Church, boasted that she was a virgin sent by God to ride and

tame the people of England. ... The people did not wait till

the laws of King Edward were repealed; the Romish doctrines

were preached, and in some places the Romish clergy took

possession of the churches, turned out the incumbents, and

performed mass in jubilant anticipation of their approaching

triumph. What course the new Queen would pursue had never been

doubtful; and as one of her first acts had been to make

Gardiner Chancellor, it was evident that a fiery persecution

was at hand. Many who were obnoxious withdrew in time, some

into Scotland, and more into Switzerland and the Protestant

parts of Germany. Cranmer advised others to fly; but when his

friends entreated him to preserve himself by the like

precaution, he replied, that it was not fitting for him to

desert his post. ... The Protestant Bishops were soon

dispossessed of their sees; the marriages which the Clergy and

Religioners had contracted were declared unlawful, and their

children bastardized.

{835}

The heads of the reformed Clergy, having been brought forth to

hold disputations, for the purpose rather of intimidating than

of convincing them, had been committed to different prisons,

and after these preparatories the fiery process began."

R. Southey,

Book of the Church,

chapter 14.

"The total number of those who suffered in this persecution,

from the martyrdom of Rogers, in February, 1555, to September,

1558, when its last ravages were felt, is variously related,

in a manner sufficiently different to assure us that the

relaters were independent witnesses, who did not borrow from

each other, and yet sufficiently near to attest the general

accuracy of their distinct statements. By Cooper they are

estimated at about 290. According to Burnet they were 284.

Speed calculates them at 274. The most accurate account is

probably that of Lord Burleigh, who, in his treatise called

'The Execution of Justice in England,' reckons the number of

those who died in that reign by imprisonment, torments, famine

and fire, to be near 400, of which those who were burnt alive

amounted to 290. From Burnet's Tables of the separate years,

it is apparent that the persecution reached its full force in

its earliest year."

Sir J. Mackintosh,

History of England,

volume 2, chapter 11.

"Though Pole and Mary could have laid their hands on earl and

baron, knight and gentleman, whose heresy was notorious,

although, in the queen's own guard, there were many who never

listened to a mass, they durst not strike where there was

danger that they would be struck in return. ... They took the

weaver from his loom, the carpenter from his workshop, the

husbandman from his plough; they laid hands on maidens and

boys 'who had never heard of any other religion than that

which they were called on to abjure'; old men tottering into

the grave, and children whose lips could but just lisp the

articles of their creed; and of these they made their

burnt-offerings; with these they crowded their prisons, and

when filth and famine killed them, they flung them out to

rot."

J. A. Froude,

History of England,

chapter 24.

Queen Mary's marriage with Philip of Spain and his arbitrary

disposition, "while it thoroughly alienated the kingdom from

Mary, created a prejudice against the religion which the

Spanish court so steadily favoured. ... Many are said to have

become Protestants under Mary who, at her coming to the

throne, had retained the contrary persuasion."

H. Hallam,

Constitutional History of England,

volume 1, chapter 2.

ALSO IN:

J. Collier,

Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain,

part 2, book 5.

J. Lingard,

History of England,

volume 7, chapter 2-3.

J. Fox,

Book of Martyrs.

P. Heylyn,

Ecclesia Restaurata,

volume 2.

J. Strype,

Memorials of Cranmer,

book 3.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1557-1559.

Involved by the Spanish husband of Queen Mary in war with France.

Loss of Calais.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1547-1559.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1558.

Accession of Queen Elizabeth.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1558-1588.

The Age of Elizabeth:

Recovery of Protestantism.

"The education of Elizabeth, as well as her interest, led her

to favour the reformation; and she remained not long in

suspense with regard to the party which she should embrace.

But though determined in her own mind, she resolved to proceed

by gradual and secure steps, and not to imitate the example of

Mary, in encouraging the bigots of her party to make

immediately a violent invasion on the established religion.

She thought it requisite, however, to discover such symptoms

of her intentions as might give encouragement to the

Protestants, so much depressed by the late violent

persecutions. She immediately recalled all the exiles, and

gave liberty to the prisoners who were confined on account of

religion. ... Elizabeth also proceeded to exert, in favour of

the reformers, some acts of power, which were authorized by

the extent of royal prerogative during that age. Finding that

the Protestant teachers, irritated by persecution, broke out

in a furious attack on the ancient superstition, and that the

Romanists replied with no less zeal and acrimony, she

published a proclamation, by which she inhibited all preaching

without a special licence; and though she dispensed with these

orders in favour of some preachers of her own sect, she took

care that they should be the most calm and moderate of the

party. She also suspended the laws, so far as to order a great

part of the service, the litany, the Lord's prayer, the creed,

and the gospels, to be read in English. And, having first

published injunctions that all churches should conform

themselves to the practice of her own chapel, she forbad the

host to be any more elevated in her presence: an innovation

which, however frivolous it may appear, implied the most

material consequences. These declarations of her intentions,

concurring with preceding suspicions, made the bishops

foresee, with certainty, a revolution in religion. They

therefore refused to officiate at her coronation; and it was

with some difficulty that the Bishop of Carlisle was at last

prevailed on to perform the ceremony. ... Elizabeth, though

she threw out such hints as encouraged the Protestants,

delayed the entire change of religion till the meeting of the

Parliament, which was summoned to assemble. The elections had

gone entirely against the Catholics, who seem not indeed to

have made any great struggle for the superiority; and the

Houses met, in a disposition of gratifying the queen in every

particular which she could desire of them. ... The first bill

brought into Parliament, with a view of trying their

disposition on the head of religion, was that for suppressing

the monasteries lately erected, and for restoring the tenths

and first-fruits to the queen. This point being gained without

much difficulty, a bill was next introduced, annexing the

supremacy to the crown; and though the queen was there

denominated governess, not head, of the church, it conveyed

the same extensive power, which, under the latter title, had

been exercised by her father and brother. ... By this act, the

crown, without the concurrence either of the Parliament or

even of the convocation, was vested with the whole spiritual

power; might repress all heresies, might establish or repeal

all canons, might alter every point of discipline, and might

ordain or abolish any religious rite or ceremony. ... A law

was passed, confirming all the statutes enacted in King

Edward's time with regard to religion; the nomination of

bishops was given to the crown without any election of the

chapters. ... A solemn and public disputation was held during

this session, in presence of Lord Keeper Bacon, between the

divines of the Protestant and those of the Catholic communion.

The champions appointed to defend the religion of the

sovereign were, as in all former instances, entirely

triumphant; and the popish disputants, being pronounced

refractory and obstinate, were even punished by imprisonment.

{836}

Emboldened by this victory, the Protestants ventured on the

last and most important step, and brought into Parliament a

bill for abolishing the mass, and re-establishing the liturgy

of King Edward. Penalties were enacted as well against those

who departed from this mode of worship, as against those who

absented themselves from the church and the sacraments. And

thus, in one session, without any violence, tumult, or

clamour, was the whole system of religion altered, on the very

commencement of a reign, and by the will of a young woman,

whose title to the crown was by many thought liable to great

objections."

D. Hume,

History of England,

chapter 38, pages 375-380 (volume 3).

"Elizabeth ascended the throne much more in the character of a

Protestant champion than her own convictions and inclinations

would have dictated. She was, indeed, the daughter of Ann

Boleyn, whom by this time the Protestants were beginning to

regard as a martyr of the faith; but she was also the child of

Henry VIII., and the heiress of his imperious will. Soon,

however, she found herself Protestant almost in her own

despite. The Papacy, in the first pride of successful

reaction, offered her only the alternative of submission or

excommunication, and she did not for a moment hesitate to

choose the latter. Then commenced that long and close alliance

between Catholicism and domestic treason which is so differently

judged as it is approached from the religious or the political

side. These seminary priests, who in every various disguise

come to England, moving secretly about from manor-house to

manor-house, celebrating the rites of the Church, confirming

the wavering, consoling the dying, winning back the lapsed to

the fold, too well acquainted with Elizabeth's prisons, and

often finding their way to her scaffolds,--what are they but

the intrepid missionaries, the self-devoted heroes, of a

proscribed faith? On the other hand, the Queen is

excommunicate, an evil woman, with whom it is not necessary to

keep faith, to depose whom would be the triumph of the Church,

whose death, however compassed, its occasion: how easy to

weave plots under the cloak of religious intercourse, and to

make the unity of the faith a conspiracy of rebellion! The

next heir to the throne, Mary of Scotland, was a Catholic,

and, as long as she lived, a perpetual centre of domestic and

European intrigue: plot succeeded plot, in which the

traitorous subtlety was all Catholic--the keenness of

discovery, the watchfulness of defence, all Protestant. Then,

too, the shadow of Spanish supremacy began to cast itself

broadly over Europe: the unequal struggle with Holland was

still prolonged: it was known that Philip's dearest wish was

to recover to his empire and the Church the island kingdom

which had once unwillingly accepted his rule. It was thus the

instinct of self-defence which placed Elizabeth at the head of

the Protestant interest in Europe: she sent Philip Sidney to

die at Zutphen: her sailor buccaneers, whether there were

peace at home or not, bit and tore at everything Spanish upon

the southern main: till at last, 1588, Philip gathered up all

his naval strength and hurled the Armada at our shores.

'Afflavit Deus, et dissipati sunt.' The valour of England did

much; the storms of heaven the rest. Mary of Scotland had gone

to her death the year before, and her son had been trained to

hate his mother's faith. There could be no question any more

of the fixed Protestantism of the English people."

C. Beard,

Hibbert Lectures, 1883: The Reformation,

lecture 9.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1558-1598.

The Age of Elizabeth:

The Queen's chief councillors.

"Sir William Cecil, afterwards Lord Burleigh, already

officially experienced during three reigns, though still

young, was the queen's chief adviser from first to last--that

is to say, till he died in 1598. Philip II., who also died in

that year, was thus his exact contemporary; for he mounted the

Spanish throne just when Elizabeth and her minister began

their work together. He was not long in discovering that there

was one man, possessed of the most balanced judgment ever

brought to the head of English affairs, who was capable of

unwinding all his most secret intrigues; and, in fact, the two

arch-enemies, the one in London and the other in Madrid, were

pitted against each other for forty years. Elizabeth had also

the good sense to select the wisest and most learned

ecclesiastic of his day, Matthew Parker, for her Primate and

chief adviser in Church affairs. It should be noted that both

of these sages, as well as the queen herself, had been

Conformists to the Papal obedience under Mary--a position far

from heroic, but not for a moment to be confused with that of

men whose philosophical indifference to the questions which

exercised all the highest minds enabled them to join in the

persecution of Romanists and Anglicans at different times with

a sublime impartiality. ... It was under the advice of Cecil

and Parker that Elizabeth, on coming to the throne, made her

famous settlement or Establishment of religion."

M. Burrows,

Commentaries on the History of England,

book 2, chapter 17.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1558-1603.

The Age of Elizabeth: Parliament.

"The house of Commons, upon a review of Elizabeth's reign, was

very far, on the one hand, from exercising those

constitutional rights which have long since belonged to it, or

even those which by ancient precedent they might have claimed

as their own; yet, on the other hand, was not quite so servile

and submissive an assembly as an artful historian has

represented it. If many of its members were but creatures of

power, ... there was still a considerable party, sometimes

carrying the house along with them, who with patient

resolution and inflexible aim recurred in every session to the

assertion of that one great privilege which their sovereign

contested, the right of parliament to inquire into and suggest

a remedy for every public mischief or danger. It may be

remarked that the ministers, such as Knollys, Hatton, and

Robert Cecil, not only sat among the commons, but took a very

leading part in their discussions; a proof that the influence

of argument could no more be dispensed with than that of

power. This, as I conceive, will never be the case in any

kingdom where the assembly of the estates is quite subservient

to the crown. Nor should we put out of consideration the

manner in which the commons were composed. Sixty-two members

were added at different times by Elizabeth to the

representation; as well from places which had in earlier times

discontinued their franchise, as from those to which it was

first granted; a very large proportion of them petty boroughs,

evidently under the influence of the crown or peerage. The

ministry took much pains with ejections, of which many proofs,

remain.

{837}

The house accordingly was filled with placemen, civilians, and

common lawyers grasping at preferment. The slavish tone of

these persons, as we collect from the minutes of D'Ewes, is

strikingly contrasted by the manliness of independent

gentlemen. And as the house was by no means very fully

attended, the divisions, a few of which are recorded, running

from 200 to 250 in the aggregate, it may be perceived that the

court, whose followers were at hand, would maintain a

formidable influence. But this influence, however pernicious

to the integrity of parliament, is distinguishable from that

exertion of almost absolute prerogative which Hume has assumed

as the sole spring of Elizabeth's government, and would never

be employed till some deficiency of strength was experienced

in the other."

H. Hallam,

Constitutional History of England,

chapter 5.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1558-1603.

The Age of Elizabeth: Literature.

"The age of Elizabeth was distinguished beyond, perhaps, any

other in our history by a number of great men, famous in

different ways, and whose names have come down to us with

unblemished honours: statesmen, warriors, divines, scholars,

poets, and philosophers; Raleigh, Drake, Coke, Hooker,

and--high and more sounding still, and still more frequent in

our mouths--Shakespear, Spenser, Sidney, Bacon, Jonson,

Beaumont, and Fletcher, men whom fame has eternised in her

long and lasting scroll, and who, by their words and acts,

were benefactors of their country, and ornaments of human

nature. Their attainments of different kinds bore the same

general stamp, and it was sterling; what they did had the mark

of their age and country upon it. Perhaps the genius of Great

Britain (if I may so speak without offence or flattery) never

shone out fuller or brighter, or looked more like itself, than

at this period. Our writers and great men had something in

them that savoured of the soil from which they grew: they were

not French; they were not Dutch, or German, or Greek, or

Latin; they were truly English. They did not look out of

themselves to see what they should be; they sought for truth

and nature, and found it in themselves. There was no tinsel,

and but little art; they were not the spoilt children of

affectation and refinement, but a bold, vigorous, independent

race of thinkers, with prodigious strength and energy, with

none but natural grace, and heartfelt, unobtrusive delicacy.

... For such an extraordinary combination and development of

fancy and genius many causes may be assigned; and we may seek

for the chief of them in religion, in politics, in the

circumstances of the time, the recent diffusion of letters, in

local situation, and in the character of the men who adorned

that period, and availed themselves so nobly of the advantages

placed within their reach. ... The first cause I shall

mention, as contributing to this general effect, was the

Reformation, which had just then taken place. This event gave

a mighty impulse and increased activity to thought and

inquiry, and agitated the inert mass of accumulated prejudices

throughout Europe. ... The translation of the Bible was the

chief engine in the great work. It threw open, by a secret

spring, the rich treasures of religion and morality, which had

been there locked up as in a shrine. It revealed the visions

of the prophets, and conveyed the lessons of inspired teachers

(such they were thought) to the meanest of the people. It gave

them a common interest in the common cause. Their hearts burnt

within them as they read. It gave a mind to the people, by

giving them common subjects of thought and feeling. ... The

immediate use or application that was made of religion to

subjects of imagination and fiction was not (from an obvious

ground of separation) so direct or frequent as that which was

made of the classical and romantic literature. For much about

the same time, the rich and fascinating stores of the Greek

and Roman mythology, and those of the romantic poetry of Spain

and Italy, were eagerly explored by the curious, and thrown

open in translations to the admiring gaze of the vulgar. ...

What also gave an unusual impetus to the mind of man at this

period, was the discovery of the New World, and the reading of

voyages and travels. Green islands and golden sands seemed to

arise, as by enchantment, out of the bosom of the watery

waste, and invite the cupidity, or wing the imagination of the

dreaming speculator. Fairyland was realised in new and unknown

worlds. ... Again, the heroic and martial spirit which

breathes in our elder writers, was yet in considerable

activity in the reign of Elizabeth. The age of chivalry was

not then quite gone, nor the glory of Europe extinguished

forever. ... Lastly, to conclude this account: What gave a

unity and common direction to all these causes, was the

natural genius of the country, which was strong in these

writers in proportion to their strength. We are a nation of

islanders, and we cannot help it, nor mend ourselves if we

would. We are something in ourselves, nothing when we try to

ape others. Music and painting are not our forte: for what we

have done in that way has been little, and that borrowed from

others with great difficulty. But we may boast of our poets

and philosophers. That's something. We have had strong heads

and sound hearts among us. Thrown on one side of the world,

and left to bustle for ourselves, we have fought out many a

battle for truth and freedom. That is our natural style; and

it were to be wished we had in no instance departed from it.

Our situation has given us a certain cast of thought and

character; and our liberty has enabled us to make the most of

it. We are of a stiff clay, not moulded into every fashion,

with stubborn joints not easily bent. We are slow to think,

and therefore impressions do not work upon us till they act in

masses. ... We may be accused of grossness, but not of

flimsiness; of extravagance, but not of affectation; of want

of art and refinement, but not of a want of truth and nature.

Our literature, in a word, is Gothic and grotesque; unequal

and irregular; not cast in a previous mould, nor of one

uniform texture, but of great weight in the whole, and of

incomparable value in the best parts. It aims at an excess of

beauty or power, hits or misses, and is either very good

indeed, or absolutely good for nothing. This character applies

in particular to our literature in the age of Elizabeth, which

is its best period, before the introduction of a rage for

French rules and French models."

W. Hazlitt,

Lectures on the Literature of the Age of Elizabeth,

lecture 1.

{838}

"Humanism, before it moulded the mind of the English, had

already permeated Italian and French literature. Classical

erudition had been adapted to the needs of modern thought.

Antique authors had been collected, printed, annotated, and

translated. They were fairly mastered in the south, and

assimilated to the style of the vernacular. By these means

much of the learning popularised by our poets, essayists, and

dramatists came to us at second-hand, and bore the stamp of

contemporary genius. In like manner, the best works of

Italian, French, Spanish, and German literature were

introduced into Great Britain together with the classics. The

age favoured translation, and English readers before the close

of the sixteenth century, were in possession of a cosmopolitan

library in their mother tongue, including choice specimens of

ancient and modern masterpieces. These circumstances

sufficiently account for the richness and variety of

Elizabethan literature. They also help to explain two points

which must strike every student of that literature--its native

freshness, and its marked unity of style. Elizabethan

literature was fresh and native, because it was the utterance

of a youthful race, aroused to vigorous self-consciousness

under conditions which did not depress or exhaust its

energies. The English opened frank eyes upon the discovery of

the world and man, which had been effected by the Renaissance.

They were not wearied with collecting, collating, correcting,

transmitting to the press. All the hard work of assimilating

the humanities had been done for them. They had only to survey

and to enjoy, to feel and to express, to lay themselves open

to delightful influences, to con the noble lessons of the

past, to thrill beneath the beauty and the awe of an authentic

revelation. Criticism had not laid its cold, dry finger on the

blossoms of the fancy. The new learning was still young enough to

be a thing of wonder and entrancing joy."

J. A. Symonds,

A Comparison of Elizabethan with Victorian Poetry

(Fortnightly Rev., volume 45, page 56).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1559.

The Act of Supremacy, the Act of Uniformity, and the Court of

High Commission.

"When Elizabeth's first Parliament met in January 1559,

Convocation, of course, met too. It at once claimed that the

clergy alone had authority in matters of faith, and proceeded

to pass resolutions in favour of Transubstantiation, the Mass,

and the Papal Supremacy. The bishops and the Universities

signed a formal agreement to this effect. That in the

constitution of the English Church, Convocation, as

Convocation, has no such power as this, was proved by the

steps now taken. The Crown, advised by the Council and

Parliament, took the matter in hand. As every element, except

the Roman, had been excluded from the clerical bodies, a

consultation was ordered between the representatives of both

sides, and all preaching was suspended till a settlement had

been arrived at between the queen and the Three Estates of the

realm. The consultation broke upon the refusal of the Romanist

champions to keep to the terms agreed upon; but even before it

took place Parliament restored the Royal Supremacy, repealed

the laws of Mary affecting religion, and gave the queen by her

own desire, not the title of 'Supreme Head,' but 'Supreme

Governor,' of the Church of England."

M. Burrows,

Commentaries on the History of England,

book 2, chapter 17.

This first Parliament of Elizabeth passed two memorable acts

of great importance in English history,--the Act of Supremacy

and the Act of Uniformity of Common Prayer. "The former is

entitled 'An act for restoring to the crown the ancient

jurisdiction over the State Ecclesiastical and Spiritual; and

for abolishing foreign power.' It is the same for substance

with the 25th of Henry VIII. ... but the commons incorporated

several other bills into it; for besides the title of 'Supreme

Governor in all causes Ecclesiastical and Temporal,' which is

restored to the Queen, the act revives those laws of King

Henry VIII. and King Edward VI. which had been repealed in the

late reign. It forbids all appeals to Rome, and exonerates the

subjects from all exactions and impositions heretofore paid to

that court; and as it revives King Edward's laws, it repeals a

severe act made in the late reign for punishing heresy. ...

'Moreover, all persons in any public employs, whether civil or

ecclesiastical, are obliged to take an oath in recognition of

the Queen's right to the crown, and of her supremacy in all

causes ecclesiastical and civil, on penalty of forfeiting all

their promotions in the church, and of being declared

incapable of holding any public office.' ... Further, 'The act

forbids all writing, printing, teaching, or preaching, and all

other deeds or acts whereby any foreign jurisdiction over

these realms is defended, upon pain that they and their

abettors, being thereof convicted, shall for the first offence

forfeit their goods and chattels; ... spiritual persons shall

lose their benefices, and all ecclesiastical preferments; for

the second offence they shall incur the penalties of a

præmunire; and the third offence shall be deemed high

treason.' There is a remarkable clause in this act, which gave

rise to a new court, called 'The Court of High Commission.'

The words are these, 'The Queen and her successors shall have

power, by their letters patent under the great seal, to

assign, name, and authorize, as often as they shall think

meet, and for as long a time as they shall please, persons

being natural-born subjects, to use, occupy, and exercise,

under her and them, all manner of jurisdiction, privileges,

and preeminences, touching any spiritual or ecclesiastical

jurisdiction within the realms of England and Ireland, &c., to

visit, reform, redress, order, correct and amend all errors,

heresies, schisms, abuses, contempts, offences and enormities

whatsoever. Provided, that they have no power to determine

anything to be heresy, but what has been adjudged to be so by

the authority of the canonical scripture, or by the first four

general councils, or any of them; or by any other general

council wherein the same was declared heresy by the express

and plain words of canonical scripture; or such as shall

hereafter be declared to be heresy by the high court of

parliament, with the assent of the clergy in convocation.'

Upon the authority of this clause the Queen appointed a

certain number of 'Commissioners' for ecclesiastical causes,

who exercised the same power that had been lodged in the hands

of one vicegerent in the reign of King Henry VIII. And how

sadly they abused their power in this and the two next reigns

will appear in the sequel of this history. They did not

trouble themselves much with the express words of scripture,

or the four first general councils, but entangled their

prisoners with oaths ex-officio, and the inextricable mazes of

the popish canon law. ... The papists being vanquished, the

next point was to unite the reformed among themselves. ...

Though all the reformers were of one faith, yet they were far

from agreeing about discipline and ceremonies, each party

being for settling the church according to their own model. ...

{839}

The Queen ... therefore appointed a committee of divines to

review King Edward's liturgy, and to see if in any particular

it was fit to be changed; their names were Dr. Parker,

Grindal, Cox, Pilkington, May, Bill, Whitehead, and Sir Thomas

Smith, doctor of the civil law. Their instructions were, to

strike out all offensive passages against the pope, and to

make people easy about the belief of the corporal presence of

Christ in the sacraments; but not a word in favour of the

stricter protestants. Her Majesty was afraid of reforming too

far; she was desirous to retain images in churches, crucifixes

and crosses, vocal and instrumental music, with all the old

popish garments; it is not therefore to be wondered, that in

reviewing the liturgy of King Edward, no alterations were made

in favour of those who now began to be called Puritans, from

their attempting a purer form of worship and discipline than

had yet been established. ... The book was presented to the

two houses and passed into a law. ... The title of the act is

'An act for the Uniformity of Common Prayer and Service in the

Church, and administration of the Sacraments.' It was brought

into the House of Commons April 18th, and was read a third

time April 20th. It passed the House of Lords April 28th, and

took place from the 24th of June 1559."

D. Neal,

History of the Puritans,

volume 1, chapter 4.

ALSO IN:

G. Burnet,

History of the Reformation of the Church of England.,

volume 2, book 3.

P. Heylyn,

Ecclesia Restaurata: Elizabeth, Anno 1.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1559-1566.

Puritanism taking form.

"The Church of England was a latitudinarian experiment, a

contrivance to enable men of opposing creeds to live together

without shedding each others' blood. It was not intended, and

it was not possible, that Catholics or Protestants should find

in its formulas all that they required. The services were

deliberately made elastic; comprehending in the form of

positive statement only what all Christians agreed in

believing, while opportunities were left open by the rubric to

vary the ceremonial according to the taste of the

congregations. The management lay with the local authorities

in town or parish: where the people were Catholics the

Catholic aspect could be made prominent; where Popery was a

bugbear, the people were not disturbed by the obtrusion of

doctrines which they had outgrown. In itself it pleased no

party or section. To the heated controversialist its chief

merit was its chief defect. ... Where the tendencies to Rome

were strongest, there the extreme Reformers considered

themselves bound to exhibit in the most marked contrast the

unloveliness of the purer creed. It was they who furnished the

noble element in the Church of England. It was they who had

been its martyrs; they who, in their scorn of the world, in

their passionate desire to consociate themselves in life and

death to the Almighty, were able to rival in self-devotion the

Catholic Saints. But they had not the wisdom of the serpent,

and certainly not the harmlessness of the dove. Had they been

let alone--had they been unharassed by perpetual threats of

revolution and a return of the persecutions--they, too, were

not disinclined to reason and good sense. A remarkable

specimen survives, in an account of the Church of Northampton,

of what English Protestantism could become under favouring

conditions. ... The fury of the times unhappily forbade the

maintenance of this wise and prudent spirit. As the power of

evil gathered to destroy the Church of England, a fiercer

temper was required to combat with them, and Protestantism

became impatient, like David, of the uniform in which it was

sent to the battle. It would have fared ill with England had

there been no hotter blood there than filtered in the sluggish

veins of the officials of the Establishment. There needed an

enthusiasm fiercer far to encounter the revival of Catholic

fanaticism; and if the young Puritans, in the heat and glow of

their convictions, snapped their traces and flung off their

harness, it was they, after all, who saved the Church which

attempted to disown them, and with the Church saved also the

stolid mediocrity to which the fates then and ever committed

and commit the government of it."

J. A. Froude,

History of England,

volume 10, chapter 20.

"The compromise arranged by Cranmer had from the first been

considered by a large body of Protestants as a scheme for

serving two masters, as an attempt to unite the worship of the

Lord with the worship of Baal. In the days of Edward VI. the

scruples of this party had repeatedly thrown great

difficulties in the way of the government. When Elizabeth came

to the throne, those difficulties were much increased.

Violence naturally engenders violence. The spirit of

Protestantism was therefore far fiercer and more intolerant

after the cruelties of Mary than before them. Many persons who

were warmly attached to the new opinions had, during the evil

days, taken refuge in Switzerland and Germany. They had been

hospitably received by their brethren in the faith, had sate

at the feet of the great doctors of Strasburg, Zurich and

Geneva, and had been, during some years, accustomed to a more

simple worship, and to a more democratical form of church

government, than England had yet seen. These men returned to

their country, convinced that the reform which had been

effected under King Edward had been far less searching and

extensive than the interests of pure religion required. But it

was in vain that they attempted to obtain any concession from

Elizabeth. Indeed, her system, wherever it differed from her

brother's, seemed to them to differ for the worse. They were

little disposed to submit, in matters of faith, to any human

authority. ... Since these men could not be convinced, it was

determined that they should be persecuted. Persecution

produced its natural effect on them. It found them a sect: it

made them a faction. ... The power of the discontented

sectaries was great. They were found in every rank; but they

were strongest among the mercantile classes in the towns, and

among the small proprietors in the country. Early in the reign

of Elizabeth they began to return a majority of the House of

Commons. And doubtless, had our ancestors been then at liberty

to fix their attention entirely on domestic questions, the

strife between the crown and the Parliament would instantly

have commenced. But that was no season for internal

dissensions. ... Roman Catholic Europe and reformed Europe

were struggling for death or life. ... Whatever might be the

faults of Elizabeth, it was plain that, to speak humanly, the

fate of the realm and of all reformed churches was staked on

the security of her person and on the success of her

administration. ...

{840}

The Puritans, even in the depths of the prisons to which she

had sent them, prayed, and with no simulated fervour, that she

might be kept from the dagger of the assassin, that rebellion

might be put down under her feet, and that her arms might be

victorious by sea and land."

Lord Macaulay,

History of England,

volume 1, chapter 1.

"Two parties quickly evolved themselves out of the mass of

Englishmen who held Calvinistic opinions; namely those who

were willing to conform to the requirements of the Queen, and

those who were not. To both is often given indiscriminately by

historians the name of Puritan; but it seems more correct, and

certainly is more convenient, to restrict the use of the name

to those who are sometimes called conforming Puritans. ... To

the other party fitly belongs the name of Nonconformist. ...

It was against the Nonconformist organization that Elizabeth's

efforts were chiefly directed. ... The war began in the

enforcement by Archbishop Parker in 1565 of the Advertisements

as containing the minimum of ceremonial that would be

tolerated. In 1566 the clergy of London were required to make

the declaration of Conformity which was appended to the

Advertisements, and thirty-seven were suspended or deprived

for refusal. Some of the deprived ministers continued to

conduct services and preach in spite of their deprivation, and

so were formed the first bodies of Nonconformists, organized

in England."

H. O. Wakeman,

The Church and the Puritans,

chapter 3.

ALSO IN:

J. Tulloch,

English Puritanism and its Leaders,

introduction.

D. Neal,

History of the Puritans,

volume 1, chapter 4.

D. Campbell,

The Puritan in Holland, England, and America,

chapters 8-10 (volume 1).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1562-1567.

Hawkins' slave-trading voyages to America.

First English enterprise in the New World.

See AMERICA: A. D. 1562-1567.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1564-1565 (?).

The first naming of the Puritans.

"The English bishops, conceiving themselves empowered by their

canons, began to show their authority in urging the clergy of

their dioceses to subscribe to the Liturgy, ceremonies and

discipline of the Church; and such as refused the same were

branded with the odious name of Puritans. A name which in this

notion first began in this year [A. D. 1564]; and the grief

had not been great if it had ended in the same. The

philosopher banisheth the term, (which is Polysæmon), that is

subject to several senses, out of the predicaments, as

affording too much covert for cavil by the latitude thereof.

On the same account could I wish that the word Puritan were

banished common discourse, because so various in the

acceptations thereof. We need not speak of the ancient Cathari

or primitive Puritans, sufficiently known by their heretical

opinions. Puritan here was taken for the opposers of the

hierarchy and church service, as resenting of superstition.

But profane mouths quickly improved this nickname, therewith

on every occasion to abuse pious people; some of them so far

from opposing the Liturgy, that they endeavoured (according to

the instructions thereof in the preparative to the Confession)

'to accompany the minister with a pure heart,' and laboured

(as it is in the Absolution) 'for a life pure and holy.' We

will, therefore, decline the word to prevent exceptions;

which, if casually slipping from our pen, the reader knoweth

that only nonconformists are thereby intended."

T. Fuller,

Church History of Britain,

book 9, section 1.

"For in this year [1565] it was that the Zuinglian or

Calvinian faction began to be first known by the name of

Puritans, if Genebrard, Gualter, and Spondanus (being all of

them right good chronologers) be not mistaken in the time.

Which name hath ever since been appropriate to them, because

of their pretending to a greater purity in the service of God

than was held forth unto them (as they gave out) in the Common

Prayer Book; and to a greater opposition to the rites and

usages of the Church of Rome than was agreeable to the

constitution of the Church of England."

P. Heylyn,

Ecclesia Restaurata: Elizabeth,

Anno 7, section 6.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1568.

Detention and imprisonment of Mary Queen of Scots.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1561-1568.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1569.

Quarrel with the Spanish governor of the Netherlands.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1568-1572.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1572-1580.

Drake's piratical warfare with Spain and his famous voyage.

See AMERICA: A. D. 1572-1580.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1572-1603.

Queen Elizabeth's treatment of the Roman Catholics.

Persecution of the Seminary Priests and the Jesuits.

"Camden and many others have asserted that by systematic

connivance the Roman Catholics enjoyed a pretty free use of

their religion for the first fourteen years of Elizabeth's

reign. But this is not reconcilable to many passages in

Strype's collections. We find abundance of persons harassed

for recusancy, that is, for not attending the protestant

church, and driven to insincere promises of conformity. Others

were dragged before ecclesiastical commissions for harbouring

priests, or for sending money to those who had fled beyond

sea. ... A great majority both of clergy and laity yielded to

the times; and of these temporizing conformists it cannot be

doubted that many lost by degrees all thought of returning to

their ancient fold. But others, while they complied with

exterior ceremonies, retained in their private devotions their

accustomed mode of worship. ... Priests ... travelled the

country in various disguises, to keep alive a flame which the

practice of outward conformity was calculated to extinguish.

There was not a county throughout England, says a Catholic

historian, where several of Mary's clergy did not reside, and

were commonly called the old priests. They served as chaplains

in private families. By stealth, at the dead of night, in

private chambers, in the secret lurking places of an

ill-peopled country, with all the mystery that subdues the

imagination, with all the mutual trust that invigorates

constancy, these proscribed ecclesiastics celebrated their

solemn rites, more impressive in such concealment than if

surrounded by all their former splendour. ... It is my

thorough conviction that the persecution, for it can obtain no

better name, carried on against the English Catholics, however

it might serve to delude the government by producing an

apparent conformity, could not but excite a spirit of

disloyalty in many adherents of that faith. Nor would it be

safe to assert that a more conciliating policy would have

altogether disarmed their hostility, much less laid at rest

those busy hopes of the future, which the peculiar

circumstances of Elizabeth's reign had a tendency to produce."

H. Hallam,

Constitutional History of England,

chapter 3.

{841}

"The more vehement Catholics had withdrawn from the country,

on account of the dangers which there beset them. They had

taken refuge in the Low Countries, and there Allen, one of the

chief among them, had established a seminary at Douay, for the

purpose of keeping up a supply of priests in England. To Douay

numbers of young Englishmen from Oxford continually flocked.

The establishment had been broken up by Requescens, and

removed to Rheims, and a second college of the same

description was established at Rome. From these two centres of

intrigue numerous enthusiastic young men constantly repaired

to England, and in the disguise of laymen carried on their

priestly work and attempted to revive the Romanist religion.

But abler and better disciplined workmen were now wanted.

Allen and his friends therefore opened negotiations with

Mercuriano, the head of the Jesuit order, in which many

Englishmen had enrolled themselves. In 1580, as part of a

great combined Catholic effort, a regular Jesuit mission,

under two priests, Campion and Parsons, was despatched to

England. ... The new missionaries were allowed to say that

that part of the Bull [of excommunication issued against

Elizabeth] which pronounced censures upon those who clung to

their allegiance applied to heretics only, that Catholics

might profess themselves loyal until the time arrived for

carrying the Bull into execution; in other words, they were

permitted to be traitors at heart while declaring themselves

loyal subjects. This explanation of the Bull was of itself

sufficient to justify severity on the part of the government.

It was impossible henceforward to separate Roman Catholicism

from disloyalty. Proclamations were issued requiring English

parents to summon their children from abroad, and declaring

that to harbour Jesuit priests was to support rebels. ...

Early in December several priests were apprehended and closely

examined, torture being occasionally used for the purpose. In

view of the danger which these examinations disclosed,

stringent measures were taken. Attendance at church was

rendered peremptorily necessary. Parliament was summoned in

the beginning of 1581 and laws passed against the action of

the Jesuits. ... Had Elizabeth been conscious of the full

extent of the plot against her, had she known the intention of

the Guises [then dominant in France] to make a descent upon

England in co-operation with Spain, and the many ramifications

of the plot in her own country, it is reasonable to suppose

that she would have been forced at length to take decided

measures. But in ignorance of the abyss opening before her

feet, she continued for some time longer her old temporizing

policy." At last, in November, 1583, the discovery of a plot

for the assassination of the queen, and the arrest of one

Throgmorton, whose papers and whose confession were of

startling import, brought to light the whole plan and extent

of the conspiracy. "Some of her Council urged her at once to

take a straightforward step, to make common cause with the

Protestants of Scotland and the Netherlands, and to bid

defiance to Spain. To this honest step, she as usual could not

bring herself, but strong measures were taken in England.

Great numbers of Jesuits and seminary priests were apprehended

and executed, suspected magistrates removed, and those

Catholic Lords whose treachery might have been fatal to her

ejected from their places of authority and deprived of

influence."

J. F. Bright,

History of England,

period 2, pages 546-549.

"That the conspiracy with which these men were charged was a

fiction cannot be doubted. They had come to England under a

prohibition to take any part in secular concerns, and with the

sole view of exercising the spiritual functions of the

priesthood. ... At the same time it must be owned that the

answers which six of them gave to the queries were far from

satisfactory. Their hesitation to deny the opposing power (a

power then indeed maintained by the greater number of divines

in Catholic kingdoms) rendered their loyalty very

problematical, in case of an attempt to enforce the bull by

any foreign prince. It furnished sufficient reason to watch

their conduct with an eye of jealousy ... but could not

justify their execution for an imaginary offence."

J. Lingard,

History of England,

volume 8, chapter 3.

"It is probable that not many more than 200 Catholics were

executed, as such, in Elizabeth's reign, and this was ten

score too many. ... 'Dod reckons them at 191; Milner has

raised the list to 204. Fifteen of these, according to him,

suffered for denying the Queen's supremacy, 126 for exercising

their ministry, and the rest for being reconciled to the

Romish church. Many others died of hardships in prison, and

many were deprived of their property. There seems,

nevertheless [says Hallam], to be good reason for doubting

whether anyone who was executed might not have saved his life

by explicitly denying the Pope's power to depose the Queen.'"

J. L. Motley,

History of the United Netherlands,

chapter 17, with foot-note.

ALSO IN:

J. Foley,

Records of the English Province of the Society of

Jesus.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1574.

Emancipation of villeins on the royal domains.

Practical end of serfdom.

See SLAVERY, MEDIÆVAL: ENGLAND.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1575.

Sovereignty of Holland and Zealand offered to Queen Elizabeth,

and declined.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1575-1577.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1581.

Marriage proposals of the Duke of Anjou declined by Queen

Elizabeth.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1581-1584.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1583.

The expedition of Sir Humphrey Gilbert.

Formal possession taken of Newfoundland.

See AMERICA: A. D. 1583.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1584-1590.

Raleigh's colonizing attempts in America.

See AMERICA: A. D. 1584-1586; and 1587-1590.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1585-1586.

Leicester in the Low Countries.

Queen Elizabeth's treacherous dealing with the

struggling Netherlanders.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1585-1586.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1585-1587.

Mary Queen of Scots and the Catholic conspiracies.

Her trial and execution.

"Maddened by persecution, by the hopelessness of rebellion

within or deliverance from without, the fiercer Catholics

listened to schemes of assassination, to which the murder of

William of Orange lent at the moment a terrible significance.

The detection of Somerville, a fanatic who had received the

host before setting out for London 'to shoot the Queen with

his dagg,' was followed by measures of natural severity, by

the flight and arrest of Catholic gentry, by a vigourous

purification of the Inns of Court, where a few Catholics

lingered, and by the dispatch of fresh batches of priests to

the block. The trial and death of Parry, a member of the House

of Commons who had served in the Queen's household, on a

similar charge, brought the Parliament together in a transport

of horror and loyalty.

{842}

All Jesuits and seminary priests were banished from the realm

on pain of death. A bill for the security of the Queen

disqualified any claimant of the succession who had instigated

subjects to rebellion or hurt to the Queen's person from ever

succeeding to the crown. The threat was aimed at Mary Stuart.

Weary of her long restraint, of her failure to rouse Philip or

Scotland to aid her, of the baffled revolt of the English

Catholics and the baffled intrigues of the Jesuits, she bent

for a moment to submission. 'Let me go,' she wrote to

Elizabeth; 'let me retire from this island to some solitude

where I may prepare my soul to die. Grant this and I will sign

away every right which either I or mine can claim.' But the

cry was useless, and her despair found a new and more terrible

hope in the plots against Elizabeth's life. She knew and

approved the vow of Anthony Babington and a band of young

Catholics, for the most part connected with the royal

household, to kill the Queen; but plot and approval alike

passed through Walsingham's hands, and the seizure of Mary's

correspondence revealed her guilt. In spite of her protests, a

commission of peers sat as her judges at Fotheringay Castle;

and their verdict of 'guilty' annihilated, under the

provisions of the recent statute, her claim to the crown. The

streets of London blazed with bonfires, and peals rang out

from steeple to steeple, at the news of her condemnation; but,

in spite of the prayer of Parliament for her execution, and

the pressure of the Council, Elizabeth shrank from her death.

The force of public opinion, however, was now carrying all

before it, and the unanimous demand of her people wrested at

last a sullen consent from the Queen. She flung the warrant

signed upon the floor, and the Council took on themselves the

responsibility of executing it. Mary died [February 8, 1587]

on a scaffold which was erected in the castle hall at

Fotheringay, as dauntlessly as she had lived. 'Do not weep,'

she said to her ladies, 'I have given my word for you.' 'Tell

my friends,' she charged Melville, 'that I die a good

Catholic.'"

J. R. Green,

Short History of the English People,

chapter 7, section 6.

"'Who now doubts,' writes an eloquent modern writer, 'that it

would have been wiser in Elizabeth to spare her life?' Rather,

the political wisdom of a critical and difficult act has never

in the world's history been more signally justified. It cut

away the only interest on which the Scotch and English

Catholics could possibly have combined. It determined Philip

upon the undisguised pursuit of the English throne, and it

enlisted against him and his projects the passionate

patriotism of the English nobility."

J. A. Froude,

History of England,

volume 12, chapter 34.

ALSO IN:

A. De Lamartine,

Mary Stuart,

chapter 31-34.

L. S. F. Buckingham,

Memoirs of Mary Stuart,

volume 2, chapter 5-6.

L. von Ranke,

History of England,

book 3, chapter 5.

J. D. Leader,

Mary Queen of Scots in Captivity.

C. Nau,

History of Mary Stuart.

F. A. Mignet,

History of Mary Queen of Scots,

chapters 9-10.

England: A. D. 1587-1588.

The wrath of Catholic Europe.

Spanish vengeance and ambition astir.

"The death of Mary [Queen of Scots] may have preserved England

from the religious struggle which would have ensued upon her

accession to the throne, but it delivered Elizabeth from only

one, and that the weakest of her enemies; and it exposed her

to a charge of injustice and cruelty, which, being itself well

founded, obtained belief for any other accusation, however

extravagantly false. It was not Philip [of Spain] alone who

prepared for making war upon her with a feeling of personal

hatred: throughout Romish Christendom she was represented as a

monster of iniquity; that representation was assiduously set

forth, not in ephemeral libels, but in histories, in dramas,

in poems, and in hawker's pamphlets; and when the king of

Spain equipped an armament for the invasion of England,

volunteers entered it with a passionate persuasion that they

were about to bear a part in a holy war against the wickedest

and most inhuman of tyrants. The Pope exhorted Philip to

engage in this great enterprize for the sake of the Roman

Catholic and apostolic church, which could not be more

effectually nor more meritoriously extended than by the

conquest of England; so should he avenge his own private and

public wrongs; so should he indeed prove himself most worthy

of the glorious title of Most Catholic King. And he promised,

as soon as his troops should have set foot in that island, to

supply him with a million of crowns of gold towards the

expenses of the expedition. ... Such exhortations accorded

with the ambition, the passions, and the rooted principles of

the king of Spain. The undertaking was resolved."

R. Southey,

Lives of the British Admirals,

volume 2, page 319.

"The succours which Elizabeth had from time to time afforded

to the insurgents of the Netherlands was not the only cause of

Philip's resentment and of his desire for revenge. She had

fomented the disturbances in Portugal, ... and her captains,

among whom Sir Francis Drake was the most active, had for many

years committed unjustifiable depredations on the Spanish

possessions of South America, and more than once on the coasts

of the Peninsula itself. ... By Spanish historians, these

hostilities are represented as unprovoked in their origin, and

as barbarous in their execution, and candor must allow that

there is but too much justice in the complaint."

S. A. Dunham,

History of Spain and Portugal,

book 4, section 1, chapter 1.

ALSO IN:

J. A. Froude,

History of England,

volume 12, chapter 35.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1588.

The Spanish Armada.

"Perhaps in the history of mankind there has never been a vast

project of conquest conceived and matured in so protracted and

yet so desultory a manner, as was this famous Spanish

invasion. ... At last, on the 28th, 29th and 30th May, 1588,

the fleet, which had been waiting at Lisbon more than a month

for favourable weather, set sail from that port, after having

been duly blessed by the Cardinal Archduke Albert, viceroy of

Portugal. There were rather more than 130 ships in all,

divided into 10 squadrons. ... The total tonnage of the fleet

was 59,120: the number of guns was 3,165. Of Spanish troops

there were 19,295 on board: there were 8,252 sailors and 2,088

galley-slaves. Besides these, there was a force of noble

volunteers, belonging to the most illustrious houses of Spain,

with their attendants, amounting to nearly 2,000 in all. ...

The size of the ships ranged from 1,200 tons to 300. The

galleons, of which there were about 60, were huge

round-stemmed clumsy vessels, with bulwarks three or four feet

thick, and built up at stem and stern, like castles.

{843}

The galeasses--of which there were four--were a third larger

than the ordinary galley, and were rowed each by 300

galley-slaves. They consisted of an enormous towering fortress

at the stern, a castellated structure almost equally massive

in front, with seats for the rowers amidships. At stem and

stern and between each of the slaves' benches were heavy

cannon. These galeasses were floating edifices, very wonderful

to contemplate. They were gorgeously decorated. There were

splendid state-apartments, cabins, chapels, and pulpits in

each, and they were amply provided with awnings, cushions,

streamers, standards, gilded saints and bands of music. To

take part in an ostentatious pageant, nothing could be better

devised. To fulfil the great objects of a war-vessel--to sail

and to fight--they were the worst machines ever launched upon

the ocean. The four galleys were similar to the galeasses in

every respect except that of size, in which they were by

one-third inferior. All the ships of the fleet--galeasses,

galleys, galleons, and hulks--were so encumbered with

top-hamper, so over-weighted in proportion to their draught of

water, that they could bear but little canvas, even with

smooth seas and light and favourable winds. ... Such was the

machinery which Philip had at last set afloat, for the purpose

of dethroning Elizabeth and establishing the inquisition in

England. One hundred and forty ships, 11,000 Spanish veterans,

as many more recruits, partly Spanish, partly Portuguese, 2,000

grandees, as many galley slaves, and 300 barefooted friars and

inquisitors. The plan was simple. Medina Sidonia [the

captain-general of the Armada] was to proceed straight from

Lisbon to Calais roads: there he was to wait for the Duke of

Parma [Spanish commander in the Netherlands], who was to come

forth from Newport, Sluys, and Dunkirk, bringing with him his

17,000 veterans, and to assume the chief command of the whole

expedition. They were then to cross the channel to Dover, land

the army of Parma, reinforced with 6,000 Spaniards from the

fleet, and with these 23,000 men Alexander was to march at

once upon London. Medina Sidonia was to seize and fortify the

Isle of Wight, guard the entrance of the harbours against any

interference from the Dutch and English fleets, and--so soon

as the conquest of England had been effected--he was to

proceed to Ireland. ... A strange omission had however been

made in the plan from first to last. The commander of the

whole expedition was the Duke of Parma: on his head was the

whole responsibility. Not a gun was to be fired--if it could

be avoided--until he had come forth with his veterans to make

his junction with the Invincible Armada off Calais. Yet there

was no arrangement whatever to enable him to come forth--not

the slightest provision to effect that junction. ... Medina

could not go to Farnese [Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma],

nor could Farnese come to Medina. The junction was likely to

be difficult, and yet it had never once entered the heads of

Philip or his counsellors to provide for that difficulty. ...

With as much sluggishness as might have been expected from

their clumsy architecture, the ships of the Armada consumed

nearly three weeks in sailing from Lisbon to the neighbourhood

of Cape Finisterre. Here they were overtaken by a tempest. ...

Of the squadron of galleys, one was already sunk in the sea,

and two of the others had been conquered by their own slaves.

The fourth rode out the gale with difficulty, and joined the

rest of the fleet, which ultimately reassembled at Coruña; the

ships having, in distress, put in first at Vivera, Ribadeo,

Gijon, and other northern ports of Spain. At the Groyne--as

the English of that day were accustomed to call Coruña--they

remained a month, repairing damages and recruiting; and on the

22d of July (N. S.) the Armada set sail. Six days later, the

Spaniards took soundings, thirty leagues from the Scilly

Islands, and on Friday, the 29th of July, off the Lizard, they

had the first glimpse of the land of promise presented them by

Sixtus V. of which they had at last come to take possession.

On the same day and night the blaze and smoke of ten thousand

beacon-fires from the Land's End to Margate, and from the Isle

of Wight to Cumberland, gave warning to every Englishman that

the enemy was at last upon them."

J. L. Motley,

History of the United Netherlands,

chapter 19.

ALSO IN:

J. A. Froude,

History of England,

volume 12, chapter 36.

J. A. Froude,

The Spanish Story of the Armada.

R. Southey,

Lives of British Admirals,

volume 2, pages 327-334.

C. M. Yonge,

Cameos from English History,

5th series, chapter 27.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1588.

The Destruction of the Armada.

"The great number of the English, the whole able-bodied

population being drilled, counterbalanced the advantage

possessed, from their universal use of firearms, by the

invaders. In all the towns there were trained bands (a civic

militia); and, either in regular service or as volunteers,

thousands of all ranks had received a military training on the

continent. The musters represented 100,000 men as ready to

assemble at their head-quarters at a day's notice. It was, as

nearly always, in its military administration that the

vulnerable point of England lay. The fitting-out and

victualling of the navy was disgraceful; and it is scarcely an

excuse for the councillors that they were powerless against

the parsimony of the Queen. The Government maintained its

hereditary character from the days of Ethelred the Unready,

and the arrangements for assembling the defensive forces were

not really completed by them until after the Armada was

destroyed. The defeat of the invaders, if they had landed,

must have been accomplished by the people. The flame of

patriotism never burnt purer: all Englishmen alike, Romanists,

Protestant Episcopalians, and Puritans, were banded together

to resist the invader. Every hamlet was on the alert for the

beacon-signal. Some 15,000 men were already under arms in

London; the compact Tilbury Fort was full, and a bridge of

boats from Tilbury to Gravesend blocked the Thames. Philip's

preparations had been commensurate with the grandeur of his

scheme. The dockyards in his ports in the Low Countries, the

rivers, the canals, and the harbours of Spain, Portugal,

Naples, and Italy, echoed the clang of the shipwrights'

hammers. A vast armament, named, as if to provoke Nemesis, the

'Invincible Armada,' on which for three years the treasures of

the American mines had been lavished, at length rode the seas,

blessed with Papal benedictions and under the patronage of the

saints. It comprised 65 huge galleons, of from 700 to 1,300

tons, with sides of enormous thickness, and built high like

castles; four great galleys, each carrying 50 guns and 450

men, and rowed by 300 slaves; 56 armed merchantmen, and 20

pinnaces. These 129 vessels were armed with 2,430 brass and

iron guns of the best manufacture, but each gun was furnished

only with 50 rounds.

{844}

They carried 5,000 seamen: Parma's army amounted to 30,000

men--Spaniards, Germans, Italians and Walloons; and 19,000

Castilians and Portuguese, with 1,000 gentlemen volunteers,

were coming to join him. To maintain this army after it had

effected a landing, a great store of provisions--sufficient

for 40,000 men for six months--was placed on board. The

overthrow of this armament was effected by the navy and the

elements. From the Queen's parsimony the State had only 36

ships in the fleet; but the City of London furnished 33

vessels; 18 were supplied by the liberality of private

individuals; and nearly 100 smaller ships were obtained on

hire; so that the fleet was eventually brought up to nearly

30,000 tons, carrying 16,000 men, and equipped with 837 guns.

But there was sufficient ammunition for only a single day's

fighting. Fortunately for Elizabeth's Government, the

Spaniards, having been long driven from the channel by

privateers, were now unacquainted with its currents; and they

could procure, as the Dutch were in revolt, only two or three

competent pilots. The Spanish commander was the Duke of

Medina-Sidonia, an incapable man, but he had under him some of

the ablest of Philip's officers. When the ships set out from

the Tagus, on the 29th May, 1588, a storm came on, and the

Armada had to put into Coruña to refit. From that port the

Armada set out at the beginning of July, in lovely weather,

with just enough wind to wave from the mastheads the red

crosses which they bore as symbols of their crusade. The Duke

of Medina entered the Channel on the 18th July, and the rear

of his fleet was immediately harassed by a cannonade from the

puny ships of England, commanded by Lord Howard of Effingham

(Lord High Admiral), with Drake, Hawkins, Frobisher, Winter,

Fenner, and other famous captains. With the loss of three

galleons from fire or boarding, the Spanish commander, who was

making for Flanders to embark Parma's army, anchored in Calais

roads. In the night fire-ships--an ancient mode of warfare

which had just been reintroduced by the Dutch--passed in among

the Armada, a fierce gale completed their work, and morning

revealed the remnant of the Invincible Armada scattered along

the coast from Calais to Ostend. Eighty vessels remained to

Medina, and with these he sailed up the North Sea, to round

the British Isles. But the treacherous currents of the Orkneys

and the Hebrides were unknown to his officers, and only a few

ships escaped the tempests of the late autumn. More than

two-thirds of the expedition perished, and of the remnant that

again viewed the hills of Spain all but a few hundreds

returned only to die."

H. R. Clinton,

From Crécy to Assye,

chapter 7.

In the fighting on the 23d of July, "the Spaniards' shot flew

for the most part over the heads of the English, without doing

execution, Cock being the only Englishman that died bravely in

the midst of his enemies in a ship of his own. The reason of

this was, that the English ships, being far less than the

enemy's, made the attack with more quickness and agility; and

when they had given a broadside, they presently sheered off to

a convenient distance, and levelled their shot so directly at

the bigger and more unwieldy ships of the Spaniards, as seldom

to miss their aim; though the Lord Admiral did not think it

safe or proper to grapple with them, as some advised, with

much more heat than discretion, because that the enemy's fleet

carried a considerable army within their sides, whereas ours had

no such advantage. Besides their ships far exceeded ours in

number and bulk, and were much stronger and higher built;

insomuch that their men, having the opportunity to ply us from

such lofty hatches, must inevitably destroy those that were

obliged, as it were, to fight beneath them. ... On the 24th

day of the month there was a cessation on both sides, and the

Lord Admiral sent some of his smaller vessels to the nearest

of the English harbours, to fetch a supply of powder and

ammunition; then he divided the fleet into four squadrons, the

first of which he commanded himself, the second he committed

to Drake, the third to Hawkins, and the fourth to Frobisher.

He likewise singled out of the main fleet some smaller vessels

to begin the attack on all sides at once, in the very dead of

the night; but a calm happening spoiled his design." On the

26th "the Spanish fleet sailed forward with a fair and soft

gale at southwest and by south; and the English chased them

close at the heels; but so far was this Invincible Armada from

alarming the sea-coasts with any frightful apprehensions, that

the English gentry of the younger sort entered themselves

volunteers, and taking leave of their parents, wives, and

children, did, with incredible cheerfulness, hire ships at

their own charge; and, in pure love to their country, joined

the grand fleet in vast numbers. ... On the 27th of this month

the Spanish Fleet came to an anchor before Calais, their

pilots having acquainted them that if they ventured any

farther there was some danger that the force of the current

might drive them away into the Northern Channel. Not far from

them came likewise the English Admiral to an anchor, and lay

within shot of their ships. The English fleet consisted by

this time of 140 sail; all of them ships of force, and very

tight and nimble sailors, and easily manageable upon a tack.

But, however, the main brunt of the engagement lay not upon

more than 15 or 16 of them. ... The Lord Admiral got ready

eight of his worst ships the very day after the Spaniards came

to an anchor; and having bestowed upon them a good plenty of

pitch, tar, and rosin, and lined them well with brimstone and

other combustible matter, they sent them before the wind, in

the dead time of the night, under the conduct of Young and

Prowse, into the midst of the Spanish fleet. ... The Spaniards

reported that the duke, upon the approach of the fire-ships,

ordered the whole fleet to weigh anchor and stand to sea, but

that when the danger was over every ship should return to her

station. This is what he did himself, and he likewise

discharged a great gun as a signal to the rest to do as he

did; the report, however, was heard but by very few, by reason

their fears had dispersed them at that rate that some of them

ventured out of the main ocean, and others sailed up the

shallows of Flanders. In the meantime Drake and Fenner played

briskly with their cannon upon the Spanish fleet, as it was

rendezvousing over against Graveling. ... On the last day of

the month the wind blew hard at north-west early in the

morning, and the Spanish fleet attempting to get back again to

the Straits of Calais, was driven toward Zealand.

{845}

The English then gave over the chase, because, in the

Spaniards' opinion, they perceived them making haste enough to

their own destruction. For the wind, lying at the W. N. W.

point, could not choose but force them on the shoals and sands

on the coast of Zealand. But the wind happening to come about

in a little time to Southwest and by West they went before the

wind. ... Being now, therefore, clear of danger in the main

ocean, they steered northward, and the English fleet renewed

the chase after them. ... The Spaniards having now laid aside

all the thoughts and hopes of returning to attempt the

English, and perceiving their main safety lay in their flight,

made no stay or stop at any port whatever. And thus this

mighty armada, which had been three whole years fitting out,

and at a vast expense, met in one month's time with several

attacks, and was at last routed, with a vast slaughter on

their side, and but a very few of the English missing, and not

one ship lost, except that small vessel of Cock's. ... When,

therefore, the Spanish fleet had taken a large compass round

Britain, by the coasts of Scotland, the Orcades, and Ireland,

and had weathered many storms, and suffered as many wrecks and

blows, and all the inconveniences of war and weather, it made

a shift to get home again, laden with nothing but shame and

dishonour. ... Certain it is that several of their ships

perished in their flight, being cast away on the coasts of

Scotland and Ireland, and that above 700 soldiers were cast on

shore in Scotland. ... As for those who had the ill fortune to

be drove upon the Irish shore, they met with the most

barbarous treatment; for some of them were butchered by the

wild Irish, and the rest put to the sword by the Lord Deputy."

W. Camden,

History of Queen Elizabeth.

ALSO IN:

S. R. Gardiner,

Historical Biographies: Drake.

E. S. Creasy,

Fifteen Decisive Battles,

chapter 10.

C. Kingsley,

Westward Ho!

chapter 31.

R. Hakluyt,

Principal Navigations, &C.

(E. Goldsmid's ed.), volume 7.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1596.

Alliance with Henry IV. of France against Spain.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1593--1598.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1596.

Dutch and English expedition against Cadiz.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1596.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1597.

Abolition of the privileges of the Hanse merchants.

See HANSA TOWNS.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1600.

The first charter to the East India Company.

See INDIA: A. D. 1600-1702.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1601.

The first Poor Law.

See POOR LAWS, THE ENGLISH.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1603.

Accession of King James I.

The Stuart family.

On the death of Queen Elizabeth, in 1603, James VI. of

Scotland became also the accepted king of England (under the

title of James I.), by virtue of his descent from that

daughter of Henry VII. and sister of Henry VIII., Margaret

Tudor, who married James IV. king of Scots. His grandfather

was James V.; his mother was Marie Stuart, or Mary, Queen of

Scots, born of her marriage with Lord Darnley. He was the

ninth in the line of the Scottish dynasty of the Stuarts, or

Stewarts, for an account of the origin of which see SCOTLAND:

A. D. 1370. He had been carefully alienated from the religion

of his mother and reared in Protestantism, to make him an

acceptable heir to the English throne. He came to it at a time

when the autocratic spirit of the Tudors, making use of the

peculiar circumstances of their time, had raised the royal

power and prerogative to their most exalted pitch; and he

united the two kingdoms of Scotland and England under one

sovereignty. "The noble inheritance fell to a race who,

comprehending not one of the conditions by which alone it was

possible to be retained, profligately misused until they lost

it utterly. The calamity was in no respect foreseen by the

statesman, Cecil, to whose exertion it was mainly due that

James was seated on the throne: yet in regard to it he cannot

be held blameless. He was doubtless right in the course he

took, in so far as he thereby satisfied a national desire, and

brought under one crown two kingdoms that with advantage to

either could not separately exist; but it remains a reproach

to his name that he let slip the occasion of obtaining for the

people some ascertained and settled guarantees which could not

then have been refused, and which might have saved half a

century of bloodshed. None such were proposed to James. He was

allowed to seize a prerogative, which for upwards of fifty

years had been strained to a higher pitch than at any previous

period of the English history; and his clumsy grasp closed on

it without a sign of question or remonstrance from the leading

statesmen of England. 'Do I mak the judges? Do I mak the

bishops?' he exclaimed, as the powers of his new dominion

dawned on his delighted sense: 'Then, God's wauns! I mak what

likes me, law and gospel!' It was even so. And this license to

make gospel and law was given, with other far more

questionable powers, to a man whose personal appearance and

qualities were as suggestive of contempt, as his public acts

were provocative of rebellion. It is necessary to dwell upon

this part of the subject; for it is only just to his not more

culpable but far less fortunate successor to say, that in it

lies the source and explanation of not a little for which the

penalty was paid by him. What is called the Great Rebellion

can have no comment so pregnant as that which is suggested by

the character and previous career of the first of the Stuart

kings."

J. Forster,

Historical and Biographical Essays,

p.227.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1604.

The Hampton Court Conference.

James I. "was not long seated on the English throne, when a

conference was held at Hampton Court, to hear the complaints

of the puritans, as those good men were called who scrupled to

conform to the ceremonies, and sought a reformation of the

abuses of the church of England. On this occasion, surrounded

with his deans, bishops, and archbishops, who breathed into

his ears the music of flattery, and worshipped him as an

oracle, James, like king Solomon, to whom he was fond of being

compared, appeared in all his glory, giving his judgment on

every question, and displaying before the astonished prelates,

who kneeled every time they addressed him, his polemic powers and

theological learning. Contrasting his present honours with the

scenes from which he had just escaped in his native country,

he began by congratulating himself that, 'by the blessing of

Providence, he was brought into the promised land, where

religion was professed in its purity; where he sat among

grave, learned, and reverend men; and that now he was not, as

formerly, a king without state and honour, nor in a place

where order was banished, and beardless boys would brave him

to his face.'

{846}

After long conferences, during which the king gave the most

extraordinary exhibitions of his learning, drollery, and

profaneness, he was completely thrown off his guard by the

word presbytery, which Dr. Reynolds, a representative of the

puritans, had unfortunately employed. Thinking that he aimed

at a 'Scotch presbytery,' James rose into a towering passion,

declaring that presbytery agreed as well with monarchy as God

and the devil. 'Then,' said he, 'Jack and Tom, and Will and

Dick, shall meet, and at their pleasures censure me and my

council, and all our proceedings. Then Will shall stand up and

say, It must be thus: Then Dick shall reply, and say, Nay

marry, but we will have it thus. And, therefore, here I must

once reiterate my former speech, Le Roy s'avisera (the king

will look after it). Stay, I pray you, for one seven years

before you demand that of me; and if you then find me pursy

and fat, and my wind-pipes stuffed, I will perhaps hearken to

you; for let that government be once up, I am sure I shall be

kept in breath; then we shall all of us have work enough, both

our hands full. But, Dr. Reynolds, till you find that I grow

lazy, let that alone." Then, putting his hand to his hat, 'My

lords the bishops,' said his majesty, 'I may thank you that

these men plead for my supremacy; they think they can't make

their party good against you, but by appealing unto it. But if

once you are out, and they in place, I know what would become

of my supremacy; for no bishop, no king, as I said before.'

Then rising from his chair, he concluded the conference with,

'If this be all they have to say, I'll make them conform, or

I'll harry them out of this land, or else do worse.' The

English lords and prelates were so filled with admiration at

the quickness of apprehension and dexterity in controversy

shown by the king, that, as Dr. Barlow informs us, 'one of

them said his majesty spoke by the instinct of the Spirit of

God; and the lord chancellor, as he went out, said to the dean

of Chester, I have often heard that Rex est mixta persona cum

sacerdote (that a king is partly a priest), but I never saw

the truth thereof till this day!' In these circumstances,

buoyed up with flattery by his English clergy, and placed

beyond the reach of the faithful admonitions of the Scottish

ministry, we need not wonder to find James prosecuting, with

redoubled ardour, his scheme of reducing the church of

Scotland to the English model."

T. McCrie,

Sketches of Scottish Church History,

chapter 5.

ALSO IN:

S. R. Gardiner,

The First Two Stuarts and the Puritan Revolution,

chapter 1, sections 3.

G. G. Perry,

History of the Church of England,

volume 1, chapter 2.

T. Fuller,

Church History of Britain,

book 10, section 1 (volume 3).

England: A. D. 1605.

The Gunpowder Plot.

"The Roman Catholics had expected great favour and indulgence

on the accession of James, both as he was descended from Mary,

whose life they believed to have been sacrificed to their

cause, and as he himself, in his early youth, was imagined to

have shown some partiality towards them. ... Very soon they

discovered their mistake; and were at once surprised and

enraged to find James, on all occasions, express his intention

of strictly executing the laws enacted against them, and of

persevering in all the rigorous measures of Elizabeth.

Catesby, a gentleman of good parts and of an ancient family,

first thought of a most extraordinary method of revenge; and

he opened his intention to Piercy, a descendant of the

illustrious house of Northumberland. In vain, said he, would

you put an end to the king's life: he has children. ... To

serve any good purpose, we must destroy, at one blow, the

king, the royal family, the Lords, the Commons, and bury all

our enemies in one common ruin. Happily, they are all

assembled on the first meeting of Parliament, and afford us

the opportunity of glorious and useful vengeance. Great

preparations will not be requisite. A few of us, combining,

may run a mine below the hall in which they meet, and choosing

the very moment when the king harangues both Houses, consign over

to destruction these determined foes to all piety and

religion. ... Piercy was charmed with this project of Catesby;

and they agreed to communicate the matter to a few more, and

among the rest to Thomas Winter, whom they sent over to

Flanders, in quest of Fawkes, an officer in the Spanish

service, with whose zeal and courage they were all thoroughly

acquainted. ... All this passed in the spring and summer of

the year 1604; when the conspirators also hired a house in

Piercy's name, adjoining to that in which the Parliament was

to assemble. Towards the end of that year they began their

operations. ... They soon pierced the wall, though three yards

in thickness; but on approaching the other side they were

somewhat startled at hearing a noise which they knew not how

to account for. Upon inquiry, they found that it came from the

vault below the House of Lords; that a magazine of coals had

been kept there; and that, as the coals were selling off, the

vault would be let to the highest bidder. The opportunity was

immediately seized; the place hired by Piercy; thirty-six

barrels of powder lodged in it; the whole covered up with

faggots and billets; the doors of the cellar boldly flung

open, and everybody admitted, as if it contained nothing

dangerous. ... The day [November 5, 1605], so long wished for,

now approached, on which the Parliament was appointed to

assemble. The dreadful secret, though communicated to above

twenty persons, had been religiously kept, during the space of

near a year and a half. No remorse, no pity, no fear of

punishment, no hope of reward, had as yet induced any one

conspirator, either to abandon the enterprise or make a

discovery of it." But the betrayal was unwittingly made, after

all, by one in the plot, who tried to deter Lord Monteagle

from attending the opening session of Parliament, by sending

him a mysterious message of warning. Lord Monteagle showed the

letter to Lord Salisbury, secretary of state, who attached

little importance to it, but who laid it before the king. The

Scottish Solomon read it with more anxiety and was shrewdly

led by some expressions in the missive to order an inspection

of the vaults underneath the parliamentary houses. The

gunpowder was discovered and Guy Fawkes was found in the

place, with matches for the firing of it on his person. Being

put to the rack he disclosed the names of his accomplices.

They were seized, tried and executed, or killed while

resisting arrest.

D. Hume,

History of England,

volume 4, chapter 46.

ALSO IN:

S. R. Gardiner,

History of England,

chapter 6, (volume 1).

J. Lingard,

History of England,

volume 9, chapter 1.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1606.

The chartering of the Virginia Company, with its London and

Plymouth branches.

See VIRGINIA: A. D. 1606-1607.

{847}

ENGLAND: A. D. 1620.

The Monopoly granted to the Council for New England.

See NEW ENGLAND: A.. D. 1620-1623.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1620.

The exodus of the Pilgrims and the planting of their colony at

New Plymouth.

See MASSACHUSETTS (PLYMOUTH COLONY): A. D. 1620.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1621.

Claims in North America conflicting with France.

Grant of Nova Scotia to Sir William Alexander.

See NEW ENGLAND: A. D. 1621-1631.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1623-1638.

The grants in Newfoundland to Baltimore and Kirke.

See NEWFOUNDLAND: A. D. 1610-1655.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1625.

The Protestant Alliance in the Thirty Years War.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1624-1626.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1625.

The gains of Parliament in the reign of James I.

"The commons had now been engaged [at the end of the reign of

James I.], for more than twenty years, in a struggle to

restore and to fortify their own and their fellow subjects'

liberties. They had obtained in this period but one

legislative measure of importance, the late declaratory act

against monopolies. But they had rescued from disuse their

ancient right of impeachment. They had placed on record a

protestation of their claim to debate all matters of public

concern. They had remonstrated against the usurped

prerogatives of binding the subject by proclamation, and of

levying customs at the out-ports. They had secured beyond

controversy their exclusive privilege of determining contested

elections of their members. They had maintained, and carried

indeed to an unwarrantable extent, their power of judging and

inflicting punishment, even for offences not committed against

their house. Of these advantages some were evidently

incomplete; and it would require the most vigorous exertions

of future parliaments to realize them. But such exertions the

increased energy of the nation gave abundant cause to

anticipate. A deep and lasting love of freedom had taken hold

of every class except perhaps the clergy; from which, when

viewed together with the rash pride of the court, and the

uncertainty of constitutional principles and precedents,

collected through our long and various history, a calm

by-stander might presage that the ensuing reign would not pass

without disturbance, nor perhaps end without confusion."

H. Hallam,

Constitutional History of England,

chapter 6.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1625.

Marriage of Charles with Henrietta Maria of France.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1624--1626.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1625-1628.

The accession of Charles I.

Beginning of the struggle of King and Parliament.

"The political and religious schism which had originated in

the 16th century was, during the first quarter of the 17th

century, constantly widening. Theories tending to Turkish

despotism were in fashion at Whitehall. Theories tending to

republicanism were in favour with a large portion of the House

of Commons. ... While the minds of men were in this state, the

country, after a peace of many years, at length engaged in a

war [with Spain, and with Austria and the Emperor in the

Palatinate] which required strenuous exertions. This war

hastened the approach of the great constitutional crisis. It

was necessary that the king should have a large military

force. He could not have such a force without money. He could

not legally raise money without the consent of Parliament. It

followed, therefore, that he either must administer the

government in conformity with the sense of the House of

Commons, or must venture on such a violation of the

fundamental laws of the land as had been unknown during

several centuries. ... Just at this conjuncture James died

[March 27, 1625]. Charles I. succeeded to the throne. He had

received from nature a far better understanding, a far

stronger will, and a far keener and firmer temper than his

father's. He had inherited his father's political theories,

and was much more disposed than his father to carry them into

practice. ... His taste in literature and art was excellent,

his manner dignified though not gracious, his domestic life

without blemish. Faithlessness was the chief cause of his

disasters, and is the chief stain on his memory. He was, in

truth, impelled by an incurable propensity to dark and crooked

ways. ... He seems to have learned from the theologians whom

he most esteemed that between him and his subjects there could

be nothing of the nature of mutual contract; that he could

not, even if he would, divest himself of his despotic

authority; and that, in every promise which he made, there was

an implied reservation that such promise might be broken in

case of necessity, and that of the necessity he was the sole

judge. And now began that hazardous game on which were staked

the destinies of the English people. It was played on the side

of the House of Commons with keenness, but with admirable

dexterity, coolness and perseverance. Great statesmen who

looked far behind them and far before them were at the head of

that assembly. They were resolved to place the king in such a

situation that he must either conduct the administration in

conformity with the wishes of his Parliament, or make

outrageous attacks on the most sacred principles of the

constitution. They accordingly doled out supplies to him very

sparingly. He found that he must govern either in harmony with

the House of Commons, or in defiance of all law. His choice

was soon made. He dissolved his first Parliament, and levied

taxes by his own authority. He convoked a second Parliament

[1626] and found it more intractable than the first. He again

resorted to the expedient of dissolution, raised fresh taxes

without any show of legal right, and threw the chiefs of the

opposition into prison. At the same time a new grievance,

which the peculiar feelings and habits of the English nation

made insupportably painful, and which seemed to all discerning

men to be of fearful augury, excited general discontent and

alarm. Companies of soldiers were billeted on the people; and

martial law was, in some places, substituted for the ancient

jurisprudence of the realm. The king called a third Parliament

[1628], and soon perceived that the opposition was stronger

and fiercer than ever. He now determined on a change of

tactics. Instead of opposing an inflexible resistance to the

demands of the commons, he, after much altercation and many

evasions, agreed to a compromise which, if he had faithfully

adhered to it, would have averted a long series of calamities.

The Parliament granted an ample supply. The King ratified, in

the most solemn manner, that celebrated law which is known by

the name of the Petition of Right, and which is the second

Great Charter of the liberties of England."

Lord Macaulay,

History of England,

chapter 1.

ALSO IN:

J. R. Green,

History of the English People,

book 7, chapter 5 (volume 3).

F. P. Guizot,

History of the English Revolution,

book 1.

{848}

ENGLAND: A. D. 1627-1628.

Buckingham's war with France and expedition to La Rochelle.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1627-1628.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1628.

The Petition of Right.

"Charles had recourse to many subterfuges in hopes to elude

the passing of this law; rather perhaps through wounded pride,

as we may judge from his subsequent conduct, than much

apprehension that it would create a serious impediment to his

despotic schemes. He tried to persuade them to acquiesce in

his royal promise not to arrest anyone without just cause, or

in a simple confirmation of the Great Charter and other

statutes in favour of liberty. The peers, too pliant in this

instance to his wishes, and half receding from the patriot

banner they had lately joined, lent him their aid by proposing

amendments (insidious in those who suggested them, though not

in the body of the house) which the commons firmly rejected.

Even when the bill was tendered to him for that assent which

it had been necessary, for the last two centuries, that the

king should grant or refuse in a word, he returned a long and

equivocal answer, from which it could only be collected that

he did not intend to remit any portion of what he had claimed

as his prerogative. But on an address from both houses for a

more explicit answer, he thought fit to consent to the bill in

the usual form. The commons, of whose harshness towards Charles

his advocates have said so much, immediately passed a bill for

granting five subsidies, about £350,000; a sum not too great

for the wealth of the kingdom or for his exigencies, but

considerable according to the precedents of former times, to

which men naturally look. ... The Petition of Right, ... this

statute is still called, from its not being drawn in the

common form of an act of parliament." Although the king had

been defeated in his attempt to qualify his assent to the

Petition of Right, and had been forced to accede to it

unequivocally, yet "he had the absurd and audacious

insincerity (for we can use no milder epithets), to circulate

1,500 copies of it through the country, after the prorogation,

with his first answer annexed; an attempt to deceive without

the possibility of success. But instances of such ill-faith,

accumulated as they are through the life of Charles, render

the assertion of his sincerity a proof either of historical

ignorance or of a want of moral delicacy."

H. Hallam,

Constitutional History of England,

volume 1, chapter 7.

The following is the text of the Petition of Right:

"To the King's Most Excellent Majesty. Humbly show unto our

Sovereign Lord the King, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and

Commons in Parliament assembled, that whereas it is declared

and enacted by a statute made in the time of the reign of King

Edward the First, commonly called, 'Statutum de Tallagio non

concedendo,' that no tallage or aid shall be laid or levied by

the King or his heirs in this realm, without the goodwill and

assent of the Archbishops, Bishops, Earls, Barons, Knights,

Burgesses, and other the freemen of the commonalty of this

realm: and by authority of Parliament holden in the five and

twentieth year of the reign of King Edward the Third, it is

declared and enacted, that from thenceforth no person shall be

compelled to make any loans to the King against his will,

because such loans were against reason and the franchise of

the land; and by other laws of this realm it is provided, that

none should be charged by any charge or imposition, called a

Benevolence, or by such like charge, by which the statutes

before-mentioned, and other the good laws and statutes of this

realm, your subjects have inherited this freedom, that they

should not be compelled to contribute to any tax, tallage,

aid, or other like charge, not set by common consent in

Parliament: Yet nevertheless, of late divers commissions

directed to sundry Commissioners in several counties with

instructions have issued, by means whereof your people have

been in divers places assembled, and required to lend certain

sums of money unto your Majesty, and many of them upon their

refusal so to do, have had an oath administered unto them, not

warrantable by the laws or statutes of this realm, and have

been constrained to become bound to make appearance and give

attendance before your Privy Council, and in other places, and

others of them have been therefore imprisoned, confined, and

sundry other ways molested and disquieted: and divers other

charges have been laid and levied upon your people in several

counties, by Lords Lieutenants, Deputy Lieutenants,

Commissioners for Musters, Justices of Peace and others, by

command or direction from your Majesty or your Privy Council,

against the laws and free customs of this realm: And where

also by the statute called, 'The Great Charter of the

Liberties of England,' it is declared and enacted, that no

freeman may be taken or imprisoned or be disseised of his

freeholds or liberties, or his free customs, or be outlawed or

exiled; or in any manner destroyed, but by the lawful judgment

of his peers, or by the law of the land: And in the eight and

twentieth year of the reign of King Edward the Third, it was

declared and enacted by authority of Parliament, that no man

of what estate or condition that he be, should be put out of

his lands or tenements, nor taken, nor imprisoned, nor

disherited, nor put to death, without being brought to answer

by due process of law: Nevertheless, against the tenor of the

said statutes, and other the good laws and statutes of your

realm, to that end provided, divers of your subjects have of

late been imprisoned without any cause showed, and when for

their deliverance they were brought before your Justices, by

your Majesty's writs of Habeas Corpus, there to undergo and

receive as the Court should order, and their keepers commanded

to certify the causes of their detainer; no cause was

certified, but that they were detained by your Majesty's

special command, signified by the Lords of your Privy Council,

and yet were returned back to several prisons, without being

charged with anything to which they might make answer

according to the law: And whereas of late great companies of

soldiers and mariners have been dispersed into divers counties

of the realm, and the inhabitants against their wills have

been compelled to receive them into their houses, and there to

suffer them to sojourn, against the laws and customs of this

realm, and to the great grievance and vexation of the people:

And whereas also by authority of Parliament, in the 25th year

of the reign of King Edward the Third, it is declared and

enacted, that no man shall be forejudged of life or limb

against the form of the Great Charter, and the law of the

land:

{849}

and by the said Great Charter and other the laws and statutes

of this your realm, no man ought to be adjudged to death; but

by the laws established in this your realm, either by the

customs of the same realm or by Acts of Parliament: and

whereas no offender of what kind soever is exempted from the

proceedings to be used, and punishments to be inflicted by the

laws and statutes of this your realm: nevertheless of late

divers commissions under your Majesty's Great Seal have issued

forth, by which certain persons have been assigned and

appointed Commissioners with power and authority to proceed

within the land, according to the justice of martial law

against such soldiers and mariners, or other dissolute persons

joining with them, as should commit any murder, robbery,

felony, mutiny, or other outrage or misdemeanour whatsoever,

and by such summary course and order, as is agreeable to

martial law, and is used in armies in time of war, to proceed

to the trial and condemnation of such offenders, and them to

cause to be executed and put to death, according to the law

martial: By pretext whereof, some of your Majesty's subjects

have been by some of the said Commissioners put to death, when

and where, if by the laws and statutes of the land they had

deserved death, by the same laws and statutes also they might,

and by no other ought to have been, adjudged and executed: And

also sundry grievous offenders by colour thereof, claiming an

exemption, have escaped the punishments due to them by the

laws and statutes of this your realm, by reason that divers of

your officers and ministers of justice have unjustly refused,

or forborne to proceed against such offenders according to the

same laws and statutes, upon pretence that the said offenders

were punishable only by martial law, and by authority of such

commissions as aforesaid, which commissions, and all other of

like nature, are wholly and directly contrary to the said laws

and statutes of this your realm: They do therefore humbly pray

your Most Excellent Majesty, that no man hereafter be

compelled to make or yield any gift, loan, benevolence, tax,

or such like charge, without common consent by Act of

Parliament; and that none be called to make answer, or take

such oath, or to give attendance, or be confined, or otherwise

molested or disquieted concerning the same, or for refusal

thereof; and that no freeman, in any such manner as is

before-mentioned, be imprisoned or detained; and that your

Majesty will be pleased to remove the said soldiers and

mariners, and that your people may not be so burdened in time

to come; and that the foresaid commissions for proceeding by

martial law, may be revoked and annulled; and that hereafter

no commissions of like nature may issue forth to any person or

persons whatsoever, to be executed as aforesaid, lest by

colour of them any of your Majesty's subjects be destroyed or

put to death, contrary to the laws and franchise of the land.

All which they most humbly pray of your Most Excellent

Majesty, as their rights and liberties according to the laws

and statutes of this realm: and that your Majesty would also

vouchsafe to declare, that the awards, doings, and proceedings

to the prejudice of your people, in any of the premises, shall

not be drawn hereafter into consequence or example: and that

your Majesty would be also graciously pleased, for the further

comfort and safety of your people, to declare your royal will

and pleasure, that in the things aforesaid all your officers

and ministers shall serve you, according to the laws and

statutes of this realm, as they tender the honour of your

Majesty, and the prosperity of this kingdom. [Which Petition

being read the 2nd of June 1628, the King's answer was thus

delivered unto it. The King willeth that right be done

according to the laws and customs of the realm; and that the

statutes be put in due execution, that his subjects may have

no cause to complain of any wrong or oppressions, contrary to

their just rights and liberties, to the preservation whereof

he holds himself as well obliged as of his prerogative. On

June 7 the answer was given in the accustomed form, 'Soit

droit fait comme il est désiré.']"

ALSO IN:

S. R. Gardiner,

History of England,

chapter 63 (volume 6).

S. R. Gardiner,

Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution,

page 1.

J. L. De Lolme,

The English Constitution,

chapter 7 (volume 1).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1628.

Assassination of Buckingham.

"While the struggle [over the Petition of Right] was going on,

the popular hatred of Buckingham [the King's favourite, whose

influence at court was supreme] showed itself in a brutal

manner. In the streets of London, the Duke's physician, Dr.

Lambe, was set upon by the mob, called witch, devil, and the

Duke's conjuror, and absolutely beaten to death. The Council

set inquiries on foot, but no individual was brought before

it, and the rhyme went from mouth to mouth--'Let Charles and

George do what they can, The Duke shall die like Doctor

Lambe.' ... Charles, shocked and grieved, took his friend in

his own coach through London to see the ten ships which were

being prepared at Deptford for the relief of Rochelle. It was

reported that he was heard to say, 'George, there are some

that wish that both these and thou might perish. But care not

thou for them. We will both perish together if thou dost.'

There must have been something strangely attractive about the

man who won and kept the hearts of four personages so

dissimilar as James and Charles of England, Anne of Austria,

and William Laud. ... In the meantime Rochelle held out." One

attempt to relieve the beleaguered town had failed. Buckingham

was to command in person the armament now in preparation for

another attempt. "The fleet was at Portsmouth, and Buckingham

went down thither in high spirits to take the command. The

King came down to Sir Daniel Norton's house at Southwick. On

the 23d of August Buckingham rose and 'cut a caper or two'

before the barber dealt with his moustache and lovelocks. Then

he was about to sit down to breakfast with a number of

captains, and as he rose he received letters which made him

believe that Rochelle had been relieved. He said he must tell

the King instantly, but Soubise and the other refugees did not

believe a word of it, and there was a good deal of disputing

and gesticulation between them. He crossed a lobby, followed

by the eager Frenchmen, and halted to take leave of an

officer, Sir Thomas Fryar. Over the shoulder of this

gentleman, as he bowed, a knife was thrust into Buckingham's

breast. There was an effort to withdraw it; a cry 'The

Villain!' and the great Duke, at 36 years old, was dead. The

attendants at first thought the blow came from one of the

noisy Frenchmen, and were falling on them." But a servant had

seen the deed committed, and ran after the assassin, who was

arrested and proved to be one John Felton, a soldier and a man

of good family. He had suffered wrongs which apparently

unhinged his mind.

{850}

C. M. Yonge,

Cameos from English History,

6th series, chapter 17.

ALSO IN:

S. R. Gardiner,

History of England, 1603-1642,

chapter 65.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1628-1632.

Conquest and brief occupation of Canada and Nova Scotia.

See CANADA (NEW FRANCE): A. D. 1628-1635.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1629.

The royal charter granted to the Governor and Company of

Massachusetts Bay.

See: MASSACHUSETTS: A. D. 1623-1629.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1629.

The King's Carolina grant to Sir Robert Heath.

See AMERICA: A. D. 1629.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1629.

Tonnage and Poundage.

The tumult in Parliament and the dissolution.

Charles' third Parliament, prorogued on the 26th of June,

1628, reassembled on the 20th of January, 1629. "The

Parliament Session proved very brief; but very energetic, very

extraordinary. Tonnage and Poundage, what we now call

Customhouse duties, a constant subject of quarrel between

Charles and his Parliaments hitherto, had again been levied

without Parliamentary consent; in the teeth of old 'Tallagio

non concedendo,' nay even of the late solemnly confirmed

Petition of Right; and naturally gave rise to Parliamentary

consideration. Merchants had been imprisoned for refusing to

pay it; Members of Parliament themselves had been 'supoena'd':

there was a very ravelled coil to deal with in regard to

Tonnage and Poundage. Nay the Petition of Right itself had

been altered in the Printing; a very ugly business too. In

regard to Religion also, matters looked equally ill. Sycophant

Mainwaring, just censured in Parliament, had been promoted to

a fatter living. Sycophant Montague, in the like

circumstances, to a Bishopric: Laud was in the act of

consecrating him at Croydon, when the news of Buckingham's

death came thither. There needed to be a Committee of

Religion. The House resolved itself into a Grand Committee of

Religion; and did not want for matter. Bishop Neile of

Winchester, Bishop Laud now of London, were a frightfully

ceremonial pair of Bishops; the fountain they of innumerable

tendencies to Papistry and the old clothes of Babylon. It was

in this Committee of Religion, on the 11th day of February,

1628-9, that Mr. Cromwell, Member for Huntingdon, stood up and

made his first speech, a fragment of which has found its way

into History. ... A new Remonstrance behoves to be resolved

upon; Bishops Neile and Laud are even to be 'named' there.

Whereupon, before they could get well 'named' ... the King

hastily interfered. This Parliament, in a fortnight more, was

dissolved; and that under circumstances of the most

unparalleled sort. For Speaker Finch, as we have seen, was a

Courtier, in constant communication with the King: one day,

while these high matters were astir, Speaker Finch refused to

'put the question' when ordered by the House! He said he had

orders to the contrary; persisted in that;--and at last took

to weeping. What was the House to do? Adjourn for two days;

and consider what to do! On the second day, which was

Wednesday, Speaker Finch signified that by his Majesty's

command they were again adjourned till Monday next. On Monday

next, Speaker Finch, still recusant, would not put the former

nor indeed any question, having the King's order to adjourn

again instantly. He refused; was reprimanded, menaced; once

more took to weeping; then started up to go his ways. But

young Mr. Holles, Denzil Holles, the Earl of Clare's second

son, he and certain other honourable members were prepared for

that movement: they seized Speaker Finch, set him down in his

chair, and by main force held him there! A scene of such

agitation as was never seen in Parliament before. 'The House

was much troubled.' 'Let him go,' cried certain Privy

Councillors, Majesty's Ministers as we should now call them,

who in those days sat in front of the Speaker, 'Let Mr.

Speaker go!' cried they imploringly. 'No!' answered Holles;

'God's wounds, he shall sit there till it please the House to

rise!' The House in a decisive though almost distracted

manner, with their Speaker thus held down for them, locked

their doors; redacted Three emphatic Resolutions, their

Protest against Arminianism, Papistry, and illegal Tonnage and

Poundage; and passed the same by acclamation; letting no man

out, refusing to let even the King's Usher in; then swiftly

vanishing so soon as the resolutions were passed, for they

understood the soldiery was coming. For which surprising

procedure, vindicated by Necessity the mother of Invention,

and supreme of Lawgivers, certain honourable gentlemen, Denzil

Holles, Sir John Eliot, William Strode, John Selden, and

others less known to us, suffered fine, imprisonment, and much

legal tribulation: nay Sir John Eliot, refusing to submit, was

kept in the Tower till he died. This scene fell out on Monday,

2d of March, 1629."

T. Carlyle,

Introduction to Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches,

chapter 4.

ALSO IN:

J. Forster,

Sir John Eliot: a Biography,

book 10, section 6-8 (volume 2).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1630.

Emigration of the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay,

with their royal charter.

See MASSACHUSETTS: A. D. 1629-1630.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1631.

Aid to Gustavus Adolphus in Germany.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1631-1632.

ENGLAND: A. D: 1632.

Cession of Acadia (Nova Scotia) to France.

See NOVA SCOTIA (ACADIA): A. D. 1621-1668.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1632.

The Palatine grant of Maryland to Lord Baltimore.

See MARYLAND: A. D. 1632.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1633-1640.

The Ecclesiastical despotism of Laud.

"When Charles, having quarreled with his parliament, stood

alone in the midst of his kingdom, seeking on all sides the

means of governing, the Anglican clergy believed this day [for

establishing the independent and uncontrolled power of their

church] was come. They had again got immense wealth, and

enjoyed it without dispute. The papists no longer inspired

them with alarm. The primate of the church, Laud, possessed

the entire confidence of the king and alone directed all

ecclesiastical affairs. Among the other ministers, none

professed, like lord Burleigh under Elizabeth, to fear and

struggle against the encroachments of the clergy. The

courtiers were indifferent, or secret papists. Learned men

threw lustre over the church. The universities, that of Oxford

more especially, were devoted to her maxims. Only one

adversary remained--the people, each day more discontented

with uncompleted reform, and more eager fully to accomplish

it. But this adversary was also the adversary of the throne;

it claimed at the same time, the one to secure the other,

evangelical faith and civil liberty.

{851}

The same peril threatened the sovereignty of the crown and of

episcopacy. The king, sincerely pious, seemed disposed to

believe that he was not the only one who held his authority

from God, and that the power of the bishops was neither of

less high origin, nor of less sacred character. Never had so

many favourable circumstances seemed combined to enable the

clergy to achieve independence of the crown, dominion over the

people. Laud set himself to work with his accustomed

vehemence. First, it was essential that all dissensions in the

bosom of the church itself should cease, and that the

strictest uniformity should infuse strength into its

doctrines, its discipline, its worship. He applied himself to

this task with the most unhesitating and unscrupulous

resolution. Power was exclusively concentrated into the hands

of the bishops. The court of high commission, where they took

cognizance of and decided everything relating to religious

matters, became day by day more arbitrary, more harsh in its

jurisdiction, its forms and its penalties. The complete

adoption of the Anglican canons, the minute observance of the

liturgy, and the rites enforced in cathedrals, were rigorously

exacted on the part of the whole ecclesiastical body. A great

many livings were in the hands of nonconformists; they were

withdrawn from them. The people crowded to their sermons; they

were forbidden to preach. ... Persecution followed and reached

them everywhere. ... Meantime, the pomp of catholic worship

speedily took possession of the churches deprived of their

pastors; while persecution kept away the faithful,

magnificence adorned the walls. They were consecrated amid

great display, and it was then necessary to employ force to

collect a congregation. Laud was fond of prescribing minutely

the details of new ceremonies--sometimes borrowed from Rome,

sometimes the production of his own imagination, at once

ostentatious and austere. On the part of the nonconformists,

every innovation, the least derogation from the canons or the

liturgy, was punished as a crime; yet Laud innovated without

consulting anybody, looking to nothing beyond the king's

consent, and sometimes acting entirely upon his own authority.

... And all these changes had, if not the aim, at all events

the result, of rendering the Anglican church more and more

like that of Rome. ... Books were published to prove that the

doctrine of the English bishops might very well adapt itself

to that of Rome; and these books, though not regularly

licensed, were dedicated to the king or to Laud, and openly

tolerated. ... The splendour and exclusive dominion of

episcopacy thus established, at least so he flattered himself,

Laud proceeded to secure its independence. ... The divine

right of bishops became, in a short time, the official

doctrine, not only of the upper clergy, but of the king

himself. ... By the time things had come to this pass, the

people were not alone in their anger. The high nobility, part

of them at least, took the alarm. They saw in the progress of

the church far more than mere tyranny; it was a regular

revolution, which, not satisfied with crushing popular

reforms, disfigured and endangered the first reformation; that

which kings had made and the aristocracy adopted."

F. P. Guizot,

History of the English Revolution of 1640,

book 2.

ALSO IN:

D. Neal,

History of the Puritans,

volume 2, chapters 4-6.

G. G. Perry,

History of the Church of England,

chapters 13-16 (volume l).

P. Bayne,

The Chief Actors of the Puritan Revolution,

chapter 3.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1634-1637.

Hostile measures against the Massachusetts Colony.

See MASSACHUSETTS: A. D. 1634-1637.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1634-1637.

Ship-money.

"The aspect of public affairs grew darker and darker. ... All

the promises of the king were violated without scruple or

shame. The Petition of Right, to which he had, in

consideration of moneys duly numbered, given a solemn assent,

was set at naught. Taxes were raised by the royal authority.

Patents of monopoly were granted. The old usages of feudal

times were made pretexts for harassing the people with

exactions unknown during many years. The Puritans were

persecuted with cruelty worthy of the Holy Office. They were

forced to fly from the country. They were imprisoned. They

were whipped. Their ears were cut off. Their noses were slit.

Their cheeks were branded with red-hot iron. But the cruelty

of the oppressor could not tire out the fortitude of the

victims. ... The hardy sect grew up and flourished, in spite

of everything that seemed likely to stunt it, struck its roots

deep into a. barren soil, and spread its branches wide to an

inclement sky. ... For the misgovernment of this disastrous

period, Charles himself is principally responsible. After the

death of Buckingham, he seemed to have been his own prime

minister. He had, however, two counsellors who seconded him,

or went beyond him, in intolerance and lawless violence; the

one a superstitious driveller, as honest as a vile temper

would suffer him to be; the other a man of great valour and

capacity, but licentious, faithless, corrupt, and cruel. Never

were faces more strikingly characteristic of the individuals

to whom they belonged than those of Laud and Strafford, as

they still remain portrayed by the most skilful hand of that

age. The mean forehead, the pinched features, the peering eyes

of the prelate suit admirably with his disposition. They mark

him out as a lower kind of Saint Dominic. ... But

Wentworth--whoever names him without thinking of those harsh

dark features, ennobled by their expression into more than the

majesty of an antique Jupiter! ... Among the humbler tools of

Charles were Chief-Justice Finch, and Noy, the

attorney-general. Noy had, like Wentworth, supported the cause

of liberty in Parliament, and had, like Wentworth, abandoned that

cause for the sake of office. He devised, in conjunction with

Finch, a scheme of exaction which made the alienation of the

people from the throne complete. A writ was issued by the

king, commanding the city of London to equip and man ships of

war for his service. Similar writs were sent to the towns

along the coast. These measures, though they were direct

violations of the Petition of Right, had at least some show of

precedent in their favour. But, after a time, the government

took a step for which no precedent could be pleaded, and sent

writs of ship-money to the inland counties. This was a stretch

of power on which Elizabeth herself had not ventured, even at

a time when all laws might with propriety have been made to

bend to that highest law, the safety of the state. The inland

counties had not been required to furnish ships, or money in

the room of ships, even when the Armada was approaching our

shores.

{852}

It seemed intolerable that a prince, who, by assenting to the

Petition of Right, had relinquished the power of levying

ship-money even in the outports, should be the first to levy

it on parts of the kingdom where it had been unknown, under

the most absolute of his predecessors. Clarendon distinctly

admits that this tax was intended, not only for the support of

the navy, but 'for a spring and magazine that should have no

bottom, and for an everlasting supply on all occasions.' The

nation well understood this; and from one end of England to

the other, the public mind was strongly excited.

Buckinghamshire was assessed at a ship of 450 tons, or a sum

of £4,500. The share of the tax which fell to Hampden was very

small [twenty shillings]; so small, indeed, that the sheriff

was blamed for setting so wealthy a man at so low a rate. But,

though the sum demanded was a trifle, the principle of the

demand was despotism. Hampden, after consulting the most

eminent constitutional lawyers of the time, refused to pay the

few shillings at which he was assessed; and determined to

incur all the certain expense and the probable danger of

bringing to a solemn hearing this great controversy between

the people and the crown. ... Towards the close of the year

1636, this great cause came on in the Exchequer Chamber before

all the judges of England. The leading counsel against the

writ was the celebrated Oliver St. John; a man whose temper

was melancholy, whose manners were reserved, and who was as

yet little known in Westminster Hall; but whose great talents

had not escaped the penetrating eye of Hampden. The arguments

of the counsel occupied many days; and the Exchequer Chamber

took a considerable time for deliberation. The opinion of the

bench was divided. So clearly was the law in favour of

Hampden, that though the judges held their situations only

during the royal pleasure, the majority against him was the

least possible. Four of the twelve pronounced decidedly in his

favour; a fifth took a middle course. The remaining seven gave

their voices in favour of the writ. The only effect of this

decision was to make the public indignation stronger and

deeper. 'The judgment,' says Clarendon, 'proved of more

advantage and credit to the gentleman condemned than to the

king's service.' The courage which Hampden had shown on this

occasion, as the same historian tells us, 'raised his

reputation to a great height generally throughout the

kingdom.'"

Lord Macaulay,

Essays,

volume 2 (Nugent's Memorials of Hampden).

ALSO IN:

J. Forster,

Statesmen of the Commonwealth: Hampden.

S. R. Gardiner,

History of England, 1603-1642,

chapter 74 (volume 7),

and chapters 77 and 82 (volume 8);

ALSO

Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution,

pages 37-53, and 115.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1638-1640.

Presbyterianism of the Puritan party.

Rise of the independents.

"It is the artifice of the favourers of the Catholic and of

the prelatical party to call all who are sticklers for the

constitution in church or state, or would square their actions

by any rule, human or divine, Puritans."

J. Rushworth,

Historical Collection,

volume 2, 1355.

"These men [the Puritan party], at the commencement of the

civil war, were presbyterians: and such had at that time been

the great majority of the serious, the sober, and the

conscientious people of England. There was a sort of

imputation of laxness of principles, and of a tendency to

immorality of conduct, upon the adherents of the

establishment, which was infinitely injurious to the episcopal

church. But these persons, whose hearts were in entire

opposition to the hierarchy, had for the most part no

difference of opinion among themselves, and therefore no

thought of toleration for difference of opinion in others.

Their desire was to abolish episcopacy and set up presbytery.

They thought and talked much of the unity of the church of

God, and of the cordial consent and agreement of its members,

and considered all sects and varieties of sentiment as a

blemish and scandal upon their holy religion. They would put

down popery and episcopacy with the strong hand of the law,

and were disposed to employ the same instrument to suppress

all who should venture to think the presbyterian church itself

not yet sufficiently spiritual and pure. Against this party,

which lorded it for a time almost without contradiction,

gradually arose the party of the independents. ... Before the

end of the civil war they became almost as strong as the party

of the presbyterians, and greatly surpassed them in abilities,

intellectual, military and civil."

W. Godwin,

History of the Commonwealth,

book 2, chapter 1 (volume 2).

See, also,

INDEPENDENTS; ENGLAND:

A. D. 1643 (JULY) and (JULY-SEPTEMBER),

A. D. 1646 (MARCH),

A. D. 1647 (APRIL-AUGUST),

and A. D. 1648 (NOVEMBER-DECEMBER).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1639.

The First Bishops' War in Scotland.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1638-1640.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1640.

The Short Parliament and the Second Bishops' War.

The Scots Army in England.

"His Majesty having burnt Scotch paper Declarations 'by the

hands of the common hangman,' and almost cut the Scotch

Chancellor Loudon's head off, and being again resolute to

chastise the rebel Scots with an Army, decides on summoning a

Parliament for that end, there being no money attainable

otherwise. To the great and glad astonishment of England;

which, at one time, thought never to have seen another

Parliament! Oliver Cromwell sat in this Parliament for

Cambridge; recommended by Hampden, say some; not needing any

recommendation in those Fen-countries, think others. Oliver's

Colleague was a Thomas Meautys, Esq. This Parliament met, 13th

April, 1640: it was by no means prompt enough with supplies

against the rebel Scots; the king dismissed it in a huff, 5th

May; after a Session of three weeks: Historians call it the

Short Parliament. His Majesty decides on raising money and an

Army 'by other methods': to which end Wentworth, now Earl

Strafford and Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, who had advised that

course in the Council, did himself subscribe £20,000.

Archbishop Laud had long ago seen 'a cloud rising' against the

Four surplices at Allhallowtide; and now it is covering the

whole sky in a most dismal and really thundery-looking manner.

His Majesty by 'other methods,' commission of array, benevolence,

forced loan, or how he could, got a kind of Army on foot, and

set it marching out of the several Counties in the South

towards the Scotch Border; but it was a most hopeless Army.

The soldiers called the affair a Bishops' War; they mutinied

against their officers, shot some of their officers: in

various Towns on their march, if the Clergyman were reputed

Puritan, they went and gave him three cheers; if of

Surplice-tendency, they sometimes threw his furniture out of

the window.

{853}

No fighting against poor Scotch Gospellers was to be hoped for

from these men. Meanwhile the Scots, not to be behindhand, had

raised a good Army of their own; and decided on going into

England with it, this time, 'to present their grievances to

the King's Majesty.' On the 20th of August, 1640, they cross

the Tweed at Coldstream; Montrose wading in the van of them

all. They wore uniform of hodden gray, with blue caps; and

each man had a moderate haversack of oatmeal on his back.

August 28th, the Scots force their way across the Tyne, at

Newburn, some miles above Newcastle; the King's Army making

small fight, most of them no fight; hurrying from Newcastle,

and all town and country quarters, towards York again, where

his Majesty and Strafford were. The Bishops' War was at an

end. The Scots, striving to be gentle as doves in their

behaviour, and publishing boundless brotherly Declarations to

all the brethren that loved Christ's Gospel and God's Justice

in England,--took possession of Newcastle next day; took

possession gradually of all Northumberland and Durham,--and

stayed there, in various towns and villages, about a year. The

whole body of English Puritans looked upon them as their

saviours. ... His Majesty and Strafford, in a fine frenzy at

the turn of affairs, found no refuge, except to summon a

'Council of Peers,' to enter upon a 'Treaty' with the Scots;

and alas, at last, summon a New Parliament. Not to be helped

in any way. ... A Parliament was appointed for the 3d of

November next;--whereupon London cheerfully lent £200,000; and

the Treaty with the Scots at Ripon, 1st October, 1640, by and

by transferred to London, went peaceably on at a very

leisurely pace. The Scotch Army lay quartered at Newcastle,

and over Northumberland and Durham, on an allowance of £850 a

day; an Army indispensable for Puritan objects; no haste in

finishing its Treaty. The English army lay across in

Yorkshire; without allowance except from the casualties of the

King's Exchequer; in a dissatisfied manner, and occasionally

getting into 'Army-Plots.' This Parliament, which met on the

3d of November; 1640, has become very celebrated in History by

the name of the 'Long Parliament.'"

T. Carlyle,

Cromwell's Letters and Speeches,

part 1: 1640.

ALSO IN:

J. Forster,

Statesmen of the Commonwealth: Strafford.

S. R. Gardiner,

History of England, 1603-1642,

chapter 91-94.

J. H. Burton,

History of Scotland,

chapter 72-73 (volume 7).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1640.

Acquisition and settlement of Madras.

See INDIA: A. D. 1600-1702.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1640-1641.

The Long Parliament and the beginning of its work.

Impeachment and Execution of Strafford.

"The game of tyranny was now up. Charles had risked and lost

his last stake. It is impossible to trace the mortifications

and humiliations which this bad man now had to endure without

a feeling of vindictive pleasure. His army was mutinous; his

treasury was empty; his people clamoured for a Parliament;

addresses and petitions against the government were presented.

Strafford was for shooting those who presented them by martial

law, but the king could not trust the soldiers. A great

council of Peers was called at York, but the king would not

trust even the Peers. He struggled, he evaded, he hesitated,

he tried every shift rather than again face the

representatives of his injured people. At length no shift was

left. He made a truce with the Scots, and summoned a

Parliament. ... On the 3d of November, 1640--a day to be long

remembered--met that great Parliament, destined to every

extreme of fortune--to empire and to servitude, to glory and

to contempt;--at one time the sovereign of its sovereign, at

another time the servant of its servants, and the tool of its

tools. From the first day of its meeting the attendance was

great, and the aspect of the members was that of men not

disposed to do the work negligently. The dissolution of the

late Parliament had convinced most of them that half measures

would no longer suffice. Clarendon tells us that 'the same men

who, six months before, were observed to be of very moderate

tempers, and to wish that gentle remedies might be applied,

talked now in another dialect both of kings and persons; and

said that they must now be of another temper than they were

the last Parliament.' The debt of vengeance was swollen by all

the usury which had been accumulating during many years; and

payment was made to the full. This memorable crisis called

forth parliamentary abilities, such as England had never

before seen. Among the most distinguished members of the House

of Commons were Falkland, Hyde, Digby, Young, Harry Vane, Oliver

St. John, Denzil Hollis, Nathaniel Fiennes. But two men

exercised a paramount influence over the legislature and the

country--Pym and Hampden; and, by the universal consent of

friends and enemies, the first place belonged to Hampden."

Lord Macaulay,

Nugent's Memorials of Hampden

(Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, volume 2).

"The resolute looks of the members as they gathered at

Westminster contrasted with the hesitating words of the king,

and each brought from borough or county a petition of

grievances. Fresh petitions were brought every day by bands of

citizens or farmers. Forty committees were appointed to

examine and report on them, and their reports formed the

grounds on which the Commons acted. One by one the illegal

acts of the Tyranny were annulled. Prynne and his fellow

'martyrs' recalled from their prisons, entered London in

triumph, amid the shouts of a great multitude who strewed

laurel in their path. The civil and criminal jurisdiction of

the Privy Council, the Star Chamber, the Court of High

Commission, the irregular jurisdictions of the Council of the

North, of the Duchy of Lancaster, the County of Chester, and a

crowd of lesser tribunals, were summarily abolished.

Ship-money was declared illegal, and the judgment in Hampden's

case annulled. A statute declaring 'the ancient right of the

subjects of this kingdom that no subsidy, custom, impost, or

any charge whatsoever, ought or may be laid or imposed upon

any merchandize exported or imported by subjects, denizens or

allies, without common consent of Parliament,' put an end

forever to all pretensions to a right of arbitrary taxation on

the part of the crown. A Triennial Bill enforced the Assembly

of the Houses every three years, and bound the sheriff and

citizens to proceed to election if the Royal writ failed to

summon them. Charles protested, but gave way. He was forced to

look helplessly on at the wreck of his Tyranny, for the Scotch

army was still encamped in the north. ... Meanwhile the

Commons were dealing roughly with the agents of the Royal

system. ...

{854}

Windebank, the Secretary of State, with the Chancellor, Finch,

fled in terror over sea. Laud himself was flung into prison.

... But even Laud, hateful as he was to all but the poor

neighbours whose prayers his alms had won, was not the centre

of so great and universal a hatred as the Earl of Strafford.

Strafford's guilt was more than the guilt of a servile

instrument of tyranny--it was the guilt of 'that grand

apostate to the Commonwealth who,' in the terrible words which

closed Lord Digby's invective, 'must not expect to be pardoned

in this world till he be dispatched to the other.' He was

conscious of his danger, but Charles forced him to attend the

Court.' He came to London with the solemn assurance of his

master that, "while there was a king in England, not a hair of

Strafford's head should be touched by the Parliament."

Immediately impeached of high treason by the Commons, and sent

to the Tower, he received from the king a second and more

solemn pledge, by letter, that, "upon the word of a king, you

shall not suffer in life, honour or fortune." But the "word of

a king" like Charles Stuart, had neither honor nor gratitude, nor

a decent self respect behind it. He could be false to a friend

as easily as to an enemy. When the Commons, fearing failure on

the trial of their impeachment, resorted to a bill of

attainder, Charles signed it with a little resistance, and

Strafford went bravely and manfully to the block. "As the axe

fell, the silence of the great multitude was broken by a

universal shout of joy. The streets blazed with bonfires. The

bells clashed out from every steeple."

J. R. Green,

Short History of England,

chapter 8, section 6.

The king "was as deeply pledged to Strafford as one man could

be to another; he was as vitally concerned in saving the life

and prolonging the service of incomparably his ablest servant

as was ever any sovereign in the case of any minister; yet it

is clear that for some days past, probably ever since the

first signs of popular tumult began to manifest themselves, he

had been wavering. Four days before the Bill passed the Lords,

Strafford as is well known, entreated the king to assent to

it. There is no reason to doubt the absolute sincerity with

which, at the moment of its conception, the prisoner penned

his famous letter from the Tower. That passionate chivalry of

loyalty, which has never animated any human heart in equal

intensity since Strafford's ceased to beat, inspires every

line. ... Charles turned distractedly from one adviser to

another, not so much for counsel as for excuse. He did not

want his judgment guided, but his conscience quieted; and his

counsellors knew it. They had other reasons, too, for urging

him to his dishonour. Panic seems to have seized upon them

all. The only man who would not have quailed before the fury

of the populace was the man himself whose life was trembling

in the balance. The judges were summoned to declare their

opinion, and replied, with an admirable choice of

non-committing terms, that 'upon all that which their

Lordships have voted to be proved the Earl of Strafford doth

deserve to undergo the pains and forfeitures of high treason.'

Charles sent for the bishops, and the bishops, with the

honourable exception of Juxon, informed him that he had two

consciences,--a public and a private conscience,--and that

'his public conscience as a king might not only dispense with,

but oblige him to do, that which was against his conscience as

a man.' What passed between these two tenants in common of the

royal breast during the whole of Sunday, May 9th, 1641, is

within no earthly knowledge; but at some time on that day

Charles's public conscience got the better of its private

rival. He signed a commission for giving the royal assent to

the Bill, and on Monday, May 10th, in the presence of a House

scarcely able to credit the act of betrayal which was taking

place before them, the Commissioners pronounced the fatal Le

roi le veult over the enactment which condemned his Minister

to the block. Charles, of course, might still have reprieved

him by an exercise of the prerogative, but the fears which

made him acquiesce in the sentence availed to prevent him from

arresting its execution."

H. D. Traill,

Lord Stafford,

pages 195-198.

"It is a sorry office to plant the foot on a worm so crushed

and writhing as the wretched king ... [who abandoned

Strafford] for it was one of the few crimes of which he was in

the event thoroughly sensible, and friend has for once

cooperated with foe in the steady application to it of the

branding iron. There is in truth hardly any way of relieving

the 'damned spot' of its intensity of hue even by distributing

the concentrated infamy over other portions of Charles's

character. ... When we have convinced ourselves that this

'unthankful king' never really loved Strafford; that, as much

as in him lay, he kept the dead Buckingham in his old

privilege of mischief, by adopting his aversions and abiding

by his spleenful purposes; that, in his refusals to award

those increased honours for which his minister was a

petitioner, on the avowed ground of the royal interest, may be

discerned the petty triumph of one who dares not dispense with

the services thrust upon him, but revenges himself by

withholding their well-earned reward;--still does the

blackness accumulate to baffle our efforts. The paltry tears

he is said to have shed only burn that blackness in. If his

after conduct indeed had been different, he might have availed

himself of one excuse,--but that the man, who, in a few short

months, proved that he could make so resolute a stand

somewhere, should have judged this event no occasion for

attempting it, is either a crowning infamy or an infinite

consolation, according as we may judge wickedness or weakness

to have preponderated in the constitution of Charles I. ... As

to Strafford's death, the remark that the people had no

alternative, includes all that it is necessary to urge. The

king's assurances of his intention to afford him no further

opportunity of crime, could surely weigh nothing with men who

had observed how an infinitely more disgusting minister of his

will had only seemed to rise the higher in his master's

estimation for the accumulated curses of the nation. Nothing

but the knife of Felton could sever in that case the weak head

and the wicked instrument, and it is to the honour of the

adversaries of Strafford that they were earnest that their

cause should vindicate itself completely, and look for no

adventitious redress. Strafford had outraged the people--this

was not denied. He was defended on the ground of those

outrages not amounting to a treason against the king. For my

own part, this defence appears to me decisive, looking at it

in a technical view, and with our present settlement of

evidence and treason.

{855}

But to concede that point, after the advances they had made,

would have been in that day to concede all. It was to be shown

that another power had claim to the loyalty and the service of

Strafford--and if a claim, then a vengeance to exact for its

neglect. And this was done. ... One momentary emotion ...

escaped ... [Strafford] when he was told to prepare for death.

He asked if the king had indeed assented to the bill.

Secretary Carleton answered in the affirmative; and Strafford,

laying his hand on his heart, and raising his eyes to heaven,

uttered the memorable words,--'Put not your trust in princes,

nor in the sons of men, for in them there is no salvation.'

Charles's conduct was indeed incredibly monstrous."

R. Browning,

Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford

(Eminent British Statesmen, by John Forster, volume 2,

pages 403-406).

ALSO IN:

J. Forster,

Statesmen of the Commonwealth: Strafford; Pym.

Earl of Clarendon,

History of the Rebellion,

book 3 (volume 1).

Lord Nugent,

Memorials of Hampden.

parts 5-6 (volumes 1-2).

Lady T. Lewis,

Life of Lord Falkland.

The following are the Articles of Impeachment under which

Strafford was tried and condemned:

"Articles of the Commons, assembled in Parliament, against

Thomas Earl of Strafford, in Maintenance of their Accusation,

whereby he stands charged with High Treason.

I. That he the said Thomas earl of Strafford hath traiterously

endeavoured to subvert the fundamental laws and government of

the realms of England and Ireland, and, instead thereof, to

introduce an arbitrary and tyrannical government, against law,

which he hath declared by traiterous words, counsels, and

actions, and by giving his majesty advice, by force of arms,

to compel his loyal subjects to submit thereunto.

II. That he hath traiterously assumed to himself regal power

over the lives, liberties of persons, lands, and goods of his

majesty's subjects, in England and Ireland, and hath exercised

the same tyrannically, to the subversion and undoing of many,

both peers and others, of his majesty's liege people.

III. The better to inrich, and enable himself to go through

with his traiterous designs, he hath detained a great part of

his majesty's revenue, without giving any legal accounts; and

hath taken great sums of money out of the exchequer,

converting them to his own use, when his majesty was

necessitated for his own urgent occasions, and his army had

been a long time unpaid.

IV. That he hath traiterously abused the power and authority

of his government, to the increasing, countenancing, and

encouraging of Papists, that so he might settle a mutual

dependence and confidence betwixt himself and that party, and

by their help prosecute and accomplish his malicious and

tyrannical designs.

V. That he hath maliciously endeavoured to stir up enmity and

hostility between his majesty's subjects of England and those

of Scotland.

VI. That he hath traiterously broken the great trust reposed

in him by his majesty, of lieutenant general of his Army, by

wilfully betraying divers of his majesty's subjects to death,

his majesty's Army to a dishonourable defeat by the Scots at

Newborne, and the town of Newcastle into their hands, to the

end that, by effusion of blood, by dishonour, by so great a

loss as of Newcastle, his majesty's realm of England might be

engaged in a national and irreconcilable quarrel with the

Scots.

VII. That, to preserve himself from being questioned for these

and other his traiterous courses, he laboured to subvert the

right of parliaments, and the ancient course of parliamentary

proceedings, and, by false and malicious slanders, to incense

his maj. against parliaments.--By which words, counsels, and

actions, he hath traiterously, and contrary to his allegiance,

laboured to alienate the hearts of the king's liege people

from his maj. to set a division between them, and to ruin and

destroy his majesty's kingdoms, for which they do impeach him

of High Treason against our sovereign lord the king, his crown

and dignity. And he the said earl of Strafford was lord deputy

of Ireland, or lord lieutenant of Ireland, and lieutenant

general of the Army there, under his majesty, and a sworn

privy counsellor to his maj. for his kingdoms both of England

and Ireland, and lord president of the North, during the time

that all and every of the crimes and offences before set forth

were done and committed; and he the said earl was lieutenant

general of his majesty's Army in the North parts of England,

during the time that the crimes and offences in the 5th and

6th Articles set forth were done and committed.--And the said

commons, by protestation, saving to themselves the liberty of

exhibiting at any time hereafter any other Accusation or

Impeachment against the said earl, and also of replying to the

Answer that he the said earl shall make unto the said

Articles, or to any of them, and of offering proof also of the

premises, or any of them, or of any other Accusation or

Impeachment that shall be by them exhibited, as the case

shall, according to the course of parliaments, require; and do

pray that the said earl may be put to answer to all and every

the premises; and that such proceedings, examination, trial,

and judgment, may be upon every of them had and used, as is

agreeable to law and justice."

Cobbett's Parliamentary History of England,

volume 2, pages 737-739.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1641 (March-May).

The Root and Branch Bill.

"A bill was brought in [March, 1641], known as the Restraining

Bill, to deprive Bishops of their rights of voting in the

House of Lords. The opposition it encountered in that House

induced the Commons to follow it up [May 27] with a more

vehement measure, 'for the utter abolition of Archbishops,

Bishops. Deans, Archdeacons, Prebendaries and Canons,' a

measure known by the title of the Root and Branch Bill. By the

skill of the royal partisans, this bill was long delayed in

Committee."

J. F. Bright,

History of England,

period 2 (volume 2), page 650.

ALSO IN:

D. Masson,

Life of John Milton,

volume 2, book 2, chapter 3.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1641 (October).

Roundheads and Cavaliers.

The birth of English parties.

"After ten months of assiduous toil, the Houses, in September,

1641, adjourned for a short vacation and the king visited

Scotland. He with difficulty pacified that kingdom, by

consenting not only to relinquish his plans of ecclesiastical

reform, but even to pass, with a very bad grace, an act

declaring that episcopacy was contrary to the word of God. The

recess of the English Parliament lasted six weeks. The day on

which the houses met again is one of the most remarkable

epochs in our history. From that day dates the corporate

existence of the two great parties which have ever since

alternately governed the country. ...

{856}

During the first months of the Long Parliament, the

indignation excited by many years of lawless oppression was so

strong and general that the House of Commons acted as one man.

Abuse after abuse disappeared without a struggle. If a small

minority of the representative body wished to retain the Star

Chamber and the High Commission, that minority, overawed by

the enthusiasm and by the numerical superiority of the

reformers, contented itself with secretly regretting

institutions which could not, with any hope of success, be

openly defended. At a later period the Royalists found it

convenient to antedate the separation between themselves and

their opponents, and to attribute the Act which restrained the

king from dissolving or proroguing the Parliament, the

Triennial Act, the impeachment of the ministers, and the

attainder of Strafford, to the faction which afterwards made

war on the king. But no artifice could be more disingenuous.

Everyone of those strong measures was actively promoted by the

men who were afterwards foremost among the Cavaliers. No

republican spoke of the long misgovernment of Charles more

severely than Colepepper. The most remarkable speech in favour

of the Triennial Bill was made by Digby. The impeachment of

the Lord Keeper was moved by Falkland. The demand that the

Lord Lieutenant should be kept close prisoner was made at the

bar of the Lords by Hyde. Not till the law attainting

Strafford was proposed did the signs of serious disunion

become visible. Even against that law, a law which nothing but

extreme necessity could justify, only about sixty members of

the House of Commons voted. It is certain that Hyde was not in

the minority, and that Falkland not only voted with the

majority, but spoke strongly for the bill. Even the few who

entertained a scruple about inflicting death by a

retrospective enactment thought it necessary to express the

utmost abhorrence of Strafford's character and administration.

But under this apparent concord a great schism was latent; and

when, in October 1641, the Parliament reassembled after a

short recess, two hostile parties, essentially the same with

those which, under different names, have ever since contended,

and are still contending, for the direction of public affairs,

appeared confronting each other. During some years they were

designated as Cavaliers and Roundheads. They were subsequently

called Tories and Whigs; nor does it seem that these

appellations are likely soon to become obsolete."

Lord Macaulay,

History of England,

chapter 1.

It was not until some months later, however, that the name of

Roundheads was applied to the defenders of popular rights by

their royalist adversaries.

See ROUNDHEADS.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1641 (November).

The Grand Remonstrance.

Early in November, 1641, the king being in Scotland, and news

of the insurrection in Ireland having just reached London, the

party of Pym, Hampden, and Cromwell "resolved on a great

pitched battle between them and the opposition, which should

try their relative strengths before the king's return; and

they chose to fight this battle over a vast document, which

they entitled 'A Declaration and Remonstrance of the State of

the Kingdom,' but which has come to be known since as The

Grand Remonstrance. ... The notion of a great general document

which, under the name of 'A Remonstrance,' should present to

the king in one view a survey of the principal evils that had

crept into the kingdom in his own and preceding reigns, with a

detection of their causes, and a specification of the

remedies, had more than once been before the Commons. It had

been first mooted by Lord Digby while the Parliament was not a

week old. Again and again set aside for more immediate work, it

had recurred to the leaders of the Movement party, just before

the king's departure for Scotland, as likely to afford the

broad battle-ground with the opposition then becoming

desirable. 'A Remonstrance to be made, how we found the

Kingdom and the Church, and how the state of it now stands,'

such was the description of the then intended document (August

7). The document had doubtless been in rehearsal through the

Recess, for on the 8th of November the rough draft of it was

presented to the House and read at the clerk's table. When we

say that the document in its final form occupies thirteen

folio pages of rather close print in Rushworth, and consists

of a preamble followed by 206 articles or paragraphs duly

numbered, one can conceive what a task the reading of even the

first draft of it must have been, and through what a storm of

successive debates over proposed amendments and additions it

reached completeness. There had been no such debates yet in

the Parliament."

D. Masson,

Life of John Milton,

volume 2, book 2, chapter 6.

"It [The Grand Remonstrance] embodies the case of the

Parliament against the Ministers of the king. It is the most

authentic statement ever put forth of the wrongs endured by

all classes of the English people, during the first fifteen

years of the reign of Charles I.; and, for that reason, the

most complete justification upon record of the Great

Rebellion." The debates on The Grand Remonstrance were begun

November 9 and ended November 22, when the vote was taken:

Ayes, 159.--Noes, 148.--So evenly were the parties in the

great struggle then divided.

J. Forster,

History and Biographical Essays,

volume 1: Debates on the Grand Remonstrance.

The following is the text of "The Grand Remonstrance," with

that of the Petition preceding it:

"Most Gracious Sovereign: Your Majesty's most humble and

faithful subjects the Commons in this present Parliament

assembled, do with much thankfulness and joy acknowledge the

great mercy and favour of God, in giving your Majesty a safe

and peaceable return out of Scotland into your kingdom of

England, where the pressing dangers and distempers of the

State have caused us with much earnestness to desire the

comfort of your gracious presence, and likewise the unity and

justice of your royal authority, to give more life and power

to the dutiful and loyal counsels and endeavours of your

Parliament, for the prevention of that eminent ruin and

destruction wherein your kingdoms of England and Scotland are

threatened. The duty which we owe to your Majesty and our

country, cannot but make us very sensible and apprehensive,

that the multiplicity, sharpness and malignity of those evils

under which we have now many years suffered, are fomented and

cherished by a corrupt and ill-affected party, who amongst

other their mischievous devices for the alteration of religion

and government, have sought by many false scandals and

imputations, cunningly insinuated and dispersed amongst the

people, to blemish and disgrace our proceedings in this

Parliament, and to get themselves a party and faction amongst

your subjects, for the better strengthening themselves in

their wicked courses; and hindering those provisions and

remedies which might, by the wisdom of your Majesty and

counsel of your Parliament, be opposed against them.

{857}

For preventing whereof, and the better information of your

Majesty, your Peers and all other your loyal subjects, we have

been necessitated to make a declaration of the state of the

kingdom, both before and since the assembly of this

Parliament, unto this time, which we do humbly present to your

Majesty, without the least intention to lay any blemish upon

your royal person, but only to represent how your royal

authority and trust have been abused, to the great prejudice

and danger of your Majesty, and of all your good subjects. And

because we have reason to believe that those malignant

parties, whose proceedings evidently appear to be mainly for

the advantage and increase of Popery, is composed, set up, and

acted by the subtile practice of the Jesuits and other

engineers and factors for Rome, and to the great danger of

this kingdom, and most grievous affliction of your loyal

subjects, have so far prevailed as to corrupt divers of your

Bishops and others in prime places of the Church, and also to

bring divers of these instruments to be of your Privy Council,

and other employments of trust and nearness about your

Majesty, the Prince, and the rest of your royal children. And

by this means have had such an operation in your counsel and

the most important affairs and proceedings of your government,

that a most dangerous division and chargeable preparation for

war betwixt your kingdoms of England and Scotland, the

increase of jealousies betwixt your Majesty and your most

obedient subjects, the violent distraction and interruption of

this Parliament, the insurrection of the Papists in your

kingdom of Ireland, and bloody massacre of your people, have

been not only endeavoured and attempted, but in a great

measure compassed and effected. For preventing the final

accomplishment whereof, your poor subjects are enforced to

engage their persons and estates to the maintaining of a very

expensive and dangerous war, notwithstanding they have already

since the beginning of this Parliament undergone the charge of

£150,000 sterling, or thereabouts, for the necessary support

and supply of your Majesty in these present and perilous

designs. And because all our most faithful endeavours and

engagements will be ineffectual for the peace, safety and

preservation of your Majesty and your people, if some present,

real and effectual course be not taken for suppressing this

wicked and malignant party:--We, your most humble and obedient

subjects, do with all faithfulness and humility beseech your

Majesty,

1. That you will be graciously pleased to concur with the

humble desires of your people in a parliamentary way, for the

preserving the peace and safety of the kingdom from the

malicious designs of the Popish party:

For depriving the Bishops of their votes in Parliament, and

abridging their immoderate power usurped over the Clergy,

and other your good subjects, which they have perniciously

abused to the hazard of religion, and great prejudice and

oppression of the laws of the kingdom, and just liberty of

your people:

For the taking away such oppressions in religion, Church

government and discipline, as have been brought in and

fomented by them;

For uniting all such your loyal subjects together as join

in the same fundamental truths against the Papists, by

removing some oppressions and unnecessary ceremonies by

which divers weak consciences have been scrupled, and seem

to be divided from the rest, and for the due execution of

those good laws which have been made for securing the

liberty of your subjects.

2. That your Majesty will likewise be pleased to remove from

your council all such as persist to favour and promote any of

those pressures and corruptions wherewith your people have

been grieved, and that for the future your Majesty will

vouchsafe to employ such persons in your great and public

affairs, and to take such to be near you in places of trust,

as your Parliament may have cause to confide in; that in your

princely goodness to your people you will reject and refuse

all mediation and solicitation to the contrary, how powerful

and near soever.

3. That you will be pleased to forbear to alienate any of the

forfeited and escheated lands in Ireland which shall accrue to

your Crown by reason of this rebellion, that out of them the

Crown may be the better supported, and some satisfaction made

to your subjects of this kingdom for the great expenses they

are like to undergo [in] this war. Which humble desires of

ours being graciously fulfilled by your Majesty, we will, by

the blessing and favour of God, most cheerfully undergo the

hazard and expenses of this war, and apply ourselves to such

other courses and counsels as may support your real estate

with honour and plenty at home, with power and reputation

abroad, and by our loyal affections, obedience and service,

lay a sure and lasting foundation of the greatness and

prosperity of your Majesty, and your royal prosperity in

future times.

The Commons in this present Parliament assembled, having with

much earnestness and faithfulness of affection and zeal to the

public good of this kingdom, and His Majesty's honour and

service for the space of twelve months, wrestled with great

dangers and fears, the pressing miseries and calamities, the

various distempers and disorders which had not only assaulted,

but even overwhelmed and extinguished the liberty, peace and

prosperity of this kingdom, the comfort and hopes of all His

Majesty's good subjects, and exceedingly weakened and

undermined the foundation and strength of his own royal

throne, do yet find an abounding malignity and opposition in

those parties and factions who have been the cause of those

evils, and do still labour to cast aspersions upon that which

hath been done, and to raise many difficulties for the

hindrance of that which remains yet undone, and to foment

jealousies between the King and Parliament, that so they may

deprive him and his people of the fruit of his own gracious

intentions, and their humble desires of procuring the public

peace, safety and happiness of this realm. For the preventing

of those miserable effects which such malicious endeavours may

produce, we have thought good to declare the root and the

growth of these mischievous designs: the maturity and ripeness

to which they have attained before the beginning of the

Parliament: the effectual means which have been used for the

extirpation of those dangerous evils, and the progress which

hath therein been made by His Majesty's goodness and the

wisdom of the Parliament: the ways of obstruction and

opposition by which that progress hath been interrupted: the

courses to be taken for the removing those obstacles, and for

the accomplishing of our most dutiful and faithful intentions

and endeavours of restoring and establishing the ancient

honour, greatness and security of this Crown and nation.

{858}

The root of all this mischief we find to be a malignant and

pernicious design of subverting the fundamental laws and

principles of government, upon which the religion and justice

of this kingdom are firmly established. The actors and

promoters hereof have been:

1. The Jesuited Papists, who hate the laws, as the obstacles

of that change and subversion of religion which they so much

long for.

2. The Bishops, and the corrupt part of the Clergy, who

cherish formality and superstition as the natural effects and

more probable supports of their own ecclesiastical tyranny and

usurpation.

3. Such Councillors and Courtiers as for private ends have

engaged themselves to further the interests of some foreign

princes or states to the prejudice of His Majesty and the

State at home. The common principles by which they moulded and

governed all their particular counsels and actions were these:

First, to maintain continual differences and discontents

between the King and the people, upon questions of prerogative

and liberty, that so they might have the advantage of siding

with him, and under the notions of men addicted to his

service, gain to themselves and their parties the places of

greatest trust and power in the kingdom. A second, to suppress

the purity and power of religion, and such persons as were

best affected to it, as being contrary to their own ends, and

the greatest impediment to that change which they thought to

introduce. A third, to conjoin those parties of the kingdom

which were most propitious to their own ends, and to divide

those who were most opposite, which consisted in many

particular observations. To cherish the Arminian part in those

points wherein they agree with the Papists, to multiply and

enlarge the difference between the common Protestants and

those whom they call Puritans, to introduce and countenance

such opinions and ceremonies as are fittest for accommodation

with Popery, to increase and maintain ignorance, looseness and

profaneness in the people; that of those three parties,

Papists, Arminians and Libertines, they might compose a body

fit to act such counsels and resolutions as were most

conducible to their own ends. A fourth, to disaffect the King

to Parliaments by slander and false imputations, and by

putting him upon other ways of supply, which in show and

appearance were fuller of advantage than the ordinary course

of subsidies, though in truth they brought more loss than gain

both to the King and people, and have caused the great

distractions under which we both suffer. As in all compounded

bodies the operations are qualified according to the

predominant element, so in this mixed party, the Jesuited

counsels, being most active and prevailing, may easily be

discovered to have had the greatest sway in all their

determinations, and if they be not prevented, are likely to

devour the rest, or to turn them into their own nature. In the

beginning of His Majesty's reign the party began to revive and

flourish again, having been somewhat damped by the breach with

Spain in the last year of King James, and by His Majesty's

marriage with France; the interests and counsels of that State

being not so contrary to the good of religion and the

prosperity of this kingdom as those of Spain; and the Papists

of England, having been ever more addicted to Spain than

France, yet they still retained a purpose and resolution to

weaken the Protestant parties in all parts, and even in

France, whereby to make way for the change of religion which

they intended at home.

1. The first effect and evidence of their recovery and

strength was the dissolution of the Parliament at Oxford,

after there had been given two subsidies to His Majesty, and

before they received relief in any one grievance many other

more miserable effects followed.

2. The loss of the Rochel fleet, by the help of our shipping,

set forth and delivered over to the French in opposition to

the advice of Parliament, which left that town without defence

by sea, and made way, not only to the loss of that important

place, but likewise to the loss of all the strength and

security of the Protestant religion in France.

3. The diverting of His Majesty's course of wars from the West

Indies, which was the most facile and hopeful way for this

kingdom to prevail against the Spaniard, to an expenseful and

successless attempt upon Cadiz, which was so ordered as if it

had rather been intended to make us weary of war than to

prosper in it.

4. The precipitate breach with France, by taking their ships

to a great value without making recompense to the English,

whose goods were thereupon imbarred and confiscated in that

kingdom.

5. The peace with Spain without consent of Parliament,

contrary to the promise of King James to both Houses, whereby

the Palatine's cause was deserted and left to chargeable and

hopeless treaties, which for the most part were managed by

those who might justly be suspected to be no friends to that

cause.

6. The charging of the kingdom with billeted soldiers in all

parts of it, and the concomitant design of German horse, that

the land might either submit with fear or be enforced with

rigour to such arbitrary contributions as should be required

of them.

7. The dissolving of the Parliament in the second year of His

Majesty's reign, after a declaration of their intent to grant

five subsidies.

8. The exacting of the like proportion of five subsidies,

after the Parliament dissolved, by commission of loan, and

divers gentlemen and others imprisoned for not yielding to pay

that loan, whereby many of them contracted such sicknesses as

cost them their lives.

9. Great sums of money required and raised by privy seals.

10. An unjust and pernicious attempt to extort great payments

from the subject by way of excise, and a commission issued

under the seal to that purpose.

11. The Petition of Right, which was granted in full

Parliament, blasted, with an illegal declaration to make it

destructive to itself, to the power of Parliament, to the

liberty of the subject, and to that purpose printed with it,

and the Petition made of no use but to show the bold and

presumptuous injustice of such ministers as durst break the

laws and suppress the liberties of the kingdom, after they had

been so solemnly and evidently declared.

12. Another Parliament dissolved 4 Car., the privilege of

Parliament broken, by imprisoning divers members of the House,

detaining them close prisoners for many months together,

without the liberty of using books, pen, ink or paper; denying

them all the comforts of life, all means of preservation of

health, not permitting their wives to come unto them even in

the time of their sickness.

{859}

13. And for the completing of that cruelty, after years spent

in such miserable durance, depriving them of the necessary

means of spiritual consolation, not suffering them to go

abroad to enjoy God's ordinances in God's House, or God's

ministers to come to them to minister comfort to them in their

private chambers.

14. And to keep them still in this oppressed condition, not

admitting them to be bailed according to law, yet vexing them

with informations in inferior courts, sentencing and fining

some of them for matters done in Parliament; and extorting the

payments of those fines from them, enforcing others to put in

security of good behaviour before they could be released.

15. The imprisonment of the rest, which refused to be bound,

still continued, which might have been perpetual if necessity

had not the last year brought another Parliament to relieve

them, of whom one died [Sir John Eliot] by the cruelty and

harshness of his imprisonment, which would admit of no

relaxation, notwithstanding the imminent danger of his life,

did sufficiently appear by the declaration of his physician,

and his release, or at least his refreshment, was sought by

many humble petitions, and his blood still cries either for

vengeance or repentance of those Ministers of State, who have

at once obstructed the course both of His Majesty's justice

and mercy.

16. Upon the dissolution of both these Parliaments, untrue and

scandalous declarations were published to asperse their

proceedings, and some of their members unjustly; to make them

odious, and colour the violence which was used against them;

proclamations set out to the same purpose; and to the great

dejecting of the hearts of the people, forbidding them even to

speak of Parliaments.

17. After the breach of the Parliament in the fourth of His

Majesty, injustice, oppression and violence broke in upon us

without any restraint or moderation, and yet the first project

was the great sums exacted through the whole kingdom for

default of knighthood, which seemed to have some colour and

shadow of a law, yet if it be rightly examined by that

obsolete law which was pretended for it, it will be found to

be against all the rules of justice, both in respect of the

persons charged, the proportion of the fines demanded, and the

absurd and unreasonable manner of their proceedings.

18. Tonnage and Poundage hath been received without colour or

pretence of law; many other heavy impositions continued

against law, and some so unreasonable that the sum of the

charge exceeds the value of the goods.

19. The Book of Rates lately enhanced to a high proportion,

and such merchants that would not submit to their illegal and

unreasonable payments, were vexed and oppressed above measure;

and the ordinary course of justice, the common birthright of

the subject of England, wholly obstructed unto them.

20. And although all this was taken upon pretence of guarding

the seas, yet a new unheard-of tax of ship-money was devised,

and upon the same pretence, by both which there was charged

upon the subject near £700,000 some years, and yet the

merchants have been left so naked to the violence of the

Turkish pirates, that many great ships of value and thousands

of His Majesty's subjects have been taken by them, and do

still remain in miserable slavery.

21. The enlargements of forests, contrary to 'Carta de

Foresta,' and the composition thereupon.

22. The exactions of coat and conduct money and divers other

military charges.

23. The taking away the arms of trained bands of divers

counties.

24. The desperate design of engrossing all the gunpowder into

one hand, keeping it in the Tower of London, and setting so

high a rate upon it that the poorer sort were not able to buy

it, nor could any have it without licence, thereby to leave

the several parts of the kingdom destitute of their necessary

defence, and by selling so dear that which was sold to make an

unlawful advantage of it, to the great charge and detriment of

the subject.

25. The general destruction of the King's timber, especially

that in the Forest of Deane, sold to Papists, which was the

best store-house of this kingdom for the maintenance of our

shipping.

26. The taking away of men's right, under the colour of the

King's title to land, between high and low water marks.

27. The monopolies of soap, salt, wine, leather, sea-coal, and

in a manner of all things of most common and necessary use.

28. The restraint of the liberties of the subjects in their

habitation, trades and other interests.

29. Their vexation and oppression by purveyors, clerks of the

market and saltpetre men.

30. The sale of pretended nuisances, as building in and about

London.

31. Conversion of arable into pasture, continuance of pasture,

under the name of depopulation, have driven many millions out

of the subjects' purses, without any considerable profit to

His Majesty.

32. Large quantities of common and several grounds hath been

taken from the subject by colour of the Statute of

Improvement, and by abuse of the Commission of Sewers, without

their consent, and against it.

33. And not only private interest, but also public faith, have

been broken in seizing of the money and bullion in the mint,

and the whole kingdom like to be robbed at once in that

abominable project of brass money.

34. Great numbers of His Majesty's subjects for refusing those

unlawful charges, have been vexed with long and expensive

suits, some fined and censured, others committed to long and

hard imprisonments and confinements, to the loss of health in

many, of life in some, and others have had their houses broken

up, their goods seized, some have been restrained from their

lawful callings.

35. Ships have been interrupted in their voyages, surprised at

sea in a hostile manner by projectors, as by a common enemy.

36. Merchants prohibited to unlade their goods in such ports

as were for their own advantage, and forced to bring them to

those places which were much for the advantage of the

monopolisers and projectors.

{860}

37. The Court of Star Chamber hath abounded in extravagant

censures, not only for the maintenance and improvement of

monopolies and other unlawful taxes, but for divers other

causes where there hath been no offence, or very small;

whereby His Majesty's subjects have been oppressed by grievous

fines, imprisonments, stigmatisings, mutilations, whippings,

pillories, gags, confinements, banishments; after so rigid a

manner as hath not only deprived men of the society of their

friends, exercise of their professions, comfort of books, use

of paper or ink, but even violated that near union which God

hath established between men and their wives, by forced and

constrained separation, whereby they have been bereaved of the

comfort and conversation one of another for many years

together, without hope of relief, if God had not by His

overruling providence given some interruption to the

prevailing power, and counsel of those who were the authors

and promoters of such peremptory and heady courses.

38. Judges have been put out of their places for refusing to

do against their oaths and consciences; others have been so

awed that they durst not do their duties, and the better to

hold a rod over them, the clause 'Quam diu se bene gesserit'

was left out of their patents, and a new clause 'Durante bene

placito' inserted.

39. Lawyers have been checked for being faithful to their

clients; solicitors and attorneys have been threatened, and

some punished, for following lawful suits. And by this means

all the approaches to justice were interrupted and forecluded.

40. New oaths have been forced upon the subject against law.

41. New judicatories erected without law. The Council Table

have by their orders offered to bind the subjects in their

freeholds, estates, suits and actions.

42. The pretended Court of the Earl Marshal was arbitrary and

illegal in its being and proceedings.

43. The Chancery, Exchequer Chamber, Court of Wards, and other

English Courts, have been grievous in exceeding their

jurisdiction.

44. The estate of many families weakened, and some ruined by

excessive fines, exacted from them for compositions of

wardships.

45. All leases of above a hundred years made to draw on

wardship contrary to law.

46. Undue proceedings used in the finding of offices to make

the jury find for the King.

47. The Common Law Courts, feeling all men more inclined to

seek justice there, where it may be fitted to their own

desire, are known frequently to forsake the rules of the

Common Law, and straying beyond their bounds, under pretence

of equity, to do injustice.

48. Titles of honour, judicial places, sergeantships at law,

and other offices have been sold for great sums of money,

whereby the common justice of the kingdom hath been much

endangered, not only by opening a way of employment in places

of great trust, and advantage to men of weak parts, but also

by giving occasion to bribery, extortion, partiality, it

seldom happening that places ill-gotton are well used.

49. Commissions have been granted for examining the excess of

fees, and when great exactions have been discovered,

compositions have been made with delinquents, not only for the

time past, but likewise for immunity and security in offending

for the time to come, which under colour of remedy hath but

confirmed and increased the grievance to the subject.

50. The usual course of pricking Sheriffs not observed, but

many times Sheriffs made in an extraordinary way, sometimes as

a punishment and charge unto them; sometimes such were pricked

out as would be instruments to execute whatsoever they would

have to be done.

51. The Bishops and the rest of the Clergy did triumph in the

suspensions, ex-communications, deprivations, and degradations

of divers painful, learned and pious ministers, in the

vexation and grievous oppression of great numbers of His

Majesty's good subjects.

52. The High Commission grew to such excess of sharpness and

severity as was not much less than the Romish Inquisition, and

yet in many cases by the Archbishop's power was made much more

heavy, being assisted and strengthened by authority of the

Council Table.

53. The Bishops and their Courts were as eager in the country;

although their jurisdiction could not reach so high in rigour

and extremity of punishment, yet were they no less grievous in

respect of the generality and multiplicity of vexations, which

lighting upon the meaner sort of tradesmen and artificers did

impoverish many thousands.

54. And so afflict and trouble others, that great numbers to

avoid their miseries departed out of the kingdom, some into

New England and other parts of America, others into Holland.

55. Where they have transported their manufactures of cloth,

which is not only a loss by diminishing the present stock of

the kingdom, but a great mischief by impairing and endangering

the loss of that particular trade of clothing, which hath been

a plentiful fountain of wealth and honour to this nation.

56. Those were fittest for ecclesiastical preferment, and

soonest obtained it, who were most officious in promoting

superstition, most virulent in railing against godliness and

honesty.

57. The most public and solemn sermons before His Majesty were

either to advance prerogative above law, and decry the

property of the subject, or full of such kind of invectives.

58. Whereby they might make those odious who sought to

maintain the religion, laws and liberties of the kingdom, and

such men were sure to be weeded out of the commission of the

peace, and out of all other employments of power in the

government of the country.

59. Many noble personages were councillors in name, but the

power and authority remained in a few of such as were most

addicted to this party, whose resolutions and determinations

were brought to the table for countenance and execution, and

not for debate and deliberation, and no man could offer to

oppose them without disgrace and hazard to himself.

60. Nay, all those that did not wholly concur and actively

contribute to the furtherance of their designs, though

otherwise persons of never so great honour and abilities, were

so far from being employed in any place of trust and power,

that they were neglected, discountenanced, and upon all

occasions injured and oppressed.

61. This faction was grown to that height and entireness of

power, that now they began to think of finishing their work,

which consisted of these three parts.

62. I. The government must be set free from all restraint of

laws concerning our persons and estates.

{861}

63. II. There must be a conjunction between Papists and

Protestants in doctrine, discipline and ceremonies; only it

must not yet be called Popery.

64. III. The Puritans, under which name they include all those

that desire to preserve the laws and liberties of the kingdom,

and to maintain religion in the power of it, must be either

rooted out of the kingdom with force, or driven out with fear.

65. For the effecting of this it was thought necessary to

reduce Scotland to such Popish superstitions and innovations

as might make them apt to join with England in that great

change which was intended.

66. Whereupon new canons and a new liturgy were pressed upon

them, and when they refused to admit of them, an army was

raised to force them to it, towards which the Clergy and the

Papists were very forward in their contribution.

67. The Scots likewise raised an army for their defence.

68. And when both armies were come together, and ready for a

bloody encounter, His Majesty's own gracious disposition, and

the counsel of the English nobility and dutiful submission of

the Scots, did so far prevail against the evil counsel of

others, that a pacification was made, and His Majesty returned

with peace and much honour to London.

69. The unexpected reconciliation was most acceptable to all

the kingdom, except to the malignant party; whereof the

Archbishop and the Earl of Strafford being heads, they and

their faction begun to inveigh against the peace, and to

aggravate the proceedings of the states, which so increased

[incensed?] His Majesty, that he forthwith prepared again for

war.

70. And such was their confidence, that having corrupted and

distempered the whole frame and government of the kingdom,

they did now hope to corrupt that which was the only means to

restore all to a right frame and temper again.

71. To which end they persuaded His Majesty to call a

Parliament, not to seek counsel and advice of them, but to

draw countenance and supply from them, and to engage the whole

kingdom in their quarrel.

72. And in the meantime continued all their unjust levies of

money, resolving either to make the Parliament pliant to their

will, and to establish mischief by a law, or else to break it,

and with more colour to go on by violence to take what they

could not obtain by consent. The ground alleged for the

justification of this war was this,

73. That the undutiful demands of the Parliaments in Scotland

was a sufficient reason for His Majesty to take arms against

them, without hearing the reason of those demands, and

thereupon a new army was prepared against them, their ships

were seized in all ports both of England and Ireland, and at

sea, their petitions rejected, their commissioners refused

audience.

74. The whole kingdom most miserably distempered with levies

of men and money, and imprisonments of those who denied to

submit to those levies.

75. The Earl of Strafford passed into Ireland, caused the

Parliament there to declare against the Scots, to give four

subsidies towards that war, and to engage themselves, their

lives and fortunes, for the prosecution of it, and gave

directions for an army of eight thousand foot and one thousand

horse to be levied there, which were for the most part

Papists.

76. The Parliament met upon the 13th of April, 1640. The Earl

of Strafford and Archbishop of Canterbury, with their party,

so prevailed with His Majesty, that the House of Commons was

pressed to yield a supply for maintenance of the war with

Scotland, before they had provided any relief for the great

and pressing grievances of the people, which being against the

fundamental privilege and proceeding of Parliament, was yet in

humble respect to His Majesty, so far admitted as that they

agreed to take the matter of supply into consideration, and

two several days it was debated.

77. Twelve subsidies were demanded for the release of

ship-money alone, a third day was appointed for conclusion,

when the heads of that party begun to fear the people might

close with the King, in falsifying his desires of money; but

that withal they were like to blast their malicious designs

against Scotland, finding them very much indisposed to give

any countenance to that war.

78. Thereupon they wickedly advised the King to break off the

Parliament and to return to the ways of confusion, in which

their own evil intentions were most likely to prosper and

succeed.

79. After the Parliament ended the 5th of May, 1640, this

party grew so bold as to counsel the King to supply himself

out of his subjects' estates by his own power, at his own

will, without their consent.

80. The very next day some members of both Houses had their

studies and cabinets, yea, their pockets searched: another of

them not long after was committed close prisoner for not

delivering some petitions which he received by authority of

that House.

81. And if harsher courses were intended (as was reported) it

is very probable that the sickness of the Earl of Strafford,

and the tumultuous rising in Southwark and about Lambeth were

the causes that such violent intentions were not brought to

execution.

82. A false and scandalous Declaration against the House of

Commons was published in His Majesty's name, which yet wrought

little effect with the people, but only to manifest the

impudence of those who were authors of it.

83. A forced loan of money was attempted in the City of

London.

84. The Lord Mayor and Aldermen in their several wards,

enjoined to bring in a list of the names of such persons as

they judged fit to lend, and of the sums they should lend. And

such Aldermen as refused to do so were committed to prison.

85. The Archbishop and the other Bishops and Clergy continued

the Convocation, and by a new commission turned it into a

provincial Synod, in which, by an unheard-of presumption, they

made canons that contain in them many matters contrary to the

King's prerogative, to the fundamental laws and statutes of

the realm, to the right of Parliaments, to the property and

liberty of the subject, and matters tending to sedition and of

dangerous consequence, thereby establishing their own

usurpations, justifying their altar-worship, and those other

superstitious innovations which they formerly introduced

without warrant of law.

{862}

86. They imposed a new oath upon divers of His Majesty's

subjects, both ecclesiastical and lay, for maintenance of

their own tyranny, and laid a great tax on the Clergy, for

supply of His Majesty, and generally they showed themselves

very affectionate to the war with Scotland, which was by some

of them styled 'Bellum Episeopale,' and a prayer composed and

enjoined to be read in all churches, calling the Scots rebels,

to put the two nations in blood and make them irreconcilable.

87. All those pretended canons and constitutions were armed

with the several censures of suspension, excommunication,

deprivation, by which they would have thrust out all the good

ministers, and most of the well-affected people of the

kingdom, and left an easy passage to their own design of

reconciliation with Rome.

88. The Popish party enjoyed such exemptions from penal laws

as amounted to a toleration, besides many other encouragements

and Court favours.

89. They had a Secretary of State, Sir Francis Windebanck, a

powerful agent for speeding all their desires.

90. A Pope's Nuncio residing here, to act and govern them

according to such influences as he received from Rome, and to

intercede for them with the most powerful concurrence of the

foreign princes of that religion.

91. By his authority the Papists of all sorts, nobility,

gentry, and clergy were convocated after the manner of a

Parliament.

92. New jurisdictions were erected of Romish Archbishops,

taxes levied, another state moulded within this state

independent in government, contrary in interest and affection,

secretly corrupting the ignorant or negligent professors of

our religion, and closely uniting and combining themselves

against such as were found in this posture, waiting for an

opportunity by force to destroy those whom they could not hope

to seduce.

93. For the effecting whereof they were strengthened with arms

and munitions, encouraged by superstitious prayers, enjoined

by the Nuncio to be weekly made for the prosperity of some

great design.

94. And such power had they at Court, that secretly a

commission was issued out, or intended to be issued to some

great men of that profession, for the levying of soldiers, and

to command and employ them according to private instructions,

which we doubt were framed for the advantage of those who were

the contrivers of them.

95. His Majesty's treasure was consumed, his revenue

anticipated.

96. His servants and officers compelled to lend great sums of

money.

97. Multitudes were called to the Council Table, who were

tired with long attendances there for refusing illegal

payments.

98. The prisons were filled with their commitments; many of

the Sheriffs summoned into the Star Chamber, and some

imprisoned for not being quick enough in levying the

ship-money; the people languished under grief and fear, no

visible hope being left but in desperation.

99. The nobility began to weary of their silence and patience,

and sensible of the duty and trust which belongs to them: and

thereupon some of the most ancient of them did petition His

Majesty at such a time, when evil counsels were so strong,

that they had occasion to expect more hazard to themselves,

than redress of those public evils for which they interceded.

100. Whilst the kingdom was in this agitation and distemper,

the Scots, restrained in their trades, impoverished by the

loss of many of their ships, bereaved of all possibility of

satisfying His Majesty by any naked supplication, entered with

a powerful army into the kingdom, and without any hostile act

or spoil in the country they passed, more than forcing a

passage over the Tyne at Newburn, near Newcastle, possessed

themselves of Newcastle, and had a fair opportunity to press

on further upon the King's army.

101. But duty and reverence to His Majesty, and brotherly love

to the English nation, made them stay there, whereby the King

had leisure to entertain better counsels.

102. Wherein God so blessed and directed him that he summoned

the Great Council of Peers to meet at York upon the 24th of

September, and there declared a Parliament to begin the 3d of

November then following.

103. The Scots, the first day of the Great Council, presented

an humble Petition to His Majesty, whereupon the Treaty was

appointed at Ripon.

104. A present cessation of arms agreed upon, and the full

conclusion of all differences referred to the wisdom and care

of the Parliament.

105. At our first meeting, all oppositions seemed to vanish,

the mischiefs were so evident which those evil counsellors

produced, that no man durst stand up to defend them: yet the

work itself afforded difficulty enough.

106. The multiplied evils and corruption of fifteen years,

strengthened by custom and authority, and the concurrent

interest of many powerful delinquents, were now to be brought

to judgment and reformation.

107. The King's household was to be provided for:--they had

brought him to that want, that he could not supply his

ordinary and necessary expenses without the assistance of his

people.

108. Two armies were to be paid, which amounted very near to

eighty thousand pounds a month.

109. The people were to be tenderly charged, having been

formerly exhausted with many burdensome projects.

110. The difficulties seemed to be insuperable, which by the

Divine Providence we have overcome. The contrarieties

incompatible, which yet in a great measure we have reconciled.

111. Six subsidies have been granted and a Bill of poll-money,

which if it be duly levied, may equal six subsidies more, in

all £600,000.

112. Besides we have contracted a debt to the Scots of

£220,000, yet God hath so blessed the endeavours of this

Parliament, that the kingdom is a great gainer by all these

charges.

113. The ship-money is abolished, which cost the kingdom about

£200,000 a year.

114. The coat and conduct-money, and other military charges

are taken away, which in many countries amounted to little

less than the ship-money.

115. The monopolies are all suppressed, whereof some few did

prejudice the subject, above £1,000,000 yearly.

116. The soap £100,000.

117. The wine £300,000.

118. The leather must needs exceed both, and salt could be no

less than that.

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119. Besides the inferior monopolies, which, if they could be

exactly computed, would make up a great sum.

120. That which is more beneficial than all this is, that the

root of these evils is taken away, which was the arbitrary

power pretended to be in His Majesty of taxing the subject, or

charging their estates without consent in Parliament, which is

now declared to be against law by the judgment of both Houses,

and likewise by an Act of Parliament.

121. Another step of great advantage is this, the living

grievances, the evil counsellors and actors of these mischiefs

have been so quelled.

122. By the justice done upon the Earl of Strafford, the

flight of the Lord Finch and Secretary Windebank.

123. The accusation and imprisonment of the Archbishop of

Canterbury, of Judge Berkeley; and

124. The impeachment of divers other Bishops and Judges, that

it is like not only to be an ease to the present times, but a

preservation to the future.

125. The discontinuance of Parliaments is prevented by the

Bill for a triennial Parliament, and the abrupt dissolution of

this Parliament by another Bill, by which it is provided it

shall not be dissolved or adjourned without the consent of

both Houses.

126. Which two laws well considered may be thought more

advantageous than all the former, because they secure a full

operation of the present remedy, and afford a perpetual spring

of remedies for the future.

127. The Star Chamber.

128. The High Commission.

129. The Courts of the President and Council in the North were

so many forges of misery, oppression and violence, and are all

taken away, whereby men are more secured in their persons,

liberties and estates, than they could be by any law or

example for the regulation of those Courts or terror of the

Judges.

130. The immoderate power of the Council Table, and the

excessive abuse of that power is so ordered and restrained,

that we may well hope that no such things as were frequently

done by them, to the prejudice of the public liberty, will

appear in future times but only in stories, to give us and our

posterity more occasion to praise God for His Majesty's

goodness, and the faithful endeavours of this Parliament.

131. The canons and power of canon-making are blasted by the

votes of both Houses.

132. The exorbitant power of Bishops and their courts are much

abated, by some provisions in the Bill against the High

Commission Court, the authors of the many innovations in

doctrine and ceremonies.

133. The ministers that have been scandalous in their lives,

have been so terrified in just complaints and accusations,

that we may well hope they will be more modest for the time to

come; either inwardly convicted by the sight of their own

folly, or outwardly restrained by the fear of punishment.

134. The forests are by a good law reduced to their right

bounds.

135. The encroachments and oppressions of the Stannary Courts,

the extortions of the clerk of the market.

136. And the compulsion of the subject to receive the Order of

Knighthood against his will, paying of fines for not receiving

it, and the vexatious proceedings thereupon for levying of

those fines, are by other beneficial laws reformed and

prevented.

137. Many excellent laws and provisions are in preparation for

removing the inordinate power, vexation and usurpation of

Bishops, for reforming the pride and idleness of many of the

clergy, for easing the people of unnecessary ceremonies in

religion, for censuring and removing unworthy and unprofitable

ministers, and for maintaining godly and diligent preachers

through the kingdom.

138. Other things of main importance for the good of this

kingdom are in proposition, though little could hitherto be

done in regard of the many other more pressing businesses,

which yet before the end of this Session we hope may receive

some progress and perfection.

139. The establishing and ordering the King's revenue, that so

the abuse of officers and superfluity of expenses may be cut

off, and the necessary disbursements for His Majesty's honour,

the defence and government of the kingdom, may be more

certainly provided for.

140. The regulating of courts of justice, and abridging both

the delays and charges of lawsuits.

141. The settling of some good courses for preventing the

exportation of gold and silver, and the inequality of

exchanges between us and other nations, for the advancing of

native commodities, increase of our manufactures, and well

balancing of trade, whereby the stock of the kingdom may be

increased, or at least kept from impairing, as through neglect

hereof it hath done for many years last past.

142. Improving the herring-fishing upon our coasts, which will

be of mighty use in the employment of the poor, and a

plentiful nursery of mariners for enabling the kingdom in any

great action.

143. The oppositions, obstructions and other difficulties

wherewith we have been encountered, and which still lie in our

way with some strength and much obstinacy, are these: the

malignant party whom we have formerly described to be the

actors and promoters of all our misery, they have taken heart

again.

144. They have been able to prefer some of their own factors

and agents to degrees of honour, to places of trust and

employment, even during the Parliament.

145. They have endeavoured to work in His Majesty ill

impressions and opinions of our proceedings, as if we had

altogether done our own work, and not his; and had obtained

from him many things very prejudicial to the Crown, both in

respect of prerogative and profit.

146. To wipe out this slander we think good only to say thus

much: that all that we have done is for His Majesty, his

greatness, honour and support, when we yield to give £25,000 a

month for the relief of the Northern Counties; this was given

to the King, for he was bound to protect his subjects.

147. They were His Majesty's evil counsellors, and their ill

instruments that were actors in those grievances which brought

in the Scots.

148. And if His Majesty please to force those who were the

authors of this war to make satisfaction, as he might justly

and easily do, it seems very reasonable that the people might

well be excused from taking upon them this burden, being

altogether innocent and free from being any cause of it.

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149. When we undertook the charge of the army, which cost

above £50,000 a month, was not this given to the King? Was it

not His Majesty's army? Were not all the commanders under

contract with His Majesty, at higher rates and greater wages

than ordinary?

150. And have not we taken upon us to discharge all the

brotherly assistance of £300,000, which we gave the Scots? Was

it not toward repair of those damages and losses which they

received from the King's ships and from his ministers?

151. These three particulars amount to above £1,100,000.

152. Besides, His Majesty hath received by impositions upon

merchandise at least £400,000.

153. So that His Majesty hath had out of the subjects' purse

since the Parliament began, £1,500,000 and yet these men can

be so impudent as to tell His Majesty that we have done

nothing for him.

154. As to the second branch of this slander, we acknowledge

with much thankfulness that His Majesty hath passed more good

Bills to the advantage of the subjects than have been in many

ages.

155. But withal we cannot forget that these venomous councils

did manifest themselves in some endeavours to hinder these

good acts.

156. And for both Houses of Parliament we may with truth and

modesty say thus much: that we have ever been careful not to

desire anything that should weaken the Crown either in just

profit or useful power.

157. The triennial Parliament for the matter of it, doth not

extend to so much as by law we ought to have required (there

being two statutes still in force for a Parliament to be once

a year), and for the manner of it, it is in the King's power

that it shall never take effect, if he by a timely summons

shall prevent any other way of assembling.

158. In the Bill for continuance of this present Parliament,

there seems to be some restraint of the royal power in

dissolving of Parliaments, not to take it out of the Crown,

but to suspend the execution of it for this time and occasion

only: which was so necessary for the King's own security and

the public peace, that without it we could not have undertaken

any of these great charges, but must have left both the armies

to disorder and confusion, and the whole kingdom to blood and

rapine.

159. The Star Chamber was much more fruitful in oppression

than in profit, the great fines being for the most part given

away, and the rest stalled at long times.

160. The fines of the High Commission were in themselves

unjust, and seldom or never came into the King's purse. These

four Bills are particularly and more specially instanced.

161. In the rest there will not be found so much as a shadow

of prejudice to the Crown.

162. They have sought to diminish our reputation with the

people, and to bring them out of love with Parliaments.

163. The aspersions which they have attempted this way have

been such as these:

164. That we have spent much time and done little, especially

in those grievances which concern religion.

165. That the Parliament is a burden to the kingdom by the

abundance of protections which hinder justice and trade; and

by many subsidies granted much more heavy than any formerly

endured.

166. To which there is a ready answer; if the time spent in

this Parliament be considered in relation backward to the long

growth and deep root of those grievances, which we have

removed, to the powerful supports of those delinquents, which

we have pursued, to the great necessities and other charges of

the commonwealth for which we have provided.

167. Or if it be considered in relation forward to many

advantages, which not only the present but future ages are

like to reap by the good laws and other proceedings in this

Parliament, we doubt not but it will be thought by all

indifferent judgments, that our time hath been much better

employed than in a far greater proportion of time in many

former Parliaments put together; and the charges which have

been laid upon the subject, and the other inconveniences which

they have borne, will seem very light in respect of the

benefit they have and may receive.

168. And for the matter of protections, the Parliament is so

sensible of it that therein they intended to give them

whatsoever ease may stand with honour and justice, and are in

a way of passing a Bill to give them satisfaction.

169. They have sought by many subtle practices to cause

jealousies and divisions betwixt us and our brethren of

Scotland, by slandering their proceedings and intentions

towards us, and by secret endeavours to instigate and incense

them and us one against another.

170. They have had such a party of Bishops and Popish lords in

the House of Peers, as hath caused much opposition and delay

in the prosecution of delinquents, hindered the proceedings of

divers good Bills passed in the Commons' House, concerning the

reformation of sundry great abuses and corruptions both in

Church and State.

171. They have laboured to seduce and corrupt some of the

Commons' House to draw them into conspiracies and combinations

against the liberty of the Parliament.

172. And by their instruments and agents they have attempted

to disaffect and discontent His Majesty's army, and to engage

it for the maintenance of their wicked and traitorous designs;

the keeping up of Bishops in votes and functions, and by force

to compel the Parliament to order, limit and dispose their

proceedings in such manner as might best concur with the

intentions of this dangerous and potent faction.

173. And when one mischievous design and attempt of theirs to

bring on the army against the Parliament and the City of

London, hath been discovered and prevented;

174. They presently undertook another of the same damnable

nature, with this addition to it, to endeavour to make the

Scottish army neutral, whilst the English army, which they had

laboured to corrupt and envenom against us by their false and

slanderous suggestions, should execute their malice to the

subversion of our religion and the dissolution of our

government.

175. Thus they have been continually practising to disturb the

peace, and plotting the destruction even of all the King's

dominions; and have employed their emissaries and agents in

them, all for the promoting their devilish designs, which the

vigilancy of those who were well affected hath still

discovered and defeated before they were ripe for execution in

England and Scotland.

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176. Only in Ireland, which was farther off, they have had

time and opportunity to mould and prepare their work, and had

brought it to that perfection that they had possessed

themselves of that whole kingdom, totally subverted the

government of it, routed out religion, and destroyed all the

Protestants whom the conscience of their duty to God, their

King and country, would not have permitted to join with them,

if by God's wonderful providence their main enterprise upon

the city and castle of Dublin, had not been detected and

prevented upon the very eve before it should have been

executed.

177. Notwithstanding they have in other parts of that kingdom

broken out into open rebellion, surprising towns and castles,

committed murders, rapes and other villainies, and shaken off

all bonds of obedience to His Majesty and the laws of the

realm.

178. And in general have kindled such a fire, as nothing but

God's infinite blessing upon the wisdom and endeavours of this

State will be able to quench it.

179. And certainly had not God in His great mercy unto this

land discovered and confounded their former designs, we had

been the prologue to this tragedy in Ireland, and had by this

been made the lamentable spectacle of misery and confusion.

180. And now what hope have we but in God, when as the only

means of our subsistence and power of reformation is under Him

in the Parliament?

181. But what can we the Commons, without the conjunction of

the House of Lords, and what conjunction can we expect there,

when the Bishops and recusant lords are so numerous and

prevalent that they are able to cross and interrupt our best

endeavours for reformation, and by that means give advantage

to this malignant party to traduce our proceedings?

182. They infuse into the people that we mean to abolish all

Church government, and leave every man to his own fancy for

the service and worship of God, absolving him of that

obedience which he owes under God unto His Majesty, whom we

know to be entrusted with the ecclesiastical law as well as

with the temporal, to regulate all the members of the Church

of England, by such rules of order and discipline as are

established by Parliament, which is his great council in all

affairs both in Church and State.

183. We confess our intention is, and our endeavours have

been, to reduce within bounds that exorbitant power which the

prelates have assumed unto themselves, so contrary both to the

Word of God and to the laws of the land, to which end we

passed the Bill for the removing them from their temporal

power and employments, that so the better they might with

meekness apply themselves to the discharge of their functions,

which Bill themselves opposed, and were the principal

instruments of crossing it.

184. And we do here declare that it is far from our purpose or

desire to let loose the golden reins of discipline and

government in the Church, to leave private persons or

particular congregations to take up what form of Divine

Service they please, for we hold it requisite that there

should be throughout the whole realm a conformity to that

order which the laws enjoin according to the Word of God. And

we desire to unburden the consciences of men of needless and

superstitious ceremonies, suppress innovations, and take away

the monuments of idolatry.

185. And the better to effect the intended reformation, we

desire there may be a general synod of the most grave, pious,

learned and judicious divines of this island; assisted with

some from foreign parts, professing the same religion with us,

who may consider of all things necessary for the peace and

good government of the Church, and represent the results of

their consultations unto the Parliament, to be there allowed

of and confirmed, and receive the stamp of authority, thereby

to find passage and obedience throughout the kingdom.

186. They have maliciously charged us that we intend to

destroy and discourage learning, whereas it is our chiefest

care and desire to advance it, and to provide a competent

maintenance for conscionable and preaching ministers

throughout the kingdom, which will be a great encouragement to

scholars, and a certain means whereby the want, meanness and

ignorance, to which a great part of the clergy is now subject,

will be prevented.

187. And we intended likewise to reform and purge the

fountains of learning, the two Universities, that the streams

flowing from thence may be clear and pure, and an honour and

comfort to the whole land.

188. They have strained to blast our proceedings in

Parliament, by wresting the interpretations of our orders from

their genuine intention.

189. They tell the people that our meddling with the power of

episcopacy hath caused sectaries and conventicles, when

idolatrous and Popish ceremonies, introduced into the Church

by the command of the Bishops have not only debarred the

people from thence, but expelled them from the kingdom.

190. Thus with Elijah, we are called by this malignant party

the troublers of the State, and still, while we endeavour to

reform their abuses, they make us the authors of those

mischiefs we study to prevent.

191. For the perfecting of the work begun, and removing all

future impediments, we conceive these courses will be very

effectual, seeing the religion of the Papists hath such

principles as do certainly tend to the destruction and

extirpation of all Protestants, when they shall have

opportunity to effect it.

192. It is necessary in the first place to keep them in such

condition as that they may not be able to do us any hurt, and

for avoiding of such connivance and favour as hath heretofore

been shown unto them.

193. That His Majesty be pleased to grant a standing

Commission to some choice men named in Parliament, who may

take notice of their increase, their counsels and proceedings,

and use all due means by execution of the laws to prevent all

mischievous designs against the peace and safety of this

kingdom.

194. Thus some good course be taken to discover the

counterfeit and false conformity of Papists to the Church, by

colour whereof persons very much disaffected to the true

religion have been admitted into place of greatest authority

and trust in the kingdom.

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195. For the better preservation of the laws and liberties of

the kingdom, that all illegal grievances and exactions be

presented and punished at the sessions and assizes.

196. And that Judges and Justices be very careful to give this

in charge to the grand jury, and both the Sheriff and Justices

to be sworn to the due execution of the Petition of Right and

other laws.

197. That His Majesty be humbly petitioned by both Houses to

employ such counsellors, ambassadors and other ministers, in

managing his business at home and abroad as the Parliament may

have cause to confide in, without which we cannot give His

Majesty such supplies for support of his own estate, nor such

assistance to the Protestant party beyond the sea, as is

desired.

198. It may often fall out that the Commons may have just

cause to take exceptions at some men for being councillors,

and yet not charge those men with crimes, for there be grounds

of diffidence which lie not in proof.

199. There are others, which though they may be proved, yet

are not legally criminal.

200. To be a known favourer of Papists, or to have been very

forward in defending or countenancing some great offenders

questioned in Parliament; or to speak contemptuously of either

Houses of Parliament or Parliamentary proceedings.

201. Or such as are factors or agents for any foreign prince

of another religion; such are justly suspected to get

councillors' places, or any other of trust concerning public

employment for money; for all these and divers others we may

have great reason to be earnest with His Majesty, not to put

his great affairs into such hands, though we may be unwilling

to proceed against them in any legal way of charge or

impeachment.

202. That all Councillors of State may be sworn to observe

those laws which concern the subject in his liberty, that they

may likewise take an oath not to receive or give reward or

pension from any foreign prince, but such as they shall within

some reasonable time discover to the Lords of His Majesty's

Council.

203. And although they should wickedly forswear themselves,

yet it may herein do good to make them known to be false and

perjured to those who employ them, and thereby bring them into

as little credit with them as with us.

204. That His Majesty may have cause to be in love with good

counsel and good men, by shewing him in an humble and dutiful

manner how full of advantage it would be to himself, to see

his own estate settled in a plentiful condition to support his

honour; to see his people united in ways of duty to him, and

endeavours of the public good; to see happiness, wealth, peace

and safety derived to his own kingdom, and procured to his

allies by the influence of his own power and government."

ENGLAND: A. D. 1642 (JANUARY).

The King's attempt against the Five Members.

On the 3d of January, "the king was betrayed into ... an

indiscretion to which all the ensuing disorders and civil wars

ought immediately and directly to be ascribed. This was the

impeachment of Lord Kimbolton and the five members. ...

Herbert, attorney-general, appeared in the House of Peers,

and, in his majesty's name, entered an accusation of high

treason against Lord Kimbolton and five commoners, Hollis, Sir

Arthur Hazlerig, Hambden, Pym, and Strode. The articles were,

That they had traitorously endeavoured to subvert the

fundamental laws and government of the kingdom, to deprive the

king of his regal power, and to impose on his subjects an

arbitrary and tyrannical authority; that they had endeavoured,

by many foul aspersions on his majesty and his government, to

alienate the affections of his people, and make him odious to

them; that they had attempted to draw his late army to

disobedience of his royal commands, and to side with them in

their traitorous designs; that they had invited and encouraged

a foreign power to invade the kingdom; that they had aimed at

subverting the rights and very being of Parliament; that, in

order to complete their traitorous designs, they had

endeavoured, as far as in them lay, by force and terror, to

compel the Parliament to join with them, and to that end had

actually raised and countenanced tumults against the king and

Parliament; and that they had traitorously conspired to levy,

and actually had levied, war against the king. The whole world

stood amazed at this important accusation, so suddenly entered

upon, without concert, deliberation or reflection. ... But men

had not leisure to wonder at the indiscretion of this measure:

their astonishment was excited by new attempts, still more

precipitate and imprudent. A sergeant at arms, in the king's

name, demanded of the House the five members, and was sent

back without any positive answer. Messengers were employed to

search for them and arrest them. Their trunks, chambers, and

studies, were sealed and locked. The House voted all these

acts of violence to be breaches of privilege, and commanded

everyone to defend the liberty of the members. The king,

irritated by all this opposition, resolved next day to come in

person to the House, with an intention to demand, perhaps

seize, in their presence, the persons whom he had accused.

This resolution was discovered to the Countess of Carlisle,

sister to Northumberland, a lady of spirit, wit, and intrigue.

She privately sent intelligence to the five members; and they

had time to withdraw, a moment before the king entered. He was

accompanied by his ordinary retinue, to the number of above

two hundred, armed as usual, some with halberts, some with

walking swords. The king left them at the door, and he himself

advanced alone through the hall, while all the members rose to

receive him. The speaker withdrew from his chair, and the king

took possession of it. The speech which he made was as

follows: 'Gentlemen, I am sorry for this occasion of coming to

you. Yesterday, I sent a sergeant at arms, to demand some,

who, by my order, were accused of high treason. Instead of

obedience, I received a message. ... Therefore am I come to

tell you, that I must have these men wheresoever I can find

them. Well, since I see all the birds are flown, I do expect

that you will send them to me as soon as they return. But I

assure you, on the word of a king, I never did intend any

force, but shall proceed against them in a fair and legal way,

for I never meant any other.' ... When the king was looking

around for the accused members, he asked the speaker, who

stood below, whether any of these persons were in the House?

The speaker, falling on his knee, prudently replied: 'I have,

sir, neither eyes to see, nor tongue to speak, in this place,

but as the House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am.

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And I humbly ask pardon, that I cannot give any other answer

to what your majesty is pleased to demand of me.' The Commons

were in the utmost disorder; and when the king was departing,

some members cried aloud so as he might hear them, Privilege!

Privilege! and the House immediately adjourned till next day.

That evening, the accused members, to show the greater

apprehension, removed into the city, which was their fortress.

The citizens were the whole night in arms. ... When the House

of Commons met, they affected the greatest dismay; and

adjourning themselves for some days, ordered a committee to

sit in Merchant-Tailors' hall in the city. ... The House again

met, and after confirming the votes of their committee, instantly

adjourned, as if exposed to the most imminent perils from the

violence of their enemies. This practice they continued for

some time. When the people, by these affected panics, were

wrought up to a sufficient degree of rage and terror, it was

thought proper, that the accused members should, with a

triumphant and military procession, take their seats in the

House. The river was covered with boats, and other vessels,

laden with small pieces of ordnance, and prepared for fight.

Skippon, whom the Parliament had appointed, by their own

authority, major-general of the city militia, conducted the

members, at the head of this tumultuary army, to

Westminster-hall. And when the populace, by land and by water,

passed Whitehall, they still asked, with insulting shouts,

What has become of the king and his cavaliers? And whither are

they fled? The king, apprehensive of danger from the enraged

multitude, had retired to Hampton-court, deserted by all the

world, and overwhelmed with grief, shame, and remorse for the

fatal measures into which he had been hurried."

D. Hume,

History of England,

volume 5, chapter 55, pages 85-91.

ALSO IN:

S. R. Gardiner,

The First Two Stuarts and the Puritan Revolution,

chapter 6, section 5.

S. R. Gardiner,

History of England, 1603-1642,

chapter 103 (volume 10).

J. Forster,

Statesmen of the Commonwealth: Pym; Hampden.

L. von Ranke,

History of England, 17th Cent.,

book 8, chapter 10 (volume 2).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1642 (JANUARY-AUGUST).

Preparations for war.

The marshalling of forces.

The raising of the King's standard.

"January 10th. The King with his Court quits Whitehall; the

Five Members and Parliament proposing to return tomorrow, with

the whole City in arms round them. He left Whitehall; never

saw it again till he came to lay down his head there.

March 9th. The King has sent away his Queen from Dover, 'to be

in a place of safety,'--and also to pawn the Crown-jewels in

Holland, and get him arms. He returns Northward again,

avoiding London. Many messages between the Houses of

Parliament and him: 'Will your Majesty grant us Power of the

Militia; accept this list of Lord-Lieutenants?' On the 9th of

March, still advancing Northward without affirmative response,

he has got to Newmarket; where another Message overtakes him,

earnestly urges itself upon him: 'Could not your Majesty

please to grant us Power of the Militia for a limited time?'

'No, by God!' answers his Majesty, 'not for an hour.'

On the 19th of March he is at York; where his Hull Magazine,

gathered for service against the Scots, is lying near; where a

great Earl of Newcastle, and other Northern potentates, will

help him; where at least London and its Puritanism, now grown

so fierce, is far off. There we will leave him; attempting

Hull Magazine, in vain; exchanging messages with his

Parliament; messages, missives, printed and written Papers

without limit: Law-pleadings of both parties before the great

tribunal of the English Nation, each party striving to prove

itself right and within the verge of Law: preserved still in

acres of typography, once thrillingly alive in every fibre of

them; now a mere torpor, readable by few creatures, not

rememberable by any."

T. Carlyle,

Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches,

part 2, preliminary.

"As early as June 2 a ship had arrived on the North English

coast, bringing the King arms and ammunition from Holland,

purchased by the sale of the crown-jewels which the Queen had

taken abroad. On the 22d of the same month more than forty of

the nobles and others in attendance on the King at York had

put down their names for the numbers of armed horse they would

furnish respectively for his service. Requisitions in the

King's name were also out for supplies of money; and the two

Universities, and the Colleges in each, were invited to send

in their plate. On the other hand, the Parliament had not been

more negligent. There had been contributions or promises from

all the chief Parliamentarian nobles and others; there was a

large loan from the city; and hundreds of thousands, on a

smaller scale, were willing to subscribe. And already, through

all the shires, the two opposed powers were grappling and

jostling with each other in raising levies. On the King's side

there were what were called Commissions of Array, or powers

granted to certain nobles and others by name to raise troops

for the King. On the side of Parliament, in addition to the

Volunteering which had been going on in many places (as, for

example, in Cambridgeshire, where Oliver Cromwell was forming

a troop of Volunteer horse ... ), there was the Militia

Ordinance available wherever the persons named in that

ordinance were really zealous for Parliament, and able to act

personally in the districts assigned them. And so on the 12th

of July the Parliament had passed the necessary vote for

supplying an army, and had appointed the Earl of Essex to be

its commander-in-chief, and the Earl of Bedford to be its

second in command as general of horse. It was known, on the

other side, that the Earl of Lindsey, in consideration of his

past experience of service both on sea and land, was to have

the command of the King's army, and that his master of horse

was to be the King's nephew, young Prince Rupert, who was

expected from the Continent on purpose. Despite all these

preparations, however, it was probably not till August had

begun that the certainty of Civil War was universally

acknowledged. It was on the 9th of that month that the King

issued his proclamation 'for suppressing the present Rebellion

under the command of Robert, Earl of Essex,' offering pardon

to him and others if within six days they made their

submission. The Parliamentary answer to this was on the 11th;

on which day the Commons resolved, each man separately rising

in his place and giving his word, that they would stand by the

Earl of Essex with their lives and fortunes to the end. Still,

even after that, there were trembling souls here and there who

hoped for a reconciliation.

{868}

Monday the 22d of August put an end to all such fluttering:

--On that day, the King, who had meanwhile left York, and come

about a hundred miles farther south, into the very heart of

England, ... made a backward movement as far as the town of

Nottingham, where preparations had been made for the great

scene that was to follow. ... This consisted in bringing out

the royal standard and setting it up in due form. It was about

six o'clock in the evening when it was done. ... A herald read

a proclamation, declaring the cause why the standard had been

set up, and summoning all the lieges to assist his Majesty.

Those who were present cheered and threw up their hats, and,

with a beating of drums and a sounding of trumpets, the

ceremony ended. ... From that evening of the 22d of August,

1642, the Civil War had begun."

D. Masson,

Life of John Milton,

book 2, chapter 8 (volume 2).

ALSO IN:

John Forster,

Statesmen of the Commonwealth: Pym; Hampden.

S. R. Gardiner,

History of England, 1603-1642,

chapters 104-105 (volume 10).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1642 (AUGUST-SEPTEMBER).

The nation choosing sides.

"In wealth, in numbers, and in cohesion the Parliament was

stronger than the king. To him there had rallied most of the

greater nobles, many of the lesser gentry, some proportion of

the richer citizens, the townsmen of the west, and the rural

population generally of the west and north of England. For the

Parliament stood a strong section of the peers and greater

gentry, the great bulk of the lesser gentry, the townsmen of

the richer parts of England, the whole eastern and home

counties, and lastly, the city of London. But as the Civil War

did not sharply divide classes, so neither did it

geographically bisect England. Roughly speaking, aristocracy

and peasantry, the Church, universities, the world of culture,

fashion, and pleasure were loyal: the gentry, the yeomanry,

trade, commerce, morality, and law inclined to the Parliament.

Broadly divided, the north and west went for the king; the

south and east for the Houses; but the lines of demarcation

were never exact: cities, castles, and manor-houses long held

out in an enemy's county. There is only one permanent

limitation. Draw a line from the Wash to the Solent. East of

that line the country never yielded to the king; from first to

last it never failed the Parliament. Within it are enclosed

Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridge, Huntingdon, Bedford,

Bucks, Herts, Middlesex, Surrey, Kent, Sussex. This was the

wealthiest, the most populous, and the most advanced portion

of England. With Gloucester, Reading, Bristol, Leicester, and

Northampton, it formed the natural home of Puritanism."

F. Harrison,

Oliver Cromwell,

chapter 4.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1642 (OCTOBER-DECEMBER).

Edgehill--the opening battle of the war.

The Eastern Association.

Immediately after the raising of his standard at Nottingham,

the King, "aware at last that he could not rely on the

inhabitants of Yorkshire, moved to Shrewsbury, at once to

collect the Catholic gentry of Lancashire and Cheshire, to

receive the Royalist levies of Wales, and to secure the valley

of the Severn. The movement was successful. In a few days his

little army was increased fourfold, and he felt himself strong

enough to make a direct march towards the capital. Essex had

garrisoned Northampton, Coventry and Warwick, and lay himself

at Worcester; but the King, waiting for no sieges, left the

garrisoned towns unmolested and passed on towards London, and

Essex received peremptory orders to pursue and interpose if

possible between the King and London. On the 22nd of October

he was close upon the King's rear at Keynton, between

Stratford and Banbury. But his army was by no means at its

full strength; some regiments had been left to garrison the

West, others, under Hampden had not yet joined him. But delay

was impossible, and the first battle of the war was fought on

the plain at the foot of the north-west slope of Edgehill,

over which the royal army descended, turning back on its

course to meet Essex. Both parties claimed the victory. In

fact it was with the King. The Parliamentary cavalry found

themselves wholly unable to withstand the charge of Rupert's

cavaliers. Whole regiments turned and fled without striking a

blow; but, as usual, want of discipline ruined the royal

cause. Rupert's men fell to plundering the Parliamentary

baggage, and returned to the field only in time to find that

the infantry, under the personal leading of Essex, had

reestablished the fight. Night closed the battle [which is

sometimes named from Edgehill and sometimes from Keynton]. The

King's army withdrew to the vantage-ground of the hills, and

Essex, reinforced by Hampden, passed the night upon the field.

But the Royalist army was neither beaten nor checked in its

advance, while the rottenness of the Parliamentary troops had

been disclosed." Some attempts at peace-making followed this

doubtful first collision; but their only effect was to

embitter the passions on both sides. The King advanced,

threatening London, but the citizens of the capital turned out

valiantly to oppose him, and he "fell back upon Oxford, which

henceforward became the centre of their operations. ... War

was again the only resource, and speedily became universal.

... There was local fighting over the whole of England. ...

The headquarters of the King were constantly at Oxford, from

which, as from a centre, Rupert would suddenly make rapid

raids, now in one direction, now in another. Between him and

London, about Reading, Aylesbury, and Thame, lay what may be

spoken of as the main army of Parliament, under the command of

Lord-General Essex. ... The other two chief scenes of the war

were Yorkshire and the West. In Yorkshire the Fairfaxes,

Ferdinando Lord Fairfax and his son Sir Thomas, made what head

they could against what was known as the Popish army under the

command of the Earl, subsequently Marquis of Newcastle, which

consisted mainly of the troops of the Northern counties, which

had become associated under Newcastle in favour of Charles.

Newark, in Nottinghamshire, was early made a royal garrison,

and formed the link of connection between the operations in

Yorkshire and at Oxford. In the extreme South-west, Lord

Stamford, the Parliamentary General, was making a somewhat

unsuccessful resistance against Sir Ralph, afterwards Lord

Hopton. Wales was wholly Royalist, and one of the chief

objects of Charles's generals was to secure the Severn valley,

and thus connect the war in Devonshire with the central

operations at Oxford. In the Eastern counties matters assumed

rather a different form. The principle of forming several

counties into an association ... was adopted by the

Parliament, and several such associations were formed, but

none of these came to much except that of the Eastern

counties, which was known by way of preeminence as 'The

Association.' Its object was to keep the war entirely beyond

the borders of the counties of which it consisted. The reason

of its success was the genius and energy of Cromwell."

J. F. Bright,

History of England, period 2,

page 659.

{869}

"This winter there arise among certain Counties 'Associations'

for mutual defence, against Royalism and plunderous Rupertism;

a measure cherished by the Parliament, condemned as

treasonable by the King. Of which 'Associations,' countable to

the number of five or six, we name only one, that of Norfolk,

Suffolk, Essex, Cambridge, Herts; with Lord Gray of Wark for

Commander; where and under whom Oliver was now serving. This

'Eastern Association' is alone worth naming. All the other

Associations, no man of emphasis being in the midst of them,

fell in a few months to pieces; only this of Cromwell

subsisted, enlarged itself, grew famous;--and kept its own

borders clear of invasion during the whole course of the War."

T. Carlyle,

Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches,

part 2, preliminary.

ALSO IN:

S. R. Gardiner,

History of the Great Civil War,

chapters 2-4 (volume l).

W. Godwin,

History of the Commonwealth,

chapter 2 (volume 1).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1643 (May).

Cromwell's Ironsides.

"It was ... probably, a little before Edgehill, that there

took place between Cromwell and Hampden the memorable

conversation which fifteen years afterwards the Protector

related in a speech to his second Parliament. It is a piece of

autobiography so instructive and pathetic that it must be set

forth in full in the words of Cromwell himself:

'I was a person who, from my first employment, was suddenly

preferred and lifted up from lesser trusts to greater; from my

first being Captain of a Troop of Horse. ... I had a very

worthy friend then; and he was a very noble person, and I know

his memory was very grateful to all,--Mr. John Hampden. At my

first going out into this engagement, I saw our men were

beaten at every hand. ... Your troops, said I, are most of

them old decayed serving-men, and tapsters, and such kind of

fellows; and, said I, their troops are gentlemen's sons,

younger sons and persons of quality: do you think that the

spirits of such base mean fellows will ever be able to

encounter gentlemen, that have honour and courage and

resolution in them? Truly I did represent to him in this

manner conscientiously; and truly I did tell him: You must get

men of a spirit: and take it not ill what I say,--I know you

will not,--of a spirit that is likely to go on as far as

gentlemen will go: or else you will be beaten still. I told

him so; I did truly. He was a wise and worthy person; and he

did think that I talked a good notion, but an impracticable

one. ... I raised such men as had the fear of God before them,

as made some conscience of what they did; and from that day

forward, I must say to you, they were never beaten, and

wherever they were engaged against the enemy they beat

continually.' ... The issue of the whole war lay in that word.

It lay with 'such men as had some conscience in what they

did.' 'From that day forward they were never beaten.' ... As

for Colonel Cromwell,' writes a news-letter of May, 1643, 'he

hath 2,000 brave men, well disciplined; no man swears but he

pays his twelve-pence; if he be drunk, he is set in the

stocks, or worse; if one calls the other roundhead he is

cashiered: insomuch that the countries where they come leap

for joy of them, and come in and join with them. How happy

were it if all the forces were thus disciplined!' These were

the men who ultimately decided the war, and established the

Commonwealth. On the field of Marston, Rupert gave Cromwell

the name of Ironside, and from thence this famous name passed

to his troopers. There are two features in their history which

we need to note. They were indeed 'such men as had some

conscience in their work'; but they were also much more. They

were disciplined and trained soldiers. They were the only body

of 'regulars' on either side. The instinctive genius of

Cromwell from the very first created the strong nucleus of a

regular army, which at last in discipline, in skill, in

valour, reached the highest perfection ever attained by

soldiers either in ancient or modern times. The fervour of

Cromwell is continually pressing towards the extension of this

'regular' force. Through all the early disasters, this body of

Ironsides kept the cause alive: at Marston it overwhelmed the

king: as soon as, by the New Model, this system was extended

to the whole army, the Civil War was at an end."

F. Harrison,

Oliver Cromwell,

chapter 4.

ALSO IN:

J. Forster,

Statesmen of the Commonwealth: Cromwell.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1643 (JUNE-SEPTEMBER).

The King calls in the Irish.

"To balance the accession of power which the alliance with

Scotland brought to the Parliament, Charles was so unwise, men

then said so guilty, as to conclude a peace with the Irish

rebels, with the intent that thus those of his forces which

had been employed against them, might be set free to join his

army in England. No act of the King, not the levying of

ship-money, not the crowd of monopolies which enriched the

court and impoverished the people, neither the extravagance of

Buckingham, the tyranny of Strafford nor the prelacy of Laud, not

even the attempted arrest of the five members, raised such a

storm of indignation and hatred throughout the kingdom, as did

this determination of the King to withdraw (as men said), for

the purpose of subduing his subjects, the force which had been

raised to avenge the blood of 100,000 Protestant martyrs. ...

To the England of the time this act was nauseous, was

exasperating to the highest degree, while to the cause of the

King it was fatal; for, from this moment, the condition of the

Parliamentary party began to mend."

N. L. Walford,

Parliamentary Generals of the Great Civil War,

chapter 2.

"None of the king's schemes proved so fatal to his cause as

these. On their discovery, officer after officer in his own

army flung down their commissions, the peers who had fled to

Oxford fled back again to London, and the Royalist reaction in

the Parliament itself came utterly to an end."

J. R. Green,

Short History of England,

chapter 8, section 7.

ALSO IN:

S. R. Gardiner,

History of the Great Civil War,

chapter 11 (volume 1).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1643 (JULY).

Meeting of the Westminster Assembly of Divines.

At the beginning of July, 1643, "London was astir with a new

event of great consequence in the course of the national

revolution. This was the meeting of the famous Westminster

Assembly. The necessity of an ecclesiastical Synod or

Convocation, to cooperate with the Parliament, had been long

felt.

{870}

Among the articles of the Grand Remonstrance of December 1641

had been one desiring a convention of 'a General Synod of the

most grave, pious, learned, and judicious divines of this

island, assisted by some from foreign parts,' to consider of

all things relating to the Church and report thereon to

Parliament. It is clear from the wording of this article that

it was contemplated that the Synod should contain

representatives from the Presbyterian Church of Scotland.

Indeed, by that time, the establishment of a uniformity of

Doctrine, Discipline, and Worship between the Churches of

England and Scotland was the fixed idea of those who chiefly

desired a Synod. ... In April, 1642 ... it was ordered by the

House, in pursuance of previous resolutions on the subject,

'that the names of such divines as shall be thought fit to be

consulted with concerning the matter of the Church be brought

in tomorrow morning,' the understood rule being that the

knights and burgesses of each English county should name to

the House two divines, and those of each Welsh county one

divine, for approval. Accordingly, on the 20th, the names were

given in. ... By the stress of the war the Assembly was

postponed. At last, hopeless of a bill that should pass in the

regular way by the King's consent, the Houses resorted, in

this as in other things, to their peremptory plan of Ordinance

by their own authority. On the 13th of May, 1643, an Ordinance

for calling an Assembly was introduced in the Commons; which

Ordinance, after due going and coming between the two Houses,

came to maturity June 12, when it was entered at full length

in the Lords' Journals. 'Whereas, amongst the infinite

blessings of Almighty God upon this nation,'--so runs the

preamble of the Ordinance,--'none is, or can be, more dear to

us than the purity of our religion; and for as much as many

things yet remain in the discipline, liturgy and government of

the Church which necessarily require a more perfect

reformation: and whereas it has been declared and resolved, by

the Lords and Commons assembled in Parliament, that the

present Church Government by Archbishops, Bishops, their

Chancellors, Commissaries, Deans, Deans and Chapters,

Archdeacons, and other ecclesiastical officers depending on

the hierarchy, is evil and justly offensive and burdensome to

the kingdom, and a great impediment to reformation and growth

of religion, and very prejudicial to the state and government

of this kingdom, and that therefore they are resolved the same

shall be taken away, and that such a government shall be

settled in the Church as may be agreeable to God's Holy Word,

and most apt to procure and preserve the peace of the Church

at home, and nearer agreement with the Church of Scotland, and

other reformed Churches abroad. ... Be it therefore ordained,

&c.' What is ordained is that 149 persons, enumerated by name

in the Ordinance ... shall meet on the 1st of July next in

King Henry VII.'s Chapel at Westminster; ... 'to confer and

treat among themselves of such matters and things, concerning

the liturgy, discipline and government of the Church of

England ... as shall be proposed by either or both Houses of

Parliament, and no other.' ... Notwithstanding a Royal

Proclamation from Oxford, dated June 22, forbidding the

Assembly and threatening consequences, the first meeting duly

took place on the day appointed--Saturday, July 1, 1643; and

from that day till the 22d of February, 1648-9, or for more

than five years and a half, the Westminster Assembly is to be

borne in mind as a power or institution in the English realm,

existing side by side with the Long Parliament, and in

constant conference and cooperation with it. The number of its

sittings during these five years and a half was 1,163 in all;

which is at the rate of about four sittings every week for the

whole time. The earliest years of the Assembly were the most

important."

D. Masson,

Life of John Milton,

book 3, chapter 3 (volume 2).

ALSO IN:

A. F. Mitchell,

The Westminster Assembly,

lectures 4-5.

D. Neal,

History of the Puritans,

volume 3, chapters 2 and 4.

SEE, also, INDEPENDENTS.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1643 (JULY-SEPTEMBER).

The Solemn League and Covenant with the Scottish nation.

"Scotland had been hitherto kept aloof from the English

quarrel. ... Up to this time the pride and delicacy of the

English patriots withheld them, for obvious reasons, from

claiming her assistance. Had it been possible, they would

still have desired to engage no distant party in this great

domestic struggle; but when the present unexpected crisis

arrived ... these considerations were laid aside, and the

chief leaders of the Parliament resolved upon an embassy to

the North, to bring the Scottish nation into the field. The

conduct of this embassy was a matter of the highest difficulty

and danger. The Scots were known to be bigoted to their own

persuasions of narrow and exclusive church government, while

the greatest men of the English Parliament had proclaimed the

sacred maxim that every man who worshipped God according to

the dictates of his conscience was entitled to the protection

of the State. But these men, Vane, Cromwell, Marten and St.

John, though the difficulties of the common cause had brought

them into the acknowledged position of leaders and directors

of affairs, were in a minority in the House of Commons, and

the party who were their superiors in numbers were as bigoted

to the most exclusive principles of Presbyterianism as the

Scots themselves. Denzil Holies stood at the head of this

inferior class of patriots. ... The most eminent of the

Parliamentary nobility, particularly Northumberland, Essex and

Manchester belonged also to this body; while the London

clergy, and the metropolis itself, were almost entirely

Presbyterian. These things considered, there was indeed great

reason to apprehend that this party, backed by the Scots, and

supported with a Scottish army, would be strong enough to

overpower the advocates of free conscience, and 'set up a

tyranny not less to be deplored than that of Laud and his

hierarchy, which had proved one of the main occasions of

bringing on the war.' Yet, opposing to all this danger only

their own high purposes and dauntless courage, the smaller

party of more consummate statesmen were the first to propose

the embassy to Scotland. ... On the 20th of July, 1643, the

commissioners set out from London. They were four; and the man

principally confided in among them was Vane [Sir Henry, the

younger]. He, indeed, was the individual best qualified to

succeed Hampden as a counsellor in the arduous struggle in

which the nation was at this time engaged. ... Immediately on

his arrival in Edinburgh the negotiation commenced, and what

Vane seems to have anticipated at once occurred. The Scots

offered their assistance heartily on the sole condition of an

adhesion to the Scottish religious system on the part of

England.

{871}

After many long and very warm debates, in which Vane held to

one firm policy from the first, a solemn covenant was

proposed, which Vane insisted should be named a solemn league

and covenant, while certain words were inserted in it on his

subsequent motion, to which he also adhered with immovable

constancy, and which had the effect of leaving open to the

great party in England, to whose interests he was devoted,

that last liberty of conscience which man should never

surrender. ... The famous article respecting religion ran in

these words;

'That we shall sincerely, really, and constantly, through the

grace of God, endeavour, in our several places and callings,

the preservation of the Reformed religion in the Church of

Scotland, in doctrine, worship, discipline and government,

against our common enemies; the reformation of religion in the

kingdoms of England and Ireland, in doctrine, worship,

discipline, and government, according to the Word of God, and

the example of the best Reformed churches; and we shall

endeavour to bring the churches of God in the three kingdoms

to the nearest conjunction and uniformity in religion,

confessing of faith, form of church government directory for

worship and catechizing; that we and our posterity after us,

may as brethren live in faith and love, and the Lord may

delight to dwell in the midst of us. That we shall in like

manner, without respect of persons, endeavour the extirpation

of popery, prelacy (that is, church government by archbishops,

bishops, their chancellors and commissaries, deans, deans and

chapters, archdeacons, and all other ecclesiastical officers

depending on that hierarchy).' Vane, by this introduction of

'according to the Word of God,' left the interpretation of

that word to the free conscience of every man. On the 17th of

August, the solemn league and covenant was voted by the

Legislature and the Assembly of the Church at Edinburgh. The

king in desperate alarm, sent his commands to the Scotch

people not to take such a covenant. In reply, they 'humbly

advised his majesty to take the covenant himself.' The

surpassing service rendered by Vane on this great occasion to

the Parliamentary cause, exposed him to a more violent hatred

from the Royalists than he had yet experienced, and Clarendon

has used every artifice to depreciate his motives and his

sincerity. ... The solemn league and covenant remained to be

adopted in England. The Scottish form of giving it authority

was followed as far as possible. It was referred by the two

Houses to the Assembly of Divines, which had commenced its

sittings on the 1st of the preceding July, being called

together to be consulted with by the Parliament for the

purpose of settling the government and form of worship of the

Church of England. This assembly already referred to,

consisted of 121 of the clergy; and a number of lay assessors

were joined with them, consisting of ten peers, and twenty

members of the House of Commons. All these persons were named

by the ordinance of the two Houses of Parliament which gave

birth to the assembly. The public taking of the Covenant was

solemnized on the 25th of September, each member of either

House attesting his adherence by oath first, and then by

subscribing his name. The name of Vane, subscribed immediately

on his return, appears upon the list next to that of

Cromwell."

J. Forster,

Statesmen of the Commonwealth: Vane.

ALSO IN:

J. K. Hosmer,

Life of Young Sir Henry Vane,

chapter 8.

A. F. Mitchell,

The Westminster Assembly,

lectures 5-6.

D. Neal,

History of the Puritans,

volume 3, chapter 2.

S. R. Gardiner,

Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution,

page 187.

The following is the text of the Solemn League and Covenant:

"A solemn league and covenant for Reformation and defence of

religion, the honour and happiness of the King, and the peace

and safety of the three kingdoms of England, Scotland and

Ireland. We noblemen, barons, knights, gentlemen, citizens,

burgesses, ministers of the Gospel, and commons of all sorts

in the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland, by the

providence of God living under one King, and being of one

reformed religion; having before our eyes the glory of God,

and the advancement of the kingdom of our Lord and Saviour

Jesus Christ, the honour and happiness of the King's Majesty

and his posterity, and the true public liberty, safety and

peace of the kingdoms, wherein everyone's private condition is

included; and calling to mind the treacherous and bloody

plots, conspiracies, attempts and practices of the enemies of

God against the true religion and professors thereof in all

places, especially in these three kingdoms, ever since the

reformation of religion; and how much their rage, power and

presumption are of late, and at this time increased and

exercised, whereof the deplorable estate of the Church and

kingdom of Ireland, the distressed estate of the Church and

kingdom of England, and the dangerous estate of the Church and

kingdom of Scotland, are present and public testimonies: we

have (now at last) after other means of supplication,

remonstrance, protestations and sufferings, for the

preservation of ourselves and our religion from utter ruin and

destruction, according to the commendable practice of these

kingdoms in former times, and the example of God's people in

other nations, after mature deliberation, resolved and

determined to enter into a mutual and solemn league and

covenant, wherein we all subscribe, and each one of us for

himself, with our hands lifted up to the most high God, do

swear,

I. That we shall sincerely, really and constantly, through the

grace of God, endeavour in our several places and callings,

the preservation of the reformed religion in the Church of

Scotland, in doctrine, worship, discipline and government,

against our common enemies; the reformation of religion in the

kingdoms of England and Ireland, in doctrine, worship,

discipline and government, according to the Word of God, and

the example of the best reformed Churches; and we shall

endeavour to bring the Churches of God in the three kingdoms

to the nearest conjunction and uniformity in religion,

confession of faith, form of Church government, directory for

worship and catechising, that we, and our posterity after us,

may, as brethren, live in faith and love, and the Lord may

delight to dwell in the midst of us.

II. That we shall in like manner, without respect of persons,

endeavour the extirpation of Popery, prelacy (that is, Church

government by Archbishops, Bishops, their Chancellors and

Commissaries, Deans, Deans and Chapters, Archdeacons, and all

other ecclesiastical officers depending on that hierarchy),

superstition, heresy, schism, profaneness and whatsoever shall

be found to be contrary to sound doctrine and the power of

godliness lest we partake in other men's sins, and thereby be

in danger to receive of their plagues; and that the Lord may

be one, and His name one in the three kingdoms.

{872}

III. We shall with the same sincerity, reality and constancy,

in our several vocations, endeavour with our estates and lives

mutually to preserve the rights and privileges of the

Parliaments, and the liberties of the kingdoms, and to

preserve and defend the King's Majesty's person and authority,

in the preservation and defence of the true religion and

liberties of the kingdoms, that the world may bear witness

with our consciences of our loyalty, and that we have no

thoughts or intentions to diminish His Majesty's just power

and greatness.

IV. We shall also with all faithfulness endeavour the

discovery of all such as have been or shall be incendiaries,

malignants or evil instruments, by hindering the reformation

of religion, dividing the King from his people, or one of the

kingdoms from another, or making any faction or parties

amongst the people, contrary to the league and covenant, that

they may be brought to public trial and receive condign

punishment, as the degree of their offences shall require or

deserve, or the supreme judicatories of both kingdoms

respectively, or others having power from them for that

effect, shall judge convenient.

V. And whereas the happiness of a blessed peace between these

kingdoms, denied in former times to our progenitors, is by the

good providence of God granted to us, and hath been lately

concluded and settled by both Parliaments: we shall each one

of us, according to our places and interest, endeavour that

they may remain conjoined in a firm peace and union to all

posterity, and that justice may be done upon the wilful

opposers thereof, in manner expressed in the precedent

articles.

VI. We shall also, according to our places and callings, in

this common cause of religion, liberty and peace of the

kingdom, assist and defend all those that enter into this

league and covenant, in the maintaining and pursuing thereof;

and shall not suffer ourselves, directly or indirectly, by

whatsoever combination, persuasion or terror, to be divided

and withdrawn from this blessed union and conjunction, whether

to make defection to the contrary part, or give ourselves to a

detestable indifferency or neutrality in this cause, which so

much concerneth the glory of God, the good of the kingdoms,

and the honour of the King; but shall all the days of our

lives zealously and constantly continue therein, against all

opposition, and promote the same according to our power,

against all lets and impediments whatsoever; and what we are

not able ourselves to suppress or overcome we shall reveal and

make known, that it may be timely prevented or removed: all

which we shall do as in the sight of God. And because these

kingdoms are guilty of many sins and provocations against God,

and His Son Jesus Christ, as is too manifest by our present

distresses and dangers, the fruits thereof: we profess and

declare, before God and the world, our unfeigned desire to be

humbled for our own sins, and for the sins of these kingdoms;

especially that we have not as we ought valued the inestimable

benefit of the Gospel; that we have not laboured for the

purity and power thereof; and that we have not endeavoured to

receive Christ in our hearts, nor to walk worthy of Him in our

lives, which are the causes of other sins and transgressions

so much abounding amongst us, and our true and unfeigned

purpose, desire and endeavour, for ourselves and all others

under our power and charge, both in public and in private, in

all duties we owe to God and man, to amend our lives, and each

one to go before another in the example of a real reformation,

that the Lord may turn away His wrath and heavy indignation,

and establish these Churches and kingdoms in truth and peace.

And this covenant we make in the presence of Almighty God, the

Searcher of all hearts, with a true intention to perform the

same, as we shall answer at that Great Day when the secrets of

all hearts shall be disclosed: most humbly beseeching the Lord

to strengthen us by His Holy Spirit for this end, and to bless

our desires and Proceedings with such success as may be a

deliverance and safety to His people, and encouragement to the

Christian Churches groaning under or in danger of the yoke of

Anti-Christian tyranny, to join in the same or like

association and covenant, to the glory of God, the enlargement

of the kingdom of Jesus Christ, and the peace and tranquility

of Christian kingdoms and commonwealths."

ENGLAND: A. D. 1643 (August-September).

Siege of Gloucester and first Battle of Newbury.

"When the war had lasted a year, the advantage was decidedly

with the Royalists. They were victorious, both in the western

and in the northern counties. They had wrested Bristol, the

second city in the kingdom, from the Parliament. They had won

several battles, and had not sustained a single serious or

ignominious defeat. Among the Roundheads, adversity had begun

to produce dissension and discontent. The Parliament was kept

in alarm, sometimes by plots and sometimes by riots. It was

thought necessary to fortify London against the royal army,

and to hang some disaffected citizens at their own doors.

Several of the most distinguished peers who had hitherto

remained at Westminster fled to the court at Oxford; nor can

it be doubted that, if the operations of the Cavaliers had, at

this season, been directed by a sagacious and powerful mind,

Charles would soon have marched in triumph to Whitehall. But

the King suffered the auspicious moment to pass away; and it

never returned. In August, 1643, he sate down before the city

of Gloucester. That city was defended by the inhabitants and

by the garrison, with a determination such as had not, since

the commencement of the war, been shown by the adherents of

the Parliament. The emulation of London was excited. The

trainbands of the City volunteered to march wherever their

services might be required. A great force was speedily

collected, and began to move westward. The siege of Gloucester

was raised. The Royalists in every part of the kingdom were

disheartened; the spirit of the parliamentary party revived;

and the apostate Lords, who had lately fled from Westminster

to Oxford, hastened back from Oxford to Westminster."

Lord Macaulay,

History of England,

chapter 1.

After accomplishing the relief of Gloucester, the

Parliamentary army, marching back to London, was intercepted

at Newbury by the army of the king, and forced to fight a

battle, September 20, 1643, in which both parties, as at

Edgehill, claimed the victory. The Royalists, however, failed

to bar the road to London, as they had undertaken to do, and

Essex resumed his march on the following morning.

{873}

"In this unhappy battle was slain the lord viscount Falkland;

a person of such prodigious parts of learning and knowledge,

of that inimitable sweetness and delight in conversation, of

so flowing and obliging a humanity and goodness to mankind,

and of that primitive sincerity and integrity of life, that if

there were no other brand upon this odious and accursed war

than that single loss, it must be most infamous and execrable

to all posterity."

Earl of Clarendon,

History of the Rebellion,

book 7, section 217.

This lamented death on the royal side nearly evened, so to

speak, the great, unmeasured calamity which had befallen the

better cause three months before, when the high-souled patriot

Hampden was slain in a paltry skirmish with Rupert's horse, at

Chalgrove Field, not far from the borders of Oxfordshire. Soon

after the fight at Newbury, Charles, having occupied Reading,

withdrew his army to Oxford and went into winter quarters.

N. L. Walford,

Parliamentary Generals of the Great Civil War,

chapter 2.

ALSO IN:

Sir E. Cust,

Lives of the Warriors of the Civil Wars,

part 2.

S. R. Gardiner,

History of the Great Civil War,

chapter 10 (volume 1).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1644 (January).

Battle of Nantwich and siege of Lathom House.

The Irish army brought over by King Charles and landed in

Flintshire, in November, 1643, under the command of Lord

Byron, invaded Cheshire and laid siege to Nantwich, which was

the headquarters of the Parliamentary cause in that region.

Young Sir Thomas Fairfax was ordered to collect forces and

relieve the town. With great difficulty he succeeded, near the

end of January, 1644, in leading 2,500 foot-soldiers and

twenty-eight troops of horse, against the besieging army,

which numbered 3,000 foot and 1,800 horse. On the 28th of

January he attacked and routed the Irish royalists completely.

"All the Royalist Colonels, including the subsequently

notorious Monk, 1,500 soldiers, six pieces of ordnance, and

quantities of arms, were captured." Having accomplished this

most important service, Sir Thomas, "to his great annoyance,"

received orders to lay siege to Lathom House, one of the

country seats of the Earl of Derby, which had been fortified

and secretly garrisoned, with 300 soldiers. It was held by the

high-spirited and dauntless Countess of Derby, in the absence

of her husband, who was in the Isle of Man. Sir Thomas Fairfax

soon escaped from this ignoble enterprise and left it to be

carried on, first, by his cousin, Sir William Fairfax, and

afterwards by Colonel Rigby. The Countess defended her house

for three months, until the approach of Prince Rupert forced

the raising of the siege in the following spring. Lathom House

was not finally surrendered to the Roundheads until December

6, 1645, when it was demolished.

C. R. Markham,

Life of the Great Lord Fairfax,

chapter 13.

ALSO IN:

Mrs. Thompson,

Recollections of Literary Characters and Celebrated Places,

volume 2, chapter 2.

E. Warburton,

Memoirs of Prince Rupert and the Cavaliers,

page 2, chapter 4.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1644 (January-July).

The Scots in England.

The Battle of Marston Moor.

"On the 19th of January, 1644, the Scottish army entered

England. Lesley, now earl of Leven, commanded them. ... In the

meantime, the parliament at Westminster formed a council under

the title of 'The Committee of the Two Kingdoms,' consisting

of seven Lords, fourteen members of the Commons, and four

Scottish Commissioners. Whatever belongs to the executive

power as distinguished from the legislative devolved upon this

Committee. In the spring of 1644 the parliament had five

armies in the field, paid by general or local taxation, and by

voluntary contributions. Including the Scottish army there

were altogether 56,000 men under arms; the English forces

being commanded, as separate armies, by Essex, Waller,

Manchester, and Fairfax. Essex and Waller advanced to blockade

Oxford. The queen went to Exeter in April, and never saw

Charles again. The blockading forces around Oxford had become

so strong that resistance appeared to be hopeless. On the

night of the 3d of June the king secretly left the city and

passed safely between the two hostile armies. There had again

been jealousies and disagreements between Essex and Waller.

Essex, supported by the council of war, but in opposition to

the committee of the two kingdoms, had marched to the west.

Waller, meanwhile, went in pursuit of the king into

Worcestershire, Charles suddenly returned to Oxford; and then

at Copredy Bridge, near Banbury, defeated Waller, who had

hastened back to encounter him. Essex was before the walls of

Exeter, in which city the queen had given birth to a princess.

The king hastened to the west. He was strong enough to meet

either of the parliamentary armies thus separated. Meanwhile

the combined English and Scottish armies were besieging York.

Rupert had just accomplished the relief of Lathom House, which

had been defended by the heroic countess of Derby for eighteen

weeks, against a detachment of the army of Fairfax. He then

marched towards York with 20,000 men. The allied English and

Scots retired from Hessey Moor, near York, to Tadcaster.

Rupert entered York with 2,000 cavalry. The Earl of Newcastle

was in command there. He counselled a prudent delay. The

impetuous Rupert said he had the orders of the king for his

guidance, and he was resolved to fight. On the 2nd of July,

having rested two days in and near York, and enabled the city

to be newly provisioned, the royalist army went forth to

engage. They met their enemy on Marston Moor. The issue of the

encounter would have been more than doubtful, but for

Cromwell, who for the first time had headed his Ironsides in a

great pitched battle. The right wing of the parliamentary army

was scattered. Rupert was chasing and slaying the Scottish

cavalry. ... The charges of Fairfax and Cromwell decided the

day. The victory of the parliamentary forces was so complete

that the Earl of Newcastle left York, and embarked at

Scarborough for the continent. Rupert marched away also, with

the wreck of his army, to Chester. Fifteen hundred prisoners,

all the artillery, more than 100 banners, remained with the

victors; 4,150 bodies lay dead on the plain."

C. Knight,

Crown History of England,

chapter 25.

ALSO IN:

T. Carlyle,

Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches,

part 2, letter 8.

B. M. Cordery and J. S. Phillpotts,

King and Commonwealth,

chapter 7.

W. Godwin, History of the Commonwealth, chapter 12,

(volume 1).

E. Warburton, Memoirs of Prince Rupert and the

Cavaliers, volume 2, chapter 4.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1644 (August-September).

Essex's surrender.

The second Battle of Newbury.

{874}

"The great success at Marston, which had given the north to

the Parliament, was all undone in the south and west through

feebleness and jealousies in the leaders and the wretched

policy that directed the war. Detached armies, consisting of a

local militia, were aimlessly ordered about by a committee of

civilians in London. Disaster followed on disaster. Essex,

Waller, and Manchester would neither agree amongst themselves

nor obey orders. Essex and Waller had parted before Marston

was fought; Manchester had returned from York to protect his

own eastern counties. Waller, after his defeat at Copredy, did

nothing, and naturally found his army melting away. Essex,

perversely advancing into the west, was out-manœuvred by

Charles, and ended a campaign of blunders by the surrender of

all his infantry [at Fowey, in Cornwall, September 2, 1644].

By September 1644 throughout the whole south-west the

Parliament had not an army in the field. But the Committee of

the Houses still toiled on with honourable spirit, and at last

brought together near Newbury a united army nearly double the

strength of the King's. On Sunday, the 29th of October, was

fought the second battle of Newbury, as usual in these

ill-ordered campaigns, late in the afternoon. An arduous day

ended without victory, in spite of the greater numbers of the

Parliament's army, though the men fought well, and their

officers led them with skill and energy. At night the King was

suffered to withdraw his army without loss, and later to carry

off his guns and train. The urgent appeals of Cromwell and his

officers could not infuse into Manchester energy to win the

day, or spirit to pursue the retreating foe."

F. Harrison, Oliver Cromwell, chapter 5.

ALSO IN:

B. M. Cordery and J. S. Phillpotts,

King and Commonwealth,

chapters 7.

S. R. Gardiner,

History of the Great Civil War,

chapters 19 and 21.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1644-1645.

The Self-denying Ordinance.

"Cromwell had shown his capacity for organization in the

creation of the Ironsides; his military genius had displayed

itself at Marston Moor. Newbury first raised him into a

political leader. 'Without a more speedy, vigorous and

effective prosecution of the war,' he said to the Commons

after his quarrel with Manchester, 'casting off all lingering

proceedings, like those of soldiers of fortune beyond sea to

spin out a war, we shall make the kingdom weary of us, and

hate the name of a Parliament.' But under the leaders who at

present conducted it a vigorous conduct of the war was

hopeless. They were, in Cromwell's plain words, 'afraid to

conquer.' They desired not to crush Charles, but to force him

back, with as much of his old strength remaining as might be,

to the position of a constitutional King. ... The army, too,

as he long ago urged at Edgehill, was not an army to conquer

with. Now, as then, he urged that till the whole force was new

modeled, and placed under a stricter discipline, 'they must

not expect any notable success in anything they went about.'

But the first step in such a reorganization must be a change

of officers. The army was led and officered by members of the

two Houses, and the Self-renouncing [or Self-denying]

Ordinance, which was introduced by Cromwell and Vane, declared

the tenure of civil or military offices incompatible with a

seat in either. In spite of a long and bitter resistance,

which was justified at a later time by the political results

which followed this rupture of the tie which had hitherto

bound the army to the Parliament, the drift of public opinion

was too strong to be withstood. The passage of the Ordinance

brought about the retirement of Essex, Manchester, and Waller;

and the new organization of the army went rapidly on under a

new commander-in-chief, Sir Thomas Fairfax, the hero of the

long contest in Yorkshire, and who had been raised into fame

by his victory at Nantwich and his bravery at Marston Moor."

J. R. Green,

Short History of England,

chapter 8, section 7.

ALSO IN:

W. Godwin,

History of the Commonwealth,

chapter 15 (volume l).

J. K. Hosmer,

Life of Young Sir Henry Vane,

chapter 11.

J. A. Picton,

Oliver Cromwell,

chapter 10.

J. Forster,

Statesmen of the Commonwealth: Vane.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1645 (January-February).

The attempted Treaty of Uxbridge.

A futile negotiation between the king and Parliament was

opened at Uxbridge in January, 1645. "But neither the king nor

his advisers entered on it with minds sincerely bent on peace;

they, on the one hand, resolute not to swerve from the utmost

rigour of a conqueror's terms, without having conquered; and

he though more secretly, cherishing illusive hopes of a more

triumphant restoration to power than any treaty could be

expected to effect. The three leading topics of discussion

among the negotiators at Uxbridge were, the church, the

militia, and the state of Ireland. Bound by their unhappy

covenant, and watched by their Scots colleagues, the English

commissioners on the parliament's side demanded the complete

establishment of a presbyterian polity, and the substitution

of what was called the directory for the Anglican liturgy.

Upon this head there was little prospect of a union."

H. Hallam,

Constitutional History of England,

chapter 10, part 1.

ALSO IN:

Earl of Clarendon,

History of the Rebellion,

book 8, sections 209-252 (volume 3).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1645 (January-April).

The New Model of the army.

The passage of the Self-denying Ordinance was followed, or

accompanied, by the adoption of the scheme for the so-called

New Model of the army. "The New Model was organised as

follows:

10 Regiments of Cavalry of 600 men, 6,000;

10 Companies of Dragoons of 100 men, 1,000;

10 Regiments of Infantry of 1,400 men, 14,000:

Total, 21,000 men.

All officers were to be nominated by Sir Thomas Fairfax, the

new General, and (as was insisted upon by the Lords, with the

object of excluding the more fanatical Independents) every

officer was to sign the covenant within twenty days of his

appointment. The cost of this force was estimated at £539,460

per annum, about £1,600,000 of our money. ... Sir Thomas

Fairfax having been appointed Commander-in-Chief by a vote of

both Houses on the 1st of April [A. D. 1645], Essex,

Manchester and others of the Lords resigned their commissions

on the 2nd. ... The name of Cromwell was of course, with those

of other members of the Commons, omitted from the original

list of the New Model army; but with a significance which

could not have escaped remark, the appointment of

lieutenant-general was left vacant, while none doubted by whom

that vacancy would be filled."

N. L. Walford,

The Parliamentary Generals of the Great Civil War,

chapter 4.

ALSO IN:

Sir E. Cust,

Lives of the Warriors of the Civil Wars,

part. 2: Fairfax.

{875}

ENGLAND: A. D. 1645 (JUNE).

The Battle of Naseby.

"Early in April, Fairfax with his new army advanced westward

to raise the siege of Taunton, which city Goring was

besieging. Before that task was completed he received orders

to enter on the siege of Oxford. This did not suit his own

views or those of the Independents. They had joined their new

army upon the implied condition that decisive battles should

be fought. It was therefore with great joy that Fairfax

received orders to proceed in pursuit of the royal forces,

which, having left Worcester, were marching apparently against

the Eastern Association, and had just taken Leicester on their

way. Before entering on this active service, Fairfax demanded

and obtained leave for Cromwell to serve at least for one

battle more in the capacity of Lieutenant-General. He came up

with the king in the neighbourhood of Harborough. Charles

turned back to meet him, and just by the village of Naseby the

great battle known by that name was fought. Cromwell had

joined the army, amid the rejoicing shouts of the troops, two

days before, with the Association horse. Again the victory

seems to have been chiefly due to his skill. In detail it is

almost a repetition of the battle of Marston Moor."

J. F. Bright,

History of England, period 2,

page 675.

"The old Hamlet of Naseby stands yet, on its old hill-top,

very much as it did in Saxon days, on the Northwestern border

of Northamptonshire; nearly on a line, and nearly midway,

between that Town and Daventry. A peaceable old Hamlet, of

perhaps five hundred souls; clay cottages for laborers, but

neatly thatched and swept; smith's shop, saddler's shop,

beer-shop all in order; forming a kind of square, which leads

off, North and South, into two long streets; the old Church

with its graves, stands in the centre, the truncated spire

finishing itself with a strange old Ball, held up by rods; a

'hollow copper Ball, which came from Boulogne in Henry the

Eighth's time,'--which has, like Hudibras's breeches, 'been

at the Siege of Bullen.' The ground is upland, moorland,

though now growing corn; was not enclosed till the last

generation, and is still somewhat bare of wood. It stands

nearly in the heart of England; gentle Dullness, taking a turn

at etymology, sometimes derives it from 'Navel'; 'Navesby,

quasi Navelsby, from being, &c.' ... It was on this high

moor-ground, in the centre of England, that King Charles, on

the 14th of June, 1645, fought his last Battle; dashed

fiercely against the New-Model Army which he had despised till

then: and saw himself shivered utterly to ruin thereby.

'Prince Rupert, on the King's right wing, charged up the hill,

and carried all before him'; but Lieutenant-General Cromwell

charged down hill on the other wing, likewise carrying all

before him,--and did not gallop off the field to plunder, he.

Cromwell, ordered thither by the Parliament, had arrived from

the Association two days before, 'amid shouts from the whole

Army': he had the ordering of the Horse this morning. Prince

Rupert, on returning from his plunder, finds the King's

Infantry a ruin; prepares to charge again with the rallied

Cavalry; but the Cavalry too, when it came to the point,

'broke all asunder,'--never to reassemble more. ... There were

taken here a good few 'ladies of quality in carriages';--and

above a hundred Irish ladies not of quality, tattery

camp-followers 'with long skean-knives about a foot in

length,' which they well knew how to use; upon whom I fear the

Ordinance against Papists pressed hard this day. The King's

Carriage was also taken, with a Cabinet and many Royal

Autographs in it, which when printed made a sad impression

against his Majesty,--gave in fact a most melancholy view of

the veracity of his Majesty, 'On the word of a King.' All was

lost!"

T. Carlyle,

Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches,

part 2, letter 29.

ALSO IN:

Earl of Clarendon,

History of the Rebellion,

book 9, sections 30-42 (volume 4).

E. Warburton,

Memoirs of Prince Rupert and the Cavaliers,

volume 3, chapter 1.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1645 (JUNE-DECEMBER).

Glamorgan's Commissions, and other perfidies of the King

disclosed.

"At the battle of Naseby, copies of some letters to the queen,

chiefly written about the time of the treaty of Uxbridge, and

strangely preserved, fell into the hands of the enemy and were

instantly published. No other losses of that fatal day were

more injurious to [the king's] cause. ... He gave her [the

queen] power to treat with the English catholics, promising to

take away all penal laws against them as soon as God should

enable him to do so, in consideration of such powerful

assistance as might deserve so great a favour, and enable him

to affect it. ... Suspicions were much aggravated by a second

discovery that took place soon afterwards, of a secret treaty

between the earl of Glamorgan and the confederate Irish

catholics, not merely promising the repeal of the penal laws,

but the establishment of their religion in far the greater

part of Ireland. The marquis of Ormond, as well as lord Digby,

who happened to be at Dublin, loudly exclaimed against

Glamorgan's presumption in concluding such a treaty, and

committed him to prison on a charge of treason. He produced

two commissions from the king, secretly granted without any

seal or the knowledge of any minister, containing the fullest

powers to treat with the Irish, and promising to fulfil any

conditions into which he should enter. The king, informed of

this, disavowed Glamorgan. ... Glamorgan, however, was soon

released, and lost no portion of the king's or his family's

favour. This transaction has been the subject of much

historical controversy. The enemies of Charles, both in his

own and later ages, have considered it as a proof of his

indifference, at least, to the protestant religion, and of his

readiness to accept the assistance of Irish rebels on any

conditions. His advocates for a long time denied the

authenticity of Glamorgan's commissions. But Dr. Birch

demonstrated that they were genuine; and, if his dissertation

could have left any doubt, later evidence might be adduced in

confirmation."

H. Hallam,

Constitutional History of England,

chapter 10 (volume 2).

ALSO IN:

S. R. Gardiner,

History of the Great Civil War,

chapters 39 and 44 (volume 2).

T. Carte,

Life of James, Duke of Ormond,

book 4 (volume 3).

J. Lingard,

History of England,

volume 10, chapter 3.

{876}

ENGLAND: A. D. 1645 (JULY-AUGUST).

The Clubmen.

"When Fairfax and Cromwell marched into the west [after Naseby

fight], they found that in these counties the country-people

had begun to assemble in bodies, sometimes 5,000 strong, to

resist their oppressors, whether they fought in the name of

King or Parliament. They were called clubmen from their arms,

and carried banners, with the motto--'If you offer to plunder

our cattle, Be assured we will give you battle.' The clubmen,

however, could not hope to control the movements of the

disciplined troops who now appeared against them. After a few

fruitless attempts at resistance they dispersed."

B. M. Cordery and J. S. Phillpotts,

King and Commonwealth,

chapter 8.

"The inexpugnable Sir Lewis Dives (a thrasonical person known

to the readers of Evelyn), after due battering, was now soon

stormed; whereupon, by Letters found on him it became apparent

how deeply Royalist this scheme of Clubmen had been:

'Commissions for raising Regiments of Clubmen'; the design to

be extended over England at large, 'yea into the Associated

Counties': however, it has now come to nothing."

T. Carlyle,

Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches,

part 2, letter 14.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1645 (JULY-SEPTEMBER).

The storming of Bridgewater and Bristol.

"The continuance of the civil war for a whole year after the

decisive battle of Naseby is a proof of the King's

selfishness, and of his utter indifference to the sufferings

of the people. All rational hope was gone, and even Rupert

advised his uncle to make terms with the Parliament. Yet

Charles, while incessantly vacillating as to his plans,

persisted in retaining his garrisons, and required his

adherents to sacrifice all they possessed in order to prolong

a useless struggle for a few months. Bristol, therefore, was

to stand a siege, and Charles expected the garrison to hold

out, without an object, to the last extremity, entailing

misery and ruin on the second commercial city in the kingdom.

Rupert was sent to take the command there, and when the army

of Sir Thomas Fairfax approached, towards the end of August,

he had completed his preparations." Fairfax had marched

promptly and rapidly westward, after the battle of Naseby. He

had driven Goring from the siege of Taunton, had defeated him

in a sharp battle at Langport, taking 1,400 prisoners, and had

carried Bridgewater by storm, July 21, capturing 2,000 prisoners,

with 36 pieces of artillery and 5,000 stand of arms. On the

21st of August he arrived before Bristol, which Prince Rupert

had strongly fortified, and which he held with an effective

garrison of 2,300 men. On the morning of the 10th of September

it was entered by storm, and on the following day Rupert, who

still occupied the most defensible forts, surrendered the

whole place. This surrender so enraged the King that he

deprived his nephew of all his commissions and sent him a pass

to quit the kingdom. But Rupert understood, as the King would

not, that fighting was useless--that the royal cause was lost.

C. R. Markham,

Life of the Great Lord Fairfax,

chapter 21-22.

ALSO IN.

Earl of Clarendon,

History of the Rebellion,

book 9.

W. Hunt,

Bristol,

chapter 7.

E. Warburton,

Memoirs of Prince Rupert and the Cavaliers,

volume 3, chapter 1.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1645 (SEPTEMBER).

Defeat of Montrose at Philiphaugh.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1644-1645.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1646 (MARCH).

Adoption of Presbyterianism by Parliament.

"For the last three years the Assembly of Divines had been

sitting almost daily in the Jerusalem Chamber of Westminster

Abbey. ... They were preparing a new Prayer-book, a form of

Church Government, a Confession of Faith, and a Catechism; but

the real questions at issue were the establishment of the

Presbyterian Church and the toleration of sectarians. The

Presbyterians, as we know, desired to establish their own form

of Church government by assemblies and synods, without any

toleration for non-conformists, whether Catholics,

Episcopalians, or sectarians. But though they formed a large

majority in the assembly, there was a well-organized

opposition of Independents and Erastians, whose union made it

no easy matter for the Presbyterians to carry every vote their

own way. ... After the Assembly had sat a year and a half, the

Parliament passed an ordinance for putting a directory,

prepared by the divines, into force, and taking away the

Common Prayer-book (3rd January, 1645). The sign of the cross

in baptism, the ring in marriage, the wearing of vestments,

the keeping of saints' days, were discontinued. The communion

table was ordered to be set in the body of the church, about

which the people were to stand or sit; the passages of

Scripture to be read were left to the minister's choice; no

forms of prayer were prescribed. The same year a new directory

for ordination of ministers was passed into an ordinance. The

Presbyterian assemblies, called presbyteries, were empowered

to ordain, and none were allowed to enter the ministry without

first taking the covenant (8th November, 1645). This was

followed by a third ordinance for establishing the

Presbyterian system of Church government in England by way of

trial for three years. As originally introduced into the

House, this ordinance met with great opposition, because it

gave power to ministers of refusing the sacrament and turning

men out of the Church for scandalous offences. Now, in what,

argued the Erastians, did scandalous offences consist? ... A

modified ordinance accordingly was passed; scandalous

offences, for which ministers might refuse the sacrament and

excommunicate, were specified; assemblies were declared

subject to Parliament, and leave was granted to those who

thought themselves unjustly sentenced, to appeal right up from

one Church assembly after another to the civil power--the

Parliament (16th March, 1646). Presbyterians, both in England

and Scotland, felt deeply mortified. After all these years'

contending, then, just when they thought they were entering on

the fruits of their labours, to see the Church still left

under the power of the State--the disappointment was intense

to a degree we cannot estimate. They looked on the

Independents as the enemies of God; this 'lame Erastian

Presbytery' as hardly worth the having. ... The Assembly of

Divines practically came to an end in 1649, when it was

changed into a committee for examining candidates for the

Presbyterian ministry. It finally broke up without any formal

dismissal on the dispersion of the Rump Parliament in March,

1653."

B. M. Cordery and J. S. Phillpotts,

King and Commonwealth,

chapter 9.

ALSO IN:

S. R. Gardiner,

History of the Great Civil War.

chapter 40 (volume 2).

A. F. Mitchell,

The Westminster Assembly,

lectures 7, 9, 13.

Minutes of the Sessions of the Westminster Assembly.

See, also, INDEPENDENTS.

{877}

ENGLAND: A. D. 1646-1647.

The King in the hands of the Scots.

His duplicity and his intrigues.

The Scots surrender him.

"On the morning of May 6th authentic news came that the King

had ridden into the Scottish army, and had entrusted to his

northern subjects the guardianship of his royal person.

Thereupon the English Parliament at once asserted their right

to dispose of their King so long as he was on English soil;

and for the present ordered that he be sent to Warwick Castle,

an order, however, which had no effect. Newark, impregnable

even to Ironsides, was surrendered at last by royal order; and

the Scots retreated northwards to Newcastle, carrying their

sovereign with them. ... Meantime the City Presbyterians were

petitioning the House to quicken the establishment of the

godly and thorough reformation so long promised; and they were

supported by letters from the Scottish Parliament, which, in

the month of February, 1646, almost peremptorily required that

the Solemn League and Covenant should be carried out in the

Scottish sense of it. ... The question as to the disposal of

the King's person became accidentally involved in the issues

between Presbyterianism and the sects. For if the King had

been a man to be trusted, and if he had frankly accepted the

army programme of free religion, a free Parliament, and

responsible advisers, there is little doubt that he might have

kept his crown and his Anglican ritual--at least for his own

worship--and might yet have concluded his reign prosperously

as the first constitutional King of England. Instead of this,

he angered the army by making their most sacred purposes mere

cards in a game, to be played or held as he thought most to

his own advantage in dealing with the Presbyterian Parliament.

On July 11th, 1646, Commissioners from both Houses were

appointed to lay certain propositions for peace before the

King at Newcastle. These of course involved everything for

which the Parliament had contended, and in a form developed

and exaggerated by the altered position of affairs. All armed

forces were to be absolutely under the control of Parliament

for a period of 20 years. Speaking generally, all public acts

done by Parliament, or by its authority, were to be confirmed;

and all public acts done by the King or his Oxford

anti-Parliament, without due authorisation from Westminster,

were to be void. ... On August 10th the Commissioners who had

been sent to the King returned to Westminster. ... The King

had given no distinct answer. It was a suspicious circumstance

that the Duke of Hamilton had gone into Scotland, especially

as Cromwell learned that, in spite of an ostensible order from

the King, Montrose's force had not been disbanded. The

labyrinthine web of royal intrigue in Ireland was beginning to

be discovered. ... The death of the Earl of Essex on September

14th increased the growing danger of a fatal schism in the

victorious party. The Presbyterians had hoped to restore him

to the head of the army, and so sheathe or blunt the terrible

weapon they had forged and could not wield. They were now left

without a man to rival in military authority the commanders

whose exploits overwhelmed their employers with a too complete

success. Not only were the political and religious opinions of

the soldiers a cause of anxiety, but the burden of their

sustenance and pay was pressing heavily on the country. ... No

wonder that the City of London, always sensitive as to public

security, began to urge upon the Parliament the necessity for

diminishing or disbanding the army in England. ... The

Parliament, however, could not deal with the army, for two

reasons; First, the negotiations with the Scotch lingered; and

next, they could not pay the men. The first difficulty was

overcome, at least for the time, by the middle of January,

1647, when a train of wagons carried £200,000 to Newcastle in

discharge of the English debt to the Scottish army. But the

successful accomplishment of this only increased the remaining

difficulty of the Parliament--that of paying their own

soldiers. We need not notice the charge made against the

Scotch of selling their King further than to say, that it is

unfairly based upon only one subordinate feature of a very

complicated negotiation. If the King would have taken the

Covenant, and guaranteed to them their precious Presbyterian

system, his Scottish subjects would have fought for him almost

to the last man. The firmness of Charles in declining the

Covenant for himself is, no doubt, the most creditable point

in his resistance. But his obstinacy in disputing the right of

two nations, in their political establishment of religion, to

override his convictions by their own, illustrates his entire

incapacity to comprehend the new light dawning on the

relations of sovereign and people. The Scots did their best

for him. They petitioned him, they knelt to him, they preached

to him. ... But to have carried with them an intractable man

to form a wedge of division amongst themselves, at the same

time that he brought against them the whole power of England,

would have been sheer insanity. Accordingly, they made the

best bargain they could both for him and themselves; and,

taking their wages, they left him with his English subjects,

who conducted him to Holdenby House, in Northamptonshire, on

the 6th of February, 1647."

J. A. Picton,

Oliver Cromwell,

chapter 13.

ALSO IN:

S. R. Gardiner,

The First two Stuarts and the Puritan Revolution,

chapter 7, section 4.

S. R. Gardiner,

History of the Great Civil War,

chapter 3845 (volume 2).

W. Godwin,

History of the Commonwealth, book 1,

chapters 24-27, and book 2,

chapter 1-6 (volume 2).

Earl of Clarendon,

History of chapter Rebellion,

book 9, section 161-178,

and book 10 (volume 3).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1647 (APRIL-AUGUST).

The Army takes things in hand.

The King was surrendered to Parliament, and all now looking

toward peace, the Presbyterians were uppermost, discredit

falling upon the Army and its favorers. Many of the Recruiters

[i. e., the new members, elected to fill vacancies in the

Parliament], who at first had acted with the Independents,

inclined now to their opponents. The Presbyterians, feeling

that none would dare to question the authority of Parliament,

pushed energetically their policy as regards the Army, of

sending to Ireland, disbanding, neglecting the payment of

arrears, and displacing the old officers. But suddenly there

came for them a rude awakening. On April 30, 1647, Skippon,

whom all liked, whom the Presbyterians indeed claimed, but who

at the same time kept on good terms with the Army and

Independents, rose in his place in St. Stephens and produced a

letter, brought to him the day before by three private

soldiers, in which eight regiments of horse expressly refused

to serve in Ireland, declaring that it was a perfidious design

to separate the soldiers from the officers whom they

loved,--framed by men who, having tasted of power, were

degenerating into tyrants. Holles and the Presbyterians were

thunder-struck, and laying aside all other business summoned

the three soldiers to appear at once. ...

{878}

A violent tumult arose in the House. The Presbyterians

declared that the three sturdy Ironsides standing there, with

their buff stained from their corselets, ought to be at once

committed; to which it was answered, that if there were to be

commitment, it should be to the best London tavern, and sack

and sugar provided. Cromwell, leaning over toward Ludlow, who

sat next to him, and pointing to the Presbyterians, said that

those fellows would never leave till the Army pulled them out

by the ears. That day it became known that there existed an

organization, a sort of Parliament, in the Army, the officers

forming an upper council and the representatives of the rank

and file a lower council. Two such representatives stood in

the lower council for each squadron or troop, known as

'Adjutators,' aiders, or 'Agitators.' This organization had

taken upon itself to see that the Army had its rights. ... At

the end of a month, there was still greater occasion for

astonishment. Seven hundred horse suddenly left the camp, and

appearing without warning, June 2, at Holmby House, where

Charles was kept, in charge of Parliamentary commissioners,

proposed to assume the custody of the King. A cool, quiet

fellow, of rank no higher than that of cornet, led them and

was their spokesman, Joyce. 'What is your authority?' asked

the King. The cornet simply pointed to the mass of troopers at

his back. ... So bold a step as the seizure of the King made

necessary other bold steps on the part of the Army. Scarcely a

fortnight had passed, when a demand was made for the exclusion

from Parliament of eleven Presbyterians, the men most

conspicuous for extreme views. The Army meanwhile hovered,

ever ominously, close at hand, to the north and east of the

city, paying slight regard to the Parliamentary prohibition to

remain at a distance. The eleven members withdrew. ... But if

Parliament was willing to yield, Presbyterian London and the

country round about were not, and in July broke out into sheer

rebellion. ... The Speakers of the Lords and Commons, at the

head of the strength of the Parliament, fourteen Peers and one

hundred Commoners, betook themselves to Fairfax, and on August

2 they threw themselves into the protection of the Army at

Hounslow Heath, ten miles distant. A grand review took place.

The consummate soldier, Fairfax, had his troops in perfect

condition, and they were drawn out 20,000 strong to receive

the seceding Parliament. The soldiers rent the air with shouts

in their behalf, and all was made ready for a most impressive

demonstration. On the 6th of August, Fairfax marched his

troops in full array through the city, from Hammersmith to

Westminster. Each man had in his hat a wreath of laurel. The

Lords and Commons who had taken flight were escorted in the

midst of the column; the city officials joined the train. At

Westminster the Speakers were ceremoniously reinstalled, and

the Houses again put to work, the first business being to

thank the General and the veterans who had reconstituted them.

The next day, with Skippon in the centre and Cromwell in the

rear, the Army marched through the city itself, a heavy tramp

of battle-seasoned platoons, at the mere sound of which the

war-like ardor of the turbulent youths of the work-shops and

the rough watermen was completely squelched. Yet the soldiers

looked neither to the right nor left; nor by act, word, or

gesture was any offence given."

J. K. Hosmer,

Life of Young Sir Henry Vane,

chapter 12.

ALSO IN:

C. R. Markham,

Life of the Great Lord Fairfax,

chapter 24.

T. Carlyle,

Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches,

part 3, letter 26.

W. Godwin,

History of the Commonwealth,

book 2, chapter 7-11.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1647 (AUGUST-DECEMBER).

The King's "Game" with Cromwell and the army,

and the ending of it.

After reinstating the Parliament at Westminster, "the army

leaders resumed negotiations with the King. The indignation of

the soldiers at his delays and intrigues made the task hourly

more difficult; but Cromwell ... clung to the hope of

accommodation with a passionate tenacity. His mind,

conservative by tradition, and above all practical in temper,

saw the political difficulties which would follow on the

abolition of Royalty, and in spite of the King's evasions, he

persisted in negotiating with him. But Cromwell stood almost

alone; the Parliament refused to accept Ireton's proposals as

a basis of peace, Charles still evaded, and the army then grew

restless and suspicious. There were cries for a wide reform,

for the abolition of the House of Peers, for a new House of

Commons, and the Adjutators called on the Council of Officers

to discuss the question of abolishing Royalty itself. Cromwell

was never braver than when he faced the gathering storm, forbade

the discussion, adjourned the Council, and sent the officers

to their regiments. But the strain was too great to last long,

and Charles was still resolute to 'play his game.' He was, in

fact, so far from being in earnest in his negotiations with

Cromwell and Ireton, that at the moment they were risking

their lives for him he was conducting another and equally

delusive negotiation with the Parliament. ... In the midst of

his hopes of an accommodation, Cromwell found with

astonishment that he had been duped throughout, and that the

King had fled [November 11, 1647]. ... Even Cromwell was

powerless to break the spirit which now pervaded the soldiers,

and the King's perfidy left him without resource. 'The King is

a man of great parts and great understanding,' he said at

last, 'but so great a dissembler and so false a man that he is

not to be trusted.' By a strange error, Charles had made his

way from Hampton Court to the Isle of Wight, perhaps with some

hope from the sympathy of Colonel Hammond, the Governor of

Carisbrooke Castle, and again found himself a prisoner. Foiled

in his effort to put himself at the head of the new civil war, he

set himself to organize it from his prison; and while again

opening delusive negotiations with the Parliament, he signed a

secret treaty with the Scots for the invasion of the realm.

The rise of Independency, and the practical suspension of the

Covenant, had produced a violent reaction in his favour north

of the Tweed. ... In England the whole of the conservative

party, with many of the most conspicuous members of the Long

Parliament at its head, was drifting, in its horror of the

religious and political changes which seemed impending, toward

the King; and the news from Scotland gave the signal for

fitful insurrections in almost every quarter."

J. R. Green,

Short History of England,

chapter 8, section 8.

ALSO IN:

F. P. Guizot,

History of the English Revolution of 1640,

books 7-8.

L. von Ranke,

History of England, 17th Century,

book 10, chapter 4.

W. Godwin,

History of the Commonwealth.

G. Hillier,

Narrative of attempted Escapes of Charles I. from

Carisbrooke Castle, &c.

{879}

ENGLAND: A. D. 1648 (April-August).

The Second Civil War.

Defeat of the Scots at Preston.

"The Second Civil War broke out in April, and proved to be a

short but formidable affair. The whole of Wales was speedily

in insurrection; a strong force of cavaliers were mustering in

the north of England; in Essex, Surrey, and the southern

counties various outbreaks arose; Berwick, Carlisle, Chester,

Pembroke, Colchester, were held for the king; the fleet

revolted; and 40,000 men were ordered by the Parliament of

Scotland to invade England. Lambert was sent to the north;

Fairfax to take Colchester; and Cromwell into Wales, and

thence to join Lambert and meet the Scotch. On the 24th of May

Cromwell reached Pembroke, but being short of guns, he did not

take it till 11th July. The rising in Wales crushed, Cromwell

turned northwards, where the northwest was already in revolt,

and 20,000 Scots, under the Duke of Hamilton, were advancing

into the country. Want of supplies and shoes, and sickness,

detained him with his army, some 7,000 strong, 'so extremely

harassed with hard service and long marches, that they seemed

rather fit for a hospital than a battle.' Having joined

Lambert in Yorkshire he fought the battle of Preston on 17th

of August. The battle of Preston was one of the most decisive

and important victories ever gained by Cromwell, over the most

numerous enemy he ever encountered, and the first in which he

was in supreme command. ... Early on the morning of the 17th

August, Cromwell, with some 9,000 men, fell upon the army of

the Duke of Hamilton unawares, as it proceeded southwards in a

long, straggling, unprotected line. The invaders consisted of

17,000 Scots and 7,000 good men from northern counties. The

long ill-ordered line was cut In half and rolled back northward

and southward, before they even knew that Cromwell was

upon them. The great host, cut into sections, fought with

desperation from town to town. But for three days it was one

long chase and carnage, which ended only with the exhaustion

of the victors and their horses. Ten thousand prisoners were

taken. 'We have killed we know not what,' writes Cromwell,

'but a very great number; having done execution upon them

above thirty miles together, besides what we killed in the two

great fights.' His own loss was small, and but one superior

officer. ... The Scottish invaders dispersed, Cromwell

hastened to recover Berwick and Carlisle, and to restore the

Presbyterian or Whig party in Scotland."

F. Harrison,

Oliver Cromwell,

chapter 7.

ALSO IN:

J. H. Burton,

History of Scotland,

chapter 74 (volume 7).

Earl of Clarendon,

History of the Rebellion,

book 11 (volume 4).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1648 (SEPTEMBER-NOVEMBER).

The Treaty at Newport.

"The unfortunate issue of the Scots expedition under the duke

of Hamilton, and of the various insurrections throughout

England, quelled by the vigilance and good conduct of Fairfax

and Cromwell, is well known. But these formidable

manifestations of the public sentiment in favour of peace with

the king on honourable conditions, wherein the city of London,

ruled by the presbyterian ministers, took a share, compelled

the house of commons to retract its measures. They came to a

vote, by 165 to 90, that they would not alter the fundamental

government by king, lords, and commons; they abandoned their

impeachment against seven peers, the most moderate of the

upper house and the most obnoxious to the army: they restored

the eleven members to their seats; they revoked their

resolutions against a personal treaty with the king, and even

that which required his assent by certain preliminary

articles. In a word the party for distinction's sake called

presbyterian, but now rather to be denominated constitutional,

regained its ascendancy. This change in the counsels of

parliament brought on the treaty of Newport. The treaty of

Newport was set on foot and managed by those politicians of

the house of lords, who, having long suspected no danger to

themselves but from the power of the king, had discovered,

somewhat of the latest, that the crown itself was at stake,

and that their own privileges were set on the same cast.

Nothing was more remote from the intentions of the earl of

Northumberland, or lord Say, than to see themselves pushed

from their seats by such upstarts as Ireton and Harrison; and

their present mortification afforded a proof how men reckoned

wise in their generation become the dupes of their own

selfish, crafty, and pusillanimous policy. They now grew

anxious to see a treaty concluded with the king. Sensible that

it was necessary to anticipate, if possible, the return of

Cromwell from the north, they implored him to comply at once

with all the propositions of parliament, or at least to yield

in the first instance as far as he meant to go. They had not,

however, mitigated in any degree the rigorous conditions so

often proposed; nor did the king during this treaty obtain any

reciprocal concession worth mentioning in return for his

surrender of almost all that could be demanded."

H. Hallam,

Constitutional History of England,

chapter 10, part 2.

The utter faithlessness with which Charles carried on these

negotiations, as on all former occasions, was shown at a later

day when his correspondence came to light. "After having

solemnly promised that all hostilities in Ireland should

cease, he secretly wrote to Ormond (October 10): 'Obey my

wife's orders, not mine, until I shall let you know I am free

from all restraint; nor trouble yourself about my concessions

as to Ireland; they will not lead to anything;' and the day on

which he had consented to transfer to parliament for twenty

years the command of the army (October 9), he wrote to sir

William Hopkins: 'To tell you the truth, my great concession

this morning was made only with a view to facilitate my

approaching escape; without that hope, I should never have

yielded in this manner. If I had refused, I could, without

much sorrow, have returned to my prison; but as it is, I own

it would break my heart, for I have done that which my escape

alone can justify.' The parliament, though without any exact

information, suspected all this perfidy; even the friends of

peace, the men most affected by the king's condition, and most

earnest to save him, replied but hesitatingly to the charges

of the independents."

F. P. Guizot,

History of the English Revolution of 1640,

book 8.

ALSO IN:

Earl of Clarendon,

History of the Rebellion,

book 11, sections 153-190 (volume 4).

I. Disraeli,

Commentaries on the Life and Reign of Charles I.,

volume 2, chapters 39-40.

{880}

ENGLAND: A. D. 1648 (NOVEMBER-DECEMBER).

The Grand Army Remonstrance and Pride's Purge.

The Long Parliament cut down to the Rump.

On the 20th of November, 1648, Colonel Ewer and other officers

presented to the house of commons a remonstrance from the Army

against the negotiations and proposed treaty with the king.

This was accompanied by a letter from Fairfax, stating that it

had been voted unanimously in the council of officers, and

entreating for it the consideration of parliament. The

remonstrance recommended an immediate ending of the treaty

conferences at Newport, demanded that the king be brought to

justice, as the capital source of all grievances, and called

upon parliament to enact its own dissolution, with provision

for the electing and convening of future annual or biennial

parliaments. Ten days passed without attention being given to

this army manifesto, the house having twice adjourned its

consideration of the document. On the first of December there

appeared at Newport a party of horse which quietly took

possession of the person of the king, and conveyed him to

Hurst Castle, "a fortress in Hampshire, situated at the

extreme point of a neck of land, which shoots into the sea

towards the isle of Wight." The same day on which this was

done, "the commissioners who had treated with the king at

Newport made their appearance in the two houses of parliament;

and the two following days were occupied by the house of

commons in an earnest debate as to the state of the

negotiation. Vane was one of the principal speakers against

the treaty; and Fiennes, who had hitherto ranked among the

independents, spoke for it. At length, after the house had sat

all night, it was put and carried, at five in the morning of

the 5th, by a majority of 129 to 83, that the king's answers

to the propositions of both houses were a ground for them to

proceed upon, to the settlement of the peace of the kingdom.

On the same day this vote received the concurrence of the

house of lords." Meantime, on the 30th of November, the

council of the army had voted a second declaration more fully

expressive of its views and announcing its intention to draw

near to London, for the accomplishment of the purposes of the

remonstrance. "On the 2d of December Fairfax marched to

London, and quartered his army at Whitehall, St. James's, the

Mews, and the villages near the metropolis. ... On the 5th of

December three officers of the army held a meeting with three

members of parliament, to arrange the plan by which the sound

members might best be separated from those by whom their

measures were thwarted, and might peaceably be put in

possession of the legislative authority. The next morning a

regiment of horse, and another of foot were placed as a guard

upon the two houses, Skippon, who commanded the city-militia,

having agreed with the council of the army to keep back the

guard under his authority which usually performed that duty. A

part of the foot were ranged in the Court of Requests, upon

the stairs, and in the lobby leading to the house of commons.

Colonel Pride was stationed near the door, with a list in his

hand of the persons he was commissioned to arrest; and

sometimes one of the door-keepers, and at others Lord Grey of

Groby, pointed them out to him, as they came up with an

intention of passing into the house. Forty-one members were

thus arrested. ... On the following day more members were

secured, or denied entrance, amounting, with those of the day

before, to about one hundred. At the same time Cromwell took

his seat; and Henry Marten moved that the speaker should

return him thanks for his great and eminent services performed

in the course of the campaign. The day after, the two houses

adjourned to the 12th. During the adjournment many of the

members who had been taken into custody by the military were

liberated. ... Besides those who were absolutely secured, or

shut out from their seats by the power of the army, there were

other members that looked with dislike on the present

proceedings, or that considered parliament as being under

force, and not free in their deliberations, who voluntarily

abstained from being present at their sittings and debates."

W. Godwin,

History of the Commonwealth,

book 2, chapters 23-24 (volume 2).

"The famous Pride's Purge was accomplished. By military force

the Long Parliament was cut down to a fraction of its number,

and the career begins of the mighty 'Rump,' so called in the

coarse wit of the time because it was 'the sitting part.'"

J. K. Hosmer,

Life of Young Sir Henry Vane,

chapter 13.

"This name [the Rump] was first given to them by Walker, the

author of the History of Independency, by way of derision, in

allusion to a fowl all devoured but the rump."

D. Neal,

History of the Puritans,

volume 4, chapter 1, foot-note.

ALSO IN:

C. R Markham,

Life of the Great Lord Fairfax,

chapter 28.

D. Masson,

Life of John Milton,

book 4, chapters 1 and 3 (volume 3).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1649 (JANUARY).

The trial and execution of the King.

"During the month in which Charles had remained at Windsor

[whither he had been brought from Hurst Castle on the 17th of

December], there had been proceedings in Parliament of which

he was imperfectly informed. On the day he arrived there, it

was resolved by the Commons that he should be brought to

trial. On the 2nd of January, 1649, it was voted that, in

making war against the Parliament, he had been guilty of

treason; and a High Court was appointed to try him. One

hundred and fifty commissioners were to compose the Court,--

peers, members of the Commons, aldermen of London. The

ordinance was sent to the Upper House, and was rejected. On

the 6th, a fresh ordinance, declaring that the people being,

after God, the source of all just power, the representatives

of the people are the supreme power in the nation; and that

whatsoever is enacted or declared for law by the Commons in

Parliament hath the force of a law, and the people are

concluded thereby, though the consent of King or Peers be not

had thereto. Asserting this power, so utterly opposed either

to the ancient constitution of the monarchy, or to the

possible working of a republic, there was no hesitation in

constituting the High Court of Justice in the name of the

Commons alone. The number of members of the Court was now

reduced to 135. They had seven preparatory meetings, at which

only 58 members attended. 'All men,' says Mrs. Hutchinson,

'were left to their free liberty of acting, neither persuaded

nor compelled; and as there were some nominated in the

commission who never sat, and others who sat at first but

durst not hold on, so all the rest might have declined it if

they would, when it is apparent they should have suffered

nothing by so doing.' ... On the 19th of January, major

Harrison appeared ... at Windsor with his troop. There was a

coach with six horses in the court-yard, in which the King

took his seat; and, once more, he entered London, and was

lodged at St. James's palace.

{881}

The next day, the High Court of Justice was opened in

Westminster-hall. ... After the names of the members of the

court had been called, 69 being present, Bradshaw, the

president, ordered the serjeant to bring in the prisoner.

Silently the King sat down in the chair prepared for him. He

moved not his hat, as he looked sternly and contemptuously

around. The sixty-nine rose not from their seats, and remained

covered. ... The clerk reads the charge, and when he is

accused therein of being tyrant and traitor, he laughs in the

face of the Court. 'Though his tongue usually hesitated, yet

it was very free at this time, for he was never discomposed in

mind,' writes Warwick. ... Again and again contending against

the authority of the Court, the King was removed, and the

sitting was adjourned to the 22nd. On that day the same scene

was renewed; and again on the 23rd. A growing sympathy for the

monarch became apparent. The cries of 'Justice, justice,'

which were heard at first, were now mingled with 'God save the

King.' He had refused to plead; but the Court nevertheless

employed the 24th and 25th of January in collecting evidence

to prove the charge of his levying war against the Parliament.

Coke, the solicitor-general, then demanded whether the Court

would proceed to pronouncing sentence; and the members

adjourned to the Painted Chamber. On the 27th the public

sitting was resumed. ... The Court, Bradshaw then stated, had

agreed upon the sentence. Ludlow records that the King'

desired to make one proposition before they proceeded to

sentence; which he earnestly pressing, as that which he

thought would lead to the reconciling of all parties, and to

the peace of the three kingdoms, they permitted him to offer

it; the effect of which was, that he might meet the two Houses

in the Painted Chamber, to whom he doubted not to offer that

which should satisfy and secure all interests.' Ludlow goes on

to say, 'Designing, as I have since been informed, to propose

his own resignation, and the admission of his son to the

throne upon such terms as should have been agreed upon.' The

commissioners retired to deliberate, 'and being satisfied,

upon debate, that nothing but loss of time would be the

consequence of it, they returned into the Court with a

negative to his demand.' Bradshaw then delivered a solemn

speech to the King. ... The clerk was lastly commanded to read

the sentence, that his head should be severed from his body;

'and the commissioners,' says Ludlow, 'testified their

unanimous assent by standing up.' The King attempted to speak;

'but being accounted dead in law, was not permitted.' On the

29th of January, the Court met to sign the sentence of

execution, addressed to 'colonel Francis Hacker, colonel

Huncks, and lieutenant-colonel Phayr, and to every one of

them.' ... There were some attempts to save him. The Dutch

ambassador made vigorous efforts to procure a reprieve, whilst

the French and Spanish ambassadors were inert. The ambassadors

from the States nevertheless persevered; and early in the day

of the 30th obtained some glimmering of hope from Fairfax.

'But we found,' they say in their despatch, 'in front of the

house in which we had just spoken with the general, about 200

horsemen; and we learned, as well as on our way as on reaching

home, that all the streets, passages, and squares of London were

occupied by troops, so that no one could pass, and that the

approaches of the city were covered with cavalry, so as to

prevent anyone from coming in or going out; ... The same day,

between two and three o'clock, the King was taken to a

scaffold covered with black, erected before Whitehall.' To

that scaffold before Whitehall, Charles walked, surrounded by

soldiers, through the leafless avenues of St. James's Park. It

was a bitterly cold morning. ... His purposed address to the

people was delivered only to the hearing of those upon the

scaffold, but its purport was that the people mistook the

nature of government; for people are free under a government,

not by being sharers in it, but by due administration of the

laws of it.' His theory of government was a consistent one. He

had the misfortune not to understand that the time had been

fast passing away for its assertion. The headsman did his

office; and a deep groan went up from the surrounding

multitude."

Charles Knight,

Popular History of England,

volume 4, chapter 7.

"In the death-warrant of 29th January 1649, next after the

President and Lord Grey, stands the name of Oliver Cromwell.

He accepted the responsibility of it, justified, defended it

to his dying day. No man in England was more entirely

answerable for the deed than he, 'I tell you,' he said to

Algernon Sidney, 'we will cut off his head with the crown upon

it.' ... Slowly he had come to know--not only that the man,

Charles Stuart, was incurably treacherous, but that any

settlement of Parliament with the old Feudal Monarchy was

impossible. As the head of the king rolled on the scaffold the

old Feudal Monarchy expired for ever. In January 1649 a great

mark was set in the course of the national life--the Old Rule

behind it, the New Rule before it. Parliamentary government,

the consent of the nation, equality of rights, and equity in

the law--all date from this great New Departure. The Stuarts

indeed returned for one generation, but with the sting of the

Old Monarchy gone, and only to disappear almost without a

blow. The Church of England returned; but not the Church of

Laud or of Charles. The peers returned, but as a meek House of

Lords, with their castles razed, their feudal rights and their

political power extinct. It is said that the regicides killed

Charles I. only to make Charles II. king. It is not so, They

killed the Old Monarchy; and the restored monarch was by no

means its heir, but a royal Stadtholder or Hereditary

President."

F. Harrison,

Oliver Cromwell,

chapter 7.

"Respecting the death of Charles it has been pronounced by

Fox, that 'it is much to be doubted whether his trial and

execution have not, as much as any other circumstance, served

to raise the character of the English nation in the opinion of

Europe in general.' And he goes on to speak with considerable

favour of the authors of that event. One of the great

authorities of the age having so pronounced, an hundred and

fifty years after the deed, it may be proper to consider for a

little the real merits of the actors, and the act. It is not

easy to imagine a greater criminal than the individual against

whom the sentence was awarded. ... Liberty is one of the

greatest negative advantages that can fall to the lot of a

man; without it we cannot possess any high degree of

happiness, or exercise any considerable virtue. Now Charles,

to a degree which can scarcely be exceeded, conspired against

the liberty of his country, to assert his own authority

without limitation, was the object of all his desires and all

his actions, so far as the public was concerned.

{882}

To accomplish this object he laid aside the use of a

parliament. When he was compelled once more to have recourse

to this assembly, and found it retrograde to his purposes, he

determined to bring up the army, and by that means to put an

end to its sittings. Both in Scotland and England, the scheme

that he formed for setting aside all opposition, was by force

of arms. For that purpose he commenced war against the English

parliament, and continued it by every expedient in his power

for four years. Conquered, and driven out of the field, he did

not for that, for a moment lose sight of his object and his

resolution. He sought in every quarter for the materials of a

new war; and, after an interval of twenty months, and from the

depths of his prison, he found them. To this must be added the

most consummate insincerity and duplicity. He could never be

reconciled; he could never be disarmed; he could never be

convinced. His was a war to the death, and therefore had the

utmost aggravation that can belong to a war against the

liberty of a nation. ... The proper lesson taught by the act

of the thirtieth of January, was that no person, however high

in station, however protected by the prejudices of his

contemporaries, must expect to be criminal against the welfare

of the state and community, without retribution and

punishment. The event however sufficiently proved that the

condemnation and execution of Charles did not answer the

purposes intended by its authors. It did not conciliate the

English nation to republican ideas. It shocked all those

persons in the country who did not adhere to the ruling party.

This was in some degree owing to the decency with which

Charles met his fate. He had always been in manners, formal,

sober and specious. ... The notion was every where prevalent,

that a sovereign could not be called to account, could not be

arraigned at the bar of his subjects. And the violation of

this prejudice, instead of breaking down the wall which

separated him from others, gave to his person a sacredness

which never before appertained to it. Among his own partisans

the death of Charles was treated, and was spoken of, as a sort

of deicide. And it may be admitted for a universal rule, that

the abrupt violation of a deep-rooted maxim and persuasion of

the human mind, produces a reaction, and urges men to hug the

maxim closer than ever. I am afraid, that the day that saw

Charles perish on the scaffold, rendered the restoration of

his family certain."

W. Godwin,

History of the Commonwealth of England

to the Restoration of Charles II.,

book 2, chapter 26 (volume 2).

"The situation, complicated enough already, had been still

further complicated by Charles's duplicity. Men who would have

been willing to come to terms with him, despaired of any

constitutional arrangement in which he was to be a factor; and

men who had long been alienated from him were irritated into

active hostility. By these he was regarded with increasing

intensity as the one disturbing force with which no

understanding was possible and no settled order consistent. To

remove him out of the way appeared, even to those who had no

thought of punishing him for past offences, to be the only

possible road to peace for the troubled nation. It seemed that

so long as Charles lived deluded nations and deluded parties

would be stirred up, by promises never intended to be

fulfilled, to fling themselves, as they had flung themselves

in the Second Civil War, against the new order of things which

was struggling to establish itself in England."

S. R. Gardiner,

History of the Great Civil War,

1642-1649, chapter 71 (volume 3).

ALSO IN:

John Forster,

Statesmen of the Commonwealth: Henry Marten.

S. R. Gardiner,

Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution,

pages 268-290.

The following is the text of the Act which arraigned the King

and constituted the Court by which he was tried:

"Whereas it is notorious that Charles Stuart, the now king of

England, not content with the many encroachments which his

predecessors had made upon the people in their rights and

freedom, hath had a wicked design totally to subvert the

antient and fundamental laws and liberties of this nation, and

in their place to introduce an arbitrary and tyrannical

government; and that, besides all other evil ways and means to

bring his design to pass, he hath prosecuted it with fire and

sword, levied and maintained a civil war in the land, against

the parliament and kingdom; whereby this country hath been

miserably wasted, the public treasure exhausted, trade

decayed, thousands of people murdered, and infinite other

mischiefs committed; for all which high and treasonable

offences the said Charles Stuart might long since have justly

been brought to exemplary and condign punishment: whereas also

the parliament, well hoping that the restraint and imprisonment

of his person after it had pleased God to deliver him into

their hands, would have quieted the distempers of the kingdom,

did forbear to proceed judicially against him; but found, by

sad experience, that such their remissness served only to

encourage him and his accomplices in the continuance of their

evil practices and in raising new commotions, rebellions, and

invasions: for prevention therefore of the like or greater

inconveniences, and to the end no other chief officer or

magistrate whatsoever may hereafter presume, traiterously and

maliciously, to imagine or contrive the enslaving or

destroying of the English nation, and to expect impunity for

so doing; be it enacted and ordained by the [Lords] and

commons in Parliament assembled, and it is hereby enacted and

ordained by the authority thereof, That the earls of Kent,

Nottingham, Pembroke, Denbigh, and Mulgrave; the lord Grey of

Warke; lord chief justice Rolle of the king's bench, lord

chief justice St. John of the common Pleas, and lord chief

baron Wylde; the lord Fairfax, lieutenant general Cromwell,

&c. [in all about 150,] shall be, and are hereby appointed and

required to be Commissioners and Judges, for the Hearing,

Trying, and Judging of the said Charles Stuart; and the said

Commissioners, or any 20 or more of them, shall be, and are

hereby authorized and constituted an High Court of Justice, to

meet and sit at such convenient times and place as by the said

commissioners, or the major part, or 20 or more of them, under

their hands and seals, shall be appointed and notified by

public Proclamation in the Great Hall, or Palace Yard of

Westminster; and to adjourn from time to time, and from place

to place, as the said High Court, or the major part thereof,

at meeting, shall hold fit; and to take order for the charging

of him, the said Charles Stuart, with the Crimes and Treasons

above-mentioned, and for receiving his personal Answer

thereunto, and for examination of witnesses upon oath, (which

the court hath hereby authority to administer) or otherwise,

and taking any other Evidence concerning the same; and

thereupon, or in default of such Answer, to proceed to final

Sentence according to justice and the merit of the cause; and

such final Sentence to execute, or cause to be executed,

speedily and impartially.--

{883}

And the said court is hereby  and required to chuse and

appoint all such officers, attendants, and other circumstances

as they, or the major part of them, shall in any sort judge

necessary or useful for the orderly and good managing of the

premises; and Thomas lord Fairfax the General, and all

officers and soldiers, under his command, and all officers of

justice, and other well-affected persons, are hereby

authorized and required to be aiding and assisting unto the

said court in the due execution of the trust hereby committed

unto them; provided that this act, and the authority hereby

granted, do continue in force for the space of one month from

the date of the making hereof, and no longer."

Cobbett's Parliamentary History of England,

volume 3, pages 1254-1255.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1649 (FEBRUARY).

The Commonwealth established.

"England was now a Republic. The change had been virtually

made on Thursday, January 4, 1648-9, when the Commons passed

their three great Resolutions, declaring

(1) that the People of England were, under God, the original

of all just power in the State,

(2) that the Commons, in Parliament assembled, having been

chosen by the People, and representing the People, possessed

the supreme power in their name, and

(3) that whatever the Commons enacted should have the force of

a law, without needing the consent of either King or House of

Peers.

On Tuesday, the 30th of January, the theory of these

Resolutions became more visibly a fact. On the afternoon of

that day, while the crowd that had seen the execution in front

of Whitehall were still lingering round the scaffold, the

Commons passed an Act 'prohibiting the proclaiming of any

person to be King of England or Ireland, or the dominions

thereof.' It was thus declared that Kingship in England had

died with Charles. But what of the House of Peers? It was

significant that on the same fatal day the Commons revived

their three theoretical resolutions of the 4th, and ordered

them to be printed. The wretched little rag of a House might

then have known its doom. But it took a week more to convince

them." On the 6th of February it was resolved by the House of

Commons, "'That the House of Peers in Parliament is useless

and dangerous, and ought to be abolished, and that an Act be

brought in to that purpose.' Next day, February 7, after

another long debate, it was further resolved 'That it hath

been found by experience, and this House doth declare, that

the office of a King in this realm, and to have the power

thereof in any single person, is unnecessary, burdensome, and

dangerous to the liberty, safety, and public interest of the

People of this nation, and therefore ought to be abolished,

and that an Act be brought in to that purpose.' Not till after

some weeks were these Acts deliberately passed after the

customary three readings. The delay, however, was matter of

mere Parliamentary form. Theoretically a Republic since Jan.

4, 1648-9, and visibly a Republic from the day of Charles's

death, England was a Republic absolutely and in every sense

from February 7, 1648-9." For the administration of the

government of the republican Commonwealth, the Commons

resolved, on the 7th of February, that a Council of State be

erected; to consist of not more than forty persons. On the

13th, Instructions to the intended Council of State were

reported and agreed to, "these Instructions conferring almost

plenary powers, but limiting the duration of the Council to

one year." On the 14th and 15th forty-one persons were

appointed to be members of the Council, Fairfax, Cromwell,

Vane, St. John, Whitlocke, Henry Marten, and Colonels

Hutchinson and Ludlow being in the number; nine to constitute

a quorum, and no permanent President to be chosen.

D. Masson,

Life of John Milton,

volume 4, book 1, chapter 1.

ALSO IN:

J. Lingard,

History of England,

volume. 10, chapter 5.

A. Bisset,

Omitted Chapters of History of England,

chapter 1.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1649 (FEBRUARY).

The Eikon Basilike.

"A book, published with great secrecy, and in very mysterious

circumstances, February 9, 1648-9, exactly ten days after the

late King's death, had done much to increase the Royalist

enthusiasm.

'Eikon Basilike: The True Portraicture of His Sacred Majestie

in his Solitudes and Sufferings.--Romans viii. More than

conquerour, &c.--Bona agere et mala pati Regium est.

MDCXLVIII':

such was the title-page of this volume (of 269 pages of text,

in small octavo), destined by fate, rather than by merit, to

be one of the most famous books of the world. ... The book, so

elaborately prepared and heralded, consists of twenty-eight

successive chapters, purporting to have been written by the

late King, and to be the essence of his spiritual

autobiography in the last years of his life. Each chapter,

with scarcely an exception, begins with a little narrative, or

generally rather with reflections and meditations on some

passage of the King's life the narrative of which is supposed

to be unnecessary, and ends with a prayer in italics

appropriate to the circumstances remembered. ... Save for a

few ... passages ... , the pathos of which lies in the

situation they represent, the Eikon Basilike is a rather dull

performance, in third-rate rhetoric, modulated after the

Liturgy; and without incision, point, or the least shred of

real information as to facts. But O what a reception it had!

Copies of it ran about instantaneously, and were read with

sobs and tears. It was in vain that Parliament, March 16, gave

orders for seizing the book. It was reprinted at once in

various forms, to supply the constant demand--which was not

satisfied, it is said, with less than fifty editions within a

single year; it became a very Bible in English Royalist

households. ... By means of this book, in fact, acting on the

state of sentiment which it fitted, there was established,

within a few weeks after the death of Charles I., that

marvellous worship of his memory, that passionate recollection

of him as the perfect man and the perfect king, the saint, the

martyr, the all but Christ on earth again, which persisted

till the other day as a positive religious cultus of the

English mind, and still lingers in certain quarters."

D. Masson,

Life and Times of John Milton,

volume 4, book 1, chapter 1.

{884}

"I struggled through the Eikon Basilike yesterday; one of the

paltriest pieces of vapid, shovel-hatted, clear-starched,

immaculate falsity and cant I have ever read. It is to me an

amazement how any mortal could ever have taken that for a

genuine book of King Charles's. Nothing but a surpliced

Pharisee, sitting at his ease afar off, could have got up such

a set of meditations. It got Parson Gauden [John Gauden,

Bishop of Exeter and Worcester, successively, after the

Restoration, and who is believed to have been the author of

the Eikon Basilike] a bishopric."

T. Carlyle,

History of his Life in London,

by Froude, volume 1, chapter 7, November 26, 1840.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1649 (APRIL-MAY).

Mutiny of the Levellers.

See LEVELLERS.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1649-1650.

Cromwell's campaign in Ireland.

See IRELAND: A. D. 1649-1650.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1650 (JULY).

Charles II. proclaimed King in Scotland.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1650 (MARCH-JULY).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1650 (SEPTEMBER).

War with the Scots and Cromwell's victory at Dunbar.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1650 (SEPTEMBER).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1651 (SEPTEMBER).

The Scots and Charles II. overthrown at Worcester.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1651.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1651-1653.

The Army and the Rump.

"'Now that the King is dead and his son defeated,' Cromwell

said gravely to the Parliament, 'I think it necessary to come

to a settlement.' But the settlement which had been promised

after Naseby was still as distant as ever after Worcester. The

bill for dissolving the present Parliament, though Cromwell

pressed it in person, was only passed, after bitter

opposition, by a majority of two; and even this success had

been purchased by a compromise which permitted the House to

sit for three years more. Internal affairs were simply at a

dead lock. ... The one remedy for all this was, as the army

saw, the assembly of a new and complete Parliament in place of

the mere 'rump' of the old; but this was the one measure which

the House was resolute to avert. Vane spurred it to a new

activity. ... But it was necessary for Vane's purposes not

only to show the energy of the Parliament, but to free it from

the control of the army. His aim was to raise in the navy a

force devoted to the House, and to eclipse the glories of

Dunbar and Worcester by yet greater triumphs at sea. With this

view the quarrel with Holland had been carefully nursed. ...

The army hardly needed the warning conveyed by the

introduction of a bill for its disbanding to understand the

new policy of the Parliament. ... The army petitioned not only

for reform in Church and State, but for an explicit

declaration that the House would bring its proceedings to a

close. The Petition forced the House to discuss a bill for 'a

New Representative,' but the discussion soon brought out the

resolve of the sitting members to continue as a part of the

coming Parliament without re-election. The officers, irritated

by such a claim, demanded in conference after conference an

immediate dissolution, and the House as resolutely refused. In

ominous words Cromwell supported the demands of the army. 'As

for the members of this Parliament, the army begins to take

them in disgust. I would it did so with less reason.' ... Not

only were the existing members to continue as members of the

New Parliament, depriving the places they represented of their

right of choosing representatives, but they were to constitute

a Committee of Revision, to determine the validity of each

election, and the fitness of the members returned. A

conference took place [April 19, 1653] between the leaders of

the Commons and the officers of the army. ... The conference

was adjourned till the next morning, on an understanding that

no decisive step should be taken; but it had no sooner

reassembled, than the absence of the leading members confirmed

the news that Vane was fast pressing the bill for a new

Representative through the House. 'It is contrary to common

honesty,' Cromwell angrily broke out; and, quitting Whitehall,

he summoned a company of musketeers to follow him as far as

the door of the House of Commons."

J. R Green,

Short History of England,

chapter 8, section 9.

ALSO IN:

J. Forster,

Statesmen of the Commonwealth: Cromwell.

J. A. Picton,

Oliver Cromwell,

chapter 22.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1651-1672.

The Navigation Acts and the American colonies.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1651-1672;

also, NAVIGATION LAWS.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1652-1654.

War with the Dutch Republic.

"After the death of William, Prince of Orange, which was

attended with the depression of his party and the triumph of

the Dutch republicans [see NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1647-1650], the

Parliament thought that the time was now favourable for

cementing a closer confederacy with the states. St. John,

chief justice, who was sent over to the Hague, had entertained

the idea of forming a kind of coalition between the two

republics, which would have rendered their interests totally

inseparable; ... but the states, who were unwilling to form a

nearer confederacy with a government whose measures were so

obnoxious, and whose situation seemed so precarious, offered

only to renew 'the former alliances with England; and the

haughty St. John, disgusted with this disappointment, as well

as incensed at many affronts which had been offered him, with

impunity, by the retainers of the Palatine and Orange

families, and indeed by the populace in general, returned into

England and endeavoured to foment a quarrel between the

republics. .... There were several motives which at this time

induced the English Parliament to embrace hostile measures.

Many of the members thought that a foreign war would serve as

a pretence for continuing the same Parliament, and delaying

the new model of a representative, with which the nation had

so long been flattered. Others hoped that the war would

furnish a reason for maintaining, some time longer, that

numerous standing army which was so much complained of. On the

other hand, some, who dreaded the increasing power of

Cromwell, expected that the great expense of naval armaments

would prove a motive for diminishing the military

establishment. To divert the attention of the public from

domestic quarrels towards foreign transactions, seemed, in the

present disposition of men's minds, to be good policy. ... All

these views, enforced by the violent spirit of St. John, who

had great influence over Cromwell, determined the Parliament

to change the purposed alliance into a furious war against the

United Provinces. To cover these hostile intentions, the

Parliament, under pretence of providing for the interests of

commerce, embraced such measures as they knew would give

disgust to the states. They framed the famous act of

navigation, which prohibited all nations from importing into

England in their bottoms any commodity which was not the

growth and manufacture of their own country. ... The minds of

men in both states were every day more irritated against each

other; and it was not long before these humours broke forth

into action."

D. Hume,

History of England,

chapter 60 (volume 5).

{885}

"The negotiations ... were still pending when Blake, meeting

Van Tromp's fleet in the Downs, in vain summoned the Dutch

Admiral to lower his flag. A battle was the consequence, which

led to a declaration of war on the 8th of July (1652). The

maritime success of England was chiefly due to the genius of

Blake, who having hitherto served upon shore, now turned his

whole attention to the navy. A series of bloody fights took

place between the two nations. For some time the fortunes of

the war seemed undecided. Van Tromp, defeated by Blake, had to

yield the command to De Ruyter. De Ruyter in his turn was

displaced to give way again to his greater rival. Van Tromp

was reinstated in command. A victory over Blake off the Naze

(November 28) enabled him to cruise in the Channel with a

broom at his mast-head, implying that he had swept the English

from the seas. But the year 1653 again saw Blake able to fight

a drawn battle of two days' duration between Portland and La

Hogue; while at length, on the 2d and 3d of June, a decisive

engagement was fought off the North Foreland, in which Monk

and Deane, supported by Blake, completely defeated the Dutch

Admiral, who, as a last resource, tried in vain to blow up his

own ship, and then retreated to the Dutch coast, leaving

eleven ships in the hands of the English. In the next month,

another victory on the part of Blake, accompanied by the death

of the great Dutch Admiral, completed the ruin of the naval

power of Holland. The States were driven to treat. In 1654 the

treaty was signed, in which Denmark, the Hanseatic towns, and

the Swiss provinces were included. ... The Dutch acknowledged

the supremacy of the English flag in the British seas; they

consented to the Navigation Act."

J. F. Bright,

History of England,

period 2, page 701.

ALSO IN:

W. H. Dixon,

Robert Blake, Admiral and General at Sea,

chapters 6-7.

D. Hannay,

Admiral Blake,

chapters 6-7.

J. Campbell,

Naval History of Great Britain,

chapter 15 (volume 2).

G. Penn,

Memorials of Sir William Penn,

chapter 4.

J. Corbett,

Monk,

chapter 7.

J. Geddes,

History of the Administration of John De Witt,

volume 1, books 4-5.

See, also, NAVIGATION LAWS, ENGLISH: A. D. 1651.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1653 (APRIL).

Cromwell's expulsion of the Rump.

"In plain black clothes and gray worsted stockings, the

Lord-General came in quietly and took his seat [April 20], as

Vane was pressing the House to pass the dissolution Bill

without delay and without the customary forms. He beckoned to

Harrison and told him that the Parliament was ripe for

dissolution, and he must do it. 'Sir,' said Harrison, 'the

work is very great and dangerous.'--'You say well,' said the

general, and thereupon sat still for about a quarter of an

hour. Vane sat down, and the Speaker was putting the question

for passing the Bill. Then said Cromwell to Harrison again,

'This is the time; I must do it.' He rose up, put off his hat,

and spoke. Beginning moderately and respectfully, he presently

changed his style, told them of their injustice, delays of

justice, self interest, and other faults; charging them not to

have a heart to do anything for the public good, to have

espoused the corrupt interest of Presbytery and the lawyers,

who were the supporters of tyranny and oppression, accusing

them of an intention to perpetuate themselves in power. And

rising into passion, 'as if he were distracted,' he told them

that the Lord had done with them, and had chosen other

instruments for the carrying on His work that were worthy. Sir

Peter Wentworth rose to complain of such language in

Parliament, coming from their own trusted servant. Roused to

fury by the interruption, Cromwell left his seat, clapped on

his hat, walked up and down the floor of the House, stamping

with his feet, and cried out, 'You are no Parliament, I say

you are no Parliament. Come, come, we have had enough of this;

I will put an end to your prating. Call them in!' Twenty or

thirty musketeers under Colonel Worsley marched in onto the

floor of the House. The rest of the guard were placed at the

door and in the lobby. Vane from his place cried out, 'This is

not honest, yea, it is against morality and common honesty.'

Cromwell, who evidently regarded Vane as the breaker of the

supposed agreement, turned on him with a loud voice, crying,

'O Sir Henry Vane, Sir Henry Vane, the Lord deliver me from

Sir Henry Vane.' Then looking upon one of the members, he

said, 'There sits a drunkard;' to another he said, 'Some of

you are unjust, corrupt persons, and scandalous to the

profession of the Gospel.' 'Some are whoremasters,' he said,

looking at Wentworth and Marten. Going up to the table, he

said, 'What shall we do with this Bauble? Here, take it away!'

and gave it to a musketeer. 'Fetch him down,' he cried to

Harrison, pointing to the Speaker. Lenthall sat still, and

refused to come down unless by force. 'Sir,' said Harrison, 'I

will lend you my hand,' and putting his hand within his, the

Speaker came down. Algernon Sidney sat still in his place.

'Put him out,' said Cromwell. And Harrison and Worsley put

their hands on his shoulders, and he rose and went out. The

members went out, fifty-three in all, Cromwell still calling

aloud. To Vane he said that he might have prevented this; but

that he was a juggler and had not common honesty. 'It is you,'

he said, as they passed him, 'that have forced me to do this,

for I have sought the Lord night and day, that He would rather

slay me than put me on the doing of this work.' He snatched

the Bill of dissolution from the hand of the clerk, put it

under his cloak, seized on the records, ordered the guard to

clear the House of all members, and to have the door locked,

and went away to Whitehall. Such is one of the most famous

scenes in our history, that which of all other things has most

heavily weighed on the fame of Cromwell. In truth it is a

matter of no small complexity, which neither constitutional

eloquence nor boisterous sarcasm has quite adequately

unravelled. ... In strict constitutional right the House was

no more the Parliament than Cromwell was the king. A House of

Commons, which had executed the king, abolished the Lords,

approved the 'coup d'état' of Pride, and by successive

proscriptions had reduced itself to a few score of extreme

partisans, had no legal title to the name of Parliament. The

junto which held to Vane was not more numerous than the junto

which held to Cromwell; they had far less public support; nor

had their services to the Cause been so great.

{886}

In closing the House, the Lord-General had used his office of

Commander-in-Chief to anticipate one 'coup d'état' by another.

Had he been ten minutes late, Vane would himself have

dissolved the House; snapping a vote which would give his

faction a legal ascendancy. Yet, after all, the fact remains

that Vane and the remnant of the famous Long Parliament had

that 'scintilla juris,' as lawyers call it, that semblance of

legal right, which counts for so much in things political."

F. Harrison,

Oliver Cromwell,

chapter 10.

ALSO IN:

J. K. Hosmer,

Life of Young Sir Henry Vane,

part 3, chapter 17.

F. P. Guizot,

History of Oliver Cromwell,

book 4 (volume l).

L. von Ranke,

History of England, 17th century,

book 11, chapter 5 (volume 3).

W. Godwin,

History of the Commonwealth,

volume 3, chapters 27-29.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1653 (JUNE-DECEMBER).

The Barebones, or Little Parliament.

Six weeks after the expulsion of the Rump, Cromwell, in his

own name, and upon his own authority, as "Captain-General and

Commander-in-Chief," issued (June 6) a summons to one hundred

and forty "persons fearing God and of approved fidelity and

honesty," chosen and "nominated" by himself, with the advice

of his council of officers, requiring them to be and appear at

the Council Chamber of Whitehall on the following fourth day

of July, to take upon themselves "the great charge and trust"

of providing for "the peace, safety, and good government" of

the Commonwealth, and to serve, each, "as a Member for the

county" from which he was called. "Of all the Parties so

summoned, 'only two' did not attend. Disconsolate Bulstrode

says: 'Many of this Assembly being persons of fortune and

knowledge, it was much wondered by some that they would at

this summons, and from such hands, take upon them the Supreme

Authority of this Nation; considering how little right

Cromwell and his Officers had to give it, or those Gentlemen

to take it.' My disconsolate friend, it is a sign that Puritan

England in general accepts this action of Cromwell and his

Officers, and thanks them for it, in such a case of extremity;

saying as audibly as the means permitted: Yea, we did wish it

so. Rather mournful to the disconsolate official mind. ... The

undeniable fact is, these men were, as Whitlocke intimates, a

quite reputable Assembly; got together by anxious

'consultation of the godly Clergy' and chief Puritan lights in

their respective Counties; not without much earnest revision,

and solemn consideration in all kinds, on the part of men

adequate enough for such a work, and desirous enough to do it

well. The List of the Assembly exists; not yet entirely gone

dark for mankind. A fair proportion of them still recognizable

to mankind. Actual Peers one or two: founders of Peerage

Families, two or three, which still exist among us,--Colonel

Edward Montague, Colonel Charles Howard, Anthony Ashley

Cooper. And better than King's Peers, certain Peers of Nature;

whom if not the King and his pasteboard Norroys have had the

luck to make Peers of, the living heart of England has since

raised to the Peerage and means to keep there,--Colonel Robert

Blake the Sea-King, for one. 'Known persons,' I do think; 'of

approved integrity, men fearing God'; and perhaps not entirely

destitute of sense anyone of them! Truly it seems rather a

distinguished Parliament,--even though Mr. Praisegod Barbone,

'the Leather merchant in Fleet-street,' be, as all mortals

must admit, a member of it. The fault, I hope, is forgivable.

Praisegod, though he deals in leather, and has a name which

can be misspelt, one discerns to be the son of pious parents;

to be himself a man of piety, of understanding and

weight,--and even of considerable private capital, my witty

flunkey friends! We will leave Praisegod to do the best he

can, I think. ... In fact, a real Assembly of the Notables in

Puritan England; a Parliament, Parliamentum, or

Speaking-Apparatus for the now dominant Interest in England,

as exact as could well be got,--much more exact, I suppose,

than any ballot-box, free hustings or ale-barrel election

usually yields. Such is the Assembly called the Little

Parliament, and wittily Bare-bone's Parliament; which meets on

the 4th of July. Their witty name survives; but their history

is gone all dark."

T. Carlyle,

Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches,

part 7, speech. 1.

The "assembly of godly persons" proved, however, to be quite

an unmanageable body, containing so large a number of erratic

and impracticable reformers that everything substantial among

English institutions was threatened with overthrow at their

hands. After five months of busy session, Cromwell was happily

able to bring about a dissolution of his parliament, by the

action of a majority, surrendering back their powers into his

hands,--which was done on the 10th of December, 1653.

F. P. Guizot,

History of Oliver Cromwell,

book 5 (volume 2).

ALSO IN:

J. A. Picton,

Oliver Cromwell,

chapter 23.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1653 (December).

The Establishment and Constitution of the Protectorate.

The Instrument of Government.

"What followed the dissolution of the Little Parliament is

soon told. The Council of Officers having been summoned by

Cromwell as the only power de facto, there were dialogues and

deliberations, ending in the clear conclusion that the method

of headship in a 'Single Person' for his whole life must now

be tried in the Government of the Commonwealth, and that

Cromwell must be that 'Single Person.' The title of King was

actually proposed; but, as there were objections to that,

Protector was chosen as a title familiar in English History

and of venerable associations. Accordingly, Cromwell having

consented, and all preparations having been made, he was, on

Friday, December 16, in a great assembly of civic, judicial

and military dignities, solemnly sworn and installed in the

Chancery Court, Westminster Hall, as Lord Protector of the

Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland. There were some

of his adherents hitherto who did not like this new elevation

of their hero, and forsook him in consequence, regarding any

experiment of the Single Person method in Government 'as a

treason to true Republicanism, and Cromwell's assent to it as

unworthy of him. Among these was Harrison. Lambert, on the

other hand, had been the main agent in the change, and took a

conspicuous part in the installation-ceremony. In fact, pretty

generally throughout the country and even among the

Presbyterians, the elevation of Cromwell to some kind of

sovereignty had come to be regarded as an inevitable necessity

of the time, the only possible salvation of the Commonwealth from

the anarchy, or wild and experimental idealism, in matters

civil and religious, which had been the visible drift at last

of the Barebones or Daft Little Parliament. ... The powers and

duties of the Protectorate had been defined, rather elaborately,

in a Constitutional Instrument of forty-two Articles, called

'The Government of the Commonwealth' [more commonly known as

The Instrument of Government] to which Cromwell had sworn

fidelity at his installation."

{887}

D. Masson,

Life of John Milton,

volume 4, book 4, chapters 1 and 3.

ALSO IN:

J. Forster,

Statesmen of the Commonwealth: Cromwell.

L. von Ranke,

History of England, 17th Century,

book 12, chapter 1 (volume 3).

S. R. Gardiner,

Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution,

introduction, section 4 and pages 314-324.

Cobbett's Parliamentary History of England,

volume 3, pages 1417-1426.

The following is the text Of the Instrument of Government:

The government of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and

Ireland, and the dominions thereunto belonging.

I. That the supreme legislative authority of the Commonwealth

of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the dominions thereunto

belonging, shall be and reside in one person, and the people

assembled in Parliament; the style of which person shall be

the Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland,

and Ireland.

II. That the exercise of the chief magistracy and the

administration of the government over the said countries and

dominions, and the people thereof, shall be in the Lord

Protector, assisted with a council, the number whereof shall

not exceed twenty-one, nor be less than thirteen.

III. That all writs, processes, commissions, patents, grants,

and other things, which now run in the name and style of the

keepers of the liberty of England by authority of Parliament,

shall run in the name and style of the Lord Protector, from

whom, for the future, shall be derived all magistracy and

honours in these three nations; and have the power of pardons

(except in case of murders and treason) and benefit of all

forfeitures for the public use; and shall govern the said

countries and dominions in all things by the advice of the

council, and according to these presents and the laws.

IV. That the Lord Protector, the Parliament sitting, shall

dispose and order the militia and forces, both by sea and

land, for the peace and good of the three nations, by consent

of Parliament; and that the Lord Protector, with the advice

and consent of the major part of the council, shall dispose

and order the militia for the ends aforesaid in the intervals

of Parliament."

V. That the Lord Protector, by the advice aforesaid, shall

direct in all things concerning the keeping and holding of a

good correspondency with foreign kings, princes, and states;

and also, with the consent of the major part of the council,

have the power of war and peace.

VI. That the laws shall not be altered, suspended, abrogated,

or repealed, nor any new law made, nor any tax, charge, or

imposition laid upon the people, but by common consent in

Parliament, save only as is expressed in the thirtieth

article.

VII. That there shall be a Parliament summoned to meet at

Westminster upon the third day of September, 1654, and that

successively a Parliament shall be summoned once in every

third year, to be accounted from the dissolution of the

present Parliament.

VIII. That neither the Parliament to be next summoned, nor any

successive Parliaments, shall, during the time of five months,

to be accounted from the day of their first meeting, be

adjourned, prorogued, or dissolved, without their own consent.

IX. That as well the next as all other successive Parliaments,

shall be summoned and elected in manner hereafter expressed;

that is to say, the persons to be chosen within England,

Wales, the Isles of Jersey, Guernsey, and the town of

Berwick-upon-Tweed, to sit and serve in Parliament, shall be,

and not exceed, the number of four hundred. The persons to be

chosen within Scotland, to sit and serve in Parliament, shall

be, and not exceed, the number of thirty; and the persons to

be chosen to sit in Parliament for Ireland shall be, and not

exceed, the number of thirty.

X. That the persons to be elected to sit in Parliament from

time to time, for the several counties of England, Wales, the

Isles of Jersey and Guernsey, and the town of

Berwick-upon-Tweed, and all places within the same

respectively, shall be according to the proportions and

numbers hereafter expressed: that is to say,

Bedfordshire, 5;

Bedford Town, 1;

Berkshire, 5;

Abingdon, 1;

Reading, 1;

Buckinghamshire, 5;

Buckingham Town, 1;

Aylesbury, 1;

Wycomb, 1;

Cambridgeshire, 4;

Cambridge Town, 1;

Cambridge University, 1;

Isle of Ely, 2;

Cheshire, 4;

Chester, 1;

Cornwall, 8;

Launceston, 1;

Truro, 1;

Penryn, 1;

East Looe and West Looe, 1;

Cumberland, 2;

Carlisle, 1;

Derbyshire, 4;

Derby Town, 1;

Devonshire, 11;

Exeter, 2;

Plymouth, 2

Clifton, Dartmouth, Hardness, 1;

Totnes, 1;

Barnstable, 1;

Tiverton, 1;

Honiton, 1;

Dorsetshire, 6;

Dorchester, 1;

Weymouth and Melcomb-Regis, 1;

Lyme-Regis, 1;

Poole, 1;

Durham, 2;

City of Durham, 1;

Essex, 13;

Malden, 1;

Colchester, 2;

Gloucestershire, 5;

Gloucester, 2;

Tewkesbury, 1;

Cirencester, 1;

Herefordshire, 4;

Hereford, 1;

Leominster, 1;

Hertfordshire, 5;

St. Alban's, 1:

Hertford, 1;

Huntingdonshire, 3;

Huntingdon, 1;

Kent, 11;

Canterbury, 2;

Rochester, 1

Maidstone, 1;

Dover, 1;

Sandwich, 1;

Queenborough, 1;

Lancashire, 4;

Preston, 1;

Lancaster, 1;

Liverpool, 1;

Manchester, 1;

Leicestershire, 4

Leicester, 2;

Lincolnshire, 10;

Lincoln, 2;

Boston, 1;

Grantham, 1;

Stamford, 1;

Great Grimsby, 1;

Middlesex, 4;

London, 6;

Westminster, 2;

Monmouthshire, 3;

Norfolk 10;

Norwich, 2;

Lynn-Regis, 2

Great Yarmouth, 2

Northamptonshire, 6;

Peterborough, 1;

Northampton, 1;

Nottinghamshire, 4;

Nottingham, 2;

Northumberland, 3;

Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1;

Berwick, 1;

Oxfordshire, 5;

Oxford City, 1;

Oxford University, 1;

Woodstock, 1;

Rutlandshire, 2;

Shropshire, 4;

Shrewsbury, 2;

Bridgnorth, 1;

Ludlow, 1;

Staffordshire, 3;

Lichfield, 1;

Stafford, 1;

Newcastle-under-Lyne, 1;

Somersetshire, 11;

Bristol, 2;

Taunton, 2;

Bath, 1;

Wells, 1;

Bridgwater, 1;

Southamptonshire, 8;

Winchester, 1;

Southampton, 1

Portsmouth, 1;

Isle of Wight, 2;

Andover, 1;

Suffolk, 10;

Ipswich, 2;

Bury St. Edmunds, 2;

Dunwich, 1;

Sudbury, 1;

Surrey, 6;

Southwark, 2;

Guildford, 1;

Reigate, 1;

Sussex, 9;

Chichester, 1;

Lewes, 1;

East Grinstead, 1;

Arundel, 1;

Rye, 1;

Westmoreland, 2;

Warwickshire, 4;

Coventry, 2;

Warwick, 1;

Wiltshire, 10;

New Sarum, 2;

Marlborough, 1;

Devizes, 1;

Worcestershire, 5;

Worcester, 2.

YORKSHIRE.

West Riding, 6;

East Riding, 4;

North Riding, 4;

City of York, 2

Kingston-upon-Hull, 1;

Beverley, 1;

Scarborough, 1;

Richmond, 1;

Leeds, 1;

Halifax, 1.

{888}

WALES.

Anglesey, 2:

Brecknoekshire, 2;

Cardiganshire, 2;

Carmarthenshire, 2;

Carnarvonshire, 2;

Denbighshire, 2;

Flintshire, 2;

Glamorganshire, 2;

Cardiff, 1;

Merionethshire, 1;

Montgomeryshire, 2;

Pembrokeshire, 2;

Haverfordwest, 1;

Radnorshire, 2.

The distribution of the persons to be chosen for Scotland and

Ireland, and the several counties, cities, and places therein,

shall be according to such proportions and number as shall be

agreed upon and declared by the Lord Protector and the major

part of the council, before the sending forth writs of summons

for the next Parliament.

XI. That the summons to Parliament shall be by writ under the

Great Seal of England, directed to the sheriffs of the several

and respective counties, with such alteration as may suit with

the present government to be made by the Lord Protector and

his council, which the Chancellor, Keeper, or Commissioners of

the Great Seal shall seal, issue, and send abroad by warrant

from the Lord Protector. If the Lord Protector shall not give

warrant for issuing of writs of summons for the next

Parliament, before the first of June, 1654, or for the

Triennial Parliaments, before the first day of August in every

third year, to be accounted as aforesaid; that then the

Chancellor, Keeper, or Commissioners of the Great Seal for the

time being, shall, without any warrant or direction, within

seven days after the said first day of June, 1654, seal,

issue, and send abroad writs of summons (changing therein what

is to be changed as aforesaid) to the several and respective

sheriffs of England, Scotland, and Ireland, for summoning the

Parliament to meet at Westminster, the third day of September

next; and shall likewise, within seven days after the said

first day of August, in every third year, to be accounted from

the dissolution of the precedent Parliament, seal, issue, and

send forth abroad several writs of summons (changing therein

what is to be changed) as aforesaid, for summoning the

Parliament to meet at Westminster the sixth of November in

that third year. That the said several and respective

sheriffs, shall, within ten days after the receipt of such

writ as aforesaid, cause the same to be proclaimed and

published in every market-town within his county upon the

market-days thereof, between twelve and three of the clock;

and shall then also publish and declare the certain day of the

week and month, for choosing members to serve in Parliament for

the body of the said county, according to the tenor of the

said writ, which shall be upon Wednesday five weeks after the

date of the writ; and shall likewise declare the place where

the election shall be made: for which purpose he shall appoint

the most convenient place for the whole county to meet in; and

shall send precepts for elections to be made in all and every

city, town, borough, or place within his county, where

elections are to be made by virtue of these presents, to the

Mayor, Sheriff, or other head officer of such city, town,

borough, or place, within three days after the receipt of such

writ and writs; which the said Mayors, Sheriffs, and officers

respectively are to make publication of, and of the certain

day for such elections to be made in the said city, town, or

place aforesaid, and to cause elections to be made

accordingly.

XII. That at the day and place of elections, the Sheriff of

each county, and the said Mayors, Sheriffs, Bailiffs, and

other head officers within their cities, towns, boroughs, and

places respectively, shall take view of the said elections,

and shall make return into the chancery within twenty days

after the said elections, of the persons elected by the

greater number of electors, under their hands and seals,

between him on the one part, and the electors on the other

part; wherein shall be contained, that the persons elected

shall not have power to alter the government as it is hereby

settled in one single person and a Parliament.

XIII. That the Sheriff, who shall wittingly and willingly make

any false return, or neglect his duty, shall incur the penalty

of 2,000 marks of lawful English money; the one moiety to the

Lord Protector, and the other moiety to such person as will

sue for the same.

XIV. That all and every person and persons, who have aided,

advised, assisted, or abetted in any war against the

Parliament, since the first day of January 1641 (unless they

have been since in the service of the Parliament, and given

signal testimony of their good affection thereunto) shall be

disabled and incapable to be elected, or to give any vote in

the election of any members to serve in the next Parliament,

or in the three succeeding Triennial Parliaments.

XV. That all such, who have advised, assisted, or abetted the

rebellion of Ireland, shall be disabled and incapable for ever

to be elected, or give any vote in the election of any member

to serve in Parliament; as also all such who do or shall

profess the Roman Catholic religion.

XVI. That all votes and elections given or made contrary, or

not according to these qualifications, shall be null and void;

and if any person, who is hereby made incapable, shall give

his vote for election of members to serve in Parliament, such

person shall lose and forfeit one full year's value of his

real estate, and one full third part of his personal estate;

one moiety thereof to the Lord Protector, and the other moiety

to him or them who shall sue for the same.

XVII. That the persons who shall be elected to serve in

Parliament, shall be such (and no other than such) as are

persons of known integrity, fearing God, and of good

conversation, and being of the age of twenty-one years.

XVIII. That all and every person and persons seised or

possessed to his own use, of any estate, real or personal, to

the value of £200, and not within the aforesaid exceptions,

shall be capable to elect members to serve in Parliament for

counties.

XIX. That the Chancellor, Keeper, or Commissioners of the

Great Seal, shall be sworn before they enter into their

offices, truly and faithfully to issue forth, and send abroad,

writs of summons to Parliament, at the times and in the manner

before expressed: and in case of neglect or failure to issue

and send abroad writs accordingly, he or they shall for every

such offence be guilty of high treason, and suffer the pains

and penalties thereof.

XX. That in case writs be not issued out, as is before

expressed, but that there be a neglect therein, fifteen days

after the time wherein the same ought to be issued out by the

Chancellor, Keeper, or Commissioners of the Great Seal; that

then the Parliament shall, as often as such failure shall

happen, assemble and be held at Westminster, in the usual

place, at the times prefixed, in manner and by the means

hereafter expressed; that is to say, that the sheriffs of the

several and respective counties, sheriffdoms, cities,

boroughs, and places aforesaid, within England, Wales,

Scotland, and Ireland, the Chancellor, Masters, and Scholars

of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and the Mayor and

Bailiffs of the borough of Berwick-upon-Tweed, and other

places aforesaid respectively, shall at the several courts and

places to be appointed as aforesaid, within thirty days after

the said fifteen days, cause such members to be chosen for

their said several and respective counties, sheriffdoms,

universities, cities, boroughs, and places aforesaid, by such

persons, and in such manner, as if several and respective

writs of summons to Parliament under the Great Seal had issued

and been awarded according to the tenor aforesaid: that if the

sheriff, or other persons authorized, shall neglect his or

their duty herein, that all and every such sheriff and person

authorized as aforesaid, so neglecting his or their duty,

shall, for every such offence, be guilty of high treason, and

shall suffer the pains and penalties thereof.

{889}

XXI. That the clerk, called the clerk of the Commonwealth in

Chancery for the time being, and all others, who shall

afterwards execute that office, to whom the returns shall be

made, shall for the next Parliament, and the two succeeding

Triennial Parliaments, the next day after such return, certify

the names of the several persons so returned, and of the

places for which he and they were chosen respectively, unto

the Council; who shall peruse the said returns, and examine

whether the persons so elected and returned be such as is

agreeable to the qualifications, and not disabled to be

elected: and that every person and persons being so duly

elected, and being approved of by the major part of the

Council to be persons not disabled, but qualified as

aforesaid, shall be esteemed a member of Parliament, and be

admitted to sit in Parliament, and not otherwise.

XXII. That the persons so chosen and assembled in manner

aforesaid, or any sixty of them, shall be, and be deemed the

Parliament of England, Scotland, and Ireland; and the supreme

legislative power to be and reside in the Lord Protector and

such Parliament, in manner herein expressed.

XXIII. That the Lord Protector, with the advice of the major

part of the Council, shall at any other time than is before

expressed, when the necessities of the State shall require it,

summon Parliaments in manner before expressed, which shall not

be adjourned, prorogued, or dissolved without their own

consent, during the first three months of their sitting. And

in case of future war with any foreign State, a Parliament

shall be forthwith summoned for their advice concerning the

same.

XXIV. That all Bills agreed unto by the Parliament, shall be

presented to the Lord Protector for his consent; and in case

he shall not give his consent thereto within twenty days after

they shall be presented to him, or give satisfaction to the

Parliament within the time limited, that then, upon

declaration of the Parliament that the Lord Protector hath not

consented nor given satisfaction, such Bills shall pass into

and become laws, although he shall not give his consent

thereunto; provided such Bills contain nothing in them

contrary to the matters contained in these presents.

XXV. That [Henry Lawrence, esq.; Philip lord vise. Lisle; the

majors general Lambert, Desborough, and Skippon; lieutenant

general Fleetwood; the colonels Edward Montagu, Philip Jones,

and Wm. Sydenham; sir Gilbert Pickering, sir Ch. Wolseley, and

sir Anth. Ashley Cooper, Barts., Francis Rouse, esq., Speaker

of the late Convention, Walter Strickland, and Rd. Major,

esqrs.]--or any seven of them, shall be a Council for the

purposes expressed in this writing; and upon the death or

other removal of any of them, the Parliament shall nominate

six persons of ability, integrity, and fearing God, for

everyone that is dead or removed; out of which the major part

of the Council shall elect two, and present them to the Lord

Protector, of which he shall elect one; and in case the

Parliament shall not nominate within twenty days after notice

given unto them thereof, the major part of the Council shall

nominate three as aforesaid to the Lord Protector, who out of

them shall supply the vacancy; and until this choice be made,

the remaining part of the Council shall execute as fully in

all things, as if their number were full. And in case of

corruption, or other miscarriage in any of the Council in

their trust, the Parliament shall appoint seven of their

number, and the Council six, who, together with the Lord

Chancellor, Lord Keeper, or Commissioners of the Great Seal

for the time being, shall have power to hear and determine

such corruption and miscarriage, and to award and inflict

punishment, as the nature of the offence shall deserve, which

punishment shall not be pardoned or remitted by the Lord

Protector; and, in the interval of Parliaments, the major part

of the Council, with the consent of the Lord Protector, may,

for corruption or other miscarriage as aforesaid, suspend any

of their number from the exercise of their trust, if they

shall find it just, until the matter shall be heard and

examined as aforesaid.

XXVI. That the Lord Protector and the major part of the

Council aforesaid may, at any time before the meeting of the

next Parliament, add to the Council such persons as they shall

think fit, provided the number of the Council be not made

thereby to exceed twenty-one, and the quorum to be

proportioned accordingly by the Lord Protector and the major

part of the Council.

XXVII. That a constant yearly revenue shall be raised,

settled, and established for maintaining of 10,000 horse and

dragoons, and 20,000 foot, in England, Scotland and Ireland,

for the defence and security thereof, and also for a

convenient number of ships for guarding of the seas; besides

£200,000 per annum for defraying the other necessary charges

of administration of justice, and other expenses of the

Government, which revenue shall be raised by the customs, and

such other ways and means as shall be agreed upon by the Lord

Protector and the Council, and shall not be taken away or

diminished, nor the way agreed upon for raising the same

altered, but by the consent of the Lord Protector and the

Parliament.

XXVIII. That the said yearly revenue shall be paid into the

public treasury, and shall be issued out for the uses

aforesaid.

XXIX. That in case there shall not be cause hereafter to keep

up so great a defence both at land or sea, but that there be

an abatement made thereof, the money which will be saved

thereby shall remain in bank for the public service, and not

be employed to any other use but by consent of Parliament, or,

in the intervals of Parliament, by the Lord Protector and

major part of the Council.

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XXX. That the raising of money for defraying the charge of the

present extraordinary forces, both at sea and land, in respect

of the present wars, shall be by consent of Parliament, and

not otherwise: save only that the Lord Protector, with the

consent of the major part of the Council, for preventing the

disorders and dangers which might otherwise fall out both by

sea and land, shall have power, until the meeting of the first

Parliament, to raise money for the purposes aforesaid; and

also to make laws and ordinances for the peace and welfare of

these nations where it shall be necessary, which shall be

binding and in force, until order shall be taken in Parliament

concerning the same.

XXXI. That the lands, tenements, rents, royalties,

jurisdictions and hereditaments which remain yet unsold or

undisposed of, by Act or Ordinance of Parliament, belonging to

the Commonwealth (except the forests and chases, and the

honours and manors belonging to the same; the lands of the

rebels in Ireland, lying in the four counties of Dublin, Cork,

Kildare, and Carlow; the lands forfeited by the people of

Scotland in the late wars, and also the lands of Papists and

delinquents in England who have not yet compounded), shall be

vested in the Lord Protector, to hold, to him and his

successors, Lords Protectors of these nations, and shall not

be alienated but by consent in Parliament. And all debts,

fines, issues, amercements, penalties and profits, certain and

casual, due to the Keepers of the liberties of England by

authority of Parliament, shall be due to the Lord Protector,

and be payable into his public receipt, and shall be recovered

and prosecuted in his name.

XXXII. That the office of Lord Protector over these nations

shall be elective and not hereditary; and upon the death of

the Lord Protector, another fit person shall be forthwith

elected to succeed him in the Government; which election shall

be by the Council, who, immediately upon the death of the Lord

Protector, shall assemble in the Chamber where they usually

sit in Council; and, having given notice to an their members

of the cause of their assembling, shall, being thirteen at

least present, proceed to the election; and, before they

depart the said Chamber, shall elect a fit person to succeed

in the Government, and forthwith cause proclamation thereof to

be made in an the three nations as shall be requisite; and the

person that they, or the major part of them, shall elect as

aforesaid, shall be, and shall be taken to be, Lord Protector

over these nations of England, Scotland and Ireland, and the

dominions thereto belonging. Provided that none of the

children of the late King, nor any of his line or family, be

elected to be Lord Protector or other Chief Magistrate over

these nations, or any the dominions thereto belonging. And

until the aforesaid election be past, the Council shall take

care of the Government, and administer in an things as fully

as the Lord Protector, or the Lord Protector and Council are

enabled to do.

XXXIII. That Oliver Cromwell, Captain-General of the forces of

England, Scotland and Ireland, shall be, and is hereby

declared to be, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England,

Scotland and Ireland, and the dominions thereto belonging, for

his life.

XXXIV. That the Chancellor, Keeper or Commissioners of the

Great Seal, the Treasurer, Admiral, Chief Governors of Ireland

and Scotland, and the Chief Justices of both the Benches,

shall be chosen by the approbation of Parliament; and, in the

intervals of Parliament, by the approbation of the major part

of the Council, to be afterwards approved by the Parliament.

XXXV. That the Christian religion, as contained in the

Scriptures, be held forth and recommended as the public

profession of these nations; and that, as soon as may be, a

provision, less subject to scruple and contention, and more

certain than the present, be made for the encouragement and

maintenance of able and painful teachers, for the instructing

the people, and for discovery and confutation of error,

hereby, and whatever is contrary to sound doctrine; and until

such provision be made, the present maintenance shall not be

taken away or impeached.

XXXVI. That to the public profession held forth none shall be

compened by penalties or otherwise; but that endeavours be

used to win them by sound doctrine and the example of a good

conversation.

XXXVII. That such as profess faith in God by Jesus Christ

(though differing in judgment from the doctrine, worship or

discipline publicly held forth) shall not be restrained from,

but shall be protected in, the profession of the faith and

exercise of their religion; so as they abuse not this liberty

to the civil injury of others and to the actual disturbance of

the public peace on their parts: provided this liberty be not

extended to Popery or Prelacy, nor to such as, under the

profession of Christ, hold forth and practice licentiousness.

XXXVIII. That all laws, statutes and ordinances, and clauses

in any law, statute or ordinance to the contrary of the

aforesaid liberty, shall be esteemed as null and void.

XXXIX. That the Acts and Ordinances of Parliament made for the

sale or other disposition of the lands, rents and

hereditaments of the late King, Queen, and Prince, of

Archbishops and Bishops, &c., Deans and Chapters, the lands of

delinquents and forest-lands, or any of them, or of any other

lands, tenements, rents and hereditaments belonging to the

Commonwealth, shall nowise be impeached or made invalid, but

shall remain good and firm; and that the securities given by

Act and Ordinance of Parliament for any sum or sums of money,

by any of the said lands, the excise, or any other public

revenue; and also the securities given by the public faith of

the nation, and the engagement of the public faith for

satisfaction of debts and damages, shall remain firm and good,

and not be made void and invalid upon any pretence whatsoever.

XL. That the Articles given to or made with the enemy, and

afterwards confirmed by Parliament, shall be performed and

made good to the persons concerned therein; and that such

appeals as were depending in the last Parliament for relief

concerning bills of sale of delinquent's estates, may be heard

and determined the next Parliament, anything in this writing

or otherwise to the contrary notwithstanding.

{891}

XLI. That every successive Lord Protector over these nations

shall take and subscribe a solemn oath, in the presence of the

Council, and such others as they shall call to them, that he

will seek the peace, quiet and welfare of these nations, cause

law and justice to be equally administered; and that he will

not violate or infringe the matters and things contained in

this writing, and in all other things will, to his power and

to the best of his understanding, govern these nations

according to the laws, statutes and customs thereof.

XLII. That each person of the Council shall, before they enter

upon their trust, take and subscribe an oath, that they will

be true and faithful in their trust, according to the best of

their knowledge; and that in the election of every successive

Lord Protector they shall proceed therein impartially, and do

nothing therein for any promise, fear, favour or reward.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1654.

Re-conquest of Acadia (Nova Scotia).

See NOVA SCOTIA: A. D. 1621-1668.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1654 (April).

Incorporation of Scotland with the Commonwealth.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1654.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1654-1658.

The Protector, his Parliaments and his Major-Generals.

The Humble Petition and Advice.

Differing views of the Cromwellian autocracy.

"Oliver addressed his first Protectorate Parliament on Sunday,

the 3d of September. ... Immediately, under the leadership of

old Parliamentarians, Haslerig, Scott, Bradshaw, and many

other republicans, the House proceeded to debate the

Instrument of Government, the constitutional basis of the

existing system. By five votes, it decided to discuss 'whether

the House should approve of government by a Single Person and

a Parliament.' This was of course to set up the principle of

making the Executive dependent on the House; a principle, in

Oliver's mind, fatal to settlement and order. He acted at

once. Calling on the Lord Mayor to secure the city, and

disposing his own guard round Westminster Hall, he summoned

the House again on the 9th day. ... Members were called on to

sign a declaration, 'not to alter the government as settled in

a Single Person and a Parliament.' Some, 300 signed; the

minority--about a fourth--refused and retired. ... The

Parliament, in spite of the declaration, set itself from the

first to discuss the constitution, to punish heretics,

suppress blasphemy, revise the Ordinances of the Council; and

they deliberately withheld all supplies for the services and

the government. At last they passed an Act for revising the

constitution de novo. Not a single bill had been sent up to

the Protector for his assent. Oliver, as usual, acted at once.

On the expiration of their five lunar months, 22d January

1655, he summoned the House and dissolved it, with a speech

full of reproaches."

F. Harrison,

Oliver Cromwell,

chapter 11.

"In 1656, the Protector called a second Parliament. By

excluding from it about a hundred members whom he judged to be

hostile to his government, he found himself on amicable terms

with the new assembly. It presented to him a Humble Petition

and Advice, asking that certain changes of the Constitution

might be agreed to by mutual consent, and that he should

assume the title of King. This title he rejected, and the

Humble Petition and Advice was passed in an amended form on

May 25, 1657, and at once received the assent of the

Protector. On June 26, it was modified in some details by the

Additional Petition and Advice. Taking the two together, the

result was to enlarge the power of Parliament and to diminish

that of the Council. The Protector, in turn, received the

right of appointing his successor, and to name the

life-members of 'the other House,' which was now to take the

place of the House of Lords. ... In accordance with the

Additional Petition and Advice, the Protector summoned

'certain persons to sit in the other House.' A quarrel between

the two Houses broke out, and the Protector [February 4, 1658]

dissolved the Parliament in anger."

S. R. Gardiner,

Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution,

pages lxiii-lxiv., and 334-350.

"To govern according to law may sometimes be an usurper's

wish, but can seldom be in his power. The protector [in 1655]

abandoned all thought of it. Dividing the kingdom into

districts, he placed at the head of each a major-general as a

sort of military magistrate, responsible for the subjection of

his prefecture. These were eleven in number, men bitterly

hostile to the royalist party, and insolent towards all civil

authority. They were employed to secure the payment of a tax

of 10 per cent., imposed by Cromwell's arbitrary will on those

who had ever sided with the king during the late wars, where

their estates exceeded £100 per annum. The major-generals, in

their correspondence printed among Thurloe's papers, display a

rapacity and oppression beyond their master's. ... All

illusion was now gone as to the pretended benefits of the

civil war. It had ended in a despotism, compared to which all

the illegal practices of former kings, all that had cost

Charles his life and crown, appeared as dust in the balance.

For what was ship-money, a general burthen, by the side of the

present decimation of a single class, whose offence had long

been expiated by a composition and effaced by an act of

indemnity? or were the excessive punishments of the

star-chamber so odious as the capital executions inflicted

without trial by peers, whenever it suited the usurper to

erect his high court of justice? ... I cannot ... agree in the

praises which have been showered upon Cromwell for the just

administration of the laws under his dominion. That, between

party and party, the ordinary civil rights of men were fairly

dealt with, is no extraordinary praise; and it may be admitted

that he filled the benches of justice with able lawyers,

though not so considerable as those of the reign of Charles

II.; but it is manifest that, so far as his own authority was

concerned, no hereditary despot, proud in the crimes of a

hundred ancestors, could more have spurned at every limitation

than this soldier of a commonwealth."

H. Hallam,

Constitutional History of England,

chapter 10, part 2.

"Cromwell was, and felt himself to be, a dictator called in by

the winning cause in a revolution to restore confidence and

secure peace. He was, as he said frequently, 'the Constable

set to keep order in the Parish.' Nor was he in any sense a

military despot. ... Never did a ruler invested with absolute

power and overwhelming military force more obstinately strive

to surround his authority with legal limits and Parliamentary

control."

F. Harrison,

Oliver Cromwell,

chapter 11.

"To this condition, then, England was now reduced. After the

gallantest fight for liberty that had ever been fought by any

nation in the world, she found herself trampled under foot by

a military despot. All the vices of old kingly rule were

nothing to what was now imposed upon her."

J. Forster,

Statesmen of the Commonwealth:

Cromwell.

{892}

"His [Cromwell's] wish seems to have been to govern

constitutionally, and to substitute the empire of the laws for

that of the sword. But he soon found that, hated as he was,

both by Royalists and Presbyterians, he could be safe only by

being absolute. ... Those soldiers who would not suffer him to

assume the kingly title, stood by him when he ventured on acts

of power as high as any English king has ever attempted. The

government, therefore, though in form a republic, was in truth

a despotism, moderated only by the wisdom, the sobriety and

the magnanimity of the despot."

Lord Macaulay,

History of England,

chapter 1.

England: A. D. 1655-1658.

War with Spain, alliance with France.

Acquisition of Dunkirk.

"Though the German war ['the Thirty Years' War,' concluded in

1648 by the Treaty of Westphalia] was over, the struggle

between France and Spain was continued with great animosity,

each country striving to crush her rival and become the first

power in Europe. Both Louis XIV. and Philip IV. of Spain were

bidding for the protector's support. Spain offered the

possession of Calais, when taken from France; France the

possession of Dunkirk when taken from Spain (1655). Cromwell

determined to ally himself with France against Spain. ... It

was in the West Indies that the obstructive policy of Spain

came most into collision with the interests of England. Her

kings based their claims to the possession of two continents

on the bull of Pope Alexander VI., who in 1493 had granted

them all lands they should discover from pole to pole, at the

distance of 100 leagues west from the Azores and Cape Verd

Islands. On the strength of this bull they held that the

discovery of an island gave them the right to the group, the

discovery of a headland the right to a continent. Though this

monstrous claim had quite broken down as far as the North

American continent was concerned, the Spaniards, still

recognizing 'no peace beyond the line,' endeavoured to shut

all Europeans but themselves out of any share in the trade or

colonization of at least the southern half of the New World.

... While war was now proclaimed with Spain, a treaty of peace

was signed between France and England, Louis XIV. agreeing to

banish Charles Stuart and his brothers from French territory

(October 24, 1655). This treaty was afterwards changed into a

league, offensive and defensive (March 23, 1657), Cromwell

undertaking to assist Louis with 6,000 men in besieging

Gravelines, Mardyke, and Dunkirk, on condition of receiving

the two latter towns when reduced by the allied armies. By the

occupation of these towns Cromwell intended to control the

trade of the Channel, to hold the Dutch in check, who were

then but unwilling friends, and to lessen the danger of

invasion from any union of Royalists and Spaniards. The war

opened in the year 1657 [Jamaica, however, had already been

taken from the Spaniards and St. Domingo attacked], with

another triumph by sea." This was Blake's last exploit. He

attacked and destroyed the Spanish bullion fleet, from Mexico,

in the harbor of Santa Cruz, island of Teneriffe, and silenced

the forts which guarded it. The great sea-captain died on his

voyage home, after striking this blow. The next spring "the

siege of Dunkirk was commenced (May, 1658). The Spaniards

tried to relieve the town, but were completely defeated in an

engagement called the Battle of the Dunes from the sand hills

among which it was fought; the defeat was mainly owing to the

courage and discipline of Oliver's troops, who won for

themselves the name of 'the Immortal Six Thousand.' ... Ten

days after the battle Dunkirk surrendered, and the French had

no choice but to give over to the English ambassador the keys

of a town they thought 'unsi bon morceau' ['a good ...'] (June

25)."

B. M. Cordery and J. S. Phillpotts,

King and Commonwealth,

chapter 15.

ALSO IN:

T. Carlyle,

Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches,

book 9, speech 5 and book 10, letters 152-157.

J. Campbell,

Naval History of Great Britain,

chapter 15 (volume 2).

J. Waylen,

The House of Cromwell and the Story of Dunkirk,

pages 173-272.

W. H. Dixon,

Robert Blake,

chapters 9-10.

D. Hannay,

Admiral Blake,

chapter 9-11.

See, also, FRANCE: A. D. 1655-1658.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1658-1660.

The fall of the Protectorate and Restoration of the Stuarts.

King Charles II.

When Oliver Cromwell died, on the 3d day of September,

1658--the anniversary of his victories at Dunbar and at

Worcester--his eldest son Richard, whom he had nominated, it

was said, on his death-bed, was proclaimed Protector, and

succeeded him "as quietly as any King had ever been succeeded

by any Prince of Wales. During five months, the administration

of Richard Cromwell went on so tranquilly and regularly that

all Europe believed him to be firmly established on the chair

of state." But Richard had none of his father's genius or

personal power, and the discontents and jealousies which the

former had rigorously suppressed soon tossed the latter from

his unstable throne by their fierce upheaval. He summoned a

new Parliament (January 27, 1659), which recognized and

confirmed his authority, though containing a powerful

opposition, of uncompromising republicans and secret

royalists. But the army, which the great Protector had tamed

to submissive obedience, was now stirred into mischievous

action once more as a political power in the state,

subservient to the ambition of Fleetwood and other commanders.

Richard Cromwell could not make himself the master of his

father's battalions. "He was used by the army as an instrument

for the purpose of dissolving the Parliament [April 22], and

was then contemptuously thrown aside. The officers gratified

their republican allies by declaring that the expulsion of the

Rump had been illegal, and by inviting that assembly to resume

its functions. The old Speaker and a quorum of the old members

came together [May 9] and were proclaimed, amidst the scarcely

stifled derision and execration of the whole nation, the

supreme power in the Commonwealth. It was at the same time

expressly declared that there should be no first magistrate

and no House of Lords. But this state of things could not

last. On the day on which the Long Parliament revived, revived

also its old quarrel with the army. Again the Rump forgot that

it owed its existence to the pleasure of the soldiers, and

began to treat them as subjects. Again the doors of the House

of Commons were closed by military violence [October 13]; and

a provisional government, named by the officers, assumed the

direction of affairs." The troops stationed in Scotland, under

Monk, had not been consulted, however, in these transactions,

and were evidently out of sympathy with their comrades in

England. Monk, who had never meddled with politics before, was

now induced to interfere.

{893}

He refused to acknowledge the military provisional government,

declared himself the champion of the civil power, and marched

into England at the head of his 7,000 veterans. His movement

was everywhere welcomed and encouraged by popular

demonstrations of delight. The army in England lost courage

and lost unity, awed and paralyzed by the public feeling at

last set free. Monk reached London without opposition, and was

the recognized master of the realm. Nobody knew his

intentions--himself, perhaps, as little as any--and it was

not until after a period of protracted suspense that he

declared himself for the convening of a new and free

Parliament, in the place of the Rump--which had again resumed

its sittings--for the settlement of the state. "The result of

the elections was such as might have been expected from the

temper of the nation. The new House of Commons consisted, with

few exceptions, of persons friendly to the royal family. The

Presbyterians formed the majority. ... The new Parliament,

which, having been called without the royal writ, is more

accurately described as a Convention, met at Westminster

[April 26, 1660]. The Lords repaired to the hall, from which

they had, during more than eleven years, been excluded by

force. Both Houses instantly invited the King to return to his

country. He was proclaimed with pomp never before known. A

gallant fleet convoyed him from Holland to the coast of Kent.

When he landed [May 25, 1660], the cliffs of Dover were

covered by thousands of gazers, among whom scarcely one could

be found who was not weeping with delight. The journey to

London was a continued triumph."

Lord Macaulay,

History of England,

chapter 1.

The only guarantee with which the careless nation took back

their ejected kings of the faithless race of Stuarts was

embodied in a Declaration which Charles sent over from "Our

Court at Breda" in April, and which was read in Parliament

with an effusive display of respect and thankfulness. In this

Declaration from Breda, "a general amnesty and liberty of

conscience were promised, with such exceptions and limitations

only as the Parliament should think fit to make. All delicate

questions, among others the proprietorship of confiscated

estates, were in like manner referred to the decision of

Parliament, thus leaving the King his liberty while

diminishing his responsibility; and though fully asserting the

ancient rights of the Crown, he announced his intention to

associate the two Houses with himself in all great affairs of

State."

F. P. Guizot,

History of Richard Cromwell and the Restoration,

book 4 (volume 2).

ALSO IN:

G. Burnet,

History of My Own Time,

book 2, 1660-61.

Earl of Clarendon,

History of the Rebellion,

book 16 (volume 6).

D. Masson,

Life of Milton,

volume 5, book 3.

J. Corbett,

Monk,

chapter 9-14.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1660-1685.

The Merry Monarch.

"There never were such profligate times in England as under

Charles the Second. Whenever you see his portrait, with his

swarthy ill-looking face and great nose, you may fancy him in

his Court at Whitehall, surrounded by some of the very worst

vagabonds in the kingdom (though they were lords and ladies),

drinking, gambling, indulging in vicious conversation, and

committing every kind of profligate excess. It has been a

fashion to call Charles the Second 'The Merry Monarch.' Let me

try to give you a general idea of some of the merry things

that were done, in the merry days when this merry gentleman

sat upon his merry throne, in merry England. The first merry

proceeding was--of course--to declare that he was one of the

greatest, the wisest, and the noblest kings that ever shone,

like the blessed sun itself, on this benighted earth. The next

merry and pleasant piece of business was, for the Parliament,

in the humblest manner, to give him one million two hundred

thousand pounds a year, and to settle upon him for life that

old disputed 'tonnage and poundage' which had been so bravely

fought for. Then, General Monk, being made Earl of Albemarle,

and a few other Royalists similarly rewarded, the law went to

work to see what was to be done to those persons (they were

called Regicides) who had been concerned in making a martyr of

the late King. Ten of these were merrily executed; that is to

say, six of the judges, one of the council, Colonel Hacker and

another officer who had commanded the Guards, and Hugh Peters,

a preacher who had preached against the martyr with all his

heart. These executions were so extremely merry, that every

horrible circumstance which Cromwell had abandoned was revived

with appalling cruelty. ... Sir Harry Vane, who had furnished

the evidence against Stratford, and was one of the most

staunch of the Republicans, was also tried, found guilty, and

ordered for execution. ... These merry scenes were succeeded

by another, perhaps even merrier. On the anniversary of the

late King's death, the bodies of Oliver Cromwell, Ireton, and

Bradshaw, "Were torn out of their graves in 'Westminster

Abbey, dragged to Tyburn, hanged there on a gallows all day

long, and then beheaded. Imagine the head of Oliver Cromwell

set upon a pole to be stared at by a brutal crowd, not one of

whom would have dared to look the living Oliver in the face

for half a moment! Think, after you have read this reign, what

England was under Oliver Cromwell who was torn out of his

grave, and what it was under this merry monarch who sold it,

like a merry Judas, over and over again. Of course, the

remains of Oliver's wife and daughter were not to be spared,

either, though they had been most excellent women. The base

clergy of that time gave up their bodies, which had been

buried in the Abbey, and--to the eternal disgrace of

England--they were thrown into a pit, together with the

mouldering bones of Pym, and of the brave and bold old Admiral

Blake. ... The whole Court was a great flaunting crowd of

debauched men and shameless women; and Catherine's merry

husband insulted and outraged her in every possible way, until

she consented to receive those worthless creatures as her very

good friends, and to degrade herself by their companionship. A

Mrs. Palmer, whom the King made Lady Castlemaine, and

afterwards Duchess of Cleveland, was one of the most powerful

of the bad women about the Court, and had great influence with

the King nearly all through his reign. Another merry lady

named Moll Davies, a dancer at the theatre, was afterwards her

rival. So was Nell Gwyn, first an orange girl and then an

actress, who really had good in her, and of whom one of the

worst things I know is, that actually she does seem to have

been fond of the King. The first Duke of St. Albans was this

orange girl's child. In like manner the son of a merry

waiting-lady, whom the King created Duchess of Portsmouth,

became the Duke of Richmond.

{894}

Upon the whole it is not so bad a thing to be a commoner. The

Merry Monarch was so exceedingly merry among these merry

ladies, and some equally merry (and equally infamous) lords

and gentlemen, that he soon got through his hundred thousand

pounds, and then, by way of raising a little pocket-money,

made a merry bargain. He sold Dunkirk to the French King for

five millions of livres. When I think of the dignity to which

Oliver Cromwell raised England in the eyes of foreign powers,

and when I think of the manner in which he gained for England

this very Dunkirk, I am much inclined to consider that if the

Merry Monarch had been made to follow his father for this

action, he would have received his just deserts."

C. Dickens,

Child's History of England,

chapter 35.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1661.

Acquisition of Bombay.

See INDIA: A. D. 1600-1702.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1661.

The Savoy Conference.

"The Restoration had been the joint work of Episcopalian and

Presbyterian; would it be possible to reconcile them on this

question too [i. e., of the settlement of Church government]?

The Presbyterian indeed was willing enough for a compromise,

for he had an uneasy feeling that the ground was slipping from

beneath his feet. Of Charles's intentions he was still in

doubt; but he knew that Clarendon was the sworn friend of the

Church. The Churchman on the other hand was eagerly expecting

the approaching hour of triumph. It soon appeared that as King

and Parliament, so King and Church were inseparable in the

English mind; that indeed the return of the King was the

restoration of the Church even more than it was the

restoration of Parliament. In the face of the present

Presbyterian majority however it was necessary to temporise.

The former incumbents of Church livings were restored, and the

Commons took the Communion according to the rites of the

Church; but in other respects the Presbyterians were carefully

kept in play; Charles taking his part in the elaborate farce

by appointing ten of their leading ministers royal chaplains,

and even attending, their sermons." In October, 1660, Charles

"took the matter more completely into his own hands by issuing

a Declaration. Refusing, on the ground of constraint, to admit

the validity of the oaths imposed upon him in Scotland, by

which he was bound to uphold the Covenant, and not concealing

his preference for the Anglican Church, as 'the best fence God

hath yet raised against popery in the world,' he asserted that

nevertheless, to his own knowledge, the Presbyterians were not

enemies to Episcopacy or a set liturgy, and were opposed to

the alienation of Church revenues. The Declaration then went

on to limit the power of bishops and archdeacons in a degree

sufficient to satisfy many of the leading Presbyterians, one

of whom, Reynolds, accepted a bishopric. Charles then proposed

to choose an equal number of learned divines of both

persuasions to discuss alterations in the liturgy; meanwhile

no one was to be troubled regarding differences of practice.

The majority in the Commons at first welcomed the Declaration,

... and a bill was accordingly introduced by Sir Matthew Hale

to turn the Declaration into a law. But Clarendon at any rate

had no intention of thus baulking the Church of her revenge.

Anticipating Hale's action, he had in the interval been busy

in securing a majority against any compromise. The Declaration

had done its work in gaining time, and when the bill was

brought in it was rejected by 183 to 157 votes. Parliament was

at once (December 24) dissolved. The way was now open for the

riot of the Anglican triumph. Even before the new House met

the mask was thrown off by the issuing of an order to the

justices to restore the full liturgy. The conference indeed

took place in the Savoy Palace. It failed, like the Hampton

Court Conference of James I., because it was intended to fail.

Upon the two important points, the authority of bishops and

the liturgy, the Anglicans would not give way an inch. Both

parties informed the King that, anxious as they were for

agreement, they saw no chance of it. This last attempt at

union having fallen through, the Government had their hands

free; and their intentions were speedily made plain."

O. Airy,

The English Restoration and Louis XIV.,

chapter 7.

"The Royal Commission [for the Savoy Conference] bore date the

25th of March. It gave the Commissioners authority to review

the Book of Common Prayer, to compare it with the most ancient

Liturgies, to take into consideration all things which it

contained, to consult respecting the exceptions against it,

and by agreement to make such necessary alterations as should

afford satisfaction to tender consciences, and restore to the

Church unity and peace; the instrument appointed 'the Master's

lodgings in the Savoy' as the place of meeting. ... The

Commissioners were summoned to meet upon the 15th of April.

... The Bill of Uniformity, hereafter to be described,

actually passed the House of Commons on the 9th of July, about

a fortnight before the Conference broke up. The proceedings of

a Royal Commission to review the Prayer Book, and make

alterations for the satisfaction of tender consciences were,

by this premature act, really treated with mockery, a

circumstance which could not but exceedingly offend and annoy

the Puritan members, and serve to embitter the language of

Baxter as the end of these fruitless sittings approached."

J. Stoughton,

History of Religion in English,

volume 3, chapter 5.

ALSO IN:

E. Calamy,

Nonconformists' Memorial,

introduction, section 3.

W. Orme,

Life and Times of Richard Baxter,

chapter 7.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1662.

The sale of Dunkirk.

"Unable to confine himself within the narrow limits of his

civil list, with his favorites and mistresses, he [Charles

II.] would have sought even in the infernal regions the gold

which his subjects measured out to him with too parsimonious a

hand. ... [He] proposed to sell to France Dunkirk and its

dependencies, which, he said, cost him too much to keep up. He

asked twelve million francs; he fell at last to five millions,

and the treaty was signed October 27, 1662. It was time; the

Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London, informed of the

negotiation, had determined to offer Charles II. whatever he

wished in behalf of their city not to alienate Dunkirk.

Charles dared not retract his word, which would have been, as

D'Estrades told him, to break forever with Louis XIV., and on

the 2d of December Louis joyfully made his entry into his good

city, reconquered by gold instead of the sword."

H. Martin,

History of France: Age of Louis XIV.,

translated by M. L. Booth, chapter 4 (volume 1).

{895}

England: A. D. 1662-1665.

The Act of Uniformity and persecution of the Nonconformists.

The failure of the Savoy Conference "was the conclusion which

had been expected and desired. Charles had already summoned

the Convocation, and to that assembly was assigned the task

which had failed in the hands of the commissioners at the

Savoy. ... The act of uniformity followed [passed by the

Commons July 9, 1661; by the Lords May 8, 1662; receiving the

royal assent May 19, 1662], by which it was enacted that the

revised Book of Common Prayer, and of Ordination of Ministers,

and no other, should be used in all places of public worship;

and that all beneficed clergymen should read the service from

it within a given time, and, at the close, profess in a set

form of words, their 'unfeigned assent and consent to

everything contained and prescribed in it.' ... The act of

uniformity may have been necessary for the restoration of the

church to its former discipline and doctrine; but if such was

the intention of those who framed the declaration from Breda,

they were guilty of infidelity to the king and of fraud to the

people, by putting into his mouth language which, with the aid of

equivocation, they might explain away, and by raising in them

expectations which it was never meant to fulfil."

J. Lingard,

History of England,

volume 11, chapter. 4.

"This rigorous act when it passed, gave the ministers, who

could not conform, no longer time than till Bartholomewday,

August 24th, 1662, when they were all cast out. ... This was

an action without a precedent: The like to this the Reformed

church, nay the Christian world, never saw before. Historians

relate, with tragical exclamations, that between three and

four score bishops were driven at once into the island of

Sardinia by the African vandals; that 200 ministers were

banished by Ferdinand, king of Bohemia; and that great havock

was, a few years after, made among the ministers of Germany by

the Imperial Interim. But these all together fall short of the

number ejected by the act of uniformity, which was not less

than 2,000. The succeeding hardships of the latter were also

by far the greatest. They were not only silenced, but had no

room left for any sort of usefulness, and were in a manner

buried alive. Far greater tenderness was used towards the

Popish clergy ejected at the Reformation. They were suffered

to live quietly; but these were oppressed to the utmost, and

that even by their brethren who professed the same faith

themselves: not only excluded preferments, but turned out into

the wide world without any visible way of subsistence. Not so

much as a poor vicarage, not an obscure chapel, not a school

was left them. Nay, though they offered, as some of them did,

to preach gratis, it must not be allowed them. ... The ejected

ministers continued for ten years in a state of silence and

obscurity. ... The act of uniformity took place August the

24th, 1662. On the 26th of December following, the king

published a Declaration, expressing his purpose to grant some

indulgence or liberty in religion. Some of the Nonconformists

were hereupon much encouraged, and waiting privately on the

king, had their hopes confirmed, and would have persuaded

their brethren to have thanked him for his declaration; but

they refused, lest they should make way for the toleration of

the Papists, whom they understood the king intended to include

in it. ... Instead of indulgence or comprehension, on the 30th

of June, an act against private meetings, called the

Conventicle Act, passed the House of Commons, and soon after

was made a law, viz.: 'That every person above sixteen years

of age, present at any meeting, under pretence of any exercise

of religion, in other manner than is the practice of the

church of England, where there are five persons more than the

household, shall for the first offence, by a justice of peace

be recorded, and sent to gaol three months, till he pay £5,

and for the second offence six months, till he pay £10, and

the third time being convicted by a jury, shall be banished to

some of the American plantations, excepting New England or

Virginia." ... In the year 1665 the plague broke out"--and

the ejected ministers boldly took possession for the time of

the deserted London pulpits. "While God was consuming the

people by this judgment, and the Nonconformists were labouring

to save their souls, the parliament, which sat at Oxford, was

busy in making an act [called the Five Mile Act] to render

their case incomparably harder than it was before, by putting

upon them a certain oath ['that it is not lawful, upon any

pretence whatsoever, to take arms against the king,' &c.],

which, if they refused, they must not come (unless upon the

road) within five miles of any city or corporation, any place

that sent burgesses to parliament, any place where they had

been ministers, or had preached after the act of oblivion. ...

When this act came out, those ministers who had any

maintenance of their own, found out some place of residence in

obscure villages, or market-towns, that were not

corporations."

E. Calamy,

The Nonconformist's Memorial,

introduction, sections 4-6.

ALSO IN:

J. Stoughton,

History of Religion in England,

volume 3, chapters 6-9.

D. Neal,

History of the Puritans,

volume 4, chapter 6-7.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1663.

The grant of the Carolinas to Monk, Clarendon, Shaftesbury,

and others.

See NORTH CAROLINA: A. D. 1663-1670.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1663.

The King's charter to Rhode Island.

See RHODE ISLAND: A. D. 1660-1663.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1664.

The conquest of New Netherland (New York).

See NEW YORK: A. D. 1664.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1664-1665.

The first refractory symptoms in Massachusetts.

See MASSACHUSETTS: A. D. 1660-1665.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1665.

The grant of New Jersey to Carteret and Berkeley.

See NEW JERSEY: A. D. 1664-1667.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1665-1666.

War with Holland renewed.

The Dutch fleet in the Thames.

See NETHERLANDS (HOLLAND): A. D. 1665-1666.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1668.

The Triple Alliance with Holland and Sweden against Louis XIV.

See NETHERLANDS (HOLLAND): A. D. 1668.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1668.

Cession of Acadia (Nova Scotia) to France.

See NOVA SCOTIA: A. D. 1621-1668.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1668-1670.

The secret Catholicism and the perfidy of the King.

His begging of bribes from Louis XIV.

His betrayal of Holland.

His breaking of the Triple Alliance.

In 1668, the royal treasury being greatly embarrassed by the

king's extravagances, an attempt was made "to reduce the

annual expenditure below the amount of the royal income. ...

But this plan of economy accorded not with the royal

disposition, nor did it offer any prospect of extinguishing

the debt. Charles remembered the promise of pecuniary

assistance from France in the beginning of his reign; and,

though his previous efforts to cultivate the friendship of

Louis had been defeated by an unpropitious course of events,

he resolved to renew the experiment.

{896}

Immediately after the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, Buckingham

opened a negotiation with the duchess of Orleans, the king's

sister, in France, and Charles, in his conversations with the

French resident, apologised for his conduct in forming the

triple alliance, and openly expressed his wish to enter into a

closer union, a more intimate friendship, with Louis. ...

About the end of the year the communications between the two

princes became more open and confidential; French money, or

the promise of French money, was received by the English

ministers; the negotiation began to assume a more regular

form, and the most solemn assurances of secrecy were given,

that their real object might be withheld from the knowledge,

or even the suspicion, of the States. In this stage of the

proceedings Charles received an important communication from

his brother James. Hitherto that prince had been an obedient

and zealous son of the Church of England; but Dr. Heylin's

History of the Reformation had shaken his religious credulity,

and the result of the inquiry was a conviction that it became

his duty to reconcile himself with the Church of Rome. He was

not blind to the dangers to which such a change would expose

him; and he therefore purposed to continue outwardly in

communion with the established church, while he attended at

the Catholic service in private. But, to his surprise, he

learned from Symonds, a Jesuit missionary, that no

dispensation could authorise such duplicity of conduct: a

similar answer was returned to the same question from the

pope; and James immediately took his resolution. He

communicated to the king in private that he was determined to

embrace the Catholic faith; and Charles without hesitation

replied that he was of the same mind, and would consult with

the duke on the subject in the presence of lord Arundell, lord

Arlington, and Arlington's confidential friend, sir Thomas

Clifford. ... The meeting was held in the duke's closet.

Charles, with tears in his eyes, lamented the hardship of

being compelled to profess a religion which he did not

approve, declared his determination to emancipate himself from

this restraint, and requested the opinion of those present, as

to the most eligible means of effecting his purpose with

safety and success. They advised him to communicate his

intention to Louis, and to solicit the powerful aid of that

monarch. Here occurs a very interesting question,--was Charles

sincere or not? ... He was the most accomplished dissembler in

his dominions; nor will it be any injustice to his character

to suspect that his real object was to deceive both his

brother and the king of France. ... Now, however, the secret

negotiation proceeded with greater activity; and lord

Arundell, accompanied by sir Richard Bellings, hastened to the

French court. He solicited from Louis the present of a

considerable sum, to enable the king to suppress any

insurrection which might be provoked by his intended

conversion, and offered the co-operation of England in the

projected invasion of Holland, on the condition of an annual

subsidy during the continuation of hostilities." On the advice

of Louis, Charles postponed, for the time being, his intention

to enter publicly the Romish church and thus provoke a

national revolt; but his proposals were otherwise accepted,

and a secret treaty was concluded at Dover, in May, 1670,

through the agency of Charles' sister, Henrietta, the duchess

of Orleans, who came over for that purpose. "Of this treaty,

... though much was afterwards said, little was certainly

known. All the parties concerned, both the sovereigns and the

negotiators, observed an impenetrable secrecy. What became of

the copy transmitted to France is unknown; its counterpart was

confided to the custody of sir Thomas Clifford, and is still

in the keeping of his descendant, the lord Clifford of

Chudleigh. The principal articles were:

1. That the king of England should publicly profess himself

a Catholic at such time as should appear to him most

expedient, and subsequently to that profession should join

with Louis in a war against the Dutch republic at such time

as the most Christian king should judge proper.

2. That to enable the king of England to suppress any

insurrection which might be occasioned by his conversion,

the king of France should grant him an aid of 2,000,000 of

livres, by two payments, one at the expiration of three

months, the other of six months, after the ratification of

the treaty, and should also assist him with an armed force

of 6,000 men, if ... necessary. ...

4. That if, eventually, any new rights on the Spanish

monarchy should accrue to the king of France, the king of

England should aid him with all his power in the

acquisition of those rights. 5. That both princes should

make war on the united provinces, and that neither should

conclude peace or truce with them without the advice and

consent of his ally.".

J. Lingard,

History of England,

volume 11, chapter 6.

ALSO IN:

H. Hallam,

Constitutional History of England,

chapter 11.

O. Airy,

The English Restoration and Louis XIV.,

chapter 16.

G. Burnet,

History of My Own Time,

book 2 (volume 1).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1671.

The Cabal.

"It was remarked that the committee of council, established

for foreign affairs, was entirely changed; and that Prince

Rupert, the Duke of Ormond, Secretary Trevor, and Lord-keeper

Bridgeman, men in whose honour the nation had great

confidence, were never called to any deliberations. The whole

secret was intrusted to five persons, Clifford, Ashley

[afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury], Buckingham, Arlington, and

Lauderdale. These men were known by the appellation of the

Cabal, a word which the initial letters of their names

happened to compose. Never was there a more dangerous ministry

in England, nor one more noted for pernicious counsels."

D. Hume,

History of England,

chapter. 65 (volume 6).

See, also, CABINET, THE ENGLISH.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1672-1673.

The Declaration of Indulgence and the Test Act.

"It would have been impossible to obtain the consent of the

party in the Royal Council which represented the old

Presbyterians, of Ashley or Lauderdale or the Duke of

Buckingham, to the Treaty of Dover. But it was possible to

trick them into approval of a war with Holland by playing on

their desire for a toleration of the Nonconformists. The

announcement of the King's Catholicism was therefore deferred.

... His ministers outwitted, it only remained for Charles to

outwit his Parliament. A large subsidy was demanded for the

fleet, under the pretext of upholding the Triple Alliance, and

the subsidy was no sooner granted than the two Houses were

adjourned.

{897}

Fresh supplies were obtained by closing the Exchequer, and

suspending--under Clifford's advice--the payment of either

principal or interest on loans advanced to the public

treasury. The measure spread bankruptcy among half the

goldsmiths of London; but it was followed in 1672 by one yet

more startling--the Declaration of Indulgence. By virtue of

his ecclesiastical powers, the King ordered 'that all manner

of penal laws on matters ecclesiastical against whatever sort

of Nonconformists or recusants should be from that day

suspended,' and gave liberty of public worship to all

dissidents save Catholics, who were allowed to practice their

religion only in private houses. ... The Declaration of

Indulgence was at once followed by a declaration of war

against the Dutch on the part of both England and France. ...

It was necessary in 1673 to appeal to the Commons [for war

supplies], but the Commons met in a mood of angry distrust.

... There was a general suspicion that a plot was on foot for

the establishment of Catholicism and despotism, and that the

war and the Indulgence were parts of the plot. The change of

temper in the Commons was marked by the appearance of what was

from that time called the Country party, with Lords Russell

and Cavendish and Sir William Coventry at its head--a party

which sympathized with the Nonconformists, but looked on it as

its first duty to guard against the designs of the Court. As to

the Declaration of Indulgence, however, all parties in the

House were at one. The Commons resolved 'that penal statutes

in matters ecclesiastical cannot be suspended but by consent

of Parliament,' and refused supplies till the Declaration was

recalled. The King yielded; but the Declaration was no sooner

recalled than a Test Act was passed through both Houses

without opposition, which required from everyone in the civil

and military employment of the State the oaths of allegiance

and supremacy, a declaration against transubstantiation, and a

reception of the sacrament according to the rites of the

Church of England. Clifford at once counseled resistance, and

Buckingham talked flightily about bringing the army to London,

but Arlington saw that all hope of carrying the 'great plan'

through was at an end, and pressed Charles to yield. ...

Charles sullenly gave way. No measure has ever brought about

more startling results. The Duke of York owned himself a

Catholic, and resigned his office as Lord High Admiral. ...

Clifford, too, ... owned to being a Catholic, and ... laid

down his staff of office. Their resignation was followed by

that of hundreds of others in the army and the civil service

of the Crown. ... The resignations were held to have proved

the existence of the dangers which the Test Act had been

passed to meet. From this moment all trust in Charles was at

an end."

J. R. Green,

Short History of England,

chapter 9, section 3.

"It is very true that the [Test Act] pointed only at

Catholics, that it really proposed an anti-Popish test, yet

the construction of it, although it did not exclude from

office such Dissenters as could occasionally conform, did

effectually exclude all who scrupled to do so. Aimed at the

Romanists, it struck the Presbyterians. It is clear that, had

the Nonconformists and the Catholics joined their forces with

those of the Court, in opposing the measure, they might have

defeated it; but the first of these classes for the present

submitted to the inconvenience, from the horror which they

entertained of Popery, hoping, at the same time, that some

relief would be afforded for this personal sacrifice in the

cause of a common Protestantism. Thus the passing of an Act,

which, until a late period, inflicted a social wrong upon two

large sections of the community, is to be attributed to the

course pursued by the very parties whose successors became the

sufferers."

J. Stoughton,

History of Religion in England,

volume 3, chapter 11.

ALSO IN:

D. Neal,

History of the Puritans,

volume 4, chapter 8, and volume 5, chapter 1.

J. Collier,

Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain,

part 2, book 9 (volume 8).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1672-1674.

Alliance with Louis XIV. of France in war with Holland.

See NETHERLANDS (HOLLAND): A. D. 1672-1674.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1673.

Loss of New York, retaken by the Dutch.

See NEW YORK: A. D. 1673.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1674.

Peace with the Dutch.

Treaty of Westminster.

Recovery of New York.

See NETHERLANDS (HOLLAND): A. D. 1674.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1675-1688.

Concessions to France in Newfoundland.

See NEWFOUNDLAND: A. D. 1660-1688.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1678-1679.

The Popish Plot.

"There was an uneasy feeling in the nation that it was being

betrayed, and just then [August, 1678] a strange story caused

a panic throughout all England. A preacher of low character,

named Titus Oates, who had gone over to the Jesuits, declared

that he knew of a plot among the Catholics to kill the king

and set up a Catholic Government. He brought his tale to a

magistrate, named Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey, and shortly

afterwards [October 17] Godfrey was found murdered in a ditch

near St. Pancras Church. The people thought that the Catholics

had murdered him to hush up the 'Popish plot,' and when

Parliament met a committee was appointed to examine into the

matter. Some papers belonging to a Jesuit named Coleman

alarmed them, and so great was the panic that an Act was

passed shutting out all Catholics, except the Duke of York,

from Parliament. After this no Catholic sat in either House

for a hundred and fifty years. But worse followed. Oates

became popular, and finding tale-bearing successful, he and

other informers went on to swear away the lives of a great

number of innocent Catholics. The most noted of these was Lord

Stafford, an upright and honest peer, who was executed in

1681, declaring his innocence. Charles laughed among his

friends at the whole matter, but let it go on, and

Shaftesbury, who wished to turn out Lord Danby, did all he

could to fan the flame."

A. B. Buckley,

History of England for Beginners,

chapter 19.

"The capital and the whole nation went mad with hatred and

fear. The penal laws, which had begun to lose something of

their edge, were sharpened anew. Everywhere justices were

busied in searching houses and seizing papers. All the gaols

were filled with Papists. London had the aspect of a city in a

state of siege. The train bands were under arms all night.

Preparations were made for barricading the great

thoroughfares. Patroles marched up and down the streets.

Cannon were planted round Whitehall. No citizen thought

himself safe unless he carried under his coat a small flail

loaded with lead to brain the Popish assassins."

Lord Macaulay,

History of England,

chapter. 2 (volume 1).

{898}

"It being expected that printed Bibles would soon become rare,

or locked up in an unknown tongue, many honest people, struck

with the alarm, employed themselves in copying the Bible into

short-hand that they might not be destitute of its

consolations in the hour of calamity. ... It was about the

year 1679 that the famous King's Head Club was formed, so

named from its being held at the King's Head Tavern in Fleet

Street. ... They were terrorists and spread alarm with great

effect. It was at this club that silk armour, pistol proof,

was recommended as a security against assassination at the

hands of the Papists; and the particular kind of

life-preserver of that day, called a Protestant flail, was

introduced."

G. Roberts,

Life of Monmouth,

chapter 5 (volume 1).

"And now commenced, before the courts of justice and the upper

house, a sombre prosecution of the catholic lords Arundel,

Petre, Stafford, Powis, Bellasis, the Jesuits Coleman,

Ireland, Grieve, Pickering, and, in succession, all who were

implicated by the indefatigable denunciations of Titus Oates

and Bedloe. Unhappily, these courts of justice, desiring, in

common with the whole nation, to condemn rather than to

examine, wanted neither elements which might, if strictly

acted upon, establish legal proof of conspiracy against some

of the accused, nor terrible laws to destroy them when found

guilty. And it was here that a spectacle, at first imposing,

became horrible. No friendly voice arose to save those men who

were guilty only of impracticable wishes, of extravagant

conceptions. The king, the duke of York, the French

ambassador, thoroughly acquainted as they were with the real

nature of these imputed crimes, remained silent; they were

thoroughly cowed."

A. Carrel,

History of the Counter-Revolution in England,

part 1, chapter 4.

"Although, ... upon a review of this truly shocking

transaction, we may be fairly justified ... in imputing to the

greater part of those concerned in it, rather an extraordinary

degree of blind credulity than the deliberate wickedness of

planning and assisting in the perpetration of legal murders;

yet the proceedings on the popish plot must always be

considered as an indelible disgrace upon the English nation,

in which king, parliament, judges, juries, witnesses,

prosecutors, have all their respective, though certainly not

equal, shares."

C. J. Fox,

History of the Early Part of the Reign of James II.,

introduction, ch.

"In this dreadful scene of wickedness, it is difficult not to

assign the pre-eminence of guilt to Anthony Ashley Cooper,

earl of Shaftesbury. If he did not first contrive, he

certainly availed himself of the revelations of Oates, to work

up the nation to the fury which produced the subsequent

horrors. ... In extenuation of the delusion of the populace,

something may be offered. The defamation of half a century had

made the catholics the objects of protestant odium and

distrust: and these had been increased by the accusation,

artfully and assiduously fomented, of their having been the

authors of the fire of the city of London. The publication,

too, of Coleman's letters, certainly announced a considerable

activity in the catholics to promote the catholic religion;

and contained expressions, easily distorted to the sense, in

which the favourers of the belief of the plot wished them to

be understood. Danby's correspondence, likewise, which had

long been generally known, and was about this time made

public, had discovered that Charles was in the pay of France.

These, with several other circumstances, had inflamed the

imaginations of the public to the very highest pitch. A

dreadful something (and not the less dreadful because its

precise nature was altogether unknown), was generally

apprehended. ... For their supposed part in the plot, ten

laymen and seven priests, one of whom was seventy, another

eighty, years of age, were executed. Seventeen others were

condemned, but not executed. Some died in prison, and some

were pardoned. On the whole body of catholics the laws were

executed with horrible severity."

C. Butler,

Historical Memoirs of the English Catholics,

chapter 32, section 3 (volume 2).

ALSO IN:

Lord Campbell,

Lives of the Lord Chancellors,

chapter 89 (volume 3).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1679 (May).

The Habeas Corpus Act.

"Arbitrary imprisonment is a grievance which, in some degree,

has place in almost every government, except in that of Great

Britain; and our absolute security from it we owe chiefly to

the present Parliament; a merit which makes some atonement for

the faction and violence into which their prejudices had, in

other particulars, betrayed them. The great charter had laid

the foundation of this valuable part of liberty; the petition

of right had renewed and extended it; but some provisions were

still wanting to render it complete, and prevent all evasion

or delay from ministers and judges. The act of habeas corpus,

which passed this session, served these purposes. By this act

it was prohibited to send anyone to a prison beyond sea. No

judge, under severe penalties, must refuse to any prisoner a

writ of habeas corpus, by which the gaoler was directed to

produce in court the body of the prisoner (whence the writ has

its name), and to certify the cause of his detainer and

imprisonment. If the gaol lie within twenty miles of the

judge, the writ must be obeyed in three days; and so

proportionably for greater distances; every prisoner must be

indicted the first term after his commitment, and brought to

trial in the subsequent term. And no man, after being enlarged

by order of court, can be recommitted for the same offence."

D. Hume,

History of England,

chapter 67 (volume 6).

"The older remedies serving as a safeguard against unlawful

imprisonment, were--

1. The writ of Mainprise, ensuring the delivery of the accused

to a friend of the same, who gave security to answer for his

appearance before the court when required, and in token of

such undertaking he held him by the hand ('le prit par le

main').

2. The writ 'De odio et atiâ,' i. e., of hatred and malice,

which, though not abolished, has long since been antiquated.

... It directed the sheriff to make inquisition in the county

court whether the imprisonment proceeded from malice or not.

...

3. The writ 'De homine replegiando,' or replevying a man, that

is, delivering him out on security to answer what may be

objected against him.

A writ is, originally, a royal writing,

either an open patent addressed to all to whom it may come,

and issued under the great seal; or, 'litteræ clausæ,' a

sealed letter addressed to a particular person; such writs

were prepared in the royal courts or in the Court of Chancery.

The most usual instrument of protection, however, against

arbitrary imprisonment is the writ of 'Habeas corpus,' so

called from its beginning with the words, 'Habeas corpus ad

subjiciendum,' which, on account of its universal application

and the security it affords, has, insensibly, taken precedence

of all others.

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This is an old writ of the common law, and must be prayed for

in any of the Superior courts of common law. ... But this writ

. . . proved but a feeble, or rather wholly ineffectual

protection against the arbitrary power of the sovereign. The

right of an English subject to a writ of habeas corpus, and to

a release from imprisonment unless sufficient cause be shown

for his detention, was fully canvassed in the first years of

the reign of Charles I. ... The parliament endeavoured to

prevent such arbitrary imprisonment by passing the 'Petition

of Right,' which enacted that no freeman, in any such manner

... should be imprisoned or detained. Even this act was found

unavailing against the malevolent interpretations put by the

judges; hence the 16 Charles I., c. 10, was passed, which

enacts, that when any person is restrained of his liberty by

the king in person, or by the Privy Council, or any member

thereof, he shall, on demand of his counsel, have a writ of

habeas corpus, and, three days after the writ, shall be

brought before the court to determine whether there is ground

for further imprisonment, for bail, or for his release.

Notwithstanding these provisions, the immunity of English

subjects from arbitrary detention was not ultimately

established in full practical efficiency until the passing of

the statute of Charles II., commonly called the 'Habeas Corpus

Act.'"

E. Fischel,

The English Constitution,

book 1, chapter 9.

ALSO IN:

Sir W. Blackstone,

Commentaries on the Laws of England,

book 3, chapter 8.

H. J. Stephen,

Commentaries,

book 5, chapter 12, section 5 (volume 4).

The following is the text of the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679:

I. Whereas great Delays have been used by Sheriffs, Gaolers

and other Officers, to whose Custody any of the King's

Subjects have been committed, for criminal or supposed

criminal Matters, in making Returns of Writs of Habeas Corpus

to them directed, by standing out an Alias and Pluries Habeas

Corpus, and sometimes more, and by other Shifts, to avoid

their yielding Obedience to such Writs, contrary to their

Duty, and the known Laws of the Land, whereby many of the

King's Subjects have been, and hereafter may be long detained

in Prison, in such cases where by Law they are bailable, to

their great Charges and Vexation.

II. For the Prevention whereof, and the more speedy Relief of

all Persons imprisoned for any such Criminal, or supposed

Criminal Matters: (2.) Be it Enacted by the King's most

Excellent Majesty, by and with the Advice and Consent of the

Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons in this present

Parliament assembled, and by the Authority thereof, that

whensoever any Person or Persons shall bring any Habeas Corpus

directed unto any Sheriff, or Sheriffs, Gaoler, Minister, or

other Person whatsoever, for any Person in his or their

Custody, and the said Writ shall be served upon the said

Officer, or left at the Gaol or Prison, with any of the under

Officers, under Keepers, or Deputy of the said Officers or

Keepers, that the said Officer or Officers, his or their Under

Officers, Under Keepers or Deputies, shall within three Days

after the Service thereof, as aforesaid (unless the Commitment

aforesaid were for Treason or Felony, plainly and specially

expressed in the Warrant of Commitment), upon Payment or

Tender of the Charges of bringing the said Prisoner, to be

ascertained by the Judge or Court that awarded the same, and

endorsed upon the said Writ, not exceeding Twelve-pence per

Mile, and upon Security given by his own Bond, to pay the

Charges of carrying back the Prisoner, if he shall be remanded

by the Court or Judge, to which he shall be brought, according

to the true Intent of this present Act, and that he will not

make any Escape by the way, make Return of such Writ. (3.) And

bring or cause to be brought the Body of the Party so

committed or restrained, unto or before the Lord Chancellor,

or Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England for the time

being, or the Judges or Barons of the said Court from whence

the said Writ shall Issue, or unto and before such other

Person or Persons before whom the said Writ is made

returnable, according to the Command thereof. (4.) And shall

then likewise certifie the true causes of his Detainer, or

Imprisonment, unless the commitment of the said party be in

any place beyond the Distance of twenty Miles from the Place

or Places where such Court or Person is, or shall be residing;

and if beyond the Distance of twenty Miles, and not above One

Hundred Miles, then within the Space of Ten Days, and if

beyond the Distance of One Hundred Miles, then within the

space of Twenty Days, after such Delivery aforesaid, and not

longer.

III. And to the Intent that no Sheriff, Gaoler or other

Officer may pretend Ignorance of the Import of any such Writ,

(2.) Be it enacted by the Authority aforesaid, That all such

Writs shall be marked in this manner, Per Statutum Tricesimo

Primo Caroli Secundi Regis, and shall be signed by the Person

that awards the same. (3.) And if any Person or Persons shall

be or stand committed or detained, as aforesaid, for any

Crime, unless for Felony or Treason, plainly expressed in the

Warrant of Commitment, in the Vacation-time, and out of Term,

it shall and may be lawful to and for the Person or Persons so

committed or detained (other than Persons convict, or in

Execution by legal Process) or anyone on his or their Behalf,

to appeal, or complain to the Lord Chancellor, or Lord Keeper,

or anyone of His Majesty's Justices, either of the one Bench,

or of the other, or the Barons of the Exchequer of the Degree

of the Coif. (4.) And the said Lord Chancellor, Lord Keeper,

Justices, or Barons, or any of them, upon View of the Copy or

Copies of the Warrant or Warrants of Commitment and Detainer,

or otherwise upon Oath made, that such Copy or Copies were

denied to be given by such Person or Persons in whose custody

the Prisoner or Prisoners is or are detained, are hereby

authorized and required, upon Request made in Writing by such

Person or Persons, or any on his, her, or their Behalf,

attested and subscribed by two Witnesses, who were present at

the Delivery of the same, to award and grant an Habeas Corpus

under the Seal of such Court, whereof he shall then be one of

the Judges, (5.) to be directed to the Officer or Officers in

whose Custody the Party so committed or detained shall be,

returnable immediate before the said Lord Chancellor, or Lord

Keeper, or such Justice, Baron, or any other Justice or Baron,

of the Degree of the Coif, of any of the said Courts. (6.) And

upon Service thereof as aforesaid, the Officer or Officers,

his or their under Officer or under Officers, under Keeper or

under Keepers, or their Deputy, in whose Custody the Party is

so committed or detained, shall within the times respectively

before limited, bring such Prisoner or Prisoners before the

said Lord Chancellor or Lord Keeper, or such Justices, Barons,

or one of them, before whom the said Writ is made returnable,

and in case of his Absence, before any of them, with the

Return of such Writ, and the true Causes of the Commitment and

Detainer.

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(7.) And thereupon within two Days after the Party shall be

brought before them the said Lord Chancellor, or Lord Keeper,

or such Justice or Baron, before whom the Prisoner shall be

brought as aforesaid, shall discharge the said Prisoner from

his Imprisonment, taking his or their Recognizance, with one

or more Surety or Sureties, in any Sum, according to their

Discretions, having regard to the Quality of the Prisoner, and

Nature of the Offence, for his or their Appearance in the

Court of King's Bench the Term following, or at the next

Assizes, Sessions, or general Gaol-Delivery, of and for such

County, City or Place, where the Commitment was, or where the

Offence was committed, or in such other Court where the said

Offence is properly cognizable, as the Case shall require, and

then shall certify the said Writ with the Return thereof, and

the said Recognizance or Recognizances into the said Court,

where such Appearance is to be made. (8.) Unless it shall

appear unto the said Lord Chancellor, or Lord Keeper, or

Justice, or Justices, or Baron or Barons, that the Party so

committed is detained upon a legal Process, Order, or Warrant

out of some Court that hath Jurisdiction of Criminal Matters,

or by some Warrant signed and sealed with the Hand and Seal of

any of the said Justices or Barons, or some Justice or

Justices of the Peace, for such Matters or Offences, for the

which by the Law, the Prisoner is not bailable.

IV. Provided always, and be it enacted, That if any Person

shall have wilfully neglected by the Space of two whole Terms

after his Imprisonment to pray a Habeas Corpus for his

Enlargement, such Person so wilfully neglecting, shall not

have any Habeas Corpus to be granted in Vacation-time in

Pursuance of this Act.

V. And be it further enacted by the Authority aforesaid, That

if any Officer or Officers, his or their under Officer, or

under Officers, under Keeper or under Keepers, or Deputy,

shall neglect or refuse to make the Returns aforesaid, or to

bring the Body or Bodies of the Prisoner or Prisoners,

according to the Command of the said Writ, within the

respective times aforesaid, or upon Demand made by the

Prisoner, or Person in his Behalf, shall refuse to deliver, or

within the Space of six Hours after Demand shall not deliver,

to the Person so demanding, a true Copy of the Warrant or

Warrants of Commitment and Detainer of such Prisoner, which he

and they are hereby required to deliver accordingly; all and

every the Head Gaolers and Keepers of such Prisons, and such

other Person, in whose Custody the Prisoner shall be detained,

shall for the first Offence, forfeit to the Prisoner, or Party

grieved, the Sum of One Hundred Pounds. (2.) And for the

second Offence, the Sum of Two Hundred Pounds, and shall and

is hereby made incapable to hold or execute his said Office.

(3.) The said Penalties to be recovered by the Prisoner or

Party grieved, his Executors or Administrators, against such

Offender, his Executors or Administrators, by any Action of

Debt, Suit, Bill, Plaint or Information, in any of the King's

Courts at Westminster, wherein no Essoin, Protection,

Priviledge, Injunction, Wager of Law, or stay of Prosecution,

by Non vult ulterius prosequi, or otherwise, shall be admitted

or allowed, or any more than one Imparlance. (4.) And any

Recovery or Judgment at the Suit of any Party grieved, shall

be a sufficient Conviction for the first Offence; and any

after Recovery or Judgment at the Suit of a Party grieved, for

any Offence after the first Judgment, shall be a sufficient

Conviction to bring the Officers or Person within the said

Penalty for the Second Offence.

VI. And for the Prevention of unjust Vexation, by reiterated

Commitments for the same offence; (2.) Be it enacted by the

Authority aforesaid, That no Person or Persons, which shall be

delivered or set at large upon any Habeas Corpus, shall at any

time hereafter be again imprisoned or committed for the same

Offence, by any Person or Persons whatsoever, other than by

the legal Order and Process of such Court wherein he or they

shall be bound by Recognizance to appear, or other Court

having Jurisdiction of the Cause. (3.) And if any other Person

or Persons shall knowingly, contrary to this Act, recommit or

imprison, or knowingly procure or cause to be recommitted or

imprisoned for the same Offence, or pretended Offence, any

Person or Persons delivered or set at large as aforesaid, or

be knowingly aiding or assisting therein, then he or they

shall forfeit to the Prisoner or Party grieved, the Sum of

Five Hundred Pounds; any colourable Pretence or Variation in

the Warrant or Warrants of Commitment notwithstanding, to be

recovered as aforesaid.

VII. Provided always, and be it further enacted, That if any

Person or Persons shall be committed for High Treason or

Felony, plainly and specially expressed in the Warrant of

Commitment, upon his Prayer or Petition in open Court the

first Week of the Term, or first Day of the Sessions of Oyer

and Terminer, or general Gaol Delivery, to be brought to his

Tryal, shall not be indicted sometime in the next Term,

Sessions of Oyer and Terminer, or general Gaol-Delivery after

such Commitment, it shall and may be lawful to and for the

Judges of the Court of King's Bench, and Justices of Oyer and

Terminer, or general Gaol-Delivery, and they are hereby

required, upon Motion to them made in open Court the last Day

of the Term, Sessions or Gaol-Delivery, either by the

Prisoner, or anyone in his Behalf, to set at Liberty the

Prisoner upon Bail, unless it appear to the Judges and

Justices upon Oath made, that the Witnesses for the King could

not be produced the same Term, Sessions, or general

Gaol-Delivery. (2.) And if any Person or Persons committed as

aforesaid, upon his Prayer or Petition in open Court, the

first Week of the Term, or first Day of the Sessions of Oyer

and Terminer, and general Gaol-Delivery, to be brought to his

Tryal, shall not be indicted and tryed the second Term,

Sessions of Oyer and Terminer, or general Gaol-Delivery, after

his Commitment, or upon his Tryal shall be acquitted, he shall

be discharged from his Imprisonment.

VIII. Provided always, that nothing in this Act shall extend

to discharge out of Prison, any Person charged in Debt, or

other Action, or with Process in any Civil Cause, but that

after he shall be discharged of his Imprisonment for such his

criminal Offence, he shall be kept in Custody, according to

the Law for such other Suit.

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IX. Provided always, and be it enacted by the Authority

aforesaid, That if any Person or Persons, Subjects of this

Realm, shall be committed to any Prison, or in Custody of any

Officer or Officers whatsoever, for any Criminal or supposed

Criminal Matter, that the said Person shall not be removed

from the said Prison and Custody, into the Custody of any

other Officer or Officers. (2.) Unless it be by Habeas Corpus,

or some other legal Writ; or where the Prisoner is delivered

to the Constable or other inferiour Officer, to carry such

Prisoner to some common Gaol. (3.) Or where any Person is sent

by Order of any Judge of Assize, or Justice of the Peace, to

any common Workhouse, or House of Correction. (4.) Or where

the Prisoner is removed from one Prison or Place to another

within the same County, in order to his or her Tryal or

Discharge in due Course of Law. (5.) Or in case of sudden

Fire, or Infection, or other Necessity. (6.) And if any Person

or Persons shall after such Commitment aforesaid, make out and

sign, or countersign, any Warrant or Warrants for such Removal

aforesaid, contrary to this Act, as well he that makes or

signs, or countersigns, such Warrant or Warrants, as the

Officer or Officers, that obey or execute the same, shall

suffer & incur the Pains & Forfeitures in this Act

before-mentioned, both for the 1st & 2nd Offence,

respectively, to be recover'd in manner aforesaid, by the

Party grieved.

X. Provided also, and be it further enacted by the Authority

aforesaid, That it shall and may be lawful to and for any

Prisoner & Prisoners as aforesaid, to move, and obtain his or

their Habeas Corpus, as well out of the High Court of

Chancery, or Court of Exchequer, as out of the Courts of

King's Bench, or Common Pleas, or either of them. (2.) And if

the said Lord Chancellor or Lord Keeper, or any Judge or

Judges, Baron or Barons for the time being, of the Degree of

the Coif, of any of the Courts aforesaid, in the Vacation

time, upon view of the Copy or Copies of the Warrant or

Warrants of Commitment or Detainer, or upon Oath made that

such Copy or Copies were denied as aforesaid, shall deny any

Writ of Habeas Corpus by this Act required to be granted,

being moved for as aforesaid, they shall severally forfeit to

the Prisoner or Party grieved, the Sum of Five Hundred Pounds,

to be recovered in manner aforesaid.

XI. And be it declared and enacted by the Authority aforesaid,

That an Habeas Corpus according to the true Intent and meaning

of this Act, may be directed, and run into any County

Palatine, the Cinque Ports, or other priviledged Places,

within the Kingdom of England, Dominion of Wales, or Town of

Berwick upon Tweed, and the Isles of Jersey or Guernsey, any

Law or Usage to the contrary notwithstanding.

XII. And for preventing illegal Imprisonments in Prisons

beyond the Seas; (2.) Be it further enacted by the Authority

aforesaid, That no Subject of this Realm that now is, or

hereafter shall be, an Inhabitant or Resiant of this Kingdom

of England, Dominion of Wales, or Town of Berwick upon Tweed,

shall or may be sent Prisoner into Scotland, Ireland, Jersey,

Guernsey, Tangier, or into Parts, Garrisons, Islands, or

Places beyond the Seas, which are, or at any time hereafter

shall be within or without the Dominions of his Majesty, his

Heirs or Successors. (3.) And that every such Imprisonment is

hereby enacted and adjudged to be illegal. (4.) And that if

any of the said Subjects now is, or hereafter shall be so

imprisoned, every such Person and Persons so imprisoned, shall

and may for every such Imprisonment, maintain by Virtue of

this Act, an Action or Actions of False Imprisonment, in any

of his Majesty's Courts of Record, against the Person or

Persons by whom he or she shall be so committed, detained,

imprisoned, sent Prisoner or transported, contrary to the true

meaning of this Act, and against all or any Person or Persons,

that shall frame, contrive, write, seal or countersign any

Warrant or Writing for such Commitment, Detainer, Imprisonment

or Transportation, or shall be advising, aiding or assisting

in the same, or any of them. (5.) And the Plaintiff in every

such Action, shall have judgment to recover his treble Costs,

besides Damages; which Damages so to be given, shall not be

less than Five Hundred Pounds. (6.) In which Action, no Delay,

Stay, or Stop of Proceeding, by Rule, Order or Command, nor no

Injunction, Protection, or Priviledge whatsoever, nor any more

than one Imparlance shall be allowed, excepting such Rule of

the Court wherein the Action shall depend, made in open Court,

as shall be thought in justice necessary, for special Cause to

be expressed in the said Rule. (7.) And the Person or Persons

who shall knowingly frame, contrive, write, seal or

countersign any Warrant for such Commitment, Detainer, or

Transportation, or shall so commit, detain, imprison, or

transport any Person or Persons contrary to this Act, or be

any ways advising, aiding or assisting therein, being lawfully

convicted thereof, shall be disabled from thenceforth to bear

any Office of Trust or Profit within the said Realm of

England, Dominion of Wales, or Town of Berwick upon Tweed, or

any of the Islands, Territories or Dominions thereunto

belonging. (8.) And shall incur and sustain the Pains,

Penalties, and Forfeitures, limited, ordained, and Provided in

and by the Statute of Provision and Premunire made in the

Sixteenth Year of King Richard the Second. (9.) And be

incapable of any Pardon from the King, his Heirs or

Successors, of the said Forfeitures, Losses, or Disabilities,

or any of them.

XIII. Provided always, That nothing in this Act shall extend

to give Benefit to any Person who shall by Contract in

Writing, agree with any Merchant or Owner, of any Plantation,

or other Person whatsoever, to be transported to any part

beyond the Seas, and receive Earnest upon such Agreement,

altho' that afterwards such Person shall renounce such

Contract.

XIV. Provided always, and be it enacted, That if any Person or

Persons, lawfully convicted of any Felony, shall in open Court

pray to be transported beyond the Seas, and the Court shall

think fit to leave him or them in Prison for that Purpose,

such Person or Persons may be transported into any Parts

beyond the Seas; This Act, or any thing therein contained to

the contrary notwithstanding.

XV. Provided also, and be it enacted, That nothing herein

contained, shall be deemed, construed, or taken to extend to

the Imprisonment of any Person before the first Day of June,

One Thousand Six Hundred Seventy and Nine, or to any thing

advised, procured, or otherwise done, relating to such

Imprisonment; Any thing herein contained to the contrary

notwithstanding.

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XVI. Provided also, That if any Person or Persons, at any time

resiant in this Realm, shall have committed any Capital

Offence in Scotland or Ireland, or any of the Islands, or

foreign Plantations of the King, his Heirs or Successors,

where he or she ought to be tryed for such Offence, such

Person or Persons may be sent to such Place, there to receive

such Tryal, in such manner as the same might have been used

before the making this Act; Any thing herein contained to the

contrary notwithstanding.

XVII. Provided also, and be it enacted, That no Person or

Persons, shall be sued, impleaded, molested or troubled for

any Offence against this Act, unless the Party offending be

sued or impleaded for the same within two Years at the most

after such time wherein the Offence shall be committed, in

Case the Party grieved shall not be then in Prison; and if he

shall be in Prison, then within the space of two Years after

the Decease of the Person imprisoned, or his, or her Delivery

out of Prison, which shall first happen.

XVIII. And to the Intent no Person may avoid his Tryal at the

Assizes, or general Gaol Delivery, by procuring his Removal

before the Assizes at such time as he cannot be brought back

to receive his Tryal there; (2.) Be it enacted, That after the

Assizes proclaimed for that County where the Prisoner is

detained, no Person shall be removed from the Common Gaol upon

any Habeas Corpus granted in pursuance of this Act, but upon

any such Habeas Corpus shall be brought before the Judge of

Assize in open Court, who is thereupon to do what to Justice

shall appertain.

XIX. Provided nevertheless, That after the Assizes are ended,

any Person or Persons detained may have his or her Habeas

Corpus, according to the Direction and Intention of this Act.

XX. And be it also enacted by the Authority aforesaid, That if

any Information, Suit or Action, shall be brought or exhibited

against any Person or Persons, for any Offence committed or to

be committed against the Form of this Law, it shall be lawful

for such Defendants to plead the general Issue, that they are

not guilty, or that they owe nothing, and to give such special

Matter in Evidence to the Jury, that shall try the same, which

Matter being pleaded, had been good and sufficient matter in

Law to have discharged the said Defendant or Defendants

against the said Information, Suit or Action, and the said

Matter shall be then as available to him or them, to all

Intents and Purposes, as if he or they had sufficiently

pleaded, set forth, or alleged the same Matter in Bar, or

Discharge of such Information, Suit or Action.

XXI. And because many times Persons charged with Petty-Treason

or Felony, or as Accessaries thereunto, are committed upon

Suspicion only, whereupon they are bailable or not, according

as the Circumstances making out that Suspicion are more or

less weighty, which are best known to the Justices of Peace

that committed the Persons, and have the Examinations before

them, or to other Justices of the Peace in the County; (2.) Be

it therefore enacted, That where any Person shall appear to be

committed by any Judge, or Justice of the Peace, and charged

as necessary before the Fact, to any Petty-Treason or Felony,

or upon Suspicion thereof, or with Suspicion of Petty-Treason

or Felony, which Petty-Treason or Felony, shall be plainly and

specially expressed in the Warrant of Commitment, that such

Person shall not be removed or bailed by Virtue of this Act,

or in any other manner than they might have been before the

making of this Act.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1679 (June).

The Meal-tub Plot.

"Dangerfield, a subtle and dexterous man, who had gone through

all the shapes and practices of roguery, and in particular was

a false coiner, undertook now to coin a plot for the ends of

the papists. He ... got into all companies, and mixed with the

hottest men of the town, and studied to engage others with

himself to swear that they had been invited to accept of

commissions, and that a new form of government was to be set

up, and that the king and the royal family were to be sent

away. He was carried with this story, first to the duke, and

then to the king, and had a weekly allowance of money, and was

very kindly used by many of that side; so that a whisper run

about town, that some extraordinary thing would quickly break

out: and he having some correspondence with one colonel

Mansel, he made up a bundle of seditious but ill contrived

letters, and laid them in a dark corner of his room: and then

some searchers were sent from the custom house to look for

some forbidden goods, which they heard were in Mansel's

chamber. There were no goods found: but as it was laid, they

found that bundle of letters: and upon that a great noise was

made of a discovery: but upon inquiry it appeared the letters

were counterfeited, and the forger of them was suspected; so

they searched into all Dangerfield's haunts, and in one of

them they found a paper that contained the scheme of this

whole fiction, which, because it was found in a meal-tub, came

to be called the meal-tub plot. ... This was a great disgrace

to the popish party, and the king suffered much by the

countenance he had given him."

G. Burnet,

History of My Own Time,

book 3, 1679.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1679-1681.

The Exclusion Bill.

"Though the duke of York was not charged with participation in

the darkest schemes of the popish conspirators, it was evident

that his succession was the great aim of their endeavours, and

evident also that he had been engaged in the more real and

undeniable intrigues of Coleman. His accession to the throne,

long viewed with just apprehension, now seemed to threaten

such perils to every part of the constitution as ought not

supinely to be waited for, if any means could be devised to

obviate them. This gave rise to the bold measure of the

exclusion bill, too bold, indeed, for the spirit of the

country, and the rock on which English liberty was nearly

shipwrecked. In the long parliament, full as it was of

pensioners and creatures of court influence, nothing so

vigorous would have been successful. ... But the zeal they

showed against Danby induced the king to put an end [January

24, 1679] to this parliament of seventeen years' duration; an

event long ardently desired by the popular party, who foresaw

their ascendancy in the new elections. The next house of

commons accordingly came together with an ardour not yet

quenched by corruption; and after reviving the impeachments

commenced by their predecessors, and carrying a measure long

in agitation, a test which shut the catholic peers out of

parliament, went upon the exclusion bill [the second reading

of which was carried, May 21, 1679, by 207 to 128].

{903}

Their dissolution put a stop to this; and in the next

parliament the lords rejected it [after the commons had passed

the bill, without a division, October, 1680]. ... The bill of

exclusion ... provided that the imperial crown of England

should descend to and be enjoyed by such person or persons

successively during the life of the duke of York as would have

inherited or enjoyed the same in case he were naturally dead.

... But a large part of the opposition had unfortunately other

objects in view." Under the contaminating influence of the

earl of Shaftesbury, "they broke away more and more from the

line of national opinion, till a fatal reaction involved

themselves in ruin, and exposed the cause of public liberty to

its most imminent peril. The countenance and support of

Shaftesbury brought forward that unconstitutional and most

impolitic scheme of the duke of Monmouth's succession. [James,

duke of Monmouth, was the acknowledged natural son of king

Charles, by Lucy Walters, his mistress while in exile at the

Hague.] There could hardly be a greater insult to a nation

used to respect its hereditary line of kings, than to set up

the bastard of a prostitute, without the least pretence of

personal excellence or public services, against a princess of

known virtue and attachment to the protestant religion. And

the effrontery of this attempt was aggravated by the libels

eagerly circulated to dupe the credulous populace into a

belief of Monmouth's legitimacy."

H. Hallam,

Constitutional History of England,

chapter 12.

ALSO IN:

A. Carrel,

History of the Counter-Revolution in England,

part 2, chapter 1.

G. Roberts,

Life of Monmouth,

chapter 4-8 (volume 1).

G. Burnet,

History of My Own Time,

book 3, 1679-81.

Sir W. Temple,

Memoirs,

part 3 (Works, volume 2).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1680.

Whigs and Tories acquire their respective names.

"Factions indeed were at this time [A. D. 1680] extremely

animated against each other. The very names by which each

party denominated its antagonist discover the virulence and

rancour which prevailed. For besides petitioner and abhorrer,

appellations which were soon forgotten, this year is

remarkable for being the epoch of the well-known epithets of

Whig and Tory, by which, and sometimes without any material

difference, this island has been so long divided. The court

party reproached their antagonists with their affinity to the

fanatical conventiclers in Scotland, who were known by the

name of Whigs: the country party found a resemblance between

the courtiers and the popish banditti in Ireland, to whom the

appellation of Tory was affixed: and after this manner these

foolish terms of reproach came into public and general use."

D. Hume,

History of England,

chapter 68 (volume 6).

"The definition of the nickname Tory, as it originally arose,

is given in 'A New Ballad' (Narcissus Luttrell's

Collection):--

The word Tory's of Irish Extraction,

'Tis a Legacy that they have left here

They came here in their brogues,

And have acted like Rogues,

In endeavouring to learn us to swear."

J. Grego,

History of Parliamentary Elections,

page 36.

ALSO IN:

G. W. Cooke,

History of Party,

volume 1, chapter 2.

Lord Macaulay,

History of England,

chapter 2.

For the origin of the name of the 'Whig party,

See WHIGS (WIGGAMORS); also, RAPPAREES.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1681-1683.

The Tory reaction and the downfall of the Whigs.

The Rye-house Plot.

"Shaftesbury's course rested wholly on the belief that the

penury of the Treasury left Charles at his mercy, and that a

refusal of supplies must wring from the King his assent to the

exclusion. But the gold of France had freed the King from his

thraldom. He had used the Parliament [of 1681] simply to

exhibit himself as a sovereign whose patience and conciliatory

temper was rewarded with insult and violence; and now that he

saw his end accomplished, he suddenly dissolved the Houses in

April, and appealed in a Royal declaration to the justice of

the nation at large. The appeal was met by an almost universal

burst of loyalty. The Church rallied to the King; his

declaration was read from every pulpit; and the Universities

solemnly decided that 'no religion, no law, no fault, no

forfeiture' could avail to bar the sacred right of hereditary

succession. ... The Duke of York returned in triumph to St.

James's. ... Monmouth, who had resumed his progresses through

the country as a means of checking the tide of reaction, was

at once arrested. ... Shaftesbury, alive to the new danger,

plunged desperately into conspiracies with a handful of

adventurers as desperate as himself, hid himself in the City,

where he boasted that ten thousand 'brisk boys' were ready to

appear at his call, and urged his friends to rise in arms. But

their delays drove him to flight. ... The flight of

Shaftesbury proclaimed the triumph of the King. His wonderful

sagacity had told him when the struggle was over and further

resistance useless. But the Whig leaders, who had delayed to

answer the Earl's call, still nursed projects of rising in

arms, and the more desperate spirits who had clustered around

him as he lay hidden in the City took refuge in plots of

assassination, and in a plan for murdering Charles and his

brother as they passed the Rye-house [a Hertfordshire farm

house, so-called] on their road from London to Newmarket. Both

the conspiracies were betrayed, and, though they were wholly

distinct from one another, the cruel ingenuity of the Crown

lawyers blended them into one. Lord Essex, the last of an

ill-fated race, saved himself from a traitor's death by

suicide in the Tower. Lord Russell, convicted on a charge of

sharing in the Rye-house Plot, was beheaded in Lincoln Inn

Fields. The same fate awaited Algernon Sidney. Monmouth fled

in terror over sea, and his flight was followed by a series of

prosecutions for sedition directed against his followers. In 1683

the Constitutional opposition which had held Charles so long

in check lay crushed at his feet. ... On the very day when the

crowd around Russell's scaffold were dipping their

handkerchiefs in his blood, as in the blood of a martyr, the

University of Oxford solemnly declared that the doctrine of

passive obedience, even to the worst of rulers, was a part of

religion." During the brief remainder of his reign Charles was

a prudently absolute monarch, governing without a Parliament,

coolly ignoring the Triennial Act, and treating on occasions

the Test Act, as well as other laws obnoxious to him, with

contempt. He died unexpectedly, early in February, 1685, and

his brother, the Duke of York, succeeded to the throne, as

James II., with no resistance, but with much feeling opposed

to him.

J. R. Green,

Short History of England,

chapter 9, sections 5-6.

{904}

ALSO IN:

G. Roberts,

Life of Monmouth;

chapters 8-10 (volume 1).

D. Hume,

History of England,

chapters 68-69 (volume 6).

G. W. Cooke,

History of Party,

volume 1, chapters 6-11.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1685.

Accession of James II.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1685 (February).

The new King proclaims his religion.

"The King [James II.] early put the loyalty of his Protestant

friends to the proof. While he was a subject, he had been in

the habit of hearing mass with closed doors in a small oratory

which had been fitted up for his wife. He now ordered the

doors to be thrown open, in order that all who came to pay

their duty to him might see the ceremony. When the host was

elevated there was a strange confusion in the antechamber. The

Roman Catholics fell on their knees: the Protestants hurried

out of the room. Soon a new pulpit was erected in the palace;

and, during Lent, a series of sermons was preached there by

Popish divines."

Lord Macaulay,

History of England,

chapter 4 (volume 2).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1685 (May-July).

Monmouth's Rebellion.

"The Parliament which assembled on the 22nd of May ... was

almost entirely Tory. The failure of the Rye-House Plot had

produced a reaction, which for a time entirely annihilated the

Whig influence. ... The apparent triumph of the King and the

Tory party was completed by the disastrous failure of the

insurrection planned by their adversaries. A knot of exiled

malcontents, some Scotch, some English, had collected in

Holland. Among them was Monmouth and the Earl of Argyle, son

of that Marquis of Argyle who had taken so prominent a part on

the Presbyterian side in the Scotch troubles of Charles I.'s

reign. Monmouth had kept aloof from politics till, on the

accession of James, he was induced to join the exiles at

Amsterdam, whither Argyle, a strong Presbyterian, but a man of

lofty and moderate views, also repaired. National jealousy

prevented any union between the exiles, and two expeditions

were determined on,--the one under Argyle, who hoped to find

an army ready to his hand among his clansmen in the West of

Scotland, the other under Monmouth in the West of England.

Argyle's expedition set sail on the 2nd of May [1685]. ...

Argyle's invasion was ruined by the limited authority

intrusted to him, and by the jealousy and insubordination of

his fellow leaders. ... His army disbanded. He was himself

taken in Renfrewshire, and, after an exhibition of admirable

constancy, was beheaded. ... A week before the final

dispersion of Argyle's troops, Monmouth had landed in England

[at Lyme, June 11]. He was well received in the West. He had

not been twenty-four hours in England before he found himself

at the head of 1,500 men; but though popular among the common

people, he received no support from the upper classes. Even

the strongest Whigs disbelieved the story of his legitimacy,

and thought his attempt ill-timed and fraught with danger. ...

Meanwhile Monmouth had advanced to Taunton, had been there

received with enthusiasm, and, vainly thinking to attract the

nobility, had assumed the title of King. Nor was his reception

at Bridgewater less flattering. But difficulties already began

to gather round him; he was in such want of arms, that,

although rustic implements were converted into pikes, he was

still obliged to send away many volunteers; the militia were

closing in upon him in all directions; Bristol had been seized

by the Duke of Beaufort, and the regular army under Feversham

and Churchill were approaching." After feebly attempting

several movements, against Bristol and into Wiltshire,

Monmouth lost heart and fell back to Bridgewater. "The

Royalist army was close behind him, and on the fifth of July

encamped about three miles from Bridgewater, on the plain of

Sedgemoor." Monmouth was advised to undertake a night

surprise, and did so in the early morning of the 6th. "The

night was not unfitting for such an enterprise, for the mist

was so thick that at a few paces nothing could be seen. Three

great ditches by which the moor was drained lay between the

armies; of the third of these, strangely enough, Monmouth knew

nothing." The unexpected discovery of this third ditch, known

as "the Bussex Rhine," which his cavalry could not cross, and

behind which the enemy rallied, was the ruin of the

enterprise. "Monmouth saw that the day was lost, and with the

love of life which was one of the characteristics of his soft

nature, he turned and fled. Even after his flight the battle

was kept up bravely. At length the arrival of the King's

artillery put an end to any further struggle. The defeat was

followed by all the terrible scenes which mark a suppressed

insurrection. ... Monmouth and Grey pursued their flight into

the New Forest, and were there apprehended in the

neighbourhood of Ringwood." Monmouth petitioned abjectly for

his life, but in vain. He was executed on the 15th of July.

"The failure of this insurrection was followed by the most

terrible cruelties. Feversham returned to London, to be

flattered by the King and laughed at by the Court for his

military exploits. He left Colonel Kirke in command at

Bridgewater. This man had learned, as commander at Tangier,

all the worst arts of cruel despotism. His soldiery in bitter

pleasantry were called Kirke's 'Lambs,' from the emblem of

their regiment. It is impossible to say how many suffered at

the hands of this man and his brutal troops; 100 captives are

said by some to have been put to death the week after the

battle. But this military revenge did not satisfy the Court."

J. F. Bright,

History of England,

period 2, pages 764-768.

The number of Monmouth's men killed is computed by some at

2,000, by others at 300; a disparity, however, which may be

easily reconciled by supposing that the one account takes in

those who were killed in battle, while the other comprehends

the wretched fugitives who were massacred in ditches,

cornfields, and other hiding places, the following day."

C. J. Fox,

History of the Early Part of the Reign of James II.,

chapter 3.

ALSO IN:

G. Roberts,

Life of Monmouth,

chapters 13-28 (volumes 1-2).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1685 (September).

The Bloody Assizes.

"Early in September, Jeffreys [Sir George Jeffreys, Chief

Justice of the Court of King's Bench], accompanied by four

other judges, set out on that circuit of which the memory will

last as long as our race and language. ... At Winchester the

Chief Justice first opened his commission. Hampshire had not

been the theatre of war; but many of the vanquished rebels

had, like their leader, fled thither." Two among these had

been found concealed in the house of Lady Alice Lisle, a widow

of eminent nobility of character, and Jeffreys' first proceeding

was to arraign Lady Alice for the technical reason of the

concealment.

{905}

She was tried with extraordinary brutality of manner on the

part of the judge; the jury was bullied into a verdict of

guilty, and the innocent woman was condemned by the fiend on

the bench to be burned alive. By great exertion of many

people, the sentence was commuted from burning to beheading.

No mercy beyond this could be obtained from Jeffreys or his

fit master, the king. "In Hampshire Alice Lisle was the only

victim: but, on the day following her execution, Jeffreys

reached Dorchester, the principal town of the county in which

Monmouth had landed, and the judicial massacre began. The

court was hung, by order of the Chief Justice, with scarlet;

and this innovation seemed to the multitude to indicate a

bloody purpose. ... More than 300 prisoners were to be tried.

The work seemed heavy; but Jeffreys had a contrivance for

making it light. He let it be understood that the only chance

of obtaining pardon or respite was to plead guilty.

Twenty-nine persons, who put themselves on their country and

were convicted, were ordered to be tied up without delay. The

remaining prisoners pleaded guilty by scores. Two hundred and

ninety-two received sentence of death. The whole number hanged

in Dorsetshire amounted to seventy-four. From Dorchester

Jeffreys proceeded to Exeter. The civil war had barely grazed

the frontier of Devonshire. Here, therefore, comparatively few

persons were capitally punished. Somersetshire, the chief seat

of the rebellion, had been reserved for the last and most

fearful vengeance. In this county two hundred and thirty-three

prisoners were in a few days hanged, drawn and quartered. At

every spot where two roads met, on every market place, on the

green of every large village which had furnished Monmouth with

soldiers, ironed corpses clattering in the wind, or heads and

quarters stuck on poles, poisoned the air, and made the

traveller sick with horror. ... The Chief Justice was all

himself. His spirits rose higher and higher as the work went

on. He laughed, shouted, joked, and swore in such a way that

many thought him drunk from morning to night. ... Jeffreys

boasted that he had hanged more traitors than all his

predecessors together since the Conquest. ... Yet those rebels

who were doomed to death were less to be pitied than some of

the survivors. Several prisoners to whom Jeffreys was unable

to bring home the charge of high treason were convicted of

misdemeanours and were sentenced to scourging not less

terrible than that which Oates had undergone. ... The number

of prisoners whom Jeffreys transported was eight hundred and

forty-one. These men, more wretched than their associates who

suffered death, were distributed into gangs, and bestowed on

persons who enjoyed favour at court. The conditions of the

gift were that the convicts should be carried beyond sea as

slaves, that they should not be emancipated for ten years, and

that the place of their banishment should be some West Indian

island. ... It was estimated by Jeffreys that, on an average,

each of them, after all charges were paid, would be worth from

ten to fifteen pounds. There was therefore much angry

competition for grants. ... And now Jeffreys had done his

work, and returned to claim his reward. He arrived at Windsor

from the West, leaving carnage, mourning and terror behind

him. The hatred with which he was regarded by the people of

Somersetshire has no parallel in our history. ... But at the

court Jeffreys was cordially welcomed. He was a judge after

his master's own heart. James had watched the circuit with

interest and delight. ... At a later period, when all men of

all parties spoke with horror of the Bloody Assizes, the

wicked Judge and the wicked King attempted to vindicate

themselves by throwing the blame on each other."

Lord Macaulay,

History of England,

chapter 5.

ALSO IN:

Sir James Mackintosh,

History of the Revolution

in England, chapter 1.

Lord Campbell,

Lives of the Lord Chancellors,

chapter 100 (volume 3).

G. Roberts,

Life of Monmouth,

chapter 29-31 (volume 2).

See, also, TAUNTON: A. D. 1685.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1685-1686.

Faithless and tyrannical measures against

the New England colonies.

See CONNECTICUT: A. D. 1685-1687;

and MASSACHUSETTS: A. D. 1671-1686.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1685-1689.

The Despotism of James II. in Scotland.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1681-1689.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1686.

The Court of High Commission revived.

"James conceived the design of employing his authority as head

of the Church of England as a means of subjecting that church

to his pleasure, if not of finally destroying it. It is hard

to conceive how he could reconcile to his religion the

exercise of supremacy in an heretical sect, and thus sanction

by his example the usurpations of the Tudors on the rights of

the Catholic Church. ... He, indeed, considered the

ecclesiastical supremacy as placed in his hands by Providence

to enable him to betray the Protestant establishment. 'God,'

said he to Barillon, 'has permitted that all the laws made to

establish Protestantism now serve as a foundation for my

measures to re-establish true religion, and give me a right to

exercise a more extensive power than other Catholic princes

possess in the ecclesiastical affairs of their dominions.' He

found legal advisers ready with paltry expedients for evading

the two statutes of 1641 and 1660 [abolishing, and

re-affirming the abolition of the Court of High Commission],

under the futile pretext that they forbade only a court vested

with such powers of corporal punishment as had been exercised

by the old Court of High Commission; and in conformity to

their pernicious counsel, he issued, in July, a commission to

certain ministers, prelates, and judges, to act as a Court of

Commissioners in Ecclesiastical Causes. The first purpose of

this court was to enforce directions to preachers, issued by

the King, enjoining them to abstain from preaching on

controverted questions."

Sir James Mackintosh,

History of the Revolution in England,

chapter 2.

ALSO IN:

D. Neal,

History of the Puritans,

volume 5, chapter 3.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1686.

The consolidation of New England under a royal

Governor-General.

See NEW ENGLAND: A. D. 1686.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1687.

Riddance of the Test Act by royal dispensing power.

"The abolition of the tests was a thing resolved upon in the

catholic council, and for this a sanction of some kind or

other was required, as they dared not yet proceed upon the

royal will alone. Chance, or the machinations of the

catholics, created an affair which brought the question of the

tests under another form before the court of king's bench.

{906}

This court had not the power to abolish the Test Act, but it

might consider whether the king had the right of exempting

particular subjects from the formalities. ... The king ...

closeted himself with the judges one by one, dismissed some,

and got those who replaced them, 'ignorant men,' says an

historian, 'and scandalously incompetent,' to acknowledge his

dispensing power. ... The judges of the king's bench, after a

trial, ... declared, almost in the very language used by the

crown counsel:

1. That the kings of England are sovereign princes;

2. That the laws of England are the king's laws;

3. That therefore it is an inseparable prerogative in the

kings of England to dispense with penal laws in particular

cases, and upon particular necessary reasons;

4. That of those reasons, and those necessities, the king

himself is sole judge; and finally, which is consequent

upon all,

5. That this is not a trust invested in, or granted to the

king by the people, but the ancient remains of the

sovereign power and prerogative of the kings of England,

which never yet was taken from them, nor can be.

The case thus decided, the king thought he might rely upon the

respect always felt by the English people for the decisions of

the higher courts, to exempt all his catholic subjects from

the obligations of the test. And upon this, it became no

longer a question merely of preserving in their commissions

and offices those whose dismissal had been demanded by

parliament. ... To obtain or to retain certain employments, it

was necessary to be of the same religion with the king.

Papists replaced in the army and in the administration all

those who had pronounced at all energetically for the

maintenance of the tests. Abjurations, somewhat out of credit

during the last session of parliament, again resumed favour."

A. Carrel,

History of the Counter-Revolution in England,

chapter 3.

ALSO IN:

J. Stoughton,

History of Religion in England,

volume 4, chapter 4.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1687-1688.

Declarations of Indulgence.

Trial of the Seven Bishops.

"Under pretence of toleration for Dissenters, James

endeavoured, under another form, to remove obstacles from

Romanists. He announced an Indulgence. He began in Scotland by

issuing on the 12th of February, 1687, in Edinburgh, a

Proclamation granting relief to scrupulous consciences. Hereby

he professed to relieve the Presbyterians, but the relief of

them amounted to nothing; to the Romanists it was complete.

... On the 18th of March, 1687, he announced to the English

Privy Council his intention to prorogue Parliament, and to

grant upon his own authority entire liberty of conscience to

all his subjects. Accordingly on the 4th of April he published

his Indulgence, declaring his desire to see all his subjects

become members of the Church of Rome, and his resolution

(since that was impracticable) to protect them in the free

exercise of their religion; also promising to protect the

Established Church: then he annulled a number of Acts of

Parliament, suspended all penal laws against Nonconformists,

authorised Roman Catholics and Protestant Dissenters to

perform worship publicly, and abrogated all Acts of Parliament

imposing any religious test for civil or military offices.

This declaration was then notoriously illegal and

unconstitutional. James now issued a second and third

declaration for Scotland, and courted the Dissenters in

England, but with small encouragement. ... On the 27th of

April, 1688, James issued a second Declaration of Indulgence

for England. ... On the 4th of May, by an order in Council, he

directed his Declaration of the 27th of April to be publicly

read during divine service in all Churches and Chapels, by the

officiating ministers, on two successive Sundays--namely, on

the 20th and 27th of May in London, and on the 3d and 10th of

June in the country; and desired the Bishops to circulate this

Declaration through their dioceses. Hitherto the Bishops and

Clergy had held the doctrine of passive obedience to the

sovereign, however bad in character or in his measures--now

they were placed by the King himself in a dilemma. Here was a

violation of existing law, and an intentional injury to their

Church, if not a plan for the substitution of another. The

Nonconformists, whom James pretended to serve, coincided with

and supported the Church. A decided course must be taken. The

London Clergy met and resolved not to read the Declaration. On

the 12th of May, at Lambeth Palace, the Archbishop of

Canterbury and other Prelates assembled. They resolved that

the Declaration ought not to be read. On Friday, the 18th of

May, a second meeting of the Prelates and eminent divines was

held at Lambeth Palace. A petition to the King was drawn up by

the Archbishop of Canterbury in his own handwriting,

disclaiming all disloyalty and all intolerance, ... but

stating that Parliament had decided that the King could not

dispense with Statutes in matters ecclesiastical--that the

Declaration was therefore illegal--and could not be solemnly

published by the petitioners in the House of God and during

divine service. This paper was signed by Sancroft, Archbishop

of Canterbury, Lloyd, Bishop of St. Asaph, Turner of Ely, Lake

of Chichester, Ken of Bath and Wells, White of Peterborough,

and Trelawny of Bristol. It was approved by Compton, Bishop of

London, but not signed, because he was under suspension. The

Archbishop had long been forbidden to appear at Court,

therefore could not present it. On Friday evening the six

Bishops who had signed were introduced by Sunderland to the

King, who read the document and pronounced it libellous [and

seditious and rebellious], and the Bishops retired. On Sunday,

the 20th of May, the first day appointed, the Declaration was

read in London only in four Churches out of one hundred. The

Dissenters and Church Laymen sided with the Clergy. On the

following Sunday the Declaration was treated in the same

manner in London, and on Sunday, the 3d of June, was

disregarded by Bishops and Clergy in all parts of England.

James, by the advice of Jeffreys, ordered the Archbishop and

Bishops to be indicted for a seditious libel. They were, on

the 8th of June, conveyed to the Tower amidst the most

enthusiastic demonstrations of respect and affection from all

classes. The same night the Queen was said to have given birth

to a son; but the national opinion was that some trick had

been played. On the 29th of June the trial of the seven

Bishops came on before the Court of King's Bench. ... The

Jury, who, after remaining together all night (one being

stubborn) pronounced a verdict of not guilty on the morning of

the 30th June, 1688."

W. H. Torriano,

William the Third,

chapter 2.

{907}

"The court met at nine o'clock. The nobility and gentry

covered the benches, and an immense concourse of people filled

the Hall, and blocked up the adjoining streets. Sir Robert

Langley, the foreman of the jury, being, according to

established form, asked whether the accused were guilty or not

guilty, pronounced the verdict 'Not guilty.' No sooner were

these words uttered than a loud huzza arose from the audience

in the court. It was instantly echoed from without by a shout

of joy, which sounded like a crack of the ancient and massy

roof of Westminster Hall. It passed with electrical rapidity

from voice to voice along the infinite multitude who waited in

the streets. It reached the Temple in a few minutes. ... 'The

acclamations,' says Sir John Reresby, 'were a very rebellion

in noise.' In no long time they ran to the camp at Hounslow,

and were repeated with an ominous voice by the soldiers in the

hearing of the King, who, on being told that they were for the

acquittal of the bishops, said, with an ambiguity probably

arising from confusion, 'So much the worse for them.'"

Sir J. Mackintosh,

History of the Revolution in England in 1688,

chapter 9.

ALSO IN:

A. Strickland,

Lives of the Seven Bishops.

R. Southey,

Book of the Church,

chapter 18.

G. G. Perry,

History of the Church of England,

chapter 30 (volume 2).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1688 (July).

William and Mary of Orange the hope of the nation.

"The wiser among English statesmen had fixed their hopes

steadily on the succession of Mary, the elder daughter and

heiress of James. The tyranny of her father's reign made this

succession the hope of the people at large. But to Europe the

importance of the change, whenever it should come about, lay

not so much in the succession of Mary as in the new power

which such an event would give to her husband, William, Prince

of Orange. We have come, in fact, to a moment when the

struggle of England against the aggression of its King blends

with the larger struggle of Europe against the aggression of

Lewis XIV."

J. R. Green,

Short History of England,

chapter 9, section 7.

"William of Nassau, Prince of Orange, Stadtholder of the

republic of the United Provinces, was, before the birth of the

Prince of Wales, first prince of the blood royal of England

[as son of Princess Mary, daughter of Charles I., and,

therefore, nephew as well as son-in-law of James II.]; and his

consort, the Lady Mary, the eldest daughter of the King, was,

at that period, presumptive heiress to the crown."

Sir J. Mackintosh,

History of the Revolution in England,

chapter 10.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1688 (JULY-NOVEMBER).

Invitation to William of Orange and his acceptance of it.

"In July, in almost exact coincidence of time with the Queen's

accouchement [generally doubted and suspected], came the

memorable trial of the Seven Bishops, which gave the first

demonstration of the full force of that popular animosity

which James's rule had provoked. Some months before, however,

Edward Russell, nephew of the Earl of Bedford, and cousin of

Algernon Sidney's fellow-victim, had sought the Hague with

proposals to William [prince of Orange] to make an armed

descent upon England, as vindicator of English liberties and

the Protestant religion. William had cautiously required a

signed invitation from at least a few representative statesmen

before committing himself to such an enterprise, and on the

day of the acquittal of the Seven Bishops a paper, signed in

cipher by Lords Shrewsbury, Devonshire, Danby, and Lumley, by

Compton, Bishop of Northampton, by Edward Russell, and by

Henry Sidney, brother of Algernon, was conveyed by Admiral

Herbert to the Hague. William was now furnished with the

required security for English assistance in the projected

undertaking, but the task before him was still one of extreme

difficulty. ... On the 10th of October, matters now being ripe

for such a step, William, in conjunction with some of his

English advisers, put forth his famous declaration. Starting

with a preamble to the effect that the observance of laws is

necessary to the happiness of states, the instrument proceeds

to enumerate fifteen particulars in which the laws of England

had been set at naught. The most important of these were--

(1) the exercise of the dispensing power;

(2) the corruption, coercion, and packing of the judicial

bench;

(3) the violation of the test laws by the appointment of

papists to offices (particularly judicial and military

offices, and the administration of Ireland), and generally

the arbitrary and illegal measures resorted to by James for

the propagation of the Catholic religion;

(4) the establishment and action of the Court of High

Commission;

(5) the infringement of some municipal charters, and the

procuring of the surrender of others;

(6) interference with elections by turning out of all

employment such as refused to vote as they were required;

and

(7) the grave suspicion which had arisen that the Prince of

Wales was not born of the Queen, which as yet nothing had

been done to remove.

Having set forth these grievances, the Prince's manifesto went

on to recite the close interest which he and his consort had

in this matter as next in succession to the crown, and the

earnest solicitations which had been made to him by many lords

spiritual and temporal, and other English subjects of all

ranks, to interpose, and concluded by affirming in a very

distinct and solemn manner that the sole object of the

expedition then preparing was to obtain the assembling of a

free and lawful Parliament, to which the Prince pledged

himself to refer all questions concerning the due execution of

the laws, and the maintenance of the Protestant religion, and

the conclusion of an agreement between the Church of England

and the Dissenters, as also the inquiry into the birth of the

'pretended Prince of Wales'; and that this object being

attained, the Prince would, as soon as the state of the nation

should permit of it, send home his foreign forces. About a

week after, on the 16th of October, all things being now in

readiness, the Prince took solemn leave of the States-General.

... On the 19th William and his armament set sail from

Helvoetsluys, but was met on the following day by a violent

storm which forced him to put back on the 21st. On the 1st of

November the fleet put to sea a second time. ... By noon of

the 5th of November, the Prince's fleet was wafted safely into

Torbay."

H. D. Traill,

William the Third,

chapter 3.

ALSO IN:

G. Burnet,

History of My Own Time, 1688

(volume 3).

L. von Ranke,

History of England, 17th Century,

book 18, chapters 1-4 (volume 4).

Lord Campbell,

Lives of the Lord Chancellors,

chapters 106-107: Somers (volume 4).

T. P. Courtenay,

Life of Danby (Lardner's Cab. Cyclop.),

pages 315-324.

{908}

ENGLAND: A. D. 1688 (NOVEMBER-DECEMBER).

The Revolution.

Ignominious flight of James.

"The declaration published by the prince [on landing]

consisted of sixteen articles. It enumerated those proceedings

of the government since the accession of the king, which were

regarded as in the greatest degree opposed to the liberty of

the subject and to the safety of the Protestant religion. ...

To provide some effectual remedy against these and similar

evils, was the only design of the enterprise in which the

prince, in compliance with earnest solicitations from many

lords, both spiritual and temporal, from numbers among the

gentry and all ranks of people, had now embarked. ...

Addresses were also published to the army and navy. ... The

immediate effect of these appeals did not correspond with the

expectations of William and his followers. On the 8th of

November the people of Exeter received the prince with quiet

submission. The memory of Monmouth's expedition was still

fresh and terrible through the west. On the 12th, lord

Cornbury, son of the earl of Clarendon, went over, with some

officers, and about a hundred of his regiment, to the prince;

and most of the officers, with a larger body of the privates

belonging to the regiment commanded by the duke of St.

Alban's, followed their example. Of three regiments, however,

quartered near Salisbury, the majority could not be induced to

desert the service of the king. ... Every day now brought with

it new accessions to the standard of the prince, and tidings

of movements in different parts of the kingdom in his favour;

while James was as constantly reminded, by one desertion after

another, that he lived in an atmosphere of treachery, with

scarcely a man or woman about him to be trusted. The defection

of the lords Churchill and Drumlaneric, and of the dukes of

Grafton and Ormond, was followed by that of prince George and

the princess Anne. Prince George joined the invader at

Sherburne; the princess made her escape from Whitehall at

night, under the guardianship of the bishop of London, and

found an asylum among the adherents of the prince of Orange

who were in arms in Northamptonshire. By this time Bristol and

Plymouth, Hull, York, and Newcastle, were among the places of

strength which had been seized by the partisans of the prince.

His standard had also been unfurled with success in the

counties of Derby, Nottingham, York, and Cheshire. ... Even in

Oxford, several of the heads of colleges concurred in sending

Dr. Finch, warden of All Souls' College, to invite the prince

from Dorsetshire to their city, assuring him of their

willingness to receive him, and to melt down their plate for

his service, if it should be needed. So desperate had the

affairs of James now become, that some of his advisers urged

his leaving the kingdom, and negotiating with safety to his

person from a distance; but from that course he was dissuaded

by Halifax and Godolphin. In compliance with the advice of an

assembly of peers, James issued a proclamation on the 13th of

November, stating that writs had been signed to convene a

parliament on the 15th of January; that a pardon of all

offences should previously pass the great seal; and that

commissioners should proceed immediately to the head-quarters

of the prince of Orange, to negotiate on the present state of

affairs. The commissioners chosen by the king were Halifax,

Nottingham, and Godolphin; but William evaded for some days

the conference which they solicited. In the meantime a forged

proclamation in the name of the prince was made public in

London, denouncing the Catholics of the metropolis as plotting

the destruction of life and property on the largest possible

scale. ... No one doubted the authenticity of this document,

and the ferment and disorder which it spread through the city

filled the king with the greatest apprehension for the safety

of himself and family. On the morning of the 9th of December,

the queen and the infant prince of Wales were lodged on board

a yacht at Gravesend, and commenced a safe voyage to Calais.

James pledged himself to follow within 24 hours. In the course

of that day the royal commissioners sent a report of their

proceedings to Whitehall. The demands of the prince were, that

a parliament should be assembled; that all persons holding

public trusts in violation of the Test-laws should relinquish

them; that the city should have command of the Tower; that the

fleet, and the places of strength through the kingdom should

be placed in the hands of Protestants; that the expense of the

Dutch armament should be defrayed, in part, from the English

Treasury; and that the king and the prince, and their

respective forces, should remain at an equal distance from

London during the sitting of parliament. James read these

articles with some surprise, observing that they were much

more moderate than he had expected. But his pledge had been

given to the queen; the city was still in great agitation; and

private letters, intimating that his person was not beyond the

reach of danger, suggested that his interests might possibly

be better served by his absence than by his presence. Hence

his purpose to leave the kingdom remained unaltered. At three

o'clock on the following morning the king left Whitehall with

sir Edward Hales, disguising himself as an attendant. The

vessel provided to convey him to France was a miserable

fishing-boat. It descended the river without interruption

until it came near to Feversham, where some fishermen,

suspecting Hales and the king to be Catholics, probably

priests endeavouring to make their escape in disguise, took

them from the vessel. ... The arrest of the monarch at

Feversham on Wednesday was followed by an order of the privy

council, commanding that his carriage and the royal guards

should be sent to reconduct him to the capital. ... After some

consultation the king was informed that the public interests

required his immediate withdrawment to some distance from

Westminster, and Hampton Court was named. James expressed a

preference for Rochester, and his wishes in that respect were

complied with. The day on which the king withdrew to Rochester

William took up his residence in St. James's. The king chose

his retreat, deeming it probable that it might be expedient

for him to make a second effort to reach the continent. ...

His guards left him so much at liberty, that no impediment to

his departure was likely to arise; and on the last day of this

memorable year--only a week after his removal from Whitehall,

James embarked secretly at Rochester, and with a favourable

breeze safely reached the French coast."

R. Vaughan,

History of England under the House of Stuart,

volume 2, pages 914-918.

ALSO IN:

Lord Macaulay,

History of England,

chapters 9-10 (volume 2).

H. D. Traill,

William the Third,

chapter 4.

Continuation of Sir J. Mackintosh's

History of the Revolution in 1688,

chapters 16-17.

Sir J. Dalrymple,

Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland,

part 1, books 6-7 (volume 2).

{909}

ENGLAND: A. D. 1689 (JANUARY-FEBRUARY).

The settlement of the Crown on William and Mary.

The Declaration of Rights.

"The convention met on the 22nd of January. Their first care

was to address the prince to take the administration of

affairs and disposal of the revenue into his hands, in order

to give a kind of parliamentary sanction to the power he

already exercised. On the 28th of January the commons, after a

debate in which the friends of the late king made but a faint

opposition, came to their great vote: That king James II.,

having endeavoured to subvert the constitution of this

kingdom, by breaking the original contract between king and

people, and by the advice of Jesuits and other wicked persons

having violated the fundamental laws, and having withdrawn

himself out of the kingdom, has abdicated the government, and

that the throne is thereby vacant. They resolved unanimously

the next day, That it hath been found by experience

inconsistent with the safety and welfare of this protestant

kingdom to be governed by a popish prince. This vote was a

remarkable triumph of the Whig party, who had contended for

the exclusion bill. ... The lords agreed with equal unanimity

to this vote; which, though it was expressed only as an

abstract proposition, led by a practical inference to the

whole change that the whigs had in view. But upon the former

resolution several important divisions took place." The lords

were unwilling to commit themselves to the two propositions,

that James had "abdicated" the government by his desertion of

it, and that the throne had thereby become "vacant." They

yielded at length, however, and adopted the resolution as the

commons had passed it. They "followed this up by a resolution,

that the prince and princess of Orange shall be declared king

and queen of England, and all the dominions thereunto

belonging. But the commons, with a noble patriotism, delayed

to concur in this hasty settlement of the crown, till they

should have completed the declaration of those fundamental

rights and liberties for the sake of which alone they had gone

forward with this great revolution. That declaration, being at

once an exposition of the mis-government which had compelled

them to dethrone the late king, and of the conditions upon

which they elected his successors, was incorporated in the

final resolution to which both houses came on the 13th of

February, extending the limitation of the crown as far as the

state of affairs required: That William and Mary, prince and

princess of Orange, be, and be declared, king and queen of

England, France and Ireland, and the dominions thereunto

belonging, to hold the crown and dignity of the said kingdoms

and dominions to them, the said prince and princess, during

their lives, and the life of the survivor of them; and that

the sole and full exercise of the regal power be only in, and

executed by, the said prince of Orange, in the names of the

said prince and princess, during their joint lives; and after

their decease the said crown and royal dignity of the said

kingdoms and dominions to be to the heirs of the body of the

said princess; for default of such issue, to the princess Anne

of Denmark [younger daughter of James II.], and the heirs of

her body; and for default of such issue, to the heirs of the

body of the said prince of Orange. ... The Declaration of

Rights presented to the prince of Orange by the marquis of

Halifax, as speaker of the lords, in the presence of both

houses, on the 18th of February, consists of three parts: a

recital of the illegal and arbitrary acts committed by the

late king, and of their consequent vote of abdication; a

declaration, nearly following the words of the former part,

that such enumerated acts are illegal; and a resolution, that

the throne shall be filled by the prince and princess of

Orange, according to the limitations mentioned. ... This

declaration was, some months afterwards [in October],

confirmed by a regular act of the legislature in the bill of

rights."

See ENGLAND: 1689 (OCTOBER).

H. Hallam,

Constitutional History of England,

chapters 14-15 (volume 3).

ALSO IN:

Lord Macaulay,

History of England,

chapter 10 (volume 2).

L. von Ranke,

History of England, 17th Century,

book 19, chapters 2-3 (volume 4).

R. Gneist,

History of English Constitution,

chapter 42 (volume 2).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1689 (APRIL-AUGUST).

The Church and the Revolution.

The Toleration Act.

The Non-Jurors.

"The men who had been most helpful in bringing about the late

changes were not all of the same way of thinking in religion;

many of them belonged to the Church of England; many were

Dissenters. It seemed, therefore, a fitting time to grant the

Dissenters some relief from the harsh laws passed against them

in Charles II.'s reign. Protestant Dissenters, save those who

denied the Trinity, were no longer forbidden to have places of

worship and services of their own, if they would only swear to

be loyal to the king, and that his power was as lawful in

Church as in State matters. The law that gave them this is

called the Toleration Act. Men's notions were still, however,

very narrow; care was taken that the Roman Catholics should

get no benefit from this law. Even a Protestant Dissenter

might not yet lawfully be a member of either House of

Parliament, or take a post in the king's service; for the Test

Acts were left untouched. King William, who was a Presbyterian

in his own land, wanted very much to see the Dissenters won

back to the Church of England. To bring this about, he wished

the Church to alter those things in the Prayer Book which kept

Dissenters from joining with her. But most of the clergy would

not have any change; and because these were the stronger party in

Convocation--as the Parliament of the Church is

called--William could get nothing done. At the same time a

rent, which at first seemed likely to be serious, was made in

the Church itself. There was a strong feeling among the clergy

in favour of the banished king. So a law was made by which

every man who held a preferment in the Church, or either of

the Universities, had to swear to be true to King William and

Queen Mary, or had to give up his preferment. Most of the

clergy were very unwilling to obey this law; but only 400 were

found stout-hearted enough to give up their livings rather

than do what they thought to be a wicked thing. These were

called 'non-jurors,' or men who would not swear. Among them

were five out of the seven Bishops who had withstood James II.

only a year before. The sect of non-jurors, who looked upon

themselves as the only true Churchmen, did not spread. But it

did not die out altogether until seventy years ago [i. e.,

early in the 19th century]. It was at this time that the names

High-Church and Low-Church first came into use."

J. Rowley,

The Settlement of the Constitution,

chapter 1.

ALSO IN:

J. Stoughton,

History of Religion in England,

volume 5, chapters 4-11.

T. Lathbury,

History of the Non-jurors.

{910}

ENGLAND: A. D. 1689 (MAY).

War declared against France.

The Grand Alliance.

See FRANCE: A.. D. 1689-1690.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1689 (OCTOBER).

The Bill of Rights.

The following is the text of the Bill of Rights, passed by

Parliament at its sitting in October, 1689:

Whereas the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons,

assembled at Westminster, lawfully, fully, and freely

representing all the estates of the people of this realm, did

upon the Thirteenth day of February, in the year of our Lord

One Thousand Six Hundred Eighty-eight [o. s.], present unto

their Majesties, then called and known by the names and style

of William and Mary, Prince and Princess of Orange, being

present in their proper persons, a certain Declaration in

writing, made by the said Lords and Commons, in the words

following, viz.:

"Whereas the late King James II., by the assistance of divers

evil counsellors, judges, and ministers employed by him, did

endeavour to subvert and extirpate the Protestant religion,

and the laws and liberties of this kingdom:

1. By assuming and exercising a power of dispensing with

and suspending of laws, and the execution of laws, without

consent of Parliament.

2. By committing and prosecuting divers worthy prelates for

humbly petitioning to be excused from concurring to the

said assumed power.

3. By issuing and causing to be executed a commission under

the Great Seal for erecting a court, called the Court of

Commissioners for Ecclesiastical Causes.

4. By levying money for and to the use of the Crown by

pretence of prerogative, for other time and in other manner

than the same was granted by Parliament.

5. By raising and keeping a standing army within this

kingdom in time of peace, without consent of Parliament,

and quartering soldiers contrary to law.

6. By causing several good subjects, being Protestants, to

be disarmed, at the same time when Papists were both armed

and employed contrary to law.

7. By violating the freedom of election of members to serve

in Parliament.

8. By prosecutions in the Court of King's Bench for matters

and causes cognisable only in Parliament, and by divers

other arbitrary and illegal causes.

9. And whereas of late years, partial, corrupt, and

unqualified persons have been returned, and served on

juries in trials, and particularly divers jurors in trials

for high treason, which were not freeholders.

10. And excessive bail hath been required of persons

committed in criminal cases, to elude the benefit of the

laws made for the liberty of the subjects.

11. And excessive fines have been imposed; and illegal and

cruel punishments inflicted.

12. And several grants and promises made of fines and

forfeitures before any conviction or judgment against the

persons upon whom the same were to be levied.

All which are utterly and directly contrary to the known laws

and statutes, and freedom of this realm. And whereas the said

late King James II. having abdicated the government, and the

throne being thereby vacant, his Highness the Prince of Orange

(whom it hath pleased Almighty God to make the glorious

instrument of delivering this kingdom from Popery and

arbitrary power) did (by the advice of the Lords Spiritual and

Temporal, and divers principal persons of the Commons) cause

letters to be written to the Lords Spiritual and Temporal,

being Protestants, and other letters to the several counties,

cities, universities, boroughs, and Cinque ports, for the

choosing of such persons to represent them as were of right to

be sent to Parliament, to meet and sit at Westminster upon the

two-and-twentieth day of January, in this year One Thousand

Six Hundred Eighty and Eight, in order to such an

establishment, as that their religion, laws, and liberties

might not again be in danger of being subverted; upon which

letters elections have been accordingly made. And thereupon

the said Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, pursuant

to their respective letters and elections, being now assembled

in a full and free representation of this nation, taking into

their most serious consideration the best means for attaining

the ends aforesaid, do in the first place (as their ancestors

in like case have usually done) for the vindicating and

asserting their ancient rights and liberties, declare:

1. That the pretended power of suspending of laws, or the

execution of laws, by regal authority, without consent of

Parliament, is illegal.

2. That the pretended power of dispensing with laws, or the

execution of laws by regal authority, as it hath been

assumed and exercised of late, is illegal.

3. That the commission for erecting the late Court of

Commissioners for Ecclesiastical Causes, and all other

commissions and courts of like nature, are illegal and

pernicious.

4. That levying money for or to the use of the Crown by

pretence and prerogative, without grant of Parliament, for

longer time or in other manner than the same is or shall be

granted, is illegal.

5. That it is the right of the subjects to petition the

King, and all commitments and prosecutions for such

petitioning are illegal.

6. That the raising or keeping a standing army within the

kingdom in time of peace, unless it be with consent of

Parliament, is against law.

7. That the subjects which are Protestants may have arms

for their defence suitable to their conditions, and as

allowed by law.

8. That election of members of Parliament ought to be free.

9. That the freedom of speech, and debates or proceedings

in Parliament, ought not to be impeached or questioned in

any court or place out of Parliament.

10. That excessive bail ought not to be required, nor

excessive fines imposed; nor cruel and unusual punishments

inflicted.

11. That jurors ought to be duly impanelled and returned,

and jurors which pass upon men in trials for high treason

ought to be freeholders.

12. That all grants and promises of fines and forfeitures

of particular persons before conviction are illegal and

void.

13. And that for redress of all grievances, and for the

amending, strengthening, and preserving of the laws,

Parliament ought to be held frequently.

{911}

And they do claim, demand, and insist upon all and singular

the premises, as their undoubted rights and liberties; and

that no declarations, judgments, doings or proceedings, to the

prejudice of the people in any of the said premises, ought in any

wise to be drawn hereafter into consequence or example. To

which demand of their rights they are particularly encouraged

by the declaration of his Highness the Prince of Orange, as

being the only means for obtaining a full redress and remedy

therein. Having therefore an entire confidence that his said

Highness the Prince of Orange will perfect the deliverance so

far advanced by him, and will still preserve them from the

violation of their rights, which they have here asserted, and

from all other attempts upon their religion, rights, and

liberties:

II. The said Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and

Commons, assembled at Westminster, do resolve, that William

and Mary, Prince and Princess of Orange, be, and be declared,

King and Queen of England, France, and Ireland, and the

dominions thereunto belonging, to hold the crown and royal

dignity of the said kingdoms and dominions to them the said

Prince and Princess during their lives, and the life of the

survivor of them; and that the sole and full exercise of the

regal power be only in, and executed by, the said Prince of

Orange, in the names of the said Prince and Princess, during

their joint lives; and after their deceases, the said crown

and royal dignity of the said kingdoms and dominions to be to

the heirs of the body of the said Princess; and for default of

such issue to the Princess Anne of Denmark, and the heirs of

her body; and for default of such issue to the heirs of the

body of the said Prince of Orange. And the Lords Spiritual and

Temporal, and Commons, do pray the said Prince and Princess to

accept the same accordingly.

III. And that the oaths hereafter mentioned be taken by all

persons of whom the oaths of allegiance and supremacy might be

required by law instead of them; and that the said oaths of

allegiance and supremacy be abrogated. 'I, A. B., do sincerely

promise and swear, That I will be faithful and bear true

allegiance to their Majesties King William and Queen Mary: So

help me God.' 'I, A. B., do swear, That I do from my heart

abhor, detest, and abjure as impious and heretical that

damnable doctrine and position, that princes excommunicated or

deprived by the Pope, or any authority of the See of Rome, may

be deposed or murdered by their subjects, or any other

whatsoever. And I do declare, that no foreign prince, person,

prelate, state, or potentate hath, or ought to have, any

jurisdiction, power, superiority, preeminence, or authority,

ecclesiastical or spiritual, within this realm: So help me

God.'"

IV. Upon which their said Majesties did accept the crown and

royal dignity of the kingdoms of England, France, and Ireland,

and the dominions thereunto belonging, according to the

resolution and desire of the said Lords and Commons contained

in the said declaration.

V. And thereupon their Majesties were pleased, that the said

Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, being the two

Houses of Parliament, should continue to sit, and with their

Majesties' royal concurrence make effectual provision for the

settlement of the religion, laws and liberties of this

kingdom, so that the same for the future might not be in

danger again of being subverted; to which the said Lords

Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, did agree and proceed to

act accordingly.

VI. Now in pursuance of the premises, the said Lords Spiritual

and Temporal, and Commons, in Parliament assembled, for the

ratifying, confirming, and establishing the said declaration,

and the articles, clauses, matters, and things therein

contained, by the force of a law made in due form by authority

of Parliament, do pray that it may be declared and enacted,

That all and singular the rights and liberties asserted and

claimed in the said declaration are the true, ancient, and

indubitable rights and liberties of the people of this

kingdom, and so shall be esteemed, allowed, adjudged, deemed,

and taken to be, and that all and every the particulars

aforesaid shall be firmly and strictly holden and observed, as

they are expressed in the said declaration; and all officers

and ministers whatsoever shall serve their Majesties and their

successors according to the same in all times to come.

VII. And the said Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons,

seriously considering how it hath pleased Almighty God, in his

marvellous providence, and merciful goodness to this nation,

to provide and preserve their said Majesties' royal persons

most happily to reign over us upon the throne of their

ancestors, for which they render unto Him from the bottom of

their hearts their humblest thanks and praises, do truly,

firmly, assuredly, and in the sincerity of their hearts,

think, and do hereby recognise, acknowledge, and declare, that

King James II. having abdicated the Government, and their

Majesties having accepted the Crown and royal dignity as

aforesaid, their said Majesties did become, were, are, and of

right ought to be, by the laws of this realm, our sovereign

liege Lord and Lady, King and Queen of England, France, and

Ireland, and the dominions thereunto belonging, in and to

whose princely persons the royal state, crown, and dignity of

the said realms, with all honours, styles, titles, regalities,

prerogatives, powers, jurisdictions, and authorities to the same

belonging and appertaining, are most fully, rightfully, and

entirely invested and incorporated, united, and annexed.

VIII. And for preventing all questions and divisions in this

realm, by reason of any pretended titles to the Crown, and for

preserving a certainty in the succession thereof, in and upon

which the unity, peace, tranquillity, and safety of this

nation doth, under God, wholly consist and depend, the said

Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, do beseech their

Majesties that it may be enacted, established, and declared,

that the Crown and regal government of the said kingdoms and

dominions, with all and singular the premises thereunto

belonging and appertaining, shall be and continue to their

said Majesties, and the survivor of them, during their lives,

and the life of the survivor of them. And that the entire,

perfect, and full exercise of the regal power and government

be only in, and executed by, his Majesty, in the names of both

their Majesties, during their joint lives; and after their

deceases the said Crown and premises shall be and remain to

the heirs of the body of her Majesty: and for default of such

issue, to her Royal Highness the Princess Anne of Denmark, and

the heirs of her body; and for default of such issue, to the

heirs of the body of his said Majesty: And thereunto the said

Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, do, in the name of

all the people aforesaid, most humbly and faithfully submit

themselves, their heirs and posterities, for ever: and do

faithfully promise, that they will stand to, maintain, and

defend their said Majesties, and also the limitation and

succession of the Crown herein specified and contained, to the

utmost of their powers, with their lives and estates, against

all persons whatsoever that shall attempt anything to the

contrary.

{912}

IX. And whereas it hath been found by experience, that it is

inconsistent with the safety and welfare of this Protestant

kingdom to be governed by a Popish prince, or by any king or

queen marrying a Papist, the said Lords Spiritual and

Temporal, and Commons, do further pray that it may be enacted,

That all and every person and persons that is, are, or shall be

reconciled to, or shall hold communion with, the See or Church

of Rome, or shall profess the Popish religion, or shall marry

a Papist, shall be excluded, and be for ever incapable to

inherit, possess, or enjoy the Crown and Government of this

realm, and Ireland, and the dominions thereunto belonging, or

any part of the same, or to have, use, or exercise, any regal

power, authority, or jurisdiction within the same; and in all

and every such case or cases the people of these realms shall

be and are hereby absolved of their allegiance, and the said

Crown and government shall from time to time descend to, and

be enjoyed by, such person or persons, being Protestants, as

should have inherited and enjoyed the same, in case the said

person or persons so reconciled, holding communion, or

professing, or marrying, as aforesaid, were naturally dead.

X. And that every King and Queen of this realm, who at any

time hereafter shall come to and succeed in the Imperial Crown

of this kingdom, shall, on the first day of the meeting of the

first Parliament, next after his or her coming to the Crown,

sitting in his or her throne in the House of Peers, in the

presence of the Lords and Commons therein assembled, or at his

or her coronation, before such person or persons who shall

administer the coronation oath to him or her, at the time of

his or her taking the said oath (which shall first happen),

make, subscribe, and audibly repeat the declaration mentioned

in the statute made in the thirteenth year of the reign of

King Charles II., intituled "An Act for the more effectual

preserving the King's person and Government, by disabling

Papists from sitting in either House of Parliament." But if it

shall happen that such King or Queen, upon his or her

succession to the Crown of this realm, shall be under the age

of twelve years, then every such King or Queen shall make,

subscribe, and audibly repeat the said declaration at his or

her coronation, or the first day of meeting of the first

Parliament as aforesaid, which shall first happen after such

King or Queen shall have attained the said age of twelve

years.

XI. All which their Majesties are contented and pleased shall

be declared, enacted, and established by authority of this

present Parliament, and shall stand, remain, and be the law of

this realm for ever; and the same are by their said Majesties,

by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and

Temporal, and Commons, in Parliament assembled, and by the

authority of the same, declared, enacted, or established

accordingly.

XII. And be it further declared and enacted by the authority

aforesaid, That from and after this present session of

Parliament, no dispensation by "non obstante" of or to any

statute, or any part thereof, shall be allowed, but that the

same shall be held void and of no effect, except a

dispensation be allowed of in such statute, and except in such

cases as shall be specially provided for by one or more bill

or bills to be passed during this present session of

Parliament.

XIII. Provided that no charter, or grant, or pardon granted

before the three-and-twentieth day of October, in the year of

our Lord One thousand six hundred eighty-nine, shall be any

ways impeached or invalidated by this Act, but that the same

shall be and remain of the same force and effect in law, and

no other, than as if this Act had never been made.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1689-1696.

The war of the League of Augsburg, or the Grand Alliance

against Louis XIV. (called in American history "King William's

War ").

See FRANCE: A. D. 1689-1690; 1689-1691; 1692;

1693 (JULY); 1694; 1695-1696.

Also, CANADA: A. D. 1689-1690; 1692-1697;

and NEWFOUNDLAND: A. D. 1694--1697.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1690 (JUNE).

The Battle of Beachy Head.

The great peril of the kingdom.

"In June, 1690, whilst William was in Ireland, the French sent

a fleet, under Tourville, to threaten England. He left Brest

and entered the British Channel. Herbert (then Earl of

Torrington) commanded the English fleet lying in the Downs,

and sailed to Saint Helens, where he was joined by the Dutch

fleet under Evertsen. On the 26th of June the English and

French fleets were close to each other, and an important

engagement was expected, when unexpectedly Torrington

abandoned the Isle of Wight and retreated towards the Straits

of Dover. ...  The Queen and her Council, receiving this

intelligence, sent to Torrington peremptory orders to fight.

Torrington received these orders on the 29th June. Next day he

bore down on the French fleet in order of battle. He had less

than 60 ships of the line, whilst the French had 80. He placed

the Dutch in the van, and during the whole fight rendered them

little or no assistance. He gave the signal to engage, which

was immediately obeyed by Evertsen, who fought with the most

splendid courage, but at length, being unsupported, his second

in command and many other officers of high rank having fallen,

and his ships being fearfully shattered, Evertsen was obliged

to draw off his contingent from the unequal battle. Torrington

destroyed some of these injured ships, took the remainder in

tow, and sailed along the coast of Kent for the Thames. When

in that river he pulled up all the buoys to prevent pursuit.

... Upon his return to London he was sent to the Tower, and in

December was tried at Sheerness by court-martial, and on the

third day was acquitted; but William refused to see him, and

ordered him to be dismissed from the navy."

W. H. Torriano,

William the Third,

chapter 24.

"There has scarcely ever been so sad a day in London as that

on which the news of the Battle of Beachy Head arrived. The

shame was insupportable; the peril was imminent. ... At any

moment London might be appalled by news that 20,000 French

veterans were in Kent. It was notorious that, in every part of

the kingdom, the Jacobites had been, during some months,

making preparations for a rising. All the regular troops who

could be assembled for the defence of the island did not

amount to more than 10,000 men. It may be doubted whether our

country has ever passed through a more alarming crisis than

that of the first week of July 1690."

Lord Macaulay,

History of England,

chapter 15 (volume 3).

ALSO IN:

J. Campbell,

Naval History of Great Britain,

chapter 18 (volume 2).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1690-1691.

Defeat of James and the Jacobites in Ireland.

See IRELAND: A. D. 1689-1691.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1692.

The new charter to Massachusetts as a royal province.

See MASSACHUSETTS: A. D. 1689-1692.

{912}

ENGLAND: A. D. 1692.

Attempted invasion from France.

Battle of La Hogue.

"The diversion in Ireland having failed, Louis wished to make

an effort to attack England without and within. James II., who

had turned to so little advantage the first aid granted by the

King of France saw therefore in preparation a much more

powerful assistance, and obtained what had been refused him

after the days of the Boyne and Beachy-Head,--an army to

invade England. News received from that country explained this

change in the conduct of Louis. The opinion of James at

Versailles was no better than in the past; but England was

believed to be on the eve of counter-revolution, which it

would be sufficient to aid with a vigorous and sudden blow.

... Many eminent personages, among the Whigs as well as among

the Tories, among others the Duke of Marlborough (Churchill),

had opened a secret correspondence with the royal exile at

Saint-Germain. James had secret adherents in the English fleet

which he had so long commanded before reigning, and believed

himself able to count on Rear-Admiral Carter, and even on

Admiral Russell. Louis gave himself up to excessive confidence

in the result of these plots, and arranged his plan of naval

operations accordingly. An army of 30,000 men, with 500

transports, was assembled on the coast of Normandy, the

greater part at La Hogue and Cherbourg, the rest at Havre:

this was composed of all the Irish troops, a number of

Anglo-Scotch refugees, and a corps of French troops. Marshal

de Bellefonds commanded under King James. Tourville was to set

ut from Brest in the middle of April with fifty ships of the

line, enter the Channel, attack the English fleet before it

could be reinforced by the Dutch, and thus secure the

invasion. Express orders were sent to him to engage the enemy

'whatever might be his numbers.' It was believed that half of

the English fleet would go over to the side of the allies of

its king. The landing effected, Tourville was to return to

Brest, to rally there the squadron of Toulon, sixteen vessels

strong, and the rest of our large ships, then to hold the

Channel during the whole campaign. They had reckoned without

the elements, which, hitherto hostile to the enemies of

France, this time turned against her." The French fleets were

detained by contrary winds and by incomplete preparations.

Tourville was not reinforced, as he expected to be, by the

squadrons of Toulon and Rochefort. Before he found it possible

to sail from Brest, the Jacobite plot had been discovered in

England, the government was on its guard, and the Dutch and

English fleets had made their junction. Still, the French

admiral was under orders which left him no discretion, and he

went out to seek the enemy. "May 29, at daybreak, between the

Capes of La Hogue and Barfleur, Tourville found himself in

presence of the allied fleet, the most powerful that had ever

appeared on the sea. He had been joined by seven ships from

the squadron of Rochefort, and numbered 44 vessels against 99,

78 of which carried over 50 guns, and, for the most part, were

much larger than a majority of the French. The English had 63

ships and [4,540] guns; the Dutch, 36 ships and 2,614 guns; in

all, 7,154 guns; the French counted only 3,114. The allied

fleet numbered nearly 42,000 men; the French fleet less than

20,000." Notwithstanding this great inferiority of numbers and

strength, it was the French fleet which made the attack,

bearing down under full sail "on the immense mass of the

enemy." The attempt was almost hopeless; and yet, when night

fell, after a day of tremendous battle, Tourville had not yet

lost a ship; but his line of battle had been broken, and no

chance of success remained. "May 30, at break of day,

Tourville rallied around him 35 vessels. The other nine had

strayed, five towards La Hogue, four towards the English

coast, whence they regained Brest. If there had been a naval

port at La Hogue or at Cherbourg, as Colbert and Vauban had

desired, the French fleet would have preserved its laurels!

There was no place of retreat on all that coast. The fleet of

the enemy advanced in full force. It was impossible to renew

the prodigious effort of the day before." In this emergency,

Tourville made a daring attempt to escape with his fleet

through the dangerous channel called the Race of Alderney,

which separates the Channel Islands from the Normandy coast.

Twenty-two vessels made the passage safely and found a place

of refuge at St. Malo; thirteen were too late for the tide and

failed. Most of these were destroyed, during the next few

days, by the English and Dutch at Cherbourg and in the bay of

La Hogue,--in the presence and under the guns of King James'

army of invasion. "James II. had reason to say that 'his

unlucky star' everywhere shed a malign influence around him;

but this influence was only that of his blindness and

incapacity. Such was that disaster of La Hogue, which has left

among us such a fatal renown, and the name of which resounds in

our history like another Agincourt or Cressy. Historians have

gone so far as to ascribe to this the destruction of the

French navy. ... La Hogue was only a reprisal for Beachy-Head.

The French did not lose in it a vessel more than the allies

had lost two years before, and the 15 vessels destroyed were

soon replaced."

H. Martin,

History of France: Age of Louis XIV:

(translated by M. L. Booth),

volume 2, chapter 2.'

ALSO IN:

Lord Macaulay,

History of England,

chapter 18 (volume 4).

L. von Ranke,

History of England, 17th Century,

book 20, chapter 4 (volume 5).

Sir J. Dalrymple,

Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland,

part 2, book 7 (volume 3).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1695.

Expiration of censorship law.

Appearance of first newspapers.

See PRINTING AND THE PRESS: A. D. 1695.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1696-1749.

Measures of commercial and industrial restriction

in the American colonies.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1696-1749.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1697.

The Peace of Ryswick.

Recognition of William III. by France.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1697.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1698.

The founding of Calcutta.

See INDIA: A. D. 1600-1702.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1698-1700.

The question of the Spanish Succession.

The Treaties of Partition.

The Spanish king's will.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1698-1700.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1701.

The Act of Settlement.

The source of the sovereignty of the

House of Hanover or Brunswick.

"William and Mary had no children; and in 1700 the young Duke

of Gloucester, the only child of Anne that lived beyond

infancy, died. There was now no hope of there being anyone to

inherit the crown by the Bill of Rights after the death of

William and of Anne. In 1701, therefore, Parliament settled

the crown on the Electress Sophia of Hanover, and her heirs.

Sophia was one of the children of that Elizabeth, daughter of

James I., who in 1613 had married the Palsgrave Frederick. She

was chosen to come after William and Anne because she was the

nearest to the Stuart line who was a Protestant. The law that

did this is called the Act of Settlement; it gives Queen

Victoria her title to the throne. Parliament in passing it

tried to make the nation's liberties still safer. It was now

made impossible (1) for any foreigner to sit in Parliament or

to hold an office under the Crown; (2). for the king to go to

war in defence of countries that did not belong to England,

unless Parliament gave him leave; or (3) to pardon anyone so

that the Commons might not be able to impeach him."

J. Rowley,

The Settlement of the Constitution,

book 1, chapter 5.

{914}

"Though the choice was truly free in the hands of parliament,

and no pretext of absolute right could be advanced on any

side, there was no question that the princess Sophia was the

fittest object of the nation's preference. She was indeed very

far removed from any hereditary title. Besides the pretended

prince of Wales, and his sister, whose legitimacy no one

disputed, there stood in her way the duchess of Savoy,

daughter of Henrietta duchess of Orleans, and several of the

Palatine family. These last had abjured the reformed faith, of

which their ancestors had been the strenuous assertors; but it

seemed not improbable that some one might return to it. ...

According to the tenor and intention of the act of settlement,

all prior claims of inheritance, save that of the issue of

king William and the princess Anne, being set aside and

annulled, the princess Sophia became the source of a new royal

line. The throne of England and Ireland, by virtue of the

paramount will of parliament, stands entailed upon the heirs

of her body, being protestants. In them the right is as truly

hereditary as it ever was in the Plantagenets or the Tudors.

But they derive it not from those ancient families. The blood

indeed of Cerdic and of the Conqueror flows in the veins of

his present majesty [George IV.]. Our Edwards and Henries

illustrate the almost unrivalled splendour and antiquity of

the house of Brunswic. But they have transmitted no more right

to the allegiance of England than Boniface of Este or Henry

the Lion. That rests wholly on the act of settlement, and

resolves itself into the sovereignty of the legislature.

H. Hallam,

Constitutional History of England,

chapter 15 (volume 3).

ALSO IN:

Sir A. Halliday,

Annals of the House of Hanover,

book 10 (volume 2).

See, also, ENGLAND: A. D. 1714.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1701-1702.

The rousing of the nation to war with France.

When Louis XIV. procured and accepted for his grandson the

bequest of the Spanish crown, throwing over the Partition

Treaty, "William had the intolerable chagrin of discovering

not only that he had been befooled, but that his English

subjects had no sympathy with him or animosity against the

royal swindler who had tricked him. 'The blindness of the

people here,' he writes sadly to the Pensionary Heinsius, 'is

incredible. For though the affair is not public, yet it was no

sooner said that the King of Spain's will was in favour of the

Duke of Anjou, that it was the general opinion that it was

better for England that France should accept the will than

fulfil the Treaty of Partition.' ... William dreaded the idea

of a Bourbon reigning at Madrid, but he saw no very grave

objection, as the two treaties showed, to Naples and Sicily

passing into French hands. With his English subjects the exact

converse was the case. They strongly deprecated the assignment

of the Mediterranean possessions of the Spaniard to the

Dauphin; but they were undisturbed by the sight of the Duke of

Anjou seating himself on the Spanish throne. ... But just as,

under a discharge from an electric battery, two repugnant

chemical compounds will sometimes rush into sudden

combination, so at this juncture the King and the nation were

instantaneously united by the shock of a gross affront. The

hand that liberated the uniting fluid was that of the

Christian king. On the 16th of September 1701 James II.

breathed his last at St. Germains, and, obedient to one of

those impulses, half-chivalrous, half-arrogant, which so often

determined his policy, Louis XIV. declared his recognition of

the Prince of Wales as de jure King of England. No more timely

and effective assistance to the policy of its de facto king

could possibly have been rendered. Its effect upon English

public opinion was instantaneous; and when William returned

from Holland on the 4th of November, he found the country in

the temper in which he could most have wished it to be."

Dissolving the Parliament in which his plans had long been

factiously opposed, he summoned a new one, which met on the

last day of the year 1701. "Opposition in Parliament--in the

country it was already inaudible--was completely silenced. The

two Houses sent up addresses assuring the King of their firm

resolve to defend the succession against the pretended Prince

of Wales and all other pretenders whatsoever. ... Nor did the

goodwill of Parliament expend itself in words. The Commons

accepted without a word of protest the four treaties

constituting the new Grand Alliance. ... The votes of supply

were passed unanimously." But scarcely had the nation and the

King arrived at this agreement with one another than the

latter was snatched from his labors. On the 21st of February,

1702, William received an injury, through the stumbling of his

horse, which his frail and diseased body could not bear. His

death would not have been long delayed in any event, but it

was hastened by this accident, and occurred on the 8th of

March following. He was succeeded by Anne, the sister of his

deceased queen, Mary, and second daughter of the deposed

Stuart king, James II.

H. D. Traill,

William the Third,

chapters 14-15.

ALSO IN:

L. von Ranke,

History of England, 17th Century,

book 21, chapters 7-10 (volume 5).

See, also, SPAIN: A. D. 1701-1702.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1702.

Accession of Queen Anne.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1702.

Union of rival East India Companies.

See INDIA: A. D. 1600-1702.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1702.

The War of the Spanish Succession.

Failure at Cadiz.

The treasure ships in Vigo Bay.

Marlborough's first campaigns.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1702;

and NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1702-1704.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1702-1711.

The War of the Spanish Succession in America

(called "Queen Anne's War").

See NEW ENGLAND: A. D. 1702-1710;

CANADA: A. D. 1711-1713.

{915}

ENGLAND: A. D. 1702-1714.

The Age of Anne in literature.

"That which was once called the Augustan age of English

literature was specially marked by the growing development of

a distinct literary class. It was a period of transition from

the early system of the patronage of authors to the later

system of their professional independence. Patronage was being

changed into influence. The system of subscription, by which

Pope made his fortune, was a kind of joint-stock patronage.

The noble did not support the poet, but induced his friends to

subscribe. The noble, moreover, made another discovery. He found

that he could dispense a cheaper and more effective patronage

than of old by patronising at the public expense. During the

reign of Queen Anne, the author of a successful poem or an

effective pamphlet might look forward to a comfortable place.

The author had not to wear the livery, but to become the

political follower, of the great man. Gradually a separation

took place. The minister found it better to have a regular

corps of politicians and scribblers in his pay than

occasionally to recruit his ranks by enlisting men of literary

taste. And, on the other hand, authors, by slow degrees,

struggled into a more independent position as their public

increased. In the earlier part of the century, however, we

find a class of fairly cultivated people, sufficiently

numerous to form a literary audience, and yet not so numerous

as to split into entirely distinct fractions. The old

religious and political warfare has softened; the statesman

loses his place, but not his head; and though there is plenty

of bitterness, there is little violence. We have thus a

brilliant society of statesmen, authors, clergymen, and

lawyers, forming social clubs, meeting at coffee-houses,

talking scandal and politics, and intensely interested in the

new social phenomena which emerge as the old order decays;

more excitable, perhaps, than their fathers, but less

desperately in earnest, and waging a constant pamphleteering

warfare upon politics, literature, and theology, which is yet

consistent with a certain degree of friendly intercourse. The

essayist, the critic, and the novelist appear for the first

time in their modern shape; and the journalist is slowly

gaining some authority as the wielder of a political force.

The whole character of contemporary literature, in short, is

moulded by the social conditions of the class for which and by

which it was written, still more distinctly than by the ideas

current in contemporary speculation. ... Pope is the typical

representative of the poetical spirit of the day. He may or

may not be regarded as the intellectual superior of Swift or

Addison; and the most widely differing opinions may be formed

of the intrinsic merits of his poetry. The mere fact, however,

that his poetical dynasty was supreme to the end of the

century proved that, in some sense, he is a most

characteristic product. Nor is it hard to see the main sources

of his power. Pope had at least two great poetical qualities.

He was amongst the most keenly sensitive of men, and he had an

almost unique felicity of expression, which has enabled him to

coin more proverbs than any writer since Shakespeare.

Sensitive, it may be said, is a polite word for morbid, and

his felicity of phrase was more adapted to coin epigrams than

poetry. The controversy is here irrelevant. Pope, whether, as

I should say, a true poet, or, as some have said, only the

most sparkling of rhymesters, reflects the thoughts of his day

with a curious completeness. ... There is, however, another

wide province of literature in which writers of the eighteenth

century did work original in character and of permanent value.

If the seventeenth century is the great age of dramatists and

theologians, the eighteenth century was the age in which the

critic, the essayist, the satirist, the novelist, and the

moralist first appeared, or reached the highest mark.

Criticism, though still in its infancy, first became an

independent art with Addison. Addison and his various

colleagues set the first example of that kind of social essay

which is still popular. Satire had been practised in the

preceding century, and in the hands of Dryden had become a

formidable political weapon; but the social satire of which

Pope was, and remains, the chief master, began with the

century, and may be said to have expired with it, in spite of

the efforts of Byron and Gifford. De Foe, Richardson,

Fielding, and Smollett developed the modern novel out of very

crude rudiments; and two of the greatest men of the century,

Swift and Johnson, may be best described as practical

moralists in a vein peculiar to the time. ... The English

novel, as the word is now understood, begins with De Foe.

Though, like all other products of mind or body, it was

developed out of previously existing material, and is related

to the great family of stories with which men have amused

themselves in all ages, it is, perhaps, as nearly an original

creation as anything can be. The legends of saints which

amused the middle ages, or the chivalrous romances which were

popular throughout the seventeenth century, had become too

unreal to amuse living human beings. De Foe made the discovery

that a history might be equally interesting if the recorded

events had never happened."

L. Stephen,

History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century,

chapter 12, sections 23-56 (volume 2).

"This so-called classic age of ours has long ceased to be

regarded with that complacency which led the most flourishing

part of it to adopt the epithet 'Augustan.' It will scarcely

be denied by its greatest admirer, if he be a man of wide

reading, that it cannot be ranked with the poorest of the five

great ages of literature. Deficient in the highest

intellectual beauty, in the qualities which awaken the fullest

critical enthusiasm, the eighteenth century will be enjoyed

more thoroughly by those who make it their special study than

by those who skim the entire surface of literature. It has,

although on the grand scale condemned as second-rate, a

remarkable fulness and sustained richness which endear it to

specialists. If it be compared, for instance, with the real

Augustan age in Rome, or with the Spanish period of literary

supremacy, it may claim to hold its own against these rivals

in spite of their superior rank, because of its more copious

interest. If it has neither a Horace nor a Calderon, it has a

great extent and variety of writers just below these in merit,

and far more numerous than what Rome or Spain can show during

those blossoming periods. It is, moreover, fertile at far more

points than either of these schools. This sustained and

variegated success, at a comparatively low level of effort,

strikes one as characteristic of an age more remarkable for

persistent vitality than for rapid and brilliant growth. The

Elizabethan vivida vis is absent, the Georgian glow has not

yet dawned, but there is a suffused prosaic light of

intelligence, of cultivated form, over the whole picture, and

during the first half of the period, at least, this is bright

enough to be very attractive. Perhaps, in closing, the

distinguishing mark of eighteenth-century literature may be

indicated as its mastery of prose as a vehicle for general

thought."

E. Gosse,

The Study of Eighteenth-Century Literature

(New Princeton Rev., July, 1888, page 21).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1703.

The Methuen Treaty with Portugal.

See PORTUGAL: A. D. 1703;

and SPAIN: A. D. 1703-1704.

{916}

England: A. D. 1703.

The Aylesbury election case.

"Ashby, a burgess of Aylesbury, sued the returning officer for

maliciously refusing his vote. Three judges of the King's

Bench decided, against the opinion of Chief Justice Holt, that

the verdict which a jury had given in favor of Ashby must be

set aside, as the action was not maintainable. The plaintiff

went to the House of Lords upon a writ of error, and there the

judgment was reversed by a large majority of Peers. The Lower

House maintained that 'the qualification of an elector is not

cognizable elsewhere than before the Commons of England'; that

Ashby was guilty of a breach of privilege; and that all

persons who should in future commence such an action, and all

attorneys and counsel conducting the same, are also guilty of

a high breach of privilege. The Lords, led by Somers, then

came to counter-resolutions. ... The prorogation of Parliament

put an end to the quarrel in that Session; but in the next it

was renewed with increased violence. The judgment against the

Returning Officer was followed up by Ashby levying his

damages. Other Aylesbury men brought new actions. The Commons

imprisoned the Aylesbury electors. The Lords took strong

measures that affected, or appeared to affect, the privileges

of the Commons. The Queen finally stopped the contest by a

prorogation; and the quarrel expired when the Parliament

expired under the Triennial Act. Lord Somers 'established the

doctrine which has been acted on ever since, that an action

lies against a Returning Officer for maliciously refusing the

vote of an elector.'"

C. Knight,

Popular History of England,

volume 5, chapter 17.

ALSO IN:

Lord Campbell,

Lives of the Lord Chancellors: Somers,

chapter. 110 (volume 4).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1704-1707.

Marlborough's campaigns in the War of the Spanish Succession.

Campaigns in Spain.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1704;

SPAIN: A. D. 1703-1704, to 1707;

NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1705, and 1706-1707.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1707.

The Union with Scotland.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1707.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1707-1708.

Hostility to the Union in Scotland.

Spread of Jacobitism.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1707-1708.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1708-1709.

The War of the Spanish Succession:

Oudenarde and Malplaquet.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1708-1709;

and SPAIN: A. D. 1707-1710.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1709.

The Barrier Treaty with Holland.

"The influence of the Whig party in the affairs of government

in England, always irksome to the Queen, had now began visibly

to decline; and the partiality she was suspected of

entertaining for her brother, with her known dislike of the

house of Hanover, inspired them with alarm, lest the Tories

might seek still further to propitiate her favour, by

altering, in his favour, the line of succession, as at present

established. They had, accordingly, made it one of the

preliminaries of the proposed treaty of peace, that the

Protestant succession, in England, should be secured by a

general guarantee, and now sought to repair, as far as

possible, the failure caused by the unsuccessful termination

of the conferences, by entering into a treaty to that effect

with the States. The Marquis Townshend, accordingly, repaired

for this purpose to the Hague, when the States consented to

enter into an engagement to maintain the present succession to

the crown, with their whole force, and to make the recognition

of that succession, and the expulsion of the Pretender from

France, an indispensable preliminary to any peace with that

kingdom. In return for this important guarantee, England was

to secure to the States a barrier, formed of the towns of

Nieuport, Furnes and the fort of Knokke, Menin, Lille, Ryssel,

Tournay, Conde, and Valenciennes, Maubeuge, Charleroi, Namur,

Lier, Halle, and some forts, besides the citadels of Ghent and

Dendermonde. It was afterwards asserted, in excuse for the

dereliction from that treaty on the part of England, that

Townshend had gone beyond his instructions; but it is quite

certain that it was ratified without hesitation by the queen,

whatever may have been her secret feelings regarding it."

C. M. Davies,

History of Holland,

part 3, chapter 11 (volume 3 ).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1710-1712.

Opposition to the war.

Trial of Sacheverell.

Fall of the Whigs and Marlborough.

"A 'deluge of blood' such as that of Malplaquet increased the

growing weariness of the war, and the rejection of the French

offers was unjustly attributed to a desire on the part of

Marlborough of lengthening out a contest which brought him

profit and power. The expulsion of Harley and St. John

[Bolingbroke] from the Ministry had given the Tories leaders

of a more vigorous stamp, and St. John brought into play a new

engine of political attack whose powers soon made themselves

felt. In the Examiner, and in a crowd of pamphlets and

periodicals which followed in its train, the humor of Prior,

the bitter irony of Swift, and St. John's own brilliant

sophistry spent themselves on the abuse of the war and of its

general. ... A sudden storm of popular passion showed the way

in which public opinion responded to these efforts. A

High-Church divine, Dr. Sacheverell, maintained the doctrine

of non-resistance [the doctrine, that is, of passive obedience

and non-resistance to government, implying a condemnation of

the Revolution of 1688 and of the Revolution settlement], in a

sermon at St. Paul's, with a boldness which deserved

prosecution; but in spite of the warning of Marlborough and of

Somers the Whig Ministers resolved on his impeachment. His

trial in 1710 at once widened into a great party struggle, and

the popular enthusiasm in Sacheverell's favor showed the

gathering hatred of the Whigs and the war. ... A small

majority of the peers found him guilty, but the light sentence

they inflicted was in effect an acquittal, and bonfires and

illuminations over the whole country welcomed it as a Tory

triumph. The turn of popular feeling freed Anne at once from

the pressure beneath which she had bent; and the skill of

Harley, whose cousin, Mrs. Masham, had succeeded the Duchess

of Marlborough in the Queen's favor, was employed in bringing

about the fall both of Marlborough and the Whig Ministers. ...

The return of a Tory House of Commons sealed his

[Marlborough's] fate. His wife was dismissed from court. A

masterly plan for a march into the heart of France in the

opening of 1711 was foiled by the withdrawal of a part of his

forces, and the negotiations which had for some time been

conducted between the French and English Ministers without his

knowledge marched rapidly to a close. ... At the opening of

1712 the Whig majority of the House of Lords was swamped by

the creation of twelve Tory peers. Marlborough was dismissed

from his command, charged with peculation, and condemned as

guilty by a vote of the House of Commons. He at once withdrew

from England, and with his withdrawal all opposition to the

peace was at an end."

J. R. Green,

Short History of the English People,

section 9, chapter 9.

{917}

Added to other reasons for opposition to the war, the death of

the Emperor Joseph I., which occurred in April, 1711, had

entirely reversed the situation in Europe out of which the war

proceeded. The Archduke Charles, whom the allies had been

striving to place on the Spanish throne, was now certain to be

elected Emperor. He received the imperial crown, in fact, in

December, 1711. By this change of fortune, therefore, he

became a more objectionable claimant of the Spanish crown than

Louis XIV. 's grandson had been.

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1711.

Earl Stanhope,

History of England, Reign of Anne,

chapters 12-15.

"Round the fall of Marlborough has gathered the interest

attaching to the earliest political crisis at all resembling

those of quite recent times. It is at this moment that Party

Government in the modern sense actually commenced. William the

Third with military instinct had always been reluctant to

govern by means of a party. Bound as he was, closely, to the

Whigs, he employed Tory Ministers. ... The new idea of a

homogeneous government was working itself into shape under the

mild direction of Lord Somers; but the form finally taken

under Sir Robert Walpole, which has continued to the present

time, was as yet some way off. Marlborough's notions were

those of the late King. Both abroad and at home he carried out

the policy of William. He refused to rely wholly upon the

Whigs, and the extreme Tories were not given employment. The

Ministry of Godolphin was a composite administration,

containing at one time, in 1705, Tories like Harley and St.

John as well as Whigs such as Sunderland and Halifax. ... Lord

Somers was a type of statesman of a novel order at that time.

... In the beginning of the eighteenth century it was rare to

find a man attaining the highest political rank who was

unconnected by birth or training or marriage with any of the

great 'governing families,' as they have been called. Lord

Somers was the son of a Worcester attorney. ... It was

fortunate for England that Lord Somers should have been the

foremost man of the Whig party at the time when constitutional

government, as we now call it, was in course of construction.

By his prudent counsel the Whigs were guided through the

difficult years at the end of Queen Anne's reign; and from the

ordeal of seeing their rivals in power they certainly managed,

as a party, to emerge on the whole with credit. Although he

was not nominally their leader, the paramount influence in the

Tory party was Bolingbroke's; and that the Tories suffered from

the defects of his great qualities, no unprejudiced critic can

doubt. Between the two parties, and at the head of the

Treasury through the earlier years of the reign, stood

Godolphin, without whose masterly knowledge of finance and

careful attention to the details of administration

Marlborough's policy would have been baffled and his campaigns

remained unfought. To Godolphin, more than to any other one

man, is due the preponderance of the Treasury control in

public affairs. It was his administration, during the absence

of Marlborough on the Continent, which created for the office

of Lord Treasurer its paramount importance, and paved the way

for Sir Robert Walpole's government of England under the title

of First Lord of the Treasury. ... Marlborough saw and always

admitted that his victories were due in large measure to the

financial skill of Godolphin. To this statesman's lasting

credit it must be remembered that in a venal age, when the

standards of public honesty were so different from those which

now prevail, Godolphin died a poor man. ... Bolingbroke is

interesting to us as the most striking figure among the

originators of the new parliamentary system. With Marlborough

disappeared the type of Tudor statesmen modified by contact

with the Stuarts. He was the last of the Imperial Chancellors.

Bolingbroke and his successor Walpole were the earlier types

of constitutional statesmen among whom Mr. Pitt and, later,

Mr. Gladstone stand pre-eminent. ... He and his friends,

opponents of Marlborough, and contributors to his fall, are

interesting to us mainly as furnishing the first examples of

'Her Majesty's Opposition,' as the authors of party government

and the prototypes of cabinet ministers of to-day. Their ways

of thought, their style of speech and of writing, may be

dissimilar to those now in vogue, but they show greater

resemblance to those of modern politicians than to those of

the Ministers of William or of the Stuarts. Bolingbroke may

have appeared a strange product of the eighteenth century to

his contemporaries, but he would not have appeared peculiarly

misplaced among the colleagues of Lord Randolph Churchill or

Mr. Chamberlain."

R. B. Brett,

Footprints of Statesmen,

chapter 3.

ALSO IN:

W. Coxe,

Memoirs of Marlborough,

chapters 89-107.

W. Coxe,

Memoirs of Walpole,

volume 1, chapters 5-6.

G. Saintsbury,

Marlborough.

G. W. Cooke,

Memoirs of Bolingbroke,

volume 1, chapters 6-13.

J. C. Collins,

Bolingbroke.

A. Hassall,

Life of Bolingbroke,

chapter 3.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1711-1714.

The Occasional Conformity Bill and the Schism Act.

"The Test Act, making the reception of the Anglican Sacrament

a necessary qualification for becoming a member of

corporations, and for the enjoyment of most civil offices, was

very efficacious in excluding Catholics, but was altogether

insufficient to exclude moderate Dissenters. ... Such men,

while habitually attending their own places of worship, had no

scruple about occasionally entering an Anglican church, or

receiving the sacrament from an Anglican clergyman. The

Independents, it is true, and some of the Baptists, censured

this practice, and Defoe wrote vehemently against it, but it

was very general, and was supported by a long list of imposing

authorities. ... In 1702, in 1703, and in 1704, measures for

suppressing occasional conformity were carried through the

Commons, but on each occasion they were defeated by the Whig

preponderance in the Lords." In 1711, the Whigs formed a

coalition with one section of the Tories to defeat the

negotiations which led to the Peace of Utrecht; but the Tories

"made it the condition of alliance that the Occasional

Conformity Bill should be accepted by the Whigs.

{918}

The bargain was made; the Dissenters were abandoned, and, on

the motion of Nottingham, a measure was carried providing that

all persons in places of profit or trust, and all common

councilmen in corporations, who, while holding office, were

proved to have attended any Nonconformist place of worship,

should forfeit the place, and should continue incapable of

public employment till they should depose that for a whole

year they had not attended a conventicle. The House of Commons

added a fine of £40, which was to be paid to the informer, and

with this addition the Bill became a law. Its effects during

the few years it continued in force were very inconsiderable,

for the great majority of conspicuous Dissenters remained in

office, abstaining from public worship in conventicles, but

having Dissenting ministers as private chaplains in their

houses. ... The object of the Occasional Conformity Bill was

to exclude the Dissenters from all Government positions of

power, dignity or profit. It was followed in 1714 by the

Schism Act, which was intended to crush their seminaries and

deprive them of the means of educating their children in their

faith. ... As carried through the House of Commons, it

provided that no one, under pain of three months'

imprisonment, should keep either a public or a private school,

or should even act as tutor or usher, unless he had obtained a

licence from the Bishop, had engaged to conform to the

Anglican liturgy, and had received the sacrament in some

Anglican church within the year. In order to prevent

occasional conformity it was further provided that if a

teacher so qualified were present at any other form of worship

he should at once become liable to three months' imprisonment,

and should be incapacitated for the rest of his life from

acting as schoolmaster or tutor. ... Some important clauses,

however, were introduced by the Whig party qualifying its

severity. They provided that Dissenters might have

school-mistresses to teach their children to read; that the

Act should not extend to any person instructing youth in

reading, writing, or arithmetic, in any part of mathematics

relating to navigation, or in any mechanical art only. ... The

facility with which this atrocious Act was carried, abundantly

shows the danger in which religious liberty was placed in the

latter years of the reign of Queen Anne."

W. E. H. Lecky,

History of England, 18th Century,

chapter 1.

The Schism Act was repealed in 1719, during the administration

of Lord Stanhope.

Cobbett's Parliamentary History,

volume 7, pages 567-587.

ALSO IN:

J. Stoughton,

History of Religion in England,

volume 5, chapters 14-16.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1713.

Ending of the War of the Spanish Succession.

The Peace of Utrecht.

Acquisitions from Spain and France.

See UTRECHT: A. D. 1712-1714;

CANADA: A. D. 1711-1713;

also, NEWFOUNDLAND: A. D. 1713;

and SLAVERY, NEGRO: A. D. 1698-1776.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1713.

Second Barrier Treaty with the Dutch.

See NETHERLANDS (HOLLAND): A. D. 1713-1715.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1713-1714.

The desertion of the Catalans.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1713-1714.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1714.

The end of the Stuart line and the beginning of the

Hanoverians.

Queen Anne died, after a short illness, on the morning of

August 1, 1714. The Tories, who had just gained control of the

ministry, were wholly unprepared for this emergency. They

assembled in Privy Council, on the 29th of July, when the

probably fatal issue of the Queen's illness became apparent,

and "a strange scene is said to have occurred. Argyle and

Somerset, though they had contributed largely by their

defection to the downfall of the Whig ministry of Godolphin,

were now again in opposition to the Tories, and had recently

been dismissed from their posts. Availing themselves of their

rank of Privy Councillors, they appeared unsummoned in the

council room, pleading the greatness of the emergency.

Shrewsbury, who had probably concocted the scene, rose and

warmly thanked them for their offer of assistance; and these

three men appear to have guided the course of events. ...

Shrewsbury, who was already Chamberlain and Lord Lieutenant of

Ireland, became Lord Treasurer, and assumed the authority of

Prime Minister. Summons were at once sent to all Privy

Councillors, irrespective of party, to attend; and Somers and

several other of the Whig leaders were speedily at their post.

They had the great advantage of knowing clearly the policy

they should pursue, and their measures were taken with

admirable promptitude and energy. The guards of the Tower were

at once doubled. Four regiments were ordered to march from the

country to London, and all seamen to repair to their vessels.

An embargo was laid on all shipping. The fleet was equipped,

and speedy measures were taken to protect the seaports and to

secure tranquility in Scotland and Ireland. At the same time

despatches were sent to the Netherlands ordering seven of the

ten British battalions to embark without delay; to Lord

Strafford, the ambassador at the Hague, desiring the

States-General to fulfil their guarantee of the Protestant

succession in England; to the Elector, urging him to hasten to

Holland, where, on the death of the Queen, he would be met by

a British squadron, and escorted to his new kingdom." When the

Queen's death occurred, "the new King was at once proclaimed,

and it is a striking proof of the danger of the crisis that

the funds, which had fallen on a false rumour of the Queen's

recovery, rose at once when she died. Atterbury is said to

have urged Bolingbroke to proclaim James III. at Charing

Cross, and to have offered to head the procession in his lawn

sleeves, but the counsel was mere madness, and Bolingbroke saw

clearly that any attempt to overthrow the Act of Settlement

would be now worse than useless. ... The more violent spirits

among the Jacobites now looked eagerly for a French invasion,

but the calmer members of the party perceived that such an

invasion was impossible. ... The Regency Act of 1705 came at

once into operation. The Hanoverian minister produced the

sealed list of the names of those to whom the Elector

entrusted the government before his arrival, and it was found

to consist of eighteen names taken from the leaders of the

Whig party. ... Parliament, in accordance with the provisions

of the Bill, was at once summoned, and it was soon evident

that there was nothing to fear. The moment for a restoration

was passed."

W. E. H. Lecky,

History of England, 18th Century,

chapter 1 (volume 1).

{919}

"George I., whom circumstances and the Act of Settlement had

thus called to be King of Great Britain and Ireland, had been

a sovereign prince for sixteen years, during which time he had

been Elector of Brunswick-Lüneburg. He was the second who ever

bore that title. By right of his father he was Elector; it was

by right of his mother that he now became ruler of the United

Kingdom. The father was Ernest Augustus, Sovereign Bishop of

Osnaburg, who, by the death of his elder brothers, had become

Duke of Hanover, and then Duke of Brunswick and Lüneburg. In

1692 he was raised by the Emperor to the dignity of Elector.

... The mother of George I. was Sophia, usually known as the

Electress Sophia. The title was merely one of honour, and only

meant wife of an Elector. ... The Electress Sophia was the

daughter of Elizabeth, daughter of King James I., and

Frederick, the Elector Palatine [whose election to the throne

of Bohemia and subsequent expulsion from that kingdom and from

his Palatine dominions were the first acts in the Thirty

Years' War]. ... The new royal house in England is sometimes

called the House of Hanover, sometimes the House of Brunswick.

It will be found that the latter name is more generally used

in histories written during the last century, the former in

books written in the present day. If the names were equally

applicable, the modern use is the more convenient, because

there is another, and in some respects well known, branch of

the House of Brunswick; but no other has a right to the name

of Hanover. It is, however, quite certain that, whatever the

English use may be, Hanover is properly the name of a town and

of a duchy, but that the electorate was Brunswick-Lüneburg.

... The House of Brunswick was of noble origin, tracing itself

back to a certain Guelph d'Este, nicknamed 'the Robust,' son

of an Italian nobleman, who had been seeking his fortunes in

Germany. Guelph married Judith, widow of the English King,

Harold, who fell on the hill of Senlac. ... One of Guelph's

descendants, later, married Maud, the daughter of King Henry

II., probably the most powerful king in Europe of his day, at

whose persuasion the Emperor conferred on the Guelphs the

duchy of Brunswick."

E. E. Morris,

The Early Hanoverians,

book 1, chapter 2.

ALSO IN:

P. M. Thornton,

The Brunswick Accession,

chapters 1-10.

Sir A. Halliday,

Annals of the House of Hanover,

book 10 (volume 2).

J. McCarthy,

History of the Four Georges,

chapters 1-4.

W. M. Thackeray,

The Four Georges,

lecture 1.

A. W. Ward,

The Electress Sophia and the Hanoverian Succession (English

History Review, volume 1).

See, also, ENGLAND: A. D. 1701,

THE ACT OF SETTLEMENT.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1714-1721.

First years of George I.

The rise of Walpole to power and the founding of Parliamentary

Government.

"The accession of the house of Hanover in the person of the

great-grandson of James I. was once called by a Whig of this

generation the greatest miracle in our history. It took place

without domestic or foreign disturbance. ... Within our own

borders a short lull followed the sharp agitations of the last

six months. The new king appointed an exclusively Whig

Ministry. The office of Lord Treasurer was not revived, and

the title disappears from political history. Lord Townshend

was made principal Secretary of State, and assumed the part of

first Minister. Mr. Walpole [Sir Robert] took the subaltern

office of paymaster of the forces, holding along with it the

paymastership of Chelsea Hospital. Although he had at first no

seat in the inner Council or Cabinet, which seems to have

consisted of eight members, only one of them a commoner, it is

evident that from the outset his influence was hardly second

to that of Townshend himself. In little more than a year

(October 1715) he had made himself so prominent and valuable

in the House of Commons, that the opportunity of a vacancy was

taken to appoint him to be First Commissioner of the Treasury

and Chancellor of the Exchequer. ... Besides excluding their

opponents from power, the Whigs instantly took more positive

measures. The new Parliament was strongly Whig. A secret

committee was at once appointed to inquire into the

negotiations for the Peace. Walpole was chairman, took the

lead in its proceedings, and drew the report." On Walpole's

report, the House "directed the impeachment of Oxford,

Bolingbroke, and Ormond for high treason, and other high

crimes and misdemeanours mainly relating to the Peace of

Utrecht. ... The proceedings against Oxford and Bolingbroke

are the last instance in our history of a political

impeachment. They are the last ministers who were ever made

personally responsible for giving bad advice and pursuing a

discredited policy, and since then a political mistake has

ceased to be a crime. ... The affair came to an abortive end.

... The opening years of the new reign mark one of the least

attractive periods in political history. George I. ... cared

very little for his new kingdom, and knew very little about

its people or its institutions. ... His expeditions to Hanover

threw the management of all domestic affairs almost without

control into the hands of his English ministers. If the two

first Hanoverian kings had been Englishmen instead of Germans,

if they had been men of talent and ambition, or even men of

strong and commanding will without much talent, Walpole would

never have been able to lay the foundations of government by

the House of Commons and by Cabinet so firmly that even the

obdurate will of George III. was unable to overthrow it

See CABINET, THE ENGLISH.

Happily for the system now established, circumstances

compelled the first two sovereigns of the Hanoverian line to

strike a bargain with the English Whigs, and it was faithfully

kept until the accession of the third George. The king was to

manage the affairs of Hanover, and the Whigs were to govern

England. It was an excellent bargain for England. Smooth as

this operation may seem in historic description, Walpole found

its early stages rough and thorny." The king was not easily

brought to understand that England would not make war for

Hanoverian objects, nor allow her foreign policy to be shaped

by the ambitions of the Electorate. Differences arose which

drove Townshend from the Cabinet, and divided the Whig party.

Walpole retired from the government with Townshend, and was in

opposition for three years, while Lord Stanhope and the Earl of

Sunderland controlled the administration. The Whig schism came

to an end in 1720, and Townshend and Walpole rejoined the

administration, the latter as Paymaster of the Forces without

a seat in the Cabinet. "His opposition was at an end, but he

took no part in the active work of government. ... Before many

months had passed the country was overtaken by the memorable

disasters of the South Sea Bubble.

See SOUTH SEA BUBBLE.

{920}

All eyes were turned to Walpole. Though he had privately

dabbled in South Sea stock on his own account, his public

predictions came back to men's minds; they remembered that he

had been called the best man for figures in the House, and the

disgrace of' his most important colleagues only made his

sagacity the more prominent. ... He returned to his old posts,

and once more became First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor

of the Exchequer (April 1721), while Townshend was again

Secretary of State. Walpole held his offices practically

without a break for twenty-one years. The younger Pitt had an

almost equal span of unbroken supremacy, but with that

exception there is no parallel to Walpole's long tenure of

power. To estimate aright the vast significance of this

extraordinary stability, we must remember that the country had

just passed through eighty years of revolution. A man of 80 in

1721 could recall the execution of Charles I., the protectorate

of Oliver, the fall of Richard Cromwell, the restoration of

Charles II., the exile of James II., the change of the order

of succession to William of Orange, the reactionary ministry

of Anne, and finally the second change to the House of

Hanover. The interposition, after so long a series of violent

perturbations as this, of twenty years of settled system and

continuous order under one man, makes Walpole's government of

capital and decisive importance in our history, and

constitutes not an artificial division like the reign of a

king, but a true and definite period, with a beginning, an

end, a significance, and a unity of its own."

J. Morley,

Walpole,

chapters 3-4.

ALSO IN:

W. Coxe,

Memoirs of Sir Robert Walpole,

chapters 9-21 (volume 1).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1715.

The Jacobite rising.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1715.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1716.

The Septennial Act.

The easy suppression of the Jacobite rebellion was far from

putting an end to the fears of the loyal supporters of the

Hanoverian dynasty. They regarded with especial anxiety the

approaching Parliamentary elections. "As, by the existing

statute of 6 William and Mary [the Triennial Act, of 1694],

Parliament would be dissolved at the close of the year, and a

new election held in the spring of 1717, there seemed great

probability of a renewal of the contest, or at least of very

serious riots during the election time. With this in view, the

ministers proposed that the existing Parliament should be

continued for a term of seven instead of three years. This,

which was meant for a temporary measure, has never been

repealed, and is still the law under which Parliaments are

held. It has been often objected to this action of Parliament,

that it was acting arbitrarily in thus increasing its own

duration. 'It was a direct usurpation,' it has been said, 'of

the rights of the people, analogous to the act of the Long

Parliament in declaring itself indestructible.' It has been

regarded rather as a party measure than as a forward step in

liberal government. We must seek its vindication in the

peculiar conditions of the time. It was useless to look to the

constituencies for the support of the popular liberty. The

return of members in the smaller boroughs was in the hands of

corrupt or corruptible freemen; in the counties, of great

landowners; in the larger towns, of small place-holders under

Government. A general election in fact only gave fresh

occasion for the exercise of the influence of the Crown and of

the House of Lords--freedom and independence in the presence

of these two permanent powers could be secured only by the

greater permanence of the third element of the Legislature,

the House of Commons. It was thus that, though no doubt in

some degree a party measure for securing a more lengthened

tenure of office to the Whigs, the Septennial Act received,

upon good constitutional grounds, the support and approbation

of the best statesmen of the time."

J. F. Bright,

History of England,

period 3, page 938.

ALSO IN:

Lord Mahon (Earl Stanhope),

History of England, 1713-1783,

volume 1, chapter 6.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1717-1719.

The Triple Alliance.

The Quadruple Alliance.

War with Spain.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1713-1725;

also, ITALY: A. D. 1715-1735.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1720.

The South Sea Bubble.

See SOUTH SEA BUBBLE.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1721-1742.

Development of the Cabinet System of ministerial government.

See CABINET, THE ENGLISH.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1725.

The Alliance of Hanover.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1713-1725.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1726-1731.

Fresh differences with Spain.

Gibraltar besieged.

The Treaty of Seville.

The Second Treaty of Vienna.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1726-1731.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1727.

Accession of King George II.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1727-1741.

Walpole's administration under George II.

"The management of public affairs during the six years of

George the First's reign in which Walpole was Prime Minister,

was easy. ... His political fortunes seemed to be ruined by

George the First's death [1727]. That King's successor had

ransacked a very copious vocabulary of abuse, in order to

stigmatise the minister and his associates. Rogue and rascal,

scoundrel and fool, were his commonest utterances when Robert

Walpole's name was mentioned. ... Walpole bowed meekly to the

coming storm," and an attempt was made to put Sir Spencer

Compton in his place. But Compton himself, as well as the king

and his sagacious queen, soon saw the futility of it, and the

old ministry was retained. "At first, Walpole was associated

with his brother-in-law, Townsend. But they soon disagreed,

and the rupture was total after the death of Walpole's sister,

Townsend's wife. ... After Townsend's dismissal, Walpole

reigned alone, if, indeed, he could be said to exercise sole

functions while Newcastle was tied to him. Long before he was

betrayed by this person, of whom he justly said that his name

was perfidy, he knew how dangerous was the association. But

Newcastle was the largest proprietor of rotten boroughs in the

kingdom, and, fool and knave as he was, he had wit enough to

guess at his own importance, and knavery enough to make his

market. Walpole's chief business lay in managing the King, the

Queen, the Church, the House of Commons, and perhaps the

people. I have already said, that before his accession George

hated Walpole. But there are hatreds and hatreds, equal in

fervency while they last, but different in duration. The King

hated Walpole because he had served his father well. But one

George was gone, and another George was in possession. Then

came before the man in possession the clear vision of

Walpole's consummate usefulness. The vision was made clearer

by the sagacious hints of the Queen. It became clear as

noonday when Walpole contrived to add £115,000 to the civil

list. ... Besides, Walpole was sincerely determined to support

the Hanoverian succession. He constantly insisted to George

that the final settlement of his House on the throne would be

fought out in England. ... Hence he was able to check one of

the King's ruling passions, a longing to engage in war. ...

{921}

It is generally understood that Walpole managed the House of

Commons by bribery; that the secret service money was thus

employed: and that this minister was the father of that

corruption which was reported to have disgraced the House

during the first half of the last century. I suspect that

these influences have been exaggerated. It is a stock story

that Walpole said he knew every man's price. It might have

been generally true, but the foundation of this apothegm is,

in all likelihood, a recorded saying of his about certain

members of the opposition. ... Walpole has been designated,

and with justice, as emphatically a peace minister. He held

'that the most pernicious circumstances in which this country

can be, are those of war, as we must be great losers while the

war lasts, and cannot be great gainers when it ends.' He kept

George the Second at peace, as well as he could, by insisting

on it that the safety of his dynasty lay in avoiding foreign

embroilments. He strove in vain against the war which broke

out in 1739. ... I do not intend to disparage Walpole's

administrative ability when I say that the country prospered

independently of any financial policy which he adopted or

carried out. ... Walpole let matters take their course, for he

understood that the highest merit of a minister consists in

his doing no mischief. But Walpole's praise lies in the fact,

that, with this evident growth of material prosperity, he

steadily set his face against gambling with it. He resolved,

as far as lay in his power, to keep the peace of Europe; and

he was seconded in his efforts by Cardinal Fleury. He

contrived to smooth away the difficulties which arose in 1727;

and on January 13, 1730, negotiated the treaty of Seville [see

SPAIN: A. D. 1726-1731], the benefits of which lasted through

ten years of peace, and under which he reduced the army to

5,000 men." But the opposition to Walpole's peace policy

became a growing passion, which overcame him in 1741 and

forced him to resign. On his resignation he was raised to the

peerage, with the title of Earl of Orford, and defeated,

though with great difficulty, the determination of his enemies

to impeach him.

J. E. T. Rogers,

Historical Gleanings,

volume 1, chapter 2.

"It is impossible, I think, to consider his [Walpole's] career

with adequate attention without recognising in him a great

minister, although the merits of his administration were often

rather negative than positive, and although it exhibits few of

those dramatic incidents, and is but little susceptible of

that rhetorical colouring, on which the reputation of

statesmen largely depends. ... He was eminently true to the

character of his countrymen. He discerned with a rare sagacity

the lines of policy most suited to their genius and to their

needs, and he had a sufficient ascendancy in English politics

to form its traditions, to give a character and a bias to its

institutions. The Whig party, under his guidance, retained,

though with diminished energy, its old love of civil and of

religious liberty, but it lost its foreign sympathies, its

tendency to extravagance, its military restlessness. The

landed gentry, and in a great degree the Church, were

reconciled to the new dynasty. The dangerous fissures which

divided the English nation were filled up. Parliamentary

government lost its old violence, it entered into a period of

normal and pacific action, and the habits of compromise, of

moderation, and of practical good sense, which are most

essential to its success, were greatly strengthened. These

were the great merits of Walpole. His faults were very

manifest, and are to be attributed in part to his own

character, but in a great degree to the moral atmosphere of

his time. He was an honest man in the sense of desiring

sincerely the welfare of his country and serving his sovereign

with fidelity; but he was intensely wedded to power,

exceedingly unscrupulous about the means of grasping or

retaining it, and entirely destitute of that delicacy of

honour which marks a high-minded man. ... His estimate of

political integrity was very similar to his estimate of female

virtue. He governed by means of an assembly which was

saturated with corruption, and he fully acquiesced in its

conditions and resisted every attempt to improve it. ... It is

necessary to speak with much caution on this matter,

remembering that no statesman can emancipate himself from the

conditions of his time. ... The systematic corruption of

Members of Parliament is said to have begun under Charles II.,

in whose reign it was practised to the largest extent. It was

continued under his successor, and the number of scandals

rather increased than diminished after the Revolution. ... And

if corruption did not begin with Walpole, it is equally

certain that it did not end with him. His expenditure of

secret service money, large as it was, never equalled in an

equal space of time the expenditure of Bute. ... The real

charge against him is that in a period of profound peace, when

he exercised an almost unexampled ascendancy in politics, and

when public opinion was strongly in favour of the diminution

of corrupt influence in Parliament, he steadily and

successfully resisted every attempt at reform. ... It was his

settled policy to maintain his Parliamentary majority, not by

attracting to his ministry great orators, great writers, great

financiers, or great statesmen, ... but simply by engrossing

borough influence and extending the patronage of the Crown."

W. E. H. Lecky,

History of England in the 18th Century,

chapter. 3 (volume 1).

"But for Sir Robert Walpole, we should have had the Pretender

back again. But for his obstinate love of peace, we should

have had wars, which the nation was not strong enough nor

united enough to endure. But for his resolute counsels and

good-humoured resistance, we might have had German despots

attempting a Hanoverian regimen over us: we should have had

revolt, commotion, want, and tyrannous misrule, in place of a

quarter of a century of peace, freedom and material

prosperity, such as the country never enjoyed, until that

corrupter of parliaments, that dissolute tipsy cynic, that

courageous lover of peace and liberty, that great citizen,

patriot and statesman governed it. ... In private life the old

pagan revelled in the lowest pleasures: he passed his Sundays

tippling at Richmond; and his holidays bawling after dogs, or

boozing at Houghton with Boors over beef and punch. He cared

for letters no more than his master did: he judged human

nature so meanly that one is ashamed to have to own that he

was right, and that men could be corrupted by means so base.

But, with his hireling House of Commons, he defended liberty

for us; with his incredulity he kept Church-craft down. ... He

gave Englishmen no conquests, but he gave them peace, and

ease, and freedom; the Three per Cents. nearly at par; and

wheat at five and six and twenty shillings a quarter."

W. M. Thackeray,

The Four Georges,

chapter 2.

ALSO IN:

W. Coxe,

Memoirs of Sir R. Walpole,

chapters 31-59 (volume 1).

Lord Mahon (Earl Stanhope),

History of England, 1713-1783,

chapters 15-23 (volumes 2-3).

Lord Hervey,

Memoirs of the Reign of George II.

{922}

ENGLAND: A. D. 1731-1740.

The question of the Austrian Succession.

Guarantee of the Pragmatic Sanction.

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1718-1738, and 1740.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1732.

The grant of Georgia to General Oglethorpe.

See GEORGIA: A. D. 1732-1739.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1733.

The first Bourbon Family Compact.

Its hostility to Great Britain.

See FRANCE, A. D. 1733.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1733-1787

The great inventions which built up the

Cotton Manufacture.

See COTTON MANUFACTURE.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1739-1741.

The War of Jenkins' Ear.

"In spite of Walpole's love of peace, and determined efforts

to preserve it, in the year 1739 a war broke out with Spain,

which is an illustration of the saying that the occasion of a

war may be trifling, though its real cause be very serious.

The war is often called the War of Jenkins' Ear. The story ran

that eight years before (1731) a certain Captain Jenkins,

skipper of the ship 'Rebecca,' of London, had been maltreated

by the Spaniards. His ship was sailing from Jamaica, and

hanging about the entrance of the Gulf of Florida, when it was

boarded by the Spanish coast guard. The Spaniards could find

no proof that Jenkins was smuggling, though they searched

narrowly, and being angry at their ill-success they hanged him

to the yardarm, lowering him just in time to save his life. At

length they pulled off his ear and told him to take it to his

king. ... Seven years later Captain Jenkins was examined by

the House of Commons, on which occasion some member asked him

how he felt when being maltreated, and Jenkins answered, 'I

recommended my soul to God and my cause to my country.' The

answer, whether made at the time or prepared for use in the

House of Commons, touched a chord of sympathy, and soon was

circulated through the country. 'No need of allies now,' said

one politician; 'the story of Jenkins will raise us

volunteers.' The truth of the matter is that this story from

its somewhat ridiculous aspect has remained in the minds of

men, but that it is only a specimen of many stories then

afloat, all pointing to insolence of Spaniards in insisting

upon what was after all strictly within their rights. But the

legal treaty rights of Spain were growing intolerable to

Englishmen, though not necessarily to the English Government;

and traders and sailors were breaking the international laws

which practically stopped the expansion of England in the New

World. The war arose out of a question of trade, in this as in

so many other cases the English being prepared to fight in

order to force an entrance for their trade, which the

Spaniards wished to shut out from Spanish America. This

question found a place amongst the other matters arranged by

the treaty of Utrecht, when the English obtained almost as

their sole return for their victories what was known as the

Assiento. This is a Spanish word meaning contract, but its use

had been for some time confined to the disgraceful privilege

of providing Spanish America with negroes kidnapped from their

homes in Africa. The Flemings, the Genoese, the Portuguese,

and the French Guinea Company received in turn from Spanish

kings the monopoly in this shameful traffic, which at the

treaty of Utrecht was passed on for a period of thirty years

to England, now becoming mistress of the seas, and with her

numerous merchant ships better able than others to carry on

the business. The English Government committed the contract to

the South Sea Company, and the number of negroes to be

supplied annually was no less than 4,800 'sound, healthy,

merchantable negroes, two-thirds to be male, none under ten or

over forty years old.' In the Assiento Treaty there was also a

provision for the trading of one English ship each year with

Spanish America; but in order to prevent too great advantage

therefrom it was carefully stipulated that the ship should not

exceed 600 tons burden. There is no doubt that this

stipulation was regularly violated by the English sending a

ship of the required number of tons, but with it numerous

tenders and smaller craft. Moreover smuggling, being very

profitable, became common; it was of this smuggling that

Captain Jenkins was accused. ... Walpole, always anxious for

peace, by argument, by negotiation, by delays, resisted the

growing desire for war; at length he could resist no longer.

For the sake of his reputation he should have resigned office,

but he had enjoyed power too long to be ready to yield it, and

most unwisely he allowed himself to be forced into a

declaration of war October 19, 1739. The news was received

throughout England with a perfect frenzy of delight. ... A

year and a day after this declaration of war an event

occurred--the death of the Emperor--which helped to swell the

volume of this war until it was merged into the European war,

called the War of the Austrian Succession, which includes

within itself the First and Second Silesian Wars, between

Austria and Frederick the Great of Prussia. The European war

went on until the general pacification in the treaty of

Aix-la-Chapelle, 1748. Within another ten years war broke out

again on somewhat similar grounds, but on a much wider scale

and with the combatants differently arranged, under the title

'Seven Years' War.' The events of this year, whilst the war

was only between Spain and England, were the attacks on

Spanish settlements in America, the capture of Porto Bello,

and the failure before Cartagena, which led to Anson's famous

voyage."

E. E. Morris,

The Early Hanoverians,

book 2, chapter 3.

"Admiral Vernon, setting sail with the English fleet from

Jamaica, captured Porto Bello, on the Isthmus of Darien,

December 1st--an exploit for which he received the thanks of

both Houses of Parliament. His attempt on Carthagena, in the

spring of 1741, proved, however, a complete failure through

his dissensions, it is said, with General Wentworth, the

commander of the land forces. A squadron, under Commodore

Anson, despatched to the South Sea for the purpose of annoying

the Spanish colonies of Peru and Chili, destroyed the Peruvian

town of Paita, and made several prizes; the most important of

which was one of the great Spanish galleons trading between

Acapulco and Manilla, having a large treasure on board. It was

on this occasion that Anson circumnavigated the globe, having

sailed from England in 1740 and returned to Spithead in 1744."

T. H. Dyer,

History of Modern Europe,

book 6, chapter 3.

{923}

ALSO IN:

R. Walter,

Voyage around the World of George Anson.

Sir J. Barrow,

Life of Lord George Anson,

chapter 1-2.

W. Coxe,

Memoirs of the Bourbon Kings of Spain,

chapter 43 (volume 3).

See, also,

FRANCE, A. D. 1733,

and GEORGIA: A. D. 1738-1743.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1740-1741.

Beginning of the War of the Austrian Succession.

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1740-1741.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1742.

Naval operations in the Mediterranean.

See ITALY: A. D. 1741-1743.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1742-1745.

Ministries of Carteret and the Pelhams,

Pitt's admission to the Cabinet.

"Walpole resigned in the beginning of February, 1742; but his

retirement did not bring Pitt into office. The King had

conceived a violent prejudice against him, not only on account

of the prominent and effective part he had taken in the

general assault upon the late administration, but more

especially in consequence of the strong opinions he had

expressed on the subject of Hanover, and respecting the public

mischiefs arising from George the Second's partiality to the

interests of the Electorate. Lord Wilmington was the nominal

head of the new administration, which was looked on as little

more than a weak continuation of Walpole's. The same character

was generally given to Pelham's ministry, (Pelham succeeded

Wilmington as Premier, on the death of the latter in 1743,)

and Pitt soon appeared in renewed opposition to the Court. It

was about this time that he received a creditable and

convenient addition to his private fortune, which also

attested his celebrity. In 1744, the celebrated Duchess of

Marlborough died, leaving him a legacy' of 10,000 l. on

account of his merit in the noble defence he has made of the

laws of England, to prevent the ruin of his country.' Pitt was

now at the head of a small but determined band of Opposition

statesmen, with whom he was also connected by intermarriages

between members of their respective families and his own.

These were Lord Cobham, the Grenvilles, and his schoolfellow

Lord Lyttelton. The genius of Pitt had made the opposition of

this party so embarrassing to the minister, that Mr. Pelham,

the leader of the House of Commons, and his brother, the Duke

of Newcastle, found it necessary to get rid of Lord Carteret,

who was personally most obnoxious to the attacks of Pitt, on

account of his supposed zeal in favour of the King's

Hanoverian policy. Pitt's friends, Lyttelton and Grenville,

were taken into the ministry [called the Broad-bottomed

Administration], and the undoubted wish of the Pelhams was to

enlist Pitt also among their colleagues. But 'The great Mr.

Pitt,' says old Horace Walpole--using in derision an epithet

soon confirmed by the serious voice of the country--'the great

Mr. Pitt insisted on being Secretary at War';--but it was

found that the King's aversion to him was insurmountable; and

after much reluctance and difficulty, his friends were

persuaded to accept office without him, under an assurance

from the Duke of Newcastle that 'he should at no distant day

be able to remove this prejudice from his Majesty's mind.'

Pitt concurred in the new arrangement, and promised to give

his support to the remodelled administration. ... On the

breaking out of the rebellion of 1745, Pitt energetically

supported the ministry in their measures to protect the

established government. George the Second's prejudices

against him, were, however, as strong as ever. At last a sort

of compromise was effected. Pitt waived for a time his demand

of the War Secretaryship, and on the 22nd of February, 1746,

he was appointed one of the joint Vice-treasurers for Ireland;

and on the 6th of May following he was promoted to the more

lucrative office of Paymaster-General of the Forces. ... In

his office of Paymaster of the Forces Pitt set an example then

rare among statesmen, of personal disinterestedness. He held

what had hitherto been an exceedingly lucrative situation: for

the Paymaster seldom had less than 100,000 l. in his hands,

and was allowed to appropriate the interest of what funds he

held to his own use. In addition to this it had been customary

for foreign princes in the pay of England to allow the

Paymaster of the Forces a per-centage on their subsidies. Pitt

nobly declined to avail himself of these advantages, and would

accept of nothing beyond his legal salary."

Sir E. Creasy,

Memoirs of Eminent Etonians,

chapter 4.

"From Walpole's death in 1745, when the star of the Stuarts

set for ever among the clouds of Culloden, to 1754, when Henry

Pelham followed his old chief, public life in England was

singularly calm and languid. The temperate and peaceful

disposition of the Minister seemed to pervade Parliament. At

his death the King exclaimed: 'Now I shall have no more

peace'; and the words proved to be prophetic. Both in

Parliament and in the country, as well as beyond its shores,

the elements of discord were swiftly at war. Out of

conflicting ambitions and widely divergent interests a new

type of statesman, very different from Walpole, or from

Bolingbroke, or from Pelham, or from the 'hubble-bubble

Newcastle,' was destined to arise. And along with the new

statesman a new force, of which he was in part the

representative, in part the creator, was to be introduced into

political life. This new force was the unrepresented voice of

the people. The new statesman was an ex-cornet of horse,

William Pitt, better known as Lord Chatham. The

characteristics of William Pitt which mainly influenced his

career were his ambition and his ill-health. Power, and that

conspicuous form of egotism called personal glory, were the

objects of his life. He pursued them with all the ardour of a

strong-willed purpose; but the flesh was in his case painfully

weak. Gout had declared itself his foe while he was still an

Eton boy. His failures, and prolonged withdrawal at intervals

from public affairs, were due to the inroads of this fatal

enemy, from whom he was destined to receive his death-blow.

Walpole had not been slow to recognise the quality of this

'terrible cornet of horse,' as he called him."

R. B. Brett,

Footprints of Statesmen,

chapter 7.

ALSO IN:

Lord Mahon (Earl Stanhope),

History of England, 1713-1783,

chapters 24-28 (volume 3).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1743.

The British Pragmatic Army.

Battle of Dettingen.

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1743.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1743 (OCTOBER).

The second Bourbon Family Compact.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1743 (OCTOBER).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1743-1752.

Struggle of French and English for supremacy in India.

The founding of British empire by Clive.

See INDIA: A. D. 1743-1752.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1744-1745.

War of the Austrian Succession:

Hostilities in America.

See NEW ENGLAND: A. D. 1744: and 1745.

{924}

ENGLAND: A. D. 1745 (MAY).

War of the Austrian Succession in the Netherlands.

Fontenoy.

See NETHERLANDS (THE AUSTRIAN PROVINCES): A. D. 1745.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1745-1746.

The Young Pretender's invasion.

Last rising of the Jacobites.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1745-1746.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1745-1747.

War of the Austrian Succession

British incapacity.

Final successes at Sea.

"The extraordinary incapacity of English commanders, both by

land and sea, is one of the most striking facts in the war we

are considering. ... Mismanagement and languor were general.

The battle of Dettingen was truly described as a happy escape

rather than a great victory; the army in Flanders can hardly

be said to have exhibited any military quality except courage,

and the British navy, though it gained some successes, added

little to its reputation. The one brilliant exception was the

expedition of Anson round Cape Horn, for the purpose of

plundering the Spanish merchandise and settlements in the

Pacific. It lasted for nearly four years. ... The overwhelming

superiority of England upon the sea began, however, gradually

to influence the war. The island of Cape Breton, which

commanded the mouth of Gulf St. Lawrence, and protected the

Newfoundland fisheries, was captured in the June of 1745. In

1747 a French squadron was destroyed by a very superior

English fleet off Cape Finisterre. Another was defeated near

Belleisle, and in the same year as many as 644 prizes were

taken. The war on the part of the English, however, was most

efficiently conducted by means of subsidies, which were

enormously multiplied."

W. E. H. Lecky,

History of England, 18th Century,

chapter 3 (volume 1).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1746-1747.

War of the Austrian Succession in Italy.

Siege of Genoa.

See ITALY: A. D. 1746-1747.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1748 (OCTOBER).

End and results of the War of the Austrian Succession.

See AIX-LA-CHAPELLE: A. D. 1748;

and NEW ENGLAND: A. D. 1745-1748.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1748-1754.

First movements to dispute possession of the Ohio Valley with

the French.

See OHIO (VALLEY): A. D. 1748-1754.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1749-1755.

Unsettled boundary disputes with France in America.

Preludes of the final contest.

See NOVA SCOTIA: A. D. 1749-1755;

CANADA: A. D. 1750-1753;

and OHIO (VALLEY): A. D. 1754.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1751.

Reformation of the Calendar.

See CALENDAR, GREGORIAN.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1753.

The Jewish Naturalization  Bill.

See JEWS: A. D. 1662-1753.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1754.

Collision with the French in the Ohio Valley.

See OHIO (VALLEY): A. D. 1754.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1754-1755.

The Seven Years War.

Its causes and provocations.

"The seven years that succeeded the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle

are described by Voltaire as among the happiest that Europe

ever enjoyed. Commerce revived, the fine arts flourished, and

the European nations resembled, it is said, one large family

that had been reunited after its dissensions. Unfortunately,

however, the peace had not exterminated all the elements of

discord. Scarcely had Europe begun to breathe again when new

disputes arose, and the seven years of peace and prosperity

were succeeded by another seven of misery and war. The ancient

rivalry between France and England, which had formerly vented

itself in continental struggles, had, by the progress of

maritime discovery and colonisation, been extended to all the

quarters of the globe. The interests of the two nations came

into collision in India, Africa and America, and a dispute

about boundaries in this last quarter again plunged them into

a war. By the 9th article of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle,

France and England were mutually to restore their conquests in

such state as they were before the war. This clause became a

copious source of quarrel. The principal dispute regarded the

limits of Acadia, or Nova Scotia, which province had, by the

12th article of the Treaty of Utrecht, been ceded to England

'conformably to its ancient boundaries'; but what these were

had never been accurately determined, and each Power fixed

them according to its convenience. Thus, while the French

pretended that Nova Scotia embraced only the peninsula

extending from Cape St. Mary to Cape Canseau, the English

further included in it that part of the American continent

which extends to Pentagoet on the west, and to the river St.

Lawrence on the north, comprising all the province of New

Brunswick. Another dispute regarded the western limits of the

British North American settlements. The English claimed the

banks of the Ohio as belonging to Virginia, the French as

forming part of Louisiana; and they attempted to confine the

British colonies by a chain of forts stretching from Louisiana

to Canada. Commissaries were appointed to settle these

questions, who held their conferences at Paris between the

years 1750 and 1755. Disputes also arose respecting the

occupation by the French of the islands of St. Lucia,

Dominica, St. Vincent, and Tobago, which had been declared

neutral by former treaties. Before the Commissaries could

terminate their labours, mutual aggressions had rendered a war

inevitable. As is usual in such cases, it is difficult to say

who was the first aggressor. Each nation laid the blame on the

other. Some French writers assert that the English resorted to

hostilities out of jealousy at the increase of the French

navy. According to the plans of Rouillé, the French Minister

of Marine, 111 ships of the line, 54 frigates, and smaller

vessels in proportion, were to be built in the course of ten

years. The question of boundaries was, however, undoubtedly

the occasion, if not also the true cause, of the war. A series

of desultory conflicts had taken place along the Ohio, and on

the frontiers of Nova Scotia, in 1754, without being avowed by

the mother countries. A French writer, who flourished about

this time, the Abbé Raynal, ascribes "this clandestine warfare

to the policy of the Court of Versailles, which was seeking

gradually to recover what it had lost by treaties. Orders were

now issued to the English fleet to attack French vessels

wherever found. ... It being known that a considerable French

fleet was preparing to sail from Brest and Rochefort for

America, Admiral Boscawen was despatched thither, and captured

two French men-of-war off Cape Race in Newfoundland, June 1755.

Hostilities were also transferred to the shores of Europe. ...

A naval war between England and France was now unavoidable;

but, as in the case of the Austrian Succession, this was also

to be mixed up with a European war.

{925}

The complicated relations of the European system again caused

these two wars to run into one, though their origin had

nothing in common. France and England, whose quarrel lay in

the New World, appeared as the leading Powers in a European

contest in which they had only a secondary interest, and

decided the fate of Canada on the plains of Germany. The war

in Europe, commonly called the Seven Years' War, was chiefly

caused by the pride of one Empress [Maria Theresa], the vanity

of another [Elizabeth of Russia], and the subserviency of a

royal courtezan [Madame Pompadour], who became the tool of

these passions."

T. H. Dyer,

History of Modern Europe,

book 6, chapter 5 (volume 3).

"The Seven Years' War was in its origin not an European war at

all; it was a war between England and France on Colonial

questions with which the rest of Europe had nothing to do; but

the alliances and enmities of England and France in Europe,

joined with the fact that the King of England was also Elector

of Hanover, made it almost certain that a war between England

and France must spread to the Continent. I am far from

charging on the English Government of the time--for it was

they, and not the French, who forced on the war--as Macaulay

might do, the blood of the Austrians who perished at Leuthen,

of the Russians sabred at Zorndorf, and the Prussians mown

down at Kunersdorf. The States of the Continent had many old

enmities not either appeased or fought out to a result; and

these would probably have given rise to a war some day, even

if no black men, to adapt Macaulay again, had been previously

fighting on the coast of Coromandel, nor red men scalping each

other by the great lakes of North America. Still, it is to be

remembered that it was the work of England that the war took

place then and on those lines; and in view of the enormous

suffering and slaughter of that war, and of the violent and

arbitrary proceedings by which it was forced on, we may well

question whether English writers have any right to reprobate

Frederick's seizure of Silesia as something specially immoral

in itself and disastrous to the world. If the Prussians were

highway robbers, the English were pirates. ... The origin of

the war between England and France, if a struggle which had

hardly been interrupted since the nominal peace could be said

to have an origin, was the struggle for America."

A. R. Ropes,

The Causes of the Seven Years' War

(Royal Historical Society, Transactions,

new series, volume 4).

ALSO IN:

Lord Mahon (Earl Stanhope),

History of England, 1713-1783,

chapters 31-32 (volume 4).

F. Parkman,

Montcalm and Wolfe,

chapters 1-7.

See, also, GERMANY: A. D. 1755-1756;

CANADA: A. D. 1750-1753;

and OHIO (VALLEY): A. D. 1748-1754.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1755 (APRIL).

Demand of the royal governors in America for taxation of the

colonies by act of Parliament.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1755.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1755 (JUNE).

Boscawen's naval victory over the French.

See CANADA: A. D. 1755 (JUNE).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1755 (JULY).

Braddock's defeat in America.

See OHIO (VALLEY): A. D. 1755.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1755 (SEPTEMBER).

Victory at Lake George.

See CANADA: A. D. 1755 (SEPTEMBER).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1756.

Loss of Minorca and reverses in America.

See MINORCA: A. D. 1756;

and CANADA: A. D. 1756-1757.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1757-1759.

Campaigns on the Continent.

Defence of Hanover.

See GERMANY: A D. 1757 (JULY-DECEMBER),

to 1759 (APRIL-AUGUST).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1757-1760.

The great administration of the elder Pitt.

"In 1754 Henry Pelham died. The important consequence of his

death was the fact that it gave Pitt at last an opportunity of

coming to the front. The Duke of Newcastle, Henry Pelham's

brother, became leader of the administration, with Henry Fox

for Secretary at War, Pitt for Paymaster-general of the

Forces, and Murray, afterwards to be famous as Lord Mansfield,

for Attorney-general. There was some difficulty about the

leadership of the House of Commons. Pitt was still too much

disliked by the King, to be available for the position. Fox

for a while refused to accept it, and Murray was unwilling to

do anything which might be likely to withdraw him from the

professional path along which he was to move to such

distinction. An attempt was made to get on with a Sir Thomas

Robinson, a man of no capacity for such a position, and the

attempt was soon an evident failure. Then Fox consented to

take the position on Newcastle's own terms, which were those

of absolute submission to the dictates of Newcastle. Later

still he was content to descend to a subordinate office which

did not even give him a place in the Cabinet. Fox never

recovered the damage which his reputation and his influence

suffered by this amazing act. ... The Duke of Newcastle's

Ministry soon fell. Newcastle was not a man who had the

slightest capacity for controlling or directing a policy of

war; and the great struggle known as the Seven Years' War had

now broken out. One lamentable event in the war has to be

recorded, although it was but of minor importance. This was

the capture of Minorca by the French under the romantic,

gallant, and profligate Duc de Richelieu. The event is

memorable chiefly, or only, because it was followed by the

trial and execution [March 14, 1757] of the unfortunate

Admiral Byng.

See MINORCA: A. D. 1756.

The Duke of Newcastle resigned office, and for a short time

the Duke of Devonshire was at the head of a coalition Ministry

which included Pitt. The King, however, did not stand this

long, and one day suddenly turned them all out of office. Then

a coalition of another kind was formed, which included

Newcastle and Pitt, with Henry Fox in the subordinate position

of paymaster. Pitt now for the first time had it all his own

way. He ruled everything in the House of Commons. He flung

himself with passionate and patriotic energy into the alliance

with that great Frederick whose genius and daring were like

his own."

Justin McCarthy,

History of the Four Georges,

volume 2, chapter 41.

"Newcastle took the Treasury. Pitt was Secretary of State,

with the lead in the House of Commons, and with the supreme

direction of the war and of foreign affairs. Fox, the only man

who could have given much annoyance to the new Government, was

silenced with the office of Paymaster, which, during the

continuance of that war, was probably the most lucrative place

in the whole Government. He was poor, and the situation was

tempting. ... The first acts of the new administration were

characterized rather by vigour than by judgment. Expeditions

were sent against different parts of the French coast with

little success. ... But soon conquests of a very different

kind filled the kingdom with pride and rejoicing. A succession

of victories undoubtedly brilliant, and, as it was thought,

not barren, raised to the highest point the fame of the

minister to whom the conduct of the war had been intrusted.

{926}

In July, 1758, Louisburg fell. The whole island of Cape Breton

was reduced. The fleet to which the Court of Versailles had

confided the defence of French America was destroyed. The

captured standards were borne in triumph from Kensington

Palace to the city, and were suspended in St. Paul's Church,

amidst the roar of guns and kettle-drums, and the shouts of an

immense multitude. Addresses of congratulation came in from all

the great towns of England. Parliament met only to decree

thanks and monuments, and to bestow, without one murmur,

supplies more than double of those which had been given during

the war of the Grand Alliance. The year 1759 opened with the

conquest of Goree. Next fell Guadaloupe; then Ticonderoga;

then Niagara. The Toulon squadron was completely defeated by

Boscawen off Cape Lagos. But the greatest exploit of the year

was the achievement of Wolfe on the heights of Abraham. The

news of his glorious death and of the fall of Quebec reached

London in the very week in which the Houses met. All was joy

and triumph. Envy and faction were forced to join in the

general applause. Whigs and Tories vied with each other in

extolling the genius and energy of Pitt. His colleagues were

never talked of or thought of. The House of Commons, the

nation, the colonies, our allies, our enemies, had their eyes

fixed on him alone. Scarcely had Parliament voted a monument

to Wolfe when another great event called for fresh rejoicings.

The Brest fleet, under the command of Conflans, had put out to

sea. It was overtaken by an English squadron under Hawke.

Conflans attempted to take shelter close under the French

coast. The shore was rocky: the night was black: the wind was

furious: the waves of the Bay of Biscay ran high. But Pitt had

infused into every branch of the service a spirit which had

long been unknown. No British seaman was disposed to err on

the same side with Byng. The pilot told Hawke that the attack

could not be made without the greatest danger. 'You have done

your duty in remonstrating,' answered Hawke; 'I will answer

for everything. I command you to lay me alongside the French

admiral.' Two French ships of the line struck. Four were

destroyed. The rest hid themselves in the rivers of Brittany.

The year 1760 came; and still triumph followed triumph.

Montreal was taken; the whole Province of Canada was

subjugated; the French fleets underwent a succession of

disasters in the seas of Europe and America. In the meantime

conquests equalling in rapidity, and far surpassing in

magnitude, those of Cortes and Pizarro, had been achieved in

the East. In the space of three years the English had founded

a mighty empire. The French had been defeated in every part of

India. Chandernagore had surrendered to Clive, Pondicherry to

Coote. Throughout Bengal, Bahar, Orissa and the Carnatic, the

authority of the East India Company was more absolute than

that of Acbar or Aurungzebe had ever been. On the continent of

Europe the odds were against England. We had but one important

ally, the King of Prussia; and he was attacked, not only by

France, but also by Russia and Austria. Yet even on the

Continent, the energy of Pitt triumphed over all difficulties.

Vehemently as he had condemned the practice of subsidising

foreign princes, he now carried that practice farther than

Carteret himself would have ventured to do. The active and

able Sovereign of Prussia received such pecuniary assistance

as enabled him to maintain the conflict on equal terms against

his powerful enemies. On no subject had Pitt ever spoken with

so much eloquence and ardour as on the mischiefs of the

Hanoverian connection. He now declared, not without much show

of reason, that it would be unworthy of the English people to

suffer their King to be deprived of his electoral dominions in

an English quarrel. He assured his countrymen that they should

be no losers, and that he would conquer America for them in

Germany. By taking this line he conciliated the King, and lost

no part of his influence with the nation. In Parliament, such

was the ascendeney which his eloquence, his success, his high

situation, his pride, and his intrepidity had obtained for

him, that he took liberties with the House of which there had

been no example, and which have never since been imitated. ...

The face of affairs was speedily changed. The invaders [of

Hanover] were driven out. ... In the meantime, the nation

exhibited all the signs of wealth and prosperity. ... The

success of our arms was perhaps owing less to the skill of his

[Pitt's] dispositions than to the national resources and the

national spirit. But that the national spirit rose to the

emergency, that the national resources were contributed with

unexampled cheerfulness, this was undoubtedly his work. The

ardour of his soul had set the whole kingdom on fire. ... The

situation which Pitt occupied at the close of the reign of

George the Second was the most enviable ever occupied by any

public man in English history. He had conciliated the King; he

domineered over the House of Commons; he was adored by the

people; he was admired by all Europe. He was the first

Englishman of his time; and he had made England the first

country in the world. The Great Commoner, the name by which he

was often designated, might look down with scorn on coronets

and garters. The nation was drunk with joy and pride."

Lord Macaulay,

First Essay on William Pitt, Earl of Chatham

(Essays, volume 3).

ALSO IN:

Lord Mahon (Earl Stanhope),

History of England, 1713-1783,

chapters 33-36 (volume 4).

Sir E. Creasy,

Memoirs of Eminent Etonians,

chapter 4.

England: A. D. 1758 (JUNE-AUGUST).

The Seven Years War.

Abortive expeditions against the coast of France.

Early in 1758 there was sent out "one of those joint military

and naval expeditions which Pitt seems at first to have

thought the proper means by which England should assist in a

continental war. Like all such isolated expeditions, it was of

little value. St. Malo, against which it was directed, was

found too strong to be taken, but a large quantity of shipping

and naval stores was destroyed. The fleet also approached

Cherbourg, but although the troops were actually in their

boats ready to land, they were ordered to re-embark, and the

fleet came home. Another somewhat similar expedition was sent

out later in the year. In July General Bligh and Commodore

Howe took and destroyed Cherbourg, but on attempting a similar

assault on St. Malo they found it too strong for them. The

army had been landed in the Bay of St. Cast, and, while

engaged in re-embarkation, it was attacked by some French

troops which had been hastily collected, and severely

handled."

J. F. Bright,

History of England,

period 3, page 1027.

{927}

ENGLAND: A. D. 1758 (JULY-NOVEMBER).

The Seven Years War in America: Final capture of Louisbourg

and recovery of Fort Duquesne.

Bloody defeat at Ticonderoga.

See CANADA: A. D. 1758;

and CAPE BRETON ISLAND: A. D. 1758-1760.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1758-1761.

Breaking of French power in India.

See INDIA: A. D. 1758-1761.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1759.

Great victories in America.

Niagara, Ticonderoga, Crown Point, Quebec.

See CANADA: A. D. 1759.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1759 (AUGUST-NOVEMBER).

British naval supremacy established.

Victories off Lagos and in Quiberon Bay.

"Early in the year [1759] the French had begun to make

preparations for an invasion of the British Isles on a large

scale. Flat-bottomed boats were built at Havre and other

places along the coasts of Normandy and Brittany, and large

fleets were collected at Brest and Toulon, besides a small

squadron at Dunkirk. A considerable force was assembled at

Vannes in the south of Brittany, under the command of the Duc

d'Aiguillon, which was to be convoyed to the Irish coasts by

the combined fleets of Brest and Toulon, while the

flat-bottomed boats transported a second army across the

channel under cover of a dark night. The Dunkirk squadron,

under Admiral Thurot, a celebrated privateer, was to create a

diversion by attacking some part of the Scotch coast. The

design was bold and well contrived, and would not improbably

have succeeded three or even two years before, but the

opportunity was gone. England was no longer in 'that enervate

state in which 20,000 men from France could shake her.' Had a

landing been effected, the regular troops in the country, with

the support of the newly created militia, would probably have

been equal to the emergency; but a more effectual bulwark was

found in the fleet, which watched the whole French coast,

ready to engage the enemy as soon as he ventured out of his

ports. The first attempt to break through the cordon was made

by M. de la Clue from Toulon. The English Mediterranean fleet,

under Admiral Boscawen, cruising before that port, was

compelled early in July to retire to Gibraltar to take in

water and provisions and to refit some of' the ships. Hereupon

M. de la Clue put to sea, and hugging the African coast,

passed the straits without molestation. Boscawen, however,

though his ships were not yet refitted, at once gave chase,

and came up with the enemy off [Lagos, on] the coast of

Portugal, where an engagement took place [August 18], in which

three French ships were taken and two driven on shore and burnt.

The remainder took refuge in Cadiz, where they were blockaded

till the winter, when, the English fleet being driven off the

coast by a storm, they managed to get back to Toulon. The

discomfiture of the Brest fleet, under M. de Conflans, was

even more complete. On November 9 Admiral Sir Edward Hawke,

who had blockaded Brest all the summer and autumn, was driven

from his post by a violent gale, and on the 14th, Conflans put

to sea with 21 sail of the line and 4 frigates. On the same

day, Hawke, with 22 sail of the line, stood out from Torbay,

where he had taken shelter, and made sail for Quiberon Bay,

judging that Conflans would steer thither to liberate a fleet

of transports which were blocked up in the river Morbihan, by

a small squadron of frigates under Commodore Duff. On the

morning of the 20th, he sighted the French fleet chasing Duff

in Quiberon Bay. Conflans, when he discerned the English,

recalled his chasing ships and prepared for action; but on

their nearer approach changed his mind, and ran for shelter

among the shoals and rocks of the coast. The sea was running

mountains high and the coast was very dangerous and little

known to the English, who had no pilots; but Hawke, whom no

peril could daunt, never hesitated a moment, but crowded all

sail after them. Without regard to lines of battle, every ship

was directed to make the best of her way towards the enemy,

the admiral telling his officers he was for the old way of

fighting, to make downright work with them. In consequence

many of the English ships never got into action at all; but

the short winter day was wearing away, and all haste was

needed if the enemy were not to escape. ... As long as

daylight lasted the battle raged with great fury, so near the

coast that '10,000 persons on the shore were the sad

spectators of the white flag's disgrace.' ... By nightfall two

French ships, the Thésée 74, and Superb 70, were sunk, and two,

the Formidable 80, and the Héros 74, had struck. The Soleil

Royal afterwards went aground, but her crew escaped, as did

that of the Héros, whose captain dishonourably ran her ashore

in the night. Of the remainder, seven ships of the line and

four frigates threw their guns overboard, and escaped up the

river Vilaine, where most of them bumped their bottoms out in

the shallow water; the rest got away and took shelter in the

Charente, all but one, which was wrecked, but very few ever

got out again. With two hours more of daylight Hawke thought

he could have taken or destroyed all, as he was almost up with

the French van when night overtook him. Two English ships, the

Essex 64, and the Resolution 74, went ashore in the night and

could not be got off, but the crews were saved, and the

victory was won with the loss of 40 killed and 200 wounded.

The great invasion scheme was completely wrecked. Thurot had

succeeded in getting out from Dunkirk, and for some months was

a terror to the northern coast-towns, but early in the

following year an end was put to his career. For the rest of

the war the French never ventured to meet the English in

battle on the high seas, and could only look on helplessly

while their colonies and commerce fell into the hands of their

rivals. From the day of the fight in Quiberon Bay, the naval

and commercial supremacy of England was assured."

F. W. Longman,

Frederick the Great and the Seven Years War,

chapter 12, section 3.

ALSO IN:

C. D. Yonge,

History of the British Navy,

volume 1, chapter 12.

J. Entick,

History of the late War,

volume 4, pages 241-290.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1760.

Completed conquest of Canada.

Successes of the Prussians and their allies.

See CANADA: A. D. 1760;

and GERMANY: A. D. 1760.

{928}

ENGLAND: A. D. 1760-1763.

Accession of George III.

His ignorance and his despotic notions of kingship.

Retirement of the elder Pitt.

Rise and fall of Bute.

The Grenville Ministry.

"When George III. came to the throne, in 1760, England had

been governed for more than half a century by the great Whig

families which had been brought into the foreground by the

revolution of 1688. ... Under Walpole's wise and powerful

sway, the first two Georges had possessed scarcely more than

the shadow of sovereignty. It was the third George's ambition

to become a real king, like the king of France or the king of

Spain. From earliest babyhood, his mother had forever been

impressing upon him the precept, 'George be king!' and this

simple lesson had constituted pretty much the whole of his

education. Popular tradition regards him as the most ignorant

king that ever sat upon the English throne; and so far as

general culture is concerned, this opinion is undoubtedly

correct. ... Nevertheless ... George III. was not destitute of

a certain kind of ability, which often gets highly rated in

this not too clear-sighted world. He could see an immediate

end very distinctly, and acquired considerable power from the

dogged industry with which he pursued it. In an age where some

of the noblest English statesmen drank their gallon of strong

wine daily, or sat late at the gambling-table, or lived in

scarcely hidden concubinage, George III. was decorous in

personal habits and pure in domestic relations, and no

banker's clerk in London applied himself to the details of

business more industriously than he. He had a genuine talent

for administration, and he devoted this talent most

assiduously to selfish ends. Scantily endowed with human

sympathy, and almost boorishly stiff in his ordinary unstudied

manner, he could be smooth as oil whenever he liked. He was an

adept in gaining men's confidence by a show of interest, and

securing their aid by dint of fair promises; and when he found

them of no further use, he could turn them adrift with wanton

insult. Anyone who dared to disagree with him upon even the

slightest point of policy he straightway regarded as a natural

enemy, and pursued him ever afterward with vindictive hatred.

As a natural consequence, he surrounded himself with weak and

short-sighted advisers, and toward all statesmen of broad

views and independent character he nursed the bitterest

rancour. ... Such was the man who, on coming to the throne in

1760, had it for his first and chiefest thought to break down

the growing system of cabinet government in England."

J. Fiske,

The American Revolution,

chapter 1 (volume 1).

"The dissolution of Parliament, shortly after his accession,

afforded an opportunity of strengthening the parliamentary

connection of the king's friends. Parliament was kept sitting

while the king and Lord Bute were making out lists of the

court candidates, and using every exertion to secure their

return. The king not only wrested government boroughs from the

ministers, in order to nominate his own friends, but even

encouraged opposition to such ministers as he conceived not to

be in his interest. ... Lord Bute, the originator of the new

policy, was not personally well qualified for its successful

promotion. He was not connected with the great families who

had acquired a preponderance of political influence; he was no

parliamentary debater: his manners were unpopular: he was a

courtier rather than a politician: his intimate relations with

the Princess of Wales were an object of scandal; and, above

all, he was a Scotchman. ... Immediately after the king's

accession he had been made a privy councillor, and admitted

into the cabinet. An arrangement was soon afterwards

concerted, by which Lord Holdernesse retired from office with

a pension, and Lord Bute succeeded him as Secretary of State.

It was now the object of the court to break up the existing

ministry, and to replace it with another, formed from among

the king's friends. Had the ministry been united, and had the

chiefs reposed confidence in one another, it would have been

difficult to overthrow them. But there were already jealousies

amongst them, which the court lost no opportunity of

fomenting. A breach soon arose between Mr. Pitt, the most

powerful and popular of the ministers, and his colleagues. He

desired to strike a sudden blow against Spain, which had

concluded a secret treaty of alliance with France, then at war

with this country.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1761 (AUGUST).

Though war minister he was opposed by all his colleagues

except Lord Temple. He bore himself haughtily at the council,

--declared that he had been called to the ministry by the

voice of the people, and that he could not be responsible for

measures which he was no longer allowed to guide. Being met

with equal loftiness in the cabinet, he was forced to tender

his resignation. The king overpowered the retiring minister

with kindness and condescension. He offered the barony of

Chatham to his wife, and to himself an annuity of £3,000 a

year for three lives. The minister had deserved these royal

favours, and he accepted them, but at the cost of his

popularity. ... The same Gazette which announced his

resignation, also trumpeted forth the peerage and the pension,

and was the signal for clamors against the public favourite.

On the retirement of Mr. Pitt, Lord Bute became the most

influential of the ministers. He undertook the chief

management of public affairs in the cabinet, and the sole

direction of the House of Lords. ... His ascendency provoked

the jealousy and resentment of the king's veteran minister,

the Duke of Newcastle: who had hitherto distributed all the

patronage of the Crown, but now was never consulted. ... At

length, in May 1762, his grace, after frequent disagreements

in the cabinet and numerous affronts, was obliged to resign.

And now, the object of the court being at length attained,

Lord Bute was immediately placed at the head of affairs, as

First Lord of the Treasury. ... The king and his minister were

resolved to carry matters with a high hand, and their

arbitrary attempts to coerce and intimidate opponents

disclosed their imperious views of the prerogative.

Preliminaries of a treaty of peace with France having been

agreed upon, against which a strong popular feeling was

aroused, the king's vengeance was directed against all who

ventured to disapprove them. The Duke of Devonshire having

declined to attend the council summoned to decide upon the

peace, was insulted by the king, and forced to resign his

office of Lord Chamberlain. A few days afterwards the king,

with his own hand, struck his grace's name from the list of

privy councillors. ... No sooner had Lord Rockingham heard of

the treatment of the Duke of Devonshire than he ... resigned

his place in the household. A more general proscription of the

Whig nobles soon followed. The Dukes of Newcastle and Grafton,

and the Marquess of Rockingham, having presumed, as peers of

Parliament, to express their disapprobation of the peace, were

dismissed from the lord-lieutenancies of their counties. ...

Nor was the vengeance of the court confined to the heads of

the Whig party.

{929}

All placemen, who had voted against the preliminaries of

peace, were dismissed. ... The preliminaries of peace were

approved by Parliament; and the Princess of Wales, exulting in

the success of the court, exclaimed, 'Now my son is king of

England.' But her exultation was premature. ... These

stretches of prerogative served to unite the Whigs into an

organised opposition. ... The fall of the king's favoured

minister was even more sudden than his rise. ... Afraid, as he

confessed, 'not only of falling himself, but of involving his

royal master in his ruin,' he resigned suddenly [April 7,

1763],--to the surprise of all parties, and even of the king

himself,--before he had held office for eleven months. ... He

retreated to the interior cabinet, whence he could direct more

securely the measures of the court; having previously negotiated

the appointment of Mr. George Grenville as his successor, and

arranged with him the nomination of the cabinet. The ministry

of Mr. Grenville was constituted in a manner favourable to the

king's personal views, and was expected to be under the

control of himself and his favorite."

T. E. May,

Constitutional History of England, 1760-1860,

chapter 1.

ALSO IN:

J. H. Jesse,

Memoirs of the Life and Reign of George III.,

chapter 1-10 (volume 1).

The Grenville Papers,

volumes 1-2.

W. Massey,

History of England: Reign of George III.,

chapters 2-3 (volume 1).

G. O. Trevelyan,

Early History of Charles James Fox,

chapter 4.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1760-1775.

Crown, Parliament and Colonies.

The conflicting theories of their relations.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1760-1775.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1761-1762.

The third Family Compact of the Bourbon kings.

War with Spain.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1761 (AUGUST).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1761-1762.

The Seven Years War: Last Campaigns in Germany.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1761-1762.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1 762.

Capture of Havana.

See CUBA: A. D. 1514-1851.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1762-1764.

"The North Briton," No. 45, and the prosecution of Wilkes.

"The popular dislike to the new system of Government by

courtiers had found vent in a scurrilous press, the annoyance

of which continued unabated by the sham retirement of the

minister whose ascendancy had provoked this grievous kind of

opposition. The leader of the host of libellers was John

Wilkes, a man of that audacity and self-possession which are

indispensable to success in the most disreputable line of

political adventure. But Wilkes had qualities which placed him

far above the level of a vulgar demagogue. Great sense and

shrewdness, brilliant wit, extensive knowledge of the world,

with the manners of a gentleman, were among the

accomplishments which he brought to a vocation, but rarely

illustrated by the talents of a Catiline. Long before he

engaged in public life, Wilkes had become infamous for his

debaucheries, and, with a few other men of fashion, had tested

the toleration of public opinion by a series of outrages upon

religion and decency. Profligacy of morals, however, has not

in any age or country proved a bar to the character of a

patriot. ... Wilkes' journal, which originated with the

administration of Lord Bute [first issued June 5, 1762], was

happily entitled 'The North Briton,' and from its boldness and

personality soon obtained a large circulation. It is surpassed

in ability though not often equalled in virulence by the

political press of the present day; but at a time when the

characters of public men deservedly stood lowest in public

estimation, they were protected, not unadvisedly perhaps, from

the assaults of the press by a stringent law of libel. ... It

had been the practice since the Revolution, and it is now

acknowledged as an important constitutional right, to treat

the Speech from the Throne, on the opening of Parliament, as

the manifesto of the minister; and in that point of view, it

had from time to time been censured by Pitt, and other leaders

of party, with the ordinary license of debate. But when Wilkes

presumed to use this freedom in his paper, though in a degree

which would have seemed temperate and even tame had he spoken

to the same purport in his place in Parliament, it was thought

necessary to repress such insolence with the whole weight of

the law. A warrant was issued from the office of the Secretary

of State to seize--not any person named--but 'the authors,

printers, and publishers of the seditious libel, entitled the

North Briton, No. 45.' Under this warrant, forty-nine persons

were arrested and detained in custody for several days; but as

it was found that none of them could be brought within the

description in the warrant, they were discharged. Several of

the individuals who had been so seized, brought actions for

false imprisonment against the messengers; and in one of these

actions, in which a verdict was entered for the plaintiff

under the direction of the Lord Chief Justice of the Common

Pleas, the two important questions as to the claim of a

Secretary of State to the protection given by statute to

justices of the peace acting in that capacity, and as to the

legality of a warrant which did not specify any individual by

name, were raised by a Bill of Exceptions to the ruling of the

presiding judge, and thus came upon appeal before the Court of

King's Bench. ... The Court of King's Bench ... intimated a

strong opinion against the Crown upon the important

constitutional questions which had been raised, and directed

the case to stand over for further argument; but when the case

came on again, the Attorney-General Yorke prudently declined

any further agitation of the questions. ... These proceedings

were not brought to a close until the end of the year 1765,

long after the administration under which they were instituted

had ceased to exist. ... The prosecution of Wilkes himself was

pressed with the like indiscreet vigour. The privilege of

Parliament, which extends to every case except treason,

felony, and breach of the peace, presented an obstacle to the

vengeance of the Court. But the Crown lawyers, with a

servility which belonged to the worst times of prerogative,

advised that a libel came within the purview of the exception,

as having a tendency to a breach of the peace; and upon this

perversion of plain law, Wilkes was arrested, and brought

before Lord Halifax for examination. The cool and wary

demagogue, however, was more than a match for the Secretary of

State; but his authorship of the alleged libel having been

proved by the printer, he was committed close prisoner to the

Tower. In a few days, having sued out writs of habeas, he was

brought up before the Court of Common Pleas. ... The argument

which would confound the commission of a crime with conduct

which had no more than a tendency to provoke it, was at once

rejected by an independent court of justice; and the result

was the liberation of Wilkes from custody.

{930}

But the vengeance of the Court was not turned aside by this

disappointment. An ex-officio prosecution for libel was

immediately instituted against the member for Aylesbury; he

was deprived of his commission as colonel of the

Buckinghamshire militia; his patron, Earl Temple, who provided

the funds for his defence, was at the same time dismissed from

the lord-lieutenancy of the same county, and from the Privy

Council. When Parliament assembled in the autumn, the first

business brought forward by the Government was this

contemptible affair--a proceeding not merely foolish and

undignified, but a flagrant violation of common justice and

decency. Having elected to prosecute Wilkes for this alleged

libel before the ordinary tribunals of the country, it is

manifest that the Government should have left the law to take

its course unprejudiced. But the House of Commons was now

required to pronounce upon the very subject-matter of inquiry

which had been referred to the decision of a court of law; and

this degenerate assembly, at the bidding of the minister,

readily condemned the indicted paper in terms of extravagant

and fulsome censure, and ordered that it should be burned by

the hands of the common hangman. Lord North, on the part of

the Government, then pressed for an immediate decision on the

question of privilege; but Pitt, in his most solemn manner,

insisting on an adjournment, the House yielded this point. On

the following day, Wilkes, being dangerously wounded in a duel

with Martin, one of the joint Secretaries to the Treasury, who

had grossly insulted him in the House, for the purpose of

provoking a quarrel, was disabled from attending in his place;

but the House, nevertheless, refused to postpone the question

of privilege beyond the 24th of the month. On that day, they

resolved 'that the privilege of Parliament does not extend to

the case of writing and publishing seditious libels, nor ought

to be allowed to obstruct the ordinary course of the laws in

the speedy and effectual prosecution of so heinous and

dangerous an offence.' Whatever may be thought of the public

spirit or prudence of a House of Commons which could thus

officiously define its privilege, the vote was practically

futile, since a court of justice had already decided in this

very case, as a matter of strict law, that the person of a

member of Parliament was protected from arrest on a charge of

this description. The conduct of Pitt on this occasion was

consistent with the loftiness of his character. ... The

conduct of the Lords was in harmony with that of the Lower

House. ... The session was principally occupied by the

proceedings against this worthless demagogue, whom the

unworthy hostility of the Crown and both Houses of Parliament

had elevated into a person of the first importance. His name

was coupled with that of Liberty; and when the executioner

appeared to carry into effect the sentence of Parliament upon

'The North Briton,' he was driven away by the populace, who

rescued the obnoxious paper from the flames, and evinced their

hatred and contempt for the Court faction by 'burning in its

stead the jack-boot and the petticoat, the vulgar emblems

which they employed to designate John Earl of Bute and his

supposed royal patroness. ... Wilkes himself, however, was

forced to yield to the storm. Beset by the spies of

Government, and harassed by its prosecutions, which he had not

the means of resisting, he withdrew to Paris. Failing to attend

in his place in the House of Commons on the first day after

the Christmas recess, according to order, his excuse was

eagerly declared invalid; a vote of expulsion immediately

followed [January 19, 1764], and a new writ was ordered for

Aylesbury."

W. Massey,

History of England: Reign of George III.,

chapter 4 (volume 1).

ALSO IN:

J. E. T. Rogers,

Historical Gleanings,

volume 2, chapter 3.

Lord Mahon (Earl Stanhope),

History of England, 1713-1783,

chapters 41-42 (volume 5).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1763.

The end and results of the Seven Years War:

The Peace of Paris and Peace of Hubertsburg.

America to be English, not French.

See SEVEN YEARS WAR.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1763-1764.

Determination to tax the American colonies.

The Sugar (or Molasses) Act.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1763-1764.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1764.

The climax of the mercantile colonial policy and its

consequences.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1764.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1765.

Passage of the Stamp Act for the colonies.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1765.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1765-1768.

Grenville dismissed.

The Rockingham and the Grafton-Chatham Ministries.

Repeal of the Stamp Act.

Fresh trouble in the American colonies.

"Hitherto the Ministry had only excited the indignation of the

people and the colonies. Not satisfied with the number of

their enemies, they now proceeded to quarrel openly with the

king. In 1765 the first signs of the illness, to which George

afterwards fell a victim, appeared; and as soon as he

recovered he proposed, with wonderful firmness, that a Regency

Bill should be brought in, limiting the king's choice of a

Regent to the members of the Royal Family. The Ministers,

however, in alarm at the prospect of a new Bute Ministry,

persuaded the king that there was no hope of the Princess's

name being accepted, and that it had better be left out of the

Bill. The king unwisely consented to this unparalleled insult

on his parent, apparently through lack of consideration.

Parliament, however, insisted on inserting the Princess's name

by a large majority, and thus exposed the trick of his

Ministers. This the king never forgave. They had been for some

time obnoxious to him, and now he determined to get rid of

them. With this view he induced the Duke of Cumberland to make

overtures to Chatham [Pitt, not yet titled], offering almost

any terms." But no arrangement was practicable, and the king

was left quite at the mercy of the Ministers be detested. "He

was obliged to consent to dismiss Bute and all Bute's

following. He was obliged to promise that he would use no

underhand influence for the future. Life, in fact, became a

burden to him under George Grenville's domination, and he

determined to dismiss him, even at the cost of accepting the

Whig Houses, whom he had pledged himself never to employ

again. Pitt and Temple still proving obdurate, Cumberland

opened negotiations with the Rockingham Whigs, and the

Grenville Ministry was at an end [July, 1765]. ... The new

Ministry was composed as follows: Rockingham became First Lord

of the Treasury; Dowdeswell, Chancellor of the Exchequer;

Newcastle, Privy Seal; Northington, Lord Chancellor. ...

{931}

Their leader Rockingham was a man of sound sense, but no power

of language or government. ... He was totally free from any

suspicion of corruption. In fact there was more honesty than

talent in the Ministry altogether. ... The back-bone of the

party was removed by the refusal of Pitt to co-operate. Burke

was undoubtedly the ablest man among them, but his time was

not yet come. Such a Ministry, it was recognized even by its

own members, could not last long. However, it had come in to

effect certain necessary legislation, and it certainly so far

accomplished the end of its being. It repealed the Stamp Act

[see UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1766], which had caused

so much indignation among the Americans; and at the same time

passed a law securing the dependence of the colonies. ... The

king, however, made no secret of his hostility to his

Ministers. ... The conduct of Pitt in refusing to join them

was a decided mistake, and more. He was really at one with

them on most points. Most of their acts were in accordance

with his views. But he was determined not to join a purely

party Ministry, though he could have done so practically on

whatever terms he pleased. In 1766, however, he consented to

form a coalition, in which were included men of the most

opposite views--'King's Friends,' Rockingham Whigs, and the

few personal followers of Pitt. Rockingham refused to take any

office, and retired to the more congenial occupation of

following the hounds. The nominal Prime Minister of this

Cabinet was the Duke of Grafton, for Pitt refused the

leadership, and retired to the House of Lords as Lord Chatham.

Charles Townshend became Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Lord

North, the leader of the 'King's Friends,' was Pay-master. The

Ministry included Shelburne, Barré, Conway, Northington,

Barrington, Camden, Granby--all men of the most opposite

views. ... This second Ministry of Pitt was a mistake from the

very first. He lost all his popularity by taking a peerage.

... As a peer and Lord Privy Seal he found himself in an

uncongenial atmosphere. ... His name, too, had lost a great

deal of its power abroad. 'Pitt' had, indeed, been a word to

conjure with; but there were no associations of defeat and

humiliation connected with the name of 'Chatham.' ... There

were other difficulties, however, as well. His arrogance had

increased, and it was so much intensified by irritating gout,

that it became almost impossible to serve with him. His

disease later almost approached madness. ... The Ministry

drifted helplessly about at the mercy of each wind and wave of

opinion like a water-logged ship; and it was only the utter want

of union among the Opposition which prevented its sinking

entirely. As it was, they contrived to renew the breach with

America, which had been almost entirely healed by Rockingham's

repeal of the Stamp Act. Charles Townshend, the Chancellor of

the Exchequer, was by far the ablest man left in the Cabinet,

and he rapidly assumed the most prominent position. He had

always been in favour of taxing America. He now brought

forward a plan for raising a revenue from tea, glass, and

paper [see UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1766-1767, and

1767-1768], by way of import duty at the American ports. ...

This wild measure was followed shortly by the death of its

author, in September; and then the weakness of the Ministry

became so obvious that, as Chatham still continued incapable,

some fresh reinforcement was absolutely necessary. A coalition

was effected with the Bloomsbury Gang; and, in consequence, Lords

Gower, Weymouth, and Sandwich joined the Ministry. Lord

Northington and General Conway retired. North succeeded

Townshend at the Exchequer. Lord Hillsborough became the first

Secretary of State for the Colonies, thus raising the number

of Secretaries to three. This Ministry was probably the worst

that had governed England since the days of the Cabal; and the

short period of its existence was marked by a succession of

arbitrary and foolish acts. On every important question that

it had to deal with, it pursued a course diametrically opposed

to Chatham's views; and yet with singular irony his nominal

connection with it was not severed for some time"--that is,

not until the following year, 1768.

B. C. Skottowe,

Our Hanoverian Kings,

pages 234-239.

ALSO IN:

The Grenville Papers,

volumes 3-4.

C. W. Dilke,

Papers of a Critic,

volume 2.

E. Lodge,

Portraits,

volume 8, chapter 2.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1767-1769.

The first war with Hyder Ali, of Mysore.

See INDIA: A. D. 1767-1769.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1768-1770.

The quartering of troops in Boston and Its ill consequences.

See BOSTON: A. D. 1768; and 1770.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1768-1774.

John Wilkes and the King and Parliament again.

The Middlesex elections.

In March, 1768, Wilkes, though outlawed by the court, returned

to London from Paris and solicited a pardon from the king; but

his petition was unnoticed. Parliament being then dissolved

and writs issued for a new election, he offered himself as a

candidate to represent the City of London. "He polled 1,247

votes, but was unsuccessful. On the day following this

decision he issued an address to the freeholders of Middlesex.

The election took place at Brentford, on the 28th of March. At

the close of the poll the numbers were--Mr. Wilkes, 1,292; Mr.

Cooke, 827; Sir W. B. Proctor, 807. This was a victory which

astonished the public and terrified the ministry. The mob was

in ecstasies. The citizens of London were compelled to

illuminate their houses and to shout for 'Wilkes and liberty.'

It was the earnest desire of the ministry to pardon the man whom

they had persecuted, but the king remained inexorable. ... A

month after the election he wrote to Lord North: 'Though

relying entirely on your attachment to my person as well as in

your hatred of any lawless proceeding, yet I think it highly

expedient to apprise you that the expulsion of Mr. Wilkes

appears to be very essential, and must be effected.' What the

sovereign counselled was duly accomplished. Before his

expulsion, Wilkes was a prisoner in the King's Bench. Having

surrendered, it was determined that his outlawry was informal;

consequently it was reversed, and sentence was passed for the

offences whereof he had been convicted. He was fined £1,000,

and imprisoned for twenty-two months. On his way to prison he

was rescued by the mob; but as soon as he could escape out of

the hands of his boisterous friends he went and gave himself

into the custody of the Marshal of the King's Bench.

Parliament met on the 10th of April, and it was thought that

he would be released in order to take his seat. A dense

multitude assembled before the prison, but, balked in its

purpose of escorting the popular favourite to the House,

became furious, and commenced a riot.

{932}

Soldiers were at hand prepared for this outbreak. They fired,

wounding and slaughtering several persons; among others, they

butchered a young man whom they found in a neighbouring house,

and who was mistaken for a rioter they had pursued. At the

inquest the jury brought in a verdict of wilful murder against

the magistrate who ordered the firing, and the soldier who did

the deed. The magistrate was tried and acquitted. The soldier

was dismissed the service, but received in compensation, as a

reward for his services, a pension of one shilling a day. A

general order sent from the War Office by Lord Barrington

conveyed his Majesty's express thanks to the troops employed,

assuring them 'that every possible regard shall be shown to

them; their zeal and good behaviour on this occasion deserve

it; and in case any disagreeable circumstance should happen in

the execution of their duty, they shall have every defence and

protection that the law can authorise and this office can

give.' This approbation of what the troops had done was the

necessary supplement to a despatch from Lord Weymouth sent

before the riot, and intimating that force was to be used

without scruple. Wilkes commented on both documents. His

observations on the latter drew a complaint from Lord Weymouth

of breach of privilege. This was made an additional pretext

for his expulsion from the House of Commons. Ten days

afterwards he was re-elected, his opponent receiving five

votes only. On the following day the House resolved 'that John

Wilkes, Esquire, having been in this session of Parliament

expelled this House, was and is incapable of being elected a

member to serve in this present Parliament'; and his election

was declared void. Again the freeholders of Middlesex returned

him, and the House re-affirmed the above resolution. At

another election he was opposed by Colonel Luttrell, a Court

tool, when he polled 1,143 votes against 296 cast for

Luttrell. It was declared, however, that the latter had been

elected. Now began a struggle between the country, which had

been outraged in the persons of the Middlesex electors, and a

subservient majority in the House of Commons that did not

hesitate to become instrumental in gratifying the personal

resentment of a revengeful and obstinate king. The cry of

'Wilkes and liberty' was raised in quarters where the very

name of the popular idol had been proscribed. It was evident

that not the law only had been violated in his person, but

that the Constitution itself had sustained a deadly wound.

Wilkes was overwhelmed with substantial marks of sympathy. In

the course of a few weeks £20,000 were subscribed to pay his

debts. He could boast, too, that the courts of law had at

length done what was right between him and one of the

Secretaries of State who had signed the General Warrant, the

other having been removed by death beyond the reach of

justice. Lord Halifax was sentenced to pay £4,000 damages.

These damages, and the costs of the proceedings, were defrayed

out of the public purse. Lord North admitted that the outlay had

exceeded £100,000. Thus the nation was doubly insulted by the

ministers, who first violated the law, and then paid the costs

of the proceedings out of the national taxes. On the 17th of

April, 1770, Wilkes left the prison, to be elected in rapid

succession to the offices--then much sought after, because

held in high honour--of Alderman, Sheriff, and Lord Mayor of

London. In 1774 he was permitted to take his seat as Member

for Middlesex. After several failures, he succeeded in getting

the resolutions of his incapacity to sit in the House formally

expunged from its journals. He was elected Chamberlain of the

City in 1779, and filled that lucrative and responsible post

till his death, in 1797, at the age of seventy. Although the

latter portion of his career as Member of Parliament has

generally been considered a blank, yet it was marked by

several incidents worthy of attention. He was a consistent and

energetic opponent of the war with America."

W. F. Rae,

John Wilkes

(Fortnightly Review, September, 1868, volume 10).

ALSO IN:

W. F. Rae,

Wilkes, Sheridan, Fox,

part 1.

G. O. Trevelyan,

Early History of Charles James Fox,

chapters 5-6, and 8.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1769-1772.

The Letters of Junius.

"One of the newspapers in London at this period was the

'Public Advertiser,' printed and directed by Mr. Henry Sampson

Woodfall. His politics were those of the Opposition of the

day; and he readily received any contributions of a like

tendency from unknown correspondents. Among others was a

writer whose letters beginning at the latest in April, 1767,

continued frequent through that and the ensuing year. It was

the pleasure of this writer to assume a great variety of

signatures in his communications, as Mnemon, Atticus, and

Brutus. It does not appear, however, that these letters

(excepting only some with the signature of Lucius which were

published in the autumn of 1768) attracted the public

attention to any unusual extent, though by no means wanting in

ability, or still less in acrimony. ... Such was the state of

these publications, not much rising in interest above the

common level of many such at other times, when on the 21st of

January 1769 there came forth another letter from the same

hand with the novel signature of Junius. It did not differ

greatly from its predecessors either in superior merit or

superior moderation; it contained, on the contrary, a fierce

and indiscriminate attack on most men in high places,

including the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Granby. But, unlike its

predecessors, it roused to controversy a well-known and

respectable opponent. Sir William Draper, General in the army

and Knight of the Bath, undertook to meet and parry the blows

which it had aimed at his Noble friend. In an evil hour for

himself he sent to the Public Advertiser a letter subscribed

with his own name, and defending the character and conduct of

Lord Granby. An answer from Junius soon appeared, urging anew

his original charge, and adding some thrusts at Sir William

himself on the sale of a regiment, and on the nonpayment of

the Manilla ransom. Wincing at the blow, Sir William more than

once replied; more than once did the keen pen of Junius lay

him prostrate in the dust. The discomfiture of poor Sir

William was indeed complete. Even his most partial friends

could not deny that so far as wit and eloquence were concerned

the man in the mask had far, very far, the better in the

controversy. ... These victories over a man of rank and

station such as Draper's gave importance to the name of

Junius. Henceforth letters with that signature were eagerly

expected by the public, and carefully prepared by the author.

{933}

He did not indeed altogether cease to write under other names;

sometimes especially adopting the part of a bystander, and the

signature of Philo-Junius; but it was as Junius that his main

and most elaborate attacks were made. Nor was it long before

he swooped at far higher game than Sir William. First came a

series of most bitter pasquinades against the Duke of Grafton.

Dr. Blackstone was then assailed for the unpopular vote which

he gave in the case of Wilkes. In September was published a

false and malignant attack upon the Duke of Bedford,--an

attack, however, of which the sting is felt by his descendants

to this day. In December the acme of audacity was reached by

the celebrated letter to the King. All this while conjecture

was busy as to the secret author. Names of well-known

statesmen or well-known writers--Burke or Dunning, Boyd or

Dyer, George Sackville or Gerard Hamilton--flew from mouth to

mouth. Such guesses were for the most part made at mere

hap-hazard, and destitute of any plausible ground.

Nevertheless the stir and talk which they created added not a

little to the natural effects of the writer's wit and

eloquence. 'The most important secret of our times!' cries

Wilkes. Junius himself took care to enhance his own importance

by arrogant, nay even impious, boasts of it. In one letter of

August 1771 he goes so far as to declare that 'the Bible and

Junius will be read when the commentaries of the Jesuits are

forgotten!' Mystery, as I have said, was one ingredient to the

popularity of Junius. Another not less efficacious was

supplied by persecution. In the course of 1770 Mr. Woodfall

was indicted for publishing, and Mr. Almon with several others

for reprinting, the letter from Junius to the King. The

verdict in Woodfall's case was: Guilty of printing and

publishing only. It led to repeated discussions and to

ulterior proceedings. But in the temper of the public at that

period such measures could end only in virtual defeat to the

Government, in augmented reputation to the libeller. During

the years 1770 and 1771 the letters of Junius were continued

with little abatement of spirit. He renewed invectives against

the Duke of Grafton; he began them against Lord Mansfield, who

had presided at the trials of the printers; he plunged into

the full tide of City politics; and he engaged in a keen

controversy with the Rev. John Horne, afterwards Horne Tooke.

The whole series of letters from January 1769, when it

commences, until January 1772, when it terminates, amounts to

69, including those with the signature of Philo-Junius, those

of Sir William Draper, and those of Mr. Horne. ... Besides the

letters which Junius designed for the press, there were many

others which he wrote and sent to various persons, intending

them for those persons only. Two addressed to Lord Chatham

appear in Lord Chatham's correspondence. Three addressed to

Mr. George Grenville have until now remained in manuscript

among the papers at Wotton, or Stowe; all three were written

in the same year, 1768, and the two first signed with the same

initial C. Several others addressed to Wilkes were first made

known through the son of Mr. Woodfall. But the most important

of all, perhaps, are the private notes addressed to Mr.

Woodfall himself. Of these there are upwards of sixty, signed

in general with the letter C.; some only a few lines in

length; but many of great value towards deciding the question

of authorship. It seems that the packets containing the

letters of Junius for Mr. Woodfall or the Public Advertiser

were sometimes brought to the office-door, and thrown in, by

an unknown gentleman, probably Junius himself; more commonly

they were conveyed by a porter or other messenger hired in the

streets. When some communication from Mr. Woodfall in reply

was deemed desirable, Junius directed it to be addressed to

him under some feigned name, and to be left till called for at

the bar of some coffee-house. ... It may be doubted whether

Junius had any confidant or trusted friend. ... When

dedicating his collected letters to the English people, he

declares: 'I am the sole depository of my own secret, and it

shall perish with me.'"

Lord Mahon (Earl Stanhope),

History of England, 1713-1783,

chapter 47 (v. 5).

The following list of fifty-one names of persons to whom the

letters of Junius have been attributed at different times by

different writers is given in Cushing's "Initials and

Pseudonyms":

James Adair, M. P.;

Captain Allen;

Lieutenant-Colonel Isaac Barre, M. P.;

William Henry Cavendish Bentinck;

Mr. Bickerton;

Hugh M'Aulay Boyd;

Edmund Burke;

William Burke;

John Butler, Bishop of Hereford;

Lord Camden;

John Lewis De Lolme;

John Dunning, afterwards Lord Ashburton;

Samuel Dyer;

Henry Flood;

Sir Philip Francis;

George III.;

Edward Gibbon;

Richard Glover;

Henry Grattan;

William Greatrakes;

George Grenville;

James Grenville;

William Gerard Hamilton;

James Hollis;

Thomas Hollis;

Sir George Jackson;

Sir William Jones;

John Kent;

Major-General Charles Lee;

Charles Lloyd;

Thomas Lyttleton;

Laughlin Maclean;

Rev. Edmund Marshall;

Thomas Paine;

William Pitt, Earl of Chatham;

the Duke of Portland;

Thomas Pownall;

Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Robert Rich;

John Roberts;

Rev. Philip Rosenhagen;

George, Viscount Sackville;

the Earl of Shelburne;

Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield;

Richard Suett;

Earl Temple;

John Horne Tooke;

Horace Walpole;

Alexander Wedderburn, Lord Loughborough;

John Wilkes;

James Wilmot, D. D.;

Daniel Wray.

ALSO IN:

G. W. Cooke,

History of Party,

volume 3, chapter 6.

C. W. Dilke,

Papers of a Critic,

volume 2.

Lord Macaulay,

Warren Hastings

(Essays, volume 5).

A. Bisset,

Short History of the English Parliament,

chapter 7.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1770.

Fall of the Grafton Ministry.

Beginning of the administration of Lord North.

"The incompetency of the ministry was ... becoming obvious. In

the first place it was divided within itself. The Prime

Minister, with the Chancellor and some others, were remnants

of the Chatham ministry and admirers of Chatham's policy. The

rest of the Cabinet were either men who represented Bedford's

party, or members of that class whose views are sufficiently

explained by their name, 'the King's friends.' Grafton, fonder

of hunting and the turf than of politics, had by his indolence

suffered himself to fall under the influence of the last-named

party, and unconstitutional action had been the result which

had brought discontent in England to the verge of open

outbreak. Hillsborough, under the same influence, was hurrying

along the road which led to the loss of America. On this point

the Prime Minister had found himself in a minority in his own

Cabinet.

{934}

France too, under Choiseul, in alliance with Spain, was

beginning to think of revenge for the losses of the Seven

Years' War. A crisis was evidently approaching, and the

Opposition began to close their ranks. Chatham, yielding again

to the necessities of party, made a public profession of

friendship with Temple and George Grenville; and though there

was no cordial connection, there was external alliance between

the brothers and the old Whigs under Rockingham. In the first

session of 1770 the storm broke. Notwithstanding the state of

public affairs, the chief topic of the King's speech was the

murrain among 'horned beasts,'--a speech not of a king, but,

said Junius, of  'a ruined grazier.' Chatham at once moved an

amendment when the address in answer to this speech was

proposed. He deplored the want of all European alliances, the

fruit of our desertion of our allies at the Peace of Paris; he

blamed the conduct of the ministry with regard to America,

which, he thought, needed much gentle handling, inveighed

strongly against the action of the Lower House in the case of

Wilkes, and ended by moving that that action should at once be

taken into consideration. At the sound of their old leader's

voice his followers in the Cabinet could no longer be silent.

Camden declared he had been a most unwilling party to the

persecution of Wilkes, and though retaining the Seals attacked

and voted against the ministry. In the Lower House, Granby,

one of the most popular men in England, followed the same

course. James Grenville and Dunning, the Solicitor-General,

also resigned. Chatham's motion was lost but was followed up

by Rockingham, who asked for a night to consider the state of

the nation. ... Grafton thus found himself in no state to meet

the Opposition, and in his heart still admiring Chatham, and

much disliking business, he suddenly and unexpectedly gave in

his resignation the very day fixed for Rockingham's motion.

The Opposition seemed to have everything in their own hands,

but there was no real cordiality between the two sections. ...

The King with much quickness and decision, took advantage of

this disunion. To him it was of paramount importance to retain

his friends in office, and to avoid a new Parliament elected

in the present excited state of the nation. There was only one

of the late ministry capable of assuming the position of Prime

Minister. This was Lord North, Chancellor of the Exchequer,

and to him the King immediately and successfully applied, so

that while the different sections of the Opposition were still

unable to decide on any united action they were astonished to

find the old ministry reconstituted and their opportunity

gone. The new Prime Minister ... had great capacity for

business and administration, and much sound sense; he was a

first-rate debater, and gifted with a wonderful sweetness of

temper, which enabled him to listen unmoved, or even to sleep,

during the most violent attacks upon himself, and to turn

aside the bitterest invectives with a happy joke. With his

accession to the Premiership the unstable character of the

Government ceased. Resting on the King, making himself no more

than an instrument of the King's will, and thus commanding the

support of all royal influence from whatever source derived,

North was able to bid defiance to all enemies, till the ill

effects of such a system of government, and of the King's

policy, became so evident that the clamour for a really

responsible minister grew too loud to be disregarded. Thus is

closed the great constitutional struggle of the early part of

the reign--the struggle of the King, supported by the

unrepresented masses, and the more liberal and independent of

those who were represented, against the domination of the

House of Commons. It was an attempt to break those trammels

which, under the guise of liberty, the upper classes, the

great lords and landed aristocracy, had succeeded after the

Revolution in laying on both Crown and people. In that

struggle the King had been victorious. But he did not

recognize the alliance which had enabled him to succeed. He

did not understand that the people had other objects much

beyond his own."

J. F. Bright,

History of England,

period 3, pages 1057-1060.

ALSO IN:

Correspondence of George III. with Lord North,

volume 1.

W. Massey,

History of England: Reign of George III.,

chapters 10-13 (volume 1).

J. Adolphus,

History of England: Reign of George III.,

chapter 17 (volume 1).

E. Burke,

Thoughts on the Present Discontents

(Works, volume 1).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1770-1773.

Repeal of the Townshend duties, except on tea.

The tea-ships and the Boston Tea-party.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1770,

and 1772-1773;  and BOSTON: A. D. 1773.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1771.

Last contention of Parliament against the Press.

Freedom of reporting secured.

"The session of 1771 commenced with a new quarrel between the

House of Commons and the country. The standing order for the

exclusion of strangers, which had long existed (and which

still exists), was seldom enforced, except when it was thought

desirable that a question should be debated with closed doors.

It was now attempted, by means of this order, to prevent the

publication of the debates and proceedings of the House. It

had long been the practice of the newspapers, and other

periodical journals, to publish the debates of Parliament,

under various thin disguises, and with more or less fulness

and accuracy, from speeches furnished at length by the

speakers themselves, to loose and meagre notes of more or less

authenticity. One of the most attractive features of the

'Gentleman's Magazine,' a monthly publication of

respectability, which has survived to the present day, was an

article which purported to be a report of the debates in

Parliament. This report was, for nearly three years, prepared

by Dr. Johnson, who never attended the galleries himself, and

derived his information from persons who could seldom give him

more than the names of the speakers, and the side which each

of them took in the debate. The speeches were, therefore, the

composition of Johnson himself; and some of the most admired

oratory of the period was avowedly the product of his genius.

Attempts were made from time to time, both within and without

the walls of Parliament, to abolish, or at least to modify,

the standing order for the exclusion of strangers, by means of

which the license of reporting had been restricted; for there was

no order of either House specifically prohibiting the

publication of its debates. But such proposals had always been

resisted by the leaders of parties, who thought that the

privilege was one which might be evaded, but could not safely

be formally relinquished. The practice of reporting,

therefore, was tolerated on the understanding, that a decent

disguise should be observed; and that no publication of the

proceedings of Parliament should take place during the

session.

{935}

There can be little doubt, however, that the public journals

would have gone on, with the tacit connivance of the

parliamentary chiefs, until they had practically established a

right of reporting regularly the proceedings of both Houses,

had not the presumptuous folly of inferior members provoked a

conflict with the press upon this ground of privilege, and, in

the result, driven Parliament reluctantly to yield what they

would otherwise have quietly conceded. It was Colonel Onslow,

member for Guildford, who rudely agitated a question which

wiser men had been content to leave unvexed; and by his rash

meddling, precipitated the very result which he thought he

could prevent. He complained that the proceedings of the House

had been inaccurately reported; and that the newspapers had

even presumed to reflect on the public conduct of honourable

members."

William Massey,

History of England,

volume 2, chapter 15.

"Certain printers were in consequence ordered to attend the

bar of the House. Some appeared and were discharged, after

receiving, on their knees, a reprimand from the Speaker.

Others evaded compliance; and one of them, John Miller, who

failed to appear, was arrested by its messenger, but instead

of submitting, sent for a constable and gave the messenger

into custody for an assault and false imprisonment. They were

both taken before the Lord Mayor (Mr. Brass Crosby), Mr.

Alderman Oliver, and the notorious John Wilkes, who had

recently been invested with the aldermanic gown. These civic

magistrates, on the ground that the messenger was neither a

peace-officer nor a constable, and that his warrant was not

backed by a city magistrate, discharged the printer from

custody, and committed the messenger to prison for an unlawful

arrest. Two other printers, for whose apprehension a reward had

been offered by a Government proclamation, were collusively

apprehended by friends, and taken before Aldermen Wilkes and

Oliver, who discharged the prisoners as 'not being accused of

having committed any crime.' These proceedings at once brought

the House into conflict with the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of

London. The Lord Mayor and Alderman Oliver, who were both

members of Parliament, were ordered by the House to attend in

their places, and were subsequently committed to the Tower.

Their imprisonment, instead of being a punishment, was one

long-continued popular ovation, and from the date of their

release, at the prorogation of Parliament shortly afterwards,

the publication of debates has been pursued without any

interference or restraint. Though still in theory a breach of

privilege, reporting is now encouraged by Parliament as one of

the main sources of its influence--its censure being reserved for

wilful misrepresentation only. But reporters long continued

beset with many difficulties. The taking of notes was

prohibited, no places were reserved for reporters, and the

power of a single member of either House to require the

exclusion of strangers was frequently and capriciously

employed. By the ancient usage of the House of Commons [until

1875] any one member by merely 'spying' strangers present

could compel the Speaker to order their withdrawal."

T. P. Taswell-Langmead,

English Constitutional History,

chapter 17.

ALSO IN:

R. F. D. Palgrave,

The House of Commons,

lecture 2.

T. E. May,

Constitutional History of England,

chapter 7 (volume 1).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1772.

The ending of Negro slavery in the British Islands.

See SLAVERY, NEGRO: A. D. 1685-1772.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1773.

Reconstitution of the Government of British India.

See INDIA: A. D. 1770-1773.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1774.

The Boston Port Bill, the Massachusetts Act and the Quebec  Act.

The First Continental Congress in America.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1774.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1774.

Advent in English industries of the Steam-Engine as made

efficient by James Watt.

See STEAM ENGINE: A. D. 1765-1785.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1775.

The beginning of the War of the American Revolution.

Lexington.

Concord.

The colonies in arms and Boston beleaguered.

Ticonderoga.

Bunker Hill.

The Second Continental Congress.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1775.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1775-1776.

Successful defence of Canada against American invasion.

See CANADA: A. D. 1775-1776.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1776.

War measures against the colonies.

The drift toward American independence.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1776 (JANUARY-JUNE).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1776-1778.

The People, the Parties, the King, and Lord North, in their

relations to the American War.

"The undoubted popularity of the war [in America] in its first

stage had for some time continued to increase, and in the

latter part of 1776 and 1777 it had probably attained its

maximum. ... The Whigs at this time very fully admitted that

the genuine opinion of the country was with the Government and

with the King. ... The Declaration of Independence, and the

known overtures of the Americans to France, were deemed the

climax of insolence and ingratitude. The damage done to

English commerce, not only in the West Indies but even around

the English and Irish coast, excited a widespread bitterness.

... In every stage of the contest the influence of the

Opposition was employed to trammel the Government. ... The

statement of Wraxall that the Whig colours of buff and blue

were first adopted by Fox in imitation of the uniform of

Washington's troops, is, I believe, corroborated by no other

writer; but there is no reason to question his assertion that

the members of the Whig party in society and in both Houses of

Parliament during the whole course of the war wished success

to the American cause and rejoiced in the American triumphs.

... While the Opposition needlessly and heedlessly intensified

the national feeling against them, the King, on his side, did

the utmost in his power to embitter the contest. It is only by

examining his correspondence with Lord North that we fully

realise how completely at this time he assumed the position

not only of a prime minister but of a Cabinet, superintending,

directing, and prescribing, in all its parts, the policy of

the Government. ... 'Every means of distressing America,'

wrote the King, 'must meet with my concurrence.' He strongly

supported the employment of Indians. ... It was the King's

friends who were most active in promoting all measures of

violence. ... The war was commonly called the 'King's war,'

and its opponents were looked upon as opponents of the King.

The person, however, who in the eye of history appears most

culpable in this matter, was Lord North. ...

{936}

The publication of the correspondence of George III. ...

supplies one of the most striking and melancholy examples of

the relation of the King to his Tory ministers. It appears

from this correspondence that for the space of about five

years North, at the entreaty of the King, carried on a bloody,

costly, and disastrous war in direct opposition to his own

judgment and to his own wishes. ... Again and again he

entreated that his resignation might be accepted, but again

and again he yielded to the request of the King, who

threatened, if his minister resigned, to abdicate the throne.

... The King was determined, under no circumstances, to treat

with the Americans on the basis of the recognition of their

independence; but he acknowledged, after the surrender of

Burgoyne, and as soon as the French war had become inevitable,

that unconditional submission could no longer be hoped for.

... He consented, too, though apparently with extreme

reluctance, and in consequence of the unanimous vote of the

Cabinet, that new propositions should be made to the

Americans." These overtures, conveyed to America by three

Commissioners, were rejected, and the colonies concluded, in

the spring of 1778, their alliance with France. "The moment

was one of the most terrible in English history. England had

not an ally in the world. ... England, already exhausted by a

war which its distance made peculiarly terrible, had to

confront the whole force of France, and was certain in a few

months to have to encounter the whole force of Spain. ...

There was one man to whom, in this hour of panic and

consternation, the eyes of all patriotic Englishmen were

turned. . . . If any statesman could, at the last moment,

conciliate [the Americans], dissolve the new alliance, and

kindle into a flame the loyalist feeling which undoubtedly

existed largely in America, it was Chatham. If, on the other

hand, conciliation proved impossible, no statesman could for a

moment be compared to him in the management of a war. Lord

North implored the King to accept his resignation, and to send

for Chatham. Bute, the old Tory favourite, breaking his long

silence, spoke of Chatham as now indispensable. Lord

Mansfield, the bitterest and ablest rival of Chatham, said,

with tears in his eyes, that unless the King sent for Chatham

the ship would assuredly go down. ... The King was unmoved. He

consented indeed--and he actually authorised Lord North to make

the astounding proposition--to receive Chatham as a

subordinate minister to North. ... This episode appears to me

the most criminal in the whole reign of George III., and in my

own judgment it is as criminal as any of those acts which led

Charles I. to the scaffold."

W. E. H. Lecky,

History of England in the 18th Century,

chapter 14 (volume 4).

"George III. and Lord North have been made scapegoats for sins

which were not exclusively their own. The minister, indeed,

was only the vizier, who hated his work, but still did not

shrink from it, out of a sentiment that is sometimes admired

under the name of loyalty, but which in such a case it is

difficult to distinguish from base servility. The impenetrable

mind of the King was, in the case of the American war, the

natural organ and representative of all the lurking ignorance

and arbitrary humours of the entire community. It is totally

unjust and inadequate to lay upon him the entire burden."

J. Morley,

Edmund Burke: a Historical Study,

page 135.

"No sane person in Great Britain now approves of the attempt

to tax the colonies. No sane person does otherwise than

rejoice that the colonies became free and independent. But let

us in common fairness say a word for King George. In all that

he did he was backed by the great mass of the British nation.

And let us even say a word for the British nation also. Had

the King and the nation been really wise, they would have let

the colonies go without striking a blow. But then no king and

no nation ever was really wise after that fashion. King George

and the British nation were simply not wiser than other

people. I believe that you may turn the pages of history from

the earliest to the latest times, without finding a time when

any king or any commonwealth, freely and willingly, without

compulsion or equivalent, gave up power or dominion, or even

mere extent of territory on the map, when there was no real

power or dominion. Remember that seventeen years after the

acknowledgment of American independence, King George still

called himself King of France. Remember that, when the title

was given up, some people thought it unwise to give it up.

Remember that some people in our own day regretted the

separation between the crowns of Great Britain and Hanover. If

they lived to see the year 1866, perhaps they grew wiser."

E. A. Freeman,

The English People in its Three Homes

(Lectures to American Audiences),

pages 183-184.

ALSO IN:

Correspondence of George III. with Lord North.

Lord Brougham,

Historical Sketches of Statesmen

in the Reign of George III.

T. Macknight,

History of the Life and Times of Edmund Burke,

chapters 22-26 (volume 2).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1778.

War with France.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1778 (FEBRUARY).

ENGLAND: A.D. 1778-1780.

Repeal of Catholic penal laws.

The Gordon No-Popery Riots.

"The Quebec Act of 1774 [see CANADA: A. D. 1763-1774],

establishing Catholicism in Canada, would a generation earlier

have been impossible, and it was justly considered a

remarkable sign of the altered condition of opinion that such

a law should be enacted by a British Parliament, and should

have created no serious disturbances in the country. ... The

success of the Quebec Act led Parliament, a few years later,

to undertake the relief of the Catholics at home from some

part of the atrocious penal laws to which they were still

subject. ... The Act still subsisted which gave a reward of

£100 to any informer who procured the conviction of a Catholic

priest performing his functions in England, and there were

occasional prosecutions, though the judges strained the law to

the utmost in order to defeat them. ... The worst part of the

persecution of Catholics was based upon a law of William III.,

and in 1778 Sir George Savile introduced a bill to repeal

those portions of this Act which related to the apprehending

of Popish bishops, priests, and Jesuits, which subjected these

and also Papists keeping a school to perpetual imprisonment,

and which disabled all Papists from inheriting or purchasing

land. ... It is an honourable fact that this Relief Bill was

carried without a division in either House, without any

serious opposition from the bench of bishops, and with the

concurrence of both parties in the State. The law applied to

England only, but the Lord Advocate promised, in the ensuing

session, to introduce a similar measure for Scotland.

{937}

It was hoped that a measure which was so manifestly moderate

and equitable, and which was carried with such unanimity

through Parliament, would have passed almost unnoticed in the

country; but fiercer elements of fanaticism than politicians

perceived were still smouldering in the nation. The first

signs of the coming storm were seen among the Presbyterians of

Scotland. The General Assembly of the Scotch Established

Church was sitting when the English Relief Bill was pending,

and it rejected by a large majority a motion for a

remonstrance to Parliament against it. But in a few months an

agitation of the most dangerous description spread swiftly

through the Lowlands. It was stimulated by many incendiary

resolutions of provincial synods, by pamphlets, hand-bills,

newspapers, and sermons, and a 'Committee for the Protestant

Interests' was formed at Edinburgh to direct it. ... Furious

riots broke out in January, 1779, both in Edinburgh and

Glasgow. Several houses in which Catholics lived, or the

Catholic worship was celebrated, were burnt to the ground. The

shops of Catholic tradesmen were wrecked, and their goods

scattered, plundered, or destroyed. Catholic ladies were

compelled to take refuge in Edinburgh Castle. The houses of

many Protestants who were believed to sympathise with the

Relief Bill were attacked, and among the number was that of

Robertson the historian. The troops were called out to

suppress the riot, but they were resisted and pelted, and not

suffered to fire in their defence. ... The flame soon spread

southwards. For some years letters on the increase of Popery

had been frequently appearing in the London newspapers. Many

murmurs had been heard at the enactment of the Quebec Act, and

many striking instances in the last ten years had shown how

easily the spirit of riot could be aroused, and how impotent

the ordinary watchmen were to cope with it. ... The fanatical

party had unfortunately acquired an unscrupulous leader in the

person of Lord George Gordon, whose name now attained a

melancholy celebrity. He was a young man of thirty, of very

ordinary talents, and with nothing to recommend him but his

connection with the ducal house of Gordon. ... A 'Protestant

Association,' consisting of the worst agitators and fanatics,

was formed, and at a great meeting held on May 29, 1780, and

presided over by Lord George Gordon, it was determined that

20,000 men should march to the Parliament House to present a

petition for the repeal of the Relief Act. It was about

half-past two on the afternoon of Friday, June 2, that three

great bodies, consisting of many thousands of men, wearing

blue cockades, and carrying a petition which was said to have

been signed by near 120,000 persons, arrived by different

roads at the Parliament House. Their first design appears to

have been only to intimidate, but they very soon proceeded to

actual violence. The two Houses were just meeting, and the

scene that ensued resembled on a large scale and in an

aggravated form the great riot which had taken place around

the Parliament House in Dublin during the administration of

the Duke of Bedford. The members were seized, insulted,

compelled to put blue cockades in their hats, to shout 'No

Popery!' and to swear that they would vote for the repeal; and

many of them, but especially the members of the House of

Lords, were exposed to the grossest indignities. ... In the

Commons Lord George Gordon presented the petition, and

demanded its instant consideration. The House behaved with

much courage, and after a hurried debate it was decided by 192

to 7 to adjourn its consideration till the 6th. Lord George

Gordon several times appeared on the stairs of the gallery,

and addressed the crowd, denouncing by name those who opposed

him, and especially Burke and North; but Conway rebuked him in

the sight and hearing of the mob, and Colonel Gordon, one of

his own relatives, declared that the moment the first man of

the mob entered the House he would plunge his sword into the

body of Lord George. The doors were locked. The strangers'

gallery was empty, but only a few doorkeepers and a few other

ordinary officials protected the House, while the mob is said

at first to have numbered not less than 60,000 men. Lord North

succeeded in sending a messenger for the guards, but many

anxious hours passed before they arrived. Twice attempts were

made to force the doors. ... At last about nine o'clock the

troops appeared, and the crowd, without resisting, agreed to

disperse. A great part of them, however, were bent on further

outrages. They attacked the Sardinian Minister's chapel in

Duke Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields. They broke it open, carried

away the silver lamps and other furniture, burnt the benches in

the street, and flung the burning brands into the chapel. The

Bavarian Minister's chapel in Warwick Street Golden Square was

next attacked, plundered, and burnt before the soldiers could

intervene. They at last appeared upon the scene, and some

slight scuffling ensued, and thirteen of the rioters were

captured. It was hoped that the riot had expended its force,

for Saturday and the greater part of Sunday passed with little

disturbance, but on Sunday afternoon new outrages began in

Moorfields, where a considerable Catholic population resided.

Several houses were attacked and plundered, and the chapels

utterly ruined."

W. E. H. Lecky,

History of English in the 18th Century,

chapter 13 (volume 3).

"On Monday the rioters continued their outrages. ...

Notwithstanding, however, that the town might now be said to

have been in the possession of the rioters for more than three

days, it does not appear that any more decided measures were

adopted to put them down. Their audacity and violence, as

might have been expected, increased under this treatment. On

Tuesday afternoon and evening the most terrible excesses were

perpetrated. Notwithstanding that a considerable military

force was stationed around and on the way to the Houses of

Parliament, several of the members were again insulted and

maltreated in the grossest manner. Indeed, the mob by this

time seem to have got over all apprehensions of the

interference of the soldiers." The principal event of the day

was the attack on Newgate prison, which was destroyed and the

prisoners released. "The New Prison, Clerkenwell, was also

broken open ... and all the prisoners set at large. Attacks

were likewise made upon several ... private houses. ... But

the most lamentable of all the acts of destruction yet

perpetrated by these infuriated ruffians was that with which

they closed the day of madness and crime--the entire

demolition of the residence of Lord Mansfield, the venerable

Lord Chief Justice, in Bloomsbury Square. ...

{938}

The scenes that took place on Wednesday were still more

dreadful than those by which Tuesday had been marked. The town

indeed was now in a state of complete insurrection: and it was

felt by all that the mob must be put down at any cost, if it

was intended to save the metropolis of the kingdom from utter

destruction. This day, accordingly, the military were out in

all quarters, and were everywhere employed against the

infuriated multitudes who braved their power. ... The King's

Bench Prison, the New Gaol, the Borough Clink, the Surrey

Bridewell, were all burned today. ... The Mansion House, the

Museum, the Exchange, the Tower, and the Bank, were all, it is

understood, marked for destruction. Lists of these and the

other buildings which it was intended to attack were

circulated among the mob. The bank was actually twice

assaulted; but a powerful body of soldiers by whom it was

guarded on both occasions drove off the crowd, though not

without great slaughter. At some places the rioters returned

the fire of the military. ... Among other houses which were

set on fire in Holborn were the extensive premises of Mr.

Langdale, the distiller, who was a Catholic. ... The worst

consequence of this outrage, however, was the additional

excitement which the frenzy of the mob received from the

quantities of spirits with which they were here supplied. Many

indeed drank themselves literally dead; and many more, who had

rendered themselves unable to move, perished in the midst of

the flames. Six and thirty fires, it is stated, were this

night to be seen, from one spot, blazing at the same time in

different quarters of the town. ... By Thursday morning ...

the exertions of Government, now thoroughly alarmed, had

succeeded in bringing up from different parts so large a force

of regular troops and of militia as to make it certain that

the rioters would be speedily overpowered. ... The soldiers

attacked the mob in various places, and everywhere with

complete success. ... On Friday the courts of justice were

again opened for business, and the House of Commons met in the

evening. ... On this first day after the close of the riots,

'the metropolis,' says the Annual Register, 'presented in many

places the image of a city recently stormed and sacked.' ...

Of the persons apprehended and brought to trial, 59 were

capitally convicted; and of these more than 20 were executed;

the others were sent to expiate their offences by passing the

remainder of their days in hard labour and bondage in a

distant land. ... Lord George Gordon, in consequence of the

part he had borne in the measures which led to these riots,

was sent to the Tower, and some time afterwards brought to

trial on a charge of high treason," but was acquitted.

Sketches of Popular Tumults,

section 1, chapter 3.

ALSO IN:

J. H. Jesse,

Memoirs of the Life and Reign of George III.,

chapter 34 (volume 2).

H. Walpole,

Journal of the Reign of George III.,

volume 2, pages 403-424.

Annual Register, 1780,

pages 254-287.

C. Dickens,

Barnaby Rudge.

W. J. Amherst,

History of Catholic Emancipation,

volume 1, chapters 1-5.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1780-1782.

Declining strength of the government.

Rodney's great naval victory.

The siege of Gibraltar.

"The fall of Lord North's ministry, and with it the overthrow

of the personal government of George III., was now close at

hand. For a long time the government had been losing favour.

In the summer of 1780, the British victories in South Carolina

had done something to strengthen, yet when, in the autumn of

that year, Parliament was dissolved, although the king

complained that his expenses for purposes of corruption had

been twice as great as ever before, the new Parliament was

scarcely more favourable to the ministry than the old one.

Misfortunes and perplexities crowded in the path of Lord North

and his colleagues. The example of American resistance had

told upon Ireland. ... For more than a year there had been war

in India, where Hyder Ali, for the moment, was carrying

everything before him. France, eager to regain her lost

foothold upon Hindustan, sent a strong armament thither, and

insisted that England must give up all her Indian conquests

except Bengal. For a moment England's great Eastern empire

tottered, and was saved only by the superhuman efforts of

Warren Hastings, aided by the wonderful military genius of Sir

Eyre Coote. In May, 1781, the Spaniards had taken Pensacola,

thus driving the British from their last position in Florida.

In February, 1782, the Spanish fleet captured Minorca, and the

siege of Gibraltar, which had been kept up for nearly three

years, was pressed with redoubled energy. During the winter

the French recaptured St. Eustatius, and handed it over to

Holland; and Grasse's great fleet swept away all the British

possessions in the West Indies, except Jamaica, Barbadoes, and

Antigua. All this time the Northern League kept up its jealous

watch upon British cruisers in the narrow seas, and among all

the powers of Europe the government of George could not find a

single friend. The maritime supremacy of England was, however,

impaired but for a moment. Rodney was sent back to the West

Indies, and on the 12th of April, 1782, his fleet of 36 ships

encountered the French near the island of

Sainte-Marie-Galante. The battle of eleven hours which ensued,

and in which 5,000 men were killed or wounded, was one of the

most tremendous contests ever witnessed upon the ocean before

the time of Nelson. The French were totally defeated, and

Grasse was taken prisoner,--the first French

commander-in-chief, by sea or land, who had fallen into an

enemy's hands since Marshal Tallard gave up his sword to

Marlborough, on the terrible day of Blenheim. France could do

nothing to repair this crushing disaster. Her naval power was

eliminated from the situation at a single blow; and in the

course of the summer the English achieved another great

success by overthrowing the Spaniards at Gibraltar, after a

struggle which, for dogged tenacity, is scarcely paralleled in

modern warfare. By the autumn of 1782, England, defeated in

the United States, remained victorious and defiant as regarded

the other parties to the war."

J. Fiske,

American Revolution,

chapter 15 (volume 2).

"Gibraltar ... had been closely invested for nearly three

years. At first, the Spanish had endeavoured to starve the

place; but their blockade having been on two occasions forced

by the British fleet, they relinquished that plan, and

commenced a regular siege. During the spring and summer of

1781, the fortress was bombarded, but with little success; in

the month of November, the enemy were driven from their

approaches, and the works themselves were almost destroyed by

a sally from the garrison. Early in the year, however, the

fall of Minorca enabled the Spanish to reform the siege of

Gibraltar.

{939}

De Grillon himself, the hero of Minorca, superseding Alvarez,

assumed the chief command. ... The garrison of Gibraltar

comprised no more than 7,000 men; while the force of the

allied monarchies amounted to 33,000 soldiers, with an immense

train of artillery. De Grillon, however, who was well

acquainted with the fortress, had little hope of taking it

from the land side, but relied with confidence on the

formidable preparations which he had made for bombarding it

from the sea. Huge floating batteries, bomb-proof and

shot-proof, were constructed; and it was calculated that the

action of these tremendous engines alone would be sufficient

to destroy the works. Besides the battering ships, of which

ten were provided, a large armament of vessels of all rates

was equipped; and a grand attack was to take place, both from

sea and land, with 400 pieces of artillery. Six months were

consumed in these formidable preparations; and it was not

until September that they were completed. A partial cannonade

took place on the 9th and three following days; but the great

attack, which was to decide the fate of the beleaguered

fortress, was commenced on the 13th of September. On that day,

the combined fleets of France and Spain, consisting of 47 sail

of the line, besides numerous ships of inferior rate, were

drawn out in order of battle before Gibraltar. Numerous bomb

ketches, gun and mortar boats, dropped their anchors within

close range; while the ten floating batteries were moored with

strong iron chains within half gun-shot of the walls. On the

land 170 guns were prepared to open fire simultaneously with

the ships; and 40,000 troops were held in readiness to rush in

at the first practicable breach. ... The grand attack was

commenced at ten o'clock in the forenoon, by the fire of 400

pieces of artillery. The great floating batteries, securely

anchored within 600 yards of the walls, poured in an incessant

storm, from 142 guns. Elliot had less than 100 guns to reply to

the cannonade both from sea and land; and of these he made the

most judicious use. Disregarding the attack from every other

quarter, he concentrated the whole of his ordnance on the

floating batteries in front of him; for unless these were

silenced, their force would prove irresistible. But for a long

time the thunder of 80 guns made no impression on the enormous

masses of wood and iron. The largest shells glanced harmless

from their sloping roofs; the heaviest shot could not

penetrate their hulls seven feet in thickness. Nevertheless,

the artillery of the garrison was still unceasingly directed

against these terrible engines of destruction. A storm of

red-hot balls was poured down upon them; and about midday it

was observed that the combustion caused by these missiles,

which had hitherto been promptly extinguished, was beginning

to take effect. Soon after, the partial cessation of the guns

from the battering ships, and the volumes of smoke which

issued from their decks, made it manifest they were on fire,

and that all the efforts of the crews were required to subdue

the conflagration. Towards evening, their guns became silent;

and before midnight, the flames burst forth from the principal

floating battery, which carried the Admiral's flag. ... Eight

of the 10 floating batteries were on fire during the night;

and the only care of the besieged was to save from the flames

and from the waters, the wretched survivors of that terrible

flotilla, which had so recently menaced them with

annihilation. . . . The loss of the enemy was computed at

2,000; that of the garrison, in killed and wounded, amounted

to no more than 84. The labour of a few hours sufficed to

repair the damage sustained by the works. The French and

Spanish fleets remained in the Straits, expecting the

appearance of the British squadron under Lord Howe; and

relying on their superiority in ships and weight of metal,

they still hoped that the result of an action at sea might

enable them to resume the siege of Gibraltar. Howe, having

been delayed by contrary winds, did not reach the Straits

until the 9th of October; and, notwithstanding the superior

array which the enemy presented, he was prepared to risk an

engagement. But at this juncture, a storm having scattered the

combined fleet, the British Admiral was enabled to land his

stores and reinforcements without opposition. Having performed

this duty, he set sail for England; nor did the Spanish

Admiral, though still superior by eight sail of the line,

venture to dispute his passage. Such was the close of the

great siege of Gibraltar; an undertaking which had been

regarded by Spain as the chief object of the war, which she

had prosecuted for three years, and which, at the last, had

been pressed by the whole force of the allied monarchies.

After this event, the war itself was virtually at an end."

W. Massey,

History of England, Reign of George III.,

chapter 27 (volume 3).

ALSO IN:

Lord Mahon (Earl Stanhope),

History of England, 1713-1783,

chapters 62-66 (volume 7).

J. Drinkwater,

History of the Siege of Gibraltar.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1780-1783.

Second war with Hyder Ali, or Second Mysore War.

See INDIA: A. D. 1780--1783.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1781-1783.

War with Holland.

See NETHERLANDS (HOLLAND): A. D. 1746-1787.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1782.

Legislative independence conceded to Ireland.

See IRELAND: A. D. 1778-1794.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1782-1783.

Fall of Lord North.

The second Rockingham Ministry.

Fox, Shelburne, and the American peace negotiations.

The Shelburne Ministry.

Coalition of Fox and North.

"There comes a point when even the most servile majority of an

unrepresentative Parliament finds the strain of party

allegiance too severe, and that point was reached when the

surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown became known in November,

1781. 'O God, it is all over!' cried Lord North, wringing his

hands, when he heard of it. ... On February 7, a vote of

censure, moved by Fox, upon Lord Sandwich, was negatived by a

majority of only twenty-two. On the 22nd, General Conway lost

a motion in favour of putting an end to the war by only one

vote. On the 27th, the motion was renewed in the form of a

resolution and carried by a majority of nineteen.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1782 (FEBRUARY-MAY).

Still the King would not give his consent to Lord North's

resignation. Rather than commit himself to the opposition, he

seriously thought of abdicating his crown and retiring to

Hanover. ... Indeed, if it had not been for his large family,

and the character of the Prince of Wales, already too well

known, it is far from improbable that he would have carried

this idea into execution, and retired from a Government of

which he was no longer master.

{940}

By the 20th [of March], however, even George III. saw that the

game could not be kept up any longer. He gave permission to

Lord North to announce his resignation, and parted with him

with the characteristic words: 'Remember, my Lord, it is you

who desert me, not I who desert you.' ... Even when the

long-deferred blow fell, and Lord North's Ministry was no

more, the King refused to send for Lord Rockingham. He still

flattered himself that he might get together a Ministry from

among the followers of Chatham and of Lord North, which would

be able to restore peace without granting independence, and

Shelburne was the politician whom he fixed upon to aid him in

this scheme. ... Shelburne, however, was too clever to fall

into the trap. A Ministry which had against it the influence

of the Rockingham connection and the talents of Charles Fox,

and would not receive the hearty support of Lord North's

phalanx of placemen, was foredoomed to failure. The pear was

not yet ripe. He saw clearly enough that his best chance of

permanent success lay in becoming the successor, not the

supplanter, of Rockingham. ... His game was to wait. He

respectfully declined to act without Rockingham. ... Before

Rockingham consented to take office, he procured a distinct

pledge from the King that he would not put a veto upon

American independence, if the Ministers recommended it; and on

the 27th of March the triumph of the Opposition was completed

by the formation of a Ministry, mainly representative of the

old Whig families, pledged to a policy of economical reform,

and of peace with America on the basis of the acknowledgment

of independence. Fox received the reward of his services by

being appointed Foreign Secretary, and Lord Shelburne took

charge of the Home and Colonial Department. Rockingham himself

went to the Treasury, Lord John Cavendish became Chancellor of

the Exchequer, Lord Keppel First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord

Camden President of the Council. Burke was made Paymaster of

the Forces, and Sheridan Under-Secretary to his friend Fox. At

the King's special request, Thurlow was allowed to remain as

Chancellor. ... The Cabinet no sooner met than it divided into

the parties of Shelburne and of Fox, while Rockingham, Conway,

and Cavendish tried to hold the balance between them, and

Thurlow artfully fomented the dissensions. ... Few

Administrations have done so much in a short time as did the

Rockingham Ministry during the three months of its existence,

and it so happened that the lion's share of the work fell to

Fox. Upon his appointment to office his friends noticed a

change in habits and manner of life, as complete as that

ascribed to Henry V. on his accession to the throne. He is

said never to have touched a card during either of his three

short terms of office. ... By the division of work among the

two Secretaries of State, all matters which related to the

colonies were under the control of Shelburne, while those

relating to foreign Governments belonged to the department of

Fox. Consequently it became exceedingly important to these two

Ministers whether independence was to be granted to the American

colonies by the Crown of its own accord, or should be reserved

in order to form part of the general treaty of peace.

According to Fox's plan, independence was to be offered at

once fully and freely to the Americans. They would thus gain

at a blow all that they wanted. Their jealousy of French and

Spanish interests in America would at once assert itself, and

England would have no difficulty in bringing them over to her

side in the negotiations with France. Such was Fox's scheme,

but unfortunately, directly America became independent, she

ceased to be in any way subject to Shelburne's management, and

the negotiations for peace would pass wholly out of his

control into the hands of Fox. ... Shelburne at once threw his

whole weight into the opposite scale. He urged with great

effect that to give independence at once was to throw away the

trump card. It was the chief concession which England would be

required to make, the only one which she was, prepared to

make; and to make it at once, before she was even asked, was

wilfully to deprive herself of her best weapon. The King and

the Cabinet adopted Shelburne's view. Fox's scheme for the

isolation of France failed, and a double negotiation for peace

was set on foot. Shelburne and Franklin took charge of the

treaty with America [see UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1782

(SEPTEMBER)], Fox and M. de Vergennes that with France and

Spain and Holland. An arrangement of this sort could hardly

have succeeded had the two Secretaries been the firmest of

friends; since they were rivals and enemies it was foredoomed

to failure." Fox found occasion very soon to complain that

important matters in Shelburne's negotiation with Franklin

were kept from his knowledge, and once more he proposed to the

Cabinet an immediate concession of independence to the

Americans. Again he was outvoted, and, "defeated and

despairing, only refrained from resigning there and then

because he would not embitter Rockingham's last moments upon

earth." This was on the 30th of June. "On the 1st of, July

Rockingham died, and on the 2nd Shelburne accepted from the

King the task of forming a Ministry." Fox, of course, declined

to enter it, and suffered in influence because he could not

make public the reasons for his inability to act with Lord

Shelburne. "Only Lord Cavendish, Burke, and the

Solicitor-General, Lee, left office with Portland and Fox, and

the gap was more than supplied by the entrance of William Pitt

[Lord Chatham's son, who had entered Parliament in 1780] into

the Cabinet as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Fortune seemed to

smile on Shelburne. He ... might well look forward to a long

and unclouded tenure of political power. His Administration

lasted not quite seven months." It was weakened by distrust

and dissatisfaction among its members, and overturned in

February, 1783, by a vote of censure on the peace which it had

concluded with France, Spain and the American States. It was

succeeded in the Government by the famous Coalition Ministry

formed under Fox and Lord North. "The Duke of Portland

succeeded Shelburne at the Treasury. Lord North and Fox became

the Secretaries of State. Lord John Cavendish returned to the

Exchequer, Keppel to the Admiralty, and Burke to the

Paymastership, the followers of Lord North ... were rewarded

with the lower offices. Few combinations in the history of

political parties have been received by historians and

posterity with more unqualified condemnation than the

coalition of 1783. ... There is no evidence to show that at

the time it struck politicians in general as being specially

heinous."

H. O. Wakeman,

Life of Charles James Fox,

chapters 3-5.

ALSO IN:

Lord J. Russell,

Life of Fox,

chapters 16-17 (volume l).

W. F. Rae,

Wilkes, Sheridan, Fox,

pages 307-317.

Lord E. Fitzmaurice,

Life of William, Earl of Shelburne,

volume 3, chapters 3-6.

{941}

ENGLAND: A. D. 1783.

The definitive Treaty of Peace with the United States of

America signed at Paris.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1783 (SEPTEMBER).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1783-1787.

Fall of the Coalition.

Ascendancy of the younger Pitt.

His extraordinary grasp of power.

His attempted measures of reform.

"Parliament met on the 11th of November; on the 18th Fox asked

for leave to introduce a Bill for the Better Government of

India. That day month[?] the Government had ceased to exist.

Into the merits of the Bill it is not now necessary to enter.

... It was clear that it furnished an admirable weapon against

an unpopular Coalition which had resisted economical reform,

demanded a great income for a debauched prince, and now aimed

at securing a monopoly of the vast patronage of

India,--patronage which, genially exercised by Dundas, was

soon to secure Scotland for Pitt. In the House of Commons the

majority for the Bill was over 100; the loftiest eloquence of

Burke was exerted in its favour; and Fox was, as ever,

dauntless and crushing in debate. But outside Parliament the

King schemed, and controversy raged. ... When the Bill arrived

at the House of Lords, the undertakers were ready. The King

had seen Temple, and empowered him to communicate to all whom

it might concern his august disapprobation. The uneasy whisper

circulated, and the joints of the lords became as water. The

peers who yearned for lieutenancies or regiments, for stars or

strawberry leaves; the prelates, who sought a larger sphere of

usefulness; the minions of the bedchamber and the janissaries

of the closet; all, temporal or spiritual, whose convictions

were unequal to their appetite, rallied to the royal nod. ...

The result was overwhelming. The triumphant Coalition was

paralysed by the rejection of their Bill. They rightly refused

to resign, but the King could not sleep until he had resumed

the seals. Late at night he sent for them. The messenger found

North and Fox gaily seated at supper with their followers. At

first he was not believed. 'The King would not dare do it,'

exclaimed Fox. But the under Secretary charged with the

message soon convinced them of its authenticity, and the seals

were delivered with a light heart. In such dramatic fashion, and

the springtide of its youth, fell that famous government,

unhonoured and unwept. 'England,' once said Mr. Disraeli,

'does not love coalitions.' She certainly did not love this

one. On this occasion there was neither hesitation nor delay;

the moment had come, and the man. Within 12 hours of the

King's receiving the seals, Pitt had accepted the First

Lordship of the Treasury and the Chancellorship of the

Exchequer. That afternoon his writ was moved amid universal

derision. And so commenced a supreme and unbroken Ministry of

17 years. Those who laughed were hardly blamable, for the

difficulties were tremendous. ... The composition of the

Government was ... the least of Pitt's embarrassments. The

majority against him in the House of Commons was not less than

40 or 50, containing, with the exception of Pitt himself and

Dundas, every debater of eminence; while he had, before the

meeting of Parliament, to prepare and to obtain the approval

of the East India Company to a scheme which should take the

place of Burke's. The Coalition Ministers were only dismissed

on the 18th of December, 1783; but, when the House of Commons

met on the 12th of January, 1784, all this had been done. The

narrative of the next three months is stirring to read, but

would require too much detail for our limits. ... On the day

of the meeting of Parliament, Pitt was defeated in two pitched

divisions, the majorities against him being 39 and 54. His

government seemed still-born. His colleagues were dismayed.

The King came up from Windsor to support him. But in truth he

needed no support. He had inherited from his father that

confidence which made Chatham once say, 'I am sure that I can

save this country, and that nobody else can'; which made

himself say later, 'I place much dependence on my new

colleagues; I place still more dependence on myself.' He had

refused, in spite of the King's insistance, to dissolve; for

he felt that the country required time. ... The Clerkship of

the Pells, a sinecure office worth not less than £3,000 a

year, fell vacant the very day that Parliament met. It was

universally expected that Pitt would take it as of right, and

so acquire an independence, which would enable him to devote

his life to politics, without care for the morrow. He had not

£300 a year; his position was to the last degree precarious.

... Pitt disappointed his friends and amazed his enemies. He

gave the place to Barré. ... To a nation inured to jobs this

came as a revelation. ... Above and beyond all was the fact

that Pitt, young, unaided, and alone, held his own with the

great leaders allied against him. ... In face of so resolute a

resistance, the assailants began to melt away. Their divisions,

though they always showed a superiority to the Government,

betrayed notable diminution. ... On the 25th of March

Parliament was dissolved, the announcement being retarded by

the unexplained theft of the Great Seal. When the elections

were over, the party of Fox, it was found, had shared the fate

of the host of Sennacherib. The number of Fox's martyrs--of

Fox's followers who had earned that nickname by losing their

seats--was 160. ... The King and Pitt were supported on the

tidal wave of one of those great convulsions of feeling, which

in Great Britain relieve and express pent-up national

sentiment, and which in other nations produce revolutions."

Lord Rosebery,

Pitt,

chapter 3.

"Three subjects then needed the attention of a great

statesman, though none of them were so pressing as to force

themselves on the attention of a little statesman. These were,

our economical and financial legislation, the imperfection of

our parliamentary representation, and the unhappy' condition

of Ireland. Pitt dealt with all three. ... He brought in a

series of resolutions consolidating our customs laws, of which

the inevitable complexity may be estimated by their number.

They amounted to 133, and the number of Acts of Parliament

which they restrained or completed was much greater. He

attempted, and successfully, to apply the principles of Free

Trade, the principles which he was the first of English

statesmen to learn from Adam Smith, to the actual commerce of

the country. ... The financial reputation of Pitt has greatly

suffered from the absurd praise which was once lavished on the

worst part of it.

{942}

The dread of national ruin from the augmentation of the

national debt was a sort of nightmare in that age. ... Mr.

Pitt sympathised with the general apprehension and created the

well-known 'Sinking Fund.' He proposed to apply annually a

certain fixed sum to the payment of the debt, which was in

itself excellent, but he omitted to provide real money to be

so paid. ... He proposed to borrow the money to payoff the

debt, and fancied that he thus diminished it. ... The exposure

of this financial juggle, for though not intended to be so,

such in fact it was, has reacted very unfavourably upon Mr.

Pitt's deserved fame. ... The subject of parliamentary reform

is the one with which, in Mr. Pitt's early days, the public

most connected his name, and is also that with which we are

now least apt to connect it. ... He proposed the abolition of

the worst of the rotten boroughs fifty years before Lord Grey

accomplished it. ... If the strong counteracting influence of

the French Revolution had not changed the national opinion, he

would unquestionably have amended our parliamentary

representation. ... The state of Ireland was a more pressing

difficulty than our financial confusion, our economical

errors, or our parliamentary corruption. ... He proposed at

once to remedy the national danger of having two Parliaments,

and to remove the incredible corruption of the old Irish

Parliament, by uniting the three kingdoms in a single

representative system, of which the Parliament should sit in

England. ... Of these great reforms he was only permitted to

carry a few into execution. His power, as we have described

it, was great when his reign commenced, and very great it

continued to be for very many years; but the time became

unfavourable for all forward-looking statesmanship."

W. Bagehot,

Biographical Studies: William Pitt.

ALSO IN:

Earl Stanhope,

Life of William Pitt,

chapters 4-9 (volume 1).

G. Tomline,

Life of William Pitt,

chapters 3-9 (volume 1-2).

Lord Rosebery,

Pitt,

chapters 3-4.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1788 (FEBRUARY).

Opening of the Trial of Warren Hastings.

See INDIA: A. D.1785-1795.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1788-1789.

The King's second derangement.

The king's second derangement, which began to show itself in

the summer of 1788, was more serious and of longer duration

than the first. "He was able ... to sign a warrant for the

further prorogation of Parliament by commission, from the 25th

September to the 20th November. But, in the interval, the

king's malady increased: he was wholly deprived of reason, and

placed under restraint; and for several days his life was in

danger. As no authority could be obtained from him for a

further prorogation, both Houses assembled on the 20th

November. ... According to long established law, Parliament,

without being opened by the Crown, had no authority to proceed

to any business whatever: but the necessity of an occasion,

for which the law had made no provision, was now superior to

the law; and Parliament accordingly proceeded to deliberate

upon the momentous questions to which the king's illness had

given rise." By Mr. Fox it was maintained that "the Prince of

Wales had as clear a right to exercise the power of

sovereignty during the king's incapacity as if the king were

actually dead; and that it was merely for the two Houses of

Parliament to pronounce at what time he should commence, the

exercise of his right. ... Mr. Pitt, on the other hand,

maintained that as no legal provision had been made for

carrying on the government, it belonged to the Houses of

Parliament to make such provision." The discussion to which

these differences, and many obstructing circumstances in the

situation of affairs, gave rise, was so prolonged, that the

king recovered his faculties (February, 1789) before the

Regency Bill, framed by Mr. Pitt, had been passed.

T. E. May,

Constitutional History of England,

volume 1, chapter 3.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1789-1792.

War with Tippoo Saib (third Mysore War).

See INDIA: A. D. 1785-1793.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1793.

The Coalition against Revolutionary France.

Unsuccessful siege of Dunkirk.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1793 (MARCH-SEPTEMBER),

and (JULY-DECEMBER).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1793-1796.

Popular feeling towards the French Revolution.

Small number of the English Jacobins.

Pitt forced into war.

Tory panic and reign of terror.

Violence of government measures.

"That the war [of Revolutionary France] with Germany would

widen into a vast European struggle, a struggle in which the

peoples would rise against their oppressors, and the freedom

which France had won diffuse itself over the world, no French

revolutionist doubted for an hour. Nor did they doubt that in

this struggle England would join them. It was from England

that they had drawn those principles of political and social

liberty which they believed themselves to be putting into

practice. It was to England that they looked above all for

approbation and sympathy. ... To the revolutionists at Paris

the attitude of England remained unintelligible and

irritating. Instead of the aid they had counted on, they found

but a cold neutrality. ... But that this attitude was that of the

English people as a whole was incredible to the French

enthusiasts. ... Their first work therefore they held to be

the bringing about a revolution in England. ... They strove,

through a number of associations which had formed themselves

under the name of Constitutional Clubs, to rouse the same

spirit which they had roused in France; and the French envoy,

Chauvelin, protested warmly against a proclamation which

denounced this correspondence as seditious. ... Burke was

still working hard in writings whose extravagance of style was

forgotten in their intensity of feeling to spread alarm

throughout Europe. He had from the first encouraged the

emigrant princes to take arms, and sent his son to join them

at Coblentz. 'Be alarmists,' he wrote to them; 'diffuse

terror!' But the royalist terror which he sowed would have

been of little moment had it not roused a revolutionary terror

in France. ... In November the Convention decreed that France

offered the aid of her soldiers to all nations who would

strive for freedom. ... In the teeth of treaties signed only

two years before, and of the stipulation made by England when

it pledged itself to neutrality, the French Government

resolved to attack Holland, and ordered its generals to

enforce by arms the opening of the Scheldt [see FRANCE: A.

D.1792-1793 (DECEMBER-FEBRUARY)]. To do this was to force

England into war. Public opinion was already pressing every

day harder upon Pitt. ... But even while withdrawing our

Minister from Paris on the imprisonment of the King, to whose

Court he had been commissioned, Pitt clung stubbornly to a

policy of peace. ...

{943}

No hour of Pitt's life is so great as the hour when he stood

lonely and passionless before the growth of national passion,

and refused to bow to the gathering cry for war. ... But

desperately as Pitt struggled for peace, his struggle was in

vain. ... Both sides ceased from diplomatic communications,

and in February 1793 France issued her Declaration of War.

From that moment Pitt's power was at an end. His pride, his

immovable firmness, and the general confidence of the nation,

still kept him at the head of affairs; but he could do little

save drift along with a tide of popular feeling which he never

fully understood. Around him the country broke out in a fit of

passion and panic which rivalled the passion and panic

oversea. ... The partisans of Republicanism were in reality

but a few handfuls of men. ... But in the mass of Englishmen

the dread of these revolutionists passed for the hour into

sheer panic. Even the bulk of the Whig party believed property

and the constitution to be in peril, and forsook Fox when he

still proclaimed his faith in France and the Revolution."

J. R. Green,

History of the English People,

book 9, chapter 4 (volume 4).

"Burke himself said that not one man in a hundred was a

Revolutionist. Fox's revolutionary sentiments met with no

response, but with general reprobation, and caused even his

friends to shrink from his side. Of the so-called Jacobin

Societies, the Society for Constitutional Information numbered

only a few hundred members, who, though they held extreme

opinions, were headed by men of character, and were quite

incapable of treason or violence. The Corresponding Society

was of a more sinister character; but its numbers were

computed only at 6,000, and it was swallowed up in the loyal

masses of the people. ... It is sad to say it, but when Pitt

had once left the path of right, he fell headlong into evil.

To gratify the ignoble fears and passions of his party, he

commenced a series of attacks on English liberty of speaking

and writing which Mr. Massey, a strong anti-revolutionist,

characterizes as unparalleled since the time of Charles I. The

country was filled with spies. A band of the most infamous

informers was called into activity by the government. ...

There was a Tory reign of terror, to which a slight increase

of the panic among the upper classes would probably have lent

a redder hue. Among other measures of repression the Habeas

Corpus Act was suspended; and the liberties of all men were

thus placed at the mercy of the party in power. ... In

Scotland the Tory reign of terror was worse than in England."

Goldwin Smith,

Three English Statesmen,

pages 239-247.

"The gaols were filled with political delinquents, and no man

who professed himself a reformer could say, that the morrow

might not see him a prisoner upon a charge of high treason.

... But the rush towards despotism against which the Whigs

could not stand, was arrested by the people. Although the

Habeas Corpus had fallen, the Trial by Jury remained, and now,

as it had done before, when the alarm of fictitious plots had

disposed the nation to acquiesce in the surrender of its

liberties, it opposed a barrier which Toryism could not pass."

The trials which excited most interest were those of Hardy,

who organized the Corresponding Society, and Horne Tooke. But

no unlawful conduct or treasonable designs could be proved

against them by creditable witnesses, and both were

acquitted." The public joy was very general at these

acquittals. ... The war lost its popularity; bread grew

scarce; commerce was crippled; ... the easy success that had

been anticipated was replaced by reverses. The people

clamoured and threw stones at the king, and Pitt eagerly took

advantage of their violence to tear away the few shreds of the

constitution which yet covered them. He brought forward the

Seditious Meetings bill, and the Treasonable Practices bill.

Bills which, among other provisions, placed the conduct of

every political meeting under the protection of a magistrate,

and rendered disobedience to his command a felony."

G. W. Cooke,

History of Party,

volume 3, chapter 17.

ALSO IN:

J. Adolphus,

History of England: Reign of George III.,

chapters 81-89 and 95 (volumes 5-6).

J. Gifford,

History of the Political Life of William Pitt,

chapters 23-24, and 28-29 (volumes 3-4).

W. Massey,

History of England: Reign of George III.,

chapters 32-36 (volumes 3-4).

E. Smith,

The Story of the English Jacobins.

A. Bisset,

Short History of the English Parliament,

chapter 8.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1794.

Campaigns of the Coalition against France.

French successes in the Netherlands and on the Rhine.

Conquest of Corsica.

Naval victory of Lord Howe.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1794 (MARCH-JULY).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1794.

Angry relations with the United States.

The Jay Treaty.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1794-1795.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1794-1795.

Withdrawal of troops from the Netherlands.

French conquest of Holland.

Establishment of the Batavian Republic.

Crumbling of the European Coalition.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1794-1795 (OCTOBER-MAY).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1795.

Disastrous expedition to Quiberon Bay.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1794-1796.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1795.

Capture of the Cape of Good Hope from the Dutch.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1795 (JUNE-DECEMBER).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1796 (SEPTEMBER).

Evacuation and abandonment of Corsica.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1796 (SEPTEMBER).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1796 (OCTOBER).

Unsuccessful peace negotiations with the French Directory.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1796 (OCTOBER).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1796-1798.

Attempted French invasions of Ireland.

Irish Insurrection.

See IRELAND: A. D. 1793-1798.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1797.

Monetary panic and suspension of specie payments.

Defeat of the first Reform movement.

Mutiny of the Fleet.

Naval victories of Cape St. Vincent and Camperdown.

"The aspect of affairs in Britain had never been so clouded

during the 18th century as at the beginning of the year 1797.

The failure of Lord Malmesbury's mission to Paris had closed

every hope of an honourable termination to the war, while of

all her original allies, Austria alone remained; the national

burdens were continually increasing, and the three-per-cents

had fallen to fifty-one; while party spirit raged with

uncommon violence, and Ireland was in a state of partial

insurrection. A still greater disaster resulted from the panic

arising from the dread of invasion, and which produced such a

run on all the banks, that the Bank of England itself was

reduced to payment in sixpences, and an Order in Council

appeared (February 26) for the suspension of all cash

payments. This measure, at first only temporary, was prolonged

from time to time by parliamentary enactments, making bank-notes

a legal-tender; and it was not till 1819, after the conclusion

of peace, that the recurrence to metallic currency took place.

{944}

The Opposition deemed this a favourable opportunity to renew

their cherished project of parliamentary reform; and on 26th

May, Mr. (afterwards Lord) Grey brought forward a plan chiefly

remarkable for containing the outlines of that subsequently

carried into effect in 1831. It was negatived, however, after

violent debates, by a majority of 258 against 93. After a

similar strife of parties, the motion for the continuance of

the war was carried by a great majority in both houses; and

the requisite supplies were voted. ... Unknown to the

government, great discontent had for a long time prevailed in

the navy. The exciting causes were principality the low rate

of pay (which had not been raised since the time of Charles

II.), the unequal distribution of prize-money, and undue

severity in the maintenance of discipline. These grounds of

complaint, with others not less well founded, gave rise to a

general conspiracy, which broke out (April 15) in the Channel

fleet under Lord Bridport. All the ships fell under the power

of the insurgents; but they maintained perfect order, and

memorialised the Admiralty and the Commons on their

grievances: their demands being examined by government, and

found to be reasonable, were granted; and on the 7th of May

the fleet returned to its duty. But scarcely was the spirit of

disaffection quelled in this quarter, when it broke out in a

more alarming form (May 22) among the squadron at the Nore,

which was soon after (June 6) joined by the force which had

been cruising off the Texel under Lord Duncan. The mutineers

appointed a seaman named Parker to the command; and,

blockading the mouth of the Thames, announced their demands in

such a tone of menacing audacity as insured their instant

rejection by the government. This second mutiny caused

dreadful consternation in London; but the firmness of the King

remained unshaken, and he was nobly seconded by the

parliament. A bill was passed, prohibiting all communication

with the mutineers under pain of death. Sheerness and Tilbury

Fort were armed and garrisoned for the defence of the Thames;

and the sailors, finding the national feelings strongly

arrayed against them, became gradually sensible that their

enterprise was desperate. One by one the ships returned to

their duty; and on 15th June all had submitted. Parker and

several other ringleaders suffered death; but clemency was

extended to the multitude. ... Notwithstanding all these

dissensions, the British navy was never more terrible to its

enemies than during this eventful year. On the 14th of

February, the Spanish fleet of 27 sail of the line and 12

frigates, which had put to sea for the purpose of raising the

blockade of the French harbours, was encountered off Cape St.

Vincent by Sir John Jarvis, who had only 15 ships and 6

frigates. By the old manœuvre of breaking the line, 9 of the

Spanish ships were cut off from the rest; and the admiral,

while attempting to regain them by wearing round the rear of

the British line, was boldly assailed by Nelson and

Collingwood,--the former of whom, in the Captain, of 74 guns,

engaged at once two of the enemy's gigantic vessels, the

Santissima Trinidad of 136 guns, and the San Josef of 112;

while the Salvador del Mundo, also of 112 guns, struck in a

quarter of an hour to Collingwood. Nelson at length carried

the San Josef by boarding, and received the Spanish admiral's

sword on his own quarterdeck. The Santissima Trinidad--an

enormous four-decker--though her colours were twice struck,

escaped in the confusion; but the San Josef and the Salvador,

with two 74-gun ships, remained in the hands of the British;

and the Spanish armament, thus routed by little more than half

its own force, retired in the deepest dejection to Cadiz, which

was shortly after insulted by a bombardment from the gallant

Nelson. A more important victory than that of Sir John Jarvis

(created in consequence Earl St. Vincent) was never gained at

sea, from the evident superiority of skill and seamanship

which it demonstrated in the British navy. The battle of St.

Vincent disconcerted the plans of Truguet for the naval

campaign; but later in the season a second attempt to reach

Brest was made by a Dutch fleet of 15 sail of the line and 11

frigates, under the command of De Winter, a man of tried

courage and experience. The British blockading fleet, under

Admiral Duncan, consisted of 16 ships and 3 frigates; and the

battle was fought (October 16) off Camperdown, about nine

miles from the shore of Holland. The manœuvres of the British

Admiral were directed to cut off the enemy's retreat to his

own shores; and this having been accomplished, the action

commenced yard-arm to yard-arm, and continued with the utmost

fury for more than three hours. The Dutch sailors fought with

the most admirable skill and courage, and proved themselves

worthy descendants of Van Tromp and De Ruyter; but the prowess

of the British was irresistible. 12 sail of the line,

including the flagship, two 56-gun ships, and 2 frigates,

struck their colours; but the nearness of the shore enabled

two of the prizes to escape, and one 74-gun ship foundered.

The obstinacy of the conflict was evidenced by the nearly

equal number of killed and wounded, which amounted to 1,040

English, and 1,160 Dutch. ... The only remaining operations of

the year were the capture of Trinidad in February, by a force

which soon after was repulsed from before Porto Rico; and an

abortive attempt at a descent in Pembroke Bay by about 1,400

French."

Epitome of Alison's History of Europe,

sections 190-196 (chapter 22,

volume 5--of complete work).

ALSO IN:

J. Adolphus,

History of England: Reign of George III.,

chapters 100-103 (volume 6).

R. Southey,

Life of Nelson,

chapter 4.

E. J. De La Gravière,

Sketches of the Last Naval War,

volume 1, part 2.

Captain A. T. Mahan,

Influence of Sea Power on the

French Revolution and Empire,

chapters 8 and 11 (volume 1).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1798 (AUGUST).

Nelson's victory in the Battle of the Nile.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1798 (MAY-AUGUST).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1798.

Second Coalition against Revolutionary France.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1798-1799 (AUGUST-APRIL).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1799 (APRIL).

Final war with Tippoo Saib (third Mysore War).

See INDIA: A. D. 1798-1805.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1799 (AUGUST-OCTOBER).

Expedition against Holland.

Seizure of the Dutch fleet.

Ignominious ending of the enterprise.

Capitulation of the Duke of York.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1799 (APRIL-SEPTEMBER),

and (SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1800.

Legislative union of Ireland with Great Britain.

Creation of the "United Kingdom."

See IRELAND: A. D. 1798-1800.

{945}

ENGLAND: A. D. 1801.

The first Factory Act.

See FACTORY LEGISLATION.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1801-1802.

Import of the Treaty of Luneville.

Bonaparte's preparations for conflict with Great Britain alone.

Retirement of Pitt.

The Northern Maritime League and its summary annihilation at

Copenhagen.

Expulsion of the French from Egypt.

The Peace of Amiens.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1801-1802.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1801-1806.

Pitt's promise to the Irish Catholics broken by the King.

His resignation.

The Addington Ministry.

The Peace of Amiens.

War resumed.

Pitt at the helm again.

His death.

The Ministry of "All the Talents."

"The union with Ireland introduced a new topic of party

discussion, which quickly became only second to that of

parliamentary reform. In transplanting the parliament of

College Green to St. Stephen's, Pitt had transplanted the

questions which were there debated; and, of these, none had

been more important than the demand of the Catholics to be

admitted to the common rights of citizens. Pitt, whose Toryism

was rather the imperiousness of a haughty master, than the

cautious cowardice of the miser of power, thought their

complaints were just. In his private negotiations with the

Irish popular leaders he probably promised that emancipation

should be the sequel to the union. In his place in parliament

he certainly gave an intimation, which from the mouth of a

minister could receive no second interpretation. Pitt was not

a minister who governed by petty stratagems, by ambiguous

professions, and by skilful shuffles: he was at least an

honourable enemy. He prepared to fulfil the pledge he had

given, and to admit the Catholics within the pale of the

constitution. It had been better for the character of George

III. had he imitated the candour of his minister; had he told

him that he had made a promise he would not be suffered to

fulfil, before he had obtained the advantage to gain which

that promise had been made. When Pitt proposed Catholic

emancipation as one of the topics of the king's speech, for

the session of 1801, the royal negative was at once

interposed, and when Dundas persisted in his attempt to

overcome his master's objections, the king abruptly terminated

the conference, saying, 'Scotch metaphysics cannot destroy

religious obligations.' Pitt immediately tendered his

resignation. ... All that was brilliant in Toryism passed from

the cabinet with the late minister: When Pitt and Canning were

withdrawn, with their satellites, nothing remained of the Tory

party but the mere courtiers who lived upon the favour of the

king, and the insipid lees of the party; men who voted upon

every subject in accordance with their one ruling idea--the

certain ruin, which must follow the first particle of

innovation. Yet from these relicts the king was obliged to

form a new cabinet, for application to the Whigs was out of

the question. These were more strenuous for emancipation than

Pitt. Henry Addington, Pitt's speaker of the house of commons,

was the person upon whom the king's choice fell; and he

succeeded, with the assistance of the late premier, in filling

up the offices at his disposal. ... The peace of Amiens was

the great work of this feeble administration [see FRANCE: A.

D. 1801-1802], and formed a severe commentary upon the

boastings of the Tories. 'Unless the monarchy of France be

restored,' Pitt had said, eight years before, 'the monarchy of

England is lost forever.' Eight years of warfare had succeeded,

yet the monarchy of France was not restored, and the crusade

was stayed. England had surrendered her conquests, France

retained hers; the landmarks of Europe had been in some degree

restored; England, alone, remained burdened with the enduring

consequences of the ruinous and useless strife. The peace was

approved by the Whigs, who were glad of any respite from such

a war, and by Pitt, who gave his support to the Addington

administration. But he could not control his adherents. ... As

the instability of the peace grew manifest, the incompetency

of the administration became generally acknowledged: with Pitt

sometimes chiding, Windham and Canning, and Lords Spencer and

Grenville continually attacking, and Fox and the Whigs only

refraining from violent opposition from a knowledge that if

Addington went out Pitt would be his successor, the conduct of

the government was by no means an easy or a grateful task to a

man destitute of commanding talents. When to these

parliamentary difficulties were added a recommencement of the

war, and a popular panic at Bonaparte's threatened invasion,

Addington's embarrassments became inextricable. He had

performed the business which Pitt had assigned him; he had

made an experimental peace, and had saved Pitt's honour with

the Roman Catholics. The object of his appointment he had

unconsciously completed, and no sooner did his predecessor

manifest an intention of returning to office, than the

ministerial majorities began to diminish, and Addington found

himself without support. On the 12th of April it was announced

that Mr. Addington had resigned, and Pitt appeared to resume

his station as a matter of course. During his temporary

retirement, Pitt had, however, lost one section of his

supporters. The Grenville party and the Whigs had gradually

approximated, and the former now refused to come into the new

arrangements unless Fox was introduced into the cabinet. To

this Pitt offered no objection, but the king was firm--or

obstinate. ... In the following year, Addington himself, now

created Viscount Sidmouth, returned to office with the

subordinate appointment of president of the council. The

conflagration had again spread through Europe. ... Pitt had

the mortification to see his grand continental coalition, the

produce of such immense expense and the object of such hope,

shattered in one campaign. At home, Lord Melville, his most

faithful political supporter, was attacked by a charge from

which he could not defend him, and underwent the impeachment

of the commons for malpractices in his office as treasurer of

the navy. Lord Sidmouth and several others seceded from the

cabinet, and Pitt, broken in health, and dispirited by

reverses, had lost much of his wonted energy. Thus passed away

the year 1805. On the 23d of January, 1806, Pitt expired. ...

The death of Pitt was the dissolution of his administration.

The Tory party was scattered in divisions and subdivisions

innumerable. Canning now recognised no political leader, but

retained his old contempt for Sidmouth and his friends, and

his hostility to the Grenvilles for their breach with Pitt.

Castlereagh, William Dundas, Hawkesbury, or Barham, although

sufficiently effective when Pitt was present to direct and to

defend, would have made a hopeless figure without him in face

of such an opposition as the house of commons now afforded.

{946}

The administration, which was ironically designated by its

opponents as 'All the Talents,' succeeded. Lord Grenville was

first lord of the treasury. Fox chose the office of secretary

for foreign affairs with the hope of putting an end to the

war. Windham was colonial secretary. Earl Spencer had the

seals of the home department. Erskine was lord chancellor. Mr.

Grey was first lord of the admiralty. Sheridan, treasurer of

the navy. Lord Sidmouth was privy seal. Lord Henry Petty, who,

although now only in his 26th year, had already acquired

considerable distinction as an eloquent Whig speaker, was

advanced to the post of chancellor of the exchequer, the

vacant chair of Pitt. Such were the men who now assumed the

reins under circumstances of unparalleled difficulty."

G. W. Cooke,

History of Party,

volume 3, chapters 17-18.

ALSO IN:

Earl Stanhope (Lord Mahon),

Life of Pitt,

chapters 29-44 (volumes 3-4).

A. G. Stapleton,

George Canning and His Times,

chapters 6-8.

Earl Russell,

Life and Times of Charles James Fox,

chapters 58-69 (volume 3).

G. Pellew,

Life and Correspondence of Henry Addington,

1st Viscount Sidmouth,

chapters 10-26 (volumes 1-2).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1802 (OCTOBER).

Protest against Bonaparte's interference in Switzerland.

His extraordinary reply.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1801-1803.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1802-1803.

Bonaparte's complaints and demands.

The Peltier trial.

The First Consul's rage.

Declaration of war.

Napoleon's seizure of Hanover.

Cruel detention of all English people in France, Italy,

Switzerland and the Netherlands.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1802-1803.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1804-1809.

Difficulties with the United States.

Questions of neutral rights.

Right of Search and Impressment.

The American Embargo.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1804-1809, and 1808.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1805 (JANUARY-APRIL).

Third Coalition against France.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1805 (JANUARY-APRIL).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1805.

Napoleon's threatened invasion.

Nelson's long pursuit of the French fleet.

His victory and death at Trafalgar.

The crushing of the Coalition at Austerlitz.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1805 (MARCH-DECEMBER).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1806.

Final seizure of Cape Colony from the Dutch.

See SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1486-1806.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1806.

Cession of Hanover to Prussia by Napoleon.

War with Prussia.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1806 (JANUARY-AUGUST).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1806.

Attempted reinstatement of the dethroned King of Naples.

The Battle of Maida.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1805-1806 (DECEMBER-SEPTEMBER).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1806.

Death of Pitt.

Peace negotiations with Napoleon.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1806 (JANUARY-OCTOBER).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1806-1807.

Expedition against Buenos Ayres.

See ARGENTINE REPUBLIC: A. D. 1806-1820.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1806-1810.

Commercial warfare with Napoleon.

Orders in Council.

Berlin and Milan Decrees.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1806-1810.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1806-1812.

The ministry of "All the Talents."

Abolition of the Slave Trade.

The Portland and the Perceval ministries.

Confirmed insanity of George III.

Beginning of the regency of the Prince of Wales.

Assassination of Mr. Perceval.

The "Ministry of All the Talents" is "remarkable solely for

its mistakes, and is to be remembered chiefly for the death of

Fox [September 13, 1806] and the abolition of the slave-trade.

Fox was now destined at the close of his career to be

disillusioned with regard to Napoleon. He at last thoroughly

realized the insincerity of his hero. ... The second great

object of Fox's life he succeeded in attaining before his

death;--this was the abolition of the slave-trade. For more

than thirty years the question had been before the country,

and a vigorous agitation had been conducted by Clarkson,

Wilberforce, and Fox. . Pitt was quite at one with them on

this question, and had brought forward motions on the subject.

The House of Lords, however, rejected all measures of this

description during the Revolutionary War, under the influence

of the Anti-Jacobin feeling. It was reserved for Fox to

succeed in carrying a Bill inflicting heavy pecuniary

punishments on the traffic in slaves. And yet this

measure--the sole fruit of Fox's statesmanship--was wholly

inadequate; nor was it till the slave-trade was made felony in

1811 that its final extinction was secured. The remaining acts

of the Ministry were blunders. ... Their financial system was

a failure. They carried on the war so as to alienate their

allies and to cover themselves with humiliation. Finally, they

insisted on bringing forward a measure for the relief of the

Catholics, though there was not the slightest hope of carrying

it, and it could only cause a disruption of the Government.

... The king and the Pittites were determined to oppose it,

and so the Ministry agreed to drop the question under protest.

George insisted on their withdrawing the protest, and as this was

refused he dismissed them. ... This then was the final triumph

of George III. He had successfully dismissed this Ministry; he

had maintained the principle that every Ministry is bound to

withdraw any project displeasing to the king. These principles

were totally inconsistent with Constitutional Government, and

they indirectly precipitated Reform by rendering it absolutely

necessary in order to curb the royal influence. ... The Duke

of Portland's sole claims to form a Ministry were his high

rank, and the length of his previous services. His talents

were never very great, and they were weakened by age and

disease. The real leader was Mr. Perceval, the Chancellor of

the Exchequer, a dexterous debater and a patriotic statesman.

This Government, being formed on the closest Tory basis and on

the king's influence, was pledged to pursue a retrograde

policy and to oppose all measures of Reform. The one really

high-minded statesman in the Cabinet was Canning, the Foreign

Minister. His advanced views, however, continually brought him

into collision with Castlereagh, the War Minister, a man of

much inferior talents and the narrowest Tory views. Quarrels

inevitably arose between the two, and there was no real Prime

Minister to hold them strongly under control. ... At last the

ill-feeling ended in a duel, which was followed by a mutual

resignation on the ground that neither could serve with the

other. This was followed by the resignation of Portland, who

felt himself wholly unequal to the arduous task of managing

the Ministry any longer.

{947}

The leadership now devolved on Perceval, who found himself in

an apparently hopeless condition. His only supporters were

Lords Liverpool, Eldon, Palmerston, and Wellesley. Neither

Canning, Castlereagh, nor Sidmouth (Addington) would join him.

The miserable expedition to Walcheren had just ended in

ignominy. The campaign in the Peninsula was regarded as a

chimerical enterprise, got up mainly for the benefit of a Tory

commander. Certainly the most capable man in the Cabinet was

Lord Wellesley, the Foreign Minister, but he was continually

thwarted by the incapable men he had to deal with. However, as

long as he remained at the Foreign Office, he supported the

Peninsular War with vigour, and enabled his brother to carry

out more effectually his plans with regard to the defence of

Portugal. In November, 1810, the king was again seized with

insanity, nor did he ever recover the use of his faculties

during the rest of his life. The Ministry determined to bring

forward Pitt's old Bill of 1788 in a somewhat more modified

form, February, 1811. The Prince of Wales requested Grey and

Grenville to criticize this, but, regarding their reply as

lukewarm, he began to entertain an ill-will for them. At this

moment the judicious flattery of his family brought him over

from the Whigs, and he decided to continue Perceval in office.

Wellesley, however, took the opportunity to resign, and was

succeeded by Castlereagh, February, 1812. In May Perceval was

assassinated by Mr. Bellingham, a lunatic, and his Ministry at

once fell to pieces."

B. C. Skottowe,

Our Hanoverian Kings,

book 10, chapter 3.

ALSO IN:

F. H. Hill,

George Canning,

chapters 13-17.

S. Walpole,

Life of Spencer Perceval,

volume 2.

R. I. and S. Wilberforce,

Life of William Wilberforce,

chapter 20 (volume 3).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1807.

Act for the Abolition of the Slave-Trade.

See SLAVERY, NEGRO: A. D. 1792-1807.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1807 (FEBRUARY-SEPTEMBER).

Operations in support of the Russians against the Turks and

French.

Bold naval attack on Constantinople and humiliating failure.

Disastrous expedition to Egypt.

See TURKS: A. D. 1806-1807.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1807 (JUNE-JULY).

Alliance formed at Tilsit between Napoleon and Alexander I. of

Russia.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1807 (JUNE-JULY).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1807 (AUGUST-NOVEMBER).

Bombardment of Copenhagen and seizure of the Danish fleet.

War with Russia and Denmark.

See SCANDINAVIAN STATES: A. D. 1807-1810.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1807 (OCTOBER-NOVEMBER).

Submission of Portugal to Napoleon under English advice.

Flight of the house of Braganza to Brazil.

See PORTUGAL: A. D. 1807.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1808 (MAY).

Ineffectual attempt to aid Sweden.

Expedition of Sir John Moore.

See SCANDINAVIAN STATES: A. D. 1807-1810.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1808 (JULY).

Peace and alliance with the Spanish people against the new

Napoleonic monarchy.

Opening of the Peninsular War.

See SPAIN: A. D.1808 (MAY-SEPTEMBER).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1808.

Expulsion of English forces from Capri.

See ITALY (SOUTHERN): A. D.1808-1809.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1808-1809.

Wellington's first campaign in the Peninsula.

Convention of Cintra.

Evacuation of Portugal by the French.

Sir John Moore's advance into Spain and his retreat.

His death at Corunna.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1808-1809 (AUGUST-JANUARY).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1809 (FEBRUARY-JULY).

Wellington sent to the Peninsula.

The passage of the Douro and the Battle of Talavera.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1809 (FEBRUARY-JULY).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1809 (JULY-DECEMBER).

The Walcheren Expedition.

"Three times before, during the war, it had occurred to one or

another, connected with the government, that it would be a

good thing to hold Antwerp, and command the Scheldt, seize the

French ships in the river, and get possession of their

arsenals and dockyards. On each occasion, men of military

science and experience had been consulted; and invariably they

had pronounced against the scheme. Now, however, what Mr. Pitt

had considered impracticable, Lord Castlereagh, with the

rashness of incapacity, resolved should be done: and, in order

not to be hindered, he avoided consulting with those who would

have objected to the enterprise. Though the scene of action

was to be the swamps at the mouths of the Scheldt, he

consulted no physician. Having himself neither naval,

military, nor medical knowledge, he assumed the

responsibility--except such as the King and the Duke of York

chose to share. ... It was May, 1809, before any stir was

apparent which could lead men outside the Cabinet to infer

that an expedition for the Scheldt was in contemplation; but

so early as the beginning of April (it is now known), Mr.

Canning signified that he could not share in the

responsibility of an enterprise which must so involve his own

office. ... The fleet that rode in the channel consisted of 39

ships of the line, and 36 frigates, and a due proportion of

small vessels: in all, 245 vessels of war: and 400 transports

carried 40,000 soldiers. Only one hospital ship was provided

for the whole expedition, though the Surgeon General implored

the grant of two more. He gave his reasons, but was refused.

... The naval commander was Sir Richard J. Strachan, whose

title to the responsibility no one could perceive, while many

who had more experience were unemployed. The military command

was given (as the selection of the present Cabinet bad been)

to Lord Chatham, for no better reason than that he was a

favourite with the King and Queen, who liked his gentle and

courtly manners, and his easy and amiable temper. ... The

fatal mistake was made of not defining the respective

authorities of the two commanders; and both being

inexperienced or apathetic, each relied upon the other first,

and cast the blame of failure upon him afterwards. In the

autumn, an epigram of unknown origin was in every body's

mouth, all over England:

'Lord Chatham, with his sword undrawn,

Stood waiting for Sir Richard Strachan;

Sir Richard, longing to be at 'em,

Stood waiting for the Earl of Chatham.'

The fleet set sail on the 28th of July, and was on the coast

of Holland the next day. The first discovery was that there

were not boats enough to land the troops and the ordnance. The

next was that no plan had been formed about how to proceed.

The most experienced officers were for pushing on to Antwerp,

45 miles off, and taking it before it could be prepared for

defence; but the commanders determined to take Flushing first.

They set about it so slowly that a fortnight was consumed in

preparations.

{948}

In two days more, the 15th of August, Flushing was taken.

After this, Lord Chatham paused to consider what he should do

next; and it was the 21st before be began to propose to go on

to Antwerp. Then came the next discovery, that, by this time

two intermediate places had been so strengthened that there

must be some fighting on the way. So he did nothing more but

take possession of two small islands near Flushing. Not

another blow was struck; not another league was traversed by

this magnificent expedition. But the most important discovery

of all now disclosed itself. The army had been brought into

the swamps at the beginning of the sickly season. Fever sprang

up under their feet, and 3,000 men were in hospital in a few

days, just when it became necessary to reduce the rations,

because provisions were falling short. On the 27th of August,

Lord Chatham led a council of war to resolve that 'it was not

advisable to pursue further operations.' But, if they could

not proceed, neither could they remain where they were. The

enemy had more spirit than their invaders. On the 30th and

31st, such a fire was opened from both banks of the river,

that the ships were obliged to retire. Flushing was given up,

and everything else except the island of Walcheren, which it

was fatal to hold at this season. On the 4th of September,

most of the ships were at home again; and Lord Chatham

appeared on the 14th. Eleven thousand men were by that time in

the fever, and he brought home as many as he could. Sir Eyre

Coote, whom he left in command, was dismayed to see all the

rest sinking down in disease at the rate of hundreds in a day.

Though the men had been working in the swamps, up to the waist

in marsh water, and the roofs of their sleeping places had

been carried off by bombardment, so that they slept under a

canopy of autumn fog, it was supposed that a supply of Thames

water to drink would stop the sickness; and a supply of 500

tons per week was transmitted. At last, at the end of October,

a hundred English bricklayers, with tools, bricks, and mortar,

were sent over to mend the roofs; but they immediately dropped

into the hospitals. Then the patients were to be accommodated

in the towns; but to spare the inhabitants, the soldiers were

laid down in damp churches; and their bedding had from the

beginning been insufficient for their need. At last,

government desired the chief officers of the army Medical

Board to repair to Walcheren, and see what was the precise

nature of the fever, and what could be done. The

Surgeon-General and the Physician-General threw the duty upon

each other. Government appointed it to the Physician-General,

Sir Lucas Pepys; but he refused to go. Both officers were

dismissed, and the medical department of the army was

reorganized and greatly improved. The deaths were at this time

from 200 to 300 a week. When Walcheren was evacuated, on the

23rd of December, nearly half the force sent out five months

before were dead or missing; and of those who returned, 35,000

were admitted into the hospitals of England before the next 1st

of June. Twenty millions sterling were spent on this

expedition. It was the purchase money of tens of thousands of

deaths, and of ineffaceable national disgrace."

H. Martineau,

History of England, 1800-1815,

book 2, chapter 2.

ALSO IN:

C. Knight,

Popular History of England,

volume 7, chapter 20.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1809 (AUGUST-DECEMBER).

Difficulties of Wellington's campaign in the Peninsula.

His retreat into Portugal.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1809 (AUGUST-DECEMBER).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1810.

Capture of the Mauritius.

See INDIA: A. D. 1805-1816.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1810-1812.

The War in the Peninsula.

Wellington's Lines of Torres Vedras.

French recoil from them.

English advance into Spain.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1800-1810 (OCTOBER-SEPTEMBER),

and 1810-1812.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1811.

Capture of Java from the Dutch.

See INDIA: A. D. 1805-1816.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1811-1812.

Desertion of Napoleon's Continental System by Russia and Sweden.

Reopening of their ports to British commerce.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1810-1812.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1812 (JANUARY).

Building of the first passenger Steam-boat.

See STEAM NAVIGATION: THE BEGINNINGS.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1812 (JUNE-AUGUST).

The Peninsular War.

Wellington's victory at Salamanca and advance to Madrid.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1812 (JUNE-AUGUST).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1812-1813.

The Liverpool Ministry.

Business depression and bad harvests.

Distress and rioting.

The Luddites.

"Again there was much negotiation, and an attempt to introduce

Lord Wellesley and Mr. Canning to the ministry. Of course they

could not serve with Castlereagh; they were then asked to form

a ministry with Grenville and Grey, but these Lords objected

to the Peninsular War, to which Wellesley was pledged.

Grenville and Grey then attempted a ministry of their own but

quarrelled with Lord Moira on the appointments to the

Household; and as an American war was threatening, and the

ministry had already given up their Orders in Council (one of

the chief causes of their unpopularity), the Regent rather

than remain longer without a ministry, intrusted Lord

Liverpool with the Premiership, with Castlereagh as his

Foreign Secretary, and the old ministry remained in office.

Before the day of triumph of this ministry arrived, while

Napoleon was still at the height of his power, and the success

of Wellington as yet uncertain, England had drifted into war

with America. It is difficult to believe that this useless war

might not have been avoided had the ministers been men of

ability. It arose from the obstinate manner in which the

Government clung to the execution of their retaliatory

measures against France, regardless of the practical injury

they were inflicting upon all neutrals. ... The same motive of

class aggrandizement which detracts from the virtue of the

foreign policy of this ministry underlay the whole

administration of home affairs. There was an incapacity to

look at public affairs from any but a class or aristocratic

point of view. The natural consequence was a constantly

increasing mass of discontent among the lower orders, only

kept in restraint by an overmastering fear felt by all those

higher in rank of the possible revolutionary tendencies of any

attempt at change. Much of the discontent was of course the

inevitable consequence of the circumstances in which England

was placed, and for which the Government was only answerable

in so far as it created those circumstances. At the same time

it is impossible not to blame the complacent manner in which

the misery was ignored and the occasional success of

individual merchants and contractors regarded as evidences of

national prosperity. ...

{949}

A plentiful harvest in 1813, and the opening of many

continental ports, did much to revive both trade and

manufactures; but it was accompanied by a fall in the price of

corn from 171s. to 75s. The consequence was widespread

distress among the agriculturists, which involved the country

banks, so that in the two following years 240 of them stopped

payment. So great a crash could not fail to affect the

manufacturing interest also; apparently, for the instant, the

very restoration of peace brought widespread ruin. ... Before

the end of the year 1811, wages had sunk to 7s. 6d. a week.

The manufacturing operatives were therefore in a state of

absolute misery. Petitions signed by 40,000 or 50,000 men

urged upon Parliament that they were starving; but there was

another class which fared still worse. Machinery had by no

means superseded hand-work. In thousands of hamlets and

cottages handlooms still existed. The work was neither so good

nor so rapid as work done by machinery; even at the best of

times used chiefly as an auxiliary to agriculture, this hand

labour could now scarcely find employment at all. Not

unnaturally, without work and without food, these hand workers

were very ready to believe that it was the machinery which

caused their ruin, and so in fact it was; the change, though

on the whole beneficial, had brought much individual misery.

The people were not wise enough to see this. They rose in

riots in many parts of England, chiefly about Nottingham,

calling themselves Luddites (from the name of a certain idiot

lad who some 30 years before, had broken stocking-frames),

gathered round them many of the disbanded soldiery with whom

the country was thronged, and with a very perfect secret

organization, carried out their object of machine-breaking.

The unexpected thronging of the village at nightfall, a crowd

of men with blackened faces, armed sentinels holding every

approach, silence on all sides, the village inhabitants

cowering behind closed doors, an hour or two's work of

smashing and burning, and the disappearance of the crowd as

rapidly as it had arrived--such were the incidents of the

night riots."

J. F. Bright,

History of England, period 3,

pages 1325-1332.

ALSO IN:

C. Knight,

Popular History of England,

volume 7, chapter 30.

Pictorial History of England,

volume 8, chapter 4

(Reign of George III., volume 4).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1812-1815.

War with the United States.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1804-1809;

1808; and 1810-1812, to 1815 (JANUARY).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1813 (JUNE).

Joined with the new European Coalition against Napoleon.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1813 (MAY-AUGUST).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1813-1814.

Wellington's victorious and final campaigns

in the Peninsular War.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1812-1814.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1813-1816.

War with the Ghorkas of Nepal.

See INDIA: A. D..1805-1816.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1814.

The allies in France and in possession of Paris.

Fall of Napoleon.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1814 (JANUARY-MARCH),

and (MARCH-APRIL).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1814 (May-June).

Treaty of Paris.

Acquisition of Malta, the Isle of France

and the Cape of Good Hope.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1814 (APRIL-JUNE).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1814 (DECEMBER).

The Treaty of Ghent, terminating war with the United States.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1814 (DECEMBER).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1814-1815.

The Congress of Vienna and its revision of the map of Europe.

See VIENNA, THE CONGRESS OF.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1815 (MARCH).

The Corn Law.

See TARIFF LEGISLATION (ENGLAND): A. D. 1815-1828.

[Transcriber's Note:]

INDONESIA: A. D. 1815 (APRIL).

Eruption of Mount Tambora precipitating the "Year without a

Summer" and widespread famine.

"Low temperatures and heavy rains resulted in failed harvests

in Britain and Ireland. ... With the cause of the problems

unknown, hungry people demonstrated in front of grain markets

and bakeries. Later riots, arson, and looting took place in

many European cities. On some occasions, rioters carried flags

reading "Bread or Blood". Though riots were common during

times of hunger, the food riots of 1816 and 1817 were the

highest levels of violence since the French Revolution. It was

the worst famine of 19th-century mainland Europe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer#Europe

[End Transcriber's Note]

ENGLAND: A. D. 1815 (JUNE).

The Waterloo campaign.

Defeat and final Overthrow of Napoleon.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1815 (JUNE).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1815 (JULY-AUGUST).

Surrender of Napoleon.

His confinement on the Island of St. Helena.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1815 (JUNE-AUGUST).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1815 (JULY-NOVEMBER).

Wellington's army in Paris.

The Second Treaty.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1815 (JULY-NOVEMBER).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1815 (SEPTEMBER).

The Holy Alliance.

See HOLY ALLIANCE.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1816-1820.

Agitation for Parliamentary Reform.

Hampden Clubs.

Spencean philanthropists.

Trials of William Hone.

The Spa-fields meeting and riot.

March of the Blanketeers.

Massacre of Peterloo.

The Six Acts.

Death of George III.

Accession of George IV.

"From this time the name of Parliamentary Reform became, for

the most part, a name of terror to the Government. ... It

passed away from the patronage of a few aristocratic lovers of

popularity, to be advocated by writers of 'two-penny trash,'

and to be discussed and organized by 'Hampden Clubs' of

hungering philanthropists and unemployed 'weaver-boys.' Samuel

Bamford, who thought it no disgrace to call himself 'a

Radical' ... says, 'at this time (1816) the writings of

William Cobbett suddenly became of great authority; they were

read on nearly every cottage hearth in the manufacturing

districts of South Lancashire, in those of Leicester, Derby,

and Nottingham; also in many of the Scottish manufacturing

towns. Their influence was speedily visible.' Cobbett

advocated Parliamentary Reform as the corrective of whatever

miseries the lower classes suffered. A new order of

politicians was called into action: 'The Sunday-schools of the

preceding thirty years had produced many working men of

sufficient talent to become readers, writers, and speakers in

the village meetings for Parliamentary Reform; some also were

found to possess a rude poetic talent, which rendered their

effusions popular, and bestowed an additional charm on their

assemblages; and by such various means, anxious listeners at

first, and then zealous proselytes, were drawn from the

cottages of quiet nooks and dingles to the weekly readings and

discussions of the Hampden Clubs.' ... In a Report of the

Secret Committee of the House of Commons, presented on the

19th of February, 1817, the Hampden Clubs are described as

'associated professedly for the purpose of Parliamentary

Reform, upon the most extended principle of universal suffrage

and annual parliaments'; but that 'in far the greater number

of them ... nothing short of a Revolution is the object

expected and avowed.' The testimony of Samuel Bamford shows

that, in this early period of their history, the Hampden Clubs

limited their object to the attainment of Parliamentary Reform.

... Bamford, at the beginning of 1817, came to London as a

delegate from the Middleton Club, to attend a great meeting of

delegates to be assembled in London. ...

{950}

The Middleton delegate was introduced, amidst the reeking

tobacco-fog of a low tavern, to the leading members of a

society called the 'Spencean Philanthropists.' They derived

their name from that of a Mr. Spence, a school-master in

Yorkshire, who had conceived a plan for making the nation

happy, by causing all the lands of the country to become the

property of the State, which State should divide all the

produce for the support of the people. ... The Committee of

the Spenceans openly meddled with sundry grave questions

besides that of a community in land; and, amongst other

notable projects, petitioned Parliament to do away with

machinery. Amongst these fanatics some dangerous men had

established themselves, such as Thistlewood, who subsequently

paid the penalty of five years of maniacal plotting." A

meeting held at Spa-fields on the 2d of December, 1816, in the

interest of the Spencean Philanthropists, terminated in a

senseless outbreak of riot, led by a young fanatic named

Watson. The mob plundered some gunsmiths' shops, shot one

gentleman who remonstrated, and set out to seize the Tower;

but was dispersed by a few resolute magistrates and

constables. "It is difficult to imagine a more degraded and

dangerous position than that in which every political writer

was placed during the year 1817. In the first place, he was

subject, by a Secretary of State's warrant, to be imprisoned

upon suspicion, under the Suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act.

Secondly, he was open to an ex-officio information, under

which he would be compelled to find bail, or be imprisoned.

The power of ex-officio information had been extended so as to

compel bail, by an Act of 1808; but from 1808 to 1811, during

which three years forty such informations were laid, only one

person was held to bail. In 1817 numerous ex-officio

informations were filed, and the almost invariable practice

then was to hold the alleged offender to bail, or, in default,

to commit to prison. Under this Act Mr. Hone and others were

committed to prison during this year. ... The entire course of

these proceedings was a signal failure. There was only one

solitary instance of success--William Cobbett ran away. On the

28th of March he fled to America, suspending the publication

of his 'Register' for four months. On the 12th of May earl

Grey mentioned in the House of Lords that a Mr. Hone was

proceeded against for publishing some blasphemous parody; but

he had read one of the same nature, written, printed, and

published, some years ago, by other people, without any notice

having been officially taken of it. The parody to which earl

Grey alluded, and a portion of which he recited, was Canning's

famous parody, 'Praise Lepaux'; and he asked whether the

authors, be they in the cabinet or in any other place, would

also be found out and visited with the penalties of the law?

This hint to the obscure publisher against whom these

ex-officio informations had been filed for blasphemous and

seditious parodies, was effectually worked out by him in the

solitude of his prison, and in the poor dwelling where he had

surrounded himself, as he had done from his earliest years,

with a collection of odd and curious books. From these he had

gathered an abundance of knowledge that was destined to

perplex the technical acquirements of the Attorney-General, to

whom the sword and buckler of his precedents would be wholly

useless, and to change the determination of the boldest judge

in the land [Lord Ellenborough] to convict at any rate, into

the prostration of helpless despair. Altogether, the three

trials of William Hone are amongst the most remarkable in our

constitutional history. They produced more distinct effects

upon the temper of the country than any public proceedings of

that time. They taught the Government a lesson which has never

been forgotten, and to which, as much as to any other cause,

we owe the prodigious improvement as to the law of libel

itself, and the use of the law, in our own day,--an

improvement which leaves what is dangerous in the press to be

corrected by the remedial power of the press itself; and

which, instead of lamenting over the newly-acquired ability of

the masses to read seditious and irreligious works, depends

upon the general diffusion of this ability as the surest

corrective of the evils that are incident even to the best

gift of heaven,--that of knowledge."

C. Knight,

Popular History of England,

volume 8, chapter 5.

In 1817 "there was widespread distress. There were riots in

the counties of England arising out of the distress. There

were riots in various parts of London. Secret Committees were

appointed by both Houses of the Legislature to inquire into

the alleged disaffection of part of the people. The Habeas

Corpus Act was suspended. The march of the Blanketeers from

Manchester [March, 1817] caused panic and consternation

through various circles in London. The march of the

Blanketeers was a very simple and harmless project. A large

number of the working-men in Manchester conceived the idea of

walking to London to lay an account of their distress before

the heads of the Government, and to ask that some remedy might

be found, and also to appeal for the granting of Parliamentary

reform. It was part of their arrangement that each man should

carry a blanket with him, as they would, necessarily, have to

sleep at many places along the way, and they were not exactly

in funds to pay for first-class hotel accommodation. The

nickname of Blanketeers was given to them because of their

portable sleeping-arrangements. The whole project was simple,

was touching in its simplicity. Even at this distance of time

one cannot read about it without being moved by its pathetic

childishness. These poor men thought they had nothing to do

but to walk to London, and get to speech of Lord Liverpool,

and justice would be done to them and their claims. The

Government of Lord Liverpool dealt very roundly, and in a very

different way, with the Blanketeers. If the poor men had been

marching on London with pikes, muskets and swords, they could

not have created a greater fury of panic and of passion in

official circles. The Government, availing itself of the

suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, had the leaders of the

movement captured and sent to prison, stopped the march by

military force, and dispersed those who were taking part in

it. ... The 'Massacre of Peterloo,' as it is not

inappropriately called, took place not long after. A great

public meeting was held [August 16, 1819] at St. Peter's

Field, then on the outskirts of Manchester, now the site of

the Free Trade Hall, which many years later rang so often to

the thrilling tones of John Bright. The meeting was called to

petition for Parliamentary reform. It should be remembered

that in those days Manchester, Birmingham, and other great

cities were without any manner of representation in

Parliament.

{951}

It was a vast meeting--some 80,000 men and women are stated to

have been present. The yeomanry [a mounted militia force], for

some reason impossible to understand, endeavoured to disperse

the meeting, and actually dashed in upon the crowd, spurring

their horses and flourishing their sabres. Eleven persons were

killed, and several hundreds were wounded. The Government

brought in, as their panacea for popular trouble and

discontent, the famous Six Acts. These Acts were simply

measures to render it more easy for the authorities to put

down or disperse meetings which they considered objectionable,

and to suppress any manner of publication which they chose to

call seditious. But among them were some Bills to prevent

training and drilling, and the collection and use of arms.

These measures show what the panic of the Government was. It

was the conviction of the ruling classes that the poor and the

working-classes of England were preparing a revolution. ...

During all this time, the few genuine Radicals in the House of

Commons were bringing on motion after motion for Parliamentary

reform, just as Grattan and his friends were bringing forward

motion after motion for Catholic Emancipation. In 1818, a

motion by Sir Francis Burdett for annual Parliaments and

universal suffrage was lost by a majority of 106 to nobody.

... The motion had only two supporters--Burdett himself, and

his colleague, Lord Cochrane. ... The forms of the House

require two tellers on either side, and a compliance with this

inevitable rule took up the whole strength of Burdett's party.

... On January 29, 1820, the long reign of George III. came to

an end. The life of the King closed in darkness of eyes and mind.

Stone-blind, stone-deaf, and, except for rare lucid intervals,

wholly out of his senses, the poor old King wandered from room

to room of his palace, a touching picture, with his long,

white, flowing beard, now repeating to himself the awful words

of Milton--the 'dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of

noon--irrecoverably dark'--now, in a happier mood, announcing

himself to be in the companionship of angels. George, the

Prince Regent, succeeded, of course, to the throne; and George

IV. at once announced his willingness to retain the services

of the Ministry of Lord Liverpool. The Whigs had at one time

expected much from the coming of George IV. to the throne, but

their hopes had begun to be chilled of late."

J. McCarthy,

Sir Robert Peel,

chapter 3.

ALSO IN:

J. Routledge,

Chapters in the History of Popular Progress,

chapters 12-19.

H. Martineau,

History of the Thirty Years' Peace,

book 1, chapters 5-17 (volume 1).

E. Smith,

William Cobbett,

chapters 21-23 (volume 2).

See, also, TARIFF LEGISLATION (ENGLAND): A. D. 1815-1828.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1818.

Convention with the United States relating to Fisheries, etc.

See FISHERIES, NORTH AMERICAN: A. D. 1814-1818.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1820.

Accession of King George IV.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1820-1822.

Congresses of Troppau, Laybach and Verona.

Projects of the Holy Alliance.

English protests.

Canning's policy towards Spain and the Spanish American

colonies.

See VERONA, THE CONGRESS OF.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1820-1827.

The Cato Street Conspiracy.

Trial of Queen Caroline.

Canning in the Foreign Office.

Commercial Crisis of 1825.

Canning as Premier.

His death.

"Riot and social misery had, during the Regency, heralded the

Reign. They did not cease to afflict the country. At once we

are plunged into the wretched details of a conspiracy. Secret

intelligence reached the Home Office to the effect that a man

named Thistlewood, who had been a year in jail for challenging

Lord Sidmouth, had with several accomplices laid a plot to

murder the Ministers during a Cabinet dinner, which was to

come off at Lord Harrowby's. The guests did not go, and the

police pounced on the gang, arming themselves in a stable in

Cato Street, off the Edgeware Road. Thistlewood blew out the

candle, having first stabbed a policeman to the heart. For

that night he got off; but, being taken next day, he was soon

hanged, with his four leading associates. This is called the

Cato Street Conspiracy. ... George IV., almost as soon as the

crown became his own, began to stir in the matter of getting a

divorce from his wife. He had married this poor Princess

Caroline of Brunswick in 1795, merely for the purpose of

getting his debts paid. Their first interview disappointed

both. After some time of semi-banishment to Blackheath she had

gone abroad to live chiefly in Italy, and had been made the

subject of more than one 'delicate investigation' for the

purpose of procuring evidence of infidelity against her. She

now came to England (June 6, 1820), and passed from Dover to

London through joyous and sympathizing crowds. The King sent a

royal message to the Lords, asking for an inquiry into her

conduct. Lord Liverpool and Lord Castlereagh laid before the

Lords and Commons a green bag, stuffed with indecent and

disgusting accusations against the Queen. Happily for her she

had two champions, whose names shall not readily lose the

lustre gained in her defence--Henry Brougham and Thomas

Denman, her Attorney-General and Solicitor-General. After the

failure of a negotiation, in which the Queen demanded two

things that the Ministers refused--the insertion of her name

in the Liturgy, and a proper reception at some foreign

court--Lord Liverpool brought into the Upper House a 'Bill of

Pains and Penalties,' which aimed at her degradation from the

throne and the dissolution of her marriage. Through the

fever-heat of a scorching summer the case went on, counsel and

witnesses playing their respective parts before the Lords. ...

At length the Bill, carried on its third reading by a majority

of only nine, was abandoned by the Ministry (November 10). And

the country broke out into cheers and flaming windows. Had she

rested content with the vindication of her fair fame, it would

have been better for her own peace. But she went in public

procession to St. Paul's to return thanks for her victory. And

more rashly still in the following year she tried to force her

way into Westminster Abbey during the Coronation of her

husband (July 19, 1821). But mercy came a few days later from

the King of kings. The people, true to her even in death,

insisted that the hearse containing her remains should pass

through the city; and in spite of bullets from the carbines of

dragoons they gained their point, the Lord Mayor heading the

procession till it had cleared the streets. ... George Canning

had resigned his office rather than take any part with the

Liverpool Cabinet in supporting the 'Bill of Pains and

Penalties,' and had gone to the Continent for the summer of

the trial year.

{952}

Early in 1822 Lord Sidmouth ... resigned the Home Office. He

was succeeded by Robert Peel, a statesman destined to achieve

eminence. Canning about the same time was offered the post of

Governor-General of India," and accepted it; but this

arrangement was suddenly changed by the death of Castlereagh,

who committed suicide in August. Canning then became Foreign

Secretary. "The spirit of Canning's foreign policy was

diametrically opposed to that of Londonderry [Castlereagh].

... Refusing to interfere in Spanish affairs, he yet

acknowledged the new-won freedom of the South American States,

which had lately shaken off the Spanish yoke. To preserve peace

and yet cut England loose from the Holy Alliance were the

conflicting aims, which the genius of Canning enabled him to

reconcile [see VERONA, CONGRESS OF]. ... During the years

1824-25, the country, drunk with unusual prosperity, took that

speculation fever which has afflicted her more than once

during the last century and a half. ... A crop of fungus

companies sprang up temptingly from the heated soil of the

Stock Exchange. ... Shares were bought and gambled in. The

winter passed; but spring shone on glutted markets.

depreciated stock, no buyers, and no returns from the shadowy

and distant investments in South America, which had absorbed

so much capital. Then the crashing began--the weak broke

first, the strong next, until banks went down by dozens, and

commerce for the time was paralyzed. By causing the issue of

one and two pound notes, by coining in great haste a new

supply of sovereigns, and by inducing the Bank of England to

lend money upon the security of goods--in fact to begin the

pawnbroking business--the Government met the crisis, allayed

the panic, and to some extent restored commercial credit.

Apoplexy having struck down Lord Liverpool early in 1827, it

became necessary to select a new Premier. Canning was the

chosen man." He formed a Cabinet with difficulty in April,

Wellington, Peel, Eldon, and others of his former colleagues

refusing to take office with him. His administration was

brought abruptly to an end in August by his sudden death.

W. F. Collier,

History of England,

pages 526-529.

ALSO IN:

Lord Brougham,

Life and Times, by Himself,

chapters 12-18 (volume 2).

A. G. Stapleton,

George Canning and His Times,

chapters 18-34.

A. G. Stapleton,

Some Official Correspondence of George Canning,

2 volumes

F. H. Hill,

George Canning,

chapters 19-22.

Sir T. Martin,

Life of Lord Lyndhurst,

chapter 7.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1824-1826.

The first Burmese War.

See INDIA: A. D. 1823-1833.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1825-1830.

The beginning of railroads.

See STEAM LOCOMOTION ON LAND.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1827-1828.

Removal of Disabilities from the Dissenters.

Repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts.

"Early in 1827 a private member, of little influence,

unexpectedly raised a dormant question. For the best part of a

century the Dissenters had passively submitted to the

anomalous position in which they had been placed by the

Legislature [see above: A. D. 1662-1665; 1672-1673;

1711-1714]. Nominally unable to hold any office under the

Crown, they were annually 'whitewashed' for their infringement

of the law by the passage of an Indemnity Act. The Dissenters

had hitherto been assenting parties to this policy. They

fancied that the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts would

logically lead to the emancipation of the Roman Catholics, and

they preferred remaining under a disability themselves to

running the risk of conceding relief to others. The tacit

understanding, which thus existed between the Church on one

side and Dissent on the other, was maintained unbroken and

almost unchallenged till 1827. It was challenged in that year

by William Smith, the member for Norwich. Smith was a London

banker; he was a Dissenter; and he felt keenly the  hard,

unjust, and unnecessary' law which disabled him from holding,

any office, however insignificant, under the Crown,' and from

sitting 'as a magistrate in any corporation without violating

his conscience.' Smith took the opportunity which the annual

Indemnity Act afforded him of stating these views in the House

of Commons. As he spoke the scales fell from the eyes of the

Liberal members. The moment he sat down Harvey, the member for

Colchester, twitted the Opposition with disregarding 'the

substantial claims of the Dissenters,' while those of the

Catholics were urged year after year' with the vehemence of

party,' and supported by 'the mightiest powers of energy and

eloquence.' The taunt called up Lord John Russell, and

elicited from him the declaration that he would bring forward

a motion on the Test and Corporation Acts, 'if the Protestant

Dissenters should think it to their interest that he should do

so.' A year afterwards--on the 26th of February, 1828--Lord

John Russell rose to redeem the promise which he thus gave."

His motion "was carried by 237 votes to 193. The Ministry had

sustained a crushing and unexpected reverse. For the moment it

was doubtful whether it could continue in office. It was saved

from the necessity of resigning by the moderation and

dexterity of Peel. Peel considered that nothing could be more

unfortunate for the Church than to involve the House of

Commons in a conflict with the House of Lords on a religious

question. ... On his advice the Bishops consented to

substitute a formal declaration for the test hitherto in

force. The declaration, which contained a promise that the

maker of it would 'never exert any power or any influence to

injure or subvert the Protestant' Established Church, was to

be taken by the members of every corporation, and, at the

pleasure of the Crown, by the holder of every office. Russell,

though he disliked the declaration, assented to it for the

sake of securing the success of his measure." The bill was

modified accordingly and passed both Houses, though

strenuously resisted by all the Tories of the old school.

S. Walpole,

History of England from 1815,

chapter 10 (volume 2).

ALSO IN:

J. Stoughton,

Religion in England from 1800 to 1850,

volume 1, chapter 2.

H. S. Skeats,

History of the Free Churches of England,

chapter 9.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1827-1828.

The administration of Lord Goderich.

Advent of the Wellington Ministry.

"The death of Mr. Canning placed Lord Goderich at the head of

the government. The composition of the Cabinet was slightly

altered. Mr. Huskisson became Colonial Secretary, Mr. Herries

Chancellor of the Exchequer. The government was generally

considered to be weak, and not calculated for a long

endurance. ... The differences upon financial measures between

Mr. Herries ... and Mr. Huskisson ... could not be reconciled

by Lord Goderich, and he therefore tendered his resignation to

the king on the 9th of January, 1828.

{953}

His majesty immediately sent to lord Lyndhurst to desire that

he and the duke of Wellington should come to Windsor. The king

told the duke that he wished him to form a government of which

he should be the head. ... It was understood that lord

Lyndhurst was to continue in office. The duke of Wellington

immediately applied to Mr. Peel, who, returning to his post of

Secretary of State for the Home Department, saw the impossibility

of re-uniting in this administration those who had formed the

Cabinet of lord Liverpool. He desired to strengthen the

government of the duke of Wellington by the introduction of

some of the more important of Mr. Canning's friends into the

Cabinet and to fill some of the lesser offices. The earl of

Dudley, Mr. Huskisson, lord Palmerston, and Mr. Charles Grant,

became members of the new administration. Mr. William Lamb,

afterwards lord Melbourne, was appointed Chief Secretary for

Ireland. The ultra-Tories were greatly indignant at these

arrangements. They groaned and reviled as if the world was

unchanged."

C. Knight,

Popular History of England,

volume 8, chapter 13.

ALSO IN:

Sir T. Martin,

Life of Lord Lyndhurst,

chapter 9.

W. M. Torrens,

Life of Viscount Melbourne,

volume 1, chapter 15.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1827-1829.

Intervention on behalf of Greece.

Battle of Navarino.

See GREECE: A. D. 1821-1829.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1828.

Corn Law amendment.

The Sliding Scale.

See TARIFF LEGISLATION (ENGLAND): A. D. 1815-1828.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1829.

Catholic Emancipation.

See IRELAND: A. D. 1811-1829.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1830.

The state of the Parliamentary representation before Reform.

Death of George IV.

Accession of William IV.

Fall of the Wellington Ministry.

"Down to the year 1800, when the Union between Great Britain

and Ireland was effected, the House consisted of 558 members;

after 1800, it consisted of 658 members. In the earlier days

of George III., it was elected by 160,000 voters, out of a

population of a little more than eight millions; in the later

days of that monarch, it was elected by about 440,000 voters,

out of a population of twenty-two millions. ... But the

inadequacy of the representation will be even more striking if

we consider the manner in which the electors were broken up

into constituencies. The constituencies consisted either of

counties, or of cities or boroughs. Generally speaking, the

counties of England and Wales (and of Ireland, after the

Union) were represented by two members, and the counties of

Scotland by one member; and the voters were the forty-shilling

freeholders. The number of cities and boroughs which returned

members varied; but, from the date of the Union, there were

about 217 in England and Wales, 14 in Scotland, and 39 in

Ireland,--all the English and Welsh boroughs (with a few

exceptions) returning two members, and the Scotch and Irish

boroughs one member. How the particular places came to be

Parliamentary boroughs is a question of much historic

interest, which cannot be dealt with here in detail.

Originally, the places to which writs were issued seem to have

been chosen by the Crown, or, not unfrequently, by the

Sheriffs of the counties. Probably, in the first instance, the

more important places were selected; though other

considerations, such as the political opinions of the owners

of the soil, and the desire to recognise services (often of a

very questionable character) rendered by such owners to the

King, no doubt had their weight. In the time of Cromwell, some

important changes were made. In 1654, he disfranchised many small

boroughs, increased the number of county members, and

enfranchised Manchester, Leeds, and Halifax. All these reforms

were cancelled after the Restoration; and from that time very

few changes were made. ... In the hundred and fifty years

which followed the Restoration, however, there were changes in

the condition of the country, altogether beyond the control of

either kings or parliaments. Old towns disappeared or decayed,

and new ones sprang up. Manchester, Birmingham, and Leeds were

remarkable examples of the latter,--Old Sarum was an example

of the former. ... At one time a place of some importance, it

declined from the springing up of New Sarum (Salisbury); and,

even so far back as the reign of Henry VII., it existed as a

town only in imagination, and in the roll of the Parliamentary

boroughs. ... Many other places might be named [known as Rotten

Boroughs and Pocket Boroughs]--such as Gatton in Surrey, and

Ludgershall in Wiltshire--which represented only their owners.

In fact, the representation of owners, and of owners only, was

a very prominent feature of the electoral system now under

consideration. Thus, the Duke of Norfolk was represented by

eleven members, who sat for places forming a part of his

estates; similarly, Lord Lonsdale was represented by nine

members, Lord Darlington by seven, the Duke of Rutland and

several other peers by six each; and it is stated by one

authority that the Duke of Newcastle, at one time, returned

one third of all the members for the boroughs, while, up to

1780, the members for the county of York--the largest and most

influential of the counties--were always elected in Lord

Rockingham's dining-room. But these are only selected

instances. Many others might be cited. According to a

statement made by the Duke of Richmond in 1780, 6,000 persons

returned a clear majority of the House of Commons. In 1793,

the Society of the Friends of the People asserted, and

declared that they were able to prove, that 84 individuals

returned 157 members; that 70 individuals returned 150

members; and that of the 154 individuals who thus returned 307

members--the majority of the House before the Union with

Ireland--no fewer than 40 were peers. The same Society

asserted in the same year, and declared that they were able to

prove, that 70 members were returned by 35 places, in which

there were scarcely any electors; that 90 members were

returned by 46 places, in which there were fewer than 50

electors; that 37 members were returned by 19 places, with not

more than 100 electors; and that 52 members were returned by

26 places, with not more than 200 electors: all these in

England alone. Even in the towns which had a real claim to

representation, the franchise rested upon no uniform basis.

... In some cases the suffrage was practically household

suffrage; in other cases the suffrage was extremely

restricted. But they all returned their two members equally;

it made no difference whether the voters numbered 3,000 or

only three or four. Such being the state of the

representation, corruption was inevitable. Bribery was

practised to an inconceivable extent. Many of the smaller

boroughs had a fixed price, and it was by no means uncommon to

see a borough advertised for sale in the newspapers. ...

{954}

As an example of cost in contesting a county election, it is

on record that the joint expenses of Lord Milton and Mr.

Lascelles, in contesting the county of York in 1807, were

£200,000. ... It is not to be supposed that a condition of

things which appears to us so intolerable attracted no

attention before what may be called the Reform era. So far

back as 1745, Sir Francis Dashwood (afterwards Lord de

Spencer) moved an amendment to the Address in favour of

Reform; Lord Chatham himself, in 1766 and 1770, spoke of the

borough representation as 'the rotten part of the

constitution,' and likened it to a 'mortified limb'; the Duke

of Richmond of that day, in 1780, introduced a bill into the

House of Lords which would have given manhood suffrage and

annual parliaments; and three times in succession, in 1782,

1783, and 1785, Mr. Pitt proposed resolutions in favour of

Reform. ... After Mr. Pitt had abandoned the cause, Mr.

(afterwards Earl) Grey took up the subject. First, in 1792, he

presented that famous petition from the Society of the Friends

of the People, to which allusion has been already made, and

founded a resolution upon it. He made further efforts in 1793,

1795, and 1797, but was on every occasion defeated by large

majorities. ... From the beginning of the 19th century to the

year 1815--with the exception of a few months after the Peace

of Amiens in 1802--England was at war. During that time Reform

dropped out of notice. ... In 1817, and again in 1818 and

1819, Sir Francis Burdett, who was at that time member for

Westminster and a leading Reformer, brought the question of

Reform before the House of Commons. On each occasion he was

defeated by a tremendous majority. ... The next ten years were

comparatively uneventful, so far as the subject of this

history is concerned. ... Two events made the year 1830

particularly opportune for raising the question of

Parliamentary Reform. The first of these events was the death

of George IV. [June 26],--the second, the deposition of

Charles X. of France. ... For the deposition of

Charles--followed as it was very soon by a successful

insurrection in Belgium--produced an immense impression upon

the Liberals of this country, and upon the people generally.

In a few days or weeks there had been secured in two

continental countries what the people of England had been

asking for in vain for years. ... We must not omit to notice

one other circumstance that favoured the cause of Reform. This

was the popular distress. Distress always favours agitation.

The distress in 1830 was described in the House of Lords at

the time as 'unparalleled in any previous part of our

history.' Probably this was an exaggeration. But there can be

no doubt that the distress was general, and that it was acute.

... By the law as it stood when George IV. died, the demise of

the Crown involved a dissolution of Parliament. The Parliament

which was in existence in 1830 had been elected in 1826. Since

the beginning o£ 1828 the Duke of Wellington had been Prime

Minister, with Mr. (soon after Sir Robert) Peel as Home

Secretary, and Leader of the House of Commons. They decided to

dissolve at once. ... In the Parliament thus dissolved, and

especially in the session just brought to a close, the

question of Reform had held a prominent place. At the very

beginning of the session, in the first week of February, the

Marquis of Blandford (afterwards Duke of Marlborough) moved an

amendment to the Address, in which, though a Tory, he affirmed

the conviction 'that the State is at this moment in the most

imminent danger, and that no effectual measures of salvation

will or can be adopted until the people shall be restored to

their rightful share in the legislation of the country.' ...

He was supported on very different grounds by Mr. O'Connell,

but was defeated by a vote of 96 to 11. A few days later he

introduced a specific plan of Reform--a very Radical plan

indeed--but was again ignominiously defeated; then, on the 23d

of February, Lord John Russell ... asked for leave to bring in

a bill for conferring the franchise upon Leeds, Manchester,

and Birmingham, as the three largest unrepresented towns in

the kingdom, but was defeated by 188 votes to 140; and

finally, on the 28th of May--scarcely two months before the

dissolution--Mr. O'Connell brought in a bill to establish

universal suffrage, vote by ballot, and triennial parliaments,

but found only 13 members to support him in a House of 332.

... Thus, the question of Reform was now before the country,

not merely as a popular but as a Parliamentary question. It is

not too much to say that, when the dissolution occurred, it

occupied all minds. ... The whole of August and a considerable

part of September, therefore, were occupied with the

elections, which were attended by an unparalleled degree of

excite merit. ... When all was over, and the results were

reckoned up, it was found that, of the 28 members who

represented the thirteen greatest cities in England (to say

nothing of Wales, Scotland, or Ireland), only 3 were

Minsterialists. ... Of the 236 men who were returned by

elections, more or less popular, in England, only 79 were

Ministerialists. ... The first Parliament of William IV. met

on the 26th of October, but the session was not really opened

till the 2d of November, when the King came down and delivered

his Speech. ... The occasion was made memorable, however, not

by the King's Speech, but by a speech by the Duke of

Wellington, who was then Prime Minister. ... 'The noble Earl

[Grey],' said the Duke, 'has alluded to something in the shape

of a Parliamentary Reform, but he has been candid enough to

acknowledge that he is not prepared with any measure of

Reform; and I have as little scruple to say that his Majesty's

Government is as totally unprepared as the noble lord. Nay, on

my own part, I will go further, and say, that I have never

read or heard of any measure, up to the present moment, which

could in any degree satisfy my mind that the state of the

representation could be improved, or be rendered more

satisfactory to the country at large than at the present

moment. ... I am not only not prepared to bring forward any

measure of this nature, but I will at once declare that, as

far as I am concerned, as long as I hold any station in the

government of the country, I shall always feel it my duty to

resist such measures when proposed by others.' Exactly

fourteen days after the delivery of this speech, the Duke's

career' as Prime Minister came for the time to a close. On the

16th of November he came down to Westminster, and announced

that he had resigned office. In the meantime, there had been

something like a panic in the city, because Ministers,

apprehending disturbance, had advised the King and Queen to

abandon an engagement to dine, on the 9th, with the Lord Mayor

at the Guildhall.

{955}

On the 15th, too, the Government had sustained a defeat in the

House of Commons, on a motion proposed by Sir Henry Parnell on

the part of the Opposition, having reference to the civil

list. This defeat was made the pretext for resignation. But it

was only a pretext. After the Duke's declaration in regard to

Reform, and in view of his daily increasing unpopularity, his

continuance in office was impossible."

W. Heaton,

The Three Reforms of Parliament,

chapters 1-2.

ALSO IN:

A. Paul,

History of Reform,

chapters 1-6.

W. Bagehot,

Essays on Parliamentary Reform,

essay 2.

H. Cox,

Antient Parliamentary Elections.

S. Walpole,

The Electorate and the Legislature,

chapter 4.

E. A. Freeman,

Decayed Boroughs

(Historical Essays, 4th series).

England: A. D. 1830-1832.

The great Reform of Representation in Parliament, under the

Ministry of Earl Grey.

"Earl Grey was the new Minister; and Mr. Brougham his Lord

Chancellor. The first announcement of the premier was that the

government would 'take into immediate consideration the state

of the representation, with a view to the correction of those

defects which have been occasioned in it, by the operation of

time; and with a view to the reestablishment of that

confidence upon the part of the people, which he was afraid

Parliament did not at present enjoy, to the full extent that

is essential for the welfare and safety of the country, and

the preservation of the government.' The government were now

pledged to a measure of parliamentary reform; and during the

Christmas recess were occupied in preparing it. Meanwhile, the

cause was eagerly supported by the people. ... So great were

the difficulties with which the government had to contend,

that they needed all the encouragement that the people could

give. They had to encounter the reluctance of the king,--the

interests of the proprietors of boroughs, which Mr. Pitt,

unable to overcome, had sought to purchase,--the opposition of

two thirds of the House of Lords; and perhaps of a majority of

the House of Commons,--and above all, the strong Tory spirit

of the country. ... On the 3d February, when Parliament

reassembled, Lord Grey announced that the government had

succeeded in framing 'a measure which would be effective,

without exceeding the bounds of a just and well-advised

moderation,' and which 'had received the unanimous consent of

the whole government.' ... On the 1st March, this measure was

brought forward in the House of Commons by Lord John Russell,

to whom,--though not in the cabinet,--this honorable duty had

been justly confided. ... On the 22d March, the second reading

of the bill was carried by a majority of one only, in a House

of 608,--probably the greatest number which, up to that time,

had ever been assembled at a division. On the 19th of April,

on going into committee, ministers found themselves in a

minority of eight, on a resolution proposed by General

Gascoyne, that the number of members returned for England

ought not to be diminished. On the 21st, ministers announced

that it was not their intention to proceed with the bill. On

that same night, they were again defeated on a question of

adjournment, by a majority of twenty-two. This last vote was

decisive. The very next day, Parliament was prorogued by the

king in person, 'with a view to its immediate dissolution.' It

was one of the most critical days in the history of our

country. ... The people were now to decide the question;--and

they decided it. A triumphant body of reformers was returned,

pledged to carry the reform bill; and on the 6th July, the

second reading of the renewed measure was agreed to, by a

majority of 136. The most tedious and irritating discussions

ensued in committee,--night after night; and the bill was not

disposed of until the 21st September, when it was passed by a

majority of 109. That the peers were still adverse to the bill

was certain; but whether, at such a crisis, they would venture to

oppose the national will, was doubtful. On the 7th October,

after a debate of five nights,--one of the most memorable by

which that House has ever been distinguished, and itself a

great event in history,--the bill was rejected on the second

reading, by a majority of forty-one. The battle was to be

fought again. Ministers were too far pledged to the people to

think of resigning; and on the motion of Lord Ebrington, they

were immediately supported by a vote of confidence from the

House of Commons. On the 20th October, Parliament was

prorogued; and after a short interval of excitement,

turbulence, and danger [see BRISTOL: A. D. 1831], met again on

the 6th December. A third reform bill was immediately brought

in,--changed in many respects,--and much improved by reason of

the recent census, and other statistical investigations.

Amongst other changes, the total number of members was no

longer proposed to be reduced. This bill was read a second

time on Sunday morning, the 18th of December, by a majority of

162. On the 23d March, it was passed by the House of Commons,

and once more was before the House of Lords. Here the peril of

again rejecting it could not be concealed,--the courage of some

was shaken,--the patriotism of others aroused; and after a

debate of four nights, the second reading was affirmed by the

narrow majority of nine. But danger still awaited it. The

peers who would no longer venture to reject such a bill, were

preparing to change its essential character by amendments.

Meanwhile the agitation of the people was becoming dangerous.

... The time had come, when either the Lords must be coerced;

or the ministers must resign. This alternative was submitted

to the king. He refused to create peers: the ministers

resigned, and their resignation was accepted. Again the

Commons came to the rescue of the bill and the reform

ministry. On the motion of Lord Ebrington, an address was

immediately voted by them, renewing their expressions of

unaltered confidence in the late ministers, and imploring his

Majesty 'to call to his councils such persons only as will

carry into effect, unimpaired in all its essential provisions,

that bill for reforming the representation of the people,

which has recently passed this House.' ... The public

excitement was greater than ever; and the government and the

people were in imminent danger of a bloody collision, when

Earl Grey was recalled to the councils of his sovereign. The

bill was now secure. The peers averted the threatened addition

to their numbers by abstaining from further opposition; and

the bill,--the Great Charter of 1832,--at length received the

Royal Assent. It is now time to advert to the provisions of

this famous statute; and to inquire how far it corrected the

faults of a system, which had been complained of for more than

half a century.

{956}

The main evil had been the number of nomination, or rotten

boroughs enjoying the franchise. Fifty-six of these,--having

less than 2,000 inhabitants, and returning 111 members,--were

swept away. Thirty boroughs, having less than 4,000

inhabitants, lost each a member. Weymouth and Melcombe Regis

lost two. This disfranchisement extended to 143 members. The

next evil had been, that large populations were unrepresented;

and this was now redressed. Twenty-two large towns, including

metropolitan districts, received the privilege of returning

two members; and 20 more of returning one. The large county

populations were also regarded in the distribution of

seats,--the number of county members being increased from 94

to 159. The larger counties were divided; and the number of

members adjusted with reference to the importance of the

constituencies. Another evil was the restricted and unequal

franchise. This too was corrected. All narrow rights of

election were set aside in Boroughs; and a £10 household

franchise was established. The freemen of corporate towns were

the only class of electors whose rights were reserved; but

residence within the borough was attached as a condition to

their right of voting. ... The county constituency was

enlarged by the addition of copyholders and leaseholders, for

terms of years, and of tenants-at-will paying a rent of £50 a

year. ... The defects of the Scotch representation, being even

more flagrant and indefensible than those of England, were not

likely to be omitted from Lord Grey's general scheme of

reform. ... The entire representation was remodelled.

Forty-five members had been assigned to Scotland at the Union:

this number was now increased to 53 of whom 30 were allotted

to counties, and 23 to cities and burghs. The county franchise

was extended to all owners of property of £10 a year, and to

certain classes of leaseholders; and the burgh franchise to

all £10 householders. The representation of Ireland had many

of the defects of the English system. ... The right of

election was taken away from the corporations, and vested in

£10 householders; and large additions were made to the county

constituency. The number of members in Ireland, which the Act

of Union had settled at 100, was now increased to 105."

T. E. May,

Constitutional History of England, 1760-1860,

chapter 6 (volume 1).

ALSO IN:

W. N. Molesworth,

History of the Reform Bill of 1832.

W. Jones,

Biographical Sketches of the Reform Ministers.

Lord Brougham, Life and Times, by Himself,

chapters 21-22.

S. Walpole,

History of England from 1815,

chapter 11 (volume 2).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1831.

First assumption of the name Conservatives by the Tories.

See CONSERVATIVE PARTY.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1831-1832.

Intervention in the Netherlands.

Creation of the kingdom of Belgium.

War with Holland.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1830-1832.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1832-1833.

Abolition of Slavery in the West Indies.

Trade monopoly of the East India Company withdrawn.

Factory Bill.

Irish tithes.

"The period which succeeded the passing of the Reform Bill was

one of immense activity and earnestness in legislation. ...

The first great reform was the complete abolition of the

system of slavery in the British colonies. The slave trade had

itself been suppressed so far as we could suppress it long

before that time, but now the whole system of West Indian

slavery was brought to an end [see SLAVERY, NEGRO: A. D.

1834-1838]. ... A long agitation of the small but energetic

anti-slavery party brought about this practical result in

1833. ... Granville Sharpe, Zachary Macaulay, father of the

historian and statesman, Thomas Fowell Buxton, Wilberforce,

Brougham, and many others, had for a long time been striving

hard to rouse up public opinion to the abolition of the slave

system." The bill which passed Parliament gave immediate

freedom to all children subsequently born, and to all those

who were then under six years of age; while it determined for

all other slaves a period of apprenticeship, lasting five

years in one class and seven years in another, after which

they attained absolute freedom. It appropriated £20,000,000

for the compensation of the slave-owners. "Another reform of

no small importance was accomplished when the charter of the

East India Company came to be renewed in 1833. The clause

giving them a commercial monopoly of the trade of the East was

abolished, and the trade thrown open to the merchants of the

world [see INDIA: A. D. 1823-1833]. There were other slaves in

those days as well as the negro. There were slaves at home,

slaves to all intents and purposes, who were condemned to a

servitude as rigorous as that of the negro, and who, as far as

personal treatment went, suffered more severely than negroes in

the better class plantations. We speak now of the workers in

the great mines and factories. No law up to this time

regulated with anything like reasonable stringency the hours

of labour in factories. ... A commission was appointed to

investigate the condition of those who worked in the

factories. Lord Ashley, since everywhere known as the Earl of

Shaftesbury, ... brought forward the motion which ended in the

appointment of the commission. The commission quickly brought

together an immense amount of evidence to show the terrible

effect, moral and physical, of the over-working of women and

children, and an agitation set in for the purpose of limiting

by law the duration of the hours of labour. ... The principle

of legislative interference to protect children working in

factories was established by an Act passed in 1833, limiting

the work of children to eight hours a day, and that of young

persons under eighteen to 69 hours a week [see FACTORY

LEGISLATION]. The agitation then set on foot and led by Lord

Ashley was engaged for years after in endeavouring to give

that principle a more extended application. ... Irish tithes

were one of the grievances which came under the energetic

action of this period of reform. The people of Ireland

complained with justice of having to pay tithes for the

maintenance of the church establishment in which they did not

believe, and under whose roofs they never bent in worship." In

1832, committees of both Houses of Parliament reported in

favor of the extinction of tithes; but the Government

undertook temporarily a scheme whereby it made advances to the

Irish clergy and assumed the collection of tithes among its

own functions. It only succeeded in making matters worse, and

several years passed before the adoption (in 1838) of a bill

which "converted the tithe composition into a rent charge."

J. McCarthy,

The Epoch of Reform,

chapters 7-8.

ALSO IN: C. Knight, Popular History of England,

volume 8, chapter 17.

H. Martineau,

History of the Thirty Years' Peace,

book 4, chapters 6-9 (volumes 2-3).

{957}

ENGLAND: A. D. 1833-1840.

Turko-Egyptian question and its settlement.

The capture of Acre.

Bombardment of Alexandria.

See TURKS: A. D. 1831-1840.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1833-1845.

The Oxford or Tractarian Movement.

See OXFORD OR TRACTARIAN MOVEMENT.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1834-1837.

Resignation of Lord Grey and the Reform Ministry.

The first Melbourne Administration.

Peel's first Ministry and Melbourne's second.

Death of William IV.

Accession of Queen Victoria.

"On May 27th, Mr. Ward, member of St. Albans, brought forward

... resolutions, that the Protestant Episcopal Church of

Ireland much exceeded the spiritual wants of the Protestant

population; that it was the right of the State, and of

Parliament, to distribute church property, and that the

temporal possessions of the Irish church ought to be reduced.

The ministers determined to adopt a middle course and appoint

a commission of inquiry; they hoped thereby to induce Mr. Ward

to withdraw his motion, because the question was already in

government hands. While the negotiations were going on, news

was received of the resignation of four of the most

conservative members of the Cabinet, who regarded any

interference with church property with abhorrence; they were

Mr. Stanley, Sir James Graham, the Duke of Richmond, and the

Earl of Ripon. ... Owing to the difference of opinion in the

Cabinet on the Irish coercion bill, on July 9, 1834, Earl Grey

placed his resignation as Prime Minister in the hands of the

king. On the 10th the House of Commons adjourned for four

days. On the 14th, Viscount Melbourne stated in the House of

Lords that his Majesty had honored him with his commands for

the formation of a ministry. He had undertaken the task, but

it was not yet completed. There was very little change in the

Cabinet; Lord Melbourne's place in the Home Department was

filled by Lord Duncannon; Sir John Cam Hobhouse obtained a

seat as First Commissioner of Woods and Forests, and Lord

Carlisle surrendered the Privy Seal to Lord Mulgrave. The

Irish Church Bill was again brought forward, and although it

passed the Commons, was defeated in the Lords, August 1st. The

king much disliked the church policy of the Whigs, and dreaded

reform. He was eager to prevent the meeting of the House, and

circumstances favored him. Before the session Lord Spencer

died, and Lord Althorpe, his son, was thus removed to the

upper House. There was no reason why this should have broken

up the ministry, but the king seized the opportunity, sent for

Lord Melbourne, asserted that the ministry depended chiefly on

the personal influence of Lord Althorpe in the Commons,

declared that, deprived of it as it now was, the government

could not go on, and dismissed his ministers, instructing

Melbourne at once to send for the Duke of Wellington. The

sensation in London was great; the dismissal of the ministry

was considered unconstitutional; the act of the king was

wholly without precedent. ... The Duke of Wellington, from

November 15th to December 9th, was the First Lord of the

Treasury, and the sole Secretary of State, having only one

colleague, Lord Lyndhurst, who held the great seal, while at

the same time he sat as Chief Baron of the Court of Exchequer.

This temporary government was called a dictatorship. ... On

Sir Robert Peel's return from Italy, whence he had been

called, he waited upon the king and accepted the office of

First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer.

With the king's permission, he applied to Lord Stanley and Sir

James Graham, entreating them to give him the benefit of their

co-operation as colleagues in the Cabinet. They both declined.

Prevented from forming a moderate Conservative ministry, he

was reduced to fill his places with men of more pronounced

opinions, which promised ill for any advance in reform. ...

The Foreign, Home, War, and Colonial offices were filled by

Wellington, Goulburn, Herries, and Aberdeen; Lord Lyndhurst

was Lord Chancellor; Harding, Secretary for Ireland; and Lord

Wharncliffe, Privy Seal. With this ministry Peel had to meet a

hostile House of Commons. ... The Prime Minister therefore

thought it necessary to dissolve Parliament, and took the

opportunity [in what was called 'the Tamworth manifesto'] of

declaring his policy. He declared his acceptance of the Reform

Bill as a final settlement of the question. ... The elections,

though they returned a House, as is generally the case, more

favorable to the existing government than that which had been

dissolved, still gave a considerable majority to the Liberals.

... Lord John Russell, on April 7th, proposed the resolution,

'That it is the opinion of this House that no measure upon the

subject of the tithes in Ireland can lead to satisfactory and

final adjustment which does not embody the temporalities of

the Church in Ireland.' This was adopted by a majority of 27,

and that majority was fatal to the ministry. On the following

day the Duke of Wellington, in the House of Lords, stated that

in consequence of the resolution in the House of Commons, the

ministry had tendered their resignation. Sir Robert made a

similar explanation in the Commons. Ten days later, Viscount

Melbourne, in moving the adjournment of the House of Lords,

stated that the king had been pleased to appoint him First

Lord of the Treasury. ... On June 9, 1837, a bulletin issued

from Windsor Castle informing a loyal and really affectionate

people that the king was ill. From the 12th they were

regularly issued until the 19th, when the malady, inflammation

of the lungs, had greatly increased. ... On Tuesday, June 20th,

the last of these official documents was issued. His Majesty

had expired that morning at 2 o'clock. William died in the

seventy-second year of his age and seventh year of his reign,

leaving no legitimate issue. He was succeeded by his niece,

Alexandrina Victoria."

A. H. McCalman,

Abridged History of England,

pages 565-570.

ALSO IN:

W. C. Taylor,

Life and Times of Sir Robert Peel,

volume 2, chapters 10-12.

W. M. Torrens,

Memoirs of Viscount Melbourne,

volume 2, chapters 1-8.

J. W. Croker,

Correspondence and Diaries,

chapters 18-20 (volume 2).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1836-1839.

Beginning of the Anti-Corn-Law Agitation.

See TARIFF LEGISLATION (ENGLAND): A. D. 1836-1839.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1837.

Separation of Hanover.

See HANOVER: A. D. 1837.

{958}

ENGLAND: A. D. 1837-1839.

Opening of the reign of Queen Victoria.

End of personal rule.

Beginning of purely constitutional government.

Peel and the Bedchamber Question.

"The Duke of Wellington thought the accession of a woman to

the sovereign's place would be fatal to the present hopes of

the Tories [who were then expecting a turn of events in their

favor, as against the Whig administration of Lord Melbourne].

'Peel,' he said, 'has no manners, and I have no small talk.'

He seemed to take it for granted that the new sovereign would

choose her Ministers as a school-girl chooses her companions.

He did not know, did not foresee, that with the accession of

Queen Victoria the real reign of constitutional government in

these islands was to begin. The late King had advanced

somewhat on the ways of his predecessors, but his rule was

still, to all intents and purposes, a personal rule. With the

accession of Victoria the system of personal rule came to an

end. The elections which at that time were necessary on the

coming of a new sovereign went slightly in favour of the

Tories. The Whigs had many troubles. They were not reformers

enough for the great body of their supporters. ... The

Radicals had split off from them. They could not manage

O'Connell. The Chartist fire was already burning. There was

many a serious crisis in foreign policy--in China and in

Egypt, for example. The Canadian Rebellion and the mission of

Lord Durham involved the Whigs in fresh anxieties, and laid

them open to new attacks from their enemies. On the top of all

came some disturbances, of a legislative rather than an

insurrectionary kind, in Jamaica, and the Government felt

called upon to bring in a Bill to suspend for five years the

Constitution of the island. A Liberal and reforming Ministry

bringing in a Bill to suspend a Constitution is in a highly

awkward and dangerous position. Peel saw his opportunity, and

opposed the Bill. The Government won by a majority of only 5.

Lord Melbourne accepted the situation, and resigned [May 7,

1839]. The Queen sent for the Duke of Wellington, and he, of

course, advised her to send for Peel. When Peel came, the

young Queen told him with all the frankness of a girl that she

was sorry to part with her late Ministers, and that she did

not disapprove of their conduct, but that she felt bound to

act in accordance with constitutional usages; Peel accepted

the task of forming an Administration. And then came the

famous dispute known as the 'Bedchamber Question'--the

'question de jupons.' The Queen wished to retain her

ladies-in-waiting; Peel insisted that there must be some

change. Two of these ladies were closely related to Whig

statesmen whose policy was diametrically opposed to that of

Peel on no less important a question than the Government of

Ireland. Peel insisted that he could not undertake to govern

under such conditions. The Queen, acting on the advice of her

late Ministers, would not give way. The whole dispute created

immense excitement at the time. There was a good deal of

misunderstanding on both sides. It was quietly settled, soon

after, by a compromise which the late Prince Consort

suggested, and which admitted that Peel had been in the right.

... Its importance to us now is that, as Peel would not give

way, the Whigs had to come back again, and they came back

discredited and damaged, having, as Mr. Molesworth puts it,

got back 'behind the petticoats of the ladies-in-waiting.'"

J. McCarthy,

Sir Robert Peel,

chapter 12.

ALSO IN:

W. N. Molesworth,

History of England, 1830-1874,

volume 2, chapter 1.

H. Dunckley,

Lord Melbourne,

chapter 11.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1837.

The Victorian Age in Literature.

"It may perhaps be assumed without any undue amount of

speculative venturesomeness that the age of Queen Victoria

will stand out in history as the period of a literature as

distinct from others as the age of Elizabeth or Anne, although

not perhaps equal in greatness to the latter, and far indeed

below the former. At the opening of Queen Victoria's reign a

great race of literary men had come to a close. It is curious

to note how sharply and completely the literature of Victoria

separates itself from that of the era whose heroes were Scott,

Byron, and Wordsworth: Before Queen Victoria came to the

throne, Scott, Byron, Coleridge, and Keats were dead.

Wordsworth lived, indeed, for many years after; so did Southey

and Moore; and Savage Landor died much later still. But

Wordsworth, Southey, Moore, and Landor had completed their

literary work before Victoria came to the throne. Not one of

them added a cubit or an inch to his intellectual stature from

that time; some of them even did work which distinctly proved

that their day was done. A new and fresh breath was soon after

breathed into literature. Nothing, perhaps, is more remarkable

about the better literature of the age of Queen Victoria than

its complete severance from the leadership of that which had

gone before it, and its evidence of a fresh and genuine

inspiration. It is a somewhat curious fact, too, very

convenient for the purposes of this history, that the

literature of Queen Victoria's time thus far divides itself

clearly enough into two parts. The poets, novelists, and

historians who were making their fame with the beginning of

the reign had done all their best work and made their mark

before these later years, and were followed by a new and

different school, drawing inspiration from wholly different

sources, and challenging comparison as antagonists rather than

disciples. We speak now only of literature. In science the

most remarkable developments were reserved for the later years

of the reign."

J. McCarthy,

The Literature of the Victorian Reign

(Appletons' Journal, January, 1879, page 498).

"The age of Queen Victoria is as justly entitled to give name

to a literary epoch as any of those periods on which this

distinction has been conferred by posterity. A new tone of

thought and a new colour of style are discernible from about

the date of the Queen's accession, and, even should these

characteristics continue for generations without apparent

break, it will be remembered that the Elizabethan age did not

terminate with Elizabeth. In one important respect, however,

it differs from most of those epochs which derive their

appellation from a sovereign. The names of Augustus, Lorenzo,

Louis XIV., Anne, are associated with a literary advance, a

claim to have bequeathed models for imitation to succeeding

ages. This claim is not preferred on behalf of the age of

Victoria. It represents the fusion of two currents which had

alternately prevailed in successive periods. Delight and

Utility met, Truth and Imagination kissed each other.

Practical reform awoke the enthusiasm of genius, and genius

put poetry to new use, or made a new path for itself in prose.

The result has been much gain, some loss, and an originality

of aspect which would alone render our Queen's reign

intellectually memorable.

{959}

Looking back to the 18th century in England, we see the spirit

of utility entirely in the ascendant. Intellectual power is as

great as ever, immortal books are written as of old, but there

is a general incapacity not only for the production, but for

the comprehension of works of the imagination. Minds as robust

as Johnson's, as acute as Hume's, display neither strength nor

intelligence in their criticism of the Elizabethan writers,

and their professed regard for even the masterpieces of

antiquity is evidently in the main conventional. Conversely,

when the spell is broken and the capacity for imaginative

composition returns, the half-century immediately preceding

her Majesty's accession does not, outside the domain of the

ideal, produce a single work of the first class. Hallam, the

elder Mill, and others compose, indeed, books of great value,

but not great books. In poetry and romantic fiction, on the

other hand, the genius of that age reaches a height unattained

since Milton, and probably not destined to be rivalled for

many generations. In the age of Victoria we witness the fusion

of its predecessors."

R. Garnett,

Literature (The Reign of Queen Victoria,

edited by T. H. Ward, volume 2, pages 445-446).

"The most conspicuous of the substantial distinctions between

the literature of the present day and that of the first

quarter or third of the century may be described as consisting

in the different relative positions at the two dates of Prose

and Verse. In the Georgian era verse was in the ascendant; in

the Victorian era the supremacy has passed to prose. It is not

easy for anyone who has grown up in the latter to estimate

aright the universal excitement which used to be produced in

the former by a new poem of Scott's, or Byron's, or Moore's,

or Campbell's, or Crabbe's, or the equally fervid interest

that was taken throughout a more limited circle in one by

Wordsworth, or Southey, or Shelley. There may have been a

power in the spirit of poetry which that of prose would in

vain aspire to. Probably all the verse ages would be found to

have been of higher glow than the prose ones. The age in

question, at any rate, will hardly be denied by anyone who

remembers it to have been in these centuries, perhaps from the

mightier character of the events and circumstances in the

midst of which we were then placed, an age in which the

national heart beat more strongly than it does at present in

regard to other things as well as this. Its reception of the

great poems that succeeded one another so rapidly from the

first appearance of Scott till the death of Byron was like its

reception of the succession of great victories that, ever

thickening, and almost unbroken by a single defeat, filled up

the greater part of the ten years from Trafalgar to

Waterloo--from the last fight of Nelson to the last of

Wellington. No such huzzas, making the welkin ring with the

one voice of a whole people, and ascending alike from every

city and town and humblest village in the land, have been

heard since then. ... Of course, there was plenty of prose

also written throughout the verse era; but no book in prose

that was then produced greatly excited the public mind, or

drew any considerable amount of attention, till the Waverley

novels began to appear; and even that remarkable series of

works did not succeed in at once reducing poetry to the second

place, however chief a share it may have had in hastening that

result. Of the other prose writing that then went on what was

most effective was that of the periodical press,--of the

Edinburgh Review and Cobbett's Register, and, at a later date,

of Blackwood's Magazine and the London Magazine (the latter

with Charles Lamb and De Quincey among its

contributors),--much of it owing more or less of its power to

its vehement political partisanship. A descent from poetry to

prose is the most familiar of all phenomena in the history of

literature. Call it natural decay or degeneracy, or only a

relaxation which the spirit of a people requires after having

been for a certain time on the wing or on the stretch, it is

what a period of more than ordinary poetical productiveness

always ends in."

G. L. Craik,

Compendious History of English Literature,

volume 2, pages 553-555.

"What ... are the specific channels of Victorian utterance in

verse? To define them is difficult, because they are so subtly

varied and so inextricably interwoven. Yet I think they may be

superficially described as the idyll and the lyric. Under the

idyll I should class all narrative and descriptive poetry, of

which this age has been extraordinarily prolific; sometimes

assuming the form of minstrelsy, as in the lays of Scott;

sometimes approaching to the classic style, as in the

Hellenics of Landor; sometimes rivalling the novellette, as in

the work of Tennyson; sometimes aiming at psychological

analysis, as in the portraits drawn by Robert Browning;

sometimes confining art to bare history, as in Crabbe;

sometimes indulging flights of pure artistic fancy, as in

Keats' "Endymion" and "Lamia." Under its many metamorphoses

the narrative and descriptive poetry of our century bears the

stamp of the idyll, because it is fragmentary and because it

results in a picture. ... No literature and no age has been

more fertile of lyric poetry than English literature in the

age of Victoria. The fact is apparent. I should superfluously

burden my readers if I were to prove the point by reference to

Byron, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, Rossetti,

Clough, Swinburne, Arnold, Tennyson, and I do not know how

many of less illustrious but splendid names, in detail. The

causes are not far to seek. Without a comprehensive vehicle

like the epic, which belongs to the first period of national

life, or the drama, which belongs to its secondary period, our

poets of a later day have had to sing from their inner selves,

subjectively, introspectively, obeying impulses from nature

and the world, which touched them not as they were Englishmen,

but as they were this man or that woman. ... When they sang,

they sang with their particular voice; and the lyric is the

natural channel for such song. But what a complex thing is

this Victorian lyric! It includes Wordsworth's sonnets and

Rossetti's ballads, Coleridge's' Ancient Mariner' and Keats'

odes, Clough's 'Easter day' and Tennyson's 'Maud,' Swinburne's

'Songs before Sunrise' and Browning's 'Dramatis Personæ,'

Thomson's 'City of Dreadful Night' and Mary Robinson's

'Handful of Honeysuckles,' Andrew Lang's Ballades and Sharp's

'Weird of Michael Scot,' Dobson's dealings with the eighteenth

century and Noel's 'Child's Garland,' Barnes's Dorsetshire

Poems and Buchanan's London Lyrics, the songs from Empedocles

on Etna and Ebenezer Jones's 'Pagan's Drinking Chant,'

Shelley's Ode to the West Wind and Mrs. Browning's 'Pan is

Dead,' Newman's hymns and Gosse's Chant Royal.

{960}

The kaleidoscope presented by this lyric is so inexhaustible

that any man with the fragment of a memory might pair off

scores of poems by admired authors, and yet not fall upon the

same parallels as those which I have made. The genius of our

century, debarred from epic, debarred from drama, falls back

upon idyllic and lyrical expression. In the idyll it satisfies

its objective craving after art. In the lyric it pours forth

personality. It would be wrong, however, to limit the wealth

of our poetry to these two branches. Such poems as

Wordsworth's 'Excursion,' Byron's 'Don Juan' and 'Childe

Harold,' Mrs. Browning's 'Aurora Leigh,' William Morris's

'Earthly Paradise,' Clough's 'Amours de Voyage,' are not to be

classified in either species. They are partly

autobiographical, and in part the influence of the tale makes

itself distinctly felt in them. Nor again can we omit the

translations, of which so many have been made; some of them

real masterpieces and additions to our literature."

J. A. Symonds,

A Comparison of Elizabethan with Victorian Poetry

(Fortnightly Review, January 1, 1889,

pages 62-64).

The difference between the drama and the novel "is one of

perspective; and it is this which in a wide sense

distinguishes the Elizabethan and the Victorian views of life,

and thence of art. ... It is ... the present aim of art to

throw on life all manner of side-lights, such as the stage can

hardly contrive, but which the novel professes to manage for

those who can read. The round unvarnished tale of the early

novelists has been dead for over a century, and in its place

we have fiction that seeks to be as complete as life itself.

... There is, then, in each of these periods an excellence and

a relative defect: in the Elizabethan, roundness and balance,

but, to us, a want of fulness; in the Victorian, amplified

knowledge, but a falling short of comprehensiveness. And

adapted to each respectively, the drama and the novel are its

most expressive literary form. The limitations and scope of

the drama are those of its time, and so of the novel. Even as

the Elizabethan lived with all his might and was not troubled

about many things, his art was intense and round, but

restricted; and as the Victorian commonly views life by the

light of a patent reading-lamp, and so, sitting apart, sees

much to perplex, the novel gives a more complex treatment of

life, with rarer success in harmony. This rareness is not,

however, due to the novel itself, but to the minds of its

makers. In possibility it is indeed the greater of the two,

being more epical; for it is as capable of grandeur, and is

ampler. This largeness in Victorian life and art argues in the

great novelists a quality of spirit which it is difficult to

name without being misunderstood, and which is peculiarly

non-Elizabethan. It argues what Burns would call a castigated

pulse, a supremacy over passion. Yet they are not Lucretian

gods, however calm their atmosphere; their minds are not built

above humanity, but, being rooted deep in it, rise high. ...

Both periods are at heart earnest, and the stamp on the great

literature of each is that of reality, heightened and made

powerful by romance. Nor is their agreement herein greatly

shaken by the novel laying considerable stress on the outside

of life, while the drama is almost heedless of it; for they

both seek to break into the kernel, their variance being

chiefly one of method, dictated by difference of knowledge,

taste, and perception."

T. D. Robb,

The Elizabethan Drama and the Victorian Novel

(Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, April, 1891,

pages 520-522).

England: A. D. 1838-1842.

The Chartist agitation.

"When the Parliament was opened by the Queen on the 5th of

February, 1839, a passage in the Royal Speech had reference to

a state of domestic affairs which presented an unhappy

contrast to the universal loyalty which marked the period of

the Coronation. Her Majesty said: 'I have observed with pain

the persevering efforts which have been made in some parts of

the country to excite my subjects to disobedience and

resistance to the law, and to recommend dangerous and illegal

practices.' Chartism, which for ten subsequent years

occasionally agitated the country, had then begun to take

root. On the previous 12th of December a proclamation had been

issued against illegal Chartist assemblies, several of which

had been held, says the proclamation, 'after sunset by

torchlight.' The persons attending these meetings were armed

with guns and pikes; and demagogues, such as Feargus O'Connor

and the Rev. Mr. Stephens at Bury, addressed the people in the

most inflammatory language. ... The document called 'The People's

Charter,' which was embodied in the form of a bill in 1838,

comprised six points:--universal suffrage, excluding,

however, women; division of the United Kingdom into equal

electoral districts; vote by ballot; annual parliaments; no

property qualification for members; and a payment to every

member for his legislative services. These principles so

quickly recommended themselves to the working-classes that in

the session of 1839 the number of signatures to a petition

presented to Parliament was upwards of a million and a

quarter. The middle classes almost universally looked with

extreme jealousy and apprehension upon any attempt for an

extension of the franchise. The upper classes for the most

part regarded the proceedings of the Chartists with a contempt

which scarcely concealed their fears. This large section of the

working population very soon became divided into what were

called physical-force Chartists and moral-force Chartists. As

a natural consequence, the principles and acts of the

physical-force Chartists disgusted every supporter of order

and of the rights of property."

C. Knight,

Popular History of England,

volume 8, chapter 23.

"Nothing can be more unjust than to represent the leaders and

promoters of the movement as mere factious and self-seeking

demagogues. Some of them were men of great ability and

eloquence; some were impassioned young poets, drawn from the

class whom Kingsley has described in his 'Alton Locke'; some

were men of education; many were earnest and devoted fanatics;

and, so far as we can judge, all, or nearly all, were sincere.

Even the man who did the movement most harm, and who made

himself most odious to all reasonable outsiders, the once

famous, now forgotten, Feargus O'Connor, appears to have been

sincere, and to have personally lost more than he gained by

his Chartism. ... He was of commanding presence, great

stature, and almost gigantic strength. He had education; he

had mixed in good society; he belonged to an old family. ...

There were many men in the movement of a nobler moral nature

than poor, huge, wild Feargus O'Connor. There were men like

Thomas Cooper, ... devoted, impassioned, full of poetic

aspiration, and no scant measure of poetic inspiration as

well. Henry Vincent was a man of unimpeachable character. ...

{961}

Ernest Jones was as sincere and self-sacrificing a man as ever

joined a sinking cause. ... It is necessary to read such a

book as Thomas Cooper's Autobiography to understand how

genuine was the poetic and political enthusiasm which was at

the heart of the Chartist movement, and how bitter was the

suffering which drove into its ranks so many thousands of

stout working men who, in a country like England, might well

have expected to be able to live by the hard work they were

only too willing to do. One must read the Anti-Corn-Law Rhymes

of Ebenezer Elliott to understand how the 'bread tax' became

identified in the minds of the very best of the working class,

and identified justly, with the system of political and

economical legislation which was undoubtedly kept up, although

not of conscious purpose, for the benefit of a class. ... A

whole literature of Chartist newspapers sprang up to advocate

the cause. The 'Northern Star,' owned and conducted by Feargus

O'Connor, was the most popular and influential of them; but

every great town had its Chartist press. Meetings were held at

which sometimes very violent language was employed. ... A

formidable riot took place in Birmingham, where the

authorities endeavoured to put down a Chartist meeting. ...

Efforts were made at times to bring about a compromise with

the middle-class Liberals and the Anti-Corn-Law leaders; but

all such attempts proved failures. The Chartists would not

give up their Charter; many of them would not renounce the

hope of seeing it carried by force. The Government began to

prosecute some of the orators and leaders of the Charter

movement; and some of these were convicted, imprisoned and

treated with great severity. Henry Vincent's imprisonment at

Newport, in Wales, was the occasion of an attempt at rescue

[November 4, 1839] which bore a very close resemblance indeed

to a scheme of organised and armed rebellion." A conflict

occurred in which ten of the Chartists were killed, and some

50 were wounded. Three of the leaders, named Frost, Williams,

and Jones, were tried and convicted on the charge of high

treason, and were sentenced to death; but the sentence was

commuted to one of transportation. "The trial and conviction

of Frost, Williams, and Jones, did not put a stop to the

Chartist agitation. On the contrary, that agitation seemed

rather to wax and strengthen and grow broader because of the

attempt at Newport and its consequences. ... There was no lack

of what were called energetic measures on the part of the

Government. The leading Chartists all over the country were

prosecuted and tried, literally by hundreds. In most cases

they were convicted and sentenced to terms of imprisonment.

... The working classes grew more and more bitter against the

Whigs, who they said had professed Liberalism only to gain

their own ends. ... There was a profound distrust of the

middle class and their leaders," and it was for that reason

that the Chartists would not join hands with the Anti-Corn-Law

movement, then in full progress. "It is clear that at that

time the Chartists, who represented the bulk of the artisan

class in most of the large towns, did in their very hearts

believe that England was ruled for the benefit of aristocrats

and millionaires who were absolutely indifferent to the

sufferings of the poor. It is equally clear that most of what

are called the ruling class did really believe the English

working men who joined the Chartist movement to be a race of

fierce, unmanageable, and selfish communists, who, if they

were allowed their own way for a moment, would prove

themselves determined to overthrow throne, altar, and all

established securities of society."

J. McCarthy,

History of Our Own Times,

chapter 5 (volume 1).

Among the measures of coercion advocated in the councils of

the Chartists was that of appointing and observing what was to

be called a "'sacred month,' during which the working classes

throughout the whole kingdom were to abstain from every kind

of labour, in the hope of compelling the governing classes to

concede the charter."

W. N. Molesworth,

History of England, 1830-1874,

volume 2, chapter 5.

ALSO IN:

T. Cooper,

Life, by himself,

chapter 14-23.

W. Lovett,

Life and Struggles,

chapters 8-15.

T. Frost,

Forty Years' Recollections,

chapters 3-11.

H. Jephson,

The Platform,

part 4, chapters 17 and 19 (volume 2).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1839-1842.

The Opium War with China.

See CHINA: A. D. 1839-1842.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1840.

Adoption of Penny-Postage.

"In 1837 Mr. Rowland Hill had published his plan of a cheap

and uniform postage. A Committee of the House of Commons was

appointed in 1837, which continued its inquiries throughout

the session of 1838, and arrived at the conviction that the

plan was feasible, and deserving of a trial under legislative

sanction. After much discussion, and the experiment of a

varying charge, the uniform rate for a letter not weighing

more than half an ounce became, by order of the Treasury, one

penny. This great reform came into operation on the 10th of

January, 1840. Its final accomplishment is mainly due to the

sagacity and perseverance of the man who first conceived the

scheme."

C. Knight,

Crown History of England,

page 883.

"Up to this time the rates of postage on letters were very

heavy, and varied according to the distance. For instance, a

single letter conveyed from one part of a town to another cost

2d.; a letter from Reading, to London 7d.; from Brighton, 8d.;

from Aberdeen, 1s. 3½d.; from Belfast, 1s. 4d. If the letter

was written on more than a single sheet, the rate of postage

was much higher."

W. N. Molesworth,

History of England, 1830-1874,

volume 2, chapter 1.

ALSO IN:

G. B. Hill,

Life of Sir Rowland Hill.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1840.

The Queen's marriage.

"On January 16,1840, the Queen, opening Parliament in person,

announced her intention to marry her cousin, Prince Albert of

Saxe Coburg-Gotha--a step which she trusted would be

'conducive to the interests of my people as well as to my own

domestic happiness.' ... It was indeed a marriage founded on

affection. ... The Queen had for a long time loved her cousin.

He was nearly her own age, the Queen being the elder by three

months and two or three days. Francis Charles Augustus Albert

Emmanuel was the full name of the young Prince. He was the

second son of Ernest, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, and of his

wife Louisa, daughter of Augustus, Duke of

Saxe-Gotha-Altenberg. Prince Albert was born at the Rosenau,

one of his father's residences, near Coburg, on August 26,

1819. ... A marriage between the Princess Victoria and Prince

Albert had been thought of as desirable among the families on

both sides, but it was always wisely resolved that nothing

should be said to the young Princess on the subject unless she

herself showed a distinct liking for her cousin.

{962}

In 1836, Prince Albert was brought by his father to England,

and made the personal acquaintance of the Princess, and she

seems at once to have been drawn toward him in the manner

which her family and friends would most have desired. ... The

marriage of the Queen and the Prince took place on February

10, 1840."

J. McCarthy,

History of Our Own Times,

chapter 7 (volume 1).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1841-1842.

Interference in Afghanistan.

The first Afghan War.

See AFGHANISTAN: A. D. 1803-1838; 1838-1842; 1842-1869.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1841-1842.

Fall of the Melbourne Ministry.

Opening of the second administration of Sir Robert Peel.

In 1841, the Whig Ministry (Melbourne's) determined "to do

something for freedom of trade. ... Colonial timber and sugar

were charged with a duty lighter than was imposed on foreign

timber and sugar; and foreign sugar paid a lighter or a

heavier duty according as it was imported from countries of

slave labour or countries of free labour. It was resolved to

raise the duty on colonial timber, but to lower the duty on

foreign timber and foreign sugar, and at the same time to

replace the sliding scale of the Corn Laws then in force [see

TARIFF LEGISLATION (ENGLAND): A. D. 1815-1828] with a fixed

duty of 8s. per quarter. ... The concessions offered by the

Ministry, too small to excite the enthusiasm of the free

traders, were enough to rally all the threatened interests

around Peel. Baring's revision of the sugar duties was

rejected by a majority of 36. Everybody expected the Ministers

to resign upon this defeat; but they merely announced the

continuance of the former duties. Then Peel gave notice of a

vote of want of confidence, and carried it on the 4th of June

by a single vote in a House of 623 members. Instead of

resigning, the Ministers appealed to the country. The

elections went on through the last days of June and the whole

of July. When the new Parliament was complete, it appeared

that the Conservatives could count upon 367 votes in the House

of Commons. The Ministry met Parliament on the 24th of August.

Peel in the House of Commons and Ripon in the House of Lords

moved amendments to the Address, which were carried by

majorities of 91 and 72 respectively." The Ministry resigned

and a Conservative Government was formed, with Peel at its

head, as First Lord of the Treasury. "Wellington entered the

Cabinet without office, and Lyndhurst assumed for the third

time the honours of Lord Chancellor." Among the lesser members

of the Administration--not in the Cabinet--was Mr. Gladstone,

who became Vice-President of the Board of Trade. "This time

Peel experienced no difficulty with regard to the Queen's

Household. It had been previously arranged that in the case of

Lord Melbourne's resignation three Whig Ladies, the Duchess of

Bedford, the Duchess of Sutherland, and Lady Normanby, should

resign of their own accord. One or two other changes in the

Household contented Peel, and these the Queen accorded with a

frankness which placed him entirely at his ease. ... During

the recess Peel took a wide survey of the ills affecting the

commonwealth, and of the possible remedies. To supply the

deficiency in the revenue without laying new burthens upon the

humbler class; to revive our fainting manufactures by

encouraging the importation of raw material; to assuage

distress by making the price of provisions lower and more

regular, without taking away that protection which he still

believed essential to British agriculture: these were the

tasks which Peel now bent his mind to compass. ... Having

solved [the problems] to his own satisfaction, he had to

persuade his colleagues that they were right. Only one proved

obstinate. The Duke of Buckingham would hear of no change in

the degree of protection afforded to agriculture. He

surrendered the Privy Seal, which was given to the Duke of

Buccleugh. ... The Queen's Speech recommended Parliament to

consider the state of the laws affecting the importation of

corn and other commodities. It announced the beginning of a

revolution which few persons in England thought possible,

although it was to be completed in little more than ten

years."

F. C. Montague,

Life of Sir Robert Peel,

chapter 7-8.

ALSO IN:

J. R. Thursfield,

Peel,

chapter 7-8.

W. C. Taylor,

Life and Times of Sir Robert Peel,

volume 3, chapters 3-5.

J. W. Croker,

Correspondence and Diaries,

chapter 22 (volume 2).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1842.

The Ashburton Treaty with the United States.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1842.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1845-1846.

Repeal of the Corn Laws and dissolution of the League.

See TARIFF LEGISLATION (ENGLAND): A. D. 1845-1846.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1845-1846.

First war with the Sikhs.

See INDIA: A. D. 1845-1849.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1846.

Settlement of the Oregon Boundary Question with the United

States.

See OREGON: A. D. 1844-1846.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1846.

The vengeance of the Tory-Protectionists.

Overthrow of Peel.

Advent of Disraeli.

Ministry of Lord John Russell.

"Strange to say, the day when the Bill [extinguishing the

duties on corn] was read in the House of Lords for the third

time [June 25] saw the fall of Peel's Ministry. The fall was

due to the state of Ireland. The Government had been bringing

in a Coercion Bill for Ireland. It was introduced while the

Corn Bill was yet passing through the House of Commons. The

situation was critical. All the Irish followers of Mr.

O'Connell would be sure to oppose the Coercion Bill. The

Liberal party, at least when out of office, had usually made

it their principle to oppose Coercion Bills, if they were not

attended with some promises of legislative reform. The English

Radical members, led by Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright, were

certain to oppose coercion. If the protectionists should join

with these other opponents of the Coercion Bill, the fate of

the measure was assured, and with it the fate of the

Government. This was exactly what happened. Eighty

Protectionists followed Lord George Bentinck into the lobby

against the Bill, in combination with the Free Traders, the

Whigs, and the Irish Catholic and national members. The

division took place on the second reading of the Bill on

Thursday, June 25, and there was a majority of 73 against the

Ministry."

J. McCarthy,

The Epoch of Reform,

page 183.

{963}

The revengeful Tory-Protectionist attack on Peel was led by

Sir George Bentinck and Benjamin Disraeli, then just making

himself felt in the House of Commons. It was distinctly

grounded upon no objection in principle to the Irish Coercion

Bill, but on the declaration that they could "no longer trust

Peel, and, must therefore refuse to give him unconstitutional

powers.' ... He had twice betrayed the party who had trusted

his promises. ... 'The gentlemen of England,' of whom it had

once been Sir Robert's proudest boast to be the leader,

declared against him. He was beaten by an overpowering

majority, and his career as an English Minister was closed.

Disraeli's had been the hand which dethroned him, and to

Disraeli himself, after three years of anarchy and

uncertainty, descended the task of again building together the

shattered ruins of the Conservative party. Very unwillingly

they submitted to the unwelcome necessity. Canning and the

elder Pitt had both been called adventurers, but they had

birth and connection, and they were at least Englishmen.

Disraeli had risen out of a despised race; he had never sued

for their favours; he had voted and spoken as he pleased,

whether they liked it or not. ... He was without Court favour,

and had hardly a powerful friend except Lord Lyndhurst. He had

never been tried on the lower steps of the official ladder. He

was young, too--only 42--after all the stir that he had made.

There was no example of a rise so sudden under such

conditions. But the Tory party had accepted and cheered his

services, and he stood out alone among them as a debater of

superior power. Their own trained men had all deserted them.

Lord George remained for a year or two as nominal chief: but

Lord George died; the conservatives could only consolidate

themselves under a real leader, and Disraeli was the single

person that they had who was equal to the situation. ... He

had overthrown Peel and succeeded to Peel's honours."

J. A. Froude,

Lord Beaconsfield,

chapter 9.

Although the Tory-Protectionists had accomplished the

overthrow of Peel, they were not prepared to take the

Government into their own hands. The new Ministry was formed

under Lord John Russell, as First Lord of the Treasury, with

Lord Palmerston in the Foreign Office, Sir George Grey in the

Home Department, Earl Grey Colonial Secretary, Sir C. Wood

Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Mr. Macaulay

Paymaster-General.

W. C. Taylor, Life and Times of Sir Robert Peel,

volume 3, chapter 11.

The most important enactment of the Coercion Bill "(which

subsequently gave it the name of the Curfew Act) was that

which conferred on the executive Government the power in

proclaimed districts of forbidding persons to be out of their

dwellings between sunset and sunrise. The right of proclaiming

a district as a disturbed district was placed in the hands of

the Lord-Lieutenant, who might station additional constabulary

there, the whole expense of which was to be borne by the

district."

J. F. Bright,

History of England,

period 4, page 137.

ALSO IN:

S. Walpole,

Life of Lord John Russell,

chapter 16 (volume 1).

B. Disraeli,

Lord George Bentinck,

chapter 14-16.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1846.

Difference with France on the Spanish marriages.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1841-1848.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1848.

The last Chartist demonstration.

"The more violent Chartists had broken from the Radical

reformers, and had themselves divided into two sections; for

their nominal leader, Feargus O'Connor, was at bitter enmity

with more thoroughgoing and earnest leaders such as O'Brien

and Cooper. O'Connor had not proved a very efficient guide. He

had entered into a land scheme of a somewhat doubtful

character. ... He had also injudiciously taken up a position

of active hostility to the free-traders, and while thus

appearing as the champion of a falling cause had alienated

many of his supporters. Yet the Parliament elected in 1846

contained several representatives of the Chartist principles,

and O'Connor himself had been returned for Nottingham by a

large majority over Hobhouse, a member of the new Ministry.

The revolution in France gave a sudden and enormous impulse to

the agitation. The country was filled with meetings at which

violent speeches were uttered and hints, not obscure, dropped

of the forcible establishment of a republic in England. A new

Convention was summoned for the 6th of April, a vast petition

was prepared, and a meeting, at which it was believed that

half a million of people would have been present, was summoned

to meet on Kennington Common on the 10th of April for the

purpose of carrying the petition to the House in procession.

The alarm felt in London was very great. It was thought

necessary to swear in special constables, and the wealthier

classes came forward in vast numbers to be enrolled. There are

said to have been no less than 170,000 special constables. The

military arrangements were entrusted to the Duke of

Wellington; the public offices were guarded and fortified;

public vehicles were forbidden to pass the streets lest they

should be employed for barricades; and measures were taken to

prevent the procession from crossing the bridges. ... Such a

display of determination seemed almost ridiculous when

compared with what actually occurred. But it was in fact the

cause of the harmless nature of the meeting. Instead of half a

million, about 30,000 men assembled on Kennington Common.

Feargus O'Connor was there; Mr. Maine, the Commissioner of

Police, called him aside, told him he might hold his meeting,

but that the procession would be stopped, and that he would be

held personally responsible for any disorder that might occur.

His heart had already begun to fail him, and he ... used all

his influence to put an end to the procession. His prudent

advice was followed, and no disturbance of any importance took

place. ... The air of ridicule thrown over the Chartist movement

by the abortive close of a demonstration which had been

heralded with so much violent talk was increased by the

disclosures attending the presentation of the petition." There

were found to be only 2,000,000 names appended to the

document, instead of 5,000,000 as claimed, and great numbers

of them were manifestly spurious. "This failure proved a

deathblow to Chartism."

J. F. Bright,

History of England,

period 4, pages 176-178.

ALSO IN:

S. Walpole,

History of England from 1815,

chapter 20 (volume 4).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1848-1849.

Second war with the Sikhs.

Conquest and annexation of the Punjab.

See INDIA: A. D. 1845-1849.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1849.

Repeal of the Navigation Laws.

See NAVIGATION LAWS: A. D. 1849.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1849-1850.

The Don Pacifico Affair.

Lord Palmerston's speech.

The little difficulty with Greece which came to a crisis in

the last weeks of 1849 and the first, of 1850 (see GREECE: A.

D. 1846-1850), and which was commonly called the Don Pacifico

Affair, gave occasion for a memorable speech in Parliament by

Lord Palmerston, defending his foreign policy against attacks.

{964}

The speech (June 24, 1850), which occupied five hours, "from

the dusk of one day till the dawn of another," was greatly

admired, and proved immensely effective in raising the

speaker's reputation. "The Don Pacifico debate was

unquestionably an important landmark in the life of Lord

Palmerston. Hitherto his merits had been known only to a

select few; for the British public does not read Blue Books,

and as a rule troubles itself very little about foreign

politics at all. ... But the Pacifico speech caught the ear of

the nation, and was received with a universal verdict of

approval. From that hour Lord Palmerston became the man of the

people, and his rise to the premiership only a question of

time."

L. C. Sanders,

Life of Viscount Palmerston,

chapter 8.

ALSO IN:

Marquis of Lorne,

Viscount Palmerston,

chapter 7.

J. McCarthy,

History of Our Own Times,

chapter 19 (volume 2).

J. Morley,

Life of Cobden,

volume 2, chapter 3.

T. Martin,

Life of the Prince Consort,

chapter 38 (volume 2).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1850.

The so-called Clayton-Bulwer Treaty with the United States,

establishing a joint protectorate over the projected Nicaragua

Canal.

See NICARAGUA: A. D. 1850.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1850.

Restoration of the Roman Episcopate.

The Ecclesiastical Titles Bill.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1850.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1850-1852.

The London protocol and treaty on the Schleswig-Holstein

Question.

See SCANDINAVIAN STATES (DENMARK): A. D. 1848-1862.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1851.

The Great Exhibition.

"The first of May, 1851, will always be memorable as the day

on which the Great Exhibition was opened in Hyde Park. ...

Many exhibitions of a similar kind have taken place since.

Some of these far surpassed that of Hyde Park in the splendour

and variety of the collections brought together. Two of them

at least--those of Paris in 1867 and 1878--were infinitely

superior in the array and display of the products, the

dresses, the inhabitants of far-divided countries. But the

impression which the Hyde Park Exhibition made upon the

ordinary mind was like that of the boy's first visit to the

play--an impression never to be equalled. ... It was the first

organised to gather all the representatives of the world's

industry into one great fair. ... The Hyde Park Exhibition was

often described as the festival to open the long reign of

Peace. It might, as a mere matter of chronology, be called

without any impropriety the festival to celebrate the close of

the short reign of Peace. From that year, 1851, it may be said

fairly enough that the world has hardly known a week of peace.

... The first idea of the Exhibition was conceived by Prince

Albert; and it was his energy and influence which succeeded in

carrying the idea into practical execution. ... Many persons

were disposed to sneer at it; many were sceptical about its

doing any good; not a few still regarded Prince Albert as a

foreigner and a pedant, and were slow to believe that anything

really practical was likely to be developed under his impulse

and protection. ... There was a great deal of difficulty in

selecting a plan for the building. ... Happily, a sudden

inspiration struck Mr. (afterward Sir Joseph) Paxton, who was

then in charge of the Duke of Devonshire's superb grounds at

Chatsworth. Why not try glass and iron? he asked himself. ...

Mr. Paxton sketched out his plan hastily, and the idea was

eagerly accepted by the Royal Commissioners. He made many

improvements afterwards in his design; but the palace of glass

and iron arose within the specified time on the green turf of

Hyde Park."

J. McCarthy,

History of Our Own Times,

chapter 21 (volume 2).

ALSO IN:

T. Martin,

Life of the Prince Consort,

chapters 33-36, 39, 42-43 (volume 2).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1851-1852.

The Coup d'Etat in France and Lord Palmerston's dismissal from

the Cabinet.

Defeat and resignation of Lord John Russell.

The first Derby

Disraeli Ministry and the Aberdeen coalition Ministry.

The "coup d'etat" of December 2nd, 1851, by which Louis

Napoleon made himself master of France (see FRANCE: A. D.

1851) brought about the dismissal of Lord Palmerston from the

British Ministry, followed quickly by the overthrow of the

Ministry which expelled him. "Lord Palmerston not only

expressed privately to Count Walewski [the French ambassador]

his approval of the 'coup d'etat,' but on the 16th of December

wrote a despatch to Lord Normanby, our representative in

Paris, expressing in strong terms his satisfaction at the

success of the French President's arbitrary action. This

despatch was not submitted either to the Prime Minister or to

the Queen, and of course the offence was of too serious a

character to be passed over. A great deal of correspondence

ensued, and as Palmerston's explanations were not deemed

satisfactory, and he had clearly broken the undertaking he

gave some time previously, he was dismissed from office. ...

There were some who thought him irretrievably crushed from

this time forward; but a very short time only elapsed before

he retrieved his fortunes and was as powerful as ever. In

February 1852 Lord John Russell brought in a Militia Bill

which was intended to develop a local militia for the defence

of the country. Lord Palmerston strongly disapproved of the

scope of the measure, and in committee moved an amendment to

omit the word 'local,' so as to constitute a regular militia,

which should be legally transportable all over the kingdom,

and thus be always ready for any emergency. The Government

were defeated by eleven votes, and as the Administration had

been very weak for some time, Lord John resigned. Lord Derby

formed a Ministry, and invited the cooperation of Palmerston,

but the offer was declined, as the two statesmen differed on

the question of imposing a duty on the importation of corn,

and other matters.'

G. B. Smith,

The Prime Ministers of Queen Victoria,

pages 264-265.

"The new Ministry [in which Mr. Disraeli became Chancellor of

the Exchequer] took their seats on the 27th of February, but

it was understood that a dissolution of Parliament would take

place in the summer, by which the fate of the new Government

would be decided, and that in the meantime the Opposition

should hold its hand. The raw troops [of the Tory Party in the

House of Commons], notwithstanding their inexperience,

acquitted themselves with credit, and some good Bills were

passed, the Militia Bill among the number, while a

considerable addition to the strength of the Navy was effected

by the Duke of Northumberland. No doubt, when the general

election began, the party had raised itself considerably in

public estimation. But for one consideration the country would

probably have been quite willing to entrust its destinies to

their hands.

{965}

But that one consideration was all important. ... The

Government was obliged to go to the country, to some extent,

on Protectionist principles. It was known that a Derbyite

majority meant a moderate import duty; and the consequence was

that Lord Derby just lost the battle, though by a very narrow

majority. When Parliament met in November, Lord Derby and Mr.

Disraeli had a very difficult game to play. ... Negotiations

were again opened with Palmerston and the Peelites, and on

this occasion Gladstone and Mr. Sidney Herbert were willing to

join if Lord Palmerston might lead in the House of Commons.

But the Queen put her veto on this arrangement, which

accordingly fell to the ground; and Lord Derby had to meet the

Opposition attack without any reinforcements. ... On the 16th

of December, ... being defeated on the Budget by a majority of

19, Lord Derby at once resigned."

T. E. Kebbel,

Life of the Earl of Derby,

chapter 6.

"The new Government [which succeeded that of Derby] was a

coalition of Whigs and Peelites, with Sir William Molesworth

thrown in to represent the Radicals. Lord Aberdeen became

Prime Minister, and Mr. Gladstone Chancellor of the Exchequer.

The other Peelites in the Cabinet were the Duke of Newcastle,

Sir James Graham, and Mr. Sidney Herbert."

G. W. E. Russell,

The Rt. Hon. William Ewart Gladstone,

chapter 5.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1852.

Second Burmese War.

Annexation of Pegu.

See INDIA: A. D. 1852.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1852-1853.

Abandonment of Protection by the Conservatives.

Further progress in Free Trade.

See TARIFF LEGISLATION (ENGLAND): A. D. 1846-1879.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1853-1855.

Civil-Service Reform.

See CIVIL-SERVICE REFORM IN ENGLAND.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1853-1856.

The Crimean War.

See RUSSIA: A. D. 1853-1854, to 1854-1856.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1855.

Popular discontent with the management of the war.

Fall of the Aberdeen Ministry.

Palmerston's first premiership.

A brightening of prospects.

"Our army system entirely broke down [in the Crimea], and Lord

Aberdeen and the Duke of Newcastle were made the scapegoats of

the popular indignation. ... But England was not only

suffering from unpreparedness and want of administrative power

in the War department; there were dissensions in the Cabinet.

... Lord John Russell gave so much trouble, that Lord

Aberdeen, after one of the numerous quarrels and

reconciliations which occurred at this juncture, wrote to the

Queen that nothing but a sense of public duty and the

necessity for avoiding the scandal of a rupture kept him at

his post. ... At a little later stage ... the difficulties

were renewed. Mr. Roebuck gave notice of his motion for the

appointment of a select committee to inquire into the

condition of the army before Sebastopol, and Lord John

definitively resigned. The Ministry remained in office to

await the fate of Mr. Roebuck's motion, which was carried

against them by the very large majority of 157. Lord Aberdeen

now placed the resignation of the Cabinet in the hands of the

Queen [January 31, 1855]. ... Thus fell the Coalition Cabinet

of Lord Aberdeen. In talent and parliamentary influence it was

apparently one of the strongest Governments ever seen, but it

suffered from a fatal want of cohesion."

G. B. Smith,

Prime Ministers of Queen Victoria,

pages 227-230.

"Lord Palmerston had passed his 70th year when the Premiership

came to him for the first time. On the fall of the Coalition

Government the Queen sent for Lord Derby, and upon his failure

for Lord John Russell. Palmerston was willing at the express

request of her Majesty to serve once more under his old chief,

but Clarendon and many of the Whigs not unnaturally positively

refused to do so. Palmerston finally undertook and

successfully achieved the task of forming a Government out of

the somewhat heterogeneous elements at his command. Lord

Clarendon continued at the Foreign Office, and Gladstone was

still Chancellor of the Exchequer. The War Department was

reorganised, the office of Secretary at War disappearing, and

being finally merged in that of Secretary of State for War.

Although Palmerston objected to Roebuck's Committee, he was

practically compelled to accept it, and this led to the

resignation of Gladstone, Graham and Herbert; their places

being taken by Sir G. C. Lewis, Sir Charles Wood, and Lord

John Russell."

Marquis of Lorne,

Viscount Palmerston,

chapter 10.

"It was a dark hour in the history of the nation when Lord

Palmerston essayed the task which had been abandoned by the

tried wisdom of Derby, Lansdowne, and John Russell. Far away

in the Crimea the war was dragging on without much hope of a

creditable solution, though the winter of discontent and

mismanagement was happily over. The existence of the European

concert was merely nominal. The Allies had discovered, many

months previously, that, though Austria was staunch, Prussia

was a faithless friend. ... Between the belligerent powers the

cloud of suspicion and distrust grew thicker; for

Abd-el-Medjid was known to be freely squandering his war loans

on seraglios and palaces while Kars was starving; and though

there was no reason for distrusting the present good faith of

the Emperor of the French, his policy was straight-forward

only as long as he kept himself free from the influence of the

gang of stock-jobbers and adventurers who composed his Ministry.

Nor was the horizon much brighter on the side of England. A

series of weak cabinets, and the absence of questions of

organic reform, had completely relaxed the bonds of Party. If

there was no regular Opposition, still less was there a

regular majority. ... And the hand that was to restore order

out of chaos was not so steady as of yore. ... Lord Palmerston

was not himself during the first weeks of his leadership. But

the prospect speedily brightened. Though Palmerston was

considerably over seventy, he still retained a wonderful

vigour of constitution. He was soon restored to health, and

was always to be found at his post. ... His generalship

secured ample majorities for the Government in every division

during the session. Of the energy which Lord Palmerston

inspired into the operations against Sebastopol, there can

hardly be two opinions."

L. C. Sanders,

Life of Viscount Palmerston,

chapter 10.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1855.

Mr. Gladstone's Commission to the Ionian Islands.

See IONIAN ISLANDS: A. D. 1815-1862.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1856-1860.

War with China.

French alliance in the war.

Capture of Canton.

Entrance into Pekin.

Destruction of the Summer Palace.

See CHINA: A. D. 1856-1860.

{966}

ENGLAND: A. D. 1857-1858.

The Sepoy Mutiny in India.

See INDIA: A. D. 1857, to 1857-1858 (JULY-JUNE).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1858.

Assumption of the government of India by the Crown.

End of the rule of the East India Co.

See INDIA: A. D. 1858.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1858-1859.

The Conspiracy Bill.

Fall of Palmerston's government.

Second Ministry of Derby and Disraeli.

Lord Palmerston again Premier.

"On January 14, 1858, an attempt was made to assassinate

Napoleon III. by a gang of desperadoes, headed by Orsini,

whose head-quarters had previously been in London. Not without

some reason it was felt in France that such men ought not to

be able to find shelter in this country, and the French

Minister was ordered to make representations to that effect.

Lord Palmerston, always anxious to cultivate the good feeling

of the French nation, desired to pass a measure which should

give to the British Government the power to banish from

England any foreigner conspiring in Britain against the life

of a foreign sovereign. ... An unfortunate outburst of

vituperation against England in the French press, and the

repetition of such language by officers of the French army who

were received by the Emperor when they waited on him as a

deputation, aroused very angry English feeling. Lord

Palmerston had already introduced the Bill he desired to pass,

and it had been read the first time by a majority of 200. But the

foolish action of the French papers changed entirely the

current of popular opinion. Lord Derby saw his advantage. An

amendment to the second reading, which was practically a vote

of censure, was carried against Lord Palmerston, and to his

own surprise no less than to that of the country, he was

obliged to resign. Lord Derby succeeded to Palmerston's vacant

office. ... Lord Derby's second Ministry was wrecked upon the

fatal rock of Reform early in 1859, and at once appealed to

the country. ... The election of 1859 failed to give the

Conservatives a majority, and soon after the opening of the

session they were defeated upon a vote of want of confidence

moved by Lord Hartington. Earl Granville was commissioned by

the Queen to form a Ministry, because her Majesty felt that

'to make so marked a distinction as is implied in the choice

of one or other as Prime Minister of two statesmen so full of

years and honour as Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell

would be a very invidious and unwelcome task.' Each of these

veterans was willing to serve under the other, but neither

would follow the lead of a third. And so Granville failed, and

to Palmerston was entrusted the task. He succeeded in forming

what was considered the strongest Ministry of modern times, so

far as the individual ability of its members was concerned.

Russell went to the Foreign Office and Gladstone to the

Exchequer."

Marquis of Lorne,

Viscount Palmerston,

chapters 10-11.

ALSO IN:

T. Martin,

Life of the Prince Consort,

chapters 82-84, 91-92,

and 94 (volume 4).

T. E. Kebbel,

Life of the Earl of Derby,

chapter 7.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1860.

The Cobden-Chevalier commercial treaty with France.

See TARIFF LEGISLATION (FRANCE): A. D. 1853-1860.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1861 (May).

The Queen's Proclamation of Neutrality with reference

to the American Civil War.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1861 (APRIL-MAY).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1861 (October).

The allied intervention in Mexico.

See MEXICO: A. D. 1861-1867.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1861 (November).

The Trent Affair.

Seizure of Mason and Slidell.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1861 (NOVEMBER).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1861-1865.

The Cotton Famine.

"Upon a population, containing half a million of cotton

operatives, in a career of rapid prosperity, the profits of

1860 reaching in some instances from 30 to 40 per cent upon

the capital engaged; and with wages also at the highest point

which they had ever touched, came the news of the American

war, with the probable stoppage of 85 per cent of the raw

material of their manufacture. A few wise heads hung

despondently down, or shook with fear for the fate of 'the

freest nation under heaven,' but the great mass of traders

refused to credit a report which neither suited their opinions

nor their interests. ... There was a four months' supply held

on this side the water at Christmas (1860), and there had been

three months' imports at the usual rate since that time, and

there would be the usual twelve months' supply from other

sources; and by the time this was consumed, and the five

months' stock of goods held by merchants sold, all would be

right again. That this was the current opinion was proved by

the most delicate of all barometers, the scale of prices; for

during the greater part of the year 1861 the market was dull,

and prices scarcely moved upwards. But towards the end of the

year the aspect of affairs began to change. ... The Federals

had declared a blockade of the Southern ports, and, although

as yet it was pretty much a 'paper blockade,' yet the newly

established Confederate government was doing its best to

render it effective. They believed that cotton was king in

England, and that the old country could not do without it, and

would be forced, in order to secure its release, to side with

those who kept it prisoner. Mills began to run short time or

to close in the month of October, but no noise was made about

it; and the only evidence of anything unusual was at the

boards of guardians, where the applications had reached the

mid-winter height three months earlier than usual. The

poor-law guardians in the various unions were aware that the

increase was not of the usual character--it was too early for

out-door labourers to present themselves; still the difference

was not of serious amount, being only about 3,000 in the whole

twenty-eight unions. In November, 7,000 more presented

themselves, and in December the increase was again 7,000; so

that the recipients of relief were at this time 12,000 (or

about 25 per cent) more than in the January previous. And now

serious thoughts began to agitate many minds; cotton was very

largely held by speculators for a rise, the arrivals were

meagre in quantity, and the rates of insurance began to show

that, notwithstanding the large profits on imports, the

blockade was no longer on paper alone. January, 1862, added

16,000 more to the recipients of relief, who were now 70 per

cent above the usual number for the same period of the year.

But from the facts as afterwards revealed, the statistics of

boards of guardians were evidently no real measure of the

distress prevailing. ... The month of February usually lessens

the dependents on the poor-rates, for out-door labour begins

again as soon as the signs of spring appear; but in 1862 it

added nearly 9,000 to the already large number of extra cases,

the recipients being now 105 per cent above the average for the

same period of the year.

{967}

But this average gives no idea of the pressure in particular

localities. ... The cotton operatives were now, if left to

themselves, like a ship's crew upon short provisions, and

those very unequally distributed, and without chart or

compass, and no prospect of getting to land. In Ashton there

were 3,197; in Stockport, 8,588; and in Preston, 9,488 persons

absolutely foodless; and who nevertheless declined to go to

the guardians. To have forced the high-minded heads of these

families to hang about the work-house lobbies in company with

the idle, the improvident, the dirty, the diseased, and the

vicious, would have been to break their heaving hearts, and to

hurl them headlong into despair. Happily there is spirit

enough in this country to appreciate nobility, even when

dressed in fustian, and pride and sympathy enough to spare

even the poorest from unnecessary humiliation; and

organisations spring up for any important work so soon as the

necessity of the case becomes urgent in any locality.

Committees arose almost simultaneously in Ashton, Stockport,

and Preston; and in April, Blackburn followed in the train,

and the guardians and the relief committees of these several

places divided an extra 6,000 dependents between them. The

month of May, which usually reduces pauperism to almost its

lowest ebb, added 6,000 more to the recipients from the

guardians, and 5,000 to the dependents on the relief

committees, which were now six in number, Oldham and Prestwich

(a part of Manchester) being added to the list. ... The month

of June sent 6,000 more applicants to sue for bread to the

boards of guardians, and 5,000 additional to the six relief

committees; and these six committees had now as many

dependents as the whole of the boards of guardians in the

twenty-eight unions supported in ordinary years. ... In the

month of July, when all unemployed operatives would ordinarily

be lending a hand in the hay harvest, and picking up the means

of living whilst improving in health and enjoying the glories

of a summer in the country, the distress increased like a

flood, 13,000 additional applicants being forced to appeal for

poor-law relief; whilst 11,000 others were adopted by the

seven relief committees. ... In August the flood had become a

deluge, at which the stoutest heart might stand appalled. The

increased recipients of poor-law relief were in a single

month, 33,000, being nearly as many as the total number

chargeable in the same month of the previous year, whilst a

further addition of more than 34,000 became chargeable to the

relief committees. ... Most of the cotton on hand at this

period was of Indian growth, and needed alterations of

machinery to make it workable at all, and in good times an

employer might as well shut up his mill as try to get it spun

or manufactured. But oh! how glad would the tens of thousands

of unwilling idlers have been now, to have had a chance even

of working at Surats, although they knew that it required much

harder work for one-third less than normal wages. ... Another

month is past, and October has added to the number under the

guardians no less than 55,000, and to the charge of the relief

committees 39,000 more. ... And now dread winter approaches,

and the authorities have to deal not only with hundreds of

thousands who are compulsorily idle, and consequently

foodless, but who are wholly unprepared for the inclemencies

of the season; who have no means of procuring needful

clothing, nor even of making a show of cheerfulness upon the

hearth by means of the fire, which is almost as useful as

food. ... The total number of persons chargeable at the end of

November, 1862, was, under boards of guardians, 258,357, and on

relief committees, 200,084; total 458,441. ... There were not

wanting men who saw, or thought they saw, a short way out of

the difficulty, viz., by a recognition on the part of the

English government of the Southern confederacy in America. And

meetings were called in various places to memorialise the

government to this effect. Such meetings were always balanced

by counter meetings, at which it was shown that simple

recognition would be waste of words; that it would not bring

to our shores a single shipload of cotton, unless followed up

by an armed force to break the blockade, which course if

adopted would be war; war in favour of the slave confederacy

of the South, and against the free North and North-west,

whence comes a large proportion of our imported corn. In

addition to the folly of interfering in the affairs of a

nation 3,000 miles away, the cotton, if we succeeded in

getting it, would be stained with blood and cursed with the

support of slavery, and would also prevent our getting the

food which we needed from the North equally as much as the

cotton from the South. ... These meetings and counter meetings

perhaps helped to steady the action of the government

(notwithstanding the sympathy of some of its members towards

the South), to confirm them in the policy of the royal

proclamation, and to determine them to enforce the provisions

of the Foreign Enlistment Act against all offenders. ... The

maximum pressure upon the relief committees was reached early

in December, 1862, but, as the tide had turned before the end

of the month, the highest number chargeable at any one time is

nowhere shown. The highest number exhibited in the returns is

for the last week in the year 1862, viz.: 485,434 persons; but

in the previous weeks of the same month some thousands more

were relieved."

J. Watts,

The Facts of the Cotton Famine,

chapters 8 and 12.

ALSO IN:

R. A. Arnold,

History of the Cotton Famine.

E. Waugh,

Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1862 (JULY).

The fitting out of the Confederate cruiser Alabama

at Liverpool.

See ALABAMA CLAIMS: A. D. 1862-1864.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1865.

Governor Eyre and the Jamaica Insurrection.

See JAMAICA: A. D. 1865.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1865-1868.

Death of Palmerston.

Ministry of Lord John Russell.

Its unsatisfactory Reform Bill and its resignation.

Triumph of the Adullamites.

Third administration of Derby and Disraeli,

and its Reform Bills.

"On the death of Lord Palmerston [which occurred October 18,

1865], the premiership was intrusted for the second time to

Earl Russell, with Mr. Gladstone as leader in the House of

Commons. The queen opened her seventh parliament (February 6,

1866), in person, for the first time since the prince

consort's death. On March 12th Mr. Gladstone brought forward

his scheme of reform, proposing to extend the franchise in

counties and boroughs, but the opposition of the moderate

Liberals, and their joining the Conservatives, proved fatal to

the measure, and in consequence the ministry of Earl Russell

resigned.

{968}

The government had been personally weakened by the successive

deaths of Mr. Sidney Herbert, Sir George Cornewall Lewis, the

Duke of Newcastle, Earl of Elgin, and Lord Palmerston. The

queen sent for the Earl of Derby to form a Cabinet, who,

although the Conservative party was in the minority in the

House of Commons, accepted the responsibility of undertaking

the management of the government: he as Premier and First Lord

of the Treasury; Mr. Disraeli, Chancellor of the Exchequer."

A. H. McCalman,

Abridged History of England,

page 603.

"The measure, in fact, was too evidently a compromise. The

Russell and Gladstone section of the Cabinet wanted reform:

the remnants of Palmerston's followers still thought it

unnecessary. The result was this wretched, tinkering measure,

which satisfied nobody, and disappointed the expectation of

all earnest Reformers. ... The principal opposition came not

from the Conservatives, as might have been expected, but from

Mr. Horsman and Mr. Robert Lowe, both members of the Liberal

party, who from the very first declared they would have none

of it. ... Mr. Bright denounced them furiously as

'Adullamites'; all who were in distress, all who were

discontented, had gathered themselves together in the

political cave of Adullam for the attack on the Government.

But Mr. Lowe, all unabashed by denunciation or sarcasm,

carried the war straight into the enemy's camp in a swift

succession of speeches of extraordinary brilliance and power.

... The party of two, which in its origin reminded Mr. Bright

of 'the Scotch terrier which was so covered with hair that you

could not tell which was the head and which was the tail of

it,' was gradually reinforced by deserters from the ranks of

the Government until at last the Adullamites were strong

enough to turn the scale of a division. Then one wild night,

after a hot and furious debate, the combined armies of the

Adullamites and Conservatives carried triumphantly an

amendment brought forward by one of the Adullamite chiefs,

Lord Dunkellin, to the effect that a rating be substituted for

a rental qualification; and the Government was at an end. ...

The failure of the bill brought Lord Russell's official career

to its close. He formally handed over the leadership of the

party to Mr. Gladstone, and from this time took but little

part in politics. Lord Derby, his opponent, was soon to follow

his example, and then the long-standing duel between Gladstone

and Disraeli would be pushed up to the very front of the

parliamentary stage, right in the full glare of the

footlights. Meanwhile, however, Lord Derby had taken office

[July 9, 1866]. Disraeli and Gladstone were changing weapons

and crossing the stage. ... The exasperated Liberals, however,

were rousing a widespread agitation throughout the country in

favour of Reform: monster meetings were held in Hyde Park; the

Park railings were pulled down and trampled on by an excited

mob, and the police regulations proved as unable to bear the

unusual strain as police regulations usually do on such

occasions. The result was that Mr. Disraeli became convinced

that a Reform Bill of some kind or other was inevitable, and

Mr. Disraeli's opinion naturally carried the day. The

Government, however, did not go straight to the point at once.

They began by proposing a number of resolutions on the

subject, which were very soon laughed out of existence. Then

they brought a bill founded on them, which, however, was very

shortly afterwards withdrawn after a very discouraging

reception. Finally, the Ministry, lightened by the loss of

three of its members--the Earl of Carnarvon, Viscount

Cranborne, and General Peel--announced their intention of

bringing in a comprehensive measure. The measure in question

proposed household suffrage in the boroughs subject to the

payment of rates, and occupation franchise for the counties

subject to the same limitation, and a variety of fanciful

clauses, which would have admitted members of the liberal

professions, graduates of the universities, and a number of

other classes to the franchise. The most novel feature was a

clause which permitted a man to acquire two votes if he

possessed a double qualification by rating and by profession.

The great objection to the bill was that it excluded the

compound householder.' The compound householder is now as

extinct an animal as the potwalloper found in earlier

parliamentary strata, but he was the hero of the Reform

debates of 1867, and as such deserves more than a passing

reference. He was, in fact, an occupier of a small house who

did not pay his rates directly and in person, but paid them

through his landlord. Now the occupiers of these very small

houses were naturally by far the most numerous class of

occupiers in the boroughs, and the omission of them implied a

large exclusion from the franchise. The Liberal party,

therefore, rose in defence of the compound householder, and

the struggle became fierce and hot. It must be remembered,

however, that neither Mr. Gladstone nor Mr. Bright wished to

lower the franchise beyond a certain point, and a meeting was

held in consequence, in which it was agreed that the programme

brought forward in committee should begin by an alteration of

the rating laws, so that the compound householder above a

certain level should pay his own rates and be given a vote,

and that all occupiers below the level should be excluded from

the rates and the franchise alike. On what may be described

roughly as 'the great drawing-the-line question,' however, the

Liberal party once more split up. The advanced section were

determined that all occupiers should be admitted, and they

would have no 'drawing the line.' Some fifty or sixty of them

held a meeting in the tea-room of the House of Commons and

decided on this course of action: in consequence they acquired

the name of the 'Tea-Room Party.' The communication of their

views to Mr. Gladstone made him excessively indignant. He

denounced them in violent language, and his passion was

emulated by Mr. Bright. ... Mr. Gladstone had to give in, and

his surrender was followed by that of Mr. Disraeli. The

Tea-Room Party, in fact, were masters of the day, and were

able to bring sufficient pressure to bear on the Government to

induce them to admit the principle of household suffrage pure

and simple, and to abolish all distinctions of rating. ... Not

only was the household suffrage clause considerably extended,

the dual vote abolished, and most of the fancy franchises

swept away, but there were numerous additions which completely

altered the character of the bill, and transformed it from a

balanced attempt to enlarge the franchise without shifting the

balance of power to a sweeping measure of reform."

B. C. Skottowe,

Short History of Parliament,

chapter 22.

{969}

The Reform Bill for England "was followed in 1868 by measures

for Scotland and Ireland. By these Acts the county franchise

in England was extended to all occupiers of lands or houses of

the yearly value of £12, and in Scotland to all £5 property

owners and £14 property occupiers; while that in Ireland was

not altered. The borough franchise in England and Scotland was

given to all ratepaying householders and to lodgers occupying

lodgings of the annual value of £10; and in Ireland to all

ratepaying £4 occupiers. Thus the House of Commons was made

nearly representative of all taxpaying commoners, except

agricultural labourers and women."

D. W. Rannie,

Historical Outline of the English Constitution,

chapter 12, section 4.

ALSO IN:

W. BAGEHOT,

Essays on Parliamentary Reform, 3.

G. B. Smith,

Life of Gladstone,

chapters 17-18 (volume 2).

W. Robertson,

Life and Times of John Bright,

chapters 39-40.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1865-1869.

Discussion of the Alabama Claims of the United States.

The Johnson-Clarendon Treaty and its rejection.

See ALABAMA CLAIMS: A. D. 1862-1869.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1867-1868.

Expedition to Abyssinia.

See ABYSSINIA: A. D. 1854-1889.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1868-1870.

Disestablishment of the Irish Church.

Retirement of the Derby-Disraeli Ministry.

Mr. Gladstone in power.

His Irish Land Bill.

"On March 16, 1868, a remarkable debate took place in the

House of Commons. It had for its subject the condition of

Ireland, and it was introduced by a series of resolutions

which Mr. John Francis Maguire, an Irish member, proposed. ...

It was on the fourth night of the debate that the importance

of the occasion became fully manifest. Then it was that Mr.

Gladstone spoke, and declared that in his opinion the time had

come when the Irish Church as a State institution must cease

to exist. Then every man in the House knew that the end was

near. Mr. Maguire withdrew his resolutions. The cause he had

to serve was now in the hands of one who, though not surely

more earnest for its success, had incomparably greater power

to serve it. There was probably not a single Englishman

capable of forming an opinion who did not know that from the

moment when Mr. Gladstone made his declaration, the fall of

the Irish State Church had become merely a question of time.

Men only waited to see how Mr. Gladstone would proceed to

procure its fall. Public expectation was not long kept in

suspense. A few days after the debate on Mr. Maguire's motion,

Mr. Gladstone gave notice of three resolutions on the subject

of the Irish State Church. The first declared that in the

opinion of the House of Commons it was necessary that the

Established Church of Ireland should cease to exist as an

Establishment, due regard being had to all personal interests

and to all individual rights of property. The second

resolution pronounced it expedient to prevent the creation of

new personal interests by the exercise of any public

patronage; and the third asked for an address to the Queen,

praying that Her Majesty would place at the disposal of

Parliament her interest in the temporalities of the Irish

Church. The object of these resolutions was simply to prepare

for the actual disestablishment of the Church, by providing

that no further appointments should be made, and that the

action of patronage should be stayed, until Parliament should

decide the fate of the whole institution. On March 30, 1868,

Mr. Gladstone proposed his resolutions. Not many persons could

have had much doubt as to the result of the debate. But if

there were any such, their doubts must have begun to vanish

when they read the notice of amendment to the resolutions

which was given by Lord Stanley. The amendment proclaimed even

more surely than the resolutions the impending fall of the Irish

Church. Lord Stanley must have been supposed to speak in the

name of the Government and the Conservative party; and his

amendment merely declared that the House, while admitting that

considerable modifications in the temporalities of the Church

in Ireland might appear to be expedient, was of opinion 'that

any proposition tending to the disestablishment or

disendowment of the Church ought to be reserved for the

decision of the new Parliament.' Lord Stanley's amendment

asked only for delay. ... The debate was one of great power

and interest. ... When the division was called there were 270

votes for the amendment, and 331 against it. The doom of the

Irish Church was pronounced by a majority of 61. An interval

was afforded for agitation on both sides. ... Mr. Gladstone's

first resolution came to a division about a month after the

defeat of Lord Stanley's amendment. It was carried by a

majority somewhat larger than that which had rejected the

amendment--330 votes were given for the resolution; 265

against it. The majority for the resolution was therefore 65.

Mr. Disraeli quietly observed that the Government must take

some decisive step in consequence of that vote; and a few days

afterwards it was announced that as soon as the necessary

business could be got through, Parliament would be dissolved

and an appeal made to the country. On the last day of July the

dissolution took place, and the elections came on in November.

Not for many years had there been so important a general

election. The keenest anxiety prevailed as to its results. The

new constituencies created by the Reform Bill were to give

their votes for the first time. The question at issue was not

merely the existence of the Irish State Church. It was a

general struggle of advanced Liberalism against Toryism. ...

The new Parliament was to all appearance less marked in its

Liberalism than that which had gone before it. But so far as

mere numbers went the Liberal party was much stronger than it

had been. In the new House of Commons it could count upon a

majority of about 120, whereas in the late Parliament it had

but 60. Mr. Gladstone it was clear would now have everything

in his own hands, and the country might look for a career of

energetic reform. ... Mr. Disraeli did not meet the new

Parliament as Prime Minister. He decided very properly that it

would be a mere waste of public time to wait for the formal

vote of the House of Commons, which would inevitably command

him to surrender. He at once resigned his office, and Mr.

Gladstone was immediately sent for by the Queen, and invited

to form an Administration. Mr. Gladstone, it would seem, was

only beginning his career. He was nearly sixty years of age,

but there were scarcely any evidences of advancing years to be

seen on his face. ... The Government he formed was one of

remarkable strength. ... Mr. Gladstone went to work at once

with his Irish policy.

{970}

On March 1, 1869, the Prime Minister introduced his measure

for the disestablishment and partial disendowment of the Irish

State Church. The proposals of the Government were, that the

Irish Church should almost at once cease to exist as a State

Establishment, and should pass into the condition of a free

Episcopal Church. As a matter of course the Irish bishops were

to lose their seats in the House of Lords. A synodal, or

governing body, was to be elected from the clergy and laity of

the Church and was to be recognised by the Government, and

duly incorporated. The union between the Churches of England

and Ireland was to be dissolved, and the Irish Ecclesiastical

Courts were to be abolished. There were various and

complicated arrangements for the protection of the life

interests of those already holding positions in the Irish

Church, and for the appropriation of the fund which would

return to the possession of the State when all these interests

had been fairly considered and dealt with. ... Many amendments

were introduced and discussed; and some of these led to a

controversy between the two Houses of Parliament; but the

controversy ended in compromise. On July 26, 1869, the measure

for the disestablishment of the Irish Church received the

royal assent. Lord Derby did not long survive the passing of

the measure which he had opposed with such fervour and so much

pathetic dignity. Be died before the Irish State Church had

ceased to live. ... When the Irish Church had been disposed

of, Mr. Gladstone at once directed his energies to the Irish

land system. ... In a speech delivered by him during his

electioneering campaign in Lancashire, he had declared that

the Irish upas-tree had three great branches: the State

Church, the Land Tenure System, and the System of Education,

and that he meant to hew them all down if he could. On

February 15, 1870, Mr. Gladstone introduced his Irish Land

Bill into the House of Commons. ... It recognised a certain

property or partnership of the tenant in the land which he

tilled. Mr. Gladstone took the Ulster tenant-right as he found

it, and made it a legal institution. In places where the

Ulster practice, or something analogous to it, did not exist,

he threw upon the landlord the burden of proof as regarded the

right of eviction. The tenant disturbed in the possession of

his land could claim compensation for improvements, and the

bill reversed the existing assumption of the law by presuming

all improvements to be the property of the tenant, and leaving

it to the landlord, if he could, to prove the contrary. The

bill established a special judiciary machinery for carrying

out its provisions. ... It put an end to the reign of the

landlord's absolute power; it reduced the landlord to the

level of every other proprietor, of every other man in the

country who had anything to sell or hire. ... The bill passed

without substantial alteration. On August 1, 1870, the bill

received the Royal assent. The second branch of the upas-tree

had been hewn down. ... Mr. Gladstone had dealt with Church

and land; he had yet to deal with university education. He had

gone with Irish ideas thus far."

J. McCarthy,

Short History of Our Own Times,

chapter 23.

ALSO IN:

W. N. Molesworth,

History of England, 1830-1874,

volume 3, chapter 6.

Annual Register, 1869,

part 1: English History,

chapters 2-3, and 1870, chapters 1-2.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1870.

The Education Bill.

See EDUCATION, MODERN: EUROPEAN COUNTRIES,

ENGLAND: A. D. 1699-1870.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1871.

Abolition of Army Purchase and University Religious Tests.

Defeat of the Ballot Bill.

"The great measure of the Session [of 1871] was of course the

Army Bill, which was introduced by Mr. Cardwell, on the 16th

of February. It abolished the system by which rich men

obtained by purchase commissions and promotion in the army,

and provided £8,000,000 to buy all commissions, as they fell

in, at their regulation and over-regulation value [the

regulation value being a legal price, fixed by a Royal

Warrant, but which in practice was never regarded]. In future,

commissions were to be awarded either to those who won them by

open competition, or who had served as subalterns in the

Militia, or to deserving non-commissioned officers. ... The

debate, which seemed interminable, ended in an anti-climax

that astonished the Tory Opposition. Mr. Disraeli threw over

the advocates of Purchase, evidently dreading an appeal to the

country. ... The Army Regulation Bill thus passed the Second

Reading without a division," and finally, with some amendments

passed the House. "In the House of Lords the Bill was again

obstructed. ... Mr. Gladstone met them with a bold stroke. By

statute it was enacted that only such terms of Purchase could

exist as her Majesty chose to permit by Royal Warrant. The

Queen, therefore, acting on Mr. Gladstone's advice, cancelled

her warrant permitting Purchase, and thus the opposition of

the Peers was crushed by what Mr. Disraeli indignantly termed

'the high-handed though not illegal' exercise of the Royal

Prerogative. The rage of the Tory Peers knew no bounds." They

"carried a vote of censure on the Government, who ignored it,

and then their Lordships passed the Army Regulation Bill

without any alterations. ... The Session of 1871 was also made

memorable by the struggle over the Ballot Bill, in the course

of which nearly all the devices of factious obstruction were

exhausted. ... When the Bill reached the House of Lords, the

real motive which dictated the ... obstruction of the

Conservative Opposition in the House of Commons was quickly

revealed. The Lords rejected the Bill on the 18th of August,

not merely because they disliked and dreaded it, but because

it had come to them too late for proper consideration.

Ministers were more successful with some other measures. In

spite of much conservative opposition they passed a Bill

abolishing religious tests in the Universities of Oxford and

Cambridge, and throwing open all academic distinctions and

privileges except Divinity Degrees and Clerical Fellowships to

students of all creeds and faiths."

R. Wilson,

Life and Times of Queen Victoria,

volume 2, chapter 16.

ALSO IN:

G. W. E. Russell,

The Rt. Hon. W. E. Gladstone,

chapter 9.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1871-1872.

Renewed negotiations with the United States.

The Treaty of Washington and the Geneva Award.

See ALABAMA CLAIMS: A. D. 1869-1871; 1871; and 1871-1872.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1873-1879.

Rise of the Irish Home Rule Party

and organization of the Land League.

See IRELAND: A. D. 1873-1879.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1873-1880.

Decline and fall of the Gladstone government.

Disraeli's Ministry.

His rise to the peerage, as Earl of Beaconsfield.

The Eastern Question.

Overthrow of the administration.

The Second Gladstone Ministry.

{971}

"One of the little wars in which we had to engage broke out

with the Ashantees, a misunderstanding resulting from our

purchase of the Dutch possessions (1873) in their

neighbourhood. Troops and marines under Wolseley ... were sent

out to West Africa. Crossing the Prah River, January 20th,

1874, he defeated the Ashantees on the last day of that month

at a place called Amoaful, entered and burnt their capital,

Coomassie, and made a treaty with their King, Koffee, by which

he withdrew all claims of sovereignty over the tribes under

our protection. The many Liberal measures carried by the

Ministry caused moderate men to wish for a halt. Some

restrictions on the licensed vintners turned that powerful

body against the Administration, which, on attempting to carry

an Irish University Bill in 1873, became suddenly aware of its

unpopularity, as the second reading was only carried by a

majority of three. Resignation followed. The erratic, but

astute, Disraeli declined to undertake the responsibility of

governing the country with the House of Commons then existing,

consequently Mr. Gladstone resumed office; yet Conservative

reaction progressed. He in September became Chancellor of the

Exchequer (still holding the Premiership) and 23rd January,

1874, he suddenly dissolved Parliament, promising in a letter

to the electors of Greenwich the final abolition of the income

tax, and a reduction in some other 'imposts.' The elections

went against him. The 'harassed' interests overturned the

Ministry (17th February, 1874). ... On the accession of the

Conservative Government under Mr. Disraeli (February, 1874),

the budget showed a balance of six millions in favour of the

reduction of taxation. Consequently the sugar duties were

abolished and the income tax reduced to 2d. in the pound.

This, the ninth Parliament of Queen Victoria, sat for a little

over six years. ... Mr. Disraeli, now the Earl of Beaconsfield,

was fond of giving the country surprises. One of these

consisted in the purchase of the interest of the Khedive of

Egypt in the Suez Canal for four millions sterling (February,

1876). Another was the acquisition of the Turkish Island of

Cyprus, handed over for the guarantee to Turkey of her Asiatic

provinces in the event of any future Russian encroachments.

... As war had broken out in several of the Turkish provinces

(1876), and as Russia had entered the lists for the insurgents

against the Sultan, whom England was bound to support by

solemn treaties, we were treated to a third surprise by the

conveyance, in anticipation of a breach with Russia, of 7,000

troops from India to Malta. The Earl of Derby, looking upon

this manœuvre as a menace to that Power, resigned his office,

which was filled by Lord Salisbury (1878). ... The war proving

disastrous to Turkey, the treaty of St. Stephano (February,

1878), was concluded with Russia, by which the latter acquired

additional territory in Asia Minor in violation of the treaty

of Paris (1856). Our Government strongly remonstrated, and war

seemed imminent. Through the intercession, however, of

Bismarck, the German Chancellor, war was averted, and a

congress soon met in Berlin, at which Britain was represented

by Lords Salisbury and Beaconsfield; the result being the

sanction of the treaty already made, with the exception that

the town of Erzeroum was handed back to Turkey. Our

ambassadors returned home rather pompously, the Prime Minister

loftily declaring, that they had brought back 'peace with

honour.' ... Our expenses had rapidly increased, the wealthy

commercial people began to distrust a Prime Minister who had

brought us to the brink of war, the Irish debates, Irish

poverty, and Irish outrages had brought with them more or less

discredit on the Ministry. ... The Parliament was dissolved March

24th, but the elections went so decisively in favour of the

Liberals that Beaconsfield resigned (April 23rd). Early in the

following year he appeared in his place in the House of Peers,

but died April 19th. Though Mr. Gladstone had in 1875

relinquished the political leadership in favour of Lord

Hartington yet the 'Bulgarian Atrocities' and other writings

brought him again so prominent before the public that his

leadership was universally acknowledged by the party. ... He

now resumed office, taking the two posts so frequently held

before by Prime Ministers since the days of William Pitt, who

also held them. ... The result of the general election of 1880

was the return of more Liberals to Parliament than

Conservatives and Home Rulers together. The farming interest

continued depressed both in Great Britain and Ireland,

resulting in thousands of acres being thrown on the landlords'

hands in the former country, and numerous harsh evictions in the

latter for non-payment of rent. Mr. Gladstone determined to

legislate anew on the Irish Land Question: and (1881) carried

through both Houses that admirable measure known as the Irish

Land Act, which for the first time in the history of that

country secured to the tenant remuneration for his own

industry. A Land Commission Court was established to fix Fair

Rents for a period of 15 years. After a time leaseholders were

included in this beneficent legislation."

R. Johnston,

A Short History of the Queen's Reign,

pages 49-57.

ALSO IN:

J. A. Froude,

Lord Beaconsfield,

chapters 16-17.

G. B. Smith,

Life of Gladstone,

chapters 22-28 (volume 2).

H. Jephson,

The Platform,

chapters 21-22 (volume 2).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1877.

Assumption by the Queen of the title of Empress of India.

See INDIA: A. D. 1877.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1877-1878.

The Eastern Question again.

Bulgarian atrocities.

Excitement over the Russian successes in Turkey.

War-clamor of "the Jingoes."

The fleet sent through the Dardanelles.

Arrangement of the Berlin Congress.

See BALKAN AND DANUBIAN STATES: A. D. 1875-1878;

and TURKS: A. D. 1878.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1877-1881.

Annexation of the Transvaal.

The Boer War.

See SOUTH AFRICA:  A. D. 1806-1881.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1878.

The Congress of Berlin.

Acquisition of the control of Cyprus.

See TURKS: A. D. 1878.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1878-1880.

The second Afghan War.

See AFGHANISTAN: A. D. 1869-1881.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1880.

Breach between the Irish Party and the English Liberals.

See IRELAND: A. D. 1880.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1882.

War in Egypt.

Bombardment of Alexandria.

Battle of Tel-el-Kebir.

See EGYPT: A. D. 1875-1882, and 1882-1883.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1883.

The Act for Prevention of Corrupt and Illegal Practices at

Parliamentary Elections.

{972}

"Prior to the General Election of 1880 there were those who

hoped and believed that Corrupt Practices at Elections were

decreasing. These hopes were based upon the growth of the

constituencies and their increased political intelligence, and

also upon the operation of the Ballot Act. The disclosures

following the General Election proved to the most sanguine

that this belief was an error. Corrupt practices were found to

be more prevalent than ever. If in olden times larger

aggregate sums were expended in bribery and treating, never

probably had so many persons been bribed and treated as at the

General Election of 1880. After that election nineteen

petitions against returns on the ground of corrupt practices

were presented. In eight instances the Judges reported that

those practices had extensively prevailed, and in respect of

seven of these the reports of the Commissioners appointed

under the Act of 1852 demonstrated the alarming extent to

which corruption of all kinds had grown. ... A most serious

feature in the Commissioners' Reports was the proof they

afforded that bribery was regarded as a meritorious not as a

disgraceful act. Thirty magistrates were reported as guilty of

corrupt practices and removed from the Commission of the Peace

by the Lord Chancellor. Mayors, aldermen, town-councillors,

solicitors, the agents of the candidates, and others of a like

class were found to have dealt with bribery as if it were a

part of the necessary machinery for conducting an election.

Worst of all, some of these persons had actually attained

municipal honours, not only after they had committed these

practices, but even after their misdeeds had been exposed by

public inquiry. The Reports also showed, and a Parliamentary

Return furnished still more conclusive proof, that election

expenses were extravagant even to absurdity, and moreover were

on the increase. The lowest estimate of the expenditure during

the General Election of 1880 amounts to the enormous sum of

two and a half millions. With another Reform Bill in view, the

prospects of future elections were indeed alarming. ... The

necessity for some change was self-evident. Public opinion

insisted that the subject should be dealt with, and the evil

encountered. ... The Queen's Speech of the 6th of January,

1881, announced that a measure 'for the repression of corrupt

practices' would be submitted to Parliament, and on the

following day the Attorney-General (Sir Henry James), in

forcible and eloquent terms, moved for leave to introduce his

Bill. His proposals (severe as they seemed) were received with

general approval and sympathy, both inside and outside the

House of Commons, at a time when members and constituents

alike were ashamed of the excesses so recently brought to

light. It is true that the two and a half years' delay that

intervened between the introduction of the Bill and its

finally becoming law (a delay caused by the necessities of

Irish legislation), sufficed very considerably to cool the

enthusiasm of Parliament and the public. Yet enough desire for

reform remained to carry in July 1883 the Bill of January

1881, modified indeed in detail, but with its principles

intact and its main provisions unaltered. The measure which

has now become the Parliamentary Elections Act of 1883, was in

its conception pervaded by two principles. The first was to

strike hard and home at corrupt practices; the second was to

prohibit by positive legislation any expenditure in the

conduct of an election which was not absolutely necessary.

Bribery, undue influence, and personation, had long been

crimes for which a man could be fined and imprisoned. Treating

was now added to the same class of offences, and the

punishment for all rendered more deterrent by a liability to

hard labour. ... Besides punishment on conviction,

incapacities of a serious character are to result from a

person being reported guilty of corrupt practices by Election

Judges or Election Commissioners. ... A candidate reported

personally guilty of corrupt practices can never sit again for

the same constituency, and is rendered incapable of being a

member of the House of Commons for seven years. All persons,

whether candidates or not, are, on being reported, rendered

incapable of holding any public office or exercising any

franchise for the same period. Moreover, if any persons so

found guilty are magistrates, barristers, solicitors, or

members of other honourable professions, they are to be

reported to the Lord Chancellor, Inns of Court, High Court of

Justice, or other authority controlling their profession, and

dealt with as in the case of professional misconduct. Licensed

victuallers are, in a similar manner, to be reported to the

licensing justices, who may on the next occasion refuse to

renew their licenses. ... The employment of all paid

assistants except a very limited number is forbidden; no

conveyances are to be paid for, and only a restricted number

of committee rooms are to be engaged. Unnecessary payments for

the exhibition of bills and addresses, and for flags, bands,

torches, and the like are declared illegal. But these

prohibitions of specific objects were not considered

sufficient. Had these alone been enacted, the money of wealthy

and reckless candidates would have found other channels in

which to flow. ... And thus it was that the 'maximum scale'

was adopted as at once the most direct and the most

efficacious means of limiting expenditure. Whether by himself

or his agents, by direct payment or by contract, the candidate

is forbidden to spend more in 'the conduct and management of

an election' than the sums permitted by the Act, sums which

depend in each case on the numerical extent of the

constituency."

H. Hobhouse,

The Parliamentary Elections

(Corrupt and Illegal Practices) Act, 1883,

pages 1-8.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1884-1885.

The Third Reform Bill and the Redistribution Bill.

The existing qualifications and disqualifications

of the Suffrage.

"Soon after Mr. Gladstone came into power in 1880, Mr.

Trevelyan became a member of his Administration. Already the

Premier had secured the co-operation of two other men new to

office--Mr. Chamberlain and Sir Charles Dilke. ... Their

presence in the Administration was looked upon as a good

augury by the Radicals, and the augury was not destined to

prove misleading. It was understood from the first that, with

such men as his coadjutors, Mr. Gladstone was pledged to a

still further Reform. He was pledged already, in fact, by his

speeches in Midlothian. ... On the 17th of October, 1883, a

great Conference was held at Leeds, for the purpose of

considering the Liberal programme for the ensuing season. The

Conference was attended by no fewer than 2,000 delegates, who

represented upwards of 500 Liberal Associations.

{973}

It was presided over by Mr. John Morley. ... To a man the

delegates agreed as to the imperative necessity of household

suffrage being extended to the counties; and almost to a man

they agreed also as to the necessity of the measure being no

longer delayed. ... When Parliament met on the 5th of the

following February ... a measure for 'the enlargement of the

occupation franchise in Parliamentary Elections throughout the

United Kingdom' was distinctly promised in the Royal Speech;

and the same evening Mr. Gladstone gave notice that 'on the

first available day,' he would move for leave to bring in the

bill. So much was the House of Commons occupied with affairs

in Egypt and the Soudan, however, that it was not till the

29th of February that the Premier was able to fulfil his

pledge." Four months were occupied in the passage of the bill

through the House of Commons, and when it reached the Lords it

was rejected. This roused "an intense feeling throughout the

country. On the 21st of July, a great meeting was held in Hyde

Park, attended, it was believed, by upwards of 100,000

persons. ... On the 30th of July, a great meeting of delegates

was held in St. James's Hall, London. ... Mr. John Morley, who

presided, used some words respecting the House that had

rejected the bill which were instantly caught up by Reformers

everywhere. 'Be sure,' he said, 'that no power on earth can

separate henceforth the question of mending the House of

Commons from the question of mending, or ending, the House of

Lords.' On the 4th of August, Mr. Bright, speaking at

Birmingham, referred to the Lords as 'many of them the spawn

of the plunder and the wars and the corruption of the dark

ages of our country'; and his colleague, Mr. Chamberlain, used

even bolder words: 'During the last one hundred years the

House of Lords has never contributed one iota to popular

liberties or popular freedom, or done anything to advance the

common weal; and during that time it has protected every abuse

and sheltered every privilege. ... It is irresponsible without

independence, obstinate without courage, arbitrary without

judgment, and arrogant without knowledge.' ... In very many

instances, a strong disposition was manifested to drop the

agitation for the Reform of the House of Commons for a time,

and to concentrate the whole strength of the Liberal party on

one final struggle for the Reform (or, preferably, the

extinction) of the Upper House." But Mr. Gladstone gave no

encouragement to this inclination of his party. The outcome of

the agitation was the passage of the Franchise Bill a second time

in the House of Commons, in November, 1884, and by the Lords

soon afterwards. A concession was made to the latter by

previously satisfying them with regard to the contemplated

redistribution of seats in the House of Commons, for which a

separate bill was framed and introduced while the Franchise

Bill was yet pending. The Redistribution Bill passed the

Commons in May and the Lords in June, 1885.

W. Heaton,

The Three Reforms of Parliament,

chapter 6.

"In regard to electoral districts, the equalization, in other

words, the radical refashioning of electoral districts, having

about the same number of inhabitants, is carried out. For this

purpose, 79 towns, having less than 15,000 inhabitants, are

divested of the right of electing a separate member; 36 towns,

with less than 50,000, return only one member; 14 large towns

obtain an increase of the number of the members in proportion

to the population; 35 towns, of nearly 50,000, obtain a new

franchise. The counties are throughout parcelled-out into

'electoral districts' of about the like population, to elect

one member each. This single-seat system is, regularly,

carried out in towns, with the exception of 28 middle-sized

towns, which have been left with two members. The County of

York forms, for example, 26 electoral districts; Liverpool 9.

To sum up, the result stands thus:--the counties choose 253

members (formerly 187), the towns 237 (formerly 297). The

average population of the county electoral districts is now

52,800 (formerly 70,800); the average number of the town

electoral districts 52,700 (formerly 41,200). ... The number

of the newly-enfranchised is supposed, according to an average

estimate, to be 2,000,000."

Dr. R. Gneist,

The English Parliament in its Transformations,

chapter 9.

ALSO IN:

J. Murdoch,

History of Constitutional Reform in Great

Britain and Ireland,

pages 277-398.

H. Jephson,

The Platform,

chapter 23 (volume 2).

The following is the text of the "Third Reform Act," which is

entitled "The Representation of the People Act, 1884":

An Act to amend the Law relating to the Representation of

the People of the United Kingdom. [6th December, 1884.]

Be it enacted by the Queen's most Excellent Majesty, by and

with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and

Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament

assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:

1. This Act may be cited as the Representation of the

People Act, 1884.

2. A uniform household franchise and a uniform lodger

franchise at elections shall be established in all counties

and boroughs throughout the United Kingdom, and every man

possessed of a household qualification or a lodger

qualification shall, if the qualifying premises be situate

in a county in England or Scotland, be entitled to be

registered as a voter, and when registered to vote at an

election for such county, and if the qualifying premises be

situate in a county or borough in Ireland, be entitled to

be registered as a voter, and when registered to vote at an

election for such county or borough.

3. Where a man himself inhabits any dwelling-house by

virtue of any office, service, or employment, and the

dwelling-house is not inhabited by any person under whom

such man serves in such office, service, or employment, he

shall be deemed for the purposes of this Act and of the

Representation of the People Acts to be an inhabitant

occupier of such dwelling-house as a tenant.

4. Subject to the saving in this Act for existing voters,

the following provisions shall have effect with reference

to elections:

(1.) A man shall not be entitled to be registered as a

voter in respect of the ownership of any rentcharge except

the owner of the whole of the tithe rentcharge of a

rectory, vicarage, chapelry, or benefice to which an

apportionment of tithe rentcharge shall have been made in

respect of any portion of tithes.

(2.) Where two or more men are owners either as joint

tenants or as tenants in common of an estate in any land or

tenement, one of such men, but not more than one, shall, if

his interest is sufficient to confer a qualification as a

voter in respect of the ownership of such estate, be

entitled (in the like cases and subject to the like

conditions as if he were the sole owner) to be registered

as a voter, and when registered to vote at an election.

{974}

Provided that where such owners have derived their interest

by descent, succession, marriage, marriage settlement, or

will, or where they occupy the land or tenement, and are

bonâ fide engaged as partners carrying on trade or business

thereon, each of such owners whose interest is sufficient

to confer on him a qualification as a voter shall be

entitled (in the like cases and subject to the like

conditions as if he were sole owner) to be registered as a

voter in respect of such ownership, and when registered to

vote at an election, and the value of the interest of each

such owner where not otherwise legally defined shall be

ascertained by the division of the total value of the land

or tenement equally among the whole of such owners.

5. Every man occupying any land or tenement in a county or

borough in the United Kingdom of a clear yearly value of

not less than ten pounds shall be entitled to be registered

as a voter and when registered to vote at an election for

such county or borough in respect of such occupation

subject to the like conditions respectively as a man is, at

the passing of this Act, entitled to be registered as a

voter and to vote at an election for such county in respect

of the county occupation franchise, and at an election for

such borough in respect of the borough occupation

franchise.

6. A man shall not by virtue of this Act be entitled to be

registered as a voter or to vote at any election for a

county in respect of the occupation of any dwelling-house,

lodgings, land, or tenement, situate in a borough.

7. (1.) In this Act the expression "a household

qualification" means, as respects England and Ireland, the

qualification enacted by the third section of the

Representation of the People Act, 1867 [see comments

appended to this text], and the enactments amending or

affecting the same, and the said section and enactments so

far as they are consistent with this Act, shall extend to

counties in England and to counties and boroughs in

Ireland.

(2.) In the construction of the said enactments, as amended

and applied to Ireland, the following dates shall be

substituted for the dates therein mentioned, that is to say,

the twentieth day of July for the fifteenth day of July, the

first day of July for the twentieth day of July, and the

first day of January for the fifth day of January.

(3.) The expression "a lodger qualification" means the

qualification enacted, as respects England, by the fourth

section of the Representation of the People Act, 1867 [see

comments appended to this text], and the enactments amending

or affecting the same, and as respects Ireland, by the

fourth section of the Representation of the People (Ireland)

Act, 1868, and the enactments amending or affecting the

same, and the said section of the English Act of 1867, and

the enactments amending or affecting the same, shall, so far

as they are consistent with this Act, extend to counties in

England, and the said section of the Irish Act of 1868, and

the enactments amending or affecting the same, shall, so far

as they are consistent with this Act, extend to counties in

Ireland; and sections five and six and twenty-two and

twenty-three of the Parliamentary and Municipal Registration

Act, 1878, so far as they relate to lodgings, shall apply to

Ireland, and for the purpose of such application the

reference in the said section six to the Representation of

the People Act, 1867, shall be deemed to be made to the

Representation of the People (Ireland) Act, 1868, and in the

said section twenty-two of the Parliamentary and Municipal

Registration Act, 1878, the reference to section thirteen of

the Parliamentary Registration Act, 1843, shall be construed

to refer to the enactments of the Registration Acts in

Ireland relating to the making out, signing, publishing, and

otherwise dealing with the lists of voters, and the

reference to the Parliamentary Registration Acts shall be

construed to refer to the Registration Acts in Ireland, and

the following dates shall be substituted in Ireland for the

dates in that section mentioned, that is to say, the

twentieth day of July for the last day of July, and the

fourteenth day of July for the twenty-fifth day of July,

and the word "overseers" shall be construed to refer in a

county to the clerk of the peace, and in a borough to the

town clerk.

(4.) The expression "a household qualification" means, as

respects Scotland, the qualification enacted by the third

section of the Representation of the People (Scotland) Act,

1868, and the enactments amending or affecting the same,

and the said section and enactments shall, so far as they

are consistent with this Act, extend to counties in

Scotland, and for the purpose of the said section and

enactments the expression "dwelling-house" in Scotland

means any house or part of a house occupied as a separate

dwelling, and this definition of a dwelling-house shall be

substituted for the definition contained in section

fifty-nine of the Representation of the People (Scotland)

Act, 1868.

(5.) The expression "a lodger qualification" means, as

respects Scotland, the qualification enacted by the fourth

section of the Representation of the People (Scotland) Act,

1868, and the enactments amending or affecting the same,

and the said section and enactments, so far as they are

consistent with this Act, shall extend to counties in

Scotland.

(6.) The expression "county occupation franchise" means, as

respects England, the franchise enacted by the sixth

section of the Representation of the People Act, 1867 [see

comments appended to this text]; and, as respects Scotland,

the franchise enacted by the sixth section of the

Representation of the People (Scotland) Act, 1868; and, as

respects Ireland, the franchise enacted by the first

section of the Act of the session of the thirteenth and

fourteenth years of the reign of Her present Majesty,

chapter sixty-nine.

(7.) The expression "borough occupation franchise" means,

as respects England, the franchise enacted by the

twenty-seventh section of the Act of the session of the

second and third years of the reign of King William the

Fourth, chapter forty-five [see comments appended to this

text]; and as respects Scotland, the franchise enacted by

the eleventh section of the Act of the session of the

second and third years of the reign of King William the

Fourth, chapter sixty-five; and as respects Ireland the

franchise enacted by section five of the Act of the session

of the thirteenth and fourteenth years of the reign of Her

present Majesty, chapter sixty-nine, and the third section

of the Representation of the People (Ireland) Act, 1868.

{975}

(8.) Any enactments amending or relating to the county

occupation franchise or 'borough occupation franchise other

than the sections in this Act in that behalf mentioned

shall be deemed to be referred to in the definition of the

county occupation franchise and the borough occupation

franchise in this Act mentioned.

8. (1.) In this Act the expression "the Representation of

the People Acts" means the enactments for the time being in

force in England, Scotland, and Ireland respectively

relating to the representation of the people, inclusive of

the Registration Acts as defined by this Act.

(2.) The expression "the Registration Acts" means the

enactments for the time being in force in England,

Scotland, and Ireland respectively, relating to the

registration of persons entitled to vote at elections for

counties and boroughs, inclusive of the Rating Acts as

defined by this Act.

(3.) The expressions "the Representation of the People

Acts" and "the Registration Acts" respectively, where used

in this Act, shall be read distributively in reference to

the three parts of the United Kingdom as meaning in the

case of each part the enactments for the time being in

force in that part.

(4.) All enactments of the Registration Acts which relate

to the registration of persons entitled to vote in boroughs

in England in respect of a household or a lodger

qualification, and in boroughs in Ireland in respect of a

lodger qualification, shall, with the necessary variations

and with the necessary alterations of precepts, notices,

lists, and other forms, extend to counties as well as to

boroughs.

(5.) All enactments of the Registration Acts which relate

to the registration in counties and boroughs in Ireland of

persons entitled to vote in respect of the county

occupation franchise and the borough occupation franchise

respectively, shall, with the necessary variations and with

the necessary alterations of precepts, notices, lists, and

other forms, extend respectively to the registration in

counties and boroughs in Ireland of persons entitled to

vote in respect of the household qualification conferred by

this Act.

(6.) In Scotland all enactments of the Registration Acts

which relate to the registration of persons entitled to

vote in burghs, including the provisions relating to dates,

shall, with the necessary variations, and with the

necessary alterations of notices and other forms, extend

and apply to counties as well as to burghs; and the

enactments of the said Acts which relate to the

registration of persons entitled to vote in counties shall,

so far as inconsistent with the enactments so applied, be

repealed: Provided that in counties the valuation rolls,

registers, and lists shall continue to be arranged in

parishes as heretofore.

9. (1.) In this Act the expression "the Rating Acts" means

the enactments for the time being in force in England,

Scotland, and Ireland respectively, relating to the placing

of the names of occupiers on the rate book, or other

enactments relating to rating in so far as they are

auxiliary to or deal with the registration of persons

entitled to vote at elections; and the expression "the

Rating Acts" where used in this Act shall be read

distributively in reference to the three parts of the

United Kingdom as meaning in the case of each part the Acts

for the time being in force in that part.

(2.) In every part of the United Kingdom it shall be the

duty of the overseers annually, in the months of April and

May, or one of them, to inquire or ascertain with respect

to every hereditament which comprises any dwelling-house or

dwelling-houses within the meaning of the Representation of

the People Acts, whether any man, other than the owner or

other person rated or liable to be rated in respect of such

hereditament, is entitled to be registered as a voter in

respect of his being an inhabitant occupier of any such

dwelling-house, and to enter in the rate book the name of

every man so entitled, and the situation or description of

the dwelling-house in respect of which he is entitled, and

for the purposes of such entry a separate column shall be

added to the rate book.

(3.) For the purpose of the execution of such duty the

overseers may serve on the person who is the occupier or

rated or liable to be rated in respect of such

hereditament, or on some agent of such person concerned in

the management of such hereditament, the requisition

specified in the Third Schedule of this Act requiring that

the form in that notice be accurately filled up and

returned to the overseers within twenty-one days after such

service; and if any such person or agent on whom such

requisition is served fails to comply therewith, he shall

be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding

forty shillings, and any overseer who fails to perform his

duty under this section shall be deemed guilty of a breach

of duty in the execution of the Registration Acts, and

shall be liable to be fined accordingly a sum not exceeding

forty shillings for each default.

(4.) The notice under this section may be served in manner

provided by the Representation of the People Acts with

respect to the service on occupiers of notice of

non-payment of rates, and, where a body of persons,

corporate or unincorporate, is rated, shall be served on

the secretary or agent of such body of persons; and where

the hereditament by reason of belonging to the Crown or

otherwise is not rated, shall be served on the chief local

officer having the superintendence or control of such

hereditament.

(5.) In the application of this section to Scotland the

expression rate book means the valuation roll, and where a

man entered on the valuation roll by virtue of this section

inhabits a dwelling-house by virtue of any office, service,

or employment, there shall not be entered in the valuation

roll any rent or value against the name of such man as

applicable to such dwelling-house, nor shall any such man

by reason of such entry become liable to be rated in

respect of such dwelling-house.

(6.) The proviso in section two of the Act for the

valuation of lands and heritages in Scotland passed in the

session of the seventeenth and eighteenth years of the

reign of Her present Majesty chapter ninety-one, and

section fifteen of the Representation of the People

(Scotland) Act, 1868, shall be repealed: Provided that in

any county in Scotland the commissioners of supply, or the

parochial board of any parish, or any other rating

authority entitled to impose assessments according to the

valuation roll, may, if they think fit, levy such

assessments in respect of lands and heritages separately

let for a shorter period than one year or at a rent not

amounting to four pounds per annum in the same manner and

from the same persons as if the names of the tenants and

occupiers of such lands and heritages were not inserted in

the valuation roll.

{976}

(7.) In Ireland where the owner of a dwelling-house is

rated instead of the occupier, the occupier shall

nevertheless be entitled to be registered as a voter, and

to vote under the same conditions under which an occupier

of a dwelling-house in England is entitled in pursuance of

the Poor Rate Assessment and Collection Act, 1869, and the

Acts amending the same, to be registered as a voter, and to

vote where the owner is rated, and the enactments referred

to in the First Schedule to this Act shall apply to Ireland

accordingly, with the modifications in that schedule

mentioned.

(8.) Both in England and Ireland where a man inhabits any

dwelling-house by virtue of any office, service, or

employment, and is deemed for the purposes of this Act and

of the Representation of the People Acts to be an

inhabitant occupier of such dwelling-house as a tenant, and

another person is rated or liable to be rated for such

dwelling-house, the rating of such other person shall for

the purposes of this Act and of the Representation of the

People Acts be deemed to be that of the inhabitant

occupier; and the several enactments of the Poor Rate

Assessment and Collection Act, 1869, and other Acts

amending the same referred to in the First Schedule to this

Act shall for those purposes apply to such inhabitant

occupier, and in the construction of those enactments the

word "owner" shall be deemed to include a person actually

rated or liable to be rated as aforesaid.

(9.) In any part of the United Kingdom where a man inhabits

a dwelling-house in respect of which no person is rated by

reason of such dwelling-house belonging to or being

occupied on behalf of the Crown, or by reason of any other

ground of exemption, such person shall not be disentitled

to be registered as a voter, and to vote by reason only

that no one is rated in respect of such dwelling-house, and

that no rates are paid in respect of the same, and it shall

be the duty of the persons making out the rate book or

valuation roll to enter any such dwelling-house as last

aforesaid in the rate book or valuation roll, together with

the name of the inhabitant occupier thereof.

10. Nothing in this Act shall deprive any person (who at

the date of the passing of this Act is registered in

respect of any qualification to vote for any county or

borough), of his right to be from time to time registered

and to vote for such county or borough in respect of such

qualification in like manner as if this Act had not passed.

Provided that where a man is so registered in respect of

the county or borough occupation franchise by virtue of a

qualification which also qualifies him for the franchise

under this Act, he shall be entitled to be registered in

respect of such latter franchise only. Nothing in this Act

shall confer on any man who is subject to any legal

incapacity to be registered as a voter or to vote, any

right to be registered as a voter or to vote.

11. This Act, so far as may be consistently with the tenor

thereof, shall be construed as one with the Representation

of the People Acts as defined by this Act; and the

expressions "election," "county," and "borough," and other

expressions in this Act and in the enactments applied by

this Act, shall have the same meaning as in the said Acts.

Provided that in this Act and the said enactments--The

expression "overseers" includes assessors, guardians,

clerks of unions, or other persons by whatever name known,

who perform duties in relation to rating or to the

registration of voters similar to those performed in

relation to such matters by overseers in England. The

expression "rentcharge" includes a fee farm rent, a feu

duty in Scotland, a rent seck, a chief rent, a rent of

assize, and any rent or annuity granted out of land. The

expression "land or tenement" includes any part of a house

separately occupied for the purpose of any trade, business,

or profession, and that expression, and also the expression

"hereditament" when used in this Act, in Scotland includes

"lands and heritages." The expressions "joint tenants" and

"tenants in common" shall include "pro indiviso

proprietors." The expression "clear yearly value" as

applied to any land or tenement means in Scotland the

annual value as appearing in the valuation roll, and in

Ireland the net annual value at which the occupier of such

land or tenement was rated under the last rate for the time

being, under the Act of the session of the first and second

years of the reign of Her present Majesty, chapter

fifty-six, or any Acts amending the same.

12. Whereas the franchises conferred by this Act are in

substitution for the franchises conferred by the enactments

mentioned in the first and second parts of the Second

Schedule hereto, be it enacted that the Acts mentioned in

the first part of the said Second Schedule shall be

repealed to the extent in the third column of that part of

the said schedule mentioned except in so far as relates to

the rights of persons saved by this Act; and the Acts

mentioned in the second part of the said Second Schedule

shall be repealed to the extent in the third column of that

part of the said schedule mentioned, except in so far as

relates to the rights of persons saved by this Act and

except in so far as the enactments so repealed contain

conditions made applicable by this Act to any franchise

enacted by this Act.

13. This Act shall commence and come into operation on the

first day of January one thousand eight hundred and

eighty-five: Provided that the register of voters in any

county or borough in Scotland made in the last-mentioned

year shall not come into force until the first day of

January one thousand eight hundred and eighty-six, and

until that day the previous register of voters shall

continue in force.

The following comments upon the foregoing act afford

explanations which are needed for the understanding of some of

its provisions:

"The introduction of the household franchise into counties is

the main work of the Representation of the People Act, 1884.

... The county household franchise is ... made identical with

the borough franchise created by the Reform Act of 1867 (30 &

31 Vict., c. 102), to which we must, therefore, turn for the

definition of the one household franchise now established in

both counties and boroughs throughout the United Kingdom. The

third section of the Act in question provides that 'Every man

shall in and after the year 1868 be entitled to be registered

as a voter, and when registered to vote, for a member or

members to serve in Parliament for a borough [we must now add

"or for a county or division of a county"] who is qualified as

follows:

(1.) Is of full age and not subject to any legal

incapacity;

(2.) Is on the last day of July [now July 15th] in any

year, and has during the whole of the preceding twelve

calendar months been an inhabitant occupier as owner or

tenant of any dwelling house within the borough [or within

a county or division of a county];

{977}

(3.) Has during the time of such occupation been rated as

an ordinary occupier in respect of the premises so occupied

by him within the borough to all rates (if any) made for

the relief of the poor in respect of such premises; and,

(4.) Has on or before the 20th day of July in the same year

bona fide paid an equal amount in the pound to that payable

by other ordinary occupiers in respect of all poor rates

that have been payable by him in respect of the said

premises up to the preceding 5th day of January: Provided

that no man shall under this section be entitled to be

registered as a voter by reason of his being a joint

occupier of any dwelling house. ... The lodger franchise

was the creation of the Reform Act of 1867 (30 & 31 Vict.,

c. 102), the 4th section of which conferred the suffrage

upon lodgers who, being of full age and not subject to any

legal incapacity, have occupied in the same borough

lodgings 'of a clear yearly value, if let unfurnished, of

£10 or upwards' for twelve months preceding the last day of

July, and have claimed to be registered as voters at the

next ensuing registration of voters. By this clause certain

limitations or restrictions were imposed on the lodger franchise;

but these were swept away by the 41 & 42 Vict., c. 26, the

6th section of which considerably enlarged the franchise by

enacting that:--

(1.) Lodgings occupied by a person in any year or two

successive years shall not be deemed to be different

lodgings by reason only that in that year or either of

those years he has occupied some other rooms or place in

addition to his original lodgings.

(2.) For the purpose of qualifying a lodger to vote the

occupation in immediate succession of different lodgings of

the requisite value in the same house shall have the same effect

as continued occupation of the same lodgings.

(3.) Where lodgings are jointly occupied by more than one

lodger, and the clear yearly value of the lodgings if let

unfurnished is of an amount which, when divided by the

number of the lodgers, gives a sum of not less than £10 for

each lodger, then each lodger (if otherwise qualified and

subject to the conditions of the Representation of the

People Act, 1867) shall be entitled to be registered and

when registered to vote as a lodger, provided that not more

than two persons being such joint lodgers shall be entitled

to be registered in respect of such lodgings. ... Until the

passing of the Representation of the People Act, 1884, no

householder was qualified to vote unless he not only

occupied a dwelling house, but occupied it either as owner

or as the tenant of the owner. And where residence in an

official or other house was necessary, or conducive to the

efficient discharge of a man's duty or service, and was

either expressly or impliedly made a part of such duty or

service then the relation of landlord or tenant was held

not to be created. The consequence was that a large number

of persons who as officials, as employes, or as servants

are required to reside in public buildings, on the premises

of their employers or in houses assigned to them by their

masters were held not to be entitled to the franchise. In

future such persons will ... be entitled to vote as

inhabitant occupiers and tenants (under Section 3 of the

recent Act), notwithstanding that they occupy their

dwelling houses 'by virtue of any office, service or

employment.' But this is subject to the condition that a

subordinate cannot qualify or obtain a vote in respect of a

dwelling house which is also inhabited by any person under whom

'such man serves in such office, service or employment.'

... Persons seised of (i. e., owning) an estate of

inheritance (i. e., in fee simple or fee-tail) of freehold

tenure, in lands or tenements, of the value of 40s. per

annum, are entitled to a vote for the county or division of

the county in which the estate is situated. This is the

class of electors generally known as 'forty shilling

freeholders.' Originally all freeholders were entitled to

county votes, but by the 8 Henry VI., c. 7, it was provided

that no freehold of a less annual value than 40s. should

confer the franchise. Until the Reform Act of 1832, 40s.

freeholders, whether their estate was one of inheritance or

one for life or lives, were entitled to county votes. That Act,

however, restricted the county freehold franchise by

drawing a distinction between (1) freeholds of inheritance,

and (2) freeholds not of inheritance. While the owners of

the first class of freeholds were left in possession of

their former rights (except when the property is situated

within a Parliamentary borough), the owners of the latter

were subjected to a variety of conditions and restrictions. ...

Before the passing of the Representation of the People Act,

1884, any number of persons might qualify and obtain county

votes as joint owners of a freehold of inheritance,

provided that it was of an annual value sufficient to give

40s. for each owner. But ... this right is materially

qualified by Section 4 of the recent Act. ... Persons

seised of an estate for life or lives of freehold tenure of

the annual value of 40s., but of less than £5, are entitled

to a county vote, provided that they

(1) actually and bonâ fide occupy the premises, or

(2) were seised of the property at the time of the passing

of the 2 Will. IV., c. 45 (June 7th, 1832), or

(3) have acquired the property after the date by marriage,

marriage settlement, devise, or promotion to a benefice or

office. ... Persons seised of an estate for life or lives

or of any larger estate in lands or tenements of any tenure

whatever of the yearly value of £5 or upwards: This

qualification is not confined to the ownership of freehold

lands. Under the words 'of any tenure whatever' (30 & 31

Vict., c. 102, s. 5) copyholders have county votes if their

property is of the annual value of £5. ... The electoral

qualifications in Scotland are defined by the 2 & 3 Will.

IV., c. 65, the 31 & 32 Vict., c. 48, and the

Representation of the People Act, 1884 (48 Vict., c. 3).

The effect of the three Acts taken together is that the

County franchises are as follows:

1. Owners of Land, &c., of the annual value of £5, after

deducting feu duty, ground annual, or other considerations

which an owner may be bound to pay or to give an account

for as a condition of his right.

2. Leaseholders under a lease of not less than 57 years or

for the life of the tenant of the clear yearly value of

£10, or for a period of not less than 19 years when the

clear yearly value is not less than £50, or the tenant is

in actual personal occupancy of the land.

3. Occupiers of land, &c., of the clear yearly value of £10.

4. Householders.

5. Lodgers.

6. The service franchise.

Borough franchises.

1. Occupiers of land or tenements of the annual value of £10.

2. Householders.

3. Lodgers.

4. The service franchise.

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The qualification for these franchises is in all material

respects the same as for the corresponding franchises in

the Scotch counties, and in the counties and boroughs of

England and Wales. ... The Acts relating to the franchise

in Ireland are 2 & 3 Will. IV., c. 88, 13 & 14 Vict., c.

69, the representation of the People (Ireland) Act, 1868,

and the Representation of the People Act, 1884. Read

together they give the following qualifications:

County franchises.

1. Owners of freeholds of inheritance or of freeholds for

lives renewable for ever rated to the poor at the annual

value of £5.

2. Freeholders and copyholders of a clear annual value of

£10.

3. Leaseholders of various terms and value.

4. Occupiers of land or a tenement of the clear annual

value of £10.

5. Householders.

6. The lodger franchise.

7. The service franchise.

Borough franchises.

1. Occupiers of lands and tenements of the annual value of

£10.

2. Householders. ...

3. Lodgers.

4. The service franchise.

5. Freemen in certain boroughs. ...

All the franchises we have described ... are subject to this

condition, that no one, however qualified, can be registered

or vote in respect of them if he is subjected to any legal

incapacity to become or act as elector. ... No alien unless

certificated or naturalised, no minor, no lunatic or idiot,

nor any person in such a state of drunkenness as to be

incapable--is entitled to vote. Police magistrates in London

and Dublin, and police officers throughout the country,

including the members of the Royal Irish Constabulary, are

disqualified from voting either generally or for

constituencies within which their duties lie. In the case of

the police the disqualification continues for six months after

an officer has left the force. ... Persons are disqualified

who are convicted of treason or treason-felony, for which the

sentence is death or penal servitude, or any term of

imprisonment with hard labour or exceeding twelve months,

until they have suffered their punishment (or such as may be

substituted by competent authority), or until they receive a

free pardon. Peers are disqualified from voting at the

election of any member to serve in Parliament. A returning

officer may not vote at any election for which he acts, unless

the numbers are equal, when he may give a casting vote. No

person is entitled to be registered in any year as a voter for

any county or borough who has within twelve calendar months

next previous to the last day of July in such year received

parochial relief or other alms which by the law of Parliament

disqualify from voting. Persons employed at an election for

reward or payment are disqualified from voting thereat

although they may be on the register. ... The Corrupt and

Illegal Practices Prevention Act, 1883 (46 & 47 Vict., c. 51),

disqualifies a variety of offenders [see above, A. D. 1883]

against its provisions from being registered or voting."

W. A. Holdsworth,

The New Reform Act,

pages 20-36.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1881-1885.

Campaign in the Soudan for the relief of General Gordon.

See EGYPT: A. D. 1884-1885.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1885.

The fall of the Gladstone government.

The brief first Ministry of Lord Salisbury.

"Almost simultaneously with the assembling of Parliament

[February 19, 1885] had come the news of the fall of Khartoum

and the death of General Gordon [see EGYPT: A. D. 1884-1885].

These terrible events sent a thrill of horror and indignation

throughout the country, and the Government was severely

condemned in many quarters for its procrastination. Mr.

Gladstone, who was strongly moved by Gordon's death, rose to

the situation, and announced that it was necessary to

overthrow the Mahdi at Khartoum, to renew operations against

Osman Digma, and to construct a railway from Suakim to Berber

with a view to a campaign in the autumn. A royal proclamation

was issued calling out the reserves. Sir Stafford Northcote

initiated a debate on the Soudan question with a motion

affirming that the risks and sacrifices which the Government

appeared to be ready to encounter could only be justified by a

distinct recognition of our responsibility for Egypt, and

those portions of the Soudan which are necessary to its

security. Mr. John Morley introduced an amendment to the

motion, waiving any judgment on the policy of the Minister,

but expressing regret at its decision to continue the conflict

with the Mahdl. Mr. Gladstone skilfully dealt with both motion

and amendment. Observing that it was impossible to give rigid

pledges as to the future, he appealed to the Liberal party, if

they had not made up their minds to condemn and punish the

Government, to strengthen their hands by an unmistakable vote

of confidence. The Government obtained a majority of 14, the

votes being 302 in their favour with 288 against; but many of

those who supported the Government had also voted for the

amendment by Mr. Morley. ... Financial questions were

extremely embarrassing to the Government, and it was not until

the 30th of April that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was

ready with his financial statement. He was called upon to deal

with a deficit of upwards of a million, with a greatly

depressed revenue, and with an estimated expenditure for the

current year--including the vote of credit--of no less than

£100,000,000. Amongst Mr. Childers's proposals was one to levy

upon land an amount of taxation proportioned to that levied on

personal property. There was also an augmentation of the

spirit duties and of the beer duty. The country members were

dissatisfied and demanded that no new charges should be thrown

on the land till the promised relief of local taxation had

been carried out. The agricultural and the liquor interests

were discontented, as well as the Scotch and Irish members

with the whiskey duty. The Chancellor made some concessions,

but they were not regarded as sufficient, and on the Monday

after the Whitsun holidays, the Opposition joined battle on a

motion by Sir M. Hicks Beach. ... Mr. Gladstone stated at the

close of the debate that the Government would resign if

defeated. The amendment was carried against them by 264 to

252, and the Ministry went out. ... Lord Salisbury became

Premier. ... The general election ... [was] fixed for November

1885."

G. B. Smith,

The Prime Ministers of Queen Victoria,

pages 373-377.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1885-1886.

The partition of East Africa with Germany.

See AFRICA: A. D. 1884-1889.

{979}

ENGLAND: A. D. 1885-1886.

Mr. Gladstone's return to power.

His Home Rule Bill for Ireland and his Irish Land Bill.

Their defeat.

Division of the Liberal Party.

Lord Salisbury's Ministry.

"The House of Commons which had been elected in November and

December, 1885, was the first House of Commons which

represented the whole body of the householders and lodgers of

the United Kingdom. The result of the appeal to new

constituencies and an enlarged electorate had taken all

parties by surprise. The Tories found themselves, by the help

of their Irish allies, successful in the towns beyond all

their hopes; the Liberals, disappointed in the boroughs, had

found compensation in unexpected successes in the counties;

and the Irish Nationalists had almost swept the board. ... The

English representation--exclusive of one Irish Nationalist for

Liverpool--gave a liberal majority of 28 in the English

constituencies; which Wales and Scotland swelled to 106. The

Irish representation had undergone a still more remarkable

change. Of 103 members for the sister island, 85 were Home

Rulers and only 18 were Tories. ... The new House of Commons

was exactly divided between the Liberals on one side and the

Tories with their Irish allies on the other. Of its 670

members just one-half, or 335, were Liberals, 249 were Tories,

and 86 were Irish Nationalists [or Home Rulers]. ... It was

soon clear enough that the alliance between the Tory Ministers

and the Irish Nationalists was at an end." On the 25th of

January 1886, the Government was defeated on an amendment to

the address, and on the 28th it resigned. Mr. Gladstone was

invited to form a Ministry and did so with Lord Herschell for

Lord Chancellor, Sir William Harcourt for Chancellor of the

Exchequer, Mr. Childers for Home Secretary, Lord Granville for

Secretary for the Colonies, Mr. John Morley for Chief

Secretary for Ireland, and Mr. Chamberlain for President of

the Local Government Board. On the 29th of March "Mr.

Gladstone announced in the House of Commons that on the 8th of

April he would ask for leave to bring in a bill 'to amend the

provision for the future government of Ireland'; and that on

the 15th he would ask leave to bring in a measure 'to make

amended provision for the sale and purchase of land in

Ireland.'" The same day Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Trevelyan

(Secretary for Ireland) resigned their seats in the Cabinet,

and it was generally understood that differences of opinion on

the Irish bills had arisen. On the 8th of April the House of

Commons was densely crowded when Mr. Gladstone introduced his

measure for giving Home Rule to Ireland. In a speech which

lasted three hours and a half he set forth the details of his

plan and the reasons on which they were based. The essential

conditions observed in the framing of the measure, as he

defined them, were these: "The unity of the Empire must not be

placed in jeopardy; the minority must be protected; the

political equality of the three countries must be maintained,

and there must be an equitable distribution of Imperial

burdens. He then discussed some proposals which had been made

for the special treatment of Ulster--its exclusion from the

bill, its separate autonomy or the reservation of certain

matters, such as education, for Provincial Councils; all of

which he rejected. The establishment of an Irish legislature

involved the removal of Irish peers from the House of Lords

and the Irish representatives from the House of Commons. But

if Ireland was not represented at Westminster, how was it to

be taxed? The English people would never force on Ireland

taxation without representation. The taxing power would be in

the hands of the Irish legislature, but Customs and Excise

duties connected with Customs would be solely in the control

of the Imperial Parliament, Ireland's share in these being

reserved for Ireland's use. Ireland must have security against

her Magna Charta being tampered with; the provision of the Act

would therefore only be capable of modification with the

concurrence of the Irish legislature, or after the recall of

the Irish members to the two Houses of Parliament. The Irish

legislature would have all the powers which were not specially

reserved from it in the Act. It was to consist of two orders,

though not two Houses. It would be subject to all the

prerogatives of the Crown; it would have nothing to do with

Army or Navy, or with Foreign or Colonial relations; nor could

it modify the Act on which its own authority was based.

Contracts, charters, questions of education, religious

endowments and establishments, would be beyond its authority.

Trade and navigation, coinage, currency, weights and measures,

copyright, census, quarantine laws, and some other matters,

were not to be within the powers of the Irish Parliament. The

composition of the legislature was to be first, the 103

members now representing Ireland with 101, elected by the same

constituencies, with the exception of the University, with

power to the Irish legislature to give two members to the

Royal University if it chose; then the present Irish members

of the House of Lords, with 75 elected by the Irish people

under a property qualification. The Viceroyalty was to be

left, but the Viceroy was not to quit office with an outgoing

government, and no religious disability was to affect his

appointment. He would have a Privy Council, and the executive

would remain as at present, but might be changed by the action

of the legislative body. The present judges would preserve their

lien on the Consolidated Fund of Great Britain, and the Queen

would be empowered to antedate their pensions if it was seen

to be desirable. Future judges, with the exception of two in

the Court of Exchequer, would be appointed by the Irish

government, and, like English judges, would hold their office

during good behaviour. The Constabulary would remain under its

present administration, Great Britain paying all charges over

a million. Eventually, however, the whole police of Ireland

would be under the Irish government. The civil servants would

have two years' grace, with a choice of retirement on pension

before passing under the Irish executive. Of the financial

arrangements Mr. Gladstone spoke in careful and minute detail.

He fixed the proportion of Imperial charges Ireland should pay at

one-fifteenth, or in other words she would pay one part and

Great Britain fourteen parts. More than a million of duty is

paid on spirits in Ireland which come to Great Britain, and

this would be practically a contribution towards the Irish

revenue. So with Irish porter and with the tobacco

manufactured in Ireland and sold here. Altogether the British

taxpayers would contribute in this way £1,400,000 a year to

the Irish Exchequer; reducing the actual payment of Ireland

itself for Imperial affairs to one-twenty-sixth." On the 16th

of April Mr. Gladstone introduced his Irish Land Bill,

connecting it with the Home Rule Bill as forming part of one

great measure for the pacification of Ireland. In the meantime

the opposition to his policy within the ranks of the Liberal

party had been rapidly taking form. It Mr. Trevelyan, Sir

Henry James, Sir John Lubbock, Mr. Goschen, and Mr. Courtney.

It soon received the support of Mr. John Bright. The debate in

the House, which lasted until the 3rd of June, was passionate

and bitter.

{980}

It ended in the defeat of the Government by a majority of 30

against the bill. The division was the largest which had ever

been taken in the House of Commons, 657 members being present.

The majority was made up of 249 Conservatives and 94 Liberals.

The minority consisted of 228 Liberals and 85 Nationalists.

Mr. Gladstone appealed to the country by a dissolution of

Parliament. The elections were adverse to him, resulting in

the return to Parliament of members representing the several

parties and sections of parties as follows:

Home Rule Liberals, or Gladstonians, 194,

Irish Nationalists 85

total 279;

seceding Liberals 75,

Conservatives 316

total 391.

Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues resigned and a new Ministry

was formed under Lord Salisbury. The Liberals, in alliance

with the Conservatives and giving their support to Lord

Salisbury's Government, became organized as a distinct party

under the leadership of Lord Hartington, and took the name of

Liberal Unionists.

P. W. Clayden,

England under the Coalition,

chapters 1-6.

ALSO IN:

H. D. Traill,

The Marquis of Salisbury,

chapter 12.

Annual Register, 1885, 1886.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1885-1888.

Termination of the Fishery Articles of the Treaty of

Washington.

Renewed controversies with the United States.

The rejected Treaty.

See FISHERIES, NORTH AMERICAN: A. D. 1877-1888.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1886.

Defeat of Mr. Parnell's Tenants' Relief Bill.

The plan of campaign in Ireland.

See IRELAND: A. D. 1886.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1886-1893.

The Bering Sea Controversy and Arbitration.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1886-1893.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1890.

Settlement of African questions with Germany.

Cession of Heligoland.

See AFRICA: A. D. 1884-1889.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1891.

The Free Education Bill.

See EDUCATION, MODERN: EUROPEAN COUNTRIES.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1891.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1892-1893.

The fourth Gladstone Ministry.

Passage of the Irish Home Rule Bill by the House of Commons.

Its defeat by the Lords.

On the 28th of June, 1892, Parliament was dissolved, having

been in existence since 1886, and a new Parliament was

summoned to meet on the 4th of August. Great excitement

prevailed in the ensuing elections, which turned almost

entirely on the question of Home Rule for Ireland. The Liberal

or Gladstonian party, favoring Home Rule, won a majority of 42

in the House of Commons; but in the representation of England

alone there was a majority of 70 returned against it. In

Ireland, the representation returned was 103 for Home Rule,

and 23 against; in Scotland, 51 for and 21 against; in Wales,

28 for and 2 against. Conservatives and Liberal Unionists

(opposing Home Rule) lost little ground in the boroughs, as

compared with the previous Parliament, but largely in the

counties. As the result of the election, Lord Salisbury and

his Ministry resigned August 12, and Mr. Gladstone was

summoned to form a Government. In the new Cabinet, which was

announced four days later, Earl Rosebery became Foreign

Secretary; Baron Herschell, Lord Chancellor; Sir William

Vernon Harcourt, Chancellor of the Exchequer; Mr. Herbert H.

Asquith, Home Secretary; and Mr. John Morley, Chief Secretary

for Ireland. Although the new Parliament assembled in August,

1892, it was not until the 13th of February following that Mr.

Gladstone introduced his bill to establish Home Rule in

Ireland. The bill was under debate in the House of Commons

until the night of September 1, 1893, when it passed that body

by a vote of 301 to 267. "The bill provides for a Legislature

for Ireland, consisting of the Queen and of two Houses--the

Legislative Council and the Legislative Assembly. This

Legislature, with certain restrictions, is authorized to make

laws for the peace, order, and good government of Ireland in

respect of matters exclusively relating to Ireland or some

part thereof. The bill says that the powers of the Irish

Legislature shall not extend to the making of any law

respecting the establishment or endowment of religion or

prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or imposing any

disability or conferring any privilege on account of religious

belief, or whereby any person may be deprived of life,

liberty, or property without due process of law, or whereby

private property may be taken without just compensation.

According to the bill the executive power in Ireland shall

continue vested in her Majesty the Queen, and the Lord

Lieutenant, on behalf of her Majesty, shall exercise any

prerogatives or other executive power of the Queen the

exercise of which may be delegated to him by her Majesty, and

shall in the Queen's name summon, prorogue, and dissolve the

Legislature. An Executive Committee of the Privy Council of

Ireland is provided for, which 'shall aid and advise in the

government of Ireland.' The Lord Lieutenant, with the advice

and consent of the Executive Council, is authorized to give or

withhold the assent of her Majesty to bills passed by the houses

of the Legislature. The Legislative Council by the terms of

the bill shall consist of forty-eight Councilors. Every man

shall be entitled to vote for a Councilor who owns or occupies

any land or tenement of a ratable value of £20. The term of

office of the Councilors is to be for eight years, which is

not to be affected by dissolution, but one-half of the

Councilors shall retire in every fourth year and their seats

be filled by a new election. The Legislative Assembly is to

consist of 103 members returned by the Parliamentary

constituencies existing at present in Ireland. This Assembly,

unless sooner dissolved, may exist for five years. The bill

also provides for 80 Irish members in the House of Commons. In

regard to finance, the bill provides that for the purposes of

this act the public revenue shall be divided into general

revenue and special revenue, and general revenue shall consist

of the gross revenue collected in Ireland from taxes; the portion

due to Ireland of the hereditary revenues of the crown which

are managed by the Commissioners of Woods, an annual sum for

the customs and excise duties collected in Great Britain on

articles consumed in Ireland, provided that an annual sum of

the customs and excise duties collected in Ireland on articles

consumed in Great Britain shall be deducted from the revenue

collected in Ireland and treated as revenue collected in Great

Britain; these annual sums to be determined by a committee

appointed jointly by the Irish Government and the Imperial

Treasury. It is also provided that one-third of the general

revenue of Ireland and also that portion of any imperial

miscellaneous revenue to which Ireland may claim to be

entitled shall be paid into the Treasury of the United Kingdom

as the contribution of Ireland to imperial liabilities and

expenditures; this plan to continue for a term of six years,

at the end of which time a new scheme of tax division shall be

devised.

{981}

The Legislature, in order to meet expenses of the public

service, is authorized to impose taxes other than those now

existing in Ireland. Ireland should also have charged up

against her and be compelled to pay out of her own Treasury

all salaries and pensions of Judges and liabilities of all

kinds which Great Britain has assumed for her benefit. The

bill further provides that appeal from courts in Ireland to

the House of Lords shall cease and that all persons having the

right of appeal shall have a like right to appeal to the Queen in

council. The term of office of the Lord Lieutenant is fixed at

six years. Ultimately the Royal Irish Constabulary shall cease

to exist and no force other than the ordinary civil police

shall be permitted to be formed. The Irish Legislature shall

be summoned to meet on the first Tuesday in September, 1894,

and the first election for members shall be held at such time

before that day as may be fixed by her Majesty in council." In

the House of Lords, the bill was defeated on the 8th of

September--the second reading postponed to a day six months

from that date--by the overwhelming vote of 419 to 41.

----------ENGLAND: End----------

ENGLE.--ENGLISH.

See ANGLES AND JUTES;

also, ENGLAND: A. D. 547-633.

ENGLISH PALE, The.

See PALE, THE ENGLISH.

ENGLISH SWEAT, The.

See SWEATING SICKNESS.

ENGLISHRY.

To check the assassination of his tyrannical Norman followers

by the exasperated English, William the Conqueror ordained

that the whole Hundred within which one was slain should pay a

heavy penalty. "In connexion with this enactment there grew up

the famous law of 'Englishry,' by which every murdered man was

presumed to be a Norman, unless proofs of 'Englishry' were

made by the four nearest relatives of the deceased.

'Presentments of Englishry,' as they were technically termed,

are recorded in the reign of Richard I., but not later."

T. P. Taswell-Langmead,

English Constitutional History.

page 68.

ENNISKILLEN, The defence of.

See IRELAND: A. D. 1688-1689.

ENÔMOTY, The.

In the Spartan military organization the enômoty "was a small

company of men, the number of whom was variable, being given

differently at 25, 32, or 36 men,--drilled and practised

together in military evolutions, and bound to each other by a

common oath. Each Enômoty had a separate captain or

enomotarch, the strongest and ablest soldier of the company."

G. Grote,

History of Greece,

part 2, chapter 8.

ENRIQUE.

See HENRY.

ENSISHEIM, Battle of (1674).

See NETHERLANDS (HOLLAND): A. D. 1674-1678.

EORL AND CEORL.

"The modern English forms of these words have completely lost

their ancient meaning. The word 'Earl,' after several

fluctuations, has settled down as the title of one rank in the

Peerage; the word 'Churl' has come to be a word of moral

reprobation, irrespective of the rank of the person who is

guilty of the offence. But in the primary meaning of the

words, 'Eorl' and 'Ceorl'--words whose happy jingle causes

them to be constantly opposed to each other--form an

exhaustive division of the free members of the state. The

distinction in modern language is most nearly expressed br the

words 'Gentle' and 'Simple.' The 'Ceorl' is the simple

freeman, the mere unit in the army or in the assembly, whom no

distinction of birth or office marks out from his fellows."

E. A. Freeman,

History of the Norman Conquest of England,

chapter 3, section 2.

See, also, ETHEL;

and ENGLAND: A. D. 958.

EORMEN STREET.

See ERMYN STREET.

EPAMINONDAS, and the greatness of Thebes.

See GREECE: B. C. 379-371, and 371-362;

also THEBES: B. C. 378.

EPEIROS.

See Epmus.

EPHAH, The.

"The ephah, or bath, was the unit of measures of capacity for

both liquids and grain [among the ancient Jews]. The ephah is

considered by Queipo to have been the measure of water

contained in the ancient Egyptian cubic foot, and thus

equivalent to 29.376 litres, or 6.468 imperial gallons, and to

have been nearly identical with the ancient Egyptian artaba

and the Greek metretes. For liquids, the ephah was divided

into six hin, and the twelfth part of the hin was the log. As

a grain measure, the ephah was divided into ten omers, or

gomers. The omer measure of manna gathered by the Israelites

in the desert as a day's food for each adult person was thus

equal to 2.6 imperial quarts. The largest measure of capacity

both for liquids and dry commodities was the cor of twelve

ephahs."

H. W. Chisholm,

On the Science of Weighing and Measuring,

chapter 2.

EPHES-DAMMIM, Battle of.

The battle which followed David's encounter with Goliath, the

gigantic Philistine.

1 Samuel, xvii.

EPHESIA, The.

See IONIC (PAN-IONIC) AMPHIKTYONY.

EPHESUS.

The Ephesian Temple.

"The ancient city of Ephesus was situated on the river

Cayster, which falls into the Bay of Scala Nova, on the

western coast of Asia Minor. Of the origin and foundation of

Ephesus we have no historical record. Stories were told which

ascribed the settlement of the place to Androklos, the son of

the Athenian king, Codrus. ... With other Ionian cities of

Asia Minor, Ephesus fell into the hands of Crœsus, the last of

the kings of Lydia, and, on the overthrow of Crœsus by Cyrus,

it passed under the heavier yoke of the Persian despot.

Although from that time, during a period of at least five

centuries, to the conquest by the Romans, the city underwent

great changes of fortune, it never lost its grandeur and

importance. The Temple of Artemis (Diana), whose splendour has

almost become proverbial, tended chiefly to make Ephesus the most

attractive and notable of all the cities of Asia Minor. Its

magnificent harbour was filled with Greek and Phenician

merchantmen, and multitudes flocked from all parts to profit

by its commerce and to worship at the shrine of its tutelary

goddess. The City Port was fully four miles from the sea,

which has not, as has been supposed, receded far. ... During

the generations which immediately followed the conquest of

Lydia and the rest of Asia Minor by the Persian kings, the

arts of Greece attained their highest perfection, and it was

within this short period of little more than two centuries

that the great Temple of Artemis was three times built upon

the same site, and, as recent researches have found, each time

on the same grand scale."

J. T. Wood,

Discoveries at Ephesus,

chapter 1.

{982}

The excavations which were carried on at Ephesus by Mr. Wood,

for the British Museum, during eleven years, from 1863 until

1874, resulted in the uncovering of a large part of the site

of the great Temple and the determining of its architectural

features, besides bringing to light many inscriptions and much

valuable sculpture. The account given in the work named above

is exceedingly interesting.

EPHESUS: Ionian conquest and occupation.

See ASIA MINOR: THE GREEK COLONIES.

EPHESUS: Ancient Commerce.

"The spot on the Asiatic coast which corresponded most nearly

with Corinth on the European, was Ephesus, a city which, in

the time of Herodotus, had been the starting point of caravans

for Upper Asia, but which, under the change of dynasties and

ruin of empires, had dwindled into a mere provincial town. The

mild sway of Augustus restored it to wealth and eminence, and

as the official capital of the province of Asia, it was

reputed to be the metropolis of no less than 500 cities."

C. Merivale,

History of the Romans,

chapter 40.

EPHESUS: A. D. 267.

Destruction by the Goths of the Temple of Diana.

See GOTHS: A. D. 258-267.

EPHESUS: A. D. 431 and 449.

The General Council and the "Robber Synod."

See NESTORIAN AND MONOPHYSITE CONTROVERSY.

----------EPHESUS: End----------

EPHETÆ, The.

A board of fifty-one judges instituted by the legislation of

Draco, at Athens, for the trial of crimes of bloodshed upon

the Areopagus.

G. Schömann,

Antiquities of Greece: The State,

part 3, chapter 3.

EPHORS.

"Magistrates, called by the name of Ephors, existed in many

Dorian as well as in other States [of ancient Greece],

although our knowledge with regard to them extends no further

than to the fact of their existence; while the name, which

signifies quite generally 'overseers,' affords room for no

conclusion as to their political position or importance. In

Sparta, however, the Board of Five Ephors became, in the

course of time, a magistracy of such dignity and influence

that no other can be found in any free State with which it can

be compared. Concerning its first institution nothing certain

can be ascertained. ... The following appears to be a probable

account:--The Ephors were originally magistrates appointed by

the kings, partly to render them special assistance in the

judicial decision of private disputes,--a function which they

continued to exercise in later times,--partly to undertake,

as lieutenants of the kings, other of their functions, during

their absence in military service, or through some other

cause. ... When the monarchy and the Gerousia wished to

re-establish their ancient influence in opposition to the

popular assembly, they were obliged to agree to a concession

which should give some security to the people that this power

should not be abused to their detriment. This concession

consisted in the fact that the Ephors were independently

authorized to exercise control over the kings themselves. ...

The Ephors were enabled to interfere in every department of

the administration, and to remove or punish whatever they

found to be contrary to the laws or adverse to the public

interest."

G. F. Schömann,

Antiquities of Greece: The State,

part 3, chapter 1, section 8.

See, also, SPARTA: THE CONSTITUTION, &c.

EPHTHALITES, The.

See HUNS, THE WHITE.

EPIDAMNUS.

See GREECE: B. C. 435-432;

and KORKYRA.

EPIDII, The.

See BRITAIN, CELTIC TRIBES.

EPIGAMIA.

The right of marriage in ancient Athens.

G. F. Schömann, Antiquities of Greece: The State,

part 3, chapter 3.

EPIGONI, The.

See BŒOTIA.

EPIPOLÆ.

One of the parts or divisions of the ancient city of Syracuse,

Sicily.

EPIROT LEAGUE, The.

"The temporary greatness of the Molossian kingdom [of Epeiros,

or Epirus] under Alexander and Pyrrhus is matter of general

history. Our immediate business is with the republican

government which succeeded on the bloody extinction of royalty

and the royal line [which occurred B. C. 239]. Epeiros now

became a republic; of the details of its constitution we know

nothing, but its form can hardly fail to have been federal.

The Epeirots formed one political body; Polybios always speaks

of them, like the Achaians and Akarnanians, as one people

acting with one will. Decrees are passed, ambassadors are sent

and received, in the name of the whole Epeirot people, and

Epeiros had, like Akarnania, a federal coinage bearing the

common name of the whole nation."

E. A. Freeman,

History of Federal Government,

book 4, section 1.

EPIRUS.--THE EPIROTS.

"Passing over the borders of Akarnania [in ancient western

Greece] we find small nations or tribes not considered as

Greeks, but known, from the fourth century B. C. downwards,

under the common name of Epirots. This word signifies,

properly, inhabitants of a continent, as opposed to those of

an island or a peninsula. It came only gradually to be applied

by the Greeks as their comprehensive denomination to designate

all those diverse tribes, between the Ambrakian Gulf on the

south and west, Pindus on the east, and the Illyrians and

Macedonians to the north and north-east. Of these Epirots the

principal were--the Chaonians, Thesprotians, Kassopians, and

Molossians, who occupied the country inland as well as

maritime along the Ionian Sea, from the Akrokeraunian

mountains to the borders of Ambrakia in the interior of the

Ambrakian Gulf. ... Among these various tribes it is difficult

to discriminate the semi-Hellenic from the non-Hellenic; for

Herodotus considers both Molossians and Thesprotians as

Hellenic,--and the oracle of Dôdôna, as well as the

Nekyomanteion (or holy cavern for evoking the dead) of

Acheron, were both in the territory of the Thesprotians, and

both (in the time of the historian) Hellenic. Thucydides, on

the other hand, treats both Molossians and Thesprotians as

barbaric. ... Epirus is essentially a pastoral country: its

cattle as well as its shepherds and shepherds' dogs were

celebrated throughout all antiquity; and its population then,

as now, found divided village residence the most suitable to

their means and occupations. ... Both the Chaonians and

Thesprotians appear, in the time of Thucydides, as having no

kings: there was a privileged kingly race, but the presiding

chief was changed from year to year. The Molossians, however,

had a line of kings, succeeding from father to son, which

professed to trace its descent through fifteen generations

downward from Achilles and Neoptolemus to Tharypas about the

year 400 B. C."

G. Grote,

History of Greece,

part 2, chapter 24.

{983}

The Molossian kings subsequently extended their sovereignty

over the whole country and styled themselves kings of Epirus.

Pyrrhus, whose war with Rome (see ROME: B. C. 282-275) is one

of the well known episodes of history, was the most ambitious

and energetic of the dynasty (see MACEDONIA: B. C. 297-280);

Hannibal reckoned him among the greatest of soldiers. In the

next century Epirus fell under the dominion of Rome.

Subsequently it formed part of the Byzantine empire; then

became a separate principality, ruled by a branch of the

imperial Comnenian family; was conquered by the Turks in 1466

and is now represented by the southern half of the province of

Turkey, called Albania.

See, also, ŒNOTRIANS.

EPIRUS: A. D. 1204-1350.

The Greek Despotat.

From the ruins of the Byzantine empire, overthrown by the

Crusaders and the Venetians in 1204, "that portion ...

situated to the west of the range of Pindus was saved from

feudal domination by Michael, a natural son of Constantine

Angelos, the uncle of the Emperors Isaac II. and Alexius III.

After the conquest of Constantinople, he escaped into Epirus,

where his marriage with a lady of the country gave him some

influence; and assuming the direction of the administration of

the whole country from Dyrrachium to Naupactus, he collected a

considerable military force, and established the seat of his

authority generally at Ioannina or Arta. ... History has

unfortunately preserved very little information concerning the

organisation and social condition of the different classes and

races which inhabited the dominions of the princes of Epirus.

Almost the only facts that have been preserved relate to the

wars and alliances of the despots and their families with the

Byzantine emperors and the Latin princes. ... They all assumed

the name of Angelos Komnenos Dukas; and the title of despot,

by which they are generally distinguished, was a Byzantine

honorary distinction, never borne by the earlier members of

the family until it had been conferred on them by the Greek

emperor. Michael I, the founder of the despotat, distinguished

himself by his talents as a soldier and a negotiator. He

extended his authority over all Epirus, Acarnania and Etolia,

and a part of Macedonia and Thessaly. Though virtually

independent, he acknowledged Theodore I. (Laskaris), [at

Nicæa] as the lawful emperor of the East." The able and

unscrupulous brother of Michael, Theodore, who became his

successor in 1214, extinguished by conquest the Lombard

kingdom of Saloniki, in Macedonia (A. D. 1222), and assumed

the title of emperor, in rivalry with the Greek emperor at

Nicæa, establishing his capital at Thessalonica. The empire of

Thessalonica was short lived. Its capital was taken by the

emperor of Nicæa, in 1234, and Michael's son John, then

reigning, was forced to resign the imperial title. The

despotat of Epirus survived for another century, much torn and

distracted by wars and domestic conflicts. In 1350 its

remaining territory was occupied by the king of Servia, and

finally it was swallowed up in the conquests of the Turks.

G. Finlay,

History of Greece from its Conquest by the Crusader,

chapter 6.

ALSO IN:

Sir J. E. Tennent,

History of Modern Greece,

chapter 3.

EPIRUS: Modern History.

See ALBANIANS.

EPISCOPALIAN CHURCH.

See CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

EPISTATES.

The presiding officer of the ancient Athenian council and

popular assembly.

EPONYM.--EPONYMUS.

The name-giver,--the name-giving hero of primitive myths, in

which tribes and races of people set before themselves, partly

by tradition, partly by imagination, an heroic personage who

is supposed to be their common progenitor and the source of

their name.

EPONYM CANON OF ASSYRIA.

See ASSYRIA, EPONYM CANON OF.

EPPING FOREST.

Once so extensive that it covered the whole county of Essex,

England, and was called the Forest of Essex. Subsequently,

when diminished in size, it was called Waltham Forest. Still

later, when further retrenched, it took the name of Epping,

from a town that is embraced in it. It is still quite large,

and within recent years it has been formally declared by the

Queen "a people's park."

J. C. Brown,

Forests of England.

EPULONES, The.

"The epulones [at Rome] formed a college for the

administration of the sacred festivals."

C. Merivale,

History of the Romans,

chapter 31.

EQUADOR.

See ECUADOR.

EQUAL RIGHTS PARTY.

See NEW YORK: A. D. 1835-1837.

EQUESTRIAN ORDER, Roman.

"The selection of the burgess cavalry was vested in the

censors. It was, no doubt, the duty of these to make the

selection on purely military grounds, and at their musters to

insist that all horsemen incapacitated by age or otherwise, or

at all unserviceable, should surrender their public horse; but

it was not easy to hinder them from looking to noble birth

more than to capacity, and from allowing men of standing, who

were once admitted, senators particularly, to retain their

horse beyond the proper time. Accordingly it became the

practical rule for the senators to vote in the eighteen

equestrian centuries, and the other places in these were

assigned chiefly to the younger men of the nobility. The

military system, of course, suffered from this, not so much

through the unfitness for effective service of no small part

of the legionary cavalry, as through the destruction of

military equality to which the change gave rise; the noble

youth more and more withdrew from serving in the infantry, and

the legionary cavalry became a close aristocratic corps."

T. Mommsen,

History of Rome,

book 3, chapter 11.

"The eighteen centuries, therefore, in course of time ... lost

their original military character and remained only as a

voting body. It was by the transformation thus effected in the

character of the eighteen centuries of knights, whilst the

cavalry service passed over to the richer citizens not

included in the senatorial families, that a new class of Roman

citizens began gradually to be formed, distinct from the

nobility proper and from the mass of the people, and

designated as the equestrian order."

W. Ihne,

History of Rome,

book 7, chapter. 1.

The equestrian order became a legally constituted class under

the judicial law of Caius Gracchus, B. C. 123, which fixed its

membership by a census, and transferred to it the judicial

functions previously exercised by the senators only. It formed

a kind of monetary aristocracy, as a counterweight to the

nobility.

W. Ihne,

History of Rome,

book 7, chapter 6.

{984}

ERA, Christian.

"Unfortunately for ancient Chronology, there was no one fixed

or universally established Era. Different countries reckoned

by different eras, whose number is embarrassing, and their

commencements not always easily to be adjusted or reconciled

to each other; and it was not until A. D. 532 that the

Christian Era was invented by Dionysius Exiguus, a Scythian by

birth, and a Roman Abbot, who flourished in the reign of

Justinian. ... Dionysius began his era with the year of our

Lord's incarnation and nativity, in U. C. 753, of the

Varronian Computation, or the 45th of the Julian Era. And at

an earlier period, Panodorus, an Egyptian monk, who flourished

under the Emperor Arcadius, A. D. 395, had dated the

incarnation in the same year. But by some mistake, or

misconception of his meaning, Bede, who lived in the next

century after Dionysius, adopted his year of the Nativity, U.

C. 753, yet began the Vulgar Era, which he first introduced,

the year after, and made it commence Jan. 1, U. C. 754, which

was an alteration for the worse, as making the Christian Era

recede a year further from the true year of the Nativity. The

Vulgar Era began to prevail in the West about the time of

Charles Martel and Pope Gregory II. A. D. 730. ... But it was

not established till the time of Pope Eugenius IV. A. D. 1431,

who ordered this era to be used in the public Registers. ...

Dionysius was led to date the year of the Nativity, U. C. 753,

from the Evangelist Luke's account that John the Baptist began

his ministry 'in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius

Cæsar'; and that Jesus, at his baptism, 'was beginning to be

about 30 years of age.' Luke iii. 1-23. ... But this date of

the Nativity is at variance with Matthew's account, that

Christ was born before Herod's death; which followed shortly

after his massacre of the infants at Bethlehem. ... Christ's

birth, therefore, could not have been earlier than U. C. 748,

nor later than U. C. 749. And if we assume the latter year, as

most conformable to the whole tenor of Sacred History, with

Chrysostom, Petavius, Prideaux, Playfair, &c., this would give

Christ's age at his baptism, about 34 years; contrary to

Luke's account."

W. Hales,

New Analysis of Chronology,

volume 1, book l.

In a subsequent table, Mr. Hales gives the results of the

computations made by different chronologists, ancient and

modern, to fix the true year of the Nativity, as accommodated

to what is called "the vulgar," or popularly accepted,

Christian Era. The range is through no less than ten years,

from B. C. 7 to A. D. 3. His own conclusion, supported by

Prideaux and Playfair, is in favor of the year B. C. 5.

Somewhat more commonly at the present time, it is put at B. C.

4.

See, also, JEWS: B. C. 8-A. D. 1.

ERA, French Revolutionary.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1792 (SEPTEMBER-NOVEMBER),

and 1793 (OCTOBER).

ERA, Gregorian.

See CALENDAR, GREGORIAN.

ERA, Jalalæan.

See TURKS (THE SELJUK): A. D. 1073-1092.

ERA, Julian.

See CALENDAR, JULIAN.

ERA, Mahometan, or Era of the Hegira.

"The epoch of the Era of the Hegira is, according to the civil

calculation, Friday, the 16th of July, A. D. 622, the day of

the flight of Mahomet from Mecca to Medina, which is the date

of the Mahometans; but astronomers and some historians assign

it to the preceding day, viz., Thursday, the 15th of July; an

important fact to be borne in mind when perusing Arabian

writers. The years of the Hegira are lunar years, and contain

twelve months, each commencing with the new moon; a practice

which necessarily leads to great confusion and uncertainty,

inasmuch as every year must begin considerably earlier in the

season than the preceding. In chronology and history, however,

and in dating their public instruments, the Turks use months

which contain alternately thirty and twenty-nine days,

excepting the last month, which, in intercalary years,

contains thirty days. ... The years of the Hegira are divided

into cycles of thirty years, nineteen of which are termed

common years, of 354 days each; and the eleven others

intercalary, or abundant, from their consisting of one day

more: these are the 2d, 5th, 7th, 10th, 13th, 16th, 18th,

21st, 24th, 26th and 29th. To ascertain whether any given year

be intercalary or not divide it by 30; and if either of the

above numbers remain, the year is one of 355 days."

Sir H. Nicolas,

Chronology of History.

See, also, MAHOMETAN CONQUEST: A. D. 609-632.

ERA, Spanish.

"The Spanish era dates from 38 B. C. (A. U. 716) and is

supposed to mark some important epoch in the organization of

the province by the Romans. It may coincide with the campaign

of Calvinus, which is only known to us from a notice in the

Fasti Triumphales. ... The Spanish era was preserved in Aragon

till 1358, in Castile till 1383, and in Portugal till 1415."

C. Merivale,

History of the Romans,

chapter 34, note.

ERA OF DIOCLETIAN, or Era of Martyrs.

See ROME: A. D. 192-284.

ERA OF GOOD FEELING.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1821-1824.

ERA OF THE FOUNDATION OF ROME.

See ROME: B. C. 753.

ERA OF THE OLYMPIADS.

See OLYMPIADS, ERA OF THE.

ERANI.

Associations existing in ancient Athens which resembled the

mutual benefit or friendly-aid societies of modern times.

G. F. Schömann,

Antiquity of Greece: The State,

part 3, chapter 3.

ERASTIANISM.

A doctrine which "received its name from Thomas Erastus, a

German physician of the 16th century, contemporary with

Luther. The work in which he delivered his theory and

reasonings on the subject is entitled 'De Excommunicatione

Ecclesiastica.' ... The Erastians ... held that religion is an

affair between man and his creator, in which no other man or

society of men was entitled to interpose. ... Proceeding on

this ground, they maintained that every man calling himself a

Christian has a right to make resort to any Christian place of

worship, and partake in all its ordinances. Simple as this

idea is, it strikes at the root of all priestcraft."

W. Godwin,

History of the Commonwealth,

volume 1, chapter 13.

ERCTÉ, Mount, Hamilcar on.

See PUNIC WAR, THE FIRST.

See, also, ERYX.

ERDINI, The.

See IRELAND, TRIBES OF EARLY CELTIC INHABITANTS.

EREMITES OF ST. FRANCIS.

See MINIMS.

ERETRIA.

See CHALCIS AND ERETRIA.

ERFURT, IMPERIAL CONFERENCE AND TREATY OF.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1808 (SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER).

{985}

ERECTHEION AT ATHENS, The.

"At a very early period there was, opposite the long northern

side of the Parthenon, a temple which, according to Herodot,

was dedicated jointly to Athene Polias and the Attic hero,

Erectheus. ... This temple was destroyed by fire while the

Persians held the city. Not unlikely the rebuilding of the

Erectheion was begun by Perikles together with that of the

other destroyed temples of the Akropolis; but as it was not

finished by him, it is generally not mentioned amongst his

works. ... This temple was renowned amongst the ancients as

one of the most beautiful and perfect in existence, and seems

to have remained almost intact down to the time of the Turks.

The siege of Athens by the Venetians in 1687 seems to have

been fatal to the Erectheion, as it was to the Parthenon."

E. Guhl and W. Koner,

Life of the Greeks,

section 14.

See, also, ACROPOLIS OF ATHENS.

ERIC,

King of Denmark, Sweden and Norway, A. D. 1412-1439.

Eric Blodaexe, King of Norway, A. D. 934-940.

Eric I., King of Denmark, A. D: 850-854.

Eric I. (called Saint), King of Sweden, A. D. 1155-1161.

Eric II., King of Denmark, A. D. 854-883.

Eric II., King of·Norway, A. D. 1280-1299.

Eric II. (Knutsson), King of Sweden, A. D. 1210-1216.

Eric III., King of Denmark, A. D. 1095-1103.

Eric III. (called The Stammerer), King of Sweden, A. D. 1222-1250.

Eric IV., King of Denmark, A. D. 1134-1137.

Eric V., King of Denmark, A. D. 1137-1147.

Eric VI., King of Denmark, A. D. 1241-1250.

Eric VII., King of Denmark, A. D. 1259-1286.

Eric VIII., King of Denmark, A. D. 1286-1319.

Eric XIV., King of Sweden, A. D. 1560-1568.

ERICSSON, John

Invention and construction of the Monitor.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1862 (MARCH).

ERIE, The City of: A. D. 1735.

Site occupied by the French.

See CANADA: A. D. 1700-1735.

ERIE, Fort: A. D. 1764-1791.

Origin.

Four years after the British conquest of Canada, in 1764,

Colonel John Bradstreet built a blockhouse and stockade near

the site of the later Fort Erie, which was not constructed

until 1791. When war with the United States broke out, in

1812, the British considered the new fort untenable, or

unnecessary, and evacuated and partly destroyed it, in May,

1813.

C. K. Remington,

Old Fort Erie.

ERIE, Fort: A. D. 1814.

The siege and the destruction.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1814 (JULY-SEPTEMBER).

ERIE, Fort: A. D. 1866.

The Fenian invasion.

See CANADA: A. D. 1866-1871.

----------ERIE: End----------

ERIE, Lake:

The Indian name.

See NIAGARA: THE NAME, &c.

ERIE, Lake: A. D. 1679.

Navigated by La Salle.

See CANADA: A. D. 1669-1687.

ERIE, Lake: A. D. 1813.

Perry's naval victory.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1812-1813.

----------ERIE, Lake: End----------

ERIE CANAL, Construction of the.

See NEW YORK: A. D. 1817-1825.

ERIES, The.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: HURONS, &c.,

and IROQUOIS CONFEDERACY: THEIR CONQUESTS.

ERIN.

See IRELAND.

ERMANRIC, OR HERMANRIC, The empire of.

See GOTHS (OSTROGOTHS): A. D. 350-375; and 376.

ERMYN STREET.

A corruption of Eormen street, the Saxon name of one of the

great Roman roads in Britain, which ran from London to

Lincoln. Some writers trace it northwards through York to the

Scottish border and southward to Pevensey.

See ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

ERNESTINE LINE OF SAXONY.

See SAXONY: A. D. 1180-1553.

ERPEDITANI, The.

See IRELAND, TRIBES OF EARLY CELTIC INHABITANTS.

ERTANG, The.

The sacred book of the Manicheans.

See MANICHEANS.

ERYTHRÆ.-ERYTHRÆAN SIBYL.

Erythræ was an ancient Ionian city on the Lydian coast of Asia

Minor, opposite the island of Chios or Scio. It was chiefly

famous as the home or seat of one of the most venerated of the

sibyls--prophetic women--of antiquity. The collection of

Sibylline oracles which was sacredly preserved at Rome appears

to have been largely derived from Erythræ. The Cumæan Sibyl is

sometimes identified with her Erythræan sister, who is said to

have passed into Europe.

See, also, SIBYLS.

ERYTHRÆAN SEA, The.

The Erythræan Sea, in the widest sense of the term, as used by

the ancients, comprised "the Arabian Gulf (or what we now call

the Red Sea), the coasts of Africa outside the straits of Bab

el Mandeb as far as they had then been explored, as well as

those of Arabia and India down to the extremity of the Malabar

coast." The Periplus of the Erythræan Sea is a geographical

treatise of great importance which we owe to some unknown

Greek writer supposed to be nearly contemporary with Pliny. It

is "a kind of manual for the instruction of navigators and

traders in the Erythræan Sea."

E. H. Bunbury,

History of Ancient Geography,

chapter 25.

"The Erythrêam Sea is an appellation ... in all appearance

deduced [by the ancients] from their entrance into it by the

straits of the Red Sea, styled Erythra by the Greeks, and not

excluding the gulph of Persia, to which the fabulous history

of a king Erythras is more peculiarly appropriate."

W. Vincent,

Periplus of the Erythrêan Sea,

book 1, prelim. disquis.

ERYX.--ERCTE.

A town originally Phoœnician or Carthaginian on the

northwestern coast of Sicily. It stood on the slope of a

mountain which was crowned with an ancient temple of

Aphrodite, and which gave the name Erycina to the goddess when

her worship was introduced at Rome.

See PUNIC WAR, THE FIRST.

ERZEROUM: A. D. 1878.

Taken by the Russians.

See TURKS: A. D. 1877-1878.

ESCOCÉS, The party of the.

See MEXICO: A. D. 1822-1828.

ESCOMBOLI.

See STAMBOUL.

ESCORIAL, The.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1559-1563.

ESCUYER.--ESQUIRE.

See CHIVALRY.

ESDRAELON, Valley of.

See MEGIDDO.

ESKIMO, The.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: ESKIMAUAN FAMILY.

ESNE.

See THEOW.

ESPARTERO, Regency of.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1833-1846.

ESPINOSA, Battle of.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1808 (SEPTEMBER-DECEMBER).

{986}

ESQUILINE, The.

See SEVEN HILLS OF ROME.

ESQUIRE.--ESCUYER.--SQUIRE.

See CHIVALRY.

ESQUIROS, Battle of (1521).

See NAVARRE: A. D. 1442-1521.

ESSELENIAN FAMILY, The.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: ESSELENIAN FAMILY.

ESSENES, The.

See Supplement in volume 5.

ESSEX.

Originally the kingdom formed by that body of the Saxon

conquerors of Britain, in the fifth and sixth centuries, who

acquired, from their geographical position in the island, the

name of the East Saxons. It covered the present county of

Essex and also included London and Middlesex.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 477-527.

ESSEX JUNTO, The.

In the Massachusetts election of 1781, "the representatives of

the State in Congress, and some of the more moderate leaders

at home, opposed Governor Hancock, the popular candidate, and

supported James Bowdoin, who was thought to represent the more

conservative elements. ... It was at this time that Hancock is

said to have bestowed on his opponents the title of the 'Essex

Junto,' and this is the first appearance of the name in

American politics. ... The 'Junto' was generally supposed to

be composed of such men as Theophilus Parsons, George Cabot,

Fisher Ames, Stephen Higginson, the Lowells, Timothy

Pickering, &c., and took its name from the county to which

most of its reputed members originally belonged. ... The

reputed members of the 'Junto' held political power in

Massachusetts [as leaders of the Federalist party] for more

than a quarter of a century." According to Chief Justice

Parsons, as quoted by Colonel Pickering in his Diary, the term

'Essex Junto' was applied by one of the Massachusetts royal

governors, before the Revolution, to certain gentlemen of

Essex county who opposed his measures. Hancock, therefore,

only revived the title and gave it currency, with a new

application.

H. C. Lodge,

Life and Letters of George Cabot,

pages 17-22.

ESSLINGEN, OR ASPERN, Battle of.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1809 (JANUARY-JUNE).

ESSUVII, The.

A Gallic tribe established anciently in the modern French

department of the Orne.

Napoleon III.,

History of Cæsar,

book 3, chapter 2, note.

ESTATES, Assembly of.

"An assembly of estates is an organised collection, made by

representation or otherwise, of the several orders, states or

conditions of men, who are recognised as possessing political

power. A national council of clergy and barons is not an

assembly of estates, because it does not include the body of

the people, the plebs, the simple freemen or commons."

W. Stubbs,

Constitutional History of England,

chapter 15, section 185.

See, also, ESTATES, THE THREE.

ESTATES, The Three.

"The arrangement of the political factors in three estates is

common, with some minor variations, to all the European

constitutions, and depends on a principle of almost universal

acceptance. This classification differs from the system of

caste and from all divisions based on differences of blood or

religion, historical or prehistorical. ... In Christendom it

has always taken the form of a distinction between clergy and

laity, the latter being subdivided according to national

custom into noble and non-noble, patrician and plebeian,

warriors and traders, landowners and craftsmen. ... The

Aragonese cortes contained four brazos or arms, the clergy,

the great barons or ricos hombres, the minor barons, knights

or infanzones, and the towns. The Germanic diet comprised

three colleges, the electors, the princes and the cities, the

two former being arranged in distinct benches, lay and

clerical. ... The Castilian cortes arranged the clergy, the

ricos hombres and the communidades, in three estates. The

Swedish diet was composed of clergy, barons, burghers and

peasants. ... In France, both in the States General and in the

provincial estates, the division is into gentz de l'eglise,

nobles, and gentz des bonnes villes. In England, after a

transitional stage, in which the clergy, the greater and

smaller barons, and the cities and boroughs, seemed likely to

adopt the system used in Aragon and Scotland, and another in

which the county and borough communities continued to assert

an essential difference, the three estates of clergy, lords

and commons, finally emerge as the political constituents of

the nation, or, in their parliamentary form, as the lords

spiritual and temporal and the commons. This familiar formula

in either shape bears the impress of history. The term commons

is not in itself an appropriate expression for the third

estate; it does not signify primarily the simple freemen, the

plebs, but the plebs organised and combined in corporate

communities, in a particular way for particular purposes. The

commons are the communitates or universitates, the organised

bodies of freemen of the shires and towns. ... The third

estate in England differs from the same estate in the

continental constitutions, by including the landowners under

baronial rank. In most of those systems it contains the

representatives of the towns or chartered communities only."

W. Stubbs,

Constitutional History of England,

chapter 15, sections 185, 193.

"The words 'gens de tiers et commun état' are found in many

acts [France] of the 15th century. The expressions 'tiers

état,' 'commun état,' and 'le commun' are used indifferently,

... This name of 'Tiers État, when used in its ordinary sense,

properly comprises only the population of the privileged

cities; but in effect it extends much beyond this; it includes

not only the cities, but the villages and hamlets--not only

the free commonalty, but all those for whom civil liberty is a

privilege still to come."

A. Thierry,

Formation and Progress of the Tiers État in France,

volume 1, pages 61 and 60.

ESTATES, or "States," of the Netherland Provinces.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1584-1585.

ESTATES GENERAL.

See STATES GENERAL.

ESTE, The House of.

"Descended from one of the northern families which settled in

Italy during the darkest period of the middle ages, the Este

traced their lineal descent up to the times of Charlemagne.

They had taken advantage of the frequent dissensions between

the popes and the German emperors of the houses of Saxony and

Swabia, and acquired wide dominions in Lunigiana, and the

March of Treviso, where the castle of Este, their family

residence, was situated. Towards the middle of the 11th

century, that family had been connected by marriages with the

Guelphs of Bavaria, and one of the name of Este was eventually

to become the common source from which sprung the illustrious

houses of Brunswick and Hanover. The Este had warmly espoused

the Guelph party [see GUELFS], during the wars of the Lombard

League. ...

{987}

Towards the year 1200, Azzo V., Marquis of Este, married

Marchesella degli Adelardi, daughter of one of the most

conspicuous Guelphs at Ferrara, where the influence of the

House of Este was thus first established."

L. Mariotti (A. Gallenga),

Italy,

volume 2, pages 62-63.

The Marquesses of Este became, "after some of the usual

fluctuations, permanent lords of the cities of Ferrara [1264]

and Modena [1288]. About the same time they lost their

original holding of Este, which passed to Padua, and with

Padua to Venice. Thus the nominal marquess of Este and real

lord of Ferrara was not uncommonly spoken of as Marquess of

Ferrara. In the 15th century these princes rose to ducal rank;

but by that time the new doctrine of the temporal dominion of

the Popes had made great advances. Modena, no man doubted, was

a city of the Empire; but Ferrara was now held to be under the

supremacy of the Pope. The Marquess Borso had thus to seek his

elevation to ducal rank from two separate lords. He was

created Duke of Modena [1453] and Reggio by the Emperor, and

afterwards Duke of Ferrara [1471] by the Pope. This difference

of holding ... led to the destruction of the power of the

house of Este. In the times in which we are now concerned,

their dominions lay in two masses. To the west lay the duchy

of Modena and Reggio; apart from it to the east lay the duchy

of Ferrara. Not long after its creation, this last duchy was

cut short by the surrender of the border-district of Rovigo to

Venice. ... Modena and Ferrara remained united, till Ferrara

was annexed [1598] as an escheated fief to the dominions of

its spiritual overlord. But the house of Este still reigned

over Modena with Reggio and Mirandola, while its dominions

were extended to the sea by the addition of Massa and other

small possessions between Lucca and Genoa. The duchy in the

end passed by female succession to the House of Austria

[1771-1803]."

E. A. Freeman,

Historical Geography of Europe,

chapter 8, sections 3-4.

"The government of the family of Este at Ferrara, Modena, and

Reggio displays curious contrasts of violence and popularity.

Within the palace frightful deeds were perpetrated; a princess

was beheaded [1425] for alleged adultery with a stepson;

legitimate and illegitimate children fled from the court, and

even abroad their lives were threatened by assassins sent in

pursuit of them (1471). Plots from without were incessant; the

bastard of a bastard tried to wrest the crown from the lawful

heir, Hercules I.: this latter is said afterwards (1493) to

have poisoned his wife on discovering that she, at the

instigation of her brother, Ferrante of Naples, was going to

poison him. This list of tragedies is closed by the plot of

two bastards against their brothers; the ruling Duke Alfonso

I. and the Cardinal Ippolito (1506), which was discovered in

time, and punished with imprisonment for life. ... It is

undeniable that the dangers to which these princes were

constantly exposed developed in them capacities of a

remarkable kind."

J. Burckhardt,

The Civilization of the Period of the Renaissance in Italy,

part 1, chapter 5.

For the facts of the ending of the legitimate Italian line of

Este,

See PAPACY: A. D. 1597.

ESTHONIA, OR ESTONIA:

Origin of the name.

See ÆSTII.

ESTHONIA, OR ESTONIA: Christian conquest.

See LIVONIA: 12TH-13TH CENTURIES.

ESTIENNES, The Press of the.

See PRINTING: A. D. 1496-1598.

ESTREMOS, OR AMEIXAL, Battle of (1663).

See PORTUGAL: A. D. 1637-1668.

ETCHEMINS, The.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: ALGONQUIAN FAMILY.

ETHANDUN, OR EDINGTON, Battle of (A. D. 878).

See ENGLAND: A. D. 855-880.

ETHEL, ETHELINGS, OR ÆTHELINGS.

"The sons and brothers of the king [of the English] were

distinguished by the title of Æthelings. The word Ætheling,

like eorl, originally denoted noble birth simply; but as the

royal house of Wessex rose to pre-eminence and the other royal

houses and the nobles generally were thereby reduced to a

relatively lower grade, it became restricted to the near

kindred of the national king."

T. P. Taswell-Langmead,

English Constitutional History,

page 29.

"It has been sometimes held that the only nobility of blood

recognized in England before the Norman Conquest was that of

the king's kin. The statement may be regarded as deficient in

authority, and as the result of a too hasty generalization

from the fact that only the sons and brothers of the kings

bear the name of ætheling. On the other hand must be alleged

the existence of a noble (edhiling) class among the

continental Saxons who had no kings at all. ... The laws of

Ethelbert prove the existence of a class bearing the name of

eorl of which no other interpretation can be given. That

these, eorlas and æthel, were the descendants of the primitive

nobles of the first settlement, who, on the institution of

royalty, sank one step in dignity from the ancient state of

rude independence, in which they had elected their own chiefs

and ruled their own dependents, may be very reasonably

conjectured. ... The ancient name of eorl, like that of

ætheling, changed its application, and, under the influence,

perhaps, of Danish association, was given like that of jarl to

the official ealdorman. Henceforth the thegn takes the place

of the æthel, and the class of thegns probably embraces all

the remaining families of noble blood. The change may have

been very gradual; the 'north people's law' of the tenth or

early eleventh century still distinguishes the eorl and

ætheling with a wergild nearly double that of the ealdorman

and seven times that of the thegn; but the north people's law

was penetrated with Danish influence, and the eorl probably

represents the jarl rather than the ealdorman, the great eorl

of the fourth part of England as it was divided by Canute. ...

The word eorl is said to be the same as the Norse jarl and

another form of ealdor (?); whilst the ceorl answers to the

Norse Karl; the original meaning of the two being old man and

young man."

W. Stubbs,

Constitutional History of England,

chapter 6, section 64, and note.

ETHEL.--Family-land.

See ALOD; and FOLCLAND.

ETHELBALD,

King of Mercia, A. D. 716-755.

Ethelbald, King of Wessex, A. D. 858-860.

ETHELBERT,

King of Kent, A. D. 565-616.

Ethelbert, King of Wessex, A. D. 860-866.

ETHELFRITH, King of Northumberland, A. D. 593-617.

ETHELRED,

King of Wessex, A. D. 866-871.

Ethelred, called the Unready, King of Wessex, A. D. 979-1016.

{988}

ETHELSTAN, King of Wessex, A. D. 925-940.

ETHELWULF, King of Wessex, A. D. 836-858.

ETHIOPIA.

The Ethiopia of the ancients, "in the ordinary and vague sense

of the term, was a vast tract extending in length above a

thousand miles, from the 9th to the 24th degree of north

latitude, and in breadth almost 900 miles, from the shores of

the Red Sea and Indian Ocean to the desert of the Sahara. This

tract was inhabited for the most part by wild and barbarous

tribes--herdsmen, hunters, or fishermen--who grew no corn,

were unacquainted with bread, and subsisted on the milk and

flesh of their cattle, or on game, turtle, and fish, salted or

raw. The tribes had their own separate chiefs, and

acknowledged no single head, but on the contrary were

frequently at war one with the other, and sold their prisoners

for slaves. Such was Ethiopia in the common vague sense; but

from this must be distinguished another narrower Ethiopia,

known sometimes as 'Ethiopia Proper' or 'Ethiopia above

Egypt,' the limits of which were, towards the south, the

junction of the White and Blue Niles, and towards the north

the Third Cataract. Into this tract, called sometimes 'the

kingdom of Meroë,' Egyptian civilisation had, long before the

eighth century [B. C.], deeply penetrated. Temples of the

Egyptian type, stone pyramids, avenues of sphinxes, had been

erected; a priesthood had been set up, which was regarded as

derived from the Egyptian priesthood; monarchical institutions

had been adopted; the whole tract formed ordinarily one

kingdom, and the natives were not very much behind the

Egyptians in arts or arms, or very different from them in

manners, customs, and mode of life. Even in race the

difference was not great. The Ethiopians were darker in

complexion than the Egyptians, and possessed probably a

greater infusion of Nigritic blood; but there was a common

stock at the root of the two races--Cush and Mizraim were

brethren. In the region of Ethiopia Proper a very important

position was occupied in the eighth century [B. C.] by Napata.

Napata was situated midway in the great bend of the Nile,

between latitude 18° and 19°. ... It occupied the left bank of

the river in the near vicinity of the modern Gebel Berkal. . .

Here, when the decline of Egypt enabled the Ethiopians to

reclaim their ancient limits, the capital was fixed of that

kingdom, which shortly became a rival of the old empire of the

Pharaohs, and aspired to take its place. ... The kingdom of

Meroë, whereof it was the capital, reached southward as far as

the modern Khartoum, and eastward stretched up to the

Abyssinian highlands, including the valleys of the Atbara and

its tributaries, together with most of the tract between the

Atbara and the Blue Nile. ... Napata continued down to Roman

times a place of importance, and only sank to ruin in

consequence of the campaigns of Petronius against Candacé in

the first century after our era."

G. Rawlinson,

History of Ancient Egypt,

chapter 25.

ALSO IN:

A. H. L. Heeren,

Historical Researches, Carthaginians,

Ethiopians, &c., pages 143-249.

See, also, EGYPT: ABOUT B. C. 1200-670;

and LIBYANS, THE.

ETON SCHOOL.

See EDUCATION, MODERN: EUROPEAN COUNTRIES.--ENGLAND.

ETRURIA, Ancient.

See ETRUSCANS.

ETRURIA, The kingdom of.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1801-1803;

also PORTUGAL: A. D. 1807;

and FRANCE: A. D. 1807-1808(NOVEMBER-FEBRUARY).

ETRUSCANS, The.

"At the time when Roman history begins, we find that a

powerful and warlike race, far superior to the Latins in

civilisation and in the arts of life, hemmed in the rising

Roman dominion in the north. The Greeks called them Turrhenoi,

the Romans called them Etrusci, they called themselves the

Rasenna. Who they were and whence they came has ever been

regarded as one of the most doubtful and difficult problems in

ethnology. One conclusion only can be said to have been

universally accepted both in ancient and in modern times. It

is agreed on every hand that in all essential points, in

language, in religion, in customs, and in appearance, the

Etruscans were a race wholly different from the Latins. There

is also an absolute agreement of all ancient tradition to the

effect that the Etruscans were not the original inhabitants of

Etruria, but that they were an intrusive race of conquerors.

... It has been usually supposed that the Rasenna made their

appearance in Italy some ten or twelve centuries before the

Christian era. ... For some six or seven centuries, the

Etruscan power and territory continued steadily to increase,

and ultimately stretched far south of the Tiber, Rome itself

being included in the Etruscan dominion, and being ruled by an

Etruscan dynasty. The early history of Rome is to a great

extent the history of the uprising of the Latin race, and its

long struggle for Italian supremacy with its Etruscan foe. It

took Rome some six centuries of conflict to break through the

obstinate barrier of the Etruscan power. The final conquest of

Etruria by Rome was effected in the year 281 B. C. ... The

Rasennic people were collected mainly in the twelve great

cities of Etruria proper, between the Arno and the Tiber.

[Modern Tuscany takes its name from the ancient Etruscan

inhabitants of the region.] This region was the real seat of

the Etruscan power. ... From the 'Shah-nameh,' the great

Persian epic, we learn that the Aryan Persians called their

nearest non-Aryan neighbours--the Turkic or Turcoman tribes to

the north of them--by the name Turan, a word from which we

derive the familiar ethnologic term Turanian. The Aryan

Greeks, on the other hand, called the Turkic tribe of the

Rasenna, the nearest non-Aryan race, by the name of Turrhenoi.

The argument of this book is to prove that the Tyrrhenians of

Italy were of kindred race with the Turanians of Turkestan. Is

it too much to conjecture that the Greek form Turrhene may be

identically the same word as the Persian form Turan?"

I. Taylor,

Etruscan Researches,

chapter 2.

"The utmost we can say is that several traces, apparently

reliable, point to the conclusion that the Etruscans may be on

the whole included among the Indo-Germans. ... But even

granting those points of connection, the Etruscan people

appears withal scarcely less isolated. 'The Etruscans,'

Dionysius said long ago, 'are like no other nation in language

and manners'; and we have nothing to add to his statement. ...

Reliable traces of any advance of the Etruscans beyond the

Tiber, by land, are altogether wanting. ... South of the Tiber

no Etruscan settlement can be pointed out as having owed its

origin to founders who came by land; and that no indication

whatever is discernible of any serious pressure by the

Etruscans upon the Latin nation."

T. Mommsen,

History of Rome,

book 1, chapter 9.

{989}

EUBŒA.

"The island of Eubœa, long and narrow like Krête, and

exhibiting a continuous backbone of lofty mountains from

northwest to southeast, is separated from Bœotia at one point

by a strait so narrow (celebrated in antiquity under the name

of the Eurīpus) that the two were connected by a bridge for a

large portion of the historical period of Greece, erected

during the later times of the Peloponnesian war by the

inhabitants of Chalkis [Chalcis]. Its general want of breadth

leaves little room for plains. The area of the island consists

principally of mountain, rock, dell, and ravine, suited in

many parts for pasture, but rarely convenient for

grain-culture or town habitations. Some plains there were,

however, of great fertility, especially that of Lelantum,

bordering on the sea near Chalkis, and continuing from that

city in a southerly direction towards Eretria. Chalkis and

Eretria, both situated on the western coast, and both

occupying parts of this fertile plain, were the two principal

places in the island: the domain of each seems to have

extended across the island from sea to sea. ... Both were in

early times governed by an oligarchy, which among the

Chalcidians was called the Hippobotæ, or Horse feeders,--

proprietors probably of most part of the plain called

Lelantum."

G. Grote,

History of Greece,

part 2, chapter 12.

See, also, NEGROPONT.

EUBOIC TALENT.

See TALENT.

EUCHITES, The.

See MYSTICISM.

EUDES, King of France

(in partition with Charles the Simple), A. D. 887-898.

EUDOSES, The.

See AVIONES.

EUGENE (Prince) of Savoy, Campaigns of.

See HUNGARY: A. D. 1699-1718;

GERMANY: A. D. 1704;

ITALY (SAVOY AND PIEDMONT): A. D. 1701-1713;

NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1708-1709, and 1710-1712.

EUGENE I., Pope, A. D. 655-657.

Eugene II., Pope, A. D. 824-827.

Eugene III., Pope, A. D. 1145-1153.

Eugene IV., Pope, A. D. 1431-1447.

EUGENIANS, The.

See HY-NIALS.

EUMENES, and the wars of the Diadochi.

See MACEDONIA: B. C. 323-316.

EUMOLPHIDÆ, The.

See PHYLÆ.

EUPATRIDÆ, The.

"The Eupatridæ [in ancient Athens] are the wealthy and

powerful men, belonging to the most distinguished families in

all the various gentes, and principally living in the city of

Athens, after the consolidation of Attica: from them are

distinguished the middling and lower people, roughly

classified into husbandmen and artisans. To the Eupatridæ is

ascribed a religious as well as a political and social

ascendency. They are represented as the source of all

authority on matters both sacred and profane,"

G. Grote,

History of Greece,

part 2, chapter 10.

EUROKS, OR YUROKS.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: MODOCS.

EUROPE.

A HISTORICAL SKETCH.

A general sketch of the history of Europe at large cannot, for

obvious reasons, be constructed of quotations from the

historians, on the plan followed in other parts of this work.

The editor has found it necessary, therefore, to introduce

here an essay of his own.

The first inhabitants of the continent of Europe have left no

trace of their existence on the surface of the land. The

little that we know of them has been learned by the discovery

of deeply buried remains, including a few bones and skulls,

many weapons and tools which they had fashioned out of stone

and bone, and some other rude marks of their hands which time

has not destroyed. The places in which these remains are

found--under deposits that formed slowly in ancient river beds

and in caves--have convinced geologists that the people whose

existence they reveal lived many thousands of years ago, and

that the continent of Europe in their time was very different

from the Europe of the present day, in its climate, in its

aspect, and in its form. They find reason to suppose that the

peninsula of Italy, as well as that of Spain, was then an

isthmus which joined Europe to Africa; and this helps to

explain the fact that remains of such animals as the elephant,

the lion, the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, and the hyena, as

well as the mammoth, are found with the remains of these early

men. They all seem to have belonged, together, to a state of

things, on the surface of the earth, which was greatly changed

before the men and the animals that we have historical

knowledge of appeared.

The Stone Age.

These primitive Europeans were evidently quite at the bottom

of the savage state. They had learned no use of metals, since

every relic of their workmanship that can be found is of

stone, or bone, or wood. It is thought possible that they

shaped rough vessels out of unbaked clay; but that is

uncertain. There is nothing to show that they had domesticated

any animals. It is plain that they dwelt in caves, wherever

nature provided such dwellings; but what shelters they may

have built elsewhere for themselves is unknown.

In one direction, only, did these ancient people exhibit a

faculty finer than we see in the lowest savages of the present

day: they were artists, in a way. They have left carvings and

drawings of animals--the latter etched with a sharp point on

horns, bones, and stones--which are remarkable for uncultured

men.

The period in man's life on the earth at which these people

lived--the period before metals were known--has been named by

archæologists the Stone Age. But the Stone Age covers two

stages of human culture--one in which stone implements were

fashioned unskilfully, and a second in which they were

finished with expert and careful hands. The first is called

the Palæolithic or Old Stone Age, the second the Neolithic or

New Stone Age. Between the two periods in Europe there seems

to have been a long interval of time, and a considerable

change in the condition of the country, as well as in that of

its people.

{990}

In fact, the Europe of the Neolithic Age was probably not very

different in form and climate from the Europe of our own day.

Relics of the human life of that time are abundantly scattered

over the face of the continent. There are notable deposits of

them in the so-called "kitchen-middens" of Denmark, which are

great mounds of shells,--shells of oysters and other

molluscs,--which these ancient fishermen had opened and

emptied, and then cast upon a refuse heap. Buried in those

mounds, many bits of their workmanship have been preserved,

and many hints of their manner of life are gleaned from the

signs and tokens which these afford. They had evidently risen

some degrees above the state of the men of the Palæolithic or

Old Stone Age; but they were inferior in art.

The Bronze Age.

The discovery and use of copper--the metal most easily worked,

and most frequently found in the metallic state--is the event

by which archæologists mark the beginning of a second state in

early civilizations. The period during which copper, and

copper hardened by an alloy of tin, are the only metals found

in use, they call the Bronze Age. There is no line of positive

division between this and the Neolithic period which it

followed. The same races appear to have advanced from the one

stage to the other, and probably some were in possession of

tools and weapons of bronze, while others were still

contenting themselves with implements of stone.

Lake Dwellings.

In many parts of Europe, especially in Switzerland and

northern Italy, plain traces of some curious habitations of

people who lived through the later Stone Age into the Bronze

Age, and even after it, have been brought to light. These are

the "lake dwellings," or "lacustrine habitations," as they

have been called, which have excited interest in late years.

They were generally built on piles, driven into a lake-bottom,

at such distance from shore as would make them easy of defence

against enemies. The foundations of whole villages of these

dwellings have been found in the Swiss and North Italian

lakes, and less numerously elsewhere. From the lake-mud under

and around them, a great quantity of relics of the

lake-dwellers have been taken, and many facts about their arts

and mode of life have been learned. It is known that, even

before a single metal had come into their hands, they had

begun to cultivate the earth; had raised wheat and barley and

flax; had domesticated the horse, the ox, the sheep, the goat,

the pig and the dog; had become fairly skilful in weaving, in

rope-making, and in the art of the potter, but without the

potter's wheel.

Gradually copper and bronze made their appearance among the

implements of these people, as modern search discovers them

imbedded, layer upon layer, in the old ooze of the lake-beds

where they were dropped. In time, iron, too, reveals itself

among their possessions, showing that they lived in their

lake-villages from the later Stone Age into that third period

of the early process of civilization which is named the Iron

Age--when men first acquired the use of the most useful of all

the metals. It appears, in fact, that the lake-dwellings were

occupied even down to Roman times, since articles of Roman

make have been found in the ruins of them.

Barrows.

In nearly all parts of Europe there are found burial mounds,

called barrows, which contain buried relics of people who

lived at one or the other of the three periods named. For the

most part, they represent inhabitants of the Neolithic and of

the Bronze Ages. In Great Britain some of these barrows are

long, some are round; and the skulls found in the long barrows

are different in shape from those in the round ones, showing a

difference of race. The people to whom the first belonged are

called "long-headed," or "dolichocephalic"; the others are

called "broad-headed," or "brachycephalic." In the opinion of

some ethnologists, who study this subject of the distinctions

of race in the human family, the broad-headed people were

ancestors of the Celtic or Keltic tribes, whom the Romans

subdued in Gaul and Britain; while the long-headed men were of

a preceding race, which the Celts, when they came, either

drove out of all parts of Europe, except two or three

mountainous corners, or else absorbed by intermarriage. The

Basques of northwestern Spain, and some of their neighbors on

the French side of the Pyrenees, are supposed to be survivals

of this very ancient people; and there are suspected to be

traces of their existence seen in the dark-haired and

dark-skinned people of parts of Wales, Ireland, Corsica, North

Africa, and elsewhere.

The Aryan Nations.

At least one part of this conjecture has much to rest upon.

The inhabitants of western Europe when our historical

knowledge of them--that is, our recorded and reported

knowledge of them--begins, were, certainly, for the most

part, Celtic peoples, and it is extremely probable that they

had been occupying the country as long as the period

represented by the round barrows. It is no less probable that

they were the lake-dwellers of Switzerland, North Italy, and

other regions; and that they did, in fact, displace some

earlier people in most parts of Western Europe.

The Celts--whose nearly pure descendants are found now in the

Bretons of France, the Welsh, the Highland Scotch and the

Celtic Irish, and who formed the main stock of the larger part

of the French nation--were one branch of the great family of

nations called Aryan or Indo-European. The Aryan peoples are

assumed to be akin to one another--shoots from one

stem--because their languages are alike in grammatical

structure and contain great numbers of words that are

manifestly formed from the same original "root"; and because

they differ in these respects from all other languages. The

nations thus identified as Aryan are the nations that have

acted the most important parts in all human history except the

history of extremely ancient times. Besides the Celtic peoples

already mentioned, they include the English, the Dutch, the

Germans, and the Scandinavians, forming the Teutonic race; the

Russians, Poles, and others of the Slavonic group; the ancient

Greeks and Romans, with their modern representatives, and the

Persians and Hindus in Asia. According to the evidence of

their languages, there must have been a time and a place, in

the remote past, when and where a primitive Aryan race, which

was ancestral to all these nations, lived and multiplied until

it outgrew its original country and began to send forth

successive "swarms," or migrating hordes, as many unsettled

races have been seen to do within the historic age.

{991}

It is hopeless, perhaps, to think of determining the time when

such a dispersion of the Aryan peoples began; but many

scholars believe it possible to trace, by various marks and

indications, in language and elsewhere, the lines of movement

in the migration, so far as to guess with some assurance the

region of the primitive Aryan home; but thus far there are

great disagreements in the guessing. Until recent years, the

prevailing judgment pointed to that highland district in

Central Asia which lies north of the Hindoo-Koosh range of

mountains, and between the upper waters of the Oxus and

Jaxartes. But later studies have discredited this first theory

and started many opposing ones. The strong tendency now is to

believe that the cradle of all the peoples of Aryan speech was

somewhere in Europe, rather than in Asia, and in the north of

Europe rather than in the center or the south. At the same

time, there seems to be a growing opinion that the language of

the Aryans was communicated to conquered peoples so

extensively that its spread is not a true measure of the

existing diffusion of the race.

The Celtic Branch.

Whatever may have been the starting-point of the Aryan

migrations, it is supposed that the branch now distinguished

as Celtic was the first to separate from the parent stem and

to acquire for itself a new domain. It occupied southwestern

Europe, from northern Spain to the Rhine, and across the

Channel to the British islands, extending eastward into

Switzerland, North It&ly and the Tyrol. But little of what the

tribes and nations forming this Celtic race did is known,

until the time when another Aryan people, better civilized,

came into collision with them, and drew them into the written

history of the world by conquering them and making them its

subjects.

The people who did this were the Romans, and the Romans and

the Greeks are believed to have been carried into the two

peninsulas which they inhabited, respectively, by one and the

same movement in the Aryan dispersion. Their languages show

more affinity to one another than to the other Aryan tongues,

and there are other evidences of a near relationship between

them; though they separated, it is quite certain, long before

the appearance of either in history.

The Hellenes, or Greeks.

The Greeks, or Hellenes, as they called themselves, were the

first among the Aryan peoples in Europe to make themselves

historically known, and the first to write the record which

transmits history from generation to generation. The peninsula

in which they settled themselves is a very peculiar one in its

formation. It is crossed in different directions by mountain

ranges, which divide the land into parts naturally separated

from one another, and which form barriers easily defended

against invading foes. Between the mountains lie numerous

fertile valleys. The coast is ragged with gulfs and bays,

which notch it deeply on all sides, making the whole main

peninsula a cluster of minor peninsulas, and supplying the

people with harbors which invite them to a life of seafaring

and trade. It is surrounded, moreover, with islands, which

repeat the invitation.

Almost necessarily, in a country marked with such features so

strongly, the Greeks became divided politically into small

independent states--city-states they have been named--and

those on the sea-coast became engaged very early in trade with

other countries of the Mediterranean Sea. Every city of

importance in Greece was entirely sovereign in the government

of itself and of the surrounding territory which formed its

domain. The stronger among them extended their dominion over

some of the weaker or less valiant ones; but even then the

subject cities kept a considerable measure of independence.

There was no organization of national government to embrace

the whole, nor any large part, of Greece. Certain among the

states were sometimes united in temporary leagues, or

confederacies, for common action in war; but these were

unstable alliances, rather than political unions. In their

earliest form, the Greek city-states were governed by kings,

whose power appears to have been quite limited, and who were

leaders rather than sovereigns. But kingship disappeared from

most of the states in Greece proper before they reached the

period of distinct and accepted history. The kings were first

displaced by aristocracies--ruling families, which took all

political rights and privileges to themselves, and allowed

their fellows (whom they usually oppressed) no part or voice

in public affairs. In most instances these aristocracies, or

oligarchies, were overthrown, after a time, by bold agitators

who stirred up a revolution, and then contrived, while

confusion prevailed, to gather power into their own hands.

Almost every Greek city had its time of being ruled by one or

more of these Tyrants, as they were called. Some of them, like

Pisistratus of Athens, ruled wisely and justly for the most

part, and were not "tyrants" in the modern sense of the term;

but all who gained and held a princely power unlawfully were

so named by the Greeks. The reign of the Tyrants was nowhere

lasting. They were driven out of one city after another until

they disappeared. Then the old aristocracies came uppermost

again in some cities, and ruled as before. But some, like

Athens, had trained the whole body of their citizens to such

intelligence and spirit that neither kingship nor oligarchy

would be endured any longer, and the people undertook to

govern themselves. These were the first democracies--the first

experiments in popular government--that history gives any

account of. "The little commonwealths of Greece," says a great

historian, "were the first states at once free and civilized

which the world ever saw. They were the first states which

gave birth to great statesmen, orators, and generals who did

great deeds, and to great historians who set down those great

deeds in writing. It was in the Greek commonwealths, in short,

that the political and intellectual life of the world began."

In the belief of the Greeks, or of most men among them, their

early history was embodied with truth in the numerous legends

and ancient poems which they religiously preserved; but people

in modern times look differently upon those wonderful myths

and epics, studying them with deep interest, but under more

critical views. They throw much light on the primitive life of

the Hellenes, and more light upon the development of the

remarkable genius and spirit of those thoughtful and

imaginative people; but of actual history there are only

glimpses and guesses to be got from them.

{992}

The Homeric poems, the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey," describe a

condition of things in which the ruling state of Peloponnesus

(the southern peninsula of Greece) was a kingdom of the

Achaians, having its capital at Mycenæ, in Argolis,--the realm

of King Agamemnon,--and in which Athens is unknown to the

poet. Within recent years, Dr. Schliemann has excavated the

ruins of Mycenæ, and has found evidence that it really must

have been, in very early times, the seat of a strong and rich

monarchy. But the Achaian kingdom had entirely disappeared,

and the Achaian people had shrunk to an insignificant

community, on the Gulf of Corinth, when the first assured

views of Greek history open to us.

The Dorians.

It seems to be a fact that the Achaians had been overwhelmed

by a great invasion of more barbarous Greek tribes from the

North, very much as the Roman Empire, in later times, was

buried under an avalanche of barbarism from Germany. The

invaders were a tribe or league of tribes called Dorians, who

had been driven from their own previous home on the slopes of

the Pindus mountain range. Their movement southward was part,

as appears, of an extensive shifting of place, or migration,

that occurred at that time (not long, it is probable, before

the beginning of the historic period) among the tribes of

Hellas. The Dorians claimed that in conquering Peloponnesus

they were recovering a heritage from which their chiefs had

been anciently expelled, and their legends were shaped

accordingly. The Dorian chiefs appeared in these legends as

descendants of Hercules, and the tradition of the conquest

became a story of "The Return of the Heraclids."

The principal states founded or possessed and controlled by

the Dorians in Peloponnesus, after their conquest, were

Sparta, or Lacedæmon, Argos, and Corinth. The Spartans were

the most warlike of the Greeks,--the most resolute and

energetic,--and their leadership in practical affairs common

to the whole came to be generally acknowledged. At the same

time they had little of the intellectual superiority which

distinguished some of their Hellenic kindred in so remarkable

a degree. Their state was organized on military principles;

its constitution (the body of famous ordinances ascribed to

Lycurgus) was a code of rigid discipline, which dealt with the

citizen as a soldier always under training for war, and

demanded from him the utmost simplicity of life. Their form of

government combined a peculiar monarchy (having two royal

families and two kings) with an aristocratic senate (the

Gerousia), and a democratic assembly (which voted on matters

only as submitted to it by the senate), with an irresponsible

executive over the whole, consisting of five men called the

Ephors. This singular government, essentially aristocratic or

oligarchical, was maintained, with little disturbance or

change, through the whole independent history of Sparta. In

all respects, the Spartans were the most conservative and the

least progressive among the politically important Greeks.

At the beginning of the domination of the Dorians in

Peloponnesus, their city of Argos took the lead, and was the

head of a league which included Corinth and other city-states.

But Sparta soon rose to rivalry with Argos; then reduced it to

a secondary place, and finally subjugated it completely.

The Ionians.

The extensive shifting of population which had produced its

most important result in the invasion of Peloponnesus by the

Dorians, must have caused great commotions and changes

throughout the whole Greek peninsula; and quite as much north

of the Corinthian isthmus as south of it. But in the part

which lies nearest to the isthmus--the branch peninsula of

Attica--the old inhabitants appear to have held their ground,

repelling invaders, and their country was affected only by an

influx of fugitives, flying from the conquered Peloponnesus.

The Attic people were more nearly akin to the expelled

Achaians and Ionians than to the conquering Dorians, although

a common brotherhood in the Hellenic race was recognized by

all of them. Whatever distinction there may have been before

between Achaians and Ionians now practically disappeared, and

the Ionic name became common to the whole branch of the Greek

people which derived itself from them. The important division

of the race through all its subsequent history was between

Dorians and Ionians. The Æolians constituted a third division,

of minor importance and of far less significance. The

distinction between Ionians and Dorians was a very real one,

in character no less than in traditions and name. The Ionians

were the superior Greeks on the intellectual side. It was

among them that the wonderful genius resided which produced

the greater marvels of art, literature and philosophy in Greek

civilization. It was among them, too, that the institutions of

political freedom were carried to their highest attainment.

Their chief city was Athens, and the splendor of its history

bears testimony to their unexampled genius. On the other hand,

the Dorians were less thoughtful, less imaginative, less broad

in judgment or feeling--less susceptible, it would seem, of a

high refinement of culture; but no less capable in practical

pursuits, no less vigorous in effective action, and sounder,

perhaps, in their moral constitution. Sparta, which stood at

the head of the Doric states, contributed almost nothing to

Greek literature, Greek thought, Greek art, or Greek commerce,

but exercised a great influence on Greek political history.

Other Doric states, especially Corinth, were foremost in

commercial and colonizing enterprise, and attained some

brilliancy of artistic civilization, but with moderate

originality.

Greeks and Phœnicians.

It was natural, as noted above, that the Greeks should be

induced at an early day to navigate the surrounding seas, and

to engage in trade with neighboring nations. They were not

original, it is supposed, in these ventures, but learned more

or less of ship-building and the art of navigation from an

older people, the Phœnicians, who dwelt on the coast of Syria

and Palestine, and whose chief cities were Sidon and Tyre. The

Phœnicians had extended their commerce widely through the

Mediterranean before the Greeks came into rivalry with them.

Their ships, and their merchants, and the wares they bartered,

were familiar in the Ægean when the Homeric poems were

composed.

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They seem to have been the teachers of the early Greeks in

many things. They gave them, with little doubt, the invention

of the alphabet, which they themselves had borrowed from

Egypt. They conveyed hints of art, which bore astonishing

fruits when planted in the fertile Hellenic imagination. They

carried from the East strange stories of gods and demigods,

which were woven into the mythology of the Greeks. They gave,

in fact, to Greek civilization, at its beginning, the greatest

impulse it received. But all that Hellas took from the outer

world it wrought into a new character, and put upon it the

stamp of its own unmistakable genius. In navigation and

commerce the Greeks of the coast-cities and the islands were

able, ere long, to compete on even terms with the Phœnicians,

and it happened, in no great space of time, that they had

driven the latter entirely from the Ægean and the Euxine seas.

Greek Colonies.

They had now occupied with colonies the coast of Asia Minor

and the islands on both their own coasts. The Ionian Greeks

were the principal colonizers of the Asiatic shore and of the

Cyclades. On the former and near it they founded twelve towns

of note, including Samos, Miletus, Ephesus, Chios, and Phocæa,

which are among the more famous cities of ancient times. Their

important island settlements in the Cyclades were Naxos,

Delos, Melos, and Paros. They possessed, likewise, the great

island of Eubœa, with its two wealthy cities of Chalcis and

Eretria. These, with Attica, constituted, in the main, the

Ionic portion of Hellas.

The Dorians occupied the islands of Rhodes and Cos, and

founded on the coast of Asia Minor the cities of Halicarnassus

and Cnidus. The important Æolian colonies in Asia were Smyrna

(acquired later by the Ionians), Temnos, Larissa, and Cyme. Of

the islands they occupied Lesbos and Tenedos.

From these settlements on neighboring coasts and islands the

vigorous Greeks pushed on to more distant fields. It is

probable that their colonies were in Cyprus and Crete before

the eighth century, B. C. In the seventh century B. C., during

a time of confusion and weakness in Egypt, they had entered

that country as allies or as mercenaries of the kings, and had

founded a city, Naucratis, which became an important agent in

the exchange of arts and ideas, as well as of merchandise,

between the Nile and the Ægean. Within a few years past the

site of Naucratis has been uncovered by explorers, and much

has been brought to light that was obscure in Greek and

Egyptian history before. Within the same seventh century,

Cyrene and Barca had been built on the African coast, farther

west. Even a century before that time, the Corinthians had

taken possession of Corcyra (modern Corfu), and they, with the

men of Chalcis and Megara, had been actively founding cities

that grew great and rich, in Sicily and in southern Italy,

which latter acquired the name of "Magna Græcia" (Great

Greece). At a not much later time they had pressed northwards

to the Euxine or Black Sea, and had scattered settlements

along the Thracian and Macedonian coast, including one

(Byzantium) on the Bosphorus, which became, after a thousand

years had passed, the imperial city of Constantinople. About

597 B. C., the Phocæans had planted a colony at Massalia, in

southern Gaul, from which sprang the great city known in

modern times as Marseilles. And much of all this had been

done, by Ionians and Dorians together, before Athens (in which

Attica now centered itself, and which loomed finally greater

in glory than the whole Hellenic world besides) had made a

known mark in history.

Rise of Athens.

At first there had been kings in Athens, and legends had

gathered about their names which give modern historians a

ground-work for critical guessing, and scarcely more. Then the

king disappeared and a magistrate called Archon took his

place, who held office for only ten years. The archons are

believed to have been chosen first from the old royal family

alone; but after a time the office was thrown open to all

noble families. This was the aristocratic stage of political

evolution in the city-state. The next step was taken in 683 B.

C. (which is said to be the beginning of authentic Athenian

chronology) when nine archons were created, in place of the

one, and their term of office was reduced to a single year.

Fifty years later, about 621 B. C., the people of Athens

obtained their first code of written law, ascribed to one

Draco, and described as a code of much severity. But it gave

certainty to law, for the first time, and was the first great

protective measure secured by the people. In 612 B. C. a noble

named Kylon attempted to overthrow the aristocratic government

and establish a tyranny under himself, but he failed.

Legislation of Solon.

Then there came forward in public life another noble, who was

one of the wisest men and purest patriots of any country or

age, and who made an attempt of quite another kind. This was

Solon, the famous lawgiver, who became archon in 594 B. C. The

political state of Athens at that time has been described for

us in an ancient Greek treatise lately discovered, and which

is believed to be one of the hitherto lost writings of

Aristotle. "Not only," says the author of this treatise, "was

the constitution at this time oligarchical in every respect,

but the poorer classes, men, women, and children, were in

absolute slavery to the rich. ... The whole country was in the

hands of a few persons, and if the tenants failed to pay their

rent, they were liable to be haled into slavery, and their

children with them. Their persons were mortgaged to their

creditors." Solon saw that this was a state of things not to

be endured by such a people as the Athenians, and he exerted

himself to change it. He obtained authority to frame a new

constitution and a new code of laws for the state. In the

latter, he provided measures for relieving the oppressed class

of debtors. In the former, he did not create a democratic

government, but he greatly increased the political powers of

the people. He classified them according to their wealth,

defining four classes, the citizens in each of which had

certain political duties and privileges measured to them by

the extent of their property and income. But the whole body of

citizens, in their general assembly (the Ecclesia), were given

the important right of choosing the annual archons, whom they

must select, however, from the ranks of the wealthiest class.

At the same time, Solon enlarged the powers of the old

aristocratic senate--the Areopagus--giving it a supervision of

the execution of the laws and a censorship of the morals of

the people.

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"These changes did not constitute Democracy,--a form of

government then unknown, and for which there was as yet no

word in the Greek language. But they initiated the democratic

spirit. ... Athens, thus fairly started on her

way,--emancipated from the discipline of aristocratic

school-masters, and growing into an age of manly liberty and

self-restraint,--came eventually nearer to the ideal of 'the

good life' [Aristotle's phrase] than any other State in

Hellas."

(W. W. Fowler.)

Tyranny of Pisistratus.

But before the Athenians reached their nearness to this "good

life," they had to pass under the yoke of a "tyrant,"

Pisistratus, who won the favor of the poorer people, and, with

their help, established himself in the Acropolis (560 B. C.)

with a foreign guard to maintain his power. Twice driven out,

he was twice restored, and reigned quite justly and prudently,

on the whole, until his death in 527 B. C. He was succeeded by

his two sons, Hippias and Hipparchus; but the latter was

killed in 514, and Hippias was expelled by the Spartans in 510

B. C.; after which there was no tyranny in Athens.

The Democratic Republic.

On the fall of the Pisistratidæ, a majority of the noble or

privileged class struggled hard to regain their old

ascendancy; but one of their number, Cleisthenes, took the

side of the people and helped them to establish a democratic

constitution. He caused the ancient tribal division of the

citizens to be abolished, and substituted a division which

mixed the members of clans and broke up or weakened the

clannish influence in politics. He enlarged Solon's senate or

council and divided it into committees, and he brought the

"ecclesia," or popular assembly, into a more active exercise

of its powers. He also introduced the custom of ostracism,

which permitted the citizens of Athens to banish by their vote

any man whom they thought dangerous to the state. The

constitution of Cleisthenes was the final foundation of the

Athenian democratic republic. Monarchical and aristocratic

Sparta resented the popular change, and undertook to restore

the oligarchy by force of arms; but the roused democracy of

Athens defended its newly won liberties with vigor and

success.

The Persian Wars.

Not Athens only, but all Greece, was now about to be put to a

test which proved the remarkable quality of both, and formed

the beginning of their great career. The Ionian cities of Asia

Minor had recently been twice conquered, first by Crœsus, King

of Lydia, and then by Cyrus the Great, founder of the Persian

empire, who had overthrown Crœsus (B. C. 547), and taken his

dominions. The Persians oppressed them, and in 500 B. C. they

rose in revolt. Athens and Eretria sent help to them, while

Sparta refused. The revolt was suppressed, and Darius, the

king of Persia, planned vengeance upon the Athenians and

Eretrians for the aid they had given to it. He sent an

expedition against them in 493 B. C., which was mostly

destroyed by a storm. In 490 B. C. he sent a second powerful

army and fleet, which took Eretria and razed it to the ground.

The great Persian army then marched upon Athens, and was met at

Marathon by a small Athenian force of 9,000 men. The little

city of Platæa sent 1,000 more to stand with them in the

desperate encounter. They had no other aid in the fight, and

the Persians were a great unnumbered host. But Miltiades, the

Greek general that day, planned his battle-charge so well that

he routed the Asiatic host and lost but 192 men. The Persians

abandoned their attempt and returned to their wrathful king.

One citizen of Athens, Themistocles, had sagacity enough to

foresee that the "Great King," as he was known, would not rest

submissive under his defeat; and with difficulty he persuaded

his fellow citizens to prepare themselves for future conflicts

by building a fleet and by fortifying their harbors, thus making

themselves powerful at sea. The wisdom of his counsels was

proved in 480 B. C., when Xerxes, the successor of Darius, led

an army of prodigious size into Greece, crossing the

Hellespont by a bridge of boats. This time, Sparta, Corinth,

and several of the lesser states, rallied with Athens to the

defence of the common country; but Thebes and Argos showed

friendship to the Persians, and none of the important

island-colonies contributed any help. Athens was the brain and

right arm of the war, notwithstanding the accustomed

leadership of Sparta in military affairs.

The first encounter was at Thermopylæ, where Leonidas and his

300 Spartans defended the narrow pass, and died in their place

when the Persians found a way across the mountain to surround

them. But on that same day the Persian fleet was beaten at

Artemisium. Xerxes marched on Athens, however, found the city

deserted, and destroyed it. His fleet had followed him, and

was still stronger than the naval force of the Greeks.

Themistocles forced a battle, against the will of the

Peloponnesian captains, and practically destroyed the Persian

fleet. This most memorable battle of Salamis was decisive of

the war, and decisive of the independence of Greece. Xerxes,

in a panic, hastened back into Asia, leaving one of his

generals, Mardonius, with 300,000 men, to pursue the war. But

Mardonius was routed and his host annihilated, at Platæa, the

next year, while the Persian fleet was again defeated on the

same day at Mycale.

The Golden Age of Athens.

The war had been glorious for the Athenians, and all could see

that Greece had been saved by their spirit and their

intelligence much more than by the valor of Sparta and the

other states. But they were in a woful condition, with their

city destroyed and their families without homes. Wasting no

time in lamentations, they rebuilt the town, stretched its

walls to a wider circuit, and fortified it more strongly than

before, under the lead of the sagacious Themistocles. Their

neighbors were meanly jealous, and Sparta made attempts to

interfere with the building of the walls; but Themistocles

baffled them cunningly, and the new Athens rose proudly out of

the ashes of the old.

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The Ionian islands and towns of Asia Minor (which had broken

the Persian yoke) now recognized the superiority and

leadership of Athens, and a league was formed among them,

which held the meetings of its deputies and kept its treasury

in the temple of Apollo on the sacred island of Delos; for

which reason it was called the Confederacy of Delos, or the

Delian League. The Peloponnesian states formed a looser rival

league under the headship of Sparta. The Confederacy of Delos

was in sympathy with popular governments and popular parties

everywhere, while the Spartans and their following favored

oligarchies and aristocratic parties. There were many

occasions for hostility between the two.

The Athenians, at the head of their Confederacy, were strong,

until they impaired their power by using it in tyrannical

ways. Many lesser states in the league were foolish enough to

commute in money payments the contribution of ships and men

which they had pledged themselves to make to the common naval

force. This gave Athens the power to use that force

despotically, as her own, and she did not scruple to exercise

the power. The Confederacy was soon a name; the states forming

it were no longer allies of Athens, but her subjects; she

ruled them as the sovereign of an Empire, and her rule was

neither generous nor just. Thereby the double tie of kinship

and of interest which might have bound the whole circle of

Ionian states to her fortunes and herself was destroyed by her

own acts. Provoking the hatred of her allies and challenging

the jealous fear of her rivals, Athens had many enemies.

At the same time, a dangerous change in the character of her

democratic institutions was begun, produced especially by the

institution of popular jury-courts, before which prosecutions

of every kind were tried, the citizens who constituted the

courts acting as jury and judge at once. This gave them a

valuable training, without doubt, and helped greatly to raise

the common standard of intelligence among the Athenians so

high; but it did unquestionably tend also to demoralizations

that were ruinous in the end. The jury service, which was

slightly paid, fell more and more to an unworthy class, made

up of idlers or intriguers. Party feeling and popular passions

gained an increasing influence over the juries, and demagogues

acquired an increasing skill in making use of them.

But these evils were scarcely more than in their seed during

the great period of "Athenian Empire," as it is sometimes

called, and everything within its bounds was suffused with the

shining splendor of that matchless half-century. The genius of

this little Ionic state was stimulated to amazing achievements

in every intellectual field. Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides,

Aristophanes, within a single generation, crowded Athenian

literature with the masterpieces of classic drama. Pheidias

and his companions crowned the Acropolis and filled the city

with works that have been the models in art for all ages

since. Socrates began the quizzing which turned philosophy

into honest truth-seeking paths, and Plato listened to him and

was instructed for his mission. Thucydides watched events with

sagacious young eyes, and prepared his pen for the chronicling

of them; while Herodotus, pausing at Athens from his wide

travels, matured the knowledge he had gathered up and

perfected it for his final work. Over all of them came

Pericles to preside and rule, not as a master, or "tyrant,"

but as leader, guide, patron, princely republican,--statesman

and politician in one.

The Peloponnesian War.

The period of the ascendancy of Pericles was the "golden age"

of Athenian prosperity and power, both material and

intellectual. The beginning of the end of it was reached a

little before he died, when the long-threatened war between

Athens and the Peloponnesian league, led by Sparta, broke out

(B. C. 431). If Athens had then possessed the good will of the

cities of her own league, and if her citizens had retained

their old sobriety and intelligence, she might have triumphed

in the war; for she was all powerful at sea and fortified

almost invincibly against attacks by land. But the subject

states, called allies, were hostile, for the most part, and

helped the enemy by their revolts, while the death of Pericles

(B. C. 429) let loose on the people a swarm of demagogues who

flattered and deluded them, and baffled the wiser and more

honest, whose counsels and leadership might have given her

success.

The fatal folly of the long war was an expedition against the

distant city of Syracuse (B. C. 415-413), into which the

Athenians were enticed by the restless and unscrupulous

ambition of Alcibiades. The entire force sent to Sicily

perished there, and the strength and spirit of Athens were

ruinously sapped by the fearful calamity. She maintained the

war, however, until 404 B. C., when, having lost her fleet in

the decisive battle of Ægospotami, and being helplessly

blockaded by sea and land, the city was surrendered to the

Spartan general Lysander. Her walls and fortifications were

then destroyed and her democratic government was overthrown,

giving place to an oligarchy known as the "thirty tyrants."

The democracy soon suppressed the thirty tyrants and regained

control, and Athens, in time, rose somewhat from her deep

humiliation, but never again to much political power in

Greece. In intellect and cultivation, the superiority of the

Attic state was still maintained, and its greatest productions

in philosophy and eloquence were yet to be given to the world.

Spartan and Theban Ascendancy.

After the fall of Athens, Sparta was dominant in the whole of

Greece for thirty years and more, exercising her power more

oppressively than Athens had done. Then Thebes, which had been

treacherously seized and garrisoned by the Spartans, threw off

their yoke (B. C. 379) and led a rising, under her great and

high-souled citizen, Epaminondas, which resulted in bringing

Thebes to the head of Greek affairs. But the Theban ascendancy

was short-lived, and ended with the death of Epaminondas in

362 B. C.

Macedonian Supremacy.

Meantime, while the city-states of Hellas proper had been

wounding and weakening one another by their jealousies and

wars, the semi-Greek kingdom of Macedonia, to the north of

them, in their own peninsula, had been acquiring their

civilization and growing strong. And now there appeared upon

its throne a very able king, Philip, who took advantage of

their divisions, interfered in their affairs, and finally made

a practical conquest of the whole peninsula, by his victory at

the battle of Chæronea (B. C. 338). At Athens, the great

orator Demosthenes had exerted himself for years to rouse

resistance to Philip. If his eloquence failed then, it has

served the world immortally since, by delighting and

instructing mankind.

{996}

King Philip was succeeded by his famous son, Alexander the

Great, who led an army of Macedonians and Greeks into Asia (B.

C. 334), overthrew the already crumbling Persian power,

pursued his conquests through Afghanistan to India, and won a

great empire which he did not live to rule. When he died (B.

C. 323), his generals divided the empire among them and fought

with one another for many years. But the general result was

the spreading of the civilization and language of the Greeks,

and the establishing of their intellectual influence, in

Egypt, in Syria, in Asia Minor, and beyond.

In Greece itself, a state of disturbance and of political

confusion and weakness prevailed for another century. There

was promise of something better, in the formation, by several

of the Peloponnesian states, of a confederacy called the

Achaian League, which might possibly have federated and

nationalized the whole of Hellas in the end; but the Romans,

at this juncture, turned their conquering arms eastward, and

in three successive wars, between 211 and 146 B. C., they

extinguished the Macedonian kingdom, and annexed it, with the

whole peninsula, to the dominions of their wonderful republic.

The Romans.

The Romans, as stated already, are believed to have been

originally near kindred to the Greeks. The same movement, it

is supposed, in the successive outswarmings of Aryan peoples,

deposited in one peninsula the Italian tribes, and in the next

peninsula, eastward, the tribes of the Hellenes. Among the

Italian tribes were Latins, Umbrians, Sabines, Samnites, etc.,

occupying the middle and much of the southern parts of the

peninsula, while a mysterious alien people, the Etruscans,

whose origin is not known, possessed the country north of them

between the Arno and the Tiber. In the extreme south were

remnants of a primitive race, the Iapygian, and Greek colonies

were scattered there around the coasts. From the Latins sprang

the Romans, at the beginning of their separate existence; but

there seems to have been a very early union of these Romans of

the primitive tradition with a Sabine community, whereby was

formed the Roman city-state of historical times. That union

came about through the settlement of the two communities,

Latin and Sabine, on two neighboring hills, near the mouth of

the river Tiber, on its southern bank. In the view of some

historians, it is the geographical position of those hills,

hardly less than the masterful temper and capacity of the race

seated on them, which determined the marvellous career of the

city founded on that site. Says Professor Freeman: "The whole

history of the world has been determined by the geological

fact that at a point a little below the junction of the Tiber

and the Anio the isolated hills stand nearer to one another

than most of the other hills of Latium. On a site marked out

above all other sites for dominion, the centre of Italy, the

centre of Europe, as Europe then was, a site at the junction

of three of the great nations of Italy, and which had the

great river as its highway to lands beyond the bounds of

Italy, stood two low hills, the hill which bore the name of

Latin Saturn, and the hill at the meaning of whose name of

Palatine scholars will perhaps guess for ever. These two

hills, occupied by men of two of the nations of Italy, stood

so near to one another that a strait choice indeed was laid on

those who dwelled on them. They must either join together on

terms closer than those which commonly united Italian leagues,

or they must live a life of border warfare more ceaseless,

more bitter, than the ordinary warfare of Italian enemies.

Legend, with all likelihood, tells us that warfare was tried;

history, with all certainty, tells us that the final choice

was union. The two hills were fenced with a single wall; the

men who dwelled on them changed from wholly separate

communities into tribes of a single city."

The followers of Romulus occupied the Palatine Mount, and the

Sabines were settled on the Quirinal. At subsequent times, the

Cœlian, the Capitoline, the Aventine, the Esquiline and the

Viminal hills were embraced in the circumvallation, and the

city on the seven hills thus acquired that name.

If modern students and thinkers, throwing light on the

puzzling legends and traditions of early Rome from many

sources, in language and archæology, have construed their

meaning lightly, then great importance attaches to those first

unions or incorporations of distinct settlements in the

forming of the original city-state. For it was the beginning

of a process which went on until the whole of Latium, and then

the whole of Italy, and, finally, the whole Mediterranean

world, were joined to the seven hills of Rome. "The whole

history of Rome is a history of incorporation"; and it is

reasonable to believe that the primal spring of Roman

greatness is found in that early adoption and persistent

practice of the policy of political absorption, which gave

conquest a character it had never borne before. At the same

time, this view of the creation of the Roman state contributes

to an understanding of its early constitutional history. It

supposes that the union of the first three tribes which

coalesced--those of the Palatine, the Quirinal and Capitoline

(both occupied by the Sabines) and the Cœlian hills--ended the

process of incorporation on equal terms. These formed the

original Roman people--the "fathers," the "patres," whose

descendants appear in later times as a distinct class or

order, the "patricians"--holding and struggling to maintain

exclusive political rights, and exclusive ownership of the

public domain, the "ager publicus," which became a subject of

bitter contention for four centuries. Around these heirs of

the "fathers" of Rome arose another class of Romans, brought

into the community by later incorporations, and not on equal

terms. If the first class were "fathers," these were children,

in a political sense, adopted into the Roman family, but without

a voice in general affairs, or a share in the public lands, or

eligibility to the higher offices of the state. These were the

"plebeians" or "plebs" of Rome, whose long struggle with the

patricians for political and agrarian rights is the more

interesting side of Roman history throughout nearly the whole

of the prosperous age of the republic.

{997}

At Rome, as at Athens, there was a period of early kingship,

the legends of which are as familiar to us all as the stories

of the Bible, but the real facts of which are almost totally

unknown. It is surmised that the later kings--the well known

Tarquins of the classical tale--were Etruscan princes (it is

certain that they were Etruscans), who had broken for a time

the independence of the Romans and extended their sovereignty

over them. It is suspected, too, that this period of Etruscan

domination was one in which Roman civilization made a great

advance, under the tuition of a more cultivated people. But if

Rome in its infancy did know a time of subjugation, the

endurance was not long. It ended, according to Roman

chronology, in the 245th year of the city, or 509 B.C., by the

expulsion of Tarquin the Proud, the last of the kings.

The Roman Republic.

The Republic was then founded; but it was an aristocratic and

not a democratic republic. The consuls, who replaced the

kings, were required to be patricians, and they were chosen by

the landholders of the state. The senate was patrician; all

the important powers of government were in patrician hands,

and the plebs suffered grievous oppression in consequence.

They were not of a tamely submissive race. They demanded

powers for their own protection, and by slow degrees they won

them--strong as the patricians were in their wealth and their

trained political skill.

Precisely as in Athens, the first great effort among the

common people was to obtain relief from crushing burdens of

debt, which had been laid upon them in precisely the same

way--by loss of harvests while in military service, and by the

hardness of the laws which creditors alone had framed. An army

of plebs, just home from war, marched out of the city and

refused to return until magistrates of their own choosing had

been conceded to them. The patricians could not afford to lose

the bone and sinew of their state, and they yielded the point

in demand (B. C. 494). This first "secession of the plebs"

brought about the first great democratic change in the Roman

constitution, by calling into existence a powerful

magistracy--the Tribunes of the Plebs--who henceforth stood

between the consuls and the common people, for the protection

of the latter.

From this first success the plebeian order went forward, step

by step, to the attainment of equal political rights in the

commonwealth, and equal participation in the lands which Roman

conquest was continually adding to the public domain. In 450

B. C., after ten years of struggle, they secured the

appointment of a commission which framed the famous Twelve

Tables of the Law, and so established a written and certain

code. Five years later, the caste exclusiveness of the

patricians was broken down by a law which permitted marriages

between the orders. In 367 B. C. the patrician monopoly of the

consular office was extinguished, by the notable Licinian

Laws, which also limited the extent of land that any citizen

might occupy, and forbade the exclusive employment of slave

labor on any estate. One by one, after that, other

magistracies were opened to the plebs; and in 287 B. C. by the

Lex Hortensia, the plebeian concilium, or assembly, was made

independent of the senate and its acts declared to be valid

and binding. The democratic commonwealth was now completely

formed.

Roman Conquest of Italy.

While these changes in the constitution of their Republic were

in progress, the Romans had been making great advances toward

supremacy in the peninsula. First they had been in league with

their Latin neighbors, for war with the Æquians, the

Volscians, and the Etruscans. The Volscian war extended over

forty years, and ended about 450 B. C. in the practical

disappearance of the Volscians from history. Of war with the

Æquians, nothing is heard after 458 B. C., when, as the tale

is told, Cincinnatus left his plow to lead the Romans against

them. The war with the Etruscans of the near city of Veii had

been more stubborn. Suspended by a truce between 474 and 438

B. C., it was then renewed, and ended in 396 B. C., when the

Etruscan city was taken and destroyed. At the same time the

power of the Etruscans was being shattered at sea by the

Greeks of Tarentum and Syracuse, while at home they were

attacked from the north by the barbarous Gauls or Celts.

These last named people, having crossed the Alps from Gaul and

Switzerland and occupied northern Italy, were now pressing

upon the more civilized nations to the south of the Po. The

Etruscans were first to suffer, and their despair became so

great that they appealed to Rome for help. The Romans gave

little aid to them in their extremity; but enough to provoke

the wrath of Brennus, the savage leader of the Gauls. He

quitted Etruria and marched to Rome, defeating an army which

opposed him on the Allia, pillaging and burning the city (B.

C. 390) and slaying the senators, who had refused to take

refuge, with other inhabitants, in the capitol. The defenders

of the capitol held it for seven months; Rome was rebuilt,

when the Gauls withdrew, and soon took up her war again with

the Etruscan cities. By the middle of the same century she was

mistress of southern Etruria, though her territories had been

ravaged twice again by renewed incursions of the Gauls. In a

few years more, when her allies of Latium complained of their

meager share of the fruits of these common wars, and demanded

Roman citizenship and equal rights, she fought them fiercely

and humbled them to submissiveness (B. C. 339-338), reducing

their cities to the status of provincial towns.

And now, having awed or subdued her rivals, her friends, and

her enemies, near at hand, the young Republic swung into the

career of rapid conquest which subdued to her will, within

three-fourths of a century, the whole of Italy below the mouth

of the Arno.

In 343 B. C. the Roman arms had been turned against the

Samnites at the south, and they had been driven from the

Campania. In 327 B. C. the same dangerous rivals were again

assailed, with less impunity. At the Caudine Forks, in 321 B.

C., the Samnites inflicted both disaster and shame upon their

indomitable foes; but the end of the war (B. C. 304) found

Rome advanced and Samnium fallen back. A third contest ended

the question of supremacy; but the Samnites (B. C. 290)

submitted to become allies and not subjects of the Roman

state.

In this last struggle the Samnites had summoned Gauls and

Etruscans to join them against the common enemy, and Rome had

overcome their united forces in a great fight at Sentinum.

This was in 295 B. C. Ten years later she annihilated the

Senonian Gauls, annexed their territory and planted a colony

at Sena on the coast. In two years more she had paralyzed the

Boian Gauls by a terrible chastisement, and had nothing more

to fear from the northward side of her realm. Then she turned

back to finish her work in the south.

{998}

War with Pyrrhus.

The Greek cities of the southern coast were harassed by

various marauding neighbors, and most of them solicited the

protection of Rome, which involved, of course, some surrender

of their independence. But one great city, Tarentum, the most

powerful of their number, refused these terms, and hazarded a

war with the terrible republic, expecting support from the

ambitious Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, on the Greek coast opposite

their own. Pyrrhus came readily at their call, with dreams of

an Italian kingdom more agreeable than his own. Assisted in

the undertaking by his royal kinsmen of Macedonia and Syria,

he brought an army of 25,000 men, with 20 elephants--which

Roman eyes had never seen before. In two bloody fights (B. C.

280-279), Pyrrhus was victorious; but the cost of victory was

so great that he dared not follow it up. He went over to

Sicily, instead, and waged war for three years (B. C. 278-276)

with the Carthaginians, who had subjugated most of the island.

The Epirot king brought timely aid to the Sicilian Greeks, and

drove their Punic enemies into the western border of the

island; but he claimed sovereignty over all that his arms

delivered, and was not successful in enforcing the claim. He

returned to Italy and found the Romans better prepared than

before to face his phalanx and his elephants. They routed him

at Beneventum, in the spring of 275 B. C. and he went back to

Epirus, with his dreams dispelled. Tarentum fell, and Southern

Italy was added to the dominion of Rome.

Punic Wars.

During her war with Pyrrhus, the Republic had formed an

alliance with Carthage, the powerful maritime Phœnician city

on the African coast. But friendship between these two cities

was impossible. The ambition of both was too boundless and too

fierce. They were necessarily competitors for supremacy in the

Mediterranean world, from the moment that a narrow strait

between Italy and Sicily was all that held them apart. Rome

challenged her rival to the duel in 264 B. C., when she sent

help to the Mamertines, a band of brigands who had seized the

Sicilian city of Messina, and who were being attacked by both

Carthaginians and Syracusan Greeks. The "First Punic War,"

then begun, lasted twenty-four years, and resulted in the

withdrawal of the Carthaginians from Sicily, and in their

payment of an enormous war indemnity to Rome. The latter

assumed a protectorate over the island, and the kingdom of

Hiero of Syracuse preserved its nominal independence for the

time; but Sicily, as a matter of fact, might already be looked

upon as the first of those provinces, beyond Italy, which Rome

bound to herself, one by one, until she had compassed the

Mediterranean with her dominion and gathered to it all the

islands of that sea.

The "Second Punic war," called sometimes the "Hannibalic war,"

was fought with a great Carthaginian, rather than with

Carthage herself. Hamilcar Barca had been the last and ablest

of the Punic generals in the contest for Sicily. Afterwards he

undertook the conquest of Spain, where his arms had such

success that he established a very considerable power, more

than half independent of the parent state. He nursed an

unquenchable hatred of Rome, and transmitted it to his son

Hannibal, who solemnly dedicated his life to warfare with the

Latin city. Hamilcar died, and in due time Hannibal found

himself prepared to make good his oath. He provoked a

declaration of war (B. C. 218) by attacking Saguntum, on the

eastern Spanish coast--a town which the Romans "protected."

The latter expected to encounter him in Spain; but before the

fleet bearing their legions to that country had reached

Massilia, he had already passed the Pyrenees and the Rhone,

with nearly 100,000 men, and was crossing the Alps, to assail

his astounded foes on their own soil. The terrific barrier was

surmounted with such suffering and loss that only 20,000 foot

and 6,000 horse, of the great army which left Spain, could be

mustered for the clearing of the last Alpine pass. With this

small following, by sheer energy, rapidity and precision of

movement--by force, in other words, of a military genius never

surpassed in the world--he defeated the armies of Rome again

and again, and so crushingly in the awful battle of Cannæ (B.

C. 216) that the proud republic was staggered, but never

despaired. For fifteen years the great Carthaginian held his

ground in southern Italy; but his expectation of being joined

by discontented subjects of Rome in the peninsula was very

slightly realized, and his own country gave him little

encouragement or help. His brother Hasdrubal, marching to his

relief in 207 B. C., was defeated on the river Metaurus and

slain. The arms of Rome had prospered meantime in Sicily and

in Spain, even while beaten at home, and her Punic rival had

been driven from both. In 204 B. C. the final field of battle

was shifted to Carthaginian territory by Scipio, of famous

memory, thereafter styled Africanus, because he "carried the

war into Africa." Hannibal abandoned Italy to confront him,

and at Zama, in the autumn of 202 B. C., the long contention

ended, and the career of Carthage as a Power in the ancient

world was forever closed. Existing by Roman sufferance for

another half century, she then gave her implacable conquerors

another pretext for war, and they ruthlessly destroyed her

(B.C. 146).

Roman Conquest of Greece.

In that same year of the destruction of Carthage, the conquest

of Greece was finished. The first war of the Romans on that

side of the Adriatic had taken place during the Second Punic

war, and had been caused by an alliance formed between

Hannibal and King Philip of Macedonia (B. C. 214). They

pursued it then no further than to frustrate Philip's designs

against themselves; but they formed alliances with the Greek

states oppressed or menaced by the Macedonian, and these drew

them into a second war, just as the century closed. On

Cynoscephalæ, Philip was overthrown (B. C. 197), his kingdom

reduced to vassalage, and the freedom of all Greece was

solemnly proclaimed by the Roman Consul Flaminius.

{999}

And now, for the first time, Rome came into conflict with an

Asiatic power. The throne of the Syrian monarchy, founded by

one of the generals of Alexander the Great, was occupied by a

king more ambitious than capable, who had acquired a large and

loosely jointed dominion in the East, and who bore the

sounding name of Antiochus the Great. This vainglorious King,

having a huge army and many elephants at his disposal, was

eager to try a passage at arms with the redoubtable men of

Rome. He was encouraged in his desire by the Ætolians in

Greece, who bore ill-will to Rome. Under this encouragement,

and having Hannibal--then a fugitive at his court--to give him

counsel, which he lacked intelligence to use, Antiochus

crossed the Ægean and invaded Greece (B. C. 192). The Romans

met him at the pass of Thermopylæ; drove him back to the

shores from which he came; pursued him thither; crushed and

humbled him on the field of Magnesia, and took the kingdoms

and cities of Asia Minor under their protection, as the allies

(soon to be subjects) of Rome.

Twenty years passed with little change in the outward

situation of affairs among the Greeks. But discontent with the

harshness and haughtiness of Roman "protection" changed from

sullenness to heat, and Perseus, son of Philip of Macedonia,

fanned it steadily, with the hope of bringing it to a flame.

Rome watched him with keen vigilance, and before his plans

were ripe her legions were upon him. He battled with them

obstinately for three years (B. C. 171-168); but his fate was

sealed at Pydna. He went as a prisoner to Rome; his kingdom

was broken into four small republics; the Achæan League was

stricken by the captivity of a thousand of its chief men; the

whole of Greece was humbled to submissiveness, though not yet

formally reduced to the state of a Roman province. That

followed some years later, when risings in Macedonia and

Achaia were punished by the extinction of the last semblance

of political independence in both (B. C. 148-146).

The Zenith of the Republic.

Rome now gripped the Mediterranean (the ocean of the then

civilized world) as with four fingers of a powerful hand: one

laid on Italy and all its islands, one on Macedonia and

Greece, one on Carthage, one on Spain, and the little finger

of her "protection" reaching over to the Lesser Asia. Little

more than half a century, since the day that Hannibal

threatened her own city gates, had sufficed to win this vast

dominion. But the losses of the Republic had been greater,

after all, than the gains; for the best energies of its

political constitution had been expended in the acquisition,

and the nobler qualities in its character had been touched

with the incurable taints of a licentious prosperity.

Beginning of Decline.

A century and a half had passed since the practical ending of

the struggle of plebeians with patricians for political and

agrarian rights. In theory and in form, the constitution

remained as democratic as it was made by the Licinian Laws of

367 B. C., and by the finishing touch of the Hortensian Law of

287 B. C. But in practical working it had reverted to the

aristocratic mode. A new aristocracy had risen out of the

plebeian ranks to reinforce the old patrician order. It was

composed of the families of men who had been raised to

distinction and ennobled by the holding of eminent offices,

and its spirit was no less jealous and exclusive than that of

the older high caste.

The Senate and the Mob.

Thus strengthened, the aristocracy had recovered its

ascendancy in Rome, and the Senate, which it controlled, had

become the supreme power in government. The amazing success of

the Republic during the last century just reviewed--its

successes in war, in diplomacy, and in all the sagacious

measures of policy by which its great dominion had been

won--are reasonably ascribed to this fact. For the Senate had

wielded the power of the state, in most emergencies, with

passionless deliberation and with unity and fixity of aim.

But it maintained its ascendancy by an increasing employment

of means which debased and corrupted all orders alike. The

people held powers which might paralyze the Senate at any

moment, if they chose to exercise them, through their

assemblies and their tribunes. They had seldom brought those

powers into play thus far, to interfere with the senatorial

government of the Republic, simply because they had been

bribed to abstain. The art of the politician in Rome, as

distinguished from the statesman, had already become

demagoguery. This could not well have been otherwise under the

peculiar constitution of the Roman citizenship. Of the

thirty-five tribes who made up the Roman people, legally

qualified to vote, only four were within the city. The

remaining thirty-one were "plebs urbana." There was no

delegated representation of this country populace--citizens

beyond the walls. To exercise their right of suffrage they

must be personally present at the meetings of the "comitia

tributa"--the tribal assemblies; and those of any tribe who

chanced to be in attendance at such a meeting might give a

vote which carried with it the weight of their whole tribe.

For questions were decided by the majority of tribal, not

individual, votes; and a very few members of a tribe might act

for and be the tribe, for all purposes of voting, on occasions

of the greatest possible importance. It is quite evident that

a democratic system of this nature gave wide opportunity for

corrupt "politics." There must have been, always, an

attraction for the baser sort among the rural plebs, drawing

them into the city, to enjoy the excitement of political

contests, and to partake of the flatteries and largesses which

began early to go with these. And circumstances had tended

strongly to increase this sinister sifting into Rome of the

most vagrant and least responsible of her citizens, to make

them practically the deputies and representatives of that

mighty sovereign which had risen in the world--the "Populus

Romanus." For there was no longer either thrift or dignity

possible in the pursuits of husbandry. The long Hannibalic War

had ruined the farming class in Italy by its ravages; but the

extensive conquests that followed it had been still more

ruinous to that class by several effects combined. Corn

supplies from the conquered provinces were poured into Rome at

cheapened prices; enormous fortunes, gathered in the same

provinces by officials, by farmers of taxes, by money-lenders,

and by traders, were largely invested in great estates,

absorbing the small farms of olden time; and, finally,

free-labor in agriculture was supplanted, more and more, by

the labor of slaves, which war and increasing wealth combined

to multiply in numbers. Thus the "plebs urbana" of Rome were a

depressed and, therefore, a degenerating class, and the same

circumstances that made them so impelled them towards the

city, to swell the mob which held its mighty sovereignty in

their hands.

{1000}

So far, a lavish amusement of this mob with free games, and

liberal bribes, had kept it generally submissive to the

senatorial government. But the more it was debased by such

methods, and its vagrancy encouraged, the more extravagant

gratuities of like kind it claimed. Hence a time could never

be far away when the aristocracy and the senate would lose

their control of the popular vote on which they had built

their governing power.

Agrarian Agitations.

But they invited the quicker coming of that time by their own

greediness in the employment of their power for selfish and

dishonest ends. They had practically recovered their monopoly

of the use of the public lands. The Licinian law, which

forbade any one person to occupy more than five hundred jugera

(about three hundred acres) of the public lands, had been made

a dead letter. The great tracts acquired in the Samnite wars,

and since, had remained undistributed, while the use and

profit of them were enjoyed, under one form of authority or

another, by rich capitalists and powerful nobles.

This evil, among many that waxed greater each year, caused the

deepest discontent, and provoked movements of reform which

soon passed by rapid stages into a revolution, and ended in

the fall of the Republic. The leader of the movement at its

beginning was Tiberius Gracchus, grandson of Scipio Africanus

on the side of his mother, Cornelia. Elected tribune in 133 B.

C., he set himself to the dangerous task of rousing the people

against senatorial usurpations, especially in the matter of

the public domain. He only drew upon himself the hatred of the

senate and its selfish supporters; he failed to rally a

popular party that was strong enough for his protection, and

his enemies slew him in the very midst of a meeting of the

tribes. His brother Caius took up the perilous cause and won

the office of tribune (B. C. 123) in avowed hostility to the

senatorial government. He was driven to bid high for popular

help, even when the measures which he strove to carry were

most plainly for the welfare of the common people, and he may

seem to modern eyes to have played the demagogue with some

extravagance. But statesmanship and patriotism without

demagoguery for their instrument or their weapon were hardly

practicable, perhaps, in the Rome of those days, and it is not

easy to find them clean-handed in any political leader of the

last century of the Republic. The fall of Caius Gracchus was

hastened by his attempt to extend the Roman franchise beyond

the "populus Romanus," to all the freemen of Italy. The mob in

Rome was not pleased with such political generosity, and

cooled in its admiration for the large-minded tribune. He lost

his office and the personal protection it threw over him, and

then he, like his brother, was slain (B. C. 121) in a melee.

Jugurthine War.

For ten years the senate, the nobility, and the capitalists

(now beginning to take the name of the equestrian order), had

mostly their own way again, and effaced the work of the

Gracchi as completely as they could. Then came disgraceful

troubles in Numidia which enraged the people and moved them to

a new assertion of themselves. The Numidian king who helped

Scipio to pull Carthage down had been a ward of Rome since

that time. When he died, he left his kingdom to be governed

jointly by two young sons and an older nephew. The latter,

Jugurtha, put his cousins out of the way, took the kingdom to

himself, and baffled attempts at Rome to call him to account,

by heavy bribes. The corruption in the case became so flagrant

that even the corrupted Roman populace revolted against it, and

took the Numidian business into its own hands. War was

declared against Jugurtha by popular vote, and, despite

opposing action in the Senate, one Marius, an experienced

soldier of humble birth, was elected consul and sent out to

take command. Marius distinguished himself in the war much

less than did one of his officers, Cornelius Sulla; but he

bore the lion's share of glory when Jugurtha was taken captive

and conveyed to Rome (B. C. 104). Marius was now the great

hero of the hour, and events were preparing to lift him to the

giddiest heights of popularity.

Teutones and Cimbri.

Hitherto, the barbarians of wild Europe whom the Romans had

met were either the Aryan Celts, or the non-Aryan tribes found

in northern Italy, Spain and Gaul. Now, for the first time,

the armies of Rome were challenged by tribes of another grand

division of the Aryan stock, coming out of the farther North.

These were the Cimbri and the Teutones, wandering hordes of

the great Teutonic or Germanic race which has occupied Western

Europe north of the Rhine since the beginning of historic

time. So far as we can know, these two were the first of the

Germanic nations to migrate to the South. They came into

collision with Rome in 113 B. C., when they were in Noricum,

threatening the frontiers of her Italian dominion. Four years

later they were in southern Gaul, where the Romans were now

settling colonies and subduing the native Celts. Twice they

had beaten the armies opposed to them; two years later they

added a third to their victories; and in 105 B. C. they threw

Rome into consternation by destroying two great armies on the

Rhone. Italy seemed helpless against the invasion for which

these terrible barbarians were now preparing, when Marius went

against them. In the summer of 102 B. C. he annihilated the

Teutones, near Aquæ Sextiæ (modern Aix), and in the following

year he destroyed the invading Cimbri, on a bloody field in

northern Italy, near modern Vercellæ.

Marius.

From these great victories, Marius went back to Rome, doubly

and terribly clothed with power, by the devotion of a reckless

army and the hero-worship of an unthinking mob. The state was

at his mercy. A strong man in his place might have crushed the

class-factions and accomplished the settlement which Cæsar

made after half a century more of turbulence and shame. But

Marius was ignorant, he was weak, and he became a mere

blood-stained figure in the ruinous anarchy of his time.

{1001}

Optimates and Populares.

The social and political state of the capital had grown

rapidly worse. A middle-class in Roman society had practically

disappeared. The two contending parties or factions, which had

taken new names--"optimates" and "populares"--were now

divided almost solely by the line which separates rich from

poor. "If we said that 'optimates' signified the men who

bribed and abused office under the banner of the Senate and

its connections, and that 'populares' meant men who bribed and

abused office with the interests of the people outside the

Senatorial pale upon their lips, we might do injustice to many

good men on both sides, but should hardly be slandering the

parties" (Beesly). There was a desperate conflict between the

two in the year 100, B. C. and the Senate once more recovered

its power for a brief term of years.

The Social War.

The enfranchisement of the so-called "allies"--the Latin and

other subjects of Rome who were not citizens--was the burning

question of the time. The attempt of Caius Gracchus to extend

rights of citizenship to them had been renewed again and

again, without success, and each failure had increased the

bitter discontent of the Italian people. In 90 B. C. they drew

together in a formidable confederation and rose in revolt. In

the face of this great danger Rome sobered herself to action

with old time wisdom and vigor. She yielded her full

citizenship to all Italian freemen who had not taken arms, and

then offered it to those who would lay their arms down. At the

same time, she fought the insurrection with every army she

could put into the field, and in two years it was at an end.

Marius and his old lieutenant, Sulla, had been the principal

commanders in this "Social War," as it was named, and Sulla

had distinguished himself most. The latter had now an army at

his back and was a power in the state, and between the two

military champions there arose a rivalry which produced the

first of the Roman Civil Wars.

Marius and Sulla.

A troublesome war in the East had been forced upon the Romans

by aggressions of Mithridates, King of Pontus. Both Marius and

Sulla aspired to the command. Sulla obtained election to the

consulship in 88 B. C. and was named for the coveted place.

But Marius succeeded in getting the appointment annulled by a

popular assembly and himself chosen instead for the Eastern

command. Sulla, personally imperilled by popular tumults, fled

to his legions, put himself at their head, and marched back to

Rome--the first among her generals to turn her arms against

herself. There was no effective resistance; Marius fled; both

Senate and people were submissive to the dictates of the

consul who had become master of the city. He "made the tribes

decree their own political extinction, resuscitating the

comitia centuriata; he reorganized the Senate by adding three

hundred to its members and vindicating the right to sanction

legislation; conducted the consular elections, exacting from

L. Cornelius Cinna, the newly elected consul, a solemn oath

that he would observe the new regulations, and securing the

election of Cn. Octavius in his own interest, and then, like

'a countryman who had just shaken the lice off his coat,' to

use his own figure, he turned to do his great work in the

East."

(Horton).

Sulla went to Greece, which was in revolt and in alliance with

Mithridates, and conducted there a brilliant, ruthless

campaign for three years (B. C. 87-84), until he had restored

Roman authority in the peninsula, and forced the King of

Pontus to surrender all his conquests in Asia Minor. Until

this task was finished, he gave no heed to what his enemies

did at Rome; though the struggle there between "Sullans" and

"Marians" had gone fiercely and bloodily on, and his own

partisans had been beaten in the fight. The consul Octavius,

who was in Bulla's interest, had first driven the consul Cinna

out of the city, after slaying 10,000 of his faction. Cinna's

cause was taken up by the new Italian citizens; he was joined

by the exiled Marius, and these two returned together, with an

army which the Senate and the party of Sulla were unable to

resist. Marius came back with a burning heart and with savage

intentions of revenge. A horrible massacre of his opponents

ensued, which went on unchecked for five days, and was

continued more deliberately for several months, until Marius

died, at the beginning of the year 86 B. C. Then Cinna ruled

absolutely at Rome for three years, supported in the main by

the newly-made citizens; while the provinces generally

remained under the control of the party of the optimates. In

83 B. C. Sulla, having finished with carefulness his work in

the East, came back into Italy, with 40,000 veterans to attend

his steps. He had been outlawed and deprived of his command,

by the faction governing at the capital; but its decrees had

no effect and troubled him little. Cinna had been killed by

his own troops, even before Bulla's landing at Brundisium.

Several important leaders and soldiers on the Marian side,

such as Pompeius, then a young general, and Crassus, the

millionaire, went over to Sulla's camp. One of the consuls of

the year saw his troops follow their example, in a body; the

other consul was beaten and driven into Capua. Sulla wintered

in Campania, and the next spring he pressed forward to Rome,

fighting a decisive battle with Marius the younger on the way,

and took possession of the city; but not in time to prevent a

massacre of senators by the resentful mob.

Sulla's Dictatorship.

Before that year closed, the whole of Italy had been subdued,

the final battle being fought with the Marians and Italians at

the Colline Gate, and Sulla again possessed power supreme. He

placed it beyond dispute by a deliberate extermination of his

opponents, more merciless than the Marian massacre had been.

They were proscribed by name, in placarded lists, and rewards

paid to those who killed them; while their property was

confiscated, and became the source of vast fortunes to Sulla's

supporters, and of lands for distribution to his veterans.

When this terror had paralyzed all resistance to his rule, the

Dictator (for he had taken that title) undertook a complete

reconstruction of the constitution, aiming at a permanent

restoration of senatorial ascendancy and a curbing of the

powers which the people, in their assemblies, and the

magistrates who especially represented them, had gained during

the preceding century. He remodelled, moreover, the judicial

system, and some of his reforms were undoubtedly good, though

they did not prove enduring. When he had fashioned the state

to his liking, this extraordinary usurper quietly abdicated

his dictatorial office (B. C. 80) and retired to private life,

undisturbed until his death (B. C. 78).

{1002}

After Sulla.

The system he had established did not save Rome from renewed

distractions and disorder after Sulla died. There was no

longer a practical question between Senate and people--between

the few and the many in government. The question now, since

the legionaries held their swords prepared to be flung into

the scale, was what one should again gather the powers of

government into his hands, as Sulla had done.

The Great Game and the Players.

The history of the next thirty years--the last generation of

republican Rome--is a sad and sinister but thrilling chronicle

of the strifes and intrigues, the machinations and

corruptions, of a stupendous and wicked game in politics that

was played, against one another and against the Republic, by a

few daring, unscrupulous players, with the empire of the

civilized world for the stake between them. There were more

than a few who aspired; there were only three players who

entered really as principals into the game. These were

Pompeius, called "the Great," since he extinguished the Marian

faction in Sicily and in Spain; Crassus, whose wealth gave him

power, and who acquired some military pretensions besides, by

taking the field against a formidable insurrection of slaves

(B. C. 73-71); and Julius Cæsar, a young patrician, but nephew

of Marius by marriage, who assiduously strengthened that

connection with the party of the people, and who began, very

soon after Sulla's death, to draw attention to himself as a

rising power in the politics of the day. There were two other

men, Cicero and the younger Cato, who bore a nobler and

greater because less selfish part in the contest of that

fateful time. Both were blind to the impossibility of

restoring the old order of things, with a dominant Senate, a

free but well guided populace, and a simply ordered social

state; but their blindness was heroic and high-souled.

Pompeius in the East.

Of the three strong rivals for the vacant dictatorial chair

which waited to be filled, Pompeius held by far the greater

advantages. His fame as a soldier was already won; he had been

a favorite of Fortune from the beginning of his career;

everything had succeeded with him; everything was expected for

him and expected from him. Even while the issues of the great

struggle were pending, a wonderful opportunity for increasing

his renown was opened to him. The disorders of the civil war

had licensed a swarm of pirates, who fairly possessed the

eastern Mediterranean and had nearly extirpated the maritime

trade. Pompeius was sent against them (B. C. 67), with a

commission that gave him almost unlimited powers, and within

ninety days he had driven them from the sea. Then, before he

had returned from this exploit, he was invested with supreme

command in the entire East, where another troublesome war with

Mithridates was going on. He harvested there all the laurels

which belonged by better right to his predecessor, Lucullus,

finding the power of Mithridates already broken down. From

Pontus he passed into Armenia, and thence into Syria, easily

subjugating both, and extinguishing the monarchy of the

Seleucids. The Jews resisted him and he humbled them by the

siege and conquest of their sacred city. Egypt was now the

only Mediterranean state left outside the all-absorbing

dominion of Rome; and even Egypt, by bequest of its late king,

belonged to the Republic, though not yet claimed.

The First Triumvirate.

Pompeius came back to Rome in the spring of 61 B. C. so

glorified by his successes that he might have seemed to be

irresistible, whatever he should undertake. But, either

through an honest patriotism or an overweening confidence, he

had disbanded his army when he reached Italy, and he had

committed himself to no party. He stood alone and aloof, with

a great prestige, great ambitions, and no ability to use the

one or realize the other. Before another year passed, he was

glad to accept offers of a helping hand in politics from

Cæsar, who had climbed the ladder of office rapidly within

four or five years, spending vast sums of borrowed money to

amuse the people with games, and distinguishing himself as a

democratic champion. Cæsar, the far seeing calculator,

discerned the enormous advantages that he might gain for

himself by massing together the prestige of Pompeius, the

wealth of Crassus and his own invincible genius, which was

sure to be the master element in the combination. He brought

the coalition about through a bargain which created what is

known in history as the First Triumvirate, or supremacy of

three.

Cæsar in Gaul.

Under the terms of the bargain, Cæsar was chosen consul for 59

B. C., and at the end of his term was given the governorship

of Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul, with command of three

legions there, for five years. His grand aim was a military

command--the leadership of an army--the prestige of a

successful soldier. No sooner had he secured the command than

fortune gave him opportunities for its use in the most

striking way and with the most impressive results. The Celtic

tribes of Gaul, north of the two small provinces which the

Romans had already acquired on the Mediterranean coast, gave

him pretexts or provocations (it mattered little to Cæsar

which) for war with them, and in a series of remarkable

campaigns, which all soldiers since have admired, he pushed

the frontiers of the dominion of Rome to the ocean and the

Rhine, and threatened the nations of Germany on the farther

banks of that stream. "The conquest of Gaul by Cæsar," says

Mr. Freeman, "is one of the most important events in the

history of the world. It is in some sort the beginning of

modern history, as it brought the old world of southern

Europe, of which Rome was the head, into contact with the

lands and nations which were to play the greatest part in

later times--with Gaul, Germany, and Britain." From Gaul

Cæsar crossed the channel to Britain in 55 B. C. and again in

the following year, exacting tribute from the Celtic natives,

but attempting no lodgment in the island.

{1003}

Meantime, while pursuing a career of conquest which excited

the Roman world, Cæsar never lost touch with the capital and

its seething politics. Each winter he repaired to Lucca, the

point in his province which was nearest to Rome, and conferred

there with his friends, who flocked to the rendezvous. He

secured an extension of his term, to enable him to complete

his plans, and year by year he grew more independent of the

support of his colleagues in the triumvirate, while they

weakened one another by their jealousies, and the Roman state

was more hopelessly distracted by factious strife.

End of the Triumvirate.

The year after Cæsar's second invasion of Britain, Crassus,

who had obtained the government of Syria, perished in a

disastrous war with the Parthians, and the triumvirate was at

an end. Disorder in Rome increased and Pompeius lacked energy

or boldness to deal with it, though he seemed to be the one

man present who might do so. He was made sole consul in 52 B.

C.; he might have seized the dictatorship, with approval of

many, but he waited for it to be offered to him, and the offer

never came. He drew at last into close alliance with the party

of the Optimates, and left the Populares to be won entirely to

Cæsar's side.

Civil War.

Matters came to a crisis in 50 B. C., when the Senate passed

an order removing Cæsar from his command and discharging his

soldiers who had served their term. He came to Ravenna with a

single legion and concerted measures with his friends. The

issue involved is supposed to have been one of life or death

to him, as well as of triumph or failure in his ambitions; for

his enemies were malignant. His friends demanded that he be

made consul, for his protection, before laying down his arms.

The Senate answered by proclaiming him a public enemy if he

failed to disband his troops with no delay. It was a

declaration of war, and Cæsar accepted it. He marched his

single legion across the Rubicon, which was the boundary of

his province, and advanced towards Rome.

Pompeius, with the forces he had gathered, retreated

southward, and consuls, senators and nobles generally streamed

after him. Cæsar followed them--turning aside from the

city--and his force gathered numbers as he advanced. The

Pompeians continued their flight and abandoned Italy,

withdrawing to Epirus, planning to gather there the forces of

the East and return with them. Cæsar now took possession of

Rome and secured the islands of Sicily and Sardinia, from

which it drew its supply of food. This done, he proceeded

without delay to Spain, where seven legions strongly devoted

to Pompeius were stationed. He overcame them in a single

campaign, enlisted most of the veterans in his own service,

and acquired a store of treasure. Before the year ended he was

again in Rome, where the citizens had proclaimed him dictator. He

held the dictatorship for eleven days, only, to legalize an

election which made him consul, with a pliant associate. He

reorganized the government, complete in all its branches,

including a senate, partly composed of former members of the

body who had remained or returned. Then (B. C. 48.--January) he

took up the pursuit of Pompeius and the Optimates. Crossing to

Epirus, after some months of changeful fortune, he fought and

won the decisive battle of Pharsalia. Pompeius, flying to

Egypt, was murdered there. Cæsar, following, with a small

force, was placed in great peril by a rising at Alexandria,

but held his ground until assistance came. He then garrisoned

Egypt with Roman troops and made the princess Cleopatra, who

had captivated him by her charms, joint occupant of the throne

with her younger brother. During his absence, affairs at Rome

were again disturbed, and he was once more appointed dictator,

as well as tribune for life. His presence restored order at

once, and he was soon in readiness to attack the party of his

enemies who had taken refuge in Africa. The battle of Thapsus,

followed by the suicide of Cato and the surrender of Utica,

practically finished the contest, though one more campaign was

fought in Spain the following year.

Cæsar Supreme.

Cæsar was now master of the dominions of Rome, and as entirely

a monarch as anyone of his imperial successors, who took his

name, with the power which he caused it to symbolize, and

called themselves "Cæsars," and "Imperators," as though the

two titles were equivalent. "Imperator" was the title under

which he chose to exercise his sovereignty. Other Roman

generals had been Imperators before, but he was the first to

be named Imperator for life, and the word (changed in our

tongue to Emperor) took a meaning from that day more regal

than Rex or King. That Cæsar, the Imperator, first of all

Emperors, ever coveted the crown and title of an

older-fashioned royalty, is not an easy thing to believe.

Having settled his authority firmly, he gave his attention to

the organization of the Empire (still Republic in name) and to

the reforming of the evils which afflicted it. That he did

this work with consummate judgment and success is the opinion

of all who study his time. He gratified no resentments,

executed no revenges, proscribed no enemies. All who submitted

to his rule were safe; and it seems to be clear that the

people in general were glad to be rescued by his rule from the

old oligarchical and anarchical state. But some of Cæsar's own

partisans were dissatisfied with the autocracy which they

helped to create, or with the slenderness of their own parts

in it. They conspired with surviving leaders of the Optimates,

and Cæsar was assassinated by them, in the Senate chamber, on

the 15th of March, B. C. 44.

Professor Mommsen has expressed the estimate of Cæsar which

many thoughtful historians have formed, in the following

strong words: "In the character of Cæsar the great contrasts

of existence meet and balance each other. He was of the

mightiest creative power, and yet of the most penetrating

judgment; of the highest energy of will and the highest

capacity of execution; filled with republican ideals, and at

the same time born to be king. He was 'the entire perfect

man'; and he was this because he was the entire and perfect

Roman." This may be nearly true if we ignore the moral side of

Cæsar's character. He was of too large a nature to do evil

things unnecessarily, and so he shines even morally in

comparison with many of his kind; but he had no scruples.

{1004}

After the Murder of Cæsar.

The murderers of Cæsar were not accepted by the people as the

patriots and "liberators" which they claimed to be, and they

were soon in flight from the city. Marcus Antonius, who had

been Cæsar's associate in the consulship, now naturally and

skilfully assumed the direction of affairs, and aspired to

gather the reins of imperial power into his own hands. But

rivals were ready to dispute with him the great prize of

ambition. Among them, it is probable that Antony gave little

heed at first to the young man, Caius Octavius, or Octavianus,

who was Cæsar's nephew, adopted son and heir; for Octavius was

less than nineteen years old, he was absent in Apollonia, and

he was little known. But the young Cæsar, coming boldly though

quietly to Rome, began to push his hereditary claims with a

patient craftiness and dexterity that were marvellous in one

so young.

The Second Triumvirate.

The contestants soon resorted to arms. The result of their

first indecisive encounter was a compromise and the formation

of a triumvirate, like that of Cæsar, Pompeius and Crassus.

This second triumvirate was made up of Antonius, Octavius, and

Lepidus, lately master of the horse in Cæsar's army. Unlike

the earlier coalition, it was vengeful and bloody-minded. Its

first act was a proscription, in the terrible manner of Sulla,

which filled Rome and Italy with murders, and with terror and

mourning. Cicero, the patriot and great orator, was among the

victims cut down.

After this general slaughter of their enemies at home,

Antonius and Octavius proceeded against Brutus and Cassius,

two of the assassins of Cæsar, who had gathered a large force

in Greece. They defeated them at Philippi, and both

"liberators" perished by their own hands. The triumvirs now

divided the empire between them, Antonius ruling the East,

Octavius the West, and Lepidus taking Africa--that is, the

Carthaginian province, which included neither Egypt nor

Numidia. Unhappily for Antonius, the queen of Egypt was among

his vassals, and she ensnared him. He gave himself up to

voluptuous dalliance with Cleopatra at Alexandria, while the

cool intriguer, Octavius, at Rome, worked unceasingly to

solidify and increase his power. After six years had passed,

the young Cæsar was ready to put Lepidus out of his way, which

he did mercifully, by sending him into exile. After five years

more, he launched his legions and his war galleys against

Antonius, with the full sanction of the Roman senate and

people. The sea-fight at Actium (B. C. 31) gave Octavius the

whole empire, and both Antonius and Cleopatra committed

suicide after flying to Egypt. The kingdom of the Ptolemies

was now extinguished and became a Roman province in due form.

Octavius (Augustus) Supreme.

Octavius was now more securely absolute as the ruler of Rome

and its great empire than Sulla or Julius Cæsar had been, and

he maintained that sovereignty without challenge for

forty-five years, until his death. He received from the Senate

the honorary title of "Augustus," by which he is most commonly

known. For official titles, he took none but those which had

belonged to the institutions of the Republic, and were

familiarly known. He was Imperator, as his uncle had been. He

was Princeps, or head of the Senate; he was Censor; he was

Tribune; he was Supreme Pontiff. All the great offices of the

Republic he kept alive, and ingeniously constructed his

sovereignty by uniting their powers in himself.

Organization of the Empire.

The historical position of Augustus, as the real founder of

the Roman Empire, is unique in its grandeur; and yet History

has dealt contemptuously, for the most part, with his name.

His character has been looked upon, to use the language of De

Quincey, as "positively repulsive, in the very highest

degree." "A cool head," wrote Gibbon of him, "an unfeeling

heart, and a cowardly disposition, prompted him, at the age of

nineteen, to assume the mask of hypocrisy, which he never

afterwards laid aside." And again: "His virtues, and even his

vices, were artificial; and according to the various dictates

of his interest, he was at first the enemy, and at last the

father, of the Roman world." Yet, how can we deny surpassing

high qualities of some description to a man who set the

shattered Roman Republic, with all its democratic bases broken

up, on a new--an imperial--foundation, so gently that it

suffered no further shock, and so solidly that it endured, in

whole or in part, for a millennium and a half?

In the reign of Augustus the Empire was consolidated and

organized; it was not much extended. The frontiers were

carried to the Danube, throughout, and the subjugation of

Spain was made complete. Augustus generally discouraged wars

of conquest. His ambitious stepsons, Drusus and Tiberius,

persuaded him into several expeditions beyond the Rhine,

against the restless German nations, which perpetually menaced

the borders of Gaul; but these gained no permanent footing in

the Teutonic territory. They led, on the contrary, to a

fearful disaster (A. D. 9), near the close of the reign of

Augustus, when three legions, under Varus, were destroyed in

the Teutoburg Forest by a great combination of the tribes,

planned and conducted by a young chieftain named Hermann, or

Arminius, who is the national hero of Germany to this day.

The policy of Drusus in strongly fortifying the northern

frontier against the Germans left marks which are

conspicuously visible at the present day. From the fifty

fortresses which he is said to have built along the line

sprang many important modern cities,--Basel, Strasburg, Worms,

Mainz, Bingen, Coblenz, Bonn, Cologne, and Leyden, among the

number. From similar forts on the Danubian frontier rose

Vienna, Regensburg and Passau.

Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero.

Augustus died A. D. 11, and was succeeded in his honors, his

offices, and his powers, by his step-son, Tiberius Claudius

Nero, whom he had adopted. Tiberius, during most of his reign,

was a vigorous ruler, but a detestable man, unless his

subjects belied him, which some historians suspect. Another

attempt at the conquest of Germany was made by his nephew

Germanicus, son of Drusus; but the jealousy of the emperor

checked it, and Germanicus died soon after, believing that he

had been poisoned. A son of Germanicus, Caius, better known by

his nick-name of Caligula, succeeded to the throne on the

death of Tiberius (A. D. 37), and was the first of many

emperors to be crazed and made beast-like, in lust, cruelty

and senselessness, by the awful, unbounded power which passed

into their hands.

{1005}

The Empire bore his madness for three years, and then he was

murdered by his own guards. The Senate had thoughts now of

restoring the commonwealth, and debated the question for a

day; but the soldiers of the prætorian guard took it out of

their hands, and decided it, by proclaiming Tiberius Claudius

(A. D. 41), a brother of Germanicus, and uncle of the emperor

just slain. Claudius was weak of body and mind, but not

vicious, and his reign was distinctly one of improvement and

advance in the Empire. He began the conquest of Britain, which

the Romans had neglected since Cæsar's time, and he opened the

Senate to the provincials of Gaul. He had two wives of

infamous character, and the later one of these, Agrippina,

brought him a son, not his own, whom he adopted, and who

succeeded him (A.D. 54). This was Nero, of foul memory, who

was madman and monster in as sinister a combination as history

can show. During the reign of Nero, the spread of

Christianity, which had been silently making its way from

Judæa into all parts of the Empire, began to attract the

attention of men in public place, and the first persecution of

its disciples took place (A. D. 64). A great fire occurred in

Rome, which the hated emperor was believed to have caused; but

he found it convenient to accuse the Christians of the deed,

and large numbers of them were put to death in horrible ways.

Vespasian and his Sons.

Nero was tolerated for fourteen years, until the soldiers in

the provinces rose against him, and he committed suicide (A.

D. 68) to escape a worse death. Then followed a year of civil

war between rival emperors--Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and

Vespasian--proclaimed by different bodies of soldiers in

various parts of the Empire. The struggle ended in favor of

Vespasian, a rude, strong soldier, who purged the government,

disciplined the army, and brought society back toward simpler

and more decent ways. The great revolt of the Jews (A. D.

66-70) had broken out before he received the purple, and he

was commanding in Judæa when Nero fell. The siege, capture and

destruction of Jerusalem was accomplished by his son Titus. A

more formidable revolt in the West (A. D. 69) was begun the

Batavians, a German tribe which occupied part of the

Netherland territory, near the mouth of the Rhine. They were

joined by neighboring Gauls and by disaffected Roman

legionaries, and they received help from their German kindred

on the northern side of the Rhine. The revolt, led by a

chieftain named Civilis, who had served in the Roman army, was

overcome with extreme difficulty.

Vespasian was more than worthily succeeded (A. D. 79) by his

elder son, Titus, whose subjects so admired his many virtues

that he was called "the delight of the human race." His short

reign, however, was one of calamities: fire at Rome, a great

pestilence, and the frightful eruption of Vesuvius which

destroyed Herculaneum and Pompeii. After Titus came his

younger brother Domitian (A. D. 81), who proved to be another

creature of the monstrous species that appeared so often in

the series of Roman emperors. The conquest of southern Britain

(modern England) was completed in his reign by an able

soldier, Agricola, who fought the Caledonians of the North,

but was recalled before subduing them. Domitian was murdered

by his own servants (A. D. 96), after a reign of fifteen

years.

Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian.

Rome and the Empire were happy at last in the choice that was

made of a sovereign to succeed the hateful son of Vespasian.

Not the soldiery, but the Senate, made the choice, and it fell

on one of their number, Cocceius Nerva, who was already an

aged man. He wore the purple but sixteen months, and his

single great distinction in Roman history is, that he

introduced to the imperial succession a line of the noblest

men who ever sat in the seat of the Cæsars. The first of these

was the soldier Trajan, whom Nerva adopted and associated with

himself in authority. When Nerva died (A. D. 97), his son by

adoption ascended the throne with no opposition. The new

Emperor was simple and plain in his habits and manners of

life; he was honest and open in all his dealings with men; he

was void of suspicion, and of malice and jealousy no less. He

gave careful attention to the business of state and was wise

in his administration of affairs, improving roads, encouraging

trade, helping agriculture, and developing the resources of the

Empire in very prudent and practical ways. But he was a

soldier, fond of war, and he unwisely reopened the career of

conquest which had been almost closed for the Empire since

Pompeius came back from the East. A threatening kingdom having

risen among the Dacians, in the country north of the lower

Danube--the Transylvania and Roumania of the present day--he

attacked and crushed it, in a series of vigorous campaigns (A.

D. 101-106), and annexed the whole territory to the dominion

of Rome. He then garrisoned and colonized the country, and

Romanized it so completely that it keeps the Roman name, and

its language to this day is of the Latin stock, though Goths,

Huns, Bulgarians and Slavs have swept it in successive

invasions, and held it among their conquests for centuries at

a time. In the East, he ravaged the territory of the Parthian

king, entered his capital and added Mesopotamia, Armenia, and

Arabia Petræa to the list of Roman provinces. But he died (A.

D. 117) little satisfied with the results of his eastern

campaigns.

His successor abandoned them, and none have doubted that he

did well; because the Empire was weakened by the new frontier

in Asia which Trajan gave it to defend. His Dacian conquests

were kept, but all beyond the Euphrates in the East were given

up. The successor who did this was Hadrian, a kinsman, whom

the Emperor adopted in his last hours. Until near the close of

his life, Hadrian ranked among the best of the emperors. Rome

saw little of him, and resented his incessant travels through

every part of his great realm. His manifest preference for

Athens, where he lingered longest, and which flourished anew

under his patronage, was still more displeasing to the ancient

capital. For the Emperor was a man of cultivation, fond of

literature, philosophy and art, though busy with the cares of

State. In his later years he was afflicted with a disease

which poisoned his nature by its torments, filled his mind

with dark suspicions, and made him fitfully tyrannical and

cruel. The event most notable in his generally peaceful and

prosperous reign was the renewed and final revolt of the Jews,

under Barchochebas, which resulted in their total expulsion

from Jerusalem, and its conversion into a heathen city, with a

Roman name.

{1006}

The Antonines.

Hadrian had adopted before his death (A. D. 138) a man of

blameless character, Titus Aurelius Antoninus, who received

from his subjects, when he became Emperor, the appellation

"Pius," to signify the dutiful reverence and kindliness of his

disposition. He justified the name of Antoninus Pius, by which

he is historically known, and his reign, though disturbed by

some troubles on the distant borders of the Empire, was happy

for his subjects in nearly all respects. "No great deeds are

told of him, save this, perhaps the greatest, that he secured

the love and happiness of those he ruled" (Capes).

Like so many of the emperors, Antoninus had no son of his own;

but even before he came to the throne, and at the request of

Hadrian, he had adopted a young lad who won the heart of the

late Emperor while still a child. The family name of this son

by adoption was Verus, and he was of Spanish descent; the name

which he took, in his new relationship, was Marcus Aurelius

Antoninus. It is unquestionably the most illustrious name in

the whole imperial line, from Augustus to the last

Constantine, and made so, not so much by deeds as by

character. He gave the world the solitary example of a

philosopher upon the throne. There have been a few--a very

few--surpassingly good men in kingly places; but there has

never been another whose soul was lifted to so serene a height

above the sovereignty of his station. Unlimited power tempted

no form of selfishness in him; he saw nothing in his imperial

exaltation but the duties which it imposed. His mind was

meditative, and inclined him to the studious life; but he

compelled himself to be a man of vigor and activity in

affairs. He disliked war; but he spent years of his life in

camp on the frontiers; because it fell to his lot to encounter

the first great onset of the barbarian nations of the north,

which never ceased from that time to beat against the barriers

of the Empire until they had broken them down. His struggle

was on the line of the Danube, with the tribes of the

Marcomanni, the Quadi, the Vandals, and others of less

formidable power. He held them back, but the resources of the

Empire were overstrained and weakened lastingly by the effort.

For the first time, too, there were colonies of barbarians

brought into the Empire, from beyond its lines, to be settled

for the supply of soldiers to the armies of Rome: It was a

dangerous sign of Roman decay and a fatal policy to begin. The

decline of the great world-power was, in truth, already well

advanced, and the century of good emperors which ended when

Marcus Aurelius died (A. D. 180), only retarded, and did not

arrest, the progress of mortal maladies in the state.

From Commodus to Caracalla.

The best of emperors was followed on the throne by a son,

Commodus, who went mad, like Nero and Caligula, with the

drunkenness of power, and who was killed (A. D. 192) by his

own servants, after a reign of twelve years. The soldiers of

the prætorian guard now took upon themselves the making of

emperors, and placed two upon the throne--first, Pertinax, an

aged senator, whom they murdered the next year, and then

Didius Julianus, likewise a senator, to whom, as the highest

bidder, they sold the purple. Again, as after Nero's death,

the armies on the frontiers put forward, each, a rival

claimant, and there was war between the competitors. The

victor who became sovereign was Septimius Severus (A. D.

194-211), who had been in command on the Danube. He was an

able soldier, and waged war with success against the Parthians

in the East, and with the Caledonians in Britain, which latter

he could not subdue. Of his two sons, the elder, nicknamed

Caracalla (A. D. 211-217), killed his brother with his own

hands, and tortured the Roman world with his brutalities for

six years, when he fell under the stroke of an assassin. The

reign of this foul beast brought one striking change to the

Empire. An imperial edict wiped away the last distinction

between Romans and Provincials, giving citizenship to every

free inhabitant of the Empire. "Rome from this date became

constitutionally an empire, and ceased to be merely a

municipality. The city had become the world, or, viewed from

the other side, the world had become 'the City'" (Merivale).

Anarchy and Decay.

The period of sixty-seven years from the murder of Caracalla

to the accession of Diocletian--when a great constitutional

change occurred--demands little space in a sketch like this.

The weakening of the Empire by causes inherent in its social

and political structure,--the chief among which were the

deadly influence of its system of slavery and the paralyzing

effects of its autocracy,--went on at an increasing rate,

while disorder grew nearly to the pitch of anarchy, complete.

There were twenty-two emperors in the term, which scarcely

exceeded that of two generations of men. Nineteen of these

were taken from the throne by violent deaths, through mutiny

or murder, while one fell in battle, and another was held

captive in Persia till he died. Only five among these

twenty-two ephemeral lords of the world,--namely Alexander

Severus, Decius (who was a vigorous soldier and ruler, but who

persecuted the Christians with exceptional cruelty), Claudius,

Aurelian, and Probus,--can be credited with any personal

weight or worth in the history of the time; and they held

power too briefly to make any notable mark.

The distractions of the time were made worse by a great number

of local "tyrants," as they were called--military adventurers

who rose in different parts of the Empire and established

themselves for a time in authority over some district, large

or small. In the reign of Gallienus (A. D. 260-268) there were

nineteen of these petty "imperators," and they were spoken of

as the "thirty tyrants." The more important of the "provincial

empires" thus created were those of Postumus, in Gaul, and of

Odenatus of Palmyra. The latter, under Zenobia; queen and

successor of Odenatus, became a really imposing monarchy,

until it was overthrown by Aurelian, A. D. 273.

{1007}

The Teutonic Nations.

The Germanic nations beyond the Rhine and the Danube had, by

this time, improved their organization, and many of the tribes

formerly separated and independent were now gathered into

powerful confederations. The most formidable of these leagues

in the West was that which acquired the common name of the

Franks, or Freemen, and which was made up of the peoples

occupying territory along the course of the Lower Rhine.

Another of nearly equal power, dominating the German side of

the Upper Rhine and the headwaters of the Danube, is believed

to have absorbed the tribes which had been known in the

previous century as Boii, Marcomanni, Quadi, and others. The

general name it received was that of the Alemanni. The

Alemanni were in intimate association with the Suevi, and

little is known of the distinction that existed between the

two. They had now begun to make incursions across the Rhine,

but were driven back in 238. Farther to the East, on the Lower

Danube, a still more dangerous horde was now threatening the

flanks of the Empire in its European domain. These were Goths,

a people akin, without doubt, to the Swedes, Norsemen and

Danes; but whence and when they made their way to the

neighborhood of the Black Sea is a question in dispute. It was

in the reign of Caracalla that the Romans became first aware

of their presence in the country since known as the Ukraine. A

few years later, when Alexander Severus was on the throne, they

began to make incursions into Dacia. During the reign of

Philip the Arabian (A. D. 244-249) they passed through Dacia,

crossed the Danube, and invaded Mœsia (modern Bulgaria). In

their next invasion (A. D. 251) they passed the Balkans,

defeated the Romans in two terrible battles, the last of which

cost the reigning Emperor, Decius, his life, and destroyed the

city of Philippopolis, with 100,000 of its people. But when, a

few years later, they attempted to take possession of even

Thrace and Macedonia, they were crushingly defeated by the

Emperor Claudius, whose successor Aurelian made peace by

surrendering to them the whole province of Dacia (A. D. 270),

where they settled, giving the Empire no disturbance for

nearly a hundred years. Before this occurred, the Goths,

having acquired the little kingdom of Bosporus (the modern

Crimea) had begun to launch a piratical navy, which plundered

the coast cities of Asia Minor and Greece, including Athens

itself.

On the Asiatic side of the Empire a new power, a revived and

regenerated Persian monarchy, had risen out of the ruins of

the Parthian kingdom, which it overthrew, and had begun

without delay to contest the rule of Rome in the East.

Diocletian.

Briefly described, this was the state and situation of the

Roman Empire when Diocletian, an able Illyrian soldier, came

to the throne (A. D. 284). His accession marks a new epoch.

"From this time," says Dean Merivale, "the old names of the

Republic, the consuls, the tribunes, and the Senate itself,

cease, even if still existing, to have any political

significance." "The empire of Rome is henceforth an Oriental

sovereignty." But the changes which Diocletian made in the

organization and administration of the Empire, if they did

weigh it down with a yet more crushing autocracy and

contribute to its exhaustion in the end, did also, for the

time, stop the wasting of its last energies, and gather them

in hand for potent use. It can hardly be doubted that he

lengthened the term of its career.

Finding that one man in the exercise of supreme sovereignty,

as absolute as he wished to make it, could not give sufficient

care to every part of the vast realm, he first associated one

Maximian with himself, on equal terms, as Emperor, or

Augustus, and six years later (A. D. 292) he selected two

others from among his generals and invested them with a

subordinate sovereignty, giving them the title of "Cæsars."

The arrangement appears to have worked satisfactorily while

Diocletian remained at the head of his imperial college. But

in 305 he wearied of the splendid burden that he bore, and

abdicated the throne, unwillingly followed by his associate,

Maximian. The two Cæsars, Constantius and Galerius, were then

advanced to the imperial rank, and two new Cæsars were named.

Jealousies, quarrels, and civil war were soon rending the

Empire again. The details are unimportant.

Constantine and Christianity.

After nine years of struggle, two competitors emerged (A. D.

314) alone, and divided the Empire between them. They were

Constantine, son of Constantius, the Cæsar, and one Licinius.

After nine years more, Licinius had disappeared, defeated and

put to death, and Constantine (A. D. 323) shared the

sovereignty of Rome with none. In its final stages, the

contest had become, practically, a trial of strength between

expiring Paganism in the Roman world and militant

Christianity, now grown to great strength. The shrewd

adventurer Constantine saw the political importance to which

the Christian Church had risen, and identified himself with it

by a "conversion" which has glorified his name most

undeservedly. If to be a Christian with sincerity is to be a

good man, then Constantine was none; for his life was full of

evil deeds, after he professed the religion of Christ, even

more than before. "He poured out the best and noblest blood in

torrents, more especially of those nearly connected with

himself. ... In a palace which he had made a desert, the

murderer of his father-in-law, his brothers-in-law, his

sister, his wife, his son, and his nephew, must have felt the

stings of remorse, if hypocritical priests and courtier

bishops had not lulled his conscience to rest" (Sismondi).

But the so-called "conversion" of Constantine was an event of

vast import in history. It changed immensely, and with

suddenness, the position, the state, the influence, and very

considerably the character and spirit of the Christian Church.

The hierarchy of the Church became, almost at once, the

greatest power in the Empire, next to the Emperor himself, and

its political associations, which were dangerous from the

beginning, soon proved nearly fatal to its spiritual

integrity. "Both the purity and the freedom of the Church were

in danger of being lost. State and Church were beginning an

amalgamation fraught with peril. The State was becoming a kind

of Church, and the Church a kind of State. The Emperor

preached and summoned councils, called himself, though half in

jest, a 'bishop,' and the bishops had become State officials,

who, like the high dignitaries of the Empire, travelled by the

imperial courier-service, and frequented the ante-chambers of

the palaces in Constantinople." "The Emperor determined what

doctrines were to prevail in the Church, and banished Arius

to-day and Athanasius to-morrow." "The Church was surfeited

with property and privileges. The Emperor, a poor financier,

impoverished the Empire to enrich" it (Uhlhorn). That

Christianity had shared the gain of the Christian Church from

these great changes, is very questionable.

{1008}

By another event of his reign, Constantine marked it in

history with lasting effect. He rebuilt with magnificence the

Greek city of Byzantium on the Bosphorus, transferred to it

his imperial residence, and raised it to a nominal equality

with Rome, but to official find practical superiority, as the

capital of the Empire. The old Rome dwindled in rank and

prestige from that day; the new Rome--the city of Constantine,

or Constantinople--rose to the supreme place in the eyes and

the imaginations of men.

Julian and the Pagan Revival.

That Constantine added the abilities of a statesman to the

unscrupulous cleverness of an adventurer is not to be

disputed; but he failed to give proof of this when he divided

the Empire between his three sons at his death (A. D. 337).

The inevitable civil wars ensued, until, after sixteen years,

one survivor gathered the whole realm under his scepter again.

He (Constantius), who debased and disgraced the Church more

than his father had done, was succeeded (A. D. 361) by his

cousin, Julian, an honest, thoughtful, strong man, who, not

unnaturally, preferred the old pagan Greek philosophy to the

kind of Christianity which he had seen flourishing at the

Byzantine court. He publicly restored the worship of the

ancient gods of Greece and Rome; he excluded Christians from

the schools, and bestowed his favor on those who scorned the

Church; but he entered on no violent persecution. His reign

was brief, lasting only two years. He perished in a hapless

expedition against the Persians, by whom the Empire was now

almost incessantly harassed.

Valentinian and Valens.

His successor, Jovian, whom the army elected, died in seven

months; but Valentinian, another soldier, raised by his

comrades to the throne, reigned vigorously for eleven years.

He associated his brother, Valens, with him in the

sovereignty, assigning the latter to the East, while he took

the administration of the West.

Until the death of Valentinian, in 375, the northern frontiers

of the Empire, along the Rhine and the Danube, were well

defended. Julian had commanded in Gaul, with Paris for his

capital, six years before he became Emperor, and had organized

its defence most effectively. Valentinian maintained the line

with success against the Alemanni; while his lieutenant,

Theodosius, delivered Roman Britain from the ruinous attacks

of the Scots and Picts of its northern region. On the Danube,

there continued to be peace with the Goths, who held back all

other barbarians from that northeastern border.

The Goths in the Empire.

But the death of Valentinian was the beginning of fatal

calamities. His brother, Valens, had none of his capability or

his vigor, and was unequal to such a crisis as now occurred.

The terrible nation of the Huns had entered Europe from the

Asiatic steppes, and the Western Goths, or Visigoths, fled

before them. These fugitives begged to be permitted to cross

the Danube and settle on vacant lands in Mœsia and Thrace.

Valens consented, and the whole Visigothic nation, 200,000

warriors, with their women and children, passed the river (A.

D. 376). It is possible that they might, by fair treatment,

have been converted into loyal citizens, and useful defenders

of the land. But the corrupt officials of the court took

advantage of their dependent state, and wrung extortionate

prices from them for disgusting food, until they rose in

desperation and wasted Thrace with fire and sword. Fresh

bodies of Ostrogoths (Eastern Goths) and other barbarians came

over to join them (A. D. 378); the Roman armies were beaten in

two great battles, and Valens, the Emperor, was slain. The

victorious Goths swept on to the very walls of Constantinople,

which they could not surmount, and the whole open country,

from the Black Sea to the Adriatic, was ravaged by them at

will.

Theodosius.

In the meantime, the western division of the Empire had

passed, on the death of Valentinian, under the nominal rule of

his two young sons, Gratian, aged sixteen, and Valentinian

II., aged four. Gratian had made an attempt to bring help to

his uncle Valens; but the latter fought his fatal battle while

the boy emperor was on the way, and the latter, upon hearing

of it, turned back. Then Gratian performed his one great act.

He sought a colleague, and called to the throne the most

promising young soldier of the day. This was Theodosius, whose

father, Count Theodosius, the deliverer of Britain, had been

put to death by Valens, on some jealous accusation, only three

years before. The new Emperor took the East for his realm, having

Gratian and Valentinian II. for colleagues in the West. He

speedily checked the ravages of the Goths and restored the

confidence of the Roman soldiers. Then he brought diplomacy to

bear upon the dangerous situation, and succeeded in arranging

a peace with the Gothic chieftains, which enlisted them in the

imperial service with forty thousand of their men. But they

retained their distinctive organization, under their own

chiefs, and were called "fœderati," or allies. This concession

of a semi-independence to so great a body of armed barbarians

in the heart of the Empire was a fatal mistake, as was proved

before many years.

For the time being it secured peace, and gave Theodosius

opportunity to attend to other things. The controversies of

the Church were among the subjects of his consideration, and

by taking the side of the Athanasians, whom his predecessor

had persecuted, he gave a final victory to Trinitarianism, in

the Roman world. His reign was signalized, moreover, by the

formal, official abolition of paganism at Rome.

The weak but amiable Gratian, reigning at Paris, lost his

throne and his life, in 383, as the consequence of a revolt

which began in Britain and spread to Gaul. The successful

rebel and usurper, Maximus, seemed so strong that Theodosius

made terms with him, and acknowledged his sovereignty for a

number of years. But, not content with a dominion which

embraced Britain, Gaul and Spain, Maximus sought, after a

time, to add Italy, where the youth, Valentinian II., was

still enthroned (at Milan, not Rome), under the tutelage of

his mother. Valentinian fled to Theodosius; the Eastern

Emperor adopted his cause, and restored him to his throne,

defeating the usurper and putting him to death (A. D. 388).

Four years later Valentinian II. died; another usurper arose,

and again Theodosius (A. D. 394) recovered the throne.

{1009}

Final Division of the Empire.

Theodosius was now alone in the sovereignty. The Empire was

once more, and for the last time, in its full extent, united

under a single lord. It remained so for but a few months. At

the beginning of the year 395, Theodosius died, and his two

weak sons, Arcadius and Honorius, divided the perishing Empire

between them, only to augment, in its more venerable seat, the

distress of the impending fall.

Arcadius, at the age of eighteen, took the government of the

East; Hononus, a child of eleven, gave his name to the

administration of the West. Each emperor was under the

guardianship of a minister chosen by Theodosius before he

died. Rufinus, who held authority at Constantinople, was

worthless in all ways; Stilicho, who held the reins at Milan,

was a Vandal by birth, a soldier and a statesman of vigorous

powers.

Decay of the Western Empire.

The West seemed more fortunate than the East, in this

division; yet the evil days now fast coming near fell

crushingly on the older Rome, while the New Rome lived through

them, and endured for a thousand years. No doubt the Empire

had weakened more on its elder side; had suffered more

exhaustion of vital powers. It had little organic vitality now

left in it. If no swarms of barbaric invaders had been waiting

and watching at its doors, and pressing upon it from every

point with increasing fierceness, it seems probable that it

would have gone to pieces ere long through mere decay. And if,

on the other hand, it could have kept the vigorous life of its

best republican days, it might have defied Teuton and Slav

forever. But all the diseases, political and social, which the

Republic engendered in itself, had been steadily consuming the

state, with their virulence even increased, since it took on the

imperial constitution. All that imperialism did was to gather

waning energies in hand, and make the most of them for

external use. It stopped no decay. The industrial palsy,

induced by an ever-widening system of slave-labor, continued

to spread. Production decreased; the sum of wealth shrunk in

the hands of each succeeding generation; and yet the great

fortunes and great estates grew bigger from age to age. The

gulf between rich and poor opened deeper and wider, and the

bridges once built across it by middle-class thrift were

fallen down. The burden of imperial government had become an

unendurable weight; the provincial municipalities, which had

once been healthy centers of a local political life, were

strangled by the nets of taxation flung over them. Men sought

refuge even in death from the magistracies which made them

responsible to the imperial treasury for revenues which they

could not collect. Population dwindled, year by year.

Recruiting from the body of citizens for the common needs of

the army became more impossible. The state was fully

dependent, at last, on barbaric mercenaries of one tribe for

its defence against barbaric invaders of another; and it was

no longer able, as of old, to impress its savage servitors

with awe of its majesty and its name.

Stilicho and Alaric.

Stilicho, for a time, stoutly breasted the rising flood of

disaster. He checked the Picts and Scots of Northern Britain,

and the Alemanni and their allies on the frontiers of Gaul.

But now there arose again the more dreadful barbarian host

which had footing in the Empire itself, and which Theodosius

had taken into pay. The Visigoths elected a king (A. D. 395),

and were persuaded with ease to carve a kingdom for him out of

the domain which seemed waiting to be snatched from one or

both of the feeble monarchs, who sat in mockery of state at

Constantinople and Milan. Alaric, the new Gothic king, moved

first against the capital on the Bosphorus; but Rufinus

persuaded him to pass on into Greece, where he went pillaging

and destroying for a year. Stilicho, the one manly defender of

the Empire, came over from Italy with an army to oppose him;

but he was stopped on the eve of battle by orders from the

Eastern Court, which sent him back, as an officious meddler.

This act of mischief and malice was the last that Rufinus

could do. He was murdered, soon afterwards, and Arcadius,

being free from his influence, then called upon Stilicho for

help. The latter came once more to deliver Greece, and did so

with success. But Alaric, though expelled from the peninsula,

was neither crushed nor disarmed, and the Eastern Court had

still to make terms with him. It did so for the moment by

conferring on him the government of that part of Illyricum

which the Servia and Bosnia of the present day coincide with,

very nearly. He rested there in peace for four years, and then

(A. D. 400) he called his people to arms again, and led the whole

nation, men, women and children, into Italy. The Emperor,

Honorius, fled from Milan to Ravenna, which, being a safe

shelter behind marshes and streams, became the seat of the

court for years thereafter. Stilicho, stripping Britain and

Gaul of troops, gathered forces with which, at Eastertide in

the year 402, and again in the following year, he defeated the

Goths, and forced them to retreat.

He had scarcely rested from these exertions, when the valiant

Stilicho was called upon to confront a more savage leader,

Radagaisus by name, who came from beyond the lines (A. D.

405), with a vast swarm of mixed warriors from many tribes

pouring after him across the Alps. Again Stilicho, by superior

skill, worsted the invaders, entrapping them in the mountains

near Fiesole (modern Florence), and starving them there till

they yielded themselves to slavery and their chieftain to

death.

This was the last great service to the dying Roman state which

Stilicho was permitted to do. Undermined by the jealousies of

the cowardly court at Ravenna, he seems to have lost suddenly

the power by which he held himself so high. He was accused of

treasonable designs and was seized and instantly executed, by

the Emperor's command.

{1010}

Alaric and his Goths in Rome.

Stilicho dead, there was no one in Italy for Alaric to fear,

and he promptly returned across the Alps, with the nation of

the Visigoths behind him. There was no resistance to his

march, and he advanced straight upon Rome. He did not assail

the walls, but sat down before the gates (A. D. 408), until

the starving citizens paid him a great ransom in silver and

gold and precious spices and silken robes. With this booty he

retired for the winter into Tuscany, where his army was

swelled by thousands of fugitive barbarian slaves, and by

reinforcements of Goths and Huns. From his camp he opened

negotiations with Honorius, demanding the government of

Dalmatia, Venetia and Noricum, with certain subsidies of money

and corn. The contemptible court, skulking at Ravenna, could

neither make war nor make concessions, and it soon exhausted

the patience of the barbarian by its puerilities. He marched

again to Rome (A. D. 409), seized the port of Ostia, with its

supplies of grain, and forced the helpless capital to join him

in proclaiming a rival emperor. The prefect of the city, one

Attalus, accepted the purple at his hands, and played the

puppet for a few months in imperial robes. But the scheme

proved unprofitable, Attalus was deposed, and negotiations

were reopened with Honorius. Their only result was a fresh

provocation which sent Alaric once more against Rome, and this

time with wrath and vengeance in his heart. Then the great,

august capital of the world was entered, through treachery or

by surprise, on the night of the 24th of August, 410, and

suffered all that the lust, the ferocity and the greed of a

barbarous army let loose could inflict on an unresisting city.

It was her first experience of that supreme catastrophe of

war, since Brennus and the Gauls came in; but it was not to be

the last.

From the sack of Rome, Alaric moved southward, intending to

conquer Sicily; but a sudden illness brought his career to an

end.

The Barbarians Swarming in.

The Empire was now like a dying quarry, pulled down by fierce

hunting packs and torn on every side. The Goths were at its

throat; the tribes of Germany--Sueves, Vandals, Burgundians,

Alans--had leaped the Rhine (A. D. 406) and swarmed upon its

flanks, throughout Gaul and Spain. The inrush began after

Stilicho, to defend Italy against Alaric and Radagaisus, had

stripped the frontiers of troops. Sueves, Vandals, and Alans

passed slowly through the provinces, devouring their wealth

and making havoc of their civilization as they went. After

three years, they had reached and surmounted the Pyrenees, and

were spreading the same destruction through Spain.

The confederated tribes of the Franks had already been

admitted as allies into northwestern Gaul, and were settled

there in peace. At first, they stood faithful to the Roman

alliance, and valiantly resisted the new invasion; but its

numbers overpowered them, and their fidelity gave way when

they saw the pillage of the doomed provinces going on. They

presently joined the barbarous mob, and with an energy which

secured the lion's share of plunder and domain.

The Burgundians did not follow the Vandals and Sueves to the

southwest, but took possession of the left bank of the middle

Rhine, whence they gradually spread into western Switzerland

and Savoy, and down the valleys of the Rhone and Saone,

establishing in time an important kingdom, to which they gave

their name.

No help from Ravenna or Rome came to the perishing provincials

of Gaul in the extremity of their distress; but a pretender

arose in Britain, who assumed the imperial title and promised

deliverance. He crossed over to Gaul in 407 and was welcomed

with eagerness, both there and in Spain, to which he advanced.

He gained some success, partly by enlisting and partly by

resisting the invaders; but his career was brief. Other

pretenders appeared in various provinces, of the West; but the

anarchy of the time was too great for any authority,

legitimate or revolutionary, to establish itself.

The Visigoths in Gaul.

And, now, into the tempting country of the afflicted Gauls,

already crowded with rapacious freebooters, the Visigoths made

their way. Their new king, Ataulph, or Adolphus, who succeeded

Alaric, passed into Gaul, but not commissioned, as sometimes

stated, to restore the imperial sovereignty there. He moved

with his nation, as Alaric had moved, and Italy, by his

departure, was relieved; but Narbonne, Toulouse, Bordeaux, and

the Aquitainian country at large, was soon subject to his

command (A. D. 412-419). He passed the Pyrenees and entered

Spain, where an assassin took his life. His successor, Wallia,

drove the Sueves into the mountains and the Vandals into the

South; but did not take possession of the country until a

later time. The Visigoths, returning to Aquitaine, found

there, at last, the kingdom which Alaric set out from the

Danube to seek, and they were established in it with the Roman

Emperor's consent. It was known as the kingdom of Gothia, or

Septimania, but is more commonly called, from its capital, the

kingdom of Toulouse.

The Eastern Empire.

Affairs in the Eastern Empire had never arrived at so

desperate a state as in the West. With the departure of

Alaric, it had been relieved from its most dangerous immediate

foe. There had been tumults, disorders, assassinations, court

conspiracies, fierce religious strifes, and every evidence of

a government with no settled authority and no title to

respect; but yet the Empire stood and was not yet seriously

shaken. In 408 Arcadius died. His death was no loss, though he

left an infant son to take his place; for he also left a

daughter, Pulcheria, who proved to be a woman of rare virtue

and talents, and who reigned in her brother's name.

Aetius and the Huns.

The imbecile Honorius, with whose name the failing sovereignty

of Rome had been so disastrously linked for eight and twenty

rears, died in 423. An infant nephew was his heir, and

Placidia, the mother, ruled at Ravenna for a fourth of a

century, in the name of her child. Her reign was far stronger

than her wretched brother's had been, because she gave loyal

support to a valiant and able man, who stood at her side.

Aetius, her minister, did all, perhaps, that man could do to

hold some parts of Gaul, and to play barbarian against

barbarian--Hun against Goth and Frank--in skilful diplomacy

and courageous war. But nothing that he won was any lasting

gain. In his youth, Aetius had been a hostage in the camps of

both the Goths and the Huns, and had made acquaintances among

the chieftains of both which served his policy many times.

{1011}

He had employed the terrible Huns in the early years of his

ministry, and perhaps they had learned too much of the

weakness of the Roman State. These most fearful of all the

barbarian peoples then surging in Europe had been settled, for

some years, in the region since called Hungary, under Attila,

their most formidable king. He terrorized all the surrounding

lands and exercised a lordship from the Caspian to the Baltic

and the Rhine. The imperial court at the East stooped to pay

him annual tribute for abstaining from the invasion of its

domain. But in 450, when the regent Pulcheria became Empress

of the East, by her brother's death, and married a brave old

soldier, Marcian, in order to give him the governing power, a

new tone was heard in the voice from Constantinople which

answered Attila's demands.

Defeat of Attila.

The Hun then appears to have seen that the sinking Empire of

the West offered a more certain victim to his terrors and his

arms, and he turned them to that side. First forming an

alliance with the Vandals (who had crossed from Spain to

Africa in 429, had ravaged and subdued the Roman provinces,

and had established a kingdom on the Carthaginian ground, with

a naval power in the Carthaginian Sea), Attila led his huge

army into suffering Gaul. There were Ostrogoths, and warriors

from many German tribes, as well as Huns, in the terrific

host; for Attila's arm stretched far, and his subjects were

forced to follow when he led. His coming into Gaul affrighted

Romans and barbarians alike, and united them in a common

defense. Aetius formed an alliance with Theodoric, the

Visigothic king, and their forces were joined by Burgundians

and Franks. They met Attila near Chalons, and there, on a day

in June, A. D. 451, upon the Catalaunian fields, was fought a

battle that is always counted among the few which gave shape

to all subsequent history. The Huns were beaten back, and

Europe was saved from the hopeless night that must have

followed a Tartar conquest in that age.

Attila threatening Rome.

Attila retreated to Germany, foiled but not daunted. The next

year (A. D. 452) he invaded Italy and laid siege to Aquileia,

an important city which stood in his path. It resisted for

three months and was then utterly destroyed. The few

inhabitants who escaped, with fugitives from neighboring

ports, found a refuge in some islands of the Adriatic coast,

and formed there a sheltered settlement which grew into the

great city and republican state of Venice. Aetius made

strenuous exertions to gather forces for another battle with

the Huns; but the resources of the Empire had sunk very low.

While he labored to collect troops, the effect of a pacific

embassy was despairingly tried, and it went forth to the camp

of Attila, led by the venerable bishop of Rome--the first

powerful Pope--Leo I., called the Great. The impression which

Leo made on the Hunnish king, by his venerable presence, and

by the persuasiveness of his words, appears to have been

extraordinary. At all events, Attila consented to postpone his

designs on Rome; though he demanded and received promise of an

annual tribute. The next winter he died, and Rome was troubled

by him no more.

Rome Sacked by the Vandals.

But another enemy came, who rivalled Attila in ruthlessness,

and who gave a name to barbarity which it has kept to this

day. The Vandal king, Genseric, who now swept the

Mediterranean with a piratical fleet, made his appearance in

the Tiber (A. D. 455) and found the Roman capital powerless to

resist his attack. The venerable Pope Leo again interceded for

the city, and obtained a promise that captives should not be

tortured nor buildings burned,--which was the utmost stretch

of mercy that the Vandal could afford. Once more, then, was

Rome given up, for fourteen days and nights, to pillage and

the horrors of barbaric debauch. "Whatever had survived the

former sack,--whatever the luxury of the Roman Patriciate,

during the intervening forty-five years, had accumulated in

reparation of their loss,--the treasures of the imperial

palace, the gold and silver vessels employed in the churches,

the statues of pagan divinities and men of Roman renown, the

gilded roof of the temple of Capitolian Jove, the plate and

ornaments of private individuals, were leisurely conveyed to

the Vandal fleet and shipped off to Africa" (Sheppard).

The Vandal invasion had been preceded, in the same year, by a

palace revolution which brought the dynasty of Theodosius to

an end. Placidia was dead, and her unworthy son, Valentinian

III., provoked assassination by dishonoring the wife of a

wealthy senator, Maximus, who mounted to his place. Maximus

was slain by a mob at Rome, just before the Vandals entered

the city. The Empire was now without a head, and the throne

without an heir. In former times, the Senate or the army would

have filled the vacant imperial seat; now, it was a barbarian

monarch, Theodoric, the Visigothic king, who made choice of a

successor to the Cæsars. He named a Gallic noble, Avitus by

name, who had won his esteem, and the nomination was confirmed

by Marcian, Emperor of the East.

Ricimer and Majorian.

But the influence of Theodoric in Roman affairs was soon

rivalled by that of Count Ricimer, another Goth, or Sueve, who

held high command in the imperial army, and who resented the

elevation of Avitus. The latter was deposed, after reigning a

single year; and Majorian, a soldier of really noble and

heroic character, was promoted to the throne. He was too great

and too sincere a man to be Ricimer's tool, and the same hand

which raised him threw him down, after he had reigned four

years (A. D. 457-461). He was in the midst of a powerful

undertaking against the Vandals when he perished. Majorian was

the last Emperor in the Western line who deserves to be named.

The last Emperors in the West.

Ricimer ruled Italy, with the rigor of a despot, under the

modest title of Patrician, until 472. His death was soon

followed by the rise of another general of the barbarian

troops, Orestes, to like autocracy, and he, in turn, gave way

to a third, Odoacer, who slew him and took his place. The

creatures, half a dozen in number, who put on and put off the

purple robe, at the command of these adventurers, who played

with the majesty of Rome, need no further mention.

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The last of them was Romulus Augustulus, son of Orestes, who

escaped his father's fate by formally resigning the throne. He

was the last Roman Emperor in the West, until Charlemagne

revived the title, three centuries and a quarter later. "The

succession of the Western Emperors came to an end, and the way

in which it came to an end marks the way in which the names

and titles of Rome were kept on, while all power was passing

into the hands of the barbarians. The Roman Senate voted that

one Emperor was enough, and that the Eastern Emperor, Zeno,

should reign over the whole Empire. But at the same time Zeno

was made to entrust the government of Italy, with the title of

Patrician, to Odoacer. ... Thus the Roman Empire went on at

Constantinople, or New Rome, while Italy and the Old Rome

itself passed into the power of the Barbarians. Still the

Roman laws and names went on, and we may be sure that any man

in Italy would have been much surprised if he had been told

that the Roman Empire had come to an end" (Freeman).

Odoacer.

The government of Odoacer, who ruled with the authority of a

king, though pretending to kingship only in his own nation,

was firm and strong. Italy was better protected from its

lawless neighbors than it had been for nearly a century

before. But nothing could arrest the decay of its

population--the blight that had fallen upon its prosperity.

Nor could that turbulent age afford any term of peace that

would be long enough for even the beginning of the cure of

such maladies and such wounds as had brought Italy low. For

fourteen years Odoacer ruled; and then he was overthrown by a

new kingdom-seeking barbarian, who came, like Alaric, out of

the Gothic swarm.

Theodoric the Ostrogoth.

The Ostrogoths had now escaped, since Attila died, from the

yoke of the Huns, and were prepared, under an able and

ambitious young king, Theodoric, who had been reared as a

hostage at Constantinople, to imitate the career of their

cousins, the Visigoths. Having troubled the Eastern Court

until it stood in fear of him, Theodoric asked for a

commission to overthrow Odoacer, in Italy, and received it

from the Emperor's hand. Thus empowered by one still

recognized as lawful lord on both sides of the Adriatic,

Theodoric crossed the Julian Alps (A. D. 489) with the

families of his nation and their household goods. Three

battles made him master of the peninsula and decided the fate

of his rival. Odoacer held out in Ravenna for two years and a

half, and surrendered on a promise of equal sovereignty with

the Ostrogothic king. But Theodoric did not scruple to kill

him with his own sword, at the first opportunity which came.

In that act, the native savagery in him broke loose; but

through most of his life he kept his passions decently tamed,

and acted the barbarian less frequently than the civilized

statesman and king. He gave Italy peace, security, and

substantial justice for thirty years. With little war, he

extended his sovereignty over Illyrium, Pannonia, Noricum,

Rhætia and Provence, in south-eastern Gaul. If the extensive

kingdom which he formed--with more enlightenment than any

other among those who divided the heritage of Rome--could have

endured, the parts of Europe which it covered might have fared

better in after times than they did. "Italy might have been

spared six hundred years of gloom and degradation." But

powerful influences were against it from the first, and they

were influences which proceeded mischievously from the

Christian Church. Had the Goths been pagans, the Church might

have turned a kindly face to them, and wooed them to

conversion as she wooed the Franks. But they were Christians,

of a heretic stamp, and the orthodox Christianity of Rome held

them in deadly loathing. While still beyond the Danube, they had

received the faith from an Arian apostle, at the time of the

great conflict of Athanasius against Arius, and were stubborn

in the rejection of Trinitarian dogma. Hence the Church in the

West was never reconciled to the monarchy of Theodoric in

Italy, nor to that of the Visigoths at Toulouse; and its

hostility was the ultimate cause of the failure of both.

The Empire in the East.

To understand the events which immediately caused the fall of

the Ostrogothic power, we must turn back for a moment to the

Empire in the East. Marcian, whom Pulcheria, the wise daughter

of Arcadius, made Emperor by marrying him, died in 457, and

Aspar, the barbarian who commanded the mercenaries, selected

his successor. He chose his own steward, one Leo, who proved

to have more independence than his patron expected, and who

succeeded in destroying the latter. After Leo I. came (474)

his infant grandson; Leo II., whose father, an Isaurian

chieftain, took his place when he died, within the year. The

Isaurian assumed a Greek name, Zeno, and occupied the

throne--with one interval of flight and exile for twenty

months--during seven years. When he died, his widow gave her

hand in marriage to an excellent officer of the palace,

Anastasius by name, and he was sovereign of the Empire for

twenty-seven years.

The reign of Justinian.

After Anastasius, came Justin I., born a peasant in Dacia

(modern Roumania), but advanced as a soldier to the command of

the imperial guards, and thence to the throne. He had already

adopted and educated his nephew, Justinian, and before dying,

in 527, he invested him with sovereignty as a colleague. The

reign of Justinian was the most remarkable in the whole

history of the Empire in the East. Without breadth of

understanding, or notable talents of any kind: without

courage; without the least nobility of character; without even

the virtue of fidelity to his ministers and friends,--this

remarkable monarch contrived to be splendidly served by an

extraordinary generation of great soldiers, great jurists,

great statesmen, who gave a brilliance to his reign that was

never rivalled while the Byzantine seat of Empire stood. It

owes, in modern esteem, its greatest fame to the noble

collection of Roman laws which was made, in the Pandects and

the Code, under the direction of the wise and learned

Tribonian. Transiently it was glorified by conquests that bore

a likeness to the march of the resistless legions of ancient

Rome; and the laurelled names of Belisarius and Narses claimed

a place on the columns of victory with the names of Cæsar and

Pompeius.

{1013}

But the splendors of the reign were much more than offset by

miseries and calamities of the darkest kind. "The reign of

Justinian, from its length, its glory and its disasters, may

be compared to the reign of Louis XIV., which exceeded it in

length, and equalled it in glory and disaster. ... He extended

the limits of his empire; but he was unable to defend the

territory he had received from his predecessors. Everyone of

the thirty-eight years of his reign was marked by an invasion

of the barbarians; and it has been said that, reckoning those

who fell by the sword, who perished from want, or were led

into captivity, each invasion cost 200,000 subjects to the

empire. Calamities which human prudence is unable to resist

seemed to combine against the Romans, as if to compel them to

expiate their ancient glory. ... So that the very period which

gave birth to so many monuments of greatness, may be looked

back upon with horror, as that of the widest desolation and

the most terrific mortality" (Sismondi). The first and longest

of the wars of Justinian was the Persian war, which he inherited

from his predecessors, and which scarcely ceased while the

Persian monarchy endured. It was in these Asiatic campaigns

that Belisarius began his career. But his first great

achievement was the overthrow and extinction of the Vandal

power in Africa, and the restoration of Roman authority (the

empire of the new Rome) in the old Carthaginian province (A.

D. 533-534). He accomplished this with a force of but 10,000

foot and 5,000 horse, and was hastily recalled by his jealous

lord on the instant of his success.

Conquests of Belisarius in Italy.

But the ambition of Justinian was whetted by this marvellous

conquest, and he promptly projected an expedition against the

kingdom of the Eastern Goths. The death of Theodoric had

occurred in 526. His successor was a child of ten years, his

grandson, whose mother exercised the regency. Amalsuentha, the

queen-regent, was a woman of highly cultivated mind, and she

offended her subjects by too marked a Romanization of her

ideas. Her son died in his eighteenth year, and she associated

with herself on the throne the next heir to it, a worthless

nephew of Theodoric, who was able, in a few weeks, to strip

all her power from her and consign her to a distant prison,

where she was soon put to death (A. D. 535). She had

previously opened negotiations with Justinian for the

restoration of his supremacy in Italy, and the ambitious

Emperor assumed with eagerness a right to avenge her

deposition and death. The fate of Amalsuentha was his excuse,

the discontent of Roman orthodoxy with the rule of the heretic

Goths was his encouragement, to send an army into Italy with

Belisarius at its head. First taking possession of Sicily,

Belisarius landed in Italy in 536, took Naples and advanced on

Rome. An able soldier, Vitiges, had been raised to the Gothic

throne, and he evacuated Rome in December; but he returned the

following March and laid siege to the ancient capital, which

Belisarius had occupied with a moderate force. It was defended

against him for an entire year, and the strength of the Gothic

nation was consumed on the outer side of the walls, while the

inhabitants within were wasted by famine and disease. The

Goths invoked the aid of the Franks in Gaul, and those fierce

warriors, crossing the Alps (A. D. 538), assailed both Goths

and Greeks, with indiscriminate hostility, destroyed Milan and

Genoa, and mostly perished of hunger themselves before they

retreated from the wasted Cisalpine country.

Released from Rome, Belisarius advanced in his turn against

Ravenna, and took the Gothic capital, making Vitiges a

prisoner (A. D. 539). His reward for these successes was a

recall from command. The jealous Emperor could not afford his

generals too much glory at a single winning. As a consequence

of his folly, the Goths, under a new king, Totila, were

allowed to recover so much ground in the next four years that,

when, in 544, Belisarius was sent back, almost without an

army, the work of conquest had to be done anew. Rome was still

being held against Totila, who besieged it, and the great

general went by sea to its relief. He forced the passage of

the Tiber, but failed through the misconduct of the commander

in the city to accomplish an entry, and once more the great

capital was entered and yielded to angry Goths (A. D. 546).

They spared the lives of the few people they found, and the

chastity of the women; but they plundered without restraint.

Rome a Solitude for Forty Days.

Totila commanded the total destruction of the city; but his

ruthless hand was stayed by the remonstrances of Belisarius.

After demolishing a third of the walls, he withdrew towards

the South, dragging the few inhabitants with him, and, during

forty days, Rome is said to have been an unpeopled solitude.

The scene which this offers to the imagination comes near to

being the most impressive in history. At the end of that

period it was entered by Belisarius, who hastily repaired the

walls, collected his forces, and was prepared to defend

himself when Totila came back by rapid marches from Apulia.

The Goths made three assaults and were bloodily repulsed.

End of the Ostrogothic Kingdom.

But again Belisarius was recalled by a mean and jealous court,

and again the Gothic cause was reanimated and restored. Rome

was taken again from its feeble garrison (A. D. 549), and this

time it was treated with respect. Most of Italy and Sicily,

with Corsica and Sardinia, were subdued by Totila's arms, and

that king, now successful, appealed to Justinian for peace. It

was refused, and in 552 a vigorous prosecution of the war

resumed, under a new commander--the remarkable eunuch Narses,

who proved himself to be one of the great masters of war.

Totila was defeated and slain in the first battle of the

campaign; Rome was again beleaguered and taken; and the last

blow needed to extinguish the Gothic kingdom in Italy was

given the following year (A. D. 553), when Totila's successor,

Teia, ended his life on another disastrous field of battle.

The Exarchate.

Italy was restored for the moment to the Empire, and was

placed under the government of an imperial viceroy, called

Exarch, which high office the valiant Narses was the first to

fill. His successors, known in history as the Exarchs of

Ravenna, resided in that capital for a long period, while the

arm of their authority was steadily shortened by the conquests

of new invaders, whose story is yet to be told.

{1014}

Events in the West.

Leaving Italy and Rome, once more in the imperial fold, but

mere provinces now of a distant and alienated sovereignty, it

is necessary to turn back to the West, and glance over the

regions in which, when we looked at them last, the

institutions of Roman government and society were being

dissolved and broken up by flood upon flood of barbaric

invasion from the Teutonic North.

Teutonic Conquest of Britain.

If we begin at the farthest West which the Roman dominion

reached, we shall find that the island of Britain was

abandoned, practically, by the imperial government earlier

than the year 410, when Rome was sinking under the blows of

Alaric. From that time the inhabitants were left to their own

government and their own defense. To the inroads of the savage

Caledonian Picts and Irish Scots, there were added, now, the

coast ravages of a swarm of ruthless pirates, which the tribes

of northwestern Europe had begun to launch upon the German or

North Sea. The most cruel and terrible of these ocean

freebooters were the Saxons, of the Elbe, and they gave their

name for a time to the whole. Their destructive raids upon the

coasts of Britain and Gaul had commenced more than a century

before the Romans withdrew their legions, and that part of the

British coast most exposed to their ravages was known as the

Saxon Shore. For about thirty years after the Roman and

Romanized inhabitants of Britain had been left to defend

themselves, they held their ground with good courage, as

appears; but the incessant attacks of the Picts wore out, at

last, their confidence in themselves, and they were fatally

led to seek help from their other enemies, who scourged them

from the sea. Their invitation was given, not to the Saxons,

but to a band of Jutes--warriors from that Danish peninsula in

which they have left their name. The Jutes landed at

Ebbsfleet, in the Isle of Thanet (A. D. 449 or 450), with two

chiefs, Hengest and Horsa, at their head. They came as allies,

and fought by the side of the Britons against the Picts with

excellent success. Then came quarrels, and presently, in 455,

the arms of Hengest and Horsa were turned against their

employers. Ten years later the Jutes had secure possession of

the part of Britain now called Kent, and Hengest was their

king, Horsa having fallen in the war. This was the beginning

of the transformation of Roman-Celtic Britain into the

Teutonic England of later history. The success of the Jutes

drew their cousins and piratical comrades, the Saxons and the

Angles, to seek kingdoms in the same rich island. The Saxons

came first, landing near Selsey, in 477, and taking gradual

possession of a district which became known as the kingdom of

the South Saxons, or Sussex. The next invasion was by Saxons

under Cerdic, and Jutes, who joined to form the kingdom of the

West Saxons, or Wessex, covering about the territory of modern

Hampshire. So much of their conquest was complete by the year

519. At about the same time, other colonies were established

and gave their names, as East Saxons and Middle Saxons, to the

Essex and Middlesex of modern English geography. A third tribe

from the German shore, the Angles, now came (A. D. 547) to

take their part in the conquest of the island, and these laid

their hands upon kingdoms in the East and North of England, so

much larger than the modest Jute and Saxon realms in the south

that their name fixed itself, at last, upon the whole country,

when it lost the name of Britain. Northumberland, which

stretched from the Humber to the Firth of Forth, Mercia, which

covered at one time the whole middle region of England, and

East Anglia, which became divided into the two English

counties of Norfolk (North-folk) and Suffolk (South-folk),

were the three great kingdoms of the Angles.

The Making of England.

Before the end of the sixth century, almost the whole of

modern England, and part of Scotland, on its eastern side, as

far to the north as Edinburgh, was in possession of the German

invaders. They had not merely subdued the former

possessors--Britons and Roman provincials (if Romans remained

in the island after their domination ceased),--but, in the

judgment of the best investigators of the subject, they had

practically swept them from all the parts of the island in

which their own settlements were established. That is to say,

the prior population was either exterminated by the merciless

swords of these Saxon and English pagans, or was driven into

the mountains of Wales, into the peninsula of Cornwall and

Devon, or into the Strathclyde corner of Scottish

territory,--in all which regions the ancient British race has

maintained itself to this day. Scarcely a vestige of its

existence remains elsewhere in England,--neither in language,

nor in local names, nor in institutions, nor in survivals of

any other kind; which shows that the inhabitants were effaced

by the conquest, as the inhabitants of Gaul, of Spain, and of

Italy, for example, were not.

The new society and the new states which now arose on the soil

of Britain, and began to shape themselves into the England of

the future, were as purely Germanic as if they had grown up in

the Jutish peninsula or on the Elbe. The institutions,

political and social, of the immigrant nations, had been

modified by changed circumstances, but they had incorporated

almost nothing from the institutions which they found existing

in their new home and which they supplanted. Broadly speaking,

nothing Roman and nothing Celtic entered into them. They were

constructed on German lines throughout.

The barbarism of the Saxons and their kin when they entered

Britain was far more unmitigated than that of most of the

Teutonic tribes which overwhelmed the continental provinces of

Rome had been. The Goths had been influenced to some extent

and for quite a period by Roman civilization, and had

nominally accepted Christian precepts and beliefs, before they

took arms against the Empire. The Franks had been allies of

Rome and in contact with the refinements of Roman Gaul, for a

century or two before they became masters in that province.

Most of the other nations which transplanted themselves in the

fifth century from beyond the Rhine to new homes in the

provinces of Rome, had been living for generations on the

borders of the Empire, or near; had acquired some

acquaintance, at least, with the civilization which they did

not share, and conceded to it a certain respect; while some of

them had borne arms for the Emperor and taken his pay. But the

Saxons, Angles and Jutes had thus far been remote from every

influence or experience of the kind.

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They knew the Romans only as rich strangers to be plundered

and foes to be fought. Christianity represented nothing to

them but an insult to their gods. There seems to be little

doubt, therefore, that the civilizing work which Rome had done

in western Europe was obliterated nowhere else so ruthlessly

and so wantonly as in Britain. Christianity, still sheltered

and strong in Ireland, was wholly extinguished in England for

a century and more, until the memorable mission of Augustine,

sent by Pope Gregory the Great (A. D. 597), began the

conversion of the savage islanders.

The Kingdom of the Franks.

In Gaul, meanwhile, and in southwestern Germany, the Franks

had become the dominant power. They had moved tardily to the

conquest, but when they moved it was with rapid strides. While

they dwelt along the Lower Rhine, they were in two divisions:

the Salian Franks, who occupied, first, the country near the

mouth of the river, and then spread southwards, to the Somme,

or beyond; and the Ripuarians, who lived farther up the Rhine,

in the neighborhood of Cologne, advancing thence to the

Moselle. In the later part of the fifth century a Roman

Patrician, Syagrius, still exercised some kind of authority in

northern Gaul; but in 486 he was defeated and overthrown by

Chlodvig, or Clovis, the chief of the Salian Franks. Ten years

later, Clovis, leading both the Salian and the Ripuarian

Franks in an attack upon the German Alemanni, beyond the Upper

Rhine, subdued that people completely, and took their country.

Their name survived, and adhered to the whole people of

Germany, whom the Franks and their successors the French have

called Allemands to this day. After his conquest of the

Alemanni, Clovis, who had married a Christian wife, accepted

her faith and was baptized, with three thousand of his chief

men. The professed conversion was as fortunate politically for

him as it had been for Constantine. He adopted the

Christianity which was that of the Roman Church--the Catholic

Christianity of the Athanasian creed--and he stood forth at

once as the champion of orthodoxy against the heretic Goths

and Burgundians, whose religion had been poisoned by the

condemned doctrines of Arius. The blessings, and the more

substantial endeavors, of the Roman Church were, therefore, on

his side, when he attacked the Burgundians and made them

tributary, and when, a few years later, he expelled the Goths

from Aquitaine and drove them into Spain (A.D. 500-508).

Beginning, apparently, as one of several chiefs among the

Salian Franks, he ended his career (510) as sole king of the

whole Frank nation, and master of all Gaul except a Gothic

corner of Provence, with a considerable dominion beyond the

Rhine.

The Merovingian Kings.

But Clovis left his realm to four sons, who divided it into as

many kingdoms, with capitals at Metz, Orleans, Paris, and

Soissons. There was strife and war between them, until one of

the brothers, Lothaire, united again the whole kingdom, which,

meantime, had been enlarged by the conquest of Thuringia and

Provence, and by the extinction of the tributary Burgundian

kings. When he died, his sons rent the kingdom again, and

warred with one another, and once more it was brought

together. Says Hallam: "It is a weary and unprofitable task to

follow these changes in detail, through scenes of tumult and

bloodshed, in which the eye meets with no sunshine, nor can

rest upon any interesting spot. It would be difficult, as

Gibbon has justly observed, to find anywhere more vice or less

virtue." But, as Dean Church has remarked, the Franks were

maintained in their ascendancy by the favor of the clergy and

the circumstances of their position, despite their divisions

and the worthless and detestable character of their kings,

after Clovis. "They occupied a land of great natural wealth,

and great geographical advantages, which had been prepared for

them by Latin culture; they inherited great cities which they

had not built, and fields and vineyards which they had not

planted; and they had the wisdom, not to destroy, but to use

their conquest. They were able with singular ease and

confidence to employ and trust the services, civil and

military, of the Latin population. ... The bond between the

Franks and the native races was the clergy. ... The forces of

the whole nation were at the disposal of the ruling race; and

under Frank chiefs, the Latins and Gauls learned once more to

be warriors." This no doubt suggests a quite true explanation

of the success of the Franks; but too much may easily be

inferred from it. It will not be safe to conclude that the

Franks were protectors of civilization in Gaul, and did not

lay destroying hands upon it. We shall presently see that it

sank to a very darkened state under their rule, though the

eclipse may have been less complete than in some other of the

barbarized provinces of Rome.

Rise of the Carolingians.

The division in the Frankish dominion which finally marked

itself deeply and became permanent was that which separated

the East Kingdom, or Austrasia, from the West Kingdom, or

Neustria. In Austrasia, the Germanic element prevailed; in

Neustria, the Roman and Gallic survivals entered most largely

into the new society. Austrasia widened into the Germany of

later history; Neustria into France. In both these kingdoms,

the Frankish kings sank lower and lower in character, until

their name (of Merwings or Merovingians, from an ancestor of

Clovis) became a byword for sloth and worthlessness. In each

kingdom there arose, beside the nominal monarch, a strong

minister, called the Major Domus, or Mayor of the Palace, who

exercised the real power and governed in the king's name.

During the last half of the seventh century, the Austrasian

Mayor, Pippin of Heristal, and the Neustrian Mayor, Ebroin,

converted the old antagonism of the two kingdoms into a

personal rivalry and struggle for supremacy. Ebroin was

murdered, and Pippin was the final victor, in a decisive

battle at Testry (687), which made him virtual master of the

whole Frank realm, although the idle Merwings still sat on

their thrones. Pippin's son, Charles Martel, strengthened and

extended the domination which his father had acquired. He

drove back the Saxons and subdued the Frisians in the North,

and, in the great and famous battle of Tours (732) he

repelled, once for all, the attempt of the Arab and Moorish

followers of Mahomet, already lodged in Spain, to push their

conquests beyond the Pyrenees.

{1016}

The next of the family, Pippin the Short, son of Charles

Martel, put an end to the pretence of governing in the name of

a puppet-king. The last of the Merovingians was quietly

deposed--lacking even importance enough to be put to death--

and Pippin received the crown at the hands of Pope Zachary (A.

D. 751). He died in 768, and the reign of his son, who

succeeded him--the Great Charles--the Charlemagne of mediæval

history--is the introduction to so new an era, and so changed

an order of circumstances in the European world, that it will

be best to finish with all that lies behind it in our hasty

survey before we take it up.

The Conquests of Islam.

Outside of Europe, a new and strange power had now risen, and

had spread its forces with extraordinary rapidity around the

southern and eastern circuit of the Mediterranean, until it

troubled both extremities of the northern shore. This was the

power of Islam--the proselyting, war-waging religion of

Mahomet, the Arabian prophet. At the death of Mahomet, in 632,

he was lord of Arabia, and his armies had just crossed the

border, to attack the Syrian possessions of the Eastern Roman

Empire. In seven years from that time, the whole of Palestine

and Syria had been overrun, Jerusalem, Damascus, Antioch, and

all the strong cities taken, and Roman authority expelled. In

two years more, they had dealt the last blow to the Sassanian

monarchy in Persia and shattered it forever. At the same time

they were besieging Alexandria and adding Egypt to their

conquests. In 668, only thirty-six years after the death of

the Prophet, they were at the gates of Constantinople, making

the first of their many attempts to gain possession of the New

Rome. In 698 they had taken Carthage, had occupied all North

Africa to the Atlantic coast, had converted the Mauretanians,

or Moors, and absorbed them into their body politic as well as

into their communion. In 711 the commingled Arabs and Moors

crossed the Straits and entered Spain, and the overthrow of

the Christian kingdom of the Visigoths was practically

accomplished in a single battle that same year. Within two

years more, the Moors (as they came to be most commonly

called) were in possession of the whole southern, central, and

eastern parts of the Spanish peninsula, treating the

inhabitants who had not fled with a more generous toleration

than differing Christians were wont to offer to one another.

The Spaniards (a mixed population of Roman, Suevic, Gothic,

and aboriginal descent) who did, not submit, took refuge in

the mountainous region of the Asturias and Galicia, where they

maintained their independence, and, in due time, became

aggressive, until, after eight centuries, they recovered their

whole land.

The Eastern Empire.

At the East, as we have seen, the struggle of the Empire with

the Arabs began at the first moment of their career of foreign

conquest. They came upon it when it was weak from many wounds,

and exhausted by conflict with many foes. Before the death of

Justinian (565), the transient glories of his reign had been

waning fast. His immediate successor saw the work of

Belisarius and Narses undone, for the most part, and the

Italian peninsula overrun by a new horde of barbarians, more

rapacious and more savage than the Goths. At the same time,

the Persian war broke out again, and drained the imperial

resources to pay for victories that had no fruit. Two better

and stronger emperors--Tiberius and Maurice--who came after

him, only made an honorable struggle, without leaving the

Empire in a better state. Then a brutal creature--Phocas--held

the throne for eight years (602-610) and sunk it very low by his

crimes. The hero, Heraclius, who was now raised to power, came

too late. Assailed suddenly, at the very beginning of his

reign, by a fierce Persian onset, he was powerless to resist.

Syria, Egypt and Asia Minor were successively ravaged and

conquered by the Persian arms. They came even to the

Bosphorus, and for ten years they held its eastern shore and

maintained a camp within sight of Constantinople itself; while

the wild Tartar nation of the Avars raged, at the same time,

through the northern and western provinces of the Empire, and

threatened the capital on its landward sides. The Roman Empire

was reduced, for a time, to "the walls of Constantinople, with

the remnant of Greece, Italy, and Africa, and some maritime

cities, from Tyre to Trebizond, of the Asiatic coast." But in

622 Heraclius turned the tide of disaster and rolled it back

upon his enemies. Despite an alliance of the Persians with the

Avars, and their combined assault upon Constantinople in 626,

he repelled the latter, and wrested from the former, in a

series of remarkable campaigns, all the territory they had

seized. He had but just accomplished this great deliverance of

his dominions, when the Arabs came upon him, as stated above.

There was no strength left in the Empire to resist the

terrible prowess of these warriors of the desert. They

extinguished its authority in Syria and Egypt, as we have

seen, in the first years of their career; but then turned

their arms to the East and the West, and were slow in

disputing Asia Minor with its Christian lords. "From the time

of Heraclius the Byzantine theatre is contracted and darkened:

the line of empire which had been defined by the laws of

Justinian and the arms of Belisarius recedes on all sides from

our view" (Gibbon). There was neither vigor nor virtue in the

descendants of Heraclius; and when the last of them was

destroyed by a popular rising against his vicious tyranny

(711), revolution followed revolution so quickly that three

reigns were begun and ended in six years.

The so-called Byzantine Empire.

Then came to the throne a man of strong character, who

redeemed it at least from contempt; who introduced a dynasty

which endured for a century, and whose reign is the beginning

of a new era in the history of the Eastern Empire, so marked

that the Empire has taken from that time, in the common usage,

a changed name, and is known thenceforth as the Byzantine,

rather than the Eastern or the Greek. This was Leo the

Isaurian, who saved Constantinople from a second desperate

Moslem siege; who checked for a considerable period the

Mahometan advance in the East; who reorganized the imperial

administration on lasting lines; and whose suppression of

image-worship in the Christian churches of his empire led to a

rupture with the Roman Church in the West,--to the breaking of

all relations of dependence in Rome and Italy upon the Empire

in the East, and to the creating of a new imperial sovereignty

in Western Europe which claimed succession to that of Rome.

{1017}

Lombard Conquest of Italy.

On the conquest of Italy by Belisarius and Narses, for

Justinian, the eunuch Narses, as related before, was made

governor, residing at Ravenna, and bearing the title of

Exarch. In a few years he was displaced, through the influence

of a palace intrigue at Constantinople. To be revenged, it is

said that he persuaded the Lombards, a German tribe lately

become threatening on the Upper Danube, to enter Italy. They

came, under their leader Alboin, and almost the whole northern

and middle parts of the peninsula submitted to them with no

resistance. Pavia stood a siege for three years before it

surrendered to become the Lombard capital; Venice received an

added population of fugitives, and was safe in her

lagoons--like Ravenna, where the new Exarch watched the march

of Lombard conquest, and scarcely opposed it. Rome was

preserved, with part of southern Italy and with Sicily; but no

more than a shadow of the sovereignty of the Empire now

stretched westward beyond the Adriatic.

Temporal Power of the Popes.

The city of Rome, and the territory surrounding it, still

owned a nominal allegiance to the Emperor at Constantinople;

but their immediate and real ruler was the Bishop of Rome, who

had already acquired, in a special way, the fatherly name of

"Papa" or Pope. Many circumstances had combined to place both

spiritual and temporal power in the hands of these Christian

pontiffs of Rome. They may have been originally, in the

constitution of the Church, on an equal footing of

ecclesiastical authority with the four other chiefs of the

hierarchy--the Patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria,

Antioch and Jerusalem; but the great name of Rome gave them

prestige and weight of superior influence to begin with. Then,

they stood, geographically and sympathetically, in nearest

relations with that massive Latin side of Christendom, in

western Europe, which was never much disturbed by the raging

dogmatic controversies that tore and divided the Church on its

Eastern, Greek side. It was inevitable that the Western Church

should yield homage to one head--to one bishopric above all

other bishoprics; and it was more inevitable that the See of

Rome should be that one. So the spiritual supremacy to which

the Popes arrived is easily enough explained. The temporal

authority which they acquired is accounted for as obviously.

Even before the interruption of the line of emperors in the

West, the removal of the imperial residence for long periods

from Rome, to Constantinople, to Milan, to Ravenna, left the

Pope the most impressive and influential personage in the

ancient capital. Political functions were forced on him,

whether he desired to exercise them or not. It was Pope Leo

who headed the embassy to Attila, and saved the city from the

Huns. It was the same Pope who pleaded for it with the Vandal

king, Genseric. And still more and more, after the imperial

voice which uttered occasional commands to his Roman subjects

was heard from a distant palace in Constantinople, and in

accents that had become wholly Greek, the chair of St. Peter

grew throne-like,--the respect paid to the Pope in civil

matters took on the spirit of obedience, and his aspect before

the people became that of a temporal prince.

This process of the political elevation of the Papacy was

completed by the Lombard conquest of Italy. The Lombard kings

were bent upon the acquisition of Rome; the Popes were

resolute and successful in holding it against them. At last

the Papacy made its memorable and momentous alliance with the

Carolingian chiefs of the Franks. It assumed the tremendous

super-imperial right and power to dispose of crowns, by taking

that of the kingdom of the Franks from Childeric and giving it

to Pippin (751); and this was the first assumption of that

right by the chief priest of Western Christendom. In return,

Pippin led an army twice to Italy (754-755), humbled the

Lombards, took from them the exarchate of Ravenna and the

Pentapolis (a district east of the Appenines, between Ancona

and Ferrara), and transferred this whole territory as a

conqueror's "donation" to the Apostolic See. The temporal

sovereignty of the Popes now rested on a base as political and

as substantial as that of the most worldly and vulgar

potentates around them.

Charlemagne's restored Roman Empire.

Pippin's greater son, Charlemagne, renewed the alliance of his

house with the Papacy, and strengthened it by completing the

conquest of the Lombards, extinguishing their kingdom (774),

and confirming his father's donation of the States of the

Church. Charlemagne was now supreme in Italy, and the Pope

became the representative of his sovereignty at Rome,--a

position which lastingly enhanced the political importance of

the Roman See in the peninsula. But while Pope and King stood

related, in one view, as agent and principal, or subject and

sovereign, another very different relationship slowly shaped

itself in the thoughts of one, if not of both. The Western

Church had broken entirely with the Eastern, on the question

of image-worship; the titular sovereignty of the Eastern

Emperor in the ancient Roman capital was a worn-out fiction;

the reign of a female usurper, Irene, at Constantinople

afforded a good occasion for renouncing and discarding it. But

a Roman Emperor there must be, somewhere, for lesser princes

and sovereigns to do homage to; the political habit and

feeling of the European world, shaped and fixed by the long

domination of Rome, still called for it. "Nor could the

spiritual head of Christendom dispense with the temporal;

without the Roman Empire there could not be," according to the

feeling of the ninth century, "a Roman, nor by necessary

consequence a Catholic and Apostolic Church." For "men could

not separate in fact what was indissoluble in thought:

Christianity must stand or fall along with the great Christian

state: they were but two names for one and the same thing"

(Bryce). Therefore the head of the Church, boldly enlarging

the assumption of his predecessor who bestowed the crown of

the Merovingians upon Pippin, now took it upon himself to set

the diadem of the Cæsars on the head of Charlemagne. On the

Christmas Day, in the year 800, in the basilica of St. Peter,

at Rome, the solemn act of coronation was performed by Pope

Leo III.; the Roman Empire lived again, in the estimation of

that age, and Charles the Great reopened the interrupted line

of successors to Augustus.

{1018}

Before this imperial coronation of Charlemagne occurred, he

had already made his dominion imperial in extent, by the

magnitude of his conquests. North, south, east, and west, his

armies had been everywhere victorious. In eighteen campaigns

against the fierce and troublesome Saxons, he subdued those

stubborn pagans and forced them to submit to a Christian

baptism--with how much of immediate religious effect may be

easily surmised. But by opening a way for the more Christ-like

missionaries of the cross, who followed him, this missionary

of the battle-ax did, no doubt, a very real apostolic work. He

checked the ravages of the piratical Danes. He crushed the

Avars and took their country, which comprised parts of the

Austria and Hungary of the present day. He occupied Bavaria,

on the one hand, and Brittany on the other. He crossed the

Pyrenees to measure swords with the Saracens, and drove them

from the north of Spain, as far as the Ebro. His lordship in

Italy has been noticed already. He was unquestionably one of

the greatest monarchs of any age, and deserves the title

Magnus, affixed to his name, if that title ever has been

deserved by the kings who were flattered with it. There was

much more in his character than the mere aggressive energy

which subjugated so wide a realm. He was a man of

enlightenment far beyond his time; a man who strove after

order, in that disorderly age, and who felt oppressed by the

ignorance into which the world had sunk. He was a seeker after

learning, and the friend and patron of all in his day who

groped in the darkness and felt their way towards the light.

He organized his Empire with a sense of political system which

was new among the Teutonic masters of Western Europe (except

as shown by Theodoric in Italy); but there were not years

enough in his own life for the organism to mature, and his

sons brought back chaos again.

Appearance of the Northmen.

Before Charlemagne died (814) he saw the western coasts and

river valleys of his Empire harried by a fresh outpouring of

sea-rovers from the far North, and it is said that he had sad

forebodings of the affliction they would become to his people

thereafter. These new pirates of the North Sea, who took up,

after several centuries, the abandoned trade of their kinsmen,

the Saxons (now retired from their wild courses and

respectably settled on one side of the water, while subdued

and kept in order on the other), were of the bold and rugged

Scandinavian race, which inhabited the countries since known

as Denmark, Sweden and Norway. They are more or less confused

under the general name of Northmen, or Norsemen--men of the

North; but that term appears to have been applied more

especially to the freebooters from the Norwegian coast, as

distinguished from the "Danes" of the lesser peninsula. It is

convenient, in so general a sketch as this, to ignore the

distinction, and to speak of the Northmen as inclusive, for

that age, of the whole Scandinavian race.

Their visitations began to terrify the coasts of England,

France and Germany, and the lower valleys of the rivers which

they found it possible to ascend, some time in the later half

of the eighth century. It is probable that their appearance on

the sea at this time, and not before, was due to a revolution

which united Norway under a single king and a stronger

government, and which, by suppressing independence and

disorder among the petty chiefs, drove many of them to their

ships and sent them abroad, to lead a life of lawlessness more

agreeable to their tastes. It is also probable that the

northern countries had become populated beyond their

resources, as seemed to have happened before, when the Goths

swarmed out, and that the outlet by sea was necessarily and

deliberately opened. Whatever the cause, these Norse

adventurers, in fleets of long boats, issued with some

suddenness from their "vics," or fiords (whence the name

"viking"), and began an extraordinary career. For more than

half a century their raids had no object but plunder, and what

they took they carried home to enjoy. First to the Frisian

coast, then to the Rhine--the Seine--the Loire,--they came

again and again to pillage and destroy; crossing at the same

time to the shores of their nearest kinsmen--but heeding no

kinship in their savage and relentless forays along the

English coasts--and around to Ireland and the Scottish

islands, where their earliest lodgments were made.

The Danes in England.

About the middle of the ninth century they began to seize

tracts of land in England and to settle themselves there in

permanent homes. The Angles in the northern and eastern parts

and the Saxons in the southern part of England had weakened

themselves and one another by rivalry and war between their

divided kingdoms. There had been for three centuries an

unceasing struggle among them for supremacy. At the time of

the coming of the Danes (who were prominent in the English

invasion and gave their name to it), the West Saxon kings had

won a decided ascendancy. The Danes, by degrees, stripped them

of what they had gained. Northumberland, Mercia and East

Anglia were occupied in succession, and Wessex itself was

attacked. King Alfred, the great and admirable hero of early

English history, who came to the throne in 871, spent the

first eight years of his reign in a deadly struggle with the

invaders. He was obliged in the end to concede to them the

whole northeastern part of England, from the Thames to the

Tyne, which was known thereafter as "the Danelaw"; but they

became his vassals, and submitted to Christian baptism. A

century later, the Norse rovers resumed their attacks upon

England, and a cowardly English king, distrusting the now

settled and peaceful Danes, ordered an extensive massacre of

them (1002). The rage which this provoked in Denmark led to a

great invasion of the country. England was completely

conquered, and remained subject to the Danish kings until

1042, when its throne was recovered for a brief space of time

by the English line.

{1019}

The Normans in Normandy.

Meanwhile the Northmen had gained a much firmer and more

important footing in the territory of the Western

Franks--which had not yet acquired the name of France. The

Seine and its valley attracted them again and again, and after

repeated expeditions up the river, even to the city of Paris,

which they besieged several times, one of their chiefs, Rolf

or Rollo, got possession of Rouen and began a permanent

settlement in the country. The Frank King, Charles the Simple,

now made terms with Rollo and granted him a district at the

mouth of the Seine, (912), the latter acknowledging the

suzerainty or feudal superiority of Charles, and accepting at

the same time the doubly new character of a baptised Christian

and a Frankish Duke. The Northmen on the Seine were known

thenceforth as Normans, their dukedom as Normandy, and they

played a great part in European history during the next two

centuries.

The Northmen in the West.

The northern sea-rovers who had settled neither in Ireland,

England, nor Frankland, went farther afield into the West and

North and had wonderful adventures there. They took possession

of the Orkneys, the Shetlands, the Hebrides, and other islands

in those seas, including Man, and founded a powerful

island-kingdom, which they held for a long period. Thence they

passed on to Faroë and Iceland, and in Iceland, where they

lived peaceful and quiet lives of necessity, they founded an

interesting republic, and developed a very remarkable

civilization, adorned by a literature which the world is

learning more and more to admire. From Iceland, it was a

natural step to the discovery of Greenland, and from

Greenland, there is now little doubt that they sailed

southwards and saw and touched the continent of America, five

centuries before Columbus made his voyage.

The Northmen in the East.

While the Northmen of the ninth and tenth centuries were

exciting and disturbing all Western Europe by their naval

exploits, other adventurers from the Swedish side of the

Scandinavian country were sallying eastwards under different

names. Both as warriors and as merchants, they made their way

from the Baltic to the Black Sea and the Bosphorus, and bands

of them entered the service of the Eastern Emperor, at

Constantinople, where they received the name of Varangians,

from the oath by which they bound themselves. One of the

Swedish chiefs, Rurik by name, was chosen by certain tribes of

the country now called Russia, to be their prince. Rurik's

capital was Novgorod, where he formed the nucleus of a kingdom

which grew, through many vicissitudes, into the modern empire

of Russia. His successors transferred their capital to Kief,

and ultimately it was shifted again to Moscow, where the

Muscovite princes acquired the title, the power, and the great

dominion of the Czars of all the Russias.

The Slavonic Race.

The Russian sovereigns were thus of Swedish origin; but their

subjects were of another race. They belonged to a branch of

the great Aryan stock, called the Slavic or Slavonic, which

was the last to become historically known. The Slavonians bore

no important part in events that we have knowledge of until

several centuries of the Christian era had passed. They were

the obscure inhabitants in that period of a wide region in

Eastern Europe, between the Vistula and the Caspian. In the

sixth century, pressed by the Avars, they crossed the Vistula,

moving westwards, along the Baltic; and, about the same time

they moved southwards, across the Danube, and established the

settlements which formed the existing Slavonic states in

South-eastern Europe--Servia, Croatia and their lesser

neighbors. But the principal seat of the Slavonic race within

historic times has always been in the region still occupied by

its principal representatives, the Russians and the Poles.

Mediæval Society.--The Feudal System.

We have now come to a period in European history--the middle

period of the Middle Ages--when it is appropriate to consider

the peculiar state of society which had resulted from the

transplanting of the Germanic nations of the North to the

provinces of the Roman Empire, and from placing the well

civilized surviving inhabitants of the latter in subjection to

and in association with masters so vigorous, so capable and so

barbarous. In Gaul, the conquerors, unused to town-life, not

attracted to town pursuits, and eager for the possession of

land, had generally spread themselves over the country and

left the cities more undisturbed, except as they pillaged them

or extorted ransom from them. The Roman-Gallic population of

the country had sought refuge, no doubt, to a large extent, in

the cities; the agricultural laborers were already, for the

most part, slaves or half-slaves--the coloni of the Roman

system--and remained in their servitude; while some of the

poorer class of freemen may have sunk to the same condition.

How far the new masters of the country had taken possession of

its land by actual seizure, ousting the former owners, and

under what rules, if any, it was divided among them, are

questions involved in great obscurity. In the time of

Charlemagne, there seems to have been a large number of small

landowners who cultivated their own holdings, which they

owned, not conditionally, but absolutely, by the tenure called

allodial. But alongside of these peasant proprietors there was

another landed class whose estates were held on very different

terms, and this latter class, at the time now spoken of, was

rapidly absorbing the former. It was a class which had not

existed before, neither among the Germans nor among the

Romans, and the system of land tenure on which it rested was

equally new to both, although both seem to have contributed

something to the origin of it. This was the Feudal System,

which may be described, in the words of Bishop Stubbs, as

being "a complete organization of society through the medium

of land tenure, in which, from the king down to the landowner,

all are bound together by obligation of service and defence:

the lord to protect his vassal, the vassal to do service to

his lord; the defence and service being based on, and

regulated by, the nature and extent of the land held by the

one of the other." Of course, the service exacted was, in the

main, military, and the system grew up as a military system,

expanding into a general governing system, during a time of

loose and ineffective administration. That it was a thing of

gradual growth is now fairly well settled, although little is

clearly known of the process of growth. It came to its

perfection in the tenth century, by which time most other

tenures of land had disappeared. The allodial tenure gave way

before it, because, in those disorderly times, men of small or

moderate property in land were in need of the protection which

a powerful lord, who had many retainers at his back, or a strong

monastery, could give, and were induced to surrender, to one

or the other, their free ownership of the land they held,

receiving it back as tenants, in order to establish the

relation which secured a protector.

{1020}

In its final organization, the feudal system, as stated

before, embraced the whole society of the kingdom.

Theoretically, the king was the pinnacle of the system. In the

political view of the time--so far as a political view

existed--he was the over-lord of the realm rather by reason of

being its ultimate land-lord, than by being the center of

authority and the guardian of law. The greater subordinate

lordships of the kingdom--the dukedoms and counties--were

held as huge estates, called fiefs, derived originally by

grant from the king, subject to the obligation of military

service, and to certain acts of homage, acknowledging the

dependent relationship. The greater feudatories, or vassals,

holding immediately from the king, were lords in their turn of

a second order of feudatories, who held lands under them; and

they again might divide their territories among vassals of a

third degree; for the process of sub-infeudation went on until

it reached the cultivator of the soil, who bore the whole

social structure of society on his bent back.

But the feudal system would have wrought few of the effects

which it did if it had involved nothing but land tenure and

military service. It became, however, as before intimated, a

system of government, and one which inevitably produced a

disintegration of society and a destruction of national bonds.

A grant of territory generally carried with it almost a grant

of sovereignty over the inhabitants of the territory, limited

only by certain rights and powers reserved to the king, which

he found extreme difficulty in exercising. The system was one

"in which every lord judged, taxed, and commanded the class

next below him, in which abject slavery formed the lowest and

irresponsible tyranny the highest grade, in which private war,

private coinage, private prisons, took the place of the

imperial institutions of government" (Stubbs). This was the

singular system which had its original and special growth

among the Franks, in the Middle Ages, and which spread from

them, under the generally similar conditions of the age, to

other countries, with various degrees of modification and

limitation. Its influence was obviously opposed to political

unity and social order, and to the development of institutions

favorable to the people.

But an opposing influence had kept life in one part of society

which feudalism was not able to envelope. That was in cities.

The cities, as before stated, had been the refuge of a large

and perhaps a better part of the Roman-Gallic free population

which survived the barbarian conquest. They, in conjunction

with the Church, preserved, without doubt, so much of the

plant of Roman civilization as escaped destruction. They

certainly suffered heavily, and languished for several

centuries; but a slow revival of industries and arts went on

in them,--trade crept again into its old channels, or found

new ones,--and wealth began to be accumulated anew. With the

consciousness of wealth came feelings of independence; and

such towns were now beginning to acquire the spirit which made

them, a little later, important instruments in the weakening

and breaking of the feudal system.

Rise of the Kingdom of France.

During the period between the death of Charlemagne and the

settlement of the Normans in the Carlovingian Empire, that

Empire had become permanently divided. The final separation

had taken place (887) between the kingdom of the East Franks,

or Germany, and the kingdom of the West Franks, which

presently became France. Between them stretched a region in

dispute called Lotharingia, out of which came the duchy of

Lorraine. The kingdom of Burgundy (sometimes cut into two) and

the kingdom of Italy, had regained a separate existence; and

the Empire which Charlemagne had revived was nothing but a

name. The last of the Carlovingian emperors was Arnulf, who

died in 899. The imperial title was borne afterwards by a

number of petty Italian potentates, but lost all imperial

significance for two-thirds of a century, until it was

restored to some grandeur again and to a lasting influence in

history, by another German king.

Before this occurred, the Carlovingian race of kings had

disappeared from both the Frank kingdoms. During the last

hundred years of their reign in the West kingdom, the throne

had been disputed with them two or three times by members of a

rising family, the Counts of Paris and Orleans, who were also

called Dukes of the French, and whose duchy gave its name to

the kingdom which they finally made their own. The kings of

the old race held their capital at Laon, with little power and

a small dominion, until 987, when the last one died. The then

Count of Paris and Duke of the French, Hugh, called Capet,

became king of the French, by election; Paris became the

capital of the kingdom, and the France of modern times had its

birth, though very far from its full growth.

The royal power had now declined to extreme weakness. The

development of feudalism had undermined all central authority,

and Hugh Capet as king had scarcely more power than he drew

from his own large fief. "At first he was by no means

acknowledged in the kingdom; but ... the chief vassals

ultimately gave at least a tacit consent to the usurpation,

and permitted the royal name to descend undisputed upon his

posterity. But this was almost the sole attribute of

sovereignty which the first kings of the third dynasty

enjoyed. For a long period before and after the accession of

that family France has, properly speaking, no national

history" (Hallam).

The Communes.

When the royal power began to gain ascendancy, it seems to

have been largely in consequence of a tacitly formed alliance

between the kings and the commons or burghers of the towns.

The latter, as noted before, were acquiring a spirit of

independence, born of increased prosperity, and were

converting their guilds or trades unions into crude forms of

municipal organization, as "communes" or commons. Sometimes by

purchase and sometimes by force, they were ridding themselves

of the feudal pretensions which neighboring lords held over

them, and were obtaining charters which defined and guaranteed

municipal freedom to them. One or two kings of the time

happened to be wise enough to give encouragement to this

movement towards the enfranchisement of the communes, and it

proved to have an important influence in weakening feudalism

and strengthening royalty.

{1021}

Germany.

In the German kingdom, much the same processes of

disintegration had produced much the same results as in

France. The great fiefs into which it was divided--the duchies

of Saxony, Franconia, Swabia and Bavaria--were even more

powerful than the great fiefs of France. When the Carlovingian

dynasty came to an end, in 911, the nobles made choice of a

king, electing Conrad of Franconia, and, after him (919),

Henry the Fowler, Duke of Saxony. The monarchy continued

thereafter to be elective, actually as well as in theory, for

a long period. Three times the crown was kept in the same

family during several successive generations: in the House of

Saxony from 919 to 1024; in the House of Franconia from 1024

to 1137; in the House of the Hohenstaufens, of Swabia, from

1137 to 1254: but it never became an acknowledged heritage

until long after the Hapsburgs won possession of it; and even

to the end the forms of election were preserved.

The Holy Roman Empire.

The second king of the Saxon dynasty, Otho I., called the

Great, recovered the imperial title, which had become extinct

again in the West, added the crown of Lombardy to the crown of

Germany, and founded anew the Germanic Roman Empire, which

Charlemagne had failed to establish enduringly, but which now

became one of the conspicuous facts of European history for

more than eight hundred years, although seldom more than a

shadow and a name. But the shadow and the name were those of

the great Rome of antiquity, and the mighty memory it had left

in the world gave a superior dignity and rank to these German

emperors, even while it diminished their actual power as kings

of Germany. It conferred upon them, indeed, more than rank and

dignity; it bestowed an "office" which the ideas and feelings

of that age could not suffer to remain vacant. The Imperial

office seemed to be required, in matters temporal, to balance

and to be the complement of the Papal office in matters

spiritual. "In nature and compass the government of these two

potentates is the same, differing only in the sphere of its

working; and it matters not whether we call the Pope a

spiritual Emperor, or the Emperor a secular Pope." "Thus the

Holy Roman Church and the Holy Roman Empire are one and the

same thing, in two aspects; and Catholicism, the principle of

the universal Christian society, is also Romanism; that is,

rests upon Rome as the origin and type of its universality"

(Bryce). These mediæval ideas of the "Holy Roman Empire," as

it came to be called (not immediately, but after a time), gave

importance to the imperial coronation thenceforth claimed by

the German kings. It was a factitious importance, so far as

concerned the immediate realm of those kings. In Germany,

while it brought no increase to their material power, it

tended to alarm feudal jealousies; it tended to draw the kings

away from their natural identification with their own country; it

tended to distract them from an effective royal policy at

home, by foreign ambitions and aims; and altogether it

interfered seriously with the nationalization of Germany, and

gave a longer play to the disrupting influences of feudalism

in that country than in any other.

Italy, the Empire and the Papacy.

Otto I. had won Italy and the Imperial crown (962) very

easily. For more than half a century the peninsula had been in

a deplorable state. The elective Lombard crown, quarreled over

by the ducal houses of Friuli, Spoleto, Ivrea, Provence, and

others, settled nowhere with any sureness, and lost all

dignity and strength, though several of the petty kings who

wore it had been crowned emperors by the Pope. At Rome, all

legitimate government, civil or ecclesiastical, had

disappeared. The city and the Church had been for years under

the rule of a family of courtesans, who made popes of their

lovers and their sons. Southern Italy was being ravaged by the

Saracens, who occupied Sicily, and Northern Italy was

desolated by the Hungarians. Under these circumstances, Otto

I., the German king, listened to an appeal from an oppressed

queen, Adelaide, widow of a murdered king, and crossed, the

Alps (951), like a gallant knight, to her relief. He chastised

and humbled the oppressor, rescued the queen, and married her. A

few years later, on further provocation, he entered Italy

again, deposed the troublesome King Berengar, caused himself

to be crowned King of Italy, and received the imperial crown

at Rome (962) from one of the vilest of a vile brood of popes,

John XII. Soon afterwards, he was impelled to convoke a synod

which deposed this disgraceful pope and elected in his place

Leo VIII., who had been Otto's chief secretary. The citizens

now conceded to the Emperor an absolute veto on papal

elections, and the new pope confirmed their act. The German

sovereigns, from that time, for many years, asserted their

right to control the filling of the chair of St. Peter, and

exercised the right on many occasions, though always with

difficulty.

Nominally they were sovereigns of Rome and Italy; but during

their long absences from the country they scarcely made a show

of administrative government in it, and their visits were

generally of the nature of expeditions for a reconquest of the

land. Their claims of sovereignty were resisted more and more,

politically throughout Italy and ecclesiastically at Rome. The

Papacy emancipated itself from their control and acquired a

natural leadership of Italian opposition to German imperial

pretensions. The conflict between these two forces became, as

will be seen later on, one of the dominating facts of European

history for four centuries--from the eleventh to the

fourteenth.

{1022}

The Italian City-republics.

The disorder that had been scarcely checked in Italy since the

Goths came into it,--the practical extinction of central

authority after Charlemagne dropped his sceptre, and the

increasing conflicts of the nobles among themselves,--had one

consequence of remarkable importance in Italian history. It

opened opportunities to many cities in the northern parts of

the peninsula for acquiring municipal freedom, which they did

not lack spirit to improve. They led the movement and set the

example which created, a little later, so many vigorous

communes in Flanders and France, and imperial free cities in

Germany at a still later day. They were earlier in winning

their liberties, and they pushed them farther,--to the point

in many cases of creating, as at Pisa, Genoa, Florence, and

Venice, a republican city state. Venice, growing up in the

security of her lagoons, from a cluster of fishing villages to

a great city of palaces, had been independent from the

beginning, except as she acknowledged for a time the nominal

supremacy of the Eastern Emperor. Others won their way to

independence through struggles that are now obscure, and

developed, before these dark centuries reached their close, an

energy of life and a splendor of genius that come near to

comparison with the power and the genius of the Greeks. But,

like the city-republics of Greece, they were perpetually at

strife with one another, and sacrificed to their mutual

jealousies, in the end, the precious liberty which made them

great, and which they might, by a well settled union, have

preserved.

The Saxon line of Emperors.

Such were the conditions existing or taking shape in Italy

when the Empire of the West--the Holy Roman Empire of later

times--was founded anew by Otho the Great. Territorially, the

Empire as he left it covered Germany to its full extent, and

two-thirds of Italy, with the Emperor's superiority

acknowledged by the subject states of Burgundy, Bohemia,

Moravia, Poland, Denmark, and Hungary--the last named with

more dispute.

Otho the Great died in 972. His two immediate successors, Otho

II. (973-983) and Otho III. (983-1002) accomplished little,

though the latter had great ambitions, planning to raise Rome

to her old place as the capital of the world; but he died in

his youth in Italy, and was succeeded by a cousin, Henry II.,

whose election was contested by rivals in Germany, and

repudiated in Italy. In the latter country the great nobles

placed Ardoin, marquis of Ivrea, on the Lombard throne; but

the factions among them soon caused his overthrow, and, Henry,

crossing the Alps, reclaimed the crown.

The Franconian Emperors.

Henry II. was the last of the Saxon line, and upon his death,

in 1024, the House of Franconia came to the throne, by the

election of Conrad II., called "the Salic." Under Conrad, the

kingdom of Burgundy, afterwards called the kingdom of Arles

(which is to be distinguished from the French Duchy of

Burgundy--the northwestern part of the old kingdom), was

reunited to the Empire, by the bequest of its last king,

Rudolph III. Conrad's son, grandson, and great grandson

succeeded him in due order; Henry III. from 1039 to 1056;

Henry IV. from 1056 to 1106; Henry V. from 1106 to 1125. Under

Henry III. the Empire was at the summit of its power. Henry

II., exercising the imperial prerogative, had raised the Duke

of Hungary to royal rank, giving him the title of king. Henry

III. now forced the Hungarian king to acknowledge the imperial

supremacy and pay tribute. The German kingdom was ruled with a

strong hand and peace among its members compelled. "In Rome,

no German sovereign had ever been so absolute. A disgraceful

contest between three claimants of the papal chair had shocked

even the reckless apathy of Italy. Henry deposed them all and

appointed their successor." "The synod passed a decree

granting to Henry the right of nominating the supreme pontiff;

and the Roman priesthood, who had forfeited the respect of the

world even more by habitual simony than by the flagrant

corruption of their manners, were forced to receive German

after German as their bishop, at the bidding of a ruler so

powerful, so severe, and so pious. But Henry's encroachments

alarmed his own nobles no less than the Italians, and the

reaction, which might have been dangerous to himself, was

fatal to his successor. A mere chance, as some might call it,

determined the course of history. The great Emperor died

suddenly in A. D. 1056, and a child was left at the helm,

while storms were gathering that might have demanded the

wisest hand" (Bryce).

Hildebrand and Henry IV.

The child was Henry IV., of unfortunate memory; the storms

which beset him blew from Rome. The Papacy, lifted from its

degradation by Henry's father and grandfather, had recovered

its boldness of tone and enlarged its pretensions and claims.

It had come under the influence of an extraordinary man, the

monk Hildebrand, who swayed the councils of four popes before

he became pope himself (1073), and whose pontifical reign as

Gregory VII. is the epoch of greatest importance in the

history of the Roman Church. The overmastering ascendancy of

the popes, in the Church and over all who acknowledge its

communion, really began when this invincible monk was raised

to the papal throne. He broke the priesthood and the whole

hierarchy of the West to blind obedience by his relentless

discipline. He isolated them, as an order apart, by enforcing

celibacy upon them; and he extinguished the corrupting

practices of simony. Then, when he had marshalled the forces

of the Church, he proclaimed its independence and its

supremacy in absolute terms. In the growth of feudalism

throughout Europe, the Church had become compromised in many

ways with the civil powers. Its bishoprics and abbeys had

acquired extensively the nature of fiefs, and bishops and

abbots were required to do homage to a secular lord before

they could receive an "investiture" of the rich estates which

had become attached by a feudal tenure to their sees. The

ceremony of investiture, moreover, included delivery of the

crozier and the pastoral ring, which were the very symbols of

their spiritual office. Against this dependence of the Church

upon temporal powers, Gregory now arrayed it in revolt, and

began the "War of Investitures," which lasted for half a

century. The great battle ground was Germany; the Emperor, of

necessity, was the chief opponent; and Henry IV., whose youth

had been badly trained, and whose authority had been weakened

by a long, ill-guardianed minority, was at a disadvantage in

the contest. His humiliation at Canossa (1077), when he stood

through three winter days, a suppliant before the door of the

castle which lodged his haughty enemy, praying to be released

from the dread penalties of excommunication, is one of the

familiar tableaux of history. He had a poor revenge seven

years later, when he took Rome, drove Gregory into the castle

St. Angelo, and seated an anti-pope in the Vatican. But his

triumph was brief. There came to the rescue of the

beleaguered Pope certain new actors in Italian history, whom

it is now necessary to introduce.

{1023}

The Normans in Italy and Sicily.

The settlement of predatory Northmen on the Seine, which took

the name of Normandy and the constitution of a ducal fief of

France, had long since grown into an important

half-independent state. Its people--now called Normans in the

smoother speech of the South--had lost something of their

early rudeness, and had fallen a little under the spell of the

rising chivalry of the age; but the goad of a warlike temper

which drove their fathers out of Norway still pricked the sons

and sent them abroad, in restless search of adventures and

gain. Some found their way into the south of Italy, where

Greeks, Lombards and Saracens were fighting merrily, and where

a good sword and a tough lance were tools of the only industry

well-paid. Presently there was banded among them there a

little army, which found itself a match for any force that

Greek or Lombard, or other opponent, could bring against it,

and which proceeded accordingly to work its own will in the

land. It seized Apulia (1042) and divided it into twelve

countships, as an aristocratic republic. Pope Leo IX. led an

army against it and was beaten and taken prisoner (1053). To

release himself he was compelled to grant the duchy they had

taken to them, as a fief of the Church, and to extend his

grant to whatever they might succeed in taking, beyond it. The

chiefs of the Normans thus far had been, in succession, three

sons of a poor gentleman in the Cotentin, Tancred by name, who

now sent a fourth son to the scene. This new comer was Robert,

having the surname of Guiscard, who became the fourth leader

of the Norman troop (1057), and who, in a few years, assumed

the title of Duke of Calabria and Apulia. His duchies

comprised, substantially, the territory of the later kingdom

of Naples. A fifth brother, Roger, had meantime crossed to

Sicily, with a small following of his countrymen; and, between

1060 and 1090, had expelled the Saracens from that island, and

possessed it as a fief of his brother's duchy. But in the next

generation these relations between the two conquests were

practically reversed. The son of Roger received the title of

King of Sicily from the Pope, and Calabria and Apulia were

annexed to his kingdom, through the extinction of Robert's

family.

These Normans of Southern Italy were the allies who came to

the rescue of Pope Gregory, when the Emperor, Henry IV.,

besieged him in Castle St. Angelo. He summoned Robert Guiscard

as a vassal of the Church, and the response was prompt. Henry

and his Germans retreated when the Normans came near, and the

latter entered Rome (1084). Accustomed to pillage, they began,

soon, to treat the city as a captured place, and the Romans

rose against them. They retaliated with torch and sword, and

once more Rome suffered from the destroying rage of a

barbarous soldiery let loose. "Neither Goth nor Vandal,

neither Greek nor German, brought such desolation on the city

as this capture by the Normans" (Milman). Duke Robert made no

attempt to hold the ruined capital, but withdrew to his own

dominions. The Pope went with him, and died soon afterwards

(1085), unable to return to Rome. But the imperious temper he

had imparted to the Church was lastingly fixed in it, and his

lofty pretensions were even surpassed by the pontiffs who

succeeded him. He spoke for the Papacy the first syllables of

that awful proclamation that was sounded in its finality,

after eight hundred years, when the dogma of infallibility was

put forth.

Norman Conquest of England.

The Normans in Italy established no durable power. In another

quarter they were more fortunate. Their kinsmen, the Danes,

who subjugated England and annexed it to their own kingdom in

1016, had lost it again in 1042, when the old line of kings

was restored, in the person of Edward, called the Confessor.

But William, Duke of Normandy, had acquired, in the course of

these shiftings of the English crown, certain claims which he

put forth when Edward died, and when Harold, son of the great

Earl Godwine, was elected king to succeed him, in 1066. To

enforce his claim, Duke William, commissioned by the Pope,

invaded England, in the early autumn of that year, and won the

kingdom in the great and decisive battle of Senlac, or

Hastings, where Harold was slain. On Christmas Day he was

crowned, and a few years sufficed to end all resistance to his

authority. He established on the English throne a dynasty

which, though shifting sometimes to collateral lines, has held

it to the present day.

The Norman Conquest, as estimated by its greatest historian,

Professor Freeman, wrought more good effects than ill to the

English people. It did not sweep away their laws, customs or

language, but it modified them all, and not unfavorably; while

"it aroused the old national spirit to fresh life, and gave

the conquered people fellow-workers in their conquerors." The

monarchy was strengthened by William's advantages as a

conqueror, used with the wisdom and moderation of a statesman.

Feudalism came into England stripped of its disrupting forces;

and the possible alternative of absolutism was hindered by

potent checks. At the same time, the Conquest brought England

into relations with the Continent which might otherwise have

arisen very slowly, and thus gave an early importance to the

nation in European history.

The Crusades.

At the period now reached in our survey, all Europe was on the

eve of a profounder excitement and commotion than it had ever

before known--one which stirred it for the first time with a

common feeling and with common thoughts. A great cry ran

through it, for help to deliver the holy places of the

Christian faith from the infidels who possessed them. The

pious and the adventurous, the fanatical and the vagrant, rose

up in one motley and tumultuous response to the appeal, and

mobs and armies (hardly distinguishable) of Crusaders--

warriors of the Cross--began to whiten the highways into Asia

with their bones. The first movement, in 1096, swept 300,000

men, women and children, under Peter the Hermit, to their

death, with no other result; but nearly at the same time there

went an army, French and Norman for the most part, which made its

way to Jerusalem, took the city by assault (1099) and founded

a kingdom there, which defended itself for almost a hundred

years. Long before it fell, it was pressed sorely by the

surrounding Moslems and cried to Europe for help.

{1024}

A Second Crusade, in 1147, accomplished nothing for its

relief, but spent vast multitudes of lives; and when the

feeble kingdom disappeared, in 1187, and the Sepulchre of the

Saviour was defiled again by unbelievers, Christendom grew

wild, once more, with passion, and a Third Crusade was led by

the redoubtable Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, of Germany, King

Richard Cœur de Lion, of England, and King Philip Augustus of

France. The Emperor perished miserably on the way and his army

was wasted in its march; the French and English exhausted

themselves in sieges which won nothing of durable advantage to

the Christian world; the Sultan Saladin gathered most of the

laurels of the war.

The Turks on the Scene.

The armies of Islam which the Crusaders encountered in Asia

Minor and the Holy Land were no longer, in their leadership,

of the race of Mahomet. The religion of the Prophet was still

triumphant in the East, but his nation had lost its lordship,

and Western Asia had submitted to new masters. These were the

Turks--Turks of the House of Seljuk--first comers of their

swarm from the great Aral basin. First they had been

disciples, won by the early armed missionaries of the

Crescent; then servants and mercenaries, hired to fight its

battles and guard its princes, when the vigor of the Arab

conquerors began to be sapped, and their character to be

corrupted by luxury and pride; then, at last, they were

masters. About the middle of the ninth century, the Caliph at

Bagdad became a puppet in their hands, and the Moslem Empire

in Asia (Africa and Spain being divided between rival Caliphs)

soon passed under their control.

These were the possessors of Jerusalem and its sacred shrines,

whose grievous and insulting treatment of Christian pilgrims,

in the last years of the eleventh century, had stirred Europe

to wrath and provoked the great movement of the Crusades. The

movement had important consequences, both immediate and

remote; but its first effects were small in moment compared

with those which lagged after. To understand either, it will

be necessary to glance back at the later course of events in

the Eastern or Byzantine Empire.

The Byzantine Empire.

The fortunes of the Empire, since it gave up Syria and Egypt

to the Saracens, had been, on the whole, less unhappy than the

dark prospect at that time. It had checked the onrush of Arabs

at the Taurus mountain range, and retained Asia Minor; it had

held Constantinople against them through two terrible sieges;

it had fought for three centuries, and finally subdued, a new

Turanian enemy, the Bulgarians, who had established a kingdom

south of the Danube, where their name remains to the present

day. The history of its court, during much of the period, had

been a black and disgusting record of conspiracies,

treacheries, murders, mutilations, usurpations and foul vices

of every description; with now and then a manly figure

climbing to the throne and doing heroic things, for the most

part uselessly; but the system of governmental administration

seems to have been so well constructed that it worked with a

certain independence of its vile or imbecile heads, and the

country was probably better and better governed than its

court.

At Constantinople, notwithstanding frequent tumults and

revolutions, there had been material prosperity and a great

gathering of wealth. The Saracen conquests, by closing other

avenues of trade between the East and the West, had

concentrated that most profitable commerce in the Byzantine

capital. The rising commercial cities of Italy--Amalphi,

Venice, Genoa, Pisa--seated their enterprises there. Art and

literature, which had decayed, began then to revive, and

Byzantine culture, on its surface, took more of superiority to

that of Teutonic Europe.

The conquests of the Seljuk Turks gave a serious check to this

improvement of the circumstances of the Empire. Momentarily,

by dividing the Moslem power in Asia, they had opened an

opportunity to an energetic Emperor, Nicephorus Phocas, to

recover northern Syria and Cilicia (961-969). But when, in the

next century, they had won a complete mastery of the dominions

of the Caliphate of Bagdad, they speedily swept back the

Byzantines, and overran and occupied the most of Asia Minor

and Armenia. A decisive victory at Manzikert, in 1071, when

the emperor of the moment was taken prisoner and his army

annihilated, gave them well nigh the whole territory to the

Hellespont. The Empire was nearly reduced to its European

domain, and suffered ten years of civil war between rivals for

the throne.

At the end of that time it acquired a ruler, in the person of

Alexius Comnenus, who is the generally best known of all the

Byzantine line, because he figures notably in the stories of

the First Crusade. He was a man of crafty abilities and

complete unscrupulousness. He took the Empire at its lowest

state of abasement and demoralization. In the first year of

his reign he had to face a new enemy. Robert Guiscard, the

Norman, who had conquered a dukedom in Southern Italy, thought

the situation favorable for an attack on the Eastern Empire,

and for winning the imperial crown. Twice he invaded the Greek

peninsula (1081-1084) and defeated the forces brought against

him by Alexius; but troubles in Italy recalled him on the

first occasion, and his death brought the second expedition to

naught.

Such was the situation of the Byzantines when the waves of the

First Crusade, rolling Asia-ward, surged up to the gates of

Constantinople. It was a visitation that might well appall

them,--these hosts of knights and vagabonds, fanatics and

freebooters, who claimed and proffered help in a common

Christian war with the infidels, and who, nevertheless, had no

Christian communion with them--schismatics as they were,

outside the fold of the Roman shepherd. There is not a doubt

that they feared the crusading Franks more than they feared

the Turks. They knew them less, and the little hearsay

knowledge they had was of a lawless, barbarous, fighting

feudalism in the countries of the West,--more rough and

uncouth, at least, than their own defter methods of murdering

and mutilating one another. They received their dangerous

visitors with nervousness and suspicion; but Alexius Comnenus

proved equal to the delicate position in which he found

himself placed. He burdened his soul with lies and perfidies;

but he managed affairs so wonderfully that the Empire plucked

the best fruits of the first Crusades, by recovering a great

part of Asia Minor, with all the coasts of the Euxine and the

Ægean, from the weakened Turks. The latter were so far shaken

and depressed by the hard blows of the Crusaders that they

troubled the Byzantines very little in the century to come.

{1025}

But against this immediate gain to the Eastern Empire from the

early Crusades, there were serious later offsets. The commerce

of Constantinople declined rapidly, as soon as the Moslem

blockade of the Syrian coast line was broken. It lost its

monopoly. Trade ran back again into other reopened channels.

The Venetians and Genoese became more independent. Formerly,

they had received privileges in the Empire as a gracious

concession. Now they dictated the terms of their commercial

treaties and their naval alliances. Their rivalries with one

another involved the Empire in quarrels with both, and a state

of things was brought about which had much to do with the

catastrophe of 1204, when the fourth Crusade was diverted to

the conquest of Constantinople, and a Latin Empire supplanted

the Empire of the Roman-Greeks.

Effects of the Crusades.

Briefly noted, these were the consequences of the early

Crusades in the East. In western Europe they had slower, but

deeper and more lasting effects. They weakened feudalism, by

sending abroad so many of the feudal lords, and by

impoverishing so many more; whereby the towns gained more

opportunity for enfranchisement, and the crown, in France

particularly, acquired more power. They checked smaller wars

and private quarrels for a time, and gave in many countries

unwonted seasons of peace, during which the thoughts and

feelings of men were acted on by more civilizing influences.

They brought men into fellowship who were only accustomed to

fight one another, and thus softened their provincial and

national antipathies. They expanded the knowledge--the

experience--the ideas--of the whole body of those who visited

the East and who survived the adventurous expedition; made

them acquainted with civilizations at least more polished than

their own; taught them many things which they could only learn in

those days by actual sight, and sent them back to their homes

throughout Europe, to be instructors and missionaries, who did

much to prepare Western Christendom for the Renaissance or new

birth of a later time. The twelfth century--the century of the

great Crusades--saw the gray day-break in Europe after the

long night of darkness which settled down upon it in the

fifth. In the thirteenth it reached the brightening dawn, and

in the fifteenth it stood in the full morning of the modern

day. Among all the movements by which it was pushed out of

darkness into light, that of the Crusades would appear to have

been the most important; important in itself, as a social and

political movement of great change, and important in the seeds

that it scattered for a future harvest of effects.

In both the Byzantine and Arabian civilizations of the East

there was much for western Europe to learn. Perhaps there was

more in the last named than in the first; for the Arabs, when

they came out from behind their deserts, and exchanged the

nomadic life for the life of cities, had shown an amazing

avidity for the lingering science of old Greece, which they

encountered in Egypt and Syria. They had preserved far more of

it, and more of the old fineness of feeling that went with it,

than had survived in Greece itself, or in any part of the

Teutonized empire of Rome. The Crusaders got glimpses of its

influence, at least, and a curiosity was wakened, which sent

students into Moorish Spain, and opened scholarly interchanges

which greatly advanced learning in Europe.

Rising Power of the Church.

Not the least important effect of the Crusades was the

atmosphere of religion which they caused to envelope the great

affairs of the time, and which they made common in politics

and society. The influence of the Church was increased by

this; and its organization was powerfully strengthened by the

great monastic revival that followed presently: the rise of

purer and more strictly disciplined orders of the "regular"

(that is the secluded or monastic) clergy--Cistercians,

Benedictines, Franciscans, Dominicans, etc.; as well as the

creation of the great military-religious orders--Knights

Templars, Knights of the Hospital of St. John, Teutonic

Knights, and others, which were immediately connected with the

Crusades.

To say that the Church gained influence is to say that the

clergy gained it, and that the chief of the clergy, the Pope,

concentrated the gain in himself. The whole clerical body was

making encroachments in every field of politics upon the

domain of the civil authority, using shrewdly the advantages

of superior learning, and busying itself more and more in

temporal affairs. The popes after Gregory VII. maintained his

high pretensions and pursued his audacious course. In most

countries they encountered resistance from the Crown; but the

brunt of the conflict still fell upon the emperors, who, in

some respects, were the most poorly armed for it.

Guelfs and Ghibellines.

Henry IV., who outlived his struggle with Gregory, was beaten

down at last--dethroned by a graceless son, excommunicated by

a relentless Church and denied burial when he died (1106) by

its clergy. The rebellious son, Henry V., in his turn fought

the same battle over for ten years, and forced a compromise

which saved about half the rights of investiture that his

father had claimed. His death (1125) ended the Franconian

line, and the imperial crown returned for a few years to the

House of Saxony, by the election of the Duke Lothaire. But the

estates of the Franconian family had passed, by his mother, to

Frederick of Hohenstaufen, duke of Swabia; and now a bitter

feud arose between the House of Saxony and the House of

Hohenstaufen or Swabia,--a feud that was the most memorable

and, the longest lasting in history, if measured by the

duration of party strifes which began in it and which took

their names from it. For the raging factions of Guelfs and

Ghibellines which divided Italy for two centuries had their

beginning in this Swabian-Saxon feud, among the Germans. The

Guelfs were the partisans of the House of Saxony; the

Ghibellines were the party of the Hohenstaufens. The

Hohenstaufens triumphed when Lothaire died (1138), and made

Conrad of their House Emperor. They held the crown, moreover,

in their family for four generations, extending through more

than a century; and so it happened that the German name of the

German party of the Hohenstaufens came to be identified in

Italy with the party or faction in that country which

supported imperial interests and claims in the free cities and

against the popes. Whereupon the opposed party name was

borrowed from Germany likewise and applied to the Italian

faction which took ground against the Emperors--although these

Italian Guelfs had no objects in common with the partisans of

Saxony.

{1026}

The Hohenstaufens in Italy.

The first Hohenstaufen emperor was succeeded (1152) by his

nephew Frederick I., called Barbarossa, because of his red

beard. The long reign of Frederick, until 1190, was mainly

filled with wars and contentions in Italy, where he pushed the

old quarrel of the Empire with the Papacy, and where,

furthermore, he resolutely undertook to check the growing

independence of the Lombard cities. Five times during his

reign he led a great army into the peninsula, like a hostile

invader, and his destroying marches through the country, of

which he claimed to be sovereign, were like those of the

barbarians who came out of the North seven centuries before.

The more powerful cities, like Milan, were undoubtedly

oppressing their weaker neighbors, and Barbarossa assumed to

be the champion of the latter. But he smote impartially the

weak and the strong, the village and the town, which provoked

his arrogant temper in the slightest degree. Milan escaped his

wrath on the first visitation, but went down before it when he

came again (1158), and was totally destroyed, the inhabitants

being scattered in other towns. Even the enemies of Milan were

moved to compassion by the savageness of this punishment, and

joined, a few years later, in rebuilding the prostrate walls

and founding Milan anew. A great "League of Lombardy" was

formed by all the northern towns, to defend their freedom

against the hated Emperor, and the party of the Ghibellines

was reduced for the time to a feeble minority. Meantime

Barbarossa had forced his way into Rome, stormed the very

Church of St. Peter, and seated an anti-pope on the throne.

But a sudden pestilence fell upon his army, and he fled before

it, out of Italy, almost alone. Yet he never relaxed his

determination to bend both the Papacy and the Lombard

republics to his will. After seven years he returned, for the

fifth time, and it proved to be the last. The League met him

at Legnano (1176) and administered to him an overwhelming

defeat. Even his obstinacy was then overcome, and after a

truce of six years he made peace with the League and the Pope,

on terms which conceded most of the liberties that the cities

claimed. It was in the reign of Frederick that the name "Holy

Roman Empire" began, it seems, to be used.

Frederick died while on a crusade and was succeeded (1190) by

his son, Henry VI., who had married the daughter and heiress

of the King of Sicily and who acquired that kingdom in her

right. His short reign was occupied mostly in subduing the

Sicilian possession. When he died (1197) his son Frederick was

a child. Frederick succeeded to the crown of Sicily, but his

rights in Germany (where his father had already caused him to

be crowned "King of the Romans"--the step preliminary to an

imperial election) were entirely ignored. The German crown was

disputed between a Swabian and a Saxon claimant, and the

Saxon, Otho, was King and Emperor in name, until 1218, when he

died. But he, too, quarreled with a pope, about the lands of

the Countess Matilda, which she gave to the Church; and his

quarrel was with Innocent III., a pope who realized the

autocracy which Hildebrand had looked forward to, and who

lifted the Papacy to the greatest height of power it ever

attained. To cast down Otho, Innocent took up the cause of

Frederick, who received the royal crown a second time, at

Aix-la-Chapelle (1215) and the imperial crown at Rome (1220).

Frederick II. (his designation) was one of the few men of

actual genius who have ever sprung from the sovereign families

of the world; a man so far in advance of his time that he

appears like a modern among his mediæval contemporaries. He

was superior to the superstitions of his age,--superior to its

bigotries and its provincialisms. His large sympathies and

cosmopolitan frame of mind were acted upon by all the new

impulses of the epoch of the crusades, and made him reflect,

in his brilliant character, as in a mirror, the civilizing

processes that were working on his generation.

Between such an emperor as Frederick II. and such popes as

Innocent III. and his immediate successors, there could not

fail to be collision and strife. The man who might, perhaps,

under other circumstances, have given some quicker movement to

the hands which measure human, progress on the dial of time,

spent his life in barely proving his ability to live and reign

under the anathemas and proscriptions of the Church. But he

fought a losing fight, even when he seemed to be winning

victories in northern Italy, over the Guelf cities of

Lombardy, and when the party of the Ghibellines appeared to be

ascendant throughout the peninsula. His death (1250) was the

end of the Hohenstaufens as an imperial family. His son,

Conrad, who survived him four years, was king of Sicily and

had been crowned king of Germany; but he never wore the crown

imperial. Conrad's illegitimate brother, Manfred, succeeded on

the Sicilian throne; but the implacable Papacy gave his

kingdom to Charles of Anjou, brother of King Louis IX. of

France, and invited a crusade for the conquest of it. Manfred

was slain in battle, Conrad's young son, Conradin, perished on

the scaffold, and the Hohenstaufens disappeared from history.

Their rights, or claims, in Sicily and Naples, passed to the

Spanish House of Aragon, by the marriage of Manfred's daughter

to the Aragonese king; whence long strife between the House of

Anjou and the House of Aragon, and a troubled history for the

Neapolitans and the Sicilians during some centuries. In the

end, Anjou kept Naples, while Aragon won Sicily; the kings in

both lines called themselves Kings of Sicily, and a subsequent

re-union of the two crowns created a very queerly named

"Kingdom of the Two Sicilies."

{1027}

Germany and the Empire.

After the death of Frederick II., the German kings, while

maintaining the imperial title, practically abandoned their

serious attempts to enforce an actual sovereignty in Italy.

The Holy Roman Empire, as a political factor comprehending

more than Germany, now ceased in reality to exist. The name

lived on, but only to represent a flattering fiction for

magnifying the rank and importance of the German kings. In

Italy, the conflict, as between Papacy and Empire, or between

Lombard republican cities and Empire, was at an end. No

further occasion existed for an imperial party, or an

anti-imperial party. The Guelf and Ghibelline names and

divisions had no more the little meaning that first belonged

to them. But Guelfs and Ghibellines raged against one another,

more furiously than before, and generations passed before

their feud died out.

While the long, profitless Italian conflict of the Emperors

went on, their kingship in Germany suffered sorely. As they

grasped at a shadowy imperial title, the substance of royal

authority slipped from them. Their frequent prolonged absence

in Italy gave opportunities for enlarged independence to the

German princes and feudal lords; their difficulties beyond the

Alps forced them to buy support from their vassals at home by

fatal concessions and grants; their neglect of German affairs

weakened the ties of loyalty, and provoked revolts. The result

might have been a dissolution of Germany so complete as to

give rise to two or three strong states, if another potent

influence had not worked injury in a different way. This came

from the custom of equalized inheritance which prevailed among

the Germans. The law of primogeniture, which already governed

hereditary transmissions of territorial sovereignty in many

countries, even where it did not give an undivided private

estate, as in England, to the eldest son of a family, got

footing in Germany very late and very slowly. At the time now

described, it was the quite common practice to divide

principalities between all the sons surviving a deceased duke

or margrave. It was this practice which gave rise to the

astonishing number of petty states into which Germany came to

be divided, and the forms of which are still intact. It was

this, in the main, which prevented the growth of any states to

a power that would absorb the rest. On the other hand, the

flimsy, half fictitious general constitution which the Empire

substituted for such an one as the Kingdom of Germany would

naturally have grown into, made an effective centralization of

sovereignty--easy as the conditions seemed to be prepared for

it--quite impossible.

Free Cities in Germany and their Leagues.

One happy consequence of this state of things was the

enfranchisement, either wholly or nearly so, of many thriving

cities. The growth of cities, as centers of industry and

commerce, and the development of municipal freedom among them,

was considerably later in Germany than in Italy, France and

the Netherlands; but the independence gained by some among

them was more entire than in the Low Countries or in France,

and more lasting than in Italy.

Most of the free cities of Germany were directly or

immediately subject to the Emperor, and wholly independent of

the princes whose territories surrounded them; whence they

were called "imperial cities." This relationship bound them to

the Empire by strong ties; they had less to fear from it than

from the nearer small potentates of their country; and it

probably drew a considerable part of such strength as it

possessed, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, from their

support. Their own power was being augmented at this period by

the formation of extensive Leagues among them, for common

defense, and for the protection, regulation and extension of

their trade. In that age of lawless violence, there was so

little force in government, everywhere, and so entire a want

of co-operation between governments, that the operations of

trade were exposed to piracy, robbery, and black-mail, on

every sea and in every land. By the organization of their

Leagues, the energetic merchants of north-western Europe did

for themselves what their half-civilized governments failed to

do for them. They not only created effective agencies for the

protection of their trade, but they legislated, nationally and

internationally, for themselves, establishing codes and

regulations, negotiating commercial treaties, making war, and

exercising many functions and powers that seem strange to

modern times. The great Hansa, or Hanseatic League, which rose

to importance in the thirteenth century among the cities in

the north of Germany, was the most extensive, the longest

lasting and the most formidable of these confederations. It

controlled the trade between Germany, England, Russia, the

Scandinavian countries, and the Netherlands, and through the

latter it made exchanges with southern Europe and the East. It

waged successful war with Denmark, Sweden and Norway combined,

in defiance of the opposition of the Emperor and the Pope. But

the growth of its power engendered an arrogance which provoked

enmity in all countries, while the slow crystalizing of

nationalities in Europe, with national sentiments and

ambitions, worked in all directions against the commercial

monopoly of the Hansa towns. By the end of the fifteenth

century their league had begun to break up and its power to

decline. The lesser associations of similar character--such as

the Rhenish and the Swabian--had been shorter-lived.

The Great Interregnum.

These city-confederations represented in their time the only

movement of concentration that appeared in Germany. Every

other activity seemed tending toward dissolution. Headship

there was none for a quarter of a century after Frederick II.

died. The election of the Kings, who took rank and title as

Emperors when crowned by the Pope, had now become the

exclusive privilege of three prince-bishops and four temporal

princes, who acquired the title of Electors. Jealous of one

another, and of all the greater lords outside their electoral

college, it was against their policy to confer the scepter on

any man who seemed likely to wield it with a strong hand. For

twenty years--a period in German history known as the Great

Interregnum--they kept the throne practically vacant. Part of

the Electors were bribed to choose Richard, Earl of Cornwall,

brother of the English King Henry III., and the other part

gave their votes to Alfonso, King of Castile. Alfonso never

came to be crowned, either as King or Emperor; Richard was

crowned King, but exercised no power and lived mostly in his

own country. The Empire was virtually extinct; the Kingdom

hardly less so. Burgundy fell away from the imperial

jurisdiction even more than Italy did. Considerable parts of

it passed to France.

{1028}

Rise of the House of Austria.

At last, in 1273, the interregnum was ended by the election of

a German noble to be King of Germany. This was Rodolph, Count

of Hapsburg,--lord of a small domain and of little importance

from his own possessions, which explains, without doubt, his

selection. But Rodolph proved to be a vigorous king, and he

founded a family of such lasting stamina and such self-seeking

capability that it secured in time permanent possession of the

German crown, and acquired, outside of Germany, a great

dominion of its own. He began the aggrandizement of his House

by taking the fine duchy of Austria from the kingdom of

Bohemia and bestowing it upon his sons. He was energetic in

improving opportunities like this, and energetic, too, in

destroying the castles of robber-knights and hanging the

robbers on their own battlements; but of substantial authority

or power he had little enough. He never went to Rome for the

imperial crown; nor troubled himself much with Italian

affairs.

On Rodolph's death (1291), his son Albert of Austria was a

candidate for the crown. The Electors rejected him and ejected

another poor noble, Adolphus of Nassau; but Adolphus

displeased them after a few years, and they decreed his

deposition, electing Albert in his place. War followed and

Adolphus was killed. Albert's reign was one of vigor, but he

accomplished little of permanent effect. He planted one of his

sons on the throne of Bohemia, where the reigning family had

become extinct; but the new king died in a few months, much

hated, and the Bohemians resisted an Austrian successor. In

1308, Albert was assassinated, and the electors raised Count

Henry of Luxemburg to the throne, as Henry VII. Henry VII. was

the first king of Germany since the Hohenstaufens who went to

Italy (1310) for the crown of Lombardy and the crown of the

Cæsars, both of which he received. The Ghibelline party was

still strong among the Italians. In the distracted state of

that country there were many patriots--the poet Dante

prominent among them--who hoped great things from the

reappearance of an emperor; but the enthusiastic welcome he

received was mainly from those furious partisans who looked

for a party triumph to be won under the new emperor's lead.

When they found that he would not let himself be made an

instrument of faction in the unhappy country, they turned

against him. His undertakings in Italy promised nothing but

failure, when he died suddenly (1313), from poison, as the

Germans believed. His successor in Germany, chosen by the

majority of the electors, was Lewis of Bavaria; but Frederick

the Fair of Austria, supported by a minority, disputed the

election, and there was civil war for twelve years, until

Frederick, a prisoner, so won the heart of Lewis that the

latter divided the throne with him and the two reigned

together.

France under the Capetians.

While Germany and the fictitious Empire linked with it were

thus dropping from the foremost place in western Europe into

the background, several kingdoms were slowly emerging out of

the anarchy of feudalism, and acquiring the organization of

authority and law which creates stable and substantial power.

France for two centuries, under the first three Capetian

kings, had made little progress to that end. At the accession

(1103) of the fourth of those kings, namely, Louis VI., it is

estimated that the actual possessions of the Crown, over which

it exercised sovereignty direct, equalled no more than about

five of the modern departments of France; while twenty-nine

were in the great fiefs of Flanders, Burgundy, Champagne,

Normandy, Brittany, Anjou, Vermandois, and Boulogne, where the

royal authority was but nominal; thirty-three, south of the

Loire, were hardly connected with the Crown, and twenty-one

were then dependent on the Empire. The actual "France," as a

kingdom, at that time, was very small. "The real domain of

Louis VI. was almost confined to the five towns of Paris,

Orleans, Estampes, Melun, and Compiegne, and to estates in

their neighbourhood." But the strengthening of the Crown was

slightly begun in the reign of this king, by his wise policy

of encouraging the enfranchisement of the communes, as noted

before, which introduced a helpful alliance between the

monarchy and the burgher-class, or third estate, as it came to

be called, of the cities, against the feudal aristocracy.

But progress in that direction was slight at first and slowly

made. Louis VII., who came to the throne in 1137, acquired

momentarily the great duchy of Aquitaine, or Guienne, by his

marriage with Eleanor, who inherited it; but he divorced her,

and she married Henry Plantagenet, who became Henry II., King

of England, being at the same time Duke of Normandy, by

inheritance from his mother, and succeeding his father in

Anjou, Maine and Touraine. Eleanor having carried to him the

great Aquitanian domain of her family, he was sovereign of a

larger part of modern France than owned allegiance to the

French king.

French recovery of Normandy and Anjou,

But the next king in France, Philip, called Augustus (1180),

who was the son of Louis VII., wrought a change of these

circumstances. He was a prince of remarkable vigor, and he

rallied with rare ability all the forces that the Crown could

command. He wrested Vermandois from the Count of Flanders, and

extorted submission from the rebellious Duke of Burgundy.

Suspending his projects at home for a time, to go crusading to

the Holy Land in company with King Richard of England, he

resumed them with fresh energy after Richard's death. The

latter was succeeded by his mean brother John, who seems to

have been hated with unanimity. John was accused of the murder

of his young nephew, Arthur of Brittany, who disputed the

inheritance from Richard. As Duke of Normandy and Anjou, John,

though King of England, was nevertheless a vassal of the King

of France. Philip summoned him, on charges, to be tried by his

peers. John failed to answer the summons, and the forfeiture

of his fiefs was promptly declared. The French king stood well

prepared to make the confiscation effective, while John, in

serious trouble with his English subjects, could offer little

resistance. Thus the Norman realm of the English kings--their

original dominion--was lost beyond recovery, and with it Anjou

and Maine. They held Guienne and Poitou for some years; but

the bases of the French monarchy were broadened immensely from

the day when the great Norman and Angevin fiefs became royal

domain.

{1029}

The Albigenses.

Events in the south of France, during Philip's reign, prepared

the way for a further aggrandisement of the Crown. Ancient

Latin civilization had lingered longer there, in spirit, at

least, than in the central and northern districts of the

kingdom, and the state of society intellectually was both

livelier and more refined. It was the region of Europe where

thought first showed signs of independence, and where the

spiritual despotism of Rome was disputed first. A sect arose

in Languedoc which took its name from the district of Albi,

and which offended the Church perhaps more by the freedom of

opinion that it claimed than by the heresy of the opinions

themselves. These Albigeois, or Albigenses, had been at issue

with the clergy of their country and with the Papacy for some

years before Innocent III., the pontifical autocrat of his

age, proclaimed a crusade against them (1208), and launched

his sentence of excommunication against Raymond, Count of

Toulouse, who gave them countenance if not sympathy. The

fanatical Simon de Montfort, father of the great noble of like

name who figures more grandly in English history, took the

lead of the Crusade, to which bigots and brutal adventurers

flocked together. Languedoc was wasted with fire and sword,

and after twenty years of intermittent war, in which Peter of

Aragon took part, assisting the Albigeois, the Count of

Toulouse purchased peace for his ruined land by ceding part of

it to the king of France, and giving his daughter in marriage

to the king's brother Alphonso,--by which marriage the

remainder of the country was transferred, a few years later,

to the French crown.

The Battle of Bouvines.

Philip Augustus, in whose reign this brutal crushing of

Provençal France began, took little part in it, but he saw

with no unwillingness another too powerful vassal brought low.

The next blow of like kind he struck with his own hand. John

of England had quarreled with the mighty Pope Innocent III.;

his kingdom had been placed under interdict and his subjects

absolved from their allegiance. Philip of France eagerly

offered to become the executor of the papal decree, and

gathered an army for the invasion of England, to oust John

from his throne. But John hastened now to make peace with the

Church, submitting himself, surrendering his kingdom to the

Pope, and receiving it back as a papal fief. This

accomplished, the all-powerful pontiff persuaded the French

king to turn his army against the Count of Flanders, who had

never been reduced to a proper degree of submission to his

feudal sovereign. He seems to have become the recognized head

of a body of nobles who showed alarm and resentment at the

growing power of the Crown, and the war which ensued was quite

extraordinary in its political importance. King John of

England came personally to the assistance of the Flemish

Count, because of the hatred he felt towards Philip of France.

Otho, Emperor of Germany, who had been excommunicated and

deposed by the Pope, and who was struggling for his crown with

the young Hohenstaufen, Frederick II., took part in the melee,

because John was his uncle, and because the Pope was for

Philip, and because Germany dreaded the rising power of

France. So the war, which seemed at first to be a trifling

affair in a corner, became in fact a grand clearing storm, for

the settlement of many large issues, important to all Europe.

The settlement was accomplished by a single decisive battle,

fought at Bouvines (1214), not far from Tournay. It

established effectively in France the feudal superiority and

actual sovereignty of the king. It evoked a national spirit

among the French people, having been their first national

victory, won under the banners of a definite kingdom, over

foreign foes. It was a triumph for the Papacy and the Church

and a crushing blow to those who dared resist the mandates of

Rome. It sent King John back to England so humbled and

weakened that he had little stomach for the contest which

awaited him there, and the grand event of the signing of Magna

Charta next year was more easily brought about. It settled the

fate of Otho of Germany, and cleared the bright opening of the

stormy career of Frederick II., his successor. Thus the battle

of Bouvines, which is not a famous field in common knowledge,

must really be numbered among the great and important battles

of the world.

When Philip Augustus died in 1223, the regality which he

bequeathed to his son, Louis VIII., was something vastly

greater than that which came to him from his predecessors. He

had enhanced both the dignity and the power, both the

authority and the prestige, of the Crown, and made a

substantial kingdom of France. Louis VIII. enlarged his

dominions by the conquest of Lower Poitou and the taking of

Rochelle from the English; but he sowed the seeds of future

weakness in the monarchy by creating great duchies for his

children, which became as troublesome to later kings as

Normandy and Anjou had been to those before him.

Saint Louis.

Louis IX.--Saint Louis in the calendar of the Catholic

Church--who came to the throne in 1226, while a child of

eleven years, was a king of so noble a type that he stands

nearly alone in history. Marcus Aurelius, the Emperor, and

King Alfred of England, are the only sovereigns who seem

worthy to be compared with him; and even the purity of those

rare souls is not quite so simple and so selfless, perhaps, as

that which shines in the beautiful character of this most

Christian king. His goodness was of that quality which rises

to greatness--above all other measures of greatness in the

distinction of men. It was of that quality which even a wicked

world is compelled to feel and to bend to as a power, much

exceeding the power of state-craft or of the sword. Of all the

kings of his line, this Saint Louis was probably the one who

had least thought of a royal interest in France distinct from

the interest of the people of France; and the one who

consciously did least to aggrandize the monarchy and enlarge

its powers; but no king before him or after him was so much

the true architect of the foundations of the absolute French

monarchy of later times. His constant purpose was to give

peace to his kingdom and justice to his people; to end

violence and wrong-doing.

{1030}

In pursuing this purpose, he gave a new character and a new

influence to the royal courts,--established them in public

confidence,--accustomed his subjects to appeal to them; he

denounced the brutal senselessness of trials by combat, and

commanded their abolition; he gave encouragement to the study

and the introduction of Roman law, and so helped to dispel the

crude political as well as legal ideas that feudalism rested

on. His measures in these directions all tended to the

undermining of the feudal system and to the breaking down of

the independence of the great vassals who divided sovereignty

with the king. At the same time the upright soul of King

Louis, devotedly pious son of the Church as he was, yielded

his conscience to it, and the just ordinances of his kingdom,

no more than he yielded to the haughty turbulence of the great

vassals of the crown.

The great misfortunes of the reign of Saint Louis were the two

calamitous Crusades in which he engaged (1248-1254, and 1270),

and in the last of which he died. They were futile in every

way--as unwisely conducted as they were unwisely conceived;

but they count among the few errors of a noble, great life.

Regarded altogether, in the light which after-history throws

back upon it, the reign of Louis IX. is more loftily

distinguished than any other in the annals of France.

Philip the Fair and Pope Boniface.

There is little to distinguish the reign of St. Louis' son,

Philip III., "le Hardi," "the Rash" (1270-1285), though the

remains of the great fief of Toulouse were added in his time

to the royal domain; but under the grandson of St. Louis, the

fourth Philip, surnamed "le Bel," there was a season of storms

in France. This Philip was unquestionably a man of clear, cold

intellect, and of powerful, unbending will. There was nothing

of the soldier in him, much of the lawyer-like mind and

disposition. The men of the gown were his counsellors; he

advanced their influence, and promoted the acceptance in

France of the principles of the Roman or civil law, which were

antagonistic to feudal ideas. In his attitude towards the

Papacy--which had declined greatly in character and power

within the century past--he was extraordinarily bold. His

famous quarrel with Pope Boniface VIII. resulted in

humiliations to the head of the Church from which, in some

respects, there was no recovery. The quarrel arose on

questions connected chiefly with the taxing of the clergy. The

Pope launched one angry Bull after another against the

audacious king, and the latter retorted with Ordinances which

were as effective as the Bulls. Excommunication was defied;

the Inquisition was suppressed in France; appeal taken to a

General Council of the Church. At last Boniface suffered

personal violence at the hands of a party of hired ruffians,

in French pay, who attacked him at his country residence, and

received such indignities that he expired soon after of shame

and rage. The pope immediately succeeding died a few months

later, and dark suspicions as to the cause of his death were

entertained; for he gave place (1305) to one, Clement V., who

was the tool of the French king, bound to him by pledges and

guarantees before his election. This Pope Clement removed the

papal residence from Rome to Avignon, and for a long

period--the period known as "the Babylonish Captivity"--the

Holy See was subservient to the monarchy of France.

In this contest with the Papacy, Philip threw himself on the

support of the whole body of his people, convoking (1302) the

first meeting of the Three Estates--the first of the few

general Parliaments--ever assembled in France.

Destruction of the Templars.

A more sinister event in the reign of Philip IV. was his

prosecution and destruction of the famous Order of the Knights

Templars. The dark, dramatic story has been told many times,

and its incidents are familiar. Perhaps there will never be

agreement as to the bottom of truth that might exist in the

charges brought against the Order; but few question the fact

that its blackest guilt in the eyes of the French King was its

wealth, which he coveted and which he was resolved to find

reasons for taking to himself. The knights were accused of

infidelity, blasphemy, and abominable vices. They were tried,

tortured, tempted to confessions, burned at the stake, and

their lands and goods were divided between the Crown and the

Knights of St. John.

Flemish Wealth and Independence.

The wilful king had little mercy in his cold heart and few

scruples in his calculating brain. His character was not

admirable; but the ends which he compassed were mostly good

for the strength and independence of the monarchy of France,

and, on the whole, for the welfare of the people subject to

it. Even the disasters of his reign had sometimes their good

effect: as in the case of his failure to subjugate the great

county of Flanders. Originally a fief of the Kings of France,

it had been growing apart from the French monarchy, through

the independent interests and feelings that rose in it with

the increase of wealth among its singularly industrious and

thrifty people. The Low Countries, or Netherlands, on both

sides of the Rhine, had been the first in western Europe to

develop industrial arts and the trade that goes with them in a

thoroughly intelligent and systematic way. The Flemings were

leaders in this industrial development. Their country was full

of busy cities,--communes, with large liberties in

possession,--where prosperous artisans, pursuing many crafts,

were organized in gilds and felt strong for the defense of

their chartered rights. Ghent exceeded Paris in riches and

population at the end of the thirteenth century. Bruges was

nearly its equal; and there were many of less note. The

country was already a prize to be coveted by kings; and the

kings of France, who claimed the rights of feudal superiority

over its count, had long been seeking to make their

sovereignty direct, while the spirit of the Flemings carried

them more and more toward independence.

In 1294, Philip IV. became involved in war with Edward I. of

England over Guienne. Flanders, which traded largely with

England and was in close friendship with the English king and

people, took sides with the latter, and was basely abandoned

when Philip and Edward made peace, in 1302. The French king

then seized his opportunity to subjugate the Flemings, which

he practically accomplished for a time, mastering all of their

cities except Ghent. His need and his greed made the burden of

taxes which he now laid on these new subjects very heavy and

they were soon in revolt. By accident, and the folly of the

French, they won a fearfully decisive victory at Courtray,

where some thousands of the nobles and knights of France

charged blindly into a canal, and were drowned, suffocated and

slaughtered in heaps. The carnage was so great that it broke

the strength of the feudal chivalry of France, and the French

crown, while it lost Flanders, yet gained power from the very

disaster.

{1031}

In 1314, Philip IV. died, leaving three sons, who occupied the

throne for brief terms in succession: Louis X, surnamed Hutin

(disorder), who survived his father little more than a year;

Philip V., called "the Long" (1316-1322), and Charles IV.,

known as "the Fair" (1322-1328). With the death of Charles the

Fair, the direct line of the Capetian Kings came to an end,

and Philip, Count of Valois, first cousin of the late kings,

and grandson of Philip III., came to the throne, as Philip

VI.--introducing the Valois line of kings.

Claims of Edward III. of England.

The so-called Salic law, excluding females, in France, from

the throne, had now, in the arrangement of these recent

successions, been affirmed and enforced. It was promptly

disputed by King Edward III. of England, who claimed the

French crown by right of his mother, daughter of Philip IV.

and sister of the last three kings. His attempt to enforce

this claim was the beginning of the wicked, desolating

"Hundred Years War" between England and France, which

well-nigh ruined the latter, while it contributed in the

former to the advancement of the commons in political power.

England after the Norman Conquest.

The England of the reign of Edward III., when the Hundred

Years War began, was a country quite different in condition

from that which our narrative left, at the time it had yielded

(about 1071) to William the Norman conqueror. The English

people were brought low by that subjugation, and the yoke

which the Normans laid upon them was heavy indeed. They were

stripped of their lands by confiscation; they were disarmed

and disorganized; every attempt at rebellion failed miserably,

and every failure brought wider confiscations. The old

nobility suffered most and its ranks were thinned. England

became Norman in its aristocracy and remained English in its

commons and its villeinage.

Modified Feudalism in England.

Before the Conquest, feudalism had crept into its southern

parts and was working a slow change of its old free Germanic

institutions. But the Normans quickened the change and widened

it. At the same time they controlled it in certain ways,

favorably both to the monarchy and the people. They

established a feudal system, but it was a system different

from that which broke up the unity of both kingdoms of the

Franks. William, shrewd statesman that he was, took care that

no dangerous great fiefs should be created; and he took care,

too, that every landlord in England should swear fealty direct

to the king,--thus placing the Crown in immediate relations

with all its subjects, permitting no intermediary lord to take

their first allegiance to himself and pass it on at second

hand to a mere crowned overlord.

The effect of this diluted organization of feudalism in

England was to make the monarchy so strong, from the

beginning, that both aristocracy and commons were naturally

put on their defence against it, and acquired a feeling of

association, a sense of common interest, a habit of alliance,

which became very important influences in the political

history of the nation. In France, as we have seen, there had

been nothing of this. There, at the beginning, the feudal

aristocracy was dominant, and held itself so haughtily above

the commons, or Third Estate, that no political cooperation

between the two orders could be thought of when circumstances

called for it. The kings slowly undermined the aristocratic

power, using the communes in the process; and when, at last,

the power of the monarchy had become threatening to both

orders in the state, they were separated by too great an

alienation of feeling and habit to act well together.

It was the great good fortune of England that feudalism was

curbed by a strong monarchy. It was the greater good fortune

of the English people that their primitive Germanic

institutions--their folk-moots, and their whole simple popular

system of local government--should have had so long and sturdy

a growth before the feudal scheme of society began seriously

to intrude upon them. The Norman conqueror did no violence to

those institutions. He claimed to be a lawful English king,

respecting English laws. The laws, the customs, the

organization of government, were, indeed, greatly modified in

time; but the modification was slow, and the base of the whole

political structure that rose in the Anglo-Norman kingdom

remained wholly English.

Norman Influences in England.

The Normans brought with them into England a more active,

enterprising, enquiring spirit than had animated the land

before. They brought an increase of learning and of the

appetite for knowledge. They brought a more educated taste in

art, to improve the building of the country and its

workmanship in general. They brought a wider acquaintance with

the affairs of the outside world, and drew England into

political relations with her continental neighbors, which were

not happy for her in the end, but which may have contributed

for a time to her development. They brought, also, a more

powerful organization of the Church, which gave England

trouble in later days.

The Conqueror's Sons.

When the Conqueror died (1087), his eldest son Robert

succeeded him in Normandy, but he wished the crown of England

to go to his son William, called Rufus, or "the Red." He could

not settle the succession by his will, because in theory the

succession was subject to the choice or assent of the nobles

of the realm. But, in fact, William Rufus became king through

mere tardiness of opposition; and when, a few months after his

coronation, a formidable rebellion broke out among the Normans

in England, who preferred his wayward brother Robert, it was

the native English who sustained him and established him on

the throne. The same thing occurred again after William Rufus

died (1100). The Norman English tried again to bring in Duke

Robert, while the native English preferred the younger

brother, Henry, who was born among them. They won the day.

Henry I., called Beauclerc, the Scholar, was seated on the

throne. Unlike William Rufus, who had no gratitude for the

support the English gave him, and ruled them harshly, Henry

showed favor to his English subjects, and, during his reign of

thirty-five years, the two races were so effectually

reconciled and drawn together that little distinction between

them appears thereafter.

{1032}

Henry acquired Normandy, as well as England, uniting again the

two sovereignties of his father. His thriftless brother,

Robert, had pledged the dukedom to William Rufus, who lent him

money for a crusading expedition. Returning penniless, Robert

tried to recover his heritage; but Henry claimed it and made

good the claim.

Anarchy in Stephen's Reign.

At Henry's death, the succession fell into dispute. He had

lost his only son. His daughter, Matilda, first married to the

Emperor Henry V., had subsequently wedded Count Geoffrey of

Anjou, by whom she had a son. Henry strove, during his life,

to bind his nobles by oath to accept Matilda and her son as

his successors. But on his death (1135) their promises were

broken. They gave the crown to Stephen of Blois, whose mother

was Henry's sister; whereupon there ensued the most dreadful

period of civil war and anarchy that England ever knew.

Stephen, at his coronation, swore to promises which he did not

keep, losing many of his supporters for that reason; the

Empress Matilda and her young son Henry had numerous

partisans; and each side was able to destroy effectually the

authority of the other. "The price of the support given to

both was the same--absolute licence to build castles, to

practise private war, to hang their private enemies, to

plunder their neighbours, to coin their money, to exercise

their petty tyrannies as they pleased." "Castles innumerable

sprang up, and as fast as they were built they were filled

with devils; each lord judged and taxed and coined. The feudal

spirit of disintegration had for once its full play. Even

party union was at an end, and every baron fought on his own

behalf. Feudalism had its day, and the completeness of its

triumph ensured its fall" (Stubbs).

Angevin Kings of England.

At length, in 1153, peace was made by a treaty which left

Stephen in possession of the throne during his life, but made

Henry, already recognized as Duke of Normandy, his heir.

Stephen died the following year, and Henry II., now twenty-one

years old, came quietly into his kingdom, beginning a new

royal line, called the Angevin kings, because of their descent

from Geoffrey of Anjou; also taking the name Plantagenets from

Geoffrey's fashion of wearing a bit of broom, Planta Genista,

in his hat.

Henry II. proved, happily, to be a king of the strong

character that was needed in the England of that wretched

time. He was bold and energetic, yet sagacious, prudent,

politic. He loved power and he used it with an unsparing hand;

but he used it with wise judgment, and England was the better

for it. He struck hard and persistently at the lawlessness of

feudalism, and practically ended it forever as a menace to

order and unity of government in England. He destroyed

hundreds of the castles which had sprung up throughout the

land in Stephen's time, to be nests of robbers and strongholds

of rebellion. He humbled the turbulent barons. He did in

England, for the promotion of justice, and for the enforcement

of the royal authority, what Louis IX. did a little later in

France: that is, he reorganized and strengthened the king's

courts, creating a judicial system which, in its most

essential features, has existed to the present time. His

organizing hand brought system and efficiency into every

department of the government. He demanded of the Church that

its clergy should be subject to the common laws of the

kingdom, in matters of crime, and to trial before the ordinary

courts; and it was this most just reform of a crying

abuse--the exemption of clerics from the jurisdiction of

secular courts--which brought about the memorable collision

of King Henry with Thomas Becket, the inflexible archbishop of

Canterbury. Becket's tragical death made a martyr of him, and

placed Henry in a penitential position which checked his great

works of reform; but, on the whole, his reign was one of

splendid success, and shines among the epochs that throw light

on the great after-career of the English nation.

Aside from his importance as an English statesman, Henry II.

figured largely, in his time, among the most powerful of the

monarchs of Europe. His dominions on the continent embraced

much more of the territory of modern France than was ruled

directly by the contemporary French king, though nominally he

held them as a vassal of the latter. Normandy came to him from

his grandfather; from his father he inherited the large

possessions of the House of Anjou; by his marriage with

Eleanor of Aquitaine (divorced by Louis VII. of France, as

mentioned already) he acquired her wide and rich domain. On

the continent, therefore, he ruled Normandy, Maine, Touraine,

Anjou, Guienne, Poitou and Gascony. He may be said to have

added Ireland to his English kingdom, for he began the

conquest. He held a great place, in his century, and

historically he is a notable figure in the time.

His rebellious, undutiful son Richard, Cœur de Lion, the

Crusader, the hard fighter, the knight of many rude

adventures, who succeeded Henry II. in 1189, is popularly

better known than he; but Richard's noisy brief career shows

poorly when compared with his father's life of thoughtful

statesmanship. It does not show meanly, however, like that of

the younger son, John, who came to the throne in 1199. The

story of John's probable murder of his young nephew, Arthur,

of Brittany, and of his consequent loss of all the Angevin

lands, and of Normandy (excepting only the Norman islands, the

Jerseys, which have remained English to our own day) has been

briefly told heretofore, when the reign of Philip Augustus of

France was under review.

{1033}

The whole reign of John was ignominious. He quarreled with the

Pope--with the inflexible Innocent III., who humbled many

kings--over a nomination to the Archbishopric of Canterbury

(1205); his kingdom was put under interdict (1208); he was

threatened with deposition; and when, in affright, he

surrendered, it was so abjectly done that he swore fealty to

the Pope, as a vassal to his suzerain, consenting to hold his

kingdom as a fief of the Apostolic See. The triumph of the

Papacy in this dispute brought one great good to England. It

made Stephen Langton Archbishop of Canterbury, and thereby

gave a wise and righteous leader to the opponents of the

king's oppressive rule. Lords and commons, laity and clergy,

were all alike sufferers from John's greed, his perfidy, his

mean devices and his contempt of law. Langton rallied them to

a sober, stern, united demonstration, which awed King John,

and compelled him to put his seal to Magna Charta--the grand

Charter of English liberties (1215). A few weeks later he

tried to annul what he had done, with encouragement from the

Pope, who anathematized the Charter and all who had to do with

it. Then certain of the barons, in their rage, offered the

English crown to the heir of France, afterwards Louis VIII.;

and the French prince actually came to England (1216) with an

army to secure it. But before the forces gathered on each side

were brought to any decisive battle, John died. Louis'

partisans then dropped away from him and the next year, after

a defeat at sea, he returned to France.

Henry III. and the Barons' War.

John left a son, a lad of nine years, who grew to be a better

man than himself, though not a good king, for he was weak and

untruthful in character, though amiable and probably

well-meaning. He held the throne for fifty-six years, during

which long time, after his minority was passed, no minister of

ability and honorable character could get and keep office in

the royal service. He was jealous of ministers, preferring

mere administrative clerks; while he was docile to favorites,

and picked them for the most part from a swarm of foreign

adventurers whom the nation detested. The Great Charter of his

father had been reaffirmed in his name soon after he received

the crown, and in 1225 he was required to issue it a third

time, as the condition of a grant of money; but he would not

rule honestly in compliance with its provisions, and sought

continually to lay and collect heavy taxes in unlawful ways.

He spent money extravagantly, and was foolish and reckless in

foreign undertakings, accepting, for example, the Kingdom of

Sicily, offered to his son Edmund by the Pope, whose gift

could only be made good by force of arms. At the same time he

was servile to the popes, whose increasing demands for money

from England were rousing even the clergy to resistance. So

the causes of discontent grew abundantly until they brought it

to a serious head. All classes of the people were drawn

together again, as they had been to resist the aggressions of

John. The great councils of the kingdom, or assemblies of

barons and bishops (which had taken the place of the

witenagemot of the old English time, and which now began to be

called Parliaments), became more and more united against the

king. At last the discontent found a leader of high capacity

and of heroic if not blameless character, in Simon de

Montfort, Earl of Leicester. Simon de Montfort was of foreign

birth,--son of that fanatical crusader of the same name, who

spread ruin over the fair country of the Albigeois. The

English earldom of Leicester had passed to his family, and the

younger Simon, receiving it, came to England and became an

Englishman. After some years he threw himself into the

struggle with the Crown, and his leadership was soon

recognized. In 1258, a parliament held at London compelled the

king to consent to the appointment of an extraordinary

commission of twenty-four barons, clothed with full power to

reform the government. The commission was named at a

subsequent meeting of parliament, the same year, at Oxford,

where the grievances to be redressed were set forth in a paper

known as the Provisions of Oxford. From the twenty-four

commissioners there were chosen fifteen to be the King's

Council. This was really the creation of a new constitution

for the kingdom, and Henry swore to observe it. But ere long

he procured a bull from the Pope, absolving him from his oath,

and he began to prepare for throwing off the restraints that

had been put upon him. The other side took up arms, under

Simon's lead; but peace was preserved for a time by referring

all questions in dispute to the arbitration of Louis IX. of

France. The arbiter decided against the barons (1264) and

Montfort's party refused to abide by the award. Then followed

the civil conflict known as the Barons' War. The king was

defeated and taken prisoner, and was obliged to submit to

conditions which practically transferred the administration of

the government to three counsellors, of whom Simon de Montfort

was the chief.

Development of the English Parliament;

In January, 1265, a memorable parliament was called together.

It was the first national assembly in which the larger element

of the English Commons made its appearance; for Montfort had

summoned to it certain representatives of borough towns, along

with the barons, the bishops and the abbots, and along,

moreover, with representative knights, who had been gaining

admittance of late years to what now became a convocation of

the Three Estates. The parliamentary model thus roughly shaped

by the great Earl of Leicester was not continuously followed

until another generation came; but it is his glory,

nevertheless, to have given to England the norm and principle

on which its unexampled parliament was framed. By dissensions

among themselves, Simon de Montfort and his party soon lost

the great advantage they had won, and on another appeal to

arms they were defeated (1265) by the king's valiant and able

son, afterwards King Edward I., and Montfort was slain. It was

seven years after this before Edward succeeded his father, and

nine before he came to the throne, because he was absent on a

Crusade; but when he did, it was to prove himself, not merely

one of the few statesmen-kings of England, but one large

enough in mind to take lessons from the vanquished enemies of

the Crown. He, in reality, took up the half-planned

constitutional work of Simon de Montfort, in the development

of the English Parliament as a body representative of all

orders in the nation, and carried it forward to substantial

completion. He did it because he had wit to see that the

people he ruled could be led more easily than they could be

driven, and that their free-giving of supplies to the Crown

would be more open-handed than their giving under compulsion.

The year 1295 "witnessed the first summons of a perfect and

model parliament; the clergy represented by their bishops,

deans, archdeacons, and elected proctors; the barons summoned

severally in person by the king's special writ, and the

commons summoned by writs addressed to the sheriffs, directing

them to send up two elected knights from each shire, two

elected citizens from each city, and two elected burghers from

each borough" (Stubbs).

{1034}

Two years later, the very fundamental principle of the English

Constitution was established, by a Confirmation of the

Charters, conceded in Edward's absence by his son, but

afterwards assented to by him, which definitely renounced the

right of the king to tax the nation without its consent. Thus

the reign of Edward I. was really the most important in the

constitutional history of England. It was scarcely less

important in the history of English jurisprudence; for Edward

was in full sympathy with the spirit of an age in which the

study and reform of the law were wonderfully awakened

throughout Europe. The great statutes of his reign are among

the monuments of Edward's statesmanship, and not the least

important of them are those by which he checked the

encroachments of the Church and its dangerous acquisition of

wealth.

At the same time, the temper of this vigorous king was warlike

and aggressive. He subdued the Welsh and annexed Wales as a

principality to England. He enforced the feudal supremacy

which the English kings claimed over Scotland, and, upon the

Scottish throne becoming vacant, in 1290, seated John Baliol,

as a vassal who did homage to him. The war of Scottish

Independence then ensued, of which William Wallace and Robert

Bruce were the heroes. Wallace perished on an English scaffold

in 1305; Bruce, the next year, secured the Scottish crown, and

eventually broke the bonds in which his country was held.

Edward I. died in 1307, and his kingly capability died with

him. He transmitted neither spirit nor wisdom to his son, the

second Edward, who gave himself and his kingdom up to foreign

favorites, as his grandfather had done. His angry subjects

practically took the government out of his hands (1310), and

confided it to a body of twenty-one members, called Ordainers.

His reign of twenty years was one of protracted strife and

disorder; but the constitutional power of Parliament made

gains. In outward appearance, however, there was nothing to

redeem the wretchedness of the time. The struggle of factions

was pushed to civil war; while Scotland, by the great blow

struck at Bannockburn (1314), made her independence complete.

In 1322, Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, whose descent was as royal

as the king's, but who headed the opponents of Edward and

Edward's unworthy favorites, was defeated in battle, taken

prisoner, and brought to the block. This martyrdom, as it was

called, embalmed Lancaster's memory in the hearts of the

people.

Edward III. and his French Claims.

The queen of Edward II., Isabella of France, daughter of

Philip the Fair, made, at last, common cause with his enemies.

In January, 1327, he was forced to formally resign the crown,

and in September of the same year he was murdered, the queen,

with little doubt, assenting to the deed. His son, Edward

III., who now came to the throne, founded claims to the crown

of France upon the rights of his mother, whose three brothers,

as we have seen, had been crowned in succession and had died,

bringing the direct line of royalty in France to an end. By

this claim the two countries were plunged into the miseries of

the dreadful Hundred Years War, and the progress of

civilization in Europe was seriously checked.

Recovery of Christian Spain.

Before entering that dark century of war, it will be necessary

to go back a little in time, and carry our survey farther

afield, in the countries of Europe more remote from the center

of the events we have already scanned. In Spain, for example,

there should be noticed, very briefly, the turning movement of

the tide of Mahometan conquest which drove the Spanish

Christians into the mountains of the North. In the eighth

century, their little principality of Asturia had widened into

the small kingdom of Leon, and the eastern county of Leon had

taken the name of Castella (Castile) from the number of forts

or castles with which it bristled, on the Moorish border. East

of Leon, in the Pyrenees, there grew up about the same time the

kingdom of Navarre, which became important in the eleventh

century, under an enterprising king, Sancho the Great, who

seized Castile and made a separate kingdom of it, which he

bequeathed to his son. The same Navarrese king extended his

dominion over a considerable part of the Spanish March, which

Charlemagne had wrested from the Moors in the ninth century,

and out of this territory the kingdom of Aragon was presently

formed. These four kingdoms, of Leon, Navarre, Castile, and

Aragon, were shuffled together and divided again, in changing

combinations, many times during the next century or two; but

Castile and Leon were permanently united in 1230. Meantime

Portugal, wrested from the Moors, became a distinct kingdom;

while Navarre was reduced in size and importance. Castile,

Aragon, and Portugal are from that time the Christian Powers

in the Peninsula which carried on the unending war with their

Moslem neighbors. By the end of the thirteenth century they

had driven the Moors into the extreme south of the peninsula,

where the latter, thenceforth, held little beyond the small

kingdom of Granada, which defended itself for two centuries

more.

Moorish Civilization and its Decay.

The Christians were winners and the Moslems were losers in

this long battle, because adversity had disciplined the one

and prosperity had relaxed and vitiated the other. Success

bred disunion, and the spoils of victory engendered

corruption, among the followers of Mahomet, very quickly in

their career. The middle of the eighth century was hardly

passed when the huge empire they had conquered broke in twain,

and two Caliphates on one side of the Mediterranean, imitated the

two Roman Empires on the other. We have seen how the Caliphate

of the East, with its seat at Bagdad, went steadily to wreck;

but fresh converts of Islam, out of deserts at the North, were

in readiness, there, to gather the fragments and construct a

new Mahometan power. In the West, where the Caliphs held their

court at Cordova, the same crumbling of their power befell

them, through feuds and jealousies and the decay of a sensuous

race; but there were none to rebuild it in the Prophet's name.

The Moor gave way to the Castilian in Spain for reasons not

differing very much from the reasons which explain the

supplanting of the Arab by the Turk in the East.

{1035}

While its grandeur lasted in Spain,--from the eighth to the

eleventh centuries--the empire of the Saracens, or Moors, was

the most splendid of its age. It developed a civilization

which must have been far finer, in the superficial showing,

and in much of its spirit as well, than anything found in

Christian Europe at that time. Its religious temper was less

fierce and intolerant. Its intellectual disposition was

towards broader thinking and freer inquiry. Its artistic

feeling was truer and more instinctive. It took lessons from

classic learning and philosophy before Germanized Europe had

become aware of the existence of either, and it gave the

lessons at second hand to its Christian neighbors. Its

industries were conducted with a knowledge and a skill that

could be found among no other people. Says Dr. Draper: "Europe

at the present day does not offer more taste, more refinement,

more elegance, than might have been seen, at the epoch of

which we are speaking, in the capitals of the Spanish Arabs.

Their streets were lighted and solidly paved. Their houses

were frescoed and carpeted; they were warmed in winter by

furnaces, and cooled in summer with perfumed air brought by

underground pipes from flower beds. They had baths, and

libraries, and dining halls, fountains of quicksilver and

water. City and country were full of conviviality, and of

dancing to lute and mandolin. Instead of the drunken and

gluttonous wassail orgies of their northern neighbors, the

feasts of the Saracens were marked with sobriety."

The brilliancy of the Moorish civilization seems like that of

some short-lived flower, which may spring from a thin soil of

no lasting fertility. The qualities which yielded it had their

season of ascendancy over the deeper-lying forces that worked

in the Gothic mind of Christian Spain; but time exhausted the

one, while it matured the other.

Mediæval Spanish Character.

There seems to be no doubt that the long conflict of races and

religions in the peninsula affected the character of the

Spanish Christians more profoundly, both for good and for ill,

than it affected the people with whom they strove. It hardened

and energized them, preparing them for the bold adventures

they were soon to pursue in a new-found world, and for a

lordly career in all parts of the rounded globe. It embittered

and gave fierceness to a sentiment among them which bore some

likeness to religion, but which was, in reality, the

partisanship of a church, and not the devotion of a faith. It

tended to put bigotry in the place of piety--religious rancor

in the place of charity--priests and images in the place of

Christ--much more among the Spaniards than among other

peoples; for they, alone, were Crusaders against the Moslem

for eight hundred years.

Early Free Institutions in Spain.

The political effects of those centuries of struggle in the

peninsula were also remarkable and strangely mixed. In all the

earlier stages of the national development, until the close of

the mediæval period, there seems to have been as promising a

growth of popular institutions, in most directions, as can be

found in England itself. Apparently, there was more good

feeling between classes than elsewhere in Europe. Nobles,

knights and commons fought side by side in so continuous a

battle that they were more friendly and familiar in

acquaintance with one another. Moreover, the ennobled and the

knighted were greatly more numerous in Spain than in the

neighboring countries. The kings were lavish of such honors in

rewarding valor, on every battlefield and after every campaign.

It was impossible, therefore, for so great a distance to widen

between the grandee and the peasant or the burgher as that

which separated the lord and the citizen in Germany or France.

The division of Christian Spain into several petty kingdoms,

and the circumstances under which they were placed, retarded

the growth of monarchical power, and yet did not tend to a

feudal disintegration of society; because the pressure of its

perpetual war with the infidels forced the preservation of a

certain degree of unity, sufficient to be a saving influence.

At the same time, the Spanish cities became prosperous, and

naturally, in the circumstances of the country, acquired much

freedom and many privileges. The inhabitants of some cities in

Aragon enjoyed the privileges of nobility as a body; the

magistrates of other cities were ennobled. Both in Aragon and

Castile, the towns had deputies in the Cortes before any

representatives of boroughs sat in the English Parliament; and

the Cortes seems to have been, in the twelfth and thirteenth

centuries, a more potent factor in government than any

assembly of estates in any other part of Europe.

But something was wanting in Spain that was not wanting in

England and in the Netherlands, for example, to complete the

evolution of a popular government from this hopeful beginning.

And the primary want, it would seem, was a political sense or

faculty in the people. To illustrate this in one particular:

the Castilian Commons did not grasp the strings of the

national purse when they had it in their hands, as the

practical Englishmen did. They allowed the election of

deputies from the towns to slip out of their hands and to

become an official function of the municipalities, where it

was corrupted and controlled by the Crown. In Aragon, the

popular rights were more efficiently maintained, perhaps; but

even there the political faculty of the people must have been

defective, as compared with that of the nations in the North

which developed free government from less promising germs.

And, yet, it is possible that the whole subsequent failure of

Spain may be fully explained by the ruinous prosperity of her

career in the sixteenth century,--by the fatal gold it gave

her from America, and the independent power it put into the

hands of her kings.

Northern and North-eastern Europe.

While the Spaniards in their southern peninsula were wrestling

with the infidel Moor, their Gothic kindred of Sweden, and the

other Norse nations of that opposite extremity of Europe, had

been casting off paganism and emerging from the barbarism of

their piratical age, very slowly. It was not until the tenth

and eleventh centuries that Christianity got footing among

them. It was not until the thirteenth century that unity and

order, the fruits of firm government, began to be really fixed

in any part of the Scandinavian peninsulas.

{1036}

The same is substantially true of the greater Slavic states on

the eastern side of Europe. The Poles had accepted

Christianity in the tenth century, and their dukes, in the

same century, had assumed the title of kings. In the twelfth

century they had acquired a large dominion and exercised great

power; but the kingdom was divided, was brought into collision

with the Teutonic Knights, who conquered Prussia, and it fell

into a disordered state. The Russians had been Christianized

in the same missionary century--the tenth; but civilization

made slow progress among them, and their nation was being

divided and re-divided in shifting principalities by

contending families and lords. In the thirteenth century they

were overwhelmed by the fearful calamity of a conquest by

Mongol or Tartar hordes, and fell under the brutal domination

of the successors of Genghis Khan.

Latin Conquest of Constantinople.

At Constantinople, the old Greek-Roman Empire of the East had

been passing through singular changes since we noticed it

last. The dread with which Alexius Comnenius saw the coming of

the Crusaders in 1097 was justified by the experience of his

successors, after little more than a hundred years. In 1204, a

crusade, which is sometimes numbered as the fourth and

sometimes as the fifth in the crusading series, was diverted

by Venetian influence from the rescue of Jerusalem to the

conquest of Constantinople, ostensibly in the interest of a

claimant of the Imperial throne. The city was taken and

pillaged, and the Greek line of Emperors was supplanted by a

Frank or Latin line, of which Baldwin, Count of Flanders, was

the first. But this Latin Empire was reduced to a fraction of

the conquered dominion, the remainder being divided among

several partners in the conquest; while two Greek princes of

the fallen house saved fragments of the ancient realm in Asia,

and throned themselves as emperors at Trebizond and Nicæa. The

Latin Empire was maintained, feebly and without dignity, a

little more than half a century; and then (1261) it was

extinguished by the sovereign of its Nicæan rival, Michael

Palæologus, who took Constantinople by a night surprise,

helped by treachery within. Thus the Greek or Byzantine Empire

was restored, but much shorn of its former European

possessions, and much weakened by loss of commerce and wealth.

It was soon involved in a fresh struggle for life with the

Turks.

The Thirteenth Century.

We have now, in our general survey of European history, just

passed beyond the thirteenth century, and it will be

instructive to pause here a moment and glance back over the

movements and events which distinguish that remarkable age.

For the thirteenth century, while it belongs chronologically

to mediæval times, seems nearer in spirit to the

Renaissance--shows more of the travail of the birth of our

modern mind and life--than the fourteenth, and even more than

the greater part of the years of the fifteenth century.

For England, it was the century in which the enduring bases of

constitutional government were laid down; within which Magna

Charta and its Confirmations were signed; within which the

Parliament of Simon de Montfort and the Parliaments of Edward

I. gave a representative form and a controlling power to the

wonderful legislature of the English nation. In France, it was

the century of the Albigenses; of Saint Louis and his judicial

reforms; and it stretched within two years of the first

meeting of the States-General of the kingdom. In Switzerland,

it was the century which began the union of the three forest

cantons. In Spain, it was the century which gave Aragon the

"General Privilege" of Peter III.; in Hungary, it was the

century of its Golden Bull. In Italy it was the century of

Frederick II.,--the man of modern spirit set in mediæval

circumstances; and it was the century, too, which moulded the

city-republics that resisted and defeated his despotic

pretensions. Everywhere, it was an age of impulses toward

freedom, and of mighty upward strivings out of the chaos and

darkness of the feudal state. It was an age of vast energies,

directed with practical judgment and power. It organized the

great league of the Hansa Towns, which surpassed, as an

enterprise of combination in commercial affairs, the most

stupendous undertakings of the present time. It put the

weavers and traders of Flanders on a footing with knights and

princes. In Venice and Genoa it crowned the merchant like a

king. It sent Marco Polo to Cathay, and inoculated men with

the itch of exploration from which they find no ease to this

day. It was the century which saw painting revived as a living

art in the world by Cimabue and Giotto, and sculpture restored

by Niccola Pisano. It was the age of great church-building in

Italy, in Germany and in France. It was the century of St.

Francis of Assisi, and of the creation of the mendicant orders

in the Church,--a true religious reformation in its spirit,

however unhappy in effect it may have been. It was the time of

the high tide of mediæval learning; the epoch of Aquinas, of

Duns Scotus, of Roger Bacon; the true birth-time of the

Universities of Paris and Oxford. It was the century which

educated Dante for his immortal work.

The Fourteenth Century.

The century which followed was a period of many wars--of

ruinous and deadly wars, and miserable demoralizations and

disorders, which depressed all Europe by their effects. In the

front of them all was the wicked Hundred Years War, forced on

France by the ambition of an English king to wear two crowns;

while with it came the bloody insurrection of the Jacquerie,

the ravages of the free companies, and ruinous anarchy

everywhere. Then, in Italy, there was a duel to the death

between Venice and Genoa; and a long, wasting contest of

rivals for the possession of Naples. In Germany, a contested

imperial election, and the struggle of the Swiss against the

Austrian Dukes. In Flanders, repeated revolts under the two

Artevelds. In the East, the terrible fight of Christendom with

the advancing Turk. And while men were everywhere so busily

slaying one another, there came the great pestilence which

they called the Black Death, to help them in the grim work,

and Europe was half depopulated by it. At the same time, the

Church, which might have kindled some beacon lights of faith

and hope in the midst of all this darkness and terror, was

sinking to its lowest state, and Rome had become an unruled

robbers' den.

There were a few voices heard, above the wailing and the

battle-din of the afflicted age, which charmed and comforted

it; voices which preached the pure gospel of Wycliffe and

Huss,--which recited the great epic of Dante,--which syllabled

the melodious verse of Petrarch and Chaucer,--which told the

gay tales of Boccaccio; but the pauses of peace in which men

might listen to such messages and give themselves to such

delights were neither many nor long.

{1037}

The Hundred Years War.

The conflict between England and France began in Flanders,

then connected with the English very closely in trade. Philip

VI. of France forced the Count of Flanders to expel English

merchants from his territory. Edward III. retaliated (1336) by

forbidding the exportation of wool to Flanders, and this

speedily reduced the Flemish weavers to idleness. They rose in

revolt, drove out their count, and formed an alliance with

England, under the lead of Jacob van Arteveld, a brewer, of

Ghent. The next year (1337) Edward joined the Flemings with an

army and entered France; but made no successful advance,

although his fleet won a victory, in a sea-fight off Sluys,

and hostilities were soon suspended by a truce. In 1341 they

were renewed in Brittany, over a disputed succession to the

dukedom, and the scattered sieges and chivalric combats which

made up the war in that region for two years are described

with minuteness by Froissart, the gossipy chronicler of the

time. After a second truce, the grimly serious stage of the

war was reached in 1346. It was in that year that the English

won the victory at Crécy, which was the pride and boast of

their nation for centuries; and the next season they took

Calais, which they held for more than two hundred years.

Philip died in 1350 and was succeeded by his son John. In

1355, Edward of England repeated his invasion, ravaging

Artois, while his son, the Black Prince, from Guienne (which

the English had held since the Angevin time), devastated

Languedoc. The next year, this last named prince made another

sally from Bordeaux, northwards, towards the Loire, and was

encountered by the French king, with a splendid army, at

Poitiers. The victory of the English in this case was more

overwhelming than at Crécy, although they were greatly

outnumbered. King John was taken prisoner and conveyed to

London. His kingdom was in confusion. The dauphin called

together the States-General of France, and that body, in which

the commons, or third estate, attained to a majority in numbers,

assumed powers and compelled assent to reforms which seemed

likely to place it on a footing of equal importance with the

Parliament of England. The leader of the third estate in these

measures was Etienne or Stephen Marcel, provost of Paris, a

man of commanding energy and courage. The dauphin, under

orders from his captive father, attempted to nullify the

ordinances of the States-General. Paris rose at the call of

Marcel and the frightened prince became submissive; but the

nobles of the provinces resented these high-handed proceedings

of the Parisians and civil war ensued. The peasants, who were

in great misery, took advantage of the situation to rise in

support of the Paris burgesses, and for the redressing of

their own wrongs. This insurrection of the Jacquerie, as it is

known, produced horrible deeds of outrage and massacre on both

sides, and seems to have had no other result. Paris, meantime

(1358), was besieged and hard pressed; Marcel, suspected of an

intended treachery, was killed, and with his death the whole

attempt to assert popular rights fell to the ground.

The state of France at this time was one of measureless

misery. It was overrun with freebooters--discharged soldiers,

desperate homeless and idle men, and the ruffians who always

bestir themselves when authority disappears. They roamed the

country in bands, large and small, stripped it of what war had

spared, and left famine behind them.

At length, in 1360, terms of peace were agreed upon, in a

treaty signed at Bretigny, and fighting ceased, except in

Brittany, where the war went on for four years more. By the

treaty, all French claims upon Aquitaine and the dependencies

were given up, and Edward acquired full sovereignty there, no

longer owing homage, as a vassal, to the king of France.

Calais, too, was ceded to England, and so heavy a ransom was

exacted from the captive King John that he failed to collect

money for the payment of it and died in London (1364).

Charles the Wise.

Charles V., who now ruled independently, as he had ruled for

some years in his father's name, proved to be a more prudent

and capable prince, and his counsellors and captains were

wisely chosen. He was a man of studious tastes and of

considerable learning for that age, with intelligence to see

and understand the greater sources of evil in his kingdom.

Above all, he had patience enough to plant better things in

the seed and wait for them to grow, which is one of the

grander secrets of statesmanship. By careful, judicious

measures, he and those who shared the task of government with

him slowly improved the discipline and condition of their

armies. The "great companies" of freebooters, too strong to be

put down, were lured out of the kingdom by an expedition into

Spain, which the famous warrior Du Guesclin commanded, and

which was sent against the detestable Pedro, called the Cruel,

of Castile, whom the English supported. A stringent economy in

public expenditure was introduced, and the management of the

finances was improved. The towns were encouraged to strengthen

their fortifications, and the state and feeling of the whole

country were slowly lifted from the gloomy depth to which the

war had depressed them.

At length, in 1369, Charles felt prepared to challenge another

encounter with the English, by repudiating the ignominious

terms of the treaty of Bretigny. Before the year closed,

Edward's armies were in the country again, but accomplished

nothing beyond the havoc which they wrought as they marched.

The French avoided battles, and their cities were well

defended. Next year the English returned, and the Black Prince

earned infamy by a ferocious massacre of three thousand men,

women, and children, in the city of Limoges, when he had taken

it by storm. It was his last campaign. Already suffering from

a mortal disease, he returned to England, and died a few years

later. The war went on, with no decisive results, until 1375,

when it was suspended by a truce. In 1377, Edward III. died,

and the French king began war again with great success. Within

three years he expelled the English from every part of France

except Bayonne, Bordeaux, Brest, Cherbourg and Calais.

If he had lived a little longer, there might soon have been an

end of the war. But he died in 1380, and fresh calamities fell

upon unhappy France.

{1038}

Rising Power of Burgundy.

The son who succeeded him, Charles VI., was an epileptic boy

of twelve years, who had three greedy and selfish uncles to

quarrel over the control of him, and to plunder the Crown of

territory and treasures. One of these was the Duke of

Burgundy, the first prince of a new great house which King

John had foolishly created. Just before that fatuous king

died, the old line of Burgundian dukes came to an end, and he

had the opportunity, which wise kings before him would have

improved very eagerly, to annex that fief to the crown.

Instead of doing so, he gave it as an appanage to his son

Philip, called "the Bold," and thus rooted a new plant of

feudalism in France which was destined to cause much trouble.

Another of the uncles was Louis, Duke of Anjou, heir to the

crown of Naples under a will of the lately murdered Queen

Joanna, and who was preparing for an expedition to enforce his

claim. The third was Duke of Berry, upon whom his father, King

John, had conferred another great appanage, including Berry,

Poitou and Auvergne.

The pillage and misgovernment of the realm under these

rapacious guardians of the young king was so great that

desperate risings were provoked, the most formidable of which

broke out in Paris. They were all suppressed, and with

merciless severity. At the same time, the Flemings, who had

again submitted to their count, revolted once more, under the

lead of Philip van Arteveld, son of their former leader. The

French moved an army to the assistance of the Count of

Flanders, and the sturdy men of Ghent, who confronted it

almost alone, suffered a crushing defeat at Roosebeke (1382).

Philip van Arteveld fell in the battle, with twenty-six

thousand of his men. Two years later, the Count of Flanders

died, and the Duke of Burgundy, who had married his daughter,

acquired that rich and noble possession. This beginning of the

union of Burgundy and the Netherlands, creating a power by the

side of the throne of France which threatened to overshadow

it, and having for its ultimate consequence the casting of the

wealth of the Low Countries into the lap of the House of

Austria and into the coffers of Spain, is an event of large

importance in European history.

Burgundians and Armagnacs.

When Charles VI. came of age, he took the government into his

own hands, and for some years it was administered by capable

men. But in 1392 the king's mind gave way, and his uncles

regained control of affairs. Philip of Burgundy maintained the

ascendancy until his death, in 1404. Then the controlling

influence passed to the king's brother, the Duke of Orleans,

between whom and the new Duke of Burgundy, John, called the

Fearless, a bitter feud arose. John, who was unscrupulous,

employed assassins to waylay and murder the Duke of Orleans,

which they did in November, 1407. This foul deed gave rise to

two parties in France. Those who sought vengeance ranged

themselves under the leadership of the Count of Armagnac, and

were called by his name. The Burgundians, who sustained Duke

John, were in the main a party of the people; for the Duke had

cultivated popularity, especially in Paris, by advocating

liberal measures and extending the rights and privileges of

the citizens.

The kingdom was kept in turmoil and terror for years by the

war of these factions, especially in and about Paris, where

the guild of the butchers took a prominent part in affairs, on

the Burgundian side, arming a riotous body of men who were

called Cabochiens, from their leader's name. In 1413 the

Armagnacs succeeded in recovering possession of the capital

and the Cabochiens were suppressed.

Second Stage of the Hundred Years War.

Meantime, Henry V. of England, the ambitious young Lancastrian

king who came to the throne of that country in 1413, saw a

favorable opportunity, in the distracted state of France, to

reopen the questions left unsettled by the breaking of the

treaty of Bretigny. He invaded France in 1415, as the rightful

king coming to dethrone a usurper, and began by taking

Harfleur at the mouth of the Seine, after a siege which cost

him so heavily that he found it prudent to retreat towards

Calais. The French intercepted him at Agincourt and forced him

to give them battle. He had only twenty thousand men, but they

formed a well disciplined and well ordered army. The French

had gathered eighty thousand men, but they were a feudal mob.

The battle ended, like those of Crécy and Poitiers, in the

routing and slaughter of the French, with small loss to

Henry's force. His army remained too weak in numbers, however,

for operations in a hostile country, and the English king

returned home, with a great train of captive princes and

lords.

He left the Armagnacs and Burgundians still fighting one

another, and disabling France as effectually as he could do if

he stayed to ravage the land. In 1417 he came back and began

to attack the strong cities of Normandy, one by one, taking

Caen first. In the next year, by a horrible massacre, the

Burgundian mob in Paris overcame the Armagnacs there, and

reinstated Duke John of Burgundy in possession of the capital.

The latter was already in negotiation with the English king,

and evidently prepared to sacrifice the kingdom for whatever

might seem advantageous to himself. But in 1419 Henry V. took

Rouen, and, when all of Normandy submitted with its capital,

he demanded nothing less than that great province, with

Brittany, Guienne, Maine, Anjou and Touraine in addition,--or,

substantially, the western half of France.

Burgundian and English Alliance.

Parleyings were brought to an end in September of that year by

the treacherous murder of Duke John. The Armagnacs slew him

foully, at an interview to which he had been enticed, on the

bridge of Montereau. His son, Duke Philip of Burgundy, now

reopened negotiations with the invader, in conjunction with

Queen Isabella (wife of the demented king), who had played an

evil part in all the factious troubles of the time. These two,

having control of the king's person, concluded a treaty with

Henry V. at Troyes, according to the terms of which Henry

should marry the king's daughter Catherine; should be

administrator of the kingdom of France while Charles VI.

lived, and should receive the crown when the latter died. The

marriage took place at once, and almost the whole of France

north of the Loire seemed submissive to the arrangement. The

States-General and the Parliament of Paris gave official

recognition to it; the disinherited dauphin of France, whose

own mother had signed away his regal heritage, retired, with

his Armagnac supporters, to the country south of the Loire,

and had little apparent prospect of holding even that.

{1039}

Two Kings in France.

But a mortal malady had already stricken King Henry V., and he

died in August, 1422. The unfortunate, rarely conscious French

king, whose crown Henry had waited for, died seven weeks

later. Each left an heir who was proclaimed king of France.

The English pretender (Henry VI. in England, Henry II. in

France) was an innocent infant, ten months old; but his court

was in Paris, his accession was proclaimed with due ceremony

at St. Denis, his sovereignty was recognized by the Parliament

and the University of that city, and the half of France

appeared resigned to the lapse of nationality which its

acceptance of him signified. The true heir of the royal house

of France (Charles VII.) was a young man of nearly mature age

and of fairly promising character; but he was proclaimed in a

little town of Berry, by a small following of lords and

knights, and the nation for which he stood hardly seemed to

exist.

The English supporters of the English king of France were too

arrogant and overbearing to retain very long the good will of

their allies among the French people. Something like a

national feeling in northern France was aroused by the

hostility they provoked, and the strength of the position in

which Henry V. left them was steadily but slowly lost. Charles

proved incapable, however, of using any advantages which

opened to him, or of giving his better counsellors an

opportunity to serve him with good effect, and no important

change took place in the situation of affairs until the

English laid siege, in 1428, to the city of Orleans, which was

the stronghold of the French cause.

Jeanne d'Arc, the Maid of Orleans.

Then occurred one of the most extraordinary episodes in

history; the appearance of the young peasant girl of Lorraine,

Jeanne d'Arc, whose coming upon the scene of war was like the

descent of an angel out of Heaven, sent with a Divine

commission to rescue France. Belief in the inspiration of this

simple maiden, who had faith in her own visions and voices,

was easier for that age than belief in a rational rally of

public energies, and it worked like a miracle on the spirit of

the nation. But it could not have done so with effect if the

untaught country girl of Domremy had not been endowed in a

wonderful way, with a wise mind, as well as with an

imaginative one, and with courage as well as with faith. When

the belief in her inspired mission gave her power to lead the

foolish king, and authority to command his disorderly troops,

she acted almost invariably with understanding, with good

sense, with a clear, unclouded judgment, with straightforward

singleness of purpose, and with absolute personal

fearlessness. She saw the necessity for saving Orleans; and

when that had been done under her own captaincy (1429), she

saw how greatly King Charles would gain in prestige if he made

his way to Rheims, and received, like his predecessors, a

solemn coronation and consecration in the cathedral of that

city. It was by force of her gentle obstinacy of determination

that this was done, and the effect vindicated the sagacity of

the Maid. Then she looked upon her mission as accomplished,

and would have gone quietly home to her village; for she seems

to have remained as simple in feeling as when she left her

father's house, and was innocent to the end of any selfish

pleasure in the fame she had won and the importance she had

acquired. But those she had helped would not let her go; and

yet they would not be guided by her without wrangle and

resistance. She wished to move the army straight from Rheims

to Paris, and enter that city before it had time to recover

from the consternation it was in. But other counsellors

retarded the march, by stopping to capture small towns on the

way, until the opportunity for taking Paris was lost. The

king, who had been braced up to a little energy by her

influence, sank back into his indolent pleasures, and faction

and frivolity possessed the court again. Jeanne strove with

high courage against malignant opposition and many

disheartenments, in the siege of Paris and after, exposing

herself in battle with the bravery of a seasoned warrior; and

her reward was to find herself abandoned at last, in a

cowardly way, to the enemy, when she had led a sortie from the

town of Compiegne, to drive back the Duke of Burgundy, who was

besieging it. Taken prisoner, she was given up to the Duke,

and sold by him to the English at Rouen.

That the Maid acted with supernatural powers was believed by

the English as firmly as by the French; but those powers, in

their belief, came, not from Heaven, but from Hell. In their

view she was not a saint, but a sorceress. They paid a high

price to the Duke of Burgundy for his captive, in order to put

her on trial for the witchcraft which they held she had

practised against them, and to destroy her mischievous power.

No consideration for her sex, or her youth, or for the beauty

and purity of character that is revealed in all the accounts

of her trial, moved her judges to compassion. They condemned

her remorselessly to the stake, and she was burned on the 31st

of May, 1431, with no effort put forth on the part of the

French or their ungrateful king to save her from that horrible

fate.

End of the Hundred Years War.

After this, things went badly with the English, though some

years passed before Charles VII. was roused again to any

display of capable powers. At last, in 1435, a general

conference of all parties in the war was brought about at

Arras. The English were offered Normandy and Aquitaine in full

sovereignty, but they refused it, and withdrew from the

conference when greater concessions were denied to them. The

Duke of Burgundy then made terms with King Charles, abandoning

the English alliance, and obtaining satisfaction for the

murder of his father. Charles was now able, for the first time

in his reign, to enter the capital of his kingdom (May, 1436),

and it is said that he found it so wasted by a pestilence and

so ruined and deserted, that wolves came into the city, and

that forty persons were devoured by them in a single week,

some two years later.

{1040}

Charles now began to show better qualities than had appeared

in his character before. He adopted strong measures to

suppress the bands of marauders who harassed and wasted the

country, and to bring all armed forces in the kingdom under

the control and command of the Crown. He began the creation of

a disciplined and regulated militia in France. He called into

his service the greatest French merchant of the day, Jacques

Cœur, who successfully reorganized the finances of the state,

and whose reward, after a few years, was to be prosecuted and

plundered by malignant courtiers, while the king looked

passively on, as he had looked on at the trial and execution

of Jeanne d'Arc.

In 1449, a fresh attack upon the English in Normandy was

begun; and as civil war--the War of the Roses--was then at the

point of outbreak in England, they could make no effective

resistance. Within a year, the whole of Normandy had become

obedient again to the rule of the king of France. In two years

more Guienne had been recovered, and when, in October, 1453,

the French king entered Bordeaux, the English had been finally

expelled from every foot of the realm except Calais and its

near neighborhood. The Hundred Years War was at an end.

England under Edward III.

The century of the Hundred Years War had been, in England, one

of few conspicuous events; and when the romantic tale of that

war--the last sanguinary romance of expiring Chivalry--is

taken out of the English annals of the time, there is not much

left that looks interesting on the surface of things. Below

the surface there are movements of no little importance to be

found.

When Edward III. put forward his claim to the crown of France,

and prepared to make it good by force of arms, the English

nation had absolutely no interest of its own in the

enterprise, from which it could derive no possible advantage,

but which did, on the contrary, promise harm to it, very

plainly, whatever might be the result. If the king succeeded,

his English realm would become a mere minor appendage to a far

more imposing continental dominion, and he and his successors

might easily acquire a power independent and absolute, over

their subjects. If he failed, the humiliation of failure would

wound the pride and the prestige of the nation, while its

resources would have been drained for naught. But these

rational considerations did not suffice to breed any

discoverable opposition to King Edward's ambitious

undertaking. The Parliament gave sanction to it; most probably

the people at large approved, with exultant expectations of

national glory; and when Crécy and Poitiers, with victories

over the hostile Scots, filled the measure of England's glory

to overflowing, they were intoxicated by it, and had little

thought then of the cost or the consequences.

But long before Edward's reign came to an end, the splendid

pageantries of the war had passed out of sight, and a new

generation was looking at, and was suffering from, the

miseries and mortifications that came in its train. The

attempt to conquer France had failed; the fruits of the

victories of Crécy and Poitiers had been lost; even Guienne,

which had been English ground since the days of Henry II., was

mostly given up. And England was weak from the drain of money

and men which the war had caused. The awful plague of the 14th

century, the Black Death, had smitten her people hard and left

diminished numbers to bear the burden. There had been famine

in the land, and grievous distress, and much sorrow.

But the calamities of this bitter time wrought beneficent

effects, which no man then living is likely to have clearly

understood. By plague, famine and battle, labor was made

scarce, wages were raised, the half-enslaved laborer was

speedily emancipated, despite the efforts of Parliament to

keep him in bonds, and land-owners were forced to let their

lands to tenant-farmers, who strengthened the English

middle-class. By the demands of the war for money and men, the

king was held more in dependence on Parliament than he might

otherwise have been, and the plant of constitutional

government, which began its growth in the previous century,

took deeper root.

In the last years of his life Edward III. lost all of his

vigor, and fell under the influence of a woman, Alice Perrers,

who wronged and scandalized the nation. The king's eldest son,

the Black Prince, was slowly dying of an incurable disease,

and took little part in affairs; when he interfered, it seems

to have been with some leanings to the popular side. The next

in age of the living sons of Edward was a turbulent, proud,

self-seeking prince, who gave England much trouble and was

hated profoundly. This was John, Duke of Lancaster, called

John of Gaunt, or Ghent, because of his birth in that city.

England under Richard II.

The Black Prince, dying in 1376, left a young son, Richard,

then ten years old, who was immediately recognized as the heir

to the throne, and who succeeded to it in the following year,

when Edward III. died. The Duke of Lancaster had been

suspected of a design to set Richard aside and claim the crown

for himself. But he did not venture the attempt; nor was he

able to secure even the regency of the kingdom during the

young king's minority. The distrust of him was so general that

Parliament and the lords preferred to invest Richard with full

sovereignty even in his boyhood. But John of Gaunt,

notwithstanding these endeavors to exclude him from any place

of authority, contrived to attain a substantial mastery of the

government, managing the war in France and the expenditure of

public moneys in his own way, and managing them very badly. At

least, he was held chiefly responsible for what was bad, and

his name was heard oftenest in the mutterings of popular

discontent. The peasants were now growing very impatient of

the last fetters of villeinage which they wore, and very

conscious of their right to complete freedom. Those feelings

were strongly stirred in them by a heavy poll-tax which

Parliament levied in 1381. The consequence was an outbreak of

insurrection, led by one Wat the Tyler, which became

formidable and dangerous. The insurgents began by making

everybody they encountered swear to be true to King Richard,

and to submit to no king named John, meaning John of Gaunt.

They increased in numbers and boldness until they entered and

took possession of the city of London, where they beheaded the

Archbishop of Canterbury, and other obnoxious persons; but

permitted no thieving to be done.

{1041}

The day after this occurred, Wat Tyler met the young king at

Smithfield, for a conference, and was suddenly killed by one

of those who attended the king. The excuse made for the deed

was some word of insolence on the part of the insurgent

leader; but there is every appearance of a foul act of

treachery in the affair. Richard on this occasion behaved

boldly and with much presence of mind, acquiring by his

courage and readiness a command over the angry rebels, which

resulted in their dispersion.

The Wat Tyler rebellion appears to have manifested a more

radically democratic state of thinking and feeling among the

common people than existed again in England before the

seventeenth century. John Ball, a priest, and others who were

associated with Wat Tyler in the leadership, preached

doctrines of social equality that would nearly have satisfied

a Jacobin of the French Revolution.

This temper of political radicalism had no apparent connection

with the remarkable religious feeling of the time, which the

great reformer, Wyclif, had aroused; yet the two movements of

the English mind were undoubtedly started by one and the same

revolutionary shock, which it took from the grave alarms and

anxieties of the age, and for which it had been prepared by

the awakening of the previous century. Wyclif was the first

English Puritan, and more of the spirit of the reformation of

religion which he sought, than the spirit of Luther's

reformation, went into the Protestantism that ultimately took

form in England. The movement he stirred was a more wonderful

anticipation of the religious revolt of the sixteenth century

than any other which occurred in Europe; for that of Huss in

Bohemia took its impulse from Wyclif and the English Lollards,

as Wyclif's followers were called.

Richard was a weak but wilful king, and the kingdom was kept

in trouble by his fitful attempts at independence and

arbitrary rule. He made enemies of most of the great lords,

and lost the good will and confidence of Parliament. He did

what was looked upon as a great wrong to Henry of Bolingbroke,

son of John of Gaunt, by banishing both him and the Duke of

Norfolk from the kingdom, when he should have judged between

them; and he made the wrong greater by seizing the lands of

the Lancastrian house when John of Gaunt died. This caused his

ruin. Henry of Bolingbroke, now Duke of Lancaster, came back to

England (1399), encouraged by the discontent in the kingdom,

and was immediately joined by so many adherents that Richard

could offer little resistance. He was deposed by act of

Parliament, and the Duke of Lancaster (a grandson of Edward

III., as Richard was), was elected to the throne, which he

ascended as Henry IV. By judgment of King and Parliament,

Richard was presently condemned to imprisonment for life in

Pomfret Castle; and, early in the following year, after a

conspiracy in his favor had been discovered, he died

mysteriously in his prison.

England Under Henry IV.

The reign of Henry IV., which lasted a little more than

thirteen years, was troubled by risings and conspiracies, all

originating among the nobles, out of causes purely personal or

factious, and having no real political significance. But no

events in English history are more commonly familiar, or seem

to be invested with a higher importance, than the rebellions

of Owen Glendower and the Percys,--Northumberland and Harry

Hotspur,--simply because Shakespeare has laid his magic upon

what otherwise would be a story of little note. Wars with the

always hostile Scots supplied other stirring incidents to the

record Of the time; but these came to a summary end in 1405,

when the crown prince, James, of Scotland, voyaging to France,

was driven by foul winds to the English coast and taken

prisoner. The prince's father, King Robert, died on hearing

the news, and James, the captive, was now entitled to be king.

But the English held him for eighteen years, treating him as a

guest at their court, rather than as a prisoner, and educating

him with care, but withholding him from his kingdom.

To strengthen his precarious seat upon the throne, Henry

cultivated the friendship of the Church, and seems to have

found this course expedient, even at considerable cost to his

popularity. For the attitude of the commons towards the Church

during his reign was anything but friendly. They went so far

as to pass a bill for the confiscation of Church property,

which the Lords rejected; and they seem to have repented of an

Act passed early in his reign, under which a cruel persecution

of the Lollards was begun. The clergy and the Lords, with the

favor of the king, maintained the barbarous law, and England

for the first time saw men burned at the stake for heresy.

England Under Henry V. and Henry VI.

Henry IV. died in 1413, and was succeeded by his spirited and

able, but too ambitious son, Henry V., the Prince Hal of

Shakespeare, who gave up riotous living when called to the

grave duties of government and showed himself to be a man of

no common mould. The war in France, which he renewed, and the

chief events of which have been sketched already, filled up

most of his brief reign of nine years. His early death (1422)

left two crowns to an infant nine months old. The English

crown was not disputed. The French crown, though practically

won by conquest, was not permanently secured, but was still to

be fought for; and in the end, as we have seen, it was lost.

No more need be said of the incidents of the war which had

that result.

The infant king was represented in France by his elder uncle,

the Duke of Bedford. In England, the government was carried on

for him during his minority by a council, in which his younger

uncle, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, occupied the chief place,

but with powers that were jealously restricted. While the war

in France lasted, or during most of the thirty-one years

through which it was protracted after Henry V.'s death, it

engrossed the English mind and overshadowed domestic

interests, so that the time has a meagre history.

Soon after he came of age, Henry VI. married (1444) Margaret

of Anjou, daughter of René, Duke of Anjou, who claimed to be

King of Naples and Jerusalem. The marriage, which aimed at

peace with France, and which had been brought about by the

cession to that country of Maine and Anjou, was unpopular in

England. Discontent with the feeble management of the war, and

with the general weakness and incapability of the government,

grew apace, and showed itself, among other exhibitions, in a

rebellion (1450) known as Jack Cade's, from the name of an

Irishman who got the lead of it. Jack Cade and his followers

took possession of London and held it for three days, only

yielding at last to an offer of general pardon, after they had

beheaded Lord Say, the most obnoxious adviser of the king. A

previous mob had taken the head of the Earl of Suffolk, who

was detested still more as the contriver of the king's

marriage and of the humiliating policy in France.

{1042}

The Wars of the Roses.

At length, the Duke of York, representing an elder line of

royal descent from Edward III., took the lead of the

discontented in the nation, and civil war was imminent in

1452; but pacific counsels prevailed for the moment. The king,

who had always been weak-minded, and entirely under the

influence of the queen, now sank for a time into a state of

complete stupor, and was incapable of any act. The Lords in

Parliament thereupon appointed the Duke of York Protector of

England, and the government was vigorously conducted by him

for a few months, until the king recovered. The queen, and the

councillors she favored, now regained their control of

affairs, and the opposition took arms.

The long series of fierce struggles between these two parties,

which is commonly called the Wars of the Roses, began on the

22d of May, 1455, with a battle at St. Albans--the first of

two that were fought on the same ground. At the beginning, it

was a contest for the possession of the unfortunate,

irresponsible king, and of the royal authority which resided

nominally in his person. But it became, ere long, a contest

for the crown which Henry wore, and to which the Duke of York

denied his right. The Duke traced his ancestry to one son of

Edward III., and King Henry to another son. But the Duke's

forefather, Lionel, was prior in birth to the King's

forefather, John of Gaunt, and, as an original proposition,

the House of York was clearly nearer than the House of

Lancaster to the royal line which had been interrupted when

Richard II. was deposed. The rights of the latter House were

such as it had gained prescriptively by half a century of

possession.

At one time it was decided by the Lords that Henry should be

king until he died, and that the Duke of York and his heirs

should succeed him. But Queen Margaret would not yield the

rights of her son, and renewed the war. The Duke of York was

killed in the next battle fought. His son, Edward, continued

the contest, and early in 1461, having taken possession of

London, he was declared king by a council of Lords, which

formally deposed Henry. The Lancastrians were driven from the

kingdom, and Edward held the government with little

disturbance for eight years. Then a rupture occurred between

him and his most powerful supporter, the Earl of Warwick.

Warwick put himself at the head of a rebellion which failed in

the first instance, but which finally, when Warwick had joined

forces with Queen Margaret, drove Edward to flight. The latter

took refuge in the Netherlands (1470), where he received

protection and assistance from the Duke of Burgundy, who was

his brother-in-law. Henry VI. was now restored to the throne;

but for no longer a time than six months. At the end of that

period Edward landed again in England, with a small force,

professing that he came only to demand his dukedom. As soon as

he found himself well received and strongly supported, he

threw off the mask, resumed the title of king, and advanced to

London, where the citizens gave him welcome. A few days later

(April 14, 1471) he went out to meet Warwick and defeated and

slew him in the fierce battle of Barnet. One more fight at

Tewkesbury, where Queen Margaret was taken prisoner, ended the

war. King Henry died, suspiciously, in the Tower, on the very

night of his victorious rival's return to London, and Edward

IV. had all his enemies under his feet.

England under the House of York.

For a few years England enjoyed peace within her borders, and

the material effects of the protracted civil wars were rapidly

effaced. Indeed, the greater part of England appears to have

been lightly touched by those effects. The people at large had

taken little part in the conflict, and had been less disturbed

by it, in their industries and in their commerce, than might

have been expected. It had been a strife among the great

families, enlisting the gentry to a large extent, no doubt,

but not the middle class. Hence its chief consequence had been

the thinning and weakening of the aristocratic order, which

relatively enhanced the political importance of the commons.

But the commons were not yet trained to act independently in

political affairs. Their rise in power had been through joint

action of lords and commons against the Crown, with the former

in the lead; they were accustomed to depend on aristocratic

guidance, and to lean on aristocratic support. For this

reason, they were not only unprepared to take advantage of the

great opportunity which now opened to them, for decisively

grasping the control of government, but they were unfitted to

hold what they had previously won, without the help of the

class above them. As a consequence, it was the king who

profited by the decimation and impoverishment of the nobles,

grasping not only the power which they lost, but the power

which the commons lacked skill to use. For a century and a

half following the Wars of the Roses, the English monarchy

approached more nearly to absolutism than at any other period

before or after.

The unsparing confiscations by which Edward IV. and his

triumphant party crushed their opponents enriched the Crown

for a time and made it independent of parliamentary subsidies.

When supply from that source began to fall short, the king

invented another. He demeaned himself so far as to solicit

gifts from the wealthy merchants of the kingdom, to which he

gave the name of "benevolences," and he practiced this system

of royal beggary so persistently and effectually that he had

no need to call Parliament together. He thus began, in a

manner hardly perceived or resisted, the arbitrary and

unconstitutional mode of government which his successors

carried further, until the nation roused itself and took back

its stolen liberties with vengeance and wrath.

{1043}

Richard III. and the first of the Tudors.

Edward IV. died in 1483, leaving two young sons, the elder not

yet thirteen. Edward's brother, Richard, contrived with

amazing ability and unscrupulousness to acquire control of the

government, first as Protector, and presently as King. The

young princes, confined in the Tower, were murdered there, and

Richard III. might have seemed to be secure on his wickedly

won throne; for he did not lack popularity, notwithstanding

his crimes. But an avenger soon came, in the person of Henry,

Earl of Richmond, who claimed the Crown. Henry's claim was not

a strong one. Through his mother, he traced his lineage to

John of Gaunt, as the Lancastrians had done; but it was the

mistress and not the wife of that prince who bore Henry's

ancestor. His grandfather was a Welsh chieftain, Sir Owen

Tudor, who won the heart of the widowed queen of Henry V.,

Catherine of France, and married her. But the claim of Henry

of Richmond, if a weak one genealogically, sufficed for the

overthrow of the red-handed usurper, Richard. Henry, who had

been in exile, landed in England in August, 1485, and was

quickly joined by large numbers of supporters. Richard

hastened to attack them, and was defeated and slain on

Bosworth Field. With no more opposition, Henry won the

kingdom, and founded, as Henry VII., the Tudor dynasty which

held the throne until the death of Elizabeth.

Under that dynasty, the history of England took on a new

character, disclosing new tendencies, new impulses, new

currents of influence, new promises of the future. We will not

enter upon it until we have looked at some prior events in

other regions.

Germany.

If we return now to Germany, we take up the thread of events

at an interesting point. We parted from the affairs of that

troubled country while two rival Emperors, Louis IV., or

Ludwig, of Bavaria, and Frederick of Austria, were endeavoring

(1325) to settle their dispute in a friendly way, by sharing

the throne together. Before noting the result of that

chivalric and remarkable compromise, let us glance backward

for a moment at the most memorable and important incident of

the civil war which led to it.

Birth of the Swiss Confederacy.

The three cantons of Switzerland which are known distinctively

as the Forest Cantons, namely, Schwytz (which gave its name in

time to the whole country), Uri, and Unterwalden, had stood in

peculiar relations to the Hapsburg family since long before

Rudolph became Emperor and his house became the House of

Austria. In those cantons, the territorial rights were held

mostly by great monasteries, and the counts of Hapsburg for

generations past had served the abbots and abbesses in the

capacity of advocates, or champions, to rule their vassals for

them and to defend their rights. Authority of their own in the

cantons they had none. At the same time, the functions they

performed so continually developed ideas in their minds,

without doubt, which grew naturally into pretensions that were

offensive to the bold mountaineers. On the other hand, the

circumstances of the situation were calculated to breed

notions and feelings of independence among the men of the

mountains. They gave their allegiance to the Emperor--to the

high sovereign who ruled over all, in the name of Rome--and

they opposed what came between them and him. It is manifest

that a threatening complication for them arose when the Count

of Hapsburg became Emperor, which occurred in 1273. They had

no serious difficulty with Rudolph, in his time; but they

wisely prepared themselves for what might come, by forming, or

by renewing, in 1291, a league of the three cantons,--the

beginning and nucleus of the Swiss Confederation, which has

maintained its independence and its freedom from that day to

this. The league of 1291 had existed something more than

twenty years when the confederated cantons were first called

upon to stand together in resistance to the Austrian

pretensions. This occurred in 1315, during the war between

Louis and Frederick, when Leopold, Duke of Austria, invaded

the Forest Cantons and was disastrously beaten in a fight at

the pass of Morgarten. The victory of the confederates and the

independence secured by it gave them so much prestige that

neighboring cities and cantons sought admission to their

league. In 1332 Luzern was received as a member; in 1351,

1352, and 1353, Zurich, Glarus, Zug, and Bern came in,

increasing the membership to eight. It took the name of the

Old League of High Germany, and its members were known as

Eidgenossen, or Confederates.

Such, in brief, are the ascertained facts of the origin of the

Swiss Confederacy. There is nothing found in authentic history

to substantiate the popular legend of William Tell.

The questions between the league and the Austrian princes,

which continued to be troublesome for two generations, were

practically ended by the two battles of Sempach and Naefels,

fought in 1386 and 1388, in both of which the Austrians were

overthrown.

The Emperor Louis IV. and the Papacy,

While the Swiss were gaining the freedom which they never

lost, Germany at large was making little progress in any

satisfactory direction. Peace had not been restored by the

friendly agreement of 1325 between Ludwig and Frederick. The

partisans of neither were contented with it. Frederick was

broken in health and soon retired from the government; in 1330

he died. The Austrian house persisted in hostility to Louis;

but his more formidable enemies were the Pope and the King of

France. The period was that known in papal history as "the

Babylonish Captivity," when the popes resided at Avignon and

were generally creatures of the French court and subservient

to its ambitions or its animosities. Philip of Valois, who now

reigned in France, aspired to the imperial crown, which the head

of the Church had conferred on the German kings, and which the

same supreme pontiff might claim authority to transfer to the

sovereigns of France. This is supposed to have been the secret

of the relentless hostility with which Louis was pursued by

the Papacy--himself excommunicated, his kingdom placed under

interdict, and every effort made to bring about his deposition

by the princes of Germany. But divided and depressed as the

Germans were, they revolted against these malevolent

pretensions of the popes, and in 1338 the electoral princes

issued a bold declaration, asserting the sufficiency of the

act of election to confer imperial dignity and power, and

denying the necessity for any papal confirmation whatever. Had

Louis been a commanding leader, and independent of the Papacy in

his own feelings, he could probably have rallied a national

sentiment on this issue that would have powerfully affected

the future of German history.

{1044}

But he lacked the needful character, and his troubles

continued until he died (1347). A year before his death, his

opponents had elected and put forward a rival emperor,

Charles, the son of King John of Bohemia. Charles (IV.) was

subsequently recognized as king without dispute, and secured

the imperial crown. "It may be affirmed with truth that the

genuine ancient Empire, which contained a German kingdom, came

to an end with the Emperor Ludwig the Bavarian. None strove

again after his death to restore the imperial power. The

golden bull of his successor Charles IV. sealed the fate of

the old Empire. Through it, and indeed through the entire

conduct of Charles IV., King of Bohemia as he really was, and

emperor scarcely more than in name, the imperial government

passed more and more into the hands of the prince-electors,

who came to regard the emperor no longer as their master, but

as the president of an assembly in which he shared the power

with themselves." "From the time of Charles IV. the main

object and chief occupation of the emperors was not the

Empire, but the aggrandisement and security of their own

house. The Empire served only as the means and instrument of

their purpose" (Dollinger).

The Golden Bull of Charles IV.

The Golden Bull referred to by Dr. Dollinger was an instrument

which became the constitution, so to speak, of the Holy Roman

or Germanic Empire. It prescribed the mode of the election of

the King, and definitively named the seven Electors. It also

conferred certain special powers and privileges on these seven

princes, which raised them much above their fellows and gave

them an independence that may be said to have destroyed every

hope of Germanic unity. This was the one mark which the reign

of Charles IV. left upon the Empire. His exertions as Emperor

were all directed to the aggrandizement of his own family, and

with not much lasting result. In his own kingdom of Bohemia he

ruled with better effect. He made its capital, Prague, an

important city, adorning it with noble buildings and founding

in it the most ancient of German universities. This University

of Prague soon sowed seeds from which sprang the first

movement of religious reformation in Germany.

Charles IV., dying in 1378, was succeeded by his son Wenzel,

or Wenceslaus, on the imperial throne as well as the Bohemian.

Wenceslaus neglected both the Empire and the Kingdom, and the

confusion of things in Germany grew worse. Some of the

principal cities continued to secure considerable freedom and

prosperity for themselves, by the combined efforts of their

leagues; but everywhere else great disorder and oppression

prevailed. It was at this time that the Swabian towns, to the

number of forty-one, formed a union and waged unsuccessful war

with a league which the nobles entered into against them. They

were defeated, and crushingly dealt with by the Emperor.

In 1400 Wenceslaus was deposed and Rupert of the Palatinate

was elected, producing another civil war, and reducing the

imperial government to a complete nullity. Rupert died in

1410, and, after some contention, Sigmund, or Sigismund,

brother of Wenceslaus, was raised to the throne. He was

Margrave of Brandenburg and King of Hungary, and would become

King of Bohemia when Wenceslaus died.

The Reformation of Huss in Bohemia.

Bohemia was about to become the scene of an extraordinary

religious agitation, which John Huss, teacher and preacher in

the new but already famous University of Prague, was beginning

to stir. Huss, who drew more or less of his inspiration from

Wyclif, anticipated Luther in the boldness of his attacks upon

iniquities in the Church. In his case as in Luther's, the

abomination which he could not endure was the sale of papal

indulgences; and it was by his denunciation of that impious

fraud that he drew on himself the deadly wrath of the Roman

hierarchy. He was summoned before the great Council of the

Church which opened at Constance in 1414. He obeyed the

summons and went to the Council, bearing a safe-conduct from

the Emperor which pledged protection to him until he returned.

Notwithstanding this imperial pledge, he was imprisoned for

seven months at Constance, and was then impatiently listened

to and condemned to the stake. On the 6th of July, 1415, he

was burned. In the following May, his friend and disciple,

Jerome of Prague, suffered the same martyrdom. The Emperor,

Sigismund, blustered a little at the insolent violation of his

safe-conduct; but dared do nothing to make it effective.

In Bohemia, the excitement produced by these outrages was

universal. The whole nation seemed to rise, in the first

wide-spread aggressive popular revolt that the Church of Rome

had yet been called upon to encounter. In 1419 there was an

armed assembly of 40,000 men, on a mountain which they called

Tabor, who placed themselves under the leadership of John

Ziska, a nobleman, one of Huss' friends. The followers of

Ziska soon displayed a violence of temper and a radicalism

which repelled the more moderate Hussites, or Reformers, and

two parties appeared, one known as the Taborites, the other as

the Calixtines, or Utraquists. The former insisted on entire

separation from the Church of Rome; the latter confined their

demands to four reforms, namely: Free preaching of the Word of

God; the giving of the Eucharistic cup to the laity; the

taking of secular powers and of worldly goods from the clergy;

the enforcing of Christian discipline by all authorities. So much

stress was laid by the Calixtines on their claim to the

chalice or cup (communion in both kinds) that it gave them

their name. The breach between these parties widened until

they were as hostile to each other as to the Catholics, and

the Bohemian reform movement was ruined in the end by their

division.

In 1419, the deposed Emperor Wenceslaus, who had still

retained his kingdom of Bohemia, was murdered in his palace,

at Prague. His brother, the Emperor Sigismund, was his heir;

but the Hussites refused the crown to him, and resisted his

pretensions with arms. This added a political conflict to the

religious one, and Bohemia was afflicted with a frightful

civil war for fifteen years. Ziska fortified mount Tabor and

took possession of Prague. The Emperor and the Pope allied

themselves, to crush an insurrection which was aimed against

both. They summoned Christendom to a new crusade, and

Sigismund led 100,000 men against Prague, in 1420. Ziska met

him and defeated him, and drove him, with his crusaders, from

the country. The Taborites were now maddened by their success,

and raged over the land, destroying convents and burning

priests. Their doctrines, moreover, began to take on a

socialistic and republican character, threatening property in

general and questioning monarchy, too. The well-to-do and

conservative classes were more and more repelled from them.

{1045}

In 1421 a second crusading army, 200,000 strong, invaded

Bohemia and was scattered like chaff by Ziska (now blind) and

his peasant soldiery. The next year they defeated the Emperor

again; but in 1424 Ziska died, and a priest called Procopius

the Great took his place. Under their new leader, the fierce

Taborites were as invincible as they had been under Ziska.

They routed an imperial army in 1426, and then carried the war

into Austria and Silesia, committing fearful ravages. Still

another crusade was set in motion against them by the Pope,

and still another disastrous failure was made of it. Then

Germany again suffered a more frightful visitation from the

vengeful Hussites than before. Towns and villages were

destroyed by hundreds, and wide tracks of ruin and death were

marked on the face of the land, to its very center. Once more,

and for the last time, in 1431, the Germans rallied a great force

to retaliate these attacks, and they met defeat, as in all

previous encounters, but more completely than ever before.

Then the Pope and the Emperor gave up hope of putting down the

indomitable revolutionists by force, and opened parleyings.

The Pope called a council at Basel for the discussion of

questions with the Hussites, and, finally, in 1433, their

moderate party was prevailed upon to accept a compromise which

really conceded nothing to them except the use of the cup in

the communion. The Taborites refused the terms, and the two

parties grappled each other in a fierce struggle for the

control of the state. But the extremists had lost much of

their old strength, and the Utraquists vanquished them in a

decisive battle at Lipan, in May, 1434. Two years later

Sigismund was formally acknowledged King of Bohemia and

received in Prague. In 1437 he died. His son-in-law, Albert of

Austria, who succeeded him, lived but two years, and the heir

to the throne then was a son, Ladislaus, born after his

father's death. This left Bohemia in a state of great

confusion and disorder for several years, until a strong man,

George Podiebrad, acquired the control of affairs.

Meantime, the Utraquists had organized a National Church of

Bohemia, considerably divergent from Rome. It failed to

satisfy the deeper religious feelings that were widely current

among the Bohemians in that age, and there grew up a sect

which took the name of "Unitas Fratrum," or "Unity of the

Brethren," but which afterwards became incorrectly known as

the Moravian Brethren. This sect, still existing, has borne an

important part in the missionary history of the Christian

world.

The Papacy.--The Great Schism.

The Papacy, at the time of its conflict with the Hussites, in

Bohemia, was rapidly sinking to that lowest level of

debasement which it reached in the later part of the fifteenth

century. Its state was not yet so abhorrent as it came to be

under the Borgias; but it had been brought even more into

contempt, perhaps, by the divisions and contentions of "the

Great Schism." The so-called "Babylonish Captivity" of the

series of popes who resided for seventy years at Avignon

(1305-1376), and who were under French influence, had been

humiliating to the Church; but the schism which immediately

followed (1378-1417), when a succession of rival popes, or

popes and antipopes, thundered anathemas and excommunications

at one another, from Rome and from Avignon, was even more

scandalous and shameful. Christendom was divided by the

quarrel. France, Spain, Scotland, and some lesser states, gave

their allegiance to the pope at Avignon; England, Germany and

the northern kingdoms adhered to the pope at Rome. In 1402, an

attempt to heal the schism was made by a general Council of

the Church convened at Pisa. It decreed the deposition of both

the contending pontiffs, and elected a third; but its

authority was not recognized, and the confusion of the Church

was only made worse by bringing three popes into the quarrel,

instead of two. Twelve years later, another Council, held at

Constance,--the same which burned Huss,--had more success.

Europe had now grown so tired of the scandal, and so disgusted

with the three pretenders to spiritual supremacy, that the

action of the Council was backed by public opinion, and they

were suppressed. A fourth pope, Martin V., whom the Council

then seated in the chair of St. Peter (1417), was universally

acknowledged, and the Great Schism was at an end.

But other scandals and abuses in the Church, which public

opinion in Europe had already begun to cry loudly against,

were untouched by these Councils. A subsequent Council at

Basel, which met in 1431, attempted some restraints upon papal

extortion (ignoring the more serious moral evils that claimed

attention); but was utterly beaten in the conflict with Pope

Eugenius IV., which this action brought on, and its decrees

lost all effect. So the religious autocracy at Rome, sinking

stage by stage below the foulest secular courts of the time,

continued without check to insult and outrage, more and more,

the piety, the common sense, and the decent feeling of

Christendom, until the habit of reverence was quite worn out

in the minds of men throughout the better half of Europe.

Rome and the last Tribune, Rienzi.

The city of Rome had fallen from all greatness of its own when

it came to be dependent on the fortunes of the popes. Their

departure to Avignon had reduced it to a lamentable state.

They took with them, in reality, the sustenance of the city;

for it lived, in the main, on the revenues of the Papacy, and

knew little of commerce beyond the profitable traffic in

indulgences, absolutions, benefices, relics and papal

blessings, which went to Avignon with the head of the Church.

Authority, too, departed with the Pope, and the wretched city

was given up to anarchy almost uncontrolled. A number of

powerful families--the Colonna, the Orsini, and

others--perpetually at strife with one another, fought out

their feuds in the streets, and abused and oppressed their

neighbors with impunity. Their houses were impregnable

castles, and their retainers were a formidable army.

{1046}

It was while this state of things was at its worst that the

famous Cola di Rienzi, "last of the Tribunes," accomplished a

revolution which was short-lived but extraordinary. He roused

the people to action against their oppressors and the

disturbers of their peace. He appealed to them to restore the

republican institutions of ancient Rome, and when they

responded, in 1347, by conferring on him the title and

authority of a Tribune, he actually succeeded in expelling the

turbulent nobles, or reducing them to submission, and

established in Rome, for a little time, what he called "the

Good Estate." But his head was quickly turned by his success;

he was inflated with conceit and vanity; he became arrogant

and despotic; the people tired of him, and after a few months

of rule he was driven from Rome. In 1354 he came back as a

Senator, appointed by the Pope, who thought to use him for the

restoration of papal authority; but his influence was gone,

and he was slain by a-riotous mob.

The return of the Pope to Rome in 1376 was an event so long

and ardently desired by the Roman people that they submitted

themselves eagerly to his government. But his sovereignty over

the States of the Church was substantially lost, and the

regaining of it was the principal object of the exertions of

the popes for a long subsequent period.

The Two Sicilies.

In Southern Italy and Sicily, since the fall of the

Hohenstaufens (1268), the times had been continuously evil.

The rule of the French conqueror, Charles of Anjou, was hard

and unmerciful, and the power he established became

threatening to the Papacy, which gave the kingdom to him. In

1282, Sicily freed itself, by the savage massacre of Frenchmen

which bears the name of the Sicilian Vespers. The King of

Aragon, Peter III., whose queen was the Hohenstaufen heiress,

supported the insurrection promptly and vigorously, took

possession of the island, and was recognized by the people as

their king. A war of twenty years' duration ensued. Both

Charles and Peter died and their sons continued the battle. In

the end, the Angevin house held the mainland, as a separate

kingdom, with Naples for its capital, and a younger branch of

the royal family of Aragon reigned in the island. But both

sovereigns called themselves Kings of Sicily, so that History,

ever since, has been forced to speak puzzlingly of "Two

Sicilies." For convenience it seems best to distinguish them

by calling one the kingdom of Naples and the other the kingdom

of Sicily. On the Neapolitan throne there came one estimable

prince, in Robert, who reigned from 1309 to 1343, and who was

a friend of peace and a patron of arts and letters. But after

him the throne was befouled by crimes and vices, and the

kingdom was made miserable by civil wars. His grand-daughter

Joanna, or Jane, succeeded him. Robert's elder brother

Caribert had become King of Hungary, and Joanna now married

one of that king's sons--her cousin Andrew. At the end of two

years he was murdered (1345) and the queen, a notoriously

vicious woman, was accused of the crime. Andrew's brother,

Louis, who had succeeded to the throne in Hungary, invaded

Naples to avenge his death, and Joanna was driven to flight.

The country then suffered from the worst form of civil war--a

war carried on by the hireling ruffians of the "free

companies" who roamed about Italy in that age, selling their

swords to the highest bidders. In 1351 a peace was brought

about which restored Joanna to the throne. The Hungarian

King's son, known as Charles of Durazzo, was her recognized

heir, but she saw fit to disinherit him and adopt Louis, of

the Second House of Anjou, brother of Charles V. in France.

Charles of Durazzo invaded Naples, took the queen prisoner and

put her to death. Louis of Anjou attempted to displace him, but

failed. In 1383 Louis died, leaving his claims to his son.

Charles of Durazzo was called to Hungary, after a time, to

take the crown of that kingdom, and left his young son,

Ladislaus, on the Neapolitan throne. The Angevin claimant,

Louis II., was then called in by his partisans, and civil war

was renewed for years. When Ladislaus reached manhood he

succeeded in expelling Louis, and he held the kingdom until

his death, in 1414. He was succeeded by his sister, Joanna

II., who proved to be as wicked and dissolute a woman as her

predecessor of the same name. She incurred the enmity of the

Pope, who persuaded Louis III., son of Louis II., to renew the

claims of his house. The most renowned "condottiere" (or

military contractor, as the term might be translated), of the

day, Atteridolo Sforza, was engaged to make war on Queen

Joanna in the interest of Louis. On her side she obtained a

champion by promising her dominions to Alfonso V., of Aragon

and Sicily. The struggle went on for years, with varying

fortunes. The fickle and treacherous Joanna revoked her

adoption of Alfonso, after a time, and made Louis her heir.

When Louis died, she bequeathed her crown to his brother René,

Duke of Lorraine. Her death occurred in 1435, but still the

war continued, and nearly all Italy was involved in it, taking

one side or the other. Alfonso succeeded at last (1442) in

establishing himself at Naples, and René practically gave up

the contest, although he kept the title of King of Naples. He

was the father of the famous English Queen Margaret of Anjou,

who fought for her weak-minded husband and her son in the Wars

of the Roses.

While the Neapolitan kingdom was passing through these endless

miseries of anarchy, civil war, and evil government, the

Sicilian kingdom enjoyed a more peaceful and prosperous

existence. The crown, briefly held by a cadet branch of the

House of Aragon, was soon reunited to that of Aragon; and

under Alfonso, as we have seen, it was once more joined with

that of Naples, in a "Kingdom of the Two Sicilies." But both

these unions were dissolved on the death of Alfonso, who

bequeathed Aragon and Sicily to his legitimate heir, and

Naples to a bastard son.

The Despots of Northern Italy.

In Northern Italy a great change in the political state of

many among the formerly free commonwealths had been going on

since the thirteenth century. The experience of the Greek

city-republics had been repeated in them. In one way and

another, they had fallen under the domination of powerful

families, who had established a despotic rule over them,

sometimes gathering several cities and their surrounding

territory into a considerable dominion, and obtaining from the

Emperor or the Pope a formally conferred and hereditary title.

Thus the Visconti had established themselves at Milan, and had

become a ducal house. After a few generations they gave way to

the military adventurer, Francesco Sforza, son of the Sforza

who made war for Louis III. of Anjou on Joanna II. of Naples.

In Verona, the Della Scala family reigned for a time, until

Venice overcame them; at Modena and Ferrara, the Estes; at

Mantua, the Gonzagas; at Padua, the Carraras.

{1047}

The Italian Republics.

In other cities, the political changes were of a different

character. Venice, which grew rich and powerful with

extraordinary rapidity, was tyrannically governed by a haughty

and exclusive aristocracy. In commerce and in wealth she

surpassed all her rivals, and her affairs were more shrewdly

conducted. She held large possessions in the East, and she was

acquiring an extensive dominion on the Italian mainland. The

Genoese, who were the most formidable competitors of Venice in

commerce, preserved their democracy, but at some serious

expense to the administrative efficiency of their government.

They were troubled by a nobility which could only be turbulent

and could not control. They fought a desperate but losing

fight with the Venetians, and were several times in subjection

to the dukes of Milan and the kings of France. Pisa, which had

led both Venice and Genoa in the commercial race at the

beginning, was ruined by her wars with the latter, and with

Florence, and sank, in the fourteenth century, under the rule

of the Visconti, who sold their rights to the Florentines.

Florence.

The wonderful Florentine republic was the one which preserved

its independence under popular institutions the longest, and

in which they bore the most splendid fruit. For a period that

began in the later part of the thirteenth century, the

government of Florence was so radically democratic that the

nobles (grandi) were made ineligible to office, and could only

qualify themselves for election to any place in the magistracy

by abandoning their order and engaging in the labor of some

craft or art. The vocations of skilled industry were all

organized in gilds, called Arti, and were divided into two

classes, one representing what were recognized as the superior

arts (Arti Major, embracing professional and mercantile callings,

with some others); the other including the commoner

industries, known as the Arti Minori. From the heads, or

Priors, of the Arti were chosen a Signory, changed every two

months, which was entrusted with the government of the

republic. This popular constitution was maintained in its

essential features through the better part of a century, but

with continual resistance and disturbance from the excluded

nobles, on one side, and from the common laboring people, on

the other, who belonged to no art-gild and who, therefore,

were excluded likewise from participation in political

affairs. Between these two upper and lower discontents, the

bourgeois constitution gave way at last. The mob got control

for a time; but only, as always happens, to bring about a

reactionary revolution, which placed an oligarchy in power;

and the oligarchy made smooth the way for a single family of

great wealth and popular gifts and graces to rise to supremacy

in the state. This was the renowned family which began to rule

in Florence in 1435, when Cosimo de' Medici entered on the

office of Gonfaloniere. The Medici were not despots, of the

class of the Visconti, or the Sforzas, or the Estes. They

governed under the old constitutional forms, with not much

violation of anything except the spirit of them. They acquired

no princely title, until the late, declining days of the

house. Their power rested on influence and prestige, at first,

and finally on habit. They developed, and enlisted in their

own support, as something reflected from themselves, the pride

of the city in itself,--in its magnificence,--in its great and

liberal wealth,--in its patronage of letters and art,--in its

fame abroad and the admiration with which men looked upon it.

Through all the political changes in Florence there ran an

unending war of factions, the bitterest and most inveterate in

history. The control of the city belonged naturally to the

Guelfs, for it was the head and front of the Guelfic party in

Italy. "Without Florence," says one historian, "there would

have been no Guelfs." But neither party scrupled to call armed

help from the outside into its quarrels, and the Ghibellines

were able, nearly as often as the Guelfs, to drive their

opponents from the city. For the ascendancy of one faction

meant commonly the flight or expulsion of every man in the

other who had importance enough to be noticed. It was thus

that Dante, an ardent Ghibelline, became an exile from his

beloved Florence during the later years of his life. But the

strife of Guelfs with Ghibellines did not suffice for the

partisan rancor of the Florentines, and they complicated it

with another split of factions, which bore the names of the

Bianchi and the Neri, 01' the Whites and the Blacks.

For two or three centuries the annals of Florence are naught,

one thinks in reading them, but an unbroken tale of strife

within, or war without--of tumult, riot, revolution,

disorder. And yet, underneath, there is an amazing story to be

found, of thrift, industry, commerce, prosperity, wealth, on

one side, and of the sublimest genius, on another, giving

itself, in pure devotion, to poetry and art. The contradiction

of circumstances seems irreconcilable to our modern

experience, and we have to seek an explanation of it in the

very different conditions of mediæval life. It is with

certainty a fact that Florence, in its democratic time, was

phenomenal in genius, and in richness of life,--in prosperity

both material and intellectual; and it is reasonable to credit

to that time the planting and the growing of fruits which

ripened surpassingly in the Medicean age.

The Ottomans and the Eastern Empire.

So little occasion has arisen for any mention of the lingering

Eastern Empire, since Michael Palæologus, the Greek, recovered

Constantinople from the Franks (1261), that its existence

might easily be forgotten. It had no importance until it fell,

and then it loomed large again, in history, not only by the

tragic impression of its fall upon the imaginations of men,

but by the potent consequences of it.

For nearly two hundred years, the successors of Palæologus,

still calling themselves "Emperors of the Romans," and ruling

a little Thracian and Macedonian corner of the old dominion of

the Eastern Cæsars, struggled with a new race of Turks, who

had followed the Seljuk horde out of the same Central Asian

region. One of the first known leaders of this tribe was

Osman, or Othman, after whom they are sometimes called

Osmanlis, but more frequently Ottoman Turks. They appeared in

Asia Minor about the middle of the thirteenth century,

attacking both Christian and Mahometan states, and gradually

extending their conquest over the whole. About the end of the

first century of their career, they passed the straits and won

a footing in Europe. In 1361, they took Hadrianople and made

it their capital. Their sultan at this time was Amurath.

{1048}

As yet, they did not attack Constantinople. The city itself

was too strong in its fortifications; but beyond the walls of

the capital there was no strength in the little fragment of

Empire that remained. It appealed vainly to Western Europe for

help. It sought to make terms with the Church of Rome. Nothing

saved it for the moment but the evident disposition of the

Turk to regard it as fruit which would drop to his hand in due

time, and which he might safely leave waiting while he turned

his arms against its more formidable neighbors. He contented

himself with exacting tribute from the emperors, and

humiliating them by commands which they dared not disobey. In

the Servians, the Bosnians, and the Bulgarians, Amurath found

worthier foes. He took Sophia, their principal city, from the

latter, in 1382; in 1389 he defeated the two former nations in

the great battle of Kossova. At the moment of victory he was

assassinated, and his son Bajazet mounted the Ottoman throne.

The latter, at Nicopolis (1396), overwhelmed and destroyed the

one army which Western Europe sent to oppose the conquering

march of his terrible race. Six years later, he himself was

vanquished and taken prisoner in Asia by a still more terrible

conqueror,--the fiendish Timour or Tamerlane, then scourging

the eastern Continent. For some years the Turks were paralyzed

by a disputed succession; but under Amurath II., who came to

the throne in 1421, their advance was resumed, and in a few

years more their long combat with the Hungarians began.

Hungary and the Turks.

The original line of kings of Hungary having died out in 1301,

the influence of the Pope, who claimed the kingdom as a fief

of the papal see, secured the election to the throne of

Charles Robert, or Caribert, of the Naples branch of the House

of Anjou. He and his son Louis, called the Great, raised the

kingdom to notable importance and power. Louis added the crown

of Poland to that of Hungary, and on his death, leaving two

daughters, the Polish crown passed to the husband of one and

the Hungarian crown to the husband of the other. This latter

was Sigismund of Luxemburg, who afterwards became Emperor, and

also King of Bohemia. Under Sigismund, Hungary was threatened

on one side by the Turks, and ravaged on the other by the

Hussites of Bohemia. He was succeeded (1437) by his

son-in-law, Albert of Austria, who lived only two years, and

the latter was followed by Wladislaus, King of Poland; who

again united the two crowns, though at the cost of a

distracting civil war with partisans of the infant son of

Albert. It was in the reign of this prince that the Turks

began their obstinate attacks on Hungary, and thenceforth, for

two centuries and more, that afflicted country served

Christendom as a battered bulwark which the new warriors of

Islam could beat and disfigure but could not break down. The

hero of these first Hungarian wars with the Turks was John

Huniades, or Hunyady, a Wallachian, who fought them with

success until a peace was concluded in 1444. But King

Wladislaus was persuaded the same year by a papal agent to

break the treaty and to lead an expedition against the enemy's

lines. The result was a calamitous defeat, the death of the

king, and the almost total destruction of his army. Huniades

now became regent of the kingdom, during the minority of the

late King Albert's young son, Ladislaus.

He suffered one serious defeat at the hands of the Turks, but

avenged it again and again, with help from an army of

volunteers raised in all parts of Europe by the exertions of a

zealous monk named Capistrano. When Huniades died, in 1456,

his enemies already controlled the worthless young king,

Ladislaus, and the latter pursued him in his grave with

denunciations as a traitor and a villain. In 1458, Ladislaus

died, and Mathias, a son of Huniades, was elected king. After

he had settled himself securely upon the throne, Mathias

turned his arms, not against the Turks, but against the

Hussites of Bohemia, in an attempt to wrest the crown of that

kingdom from George Podiebrad.

The Fall of Constantinople.

Meantime, the Turkish Sultan, Mohammed II., had accomplished

the capture of Constantinople and brought the venerable Empire

of the East--Roman, Greek, or Byzantine, as we choose to name

it--to an end. He was challenged to the undertaking by the

folly of the last Emperor, Constantine Palæologus, who

threatened to support a pretender to Mohammed's throne. The

latter began serious preparations at once for a siege of the

long coveted city, and opened his attack in April, 1453. The

Greeks, even in that hour of common danger, were too hotly

engaged in a religious quarrel to act defensively together.

Their last preceding emperor had gone personally to the

Council of the Western Church, at Florence, in 1439, with some

of the bishops of the Greek Church, and had arranged for the

submission of the latter to Rome, as a means of procuring help

from Catholic Europe against the Turks. His successor,

Constantine, adhered to this engagement, professed the

Catholic faith and observed the Catholic ritual. His subjects

in general repudiated the imperial contract with scorn, and

avowedly preferred a Turkish master to a Roman shepherd. Hence

they took little part in the defense of the city. Constantine,

with the small force at his command, fought the host of

besiegers with noble courage and obstinacy for seven weeks,

receiving a little succor from the Genoese, but from no other

quarter. On the 29th of May the walls were carried by storm;

the Emperor fell, fighting bravely to the last; and the Turks

became masters of the city of Constantine. There was no

extensive massacre of the inhabitants; the city was given up

to pillage, but not to destruction, for the conqueror intended

to make it his capital. A number of fugitives had escaped,

before, or during the siege, and made their way into Italy and

other parts of Europe, carrying an influence which was

importantly felt, as we shall presently see; but 60,000

captives, men, women and children, were sold into slavery and

scattered throughout the Ottoman Empire.

Greece and most of the islands of the Ægean soon shared the

fate of Constantinople, and the subjugation of Servia and

Bosnia was made complete. Mohammed was even threatening Italy

when he died, in 1481.

{1049}

Renaissance.

We have now come, in our hasty survey of European history, to

the stretch of time within which historians have quite

generally agreed to place the ending of the state of things

characteristic of the Middle Ages, and the beginning of the

changed conditions and the different spirit that belong to the

modern life of the civilized world. The transition in European

society from mediæval to modern ways, feelings, and thoughts

has been called Renaissance, or new birth; but the figure

under which this places the conception before one's mind does

not seem to be really a happy one. There was no birth of

anything new in the nature of the generations of men who

passed through that change, nor in the societies which they

formed. What occurred to make changes in both was an

expansion, a liberation, an enlightenment--an opening of eyes,

and of ears, and of inner senses and sensibilities. There was no

time and no place that can be marked at which this began; and

there is no cause nor chain of causes to which it can be

traced. We have found signs of its coming, here and there, in

one token of movement and another, all the way through later

mediæval times--at least since the first Crusades. In the

thirteenth century there was a wonderful quickening of all the

many processes which made it up. In the fourteenth century

they were checked; but still they went on. In the fifteenth

they revived with greater energy than before; and in the

sixteenth they rose to their climax in intensity and effect.

That which took place in European society was not a

re-naissance so much as the re-wakening of men to a day-light

existence, after a thousand years of sunless

night,--moonlighted at the best. The truest descriptive figure

is that which represents these preludes to our modern age as a

morning dawn and daybreak.

Probably foremost among the causes of the change in Western

Europe from the mediæval to the modern state, we must place

those influences that extinguished the disorganizing forces in

feudalism. Habits and forms of the feudal arrangement remained

troublesome in society, as they do in some measure to the

present day; but feudalism as a system of social disorder and

disintegration was by this time cleared away. We have noted in

passing some of the undermining agencies by which it was

destroyed: the crusading movements; the growth and

enfranchisement of cities; the spread of commerce; the rise of

a middle class; the study of Roman law; the consequent increase

of royal authority in France,--all these were among the causes

of its decline. But possibly none among them wrought such

quick and deadly harm to feudalism as the introduction of

gunpowder and fire-arms in war, which occurred in the

fourteenth century. When his new weapons placed the

foot-soldier on a fairly even footing in battle with the

mailed and mounted knight, the feudal military organization of

society was ruined beyond remedy. The changed conditions of

warfare made trained armies, and therefore standing armies, a

necessity; standing armies implied centralized authority; with

centralized authority the feudal condition disappeared.

If these agencies in the generating of the new movement of

civilization which we call Modern are placed before the

subtler and more powerful influence of the printing press, it

is because they had to do a certain work in the world before

the printing press could be an efficient educator. Some

beginning of a public, in our modern sense, required to be

created, for letters to act upon. Until that came about, the

copyists of the monasteries and of the few palace libraries

existing were more than sufficient to satisfy all demands for

the multiplication of ancient writings or the publication of

new ones. The printer, if he had existed, would have starved

for want of employment. He would have lacked material,

moreover, to work upon; for it was the rediscovery of a great

ancient literature which made him busy when he came.

Invention of Printing.

The preparation of Europe for an effective use of the art of

printing may be said to have begun in the twelfth and

thirteenth centuries, when the great universities of Paris,

Bologna, Naples, Padua, Modena, and others, came into

existence, to be centers of intellectual

irritation--disputation--challenge--groping inquiry. But it

was not until the fourteenth century, when the labors and the

influence of Petrarch and other scholars and men of genius

roused interest in the forgotten literature of ancient Rome

and Greece, that the craving and seeking for books grew

considerable. Scholars and pretended scholars from the Greek

Empire then began to find employment, in Italy more

especially, as teachers of the Greek language, and a market

was opened for manuscripts of the older Greek writings, which

brought many precious ones to light, after long burial, and

multiplied copies of them. From Italy, this revival of classic

learning crept westward and northward somewhat slowly, but it

went steadily on, and the book as a commodity in the commerce

of the world rose year by year in importance, until the

printer came forward, about the middle of the fifteenth

century, to make it abundant and cheap.

Whether John Gutenberg, at Mentz, in 1454, or Laurent Coster,

at Haarlem, twenty years earlier, executed the first printing

with movable types, is a question of small importance, except

as a question of justice between the two possible inventors,

in awarding a great fame which belongs to one or both. The

grand fact is, that thought and knowledge took wings from that

sublime invention, and ideas were spread among men with a

swift diffusion that the world had never dreamed of before.

The slow wakening that had gone on for two centuries became

suddenly so quick that scarcely more than fifty years, from

the printing of the first Bible, sufficed to inoculate half of

Europe with the independent thinking of a few boldly

enlightened men.

{1050}

The Greek Revival.

If Gutenberg's printing of Pope Nicholas' letter of

indulgence, in 1454, was really the first achievement of the

new-born art, then it followed by a single year the event

commonly fixed upon for the dating of our Modern Era, and it

derived much of its earliest importance indirectly from that

event. For the fall of Constantinople, in 1453, was preceded

and followed by a flight of Greeks to Western Europe, bearing

such treasures as they could save from the Turks. Happily

those treasures included precious manuscripts; and among the

fugitives was no small number of educated Greeks, who became

teachers of their language in the West. Thus teaching and text

were offered at the moment when the printing press stood ready

to make a common gift of them to every hungering student. This

opened the second of the three stages which the late John

Addington Symonds defined in the history of scholarship during

the Renaissance: "The first is the age of passionate desire;

Petrarch poring over a Homer he could not understand, and

Boccaccio in his maturity learning Greek, in order that he

might drink from the well-head of poetic inspiration, are the

heroes of this period. They inspired the Italians with a

thirst for antique culture. Next comes the age of acquisition

and of libraries. Nicholas V., who founded the Vatican Library

in 1453, Cosmo de' Medici, who began the Medicean Collection a

little earlier, and Poggio Bracciolani, who ransacked all the

cities and convents of Europe for manuscripts, together with

the teachers of Greek, who in the first half of the fifteenth

century escaped from Constantinople with precious freights of

classic literature, are the heroes of this second period."

"Then came the third age of scholarship--the age of the

critics, philologers, and printers. ... Florence, Venice,

Basle, and Paris groaned with printing presses. The Aldi, the

Stephani, and Froben, toiled by night and day, employing

scores of scholars, men of supreme devotion and of mighty

brain, whose work it was to ascertain the right reading of

sentences, to accentuate, to punctuate, to commit to the

press, and to place beyond the reach of monkish hatred or of

envious time, that everlasting solace of humanity which exists

in the classics. All subsequent achievements in the field of

scholarship sink into insignificance beside the labours of

these men, who needed genius, enthusiasm, and the sympathy of

Europe for the accomplishment of their titanic task. Virgil

was printed in 1470, Homer in 1488, Aristotle in 1498, Plato

in 1512. They then became the inalienable heritage of mankind.

... This third age in the history of the Renaissance

Scholarship may be said to have reached its climax in Erasmus

[1465-1536]; for by this time Italy had handed on the torch

of learning to the northern nations" (Symonds).

Art had already had its new birth in Italy; but it shared with

everything spiritual and intellectual the wonderful quickening

of the age, and produced the great masters of the fifteenth

and sixteenth centuries: Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci,

Raphael, Titian, in Italy, the Brothers Van Eyck in Flanders,

Holbein and Dürer, in Germany, and the host of their compeers

in that astonishing age of artistic genius.

Portuguese Explorations.

A ruder and more practical direction in which the spirit of

the age manifested itself conspicuously and with prodigious

results was that of exploring navigation, to penetrate the

unknown regions of the globe and find their secrets out. But,

strangely, it was none of the older maritime and commercial

peoples who led the way in this: neither the Venetians, nor

the Genoese, nor the Catalans, nor the Flemings, nor the Hansa

Leaguers, nor the English, were early in the search for new

countries and new routes of trade. The grand exploit of

"business enterprise" in the fifteenth century, which changed

the face of commerce throughout the world, was left to be

performed by the Portuguese, whose prior commercial experience

was as slight as that of any people in Europe. And it was one

great man among them, a younger son in their royal family,

Prince Henry, known to later times as "the Navigator," who

woke the spirit of exploration in them and pushed them to the

achievement which placed Portugal, for a time, at the head of

the maritime states. Beginning in 1434, Prince Henry sent

expedition following expedition down the western coast of

Africa, searching for the southern extremity of the continent,

and a way round it to the eastward--to the Indies, the goal of

commercial ambition then and long after. In our own day it

seems an easy thing to sail down the African coast to the

Cape; but it was not easy in the middle of the fifteenth

century; and when Prince Henry died, in 1460, his ships had

only reached the mouth of the Gambia, or a little way beyond

it. His countrymen had grown interested, however, in the

pursuit which he began, and expeditions were continued, not

eagerly but at intervals, until Bartolomew Diaz, in 1486,

rounded the southern point of the continent without knowing

it, and Vasco da Gama, in 1497, passed beyond, and sailed to

the coast of India.

Discovery of America.

Five years before this, Columbus, in the service of Ferdinand

and Isabella of Spain, had made the more venturesome voyage

westward, and had found the New World of America. That the

fruits of that surpassing discovery fell to Spain, is one of

the happenings of history which one need not try to explain;

since (if we except the Catalans among them) there were no

people in Europe less inclined to ocean adventure than the

Spaniards. But they had just finished the conquest of the

Moors; their energies, long exercised in that struggle,

demanded some new outlet, and the Genoese navigator, seeking

money and ships, and baffled in all more promising lands, came

to them at the right moment for a favorable hearing. So

Castile won the amazing prize of adventure, which seems to

have belonged by more natural right to Genoa, or Venice, or

Bruges, or Lubeck, or Bristol.

The immediate material effects of the finding of the new way

to the Asiatic side of the world were far more important than

the effects of the discovery of America, and they were

promptly felt. No sooner had the Portuguese secured their

footing in the eastern seas, and on the route thither, which

they proceeded vigorously to do, than the commerce of Europe

with that rich region of spices and silks, and curious

luxuries which Europe loved, abandoned its ancient channels

and ran quickly into the new one. There were several strong

reasons for this: (1) the carriage of goods by the longer

ocean route was cheaper than by caravan routes to the

Mediterranean; (2) the pestilent Moorish pirates of the

Barbary Coast were escaped; (3) European merchants found heavy

advantages in dealing directly with the East instead of

trading at second hand through Arabs and Turks. So the

commerce of the Indies fled suddenly away from the

Mediterranean to the Atlantic; fled from Venice, from Genoa,

from Marseilles, from Barcelona, from Constantinople, from

Alexandria; fled, too, from many cities of the arrogant Hanse

league in the North, which had learned the old ways of traffic

and were slow to catch the idea of a possible change. At the

outset of the rearrangement of trade, the Portuguese won and

held, for a time, the first handling of East Indian

commodities, while Dutch, English and German

traders--especially the first named--met them at Lisbon and

took their wares for distribution through central and northern

Europe. But, in no long time, the Dutch and English went to

India on their own account, and ousted the Portuguese from

their profitable monopoly.

{1051}

Commercially, the discovery of America had little effect on

Europe for a century or two. Politically, it had vast

consequences in the sixteenth century, which came, in the

main, from the power and prestige that accrued to Spain. But

perhaps its most important effects were those moral and

intellectual ones which may be attributed to the sudden,

surprising enlargement of the geographical horizon of men. The

lifting of the curtain of mystery which had hung so long

between two halves of the world must have compelled every man,

who thought at all, to suspect that other curtains of mystery

might be hiding facts as simple and substantial, waiting for

their Columbus to disclose them; and so the bondage of the

mediæval mind to that cowardice of superstition which fears

inquiry, must surely have been greatly loosened by the

startling event. But the Spaniards, who rushed to the

possession of the new-found world, showed small signs of any

such effect upon their minds; and perhaps it was the greedy

thought of their possession which excluded it.

Nationalization of Spain.

The Spaniards were one of half-a-dozen peoples in Western

Europe who had just arrived, in this fifteenth century, at a

fairly consolidated nationality, and were prepared, for the

first time in their history, to act with something like

organic unity in the affairs of the world. It was one of the

singular birth-marks of the new era in history, that so many

nations passed from the inchoate to the definite form at so

nearly the same time. The marriage of Isabella of Castile to

Ferdinand of Aragon, in 1469, effected a permanent union of

the two crowns, and a substantial incorporation of the greater

part of the Spanish peninsula into a single strong kingdom,

made yet stronger in 1491 by the conquest of Grenada and

subjugation of the last of the Spanish Moors.

Louis XI. and the Nationalizing of France.

The nationalizing of France had been a simultaneous but quite

different process. From the miserably downfallen and divided

state in which it was left by the Hundred Years War, it was

raised by a singular king, who employed strange, ignoble

methods, but employed them with remarkable success. This was

Louis XI., who owes to Sir Walter Scott's romance of "Quentin

Durward" an introduction to common fame which he could hardly

have secured otherwise; since popular attention is not often

drawn to the kind of cunning and hidden work in politics which

he did.

Louis XI., on coming to the throne in 1461, found himself

surrounded by a state of things which seemed much like a

revival of the feudal state at its worst, when Philip Augustus

and Louis IX. had to deal with great vassals who rivalled or

overtopped them in power. The reckless granting of appanages

to children of the royal family had raised up a new group of

nobles, too powerful and too proud to be loyal and obedient

subjects of the monarchy. At the head of them was the Duke of

Burgundy, whose splendid dominion, extended by marriage over

most of the Netherlands, raised him to a place among the

greater princes of Europe, and who quite outshone the King of

France in everything but the royal title. It was impossible,

under the circumstances, for the crown to establish its

supremacy over these powerful lords by means direct and open.

The craft and dishonesty of Louis found methods more

effectual. He cajoled, beguiled, betrayed and cheated his

antagonists, one by one. He played the selfishness and

ambitions of each against the others, and he skilfully evoked

something like a public opinion in his kingdom against the

whole. At the outset of his reign the nobles formed a

combination against him which they called the League of the

Public Weal, but which aimed at nothing but fresh gains to the

privileged class and advantages to its chiefs. Of alliance with

the people against the crown, as in England, there was no

thought. Louis yielded to the League in appearance, and

cunningly went beyond its demands in his concessions, making

it odious to the kingdom at large, and securing to himself the

strong support of the States-General of France, when he

appealed to it.

The tortuous policy of Louis was aided by many favoring

circumstances and happenings. It was favored not least,

perhaps, by the hot-headed character of Charles the Bold, who

succeeded his father, Philip, in the Duchy of Burgundy, in

1467. Charles was inspired with a great and not unreasonable

ambition, to make his realm a kingdom, holding a middle place

between France and Germany. He had abilities, but he was of a

passionate and haughty temper, and no match for the cool,

perfidious, plotting King of France. The latter, by skilful

intrigue, involved him in a war with the Swiss, which he

conducted imprudently, and in which he was defeated and killed

(1477). His death cleared Louis' path to complete mastery in

France, and he made the most of his opportunity. Charles left

only a daughter, Mary of Burgundy, and her situation was

helpless. Louis lost no time in seizing the Duchy of Burgundy,

as a fief of France, and in the pretended exercise of his

rights as godfather of the Duchess Mary. He also took

possession of Franche Comté, which was a fief of the Empire,

and he put forward claims in Flanders, Artois, and elsewhere.

But the Netherlanders, while they took advantage of the young

duchess' situation, and exacted large concessions of chartered

privileges from her, yet maintained her rights; and before the

first year of her orphanage closed, she obtained a champion by

marriage with the Archduke Maximilian of Austria, son of the

Emperor, Frederick III. Maximilian was successful in war with

Louis; but the latter succeeded, after all, in holding

Burgundy, which was thenceforth absorbed in the royal domain

of France and gave no further trouble to the monarchy, while

he won some important extensions of the northwestern frontiers

of his kingdom.

Before the death of Louis XI. the French crown regained Anjou,

Maine, and Provence, by inheritance from the last

representative of the great second House of Anjou. Thus the

kingdom which he left to his son, Charles VIII. (1483), was a

consolidated nation, containing in its centralized government

the germs of the absolute monarchy of a later day.

{1052}

Italian Expedition of Charles VIII.

Charles VIII. was a loutish and uneducated boy of eight years

when his father died. His capable sister Anne carried on the

government for some years, and continued her father's work by

defeating a revolt of the nobles, and by marrying the young

king to the heiress of Brittany--thereby uniting to the crown

the last of the great semi-independent fiefs. When Charles

came of age, he conceived the idea of recovering the kingdom

of Naples, which the House of Anjou claimed, and which he

looked upon as part of his inheritance from that House. He was

incited to the enterprise, moreover, by Ludovico il Moro, or

Louis the Moor, an intriguing uncle of the young Duke of

Milan, who conspired to displace his nephew. In 1494 Charles

crossed the Alps with a large and well-disciplined army, and

met with no effectual opposition. The Medici of Florence and

the Pope had agreed together to resist this French intrusion,

which they feared; but the invading force proved too

formidable, and the Florentines, then under the influence of

Savonarola, looked to it for their liberation from the

Medicean rule, already oppressive. Accordingly Charles marched

triumphantly through the peninsula, making some stay at Rome.

On his approach to Naples, the Aragonese King, Alfonso,

abdicated in favor of his son, Ferdinand II., and died soon

after. Ferdinand, shut out of Naples by an insurrection, fled

to Sicily, and Charles entered the city, where the populace

welcomed him with warmth. Most of the kingdom submitted within

a few weeks, and the conquest seemed complete, as it had been

easy.

But what they had won so easily the French held with a

careless hand, and they lost it with equal ease. While they

revelled and caroused in Naples, abusing the hospitality of

their new subjects, and gathering plunder with reckless greed,

a dangerous combination was formed against them, throughout

the peninsula. Before they were aware, it had put them in

peril, and Charles was forced to retreat with haste, in the

spring of 1495, leaving an inadequate garrison to hold the

Neapolitan capital. In Lombardy, he had to fight with the

Venetians, and with his protege, Louis the Moor, now Duke of

Milan. He defeated them, and regained France in November. Long

before that time, the small force he left at Naples had been

overcome, and Ferdinand had recovered his kingdom.

In one sense, the French had nothing to show for this their

first expedition of conquest. In another sense they had much

to show and their gain was great. They had made their first

acquaintance with the superior culture of Italy. They had

breathed the air beyond the Alps, which was then surcharged

with the inspirations of the Renaissance. Both the ideas and

the spoil they brought back were of more value to France than

can be easily estimated. They had returned laden with booty,

and much of it was in treasures of art, every sight of which

was a lesson to the sense of beauty and the taste of the

people among whom they were shown. The experience and the

influence of the Italian expedition were undoubtedly very

great, and the Renaissance in France, as an artistic and a

literary birth, is reasonably dated from it.

Italian Wars of Louis XII.

Charles VIII. died suddenly in 1498 and was succeeded by his

cousin, of the Orleans branch of the Valois family, Louis XII.

The new king was weak in character, but not wicked. His first

thought on mounting the throne was of the claims of his family

to other thrones, in Italy. Besides the standing Angevin claim

to the kingdom of Naples, he asserted rights of his own to the

duchy of Milan, as a descendant of Valentina Visconti, heiress

of the ducal house which the Sforzas supplanted. In 1499 he sent

an army against Louis the Moor, and the latter fled from Milan

without an attempt at resistance. Louis took possession of the

duchy with the greatest good will of the people; but, before

half a year had passed, French taxes, French government, and

French manners had disgusted them, and they made an attempt to

restore their former tyrant. The attempt failed, and Louis the

Moor was imprisoned in France for the remainder of his life.

Milan secured, Louis XII. began preparations to repeat the

undertaking of Charles VIII. against Naples. The Neapolitan

crown had now passed to an able and popular king, Frederick,

and Frederick had every reason to suppose that he would be

supported and helped by his kinsman, Ferdinand of Aragon, the

well-known consort of Isabella of Castile. Ferdinand had the

power to hold the French king in check; but instead of using

it for the defense of the Neapolitan branch of his house, he

secretly and treacherously agreed with Louis to divide the

kingdom of Naples with him. Under these circumstances, the

conquest was easily accomplished (1501). The betrayed

Frederick surrendered to Louis, and lived as a pensionary in

France until his death. The Neapolitan branch of the House of

Aragon came to an end.

Louis and Ferdinand speedily quarreled over the division of

their joint conquest. The treacherous Spaniard cheated the

French king in treaty negotiations, gaining time to send

forces into Italy which expelled the French. It was in this

war that the Spanish general, Gonsalvo di Cordova, won the

reputation which gave him the name of "the Great Captain"; and

it was likewise in this war that the chivalric French knight,

Bayard, began the winning of his fame.

The League of Cambrai and the Holy League.

Naples had again slipped from the grasp of France, and this

time it had passed to Spain. Louis XII. abandoned the tempting

kingdom to his rival, and applied himself to the establishing

of his sovereignty over Milan and its domain. Some territory

formerly belonging to the Milaness had been ceded to Venice by

the Sforzas. He himself had ceded another district or two to

the republic in payment for services rendered. Ferdinand of

Spain had made payments in the same kind of coin, from his

Neapolitan realm, for Venetian help to secure it.

{1053}

The warlike Pope Julius II. saw Rimini and other towns

formerly belonging to the States of the Church now counted

among the possessions of the proud mistress of the Adriatic.

All of these disputants in Italy resented the gains which

Venice had gathered at their expense, and envied and feared

her somewhat insolent prosperity. They accordingly suspended

their quarrels with one another, to form a league for breaking

her down and for despoiling her. The Emperor Maximilian, who had

grievances of his own against the Venetians, joined the

combination, and Florence was bribed to become a party to it

by the betrayal of Pisa into her hands. Thus was formed the

shameful League of Cambrai (1508). The French did most of the

fighting in the war that ensued, though Pope Julius, who took

the field in person, easily proved himself a better soldier

than priest. The Venetians were driven for a time from the

greater part of the dominion they had acquired on the

mainland, and were sorely pressed. But they made terms with

the Pope, and it then became his interest, not merely to stop

the conquests of his allies, but to press them out of Italy,

if possible. He began accordingly to intrigue against the

French, and presently had a new league in operation, making

war upon them. It was called a Holy League, because the head

of the Church was its promoter, and it embraced the Emperor,

King Ferdinand of Spain, King Henry VIII. of England, and the

Republic of Venice. As the result of the ruthless and

destructive war which they waged, Louis XII., before he died,

in 1515, saw all that he had won in Lombardy stripped from him

and restored to the Sforzas--the old family of the Dukes of

Milan; Venice recovered most of her possessions, but never

regained her former power, since the discovery of the ocean

route to India, round the Cape of Good Hope, was now turning

the rich trade of the East, the great source of her wealth,

into the hands of the Portuguese; the temporal dominion of the

Popes was enlarged by the recovery of Bologna and Perugia and by

the addition of Parma and Piacenza; and Florence, which had

been a republic since the death of Savonarola, was forced to

submit anew to the Medici.

The Age of Infamous Popes.

The fighting Pope, Julius II., who made war and led armies,

while professing to be the vicar of Him who brought the

message of good-will and peace to mankind, was very far from

being the worst of the popes of his age. He was only worldly,

thinking much of his political place as a temporal sovereign

in Italy, and little of his spiritual office as the head of

the Church of Christ. As the sovereign of Rome and the Papal

States, Julius II. ran a brilliant career, and is one of the

splendid figures of the Italian renaissance. Patron of Michael

Angelo and Raphael, projector of St. Peter's, there is a

certain grandeur in his character to be admired, if we could

forget the pretended apostolic robe which he smirched with

perfidious politics and stained with blood.

But the immediate predecessors of Julius II., Sixtus IV. and

Alexander VI., had had nothing in their characters to lure

attention from the hideous examples of bestial wickedness

which they set before the world. Alexander, especially, the

infamous Borgia,--systematic murderer and robber, liar and

libertine,--accomplished practitioner of every crime and every

vice that was known to the worst society of a depraved

generation, and shamelessly open in the foulest of his

doings,--there is scarcely a pagan monster of antiquity that

is not whitened by comparison with him. Yet he sat in the

supposed seat of St. Peter for eleven years, to be venerated

as the Vicar of Christ, the "Holy Father" of the Christian

Church; his declarations and decrees in matters of faith to be

accepted as infallible inspirations; his absolution to be

craved as a passport to Heaven; his anathema to be dreaded as

a condemnation to Hell!

This evil and malignant being died in 1503. poisoned by one of

his own cups, which he had brewed for another. Julius II.

reigned until 1513; and after him came the Medicean Pope, Leo

X., son of Lorenzo the Magnificent,--princely and worldly as

Julius, but in gentler fashion; loving ease, pleasure, luxury,

art, and careless of all that belonged to religion beyond its

ceremonies and its comfortable establishment of clerical

estates. Is it strange that Christendom was prepared to give

ear to Luther?

Luther and the Reformation.

When Luther raised his voice, he did but renew a protest which

many pure and pious and courageous men before him had uttered,

against evils in the Church and falsities and impostures in

the Papacy. But some of them, like Arnold of Brescia, like

Peter Waldo, and the Albigenses, had been too far in advance

of their time, and their revolt was hopeless from the

beginning. Wyclif's movement had been timed unfortunately in

an age of great commotions, which swallowed it up. That of

Huss had roused an ignorant peasantry, too uncivilized to

represent a reformed Christianity, and had been ruined by the

fierceness of their misguided zeal. The Reformation of

Savonarola, at Florence, had been nobly begun, but not wisely

led, and it had spent its influence at the end on aims less

religious than political.

But there occurred a combination, when Luther arose, of

character in himself, of circumstances in his country, and of

temper in his generation, which made his protest more

lastingly effective. He had high courage, without rashness. He

had earnestness and ardor, without fanaticism. He had the

plain good sense and sound judgment which win public

confidence. His substantial learning put him on terms with the

scholars of his day, and he was not so much refined by it as

to lose touch with the common people. A certain coarseness in

his nature was not offensive to the time in which he lived,

but rather belonged among the elements of power in him. His

spirituality was not fine, but it was strong. He was sincere,

and men believed in him. He was open, straightforward, manly,

commanding respect. His qualities showed themselves in his

speech, which went straight to its mark, in the simplest

words, moulding the forms and phrases of the German language

with more lasting effect than the speech of any other man who

ever used it. Not many have lived in any age or any country

who possessed the gift of so persuasive a tongue, with so

powerful a character to command the hearing for it.

{1054}

And the generation to which Luther spoke really waited for a

bold voice to break into the secret of its thoughts concerning

the Church. It had inherited a century of alienation from

quarreling popes and greedy, corrupted priests and now there

had been added in its feeling the deep abhorrence roused by

such villains as the Borgia in the papal chair, and by their

creatures and minions in the priesthood of the Church. If it

is crediting too much to the common multitude of the time to

suppose them greatly sickened by the vices and corruptions of

their priests, we may be sure, at least, that they were

wearied and angered by the exactions from them, which a

vicious hierarchy continually increased. The extravagance of

the Papacy kept pace with its degradation, and Christendom

groaned under the burden of the taxes that were wrung from it

in the name of the lowly Saviour of mankind.

Nowhere in Europe were the extortions of the Church felt more

severely than in Germany, where the serfdom of the peasants

was still real and hard, and where the depressing weight of

the feudal system had scarcely been lifted from society at

all. Feudalism had given way in that country less than in any

other. Central authority remained as weak, and national

solidification as far away, as ever. Of organic unity in the

heterogeneous bundle of electoral principalities, duchies,

margravates and free cities which made up the nominal realm of

the King of the Romans, there was no more at the beginning of

the sixteenth century than there had been in the twelfth. But

that very brokenness and division in the political state of

Germany proved to be one of the circumstances which favored

the Protestant Reformation of the Church. Had monarchical

authority established itself there as in France, then the

Austro-Spanish family which wielded it, with the concentrated

bigotry of their narrow-minded race, would have crushed the

religious revolt as completely in Saxony as they did in

Austria and Bohemia.

The Ninety-five Theses.

The main events of the Reformation in Germany are so commonly

known that no more than the slightest sketching of them is

needed here. Letters of indulgence, purporting to grant a

remission of the temporal and purgatorial penalties of sin,

had been sold by the Church for centuries; but none before

Pope Leo X. had made merchandize of them in so peddlar-like

and shameful a fashion as that which scandalized the

intelligent piety of Europe in 1517. Luther, then a professor

in the new University of Wittenberg, Saxony, could not hide

his indignation, as most men did. He stood forth boldly and

challenged the impious fraud, in a series of propositions or

theses, which, after the manner of the time, he nailed to the

door of Wittenberg Church. Just that bold action was needed to

let loose the pent-up feeling of the German people. The

ninety-five theses were printed and went broadcast through the

land, to be read and to be listened to, and to stir every

class with independent ideas. It was the first great appeal

made to the public opinion of the world, after the invention

of printing had put a trumpet to the mouths of eloquent men,

and the effect was too amazing to be believed by the careless

Pope and his courtiers.

Political Circumstances.

But more than possibly--probably, indeed--the popular feeling

stirred up would never have accomplished the rupture with Rome

and the religious independence to which North Germany attained

in the end, if political motives had not coincided with

religious feelings to bring certain princes and great nobles

into sympathy with the Monk of Wittenberg. The Elector of

Saxony, Luther's immediate sovereign, had long been in

opposition to the Papacy on the subject of its enormous

collections of money from his subjects, and he was well

pleased to have the hawking of indulgences checked in his

dominions. Partly for this reason, partly because of the pride

and interest with which he cherished his new University,

partly from personal liking and admiration of Luther, and

partly, too, no doubt, in recognition of the need of Church

reforms, he gave Luther a quiet protection and a concealed

support. He was the strongest and most influential of the

princes of the Empire, and his obvious favor to the movement

advanced it powerfully and rapidly.

At first, there was no intention to break with the Papacy and

the Papal Church,--certainly none in Luther's mind. His

attitude towards both was conciliatory in every way, except as

concerned the falsities and iniquities which he had protested

against. It was not until the Pope, in June, 1520, launched

against him the famous Bull, "Exurge Domine," which left no

alternative between abject submission and open war, that

Luther and his followers cast off the authority of the Roman

Church and its head, and grounded their faith upon Holy

Scripture alone. By formally burning the Bull, Luther accepted

the papal challenge, and those who believed with him were

ready for the contest.

The Diet of Worms.

In 1521, the reformer was summoned before a Diet of the

Empire, at Worms, where a hearing was given him. The influence

of the Church, and of the young Austro-Spanish Emperor,

Charles V., who adhered to it, was still great enough to

procure his condemnation; but they did not dare to deal with

him as Huss had been dealt with. He was suffered to depart

safely, pursued by an imperial edict which placed the ban of

the Empire on all who should give him countenance or support.

His friends among the nobles spirited him away and concealed

him in a castle, the Wartburg, where he remained for several

months, employed in making his translation of the Bible.

Meantime, the Emperor had been called away from Germany by his

multifarious affairs, in the Netherlands and Spain, and had

little attention to give to Luther and the questions of

religion for half-a-dozen years. He was represented in Germany

by a Council of Regency, with the Elector of Saxony at the

head of, it; and the movement of reformation, if not

encouraged in his absence, was at least considerably

protected. It soon showed threatening signs of wildness and

fanaticism in many quarters; but Luther proved himself as

powerful in leadership as he had been in agitation, and the

religious passion of the time was controlled effectively, on

the whole.

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Organization of the Lutheran Church.

Before the close of the year 1521, Pope Leo X. died, and his

successor, Adrian, while insisting upon the enforcement of the

Edict of Worms against Luther and his supporters, yet

acknowledged the corruptions of the Church and promised a

reformation of them. His promises came too late; his

confessions only gave testimony to the independent reformers

which their opponents could not impeach. There was no longer

any thought of cleansing the Church of Rome, to abide in it. A

separated--a restored Church--was clearly determined on, and

Luther framed a system of faith and discipline which was

adopted in Saxony, and then accepted very generally by the

reformed Churches throughout Germany. In 1525, the Elector

Frederick of Saxony died. He had quietly befriended the

Lutherans and tolerated the reform, but never identified

himself with them. His brother, John, who succeeded him, made

public profession of his belief in the Lutheran doctrines, and

authoritatively established the church system which Luther had

introduced. The Landgrave of Hesse Cassel, the Margrave of

Brandenburg, and the Dukes of Mecklenburg, Pomerania and Zell,

followed his example; while the imperial cities of Frankfort,

Nuremberg, Bremen, Strasburg, Brunswick, Nordhausen, and

others, formally ranged themselves on the same side. By the

year 1526, when a diet at Spires declared the freedom of each

state in the Empire to deal with the religious reform

according to its own will, the Reformation in Germany was a

solidly organized fact. But those of the reform had not yet

received their name, of "Protestants." That came to them three

years later, when the Roman party had rallied its forces in a

new diet at Spires, to undo the declaration of 1526, and the

leaders of the Lutheran party recorded their solemn protest.

The Austro-Burgundian Marriage.

To understand the situation politically, during the period of

struggle for and against the Reformation, it will be necessary

to turn back a little, for the noting of important occurrences

which have not been mentioned.

When Albert II., who was King of Hungary and Bohemia, as well

as King of the Romans (Emperor-elect, as the title came to be,

soon afterwards), died, in 1439, he was succeeded by his

second cousin Frederick III., Duke of Styria, and from that

time the Roman or imperial crown was held continuously in the

Austrian family, becoming practically hereditary. But

Frederick did not succeed to the duchy of Austria, and he

failed of election to the throne in Hungary and Bohemia. Hence

his position as Emperor was peculiarly weak and greatly

impoverished, through want of revenue from any considerable

possessions of his own. During his whole long reign, of nearly

fifty-four years, Frederick was humiliated and hampered by his

poverty; the imperial authority was brought very low, and

Germany was in a greatly disordered state. There were frequent

wars between its members, and between Austria and Bohemia, with

rebellions in Vienna and elsewhere; while the Hungarians were

left to contend with the aggressive Turks, almost unhelped.

But in 1477 a remarkable change in the circumstances and

prospects of the family of the Emperor Frederick III. was made

by the marriage of his son and heir, Maximilian, to Mary, the

daughter and heiress of the wealthy and powerful Duke of

Burgundy, Charles the Bold. The bridegroom was so poor that

the bride is said to have loaned him the money which enabled

him to make a fit appearance at the wedding. She had lost, as

we saw, the duchy of Burgundy, but the valiant arm of

Maximilian enabled her to hold the Burgundian county, Franche

Comté, and the rich provinces of the Netherlands, which formed

at that time, perhaps, the most valuable principality in

Europe. The Duchess Mary lived only five years after her

marriage; but she left a son, Philip, who inherited the

Netherlands and Franche Comté, and Maximilian ruled them as

his guardian.

In 1493, the Emperor Frederick died, and Maximilian, who had

been elected King of the Romans some years before, succeeded

him in the imperial office. He was never crowned at Rome, and

he took the title, not used before, of King of Germany and

Emperor-elect. He was Archduke of Austria, Duke of Styria,

Carinthia and Carniola, and Count of Tyrol; and, with his

guardianship in the Low Countries, he rose greatly in

importance and power above his father. But he accomplished

less than might possibly have been done by a ruler of more

sureness of judgment and fixity in purpose. His plans were

generally beyond his means, and the failures in his

undertakings were numerous. He was eager to interfere with the

doings of Charles VIII. and Louis XIII. in Italy; but the

Germanic diet gave him so little support that he could do

nothing effective. He joined the League of Cambrai against

Venice, and the Holy League against France, but bore no

important part in either. His reign was signalized in Germany

by the division of the nation into six administrative

"Circles," afterwards increased to ten, and by the creation of

a supreme court of appeal, called the Imperial Chamber,--both

of which measures did something towards the diminution of

private wars and disorders.

The Austro-Spanish Marriage.--Charles V.

But Maximilian figures most conspicuously in history as the

immediate ancestor of the two great sovereign dynasties--the

Austrian and the Austro-Spanish--which sprang from his

marriage with Mary of Burgundy and which dominated Europe for

a century after his death. His son Philip, heir to the

Burgundian sovereignty of the Netherlands, married (1496)

Joanna, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. Two

children, Charles and Ferdinand, were the fruit of this

marriage. Charles, the elder, inherited more crowns and

coronets than were ever gathered, in reality, by one

sovereign, before or since. Ferdinand and Isabella had united

by their marriage the kingdoms of Aragon and Castile, and, by

the conquest of Granada and the partial conquest of Navarre,

the entire peninsula, except Portugal, was subsequently added

to their joint dominion. Joanna inherited the whole, on the

death of Isabella, in 1504, and the death of Ferdinand, in

1516. She also inherited from her father, Ferdinand, the

kingdom of the Two Sicilies--which he had reunited--and the

island of Sardinia. Philip, on his side, already in possession

of the Netherlands and Franche Comté, was heir to the domain of

the House of Austria. Both of these great inheritances

descended in due course to Charles, and he had not long to

wait for them. His father, Philip, died in 1506, and his

mother, Joanna, lost her mind, through grief at that event.

The death of his Spanish grandfather, Ferdinand, occurred in

1516, and that of his Austrian grandfather, the Emperor

Maximilian, followed three years later.

{1056}

At the age of twenty years (representing his mother in her

incapacity) Charles found himself sovereign of Spain, and

America, of Sicily, Naples, Sardinia, the Low Countries,

Franche Comté, Austria, and the duchies associated with it.

The same year (1519) he was chosen King of Germany and

Emperor-elect, after a keen contest over the imperial crown,

in which Francis I. of France and Henry VIII. of England were

his competitors. On attaining this dignity, he conferred the

Austrian possessions on his brother Ferdinand. But he remained

the most potent and imposing monarch that Europe had seen

since Charlemagne. He came upon the stage just as Luther had

marshalled, in Germany, the reforming forces of the new era,

against intolerable iniquities in the Papal Church.

Unfortunately, he came, with his vast armament of powers, to

resist the demands of his age, and to be the champion of old

falsities and wrongs, both in Church and State. There was

nothing in the nature of the man, nor in his education, nor in

the influences which bore upon him, from either the Spanish or

the Austrian side of his family, to put him in sympathy with

lifting movements or with liberal ideas. He never formed a

conception of the world in which it looked larger to his eyes,

or signified more to him, than the globe upon his scepter. So,

naturally enough, this Cæsar of the Renaissance (Charles V. in

Germany and Charles I. in Spain) did his utmost, from the day

he climbed the throne, to thrust Europe back into the murk of

the fourteenth century, which he found it pretty nearly

escaped from. He did not succeed; but he gave years of misery

to several countries by his exertions, and he resigned the

task to a successor whom the world is never likely to tire of

abhorring and despising.

The end of popular freedom in Spain.

The affairs which called Charles V. away from Germany, after

launching his ineffectual edict of Worms against Luther and

Luther's supporters, grew in part out of disturbances in his

kingdom of Spain. His election to the imperial office had not

been pleasing to the Spaniards, who anticipated the

complications they would be dragged into by it, the foreign

character which their sovereign (already foreign in mind by

his education in the Netherlands) would be confirmed in, and

the indifference with which their grievances would be

regarded. For their grievances against the monarchy had been

growing serious in the last years of Ferdinand, and since his

death. The crown had gained power in the process of political

centralization, and its aggrandizement from the possession of

America began to loom startlingly in the light of the conquest

of Mexico, just achieved. During the absence of Charles in

Germany, his former preceptor, Cardinal Adrian, of Utrecht,

being in charge of the government as regent, a revolt broke

out at Toledo which spread widely and became alarming. The

insurgents organized their movement under the name of the

Santa Junta, or Holy League, and having obtained possession of

the demented Queen, Joanna, they assumed to act for her and

with her authority. This rebellion was suppressed with

difficulty; but the suppression was accomplished (1521-1522),

and it proved to be the last struggle for popular freedom in

Spain. The government used its victory with an unsparing

determination to establish absolute powers, and it succeeded.

The conditions needed for absolutism were already created, in

fact, by the deadly blight which the Inquisition had been

casting upon Spain for forty years. Since the beginning of the

frightful work of Torquemada, in 1483, it had been diligently

searching out and destroying every germ of free thought and

manly character that gave the smallest sign of fruitfulness in

the kingdom; and the crushing of the Santa Junta may be said

to have left few in Spain who deserved a better fate than the

political, the religious and the intellectual servitude under

which the nation sank.

Persecution of the Spanish Moriscoes.

Charles, whose mind was dense in its bigotry, urged on the

Inquisition, and pointed its dreadful engines of destruction

against the unfortunate Moriscoes, or Moors, who had been

forced to submit to Christian baptism after their subjugation.

Many of these followers of Mahomet had afterwards taken up

again the prayers and practices of their own faith, either

secretly or in quiet ways, and their relapse appears to have

been winked at, more or less. For they were a most useful

people, far surpassing the Spaniards in industry, in thrift

and knowledge of agriculture, and in mechanical skill. Many of

the arts and manufactures of the kingdom were entirely in

their hands. It was ruinous to interfere with their peaceful

labors. But Charles, as heathenish as the Grand Turk when it

suited his ends to be so, could look on these well-behaved and

useful Moors with no eyes but the eyes of an orthodox piety, and

could take account of nothing but their infidel faith. He

began, therefore, in 1524, the heartless, senseless and

suicidal persecution of the Moriscoes which exterminated them

or drove them from the land, and which contributed signally to

the making of Spain an exemplary pauper among the nations.

Despotism of Charles V. in the Netherlands.

In his provinces of the Low Countries, Charles found more than

in Spain to provoke his despotic bigotry. The Flemings and the

Dutch had been tasting of freedom too much for his liking, in

recent years, and ideas, both political and religious, had

been spreading among them, which were not the ideas of his

august mind, and must therefore, of necessity, be false. They

had already become infected with the rebellious anti-papal

doctrines of Luther. Indeed, they had been even riper than

Luther's countrymen for a religious revolution, when he

sounded the signal note which echoed through all northern

Europe. In Germany, the elected emperor could fulminate an

edict against the audacious reformers, but he had small power

to give force to it. In the Netherlands, he possessed a

sovereignty more potent, and he took instant measures to

exercise the utmost arbitrariness of which he could make it

capable. The Duchess Margaret, his aunt, who had been

governess of the provinces, was confirmed by him in that

office, and he enlarged the powers in her commission. His

commands practically superseded the regular courts, and

subjected the whole administration of justice to his arbitrary

will and that of his representative. At the same time they

stripped the States of their legislative functions and reduced

them to insignificance.

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Having thus trampled on the civil liberties of the provinces,

he borrowed the infernal enginery of the Inquisition, and

introduced it for the destruction of religious freedom. Its

first victims were two Augustine monks, convicted of

Lutheranism, who were burned at Brussels, in July, 1523. The

first martyr in Holland was a priest who suffered impalement

as well as burning, at the Hague, in 1525. From these

beginnings the persecution grew crueler as the alienation of

the stubborn Netherlanders from the Church of Rome widened;

and Charles did not cease to fan its fires with successive

proclamations or "placards," which denounced and forbade every

reading of Scripture, every act of devotion, every

conversation of religion, in public or private, which the

priests of the Church did not conduct. "The number of

Netherlanders who were burned, strangled, beheaded, or buried

alive, in obedience to his edicts, ... have been placed as

high as 100,000 by distinguished authorities, and have never

been put at a lower mark than 50,000."

Charles V. and Francis I. in Italy.

These exercises of an autocratic piety in Spain and the Low

Countries may be counted, perhaps, among the pleasures of the

young Emperor during the earlier years of his reign. His more

serious affairs were connected mainly with his interests or

ambitions in Italy, which seemed to be threatened by the King

of France. The throne in that country was now occupied by

Francis I., a cousin of Louis XII., who had succeeded the

latter in 1515, and who had taken up anew the Italian projects

in which Louis failed. In the first year of his reign, he

crossed the Alps with an army, defeated the Swiss whom the

Duke of Milan employed against him, and won the whole duchy by

that single fight. This re-establishment of the French at

Milan was regarded with exceeding jealousy by the Austrian

interest, and by the Pope. Maximilian, shortly before his

death, had made a futile effort to dislodge them, and Charles

V., on coming to the throne, lost no time in organizing plans

to the same end. He entered into an alliance with Pope Leo X.,

by a treaty which bears the same date as the Edict of Worms

against Luther, and there can be little doubt that the two

instruments were part of one understanding. Both parties

courted the friendship of Henry VIII. of England, whose power

and importance had risen to a high mark, and Henry's able

minister, Cardinal Wolsey, figured notably in the diplomatic

intrigues which went on during many years.

War began in 1521, and in three months the French were

expelled from nearly every part of the Milanese territory.

Pope Leo X. lived just long enough to receive the news. His

successor was Adrian VI., former tutor of the Emperor, who

made vain attempts to arrange a peace. Wolsey had brought

Henry VIII. of England into the alliance against Francis,

expecting to win the papal tiara through the Emperor's

influence; but he was disappointed.

Francis made an effort in 1523 to recover Milan; but was

crippled at the moment of sending his expedition across the

Alps by the treason of the most powerful noble of France, the

Constable, Charles, Duke of Bourbon. The Constable had been

wronged and affronted by the King's mother, and by intriguers

at court, and he revenged himself basely by going over to the

enemies of his country. In the campaigns which followed

(1523-1524), the French had ill-success, and lost their

chivalrous and famous knight, Bayard, in one of the last

skirmishes of their retreat. Another change now occurred in

the occupancy of the papal throne, and Wolsey's ambitious

schemes were foiled again. The new Pope was Giulio de'Medici,

who took the name of Clement VII.

Once more the King of France, in October, 1524, led his forces

personally into Italy and laid siege to Pavia. It was a

ruinous undertaking. He was defeated overwhelmingly in a

battle fought before Pavia (February 24, 1525) and taken

prisoner. After a captivity in Spain of nearly a year, he

regained his freedom disgracefully, by signing and solemnly

swearing to a treaty which he never intended to observe. By

this treaty he not only renounced all claims to Milan, Naples,

Genoa, and other Italian territory, but he gave up the duchy

of Burgundy. Released in good faith on these terms, in the

early part of 1526, he perfidiously repudiated the treaty, and

began fresh preparations for war. He found the Italians now as

ready to oust the Spaniards from their peninsula with French

help, as they had been ready before to expel the French with

help from Spain. The papal interest was in great alarm at the

power acquired by the Emperor, and Venice and Milan shared the

feeling. A new "Holy Alliance" was accordingly formed, with

the Pope at its head, and with Henry VIII. of England for its

"Protector." But before this League took the field with its

forces, Rome and Italy were stricken and trampled, as though

by a fresh invasion of Goths.

Sack of Rome, by the army of the Constable.

The imperial army, quartered in the duchy of Milan, under the

command of the Constable Bourbon, was scantily paid and fed.

The soldiers were forced to plunder the city and country for

their subsistence, and, of course, under those circumstances,

there was little discipline among them. The region which they

terrorized was soon exhausted, by their robberies and by the

stoppage of industries and trade. It then became necessary for

the Constable to lead them to new fields, and he moved

southwards. His forces were made up in part of Spaniards and

in part of Germans--the latter under a Lutheran commander, and

enlisted for war with the Pope and for pillage in Italy. He

directed the march to Rome, constrained, perhaps, by the

demands of his soldiery, but expecting, likewise, to crush the

League by seizing its apostolic head. On the 5th of May, 1527,

his 40,000 brigands arrived before the city. At daybreak, the

next morning, they assaulted the walls irresistibly and

swarmed over them. Bourbon was killed in the assault, and his

men were left uncontrolled masters of the venerable capital of

the world. They held it for seven months, pillaging and

destroying, committing every possible excess and every

imaginable sacrilege. Rome is believed to have suffered at

their hands more lasting defacement and loss of the splendors

of its art than from the sacking of Vandals or Goths.

The Pope held out in Castle St. Angelo for a month and then

surrendered. The hypocritical Charles V., when he learned what

his imperially commissioned bandits had done, made haste to

express horror and grief, but did not hasten to check or

repair the outrage in the least. Pope Clement was not released

from captivity until a great money-payment had been extorted

from him, with the promise of a general council of the Church

to reform abuses and to eradicate Lutheranism.

{1058}

Spanish Domination in Italy.

Europe was shocked by the barbarity of the capture of Rome,

and the enemies leagued against Charles were stimulated to

more vigorous exertions. Assisted with money from England,

Francis sent another army into Italy, which took Genoa and

Pavia and marched to Naples, blockading the city by sea and

land. But the siege proved fatal to the French army. So many

perished of disease that the survivors were left at the mercy

of the enemy, and capitulated in September, 1528.

The great Genoese Admiral, Andrea Doria, had been offended,

meantime, by King Francis, and had excited his fellow citizens

to a revolution, which made Genoa, once more, an independent

republic, with Doria at its head. Shortly before this

occurred, Florence had expelled the Medici and reorganized her

government upon the old republican basis. But the defeat of

the French before Naples ended all hope of Italian liberty;

since the Pope resigned himself after that event to the will

of the Emperor, and the papal and imperial despotisms became

united as one, to exterminate freedom from the peninsula.

Florence was the first victim of the combination. The city was

besieged and taken by the Emperor's troops, in compliance with

the wishes of the Pope, and the Medici, his relatives, were

restored. Francis continued war feebly until 1529, when a

peace called the "Ladies Peace" was brought about, by

negotiations between the French King's mother and the

Emperor's aunt. This was practically the end of the long

French wars in Italy.

Germany.

Such were the events which, in different quarters of the

world, diverted the attention of the Emperor during several

years from Luther and the Reformation in Germany. The

religious movement in those years had been making a steady

advance. Yet its enemies gained control of another Diet held

at Spires in 1529 and reversed the ordinance of the Diet of

1526, by which each state had been left free to deal in its

own manner with the edict of Worms. Against this action of the

Diet, the Lutheran princes and the representatives of the

Lutheran towns entered their solemn protest, and so acquired

the name, "Protestants," which became in time the accepted and

adopted name of all, in most parts of the world, who withdrew

from the Roman communion.

The Peasants' War and the Anabaptists.

Before this time, the Reform had passed through serious

trials, coming from excesses in the very spirit out of which

itself had risen and to which it gave encouragement. The long

suffering, much oppressed peasantry of Germany, who had found

bishops as pitiless extortioners as lords, caught eagerly at a

hope of relief from the overthrow of the ancient Church.

Several times within the preceding half-century they had risen

in formidable revolts, with a peasants' clog, or bundschuh for

their banner. In 1525 fresh risings occurred in Swabia,

Franconia, Alsace, Lorraine, Bavaria, Thuringia and elsewhere,

and a great Peasants' War raged for months, with ferocity and

brutality on both sides. The number who perished in the war is

estimated at 100,000. The demands made by the peasants were for

measures of the simplest justice--for the poorest rights and

privileges in life. But their cause was taken up by

half-crazed religious fanatics, who became in some parts their

leaders, and such a character was given to it that reasonable

reformers were justified, perhaps, in setting themselves

sternly against it. The wildest prophet of the outbreak was

one Thomas Münzer, a precursor of the frenzied sect of the

Anabaptists. Münzer perished in the wreck of the peasants'

revolt; but some of his disciples, who fled into Westphalia

and the Netherlands, made converts so rapidly in the town of

Münster that in 1535 they controlled the city, expelled every

inhabitant who would not join their communion, elected and

crowned a king, and exhibited a madness in their proceedings

that is hardly equalled in history. The experience at Münster

may reasonably be thought to have proved the soundness of

Luther's judgment in refusing countenance to the cause of the

oppressed peasants when they rebelled.

At all events, his opposition to them was hard and bitter. And

it has been remarked that what may be called Luther's

political position in Germany had become by this time quite

changed. "Instead of the man of the people, Luther became the

man of the princes; the mutual confidence between him and the

masses, which had supported the first faltering steps of the

movement, was broken; the democratic element was supplanted by

the aristocratic; and the Reformation, which at first had

promised to lead to a great national democracy, ended in

establishing the territorial supremacy of the German princes.

... The Reformation was gradually assuming a more secular

character, and leading to great political combinations"

(Dyer).

Progress of Lutheranism in Germany.

By the year 1530, the Emperor Charles was prepared to give

more attention to affairs in Germany and to gratify his

animosity towards the movement of Reformation. He had

effectually beaten his rival, the King of France, had

established his supremacy in Italy, had humbled the Pope, and

was quite willing to be the zealous champion of a submissive

Church. His brother Ferdinand, the Archduke of Austria, had

secured, against much opposition, both the Hungarian and the

Bohemian crowns, and so firmly that neither was ever again

wrested from his family, though they continued for some time

to be nominally elective. The dominions of Ferdinand had

suffered a great Turkish invasion, in 1529, under the Sultan

Solyman, who penetrated even to Vienna and besieged the city,

but without success, losing heavily in his retreat.

In May, 1530, Charles re-entered Germany from Italy. The

following month he opened the sitting of the Diet, which had

been convened at Augsburg. His first act at Augsburg was to

summon the protesting princes, of Saxony, Hesse, Brandenburg,

and other states, before him and to signify to them his

imperial command that the toleration of Lutheranism in their

dominions must cease. He expected the mandate to suffice; when

he found it ineffectual, he required an abstract of the new

religions doctrines to be laid before him. This was prepared

by Melancthon, and, afterwards known as the Confession of

Augsburg, became the Lutheran standard of faith.

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The Catholic theologians prepared a reply to it, and both were

submitted to the Emperor. He made some attempt to bring about

a compromise of the differences, but he demanded of the

Protestants that they should submit themselves to the Pope,

pending the final decisions of a proposed general Council of

the Church. When this was refused, the Diet formally condemned

their doctrines and required them to reunite themselves with

the Catholic Church before the 15th of April following. The

Emperor, in November, issued a decree accordingly, renewing

the Edict of Worms and commanding its enforcement.

The Protestant princes, thus threatened, assembled in

conference at Schmalkald at Christmas, 1530, and there

organized their famous armed league. But fresh preparations

for war by the Turk now compelled Charles to make terms with

his Lutheran subjects. They refused to give any assistance to

Austria or Hungary against the Sultan, while threatened by the

Augsburg decree. The gravity of the danger forced a concession

to them, and by the Peace of Nuremberg (1532) it was agreed

that the Protestants should have freedom of worship until the

next Diet should meet, or a General Council should be held.

This peace was several times renewed, and there were ten years

of quiet under it, in Germany, during which time the cause of

Protestantism made rapid advances. By the year 1540, it had

established an ascendancy in Würtemberg, among the states of

the South, and in the imperial cities of Nuremberg, Augsburg,

Ulm, Constance, and Strasburg. Its doctrines had been adopted

by "the whole of central Germany, Thuringia, Saxony, Hesse,

part of Brunswick, and the territory of the Guelphs; in the

north by the bishoprics of Magdeburg, Halberstadt, and

Naumburg ... ; by East Friesland, the Hanse Towns, Holstein

and Schleswig, Pomerania, Mecklenburg, Anhalt, Silesia, the

Saxon states, Brandenburg, and Prussia. Of the larger states

that were closed against it there remained only Austria,

Bavaria, the Palatinate and the Rhenish Electorates"

(Hausser). In 1542, Duke Henry of Brunswick, the last of the

North German princes who adhered to the Papal Church, was

expelled from his duchy and Protestantism established. About

the same time the Archbishop-Elector of Cologne announced his

conviction of the truth of the Protestant doctrines.

The Schmalkaldic War.

Charles was still too much involved in foreign wars to venture

upon a struggle with the Lutherans; but a few years more

sufficed to free his hands. The Treaty of Crespy, in 1544,

ended his last conflict with Francis I. In the same year, Pope

Paul III. summoned the long promised General Council of the

Church to meet at Trent the following spring--by which

appointment a term was put to the toleration conceded in the

Peace of Nuremberg. The Protestants, though greatly increased

in numbers, were now less united than at the time of the

formation of the Schmalkaldic League. There was much division

among the leading princes. They yielded no longer to the

influence of their wisest and ablest chief, Philip of Hesse.

Luther, whose counsels had always been for peace, approached

his end, and died in 1546. The circumstances were favorable to

the Emperor, when he determined to put a stop to the

Reformation by force. He secured an important ally in the very

heart of Protestant Germany, winning over to his side the

selfish schemer, Duke Maurice of Saxony--now the head of the

Albertine branch of the Saxon house. In 1546 he felt prepared

and war began. The successes were all on the imperial side.

There was no energy, no unity, no forethoughtfulness of plan,

among the Lutherans. The Elector, John Frederick, of Saxony,

and Philip of Hesse, both fell into the Emperor's hands and

were barbarously imprisoned. The former was compelled to

resign his Electorate, and it was conferred upon the renegade

Duke Maurice. Philip was kept in vile places of confinement

and inhumanly treated for years. The Protestants of Germany

were entirely beaten down, for the time being, and the Emperor

imposed upon them in 1548 a confession of faith called "the

Interim," the chief missionaries of which were the Spanish

soldiers whom he had brought into the country. But if the

Lutherans had suffered themselves to be overcome, they were

not ready to be trodden upon in so despotic a manner. Even

Maurice, now Elector of Saxony, recoiled from the tyranny

which Charles sought to establish, while he resented the

inhuman treatment of Philip of Hesse, who was his

father-in-law. He headed a new league, therefore, which was

formed against the Emperor, and which entered into a secret

alliance with Henry II. of France (Francis I. having died in

1547). Charles was taken by surprise when the revolt broke

out, in 1552, and barely escaped capture. The operations of

Maurice were vigorous and ably conducted, and in a few weeks

the Protestants had recovered all the ground lost in 1546-7;

while the French had improved the opportunity to seize the

three bishoprics of Metz, Toul and Verdun. The ultimate result

was the so-called "Religious Peace of Augsburg," concluded in

1555, which gave religious freedom to the ruling princes of

Germany, but none whatever to the people. It put the two

religions on the same footing, but it was simply a footing of

equal intolerance. Each ruler had the right to choose his own

creed, and to impose it arbitrarily upon his subjects if he

saw fit to do so. As a practical consequence, the final

division of Germany between Protestantism and Catholicism was

substantially determined by the princes and not by the people.

The humiliating failure of Charles V. to crush the Reformation

in Germany was no doubt prominent among the experiences which

sickened him of the imperial office and determined him to

abdicate the throne, which he did in the autumn of 1556.

Reformation in Switzerland.

A generation had now passed since the Lutheran movement of

Reformation was begun in Germany, and, within that time, not

only had the wave of influence from Wittenberg swept over all

western Europe, but other reformers had risen independently

and contemporaneously, or nearly so, in other countries, and

had co-operated powerfully in making the movement general. The

earliest of these was the Swiss reformer, Ulrich Zwingli, who

began preaching against indulgences and other flagrant abuses

in the Church, at Zurich, in 1519, the same year in which

Luther opened his attack. The effect of his preaching was so

great that Zurich, four years later, had practically separated

itself from the Roman Church.

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From that beginning the Reformation spread so rapidly that in

half-a-dozen years it had mastered most of the Cantons of

Switzerland outside of the five Forest Cantons, where

Catholicism held its ground with stubbornness. The two

religions were then represented by two parties, which absorbed

in themselves all the political as well as the religious

questions of the day, and which speedily came to blows. The

Catholics allied themselves with Ferdinand of Austria, and the

Protestants with several of the imperial cities of Germany.

But such an union between the Swiss and the German Protestants

as seemed plainly desirable was prevented; mainly, by the

dictatorial obstinacy of Luther. Zwingli's reforming ideas

were broader, and at the same time more radical, than

Luther's, and the latter opposed them with irreconcilable

hostility. He still held with the Catholics to the doctrine of

transubstantiation, which the Swiss reformer rejected. Hence

Zwingli was no less a heretic in Luther's eyes than in the

eyes of the pope, and the anathemas launched against him from

Wittenberg were hardly less thunderous than those from Rome.

So the two contemporaneous reformation movements, German and

Swiss, were held apart from one another, and went on side by

side, with little help or sympathy from one another. In 1531

the Forest Cantons attacked and defeated the men of Zurich,

and Zwingli was slain in the battle. Peace was then concluded

on terms which left each canton free to establish its own

creed, and each congregation free to do the same in the common

territories of the confederation.

Reformation in France.

In France, the freer ideas of Christianity--the ideas less

servile to tradition and to Rome--that were in the upper air

of European culture when the sixteenth century began, had

found some expression even before Luther spoke. The influence

of the new classical learning, and of the "humanists" who

imbibed its spirit, tended to that liberation of the mind, and

was felt in the greatest center of the learning of the time,

the University of Paris. But not sufficiently to overcome the

conservatism of the Sorbonne--the theological faculty of the

University; for Luther's writings were solemnly condemned and

burned by it in 1521, and a persecution of those inclined

toward the new doctrines was early begun. Francis I., in whose

careless and coarse nature there was some taste for letters and

learning, as well as for art, and who patronized in an idle

way the Renaissance movements of his reign, seemed disposed at

the beginning to be friendly to the religious Reformers. But

he was too shallow a creature, and too profoundly unprincipled

and false, to stand firmly in any cause of righteousness, and

face such a power as that of Rome. His nobler sister, Margaret

of Angoulême, who embraced the reformed doctrines with

conviction, exerted a strong influence upon the king in their

favor while she was by his side; but after her marriage to

Henry d'Albret, King of Navarre, and after Francis had

suffered defeat and shame in his war with Charles V., he was

ready to make himself the servant of the Papacy for whatever

it willed against his Protestant subjects, in order to have

its alliance and support. So the persecution grew steadily

more fierce, more systematic, and more determined, as the

spirit of the Reformation spread more widely through the

kingdom.

Calvin at Geneva.

One of the consequences of the persecution was the flight from

France, in 1534, of John Calvin, who subsequently became the

founder and the exponent of a system of Protestant theology

which obtained wider acceptance in Europe than that of Luther.

All minor differences were practically merged in the great

division between these two theologies--the Lutheran and the

Calvinistic--which split the Reformation in twain. After two

years of wandering, Calvin settled in the free city of Geneva,

where his influence very soon rose to so extraordinary a

height that he transformed the commonwealth and ruled it,

unselfishly, and in perfect piety, but with iron-handed

despotism, for a quarter of a century.

The French Court.

The reign of Francis I. has one other mark in history, besides

that of his persecution of the Reformers, his careless

patronage of arts and letters, and his unsuccessful wars with

the Emperor. He gave to the French Court--at least more than

his predecessors had done--the character which made it in

later French history so evil and mischievous a center of

dissoluteness, of base intrigue, of national demoralization.

It was invested in his time with the fascinations which drew

into it the nobles of France and its men of genius, to corrupt

them and to destroy their independence. It was in his time that

the Court began to seem to be, in its own eyes, a kind of

self-centered society, containing all of the French nation

which needed or deserved consideration, and holding its place

in the order of things quite apart from the kingdom which it

helped its royal master to rule. Not to be of the Court was to

be non-existent in its view; and thus every ambition in France

was invited to push at its fatal doors.

Catherine de' Medici and the Guises.

Francis I. died in 1547, and was followed on the throne by his

son Henry II., whose marriage to Catherine de' Medici, of the

renowned Florentine family, was the most important personal

act of his life. It was important in the malign fruits which

it bore; since Catherine, after his death, gave an evil

Italian bend-sinister to French politics, which had no lack of

crookedness before. Henry continued the war with Charles V.,

and was afterwards at war with Philip II., Charles' son, and

with England, the latter country losing Calais in the

contest,--its last French possession. Peace was made in 1559,

and celebrated with splendid tournaments, at one of which the

French king received a wound that caused his death.

He left three sons, all weaklings in body and character, who

reigned successively. The elder, Francis II., died the year

following his accession. Although aged but seventeen when he

died, he had been married some two years to Mary Stuart, the

young queen of Scots. This marriage had helped to raise to

great power in the kingdom a family known as the Guises. They

were a branch of the ducal House of Lorraine, whose duchy was

at that time independent of France, and, although the father

of the family, made Duke of Guise by Francis I., had become

naturalized in France in 1505, his sons were looked upon as

foreigners by the jealous Frenchmen whom they supplanted at

Court.

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Of the six sons, there were two of eminence, one (the second

duke of Guise) a famous general in his day, the other a

powerful cardinal. Five sisters completed the family in its

second generation. The elder of these, Mary, had married James

V. of Scotland (whose mother was the English princess,

Margaret, sister of Henry VIII.), and Mary Stuart, queen of

Scots, born of that marriage, was therefore a niece of the

Guises. They had brought about her marriage to Francis II.,

while he was dauphin, and they mounted with her to supreme

influence in the kingdom when she ascended the throne with her

husband. The queen-mother, Catherine de' Medici, was as eager

as the Guises to control the government, in what appeared to

her eyes the interest of her children; but during the short

reign of Francis II. she was quite thrust aside, and the

queen's uncles ruled the state.

The death of Francis II. (1560) brought a change, and with the

accession of Charles IX., a boy of ten years, there began a

bitter contest for ascendancy between Catherine and the

Guises; and this struggle became mixed and strangely

complicated with a deadly conflict of religions, which the

steady advance of the Reformation in France had brought at

this time to a crisis.

The Huguenots.

Under the powerful leadership which Calvin assumed, at Geneva,

the reformed religion in France had acquired an organized

firmness and strength which not only resisted the most cruel

persecution, but made rapid headway against it. "Protestantism

had become a party which did not, like Lutheranism in Germany,

spring up from the depths." "It numbered its chief adherents

among the middle and upper grades of society, spread its roots

rather among the nobles than the citizens, and among learned

men and families of distinction rather than among the people."

"Some of the highest aristocracy, who were discontented, and

submitted unwillingly to the supremacy of the Guises, had

joined the Calvinistic opposition--some undoubtedly from

policy, others from conviction. The Turennes, the Rohans, and

Soubises, pure nobles, who addressed the king as 'mon cousin,'

especially the Bourbons, the agnates of the royal house, had

adopted the new faith" (Hausser). One branch of the Bourbons

had lately acquired the crown of Navarre. The Spanish part of

the old Navarrese kingdom had been subjugated and absorbed by

Ferdinand of Aragon; but its territory on the French side of

the Pyrenees--Béarn and other counties--still maintained a

half independent national existence, with the dignity of a

regal government. When Margaret of Angoulême, sister of

Francis I., married Henry d'Albret, King of Navarre, as

mentioned before, she carried to that small court an earnest

inclination towards the doctrines of the Reform. Under her

protection Navarre became largely Protestant, and a place of

refuge for the persecuted of France. Margaret's daughter, the

famous Jeanne d'Albret, espoused the reformed faith fully, and

her husband, Antoine de Bourbon, as well as Antoine's brother,

Louis de Condé, found it politic to profess the same belief.

For the Protestants (who were now acquiring, in some unknown

way, the name of Huguenots) had become so numerous and so

compactly organized as to form a party capable of being

wielded with great effect, in the strife of court factions

which the rivalry of Catherine and the Guises produced. Hence

politics and religion were inextricably confused in the civil

wars which broke out shortly after the death of Francis II.

(1560), and the accession of the boy king, Charles IX. These

wars belong to a different movement in the general current of

European events, and we will return to them after a glance at

the religious Reformation, and at the political circumstances

connected with it, in England and elsewhere.

England.

Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, made king of England by his

victory at Bosworth, established himself so firmly in the seat

of power that three successive rebellions failed to disturb

him. In one of these (1487) a pretender, Lambert Simnel, was

put forward, who claimed to be the Earl of Warwick. In another

(1491-1497) a second pretender, Perkin Warbeck, personated one

of the young princes whom Richard III. had caused to be

murdered in the tower. Neither of the impostures had much

success in the kingdom. Henry VII. was not a popular king, but

he was able and strong, and he solidified all the bases of

monarchical independence which circumstances had enabled

Edward IV. to begin laying down.

It was in the reign of Henry that America was discovered, and

he might have been the patron of Columbus, the beneficiary of

the great voyage, and the proprietor and lord of the grand

realm which Isabella and Ferdinand secured. But he lacked the

funds or the faith--apparently both--and put aside his

unequaled opportunity. When the field of westward exploration

had been opened, however, he was early in entering it, and

sent the Cabots upon those voyages which gave England her

claim to the North American coasts.

During the reign of Henry VII. there were two quiet marriages

in his family which strangely influenced subsequent history.

One was the marriage, in 1501, of the king's eldest son,

Arthur, to Catherine of Aragon, youngest daughter of Ferdinand

and Isabella. The other, in 1503, united the king's daughter,

Margaret, to James IV., King of Scotland. It was through this

latter marriage that the inheritance of the English crown

passed to the Scottish House of Stuart, exactly one hundred

years later, upon the failure of the direct line of descent in

the Tudor family. The first marriage, of Prince Arthur to

Catherine of Aragon, was soon dissolved by the death of the

prince, in 1502. Seven years afterwards the widowed Catherine

married her late husband's brother, just after he became Henry

VIII., King of England, upon the death of his father, in 1509.

Whence followed notable consequences which will presently

appear.

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Henry VIII. and his breach with Rome.

It was the ambition of Henry VIII. to play a conspicuous part

in European affairs; and as England was rich and strong, and

as the king had obtained nearly the absoluteness of the crown

in France, the parties to the great contests then going on

were all eagerly courting his alliance. His ambitions ran

parallel, too, with those of the able minister, Thomas Wolsey,

who rose to high influence at his side soon after his reign

began. Wolsey aspired to the Papal crown, with the cardinal's

cap as a preparatory adornment, and he drew England, as we

have seen, into the stormy politics of the sixteenth century

in Europe, with no gain, of glory or otherwise, to the nation,

and not much result of any kind. When the Emperor Maximilian

died, in 1519, Henry entered the lists against Maximilian's

grandson, Charles of Spain, and Francis I. of France, as a

candidate for the imperial crown. In the subsequent wars which

broke out between his two rivals, he took the side of the

successful Charles, now Emperor, and helped him to climb to

supremacy in Europe over the prostrate French king. He had

dreams of conquering France again, and casting the glories of

Henry V. in the shade; but he carried his enterprise little

beyond the dreaming. When it was too late to check the growth

of Charles' overshadowing power, he changed his side and took

Francis into alliance.

But Henry's motives were always selfish and personal--never

political; and the personal motives had now taken on a most

despicable character. He had tired of his wife, the Spanish

Catherine, who was six years older than himself. He had two

pretexts for discontent with his marriage: 1, that his queen

had borne him only a daughter, whereas England needed a male

heir to the throne; 2, that he was troubled with scruples as

to the lawfulness of wedlock with his brother's widow. On this

latter ground he began intrigues to win from the Pope, not a

divorce in the ordinary sense of the term, but a declaration

of the nullity of his marriage. This challenged the opposition

of the Emperor, Catherine's nephew, and Henry's alliances were

naturally changed.

The Pope, Clement VII., refused to annul the marriage, and

Henry turned his unreasoning wrath upon Cardinal Wolsey, who

had conducted negotiations with the Pope and failed in them.

Wolsey was driven from the Court in disgrace and died soon

afterwards. He was succeeded in the king's favor by a more

unscrupulous man, Thomas Cromwell. Henry had not yet despaired

of bringing the Pope to compliance with his wishes; and he

began attacks upon the Church and upon the papal revenues

which might shake, as he hoped, the firmness of the powers at

Rome. With the help of a pliant minister and a subservient

Parliament, he forced the clergy (1531-1532) in Convocation

to acknowledge him to be the Supreme Head of the English

Church, and to submit themselves entirely to his authority. At

the same time he grasped the "annates," or first year's income

of bishoprics, which had been the richest perquisite of the papal

treasury. In all these proceedings, the English king was

acting on a line parallel to that of the continental rising

against Rome; but it was not in friendliness toward it nor in

sympathy with it that he did so. He had been among the

bitterest enemies of the Reformation, and he never ceased to

be so. He had won from the Pope the empty title of "Defender

of the Faith," by a foolish book against Luther, and the faith

which he defended in 1521 was the faith in which he died. But

when he found that the influence of Charles V. at Rome was too

great to be overcome, and that the Pope could be neither

bribed, persuaded nor coerced to sanction the putting away of

his wife, he resolved to make the English Church sufficient in

authority to satisfy his demand, by establishing its

ecclesiastical independence, with a pontiff of its own, in

himself. He purposed nothing more than this. He contemplated

no change of doctrine, no cleansing of abuses. He permitted no

one whose services he commanded in the undertaking to bring

such changes into contemplation. So far as concerned Henry's

initiative, there was absolutely nothing of religious

Reformation in the movement which separated the Church of

England from the Church of Rome. It accomplished its sole

original end when it gave finality to the decree of an English

ecclesiastical court, on the question of the king's marriage,

and barred queen Catherine's appeal from it. It was the

intention of Henry VIII. that the Church under his papacy

should remain precisely what it had been under the Pope at

Rome, and he spared neither stake nor gibbet in his

persecuting zeal against impudent reformers.

But the spirit of Reformation which was in the atmosphere of

that time lent itself, nevertheless, to King Henry's project,

and made that practicable which could hardly have been so a

generation before. The influence of Wyclif had never wholly

died out; the new learning was making its way in England and

broadening men's minds; the voice of Luther and his fellow

workers on the continent had been heard, and not vainly.

England was ripe for the religious revolution, and her king

promoted it, without intention. But while his reign lasted,

and his despotism was heavy on the land, there was nothing

accomplished but the breaking of the old Church fetters, and

the binding of the nation anew with green withes, which,

presently, it would burst asunder.

The conspicuous events of Henry's reign are familiarly known.

Most of them bear the stamp of his monstrous egotism and

selfishness. He was the incomparable tyrant of English

history. The monarch who repudiated two wives, sent two to the

block, and shared his bed with yet two more; who made a whole

national church the servant of his lusts, and who took the

lives of the purest men of his kingdom when they would not

bend their consciences to say that he did well--has a pedestal

quite his own in the gallery of infamous kings.

Edward VI. and the Reformation.

Dying in 1547, Henry left three children: Mary, daughter of

Catherine of Aragon, Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn, and

Edward, son of Jane Seymour. The latter, in his tenth year,

became King (Edward VI.), and his uncle, the Duke of Somerset,

acquired the control of the government, with the title of

Protector. Somerset headed a party which had begun before the

death of the king to press for more changes in the character

of the new Church of England and less adherence to the pattern

of Rome. There seems to be little reason to suppose that the

court leaders of this party were much moved in the matter by

any interest of a religious kind; but the growth of thinking

and feeling in England tended that way, and the side of

Reformation had become the stronger. They simply gave way to

it, and, abandoned the repression which Henry had persisted

in. At the same time, their new policy gave them more freedom

to grasp the spoils of the old Church, which Henry VIII. had

begun to lay hands on, by suppression of monasteries and

confiscation of their estates. The wealth thus sequestered

went largely into private hands.

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It was in the short reign of Edward VI. that the Church of

England really took on its organic form as one of the Churches

of the Reformation, by the composition of its first

prayer-books, and by the framing of a definite creed.

Lady Jane Grey.

In 1553, the young king died. Somerset had fallen from power

the previous year and had suffered death. He had been

supplanted by Dudley, Earl of Warwick and Duke of

Northumberland, and that minister had persuaded Edward to

bequeath his crown to Lady Jane Grey, grand-daughter of the

younger sister of Henry VIII. But Northumberland was hated by

the people, and few could recognize the right of a boy on the

throne to change the order of regal succession by his will.

Parliament had formally legitimated both Catherine's daughter,

Mary, and Anne Boleyn's daughter, Elizabeth, and had placed

them in the line of inheritance. Mary's legal title to the

crown was clear. She had adhered with her mother to the Roman

Church, and her advent upon the throne would mean the

subjection of the English Church to the Papacy anew; since the

constitution of the Church armed the sovereign with supreme

and indisputable power over it. The Protestants of the kingdom

knew what to expect, and were in great fear; but they submitted.

Lady Jane Grey was recommended to them by her Protestant

belief, and by her beautiful character; but her title was too

defective and her supporters too much distrusted. There were

few to stand by the poor young girl when Northumberland

proclaimed her queen, and she was easily dethroned by the

partisans of Mary. A year later she was sent to the block.

Catholicism was now ascendant again, and England was brought

to share in the great reaction against the Reformation which

prevailed generally through Europe and which we shall

presently consider. Before doing so, let us glance briefly at

the religious state of some other countries not yet touched

upon.

The Reformation in Scotland.

In Scotland, a deep undercurrent of feeling against the

corruptions of the Church had been repressed by resolute

persecutions, until after the middle of the sixteenth century.

Wars with England, and the close connection of the Scottish

Court with the Guises of France, had both tended to retard the

progress of a reform sentiment, or to delay the manifestation

of it. But when the pent-up feeling began to respond to the

voice of the great Calvinistic evangelist and organizer, John

Knox, it swept the nation like a storm. Knox's first

preaching, after his captivity in France and exile to Geneva,

was in 1555. In 1560, the authority of the Pope was renounced,

the mass prohibited, and the Geneva confession of faith

adopted, by the Scottish Estates. After that time the Reformed

Church in Scotland--the Church of Presbyterianism--had only

to resist the futile hostility of Mary Stuart for a few years,

until it came to its great struggle against English

Episcopacy, under Mary's son and grandson, James and Charles.

The Reformation in the North.

In the three Scandinavian nations the ideas of the

Reformation, diffused from Germany, had won early favor, both

from kings and people, and had soon secured an enduring

foothold. They owed their reception quite as much, perhaps, to

the political situation as to the religious feeling of the

northern peoples.

When the ferment of the Reformation movement began, the three

crowns were worn by one king, as they had been since the

"Union of Calmar," in 1397, and the King of Denmark was the

sovereign of the Union. His actual power in Sweden and Norway

was slight; his theoretical authority was sufficient to

irritate both. In Sweden, especially, the nobles chafed under

the yoke of the profitless federation. Christian II., the last

Danish king of the three kingdoms, crushed their disaffection

by a harsh conquest of the country (1520), and by savage

executions, so perfidious and so numerous that they are known

in Swedish history as the Massacre of Stockholm. But this

brutal and faithless king became so hateful in his own proper

kingdom that the Danish nobles rose against him in 1523 and he

was driven from the land. The crown was given to his uncle,

Frederick, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein. In that German Duchy,

Lutheranism had already made its way, and Frederick was in

accord with it. On coming to the throne of Denmark, where

Catholicism still prevailed, he pledged himself to attempt no

interference with it; but he felt no obligation, on the other

hand, to protect it. He demanded and established a toleration

for both doctrines, and gave to the reformers a freedom of

opportunity which speedily undermined the old faith and

overthrew it.

In the meantime, Sweden had undergone the important revolution

of her history, which placed the national hero, Gustavus Vasa,

on the throne. Gustavus was a young noble whose title to the

crown was not derived from his lineage, but from his genius.

After Christian II. had bloodily exterminated the elder

leaders of the Swedish state, this young lord, then a hostage

and prisoner in the tyrant's hands, made his escape and took

upon himself the mission of setting his country free. For

three years Gustavus lived a life like that of Alfred the

Great in England, when he, too, struggled with the Danes. His

heroic adventures were crowned with success, and Sweden, led

to independence by its natural king, bestowed the regal title

upon him (1523) and seated him upon its ancient throne. The

new Danish king, Frederick, acknowledged the revolution, and

the Union of Calmar was dissolved. Sweden under Gustavus Vasa

recovered from the state of great disorder into which it had

fallen, and grew to be a nation of important strength. As a

measure of policy, he encouraged the introduction of

Lutheranism and promoted the spread of it, in order to break

the power of the Catholic clergy, and also, in order, without

doubt, to obtain possession of the property of the Church,

which secured to the Crown the substantial revenues it

required.

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Italy.

In Italy, the reformed doctrines obtained no popular footing

at any time, though many among the cultivated people regarded

them with favor, and would gladly have witnessed, not only a

practical purging of the Church, but a revision of those

Catholic dogmas most offensive to a rational mind. But such

little movement as stirred in that direction was soon stopped

by the success of the Emperor, Charles V., in his Italian wars

with Francis I., and by the Spanish domination in the

peninsula which ensued thereon. The Spain of that age was like

the bloodless octopus which paralyzes the victim in its

clutch, and Italy, gripped in half of its many principalities

by the deadly tentacles thrust out from Madrid, showed no

consciousness for the next two centuries.

The Council of Trent.

The long demanded, long promised General Council, for

considering the alleged abuses in the Church and the alleged

falsities in its doctrine, and generally for discussion and

action upon the questions raised by the Reformation, assembled

at Trent in December, 1545. The Emperor seems to have desired

with sincerity that the Council might be one which the

Protestants would have confidence in, and in which they might

be represented, for a full discussion of their differences

with Rome. But this was made impossible from the beginning.

The Protestants demanded that "final appeal on all debated

points should be made to the sole authority of Holy

Scripture," and this being refused by the Pope (Paul III.),

there remained no ground on which the two parties could meet.

The Italian prelates who composed the majority of the Council

made haste, it would seem, to take action which closed the

doors of conciliation against the Reformers. "First, they

declared that divine revelation was continuous in the Church

of which the Pope was the head; and that the chief written

depository of this revelation--namely, the Scriptures--had no

authority except in the version of the Vulgate. Secondly, they

condemned the doctrine of justification by Faith. ... Thirdly,

they confirmed the efficacy and the binding authority of the

Seven Sacraments." "The Council terminated in December [1563]

with an act of submission, which placed all its decrees at the

pleasure of the Papal sanction. Pius [Pius IV. became Pope in

1560] was wise enough to pass and ratify the decrees of the

Tridentine fathers by a Bull dated on December 26, 1563,

reserving to the Papal sovereign the sole right of

interpreting them in doubtful or disputed cases. This he could

well afford to do; for not an article had been penned without

his concurrence, and not a stipulation had been made without a

previous understanding with the Catholic powers. The very terms,

moreover, by which his ratification was conveyed, secured his

supremacy, and conferred upon his successors and himself the

privileges of a court of ultimate appeal. At no previous

period in the history of the Church had so wide, so undefined,

and so unlimited an authority been accorded to the See of

Rome" (Symonds).

Some practical reforms in the Church were wrought by the

Council of Trent, but its disciplinary decrees were less

important than the dogmatic. From beginning to end of its

sessions, which, broken by many suspensions and adjournments,

dragged through eighteen years, it addressed itself to the

task of solidifying the Church of Rome, as left by the

Protestant schism,--not of healing the schism itself or of

removing the provocations to it. The work which the Council

did in that direction was of vast importance, and profoundly

affected the future of the Papacy and of its spiritual realm.

It gave a firm dogmatic footing to the great reactionary new

forces which now came into play, with aggressive enthusiasm

and zeal, to arrest the advance of the Reformation and roll it

back.

The Catholic reaction.

The extraordinary revival of Catholicism and thrusting back of

Protestantism which occurred in the later half of the

sixteenth century had several causes behind it and within it.

1. The spiritual impulse from which the Reformation started

had considerably spent itself, or had become debased by a

gross admixture of political and mercenary aims. In Germany,

the spoils derived from the suppressing of monastic

establishments and the secularizing of ecclesiastical fiefs

and estates, appeared very early among the potent inducements

by which mercenary princes were drawn to the side of the

Lutheran reform. Later, as the opposing leagues, Protestant

and Catholic, settled into chronic opposition and hostility,

the struggle between them took on more and more the character

of a great political game, and lost more and more the spirit

of a battle for free conscience and a free mind. In France, as

we have noticed, the political entanglements of the Huguenot

party were such, by this time, that it could not fail to be

lowered by them in its religious tone. In England, every

breath of spirituality in the movement had so far (to the

death of Henry VIII.) been stifled, and it showed nothing but

a brazen political front to the world. In the Netherlands, the

struggle for religious freedom was about to merge itself in a

fight of forty years for self-government, and the fortitude

and valor of the citizen were more surely developed in that

long war than the faith and fervor of the Christian. And so,

generally throughout Europe, Protestantism, in its conflict

with the powers of the ancient Church, had descended, ere the

sixteenth century ran far into its second half, to a

distinctly lower plane than it occupied at first. On that

lower plane Rome fronted it more formidably, with stronger

arms, than on the higher.

2. Broadly stating the fact, it may be said that Protestantism

made all its great inroads upon the Church of Rome before

partisanship came to the rescue of the latter, and closed the

open mind with which Luther, and Zwingli, and Farel, and

Calvin were listened to at first. It happens always, when new

ideas, combative of old ones, whether religious or political,

are first put forward in the world, they are listened to for a

time with a certain disinterestedness of attention--a certain

native candor in the mind--which gives them a fair hearing. If

they seem reasonable, they obtain ready acceptance, and spread

rapidly,--until the conservatism of the beliefs assailed

takes serious alarm, and the radicalism of the innovating

beliefs becomes ambitious and rampant; until the for and the

against stiffen themselves in opposing ranks, and the voice of

argument is drowned by the cries of party. That ends all

shifting of masses from the old to the new ground. That ends

conversion as an epidemic and dwindles it to the sporadic

character.

3. Protestantism became bitterly divided within itself at an

early stage of its career by doctrinal differences, first

between Zwinglians and Lutherans, and then between Lutherans

and Calvinists, while Catholicism, under attack, settled into

more unity and solidity than before.

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4. The tremendous power in Europe to which the Spanish

monarchy, with its subject dominions, and its dynastic

relations, had now risen, passed, in 1556, to a dull-brained

and soulless bigot, who saw but one use for it, namely, the

extinction of all dissent from his own beliefs, and all

opposition to his own will. Philip II. differed from his

father, Charles V., not in the enormity of his bigoted

egotism--they were equals, perhaps, in that--but in the

exclusiveness of it. There was something else in Charles,

something sometimes faintly admirable. He did have some

interests in life that were not purely malignant. But his

horrid vampire of a son, the most repulsive creature of his

kind in all history, had nothing in him that was not as deadly

to mankind as the venom secreted behind the fang of a cobra. It

was a frightful day for the world when a despotism which

shadowed Spain, Sicily, Italy and the Low Countries, and which

had begun to drag unbounded treasure from America, fell to the

possession of such a being as this. Nothing substantial was

taken away from the potent malevolence of Philip by his

failure of election in Germany to the Imperial throne. On the

contrary, he was the stronger for it, because all his dominion

was real and all his authority might assume to be absolute.

His father had been more handicapped than helped by his German

responsibilities and embarrassments, which Philip escaped. It

is not strange that his concentration of the vast enginery

under his hands to one limited aim, of exterminating what his

dull and ignorant mind conceived to be irreligion and treason,

had its large measure of success. The stranger thing is, that

there was fortitude and courage to resist such power, in even

one corner of his realm.

5. The Papacy was restored at this time to the purer and

higher character of its best ages, by well-guided elections,

which raised in succession to the throne a number of men, very

different in ability, and quite different, too, in the spirit

of their piety, but generally alike in dignity and decency of

life, and in qualities which command respect. The fiery

Neapolitan zealot, Caraffa, who became Pope in 1555 as Paul

IV.; his cool-tempered diplomatic successor, Pius IV., who

manipulated the closing labors of the Council of Trent; the

austere inquisitor, Pius V.; the more commonplace Gregory

XIII., and the powerful Sixtus V., were pontiffs who gave new

strength to Catholicism, in their different ways, both by what

they did and by what they were.

6. The revival of zeal in the Roman Church, naturally

following the attacks upon it, gave rise to many new religious

organizations within its elastic fold, some reformatory, some

missionary and militant, but all bringing an effectual

reinforcement to it, at the time when its assailants began to

show faltering signs. Among these was one--Loyola's Society of

Jesus--which marched promptly to the front of the battle, and

which contributed more than any other single force in the

field to the rallying of the Church, to the stopping of

retreat, and to the facing of its stubborn columns forward for

a fresh advance. The Jesuits took such a lead and accomplished

such results by virtue of the military precision of discipline

under which they had been placed and to which they were

singularly trained by the rules of the founder; and also by

effect of a certain subtle sophistry that runs through their

ethical maxims and their counsels of piety. They fought for

their faith with a sublime courage, with a devotion almost

unparalleled, with an earnestness of belief that cannot be

questioned; but they used weapons and modes of warfare which

the higher moral feeling of civilized mankind, whether

Christian or Pagan, has always condemned. It is not Protestant

enemies alone who say this. It is the accusation that has been

brought against them again and again in their own Church, and

which has expelled them from Catholic countries, again and

again. In the first century or more of their career, this

plastic conscience, moulded by a passionate zeal, and

surrendered, with every gift of mind and body, to a service of

obedience which tolerated no evasion on one side nor bending

on the other, made the Jesuits the most invincible and

dangerous body of men that was ever organized for defense and

aggression in any cause.

The order was founded in 1540, by a bull of Pope Paul III. At

the time of Loyola's death, in 1556, it numbered about one

thousand members, and under Lainez, the second general of the

order, who succeeded Loyola at the head, it advanced rapidly,

in numbers, in efficiency of organization, and in wide-spread

influence.

Briefly stated, these are the incidents and circumstances

which help to explain--not fully, perhaps, but almost

sufficiently--the check to Protestantism and the restored

energy and aggressiveness of the Catholic Church, in the later

half of the sixteenth century.

The Ruin of Spain.

In his kingdoms of Spain, Philip II. may be said to have

finished the work of death which his father and his father's

grand-parents committed to him. They began it, and appointed

the lines on which it was to be done. The Spain of their day

had the fairest opportunity of any nation in Europe for a

great and noble career. The golden gates of her opportunity

were unlocked and opened by good Queen Isabella; but the pure

hands of the same pious queen threw over the neck of her

country the noose of a strangler, and tightened it

prayerfully. Her grandson, who was neither pious nor good,

flung his vast weight of power upon it. But the strangling

halter of the Spanish Inquisition did not extinguish signs of

life in his kingdom fast enough to satisfy his royal

impatience, and he tightened other cords upon the suffering

body and all its limbs. Philip, when he came to take up the

murderous task, found every equipment for it that he could

desire. He had only to gather the strands of the infernal mesh

into his hands, and bring the strain of his awful sovereignty

to bear upon them: then sit and watch the palsy of death creep

over his dominions.

Of political life, Charles really left nothing for his son to

kill. Of positive religious life, there can have been no

important survival, for he and his Inquisition had been keenly

vigilant; but Philip made much of the little he could

discover. As to the industrial life of Spain, father and son

were alike active in the murdering of it, and alike ingenious.

They paralyzed manufactures, in the first instance, by

persecuting and expelling the thrifty and skilful Moriscoes;

then they made their work complete by heavy duties on raw

materials. To extinguish the agricultural industries of the

kingdom, they had happy inspirations.

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They prohibited the exportation of one commodity after

another--corn, cattle, wool, cloth, leather, and the

like--until they had brought Spain practically to the point of

being dependent on other countries for many products of skill,

and yet of having nothing to offer in exchange, except the

treasure of precious metals which she drew from America. Hence

it happened that the silver and gold of the Peruvian and

Mexican mines ran like quicksand through her fingers, into the

coffers of the merchants of the Low Countries and of England;

and, probably, no other country in Europe saw so little of

them, had so little of benefit from them, as the country they

were supposed to enrich.

If the killing of Spain needed to be made complete by anything

more, Philip supplied the need, in the deadliness of his

taxation. Spending vast sums in his attempt to repeat upon the

Netherlands the work of national murder he had accomplished in

Spain; losing, by the same act, the rich revenues of the

thrifty provinces; launching into new expenditures as he

pursued, by clumsy warfare, his mission of death into fresh

fields, aiming now at the life of France, and now at the life

of England,--he squeezed the cost of his armies and armadas

from a country in which he had strangled production already,

and made poverty the common estate. It was the last draining

of the life-blood of a nation which ought to have been strong

and great, but which suffered murder most foul and unnatural.

We hardly exaggerate even in figure when we say that Spain was

a dead nation whim Philip quitted the scene of his arduous

labors. It is true that his successors still found something

for their hands to do, in the ways that were pleasant to their

race, and burned and bled and crushed the unhappy kingdom with

indefatigable persistency; but it was really the corpse of a

nation which they practised on. The life of Spain, as a

breathing, sentient state, came to an end under the hands of

Philip II., first of the Thugs.

Philip II. and the Netherlands.

The hand of Charles V. had been heavy on the Netherlands; but

resistance to such a power as that of Spain in his day was

hardly dreamed of. It was not easy for Philip to outdo his

father's despotism; less easy to drive the laborious

Hollanders and Flemings to desperation and force them into

rebellious war. But he accomplished it. He filled the country

with Spanish troops. He reorganized and stimulated the

Inquisition. He multiplied bishoprics in the Provinces,

against the wish of even the Catholic population. He scorned

the counsels of the great nobles, and gave foreign advisers to

the Regent, his half-sister, Margaret of Parma, illegitimate

daughter of Charles V., whom he placed at the head of the

government. His oppressions were endured, with increasing

signs of hidden passion, for ten years. Then, in 1566, the

first movement of patriotic combination appeared. It was a

league among certain of the nobles; its objects were peaceful,

its plans were legal; but it was not countenanced by the wiser

of the patriots, who saw that events were not ripe. The

members of the league went in solemn procession to the Regent

with a petition; whereupon one of her councillors denounced

them as "a troop of beggars." They promptly seized the epithet

and appropriated it. A beggar's wallet became their emblem;

the idea was caught up and carried through the country, and a

visible party rose quickly into existence.

The religious feeling now gained boldness. Enormous

field-meetings began to be held, under arms, in every part of

the open country, defying edicts and Inquisition. There

followed a little later some fanatical and riotous outbreaks

in several cities, breaking images and desecrating churches.

Upon these occurrences, Philip despatched to the Netherlands,

in the summer of 1567, a fresh army of Spanish troops,

commanded by a man who was after his own heart--as mean, as

false, as merciless, as little in soul and mind, as

himself,--the Duke of Alva. Alva brought with him authority

which practically superseded that of the Regent, and secret

instructions which doomed every man of worth in the Provinces.

At the head of the nobility of the country; by eminence of

character, no less than by precedence in rank, stood William

of Nassau, Prince of Orange, who derived his higher title from

a petty and remote principality, but whose large family

possessions were in Flanders, Brabant, Holland and Luxemburg.

Associated closely with him, in friendship and in political

action, were Count Egmont, and the Admiral Count Horn, the

latter of a family related to the Montmorencies of France.

These three conspicuous nobles Philip had marked with special

malice for the headsman, though their solitary crime had been

the giving of advice against his tyrannies. William of

Orange-"the Silent," as he came to be known--far-seeing in

his wisdom, and well-advised by trusty agents in Spain,

withdrew into Germany before Alva arrived. He warned his

friends of their danger and implored them to save themselves;

but they were blinded and would not listen. The perfidious

Spaniard lured them with flatteries to Brussels and thrust

them into prison. They were to be the first victims of the

appalling sacrifice required to appease the dull rage of the

king. Within three months they had eighteen hundred

companions, condemned like themselves to the scaffold, by a

council in which Alva presided and which the people called

"the Council of Blood." In June, 1568, they were brought to

the block.

Meantime Prince William and his brother, Louis of Nassau, had

raised forces in Germany and attempted the rescue of the

terrorized Provinces; but their troops were ill-paid and

mutinous and they suffered defeat. For the time being, the

Netherlands were crushed. As many of the people as could

escape had fled; commerce was at a standstill; workshops were

idle; the cities, once so wealthy, were impoverished; death,

mourning, and terror, were everywhere. Alva had done very

perfectly what he was sent to do.

The first break in the blackness of the clouds appeared in

April, 1572, when a fleet, manned by refugee adventurers who

called themselves Sea-Beggars, attacked and captured the town

of Brill. From that day the revolt had its right footing, on

the decks of the ships of the best sailors in the world. It

faced Philip from that day as a maritime power, which would

grow by the very feeding of its war with him, until it had

consumed everything Spanish within its reach. The taking of

Brill soon gave the patriots control of so many places in

Holland and Zealand that a meeting of deputies was held at

Dort, in July, 1572, which declared William of Orange to be

"the King's legal Stadtholder in Holland, Zealand, Friesland

and Utrecht," and recommended to the other Provinces that he

be appointed Protector of all the Netherlands during the

King's absence.

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Alva's reign of terror had failed so signally that even he was

discouraged and asked to be recalled. It was his boast when he

retired that he had put eighteen thousand and six hundred of

the Netherlanders to death since they were delivered into his

hands, above and beyond the horrible massacres by which he had

half depopulated every captured town. Under Alva's successor,

Don Louis de Requesens, a man of more justice and humanity,

the struggle went on, adversely, upon the whole, to the

patriots, though they triumphed gloriously in the famous

defense of Leyden. To win help from England, they offered the

sovereignty of their country to Queen Elizabeth; but in vain.

They made no headway in the southern provinces, where

Catholicism prevailed, and where the religious difference drew

people more to the Spanish side. But when Requesens died

suddenly, in the spring of 1576, and the Spanish soldiery

broke into a furious mutiny, sacking Antwerp and other cities,

then the nobles of Flanders and Brabant applied to the northern

provinces for help. The result was a treaty, called the

Pacification of Ghent, which contemplated a general effort to

drive the Spaniards from the whole land. But not much came of

this confederacy; the Catholic provinces never co-operated

with the Protestant provinces, and the latter went their own

way to freedom and prosperity, while the former sank back,

submissive, to their chains.

For a short time after the death of Requesens, Philip was

represented in the Netherlands by his illegitimate

half-brother, Don John of Austria; but Don John died in

October, 1578, and then came the great general, Alexander

Farnese, Prince of Parma, who was to try the patriots sorely

by his military skill. In 1579, the Prince of Orange drew them

more closely together, in the Union of Utrecht, which Holland,

Zealand, Gelderland, Zutphen, Utrecht, Overyssel, and

Groningen, subscribed, and which was practically the

foundation of the Dutch republic, though allegiance to Philip

was not yet renounced. This followed two years later, in July,

1581, when the States General, assembled at the Hague, passed a

solemn Act of Abjuration, which deposed Philip from his

sovereignty and transferred it to the Duke of Anjou, a prince

of the royal family of France, who did nothing for the

Provinces, and who died soon after. At the same time, the

immediate sovereignty of Holland and Zealand was conferred on

the Prince of Orange.

In March, 1582, Philip made his first deliberate attempt to

procure the assassination of the Prince. He had entered into a

contract for the purpose, and signed it with his own hand. The

assassin employed failed only because the savage pistol wound

he inflicted, in the neck and jaw of his victim, did not kill.

The master-murderer, at Madrid, was not discouraged. He

launched his assassins, one following the other, until six had

made their trial in two years. The sixth, one Balthazar

Gerard, accomplished that for which he was sent, and William

the Silent, wise statesman and admirable patriot, fell under

his hand (July 10, 1584). Philip was so immeasurably delighted

at this success that he conferred three lordships on the

parents of the murderer.

William's son, Maurice, though but eighteen years old, was

immediately chosen Stadtholder of Holland, Zealand and

Utrecht, and High Admiral of the Union. In the subsequent

years of the war, he proved himself a general of great

capacity. Of the details of the war it is impossible to speak.

Its most notable event was the siege of Antwerp, whose

citizens defended themselves against the Duke of Parma, with

astonishing courage and obstinacy, for many months. They

capitulated in the end on honorable terms; but the prosperity

of their city had received a blow from which it never revived.

Once more the sovereignty of the Provinces was offered to

Queen Elizabeth of England, and once more declined; but the

queen sent her favorite, the Earl of Leicester, with a few

thousand men, to help the struggling Hollanders (1585). This

was done, not in sympathy with them or their cause, but purely

as a self-defensive measure against Spain. The niggardliness

and the vacillations of Elizabeth, combined with the

incompetency of Leicester, caused troubles to the Provinces

nearly equal to the benefit of the forces lent them. Philip of

Spain was now involved in his undertakings with the Guises and

the League in France, and in his plans against England, and

was weakened in the Netherlands for some years. Parma died in

1592, and Count Mansfield took his place, succeeded in his

turn by the Marquis Spinola. The latter, at last, made an

honest report, that the subjugation of the United Provinces

was impracticable, and, Philip II. being now dead, the Spanish

government was induced in 1607 to agree to a suspension of

arms. A truce for twelve years was arranged; practically it

was the termination of the war of independence, and

practically it placed the United Provinces among the nations,

although the formal acknowledgment of their independence was

not yielded by Spain until 1648.

England under Mary.

While the Netherlands had offered to Philip of Spain a special

field for his malice, there were others thrown open to him

which he did not neglect. He may be said, in fact, to have

whetted his appetite for blood and for burned human flesh in

England, whither he went, as a young prince, in 1554, to marry

his elderly second cousin, Queen Mary. We may be sure that he

did not check the ardor of his consort, when she hastened to

re-establish the supremacy of the Pope, and to rekindle the

fires of religious persecution. The two-hundred and

seventy-seven heretics whom she is reckoned to have burned may

have seemed to him, even then, an insignificant handful. He

quickly tired of her, if not of her congenial work, and left

her in 1555. In 1558 she died, and the Church of Rome fell

once more, never to regain its old footing of authority.

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England under Elizabeth.

Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn, who now came to the

throne, was Protestant by the necessities of her position,

whether doctrinally convinced or no. The Catholics denied her

legitimacy of birth, and disputed, therefore, her right to the

crown. She depended upon the Protestants for her support, and

Protestantism, either active or passive, had become, without

doubt, the dominant faith of the nation. But the mild schism

which formerly took most of its direction from Luther, had now

been powerfully acted upon by the influence of Calvin. Geneva

had been the refuge of many ministers and teachers who fled

from Mary's fires, and they returned to spread and deepen in

England the stern, strong, formidable piety which Calvin

evoked. These Calvinistic Protestants now made themselves felt

as a party in the state, and were known ere long by that name

which the next century rendered famous in English and American

history--the great name of the Puritans. They were not

satisfied with the stately, decorous, ceremonious Church which

Elizabeth reconstructed on the pattern of the Church of Edward

VI. At the same time, no party could be counted on more surely

for the support of the queen, since the hope of Protestantism

in England depended upon her, even as she was dependent upon

it.

The Catholics, denying legitimacy to Elizabeth, recognized

Mary Queen of Scots as the lawful sovereign of England. And

Mary was, in fact, the next in succession, tracing her

lineage, as stated before, to the elder sister of Henry VIII.

If Elizabeth had been willing to frankly acknowledge Mary's

heirship, failing heirs of her own body, it seems probable

that the partisans of the Scottish queen would have been

quieted, to a great extent. But Mary had angered her by

assuming, while in France, the arms and style of Queen of

England. She distrusted and disliked her Stuart cousin, and,

moreover, the whole idea of a settlement of the succession was

repugnant to her mind. At the same time, she could not be

brought to marry, as her Protestant subjects wished. She

coquetted with the notion of marriage through half her reign,

but never to any purpose.

Such were the elements of agitation and trouble in England

under Elizabeth. The history of well-nigh half-a-century was

shaped in almost all its events by the threatening attitude of

Catholicism and its supporters, domestic and foreign, toward

the English queen. She was supported by the majority of her

subjects with staunch loyalty and fidelity, even though she

treated them none too well, and troubled them in their very

defense of her by her whims and caprices. They identified her

cause with themselves, and took such pride in her courage that

they shut their eyes to the many weaknesses that went with it.

She never grasped the affairs she dealt with in a broadly

capable way. She never acted on them with well considered

judgment. Her ministers, it is clear, were never able to

depend upon a reasonable action of her mind. Her vanity or her

jealousy might put reason in eclipse at any moment, and a skilful

flatterer could make the queen as foolish as a milkmaid. But

she had a royal courage and a royal pride of country, and she

did make the good and glory of England her aim. So she won the

affection of all Englishmen whose hearts were not in the

keeping of the Pope, and no monarch so arbitrary was ever more

ardently admired.

Mary, Queen of Scots.

In 1567, Mary Stuart was deposed by her own subjects, or

forced to abdicate in favor of her infant son, James. She had

alienated the Scottish people, first by her religion, and then

by her suspected personal crimes. Having married her second

cousin, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, she was accused of being

false to him. Darnley revenged his supposed wrongs as a

husband by murdering her secretary, David Rizzio. In the next

year (1567) Darnley was killed; the hand of the Earl of

Bothwell appeared quite plainly in the crime, and the queen's

complicity was believed. She confirmed the suspicions against

herself by marrying Bothwell soon afterwards. Then her

subjects rose against her, imprisoned her in Loch Leven

Castle, and made the Earl of Murray regent of the Kingdom. In

1568 Mary escaped from her Scottish prison and entered

England. From that time until her death, in 1587, she was a

captive in the hands of her rival, Queen Elizabeth, and was

treated with slender magnanimity. More than before, she became

the focus of intrigues and conspiracies which threatened both

the throne and the life of Elizabeth, and a growing feeling of

hostility to the wretched woman was inevitable.

In 1570, Pope Pius V. issued against Elizabeth his formal bull

of excommunication, absolving her subjects from their

allegiance. This quickened, of course, the activity of the

plotters against the queen and set treason astir. Priests from

the English Catholic Seminary at Douai, afterwards at Rheims,

began to make their appearance in the country; a few Jesuits

came over; and both were active agents of the schemes on foot

which contemplated the seating of Mary Stuart on the throne of

Elizabeth Tudor. Some of these emissaries were executed, and

they are counted among the martyrs of the Catholic Church,

which is a serious mistake. The Protestantism of the sixteenth

century was quite capable of religious persecution, even to

death; but it has no responsibilities of that nature in these

Elizabethan cases. As a matter of fact, the religion of the

Jesuit sufferers in the reign of Elizabeth was a mere incident

attaching itself to a high political crime, which no nation

has ever forgiven.

The plotting went on for twenty years, keeping the nation in

unrest; while beyond it there were thickening signs of a great

project of invasion in the sinister mind of Philip II. At

last, in 1586, the coolest councillors of Elizabeth persuaded

her to bring Mary Stuart to trial for alleged complicity in a

conspiracy of assassination which had lately come to light.

Convicted, and condemned to death, Mary ended her sad life on

the scaffold, at Fotheringay, on the 8th of February, 1587.

Whether guilty or guiltless of any knowledge of what had been

done in her name, against the peace of England and against the

life of the English queen, it cannot be thought strange that

Protestant England took her life.

The Spanish Armada.

A great burst of wrath in Catholic Europe was caused by the

execution of Mary, and Philip of Spain hastened forward his

vast preparations for the invasion and conquest of England. In

1588, the "invincible armada," as it was believed to be,

sailed out of the harbors of Portugal and Spain, and wrecked

itself with clumsy imbecility on the British and Irish coasts.

It scarcely did more than give sport to the eager English

sailors who scattered its helpless ships and hunted them down.

Philip troubled England no more, and conspiracy ceased.

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England at Sea.

But the undeclared, half-piratical warfare which private

adventurers had been carrying on against Spanish commerce for

many years now acquired fresh energy. Drake, Hawkins,

Frobisher, Grenvil, Raleigh, were the heroic spirits of this

enterprising warfare; but they had many fellows. It was the

school of the future navy of England, and the foundations of

the British Empire were laid down by those who carried it on.

Otherwise, Elizabeth had little war upon her hands, except in

Ireland, where the state of misery and disorder had already

been long chronic. The first really complete conquest of the

island was accomplished by Lord Mountjoy between 1600 and

1603.

Intellectual England.

But neither the political troubles nor the naval and military

triumphs of England during the reign of Elizabeth are of much

importance, after all, compared with the wonderful flowering

of the genius of the nation which took place in that age.

Shakespeare, Spenser, Bacon, Ben Jonson, Marlowe, Hooker,

Raleigh, Sidney, are the great facts of Elizabeth's time, and

it shines with the luster of their names, the period most

glorious in English history.

The Religious Wars in France.

Wherever the stealthy arm of the influence of Philip II. of

Spain could reach, there the Catholic reaction of his time

took on a malignant form. In France, it is quite probable that

the Catholics and the Huguenots, if left to themselves, would

have come to blows; but it is certain that the meddling

fingers of the Spanish king put fierceness and fury into the

wars of religion, which raged from 1562 to 1596, and that they

were prolonged by his encouragement and help.

Catherine de' Medici, to strengthen herself against the

Guises, after the death of Francis II., offered attentions for

a time to the Huguenot nobles, and encouraged them to expect a

large and lasting measure of toleration. She went so far that

the Huguenot influence at court, surrounding the young king,

became very seriously alarming to Catholic onlookers, both at

home and abroad. Among the many remonstrances addressed to the

queen-regent, the one which appears to have been decisive in

its effect came from Philip. He coldly sent her word that he

intended to interfere in France and to establish the supremacy

of the Catholic Church; that he should give his support for that

purpose to any true friend of the Church who might request it.

Whether Catherine had entertained an honest purpose or not, in

her dealing with the Huguenots, this threat, with what lay

behind it, put an end to the hope of justice for them. It is

true that an assembly of notables, in January, 1562, did

propose a law which the queen put forth, in what is known as

the "Edict of January," whereby the Huguenots were given, for

the first time, a legal recognition, ceasing to be outlaws,

and were permitted to hold meetings, in the daytime, in open

places, outside of walled cities; but their churches were

taken away from them, they were forbidden to build more, and

they could hold no meetings in walled towns. It was a measure

of toleration very different from that which they had been led

to expect; and even the little meted out by this Edict of January

was soon shown to have no guarantee. Within three months, the

Duke of Guise had found an opportunity for exhibiting his

contempt of the new law, by ordering his armed followers to

attack a congregation at Vassy, killing fifty and wounding two

hundred of the peaceful worshippers. This outrage drove the

Huguenots to arms and the civil wars began.

The frivolous Anthony, King of Navarre, had been won back to

the Catholic side. His staunch wife, Jeanne d'Albret, with her

young son, the future Henry IV., and his brother, Louis,

Prince of Condé, remained true to their faith. Condé was the

chief of the party. Next to him in rank, and first in real

worth and weight, was the noble Admiral Coligny. The first war

was brief, though long enough to end the careers of Anthony of

Navarre, killed in battle, and the Duke of Guise,

assassinated. Peace was made in 1563 through a compromise,

which conceded certain places to the Huguenots, wherein they

might worship God in their own way. But it was a hollow peace,

and the malicious finger of the great master of assassins at

Madrid never ceased picking at it. In 1566, civil war broke

out a second time, continuing until 1570. Its principal

battles were that of Jarnac, in which Condé was taken prisoner

and basely assassinated by his captors, and that of

Moncontour. The Huguenots were defeated in both. After the

death of Condé, young Henry of Navarre, who had reached his

fifteenth year, was chosen to be the chief of the party, with

Coligny for his instructor in war.

Again peace was made, on a basis of slight concessions. Henry

of Navarre married the King's sister, Margaret of Valois;

prior to which he and his mother took up their residence with

the court, at Paris, where Jeanne d'Albret soon sickened and

died. The Admiral Coligny acquired, apparently, a marked

influence over the mind of the young king; and once more there

seemed to be a smiling future for the Reformed. But damnable

treacheries were hidden underneath this fair showing. The most

hideous conspiracy of modern times was being planned, at the

very moment of the ostentatious peace-marriage of the King of

Navarre, and the chief parties to it were Catherine de' Medici

and the Guises, whose evil inclinations in common had brought

them together at last. On the 22d of August, 1572, Coligny was

wounded by an assassin, employed by the widow and son of the

late Duke of Guise, whose death they charged against him,

notwithstanding his protestations of innocence. Two days

later, the monstrous and almost incredible massacre of St.

Bartholomew's Day was begun. Paris was full of Huguenots--the

heads of the party--its men of weight and influence--who had

been drawn to the capital by the King of Navarre's marriage

and by the supposed new era of favor in which they stood. To

cut these off was to decapitate Protestantism in France, and

that was the purpose of the infernal scheme. The weak-minded

young king was not an original party to the plot. When

everything had been planned, he was easily excited by a tale

of pretended Huguenot conspiracies, and his assent to summary

measures of prevention was secured. A little after midnight,

on the morning of Sunday, August 24, the signal was given, by

Catherine's order, which let loose a waiting swarm of

assassins, throughout Paris, on the victims who had been

marked for them. The Huguenots had had no warning; they were

taken everywhere by surprise, and they were easily murdered in

their beds, or hunted down in their hopeless flight.

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The noble Coligny, prostrated by the wound he had received two

days before, was killed in his chamber, and his body flung out

of the window. The young Duke of Guise stood waiting in the

court below, to gloat on the corpse and to basely spurn it

with his foot.

The massacre in Paris was carried on through two nights and

two days; and, for more than a month following, the example of

the capital was imitated in other cities of France, as the

news of what were called "the Paris Matins" reached them. The

total number of victims in the kingdom is estimated variously

to have been between twenty thousand and one hundred thousand.

Henry of Navarre and the young Prince of Condé escaped the

massacre, but they saved their lives by a hypocritical

abjuration of their religion.

The strongest town in the possession of the Huguenots was La

Rochelle, and great numbers of their ministers and people of

mark who survived the massacre now took refuge in that city,

with a considerable body of armed men. The royal forces laid

siege to the city, but made no impression on its defences.

Peace was conceded in the end on terms which again promised

the Huguenots some liberty of worship. But there was no

sincerity in it.

In 1574, Charles IX. died, and his brother, the Duke of Anjou,

who had lately been elected King of Poland, ran away from his

Polish capital with disgraceful haste and secrecy, to secure

the French crown. He was the most worthless of the

Valois-Medicean brood, and the French court in his reign

attained its lowest depth of degradation. The contending

religions were soon at war again, with the accustomed result,

in 1576, of another short-lived peace. The Catholics were

divided into two factions, one fanatical, following the

Guises, the other composed of moderate men, calling themselves

the Politiques, who hated the Spanish influence under which

the Guises were always acting, and who were willing to make

terms with the Huguenots. The Guises and the ultra-Catholics

now organized throughout France a great oath-bound "Holy

League", which became so formidable in power that the king

took fright, put himself at the head of it, and reopened war

with the Reformed.

More and more, the conflict of religions became confused with

questions of politics and mixed with personal quarrels. At one

time, the king's younger brother, the Duke of Alençon, had

gone over to the Huguenot side; but stayed only long enough to

extort from the court some appointments which he desired. The

king, more despised by his subjects than any king of France

before him had ever been, grew increasingly jealous and afraid

of the popularity and strength of the Duke of Guise, who was

proving to be a man quite superior to his father in

capability. Guise, on his side, was made arrogant by his sense

of power, and his ambition soared high. There were reasons for

believing that he did not look upon the throne itself as

beyond his reach.

After 1584, when the Duke of Alençon (Duke of Anjou under his

later title) died, a new political question, vastly

disturbing, was brought into affairs. That death left no heir

to the crown in the Valois line, and the King of Navarre, of

the House of Bourbon, was now nearer in birth to the throne

than any other living person. Henry had, long ere this,

retracted his abjuration of 1572, had rejoined the Huguenots

and taken his place as their chief. The head of the Huguenots

was now the heir presumptive to the crown, and the wretched,

incapable king was being impelled by his fear of Guise to look

to his Huguenot heir for support. It was a strange situation.

In 1588 it underwent a sinister change. Guise and his brother,

the Cardinal, were both assassinated by the king's body-guard,

acting under the king's orders, in the royal residence at the

Castle of Blois. When the murder had been done, the cowardly

king spurned his dead enemy with his foot, as Guise, sixteen

years before, had spurned the murdered Coligny, and said "I am

King at last." He was mistaken. His authority vanished with

the vile deed by which he expected to reinvigorate it. Paris

broke into open rebellion. The League renewed its activity

throughout France. The king, abandoned and cursed on all

sides, had now no course open to him but an alliance with

Henry of Navarre and the Huguenots. The alliance was effected,

and the two Henrys joined forces to subdue insurgent Paris.

While the siege of the city was in progress (1589), Henry III.

fell a victim, in his turn, to the murderous mania of his

depraved age and court. He was assassinated by a fanatical

monk.

Henry of Navarre.

Henry of Navarre now steps into the foreground of French

history, as Henry IV., lawful King of France as well as of

Navarre, and ready to prove his royal title by a more useful

reign than the French nation had known since it buried St.

Louis, his last ancestor on the throne. But his title was

recognized at first by few outside the party of the Huguenots.

The League went openly into alliance with Philip of Spain, who

even half-stopped his war in the Netherlands to send money and

troops into France. The energies of his insignificant soul

were all concentrated on the desire to keep the heretical

Béarnese from the throne of France. But happily his powers

were no longer equal to his malice; he was still staggering

under the blow which destroyed his great Armada.

Henry received some help in money from Queen Elizabeth, and

5,000 English and Scotch came over to join his army. He was an

abler general than any among his opponents, and he made

headway against them. His splendid victory at Ivry, on the

14th of March, 1590, inspirited his followers and took heart

from the League. He was driven from his subsequent siege of

Paris by a Spanish army, under the Duke of Parma; but the very

interference of the Spanish king helped to turn French feeling

in Henry's favor. On the 25th of July, 1593, he practically

extinguished the opposition to himself by his final submission

to the Church of Rome. It was an easy thing for him to do. His

religion sat lightly on him. He had accepted it from his

mother; he had adhered to it--not faithfully--as the creed of

a party. He could give it up, in exchange for the crown of

France, and feel no trouble of conscience. But the Reformed

religion in France was really benefited by his apostacy. Peace

came to the kingdom, as the consequence,--a peace of many

years,--and the Huguenots were sheltered in considerable

religious freedom by the peace. Henry secured it to them in

1598 by the famous Edict of Nantes, which remained in force

for nearly a hundred years.

{1071}

The reign of Henry IV. was one of the satisfactory periods in

the life of France, so far as concerns the material prosperity

of the nation. He was a man of strong, keen intellect, with

firmness of will and elasticity of temper, but weak on the

moral side. He was of those who win admiration and friendship

easily, and he remains traditionally the most popular of

French kings. He had the genius for government which so rarely

coincides with royal birth. A wise minister, the Duke of

Sully, gave stability to his measures, and between them they

succeeded in remarkably improving and promoting the

agricultural and the manufacturing industries of France,

effacing the destructive effects of the long civil wars, and

bringing economy and order into the finances of the

overburdened nation. His useful career was ended by an

assassin in 1610.

Germany and the Thirty Years War.

The reactionary wars of religion in Germany came

half-a-century later than in France. While the latter country

was being torn by the long civil conflicts which Henry IV.

brought to an end, the former was as nearly in the enjoyment

of religious peace as the miserable contentions in the bosom

of Protestantism, between Lutherans and Calvinists (the latter

more commonly called "the Reformed"), would permit. On the

abdication of Charles V., in 1556, he had fortunately failed

to bring about the election of his son Philip to the imperial

throne. His brother Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria and King of

Bohemia and Hungary, was chosen Emperor, and that sovereign

had too many troubles in his immediate dominions to be willing

to invite a collision with the Protestant princes of Germany

at large. The Turks had overrun Hungary and established

themselves in possession of considerable parts of the country.

Ferdinand obtained peace with the redoubtable Sultan Suleiman,

but only by payments of money which bore a strong likeness to

tribute. He succeeded, through his prudent and skilful policy,

in making both the Hungarian and the Bohemian crowns practically

hereditary in the House of Austria.

Dying in 1564, Ferdinand transmitted both those kingdoms, with

the Austrian Archduchy and the imperial office, to his son,

Maximilian II., the broadest and most liberal minded of his

race. Though educated in Spain, and in companionship with his

cousin, Philip II., Maximilian exhibited the most tolerant

spirit that appears anywhere in his age. Perhaps it was the

hatefulness of orthodox zeal as exemplified in Philip which

drove the more generous nature of Maximilian to revolt. He

adhered to the Roman communion; but he manifested so much

respect for the doctrines of the Lutheran that his father felt

called upon at one time to make apologies for him to the Pope.

Throughout his reign he held himself aloof from religious

disputes, setting an example of tolerance and spiritual

intelligence to all his subjects, Lutherans, Calvinists and

Catholics alike, which ought to have influenced them more for

their good than it did. Under the shelter of the toleration

which Maximilian gave it, Protestantism spread quickly over

Austria, where it had had no opportunity before; revived the

old Hussite reform in Bohemia; made great gains in Hungary,

and advanced in all parts of his dominions except the Tyrol.

The time permitted to it for this progress was short, since

Maximilian reigned but twelve years. He died in 1576, and his

son Rudolph, who followed him, brought evil changes upon the

country in all things. He, too, had been educated in Spain,

but with a very different result. He came back a creature of

the Jesuits; but so weakly wilful a creature that even they

could do little with him. Authority of government went to

pieces in his incompetent hands, and at last, in 1606, a

family conclave of princes of the Austrian house began

measures which aimed at dispossessing Rudolph of his various

sovereignties, so far as possible, in favor of his brother

Matthias. Rudolph resisted with some effect, and in the

contests which ensued the Protestants of Austria and Bohemia

improved their opportunity for securing an enlargement of

their rights. Matthias made the concession of complete

toleration in Austria, while Rudolph, in Bohemia, granted the

celebrated charter, called the Letter of Majesty (1609), which

gave entire religious liberty to all sects.

These concessions were offensive to two princes, the Archduke

Ferdinand of Styria, and Duke Maximilian of Bavaria, who had

already taken the lead in a vigorous movement of Catholic

reaction. Some proceedings on the part of Maximilian, which

the Emperor sanctioned, against the Protestant free city of

Donauwörth, had caused certain Protestant princes and cities,

in 1608, to form a defensive Union. But the Elector Palatine,

who attached himself to the Reformed or Calvinist Church, was

at the head of this Union, and the bigoted Lutherans,

especially the Elector of Saxony, looked with coldness upon

it. On the other hand, the Catholic states formed a

counter-organization--a Holy League--which was more compact

and effective. The two parties being thus set in array, there

rose suddenly between them a political question of the most

disturbing character. It related to the right of succession to

an important duchy, that of Juliers, Clèves, and Berg. There

were several powerful claimants, in both of the Saxon

families, and including also the Elector of Brandenburg and

the Palsgrave of Neuberg, two members of the Union. As usual,

the political question took possession of the religious issue

and used it for its own purposes. The Protestant Union opened

negotiations with Henry IV. of France, who saw an opportunity

to weaken the House of Austria and to make some gains for

France at the expense of Germany. A treaty was concluded, and

Henry began active preparations for campaigns in both Germany

and Italy, with serious intent to humble and diminish the

Austrian power. The Dutch came into the alliance, likewise,

and James I. of England promised his co-operation. The

combination was formidable, and might have changed very

extensively the course of events that awaited unhappy Germany,

if the whole plan had not been frustrated by the assassination

of Henry IV., in 1610. All the parties to the alliance drew

back after that event, and both sides waited.

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In 1611, Rudolph was deposed in Bohemia, and the following

year he died. Matthias, already King of Hungary, succeeded

Rudolph in Bohemia and in the Empire. But Matthias was

scarcely stronger in mind or body than his brother, and the

same family pressure which had pushed Rudolph aside now forced

Matthias to accept a coadjutor, in the person of the vigorous

Ferdinand, Archduke of Styria. For the remainder of his reign

Matthias was a cipher, and all power in the government was

exercised by Ferdinand. His bitter opposition to the tolerant

policy which had prevailed generally for half-a-century was

well understood. Hence, his rise to supremacy in the Empire

gave notice that the days of religious peace were ended. The

outbreak of civil war was not long in coming.

Beginning of the war in Bohemia.

It began in Bohemia. A violation of the Protestant rights

guaranteed by the Letter of Majesty provoked a rising under

Count Thurn. Two of the king's councilors, with their

secretary, were flung from a high window of the royal castle,

and this act of violence was followed by more revolutionary

measures. A provisional government of thirty Directors was set

up and the king's authority set wholly aside. The Protestant

Union gave prompt support to the Bohemian insurrection and

sent Count Mansfield with three thousand soldiers to its aid.

The Thirty Years War was begun (1618).

Early in these disturbances, Matthias died (1619). Ferdinand

had already made his succession secure, in Austria, Bohemia

and Hungary, and the imperial crown was presently conferred on

him. But the Bohemians repudiated his kingship and offered

their crown to Frederick, the Elector Palatine, lately married

to the Princess Elizabeth, daughter of James I. of England.

The Elector, persuaded, it is said, by his ambitious young

wife, unwisely accepted the tempting bauble, and went to

Prague to receive it. But he had neither prudence nor energy

to justify his bold undertaking. Instead of strengthening

himself for his contest with Ferdinand, he began immediately

to enrage his new subjects by pressing Calvinistic forms and

doctrines upon them, and by arrogantly interfering with their

modes of worship. His reign was so brief that he is known in

Bohemian annals as "the winter king." A single battle, won by

Count Tilly, in the service of the Catholic League and of its

chief, Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria, ended his sovereignty. He

lost his Electorate as well as his kingdom, and was a

wandering fugitive for the remainder of his life. Bohemia was

mercilessly dealt with by the victorious Ferdinand. Not only

was Protestantism crushed, and Catholicism established as the

exclusive religion, but the very life of the country,

intellectually and materially, was extinguished; so that

Bohemia never again stood related to the civilization of

Europe as it had stood before, when Prague was an important

center of learning and thought. To a less extent, Austria

suffered the same repression, and its Protestantism was

uprooted.

In this sketch it is unnecessary to follow the details of the

frightful Thirty Years War, which began as here described.

During the first years it was carried on mainly by the troops

of the Catholic League, under Tilly, acting against Protestant

forces which had very little coherence or unity, and which

were led by Count Mansfield, Christian of Anhalt, and other

nobles, in considerable independence of one another. In 1625

the first intervention from outside occurred. Christian IV. of

Denmark took up the cause of threatened Protestantism. As Duke

of Schleswig-Holstein, he was a prince of the Empire, and he

joined with other Protestant princes in condemning the

deposition of the Elector-Palatine, whose electorate had been

conferred on Maximilian of Bavaria. King Christian entered

into an alliance with England and Holland, which powers

promised help for the reinstatement of the Elector. But the

aid given was trifling, and slight successes which Christian

and his German allies obtained against Tilly were soon changed

to serious reverses.

Wallenstein.

For the first time during the war, the Emperor now brought

into the field an army acting in his own name, and not in that

of the League. It was done in a singular manner--by contract,

so to speak, with a great soldier and wealthy nobleman, the

famous Wallenstein. Wallenstein offered to the Emperor the

services of an army of 50,000 men, which he would raise and

equip at his own expense, and which should be maintained

without public cost--that is, by plunder. His proposal was

accepted, and the formidable body of trained and powerfully

handled brigands was launched upon Germany, for the torture

and destruction of every region in which it moved. It was the

last appearance in European warfare of the "condottiere" of

the Middle Ages. Wallenstein and Tilly swept all before them.

The former failed only before the stubborn town of Stralsund,

which defied his siege. Mansfield and Christian of Anhalt both

died in 1627. Peace was forced upon the Danish king. The

Protestant cause was prostrate, and the Emperor despised its

weakness so far that he issued an "Edict of Restitution,"

commanding the surrender of certain bishoprics and

ecclesiastical estates which had fallen into Protestant hands

since the Treaty of Passau. At the same time, he yielded to

the jealousy which Wallenstein's power had excited, by

dismissing that commander from his service.

Gustavus Adolphus.

The time was an unfavorable one for such an experiment. A new

and redoubtable champion of Protestantism had just appeared on

the scene and was about to revive the war. This was Gustavus

Adolphus, King of Sweden, who had ambitions, grievances and

religious sympathies, all urging him to rescue the Protestant

states of Germany from the Austrian-Catholic despotism which

seemed to be impending over them. His interference was

jealously resented at first by the greater Protestant princes.

The Elector of Brandenburg submitted to an alliance with him

only under compulsion. The Elector of Saxony did not join the

Swedish king until (1631) Tilly had ravaged his territories

with ferocity, burning 200 villages. When Gustavus had made

his footing in the country secure, he quickly proved himself

the greatest soldier of his age. Tilly was overwhelmed in a

battle fought on the Breitenfeld, at Leipsic. The following

spring he was again beaten, on the Lech, in Bavaria, and died

of wounds received in the battle. Meantime, the greater part

of Germany was at the feet of the Swedish king; and a sincere

co-operation between him and the German princes would probably

have ended the war. But small confidence existed between these

allies, and Richelieu, the shrewd Cardinal who was ruling

France, had begun intrigues which made the Thirty Years War

profitable in the end to France. The victories of Gustavus

seemed to bear little fruit. Wallenstein was summoned once

more to save the Emperor's cause, and reappeared in the field

with 40,000 men. The heroic Swede fought him at Lützen, on the

16th of November, 1632, and routed him, but fell in the battle

among the slain.

{1073}

With the death of Gustavus Adolphus, the possibility of a

satisfactory conclusion of the war vanished. The Swedish army

remained in Germany, under the military command of Duke

Bernhard of Saxe Weimar and General Horn, but under the

political direction of Axel Oxenstiern, the able Swedish

Chancellor. On the Imperial side, Wallenstein again incurred

distrust and suspicion. His power was so formidable that his

enemies were afraid to let him live. They plotted his death by

assassination, and he was murdered on the 25th of February,

1634. The Emperor's son Ferdinand now took the command of the

Imperial forces, and, a few months later, having received

reinforcements from Spain, he had the good fortune to defeat

the Swedes at Nördlingen.

The French in the War.

The Elector of Saxony, and other Protestant princes, then made

peace with the Emperor, and the war was only prolonged by the

intrigues of Richelieu and for the aggrandizement of France.

In this final stage of it, when the original elements of

contention, and most of the original contestants, had

disappeared, it lasted for yet fourteen years. Ferdinand II.

died in 1637, and was succeeded by his son Ferdinand III. Duke

Bernhard died in 1639. In the later years of the war,

Piccolomini on the Imperial side, Baner, Torstenson and

Wrangel at the head of the Swedes, and Turenne and Condé in

command of the French, were the soldiers who made great names.

Destructiveness of the War.

In 1648, the long suffering of Germany was eased by the Peace

of Westphalia. Years of quiet, and of order fairly restored,

would be needed to heal the bleeding wounds of the country and

revive its strength. From end to end, it had been trampled

upon for a generation by armies which plundered and destroyed

as they passed. There is nothing more sickening in the annals

of war than the descriptions which eye-witnesses have left of

the misery, the horror, the desolation of that frightful

period in German history. "Especially in the south and west,

Germany was a wilderness of ruins; places that were formerly

the seats of prosperity were the haunts of wolves and robbers

for many a long year. It is estimated that the population was

diminished by twenty, by some even by fifty, per cent. The

population of Augsburg was reduced from 80,000 to 18,000; of

Frankenthal, from 18,000 to 324 inhabitants. In Würtemberg, in

1641, of 400,000 inhabitants, 48,000 remained; in the

Palatinate, in 1636, there were 201 peasant farmers; and in

1648, but a fiftieth part of the population remained"

(Häusser).

The Peace of Westphalia.

By the treaties of Westphalia, the religious question was

settled with finality. Catholics, Lutherans, and the Reformed

(Calvinists), were put on an equal footing of religious

liberty. Politically, the effects of the Peace were radical

and lasting in their injury to the German people. The few

bonds of Germanic unity which had survived the reign of

feudalism were dissolved. The last vestige of authority in the

Empire was destroyed. "From this time Germany long remained a

mere lax confederation of petty despotisms and oligarchies

with hardly any national feeling. Its boundaries too were cut

short in various ways. The independence of the two free

Confederations at the two ends of the Empire, those of

Switzerland and the United Provinces, which had long been

practically cut off from the Empire, was now formally

acknowledged. And, what was far more important, the two

foreign kingdoms which had had the chief share in the war,

France and Sweden, obtained possessions within the Empire, and

moreover, as guarantors or sureties of the peace, they

obtained a general right of meddling in its affairs." "The

right of France to the 'Three Lotharingian Bishoprics,' which

had been seized nearly a hundred years before, was now

formally acknowledged, and, besides this, the possessions and

rights of the House of Austria in Elsass, the German land

between the Rhine and the Vosges, called in France Alsace,

were given to France. The free city of Strasburg and other

places in Elsass still remained independent, but the whole of

South Germany now lay open to France. This was the greatest

advance that France had yet made at the expense of the Empire.

Within Germany itself the Elector of Brandenburg also received

a large increase of territory" (Freeman).

Among the treaties which made up the Peace of Westphalia was

one signed by Spain, acknowledging the independence of the

United Provinces, and renouncing all claims to them.

France under Richelieu.

The great gains of France from the Thirty Years War were part

of the fruit of bold and cunning statesmanship which Richelieu

had ripened and plucked for that now rising nation. For a time

after the death of Henry IV., chaos had seemed likely to

return again in France. His son, Louis XIII., was but nine

years old. The mother, Marie de' Medici, who secured the

regency, was a foolish woman, ruled by Italian favorites, who

made themselves odious to the French people. As soon as the

young king approached manhood, he put himself in opposition to

his mother and her favorites, under the influence of a set of

rivals no more worthy, and France was carried to the verge of

civil war by their puerile hostilities. Happily there was

something in the weak character of Louis XIII. which bent him

under the influence of a really great mind when circumstances

had brought him within its reach. Richelieu entered the King's

council in 1624. The king was soon an instrument in his hands,

and he ruled France, as though the scepter was his own, for

eighteen years. He was as pitiless a despot as ever set heel

on a nation's neck; but the power which he grasped with what

seemed to be a miserly and commonplace greed, was all gathered

for the aggrandizement of the monarchy that he served. He

believed that the nation needed to have one master, sole and

unquestioned in his sovereignty. That he enjoyed being that

one master, in reality, while he lived, is hardly doubtful;

but his whole ambition is not so explained. He wrought

according to his belief for France, and the king, in his eyes,

was the embodiment of France. He erected the pedestal on which

"the grand monarch" of the next generation posed with

theatrical effect.

{1074}

Three things Richelieu did;

1. He enforced the royal authority, with inexorable rigor,

against the great families and personages, who had not

learned, even under Henry IV., that they were subjects in the

absolute sense.

2. He struck the Huguenots, not as a religious sect, but as a

political party, and peremptorily stopped their growth of

strength in that character, which had clearly become

threatening to the state.

3. He organized hostility in Europe to the overbearing and

dangerous Austro-Spanish power, put France at the head of it,

and took for her the lion's share of the conquests by which

the Hapsburgs were reduced.

Mazarin and the Fronde.

The great Cardinal died near the close of the year 1642; and

Louis XIII. followed him to the grave in the succeeding May,

leaving a son, Louis XIV., not yet five years of age, under

the regency of his mother, Anne of Austria. The minister,

Cardinal Mazarin, who enjoyed the confidence of the

queen-regent, and who was supposed to enjoy her affections as

well, had been Richelieu's disciple, and took the helm of

government on Richelieu's recommendation. He was an adroit

politician, with some statesmanlike sagacity, but he lacked

the potent spirit by which his master had awed and ruled every

circle into which he came, great or small. Mazarin had the

Thirty Years War to bring to a close, and he managed the

difficult business with success, wasting nothing of the effect

of the brilliant victories of Condé and Turenne. But the war had

been very costly. Mazarin was no better financier than

Richelieu had been before him, and the burdens of taxation

were greater than wise management would have made them. There

was inevitable discontent, and Mazarin, as a foreigner, was

inevitably unpopular. With public feeling in this state, the

Court involved itself in a foolish conflict with the

Parliament of Paris, and presently there was a Paris

revolution and a civil war afoot (1649). It was a strange

affair of froth and empty rages--this war of "The Fronde," as

it was called--having no depth of earnestness in it and no

honesty of purpose anywhere visible in its complications. The

men and women who sprang to a lead in it--the women more

actively and rancorously than the men--were mere actors of

parts in a great play of court intrigue, for the performance

of which unhappy France had lent its grand stage. There seems

to have been never, in any other civil conflict which history

describes, so extraordinary a mixture of treason and

libertinism, of political and amorous intrigue, of

heartlessness and frivolity, of hot passion and cool

selfishness. The people who fought most and suffered most

hardly appear as noticeable factors in the contest. The court

performers amused themselves with the stratagems and bloody

doings of the war as they might have done with the tricks of a

masquerade.

It was in keeping with the character of the Frondeurs that

they went into alliance, at last, with Spain, and that, even

after peace within the nation had been restored, "the Great

Condé" remained in the Spanish service and fought against his

own countrymen. Mazarin regained control of affairs, and

managed them on the whole ably and well. He brought about an

alliance with England, under Cromwell, and humbled Spain to

the acceptance of a treaty which considerably raised the

position of France among the European Powers. By this Treaty

of the Pyrenees (1659), the northwestern frontier of the

kingdom was both strengthened and advanced; Lorraine was shorn

of some of its territory and prepared for the absorption which

followed after no long time; there were gains made on the side

of the Pyrenees; and, finally, Louis XIV. was wedded to the

infanta of Spain, with solemn renunciations on her part, for

herself and her descendants, of all claims upon the Spanish

crown, or upon Flanders, or Burgundy, or Charolais. Not a

claim was extinguished by these solemn renunciations, and the

Treaty of the Pyrenees is made remarkable by the number of

serious wars and important events to which it gave rise.

Cardinal Mazarin died in 1661 and the government was assumed

personally by Louis XIV., then twenty-three years old.

England Under the Stuarts.

While Germany and France had, each in turn, been disordered by

extremely unlike civil wars, one to the unmitigated

devastation and prostration of the land, the other to the

plain putting in proof of the nothingness of the nation at

large, as against its monarchy and court, the domestic peace

of England had been ruffled in a very different way, and with

very different effects.

The death of Queen Elizabeth united the crown of England with

that of Scotland, on the head of James, son of the unhappy

Mary Stuart. In England he was James I., in Scotland James VI.

His character combined shrewdness in some directions with the

most foolish simplicity in others. He was not vicious, he was

not in any particular a bad man; but he was exasperating in

his opinionated self-conceit, and in his gaucheries of mind

and body. The Englishmen of those days did not love the Scots;

and, all things considered, we may wonder, perhaps, that James

got on so well as he did with his English subjects. He had

high notions of kingship, and a superlative opinion of his own

king-craft, as he termed the art of government. He scarcely

deviated from the arbitrary lines which Elizabeth had laid

down, though he had nothing of Elizabeth's popularity. He

offended the nation by truckling to its old enemy, the King of

Spain, and pressing almost shamefully for a marriage of his

elder son to the Spanish infanta. The favorites he enriched

and lavished honors upon were insolent upstarts. His treatment

of the growing Puritanism in English religious feeling was

contemptuous. There was scarcely a point on which any

considerable number of his subjects could feel in agreement

with him, or entertain towards him a cordial sentiment of

loyalty or respect. Yet his reign of twenty-two years was

disturbed by nothing more serious than the fatuous "gunpowder

plot" (1605) of a few discontented Catholics. But his son had

to suffer the retarded consequences of a loyalty growing weak,

on one side, while royalty strained its prerogatives on the

other.

The reign of James I. witnessed the effective beginnings of

English colonization in America,--the planting of a durable

settlement in Virginia and the migration of the Pilgrim

Fathers to New England. The latter movement (1620) was one of

voluntary exile, produced by the hard treatment inflicted on

those "Separatists" or "Independents" who could not reconcile

themselves to a state-established Church. Ten years later, the

Pilgrim movement, of Independents, was followed by the greater

migration of Puritans--quite different in class, in character

and in spirit.

{1075}

Charles. I.

James died in 1625, and the troubled reign of his son, Charles

I., began. Charles took over from his father a full measure of

popular discontent, along with numerous active springs in

operation for increasing it. The most productive of these was

the favorite, Buckingham, who continued to be the sole

counselor and minister of the young king, as he had been of

the older one, and who was utterly hateful to England, for

good reasons of incapacity and general worthlessness. In the

king himself, though he had virtues, there was a coldness and

a falsity of nature which were sure to widen the breach

between him and his people.

Failing the Spanish marriage, Charles had wedded (1624) a

French princess, Henrietta Maria, sister of Louis XIII. The

previous subserviency to Spain had then been followed by a war

with that country, which came to Charles among his

inheritances, and which Buckingham mismanaged, to the shame of

England. In 1627 another war began, but this time with France,

on account of the Huguenots besieged at La Rochelle. Again the

meddlesome hand of Buckingham wrought disaster and national

disgrace, and public indignation was greatly stirred. When

Parliament endeavored to call the incapable minister to

account, and to obtain some security for a better management

of affairs, the king dissolved it. Twice was this done, and

Charles and his favorite employed every arbitrary and

questionable device that could be contrived for them, to raise

money without need of the representatives of the people. At

length, in 1628, they were driven to face a third Parliament,

in order to obtain supplies. By this time the Commons of

England were wrought up to a high and determined assertion of

their rights, as against the Crown, and the Puritans had

gained a majority in the popular representation. In the lower

House of Parliament, therefore, the demands of the king for

money were met by a counter-demand for guarantees to protect

the people from royal encroachments on their liberties. The

Commons were resolute, and Charles gave way to them, signing

with much reluctance the famous instrument known as the

"Petition of Right," which pledged the Crown to abstain in

future from forced loans, from taxes imposed without

Parliamentary grant, from arbitrary imprisonments, without

cause shown, and from other despotic proceedings. In return

for his signature to the Petition of Right, Charles received a

grant of money; but the Commons refused to authorize his

collection of certain customs duties, called Tonnage and

Poundage, beyond a single year, and it began attacks on

Buckingham,--whereupon the king prorogued it. Shortly

afterwards Buckingham was assassinated; a second expedition to

relieve Rochelle failed miserably; and early in 1629

Parliament was assembled again. This time the Puritan temper

of the House began to show itself in measures to put a stop to

some revivals of ancient ceremony which had appeared in

certain churches. At the same time officers of the king, who

had seized goods belonging to a member of the House, for

non-payment of Tonnage and Poundage, were summoned to the bar

to answer for it. The king protected them, and a direct

conflict of authority arose. On the 2d of March, the king sent

an order to the Speaker of the House of Commons for

adjournment; but the Speaker was forcibly held in his chair,

and not permitted to announce the adjournment, until three

resolutions had been read and adopted, denouncing as an enemy

to the kingdom every person who brought in innovations in

religion, or who advised the levying of Tonnage and Poundage

without parliamentary grant, or who voluntarily paid such

duties, so levied. This done, the members dispersed; the king

dissolved Parliament immediately, and his resolution was taken

to govern England thenceforth on his own authority, with no

assembly of the representatives of the people to question or

criticise him. He held to that determination for eleven years,

during which long time no Parliament sat in England, and the

Constitution was practically obliterated.

The leaders of the Commons in their recent proceedings were

arrested and imprisoned. Sir John Eliot, the foremost of them,

died in harsh confinement within the Tower, and others were

held in long custody, refusing to recognize the jurisdiction

of the king's judges over things done in Parliament.

Wentworth and Laud.

One man, of great ability, who had stood at the beginning with

Sir John Eliot, and acted with the party which opposed the

king, now went over to the side of the latter and rose high in

royal favor, until he came in the end to be held chiefly

responsible for the extreme absolutism to which the government

of Charles was pushed. This was Sir Thomas Wentworth, made

Earl of Strafford at a later day, in the tardy rewarding of

his services. But William Laud, Bishop of London, and

afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, was the evil counselor of

the king, much more than Wentworth, in the earlier years of

the decade of tyranny. It was Laud's part to organize the

system of despotic monarchy on its ecclesiastical side; to

uproot Puritanism and all dissent, and to cast religion for

England and for Scotland in one mould, as rigid as that of

Rome.

For some years, the English nation seemed terrorized or

stupefied by the audacity of the complete overthrow of its

Constitution. The king and his servants might easily imagine

that the day of troublesome Parliaments and of inconvenient

laws was passed. At least in those early years of their

success, it can scarcely have occurred to their minds that a

time of accounting for broken laws, and for the violated

pledges of the Petition of Right, might come at the end. At

all events they went their way with seeming satisfaction, and

tested, year by year, the patient endurance of a people which

has always been slow to move. Their courts of Star Chamber and

of High Commission, finding a paramount law in the will and

pleasure of the king, imprisoned, fined, pilloried, flogged

and mutilated in quite the spirit of the Spanish Inquisition,

though they did not burn.

{1076}

They collected Tonnage and Poundage without parliamentary

consent, and servile judges enforced the payment. They

invented a claim for "ship-money" (in commutation of an

ancient demand for ships to serve in the King's navy) from

inland towns and counties, as well as from the commercial

ports; and when John Hampden, a squire in Buckinghamshire,

refused payment of the unlawful tax, their obedient judges

gave judgment against him. And still the people endured; but

they were laying up in memory many things, and gathering a

store of reasons for the action that would by and by begin.

Rebellion in Scotland.

At last, it was Scotland, not England, that moved to rebel.

Laud and the king had determined to break down Presbyterianism

in the northern kingdom and to force a Prayer Book on the

Scottish Church. There was a consequent riot at St. Giles, in

Edinburgh (1637); Jenny Geddes threw her stool at the bishop,

and Scotland presently was in revolt, signing a National

Covenant and defying the king. Charles, attempting to frighten

the resolute Scots with an army which he could not pay, was

soon driven to a treaty with them (1639) which he had not

honesty enough to keep. Wentworth, who had been Lord Deputy of

Ireland since 1632, and who had framed a model of absolutism

in that island, for the admiration of his colleagues in

England, now returned to the king's side and became his chief

adviser. He counselled the calling of a Parliament, as the

only means by which English help could be got for the

restoring of royal authority in Scotland. The Parliament was

summoned and met in April, 1640. At once, it showed a temper

which alarmed the king and he dissolved it in three weeks.

Again Charles made the attempt to put down his Scottish

subjects without help from an English Parliament, and again

the attempt failed.

The Long Parliament.

Then the desperate king summoned another Parliament, which

concentrated in itself, when it came together, the suppressed

rebellion that had been in the heart of England for ten years,

and which broke his flimsy fabric of absolutism, almost at a

single blow. It was the famous Long Parliament of English

history, which met in November, 1640, and which ruled England

for a dozen years, until it gave way to the Cromwellian

dictatorship. It sent Laud and Strafford to the Tower,

impeached the latter and brought him to the block, within six

months from the beginning of its session; and the king gave up

his minister to the vengeance of the angry Commons with hardly

one honest attempt to protect him. Laud waited in prison five

years before he suffered the same fate. The Parliament

declared itself to be indissoluble by any royal command; and

the king assented. It abolished the Star Chamber and the Court

of High Commission; and the king approved. It swept

ship-money, and forest claims, and all of Charles' lawless

money-getting devices into the limbo; and he put his signature

to its bills. But all the time he was intriguing with the

Scots for armed help to overthrow his masterful English

Parliament, and he was listening to Irish emissaries who

offered an army for the same purpose, on condition that

Ireland' should be surrendered to the Catholics.

Civil War.

Charles had arranged nothing on either of these treacherous

plans, nor had he gained anything yet from the division

between radicals and moderates that was beginning to show

itself in the popular party, when he suddenly brought the

strained situation to a crisis, in January, 1642, by his most

foolish and arrogant act. He invaded the House of Commons in

person, with a large body of armed men, for the purpose of

arresting five members--Pym, Hampden, Holles, Hazlerigg and

Strode--whom he accused of having negotiated treasonably with

the Scots in 1640. The five members escaped; the House

appealed to the citizens of London for protection; king and

Parliament began immediately to raise troops; the nation

divided and arrayed itself on the two sides,--most of the

gentry, the Cavaliers, supporting the king, and most of the

Puritan middle-class, wearing close-cut hair and receiving the

name Roundheads, being ranged in the party of Parliament. They

came to blows in October, when the first battle was fought, at

Edgehill.

In the early period of the war, the parliamentary forces were

commanded by the Earl of Essex; and Sir Thomas Fairfax was

their general at a later stage; but the true leader on that

side, for war and for politics alike, was soon found in Oliver

Cromwell, a member of Parliament, whose extraordinary capacity

was first shown in the military organization of the Eastern

Counties, from which he came. After 1645, when the army was

remodeled, with Cromwell as second in rank, his real

chieftainship was scarcely disguised. The decisive battle of

the war was fought that year at Naseby, where the king's cause

suffered an irrecoverable defeat.

The Presbyterians of Scotland had now allied themselves with

the English Roundheads, on condition that the Church of

England should be remodeled in the Presbyterian form. The

Puritan majority in Parliament being favorable to that form, a

Solemn League and Covenant between the two nations had been

entered into, in 1643, and an Assembly of Divines was convened

at Westminster to frame the contemplated system of the Church.

But the Independents, who disliked Presbyterianism, and who

were more tolerantly inclined in their views, had greatly

increased in numbers, and some of the stronger men on the

Parliament side, including Cromwell, the strongest of all,

were among them. This difference brought about a sharp

struggle within the popular party for the control of the

fruits of the triumph now beginning to seem secure. Under

Cromwell, the Army became a powerful organization of religious

Independency, while Parliament sustained Presbyterianism, and

the two stood against each other as rival powers in the state.

{1077}

At the beginning of the year 1646 the fortunes of Charles had

fallen very low. His partisan, Montrose, in Scotland, had been

beaten; his intrigues in Ireland, for the raising of a

Catholic army, had only alarmed and disgusted his English

friends; he was at the end of his resources, and he gave

himself up to the Scots. The latter, in conjunction with the

Presbyterian majority in Parliament, were willing to make

terms with him, and restore him to his throne; on conditions

which included the signing of the Covenant and the

establishing of Presbyterianism in the Churches of both

kingdoms. He refused the proposal, being deluded by a belief

that the quarrel of Independents and Presbyterians would open

his way to the recovery of power without any concessions at

all. The Scots then surrendered him to the English, and he was

held in confinement by the latter for the next two years,

scheming and pursuing intrigues in many directions, and

convincing all who dealt with him that his purposes were never

straightforward--that he was faithless and false to the core.

Ill-will and suspicion, meanwhile, were widening the breach

between Parliament and the Army. Political and religious

agitators were gaining influence in the latter and republican

ideas were spreading fast. At length (December, 1648), the

Army took matters into its own hands; expelled from Parliament

those members who favored a reconciliation with the king, on

the basis of a Presbyterian establishment of the Church, and

England passed under military rule. The "purged" Parliament

(or rather the purged House of Commons, which now set the

House of Lords aside, declaring itself to be the sole and

supreme power in the state) brought King Charles to trial in

the following month, before a High Court of Justice created

for the occasion. He was convicted of treason, in making war

upon his subjects, and was beheaded on the 30th of January,

1649.

The Commonwealth and the Protectorate.

The king being thus disposed of, the House of Commons

proclaimed England a Commonwealth, "without a King or House of

Lords," took to itself the name of Parliament, and appointed

an executive Council of State, forty-one in number. The new

government, in its first year, had a rebellion in Ireland to

deal with, and sent Cromwell to the scene. He crushed it with

a merciless hand. The next year Scotland was in arms, for the

late king's son, now called Charles II., who had entered the

country, accepted Presbyterianism, and signed the Covenant.

Again Cromwell was the man for the occasion, and in a campaign

of two months he ended the Scottish war, with such decision that

he had no more fighting to do on English or Scottish soil

while he lived. There was war with the Dutch in 1652, 1653 and

1654, over questions of trade, and the long roll of English naval

victories was opened by the great soldier-seaman, Robert

Blake.

But the power which upheld and carried forward all things at

this time was the power of Oliver Cromwell, master of the

Army, and, therefore, master of the Commonwealth. The

surviving fragment of the Long Parliament was an anomaly, a

fiction; men called it "the Rump." In April, 1653, Cromwell

drove the members of it from their chamber and formally took

to himself the reins of government which in fact he had been

holding before. A few months later he received from his

immediate supporters the title of Lord Protector, and an

Instrument of Government was framed, which served as a

constitution during the next three years. Cromwell was as

unwilling as Charles had been to share the government with a

freely elected and representative Parliament. The first House

which he called together was dissolved at the end of five

months (1655), because it persisted in discussing a revision

of the constitution. His second Parliament, which he summoned

the following year, required to be purged by the arbitrary

exclusion of about a hundred members before it could be

brought to due submission. This tractable body then made

certain important changes in the constitution, by an enactment

called the "Humble Petition and Advice." It created a second

house, to take the place of the House of Lords, and gave to

the Lord Protector the naming of persons to be life-members of

such upper house. It also gave to the Protector the right of

appointing his own successor, a right which Cromwell exercised

on his death-bed, in 1658, by designating his son Richard.

The responsible rule of Cromwell, from the expulsion of the

Rump and his assumption of the dignity of Lord Protector,

covered only the period of five years. But in that brief time

he made the world respect the power of England as it had never

been respected before. His government at home was as absolute

and arbitrary as the government of the Stuarts, but it was

infinitely wiser and more just. Cromwell was a statesman of

the higher order; a man of vast power, in intellect and will.

That he did not belong to the yet higher order of commanding

men, whose statesmanship is pure in patriotism and uncolored

by selfish aims, is proved by his failure to even plan a more

promising settlement of the government of England than that

which left it, an anomalous Protectorate, to a man without

governing qualities, who happened to be his son.

Restoration of the Stuarts.

Richard Cromwell was brushed aside after eight months of an

absurd attempt to play the part of Lord Protector. The

officers of the Army and the resuscitated Rump Parliament,

between them, managed affairs, in a fashion, for almost a

year, and then they too were pushed out of the way by the army

which had been stationed in Scotland, under General George

Monk. By the action of Monk, with the consent, and with more

than the consent, of England at large, the Stuart monarchy was

restored. Charles II. was invited to return, and in May, 1660,

he took his seat on the re-erected throne.

The nation, speaking generally, was tired of a military

despotism; tired of Puritan austerity; tired of revolution and

political uncertainty;--so tired that it threw itself down at

the feet of the most worthless member of the most worthless

royal family in its history, and gave itself up to him without

a condition or a guarantee. For twenty-five years it endured

both oppression and disgrace at his hands. It suffered him to

make a brothel of his Court; to empty the national purse into

the pockets of his shameless mistresses and debauched

companions; to revive the ecclesiastical tyranny of Laud; to

make a crime of the religious creeds and the worship of more

than half his subjects; to sell himself and sell the honor of

England to the king of France for a secret pension, and to be

in every possible way as ignoble and despicable as his father

had been arrogant and false. When he died, in 1685, the

prospects of the English nation were not improved by the

accession of his brother, the Duke of York, who became James

II.

{1078}

James had more honesty than his brother or his father; but the

narrowness and meanness of the Stuart race were in his blood.

He had made himself intolerable; to his subjects, both English

and Scotch, by entering the Catholic Church, openly, while

Charles was believed to have done the same in secret. His

religion was necessarily bigotry, because of the smallness of

his nature, and he opposed it to the Protestantism of the

kingdom with a kind of brutal aggressiveness. In the first

year of his reign there was a rebellion undertaken, in the

interest of a bastard son of Charles II., called Duke of

Monmouth; but it was savagely put down, first by force of

arms, at Sedgemoor, and afterwards by the "bloody assizes" of

the ruthless Judge Jeffreys. Encouraged by this success

against his enemies James began to ignore the "Test Act,"

which excluded Catholics from office, and to surround himself

by men of his own religion. The Test Act was an unrighteous

law, and the "Declaration of Indulgence" which James issued,

for the toleration of Catholics and Dissenters, was just in

principle, according to the ideas of later times; but the

action of the king with respect to both was, nevertheless, a

gross and threatening violation of law. England had submitted

to worse conduct from Charles II., but its Protestant temper

was now roused, and the loyalty of the subject was consumed by

the fierceness of the Churchman's wrath. James' daughter,

Mary, and her husband, William, Prince of Orange, were invited

from Holland to come over and displace the obnoxious father

from his throne. They accepted the invitation, November, 1688;

the nation rose to welcome them; James fled,--and the great

Revolution, which ended arbitrary monarchy in England forever,

and established constitutional government on clearly defined

and lasting bases, was accomplished without the shedding of a

drop of blood.

The House of Orange and the Dutch Republic.

William of Orange, who thus acquired a place in the line of

English kings, held, at the same time, the nearly regal office

of Stadtholder of Holland; but the office had not remained

continuously in his family since William the Silent, whose

great-grandson he was. Maurice, the son of the murdered

William the Silent, had been chosen to the stadtholdership

after his father's death, and had carried forward his father's

work with success, so far as concerned the liberation of the

United Provinces from the Spanish yoke. He was an abler

soldier than William, but not his equal as a statesman, nor as

a man. The greater statesman of the period was John of

Barneveldt, between whom and the Stadtholder an opposition

grew up which produced jealousy and hostility, more especially

on the part of the latter. A shameful religious conflict had

arisen at this time between the Calvinists, who numbered most

of the clergy in their ranks, and a dissenting body, led by

Jacob Hermann, or Arminius, which protested against the

doctrine of predestination. Barneveldt favored the Arminians.

The Stadtholder, Maurice, without any apparent theological

conviction in the matter, threw his whole weight of influence

on the side of the Calvinists; and was able, with the help of

the Calvinist preachers, to carry the greater part of the

common people into that faction. The Arminians were everywhere

put down as heretics, barred from preaching or teaching, and

otherwise silenced and ill treated. It is a singular fact

that, at the very time of this outburst of Calvinistic fury,

the Dutch were exhibiting otherwise a far more tolerant temper

in religion than any other people in Europe, and had thrown

open their country as a place of shelter for the persecuted of

other lands,--both Christian sectaries and Jews. We infer,

necessarily, that the bitterness of the Calvinists against the

Arminians was more political than religious in its source, and

that the source is really traceable to the fierce ambition of

Prince Maurice, and the passion of the party which supported

his suspicious political aims.

Barneveldt lost influence as the consequence of the

Calvinistic triumph, and was exposed helplessly to the

vindictive hatred of Prince Maurice, who did not scruple to

cause his arrest, his trial and execution (1619), on charges

which none believed. Maurice, whose memory is blackened by

this great crime, died in 1625, and was succeeded by his

half-brother, Frederic Henry. The war with Spain had been

renewed in 1621, at the end of the twelve years truce, and

more than willingly renewed; for the merchant class, and the

maritime interest in the cities which felt secure, preferred

war to peace. Under a hostile flag they pushed their commerce

into Spanish and Portuguese seas from which a treaty of peace

would undoubtedly exclude them; and, so long as Spanish

American silver fleets were afloat, the spoils of ocean war

were vastly enriching. It was during these years of war that

the Dutch got their footing on the farther sides of the world,

and nearly won the mastery of the sea which their slower but

stronger English rivals wrested from them in the end. Not

until the general Peace of Westphalia, in 1648, was a final

settlement of issues between Spain and the United Provinces

brought about. The freedom and independence of the Provinces,

as sovereign states, was then acknowledged by the humbled

Spaniard, and favorable arrangements of trade were conceded to

them. The southern, Catholic Provinces, which Spain had held,

were retained in their subjection to her.

Frederic Henry, the third Stadtholder, was succeeded in 1647

by his son, William II. The latter wasted his short career of

less than four years in foolish plotting to revolutionize the

government and transform the stadtholdership into a monarchy,

supported by France, for the help of which country he seemed

willing to pay any base and treasonable price. Dying suddenly

in the midst of his scheming, he left an unborn son--the

future William III. of England--who came into the world a week

after his father had left it. Under these circumstances the

stadtholdership was suspended, with strong feelings against

the revival of it, resulting from the conduct of William II.

The lesser provinces then fell under the domination of

Holland--so much so that the name of Holland began soon to be

applied to the confederation at large, and is very commonly

used with that meaning for a long subsequent time. The chief

minister of the Estates of Holland, known as the Grand

Pensionary, became the practical head of the federal

government. After 1653 the office of Grand Pensionary was

filled by a statesman of high ability, John de Witt, the chief

end of whose policy appears to have been the prevention of the

return of the House of Orange to power. The government thus

administered, and controlled by the commercial class, was

successful in promoting the general prosperity of the

provinces, and in advancing their maritime importance and

power.

{1079}

It conducted two wars with England--one with the Commonwealth

and one with the restored monarchy--and could claim at least

an equal share of the naval glory won in each. But it

neglected the land defense of the country, and was found

shamefully unprepared in 1672, when the Provinces were

attacked by a villainous combination, formed between Louis

XIV. of France and his servile pensioner, Charles II. of

England. The republic, humbled and distressed by the rushing

conquests of the French, fixed its hopes upon the young Prince

of Orange, heir to the prestige of a great historic name, and

turned its wrath against the party of De Witt. The Prince was

made Stadtholder, despite the opposition of John de Witt, and

the latter, with his brother Cornelius, was murdered by a mob

at Amsterdam. William of Orange proved both wise and heroic as

a leader, and the people were roused to a new energy of

resistance by his appeals and his example. They cut their

dykes and flooded the land, subjecting themselves to

unmeasured loss and distress, but peremptorily stopping the

French advance, until time was gained for awakening public

feeling in Europe against the aggressions of the unscrupulous

French king. Then William of Orange began that which was to be

his great and important mission in life,--the organizing of

resistance to Louis XIV. Without the foresight and penetration

of French designs which he evinced,--without his unflagging

exertions for the next thirty years,--without his diplomatic

tact, his skill of management, his patience in war, his

obstinate perseverance,--it seems to be a certainty that the

ambitious "grand monarch," concentrating the whole power of

France in himself, would have been able to break the

surrounding nations one by one, and they would not have

combined their strength for an effective self-protection. The

revolution of 1688-9 in England, which gave the crown of that

kingdom to William, and his wife Mary, contributed greatly to

his success, and was an event nearly as important in European

politics at large as it was in the constitutional history of

Great Britain.

Germany after the Thirty Years War.

In a natural order of things, Germany should have supplied the

main resistance to Louis XIV. and held his unscrupulous

ambition in check. But Germany had fallen to its lowest state

of political demoralization and disorder. The very idea of

nationality had disappeared. The Empire, even collapsed to the

Germanic sense, and even reduced to a frame and a form, had

almost vanished from practical affairs. The numerous petty

states which divided the German people stood apart from one

another, in substantial independence, and were sundered by

small jealousies and distrusts. Little absolute principalities

they were, each having its little court, which aped, in a

little way, the grand court of the grand monarch of

France--central object of the admiration and the envy of all

small souls in its time. Half of them were ready to bow down

to the splendid being at Versailles, and to be his creatures,

if he condescended to bestow a nod of patronage and attention

upon them. The French king had more influence among them than

their nominal Emperor. More and more distinctly the latter

drew apart in his immediate dominions as an Austrian

sovereign; and more and more completely Austrian interests and

Austrian policy became removed and estranged from the interests

of the Germanic people. The ambitions and the cares of the

House of Hapsburg were increasingly in directions most

opposite to the German side of its relations, tending towards

Italy and the southeast; while, at the same time, the narrow

church influence which depressed the Austrian states widened a

hopeless intellectual difference between them and the northern

German people.

Brandenburg.--Prussia.

The most notable movements in dull German affairs after the

Peace of Westphalia were those which connected themselves with

the settling and centering in Brandenburg of a nucleus of

growing power, around which the nationalizing of Germany has

been a crystalizing process ever since. The Mark of

Brandenburg was one of the earliest conquests (tenth century)

of the Germans from the Wends. Prussia, afterwards united with

Brandenburg, was a later conquest (thirteenth century) from

Wendish or Slavonic and other pagan inhabitants, and its

subjugation was a missionary enterprise, accomplished by the

crusading Order of Teutonic Knights, under the authority and

direction of the Pope. The Order, which held the country for

more than two centuries, and ruled it badly, became

degenerate, and about the middle of the fifteenth century it

was overcome in war by Casimir IV. of Poland, who took away

from it the western part of its territory, and forced it to do

homage to him for the eastern part, as a fief of the Polish

crown. Sixty years later, the Reformation movement in Germany

brought about the extinguishment of the Teutonic Order as a

political power. The Grand Master of the Order at that time

was Albert, a Hohenzollern prince, belonging to a younger

branch of the Brandenburg family. He became a Lutheran, and

succeeded in persuading the Polish king, Sigismund I., to

transfer the sovereignty of the East Prussian fief to him

personally, as a duchy. He transmitted it to his descendants,

who held it for a few generations; but the line became extinct

in 1618, and the Duchy of Prussia then passed to the elder

branch of the family and was united with Brandenburg. The Mark

of Brandenburg had been raised to the rank of an Electorate in

1356 and had been acquired by the Hohenzollern family in 1417.

The superior weight of the Brandenburg electors in northern

Germany may be dated from their acquisition of the important

Duchy of Prussia; but they made no mark on affairs until the

time of Frederick William I., called the Great Elector, who

succeeded to the Electorate in 1640, near the close of the

Thirty Years War. In the arrangements of the Peace of

Westphalia he secured East Pomerania and other considerable

additions of territory. In 1657 he made his Duchy of Prussia

independent of Poland, by treaty with the Polish king. In 1672

and 1674 he had the courage and the independence to join the

allies against Louis XIV., and when the Swedes, in alliance

with Louis, invaded his dominions, he defeated and humbled

them at Fehrbellen, and took from them the greater part of

their Pomeranian territory. When the Great Elector died, in

1688, Brandenburg was the commanding North-German power, and

the Hohenzollern family had fully entered on the great career

it has since pursued.

{1080}

Frederick William's son Frederick, with none of his father's

talent, had a pushing but shallow ambition. He aspired to be a

king, and circumstances made his friendship so important to

the Emperor Leopold I. that the latter, exercising the

theoretical super-sovereignty of the Cæsars, endowed him with

the regal title. He was made King of Prussia, not of

Brandenburg, because Brandenburg stood in vassalage to the

Empire, while Prussia was an independent state.

Poland and Russia.

When Brandenburg and Prussia united began to rise to

importance, the neighboring kingdom of Poland had already

passed the climax of its career. Under the Jagellon dynasty,

sprung from the Duke Jagellon of Lithuania, who married

Hedwig, Queen of Poland, in 1386, and united the two states,

Poland was a great power for two centuries, and seemed more

likely than Russia to dominate the Slavonic peoples of Europe.

The Russians at that time were under the feet of the Mongols

or Tartars, whose terrific sweep westwards, from the steppes

of Asia, had overwhelmed them completely and seemed to bring

their independent history to an end. Slowly a Russian duchy

had emerged, having its seat of doubtful sovereignty at

Moscow, and being subject quite humbly to the Mongol Khan.

About 1477 the Muscovite duke of that time, Ivan Vasilovitch,

broke the Tartar yoke and acquired independence. But his

dominion was limited. The Poles and Lithuanians, now united,

had taken possession of large and important territories

formerly Russian, and the Muscovite state was entirely cut off

from the Baltic. It began, however, in the next century, under

Ivan the Terrible, first of the Czars, to make conquests

southward and south-eastward, from the Tartars, until it had

reached the Caspian Sea. The dominion of the Czar stretched

northward, at the same time, to the White Sea, at the single

port of which trade was opened with the Russian country by

English merchant adventurers in the reign of Elizabeth. Late

in the sixteenth century the old line of rulers, descended

from the Scandinavian Ruric, came to an end, and after a few

years Michael Romanoff established the dynasty which has

reigned since his time.

As between the two principal Slavonic nations, Russia was now

gaining stability and weight, while Poland had begun to lose

both. It was a fatal day for the Poles when, in 1573, on the

death of the last of the Jagellons, they made their monarchy

purely elective, abolishing the restriction to one family

which had previously prevailed. The election was by the

suffrage of the nobles, not the people at large (who were

generally serfs), and the government became an oligarchy of

the most unregulated kind known in history. The crown was

stripped of power, and the unwillingness of the nobility to

submit to any national authority, even that of its own

assembly, reached a point, about the middle of the seventeenth

century, at which anarchy was virtually agreed upon as the

desirable political state. The extraordinary "liberum veto,"

then made part of the Polish constitution, gave to each single

member of the assemblies of the nobles, or of the deputies

representing them, a right to forbid any enactment, or to

arrest the whole proceedings of the body, by his unsupported

negative. This amazing prerogative appears to have been

exercised very rarely in its fullness; but its theoretical

existence effectually extinguished public spirit and paralyzed

all rational legislation. Linked with the singular feebleness

of the monarchy, it leaves small room for surprise at the

ultimate shipwreck of the Polish state.

The royal elections at Warsaw came to be prize contests at

which all Europe assisted. Every Court set up its candidate

for the paltry titular place; every candidate emptied his

purse into the Polish capital, and bribed, intrigued,

corrupted, to the best of his ability. Once, at least (1674),

when the game was on, a sudden breeze of patriotic feeling

swept the traffickers out of the diet, and inspired the

election of a national hero, John Sobieski, to whom Europe

owes much; for it was he who drove back the Turks, in 1683,

when their last bold push into central Europe was made, and

when they were storming at the gates of Vienna. But when

Sobieski died, in 1696, the old scandalous vendue of a crown

was re-opened, and the Elector of Saxony was the buyer. During

most of the last two centuries of its history, Poland sold its

throne to one alien after another, and allowed foreign states

to mix and meddle with its affairs. Of real nationality there

was not much left to extinguish when the time of extinction

came. There were patriots, and very noble patriots, among the

Poles, at all periods of their history; but it seems to have

been the very hopelessness of the state into which their

country had drifted which intensified their patriotic feeling.

Russia had acquired magnitude and strength as a barbaric

power, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; but it was

not until the reign of Peter the Great, which opened in 1682,

that the great Slavonic empire began to take on a European

character, with European interests and influences, and to

assimilate the civilization of the West. Peter may be said to

have knotted Russia to Europe at both extremities, by pushing

his dominions to the Baltic on the north and to the Black Sea

on the south, and by putting his own ships afloat in both.

From his day, Russia has been steadily gathering weight in

each of the two continents over which her vast bulk of empire

is stretched, and moving to a mysterious great destiny in time

to come.

The Turks.

The Turks, natural enemies of all the Christian races of

eastern and southeastern Europe, came practically to the end

of their threatening career of conquest about the middle of

the sixteenth century, when Suleiman the Magnificent died

(1566). He had occupied a great part of Hungary; seated a

pasha in Buda; laid siege to Vienna; taken Rhodes from the

Knights of St. John; attacked them in Malta; made an alliance

with the King of France; brought a Turkish fleet into the

western Mediterranean, and held Europe in positive terror of

an Ottoman domination for half a century. His son Selim added

Cyprus to the Turkish conquests; but was humbled in the

Mediterranean by the great Christian victory of Lepanto, won

by the combined fleets of Spain, Venice and the Pope, under

Don John of Austria. After that time Europe had no great fear

of the Turk; though he still fought hard with the Venetians,

the Poles, the Russians, the Hungarians, and, once more,

carried his arms even to Vienna. But, on the whole, it was a

losing fight; the crescent was on the wane.

{1081}

Last glories of Venice.

In the whole struggle with the Ottomans, through the

fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, the republic

of Venice bore a noble part. She contested with them foot by

foot the Greek islands, Peloponnesus, and the eastern shores

of the Adriatic. Even after her commerce began to slip from

her control, and the strength which came from it sank rapidly,

she gave up her eastern possessions but slowly, one by one,

and after stout resistance. Crete cost the Turks a war of

twenty-four years (1645-1669). Fifteen years afterwards the

Venetians gathered their energies afresh, assumed the

aggressive, and conquered the whole Peloponnesus, which they

held for a quarter of a century. Then it was lost again, and

the Ionian Islands alone remained Venetian territory in the

East.

Rise of the House of Savoy.

Of Italy at large, in the seventeenth century, lying prostrate

under the heavy hand of Spain, there is no history to claim

attention in so brief a sketch as this. One sovereign family

in the northwest, long balanced on the Alps, in uncertainty

between a cis-Alpine and a trans-Alpine destiny, but now

clearly committed to Italian fortunes, had begun to win its

footing among the noticeable smaller powers of the day by

sheer dexterity of trimming and shifting sides in the

conflicts of the time. This was the House of Savoy, whose

first possessions were gathered in the crumbling of the old

kingdom of Burgundy, and lay on both slopes of the Alps,

commanding several important passes. On the western and

northern side, the counts, afterwards dukes, of Savoy had to

contend, as time went on, with the expanding kingdom of France

and with the stout-hearted communities which ultimately formed

the Swiss Confederacy. They fell back before both. At one

period, in the fifteenth century, their dominion had stretched

to the Saone, and to the lake of Neufchatel, on both sides of

it, surrounding the free city of Geneva, which they were never

able to overcome, and the lake of Geneva entire. After that

time, the Savoyards gradually lost territory on the Gallic

side and won compensations on the Italian side, in Piedmont,

and at the expense of Genoa and the duchy of Milan. The Duke

Victor Amadeus II. was the most successful winner for his

house, and he made his gains by remarkable manœuvering on both

sides of the wars of Louis XIV. One of his acquisitions (1713)

was the island kingdom of Sicily, which gave him a royal title. A

few years later he exchanged it with Austria for the island

kingdom of Sardinia--a realm more desirable to him for

geographical reasons only. The dukes of Savoy and princes of

Piedmont thus became kings of Sardinia, and the name of the

kingdom was often applied to their whole dominion, down to the

recent time when the House of Savoy attained the grander

kingship of united Italy.

First wars of Louis XIV.

The wars of Louis XIV. gave little opportunity for western and

central Europe to make any other history than that of struggle

and battle, invasion and devastation, intrigue and faithless

diplomacy, shifting of political landmarks and traffic in

border populations, as though they were pastured cattle, for

fifty years, in the last part of the seventeenth century and

the first part of the eighteenth (1665-1715). It will be

remembered that when this King of France married the Infanta

of Spain, he joined in a solemn renunciation of all rights on

her part and on that of her children to such dominions as she

might otherwise inherit. But such a renunciation, with no

sentiment of honor behind it, was worthless, of course, and

Louis XIV., in his own esteem, stood on a height quite above

the moral considerations that have force with common men. When

Philip IV. of Spain died, in 1665, Louis promptly began to put

forward the claims which he had pledged himself not to make.

He demanded part of the Netherlands, and Franche Comté--the

old county (not the duchy) of Burgundy--as belonging to his

queen. It was his good fortune to be served by some of the

greatest generals, military engineers and administrators of

the day--by Turenne, Condé, Vauban, Louvois, and others--and

when he sent his armies of invasion into Flanders and Franche

Comté they carried all before them. Holland took alarm at

these aggressions which came so near to her, and formed an

alliance with England and Sweden to assist Spain. But the

unprincipled English king, Charles II., was easily bribed to

betray his ally; Sweden was bought over; Spain submitted to a

treaty which gave the Burgundian county back to her, and

surrendered an important part of the Spanish Netherlands to

France. Louis' first exploit of national brigandage had thus

been a glorious success, as glory is defined in the vocabulary

of sovereigns of his class. He had stolen several valuable

towns, killed some thousands of people, carried misery into

the lives of some thousands more, and provoked the Dutch to a

challenge of war that seemed promising of more glory of like

kind.

In 1672 he prepared himself to chastise the Dutch, and his

English pensioner, Charles II., with several German princes,

joined him in the war. It was this war, as related already,

which brought about the fall and the death of John de Witt,

Grand Pensionary of Holland; which raised William of Orange to

the restored stadtholdership, and which gave him a certain

leadership of influence in Europe, as against the French king.

It was this war, likewise, which gave the Hohenzollerns their

first great battle-triumph, in the defeat of the Swedes,

allies of the French, at Fehrbellin. For Frederick William,

the Great Elector, had joined the Emperor Leopold and the King

of Spain in another league with Holland to resist the

aggressions of France; while Sweden now took sides with Louis.

England was soon withdrawn from the contest, by the determined

action of Parliament, which forced its king to make peace.

Otherwise the war became general in western Europe and was

frightful in the death and misery it cost. Generally the

French had the most success. Turenne was killed in 1675 and

Condé retired the same year; but able commanders were found in

Luxemburg and Crequi to succeed them. In opposition to William

of Orange, the Dutch made peace at Nimegueu, in 1678, and

Spain was forced to give up Franche Comté, with another

fraction of her Netherland territories; but Holland lost

nothing. Again Louis XIV. had beaten and robbed his neighbors

with success, and was at the pinnacle of his glory. France, it

is true, was oppressed and exhausted, but her king was a

"grand monarch," and she must needs be content.

{1082}

For a few years the grand monarch contented himself with small

filchings of territory, which kept his conscience supple and

gave practice to his sleight-of-hand. On one pretext and

another he seized town after town in Alsace, and, at last,

1681, surprised and captured the imperial free city of

Strasburg, in a time of entire peace. He bombarded Genoa, took

Avignon from the Pope, bullied and abused feeble Spain, made

large claims on the Palatinate in the name of his

sister-in-law, but against her will, and did nearly what he

was pleased to do, without any effective resistance, until

after William of Orange had been called to the English throne.

That completed a great change in the European situation.

Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

The change had already been more than half brought about by a

foul and foolish measure which Louis had adopted in his

domestic administration. Cursed by a tyrant's impatience at

the idea of free thought and free opinion among his subjects,

he had been persuaded by Catholic zealots near his person to

revoke the Edict of Nantes and revive persecution of the

Huguenots. This was done in 1685. The fatal effects within

France resembled those which followed the persecution of the

Moriscoes of Spain. The Huguenots formed a large proportion of

the best middle class of the kingdom,--its manufacturers, its

merchants, its skilled and thrifty artisans. Infamous efforts

were made to detain them in the country and there force them

to apostacy or hold them under punishment if they withstood.

But there was not power enough in the monarchy, with all its

absolutism, to enclose France in such a wall. Vast numbers

escaped--half a million it is thought--carrying their skill,

their knowledge, their industry and their energy into Holland,

England, Switzerland, all parts of Protestant Germany, and

across the ocean to America. France was half ruined by the

loss.

The League of Augsburg.

At the same time, the Protestant allies in Germany and the

North, whom Louis had held in subserviency to himself so long,

were angered and alarmed by his act. They joined a new

defensive league against him, formed at Augsburg, in 1686,

which embraced the Emperor, Spain, Holland, and Sweden, at

first, and afterwards took in Savoy and other Italian states,

along with Germany almost entire. But the League was miserably

unprepared for war, and hardly hindered the march of Louis'

armies when he suddenly moved them into the Rhenish

electorates in 1688. For the second time in his reign, and

under his orders, the Palatinate was fearfully devastated with

fire and sword. But this attack on Germany, occupying the arms

of France, gave William of Orange his opportunity to enter

England unopposed and take the English crown. That

accomplished, he speedily brought England into the League,

enlarging it to a "grand alliance" of all western Europe

against the dangerous monarch of France, and inspiring it with

some measure of his own energy and courage. France had now to

deal with enemies on every side. They swarmed on all her

frontiers, and the strength and valor with which she met them

were amazing. For three years the French more than held their

own, not only in land-fighting, but on the sea, where they

seemed likely, for a time, to dispute the supremacy of the

English and the Dutch with success. But the frightful draft

made on the resources of the nation, and the strain on its

spirit, were more than could be kept up. The obstinacy of the

king, and his indifference to the sufferings of his people,

prolonged the war until 1697, but with steady loss to the

French of the advantages with which they began. Two years

before the end, Louis had bought over the Duke of Savoy, by

giving back to him all that France had taken from his Italian

territories since Richelieu's time. When the final peace was

settled, at Ryswick, like surrenders had to be made in the

Netherlands, Lorraine, and beyond the Rhine; but Alsace, with

Strasburg, was kept, to be a German graft on France, until the

sharp Prussian pruning knife, in our own time, cut it away.

War of the Spanish Succession.

There were three years of peace after the treaty of Ryswick,

an then a new war--longer, more bitter, and more destructive

than those before it--arose out of questions connected with

the succession to the crown of Spain. Charles II., last of the

Austro-Spanish or Spanish-Hapsburg kings, died in 1700,

leaving no heir. The nearest of his relatives to the throne

were the descendants of his two sisters, one of whom had

married Louis XIV. and the other the Emperor Leopold, of the

Austrian House. Louis XIV., as we know, had renounced all the

Spanish rights of his queen and her issue; but that

renunciation had been shown already to be wasted paper.

Leopold had renounced nothing; but he had required a

renunciation of her Spanish claims from the one daughter,

Maria, of his Spanish wife, and he put forward claims to the

Spanish succession, on his own behalf, because his mother had

been a princess of that nation, as well as his wife. He was

willing, however, to transfer his own rights to a younger son,

fruit of a second marriage, the Archduke Charles.

The question of the Spanish succession was one of European

interest and importance, and attempts had been made to settle

it two years before the death of the Spanish king, in 1698, by

a treaty, or agreement, between France, England, and Holland.

By that treaty these outside powers (consulting Spain not at

all) undertook a partition of the Spanish monarchy, in what

they assumed to be the interest of the European balance of

power. They awarded Naples, Sicily, and some lesser Italian

possessions to a grandson of Louis XIV., the Milanese

territory to the Archduke Charles, and the rest of the Spanish

dominions to an infant son of Maria, the Emperor's daughter,

who was married to the elector of Bavaria. But the infant so

selected to wear the crown of Spain died soon afterwards, and

a second treaty of partition was framed. This gave the

Milanese to the Duke of Lorraine, in exchange for his own

duchy, which he promised to cede to France, and the whole

remainder of the Spanish inheritance was conceded to the

Austrian archduke, Charles. In Spain, these arrangements were

naturally resented, by both people and king, and the latter

was persuaded to set against them a will, bequeathing all that

he ruled to the younger grandson of Louis XIV., Philip of

Anjou, on condition that the latter renounce for himself and

for his heirs all claims to the crown of France. The

inducement to this bequest was the power which the King of

France possessed to enforce it, and so to preserve the unity

of the Spanish realm. That the argument and the persuasion

came from Louis' own agents, while other agents amused

England, Holland and Austria with treaties of partition, is

tolerably clear.

{1083}

Near the end of the year 1700, the King of Spain died; his

will was disclosed; the treaties were as coolly ignored as the

prior renunciation had been, and the young French prince was

sent pompously into Spain to accept the proffered crown. For a

time, there was indignation in Europe, but no more. William of

Orange could persuade neither England nor Holland to war, and

Austria could not venture hostilities without their help. But

that submissiveness only drew from the grand monarch fresh

displays of his dishonesty and his insolence. Philip of

Anjou's renunciation of a possible succession to the French

throne, while occupying that of Spain, was practically

annulled: The government of Spain was guided from Paris like

that of a dependency of France. Dutch and English commerce was

injured by hostile measures. Movements alarming to Holland

were made on the frontiers of the Spanish Netherlands.

Finally, when the fugitive ex-king of England, James II., died

at St. Germains, in September, 1701, Louis acknowledged James'

son, the Pretender, as King of England. This insult roused the

war spirit in England which King William had striven so hard

to evoke. He had already arranged the terms of a new defensive

Grand Alliance with Holland, Austria, and most of the German

states. There was no difficulty now in making it an offensive

combination.

But William, always weak in health, and worn by many cares and

harassing troubles, died in March, 1702, before the war which

he desired broke out. His death made no pause in the movement

of events. Able statesmen, under Queen Anne, his successor,

carried forward his policy and a great soldier was found, in

the person of John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, to command

the armies of England and the Dutch. Another commander, of

remarkable genius, Prince Eugene of Savoy, took service with

the Emperor, and these two, acting cordially together, humbled

the overweening pride of Louis XIV. in the later years of his

reign. He had worn out France by his long exactions. His

strong ministers, Colbert, Louvois and others, were dead, and

he did not find successors for them. He had able generals, but

none equal to Turenne, Condé or Luxemburg,--none to cope with

Marlborough and Prince Eugene. The war was widespread, on a

stupendous scale, and it lasted for twelve years. Its

campaigns were fought in the Low Countries, in Germany, in

Italy and in Spain. It glorified the reign of Anne, in English

history, by the shining victories of Blenheim, Ramilies,

Oudenarde and Malplaquet, and by the capture of Gibraltar, the

padlock of the Mediterranean. The misery to which France was

reduced in the later years of the war was probably the

greatest that the much suffering nation ever knew.

The Peace of Utrecht.

Louis sought peace, and was willing to go far in surrenders to

obtain it. But the allies pressed him too hard in their

demands. They would have him not only abandon the Bourbon

dynasty that he had set up in Spain, but join them in

overthrowing it. He refused to negotiate on such terms, and

Fortune approved his resolution, by giving decisive victories

to his arms in Spain, while dealing, out disaster and defeat

in every other field. England grew weary of the war when it

came to appear endless, and Marlborough and the Whigs, who had

carried it on, were ousted from power. The Tories, under

Harley and Bolingbroke, came into office and negotiated the

famous Peace of Utrecht (1713), to which all the belligerents

in the war, save the Emperor, consented. The Emperor yielded

to a supplementary treaty, signed at Rastadt the next year.

These treaties left the Bourbon King of Spain, Philip V., on

his throne, but bound him, by fresh renunciations, not to be

likewise King of France. They gave to England Gibraltar and

Minorca, at the expense of Spain, and Nova Scotia,

Newfoundland and Hudson's Bay at the expense of France. They

took much more from Spain. They took Sicily, which they gave

to the Duke of Savoy, with the title of King; they took

Naples, Milan, Mantua and Sardinia, which they gave to

Austria, or, more strictly speaking, to the Emperor; and they

took the Spanish Netherlands, which they gave to Austria in

the main, with some barrier towns to the Dutch. They took from

France her conquests on the right bank of the Rhine; but they

left her in possession of Alsace, with Strasburg and Landau.

The great victim of the war was Spain.

France at the death of Louis XIV.

Louis XIV. was near the end of his reign when this last of the

fearful wars which he caused was brought to a close. He died

in September, 1715, leaving a kingdom which had reasons to

curse his memory in every particular of its state. He had

foiled the exertions of as wise a minister, Jean Colbert, as

ever strove to do good to France. He had dried the sources of

national life as with a searching and monstrous sponge. He had

repressed everything which he could not absorb in his

flaunting court, in his destroying armies, and in himself. He

had dealt with France as with a dumb beast that had been given

him to bestride; to display himself upon, before the gaze of an

envious world; to be bridled, and spurred at his pleasure, and

whipped; to toil for him and bear burdens as he willed; to

tread upon his enemies and trample his neighbors' fields. It

was he, more than all others before or after, who made France

that dumb creature which suffered and was still for a little

longer time, and then began thinking and went mad.

{1084}

Charles XII. of Sweden.

While the Powers of western Europe were wrestling in the great

war of the Spanish Succession, the nations of the North and

East were tearing each other, at the same time, with equal

stubbornness and ferocity. The beginning of their conflict was

a wanton attack from Russia, Poland and Denmark, on the

possessions of Sweden. Sweden, in the past century, had made

extensive, conquests, and her territories, outside of the

Scandinavian peninsula, were thrust provokingly into the sides

of all these three neighbors. There had been three Charleses

on the Swedish throne in succession, following Christina, the

daughter of Gustavus Adolphus. Queen Christina, an eccentric

character, had abdicated in 1654, in order to join the

Catholic Church, and had been succeeded by her cousin, Charles

X. The six years reign of this Charles was one of constant war

with the Danes and the Poles, and almost uniformly he was the

aggressor. His son and successor, Charles XI., suffered the

great defeat at Fehrbellin which gave prestige to Brandenburg;

but he was shielded by the puissant arm of Louis XIV., his

ally, and lost no territory. More successful in his domestic

policy than in his wars, he, both practically and formally,

established absolutism in the monarchy. Inheriting from his

father that absolute power, while inheriting at the same time

the ruthless ambition of his grandfather, Charles XII. came to

the throne in 1697.

In the first two years of his reign, this extraordinary young

autocrat showed so little of his character that his royal

neighbors thought him a weakling, and Peter the Great, of

Russia, conspired with Augustus of Poland and Frederick IV. of

Denmark to strip him of those parts of his dominion which they

severally coveted. The result was like the rousing of a lion

by hunters who went forth to pursue a hare. The young Swede,

dropping, instantly and forever, all frivolities, sprang at

his assailants before they dreamed of finding him awake, and

the game was suddenly reversed. The hunters became the hunted,

and they had no rest for nine years from the implacable

pursuit of them which Charles kept up. He defeated the Danes

and the Russians in the first year of the war (1700). In 1702

he invaded Poland and occupied Warsaw; in 1704 he forced the

deposition of the Saxon King of Poland, Augustus, and the

election of Stanislaus Leczinski. Not yet satisfied, he

followed Augustus into his electorate of Saxony, and compelled

him there to renounce the Polish crown and the Russian

alliance. In 1708 he invaded Russia, marching on Moscow, but

turning aside to meet an expected ally, Mazeppa the Cossack.

It was the mistake which Napoleon repeated a century later.

The Swedes exhausted themselves in the march, and the Russians

bided their time. Peter the Czar had devoted eight years,

since Charles defeated him at Narva, to making soldiers,

well-trained, out of the mob which that fight scattered. When

Charles had worn his army down to a slender and disheartened

force, Peter struck and destroyed it at Pultowa. Charles

escaped from the wreck and took refuge, with a few hundreds of

is guards, in the Turkish province of Bessarabia, at Bender. In

that shelter, which the Ottomans hospitably accorded to him,

he remained for five years, intriguing to bring the Porte into

war with his Muscovite enemy, while all the fruits of his nine

years of conquest in the North were stripped from him by the

old league revived. Augustus returned to Poland and recovered

his crown. Peter took possession of Livonia, Ingria, and a

great part of Finland. Frederick IV., of Denmark, attacked

Sweden itself. The kingless kingdom made a valiant defense

against the crowd of eager enemies; but Charles had used the

best of its energies and its resources, and it was not strong.

Near the end of 1710, Charles succeeded in pushing the Sultan

into war with the Czar, and the latter, advancing into

Moldavia, rashly placed himself in a position of great peril,

where the Turks had him really at their mercy. But Catherine,

the Czarina, who was present, found means to bribe the Turkish

vizier in command, and Peter escaped with no loss more serious

than the surrender of Azov. That ended the war, and the hopes

of the Swedish king. But still the stubborn Charles wearied

the Porte with his importunities, until he was commanded to

quit the country. Even then he refused to depart,--resisted

when force was used to expel him, and did not take his leave

until late in November, 1714, when he received intelligence

that his subjects were preparing to appoint his sister regent

of the kingdom and to make peace with the Czar. That news

hurried him homeward; but only for continued war. He was about

to make terms with Russia, and to secure her alliance against

Denmark, Poland and Hanover, when he was killed during an

invasion of Norway, in the siege of Friedrickshall (December,

1718). The crown of Sweden was then conferred upon his sister,

but shorn of absolute powers, and practically dependent upon

the nobles. All the wars in which Charles XII. had involved

his kingdom were brought to an end by great sacrifices, and

Russia rose to the place of Sweden as the chief power in the

North. The Swedes paid heavily for the career of their

"Northern Alexander."

Alliance against Spain.

Before the belligerents in the North had quieted themselves,

those of the West were again in arms. Spain had fallen under

the influence of two eager and restless ambitions, that of the

queen, Elizabeth of Parma, and an Italian minister, Cardinal

Alberoni; and the schemes into which these two drew the

Bourbon king, Philip V., soon ruptured the close relations

with France which Louis XIV. had ruined his kingdom to bring

about. To check them, a triple alliance was formed (1717)

between France, England and Holland,--enlarged the next year

to a quadruple alliance by the adhesion of Austria. At the

outset of the war, Spain made a conquest of Sardinia, and

almost accomplished the same in Sicily; but the English

crushed her navy and her rising commerce, while the French

crossed the Pyrenees with an army which the Spaniards could

not resist. A vast combination which Alberoni was weaving, and

which took in Charles XII., Peter the Great, the Stuart

pretender, the English Jacobites, and the opponents of the

regency in France, fell to pieces when the Swedish king fell.

Alberoni was driven from Spain and all his plans were given

up. The Spanish king withdrew from Sicily and surrendered

Sardinia. The Emperor and the Duke of Savoy exchanged islands,

as stated before, and the former (holding Naples already)

revived the old Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, while the latter

became King of Sardinia.

{1085}

War of the Polish Succession.

These disturbances ended, there were a few years of rest in

Europe, and then another war, of the character peculiar to the

eighteenth century, broke out. It had its cause in the Polish

election of a king to succeed Augustus II. As usual, the

neighboring nations formed a betting ring of onlookers, so to

speak, and "backed" their several candidates heavily. The

deposed and exiled king, Stanislaus Leczinski, who received

his crown from Charles XII. and lost it after Pultowa, was the

French candidate; for he had married his daughter to Louis XV.

Frederick Augustus of Saxony, son of the late King Augustus,

was the Russian and Austrian candidate. The contest resulted

in a double election (1733), and out of that came war. Spain

and Sardinia joined France, and the Emperor had no allies.

Hence the House of Austria suffered greatly in the war, losing

the Two Sicilies, which went to Spain, and were conferred on a

younger son of the king, creating a third Bourbon monarchy.

Part of the duchy of Milan was also yielded by Austria to the

King of Sardinia; and the Duke of Lorraine, husband of the

Emperor's daughter, Maria Theresa, gave up his duchy to

Stanislaus, who renounced therefor his claim on the crown of

Poland. The Duke of Lorraine received as compensation a right

of succession to the grand duchy of Tuscany, where the

Medicean House was about to expire. These were the principal

consequences, humiliating to Austria, of what is known as the

First Family Compact of the French and Spanish Bourbons.

War of Jenkins' Ear.

This alliance between the two courts gave encouragement to

hostile demonstrations in the Spanish colonies against English

traders, who were accused of extensive smuggling, and the

outcome was a petty war (1739), called "the War of Jenkins'

Ear."

War of the Austrian Succession.

Before these hostilities were ended, another "war of

succession," more serious than any before it, was wickedly

brought upon Europe. The Emperor, Charles VI., died in 1740,

leaving no son, but transmitting his hereditary dominions to

his eldest daughter, the celebrated Maria Theresa, married to

the ex-Duke of Lorraine. Years before his death he had sought

to provide against any possible disputing of the succession,

by an instrument known as the Pragmatic Sanction, to which he

obtained, first, the assent of the estates of all the

provinces and kingdoms of the Austrian realm, and, secondly,

the guaranty by solemn treaty of almost every European Power.

He died in the belief that he had established his daughter

securely, and left her to the enjoyment of a peaceful reign.

It was a pitiful illusion. He was scarcely in his grave before

half the guarantors of the Pragmatic Sanction were putting

forward claims to this part and that part of the Austrian

territories. The Elector of Bavaria, the Elector of Saxony (in

his wife's name) and the King of Spain, claimed the whole

succession; the two first mentioned on grounds of collateral

lineage, the latter (a Bourbon cuckoo in the Spanish-Hapsburg

nest) as being the heir of the Hapsburgs of Spain.

While these larger pretensions were still jostling each other

in the diplomatic stage, a minor claimant, who said little but

acted powerfully, sent his demands to the Court of Vienna with

an army following close at their heels. This was Frederick II.

of Prussia, presently known as Frederick the Great, who

resuscitated an obsolete claim on Silesia and took possession

of the province (1740-41) without waiting for debate. If,

anywhere, there had been virtuous hesitations before, his bold

stroke ended them. France could not see her old Austrian rival

dismembered without hastening to grasp a share. She contracted

with the Spanish king and the Elector of Bavaria to enforce

the latter's claims, and to take the Austrian Netherlands in

prospect for compensation, while Spain should find indemnity

in the Austro-Italian states. Frederick of Prussia, having

Silesia in hand, offered to join Maria Theresa in the defense

of her remaining dominions; but his proposals were refused,

and he entered the league against her. Saxony did the same.

England and Sardinia were alone in befriending Austria, and

England was only strong at sea. Maria Theresa found her

heartiest support in Hungary, where she made a personal appeal

to her subjects, and enlarged their constitutional privileges.

In 1742 the Elector of Bavaria was elected Emperor, as Charles

VII. In the same year, Maria Theresa, acting under pressure

from England, gave up the greater part of Silesia to

Frederick, by treaty, as a price paid, not for the help he had

offered at first, but barely for his neutrality. He abandoned

his allies and withdrew from the war. His retirement produced

an immense difference in the conditions of the contest. Saxony

made peace at the same time, and became an active ally on the

Austrian side. So rapidly did the latter then recover their

ground and the French slip back that Frederick, after two

years of neutrality, became alarmed, and found a pretext to

take up arms again. The scale was now tipped to the side on

which he threw himself, but not immediately; and when, in

1745, the Emperor, Charles VII., died suddenly, Maria Theresa

was able to secure the election of her husband, Francis of

Lorraine (or Tuscany), which founded the Hapsburg-Lorraine

dynasty on the imperial throne. This was in September. In the

following December Frederick was in Dresden, and Saxony--the

one effective ally left to the Austrians, since England had

withdrawn from the war in the previous August--was at his

feet. Maria Theresa, having the Spaniards and the French still

to fight in Italy and the Netherlands, could do nothing but make

terms with the terrible Prussian king. The treaty, signed at

Dresden on Christmas Day, 1745, repeated the cession of

Silesia to Frederick, with Glatz, and restored Saxony to the

humbled Elector.

Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle.

France and Spain, deserted the second time by their faithless

Prussian ally, continued the war until 1748, when the

influence of England and Holland brought about a treaty of

peace signed at Aix-la-Chapelle. France gained nothing from

the war, but had suffered a loss of prestige, distinctly.

Austria, besides giving up Silesia to Frederick of Prussia,

was required to surrender a bit of Lombardy to the King of

Sardinia, and to make over Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla to

Don Philip of Spain, for a hereditary principality. Under the

circumstances, the result to Maria Theresa was a notable

triumph, and she shared with her enemy, Frederick, the

fruitage of fame harvested in the war. But antagonism between

these two, and between the interests and ambitions which they

respectively represented--dynastic on one side and national

on the other--was henceforth settled and irreconcilable, and

could leave in Germany no durable peace.

{1086}

Colonial conflicts of France and England.

The peace was broken, not for Germany alone, but for Europe

and for almost the world at large, in six years after the

signing of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. The rupture occurred

first very far from Europe--on the other sides of the globe,

in America and Hindostan, where England and France were eager

rivals in colonial conquest. In America, they had quarreled

since the Treaty of Utrecht over the boundaries of Acadia, or

Nova Scotia, which that treaty transferred to England.

Latterly, they had come to a more serious collision in the

interior of the continent. The English, rooting their

possession of the Atlantic seaboard by strong and stable

settlements, had been tardy explorers and slow in passing the

Alleganies to the region inland. On the other hand, the

French, nimble and enterprising in exploration, and in

military occupation, but superficial and artificial in

colonizing, had pushed their way by a long circuit from

Canada, through the great lakes to the head waters of the

Ohio, and were fortifying a line in the rear of the British

colonies, from the valley of the St. Lawrence to the valley of

the Mississippi, before the English were well aware of their

intent. Then the colonists, Virginians and Pennsylvanians,

took arms, and the career of George Washington was begun as

leader of an expedition in 1754 to drive the French from the

Ohio. It was not successful, and a strong force of regular

troops was sent over next year by the British government,

under Braddock, to repeat the attempt. A frightful

catastrophe, worse than failure, came of this second

undertaking, and open war between France and England, which

had not yet been declared, followed soon. This colonial

conflict of England and France fired the train, so to speak,

which caused a great explosion of suppressed hostilities in

Europe.

The House of Hanover in England.

If the English crown had not been worn by a German king,

having a German principality to defend, the French and English

might have fought out their quarrel on the ocean, and in the

wilderness of America, or on the plains of the Carnatic,

without disturbing their continental neighbors. But England

was now under a new, foreign-bred line of sovereigns,

descended from that daughter of James I., the princess

Elizabeth, who married the unfortunate Elector Palatine and

was queen of Bohemia for a brief winter term. After William of

Orange died, his wife, Queen Mary, having preceded him to the

grave, and no children having been born to them, Anne, the

sister of Mary, had been called to the throne. It was in her

reign that the brilliant victories of Marlborough were won,

and in her reign that the Union of Scotland with England,

under one parliament as well as one sovereign, was brought

about. On Anne's death (1714), her brother, the son of James

II., called "the Pretender," was still excluded from the

throne, because of his religion, and the next heir was sought

and summoned, in the person of the Elector George, of Hanover,

whose remote ancestress was Elizabeth Stuart. George I. had

reigned thirteen years, and his son, George II., had been

twenty-seven years on the throne, when these quarrels with

France arose. Throughout the two reigns, until 1742, the

English nation had been kept mostly at peace, by the potent

influence of a great minister, Sir Robert Walpole, and had

made a splendid advance in material prosperity and strength;

while the system of ministerial government, responsible to

Parliament and independent of the Crown, which has been in

later times the peculiar feature of the British constitution,

was taking shape. In 1742, Walpole fell from power, and the

era of peace for England was ended. But her new dynasty had

been firmly settled, and politically, industrially, and

commercially, the nation was so sound in its condition as to

be well prepared for the series of wars into which it plunged.

In the War of the Austrian Succession England had taken a limited

part, and with small results to herself. She was now about to

enter, under the lead of the high spirited and ambitious Pitt,

afterwards Earl of Chatham, the greatest career of conquest in

her history.

The Seven Years War.

As before said, it was the anxiety of George II. for his

electorate of Hanover which caused an explosion of hostilities

in Europe to occur, as consequence of the remote fighting of

French and English colonists in America. For the strengthening

of Hanover against attacks from France, he sought an alliance

with Frederick of Prussia. This broke the long-standing

anti-French alliance of England with Austria, and Austria

joined fortunes with her ancient Bourbon enemy, in order to be

helped to the revenge which Maria Theresa now promised herself

the pleasure of executing upon the Prussian king. As the

combination finally shaped itself on the French side, it

embraced France, Austria, Russia, Sweden, Poland, Saxony, and

the Palatinate, and its inspiring purpose was to break Prussia

down and partition her territories, rather than to support

France against England. The agreements to this end were made

in secret; but Frederick obtained knowledge of them, and

learned that papers proving the conspiracy against him were in

the archives of the Saxony government, at Dresden. His action was

decided with that promptitude which so often disconcerted his

enemies. He did not wait to be attacked by the tremendous

league formed against him, nor waste time in efforts to

dissolve it, but defiantly struck the first blow. He poured

his army into Saxony (August, 1756), seized Dresden by

surprise, captured the documents he desired, and published

them to the world in vindication of his summary precipitation

of war. Then, blockading the Saxon army in Pirna, he pressed

rapidly into Bohemia, defeated the Austrians at Lowositz, and

returned as rapidly, to receive the surrender of the Saxons

and to enlist most of them in his own ranks. This was the

European opening of the Seven Years War, which raged, first

and last, in all quarters of the globe. In the second year of

the war, Frederick gained an important victory at Prague and

suffered a serious reverse at Kolin, which threw most of

Silesia into the hands of the Austrians. Close following that

defeat came crushing news from Hanover, where the incompetent

Duke of Cumberland, commanding for his father, the English

King George, had allowed the French to force him to an

agreement which disbanded his army, and left Prussia alone in

the terrific fight. Frederick's position seemed desperate; but

his energy retrieved it.

{1087}

He fought and defeated the French at Rossbach, near Lützen, on

the 5th of November, and the Austrians, at Leuthen, near

Breslau, exactly one month later. In the campaigns of 1758, he

encountered the Russians at Zorndorf, winning a bloody

triumph, and he sustained a defeat at Hochkirk, in battle with

the Austrians. But England had repudiated Cumberland's

convention and recalled him; English and Hanoverian forces

were again put into the field, under the capable command of

Prince Frederick of Brunswick, who turned the tide in that

quarter against the French, and the results of the year were

generally favorable to Frederick. In 1759, the Hanoverian

army, under Prince Ferdinand, improved the situation on that

side; but the prospects of the King of Prussia were clouded by

heavy disasters. Attempting to push a victory over the

Russians too far, at Kunersdorf, he was terribly beaten. He

lost Dresden, and a great part of Saxony. In the next year he

recovered all but Dresden, which he wantonly and inhumanly

bombarded. The war was now being carried on with great

difficulty by all the combatants. Prussia, France and Austria

were suffering almost equally from exhaustion; the misery

among their people was too great to be ignored; the armies of

each had dwindled. The opponents of Pitt's war policy in

England overcame him, in October, 1761, whereupon he resigned,

and the English subsidy to Frederick was withdrawn. But that

was soon made up to him by the withdrawal of Russia from the

war, at the beginning of 1762, when Peter of Holstein, who

admired Frederick, became Czar. Sweden made peace a little

later. The remainder of the worn and wearied fighters went on

striking at each other until near the end of the year.

Meantime, on the colonial and East Indian side of it, this

prodigious Seven Years War, as a great struggle for

world-empire between England and France, had been adding

conquest to conquest and triumph to triumph for the former. In

1759, Wolfe had taken Quebec and died on the Heights of

Abraham in the moment of victory. Another twelve months saw

the whole of Canada clear of Frenchmen in arms. In the East,

to use the language of Macaulay, "conquests equalling in

rapidity and far surpassing in magnitude those of Cortes and

Pizarro, had been achieved." "In the space of three years the

English had founded a mighty empire. The French had been

defeated in every part of India. Chandernagore had yielded to

Clive, Pondicherry to Coote. Throughout Bengal, Bahar, Orissa,

and the Carnatic, the authority of the East India Company was

more absolute than that of Acbar or Aurungzebe had ever been."

Treaties of Paris and Hubertsburg.

In February, 1763, two treaties of peace were concluded, one

at Paris, on the 10th, between England, France and Spain (the

latter Power having joined France in the war as late as

January, 1762); the other at Hubertsburg, on the 15th, between

Prussia and Austria. France gave up to England all her

possessions in North America, except Louisiana (which passed

to Spain,), and yielded Minorca, but recovered the

Philippines. She surrendered, moreover, considerable interests

in the West Indies and in Africa. The colonial aspirations of

the French were cast down by a blow that was lasting in its

effect. As between Prussia and Austria, the triumphs of the

peace and the glories of the war were won entirely by the

former. Frederick came out of it, "Frederick the Great," the

most famous man of his century, as warrior and as statesman,

both. He had defended his little kingdom for seven years

against three great Powers, and yielded not one acre of its

territory. He had raised Prussia to the place in Germany from

which her subsequent advance became easy and almost

inevitable. But the great fame he earned is spotted with many

falsities and much cynical indifference to the commonest

ethics of civilization. His greatness is of that character

which requires to be looked at from selected standpoints.

Russia.

Another character, somewhat resembling that of Frederick, was

now drawing attention on the eastern side of Europe. Since the

death of Peter the Great, the interval in Russian history had

been covered by six reigns, with a seventh just opening, and

the four sovereigns who really exercised power were women.

Peter's widow, Catherine I., had succeeded him (1725) for two

years. His son, Alexis, he had put to death; but Alexis left a

son, Peter, to whom Catherine bequeathed the crown. Peter II.

died after a brief reign, in 1730; and the nearest heirs were

two daughters of Peter the Great, Anne and Elizabeth. But they

were set aside in favor of another Anne--Anne of

Courland--daughter of Peter the Great's brother. Anne's reign

of ten years was under the influence of German favorites and

ministers, and nearly half of it was occupied with a Turkish

War, in cooperation with Austria. For Austria the war had most

humiliating results, costing her Belgrade, all of Servia, part

of Bosnia and part of Wallachia. Russia won back Asov, with

fortifications forbidden, and that was all. Anne willed her

crown to an infant nephew, who appears in the Russian annals

as Ivan VI.; but two regencies were overthrown by palace

revolutions within little more than a year, and the second one

carried to the throne that Princess Elizabeth, younger

daughter of Peter the Great, who had been put aside eleven

years before. Elizabeth, a woman openly licentious and

intemperate, reigned for twenty-one years, during the whole

important period of the War of the Austrian Succession, and

almost to the end of the Seven Years War. She was bitterly

hostile to Frederick the Great, whose sharp tongue had

offended her, and she joined Maria Theresa with eagerness in

the great effort of revenge, which failed. In the early part

of her reign, war with Sweden had been more successful and had

added South Finland to the Russian territories. It is claimed

for her domestic government that the general prosperity of the

country was advanced.

{1088}

Catherine II.

On the death of Elizabeth, near the end of the year 1761, the

crown passed to her nephew, Peter of Holstein, son of her

eldest sister, Anne, who had married the Duke of Holstein.

This prince had been the recognized heir, living at the

Russian court, during the whole of Elizabeth's reign. He was

an ignorant boor, and he had become a besotted drunkard. Since

1744 he had been married to a young German princess, of the

Anhalt Zerbst family, who took the baptismal name of Catherine

when she entered the Greek Church. Catherine possessed a superior

intellect and a strong character; but the vile court into

which she came as a young girl, bound to a disgusting husband,

had debauched her in morals and lowered her to its own

vileness. She gained so great an ascendancy that the court was

subservient to her, from the time that her incapable husband,

Peter III., succeeded to the throne. He reigned by sufferance

for a year and a half, and then (July, 1762) he was easily

deposed and put to death. In the deposition, Catherine was the

leading actor. Of the subsequent murder, some historians are

disposed to acquit her. She did not scruple, at least, to

accept the benefit of both deeds, which raised her, alone, to

the throne of the Czars.

Partition of Poland.

Peter III., in his short reign, had made one important change

in Russian policy, by withdrawing from the league against

Frederick of Prussia, whom he greatly admired. Catherine found

reasons, quite aside from those of personal admiration, for

cultivating the friendship of the King of Prussia, and a close

understanding with that astute monarch was one of the earliest

objects of her endeavor. She had determined to put an end to

the independence of Poland. As she first entertained the

design, there was probably no thought of the partitioning

afterwards contrived. But her purpose was to keep the Polish

kingdom in disorder and weakness, and to make Russian

influence supreme in it, with views, no doubt, that looked

ultimately to something more. On the death of the Saxon king

of Poland, Augustus III., in 1763, Catherine put forward a

native candidate for the vacant throne, in the person of

Stanislaus Poniatowsky, a Russianized Pole and a former lover

of her own. The King of Prussia supported her candidate, and

Poniatowsky was duly elected, with 10,000 Russian troops in

Warsaw to see that it was properly done. The Poles were

submissive to the invasion of their political independence;

but when Catherine, who sought to create a Russian party in

Poland by protecting the members of the Greek Church and the

Protestants, against the intolerance of the Polish Catholics,

forced a concession of civil equality to the former (1768),

there was a wide-spread Catholic revolt. In the fierce war

which followed, a band of Poles was pursued across the Turkish

border, and a Turkish town was burned by the Russian pursuers.

The Sultan, who professed sympathy with the Poles, then

declared war against Russia. The Russo-Turkish war, in turn,

excited Austria, which feared Russian conquests from the

Turks, and another wide disturbance of the peace of Europe

seemed threatening. In the midst of the excitement there came

a whispered suggestion, to the ear of the courts of Vienna and

St. Petersburg, that they severally satisfy their territorial

cravings and mutually assuage each other's jealousy, at the

expense of the crumbling kingdom of Poland. The whisper may

have come from Frederick II. of Prussia, or it may not. There

are two opinions on the point. From whatever source it came,

it found favorable consideration at Vienna and St. Petersburg,

and between February and August, 1772, the details of the

partition were worked out.

Poland was not yet extinguished. The kingdom was only shorn of

some 160,000 square miles of territory, more than half of

which went to Russia, a third to Austria, and the remainder,

less than 10,000 square miles, to Prussia. This last mentioned

annexation was the old district of West Prussia which the

Polish king, Casimir IV., had wrested from the Teutonic

Knights in 1466, before Brandenburg had aught to do with

Prussian lands or name. After three centuries, Frederick

reclaimed it.

The diminished kingdom of Poland showed more signs of a true

national life, of an earnest national feeling, of a sobered

and rational patriotism, than had appeared in its former

history. The fatal powers monopolized by the nobles, the

deadly "liberum veto," the corrupting elective kingship, were

looked at in their true light, and in May, 1791, a new

constitution was adopted which reformed those evils. But a few

nobles opposed the reformation and appealed to Russia,

supplying a pretext to Catherine on which she filled Poland

with her troops. It was in vain that the patriot Kosciusko led

the best of his countrymen in a brave struggle with the

invader. They were overborne (1793-1794); the unhappy nation

was put in fetters, while Catherine and a new King of Prussia,

Frederick William II., arranged the terms of a second

partition. This gave to Prussia an additional thousand square

miles, including the important towns of Danzig and Thorn,

while Russia took four times as much. A year later, the small

remainder of Polish territory was dismembered and divided

between Russia, Prussia and Austria, and thus Poland

disappeared from the map of Europe as a state.

Russia as left by Catherine II.

Meantime, in her conflicts with the Turks, Catherine was

extending her vast empire to the Dneister and the Caucasus,

and opening a passage for her fleets from the Black Sea to the

Mediterranean. By treaty in 1774 she placed the Tartars of the

Crimea in independence of the Turks, and so isolated them for

easy conquest. In 1783 the conquest was made complete. By the

same treaty she secured a right of remonstrance on behalf of

the Christian subjects of the Sultan, in the Danubian

principalities and in the Greek Church at Constantinople,

which opened many pretexts for future interference and for war

at Russian convenience. The aggressions of the strong-willed

and powerful Czarina, and their dazzling success, filled her

subjects with pride, and effaced all remembrance of her

foreign origin and her want of right to the seat which she

filled. She was ambitious to improve the empire, as well as to

expand it; for her liberal mind took in the large ideas of that

speculative age and was much moved by them. She attempted many

reforms; but most things that she tried to do for the

bettering of civilization and the lifting of the people were

done imperiously, and spoiled by the autocratic method of the

doing. In her later years, her inclination towards liberal

ideas was checked, and the French Revolution put an end to it.

{1089}

State of France in the Eighteenth Century.

In tracing the destruction of Poland and the aggrandizement of

Russia, we have passed the date of that great catastrophe in

France which ended the old modern order of things, and

introduced a new one, not for France only, but for Europe at

large. It was a catastrophe toward which the abused French

people had been slowly slipping for generations, pushed

unrelentingly to it by blind rulers and a besotted

aristocracy. By nature a people ardent and lively in temper,

hopeful and brave in spirit, full of intelligence, they had

been held down in dumb repression: silenced in voice, even for

the uttering of their complaints; the national meeting of

their representative States suppressed for nearly two

centuries; taxes wrung from them on no measure save the will

of a wanton-minded and ignorant king; their beliefs

prescribed, their laws ordained, their courts of justice

commanded, their industries directed, their trade hedged

round, their rights and permissions in all particulars meted

out to them by the same blundering and irresponsible

autocracy. How long would they bear it? and would their

deliverance come by the easing of their yoke, or by the

breaking of it?--were the only questions.

Their state was probably at its worst in the later years of

Louis XIV. That seems to be the conclusion which the deepest

study has now reached, and the picture formerly drawn by

historians, of a society continually sinking into lower

miseries, is mostly put aside. The worst state, seemingly, was

passed, or nearly so, when Louis XIV. died. It began to mend

under his despicable successor, Louis XV. (1715-1774),--

perhaps even during the regency of the profligate Orleans

(1715-1723). Why it mended, no historian has clearly

explained. The cause was not in better government; for the

government grew worse. It did not come from any rise in

character of the privileged classes; for the privileged

classes abused their privileges with increasing selfishness.

But general influences were at work in the world at large,

stimulating activities of all kinds,--industry, trade,

speculation, combination, invention, experiment, science,

philosophy,--and whatever improvement occurred in the material

condition and social state of the common people of France may

find its explanation in these. There was an augmentation of

life in the air of the eighteenth century, and France took

some invigoration from it, despite the many maladies in its

social system and the oppressions of government under which it

bent.

But the difference between the France of Louis XIV. and the

France of Louis XVI. was more in the people than in their

state. If their misery was a little less, their patience was

less, and by not a little. The stimulations of the age, which

may have given more effectiveness to labor and more energy to

trade, had likewise set thinking astir, on the same practical

lines. Men whose minds in former centuries would have labored

on riddles dialectical, metaphysical and theological, were now

bent on the pressing problems of daily life. The mysteries of

economic science began to challenge them. Every aspect of

surrounding society thrust questions upon them, concerning its

origin, its history, its inequalities, its laws and their

principles, its government and the source of authority in it.

The so-called "philosophers" of the age, Rousseau, Voltaire

and the encyclopædists--were not the only questioners of the

social world, nor did the questioning all come from what they

taught. It was the intellectual epidemic of the time, carried

into all countries, penetrating all classes, and nowhere with

more diffusion than in France.

After the successful revolt of the English colonies in

America, and the conspicuous blazoning of the doctrines of

political equality and popular self-government in their

declaration of independence and their republican constitution,

the ferment of social free-thinking in France was naturally

increased. The French had helped the colonists, fought side by

side with them, watched their struggle with intense interest,

and all the issues involved in the American revolution were

discussed among them, with partiality to the republican side.

Franklin, most republican representative of the young

republic, came among them and captivated every class. He

recommended to them the ideas for which he stood, perhaps more

than we suspect.

Louis XVI. and his reign.

And thus, by many influences, the French people of all classes

except the privileged nobility, and even in that class to some

small extent, were made increasingly impatient of their

misgovernment and of the wrongs and miseries going with it.

Louis XVI., who came to the throne in 1774, was the best in

character of the Bourbon kings. He had no noxious vices and no

baleful ambitions. If he had found right conditions prevailing

in his kingdom he would have made the best of them. But he had

no capacity for reforming the evils that he inherited, and no

strength of will to sustain those who had. He accepted an

earnest reforming minister with more than willingness, and

approved the wise measures of economy, of equitable taxation,

and of emancipation for manufactures and trade, which Turgot

proposed. But when protected interests, and the privileged

order which fattened on existing abuses, raised a storm of

opposition, he weakly gave way to it, and dismissed the man

(1776) who might possibly have made the inevitable revolution

a peaceful one. Another minister, the Genevan banker, Necker,

who aimed at less reform, but demanded economy, suffered the

same overthrow (1781). The waste, the profligate expenditure,

the jobbery, the leeching of the treasury by high-born

pensioners and sinecure office-holders, went on, scarcely

checked, until the beginnings of actual bankruptcy had

appeared.

The States-General.

Then a cry, not much heeded before, for the convocation of the

States-general of the kingdom--the ancient great legislature

of France, extinct since the year 1614--became loud and

general. The king yielded (1788). The States-general was

called to meet on the 1st of May, 1789, and the royal summons

decreed that the deputies chosen to it from the third

estate--the common people--should be equal in number to the

deputies of the nobility and the clergy together. So the dumb

lips of France as a nation were opened, its tongue unloosed,

its common public opinion, and public feeling made articulate,

for the first time in one hundred and seventy-five years. And

the word that it spoke was the mandate of Revolution.

The States-general assembled at Versailles on the 5th of May,

and a conflict between the third estate and the nobles

occurred at once on the question between three assemblies and

one. Should the three orders deliberate and vote together as

one body, or sit and act separately and apart. The commons

demanded the single assembly. The nobles and most of the

clergy refused the union, in which their votes would be

overpowered.

{1090}

The National Assembly.

After some weeks of dead-lock on this fundamental issue, the

third estate brought it to a summary decision, by boldly

asserting its own supremacy, as representative of the mass of

the nation, and organizing itself in the character of the

"National Assembly" of France. Under that name and character

it was joined by a considerable part of the humbler clergy,

and by some of the nobles,--additional to a few, like

Mirabeau, who sat from the beginning with the third estate, as

elected representatives of the people. The king made a weak

attempt to annul this assumption of legislative sufficiency on

the part of the third estate, and only hurried the exposure of

his own powerlessness. Persuaded by his worst advisers to

attempt a stronger demonstration of the royal authority, he

filled Paris with troops, and inflamed the excitement, which

had risen already to a passionate heat.

Outbreak of the Revolution.

Necker, who had been recalled to the ministry when the meeting

of the States-general was decided upon, now received his

second dismissal (July 11), and the news of it acted on Paris

like a signal of insurrection. The city next day was in

tumult. On the 14th the Bastile was attacked and taken. The

king's government vanished utterly. His troops fraternized

with the riotous people. Citizens of Paris organized

themselves as a National Guard, on which every hope of order

depended, and Lafayette took command. The frightened nobility

began flight, first from Paris, and then from the provinces,

as mob violence spread over the kingdom from the capital. In

October there were rumors that the king had planned to follow

the "émigrés" and take refuge in Metz. Then occurred the

famous rising of the women; their procession to Versailles;

the crowd of men which followed, accompanied but not

controlled by Lafayette and his National Guards; the

conveyance of the king and royal family to Paris, where they

remained during the subsequent year, practically in captivity,

and at the mercy of the Parisian mob.

Meanwhile, the National Assembly, negligent of the dangers of

the moment, while actual anarchy prevailed, busied itself with

debates on constitutional theory, with enactments for the

abolition of titles and privileges, and with the creating of

an inconvertible paper money, based on confiscated church

lands, to supply the needs of the national treasury. Meantime,

too, the members of the Assembly and their supporters outside

of it were breaking into parties and factions, divided by

their different purposes, principles and aims, and forming

clubs,--centers of agitation and discussion,--clubs of the

Jacobins, the Cordeliers, the Feuillants and the like,--where

fear, distrust and jealousy were soon engendering ferocious

conflicts among the revolutionists themselves. And outside of

France, on the border where the fugitive nobles lurked,

intrigue was always active, striving to enlist foreign help

for King Louis against his subjects.

The First Constitution.

In April, 1791, Mirabeau, whose influence had been a powerful

restraint upon the Revolution, died. In June, the king made an

attempt to escape from his durance in Paris, but was captured

at Varennes and brought back. Angry demands for his deposition

were now made, and a tumultuous republican demonstration

occurred, on the Champ de Mars, which Lafayette and the mayor

of Paris, Bailly, dispersed, with bloodshed. But republicanism

had not yet got its footing. In the constitution, which the

Assembly completed at this time, the throne was left

undisturbed. The king accepted the instrument, and a

constitutional monarchy appeared to have quietly taken the

place of the absolute monarchy of the past.

The Girondists.

It was an appearance not long delusive. The Constituent

National Assembly being dissolved, gave way to a Legislative

Assembly (October, 1791) elected under the new constitution.

In the Legislative Assembly the republicans appeared with a

strength which soon gave them control of it. They were divided

into various groups; but the most eloquent and energetic of

these, coming from Bordeaux and the department of the Gironde,

fixed the name of Girondists upon the party to which they

belonged. The king, as a constitutional sovereign, was forced

presently to choose ministers from the ranks of the

Girondists, and they controlled the government for several

months in the spring of 1792. The earliest use they made of

their control was to hurry the country into war with the

German powers, which were accused of giving encouragement to

the hostile plans of the émigrés on the border. It is now a

well-determined fact that the Emperor Leopold was strongly

opposed to war with France, and used all his influence for the

preservation of peace. It was revolutionary France which

opened the conflict, and it was the Girondists who led and

shaped the policy of war.

Overthrow of the Monarchy.

In the first encounters of the war, the undisciplined French

troops were beaten, and Paris was in panic. Measures were

adopted which the king refused to sanction, and he dismissed

his Girondist ministers. Lafayette, who was commanding one

division of the army in the field, approved the king's course,

and wrote an unwise letter to the Assembly, intimating that

the army would not submit to a violation of the constitution.

The republicans were enraged. Everything seemed proof to them

of a treasonable connivance with the enemies of France, to

bring about the subjugation of the country, and a forcible

restoration of the old regime, absolutism, aristocratic

privilege and all. On the 20th of June there was another

rising of the Paris mob, unchecked by those who could, as yet,

have controlled it. The rioters broke into the Tuileries and

humiliated the king and queen with insults, but did no

violence. Lafayette came to Paris and attempted to reorganize

his old National Guard, for the defense of the constitution

and the preservation of order, but failed. The extremists then

resolved to throw down the toppling monarchy at once, by a

sudden blow. In the early morning of August 10, they expelled

the Council-General of the Municipality of Paris from the

Hotel de Ville, and placed the government of the city under

the control of a provisional Commune, with Danton at its head.

{1091}

At the same hour, the mob which these conspirators held in

readiness, and which they directed, attacked the Tuileries and

massacred the Swiss guard, while the king and the royal family

escaped for refuge to the Chamber of the Legislative Assembly,

near at hand. There, in the king's presence, on a formal

demand made by the new self-constituted Municipality or

Commune of Paris, the Assembly declared his suspension from

executive functions, and invited the people to elect without

delay a National Convention for the revising of the

Constitution. Commissioners, hastily sent out to the provinces

and the armies in the field, were received everywhere with

submission to the change of government, except by Lafayette

and his army, in and around Sedan. The Marquis placed them

under arrest and took from his soldiers a new oath of fidelity

to the constitution and the king. But he found himself

unsupported, and, yielding to the sweep of events, he obeyed a

dismissal by the new government from his command, and left

France, to wait in exile for a time when he might serve his

Country with a conscience more assured.

The Paris Commune.

Pending the meeting of the Convention, the Paris Commune,

increased in number to two hundred and eighty-eight, and

dominated by Danton and Robespierre, became the governing

power in France. The Legislative Assembly was subservient to

it; the kingless Ministry, which had Danton in association

with the restored Girondists, was no less so. It was the

fierce vigor of the Commune which caused the king and the

royal family to be imprisoned in the Temple; which instituted

a special tribunal for the summary trial of political

prisoners; which searched Paris for "suspects," on the night

of August 29-30, gathered three thousand men and women into

the prisons and convents of the city, planned and ordered the

"September Massacres" of the following week, and thus thinned

the whole number of these "suspects" by a half.

Fall of the Girondists.

On the 22d of September the National Convention assembled. The

Jacobins who controlled the Commune were found to have carried

Paris overwhelmingly and all France largely with them, in the

election of representatives. A furious, fanatical democracy, a

bloodthirsty anarchism, was in the ascendant. The republican

Girondists were now the conservative party in the Convention.

They struggled to hold their ground, and very soon they were

struggling for their lives. The Jacobin fury was tolerant of

no opposition. What stood in its path, with no deadlier weapon

than an argument or an appeal, must be, not merely overcome,

but destroyed. The Girondists would have saved the king from

the guillotine, but they dared not adopt his defense, and

their own fate was sealed when they gave votes, under fear,

which sent him in January to his death. Five months longer

they contended irresolutely, as a failing faction, with their

terrible adversaries, and then, in June, 1793, they were

proscribed and their arrest decreed. Some escaped and raised

futile insurrections in the provinces. Some stayed and faced

the death which awaited them in the fast approaching "reign of

terror."

"The Mountain" and "the Terror."

The fall of the Girondists left the Jacobin "Mountain"

(so-called from the elevation of the seats on which its

deputies sat in the Convention) unopposed. Their power was not

only absolute in fact, but unquestioned, and they inevitably

ran to riot in the exercise of it. The same madness overcame

them in the mass which overcame Nero, Caligula, Caracalla, as

individuals; for it is no more strange that the unnatural and

awful feeling of unlimited dominion over one's fellows should

turn the brain of a suddenly triumphant faction, than that it

should madden a single shallow-minded man. The men of "the

Mountain" were not only masters of France--except in La Vendée

and the neighboring region south of the Loire, where an obstinate

insurrection had broken out--but the armies which obeyed them

had driven back the invading Germans, had occupied the

Austrian Netherlands and taken possession of Savoy and Nice.

Intoxicated by these successes, the Convention had proclaimed

a crusade against all monarchical government, offering the

help of France to every people which would rise against

existing authorities, and declaring enmity to those who

refused alliance with the Revolution. Holland was attacked and

England forced to war. The spring of 1793 found a great

European coalition formed against revolutionary France, and

justified by the aggressions of the Jacobinical government.

For effective exercise of the power of the Jacobins, the

Convention as a whole proved too large a body, even when it

had been purged of Girondist opposition. Its authority was now

gathered into the hands of the famous Committee of Public

Safety, which became, in fact, the Revolutionary Government,

controlling the national armies, and the whole administration

of domestic and foreign affairs. Its reign was the Reign of

Terror, and the fearful Revolutionary Tribunal, which began

its bloody work with the guillotine in October, 1793, was the

chief instrument of its power. Robespierre, Barère, St. Just,

Couthon, Billaud-Varennes, Collot d' Herbois and Carnot--the

latter devoted to the business of the war--were the

controlling members of the Committee. Danton withdrew from it,

refusing to serve.

In September, the policy of terrorism was avowedly adopted,

and, in the language of the Paris Commune, "the Reign of

Terror" became "the order of the day." The arraignment of

"suspects" before the Revolutionary Tribunal began. On the

14th of October Marie Antoinette was put on trial; on the 16th

she met her death. On the 31st the twenty-one imprisoned

Girondist deputies were sent to the guillotine; followed on

the 10th of November by the remarkable woman, Madame Roland,

who was looked upon as the real leader of their party. From

that time until the mid-summer following, the blood-madness

raged; not in Paris alone, but throughout France, at Lyons,

Marseilles, Toulon, Bordeaux, Nantes, and wherever a show of

insurrection and resistance had challenged the ferocity of the

Commissioners of the Revolutionary Government, who had been

sent into the provinces with unlimited death-dealing powers.

{1092}

But when Jacobinism had destroyed all exterior opposition, it

began very soon to break into factions within itself. There

was a pitch in its excesses at which even Danton and

Robespierre became conservatives, as against Hébert and the

atheists of his faction. A brief struggle ensued, and the

Hébertists, in March, 1794, passed under the knife of the

guillotine. A month later Danton's enemies had rallied and he,

with his followers, went down before their attack, and the

sharp knife in the Place de la Revolution silenced his bold

tongue. Robespierre remained dominant for a few weeks longer

in the still reigning Committee of Public Safety; but his

domination was already undermined by many fears, distrusts and

jealousies among his colleagues and throughout his party. His

downfall came suddenly on the 27th of July. On the morning of

that day he was the dictator of the Convention and of its

ruling committee; at night he was a headless corpse, and Paris

was shouting with joy.

On the death of Robespierre the Reign of Terror came quickly

to an end. The reaction was sudden and swift. The Committee of

Public Safety was changed; of the old members only Carnot,

indispensable organizer of war, remained. The Revolutionary

Tribunal was remodeled. The Jacobin Club was broken up. The

surviving Girondist deputies came back to the Convention.

Prosecution of the Terrorists for their crimes began. A new

struggle opened, between the lower elements in Parisian and

French society, the sansculotte elements, which had controlled

the Revolution thus far, and the middle class, the

bourgeoisie, long cowed and suppressed, but now rallying to

recover its share of power. Bourgeoisie triumphed in the

contest. The Sansculottes made their last effort in a rising

on the 1st Prairial (May 20, 1795) and were put down. A new

constitution was framed which organized the government of the

Republic under a legislature in two chambers,--a Council of

Five Hundred and a Council of Ancients,--with an executive

Directory of Five. But only one third of the legislature first

assembled was to be freely elected by the people. The

remaining two thirds were to be taken from the membership of

the existing Convention. Paris rejected this last mentioned

feature of the constitution, while France at large ratified

it. The National Guard of Paris rose in insurrection on the

13th Vendémiare (October 5), and it was on this occasion that

the young Corsican officer, Napoleon Bonaparte, got his foot

on the first round of the ladder by which he climbed

afterwards to so great a height. Put in command of the regular

troops in Paris, which numbered only 5,000, against 30,000 of the

National Guards, he crushed the latter in an action of an

hour. That hour was the opening hour of his career.

The government of the Directory was instituted on the 27th of

October following. Of its five members, Carnot and Barras were

the only men of note, then or afterwards.

The war with the Coalition.

While France was cowering under "the Terror," its armies,

under Jourdan, Hoche, and Pichegru, had withstood the great

European combination with astonishing success. The allies were

weakened by ill feeling between Prussia and Austria over the

second partition of Poland, and generally by a want of concert

and capable leadership in their action. On the other side, the

democratic military system of the Republic, under Carnot's

keen eyes, was continually bringing forward fresh soldierly

talent to the front. The fall of the Jacobins made no change

in that vital department of the administration, and the

successes of the French were continued. In the summer of 1794

they carried the war into Germany, and expelled the allies

from the Austrian Netherlands. Thence they invaded Holland,

and before the end of January, 1795, they were masters of the

country; the Stadtholder had fled to England, and a Batavian

Republic had been organized. Spain had suffered losses in

battle with them along the Pyrenees, and the King of Sardinia

had yielded to them the passes of the Maritime Alps. In April

the King of Prussia made peace with France. Before the close

of the year 1795 the revolt in La Vendée was at an end; Spain

had made peace; Pichegru had attempted a great betrayal of the

armies on the Rhine, and had failed.

Napoleon in Italy.

This in brief was the situation at the opening of the year

1796, when the "little Corsican officer," who won the

confidence of the new government of the Directory by saving

its constitution on the 13th Vendemiare, planned the campaign

of the year, and received the command of the army sent to

Italy. He attacked the Sardinians in April, and a single month

sufficed to break the courage of their king and force him to a

treaty of peace. On the 10th of May he defeated the Austrians

at Lodi; on the 15th he was in Milan. Lombardy was abandoned

to him; all central Italy was at his mercy, and he began to

act the sovereign conqueror in the peninsula, with a contempt

for the government at Paris which he hardly concealed. Two

ephemeral republics were created under his direction, the

Cisalpine, in Lombardy, and the Cispadane, embracing Modena,

Ferrara and Bologna. The Papacy was shorn of part of its

territories.

Every attempt made by the Austrians to shake the hold which

Bonaparte had fastened on the peninsula only fixed it more

firmly. In the spring he began movements beyond the Alps, in

concert with Hoche on the Rhine, which threatened Vienna

itself and frightened Austria into proposals of peace.

Preliminaries, signed in April, foreshadowed the hard terms of

the treaty concluded at Campo Formio in the following October.

Austria gave up her Netherland provinces to France, and part

of her Italian territories to the Cisalpine Republic; but

received, in partial compensation, the city of Venice and a

portion of the dominions of the Venetian state; for, between

the armistice and the treaty, Bonaparte had attacked and

overthrown the venerable republic, and now divided it with his

humbled enemy.

France under the Directory.

The masterful Corsican, who handled these great matters with

the airs of a sovereign, may have known himself already to be

the coming master of France. For the inevitable submission

again of the many to one was growing plain to discerning eyes.

The frightful school-teaching of the Revolution had not

impressed practical lessons in politics on the mind of the

untrained democracy, so much as suspicions, distrusts, and

alarms. All the sobriety of temper, the confidence of feeling,

the constraining habit of public order, without which the

self-government of a people is impracticable, were yet to be

acquired. French democracy was not more prepared for

republican institutions in 1797 than it had been in 1789.

{1093}

There was no more temperance in its factions, no more balance

between parties, no more of a steadying potency in public

opinion. But it had been brought to a state of feeling that

would prefer the sinking of all factions under some vigorous

autocracy, rather than another appeal of their quarrels to the

guillotine. And events were moving fast to a point at which

that choice would require to be made. The summer of 1797 found

the members of the Directory in hopeless conflict with one

another and with the legislative councils. On the 4th of

September a "coup d' état," to which Bonaparte contributed

some help, purged both the Directory and the Councils of men

obnoxious to the violent faction, and exiled them to Guiana.

Perhaps the moment was favorable then for a soldier, with the

great prestige that Bonaparte had won, to mount to the seat of

power; but he did not so judge.

The Expedition to Egypt.

He planned, instead, an expedition to Egypt, directed against

the British power in the East,--an expedition that failed in

every object it could have, except the absence in which it

kept him from increasing political disorders at home. He was

able to maintain some appearance of success, by his

subjugation of Egypt and His invasion of Syria; but of harm

done to England, or of gain to France in the Mediterranean,

there was none; since Nelson, at the battle of the Nile,

destroyed the French fleet, and Turkey was added to the

Anglo-Austrian coalition. The blunder of the expedition, as

proved by its whole results, was not seen by the French people

so plainly, however, as they saw the growing hopelessness of

their own political state, and the alarming reverses which

their armies in Italy and on the Rhine had sustained since

Bonaparte went away.

French Aggressions.--The new Coalition.

Continued aggressions on the part of the French had provoked a

new European coalition, formed in 1798. In Switzerland they

had overthrown the ancient constitution of the confederacy,

organizing a new Helvetic Republic on the Gallic model, but

taking Geneva to themselves. In Italy they had set up a third

republic, the Roman, removing the Pope forcibly from his

sovereignty and from Rome. Every state within reach had then

taken fresh alarm, and even Russia, undisturbed in the

distance, was now enlisted against the troublesome democracy

of France.

The unwise King of Naples, entering rashly into the war before

his allies could support him, and hastening to restore the

Pope, had been driven (December, 1798) from his kingdom, which

underwent transformation into a fourth Italian republic, the

Parthenopeian. But this only stimulated the efforts of the

Coalition, and in the course of the following year the French

were expelled from all Italy, saving Genoa alone, and the

ephemeral republics they had set up were extinguished. On the

Rhine they had lost ground; but they had held their own in

Switzerland, after a fierce struggle with the Russian forces

of Suwarrow.

Napoleon in power.

When news of these disasters, and of the ripeness of the

situation at Paris for a new coup d' état, reached Bonaparte,

in Egypt, he deserted his army there, leaving it, under

Kléber, in a helpless situation, and made his way back to

France. He landed at Fréjus on the 9th of October. Precisely a

month later, by a combination with Sieyès, a veteran

revolutionist and maker of constitutions, he accomplished the

overthrow of the Directory. Before the year closed, a fresh

constitution was in force, which vested substantially

monarchical powers in an executive called the First Consul,

and the chosen First Consul was Napoleon Bonaparte. Two

associate Consuls, who sat with him, had no purpose but to

conceal for a short time the real absoluteness of his rule.

From that time, for fifteen years, the history of France--it

is almost possible to say the history of Europe--is the story

of the career of the extraordinary Corsican adventurer who

took possession of the French nation, with unparalleled

audacity, and who used it, with all that pertained to

it--lives, fortunes, talents, resources--in the most

prodigious and the most ruthless undertakings of personal

ambition that the modern world has ever seen. He was

selfishness incarnate; and he was the incarnation of genius in

all those modes of intellectual power which bear upon the

mastery of momentary circumstances and the mastery of men. But

of the higher genius that might have worthily employed such

vast powers,--that might have enlightened and inspired a

really great ambition in the man, to make himself an enduring

builder of civilization in the world, he had no spark. The

soul behind his genius was ignoble, the spirit was mean. And

even on the intellectual side, his genius had its narrowness.

His projects of selfishness were extraordinary, but never

sagacious, never far-sighted, thoughtfully studied, wisely

planned. There is no appearance in any part of his career of a

pondered policy, guiding him to a well-determined end in what

he did. The circumstances of any moment, whether on the

battle-field or in the political arena, he could handle with a

swift apprehension, a mastery and a power that may never have

been surpassed. But much commoner men have apprehended and

have commanded in a larger and more successful way the general

sweep of circumstances in their lives. It is that fact which

belittles Napoleon in the comparison often made between him

and Cæsar. He was probably Cæsar's equal in war. But who can

imagine Cæsar in Napoleon's place committing the blunders of

blind arrogance which ruined the latter in Germany and Spain,

or making his fatuous attempt to shut England, the great naval

power, out of continental Europe?

His domestic administration was beneficial to France in many

ways. He restored order, and maintained it, with a powerful

hand. He suppressed faction effectually, and eradicated for

the time all the political insanities of the Revolution. He

exploited the resources of the country with admirable success;

for his discernment in such matters was keen and his practical

judgment was generally sound. But he consumed the nation

faster than he gave it growth. His wars--the wars in which

Europe was almost unceasingly kept by the aggression of his

insolence and his greed--were the most murderous, the most

devouring, that any warrior among the civilized races of

mankind has ever been chargeable with.

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His blood-guiltiness in these wars is the one glaring fact

which ought to be foremost in every thought of them. But it is

not. There is a pitiable readiness in mankind to be dazzled

and cheated by red battle-lights, when it looks into history

for heroes; and few figures have been glorified more

illusively in the world's eye than the marvelous warrior, the

vulgar-minded adventurer, the prodigy of self-exalting genius,

Napoleon Bonaparte.

In the first year of his Consulate, Bonaparte recovered Italy,

by the extraordinary Marengo campaign, while Moreau won the

victory of Hohenlinden, and the Treaty of Luneville was

brought about. Austria obtained peace again by renewing the

concessions of Campo Formio, and by taking part in a

reconstruction of Germany, under Bonaparte's dictation, which

secularized the ecclesiastical states, extinguished the

freedom of most of the imperial cities, and aggrandized

Bavaria, Würtemberg, Baden and Saxony, as protégés and

dependencies of France. England was left alone in the war,

with much hostile feeling raised against her in Europe and

America by the arrogant use she had made of her mastery of the

sea. The neutral powers had all been embittered by her

maritime pretensions, and Bonaparte now brought about the

organization among them of a Northern League of armed

neutrality. England broke it with a single blow, by Nelson's

bombardment of Copenhagen. Napoleon, however, had conceived

the plan of starving English industries and ruining British

trade by a "continental system" of blockade against them,

which involved the compulsory exclusion of British ships and

British goods from all European countries. This impossible

project committed him to a desperate struggle for the

subjugation of Europe. It was the fundamental cause of his

ruin.

The First Empire.

In 1802 the First Consul advanced his restoration of

absolutism in France a second step, by securing the Consulate

for life. A short interval of peace with England was arranged,

but war broke out anew the following year, and the English for

a time had no allies. The French occupied Hanover, and the

Germans were quiescent. But in 1804, Bonaparte shocked Europe

by the abduction and execution of the Bourbon prince, Duc

d'Enghien, and began to challenge again the interference of

the surrounding powers by a new series of aggressive measures.

His ambition had thrown off all disguises; he had transformed

the Republic of France into an Empire, so called, and himself,

by title, into an Emperor, with an imposing crown. The

Cisalpine or Italian Republic received soon afterwards the

constitution of a kingdom, and he took the crown to himself as

King of Italy. Genoa and surrounding territory (the Ligurian

Republic) were annexed, at nearly the same time, to France;

several duchies were declared to be dependencies, and an

Italian principality was given to Napoleon's elder sister. The

effect produced in Europe by such arbitrary and admonitory

proceedings as these enabled Pitt, the younger, now at the

head of the English government, to form an alliance (1805),

first with Russia, afterwards with Austria, Sweden and Naples,

and finally with Prussia, to break the yoke which the French

Emperor had put upon Italy, Holland, Switzerland and Hanover,

and to resist his further aggressions.

Austerlitz and Trafalgar.

The amazing energy and military genius of Napoleon never had

more astonishing proof than in the swift campaign which broke

this coalition at Ulm and Austerlitz. Austria was forced to

another humiliating treaty, which surrendered Venice and

Venetia to the conqueror's new Kingdom of Italy; gave up Tyrol

to Bavaria; yielded other territory to Würtemberg, and raised

both electors to the rank of kings, while making Baden a grand

duchy, territorially enlarged. Prussia was dragged by force

into alliance with France, and took Hanover as pay. But

England triumphed at the same time on her own element, and

Napoleon's dream of carrying his legions across the Channel,

as Cæsar did, was forever dispelled by Nelson's dying victory

at Trafalgar. That battle, which destroyed the combined navies

of France and Spain, ended hope of contending successfully

with the relentless Britons at sea.

End of the Holy Roman Empire.

France was never permitted to learn the seriousness of

Trafalgar, and it put no check on the vaulting ambition in

Napoleon which now began to o'erleap itself. He gave free rein

to his arrogance in all directions. The King of Naples was

expelled from his kingdom and the crown conferred on Joseph

Bonaparte. Louis Bonaparte was made King of Holland. Southern

Germany was suddenly reconstructed again. The little kingdoms

of Napoleon's creation and the small states surrounding them

were declared to be separated from the ancient Empire, and

were formed into a Confederation of the Rhine, under the

protection of France. Warned by this rude announcement of the

precarious tenure of his imperial title as the head of the

Holy Roman Empire, Francis II. resigned it, and took to

himself, instead, a title as meaningless as that which

Napoleon had assumed,--the title of Emperor of Austria. The

venerable fiction of the Holy Roman Empire disappeared from

history on the 6th of August, 1806.

Subjugation of Prussia.

But while Austria had become submissive to the offensive

measures of Napoleon, Prussia became now fired with

unexpected, sudden wrath, and declared war in October, 1800.

It was a rash explosion of national resentment, and the

rashness was dearly paid for. At Jena and Auerstadt, Prussia

sank under the feet of the merciless conqueror, as helplessly

subjugated as a nation could be. Russia, attempting her

rescue, was overcome at Eylau and Friedland; and both the

vanquished powers came to terms with the victor at Tilsit

(July, 1807). The King of Prussia gave up all his kingdom west

of the Elbe, and all that it had acquired in the second and

third partitions of Poland. A new German kingdom, of

Westphalia, was constructed for Napoleon's youngest brother,

Jerome. A free state of Danzig, dependent on France, and a

Grand Duchy of Warsaw, were created. The Russian Czar, bribed

by some pieces of Polish Prussia, and by prospective

acquisitions from Turkey and Sweden, became an ally of

Napoleon and an accomplice in his plans for the subjection of

Europe. He enlisted his empire in the "continental system"

against England, and agreed to the enforcement of the decree

which Napoleon issued from Berlin, declaring the British

islands in a state of blockade, and prohibiting trade with

them. The British government retorted by its "orders in

council," which blockaded in the like paper-fashion all ports

of France and of the allies and dependencies of France. And so

England and Napoleon fought one another for years in the

peaceful arena of commerce, to the exasperation of neutral

nations and the destruction of the legitimate trade of the

world.

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The crime against Spain.

And now, having prostrated Germany, and captivated the Czar,

Napoleon turned toward another field, which had scarcely felt,

as yet, his intrusive hand. Spain had been in servile alliance

with France for ten years, while Portugal adhered steadily to

her friendship with Great Britain, and now refused to be

obedient to the Berlin Decree. Napoleon took prompt measures

for the punishment of so bold a defiance. A delusive treaty

with the Spanish court, for the partition of the small kingdom

of the Braganzas, won permission for an army under Junot to

enter Portugal, through Spain. No resistance to it was made.

The royal family of Portugal quitted Lisbon, setting sail for

Brazil, and Junot took possession of the kingdom. But this

accomplished only half of Napoleon's design. He meant to have

Spain, as well; and he found, in the miserable state of the

country, his opportunity to work out an ingenious,

unscrupulous scheme for its acquisition. His agents set on

foot a revolutionary movement, in favor of the worthless crown

prince, Ferdinand, against his equally worthless father, Charles

IV., and pretexts were obtained for an interference by French

troops. Charles was first coerced into an abdication; then

Ferdinand was lured to an interview with Napoleon, at Bayonne,

was made prisoner there, and compelled in his turn to

relinquish the crown. A vacancy on the Spanish throne having

been thus created, the Emperor gathered at Bayonne a small

assembly of Spanish notables, who offered the seat to Joseph

Bonaparte, already King of Naples. Joseph, obedient to his

imperial brother's wish, resigned the Neapolitan crown to

Murat, his sister's husband, accepted the crown of Spain, and

was established at Madrid with a French army at his back.

This was one of the two most ruinous of the political blunders

of Napoleon's life. He had cheated and insulted the whole

Spanish nation, in a way too contemptuous to be endured even

by a people long cast down. There was a revolt which did not

spring from any momentary passion, but which had an obstinacy

of deep feeling behind that made effective suppression of it

impossible. French armies could beat Spanish armies, and

disperse them, but they could not keep them dispersed; and

they could not break up the organization of a rebellion which

organized itself in every province, and which went on, when

necessary, without any organization at all. England sent

forces to the peninsula, under Wellington, for the support of

the insurgent Spaniards and Portuguese; and thenceforward, to

the end of his career, the most inextricable difficulties of

Napoleon were those in which he had entangled himself on the

southern side of the Pyrenees.

The chastening of Germany.

The other cardinal blunder in Napoleon's conduct, which proved

more destructive to him than the crime in Spain, was his

exasperating treatment of Germany. There was neither

magnanimity on the moral side of him nor real wisdom on the

intellectual side, to restrain him from using his victory with

immoderate insolence. He put as much shame as he could invent

into the humiliations of the German people. He had Prussia

under his heel, and he ground the heel upon her neck with the

whole weight of his power. The consequence was a pain and a

passion which wrought changes like a miracle in the temper and

character of the abused nation. There were springs of feeling

opened and currents of national life set in motion that might

never have been otherwise discovered. Enlightened men and

strong men from all parts of Germany found themselves called

to Prussia and to the front of its affairs, and their way made

easy for them in labors of restoration and reform. Stein and

Hardenburg remodeled the administration of the kingdom,

uprooted the remains of serfdom in it, and gave new freedom to

its energies. Scharnhorst organized the military system on

which rose in time the greatest of military powers. Humboldt

planned the school system which educated Prussia beyond all

her neighbors, in the succeeding generations. Even the

philosophers came out of their closets and took part, as

Fichte did, in the stirring and uplifting of the spirit of

their countrymen. So it was that the outrages of Napoleon in

Germany revenged themselves, by summoning into existence an

unsuspected energy that would be turned against him to destroy

him in the end.

But the time of destruction was not yet come. He had a few

years of triumph still before him,--of triumph everywhere

except in Portugal and Spain. Austria, resisting him once more

(1809), was once more crushed at Wagram, and to such

submissiveness that it gave a daughter of the imperial house

in marriage to the parvenu sovereign of France, next year,

when he divorced his wife Josephine. He was at the summit of

his renown that year, but already declining from the greatest

height of his power. In 1811 there was little to change the

situation.

The fall of Napoleon.

In 1812 the downfall of Napoleon was begun by his fatal

expedition to Russia. The next year Prussia, half regenerated

within the brief time since Jena and Tilsit, went into

alliance with Russia, and the War of Liberation was begun.

Austria soon joined the alliance; and at Leipzig (Oct. 18,

1813) the three nations shattered at last the yoke of

oppression that had bound Europe so long. At the same time,

the French armies in Spain were expelled, and Wellington

entered France through the Pyrenees, to meet the allies who

pursued Napoleon across the Rhine. Forced to abdicate and

retire to the little island of Elba (the sovereignty of which

was ceded to him), he remained there in quiet from May, 1814,

until March, 1815, when he escaped and reappeared in France.

Army and people welcomed him. The Bourbon monarchy, which had

been restored by the allies, fell at his approach. The king,

Louis XVIII., fled. Napoleon recovered his throne and occupied

it for it few weeks. But the alliance which had expelled him from

it refused to permit his recovery of power. The question was

settled finally at Waterloo, on the 18th of June, when a

British army under Wellington and a Prussian army under

Blücher won a victory which left no hope to the beaten

Emperor. He surrendered himself to the commander of a British

vessel of war, and was sent to confinement for the remainder

of his life on the remote island of St. Helena.

{1096}

The Congress of Vienna.

But Europe, delivered from one tyrannical master, was now

given over to several of them, in a combination which

oppressed it for a generation. The sovereigns who had united

to dethrone Napoleon, with the two emperors, of Austria and

Russia, at their head, and with the Austrian minister,

Metternich, for their most trusted counselor, assumed first,

in the Congress of Vienna, a general work of political

rearrangement, to repair the Revolutionary and Napoleonic

disturbances, and then, subsequently, an authoritative

supervision of European politics which proved as meddlesome as

Napoleon's had been. Their first act, as before stated, was to

restore the Bourbon monarchy in France, indifferent to the

wishes of the people. In Spain, Ferdinand had already taken

the throne, when Joseph fled. In Italy, the King of Sardinia

was restored and Genoa transferred to him; Lombardy and

Venetia were given back to Austria; Tuscany, Modena and some

minor duchies received Hapsburg princes; the Pope recovered

his States, and the Bourbons returned to Naples and Sicily. In

Germany, the Prussian kingdom was enlarged again by several

absorptions, including part of Saxony, but some of its Polish

territory was given to the Czar; Hanover became a kingdom;

Austria resumed the provinces which Napoleon had conveyed to

his Rhenish proteges; and, finally, a Germanic Confederation

was formed, to take the place of the extinct Empire, and with

no more efficiency in its constitution. In the Netherlands, a

new kingdom was formed, to bear the Netherland name, and to

embrace Holland and Belgium in union, with the House of Orange

on the throne.

The Holy Alliance.

Between the Czar, the Emperor of Austria, and the King of

Prussia, there was a personal agreement that went with these

arrangements of the Congress of Vienna, and which was

prolonged for a number of years. In the public understanding,

this was associated, perhaps wrongly, with a written

declaration, known as the Holy Alliance, in which the three

sovereigns set forth their intention to regulate their foreign

and domestic policy by the precepts of Christianity, and

invited all princes to join their alliance for the maintenance

of peace and the promotion of brotherly love. Whether

identical as a fact with this Holy Alliance or secreted behind

it, there was, and long continued to be, an undoubted league

between these sovereigns and others, which had aims very

different from the promotion of brotherly love. It was wholly

reactionary, hostile to all political liberalism, and

repressive of all movements in the interest of the people.

Metternich was its skilful minister, and the deadly, soulless

system of beaureaucratic absolutism which he organized in

Austria was the model of government that it strove to

introduce.

In Italy, the governments generally were reduced to the

Austrian model, and the political state of the peninsula, for

forty years, was scarcely better, if at all, than it had been

under the Spanish rule in the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries.

Germany, as divided as ever, under a federal constitution

which federated nothing else so much as the big and little

courts and their reactionary ideas, was profoundly depressed

in political spirit, while prospering materially and showing

notable signs of intellectual life.

France was not slow in finding that the restored Bourbons and

the restored émigrés had forgotten nothing and learned

nothing, in the twenty-five years of their exile. They put all

their strength into the turning back of the clock, trying to

make it strike again the hours in which the Revolution and

Napoleon had been so busy. It was futile work; but it sickened

and angered the nation none the less. After all the stress and

struggle it had gone through, there was a strong nation yet to

resist the Bourbonism brought back to power. It recovered from

the exhaustion of its wars with a marvellous quickness. The

millions of peasant land-owners, who were the greatest

creation of the Revolution, dug wealth from its soil with

untiring free arms, and soon made it the most prosperous land

in Europe. Through country and city, the ideas of the

Revolution were in the brains of the common people, while its

energies were in their brawn, and Bourbonism needed more

wisdom than it ever possessed to reconcile them to its

restoration.

Revolutions of 1820-1821.

It was not in France, however, but in Spain, that the first

rising against the restored order of things occurred.

Ferdinand VII., when released from his French imprisonment in

1814, was warmly received in Spain, and took the crown with

quite general consent. He accepted the constitution under

which the country had been governed since 1812, and made large

lying promises of a liberal rule. But when seated on the

throne, he suppressed the constitution, restored the

Inquisition, revived the monasteries, called back the expelled

Jesuits, and opened a deadly persecution of the liberals in

Spanish politics. No effective resistance to him was organized

until 1820, when a revolutionary movement took form which

forced the king, in March, to reestablish the constitution and

call different men to his council. Portugal, at the same time,

adopted a similar constitution, and the exiled king, John VI.,

returning now from Brazil, accepted it.

The revolution in Spain set fire to the discontent that had

smouldered in Italy. The latter broke forth, in the summer of

1820, at Naples, where the Bourbon king made no resistance to

a sudden revolt of soldiers and citizens, but yielded the

constitution they demanded at once. Sardinia followed, in the

next spring, with a rising of the Piedmontese, requiring

constitutional government. The king, Victor Emmanuel I., who

was very old, resigned the crown to his brother, Charles

Felix. The latter refused the demands of the

constitutionalists and called upon Austria for help.

{1097}

These outbreaks of the revolutionary spirit were alarming to

the sovereigns of the Holy Alliance and excited them to a

vigorous activity. They convened a Congress, first at Troppau,

in October, 1820, afterwards at Laybach, and finally at

Verona, to plan concerted action for the suppressing of the

popular movements of the time. As the result of these

conferences, the congenial duty of restoring absolutism in the

Two Sicilies, and of helping the King of Sardinia against his

subjects, was imposed upon Austria and willingly performed;

while the Bourbon court of France was solicited to put an end

to the bad example of constitutional government in Spain. Both

commissions were executed with fidelity and zeal. Italy was

flung down and fettered again; French troops occupied Spain

from 1823 until 1827. England, alone, protested against this

flagrant policing of Europe by the Holy Alliance. Canning, its

spirited minister, "called in the New World," as he described

his policy, "to redress the balance of the old," by

recognizing the independence of the Spanish colonies in

America, which, Cuba excepted, were now separated forever from

the crown of Spain. Brazil in like manner was cut loose from

the Portuguese crown, and assumed the constitution of an

empire, under Dom Pedro, the eldest son of John VI.

Greek War of Independence.

These stifled revolutions in western Europe failed to

discourage a more obstinate insurrection which began in the

East, among the Christian subjects of the Turks, in 1821. The

Ottoman government had been growing weaker and more vicious

for many years. The corrupted and turbulent Janissaries were

the masters of the empire, and a sultan who attempted, as

Selim III. (1789-1807) had done, to introduce reforms, was

put to death. Russia, under Alexander I., had been continuing

to gain ground at the expense of the Turks, and assuming more

and more of a patronage of the Christian subjects of the

Porte. There seems to be little doubt that the rising begun in

1821, which had its start in Moldavia, and its first leader in a

Greek, Ypsilanti, who had been an officer in the Russian

service, received encouragement from the Czar. But Alexander

turned his back on it when the Greeks sprang to arms and

seriously appealed to Europe for help in a war of national

independence. The Congress of Verona condemned the Greek

rising, in common with that of Spain. Again, England alone

showed sympathy, but did nothing as a government, and left the

struggling Greeks to such help as they might win from

individual friends. Lord Byron, with others, went to Greece,

carrying money and arms; and, generally, these volunteers lost

much of their ardor in the Greek cause when they came into

close contact with its native supporters. But the Greeks,

however lacking in high qualities, made an obstinate fight,

and held their ground against the Turks, until the feeling of

sympathy with them had grown too strong in England and in

France for the governments of those countries to be heedless

of it. Moreover, in Russia, Alexander I. had been succeeded

(1825) by the aggressive Nicholas, who had not patience to

wait for the slow crumbling of the Ottoman power, but was

determined to break it as summarily as he could. He joined

France and England, therefore, in an alliance and in a naval

demonstration against the Turks (1827), which had its result

in the battle of Navarino. The allies of Nicholas went no

farther; but he pursued the undertaking, in a war which lasted

until the autumn of 1829. Turkey at the end of it conceded the

independence of Greece, and practically that of Wallachia and

Moldavia. In 1830, a conference at London established the

Greek kingdom, and in 1833 a Bavarian prince, Otho I., was

settled on the throne.

Revolutions of 1830.

Before this result was reached, revolution in western Europe,

arrested in 1821-23, had broken out afresh. Bourbonism had

become unendurable to France. Charles X., who succeeded his

brother Louis XVIII; in 1824, showed not only a more arbitrary

temper, but a disposition more deferential to the Church than

his predecessor. He was fond of the Jesuits, whom his subjects

very commonly distrusted and disliked. He attempted to put

shackles on the press, and when elections to the chamber of

deputies went repeatedly against the government, he undertook

practically to alter the suffrage by ordinances of his own. A

revolution seemed then to be the only remedy that was open to

the nation, and it was adopted in July, 1830, the veteran

Lafayette taking the lead. Charles X. was driven to

abdication, and left France for England. The crown was

transferred to Louis Philippe, of the Orleans branch of the

Bourbon family,--son of the Philip Égalité who joined the

Jacobins in the Revolution.

The July Revolution in France proved a signal for more

outbreaks in other parts of Europe than had followed the

Spanish rising of ten years before.

Belgium broke away from the union with Holland, which had

never satisfied its people, and, after some struggle, won

recognized independence, as a new kingdom, with Leopold of

Saxe Coburg raised to the throne.

Russian Poland, bearing the name of a constitutional kingdom

since 1815, but having the Czar for its king and the Czar's

brother for viceroy, found no lighter oppression than before,

and made a hopeless, brave attempt to escape from its bonds.

The revolt was put down with unmerciful severity, and

thousands of the hapless patriots went to exile in Siberia.

In Germany, there were numerous demonstrations in the smaller

states, which succeeded more or less in extorting

constitutional concessions; but there was no revolutionary

movement on a larger scale.

Italy remained quiet in both the north and the south, where

disturbances had arisen before; but commotions occurred in the

Papal states, and in Modena and Parma, which required the arms

of Austria to suppress.

In England, the agitations of the continent hastened forward a

revolution which went far beyond all other popular movements

of the time in the lasting importance of its effects, and

which exhibited in their first great triumph the peaceful

forces of the Platform and the Press.

{1098}

England under the last two Georges.

But we have given little attention to affairs in Great Britain

during the past half century or more, and need to glance

backward.

Under the third of the Georges, there was distinctly a check

given to the political progress which England had been making

since the Revolution of 1688. The wilfulness of the king

fairly broke down, for a considerable period, the system of

responsible cabinet government which had been taking shape and

root under the two earlier Hanoverians, and ministers became

again, for a time, mere mouthpieces of the royal will. The

rupture with the American colonies, and the unsuccessful war

which ended in their independence, brought in another

influence, adverse, for the time being, to popular claims in

government. For it was not King George, alone, nor Lord North,

nor any small Tory faction, that prosecuted and upheld the

attempt to make the colonists in America submissive to

"taxation without representation." The English nation at large

approved the war; English national sentiment was hostile to

the Americans in their independent attitude, and the

Whigs--the liberals then in English politics--were a

discredited and weakened party for many years because of their

leaning to the American side of the questions in dispute.

Following close upon the American war, came the French

Revolution, which frightened into Toryism great numbers of

people who did not by nature belong there. In England, as

everywhere else, the reaction lasted long, and government was

more arbitrary and repressive than it could possibly have

continued to be under different circumstances.

Meantime extraordinary social changes had taken place, which

tended to mark more strongly the petrifying of things in the

political world. The great age of mechanical invention had

been fully opened. Machines had begun to do the work of human

hands in every industry, and steam had begun to move the

machines. The organization of labor, too, had assumed a new

phase. The factory system had arisen; and with it had appeared

a new growth of cities and towns. Production was accelerated;

wealth was accumulating more rapidly, and the distribution of

wealth was following different lines. The English middle class

was rising fast as a money-power and was gathering the

increased energies of the kingdom into its hands.

Parliamentary Reform in England.

But while the tendency of social changes had been to increase

vastly the importance of this powerful middle class, the

political conditions had actually diminished its weight in

public affairs. In Parliament, it had no adequate

representation. The old boroughs, which sent members to the

House of Commons as they had sent them for generations before,

no longer contained a respectable fraction of the "commons of

England," supposed to be represented in the House, and those

who voted in the boroughs were not at all the better class of

the new England of the nineteenth century. Great numbers of

the boroughs were mere private estates, and the few votes

polled in them were cast by tenants who elected their

landlords' nominees. On the other hand, the large cities and

the numerous towns of recent growth had either no

representation in Parliament, or they had equal representation

with the "rotten boroughs" which cast two or three or

half-a-dozen votes.

That the commons of England, with all the gain of substantial

strength they had been making in the last half of the

eighteenth century and the first quarter of the nineteenth,

endured this travesty of popular representation so long as

until 1832, is proof of the potency of the conservatism which

the French Revolution induced. The subject of parliamentary

reform had been now and then discussed since Chatham's time;

but Toryism had always been able to thrust it aside and bring

the discussion to naught. At last there came the day when the

question would no longer be put down. The agitations of 1830,

combined with a very serious depression of industry and trade,

produced a state of feeling which could not be defied. King and

Parliament yielded to the public demand, and the First Reform

Bill was passed. It widened the suffrage and amended very

considerably the inequities of the parliamentary

representation; but both reforms have been carried much

farther since, by two later bills.

Repeal of the English Corn Laws.

The reform of Parliament soon brought a broader spirit into

legislation. Its finest fruits began to ripen about 1838, when

an agitation for the repeal of the foolish and wicked English

"corn-laws" was opened by Cobden and Bright. In the day of the

"rotten boroughs," when the landlords controlled Parliament,

they imagined that they had "protected" the farming interest,

and secured higher rents to themselves, by laying heavy duties

on the importation of foreign bread-stuffs. A famous "sliding

scale" of such duties had been invented, which raised the

duties when prices in the home market dropped, and lowered

them proportionately when home prices rose. Thus the consumers

were always deprived, as much as possible, of any cheapening

of their bread which bountiful Nature might offer, and paid a

heavy tax to increase the gains of the owners and cultivators

of land.

Now that other "interests" besides the agricultural had a

voice in Parliament, and had become very strong, they began to

cry out against this iniquity, and demand that the "corn laws"

be done away with. The famous "anti-corn-law league,"

organized mainly by the exertions of Richard Cobden, conducted

an agitation of the question which brought about the repeal of

the laws in 1846.

But the effect of the agitation did not end there. So thorough

and prolonged a discussion of the matter had enlightened the

English people upon the whole question between "protection"

and free trade. The manufacturers and mechanics, who had led

the movement against protective duties on food-stuffs, were

brought to see that they were handicapped more than protected

by duties on imports in their own departments of production.

So Cobden and his party continued their attacks on the theory

of "protection" until every vestige of it was cleared from the

English statute books.

The Revolutions of 1848.

Another year of revolutions throughout Europe came in 1848,

and the starting point of excitement was not, this time, at

Paris, but, strangely enough, in the Vatican, at Rome. Pius

IX. had been elected to the papal chair in 1846, and had

immediately rejoiced the hearts and raised the hopes of the

patriots in misgoverned Italy by his liberal measures of

reform and his promising words. The attitude of the Pope gave

encouragement to popular demonstrations in various Italian

states during the later part of 1847; and in January 1848 a

formidable rising occurred in Sicily, followed in February by

another in Naples. King Ferdinand II. was compelled to change

his ministers and to concede a constitution, which he did not

long respect.

{1099}

Lombardy was slow this time in being kindled; but when the

flame of revolution burst out it was very fierce. The

Austrians were driven first from Milan (March, 1848), and then

from city after city, until they seemed to be abandoning their

Italian possessions altogether. Venice asserted its republican

independence under the presidency of Daniel Manin. Charles

Albert, King of Sardinia, thought the time favorable for

recovering Lombardy to himself, and declared war against

Austria. The expulsion of the Austrians became the demand of

the entire peninsula, and even the Pope, the Grand Duke of

Tuscany, and the King of Naples were forced to join the

patriotic movement in appearance, though not with sincerity.

But the King of Sardinia brought ruin on the whole

undertaking, by sustaining a fatal defeat in battle at

Custozza, in July, 1848.

France had been for some time well prepared for revolt, and

was quick to be moved by the first whisper of it from Italy.

The short-lived popularity of Louis Philippe was a thing of

the past. There was widespread discontent with many things,

and especially with the limited suffrage. The French people

had the desire and the need of something like that grand

measure of electoral reform which England secured so

peacefully in 1832; but they could not reach it in the

peaceful way. The aptitude and the habit of handling and

directing the great forces of public opinion effectively in

such a situation were alike wanting among them. There was a

mixture, moreover, of social theories and dreams in their

political undertaking, which heated the movement and made it

more certainly explosive. The Parisian mob took arms and built

barricades on the 23d of February. The next day Louis Philippe

signed an abdication, and a week later he was an exile in

England. For the remainder of the year France was strangely

ruled: first by a self-constituted provisional government,

Lamartine at its head, which opened national workshops, and

attempted to give employment and pay to 125,000 enrolled

citizens in need; afterwards by a Constituent National

Assembly, and an Executive Commission, which found the

national workshops a devouring monster, difficult to control

and hard to destroy. Paris got rid of the shops in June, at

the cost of a battle which lasted four days, and in which more

than 8,000 people were wounded or slain. In November a

republican constitution, framed by the Assembly, was adopted,

and on the 10th of December Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, son of

Louis Bonaparte, once King of Holland, and of Hortense

Beauharnais, daughter of the Empress Josephine, was elected

President of the Republic by an enormous popular vote.

The revolutionary shock of 1848 was felt in Germany soon after

the fall of the monarchy in France. In March there was rioting

in Berlin and a collision with the troops, which alarmed the

king so seriously that he yielded promises to almost every

demand. Similar risings in other capitals had about the same

success. At Vienna, the outbreak was more violent and drove

both Metternich and the Emperor from the city. In the first

flush of these popular triumphs there came about a most

hopeful-looking election of a Germanic National Assembly,

representative of all Germany, and gathered at Frankfort, on

the invitation of the Diet, for a revision of the constitution

of the Confederation. But the Assembly contained more learned

scholars than practical statesmen, and its constitutional work

was wasted labor. A Constituent Assembly elected in Prussia

accomplished no more, and was dispersed in the end without

resistance; but the king granted a constitution of his own

framing. The revolutionary movement in Germany left its

effects, in a general loosening of the bonds of harsh

government, a general broadening of political ideas, a final

breaking of the Metternich influence, even in Austria; but it

passed over the existing institutions of the much-divided

country with a very light touch.

In Hungary the revolution, stimulated by the eloquence of

Kossuth, was carried to the pitch of serious war. The

Hungarians had resolved to be an independent nation, and in

the struggle which ensued they approached very near the

attainment of their desire; but Russia came to the help of the

Hapsburgs, and the armies of the two despotisms combined were

more than the Hungarians could resist. Their revolt was

abandoned in August, 1849, and Kossuth, with other leaders,

escaped through Turkish territory to other lands.

The suppression of the Hungarian revolt was followed by a

complete restoration of the despotism and domination of the

Austrians in Italy. Charles Albert, of Sardinia, had taken

courage from the struggle in Hungary and had renewed

hostilities in March, 1849. But, again, he was crushingly

defeated, at Novara, and resigned, in despair, the crown to

his son, Victor Emmanuel II. Venice, which had resisted a long

siege with heroic constancy, capitulated in August of the same

year. The whole of Lombardy and Venetia was bowed once more

under the merciless tyranny of the Austrians, and savage

revenges were taken upon the patriots who failed to escape.

Rome, whence the Pope--no longer a patron of liberal

politics--had fled, and where a republic had been once more

set up, with Garibaldi and Mazzini in its constituent

assembly, was besieged and taken, and the republic overturned,

by troops sent from republican France. The Neapolitan king

restored his atrocious absolutism without help, by measures of

the greatest brutality.

A civil war in Switzerland, which occurred simultaneously with

the political collisions in surrounding countries, is hardly

to be classed with them. It was rather a religious conflict,

between the Roman Catholics and their opponents. The Catholic

cantons, united in a League, called the Sonderbund, were

defeated in the war; the Jesuits were expelled from

Switzerland in consequence, and, in September, 1848, a new

constitution for the confederacy was adopted.

{1100}

The Second Empire in France.

The election of Louis Napoleon to the Presidency of the French

Republic was ominous of a disposition among the people to

bring back a Napoleonic regime, with all the falsities that it

might imply. He so construed the vote which elected him, and

does not seem to have been mistaken. Having surrounded himself

with unprincipled adventurers, and employed three years of his

presidency in preparations for the attempt, he executed a coup

d' état on the 2d of December, dispersing the National

Assembly, arresting influential republicans, and submitting to

popular vote a new constitution which prolonged his presidency

to ten years. This was but the first step. A year later he

secured a "plébiscite" which made him hereditary Emperor of

the French. The new Empire--the Second Empire in France--was

more vulgar, more false, more fraudulent, more swarmingly a

nest of self-seeking and dishonest adventurers, than the First

had been, and with nothing of the saving genius that was in

the First. It rotted for eighteen years, and then it fell,

France with it.

The Crimean War.

A certain respectability was lent to this second Napoleonic

Empire by the alliance of England with it in 1854, against

Russia. The Czar, Nicholas, had determined to defy resistance

in Europe to his designs against the Turks. He first

endeavored to persuade England to join him in dividing the

possessions of "the sick man," as he described the Ottoman,

and, that proposal being declined, he opened on his own

account a quarrel with the Porte. France and England joined

forces in assisting the Turks, and the little kingdom of

Sardinia, from motives of far-seeing policy, came into the

alliance. The principal campaign of the war was fought in the

Crimea, and its notable incident was the long siege of

Sebastopol, which the Russians defended until September, 1855.

An armistice was concluded the following January, and the

terms of peace were settled at a general conference of powers

in Paris the next March. The results of the war were a check

to Russia, but an improvement of the condition of the Sultan's

Christian subjects. Moldavia and Wallachia were soon

afterwards united under the name of Roumania, paying tribute

to the Porte, but otherwise independent.

Liberation and Unification of Italy.

The part taken by Sardinia in the Crimean War gave that

kingdom a standing in European politics which had never been

recognized before. It was a measure of sagacious policy due to

the able statesman, Count Cavour, who had become the trusted

minister of Victor Emmanuel, the Sardinian king. The king and

his minister were agreed in one aim--the unification of Italy

under the headship of the House of Savoy. By her participation

in the war with Russia, Sardinia won a position which enabled

her to claim and secure admission to the Congress of Paris,

among the greater powers. At that conference, Count Cavour

found an opportunity to direct attention to the deplorable

state of affairs in Italy, under the Austrian rule and

influence. No action by the Congress was taken; but the

Italian question was raised in importance at once by the

discussion of it, and Italy was rallied to the side of

Sardinia as the necessary head of any practicable movement

toward liberation. More than that: France was moved to

sympathy with the Italian cause, and Louis Napoleon was led to

believe that his throne would be strengthened by espousing it.

He encouraged Cavour and Victor Emmanuel, therefore, in an

attitude toward Austria which resulted in war (1859), and when

the Sardinians were attacked he went to their assistance with

a powerful force. At Magenta and Solferino the Austrians were

decisively beaten, and the French emperor then abruptly closed

the war, making a treaty which ceded Lombardy alone to

Sardinia, leaving Venetia still under the oppressor, and the

remainder of Italy unchanged in its state. For payment of the

service he had rendered, Louis Napoleon exacted Savoy and

Nice, and Victor Emmanuel was compelled to part with the

original seat of his House.

There was bitter disappointment among the Italian patriots

over the meagerness of the fruit yielded by the splendid

victories of Magenta and Solferino. Despite the treaty of

Villafranca, they were determined to have more, and they did.

Tuscany, Parma, Modena and Romagna demanded annexation to

Sardinia, and, after a plébiscite, they were received (March,

1860) into the kingdom and represented in its parliament. In

the Two Sicilies there was an intense longing for deliverance

from the brutalities of the Neapolitan Bourbons. Victor

Emmanuel could not venture an attack upon the rotten kingdom,

for fear of resentments in France and elsewhere. But the

adventurous soldier, Garibaldi, now took on himself the task

of completing the liberation of Italy. With an army of

volunteers, he first swept the Neapolitans out of Sicily, and

then took Naples itself, within the space of four months,

between May and September, 1860. The whole dominion was

annexed to what now became the Kingdom of Italy, and which

embraced the entire peninsula except Rome, garrisoned for the

Pope by French troops, and Venetia, still held in the clutches

of Austria. In 1862, Garibaldi raised volunteers for an attack

on Rome; but the unwise movement was suppressed by Victor

Emmanuel. Two years later, the King of Italy brought about an

agreement with the French emperor to withdraw his garrison

from Rome, and, after that had been done, the annexation of

Rome to the Italian kingdom was a mere question of time. It

came about in 1870, after the fall of Louis Napoleon, and

Victor Emmanuel transferred his capital to the Eternal City.

The Pope's domain was then limited to the precincts of the

Vatican.

The Austro-Prussian War.

The unification of Italy was the first of a remarkable series

of nationalizing movements which have been the most

significant feature of the history of the last half of the

nineteenth century. The next of these movements to begin was

in Germany--the much divided country of one peculiarly

homogeneous and identical race. Influences tending toward

unification had been acting on the Germans since Prussia rose

to superiority in the north. By the middle of the century, the

educated, military Prussia that was founded after 1806 had

become a power capable of great things in capable hands; and

the capable hands received it. In 1861, William I. succeeded

his brother as king; in 1862, Otto von Bismarck became his

prime minister. It was a remarkable combination of qualities

and talents, and remarkable results came from it.

{1101}

In 1864, Prussia and Austria acted together in taking

Schleswig and Holstein, as German states, from Denmark. The

next year they quarreled over the administration of the

duchies. In 1866, they fought, and Austria was entirely

vanquished in a "seven weeks war." The superiority of Prussia,

organized by her great military administrator and soldier,

Moltke, was overpowering. Her rival was left completely at her

mercy. But Bismarck and his king were wisely magnanimous. They

refrained from inflicting on the Austrians a humiliation that

would rankle and keep enmities alive. They foresaw the need of

future friendship between the two powers of central Europe, as

against Russia on the one side and France on the other, and

they shaped their policy to secure it. It sufficed them to

have put Austria out of the German circle, forever; to have

ended the false relation in which the Hapsburgs--rulers of an

essentially Slavonic and Magyar dominion--had stood towards

Germany so long.

Prussia now dominated the surrounding German states so

commandingly that the mode and the time of their unification

may be said to have been within her own control. Hanover,

Hesse-Cassel, Nassau, Schleswig-Holstein, and Frankfort were

incorporated in the Prussian kingdom at once. Saxony and the

other states of the north were enveloped in a North German

Confederation, with the King of Prussia for its hereditary

president and commander of its forces. The states of southern

Germany were left unfederated for the time being, but bound

themselves by treaty to put their armies at the disposal of

Prussia. Thus Germany as a whole was already made practically

one power, under the control of King William and his great

minister.

Final Expulsion of Austria from Italy.

The same war which unified Germany carried forward the

nationalization of Italy another step. Victor Emmanuel had

shrewdly entered into an alliance with Prussia before the war

began, and attacked Austria in Venetia simultaneously with the

German attack on the Bohemian side. The Italians were beaten

at Custozza, and their navy was defeated in the Adriatic; but

the victorious Prussians exacted Venetia for them in the

settlement of peace, and Austria had no more footing in the

peninsula.

Austria-Hungary.

It is greatly to the credit of Austria, long blinded and

stupefied by the narcotic of absolutism, that the lessons of

the war of 1866 sank deep into her mind and produced a very

genuine enlightenment. The whole policy of the court of Vienna

was changed, and with it the constitution of the Empire. The

statesmen of Hungary were called into consultation with the

statesmen of Austria, and the outcome of their discussions was

an agreement which swept away the old Austria, holding Hungary

in subjection, and created in its place a new power--a federal

Austria-Hungary--equalized in its two principal parts, and

united under the same sovereign with distinct constitutions.

The Franco-German War.

The surprising triumph of Prussia in the Seven Weeks War stung

Louis Napoleon with a jealousy which he could not conceal. He

was incapable of perceiving what it signified,--of perfection

in the organization of the Prussian kingdom and of power in

its resources. He was under illusions as to the strength of

his own Empire. It had been honeycombed by the rascalities

that attended and surrounded him, and he did not know it. He

imagined France to be capable of putting a check on Prussian

aggrandizement; and he began very early after Sadowa to pursue

King William with demands which were tolerably certain to end

in war. When the war came, in July, 1870, it was by his own

declaration; yet Prussia was prepared for it and France was

not. In six weeks time from the declaration of war,--in one

month from the first action,--Napoleon himself was a prisoner

of war in the hands of the Germans, surrendered at Sedan, with

the whole army which he personally commanded; the Empire was in

collapse, and a provisional government had taken the direction

of affairs. On the 20th of September Paris was invested; on

the 28th of October Baznine, with an army of 150,000 men,

capitulated at Metz. A hopeless attempt to rally the nation to

fresh efforts of defence in the interior, on the Loire, was

valiantly made under the lead of Gambetta; but it was too

late. When the year closed, besieged Paris was at the verge of

starvation and all attempts to relieve the city had failed. On

the 28th of January, 1871, an armistice was sought and

obtained; on the 30th, Paris was surrendered and the Germans

entered it. The treaty of peace negotiated subsequently ceded

Alsace to Germany, with a fifth of Lorraine, and bound France

to pay a war indemnity of five milliards of francs.

The Paris Commune.

In February, 1871, the provisional "Government of National

Defense" gave way to a National Assembly, duly elected under

the provisions of the armistice, and an executive was

instituted at Bordeaux, under the presidency of M. Thiers.

Early in March, the German forces were withdrawn from Paris,

and control of the city was immediately seized by that

dangerous element--Jacobinical, or Red Republican, or

Communistic, as it may be variously described--which always

shows itself with promptitude and power in the French capital,

at disorderly times. The Commune was proclaimed, and the

national government was defied. From the 2d of April until the

28th of May Paris was again under siege, this time by forces

of the French government, fighting to overcome the

revolutionists within. The proceedings of the latter were more

wantonly destructive than those of the Terrorists of the

Revolution, and scarcely less sanguinary. The Commune was

suppressed in the end with great severity.

The Third French Republic.

M. Thiers held the presidency of the Third Republic in France

until 1873, when he resigned and was succeeded by Marshal

MacMahon. In 1875 the constitution which has since remained,

with some amendments, in force, was framed and adopted. In

1878 Marshal MacMahon gave place to M. Jules Grévy, and the

latter to M. Sadi Carnot in 1887. Republican government seems

to be firmly and permanently established in France at last.

The country is in a prosperous state, and nothing but its

passionate desire to recover Alsace and to avenge Sedan

appears threatening to its future.

{1102}

The new German Empire.

While the army of the Germans was still besieging Paris, and

King William and Prince Bismarck were at Versailles, in

January, 1871, the last act which completed the unification

and nationalization of Germany was performed. This was the

assumption of the title of Emperor by King William, in

response to the prayer of the princes of Germany and of the

North German Parliament. On the 16th of the following April, a

constitution for the German Empire was proclaimed.

The long and extraordinary reign of the Emperor William I. was

ended by his death in 1888. His son, Frederick III., was dying

at the time of an incurable disease, and survived his father

only three months. The son of Frederick III., William II.,

signalized the beginning of his reign by dismissing, after a

few months, the great minister, Count Bismarck, on whom his

strong grandfather had leaned, and who had wrought such

marvels of statesmanship and diplomacy for the German race.

What may lie at the end of the reign which had this

self-sufficient beginning is not to be foretold.

The Russo-Turkish War.

Since the Franco-German War of 1870-1871, the peace of Europe

has been broken but once by hostilities within the European

boundary. In 1875 a rising against the unendurable misrule of

the Turks began in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and was imitated

the next year in Bulgaria. Servia and Montenegro declared war

against Turkey and were overcome. Russia then espoused the

cause of the struggling Slavs, and opened, in 1877, a most

formidable new attempt to crush the Ottoman power, and to

accomplish her coveted extension to the Mediterranean. From

May until the following January the storm of war raged

fiercely along the Balkans. The Turks fought stubbornly, but

they were beaten back, and nothing but a dangerous opposition

of feeling among the other powers in Europe stayed the hand of

the Czar from being laid upon Constantinople. The powers

required a settlement of the peace between Russia and Turkey

to be made by a general Congress, and it was held at Berlin in

June, 1878. Bulgaria was divided by the Congress into two

states, one tributary to the Turk, but freely governed, the

other subject to Turkey, but under a Christian governor. This

arrangement was set aside seven years later by a bloodless

revolution, which formed one Bulgaria in nominal relations of

dependence upon the Porte. This was the third important

nationalizing movement within a quarter of a century, and it

is likely to go farther in southeastern Europe, until it

settles, perhaps, "the Eastern question," so far as the

European side of it is concerned.

Bosnia and Herzegovina were given to Austria by the Congress

of Berlin; the independence of Roumania, Servia, and

Montenegro was made more complete; the island of Cyprus was

turned over to Great Britain for administration.

Spain in the last half Century.

A few words will tell sufficiently the story of Spain since

the successor of Joseph Bonaparte quitted the scene. Ferdinand

VII. died in 1833, and his infant daughter was proclaimed

queen, as Isabella II., with her mother, Christina, regent.

Isabella's title was disputed by Don Carlos, the late king's

brother, and a civil war between Carlists and Christinos went

on for years. When Isabella came of age she proved to be a

dissolute woman, with strong proclivities toward arbitrary

government. A liberal party, and even a republican party, had

been steadily gaining ground in Spain, and the queen placed

herself in conflict with it. In 1868 a revolution drove her

into France. The revolutionists offered the crown to a prince

distantly related to the royal family of Prussia. It was this

incident that gave Louis Napoleon a pretext for quarreling

with the King of Prussia in 1870 and declaring war. Declined

by the Hohenzollern prince, the Spanish crown was then offered

to Amadeo, son of the King of Italy, who accepted it, but

resigned it again in 1873, after a reign of two years, in

disgust with the factions which troubled him. Castelar, the

distinguished republican orator, then formed a republican

government which held the reins for a few months, but could

not establish order in the troubled land. The monarchy was

restored in December, 1874, by the coronation of Alfonso XII.,

son of the exiled Isabella. Since that time Spain has

preserved a tolerably peaceful and contented state.

England and Ireland.

In recent years, the part which Great Britain has taken in

Continental affairs has been slight; and, indeed, there has

been little in those affairs to bring about important

international relations. In domestic politics, a single series

of questions, concerning Ireland and the connection of Ireland

with the British part of the United Kingdom, has mastered the

field, overriding all others and compelling the statesmen of

the day to take them in hand. The sudden imperiousness of

these questions affords a peculiar manifestation of the

political conscience in nations which the nineteenth century

has wakened and set astir. Through all the prior centuries of

their subjection, the treatment of the Irish people by the

English was as cruel and as heedless of justice and right as

the treatment of Poles by Russians or of Greeks by Turks. They

were trebly oppressed: as conquered subjects of an alien race,

as religious enemies, as possible rivals in production and

trade. They were deprived of political and civil rights; they

were denied the ministrations of their priests; the better

employments and more honorable professions were closed to

them; the industries which promised prosperity to their

country were suppressed. A small minority of Protestant

colonists became the recognized nation, so far as a

nationality in Ireland was recognized at all. When Ireland was

said to have a Parliament, it was the Parliament of the

minority alone. No Catholic sat in it; no Catholic was

represented in it. When Irishmen were permitted to bear arms,

they were Protestant Irishmen only who formed the privileged

militia. Seven-tenths of the inhabitants of the island were

politically as non-existent as actual serfdom could have made

them. For the most part they were peasants and their state as

such scarcely above the condition of serfs. They owned no

land; their leases were insecure; the laws protected them in

the least possible degree; their landlords were mostly of the

hostile creed and race. No country in Europe showed conditions

better calculated to distress and degrade a people.

{1103}

This was the state of things in Ireland until nearly the end

of the eighteenth century. In 1782 legislative independence

was conceded; but the independent legislature was still the

Parliament in which Protestants sat alone. In 1793 Catholics

were admitted to the franchise; but seats in Parliament were

still denied to them and they must elect Protestants to

represent them. In 1800 the Act of Union, creating the United

Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, extinguished the

Parliament at Dublin and provided for the introduction of

Irish peers and members to represent Irish constituencies in

the greater Parliament at London; but still no Catholic could

take a seat in either House. Not until 1829, after eighteen

years of the fierce agitation which Daniel O'Connell stirred

up, were Catholic disabilities entirely removed and the people

of that faith placed on an equal footing with Protestants in

political and civil rights. O'Connell's agitation was not for

Catholic emancipation alone, but for the repeal of the Act of

Union and the restoration of legislative independence and

national distinctness to Ireland. That desire has been hot in

the Irish heart from the day the Union was accomplished. After

O'Connell's death, there was quiet on the subject for a time.

The fearful famine of 1845-7 deadened all political feeling.

Then there was a recurrence of the passionate animosity to

British rule which had kindled unfortunate rebellions in 1798

and 1803. It produced the Fenian conspiracies, which ran their

course from about 1858 to 1867. But soon after that time Irish

nationalism resumed a more politic temper, and doubled the

energy of its efforts by confining them to peaceful and lawful

ways. The Home Rule movement, which began in 1873, was aimed

at the organization of a compact and well-guided Irish party

in Parliament, to press the demand for legislative

independence and to act with united weight on lines of Irish

policy carefully laid down. This Home Rule party soon acquired

a powerful leader in Mr. Charles Parnell, and was successful

in carrying questions of reform in Ireland to the forefront of

English politics.

Under the influence of its great leader, Mr. Gladstone, the

Liberal party had already, before the Home Rule party came

into the field, begun to adopt measures for the redress of

Irish wrongs. In 1869, the Irish branch of the Church of

England, calling itself the Church of Ireland, was

disestablished. The membership of that church was reckoned to

be one-tenth of the population; but it had been supported by

the taxation of the whole. The Catholics, the Presbyterians

and other dissenters were now released from this unjust

burden. In 1870, a Land Bill--the first of several, which

restrict the power of Irish landlords to oppress their

tenants, and which protect the latter, while opening

opportunities of land-ownership to them--was passed. The land

question became for a time more prominent than the Home Rule

question, and the party of Mr. Parnell was practically

absorbed in an Irish National Land League, formed to force

landlords to a reduction of rents. The methods of coercion

adopted brought the League into collision with the Liberal

Government, notwithstanding the general sympathy of the latter

with Irish complaints. For a time the Irish Nationalists went

into alliance with the English Conservatives; but in 1886 Mr.

Gladstone became convinced, and convinced the majority of his

party, that just and harmonious relations between Ireland and

Great Britain could never be established without the

concession of Home Rule to the former. A bill which he

introduced to that end was defeated in the House of Commons

and Mr. Gladstone resigned. In 1892 he was returned to power,

and in September of the following year he carried in the House

of Commons a bill for the transferring of Irish legislation to

a distinct Parliament at Dublin. It was defeated, however, in

the House of Lords, and the question now rests in an unsettled

state. Mr. Gladstone's retirement from the premiership and

from the leadership of his party, which occurred in March,

1894, may affect the prospects of the measure; but the English

Liberals are committed to its principle, and it appears to be

certain that the Irish question will attain some solution

within no very long time.

Conclusion.

The beginning of the year 1894, when this is written, finds

Europe at peace, as it has been for a number of years. But the

peace is not of friendship, nor of honorable confidence, nor

of good will. The greater nations are lying on their arms, so

to speak, watching one another with strained eyes and with

jealous hearts. France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Russia, are

marshaling armies in the season of peace that, not many years

ago, would have seemed monstrous for war. Exactions of

military service and taxation for military expenditure are

pressed upon their people to the point of last endurance. The

preparation for battle is so vast in its scale, so unceasing,

so increasing, so far in the lead over all other efforts among

men, that it seems like a new affirmation of belief that war

is the natural order of the world.

And yet, the dread of war is greater in the civilized world

than ever before. The interests and influences that work for

peace are more powerful than at any former time. The wealth

which war threatens, the commerce which it interrupts, the

industry which it disturbs, the intelligence which it offends,

the humanity which it shocks, the Christianity which it

grieves, grow stronger to resist it, year by year. The

statesman and the diplomatist are under checks of

responsibility which a generation no older than Palmerston's

never felt. The arbitrator and the tribunal of arbitration

have become familiar within a quarter of a century. The spirit

of the age opposes war with rising earnestness and increasing

force; while the circumstance and fact of the time seem

arranged for it as the chief business of mankind. It is a

singular and a critical situation; the outcome from it is

impenetrably hidden.

Within itself, too, each nation is troubled with hostilities

that the world has not known before. Democracy in politics is

bringing in, as was inevitable, democracy in the whole social

system; and the period of adjustment to it, which we are

passing through, could not fail to be a period of trial and of

many dangers. The Anarchist, the Nihilist, the Socialist in

his many variations--what are they going to do in the time

that lies before us?

Europe, at the present stage of its history, is in the thick

of many questions; and so we leave it.

{1104}

EURYMEDON, Battles of the (B. C. 466).

See ATHENS: B. C. 470-466.

EUSKALDUNAC.

See BASQUES.

EUTAW SPRINGS, Battle of(1781).

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1780-1781.

EUTHYNI, The.

See LOGISTÆ.

EUTYCHIAN HERESY.

See NESTORIAN AND MONOPHYSITE CONTROVERSY.

EUXINE, The.

Euxinus Pontus, or Pontus Euxinus, the Black Sea,

as named by the Greeks.

EVACUATION DAY.

The anniversary of the evacuation of New York by

the British, Nov. 25, 1783.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1783 (NOVEMBER-DECEMBER).

EVANGELICAL UNION OF GERMANY, The.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1608-1618.

EVER VICTORIOUS ARMY, The.

See CHINA: A. D. 1850-1864.

EVESHAM, Battle of (1265).

The battle which finished the civil war in England known as

the Barons' War. It was fought Aug. 3, 1265, and Earl Simon de

Montfort, the soul of the popular cause, was slain, with most

of his followers. Prince Edward, afterwards Edward I.,

commanded the royal forces.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1216-1274.

EVICTIONS, Irish.

See IRELAND: A. D. 1886.

EXARCHS OF RAVENNA.

See ROME: A. D. 554-800.

EXARCHS OF THE DIOCESE.

See PRIMATES.

EXCHEQUER.--EXCHEQUER ROLLS.--EXCHEQUER TALLIES.

"The Exchequer of the Norman kings was the court in which the

whole financial business of the country was transacted, and as

the whole administration of justice, and even the military

organisation, was dependent upon the fiscal officers, the

whole framework of society may be said to have passed annually

under its review. It derived its name from the chequered cloth

which covered the table at which the accounts were taken, a

name which suggested to the spectator the idea of a game at

chess between the receiver and the payer, the treasurer and

the sheriff. ... The record of the business was preserved in

three great rolls; one kept by the Treasurer, another by the

Chancellor, and a third by an officer nominated by the king,

who registered the matters of legal and special importance.

The rolls of the Treasurer and Chancellor were duplicates;

that of the former was called from its shape the great roll of

the Pipe, and that of the latter the roll of the Chancery. These

documents are mostly still in existence. The Pipe Rolls are

complete from the second year of Henry II. and the

Chancellor's Rolls nearly so. Of the preceding period only one

roll, that of the thirty-first year of Henry I., is preserved,

and this with Domesday book is the most valuable store of

information which exists for the administrative history of the

age. The financial reports were made to the barons by the

sheriffs of the counties. At Easter and Michælmas each of

these magistrates produced his own accounts and paid in to the

Exchequer such an instalment or proffer as he could afford,

retaining in hand sufficient money for current expenses. In

token of receipt a tally was made; a long piece of wood in

which a number of notches were cut, marking the pounds,

shillings, and pence received; this stick was then split down

the middle, each half contained exactly the same number of

notches, and no alteration could of course be made without

certain detection. ... The fire which destroyed the old Houses

of Parliament is said to have originated in the burning of the

old Exchequer tallies."

W. Stubbs,

Constitutional History of England,

chapter 11, section 126.

"The wooden 'tallies' on which a large notch represented

£1,000, and smaller notches other sums, while a halfpenny was

denoted by a small round hole, were actually in use at the

Exchequer until the year 1824."--

Sir J. Lubbock,

Preface to Hall's "Antiquities and

Curiosities of the Exchequer."

ALSO IN: E. F. Henderson,

Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages,

book 1, number 5.

See, also, CURIA REGIS and CHESS.

EXCHEQUER, Chancellor of the.

In the reign of Henry III., of England, "was created the

office of Chancellor of the Exchequer, to whom the Exchequer

seal was entrusted, and who with the Treasurer took part in

the equitable jurisdiction of the Exchequer, although not in

the common law jurisdiction of the barons, which extended

itself as the legal fictions of pleading brought common pleas

into this court."

W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England,

chapter 15, section 237.

EXCLUSION BILL, The.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1679-1681.

EXCOMMUNICATIONS AND INTERDICTS.

"Excommunication, whatever opinions may be entertained as to

its religious efficacy, was originally nothing more in

appearance than the exercise of a right which every society

claims, the expulsion of refractory members from its body. No

direct temporal disadvantages attended this penalty for

several ages; but as it was the most severe of spiritual

censures, and tended to exclude the object of it, not only

from a participation in religious rites, but in a considerable

degree from the intercourse of Christian society, it was used

sparingly and upon the gravest occasions. Gradually, as the

church became more powerful and more imperious,

excommunications were issued upon every provocation, rather as

a weapon of ecclesiastical warfare than with any regard to its

original intention. ... Princes who felt the inadequacy of

their own laws to secure obedience called in the assistance of

more formidable sanctions. Several capitularies of Charlemagne

denounce the penalty of excommunication against incendiaries

or deserters from the army. Charles the Bald procured similar

censures against his revolted vassals. Thus the boundary

between temporal and spiritual offences grew every day less

distinct; and the clergy were encouraged to fresh

encroachments, as they discovered the secret of rendering them

successful. ... The support due to church censures by temporal

judges is vaguely declared in the capitularies of Pepin and

Charlemagne. It became in later ages a more established

principle in France and England, and, I presume, in other

countries. By our common law an excommunicated person is

incapable of being a witness or of bringing an action; and he

may be detained in prison until he obtains absolution. By the

Establishments of St. Louis, his estate or person might be

attached by the magistrate. These actual penalties were

attended by marks of abhorrence and ignominy still more

calculated to make an impression on ordinary minds. They were

to be shunned, like men infected with leprosy, by their

servants, their friends, and their families. ...

{1105}

But as excommunication, which attacked only one and perhaps a

hardened sinner, was not always efficacious, the church had

recourse to a more comprehensive punishment. For the offence

of a nobleman she put a county, for that of a prince his

entire kingdom, under an interdict or suspension of religious

offices. No stretch of her tyranny was perhaps so outrageous

as this. During an interdict the churches were closed, the

bells silent, the dead unburied, no rite but those of baptism

and extreme unction performed. The penalty fell upon those who

had neither partaken nor could have prevented the offence; and

the offence was often but a private dispute, in which the

pride of a pope or bishop had been wounded. Interdicts were so

rare before the time of Gregory VII., that some have referred

them to him as their author; instances may however be found of

an earlier date."

H. Hallam,

The Middle Ages,

chapter 7, part 1.

ALSO IN:

M. Gosselin,

The Power of the Pope in the Middle Ages,

part 2, chapter 1, article 3.

H. C. Lea,

Studies in Church History,

part 3.

P. Schaff,

History of the Christian Church,

volume 4, chapter 8, section 86.

EXECUTIVE SESSIONS.

See CONGRESS OF THE UNITED SESSIONS.

EXEGETÆ, The.

A board of three persons in ancient Athens "to whom

application might be made in all matters relating to sacred

law, and also, probably, with regard to the significance of

the Diosemia, or celestial phenomena and other signs by which

future events were foretold."

G. F. Schömann,

Antiquities of Greece: The State,

part 3, chapter 3.

EXETER, Origin of.

"Isca Damnoniorum, Caer Wisc, Exanceaster, Exeter, keeping

essentially the same name under all changes, stands

distinguished as the one great English city which has, in a

more marked way than any other, kept its unbroken being and

its unbroken position throughout all ages. The City on the

Exe, in all ages and in all tongues keeping its name as the

City on the Exe, allows of an easy definition. ... It is the

one city [of England] in which we can feel sure that human

habitation and city life have never ceased from the days of

the early Cæsars to our own." At the Norman conquest, Exeter

did not submit to William until after a siege of 18 days, in

1068.

E. A. Freeman,

Exeter,

chapters 1-2.

EXILARCH, The.

See JEWS: 7TH CENTURY.

EXODUS FROM EGYPT, The.

See JEWS: THE ROUTE OF THE EXODUS.

EYLAU, Battle of (1807).

See GERMANY: A. D. 1806-1807.

EYRE, Governor, and the Jamaica insurrection.

See JAMAICA: A. D. 1865.

EYSTEIN I., King of Norway, A. D. 1116-1122.

Eystein II., 1155--1157.

EZZELINO, OR ECCELINO DI ROMANO,

The tyranny of, and the crusade against.

See VERONA: A. D. 1236-1259.

F.

FABIAN POLICY.-FABIAN TACTICS.

The policy pursued by Q. Fabius Maximus, the Roman Dictator,

called "the Cunctator" or Lingerer, in his campaigns against

Hannibal.

See PUNIC WAR, THE SECOND.

FACTORY LEGISLATION, English.

"During the 17th and 18th centuries, when the skill of the

workmen had greatly improved, and the productiveness of labour

had increased, various methods were resorted to for the

purpose of prolonging the working day. The noontide nap was

first dispensed with, then other intervals of rest were

curtailed, and ultimately artificial light was introduced,

which had the effect of abolishing the difference between the

short days of winter and the long days of summer, thus

equalising, the working day throughout the year. The opening

of the 19th century was signalised by a new cry, namely, for a

reduction in the hours of labour; this was in consequence of

the introduction of female and child labour into the

factories, and the deterioration of the workers as a result of

excessive overwork. ... The overwork of the young, and

particularly the excessive hours in the factories, became such

crying evils that in 1801 the first Act was passed to restrict

the hours of labour for apprentices, who were prohibited from

working more than 12 hours a day, between six A. M. and nine

P. M., and that provision should be made for teaching them to

read and write, and other educational exercises. This Act

further provided that the mills should be whitewashed at least

once a year; and that doors and windows should be made to

admit fresh air. This Act was followed by a series of

commissions and committees of inquiry, the result being that

it was several times amended. The details of the evidence

given before the several commissions and committees of inquiry

are sickening in the extreme; the medical testimony was

unanimous in its verdict that the children were physically

ruined by overwork; those who escaped with their lives were so

crippled and maimed that they were unable to maintain

themselves in after life, and became paupers. It was proven

that out of 4,000 who entered the factory before they were 30

years of age, only 600 were to be found in the mills after

that age. By Sir Robert Peel's Bill in 1819 it was proposed to

limit the hours to 11 per day with one and a half for meals,

for those under 16 years of age. But the mill-owners

prophesied the ruin of the manufacturers of the country--they

could not compete with the foreign markets, it was an

interference with the freedom of labour, the spare time given

would be spent in debauchery and riot, and that if passed,

other trades would require the same provisions. The Bill was

defeated, and the hours fixed at 72 per week; the justices,

that is to say the manufacturers, were entrusted with the

enforcement of the law. In 1825 a new law was passed defining

the time when breakfast and dinner was to be taken, and fixing

the time to half an hour for the first repast, and a full hour

for dinner; the traditional term of apprentices was dropped

and the modern classification of children and young persons

was substituted, and children were once more prohibited from

working more than 12 hours a day. But every means was adopted

to evade the law. ... After thousands of petitions, and

numerous angry debates in Parliament, the Act of 1833 was

passed, which limited the working hours of children to 48

hours per week, and provided that each child should have a

certain amount of schooling, and with it factory inspectors

were appointed to enforce the law.

{1106}

But the law was not to come into operation until March 1,

1836, during which time it had to be explained and defended in

one session, amended in a second, and made binding in a third.

After several Royal Commissions and inquiries by select

committees, this Act has been eight times amended, until the

working hours of children are now limited to six per day, and

for young persons and women to 56 per week; these provisions

with certain modifications are now extended to workshops, and

the whole law is being consolidated and amended. ... The whole

series of the Factory Acts, dating from 42 George III., c. 73,

to the 37 and 38 Victoria 1874, forms a code of legislation,

in regard to working people, unexampled in any age and

unequalled in any country in the world. . . . Outside

Parliament efforts have been constantly made to further reduce

the working hours."

G. Howell,

The Conflicts of Capital and Labour,

pages 298-301.

"The continental governments, of course, have been obliged to

make regulations covering kindred subjects, but rarely have

they kept pace with English legislation. America has enacted

progressive laws so far as the condition of factory workers

has warranted. It should be remembered that the abuses which

crept into the system in England never existed in this country

in any such degree as we know they did in the old country. Yet

there are few States in America where manufactures predominate

or hold an important position in which law has not stepped in

and restricted either the hours of labor, or the conditions of

labor, and insisted upon the education of factory children,

although the laws are usually silent as to children of

agricultural laborers. It is is not wholly in the passage of

purely factory acts that the factory system has influenced the

legislation of the world. England may have suffered

temporarily from the effects of some of her factory

legislation, and the recent reduction of the hours of labor to

nine and one-half per day, less than in any other country, has

had the effect of placing her works at a disadvantage; but, in

the long run, England will be the gainer on account of all the

work she has done in the way of legislative restrictions upon

labor. In this she has changed her whole policy. Formerly

trade must be restricted and labor allowed to demoralize

itself under the specious plea of being free; now, trade must

be free and labor restricted in the interests of society,

which means in the interest of good morals. The factory system

has not only wrought this change, but has compelled the

economists to recognize the distinction between commodities

and services. There has been greater and greater freedom of

contract in respect to commodities, but the contracts which

involve labor have become more and more completely under the

authority and supervision of the State. 'Seventy-five years

ago scarcely a single law existed in any country for

regulating the contract for services in the interest of the

laboring classes. At the same time the contract for

commodities was everywhere subject to minute and incessant

regulations' [Hon. F. A. Walker]. Factory legislation in

England, as elsewhere, has had for its chief object the

regulation of the labor of children and women; but its scope

has constantly increased by successive and progressive

amendments until they have attempted to secure the physical

and moral well-being of the working-man in all trades, and to

give him every condition of salubrity and of personal safety

in the workshops. The excellent effect of factory legislation

has been made manifest throughout the whole of Great Britain.

'Physically, the factory child can bear fair comparison with

the child brought up in the fields,' and, intellectually,

progress is far greater with the former than with the latter.

Public opinion, struck by these results, has demanded the

extension of protective measures for children to every kind of

industrial labor, until parliament has brought under the

influence of these laws the most powerful industries. To carry

the factory regulations and those relative to schooling into

effect, England has an efficient corps of factory inspectors.

The manufacturers of England are unanimous in acknowledging

that to the activity, to the sense of impartiality, displayed

by these inspectors, is due the fact that an entire

application of the law has been possible without individual

interests being thereby jeopardized to a very serious extent.

... In no other country is there so elaborate a code of

factory laws as the 'British factory and workshop act' of 1878

(41 Vict., chapter 16), it being an act consolidating all the

factory acts since Sir Robert Peel's act of 1802."

C. D. Wright,

Factory Legislation

(Tenth Census of the United States, volume 2).

ALSO IN:

First annual Report of the Factory Inspectors of

the State of New York, 1886, appendix.

C. Knight,

Popular History of England,

volume 8, chapters 22 and 27.

H. Martineau,

History of the Thirty Years' Peace,

volume 2, pages 512-515.

See, also, ENGLAND: A. D. 1832-1833.

FADDILEY, Battle of.

Fought successfully by the Britons with the West Saxons, on

the border of Cheshire, A. D. 583.

J. R. Green,

The Making of England,

page 206.

FAENZA, Battle of (A. D. 542).

See ROME: A. D. 535-553.

FÆSULÆ.

See FLORENCE, ORIGIN AND NAME.

FAGGING.

See EDUCATION, MODERN: EUROPEAN COUNTRIES.

ENGLAND.--THE GREAT PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

FAGGIOLA, Battle of (1425).

See ITALY: A. D. 1412-1447.

FAINÉANT KINGS.

See FRANKS: A. D. 511-752.

FAIR OAKS, Battle of.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1862 (MAY: VIRGINIA).

FAIRFAX AND THE PARLIAMENTARY ARMY.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1645 (JANUARY-APRIL),

and (JUNE); 1647 (APRIL-AUGUST);

1648 (NOVEMBER); 1649 (FEBRUARY).

FALAISE.

"The Castle [in Normandy] where legend fixes the birth of

William of Normandy, and where history fixes the famous homage

of William of Scotland, is a vast donjon of the eleventh or

twelfth century. One of the grandest of those massive square

keeps which I have already spoken of as distinguishing the

earliest military architecture of Normandy crowns the summit

of a precipitous rock, fronted by another mass of rock, wilder

still, on which the cannon of England were planted during

Henry's siege. To these rocks, these 'felsen,' the spot owes

its name of Falaise. ... Between these two rugged heights lies

a narrow dell. ... The den is crowded with mills and

tanneries, but the mills and tanneries of Falaise have their

share in the historic interest of the place. ... In every from

which the story has taken in history or legend, the mother of

the Conqueror appears as the daughter of a tanner of Falaise."

E. A. Freeman,

Norman Conquest,

chapter 8, section 1.

{1107}

FALAISE, Peace of (1175).

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1174-1189.

FALK LAWS, The.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1873-1887.

FALKIRK, Battles of (1298 and 1746).

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1290-1305;

and 1745-1746.

FAMAGOSTA: A. D. 1571. Taken by the Turks.

See TURKS: A. D. 1566-1571.

FAMILIA.

The slaves belonging to a master were collectively called

familia among the Romans.

E. Guhl and W. Koner,

Life of the Greeks and Romans,

section 100.

FAMILY COMPACT,

The First Bourbon.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1733.

The Second.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1743 (OCTOBER).

The Third.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1761 (AUGUST).

FAMILY COMPACT IN CANADA, The.

See CANADA: A. D.1820-1837.

FAMINE, The Cotton.

See, ENGLAND: A. D. 1861-1865,

FAMINE, The Irish.

See IRELAND: A. D. 1845-1847.

FANARIOTS.

See PHANARIOTS.

FANEUIL HALL.

"The fame of Faneuil Hall [Boston, Mass.] is as wide as the

country itself. It has been called the 'Cradle of Liberty,'

because dedicated by that early apostle of freedom, James

Otis, to the cause of liberty, in a speech delivered in the

hall in March, 1763. ... Its walls have echoed to the voices

of the great departed in times gone by, and in every great

public exigency the people, with one accord, assembled

together to take counsel within its hallowed precincts. ...

The Old Market-house ... existing in Dock Square in 1734, was

demolished by a mob in 1736-37. There was contention among the

people as to whether they would be served at their houses in

the old way, or resort to fixed localities, and one set of

disputants took this summary method of settling the question.

... In 1740, the question of the Market-house being revived,

Peter Faneuil proposed to build one at his own cost on the

town's land in Dock Square, upon condition that the town

should legally authorize it, enact proper regulations, and

maintain it for the purpose named. Mr. Faneuil's noble offer

was courteously received, but such was the division of opinion

on the subject that it was accepted by a majority of only

seven votes, out of 727 persons voting. The building was

completed in September, 1742, and three days after, at a

meeting of citizens, the hall was formally accepted and a vote

of thanks passed to the donor. ... The town voted that the

hall should be called Faneuil Hall forever. ... The original

size of the building was 40 by 100 feet, just half the present

width; the hall would contain 1,000 persons. At the fire of

January 13, 1763, the whole interior was destroyed, but the

town voted to rebuild in March, and the State authorized a

lottery in aid of the design. The first meeting after the

rebuilding was held on the 14th March, 1763, when James Otis

delivered the dedicatory address. In 1806 the Hull was

enlarged in width to 80 feet, and by the addition of a third

story."

S. A. Drake,

Old Landmarks of Boston,

chapter 4.

FANNIAN LAW, The.

See ORCHIAN, FANNIAN, DIDIAN LAWS.

FARM.

See FERM.

FARMERS' ALLIANCE.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1877-1891.

FARMER'S LETTERS, The.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1767-1768.

FARNESE, Alexander, Duke of Parma, in the Netherlands.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1577-1581, to 1588-1593.

FARNESE, The House of.

See PARMA: A. D. 1545-1592.

FARRAGUT, Admiral David G.

Capture of New Orleans.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1862 (APRIL: ON THE MISSISSIPPI).

Attack on Vicksburg.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1862 (MAY-JULY: ON THE MISSISSIPPI).

Victory in Mobile Bay.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D.1864 (AUGUST: ALABAMA).

FARSAKH, OR FARSANG, The.

See PARASANG.

FASCES.

See LICTORS.

FASTI.

"Dies Fasti were the days upon which the Courts of Justice [in

ancient Rome] were open, and legal business could be

transacted before the Praetor; the Dies Nefasti were those

upon which the Courts were closed. ... All days consecrated to

the worship of the Gods by sacrifices, feasts or games, were

named Festi. ... For nearly four centuries and a-half after

the foundation of the city the knowledge of the Calendar was

confined to the Pontifices alone. ... These secrets which

might be, and doubtless often were, employed for political

ends, were at length divulged in the year B. C. 314, by Cn.

Flavius, who drew up tables embracing all this

carefully-treasured information, and hung them up in the Forum

for the inspection of the public. From this time forward

documents of this description were known by the name of Fasti.

... These Fasti, in fact, corresponded very closely to a

modern Almanac. ... The Fasti just described have, to prevent

confusion, been called Calendaria, or Fasti Calendares, and

must be carefully distinguished from certain compositions also

named Fasti by the ancients. These were regular chronicles in

which were recorded each year the names of the Consuls and

other magistrates, together with the remarkable events, and

the days on which they occurred. The most important were the

Annales Maximi, kept by the Pontifex Maximus."

W. Ramsay,

Manual of Roman Antiquities,

chapter 11.

FATIMITE CALIPHS, The.

See MAHOMETAN CONQUEST AND EMPIRE: A. D. 908-1171;

Also, ASSASSINS.

FAVILA, King of Leon and the Asturias, or Oviedo, A. D. 737-739.

FEAST OF LIBERTY.

See GREECE: B. C. 479:

PERSIAN WARS.

PLATÆA.

FEAST OF REASON, The.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1793 (NOVEMBER).

FEAST OF THE FEDERATION, The.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1789-1791.

FEAST OF THE SUPREME BEING, The.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1793-1794 (NOVEMBER-JUNE).

FECIALES.--FETIALES.

See FETIALES.

FEDELI.

See CATTANI.

FEDERAL CITY, The.

See WASHINGTON (CITY): A. D. 1791.

FEDERAL CONSTITUTION OF SWITZERLAND.

See CONSTITUTION OF THE SWISS CONFEDERATION.

{1108}

FEDERAL CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

See CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES.

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.--FEDERATIONS.

"Two requisites seem necessary to constitute a Federal

Government in ... its most perfect form. On the one hand, each

of the members of the Union must be wholly independent in

those matters which concern each member only. On the other

hand, all must be subject to a common power in those matters

which concern the whole body of members collectively. Thus

each member will fix for itself the laws of its criminal

jurisprudence, and even the details of its political

constitution. And it will do this, not as a matter of

privilege or concession from any higher power, but as a matter

of absolute right, by virtue of its inherent powers as an

independent commonwealth. But in all matters which concern the

general body, the sovereignty of the several members will

cease. Each member is perfectly independent within its own

sphere; but there is another sphere in which its independence,

or rather its separate existence, vanishes. It is invested

with every right of sovereignty on one class of subjects, but

there is another class of subjects on which it is as incapable

of separate political action as any province or city of a

monarchy or of an indivisible republic. ... Four Federal

Commonwealths ... stand out, in four different ages of the

world, as commanding, above all others, the attention of

students of political history. Of these four, one belongs to

what is usually known as 'ancient,' another to what is

commonly called 'mediæval' history; a third arose in the

period of transition between mediæval and modern history; the

creation of the fourth may have been witnessed by some few of

those who are still counted among living men, ... These four

Commonwealths are, First, the Achaian League [see GREECE: B.

C. 280-146] in the later days of Ancient Greece, whose most

flourishing period comes within the third century before our

era. Second, the Confederation of the Swiss Cantons [see

CONSTITUTION OF THE SWISS CONFEDERATION], which, with many

changes in its extent and constitution, has lasted from the

thirteenth century to our own day. Third, the Seven United

Provinces of the Netherlands [see NETHERLANDS: A. D.

1577-1581, and after], whose Union arose in the War of

Independence against Spain, and lasted, in a republican form,

till the war of the French Revolution. Fourth, the United

States of North America [see CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES

OF AMERICA], which formed a Federal Union after their revolt

from the British Crown under George the Third, and whose

destiny forms one of the most important, and certainly the

most interesting, of the political problems of our own time.

Of these four, three come sufficiently near to the full

realization of the Federal idea to be entitled to rank among

perfect Federal Governments. The Achaian League, and the

United States since the adoption of the present Constitution,

are indeed the most perfect developments of the Federal

principle which the world has ever seen. The Swiss

Confederation, in its origin a Union of the loosest kind, has

gradually drawn the Federal bond tighter and tighter, till,

within our own times, it has assumed a form which fairly

entitles it to rank beside Achaia and America. The claim of

the United Provinces is more doubtful; their union was at no

period of their republican being so close as that of Achaia,

America, and modern Switzerland."

E. A. Freeman,

History of Federal Government,

volume 1, pages 3-6.

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT:

Classification of Federal Governments.

"To the classification of federal governments publicists have

given great attention with unsatisfactory results. History

shows a great variety of forms, ranging from the lowest

possible organization, like that of the Amphictyonic Council

[see AMPHIKTYONIC COUNCIL] to the highly centralized and

powerful German Empire. Many writers deny that any fixed

boundaries can be described. The usual classification is,

however, into three divisions,--the Staatenstaat, or state

founded on states; the Staatenbund, or union of states--to

which the term Confederacy nearly corresponds; and the

Bundesstaat, or united state, which answers substantially to

the term federation as usually employed. The Staatenstaat is

defined to be a state in which the units are not individuals,

but states, and which, therefore, has no operation directly on

individuals, but deals with and legislates for its corporate

members; they preserve undisturbed their powers of government

over their own subjects. The usual example of a Staatenstaat

is the Holy Roman Empire [see ROMAN EMPIRE, THE HOLY]. This

conception ... is, however, illogical in theory, and never has

been carried out in practice. ... Historically, also, the

distinction is untenable. The Holy Roman Empire had courts,

taxes, and even subjects not connected with the states. In

theory it had superior claims upon all the individuals within

the Empire; in practice it abandoned control over the states.

The second category is better established. Jellinek says:

"When states form a permanent political alliance, of which

common defence is at the very least the purpose, with

permanent federal organs, there arises a Staatenbund.' This

form of government is distinguished from an alliance by the

fact that it has permanent federal organs; from a commercial

league by its political purpose; from a Bundesstaat by its

limited purpose. In other words, under Staatenbund are

included the weaker forms of true federal government, in which

there is independence from other powers, and, within the

purposes of the union, independence from the constituent

states. ... The Staatenbund form includes most of the federal

governments which have existed. The Greek confederations

(except perhaps the Lycian and Achæan) and all the mediæval

leagues were of this type: even the strong modern unions of

the United States, Germany, and Switzerland, have gone through

the Staatenbund stage in their earlier history. Between the

Staatenbund and the more highly developed form, the

Bundesstaat, no writer has described an accurate boundary.

There are certain governments, notably those of Canada,

Germany, Switzerland, and the United States, in which is found

an elaborate and powerful central organism, including federal

courts; to this organism is assigned all or nearly all the

common concerns of the nation; within its exclusive control

are war, foreign affairs, commerce, colonies, and national

finances; and there is an efficient power of enforcement

against states. Such governments undoubtedly are

Bundesstaaten."

A. B. Hart,

Introduction to the Study of Federal Government

(Harvard Historical Monographs, number 2),

chapter 1.

{1109}

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT:

Greek Federations.

"Under the conditions of the Græco-Roman civic life there were

but two practicable methods of forming a great state and

diminishing the quantity of warfare. The one method was

conquest with incorporation, the other method was federation.

... Neither method was adopted by the Greeks in their day of

greatness. The Spartan method of extending its power was

conquest without incorporation: when Sparta conquered another

Greek city, she sent a harmost to govern it like a tyrant; in

other words she virtually enslaved the subject city. The

efforts of Athens tended more in the direction of a peaceful

federalism. In the great Delian confederacy [see GREECE: B. C.

478-477, and ATHENS: B. C. 466-454], which developed into the

maritime empire of Athens, the Ægean cities were treated as

allies rather than subjects. As regards their local affairs

they were in no way interfered with, and could they have been

represented in some kind of a federal council at Athens, the

course of Grecian history might have been wonderfully altered.

As it was, they were all deprived of one essential element of

sovereignty,--the power of controlling their own military

forces. ... In the century following the death of Alexander,

in the closing age of Hellenic independence, the federal idea

appears in a much more advanced stage of elaboration, though

in a part of Greece which had been held of little account in

the great days of Athens and Sparta. Between the Achaian

federation, framed in 274 B. C., and the United States of

America, there are some interesting points of resemblance

which have been elaborately discussed by Mr. Freeman, in his

'History of Federal Government.' About the same time the

Ætolian League [see ÆTOLIAN LEAGUE] came into prominence in

the north. Both these leagues were instances of true federal

government, and were not mere confederations; that is, the

central government acted directly upon all the citizens and

not merely upon the local governments. Each of these leagues

had for its chief executive officer a General elected for one

year, with powers similar to those of an American President.

In each the supreme assembly was a primary assembly at which

every citizen from every city of the league had a right to be

present, to speak, and to vote; but as a natural consequence

these assemblies shrank into comparatively aristocratic

bodies. In Ætolia, which was a group of mountain cantons

similar to Switzerland, the federal union was more complete

than in Achaia, which was a group of cities. ... In so far as

Greece contributed anything towards the formation of great and

pacific political aggregates, she did it through attempts at

federation. But in so low a state of political development as

that which prevailed throughout the Mediterranean world in

pre-Christian times, the more barbarous method of conquest

with incorporation was more likely to be successful on a great

scale. This was well illustrated in the history of Rome,--a civic

community of the same generic type with Sparta and Athens, but

presenting specific differences of the highest importance. ...

Rome early succeeded in freeing itself from that insuperable

prejudice which elsewhere prevented the ancient city from

admitting aliens to a share in its franchise. And in this

victory over primeval political ideas lay the whole secret of

Rome's mighty career."

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT:

Mediæval Leagues in Germany.

"It is hardly too much to say that the Lombard League led

naturally to the leagues of German cities. The exhausting

efforts of the Hohenstaufen Emperors to secure dominion in

Italy compelled them to grant privileges to the cities in

Germany; the weaker emperors, who followed, bought support

with new charters and privileges. The inability of the Empire

to keep the peace or to protect commerce led speedily to the

formation of great unions of cities, usually commercial in

origin, but very soon becoming political forces of prime

importance. The first of these was the Rhenish League, formed

in 1254. The more important cities of the Rhine valley, from

Basle to Cologne, were the original members; but it eventually

had seventy members, including several princes and ruling

prelates. The league had Colloquia, or assemblies, at stated

intervals; but, beyond deciding upon a general policy, and the

assignment of military quotas, it had no legislative powers.

There was, however, a Kommission, or federal court, which

acted as arbiter in disputes between the members. The chief

political service of the league was to maintain peace during

the interregnum in the Empire (1256-1273). During the

fourteenth century it fell apart, and many of its members

joined the Hansa or Suabian League. ... In 1377 seventeen

Suabian cities, which had been mortgaged by the Emperor,

united to defend their liberties. They received many

accessions of German and Swiss cities; but in 1388 they were

overthrown by Leopold III. of Austria, and all combinations of

cities were forbidden. A federal government they cannot be

said to have possessed; but political, almost federal

relations continued during the fifteenth century. The similar

leagues of Frankfort and Wetterau were broken up about the

same time. Other leagues of cities and cantons were in a like

manner formed and dissolved,--among them the leagues of

Hauenstein and Burgundy; and there was a confederation in

Franche Comté, afterward French territory. All the mediæval

leagues thus far mentioned were defensive, and had no extended

relations beyond their own borders. The great Hanseatic League

[see HANSA TOWNS], organized as a commercial union, developed

into a political and international power, which negotiated and

made war on its own account with foreign and German

sovereigns; and which was for two centuries one of the leading

powers of Europe."

A. B. Hart,

Introduction to the Study of Federal Government

(Harvard Historical Monographs, number 2),

chapter 3.

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT:

Mediæval League of Lombardy.

When Frederick Barbarossa entered Italy for the fifth time in

1163, to enforce the despotic sovereignty over that country

which the German kings, as emperors, were then claiming (see

ITALY: A. D. 961-1039), a league of the Lombard cities was

formed to resist him. "Verona, Vicenza, Padua, and Treviso,

the most powerful towns of the Veronese marches, assembled

their consuls in congress, to consider of the means of putting

an end to a tyranny which overwhelmed them. The consuls of

these four towns pledged themselves by oath in the name of

their cities to give mutual support to each other in the

assertion of their former rights, and in the resolution to

reduce the imperial prerogatives to the point at which they

were fixed under the reign of Henry IV. Frederick, informed of

this association; returned hastily into Northern Italy, to put it

down ... but he soon perceived that the spirit of liberty had

made progress in the Ghibeline cities as well as in those of

the Guelphs. ...

{1110}

Obliged to bend before a people which he considered only as

revolted subjects, he soon renounced a contest so humiliating,

and returned to Germany, to levy an army more submissive to

him. Other and more pressing interests diverted his attention

from this object till the autumn of 1166. ... When Frederick,

in the month of October, 1166, descended the mountains of the

Grisons to enter Italy by the territory of Brescia, he marched

his army directly to Lodi, without permitting any act of

hostility on the way. At Lodi, he assembled, towards the end

of November, a diet of the kingdom of Italy, at which he

promised the Lombards to redress the grievances occasioned by

the abuses of power by his podestas, and to respect their just

liberties; ... to give greater weight to his negotiation, he

marched his army into Central Italy. ... The towns of the

Veronese marches, seeing the emperor and his army pass without

daring to attack them, became bolder: they assembled a new

diet, in the beginning of April, at the convent of Pontida,

between Milan and Bergamo. The consuls of Cremona, of Bergamo,

of Brescia, of Mantua and Ferrara met there, and joined those

of the marches. The union of the Guelphs and Ghibelines, for

the common liberty, was hailed with universal joy. The

deputies of the Cremonese, who had lent their aid to the

destruction of Milan, seconded those of the Milanese villages

in imploring aid of the confederated towns to rebuild the city

of Milan. This confederation was called the League of Lombardy.

The consuls took the oath, and their constituents afterwards

repeated it, that every Lombard should unite for the recovery

of the common liberty; that the league for this purpose should

last twenty years; and, finally, that they should aid each

other in repairing in common any damage experienced in this

sacred cause, by any one member of the confederation:

extending even to the past this contract for reciprocal

security, the league resolved to rebuild Milan. ... Lodi was

soon afterwards compelled, by force of arms, to take the oath

to the league; while the towns of Venice, Placentia, Parma,

Modena, and Bologna voluntarily and gladly joined the

association."

J. C. L. de Sismondi,

History of the Italian Republics,

chapter 2.

In 1226 the League was revived

or renewed against Frederick II.

See ITALY: A. D. 1183-1250.

"Milan and Bologna took the lead, and were followed by

Piacenza, Verona, Brescia, Faenza, Mantua, Vercelli, Lodi,

Bergamo, Turin, Alessandria, Vicenza, Padua, and Treviso. ...

Nothing could be more unlike, than the First and the Second

Lombard Leagues, that of 1167, formed against Frederick the

First after the most cruel provocation, was sanctioned by the

Pope, and had for its end the deliverance of Lombardy. That of

1226, formed against Frederick the Second, after no

provocation received, was discountenanced by the Pope, and

resulted in the frustration of the Crusade and in sowing the

germ of endless civil wars. This year is fixed upon by the

Brescian Chronicler as the beginning of 'those plaguy factions

of Guelf and Ghibelline, which were so engrained into the

minds of our forefathers, that they have handed them down as

an heir-loom to their posterity, never to come to an end.'"

T. L. Kington,

History of Frederick the Second,

volume 1, pages 265-266.

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT:

Modern Federations.

"A remarkable phenomenon of the last hundred years is the

impetus that has been given to the development of Federal

institutions. There are to-day contemporaneously existing no

less than eight distinct Federal Governments. First and

foremost is the United States of America, where we have an

example of the Federal Union in the most perfect form yet

attained. Then comes Switzerland, of less importance than the

United States of America, but most nearly approaching it in

perfection. Again we have the German Empire [see CONSTITUTION

OF GERMANY], that great factor in European politics, which is

truly a Federal Union, but a cumbrous one and full of

anomalies. Next in importance comes the Dominion of Canada

[see CONSTITUTION OF CANADA], which is the only example of a

country forming a Federal Union and at the same time a colony.

Lastly come the Argentine Republic, Mexico, and the States of

Colombia and Venezuela [see CONSTITUTIONS]. This is a very

remarkable list when we consider that never before the present

century did more than two Federal Unions ever coexist, and

that very rarely, and that even those unions were far from

satisfying the true requirements of Federation. Nor is this

all. Throughout the last hundred years we can mark a growing

tendency in countries that have adopted the Federal type of

Government to perfect that Federal type and make it more truly

Federal than before. In the United States of America, for

instance, the Constitution of 1789 was more truly Federal than

the Articles of Confederation, and certainly since the Civil

War we hear less of State Rights, and more of Union. It has

indeed been remarked that the citizens of the United States

have become fond of applying the words 'Nation' and 'National'

to themselves in a manner formerly unknown. We can mark the

same progress in Switzerland. Before 1789, Switzerland formed

a very loose system of Confederated States--in 1815, a

constitution more truly Federal was devised; in 1848, the

Federal Union was more firmly consolidated; and lastly, in

1874, such changes were made in the Constitution that

Switzerland now presents a very fairly perfect example of

Federal Government. In Germany we may trace a similar

movement. In 1815, the Germanic Confederation was formed; but

it was only a system of Confederated States, or what the

Germans call Staatenbund; but after various changes, amongst

others the exclusion of Austria in 1866, it became, in 1871, a

composite State or, in German language, a Bundestaat. Beyond

this, we have to note a further tendency to Federation. In the

year 1886, a Bill passed the Imperial Parliament to permit of

the formation of an Australasian Council for the purposes of

forming the Australasian Colonies into a Federation. Then we

hear of further aspirations for applying the Federal system,

as though there were some peculiar virtue or talismanic effect

about it which rendered it a panacea for all political troubles.

There has, also, been much talk about Imperial Federation.

Lastly, some people think they see a simple solution of the

Irish Question in the application of Federation, particularly

the Canadian form of it, to Ireland."

Federal Government

(Westminster Rev., May, 1888,

pages 573-574).

{1111}

"The federal is one of the oldest forms of government known,

and its adaptability to the largest as well as to the smallest

states is shown in all political formations of late years.

States in the New and in the Old World, all in their

aggregation, alike show ever a stronger tendency to adopt it.

Already all the central states of Europe are

federal--Switzerland, Germany, Austria [see AUSTRIA: A. D.

1866-1867, and 1866-1887]; and if ever the various Sclav

principalities in south-eastern Europe--the Serb, the

Albanian, the Rouman, the Bulgar, and the Czech--are to

combine, it will probably be (as Mr. Freeman so long ago as

1862 remarked) under a federal form,--though whether under

Russian or Austrian auspices, or neither, remains to be seen.

... In the German lands from early ages there has existed an

aggregation of tribes and states, some of them even of

non-German race, each of which preserved for domestic purposes

its own arrangements and laws, but was united with the rest

under one supreme head and central authority as regards its

relation to all external powers. Since 1871 all the states of

Germany 'form an eternal union for the protection of the realm

and the care of the welfare of the German people.' For

legislative purposes, under the Emperor as head, are the two

Houses of Assembly; first, the Upper House of the Federated

States, consisting of 62 members, who represent the individual

States, and thus as the guardian of State rights, answers very

closely to the Senate of the American Union, except that the

number of members coming from each state is not uniform, but

apportioned. ... Each German state has its own local

constitution and home rule for its internal affairs. Generally

there are two chambers, except in some of the smallest states,

the population of which does not much exceed in some cases

that of our larger towns. ... Since 1867 the Austro-Hungarian

monarchy has been a political Siamese twin, of which Austria

is the one body, and Hungary the other; the population of the

Austrian half is 24 millions, and that of Hungary about 16

millions. Each of the two has its own parliament; the

connecting link is the sovereign (whose civil list is raised

half by one and half by the other) and a common army, navy,

and diplomatic service, and another Over-parliament of 120

members, one-half chosen by the legislature of Hungary, and

the other half by the legislature of Austria (the Upper House

of each twin returns twenty, and the Lower of each forty

delegates from their own number, who thus form a kind of Joint

Committee of the Four Houses). The jurisdiction of this

Over-parliament is limited to foreign affairs and war. ... The

western or Austrian part of the twin ... is a federal

government in itself. ... Federated Austria consists of

seventeen distinct states. The German element constitutes 36

per cent. of the inhabitants of these, and the Sclav 57 per

cent. There are a few Magyars, Italians, and Roumanians. Each

of these seventeen states has its own provincial parliament of

one House, partly composed of ex-officio members (the bishops and

archbishops of the Latin and Greek Churches, and the

chancellors of the universities), but chiefly of

representatives chosen by all the inhabitants who pay direct

taxation. Some of these are elected by the landowners, others

by the towns, others by the trade-guilds and boards of

commerce; the representatives of the rural communes, however,

are elected by delegates, as in Prussia. They legislate

concerning all local matters, county taxation, land laws and

farming, education, public worship, and public works. ...

Turning next to the oldest federation in Europe, that of

Switzerland, which with various changes has survived from

1308, though its present constitution dates only from 1874, we

find it now embraces three nationalities--German, French,

Italian. The original nucleus of the State, however, was

German, and even now three-fourths of the population are

German. The twenty-two distinct states are federated under one

president elected annually, and the Federal Assembly of two

chambers. ... Each of the cantons is sovereign and

independent, and has its own local parliament, scarcely any

two being the same, but all based on universal suffrage. Each

canton has its own budget of revenue and expenditure, and its

own public debt."

J. N. Dalton,

The Federal States of the World

(Nineteenth Century, July, 1884).

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT:

Canadian Federation.

"A convention of thirty-three representative men was held in

the autumn of 1864 in the historic city of Quebec, and after a

deliberation of several weeks the result was the unanimous

adoption of a set of seventy-two resolutions embodying the

terms and conditions on which the provinces through their

delegates agreed to a federal union in many respects similar

in its general features to that of the United States

federation, and in accordance with the principles of the

English constitution. These resolutions had to be laid before

the various legislatures and adopted in the shape of addresses

to the queen whose sanction was necessary to embody the wishes

of the provinces in an imperial statute. ... In the early part

of 1867 the imperial parliament, without a division, passed

the statute known as the 'British North America Act, 1867,'

which united in the first instance the province of Canada, now

divided into Ontario and Quebec, with Nova Scotia and New

Brunswick and made provisions for the coming in of the other

provinces of Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, British

Columbia, and the admission of Rupert's Land and the great

North-west. Between 1867 and 1873 the provinces just named,

with the exception of Newfoundland, which has persistently

remained out of the federation, became parts of the Dominion

and the vast Northwest Territory was at last acquired on terms

eminently satisfactory to Canada and a new province of great

promise formed out of that immense region, with a complete

system of parliamentary government. ... When the terms of the

Union came to be arranged between the provinces in 1864, their

conflicting interest had to be carefully considered and a system

adopted which would always enable the Dominion to expand its

limits and bring in new sections until it should embrace the

northern half of the continent, which, as we have just shown,

now constitutes the Dominion. It was soon found, after due

deliberation, that the most feasible plan was a confederation

resting on those principles which experience of the working of

the federation of the United States showed was likely to give

guarantees of elasticity and permanency. The maritime

provinces had been in the enjoyment of an excellent system of

laws and representative institutions for many years, and were

not willing to yield their local autonomy in its entirety. The

people of the province of Quebec, after experience of a union

that lasted from 1841 to 1867, saw decidedly great advantages

to themselves and their institutions in having a provincial

government under their own control. The people of Ontario

recognized equal advantages in having a measure of local

government, apart from French Canadian influences and

interference. The consequence was the adoption of the federal

system, which now, after twenty-six years' experience, we can

truly say appears on the whole well devised and equal to the

local and national requirements of the people."

J. G. Bourinot,

Federal Government in Canada

(Johns Hopkins University Studies, 7th Series,

numbers 10-13), lectures 1-2.

{1112}

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT:

Britannic Federation, Proposed.

"The great change which has taken place in the public mind in

recent years upon the importance to the Empire of maintaining

the colonial connection found expression at a meeting held at

the Westminster Palace Hotel in July 1884, under the guidance

of the Right Hon. W. E. Forster, who occupied the chair. At

that meeting--which was attended by a large number of members

of Parliament of both parties, and representatives of the

colonies--it was moved by the Right Hon. W. H. Smith: 'That,

in order to secure the permanent unity of the Empire, some

form of federation is essential.' That resolution was seconded

by the Earl of Rosebery, and passed unanimously. In November

of the same year the Imperial Federation League was formed to

carry out the objects of that resolution; and the subject has

received considerable attention since. ... I believe all are

agreed that the leading objects of the Imperial Federation

League are to find means by which the colonies, the outlying

portions of the Empire, may have a certain voice and weight

and influence in reference to the foreign policy of this

country, in which they are all deeply interested, and

sometimes more deeply interested than the United Kingdom

itself. In the next place, that measures may be taken by which

all the power and weight and influence that these great

British communities in Australasia, in South Africa, and in

Canada possess shall be brought into operation for the

strengthening and defence of the Empire. The discussion of

these questions has led to a great deal of progress. We have

got rid of a number of fallacies that obtained in the minds of

a good many persons in relation to the means by which those

objects are to be attained. Most people have come to the

conclusion stated by Lord Rosebery at the Mansion House, that

a Parliamentary Federation, if practicable, is so remote, that

during the coming century it is not likely to make any very great

advance. We have also got rid of the fallacy that it was

practicable to have a common tariff throughout the Empire. It

is not, in my opinion, consistent with the constitution either

of England or of the autonomous colonies. The tariff of a

country must rest of necessity mainly with the Government of

the day, and involves such continual change and alteration as

to make uniformity impracticable. ... I regard the time as

near at hand when the great provinces of Australasia will be

confederated under one Government. ... When that has been done

it will be followed, I doubt not, at a very early day, by a

similar course on the part of South Africa, and then we shall

stand in the position of having three great dominions,

commonwealths, or realms, or whatever name is found most

desirable on the part of the people who adopt them--three

great British communities, each under one central and strong

Government. When that is accomplished, the measure which the

Marquis of Lorne has suggested, of having the representatives

of these colonies during the term of their office here in

London, practically Cabinet Ministers, will give to the

Government of England an opportunity of learning in the most

direct and complete manner the views and sentiments of each of

those great British communities in regard to all questions of

foreign policy affecting the colonies. I would suggest that

the representatives of those three great British communities

here in London should be leading members of the Cabinet of the

day of the country they represent, going out of office when

their Government is changed. In that way they would always

represent the country, and necessarily the views of the party

in power in Canada, in Australasia, and in South Africa. That

would involve no constitutional change; it would simply

require that whoever represented those dominions in London

should have a seat in their own Parliament, and be a member of

the Administration."

C. Tupper,

Federating the Empire (Nineteenth Century,

October, 1891).

"Recent expensive wars at the Cape, annexations of groups of

islands in the neighbourhood of Australia, the Fishery and

other questions that have arisen, and may arise, on the North

American continent, have all compelled us to take a review of

our responsibilities in connection with our Colonies and to

consider how far, in the event of trouble, we may rely upon

their assistance to adequately support the commercial

interests of our scattered Empire. It is remarkable that,

although the matters here indicated are slowly coming to the

surface, and have provoked discussion, they have not been

forced upon the public attention suddenly, or by any violent

injury or catastrophe. The review men are taking of our

position, and the debates as to how best we can make our

relationships of standing value, have been the natural outcome

of slowly developing causes and effects. Politicians belonging

to both of the great parties in the State have joined the

Federation League. The leaders have expressly declared that

they do not desire at the present moment to propound any

definite theories, or to push any premature scheme for closer

union of the Empire. The society has been formed for the

purpose of discussing any plans proposed for such objects. The

suggestions actually made have varied in importance from

comprehensive projects of universal commercial union and

common contributions for a world-wide military and naval

organization, to such a trivial proposal as the personal

recognition of distinguished colonists by a nomination to the

peerage."

The Marquis of Lorne,

Imperial Federation,

chapter 1.

{1113}

"Many schemes of federation have been propounded, and many

degrees of federal union are possible. Lord Rosebery has not

gone further, as yet, than the enunciation of a general

principle. 'The federation we aim at (he has said) is the

closest possible union of the various self-governing States

ruled by the British Crown, consistently with that free

development which is the birthright of British subjects all

over the world--the closest union in sympathy, in external

action, and in defence.' ... The representation of the

Colonies in the Privy Council has been viewed with favour,

both by statesmen and by theoretical writers. Earl Grey has

proposed the appointment of a Federal Committee, selected from

the Privy Council, to advise with the Secretary of State for

the Colonies. The idea thus shadowed forth has been worked out

with greater amplitude of detail by Mr. Creswell, in an essay to

which the prize offered by the London Chamber of Commerce was

awarded. 'The Imperial assembly which we want,' says Mr.

Creswell, 'must be an independent body, constitutional in its

origin, representative in its character, and supreme in its

decisions. Such a body we have already in existence in the

Privy Council. Its members are chosen, irrespective of party

considerations, from among the most eminent of those who have

done service to the State. To this body colonists of

distinguished public service could be elected. In constituting

the Imperial Committee of the Privy Council, representation

might be given to every part of the empire, in proportion to

the several contributions to expenditure for Imperial

defence.' The constitution of a great Council of the Empire,

with similar functions in relation to foreign affairs to those

which are exercised in the United States by a Committee of the

Senate, is a step for which public opinion is not yet

prepared. In the meanwhile the utmost consideration is being

paid at the Foreign Office to Colonial feelings and interests.

No commitments or engagements are taken which would not be

approved by Colonial opinion. Another proposal which has been

warmly advocated, especially by the Protectionists, is that

for a customs-union between the Mother-country and the

Colonies. It cannot be said that at the present time proposals

for a customs-union are ripe for settlement, or even for

discussion, at a conference of representatives from all parts

of the empire. The Mother-country has been committed for more

than a generation to the principle of Free-trade. By our

policy of free imports of food and raw materials we have so

cheapened production that we are able to compete successfully

with all comers in the neutral markets of the world. ... It

would be impossible to entertain the idea of a reversal of our

fiscal policy, in however restricted a sense, without careful and

exhaustive inquiry. ... Lord Rosebery has recently declared

that in his opinion it is impracticable to devise a scheme of

representation for the Colonies in the House of Commons and

House of Lords, or in the Privy Council. The scheme of an

Imperial customs-union, ably put forward by Mr. Hoffmeyer at

the last Colonial Conference, he equally rejects. Lord

Rosebery would limit the direct action of the Imperial

Government for the present to conferences, summoned at

frequent intervals. Our first conference was summoned by the

Government at the instance of the Imperial Federation League.

It was attended by men of the highest distinction in the

Colonies. Its deliberations were guided by Lord Knutsford with

admirable tact and judgment; it considered many important

questions of common interest to the different countries of the

empire; it arrived at several important decisions, and it

cleared the air of not a few doubts and delusions. The most

tangible, the most important, and the most satisfactory result

of that conference was the recognition by the Australian

colonies of the necessity for making provision for the naval

defence of their own waters by means of ships, provided by the

Government of the United Kingdom, but maintained by the

Australian Governments. Lord Rosebery holds that the question

of Imperial Federation depends for the present on frequent

conferences. In his speech at the Mansion House he laid down

the conditions essential to the success of conferences in the

future. They must be held periodically and at stated

intervals. The Colonies must send the best men to represent

them. The Government of the Mother-country must invest these

periodical congresses with all the authority and splendour

which it is in their power to give. The task to be

accomplished will not be the production of statutes, but the

production of recommendations. Those who think that a congress

that only meets to report and recommend has but a neutral task

before it, have a very inadequate idea of the influence which

would be exercised by a conference representing a quarter of

the human race, and the immeasurable opulence and power that

have been garnered up by the past centuries of our history. If

we have these conferences, if they are allowed to discuss, as

they must be allowed to discuss, all topics which any parties

to these conferences should recommend to be discussed, Lord

Rosebery cannot apprehend that they would be wanting in

authority or in weight. Lord Salisbury, in his speeches

recently delivered in reply to the Earl of Dunraven in the

House of Lords, and in reply to the deputation of the Imperial

Federation League at the Foreign Office, has properly insisted

on the chief practical obstacle to a policy of frequent

conferences. Attendance at conferences involves grave

inconvenience to Colonial statesmen. ... In appealing to the

Imperial Federation League for some practical suggestions as

to the means by which the several parts of the British Empire

may be more closely knit together, Lord Salisbury threw out

some pregnant hints. To make a united empire both a Zollverein

and a Kriegsverein must be formed. In the existing state of

feeling in the Mother-country a Zollverein would be a serious

difficulty. The reasons have been already stated. A

Kriegsverein was, perhaps, more practicable, and certainly

more, urgent. The space which separates the Colonies from

possible enemies was becoming every year less and less a

protection. We may take concerted action for defence without

the necessity for constitutional changes which it would be

difficult to carry out."

Lord Brassey,

Imperial Federation: An English View

(Nineteenth Century, September., 1891).

"The late Mr. Forster launched under the high-sounding title

of the 'Imperial Federation League,' a scheme by which its

authors proposed to solve all the problems attending the

administration of our colonial empire. From first to last the

authors of this scheme have never condescended on particulars.

'Imperial federation,' we were always told, was the only

specific against the disintegration of the Empire, but as to

what this specific really was, no information was vouchsafed.

... It is very natural that the citizens of a vast but

fragmentary empire, whose territorial atoms (instead of

forming, like those of the United States, a 'ring-fence'

domain) are scattered over the surface of the globe, should

cast about for some artificial links to bind together the

colonies we have planted, and 'the thousand tribes nourished

on strange religions and lawless slaveries' which we have

gathered under our rule.

{1114}

This anxiety has been naturally augmented by a chronic

agitation for the abandonment of all colonies as expensive and

useless. For though there may be little to boast of in the

fact that Great Britain has in the course of less than three

centuries contrived by war, diplomacy, and adventure, to annex

about a fifth of the globe, it can hardly be expected that she

should relinquish without an effort even the nominal sway she

still holds over her colonial empire. Hence it comes to pass

that any scheme which seems to supply the needed links is

caught up by those who, possessing slight acquaintance with

the past history or the present aspirations of our colonists,

are simply looking out for some new contrivance by which they

may hope that an enduring bond of union may be provided.

'Imperial federation' is the last new 'notion' which has

cropped up in pursuance of this object. ... Some clue ... to

its objects and aims may be gained by a reference to the

earliest exposition by Mr. Forster of his motives contained in

his answer five years ago to the question, 'Why was the League

formed at all?' 'For this reason,' says Mr. Forster, 'because

in giving self-government to our colonies we have introduced a

principle which must eventually shake off from Great Britain,

Greater Britain, and divide it into separate states, which

must, in short, dissolve the union unless counteracting

measures be taken to preserve it.' Believing, as we do, that

it has only been by conceding to our larger groups of colonies

absolute powers of self-government that we have retained them

at all, and that the secret of our protracted empire lies in

the fact of this abandonment of central arbitrary power, the

retention of which has caused the collapse of all the European

empires which preceded us in the path of colonisation, we are

bound to enter our emphatic protest against an assumption so

utterly erroneous as that propounded by Mr. Forster. So far

from believing that the permanent union of the British Empire

is to be secured by 'measures which may counteract the

workings of colonial self-government,' we are convinced that

the only safety for our Empire lies in the unfettered action

of that self-government which we have ourselves granted to our

colonies. It would almost seem that for Lord Rosebery and his

fellow workers the history of the colonial empires of

Portugal, Spain, Holland, and France had been written in vain.

For if we ask why these colonial empires have dwindled and

decayed, the answer is simply because that self-government

which is the life of British colonies was never granted to

their dependencies. There was a time when one hundred and

fifty sovereign princes paid tribute to the treasury of

Lisbon. For two hundred years, more than half the South

American continent was an appanage of Spain. Ceylon, the Cape,

Guiana, and a vast cluster of trade factories in the East were

at the close of the seventeenth century colonies of Holland;

while half North America, comprising the vast and fertile

valleys of the St. Lawrence, the Mississippi, and the Ohio,

obeyed, a little more than a century ago, the sceptre of

France. Neither Portugal, nor Spain, nor Holland, nor France,

has lacked able rulers or statesmen, but the colonial empire

of all these states has crumbled and decayed. The exceptional

position of Great Britain in this respect can only be ascribed

to the relinquishment of all the advantages, political and

commercial, ordinarily presumed to result to dominant states

from the possession of dependencies. ... The romantic dreams

of the Imperial Federation League were in fact dissipated

beforehand by the irrevocable grant of independent

legislatures to all our most important colonies, and Lord

Rosebery may rest assured that, charm he never so wisely, they

will not listen to his blandishments at the cost of one iota

of the political privileges already conferred on them."

Imperial Federation

(Edinburgh Review, July, 1889).

"'Britannic Confederation' is defined to be an union of 'the

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, British North

America, 'British South Africa, and Australasia.' The West

Indies and one or two other British Dependencies seem here to

be shut out; but, at any rate, with this definition we at

least know where we are. The terms of the union we are not

told; but, as the word 'confederation' is used, I conceive

that they are meant to be strictly federal. That is to say,

first of all, the Parliament of the United Kingdom will give

up its right to legislate for British North America, British

South Africa, and Australasia. Then the United Kingdom,

British North America, British South Africa and Australasia

will enter into a federal relation with one another. They may

enter either as single members (States or Cantons) 'or as

groups of members. That is, Great Britain and Ireland might

enter as a single State of the Confederation, or England,

Scotland, Ireland, Wales--or possibly smaller divisions

again--might enter as separate States. Or Great Britain,

Australia, Canada, &c., might enter as themselves Leagues,

members of a greater League, as in the old state of things in

Graubünden. I am not arguing for or against any of these

arrangements. I am only stating them as possible. But whatever

the units are to be--Great Britain and Australia, England and

Victoria, or anything larger or smaller--if the confederation

is to be a real one, each State must keep some powers to

itself, and must yield some powers to a central body. That

Central body, in which all the States must be represented in

some way or other, will naturally deal with all international

matters, all matters that concern the Britannic Confederation

as a whole. The legislatures of Great Britain and Australia,

England and Victoria, or whatever the units fixed on may be,

will deal only with the internal affairs of those several

cantons. Now such a scheme as this is theoretically possible.

That is, it involves no contradiction in terms, as the talk

about Imperial Federation does. It is purely federal; there is

nothing 'imperial' about it. It is simply applying to certain

political communities a process which has been actually gone

through by certain other political communities. It is

proposing to reconstruct a certain political constitution

after the model of certain other political constitutions which

are in actual working. It is therefore something better than

mere talk and theory. But, because it is theoretically

possible, it does not follow that it is practically possible,

that is, that it is possible in this particular case. ... Of

the federations existing at this time the two chief are

Switzerland and the United States of America. They differ in

this point, that one is very large and the other very small;

they agree in this, that the territory of both is continuous.

But the proposed Britannic Confederation will be scattered,

scattered over every part of the world.

{1115}

I know of no example in any age of a scattered confederation,

a scattered Bundesstaat. The Hanse Towns were not a

Bundesstaat; they were hardly a Staatenbund. Of the probable

working of such a body as that which is now proposed the

experience of history can teach us nothing; we can only guess

what may be likely. The Britannic Confederation will have its

federal congress sitting somewhere, perhaps at Westminster,

perhaps at Melbourne, perhaps at some Washington called

specially into being at some point more central than either.

... For a while their representatives will think it grand to

sit at Westminster; presently, as the spirit of equality

grows, they are not unlikely to ask for some more central

place; they may even refuse to stir out of their own

territory. That is to say, they will find that the sentiment

of national unity, which they undoubtedly have in no small

measure, needs some physical and some political basis to stand

on. It is hard to believe that States which are united only by

a sentiment, which have so much, both political and physical,

to keep them asunder, will be kept together for ever by a

sentiment only. And we must further remember that that

sentiment is a sentiment for the mother-country, and not for

one another. ... Canada and Australia care a great deal for

Great Britain; we may doubt whether, apart from Great Britain,

Canada and Australia care very much for one another. There may

be American States which care yet less for one another; but in

their case mere continuity produces a crowd of interests and

relations common to all. We may doubt whether the

confederation of States so distant as the existing colonies of

Great Britain, whether the bringing them into closer relations

with one another as well as with Great Britain, will at all tend

to the advance of a common national unity among them. We may

doubt whether it will not be likely to bring out some hidden

tendencies to disunion among them. ... In the scattered

confederation all questions and parties are likely to be

local. It is hard to see what will be the materials for the

formation of great national parties among such scattered

elements."

E. A. Freeman,

The Physical and Political Bases of National Unity

(Britannic Confederation, edited by A. S. White).

"I have the greatest respect for the aspirations of the

Imperial Federationists, and myself most earnestly desire the

moral unity of our race and its partnership in achievement and

grandeur. But an attempt at formal Federation, such as is now

proposed, would in the first place exclude the people of the

United States, who form the largest portion of the

English-speaking race, and in the second place it would split

us all to pieces. It would, I am persuaded, call into play

centrifugal forces against which the centripetal forces could

not contend for an hour. What interests of the class with

which a Federal Parliament would deal have Australia and

Canada in common? What enemy has either of them whom the other

would be inclined to fight? Australia, it seems, looks forward

to a struggle with the Chinese for ascendency in that quarter

of the globe. Canada cares no more about a struggle between

the Australians and the Chinese at the other extremity of the

globe than the Australians would care about a dispute between

Canada and her neighbours in the United States respecting

Canadian boundaries or the Fisheries Question. The

circumstances of the two groups of colonies, to which their

policy must conform, are totally different. Australia lies in

an ocean by herself: Canada is territorially interlocked and

commercially bound up, as well as socially almost fused, with

the great mass of English-speaking population which occupies

the larger portion of her continent. Australia again is

entirely British. Canada has in her midst a great block of

French population, constituting a distinct nationality, which

instead of being absorbed is daily growing in intensity; and

she would practically be unable to take part in any enterprise

or support any policy, especially any policy entailing an

increase of taxation, to which the French Canadians were

opposed. Of getting Canada to contribute out of her own

resources to wars or to the maintenance of armaments, for the

objects of British diplomacy in Europe or in the East, no one

who knows the Canadians can imagine that there would be the

slightest hope. The very suggestion, at the time of the Soudan

Expedition, called forth emphatic protests on all sides. The

only results of an experiment in formal Federation, I repeat,

would be repudiation of Federal demands, estrangement and

dissolution."

Goldwin Smith,

Straining the Silken Thread

(Macmillan's Magazine. August, 1888).

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT:

European Federation.

"While it is obvious that Imperial Federation of the British

Empire would cover many of the defects in our relationship

with the colonies, it is equally apparent that it is open to

the fatal objection of merely making us a more formidable

factor in the field of international anarchy. Suppose the

colonies undertook to share equitably the great cost of

imperial defence in the present state of things throughout

Europe--and that is a very large assumption--England would be

entirely dependent, in case of war, for the supply of food on

the fleet, any accident to which would place us at the enemy's

mercy. Even without actual hostilities, however, our

additional strength would cause another increase of foreign

armaments to meet the case of war with us. This process has

taken place invariably on the increase of armaments of any

European state, and may be taken to be as certain as that the

sun will rise to-morrow. But all the benefits accruing from

Imperial Federation may be secured by European Federation,

plus a reduction of military liability, which Imperial

Federation would not only not reduce, but increase. There is

nothing to prevent the self-governing colonies from joining in

a European Federation, and thus enlarging the basis of that

institution enormously, and cutting off in a corresponding

degree the chance of an outbreak of violence in another

direction, which could not fail to have serious consequences

to the colonies at any rate."

C. D. Farquharson,

Federation, the Polity of the Future

(Westminster Review, December, 1891),

pages 602-603.

----------FEDERAL GOVERNMENT: End----------

FEDERALIST, The.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1787-1789.

FEDERALISTS; The party of the.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1789-1792;

also 1812; and 1814 (DECEMBER): THE HARTFORD CONVENTION.

FEDS.--CONFEDS.

See BOYS IN BLUE.

FEE.

See FEUDALISM.

FEHDERECHT.

The right of private warfare, or diffidation,

exercised in mediæval Germany.

See LANDDFRIEDE.

{1116}

FEHRBELLIN, Battle of (1675).

See BRANDENBURG: A. D. 1640-1688;

and SCANDINAVIAN STATES (SWEDEN): A. D. 1644-1697.

FEIS OF TARA.

See TARA.

FELICIAN HERESY.

See ADOPTIANISM.

FELIX V., Pope, A. D. 1439-1449

Elected by the Council of Basle.

FENIAN MOVEMENT, The.

See IRELAND: A. D. 1858-1867;

and CANADA: A. D. 1866-1871.

FENIAN: Origin of the Name.

An Irish poem of the ninth century called the Duan Eireannach,

or Poem of Ireland, preserves a mythical story of the origin

of the Irish people, according to which they sprang from one

Fenius Farsaidh who came out of Scythia. Nel, or Niul, the son

of Fenius, travelled into Egypt and married Scota, a daughter

of Forann (Pharaoh). "Niul had a son named Gaedhuil Glas, or

Green Gael; and we are told that it is from him the Irish are

called Gaedhil (Gael) or Gadelians, while from his mother is

derived the name of Scoti, or Scots, and from Fenius that of

Feni or Fenians."

M. Haverty,

History of Ireland,

page 10.

From this legend was derived the name of the Fenian

Brotherhood, organized in Ireland and America for the

liberation of the former from British rule, and which played a

disturbing but unsuccessful part in Irish affairs from about

1865 to 1871.

FEODORE.

See THEODORE.

FEODUM.

See FEUDALISM.

FEOF.

See FEUDALISM.

FEORM FULTUM.

See FERM.

FERDINAND,

King of Portugal, A. D. 1367-1383.

Ferdinand 1., Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary and

Bohemia, 1835-1848.

Ferdinand I.,

Germanic Emperor, 1558-1564;

Archduke of Austria,

and King of Hungary and Bohemia, 1526-1564;

King of the Romans, 1531-1558.

Ferdinand I., King of Aragon and Sicily, 1412-1416.

Ferdinand I.,

King of Castile, 1035-1065;

King of Leon, 1037-1065.

Ferdinand I., King of Naples, 1458-1494.

Ferdinand II., Germanic Emperor and King of Bohemia and

Hungary, 1619-1637.

Ferdinand II.,

King of Aragon, 1479-1516;

V. of Castile (King-Consort of Isabella of Castile and

Regent), 1474-1516;

II. of Sicily, 1479-1516; and III. of Naples, 1503-1516.

Ferdinand II., King of Leon, 1157-1188.

Ferdinand II., King of Naples, 1495-1496.

Ferdinand II., called Bomba,

King of the Two Sicilies, 1830-1859.

Ferdinand III., Germanic Emperor, and King of Hungary and

Bohemia, 1637-1657.

Ferdinand III.,

King of Castile, 1217-1230;

King of Leon and Castile, united, 1230-1252.

Ferdinand IV., King of Leon and Castile, 1295-1312.

Ferdinand IV.,

King of Naples,

and I. of the Two Sicilies, 1759-1806;

and 1815-1825.

Ferdinand VI., King of Spain, 1746-1759.

Ferdinand VII., King of Spain, 1808; and 1814-1833.

FERIÆ.

See LUDI.

FERM.--FIRMA.--FARM.

"A sort of composition for all the profits arising to the king

[in England, Norman period] from his ancient claims on the

land and from the judicial proceedings of the shire-moot; the

rent of detached pieces of demesne land, the remnants of the

ancient folk-land; the payments due from corporate bodies and

individuals for the primitive gifts, the offerings made in

kind, or the hospitality--the feorm-fultum--which the kings

had a right to exact from their subjects, and which were

before the time of Domesday generally commuted for money; the

fines, or a portion of the fines, paid in the ordinary process

of the county courts, and other small miscellaneous incidents.

These had been, soon after the composition of Domesday,

estimated at a fixed sum, which was regarded as a sort of rent

or composition at which the county was let to the sheriff and

recorded in the 'Rotulus Exactorious'; for this, under the

name of ferm, he answered annually; if his receipts were in

excess, he retained the balance as his lawful profit, the

wages of his service; if the proceeds fell below the ferm, he

had to pay the difference from his own purse. ... The farm,

ferm, or firma, the rent or composition for the ancient

feorm-fultum, or provision payable in kind to the Anglo-Saxon

kings. The history of the word in its French form would be

interesting. The use of the word for a pecuniary payment is

traced long before the Norman Conquest."

W. Stubbs,

Constitutional History of England,

chapter 11, section 126, and note.

FERNANDO.

See FERDINAND.

FEROZESHUR, Battle of (1845)

See INDIA: A. D. 1845-1849.

FERRARA: The House of Este.

See ESTE.

FERRARA: A. D. 1275.

Sovereignty of the Pope confirmed by Rodolph of Hapsburg.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1273-1308.

FERRARA: A. D. 1597.

Annexation to the states of the Church.

End of the house of Este.

Decay of the city and duchy.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1597.

FERRARA: A. D. 1797.

Joined to the Cispadine Republic.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1796-1797 (OCTOBER-APRIL).

----------FERRARA: End----------

FERRY BRIDGE, Battle of (1461).

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1455-1471,

FETIALES.--FECIALES.

"The duties of the feciales, or fetiales [among the Romans].

extended over every branch of international law. They gave

advice on all matters of peace or war, and the conclusion of

treaties and alliances. ... They fulfilled the same functions

as heralds, and, as such, were frequently entrusted with

important communications. They were also sent on regular

embassies. To them was entrusted the reception and

entertainment of foreign envoys. They were required to decide

on the justice of a war about to commence, and to proclaim and

consecrate it according to certain established formalities.

... The College of Feciales consisted of nearly twenty

members, with a president, who was called Pater Patratus,

because it was necessary that he should have both father and

children living, that he might be supposed to take greater

interest in the welfare of the State, and look backwards as

well as forwards. ... The name of Feciales ... still existed

under the emperors, as well as that of Pater Patratus, though

only as a title of honour, while the institution itself was

for ever annihilated; and, after the reign of Tiberius, we

cannot find any trace of it."

E. C. G. Murray,

Embassies and Foreign Courts,

pages 8-10.

See, also, AUGURS.

{1117}

FEUDAL TENURES.

"After the feudal system of tenure had been fully established,

all lands were held subject to certain additional obligations,

which were due either to the King (not as sovereign, but as

feudal lord) from the original grantees, called

tenants-in-chief (tenentes in capite), or to the

tenants-in-chief themselves from their under tenants. Of these

obligations the most honourable was that of knight-service.

This was the tenure by which the King granted out fiefs to his

followers, and by which they in turn provided for their own

military retainers. The lands of the bishops and dignified

ecclesiastics, and of most of the religious foundations, were

also held by this tenure. A few exceptions only were made in

favour of lands which had been immemorially held in

frankalmoign, or free-alms. On the grant of a fief, the tenant

was publicly invested with the land by a symbolical or actual

delivery, termed livery of seisin. He then did homage, so

called from the words used in the ceremony: 'Je deveigne votre

homme' ['I become your man']. ... In the case of a sub-tenant

(vavassor), his oath of fealty was guarded by a reservation of

the faith due to his sovereign lord the King. For every

portion of land of the annual value of £20, which constituted

a knight's fee [in England], the tenant was bound, whenever

required, to render the services of a knight properly armed

and accoutred, to serve in the field forty days at his own

expense. ... Tenure by knight-service was also subject to

several other incidents of a burdensome character. ... There

was a species of tenancy in chief by Grand Serjeanty, ...

whereby the tenant was bound, instead of serving the King

generally in his wars, to do some special service in his own

proper person, as to carry the King's banner or lance, or to

be his champion, butler, or other officer at his coronation.

... Grants of land were also made by the King to his inferior

followers and personal attendants, to be held by meaner

services. ... Hence, probably, arose tenure by Petit

Serjeanty, though later on we find that term restricted to

tenure 'in capite' by the service of rendering yearly some

implement of war to the King. ... Tenure in Free Socage (which

still subsists under the modern denomination of Freehold, and

may be regarded as the representative of the primitive alodial

ownership) denotes, in its most general and extensive

signification, a tenure by any certain and determinate

service, as to pay a fixed money rent, or to plough the lord's

land for a fixed number of days in the year. ... Tenure in

Burgage was a kind of town socage. It applied to tenements in

any ancient borough, held by the burgesses, of the King or

other lord, by fixed rents or services. ... This tenure, which

still subsists, is subject to a variety of local customs, the

most remarkable of which is that of borough-English, by which

the burgage tenement descends to the youngest instead of to

the eldest son. Gavelkind is almost confined to the county of

Kent. ... The lands are held by suit of court and fealty, a

service in its nature certain. The tenant in Gavelkind

retained many of the properties of alodial ownership: his

lands were devisable by will; in case of intestacy they

descended to all his sons equally; they were not liable to

escheat for felony ... and they could be aliened by the tenant

at the age of fifteen. Below Free Socage was the tenure in

Villeinage, by which the agricultural labourers, both free and

servile, held the land which was to them in lieu of money

wages."

T. P. Taswell-Langmead,

English Constitutional History,

pages 58-65.

FEUDALISM.

"Feudalism, the comprehensive idea which includes the whole

governmental policy of the French kingdom, was of distinctly

Frank growth. The principle which underlies it may be

universal; but the historic development of it with which the

constitutional history of Europe is concerned may be traced

step by step under Frank influence, from its first appearance

on the conquered soil of Roman Gaul to its full development in

the jurisprudence of the Middle Ages. In the form which it has

reached at the Norman Conquest, it may be described as a

complete organisation of society through the medium of land

tenure, in which from the king down to the lowest landowner

all are bound together by obligation of service and defence:

the lord to protect his vassal, the vassal to do service to

his lord; the defence and service being based on and regulated

by the nature and extent of the land held by the one of the

other. In those states which have reached the territorial

stage of development, the rights of defence and service are

supplemented by the right of jurisdiction. The lord judges as

well as defends his vassal; the vassal does suit as well as

service to his lord. In states in which feudal government has

reached its utmost growth, the political, financial, judicial,

every branch of public administration, is regulated by the

same conditions. The central authority is a mere shadow of a

name. This institution had grown up from two great

sources--the beneficium, and the practice of

commendation,--and had been specially fostered on Gallic soil

by the existence of a subject population which admitted of any

amount of extension in the methods of dependence. The

beneficiary system originated partly in gifts of land made by

the kings out of their own estates to their kinsmen and

servants, with a special undertaking to be faithful; partly in

the surrender by landowners of their estates to churches or

powerful men, to be received back again and held by them as

tenants for rent or service. By the latter arrangement the

weaker man obtained the protection of the stronger, and he who

felt himself insecure placed his title under the defence of

the church. By the practice of commendation, on the other

hand, the inferior put himself under the personal care of a

lord, but without altering his title or divesting himself of

his right to his estate; he became a vassal and did homage.

... The union of the beneficiary tie with that of commendation

completed the idea of feudal obligation; the two-fold hold on

the land, that of the lord and that of the vassal, was

supplemented by the two-fold engagement, that of the lord to

defend, and that of the vassal to be faithful. A third

ingredient was supplied by the grants of immunity by which in

the Frank empire, as in England, the possession of land was

united with the right of judicature: the dwellers on a feudal

property were placed under the tribunal of the lord, and the

rights which had belonged to the nation or to its chosen head

were devolved upon the receiver of a fief. The rapid spread of

the system thus originated, and the assimilation of all other

tenures to it, may be regarded as the work of the tenth

century; but as early as A. D. 877 Charles the Bald recognised

the hereditary character of all benefices; and from that year

the growth of strictly feudal jurisprudence may be held to

date. The system testifies to the country and causes of its

birth.

{1118}

The beneficium is partly of Roman, partly of German origin.

... Commendation on the other hand may have had a Gallic or

Celtic origin, and an analogy only with the Roman clientship.

... The word feudum, fief, or fee, is derived from the German

word for cattle (Gothic 'faihu'; Old High German 'fihu'; Old

Saxon 'fehu'; Anglo-Saxon 'feoh'); the secondary meaning being

goods, especially money: hence property in general. The letter

d is perhaps a mere insertion for sound's sake; but it

has been interpreted as part of a second root, od, also

meaning property, in which case the first syllable has a third

meaning, that of fee or reward, and the whole word means

property given by way of reward for service. But this is

improbable. ... The word feodum is not found earlier than the

close of the ninth century."

W. Stubbs,

Constitutional History of England,

chapter 9, section 93, and notes (volume 1).

"The regular machinery and systematic establishment of feuds,

in fact, may be considered as almost confined to the dominions

of Charlemagne, and to those countries which afterwards

derived it from thence. In England it can hardly be thought to

have existed in a complete state, before the Conquest.

Scotland, it is supposed, borrowed it soon after from her

neighbour. The Lombards of Benevento had introduced feudal

customs into the Neapolitan provinces, which the Norman

conquerors afterwards perfected. Feudal tenures were so

general in the kingdom of Aragon, that I reckon it among the

monarchies which were founded upon that basis. Charlemagne's

empire, it must be remembered, extended as far as the Ebro.

But in Castile and Portugal they were very rare, and certainly

could produce no political effect. Benefices for life were

sometimes granted in the kingdoms of Denmark and Bohemia.

Neither of these, however, nor Sweden, nor Hungary, come under

the description of countries influenced by the feudal system."

H. Hallam,

The Middle Ages,

chapter 2.

"Hardly any point in the whole history of European

institutions has been the subject of so violent controversy as

this of the origin of Feudalism. It was formerly supposed that

Feudalism was only a somewhat more developed form of the

ancient Germanic 'following' transplanted to Roman soil, but a

more critical examination of the documents of the early period

soon showed that there was more to it than this. It became

evident that Feudalism was not so simple as had at first

appeared. ... When, however, scholars had come to see this,

they then found themselves at variance upon the details of the

process by which the popular monarchical arrangements of the

early Franks were converted into the aristocratic forms of the

later Feudalism. While they agreed upon the essential fact

that the Germans, at the time of their emergence from their

original seats and their occupation of the Roman lands, were

not mere wandering groups of freebooters, as the earlier

school had represented them, but well-organized nations, with

a very distinct sense of political organization, they found

themselves hopelessly divided on the question how this

national life had, in the course of time, come to assume forms

so very different from those of the primitive German. The

first person to represent what we may call the modern view of

the feudal system was Georg Waitz, in the first edition of his

History of the German Constitution, in the years 1844-47.

Waitz presented the thing as a gradual growth during several

centuries, the various elements of which it was composed

growing up side by side without definite chronological

sequence. This view was met by Paul Roth in his History of the

Institution of the Benefice, in the year 1850. He maintained that

royal benefices were unknown to the Merovingian Franks, and

that they were an innovation of the earliest Carolingians.

They were, so he believed, made possible by a grand

confiscation of the lands of the Church, not by Charles

Martel, as the earlier writers had believed, but by his sons,

Pippin and Karlmann. The first book of Roth was followed in

the year 1863 by another on Feudalism and the Relation of the

Subject to the State, (Feudalität und Unterthanenverband), in

which he attempted to show that the direct subjection of the

individual to the government was not a strange idea to the

early German, but that it pervaded all forms of Germanic life

down to the Carolingian times, and that therefore the feudal

relation was a something entirely new, a break in the practice

of the Germans. In the years 1880-1885 appeared a new edition

of Waitz's History of the German Constitution, in which, after

acknowledging the great services rendered by Roth to the cause of

learning, he declares himself unable to give up his former

point of view, and brings new evidence in support of it. Thus

for more than thirty years this question has been before the

world of scholars, and may be regarded as being quite as far

from a settlement as ever."

E. Emerton,

An Introduction to the Study of the Middle Ages,

page 236 (foot-note).

ALSO IN:

F. P. Guizot,

History of Civilization:

Second Course, lecture 2.

See, also, FRANCE: A. D. 987-1327.

FEUILLANTS, Club and Party of the.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1790, and 1791 (OCTOBER).

FEZ:

Founding of the city and kingdom.

See EDRISITES.

FIANNA EIRINN.

The ancient militia of Erin,

famous in old Irish romance and song.

T. Moore,

History of Ireland,

volume 1, chapter 7.

FIDENÆ.

An ancient city on the left bank of the Tiber, only five miles

from Rome, originally Latin, but afterwards containing a mixed

Latin and Etruscan population. It was at war with Rome until

the latter destroyed it, B. C. 426.

W. Ihne,

History of Rome,

book 2, chapter 15.

FIEFS.

See FEUDAL TENURES;

and FEUDALISM.

FIELD OF LIES, The.

Ludwig, or Louis, the Pious, son and successor of Charlemagne,

was a man of gentle character, and good intentions--too

amiable and too honest in his virtues for the commanding of a

great empire in times so rude. He lost the control of his

state, and his family, alike. His own sons headed a succession

of revolts against his authority. The second of these

insurrections occurred in the year 833. Father and sons

confronted one another with hostile armies, on the plain of

Rothfeld, not far from Colmar in Alsace. Intrigue instead of

battle settled the controversy, for the time being. The

adherents of the old emperor were all enticed away from him,

and he found himself wholly deserted and alone. To signify the

treacherous methods by which this defection was brought about,

the "Rothfeld" (Red-field) on which it occurred received the

name of "Lügenfeld," or Field of Lies.

J. C. L. de Sismondi,

The French under the Carlovingians;

translated by Bellingham, chapter 7.

{1119}

FIELD OF THE CLOTH OF GOLD, The.

The place of the famous meeting of Henry VIII. of England with

Francis I. of France, which took place in the summer of 1520

[see FRANCE: A. D. 1520-1523], is notable in history, from the

magnificence of the preparations made for it, as The Field of

the Cloth of Gold. It was at Guisnes, or between Guisnes and

Arde, near Calais (then English territory). "Guisnes and its

castle offered little attraction, and if possible less

accommodation, to the gay throng now to be gathered within its

walls. ... But on the castle green, within the limits of a few

weeks, and in the face of great difficulties, the English

artists of that day contrived a summer palace, more like a

vision of romance, the creation of some fairy dream (if the

accounts of eye-witnesses of all classes may be trusted), than

the dull every-day reality of clay-born bricks and mortar. No

'palace of art' in these beclouded climates of the West ever

so truly deserved its name. ... The palace was an exact square

of 328 feet. It was pierced on every side with oriel windows

and clerestories curiously glazed, the mullions and posts of

which were overlaid with gold. An embattled gate, ornamented

on both sides with statues representing men in various

attitudes of war, and flanked by an embattled tower, guarded

the entrance. From this gate to the entrance of the palace

arose in long ascent a sloping daïs or hall-pace, along which

were grouped 'images of sore and terrible countenances,' in

armour of argentine or bright metal. At the entrance, under an

embowed landing place, facing the great doors, stood 'antique'

(classical) figures girt with olive branches. The passages,

the roofs of the galleries from place to place and from

chamber to chamber, were ceiled and covered with white silk,

fluted and embowed with silken hanging of divers colours and

braided cloths, 'which showed like bullions of fine burnished

gold.' The roofs of the chambers were studded with roses, set

in lozenges, and diapered on a ground of fine gold. Panels

enriched with antique carving and gilt bosses covered the

spaces between the windows; whilst all along the corridors and

from every window hung tapestry of silk and gold, embroidered

with figures. ... To the palace was attached a spacious

chapel, still more sumptuously adorned. Its altars were hung

with cloth of gold tissue embroidered with pearls; cloth of

gold covered the walls and desks. ... Outside the palace gate,

on the greensward, stood a gilt fountain, of antique

workmanship, with a statue of Bacchus 'birlying the wine.'

Three runlets, fed by secret conduits hid beneath the earth,

spouted claret, hypocras, and water into as many silver cups,

to quench the thirst of all comers. ... In long array, in the

plain beyond, 2,800 tents stretched their white canvas before

the eyes of the spectator, gay with the pennons, badges, and

devices of the various occupants; whilst miscellaneous

followers, in tens of thousands, attracted by profit or the

novelty of the scene, camped on the grass and filled the

surrounding slopes, in spite of the severity of

provost-marshal and reiterated threats of mutilation and

chastisement. ... From the 4th of June, when Henry first

entered Guisnes, the festivities continued with unabated

splendour for twenty days. ... The two kings parted on the

best of terms, as the world thought."

J. S. Brewer,

Reign of Henry VIII.,

chapter 12.

ALSO IN:

Lady Jackson,

The Court of France in the 16th Century,

volume 1, chapters 11-12.

Miss Pardoe,

The Court and Reign of Francis I.,

volume 1, chapter 14.

FIESCO, Conspiracy of.

See GENOA: A. D. 1528-1559.

FIESOLE.

See FLORENCE: ORIGIN AND NAME.

FIFTEEN, The (Jacobite Rebellion),

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1715.

FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT, The.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1869-1870.

FIFTH MONARCHY MEN.

One of the most extremely fanatical of the politico-religious

sects or factions which rose in England during the

commonwealth and the Protectoral reign of Cromwell, was that

of the so-called Fifth Monarchy Men, of whom Major-General

Harrison was the chief. Their belief is thus described by

Carlyle: "The common mode of treating Universal History, ...

not yet entirely fallen obsolete in this country, though it

has been abandoned with much ridicule everywhere else for half

a century now, was to group the Aggregate Transactions of the

Human Species into Four Monarchies: the Assyrian Monarchy of

Nebuchadnezzar and Company; the Persian of Cyrus and ditto;

the Greek of Alexander; and lastly the Roman. These I think

were they; but am no great authority on the subject. Under the

dregs of this last, or Roman Empire, which is maintained yet by

express name in Germany, 'Das heilige Römische Reich,' we poor

moderns still live. But now say Major-General Harrison and a

number of men, founding on Bible Prophecies, Now shall be a

Fifth Monarchy, by far the blessedest and the only real

one,--the Monarchy of Jesus Christ, his Saints reigning for

Him here on Earth,--if not He himself, which is probable or

possible,--for a thousand years, &c., &c.--O Heavens, there

are tears for human destiny; and immortal Hope itself is

beautiful because it is steeped in Sorrow, and foolish Desire

lies vanquished under its feet! They who merely laugh at

Harrison take but a small portion of his meaning with them."

T. Carlyle,

Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches,

part 8, speech 2.

The Fifth Monarchy fanaticism, sternly repressed by Oliver

Cromwell, gave some signs of turbulence during Richard

Cromwell's protectorate, and broke out in a mad way the year

after the Restoration. The attempted insurrection in London

was headed by one Venner, and was called Venner's

Insurrection. It was easily put down. "It came as the expiring

flash of a fanatical creed, which had blended itself with

Puritanism, greatly to the detriment of the latter; and, dying

out rather slowly, it left behind the quiet element of

Millenarianism."

J. Stoughton,

History of Religion in England,

volume 3, chapter 4.

ALSO IN:

D. Masson,

Life of John Milton,

volume 5, page 16.

"FIFTY-FOUR FORTY OR FIGHT."

See OREGON: A. D. 1844-1846.

FILI.

A class of poets among the early Irish, who practiced

originally certain rites of incantation. Their art was called

Filidecht. "The bards, who recited poems and stories, formed

at first a distinct branch from the Fili. According as the

true Filidecht fell into desuetude, and the Fili became simply

a poet, the two orders practically coalesced and the names

Fili and bard became synonymous. ... In Pagan times and during

the Middle Ages the Irish bards, like the Gaulish ones,

accompanied their recitation of poems on a stringed instrument

called a crut. ... The bard was therefore to the Fili, or

poet, what the Jogler was to the Troubadour."

W. K. Sullivan,

Article, Celtic Literature,

Encyclopedia Brittanica.

{1120}

FILIBUSTER.

"The difference between a filibuster and a freebooter is one

of ends rather than of means. Some authorities say that the

words have a common etymology; but others, including

Charlevoix, maintain that the filibuster derived his name from

his original occupation, that of a cruiser in a 'flibote,' or

'Vly-boat,' first used on the river Vly, in Holland. Yet

another writer says that the name was first given to the

gallant followers of Dominique de Gourgues, who sailed from

Finisterre, or Finibuster, in France, on the famous expedition

against Fort Caroline in 1567 [see FLORIDA: A. D. 1567-1568].

The name, whatever its origin, was long current in the Spanish

as 'filibustero' before it became adopted into the English. So

adopted, it has been used to describe a type of adventurer who

occupied a curious place in American history during the decade

from 1850 to 1860."

J. J. Roche,

The Story of the Filibusters,

chapter 1.

See, also,

AMERICA: A: D. 1639-1700.

FILIBUSTERING EXPEDITIONS OF LOPEZ AND WALKER.

See CUBA: A. D. 1845-1860;

and NICARAGUA: A. D. 1855-1860.

FILIOQUE CONTROVERSY, The.

"The Council of Toledo, held under King Reccared, A. D. 589,

at which the Visigothic Church of Spain formally abjured

Arianism and adopted the orthodox faith, put forth a version

of the great creed of Nicæa in which they had interpolated an

additional clause, which stated that the Holy Ghost proceeded

from the Father 'and from the Son' (Filioque). Under what

influence the council took upon itself to make an addition to

the creed of the universal Church is unknown. It is probable

that the motive of the addition was to make a stronger protest

against the Arian denial of the co-equal Godhead of the Son.

The Spanish Church naturally took a special interest in the

addition it had made to the symbol of Nicæa, and sustained it

in subsequent councils. ... The Frankish Church seems to have

early adopted it from their Spanish neighbours. ... The

question was brought before a council held at Aix in A. D.

809. ... The council formally approved of the addition to the

creed, and Charles [Charlemagne] sent two bishops and the

abbot of Corbie to Rome to request the pope's concurrence in

the decision. Leo, at a conference with the envoys, expressed

his agreement with the doctrine, but strongly opposed its

insertion into the creed. ... Notwithstanding the pope's

protest, the addition was adopted throughout the Frankish

Empire. When the Emperor Henry V. was crowned at Rome, A. D.

1014, he induced Pope Benedict VIII. to allow the creed with

the filioque to be chanted after the Gospel at High Mass; so

it came to be generally used in Rome; and at length Pope

Nicholas I. insisted on its adoption throughout the West. At a

later period the controversy was revived, and it became the

ostensible ground of the final breach (A. D. 1054) between the

Churches of the West and those of the East."

E. L. Cutts,

Charlemagne,

chapter 23.

"The Filioque controversy relates to the eternal procession of

the Holy Spirit, and is a continuation of the trinitarian

controversies of the Nicene age. It marks the chief and almost

the only important dogmatic difference between the Greek and

Latin churches, ... and has occasioned, deepened, and

perpetuated the greatest schism in Christendom. The single

word Filioque keeps the oldest, largest and most nearly

related churches divided since the ninth century, and still

forbids a reunion."

P. Schaff,

History of the Christian Church,

volume 4, chapter 11, section 107.

ALSO IN:

G. B. Howard,

The Schism between the Oriental and Western Churches.

See, CHRISTIANITY: A. D. 330-1054.

FILIPPO MARIA, Duke of Milan, A. D. 1412-1447.

FILLMORE, Millard.

Vice-Presidential Election.

Succession to the Presidency.

Administration.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1848 to 1852.

FINÉ, The.

A clan or sept division of the tribe in ancient Ireland.

FINGALL.

See NORMANS.

NORTHMEN: 8TH-9TH CENTURIES;

also, IRELAND: 9TH-10TH CENTURIES.

FINLAND: A. D. 1808-1810.

Conquest by and peculiar annexation to Russia.

Constitutional independence of the Finnish grand

duchy confirmed by the Czar.

See SCANDINAVIAN STATES: A. D. 1807-1810.

FINN GALLS.

See IRELAND: 9TH-10TH CENTURIES.

FINNS.

See HUNGARIANS.

FIODH-INIS.

See IRELAND, THE NAME.

FIRBOLGS, The.

One of the races to which Irish legend ascribes the settlement

of Ireland; said to have come from Thrace.

See NEMEDIANS,

and IRELAND: THE PRIMITIVE INHABITANTS.

FIRE LANDS, The.

See OHIO: A. D. 1786-1796.

FIRMA.

See FERM.

FIRST CONSUL OF FRANCE, The.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1799 (NOVEMBER-DECEMBER).

FIRST EMPIRE (FRENCH), The.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1804-1805, to 1815.

FIRST-FRUITS.

See ANNATES.

FIRST REPUBLIC (FRENCH), The.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1792 (SEPTEMBER-NOVEMBER), to 1804-1805.

FISCALINI.

See SLAVERY, MEDIÆVAL: FRANCE.

FISCUS, The.

"The treasury of the senate [in the early period of the Roman

empire] retained the old republican name of the ærarium; that

of the emperor was denominated the fiscus, a term which

ordinarily signified the private property of an individual.

Hence the notion rapidly grew up, that the provincial

resources constituted the emperor's private purse, and when in

process of time the control of the senate over the taxes gave

way to their direct administration by the emperor himself, the

national treasury received the designation of fiscus, and the

idea of the empire being nothing else than Cæsar's patrimony

became fixed ineradicably in men's minds."

C. Merivale,

History of the Romans,

chapter 32.

FISHER, Fort, The capture of.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1864-1865

(DECEMBER-JANUARY: NORTH CAROLINA).

FISHERIES, North American: A. D. 1501-1578.

The Portuguese, Norman, Breton and Basque fishermen on the

Newfoundland Banks.

See NEWFOUNDLAND: A. D. 1501-1578.

{1121}

FISHERIES: A. D. 1610-1655.

Growth of the English interest.

See NEWFOUNDLAND: A. D. 1610-1655.

FISHERIES: A. D. 1620.

Monopoly granted to the Council for New England.

See NEW ENGLAND: A. D. 1620-1623.

FISHERIES: A. D. 1660-1688.

The French gain their footing in Newfoundland.

See NEWFOUNDLAND: A. D. 1660-1688.

FISHERIES: A. D. 1713.

Newfoundland relinquished to England, with fishing rights

reserved to France, by the Treaty of Utrecht.

See NEWFOUNDLAND: A. D. 1713.

FISHERIES: A. D. 1720-1745.

French interests protected by the fortification of Louisbourg.

See CAPE BRETON: A. D. 1720-1745.

FISHERIES: A. D. 1748.

St. Pierre and Michelon islands on the Newfoundland coast

ceded to France.

See NEW ENGLAND: A. D. 1745-1748.

FISHERIES: A. D. 1763.

Rights secured to France on the island of Newfoundland and in

the Gulf of St. Lawrence by the Treaty of Paris.

Articles V. and VI. of the Treaty of Paris (1763), which

transferred Canada and all its islands from France to England,

are in the following language:

"The subjects of France shall have the liberty of fishing and

drying, on a part of the coasts of the island of Newfoundland,

such as it is specified in the 13th Article of the Treaty of

Utrecht; which article is renewed and confirmed by the present

treaty (except what relates to the island of Cape Breton, as

well as to the other islands and coasts, in the mouth and in

the gulph of St. Laurence): and his Britannic majesty consents

to leave to the subjects of the most Christian king the

liberty of fishing in the gulph of St. Laurence, on condition

that the subjects of France do not exercise the said fishery,

but at the distance of three leagues from all the coasts

belonging to Great Britain, as well those of the continent, as

those of the islands situated in the said gulph of St.

Laurence. And as to what relates to the fishery on the coasts

of the island of Cape Breton out of the said gulph, the

subjects of the most Christian king shall not be permitted to

exercise the said fishery, but at the distance of 15 leagues

from the coasts of the island of Cape Breton; and the fishery

on the coasts of Nova Scotia or Acadia, and everywhere else

out of the said gulph, shall remain on the foot of former

treaties.

Article VI. The King of Great Britain cedes the islands of St.

Peter and Miquelon, in full right, to his most Christian

majesty, to serve as a shelter to the French fishermen: and

his said most Christian majesty engages not to fortify the

said islands; to erect no buildings upon them, but merely for

the convenience of the fishery; and to keep upon them a guard

of 50 men only for the police."

Text of the Treaty (Parliamentary History,

volume 15, page 1295).

FISHERIES: A. D. 1778.

French fishery rights recognized in the treaty between France

and the United States.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1778 (FEBRUARY).

FISHERIES: A. D. 1783.

Rights secured to the United States by the Treaty of Paris.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1783 (SEPTEMBER).

FISHERIES: A. D. 1814-1818.

Disputed rights of American fishermen after the War of 1812.

Silence of the Treaty of Ghent.

The Convention of 1818.

Under the Treaty of Paris (1783) "we claimed that the liberty

which was secured to the inhabitants of the United States to

take fish on the coasts of Newfoundland, under the limitation

of not drying or curing the same on that island, and also on

the other coasts, bays, and creeks, together with the limited

rights of drying or curing fish on the coasts of Nova Scotia,

Magdalen Islands, and Labrador, were not created or conferred

by that treaty, but were simply recognized by it as already

existing. They had been enjoyed before the Revolution by the

Americans in common with other subjects of Great Britain, and

had, indeed, been conquered, from the French chiefly, through

the valor and sacrifices of the colonies of New England and

New York. The treaty was therefore considered analogous to a

deed of partition. It defined the boundaries between the two

countries and all the rights and privileges belonging to them.

We insisted that the article respecting fisheries was

therefore to be regarded as identical with the possession of

land or the demarcation of boundary. We also claimed that the

treaty, being one that recognized independence, conceded

territory, and defined boundaries, belonged to that class

which is permanent in its nature and is not affected by

subsequent suspension of friendly relations. The English,

however, insisted that this treaty was not a unity; that while

some of its provisions were permanent, other stipulations were

temporary and could be abrogated, and that, in fact, they were

abrogated by the war of 1812; that the very difference of the

language used showed that while the rights of deep-sea fishing

were permanent, the liberties of fishing were created and

conferred by that treaty, and had therefore been taken away by

the war. These were the two opposite views of the respective

governments at the conferences which ended in the treaty of

Ghent, of 1814." No compromise appearing to be practicable,

the commissioners agreed, at length, to drop the subject from

consideration. "For that reason the treaty of Ghent is

entirely silent as to the fishery question.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1814 (DECEMBER).

In consequence of conflicts arising between our fishermen and

the British authorities, our point of view was very strongly

maintained by Mr. Adams in his correspondence with the British

Foreign Office, and finally, on October 20, 1818, Mr. Rush,

then our minister at London, assisted by Mr. Gallatin,

succeeded in signing a treaty, which among other things

settled our rights and privileges by the first article, as

follows: ... 'It is agreed between the high contracting

parties that the inhabitants of the said United States shall

have forever, in common with the subjects of his Britannic

Majesty, the liberty of taking fish of any kind on that part

of the southern coast of Newfoundland which extends from Cape

Ray to the Rameau Islands; on the western and northern coasts

of Newfoundland from the said Cape Ray to the Qurpon Islands;

on the shores of the Magdalen Islands, and also on the coasts,

bays, harbors, and creeks from Mont Joly, on the southern

coast of Labrador, to and through the straits of Belle Isle,

and thence northwardly indefinitely along the coast. And that

the American fishermen shall have liberty forever to dry and

cure fish in any of the unsettled bays, harbors, and creeks in

the southern part of Newfoundland herein-before described, and

of the coasts of Labrador; but as soon as the same, or any

portion thereof, shall be settled, it shall not be lawful for

said fishermen to dry or cure fish at such portion, so

settled, without previous agreement for such purpose with the

inhabitants, proprietors, or possessors of the ground.

{1122}

And the United States hereby renounces forever any liberty

heretofore enjoyed, claimed by the inhabitants thereof to

take, dry, or cure fish on or within three marine miles of any

of the coasts, bays, creeks, or harbors of his Britannic

Majesty's dominions in America not included in the

above-mentioned limits. Provided, however, That the American

fishermen shall be permitted to enter such bays or harbors for

the purpose of shelter, of repairing damages therein, of

purchasing wood, and obtaining water, and for no other purpose

whatever. But they shall be under such restrictions as shall

be necessary to prevent their taking, drying, or curing fish

therein, or in any other manner whatever abusing the

privileges hereby secured to them.' The American

plenipotentiaries evidently labored to obtain as extensive a

district of territory as possible for in-shore fishing, and

were willing to give up privileges, then apparently of small

amount, but now much more important, than of using other bays

and harbors for shelter and kindred purposes. For that reason

they acquiesced in omitting the word 'bait' in the first

sentence of the proviso after  water.' ... The power of

obtaining bait for use in the deep-sea fisheries is one which

our fishermen were afterward very anxious to secure. But the

mackerel fisheries in those waters did not begin until several

years later. The only contention then was about the cod

fisheries."

E. Schuyler,

American Diplomacy,

chapter 8.

Treaties and Conventions between the United States

and other Powers (edition of 1889), pages 415-418.

FISHERIES: A. D. 1854-1866.

Privileges defined under the Canadian Reciprocity Treaty.

See TARIFF LEGISLATION (UNITED STATES AND CANADA):

A. D. 1854-1866.

FISHERIES: A. D. 1871.

Reciprocal privileges adjusted between Great Britain and the

United States by the Treaty of Washington.

See ALABAMA CLAIMS: A. D. 1871.

FISHERIES: A. D. 1877-1888.

The Halifax award.

Termination of the Fishery articles of the Treaty of

Washington.

The rejected Treaty of 1888.

In accordance with the terms of articles 22 and 23 of the

Treaty of Washington (see ALABAMA CLAIMS: A.. D. 1871), a

Commission appointed to award compensation to Great Britain

for the superior value of the fishery privileges conceded to

the citizens of the United States by that treaty, met at

Halifax on the 5th of June, 1877. The United States was

represented on the Commission by Hon. E. H. Kellogg, of

Massachusetts, and Great Britain by Sir Alexander F. Gault, of

Canada. The two governments having failed to agree in the

selection of the third Commissioner, the latter was named, as

the Treaty provided, by the Austrian Ambassador at London, who

designated M. Maurice Delfosse, Belgian Minister at

Washington. The award was made November 27, 1877, when, "by a

vote of two to one, the Commissioners decided that the United

States was to pay $5,500,000 for the use of the fishing

privileges for 12 years. The decision produced profound

astonishment in the United States." Dissatisfaction with the

Halifax award, and generally with the main provisions of the

Treaty of Washington relating to the fisheries, was so great

in the United States that, when, in 1878, Congress

appropriated money for the payment of the award, it inserted

in the bill a clause to the effect that "Articles 18 and 21 of

the Treaty between the United States and Great Britain

concluded on the 8th of May, 1871, ought to be terminated at

the earliest period consistent with the provisions of Article

33 of the same Treaty." "It is a curious fact that during the

time intervening between the signing of the treaty of

Washington and the Halifax award an almost complete change

took place in the character of the fisheries. The method of

taking mackerel was completely revolutionized by the

introduction of the purse-seine, by means of which vast

quantities of the fish were captured far out in the open sea

by enclosing them in huge nets. ... This change in the method

of fishing brought about a change in the fishing grounds. ...

The result of this change was very greatly to diminish the

value of the North-eastern Fisheries to the United States

fishermen." On the 1st of July, 1883, "in pursuance of

instructions from Congress, the President gave the required

notice of the desire of the United States to terminate the

Fishery Articles of the Treaty of Washington, which

consequently came to an end the 1st of July, 1885. The

termination of the treaty fell in the midst of the fishing

season, and, at the suggestion of the British Minister,

Secretary Bayard entered into a temporary arrangement whereby

the American fishermen were allowed the privileges of the

treaty during the remainder of the season, with the

understanding that the President should bring the question

before Congress at its next session and recommend a joint

Commission by the Governments of the United States and Great

Britain." This was done; but Congress disapproved the

recommendation. The question of rights under former treaties,

especially that of 1818, remained open, and became a subject

of much irritation between the United States and the

neighboring British American provinces. The local regulations

of the latter were enforced with stringency and harshness

against American fishermen; the latter solicited and procured

retaliatory legislation from Congress. To end this

unsatisfactory state of affairs, a treaty was negotiated at

Washington in February, 1888, by Thomas F. Bayard, Secretary

of State, William L. Putnam and James B. Angell,

plenipotentiaries on the part of the United States, and Joseph

Chamberlain, M. P., Sir L. S. Sackville West and Sir Charles

Tupper, plenipotentiaries on the part of Great Britain, which

treaty was approved by the President and sent to the Senate,

but rejected by that body on the 21st of August, by a negative

vote of 30, against 27 in its favor.

C. B. Elliott,

The United States and the North-eastern Fisheries,

pages 79-100.

ALSO IN:

E. Schuyler,

American Diplomacy,

chapter 8.

J. H. De Ricci,

The Fisheries Dispute (1888).

Annual Cyclopedia,

volume 13 (1888), pages 217-226.

Annual Report of United States Commission of Fish and

Fisheries for 1886.

Correspondence relative to proposed Fisheries Treaty

(Senate Ex. Doc., Number 113, 50th Congress, 1st Session).

Documents and Proceedings of Halifax Commission (H. R. Ex.

Doc., Number 89, 45th. Congress, 2d Session).

----------FISHERIES: End----------

FISHER'S HILL, Battle of.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1864 (AUGUST-OCTOBER: VIRGINIA).

FISHING CREEK, Battle of.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1862

(JANUARY-FEBRUARY: KENTUCKY-TENNESSEE).

{1123}

FITCH, John, and the beginnings of steam navigation.

See STEAM NAVIGATION.

FITZGERALD'S (LORD THOMAS) REBELLION IN IRELAND.

See IRELAND: A. D. 1535-1553.

FIVE ARTICLES OF PERTH, The.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1618.

FIVE BLOODS, The.

See IRELAND; 13TH-14TH CENTURIES.

FIVE BOROUGHS, The.

A confederation of towns occupied by the Danes in England,

including Derby, Lincoln, Leicester, Nottingham and Stamford,

which played a part in the events of the tenth and eleventh

centuries. It afterwards became Seven Boroughs by addition of

York and Chester.

FIVE FORKS, Battle of.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1865

(MARCH-APRIL: VIRGINIA).

FIVE HUNDRED, The French Council of.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1795 (JUNE-SEPTEMBER).

FIVE HUNDRED AT ATHENS, The.

See ATHENS: B. C. 510-507.

FIVE MEMBERS, King Charles' attempt against the.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1642 (JANUARY).

FIVE MILE ACT, The.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1662-1665.

FIVE NATIONS OF INDIANS, The.

The five original tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy,--the

Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas,--were

commonly called by the English the Five Nations. Subsequently,

in 1715, a sixth tribe, the Tuscaroras, belonging to the same

stock, was admitted to the confederacy, and its members were

then known as the Six Nations.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: IROQUOIS CONFEDERACY, and IROQUOIS

TRIBES OF THE SOUTH.

FIVE THOUSAND, The

See ATHENS: B. C. 413-411.

FIVE YEARS' TRUCE, The.

The hostilities between Athens and Sparta which preceded the

Peloponnesian War, being opened by the battle of Tanagra, B.

C. 457, were suspended B. C. 451, by a truce called the Five

Years' Truce, arranged through the influence of the

soldier-statesman Cimon.

Thucydides,

History,

book 1, section 112.

ALSO IN:

E. Curtius,

History of Greece,

book 3, chapter 2.

FLAGELLANTS.

"Although the Church's forgiveness for sin might now [14th

century] be easily obtained in other ways: Still Flagellation

was not only greatly admired among the religious, but was also

held in such high estimation by the common people, that in

case of any calamity or plague, they thought they could

propitiate the supposed wrath of God in no more effectual

manner than by scourging, and processions of scourgers; just

as though the Church's ordinary means of atonement were

insufficient for extraordinary cases. A decided mistrust of

the Church's intercession, and the clergy who dispensed it,

prevailed among the societies of Flagellants; roused to action

by the plague that past over from Asia into Europe in the year

1348, and spread devastation everywhere, ever since the

beginning of the year 1349 they diffused themselves from the

Hungarian frontier over the whole of Germany, and found

entrance even into the neighbouring countries. ... They

practised this penance according to a fixed rule, without the

co-operation of the clergy, under the guidance of Masters,

Magistri, and made no secret of the fact, that they held the

Church's way of salvation in much lower estimation than the

penance by the scourge. Clement VI. put an end to the public

processions of Flagellants, which were already widely

prevalent: but penance by the scourge was only thus forced

into concealment. In Thuringia, Conrad Schmidt, one of their

masters, gave the form of a connected system of heretical

doctrine to their dislike of the Church. ... Thus there now

rose heretical Flagellants, called also by the common name of

Beghards; they existed down to the time of the Reformation,

especially in Thuringia, as an heretical sect very dangerous

to the Church. This warning example, as well as the mistrust

natural to the Hierarchy of all spiritual impulses which did

not originate from itself, decided the destiny of the later

societies of Flagellants. When the Whitemen (Bianchi) [see

WHITE PENITENTS], scourging themselves as they went, descended

from the Alps into Italy, they were received almost everywhere

with enthusiasm by the clergy and the people; but in the Papal

territory death was prepared for their leader, and the rest

accordingly dispersed themselves."

J. C. L. Gieseler,

Compendium of Ecclesiastical History,

section 123 (volume 4).

"Divided into companies of male and female devotees, under a

leader and two masters, they stripped themselves naked to the

waist, and publicly scourged themselves, or each other, till

their shoulders were covered with blood. This expiatory

ceremony was repeated every morning and afternoon for

thirty-three days, equal in number to the years which Christ

is thought to have lived upon earth; after which they returned

to their former employments, cleansed from sin by the baptism

of blood.' The flagellants appeared first in Hungary; but

missionary societies were soon formed, and they hastened to

impart the knowledge of the new gospel to foreign nations.

They spread with rapidity over Poland, Germany and the Low

Countries. From France they were excluded at the request of

the pope, who had issued a severe constitution against them;

but a colony reached England, and landed in London, to the

number of 120 men and women. ... The missionaries made not a

single proselyte."

J. Lingard,

History of England,

volume 4, chapter 1.

ALSO IN:

W. M. Cooper,

Flagellation and the Flagellants.

G. Waddington,

History of the Church,

note appendix to chapter 23.

FLAMENS.--FLAMINES.

"The pontifices, like several other priestly brotherhoods [of

ancient Rome] ... had sacrificial priests (flamines) attached

to them, whose name was derived from 'flare' (to blow the

fire). The number of flamines attached to the pontifices was

fifteen, the three highest of whom, ... viz., the Flamen

Dialis, Martialis, and Quirinalis, were always chosen from old

patrician families. ... Free from all civil duties, the Flamen

Dialis, with his wife and children, exclusively devoted

himself to the service of the deity. His house ... lay on the

Palatine hill. His marriage was dissoluble by death only; he

was not allowed to take an oath, mount a horse, or look at an

army. He was forbidden to remain a night away from his house,

and his hand touched nothing unclean, for which reason he

never approached a corpse or a burial-place. ... In the

daytime the Flamen Dialis was not allowed to take off his

head-dress, and he was obliged to resign his office in case it

fell off by accident. In his belt he carried the sacrificial

knife, and in his hand he held a rod, in order to keep off the

people on his way to the sacrifice. For the same purpose he

was preceded by a lictor, who compelled everybody on the way

to lay down his work, the flamen not being allowed to see the

business of daily life."

E. Guhl and W. Koner,

Life of the Greeks and Romans,

section 103.

See AUGURS.

{1124}

FLAMINIAN WAY.

See ROME: B. C. 295-191.

FLAMINIUS, The defeat of.

See PUNIC WAR, THE SECOND.

FLANDERS: A. D. 863.

Creation of the County.

Judith, daughter of Charles the Bald, of France (not yet

called France), and a twice widowed queen of England, though

hardly yet out of her girlhood (she had wedded Ethelwulf and

Ethelbald, father and son, in succession), took a mate, at

last, more to her liking, by a runaway match with one of her

father's foresters, named Baudouin, or Baldwin, Bras-de-fer.

This was in 862. King Charles, in his wrath, caused the

impudent forester to be outlawed and excommunicated, both; but

after a year of intercession and mediation he forgave the pair

and established them in a suitable fief. Baudouin was made

Count or Marquis of Flanders. "Previously to Baudouin's era,

Flanders or 'Flandria' is a designation belonging, as learned

men conjecture, to a Gau or Pagus, afterwards known as the

Franc de Bruges, and noticed only in a single charter.

Popularly, the name of Flanders had obtained with respect to a

much larger surrounding Belgic country. ... The name of

'Flanders' was thus given to the wide, and in a degree

indefinite tract, of which the Forester Baudouin and his

predecessors had the official range or care. According to the

idiom of the Middle Ages, the term 'Forest' did not exactly

convey the idea which the word now suggests, not being applied

exclusively to wood-land, but to any wild and unreclaimed

region. ... Any etymology of the name of Flamingia, or

Flanders, which we can guess at, seems intended to designate

that the land was so called from being half-drowned.

Thirty-five inundations, which afflicted the country at

various intervals from the tenth to the sixteenth century,

have entirely altered the coast-line; and the interior

features of the country, though less affected, have been much

changed by the diversions which the river-courses have

sustained. ... Whatever had been the original amplitude of the

districts over which Baudouin had any control or authority,

the boundaries were now enlarged and defined. Kneeling before

Charles-le-Chauve, placing his hands between the hands of the

Sovereign, he received his 'honour':--the Forester of Flanders

was created Count or Marquis. All the countries between the

Scheldt, the Somme and the sea, became his benefice; so that

only a narrow and contested tract divided Baudouin's Flanders

from Normandy. According to an antient nomenclature, ten

counties, to wit, Theerenburch, Arras, Boulogne, Guisnes,

Saint-Paul, Hesdin, Blandemont, Bruges, Harlebec, and Tournay,

were comprehended in the noble grant which Baudouin obtained

from his father-in-law."

Sir F. Palgrave,

History of Normandy and of England,

book 1, chapter 4.

FLANDERS: A. D. 1096.

The Crusade of Count Robert.

See CRUSADES: A. D. 1096-1099.

FLANDERS: A. D. 1201-1204.

The diverted Crusade of Count Baldwin and the imperial crown

he won at Constantinople.

See CRUSADES: A. D. 1201-1203;

and BYZANTINE EMPIRE: A. D. 1204-1205.

FLANDERS: A. D. 1214.

Humbled at the battle of Bouvines.

See BOUVINES.

FLANDERS: 13th Century.

The industry, commerce and wealth of the Flemings.

"In the 13th century, Flanders was the most populous and the

richest country in Europe. She owed the fact to the briskness

of her manufacturing and commercial undertakings, not only

amongst her neighbours, but throughout Southern and Eastern

Europe. ... Cloth, and all manner of woolen stuffs, were the

principal articles of Flemish production, and it was chiefly

from England that Flanders drew her supply of wool, the raw

material of her industry. Thence arose between the two

countries commercial relations which could not fail to acquire

political importance. As early as the middle of the 12th

century, several Flemish towns formed a society for founding

in England a commercial exchange, which obtained great

privileges, and, under the name of the Flemish hanse of

London, reached rapid development. The merchants of Bruges had

taken the initiative in it; but soon all the towns of

Flanders--and Flanders was covered with towns--Ghent, Lille,

Ypres, Courtrai, Furnes, Alost, St. Omer, and Douai, entered

the confederation, and made unity as well as extension of

liberties in respect of Flemish commerce the object of their

joint efforts. Their prosperity became celebrated; and its

celebrity gave it increase. It was a burgher of Bruges who was

governor of the hanse of London, and he was called the Count

of the Hanse. The fair of Bruges, held in the month of May,

brought together traders from the whole world. 'Thither came

for exchange,' says the most modern and most enlightened

historian of Flanders (Baron Kervyn de Lettenhove, 'Histoire

de Flandre,' t. ii., page 300), 'the produce of the North and

the South, the riches collected in the pilgrimages to

Novgorod, and those brought over by the caravans from

Samarcand and Bagdad, the pitch of Norway and the oils of

Andalusia, the furs of Russia and the dates from the Atlas,

the metals of Hungary and Bohemia, the figs of Granada, the

honey of Portugal, the wax of Morocco, and the spice of Egypt;

whereby, says an ancient manuscript, no land is to be compared

in merchandise to the land of Flanders.' ... So much

prosperity made the Counts of Flanders very puissant lords.

'Marguerite II., called "the Black," Countess of Flanders and

Hainault, from 1244 to 1280, was extremely rich,' says a

chronicler, 'not only in lands, but in furniture, jewels, and

money; ... insomuch that she kept up the state of queen rather

than countess.' Nearly all the Flemish towns were strongly

organised communes, in which prosperity had won liberty, and

which became before long small republics, sufficiently

powerful not only for the defence of their municipal rights

against the Counts of Flanders, their lords, but for offering

an armed resistance to such of the sovereigns their neighbours

as attempted to conquer them or to trammel them in their

commercial relations, or to draw upon their wealth by forced

contributions or by plunder."

F. P. Guizot,

Popular History of France,

chapter 18.

ALSO IN:

J. Hutton,

James and Philip Van Arteveld,

part 1, chapter 2.

{1125}

FLANDERS: A. D. 1299-1304.

The war with Philip the Fair.

As the Flemings advanced in wealth and consequence, the feudal

dependence of their country upon the French crown grew

increasingly irksome and oppressive to them, and their

attitude towards France became one of confirmed hostility. At

the same time, they were drawn to a friendly leaning towards

England by common commercial interests. This showed itself

decisively on the occasion of the quarrel that arose (A. D.

1295) between Philip IV., called the Fair, and Edward I. of

England, concerning the rule of the latter in Aquitaine or

Guienne. The French king found allies in Scotland; the English

king found allies in Flanders. An alliance of marriage, in

fact, had been arranged to take place between king Edward and

the daughter of Guy de Dampierre, count of Flanders; but

Philip contrived treacherously to get possession of the

persons of the count and his daughter and imprisoned them both

at Paris, declaring the states of the count to be forfeited.

In 1299 the two kings settled their quarrel and abandoned

their allies on both sides--Scotland to the tender mercies of

Edward, and Flanders to the vengeance of the malignant king

Philip the Fair. The territory of the Flemings was annexed to

the crown of France, and Jacques de Châtillon, uncle of the

queen, was appointed governor. Before two years had passed the

impatient Flemings were in furious revolt. The insurrection

began at Bruges, May 18, 1302, and more than 3,000 Frenchmen

in that city were massacred in the first rage of the

insurgents. This massacre was called the Bruges Matins. A

French army entered Flanders to put down the rising and was

confronted at Courtrai (July 11, A. D. 1302) by the Flemish

militia. The latter were led by young Guy of Dampierre and, a

few knights, who dismounted to fight on equal terms with their

fellows. "About 20,000 militia, armed only with pikes, which

they employed also as implements of husbandry, resolved to

abide the onset of 8,000 Knights of gentle blood, 10,000

archers, and 30,000 foot-soldiers, animated by the presence

and directed by the military skill of Robert Count of Artois,

and of Raoul de Nesle, Constable of France. Courtrai was the

object of attack, and the Flemings, anxious for its safety,

arranged themselves on a plain before the town, covered in

front by a canal." An altercation which occurred between the

two French commanders led to the making of a blind and furious

charge on the part of the French horsemen, ignorant and

heedless of the canal, into which they plunged, horses and

riders together, in one inextricable mass, and where, in their

helplessness, they were slain without scruple by the Flemings.

"Philip had lost his most experienced Generals, and the flower

of his troops; but his obstinacy was unbending." In repeated

campaigns during the next two years, Philip strove hard to

retrieve the disaster of Courtrai. He succeeded, at last (A.

D. 1304), in achieving, with the help of the Genoese, a naval

victory in the Zuruck-Zee, followed by a victory, personally

his own, at Mons-en-Puelle, in September of the same year.

Then, finding the Flemings as dauntlessly ready as ever to

renew the fight, he gave up to their obstinacy and

acknowledged the independence of the county. A treaty was

signed, in which "the independence of Flanders was

acknowledged under its Count, Robert de Bethune (the eldest

son of Guy de Dampierre), who, together with his brothers and

all the other Flemish prisoners, was to be restored to

liberty. The Flemings, on the other hand, consented to

surrender those districts beyond the Lys in which the French

language was vernacularly spoken; and to this territory were

added the cities of Douai, Lille, and their dependencies. They

engaged, moreover, to furnish by instalments 200,000 livres in

order to cover the expenses which Philip had incurred by their

invasion."

E. Smedley,

History of France,

part 1, chapter 7.

ALSO IN:

J. Hutton,

James and Philip Van Arteveld,

part 1, chapters 2-3.

J. Michelet,

History of France,

book 5, chapter 2.

FLANDERS: A. D. 1314.

Dishonesty of Philip of France.

Philip was one of the most treacherous of princes, and his

treaty with the Flemings did not secure them against him. "The

Flemings, who had paid the whole of the money stipulated by

the treaty of 1305, demanded the restitution of that part of

Flanders which had been given up as a pledge; but Philippe

refused to restore it on the plea that it had been given to

him absolutely and not conditionally. He commenced hostilities

[A. D. 1314] by seizing upon the counties of Nevers and

Réthel, belonging to the count of Flanders and his eldest son,

who replied by laying siege to Lille." Philippe was making

great exertions to raise money for a vigorous prosecution of

the war, when he died suddenly, Nov. 25, 1314, as the result

of an accident in hunting.

T. Wright,

History of France,

volume 1, book 2, chapter 2.

FLANDERS: A. D. 1328.

The Battle of Cassel.

The first act of Philip of Valois, King of France, after his

coronation in 1328, was to take up the cause of his cousin,

Louis de Nevers, Count of Flanders, who had been driven from

his territories by the independent burghers of Bruges, Ypres,

and other cities, and who had left to him no town save Ghent,

in which he dared to appear. The French king "gathered a great

host of feudal lords, who rejoiced in the thought of Flemish

spoil, and marched to Arras, and thence onwards into Flanders.

He pitched his tent under the hill of Cassel, 'with the

fairest and greatest host in the world' around him. The

Flemish, under Claus Dennequin, lay on the hill-top: thence

they came down all unawares in three columns on the French

camp in the evening, and surprised the King at supper and all

but took him. The French soon recovered from the surprise;

'for God would not consent that lords should be discomfitted

by such riffraff': they slew the Flemish Captain Dennequin,

and of the rest but few escaped; 'for they deigned not to

flee,' so stubborn were those despised weavers of Flanders.

This little battle, with its great carnage of Flemish,

sufficed to lay all Flanders at the feet of its count."

G. W. Kitchin,

History of France,

book 4, chapter 1.

"Sixteen thousand Flemings had marched to the attack in three

divisions. Three heaps of slain were counted on the morrow in

the French lines, amounting altogether to 13,000 corpses; and

it is said that Louis ... inflicted death upon 10,000 more of

the rebels."

E. Smedley,

History of France,

part 1, chapter 8.

ALSO IN:

Froissart (Johnes),

Chronicles,

book 1, chapters 21-22.

{1126}

FLANDERS: A. D. 1335-1337.

The revolt under Jacques Van Arteveld.

The alliance with England.

The most important measure by which Edward III. of England

prepared himself for the invasion of France, as a claimant of

the French crown [See FRANCE: A. D. 1328-1339] was the

securing of an alliance with the Flemish burghers. This was

made easy for him by his enemies. "The Flemings happened to

have a count who was wholly French--Louis de Nevers--who was

only count through the battle of Cassel and the humiliation of

his country, and who resided at Paris, at the court of

Philippe de Valois. Without consulting his subjects, he

ordered a general arrest of all the English throughout

Flanders; on which Edward had all the Flemings in England

arrested. The commerce, which was the life-blood of each

country, was thus suddenly broken off. To attack the English

through Guyenne and Flanders was to wound them in their most

sensible parts, to deprive them of cloth and wine. They sold

their wool at Bruges, in order to buy wine at Bordeaux. On the

other hand, without English wool, the Flemings were at a

stand-still. Edward prohibited the exportation of wool,

reduced Flanders to despair, and forced her to fling herself

into his arms. At first, a crowd of Flemish workmen emigrated

into England, whither they were allured at any cost, and by

every kind of flattery and caress. ... I take it that the

English character has been seriously modified by these

emigrations, which went on during the whole of the fourteenth

century. Previously, we find no indications of that patient

industry which now distinguishes the English. By endeavouring

to separate Flanders and England the French king only

stimulated Flemish emigration, and laid the foundation of

England's manufactures. Meanwhile, Flanders did not resign

herself. The towns burst into insurrection. They had long

hated the count, either because he supported the country

against the monopoly of the towns, or because he admitted the

foreigners, the Frenchmen, to a share of their commerce. The

men of Ghent, who undoubtedly repented of having withheld

their aid from those of Ypres and of Bruges at the battle of

Cassel, chose, in 1337, as their leader, the brewer,

Jacquemart Artaveld. Supported by the guilds, and, in

particular, by the fullers and clothiers, Artaveld organized a

vigorous tyranny. He assembled at Ghent the men of the three

great cities, 'and showed them that they could not live

without the king of England; for all Flanders depended on

cloth-making, and, without wool, one could not make cloth;

therefore he recommended them to keep the English king their

friend.'"

J. Michelet,

History of France,

book 6, chapter 1.

ALSO IN

F. P. Guizot,

Popular History of France,

chapter 20.

J. Hutton,

James and Philip Van Altevelde,

part 3.

J. Froissart,

Chronicles

(Johnes's translation),

book 1, chapter 29.

FLANDERS: A. D. 1345.

The end of Jacques Van Artaveld.

"Jacob von Artaveld, the citizen of Ghent that was so much

attached to the king of England, still maintained the same

despotic power over all Flanders. He had promised the king of

England, that he would give him the inheritance of Flanders,

invest his son the prince of Wales with it, and make it a

duchy instead of an earldom. Upon which account the king was,

at this period, about St. John the Baptist's day, 1345, come

to Sluys, with a numerous attendance of barons and knights. He

had brought the prince of Wales with him, in order that Jacob

von Artaveld's promises might be realized. The king remained

on board his fleet in the harbour of Sluys, where he kept his

court. His friends in Flanders came thither to see and visit

him; and there were many conferences between the king and

Jacob Von Artaveld on one side, and the councils from the

different capital towns on the other, relative to the

agreement before mentioned. ... When on his return he [Van

Artaveld] came to Ghent about midday, the townsmen who were

informed of the hour he was expected, had assembled in the

street that he was to pass through; as soon as they saw him,

they began to murmur, and put their heads close together,

saying, 'Here comes one who is too much the master, and wants

to order in Flanders according to his will and pleasure, which

must not be longer borne.' With this they had also spread a

rumour through the town, that Jacob von Artaveld had collected

all the revenues of Flanders, for nine years and more. ... Of

this great treasure he had sent part into England. This

information inflamed those of Ghent with rage; and, as he was

riding up the streets, he perceived that there was something

in agitation against him; for those who were wont to salute

him very respectfully, now turned their backs, and went into

their houses. He began therefore to suspect all was not as

usual; and as soon as he had dismounted, and entered his

hotel, he ordered the doors and windows to be shut and

fastened. Scarcely had his servants done this, when the street

which he inhabited was filled from one end to the other with

all sorts of people, but especially by the lowest of the

mechanics. His mansion was surrounded on every side, attacked

and broken into by force. Those within did all they could to

defend it, and killed and wounded many: but at last they could

not hold out against such vigorous attacks, for three parts of

the town were there. When Jacob von Artaveld saw what efforts

were making, and how hardly he was pushed, he came to a

window; and, with his head uncovered, began to use humble and

fine language. ... When Jacob von Artaveld saw that he could

not appease or calm them, he shut the window, and intended

getting out of his house the back way, to take shelter in a

church adjoining; but his hotel was already broke into on that

side, and upwards of four hundred were there calling out for him.

At last he was seized by them, and slain without mercy: his

death-stroke was given him by a sadler, called Thomas Denys.

In this manner did Jacob von Artaveld end his days, who in his

time had been complete master of Flanders. Poor men first

raised him, and wicked men slew him."

J. Froissart (Johnes),

Chronicles,

book 1, chapter 115 (volume 1).

{1127}

FLANDERS: A. D. 1379-1381.

The revolt of the White Hoods.

"We will ... speak of the war in Flanders, which began about

this time [A. D. 1379]. The people were very murderous and

cruel, and multitudes were slain or driven out of the country.

The country itself was so much ruined, that it was said a

hundred years would not restore it to the situation it was in

before the war. Before the commencement of these wars in

Flanders, the country was so fertile, and everything in such

abundance, that it was marvellous to see; and the inhabitants

of the principal towns lived in very grand state. You must

know that this war originated in the pride and hatred that

several of the chief towns bore to each other: those of Ghent

against Bruges, and others, in like manner, vying with each

other through envy. However, this could not have created a war

without the consent of their lord, the earl of Flanders, who

was so much loved and feared that no one dared anger him." It

is in these words that the old court chronicler, Froissart,

begins his fully detailed and graphic narrative of the

miserable years, from 1379 to 1384, during which the communes

of Flanders were at war with one another and at war with their

worthless and oppressive count, Luis de Maele. The picturesque

chronicle is colored with the prejudices of Froissart against

the Flemish burghers and in favor of their lord; but no one

can doubt that the always turbulent citizens were jealous of

rights which the always rapacious lord never ceased to

encroach upon. As Froissart tells the story, the outbreak of

war began with an attempt on the part of the men of Bruges, to

dig a canal which would divert the waters of the river Lys.

When those of Ghent had news of this unfriendly undertaking,

they took counsel of one John Yoens, or John Lyon, a burgher

of much cunning, who had formerly been in favor with the

count, but whom his enemies had supplanted. "When he [John

Lyon] was prevailed on to speak, he said: 'Gentlemen, if you

wish to risk this business, and put an end to it, you must

renew an ancient custom that formerly subsisted in the town of

Ghent: I mean, you must first put on white-hoods, and choose a

leader, to whom everyone may look, and rally at his signal.'

This harangue was eagerly listened to, and they all cried out,

'We will have it so, we will have it so! now let us put on

white-hoods.' White-hoods were directly made, and given out to

those among them who loved war better than peace, and had

nothing to lose. John Lyon was elected chief of the White

Hoods. He very willingly accepted of this office, to avenge

himself on his enemies, to embroil the towns of Ghent and

Bruges with each other and with the earl their lord. He was

ordered, as their chief, to march against the pioneers and

diggers from Bruges, and had with him 200 such people as

preferred rioting to quiet."

Froissart (Johnes),

Chronicles,

book 2, chapters 36-102.

When the White Hoods had driven the ditchers of Bruges from

their canal, they returned to Ghent, but not to disband.

Presently the jealous count required them to lay aside the

peculiar badge of their association, which they declined to

do. Then Count Louis sent his bailiff into Ghent with 200

horsemen, to arrest John Lyon, and some others of his band.

The White Hoods rallied, slew the bailiff and drove his posse

from the town; after which unmistakable deed Ghent and the

count were distinctly at war. The city of the White Hoods took

prompt measures to secure the alliance and support of its

neighbors. Some nine or ten thousand of its citizens marched

to Bruges, and partly by persuasion, partly by force, partly

by the help of the popular party in the town, they effected a

treaty of friendship and alliance--which did not endure,

however, very long. Courtray, Damme, Ypres and other cities

joined the league and it soon presented a formidable array.

Oudenarde, strongly fortified, by the count, became the key of

the situation, and was besieged by the citizen-militia. In the

midst of the siege, the Duke of Burgundy, son-in-law of the

count, made successful efforts to bring about a peace

(December 1379). "The count promised to forget the past and

return to his residence in Ghent. This peace, however, was of

short duration; and the count, after passing only two or three

days in Ghent, alleged some cause of dissatisfaction and

returned to Lille, to recommence hostilities, in the course of

which, with the assistance of the richer citizens, he made

himself master of Bruges. Another peace was signed in the

August of 1380, which was no more durable than the former, and

the count reduced Ypres; and, at the head of an army of 60,000

men, laid siege to Ghent itself, the chief and soul of the

popular confederacy, in the month of September. But the

citizens of Ghent defended themselves so well that he was

obliged to raise the siege in the middle of November, and

agree to a truce. This truce also was broken by the count's

party, the war renewed in the beginning of the year 1381, and

the men of Ghent experienced a disastrous defeat in the battle

of Nevelle towards the middle of May. It was a war of

extermination, and was carried on with extreme ferocity. ...

Ghent itself, now closely blockaded by the count's troops, was

only saved by the great qualities of Philip Van Artevelde [son

of Jacques Van Arteveld, of the revolution of 1337], who, by a

sort of peaceful revolution, was placed at the head of affairs

[January 25, 1381]. The victory of Beverholt, in which the

count was defeated with great slaughter, and only escaped with

difficulty, made the town of Ghent again master of Flanders."

T. Wright,

History of France,

book 2, chapter 8.

ALSO IN

J. Hutton,

James and Philip Van Arteveld,

chapters 14-16.

W. C. Taylor,

Revolutions, Insurrections and Conspiracies of Europe,

volume 2, chapters 7-9.

FLANDERS: A. D. 1382.

The rebellion crushed.

By the marriage of Philip, Duke of Burgundy, to the daughter

and heiress of the Count of Flanders, that powerful French

prince had become interested in the suppression of the revolt

of the Flemish burghers and the restoration of the count to

his lordship. His nephew, the young king of France, Charles

VI., was easily persuaded to undertake a campaign to that end,

and an army of considerable magnitude was personally led

northwards by the monarch of fourteen years. "The object of

the expedition was not only to restore to the Count of

Flanders his authority, but to punish the turbulent commons,

who stirred up those of France to imitate their example.

Froissart avows it to have been a war between the commons and

the aristocracy. The Flemings were commanded by Artaveldt, son

of the famous brewer, the ally of Edward III. The town of Ghent

had been reduced to the extreme of distress and famine by the

count and the people of Bruges, who supported him. Artaveldt

led the people of Ghent in a forlorn hope against Bruges,

defeated the army of the count, and broke into the rival town,

which he took and plundered. After this disaster, the count

had recourse to France. The passage of the river Lys, which

defended Flanders, was courageously undertaken, and effected

with some hazard by the French.

{1128}

The Flemings were rather dispirited by this first success:

nevertheless, they assembled their forces; and the two armies

of French knights and Flemish citizens met at Rosebecque [or

Roosebeck], between Ypres and Courtray. The 27th of November,

1382, was the day of battle. Artaveldt had stationed his army

on a height, to await the attack of the French, but their

impatience forced him to commence. Forming his troops into one

solid square, Artaveldt led them against the French centre.

Froissart compares their charge to the headlong rush of a wild

boar. It broke the opposite line, penetrating into its ranks:

but the wings of the French turned upon the flank of the

Flemings, which, not having the advantage of a charge or

impulse, were beaten by the French men at arms. Pressed upon

one another, the Flemings had not room to fight: they were

hemmed in, surrounded, and slaughtered: no quarter was asked

or given; nearly 30,000 perished. The 9,000 Ghentois that had

marched under their banner were counted, to a man, amongst the

slain: Artaveldt, their general, was among the foremost who

had fallen. Charles ordered his body to be hung upon a tree.

It was at Courtray, very near to the field where this battle

was fought, that Robert of Artois, with a French army, had

perished beneath the swords of the Flemings, nearly a century

previous. The gilded spurs of the French knights still adorned

the walls of the cathedral of Courtray. The victory of Rosebecque

in the eyes of Charles had not sufficiently repaid the former

defeat: the town of Courtray was pillaged and burnt; its

famous clock was removed to Dijon, and formed the third wonder

of this kind in France, Paris and Sens alone possessing

similar ornaments. The battle of Rosebecque proved more

unfortunate for the communes of France than for those of

Flanders. Ghent, notwithstanding her loss of 9,000 slain, did

not yield to the conqueror, but held out the war for two years

longer; and did not finally submit until the Duke of Burgundy,

at the death of their count, guaranteed to the burghers the

full enjoyment of their privileges. The king avenged himself

on the mutinous city of Paris; entered it as a conqueror; took

the chains from the streets and unhinged the gates: one hundred

of the citizens were sent to the scaffold; the property of the

rich was confiscated; and all the ancient and most onerous

taxes, the gabelle, the duty on sales, as well as that of

entry, were declared by royal ordinance to be established

anew. The principal towns of the kingdom were visited with the

same punishments and exactions. The victory of Rosebecque

overthrew the commons of France, which were crushed under the

feet of the young monarch and his nobles."

E. E. Crowe,

History of France,

chapter 4.

ALSO IN

Sir J. Froissart (Johnes),

Chronicles,

book 2, chapters 111-130.

J. Michelet,

History of France,

book 7, chapter 1 (volume 2).

F. P. Guizot,

Popular History of France,

chapter 23 (volume 3).

FLANDERS: A. D. 1383.

The Bishop of Norwich's Crusade.

The crushing defeat of the Flemings at Roosebeke produced

alarm in England, where the triumph of the French was quickly

felt to be threatening. "English merchants were expelled from

Bruges, and their property was confiscated. Calais even was in

danger. The French were at Dunkirk and Gravelines, and might

by a sudden dash on Calais drive the English out." There had

been aid from England promised to Van Artevelde, but the

promise had only helped on the ruin of the Ghent patriot by

misleading him. No help had come when he needed it. Now, when

it was too late, the English bestirred themselves. For some

months there had been on foot among them a Crusade, which Pope

Urban VI. had proclaimed against the supporters of the rival

Pope Clement VII.--the "Schismatics." France took the side of

the latter and was counted among the Schismatics. Accordingly,

Pope Urban's Crusade, so far as the English people could be moved

to engage in it, was now directed against the French in

Flanders. It was led by the Bishop of Norwich, who succeeded

in rousing a very considerable degree of enthusiasm in the

country for the movement, despite the earnest opposition of

Wyclif and his followers. The crusading army assembled at

Calais in the spring of 1383, professedly for a campaign in

France; but the Bishop found excuses for leading it into

Flanders. Gravelines was first attacked, carried by storm, and

its male defenders slaughtered to a man. An army of French and

Flemings, encountered near Dunkirk, was routed, with fearful

carnage, and the whole coast, including Dunkirk, fell into the

hands of the English. Then they laid siege to Ypres, and there

their disasters began. The city held out with stubbornness

from the 9th of June until the 10th of August, when the

baffled besiegers--repulsed in a last desperate assault which

they had made on the 8th--marched away. "Ypres might rejoice,

but the disasters of the long siege proved final. Her stately

faubourgs were not rebuilt, and she has never again taken her

former rank among the cities of Flanders." In September a

powerful French army entered Flanders, and the English

crusaders could do nothing but retreat before it, giving up

Cassel (which the French burned), then Bergues, then

Bourbourg, after a siege, and, finally, setting fire to

Gravelines and abandoning that place. "Gravelines was utterly

destroyed, but the French soon began to rebuild it. It was

repeopled from the surrounding country, and fortified strongly

as a menace to Calais." The Crusaders returned to England

"'dripping with blood and disgracing their country. Blessed be

God who confounds the proud,' says one sharp critic, who

appears to have been a monk of Canterbury."

G. M. Wrong,

The Crusade of MCCCLXXXIII.

ALSO IN

Sir J. Froissart, (Johnes),

Chronicles

book 2, chapters 130-145 (volumes 1-2).

FLANDERS: A. D. 1383

Joined to the Dominions of the Duke of Burgundy.

"Charles V. [of France] had formed the design of obtaining

Flanders for his brother Philip, Duke of Burgundy, afterwards

known as Philip the Bold--by marrying him to Margaret

[daughter and heiress of Louis de Maele, count of Flanders].

To gain the good will of the Communes, he engaged to restore

the three bailiwicks of Lille, Douai, and Orchies as a

substitute for the 10,000 livres a year promised to Louis de

Maele and his successors in 1351, as well as the towns of

Peronne, Crèvecœur, Arleux and Château-Chinon, assigned to him

in 1358. ... On the 13th May, 1369, the 'Lion of Flanders'

once more floated, after an interval of half a century, over

the walls of Lille, Douai, and Orchies, and at the same time

Flemish garrisons marched into St. Omer, Aire, Bethune and

Hesdin. The marriage ceremony took place at Ghent on the 19th

of June." The Duke of Burgundy waited fourteen years for the

heritage of his wife. In January, 1383, Count Louis died, and

Flanders was added to the great and growing dominion of the

new Burgundian house.

J. Hutton,

James and Philip van Arteveld,

chapters 14 and 18.

See BURGUNDY (THE FRENCH DUKEDOM): A. D. 1364.

{1129}

FLANDERS: A. D. 1451-1453.

Revolt against the Burgundian Gabelle.

See GHENT: A. D. 1451-1453.

FLANDERS: A. D. 1477.

Severance from Burgundy.

Transference to the Austrian House by marriage of Mary of

Burgundy.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1477.

FLANDERS: A. D. 1482-1488.

Resistance to Maximilian.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1482-1493.

FLANDERS: A. D. 1494-1588.

The Austro-Spanish sovereignty and its oppressions.

The great revolt and its failure in the Flemish provinces.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1494-1519, and after.

FLANDERS: A. D. 1529.

Pretensions of the king of France to Suzerainty resigned.

See ITALY: A. D. 1527-1529.

FLANDERS: A. D. 1539-1540.

The unsupported revolt of Ghent.

See GHENT: A. D. 1539-1540.

FLANDERS: A. D. 1594-1884.

Later history.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1594-1609, to 1830-1884.

----------FLANDERS: End----------

FLATHEAD INDIANS, The.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: FLATHEADS.

FLAVIA CÆSARIENSIS.

See BRITAIN: A. D. 323-337.

FLAVIAN AMPHITHEATRE, The.

See COLOSSEUM.

FLAVIAN FAMILY, The.

"We have designated the second period of the [Roman] Empire by

the name of the Flavian family--the family of Vespasian [Titus

Flavius Vespasian]. The nine Emperors who were successively

invested with the purple, in the space of the 123 years from

his accession, were not all, however, of Flavian race, even by

the rites of adoption, which in Rome was become a second

nature; but the respect of the world for the virtues of

Flavius Vespasian induced them all to assume his name, and

most of them showed themselves worthy of such an affiliation.

Vespasian had been invested with the purple at Alexandria, on

the 1st of July, A. D. 69; he died in 79. His two sons reigned

in succession after him; Titus, from 79 to 81; Domitian, from 81

to 96. The latter having been assassinated, Nerva, then an old

man, was raised to the throne by the Senate (A. D. 96-98). He

adopted Trajan (98-117); who adopted Adrian (117-138). Adrian

adopted Antoninus Pius (138-161); who adopted Marcus Aurelius

(161-180); and Commodus succeeded his father, Marcus Aurelius

(180-192). No period in history presents such a succession of

good and great men upon any throne: two monsters, Domitian and

Commodus, interrupt and terminate it."

J. C. L. Sismondi,

Fall of the Roman Empire,

chapter 2.

FLEETWOOD, OR BRANDY STATION, Battle of.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1863 (JUNE: VIRGINIA).

FLEIX, The Peace of.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1578-1580.

FLEMINGS.--FLEMISH.

See FLANDERS.

FLEMISH GUILDS.

See GUILDS OF FLANDERS.

FLEURUS, Battle of (1622).

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1621-1633.

FLEURUS, Battle of (1690).

See FRANCE: A. D. 1689-1690.

FLEURUS, Battle of (1794).

See FRANCE: A. D. 1794 (MARCH-JULY).

FLODDEN, Battle of (A. D. 1513).

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1513.

FLORALIA, The.

See LUDI.

FLORÉAL, The month.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1793 (OCTOBER).

FLORENCE:

Origin and Name:

"Fæsulre was situated on a hill above Florence. Florentine

traditions call it the metropolis of Florence, which would

accordingly be a colony of Fæsulre; but a statement in

Machiavelli and others describes Florence as a colony of

Sulla, and this statement must have been derived from some

local chronicle. Fæsulre was no doubt an ancient Etruscan

town, probably one of the twelve. It was taken in the war of

Sulla [B. C. 82-81]. ... My conjecture is, that Sulla not only

built a strong fort on the top of the hill of Fæsulre, but

also the new colony of Florentia below, and gave to it the

'ager Fæsulanus.'"

B. G. Niebuhr,

Lectures on Ancient Ethnography and Geography.

volume 2, page 228.

"We can reasonably suppose that the ancient trading nations

may have pushed their small craft up the Arno to the present

site of Florence, and thus have gained a more immediate

communication with the flourishing city of Fiesole than they

could through other ports of Etruria, from whatever race its

people might have sprung. Admitting the high antiquity of

Fiesole, the imagined work of Atlas, and the tomb of his

celestial daughter, we may easily believe that a market was

from very early times established in the plain, where both by

land and water the rural produce could be brought for sale

without ascending the steep on which that city stood. Such

arrangements would naturally result from the common course of

events, and a more convenient spot could scarcely be found

than the present site of Florence, to which the Arno is still

navigable by boats from its mouth, and at that time perhaps by

two branches. ... 'There were,' says Villani, 'inhabitants

round San Giovanni, because the people of Fiesole held their

market there one day in the week, and it was called the Field

of Mars, the ancient name: however it was always, from the

first, the market of the Fiesolines, and thus it was called

before Florence existed.'

{1130}

And again: 'The Pæetor Florinus, with a Roman army, encamped

beyond the Arno towards Fiesole and had two small villages

there, ... where the people of Fiesole one day in the week

held a general market with the neighbouring towns and

villages. ... On the site of this camp, as we are also assured

by Villani, was erected the city of Florence, after the

capture of Fiesole by Pompey, Cæsar, and Martius; but Leonardo

Aretino, following Malespini, asserts that it was the work of

Sylla's legions, who were already in possession of Fiesole.

... The variety of opinions almost equals the number of

authors. ... It may be reasonably concluded that Florence,

springing originally from Fiesole, finally rose to the rank of

a Roman colony and the seat of provincial government; a

miniature of Rome, with its Campus Martius, its Capitol,

Forum, temple of Mars, aqueducts, baths, theatre and

amphitheatre, all erected in imitation of the 'Eternal City;'

for vestiges of all these are still existing either in name or

substance. The name of Florence is as dark as its origin, and

a thousand derivations have confused the brains of

antiquarians and their readers without much enlightening them,

while the beautiful Giagiolo or Iris, the city's emblem, still

clings to her old grey walls, as if to assert its right to be

considered as the genuine source of her poetic appellation.

From the profusion of these flowers that formerly decorated

the meads between the rivers Mugnone and Arno, has sprung one

of the most popular opinions on the subject; for a white plant

of the same species having shown itself amongst the rising

fabrics, the incident was poetically seized upon and the Lily

then first assumed its station in the crimson banner of

Florence."

H. E. Napier,

Florentine History,

book 1, chapter 1.

FLORENCE: A. D. 406.

Siege by Radagaisus.

Deliverance by Stilicho.

See ROME: A. D. 404-408.

FLORENCE: 12th Century.

Acquisition of republican independence.

"There is ... an assertion by Villani, that Florence contained

twenty-two thousand fighting men, without counting the old men

and children,' about the middle of the sixth century; and

modern statisticians have based on this statement an estimate

which would make the population of the city at that period

about sixty-one thousand. There are reasons too for believing

that very little difference in the population took place

during several centuries after that time. Then came the sudden

increase arising from the destruction, more or less entire, of

Fiesole, and the incorporation of its inhabitants with those

of the newer city, which led to the building of the second

walls. ... An estimate taking the inhabitants of the city at

something between seventy and eighty thousand at the period

respecting which we are inquiring [beginning of the 12th

century] would in all probability be not very wide of the

mark. The government of the city was at that time lodged in

the hands of magistrates exercising both legislative and

administrative authority, called Consuls, assisted by a senate

composed of a hundred citizens of worth--buoni uomini. These

Consuls 'guided everything, and governed the city, and decided

causes, and administered justice.' They remained in office for

one year. How long this form of government had been

established in Florence is uncertain. It was not in existence

in the year 897; but it was in activity in 1102. From 1138 we

have a nearly complete roll of the names of the consuls for

each year down to 1219. ... The first recorded deeds of the

young community thus governed, and beginning to feel conscious

and proud of its increasing strength, were characteristic

enough of the tone of opinion and sentiment which prevailed

within its walls, and of the career on which it was entering.

'In the year 1107,' says Malispini, 'the city of Florence

being much increased, the Florentines, wishing to extend their

territory, determined to make war against any castle or

fortress which would not be obedient to them. And in that year

they took by force Monte Orlando, which belonged to certain

gentlemen who would not be obedient to the city. And they were

defeated, and the castle was destroyed.' These 'gentlemen,' so

styled by the civic historian who thus curtly records the

destruction of their home, in contradistinction to the

citizens who by no means considered themselves such, were the

descendants or representatives of those knights and captains,

mostly of German race, to whom the Emperors had made grants of

the soil according to the feudal practice and system. They

held directly of the Empire, and in no wise owed allegiance or

obedience of any sort to the community of Florence. But they

occupied almost all the country around the rising city; and

the citizens' wanted to extend their territory.' Besides,

these territorial lords were, as has been said, gentlemen, and

lived as such, stopping wayfarers on the highways, levying tolls

in the neighbourhood of their strongholds, and in many ways

making themselves disagreeable neighbours to peaceable folks.

... The next incident on the record, however, would seem to

show that peaceful townsfolk as well as marauding nobles were

liable to be overrun by the car of manifest destiny, if they

came in the way of it. 'In the same year,' says the curt old

historian, 'the men of Prato rebelled against the Florentines;

wherefore they went out in battle against it, and took it by

siege and destroyed it.' Prato rebelled against Florence! It

is a very singular statement; for there is not the shadow of a

pretence put forward, or the smallest ground for imagining

that Florence had or could have claimed any sort of suzerainty

over Prato. ... The territorial nobles, however, who held

castles in the district around Florence were the principal

objects of the early prowess of the citizens; and of course

offence against them was offence against the Emperor. ... In

1113, accordingly, we find an Imperial vicar residing in

Tuscany at St. Miniato; not the convent-topped hill of that

name in the immediate neighbourhood of Florence, but a little

mountain city of the same name, overlooking the lower

Valdarno, about half way between Florence and Pisa. ... There

the Imperial Vicars perched themselves hawk-like, with their

Imperial troops, and swooped down from time to time to

chastise and bring back such cities of the plain as too

audaciously set at naught the authority of the Emperor. And

really these upstart Florentines were taking the bit between

their teeth, and going on in a way that no Imperial Vicar

could tolerate. ... So the indignant cry of the harried Counts

Cadolingi, and of several other nobles holding of the Empire,

whose houses had been burned over their heads by these

audacious citizens, went up to the ears of 'Messer Ruberto,'

the Vicar, in San Miniato.

{1131}

Whereupon that noble knight, indignant at the wrong done to

his fellow nobles, as well as at the offence against the

authority of his master the Emperor, forthwith put lance in

rest, called out his men, and descended from his mountain

fortress to take summary vengeance on the audacious city. On

his way thither he had to pass through that very gorge where

the castle of Monte Orlando had stood, and under the ruins of

the house from which the noble vassals of the Empire had been

harried. ... There were the leathern-jerkined citizens on the

very scene of their late misdeed, come out to oppose the

further progress of the Emperor's Vicar and his soldiers. And

there, as the historian writes, with curiously impassible

brevity, 'the said Messer Ruberto was discomfited and killed.'

And nothing further is heard of him, or of any after

consequences resulting from the deed. Learned legal

antiquaries insist much on the fact, that the independence of

Florence and the other Communes was never 'recognised' by the

Emperors; and they are no doubt perfectly accurate in saying

so. One would think, however, that that unlucky Vicar of

theirs, Messer Ruberto, must have 'recognised' the fact,

though somewhat tardily."

T. A. Trollope,

History of the Commonwealth of Florence,

book 1, chapter 1 (volume 1).

Countess Matilda, the famous friend of Pope Gregory VII.,

whose wide dominion included Tuscany, died in 1115,

bequeathing her vast possessions to the Church.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1077-1102.

"In reality she was only entitled thus to bequeath her

allodial lands, the remainder being imperial fiefs. But as it

was not always easy to distinguish between the two sorts, and

the popes were naturally anxious to get as much as they could,

a fresh source of contention was added to the constant

quarrels between the Empire and the Church. 'Henry IV.

immediately despatched a representative into Tuscany, who

under the title of Marchio, Judex, or Praeses, was to govern

the Marquisate in his name.' 'Nobody,' says Professor Villari,

'could legally dispute his right to do this: but the

opposition of the Pope, the attitude of the towns which now

considered themselves independent and the universal confusion

rendered the Marquis's authority illusory. The imperial

representatives had no choice but to put themselves at the

head of the feudal nobility of the contado and unite it into a

Germanic party hostile to the cities. In the documents of the

period the members of this party are continually described as

Teutonici.' By throwing herself in this juncture on the side

of the Pope, and thus becoming the declared opponent of the

empire and the feudal lords, Florence practically proclaimed

her independence. The grandi, having the same interests with

the working classes, identified themselves with these; became

their leaders, their consuls in fact if not yet in name. Thus

was the consular commune born, or, rather, thus did it

recognize itself on reaching manhood; for born, in reality, it

had already been for some time, only so quietly and

unconsciously that nobody had marked its origin or, until now,

its growth. The first direct consequence of this

self-recognition was that the rulers were chosen out of a

larger number of families. As long as Matilda had chosen the

officers to whom the government of the town was entrusted, the

Uberti and a few others who formed their clan, their kinsmen, and

their connections had been selected, to the exclusion of the

mass of the citizens. Now more people were admitted to a share

in the administration: the offices were of shorter duration,

and out of those selected to govern each family had its turn.

But those who had formerly been privileged--the Uberti and

others of the same tendencies and influence--were necessarily

discontented with this state of things, and there are

indications in Villani of burnings and of tumults such as

later, when the era of faction fights had fairly begun, so

often desolated the streets of Florence."

B. Duffy,

The Tuscan Republics,

chapter 6.

See ITALY: A. D. 1056-1152.

FLORENCE: A. D. 1215-1250.

The beginning, the causes and the meaning of the strife of the

Guelfs and Ghibellines.

Nearly from the beginning of the 13th century, all Italy, and

Florence more than other Italian communities, became

distracted and convulsed by a contest of raging factions. "The

main distinction was that between Ghibellines and Guelphs--two

names in their origin far removed from Italy. They were first

heard in Germany in 1140, when at Winsberg in Suabia a battle

was fought between two contending claimants of the Empire; the

one, Conrad of Hohenstauffen, Duke of Franconia, chose for his

battle-cry 'Waiblingen,' the name of his patrimonial castle in

Würtemburg; the other, Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony, chose

his own family name of 'Welf,' or 'Wölf.' Conrad proved

victorious, and his kindred to the fourth ensuing generation

occupied the imperial throne; yet both war-cries survived the

contest which gave them birth, lingering on in Germany as

equivalents of Imperialist and anti-Imperialist. By a process

perfectly clear to philologists, they were modified in Italy

into the forms Ghibellino and Guelfo; and the Popes being

there the great opponents of the Emperors, an Italian Guelph

was a Papalist. The cities were mainly Guelph; the nobles most

frequently Ghibelline. A private feud had been the means of

involving Florence in the contest."

M. F. Rossetti,

A Shadow of Dante,

chapter 3.

"The Florentines kept themselves united till the year 1215,

rendering obedience to the ruling power, and anxious only to

preserve their own safety. But, as the diseases which attack

our bodies are more dangerous and mortal in proportion as they

are delayed, so Florence, though late to take part in the

sects of Italy, was afterwards the more afflicted by them. The

cause of her first division is well known, having been

recorded by Dante and many other writers; I shall, however,

briefly notice it. Amongst the most powerful families of

Florence were the Buondelmonti and the Uberti; next to these

were the Amidei and the Donati. Of the Donati family there was

a rich widow who had a daughter of exquisite beauty, for whom, in

her own mind, she had fixed upon Buondelmonti, a young

gentleman, the head of the Buondelmonti family, as her

husband; but either from negligence, or because she thought it

might be accomplished at any time, she had not made known her

intention, when it happened that the cavalier betrothed

himself to a maiden of the Amidei family. This grieved the

Donati widow exceedingly; but she hoped, with her daughter's

beauty, to disturb the arrangement before the celebration of

the marriage; and from an upper apartment, seeing Buondelmonti

approach her house alone, she descended, and as he was passing

she said to him, 'I am glad to learn you have chosen a wife,

although I had reserved my daughter for you'; and, pushing the

door open, presented her to his view.

{1132}

The cavalier, seeing the beauty of the girl, ... became

inflamed with such an ardent desire to possess her, that, not

thinking of the promise given, or the injury he committed in

breaking it, or of the evils which his breach of faith might

bring upon himself, said, 'Since you have reserved her for me,

I should be very ungrateful indeed to refuse her, being yet at

liberty to choose'; and without any delay married her. As soon

as the fact became known, the Amidei and the Uberti, whose

families were allied, were filled with rage," and some of

them, lying in wait for him, assassinated him as he was riding

through the streets. "This murder divided the whole city; one

party espousing the cause of the Buondelmonti, the other that

of the Uberti; and ... they contended with each other for many

years, without one being able to destroy the other. Florence

continued in these troubles till the time of Frederick II.,

who, being king of Naples, endeavoured to strengthen himself

against the church; and, to give greater stability to his

power in Tuscany, favoured the Uberti and their followers,

who, with his assistance, expelled the Buondelmonti; thus our

city, as all the rest of Italy had long time been, became

divided into Guelphs and Ghibellines."

N. Machiavelli,

History of Florence,

book 2, chapter 1.

"Speaking generally, the Ghibellines were the party of the

emperor, and the Guelphs the party of the Pope; the

Ghibellines were on the side of authority, or sometimes of

oppression, the Guelphs were on the side of liberty and

self-government. Again, the Ghibellines were the supporters of

an universal empire of which Italy was to be the head, the

Guelphs were on the side of national life and national

individuality. ... If these definitions could be considered as

exhaustive, there would be little doubt as to the side to

which our sympathies should be given. ... We should ... expect

all patriots to be Guelphs, and the Ghibelline party to be

composed of men who were too spiritless to resist despotic

power, or too selfish to surrender it. But, on the other hand,

we must never forget that Dante was a Ghibelline."

O. Browning,

Guelphs and Ghibellines,

chapter 2.

See, also, ITALY: A. D. 1215.

FLORENCE: A. D. 1248-1278.

The wars of a generation of the Guelfs and Ghibellines.

In 1248, the Ghibellines, at the instigation of Frederick II.,

and with help from his German soldiery, expelled the Guelfs

from the city, after desperate fighting for several days, and

destroyed the mansions of their chiefs, to the number of 38.

In 1250 there was a rising of the people--of the under-stratum

which the cleavage of parties hardly penetrated--and a popular

constitution of government was brought into force. At the same

time, the high towers, which were the strongholds of the

contending nobles, were thrown down. An attempt was then made

by the leaders of the people to restore peace between the

Ghibellines and the Guelfs, but the effort was vain; whereupon

the Guelfs (in January, 1251) came back to the city, and the

Ghibellines were either driven away or were shut up in their

city castles, to which they had retired when the people rose.

In 1258 the restless Ghibellines plotted with Manfred, King of

the Two Sicilies, to regain possession of Florence. The plot

was discovered, and the enraged people drove the last

lingerers of the faction from their midst and pulled down

their palaces. The great palace of the Uberti family, most

obnoxious of all, was not only razed, but a decree was made

that no building should ever stand again on its accursed site.

The exiled Ghibellines took refuge at Siena, and there plotted

again with King Manfred, who sent troops to aid them. The

Florentines did not wait to be attacked, but marched out to

meet them on Sienese territory, and suffered a terrible defeat

at Montaperti (September 4, 1260), in the battle that Dante

refers to, "which coloured the river Arbia red." "'On that

day,' says Villani, ... 'was broken and destroyed the old

popular government of Florence, which had existed for ten

years with so great power and dignity, and had won so many

victories.' Few events have ever left a more endurable

impression on the memory of a people than this great battle

between two cities and parties animated both of them by the

most unquenchable hatred. The memory of that day has lasted

through 600 years, more freshly perhaps in Siena than in

Florence." As a natural consequence of their defeat at

Montaperti, the Guelfs were again forced to fly into exile

from Florence, and this expatriation included a large number

of even the commoner people. "So thorough had been the defeat,

so complete the Ghibelline ascendency resulting from it, that

in every city the same scene on a lesser scale was taking

place. Many of the smaller towns, which had always been Guelph

in their sympathies, were now subjected to Ghibelline

despotism. One refuge alone remained in Tuscany--Lucca. ...

And thither the whole body of the expatriated Guelphs betook

themselves. ... The Ghibellines entered Florence in triumph on

the 16th of September, three days after their enemies had left

it. ... The city seemed like a desert. The gates were standing

open and unguarded; the streets were empty; the comparatively

few inhabitants who remained, almost entirely of the lowest

class of the populace, were shut up in their obscure

dwellings, or were on their knees in the churches. And what

was worse, the conquerors did not come back alone. They had

invited a foreign despot to restore order;" and so King

Manfred's general, Giordano da Anglona, established Count

Guido Novello in Florence as Manfred's vicar. "All the

constitutional authorities established by the people, and the

whole frame-work of the former government, were destroyed, and

the city was ruled entirely by direction transmitted from the

King's Sicilian court." There were serious proposals, even,

that Florence itself should be destroyed, and the saving of

the noble city from that untimely fate is credited to one

patriotic noble, of the Uberti family, who withstood the

proposition, alone. "The Ghibelline army marched on Lucca, and

had not much more difficulty in reducing that city. The

government was put into Ghibelline hands, and Lucca became a

Ghibelline city like all the rest of Tuscany. The Lucchese

were not required by the victors to turn their own Guelphs out

of the city. But it was imperatively insisted on that every

Guelph not a native citizen should be thrust forth from the

gates." The unfortunate Florentines, thus made homeless again,

now found shelter at Bologna, and presently helped their friends

at Modena and Reggio to overcome the Ghibellines in those

cities and recover control. But for five years their condition

was one of wretchedness. Then Charles of Anjou was brought

into Italy (1265) by the Pope, to snatch the crown of the Two

Sicilies from King Manfred, and succeeded in his undertaking.

See ITALY (SOUTHERN): A. D. 1250-1268.

{1133}

The prop of the Ghibellines was broken. Guido Novello and his

troopers rode away from Florence; 800 French horsemen, sent by

the new Angevine king, under Guy de Montfort, took their

places; the Guelfs swarmed in again--the Ghibellines swarmed

out; the popular constitution was restored, with new features

more popular than before. In 1273 there was a great attempt

made by Pope Gregory X. in person, to reconcile the factions

in Florence; but it had so little success that the Holy Father

left the city in disgust and pronounced it under interdict for

three years. In 1278 the attempt was renewed with somewhat

better success. "'And now, says Villani, 'the Ghibellines were

at liberty to return to Florence, they and their families. ...

And the said Ghibellines had back again their goods and

possessions; except that certain of the leading families were

ordered, for the safety of the city, to remain for a certain

time beyond the boundaries of the Florentine territory.' In

fact, little more is heard henceforward of the Ghibellines as

a faction within the walls of Florence. The old name, as a

rallying cry for the Tory or Imperialist party, was still

raised here and there in Tuscany; and Pisa still called

herself Ghibelline. But the stream of progress had run past

them and left them stranded."

T. A. Trollope,

History of the Commonwealth of Florence,

book 1, chapters 4-5,

and book 2, chapter 1 (volume 1).

ALSO IN

N. Machiavelli,

Florentine Histories,

book 1.

J. C. L. de Sismondi,

History of the Italian Republics,

chapter 4.

FLORENCE: A. D. 1250-1293.

Development of the popular constitution of the Commonwealth.

When it became clear that the republic was to rule itself

henceforth untrammelled by imperial interference, the people

[in 1250] divided themselves into six districts, and chose for

each district two Ancients, who administered the government in

concert with the Potestà and the Captain of the People. The

Ancients were a relic of the old Roman municipal organization.

... The body of the citizens, or the popolo, were ultimately

sovereigns in the State. Assembled under the banners of their

several companies, they formed a parlamento for delegating

their own power to each successive government. Their

representatives, again, arranged in two councils, called the

Council of the People and the Council of the Commune, under

the presidency of the Captain of the People and the Potestà,

ratified the measures which had previously been proposed and

carried by the executive authority or signoria. Under this

simple State system the Florentines placed themselves at the

head of the Tuscan League, fought the battles of the Church,

asserted their sovereignty by issuing the golden florin of the

republic, and flourished until 1266. In that year an important

change was effected in the Constitution. The whole population

of Florence consisted, on the one hand, of nobles or Grandi,

as they were called in Tuscany, and on the other hand of

working people. The latter, divided into traders and

handicraftsmen, were distributed in guilds called Arti; and at

that time there were seven Greater and five Lesser Arti, the most

influential of all being the Guild of the Wool Merchants.

These guilds had their halls for meeting, their colleges of

chief officers, their heads, called Consoli or Priors, and

their flags. In 1266 it was decided that the administration of

the commonwealth should be placed simply and wholly in the

hands of the Arti, and the Priors of these industrial

companies became the lords or Signory of Florence. No

inhabitant of the city who had not enrolled himself as a

craftsman in one of the guilds could exercise any function of

burghership. To be scioperato, or without industry, was to be

without power, without rank or place of honour in the State.

The revolution which placed the Arts at the head of the

republic had the practical effect of excluding the Grandi

altogether from the government. ... In 1293, after the

Ghibellines had been defeated in the great battle of

Campaldino, a series of severe enactments, called the

Ordinances of Justice, were decreed against the unruly Grandi.

All civic rights were taken from them; the severest penalties

were attached to their slightest infringement of municipal

law; their titles to land were limited; the privilege of

living within the city walls was allowed them only under

galling restrictions; and last not least, a supreme

magistrate, named the Gonfalonier of Justice, was created for

the special purpose of watching them and carrying out the

penal code against them. Henceforward Florence was governed

exclusively by merchants and artisans. The Grandi hastened to

enroll themselves in the guilds, exchanging their former

titles and dignities for the solid privilege of burghership.

The exact parallel to this industrial constitution for a

commonwealth, carrying on wars with emperors and princes,

holding haughty captains in its pay, and dictating laws to

subject cities, cannot, I think, be elsewhere found in

history. It is as unique as the Florence of Dante and Giotto

is unique."

J. A. Symonds,

Florence and the Medici

(Sketches and Studies in Italy, chapter 5).

ALSO IN

C. Balbo,

Life and Times of Dante,

volume 1, Introduction.

A. Von Reumont,

Lorenzo de Medici,

book 1, chapter 1.

FLORENCE: A. D. 1284-1293.

War with Pisa.

See PISA: A. D. 1063-1293.

FLORENCE: A. D. 1289.

The victory of Campaldino, and the jealousy among its heroes.

In 1289 the Ghibellines of Arezzo having expelled the Guelfs

from that city, the Florentines made war in the cause of the

latter and won a great victory at Campaldino. This "raised the

renown and the military spirit of the Guelf party, for the

fame of the battle was very great; the hosts contained the

choicest chivalry of either side, armed and appointed with

emulous splendour. The fighting was hard, there was brilliant

and conspicuous gallantry, and the victory was complete. It

sealed Guelf ascendency. The Ghibelline warrior-bishop of

Arezzo fell, with three of the Uberti, and other Ghibelline

chiefs. ... In this battle the Guelf leaders had won great

glory. The hero of the day was the proudest, handsomest,

craftiest, most winning, most ambitious, most unscrupulous

Guelf noble in Florence--one of a family who inherited the

spirit and recklessness of the proscribed Uberti, and did not

refuse the popular epithet of 'Malefami'--Corso Donati.

{1134}

He did not come back from the field of Campaldino, where he

had won the battle by disobeying orders, with any increased

disposition to yield to rivals, or court the populace, or

respect other men's rights. Those rivals, too--and they also

had fought gallantly in the post of honour at Campaldino--were

such as he hated from his soul--rivals whom he despised, and

who yet were too strong for him [the family of the Cerchi].

His blood was ancient, they were upstarts; he was a soldier,

they were traders; he was poor, they the richest men in

Florence. ... They had crossed him in marriages, bargains,

inheritances. ... The glories of Campaldino were not as oil on

these troubled waters. The conquerors flouted each other all

the more fiercely in the streets on their return, and

ill-treated the lower people with less scruple."

R. W. Church,

Dante and Other Essays,

pages 27-31.

ALSO IN

C. Balbo,

Life and Times of Dante,

part 1, chapter 6 (volume 1).

FLORENCE: A. D. 1295-1300.

New factions in the city, and Dante's relations to them.

The Bianchi and the Neri (Whites and Blacks).

Among the Nobles "who resisted the oppression of the people,

Corso Donati must have been the chief, but he did not at first

come forward; with one of his usual stratagems, however, he

was the cause of a new revolution [January, 1295], which drove

Giano della Bella, the leader of the people, from the city.

... Notwithstanding the fall of Giano, the Nobles did not

return into power. He was succeeded as a popular leader by one

much his inferior, one Pecora, surnamed, from his trade, the

Butcher. New disputes arose between the nobles and the people,

and between the upper and lower ranks of the people itself.

Villani tells us that, in the year 1295, 'many families, who

were neither tyrannical nor powerful, withdrew from the order

of the nobles, and enrolled themselves among the people,

diminishing the power of the nobles and increasing that of the

people.' Dante must have been precisely one of those nobles 'who

were neither tyrannical nor powerful;' and ... it is certain

that he was among those who passed over from their own order

to that of the Popolani, by being matriculated in one of the

Arts. In a register from 1297 to 1300, of the Art of the

physicians and druggists, the fifth of the seven major Arts,

he is found matriculated in these words: 'Dante d'Aldighiero

degli Aldighieri poeta fiorentino.' ... Dante, by this means,

obtained office under the popular government. ... The new

factions that arose in Florence, in almost all Tuscany, and in

some of the cities in other parts of Italy, were merely

subdivisions of the Guelf party; merely what, in time, happens

to every faction after a period of prosperity, a division of

the ultras and of the moderates, or of those who hold more or

less extravagant views. ... All this happened to the Guelf

party in a very few years, and the Neri and Bianchi, the names

'Of the two divisions of that party, which had arisen in 1300,

were no longer mentioned ten years afterwards, but were again

lost in the primitive appellations of Guelfs and Ghibellines.

Thus this episode would possess little interest, and would be

scarcely mentioned in the history of Italy, or even of

Florence, had not the name of our sublime Poet been involved

in it; and, after his love, it is the most important

circumstance of his life, and the one to which he most

frequently alludes in his Commedia. It thus becomes a subject

worthy of history. ... Florentine historians attribute Corso

Donati's hatred towards Vieri de Cerchi to envy. ... This envy

arose to such a height between Dante's neighbours in Florence

that he has rendered it immortal. 'Through envy,' says

Villani, 'the citizens began to divide into factions, and one

of the principal feuds began in the Sesto dello Scandalo, near

the gate of St. Pietro, between the families of the Cerchi and

the Donati [from which latter family came Dante's wife]. ...

Messer Vieri was the head of the House of the Cerchi, and he

and his house were powerful in affairs, possessing a numerous

kindred; they were very rich merchants, for their company was

one of the greatest in the world.'" The state of animosity

between these two families "was existing in Florence in the

beginning of 1300, when it was increased by another rather

similar family quarrel that had arisen in Pistoia. . . .

'There was in Pistoia a family which amounted to more than 100

men capable of bearing arms; it was not of great antiquity,

but was powerful, wealthy, and numerous; it was descended from

one Cancellieri Notaio, and from him they had preserved

Cancellieri as their family name. From the children of the two

wives of this man were descended the 107 men of arms that have

been enumerated; one of the wives having been named Madonna

Bianca, her descendants were called Cancellieri Bianchi (White

Cancellieri); and the descendants of the other wife, in

opposition, were called Cancellieri Neri (Black

Cancellieri).'" Between these two branches of the family of

the Cancellieri there arose, some time near the end of the

thirteenth century, an implacable feud. "Florence ...

exercised a supremacy over Pistoia ... and fearing that these

internal dissensions might do injury to the Guelf party, she

took upon herself the lordship or supremacy of that city. The

principal Cancellieri, both Bianchi and Neri, were banished to

Florence itself; 'the Neri took up their abode in the house of

the Frescobaldi, beyond the Arno; the Bianchi at the house of

the Cerchi, in the Garbo, from being connected with them by

kindred. But as one sick sheep infects another, and is

injurious to the flock, so this cursed seed of discord, that

had departed from Pistoia and had now entered Florence,

corrupted all the Florentines, and divided them into two

parties.' ... The Cerchi, formerly called the Forest party

(parte selvaggia), now assumed the name of Bianchi; and those

who followed the Donati were now called Neri. ... 'There sided

with [the Bianchi, says Villani] the families of the Popolani

and petty artisans, and all the Ghibellines, whether Nobles or

Popolani.' ... Thus the usual position in which the two

parties stood was altered; for hitherto the Nobles had almost

always been Ghibellines, and the Popolani Guelfs; but now, if

the Popolani were not Ghibellines, they were at least not such

strong Guelfs as the nobles. Sometimes these parties are

referred to as White Guelfs and Black Guelfs."

C. Balbo,

Life and Times of Dante,

chapter 10.

ALSO IN

H. E. Napier,

Florentine History,

book 1, chapter 14 (volume l).

N. Machiavelli,

The Florentine Histories,

book 2.

{1135}

FLORENCE: A. D. 1301-1313.

Triumph of the Neri.

Banishment of Dante and his party.

Downfall and death of Corso Donati.

"In the year 1301, a serious affray took place between the two

parties [the Bianchi and the Neri]; the whole city was in

arms; the law, and the authority of the Signoria, among whom

was the poet Dante Alighieri, was set at naught by the great

men of each side, while the best citizens looked on with fear

and trembling. The Donati, fearing that unaided they would not

be a match for their adversaries, proposed that they should

put themselves under a ruler of the family of the king of

France. Such a direct attack on the independence of the state

was not to be borne by the Signoria, among whom the poet had

great influence. At his instigation they armed the populace,

and with their assistance compelled the heads of the

contending parties to lay down their arms, and sent into exile

Messer Donati and others who had proposed the calling in of

foreigners. A sentence of banishment was also pronounced

against the most violent men of the party of the Bianchi, most

of whom, however, were allowed, under various pretences, to

return to their country. The party of the Donati in their

exile carried on those intrigues which they had commenced

while at home. They derived considerable assistance from the

king of France's brother, Charles of Valois, whom Pope

Boniface had brought into Italy. That prince managed, by means

of promises, which he subsequently violated, to get admission

for himself, together with several of the Neri, and the legate

of the pope, into Florence. He then produced letters,

generally suspected to be forgeries, charging the leaders of

the Bianchi with conspiracy. The popularity of the accused

party had already been on the wane, and after a violent

tumult, the chief men among them, including Dante, were

obliged to leave the city; their goods were confiscated, and

their houses destroyed. ... From this time Corso Donati, the

head of the faction of the Neri, became the chief man at

Florence. The accounts of its state at this period, taken from

the most credible historians, warrant us in thinking that the

severe invectives of Dante are not to be ascribed merely to

indignation or resentment at the harsh treatment he had

received. ... The city was rent by more violent dissensions

than ever. There were now three distinct sources of

contention--the jealousy between the people and the nobles,

the disputes between the Bianchi and the Neri, and those

between the Ghibellines and the Guelfs. It was in vain that

the legate of Pope Benedict, a man of great piety, went

thither for the sake of trying to restore order. The

inhabitants showed how little they respected him by exhibiting

a scandalous representation of hell on the river Arno; and,

after renewing his efforts without success, he cursed the city

and departed [1302]. The reign of Corso Donati ended like that

of most of those who have succeeded to power by popular violence.

Six years after the banishment of his adversaries he was

suspected, not without reason, of endeavouring to make himself

independent of constitutional restraints. The Signori declared

him guilty of rebellion. After a protracted resistance he made

his escape from the city, but was pursued and taken at Rovesca

[1308]. When he was led captive by those among whom his

authority had lately been paramount, he threw himself under

his horse, and, after having been dragged some distance, he

was dispatched by one of the captors. ... The party that had

been raised by Corso Donati continued to hold the chief power

at Florence even after the death of their chief. The exiled

faction, in the words of one of their leaders, ... had not

learned the art of returning to their country as well as their

adversaries. Four years after the events alluded to, the

Emperor, Henry VII., made some negotiations in their favour,

which but imperfectly succeeded. The Florentines, however,

were awed when he approached their city at the head of his

army; and in the extremity of their danger they implored the

assistance of King Robert of Naples, and made him Lord of

their city for the space of five years. The Emperor's

mysterious death [August 24, 1313], at Buonconvento freed them

from their alarm."

W. P. Urquhart,

Life and Times of Francesco Sforza,

book 1, chapter 3 (volume 1).

ALSO IN

Mrs. Oliphant,

The Makers of Florence,

chapter 2.

B. Duffy,

The Tuscan Republics,

chapter 12.

FLORENCE: A. D. 1310-1313.

Resistance to the Emperor, Henry VII.

Siege by the imperial army.

See ITALY: A. D, 1310-1313,

FLORENCE: A. D. 1313-1328.

Wars with Pisa and with Castruccio Castracani, of Lucca.

Disastrous battles of Montecatini and Altopascio.

See ITALY: A. D. 1313-1330.

FLORENCE: A. D. 1336-1338.

Alliance with Venice against Mastino della Scala.

See VERONA: A. D. 1260-1338.

FLORENCE: A. D. 1341-1343.

Defeat by the Pisans before Lucca.

The brief tyranny of the Duke of Athens.

In 1341, Mastino della Scala, of Verona, who had become master

of Lucca in 1335 by treachery, offered to sell that town to

the Florentines. The bargain was concluded; "but it appeared

to the Pisans the signal of their own servitude, for it cut

off all communication between them and the Ghibelines of

Lombardy. They immediately advanced their militia into the

Lucchese states to prevent the Florentines from taking

possession of the town; vanquished them in battle, on the 2d

of October, 1341, under the walls of Lucca; and, on the 6th of

July following, took possession of that city for themselves.

The people of Florence attributed this train of disasters to

the incapacity of their magistrates. ... At this period,

Gauttier [Walter] de Brienne, duke of Athens, a French noble,

but born in Greece, passed through Florence on his way from

Naples to France; The duchy of Athens had remained in his

family from the conquest of Constantinople till it was taken

from his father in 1312. ... It was for this man the

Florentines, after their defeat at Lucca, took a sudden fancy.

... On the 1st of August, 1342, they obliged the signoria to

confer on him the title of captain of justice, and to give him

the command of their militia." A month later, the duke, by his

arts, had worked such a ferment among the lower classes of the

population that they "proclaimed him sovereign lord of

Florence for his life, forced the public palace, drove from it

the gonfalonier and the priori, and installed him there in

their place. ... Happily, Florence was not ripe for slavery:

ten months sufficed for the duke of Athens to draw from it

400,000 golden florins, which he sent either to France or

Naples; but ten months sufficed also to undeceive all parties

who had placed any confidence in him," and by a universal

rising, in July, 1343, he was driven from the city.

J. C. L. de Sismondi,

History of the Italian Republics,

chapter 6.

ALSO IN:

T. A. Trollope,

History of the Commonwealth of Florence,

book 3, chapter 4 (volume 2).

{1136}

FLORENCE: 14th Century.

Industrial Prosperity of the City.

"John Villani has given us an ample and precise account of the

state of Florence in the earlier part of the 14th century. The

revenue of the Republic amounted to 300,000 florins, a sum

which, allowing for the depreciation of the precious metals,

was at least equivalent to 600,000 pounds sterling; a larger

sum than England and Ireland, two centuries ago, yielded

annually to Elizabeth--a larger sum than, according to any

computation which we have seen, the Grand Duke of Tuscany now

derives from a territory of much greater extent. The

manufacture of wool alone employed 200 factories and 30,000

workmen. The cloth annually produced sold, at an average, for

1,200,000 florins; a sum fairly equal, in exchangeable value,

to two millions and a half of our money. Four hundred thousand

florins were annually coined. Eighty banks conducted the

commercial operations, not of Florence only, but of all

Europe. The transactions of these establishments were

sometimes of a magnitude which may surprise even the

contemporaries of the Barings and the Rothschilds. Two houses

advanced to Edward the Third of England upwards of 300,000

marks, at a time when the mark contained more silver than 50

shillings of the present day, and when the value of silver was

more than quadruple of what it now is. The city and its

environs contained 170,000 inhabitants. In the various schools

about 10,000 children were taught to read; 1,200 studied

arithmetic; 600 received a learned education. The progress of

elegant literature and of the fine arts was proportioned to

that of the public prosperity. ... Early in the 14th century

came forth the Divine Comedy, beyond comparison the greatest

work of imagination which had appeared since the poems of

Homer. The following generation produced indeed no second

Dante: but it was eminently distinguished by general

intellectual activity. The study of the Latin writers had

never been wholly neglected in Italy. But Petrarch introduced

a more profound, liberal, and elegant scholarship; and

communicated to his countrymen that enthusiasm for the

literature, the history, and the antiquities of Rome, which

divided his own heart with a frigid mistress and a more frigid

Muse. Boccaccio turned their attention to the more sublime and

graceful models of Greece."

Lord Macaulay,

Machiavelli

(Essays, volume 1).

FLORENCE: A. D. 1348.

The Plague.

"In the year then of our Lord 1348, there happened at

Florence, the finest city in all Italy, a most terrible

plague; which, whether owing to the influence of the planets,

or that it was sent from God as a just punishment for our

sins, had broken out some years before in the Levant, and

after passing from place to place, and making incredible havoc

all the way, had now reached the west. There, spite of all the

means that art and human foresight could suggest, such as

keeping the city clear from filth, the exclusion of all

suspected persons, and the publication of copious instructions

for the preservation of health; and notwithstanding manifold

humble supplications offered to God in processions and

otherwise; it began to show itself in the spring of the

aforesaid year, in a sad and wonderful manner. Unlike what had

been seen in the east, where bleeding from the nose is the

fatal prognostic, here there appeared certain tumours in the

groin or under the armpits, some as big as a small apple,

others as an egg; and afterwards purple spots in most parts of

the body; in some cases large and but few in number, in others

smaller and more numerous--both sorts the usual messengers of

death. To the cure of this malady, neither medical knowledge

nor the power of drugs was of any effect. ... Nearly all died

the third day from the first appearance of the symptoms, some

sooner, some later, without any fever or other accessory

symptoms. What gave the more virulence to this plague, was

that, by being communicated from the sick to the hale, it

spread daily, like fire when it comes in contact with large

masses of combustibles. Nor was it caught only by conversing

with, or coming near the sick, but even by touching their

clothes, or anything that they had before touched. ... These

facts, and others of the like sort, occasioned various fears

and devices amongst those who survived, all tending to the

same uncharitable and cruel end; which was, to avoid the sick,

and everything that had been near them, expecting by that

means to save themselves. And some holding it best to live

temperately, and to avoid excesses of all kinds, made parties,

and shut themselves up from the rest of the world. ... Others

maintained free living to be a better preservative, and would

baulk no passion or appetite they wished to gratify, drinking

and revelling incessantly from tavern to tavern, or in private

houses (which were frequently found deserted by the owners,

and therefore common to everyone), yet strenuously avoiding,

with all this brutal indulgence, to come near the infected.

And such, at that time, was the public distress, that the

laws, human and divine, were no more regarded; for the

officers to put them in force being either dead, sick, or in

want of persons to assist them, everyone did just as he

pleased. ... I pass over the little regard that citizens and

relations showed to each other; for their terror was such that

a brother even fled from a brother, a wife from her husband,

and, what is more uncommon, a parent from his own child. ...

Such was the cruelty of Heaven, and perhaps of men, that

between March and July following, according to authentic

reckonings, upwards of 100,000 souls perished in the city

only; whereas, before that calamity, it was not supposed to

have continued so many inhabitants. What magnificent

dwellings, what noble palaces, were then depopulated to the

last inhabitant!"

G. Boccaccio,

The Decameron,

introd.

See, also, BLACK DEATH.

FLORENCE: A. D. 1358.

The captains of the Guelf Party and the "Ammoniti."

"The magistracy called the 'Capitani di Parte Guelfa,'--the

Captains of the Guelph party,--was instituted in the year

1267; and it was remarked, when the institution of it was

recorded, that the conception of a magistracy avowedly formed

to govern a community, not only by the authority of, but in

the interest of one section only of its members, was an

extraordinary proof of the unfitness of the Florentines for

self-government, and a forewarning of the infallible certainty

that the attempt to rule the Commonwealth on such principles

would come to a bad ending. In the year 1358, a little less

than a century after the first establishment of this strange

magistracy, it began to develop the mischievous capabilities

inherent in the nature of it, in a very alarming manner. ...

{1137}

In 1358 this magistracy consisted of four members. ... These

men, 'born,' says Ammirato, 'for the public ruin, under

pretext of zeal for the Guelph cause' ... caused a law to be

passed, according to which any citizen or Florentine subject

who had ever held, or should thereafter hold, any office in

the Commonwealth, might be either openly or secretly accused

before the tribunal of the Captains of the Guelph Party of

being Ghibelline, or not genuine Guelph. If the accusation was

supported by six witnesses worthy of belief, the accused might

be condemned to death or to fine at the discretion of the

Captains. ... It will be readily conceived that the passing of

such a law, in a city bristling with party hatreds and feuds,

was the signal for the commencement of a reign of terror." The

citizens proscribed were "said to be 'admonished'; and the

condemnations were called 'admonitions'; and henceforward for

many years the 'ammonizioni' [or 'ammoniti'] play a large part

in the domestic history and political struggles of Florence."

T. A. Trollope,

History of the Commonwealth of Florence,

book 3, chapter 7 (volume 2).

ALSO IN:

H. E. Napier,

Florentine History,

chapter 23 (volume 2).

FLORENCE: A. D. 1359-1391.

The Free Company of Sir John Hawkwood and the wars with Pisa,

with Milan, and with the Pope.

See ITALY: A. D. 1343-1393.

FLORENCE: A. D. 1375-1378.

War with the Pope in support of the oppressed States of the

Church.

The Eight Saints of War.

A terrible excommunication.

In 1375, the Florentines became engaged in war with Pope

Gregory XI., supporting a revolt of the States of the Church,

which were heavily oppressed by the representatives of their

papal sovereign

See PAPACY: A. D. 1352-1378.

"Nevertheless, so profoundly reverenced was the church that

even the sound of war against a pope appeared to many little

less than blasphemy: numbers opposed on this pretence, but

really from party motives alone." But "a general council

assembled and declared the cause of liberty paramount to every

other consideration; the war was affirmed to be rather against

the injustice and tyranny of foreign governors than the church

itself. ... All the ecclesiastical cities then groaning under

French oppression were to be invited to revolt and boldly

achieve their independence. These spirited resolutions were

instantly executed, and on the 8th of August 1375 Alessandro

de' Bardi [and seven other citizens] ... were formed into a

supreme council of war called 'Gli Otto della Guerra'; and

afterwards, from their able conduct, 'Gli Otto Santi della

Guerra' [The Eight Saints of War]; armed with the concentrated

power of the whole Florentine nation in what regarded war." A

terrible sentence of excommunication was launched against the

Florentines by the Pope. "Their souls were solemnly condemned

to the pains of hell; fire and water were interdicted; their

persons and property outlawed in every Christian land, and

they were finally declared lawful prey for all who chose to

sell, plunder, or kill them as though they were mere slaves or

infidels."

H. E. Napier,

Florentine History,

book 1, chapter 26 (volume 2).

FLORENCE: A. D. 1378-1427.

Complete democratizing of the commonwealth.

The Tumult of the Ciompi.

First appearance of the Medici in Florentine history.

Though the reign of the Duke of Athens lasted rather less than

a year, "it bore important fruits; for the tyrant, seeking to

support himself upon the favour of the common people, gave

political power to the Lesser Arts at the expense of the

Greater, and confused the old State-system by enlarging the

democracy. The net result of these events for Florence was,

first, that the city became habituated to rancorous

party-strife, involving exiles and proscriptions, and,

secondly, that it lost its primitive social hierarchy of

classes. ... Civil strife now declared itself as a conflict

between labour and capital. The members of the Lesser Arts,

craftsmen who plied trades subordinate to those of the Greater

Arts, rose up against their social and political superiors,

demanding a larger share in the government, a more equal

distribution of profits, higher wages, and privileges that

should place them on an absolute equality with the wealthy

merchants. It was in the year 1378 that the proletariate broke

out into rebellion. Previous events had prepared the way for

this revolt. First of all, the republic had been democratised

through the destruction of the Grandi and through the popular

policy pursued to gain his own ends by the Duke of Athens.

Secondly, society had been shaken to its very foundation by

the great plague of 1348 ... nor had 30 years sufficed to

restore their relative position to grades and ranks confounded

by an overwhelming calamity. ... Rising in a mass to claim

their privileges, the artisans ejected the Signory from the

Public Palace, and for awhile Florence was at the mercy of the

mob. It is worthy of notice that the Medici, whose name is

scarcely known before this epoch, now come for one moment to

the front. Salvestro de' Medici was Gonfalonier of Justice at

the time when the tumult first broke out. He followed the

faction of the handicraftsmen, and became the hero of the day.

I cannot discover that he did more than extend a sort of

passive protection to their cause. Yet there is no doubt that

the attachment of the working classes to the house of Medici

dates from this period. The rebellion of 1378 is known in

Florentine history as the Tumult of the Ciompi. The name

Ciompi strictly means the Wool-Carders. One set of operatives

in the city, and that the largest, gave its title to the whole

body of the labourers. For some months these craftsmen

governed the republic, appointing their own Signory and

passing laws in their own interest; but, as is usual, the

proletariate found itself incapable of sustained government.

The ambition and discontent of the Ciompi foamed themselves

away, and industrious workingmen began to see that trade was

languishing and credit on the wane. By their own act at last

they restored the government to the Priors of the Greater

Arti. Still the movement had not been without grave

consequences. It completed the levelling of classes, which had

been steadily advancing from the first in Florence. After the

Ciompi riot there was no longer not only any distinction

between noble and burgher, but the distinction between greater

and lesser guilds was practically swept away. ... The proper

political conditions had been formed for unscrupulous

adventurers. Florence had become a democracy without social

organisation. ... The time was come for the Albizzi to attempt

an oligarchy, and for the Medici to begin the enslavement of the

State.

{1138}

The Constitution of Florence offered many points of weakness

to the attacks of such intriguers. In the first place it was

in its origin not a political but an industrial

organisation--a simple group of guilds invested with the

sovereign authority. ... It had no permanent head, like the

Doge of Venice, no fixed senate like the Venetian Grand

Council; its chief magistrates, the Signory, were elected for

short periods of two months, and their mode of election was

open to the gravest criticism. Supposed to be chosen by lot,

they were really selected from lists drawn up by the factions

in power from time to time. These factions contrived to

exclude the names of all but their adherents from the bags, or

'borse,' in which the burghers eligible for election had to be

inscribed. Furthermore, it was not possible for this shifting

Signory to conduct affairs requiring sustained effort and

secret deliberation; therefore recourse was being continually

had to dictatorial Commissions. The people, summoned in

parliament upon the Great Square, were asked to confer

plenipotentiary authority upon a committee called Balia [see

BALIA OF FLORENCE], who proceeded to do what they chose in the

State; and who retained power after the emergency for which

they were created passed away. ... It was through these [and

other specified] defects that the democracy merged gradually

into a despotism. The art of the Medici consisted in a

scientific comprehension of these very imperfections, a

methodic use of them for their own purposes, and a steady

opposition to any attempts made to substitute a stricter

system. ... Florence, in the middle of the 14th century, was a

vast beehive of industry. Distinctions of rank among burghers,

qualified to vote and hold office, were theoretically unknown.

Highly educated men, of more than princely wealth, spent their

time in shops and counting-houses, and trained their sons to

follow trades. Military service at this period was abandoned

by the citizens; they preferred to pay mercenary troops for

the conduct of their wars. Nor was there, as in Venice, any

outlet for their energies upon the seas. Florence had no navy,

no great port--she only kept a small fleet for the protection

of her commerce. Thus the vigour of the commonwealth was

concentrated on itself; while the influence of citizens,

through their affiliated trading-houses, correspondents, and

agents, extended like a network over Europe. ... Accordingly

we find that out of the very bosom of the people a new

plutocratic aristocracy begins to rise. ... These nobles of

the purse obtained the name of 'Popolani Nobili'; and it was

they who now began to play at high stakes for the supreme

power. ... The opening of the second half of the 14th century

had been signalised by the feuds of two great houses, both

risen from the people. These were the Albizzi and the Ricci."

The Albizzi triumphed, in the conflict of the two houses, and

became all-powerful for a time in Florence; but the wars with

the Visconti, of Milan, in which they engaged the city, made

necessary a heavy burden of taxation, which they rendered more

grievous by distributing it unfairly. "This imprudent

financial policy began the ruin of the Albizzi. It caused a

clamour in the city for a new system of more just taxation,

which was too powerful to be resisted. The voice of the people

made itself loudly heard; and with the people on this occasion

sided Giovanni de' Medici. This was in 1427. It is here that

the Medici appear upon that memorable scene where in the

future they are to play the first part. Giovanni de' Medici

did not belong to the same branch of his family as the

Salvestro who favoured the people at the time of the Ciompi

Tumult. But he adopted the same popular policy. To his sons

Cosimo and Lorenzo he bequeathed on his death-bed the rule

that they should invariably adhere to the cause of the

multitude, found their influence on that, and avoid the arts

of factious and ambitious leaders."

J. A. Symonds,

Florence and the Medici

(Sketches and Studies in Italy, chapter 5).

ALSO IN:

A. von Reumont,

Lorenzo de' Medici,

book 1, chapter 2 (volume l).

T. A. Trollope,

History of the Commonwealth of Florence,

books 4-5 (volume 2).

FLORENCE: A. D. 1390-1402.

War with Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Duke of Milan.

"Already in 1386, the growing power of Giangaleazzo Visconti,

the tenth duke of Milan of that family, began to give umbrage,

not only to all the sovereign princes: his neighbours, but

also to Florence [see MILAN: A. D. 1277-1447]. ... Florence

... had cause enough to feel uneasy at the progress of such a

man in his career of successful invasion and

usurpation;--Florence, no more specially than other of the

free towns around her, save that Florence seems always to have

thought that she had more to lose from the loss of her liberty

than any of the other cities ... and felt always called upon to

take upon herself the duty of standing forward as the champion

and supporter of the principles of republicanism and free

government. ... The Pope, Urban VI., added another element of

disturbance to the condition of Italy. For in his anxiety to

recover sundry cities mainly in Umbria and Romagna ... he was

exceedingly unscrupulous of means, and might at any moment be

found allying himself with the enemies of free government and

of the old Guelph cause in Italy. Venice, also, having most

improvidently and unwisely allied herself with Visconti,

constituted another element of danger, and an additional cause

of uneasiness and watchfulness to the Florentine government.

In the spring of 1388, therefore, a board of ten, 'Dieci di

Balia,' was elected for the general management of 'all those

measures concerning war and peace which should be adopted by

the entire Florentine people.'" The first war with Visconti

was declared by the republic in May, 1390, and was so

successfully conducted for the Florentines by Sir John

Hawkwood that it terminated in a treaty signed January 26,

1392, which bound the Duke of Milan not to meddle in any way

with the affairs of Tuscany. For ten years this agreement

seems to have been tolerably well adhered to; but in 1402 the

rapacious Duke entered upon new encroachments, which forced

the Florentines to take up arms again. Their only allies were

Bologna and Padua (or Francesco Carrara of Padua), and the

armies of the three states were defeated in a terribly bloody

battle fought near Bologna on the 26th of June. "Bologna fell

into the hands of Visconti. Great was the dismay and terror in

Florence when the news ... reached the city. It was neither

more nor less than the fall, as the historian says, of the

fortress which was the bulwark of Florence. Now she lay

absolutely open to the invader." But the invader did not come.

He was stricken with the plague and died, in September, and

Florence and Italy were saved from the tyranny which he had

seemed able to extend over the whole.

T. A. Trollope,

History of the Commonwealth of Florence,

book 4, chapters 4-5 (volume 2).

{1139}

FLORENCE: 14th-15th Centuries.

Commercial enterprise, industrial energy,

wealth and culture of the city.

"During the 14th and 15th centuries Florentine wealth

increased in an extraordinary degree. Earlier generations had

compelled the powerful barons of the district to live in the

city; and even yet the exercise of the rights of citizenship

was dependent on having a residence there. The influx of

outsiders was, however, much more owing to the attractions

offered by the city, whether in business, profession, or

pleasure, than to compulsion. ... The situation of the city is

not favorable to the natural growth of commerce, especially

under the conditions which preceded the building of railroads.

At a considerable distance from the sea, on a river navigable

only for very small craft, and surrounded by hills which

rendered difficult the construction of good roads,--the fact

that the city did prosper so marvellously is in itself proof

of the remarkable energy and ability of its people. They

needed above all things a sea-port, and to obtain a good one

they waged some of their most exhausting wars. Their principal

wealth, however, came through their financial operations,

which extended throughout Europe, and penetrated even to

Morocco and the Orient. Their manufactures also, especially of

wool and silk, brought in enormous returns, and made not only

the fortunes but also, in one famous case at least, the name

of the families engaged in them. Their superiority over the

rest of Christendom in these pursuits was but one side of that

remarkable, universal talent which is the most astonishing

feature of the Florentine life of that age. With the hardihood

of youth, they were not only ready but eager to engage in new

enterprises, whether at home or abroad. ... As a result of

their energy and ability, riches poured into their coffers,--a

mighty stream of gold, in the use of which they showed so much

judgment, that the after world has feasted to our day, and for

centuries to come, will probably continue to feast without

satiety on the good things which they caused to be made, and

left behind them. Of all the legacies for which we have to

thank Florence, none are so well known and so universally

recognized as the treasures of art created by her sons, many

of which yet remain within her walls, the marvel and delight

of all who behold them. As the Florentines were ready to try

experiments in politics, manufactures, and commerce, so also

in all branches of the fine arts they tried experiments, left

the old, beaten paths of their forefathers, and created

something original, useful, and beautiful for themselves.

Christian art from the time of the Roman Empire to Cimabue had

made comparatively little progress; but a son of the

Florentine fields was to start a revolution which should lead

to the production of some of the most marvellous works which

have proceeded from the hand of man. The idea that the fine

arts are more successfully cultivated under the patronage of

princes than under republican rule is very widespread, and is

occasionally accepted almost as a dogma; but the history of

Athens and of Florence teaches us without any doubt that the

two most artistic epochs in the history of the world have had

their rise in republics. ... Some writers, dazzled by the

splendors of the Medici, entirely lose sight of the fact that

both Dante and Petrarch were dead before the Medici were even

heard of, and that the greatest works, at least in

architecture, were all begun long before they were leaders in

Florentine affairs. That family did much, yes very much, for

the advancement of art and letters; but they did not do all or

nearly all that was done in Florence. ... Though civil discord

and foreign war were very frequent, Florentine life is

nevertheless an illustration rather of what Herbert Spencer

calls the commercial stage of civilization, than of the

war-like period. Her citizens were above all things merchants,

and were generally much more willing to pay to avoid a war than

to conduct one. They strove for glory, not in feats of arms,

but in literary contests and in peaceful emulation in the

encouragement of learning and the fine arts."

W. B. Scaife,

Florentine Life during the Renaissance,

pages 16-19.

FLORENCE: A. D. 1405-1406.

Purchase and conquest of Pisa.

See ITALY: A. D. 1402-1406.

FLORENCE: A. D. 1409-1411.

League against and war with Ladislas, King of Naples.

See ITALY (SOUTHERN): A. D. 1386-1414.

FLORENCE: A. D. 1423-1447.

War with the Duke of Milan.

League with Venice, Naples, and other States.

See ITALY: A. D. 1412-1447.

FLORENCE: A. D. 1433-1464.

The ascendancy of Cosimo de' Medici.

In 1433, Cosmo, or Cosimo de' Medici, the son of Giovanni de'

Medici, was the recognized leader of the opposition to the

oligarchy controlled by Rinaldo de' Albizzi. Cosmo inherited

from his father a large fortune and a business as a merchant

and banker which he maintained and increased. "He lived

splendidly; he was a great supporter of all literary men, and

spent and distributed his great wealth amongst his fellow

citizens. He was courteous and liberal, and was looked upon

with almost unbounded respect and affection by a large party

in the state. Rinaldo was bent upon his ruin, and in 1433,

when he had a Signoria devoted to his party, he cited Cosmo

before the Council, and shut him up in a tower of the Public

Palace. Great excitement was caused by this violent step, and

two days after the Signoria held a parliament of the people.

The great bell of the city was tolled, and the people gathered

round the Palace. Then the gates of the Palace were thrown

open, and the Signoria, the Colleges of Arts, and the

Gonfaloniere came forth, and asked the people if they would

have a Balia. So a Balia was appointed, the names being

proposed by the Signoria, to decide on the fate of Cosmo. At

first it was proposed to kill him, but he was only banished,

much against the will of Rinaldo, who knew that, if he lived,

he would some day come back again. The next year the Signoria

was favourable to him; another Balia was appointed; the party

of the Albizzi was banished, and Cosmo was recalled. He was

received with a greeting such as men give to a conqueror, and

was hailed as the 'Father of his Country.' This triumphant

return gave the Medici a power in the Republic which they

never afterwards lost. The banished party fled to the court of

the Duke of Milan, and stirred him up to war against the city."

W. Hunt,

History of Italy,

chapter 6, section 5.

{1140}

"Cosimo de' Medici did not content himself with rendering his

old opponents harmless; he took care also that none of his

adherents should become too powerful and dangerous to him.

Therefore, remarks Francesco Guicciardini, he retained the

Signoria, as well as the taxes, in his hand, in order to be

able to promote or oppress individuals at will. In other

things the citizens enjoyed greater freedom and acted more

according to their own pleasure than later, in the days of his

grandson, for he let the reins hang loose if he was only sure

of his own position. It was just in this that his great art

lay, to guide things according to his will, and yet to make

his partisans believe that he shared his authority with them.

... 'It is well known' remarks [Guicciardini] ... 'how much

nobility and wealth were destroyed by Cosimo and his

descendants by taxation. The Medici never allowed a fixed

method and legal distribution, but always reserved to

themselves the power of bearing heavily upon individuals

according to their pleasure. ... He [Cosimo] maintained great

reserve in his whole manner of life. For a quarter of a

century he was the almost absolute director of the State, but

he never assumed the show of his dignity. ... The ruler of the

Florentine State remained citizen, agriculturist, and

merchant. In his appearance and bearing there was nothing

which distinguished him from others. ... He ruled the money

market, not only in Italy, but throughout Europe. He had banks

in all the western countries, and his experience and the

excellent memory which never failed him, with his strong love

of order, enabled him to guide everything from Florence, which

he never quitted after 1438." The death of Cosimo occurred on

the 1st day of August, 1464.

A. von Reumont,

Lorenzo de' Medici,

book. 1, chapters 6 and 8 (volume 1).

"The last troubled days of the Florentine democracy had not

proved quite unproductive of art. It was the time of Giotto's

undisputed sway. Many works of which the 15th century gets the

glory because it finished them were ordered and begun amidst

the confusion and terrible agitation of the demagogy. ...

Under the oligarchy, in the relative calm that came with

oppression, a taste for art as well as for letters began to

develop in Florence as elsewhere." But "Cosimo de' Medicis had

rare good fortune. In his time, and under his rule, capricious

chance united at Florence talents as numerous as they were

diverse--the universal Brunelleschi, the polished and elegant

Ghiberti, the rough and powerful Donatello, the suave

Angelico, the masculine Masaccio. ... Cosimo lived long enough

to see the collapse of the admirable talent which flourished

upon the banks of the Arno, and soon spread throughout Italy,

and to feel the void left by it. It is true his grandson saw a

new harvest, but as inferior to that which preceded it, as it

was to that which followed it."

F. T. Perrens,

History of Florence, 1434-1531,

book 1, chapter 6.

FLORENCE: A. D. 1450-1454.

Alliance with Francesco Sforza, of Milan, and war with

Venice, Naples, Savoy, and other States.

See MILAN: A. D. 1447-1454.

FLORENCE: A. D. 1458-1469.

Lucas Pitti, and the building of the Pitti Palace.

Piero de' Medici and the five agents of his tyranny.

Until 1455, Cosmo de' Medici shared the government of Florence

in some degree with Neri Capponi, an able statesman, who had

taken an eminent part in public affairs for many years--during

the domination of the Albizzi, as well as afterwards.

"When Neri Capponi died, the council refused to call a new

parliament to replace the balia, whose power expired on the

1st of July, 1455. ... The election of the signoria was again

made fairly by lot, ... the contributions were again equitably

apportioned,--the tribunals ceased to listen to the

recommendations of those who, till then, had made a traffic of

distributive justice." This recovery of freedom in Florence

was enjoyed for about three years; but when, in 1458, Lucas

Pitti, "rich, powerful, and bold," was named gonfalonier,

Cosmo conspired with him to reimpose the yoke. "Pitti

assembled the parliament; but not till he had filled all the

avenues of the public square with soldiers or armed peasants.

The people, menaced and trembling within this circle,

consented to name a new balia, more violent and tyrannical

than any of the preceding. It was composed of 352 persons, to

whom was delegated all the power of the republic. They exiled

a great number of the citizens who had shown the most

attachment to liberty, and they even put some to death." When,

in 1463, Cosmo's second son, Giovanni, on whom his hopes were

centered, died, Lucas Pitti "looked on himself henceforth as

the only chief of the state. It was about this time that he

undertook the building of that magnificent palace which now

[1832] forms the residence of the grand-dukes. The republican

equality was not only offended by the splendour of this regal

dwelling; but the construction of it afforded Pitti an

occasion for marking his contempt of liberty and the laws. He

made of this building an asylum for all fugitives from

justice, whom no public officer dared pursue when once he

[they?] took part in the labour. At the same time individuals,

as well as communities, who would obtain some favour from the

republic, knew that the only means of being heard was to offer

Lucas Pitti some precious wood or marble to be employed in the

construction of his palace. When Cosmo de' Medici died, at his

country-house of Careggi, on the 1st of August, 1464, Lucas

Pitti felt himself released from the control imposed by the

virtue and moderation of that great citizen. ... His [Cosmo's]

son, Pietro de' Medici, then 48 years of age, supposed that he

should succeed to the administration of the republic, as he

had succeeded to the wealth of his father, by hereditary

right: but the state of his health did not admit of his

attending regularly to business, or of his inspiring his

rivals with much fear. To diminish the weight of affairs which

oppressed him, he resolved on withdrawing a part of his immense

fortune from commerce; recalling all his loans made in

partnership with other merchants; and laying out this money in

land. But this unexpected demand of considerable capital

occasioned a fatal shock to the commerce of Florence; at the

same time that it alienated all the debtors of the house of

Medici, and deprived it of much of its popularity. The death

of Sforza, also, which took place on the 8th of March, 1466,

deprived the Medicean party of its firmest support abroad. ...

The friends of liberty at Florence soon perceived that Lucas

Pitti and Pietro de' Medici no longer agreed together; and

they recovered courage when the latter proposed to the council

the calling of a parliament, in order to renew the balia, the

power of which expired on the 1st of September, 1465; his

proposition was rejected.

{1141}

The magistracy began again to be drawn by lot from among the

members of the party victorious in 1434. This return of

liberty, however, was but of short duration. Pitti and Medici

were reconciled: they agreed to call a parliament, and to

direct it in concert; to intimidate it, they surrounded it

with foreign troops. But Medici, on the nomination of the

balia, on the 2d of September, 1466, found means of admitting

his own partisans only, and excluding all those of Lucas

Pitti. The citizens who had shown any zeal for liberty were

all exiled. ... Lucas Pitti ruined himself in building his

palace. His talents were judged to bear no proportion to his

ambition: the friends of liberty, as well as those of Medici,

equally detested him; and he remained deprived of all power in

a city which he had so largely contributed to enslave. Italy

became filled with Florentine emigrants: every revolution,

even every convocation of parliament, was followed by the

exile of many citizens. ... At Florence, the citizens who

escaped proscription trembled to see despotism established in

their republic; but the lower orders were in general

contented, and made no attempt to second Bartolomeo Coleoni,

when he entered Tuscany, in 1467, at the head of the

Florentine emigrants, who had taken him into their pay.

Commerce prospered; manufactures were carried on with great

activity; high wages supported in comfort all who lived by

their labour; and the Medici entertained them with shows and

festivals, keeping them in a sort of perpetual carnival,

amidst which the people soon lost all thought of liberty.

Pietro de' Medici was always in too bad a state of health to

exercise in person the sovereignty he had usurped over his

country; he left it to five or six citizens, who reigned in

his name. ... They not only transacted all business, but

appropriated to themselves all the profit; they sold their

influence and credit; they gratified their cupidity or their

vengeance; but they took care not to act in their own names,

or to pledge their own responsibility; they left that to the

house of Medici. Pietro, during the latter months of his life,

perceived the disorder and corruption of his agents. He was

afflicted to see his memory thus stained, and he addressed

them the severest reprimands; he even entered into

correspondence with the emigrants, whom he thought of

recalling, when he died, on the 2d of December, 1469. His two

sons, Lorenzo and Giuliano, the elder of whom was not 21 years

of age, ... given up to all the pleasures of their age, had

yet no ambition. The power of the state remained in the hands

of the five citizens who had exercised it under Pietro."

J. C. L. de Sismondi,

History of the Italian Republics,

chapter 11.

FLORENCE: A. D. 1469-1492.

The conspiracy of the Pazzi.

The government of Lorenzo the Magnificent.

The death of liberty.

The golden age of letters and art.

"Lorenzo inherited his grandfather's political sagacity and

far surpassed him in talent and literary culture. In many

respects too he was a very different man. Cosimo never left

his business office; Lorenzo neglected it, and had so little

commercial aptitude that he was obliged to retire from

business, in order not to lose his abundant patrimony. Cosimo

was frugal in his personal expenses and lent freely to others;

Lorenzo loved splendid living, and thus gained the title of

the Magnificent; he spent immoderately for the advancement of

literary men; he gave himself up to dissipation which ruined

his health and shortened his days. His manner of living

reduced him to such straits, that he had to sell some of his

possessions and obtain money from his friends. Nor did this

suffice; for he even meddled with the public money, a thing

that had never happened in Cosimo's time. Very often, in his

greed of unlawful gain, he had the Florentine armies paid by

his own bank; he also appropriated the sums collected in the

Monte Comune or treasury of the public debt, and those in the

Monte delle Fanciulle where were marriage portions accumulated

by private savings--money hitherto held sacred by all.

Stimulated by the same greed, he, in the year 1472 joined the

Florentine contractors for the wealthy alum mines of Volterra,

at the moment in which that city was on the verge of rebellion

in order to free itself from a contract which it deemed

unjust. And Lorenzo, with the weight of his authority, pushed

matters to such a point that war broke out, soon to be

followed by a most cruel sack of the unhappy city, a very

unusual event in Tuscany. For all this he was universally

blamed. But he was excessively haughty and cared for no man;

he would tolerate no equals, would be first in

everything--even in games. He interfered in all matters, even

in private concerns and in marriages: nothing could take place

without his consent. In overthrowing the powerful and exalting

men of low condition, he showed none of the care and

precaution so uniformly observed by Cosimo. It is not then

surprising if his enemies increased so fast that the

formidable conspiracy of the Pazzi broke out on the 26th April

1478. In this plot, hatched in the Vatican itself where Sixtus

IV. was Lorenzo's determined enemy, many of the mightiest

Florentine families took part. In the cathedral, at the moment

of the elevation of the Host, the conspirators' daggers were

unsheathed. Giuliano dei Medici was stabbed to death, but

Lorenzo defended himself with his sword and saved his own

life. The tumult was so great that it seemed as though the

walls of the church were shaken. The populace rose to the cry

of 'Palle! Palle!' the Medici watchword, and the enemies of

the Medici were slaughtered in the streets or hung from the

windows of the Palazzo Veechio. There, among others, were seen

the dangling corpses of Archbishop Salviati and of Francesco

Pazzi, who in their last struggles had gripped each other with

their teeth and remained thus for some time. More than seventy

persons perished on that day, and Lorenzo, taking advantage of

the opportunity, pushed matters to extremity by his

confiscations, banishments, and sentences of death. Thereby

his power would have been infinitely increased if Pope Sixtus

IV., blinded by rage, had not been induced to excommunicate

Florence, and make war against it, in conjunction with

Ferdinand of Aragon. On this Lorenzo, without losing a moment,

went straight to Naples, and made the king understand how much

better it served his interests that Florence should have but

one ruler instead of a republican government, always liable to

change and certainly never friendly to Naples. So he returned

with peace re-established and boundless authority and

popularity. Now indeed he might have called himself lord of

the city, and it must have seemed easy to him to destroy the

republican government altogether.

{1142}

With his pride and ambition it is certain that he had an

intense desire to stand on the same level with the other

princes and tyrants of Italy; the more so as at that moment

success seemed entirely within his grasp. But Lorenzo showed

that his political shrewdness was not to be blinded by

prosperity, and knowing Florence well, he remained firm to the

traditional policy of his house, that of dominating the

Republic, while apparently respecting it. He was well

determined to render his power solid and durable; but to that

end he had recourse to a most ingenious reform, by means of

which, without abandoning the old road, he thoroughly

succeeded in his object. In place of the usual five-yearly

Balia, he instituted, in 1480, the Council of Seventy, which

renewed itself and was like a permanent Balia with still wider

power. This, composed of men entirely devoted to his cause,

secured the government to him forever. By this Council, say

the chroniclers of the time, liberty was wholly buried and

undone, but certainly the most important affairs of the State

were carried on in it by intelligent and cultivated men, who

largely promoted its material prosperity. Florence still

called itself a republic, nominally the old institutions were

still in existence, but all this seemed and was nothing but an

empty mockery. Lorenzo, absolute lord of all, might certainly be

called a tyrant, surrounded by lackeys and courtiers. ... Yet

he dazzled all men by the splendour of his rule, so that

[Guicciardini] observes, that though Lorenzo was a tyrant, 'it

would be impossible to imagine a better and more pleasing

tyrant.' Industry, commerce, public works had all received a

mighty impulse. In no city in the world had the civil equality

of modern States reached the degree to which it had attained

not merely in Florence itself, but in its whole territory and

throughout all Tuscany. Administration and secular justice

proceeded regularly enough in ordinary cases, crime was

diminished, and, above all, literary culture had become a

substantial element of the new State. Learned men were

employed in public offices, and from Florence spread a light

that illuminated the world. ... But Lorenzo's policy could

found nothing that was permanent. Unrivalled as a model of

sagacity and prudence, it promoted in Florence the development

of all the new elements of which modern society was to be the

outcome, without succeeding in fusing them together; for his

was a policy of equivocation and deceit, directed by a man of

much genius, who had no higher aim than his own interest and

that of his family, to which he never hesitated to sacrifice

the interests of his people."

P. Villari,

Machiavelli and his Times,

chapter 2, section 2 (volume 1).

"The state of Florence at this period was very remarkable. The

most independent and tumultuous of towns was spellbound under

the sway of Lorenzo de' Medici, the grandson of Cosimo who

built San Marco; and scarcely seemed even to recollect its

freedom, so absorbed was it in the present advantages

conferred by 'a strong government,' and solaced by shows,

entertainments, festivals, pomp, and display of all kinds. It

was the very height of that classic revival so famous in the

later history of the world, and the higher classes of society,

having shaken themselves apart with graceful contempt from the

lower, had begun to frame their lives according to a pagan

model, leaving the other and much bigger half of the world to

pursue its superstitions undisturbed. Florence was as near a

pagan city as it was possible for its rulers to make it. Its

intellectual existence was entirely given up to the past; its

days were spent in that worship of antiquity which has no

power of discrimination, and deifies not only the wisdom but

the trivialities of its golden epoch. Lorenzo reigned in the

midst of a lettered crowd of classic parasites and flatterers,

writing poems which his courtiers found better than

Alighieri's, and surrounding himself with those eloquent

slaves who make a prince's name more famous than arms or

victories, and who have still left a prejudice in the minds of

all literature-loving people in favour of their patron. A man

of superb health and physical power, who can give himself up

to debauch all night without interfering with his power of

working all day, and whose mind is so versatile that he can

sack a town one morning and discourse upon the beauties of

Plato the next, and weave joyous ballads through both

occupations--gives his flatterers reason when they applaud

him. The few righteous men in the city, the citizens who still

thought of Florence above all, kept apart, overwhelmed by the

tide which ran in favour of that leading citizen of Florence,

who had gained the control of the once high-spirited and

freedom-loving people. Society had never been more dissolute,

more selfish, or more utterly deprived of any higher aim.

Barren scholarship, busy over grammatical questions, and

elegant philosophy, snipping and piecing its logical systems,

formed the top dressing to that half-brutal,

half-superstitious ignorance which in such communities is the

general portion of the poor. The dilettante world dreamed

hazily of a restoration of the worship of the pagan gods;

Cardinal Bembo bade his friend beware of reading St. Paul's

epistles, lest their barbarous style should corrupt his taste;

and even such a man as Pico della Mirandola declared the

'Divina Commedia' to be inferior to the 'Canti

Carnascialeschi' of Lorenzo de' Medici. ... Thus limited

intellectually, the age of Lorenzo was still more hopeless

morally, full of debauchery, cruelty, and corruption,

violating oaths, betraying trusts, believing in nothing but

Greek manuscripts, coins, and statues, caring for nothing but

pleasure. This was the world in which Savonarola found

himself."

Mrs. Oliphant,

The Makers of Florence,

chapter 9.

"Terrible municipal enmities had produced so much evil as to

relax ancient republican energy. After so much destruction

repose was necessary. To antique sobriety and gravity succeed

love of pleasure and the quest of luxury. The belligerent

class of great nobles were expelled and the energetic class of

artisans crushed. Bourgeois rulers were to rule, and to rule

tranquilly. Like the Medicis, their chiefs, they manufacture,

trade, bank and make fortunes in order to expend them in

intellectual fashion. War no longer fastens its cares upon

them, as formerly, with a bitter and tragic grasp; they manage

it through the paid bands of condottieri, and these as cunning

traffickers, reduce it to cavalcades; when they slaughter each

other it is by mistake; historians cite battles in which

three, and sometimes only one soldier remains on the field.

Diplomacy takes the place of force, and the mind expands as

character weakens. Through this mitigation of war and through

the establishment of principalities or of local tyrannies, it

seems that Italy, like the great European monarchies, had just

attained to its equilibrium.

{1143}

Peace is partially established and the useful arts germinate

in all directions upon an improved social soil like a good

harvest on a cleared and well-ploughed field. The peasant is

no longer a serf of the glebe, but a metayer; he nominates his

own municipal magistrates, possesses arms and a communal

treasury; he lives in enclosed bourgs, the houses of which,

built of stone and cement, are large, convenient, and often

elegant. Near Florence he erects walls, and near Lucca he

constructs turf terraces in order to favor cultivation.

Lombardy has its irrigations and rotation of crops; entire

districts, now so many deserts around Lombardy and Rome, are

still inhabited and richly productive. In the upper class the

bourgeois and the noble labor since the chiefs of Florence are

hereditary bankers and commercial interests are not

endangered. Marble quarries are worked at Carrara, and foundry

fires are lighted in the Maremmes. We find in the cities

manufactories of silk, glass, paper, books, flax, wool and

hemp; Italy alone produces as much as all Europe and furnishes

to it all its luxuries. Thus diffused commerce and industry

are not servile occupations tending to narrow or debase the

mind. A great merchant is a pacific general, whose mind

expands in contact with men and things. Like a military

chieftain he organizes expeditions and enterprises and makes

discoveries. ... The Medicis possess sixteen banking-houses in

Europe; they bind together through their business Russia and

Spain, Scotland and Syria; they possess mines of alum

throughout Italy, paying to the Pope for one of them a hundred

thousand florins per annum; they entertain at their court

representatives of all the powers of Europe and become the

councillors and moderators of all Italy. In a small state like

Florence, and in a country without a national army like Italy,

such an influence becomes ascendant in and through itself; a

control over private fortunes leads to a management of the

public funds, and without striking a blow or using violence, a

private individual finds himself director of the state. ...

These banking magistrates are liberal as well as capable. In

thirty-seven years the ancestors of Lorenzo expend six hundred

and sixty thousand florins in works of charity and of public

utility. Lorenzo himself is a citizen of the antique stamp,

almost a Pericles, capable of rushing into the arms of his

enemy, the king of Naples, in order to avert, through personal

seductions and eloquence, a war which menaces the safety of

his country. His private fortune is a sort of public treasury,

and his palace a second hotel-de-ville. He entertains the

learned, aids them with his purse, makes friends of them,

corresponds with them, defrays the expenses of editions of

their works, purchases manuscripts, statues and medals,

patronizes promising young artists, opens to them his gardens,

his collections, his house and his table, and with that

cordial familiarity and that openness, sincerity and

simplicity of heart which place the protected on a footing of

equality with the protector as man to man and not as an

inferior in relation to a superior. This is the representative

man whom his contemporaries all accept as the accomplished man of

the century, no longer a Farinata or an Alighieri of ancient

Florence, a spirit rigid, exalted and militant to its utmost

capacity, but a balanced, moderate and cultivated genius, one

who, through the genial sway of his serene and beneficent

intellect, binds up into one sheaf all talents and all

beauties. It is a pleasure to see them expanding around him.

On the one hand writers are restoring and, on the other,

constructing. From the time of Petrarch Greek and Latin

manuscripts are sought for, and now they are to be exhumed in

the convents of Italy, Switzerland, Germany and France. They

are deciphered and restored with the aid of the savants of

Constantinople. A decade of Livy or a treatise by Cicero, is a

precious gift solicited by princes; some learned man passes

ten years of travel in ransacking distant libraries in order

to find a lost book of Tacitus, while the sixteen authors

rescued from oblivion by the Poggios are counted as so many

titles to immortal fame. ... Style again becomes noble and at

the same time clear, and the health, joy and serenity diffused

through antique life re-enters the human mind with the

harmonious proportions of language and the measured graces of

diction. From refined language they pass to vulgar language,

and the Italian is born by the side of the Latin. ... Here in

the restored paganism, shines out Epicurean gaiety, a

determination to enjoy at any and all hours, and that instinct

for pleasure which a grave philosophy and political sobriety

had thus far tempered and restrained. With Pulci, Berni,

Bibiena, Ariosto, Bandelli, Aretino, and so many others, we

soon see the advent of voluptuous debauchery and open

skepticism, and later a cynical unbounded licentiousness.

These joyous and refined civilizations based on a worship of

pleasure and intellectuality--Greece of the fourth century,

Provence of the twelfth, and Italy of the sixteenth--were not

enduring. Man in these lacks some checks. After sudden

outbursts of genius and creativeness he wanders away in the

direction of license and egotism; the degenerate artist and

thinker makes room for the sophist and the dilettant. But in

this transient brilliancy his beauty was charming. ... It is

in this world, again become pagan, that painting revives, and

the new tastes she is to gratify show beforehand the road she

is to follow; henceforth she is to decorate the houses of rich

merchants who love antiquity and who desire to live daintily."

H. Taine, Italy,

Florence and Venice,

book 3, chapter 2.

ALSO IN:

A. von Reumont,

Lorenzo de' Medici.

W. Roscoe,

Life of Lorenzo de' Medici.

F. T. Perrens,

History of Florence, 1434-1531,

book 2, chapters 2-6.

FLORENCE: A. D. 1490-1498.

The preaching of Savonarola.

The coming of Charles VII. of France,

and expulsion of the Medici.

The great religious revival and Christianization of

the Commonwealth.

Conflict with the Church and fall of Savonarola.

Girolamo, or Jerome Savonarola, a Dominican monk, born at

Ferrara in 1452, educated to be a physician, but led by early

disgust with the world to renounce his intended profession and

give himself to the religious life, was sent to the convent of

St. Mark, in Florence, in 1490, when he had reached the age of

37. "He began his career as a reader and lecturer, and his

lectures, though only intended for novices, drew a large

audience. He then lectured in the garden of the cloister,

under a large rosebush, where many intellectual men came from

the city to hear him.

{1144}

At length he began to preach in the Church of St. Mark's, and

his subject was the Apocalypse, out of which he predicted the

restoration of the Church in Italy, which he declared God

would bring about by a severe visitation. Its influence upon

his hearers was overpowering; there was no room in the church

for the brethren; his fame spread abroad, and he was next

appointed to preach the sermons in the cathedral. ... Amid the

luxurious, æsthetic, semi-pagan life of Florence, in the ears

of the rich citizens, the licentious youth, the learned

Platonists, he denounced the revival of paganism, the

corruptions of the Church; the ignorance and consequent

slavery of the people, and declared that God would visit Italy

with some terrible punishment, and that it would soon come. He

spoke severe words about the priests, declared to the people

that the Scriptures were the only guides to salvation; that

salvation did not come from external works, as the Church

taught, but from faith in Christ, from giving up the heart to

Him, and if He forgave sin, there was no need for any other

absolution. Scarcely had he been a year in Florence when he

was made prior of the monastery. There was a custom in vogue,

a relic of the old times, for every new prior to go to the

king or ruler and ask his favour. This homage was then due to

Lorenzo di Medici, but Savonarola declared he would never

submit to it, saying--'From whom have I received my office,

from God or Lorenzo? Let us pray for grace to the Highest.'

Lorenzo passed over this slight, being anxious to acquire the

friendship of one whom he clearly saw would exert great

influence over the Florentines. Burlamachi, his contemporary

biographer, tells us that Lorenzo tried all kinds of plans to

win the friendship of Savonarola: he attended the church of

St. Mark; listened to his sermons; gave large sums of money to

him for the poor; loitered in the garden to attract his

attention--but with little success. Savonarola treated him

with respect, gave his money away to the poor, but avoided him

and denounced him. Another plan was tried: five distinguished men

waited on Savonarola, and begged him to spare such elevated

persons in his sermons, to treat more of generalities; and not

to foretell the future. They received a prophetic answer: 'Go

tell your master, Lorenzo, to repent of his sins, or God will

punish him and his. Does he threaten me with banishment? Well,

I am but a stranger, and he is the first citizen in Florence,

but let him know that I shall remain and he must soon depart!'

What happened shortly after caused the people to begin to

regard Savonarola as a prophet, and won him that terrible fame

which caused his downfall. ... Lorenzo died on the 8th April,

1492, and from that time Savonarola becomes more prominent. He

directed his exertions to the accomplishment of three

objects--the reformation of his monastery, the reformation of

the Florentine State, and the reformation of the Church. He

changed the whole character of his monastery. ... Then he

proceeded to State matters, and in this step we come to the

problem of his life--was he a prophet or a fanatic? Let the

facts speak for themselves. Lorenzo was succeeded by his son

Pietro, who was vastly inferior to his father in learning and

statesmanship. His only idea appears to have been a desire to

unite Florence and Naples into one principality; this created

for him many enemies, and men began to fancy that the great

house of Medici would terminate with him. So, it appears,

thought Savonarola, and announced the fact at first privately

amongst his friends; in a short time, however, he began to

prophecy their downfall publicly. During the years 1492 and

1494, he was actively engaged in preaching. In Advent of the

former year, he began his thirteen sermons upon Noah's Ark. In

1493 he preached the Lent sermons at Bologna, and upon his return

he began preaching in the cathedral. In these sermons he

predicted the approaching fall of the State to the

astonishment of all his hearers, who had not the slightest

apprehension of danger: 'The Lord has declared that His sword

shall come upon the land swiftly and soon.' This was the

burden of a sermon preached on Advent Sunday, 1492. At the

close of 1493, and as the new year approached, he spoke out

more plainly and definitely. He declared that one should come

over the Alps who was called, like Cyrus, of whom Jeremiah

wrote; and he should, sword in hand, wreak vengeance upon the

tyrants of Italy. ... His preaching had always exerted a

marvellous influence upon people, as we shall hereafter note,

but they could not understand the cause of these predictions.

The city was at peace; gay and joyous as usual, and no fear

was entertained; but towards the end of the year came the

fulfilment. Charles VIII., King of France, called into Italy

by Duke Ludovico of Milan, came over the Alps with an immense

army, took Naples, and advanced on Florence. The expulsion of

the Medici from Florence soon followed: Pietro, being

captured, signed an agreement to deliver up all his

strongholds to Charles VIII., and to pay him 200,000 ducats.

See ITALY: A. D. 1494-1496.

The utmost indignation seized the Florentines when they heard

of this treaty. The Signori sent heralds to Charles, to

negotiate for milder terms, and their chief was Savonarola,

who addressed the King like a prophet, begged him to take pity

on Italy, and save her. His words had the desired effect.

Charles made more easy terms, and left it to the Florentine

people to settle their own State. In the meantime Pietro

returned, but he found Florence in the greatest

excitement--the royal palace was closed; stones were thrown at

him; he summoned his guards, but the people took to arms, and

he was compelled to fly to his brothers Giovanni and Giuliano.

The Signori declared them to be traitors, and set a price upon

their heads. Their palace and its treasures fell into the hands

of the people. The friends of the Medici, however, were not

all extinct; and as a discussion arose which was likely to

lead to a struggle, Savonarola summoned the people to meet

under the dome of St. Mark. ... In fact, the formation of the

new State fell upon Savonarola, for the people looked up to

him as an inspired prophet. He proposed that 3,200 citizens

should form themselves into a general council. Then they drew

lots for a third part, who for six months were to act together

as an executive body and represent the general council,

another one-third for the next three months, and so on; so

that every citizen had his turn in the council every eighteen

months. They ultimately found it convenient to reduce the

number to 80--in fact, Savonarola's Democracy was rapidly

becoming oligarchic. Each of these 80 representatives was to

be 40 years of age; they voted with black and white beans, six

being a legal majority.

{1145}

But the Chief of the State was to be Christ; He was to be the

new monarch. His next step was to induce them to proclaim a

general amnesty, in which he succeeded only through vigorously

preaching to them that forgiveness was sweeter than

vengeance--that freedom and peace were more loving than strife

and hatred. ... He was now at the height of his power; his

voice ruled the State; he is the only instance in Europe of a

monk openly leading a republic. The people regarded him as

something more than human: they knew of his nights spent in

prayer; of his long fasts; of his unbounded charity. ... Few

preachers ever exerted such influence upon the minds of

crowds, such a vitalizing influence; he changed the whole

character of Florentine society. Libertines abandoned their

vices; the theatres and taverns were empty; there was no card

playing, nor dice throwing; the love of fasting grew so

general, that meat could not be sold; the city of Florence was

God's city, and its government a Theocracy. There was a custom in

Florence, during Carnival time, for the children to go from

house to house and bid people give up their cherished

pleasures; and so great was the enthusiasm at this period that

people gave up their cards, their dice and backgammon boards,

the ladies their perfumed waters, veils, paint-pots, false

hair, musical instruments, harps, lutes, licentious tales,

especially those of Boccaccio, dream books, romances, and

popular songs. All this booty was gathered together in a heap

in the market place, the people assembled, the Signori took

their places, and children clothed in white, with olive

branches on their heads, received from them the burning

torches, and set fire to the pile amid the blast of trumpets

and chant of psalms, which were continued till the whole was

consumed. ... His fame had now reached other countries;

foreigners visited Florence solely for the purpose of seeing

and hearing him. The Sultan of Turkey allowed his sermons to

be translated and circulated in his dominions. But in the

midst of his prosperity his enemies were not idle: as he

progressed their jealousy increased: his preaching displeased

them, terrified them, and amongst these the most bitter and

virulent were the young sons of the upper classes: they called

his followers 'howlers' (piagnoni), and so raged against him

that they gained the name, now immortalised in history, of the

Arrabiati (the furies): this party was increased by the old

friends of the Medici, who called him a rebel and leader of

the lower classes. Dolfo Spini, a young man of position and

wealth, commanded this party, and used every effort to destroy

the reputation of Savonarola, to incite the people against him,

and to ruin him. They bore the name of 'Compagnacci'; they

wrote satires about the Piagnoni; they circulated slanders

about the monk who was making Florence the laughing stock of

Europe: but Savonarola went on his way indifferent to the

signs already manifesting themselves amongst his countrymen,

ever most sensitive to ridicule. He also strove to reform the

Church: he delineated the Apostolic Church as a model upon

which he would build up that of Florence. ... By this time,

the intelligence of his doings, and the gist of his preaching

and writing, which had been carefully transmitted to Rome by

his enemies, began to attract the attention of the Pope,

Alexander VI., who tried what had frequently proved an

infallible remedy, and offered Savonarola a Cardinal's hat,

which he at once refused. He was then invited to Rome, but

thought it prudent to excuse himself. When the controversy

between him and the Pope appeared to approach a crisis,

Savonarola took a step which somewhat hurried the catastrophe.

He wrote to the Kings of France and Spain, and the Emperor of

Germany, to call a General Council to take into consideration

the Reform of the Church. One of these letters reached the

Pope, through a spy of Duke Ludovico Moro, of Milan, whom

Savonarola had denounced. The result was the issue of a Breve

(October, 1496), which forbade him to preach. The Pope then

ordered the Congregation of St. Mark to be broken up and

amalgamated with another. For a time Savonarola, at the advice

of his friends, remained quiet; but at this last step, to

break up the institution he had established, he was aroused to

action. He denounced Rome as the source of all the poison

which was undermining the constitution of the Church; declared

that its evil fame stunk in men's nostrils. The Pope then

applied to the Signori to deliver up this enemy of the Church,

but to no purpose. The Franciscans were ordered to preach

against him, but they made no impression. Then came the last

thunderbolt: a Bann was issued (12th May, 1497), which was

announced by the Franciscans. During the time of his

suspension and his excommunication, many things happened which

tended to his downfall, although his friends gathered round him,

the rapid change of ministry brought in turn friends of the

Medici to the helm; they introduced the young, Compagnacci

into the Council, and gradually his enemies were increasing in

the Government to a strong party." The fickle Florentine mob

now took sides with them against the monk whom it had recently

adored, and on the 7th of April, 1498, in the midst of a

raging tumult, Savonarola was taken into custody by the

Signori of the city. With the assent of the Pope, he was

subjected seven times to torture upon the rack, to force from

him a recantation of all that he had taught and preached, and

on the 23d of May he was hanged and burned, in company with

two of his disciples.

O. T. Hill,

Introduction to Savonarola's "Triumph of the Cross."

ALSO IN:

P. Villari,

History of Savonarola and his times.

Mrs. Oliphant,

The Makers of Florence.

H. H. Milman,

Savonarola, Erasmus, and other Essays.

George Eliot,

Romola.

H. Grimm,

Life of Michael Angelo,

volume 1, chapters 3-4.

FLORENCE: A. D. 1494-1509.

The French deliverance of Pisa and the long war of reconquest.

See PISA: A. D. 1404-1509.

FLORENCE: A. D. 1498-1500.

Threatened by the Medici, on one side,

and Cæsar Borgia on the other.

A new division of parties.

"After the death of Savonarola things changed with such a

degree of rapidity that the Arrabbiati had not time to

consider in what manner they could restrict the government;

but they soon became convinced that the only salvation for the

Republic was to adopt the course which had been recommended by

the Friar. Piero and Giuliano dei Medici were in fact already

in the neighbourhood of Florence, supported by a powerful

Venetian army. It became, therefore, absolutely necessary for

the Arrabbiati to unite with the Piagnoni, in order to defend

themselves against so many dangers and so many enemies.

{1146}

By great good fortune, the Duke of Milan, from jealousy of the

Venetians, came to their assistance to ward off the danger;

but who could trust to his friendship--who could place any

reliance on his fidelity? As to Alexander Borgia, he who had

held out such great hopes, and had made so many promises, in

order to get Savonarola put to death, no sooner was his object

attained than he gave full sway to his unbridled passions. It

seemed as if the death of the poor Friar had released both the

Pope and his son, Duke Valentino, from all restraints upon

their lusts and ambition. The Pope formed intimate alliances

with Turks and Jews, a thing hitherto unheard of. He, in one

year, set up twelve cardinals' hats for sale. The history of

the incests and murders of the family of Borgia is too well

known to render it necessary for us to enter into any detailed

account of them here. The great object of the Pope was to form

a State for his son in the Romagna; and so great was the

ambition of Duke Valentino, that he contemplated extending his

power over the whole of Italy, Tuscany being the first part he

meant to seize upon. With that view he was always endeavouring

to create new dangers to the Republic; at one time he caused

Arezzo to rise against it; at another time he threatened to

bring back Piero de' Medici; and he was continually ravaging

their territory. The consequence was, that the Florentines

were obliged to grant him an annual subsidy of 36,000 ducats,

under the name of condotta (military pay); but even that did

not restrain him from every now and then, under various

pretexts, overrunning and laying waste their territory. Thus

did Alexander Borgia fulfil those promises to the Republic by

which they had been induced to murder Savonarola. The

Arrabbiati were at length convinced that to defend themselves

against the Medici and Borgia, their only course was to

cultivate the alliance with France, and unite in good faith

with the Piagnoni. Thus they completely adopted the line of

policy which Savonarola had advised; and the consequence was,

that their affairs got order and their exertions were attended

with a success far beyond what could have been anticipated."

P. Villari,

History of Savonarola and of his Times,

volume 2, conclusion.

"A new division of parties may be said to have taken place

under the three denominations of 'Palleschi' [a name derived

from the watchword of the Mediceans, 'palle, palle,' which

alluded to the well-known balls in the coat of arms of the

Medici family], 'Ottimati,' and 'Popolani.' The first ... were

for the Medici and themselves. ... The 'Ottomati' were in

eager search for a sort of visionary government where a few of

the noblest blood, the most illustrious connexions and the

greatest riches, were to rule Florence without any regard to

the Medici. ... The Popolani, who formed the great majority,

loved civic liberty, therefore were constantly watching the

Medici and other potent and ambitious men."

H. E. Napier,

Florentine History,

book. 2, chapter 8 (volume 4).

FLORENCE: A. D. 1502-1569.

Ten years under Piero Soderini.

Restoration of the Medici and their second expulsion.

Siege of the city by the imperial army.

Final surrender to Medicean tyranny.

Creation of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany.

"In 1502, it was decreed that the Gonfalonier should hold

office for life--should be in fact a Doge. To this important

post of permanent president Piero Soderini was appointed; and

in his hands were placed the chief affairs of the republic.

... During the ten years which elapsed between 1502 and 1512,

Piero Soderini administered Florence with an outward show of

great prosperity. He regained Pisa, and maintained an

honourable foreign policy in the midst of the wars stirred up

by the League of Cambray. Meanwhile the young princes of the

house of Medici had grown to manhood in exile. The Cardinal

Giovanni was 37 in 1512. His brother Giuliano was 33. Both of

these men were better fitted than their brother Piero to fight

the battles of the family. Giovanni, in particular, had

inherited no small portion of the Medicean craft. During the

troubled reign of Julius II. he kept very quiet, cementing his

connection with powerful men in Rome, but making no effort to

regain his hold on Florence. Now the moment for striking a

decisive blow had come. After the battle of Ravenna in 1512,

the French were driven out of Italy, and the Sforzas returned

to Milan [see ITALY: A. D. 1510-1513]; the Spanish troops,

under the Viceroy Cardona, remained masters of the country.

Following the camp of these Spaniards, Giovanni de' Medici

entered Tuscany in August, and caused the restoration of the

Medici to be announced in Florence. The people, assembled by

Soderini, resolved to resist to the uttermost. ... Yet their

courage failed on August 29th, when news reached them of the

capture and the sack of Prato. Prato is a sunny little city a

few miles distant from the walls of Florence, famous for the

beauty of its women, the richness of its gardens, and the

grace of its buildings. Into this gem of cities the savage

soldiery of Spain marched in the bright autumnal weather, and

turned the paradise into a hell. It is even now impossible to

read of what they did in Prato without shuddering. Cruelty and

lust, sordid greed for gold, and cold delight in bloodshed,

could go no further. Giovanni de' Medici, by nature mild and

voluptuous, averse to violence of all kinds, had to smile

approval, while the Spanish Viceroy knocked thus with mailed

hand for him at the door of Florence. The Florentines were

paralysed with terror. They deposed Soderini and received the

Medici. Giovanni and Giuliano entered their devastated palace

in the Via Larga, abolished the Grand Council, and dealt with

the republic as they listed. ... It is not likely that they

would have succeeded in maintaining their authority--for they

were poor and ill-supported by friends outside the

city--except for one most lucky circumstance: that was the

election of Giovanni de' Medici to the Papacy in 1513. The

creation of Leo X. spread satisfaction throughout Italy. ...

Florence shared in the general rejoicing. ... It seemed as

though the Republic, swayed by him, might make herself the

first city in Italy, and restore the glories of her Guelf

ascendency upon the platform of Renaissance statecraft. There

was now no overt opposition to the Medici in Florence. How to

govern the city from Rome, and how to advance the fortunes of

his brother Giuliano and his nephew Lorenzo (Piero's son, a

young man of 21), occupied the Pope's most serious attention.

For Lorenzo, Leo obtained the Duchy of Urbino and the hand of

a French princess. Giuliano was named Gonfalonier of the

Church. He also received the French title of Duke of Nemours

and the hand of Filiberta, Princess of Savoy. ...

{1147}

Giulio, the Pope's bastard cousin, was made cardinal. ... To

Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, the titular head of the family, was

committed the government of Florence. ... Florence now for the

first time saw a regular court established in her midst, with

a prince, who, though he bore a foreign title, was in fact her

master. The joyous days of Lorenzo the Magnificent returned.

... But this prosperity was no less brief than it was

brilliant. A few years sufficed to sweep off all the chiefs of

the great house. Giuliano died in 1516, leaving only a bastard

son, Ippolito. Lorenzo died in 1519, leaving a bastard son,

Alessandro, and a daughter, six days old, who lived to be the

Queen of France. Leo died in 1521. There remained now no

legitimate male descendants from the stock of Cosimo. The

honours and pretensions of the Medici devolved upon three

bastards,--on the Cardinal Giulio, and the two boys,

Alessandro and Ippolito. Of these, Alessandro was a mulatto,

his mother having been a Moorish slave in the Palace of

Urbino; and whether his father was Giulio, or Giuliano, or a

base groom, was not known for certain. To such extremities

were the Medici reduced. ... Giulio de' Medici was left in

1521 to administer the State of Florence single-handed. He was

archbishop, and he resided in the city, holding it with the

grasp of an absolute ruler. ... In 1523, the Pope, Adrian VI.,

expired after a short papacy, from which he gained no honour

and Italy no profit. Giulio hurried to Rome, and, by the

clever use of his large influence, caused himself to be

elected with the title of Clement VII." Then followed the

strife of France and Spain--of Francis I. and Charles V.--for

the possession of Italy, and the barbarous sack of Rome in

1527.

See ITALY: A. D. 1523-1527, 1527, and 1527-1529.

"When the Florentines knew what was happening in Rome, they

rose and forced the Cardinal Passerini [whom the Pope had

appointed to act as his vicegerent in the government of

Florence] to depart with the Medicean bastards from the city.

... The whole male population was enrolled in a militia. The

Grand Council was reformed, and the republic was restored upon

the basis of 1495. Niccolo Capponi was elected Gonfalonier.

The name of Christ was again registered as chief of the

commonwealth--to such an extent did the memory of Savonarola

still sway the popular imagination. The new State hastened to

form an alliance with France, and Malatesta Baglioni was

chosen as military Commander-in-Chief. Meanwhile the city

armed itself for siege--Michel Angelo Buonarroti and

Francesco da San Gallo undertaking the construction of new

forts and ramparts. These measures were adopted with sudden

decision, because it was soon known that Clement had made

peace with the Emperor, and that the army which had sacked

Rome was going to be marched on Florence. ... On September 4

[1529], the Prince of Orange appeared before the walls, and

opened the memorable siege. It lasted eight months, at the end

of which time, betrayed by their generals, divided among

themselves, and worn out with delays, the Florentines

capitulated. ... The long yoke of the Medici had undermined

the character of the Florentines. This, their last glorious

struggle for liberty, was but a flash in the pan--a final

flare up of the dying lamp. ... What remains of Florentine

history may be briefly told. Clement, now the undisputed

arbiter of power and honour in the city, chose Alessandro de'

Medici to be prince. Alessandro was created Duke of Cività di

Penna, and married to a natural daughter of Charles V.

Ippolito was made a cardinal." Ippolito was subsequently

poisoned by Alessandro, and Alessandro was murdered by another

kinsman, who suffered assassination in his turn. "When

Alessandro was killed in 1539, Clement had himself been dead

five years. Thus the whole posterity of Cosimo de' Medici,

with the exception of Catherine, Queen of France [daughter of

Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, the son of Piero de' Medici], was

utterly extinguished. But the Medici had struck root so firmly

in the State, and had so remodelled it upon the type of

tyranny, that the Florentines were no longer able to do

without them. The chiefs of the Ottimati selected Cosimo," a

descendant from Lorenzo, brother of the Cosimo who founded the

power of the House. "He it was who obtained [1569] the title

of Grand Duke of Tuscany from the Pope--a title confirmed by

the Emperor, fortified by Austrian alliances, and transmitted

through his heirs to the present century."

J. A. Symonds,

Sketches and studies in Italy,

chapter 5 (Florence and the Medici).

ALSO IN:

H. Grimm,

Life of Michael Angelo,

chapters 8-15 (volumes 1-2).

T. A. Trollope,

History of the Commonwealth of Florence,

book 9, chapter 10, book 10 (volume 4).

H. E. Napier,

Florentine History,

volumes 4-5.

W. Roscoe,

Life and Pontificate of Leo X,

chapters 9-23 (volumes 1-2).

P. Villari,

Machiavelli and his Times,

volumes 3-4.

FLORENCE: A. D. 1803.

Becomes the capital of the kingdom of Etruria.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1801-1803.

FLORENCE: A. D. 1865.

Made temporarily the capital of the kingdom of Italy.

See ITALY: A. D. 1862-1866.

----------FLORENCE: End----------

FLORIANUS, Roman Emperor, A. D. 276.

FLORIDA: The aboriginal inhabitants.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: APALACHES;

MUSKHOGEAN FAMILY; SEMINOLES; TIMUQUANAN FAMILY.

FLORIDA: A. D. 1512.

Discovery and Naming by Ponce de Leon.

See AMERICA: A. D. 1512.

FLORIDA: A. D. 1528-1542.

The expeditions of Narvaez and Hernando de Soto.

Wide Spanish application of the name Florida.

"The voyages of Garay [1519-1523] and Vasquez de Ayllon

[1520-1526] threw new light on the discoveries of Ponce, and

the general outline of the coasts of Florida became known to

the Spaniards. Meanwhile, Cortes had conquered Mexico, and the

fame of that iniquitous but magnificent exploit rang through

all Spain. Many an impatient cavalier burned to achieve a

kindred fortune. To the excited fancy of the Spaniards the

unknown land of Florida seemed the seat of surpassing wealth,

and Pamphilo de Narvaez essayed to possess himself of its

fancied treasures. Landing on its shores [1528], and

proclaiming destruction to the Indians unless they

acknowledged the sovereignty of the Pope and the Emperor, he

advanced into the forests with 300 men. Nothing could exceed

their sufferings. Nowhere could they find the gold they came

to seek. The village of Appalache, where they hoped to gain a

rich booty, offered nothing but a few mean wigwams. The horses

gave out and the famished soldiers fed upon their flesh.

{1148}

The men sickened, and the Indians unceasingly harassed their

march. At length, after 280 leagues of wandering, they found

themselves on the northern shore of the Gulf of Mexico, and

desperately put to sea in such crazy boats as their skill and

means could construct. Cold, disease, famine, thirst, and the

fury of the waves, melted them away. Narvaez himself perished,

and of his wretched followers no more than four escaped,

reaching by land, after years of vicissitude, the Christian

settlements of New Spain. ... Cabeça de Vaca was one of the

four who escaped, and, after living for years among the tribes

of Mississippi, crossed the River Mississippi near Memphis,

journeyed westward by the waters of the Arkansas and Red River

to New Mexico and Chihuahua, thence to Cinaloa on the Gulf of

California, and thence to Mexico. The narrative is one of the

most remarkable of the early relations. ... The interior of

the vast country then comprehended under the name of Florida

still remained unexplored. ... Hernando de Soto ... companion

of Pizarro in the conquest of Peru ... asked and obtained

permission [1537] to conquer Florida. While this design was in

agitation, Cabeça de Vaca, one of those who had survived the

expedition of Narvaez, appeared in Spain, and for purposes of

his own spread abroad the mischievous falsehood that Florida

was the richest country yet discovered. De Soto's plans were

embraced with enthusiasm. Nobles and gentlemen contended for

the privilege of joining his standard; and, setting sail with

an ample armament, he landed [May, 1539] at the Bay of

Espiritu Santo, now Tampa Bay, in Florida, with 620 chosen

men, a band as gallant and well appointed, as eager in purpose

and audacious in hope, as ever trod the shores of the New

World. ... The adventurers began their march. Their story has

been often told. For month after month and year after year,

the procession of priests and cavaliers, cross-bowmen,

arquebusiers, and Indian captives laden with the baggage,

still wandered on through wild and boundless wastes, lured

hither and thither by the ignis-fatuus of their hopes. They

traversed great portions of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi,

everywhere inflicting and enduring misery, but never

approaching their phantom El Dorado. At length, in the third

year of their journeying, they reached the banks of the

Mississippi, 132 years before its second [or third?] discovery

by Marquette. ... The Spaniards crossed over at a point above

the mouth of the Arkansas. They advanced westward, but found

no treasures,--nothing indeed but hardships, and an Indian

enemy, furious, writes one of their officers, 'as mad dogs.'

They heard of a country towards the north where maize could

not be cultivated because the vast herds of wild cattle

devoured it. They penetrated so far that they entered the

range of the roving prairie-tribes. ... Finding neither gold

nor the South Sea, for both of which they had hoped, they

returned to the banks of the Mississippi. De Soto ... fell

into deep dejection, followed by an attack of fever, and soon

after died miserably [May 21, 1542]. To preserve his body from

the Indians his followers sunk it at midnight in the river,

and the sullen waters of the Mississippi buried his ambition

and his hopes. The adventurers were now, with few exceptions,

disgusted with the enterprise, and longed only to escape from

the scene of their miseries. After a vain attempt to reach

Mexico by land, they again turned back to the Mississippi, and

labored, with all the resources which their desperate

necessity could suggest, to construct vessels in which they

might make their way to some Christian settlement. ... Seven

brigantines were finished and launched; and, trusting their

lives on board these frail vessels, they descended the

Mississippi, running the gauntlet between hostile tribes who

fiercely attacked them. Reaching the Gulf, though not without

the loss of eleven of their number, they made sail for the

Spanish settlement on the River Panuco, where they arrived

safely, and where the inhabitants met them with a cordial

welcome. Three hundred and eleven men thus escaped with life,

leaving behind them the bones of their comrades, strewn

broadcast through the wilderness. De Soto's fate proved an

insufficient warning, for those were still found who begged a

fresh commission for the conquest of Florida; but the Emperor

would not hear them. A more pacific enterprise was undertaken

by Cancello [or Cancer], a Dominican monk, who with several

brother-ecclesiastics undertook to convert the natives to the

true faith, but was murdered in the attempt. ... Not a

Spaniard had yet gained foothold in Florida. That name, as the

Spaniards of that day understood it, comprehended the whole

country extending from the Atlantic on the east to the

longitude of New Mexico on the west, and from the Gulf of

Mexico and the River of Palms indefinitely northward towards

the polar Sea. This vast territory was claimed by Spain in

right of the discoveries of Columbus, the grant of the Pope,

and the various expeditions mentioned above. England claimed

it in light of the discoveries of Cabot, while France could

advance no better title than might be derived from the voyage

of Verrazano and vague traditions of earlier visits of Breton

adventurers."

F. Parkman,

Pioneers of France in the New World,

chapter 1.

ALSO IN:

T. Irving,

Conquest of Florida by De Soto.

Discovery and Conquest of Terra Florida;

written by a Gentleman of Elvas (Hakluyt Society).

J. W. Monette,

Discovery and Settlement of the Mississippi Valley,

chapters 1-4.

J. G. Shea,

Ancient Florida (Narrative and Critical

History of America,

volume 2, chapter 4).

FLORIDA: A. D. 1562-1563.

First colonizing attempt of the French Huguenots.

About the middle of the 16th century, certain of the

Protestants of France began to turn their thoughts to the New

World as a possible place of refuge from the persecutions they

were suffering at home. "Some of the French sea-ports became

strong-holds of the Huguenots. Their most prominent supporter,

Coligny, was high admiral of France. These Huguenots looked

toward the new countries as the proper field in which to

secure a retreat from persecution, and to found a new

religious commonwealth. Probably many of the French

'corsarios' following the track of the Portuguese and

Spaniards to the West Indies and the coasts of Brazil, were

Huguenots. ... The first scheme for a Protestant colony in the

new world was suggested by Admiral Coligny in 1554, and intended

for the coast of Brazil, to which an expedition, under Durand

de Villegagnon, was sent with ships and colonists. This

expedition arrived at the Bay of Rio de Janeiro in 1555,

and founded there the first European settlement.

{1149}

It was followed the next year by another expedition. But the

whole enterprise came to an end by divisions among the

colonists, occasioned by the treacherous, despotic, and cruel

proceedings of its commander, a reputed Catholic. The colony

was finally subverted by the Portuguese, who, in 1560, sent

out an armament against it, and took possession of the Bay of

Rio de Janeiro. ... After the unfortunate end of the French

enterprise to South America, Admiral Coligny, who may be

styled the Raleigh of France, turned his attention to the

eastern shores of North America; the whole of which had become

known in France from the voyage of Verrazano, and the French

expeditions to Canada and the Banks of Newfoundland." In

February, 1562, an expedition, fitted out by Coligny, sailed

from Havre de Grace, under Jean Ribault, with Réné de

Laudonnière forming one of the company. Ribault arrived on the

Florida coast in the neighborhood of the present harbor of St.

Augustine, and thence sailed north. "At last, in about 32° 30'

North he found an excellent broad and deep harbor, which he

named Port Royal, which probably is the present Broad River,

or Port Royal entrance. ... He found this port and the

surrounding country so advantageous and of such 'singular

beauty,' that he resolved to leave here a part of his men in a

small fort. ... A pillar with the arms of France was therefore

erected, and a fort constructed, furnished with cannon,

ammunition, and provisions, and named 'Charlesfort.' Thirty

volunteers were placed in it, and it became the second

European settlement ever attempted upon the east coast of the

United States. Its position was probably not far from the site

of the present town of Beaufort, on Port Royal River. Having

accomplished this, and made a certain captain, Albert de la

Pieria, 'a soldier of great experience,' commander of

Charlesfort, he took leave of his countrymen, and left Port

Royal on the 11th day of June," arriving in France on the 20th

of July. "On his arrival in France, Ribault found the country

in a state of great commotion. The civil war between the

Huguenots and the Catholics was raging, and neither the king

nor the admiral had time to listen to Ribault's solicitations,

to send relief to the settlers left in 'French Florida.' Those

colonists remained, therefore, during the remainder of 1562,

and the following winter, without assistance from France; and

after many trials and sufferings, they were at last forced, in

1563, to abandon their settlement and the new country." Having

constructed a ship, with great difficulty, they put to sea;

but suffered horribly on the tedious voyage, from want of food

and water, until they were rescued by an English vessel and

taken to England.

J. G. Kohl,

History of the Discovery of Maine

(Maine Historical Society Collection,

2d series, volume 1), chapter 11.

ALSO IN:

F. Parkman,

Pioneers of France in the New World,

chapter 3.

Father Charlevoix,

History of New France;

translated by J. G. Shea,

book 3 (volume 1).

T. E. V. Smith,

Villegaignon

(American Society of Church History, volume 3).

FLORIDA: A. D. 1564-1565.

The second Huguenot colony, and the cry in Spain against it.

"After the treacherous peace between Charles IX. and the

Huguenots, Coligny renewed his solicitations for the

colonization of Florida. The king gave consent; in 1564 three

ships were conceded for the service; and Laudonnière, who, in

the former voyage, had been upon the American coast, a man of

great intelligence, though a seaman rather than a soldier, was

appointed to lead forth the colony. ... A voyage of 60 days

brought the fleet, by the way of the Canaries and the

Antilles, to the shores of Florida in June. The harbor of Port

Royal, rendered gloomy by recollections of misery, was

avoided; and, after searching the coast, and discovering

places which were so full of amenity that melancholy itself

could not but change its humor as it gazed, the followers of

Calvin planted themselves on the banks of the river May [now

called the St. John's], near St. John's bluff. They sung a

psalm of thanksgiving, and gathered courage from acts of

devotion. The fort now erected was called Carolina. ... The

French were hospitably welcomed by the natives; a monument,

bearing the arms of France, was crowned with laurels, and its

base encircled with baskets of corn. What need is there of

minutely relating the simple manners of the red men, the

dissensions of rival tribes, the largesses offered to the

strangers to secure their protection or their alliance, the

improvident prodigality with which careless soldiers wasted

the supplies of food; the certain approach of scarcity; the

gifts and the tribute levied from the Indians by entreaty,

menace or force? By degrees the confidence of the red men was

exhausted; they had welcomed powerful guests, who promised to

become their benefactors, and who now robbed their humble

granaries. But the worst evil in the new settlement was the

character of the emigrants. Though patriotism and religious

enthusiasm had prompted the expedition, the inferior class of

the colonists was a motley group of dissolute men. Mutinies

were frequent. The men were mad with the passion for sudden

wealth; and in December a party, under the pretence of

desiring to escape from famine, compelled Laudonnière to sign

an order permitting their embarkation for New Spain. No sooner

were they possessed of this apparent sanction of the chief

than they began a career of piracy against the Spaniards. The

act of crime and temerity was soon avenged. The pirate vessel

was taken, and most of the men disposed of as prisoners or

slaves. The few that escaped in a boat sought shelter at Fort

Carolina, where Laudonnière sentenced the ringleaders to

death. During these events the scarcity became extreme; and

the friendship of the natives was forfeited by unprofitable

severity. March of 1565 was gone, and there were no supplies

from France; April passed away, and the expected recruits had

not arrived; May brought nothing to sustain the hopes of the

exiles, and they resolved to attempt a return to Europe. In

August, Sir John Hawkins, the slave merchant, arrived from the

West Indies. He came fresh from the sale of a cargo of

Africans, whom he had kidnapped with signal ruthlessness; and

he now displayed the most generous sympathy, not only

furnishing a liberal supply of provisions, but relinquishing a

vessel from his own fleet. The colony was on the point of

embarking when sails were descried. Ribault had arrived to

assume the command, bringing with him supplies of every kind,

emigrants with their families, garden-seeds, implements of

husbandry, and the various kinds of domestic animals. The

French, now wild with joy, seemed about to acquire a home, and

Calvinism to become fixed in the inviting regions of Florida.

{1150}

But Spain had never abandoned her claim to that territory,

where, if she had not planted colonies, she had buried many

hundreds of her bravest sons. ... There had appeared at the

Spanish court a commander well fitted for reckless acts. Pedro

Melendez [or Menendez] de Aviles ... had acquired wealth in

Spanish America, which was no school of benevolence, and his

conduct there had provoked an inquiry, which, after a long

arrest, ended in his conviction. ... Philip II. suggested the

conquest and colonization of Florida; and in May, 1565, a

compact was framed and confirmed by which Melendez, who

desired an opportunity to retrieve his honor, was constituted

the hereditary governor of a territory of almost unlimited

extent. On his part he stipulated, at his own cost, in the

following May, to invade Florida with 500 men; to complete its

conquest within three years; to explore its currents and

channels, the dangers of its coasts, and the depth of its

havens; to establish a colony of at least 500 persons, of whom

100 should be married men; with 12 ecclesiastics, besides four

Jesuits. ... Meantime, news arrived, as the French writers

assert through the treachery of the court of France, that the

Huguenots had made a plantation in Florida, and that Ribault

was preparing to set sail with re-enforcements. The cry was

raised that the heretics must be extirpated; and Melendez

readily obtained the forces which he required."

G. Bancroft,

History of the United States

(author's last revision), part 1, chapter 4.

ALSO IN:

G. R. Fairbanks,

History of Florida,

chapters 7-8.

W. G. Simms,

History of South Carolina,

book 1.

FLORIDA: A. D. 1565.

The Spanish capture of Fort Caroline and

massacre of the Huguenots.

Founding of St. Augustine.

"The expedition under Menendez consisted of an army of 2,600

soldiers and officers. He sailed straight for Florida,

intending to attack Fort Caroline with no delay. In fact he

sighted the mouth of the port [Sept. 4, 1565] two months after

starting; but, considering the position occupied by the French

ships, he judged it prudent to defer the attack, and make it,

if possible, from the land. A council of war was held in Fort

Caroline, presided over by Ribaut. Laudonnière proposed that,

while Ribaut held the fort with the ships, he, with his old

soldiers, who knew the country well, aided by the Floridans as

auxiliaries, should engage the Spaniards in the woods, and

harass them by perpetual combats in labyrinths to which they

were wholly unaccustomed. The advice was good, but it was not

followed. Ribaut proposed to follow the Spanish fleet with his

own--lighter and more easily handled--fall on the enemy when

the soldiers were all disembarked, and, after taking and

burning the ships, to attack the army. In the face of

remonstrances from all the officers, he persisted in this

project. Disaster followed the attempt. A violent gale arose.

The French ships were wrecked upon the Floridan coast; the men

lost their arms, their powder, and their clothes; they escaped

with their bare lives. There was no longer the question of

conquering the Spaniards, but of saving themselves. The

garrison of Caroline consisted of 150 soldiers, of whom 40

were sick. The rest of the colony was composed of sick and

wounded Protestant ministers, workmen, royal commissioners,'

and so forth. Laudonnière was in command. They awaited the

attack for several days, yet the Spaniards came not. They were

wading miserably through the marshes in the forests, under

tropical rains, discouraged, and out of heart." But when, at

length, the exhausted and despairing Spaniards, toiling

through the marshes, from St. Augustine, where they had landed

and established their settlement, reached the French fort

(Sept. 20), "there was actually no watch on the ramparts.

Three companies of Spaniards simultaneously rushed from the

forest, and attacked the fortress on the south, the west and

the south-west. There was but little resistance from the

surprised garrison. There was hardly time to grasp a sword.

About 20 escaped by flight, including the Captain,

Laudonnière; the rest were every one massacred. None were

spared except women and children under fifteen; and, in the

first rage of the onslaught, even these were murdered with the

rest. There still lay in the port three ships, commanded by

Jacques Ribaut, brother [son] of the unfortunate Governor. One

of these was quickly sent to the bottom by the cannon of the

fort; the other two cut their cables, and slipped out of reach

into the roadstead, where they lay, waiting for a favourable

wind, for three days. They picked up the fugitives who had

been wandering half-starved in the woods, and then set sail

from this unlucky land. ... There remained, however, the

little army, under Ribaut, which had lost most of its arms in

the wreck, and was now wandering along the Floridan shore."

When Ribaut and his men reached Fort Caroline and saw the

Spanish flag flying, they turned and retreated southward. Not

many days later, they were intercepted by Menendez, near St.

Augustine, to which post he had returned. The first party of

the French who came up, 200 in number, and who were in a

starving state, surrendered to the Spaniard, and laid down

their arms. "They were brought across the river in small

companies, and their hands tied behind their backs. On

landing, they were asked if they were Catholics. Eight out of

the 200 professed allegiance to that religion; the rest were

all Protestants.' Menendez traced out a line on the ground

with his cane. The prisoners were marched up one by one to the

line; on reaching it, they were stabbed. Next day, Ribaut

arrived with the rest of the army. The same pourparlers began.

But this time a blacker treachery was adopted." An officer,

sent by Menendez, pledged his honor to the French that the

lives of all should be spared if they laid down their arms.

"It is not clear how many of the French accepted the

conditions. A certain number refused them, and escaped into

the woods. What is certain is, that Ribaut, with nearly all

his men, were tied back to back, four together. Those who said

they were Catholics, were set on one side; the rest were all

massacred as they stood. ... Outside the circle of the

slaughtered and the slaughterers stood the priest, Mendoza,

encouraging, approving, exhorting the butchers."

W. Besant,

Gaspard de Coligny,

chapter 7.

The long dispatch in which Menendez reported his fiendish work

to the Spanish king has been brought to light in the archives

at Seville, and there is this endorsement on it, in the

hand-writing of Philip II.: "Say to him that, as to those he

has killed, he has done well; and as to those he has saved,

they shall be sent to the galleys."

F. Parkman,

Pioneers of France in the New World,

chapters 7-8.

{1151}

ALSO IN:

C. W. Baird,

History of the Huguenot Emigration to America,

volume 1, introduction.

FLORIDA: A. D. 1567-1568.

The vengeance of Dominic de Gourgues.

"As might have been expected, all attempts to rouse the French

court into demanding redress were vain. Spain, above all other

nations, knew the arts by which a corrupt court might be

swayed, and the same intrigues which, fifty years later, sent

Raleigh to the block and well-nigh ended the young colony of

Virginia, now kept France quiet. But though the court refused

to move, an avenger was not wanting. Dominic de Gourgues had

already known as a prisoner of war the horrors of the Spanish

galleys. Whether he was a Huguenot is uncertain. Happily in

France, as the history of that and all later ages proved, the

religion of the Catholic did not necessarily deaden the

feelings of the patriot. Seldom has there been a deed of more

reckless daring than that which Dominic de Gourgues now

undertook. With the proceeds of his patrimony he bought three

small ships, manned by eighty sailors and a hundred

men-at-arms. He then obtained a commission as a slaver on the

coast of Guinea, and in the summer of 1567 set sail. With

these paltry resources he aimed at overthrowing a settlement

which had already destroyed a force of twenty times his

number, and which might have been strengthened in the

interval. ... To the mass of his followers he did not reveal

the true secret of his voyage till he had reached the West

Indies. Then he disclosed his real purpose. His men were of

the same spirit as their leader. Desperate though the

enterprise seemed, De Gourgues' only difficulty was to

restrain his followers from undue haste. Happily for their

attempt, they had allies on whom they had not reckoned. The

fickle savages had at first welcomed the Spaniards, but the

tyranny of the new comers soon wrought a change, and the

Spaniards in Florida, like the Spaniards in every part of the

New World, were looked on as hateful tyrants. So when De

Gourgues landed he at once found a ready body of allies. ...

Three days were spent in making ready, and then De Gourgues,

with a hundred and sixty of his own men and his Indian allies,

marched against the enemy. In spite of the hostility of the

Indians, the Spaniards seem to have taken no precaution

against a sudden attack. Menendez himself had left the colony.

The Spanish force was divided between three forts, and no proper

precautions were taken for keeping up the communications

between them. Each was successively seized, the garrison slain

or made prisoners, and, as each fort fell, those in the next

could only make vague guesses as to the extent of the danger.

Even when divided into three the Spanish force outnumbered

that of De Gourgues, and savages with bows and arrows would

have counted for little against men with fire arms and behind

walls. But after the downfall of the first fort a panic seemed

to seize the Spaniards, and the French achieved an almost

bloodless victory. After the death of Ribault and his

followers nothing could be looked for but merciless

retaliation, and De Gourgues copied the severity, though not

the perfidy of his enemies. The very details of Menendez' act

were imitated, and the trees on which the prisoners were hung

bore the inscription: 'Not as Spaniards, but as traitors,

robbers, and murderers.' Five weeks later De Gourgues anchored

under the walls of Rochelle. ... His attack did not wholly

extirpate the Spanish power in Florida. Menendez received the

blessing of the Pope as a chosen instrument for the conversion

of the Indians, returned to America and restored his

settlement. As before, he soon made the Indians his deadly

enemies. The Spanish settlement held on, but it was not till

two centuries later that its existence made itself remembered

by one brief but glorious episode in the history of the

English colonies."

J. A. Doyle,

The English in America: Virginia, &c.,

chapter 5.

ALSO IN:

W. W. Dewhurst,

History of St. Augustine, Florida,

chapter 9.

FLORIDA: A. D. 1628.

Claimed by France, and placed, with New France, under the

control of the Company of the Hundred Associates.

See CANADA: A. D. 1616-1628.

FLORIDA: A. D. 1629.

Claimed in part by England and embraced in the Carolina grant

to Sir Robert Heath.

See AMERICA: A. D. 1629.

FLORIDA: A. D. 1680.

Attack on the English of Carolina.

See SOUTH CAROLINA: A. D. 1680.

FLORIDA: A. D. 1702.

Adjustment of western boundary with the French of Louisiana.

See LOUISIANA: A. D. 1698-1712.

FLORIDA: A. D. 1740.

Unsuccessful attack on St. Augustine by the English of Georgia

and Carolina.

See GEORGIA: A. D. 1738-1743.

FLORIDA: A. D. 1763 (February).

Ceded to Great Britain by Spain in the Treaty of Paris.

See SEVEN YEARS WAR.

FLORIDA: A. D. 1763 (July).

Possession taken by the English.

"When, in July [1763], possession was taken of Florida, its

inhabitants, of every age and sex, men, women, children, and

servants, numbered but 3,000; and, of these, the men were

nearly all in the pay of the Catholic king. The possession of

it had cost him nearly $230,000 annually; and now it was

accepted by England as a compensation for Havana. Most of the

people, receiving from the Spanish treasury indemnity for

their losses, had migrated to Cuba, taking with them the bones

of their saints and the ashes of their distinguished dead. The

western province of Florida extended to the Mississippi, on

the line of latitude of 31°. On the 20th of October, the

French surrendered the post of Mobile, with its brick fort,

which was fast crumbling to ruins. A month later, the slight

stockade at Tombigbee, in the west of the Chocta country, was

delivered up. In a congress of the Catawbas, Cherokees,

Creeks, Chicasas, and Choctas, held on the 10th of November,

at Augusta, the governors of Virginia and the colonies south

of it were present, and the peace with the Indians of the

South and South-west was ratified."

G. Bancroft,

History of the United States

(Author's last revision.),

volume 3, page 64.

FLORIDA: A. D. 1763 (October).

English provinces, East and West, constituted by the King's

proclamation.

See NORTHWEST TERRITORY OF THE UNITED STATES OF

AMERICA: A. D. 1763.

{1152}

FLORIDA: A. D. 1779-1781.

Reconquest of West Florida by the Spanish commander at New

Orleans.

"In the summer of 1779 Spain had declared war against Great

Britain. Galvez [the Spanish commander at New Orleans]

discovered that the British were planning the surprise of New

Orleans, and, under cover of preparations for defense, made

haste to take the offensive. Four days before the time he had

appointed to move, a hurricane destroyed a large number of

houses in the town, and spread ruin to crops and, dwellings up

and down the 'coast,' and sunk his gun flotilla. ... Repairing

his disasters as best he could, and hastening his ostensibly

defensive preparations, he marched, on the 22d of August,

1779, against the British forts on the Mississippi. His ...

little army of 1,434 men was without tents, other military

furniture, or a single engineer. The gun fleet followed in the

river abreast of their line of march along its shores,

carrying one 24-pounder, five 18-pounders, and four

4-pounders. With this force, in the space of about three

weeks, Fort Bute on bayou Manchac, Baton Rouge and Fort

Panmure. 8 vessels, 556 regulars, and a number of sailors,

militia-men, and free blacks, fell into the hands of the

Spaniards. The next year, 1780, re-enforced from Havana,

Galvez again left New Orleans by way of the Balize with 2,000

men, regulars, militia, and free blacks, and on the 15th of

March took Fort Charlotte on Mobile river. Galvez next

conceived the much larger project of taking Pensacola. Failing

to secure re-enforcements from Havana by writing for them, he

sailed to that place in October, to make his application in

person, intending to move with them directly on the enemy.

After many delays and disappointments he succeeded, and early

in March, 1781, appeared before Pensacola with a ship of the

line, two frigates, and transports containing 1,400 soldiers

well furnished with artillery and ammunition. Here he was

joined by such troops as could be spared from Mobile, and by

Don Estevan Mirò from New Orleans, at the head of the

Louisiana forces, and on the afternoon of the 16th of March,

though practically unsupported by the naval fleet, until

dishonor was staring its jealous commanders in the face, moved

under hot fire, through a passage of great peril, and took up

a besieging position. ... It is only necessary to state that,

on the 9th of May, 1781, Pensacola, with a garrison of 800

men, and the whole of West Florida, were surrendered to

Galvez. Louisiana had heretofore been included under one

domination with Cuba, but now one of the several rewards

bestowed upon her governor was the captain-generalship of

Louisiana and West Florida."

G. E. Waring, Jr., and G. W. Cable,

History of New Orleans

(United States Tenth Census, volume 19).

ALSO IN:

C. Gayarré,

History of Louisiana: Spanish Domination,

chapter 3.

FLORIDA: A. D. 1783-1787.

The question of boundaries between Spain and the United

States, and the question of the navigation of the Mississippi.

"By the treaty of 1783 between Great Britain on the one part

and the United States and her allies, France and Spain, on the

other, Great Britain acknowledged the independence of the

colonies, and recognized as a part of their southern boundary

a line drawn due east from a point in the Mississippi River,

in latitude 31° north, to the middle of the Appalachicola; and

at the same time she ceded to Spain by a separate agreement

the two Floridas, but without defining their northern

boundaries. This omission gave rise to a dispute between Spain

and the United States as to their respective limits. On the

part of Spain it was contended that by the act of Great

Britain, of 1764, the northern boundary of West Florida had

been fixed at the line running due east from the mouth of the

Yazoo to the Chattahoochee, and that all south of that line

had been ceded to her; whilst on the other hand, the United

States as strenuously maintained that the act fixing and

enlarging the limits of West Florida was superseded by the

recent treaty, which extended their southern boundary to the

31st degree of north latitude, a hundred and ten miles further

south than the line claimed by Spain. Spain, however, had

possession of the disputed territory by right of conquest, and

evidently had no intention of giving it up. She strengthened

her garrisons at Baton Rouge and Natchez, and built a fort at

Vicksburg, and subsequently one at New Madrid, on the Missouri

side of the Mississippi, just below the mouth of the Ohio; and

of the latter she made a port of entry where vessels from the

Ohio were obliged to land and declare their cargoes. She even

denied the right of the United States to the region between

the Mississippi and the Alleghany Mountains, which had been

ceded to them by Great Britain, on the ground that the

conquests made by Governor Galvez, of West Florida, and by Don

Eugenio Pierre, of Fort St. Joseph, 'near the sources of the

Illinois,' had vested the title to all this country in her;

and she insisted that what she did not own was possessed by

the Indians, and could not therefore belong to the United

States. Even as late as 1795, she claimed to have bought from

the Chickasaws the bluffs which bear their name, and which are

situated on the east bank of the Mississippi some distance

north of the most northerly boundary ever assigned by Great

Britain to West Florida. Here, then, was cause for 'a very

pretty quarrel,' and to add to the ill feeling which grew out

of it, Spain denied the right of the people of the United

States to the 'free navigation of the Mississippi,'--a right

which had been conceded to them by Great Britain with all the

formalities with which she had received it from France. ...

What was needed to make the right of any value to the people

of the Ohio valley was the additional right to take their

produce into a Spanish port, New Orleans, and either sell it

then and there, or else store it, subject to certain

conditions, until such time as it suited them to transfer it

to sea-going vessels. This right Spain would not concede; and

as the people of the Ohio valley were determined to have it,

cost what it might, it brought on a series of intrigues

between the Spanish governors of Louisiana and certain

influential citizens west of the Alleghanies which threatened

the stability of the American Union almost before it was

formed."

L. Carr,

Missouri,

chapter 4.

ALSO IN:

E. Schuyler,

American Diplomacy,

chapter 6.

FLORIDA: A. D. 1810-1813.

Continued occupation of West Florida by the Spaniards.

Revolt of the inhabitants.

Possession taken by the Americans from the Mississippi to the

Perdido.

"The success of the French in Spain, and the probability of

that kingdom being obliged to succumb, had given occasion to

revolutionary movements in several of the Spanish American

provinces. This example ... had been followed also in that

portion of the Spanish province of West Florida bordering on

the Mississippi. The inhabitants, most of whom were of British

or American birth, had seized the fort at Baton Rouge, had met

in convention, and had proclaimed themselves independent,

adopting a single star for their flag, the same symbol

afterward assumed by the republic of Texas.

{1153}

Some struggles took place between the adherents of the Spanish

connection and these revolutionists, who were also threatened

with attack from Mobile, still held by a Spanish garrison. In

this emergency they applied, through Holmes, governor of the

Mississippi Territory, for aid and recognition by the United

States. ... The president, however, preferred to issue a

proclamation, taking possession of the east bank of the

Mississippi, occupation of which, under the Louisiana treaty,

had been so long delayed, not, it was said, from any defect of

title, but out of conciliatory views toward Spain. ...

Claiborne, governor of the Orleans Territory, then at

Washington, was dispatched post-haste to take possession." The

following January Congress passed an act in secret session

"authorizing the president to take possession as well of East

as of West Florida, under any arrangement which had been or

might be entered into with the local authorities; or, in case

of any attempted occupation by any foreign government, to take

and to maintain possession by force. Previously to the passage

of this act, the occupation of the east bank of the

Mississippi had been already completed by Governor Claiborne;

not, however, without some show of resistance. ... Captain

Gaines presently appeared before Mobile with a small

detachment of American regulars, and demanded its surrender.

Colonel Cushing soon arrived from New Orleans with several

gun-boats, artillery, and a body of troops. The boats were

permitted to ascend the river toward Fort Stoddard without

opposition. But the Spanish commandant refused to give up

Mobile, and no attempt was made to compel him." By an act of

Congress passed in April, 1812, "that part of Florida recently

taken possession of, as far east as Pearl River, was annexed to

the new state [of Louisiana]. The remaining territory, as far

as the Perdido, though Mobile still remained in the hands of

the Spaniards, was annexed, by another act, to the Mississippi

Territory." A year later, in April, 1813, General Wilkinson

was instructed to take possession of Mobile, and to occupy all

the territory claimed, to the Perdido, which he accordingly

did, without bloodshed.

R. Hildreth,

History of the United States, 2d series,

chapters 23, 24, 26 (volume 3).

FLORIDA: A. D. 1816-1818.

The fugitive negroes and the first Seminole War.

Jackson's campaign.

"The tranquillity of Monroe's administration was soon

seriously threatened by the renewal of trouble with the

Southern Indians [the Seminoles, and the refugee Creeks]. ...

The origin of the difficulty was twofold: first, the injustice

which has always marked the treatment of Indian tribes whose

lands were coveted by the whites; and secondly, the revival of

the old grievance, that Florida was a refuge for the fugitive

slaves of Georgia and South Carolina. ... The Seminoles had

never withheld a welcome to the Georgia negro who preferred

their wild freedom to the lash of an overseer on a cotton or

rice plantation. The Georgians could never forget that the

grand-children of their grandfathers' fugitive slaves were

roaming about the Everglades of Florida. ... So long as there

were Seminoles in Florida, and so long as Florida belonged to

Spain, just so long would the negroes of Georgia find an

asylum in Florida with the Seminoles. ... A war with the

Indians of Florida, therefore, was always literally and

emphatically a slave-hunt. A reclamation for fugitives was

always repulsed by the Seminoles and the Spaniards, and, as

they could be redeemed in no other way, Georgia was always

urging the Federal Government to war."

W. C. Bryant and S. H. Gay,

Popular History of the United States,

volume 4, chapter 10.

During the War of 1812-14, the English, who were permitted by

Spain to make use of Florida with considerable freedom, and

who received no little assistance from the refugee negroes and

Creek Indians, "had built a fort on the Appalachicola River,

about 15 miles from its mouth, and had collected there an

immense amount of arms and ammunition. ... When the war ended,

the English left the arms and ammunition in the fort. The

negroes seized the fort, and it became known as the 'Negro

Fort.' The authorities of the United States sent General

Gaines to the Florida frontier with troops, to establish peace

on the border. The Negro Fort was a source of anxiety both to

the military authorities and to the slave-owners of Georgia,"

and a pretext was soon found--whether valid or not seems

uncertain--for attacking it. "A hot shot penetrated one of the

magazines, and the whole fort was blown to pieces, July 27, 1816.

There were 300 negro men, women and children, and 20 Choctaws

in the fort; 270 were killed. Only three came out unhurt, and

these were killed by the allied Indians. ... During 1817 there

were frequent collisions on the frontiers between Whites and

Indians. ... On the 20th of November, General Gaines sent a

force of 250 men to Fowltown, the headquarters of the chief of

the 'Redsticks,' or hostile Creeks. They approached the town

in the early morning, and were fired on. An engagement

followed. The town was taken and burned. ... The Indians of

that section, after this, began general hostilities, attacked

the boats which were ascending the Appalachicola, and

massacred the persons in them. ... In December, on receipt of

intelligence of the battle at Fowltown and the attack on the

boats, Jackson was ordered to take command in Georgia. He

wrote to President Monroe: 'Let it be signified to me through

any channel (say Mr. J. Rhea) that the possession of the

Floridas would be desirable to the United States, and in sixty

days it will be accomplished.' Much was afterwards made to

depend on this letter. Monroe was ill when it reached

Washington, and he did not see or read it until a year

afterwards, when some reference was made to it. Jackson

construed the orders which he received from Calhoun with

reference to this letter. ... He certainly supposed, however,

that he had the secret concurrence of the administration in

conquering Florida. ... He advanced through Georgia with great

haste and was on the Florida frontier in March, 1818. He ...

immediately advanced to St. Mark's, which place he captured.

On his way down the Appalachicola he found the Indians and

negroes at work in the fields, and unconscious of any

impending attack. Some of them fled to St. Mark's. His theory,

in which he supposed that he was supported by the

administration, was that he was to pursue the Indians until he

caught them, wherever they might go; that he was to respect

Spanish rights as far as he could consistently with that

purpose; and that the excuse for his proceedings was that

Spain could not police her own territory, or restrain the

Indians.

{1154}

Jackson's proceedings were based on two positive but arbitrary

assumptions: (1) That the Indians got aid and encouragement

from St. Mark's and Pensacola. (This the Spaniards always

denied, but perhaps a third assumption of Jackson might be

mentioned: that the word of a Spanish official was of no

value.) (2) That Great Britain kept paid emissaries employed

in Florida to stir up trouble for the United States. This

latter assumption was a matter of profound belief generally in

the United States." Acting upon it with no hesitation, Jackson

caused a Scotch trader named Arbuthnot, whom he found at St.

Mark's, and an English ex-lieutenant of marines, Ambrister by

name, who was taken prisoner among the Seminoles, to be

condemned by court martial and executed, although no

substantial evidence of their being in any way answerable for

Indian hostilities was adduced. "It was as a mere incident of

his homeward march that Jackson turned aside and captured

Pensacola, May 24, 1818, because he was told that some Indians

had taken refuge there. He deposed the Spanish government, set

up a new one, and established a garrison. He then continued

his march homewards. "Jackson's performances in Florida were

the cause of grave perplexities to his government, which

finally determined "that Pensacola and St. Mark's should be

restored to Spain, but that Jackson's course should be

approved and defended on the grounds that he pursued his enemy

to his refuge, and that Spain could not do the duty which

devolved on her."

W. G. Sumner,

Andrew Jackson as a public man,

chapter 3.

ALSO IN:

J. Parton, Life of Andrew Jackson,

volume 2, chapters 31-39.

J. R. Giddings,

The Exiles of Florida,

chapters 1-4.

FLORIDA: A. D. 1819-1821.

Cession by Spain to the United States.

"Jackson's vigorous proceedings in Florida would seem not to

have been without effect. Pending the discussion in Congress

on his conduct, the Spanish minister, under new instructions

from home, signed a treaty for the cession of Florida, in

extinction of the various American claims, for the

satisfaction of which the United States agreed to pay to the

claimants $5,000,000. The Louisiana boundary, as fixed by this

treaty, was a compromise between the respective offers

heretofore made, though leaning a good deal to the American

side: the Sabine to the 32d degree of north latitude; thence a

north meridian line to the Red River; the course of that river

to the 100th degree of longitude east [? west] from Greenwich;

thence north by that meridian to the Arkansas; up that river

to its head, and to the 42d degree of north latitude; and

along that degree to the Pacific. This treaty was immediately

ratified by the Senate," but it was not until February, 1821,

that the ratification of the Spanish government was received.

R. Hildreth,

History of the United States,

2d series, chapters 31-32 (volume 3).

ALSO IN:

J. T. Morse,

John Quincy Adams,

pages 109-125.

Treaties and Conventions between the United States and

other countries (edition of 1880), pages 1016-1022.

FLORIDA: A. D. 1835-1843.

The Second Seminole War.

"The conflict with the Seminoles was one of the legacies left

by Jackson to Van Buren; it lasted as long as the

Revolutionary War, cost thirty millions of dollars, and

baffled the efforts of several generals and numerous troops,

who had previously shown themselves equal to any in the world.

... As is usually the case in Indian wars there had been wrong

done by each side; but in this instance we were the more to

blame, although the Indians themselves were far from being

merely harmless and suffering innocents. The Seminoles were

being deprived of their lands in pursuance of the general

policy of removing all the Indians [to] west of the

Mississippi. They had agreed to go, under pressure, and

influenced, probably, by fraudulent representations; but they

declined to fulfill their agreement. If they had been treated

wisely and firmly they might probably have been allowed to

remain without serious injury to the surrounding whites. But

no such treatment was attempted, and as a result we were

plunged in one of the most harassing Indian wars we ever

waged. In their gloomy, tangled swamps, and among the unknown

and untrodden recesses of the everglades, the Indians found a

secure asylum; and they issued from their haunts to burn and

ravage almost all the settled parts of Florida, fairly

depopulating five counties. ... The great Seminole leader,

Osceola, was captured only by deliberate treachery and breach

of faith on our part, and the Indians were worn out rather

than conquered. This was partly owing to their remarkable

capacities as bush-fighters, but infinitely more to the nature

of their territory. Our troops generally fought with great

bravery; but there is very little else in the struggle, either

as regards its origin or the manner in which it was carried

on, to which an American can look back with any satisfaction."

T. Roosevelt,

Life of Thomas H. Benton,

chapter 10.

ALSO IN:

J. R. Giddings,

The Exiles of Florida,

chapters 7-21.

J. T. Sprague,

The Florida War.

See also,

AMERICAN ABORIGINES: SEMINOLES.

FLORIDA: A. D. 1845.

Admission into the Union.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1845.

FLORIDA: A. D. 1861 (JANUARY).

Secession from the Union.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1861 (JANUARY-FEBRUARY).

FLORIDA: A. D. 1862 (February-April).

Temporary Union conquests and occupation.

Discouragement of Unionists.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1862 (FEBRUARY-APRIL: GEORGIA--FLORIDA).

FLORIDA: A. D. 1864.

Unsuccessful National attempt to occupy the State.

Battle of Olustee.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1864 (JANUARY-FEBRUARY: FLORIDA).

FLORIDA: A. D. 1865 (JULY).

Provisional government set up under President Johnson's plan

of Reconstruction.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1865 (MAY-JULY).

FLORIDA: A. D. 1865-1868.

Reconstruction.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1865 (MAY-JULY), and after, to 1868-1870.

----------FLORIDA: End----------

FLORIN, The.

"The Republic of Florence, in the year 1252, coined its golden

florin, of 24 carats fine, and of the weight of one drachm. It

placed the value under the guarantee of publicity, and of

commercial good faith; and that coin remained unaltered, as

the standard for all other values, as long as the republic

itself endured."

J. C. L. de Sismondi,

History of the Italian Republics,

chapter 4.

FLOTA, The.

See PERU: A. D. 1550-1816.

FLOYD, JOHN B., Treachery of.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1860 (DECEMBER).

FLUSHING: A. D. 1807.

Ceded to France.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1807-1808 (NOVEMBER-FEBRUARY).

{1155}

FLUSHING: A. D. 1809.

Taken and abandoned by the English.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1809 (JULY-DECEMBER).

FOCKSHANI, Battle of (1789).

See TURKS: A. D. 1776-1792.

FODHLA.

See IRELAND: THE NAME.

FŒDERATI OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

The bodies of barbarians who were taken in the military

service of the Roman empire, during the period of its decline,

serving "under their hereditary chiefs, using the arms which

were proper to them, from preserving their language, their

manners and their customs, were designated by the name of

frederati" (confederates or allies).

J. C. L. de Sismondi,

The French under the Merovingians,

chapter 2.

ALSO IN:

T. Hodgkin, The dynasty of Theodosius,

chapter 4.

FOIX, Rise of the Counts of.

See BURGUNDY: A. D. 1032.

FOIX, The house in Navarre.

See NAVARRE: A. D. 1442-1521.

FOLCLAND.--FOLKLAND.

Public land, among the early English. "It comprised the whole

area that was not at the original allotment assigned to

individuals or communities, and that was not subsequently

divided into estates of bookland [bocland]. The folkland was

the standing treasury of the country; no alienation of any

part of it could be made without the consent of the national

council; but it might be allowed to individuals to hold

portions of it subject to rents and other services to the

state."

W. Stubbs,

Constitutional History of England,

chapter 5, section 36.

The theory here stated is questioned by Prof. Vinogradoff, who

says: "I venture to suggest that folkland need not mean the

land owned by the people. Bookland is land that is held by

bookright; folkland is land that is held by folkright. The

folkland is what our scholars have called ethel, and alod, and

family-land, and yrfeland; it is land held under the old

restrictive common-law, the law which keeps land in families,

as contrasted with land which is held under a book, under a

'privilegium,' modelled on Roman precedents, expressed in

Latin words, armed with ecclesiastical sanctions, and making

for free alienation and individualism."

P. Vinogradoff,

Folkland

(English History Rev., January, 1893).

ALSO IN:

J. M. Kemble,

The Saxons in England,

book 1, chapter 11.

See, also, ALOD.

FOLIGNO, Treaty of.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1800-1801 (JUNE-FEBRUARY).

FOLKLAND.

See FOLCLAND.

FOLKMOOT.

See HUNDRED:

also SHIRE;

also WITENAGEMOT;

also TOWNSHIP AND TOWN-MEETING, THE NEW ENGLAND.

FOLKTHING.--FOLKETING, The.

See SCANDINAVIAN STATES

(DENMARK--ICELAND): A. D. 1849-1874.

FOLKUNGAS, The.

See SCANDINAVIAN STATES: A. D. 1018-1397.

FOMORIANS, OR FORMORIANS, The.

A people mentioned in Irish legends as sea-rovers. Mr.

Sullivan, in his article on "Celtic Literature" in the

Encyclopædia Britannica advances the opinion that the Romans

were the people alluded to; but the general view is quite

different.

See IRELAND: THE PRIMITIVE INHABITANTS;

also, NEMEDIANS.

FONTAINE FRANĆAISE, Battle of (1595).

See FRANCE: A. D. 1593-1598.

FONTAINEBLEAU: A. D. 1812-1814.

Residence of the captive Pope.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1808-1814.

FONTAINEBLEAU,

Treaties of (1807).

See PORTUGAL: A. D. 1807,

and SPAIN: A. D.1807-1808.

FONTAINEBLEAU,

Treaties of (1814).

See FRANCE: A. D. 1814 (MARCH-APRIL).

FONTAINEBLEAU DECREE, The.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1806-1810.

FONTARABIA, Siege and Battle (1638).

See SPAIN: A. D. 1637-1640.

FONTENAILLES, OR FONTENAY,

Battle of, A. D. 841.

In the civil war between the three grandsons of Charlemagne,

which resulted in the partition of his empire and the definite

separation of Germany and France, the decisive battle was

fought, June 25, 841, at Fontenailles, or Fontenay

(Fontanetum), near Auxerre. It was one of the fiercest and

bloodiest fights of mediæval times, and 80,000 men are said to

have died on the field.

Sir F. Palgrave, History of Normandy and England,

book 1, chapter 2.

See FRANKS (CAROLINGIAN EMPIRE): A. D. 814-962.

FONTENOY, Battle of(1745).

See NETHERLANDS (AUSTRIAN PROVINCES): A. D. 1745.

FOOT, The Roman.

"The unit of lineal measure [with the Romans] was the Pes,

which occupied the same place in the Roman system as the Foot

does in our own. According to the most accurate researches,

the Pes was equal to, about 11.64 inches imperial measure, or

.97 of an English foot. The Pes being supposed to represent

the length of the foot in a well proportioned man, various

divisions and multiples of the Pes were named after standards

derived from the human frame. Thus: Pes=16 Digiti, i. e.

finger-breadths, [or] 4 Palmi, i. e. hand-breadths;

Sesquipes=l cubitus, i. e. length from elbow to extremity of

middle finger. The Pes was also divided into 12 Pollices, i.

e. thumb-joint-lengths, otherwise called Unciae (whence our

word 'inch')."

W. Ramsay,

Manual of Roman Antiquity,

chapter 13.

FOOTE, Commodore.

Gun-boat campaign on the western rivers.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1862 (JANUARY-FEBRUARY: KENTUCKY-TENNESSEE);

(MARCH-APRIL: ON THE MISSISSIPPI).

FORBACH, OR SPICHERN, Battle of.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1870 (JULY-AUGUST).

FORCE BILL, The.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1871 (APRIL).

FORESTS, Charter of.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1216-1274.

FORLI, Battle of (1423).

See ITALY: A. D. 1412-1447.

FORMORIANS.

See FOMORIANS.

FORMOSUS, Pope, A. D. 891-896.

FORNUOVA, Battle of (1495).

See ITALY: A. D. 1494-1496.

FORT EDWARD.--FORT ERIE.--FORT FISHER, ETC.

See EDWARD, FORT; ERIE, FORT, ETC.

FORTRENN, Men of.

A Pictish people who figure in early Scottish history, and

whom Mr. Rhys derives from the tribe known to the Romans as

Verturiones. The western part of Fife was embraced in their

kingdom.

J. Rhys,

Celtic Britain,

pages 158-159.

FORTUNATE ISLANDS.

See CANARY ISLANDS, DISCOVERY OF.

{1156}

FORTY-FIVE, The.

The Jacobite rebellion of 1745 is often referred to as "the

Forty-five."

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1745.

FORTY-SHILLING FREEHOLDERS.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1884-1885.

FORUM, The Julian, and its extensions.

"From the entrance of the Suburra branched out the long

streets which penetrated the hollows between the Quirinal,

Viminal, and Esquiline to the gates pierced in the mound of

Servius. It was in this direction that Cæsar effected the

first extension of the Forum, by converting the site of

certain streets into an open space which he surrounded with

arcades, and in the centre of which he erected his temple of

Venus. By the side of the Julian Forum, or perhaps in its

rear, Augustus constructed a still ampler inclosure, which he

adorned with the temple of Mars the Avenger. Succeeding

emperors ... continued to work out the same idea, till the

Argiletum on the one hand, and the saddle of the Capitoline

and Quirinal, excavated for the purpose, on the other, were

both occupied by these constructions, the dwellings of the

populace being swept away before them; and a space running

nearly parallel to the length of the Roman Forum, and

exceeding it in size, was thus devoted to public use,

extending from the pillar of Trajan to the basilica of

Constantine."

C. Merivale,

History of the Romans,

chapter 40.

FORUM BOARIUM AND VELABRUM OF ANCIENT ROME, The.

"The Velabrum, the Forum Boarium, the Vicus Tuscus, and the

Circus Maximus are names rich in reminiscences of the romantic

youth and warlike manhood of the Roman people. The earliest

dawn of Roman history begins with the union of the Capitoline

and Palatine hills into one city. In those far-distant times,

however, no population was settled in the Velabrum or Circus

valley; for, as we have seen, until the drainage was

permanently provided for by the cloacæ, these districts were

uninhabited swamps; and the name Velabrum itself is said to

have been derived from the boats used in crossing from one

hill to the other. Perhaps such may not have been the case

with the Forum Boarium, which lay between the Velabrum and the

river. ... The limits of the Forum Boarium can be clearly

defined. It was separated from the Velabrum at the Arch of the

Goldsmiths. ... On the south-eastern side the Carceres of the

Circus, and the adjoining temple on the site of S. Maria in

Cosmedin, bounded the district, on the western the Tiber, and

on the north western the wall of Servius. ... The immediate

neighbourhood of the river, the Forum, the Campus Martius, and

the Palace of the Cæsars would naturally render this quarter

one of the most crowded thoroughfares of Rome. ... The Forum

itself, which gave the name to the district, was probably an

open space surrounded by shops and public buildings, like the

Forum Romanum, but on a smaller scale. In the centre stood the

bronze figure of a bull, brought from Ægina, either as a

symbol of the trade in cattle to which the place owed its

name, or, as Tacitus observes, to mark the supposed spot

whence the plough of Romulus, drawn by a bull and a cow, first

started in tracing out the Palatine pomœrium."

R. Burn,

Rome and the Campagna,

chapter 12.

FORUM GALLORUM, Battle of (B. C. 43).

See ROME: B. C. 44-42.

FORUM JULII.

A Roman colony and naval station (modern Frejus) founded on

the Mediterranean coast of Gaul by Augustus.

FORUM ROMANUM, The.

"The older Forum, or Forum Romanum, as it was called, to

distinguish it from the later Fora, which were named after

their respective builders [Forum of Julius Cæsar, of Augustus,

of Nerva, of Vespasian, of Trajan, etc.], was an open space of

an oblong shape, which extended in a south-easterly direction

from near the depression or intermontium between the two

summits of the Capitoline hill to a point opposite the still

extant temple of Antoninus and Faustina. ... Round this

confined space were grouped the most important buildings of

Republican Rome."

R. Burn,

Rome and the Campagna,

chapter 6, part 1.

"Forum, in the literal sense of the word merely a marketplace,

derives its name 'á ferendo,' (from bringing, getting,

purchasing). ... Narrow is the arena on which so great a drama

was enacted in the Republican and Imperial City! the

ascertainable measurements of this region, according to good

authorities, being 671 English feet in the extreme length; 202

in the extreme breadth, and 117 feet at the narrower, the

south-eastern, side. A wildly picturesque marshy vale,

overshadowed by primæval forests, and shut in by rugged

heights, was that low ground between the Palatine and

Capitoline hills when the 'Roma Quadrata,' ascribed to

Romulus, was founded about seven centuries and a half before

our era. After the wars and finally confirmed alliance between

Romans and Sabines ... the colonists agreed to unite under the

same government, and to surround the two cities and two hills

with a wider cincture of fortifying walls than those the still

extant ruins of which are before us on the Palatine. Now was

the swampy waste rendered serviceable for civic purposes; the

forest was cut down; the stagnant marshes were drained, the

clayey hollows filled up; the wild valley became the appointed

arena for popular assemblage; though Dionysius tells us it was

for some time on a spot sacred to Vulcan (the 'Vulcanale'),

probably a terrace on the slope of the Palatine overlooking

the Forum, that the people used to meet for political affairs,

elections, etc. During many ages there were, it appears, no

habitations save on the hills. ... The Forum, as an enclosed

public place amidst buildings, and surrounded by graceful

porticos, may be said to have owed its origin to Tarquinius

Priscus, between the years 616 and 578 B. C. That king (Livius

tells us) was the first who erected porticos around this area,

and also divided the ground into lots, where private citizens

might build for their own uses. Booths, probably wooden (the

'tabernæ veteres'), were the first rude description of shops

here seen. ... Uncertain is the original place of the 'Rostra

Veteres'--the ancient tribunal for orators. No permanent

tribunal for such purpose is known to have been placed in the

Forum till the year of the city 417. ... In the year 336 B.

C., the Romans having gained a naval victory over the

citizens' of Antium, several of those enemies' ships were

burnt, others transported to the Roman docks, and the bronzed

prows of the latter were used to decorate a pulpit, now raised

for public speaking, probably near the centre of the Forum."

C. I. Hemans,

Historic and Monumental Rome,

chapter 6.

ALSO IN:

R. Lanciani,

Ancient Rome,

pages 75-82.

{1157}

FORUM TREBONII, Battle of (A. D. 251).

See GOTHS, FIRST INVASIONS OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

FOSI, The.

See CHAUCI.

FOSSA.

See CASTRA.

FOSSE, The.

One of the great Roman roads in Britain, which ran from

Lincoln southwestwardly into Cornwall.

See ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

FOSTAT.

The original name of Cairo, Egypt, signifying "the

Encampment."

See MAHOMETAN CONQUEST: A. D. 640-646.

FOTHERINGAY CASTLE, Mary Stuart's execution at.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1561-1568;

and ENGLAND: A. D. 1585-1587.

FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH, Ponce de Leon's quest of the.

See AMERICA: A. D. 1512.

FOUR HUNDRED AND FIVE THOUSAND AT ATHENS.

See ATHENS: B. C. 413-411.

FOUR HUNDRED AT ATHENS, The.

See ATHENS: B. C. 594.

FOUR MASTERS, The.

Four Irish antiquaries of 17th century, who compiled the mixed

collection of legend and history called the "Annals of the

Kingdom of Ireland," are commonly known as the Four Masters.

They were Michael O'Clery, a lay brother of the order of St.

Francis; Conaire O'Clery, brother of Michael; Cucogry or

Peregrine O'Clery, head of the Tirconnell sept of the

O'Clerys, to which Michael and Conaire belonged; and Ferfeasa

O'Mulconry, of whom nothing is known, except that he was a

native of the county of Roscommon. The "Annals" of the Four

Masters have been translated into English from the Irish

tongue by John O'Donovan.

J. O'Donovan,

Introduction to Annals of the Kingdom of

Ireland by the Four Masters.

FOUR MILE STRIP, Cession of the.

See PONTIAC'S WAR.

FOURMIGNY, Battle of (1449).

See FRANCE: A. D. 1431-1453.

FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1865-1866 (DECEMBER-APRIL);

1866 (JUNE);

1866-1867 (OCTOBER-MARCH).

FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT:

The enforcement of.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1871 (APRIL).

----------FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT: End----------

FOURTH OF JULY.

The anniversary of the adoption of the American Declaration of

Independence.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1776 (JULY).

FOWEY, Essex's surrender at.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1644 (AUGUST-SEPTEMBER).

FOWLTOWN, Battle of (1817).

See FLORIDA: A. D. 1816-1818.

FOX AND NORTH COALITION, The.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1782; 1783;

and 1783-1787.

FOX INDIANS, The.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: ALGONQUIAN FAMILY,

and SACS, &c.

For an account of the massacre of Fox Indians

at Detroit in 1712,

See CANADA: A. D. 1711-1713.

For an account of the Black Hawk War,

See ILLINOIS: A.. D. 1832.

FRANCE:

Gallic and Roman.

See GAUL. A. D. 481-843.

FRANCE:

Under the Franks, to the division of the Empire of

Charlemagne.

See FRANKS.

FRANCE: A. D. 841-911.

Ravages and settlements of the Northmen.

See NORMANS: A. D. 841 to 876-911.

FRANCE: 9th Century.

Introduction of the modern name.

At the time of the division of the empire of Charlemagne

between his three grand-sons, which was made a definite and

lasting political separation by the Treaty of Verdun, A. D.

843, "the people of the West [western Europe] had come to be

divided, with more and more distinctness, into two classes,

those composed of Franks and Germans, who still adhered to the

Teutonic dialects, and those, composed of Franks,

Gallo-Romans, and Aquitanians, who used the Romance dialects,

or the patois which had grown out of a corrupted Latin. The

former clung to the name of Germans, while the latter, not to

lose all share in the glory of the Frankish name, began to

call themselves Franci, and their country Francia Nova, or New

France. ... Francia was the Latin name of Frankenland, and had

long before been applied to the dominions of the Franks on

both sides of the Rhine. Their country was then divided into

East and West Francia; but in the time of Karl the Great

[Charlemagne] and Ludwig Pious, we find the monk of St. Gall

using the terms Francia Nova, in opposition to the Francia,

'quæ dicitur antiqua.'"

P. Godwin,

History of France: Ancient Gaul,

chapter 18, with note.

"As for the mere name of Francia, like other names of the

kind, it shifted its geographical use according to the

wanderings of the people from whom it was derived. After many

such changes of meaning, it gradually settled down as the name

for those parts of Germany and Gaul where it still abides.

There are the Teutonic or Austrian [or Austrasian] Francia,

part of which still keeps the name of Franken or Franconia,

and the Romance or Neustrian Francia, which by various

annexations has grown into modern France."

E. A. Freeman,

Historical Geography of Europe,

volume 1, page 121.

"As late as the reign of Frederick Barbarossa, the name of

Frank was still used, and used too with an air of triumph, as

equivalent to the name of German. The Kings and kingdoms of

this age had indeed no fixed titles, because all were still

looked on as mere portions of the great Frankish realm.

Another step has now been taken towards the creation of modern

France; but the older state of things has not yet wholly

passed away. Germany has no definite name; for a long time it

is 'Francia Orientalis,' 'Francia Teutonica'; then it becomes

'Regnum Teutonicum,' 'Regnum Teutonicorum.' But it is equally

clear that, within the limits of that Western or Latin France,

Francia and Francus were fast getting their modern meanings of

France and Frenchmen, as distinguished from Frank or German."

E. A. Freeman,

The Franks and the Gauls

(Historical Essays, 1st series, number 7).

{1158}

FRANCE: A. D. 843.

The kingdom of Charles the Bald.

The first actual kingdom of France (Francia Nova--Francia

Occidentalis), was formed in the partition of the empire of

Charlemagne between his three grandsons, by the Treaty of

Verdun, A. D. 843. It was assigned to Charles, called "the

Bald," and comprised the Neustria of the older Frank

divisions, together with Aquitaine. It "had for its eastern

boundary, the Meuse, the Saône and the Rhone; which,

nevertheless, can only be understood of the Upper Meuse, since

Brabant was certainly not comprised in it"; and it extended

southwards beyond the Pyrenees to the Ebro.

H. Hallam,

The Middle Ages,

chapter 1, part 1, footnote.

"Charles and his successors have some claim to be accounted

French. They rule over a large part of France, and are cut

away from their older connexion with Germany. Still, in

reality they are Germans and Franks. They speak German, they

yearn after the old imperial name, they have no national

feeling at all. On the other hand, the great lords of

Neustria, as it used to be called, are ready to move in that

direction, and to take the first steps towards a new national

life. They cease to look back to the Rhine, and occupy

themselves in a continual struggle with their kings. Feudal

power is founded, and with it the claims of the bishops rise

to their highest point. But we have not yet come to a kingdom

of France. ... It was no proper French kingdom; but a dying

branch of the Empire of Charles the Great. ... Charles the

Bald, entering on his part of the Caroling Empire, found three

large districts which refused to recognise him. These were

Aquitaine, whose king was Pippin II.; Septimania, in the hands

of Bernard; and Brittany under Nominoë. He attempted to reduce

them; but Brittany and Septimania defied him, while over

Aquitaine he was little more than a nominal suzerain."

G. W. Kitchin,

History of France,

volume 1, book 2, part 2, chapter 5.

ALSO IN:

E. A. Freeman,

Historical Geography of Europe,

chapter 6, section 1.

See, also,

FRANKS (CAROLINGIAN EMPIRE): A. D. 814-962.

----------------------------------------

A Logical Outline of French History

(Red)   Physical or material.

(Blue)  Ethnologilcal.

(Green) Social and political.

(Brown) Intellectual, moral and  religious.

(Black) Foreign.

IN WHICH THE DOMINANT CONDITIONS AND

INFLUENCES ARE DISTINGUISHED BY COLORS.

The country known anciently as Gaul, and in modern times as

France, is distinguished by no physical characteristics that

will go far towards explaining its history. Lying within the

middle degrees of the northern temperate zone, greatly

diversified in its superficial features, and varied in the

qualities of its soil, it represents a fair average of the

more favorable conditions of human life.

The Gauls.

The inhabitants of the land when the Romans subdued it were a

Celtic people, belonging to the race which has survived to the

present day with least admixture or modification in the

Bretons, the Welsh, the Celtic Irish and the Highland Scotch.

The peculiar traits of the race in mind and temper are so

visible in French history as to show that the nation has never

ceased to be essentially Gallic in blood.

B. C. 51-A. D. 406; Roman Gaul.

Under the control and the teaching of Rome for four centuries

and a half, the Gauls were perfected in her civilization and

corrupted by the vices of her decay.

5th Century; Frank Conquest.

When the invasion of Teutonic barbarism broke the barrier of

the Rhine, they were easily but not quickly overwhelmed, and

sank under a conquest more complete than that from Rome had

been; since the whole body of the conquerors came to dwell

within the land, and to be neighbors and masters, at once. For

the most part, these invaders preferred country to town, and

carved estates for themselves in all the districts that were

fertile and fair. The Gallo-Romans, or Romanized Gauls, were

left to more freedom in their cities than outside; but their

cities were blighted in industry and in trade by the common

ruin around them. In the rural districts, few liberties or

rights were preserved for the subjugated race.

Feudalism.

The form of society which the German conquerors brought with

them into Gaul was broken by the change of circumstance, quite

as much as the form of society which they overthrew. The camp

gave place to the castle; the wandering war-chief acquired the

firmer superiority of a great land-proprietor and lord; his

warriors slipped in station from free followers to dependents,

in divers degrees; the greater chiefs won the title of kings;

the fiercer kings destroyed their rivals; and four or five

centuries shaped, by slow processes that are traceable,

indistinctly, the military structure of society called Feudal,

which organized lawlessness with picturesque and destructive

effects.

A. D. 481-752. Merovingian monarchy.

A. D. 768-814. Empire of Charlemagne.

All authority withered, except the spiritual authority of the

Church, which steadily grew. The royalty that had thrived for

a time upon the distribution of lands, dignities and powers,

lost prestige when it had expended the domains at its

disposal, and when offices and estates were clutched in

hereditary possession. Before it actually expired, there arose

a family of remarkable men--great in four successive

generations--who put its crown upon their own heads and made

it powerful again. The last and greatest of these expanded the

Frank kingdom into a new Roman Empire; but the energy of the

achievement was wholly his own, and his empire fell to pieces

when he died.

A. D. 987. Kingdom of Hugh Capet.

11th-12th centuries. Enfranchisement of the Communes.

In the part which became France, royalty dwindled once more;

the great dukes and counts nominally subject to it, in the

feudal sense, renewed and increased their power; until one of

their number took the throne, and bequeathed it to his heirs.

This new line of kings won back by degrees the ascendancy of

the crown. The small actual dominion, surrounding Paris, with

which they began, was widened slowly by the strong,

authoritative arm. They made themselves, in rude fashion, the

champions of order and law. They took the people of the towns

into alliance with them; for the towns were beginning to

catch the spirit of the free cities of Italy, and the sturdy

temper of the Flemish burghers, and to assume the name of

"communes," or commons, casting off the feudal yoke that had

been laid upon them. The kings lent their countenance to the

communes, and the communes strengthened the hands of the

kings. Between them and much helped by the stir of the

Crusades, they loosened the roots of feudalism, until its

decay set in. The king's courts and the king's officers pushed

their jurisdiction into a widening realm, until the king's

authority had become supreme, in fact as well as in name.

Even the measureless misery of a hundred years of war with

English kings brought power, in the end, to the crown, by

weakening the greater lords, and by bringing into existence a

fixed military force.

A. D. 1337-1453. Hundred Years War.

Happy accidents, shrewd marriages, and cunning intrigues

gathered the great dukedoms, one by one, into the royal

domain, and the solidarity of modern France was attained.

16th-17th centuries. Aggrandisement of the Monarchy.

But People and King stood no longer side by side. The league

of King and Commons against the Lords had proved less happy

than the alliance in England of Commons and Lords against the

King. Royalty emerged from the patient struggle alone in

possession of sovereign power. It had used the communes and

then abused them, breaking their charters--their

liberties--their courage--their hopes--and widening the

distance between class and class. The "estates" of the realm

became a memory and a name. During five hundred years, while

the Parliament of England grew in majesty and might, the

States-General of France were assembled but thirteen times.

The Court.

When royalty, at last, invented the fatal enchantments of a

"Court," then the blighting of all other powers was soon

complete. It drew within its spell, from all the provinces of

France, their nobles, their men of genius, their aspiring

spirits, and assembled them to corrupt and debase them

together--to make them its pensioners and hirelings, its

sycophants, its jesters, its knaves.

Suppression of the Huguenots.

Neither Renaissance nor Reformation could undo the spell.

Ideas from the one and a great faith from the other joined in

league for the liberty of both, and the thoughtful among the

people were rallied to them with craving eagerness. But

bigotry and frivolity ruled the Court, and the Court proved

stronger than France. Freedom of conscience, and every species

of freedom with it, were destroyed; by massacre, by civil war,

by oppressive government, by banishment, by corrupting bribes.

18th century. The "Ancien Régime."

And always the grandeur of the monarchy increased; its rule

grew more absolute; its Court sucked the life-blood of the

State more remorselessly. The People starved, that the King

might be magnificent; they perished in a thousand battles,

that his name might be "glorious;" they went into exile,

carrying away the arts of France, that the piety of the King

might not be shocked by their heresies. But always, too, there

was growing in the world, around France and in France, a

knowledge,--an understanding,--a modern spirit,--that rebelled

against these infamies.

A. D. 1789-1799. Revolution.

A. D. 1799-1815. Napoleon.

In due time there came an end. Court, and King, and Church,

and all that even seemed to be a part of the evil old regime,

were whirled into a red gulf of Revolution and disappeared.

The people, unused to Liberty, were made drunken by it, and

went mad. In breaking the gyves of feudalism they broke every

other restraint, and wrecked society in all its forms. Then,

in the stupor of their debauch, they gave themselves to a new

despot--mean, conscienceless, detestable, but transcendent in

the genius and the energy of his selfishness--who devoured

them like a dragon, in the hunger of his insatiate ambition,

and persuaded them to be proud of their fate.

A. D. 1815-1830. Bourbon Restoration.

A. D. 1830-1848. Louis Phillippe

A. D. 1848-1851. Second Republic.

A. D. 1852-1870. Second Empire.

A. D. 1870-.     Third Republic.

Europe suppressed the intolerable adventurer, and France, for

three-fourths of a century since, has been under an

apprenticeship of experience, slowly learning the art of

self-government by constitutional modes. Two monarchies, one

republic, and a sham empire are the spoiled samples of her

work. A third republic, now in hand, is promising better

success. It rests with seeming stability on the support of the

great class of peasant landowners, which the very miseries of her

misgoverned past have created for France. Trained to pinching

frugality by the hard conditions of the old regime; unspoiled

by any ruinous philanthropy, like that of the English

poor-laws; stimulated to land-buying by opportunities which

came, first, from the impoverishment of extravagant nobles,

and, later, from revolutionary confiscations; encouraged to

the same acquisition by favorable laws of transfer and equal

inheritance,--the landowning peasants of France constitute a

Class powerful in numbers, invincible in conservatism, an

profoundly interested in the preservation of social order.

--------End: A Logical Outline of French History-----------

FRANCE: A. D. 861.

Origin of the duchy and of the house of Capet.

In 861, Charles the Bald, king of that part of the dismembered

empire of Charlemagne which grew into the kingdom of France,

was struggling with many difficulties: defending himself

against the hostile ambition of his brother, Louis the German;

striving to establish his authority in Brittany and Aquitaine;

harried and harassed by Norse pirates; surrounded by domestic

treachery and feudal restiveness. All of his many foes were

more or less in league against him, and the soul of their

combination appears to have been a certain bold adventurer--a

stranger of uncertain origin, a Saxon, as some say--who bore

the name of Robert the Strong. In this alien enemy, King

Charles, who never lacked shrewdness, discovered a possible

friend. He opened negotiations with Robert the Strong, and a

bargain was soon made which transferred the sword and the

energy of the potent mercenary to the service of the king.

"Soon after, a Placitum or Great Council was held at

Compiègne. In this assembly, and by the assent of the

Optimates, the Seine and its islands, and that most important

island Paris, and all the country between Seine and Loire,

were granted to Robert, the Duchy of France, though not yet so

called, moreover the Angevine Marches, or County of

Outre-Maine, all to be held by Robert-le-Fort as barriers

against Northmen and Bretons, and by which cessions the realm

was to be defended. Only a portion of this dominion owned the

obedience of Charles: the Bretons were in their own country,

the Northmen in the country they were making their own; the

grant therefore was a license to Robert to win as much as he

could, and to keep his acquisitions should he succeed. ...

Robert kept the Northmen in check, yet only by incessant

exertion. He inured the future kings of France, his two young

sons, Eudes and Robert, to the tug of war, making them his

companions in his enterprises. The banks of the Loire were

particularly guarded by him, for here the principal attacks

were directed." Robert the Strong fought valiantly, as he had

contracted to do, for five years, or more, and then, in an

unlucky battle with the Danes, one summer day in 866, he fell.

"Thus died the first of the Capets." All the honors and

possessions which he had received from the king were then

transferred, not to his sons, but to one Hugh, Count of

Burgundy, who became also Duke or Marquis of France and Count

of Anjou. Twenty years later, however, the older son of

Robert, Eudes, turns up in history again as Count of Paris,

and nothing is known of the means by which the family, soon to

become royal, had recovered its footing and its importance.

Sir F. Palgrave,

History of Normandy and England,

book 1, chapter 3 (volume 1).

FRANCE: A. D. 877-987.

The end of the Carolingian monarchy and the rise of the

Capetian.

Charles the Bald died in 877 and was succeeded by his son

Louis, called "the Stammerer," who reigned only two years. His

two sons, Louis and Carloman, were joint kings for a short

space, struggling with the Northmen and losing the provinces

out of which Duke Boson of Provence, brother-in-law of Charles

the Bald, formed the kingdom of Arles. Louis died in 882 and

Carloman two years afterwards; thereupon Charles, surnamed

"the Fat," king of Lombardy and Germany, and also emperor

(nephew of Charles the Bald), became likewise king of France,

and briefly reunited under his feebly handled sceptre the

greater part of the old empire of Charlemagne: When he died,

in 888, a party of the nobles, tired of his race, met and

elected Count Eudes (or Odo), the valiant Count of Paris, who

had just defended his city with obstinate courage against the

Northmen, to be their king. The sovereignty of Eudes was not

acknowledged by the nation at large. His opponents found a

Carling to set up against him, in the person of the boy

Charles,--youngest son of Louis "the Stammerer," born after

his father's death,--who appears in history as Charles "the

Simple." Eudes, after some years of war, gave up to Charles a

small domain, between the Seine and the Meuse, acknowledged

his feudal superiority and agreed that the whole kingdom

should be surrendered to him on his (Eudes') death. In

accordance with this agreement, Charles the Simple became sole

king in 898, when Eudes died, and the country which

acknowledged his nominal sovereignty fell into a more

distracted state than ever. The Northmen established

themselves in permanent occupation of the country on the lower

Seine, and Charles, in 911, made a formal cession of it to

their duke, Rollo, thus creating the great duchy of Normandy.

In 922 the nobles grew once more disgusted with the feebleness

of their king and crowned Duke Robert, brother of the late king

Eudes, driving Charles into his stronghold of Laon. The

Normans came to Charles' help and his rival Robert was killed

in a battle.

{1159}

But Charles was defeated, was inveigled into the hands of one

of the rebel Lords.--Herbert of Venmandois--and kept a

prisoner until he died, in 929. One Rodolf of Burgundy had

been chosen king, meantime, and reigned until his death, in

936. Then legitimacy triumphed again, and a young son of

Charles the Simple, who had been reared in England, was sent

for and crowned. This king--Louis IV.--his son, Lothair, and

his grandson, Louis V., kept possession of the shaking throne

for half-a-century; but their actual kingdom was much of the

time reduced to little more than the royal city of Laon and

its immediate territories. When Louis died, in 987, leaving no

nearer heir than his uncle, Charles, Duke of Lorraine, there

was no longer any serious attempt to keep up the Carolingian

line. Hugh, Duke of France--whose grandfather Robert, and

whose grand-uncle Eudes had been crowned kings, before him,

and whose father, "Hugh the Great," had been the king-maker of

the period since--was now called to the throne and settled

himself firmly in the seat which a long line of his

descendants would hold. He was known as Hugh Capet to his

contemporaries, and it is thought that he got the name from

his wearing of the hood, cap, or cape of St. Martin--he being

the abbot of St. Martin at Tours, in addition to his other

high dignities.

G. W. Kitchin,

History of France,

volume 1, book 2, part 2, chapter 5;

book 3, chapter 1.

ALSO IN:

Sir F. Palgrave,

History of Normandy and England,

book 1, chapter 5 (volume l).

C. F. Keary,

The Vikings in Western Christendom,

chapters 11 and 13-15.

See, also, LAON.

FRANCE: A. D. 987.

Accession of Hugh Capet.

The kingdom of the early Capetians.

"On the accession of the third race [the Capetians], France,

properly so called, only comprised the territory between the

Somme and the Loire; it was bounded by the counties of

Flanders and Vermandois on the north; by Normandy and Brittany

on the west; by the Champagne on the east; by the duchy of

Aquitaine on the south. The territory within these bounds was

the duchy of France, the patrimonial possession of the Capets,

and constituted the royal domain. The great fiefs of the

crown, in addition to the duchy of France, were the duchy of

Normandy, the duchy of Burgundy, nearly the whole of Flanders,

formed into a county, the county of Champagne, the duchy of

Aquitaine, and the county of Toulouse. ... The sovereigns of

these various states were the great vassals of the crown and

peers of France; Lorraine and a portion of Flanders were

dependent on the Germanic crown, while Brittany was a fief of

the duchy of Normandy. ... The county of Barcelona beyond the

Alps was also one of the great fiefs of the crown of France."

E. de Bonnechose,

History of France: second epoch,

book 1, chapter 2.

"With the exception of the Spanish March and of part of

Flanders, all these states have long been fully incorporated

with the French monarchy. But we must remember that, under the

earlier French Kings, the connexion of most of these provinces

with their nominal suzerain was even looser than the connexion

of the German princes after the Peace of Westphalia with the

Viennese Emperors. A great French Duke was as independent

within his own dominions as an Elector of Saxony or Bavaria,

and there were no common institutions, no Diet or assembly of

any kind, to bring him into contact either with his liege lord

or with his fellow-vassals. Aquitaine and Toulouse ... seem

almost to have forgotten that there was any King of the French

at all, or at all events that they had anything to do with him.

They did not often even pay him the compliment of waging war

upon him, a mode of recognition of his existence which was

constantly indulged in by their brethren of Normandy and

Flanders."

E. A. Freeman,

The Franks and the Gauls

(Historical Essays, 1st series, number 7).

"When France was detached from the Empire in the ninth

century, of all three imperial regions she was the one which

seemed least likely to form a nation. There was no unity in

the country west of the Scheldt, the Meuse, and the Rhone.

Various principalities, duchies, or counties were here formed,

but each of them was divided into secular fiefs and

ecclesiastical territories. Over these fiefs and territories

the authority of the duke or the count, which was supposed to

represent that of the king, was exercised only in case these

seigneurs had sufficient power, derived from their own

personal estates. Destitute of domains and almost starving,

the king, in official documents, asked what means he might

find on which to live with some degree of decency. From time

to time, amid this chaos, he discussed the theory of his

authority. He was a lean and solemn phantom, straying about

among living men who were very rude and energetic. The phantom

kept constantly growing leaner, but royalty did not vanish.

People were accustomed to its existence, and the men of those

days could not conceive of a revolution. By the election of

Hugh Capet, in 987, royalty became a reality, because the

king, as Duke of Francia, had lands, money, and followers. It

would be out of place to seek a plan of conduct and a

methodical line of policy in the actions of the Capetians, for

they employed simultaneously every sort of expedient. During

more than three centuries they had male offspring; thus the

chief merit of the dynasty was that it endured. As always

happens, out of the practice developed a law; and this happy

accident produced a lawful hereditary succession, which was a

great element of strength. Moreover the king had a whole

arsenal of rights: old rights of Carolingian royalty,

preserving, the remembrance of imperial power, which the study

of the Roman law was soon to resuscitate, transforming these

apparitions into formidable realities; old rights conferred by

the coronation, which were impossible to define, and hence

incontestable; and rights of suzerainty, newer and more real,

which were definitely determined and codified as feudalism

developed and which, joined to the other rights mentioned

above, made the king proprietor of France. These are the

elements that Capetian royalty contributed to the play of

fortuitous circumstances."

E. Lavisse,

General View of the Political History of Europe,

chapter 3.

See, also, TWELVE PEERS OF FRANCE.

{1160}

FRANCE: A. D. 987-1327.

The Feudal Period.

"The period in the history of France, of which we are about to

write, began with the consecration of Hugues Capet, at Reims,

the 3rd of July, 987, but it is a period which would but

improperly take its name from the Capetians; for throughout

this time royalty was, as it were, annihilated in France; the

social bond was broken, and the country which extends from the

Rhine to the Pyrenees, and from the English Channel to the

Gulf of Lyon, was governed by a confederation of princes

rarely under the influence of a common will, and united only

by the Feudal System. While France was confederated under

feudal administration, the legislative power was suspended.

Hugues Capet and his successors, until the accession of St.

Louis, had not the right of making laws; the nation had no

diet, no regularly constituted assemblies whose authority it

acknowledged. The Feudal System, tacitly adopted, and

developed by custom, was solely acknowledged by the numerous

sovereigns who divided the provinces among themselves. It

replaced the social bond, the monarch, and the legislator. ...

The period ... is therefore like a long interregnum, during

which the royal authority was suspended, although the name of

king was always preserved. He who bore this title in the midst

of a republic of princes was only distinguished from them by

some honorary prerogative, and he exercised over them scarcely

any authority. Until very near the end of the 11th century,

these princes were scarcely less numerous than the castles

which covered France. No authority was acknowledged at a

distance, and every fortress gave its lord rank among the

sovereigns. The conquest of England by the Normans broke the

equilibrium between the feudal lords; one of the confederate

princes, become a king in 1066, gradually extended, until

1179, his domination over more than half of France; and

although it was not he who bore the title of king of the

French, it may be imagined that in time the rest of the

country would also pass under his yoke. Philip the August and

his son, during the forty-six last years of the same period,

reconquered almost all the fiefs which the English kings had

united, brought the other great vassals back to obedience, and

changed the feudal confederation which had ruled France into a

monarchy, which incorporated the Feudal System in its

constitution."

J. C. L. de Sismondi,

France Under the Feudal System

(translated by W. Bellingham), chapter 1.

"The feudal period, that is, the period when the feudal system

was the dominant fact of our country, ... is comprehended

between Hugh Capet and Philippe de Valois, that is, it

embraces the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries. ... At the end of

the 10th century, royalty and the commons were not visible, or

at all events scarcely visible. At the commencement of the

14th century, royalty was the head of the state, the commons

were the body of the nation. The two forces to which the

feudal system was to succumb had then attained, not, indeed,

their entire development, but a decided preponderance. ...

With the 14th century, the character of war changed. Then

began the foreign wars; no longer a vassal against suzerain,

or vassal against vassal, but nation against nation,

government against government. On the accession of Philippe de

Valois, the great wars between the French and the English

broke out--the claims of the kings of England, not upon any

particular fief, but upon the whole land, and upon the throne

of France--and they continued up to Louis XI. They were no

longer feudal, but national wars; a certain proof that the

feudal period stopped at this limit, that another society had

already commenced."

F. P. Guizot,

History of Civilization,

2d course, lecture 1.

FRANCE: A. D. 996.

Accession of King Robert II.

FRANCE: A. D. 1031.

Accession of King Henry I.

FRANCE: A. D. 1060.

Accession of King Philip I.

FRANCE: A. D. 1070-1125.

Enfranchisement of Communes.

"The establishment of the commune of Mans, towards the year

1070, was not a fact, isolated, and without respect to what

passed in the rest of France; it was, on the contrary, a

symptom of the great revolution which was working in the

opinions, the manners, and the condition of the mass of the

people; a symptom which, bearing a certain date, must serve to

establish the epoch of a crowd of analogous efforts made in

the other towns of France. History has not preserved the

memory of these different efforts, but it has shown us the

results. During the two following centuries, the cities ceased

not to obtain charters, to found or secure by legitimate

authority, the immunities and franchises which constituted the

communal rights. ... All, or nearly all had, however, already

conquered liberty; they had experienced how advantageous it

was to be governed by themselves, and the high price which

they put upon the favor they solicited, bears witness to their

experience. The enfranchisement of the communes is almost

universally reported in the ... reign ... of Louis the Fat;

and the honor of this great revolution, which created the

third estate [tiers-état], and liberty in France, has been

given either to the generosity or the wise policy of that

prince. There is doubtless some truth in this opinion, since

we find in France no communal charter anterior to the reign of

Louis VI., and he is also the first king who was seen to ally

himself with the burgesses, to make war on the nobility.

However, the idea which is formed of this event, when one

attributes it to the act of the monarch's will, or the effect

of his system, is completely erroneous. The French people owed

whatever degree of liberty it enjoyed in the middle ages, to

its own valor; it acquired it as liberty must always be

acquired, at the sword's point; it profitted by the divisions,

the imprudence, the weakness, or the crimes of its lords, lay

or ecclesiastic, to seize it from and in spite of them. ...

The origin of every commune was, as indicated by the different

names by which they are designated, a communion, a conjuration,

or confederation, of the inhabitants of a town who were

mutually engaged to defend each other. The first act of the

commune was the occupation of a tower in which was set up a

clock or belfry; and the first clause of the oath of all the

communers, was to repair in arms, when the bell sounded, at

the place assigned them, to defend each other. From this first

engagement resulted that of submitting to magistrates named by

the communers: it was the mayors, echevins, and juries, in

northern France, and consuls or syndics in southern France, to

whom the consent of all abandoned the sole right of directing

the common efforts. Thus the militia was first created; the

magistracy came afterwards. ... The reign of Phillip I. had

been but a long anarchy. During those forty-eight years the

royal government had not existed, and no other had

efficaciously taken its place. At the same time, greatly

differing from the other feudal monarchies, all legislative

power was suspended in France. There were no diets like those

of the kingdoms of Germany and Italy, no parliament like that

of England, no cortes like those of Spain, no field of March

like that of the antient Frankish kings, no assemblages, in

fine, which bound by their acts the great vassals and their

subjects, and which could submit them to common laws.

{1161}

The French had not desired a participation in the sovereignty

which they could only acquire by sacrificing their

independence. Thus, two great vassals, or the subjects of two

great vassals, could scarcely believe themselves compatriots.

... The anarchy which was found in the great state of the

French monarchy, because all the relations between the king

and the count were relaxed, was found also in the petty state

of the county of Paris, or of the duchy of France; for the

lords and barons of the crown's domains no better obeyed or

respected more the prerogatives of their lord, than the great

vassals those of the suzerain. The anarchy was complete, the

disorder seemed carried to its height, and never had the

social bond in France been nearer to being broken: yet never

had France made so real a progress as during these forty-eight

years. Phillip, at his death, left his son quite another

people to that which he had received from his father: the most

active monarch would never have done so much for France as she

had without him done for herself during his sleep. The towns

were more numerous, more populous, more opulent, and more

industrious; property had acquired a security unknown in the

preceding centuries; justice was distributed between equals,

and by equals; and the liberty of the burgesses, conquered by

arms, was defended with energy."

J. C. L. S. de Sismondi,

France under the Feudal System,

chapters 9 and 12.

"Liberty ... was to have its beginning in the towns, in the

towns of the centre of France, which were to be called

privileged towns, or communes, and which would either receive

or extort their franchises. ... All coveted a few franchises

or privileges, and offered to purchase them; for, needy and

wretched as they were, poor artisans, smiths and weavers,

suffered to cluster for shelter at the foot of a castle, or

fugitive serfs crowding round a church, they could manage to

find money; and men of this stamp were the founders of our

liberties. They willingly starved themselves to procure the

means of purchase; and king and barons rivalled each other in

selling charters which fetched so high a price. This

revolution took place all over the kingdom under a thousand

different forms, and with but little disturbance; so that it

has only attracted notice with regard to some towns of the

Oise and the Somme, which, placed in less favorable

circumstances, and belonging to two different lords, one a

layman, the other ecclesiastical, resorted to the king for a

solemn guarantee of concessions often violated, and maintained

a precarious liberty at the cost of several centuries of civil

war. To these towns the name of communes has been more

particularly applied; and the wars they had to wage form a

slight but dramatic incident in this great revolution, which

was operating silently and under different forms in all the

towns of the north of France. 'Twas in brave and choleric

Picardy, whose commons had so soundly beaten the Normans--in

the country of Calvin, and of so many other revolutionary

spirits--that these explosions took place. Noyon, Beauvais,

Laon, three ecclesiastical lordships, were the first communes;

to these may be added St. Quentin. Here the Church had laid

the foundations of a powerful democracy. ... The king has been

said to be the founder of the communes; but the reverse is

rather the truth: it is the communes that established the

king. Without them, he could not have beaten off the Normans;

and these conquerors of England and the Two Sicilies would

probably have conquered France. It was the communes, or, to

use a more general and exact term, the bourgeoisies, which,

under the banner of the saint of the parish, enforced the

common peace between the Oise and the Loire; while the king,

on horseback, bore in front the banner of the abbey of St.

Denys."

M. Michelet,

History of France,

book 4, chapter 4.

See, also, COMMUNES.

The following comments on the passages quoted above are made

by a good authority: "The general view taken of this subject

of the enfranchisement of the communes by historians who wrote

at the middle of the century is now being seriously modified.

The studies of Luchaire have shown, I think, that such

statements as Sismondi's, which attribute everything to the

people, are exaggerations. 'Liberty,' as it existed in the

communes, was only corporate or aristocratic privilege. As for

the national assemblages, there were great councils held, such

as those which existed under the Norman monarchs in England,

and they issued the 'assizes,' which was a common form of

legislation in the Middle Ages. It was not, of course,

legislation, in its modern sense. Michelet is quite too

flowery, poetical, democratic, to be safely followed."

FRANCE: A. D. 1096.

Departure of the First Crusaders.

See CRUSADES: A. D. 1096-1099.

FRANCE: A. D. 1100.

The extent of the kingdom.

"When Louis [VI.] was adopted by his father in 1100, the crown

had as its own domain only the county of Paris, Hurepoix, the

Gatinais, the Orléanis, half the county of Sens, the French

Vexin, and Bourges, together with some ill-defined rights over

the episcopal cities of Rheims, Beauvais, Laon, Noyon,

Soissons, Amiens. And even within these narrow limits the

royal power was but thinly spread over the surface. The barons

in their castles were in fact independent, and oppressed the

merchants and poor folk as they would. The king had also

acknowledged rights of suzerainty over Champagne, Burgundy,

Normandy, Brittany, Flanders, and Boulogne; but, in most

cases, the only obedience the feudal lords stooped to was that

of duly performing the act of homage to the king on first

succession to a fief. He also claimed suzerainty, which was

not conceded, over the South of France; over Provence and

Lorraine he did not even put forth a claim of lordship."

G. W. Kitchin,

History of France,

volume 1, book 3, chapter 5.

FRANCE: A. D. 1101.

Disastrous Crusade of French princes and knights.

See CRUSADES: A. D. 1101-1102.

FRANCE: A. D. 1106-1119.

War with Henry I. of England and Normandy.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1087-1135.

{1162}

FRANCE: A. D. 1108-1180.

The reigns of Louis VI., Louis VII. and

accession of Philip II.

Gain and loss of Aquitaine.

"Louis VI., or 'the Fat' was the first able man whom the line

of Hugh Capet had produced since it mounted the throne. He

made the first attempt at curbing the nobles, assisted by

Suger, the Abbot of St. Denys. The only possibility of doing

this was to obtain the aid of one party of nobles against

another; and when any unusually flagrant offence had been

committed, Louis called together the nobles, bishops, and

abbots of his domain, and obtained their consent and

assistance in making war on the guilty man, and overthrowing

his castle, thus, in some degree, lessening the sense of utter

impunity which had caused so many violences and such savage

recklessness. He also permitted a few of the cities to

purchase the right of self-government. ... The royal authority

had begun to be respected by 1137, when Louis VI. died, having

just effected the marriage of his son, Louis VII., with

Eleanor, the heiress of the Dukes of Aquitaine--thus hoping to

make the crown really more powerful than the great princes who

owed it homage. At this time lived the great St. Bernard,

Abbot of Clairvaux, who had a wonderful influence over men's

minds. ... Bernard roused the young king Louis VII., to go on

the second crusade [see CRUSADES: A. D. 1147-1149], which was

undertaken by the Emperor and the other princes of Europe to

relieve the distress of the kingdom of Palestine. ... Though

Louis did reach Palestine, it was with weakened forces; he

could effect nothing by his campaign, and Eleanor, who had

accompanied him, seems to have been entirely corrupted by the

evil habits of the Franks settled in the East. Soon after his

return, Louis dissolved his marriage; and Eleanor became the

wife of Henry, Count of Anjou, who soon after inherited the

kingdom of England as our Henry II., as well as the duchy of

Normandy, and betrothed his third son to the heiress of

Brittany [see AQUITAINE: A. D. 1137-1152]. Eleanor's marriage

seemed to undo all that Louis VI. had done in raising the

royal power; for Henry completely overshadowed Louis, whose

only resource was in feeble endeavours to take part against

him in his many family quarrels. The whole reign of Louis the

Young, the title that adhered to him on account of his simple,

childish nature, is only a record of weakness and disaster,

till he died in 1180. ... Powerful in fact as Henry II. was,

it was his gathering so large a part of France under his rule

which was, in the end, to build up the greatness of the French

kings. What had held them in check was the existence of the

great fiefs or provinces, each with its own line of dukes or

counts, and all practically independent of the king. But now

nearly all the provinces of southern and western France were

gathered into the hand of a single ruler; and though he was a

Frenchman in blood, yet, as he was King of England, this ruler

seemed to his French subjects no Frenchman, but a foreigner.

They began therefore to look to the French king to free them

from a foreign ruler; and the son of Louis VII., called Philip

Augustus, was ready to take advantage of their disposition."

C. M. Yonge,

History of France

(History Primers), chapter 1, sections 6-7.

FRANCE: A. D. 1180-1224.

The kingdom extended by Philip Augustus.

Normandy, Maine and Anjou recovered from the English kings.

"Louis VII. ascended the throne [A. D. 1137] with better

prospects than his father. He had married Eleanor, heiress of

the great duchy of Guienne [or Aquitaine]. But this union,

which promised an immense accession of strength to the crown,

was rendered unhappy by the levities of that princess.

Repudiated by Louis, who felt rather as a husband than a king,

Eleanor immediately married Henry II. of England, who, already

inheriting Normandy from his mother and Anjou from Ins father,

became possessed of more than one-half of France, and an

over-match for Louis, even if the great vassals of the crown

had been always ready to maintain its supremacy. One might

venture perhaps to conjecture that the sceptre of France would

eventually have passed from the Capets to the Plantagenets, if

the vexatious quarrel with Becket at one time, and the

successive rebellions fomented by Louis at a later period, had

not embarrassed the great talents and ambitious spirit of

Henry. But the scene quite changed when Philip Augustus, son

of Louis VII., came upon the stage [A. D. 1180]. No prince

comparable to him in systematic ambition and military

enterprise had reigned in France since Charlemagne. From his

reign the French monarchy dates the recovery of its lustre. He

wrested from the count of Flanders the Vermandois (that part

of Picardy which borders on the Isle of France and Champagne),

and, subsequently, the County of Artois. But the most

important conquests of Philip were obtained against the kings

of England. Even Richard I., with all his prowess, lost ground

in struggling against an adversary not less active, and more

politic, than himself: But when John not only took possession

of his brother's dominions, but confirmed his usurpation by

the murder, as was very probably surmised, of the heir,

Philip, artfully taking advantage of the general indignation,

summoned him as his vassal to the court of his peers. John

demanded a safe-conduct. Willingly, said Philip; let him come

unmolested. And return? inquired the English envoy. If the

judgment of his peers permit him, replied the king. By all the

saints of France, he exclaimed, when further pressed, he shall

not return unless acquitted. The bishop of Ely still

remonstrated that the duke of Normandy could not come without

the king of England; nor would the barons of that country

permit their sovereign to run the risk of death or

imprisonment. What of that, my lord bishop? cried Philip. It

is well known that my vassal the duke of Normandy acquired

England by force. But if a subject obtains any accession of

dignity, shall his paramount lord therefore lose his rights?

... John, not appearing at his summons, was declared guilty of

felony, and his fiefs confiscated. The execution of this

sentence was not intrusted to a dilatory arm. Philip poured

his troops into Normandy, and took town after town, while the

king of England, infatuated by his own wickedness and

cowardice, made hardly an attempt at defence. In two years

[A. D. 1203-1204] Normandy, Maine, and Anjou were

irrecoverably lost. Poitou and Guienne resisted longer; but

the conquest of the first was completed [A. D. 1224] by Louis

VIII., successor of Philip."

H. Hallam,

The Middle Ages,

chapter 1, part 1.

ALSO IN:

K. Norgate, England under the Angevin Kings,

volume 2, chapter 9.

See, also,

ENGLAND: A. D. 1205;

and ANJOU: A. D. 1206-1442.

FRANCE: A. D. 1188-1190.

Crusade of Philip Augustus.

See CRUSADES: A. D. 1188-1192.

FRANCE: A. D. 1201-1203.

The Fifth Crusade, and its diversion against Constantinople.

See CRUSADES: A. D. 1201-1203.

A. D. 1209-1229.

The Albigensian wars and their effects.

See ALBIGENSES.

FRANCE: A. D. 1212.

The Children's Crusade.

See CRUSADES: A. D. 1212.

FRANCE: A. D. 1214.

Nationalizing effects of the Battle of Bouvines.

See BOUVINES.

FRANCE: A. D. 1223.

Accession of King Louis VIII.

{1163}

FRANCE: A. D. 1226-1270.

Reign and character of Louis IX. (Saint Louis).

His great civilizing work and influence.

"Of the forty-four years of St. Louis' reign, nearly fifteen,

with a long interval of separation, pertained to the

government of Queen Blanche of Castille, rather than that of

the king her son. Louis, at his accession in 1226, was only

eleven; and he remained a minor up to the age of twenty-one,

in 1236, for the time of majority in the case of royalty was

not yet specially and rigorously fixed. During those ten years

Queen Blanche governed France; not at all, as is commonly

asserted, with the official title of regent, but simply as

guardian of the king her son. With a good sense really

admirable in a person so proud and ambitious, she saw that

official power was ill suited to her woman's condition, and

would weaken rather than strengthen her; and she screened

herself from view behind her son. He it was who, in [1236],

wrote to the great vassals bidding them to his consecration;

he it was who reigned and commanded; and his name alone

appeared on royal decrees and on treaties. It was not until

twenty-two years had passed, in 1248, that Louis, on starting

for the crusade, officially delegated to his mother the kingly

authority, and that Blanche, during her son's absence, really

governed with the title of regent. ... During the first period

of his government, and so long as her son's minority lasted,

Queen Blanche had to grapple with intrigues, plots,

insurrections, and open war; and, what was still worse for

her, with the insults and calumnies of the crown's great

vassals, burning to seize once more, under a woman's

government, the independence and power which had been

effectually disputed with them by Philip Augustus. Blanche

resisted their attempts, at one time with open and persevering

energy, at another dexterously with all the tact, address, and

allurements of a woman. Though she was now forty years of age

she was beautiful, elegant, attractive, full of resources and

of grace. ... The malcontents spread the most odious scandals

about her. ... Neither in the events nor in the writings of

the period is it easy to find anything which can authorize the

accusations made by the foes of Queen Blanche. ... She

continued her resistance to the pretensions and machinations

of the crown's great vassals, whether foes or lovers, and she

carried forward, in the face and in the teeth of all, the

extension of the domains and the power of the kingship. We

observe in her no prompting of enthusiasm, of sympathetic

charitableness, or of religious scrupulousness; that is, none

of those grand moral impulses which are characteristic of

Christian piety and which were predominant in St. Louis.

Blanche was essentially politic and concerned with her

temporal interests and successes; and it was not from her

teaching or her example that her son imbibed those sublime and

disinterested feelings which stamped him the most original and

the rarest on the roll of glorious kings. What St. Louis really

owed to his mother, and it was a great deal, was the steady

triumph which, whether by arms or by negotiation, Blanche

gained over the great vassals, and the preponderance which,

amidst the struggles of the feudal system, she secured for the

kingship of her son in his minority. ... When Louis reached

his majority, his entrance upon personal exercise of the

kingly power produced no change in the conduct of public

affairs. ... The kingship of the son was a continuance of the

mother's government. Louis persisted in struggling for the

preponderance of the crown against the great vassals;

succeeded in taming Peter Mauclerc, the turbulent count of

Brittany; wrung from Theobald IV., count of Champagne, the

rights of suzerainty in the countships of Chartres, Blois, and

Sancerre, and the viscountship of Châteaudun; and purchased

the fertile countship of Mâcon from its possessor. It was

almost always by pacific procedure, by negotiations ably

conducted, and conventions faithfully executed, that he

accomplished these increments of the kingly domain; and when

he made war on any of the great vassals, he engaged therein

only on their provocation, to maintain the rights or honour of

his crown, and he used victory with as much moderation as he

had shown before entering upon the struggle. ... When war was

not either a necessity or a duty, this brave and brilliant

knight, from sheer equity and goodness of heart, loved peace

rather than war. The successes he had gained in his campaign

of 1242 [against the count of La Marche and Henry III., of

England, whose mother had become the wife of La Marche] were

not for him the first step in an endless career of glory and

conquest; he was anxious only to consolidate them whilst

securing, in Western Europe, for the dominions of his

adversaries as well as for his own, the benefits of peace. He

entered into negotiations, successively, with the count of la

Marche, the king of England, the count of Toulouse, the king

of Aragon, and the various princes and great feudal lords who

had been more or less engaged in the war; and in January,

1243, says the latest and most enlightened of his biographers

[M. Felix Faure], 'the treaty of Lorris marked the end of

feudal troubles for the whole duration of St. Louis' reign. He

drew his sword no more, save only against the enemies of the

Christian faith and Christian civilization, the Mussulmans.'"

G. Masson,

Saint Louis and the Thirteenth Century,

pages 44-56.

"St. Louis ... by this war of 1242 finished those contests for

the crown with its vassals which had been going on since the

time of his ancestor, Louis the Fat. But it was not by warfare

that he was to aid in breaking down the strongholds of

feudalism. The vassals might have been beaten time and again,

and yet the spirit of feudalism, still surviving, would have

raised up new champions to contend against the crown. St.

Louis struck at the spirit of the Middle Age, and therein

insured the downfall of its forms and whole embodiment. He

fought the last battles against feudalism, because, by a surer

means than battling, he took, and unconsciously, the

life-blood from the opposition to the royal authority.

Unconsciously, we say; he did not look on the old order of

things as evil, and try to introduce a better; he did not

selfishly contend for the extension of his own power; he was

neither a great reformer, nor a (so-called) wise king. He

undermined feudalism, because he hated injustice; he warred

with the Middle Age, because he could not tolerate its

disregard of human rights; and he paved the way for

Philip-le-bel's struggle with the papacy, because he looked

upon religion and the church as instruments for man's

salvation, not as tools for worldly aggrandizement.

{1164}

He is, perhaps, the only monarch on record who failed in most

of what he undertook of active enterprise, who was under the

control of the prejudices of his age, who was a true

conservative, who never dreamed of effecting great social

changes,--and who yet, by his mere virtues, his sense of duty,

his power of conscience, made the mightiest and most vital

reforms. One of these reforms was the abolition of the trial

by combat. ... It is not our purpose to follow Louis either in

his first or second crusade. If the great work of his life was

not to be done by fighting at home, still less was it to be

accomplished by battles in Egypt or Tunis. His mission was

other and greater than he dreamed of, and his service to

Christendom was wholly unlike that which he proposed to

himself. ... In November, 1244, he took the cross; but it was

June of 1248 before he was able to leave Paris to embark upon

his cherished undertaking. ...

See CRUSADES: A. D. 1248-1254.

On the fifth of June, 1249, he landed in Egypt, which was

to be conquered before Palestine could be safely attacked. On

the seventh of June, Damietta was entered, and there the

French slept and feasted, wasting time, strength, and money,

until the twentieth of the following November. Then came the

march southward; the encampment upon the Nile; the terrors of

the Greek fire; the skirmishes which covered the plain with

dead; the air heavy with putridity and pestilence; the putrid

water; the fish fat with the flesh of the dead; sickness,

weakness, retreat, defeat, captivity. On the sixth of April,

1250, Louis and his followers were prisoners to the

Mussulmans; Louis might have saved himself, but would not quit

his followers; he had been faithful thus far, and would be

till death. ... On the eighth of May, 1250, Louis was a

freeman, and it was not until the twenty-fifth of April, 1254,

that he set sail to return to his native shores, where

Blanche, who had been regent during his absence, had some

months since yielded up her breath. On the seventh of

September, he entered Paris, sad and worn. ... And scarce had

he landed, before he began that course of legislation which

continued until once more he embarked upon the crusade. ... In

his first legislative action, Louis proposed to himself these

objects,--to put an end to judicial partiality, to prevent

needless and oppressive imprisonment for debt, to stop

unfounded criminal prosecutions, and to mitigate the horrors

of legalized torture. In connection with these general topics,

he made laws to bear oppressively upon the Jews, to punish

prostitution and gambling, and to diminish intemperance. And

it is worthy of remark, that this last point was to be

attained by forbidding innkeepers to sell to any others than

travellers,--a measure now (six hundred years later) under

discussion in some parts of our Union, with a view to the same

end. But the wish which this rare monarch had to recompense

all who had been wronged by himself and forefathers was the

uppermost wish of his soul. He felt that to do justice himself

was the surest way to make others willing to do it. Commissioners

were sent into every province of the kingdom to examine each

alleged case of royal injustice, and with power in most

instances to make instant restitution. He himself went forth

to hear and judge in the neighborhood of his capital, and as

far north as Normandy. ... As he grew yet older, the spirit of

generosity grew stronger daily in his bosom. He would have no

hand in the affairs of Europe, save to act, wherever he could,

as peacemaker. Many occasions occurred where all urged him to

profit by power and a show of right, a naked legal title, to

possess himself of valuable fiefs; but Louis shook his head

sorrowfully and sternly, and did as his inmost soul told him

the law of God directed. ... There had been for some reigns

back a growing disposition to refer certain questions to the

king's tribunals, as being regal, not baronial, questions.

Louis the Ninth gave to this disposition distinct form and

value, and, under the influence of the baron-hating legists,

he so ordained, in conformity with the Roman law, that, under

given circumstances, almost any case might be referred to his

tribunal. This, of course, gave to the king's judgment-seat

and to him more of influence than any other step ever taken

had done. It was, in substance, an appeal of the people from

the nobles to the king, and it threw at once the balance of

power into the royal hands. ... It became necessary to make

the occasional sitting of the king's council or parliament,

which exercised certain judicial functions, permanent; and to

change its composition, by diminishing the feudal and

increasing the legal or legist element. Thus everywhere, in

the barons' courts, the king's court, and the central

parliament, the Roman, legal, organized element began to

predominate over the German, feudal, barbaric tendencies, and

the foundation-stones of modern society were laid. But the

just soul of Louis and the prejudices of his Romanized

counsellors were not arrayed against the old Teutonic

barbarism alone, with its endless private wars and judicial

duels; they stood equally opposed to the extravagant claims of

the Roman hierarchy. ... The first calm, deliberate,

consistent opposition to the centralizing power of the great

see was that offered by its truest friend and most honest

ally, Louis of France. From 1260 to 1268, step by step was

taken by the defender of the liberties of the Gallican church,

until, in the year last named, he published his 'Pragmatic

Sanction' [see below], his response, by advice of his wise

men, to the voice of the nation, the Magna Charta of the

freedom of the church of France, upon whose vague articles,

the champions of that freedom could write commentaries, and

found claims, innumerable. ... But the legislation of Louis

did not stop with antagonism to the feudal system and to the

unauthorized claims of the church; it provided for another

great grievance of the Middle Age, that lying and unequal

system of coinage which was a poison to honest industry and

commercial intercourse. ... And now the great work of Louis

was completed; the barons were conquered, the people

protected, quiet prevailed through the kingdom, the national

church was secured in her liberties. The invalid of Egypt, the

sojourner of Syria, had realized his dreams and purposes of

good to his own subjects, and once again the early vision of

his manhood, the recovery of Palestine, haunted his slumbering

and his waking hours. ... On the sixteenth of March, 1270, he

left Paris for the seashore; on the first of July, he sailed

from France. The sad, sad story of this his last earthly doing

need not be here repeated."

See CRUSADES: A.. D. 1270-1271.

Saint Louis of France

(North American Review, April, 1846).

On the part performed by Louis IX. in the founding of

absolutism in France,

See PARLIAMENT OF PARIS.

{1165}

FRANCE: A. D. 1252.

The Crusading movement of the Pastors.

See CRUSADES: A. D. 1252.

FRANCE: A. D. 1266.

Acquisition of the kingdom of Naples or the Two Sicilies by

Charles of Anjou, the king's brother.

See ITALY (SOUTHERN): A. D. 1250-1268.

FRANCE: A. D. 1268.

The Pragmatic Sanction of St. Louis.

Assertion of the rights of the Gallican Church.

"The continual usurpations of the popes produced the

celebrated Pragmatic Sanction of St. Louis [about A.. D.

1268]. This edict, the authority of which, though probably

without cause, has been sometimes disputed, contains three

important provisions; namely, that all prelates and other

patrons shall enjoy their full rights as to the collation of

benefices, according to the canons; that churches shall

possess freely their rights of election; and that no tax or

pecuniary exaction shall be levied by the pope, without

consent of the king and of the national church. We do not

find, however, that the French government acted up to the

spirit of this ordinance."

H. Hallam,

The Middle Ages,

chapter 7, part 2.

"This Edict appeared either during the last year of Clement

IV., ... or during the vacancy in the Pontificate. ... It

became the barrier against which the encroachments of the

ecclesiastical power were destined to break; nor was it swept

away till a stronger barrier had arisen in the unlimited power

of the French crown." It "became a great Charter of

Independence to the Gallican Church."

H. H. Milman,

History of Latin Christianity,

book 11, chapter 4 (volume 5).

FRANCE: A. D. 1270-1285.

The sons of St. Louis.

Origin of the Houses of Valois and Bourbon.

St. Louis left several sons, the elder of whom succeeded him

as Philippe III., and his youngest son was Robert, Count of

Clermont and Lord of Bourbon, the ancestor of all the branches

of the House of Bourbon. Philippe III. died in 1285, when he

was succeeded by his son, Philippe IV. A younger son, Charles,

Count of Valois, was the ancestor of the Valois branch of the

royal family.

FRANCE: A. D. 1285-1314.

Reign of Philip IV.

His conflict with the Pope and his destruction of the

Templars.

Philippe IV., called "le Bel" (the Handsome), came to the

throne on the death of his father, Philippe "le Hardi," in

1285. He was presently involved in war with Edward I. of

England, who crossed to Flanders in 1297, intending to invade

France, but was recalled by the revolt in Scotland, under

Wallace, and peace was made in 1303. The Flemings, who had

provoked Philippe by their alliance with the English, were

thus left to suffer his resentment. They bore themselves

valiantly in a war which lasted several years, and inflicted

upon the knights of France a fearful defeat at Courtrai, in

1302. In the end, the French king substantially failed in his

designs upon Flanders.

See FLANDERS: A. D. 1299-1304.

"It is probable that this long struggle would have been still

protracted, but for a general quarrel which had sprung up some

time before its close, between the French king and Pope

Boniface VIII., concerning the [taxation of the clergy and

the] right of nomination to vacant bishoprics within the

dominions of Philippe. The latter, on seeing Bernard Saissetti

thrust into the Bishopric of Pamiers by the pontiff's sole

authority, caused the Bishop to be arrested by night, and,

after subjecting him to various indignities, consigned him to

prison on a charge of treason, heresy, and blasphemy. Boniface

remonstrated against this outrage and violence in a bull known

in history, by its opening words 'Ausculta, fili,' in which he

asserted his power 'over nations and kingdoms, to root out and

to pull down, to destroy and to throw down, to build and to

plant,' and concluded by informing Philippe that he had

summoned all the superior clergy of France to an assembly at

Rome on the 1st of the following November, in order to

deliberate on the remedies for such abuses as those of which

the king had been guilty. Philippe, by no means intimidated by

this measure, convoked a full and early assembly of the three

estates of his kingdom, to decide upon the conduct of him whom

the orthodox, up to that time, had been in the habit of deeming

infallible. This (10th April 1302) was the first meeting of a

Parliament, properly so called, in France. ... The chambers

unanimously approved and applauded the conduct of the king,

and resolved to maintain the honour of the crown and the

nation from foreign insult or domination; and to mark their

decision more conclusively, they concurred with the sovereign

in prohibiting the clergy from attending the Pope's summons to

Rome. The papal bull was burned as publicly as possible. ...

The Pope, alarmed at these novel and bold proceedings, sought

instantly to avert their consequences by soothing

explanations; but Philippe would not now be turned aside from

his course. He summoned a convocation of the Gallican

prelates, in which by the mouth of William de Nogaret, his

chancellor, he represented the occupier of St. Peter's chair

as the father of lies and an evil-doer; and he demanded the

seizure of this pseudo-pope, and his imprisonment until he

could be brought before a legitimate tribunal to receive the

punishment due to his numerous crimes. Boniface now declared

that the French king was excommunicated, and cited him by his

confessor to appear in the papal court at Rome within three

months, to make submission and atonement for his contumacy.

... While this unseemly quarrel ... seemed to be growing

interminable in its complexities, the daring of a few men

opened a shorter path to its end than could have been

anticipated. William of Nogaret associating to him Sciarra

Colonna, a noble Roman, who, having been driven from his

native city by Boniface and subjected to various hardships,

had found refuge in Paris, passed, with a train of three

hundred horsemen, and a much larger body of picked infantry,

secretly into Italy, with the intention of surprising the Pope

at his summer residence in his native town of Anagni. ... The

papal palace was captured after a feeble resistance, and the

cardinals and personal attendants of the Pontiff fled for

their lives. ... The Condottieri ... dragged the Pope from his

throne, and conveying him into the street, mounted him upon a

lean horse without saddle or bridle, with his head to the

animal's tail, and thus conducted him in a sort of pilgrimage

through the town. He was then consigned prisoner to one of the

chambers of his palace and placed under guard; while the body

of his captors dispersed themselves through the splendid

apartments in eager pursuit of plunder. Three days were thus

occupied; but at the end of that time the ... people of Anagni

... took arms in behalf of their fellow-townsman and spiritual

father, and falling upon the French while still indulging in

the licence of the sack, drove Nogaret and Colonna from their

quarters, and either expelled or massacred the whole of their

followers."

{1166}

The Pope returned to Rome in so great a rage that his reason

gave way, and soon afterwards he was found dead in his bed.

"The scandal of these proceedings throughout Christendom was

immense; and Philippe adopted every precaution to avert evil

consequences from himself by paying court to Benedict XI. who

succeeded to the tiara. This Pope, however, though he for some

time temporised, could not be long deaf to the loud voices of

the clergy which called for punishment upon the oppressors of

the church. Ere he had reigned nine months he found himself

compelled to excommunicate the plunderers of Anagni; and a few

days afterwards he perished, under circumstances which leave

little doubt of his having been poisoned. ... The king of

France profitted largely by the crime; since, besides gaining

time for the subsidence of excitement, he was subsequently

enabled, by his intrigues, to procure the election of a person

pledged not only to grant him absolution for all past

offences, but to stigmatise the memory of Boniface, to restore

the deposed Colonna to his honours and estates, to nominate

several French ecclesiastics to the college of cardinals, and

to grant to the king the tenths of the Gallican church for a

term of five years. The pontiff who thus seems to have been

the first of his race to lower the pretensions of his office,

was Bertrand de Goth, originally a private gentleman of

Bazadors, and subsequently promoted to the Archiepiscopal See

of Bordeaux. He assumed the title of Clement V., and after

receiving investiture at Lyons, fixed the apostolic residence

at Avignon, where it continued, under successive occupants,

for a period, the length of which caused it to be denominated

by the Italians the Babylonian captivity. This quarrel

settled, Philippe engaged in another undertaking, the

safe-conduct of which required all his skill and

unscrupulousness. This important enterprise was no less than

the destruction and plunder of the military order of Knights

Templars. ... Public discontent ... had, by a variety of

circumstances, been excited throughout the realm. Among the

number of exactions, the coin had been debased to meet the

exigencies of the state, and this obstructing the operations

of commerce, and inflicting wrongs to a greater or less extent

upon all classes, everyone loudly complained of injustice,

robbery and oppression, and in the end several tumults

occurred, in which the residence of the king himself was

attacked, and the whole population were with difficulty

restrained from insurrection. In Burgundy, Champagne, Artois

and Forez, indeed, the nobles, and burgess class having for

the first time made common cause of their grievances, spoke

openly of revolt against the royal authority, unless the

administration should be reformed, and equity be substituted

in the king's courts for the frauds, extortions and

malversations, which prevailed. The sudden death of

Philippe--owing to a fall from his horse while hunting the

wild boar in the forest of Fontainebleau--on the 29th of

November, 1314, delivered the people from their tyrant, and

the crown from the consequences of a general rebellion. Pope

Clement, the king's firm friend, had gone to his last account

on the 20th of the preceding April. Louis X., le Hutin (the

Quarrelsome), ascended the throne at the mature age of

twenty-five."

G. M. Bussey and T. Gaspey,

Pictorial History of France,

volume 1, chapter 4.

See, also, PAPACY: A.D. 1294-1348,

and TEMPLARS: A.D. 1307-1314.

FRANCE: A. D. 1314-1328.

Louis X., Philip V., Charles IV.

Feudal reaction.

Philip-le-Bel died in 1314. "With the accession of his son,

Louis X., so well surnamed Hutin (disorder, tumult), comes a

violent reaction of the feudal, local, provincial spirit,

which seeks to dash in pieces the still feeble fabric of

unity, demands dismemberment, and claims chaos. The Duke of

Brittany arrogates the right of judgment without appeal; so

does the exchequer of Rouen. Amiens will not have the king's

sergeants subpœna before the barons, or his provosts remove

any prisoner from the town's jurisdiction. Burgundy and Nevers

require the king to respect the privileges of feudal justice.

... The common demand of the barons is that the king shall

renounce all intermeddling with their men. ... The young

monarch grants and signs all; there are only three points to

which he demurs, and which he seeks to defer. The Burgundian

barons contest with him the jurisdiction over the rivers,

roads, and consecrated places. The nobles of Champagne doubt

the king's right to lead them to war out of their own

province. Those of Amiens, with true Picard impetuosity,

require without any circumlocution, that all gentlemen may war

upon each other, and not enter into securities, but ride, go,

come, and be armed for war, and pay forfeit to one another.

... The king's reply to these absurd and insolent demands is

merely: 'We will order examination of the registers of my lord

St. Louis, and give to the said nobles two trustworthy

persons, to be nominated by our council, to verify and inquire

diligently into the truth of the said article.' The reply was

adroit enough. The general cry was for a return to the good

customs of St. Louis: it being forgotten that St. Louis had

done his utmost to put a stop to private wars. But by thus

invoking the name of St. Louis, they meant to express their

wish for the old feudal independence--for the opposite of the

quasi-legal, the venal, and pettifogging government of

Philippe-le-Bel. The barons set about destroying, bit by bit,

all the changes introduced by the late king. But they could

not believe him dead so long as there survived his Alter Ego,

his mayor of the palace, Enguerrand de Marigny, who, in the

latter years of his reign, had been coadjutor and rector of

the kingdom, and who had allowed his statue to be raised in

the palace by the side of the king's. His real name was Le

Portier; but along with the estates he bought the name of

Marigny. ... It was in the Temple, in the very spot where

Marigny had installed his master for the spoliation of the

Templars, that the young king Louis repaired to hear the

solemn accusation brought against him. His accuser was

Philippe-le-Bel's brother, the violent Charles of Valois, a

busy man, of mediocre abilities, who put himself at the head

of the barons. ... To effect his destruction, Charles of

Valois had recourse to the grand accusation of the day, which

none could surmount.

{1167}

It was discovered, or presumed, that Marigny's wife or sister,

in order to effect his acquittal, or bewitch the king, had

caused one Jacques de Lor to make certain small figures: 'The

said Jacques, thrown into prison, hangs himself in despair,

and then his wife, and Enguerrand's sisters are thrown into

prison, and Enguerrand himself, condemned before the knights

... is hung at Paris on the thieves' gibbet.' ... Marigny's

best vengeance was that the crown, so strong in his care, sank

after him into the most deplorable weakness. Louis-le-Hutin,

needing money for the Flemish war, treated as equal with

equal, with the city of Paris. The nobles of Champagne and

Picardy hastened to take advantage of the right of private war

which they had just reacquired, and made war on the countess of

Artois, without troubling themselves about the judgment

rendered by the king, who had awarded this fief to her. All

the barons had resumed the privilege of coining; Charles of

Valois, the king's uncle, setting them the example. But

instead of coining for their own domains only, conformably to

the ordinances of Philippe-le-Hardi and Philippe-le-Bel, they

minted coin by wholesale, and gave it currency throughout the

kingdom. On this, the king had perforce to arouse himself, and

return to the administration of Marigny and of

Philippe-le-Bel. He denounced the coinage of the barons,

(November the 19th, 1315;) ordained that it should pass

current on their own lands only; and fixed the value of the

royal coin relatively to thirteen different coinages, which

thirty-one bishops or barons had the right of minting on their

own territories. In St. Louis's time, eighty nobles had enjoyed

this right. The young feudal king, humanized by the want of

money, did not disdain to treat with serfs and with Jews. ...

It is curious to see the son of Philippe-le-Bel admitting

serfs to liberty [see SLAVERY, MEDIÆVAL: FRANCE]; but it is

trouble lost. The merchant vainly swells his voice and

enlarges on the worth of his merchandise; the poor serfs will

have none of it. Had they buried in the ground some bad piece

of money, they took care not to dig it up to buy a bit of

parchment. In vain does the king wax wroth at seeing them dull

to the value of the boon offered. At last, he directs the

commissioners deputed to superintend the enfranchisement, to

value the property of such serfs as preferred 'remaining in

the sorriness (chétiveté) of slavery,' and to tax them 'as

sufficiently and to such extent as the condition and wealth of

the individuals may conveniently allow, and as the necessity of

our war requires.' But with all this it is a grand spectacle

to see proclamation made from the throne itself of the

imprescriptible right of every man to liberty. The serfs do

not buy this right, but they will remember both the royal

lesson, and the dangerous appeal to which it instigates

against the barons. The short and obscure reign of

Philippe-le-Long [Philip V., 1316-1322] is scarcely less

important as regards the public law of France, than even that

of Philippe-le-Bel. In the first place, his accession to the

throne decides a great question. As Louis Hutin left his queen

pregnant, his brother Philippe is regent and guardian of the

future infant. This child dies soon after its birth, and

Philippe proclaims himself king to the prejudice of a daughter

of his brother's; a step which was the more surprising from

the fact that Philippe-le-Bel had maintained the right of

female succession in regard to Franche-Comté and Artois. The

barons were desirous that daughters should be excluded from

inheriting fiefs, but that they should succeed to the throne

of France; and their chief, Charles of Valois, favored his

grand-niece against his nephew Philippe. Philippe assembled

the States, and gained his cause, which, at bottom, was good,

by absurd reasons. He alleged in his favor the old German law

of the Franks, which excluded daughters from the Salic land;

and maintained that the crown of France was too noble a fief

to fall into hands used to the distaff ('pour tomber en

quenouille')--a feudal argument, the effect of which was to

ruin feudality. ... By thus rejecting the right of the

daughters at the very moment it was gradually triumphing over

the fiefs, the crown acquired its character of receiving

always without ever giving; and a bold revocation, at this

time, of an donations made since St. Louis's day, seems to

contain the principle of the inalienableness of the royal

domain. Unfortunately, the feudal spirit which resumed

strength under the Valois in favor of private wars, led to

fatal creations of appanages, and founded, to the advantage of

the different branches of the royal family, a princely

feudality as embarrassing to Charles VI. and Louis XI., as the

other had been to Philippe-le-Bel. This contested succession

and disaffection of the barons force Philippe-le-Long into the

paths of Philippe-le-Bel. He flatters the cities, Paris, and,

above all, the University,--the grand power of Paris. He

causes his barons to take the oath of fidelity to him, in

presence of the masters of the university, and with their

approval. He wishes his good cities to be provided with

armories; their citizens to keep their arms in a sure place;

and appoints them a captain in each bailiwick or district,

(March the 12th, 1316). ... Praiseworthy beginnings of order

and of government brought no relief to the sufferings of the

people. During the reign of Louis Hutin, a horrible mortality

had swept off, it was said, the third of the population of the

North. The Flemish war had exhausted the last resources of the

country. ... Men's imaginations becoming excited, a great

movement took place among the people. As in the days of St.

Louis, a multitude of poor people, of peasants, of shepherds

or pastoureaux, as they were called, flock together and say

that they seek to go beyond the sea, that they are destined to

recover the Holy Land. ... They wended their way towards the

South, everywhere massacring the Jews; whom the king's

officers vainly tried to protect. At last, troops were got

together at Toulouse, who fell upon the Pastoureaux, and

hanging them up by twenties and thirties the rest dispersed.

... Philippe-le-Long ... was seized with fever in the course

of the same year, (A. D. 1321,) in the month of August,

without his physicians being able to guess its cause. He

languished five months, and died. ... His brother Charles

[Charles IV., 1322-1328] succeeded him, without bestowing a

thought more on the rights of Philippe's daughter; than

Philippe had done to those of Louis's daughter. The period of

Charles's reign is as barren of facts with regard to France,

as it is rich in them respecting Germany, England, and

Flanders. The Flemings imprison their count. The Germans are

divided between Frederick of Austria and Lewis of Bavaria, who

takes his rival prisoner at Muhldorf. In the midst of the

universal divisions, France seems strong from the circumstance

of its being one. Charles-le-Bel interferes in favor of the

count of Flanders.

{1168}

He attempts, with the pope's aid, to make himself emperor; and

his sister, Isabella, makes herself actual queen of England by

the murder of Edward II. ... Charles-le-Bel ... died almost at

the same time as Edward, leaving only a daughter; so that he

was succeeded by a cousin of his. All that fine family of

princes who had sat near their father at the Council of Vienne

was extinct. In the popular belief, the curses of Boniface had

taken effect. ... This memorable epoch, which depresses

England so low, and in proportion, raises France so high,

presents, nevertheless, in the two countries two analogous

events: In England, the barons have overthrown Edward II. In

France, the feudal party places on the throne the feudal

branch of the Valois."

J. Michelet,

History of France,

books 5-6 (volume l).

See, also, VALOIS, THE HOUSE OF.

FRANCE: A. D. 1314-1347.

The king's control of the Papacy in its contest with the

emperor.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1314-1347.

FRANCE: A. D. 1328.

The extent of the royal domain.

The great vassals.

The possessions of foreign princes in France.

On the accession of the House of Valois to the French throne,

in the person of Philip VI. (A. D. 1328), the royal domain had

acquired a great increase of extent. In the two centuries

since Philip I. it had gained, "by conquest, by confiscation,

or by inheritance, Berry, or the Viscounty of Bourges,

Normandy, Maine, Anjou, Poitou, Valois, Vermandois, the

counties of Auvergne, and Boulogne, a part of Champagne and

Brie, Lyonnais, Angoumois, Marche, nearly the whole of

Languedoc, and, lastly, the kingdom of Navarre, which

belonging in her own right to queen Jeanne, mother of the last

three Capetians [Jeanne, heiress of the kingdom of Navarre and

of the counties of Champagne and Brie, was married to Philip

IV., and was the mother of Louis X., Philip V. and Charles

IV.], Charles IV. united with the crown. But the custom among

the kings of giving apanages or estates to the princes of

their house detached afresh from the domain a great part of

the reunited territories, and created powerful princely

houses, of which the chiefs often made themselves formidable

to the monarchs. Among these great houses of the Capetian

race, the most formidable were: the house of Burgundy, which

traced back to king Robert; the house of Dreux, issue of a son

of Louis the Big, and which added by a marriage the duchy of

Brittany to the county of that name; the house of Anjou, issue

of Charles, brother of Saint Louis, which was united in 1290

with that of Valois; the house of Bourbon, descending from

Robert, Count of Clermont, sixth son of Saint Louis; and the

house of Alençon, which traced back to Philip III., and

possessed the duchy of Alençon and Perche. Besides these great

princely houses of Capetian stock, which owed their grandeur

and their origin to their apanages, there were many others

which held considerable rank in France, and of which the

possessions were transmissible to women; while the apanages

were all masculine fiefs. The most powerful of these houses

were those of Flanders, Penthièvre, Châtillon, Montmorency,

Brienne, Coucy, Vendôme, Auvergne, Foix, and Armagnac. The

vast possessions of the two last houses were in the country of

the Langue d'Oc. The counts of Foix were also masters of

Bearn, and those of Armagnac possessed Fezensac, Rouergue, and

other large seigniories. Many foreign princes, besides, had

possessions in France at the accession of the Valois. The king

of England was lord of Ponthieu, of Aunis, of Saintonge, and

of the duchy of Aquitaine; the king of Navarre was count of

Evreux, and possessor of many other towns in Normandy; the

king of Majorca was proprietor of the seigniory of

Montpellier; the duke of Lorraine, vassal of the German

empire, paid homage to the king of France for many fiefs that

he held in Champagne; and, lastly, the Pope possessed the

county Venaissin, detached from Provence."

E. de Bonnechose,

History of France,

volume 1, page 224.

FRANCE: A. D. 1328.

Accession of King Philip VI.

FRANCE: A. D. 1328.

The splendor of the Monarchy on the eve of the calamitous

wars.

"Indisputably, the king of France [Philip VI., or Philip de

Valois] was at this moment [A. D. 1328] a great king. He had

just reinstated Flanders in its state of dependence on him.

The king of England had done him homage for his French

provinces. His cousins reigned at Naples and in Hungary. He

was protector of the king of Scotland. He was surrounded by a

court of kings--by those of Navarre, Majorca, Bohemia; and

the Scottish monarch was often one of the circle. The famous

John of Bohemia, of the house of Luxembourg, and father to the

emperor Charles IV., declared that he could not live out of

Paris, 'the most chivalrous residence in the world.' He

fluttered over all Europe, but ever returned to the court of

the great king of France--where was kept up one constant

festival, where jousts and tournaments ever went on, and the

romances of chivalry, king Arthur and the round table, were

realized."

J. Michelet,

History of France,

book 6, chapter 1.

FRANCE: A. D. 1328-1339.

The claim of Edward III. of England to the French crown.

"History tells us that Philip, king of France, surnamed the

Fair, had three sons, beside his beautiful daughter Isabella,

married to the king of England [Edward II.]. These three sons

were very handsome. The eldest, Lewis, king of Navarre during

the lifetime of his father, was called Lewis Hutin [Louis X.];

the second was named Philip the Great, or the Long [Philip

V.]; and the third, Charles [Charles IV.]. All these were

kings of France, after their father Philip, by legitimate

succession, one after the other, without having by marriage

any male heirs; yet, on the death of the last king, Charles,

the twelve peers and barons of France did not give the kingdom

to Isabella, the sister, who was queen of England, because

they said and maintained, and still do insist, that the

kingdom of France is so noble that it ought not to go to a

woman; consequently neither to Isabella, nor to her son, the

king of England [Edward III.]; for they hold that the son of a

woman cannot claim any right of succession, where that woman

has none herself. For these reasons the twelve peers and

barons of France unanimously gave the kingdom of France to the

lord Philip of Valois, nephew to king Philip, and thus put

aside the queen of England, who was sister to Charles, the

late king of France, and her son. Thus, as it seemed to many

people, the succession went out of the right line; which has

been the occasion of the most destructive wars and

devastations of countries, as well in France as elsewhere, as

you will learn hereafter; the real object of this history

being to relate the great enterprises and deeds of arms

achieved in these wars, for from the time of good Charlemagne,

king of France, never were such feats performed."

J. Froissart, Chronicles (Johnes'),

book 1, chapter 4.

France in 1154 At the Accession of Henry II. (Anjou)

Showing how he Acquired his fiefs in France.

Acquired By Henry From Matilda.

Acquired By Henry From His Father Goeffrey Of Anjou.

Acquired By Henry From His Wife Eleanor Of Aquitaine

French Crown Lands

Other Vassal Lands.

------------------

France in 1180

At The Accession Of Philip Augustus

Showing The Lands Acquired By The Crown During His Reign.

Crown Lands At Accession Of Philip

Acquired During His Reign Form Angevins

Acquired During His Reign From Other Vassals

Angevin Lands (1223)

Other Vassal Lands

------------------

France at the death of Philip IV (The Fair) 1314

------------------

France at the Peace of Bretigny

-------End: Maps of France----------------

{1169}

"From the moment of Charles IV.'s death [A. D. 1328], Edward

III. of England buoyed himself up with a notion of his title

to the crown of France, in right of his mother Isabel, sister

to the three last kings. We can have no hesitation in

condemning the injustice of this pretension. Whether the Salic

law were or were not valid, no advantage could be gained by

Edward. Even if he could forget the express or tacit decision

of all France, there stood in his way Jane, the daughter of

Louis X., three [daughters] of Philip the Long, and one of

Charles the Fair. Aware of this, Edward set up a distinction,

that, although females were excluded from succession, the same

rule did not apply to their male issue; and thus, though his

mother Isabel could not herself become queen of France, she

might transmit a title to him. But this was contrary to the

commonest rules of inheritance; and if it could have been

regarded at all, Jane had a son, afterwards the famous king of

Navarre [Charles the Bad], who stood one degree nearer to the

crown than Edward. It is asserted in some French authorities

that Edward preferred a claim to the regency immediately after

the decease of Charles the Fair, and that the States-General,

or at least the peers of France, adjudged that dignity to

Philip de Valois. Whether this be true or not, it is clear

that he entertained projects of recovering his right as early,

though his youth and the embarrassed circumstances of his

government threw insuperable obstacles in the way of their

execution. He did liege homage, therefore, to Philip for

Guienne, and for several years, while the affairs of Scotland

engrossed his attention, gave no signs of meditating a more

magnificent enterprise. As he advanced in manhood, and felt

the consciousness of his strength, his early designs grew

mature, and produced a series of the most important and

interesting revolutions in the fortunes of France."

H. Hallam,

The Middle Ages,

chapter 1, part l.

See, also, SALIC LAW: APPLICATION TO THE

REGAL SUCCESSION IN FRANCE.

FRANCE: A. D. 1337-1360.

The beginning of the "Hundred Years War."

It was not until 1337 that Edward III. felt prepared to assert

formally his claim to the French crown and to assume the title

of King of France. In July of the following year he began

undertakings to enforce his pretended right, by crossing with

a considerable force to the continent. He wintered at Antwerp,

concerting measures with the Flemings, who had espoused his

cause, and arranging an alliance with the emperor-king of

Germany, whose name bore more weight than his arms. In 1339 a

formal declaration of hostilities was made and the long

war--the Hundred Years War, as it has been called--of English

kings for the sovereignty of France, began. "This great war

may well be divided into five periods. The first ends with the

Peace of Bretigny in 1360 (A. D. 1337-1360), and includes the

great days of Crécy [1346] and Poitiers [1356], as well as the

taking of Calais: the second runs to the death of Charles the

Wise in 1380; these are the days of Du Guesclin and the

English reverses: the third begins with the renewal of the war

under Henry V. of England, and ends with the Regency of the

Duke of Bedford at Paris, including the field of Azincourt

[1415] and the Treaty of Troyes (A. D. 1415-1422): the fourth

is the epoch of Jeanne Darc and ends with the second

establishment of the English at Paris (A. D. 1428-1431): and

the fifth and last runs on to the final expulsion of the

English after the Battle of Castillon in 1453. Thus, though it

is not uncommonly called the Hundred Years War, the struggle

really extended over a period of a hundred and sixteen years."

G. W. Kitchin,

History of France,

book 4, chapters 1-7.

"No war had broken out in Europe, since the fall of the Roman

Empire, so memorable as that of Edward III. and his successors

against France, whether we consider its duration, its object,

or the magnitude and variety of its events. It was a struggle

of one hundred and twenty years, interrupted but once by a

regular pacification, where the most ancient and extensive

dominion in the civilised world was the prize, twice lost and

twice recovered in the conflict. ... There is, indeed, ample

room for national exultation at the names of Crecy, Poitiers

and Azincourt. So great was the disparity of numbers upon

those famous days, that we cannot, with the French historians,

attribute the discomfiture of their hosts merely to mistaken

tactics and too impetuous valour. ... These victories, and the

qualities that secured them, must chiefly be ascribed to the

freedom of our constitution, and to the superior condition of

the people. Not the nobility of England, not the feudal

tenants, won the battles of Crecy and Poitiers; for these were

fully matched in the ranks of France; but the yeomen who drew

the bow with strong and steady arms, accustomed to use it in

their native fields, and rendered fearless by personal

competence and civil freedom. ... Yet the glorious termination

to which Edward was enabled, at least for a time, to bring the

contest, was rather the work of fortune than of valour and

prudence. Until the battle of Poitiers [A. D. 1356] he had

made no progress towards the conquest of France. That country

was too vast, and his army too small, for such a revolution.

The victory of Crecy gave him nothing but Calais. ... But at

Poitiers he obtained the greatest of prizes, by taking

prisoner the king of France. Not only the love of freedom

tempted that prince to ransom himself by the utmost

sacrifices, but his captivity left France defenceless and

seemed to annihilate the monarchy itself. ... There is no

affliction which did not fall upon France during this

miserable period. ... Subdued by these misfortunes, though

Edward had made but slight progress towards the conquest of

the country, the regent of France, afterwards Charles V.,

submitted to the peace of Bretigni [A. D. 1360]. By this

treaty, not to mention less important articles, all Guienne,

Gascony, Poitou, Saintonge, the Limousin, and the Angoumois,

as well as Calais, and the county of Ponthieu, were ceded in

full sovereignty to Edward; a price abundantly compensating

his renunciation of the title of France, which was the sole

concession stipulated in return."

H. Hallam,

The Middle Ages,

chapter 1, part 2.

ALSO IN:

J. Froissart,

Chronicles (Johnes' translation),

book 1, chapters 1-212.

W. Longman, History of Edward III.,

volume 1, chapters 6-22.

F. P. Guizot, Popular History of France,

chapter 20.

D. F. Jamison,

Life and Times of Bertrand du Guesclin,

volume 1, chapters 4-10.

See, also, POITIERS, BATTLE OF.

{1170}

FRANCE: A. D. 1347-1348.

The Black Plague.

"Epochs of moral depression are those, too, of great motality.

... In the last years of Philippe de Valois' reign, the

depopulation was rapid. The misery and physical suffering

which prevailed were insufficient to account for it; for they

had not reached the extreme at which they subsequently

arrived. Yet, to adduce but one instance, the population of a

single town, Narbonne, fell off in the space of four or five

years from the year 1399, by 500 families. Upon this too tardy

diminution of the human race followed extermination,--the great

black plague, or pestilence, which at once heaped up mountains

of dead throughout Christendom. It began in Provence, in the

year 1347, on All Saints' Day, continued sixteen months, and

carried off two-thirds of the inhabitants. The same wholesale

destruction befell Languedoc. At Montpellier, out of twelve

consuls, ten died. At Narbonne, 30,000 persons perished. In

several places, there remained only a tithe of the

inhabitants. All that the careless Froissart says of this

fearful visitation, and that only incidentally, is--'For at

this time there prevailed throughout the world generally a

disease called epidemy, which destroyed a third of its

inhabitants.' This pestilence did not break out in the north

of the kingdom until August, 1348, where it first showed

itself at Paris and St. Denys. So fearful were its ravages at

Paris, that, according to some, 800, according to others, 500,

daily sank under it. ... As there was neither famine at the time

nor want of food, but, on the contrary great abundance, this

plague was said to proceed from infection of the air and of

the springs. The Jews were again charged with this, and the

people cruelly fell upon them."

J. Michelet,

History of France,

book 6, chapter 1.

See BLACK DEATH.

FRANCE: A. D. 1350.

Accession of King John II.

FRANCE: A. D. 1356-1358.

The States-General and Etienne Marcel.

"The disaster of Poitiers [1356] excited in the minds of the

people a sentiment of national grief, mixed with indignation

and scorn at the nobility who had fled before an army so

inferior in number. Those nobles who passed through the cities

and towns on their return from the battle were pursued with

imprecations and outrages. The Parisian bourgeoisie, animated

with enthusiasm and courage, took upon itself at all risks the

charge of its own defense; whilst, the eldest son of the king,

a youth of only nineteen, who had been one of the first to

fly, assumed the government as lieutenant of his father. It

was at the summons of this prince that the states assembled

again at Paris before the time which they had appointed. The

same deputies returned to the number of 800, of whom 400 were

of the bourgeoisie; and the work of reform, rudely sketched in

the preceding session, was resumed under the same influence,

with an enthusiasm which partook of the character of

revolutionary impulse. The assembly commenced by concentrating

its action in a committee of twenty-four members,

deliberating, as far as appears, without distinction of

orders; it then intimated its resolutions under the form of

petitions, which were as follow: The authority of the states

declared supreme in all affairs of administration and finance,

the impeachment of all the counsellors of the king, the

dismissal in a body of the officers of justice, and the

creation of a council of reformers taken from the three

orders; lastly, the prohibition to conclude any truce without

the assent of the three states, and the right on their part to

re-assemble at their own will without a royal summons. The

lieutenant of the king, Charles Duke of Normandy, exerted in

vain the resources of a precocious ability to escape these

imperious demands: he was compelled to yield everything. The

States governed in his name; but dissension, springing from

the mutual jealousy of the different orders, was soon

introduced into their body. The preponderating influence of

the bourgeois appeared intolerable to the nobles, who, in

consequence, deserted the assembly and retired home. The

deputies of the clergy remained longer at their posts, but

they also withdrew at last; and, under the name of the

States-General, none remained but the representatives of the

cities, alone charged with all the responsibilities of the

reform and the affairs of the kingdom. Bowing to a necessity

of central action, they submitted of their own accord to the

deputation of Paris; and soon, by the tendency of

circumstances, and in consequence of the hostile attitude of

the Regent, the question of supremacy of the states became a

Parisian question, subject to the chances of a popular émeute

and the guardianship of the municipal power. At this point

appears a man whose character has grown into historical

importance in our days from our greater facilities of

understanding it, Etienne [Stephen] Marcel, 'prévôt des

marchands'--that is to say, mayor of the municipality of

Paris. This échevin of the 14th century, by a remarkable

anticipation, designed and attempted things which seem to

belong only to recent revolutions. Social unity, and

administrative uniformity; political rights, co-extensive and

equal with civil rights; the principle of public authority

transferred from the crown to the nation; the States-General

changed, under the influence of the third order, into a

national representation; the will of the people admitted as

sovereign in the presence of the depositary of the royal

power; the influence of Paris over the provinces, as the head

of opinion and centre of the general movement; the democratic

dictatorship, and the influence of terror exercised in the

name of the common weal; new colours assumed and carried as a

sign of patriotic union and symbol of reform; the transference

of royalty itself from one branch of the family to the other,

with a view to the cause of reform and the interest of the

people--such were the circumstances and the scenes which have

given to our own as well as the preceding century their

political character. It is strange to find the whole of it

comprised in the three years over which the name of the Prévôt

Marcel predominates. His short and stormy career was, as it

were, a premature attempt at the grand designs of Providence,

and the mirror of the bloody changes of fortune through which

those designs were destined to advance to their accomplishment

under the impulse of human passions. Marcel lived and died for

an idea--that of hastening on, by the force of the masses, the

work of gradual equalisation commenced by the kings

themselves; but it was his misfortune and his crime to be

unrelenting in carrying out his convictions. To the

impetuosity of a tribune who did not shrink even from murder

he added the talent of organization; he left in the grand

city, which he had ruled with a stern and absolute sway,

powerful institutions, noble works, and a name which two

centuries afterwards his descendants bore with pride as a

title of nobility."

A. Thierry,

Formation and Progress of the Tiers Etat,

volume 1, chapter 2.

See, also,

STATES-GENERAL OF FRANCE IN THE 14th CENTURY.

{1171}

FRANCE: A. D. 1358.

The insurrection of the Jacquerie.

"The miseries of France weighed more and more heavily on the

peasantry; and none regarded them. They stood apart from the

cities, knowing little of them; the nobles despised them and

robbed them of their substance or their labour. ... At last

the peasantry (May, 1358), weary of their woes, rose up to

work their own revenge and ruin. They began in the Beauvais

country and there fell on the nobles, attacking and destroying

castles, and slaying their inmates: it was the old unvarying

story. They made themselves a kind of king, a man of Clermont

in the Beauvoisin, named William Callet. Froissart imagines

that the name 'Jacques Bonhomme' meant a particular person, a

leader in these risings. Froissart however had no accurate

knowledge of the peasant and his ways. Jacques Bonhomme was

the common nickname, the 'Giles' or 'Hodge' of France, the

name of the peasant generally; and from it such risings as

this of 1358 came to be called the 'Jacquerie,' or the

disturbances of the 'Jacques.' The nobles were soon out

against them, and the whole land was full of anarchy. Princes

and nobles, angry peasants with their 'iron shod sticks and

knives,' free-lances, English bands of pillagers, all made up

a scene of utter confusion: 'cultivation ceased, commerce

ceased, security was at an end.' The burghers of Paris and

Meaux sent a force to help the peasants, who were besieging

the fortress at Meaux, held by the nobles; these were suddenly

attacked and routed by the Captal de Buch and the Count de Foix,

'then on their return from Prussia.' The King of Navarre also

fell on them, took by stratagem their leader Callet, tortured

and hanged him. In six weeks the fire was quenched in blood."

G. W. Kitchin,

History of France,

chapter 2, section 3.

"Froissard relates the horrible details of the Jacquerie with

the same placid interest which characterises his descriptions

of battles, tournaments, and the pageantry of chivalry. The

charm and brilliancy of his narrative have long popularised

his injustice and his errors, which are self-apparent when

compared with the authors and chroniclers of his time. ... The

chronicles contemporary of the Jacquerie confine themselves to

a few words on the subject, although, with the exception of

the Continuator of Nangis, they were all hostile to the cause

of the peasants. The private and local documents on the

subject say very little more. The Continuator of Nangis has

drawn his information from various sources. He takes care to

state that he has witnessed almost all he relates. After

describing the sufferings of the peasants, he adds that the

laws of justice authorised them to rise in revolt against the

nobles of France. His respected testimony reduces the

insurrection to comparatively small proportions. The hundred

thousand Jacques of Froissard are reduced to something like

five or six thousand men, a number much more probable when it

is considered that the insurrection remained a purely local

one, and that, in consequence of the ravages we have

mentioned, the whole open country had lost about two-thirds of

its inhabitants. He states very clearly that the peasants

killed indiscriminately, and without pity, men and children,

but he does not say anything of those details of atrocity

related by Froissard. He only alludes once to a report of some

outrages offered to some noble ladies; he speaks of it as a

vague rumour. He describes the insurgents, after the first

explosion of their vindictive fury, as pausing--amazed at

their own boldness, and terrified at their own crimes, and the

nobles, recovering from their terror, taking immediate

advantage of this sudden torpor and paralysis--assembling and

slaughtering all, innocent and guilty, burning houses and

villages. If we turn to other writers contemporary with the

Jacquerie, we find that Louvet, author of the 'History of the

District of Beauvais,' does not say much on the subject, and

evinces also a sympathy for the peasants: the paucity of his

remarks on a subject represented by Froissard as a gigantic,

bloody tragedy, raises legitimate doubts as to the veracity of

the latter. There is another authority on the events of that

period, which may be considered as more weighty, in

consequence of its ecclesiastical character; it is the

'cartulaire,' or journal of the Abbot of Beauvais. ... There

is no trace in it of the horror and indescribable terror ...

[the rising] must have inspired if the peasants had committed

the atrocities attributed to them by the feudal historian,

Froissard. On the contrary, the vengeance of the peasants

falls into the shade, as it were, in contrast with the

merciless reaction of the nobles, along with the sanguinary

oppression of the English. The writer of the 'Abbey of

Beauvais,' and the anonymous monk, 'Continuator of Nangis,'

concur with each other in their account of the Jacquerie.

Their judgments are similar, and they manifest the same

moderation. Their opinions, moreover, are confirmed by a

higher authority, a testimony that must be considered as

indisputable, namely, the letters of amnesty of the Regent of

France, which are all preserved; they bear the date of 10th

August 1358, and refer to all the acts committed on the

occasion of the Jacquerie. In these he proves himself more

severe upon the reaction of the nobles than on the revolt of

the peasants. ... There is not the slightest allusion to the

monstrosities related by Froissard, which the Regent could not

have failed to stigmatise, as he is well known for having

entertained an unscrupulous hatred to any popular movement, or

any claims of the people. The manner, on the contrary, in

which the Jacquerie are represented in this official document,

is full of signification; it represents the men of the open

country assembling spontaneously in various localities, in

order to deliberate on the means of resisting the English, and

suddenly, as with a mutual agreement, turning fiercely on the

nobles, who were the real cause of their misery, and of the

disgrace of France, on the days of Crecy and Poitiers. ... It

has also been forgotten that many citizens took an active part

in the Jacquerie. The great chronicles of France state that

the majority were peasants, labouring people, but that there

were also among them citizens, and even gentlemen, who, no

doubt, were impelled by personal hatred and vengeance. Many

rich men joined the peasants, and became their leaders. The

bourgeoisie, in its struggles with royalty, could not refuse

to take advantage of such a diversion; and Beauvais, Senlis,

Amiens, Paris, and Meaux accepted the Jacquerie. Moreover,

almost all the poorer classes of the cities sympathised with

the revolted peasants.

{1172}

The Jacquerie broke out on the 21st of May 1358, and not in

November 1357, as erroneously stated by Froissard, in the

districts around Beauvais and Clermont-sur-Oise. The peasants,

merely armed with pikes, sticks, fragments of their ploughs,

rushed on their masters, murdered their families, and burned

down their castles. The country comprised between Beauvais and

Melun was the principal scene of this war of extermination.

... The Jacquerie had commenced on the 21st of May. On the 9th

of June ... it was already terminated. It was, therefore, in

reality, an insurrection of less than three weeks' duration.

The reprisals of the nobles had already commenced on the 9th

of June, and continued through the whole of July, and the

greater part of August. Froissard states that the Jacquerie

lasted over six weeks, thus comprising in his reckoning three

weeks of the ferocious vengeance of the nobles, and casting on

Jacques Bonhomme the responsibility of the massacres of which

he had been the victim, as well as those he had committed in

his furious despair."

Prof. De Vericour,

The Jacquerie

(Royal Historical Society, Transactions, volume 1).

ALSO IN:

Sir J. Froissart,

Chronicles

(Johnes' translation),

book 1, chapter 181.

FRANCE: A. D. 1360-1380.

English conquests recovered.

The Peace of Bretigny brought little peace to France or little

diminution of the troubles of the kingdom. In some respects

there was a change for the worse introduced. The armies which

had ravaged the country dissolved into plundering bands which

afflicted it even more. Great numbers of mercenaries from both

sides were set free, who gathered into Free Companies, as they

were called, under leaders of fit recklessness and valor, and

swarmed over the land, warring on all prosperity and all the

peaceful industries of the time, seeking booty wherever it

might be found.

See ITALY: A. D. 1343-1393.

Civil war, too, was kept alive by the intrigues and

conspiracies of the Navarrese king, Charles the Bad; and war

in Brittany, over a disputed succession to the dukedom, was

actually stipulated for, by French and English, in their

treaty of general peace. But when the chivalric but hapless

King John died, in 1364, the new king, Charles V., who had

been regent during his captivity, developed an unexpected

capacity for government. He brought to the front the famous

Breton warrior Du Guesclin-rough, ignorant, unchivalric--but a

fighter of the first order in his hard-fighting day. He

contrived with adroitness to rid France, mostly, of the Free

Companies, by sending them, with Du Guesclin at their head,

into Spain, where they drove Peter the Cruel from the throne

of Castile, and fought the English, who undertook, wickedly

and foolishly, to sustain him. The Black Prince won a great

battle, at Najara or Navarette (A. D. 1367), took Du Guesclin

prisoner and restored the cruel Pedro to his throne. But it

was a victory fatal to English interests in France. Half the

army of the English prince perished of a pestilent fever

before he led it back to Aquitaine, and he himself was marked

for early death by the same malady. He had been made duke of

Aquitaine, or Guienne, and held the government of the country.

The war in Spain proved expensive; he taxed his Gascon and

Aquitanian subjects heavily. He was ill, irritable, and

treated them harshly. Discontent became widely spread, and the

king of France subtly stirred it up until he felt prepared to

make use of it in actual war. At last, in 1368, he challenged

a rupture of the Peace of Bretigny by summoning King Edward,

as his vassal, to answer complaints from Aquitaine. In April

of the next year he formally declared war and opened

hostilities the same day. His cunning policy was not to fight,

but to waste and wear the enemy out. Its wisdom was well-proved

by the result. Day by day the English lost ground; the footing

they had gained in France was found to be everywhere insecure.

The dying Black Prince achieved one hideous triumph at

Limoges, where he fouled his brilliant fame by a monstrous

massacre; and thence he was carried home to end his days in

England. In 1376 he died, and one year later his father, King

Edward, followed him to the grave, and a child of eleven

(Richard II.) came to the English throne. But the same

calamity befell France in 1380, when Charles the Wise died,

leaving an heir to the throne only twelve years of age. In

both kingdoms the minority of the sovereign gave rise to

factious intrigues and distracting feuds. The war went on at

intervals, with frequent truces and armistices, and with

little result beyond the animosities which it kept alive. But

the English possessions, by this time, had been reduced to

Calais and Guines, with some small parts of Aquitaine

adjoining the cities of Bordeaux and Bayonne. And thus, it may

be said, the situation was prolonged through a generation,

until Henry V. of England resumed afresh the undertaking of

Edward III.

F. P. Guizot,

Popular History of France,

chapter 22.

ALSO IN:

J. Michelet,

History of France,

book 6, chapter 4.

T. Wright,

History of France,

book 2, chapter 6.

E. A. Freeman,

Historical Geography of Europe,

chapter 9.

D. F. Jamison,

Life and Times of Du Guesclin.

Froissart, Chronicles

(Johnes' translation),

book 1.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1366-1369.

FRANCE: A. D. 1364.

Accession of King Charles V.

FRANCE: A. D. 1378.

Acquisitions in the Rhone valley legal conferred by the

Emperor.

See BURGUNDY: A. D. 1127-1378.

FRANCE: A. D. 1380.

Accession of King Charles VI.

FRANCE: A. D. 1380-1415.

The reign of the Dukes.

The civil war of Armagnacs and Burgundians.

"Charles VI. had arrived at the age of eleven years and some

months when his father died [A. D. 1380]. His three paternal

uncles, the Dukes of Anjou, Berry, and Burgundy, and his

maternal uncle, the Duke of Bourbon, disputed among themselves

concerning his guardianship and the regency. They agreed to

emancipate the young King immediately after his coronation,

which was to take place during the year, and the regency was

to remain until that period in the hands of the eldest, the

Duke of Anjou." But the Duke of Anjou was soon afterwards

lured into Italy by the fatal gift of a claim to the crown of

Naples [see ITALY: A. D. 1343-1389.], and perished in striving

to realize it. The surviving uncles misgoverned the country

between them until 1389, when the young king was persuaded to

throw off their yoke. The nation rejoiced for three years in

the experience and the prospect of administrative reforms; but

suddenly, in July, 1392, the young king became demented, and

"then commenced the third and fatal epoch of that disastrous

reign. The faction of the dukes again seized power," but only

to waste and afflict the kingdom by dissensions among

themselves.

{1173}

The number of the rival dukes was now increased by the

addition of the Duke of Orleans, brother of the king, who

showed himself as ruthless and rapacious as any. "Charles was

still considered to be reigning; each one sought in turn to

get possession of him, and each one watched his lucid moments

in order to stand well in power. His flashes of reason were

still more melancholy than his fits of delirium. Incapable of

attending to his affairs, or of having a will of his own,

always subservient to the dominant party, he appeared to

employ his few glimmerings of reason only in sanctioning the

most tyrannical acts and the most odious abuses. It was in

this manner that the kingdom of France was governed during

twenty-eight years." In 1404, the Duke of Burgundy, Philip

the Bold, having died, the Duke of Orleans acquired supreme

authority and exercised it most oppressively. But the new Duke

of Burgundy, John the Fearless, made his appearance on the

scene ere long, arriving from his county of Flanders with an

army and threatening civil war. Terms of peace, however, were

arranged between the two dukes and an apparent reconciliation

took place. On the very next day the Duke of Orleans was

assassinated (A. D. 1407), and the Duke of Burgundy openly

proclaimed his instigation of the deed. Out of that

treacherous murder sprang a war of factions so deadly that

France was delivered by it to foreign conquest, and destroyed,

we may say, for the time being, as a nation. The elder of the

young princes of Orleans, sons of the murdered duke, had

married a daughter of Count Bernard of Armagnac, and Count

Bernard became the leader of the party which supported them

and sought to avenge them, as against the Duke of Burgundy and

his party. Hence the former acquired the name of Armagnacs;

the latter were called Burgundians. Armagnac led an army of

Gascons [A. D. 1410] and threatened Paris, "where John the

Fearless caressed the vilest populace. Burgundy relied on the

name of the king, whom he held in his power, and armed in the

capital a corps of one hundred young butchers or

horse-knackers, who, from John Caboche, their chief, took the

name of Cabochiens. A frightful war, interrupted by truces

violated on both sides, commenced between the party of

Armagnac and that of Burgundy. Both sides appealed to the

English, and sold France to them. The Armagnacs pillaged and

ravaged the environs of Paris with unheard of cruelties, while

the Cabochiens caused the capital they defended to tremble.

The States-General, convoked for the first time for thirty

years, were dumb--without courage and without strength. The

Parliament was silent, the university made itself the organ of

the populace, and the butchers made the laws. They pillaged,

imprisoned and slaughtered with impunity, according to their

savage fury, and found judges to condemn their victims. ...

The reaction broke out at last. Tired of so many atrocities,

the bourgeoisie took up arms, and shook off the yoke of the

horse-knackers. The Dauphin was delivered by them. He mounted

on horseback, and, at the head of the militia, went to the

Hôtel de Ville, from which place he drove out Caboche and his

brigands. The counter revolution was established. Burgundy

departed, and the power passed to the Armagnacs. The princes

re-entered Paris, and King Charles took up the oriflamme (the

royal standard of France), to make war against John the

Fearless, whose instrument he had been a short time before.

His army was victorious. Burgundy submitted, and the treaty of

Arras [A. D. 1415] suspended the war, but not the executions and

the ravages. Henry V., King of England, judged this a

propitious moment to descend upon France, which had not a

vessel to oppose the invaders."

E. de Bonnechose,

History of France,

volume 1, pages 266-279.

ALSO IN:

E. de Monstrelet,

Chronicles (Johnes' translation),

volume 1, book 1, chapters 1-140.

T. Wright,

History of France,

book 2, chapters 8-9.

FRANCE: A. D. 1383.

Pope Urban's Crusade against the Schismatics.

See FLANDERS: A. D. 1383.

FRANCE: A. D. 1396.

The sovereignty of Genoa surrendered to the king.

See GENOA: A. D. 1381-1422.

FRANCE: A. D. 1415.

The Hundred Years War renewed by Henry V. of England.

"When Henry V. resolved to recover what he claimed as the

inheritance of his predecessors, he had to begin, it may be

said, the work of conquest over again. Allies, however, he

had, whose assistance he was to find very useful. The dynasty

of De Montfort had been established in possession of the

dukedom of Britanny in a great measure by English help, and

though the relations between the two countries had not been

invariably friendly since that time, the sense of this

obligation, and, still more powerfully, a jealous fear of the

French king, inclined Britanny to the English alliance. The

Dukes of Burgundy, though they had no such motives of

gratitude towards England, felt a far stronger hostility

towards France. The feud between the rival factions which went

by the names of Burgundians and Armagnacs had now been raging

for several years; and though the attitude of the Burgundians

varied--at the great struggle of Agincourt they were allies,

though lukewarm and even doubtful allies, of the French--they

ultimately ranked themselves decidedly on Henry's side. In

1414, then, Henry formally demanded, as the heir of Isabella,

mother of his great-grandfather Edward, the crown of France.

This claim the French princes wholly refused to consider.

Henry then moderated his demands so far, at least, as to allow

Charles to remain in nominal possession of his kingdom; but

... France was to cede to England, no longer as a feudal

superior making a grant to a vassal, but in full sovereignty,

the provinces of Normandy, Maine, and Anjou, together with all

that was comprised in the ancient duchy of Aquitaine. Half,

too, of Provence was claimed, and the arrears of the ransom of

King John, amounting to 1,200,000 crowns, were also to be

paid. Finally, the French king was to give his youngest

daughter, Katharine, in marriage to Henry, with a portion of

2,000,000 crowns. The French ministers offered, in answer, to

yield the duchy of Aquitaine, comprising the provinces of

Anjou, Gascony, Guienne, Poitou, and to give the hand of the

princess Katharine with a dowry of 600,000 crowns.

"Negotiations went on through several months, with small

chance of success, while Henry prepared for war. His

preparations were completed in the summer of 1415, and on the

11th of August in that year he set sail from Southampton, with

an army of 6,000 men-at-arms and 24,000 archers, very

completely equipped, and accompanied with cannon and other

engines of war.

{1174}

Landing in the estuary of the Seine, the invaders first

captured the important Norman seaport of Harfleur, after a

siege of a month, and expelled the inhabitants from the town.

It was an important acquisition; but it had cost the English

heavily. They were ill-supplied with food; they had suffered

from much rain; 2,000 had died of an epidemic of dysentery.

The army was in no condition for a forward movement. "The

safest course would now have been to return at once; and this

seems to have been pressed upon the king by the majority of

his counsellors. But this prudent advice did not approve

itself to Henry's adventurous temper. ... He determined ... to

make what may be called a military parade to Calais. This

involved a march of not less than 150 miles through a hostile

country, a dangerous, and, but that one who cherishes such

designs as Henry's must make a reputation for daring, a

useless operation; but the king's determined will overcame all

opposition." Leaving a strong garrison at Harfleur, Henry set

out upon his march. Arrived at the Somme, his further progress

was disputed, and he was forced to make a long detour before

he could effect a crossing of the river. On the 24th of

October, he encountered the French army, strongly posted at

the village of Azincour or Agincourt, barring the road to

Calais; and there, on the morning of the 25th, after a night

of drenching rain, the great battle, which shines with so

dazzling a glory in English history, was fought. There seems

to be no doubt that the English were greatly outnumbered by

the French--according to Monstrelet they were but one to six;

but the masses on the French side were unskilfully handled and

no advantage was got from them. The deadly shafts of the

terrible English archers built such a rampart of corpses in

their front that it actually sheltered them from the charge of

the French cavalry. "Everywhere the French were routed, slain,

or taken. The victory of the English was complete. ... The

French loss was enormous. Monstrelet gives a long list of the

chief princes and nobles who fell on that fatal field. ... We

are disposed to trust his estimate, which, including princes,

knights and men-at-arms of every degree, he puts at 10,000.

... Only 1,600 are said to have been 'of low degree.' ... The

number of knights and gentlemen taken prisoners was 1,500.

Among them were Charles, Duke of Orleans, and the Duke of

Bourbon, both princes of the blood-royal. ... Brilliant as was

the victory which Henry had won at Agincourt, it had, it may

be said, no immediate results. ... The army resumed its

interrupted march to Calais, which was about forty miles

distant. At Calais a council of war was held, and the

resolution to return to England unanimously taken. A few days

were allowed for refreshment, and about the middle of November

the army embarked."

A. J. Church,

Henry the Fifth,

chapters 6-10.

ALSO IN:

E. de Monstrelet,

Chronicles (Johnes' translation),

volume 1, book 1, chapters 140-149.

J. E. Tyler,

Henry of Monmouth,

chapters 19-23.

G M. Towle,

History of Henry V.,

chapters 7-8.

Lord Brougham,

History of England and France

under the House of Lancaster.

C. M. Yonge,

Cameos from English History:

second series, chapters 24-26.

FRANCE: A. D. 1415-1419.

Massacre of Armagnacs.

The murder of the Duke of Burgundy.

"The captivity of so many princes of the blood as had been

taken prisoner at Agincourt might have seemed likely at least

to remove some of the elements of discord; but it so happened

that the captives were the most moderate and least ambitious

men. The gentle, poetical Duke of Orleans, the good Duke of

Bourbon, and the patriotic and gallant Arthur de Richemont,

had been taken, while the savage Duke of Burgundy and the

violent Gascon Count of Armagnac, Constable of France,

remained at the head of their hostile factions. ... The Count

d'Armagnac now reigned supreme; no prince of the blood came to

the councils, and the king and dauphin were absolutely in his

hands. ... The Duke of Burgundy was, however, advancing with

his forces, and the Parisians were always far more inclined to

him than to the other party. ... For a whole day's ride round

the environs of the city, every farmhouse had been sacked or

burnt. Indeed, it was said in Paris a man had only to be

called a Burgundian, or anywhere else in the Isle of France an

Armagnac, to be instantly put to death. All the soldiers who

had been posted to guard Normandy and Picardy against the

English were recalled to defend Paris against the Duke of

Burgundy; and Henry V. could have found no more favourable

moment for a second expedition." The English king took

advantage of his opportunity and landed in Normandy August 1,

1417, finding nobody to oppose him in the field. The factions

were employed too busily in cutting each other's throats,--

especially after the Burgundians had regained possession of

Paris, which they did in the following spring. Thereupon the

Parisian mob rose and ferociously massacred all the partisans

of Armagnac, while the Burgundians looked and approved. "The

prison was forced; Armagnac himself was dragged out and slain

in the court. ... The court of each prison became a

slaughter-house; the prisoners were called down one by one,

and there murdered, till the assassins were up to their ankles

in blood. The women were as savage as the men, and dragged the

corpses about the streets in derision. The prison slaughter

had but given a passion for further carnage; and the murderers

broke open the houses in search of Armagnacs, killing not only

men, but women, children, and even new-born babes, to whom in

their diabolical frenzy they refused baptism, as being little

Armagnacs. The massacre lasted from four o'clock on Sunday

morning to ten o'clock on Monday. Some say that 3,000

perished, others 1,600, and the Duke of Burgundy's servants

reported the numbers as only 400." Meantime Henry V. was

besieging Rouen, and starving Paris by cutting off the

supplies for which it depended on the Seine. In August there

was another rising of the Parisian mob and another massacre.

In January, 1419, Rouen surrendered, and attempts at peace

followed, both parties making a truce with the English

invader. The imperious demands of King Henry finally impelled

the two French factions to draw together and to make a common

cause of the deliverance of the kingdom. At least that was the

profession with which the Dauphin and the Duke of Burgundy

met, in July, and went through the forms of a reconciliation.

Perhaps there were treacherous intentions on both sides. On

one side the treachery was consummated a month later

(September 10, 1419), when, a second meeting between Duke John

the Fearless and the Dauphin taking place at the Bridge of

Montereau, the Duke was basely assassinated in the Dauphin's

presence.

{1175}

This murder, by which the Armagnacs, who controlled the young

Dauphin, hoped to break their rivals down, only kindled afresh

the passions which were destroying France and delivering it an

easy prey to foreign conquest.

C. M. Yonge,

Cameos from English History,

second series, chapters 28-29.

ALSO IN:

E. de Monstrelet,

Chronicles (Johnes' translation),

volume 1, book 1, chapters 150-211.

J. Michelet,

History of France,

book 9, chapter 2.

FRANCE: A. D. 1417-1422.

Burgundy's revenge.

Henry the Fifth's triumph.

Two kings in Paris.

The Treaty of Troyes.

Death of Henry.

"Whilst civil war was ... penetrating to the very core of the

kingship, foreign war was making its way again into the

kingdom. Henry V., after the battle of Agincourt, had returned

to London, and had left his army to repose and reorganize

after its sufferings and its losses. It was not until eighteen

months afterwards, on the 1st of August, 1417, that he landed

at Touques, not far from Honfleur, with fresh troops, and

resumed his campaign in France. Between 1417 and 1419 he

successively laid siege to nearly all the towns of importance

in Normandy, to Caen, Bayeux, Falaise, Evreux, Coutances,

Laigle, St. Lô, Cherbourg, &c., &c. Some he occupied after a

short resistance, others were sold to him by their governors;

but when, in the month of July, 1418, he undertook the siege

of Rouen, he encountered there a long and serious struggle.

Rouen had at that time, it is said, a population of 150,000

souls, which was animated by ardent patriotism. The Rouennese,

on the approach of the English, had repaired their gates,

their ramparts, and their moats; had demanded reinforcements

from the King of France and the Duke of Burgundy; and had

ordered every person incapable of bearing arms or procuring

provisions for ten months to leave the city. Twelve thousand

old men, women and children were thus expelled, and died

either round the place or whilst roving in misery over the

neighbouring country. ... Fifteen thousand men of

city-militia, 4,000 regular soldiers, 300 spearmen and as many

archers from Paris, and it is not quite known how many

men-at-arms sent by the Duke of Burgundy, defended Rouen for

more than five months amidst all the usual sufferings of

strictly-besieged cities." On the 13th of January, 1419, the

town was surrendered. "It was 215 years since Philip Augustus

had won Rouen by conquest from John Lackland, King of

England." After this great success there were truces brought

about between all parties, and much negotiation, which came to

nothing--except the treacherous murder of the Duke of

Burgundy, as related above. Then the situation changed. The

son and successor of the murdered duke, afterwards known as

Philip the Good, took sides, at once, with the English king

and committed himself to a war of revenge, indifferent to the

fate of France. "On the 17th of October [1419] was opened at

Arras a congress between the plenipotentiaries of England and

those of Burgundy. On the 20th of November a special truce was

granted to the Parisians, whilst Henry V., in concert with

Duke Philip of Burgundy, was prosecuting the war against the

dauphin. On the 2d of December the bases were laid of an

agreement between the English and the Burgundians. The

preliminaries of the treaty, which was drawn up in accordance

with these bases, were signed on the 9th of April, 1420, by

King Charles VI. [now controlled by the Burgundians], and on

the 20th communicated at Paris by the chancellor of France to

the parliament." On the 20th of May following, the treaty,

definitive and complete, was signed by Henry V. and

promulgated at Troyes. By this treaty of Troyes, Princess

Catherine, daughter of the King of France, was given in

marriage to King Henry; Charles VI. was guaranteed his

possession of the French crown while he lived; on his death,

"the crown and kingdom of France, with all their rights and

appurtenances," were solemnly conveyed to Henry V. of England

and his heirs, forever. "The revulsion against the treaty of

Troyes was real and serious, even in the very heart of the

party attached to the Duke of Burgundy. He was obliged to lay

upon several of his servants formal injunctions to swear to

this peace, which seemed to them treason. ... In the duchy of

Burgundy the majority of the towns refused to take the oath to

the King of England. The most decisive and the most helpful

proof of this awakening of national feeling was the ease

experienced by the dauphin, who was one day to be Charles

VII., in maintaining the war which, after the treaty of

Troyes, was, in his father's and his mother's name, made upon

him by the King of England and the Duke of Burgundy. This war

lasted more than three years. Several towns, amongst others,

Melun, Crotoy, Meaux, and St. Riquier, offered an obstinate

resistance to the attacks of the English and Burgundians. ...

It was in Perche, Anjou, Maine, on the banks of the Loire, and

in Southern France, that the dauphin found most of his

enterprising and devoted partisans. The sojourn made by Henry

V. at Paris, in December, 1420, with his wife, Queen

Catherine, King Charles VI., Queen Isabel, and the Duke of

Burgundy, was not, in spite of galas and acclamations, a

substantial and durable success for him. ... Towards the end

of August, 1422, Henry V. fell ill; and, too stout-hearted to

delude himself as to his condition, he ... had himself removed

to Vincennes, called his councillors about him, and gave them

his last royal instructions. ... He expired on the 31st of

August, 1422, at the age of thirty-four."

F. P. Guizot,

Popular History of France,

chapter 23.

At Paris, "the two sovereigns [Henry V. and Charles VI.] kept

distinct courts. That of Henry was by far the most splendidly

equipped and numerously attended of the two. He was the rising

sun, and all men looked to him. All offices of trust and

profit were at his disposal, and the nobles and gentlemen of

France flocked into his ante-chambers."

A. J. Church,

Henry the Fifth,

chapter 15.

ALSO IN:

E. de Monstrelet,

Chronicles (Johnes' translation),

volume 1, book 1, chapters 171-264.

J. Michelet,

History of France,

book 9, chapters 2-3.

FRANCE: A. D. 1422.

Accession of King Charles VII.

{1176}

FRANCE: A. D. 1429-1431.

The Mission of the Maid.

"France divided--two kings, two regencies, two armies, two

governments, two nations, two nobilities, two systems of

justice--met face to face: father, son, mother, uncles,

nephews, citizens, and strangers, fought for the right, the

soil, the throne, the cities, the spoil and the blood of the

nation. The King of England died at Vincennes [August 31,

1422], and was shortly followed [October 22] by Charles VI.,

father of the twelve children of Isabel, leaving the kingdom

to the stranger and to ruin. The Duke of Bedford insolently

took possession of the Regency in the name of England, pursued

the handful of nobles who wished to remain French with the

dauphin, defeated them at the battle of Verneuil [August

17,1424], and exiled the queen, who had become a burden to the

government after having been an instrument of usurpation. He

then concentrated the armies of England, France and Burgundy

round Orleans, which was defended by some thousands of the

partisans of the dauphin, and which comprised almost all that

remained of the kingdom of France. The land was everywhere

ravaged by the passing and repassing of these bands--sometimes

friends, sometimes enemies--driving each other on, wave after

wave, like the billows of the Atlantic; ravaging crops,

burning towns, dispersing, robbing, and ill-treating the

population. In this disorganization of the country, the young

dauphin, sometimes awakened by the complaints of his people,

at others absorbed in the pleasures natural to his age, was

making love to Agnes Sorel in the castle of Loches. ... Such

was the state of the nation when Providence showed it a savior

in a child." The child was Jeanne D'Arc, or Joan of Arc,

better known in history as the Maid of Orleans,--daughter of a

peasant who tilled his own few acres at the village of

Domrémy, in Upper Lorraine. Of the visions of the pious young

maiden--of the voices she heard--of the conviction which came

upon her that she was called by God to deliver her

country--and of the enthusiasm of faith with which she went

about her mission until all people bent to her as the

messenger and minister of God--the story is a familiar one to

all. In April, 1429, Joan was sent by the king, from Blois,

with 10,000 or 12,000 men, to the succour of Orleans, where

Dunois, the Bastard of Orleans, was in command. She reformed

the army, purged it of all vile followers, and raised its

confidence to that frenzied pitch which nothing can resist. On

the 8th of May the English abandoned the siege and Orleans was

saved. "Joan wasted no time in vain triumphs. She brought back

the victorious army to the dauphin, to assist him in

reconquering city after city of his kingdom. The dauphin and

the queens received her as the messenger of God, who had found

and recovered the lost keys of the kingdom. 'I have only

another year,' she remarked, with a sad presentiment, which

seemed to indicate that her victory led to the scaffold; 'I

must therefore set to work at once.' She begged the dauphin to

go and be crowned at Rheims, although that city and the

intermediate provinces were still in the power of the

Burgundians, Flemings, and English." Counsellors and generals

opposed; but the sublime faith of the Maid overcame all

opposition and all difficulties. The king's route to Rheims

was rapidly cleared of his enemies. At Patay (June 18, 1429)

the English suffered a heavy defeat and their famous soldier,

Lord Talbot, was taken prisoner. Troyes, Chalons and Rheims

opened their gates. "The Duke of Bedford, the regent, remained

trembling in Paris. 'All our misfortunes,' he wrote to the

Cardinal of Winchester, 'are owing to a young witch, who, by

her sorcery, has restored the courage of the French.' ... The

king was crowned [July 17, 1429], and Joan's mission was

accomplished. 'Noble king,' said she, embracing his knees in

the Cathedral after the coronation, 'now is accomplished the

will of God, which commanded me to bring you to this city of

Rheims to receive your holy unction--now that you at last are

king, and that the kingdom of France is yours.' ... From that

moment a great depression, and a fatal hesitation seem to have

come over her. The king, the people, and the army, to whom she

had given victory, wished her to remain always their

prophetess, their guide, and their enduring miracle. But she

was now only a weak woman, lost amid courts and camps, and she

felt her weakness beneath her armor. Her heart alone remained

courageous, but had ceased to be inspired." She urged an

attack on Paris (Sept. 8, 1429) and experienced her first

failure, being grievously wounded in the assault. The

following spring, Compiègne being besieged, she entered the

town to take part in the defence. The same evening (May 24,

1430) she led a sortie which was repulsed, and she was taken

prisoner in the retreat. Some think she was betrayed by the

commandant of the town, who ordered the raising of the

drawbridge just as her horse was being spurred upon it. Once

in the hands of her enemies, the doom of the unfortunate Maid

was sealed. Sir Lionel de Ligny, her captor, gave his prisoner

to the count of Luxembourg, who yielded her to the Duke of

Burgundy, who surrendered her to the English, who delivered

her to the Inquisition, by which she was tried, condemned and

burned to death, at Rouen, as a witch (May 30, 1431). "It was

a complex crime, in which each party got rid of

responsibility, but in which the accusation rests with Paris

[the University of Paris was foremost among the pursuers of

the wonderful Maid], the cowardice with Luxembourg, the

sentence with the Inquisition, the blame and punishment with

England, and the disgrace and ingratitude with France. This

bartering about Joan by her enemies, of whom the fiercest were

her countrymen, had lasted six months. ... During these six

months, the influence of this goddess of war upon the troops

of Charles VII.--her spirit, which still guided the camp and

council of the king--the patriotic, though superstitious,

veneration of the people, which her captivity only

doubled,--and, lastly, the absence of the Duke of Burgundy,

... all these causes had brought reverse after reverse upon

the English, and a series of successes to Charles VII. Joan,

although absent, triumphed everywhere."

A. de Lamartine,

Memoirs of Celebrated Characters: Joan of Arc.

"It seems natural to ask what steps the King of France had

taken ... to avert her doom. If ever there had been a

sovereign indebted to a subject, that sovereign was Charles

VII., that subject Joan of Arc. ... Yet, no sooner was she

captive than she seems forgotten. We hear nothing of any

attempt at rescue, of any proposal for ransom; neither the

most common protest against her trial, nor the faintest threat

of reprisals; nay, not even after her death, one single

expression of regret! Charles continued to slumber in his

delicious retreats beyond the Loire, engrossed by dames of a

very different character from Joan's, and careless of the

heroine to whom his security in that indolence was due. Her

memory on the other hand was long endeared to the French

people, and long did they continue to cherish a romantic hope

that she might still survive.

{1177}

So strong was this feeling, that in the year 1436 advantage

was taken of it by a female imposter, who pretended to be Joan

of Arc escaped from her captivity. She fixed her abode at

Metz, and soon afterwards married a knight of good family, the

Sire des Armoises. Strange to say, it appears from a contemporary

chronicle, that Joan's two surviving brothers acknowledged

this woman as their sister. Stranger still, other records

prove that she made two visits to Orleans, one before and one

after her marriage, and on each occasion was hailed as the

heroine returned. ... The brothers of Joan of Arc might

possibly have hopes of profit by the fraud; but how the people

of Orleans, who had seen her so closely, who had fought side

by side with her in the siege, could be deceived as to the

person, we cannot understand, nor yet what motive they could

have in deceiving. The interest which Joan of Arc inspires at

the present day extends even to the house where she dwelt, and

to the family from which she sprung. Her father died of grief

at the tidings of her execution; her mother long survived it,

but fell into great distress. Twenty years afterwards we find

her in receipt of a pension from the city of Orleans; three

francs a month; 'to help her to live.' Joan's brothers and

their issue took, the name of Du Lis from the Lily of France,

which the King had assigned as their arms. ... It will be easy

to trace the true character of Joan. ... Nowhere do modern

annals display a character more pure--more generous--more

humble amidst fancied visions and undoubted victories--more

free from all taint of selfishness--more akin to the champions

and martyrs of old times. All this is no more than justice and

love of truth would require us to say. But when we find some

French historians, transported by an enthusiasm almost equal

to that of Joan herself, represent her us filling the part of

a general or statesman--as skilful in leading armies, or

directing councils--we must withhold our faith. Such skill,

indeed, from a country girl, without either education or

experience, would be, had she really possessed it, scarcely

less supernatural than the visions which she claimed. But the

facts are far otherwise. In affairs of state, Joan's voice was

never heard; in affairs of war, all her proposals will be

found to resolve themselves into two--either to rush headlong

upon the enemy, often in the very point where he was

strongest, or to offer frequent and public prayers to the

Almighty. We are not aware of any single instance in which her

military suggestions were not these, or nearly akin to these.

... Of Joan's person no authentic resemblance now remains. A

statue to her memory had been raised upon the bridge at

Orleans, at the sole charge ... of the matrons and maids of

that city: this probably preserved some degree of likeness,

but unfortunately perished in the religious wars of the

sixteenth century. There is no portrait extant; the two

earliest engravings are of 1606 and 1612, and they greatly

differ."

Lord Mahon,

Historical Essays,

pages 53-57.

"A few days before her death, when urged to resume her woman's

dress, she said: 'When I shall have accomplished that for

which I was sent from God, I will take the dress of a woman.'

Yet, in one sense her mission did end at Rheims. The faith of

the people still followed her, but her enemies--not the

English, but those in the heart of the court of Charles--began

to be too powerful for her. We may, indeed, conceive what a

hoard of envy and malice was gathering in the hearts of those

hardened politicians at seeing themselves superseded by a

peasant girl. They, accustomed to dark and tortuous ways,

could not comprehend or coalesce with the divine simplicity of

her designs and means. A successful intrigue was formed

against her. It was resolved to keep her still in the camp as

a name and a figure, but to take from her all power, all voice

in the direction of affairs. So accordingly it was done. ...

Her ways and habits during the year she was in arms are

attested by a multitude of witnesses. Dunois and the Duke of

Alençon bear testimony to what they term her extraordinary

talents for war, and to her perfect fearlessness in action;

but in all other things she was the most simple of creatures.

She wept when she first saw men slain in battle, to think that

they should have died without confession. She wept at the

abominable epithets which the English heaped upon her; but she

was without a trace of vindictiveness. 'Ah, Glacidas, Glacidas!'

she said to Sir William Glasdale at Orleans, 'you have called

me foul names; but I have pity upon your soul and the souls of

your men. Surrender to the King of Heaven!' And she was once

seen, resting the head of a wounded Englishman on her lap,

comforting and consoling him. In her diet she was abstemious

in the extreme, rarely eating until evening, and then for the

most part, only of bread and water sometimes mixed with wine.

In the field she slept in her armour, but when she came into a

city she always sought out some honourable matron, under whose

protection she placed herself; and there is wonderful evidence

of the atmosphere of purity which she diffused around her, her

very presence banishing from men's hearts all evil thoughts

and wishes. Her conversation, when it was not of the war, was

entirely of religion. She confessed often, and received

communion twice in the week. 'And it was her custom,' says

Dunois, 'at twilight every day, to retire to the church and

make the bells be rung for half an hour, and she gathered the

mendicant religious who followed the King's army, and made

them sing an antiphon of the Blessed Mother of God.' From

presumption, as from superstition, she was entirely free. When

women brought her crosses and chaplets to bless, she said:

'How can I bless them? Your own blessing would be as good as

mine.'"

J. O'Hagan,

Joan of Arc,

pages 61-66.

"What is to be thought of her? What is to be thought of the

poor shepherd girl from the hills and forests of Lorraine,

that--like the Hebrew shepherd boy from the hills and forests

of Judea--rose suddenly out of the quiet, out of the safety,

out of the religious inspiration, rooted in deep pastoral

solitudes, to a station in the van of armies, and to the more

perilous station at the right hand of kings? The Hebrew boy

inaugurated his patriotic mission by an act, by a victorious

act, such as no man could deny. But so did the girl of

Lorraine, if we read her story as it was read by those who saw

her nearest. Adverse armies bore witness to the boy as no

pretender; but so they did to the gentle girl. Judged by the

voices of all who saw them from a station of good-will, both

were found true and loyal to any promises involved in their

first acts. Enemies it was that made the difference between

their subsequent fortunes.

{1178}

The boy rose to a splendour, and a noonday prosperity, both

personal and public, that rang through the records of his

people, and became a by-word amongst his posterity for a

thousand years, until the sceptre was departing from Judah.

The poor, forsaken girl, on the contrary, drank not herself

from that cup of rest which she had secured for France. ...

This pure creature--pure from every suspicion of even a

visionary self-interest, even as she was pure in senses more

obvious--never once did this holy child, as regarded herself,

relax from her belief in the darkness that was travelling to

meet her. She might not prefigure the very manner of her

death; she saw not in vision, perhaps, the aerial altitude of

the fiery scaffold, the spectators without end on every road

pouring into Rouen as to a coronation, the surging smoke, the

volleying flames, the hostile faces all around, the pitying

eye that lurked but here and there, until nature and

imperishable truth broke loose from artificial

restraints;--these might not be apparent through the mists of

the hurrying future. But the voice that called her to death,

that she heard for ever."

T. De Quincey,

Joan of Arc (Collected Writings, volume 5).

A discussion of doubts that have been raised concerning the

death of Joan at the stake will be found in

Octave Delepierre's

Historical Difficulties and Contested Events,

chapter 8.

ALSO IN:

J. Michelet,

History of France,

book 10.

E. de Monstrelet,

Chronicles (Johnes' translation),

book 2, chapters 57-105.

H. Parr,

Life and Death of Joan of Arc.

J. Tuckey,

Joan of Arc.

Mrs. A. E. Bray,

Joan of Arc.

FRANCE: A. D. 1431-1453.

The English expelled.

"In Joan of Arc the English certainly destroyed the cause of

their late reverses. But the impulse had been given, and the

crime of base vengeance could not stay it. Fortune declared

every where and in every way against them. In vain was Henry

VI. brought to Paris, crowned at Notre Dame, and made to

exercise all the functions of royalty in court and parliament.

The duke of Burgundy, disgusted with the English, became at

last reconciled to Charles; who spared no sacrifice to win the

support of so powerful a subject. The amplest possible amends

were made for the murder of the late duke. The towns beyond

the Somme were ceded to Burgundy, and the reigning duke [but

not his successors] was exempted from all homage towards the

king of France. Such was the famous treaty of Arras [September

21, 1435], which restored to Charles his throne, and deprived

the English of all hopes of retaining their conquests in the

kingdom. The crimes and misrule of the Orleans faction were

forgotten; popularity ebbed in favour of Charles. ... One of

the gates of Paris was betrayed by the citizens to the

constable and Dunois [April, 1436]. Willoughby, the governor,

was obliged to shut himself up in the Bastile with his

garrison, from whence they retired to Rouen. Charles VII.

entered his capital, after twenty years' exclusion from it, in

November, 1437. Thenceforward the war lost its serious

character. Charles was gradually established on his throne,

and the struggle between the two nations was feebly carried

on, broken merely by a few sieges and enterprises, mostly to

the disadvantage of the English. ... There had been frequent

endeavours and conferences towards a peace between the French

and English. The demands on either side proved irreconcilable.

A truce was however concluded, in 1444, which lasted four

years; it was sealed by the marriage of Henry VI. with

Margaret of Anjou, daughter of Réné, and granddaughter of

Louis, who had perished while leading an army to the conquest

of Naples. ... In 1449 the truce was allowed to expire. The

quarrels of York and Lancaster had commenced, and England was

unable to defend her foreign possessions. Normandy was

invaded. The gallant Talbot could not preserve Rouen with a

disaffected population, and Charles recovered without loss of

blood [1449] the second capital of his dominions. The only

blow struck by the English for the preservation of Normandy

was at Fourmigny near Bayeux. ... Normandy was for ever lost

to the English after this action or skirmish. The following

year Guyenne was invaded by the count de Dunois. He met with

no resistance. The great towns at that day had grown wealthy,

and their maxim was to avoid a siege at all hazards." Lord

Talbot was killed in an engagement at Castillon (1450), and

"with that hero expired the last hopes of his country in

regard to France. Guyenne was lost [A. D. 1453] as well as

Normandy, and Calais remained to England the only fruit of so

much blood spilt and so many victories achieved."

E. E. Crowe,

History of France,

volume 1, chapter 4.

ALSO IN:

J. Michelet,

History of France,

book 11.

E. de Monstrelet,

Chronicles (Johnes' translation),

book 2, chapter 109, book 3, chapter 65.

See, also,

AQUITAINE: A. D. 1360-1453.

FRANCE: A. D. 1438.

Pragmatic Sanction of Charles VII.

Reforming decrees of the Council of Basel adopted for the

Gallican church.

After the rupture between the reforming Council of Basel and

Pope Eugenius IV. (see PAPACY: A. D. 1431-1448), Charles VII.

of France "determined to adopt in his own kingdom such of the

decrees of the Council as were for his advantage, seeing that

no opposition could be made by the Pope. Accordingly a Synod

was summoned at Bourges on May 1, 1438. The embassadors of

Pope and Council urged their respective causes. It was agreed

that the King should write to Pope and Council to stay their

hands in proceeding against one another; meanwhile, that the

reformation be not lost, some of the Basel decrees should be

maintained in France by royal authority. The results of the

synod's deliberation were laid before the King, and on July 7

were made binding as a pragmatic sanction on the French

Church. The Pragmatic Sanction enacted that General Councils

were to be held every ten years, and recognised the authority

of the Council of Basel. The Pope was no longer to reserve any

of the greater ecclesiastical appointments, but elections were

to be duly made by the rightful patrons. Grants to benefices

in expectancy, 'whence all agree that many evils arise,' were

to cease, as well as reservations. In all cathedral churches,

one prebend was to be given to a theologian who had studied

for ten years in a university, and who was to lecture or

preach at least once a week. Benefices were to be conferred in

future, one-third on graduates, two-thirds on deserving

clergy. Appeals to Rome, except for important causes, were

forbidden. The number of Cardinals was to be 24, each of the

age of 30 at least. Annates and first-fruits were no longer to

be paid to the Pope, but only the necessary legal fees on

institution. Regulations were made for greater reverence in

the conduct of Divine service; prayers were to be said by the

priest in an audible voice; mummeries in churches were

forbidden, and clerical concubinage was to be punished by

suspension for three months. Such were the chief reforms of

its own special grievances, which France wished to establish.

It was the first step in the assertion of the rights of

national Churches to arrange for themselves the details of

their own ecclesiastical organisation."

M. Creighton,

History of the Papacy during the Period of the Reformation,

book 3, chapter 9 (volume 2).

{1179}

FRANCE: A. D. 1447.

Origin of the claims of the house of Orleans to the duchy of

Milan.

See MILAN: A. D. 1447-1454.

FRANCE: A. D. 1453-1461.

The reconstructed kingdom.

The new plant of Absolutism.

"At the expulsion of the English, France emerged from the

chaos with an altered character and new features of

government. The royal authority and supreme jurisdiction of

the parliament were universally recognised. Yet there was a

tendency towards insubordination left among the great

nobility, arising in part from the remains of old feudal

privileges, but still more from that lax administration which,

in the convulsive struggles of the war, had been suffered to

prevail. In the south were some considerable vassals, the

houses of Foix, Albret, and Armagnac, who, on account of their

distance from the seat of empire, had always maintained a very

independent conduct. The dukes of Britany and Burgundy were of

a more formidable character, and might rather be ranked among

foreign powers than privileged subjects. The princes, too, of

the royal blood, who, during the late reign, had learned to

partake or contend for the management, were ill-inclined

towards Charles VII., himself jealous, from old recollections

of their ascendancy. They saw that the constitution was

verging rapidly towards an absolute monarchy, from the

direction of which they would studiously be excluded. This

apprehension gave rise to several attempts at rebellion during

the reign of Charles VII., and to the war, commonly entitled,

for the Public Weal ('du bien public'), under Louis XI. Among

the pretenses alleged by the revolters in each of these, the

injuries of the people were not forgotten; but from the people

they received small support. Weary of civil dissension, and

anxious for a strong government to secure them from

depredation, the French had no inducement to intrust even

their real grievances to a few malcontent princes, whose

regard for the common good they had much reason to distrust.

Every circumstance favoured Charles VII. and his son in the

attainment of arbitrary power. The country was pillaged by

military ruffians. Some of these had been led by the dauphin

to a war in Germany, but the remainder still infested the high

roads and villages. Charles established his companies of

ordonnance, the basis of the French regular army, in order to

protect the country from such depredators. They consisted of

about nine thousand soldiers, all cavalry, of whom fifteen

hundred were heavy-armed; a force not very considerable, but

the first, except mere body-guards, which had been raised in

any part of Europe as a national standing army. These troops

were paid out of the produce of a permanent tax, called the

taille; an innovation still more important than the former.

But the present benefit cheating the people, now prone to

submissive habits, little or no opposition was made, except in

Guienne, the inhabitants of which had speedy reason to regret

the mild government of England, and vainly endeavoured to

return to its protection. It was not long before the new

despotism exhibited itself in its harshest character. Louis

XI., son of Charles VII., who during his father's reign, had

been connected with the discontented princes, came to the

throne greatly endowed with those virtues and vices which

conspire to the success of a king."

H. Hallam,

The Middle Ages,

chapter 1, part 2.

FRANCE: A. D. 1458-1461.

Renewed submission of Genoa to the King, and renewed revolt.

See GENOA: A. D. 1458-1464.

FRANCE: A. D. 1461.

Accession of King Louis XI.

Contemporary portrait of him by Commines.

"Of all the princes that I ever knew, the wisest and most

dexterous to extricate himself out of any danger or difficulty

in time of adversity, was our master King Louis XI. He was the

humblest in his conversation and habit, and the most painful

and indefatigable to win over any man to his side that he

thought capable of doing him either mischief or service:

though he was often refused, he would never give over a man

that he wished to gain, but still pressed and continued his

insinuations, promising him largely, and presenting him with

such sums and honours as he knew would gratify his ambition;

and for such as he had discarded in time of peace and

prosperity, he paid dear (when he had occasion for them) to

recover them again; but when he had once reconciled them, he

retained no enmity towards them for what had passed, but

employed them freely for the future. He was naturally kind and

indulgent to persons of mean estate, and hostile to all great

men who had no need of him. Never prince was so conversable,

nor so inquisitive as he, for his desire was to know everybody

he could; and indeed he knew all persons of any authority or

worth in England, Spain, Portugal and Italy, in the

territories of the Dukes of Burgundy and Bretagne, and among

his own subjects; and by those qualities he preserved the

crown upon his head, which was in much danger by the enemies

he had created to himself upon his accession to the throne.

But above all, his great bounty and liberality did him the

greatest service: and yet, as he behaved himself wisely in

time of distress, so when he thought himself a little out of

danger, though it were but by a truce, he would disoblige the

servants and officers of his court by mean and petty ways,

which were little to his advantage; and as for peace, he could

hardly endure the thoughts of it. He spoke slightingly of most

people, and rather before their faces, than behind their

backs, unless he was afraid of them, and of that sort there

were a great many, for he was naturally somewhat timorous.

When he had done himself any prejudice by his talk, or was

apprehensive he should do so, and wished to make amends, he

would say to the person whom he had disobliged, 'I am sensible

my tongue has done me a great deal of mischief; but, on the

other hand, it has sometimes done me much good; however, it is

but reason I should make some reparation for the injury.' And

he never used this kind of apologies to any person, but he

granted some favour to the person to whom he made it, and it

was always of considerable amount. It is certainly a great

blessing from God upon any prince to have experienced

adversity as well as prosperity, good as well as evil, and

especially if the good outweighs the evil, as it did in the

king our master.

{1180}

I am of opinion that the troubles he was involved in, in his

youth, when he fled from his father, and resided six years

together with Philip Duke of Burgundy, were of great service

to him; for there he learned to be complaisant to such as he

had occasion to use, which was no slight advantage of

adversity. As soon as he found himself a powerful and crowned

king, his mind was wholly bent upon revenge; but he quickly

found the inconvenience of this, repented by degrees of his

indiscretion, and made sufficient reparation for his folly and

error, by regaining those he had injured, as shall be related

hereafter. Besides, I am very confident that if his education

had not been different from the usual education of such nobles

as I have seen in France, he could not so easily have worked

himself out of his troubles; for they are brought up to

nothing but to make themselves ridiculous, both in their

clothes and discourse; they have no knowledge of letters; no

wise man is suffered to come near them, to improve their

understandings; they have governors who manage their business,

but they do nothing themselves."--Such is the account of Louis

XI. which Philip de Commines gives in one of the early

chapters of his delightful Memoirs. In a later chapter he

tells naively of the king's suspicions and fears, and of what

he suffered, at the end of his life, as the penalty of his

cruel and crafty dealings with his subjects: "Some five or six

months before his death, he began to suspect everybody,

especially those who were most capable and deserving of the

administration of affairs. He was afraid of his son, and

caused him to be kept close, so that no man saw or discoursed

with him, but by his special command. At last he grew

suspicious of his daughter, and of his son-in-law the Duke of

Bourbon, and required an account of what persons came to speak

with them at Plessis, and broke up a council which the Duke of

Bourbon was holding there, by his order. ... Behold, then, if

he had caused many to live under him in continual fear and

apprehension, whether it was not returned to him again; for of

whom could he be secure when he was afraid of his son-in-law,

his daughter, and his own son? I speak this not only of him,

but of all other princes who desire to be feared, that

vengeance never falls on them till they grow old, and then, as

a just penance, they are afraid of everybody themselves; and

what grief must it have been to this poor King to be tormented

with such terrors and passions? He was still attended by his

physician, Master James Coctier, to whom in five months' time

he had given fifty-four thousand crowns in ready money,

besides the bishopric of Amiens for his nephew, and other

great offices and estates for himself and his friends; yet

this doctor used him very roughly indeed; one would not have

given such outrageous language to one's servants as he gave

the King, who stood in such awe of him, that he durst not

forbid him his presence. It is true he complained of his

impudence afterwards, but he durst not change him as he had

done all the rest of his servants; because he had told him

after a most audacious manner one day, 'I know well that some

time or other you will dismiss me from court, as you have done

the rest; but be sure (and he confirmed it with a great oath)

you shall not live eight days after it'; with which expression

the King was so terrified, that ever after he did nothing but

flatter and bribe him, which must needs have been a great

mortification to a prince who had been humbly obeyed all his

life by so many good and brave men. The King had ordered

several cruel prisons to be made; some were cages of iron, and

some of wood, but all were covered with iron plates both

within and without, with terrible locks, about eight feet wide

and seven high; the first contriver of them was the Bishop of

Verdun, who was immediately put in the first of them that was

made, where he continued fourteen years. Many bitter curses he

has had since for his invention, and some from me as I lay in

one of them eight months together in the minority of our

present King. He also ordered heavy and terrible fetters to be

made in Germany, and particularly a certain ring for the feet,

which was extremely hard to be opened, and fitted like an iron

collar, with a thick weighty chain, and a great globe of iron

at the end of it, most unreasonably heavy, which engines were

called the King's Nets. ... As in his time this barbarous

variety of prisons was invented, so before he died he himself

was in greater torment, and more terrible apprehension than

those whom he had imprisoned; which I look upon as a great

mercy towards him, and as it part of his purgatory; and I have

mentioned it here to show that there is no person, of what

station or dignity soever, but suffers some time or other,

either publicly or privately, especially if he has caused

other people to suffer. The King, towards the latter end of

his days, caused his castle of Plessis-les-Tours to be

encompassed with great bars of iron in the form of thick

grating, and at the four corners of the house four

sparrow-nests of iron, strong, massy, and thick, were built.

The grates were without the wall on the other side of the

ditch, and sank to the bottom. Several spikes of iron were

fastened into the wall, set as thick by one another as was

possible, and each furnished with three or four points. He

likewise placed ten bow-men in the ditches, to shoot at any

man that durst approach the castle before the opening of the

gates; and he ordered they should lie in the ditches, but

retire to the sparrow-nests upon occasion. He was sensible

enough that this fortification was too weak to keep out an

army, or any great body of men, but he had no fear of such an

attack; his great apprehension was, that some of the nobility

of his kingdom, having intelligence within, might attempt to

make themselves masters of the castle by night. ... Is it

possible then to keep a prince (with any regard to his

quality) in a closer prison than he kept himself? The cages

which were made for other people were about eight feet square;

and he (though so great a monarch) had but a small court of

the castle to walk in, and seldom made use of that, but

generally kept himself in the gallery, out of which he went

into the chambers on his way to mass, but never passed through

the court. ... I have not recorded these things merely to

represent our master as a suspicious and mistrustful prince;

but to show, that by the patience which he expressed in his

sufferings (like those which he inflicted on other people),

they may be looked upon, in my judgment, as a punishment which

our Lord inflicted upon him in this world, in order to deal

more mercifully with him in the next, as well in regard to

those things before-mentioned as to the distempers of his

body, which were great and painful, and much dreaded by him

before they came upon him; and, likewise, that those princes

who may be his successors, may learn by his example to be more

tender and indulgent to their subjects, and less severe in

their punishments than our master had been: although I will

not censure him, or say I ever saw a better prince; for though

he oppressed his subjects himself he would never see them

injured by anybody else."

Philip de Commines,

Memoirs,

book 1, chapter 10,

and book 6, chapter 11.

{1181}

FRANCE: A. D. 1461-1468.

The character and reign of Louis XI.

The League of the Public Weal.

"Except St. Louis, he [Louis XI.] was the first, as, indeed

(with the solitary exception of Louis Philippe), he is still

the only king of France whose mind was ever prepared for the

duties of that high station by any course of severe and

systematic study. Before he ascended the throne of his

ancestors he had profoundly meditated the great Italian

authors, and the institutions and maxims of the Italian

republics. From those lessons he had derived a low esteem of

his fellowmen, and especially of those among them upon whom

wealth, and rank, and power had descended as an hereditary

birthright. ... He clearly understood, and pursued with

inflexible steadfastness of purpose the elevation of his

country and the grandeur of his own royal house and lineage;

but he pursued them with a torpid imagination, a cold heart,

and a ruthless will. He regarded mankind as a physiologist

contemplates the living subjects of his science, or as a

chess-player surveys the pieces on his board. ... It has been

said of Louis XI., that the appearance of the men of the

Revolution of 1789 first made him intelligible. ... Louis was

the first of the terrible Ideologists of France--of that class

of men who, to enthrone an idolized idea, will offer whole

hecatombs of human sacrifices at the shrine of their idol. The

Idea of Louis was that of levelling all powers in the state,

in order that the administration of the affairs, the

possession of the wealth, and the enjoyment of the honours of

his kingdom might be grasped by himself and his successors as

their solitary and unrivalled dominion. ... Before his

accession to the throne, all the great fiefs into which France

had been divided under the earlier Capetian kings had, with

the exception of Bretagne, been either annexed to the royal

domain, or reduced to a state of dependence on the crown. But,

under the name of Apanages, these ancient divisions of the

kingdom into separate principalities had reappeared. The

territorial feudalism of the Middle Ages seemed to be reviving

in the persons of the younger branches of the royal house. The

Dukes of Burgundy had thus become the rulers of a state [see

BURGUNDY: A. D. 1467] which, under the government of more

politic princes, might readily, in fulfillment of their

desires, have attained the rank of an independent kingdom. The

Duke of Bretagne, still asserting the peculiar privileges of

his duchy, was rather an ally than a subject of the king of

France. Charles, Duke of Berri, the brother of Louis, aspired

to the possession of the same advantages. And these three

great territorial potentates, in alliance with the Duc de

Bourbon and the Comte de St. Pol, the brothers-in-law of Louis

and of his queen, united together to form that confederacy

against him to which they gave the very inappropriate title of

La Ligue du Bien Public. It was, however, a title which

recognized the growing strength of the Tiers Étât, and of that

public opinion to which the Tiers Étât at once gave utterance

and imparted authority. Selfish ambition was thus compelled to

assume the mask of patriotism. The princes veiled their

insatiable appetite for their own personal advantages under

the popular and plausible demands of administrative

reforms--of the reduction of imposts--of the government of

the people by their representatives--and, consequently, of the

convocation of the States-General. To these pretensions Louis

was unable to make any effectual resistance." An indecisive

but bloody battle was fought at Montlehery, near Paris (July

16, 1465), from which both armies retreated with every

appearance of defeat. The capital was besieged ineffectually

for some weeks by the League; then the king yielded, or seemed

to do so, and the Treaty of Conflans was signed. "He assented,

in terms at least, to all the demands of his antagonists. He

granted to the Duke of Berri the duchy of Normandy as an

apanage transmissible in perpetuity to his male heirs. ... The

confederates then laid down their arms. The wily monarch bided

his time. He had bestowed on them advantages which he well

knew would destroy their popularity and so subvert the basis

of their power, and which he also knew the state of public

opinion would not allow them to retain. To wrest those

advantages from their hands, it was only necessary to comply

with their last stipulation, and to convene the

States-General. They met accordingly, at Tours, on the 6th of

April, 1468." As Louis had anticipated--or, rather, as he had

planned--the States-General cancelled the grant of Normandy to

the Duke of Berri (which the king had been able already to

recover possession of, owing to quarrels between the dukes of

Berri and Brittany) and, generally, took away from the princes

of the League nearly all that they had extorted in the Treaty

of Conflans. On the express invitation of the king they

appointed a commission to reform abuses in the

government--which commission "attempted little and effected

nothing"--and, then, having assisted the cunning king to

overcome his threatening nobles, the States-General were

dissolved, to meet no more while Louis XI. occupied the

throne. In a desperate situation he had used the dangerous

weapon against his enemies with effect; he was too prudent to

draw it from the sheath a second time.

Sir J. Stephen,

Lectures on the History of France,

lecture 11.

"The career of Louis XI. presents a curious problem. How could

a ruler whose morality fell below that of Jonathan Wild yet

achieve some of the greatest permanent results of patriotic

statesmanship, and be esteemed not only by himself but by so

calm an observer as Commines the model of kingly virtue? As to

Louis's moral character and principles, or want of principle,

not a doubt can be entertained. To say he committed the acts

of a villain is to fall far short of the truth. ... He

possessed a kind of religious belief, but it was a species of

religion which a respectable heathen would have scorned. He

attempted to bribe heaven, or rather the saints, just as he

attempted to win over his Swiss allies--that is, by gifts of

money. ... Yet this man, who was daunted by no cruelty, and

who could be bound by no oath save one, did work which all

statesmen must admire, and which French patriots must

fervently approve.

{1182}

He was the creator of modern France. When he came to the

throne it seemed more than likely that an utterly selfish and

treacherous nobility would tear the country in pieces. The

English still threatened to repeat the horrors of their

invasions. The House of Burgundy overbalanced the power of the

crown, and stimulated lawlessness throughout the whole

country. The peasantry were miserably oppressed, and the

middle classes could not prosper for want of that rule of law

which is the first requisite for civilization. When Louis

died, the existence of France and the power of the French

crown was secured: 'He had extended the frontiers of his

kingdom; Picardy, Provence, Burgundy, Anjou, Maine, Roussillon

had been compelled to acknowledge the immediate authority of

the crown.' He had crushed the feudal oligarchy; he had seen

his most dangerous enemy destroyed by the resistance of the

Swiss; he had baffled the attempt to construct a state which

would have imperilled the national existence of France; he had

put an end to all risk of English invasion; and he left France

the most powerful country in Europe. Her internal government

was no doubt oppressive, but, at any rate, it secured the rule

of law; and his schemes for her benefit were still unfinished.

He died regretting that he could not carry out his plans for

the reform of the law and for the protection of commerce; and,

in the opinion of Commines, if God had granted him the grace

of living five or six years more, he would greatly have

benefited his realm. He died commending his soul to the

intercession of the Virgin, and the last words caught from his

lips were: 'Lord, in thee have I trusted; let me never be

confounded.' Nor should this be taken as the expression of

hopeless self-delusion or gratuitous hypocrisy. In the opinion

of Commines, uttered after the king's death, 'he was more

wise, more liberal, and more virtuous in all things than any

contemporary sovereign.' The expressions of Commines were, it

may be said, but the echo of the low moral tone of the age.

This, no doubt, is true; but the fact that the age did not

condemn acts which, taken alone, seem to argue the utmost

depravity, still needs explanation. The matter is the more

worthy of consideration because Louis represents, though in an

exaggerated form, the vices and virtues of a special body of

rulers. He was the incarnation, so to speak, of kingcraft. The

word and the idea it represents have now become out of date,

but for about two centuries--say, roughly, from the middle of

the seventeenth century--the idea of a great king was that of

a monarch who ruled by means of cunning, intrigue, and

disregard of ordinary moral rules. We here come across the

fact which explains both the career and the reputation of

Louis and of others, such as Henry VII. of England, who were

masters of kingcraft. The universal feeling of the time,

shared by subjects no less than by rulers, was that a king was

not bound by the rules of morality, and especially by the

rules of honesty, which bind other men. Until you realize this

fact, nothing is more incomprehensible than the adulation

lavished by men such as Bacon or Casaubon on a ruler such as

James I. ... The real puzzle is to ascertain how this feeling

that kings were above the moral law came into existence. The

facts of history afford the necessary explanation. When the

modern European world was falling into shape the one thing

required for national prosperity was the growth of a power

which might check the disorders of the feudal nobility, and

secure for the mass of the people the blessings of an orderly

government. The only power which, in most cases, could achieve

this end, was the crown. In England the monarchs put an end to

the wars of the nobility. In France the growth of the monarchy

secured not only internal quiet, but protection from external

invasion. In these and in other cases the interest of the

crown and the interest of the people became for a time

identical. ... Acts which would have seemed villainous when

done to promote a purely private interest, became mere devices

of statesmanship when performed in the interest of the public.

The maxims that the king can do no wrong, and that the safety

of the people is the highest law, blended together in the

minds of ambitious rulers. The result was the production of

men like Louis XI."

A. V. Dicey,

Willert's Louis XI.

(The Nation, December 7, 1876).

"A careful examination of the reign of Louis the Eleventh has

particularly impressed upon me one fact, that the ends for

which he toiled and sinned throughout his whole life were

attained at last rather by circumstances than by his labours.

The supreme object of all his schemes was to crush that most

formidable of all his foes, Burgundy. And yet had Charles

confined his ambition within reasonable limits, had he

possessed an ordinary share of statecraft, and, above all,

could he have controlled those fiery passions, which drove him

to the verge of madness, he would have won the game quite

easily. Louis lacked one of the essential qualities of

statecraft--patience; and was wholly destitute of that

necessity of ambition--boldness. An irritable restlessness

was one of the salient points of his character. His courtiers

and attendants were ever intriguing to embroil him in war,

'because,' says Comines, 'the nature of the King was such,

that unless he was at war with some foreign prince, he would

certainly find some quarrel or other at home with his

servants, domestics, or officers, for his mind must be always

working.' His mood was ever changing, and he was by turns

confiding, suspicious, avaricious, prodigal, audacious, and

timid. He frequently nullified his most crafty schemes by

impatience for the result. He would sow the seed with the

utmost care, but he could not wait for the fructification. In

this he was false to the practice of those Italian statesmen

who were avowedly his models. It was this irritable

restlessness which brought down upon him the hatred of all

classes, from the noble to the serf; for we find him at one

time cunningly bidding for popularity, and immediately

afterwards destroying all he had gained by some rash and

inconsiderate act. His extreme timidity hampered the execution

of all his plans. He had not even the boldness of the coward

who will fight when all the strength is on his own side.

Constantly at war, during a reign of twenty-two years there

were fought but two battles, Montlehéry and Guingette, both of

which, strange to say, were undecided, and both of which were

fought against his will and counsel. ... He left France larger

by one-fourth than he had inherited it; but out of the five

provinces which he acquired, Provence was bequeathed him,

Roussillon was pawned to him by the usurping King of Navarre,

and Burgundy was won for him by the Swiss. His triumphs were

much more the result of fortune than the efforts of his own

genius."

Louis the Eleventh

(Temple Bar, volume 46, pages 523-524).

ALSO IN:

J. Michelet,

History of France,

book 13.

P. F. Willert,

The Reign of Louis XI.

J. F. Kirk,

History of Charles the Bold,

book 1, chapters 4-6.

P. de Commines,

Memoirs,

book 1.

E. de Monstrelet,

Chronicles

(Johnes' translation),

book 3, chapters 99-153.

{1183}

FRANCE: A. D. 1467-1477.

The troubles of Louis XI. with Charles the Bold, of Burgundy.

Death of the Duke and Louis' acquisition of Burgundy.

See BURGUNDY: A. D. 1467-1468, to 1477.

FRANCE: A. D. 1483.

The kingdom as left by Louis XI.

Louis XI., who died Aug. 30, A. D. 1483, "had joined to the

crown Berry, the apanage of his brother, Provence, the duchy

of Burgundy, Anjou, Maine, Ponthieu, the counties of Auxerre,

of Mâcon, Charolais, the Free County, Artois, Marche,

Armagnac, Cerdagne, and Roussilon. ... The seven latter

provinces did not yet remain irrevocably united with France:

one part was given anew in apanage, and the other part

restored to foreign sovereigns, and only returned one by one

to the crown of France. ... The principal work of Louis XI.

was the abasement of the second feudality, which had raised

itself on the ruins of the first, and which, without him,

would have replunged France into anarchy. The chiefs of that

feudality were, however, more formidable, since, for the most

part, they belonged to the blood royal of France. Their

powerful houses, which possessed at the accession of that

prince a considerable part of the kingdom, were those of

Orleans, Anjou, Burgundy, and Bourbon. They found themselves

much weakened at his death, and dispossessed in great part, as

we have seen in the history of the reign, by confiscations,

treaties, gifts or heritages. By the side of these houses,

which issued from that of France, there were others whose

power extended still, at this period, in the limits of France

proper, over vast domains. Those of Luxembourg and La Mark

possessed great wealth upon the frontier of the north; that of

Vaudemont had inherited Lorraine and the duchy of Bar; the

house of La Tour was powerful in Auvergne; in the south the

houses of Foix and Albert ruled, the first in the valley of

Ariége, the second between the Adour and the Pyrenees. In the

west the house of Brittany had guarded its independence; but

the moment approached when this beautiful province was to be

forever united with the crown. Lastly, two foreign sovereigns

held possessions in France; the Pope had Avignon and the

county Venaissin; and the Duke of Savoy possessed, between the

Rhone and the Saône, Bugey and Valromey. The time was still

distant when the royal authority would be seen freely

exercised through every territory comprised in the natural

limits of the kingdom. But Louis XI. did much to attain this

aim, and after him no princely or vassal house was powerful

enough to resist the crown by its own forces, and to put the

throne in peril."

E. de Bonnechose,

History of France,

volume 1, pages 315-318,

and foot-note.

FRANCE: A. D. 1483.

Accession of King Charles VIII.

FRANCE: A. D. 1485-1487.

The League of the Princes.

Charles VIII., son and successor of Louis XI., came to the

throne at the age of thirteen, on the death of his father in

1483. His eldest sister, Anne, married to the Lord of Beaujeu,

made herself practically regent of the kingdom, by sheer

ability and force of character; and ruled during the minority,

pursuing the lines of her father's policy. The princes of the

blood-royal, with the Dukes of Orleans and Bourbon at their

head, formed a league against her. They were supported by many

nobles, including Philip de Commines, the Count of Dunois and

the Prince of Orange. They also received aid from the Duke of

Brittany, and from Maximilian of Austria, who now controlled

the Netherlands. Anne's general, La Trémouille, defeated the

league in a decisive battle (A. D. 1487) near St. Aubin du

Cormier, where the Duke of Orleans, the Prince of Orange, and

many nobles and knights were made prisoners. The Duke and the

Prince were sent to Anne, who shut them up in strong places,

while most of their companions were summarily executed.

E. de Bonnechose,

History of France,

volume 1, book 3, chapter 3.

ALSO IN:

F. P. Guizot,

Popular History of France,

ch. 26.

FRANCE: A. D. 1491.

Brittany, the last of the great fiefs, united to the crown.

The end of the Feudal System.

See BRITTANY: A. D. 1491.

FRANCE: A. D. 1492-1515.

The reigns of Charles VIII. and Louis XII.

Their Italian Expeditions and Wars.

The effects on France.

Beginning of the Renaissance.

Louis XI. was succeeded by his son, Charles VIII., a boy of

thirteen years, whose elder sister Anne governed the kingdom

ably until he came of age. She dealt firmly with a rebellion

of the nobles and suppressed it. She frustrated an intended

marriage of Anne of Brittany with Maximilian of Austria, which

would have drawn the last of the great semi-independent fiefs

into a dangerous relationship, and she made Charles instead of

his rival the husband of the Breton heiress. When Charles, who

had little intelligence, assumed the government, he was

excited with dreams of making good the pretensions of the

Second House of Anjou to the Kingdom of Naples. Those

pretensions, which had been bequeathed to Louis XI., and which

Charles VIII. had now inherited, had the following origin: "In

the eleventh century, Robert Guiscard, of the Norman family of

Hauteville, at the head of a band of adventurers, took

possession of Sicily and South Italy, then in a state of

complete anarchy. Roger, the son of Robert, founded the

Kingdom of the Two Sicilies under the Pope's suzerainty. In

1189 the Guiscard family became extinct, whereupon the German

Emperor laid claim to the kingdom in right of his wife

Constance, daughter of one of the Norman kings. The Roman

Pontiffs, dreading such powerful neighbours, were adverse to

the arrangement, and in 1254 King Conrad, being succeeded by

his son Conradin, still a minor, furnished a pretext for

bestowing the crown of the Two Sicilies on Charles d' Anjou,

brother of St. Louis. Manfred, guardian of the boy Conradin,

and a natural son of the Emperor Frederick II., raised an army

against Charles d' Anjou, but was defeated, and fell in the

encounter of 1266. Two years later, Prince Conradin was

cruelly beheaded in Naples. Before his death, however, he made

a will, by which he invested Peter III. of Aragon, son-in-law

of Manfred, with full power over the Two Sicilies, exhorting

him to avenge his death [see ITALY: A. D. 1250-1268].

{1184}

This bequest was the origin of the rivalry between the houses

of Aragon and Anjou, a rivalry which developed into open

antagonism when the island of Sicily was given up to Peter of

Aragon and his descendants, while Charles d' Anjou still held

Naples for himself and his heirs [see ITALY: A. D. 1282-1300].

In 1435 Joan II., Queen of Naples, bequeathed her estates to

Alfonso V. of Aragon, surnamed the Magnanimous, to the

exclusion of Louis III. of Anjou. After a long and bloody

struggle, Alfonso succeeded in driving the Anjou dynasty out

of Naples [see ITALY: A. D. 1343-1389, and 1386-1414]. Louis

III. was the last representative of this once-powerful family.

He returned to France, survived his defeat two-and-twenty

years, and by his will left all his rights to the Count of

Maine, his nephew, who, on his death, transferred them to

Louis XI. The wily Louis was not tempted to claim this

worthless legacy. His successor, Charles VIII., less

matter-of-fact, and more romantic, was beguiled into a series

of brilliant, though sterile, expeditions, disastrous to

national interests, neglecting the Flemish provinces, the

liege vassals of France, and thoroughly French at heart.

Charles VIII. put himself at the head of his nobles, made a

triumphal entry into Naples and returned without having gained

an inch of territory [see ITALY: A. D. 1492-1494, and 1494-1496].

De Commines judges the whole affair a mystery; it was,

in fact, one of those dazzling and chivalrous adventures with

which the French delighted to astonish Europe. Louis XII.,

like Charles VIII. [whom he succeeded in 1498], proclaimed his

right to Naples, and also to the Duchy of Milan, inherited

from his grandmother, Valentine de Visconti. These pretended

rights were more than doubtful. The Emperor Wenceslas, on

conferring the duchy on the Viscontis, excluded women from the

inheritance, and both Louis XI. and Charles VIII. recognised

the validity of the Salic law in Milan by concluding an

alliance with the Sforzas. The seventeen years of Louis XII.'s

reign was absorbed in these Italian wars, in which the French

invariably began by victory, and as invariably ended in

defeat. The League of Cambrai, the Battles of Agnadel,

Ravenna, Novara, the Treaties of Grenada and Blois, are the

principal episodes of this unlucky campaign."

C. Coignet,

Francis the First and His Times,

chapter 3.

See, also, ITALY: A. D. 1499-1500.

"The warriors of France came back from Italy with the wonders

of the South on their lips and her treasures in their hands.

They brought with them books and paintings, they brought with

them armour inlaid with gold and silver, tapestries enriched

with precious metals, embroidered clothing, and even household

furniture. Distributed by many hands in many different places,

each precious thing became a separate centre of initiative

power. The châteaux of the country nobles boasted the

treasures which had fallen to the share of their lords at

Genoa or at Naples; and the great women of the court were

eager to divide the spoil. The contagion spread rapidly. Even

in the most fantastic moment of Gothic inspiration, the French

artist gave evidence that his right hand obeyed a national

instinct for order, for balance, for completeness, and that

his eye preferred, in obedience to a national predilection,

the most refined harmonies of colour. Step by step he had been

feeling his way; now, the broken link of tradition was again

made fast; the workmen of Paris and the workmen of Athens

joined hands, united by the genius of Italy. It must not,

however, be supposed that no intercourse had previously

existed between France and Italy. The roads by Narbonne and

Lyons were worn by many feet. The artists of Tours and

Poitiers, the artists of Paris and Dijon, were alike familiar

with the path to Rome. But an intercourse, hitherto

restricted, was rendered by the wars of Charles VIII. all but

universal. ... Cruelly as the Italians had suffered at the

hands of Charles VIII. they still looked to France for help;

they knew that though they had been injured they had not been

betrayed. But the weak and generous impulses of Charles VIII.

found no place in the councils of his successors. ... The doom

of Italy was pronounced. Substantially the compact was this.

Aided by Borgia, the French were to destroy the free cities of

the north, and in return France was to aid Borgia in breaking

the power of the independent nobles who yet resisted Papal

aggression in the south. In July 1499 the work began. At first

the Italians failed to realise what had taken place. When the

French army entered the Milanese territory the inhabitants

fraternised with the troops, Milan, Genoa, Pavia opened their

gates with joy. But in a few months the course of events, in

the south, aroused a dread anxiety. There, Borgia, under the

protection of the French king, and with the assistance of the

French arms, was triumphantly glutting his brutal rage and

lust, whilst Frenchmen were forced to look on helpless and

indignant. Milan, justly terrified, made an attempt to throw

herself on the mercy of her old ruler. To no purpose. Louis

went back over the Alps, leaving a strong hand and a strong

garrison in Milan, and dragging with him the unfortunate Louis

Sforza, a miserable proof of the final destruction of the most

brilliant court of Upper Italy. ... By the campaign of 1507,

the work, thus begun, was consummated. The ancient spirit of

independence still lingered in Genoa, and Venice was not yet

crushed. There were still fresh laurels to be won. In this

Holy War the Pope and the Emperor willingly joined forces with

France. ... The deathblow was first given to Genoa. She was

forced, Marot tells us, 'la corde au coul, la glaive sous la

gorge, implorer la clémence de ce prince.' Venice was next

traitorously surprised and irreparably injured. Having thus

brilliantly achieved the task of first destroying the lettered

courts, and next the free cities of Italy, Louis died,

bequeathing to François I. the shame of fighting out a

hopeless struggle for supremacy against allies who, no longer

needing help, had combined to drive the French from the field.

There was, indeed, one other duty to be performed. The

shattered remains of Italian civilisation might be collected,

and Paris might receive the men whom Italy could no longer

employ. The French returned to France empty of honour, gorged

with plunder, satiated with rape and rapine, boasting of

cities sacked, and garrisons put to the sword. They had sucked

the lifeblood of Italy, but her death brought new life to

France. The impetus thus acquired by art and letters coincided

with a change in political and social constitutions. The

gradual process of centralisation which had begun with Louis

XI. transformed the life of the whole nation. ... The royal

court began to take proportions hitherto unknown.

{1185}

It gradually became a centre which gathered together the rich,

the learned, and the skilled. Artists, who had previously been

limited in training, isolated in life, and narrowed in

activity by the rigid conservative action of the great guilds

and corporations, were thus brought into immediate contact

with the best culture of their day. For the Humanists did not

form a class apart, and their example incited those with whom

they lived to effort after attainments as varied as their own,

whilst the Court made a rallying point for all, which gave a

sense of countenance and protection even to those who might

never hope to enter it. ... Emancipation of the individual is

the watchword of the sixteenth century; to the artist it

brought relief from the trammels of a caste thraldom, and the

ceaseless efforts of the Humanists find an answer even in the

new forms seen slowly breaking through the sheath of Gothic

art."

Mrs. Mark Pattison,

The Renaissance of Art in France,

volume 1, chapter 1.

FRANCE: 16th Century.

Renaissance and Reformation.

"The first point of difference to be noted between the

Renaissance in France and the Renaissance in Italy is one of

time. Roughly speaking it may be said that France was a

hundred years behind Italy. ... But if the French Renaissance

was a later and less rapid growth, it was infinitely hardier.

The Renaissance literature in Italy was succeeded by a long

period of darkness, which remained unbroken, save by fitful

gleams of light, till the days of Alfieri. The Renaissance

literature in France was the prelude to a literature, which,

for vigour, variety, and average excellence, has in modern

times rarely, if ever, been surpassed. The reason for this

superiority on the part of France, for the fact that the

Renaissance produced there more abiding and more far-reaching

results, may be ascribed partly to the natural law that

precocious and rapid growths are always less hardy than later

and more gradual ones, partly to the character of the French

nation, to its being at once more intellectual and less

imaginative than the Italian, and therefore more influenced by

the spirit of free inquiry than by the worship of beauty;

partly to the greater unity and vitality of its political

life, but in a large measure to the fact that in France the

Renaissance came hand in hand with the Reformation. ... We

must look upon the Reformation as but a fresh development of

the Renaissance movement, as the result of the spirit of free

inquiry carried into theology, as a revolt against the

authority of the Roman Church. Now the Renaissance in Italy

preceded the Reformation by more than a century. There is no

trace in it of any desire to criticise the received theology.

... In France on the other hand the new learning and the new

religion, Greek and heresy, became almost controvertible

terms. Lefèvre d' Étaples, the doyen of French humanists,

translated the New Testament into French in 1524: the

Estiennes, the Hebrew scholar François Vatable, Turnèbe,

Ramus, the great surgeon Ambroise Paré, the artists Bernard

Palissy and Jean Goujon were all avowed protestants; while

Clement Marot, Budé, and above all Rabelais, for a time at

least, looked on the reformation with more or less favour. In

fact so long as the movement appeared to them merely as a

revolt against the narrowness and illiberality of monastic

theology, as an assertion of the freedom of the human

intellect, the men of letters and culture with hardly an

exception joined hands with the reformers. It was only when

they found that it implied a moral as well as an intellectual

regeneration, that it began to wear for some of them a less

congenial aspect. This close connexion between the Reformation

and the revival of learning was, on the whole, a great gain to

France. It was not as in Germany, where the stronger growth of

the Reformation completely choked the other. In France they

met on almost equal terms, and the result was that the whole

movement was thereby strengthened and elevated both

intellectually and morally. ... French humanism can boast of a

long roll of names honourable not only for their high

attainments, but also for their integrity and purity of life.

Robert Estienne, Turnèbe, Ramus, Cujas, the Chancellor de

l'Hôpital, Estienne Pasquier, Thou, are men whom any country

would be proud to claim for her sons. And as with the

humanists, so it was with the Renaissance generally in France.

On the whole it was a manly and intelligent movement. ... The

literature of the French Renaissance, though in point of form

it is far below that of the Italian Renaissance, in manliness

and vigour and hopefulness is far superior to it. It is in

short a literature, not of maturity, but of promise. One has

only to compare its greatest name, Rabelais, with the greatest

name of the Italian Renaissance, Ariosto, to see the

difference. How formless! how crude! how gross! how full of

cumbersome details and wearisome repetitions is Rabelais! How

limpid! how harmonious is Ariosto! what perfection of style,

what delicacy of touch! He never wearies us, he never offends

our taste. And yet one rises from the reading of Rabelais with

a feeling of buoyant cheerfulness, while Ariosto in spite of

his wit and gaiety is inexpressibly depressing. The reason is

that the one bids us hope, the other bids us despair; the one

believes in truth and goodness and in the future of the human

race, the other believes in nothing but the pleasures of the

senses, which come and go like many-coloured bubbles and leave

behind them a boundless ennui. Rabelais and Ariosto are true

types of the Renaissance as it appeared in their respective

countries."

A. Tilley,

The Literature of the French Renaissance,

chapter 2.

FRANCE: A. D. 1501-1504.

Treaty of Louis XII. with Ferdinand of Aragon for the

partition of Naples.

French and Spanish conquest.

Quarrel of the confederates, and war.

The Spaniards in possession of the Neapolitan domain.

See ITALY: A. D. 1501-1504.

FRANCE: A. D. 1504.

Norman and Breton fishermen on the Newfoundland banks.

See NEWFOUNDLAND: A. D. 1501-1578.

FRANCE: A. D. 1504-1506.

The treaties of Blois, with Ferdinand and Maximilian, and the

abrogation of them.

Relinquishment of claims on Naples.

See ITALY: A. D. 1504-1506.

FRANCE: A. D. 1507.

Revolt and subjugation of Genoa.

See GENOA: A. D. 1500-1507.

FRANCE: A. D. 1508-1509.

The League of Cambrai against Venice.

See VENICE: A. D. 1508-1509.

FRANCE: A. D. 1510-1513.

The breaking up of the League of Cambrai.

The Holy League formed by Pope Julius II. against Louis XII.

The French expelled from Milan and all Italy.

See ITALY: A. D. 1510-1513.

{1186}

FRANCE: A. D. 1513-1515.

English invasion under Henry VIII.

The Battle of the Spurs.

Marriage of Louis XII. with Mary of England.

The King's death.

Accession of Francis I.

"The long preparations of Henry VIII. of England for the

invasion of France [in pursuance of the 'Holy League' against

Louis XII., formed by Pope Julius II. and renewed by Leo

X.,--see ITALY: A. D. 1510-1513] being completed, that king,

in the summer of 1513, landed at Calais, whither a great part

of his army had already been transported. The offer of 100,000

golden crowns easily persuaded the Emperor to promise his

assistance, at the head of a body of Swiss and Germans. But at

the moment Henry was about to penetrate into France, he

received the excuses of Maximilian, who, notwithstanding a

large advance received from England, found himself unable to

levy the promised succours. Nothing disheartened by this

breach of faith, the King of England had already advanced into

Artois; when the Emperor, attended by a few German nobles,

appeared in the English camp, and was cordially welcomed by

Henry, who duly appreciated his military skill and local

knowledge. A valuable accession of strength was also obtained

by the junction of a large body of Swiss, who, encouraged by

the victory of Novara, had already crossed the Jura, and now

marched to the seat of war. The poverty of the Emperor

degraded him to the rank of a mercenary of England; and Henry

consented to grant him the daily allowance of 100 crowns for

his table. But humiliating as this compact was to Maximilian,

the King of England reaped great benefit from his presence. A

promiscuous multitude of Germans had flocked to the English

camp, in hopes of partaking in the spoil; and the arrival of

their valiant Emperor excited a burst of enthusiasm. The siege

of Terouenne was formed: but the bravery of the besieged

baffled the efforts of the allies; and a month elapsed, during

which the English sustained severe loss from frequent and

successful sorties. By the advice of the Emperor, Henry

resolved to risk a battle with the French, and the plain of

Guinegate was once more the field of conflict [August 18,

1513]. This spot, where Maximilian had formerly struck terror

into the legions of Louis XI., now became the scene of a rapid

and undisputed victory. The French were surprised by the

allies, and gave way to a sudden panic; and the shameful

flight of the cavalry abandoned the bravest of their leaders

to the hands of their enemies. The Duke of Longueville, La

Palisse, Imbercourt, and the renowned Chevalier Bayard, were

made prisoners; and the ridicule of the conquerors

commemorated the inglorious flight by designating the rout as

the Battle of the Spurs. The capture of Terouenne immediately

followed; and the fall of Tournay soon afterwards opened a

splendid prospect to the King of England. Meanwhile the safety

of France was threatened in another quarter. A large body of

Swiss, levied in the name of Maximilian but paid with the gold

of the Pope, burst into Burgundy; and Dijon was with difficulty

saved from capture. From this danger, however, France was

extricated by the dexterous negotiation of Trémouille; and the

Swiss were induced to withdraw. ... Louis now became seriously

desirous of peace. He made overtures to the Pope, and was

received into favour upon consenting to renounce the Council

of Pisa. He conciliated the Kings of Aragon and England by

proposals of marriage; he offered his second daughter Renée to

the young Charles of Spain; and his second Queen, Anne of

Bretainy, being now dead, he proposed to unite himself with

Mary of England, the favourite sister of Henry. ... But though

peace was made upon this footing, the former of the projected

marriages never took place: the latter; however, was

magnificently solemnized, and proved fatal to Louis. The

amorous King forgot his advanced age in the arms of his young

and beautiful bride; his constitution gave way under the

protracted festivities consequent on his nuptials; and on the

1st of January, 1515, Louis XII. was snatched from his adoring

people, in his 53d year. He was succeeded by his kinsman and

son-in-law, Francis, Count of Angoulême, who stood next in

hereditary succession, and was reputed one of the most

accomplished princes that ever mounted the throne of France."

Sir R. Comyn,

History of the Western Empire,

chapter 38 (volume 2).

ALSO IN:

J. S. Brewer,

The Reign of Henry VIII.,

chapter 1.

L. von Ranke,

History of the Latin and Teutonic Nations

from 1494 to 1514,

book 2, chapter 4, sections 7-8.

FRANCE: A. D. 1515.

Accession of Francis I.

His invasion of Italy.

The Battle of Marignano.

"François I. was in his 21st year when he ascended the throne

of France. His education in all manly accomplishments was

perfect, and ... he manifested ... an intelligence which had

been carefully cultivated. ... Unfortunately his moral

qualities had been profoundly corrupted by the example of his

mother, Louise of Savoy, a clever and ambitious woman, but

selfish, unscrupulous, and above all shamelessly licentious.

Louise had been an object of jealousy to Anne of Britany, who

had always kept her in the shade, and she now snatched eagerly

at the prospect of enjoying power and perhaps of reigning in

the name of her son, whose love for his mother led him to

allow her to exercise an influence which was often fatal to

the interests of his kingdom. ... Charles duke of Bourbon, who

was notoriously the favoured lover of Louise, was appointed to

the office of constable, which had remained vacant since 1488;

and one of her favourite ministers, Antoine Duprat, first

president of the parliament of Paris, was entrusted with the

seals. Both were men of great capacity; but the first was

remarkable for his pride, and the latter for his moral

depravity. The first cares of the new king of France were to

prepare for war. ... Unfortunately for his country, François

I. shared in the infatuation which had dragged his

predecessors into the wars in Italy; and all these warlike

preparations were designed for the reconquest of Milan. He had

already intimated his design by assuming at his coronation the

titles of king of France and duke of Milan. ... He entered

into an alliance with Charles of Austria, prince of Castile,

who had now reached his majority and assumed the government of

the Netherlands. ... A treaty between these two princes,

concluded on the 24th of March, 1515, guaranteed to each party

not only the estates they held or which might subsequently

descend to them, but even their conquests. ... The republic of

Venice and the king of England renewed the alliances into

which they had entered with the late king, but Ferdinand of

Aragon refused even to prolong the truce unless the whole of

Italy were included in it, and he entered into a separate

alliance with the emperor, the duke of Milan, and the Swiss,

to oppose the designs of the French king.

{1187}

The efforts of François I. to gain over the Swiss had been

defeated by the influence of the cardinal of Sion. Yet the

pope, Leo X., hesitated, and avoided compromising himself with

either party. In the course of the month of July [1515], the

most formidable army which had yet been led from France into

Italy was assembled in the district between Grenoble and

Embrun, and the king, after entrusting the regency to his

mother, Louise, with unlimited powers, proceeded to place

himself at its head."

T. Wright,

History of France,

book 3, chapter 1 (volume 1).

"The passes in Italy had already been occupied by the Swiss

under their captain general Galeazzo Visconti. Galeazzo makes

their number not more than 6,000. ... They were posted at

Susa, commanding the two roads from Mont Cenis and Geneva, by

one of which the French must pass or abandon their artillery.

In this perplexity it was proposed by Triulcio to force a

lower passage across the Cottian Alps leading to Saluzzo. The

attempt was attended with almost insurmountable difficulties.

... But the French troops with wonderful spirits and alacrity

... were not to be baffled. They dropped their artillery by

cables from steep to steep; down one range of mountains and up

another, until five days had been spent in this perilous

enterprise, and they found themselves safe in the plains of

Saluzzo. Happily the Swiss, secure in their position at Susa,

had never dreamed of the possibility of such a passage. ...

Prosper Colonna, who commanded in Italy for the Pope, was

sitting down to his comfortable dinner at Villa Franca, when a

scout covered with dust dashed into his apartment announcing

that the French had crossed the Alps. The next minute the town

was filled with the advanced guard, under the Sieur

d'Ymbercourt and the celebrated Bayard. The Swiss at Susa had

still the advantage of position, and might have hindered the

passage of the main body of the French; but they had no horse

to transport their artillery, were badly led, and evidently

divided in their councils. They retired upon Novara," and to

Milan, intending to effect a junction with the viceroy of

Naples, who advanced to Cremona. On the morning of the 13th of

September, Cardinal Scheimer harangued the Swiss and urged

them to attack the French in their camp, which was at

Marignano, or Melignano, twelve miles away. His fatal advice

was acted on with excitement and haste. "The day was hot and

dusty. The advanced guard of the French was under the command

of the Constable of Bourbon, whose vigilance defeated any

advantage the Swiss might otherwise have gained by the

suddenness and rapidity of their movements. At nine o'clock in

the morning, as Bourbon was sitting down at table, a scout,

dripping with water, made his appearance. He had left Milan

only a few hours before, had waded the canals, and came to

announce the approach of the enemy. ... The Swiss came on

apace; they had disencumbered themselves of their hats and

caps, and thrown off their shoes, the better to fight without

slipping. They made a dash at the French artillery, and were

foiled after hard fighting. ... It was an autumnal afternoon;

the sun had gone down; dust and night-fall separated and

confused the combatants. The French trumpets sounded a

retreat; both, armies crouched down in the darkness within

cast of a tennis-ball of each other. ... Where they fought,

there each man laid down to rest when darkness came on, within

hand-grip of his foe." The next morning, "the autumnal mist

crawled slowly away, and once more exposed the combatants to

each other's view. The advantage of the ground was on the side

of the French. They were drawn up in a valley protected by a

ditch full of water. Though the Swiss had taken no refreshment

that night, they renewed the fight with unimpaired animosity

and vigour. ... Francis, surrounded by a body of mounted

gentlemen, performed prodigies of valour. The night had given

him opportunity for the better arrangement of his troops; and

as the day wore on, and the sun grew hot, the Swiss, though

'marvellously deliberate, brave, and obstinate,' began to give

way. The arrival of the Venetian general, D'Alviano, with

fresh troops, made the French victory complete. But the Swiss

retreated inch by inch with the greatest deliberation,

carrying off their great guns on their shoulders. ... The

French were too exhausted to follow. And their victory had

cost them dear; for the Swiss, with peculiar hatred to the

French gentry and the lance-knights, had shown no mercy. They

spared none, and made no prisoners. The glory of the battle

was great. ... The Swiss, the best troops in Europe, and

hitherto reckoned invincible ... had been the terror and

scourge of Italy, equally formidable to friend and foe, and

now their prestige was extinguished. But it was not in these

merely military aspects that the battle of Marignano was

important. No one who reads the French chronicles of the

times, can fail to perceive that it was a battle of opinions

and of classes even more than of nations; of a fierce and

rising democratical element, now rolled back for a short

season, only to display itself in another form against royalty

and nobility;--of the burgher classes against feudality. ... The

old romantic element, overlaid for a time by the political

convulsions of the last century, had once more gained the

ascendant. It was to blaze forth and revive, before it died

out entirely, in the Sydneys and Raleighs of Queen Elizabeth's

reign; it was to lighten up the glorious imagination of

Spenser before it faded into the dull prose of Puritan

divinity, and the cold grey dawn of inductive philosophy. But

its last great battle was the battle of Marignano."

J. S. Brewer,

The Reign of Henry VIII.,

volume 1, chapter 3.

ALSO IN:

Miss Pardoe,

Court and Reign of Francis I.,

volume 1, chapters 6-7.

L. Larchey,

History of Bayard,

book 3, chapters 1-2.

FRANCE: A. D. 1515-1518.

Francis I. in possession of Milan.

His treaties with the Swiss and the Pope.

Nullification of the Pragmatic Sanction of Charles VII.

The Concordat of Bologna.

"On the 15th of September, the day after the battle [of

Marignano], the Swiss took the road back to their mountains.

Francis I. entered Milan in triumph. Maximilian Sforza took

refuge in the castle, and twenty days afterwards on the 4th of

October, surrendered, consenting to retire to France, with a

pension of 30,000 crowns, and the promise of being recommended

for a cardinal's hat, and almost consoled for his downfall 'by

the pleasure of being delivered from the insolence of the

Swiss, the exactions of the Emperor Maximilian, and the

rascalities of the Spaniards.' Fifteen years afterwards, in

June, 1530, he died in oblivion at Paris.

{1188}

Francis I. regained possession of all Milaness, adding

thereto, with the pope's consent, the duchies of Parma and

Piacenza, which had been detached from it. ... Two treaties,

one of November 7, 1515, and the other of November 29, 1516,

re-established not only peace, but perpetual alliance, between

the King of France and the thirteen Swiss Cantons, with

stipulated conditions in detail. Whilst these negotiations

were in progress, Francis I. and Leo X., by a treaty published

at Viterbo, on the 13th of October, proclaimed their hearty

reconciliation. The pope guaranteed to Francis I. the duchy of

Milan, restored to him those of Parma and Piacenza, and

recalled his troops which were still serving against the

Venetians." At the same time, arrangements were made for a

personal meeting of the pope and the French king, which took

place at Bologna in December, 1515. "Francis did not attempt

to hide his design of reconquering the kingdom of Naples,

which Ferdinand the Catholic had wrongfully usurped, and he

demanded the pope's countenance. The pope did not care to

refuse, but he pointed out to the king that everything

foretold the very near death of King Ferdinand; and 'Your

Majesty,' said he, 'will then have a natural opportunity for

claiming your rights; and as for me, free, as I shall then be,

from my engagements with the King of Arragon in respect of the

crown of Naples, I shall find it easier to respond to your

majesty's wish.' The pope merely wanted to gain time. Francis,

putting aside for the moment the kingdom of Naples, spoke of

Charles VII.'s Pragmatic Sanction [see above: A. D. 1438], and

the necessity of putting an end to the difficulties which had

arisen on this subject between the court of Rome and the Kings

of France, his predecessors. 'As to that,' said the pope, 'I

could not grant what your predecessors demanded; but be not

uneasy; I have a compensation to propose to you which will

prove to you how dear your interests are to me.' The two

sovereigns had, without doubt, already come to an

understanding on this point, when, after a three days'

interview with Leo X., Francis I. returned to Milan, leaving

at Bologna, for the purpose of treating in detail the affair

of the Pragmatic Sanction, his chancellor, Duprat, who had

accompanied him during all this campaign as his adviser and

negotiator. ... The popes ... had all of them protested since

the days of Charles VII. against the Pragmatic Sanction as an

attack upon their rights, and had demanded its abolition. In

1461, Louis XI. ... had yielded for a moment to the demand of

Pope Pius II., whose countenance he desired to gain, and had

abrogated the Pragmatic; but, not having obtained what he

wanted thereby, and having met with strong opposition in the

Parliament of Paris to his concession, he had let it drop

without formally retracting it. ... This important edict,

then, was still vigorous in 1515, when Francis I., after his

victory at Melegnano and his reconciliation with the pope,

left Chancellor Duprat at Bologna to pursue the negotiation

reopened on that subject. The 'compensation,' of which Leo X.,

on redemanding the abolition of the Pragmatic Sanction, had

given a peep to Francis I., could not fail to have charms for

a prince so little scrupulous, and for his still less

scrupulous chancellor. The pope proposed that the Pragmatic,

once for all abolished, should be replaced by a Concordat

between the two sovereigns, and that this Concordat, whilst

putting a stop to the election of the clergy by the faithful,

should transfer to the king the right of nomination to

bishoprics and other great ecclesiastical offices and

benefices, reserving to the pope the right of presentation of

prelates nominated by the king. This, considering the

condition of society and government in the 16th century, in

the absence of political and religious liberty, was to take

away from the church her own existence, and divide her between

two masters, without giving her, as regarded either of them,

any other guarantee of independence than the mere chance of

their dissensions and quarrels. ... Francis I. and his

chancellor saw in the proposed Concordat nothing but the great

increment of influence it secured to them, by making all the

dignitaries of the church suppliants at first and then clients

of the kingship. After some difficulties as to points of

detail, the Concordat was concluded and signed on the 18th of

August, 1516. Five months afterwards, on the 5th of February,

1517, the king repaired in person to Parliament, to which he

had summoned many prelates and doctors of the University. The

Chancellor explained the points of the Concordat. ... The king

ordered its registration, 'for the good of his kingdom and for

quittance of the promise he had given the pope.'" For more

than a year the Parliament of Paris resisted the royal order,

and it was not until the 22d of March, 1518, that it yielded

to the king's threats and proceeded to registration of the

Concordat, with forms and reservations "which were evidence of

compulsion. The other Parliaments of France followed with more

or less zeal ... the example shown by that of Paris. The

University was heartily disposed to push resistance farther

than had been done by Parliament."

F. P. Guizot,

Popular History of France,

chapter 28 (volume 4).

"The execution of the Concordat was vigorously contested for

years afterwards. Cathedrals and monastic chapters proceeded

to elect bishops and abbots under the provisions of the

Pragmatic Sanction; and every such case became a fresh source

of exasperation between the contending powers. ... But the

Parliament, though clamouring loudly for the 'Gallican

liberties,' and making a gallant stand for national

independence as against the usurpations of Rome, was unable to

maintain its ground against the overpowering despotism of the

Crown. The monarchical authority ultimately achieved a

complete triumph. In 1527 a peremptory royal ordinance

prohibited the courts of Parliament from taking further

cognisance of causes affecting elections to consistorial

benefices and conventual priories; and all such matters were

transferred to the sole jurisdiction of the Council of State.

After this the agitation against the Concordat gradually

subsided. But although, in virtue of its compulsory

registration by the Parliament, the Concordat became part of

the law of the land, it is certain that the Gallican Church

never accepted this flagrant invasion of its liberties."

W. H. Jervis,

History of the Church of France,

volume 1, pages 109-110.

{1189}

FRANCE: A. D. 1515-1547.

The institution of the Court.

Its baneful influence.

"Francis I. instituted the Court, and this had a decisive

influence upon the manners of the nobility. Those lords, whose

respect royalty had difficulty in keeping when they were at

their castles, having come to court, prostrated themselves

before the throne, and yielded obedience with their whole

hearts. A few words will describe this Court. The king lodged

and fed in his own large palace, which was fitted for the

purpose, the flower of the French nobility. Some of these

lords were in his service, under the title of officers of his

household--as chamberlains, purveyors, equerries, &c. Large

numbers of domestic offices were created solely as an excuse

for their presence. Others lived there, without duties, simply

as guests. All these, besides lodging and food, had often a

pension as well. A third class were given only a lodging, and

provided their own table; but all were amused and entertained

with various pleasures, at the expense of the king. Balls,

carousals, stately ceremonials, grand dinners, theatricals,

conversations inspired by the presence of fair women, constant

intercourse of all kinds, where each could choose for himself,

and where the refined and literary found a place as well as

the vain and profligate,--such was court life, a truly

different thing from the monotonous and brutal existence of

the feudal lord at his castle in the depths of his province.

So, from all sides, nobles flocked to court, to gratify both

the most refined tastes and the most degraded passions. Some

came hoping to make their fortune, a word from the king

sufficing to enrich a man; others came to gain a rank in the

army, a lucrative post in the finance department, an abbey, or

a bishopric. From the time kings held court, it became almost

a law, that nothing should be granted to a nobleman who lived

beyond its pale. Those lords who persisted in staying on their

own estates were supposed to rail against the administration, or,

as we of the present would express it, to be in opposition.

'They must indeed be men of gross minds who are not tempted by

the polish of the court; at all events it is very insolent in

them to show so little wish to see their sovereign, and enjoy

the honor of living under his roof.' Such was almost precisely

the opinion of the king in regard to the provincial nobility.

... Ambition drew the nobles to court; ambition, society, and

dissipation kept them there. To incur the displeasure of their

master, and be exiled from court was, first, to lose all hope

of advancement, and then to fall from paradise into purgatory.

It killed some people. But life was much more expensive at

court than in the castles. As in all society where each is

constantly in the presence of his neighbor, there was

unbounded rivalry as to who should be most brilliant, most

superb. The old revenues did not suffice, while, at the same

time, the inevitable result of the absence of the lords was to

decrease them. Whilst the expenses of the noblemen at Chambord

or Versailles were steadily on the increase, his intendant,

alone and unrestrained upon the estate, filled his own

pockets, and sent less money every quarter, so that, to keep

up the proper rank, the lord was forced to beg a pension from

the king. Low indeed was the downfall of the old pride and

feudal independence! The question was how to obtain these

pensions, ranks, offices, and favors of all kinds. The virtues

most prized and rewarded by the kings were not civic

virtues,--capacity, and services of value for the public

good; what pleased them was, naturally, devotion to their

person, blind obedience, flattery, and subservience."

P. Lacombe,

A Short History of the French People,

chapter 23.

FRANCE: A. D. 1516-1517.

Maximilian's attempt against Milan.

Diplomatic intrigues.

The Treaty of Noyon.

After Francis I. had taken possession of Milan, and while Pope

Leo X. was making professions of friendship to him at Bologna,

a scheme took shape among the French king's enemies for

depriving him of his conquest, and the pope was privy to it.

"Henry VIII. would not openly break the peace between England

and France, but he offered to supply Maximilian with Swiss

troops for an attack upon Milan. It was useless to send money

to Maximilian, who would have spent it on himself"; but troops

were hired for the emperor by the English agent, Pace, and "at

the beginning of March [1516] the joint army of Maximilian and

the Swiss assembled at Trent. On March 24 they were within a

few miles of Milan, and their success seemed sure, when

suddenly Maximilian found that his resources were exhausted

and refused to proceed; next day he withdrew his troops and

abandoned his allies. ... The expedition was a total failure;

yet English gold had not been spent in vain, as the Swiss were

prevented from entirely joining the French, and Francis I. was

reminded that his position in Italy was by no means secure.

Leo X., meanwhile, in the words of Pace, 'had played

marvellously with both hands in this enterprise.' ... England

was now the chief opponent of the ambitious schemes of France,

and aimed at bringing about a league with Maximilian, Charles

[who had just succeeded Ferdinand of Spain, deceased January

23, 1516], the Pope, and the Swiss. But Charles's ministers,

chief of whom was Croy, lord of Chievres, had a care above all

for the interests of Flanders, and so were greatly under the

influence of France. ... France and England entered into a

diplomatic warfare over the alliance with Charles. First,

England on April 19 recognised Charles as King of Spain,

Navarre, and the Two Sicilies; then Wolsey strove to make

peace between Venice and Maximilian as a first step towards

detaching Venice from its French alliance." On the other hand,

negotiations were secretly carried on and (August 13) "the

treaty of Noyon was concluded between Francis I. and Charles.

Charles was to marry Louise, the daughter of Francis I., an

infant of one year old, and receive as her dower the French

claims on Naples; Venice was to pay Maximilian 200,000 ducats

for Brescia and Verona; in case he refused this offer and

continued the war, Charles was at liberty to help his

grandfather, and Francis I. to help the Venetians, without any

breach of the peace now made between them. ... In spite of the

efforts of England, Francis I. was everywhere successful in

settling his difficulties. On November 29 a perpetual peace

was made at Friburg between France and the Swiss Cantons; on

December 3 the treaty of Noyon was renewed, and Maximilian was

included in its provisions. Peace was made between him and

Venice by the provision that Maximilian was to hand over

Verona to Charles, who in turn should give it up to the King

of France, who delivered it to the Venetians; Maximilian in

return received 100,000 ducats from Venice and as much from

France. The compact was duly carried out: 'On February 8,

1517,' wrote the Cardinal of Sion, 'Verona belonged to the

Emperor; on the 9th to the King Catholic; on the 15th to the

French; on the 17th to the Venetians.' Such was the end of the

wars that had arisen from the League of Cambrai. After a struggle

of eight years the powers that had confederated to destroy

Venice came together to restore her to her former place.

Venice might well exult in this reward of her long constancy,

her sacrifices and her disasters."

M. Creighton,

History of the Papacy, during the Period

of the Reformation,

book 5, chapter 19 (volume 4).

ALSO IN:

J. S. Brewer,

The Reign of Henry VIII.,

chapters 4-6 (volume 1).

{1190}

FRANCE: A. D. 1519.

Candidacy of Francis I. for Imperial crown.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1519.

FRANCE: A. D. 1520-1523.

Rivalry of Francis I. and Charles V.

The Emperor's successes in Italy and Navarre.

Milan again taken from France.

The wrongs and the treason of the Constable of Bourbon.

"With their candidature for the Imperial crown, burst forth

the inextinguishable rivalry between Francis I. and Charles V.

The former claimed Naples for himself and Navarre for Henry

d'Albret: the Emperor demanded the Milanese as a fief of the

Empire, and the Duchy of Burgundy. Their resources were about

equal. If the empire of Charles were more extensive the

kingdom of France was more compact. The Emperor's subjects

were richer, but his authority more circumscribed. The

reputation of the French cavalry was not inferior to that of

the Spanish infantry. Victory would belong to the one who

should win over the King of England to his side. ... Both gave

pensions to his Prime Minister, Cardinal Wolsey; they each asked

the hand of his daughter Mary, one for the dauphin, the other

for himself. Francis I. obtained from him an interview at

Calais, and forgetting that he wished to gain his favour,

eclipsed him by his elegance and magnificence [see FIELD OF

THE CLOTH OF GOLD]. Charles V., more adroit, had anticipated

this interview by visiting Henry VIII. in England. He had

secured Wolsey by giving him hopes of the tiara. ...

Everything succeeded with the Emperor. He gained Leo X. to his

side and thus obtained sufficient influence to raise his

tutor, Adrian of Utrecht, to the papacy [on the death of Leo,

Dec. 1, 1521]. The French penetrated into Spain, but arrived

too late to aid the rising there [in Navarre, 1521]. The

governor of the Milanese, Lautrec, who is said to have exiled

from Milan nearly half its inhabitants, was driven out of

Lombardy [and the Pope retook Parma and Placentia]. He met

with the same fate again in the following year: the Swiss, who

were ill-paid, asked either for dismissal or battle, and allowed

themselves to be beaten at La Bicoque [April 29, 1522]. The

money intended for the troops had been used for other purposes

by the Queen-mother, who hated Lautrec. At the moment when

Francis I. was thinking of re-entering Italy, an internal

enemy threw France into the utmost danger. Francis had given

mortal offence to the Constable of Bourbon, one of those who

had most contributed to the victory of Marignan. Charles,

Count of Montpensier and Dauphin of Auvergne, held by virtue

of his wife, a granddaughter of Louis XI., the Duchy of

Bourbon, and the counties of Clermont, La Marche and other

domains, which made him the first noble in the kingdom. On the

death of his wife, the Queen-mother, Louise of Savoy, who had

wanted to marry the Constable and had been refused by him,

resolved to ruin him. She disputed with him this rich

inheritance and obtained from her son that the property should

be provisionally sequestered. Bourbon, exasperated, resolved

to pass over to the Emperor (1523). Half a century earlier,

revolt did not mean disloyalty. The most accomplished knights

in France, Dunois and John of Calabria, had joined the 'League

for the public weal.' ... But now it was no question of a

revolt against the king; such a thing was impossible in France

at this time. It was a conspiracy against the very existence

of France that Bourbon was plotting with foreigners. He

promised Charles V. to attack Burgundy as soon as Francis I.

had crossed the Alps, and to rouse into revolt five provinces

of which he believed himself master; the kingdom of Provence

was to be re-established in his favour, and France,

partitioned between Spain and England, would have ceased to

exist as a nation. He was soon able to enjoy the reverses of

his country."

J. Michelet,

Summary of Modern History,

chapter 6.

"Henry VIII. and Charles V. were both ready to secure the

services of the ex-Constable. He decided in favour of Charles

as the more powerful of the two. ... These secret negotiations

were carried on in the spring of 1523, while Francis I.

(having sent a sufficient force to protect his northern

frontier) was preparing to make Italy the seat of war. With

this object the king ordered a rendezvous of the army at

Lyons, in the beginning of September, and having arranged to

pass through Moulins on his way to join the forces, called

upon the Constable to meet him there and to proceed with him

to Lyons. Already vague rumours of an understanding between

the Emperor and Bourbon had reached Francis, who gave no

credence to them; but on his way M. de Brézé, Seneschal of

Normandy, attached to the Court of Louise of Savoy, sent such

precise details of the affair by two Norman gentlemen in the

Constable's service that doubt was no longer possible."

Francis accordingly entered Moulins with a considerable force,

and went straight to Bourbon, who feigned illness. The

Constable stoutly denied to the king all the charges which the

latter revealed to him, and Francis, who was strongly urged to

order his arrest, refused to do so. But a few days later, when

the king had gone forward to Lyons, Bourbon, pretending to

follow him, rode away to his strong castle of Chantelles, from

whence he wrote letters demanding the restitution of his

estates. As soon as his flight was known, Francis sent forces

to seize him; but the Constable, taking one companion with

him, made his way out of the kingdom in disguise. Escaping to

Italy, he was there placed in command of the imperial army.

C. Coignet,

Francis I. and his Times,

chapter 4.

ALSO IN:

Miss Pardoe,

The Court and Reign of Francis I.,

volume 1, chapters 14-19.

See, also, AUSTRIA: A. D. 1519-1555.

FRANCE: A. D. 1521.

Invasion of Navarre.

See NAVARRE: A. D. 1442-1521.

FRANCE: A. D. 1521-1525.

Beginning of the Protestant Reform movement.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1521-1535.

FRANCE: A. D. 1523-1524.

First undertakings in the New World.

Voyages of Verrazano.

See AMERICA: A. D. 1523-1524.

{1191}

FRANCE: A. D. 1523-1525.

The death of Bayard.

Second invasion of Italy by Francis I.

His defeat and capture at Pavia.

"Bonnivet, the personal enemy of Bourbon, was now entrusted

with the command of the French army. He marched without

opposition into the Milanese, and might have taken the capital

had he pushed on to its gates. Having by irresolution lost it,

he retreated to winter quarters behind the Tesino. The

operations of the English in Picardy, of the imperialists in

Champagne, and of the Spaniards near the Pyrenees, were

equally insignificant. The spring of 1524 brought on an

action, if the attack of one point can be called such, which

proved decisive for the time. Bonnivet advanced rashly beyond

the Tesino. The imperialists, commanded by four able generals,

Launoi, Pescara, Bourbon, and Sforza, succeeded in almost

cutting off his retreat. They at the same time refused

Bonnivet's offer to engage. They hoped to weaken him by

famine. The Swiss first murmured against the distress

occasioned by want of precaution. They deserted across the

river; and Bonnivet, thus abandoned, was obliged to make a

precipitate and perilous retreat. A bridge was hastily flung

across the Sessia, near Romagnano; and Bonnivet, with his best

knights and gensdarmerie, undertook to defend the passage of

the rest of the army. The imperialists, led on by Bourbon,

made a furious attack. Bonnivet was wounded, and he gave his

place to Bayard, who, never entrusted with a high command, was

always chosen for that of a forlorn hope. The brave Vandenesse

was soon killed; and Bayard himself received a gun-shot

through the reins. The gallant chevalier, feeling his wound

mortal, caused himself to be placed in a sitting posture

beneath a tree, his face to the enemy, and his sword fixed in

guise of a cross before him. The constable Bourbon, who led

the imperialists, soon came up to the dying Bayard, and

expressed his compassion. 'Weep not for me,' said the

chevalier, 'but for thyself. I die in performing my duty; thou

art betraying thine.' Nothing marks more strongly the great

rise, the sudden sacro-sanctity of the royal authority in

those days, than the general horror which the treason of

Bourbon excited. ... The fact is, that this sudden horror of

treason was owing, in a great measure, to the revived study of

the classics, in which treason to one's country is universally

mentioned as an impiety and a crime of the deepest dye.

Feudality, with all its oaths, had no such horror of treason.

... Bonnivet had evacuated Italy after this defeat at

Romagnano. Bourbon's animosity stimulated him to push his

advantage. He urged the emperor to invade France, and

recommended the Bourbonnais and his own patrimonial provinces

as those most advisable to invade. Bourbon wanted to raise his

friends in insurrection against Francis; but Charles descried

selfishness in this scheme of Bourbon, and directed Pescara to

march with the constable into the south of France and lay

siege to Marseilles. ... Marseilles made an obstinate

resistance," and the siege was ineffectual. "Francis, in the

meantime, alarmed by the invasion, had assembled an army. He

burned to employ it, and avenge the late affront. The king of

England, occupied with the Scotch, gave him respite in the

north; and he resolved to employ this by marching, late as the

season was, into Italy. His generals, who by this time were

sick of warring beyond the Alps, opposed the design; but not

even the death of his queen, Claude, could stop Francis. He

passed Mount Cenis; marched upon Milan, whose population was

spiritless and broken by the plague, and took it without

resistance. It was then mooted whether Lodi or Pavia should be

besieged. The latter, imprudently, as it is said, was

preferred. It was at this time that Pope Clement VII., of the

house of Medici, who had lately succeeded Adrian, made the

most zealous efforts to restore peace between the monarchies.

He found Charles and his generals arrogant and unwilling to

treat. The French, said they, must on no account be allowed a

footing in Italy. Clement, impelled by pique towards the

emperor, or generosity to Francis, at once abandoned the

prudent policy of his predecessors, and formed a league with

the French king, to whom, after all, he brought no accession

of force. This step proved afterwards fatal to the city of

Rome. The siege of Pavia was formed about the middle of

October [1524]. Antonio de Leyva, an experienced officer,

supported by veteran troops, commanded in the town. The

fortifications were strong, and were likely to hold for a

considerable time. By the month of January the French had made

no progress; and the impatient Francis despatched a

considerable portion of his army for the invasion of Naples,

hearing that the country was drained of troops. This was a

gross blunder, which Pescara observing, forbore to send any

force to oppose the expedition. He knew that the fate of Italy

would be decided before Pavia. Bourbon, in the mean time,

disgusted with the jealousies and tardiness of the imperial

generals, employed the winter in raising an army of

lansquenets on his own account. From the duke of Savoy he

procured funds; and early in the year 1525 the constable

joined Pescara at Lodi with a fresh army of 12,000

mercenaries. They had, besides, some 7,000 foot, and not more

than 1,500 horse. With these they marched to the relief of

Pavia. Francis had a force to oppose to them, not only

inferior in numbers, but so harassed with a winter's siege,

that all the French generals of experience counselled a

retreat. Bonnivet and his young troop of courtiers were for

fighting; and the monarch hearkened to them. Pavia, to the

north of the river, was covered in great part by the chateau

and walled park of Mirabel. Adjoining this, and on a rising

ground, was the French camp, extending to the Tesino. Through

the camp, or through the park, lay the only ways by which the

imperialists could reach Pavia. The camp was strongly

entrenched and defended by artillery, except on the side of

the park of Mirabel, with which it communicated." On the night

of February 23, the imperialists made a breach in the park

wall, through which they pressed next morning, but were driven

back with heavy loss. "This was victory enough, could the

French king have been contented with it. But the impatient

Francis no sooner beheld his enemies in rout, than he was

eager to chase them in person, and complete the victory with

his good sword. He rushed forth from his entrenchments at the

head of his gensdarmerie, flinging himself between the enemy

and his own artillery, which was thus masked and rendered

useless. The imperialists rallied as soon as they found

themselves safe from the fire of the cannon," and the French

were overwhelmed. "The king ... behind a heap of slain,

defended himself valiantly; so beaten and shattered, so

begrimed with blood and dust, as to be scarcely

distinguishable, notwithstanding his conspicuous armour. He

had received several wounds, one in the forehead; and his

horse, struck with a ball in the head, reared, fell back, and

crushed him with his weight: still Francis rose, and laid

prostrate several of the enemies that rushed upon him." But

presently he was recognized and was persuaded to surrender his

sword to Lannoi, the viceroy of Naples. "Such was the signal

defeat that put an end to all French conquests and claims in

Italy."

E. E. Crowe,

History of France,

volume 1, chapter 6.

ALSO IN:

W. Robertson,

History of the Reign of Charles V.,

book 4 (volume 2).

J. S. Brewer,

Reign of Henry VIII.,

chapter 21 (volume 2).

H. G. Smith,

Romance of History,

chapter 6.

{1192}

FRANCE: A. D. 1525-1526.

The captivity of Francis I. and his deliberate perfidy in the

Treaty of Madrid.

The captive king of France was lodged in the castle at

Pizzighitone. "Instead of bearing his captivity with calmness

and fortitude, he chafed and fretted under the loss of his

wonted pleasures; at one moment he called for death to end his

woes, while at another he was ready to sign disastrous terms

of peace, meaning to break faith so soon as ever he might be

free again. ... France, at first stupefied by the mishap, soon

began to recover hope. The Regent, for all her vices and

faults, was proud and strong; she gathered what force she

could at Lyons, and looked round for help. ... Not only were

there anxieties at home, but the frontiers were also

threatened. On the side of Germany a popular movement ['the

Peasant War'], closely connected with the religious excitement

of the time, pushed a fierce and cruel rabble into Lorraine,

whence they proposed to enter France. But they were met by the

Duke of Guise and the Count of Vaudemont, his brother, at the

head of the garrisons of Burgundy and Champagne, and were

easily dispersed. It was thought that during these troubles

Lannoy would march his army, flushed with victory, from the Po

to the Rhone. ... But Lannoy had no money to pay his men, and

could not undertake so large a venture. Meanwhile negotiations

began between Charles V. and the King; the Emperor demanding,

as ransom, that Bourbon should be invested with Provence and

Dauphiny, joined to his own lands in Auvergne, and should

receive the title of king; and secondly that the Duchy of

Burgundy should be given over to the Emperor as the inheritor

of the lands and rights of Charles the Bold. But the King of

France would not listen for a moment. And now the King of

England and most of the Italian states, alarmed at the great

power of the Emperor, began to change sides. Henry VIII. came

first. He signed a treaty of neutrality with the Regent, in

which it was agreed that not even for the sake of the King's

deliverance should any part of France be torn from her. The

Italians joined in a league to restore the King to liberty,

and to secure the independence of Italy: and Turkey was called

on for help. ... The Emperor now felt that Francis was not in

secure keeping at Pizzighitone. ... He therefore gave orders

that Francis should at once be removed to Spain." The captive

king "was set ashore at Valencia, and received with wonderful

welcome: dances, festivals, entertainments of every kind,

served to relieve his captivity; it was like a restoration to

life! But this did not suit the views of the Emperor, who

wished to weary the King into giving up all thought of

resistance: he trusted to his impatient and frivolous

character; his mistake, as he found to his cost, lay in

thinking that a man of such character would keep his word. He

therefore had him removed from Valencia to Madrid, where he

was kept in close and galling confinement, in a high, dreary

chamber, where he could not even see out of the windows. This

had the desired effect. The King talked of abdicating; he fell

ill of ennui, and was like to die: but at last he could hold

out no longer, and abandoning all thought of honourable

action, agreed to shameful terms, consoling himself with a

private protest against the validity of the deed, as having

been done under compulsion."

G. W. Kitchin,

History of France,

volume 2, book 2, chapter 5.

"By the Treaty of Madrid, signed January 14th, 1526, Francis

'restored' to the Emperor the Duchy of Burgundy, the county of

Charolais, and some other smaller fiefs, without reservation

of any feudal suzerainty, which was also abandoned with regard

to the counties of Flanders and Artois, the Emperor, however,

resigning the towns on the Somme, which had been held by

Charles the Bold. The French King also renounced his claims to

the kingdom of Naples, the Duchy of Milan, the county of Asti,

and the city of Genoa. He contracted an offensive and

defensive alliance with Charles, undertaking to attend him

with an army when he should repair to Rome to receive the

Imperial crown, and to accompany him in person whenever he

should march against the Turks or heretics. He withdrew his

protection from the King of Navarre, the Duke of Gelderland,

and the La Marcks; took upon himself the Emperor's debt to

England, and agreed to give his two eldest sons as hostages

for the execution of the treaty. Instead, however, of the

independent kingdom which Bourbon had expected, all that was

stipulated in his favour was a free pardon for him and his

adherents, and their restoration in their forfeited domains.

... The provisions of the above treaty Francis promised to

execute on the word and honour of a king, and by an oath sworn

with his hand upon the holy Gospels: yet only a few hours

before he was to sign this solemn act, he had called his

plenipotentiaries, together with some French nobles,

secretaries, and notaries, into his chamber, where, after

exacting from them an oath of secrecy, he entered into a long

discourse touching the Emperor's harshness towards him, and

signed a protest, declaring that, as the treaty he was about

to enter into had been extorted from him by force, it was null

and void from the beginning, and that he never intended to

execute it: thus, as a French writer has observed,

establishing by an authentic notarial act that he was going to

commit a perjury." Treaties have often been shamefully

violated, yet it would perhaps be impossible to parallel this

gross and deliberate perjury. In March, Francis was conducted

to the Spanish frontier, where, on a boat in mid-stream of the

Bidassoa, "he was exchanged for his two sons, Francis and

Henry, who were to remain in Spain, as hostages for the

execution of the treaty. The tears started to his eyes as he

embraced his children, but he consigned them without remorse

to a long and dreary exile." As speedily as possible after

regaining his liberty, Francis assembled the states of his

kingdom and procured from them a decision "that the King could

not alienate the patrimony of France, and that the oath which he

had taken in his captivity did not abrogate the still more

solemn one which had been administered to him at his

coronation." After which he deemed himself discharged from the

obligations of his treaty, and had no thought of surrendering

himself again a prisoner, as he was honourably bound to do.

T. H. Dyer,

History of Modern Europe,

book 2, chapter 5 (volume 1).

ALSO IN:

A. B. Cochrane,

Francis I. in Captivity.

W. Robertson,

History of the Reign of Charles V.,

book 4 (volume 2).

C. Coignet,

Francis I. and his Times,

chapters 5-8.

{1193}

FRANCE: A. D. 1526-1527.

Holy League with Pope Clement VII. against Charles V.

Bourbon's attack on Rome.

See ITALY: A. D. 1523-1527, and 1527.

FRANCE: A. D. 1527-1529.

New alliance against Charles V.

Early successes in Lombardy.

Disaster at Naples.

Genoa and all possessions in Italy lost.

The humiliating Peace of Cambrai.

See ITALY: A. D. 1527-1529.

FRANCE: A. D. 1529-1535.

Persecution of the Protestant Reformers and spread of their

doctrines.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1521-1535.

FRANCE: A. D. 1531.

Alliance with the Protestant princes of the German League of

Smalkalde.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1530-1532.

FRANCE: A. D. 1532.

Final reunion of Brittany with the crown.

See BRITTANY: A. D. 1532.

FRANCE: A. D. 1532-1547.

Treaty with the Pope.

Marriage of Prince Henry with Catherine de' Medici.

Renewed war with Charles V.

Alliance with the Turks.

Victory at Cerisoles.

Treaty of Crespy.

Increased persecution of Protestants.

Massacre of Waldenses.

War with England.

Death of Francis I.

"The 'ladies' peace' ... lasted up to 1536; incessantly

troubled, however, by far from pacific symptoms, proceedings

and preparations. In October, 1532, Francis I. had, at Calais,

an interview with Henry VIII., at which they contracted a

private alliance, and undertook 'to raise between them an army

of 80,000 men to resist the Turk.'" But when, in 1535, Charles

V. attacked the seat of the Barbary pirates, and took Tunis,

Francis "entered into negotiations with Soliman II., and

concluded a friendly treaty with him against what was called

'the common enemy.' Francis had been for some time preparing

to resume his projects of conquest in Italy; he had effected

an interview at Marseilles, in October, 1533, with Pope

Clement VII., who was almost at the point of death, and it was

there that the marriage of Prince Henry of France with

Catherine de' Medici [daughter of Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, and

granddaughter of Piero de' Medici] was settled. Astonishment was

expressed that the pope's niece had but a very moderate dowry.

'You don't see, then,' said Clement VII.'s ambassador, 'that

she brings France three jewels of great price, Genoa, Milan

and Naples?' When this language was reported at the court of

Charles V., it caused great irritation there. In 1536 all

these combustibles of war exploded; in the month of February,

a French army entered Piedmont, and occupied Turin; and, in

the month of July, Charles V. in person entered Provence at

the head of 50,000 men. Anne de Montmorency, having received

orders to defend southern France, began by laying it waste in

order that the enemy might not be able to live in it. ...

Montmorency made up his mind to defend, on the whole coast of

Provence, only Marseilles and Aries; he pulled down the

ramparts of the other towns, which were left exposed to the

enemy. For two months Charles V. prosecuted this campaign

without a fight, marching through the whole of Provence an

army which fatigue, shortness of provisions, sickness, and

ambuscades were decimating ingloriously. At last he decided

upon retreating. ... On returning from his sorry expedition,

Charles V. learned that those of his lieutenants whom he had

charged with the conduct of a similar invasion in the north of

France, in Picardy, had met with no greater success than he

himself in Provence." A truce for three months was soon

afterwards arranged, and in June, 1538, through the mediation

of Pope Paul III., a treaty was signed at Nice which extended

the truce to ten years. Next month the two sovereigns met at

Aigues-Mortes and exchanged many assurances of friendship."

F. P. Guizot,

Popular History of France,

chapter 28 (volume 4).

In August, 1539, a revolt at Ghent "called Charles V. into

Flanders; he was then in Spain, and his shortest route was

through France. He requested permission to cross the kingdom,

and obtained it, after having promised the Constable

Montmorency that he would give the investiture of Milan to the

second son of the King. His sojourn in France was a time of

expensive fêtes, and cost the treasury four millions; yet, in

the midst of his pleasures, the Emperor was not without

uneasiness. ... Francis, however, respected the rights of

hospitality; but Charles did not give to his son the

investiture of Milan. The King, indignant, exiled the

constable for having trusted the word of the Emperor without

exacting his signature, and avenged himself by strengthening

his alliance with the Turks, the most formidable enemies of

the empire. ... The hatred of the two monarchs was carried to

its height by these last events; they mutually outraged each

other by injurious libels, and submitted their differences to

the Pope. Paul III. refused to decide between them, and they

again took up arms [1542]. The King invaded Luxembourg, and

the Dauphin Rousillon; and while a third army in concert with

the Mussulmans besieged Nice [1542], the last asylum of the

dukes of Savoy, by land, the terrible Barbarossa, admiral of

Soliman, attacked it by sea. The town was taken, the castle

alone resisted, and the siege of it was raised. Barbarossa

consoled himself for this check by ravaging the coasts of

Italy, where he made 10,000 captives. The horror which he

inspired recoiled on Francis I., his ally, whose name became

odious in Italy and Germany. He was declared the enemy of the

empire, and the Diet raised against him an army of 24,000 men,

at the head of which Charles V. penetrated into Champagne,

while Henry VIII., coalescing with the Emperor, attacked

Picardy with 10,000 English. The battle of Cerisoles, a

complete victory, gained during the same year [April 14,1544],

in Piedmont, by Francis of Bourbon, Duke d'Enghien, against

Gast, general of the Imperial troops, did not stop this double

and formidable invasion. Charles V. advanced almost to

Château-Thierry. But discord reigned in his army; he ran short

of provisions, and could easily have been surrounded; he then

again promised Milan to the Duke of Orleans, the second son of

the King. This promise irritated the Dauphin Henry, who was

afraid to see his brother become the head of a house as

dangerous for France as had been that of Burgundy; he wished

to reject the offer of the Emperor and to cut off his retreat.

A rivalry among women, it is said, saved Charles V. ...

{1194}

The war was terminated almost immediately afterwards [1544] by

the treaty of Crespy in Valois. The Emperor promised his

daughter to the Duke of Orleans, with the Low Countries and

Franche-Comté, or one of his nieces, with Milan. Francis

restored to the Duke of Savoy the greater part of the places

that he held in Piedmont; he renounced all ulterior

pretensions to the kingdom of Naples, the duchy of Milan, and

likewise to the sovereignty of Flanders and Artois; Charles,

on his part, gave up the duchy of Burgundy. This treaty put an

end to the rivalry of the two sovereigns, which had

ensanguined Europe for 25 years. The death of the Duke of

Orleans freed the Emperor from dispossessing himself of Milan

or the Low Countries; he refused all compensation to the King,

but the peace was not broken. Francis I. profited by it to

redouble his severity with regard to the Protestants. A

population of many thousands of Waldenses, an unfortunate

remnant from the religious persecutions of the 13th century,

dwelt upon the confines of Provence, and the County Venaissin,

and a short time back had entered into communion with the

Calvinists. The King permitted John Mesnier, Baron d'Oppède,

first president of the Parliament of Aix, to execute [1546] a

sentence delivered against them five years previously by the

Parliament. John d'Oppède himself directed this frightful

execution. Twenty-two towns or villages were burned and

sacked; the inhabitants, surprised during the night, were

pursued among the rocks by the glare of the flames which

devoured their houses. The men perished by executions, but the

women were delivered over to terrible violences. At Cabrières,

the principal town of the canton, 700 men were murdered in

cold blood, and all the women were burnt; lastly, according to

the tenor of the sentence, the houses were rased, the woods cut

down, the trees in the gardens torn up, and in a short time

this country, so fertile and so thickly peopled, became a

desert and a waste. This dreadful massacre was one of the

principal causes of the religious wars which desolated France

for so long a time. ... The war continued between [Henry

VIII.] and Francis I. The English had taken Boulogne, and a

French fleet ravaged the coasts of England, after taking

possession of the Isle of Wight [1545]. Hostilities were

terminated by the treaty of Guines [1547], which the two kings

signed on the edge of their graves, and it was arranged that

Boulogne should be restored for the sum of 2,000,000 of gold

crowns. ... Henry VIII. and Francis I. died in the same year

[1547]."

E. de Bonnechose,

History of France,

volume 1, pages 363-367.

ALSO IN:

W. Robertson,

History of the Reign of Charles V.,

book 6-9 (volume 2).

J. A. Froude,

History of England,

chapters 20-23 (volume 4).

FRANCE: A. D. 1534-1535.

The voyages of Jacques Cartier and the taking

possession of Canada.

See AMERICA: A. D. 1534-1535.

FRANCE: A. D. 1534-1560.

Persecution of the Protestants.

Their organization.

Their numbers.

"Francis I. had long shrunk from persecution, but having once

begun he showed no further hesitation. During the remainder of

his reign and the whole of that of his son Henry II.

(1534-1559) the cruelty of the sufferings inflicted on the

Reformers increased with the number of the victims. At first

they were strangled and burnt, then burnt alive, then hung in

chains to roast over a slow fire. ... The Edict of

Chateaubriand (1551), taking away all right of appeal from

those convicted of heresy, was followed by an attempt to

introduce an Inquisition on the model of that of Spain, and

when this failed owing to the opposition of the lawyers, the

Edict of Compiègne (1557) denounced capital punishment against

all who in public or private professed any heterodox doctrine. It

is a commonplace that persecution avails nothing against the

truth--that the true Church springs from the blood of martyrs.

Yet the same cause which triumphed over persecution in France

was crushed by it in Spain and in the Walloon Netherlands. Was

it therefore not the truth? The fact would rather seem to be,

that there is no creed, no sect which cannot be extirpated by

force. But that it may prevail, persecution must be without

respect of persons, universal, continuous, protracted. Not one

of these conditions was fulfilled in France. The opinions of the

greater nobles and princes, and of those who were their

immediate followers, were not too narrowly scanned, nor was

the persecution equally severe at all times and in all places.

Some governors and judges and not a few of the higher clergy

inclined to toleration. ... The cheerful constancy of the

French martyrs was admirable. Men, women and children walked

to execution singing the psalms of Marot and the Song of

Simeon. This boldness confounded their enemies. Hawkers

distributed in every part of the country the books issued from

the press of Geneva and which it was a capital offence even to

possess. Preachers taught openly in the streets and

market-places. ... The increasing numbers of their converts

and the high position of some among them gave confidence to

the Protestants. Delegates from the reformed congregations of

France were on their way to Paris to take part in the

deliberations of the first national Synod on the very day

(April 2, 1559) when the peace of Cateau Cambresis was signed,

a peace which was to be the prelude to a vigorous and

concerted effort to root out heresy on the part of the kings

of France and Spain. The object of the meeting was twofold:

first to draw up a detailed profession of faith, which was

submitted to Calvin--there was, he said, little to add, less

to correct--secondly to determine the 'ecclesiastical

discipline' of the new Church. The ministers were to be chosen

by the elders and deacons, but approved by the whole

congregation. The affairs of each congregation were placed

under the control of the Consistory, a court composed of the

pastors, elders and deacons; more important matters were

reserved for the decision of the provincial 'colloques' or

synods, which were to meet twice a year, and in which each

church was represented by its pastor and at least one elder.

Above all was the national Synod also composed of the clergy

and of representative laymen. This organisation was thoroughly

representative and popular, the elected delegates of the

congregations, the elders and deacons, preponderated in all

the governing bodies, and all ministers and churches were

declared equal. The Reformed churches, which, although most

numerous in the South, spread over almost the whole country,

are said at this time to have counted some 400,000 members

(1559). These were of almost all classes, except perhaps the

lowest, although even among the peasantry there were some

martyrs for the faith."

{1195}

On the accession of Charles IX., in 1560, "a quarter of the

inhabitants of France were, it was said, included in the 2,500

reformed congregations. This is certainly an exaggeration, but

it is probable that the number of the Protestants was never

greater than during the first years of the reign of Charles

IX. ... The most probable estimate is that at the beginning of

the wars of religion the Huguenots with women and children

amounted to some 1,500,000 souls out of a population of

between fifteen and twenty millions. But in this minority were

included about one-fourth of the lesser nobility, the country

gentlemen, and a smaller proportion of the great nobles, the

majority of the better sort of townspeople in many of the most

important towns, such as Caen, Dieppe, Havre, Nantes, La

Rochelle, Nimes, Montpellier, Montauban, Châlons, Mâcon,

Lyons, Valence, Limoges and Grenoble, and an important

minority in other places, such as Rouen, Orleans, Bordeaux and

Toulouse. The Protestants were most numerous in the

South-west, in Poitou, in the Marche, Limousin, Angoumois and

Perigord, because in those districts, which were the seats of

long-established and flourishing manufactures, the middle

classes were most prosperous, intelligent and educated. It is

doubtful whether the Catholics were not in a large majority,

even where the superior position, intelligence and vigour of

the Huguenots gave them the upper hand. Only in some parts of

the South-west and of Dauphiny do the bulk of the population

appear to have been decidedly hostile to the old religion.

During the course of the Civil War the Protestants came to be

more and more concentrated in certain parts of the country, as

for instance between the Garonne and the Loire."

P. F. Willert,

Henry of Navarre and the Huguenots in France,

chapter 1.

FRANCE: A. D. 1541-1543.

Jacques Cartier's last explorations in Canada.

See AMERICA: A. D. 1541-1603.

FRANCE: A. D. 1541-1564.

The rise and influence of Calvinism.

See GENEVA: A. D. 1536-1564.

FRANCE: A. D. 1547.

Accession of King Henry II.

FRANCE: A. D. 1547-1559.

The rise of the Guises.

Alliance with the German Protestants.

Wars with the emperor, and with Spain and England.

Acquisition of Les Trois Evêchés, and of Calais.

Unsuccessful campaign in Italy.

Battle and siege of St. Quentin.

Treaty of Cateau-Cambresis.

"The son of Francis I., who in 1547 ascended the throne under

the title of Henry II., was told by his dying father to beware

of the Guises. ... The Guises were a branch of the ducal House

of Lorraine, which, although the dukedom was a fief of the

German empire, had long stood in intimate relations with the

court and nobility of France. The founder of the family was

Claude, a younger son of René II., Duke of Lorraine, who,

being naturalised in France in 1505, rendered himself

conspicuous in the wars of Francis I., and was created first

Duke of Guise. He died in 1550, leaving five daughters and six

sons. His eldest daughter, Mary, became the wife of James V.

of Scotland, and mother of Mary Queen of Scots. The sons were

all men of extraordinary energy and ambition, and their united

influence was, for a number of years, more than a match for

that of the crown. Francis, second Duke of Guise, acquired,

while still a young man, extraordinary renown as a military

commander, by carrying out certain ambitious designs of France

on a neighbouring territory. ... As is well known, French

statesmen have for many centuries cherished the idea that the

natural boundary of France on the east is the Rhine, from its

mouth to its source, and thence along the crest of the Alps to

the Mediterranean. ... To begin the realisation of the idea,

advantage was taken of the war which broke out between the

Emperor Charles V. and his Protestant subjects in North

Germany [see GERMANY: A. D. 1546-1552]. Although the

Protestants of France were persecuted to the death, Henry II.,

with furtively ambitious designs, offered to defend the

Protestants of Germany against their own emperor; and entered

into an alliance in 1551 with Maurice of Saxony and other

princes, undertaking to send an army to their aid. As bases of

his operations, it was agreed that he might take temporary

military possession of Toul, Verdun, and Metz, three

bishoprics [forming a district called the Trois Évêchés], each

with a portion of territory lying within the area of the duchy

of Lorraine, but held as distinct fiefs of the German empire--

such, in fact, being fragments of Lothair's kingdom, which

fell to Germany, and had in no shape been incorporated with

France. It was stipulated that, in occupying these places, the

French were not to interfere with their old connection with

the empire. The confidence reposed in the French was

grievously abused. All the stipulations went for nothing. In

1552, French troops took possession of Toul and Verdun, also

of Nancy, the capital of Lorraine, treating the duchy,

generally, as a conquered country. Seeing this, Metz shut her

gates and trusted to her fortifications. To procure an

entrance and secure possession, there was a resort to

stratagems which afford a startling illustration of the tricks

that French nobles at that time could be guilty of in order to

gain their ends. The French commander, the Constable

Montmorency, begged to be allowed to pass through the town

with a few attendants, while his army made a wide circuit on

its route. The too credulous custodiers of the city opened the

gates, and, to their dismay, the whole French forces rushed

in, and began to rule in true despotic fashion. ... Thus was

Metz secured for France in a way which modern Frenchmen, we

should imagine, can hardly think of without shame. Germany,

however, did not relinquish this important fortress without a

struggle. Furious at its loss, the Emperor Charles V.

proceeded to besiege it with a large army. The defence was

undertaken by the Duke of Guise, assisted by a body of French

nobility. After an investment of four months, and a loss of

30,000 men, Charles was forced to raise the siege, January 1,

1553, all his attempts at the capture of the place being

effectually baffled."

W. Chambers,

France: its History and Revolutions,

chapter 6.

{1196}

"The war continued during the two following years; but both

parties were now growing weary of a contest in which neither

achieved any decisive superiority"; and the emperor, having

negotiated an armistice, resigned all his crowns to his son,

Philip II., and his brother Ferdinand (October, 1555).

"Meantime Pope Paul IV., who detested the Spaniards and longed

for the complete subversion of their power in the Peninsula,

entered into a league with the French king against Philip;

Francis of Guise was encouraged in his favorite project of

effecting a restoration of the crown of Naples to his own

family, as the descendants of René of Anjou; and in December,

1556, an army of 16,000 men, commanded by the Duke of Guise,

crossed the Alps, and, marching direct to Rome, prepared to

attack the Spanish viceroy of Naples, the celebrated Duke of

Alva. In April, 1557, Guise advanced into the Abruzzi, and

besieged Civitella; but here he encountered a determined

resistance, and, after sacrificing a great part of his troops,

found it necessary to abandon the attempt. He retreated toward

Rome, closely pursued by the Duke of Alva; and the result was

that the expedition totally failed. Before his army could

recover from the fatigues and losses of their fruitless

campaign, the French general was suddenly recalled by a

dispatch containing tidings of urgent importance from the

north of France. The Spanish army in the Netherlands,

commanded by the Duke of Savoy, having been joined by a body

of English auxiliaries under the Earl of Pembroke, had invaded

France and laid siege to St. Quentin. This place was badly

fortified, and defended by a feeble garrison under the Admiral

de Coligny. Montmorency advanced with the main army to

re-enforce it, and on the 10th of August rashly attacked the

Spaniards, who outnumbered his own troops in the proportion of

more than two to one, and inflicted on him a fatal and

irretrievable defeat. The loss of the French amounted,

according to most accounts, to 4,000 slain in the field, while

at least an equal number remained prisoners, including the

Constable himself. The road to Paris lay open to the victors.

... The Duke of Savoy was eager to advance; but the cautious

Philip, happily for France, rejected his advice, and ordered

him to press the siege of St. Quentin. That town made a

desperate resistance for more than a fortnight longer, and was

captured by storm on the 27th of August [1557]. ... Philip

took possession of a few other neighbouring fortresses, but

attempted no serious movement in prosecution of his victory.

... The Duke of Guise arrived from Italy early in October, to

the great joy of the king and the nation, and was immediately

created lieutenant-general of the kingdom, with powers of

almost unlimited extent. Be applied himself, with his utmost

ability and perseverance, to repair the late disasters; and

with such success, that in less than two months he was enabled

to assemble a fresh and well-appointed army at Compiègne.

Resolving to strike a vigorous blow before the enemy could

reappear in the field, he detached a division of his army to

make a feint in the direction of Luxemburg; and, rapidly

marching westward with the remainder, presented himself on the

1st of January, 1558, before the walls of Calais. ... The

French attack was a complete surprise; the two advanced forts

commanding the approaches to the town were bombarded, and

surrendered on the 3d of January; three days later the castle

was carried by assault; and on the 8th, the governor, Lord

Wentworth, was forced to capitulate. ... Guines, no longer

tenable after the fall of Calais, shared the same fate on the

21st of January; and thus, within the short space of three

weeks, were the last remnants of her ancient dominion on the

Continent snatched from the grasp of England--possessions

which she had held for upward of 200 years. ... This

remarkable exploit, so flattering to the national pride,

created universal enthusiasm in France, and carried to the

highest pitch the reputation and popularity of Guise. From

this moment his influence became paramount; and the marriage

of the dauphin to the Queen of Scots, which was solemnised on

the 24th of April, 1558, seemed to exalt the house of Lorraine

to a still more towering pinnacle of greatness. It was

stipulated by a secret article of the marriage-contract that

the sovereignty of Scotland should be transferred to France,

and that the two crowns should remain united forever, in case

of the decease of Mary without issue. Toward the end of the

year negotiations were opened with a view to peace." They were

interrupted, however, in November, 1558, by the death of Queen

Mary of England, wife of Philip of Spain. "When the congress

reassembled at Le Cateau-Cambresis, in February, 1559, the

Spanish ministers no longer maintained the interests of

England; and Elizabeth, thus abandoned, agreed to an

arrangement which virtually ceded Calais to France, though

with such nominal qualifications as satisfied the

sensitiveness of the national honour. Calais was to be

restored to the English at the end of eight years, with a

penalty, in case of failure, of 500,000 crowns. At the same

time, if any hostile proceedings should take place on the part

of England against France within the period specified, the queen

was to forego all claim to the fulfillment of the article."

The treaty between France and England was signed April 2,

1559, and that between France and Spain the following day. By

the latter, "the two monarchs mutually restored their

conquests in Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Picardy, and Artois;

France abandoned Savoy and Piedmont, with the exception of

Turin and four other fortresses [restoring Philibert Emanuel,

Duke of Savoy, to his dominions--see SAVOY AND PIEDMONT: A. D.

1559-1580]; she evacuated Tuscany, Corsica, and Montferrat,

and yielded up no less than 189 towns or fortresses in various

parts of Europe. By way of compensation, Henry preserved the

district of the 'Trois Évêchés'--Toul, Metz, and Verdun--and

made the all-important acquisition of Calais. This

pacification was sealed, according to custom, by

marriages"--Henry's daughter Elizabeth to Philip of Spain, and

his sister Marguerite to the Duke of Savoy. In a tournament, at

Paris, which celebrated these marriages, Henry received an

injury from the lance of Montgomery, captain of his Scottish

guards, which caused his death eleven days afterwards--July

10, 1559.

W. H. Jervis,

Student's History of France,

chapter 15.

ALSO IN:

J. L. Motley,

The Rise of the Dutch Republic,

part 1, chapters 2-3 (volume l).

Lady Jackson,

The Court of France in the 16th Century,

volume 2, chapters 9-20.

L. von Ranke,

Civil Wars and Monarchy in France,

16th and 17th Centuries, chapter 6 (volume 1).

FRANCE: A. D. 1548.

Marriage of Antoine de Bourbon to Jeanne d'Albret, heiress of

Navarre.

See NAVARRE: A. D. 1528-1563.

FRANCE: A. D. 1552.

Alliance with the Turks.

See ITALY (SOUTHERN): A. D. 1528-1570.

FRANCE: A. D. 1554-1565.

Huguenot attempts at colonization in Brazil and in Florida,

and their fate.

See FLORIDA: A. D. 1562-1563; 1564-1565;

1565, and 1567-1568.

FRANCE: A. D. 1558-1559.

Aid given to revolt in Corsica.

See GENOA: A. D. 1528-1559.

FRANCE: A. D. 1559.

Accession of King Francis. II.

{1197}

FRANCE: A. D. 1559-1561.

Francis II., Charles IX., the Guises and Catharine de' Medici.

The Conspiracy of Amboise.

Rapid spread and organization of Protestantism.

Rise of the Huguenot party.

Disputed origin of its name.

Henry II. "had been married from political motives to the

niece of Clement VII., Catharine de Medici. This ambitious

woman came to France conscious that the marriage was a

political one, mentally a stranger to her husband; and such

she always remained. This placed her from the first in a false

position. The King was influenced by anyone rather than by his

wife; and a by no means charming mistress, Diana of Poitiers,

played her part by the side of and above the Queen. ...

Immediately after the death of her husband, in 1559, she

[Catharine] greedily grasped at power. The young King, Francis

II., was of age when he entered his fourteenth year. There

could therefore be no legal regency, though there might be an

actual one, for a weakly monarch of sixteen was still

incompetent to govern. But she was thwarted in her first grasp

at power. Under Francis I., a family [the Guises--see above]

previously unknown in French history had begun to play a

prominent part. ... The brothers succeeded in bringing about a

political marriage which promised to throw the King, who was

mentally a child, entirely into their hands. Their sister Mary

had been married to James V. of Scotland, whose crown was then

rather an insignificant one, but was now beginning to gain

importance. The issue of this marriage was a charming girl,

who was destined for the King's wife. She was betrothed to him

without his consent when still a child. The young Queen was

Mary Stuart. Her misfortunes, her beauty, and her connection

with European history, have made her a historical personage,

more conspicuous indeed for what she suffered than for what

she did; her real importance is not commensurate with the

position she occupies. This, then, was the position of the

brothers Guise at court. The King was the husband of their

niece; both were children in age and mind, and therefore

doubly required guidance. The brothers, Francis and Charles,

had the government entirely in their hands; the Duke managed

the army, the Cardinal the finances and foreign affairs. Two

such leaders were the mayors of the palace. The whole

constitution of the court reminds us of the 'rois fainéants'

and the office of major-domo under the Carlovingians. Thus,

just when Catharine was about to take advantage of a

favourable moment, she saw herself once more eclipsed and

thrust aside, and that by insolent upstarts of whom one thing

only was certain, that they possessed unusual talents, and

that their consciences were elastic in the choice of means. It

was not only from Catharine that the supremacy of the Guises

met with violent opposition, but also from Protestantism, the

importance of which was greatly increasing in France. ... In

the time of Henry II., in spite of all the edicts and

executions, Protestantism had made great progress. ... In the

spring of 1559, interdicted Protestantism had secretly

reviewed its congregations, and at the first national synod

drawn up a confession of faith and a constitution for the new

Church. Preachers and elders had appeared from every part of

France, and their eighty articles of 28th May, 1559, have

become the code of laws of French Protestantism. The

Calvinistic principle of the Congregational Church, with

choice of its own minister, deacons, and elders; a consistory

which maintained strict discipline in matters of faith and

morals ... was established upon French soil, and was

afterwards publicly accepted by the whole party. The more

adherents this party gained in the upper circles, the bolder

was its attitude; there was, indeed, no end to the executions,

or to the edicts against heresy, but a spirit of opposition,

previously unknown, had gradually gained ground. Prisoners

were set free, the condemned were rescued from the hands of

the executioners on the way to the scaffold, and a plan was

devised among the numerous fugitives in foreign lands for

producing a turn in the course of events by violent means. La

Rénaudie, a reformed nobleman from Perigord, who had sworn

vengeance on the Guises for the execution of his brother, had,

with a number of other persons of his own way of thinking,

formed a plan for attacking the Guises, carrying off the King,

and placing him under the guardianship of the Bourbon agnates.

... The project was betrayed; the Guises succeeded in placing

the King in security in the Castle of Amboise; a number of the

conspirators were seized, another troop overpowered and

dispersed on their attack upon the castle, on the 17th of

March, 1560; some were killed, some taken prisoners and at

once executed. It was then discovered, or pretended, that the

youngest of the Bourbon princes [see BOURBON, HOUSE OF], Louis

of Condé, was implicated in the conspiracy [known as the

Conspiracy or Tumult of Amboise]. ... The Guises now ventured,

in contempt of French historical traditions, to imprison this

prince of the blood, this agnate of the reigning house; to

summon him before an arbitrary tribunal of partisans, and to

condemn him to death. ... This affair kept all France in

suspense. All the nobles, although strongly infected with

Huguenot ideas, were on Condé's side; even those who condemned

his religious opinions made his cause their own. They justly

thought that if he fell none of them would be safe. In the

midst of this ferment, destiny interposed. On the 5th of

December, 1560, Francis II. died suddenly, and a complete

change took place. His death put an end to a net-work of

intrigues, which aimed at knocking the rebellion, political

and religious, on the head. ... During this confusion one

individual had been watching the course of events with the

eagerness of a beast ready to seize on its prey. Catharine of

Medici was convinced that the time of her dominion had at

length arrived. ... Francis II. was scarcely dead when she

seized upon the person and the power of Charles IX. He was a

boy of ten years old, not more promising than his eldest

brother, sickly and weakly like all the sons of Henry II.,

more attached to his mother than the others, and he had been

neglected by the Guises. ... One of her first acts was to

liberate Condé; this was a decided step towards reconciliation

with the Bourbons and the Protestants. The whole situation was

all at once changed. The court was ruled by Catharine; her

feverish thirst for power was satisfied. The Guises and their

adherents were, indeed, permitted to remain in their offices

and posts of honour, in order not fatally to offend them; but

their supremacy was destroyed, and the new power was based

upon the Queen's understanding with the heads of the Huguenot

party."

L. Häusser,

The Period of the Reformation, 1517 to 1648,

chapter 25.

{1198}

"The recent commotion had disclosed the existence of a body of

malcontents, in part religious, in part also political,

scattered over the whole kingdom and of unascertained numbers.

To its adherents the name of Huguenots was now for the first

time given. What the origin of this celebrated appellation

was, it is now perhaps impossible to discover. ... It has been

traced back to the name of the Eidgenossen or 'confederates,'

under which the party of freedom figured in Geneva when the

authority of the bishop and duke was overthrown; or to the

'Roy Huguet,' or 'Huguon,' a hobgoblin supposed to haunt the

vicinity of Tours, to whom the superstitious attributed the

nocturnal assemblies of the Protestants; or to the gate 'du

roy Huguon' of the same city, near which those gatherings were

wont to be made. Some of their enemies maintained the former

existence of a diminutive coin known as a 'huguenot,' and

asserted that the appellation, as applied to the reformed,

arose from their 'not being worth a huguenot,' or farthing;

And some of their friends, with equal confidence and no less

improbability, declared that it was invented because the

adherents of the house of Guise secretly put forward claims

upon the crown of France in behalf of that house as descended

from Charlemagne, whereas the Protestants loyally upheld the

rights of the Valois sprung from Hugh Capet. In the diversity

of contradictory statements, we may perhaps be excused if we

suspend our judgment. ... Not a week had passed after the

conspiracy of Amboise before the word was in everybody's

mouth. Few knew or cared whence it arose. A powerful party,

whatever name it might bear, had sprung up, as it were, in a

night. ... No feature of the rise of the Reformation in France

is more remarkable than the sudden impulse which it received

during the last year or two of Henry II.'s life, and

especially within the brief limits of the reign of his eldest

son. ... There was not a corner of the kingdom where the

number of incipient Protestant churches was not considerable.

Provence alone contained 60, whose delegates this year met in

a synod at the blood-stained village of Mérindol. In large

tracts of country the Huguenots had become so numerous that

they were no longer able or disposed to conceal their

religious sentiments, nor content to celebrate their rites in

private or nocturnal assemblies. This was particularly the

case in Normandy, in Languedoc, and on the banks of the

Rhone."

H. M. Baird,

History of the Rise of the Huguenots,

book 1, chapter 10 (volume 1).

ALSO IN:

C. M. Yonge,

Cameos from English History,

4th series, chapter 29.

FRANCE: A. D. 1560.

Accession of King Charles IX.

FRANCE: A. D. 1560-1563.

Changed policy of Catharine de' Medici.

Delusive favors to the Huguenots.

The Guises and the Catholics again ascendant.

The massacre of Vassy.

Outbreak of civil war.

Battle of Dreux.

Assassination of Guise.

Peace and the Edict of Amboise.

"Catherine de Medici, now regent, thought it wisest to abandon

the policy which had till then prevailed under the influence

of the Guises, and while she confirmed the Lorraine princes in

the important offices they held, she named, on the other hand,

Antoine de Bourbon [king of Navarre] lieutenant-general of the

kingdom, and took Michel de l'Hôpital as her chief adviser.

... Chancellor de l'Hôpital, like the Regent, aimed at the

destruction of the parties which were rending the kingdom

asunder; but his political programme was that of an honest man

and a true liberal. A wise system of religious toleration and

of administrative reform would, he thought, restore peace and

satisfy all true Frenchmen. 'Let us,' he said, 'do away with

the diabolical party-names which cause so many

seditions--Lutherans, Huguenots, and Papists; let us not alter

the name of Christians.' ... The edicts of Saint Germain and

of January (1562) were favourable to the Huguenots. Religious

meetings were allowed in rural districts; all penalties

previously decreed against Dissenters were suspended on

condition that the old faith should not be interfered with:

finally, the Huguenot divines, with Theodore de Bèze at their

head, were invited to meet the Roman Catholic prelates and

theologians in a conference (colloque) at Poissy, near Paris.

Theodore de Bèze, the faithful associate and coadjutor of

Calvin in the great work of the Reformation, both at Geneva

and in France, is justly and universally regarded as the

historian of the early Huguenots. ... The speech he delivered

at the opening of the colloque is an eloquent plea for liberty

and mutual forbearance. Unfortunately, the conciliatory

measures he proposed satisfied no one."

G. Masson,

The Huguenots,

chapter 2.

"The edict of January ... gave permission to Protestants to

hold meetings for public worship outside the towns, and placed

their meetings under the protection of the law. ... The

Parliament of Paris refused to register the edict until after

repeated orders from the Queen-mother. The Parliament of Dijon

refused to register it. ... The Parliament of Aix refused.

Next, Antoine de Navarre, bribed by a promise of the

restoration of the Spanish part of his little kingdom,

announced that the colloquy of Poissy had converted him,

dismissed Beza and the reformed preachers, sent Jeanne back to

Beárn, demanded the dismissal of the Chatillons from the

court, and invited the Duke of Guise and his brother, the

Cardinal, who were at their château of Joinville, to return to

Paris. Then occurred--it was only six weeks after the Edict

of January--the massacre of Vassy. Nine hundred out of

3,000--the population of that little town--were Protestants.

Rejoicing in the permission granted them by the new law, they

were assembled on the Sunday morning, in a barn outside the

town, for the purpose of public service. The Duke of Guise and

the Cardinal, with their armed escort of gentlemen and

soldiers, riding on their way to Paris, heard the bells which

summoned the people, and asked what they meant. Being told

that it was a Huguenot 'prêche,' the Duke swore that he would

Huguenot them to some purpose. He rode straight to the barn

and entered the place, threatening to murder them all. The

people relying on the law, barred the doors. Then the massacre

began. The soldiers burst open the feeble barrier, and began

to fire among the perfectly unarmed and inoffensive people.

Sixty-four were killed--men, women, and children; 200 were

wounded. This was the signal for war. Condé, on the

intelligence, immediately retired from the court to Meaux,

whence he issued a proclamation calling on all the Protestants

of the country to take up arms. Coligny was at Chatillon,

whither Catharine addressed him letter after letter, urging

upon him, in ambiguous terms, the defence of the King.

{1199}

It seems, though this is obscure, that at one time Condé might

have seized the royal family and held them. But if he had the

opportunity, he neglected it, and the chance never came again.

Henceforward, however, we hear no more talk about Catharine

becoming a Protestant. That pretence will serve her no more.

Before the clash of arms, there was silence for a space. Men

waited till the last man in France who had not spoken should

declare himself. The Huguenots looked to the Admiral, and not

to Condé. It was on him that the real responsibility lay of

declaring civil war. It was a responsibility from which the

strongest man might shrink. ... The Admiral having once made

up his mind, hesitated no longer, and, with a heavy heart, set

off the next day to join Condé. He wrote to Catharine that he

took up arms, not against the King, but against those who held

him captive. He wrote also to his old uncle, the Constable

[Montmorency]. ... The Constable replied. There was no

bitterness between uncle and nephew. The former was fighting

to prevent the 'universal ruin' of his country, and for his

'petits maitres,' the boys, the sons of his old friend, Henry

II. Montmorency joined the Guises in perfect loyalty, and with

the firm conviction that it was the right thing for him to do.

The Chatillon fought in the name of law and justice, and to

prevent the universal massacre of his people. ... Then the

first civil war began with a gallant exploit--the taking of

Orleans [April 1562]. Condé rode into it at the head of 2,000

cavalry, all shouting like schoolboys, and racing for six

miles who should get into the city first. They pillaged the

churches, and turned out the Catholics. 'Those who were that

day turned outside the city wept catholicly that they were

dispossessed of the magazines of the finest wines in France.'

Truly a dire misfortune, for the Catholics to lose all the

best claret districts! Orleans taken, the Huguenots proceeded

to issue protestations and manifestoes, in all of which the

hand of the Admiral is visible. They are not fighting against

the King, who is a prisoner; the war was begun by the Guises.

... They might have added, truly enough, that Condé and the

Admiral held in their hands letters from Catharine, urging

them to carry on the contest for the sake of the young King.

The fall of Orleans was quickly followed by that of Rouen,

Tours, Blois, Bourges, Vienne, Valence, and Montauban. The

civil war was fairly begun. The party was now well organized.

Condé was commander-in-chief by right of his birth; Coligny

was real leader by right of his reputation and wisdom. It was

by him that a Solemn League and Covenant was drawn up, to be

signed by everyone of the Calvinist chiefs. These were,

besides Condé and the Chatillons, La Rochefoucauld, ...

Coligny's nephew and Condé's brother-in-law--he was the

greatest seigneur in Poitou; Rohan, from Dauphine, who was

Condé's cousin; the Prince of Porcian, who was the husband of

Condé's niece. Each of these lords came with a following

worthy of his name. Montgomery, who had slain Henry II.,

brought his Normans; Genlis, the Picards. ... With Andelot

came a troop of Bretons; with the Count de Grammont came 6,000

Gascons. Good news poured in every day. Not only Rouen, but

Havre, Caen, and Dieppe submitted in the North. Angers and

Nantes followed. The road was open in the end for bringing

troops from Germany. The country in the southwest was

altogether in their hands. Meantime, the enemy were not idle.

They began with massacres. In Paris they murdered 800

Huguenots in that first summer of the war. From every side

fugitives poured into Orleans, which became the city of

refuge. There were massacres at Amiens, Senlis, Cahors,

Toulouse, Angoulême--everywhere. Coligny advised a march upon

Paris, where, he urged, the Guises had but a rabble at their

command. His counsels when war was once commenced, were always

for vigorous measures. Condé preferred to wait. Andelot was

sent to Germany, where he raised 3,000 horse. Calvin

despatched letters in every direction, urging on the churches

and the Protestant princes to send help to France. Many of

Coligny's old soldiers of St. Quentin came to fight under his

banner. Elizabeth of England offered to send an army if Calais

were restored; when she saw that no Frenchman would give up

that place again, she still sent men and money, though with

grudging spirit. At length both armies took the field. The

Duke of Guise had under him 8,000 men; Condé 7,000. They

advanced, and met at the little town of Vassodun, where a

conference was held between the Queen-mother and Navarre on

the one hand, and Condé and Coligny on the other. Catharine

proposed that all the chiefs of both sides--Guise, the

Cardinal de Lorraine, St. Andre, Montmorency, Navarre, Condé,

and the Chatillon brothers--should all alike go into voluntary

exile. Condé was nearly persuaded to accept this absurd

proposal. Another conference was held at Taley. These

conferences were only delays. An attempt was made by Catharine

to entrap Condé, which was defeated by the Admiral's prompt

rescue. The Parliament of Paris issued a decree commanding all

Romanists in every parish to rise in arms at the sound of the

bell and to slay every Huguenot. It was said that 50,000 were

thus murdered. No doubt the numbers were grossly exaggerated.

... These cruelties naturally provoked retaliation. ... An

English army occupied Havre. English troops set out for Rouen.

Some few managed to get within the walls. The town was taken

by the Catholics [October 25, 1562], and, for eight days,

plundered. Needless to say that Guise hanged every Huguenot he

could find. Here the King of Navarre was killed. The loss of

Rouen, together with other disasters, greatly discouraged the

Huguenots. Their spirits rose, however, when news came that

Andelot, with 4,000 reiters, was on his way to join them. He

brought them in safety across France, being himself carried in

a litter, sick with ague and fever. The Huguenots advanced

upon Paris, but did not attack the city. At Dreux [December

19, 1562], they met the army of Guise. Protestant historians

endeavor to show that the battle was drawn. In fact both sides

sustained immense losses. St. André was killed, Montmorency

and Condé were taken prisoners. Yet Coligny had to retire from

the field--his rival had outgeneralled him. It was

characteristic of Coligny that he never lost heart. ... With

his German cavalry, a handful of his own infantry, and a small

troop of English soldiers, Coligny swept over nearly the whole

of Normandy. It is true that Guise was not there to oppose

him. Every thing looked well. He was arranging for a 'splendid

alliance' with England, when news came which stayed his hand.

{1200}

Guise marched southwards to Orleans. ... There was in Orleans

a young Huguenot soldier named Jean Poltrot de Méré. He was a

fanatic. ... He waited for an opportunity, worked himself into

the good graces of the Duke, and then shot him with three

balls, in the shoulder. Guise died three days later. ... Then

a peace was signed [and ratified by the Edict of Amboise,

March 19, 1563]. Condé, won over and seduced by the sirens of

the Court, signed it. It was a humiliating and disastrous

peace. Huguenots were to be considered loyal subjects; foreign

soldiers should be sent out of the country; churches and

temples should be restored to their original uses; the suburbs

of one town in every bailiwick, were to be used for Protestant

worship (this was a great reduction on the Edict of January,

which allowed the suburbs of every town); and the nobility and

gentry were to hold worship in their own houses after their

own opinions. The Admiral was furious at this weakness. 'You

have ruined,' he said to Condé, 'more churches by one stroke

of the pen than the enemy could have done in ten years of

war.'"

W. Besant,

Gaspard de Coligny.

chapter 8.

ALSO IN:

Duc d' Aumale,

History of the Princes de Condé,

book 1, chapter 3 (volume l).

E. Bersier,

Earlier Life of Coligny,

chapter 21-26.

FRANCE: A. D. 1563-1564.

Recovery of Havre from the English.

The Treaty of Troyes.

Under the terms on which the Huguenot leaders procured help

from Elizabeth, the English queen held Havre, and refused to

restore it until after the restoration of Calais to England,

and the repayment of a loan of 140,000 crowns. The Huguenots,

having now made peace with their Catholic fellow countrymen,

were not prepared to fulfill the English contract, according

to Elizabeth's claims, but demanded that Havre should be given

up. The Queen refusing, both the parties, lately in arms

against each other, joined forces, and laid siege to Havre so

vigorously that it was surrendered to them on the 28th of

July, 1563. Peace with England was concluded in the April

following, by a treaty negotiated at Troyes, and the Queen

lost all her rights over Calais.

Duc d'Aumale,

History of the Princes of Condé,

volume 1, chapter 4.

ALSO IN:

J. A. Froude,

History of England: Reign of Elizabeth,

chapters 6 and 8 (volume 1-2).

FRANCE: A. D. 1563-1570.

The conference at Bayonne.

Outbreak of the Second Civil War.

Battle of St. Denis.

Peace of Longjumeau.

The Third Civil War.

Huguenot rally at La Rochelle.

Appearance of the Queen of Navarre.

Battle of Jarnac.

Death of Condé.

Henry of Navarre chosen to command.

Battle of Moncontour.

Peace of St. Germain.

The religious peace established under the Edict of Amboise

lasted four years. "Not that the Huguenots enjoyed during

these years anything like security or repose. The repeated

abridgment even of those narrow liberties conferred by the

Edict of Amboise, and the frequent outbreaks of popular hatred

in which numbers of them perished, kept them in perpetual

alarm. Still more alarming was the meeting at Bayonne [of

Catherine de' Medici, the young king, her son, and the Duke of

Alva, representing Philip II. of Spain] in the summer of 1565.

... Amid the Court festivities which took place, it was known

that there had been many secret meetings between Alva,

Catherine, and, Charles. The darkest suspicions as to their

objects and results spread over France. It was generally

believed--falsely, as from Alva's letters it now appears--that

a simultaneous extermination of all heretics in the French and

Spanish dominions had been agreed upon. To anticipate this

stroke, Coligni proposed that the person of the King should be

seized upon. The Court, but slenderly guarded, was then at

Monceaux. The project had almost succeeded. Some time,

however, was lost. The Court got warning and fled to Meaux.

Six thousand Swiss arrived, and by a rapid march carried the

King to Paris. After such a failure, nothing was left to the

Huguenots but the chances of a second civil war. Condé entered

boldly on the campaign. Though he had with him but 1,500 horse

and 1,200 infantry, he marched to Paris, and offered battle to

the royal troops beneath its walls. The Constable

[Montmorency], who had 18,000 men at his command, accepted the

challenge, and on the 10th of November 1567, the battle of St.

Denis was fought. ... Neither party could well claim the

victory, as both retired from the field. The royal army had to

mourn the loss that day of its aged and gallant commander, the

Constable. Condé renewed next day the challenge, which was not

accepted. The winter months were spent by the Huguenots in

effecting a junction with some German auxiliaries, and in the

spring they appeared in such force upon the field that, on the

23d March 1568, the Peace of Longjumeau was ratified, which

re-established, free from all modifications and restrictions,

the Edict of Amboise. It was evident from the first that this

treaty was not intended to be kept; that it had been entered

into by the government solely to gain time, and to scatter the

ranks of the Huguenots. Coligni sought Condé at his château of

Noyers in Burgundy. He had scarcely arrived when secret

intelligence was given them of a plot upon their lives. They

had barely time to fly, making many a singular escape by the

way, and reaching Rochelle, which from this time became the

head-quarters of the Huguenots, on the 15th September 1568.

During the first two religious wars ... the seat of war was so

remote from her dominions that the Queen of Navarre [Jeanne

d'Albret,--see NAVARRE: A.D. 1528-1563] had satisfied herself

with opening her country as an asylum for those Huguenots

driven thither out of the southern counties of France. But

when she heard that Condé and Coligni ... were on their way to

Rochelle, to raise there once more the Protestant banner,

convinced that the French Court meditated nothing short of the

extermination of the Huguenots, she determined openly to cast

in her lot with her co-religionists, and to give them all the

help she could. Dexterously deceiving Montluc, who had

received instructions to watch her movements, and to seize

upon her person if she showed any intention of leaving her own

dominions, after a flight as precipitous and almost as

perilous as that of Condé and Coligni, she reached Rochelle on

the 29th September, ten days after their arrival. This town,

for nearly a century the citadel of Protestantism in France,

having by its own unaided power freed itself from the English

dominion [in the period between 1368 and 1380] had had

extraordinary municipal privileges bestowed on it in

return--among others, that of an entirely independent

jurisdiction, both civil and military.

{1201}

Like so many of the great commercial marts of Europe, in which

the spirit of freedom was cherished, it had early welcomed the

teaching of the Reformers, and at the time now before us

nearly the whole of its inhabitants were Huguenots. ... About

the very time that the Queen of Navarre entered Rochelle a

royal edict appeared, prohibiting, under pain of death, the

exercise of any other than the Roman Catholic religion in

France, imposing upon all the observance of its rites and

ceremonies; and banishing from the realm all preachers of the

doctrine of Calvin, fifteen days only being allowed them to

quit the kingdom. It was by the sword that this stern edict

was to be enforced or rescinded. Two powerful armies of nearly

equal strength mustered speedily. One was nominally under the

command of the Duke of Anjou, but really led by Tavannes,

Biron, Brissac, and the young Duke of Guise, the last burning

to emulate the military glory of his father; the other under

the command of Condé and Coligni. The two armies were close

upon one another; their generals desired to bring them into

action; they were more than once actually in each other's

presence; but the unprecedented inclemency of the weather

prevented an engagement, and at last, without coming into

collision, both had to retire to winter quarters. The delay

was fatal to the Huguenots." In the following spring (March

13, 1569), while their forces were still scattered and

unprepared, they were forced into battle with the

better-generaled Royalists, at Jarnac, and were grievously

defeated. Condé, wounded and taken prisoner, was treated at

first with respect by the officers who received his sword. But

"Montesquiou, captain of the Swiss Guard of the Duke of Anjou,

galloped up to the spot, and, hearing who the prisoner was,

deliberately levelled his pistol at him and shot him through

the head. The Duke passed no censure on his officer, and

expressed no regret at his deed. The grossest indignities were

afterwards, by his orders, heaped upon the dead body of the

slain. The defeat of Jarnac, and still more the death of

Condé, threw the Huguenot army into despair. ... The utter

dissolution of the army seemed at hand. The Admiral sent a

messenger to the Queen of Navarre at Rochelle, entreating her

to come to the camp. She was already on her way. On arrival,

and after a short consultation with the Admiral, the army was

drawn up to receive her. She rode along the ranks--her son

Henry on one side, the son of the deceased Condé on the

other." Then she addressed to the troops an inspiring speech,

concluding with these heroic words: "Soldiers, I offer you

everything I have to give,--my dominions, my treasures, my

life, and, what is dearer to me than all, my children. I make

here solemn oath before you all--I swear to defend to my last

sigh the holy cause which now unites us." "The soldiers

crowded around the Queen, and unanimously, as if by sudden

impulse, hailed young Henry of Navarre as their future

general. The Admiral and La Rochefoucauld were the first to

swear fidelity to the Prince; then came the inferior officers

and the whole assembled soldiery; and it was thus that, in his

fifteenth year, the Prince of Béarn was inaugurated as

general-in-chief of the army of the Huguenots." In June the

Huguenot army effected a junction at St. Yriex with a division

of German auxiliaries, led by the Duc de Deux-Ponts, and

including among its chiefs the Prince of Orange and his

brother Louis of Nassau. They attacked the Duke of Anjou at La

Roche-Abeille and gained a slight advantage; but wasted their

strength during the summer, contrary to the advice of the

Admiral Coligny, in besieging Poitiers. The Duke of Anjou

approached with a superior army, and, again in opposition to

the judgment of Coligny, the Huguenots encountered him at

Moncontour (October 3, 1569), where they suffered the worst of

their defeats, leaving 5,000 dead and wounded on the field.

Meanwhile a French army had entered Navarre, had taken the

capital and spread destruction everywhere through the small

kingdom; but the Queen sent Count de Montgomery to rally her

people, and the invaders were driven out. Coligny and Prince

Henry wintered their troops in the far south, then moved

rapidly northwards in the spring, up the valley of the Rhone,

across the Cevennes, through Burgundy, approaching the Loire,

and were met by the Marshal de Cosse at Arnay-le-Duc, where

Henry of Navarre won his first success in arms--Coligny being

ill. Though it was but a partial victory it brought about a

breathing time of peace. "This happened in the end of June,

and on the 8th of August [1570] the Peace of St.

Germain-en-Laye was signed, and France had two full years of

quiet."

W. Hanna,

The Wars of the Huguenots,

chapter 4.

ALSO IN:

Duc d'Aumale,

History of the Princes de Condé,

book 1, chapter 4-5 (volume 1-2).

M. W. Freer,

Life of Jeanne d'Albret,

chapters 8-10.

C. M. Yonge,

Cameos of English History,

5th series, chapter 8.

FRANCE: A. D. 1570-1572.

Coligny at court and his influence with the King.

Projected war with Spain.

The desperate step of Catharine de' Medici, and its

consequence in the plot of Massacre.

"After the Peace of 1570, it appeared as if a complete change

of policy was about to take place. The Queen pretended to be

friendly with the Protestants; her relations with the

ambitious Guises were distant and cold, and the project of

uniting the Houses of Bourbon and Valois by marriage [the

marriage of Henry of Navarre with the king's sister,

Marguerite] really looked as if she was in earnest. The most

distinguished leader of the Huguenot party was the Admiral

Caspar de Coligny. It is quite refreshing at this doleful

period to meet with such a character. He was a nobleman of the

old French school and of the best stamp; lived upon his estates

with his family, his little court, his retainers and subjects,

in ancient patriarchal style, and on the best terms, and

regularly went with them to the Protestant worship and the

communion; a man of unblemished morality and strict

Calvinistic views of life. Whatever this man said or did was

the result of his inmost convictions; his life was the

impersonation of his views and thoughts. In the late turbulent

times he had become an important person as leader and

organizer of the Protestant armies. At his call, thousands of

noblemen and soldiers took up arms, and they submitted under

his command to very strict discipline. He could not boast of

having won many battles, but he was famous for having kept his

resources together after repeated defeats, and for rising up

stronger than before after every lost engagement. ... Now that

peace was made, 'why,' he asked, 'excite further dissensions

for the benefit of our common enemies? Let us direct our

undivided forces against the real enemy of France--against

Spain, who stirs up intrigues in our civil, wars. Let us crush

this power, which condemns us to ignominious dependence.'

{1202}

The war against Spain was Coligny's project. It was the idea

of a good Huguenot, for it was directed against the most

blindly fanatical and dangerous foe of the new doctrines; but

it was also that of a good Frenchman, for a victory over Spain

would increase the power of France in the direction of

Burgundy. ... From September, 1571, Coligny was at court. On

his first arrival he was heartily welcomed by the King,

embraced by Catharine, and loaded with honours and favours by

both. I am not of opinion that this was a deeply laid scheme

to entrap the guileless hero, the more easily to ruin him.

Catharine's ideas did not extend so far. Still less do I

believe that the young King was trained to play the part of a

hypocrite, and regarded Coligny as a victim to be cherished

until the fête day. I think, rather, that Catharine, in her

changeableness and hatred of the Guises, was now really

disposed to make peace with the Protestants, and that the

young King was for the time impressed by this superior

personage. No youthful mind is so degraded as to be entirely

inaccessible to such influence. ... I believe that the first

and only happy day in the life of this unfortunate monarch was

when he met Coligny, who raised him above the degradation of

vulgar life; and I believe further, that this relation was the

main cause of the massacre of St. Bartholomew. A new influence

was threatening to surround the King and to take deep root,

which Catharine, her son Henry of Anjou, and the strict

Catholic party, must do their utmost to avert; and it was

quite in accordance with the King's weak character to allow

the man to be murdered whom he had just called 'Father.' ...

It appears that about the middle of the year [1572] the matter

[of war with Spain and help to the revolting Netherlands] was

as good as decided. The King willingly acceded to Coligny's

plan ... [and] privately gave considerable sums for the

support of the Flemish patriots, for the equipment of an army

of 4,000 men, composed of Catholics and Protestants, who

marched towards Mons, to succour Louis of Nassau. When in July

this army was beaten, and the majority of the Huguenots were

in despair, Coligny succeeded in persuading the King to equip

a fresh and still larger army; but the opposition then

bestirred itself. ...The Queen ... had been absent, with her

married daughter in Lorraine, and on her return she found

everything changed; the Guises without influence, herself

thrust on one side. Under the impression of the latest events

in Flanders, which made it likely that the war with Spain

would be ruinous, she hastened to the King, told him with

floods of tears that it would be his ruin; that the Huguenots,

through Coligny, had stolen the King's confidence,

unfortunately for himself and the country. She made some

impression upon him, but it did not last long, and thoughts of

war gained the upper hand again. The idea now (August, 1572),

must have been matured in Catharine's mind of venturing on a

desperate step, in order to save her supremacy and influence.

... The idea ripened in her mind of getting rid of Coligny by

assassination. ... Entirely of one mind with her son Henry,

she turned to the Guises, with whom she was at enmity when

they were in power, but friendly when they were of no more

consequence than herself. They breathed vengeance against the

Calvinists, and were ready at once to avenge the murder of

Francis of Guise by a murderous attack upon Coligny. An

assassin was hired, and established in a house belonging to

the Guises, near Coligny's dwelling, and as he came out of the

palace, on the 22nd of August, a shot was fired at him, which

wounded but did not kill him. Had Coligny died of his wound,

Catharine would have been content. ... But Coligny did not

die; the Huguenots defiantly demanded vengeance on the

well-known instigator of the deed; their threats reached the

Queen and Prince Henry of Anjou, and the personal fascination

which Coligny had exercised over King Charles appeared rather

to increase than to diminish. Thus doubtless arose, during the

anxious hours after the failure of the assassination, the idea of

an act of violence on a large scale, which should strike a

blow at Coligny and his friends before they had time for

revenge. It certainly had not been in preparation for months,

not even since the time that Coligny had been at Court; it was

conceived in the agony of these hours."

L. Hausser,

The Period of the Reformation,

chapter 27.

ALSO IN:

J. L. Motley,

The Rise of the Dutch Republic,

part 3, chapters 6-7 (volume 2).

L. von Ranke,

Civil Wars and Monarchy in France,

chapter 15.

FRANCE: A. D. 1572 (August).

The Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day.

"With some proofs, forged or real, in her hand that he was in

personal danger, the Queen Mother [August 24] presented

herself to her son. She told him that at the moment she was

speaking the Huguenots were arming. Sixteen thousand of them

intended to assemble in the morning, seize the palace, destroy

herself, the Duke of Anjou, and the Catholic noblemen, and

carry off Charles. The conspiracy, she said, extended through

France. The chiefs of the congregations were waiting for a

signal from Coligny to rise in every province and town. The

Catholics had discovered the plot, and did not mean to sit

still to be murdered. If the King refused to act with them,

they would choose another leader; and whatever happened he

would be himself destroyed. Unable to say that the story could

not be true, Charles looked enquiringly at Tavannas and De

Nevers, and they both confirmed the Queen Mother's words.

Shaking his incredulity with reminders of Amboise and Meaux,

Catherine went on to say that one man was the cause of all the

troubles in the realm. The Admiral aspired to rule all France,

and she--she admitted, with Anjou and the Guises, had

conspired to kill him to save the King and the country. She

dropped all disguise. The King, she said, must now assist them

or all would be lost. ... Charles was a weak, passionate boy,

alone in the dark conclave of iniquity. He stormed, raved,

wept, implored, spoke of his honour, his plighted word; swore

at one moment that the Admiral should not be touched, then

prayed them to try other means. But clear, cold and venomous,

Catherine told him it was too late. If there was a judicial

enquiry, the Guises would shield themselves by telling all

that they knew. They would betray her; they would betray his

brother; and, fairly or unfairly, they would not spare

himself. ... For an hour and a half the King continued to

struggle. 'You refuse, then,' Catherine said at last. ... 'Is

it that you are afraid, Sire?' she hissed in his ear. 'By

God's death,' he cried, springing to his feet, 'since you will

kill the Admiral, kill them all.

{1203}

Kill all the Huguenots in France, that none may be left to

reproach me. Mort Dieu! Kill them all.' He dashed out of the

cabinet. A list of those who were to die was instantly drawn

up. Navarre and Condé were first included; but Catherine

prudently reflected that to kill the Bourbons would make the

Guises too strong. Five or six names were added to the

Admiral's, and these Catherine afterwards asserted were all

that it was intended should suffer. ... Night had now fallen.

Guise and Aumale were still lurking in the city, and came with

the Duke of Montpensier at Catherine's summons. The persons

who were to be killed were in different parts of the town.

Each took charge of a district. Montpensier promised to see to

the Palace; Guise and his uncle undertook the Admiral; and below

these, the word went out to the leaders of the already

organised sections, who had been disappointed once, but whose

hour was now come. The Catholics were to recognise one another

in the confusion by a white handkerchief on the left arm and a

white cross in their caps. The Royal Guard, Catholics to a

man, were instruments ready made for the work. Guise assembled

the officers: he told them that the Huguenots were preparing

to rise, and that the King had ordered their instant

punishment. The officers asked no questions, and desired no

better service. The business was to begin at dawn. The signal

would be the tolling of the great bell at the Palace of

Justice, and the first death was to be Coligny's. The soldiers

stole to their posts. Twelve hundred lay along the Seine,

between the river and the Hotel de Ville; other companies

watched at the Louvre. As the darkness waned, the Queen Mother

went down to the gate. The stillness of the dawn was broken by

an accidental pistol-shot. Her heart sank, and she sent off a

messenger to tell Guise to pause. But it was too late. A

minute later the bell boomed out, and the massacre of St.

Bartholomew had commenced." The assassins broke into the

Admiral's dwelling and killed him as he lay wounded in bed.

"The window was open. 'Is it done?' cried Guise from the court

below, 'is it done? Fling him out that we may see him.' Still

breathing, the Admiral was hurled upon the pavement. The

Bastard of Angoulême wiped the blood from his face to be sure

of his identity, and then, kicking him as he lay, shouted, 'So

far well. Courage, my brave boys! now for the rest.' One of

the Duc de Nevers's people hacked off the head. A rope was

knotted about the ankles, and the corpse

was dragged out into the street amidst the howling crowd.

Teligny, ... Rochefoucault, and the rest of the Admiral's

friends who lodged in the neighbourhood were disposed of in

the same way, and so complete was the surprise that there was

not the most faint attempt at resistance. Montpensier had been

no less successful in the Louvre. The staircases were all

beset. The retinues of the King of Navarre and the Prince had

been lodged in the palace at Charles's particular desire.

Their names were called over, and as they descended unarmed

into the quadrangle they were hewn in pieces. There, in heaps,

they fell below the Royal window, under the eyes of the

miserable King, who was forced forward between his mother and

his brother that he might be seen as the accomplice of the

massacre. Most of the victims were killed upon the spot. Some

fled wounded up the stairs, and were slaughtered in the

presence of the Princesses. ... By seven o'clock the work

which Guise and his immediate friends had undertaken was

finished with but one failure. The Count Montgomery and the

Vidame of Chartres ... escaped to England. The mob meanwhile

was in full enjoyment. ... While dukes and lords were killing

at the Louvre, the bands of the sections imitated them with

more than success; men, women, and even children, striving

which should be the first in the pious work of murder. All

Catholic Paris was at the business, and every Huguenot

household had neighbours to know and denounce them. Through

street and lane and quay and causeway, the air rang with yells

and curses, pistol-shots and crashing windows; the roadways

were strewed with mangled bodies, the doors were blocked by

the dead and dying. From garret, closet, roof, or stable,

crouching creatures were torn shrieking out, and stabbed and

hacked at; boys practised their hands by strangling babies in

their cradles, and headless bodies were trailed along the

trottoirs. ... Towards midday some of the quieter people

attempted to restore order. A party of the town police made

their way to the palace. Charles caught eagerly at their

offers of service, and bade them do their utmost to put the

people down; but it was all in vain. The soldiers, maddened

with plunder and blood, could not be brought to assist, and

without them nothing could be done. All that afternoon and

night, and the next day and the day after, the horrible scenes

continued, till the flames burnt down at last for want of

fuel. The number who perished in Paris was computed variously

from 2,000 to 10,000. In this, as in all such instances, the

lowest estimate is probably the nearest to the truth. The

massacre was completed--completed in Paris--only, as it

proved, to be continued elsewhere. ... On the 24th, while the

havoc was at its height, circulars went round to the provinces

that a quarrel had broken out between the Houses of Guise and

Coligny; that the Admiral and many more had been unfortunately

killed, and that the King himself had been in danger through

his efforts to control the people. The governors of the

different towns were commanded to repress at once any symptoms

of disorder which might show themselves, and particularly to

allow no injury to be done to the Huguenots." But Guise, when

he learned of these circulars, which threw upon him the odium

of the massacre, forced the King to recall them. "The story of

the Huguenot conspiracy was revived. ... The Protestants of

the provinces, finding themselves denounced from the throne,

were likely instantly to take arms to defend themselves.

Couriers were therefore despatched with second orders that

they should be dealt with as they had been dealt with at

Paris; and at Lyons, Orleans, Rouen, Bordeaux, Toulon, Meaux,

in half the towns and villages of France, the bloody drama was

played once again. The King, thrown out into the hideous

torrent of blood, became drunk with frenzy, and let slaughter

have its way, till even Guise himself affected to be shocked,

and interposed to put an end to it; not, however, till,

according to the belief of the times, 100,000 men, women and

children had been miserably murdered. ... The number again may

be hoped to have been prodigiously exaggerated; with all large

figures, when unsupported by exact statistics, it is safe to

divide at least by ten."

J. A. Froude,

History of England: Reign of Elizabeth,

chapter 23 (volume 4).

ALSO IN:

H. White,

The Massacre of St. Bartholomew,

chapters 12-14.

Duke of Sully,

Memoirs,

book 1.

G. P. Fisher,

The Massacre of St. Bartholomew

(New Englander, January, 1880).

{1204}

FRANCE: A. D. 1572 (August-October).

The king's avowal of responsibility for the Massacre, and

celebration of his "victory."

Rejoicings at Rome and Madrid.

General horror of Europe.

The effects in France.

Changed character of the Protestant party.

"On the morning of the 26th of August, Charles IX. went to

hold a 'bed of justice' in the parliament, carrying with him

the king of Navarre, and he then openly avowed that the

massacre had been perpetrated by his orders, made ... excuse

for it, grounded on a pretended conspiracy of the Huguenots

against his person, and then directed the parliament to

commence judicial proceedings against Coligni and his

accomplices, dead or alive, on the charge of high treason. The

parliament obeyed, and, after a process of two months, which

was a mere tissue of falsehoods, they not only found all the

dead guilty, but they included in the sentence two of the

principal men who had escaped--the old captain Briquemaut,

and Arnaud de Cavaignes. ... Both were hanged at the Place de

Grève, in the presence of the king, who compelled the king of

Navarre also to be a witness of their execution. Having once

assumed the responsibility of the massacre of the protestants,

Charles IX. began to glory in the deed. On the 27th of August,

he went with the whole court to Montfaucon, to contemplate the

mutilated remains of the admiral. ... Next day, a grand

jubilee procession was headed by the king in celebration of

his so-called victory. ... The 'victory' was also celebrated

by two medals. ... Nevertheless, the minds of Charles and his

mother were evidently ill at ease, and their misgivings as to

the effect which would be produced at foreign courts by the

news of these proceedings are very evident in the varying and

often contradictory orders which they dispatched into the

provinces. ... The news of these terrible events caused an

extreme agitation in all the courts throughout Christian

Europe. Philip of Spain, informed of the massacres by a letter

from the king and the queen-mother, written on the 29th of

August, replied by warm congratulations and expressions of

joy. The cardinal of Lorraine, who was ... at Rome, gave a

reward of 1,000 écus of gold to the courier who brought the

despatches, and the news was celebrated at Rome by the firing

of the cannons of the castle of St. Angelo, and by the

lighting of bon-fires in the streets. The pope (Gregory XIII.)

and the sacred college went in grand procession to the

churches to offer their thanks to God. ... Not content with

these demonstrations, the pope caused a medal to be struck.

... Gregory dispatched immediately to the court of France the

legate Fabio d'Orsini, with a commission to congratulate the

king and his mother for the vigour they had shown in the

repression of heresy, to demand the reception in France of the

council of Trent, and the establishment of the Inquisition.

... But the papal legate found the court of France in a

different temper from that which he anticipated. Catherine,

alarmed at the effect which these great outrages had produced

on the protestant sovereigns, found it necessary to give him

private intimations that the congratulations of the pontiff

were untimely, and could not be publicly accepted. ... The

policy of the French court at home was no less distasteful to

the papal legate than its relations abroad. The old edicts

against the public exercise of the protestant worship were

gradually revived, and the Huguenots were deprived of the

offices which they had obtained during the short period of

toleration, but strict orders were sent round to forbid any

further massacres, with threats of punishment against those

who had already offended. On the 8th of October, the king

published a declaration, inviting such of the protestants as

had quitted the kingdom in consequence of the massacres to

return, and promising them safety; but this was soon followed

by letters to the governors of the provinces, directing them

to exhort the Huguenot gentry and others to conform to the

catholic faith, and declaring that he would tolerate only one

religion in his kingdom. Many, believing that the protestant

cause was entirely ruined in France, complied, and this

defection was encouraged by the example of the two princes of

Bourbon [Henry, now king of Navarre, his mother, Jeanne

d'Albret, having died June 9, 1572, and Henry, the young

prince of Condé], who, after some weeks of violent resistance,

submitted at the end of September, and, at least in outward

form, became catholics. It has been remarked that the massacre

of St. Bartholomew's-day produced an entire change in the

character of the protestant party in France. The Huguenots had

hitherto been entirely ruled by their aristocracy, who took

the lead and direction in every movement; but now the great

mass of the protestant nobility had perished or deserted the

cause, and from this moment the latter depended for support

upon the inhabitants of some of the great towns and upon the

un-noble class of the people; and with this change it took a

more popular character, in some cases showing even a tendency

to republicanism. In the towns where the protestants were

strong enough to offer serious resistance, such as La

Rochelle, Nimes, Sancerre, and Montauban, the richer burghers,

and a part at least of the municipal officers, were in favour

of submission, and they were restrained only by the resolution

and devotion of the less wealthy portion of the population."

T. Wright,

History of France,

book 3, chapter 7 (volume 1).

ALSO IN:

H. M. Baird,

History of the Rise of the Huguenots,

chapter 19 (volume 2).

A. de Montor,

Lives and Times of the Roman Pontiffs,

volume 1, pages 810-812.

{1205}

FRANCE: A. D. 1572-1573.

The Fourth Religious War.

Siege and successful defence of La Rochelle.

A favorable peace.

"The two Reformer-princes, Henry of Navarre and Henry de

Condé, attended mass on the 29th of September, and, on the 3d

of October, wrote to the pope, deploring their errors and

giving hopes of their conversion. Far away from Paris, in the

mountains of the Pyrenees and of Languedoc, in the towns where

the Reformers were numerous and confident ... the spirit of

resistance carried the day. An assembly, meeting at Milhau,

drew up a provisional ordinance for the government of the

Reformed church, 'until it please God, who has the hearts of

kings in His keeping, to change that of King Charles IX. and

restore the state of France to good order, or to raise up such

neighboring prince as is manifest marked out, by his virtue

and by distinguishing signs, for to be the liberator of this

poor afflicted people.' In November, 1572, the fourth

religious war broke out. The siege of La Rochelle was its only

important event. Charles IX. and his councillors exerted

themselves in vain to avoid it. There was everything to

disquiet them in this enterprise: so sudden a revival of the

religious war after the grand blow they had just struck, the

passionate energy manifested by the Protestants in asylum at

La Rochelle, and the help they had been led to hope for from

Queen Elizabeth, whom England would never have forgiven for

indifference in this cause. ... The king heard that one of the

bravest Protestant chiefs, La Noue, 'Ironarm,' had retired to

Mons with Prince Louis of Nassau. The Duke of Longueville ...

induced him to go to Paris. The king received him with great

favor ... and pressed him to go to La Rochelle and prevail

upon the inhabitants to keep the peace. ... La Noue at last

consented, and repaired, about the end of November, 1572, to a

village close by La Rochelle, whither it was arranged that

deputies from the town would come and confer with him. ...

After hearing him, the senate rejected the pacific overtures

made to them by La Noue. 'We have no mind [they said] to treat

specially and for ourselves alone; our cause is that of God

and of all the churches of France; we will accept nothing but

what shall seem proper to all our brethren.'" They then

offered to trust themselves under La Noue's command,

notwithstanding the commission by which he was acting for the

king. "La Noue did not hesitate; he became, under the

authority of the mayor, Jacques Henri, the military head of La

Rochelle, whither Charles IX. had sent him to make peace. The

king authorized him to accept this singular position. La Noue

conducted himself so honorably in it, and everybody was so

convinced of his good faith as well as bravery, that for three

months he commanded inside La Rochelle, and superintended the

preparations for defence, all the while trying to make the

chances of peace prevail. At the end of February, 1573, he

recognized the impossibility of his double commission, and he

went away from La Rochelle, leaving the place in better

condition than that in which he had found it, without either

king or Rochellese considering that they had any right to

complain of him. Biron first and then the Duke of Anjou in

person took the command of the siege. They brought up, it is

said, 40,000 men and 60 pieces of artillery. The Rochellese,

for defensive strength, had but 22 companies of refugees or

inhabitants, making in all 3,100 men. The siege lasted from

the 26th of February to the 13th of June, 1573; six assaults

were made on the place. ... La Rochelle was saved. Charles IX.

was more and more desirous of peace; his brother, the Duke of

Anjou, had just been elected King of Poland; Charles IX. was

anxious for him to leave France and go to take possession of

his new kingdom. Thanks to these complications, the peace of

La Rochelle was signed on the 6th of July, 1573. Liberty of

creed and worship was recognized in the three towns of La

Rochelle, Montauban, and Nimes. They were not obliged to

receive any royal garrison, on condition of giving hostages to

be kept by the king for two years. Liberty of worship throughout

the extent of their jurisdiction continued to be recognized in

the case of lords high-justiciary. Everywhere else the

Reformers had promises of not being persecuted for their

creed, under the obligation of never holding an assembly of

more than ten persons at a time. These were the most favorable

conditions they had yet obtained. Certainly this was not what

Charles IX, had calculated upon when he consented to the

massacre of the Protestants."

F. P. Guizot,

Popular History of France,

chapter 33.

FRANCE: A. D. 1573-1576.

Escape of Condé and Navarre.

Death of Charles IX.

Accession of Henry III.

The Fifth Civil War.

Navarre's repudiation of Catholicism.

The Peace of Monseur.

The King's mignons and the nation's disgust.

"Catherine ... had the address to procure the crown of Poland

for the son of her predilection, Henry duke of Anjou. She had

lavished her wealth upon the electors for this purpose. No

sooner was the point gained than she regretted it. The health

of Charles was now manifestly on the decline, and Catherine

would fain have retained Henry; but the jealousy of the king

forbade. After conducting the duke on his way to Poland the

court returned to St. Germain, and Charles sunk, without hope

or consolation, on his couch of sickness. Even here he was not

allowed to repose. The young king of Navarre formed a project

of escape with the prince of Condé. The duc d' Alençon,

youngest brother of the king, joined in it. ... The vigilance

of the queen-mother discovered the enterprise, which, for her

own purposes, she magnified into a serious plot. Charles was

informed that a huguenot army was coming to surprise him, and

he was obliged to be removed into a litter, in order to

escape. ... Condé was the only prince that succeeded in making

his escape. The king of Navarre and the duc d' Alençon were

imprisoned." The young king of Navarre "had already succeeded

by his address, his frankness, and high character, in rallying

to his interests the most honourable of the noblesse, who

dreaded at once the perfidious Catherine and her children; who

had renounced their good opinion of young Guise after the day

of St. Bartholomew; and who, at the same time professing

Catholicism, were averse to huguenot principles and zeal. This

party, called the Politiques, professed to follow the middle

or neutral course, which at one time had been that of

Catherine of Medicis; but she had long since deserted it, and

had joined in all the sanguinary and extreme measures of her

son and of the Guises. Hence she was especially odious to the

new and moderate party of the Politiques, among whom the

family of Montmorency held the lead. Catherine feared their

interference at the moment of the king's death, whilst his

successor was absent in a remote kingdom; and she swelled the

project of the princes' escape into a serious conspiracy, in

order to be mistress of those whom she feared. ... In this

state of the court Charles IX. expired on the 30th of May,

1574, after having nominated the queen-mother to be regent

during his successor's absence. ... The career of the new king

[Henry III.], while duke of Anjou, had been glorious. Raised

to the command of armies at the age of 15, he displayed

extreme courage as well as generalship.

{1206}

He had defeated the veteran leader of the protestants at

Jarnac and at Moncontour; and the fame of his exploits had

contributed to place him on the elective throne of Poland,

which he now occupied. Auguring from his past life, a

brilliant epoch might be anticipated; and yet we enter upon

the most contemptible reign, perhaps, in the annals of France.

... Henry was obliged to run away by stealth from his Polish

subjects [see POLAND: A. D. 1574-1590]. When overtaken by one

of the nobles of that kingdom, the monarch, instead of

pleading his natural anxiety to visit France and secure his

inheritance, excused himself by drawing forth the portrait of

his mistress, ... and declared that it was love which hastened

his return. At Vienna, however, Henry forgot both crown and

mistress amidst the feasts that were given him; and he turned

aside to Venice, to enjoy a similar reception from that rich

republic. ... The hostile parties were in the meantime arming.

The Politiques, or neutral catholics, for the first time

showed themselves in the field. They demanded the freedom of

Cossé and of Montmorency, and at length formed a treaty of

alliance with the Huguenots. Henry, after indulging in the

ceremony of being crowned, was obliged to lead an army into

the field. Sieges were undertaken on both sides, and what is

called the fifth civil war raged openly. It became more

serious when the king's brother joined it. This was the duke

of Alençon, a vain and fickle personage, of whom it pleased

the king to become jealous. Alençon fled and joined the

malcontents. The reformers, however, waited but languidly.

Both parties were without active and zealous leaders; and the

only notable event of this war was a skirmish in Champagne

[the battle of Dormans, in which both sides lost heavily],

where the duke of Guise received a slight wound in the cheek.

From hence came his surname of 'Le Balafré.'" In February,

1576, the king of Navarre made his escape from court. "He bent

his course towards Guienne, and at Niort publicly avowed his

adherence to the reformed religion, declaring that force alone

had made him conform to the mass. It was about this time that

the king, in lieu of leading an army against the malcontents,

despatched the queen-mother, with her gay and licentious

court, to win back his brother. She succeeded, though not

without making large concessions [in a treaty called the

'Peace of Monsieur']. The duke of Alençon obtained Anjou, and

other provinces in appanage, and henceforth was styled duke of

Anjou. More favourable terms were granted to the Huguenots:

they were allowed ten towns of surety in lieu of six, and the

appointment of a certain number of judges in the parliament.

Such weakness in Henry disgusted the body of the catholics;

and the private habits of his life contributed still more, if

possible, than his public measures, to render him

contemptible. He was continually surrounded by a set of young

and idle favourites, whose affectation it was to unite

ferocity with frivolity. The king showed them such tender

affection as he might evince towards woman; they even had the

unblushing impudence to adopt feminine habits of dress; and

the monarch passed his time in adorning them and himself with

robes and ear-rings. ... The indescribable tastes and

amusements of Henry and his mignons, as his favourites were

called, ... raised up throughout the nation one universal cry

of abhorrence and contempt."

E. E. Crowe,

History of France,

chapters 8-9 (volume 1).

ALSO IN:

Lady Jackson,

The Last of the Valois,

volume 2, chapters 2-6.

S. Menzies,

Royal Favourites,

volume 1, chapter 5.

FRANCE: A. D. 1576-1585.

The rise of the League.

Its secret objects and aims.

Its alliance with Philip II. of Spain.

The Pope's Bull against Navarre and Condé.

"The famous association known as the 'Catholic League' or

'Holy Union,' took its rise from the strangely indulgent terms

granted to the Huguenots by the 'Peace of Monsieur,' in April,

1576. Four years had scarcely elapsed since the bloodstained

Eve of St. Bartholomew. It had been hoped that by means of

that execrable crime the Reformation would have been finally

crushed and extinguished in France; but instead of this, a

treaty was concluded with the heretics, which placed them in a

more favourable situation than they had ever occupied before.

... It was regarded by the majority of Catholics as a wicked

and cowardly betrayal of their most sacred interests. They

ascribed it to its true source, namely, the hopeless

incapacity of the reigning monarch, Henry III.; a prince whose

monstrous vices and gross misgovernment were destined to

reduce France to a state of disorganization bordering on

national ruin. The idea of a general confederation of

Catholics for the defence of the Faith against the inroads of

heresy had been suggested by the Cardinal of Lorraine during

the Council of Trent, and had been favourably entertained at

the Court of Rome. The Duke of Guise was to have been placed

at the head of this alliance; but his sudden death changed the

face of affairs, and the project fell into abeyance. The

Cardinal of Lorraine was now no more; he died at Avignon, at

the age of 50, in December, 1574. ... Henry, the third Duke of

Guise, inherited in their fullest extent the ambition, the

religious ardour, the lofty political aspirations, the

enterprising spirit, the personal popularity, of his

predecessors. The League of 1576 was conceived entirely in his

interest. He was the leader naturally pointed out for such a

movement;--a movement which, although its ulterior objects

were at first studiously concealed, aimed in reality at

substituting the family of Lorraine for that of Valois on the

throne of France. The designs of the confederates, as set

forth in the original manifesto which was circulated for

signature, seemed at first sight highly commendable, both with

regard to religion and politics. According to this document, the

Union was formed for three great purposes: to uphold the

Catholic Church; to suppress heresy; and to maintain the

honour, the authority and prerogatives of the Most Christian

king and his successors. On closer examination, however,

expressions were detected which hinted at less constitutional

projects. ... Their secret aims became incontestably manifest

soon afterwards, when one of their confidential agents, an

advocate named David, happened to die suddenly on his return

from Rome, and his papers fell into the hands of the

Huguenots, who immediately made them public. ... A change of

dynasty in France was the avowed object of the scheme thus

disclosed. It set forth, in substance, that the Capetian

monarchs were usurpers,--the throne belonging rightfully to

the house of Lorraine as the lineal descendants of

Charlemagne. ...

{1207}

The Duke of Guise, with the advice and permission of the Pope,

was to imprison Henry for the rest of his days in a monastery,

after the example of his ancestor Pepin when he dethroned the

Merovingian Childeric. Lastly, the heir of the Carlovingians

was to be proclaimed King of France; and, on assuming the

crown, was to make such arrangements with his Holiness as

would secure the complete recognition of the sovereignty of

the Vicar of Christ, by abrogating for ever the so-called

'liberties of the Gallican Church.' ... This revolutionary

plot ... unhappily, was viewed with cordial sympathy, and

supported with enthusiastic zeal, by many of the prelates, and

a large majority of the parochial clergy, of France. ... The

death of the Duke of Anjou, presumptive heir to the throne, in

1584, determined the League to immediate action. In the event

of the king's dying without issue, which was most

probable,--the crown would now devolve upon Henry of Bourbon

[the King of Navarre], the acknowledged leader of the

Huguenots. ... In January, 1585, the chiefs of the League

signed a secret treaty at Joinville with the King of Spain, by

which the contracting parties made common cause for the

extirpation of all sects and heresies in France and the

Netherlands, and for excluding from the French throne princes

who were heretics, or who 'treated heretics with public

impunity.' ... Liberal supplies of men and money were to be

furnished to the insurgents by Philip from the moment that war

should break out. ... The Leaguers lost no time in seeking for

their enterprise the all-important sanction of the Holy See.

For this purpose they despatched as their envoy to Rome a

Jesuit named Claude Matthieu. ... The Jesuit fraternity in

France had embraced with passionate ardour the anti-royalist

cause. ... His Holiness [Gregory XIII.], however, was cautious

and reserved. He expressed in general terms his consent to the

project of taking up arms against the heretics, and granted a

plenary indulgence to those who should aid in the holy work.

But he declined to countenance the deposition of the king by

violence. ... At length, however [September 9, 1585], Sixtus

was persuaded to fulminate a bull against the King of Navarre

and the Prince of Condé, in which ... both culprits, together

with their heirs and posterity were pronounced for ever

incapable of succeeding to the throne of France or any other

dignity; their subjects and vassals were released from their

oath of homage, and forbidden to obey them."

W. H. Jervis,

History of the Church of France,

volume 1, chapter 3.

ALSO IN:

L. von Ranke,

Civil Wars and Monarchy in France,

chapter 21.

FRANCE: A. D. 1577-1578.

Rapid spread of the League.

The Sixth Civil War and the Peace of Bergerac.

Anjou in the Netherlands.

The League "spread like lightning over the whole face of

France; Condé could find no footing in Picardy or even in

Poitou; Henry of Navarre was refused entrance into Bordeaux

itself; the heads of the League, the family-party of the Dukes

of Guise, Mayenne and Nemours, seemed to carry all before

them; the weak King leant towards them; the Queen Mother,

intriguing ever, succeeded in separating Anjou from the

Politiques, and began to seduce Damville. She hoped once more

to isolate the Huguenots and to use the League to weaken and

depress them. ... The Court and the League seemed to be in

perfect harmony, the King ... in a way, subscribed to the

League, though the twelve articles were considerably modified

before they were shown to him. ... The Leaguers had succeeded

in making war [called the Sixth Civil War--1577], and winning

some successes: but on their heels came the Court with fresh

negotiations for peace. The heart's desire of the King was to

crush the stubborn Huguenots and to destroy the moderates, but

he was afraid to act; and so it came about that, though Anjou

was won away from them, and compromised on the other side, and

though Damville also deserted them, and though the whole party

was in the utmost disorder and seemed likely to disperse,

still the Court offered them such terms that in the end they

seemed to have even recovered ground. Under the walls of

Montpellier, Damville, the King's general, and Chatillon, the

Admiral's son, at the head of the Huguenots, were actually

manœuvring to begin a battle, when La Noue came up bearing

tidings of peace, and at the imminent risk of being shot

placed himself between the two armies, and stayed their

uplifted hands. It was the Peace of Bergerac [confirmed by the

Edict of Poitiers--Sept. 17, 1577], another ineffectual truce,

which once more granted in the main what that of Chastenoy [or

the 'Peace of Monseur'] had already promised: it is needless

to say that the League would have none of it; and

partisan-warfare, almost objectless, however oppressive to the

country, went on without a break: the land was overrun by

adventurers and bandits, sure sign of political death. Nothing

could be more brutalising or more brutal: but the savage

traits of civil war are less revolting than the ghastly

revelries of the Court. All the chiefs were alike--neither the

King, nor Henry of Navarre, nor Anjou, nor even the strict

Catholic Guise, disdained to wallow in debauch." Having

quarreled with his brother, the King, "Anjou fled, in the

beginning of 1578, to Angers, where, finding that there was a

prospect of amusement in the Netherlands, he turned his back

on the high Catholics, and renewed friendship with the

Huguenot chiefs. He was invited to come to the rescue of the

distressed Calvinists in their struggle against Philip, and

appeared in the Netherlands in July 1578."

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1577-1581, and 1581-1584.

G. W. Kitchin,

History of France,

volume 2, pages 370-373.

FRANCE: A. D. 1578-1580.

Treaty of Nérac.

The Seventh Civil War, known as the War of the Lovers.

The Peace of Fleix.

"The King, instead of availing himself of this interval of

repose [after the Peace of Bergerac] to fortify himself

against his enemies, only sank deeper and deeper into vice and

infamy. ... The court resembled at once a slaughter-house and

a brothel, although, amid all this corruption, the King was

the slave of monks and Jesuits whom he implicitly obeyed. It

was about this time (December 1578) that he instituted the

military order of the Holy Ghost, that of St. Michael having

fallen into contempt through being prostituted to unworthy

objects. Meanwhile the Guises were using every effort to

rekindle the war, which Catherine, on the other hand, was

endeavouring to prevent. With this view she travelled, in

August, into the southern provinces, and had an interview with

Henry of Navarre at Nérac, bringing with her Henry's wife, her

daughter Margaret; a circumstance, however, which did not add

to the pleasure of their meeting.

{1208}

Henry received the ladies coldly, and they retired into

Languedoc, where they passed the remainder of the year.

Nevertheless the negotiations were sedulously pursued; for a

peace with the Hugonots was, at this time, indispensable to

the Court. ... In February 1579, a secret treaty was signed at

Nérac, by which the concessions granted to the Protestants by

the peace of Bergerac were much extended. ... Catherine spent

nearly the whole of the year 1579 in the south, endeavouring

to avert a renewal of the war by her intrigues, rather than by

a faithful observance of the peace. But the King of Navarre

saw through her Italian artifices, and was prepared to summon

his friends and captains at the shortest notice. The

hostilities which he foresaw were not long in breaking out,

and in a way that would seem impossible in any other country

than France. When the King of Navarre fled from Court in 1576,

he expressed his indifference for two things he had left

behind, the mass and his wife; Margaret, the heroine of a

thousand amours, was equally indifferent, and though they now

contrived to cohabit together, it was because each connived at

the infidelities of the other. Henry was in love with

Mademoiselle Fosseuse, a girl of fourteen, while Margaret had

taken for her gallant the young Viscount of Turenne, who had

lately turned Hugonot. ... The Duke of Anjou being at this

time disposed to renew his connection with the Hugonots,

Margaret served as the medium of communication between her

brother and her husband; while Henry III., with a view to

interrupt this good understanding, wrote to the king of

Navarre to acquaint him of the intrigues of his wife with

Turenne. Henry was neither surprised nor afflicted at this

intelligence; but he laid the letter before the guilty

parties, who both denied the charge, and Henry affected to

believe their protestations. The ladies of the Court of Nérac

were indignant at this act of Henry III., 'the enemy of

women'; they pressed their lovers to renew hostilities against

that discourteous monarch; Anjou added his instances to those

of the ladies; and in 1580 ensued the war called from its

origin 'la guerre des amoureux,' or war of the lovers: the

seventh of what are sometimes styled the wars of 'religion'!

The Prince of Condé, who lived on bad terms with his cousin,

had already taken the field on his own account, and in

November 1579 had seized on the little town of La Fère in

Picardy. In the spring of 1580 the Protestant chiefs in the

south unfurled their banners. The King of Navarre laid the

foundation of his military fame by the bravery he displayed at

the capture of Cahors; but on the whole the movement proved a

failure. Henry III. had no fewer than three armies in the

field, which were generally victorious, and the King of

Navarre found himself menaced in his capital of Nérac by

Marshal Biron. But Henry III., for fear of the Guises, did not

wish to press the Hugonots too hard, and at length accepted

the proffered mediation of the Duke of Anjou, who was at this

time anxious to enter on the protectorate offered to him by

the Flemings. Anjou set off for the south, accompanied by his

mother and her 'flying squadron' [of seductive nymphs];

conferences were opened at the castle of Fleix in Périgord,

and on November 26th 1580 a treaty was concluded which was

almost a literal renewal of that of Bergerac. Thus an

equivocal peace, or rather truce, was re-established, which

proved of some duration."

T. H. Dyer,

History of Modern Europe,

book 3, chapter 8 (volume 2).

ALSO IN:

Duc d'Aumale,

History of the Princes de Condé,

book 2, chapter 1 (volume 2).

FRANCE: A. D. 1584-1589.

Henry of Navarre heir apparent to the throne.

Fresh hostility of the League.

The Edict of Nemours.

The Pope's Brutum Fulmen.

War of the Three Henrys.

Battle of Coutras.

The Day of Barricades at Paris.

Assassination of Guise.

Assassination of Henry III.

"The Duc d'Anjou ... died in 1584; Henri III. was a worn-out

and feeble invalid; the reports of the doctors and the known

virtue of the Queen forbad the hope of direct heirs. The King

of Navarre was the eldest of the legitimate male descendants

of Hugues Capet and of Saint-Louis [see BOURBON, HOUSE OF].

But on the one hand he was a relapsed heretic; on the other,

his relationship to the King was so distant that he could

never have been served heir to him in any civil suit. This

last objection was of small account; the stringent rules which

govern decisions in private affairs cannot be made applicable

to matters affecting the tranquillity and well-being of

nations. ... His religion was the only pretext on which

Navarre could be excluded. France was, and wished to remain,

Catholic; she could not submit to a Protestant King. The

managers of the League understood that this very wide-spread

and even strongly cherished feeling might some day become a

powerful lever, but that, in order to use it, it was very

needful for them to avoid offending the national amour-propre;

and they thought that they had succeeded in finding the means

of effecting their object. Next to Navarre, the eldest of the

Royal House was his uncle the Cardinal de Bourbon; the Guises

acknowledged him as heir to the throne and first Prince of the

Blood, under the protection of the Pope and of the King of

Spain. ... The feeble-minded old man, whom no one respected,

was a mere phantom, and could offer no serious resistance,

when it should be convenient to set him aside. ... In every

class throughout the nation the majority were anxious to

maintain at once French unity and Catholic unity, disliking

the Reformation, but equally opposed to ultramontane

pretensions and to Spanish ambition. ... But ... this great

party, already named the 'parti politique,' hung loosely

together without a leader, and without a policy. For the

present it was paralyzed by the contempt in which the King was

held; while the dislike which was entertained for the

religious opinions of the rightful heir to the throne seemed

to deprive it of all hope for the future. Henry III. stood in

need of the assistance of the King of Navarre; he would

willingly have cleared away the obstacle which kept them

apart, and he made an overture with a view to bring back that

Prince to the Catholic religion. But these efforts could not

be successful. The change of creed on the part of the Béarnais

was to be a satisfaction offered to France, the pledge of a

fresh agreement between the nation and his race, and not a

concession to the threats of enemies. He was not an

unbeliever; still less was he a hypocrite; but he was placed

between two fanatical parties, and repelled by the excesses of

both; so he doubted, honestly doubted, and as his religious

indecision was no secret, his conversion at the time of which

we are now speaking would have been ascribed to the worst

motives."

{1209}

As it was, he found it necessary to quiet disturbing rumors

with regard to the proposals of the King by permitting a plain

account of what had occurred to be made public. "Henry III.,

having no other answer to make to this publication, which

justified all the complaints of the Catholics, replied to it

by the treaty of Nemours and by the edict of July [1585].

These two acts annulled all the edicts in favour of

toleration; and placed at the disposal of the League all the

resources and all the forces of the monarchy." Soon afterwards

the Pope issued against Navarre and Condé his bull of

excommunication. By this "the Pontiff did not deprive the

Bourbons of a single friend, and did not give the slightest

fresh ardour to their opponents; but he produced a powerful

reaction among a portion of the clergy, among the magistracy,

among all the Royalists; wounded the national sensibility,

consolidated that union between the two Princes which he

wished to break off, and rallied the whole of the Reformed

party round their leaders. The Protestant pamphleteers replied

with no less vehemence, and gave to the Pontiff's bull that

name of 'Brutum fulmen' by which it is still known. ... Still

the sentence launched from the Vatican had had one very

decided result--it had fired the train of powder; war broke

out at once."

Duc d'Aumale,

History of the Princes of Condé,

book 2, chapter 1.

"The war, called from the three leading actors in it [Henry of

Valois, Henry of Navarre, and Henry of Guise] the War of the

Three Henrys, now opened in earnest. Seven powerful armies

were marshalled on the part of the King of France and the

League. The Huguenots were weak in numbers, but strong in the

quality of their troops. An immense body of German 'Reiter'

had been enrolled to act as an auxiliary force, and for some

time had been hovering on the frontiers. Hearing that at last

they had entered France, Henry of Navarre set out from

Rochelle to effect a junction with them. The Duke of Joyeuse,

one of the French King's chief favourites, who had the charge

of the army that occupied the midland counties, resolved to

prevent their junction. By a rapid movement he succeeded in

crossing the line of Henry's march and forcing him into

action. The two armies came in front of each other on a plain

near the village of Coutras, on the 19th of October, 1587. The

Royalist army numbered from 10,000 to 12,000, the Huguenot

from 6,000 to 7,000--the usual disparity in numbers; but

Henry's skilful disposition did more than compensate for his

numerical inferiority. ... The struggle lasted but an hour,

yet within that hour the Catholic army lost 3,000 men, more

than 400 of whom were members of the first families in the

kingdom; 3,000 men were made prisoners. Not more than a third

part of their entire army escaped. The Huguenots lost only

about 200 men. ... Before night fell he [Navarre] wrote a few

lines to the French King, which run thus: 'Sire, my Lord and

Brother,--Thank God, I have beaten your enemies and your

army.' It was but too true that the poor King's worst enemies

were to be found in the very armies that were marshalled in

his name."

W. Hanna,

The Wars of the Huguenots,

chapter 6.

"The victory [at Coutras] had only a moral effect. Henry lost

time by going to lay at the feet of the Countess of Grammont

the flags taken from the enemy. Meantime the Duke of Guise,

north of the Loire, triumphed over the Germans under the Baron

of Dohna at Vimory, near Montargis, and again near Auneau

(1587). Henry III. was unskilful enough to leave to his rival

the glory of driving them out of the country. Henry III.

re-entered Paris. As he passed along, the populace cried out,

'Saul has killed his thousands, and David his ten thousands';

and a few days after, the Sorbonne decided that 'the

government could be taken out of the hands of princes who were

found incapable.' Henry III., alarmed, forbade the Duke of

Guise to come to Paris, and quartered in the faubourgs 4,000

Swiss and several companies of the guards. The Sixteen [chiefs

of sixteen sections of Paris, who controlled the League in

that city] feared that all was over; they summoned the

'Balafré' and he came [May 9, 1588]. Cries of 'Hosannah to the

Son of David!' resounded throughout Paris, and followed him to

the Louvre. ... The king and the chief of the League fortified

themselves, one in the Louvre, the other in the Hotel Guise.

Negotiations were carried on for two days. On the morning of

the 11th the duke, well attended, returned to the Louvre, and

in loud tones demanded of the king that he should send away

his counsellors, establish the Inquisition, and push to the

utmost the war against the heretics. That evening the king

ordered the companies of the city guards to hold several

positions, and the next morning he introduced into the city

the Swiss and 2,000 men of the French guards. But the city

guards failed him. In two hours all Paris was under arms, all

the streets were rendered impassable, and the advancing

barricades soon reached the positions occupied by the troops

[whence the insurrection became known as 'the Day of

Barricades']. At this juncture Guise came out of his hôtel,

dressed in a white doublet, with a small cane in his hand;

saved the Swiss, who were on the point of being massacred,

sent them back to the king with insulting scorn, and quieted

everything as if by magic. He demanded the office of

lieutenant-general of the kingdom for himself, the convocation

of the States at Paris, the forfeiture of the Bourbons, and,

for his friends, provincial governments and all the other

offices. The queen-mother debated these conditions for three

hours. During this time the attack was suspended, and Henry

III. was thus enabled to leave the Louvre and make his escape.

The Duke of Guise had made a mistake; but if he did not have

the king, he had Paris. There was now a king of Paris and a

king of France; negotiations were carried on, and to the

astonishment of all, Henry III. at length granted what two

months before he had refused in front of the barricades. He

swore that he would not lay down his arms until the heretics

were entirely exterminated; declared that any non-Catholic

prince forfeited his rights to the throne, appointed the Duke

of Guise lieutenant-general, and convoked the States at Blois

[October, 1588]. The States of Blois were composed entirely of

Leaguers," and were wholly controlled by the Duke of Guise.

The latter despised the king too much to give heed to repeated

warnings which he received of a plot against his life.

{1210}

Summoned to a private interview in the royal cabinet, at an

early hour on the morning of the 23d of December, he did not

hesitate to present himself, boldly, alone, and was murdered

as he entered, by eight of the king's body-guard, whom Henry

III. had personally ordered to commit the crime. "Killing the

Duke of Guise was not killing the League. At the news of his

death Paris was stunned for a moment; then its fury broke

forth. ... The Sorbonne decreed 'that the French people were

set free from the oath of allegiance taken to Henry III.' ...

Henry III. had gained nothing by the murder; ... but he had

helped the fortunes of the king of Navarre, into whose arms he

was forced to cast himself. ... The junction of the Protestant

and the royal armies under the same standard completely

changed the nature of the war. It was no longer feudal

Protestantism, but the democratic League, which threatened

royalty; monarchy entered into a struggle with the Catholic

masses in revolt against it. Henry III. called together, at

Tours, his useless Parliament, and issued a manifesto against

Mayenne and the chiefs of the League. Henry of Navarre carried

on the war energetically. In two months he was master of the

territory between the Loire and the Seine, and 15,000 Swiss

and lanzknechts joined him. On the evening of July 30th, 1589,

the two kings, with 40,000 men, appeared before Paris. The

Parisians could see the long line of the enemies' fires

gleaming in a vast semi-circle on the left bank of the Seine.

The king of Navarre established his headquarters at Meudon;

Henry III. at Saint-Cloud. The great city was astounded; the

people had lost energy; but the fury was concentrated in the

hearts of the chiefs and in the depths of the cloisters. ...

The arm of a fanatic became the instrument of the general

fury, and put into practice the doctrine of tyrannicide more

than once asserted in the schools and the pulpit. The assault

was to be made on August 2d. On the morning of the previous

day a young friar from the convent of the Dominicans, Jacques

Clément, came out from Paris," obtained access to the king by

means of a forged letter, and stabbed him in the abdomen,

being, himself, slain on the spot by the royal guards. Henry

III. "died the same night, and with him the race of Valois

became extinct. The aged Catherine de' Medici had died six

months before."

V. Duruy,

History of France (abridged),

chapter 45.

ALSO IN:

L. von Ranke,

Civil Wars and Monarchy in France,

16th and 17th Centuries, chapters 22-25.

W. S. Browning,

History of the Huguenots,

chapters 35-42.

FRANCE: A. D. 1585.

Proffered sovereignty of the United Netherlands declined by

Henry III.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1585-1586.

FRANCE: A. D. 1589-1590.

Henry of Navarre as Henry IV. of France.

His retreat to Normandy.

The battles at Arques.

Battle of Ivry.

"On being made aware that all hope was over, this King [Henry

III.], whose life had been passed in folly, vanity and

sensuality ... prepared for death like a patriot king and a

martyr. He summoned his nobles to his bedside, and told them

that his only regret in dying was that he left the kingdom in

disorder, and as the best mode of remedying the evil he

recommended them to recognize the King of Navarre, to whom the

kingdom belonged of right; making no account of the religious

difference, because that king, with his sincere and earnest

nature, must finally return to the bosom of the Church. Then

turning to Henry, he solemnly warned him: 'Cousin,' he said,

'I assure you that you will never be King of France if you do

not become Catholic, and if you do not make your peace with

the Church.' Directly afterwards he breathed his last,

reciting the 'Miserere.' This account is substantially

confirmed by Perefixe. According to Sully, Henry, hearing that

the King had been stabbed, started for St. Cloud, attended by

Sully, but did not arrive till he was dead; and D'Aubigny

says: 'When the King of Navarre entered the chamber where the

body was lying, he saw amidst the howlings some pulling their

hats down upon their brows, or throwing them on the ground,

clenching their fists, plotting, clasping each other's hands,

making vows and promises.' ... Henry's situation was

embarrassing in the extreme, for only a small number of the

Catholic nobles gave in an unqualified adhesion: a powerful

body met and dictated the conditions upon which alone they

would consent to his being proclaimed King of France: the two

first being that within six months he would cause himself to

be instructed in the Holy Catholic Apostolic Faith; and that

during this interval he would nominate no Huguenot to offices

of State. He replied that he was no bigot, and would readily

seek instruction in the tenets of the Romish faith, but

declined pledging himself to any description of exclusion or

intolerance. M. Guadet computes that nine-tenths of his French

subjects were Catholic, and the temper of the majority may be

inferred from what was taking place in Paris, where the news

of the late King's death was the signal for the most unseemly

rejoicing. ... Far from being in a condition to reduce the

refractory Parisians, Henry was obliged to abandon the siege,

and retire towards Normandy, where the expected succours from

England might most easily reach him. Sully says that this

retreat was equally necessary for the safety of his person and

the success of his affairs. He was temporarily abandoned by

several of the Huguenot leaders, who, serving at their own

expense, were obliged from time to time to go home to recruit

their finances and their followers. Others were made lukewarm

by the prospect of his becoming Catholic; so that he was no

longer served with enthusiasm by either party; and when, after

making the best arrangements in his power, he entered

Normandy, he had with him only 3,000 French foot, two

regiments of Swiss and 1,200 horse; with which, after being

joined by the Due de Montpensier with 200 gentlemen and 1,500

foot, he drew near to Rouen, relying on a secret understanding

within the walls which might give him possession of the place.

Whilst preparations were making for the siege, sure

intelligence was brought that the Duc de Mayenne was seeking

him with an army exceeding 30,000; but, resolved to make head

against them till the last extremity, Henry entrenched himself

before Arques, which was only accessible by a causeway." A series

of engagements ensued, beginning September 15, 1589; but

finding that he could not dislodge his antagonist, Mayenne

withdrew after some ten days of fighting, moving his army

towards Picardy and leaving the road to Paris open. "Being too

weak to recommence the siege or to occupy the city if taken by

assault, Henry resolved to give the Parisians a sample of what

they might expect if they persevered in their contumacy, and

gave orders for attacking all the suburbs at once.

{1211}

They were taken and sacked. Davila states that the plunder was

so abundant that the whole camp was wonderfully relieved and

sustained." From this attack on the Parisian suburbs, Henry

proceeded to Tours, where he held his court for a time. Early

in March, 1590, he laid siege to Dreux. "The Duc de Mayenne,

reinforced by Spanish troops from the Low Countries under

Count Egmont, left Paris to effect a diversion, and somewhat

unexpectedly found himself compelled to accept the battle

which was eagerly pressed upon him. This was the renowned

battle of Ivry. The armies presented much the same contrast as

at Coutras. The numerical superiority on one side, the

Catholic, was more than compensated by the quality of the

troops on the other. Henry's soldiers, as described by De

Thou, were armed to the teeth. 'They displayed neither scarf

nor decoration, but their accoutrements inspired grim terror.

The army of the Duc, on the contrary, was magnificent in

equipment. The officers wore bright-coloured scarves, while

gold glittered upon their helmets and lances.' The two armies

were confronted on the 13th of March, 1590, but it was getting

dark before the dispositions were completed, and the battle

was deferred till the following morning. The King passed the

night like Henry V. at Agincourt, and took only a short rest

in the open air on the field. ... At daybreak he mounted his

horse, and rode from rank to rank, pausing from time to time

to utter a brief exhortation or encouragement. Prayers were

offered up by the Huguenot ministers at the head of each

division, and the bishop [Perefixe] gives the concluding words

of that in which Divine aid was invoked by the King: 'But,

Lord, if it has pleased Thee to dispose otherwise, or Thou

seest that I ought to be one of those kings whom Thou

punishest in Thy wrath, grant that I may be this day the

victim of Thy Holy will: so order it that my death may deliver

France from the calamities of war, and that my blood be the

last shed in this quarrel.' Then, putting on his helmet with

the white plume, before closing the vizor, he addressed the

collected leaders:--'My friends, if you share my fortune this

day, I also share yours. I am resolved to conquer or to die

with you. Keep your ranks firmly, I beg; if the heat of the

combat compels you to quit them, think always of the rally; it

is the gaining of the battle. You will make it between the

three trees which you see there [pointing to three pear-trees

on an eminence], and if you lose your ensigns, pennons and

banners, do not lose sight of my white plume: you will find it

always on the road of honour and victory.' It so chanced that his

white plume was the actual rallying-point at the most critical

moment. ... His standard-bearer fell: a page bearing a white

pennon was struck down at his side; and the rumour was

beginning to spread that he himself was killed, when the sight

of his bay horse and white plume, with the animating sound of

his voice, gave fresh courage to all around and brought the

bravest of his followers to the front. The result is told in

one of his own missives. After stating that the battle began

between 11 and 12, he continues: 'In less than an hour, after

having discharged all their anger in two or three charges

which they made and sustained, all their cavalry began to

shift for themselves, abandoning their infantry, which was

very numerous. Seeing which, their Swiss appealed to my pity

and surrendered--colonels, captains, soldiers, and colours.

The lansquenets and French had no time to form this

resolution, for more than 1,200 were cut to pieces, and the

rest dispersed into the woods at the mercy of the peasants.'

He urged on the pursuers, crying 'Spare the French, and down

with the foreigners.' ... Instead of pushing on towards Paris,

which it was thought would have opened its gates to a

conqueror in the flush of victory, Henry lingered at Mantes,

where he improvised a Court, which his female favourites were

summoned to attend."

Henry IV. of France

(Quarterly Review, October, 1879).

ALSO IN:

H. M. Baird,

The Huguenots and Henry of Navarre,

chapter 11 (volume 2).

Duke of Sully,

Memoirs,

book 3 (volume l).

G. P. R. James,

Life of Henry IV.,

books 11-12 (volume 2).

FRANCE: A. D. 1590.

The siege of Paris and its horrors.

Relief at the hands of the Spaniards under Parma.

Readiness of the League to give the crown to Philip II.

"The king, yielding to the councils of Biron and other

catholics, declined attacking the capital, and preferred

waiting the slow, and in his circumstances eminently

hazardous, operations of a regular siege. ... Whatever may

have been the cause of the delay, it is certain that the

golden fruit of victory was not plucked, and that although the

confederate army had rapidly dissolved, in consequence of

their defeat, the king's own forces manifested as little

cohesion. And now began that slow and painful siege, the

details of which are as terrible, but as universally known, as

those of any chapters in the blood-stained history of the

century. Henry seized upon the towns guarding the rivers Seine

and Marne, twin nurses of Paris. By controlling the course of

those streams as well as that of the Yonne and Oise--

especially by taking firm possession of Lagny on the Marne,

whence a bridge led from the Isle of France to the Brie

country--great thoroughfare of wine and corn--and of Corbeil

at the junction of the little river Essonne with the Seine--it

was easy in that age to stop the vital circulation of the

imperial city. By midsummer, Paris, unquestionably the first

city of Europe at that day, was in extremities. ... Rarely

have men at any epoch defended their fatherland against

foreign oppression with more heroism than that which was

manifested by the Parisians of 1590 in resisting religious

toleration, and in obeying a foreign and priestly despotism.

Men, women, and children cheerfully laid down their lives by

thousands in order that the papal legate and the king of Spain

might trample upon that legitimate sovereign of France who was

one day to become the idol of Paris and of the whole kingdom.

A census taken at the beginning of the siege had showed a

population of 200,000 souls, with a sufficiency of provisions,

it was thought, to last one month. But before the terrible

summer was over--so completely had the city been invested--the

bushel of wheat was worth 360 crowns. ... The flesh of horses,

asses, dogs, cats, rats, had become rare luxuries. There was

nothing cheap, said a citizen bitterly, but sermons. And the

priests and monks of every order went daily about the streets,

preaching fortitude in that great resistance to heresy. ...

Trustworthy eye-witnesses of those dreadful days have placed

the number of the dead during the summer at 30,000. ...

{1212}

The hideous details of the most dreadful sieges recorded in

ancient or modern times were now reproduced in Paris. ... The

priests ... persuaded the populace that it was far more

righteous to kill their own children, if they had no food to

give them, than to obtain food by recognizing a heretic king.

It was related, too, and believed, that in some instances

mothers had salted the bodies of their dead children and fed

upon them, day by day, until the hideous repast would no

longer support their own life. ... The bones of the dead were

taken in considerable quantities from the cemeteries, ground

into flour, baked into bread, and consumed. It was called

Madame Montpensier's cake, because the duchess earnestly

proclaimed its merits to the poor Parisians. 'She was never

known to taste it herself, however,' bitterly observed one who

lived in Paris through that horrible summer. She was right to

abstain, for all who ate of it died. ... Lansquenets and other

soldiers, mad with hunger and rage, when they could no longer

find dogs to feed on, chased children through the streets, and

were known in several instances to kill and devour them on the

spot. ... Such then was the condition of Paris during that

memorable summer of tortures. What now were its hopes of

deliverance out of this Gehenna? The trust of Frenchmen was in

Philip of Spain, whose legions, under command of the great

Italian chieftain [Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, commander

of the Spanish forces in the Netherlands], were daily longed

for to save them from rendering obedience to their lawful

prince. For even the king of straw--the imprisoned cardinal

[Cardinal de Bourbon, whom the League had proclaimed king,

under the title of Charles X., on the death of Henry

III.]--was now dead, and there was not even the effigy of any

other sovereign than Henry of Bourbon to claim authority in

France. Mayenne, in the course of long interviews with the

Duke of Parma at Condé and Brussels, had expressed his desire

to see Philip king of France, and had promised his best

efforts to bring about such a result." Parma, who was

struggling hard with the obstinate revolt in the Netherlands,

having few troops and little money to pay them with, received

orders from his Spanish master to relieve Paris and conquer

France. He obeyed the command to the best of his abilities. He

left the Netherlands at the beginning of August, with 12,000

foot and 3,000 horse; effected a junction with Mayenne at

Meaux, ten leagues from Paris, on the 22d, and the united

armies--5,000 cavalry and 18,000 foot--arrived at Chelles on

the last day of summer. "The two great captains of the age had

at last met face to face. ... The scientific duel which was

now to take place was likely to task the genius and to bring

into full display the peculiar powers and defects of the two."

The winner in the duel was the Duke of Parma, who foiled

Henry's attempts to bring him to battle, while he captured

Lagny under the king's eyes. "The bridges of Charenton and St.

Maur now fell into Farnese's hands without a contest. In an

incredibly short space of time provisions and munitions were

poured into the starving city, 2,000 boat-loads arriving in a

single day. Paris was relieved. Alexander had made his

demonstration and solved the problem. ... The king was now in

worse plight than ever. His army fliers, cheated of their

battle, and having neither food nor forage, rode off by

hundreds every day." He made one last attempt, by a midnight

assault on the city, but it failed. Then he followed the

Spaniards--whom Parma led back to the Netherlands early in

November--but could not bring about a battle or gain any

important advantage. But Paris, without the genius of

Alexander Farnese in its defence, was soon reduced to as

complete a blockade as before. Lagny was recovered by the

besieging royalists, the Seine and the Marne were again

fast-locked, and the rebellious capital deprived of supplies.

J. L. Motley,

History of the United Netherlands,

chapter 23 (volume 3).

ALSO IN:

M. W. Freer,

History of the Reign of Henry IV.,

book 1.

C. D. Yonge,

History of France under the Bourbons,

chapter 2.

FRANCE: A. D. 1591-1593.

The siege of Rouen and Parma's second interference.

General advancement of Henry's cause.

Restiveness of the Catholics.

The King's abjuration of Protestantism.

"It seemed as if Henri IV. had undertaken the work of

Penelope. After each success, fresh difficulties arose to

render it fruitless. ... Now it was the Swiss who refused to

go on without their pay; or Elizabeth who exacted seaports in

return for fresh supplies; or the Catholics who demanded the

conversion of the King; or the Protestants who complained of

not being protected. Depressed spirits had to be cheered, some

to be satisfied, others to be reassured or restrained, allies

to be managed, and all to be done with very little money and

without any sacrifice of the national interests. Henri was

equal to all, both to war and to diplomacy, to great concerns

and to small. ... His pen was as active as his sword. The

collection of his letters is full of the most charming notes.

... Public opinion, which was already influential and

thirsting for news, was not neglected. Every two or three

months a little publication entitled 'A Discourse,' or 'An

Authentic Narrative,' or 'Account of all that has occurred in

the King's Army,' was circulated widely. ... Thus it was that

by means of activity, patience, and tact, Henri V. was enabled

to retrieve his fortunes and to rally his party; so that by

the end of the year 1591, he found himself in a position to

undertake an important operation. ... The King laid siege to

Rouen in December, 1591. He was at the head of the most

splendid army he had ever commanded; it numbered upwards of

25,000 men. This was not too great a number; for the

fortifications were strong, the garrison numerous, well

commanded by Villars, and warmly supported by the townspeople.

The siege had lasted for some months when the King learned

that Mayenne had at last made the Duke of Parma to understand

the necessity of saving Rouen at all hazards. Thirty thousand

Spanish and French Leaguers had just arrived on the Somme.

Rouen, however, was at the last gasp; Henri could not make up

his mind to throw away the fruits of so much toil and trouble;

he left all his infantry under the walls, under the command of

Biron, and marched off with his splendid cavalry." He attacked

the enemy imprudently, near Aumale, February 5, met with a

repulse, was wounded and just missed being taken prisoner in a

precipitate retreat. But both armies were half paralyzed at this

time by dissensions among their chiefs.

{1213}

That of the Leaguers fell back to the Somme; but in April it

approached Rouen again, and Parma was able, despite all

Henri's efforts, to enter the town. This last check to the

King "was the signal for a general desertion. Henri, left with

only a small corps of regular troops and a few gentlemen, was

obliged to retire rapidly upon Pont de l'Arche. The Duke of

Parma did not follow him. Always vigilant, he wished before

everything to establish himself on the Lower Seine, and laid

siege to Caudebec, which was not likely to detain him long.

But he received during that operation a severe wound, which

compelled him to hand over the command to Mayenne." The

incompetence of the latter soon lost all the advantages which

Parma had gained. Henri's supporters rallied around him again

almost as quickly as they had dispersed. "The Leaguers were

pushed back upon the Seine and confined in the heart of the

Pays de Caux. They were without provisions; Mayenne was at his

wits' end; he had to resort for suggestions and for orders to

the bed of suffering on which the Duke of Parma was held down

by his wound." The great Italian soldier, dying though he was,

as the event soon proved, directed operations which baffled

the keen watchfulness and penetration of his antagonist, and

extricated his army without giving to Henri the chance for

battle which he sought. The Spanish army retired to Flemish

territory. In the meantime, Henri's cause was being advanced

in the northeast of his kingdom by the skill and valor of

Turenne, then beginning his great career, and experiencing

vicissitudes in the southeast, where Lesdiguières was

contending with the mercenaries of the Pope and the Duke of

Savoy, as well as with his countrymen of the League. He had

defeated them with awful slaughter at Pontcharra, September

19, 1591, and he carried the war next year into the

territories of the Duke of Savoy, seeking help from the

Italian Waldenses which he does not seem to have obtained.

"Nevertheless the king had still some formidable obstacles to

overcome. Three years had run their course since he had

promised to become instructed in the Catholic religion, and

there were no signs as yet that he was preparing to fulfil

this undertaking. The position in which he found himself, and

the importance and activity of his military operations, had

hitherto been a sufficient explanation of his delay. But the

war had now changed its character. The King had gained

brilliant successes. There was no longer any large army in the

field against him. Nothing seemed to be now in the way to

hinder him from fulfilling his promise. And yet he always

evaded it. He had to keep on good terms with Elizabeth and the

Protestants; he wished to make his abjuration the occasion for

an agreement with the Court of Rome, which took no steps to

smooth over his difficulties; and lastly, he shrank from

taking a step which is always painful when it is not the fruit

of honest conviction. This indecision doubled the ardour of

his enemies, prevented fresh adhesions, discouraged and

divided his old followers. ... A third party, composed of

bishops and Royalist noblemen, drew around the cousins of

Henri IV., the Cardinal de Vendôme and the Comte de Soissons.

... The avowed object of this third party was to raise one of

these two Princes to the throne, if the Head of their House

did not forthwith enter the bosom of the Catholic Church. And

finally, the deputies of the cities and provinces who had been

called to Paris by Mayenne were assembling there for the

election of a king. 'The Satire of Ménippée' has handed down

the States of the League to immortal ridicule; but however

decried that assembly has been, and deserved to be, 'it

decided the conversion of Henri IV.: he does not attempt in

his despatches to deny this. ... In order to take away every

excuse for such an election, he entered at once into

conference with the Catholic theologians. After some very

serious discussion, much deeper than a certain saying which

has become a proverb [that 'Paris is certainly worth a Mass']

would seem to imply, he abjured the Protestant religion on the

25th of July, 1593, before the Archbishop of Bourges. The

League had received its death-blow."

Duc d'Aumale,

History of the Princes de Condé,

book 2, chapter 2 (volume 2).

"The news of the abjuration produced in the minds of honest

men, far and near, the most painful impression. Politicians

might applaud an act intended to conciliate the favor of the

great majority of the nation, and extol the astuteness of the

king in choosing the most opportune moment for his change of

religion--the moment when he would secure the support of the

Roman Catholics, fatigued by the length of the war and too

eager for peace to question very closely the sincerity of the

king's motives, without forfeiting the support of the

Huguenots. But men of conscience, judging Henry's conduct by a

standard of morality immutable and eternal, passed a severe

sentence of condemnation upon the most flagrant instance of a

betrayal of moral convictions which the age had known."

H. M. Baird,

The Huguenots and Henry of Navarre,

chapter 13 (volume 2).

"What the future history of France would have been if Henry

had clung to his integrity, is known only to the Omniscient;

but, with the annals of France in our hands, we have no

difficulty in perceiving that the day of his impious, because

pretended conversion, was among the 'dies nefasti' of his

country. It restored peace indeed to that bleeding land, and

it gave to himself an undisputed reign of seventeen years; but

he found them years replete with cares and terrors, and

disgraced by many shameful vices, and at last abruptly

terminated by the dagger of an assassin. It rescued France,

indeed, from the evils of a disputed succession, but it

consigned her to two centuries of despotism and misgovernment.

It transmitted the crown, indeed, to seven in succession of

the posterity of Henry; but of them one died on the scaffold,

three were deposed by insurrections of their subjects, one has

left a name pursued by unmitigated and undying infamy, and

another lived and died in a monastic melancholy, the feeble

slave of his own minister."

Sir J. Stephen,

Lectures on the History of France,

lecture 16.

ALSO IN:

P. F. Willert,

Henry of Navarre and the Huguenots of France,

chapters 5-6.

{1214}

FRANCE: A. D. 1593-1598.

Henry's winning of Paris.

The first attempt upon his life.

Expulsion of Jesuits from Paris.

War with Spain.

The Peace of Vervins.

"A truce of three months had been agreed upon [August 1,

1593], during which many nobles and several important towns

made their submissions to the King. Many, however, still held

out for the League, and among them Paris, as well as Rheims,

by ancient usage the city appropriated to the coronation of

the kings of France. Henry IV. deemed that ceremony

indispensable to sanctify his cause in the eyes of the people,

and he therefore caused it to be performed at Chartres by the

bishop of that place, February 27th 1594. But he could hardly

look upon himself as King of France so long as Paris remained

in the hands of a faction which disputed his right, and he

therefore strained every nerve to get possession of that

capital. ... As he wished to get possession of the city

without bloodshed, he determined to attempt it by corrupting

the commandant. This was Charles de Cossé, Count of Brissac.

... Henry promised Brissac, as the price of his admission into

Paris, the sum of 200,000 crowns and an annual pension of

20,000, together with the governments of Corbeil and Mantes,

and the continuance to him of his marshal's bâton. To the

Parisians was offered an amnesty from which only criminals

were to be excepted; the confirmation of all their privileges;

and the prohibition of the Protestant worship within a radius

of ten leagues. ... Before daybreak on the morning of the 22nd

March 1594 Brissac opened the gates of Paris to Henry's

troops, who took possession of the city without resistance,

except at one of the Spanish guard-houses, where a few

soldiers were killed. When all appeared quiet, Henry himself

entered, and was astonished at being greeted with joyous

cheers. ... He gave manifold proofs of forbearance and good

temper, fulfilled all the conditions of his agreement, and

allowed the Spaniards [4,000] to withdraw unmolested." In May,

1594, Henry laid siege to Laon, which surrendered in August.

"Its' example was soon followed by Chateau Thierry, Amiens,

Cambrai and Noyon. The success of the King induced the Duke of

Lorraine and the Duke of Guise to make their peace with him." In

November, an attempt to kill the King was made by a young man

named Jean Chatel, who confessed that he attended the schools

of the Jesuits. "All the members of that order were arrested,

and their papers examined. One of them, named Jean Guignard,

on whom was found a treatise approving the murder of Henry

III., and maintaining that his successor deserved a like fate,

was condemned to the gallows: and the remainder of the order

were banished from Paris, January 8th 1595, as corrupters of

youth and enemies of the state. This example, however, was

followed only by a few of the provincial cities. The

irritation caused by this event seems to have precipitated

Henry IV. into a step which he had been some time meditating:

a declaration of war against his ancient and most bitter enemy

Philip II. (January 17th 1595). The King of Spain, whom the

want of money had prevented from giving the League much

assistance during the two preceding years, was stung into fury

by this challenge; and he immediately ordered Don Fernando de

Velasco, constable of Castile, to join Mayenne in Franche

Comté with 10,000 men. Velasco, however, was no great captain,

and little of importance was done. The only action worth

mentioning is an affair of cavalry at Fontaine Française (June

6th 1595), in which Henry displayed his usual bravery, or

rather rashness, but came off victorious. He then overran

nearly all Franche Comté without meeting with any impediment

from Velasco, but retired at the instance of the Swiss, who

entreated him to respect the neutrality of that province.

Meanwhile Henry had made advances to Mayenne, who was

disgusted with Velasco and the Spaniards, and on the 25th

September Mayenne, in the name of the League, signed with the

King a truce of three months, with a view to regulate the

conditions of future submission. An event had already occurred

which placed Henry in a much more favourable position with his

Roman Catholic subjects; he had succeeded [September, 1595] in

effecting his reconciliation with the Pope. ... The war on the

northern frontiers had not been going on so favourably for the

King." In January, 1595, "Philip II. ordered the Spaniard

Fuentés, who, till the arrival of Albert [the Archduke],

conducted the government of the Netherlands, to invade the

north of France; and Fuentés ... having left Mondragone with

sufficient forces to keep Prince Maurice in check, set off

with 15,000 men, with the design of recovering Cambrai.

Catelet and Doullens yielded to his arms; Ham was betrayed to

him by the treachery of the governor, and in August Fuentés

sat down before Cambrai. ... The Duke of Anjou had made over

that place to his mother, Catherine de'Medici, who had

appointed Balagni to be governor of it. During the civil wars

of France, Balagni had established himself there as a little

independent sovereign, and called himself Prince of Cambrai;

but after the discomfiture of the League he had been compelled

to declare himself, and had acknowledged his allegiance to the

King of France. His extortion and tyranny having rendered him

detested by the inhabitants, they ... delivered Cambrai to the

Spaniards, October 2nd. Fuentés then returned into the

Netherlands. ... The Cardinal Archduke Albert arrived at

Brussels in February 1596, when Fuentés resigned his command.

... Henry IV. had been engaged since the winter in the siege

of La Fère, a little town in a strong situation at the

junction of the Serre and Oise. He had received reinforcements

from England as well as from Germany and Holland. ... Albert

marched to Valenciennes with about 20,000 men, with the avowed

intention of relieving La Fère; but instead of attempting that

enterprise, he despatched De Rosne, a French renegade ... with

the greater part of the forces, to surprise Calais; and that

important place was taken by assault, April 17th, before Henry

could arrive for its defence. La Fère surrendered May 22nd;

and Henry then marched with his army towards the coast of

Picardy, where he endeavoured, but in vain, to provoke the

Spaniards to give him battle. After fortifying Calais and

Ardres, Albert withdrew again into the Netherlands. ...

Elizabeth, alarmed at the occupation by the Spaniards of a

port which afforded such facilities for the invasion of

England, soon afterwards concluded another offensive and

defensive alliance with Henry IV. (May 24th), in which the

contracting parties pledged themselves to make no separate

peace or truce with Philip II." The Dutch joined in this

treaty; but the Protestant princes of Germany refused to

become parties to it. "The treaty, however, had little

effect." Early in 1597, the Spaniards dealt Henry an alarming

blow, by surprising and capturing the city of Amiens, gaining

access to it by an ingenious stratagem. But Henry recovered

the place in September, after a vigorous siege. He also put

down a rising, under the Duke de Mercœur, in Brittany,

defeating the rebels at Dinan, while his lieutenant,

Lesdiguières, in the southeast, invaded Savoy once more,

taking Maurienne, and paralyzing the hostile designs of its

Duke.

{1215}

The malignant Spanish king, suffering and near his end,

discouraged and tired of the war, now sought to make peace.

Both the Dutch and the English refused to treat with him; but

Henry IV., notwithstanding the pledges given in 1596 to his

allies, entered into negotiations which resulted in the Treaty

of Vervins, signed May 2, 1598. "By the Peace of Vervins the

Spaniards restored to France Calais, Ardres, Doullens, La

Capelle, and Le Câtelet in Picardy, and Blavet (port Louis) in

Brittany, of all their conquests retaining only the citadel of

Cambrai. The rest of the conditions were referred to the

treaty of Câteau-Cambresis, which Henry had stipulated should

form the basis of the negotiations. The Duke of Savoy was

included in the peace." While this important treaty was

pending, in April, 1598, Henry quieted the anxieties of his

Huguenot subjects by the famous Edict of Nantes.

T. H. Dyer,

History of Modern Europe,

book 3, chapters 10-11 (volume 2).

ALSO IN:

Lady Jackson,

The First of the Bourbons,

volume 1, chapters 14-18,

and volume 2, chapters 1-7.

J. L. Motley,

History of the United Netherlands,

chapters 29-35 (volume 3).

R. Watson,

History of the Reign of Philip II.,

books 23-24.

FRANCE: A. D. 1598-1599.

The Edict of Nantes.

For the purpose of receiving the submission of the Duke of

Mercœur and the Breton insurgents, the king proceeded down the

Loire, and "reached the capital of Brittany, the commercial

city of Nantes, on the 11th of April, 1598. Two days later he

signed the edict which has come to be known as the Edict of

Nantes [and which had been under discussion for some months

with representatives of a Protestant assembly in session at

Châtellerault]. ... The Edict of Nantes is a long and somewhat

complicated document. Besides the edict proper, contained in

95 public articles, there is a further series of 56 'secret'

articles, and a 'brevet' or patent of the king, all of which

were signed on the 13th of April; and these documents are

supplemented by a second set of 23 'secret' articles, dated on

the last day of the same month. The first of these four papers

is expressly declared to be a 'perpetual and irrevocable

edict.' ... Our chief concern being with the fortunes of the

Huguenots, the provisions for the re-establishment of the

Roman Catholic worship, wherever in the course of the events

of the last 30 years that worship had been interfered with or

banished, need not claim our attention. For the benefit of the

Protestants the cardinal concession was liberty to dwell

anywhere in the royal dominions, without being subjected to

inquiry, vexed, molested, or constrained to do anything

contrary to their conscience. As respects public worship,

while perfect equality was not established, the dispositions

were such as to bring it within the power of a Protestant in

any part of the kingdom to meet his fellow-believers for the

holiest of acts, at least from time to time. To every

Protestant nobleman enjoying that extensive authority known as

'haute justice,' and to noblemen in Normandy distinguished as

possessors of 'fiefs de haubert,' the permission was granted

to have religious services on all occasions and for all comers

at their principal residence, as well as on other lands

whenever they themselves were present. Noblemen of inferior

jurisdiction were allowed to have worship on their estates,

but only for themselves and their families. In addition to

these seigniorial rights, the Protestant 'people' received

considerable accessions to the cities where they might meet

for public religious purposes. The exercise of their worship

was authorized in all cities and places where such worship had

been held on several occasions in the years 1596 and 1597, up

to the month of August; and in all places in which worship had

been, or ought to have been, established in accordance with

the Edict of 1577 [the edict of Poitiers--see above: A. D.

1577-1578], as interpreted by the Conference of Nérac and the

Peace of Fleix [see above: A. D. 1578-1580]. But in addition

to these, a fresh gift of a second city in every bailiwick and

sénéchaussée of the kingdom greatly increased the facilities

enjoyed by the scattered Huguenots for reaching the assemblies

of their fellow-believers. ... Scholars of both religions were

to be admitted without distinction of religion to all

universities, colleges, and schools throughout France. The

same impartiality was to extend to the reception of the sick

in the hospitals, and to the poor in the provision made for

their relief. More than this, the Protestants were permitted

to establish schools of their own in all places where their

worship was authorized. ... The scandal and inhumanity

exhibited in the refusal of burial to the Protestant dead, as

well in the disinterment of such bodies as had been placed in

consecrated ground, was henceforth precluded by the assignment

of portions of the public cemeteries or of new cemeteries of

their own to the Protestants. The civil equality of the

Protestants was assured by an article which declared them to

be admissible to all public positions, dignities, offices, and

charges, and forbade any other examination into their

qualifications, conduct, and morals than those to which their

Roman Catholic brethren were subjected. ... Provision was made

for the establishment of a 'chamber of the edict,' as it was

styled, in the Parliament of Paris, with six Protestants among

its sixteen counsellors, to take cognizance of cases in which

Protestants were concerned. A similar chamber was promised in

each of the parliaments of Rouen and Rennes. In Southern

France three 'chambres mi-parties' were either continued or

created, with an equal number of Roman Catholic and Protestant

judges." In the "brevet" or patent which accompanied the

edict, the king made a secret provision of 45,000 crowns

annually from the royal treasury, which was understood to be

for the support of Protestant ministers, although that purpose

was concealed. In the second series of secret articles, the

Protestants were authorized to retain possession for eight

years of the "cautionary cities" which they held under former

treaties, and provision was made for paying the garrisons.

"Such are the main features of a law whose enactment marks an

important epoch in the history of jurisprudence. ... The Edict

of Nantes was not at once presented to the parliaments; nor

was it, indeed, until early in the following year that the

Parliament of Paris formally entered the document upon its

registers. ... There were obstacles from many different

quarters to be overcome. The clergy, the parliaments, the

university, raised up difficulty after difficulty." But the

masterful will of the king bore down all opposition, and the

Edict was finally accepted as the law of the land. "On the

17th of March [1599] Henry took steps for its complete

execution throughout France, by the appointment of

commissioners--a nobleman and a magistrate from each province

--to attend to the work."

H. M. Baird,

The Huguenots and Henry of Navarre,

chapter 14 (volume 2).

ALSO IN:

C. M. Yonge,

Cameos from English History,

5th series, chapter 36.

{1216}

The full text of the Edict of Nantes will be found in the

following named works:

C. Weiss,

History of French Protestant Refugees,

volume 2, appendix.

A. Maury,

Memoirs of a Huguenot Family

(J. Fontaine), appendix.

FRANCE: A. D. 1599-1610.

Invasion of Savoy.

Acquisition of the Department of Aisne.

Ten years of peace and prosperity.

The great works of Henry IV.

His foreign policy.

His assassination.

"One thing only the peace of Vervins left unsettled. In the

preceding troubles a small Italian appanage, the Marquisate of

Saluces, had been seized by Charles Emmanuel, Duke of Savoy,

and remained still in his possession. The right of France to

it was not disputed, did not admit indeed of dispute; but the

Duke was unwilling to part with what constituted one of the

keys of Italy. He came to Paris in December 1599 to negotiate

the affair in person," but employed his opportunity to

intrigue with certain disaffected nobles, including the Duke

of Biron, marshal of France and governor of Burgundy. "Wearied

with delays, whose object was transparent, Henry at last had

recourse to arms. Savoy was speedily overrun with French

troops, and its chief strongholds taken. Spain was not

prepared to back her ally, and the affair terminated by

Henry's accepting in lieu of the Marquisate that part of Savoy

which now constitutes the Department of Aisne in France."

Biron, whom the King tried hard to save by repeated warnings

which were not heeded, paid the penalty of his treasonable

schemes at last by losing his head. "The ten years from 1600

to 1610 were years of tranquillity, and gave to Henry the

opportunity he had so ardently longed for of restoring and

regenerating France." He applied his energies and his active

mind to the reorganization of the disordered finances of the

kingdom, to the improvement of agriculture, to the

multiplication of industries, to the extending of commerce. He

gave the first impulse to silk culture and silk manufacture in

France; he founded the great Gobelin manufactory of tapestry

at Paris; he built roads and bridges, and encouraged canal

projects; he began the creation of a navy; he promoted the

colonization of Canada. "It was, however, in the domain of

foreign politics that Henry exhibited the acuteness and

comprehensiveness of his genius, and his marvellous powers of

contrivance, combination, execution. ... The great political

project, to the maturing of which Henry IV. devoted his

untiring energies for the last years of his life, was the

bringing of the ... half of Europe into close political

alliance, and arming it against the house of Austria, and

striking when the fit time came, such a blow at the ambition

and intolerance of that house that it might never be able to

recover. After innumerable negotiations ... he had succeeded

in forming a coalition of twenty separate States, embracing

England, the United Provinces, Denmark, Sweden, Northern

Germany, Switzerland. At last the time for action came. The

Duke of Cleves died, 25th March 1609. The succession was

disputed. One of the claimants of the Dukedom was supported by

the Emperor, another by the Protestant Princes of Germany [see

GERMANY: A. D. 1608-1618]. The contest about a small German

Duchy presented the opportunity for bringing into action that

alliance which Henry had planned and perfected. In the great

military movements that were projected he was himself to take

the lead. Four French armies, numbering 100,000, were to be

launched against the great enemy of European liberty. One of

these Henry was to command; even our young Prince of Wales was

to bring 6,000 English with him, and make his first essay in arms

under the French King. By the end of April, 1610, 35,000 men

and 50 pieces of cannon had assembled at Chalons. The 20th May

was fixed as the day on which Henry was to place himself at

its head." But on the 16th of May (1610) he was struck down by

the hand of an assassin (François Ravaillac), and the whole

combination fell to pieces.

W. Hanna,

The Wars of the Huguenots,

chapter 8.

"The Emperor, the King of Spain, the Queen of France, the Duke

d'Epernon, the Jesuits, were all in turn suspected of having

instigated the crime, because they all profited by it; but the

assassin declared that he had no accomplices. ... He believed

that the King was at heart a Huguenot, and thought that in

ridding France of this monarch he was rendering a great

service to his country."

A. de Bonnechose,

History of France,

volume 1, page 450.

ALSO IN:

M. W. Freer,

The Last Decade of a Glorious Reign.

Duke of Sully,

Memoirs,

volumes 2-5.

Sir N. W. Wraxall,

History of France, 1574-1610,

volume 5, chapter 7-8, and volume 6.

FRANCE: A. D. 1603-1605.

First settlements in Acadia.

See CANADA: A. D. 1603-1605;

and 1606-1608.

FRANCE: A. D. 1605-1616.

Champlain's explorations and settlements in the Valley of the

St. Lawrence.

See CANADA: A. D. 1608-1611; 1611-1616; 1616-1628.

FRANCE: A. D. 1610.

Accession of King Louis XIII.

FRANCE: A. D. 1610-1619.

The regency of Marie de Medicis.

The reign of favorites and the riot of factions.

Distractions of the kingdom.

The rise of Richelieu.

"After the death of Henry IV. it was seen how much the power,

credit, manners, and spirit of a nation frequently depend upon

a single man. This prince had by a vigorous, yet gentle

administration, kept all orders of the state in union, lulled

all factions to sleep, maintained peace between the two

religions, and kept his people in plenty. He held the balance

of Europe in his hands by his alliance, his riches, and his

arms. All these advantages were lost in the very first year of

the regency of his widow, Mary of Medicis [whom Henry had

married in 1600, the pope granting a divorce from his first

wife, Margaret of Valois]. ... Mary of Medicis ... appointed

regent [during the minority of her son, Louis XIII.], though

not mistress of the kingdom, lavished in making of creatures

all that Henry the Great had amassed to render his nation

powerful. The army he had raised to carry the war into Germany

was disbanded, the princes he had taken under his protection

were abandoned. Charles Emanuel, duke of Savoy, the new ally

of Henry IV., was obliged to ask pardon of Philip III. of

Spain for having entered into a treaty with the French king,

and sent his son to Madrid to implore the mercy of the Spanish

court, and to humble himself as a subject in his father's name.

{1217}

The princes of Germany, whom Henry had protected with an army

of 40,000 men, now found themselves almost without assistance.

The state lost all its credit abroad, and was distracted at

home. The princes of the blood and the great nobles filled

France with factions, as in the times of Francis II., Charles

IX. and Henry III., and as afterwards, during the minority of

Lewis XIV. At length [1614] an assembly of the general estates

was called at Paris, the last that was held in France [prior

to the States General which assembled on the eve of the

Revolution of 1789]. ... The result of this assembly was the

laying open all the grievances of the kingdom, without being

able to redress one. France remained in confusion, and

governed by one Concini, a Florentine, who rose to be marechal

of France without ever having drawn a sword, and prime

minister without knowing anything of the laws. It was

sufficient that he was a foreigner for the princes to be

displeased with him. Mary of Medicis was in a very unhappy

situation, for she could not share her authority with the

prince of Condé, chief of the malcontents, without being

deprived of it altogether; nor trust it in the hands of

Concini, without displeasing the whole kingdom. Henry prince

of Condé, father of the great Condé, and son to him who had

gained the battle of Coutras in conjunction with Henry IV.,

put himself at the head of a party, and took up arms. The

court made a dissembled peace with him; and afterwards clapt

him up in the Bastile. This had been the fate of his father

and grandfather, and was afterwards that of his son. His

confinement encreased the number of the male contents. The

Guises, who had formerly been implacable enemies to the Condé

family, now joined with them. The duke of Vendome, son to

Henry IV., the duke of Nevers, of the house of Gonzaga, the

marechal de Bouillon, and all the rest of the male contents,

fortified themselves in the provinces, protesting that they

continued true to their king, and made war only against the

prime minister. Concini, marechal d'Anere, secure of the queen

regent's protection, braved them all. He raised 7,000 men at

his own expense, to support the royal authority. ... A young

man of whom he had not the least apprehension, and who was a

stranger like himself, caused his ruin, and all the

misfortunes of Mary of Medicis. Charles Albert of Luines, born

in the county of Avignon, had, with his two brothers, been

taken into the number of gentlemen in ordinary to the king,

and the companions of his education. He had insinuated himself

into the good graces and confidence of the young monarch, by his

dexterity in bird-catching. It was never supposed that these

childish amusements would end in a bloody revolution. The

marechal d'Ancre had given him the government of Amboise,

thinking by that to make him his creature; but this young man

conceived the design of murdering his benefactor, banishing

the queen, and governing himself; all which he accomplished

without meeting with any obstacle. He soon found means of

persuading the king that he was capable of reigning alone,

though he was not then quite 17 years old, and told him that

the queen-mother and Concini kept him in confinement. The

young king, to whom in his childhood they had given the name

of Just, consented to the murder of his prime minister; the

marquis of Vitri, captain of the king's guards, du Hallier his

brother, Persan, and others, were sent to dispatch him, who,

finding him in the court of the Louvre, shot him dead with

their pistols [April 24, 1617]: upon this they cried out,

'Vive le roi', as if they had gained a battle, and Lewis

XIII., appearing at a window, cried out, 'Now I am king.' The

queen-mother had her guards taken from her, and was confined

to her own apartment, and afterwards banished to Blois. The

place of marechal of France, held by Concini, was given to the

marquis of Vitri, his murderer." Concini's wife, Eleanor

Galigai, was tried on a charge of sorcery and burned, "and the

king's favourite, Luines, had the confiscated estates. This

unfortunate Galigai was the first promoter of cardinal

Richelieu's fortune; while he was yet very young, and called

the abbot of Chillon, she procured him the bishopric of Luçon,

and at length got him made secretary of state in 1616. He was

involved in the disgrace of his protectors, and ... was now

banished ... to a little priory at the farther end of Anjou.

... The duke of Epernon, who had caused the queen to be

declared regent, went to the castle of Blois [February 22,

1619], whither she had been banished, and carried her to his

estate in Angoulême, like a sovereign who rescues his ally.

This was manifestly an act of high treason; but a crime that

was approved by the whole kingdom." The king presently "sought

an opportunity of reconciliation with his mother, and entered

into a treaty with the duke of Epernon, as between prince and

prince. ... But the treaty of reconciliation was hardly signed

when it was broken again; this was the true spirit of the

times. New parties took up arms in favour of the queen, and

always to oppose the duke of Luines, as before it had been to

oppose the marechal d'Ancre, but never against the king. Every

favourite at that time drew after him a civil war. Lewis and

his mother in fact made war upon each other. Mary was in Anjou

at the head of a small army against her son; they engaged each

other on the bridge of Cé, and the kingdom was on the point of

ruin. This confusion made the fortune of the famous Richelieu.

He was comptroller of the queen-mother's household, and had

supplanted all that princess's confidants, as he afterwards

did all the king's ministers. His pliable temper and bold

disposition must necessarily have acquired for him the first

rank everywhere, or have proved his ruin. He brought about the

accommodation between the mother and son; and a nomination to

the purple, which the queen asked of the king for him, was the

reward of his services. The duke of Epernon was the first to

lay down arms without making any demands, whilst the rest made

the king pay them for having taken up arms against him. The

queen-mother and the king her son had an interview at Brisac,

where they embraced with a flood of tears, only to quarrel

again more violently than ever. The weakness, intrigues, and

divisions of the court spread anarchy through the kingdom. All

the internal defects with which the state had for a long time

been attacked were now encreased, and those which Henry IV.

had removed were revived anew."

Voltaire, Ancient and Modern History,

chapter 145

(works translated by Smollett, volume 5).

ALSO IN:

C. D. Yonge,

History of France under the Bourbons,

volume 1, chapters 5-6.

A. Thierry,

Formation and Progress of the Tiers État in France,

volume 1, chapter 7.

S. Menzies,

Royal Favourites,

volume 1, chapter 9.

{1218}

FRANCE: A. D. 1620-1622.

Renewed jealousy of the Huguenots.

Their formidable organization and its political pretensions.

Restoration of Catholicism in Navarre and Béarn.

Their incorporation with France.

The Huguenot revolt.

Treaty of Montpelier.

"The Huguenot question had become a very serious one, and the

bigotry of some of the Catholics found its opportunity in the

insubordination of many of the Protestants. The Huguenots had

undoubtedly many minor causes for discontent. ... But on the

whole the government and the majority of the people were

willing to carry out in good faith the provisions of the edict

of Nantes. The Protestants, within the limits there laid down,

could have worshipped after their own conscience, free from

persecution and subject to little molestation. It was,

perhaps, all that could be expected in a country where the

mass of the population were Catholic, and where religious

fanaticism had recently supported the League and fostered the

wars of religion. But the Protestant party seem to have

desired a separate political power, which almost justifies the

charge made against them, that they sought to establish a

state within a state, or even to form a separate republic.

Their territorial position afforded a certain facility for

such endeavors. In the northern provinces their numbers were

insignificant. They were found chiefly in the southwestern

provinces--Poitou, Saintonge, Guienne, Provence, and

Languedoc,--while in Béarn and Navarre they constituted the

great majority of the population, and they held for their

protection a large number of strongly fortified cities. ...

Though there is nothing to show that a plan for a separate

republic was seriously considered, the Huguenots had adopted

an organization which naturally excited the jealousy and

ill-will of the general government. They had long maintained a

system of provincial and general synods for the regulation of

their faith and discipline. ... The assembly which met at

Saumur immediately after Henry's death, had carried still

further the organization of the members of their faith. From

consistories composed of the pastors and certain of the laity,

delegates were chosen who formed local consistories. These

again chose delegates who met in provincial synods, and from

them delegates were sent to the national synod, or general

assembly of the church. Here not only matters of faith, but of

state, were regulated, and the general assembly finally

assumed to declare war, levy taxes, choose generals, and act

both as a convocation and a parliament. The assembly of Saumur

added a system of division into eight great circles, covering

the territory where the Protestants were sufficiently numerous

to be important. All but two of these were south of the Loire.

They were subsequently organized as military departments, each

under the command of some great nobleman. ... The Huguenots

had also shown a willingness to assist those who were in arms

against the state, had joined Condé, and contemplated a union

with Mary de Medici in the brief insurrection of 1620. A

question had now arisen which was regarded by the majority of

the party as one of vital importance. The edict of Nantes,

which granted privileges to the Huguenots, had granted also to

the Catholics the right to the public profession of their

religion in all parts of France. This had formerly been

prohibited in Navarre and Béarn, and the population of those

provinces had become very largely Protestant. The Catholic

clergy had long petitioned the king to enforce the rights

which they claimed the edict gave them in Béarn, and to compel

also a restitution of some portion of the property, formerly

held by their church, which had been taken by Jeanne d'Albret,

and the revenues of which the Huguenot clergy still assumed to

appropriate entirely to themselves. On July 25, 1617, Louis

finally issued an edict directing the free exercise of the

Catholic worship in Béarn and the restitution to the clergy of

the property that had been taken from them. The edict met with

bitter opposition in Béarn and from all the Huguenot party.

The Protestants were as unwilling to allow the rites of the

Catholic Church in a province which they controlled, as the

Catholics to suffer a Huguenot conventicle within the walls of

Paris. The persecutions which the Huguenots suffered

distressed them less than the toleration which they were

obliged to grant. ... In the wars of religion the Huguenots

had been controlled, not always wisely or unselfishly, by the

nobles who had espoused their faith, but these were slowly

drifting back to Catholicism. ... The Condés were already

Catholics. Lesdiguières was only waiting till the bribe for

his conversion should be sufficiently glittering. [He was

received into the Church and was made Constable of France in

July, 1622.] Bouillon's religion was but a catch-weight in his

political intrigues. The grandson of Coligni was soon to

receive a marshal's baton for consenting to a peace which was

disastrous to his party. Sully, Rohan, Soubise, and La Force

still remained; but La Force's zeal moderated when he also was

made a marshal, and one hundred years later Rohans and the

descendants of Sully wore cardinal's hats. The party, slowly

deserted by the great nobles, came more under the leadership

of the clergy ... and under their guidance the party now

assumed a political activity which brought on the siege of La

Rochelle and which made possible the revocation of the edict

of Nantes. Béarn was not only strongly Protestant, but it

claimed, with Navarre, to form no part of France, and to be

governed only by its own laws. Its States met and declared

their local rights were violated by the king's edict; the

Parliament of Pau refused to register it, and it was not

enforced in the province. ... The disturbances caused by Mary

de Medici had delayed any steps for the enforcement of the

edict, but these troubles were ended by the peace of

Ponts-de-Cé in 1620. ... In October, 1620, Louis led his army

in Béarn, removed various Huguenot officials, and

reëstablished the Catholic clergy. ... On October 20th, an

edict was issued by which Navarre and Béarn were declared to

be united to France, and a parliament was established for the

two provinces on the same model as the other parliaments of

the kingdom. ... A general assembly of Protestants,

sympathizing with their brethren of these provinces, was

called for November 26, 1620, at La Rochelle. The king

declared those guilty of high treason who should join in that

meeting. ... The meeting was held in defiance of the

prohibition, and it was there resolved to take up arms. ...

The assembly proceeded in all respects like the legislative

body of a separate state.

{1219}

The king prepared for the war with vigor. ... He now led his

forces into southern France, and after some minor engagements

he laid siege to Montauban. A three months' siege resulted

disastrously; the campaign closed, and the king returned to

Paris. The encouragement that the Huguenots drew from this

success proved very brief. The king's armies proceeded again

into the south of France in 1622, and met only an irregular

and inefficient opposition. ... Chatillon and La Force each

made a separate peace, and each was rewarded by the baton of

marshal from the king and by charges of treachery from his

associates. ... The siege of Montpelier led to the peace

called by that name, but on terms that were unfavorable to the

Huguenots. They abandoned all the fortified cities which they

had held for their security except La Rochelle and Montauban;

no assemblies could meet without permission of the king,

except the local synods for ecclesiastical matters alone, and

the interests of Béarn and Navarre were abandoned. In return

the edict of Nantes was again confirmed, and their religious

privileges left undisturbed. Rohan accepted 800,000 livres for

his expenses and governments, and the king agreed that the

Fort of St. Louis, which had been built to overawe the

turbulence of La Rochelle, should be dismantled. La Rochelle,

the great Huguenot stronghold, continued hostilities for some

time longer, but at last it made terms. The party was fast

losing its power and its overthrow could be easily foretold.

La Rochelle was now the only place capable of making a

formidable resistance. ... In the meantime the career of

Luines reached its end." He had taken the great office of

Constable to himself, incurring much ridicule thereby. "The

exposures of the campaign and its disasters had worn upon him;

a fever attacked him at the little town of Monheur, and on

December 14, 1621, he died."

J. B. Perkins,

France under Mazarin, with a Review of the

Administration of Richelieu,

chapter 3 (volume 1).

ALSO IN:

W. S. Browning,

History of the Huguenots,

chapters 54-56.

FRANCE: A. D. 1621.

Claims in North America conflicting with England.

See NEW ENGLAND: A. D. 1621-1631.

FRANCE: A. D. 1624-1626.

Richelieu in power.

His combinations against the Austro-Spanish ascendancy.

The Valtelline War.

Huguenots again in revolt.

The second Treaty of Montpelier.

Treaty of Monzon with Spain.

"The King was once more without a guide, without a favourite,

but his fate was upon him. A few months more of uncertain

drifting and he will fall into the hands of the greatest

politician France has ever seen, Cardinal Richelieu; under his

hand the King will be effaced, his cold disposition and narrow

intelligence will accept and be convinced by the grandeur of

his master's views; convinced, he will obey, and we shall

enter on the period in which the disruptive forces in France

will be coerced, and the elements of freedom and

constitutional life stamped down; while patriotism, and a firm

belief in the destinies of the nation will be fostered and

grow strong; France will assert her high place in Europe.

Richelieu, who had already in 1622 received the Cardinal's

hat, entered the King's Council on the

29th of April, 1624. ...

[Transcriber's note: The date printed is "19/29th of

April". Wikipedia gives the date as "appointed to the royal

council of ministers on 29 April 1624, (Lodge & Ketcham,

1903, p. 85.)".]

La Vieuville, under whose patronage he had been brought

forward, welcomed him into the Cabinet. ... But La Vieuville

was not fitted by nature for the chief place; he was rash,

violent, unpopular and corrupt. He soon had to give place to

Richelieu, henceforth the virtual head of the Council. La

Vieuville, thus supplanted, had been the first to reverse the

ruinous Spanish policy of the Court; ... he had promised help

to the Dutch, to Mansfield, to the Elector Frederick; in a

word, his policy had been the forecast of that of the

Cardinal, who owed his rise to him, and now stepped nimbly

over his head into his place. England had declared war on

Spain: France joined England in renewing the old offensive and

defensive alliance with the Dutch, England promising men and

France money. ... The Austro-Spanish power had greatly

increased during these years: its successes had enabled it to

knit together all the provinces which owed it allegiance. The

Palatinate and the Lower Rhine secured their connexion with

the Spanish Netherlands, as we may now begin to call them, and

threatened the very existence of the Dutch: the Valtelline

forts [commanding the valley east of Lake Como, from which one

pass communicates with the Engadine and the Grisons, and

another with the Tyrol] ... were the roadway between the

Spanish power at Milan and the Austrians on the Danube and in

the Tyrol. Richelieu now resolved to attack this threatening

combination at both critical points. In the North he did not

propose to interfere in arms: there others should fight, and

France support them with quiet subsidies and good will. He

pressed matters on with the English, the Dutch, the North

German Princes; he negotiated with Maximilian of Bavaria and

the League, hoping to keep the South German Princes clear of

the Imperial policy. ... The French ambassador at Copenhagen,

well supported by the English envoy, Sir Robert Anstruther, at

this time organised a Northern League, headed by Christian IV.

of Denmark [see GERMANY: A. D. 1624-1626]. ... The Lutheran

Princes, alarmed at the threatening aspect of affairs, were

beginning to think that they had made a mistake in leaving the

Palatinate to be conquered; and turned a more willing ear to

the French and English proposals for this Northern League. ...

By 1625 the Cardinal's plans in the North seemed to be going

well: the North-Saxon Princes, though with little heart and

much difference of opinion, specially in the cities, had

accepted Christian IV. as their leader; and the progress of

the Spaniards in the United Provinces was checked. In the

other point to which Richelieu's attention was directed,

matters had gone still better. [The inhabitants of the

Valtelline were mostly Catholics and Italians. They had long

been subject to the Protestant Grisons or Graubunden. In 1620

they had risen in revolt, massacred the Protestants of the

valley, and formed an independent republic, supported by the

Spaniards and Austrians. Spanish and German troops occupied

the four strong Valtelline forts, and controlled the important

passes above referred to. The Grisons resisted and secured the

support of Savoy, Venice and finally France. In 1623 an

agreement had been reached, to hand over the Valtelline forts

to the pope, in deposit, until some terms could be settled.

But in 1625 this agreement had not been carried out, and

Richelieu took the affair in hand.] ...

{1220}

Richelieu, never attacking in full face if he could carry his

point by a side-attack, allied himself with Charles Emmanuel,

Duke of Savoy, and with Venice; he easily persuaded the

Savoyard to threaten Genoa, the port by which Spain could

penetrate into Italy, and her financial mainstay. Meanwhile,

the Marquis of Cœuvres had been sent to Switzerland, and, late

in 1624, had persuaded the Cantons to arm for the recovery of

the Valtelline; then, heading a small army of Swiss and

French, he had marched into the Grisons. The upper districts

held by the Austrians revolted: the three Leagues declared

their freedom, the Austrian troops hastily withdrew. Cœuvres

at once secured the Tyrolese passes, and descending from the

Engadine by Poschiavo, entered the Valtelline: in a few weeks

the Papal and Spanish troops were swept out of the whole

valley, abandoning all their forts, though the French general

had no siege-artillery with which to reduce them. ... Early in

1625, the Valtelline being secured to the Grisons and French,

the aged Lesdiguières was sent forward to undertake the rest

of the plan, the reduction of Genoa. But just as things were

going well for the party in Europe opposed to Spain and

Austria, an unlucky outburst of Huguenot dissatisfaction

marred all: Soubise in the heart of winter had seized the Isle

of Ré, and had captured in Blavet harbour on the Breton coast

six royal ships; he failed however to take the castle which

commanded the place, and was himself blockaded, escaping only

with heavy loss. Thence he seized the Isle of Oléron: in May

the Huguenots were in revolt in Upper Languedoc, Querci, and

the Cevennes, led by Rohan on land, and Soubise by sea. Their

rash outbreak [provoked by alleged breaches of the treaty of

Montpelier, especially in the failure of the king to demolish

Fort Louis at La Rochelle] came opportunely to the aid of the

distressed Austrian power, their true enemy. Although very

many of the Huguenots stood aloof and refused to embarrass the

government, still enough revolted to cause great uneasiness.

The war in the Ligurian mountains was not pushed on with

vigour; for Richelieu could not now think of carrying out the

large plans which, by his own account, he had already formed,

for the erection of an independent Italy. ... He was for the

present content to menace Genoa, without a serious siege. At

this time James I. of England died, and the marriage of the

young king [Charles I.] with Henriette Marie was pushed on. In

May Buckingham went to Paris to carry her over to England; he

tried in vain to persuade Richelieu to couple the Palatinate

with the Valtelline question. ... After this the tide of

affairs turned sharply against the Cardinal; while Tilly with

the troops of the Catholic League, and Wallenstein, the new

general of the Emperor, who begins at this moment his brief

and marvellous career, easily kept in check the Danes and

their halfhearted German allies, Lesdiguières and the Duke of

Savoy were forced by the Austrians and Spaniards to give up

all thoughts of success in the Genoese country, and the French

were even threatened in Piedmont and the Valtelline. But the old

Constable of France was worthy of his ancient fame; he drove

the Duke of Feria out of Piedmont, and in the Valtelline the

Spaniards only succeeded in securing the fortress of Riva.

Richelieu felt that the war was more than France could bear,

harassed as she was within and without. ... He was determined

to free his hands in Italy, to leave the war to work itself

out in Germany, and to bring the Huguenots to reason. ... The

joint fleets of, Soubise and of La Rochelle had driven back

the king's ships, and had taken Ré and Oléron; but in their

attempt to force an entrance into the harbour of La Rochelle

they were defeated by Montmorency, who now commanded the royal

fleet: the islands were retaken, and the Huguenots sued for

peace. It must be remembered that the bulk of them did not

agree with the Rochellois, and were quiet through this time.

Early in 1626 the treaty of Montpellier granted a hollow peace

on tolerable terms to the reformed churches; and soon after ...

peace was signed with Spain at Monzon in May, 1626. All was

done so silently that the interested parties, Savoy, the

Venetians, the Grisons, knew nothing of it till all was

settled: on Buckingham ... the news fell like a thunderclap.

... The Valtelline remained under the Grisons, with guarantees

for Catholic worship; France and Spain would jointly see that

the inhabitants of the valleys were fairly treated: the Pope

was entrusted with the duty of razing the fortresses: Genoa

and Savoy were ordered to make peace. It was a treacherous

affair; and Richelieu comes out of it but ill. We are bound,

however, to remember ... the desperate straits into which the

Cardinal had come. ... He did but fall back in order to make

that wonderful leap forward which changed the whole face of

European politics."

G. W. Kitchin,

History of France,

book 4, chapters 3 and 4 (volumes 2-3).

ALSO IN:

F. P. Guizot,

Popular History of France,

chapters 40-41.

J. B. Perkins,

France under Mazarin [and Richelieu],

volume 1, chapters 4-5.

G. Masson,

Richelieu,

chapter 5.

FRANCE: A. D. 1627-1628:

War with England, and Huguenot revolt.

Richelieu's siege and capture of La Rochelle.

His great example of magnanimity and toleration.

The end of political Huguenotism.

"Richelieu now found himself dragged into a war against his

will, and that with the very power with which, for the

furtherance of his other designs, he most desired to continue

at peace. James I. of England had been as unable to live

except under the dominion of a favourite as Louis. Charles ...

had the same unfortunate weakness; and the Duke of Buckingham,

who had long been paramount at the court of the father,

retained the same mischievous influence at that of the son.

... In passing through France in 1623 he [Buckingham] had been

presented to the queen [Anne of Austria], and had presumed to

address her in the language of love. When sent to Paris to

conduct the young Princess Henrietta Maria to England, he had

repeated this conduct. ... There had been some little

unpleasantness between the two Courts shortly after the

marriage ... owing to the imprudence of Henrietta," who

paraded her Popery too much in the eyes of Protestant England;

and there was talk of a renewed treaty, which Buckingham

sought to make the pretext for another visit to Paris. But his

motives were understood; Louis "refused to receive him as an

ambassador, and Buckingham, full of disappointed rage,

instigated the Duke de Soubise, who was still in London, to

rouse the Huguenots to a fresh outbreak, promising to send an

English fleet to Rochelle to assist them. Rochelle was at this

time the general head-quarters not only of the Huguenots, but

of all those who, on any account, were discontented with the

Government. ...

{1221}

Soubise ... embraced the duke's offer with eagerness; and in

July, 1627, without any previous declaration of war, an

English fleet, with 16,000 men on board, suddenly appeared off

Rochelle, and prepared to attack the Isle of Rhé. The

Rochellois were very unwilling to co-operate with it"; but

they were persuaded, "against their judgment, to connect

themselves with what each, individually, felt to be a

desperate enterprise; and Richelieu, to whom the prospect thus

afforded him of having a fair pretence for crushing the

Huguenot party made amends for the disappointment of being

wantonly dragged into a war with England, gladly received the

intelligence that Rochelle was in rebellion. At first the Duke

d'Anjou was sent down to command the army, Louis being

detained in Paris by illness; but by October he had recovered,

his fondness for military operations revived, and he hastened

to the scene of action, accompanied by Richelieu, whose early

education had been of a military kind. ... He at once threw

across reinforcements into the Isle of Rhé, where M. Thoiras

was holding out a fort known as St. Martin with great

resolution, though it was unfinished and incompletely armed.

In the beginning of November, Buckingham raised the siege, and

returned home, leaving guns, standards and prisoners behind

him; and Richelieu, anticipating a renewal of the attack the

next year ... undertook a work designed at once to baffle

foreign enemies and to place the city at his mercy. Along the

whole front of the port he began to construct a vast wall ...

having only one small opening in the centre which was

commanded by small batteries. The work was commenced in

November, 1627; and, in spite of a rather severe winter, was

carried on with such ceaseless diligence, under the

superintending eye of the cardinal himself, that before the

return of spring a great portion of it was completed. ...

When, in May, 1628, the British fleet, under Lord Denbigh, the

brother-in-law of Buckingham, returned to the attack, they

found it unassailable, and returned without striking a blow."

C. D. Yonge,

History of France under the Bourbons,

volume 1, chapter 7.

"Richelieu ... was his own engineer, general, admiral,

prime-minister. While he urged on the army to work upon the

dike, he organized a French navy, and in due time brought it

around to that coast and anchored it so as to guard the dike

and be guarded by it. Yet, daring as all this work was, it was

but the smallest part of his work. Richelieu found that his

officers were cheating his soldiers in their pay and

disheartening them; in face of the enemy he had to reorganize

the army and to create a new military system. ... He found,

also, as he afterward said, that he had to conquer not only

the Kings of England and Spain, but also the King of France.

At the most critical moment of the siege Louis deserted

him,--went back to Paris,--allowed courtiers to fill him with

suspicions. Not only Richelieu's place, but his life, was in

danger, and he well knew it; yet he never left his dike and

siege-works, but wrought on steadily until they were done; and

then the King, of his own will, in very shame, broke away from

his courtiers, and went back to his master. And now a Royal

Herald summoned the people of La Rochelle to surrender. But

they were not yet half conquered. Even when they had seen two

English fleets, sent to aid them, driven back from Richelieu's

dike, they still held out manfully. ... They were reduced to

feed on their horses,--then on bits of filthy

shell-fish,--then on stewed leather. They died in multitudes.

Guiton, the Mayor, kept a dagger on the city council-table to

stab any man who should speak of surrender. ... But at last

even Guiton had to yield. After the siege had lasted more than

a year, after 5,000 were found remaining out of 15,000, after

a mother had been seen to feed her child with her own blood,

the Cardinal's policy became too strong for him. The people

yielded [October 27, 1628], and Richelieu entered the city as

master. And now the victorious statesman showed a greatness of

soul to which all the rest of his life was as nothing. ... All

Europe ... looked for a retribution more terrible than any in

history. Richelieu allowed nothing of the sort. He destroyed

the old franchises of the city, for they were incompatible

with that royal authority which he so earnestly strove to

build. But this was all. He took no vengeance,--he allowed the

Protestants to worship as before,--he took many of them into

the public service,--and to Guiton he showed marks of

respect. He stretched forth that strong arm of his over the

city, and warded off all harm. ... For his leniency Richelieu

received the titles of Pope of the Protestants and Patriarch

of the Atheists. But he had gained the first great object of

his policy, and he would not abuse it: he had crushed the

political power of the Huguenots forever."

A. D. White,

The Statesmanship of Richelieu

(Atlantic Monthly, May, 1862).

"Whatever the benefit to France of this great feat, the

locality was permanently ruined. Two hundred and fifty years

after the event the Poitevin peasant is fanatic and

superstitious as the Bretons themselves. Catholic Rochelle is

still to be seen, with almost one-third less inhabitants

to-day than it had in 1627. The cardinal's dyke is still

there, but the insects have seized on the city. A plague of

white ants, imported from India, have fastened on its

timbers."

R. Heath,

The Reformation in France,

volume 1, book 2, chapter 12.

ALSO IN:

S. R. Gardiner,

History of England, 1603 to 1642,

chapters 56, 59-60, and 65.

FRANCE: A. D. 1627-1631.

War with Spain, Savoy and the Empire over the succession to

the duchy of Mantua.

Successes of Richelieu.

See ITALY: A. D. 1627-1631.

FRANCE: A. D. 1628.

New France placed under the Company of the Hundred Associates.

See CANADA: A. D. 1616-1628.

FRANCE: A. D. 1628-1632.

Loss and recovery of New France.

See CANADA: A. D. 1628-1635.

FRANCE: A. D. 1630-1632.

The Day of Dupes, and after.

On the return of Richelieu and the king from their Italian

expedition, in the beginning of August, 1630, "both the

monarch and his minister had passed in safety through a whole

tract infected with the plague; but, shortly after their

arrival at Lyons, Louis XIII. fell ill, and in a few days his

physicians pronounced his case hopeless. It was now that all

the hatred which his power had caused to hide its head, rose

up openly against Richelieu; and the two queens [Marie de

Medicis, the queen-mother, and Anne of Austria, the king's

wife], united only in their enmity towards the minister, never

quitted the bedside of the king but to form and cement the

party which was intended to work the cardinal's

destruction as soon as the monarch should be no more. ...

{1222}

The bold and the rash joined the faction of the queens; and

the prudent waited with wise doubt till they saw the result

they hoped for. Happy was it for those who did conceal their

feelings; for suddenly the internal abscess, which had nearly

reduced the king to the tomb, broke, passed away, and in a

very few days he appeared perfectly convalescent. Richelieu

might now have triumphed securely; ... but he acted more

prudently. He remembered that the queen-mother, the great

mover of the cabal against him, had formerly been his

benefactress; and though probably his gratitude was of no very

sensitive nature, yet he was wise enough to affect a virtue

that he did not possess, and to suffer the offence to be given

by her. ... At Paris [after the return of the court] ... the

queen-mother herself, unable to restrain any longer the

violent passions that struggled in her bosom, seemed resolved

to keep no terms with the cardinal." At an interview with him,

in the king's presence, "the queen forgot the dignity of her

station and the softness of her sex, and, in language more fit

for the markets than the court, called him rogue, and traitor,

and perturber of the public peace; and, turning to the king,

she endeavoured to persuade him that Richelieu wished to take

the crown from his head, in order to place it on that of the

count de Soissons. Had Richelieu been as sure of the king's

firmness as he was of his regard, this would have been exactly

the conduct which he could have desired the queen to hold; but

he knew Louis to be weak and timid, and easily ruled by those

who took a tone of authority towards him; and when at length

he retired at the command of the monarch ... he seems to have

been so uncertain how the whole would end, that he ordered his

papers and most valuable effects to be secured, and

preparations to be made for immediate departure. All these

proceedings had been watched by the courtiers: Richelieu had

been seen to quit the queen's cabinet troubled and gloomy, his

niece in tears; and, some time after, the king himself

followed in a state of excessive agitation, and ... left Paris

for Versailles without seeing his minister. The whole court

thought the rule of Richelieu at an end, and the saloons of

the Luxembourg were crowded with eager nobles ready to worship

the rising authority of the queen-mother." But the king, when he

reached Versailles, sent this message to his minister: "'Tell

the cardinal de Richelieu that he has a good master, and bid

him come hither to me without delay.' Richelieu felt that the

real power of France was still in his hands; and setting off

for Versailles, he found Louis full of expressions of regard

and confidence. Rumours every moment reached Versailles of the

immense concourse that was flocking to pay court to the

queen-mother: the king found himself nearly deserted, and all

that Richelieu had said of her ambition was confirmed in the

monarch's mind; while his natural good sense told him that a

minister who depended solely upon him, and who under him

exercised the greatest power in the realm, was not likely to

wish his fall. ... In the mean time, the news of these ...

events spread to Paris: the halls of the Luxembourg, which the

day before had been crowded to suffocation, were instantly

deserted; and the queen-mother found herself abandoned by all

those fawning sycophants whose confidence and disappointment

procured for the day of St. Martin, 1630, the title in French

history of The Day of Dupes."

G. P. R. James,

Eminent Foreign Statesmen,

volume 2, pages 88-92.

The ultimate outcome of The Day of Dupes was the flight of

Marie de Medicis, who spent the remainder of her life in the

Netherlands and in England; the trial and execution of Marshal

de Marillac; the imprisonment or exile and disgrace of

Bassompierre and other nobles; a senseless revolt, headed by

Gaston, Duke of Orleans, the king's brother, which was crushed

in one battle at Castlenaudari, September 1, 1632, and which

brought the Duke de Montmorency to the block.

C. D. Yonge,

History of France under the Bourbons,

volume 1, chapters 7-8.

ALSO IN:

M. W. Freer,

Married Life of Anne of Austria,

volume 1, chapter 4.

C. M. Yonge,

Cameos of English History, 6th series,

chapter 20.

Miss Pardoe,

Life of Marie de Medicis,

book 3, chapters 7-13 (volume 3).

FRANCE: A. D. 1631.

Treaty and negotiations with Gustavus Adolphus in Germany.

Promotion of the Protestant Union.

See GERMANY: A.D. 1631 (JANUARY);

1631-1632; and 1632-1634.

FRANCE: A. D. 1632-1641.

War in Lorraine.

Occupation and possession of the duchy.

See LORRAINE: A. D. 1624-1663.

FRANCE: A. D. 1635-1638.

Campaigns on the Flemish frontier.

Invasion by the Spaniards.

Paris in Peril.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1635-1638.

FRANCE: A. D. 1635-1639.

Active participation in the Thirty Years War.

Treaties with the Germans, Swedes, and Dutch.

Campaigns of Duke Bernhard in Lorraine, Alsace and

Franche-Comté.

The fruit gathered by Richelieu.

Alsace secured.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1634-1639.

FRANCE: A. D. 1635-1642.

The war in northern Italy.

See ITALY: A. D. 1635-1659.

FRANCE: A. D. 1637-1642.

The war in Spain.

Revolt of Catalonia.

Siege and capture of Perpignan.

Conquest of Roussillon.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1637-1640, and 1640-1642.

FRANCE: A. D. 1640-1645.

Campaigns in Germany.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1640-1645, and 1643-1644.

FRANCE: A. D. 1641-1642.

The conspiracies of Count de Soissons and Cinq Mars.

Extinction of the Principality of Sedan.

"There were revolts in various quarters to resist [the yoke of

Richelieu], but they were quelled with uniform success. Once,

and once only, the fate of the Cardinal seemed finally sealed.

The Count de Soissons, a prince of the blood, headed the

discontented gentry in open war in 1641, and established the

headquarters of revolt in the town of Sedan. The Empire and

Spain came to his support with promises and money. Twelve

thousand men were under his orders, all influenced with rage

against Richelieu, and determined to deliver the king from his

degrading tutelage. Richelieu was taken unprepared; but delay

would have been ruin. He sent the Marshal Chatillon to the

borders of Sedan, to watch the proceedings of the

confederates, and requested the king to summon fresh troops

and go down to the scene of war. While his obedient Majesty

was busied in the commission, Chatillon advanced too far.

Soissons assaulted him near the banks of the Meuse, at a place

called Marfée, and gave him a total and irremediable

overthrow. The cavalry on the royalist side retreated at an

early part of the fight, and forced their way through the

infantry, not without strong suspicions of collusion with

their opponents."

{1223}

Paris itself was in dismay. The King and Cardinal expected to

hear every hour of the advance of the rebels; but no step was

taken. It was found, when the hurry of battle was over, that

Soissons was among the slain. The force of the expedition was

in that one man; and the defeat was as useful to the Cardinal

as a victory would have been. The malcontents had no leaders

of sufficient rank and authority to keep the inferiors in

check; for the scaffold had thinned the ranks of the great

hereditary chiefs, and no man could take his first open move

against the Court without imminent risk to his head. Great

men, indeed, were rising into fame, but of a totally different

character from their predecessors. Their minds were cast in a

monarchical mould from their earliest years. ... From this

time subserviency to the king became a sign of noble birth.

... Richelieu has the boast, if boast it can be called, of

having crushed out the last spark of popular independence and

patrician pride. ... One more effort was made [1642] to shake

off the trammels of the hated Cardinal. A conspiracy was

entered into to deliver the land by the old Roman method of

putting the tyrant to death; and the curious part of the

design is, that it was formed almost in presence of the king.

His favourite friend, young Cinq Mars, son of the Marshal

d'Effiat, his brother Gaston of Orleans, and his kinsman the

Duke de Bouillon, who were round his person at all hours of

the day, were the chief agents of the perilous undertaking.

Others, and with them de Thou, the son of the great French

historian, entered into the plan, but wished the assassination

to be left out. They would arrest and imprison him; but this

was evidently not enough. While Richelieu lived, no man could

be safe, though the Cardinal were in the deepest dungeon of

the Bastile. Death, however, was busy with their victim,

without their aid. He was sinking under some deep but

partially-concealed illness when the threads of the plot came

into his skilful hands. He made the last use of his strength

and intelligence in unravelling [it] and punishing the rebels,

as he called them, against the king's authority. The paltry

and perfidious Gaston was as usual penitent and pardoned, but

on Cinq Mars and de Thou the vengeance of the law and the

Cardinal had its full force. The triumphant but failing

minister reclined in a state barge upon the Rhone, towing his

prisoners behind him to certain death. On their arrival at

Lyons the process was short and fatal. The young men were

executed together, and the account of their behaviour at the

block is one of the most affecting narratives in the annals of

France."

J. White,

History of France,

chapter 12.

The Duke de Bouillon, implicated in both these

conspiracies--that of the Count de Soissons and that of Cinq

Mars--saved his life on the latter occasion by surrendering to

the crown the sovereignty of Sedan, which belonged to him, and

which had been the headquarters of the Soissons revolt. This

small independent principality--the town and a little

territory around it--had formerly been in the possession of

the powerful and troublesome family of La Marck, the last

heiress of whom brought it, together with the Duchy of

Bouillon, into the family of La Tour d'Auvergne. The Prince

and Duke who lost it was the second of that family who bore

the titles. He was the elder brother of the great soldier,

Turenne. The Principality of Sedan was extinguished from that

time.

T. O. Cockayne,

Life of Turenne.

ALSO IN:

W. Robson,

Life of Richelieu,

chapters 11-12.

M. W. Freer,

Married Life of Anne of Austria,

volume 2, chapter 3.

Miss Pardoe,

Life of Marie de Medicis,

book 3, chapter 13 (volume 3).

FRANCE: A. D. 1642-1643.

The death of Richelieu and of Louis XIII.

Regency of Anne of Austria.

Cardinal Mazarin and the party of the Importants.

The victory at Rocroi.

Cardinal Richelieu died on the 4th of December, 1642. "He was

dead, but his work survived him. On the very evening of the 3d

of December, Louis XIII. called to his council Cardinal

Mazarin [whom Richelieu had commended to him]. ... Scarcely

had the most powerful kings yielded up their last breath when

their wishes had been at once forgotten: Cardinal Richelieu

still governed in his grave." But now, after two and a half

centuries, "the castle of Richelieu is well-nigh destroyed;

his family, after falling into poverty, is extinct; the

Palais-Cardinal [his splendid residence, which he built, and

which he gave to the crown] has assumed the name of the

Palais-Royal; and pure monarchy, the aim of all his efforts

and the work of his whole life, has been swept away by the

blast of revolution. Of the cardinal there remains nothing but

the great memory of his power and of the services he rendered his

country. ... Richelieu had no conception of that noblest

ambition on which a human soul can feed, that of governing a

free country, but he was one of the greatest, the most

effective, and the boldest, as well as the most prudent

servants that France ever had." Louis XIII. survived his great

minister less than half a year, dying May 14, 1643. He had

never had confidence in Anne of Austria, his wife, and had

provided, by a declaration which she had signed and sworn to,

for a council (which included Mazarin) to control the queen's

regency during the minority of their son, Louis XIV. But the

queen contrived very soon to break from this obligation, and

she made Cardinal Mazarin her one counsellor and supreme

minister. "Continuing to humor all parties, and displaying

foresight and prudence, the new minister was even now master.

Louis XIII., without any personal liking, had been faithful to

Richelieu to the death. With different feelings, Anne of Austria

was to testify the same constancy towards Mazarin. A stroke of

fortune came at the very first to strengthen the regent's

position. Since the death of Cardinal Richelieu, the

Spaniards, but recently overwhelmed at the close of 1642, had

recovered courage and boldness; new counsels prevailed at the

court of Philip IV., who had dismissed Olivarez; the House of

Austria vigorously resumed the offensive; at the moment of

Louis XIII.'s death, Don Francisco de Mello, governor of the

Low Countries, had just invaded French territory by way of the

Ardennes, and laid siege to Rocroi, on the 12th of May [1643].

The French army was commanded by the young Duke of Enghien

[afterwards known as the Great Condé], the prince of Condé's

son, scarcely 22 years old; Louis XIII. had given him as his

lieutenant and director the veteran Marshal de l'Hôpital; and

the latter feared to give battle.

{1224}

The Duke of Enghien, who 'was dying with impatience to enter

the enemy's country, resolved to accomplish by address what he

could not carry by authority. He opened his heart to Gassion

alone. As he [Gassion, one of the boldest of Condé's officers]

was a man who saw nothing but what was easy even in the most

dangerous deeds, he had very soon brought matters to the point

that the prince desired. Marshal de l'Hôpital found himself

imperceptibly so near the Spaniards that it was impossible for

him any longer to hinder an engagement.' ... The army was in

front of Rocroi, and out of the dangerous defile which led to

the place, without any idea on the part of the marshal and the

army that Louis XIII. was dead. The Duke of Enghien, who had

received the news, had kept it secret. He had merely said in

the tone of a master 'that he meant to fight, and would answer

for the issue.'" The battle, which was fought May 19, 1643,

resulted in the destruction, almost total, of the Spanish

army. Of 18,000 men who formed its infantry, nearly 9,000 were

killed and 7,000 were made prisoners. The whole of the Spanish

artillery and 300 of their standards fell into the hands of

the victors, who lost, according to their own reports, only

2,000 men, killed and wounded. "'The prince was a born

captain,' said Cardinal de Retz. And all France said so with

him on hearing of the victory of Rocroi. The delight was all

the keener in the queen's circle, because the house of Condé

openly supported Cardinal Mazarin, bitterly attacked as he was

by the Importants [a court faction or party so called, which

was made up of 'those meddlers of the court at whose head

marched the Duke of Beaufort, all puffed up with the

confidence lately shown to him by her Majesty,' and all

expecting to count importantly among the queen's favorites],

who accused him of reviving the tyranny of Richelieu. ... And,

indeed, on pretext offered by a feminine quarrel [August,

1643] between the young Duchess of Longueville, daughter of

the prince of Condé, and the Duchess of Montbazon, the Duke of

Beaufort and some of his friends resolved to assassinate the

cardinal. The attempt was a failure, but the Duke of Beaufort,

who was arrested on the 2d of September, was taken to the

castle of Vincennes. Madame de Chevreuse, recently returned

[after being exiled by Richelieu] to court, where she would

fain have exacted from the queen the reward for her services

and her past sufferings, was sent into exile, as well as the

Duke of Vendôme. Madame d'Hautefort, but lately summoned by

Anne of Austria to be near her, was soon involved in the same

disgrace. ... The party of the Importants was dead, and the

power of Cardinal Mazarin seemed to be firmly established. 'It

was not the thing just then for any decent man to be on bad

terms with the court,' says Cardinal de Retz."

F. P. Guizot,

Popular History of France,

chapters 41-43.

"Cardinal Richelieu was not so much a minister, in the precise

sense of the word, as a person invested with the whole power

of the crown. His preponderating influence in the council

suspended the exercise of the hereditary power, without which

the monarchy must cease to exist; and it seems as if that may

have taken place in order that the social progress, violently

arrested since the last reign, might resume its course at the

instigation of a kind of dictator, whose spirit was free from

the influences which the interest of family and dynasty

exercises over the characters of kings. By a strange

concurrence of circumstances, it happened that the weak

prince, whose destiny it was to lend his name to the reign of

the great minister, had in his character, his instincts, his

good or bad qualities, all that could supply the requirements

of such a post. Louis XIII., who had a mind without energy but

not without intelligence, could not live without a master; after

having possessed and lost many, he took and kept the one, who

he found was capable of conducting France to the point, which

he himself had a faint glimpse of, and to which he vaguely

aspired in his melancholy reveries. ... In his attempts at

innovation, Richelieu, as simple minister, much surpassed the

great king who had preceded him, in boldness. He undertook to

accelerate the movement towards civil unity and equality so

much, and to carry it so far, that hereafter it should be

impossible to recede. ... The work of Louis XI. had been

nearly lost in the depth of the troubles of the sixteenth

century; and that of Henry IV. was compromised by fifteen

years of disorder and weakness. To save it from perishing,

three things were necessary: that the high nobility should be

constrained to obedience to the king and to the law; that

Protestantism should cease to be an armed party in the State;

that France should be able to choose her allies freely in

behalf of her own interest and in that of European

independence. On this triple object the king-minister employed

his powerful intellect, his indefatigable activity, ardent

passions, and an heroic strength of mind. His daily life was a

desperate struggle against the nobles, the royal family, the

supreme courts, against all that existed of high institutions,

and corporations established in the country. For the purpose

of reducing all to the same level of submission and order, he

raised the royal power above the ties of family and the tie of

precedent; he isolated it in its sphere as a pure idea, the

living idea of the public safety and the national interest.

... He was as destitute of mercy as he was of fear, and

trampled under foot the respect due to judicial forms and

usages. He had sentences of death pronounced by commissioners

of his own selection: at the very foot of the throne he struck

the enemies of the public interest, and at the same time of

his own fortune, and confounded his personal hatreds with the

vengeance of the State. No one can say whether or not there

was deceit in that assurance of conscience which he manifested

in his last moments: God alone could look into the depth of

his mind. We who have gathered the fruit of his labours and of

his patriotic devotion at a distance of time--we can only bow,

before that man of revolution, by whom the ways which led to

our present state of society were prepared. But something sad

is still attached to his glory: he sacrificed everything to

the success of his undertaking; he stifled within himself and

crushed down in some noble spirits the eternal principles of

morality and humanity. When we look at the great things which

he achieved, we admire him with gratitude; we would, but we

cannot, love his character."

A. Thierry,

Formation and Progress of the Tiers État

or Third Estate in France, chapter 8.

ALSO IN:

V. Cousin,

Secret History of the French Court under

Richelieu and Mazarin,

chapters 3-4.

V. Cousin,

The Youth of Madame de Longueville.

Lord Mahon,

Life of Louis, Prince of Condé,

chapter 1.

Cardinal de Retz,

Memoirs,

books 1-2.

M'lle de Montpensier,

Memoirs,

chapter 2-3.

{1225}

FRANCE: A. D. 1643.

Accession of Louis XIV.

FRANCE: A. D. 1643.

Enghien's (Condé's) campaign on the Moselle.

Siege and capture of Thionville.

"On the 20th of May ... Enghien made his triumphal entry into

Rocroy. He allowed his troops to repose for two days, and then

it was towards Guise that he directed his steps. He soon heard

that Don Francisco de Melo had taken shelter at Phillipeville,

that he was trying to rally his cavalry, but that of all his

infantry not above 2,000 men remained to him, and they

disarmed and nearly naked. No army any longer protected

Flanders, and the youthful courage of Enghien already

meditated its conquest. But the Court, which had expected to

sustain war in its own provinces, was not prepared to carry it

into foreign countries. It became necessary to give up all

idea of an invasion of Maritime Flanders and the siege of

Dunkirk, with which Enghien had at first flattered himself.

Then finding that the Spaniards had drawn off their troops

from the fortifications on the Moselle, Enghien proposed to

march thither, and take possession of them. ... Although this

project was very inferior to his first, its greatness

surprised the Council of Ministers: they at first refused

their consent, but the Duke insisted--and what could they

refuse to the victor of Rocroy? Thionville was at that time

considered to be one of the best fortresses in Europe. On

arriving before its walls, after a seven days' march, Enghien

... established his lines, erected bridges, raised redoubts,

and opened a double line of trenches on the 25th of June. The

French were several times repulsed, but always rallied; and

everywhere the presence of Enghien either prevented or

repaired the disorder. ... The obstinate resistance of the

garrison obliged the French to have recourse to mines, which,

by assiduous labor, they pushed forward under the interior of

the town. Then Enghien, wishing to spare bloodshed, sent a

flag of truce to the governor, and allowed him a safe conduct

to visit the state of the works. This visit convinced the

Spaniards of the impossibility of defending themselves any

longer. ... They evacuated the town on the 22d of August.

Thionville was then little more than a heap of ruins and

ashes. ... By this conquest Enghien soon became master of the

whole course of the Moselle down to the gates of Trèves.

Sierch alone ventured to resist him, but was reduced in 24

hours. Then, disposing his army in autumn quarters, he set off

for Paris."

Lord Mahon,

Life of Louis, Prince of Condé,

chapter 1.

FRANCE: A. D. 1644-1646.

Campaigns in Catalonia.

The failures at Lerida.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1644-1646.

FRANCE: A. D. 1645-1648.

Campaigns in Flanders.

Capture of Dunkirk.

Loss of the Dutch alliance.

Conde's victory at Lens.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1634-1646; 1646-1648; 1647-1648.

FRANCE: A. D. 1646-1648.

The last campaigns of the Thirty Years War.

Turenne and the Swedes in Germany.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1646-1648.

FRANCE: A. D. 1646-1654.

Hostility to the Pope.

Siege of Orbitello.

Attempts to take advantage of the insurrection in Naples.

See ITALY: A. D. 1646-1654.

FRANCE: A. D. 1647-1648.

Conflict between Court and Parliament.

The question of the Paulette.

Events leading to the First Fronde.

"The war was conducted with alternate success and failure, but

with an unintermitted waste of the public revenue; and while

Guébriant, Turenne, and Condé were maintaining the military

renown of France, D'Emery, the superintendent of finance, was

struggling with the far severer difficulty of raising her ways

and means to the level of her expenditure. The internal

history of the first five years of the regency is

thenceforward a record of the contest between the court and

the Parliament of Paris; between the court, promulgating

edicts to replenish the exhausted treasury, and the

Parliament, remonstrating in angry addresses against the

acceptance of them." Of the four sovereign courts which had

their seat at that time in the Palais de Justice of Paris, and

of which the Parliament was the most considerable--the other

three being the Chamber 'des Comptes,' the Cour des Aides, and

the Grand Conseil--the counselors or stipendiary judges held

their offices for life. "But, in virtue of the law called

Paulette [named from Paulet, its originator, in the reign of

Henry IV.] ... they also held them as an inheritance

transmissible to their descendants. The Paulette ... was a

royal ordinance which imposed an annual tax on the stipend of

every judge. It was usually passed for a term of nine years

only. If the judge died during that term, his heir was

entitled to succeed to the vacant office. But if the death of

the judge happened when the Paulette was not in force, his

heir had no such right. Consequently, the renewal of the tax

was always welcome to the stipendiary counselors of the

sovereign courts; and, by refusing or delaying to renew it,

the king could always exercise a powerful influence over them.

In April, 1647, the Paulette had expired, and the queen-mother

proposed the revival of it. But, to relieve the necessities of

the treasury, she also proposed to increase the annual per

centage which it imposed on the stipends of the counselors of

the Chamber 'des Comptes,' of the Cour des Aides, and of the

Grand Conseil. To concert measures of resistance to the

contemplated innovation, those counselors held a meeting in

the Great Hall of St. Louis; and at their request the

Parliament, though not personally and directly interested in

the change, joined their assembly." The queen sarcastically

replied to their remonstrances that the "king would not only

withdraw his proposal for an increase in the rate of the

annual tax on their stipends, but would even graciously

relieve them from that burden altogether. ... Exasperated by

the threatened loss of the heritable tenure of their offices,

and still more offended by the sarcastic terms in which that

menace was conveyed, the judges assembled in the hall of St.

Louis with increased zeal, and harangued there with yet more

indignant eloquence. Four different times the queen

interdicted their meetings, and four different times they

answered her by renewed resolutions for the continuance of

them. She threatened severe punishments, and they replied by

remonstrances. A direct collision of authority had thus

occurred, and it behooved either party to look well to their

steps." The queen began to adopt a conciliatory manner. "But

the associated magistrates derived new boldness from the

lowered tone and apparent fears of the government.

{1226}

Soaring at once above the humble topic on which they had

hitherto been engaged into the region of general politics,

they passed at a step from the question of the Paulette to a

review of all the public grievances under which their fellow

subjects were labouring. After having wrought during four

successive days in this inexhaustible mine of eloquence, they

at length, on the 30th of June, 1648, commenced the adoption

of a series of resolutions, which, by the 24th of July, had

amounted in number to 27, and which may be said to have laid

the basis of a constitutional revolution. ... Important as

these resolutions were in themselves, they were still more

important as the assertion, by the associated magistrates, of

the right to originate laws affecting all the general

interests of the commonwealth. In fact, a new power in the

state had suddenly sprung into existence. ... That was an age

in which the minds of men, in every part of Europe, had been

rudely awakened to the extent to which the unconstitutional

encroachments of popular bodies might be carried. Charles I.

was at that time a prisoner in the hands of the English

Parliament. Louis XIV. was a boy, unripe for an encounter with

any similar antagonists. ... The queen-mother, therefore,

resolved to spare no concessions by which the disaffected

magistracy might be conciliated. D'Emery was sacrificed to

their displeasure; the renewal of the Paulette on its ancient

terms was offered to them; some of the grievances of which

they complained were immediately redressed; and the young king

appeared before them in person, to promise his assent to their

other demands. In return, he stipulated only for the cessation

of their combined meetings, and for their desisting from the

further promulgation of arrêts, to which they ascribed the

force and authority of law. But the authors of this hasty

revolution were no longer masters of the spirits whom they had

summoned to their aid. ... With increasing audacity,

therefore, they persevered in defying the royal power, and in

requiring from all Frenchmen implicit submission to their own.

Advancing from one step to another, they adopted, on the 28th

of August, 1648, an arrêt in direct conflict with a recent

proclamation of the king, and ordered the prosecution of three

persons for the offense of presuming to lend him money. At

that moment their debates were interrupted by shouts and

discharges of cannon, announcing the great victory of Condé at

Lens. During the four following days religious festivals and

public rejoicings suspended their sittings. But in those four

days, the court had arranged their measures for a coup d'état.

As the Parliament retired from Notre Dame, where they had

attended at a solemn thanksgiving for the triumph of the arms

of France, they observed that the soldiery still stood to the

posts which, in honour of that ceremonial, had been assigned

to them in different quarters of the city. Under the

protection of that force, one of the presidents of the Chamber

'des Enquêtes,' and De Broussel, the chief of the

parliamentary agitators, were arrested and consigned to

different prisons, while three of their colleagues were exiled

to remote distances from the capital. At the tidings of this

violence, the Parisian populace were seized with a

characteristic paroxysm of fury. ... In less than three hours,

Paris had become an entrenched camp. ... They dictated their

own terms. The exiles were recalled and the prisoners

released. ... Then, at the bidding of the Parliament, the

people laid aside their weapons, threw down the barricades,

re-opened their shops, and resumed the common business of life

as quietly as if nothing had occurred. ... It was, however, a

short-lived triumph. The queen, her son, and Mazarin effected

their escape to St. Germains; and there, by the mediation of

Condé and of Gaston, duke of Orleans, the uncle of the king, a

peace was negotiated. The treaty of St. Germains was regarded

by the court with shame, and by the Parliament with

exultation." Fresh quarrels over it soon arose. "Condé was a

great soldier, but an unskillful and impatient peacemaker. By

his advice and aid, the queen-mother and the king once more

retired to St. Germains, and commanded the immediate

adjournment of the Parliament from Paris to Montargis. To

their remonstrances against that order they could obtain no

answer, except that if their obedience to it should be any

longer deferred, an army of 25,000 men would immediately lay,

siege to the city. War was thus declared."

Sir J. Stephen,

Lectures on the History of France,

lecture 21.

ALSO IN:

Cardinal De Retz,

Memoirs,

book 2 (volume 1).

FRANCE: A. D. 1648.

The Peace of Westphalia.

Acquisition of Alsace, etc.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1648.

FRANCE: A. D. 1649.

The First Fronde.

Doubtful origin of the name.

Siege of Paris by Condé.

Dishonorable conduct of Turenne.

Deserted by his army.

The Peace of Reuil.

"The very name of this movement is obscure, and it is only

certain that it was adopted in jest, from a child's game. It

was fitting that the struggle which became only a mischievous

burlesque on a revolution should be named from the sport of

gamins and school-boys. Fronde is the name of a sling, and the

boys of the street used this weapon in their mimic contests.

How it came to be applied to the opponents of the government

is uncertain. Some claimed it was because the members of the

Parliament, like the young frondeurs, hurled their weapons at

Mazarin, but were ready to fly when the officers of the police

appeared. Others said the term had been used by chance by some

counsellor, and had been adopted by the writers of epigrams

and mazarinades. However derived, it was not ill applied."

J. B. Perkins,

France Under Mazarin,

chapter 9 (volume 1).

"Paul de Gondi, Coadjutor of Paris [Coadjutor, that is, of the

Archbishop of Paris, who was his uncle], famous afterwards

under the name of Cardinal de Retz, placed himself at the head

of the revolution. ... The Prince of Conti, brother of Condé,

the Duke of Longueville, the Duke of Beaufort, and the Duke of

Bouillon adopted the party of the coadjutor and the

parliament. Generals were chosen for an army with which to

resist the court. Although taxes levied by Mazarin had been

resisted, taxes were freely paid to raise troops--12,000 men

were raised; Condé [commanding for the queen] had 8,000

soldiers. These he threw around Paris, and invested 100,000

burgesses, and threatened to starve the town. The citizens,

adorned with feathers and ribbons, made sorties occasionally,

but their manœuvres were the subject of scorn by the soldiers.

... As Voltaire says, the tone of the civil discords which

afflicted England at the same time mark well the difference

between the national characters.

{1227}

The English had thrown into their civil war a balanced fury

and a mournful determination. ... The French on the other hand

threw themselves into their civil strife with caprice,

laughter, dissolution and debauchery. Women were the leaders

of factions--love made and broke cabals. The Duchess of

Longueville urged Turenne, only a short time back appointed

Marshal of France, to encourage his army to revolt, which he

was commanding for his king. Nothing can justify Turenne's

action in this matter. Had he laid down his command and taken

the side of his brother [the Duke de Bouillon], on account of

his family grievance [the loss of the principality of

Sedan--see above, A. D. 1641-1642], the feudal spirit which in

those days held affection for family higher than affection for

country, might have excused him; but, while in the service of

a sovereign and intrusted with the command of an army, to

endeavour to lead his troops over to the enemy can be regarded

as nothing short of the work of a traitor. He himself pleads

as his apology that Condé was starving the population of Paris

by the investment. ... As it was he sacrificed his honour, and

allowed his fair fame to be tarnished for the sake of a

worthless woman who secretly jeered at his passion, and cared

nothing for his heart, but merely for his sword for her own

worldly advantage. As it was he endeavoured to persuade his

army to declare for the parliament, and purposed taking it

into Champagne, and marching for the relief of the capital;

but the treachery of the marshal was no match for the subtlety

of the cardinal. Before Turenne issued his declaration to his

troops the colonels of his regiment had already been tampered

with. The cardinal's emissaries had promised them pensions,

and distributed £800,000 among the officers and soldiers. This

was a decisive argument for mercenaries, who taught Turenne by

forsaking him that mercenary services can only be commanded by

money. D'Erlach had also stood firm. The regiments of Turenne,

six German regiments, called by d'Erlach, marched one night to

join him at Brisach. Three regiments of infantry threw

themselves under the guns of Philipsburg. Only a small force

was left to Turenne, who, finding the blow he intended

hopeless, sent the troops still with him to join d'Erlach at

Brisach, and retired himself with fifteen or twenty of his

friends to Heilbron, thence to Holland, where he awaited the

termination of the civil war. The news of the abandonment of

Turenne was received with despair at Paris, with wild joy at

St. Germain. His banishment, however, was not long. The

leaders of the parliament became aware that the princes of the

Fronde were trying to obtain foreign assistance to overturn

the monarchy; that their generals were negotiating a treaty

with Spain. They felt that order, peace, and the independence

of parliament, which would in this case become dependent upon

the nobility, was in danger. They took the patriotic

resolution quickly to act of their own accord. A conference

had been opened between the parliament and the Court. Peace

was concluded at Reuil, which, notwithstanding the

remonstrances of Conti [brother of Condé, the family being

divided in the First Fronde], Bouillon, and the other nobles

of the Fronde, was accepted by the whole parliament. Peace was

proclaimed in Paris to the discontent of the populace. ...

Turenne, on the conclusion of the treaty of Reuil, embarked in

Zeeland, landed at Dieppe, and posted to Paris."

H. M. Hozier,

Turenne,

chapter 6.

"After the signing of the peace, the Château of St. Germain

became the resort of many Frondeurs; the Duchess de

Longueville, the Prince of Conti, and nearly all the other

chiefs of the party, hastened to pay their respects to the

Queen. She received everybody without bitterness, some even

with friendship; and the Minister on his part affected much

general good-will. ... One of the first effects of the peace

between the parties was a reconciliation in the House of

Condé. The Princess Dowager employed herself with zeal and

success in reestablishing harmony between her children. Condé,

who despised his brother too much to hate him, readily agreed

to a reconciliation with him. As to his sister, he had always

felt for her great affection and confidence, and she no less

for him: these sentiments were revived at their very first

interview at Ruel, and he not only gave her back his

friendship, but began to enter into her views, and even to be

guided by her counsels. The Prince's policy was to make

Royalty powerful and respected, but not absolute. He said

publicly that he had done what he ought in upholding Mazarin,

because he had promised to do so: but for the future, if

things took a different line, he should not be bound by the

past. ... A prey to a thousand conflicting feelings, and

discontented with everybody, and perhaps with himself, he took

the resolution of retiring for several months to his

government in Burgundy. On returning from Dijon in the month

of August, the Prince found the Queen and the Cardinal at

Compiègne, and very much dejected. ... He ... pressed her to

return to Paris with her Minister, answering for Mazarin's

safety, at the risk of his own head. ... Their entry into

Paris took place a few days after."

Lord Mahon,

Life of Louis, Prince of Condé,

chapter 3-4.

ALSO IN:

Guy Joli,

Memoirs,

volume 1.

Cardinal De Retz,

Memoirs,

book 2.

Miss Pardoe,

Louis XIV.,

chapters 9-11.

FRANCE: A. D. 1650-1651.

The New Fronde, or the Petits Maitres.

Its alliance with Spain and defeat at Rethel.

Revolt, siege and reduction of Bordeaux.

"Faction, laid asleep for one night, woke again fresh and

vigorous next morning. There was a Parliamentary party, a De

Retz party, and a Condé party, and each party plotted and

schemed unceasingly to discredit the others and to evoke

popular feeling against all except itself. ... Neither of the

leaders, each pretending fear of assassination, ever stirred

abroad unless in the company of 400 or 500 gentlemen, thus

holding the city in hourly peril of an 'émeute.' Condé's

arrogance and insolence becoming at last totally unbearable,

the Court proceeded to the bold measure of arresting him. New

combinations: De Retz and Orleans coalesce once more; De Retz

coquets with Mazarin and is promised a cardinal's hat. Wily

Mazarin strongly supports De Retz's nomination in public, and

privately urges every member of the council to vote against it

and to beseech the Queen to refuse the dignity. It was

refused; upon which De Retz turned his energies upon a general

union of parties for the purpose of effecting the release of

Condé and the overthrow of the minister.'

De Retz and the Fronde

(Temple Bar, volume 38, pages 535-536).

{1228}

Condé, his brother Conti, and his brother-in-law Longueville,

were arrested and conducted to Vincennes on the 18th of

January, 1650. "This was the second crisis of the sedition.

The old Fronde had expired; its leaders had sold themselves to

the Court; but in its place sprang up the New Fronde, called

also, from the affected airs of its leaders, the Petits

Maîtres. The beautiful Duchess of Longueville was the soul of

it, aided by her admirer, Marsillac, afterwards Duke de la

Rochefoucauld, and by the Duke of Bouillon. On the arrest of

her husband and her brother, the duchess had fled to Holland,

and afterwards to Stenai; where she and Bouillon's brother,

Turenne, who styled himself the 'King's Lieutenant-General for

the liberation of the Princes,' entered into negotiations with

the Archduke Leopold. Bouillon himself had retired into

Guienne, which province was alienated from the Court because

Mazarine maintained as its governor the detested Epernon. In

July Bouillon and his allies publicly received a Spanish envoy

at Bordeaux. Condé's wife and infant son had been received in

that city with enthusiasm. But on the approach of Mazarine

with the royal army, the inhabitants of Guienne, alarmed for

their vintage, now approaching maturity, showed signs of

submission; after a short siege Bordeaux surrendered, on

condition of an amnesty, in which Bouillon and La

Rochefoucauld were included; and the Princess of Condé was

permitted to retire (October 1st 1650). In the north, the

Frondeurs, with their Spanish allies, seemed at first more

successful. In the summer Leopold had entered Champagne,

penetrated to Ferté Milon, and some of his marauding parties

had even reached Dammartin. Turenne tried to persuade the

Archduke to march to Vincennes and liberate the princes; but

while he was hesitating, Gaston transferred the captives to

Marcoussis, whence they were soon after conveyed to Havre.

Leopold and Turenne, after a vain attempt to rouse the

Parisians, retreated to the Meuse and laid siege to Mouzon.

The Cardinal himself, like his master Richelieu, now assumed

the character of a general. Uniting with his troops in the

north the army of Guienne, he took up his quarters at Rethel,

which had been captured by Du Plessis Praslin. Hence he

ordered an attack to be made on the Spaniards. In the battle

which ensued, these were entirely defeated, many of their

principal officers were captured, and even Turenne himself

narrowly escaped the same fate (December 15th 1650). The

Cardinal's elation was unbounded. It was a great thing to have

defeated Turenne, and though the victory was Du Plessis',

Mazarine assumed all the credit of it. His head began to turn.

He forgot that he owed his success to the leaders of the old

Fronde, and especially to the Coadjutor; he neglected his

promises to that intriguing prelate, though Gondi plainly

declared that he must either be a prince of the Church or the

head of a faction. Mazarine was also imprudent enough to

offend the Parliament; and he compared them with that sitting

at London--which indeed was doing them too much honour. The

Coadjutor went over to the party of the princes, dragging with

him the feeble-minded Orleans, who had himself been insulted

by the Queen. Thus was produced a third phase of this singular

sedition--the union of the old Fronde with the new. The

Parliament now clamoured for the liberation of the princes. As

the Queen hesitated, Gaston bluntly declared that the

dismissal of Mazarine was necessary to the restoration of

peace; while the Parliament added to their former demand

another for the Cardinal's banishment. Mazarine saw his

mistake and endeavoured to rectify it. He hastened to Havre in

order to liberate the princes in person, and claim the merit

of a spontaneous act. But it was too late; it was plain that

he was acting only by constraint. The princes were conducted

back in triumph to Paris by a large retinue sent to escort

them. On February 25th 1651, their innocence was established

by a royal declaration, and they were restored to all their

dignities and charges. Mazarine, meanwhile, who saw that for

the present the game was lost, retired into exile; first into

Bouillon, and afterwards to Brühl on the Rhine, where the

Elector of Cologne offered him an asylum. From this place he

corresponded with the Queen, and continued to direct her

counsels. The anarchy and confusion that had ensued in France

were such as promised him a speedy return."

T. H. Dyer,

History of Modern Europe,

book 5, chapter 1 (volume 3).

ALSO IN:

T. Wright,

History of France,

book 4, chapter 4 (volume 2).

Miss Pardoe,

Louis XIV. and the Court of France,

volume 1, chapter 13-15.

FRANCE: A. D. 1651-1652.

The loss of Catalonia.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1648-1652.

FRANCE: A. D. 1651-1653.

The arrogance of Condé and his renewal of civil war.

The King's majority proclaimed.

General changing of sides.

Battle of Porte St. Antoine and massacre of

the Hôtel de Ville.

End of the Fronde.

Condé in the service of Spain.

"The liberated captives were received with every demonstration

of joy by all Paris and the Frondeurs, including the Duke of

Orleans. The Queen, melancholy, and perhaps really ill, lay in

bed to receive their visit of cold ceremony; but the Duke of

Orleans gave them a grand supper, and there was universal joy

at being rid of Mazarin. ... There was a promise to assemble

the States General, while Condé thought himself governing the

kingdom, and as usual his arrogance gave offence in various

quarters. One article in the compact which had gained his

liberty was that the Prince of Conti should marry Mademoiselle

de Chevreuse, but this alliance offended the pride of the

elder brother, and he broke the marriage off hastily and

haughtily. Madame de Chevreuse, much offended, repented of the

aid she had given, went over to the Queen's party, and took

with her the coadjutor, who was devoted to the rejected

daughter, and could always sway the mob of Paris. So many

persons had thus come to desert the cause of the Prince that

Anne of Austria thought of again arresting him." Condé,

supposing himself in danger, fled from the city on the 6th of

July, and "went to his château of St. Maur, where his family

and friends joined him; and he held a kind of court. Queen and

Parliament both sent entreaties to him to return, but he

disdained them all, and made the condition of his return the

dismissal of the secretaries whom Mazarin had left. The Queen,

most unwillingly, made them retire, and Condé did return for a

short time; but he was haughtier than ever, and openly

complained of Mazarin's influence, making every preparation

for a civil war. Strangely violent scenes took place," between

the Prince and the Coadjutor and their respective adherents;

and presently the Prince "quitted Paris, went to Chantilly,

and decided on war.

{1229}

Mazarin wrote to the Queen that the most prudent course would

be to ally herself with the Parliament to crush the Princes.

After they should have been put down the Parliament would be

easily dealt with. She acted on this advice. The elections for

the States General were beginning, but in order to quash them,

and cancel all her promises, the Queen decided on proclaiming

the majority of the King, and thus the close of her own

regency. It was of course a farce, since he had only just

entered his fourteenth year, and his mother still conducted

the Government; but it made a new beginning, and was an

occasion for stirring up the loyalty of the people. ... Condé

was unwilling to begin a civil war, and was only driven into

it by his sister's persuasions and those of his friends.

'Remember,' he said, 'if I once draw the sword, I shall be the

last to return it to the scabbard.' On the other side, Anne of

Austria said, 'Monsieur le Prince shall perish, or I will.'

From Montrond, Condé directed his forces to take possession of

the cities in Guyenne, and he afterwards proceeded to

Bordeaux. On the other hand, Mazarin repaired to Sedan, and

contrived to raise an army in the frontier cities, with which

he marched to join the King and Queen at Poitiers. War was

raging again, still as the Fronde, though there had been a

general change of sides, the Parliament being now for the

Court, and the Princes against it, the Duke of Orleans in a

state of selfish agitation between the two. Learning that the

royal army was advancing to his own appanage of Orleans, and

fearing that the city might open its gates to them, he sent

off his daughter, Mademoiselle [de Montpensier], to keep the

citizens to what he called their duty to himself. She went

with only two ladies and her servants ... and found the gates

closed against her." The persevering Mademoiselle succeeded,

however, in gaining admission to the town, despite the orders

of the magistrates, and she kept out of it the soldiers of

both factions in the war. But her own inclinations were

strongly towards Condé and his side. "She went out to a little

inn to hold a council with the Dukes of Beaufort and Nemours,

and had to mediate between them in a violent quarrel. ...

Indeed, Condé's party were ill-agreed; he had even quarreled

with his sister, and she had broken with De la Rochefoucauld!

The Duke de Bouillon and his brother Turenne were now on the

Queen's side, and the command of the royal army was conferred

on the Viscount. Condé, with only eight persons, dashed across

France, to take the command of the army over which Beaufort and

Nemours were disputing. The very morning after he arrived,

Turenne saw by the disposition of the troops who must be

opposed to him. 'M. le Prince is come,' he said. They were the

two greatest captains of the age, and they fought almost in

sight of the King and Queen at Bleneau. But though there were

skirmishes [including, at the outset, the serious defeat of a

division of the royal forces under Hocquincourt], no decisive

engagement took place. It was a struggle of manœuvres, and in

this Condé had the disadvantage. ... Week after week the two

armies ... watched one another, till at last Condé was driven

up to the walls of Paris, and there the gates were closed

against both armies. Condé was at St. Cloud, whence, on the

2nd of July [1652], he endeavoured to lead his army round to

Charenton at the confluence of the Seine and the Loire; but

when he came in front of the Porte St. Antoine, he found that

a battle was inevitable and that he was caught in a trap,

where, unless he could escape through the city, his

destruction was inevitable. He barricaded the three streets

that met there, heaping up his baggage as a protection, and

his friends within, many of them wives of gentlemen in his

army, saw the situation with despair." The only one who had

energy to act was Mademoiselle. She extorted from her

hesitating father an order, by virtue of which she persuaded

the magistrates of the city, not only to open the gates to

Condé, but to send 2,000 men to the Faubourg St. Antoine.

"Mademoiselle now repaired to the top of the great square

tower of the Bastille, whence she could see the terrible

conflict carried on in the three suburban streets which

converged at the Porte St. Antoine." Seeing an opportunity to

turn the cannon of the Bastille on the pursuing troops, she

did so with effect. "Turenne was obliged to draw back, and at

last Condé brought his army into the city, where they encamped

in the open space of the Pré des Clercs. ... Condé unworthily

requited the hospitality wrung from the city. He was resolved

to overcome the neutrality of the Parliament, and, in concert

with Beaufort, instigated the mob to violence. Many soldiers

were disguised as artizans, and mingled with the rabble, when,

on the 4th of July, he went to the Hotel de Ville, ostensibly

to thank, the magistrates, but really to demand their support

against the Crown. These loyal men, however, by a majority of

votes, decided on a petition to the King to return without

Mazarin. On this Condé exclaimed publicly, 'These gentlemen

will do nothing for us. They are Mazarinists. Treat them as

you please.' Then he retired to the Luxembourg with Gaston,

while Beaufort let loose the mob. The Hotel de Ville was

stormed, the rabble poured in at doors and windows, while the

disguised soldiers fired from the opposite houses, and the

magistrates were threatened and pursued on all sides. They had

one advantage, that they knew their way through the intricate

passages and the mob did not. The first who got out rushed to

the Luxembourg to entreat the Duke and Prince to stop the

massacre; but Monsieur only whistled and beat his tattoo, and

Condé said he knew nothing about sedition. Nor would Beaufort

interfere till the disturbance had lasted many hours; but

after all many more of the rabble were killed than of the

magistrates. It was the last remarkable scene in the strange

drama of the Fronde. The Parliament suspended its sittings,

and the King transferred it to Pontoise, whither Molé and all

the other Presidents proceeded, leaving Paris in disguise.

This last ferocious proceeding of Condé's, though he tried to

disavow it, had shocked and alienated everyone, and he soon

after fell sick of a violent fever. Meanwhile, his castle of

Montrond was taken after a year's siege, Nemours was killed in

a duel by the Duke of Beaufort, and the party was falling to

pieces. ... Mazarin saw the opportunity, and again left the

Court for the German frontier. This was all that was wanting

to bring back the malcontents. Condé offered to make terms,

but was haughtily answered that it was no time for

negotiation, but for submission. Upon this, he proceeded to

the Low Countries, and offered his sword to the Spaniards.

{1230}

The King entered Paris in state and held a bed of justice, in

which he proclaimed an amnesty, excepting from it Condé and

Conti, and some others of their party, and forbidding the

Parliament to interfere in State affairs. The Coadjutor, who

had become a Cardinal, was arrested, and imprisoned until he

made his escape, dislocating his shoulder in his fall from the

window, but finally reaching Rome, where he lived till the

Fronde was forgotten, but never becoming Archbishop of Paris.

... When all was quiet, Mazarin returned, in February, 1653,

without the slightest opposition, and thus ended the Fronde,

in the entire triumph of the Crown. ... The misery, distress

and disease caused by these wars of the Fronde were

unspeakable. There was nothing to eat in the provinces where

they had raged but roots, rotten fruit, and bread made of

bran. ... Le misère de la Fronde' was long a proverbial

expression in France."

C. M. Yonge,

Cameos from English History,

chapter 15.

ALSO IN:

Lord Mahon,

Life of Condé,

chapters 8-9.

G. P. R. James,

Life and Times of Louis XIV.,

chapters 11-12.

Cardinal de Retz,

Memoirs,

books 3-4 (volumes 2-3).

M'lle de Montpensier,

Memoirs,

volume 1, chapters 11-17.

FRANCE: A. D. 1652.

Loss of Gravelines and Dunkirk.

Spanish invasion of Picardy.

"In the spring of 1652, the Spanish forces, under the command

of the archduke had undertaken the siege of Gravelines, which

was obliged to capitulate on the 18th of May. The archduke

next undertook the siege of Dunkirk, but, at the earnest

desire of the princes, he merely blockaded the place, and sent

Fuensaldaña with about 14,000 men into Picardy to their

assistance. ... The court, in great alarm, sought first a

retreat in Normandy, but the Duke of Longueville, who still

held the government of that province, refused to receive

Mazarin. The fears of the court were not lessened by this

proceeding, and it was even proposed to carry the king to

Lyons; but the wiser counsels of Turenne finally prevailed,

and it was resolved to establish the army at Compiègne, and

lodge the court at Pontoise. Fuensaldaña forced the passage of

the Oise at Chauni, and then joined the duke of Lorraine at

Fismes, on the 29th of July, when their joint forces amounted

to full 20,000 men, while Turenne had not more than 11,000 to

oppose to them. But the Spaniards were, as usual, only

pursuing a selfish policy, and Fuensaldaña, in pursuance of

the archduke's orders, left a body of 3,000 cavalry to

reinforce the duke of Lorraine, and returned with the rest of

his troops to assist in the siege of Dunkirk," which soon

surrendered to his arms.

T. Wright,

History of France,

volume 2, page 89.

FRANCE: A. D. 1652-1653.

Last phase of the Fronde at Bordeaux.

Attempted revolution by the Society of the Ormée.

See BORDEAUX: A. D. 1652-1653.

FRANCE: A. D. 1653-1656.

Condé's campaigns against his own country, in the service of

Spain.

"Condé, unfortunately for his fame, made no attempts at

reconciliation, and retired to the Spaniards--an enemy of his

country! He captured several small places on the [Flemish]

frontier, and hoped to return in spring victorious. A few days

after the entry into Paris, Turenne set out to oppose him;

and, retaking some towns, had the satisfaction, of compelling

him to seek winter quarters beyond the limits of France. ...

Condé persuaded the Spanish to bring 30,000 men into the field

for the next campaign: Turenne and La Ferté had but 13,000. To

paralyze the plans of the enemy, the Viscount proposed, and

his proposal was allowed, to be always threatening their rear

and communications; to occupy posts they would not dare to

attack, and so to avoid fighting, at the same time hindering

them from all important undertakings. He began by throwing

himself between two corps of their army, at the point where

they expected to effect a junction; and in the eight or nine

days thus gained, he recovered Rhétel, without which it would

have been, as he declares himself, impossible to defend

Picardy and Champagne. Rhétel, so much an object of anxiety,

was taken in three days. Baffled in their original purposes,

and at a loss, the Spanish expected a large convoy from

Cambray, escorted by 3,000 horse. Turenne got news of this,

and, posting himself near Peronne to intercept it, drove it

back to Cambray [August 11, 1653]. There Condé and Fuensaldaña

turned upon him; but he took up a position, which they watched

for three or four days, and there defied their attack. They

refused the challenge. Thence the enemy drew off," with

designs on Guise, which Turenne frustrated. "Condé then laid

siege to Rocroi, where his own first glory had been gained;

and this place is so hemmed in by woods and defiles, that the

relief of it was impossible. But Turenne compensated for the

loss of it by the equally valuable recapture, of Mouson. Thus

the whole year was spent in marches and countermarches, in

gains and losses, which had no influence on events. By this

time the malcontents were so prostrate that Condé's brother,

the Prince de Conti, and his sister, the Duchesse de

Longueville, made their peace with the court. ... The year

1654 opened with the siege of Stenay by the young king in

person, who was carried thither by Mazarin, to overawe Condé's

governor with the royal name and majesty. That officer was

more true to his trust than to his allegiance, and Stenay cost

a siege. ... Condé could do no better than imitate Turenne's

policy of the previous year, and besiege Arras as an

equivalent for Stenay; to which end he mustered 32,000 men.

Arras was a town of some value. Condé had caught it at

disadvantage; the governor, Mondejeu ... was put on his

defence with 2,500 foot and 100 horse. To reinforce this

slender garrison was the first care of Turenne. ... Mazarin

was anxious for Arras, and offered Turenne to break up the

siege of Stenay, for the sake of reinforcing the army of

relief. This proposal the Viscount declined. He must have been

very confident of his own capacity; for he could collect only

14,000 men to hover around the enemy's camp. ... He proposed

no attempt upon the intrenchments till he had the aid of the

troops from Stenay ... ; but he disposed his parties around so

as to prevent the enemy's convoys from reaching them." Stenay

surrendered on the 6th of August, and Turenne, with

reinforcements from its besiegers, attacked the Spanish lines

at Arras on the night of the 24th, with complete success. The

Spaniards raised the siege and retreated to Cambray, leaving

3,000 prisoners and 63 pieces of cannon in the hands of the

French. "The capture of Quesnoy and Binches filled up the rest

of the year; the places were weak and the garrisons feeble.

{1231}

Nor did the next season, 1655, offer anything of interest.

Turenne reduced Landrecies, Condé, and Guislain, while his

active opponent was sometimes foiled by his precautions, and

sometimes baffled by the absurd behaviour of the Spanish

authorities. ... The great event of 1656 was the siege of

Valenciennes. This place ... was invested by Turenne about the

middle of June: but hardly had his camp been intrenched before

he repented of his undertaking. The Scheldt flows through the

town, and by reservoirs and sluices was flooded at the will of

the enemy. Turenne's camp was largely inundated. ... He had

overestimated his means: so great was the circle of his

circumvallation that he had not men enough to guard it

adequately, when Condé and the Spanish appeared with 20,000

men to the relief of the place." They broke through his lines

and forced him to retreat, with a heavy loss of prisoners

taken. "The Viscount retrieved his credit by the bold stand he

made after the defeat."

T. O. Cockayne,

Life of Marshal Turenne,

pages 58-69.

ALSO IN:

Lord Mahon,

Life of Condé,

chapter 10.

J. B. Perkins,

France under Mazarin,

chapters 16-17 (volume 2).

FRANCE: A. D. 1653-1660.

First persecution of the Jansenists.

See PORT ROYAL AND THE JANSENISTS.

FRANCE: A. D. 1655-1658.

Alliance with the English Commonwealth against Spain.

The taking of Dunkirk for England and Gravelines for France.

End of the war.

"Mazarin was now bent upon an enterprise which, if successful,

must finish the war. A deadly blow would be struck at the

strength of Spain if Dunkirk, Mardyck, and Gravelines--the

possession of which was of vital importance to her

communication with Flanders, as well as enabling her to ruin

French commerce on that coast--could be wrested from her. For

this the cooperation of some maritime power was necessary, and

Mazarin determined at all costs to secure England. With

Cromwell, the only diplomatist by whose astuteness he

confessed himself baffled, he had been negotiating since 1651.

... At length on November 3, 1655, a treaty was signed at

Westminster, based upon freedom of commerce and an engagement

that neither country should assist the enemies or rebels of

the other; Mazarin consented to expel Charles II., James, and

twenty named royalists from France. Cromwell similarly agreed

to dismiss from England the emissaries of Condé. But Mazarin

was soon anxious for a more effectual bond. ... Cromwell had

equally good reasons for drawing closer to France, for Spain

was preparing actively to assist Charles II. French and

English interests thus coinciding, an alliance was signed at

Paris on March 23, 1657

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1655-1658.

Gravelines and Dunkirk were to be at once besieged both by

land and sea. England was to send 6,000 men to assist the

French army. Gravelines was to become French and Dunkirk

English; should the former fall first it was to be held by

England until Dunkirk too was taken. ... The alliance was not

a moment too soon. The campaign of 1657 had opened

disastrously. The tide was however turned by the arrival of

the English contingent. Montmédy was immediately besieged, and

capitulated on August 4. The effect was again to make Mazarin

hang back from further effort, since it seemed possible now to

make peace with Spain, and thereby avoid an English occupation

of Dunkirk. But Cromwell would stand no trifling, and his

threats were so clear that Mazarin determined to act loyally

and without delay. On September 30, Turenne laid siege to

Mardyck, which protected Dunkirk, and took it in four days. It

was at once handed over to the English." In the spring of 1658

the siege of Dunkirk was begun. The Spaniards, under Don John

of Austria and Condé, attempting to relieve the place, were

defeated (June 13) in the battle of the Dunes, by Turenne and

Cromwell's Ironsides (see ENGLAND: A. D.1655-1658). "Dunkirk

immediately surrendered, and on the 25th was in Cromwell's

possession. Two months later Gravelines also fell. A short and

brilliant campaign followed, in which Don John and Condé, shut

up in Brussels and Tournai respectively, were compelled to

remain inactive while fortress after fortress fell into French

hands. A few days after the fall of Gravelines Cromwell died;

but Mazarin was now near his goal. Utterly defeated on her own

soil, beaten, too, by the Portuguese at Elvas, and threatened

in Milan, her army ruined, her treasury bankrupt, without a

single ally in Europe, Spain stood at last powerless before

him."

O. Airy,

The English Restoration and Louis XIV.,

chapter 6.

FRANCE: A. D. 1657.

Candidacy of Louis XIV. for the imperial crown.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1648-1705.

FRANCE: A. D. 1659-1661.

The treaty of the Pyrenees.

Marriage of Louis XIV. to the Spanish Infanta.

"The Spaniards could struggle no longer: they sued for peace.

Things were prepared for it on every hand: Spain was

desperate; matters far from settled or safe in France; in

England the Protector's death had come very opportunely for

Mazarin; the strong man was no longer there to hold the

balance between the European powers. Questions as to a Spanish

marriage and the Spanish succession had been before men since

1648; the Spaniards had disliked the match, thinking that in

the end it must subject them to France. But things were

changed; Philip IV. now had an heir, so that the nations might

hope to remain under two distinct crowns; moreover, the needs

of Spain were far greater than in 1648, while the demands of

France were less. So negociation between Mazarin and Louis de

Haro on the little Isle of Pheasants in the Bidassoa, under

the very shadow of the Pyrenees, went on prosperously; even

the proposal that Louis XIV. should espouse the Infanta of

Spain, Maria Theresa, was at last agreed to at Madrid. The

only remaining difficulty arose from" the fact that the young

King, Louis XIV., had fallen in love with Maria Mancini,

Cardinal Mazarin's niece, and wished to marry her. "The King

at last abandoned his youthful and pure passion, and signed

the Treaty of the Pyrenees [concluded November 7, 1659],

condemning himself to a marriage of state, which exalted high

the dignity of the French Crown, only to plunge it in the end

into the troubles and disasters of the Succession War. The

treaty of peace begins with articles on trade and navigation:

then follow cessions, restitutions, and exchanges of

territories.

{1232}

1. On the Northern frontier Spain ceded all she had in Artois,

with exception of Aire and S. Omer; in Flanders itself France

got Gravelines and its outer defences. In Hainault she became

mistress of the important towns, Landrecies, Quesnoy, and

Avesnes, and also strengthened her position by some exchanges:

in Luxemburg she retained Thionville, Montmédy, and several

lesser places; so that over her whole northern border France

advanced her frontier along a line answering to her old

limits. ... In return she restored to Spain several of her

latest conquests in Flanders: Ypres, Oudenarde, Dixmüden,

Furnes, and other cities. In Condé's country France recovered

Rocroy, Le Câtelet and Linchamp, occupied by the Prince's

soldiers; and so secured the safety and defences of Champagne

and Paris.

2. More to the East, the Duke of Lorraine, having submitted

with such good grace as might be, was reinstated in his Duchy.

... But France received her price here also, the Duchy of Bar,

the County of Clermont on the edge of Champagne, Stenay, Dun,

Jametz, Moyenvic, became hers. The fortifications of Nancy

were to be rased for ever; the Duke of Lorraine bound himself

to peace, and agreed to give France free passage to the

Bishopricks and Alsace. This was the more necessary, because

Franche-Comté, the other highway into Alsace, was left to the

Spaniards, and such places in it as were in the King's hands

were restored to them. Far out in Germany Louis XIV. replaced

Jülich in the hands of the Duke of Neuberg; and that element

of controversy, the germ or pretext of these long wars, was

extinct for ever. On the Savoyard border France retained

Pinerolo, with all the means and temptations of offence which

it involved: she restored to the Duke her other conquests

within his territories, and to the Spaniards whatever she held

in Lombardy; she also honourably obtained an amnesty for those

subjects of Spain, Neapolitans or Catalans, who had sided with

France. Lastly, the Pyrenees became the final, as it was the

natural, boundary between the two Latin kingdoms. ...

Roussillon and Conflans became French: all French conquests to

the south of the Pyrenees were restored to Spain. The Spanish

King renounced all claims on Alsace or Breisach: on the other

hand the submission of the great Condé was accepted; he was

restored to all his domains; his son, the young Duke of

Enghien, being made Grand Master of France, and he himself

appointed Governor of Burgundy and Bresse: his friends and

followers were included in the amnesty. Some lesser

stipulations, with a view to the peace of Europe, for the

settlement of the differences between Spain and Portugal,

between the Dukes of Savoy and Mantua, between the Catholic

and the Protestant Cantons of Switzerland, and an agreement to

help forward peace between the Northern Courts, worthily close

this great document, this weighty appendix to the Treaties of

Westphalia. A separate act, as was fitting, regulated all

questions bearing on the great marriage. It contains a solemn

renunciation, intended to bar for ever the union of the two

Crowns under one sceptre, or the absorption into France of

Flanders, Burgundy, or Charolais. It was a renunciation which,

as Mazarin foresaw long before, would never hold firm against

the temptations and exigencies of time. The King's marriage

with the Infanta Maria Theresa of Spain did not take place

till the next year, by which time Mazarin's work in life

seemed well nigh over; racked with gout, he had little

enjoyment of his triumphs. ... He betook himself to the

arrangement of his own affairs: his physicians giving him,

early in 1661, no hopes of recovery. ... These things

arranged, the Cardinal resigned himself to die 'with a

serenity more philosophic than Christian'; and passed away on

the 8th of March, 1661."

G. W. Kitchin,

History of France,

book 4, chapter 8 (volume 3).

"The Treaty of the Pyrenees, which completed the great work of

pacification that had commenced at Munster, is justly

celebrated as having put an end to such bitter and useless

animosities. But, it is more famous, as having introduced a

new æra in European politics. In its provisions all the

leading events of a century to come had their origin--the wars

which terminated with the Treaties of Aix-la-Chapelle,

Nimeguen, and Ryswick, and that concerning the Spanish

succession. So great an epoch in history has the Pyrenean

Treaty been accounted by politicians, that Lord Bolingbroke

was of opinion, 'That the only part of history necessary to be

thoroughly studied, goes no farther back than this treaty,

since, from that period, a new set of motives and principles

have prevailed all over Europe.'"

J. Dunlop,

Memoirs of Spain during the Reigns of

Philip IV. and Charles II., volume 1.

chapter 11.

FRANCE: A. D. 1660-1688.

A footing gained in Newfoundland.

See NEWFOUNDLAND: A. D. 1660-1688.

FRANCE: A. D. 1661.

Personal assumption of the government by Louis XIV.

The extraordinary characteristics of the reign of the Grand

Monarch, now begun.

On the death of Mazarin Louis XIV., then twenty-three years

old, announced to his council his intention of taking the

government solely upon himself. His ministers were

henceforward to receive instructions from him in person; there

was to be no premier at their head. The reign which then began

"was the culminating epoch in the history of the French

Monarchy. What the age of Pericles was in the history of the

Athenian Democracy, what the age of the Scipios was in the

history of the Roman Republic, that was the reign of Louis

XIV. in the history of the old Monarchy of France. ... It is

not only the most conspicuous reign in the history of

France--it is the most conspicuous reign in the history of

Monarchy in general. Of the very many kings whom history

mentions, who have striven to exalt the monarchical principle,

none of them achieved a success remotely comparable to his. ...

They may have ruled over wider dominions, but they never

attained the exceptional position of power and prestige which

he enjoyed for more than half a century. They never were

obeyed so submissively at home, nor so dreaded, and even

respected, abroad. For Louis XIV. carried off that last reward

of complete success, that he for a time silenced even envy,

and turned it into admiration. We who can examine with cold

scrutiny the make and composition of this Colossus of a French

Monarchy; who can perceive how much the brass and clay in it

exceeded the gold; who know how it afterwards fell with a

resounding ruin, the last echoes of which have scarcely died

away, have difficulty in realising the fascination it

exercised upon contemporaries who witnessed its first setting

up. Louis XIV.'s reign was the very triumph of commonplace

greatness, of external magnificence and success, such as the

vulgar among mankind can best and most sincerely appreciate.

... His qualities were on the surface, visible and

comprehensible to all. ...

{1233}

He was indefatigably industrious: worked on an average eight

hours a day for fifty-four years; had, great tenacity of will;

that kind of solid judgment which comes of slowness of brain,

and withal a most majestic port and great dignity of manners.

He had also as much kindliness of nature as the very great can

be expected to have. ... He must have had great original

fineness of tact, though it was in the end nearly extinguished

by adulation and incense. His court was an extraordinary

creation, and the greatest thing he achieved. He made it the

microcosm of all that was most brilliant and prominent in

France. Every order of merit was invited there, and received

courteous welcome. To no circumstance did he so much owe his

enduring popularity. By its means he impressed into his

service that galaxy of great writers, the first and the last

classic authors of France, whose calm and serene lustre will

for ever illumine the epoch of his existence. It may even be

admitted that his share in that lustre was not so accidental

and undeserved as certain king-haters have supposed. That

subtle critic, M. Ste. Beuve, thinks he can trace a marked

rise even in Bossuet's style from the moment he became a

courtier of Louis XIV. The king brought men together, placed

them in a position where they were induced and urged to bring

their talents to a focus. His Court was alternately a

high-bred gala and a stately university. ... But Louis XIV.'s

reign has better titles than the adulations of courtiers and

the eulogies of wits and poets to the attention of posterity.

It marks one of the most memorable epochs in the annals of

mankind. It stretches across history like a great

mountain-range, separating ancient France from the France of

modern times. On the farther slope are Catholicism and

feudalism in their various stages of splendour and decay--the

France of crusade and chivalry, of St. Louis and Bayard. On

the hither side are free-thought, industry, and

centralization--the France of Voltaire, Turgot and Condorcet.

When Louis came to the throne, the Thirty Years' War still

wanted six years of its end, and the heat of theological

strife was at its intensest glow. When he died, the religious

temperature had cooled nearly to freezing-point, and a new

vegetation of science and positive inquiry was overspreading

the world. This amounts to saying that his reign covers the

greatest epoch of mental transition through which the human

mind has hitherto passed, excepting the transition we are

witnessing in the day which now is. We need but recall the

names of the writers and thinkers who arose during Louis

XIV.'s reign, and shed their seminal ideas broadcast upon the

air, to realise how full a period it was, both of birth and

decay; of the passing away of the old and the uprising of the

new forms of thought. To mention only the greatest;--the

following are among the chiefs who helped to transform the

mental fabric of Europe in the age of Louis XIV.:--Descartes,

Newton, Leibnitz, Locke, Boyle. ... But the chief interest

which the reign of Louis XIV. offers to the student of history

has yet to be mentioned. It was the great turning-point in the

history of the French people. The triumph, of the Monarchical

principle was so complete under him, independence and

self-reliance were so effectually crushed, both in localities

and individuals, that a permanent bent was given to the

national mind--a habit of looking to the Government for all

action and initiative permanently established. Before the

reign of Louis XIV. it was a question which might fairly be

considered undecided, whether the country would be able or

not, willing or not, to co-operate with its rulers in the work

of the Government and the reform of abuses. On more than one

occasion such co-operation did not seem entirely impossible or

improbable. ... After the reign of Louis' XIV. such

co-operation of the ruler and the ruled became impossible. The

Government of France had become a machine depending upon the

action of a single spring. Spontaneity in the population at

large was extinct, and whatever there was to do must be done

by the central authority. As long as the Government could

correct abuses it was well; if it ceased to be equal to this

task they must go uncorrected. When at last the reform of

secular and gigantic abuses presented itself with imperious

urgency, the alternative before the Monarchy was either to

carry the reform with a high hand, or perish in the failure to

do so. We know how signal the failure was, and could not help

being, under the circumstances; and through having placed the

Monarchy between these alternatives, it is no paradox to say

that Louis XIV. was one of the most direct ancestors of the

Great Revolution."

J. C. Morison,

The Reign of Louis XIV.

(Fortnightly Review, March, 1874).

ALSO IN:

J. I. von Döllinger,

The Policy of Louis XIV.

(Studies in European History, chapter 11).

FRANCE: A. D. 1661-1680.

Revived and growing persecution of the Huguenots.

"One of the King's first acts, on assuming the supreme control

of affairs at the death of Mazarin, was significant, of his

future policy with regard to the Huguenots. Among the

representatives of the various public bodies who came to

tender him their congratulations, there appeared a deputation

of Protestant ministers, headed by their president Vignole;

but the King refused to receive them, and directed that they

should be ordered to leave Paris forthwith. Louis was not slow

to follow up this intimation by measures of a more positive

kind, for he had been carefully taught to hate Protestantism;

and, now that he possessed unrestrained power, he flattered

himself with the idea of compelling the Huguenots to abandon

their convictions and adopt his own. His minister Louvois

wrote to the governors throughout the provinces that 'his

majesty will not suffer any person in his kingdom but those

who are of his religion.' ... A series of edicts was

accordingly published with the object of carrying the King's

purposes into effect. The conferences of the Protestants were

declared to be suppressed. Though worship was still permitted

in their churches, the singing of psalms in private dwellings

was declared to be forbidden. ... Protestant children were

invited to declare themselves against the religion of their

parents. Boys of fourteen and girls of twelve years old might,

on embracing Roman Catholicism, become enfranchised and

entirely free from parental control. ... The Huguenots were

again debarred from holding public offices, though a few, such

as Marshal Turenne and Admiral Duquesne, who were Protestants,

broke through this barrier by the splendor of their services

to the state. In some provinces, the exclusion was so severe

that a profession of the Roman Catholic faith was required

from simple artisans. ...

{1234}

Colbert, while, he lived, endeavored to restrain the King, and

to abate these intolerable persecutions. ... He took the

opportunity of cautioning the King lest the measures he was

enforcing might tend, if carried out, to the impoverishment of

France and the aggrandizement of her rivals. ... But all

Colbert's expostulations were in vain; the Jesuits were

stronger than he was, and the King was in their hands;

besides, Colbert's power was on the decline. ... In 1666 the

queen-mother died, leaving to her son, as her last bequest,

that he should suppress and exterminate heresy within his

dominions. ... The Bishop of Meaux exhorted him to press on in

the path his sainted mother had pointed out to him. ... The

Huguenots had already taken alarm at the renewal of the

persecution, and such of them as could readily dispose of

their property and goods were beginning to leave the kingdom

in considerable numbers for the purpose of establishing

themselves in foreign countries. To prevent this, the King

issued an edict forbidding French subjects from proceeding

abroad without express permission, under penalty of

confiscation of their goods and property. This was followed by

a succession of severe measures for the conversion or

extirpation of such of the Protestants--in numbers about a

million and a half--as had not by this time contrived to make

their escape from the kingdom. The kidnapping of Protestant

children was actively set on foot by the agents of the Roman

Catholic priests, and their parents were subjected to heavy

penalties if they ventured to complain. Orders were issued to

pull down the Protestant places of worship, and as many as

eighty were shortly destroyed in one diocese. ... Protestants

were forbidden to print books without the authority of

magistrates of the Romish communion. Protestant teachers were

interdicted from teaching children any thing more than

reading, writing, and arithmetic. ... Protestants were only

allowed to bury their dead at daybreak or at nightfall. They

were prohibited from singing psalms on land or on water, in

workshops or in dwellings. If a priestly procession passed one

of their churches while the psalms were being sung, they must

stop instantly on pain of the fine or imprisonment of the

officiating minister. In short, from the pettiest annoyance to

the most exasperating cruelty, nothing was wanting on the part

of the 'Most Christian King' and his abettors."

S. Smiles,

The Huguenots,

chapter 7.

ALSO IN:

A. Maury,

Memoirs of a Huguenot Family (Fontaine),

chapters 4-7.

W. S. Browning,

History of the Huguenots,

chapters 59-60.

FRANCE: A. D. 1661-1683.

The administration of Colbert.

His economic system and its results.

"With Colbert the spirit of the great Cardinal came back to

power. Born at Reims on the 29th of August, 1619, Colbert was

educated by the Jesuits, and at the early age of nineteen

entered the War Office, in which department Le Tellier, a

connection of his family by marriage, filled the post of

Under-Secretary of State. From the first Colbert distinguished

himself by his abnormal powers of work, by his extraordinary

zeal in the public service, and by an equal devotion to his

own interests. His Jesuit training showed fruit in his

dealings with all those who, like Le Tellier or Mazarin, could

be of use to him on his road to power, whilst the old

tradition of his Scotch blood is favoured by a certain

'dourness' of character which rendered him in general

difficult of access. His marvellous strength of brain,

seconded by rare powers of endurance, enabled him to work

habitually fourteen hours a day to enter into every detail of

every branch of the administration, whilst at the same time he

never lost sight of that noble project of universal reform

which he had conceived, and which embraced both Church and

State. ... Qualified in every way for the work of

administration, absolutely indifferent to popularity, Colbert

seemed destined by nature to lead the final charge against the

surviving forces of the feudal system. After the troubles of

the Fronde had died away and the death of Mazarin had left

Louis XIV. a king in deed as well as in name, these forces of

the past were personified by Fouquet, and the duel between

Fouquet and Colbert was the dramatic close of a struggle

predestined to end in the complete triumph of absolutism. The

magnificent and brilliant Fouquet, who for years past had

taken advantage of his position as 'Surintendant des Finances'

to lavish the resources of the State on his private pleasures,

was plainly marked out as the object of Colbert's hostility.

... On the losing side were ranged all the spendthrift princes

and facile beauties of the Court, all the greedy recipients of

Fouquet's ostentatious bounties. He had reckoned that the

greatest names in France would be compromised by his fall, and

that by their danger his own safety was assured. He had

reckoned without Colbert; he had reckoned without that power

which had been steadily growing throughout all vicissitudes of

fate during the last two generations, and which was now

centred in the King. No stranger turn of fortune can be

pictured than that which, on the threshold of the modern era,

linked the nobles of France in their last struggle for

independence with the fortunes of a rapacious and fraudulent

financier, nor can anything be more suggestive of the

character of the coming epoch than the sight of this last

battle fought, not in the field of arms, but before a court of

law. To Colbert, the fall of Fouquet was but the necessary

preliminary to that reform of every branch of the

administration which had been ripening in his mind ever since

he had entered the public service. To bring the financial

situation into order, it was necessary first to call Fouquet

to account. ... The fall of the chief offender, Fouquet,

having been brought about, it was easy to force all those who

had been guilty of similar malversations on a minor scale to

run the gauntlet of the High Commission. Restitution and

confiscation became the order of the day, and when the Chamber

of Justice was finally dissolved in 1669, far beyond any

advantage which might be reckoned to the Treasury from these

sources was the gain to the nation in the general sense of

security and confidence. It was felt that the days of

wholesale dishonesty and embezzlement were at an end. ...

Colbert went forward from this moment without hesitation,

devoting his whole energies to the gigantic task of re-shaping

the whole internal economy of France. ... Backed by despotic

power, his achievements in these directions have to an

incredible extent determined the destinies of modern industry,

and have given origin to the whole system of modern

administration, not only in France, but throughout Europe.

{1235}

In the teeth of a lavish expenditure which he was utterly

unable to check, once and again did Colbert succeed in

establishing a financial equilibrium when the fortunes of

France seemed desperate. ... He aimed ... at the fostering of

home production by an elaborate system of protection, whilst

at the same time the markets of other countries were to be

forced open and flooded with French goods. Any attempt on the

part of a weaker power to imitate his own policy, such for

instance as that made in the papal states by Alexander VII.

and Clement IX., was instantly repressed with a high hand. ...

His leading idea was to lower all export dues on national

produce and manufactures, and, whilst diminishing import

duties on such raw materials as were required for French

manufactures, to raise them until they became prohibitive on

all foreign goods.

See TARIFF LEGISLATION: A. D. 1664-1667 (FRANCE).

The success of the tariff of 1664 misled Colbert. That tariff

was a splendidly statesmanlike attempt to put an end to the

conflict and confusion of the duties, dues, and customs then

existing in the different provinces and ports of France, and

it was in effect a tariff calculated for purely fiscal

purposes. Far other were the considerations embodied in the

tariff of 1667, which led to the Dutch and English wars, and

which, having been enacted in the supposed interests of home

industry, eventually stimulated production in other countries.

... If, however, the industrial policy of Colbert cannot be

said to have realised his expectations, since it neither

brought about a great increase in the number of home

manufactures nor succeeded in securing a larger share of

foreign trade, there is not a doubt that, in spite even of the

disastrous wars which it provoked, it powerfully contributed,

on the whole, to place France in the front rank as a

commercial nation. ... The pitiless and despotic Louvois, who

had succeeded his father, Colbert's old patron Le Tellier, as

Secretary of State for War, played on the imperious vanity of

King Louis, and engaged him in wars big and little, which in

most cases wanted even the shade of a pretext. ... All the

zeal of the great Minister's strict economy could only stay

for a while the sure approach of national distress. ... When

Colbert died, on 6th September, 1683, the misery of France,

exhausted by oppressive taxation, and depopulated by armies

kept constantly on foot, cried out against the Minister who,

rather than fall from power, had lent himself to measures

which he heartily condemned. For the moment men forgot how

numerous were the benefits which he had conferred ... and

remembered only the harshness with which he had dealt justice

and stinted mercy. Yet order reigned where, before his advent,

all had been corruption and confusion; the navy of France had

been created, her colonies fostered, her forests saved from

destruction; justice and the authority of the law had been

carried into the darkest corners of the land; religious

toleration, socially if not politically, had been advocated;

whilst the encroachments of the Church had been more or less

steadfastly opposed. To the material prosperity of the

nation--even after we have made all possible deductions for

the evils arising from an exaggerated system of protection--an

immense and enduring impulse had been given; and although it

is true that, with the death of Colbert, many parts of his

splendid scheme fell to the ground, yet it must be confessed

that the spirit in which it was originated and improved still

animates France."

Lady Dilke,

France under Colbert

(Fortnightly Rev., February, 1886).

ALSO IN:

H. Martin,

History of France: Age of Louis XIV.,

volume 1, chapters 1-7.

See, also, TAILLE AND GABELLE.

FRANCE: A. D. 1662.

The purchase of Dunkirk from Charles II.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1662.

FRANCE: A. D. 1663-1674.

New France made a Royal Province.

The French West India Company.

See CANADA: A. D. 1663-1674.

FRANCE: A. D. 1664.

Aid given to Austria against the Turks.

The victory of St. Gothard.

See HUNGARY: A. D. 1660-1664.

FRANCE: A. D. 1664-1666.

War with the piratical Barbary States.

The Jijeli expedition.

Treaties with Tunis and Algiers.

See BARBARY STATES: A. D. 1664-1684.

FRANCE: A. D. 1664-1690.

The building of Versailles.

See VERSAILLES.

FRANCE: A. D. 1665.

The Great Days of Auvergne.

"We must read the curious account of the Great Days of

Auvergne, written by Fléchier in his youth, if we would form

an idea of the barbarism in which certain provinces of France

were still plunged, in the midst of the brilliant civilization

of the 17th century, and would know how a large number of

those seigniors, who showed themselves so gallant and tender

in the boudoirs of Paris, lived on their estates, in the midst

of their subjects: we might imagine ourselves in the midst of

feudalism. A moment bewildered by the hammer of the great

demolisher [Richelieu], which had battered down so many

Chateaux, the mountain squires of Auvergne, Limousin, Marche

and Forez had resumed their habits under the feeble government

of Mazarin. Protected by their remoteness from Paris and the

parliament, and by the nature of the country they inhabited,

they intimidated or gained over the subaltern judges, and

committed with impunity every species of violence and

exaction. A single feature will enable us to comprehend the

state of these provinces. There were still, in the remoter

parts of Auvergne, seigniors who claimed to use the wedding

right (droit de jambage), or, at the least, to sell exemption

from this right at a high price to bridegrooms. Serfhood of

the glebe still existed in some districts. August 31, 1665, a

royal declaration, for which ample and noble reasons were

given, ordered the holding of a jurisdiction or court

'commonly called the Great Days,' in the city of Clermont, for

Auvergne, Bourbonnais, Nivernais, Forez, Beaujolais, Lyonnais,

Combrailles, Marche, and Berry. A president of parliament, a

master of requests, sixteen councillors, an attorney-general,

and a deputy procurator-general, were designated to hold these

extraordinary assizes. Their powers were almost absolute. They

were to judge without appeal all civil and criminal cases, to

punish the 'abuses and delinquencies of officers of the said

districts,' to reform bad usages, as well in the style of

procedure as in the preparation and expedition of trials, and

to try all criminal cases first. It was enjoined on bailiffs,

seneschals, their lieutenants and all other judges, to give

constant information of all kinds of crimes, in order to

prepare matter for the Great Days. A second declaration

ordered that a posse should be put into the houses of the

contumacious, that the chateaux where the least resistance was

made to the law should be razed; and forbade, under penalty of

death, the contumacious to be received or assisted.

{1236}

The publication of the royal edicts, and the prompt arrival of

Messieurs of the Great Days at Clermont, produced an

extraordinary commotion in all those regions. The people

welcomed the Parisian magistrates as liberators, and a

remarkable monument of their joy has been preserved, the

popular song or Christmas hymn of the Great Days. Terror, on

the contrary, hovered over the châteaux; a multitude of

noblemen left the province, and France, or concealed

themselves in the mountains; others endeavored to conciliate

their peasants. ... The Great Days at least did with vigor

what it was their mission to do: neither dignities, nor

titles, nor high connections preserved the guilty. ... The

Court of Great Days was not content with punishing evil; it

undertook to prevent its return by wise regulations: first,

against the abuses of seigniorial courts; second, against the

vexations of seigniors on account of feudal service due them;

third, concerning the mode and abbreviation of trials; and

lastly, concerning the reformation of the clergy, who had no

less need of being reformed than the nobility. The Great Days

were brought to a close after three months of assizes (end of

October, 1665--end of January, 1666), and their recollection

was consecrated by a medal."

H. Martin,

History of France: The Age of Louis XIV:,

volume 1, chapter 2.

FRANCE: A. D.1665-1670.

The East India Company.

See INDIA: A. D. 1665-1743.

FRANCE: A. D. 1666.

Alliance with Holland against England.

See NETHERLANDS (HOLLAND): A. D. 1665-1666.

FRANCE: A. D. 1667.

The War of the Queen's Rights.

Conquests in the Spanish Netherlands.

See NETHERLANDS (SPANISH PROVINCES): A. D. 1667.

FRANCE: A. D. 1668.

The king's conquests in Flanders checked by the Triple

Alliance.

See NETHERLANDS (HOLLAND): A. D. 1668.

FRANCE: A. D. 1670.

The secret treaty of Dover.

The buying of the English king.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1668-1670.

FRANCE: A. D. 1672-1678.

War with Holland and the Austro-Spanish Coalition.

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1672-1714;

and NETHERLANDS (HOLLAND): A. D. 1672-1674,

and 1674-1678.

FRANCE: A. D. 1673-1682.

Discovery and exploration of the Mississippi

by Marquette and La Salle.

Possession taken of Louisiana.

See CANADA: A. D. 1634-1673, and 1669-1687.

FRANCE: A. D. 1678-1679.

The Peace of Nimeguen.

See NIMEGUEN. PEACE OF.

FRANCE: A. D. 1679-1681.

Complete absorption of Les Trois-Evêchés and Alsace.

Assumption of entire sovereignty by Louis XIV.

Encroachments of the Chambers of Reannexation.

The seizure of Strasburg.

"The Lorraine Trois-Evêchés, recovered by France from the Holy

Roman Empire, had remained in an equivocal position, as to

public law, during nearly a century, between their old and new

ties: the treaty of Westphalia had cut the knot by the formal

renunciation of the Empire to all rights over these countries;

difficulties nevertheless still subsisted relative to the

fiefs and the pendencies of Trois-Evêchés possessed by members

of the Empire. Alsace, in its turn, from the treaty of

Westphalia to the peace of Nimeguen, had offered analogous and

still greater difficulties, this province of Teutonic tongue

not having accepted the annexation to France as easily as the

Walloon province of Trois-Evêchés, and the treaty of

Westphalia presenting two contradictory clauses, one of which

ceded to France all the rights of the Emperor and the Empire,

and the other of which reserved the 'immediateness' of the

lords and the ten cities of the prefecture of Alsace towards

the Empire. ...

See GERMANY: A. D. 1648.

At last, on the complaints carried to the Germanic Diet by the

ten Alsacian cities, joined by the German feudatories of

Trois-Evêchés, Louis, who was then very conciliatory towards

the Diet, consented to take for arbiters the King of Sweden

and some princes and towns of Germany (1665). The arbitration

was protracted for more than six years. In the beginning of

1672, the arbiters rendered an ambiguous decision which

decided nothing and satisfied no one. War with Holland broke

out meanwhile and changed all the relations of France with

Germany. ... Louis XIV. disarmed or took military occupation

of the ten cities and silenced all opposition. ... In the

conferences of Nimeguen, the representatives of the Emperor

and the Empire endeavored to return to the 'immediateness,'

but the King would not listen to a renewal of the arbitration,

and declared all debate superfluous. 'Not only,' said the

French plenipotentiaries, 'ought the King to exercise, as in

fact he does exercise, sovereign domain over the ten cities,

but he might also extend it over Strasburg, for the treaty of

Münster furnishes to this city no special title guaranteeing

its independence better than that of the other cities.' It was

the first time that Louis had disclosed this bold claim,

resting on an inaccurate assertion. The Imperialists,

terrified, yielded as regarded the ten cities, and Alsace was

not called in question in the treaty of Nimeguen. Only the

Imperialists protested, by a separate act, against the

conclusions which might be drawn from this omission. The ten

cities submitted and took to the King an oath of fidelity,

without reservation towards the Empire; their submission was

celebrated by a medal bearing the device: 'Alsatia in

provinciam reducta' (1680). The treaty of Nimeguen was

followed by divers measures destined to win the Alsacian

population. ... This wise policy bore its fruits, and Alsace,

tranquillized, gave no more cause of anxiety to the French

government. France was thenceforth complete mistress of the

possessions which had been ceded to her by the Empire; this

was only the first part of the work; the point in question now

was, to complete these possessions by joining to them their

natural appendages which the Empire had not alienated. The

boundaries of Lower Alsace and the Messin district were ill

defined, encroached upon, entangled, on the Rhine, on the

Sarre, and in the Vosges, by the fiefs of a host of petty

princes and German nobles. This could not be called a

frontier. Besides, in the very heart of Alsace, the great city

of Strasburg preserved its independence towards France and its

connection with the Empire. A pacific method was invented to

proceed to aggrandizements which it would seem could only be

demanded by arms; a pacific method, provided that France could

count on the weakness and irresolution of her neighbors; this

was to investigate and revendicate everything which, by any

title and at any epoch whatsoever, had been dependent on

Alsace and Trois-Evêchés.

{1237}

We may comprehend whither this would lead, thanks to the

complications of the feudal epoch; and it was not even

designed to stop at the feudal system, but to go back to the

times of the Frankish kings! Chambers of 'reannexation' were

therefore instituted, in 1679, in the Parliament of Metz, and

in the sovereign council of Alsace, with a mission which their

title sufficiently indicated. ... Among the nobles summoned,

figured the Elector of Treves, for Oberstein, Falkenburg,

etc.; the Landgrave of Hesse, for divers fiefs; the Elector

Palatine, for Seltz and the canton situated between the Lauter

and the Keich (Hogenbach, Germersheim, etc.); another prince

palatine for the county of Veldentz: the Bishop of Speyer, for

a part of his bishopric; the city of Strasburg, for the

domains which it possessed beyond the Rhine (Wasselonne and

Marlenheim); lastly, the King of Sweden, for the duchy of

Deux-Ponts or Zweibrücken, a territory of considerable extent

and of irregular form, which intersected the cis-Rhenish

Palatinate. ... By divers decrees rendered in March, August,

and October, 1680, the sovereign council of Alsace adjudged to

the King the sovereignty of all the Alsacian seigniories. The

nobles and inhabitants were summoned to swear fidelity to the

King, and the nobles were required to recognize the sovereign

council as judge in last resort. The chamber of Metz acted on

a still larger scale than the chamber of Breisach. April 12,

1680, it united to Trois-Evêchés more than 80 fiefs, the

Lorraine marquisate of Pont-à-Mousson, the principality of

Salm, the counties of Saarbourg and Veldentz, the seigniories

of Sarrebourg, Bitche, Homburg, etc. The foundation of the new

town of Sarre-Louis and the fortification of Bitche

consolidated this new frontier; and not only was the course of

the Sarre secured to France, but France, crossing the Sarre,

encroached deeply on the Palatinate and the Electorate of

Treves, posted herself on the Nahe and the Blies, and threw,

as an advance-guard, on a peninsula of the Moselle, the

fortress of Mont-Royal, half-way from Treves to Coblentz, on

the territories of the county of Veldentz. The parliament of

Franche-Comté, newly French as it was, zealously followed the

example of the two neighboring courts. There was also a

frontier to round towards the Jura. ... The Duke of Würtemberg

was required to swear allegiance to the King for his county of

Montbéliard. ... The acquisitions made were trifling compared

with those which remained to be made. He [Louis XIV.] was not

sure of the Rhine, not sure of Alsace, so long as he had not

Strasburg, the great city always ready to throw upon the

French bank of the river the armies of the Empire. France had

long aimed at this conquest. As soon as she possessed Metz she

had dreamed of Strasburg. ... Though the King and Louvois had

prevented Créqui from besieging the place during the war, it

was because they counted on surprising it after peace. This

great enterprise was most ably manœuvred." The members of the

regency of the city were gained over, one by one. "The

Imperial troops had evacuated the city pursuant to the treaty

of Nimeguen; the magistrates dismissed 1,200 Swiss which the

city had in its pay; then, on the threatening demands of the

French, they demolished anew Fort Kehl, which they had rebuilt

since its destruction by Créqui. When the fruit seemed ripe,

Louis stretched out his hand to gather it. In the latter part

of September, 1681, the garrisons of Lorraine, Franche-Comté,

and Alsace put themselves in motion. ... The 28th, 35,000 men

were found assembled before the city; Baron de Montclar, who

commanded this army, informed the magistrates that 'the

sovereign chamber of Breisach having adjudged to the king the

sovereignty of all Alsace, of which Strasburg was a member,

his Majesty desired that they should recognize him as their

sovereign lord, and receive a garrison." On the 30th the

capitulation of the city was signed; on the 23d of October the

King entered Strasburg in person and was received as its

sovereign.

H. Martin,

History of France: Age of Louis XIV.,

volume 1, chapter 7.

FRANCE: A. D. 1680.

Imprisonment of the "Man in the Iron Mask."

See IRON MASK.

FRANCE: A. D. 1681-1684.

Threatening relations with the Turks.

War with the Barbary States.

Destructive bombardment of Algiers.

See BARBARY STATES: A. D. 1664-1684.

FRANCE: A. D. 1681-1698.

Climax of the persecution of the Huguenots.

The Dragonnades.

The revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

The great exodus of French Protestants and the consequent

national loss.

"Love and war suspended for a considerable time" the ambition

of the king to extinguish heresy in his dominions and

establish uniformity of religious worship; "but when Louis

became satiated at once with glory and pleasure, and when

Madame de Maintenon, the Duke de Beauvilliers, the Duke de

Montausier, Bossuet, the Archbishop of Rheims, the Chancellor

Letellier, and all the religious portion of the court, began

to direct his now unoccupied and scrupulous mind to the

interests of religion, Louis XIV. returned to his plans with

renewed ardor. From bribery they proceeded to compulsion.

Missionaries, escorted by dragoons, spread themselves at the

instigation of Bossuet, and even of Fénelon, over the western,

southern and eastern provinces, and particularly in those

districts throughout which Protestantism, more firmly rooted

among a more tenacious people, had as yet resisted all

attempts at conversion by preaching. ... Children from above

seven years of age were authorized to abjure legally the

religion of their fathers. The houses of those parents who

refused to deliver up their sons and daughters were invaded

and laid under contributions by the royal troops. The

expropriation of their homes, and the tearing asunder of

families, compelled the people to fly from persecution. The

king, uneasy at this growing depopulation, pronounced the

punishment of the galleys against those who sought liberty in

flight; he also ordered the confiscation of all the lands and

houses which were sold by those proprietors who were preparing

to quit the kingdom. ... Very soon the proscription was

organized en masse: all the cavalry in the kingdom, who, on

account of the peace, were unemployed, were placed at the

disposal of the preachers and bishops, to uphold their

missions [known as the dragonnades] with the sabre. ...

Bossuet approved of these persecutions. Religious and

political faith, in his eyes, justified their necessity. His

correspondence is full of evidence, while his actions prove

that he was an accomplice: even his eloquence ... overflowed

with approbation of, and enthusiasm for, these oppressions of

the soul and terrors of heresy."

A. de Lamartine,

Memoirs of Celebrated Characters,

volume 3: Bossuet.

{1238}

"The heroism of conviction, it has been truly said, was now

displayed, not in resistance, but, if the paradox may be

admitted, in flight. The outflow was for the moment arrested

at the remonstrance of Colbert, now for the last time listened

to in the royal councils, and by reason of the sympathy

aroused by the fugitives in England: but not before 3,000

families had left the country. The retirement and death of the

great minister were the signal for revived action, wherever an

assembly of Huguenots larger than usual might warrant or

colour a suspicion of rebellion. In such excuses, not as yet

an avowed crusade, the troopers of the duke de Noailles were

called in at Grenoble, Bourdeaux, and Nimes. Full forty

churches were demolished in 1683, more than a hundred in 1684.

But the system of military missions was not organized until in

1685 the defence of the Spanish frontier offered the

opportunity for a final subjugation of the Huguenots of Bearn.

The dragonnade passed through the land like a pestilence. From

Guienne to Dauphine, from Poitou to Upper Languedoc, no place

was spared. Then it pervaded the southeast country, about the

Cevennes and Provence, and ravaged Lyons and the Pays de Gex.

In the end, the whole of the north was assailed, and the

failing edict of Nantes was annulled on the 1st of October.

The sombre mind of Madame de Maintenon had postulated the

Recall as a preliminary to the marriage which the king had

already conceded. On the 21st of the month the great church at

Charenton was doomed; and on the 22nd the 'unadvised and

precipitate' Edict of Revocation was registered in the Chambre

des Vacations. ... The year 1685 is fitly identified with the

depopulation of France. And yet, with a blindness that appears

to us incredible, the government refused to believe in the

desire or the possibility of escape. The penalties attached to

capture on the road,--the galleys or the nunnery,--the

vigilant watch at the frontier, the frigates cruising by every

coast, all these difficulties seem to have persuaded Louvois

that few would persist in risking flight. What these measures

actually effected was doubtless to diminish the exodus, but in

no marked degree. At length, it came to be thought that the

emigration was due to its prohibition, as though the Huguenots

must do a thing from mere perverseness. The watch was relaxed,

and a result unlooked for issued. It was the signal of the

greatest of the emigrations, that of 1688. ... In the

statistical question [as to the total number of the Huguenot

exiles from France after the revocation of the edict of

Nantes] it is impossible to arrive at a certain result; and

the range which calculation or conjecture has allowed to

successive historians may make one pause before attempting a

dogmatic solution. Basnage, a year after the Recall, reckoned

the emigrants above 150,000: next year Jurieu raised the total

above 200,000. Writing later Basnage found between 300,000 and

400,000; and the estimate has been accepted by Sismondi.

Lastly Voltaire, followed in our own day by Hase, counted

500,000. These are a few of the sober calculations, and their

mean will perhaps supply the ultimate figure. I need only

mention, among impossible guesses, that of Limiers, which

raises the account to 800,000, because it has been taken up by

the Prussian statesman Von Dohm. ... The only historian who

professes to have pursued the enquiry in exact detail is

Capefigue; and from his minute scrutiny of the cartons des

généralités, as prepared in the closing years of the 17th

century, he obtains a computation of 225,000 or 230,000. Such

a result must be accepted as the absolute minimum; for it was

the plain interest of the intendants who drew up the returns,

to put all the facts which revealed the folly of the king's

action at the lowest cipher. And allowing the accuracy of

Capefigue's work, there are other reasons for increasing his

total. ... We cannot set the emigration at a lower fraction

than one-fifth of the total Huguenot society. If the body

numbered two millions, the outflow will be 400,000. If this

appear an extreme estimate, it must be remembered that

one-fifth is also extreme on the other side. Reducing the

former aggregate to 1,500,000, it will be clearly within the

bounds of moderation to leave the total exodus a range between

300,000 and 350,000. How are we to distribute this immense

aggregation? Holland certainly claims near 100,000; England,

with Ireland and America, probably 80,000. Switzerland must

have received 25,000; and Germany, including Brandenburg,

thrice that number. The remainder will be made up from the

north of Europe, and from the exiles whom commerce or other

causes carried in isolated households elsewhere, and of whom

no record is preserved to us. ... The tale then of the

emigrants was above 300,000. It follows to ask what was the

material loss involved in their exodus. Caveirac is again the

lowest in his estimate: he will not grant the export of more

than 250,000 livres. He might have learnt from Count d'Avaux

himself, that those least likely to magnify the sum confessed

that by the very year of the Recall twenty million livres had

gone out of the country; and it is certain that the wealthier

merchants deferred their departure in order to carry as much

as they could with them. Two hundred and fifty traders are

said to have quitted Rouen in 1687 and 1688. Probably the

actual amount was very far in excess of these twenty millions:

and a calculation is cited by Macpherson which even affirms

that every individual refugee in England brought with him on

an average money or effects to the value of £60. ... It will

be needless to add many statistics of the injury caused by

their withdrawal from France. Two great instances are typical

of the rest. Lyons which had employed 18,000 silk-looms had

but 4,000 remaining by the end of the century. Tours with the

same interest had had 800 mills, 80,000 looms, and perhaps

4,000 work-people. Of its 3,000 ribbon-factories only sixty

remained: Equally significant was the ruin of the woollen

trade of Poitou. Little was left of the drugget-manufacture of

Coulonges and Châtaigneraie, or of the industry in serges and

bombazines at Thouars; and the export traffic between

Châtaigneraie and Canada, by way of La Rochelle, was in the

last year of the century absolutely extinct."

R. L. Poole,

History of the Huguenots of the Dispersion,

chapters 3 and 15.

ALSO IN:

C. Weiss,

History of the French Protestant Refugees.

N. Peyrat,

The Pastors in the Wilderness,

volume 1, chapters 5-7.

A. Maury,

Memoirs of a Huguenot Family

(Fontaine), chapters 4-9.

J. I. von Döllinger,

Studies in European History,

chapters 11-12.

C. W. Baird,

History of the Huguenot Emigration to America,

chapters 4-8 (volumes 1-2).

FRANCE: A. D. 1686.

Claims upon the Palatinate.

Formation of the League of Augsburg.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1686.

{1239}

FRANCE: A. D. 1689-1690.

War of the League of Augsburg.

The second devastation of the Palatinate.

"The interference of Lewis in Ireland on behalf of James [the

Second, the dethroned Stuart king] caused William [prince of

Orange, now King of England] to mature his plans for a great

Continental confederacy against France. On May 12, 1689,

William, as Stadtholder of the United Provinces, had entered

into an offensive and defensive alliance with the Emperor

against Lewis. On May 17, as King of England, he declared war

against France; and on December 30 joined the alliance between

the Emperor and the Dutch. His example was followed on June 6,

1690, by the King of Spain, and on October 20 of the same year

by Victor Amadeus, Duke of Savoy. This confederation was

called the 'Grand Alliance.' Its main object was declared to

be to curb the power and ambition of Lewis XIV.; to force him

to surrender his conquests, and to confine his territories to

the limits agreed upon between him and the Emperor at the

treaty of Westphalia (1648), and between France and Spain at

the treaty of the Pyrenees (1659). The League of Augsburg,

which William had with so much trouble brought about, had now

successfully developed into the Grand Alliance."

E. Hale,

The Fall of the Stuarts and Western Europe,

chapter 14, section 5.

"The work at which William had toiled indefatigably during

many gloomy and anxious years was at length accomplished. The

great coalition was formed. It was plain that a desperate

conflict was at hand. The oppressor of Europe would have to

defend himself against England allied with Charles the Second

King of Spain, with the Emperor Leopold, and with the Germanic

and Batavian federations, and was likely to have no ally

except the Sultan, who was waging war against the House of

Austria on the Danube. Lewis had, towards the close of the

preceding year, taken his enemies at a disadvantage, and had

struck the first blow before they were prepared to parry it.

But that blow, though heavy, was not aimed at the part where

it might have been mortal. Had hostilities been commenced on

the Batavian frontier, William and his army would probably

have been detained on the continent, and James might have

continued to govern England. Happily, Lewis, under an

infatuation which many pious Protestants confidently ascribed

to the righteous judgment of God, had neglected the point on

which the fate of the whole civilised world depended, and had

made a great display of power, promptitude, and energy, in a

quarter where the most splendid achievements could produce

nothing more than an illumination and a Te Deum. A French army

under the command of Marshal Duras had invaded the Palatinate

and some of the neighbouring principalities. But this

expedition, though it had been completely successful, and

though the skill and vigour with which it had been conducted

had excited general admiration, could not perceptibly affect

the event of the tremendous struggle which was approaching.

France would soon be attacked on every side. It would be

impossible for Duras long to retain possession of the

provinces which he had surprised and overrun. An atrocious

thought rose in the mind of Louvois, who, in military affairs,

had the chief sway at Versailles. ... The ironhearted

statesman submitted his plan, probably with much management

and with some disguise, to Lewis; and Lewis, in an evil hour

for his fame, assented. Duras received orders to turn one of

the fairest regions of Europe into a wilderness. Fifteen years

had elapsed since Turenne had ravaged part of that fine

country. But the ravages committed by Turenne, though they

have left a deep stain on his glory, were mere sport in

comparison with the horrors of this second devastation. The

French commander announced to near half a million of human

beings that he granted them three days of grace, and that,

within that time, they must shift for themselves. Soon the

roads and fields, which then lay deep in snow, were blackened

by innumerable multitudes of men, women, and children flying

from their homes. Many died of cold and hunger: but enough

survived to fill the streets of all the cities of Europe with

lean and squalid beggars, who had once been thriving farmers

and shopkeepers. Meanwhile the work of destruction began. The

flames went up from every marketplace, every hamlet, every

parish church, every country seat, within the devoted

provinces. The fields where the corn had been sown were

ploughed up. The orchards were hewn down. No promise of a

harvest was left on the fertile plains near what had once been

Frankenthal. Not a vine, not an almond tree, was to be seen on

the slopes of the sunny hills round what had once been

Heidelberg. No respect was shown to palaces, to temples, to

monasteries, to infirmaries, to beautiful works of art, to

monuments of the illustrious dead. The far-famed castle of the

Elector Palatine was turned into a heap of ruins. The

adjoining hospital was sacked. The provisions, the medicines,

the pallets on which the sick lay, were destroyed. The very

stones on which Manheim had been built were flung into the

Rhine. The magnificent Cathedral of Spires perished, and with

it the marble sepulchres of eight Cæsars. The coffins were

broken open. The ashes were scattered to the winds. Treves,

with its fair bridge, its Roman baths and amphitheatre, its

venerable churches, convents, and colleges, was doomed to the

same fate. But, before this last crime had been perpetrated,

Lewis was recalled to a better mind by the execrations of all

the neighbouring nations, by the silence and confusion of his

flatterers, and by the expostulations of his wife. ... He

relented; and Treves was spared. In truth he could hardly fail

to perceive that he had committed a great error. The

devastation of the Palatinate, while it had not in any

sensible degree lessened the power of his enemies, had

inflamed their animosity, and had furnished them with

inexhaustible matter for invective. The cry of vengeance rose

on every side. Whatever scruple either branch of the House of

Austria might have felt about coalescing with Protestants was

completely removed."

Lord Macaulay,

History of England,

chapter 11.

ALSO IN:

H. Martin,

History of France: Age of Louis XIV.

(translated by M. L. Booth), volume 2, chapter 2.

S. A. Dunham,

History of the German Empire,

book 3, chapter 3 (volume. 3).

See, also, CANADA: A. D. 1689-1690.

FRANCE: A. D. 1689-1691.

Aid to James II. in Ireland.

See IRELAND: A. D. 1689-1691.

{1240}

FRANCE: A. D. 1689-1691.

Campaigns in the Netherlands and in Savoy.

"Our limits will not permit us to describe at any length the

war between Louis XIV. and the Grand Alliance, which lasted

till the Peace of Ryswick, in 1697, but only to note some of

the chief incidents of the different campaigns. The

Imperialists had, in 1689, notwithstanding the efforts it was

still necessary to make against the Turks, brought an army of

80,000 men into the field, which was divided into three bodies

under the command of the Duke of Lorraine, the Elector of

Bavaria, and the Elector of Brandenburg; while the Prince of

Waldeck, in the Netherlands, was at the head of a large Dutch

and Spanish force, composed, however, in great part of German

mercenaries. In this quarter, Marshal d'Humières was opposed

to Waldeck, while Duras commanded the French army on the

Rhine. In the south, the Duke of Noailles maintained a French

force in Catalonia. Nothing of much importance was done this

year; but on the whole the war went in favour of the

imperialists, who succeeded in recovering Mentz and Bonn.

1690: This year, Marshal d'Humières was superseded by the Duke

of Luxembourg, who infused more vigour into the French

operations. ... Catinat was sent this year into Dauphiné to

watch the movements of the Duke of Savoy, who was suspected by

the French Court, and not without reason, of favouring the

Grand Alliance. The extravagant demands of Louis, who required

Victor Amadeus to unite his troops with the army of Catinat,

and to admit a French garrison into Vercelli, Verrua, and even

the citadel of Turin itself, till a general peace should be

effected, caused the Duke to enter into treaties with Spain

and the Emperor, June 3d and 4th; and on October 20th, he

joined the Grand Alliance by a treaty concluded at the Hague

with England and the States-General. This last step was taken

by Victor Amadeus in consequence of his reverses. He had

sustained from Catinat in the battle of Staffarda (August

17th) a defeat which only the skill of a youthful general, his

cousin the Prince Eugene, had saved from becoming a total

rout. As the fruits of this victory, Catinat occupied Saluzzo,

Susa, and all the country from the Alps to the Tanaro. During

these operations another French division had reduced, without

much resistance, the whole of Savoy, except the fortress of

Montmélian. The only other event of importance during this

campaign was the decisive victory gained by Luxembourg over

Prince Waldeck at Fleurus, July 1st. The captured standards,

more than a hundred in number, which Luxembourg sent to Paris

on this occasion, obtained for him the name of the 'Tapassier

de Notre Dame.' Luxembourg was, however, prevented from

following up his victory by the orders of Louvois, who forbade

him to lay siege to Namur or Charleroi. Thus, in this

campaign, France maintained her preponderance on land as well

as at sea by the victory off Beachy Head. ...

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1690.

The Imperialists had this year lost one of their best leaders

by the death of the Duke of Lorraine (April). He was succeeded

as commander-in-chief by Maximilian Emanuel, Elector of

Bavaria; but nothing of importance took place upon the Rhine.

1691: The campaign of this year was singularly barren of

events, though both the French and English kings took a

personal part in it. In March, Louis and Luxembourg, laid

siege to Mons, the capital of Hainault, which surrendered in

less than three weeks. King William, who was in the

neighbourhood, could not muster sufficient troops to venture

on its relief. Nothing further of importance was done in this

quarter, and the campaign in Germany was equally a blank. On

the side of Piedmont, Catinat took Nice, but, being confronted

by superior numbers, was forced to evacuate Piedmont; though,

by way of compensation, he completed the conquest of Savoy by

the capture of Montmélian. Noailles gained some trifling

successes in Spain; and the celebrated French corsair, Jean

Bart, distinguished himself by his enterprises at sea. One of

the most remarkable events of the year was a domestic

occurrence, the death of Louvois."

T. H. Dyer,

History of Modern Europe,

book 5, chapter 5 (volume 3).

ALSO IN:

F. P. Guizot,

Popular History of France,

chapter 44 (volume 5).

FRANCE: A. D. 1692.

The taking of Namur and the victory of Steinkirk, or

Steenkerke.

Never perhaps in the whole course of his unresting life were

the energies of William [of Orange] more severely taxed, and

never did his great moral and intellectual qualities shine

forth with a brighter lustre, than in the years 1692-93.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1692.

The great victory of La Hogue and the destruction of the

flower of the French fleet did, it is true, relieve England of

any immediate dread either of insurrection or invasion, and so

far the prospect before him acquired a slight improvement

towards the summer of 1692. But this was the only gleam of

light in the horizon. ... The great coalition of Powers which

he had succeeded in forming to resist the ambition of Louis

was never nearer dissolution than in the spring of 1692. The

Scandinavian states, who had held aloof from it from the

first, were now rapidly changing the benevolence of their

neutrality into something not easily distinguishable from its

reverse. The new Pope Innocent XII. showed himself far less

amicably disposed towards William than his two predecessors.

The decrepitude of Spain and the arrogant self-will of Austria

were displaying themselves more conspicuously than ever. Savoy

was ruled by a duke who was more than half suspected of being

a traitor. ... William did succeed in saving the league from

dissolution, and in getting their armies once more into the

field. But not, unfortunately, to any purpose. The campaign of

the present year was destined to repeat the errors of the

last, and these errors were to be paid for at a heavier cost.

... The French king was bent upon the capture of the great

stronghold of Namur, and the enemy, as in the case of Mons,

were too slow in their movements and too ineffective in their

dispositions to prevent it. Marching to the assault of the

doomed city, with a magnificence of courtly pageantry which

had never before been witnessed in warfare, Louis sat down

before Namur, and in eight days its faint-hearted governor,

the nominee of the Spanish viceroy of the Netherlands,

surrendered at discretion. Having accomplished, or rather

having graciously condescended to witness the accomplishment

of this feat of arms, Louis returned to Versailles, leaving

his army under the command of Luxembourg. The fall of Namur

was a severe blow to the hopes of William, but yet worse

disasters were in store for him. He was now pitted against one

who enjoyed the reputation of the greatest general of the age,

and William, a fair but by no means brilliant strategist, was

unequal to the contest with his accomplished adversary.

{1241}

Luxembourg lay at Steinkirk, and William approaching him from

a place named Lambeque, opened his attack upon him by a

well-conceived surprise which promised at first to throw the

French army into complete disorder. Luxembourg's resource and

energy, however, were equal to the emergency. He rallied and

steadied his troops with astonishing speed, and the nature of

the ground preventing the allies from advancing as rapidly as

they had expected, they found the enemy in a posture to

receive them. The British forces were in the front, commanded

by Count Solmes, the division of Mackay, a name now honourable

for many generations in the annals of continental, no less

than of Scottish, warfare, leading the way. These heroes, for

so, though as yet untried soldiers, they approved themselves,

were to have been supported by Count Solmes with a strong body

of cavalry and infantry, but at the critical moment he failed

them miserably, and his failure decided the fortunes of the

day. ... The division was practically annihilated. Its five

regiments, 'Cutt's, Mackay's, Angus's, Graham's, and Leven's,

all,' as Corporal Trim relates pathetically, cut to pieces,

and so had the English Life-guards been too, had it not been

for some regiments on the right, who marched up boldly to

their relief, and, received the enemy's fire in their faces,

before anyone of their own platoons discharged a musket.'

Bitter was the resentment in the English army at the desertion

of these gallant troops by Count de Solmes, and William gave

vent to one of his rare outbursts of anger at the sight. We

have it indeed on the authority above quoted--unimpeachable as

first-hand tradition, for Sterne had heard the story of these

wars at the knees of an eye-witness of and actor in them--that

the King 'would not suffer the Count to come into his presence

for many months after.' The destruction of Mackay's division

had indeed decided the issue of the struggle. Luxembourg's

army was being rapidly strengthened by reinforcements from

that of Boufflers, and there was nothing for it but retreat.

The loss on both sides had been great, but the moral effect of

the victory was still greater. William's reputation for

generalship, perhaps unduly raised by his recent exploits in

Ireland, underwent a serious decline."

H. D. Traill,

William the Third,

chapter 10.

On the Rhine and on the Spanish frontier nothing of importance

occurred during 1692. The Duke of Savoy gained some advantages

on his side and invaded Dauphiny, without any material result.

The invasion called into action a young heroine, Mademoiselle

de La Tour-du-Pin, whose portrait has a place at Saint-Denis

by the side of that of Jeanne D'Arc.

H. Martin,

History of France: Age of Louis XIV.,

volume 2, chapter 2.

ALSO IN:

W. H. Torriano,

William the Third,

chapter 20.

FRANCE: A. D. 1693 (July).

The Battle of Neerwinden, or Landen.

"Lewis had determined not to make any advance towards a

reconciliation with the new government of England till the

whole strength of his realm had been put forth in one more

effort. A mighty effort in truth it was, but too exhausting to

be repeated. He made an immense display of force at once on

the Pyrenees and on the Alps, on the Rhine and on the Meuse,

in the Atlantic and in the Mediterranean. That nothing might

be wanting which could excite the martial ardour of a nation

eminently high-spirited, he instituted, a few days before he

left his palace for the camp, a new military order of

knighthood, and placed it under the protection of his own

sainted ancestor and patron. The cross of Saint Lewis shone on

the breasts of the gentlemen who had been conspicuous in the

trenches before Mons and Namur, and on the fields of Fleurus

and Steinkirk. ... On the 18th of May Lewis left Versailles.

Early in June he was under the walls of Namur. The Princesses,

who had accompanied him, held their court within the fortress. He

took under his immediate command the army of Boufflers, which

was encamped at Gembloux. Little more than a mile off lay the

army of Luxemburg. The force collected in that neighbourhood

under the French lilies did not amount to less than 120,000

men. Lewis had flattered himself that he should be able to

repeat in 1693 the stratagem by which Mons had been taken in

1691 and Namur in 1692; and he had determined that either

Liege or Brussels should be his prey. But William had this

year been able to assemble in good time a force, inferior

indeed to that which was opposed to him, but still formidable.

With this force he took his post near Louvain, on the road

between the two threatened cities, and watched every movement

of the enemy. ... Just at this conjuncture Lewis announced his

intention to return instantly to Versailles, and to send the

Dauphin and Boufflers, with part of the army which was

assembled near Namur, to join Marshal Lorges who commanded in

the Palatinate. Luxemburg was thunderstruck. He expostulated

boldly and earnestly. Never, he said, was such an opportunity

thrown away. ... The Marshal reasoned: he implored: he went on

his knees: but all was vain; and he quitted the royal presence

in the deepest dejection. Lewis left the camp a week after he

had joined it, and never afterwards made war in person. ...

Though the French army in the Netherlands had been weakened by

the departure of the forces commanded by the Dauphin and

Boufflers, and though the allied army was daily strengthened

by the arrival of fresh troops, Luxemburg still had a

superiority of force; and that superiority he increased by an

adroit stratagem." He succeeded by a feint in inducing William

to detach 20,000 men from his army and to send them to Liege.

He then moved suddenly upon the camp of the allies, with

80,000 men, and found but 50,000 to oppose him. "It was still

in the [English] King's power, by a hasty retreat, to put

between his army and the enemy the narrow, but deep, waters of

the Gette, which had lately been swollen by rains. But the

site which he occupied was strong; and it could easily be made

still stronger. He set all his troops to work. Ditches were

dug, mounds thrown up, palisades fixed in the earth. In a few

hours the ground wore a new aspect; and the King trusted that

he should be able to repel the attack even of a force greatly

outnumbering his own. ... On the left flank, the village of

Romsdorff rose close to the little stream of Landen, from

which the English have named the disastrous day. On the right

was the village of Neerwinden. Both villages were, after the

fashion of the Low Countries, surrounded by moats and fences.

"Notwithstanding the strength of the position held by the

allies, and the valor with which they defended it, they were

driven out of Neerwinden [July 29]--but only after the

shattered village had been five times taken and retaken--and

across the Gette, in confusion and with heavy loss.

{1242}

"The French were victorious: but they had bought their victory

dear. More then 10,000 of the best troops of Lewis had fallen.

Neerwinden was a spectacle at which the oldest soldiers stood

aghast. The streets were piled breast high with corpses. Among

the slain were some great lords and some renowned warriors.

... The region, renowned as the battle field, through many

ages, of the greatest powers of Europe, has seen only two more

terrible days, the day of Malplaquet and the day of Waterloo.

... There was no pursuit, though the sun was still high in the

heaven when William crossed the Gette. The conquerors were so

much exhausted by marching and fighting that they could

scarcely move. ... A very short delay was enough for William.

... Three weeks after his defeat he held a review a few miles

from Brussels. The number of men under arms was greater than

on the morning of the bloody day of Landen: their appearance

was soldierlike; and their spirit seemed unbroken. William now

wrote to Heinsius that the worst was over. 'The crisis,' he

said, 'has been a terrible one. Thank God that it has ended

thus.' He did not, however, think it prudent to try at that

time the event of another pitched field. He therefore suffered

the French to besiege and take Charleroi; and this was the

only advantage which they derived from the most sanguinary

battle fought in Europe during the seventeenth century."

Lord Macaulay,

History of England,

chapter 20 (volume 4).

ALSO IN:

G. Burnet,

History of My Own Time,

book 5 (1693), volume 4.

Duc de Saint-Simon,

Memoirs (translated by St. John),

volume 1, chapter 4.

FRANCE: A. D. 1693 (October).

Defeat of the Duke of Savoy at Marsaglia.

"The great efforts made by Louis in the north prevented him

from strengthening the army of Catinat sufficiently to act

with energy against the Savoyard prince, and it was determined

to restrict the campaign of 1693 to the defensive on the part

of France. The forces of the duke had in the meantime been

reinforced from Germany, and he opened the campaign with a

brilliant and successful movement against Pignerol. ... He is

said to have entertained hopes of carrying the war in that one

campaign to the very gates of Lyons; but the successes which

inspired him with such expectations alarmed the court of

France, and Louis detached in haste a large body of cavalry to

reinforce Catinat. That general marched at once to fight the Duke

of Savoy, who, presuming on his strength, suffered the French

to pour out from the valley of Suza into the plain of

Piedmont, abandoned the heights, and was consequently defeated

at Marsaglia on the 4th of October. Catinat, however, could not

profit by his victory; he was too ill supplied in every

respect to undertake the siege of Coni, and the state of the

French armies at this time marks as plainly that Louvois was

dead, as the state of the finances speaks the loss of

Colbert."

G. P. R. James,

Life and Times of Louis XIV.,

volume 2, chapter 11.

FRANCE: A. D. 1694.

Campaigns without battles.

Operations at sea.

In 1694, King William was "in a position to keep an army afoot

in the Netherlands stronger than any had hitherto been. It was

reckoned at 31,800 horse, including a corps of dragoons, and

58,000 foot; so great a force had never been seen within the

memory of man. All the best-known generals, who had hitherto

taken part in the wars of western Europe, were gathered round

him with their troops. The French army, with which the

Dauphin, but not the King, was present, was not much smaller;

it was once more led by Marshal Luxembourg. These two hosts

lay over against one another in their camps for a couple of

months; neither offered battle to the other. ... This campaign

is notable in the annals of the art of war for the skill with

which each force pursued or evaded the other; but the results

were limited to the recovery by the allies of that unimportant

place, Huy. William had thought himself fortunate in having

come out of the previous campaign without disaster: in this

campaign the French were proud to have held their lines in

presence of a superior force. On the coast also the French

were successful in repelling a most vehement and perilous

attack. They had been warned that the English were going to

fall on Brest, and Vauban was sent down there in haste to

organise the defence; and in this he was thoroughly

successful. When the English landed on the coast in Camaret

Bay (for the fort of that name had first to be taken) they

were saluted by two batteries, which they had never detected,

and which were so well placed that every shot told, and the

grape-shot wounded almost every man who had ventured ashore.

The gallant General, Talmash, was also hit, and ere long died

of his wounds. The English fleet, which had come to bombard

Brest, was itself bombarded from the walls. But though this

great effort failed, the English fleet still held the mastery

of the Channel: it also blockaded the northern coast of

France. After Brest it attacked Dieppe, laying it almost

entirely in ashes; thence it sailed to Havre, and St. Malo, to

Calais, and Dunkirk. This was of great use in the conduct of

the war. King William observes that had not the coasts been

kept in a state of alarm, all the forces detained there for

defensive purposes would have been thrown on the Netherlands.

... But the most important result of the maritime war lay on

another side. In May, 1694, Noailles pushed into Catalonia,

supported by Tourville, who lay at anchor with the fleet in

the Bay of Rosas. ... It was of incalculable importance to

Spain to be in alliance with the maritime powers. Strengthened

by a Dutch fleet and some Spanish ships, Admiral Russell now

appeared in the Mediterranean. He secured Barcelona from the

French, who would never have been kept out of the city by the

Spaniards alone. The approach of the English fleet had at this

time the greatest influence in keeping the Duke of Savoy

staunch to the confederation. In Germany the rise of the house

of Hanover to the Electoral dignity had now caused most

unpleasant complications. A shoal of German princes, headed by

the King of Denmark, as a Prince of the Empire, and offended

by the preference shown to Hanover, inclined, if not to

alliance with France, at least to neutrality. ... We can have

no conception, and in this place we cannot possibly

investigate, with what unbroken watchfulness King William,

supported by Heinsius, looked after the German and the

Northern courts, so as to keep their irritation from reacting

on the course of the great war. ... When the French, in June,

1694, crossed the Rhine, meaning, as they boasted with true

Gallic arrogance, soon to dip their swords in the Danube, they

found the Prince of Baden so well prepared, and posted so

strongly near Wisloch, that they did not venture to attack

him. ... The general result is this: neither side was as yet

really superior to the other: but the French power was

everywhere checked and held within bounds by the arms and

influence of William III."

L. von Ranke,

History of England, 17th Century,

book 20, chapter 6 (volume 5).

{1243}

FRANCE: A. D. 1695-1696.

The end of the War of the League of Augsburg.

Loss of Namur.

Terms with Savoy.

The Peace of Ryswick.

"Military and naval efforts were relaxed on all sides: on the

Rhine the Prince of Baden and the Marechal de Lorges, both ill

in health, did little but observe each other; and though the

Duke of Savoy made himself master of Casal on the 11th July,

1695, no other military event of any consequence took place on

the side of Italy, where Louis entered into negotiations with

the duke, and succeeded, in the following year, in detaching

him from the league of Augsburg. As the price of his defection

the whole of his territories were to be restored to him, with

the exception of Suza, Nice, and Montmeillan, which were

promised to be delivered also on the signature of a general

peace. Money was added to render the consent of a needy prince

more ready. ... The duke promised to obtain from the emperor a

pledge that Italy should be considered as neutral ground, and

if the allies refused such a pledge, then to join the forces

of Savoy to those of France, and give a free passage to the

French through his dominions. In consequence of this treaty

... he applied to the emperor for a recognition of the

neutrality of Italy, and was refused. He then hastened, with a

facility which distinguished him through life, to abandon his

friends and join his enemies, and within one month was

generalissimo for the emperor in Italy fighting against

France, and generalissimo for the King of France in Italy

fighting against the emperor. Previous to this change,

however, the King of England opened the campaign of 1695 in

the Netherlands by the siege of Namur. The death of Luxemburg

had placed the French army of Flanders under the command of

the incapable Marshal Villeroi: and William, feeling that his

enemy was no longer to be much respected, assumed at once the

offensive. He concealed his design upon Namur under a variety

of manœuvres which kept the French generals in suspense; and,

then leaving the Prince of Vaudemont to protect the principal

Spanish towns in Flanders, he collected his troops suddenly;

and while the Duke of Bavaria invested Namur, he covered the

operations of the siege with a considerable force. Villeroi

now determined to attack the Prince of Vaudemont, but twice

suffered him to escape: and then, after having apparently

hesitated for some time how to drive or draw the King of

England from the attack upon Namur, he resolved to bombard the

city of Brussels, never pretending to besiege it, but alleging

as his motive for a proceeding which was merely destructive,

the bombardment of the maritime towns of France by the

English. During three days he continued to fire upon the city,

ruining a great part thereof, and then withdrew to witness the

surrender of the citadel of Namur on the 2nd September, the

town itself having capitulated on the 4th of the preceding

month. As some compensation, though but a poor one, for the

loss of Namur, and the disgrace of the French arms in

suffering such a city to be captured in the presence of 80,000

men, Montal took Dixmude and Deynse in the course of June. ...

The only after-event of any importance which occurred in

Flanders during this war, was the capture of Ath by the

French, in the year 1697, while negotiations for peace were

going on with activity at Ryswick. ... Regular communications

regarding peace having been once established, Ryswick, near

the Hague, was appointed for the meeting of plenipotentiaries;

and Harlay, Torci, and Callières appeared at that place as

representatives of Louis. The articles which had been formerly

sketched out at Utrecht formed the base of the treaties now

agreed upon; and Louis yielded far more than could have been

expected from one so proud and so successful."

G. P. R. James,

Life and Times of Louis XIV.,

volume 2, chapter 11.

ALSO IN:

T. H. Dyer,

History of Modern Europe,

volume 3, chapter 5.

Sir J. Dalrymple,

Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland,

part 3, book 4 (volume 3).

FRANCE: A. D. 1697 (April).

The sacking of Carthagena.

See CARTHAGENA: A. D. 1697.

FRANCE: A. D. 1697.

The Peace of Ryswick.

"The Congress for the treaty or series of treaties that was to

terminate the great European war, which had now lasted for

upwards of nine years, was held at Ryswick, a château near the

Hague. The conferences were opened in May, 1697. Among the

countries represented were Sweden, Austria, France, Spain,

England, Holland, Denmark and the various States of the German

Empire. The treaties were signed, in severalty, between the

different States, except Austria, in September and October,

1697, and with the Emperor, in November. The principal

features of the treaty were, as between France and Spain,

that, the former country was to deliver to Spain Barcelona,

and other places in Catalonia; also various places which

France had taken in the Spanish Netherlands, during the war,

including Luxembourg and its Duchy, Charleroi, Mons and

Courtrai. Various others were excepted, to be retained by

France, as dependencies of French possessions. The principal

stipulations of the treaty, as between France and Great

Britain, were that France formally recognized William III. as

lawful king of Great Britain, and agreed not to trouble him in

the possession of his dominions, and not to assist his

enemies, directly or indirectly. This article had particular

relation to the partisans of the exiled Stuart king, then

living in France. By another article, all places taken by

either country in America, during the war, were to be

relinquished, and the Principality of Orange and its estates

situated in the south of France were to be restored to

William. In the treaty with Holland, certain possessions in

the East Indies were to be restored to the Dutch East India

Company: and important articles of commerce were appended,

among which the principle was laid down that free ships should

make free goods, not contraband of war. By the treaty with the

Emperor and the German States, the Treaties of Westphalia and

Nymeguen were recognized as the basis of the Treaty of

Ryswick, with such exceptions only as were to be provided in

the latter treaty. France also was to give up all territory

she had occupied or controlled before or during the war under

the name of 'reunions,' outside of Alsace, but the Roman

Catholic religion was to be preserved in Alsace as it then

existed.

{1244}

This concession by France included among other places

Freiburg, Brisach, and Treves; and certain restitutions were

to be made by France, in favor of Spire, the Electors of

Treves, and Brandenburg and the Palatinate; also, others in

favor of certain of the smaller German Princes. The city of

Strasburg, in return, was formally ceded to France, ... and

the important fort of Kehl was yielded to the Empire. The

navigation of the Rhine was to be free to all persons. The

Duke of Lorraine was to be restored to his possessions with

such exceptions as were provided in the treaty. By the terms

of this treaty, a more advantageous peace was given to Spain

than she had any expectation of. ... Not only were the places

taken in Spain, including the numerous fortified places in

Catalonia, yielded up, but also, with some exceptions, those

in the Spanish Netherlands, and also the important territory

of Luxembourg; some places were even yielded to Spain that

France had gained under former treaties."

J. W. Gerard,

The Peace of Utrecht,

chapter 4.

"The restitutions and cessions [from France to Germany]

comprised Treves, Germersheim, Deux-Ponts, Veldentz,

Montbéliard, Kehl, Freiburg, Breisach, Philippsburg, the

Emperor and the Empire ceding in exchange Strasbourg to the

King of France in complete sovereignty. ... Louis XIV. had

consented somewhat to relax the rigor of the treaty of

Nimeguen towards the heir of the Duchy of Lorraine, nephew of

the Emperor by his mother; he restored to the young Duke

Leopold his inheritance in the condition in which Charles IV.

had possessed it before the French conquest of 1670; that is

to say, he restored Nancy, allowing only the ramparts of the

Old Town to remain, and razing all the rest of the

fortifications without the power of restoring them; he kept

Marsal, an interior place calculated to hold Lorraine in

check, and also Sarre-Louis, a frontier-place which separated

Lorraine from the Germanic provinces; he restored Bitche and

Homburg dismantled, without power to reestablish them, and

kept Longwy in exchange for a domain of similar value in one

of the Trois-Evêchés; finally, he no longer demanded, as at

Nimeguen, four great strategic routes through Lorraine, and

consented that the passage should always be open to his

troops. The House of Lorraine was thus reestablished in its

estates after twenty-seven years of exile."

H. Martin,

History of France: Age of Louis XIV.,

volume 2, chapter 2.

ALSO IN:

L. von Ranke,

History of England, 17th Century,

book 20, chapter 11 (volume 5).

See, also, CANADA: A. D. 1692-1697;

and NEWFOUNDLAND: A. D. 1694-1697.

FRANCE: A. D. 1698-1712.

The colonization of Louisiana.

Broad claims to the whole valley of the Mississippi.

See LOUISIANA: A. D. 1698-1712.

FRANCE: A. D. 1700.

Bequest of the Spanish crown to a French royal prince.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1698-1700.

FRANCE: A. D. 1701-1702.

Provocation of the Second Grand Alliance

and War of the Spanish Succession.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1701-1702,

and ENGLAND: A. D. 1701-1702.

FRANCE: A. D. 1702-1710.

The Camisard rising of the French Protestant's in the

Cévennes.

"The movement known as the War of the Camisards is an episode

of the history of Protestantism in France which, though rarely

studied in detail and perhaps but partially understood, was

not devoid of significance. When it occurred, in the summer of

1702, a period of little less than 17 years had elapsed since

Louis XIV., by his edict of Fontainebleau, October, 1685,

solemnly revoked the great and fundamental law enacted by his

grandfather, Henry IV., for the protection of the adherents of

the Reformed faith, known in history as the Edict of Nantes.

During the whole of that period the Protestants had submitted,

with scarcely an attempt at armed resistance, to the

proscription of their tenets: ... The majority, unable to

escape from the land of oppression, remained at home ...

nearly all of them cherishing the confident hope that the

king's delusion would be short-lived, and that the edict under

which they and their ancestors had lived for three generations

would, before long, be restored to them with the greater part,

if not the whole, of its beneficent provisions. Meanwhile, all

the Protestant ministers having been expelled from France by

the same law that prohibited the expatriation of any of the

laity, the people of the Reformed faith found themselves

destitute of the spiritual food they craved. True, the new

legislation affected to regard that faith as dead, and

designated all the former adherents of Protestantism, without

distinction, as the 'New Converts,' 'Nouveaux Convertis.' And,

in point of fact, the great majority had so far yielded to the

terrible pressure of the violent measures brought to bear upon

them ... that they had consented to sign a promise to be

're-united' to the Roman Catholic Church, or had gone at least

once to mass. But they were still Protestants at heart. ...

Under these circumstances, feeling more than ever the need of

religious comfort, now that remorse arose for a weak betrayal

of conscientious conviction, the proscribed Protestants,

especially in the south of France, began to meet clandestinely

for divine worship in such retired places as seemed most

likely to escape the notice of their vigilant enemies. ... It

was not strange that in so exceptional a situation, a phase of

religious life and feeling equally exceptional should manifest

itself. I refer to that appearance of prophetic inspiration

which attracted to the province of Vivarais and to the

Cévennes Mountains the attention of all Europe. ...

Historically ... the influence of the prophets of the Cévennes

was an important factor in the Protestant problem of the end

of the 17th and the commencement of the 18th centuries. ...

Various methods were adopted to put an end to the prophets

with their prophecies, which were for the most part

denunciatory of Rome as Antichrist and foreshadowed the

approaching fall of the papacy. But this form of enthusiasm

had struck a deep root and it was hard to eradicate it.

Imprisonment, in convent or jail, was the most common

punishment, especially in the case of women. Not infrequently

to imprisonment was, added corporal chastisement, and the

prophets, male and female, were flogged until they might be

regarded as fully cured of their delusion. ... But no

utterances of prophets, however fervid and impassioned, would

have sufficed to occasion an uprising of the inhabitants of

the Cévennes Mountains, had it not been for the virulent

persecution to which the latter found themselves exposed at

the hands of the provincial authorities directly instigated

thereto by the clergy of the established church.

{1245}

For it must be noticed that a large part of the population of

the Cévennes was still Protestant, and made no concealment of

the fact, even though the king's ministers affected to call

them 'New Catholics,' or 'New Converts.' The region over which

the Camisard war extended with more or less violence comprised

six episcopal dioceses, which, in 1698, had an aggregate

population of about two-thirds of a million of souls. Of these

souls, though Protestantism had been dead in the eye of the

law for 13 years, fully one-fourth were still Protestant. ...

The war may be said to have begun on the 24th of July, 1702,

when the Abbé du Chayla, a noted persecutor, was killed in his

house, at Pont de Montvert, by a band of 40 or 50 of the

'Nouveaux Convertis,' whom he had driven to desperation by his

cruelty to their fellow believers. If we regard its

termination to be the submission of Jean Cavalier, the most

picturesque, in the month of May, 1704, the war lasted a

little less than two years. But, although the French

government had succeeded, rather by craft than by force, in

getting rid of the most formidable of its opponents ... it was

not until five or six years later--that is, until 1709 or

1710--that ... comparative peace was finally restored. ...

During the first months of the insurrection the exploits of

the malcontents were confined to deeds of destruction

accomplished by companies of venturesome men, who almost

everywhere eluded the pursuit of the enemy by their superior

knowledge of the intricacies of the mountain woods and paths.

The track of these companies could easily be made out; for it

was marked by the destruction of vicarages and rectories, by

the smoke of burned churches, too often by the corpses of

slain priests. The perpetrators of these acts of violence soon

won for themselves some special designations, to distinguish

them from the more passive Protestants who remained in their

homes, taking no open part in the struggle. ... About the

close of 1702, however, or the first months of 1703, a new

word was coined for the fresh emergency, and the armed

Protestants received the appellation under which they have

passed into history--the Camisards. Passing by all the strange

and fanciful derivations of the word which seem to have no

claim upon our notice, unless it be their evident absurdity,

we have no difficulty in connecting it with those nocturnal

expeditions which were styled 'Camisades'; because the

warriors who took advantage of the darkness of the night to

ride out and explore or force the enemy's entrenchments,

sometimes threw over their armor a shirt that might enable

them to recognize each other. Others will have it that, though

the name was derived from the same article of apparel--the

'camisa' or shirt--it was applied to the Cévenol bands for

another reason, namely," that when they found opportunities,

they carried off clean linen from the villages and left their

soiled garments in exchange. The final overthrow of the

Camisards "was not accomplished without the employment of

100,000 troops, certainly far more than ten times the total

number ever brought into the field by the Camisards. ... Not

less than three officers of the highest grade in the service,

marshals of France, were successively appointed to put down a

revolt which it might have been expected a simple colonel

could suffice to quell--M. de Broglie being succeeded by the

Marshal de Montrevel, the Marshal de Montrevel by the Marshal

de Villars, and the Marshal de Villars by the Marshal de

Berwick."

H. M. Baird,

The Camisard Uprising

(Papers of the American Society of Church History,

volume 2, pages 13-34).

ALSO IN:

Mrs. Bray,

The Revolt of the Protestants of the Cevennes.

N. Peyrat,

The Pastors in the Wilderness.

S. Smiles,

The Huguenots in France after the Revocation of the Edict

of Nantes, chapters 5-8.

FRANCE: A. D. 1702-1711.

The War of the Spanish Succession in America

(called Queen Anne's War).

See NEW ENGLAND: A. D. 1702-1710;

and CANADA: A. D. 1711-1713.

FRANCE: A. D. 1702-1713.

The War of the Spanish Succession in Europe.

See

ITALY: A. D. 1701-1713;

SPAIN: A.D. 1702, to 1707-1710;

GERMANY: A. D. 1702, to 1706-1711;

NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1702-1704, to 1710-1712.

FRANCE: A. D. 1702-1715.

Renewed Jesuitical persecution of the Jansenists.

The odious Bull Unigenitus and its tyrannical enforcement.

See PORT ROYAL AND THE JANSENISTS: A. D. 1702-1715.

A. D. 1710.

The War of the Spanish Succession: Misery of the nation.

Overtures for Peace.

Conferences at Gertruydenberg.

"France was still reduced to extreme and abject wretchedness.

Her finances were ruined. Her people were half starving.

Marlborough declared that in the villages through which he

passed in the summer of 1710, at least half the inhabitants

had perished since the beginning of the preceding winter, and

the rest looked as if they had come out of their graves. All

the old dreams of French conquests in the Spanish Netherlands,

in Italy, and in Germany were dispelled, and the French

generals were now struggling desperately and skilfully to

defend their own frontier. ... In 1710, while the Whig

ministry [in England] was still in power, but at a time when

it was manifestly tottering to its fall, Lewis had made one

more attempt to obtain peace by the most ample concessions.

The conferences were held at the Dutch fortress of

Gertruydenberg. Lewis declared himself ready to accept the

conditions exacted as preliminaries of peace in the preceding

year, with the exception of the article compelling Philip

within two months to cede the Spanish throne. He consented, in

the course of the negotiations, to grant to the Dutch nearly

all the fortresses of the French and Spanish Netherlands,

including among others Ypres, Tournay, Lille, Furnes, and even

Valenciennes, to cede Alsace to the Duke of Lorraine, to destroy

the fortifications of Dunkirk, and those on the Rhine from

Bale to Philipsburg. The main difficulty was on the question

of the Spanish succession. ... The French troops had already

been recalled from Spain, and Lewis consented to recognise the

Archduke as the sovereign, to engage to give no more

assistance to his grandchild, to place four cautionary towns

in the hands of the Dutch as a pledge for the fulfilment of

the treaty, and even to pay a subsidy to the allies for the

continuance of the war against Philip. The allies, however,

insisted that he should join with them in driving his grandson

by force of arms from Spain, and on this article the

negotiations were broken off."

W. E. H. Lecky,

History of England in the 18th Century,

chapter 1.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1710-1712.

{1246}

FRANCE: A. D. 1713-1714.

Ending of the War of the Spanish Succession.

The Peace of Utrecht and the Treaty of Rastadt.

See UTRECHT: A. D. 1712-1714.

FRANCE: A. D. 1714.

The desertion of the Catalans.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1713-1714.

FRANCE: A. D. 1715.

Death of Louis XIV.

The character of his reign.

Louis XIV. died September 1, 1715, at the age of 77 years,

having reigned 72 years. "Richelieu, and after him Mazarin,

governing as if they had been dictators of a republic, had

extinguished, if I may use the expression, their personality

in the idea and service of the state. Possessing only the

exercise of authority, they both conducted themselves as

responsible agents towards the sovereign and before the

judgment of the country; while Louis XIV., combining the

exercise with the right, considered himself exempted from all

rule but that of his own will, and acknowledged no

responsibility for his actions except to his own conscience.

It was this conviction of his universal power, a conviction

genuine and sincere, excluding both scruples and remorse,

which made him upset one after the other the twofold system

founded by Henry IV., of religious liberty at home, and abroad

of a national preponderance resting upon a generous protection

of the independence of states and European civilisation. At

the personal accession of Louis XIV., more than fifty years

had passed since France had pursued the work of her policy in

Europe, impartial towards the various communions of

Christians, the different forms of governments, and the

internal revolutions of the states. Although France was

catholic and monarchical, her alliances were, in the first

place, with the Protestant states of Germany and with

republican Holland; she had even made friendly terms with

regicide England. No other interest but that of the

well-understood development of the national resources had

weight in her councils, and directed the internal action of

her government. But all was changed by Louis XIV., and special

interests, the spawn of royal personality, of the principle of

the hereditary monarchy, or that of the state religion, were

admitted, soon to fly upward in the scale. Thence resulted the

overthrow of the system of the balance of power in Europe,

which might be justly called the French system, and the

abandonment of it for dreams of an universal monarchy, revived

after the example of Charles V. and Philip II. Thence a

succession of enterprises, formed in opposition to the policy

of the country, such as the war with Holland, the factions

made with a view to the Imperial crown, the support given to

James II. and the counter-revolution in England, the

acceptance of the throne of Spain for a son of France,

preserving his rights to the Crown. These causes of

misfortune, under which the kingdom was obliged to succumb,

all issued from the circumstance applauded by the nation and

conformable to the spirit of its tendencies, which, after

royalty had attained its highest degree of power under two

ministers, delivered it unlimited into the hands of a prince

endowed with qualities at once brilliant and solid, an object

of enthusiastic affection and legitimate admiration. When the

reign, which was to crown under such auspices the ascendant

march of the French monarchy, had falsified the unbounded

hopes which its commencement had excited; when in the midst of

fruitless victories and continually increasing reverses, the

people beheld progress in all the branches of public economy

changed into distress,--the ruin of the finances, industry,

and agriculture--the exhaustion of all the resources of the

country,--the impoverishment of all classes of the nation, the

dreadful misery of the population, they were seized with a

bitter disappointment of spirit, which took the place of the

enthusiasm of their confidence and love."

A. Thierry,

Formation and Progress of the Tiers

État or Third Estate in France,

chapter 9.

FRANCE: A. D. 1715.

Accession of King Louis XV.

FRANCE: A. D. 1715-1723.

State of the kingdom at the death of Louis XIV.

The minority of Louis XV. and Regency of the Duke of Orleans.

"Louis XIV. ... left France excessively exhausted. The State

was ruined, and seemed to have no resource but bankruptcy.

This trouble seemed especially imminent in 1715, after the

war, during which the government had been obliged to borrow at

400 per cent., to create new taxes, to spend in advance the

revenue of two years, and to increase the public debt to 2,400

millions. The acquisition of two provinces (Flanders,

Franche-Comté) and a few cities (Strassburg, Landau, and

Dunkirk) was no compensation for such terrible poverty.

Succeeding generations have remembered only the numerous

victories, Europe defied, France for twenty years

preponderant, and the incomparable splendor of the court of

Versailles, with its marvels of letters and arts, which have

given to the 17th century the name of the age of Louis XIV. It

is for history to show the price which France has paid for her

king's vain attempts abroad to rule over Europe, and at home

to enslave the wills and consciences of men. ... The weight of

the authority of Louis XIV. had been crushing during his last

years. When the nation felt it lifted, it breathed more

freely; the court and the city burst into disrespectful

demonstrations of joy; the very coffin of the great king was

insulted. The new king [Louis XV., great-grandson of Louis

XIV.] was five years old. Who was to govern? Louis XIV. had

indeed left a will, but he had not deceived himself with

regard to the value of it. 'As soon as I am dead, it will be

disregarded; I know too well what became of the will of the

king, my father!' As after the death of Henry IV. and Louis

XIII. there was a moment of feudal reaction; but the decline

of the nobility may be measured by the successive weakening of

its efforts in each case. Under Mary de'Medici it was still able

to make a civil war; under Anne of Austria it produced the

Fronde; after Louis XIV. it only produced memorials. The Duke

of Saint-Simon desired that the first prince of the blood,

Philip of Orleans, to whom the will left only a shadow of

power, should demand the regency from the dukes and peers, as

heirs and representatives of the ancient grand vassals. But

the Duke of Orleans convoked Parliament in order to break down

the posthumous despotism of the old king, feigning that the

king had committed the government to his hands. The regency,

with the right to appoint the council of regency as he would,

was conferred upon him, and the command of the royal household

was taken from the Duke of Maine [one of the bastard sons of

Louis XIV.], who yielded this important prerogative only after

a violent altercation.

{1247}

As a reward for the services of his two allies, the Duke of

Orleans called the high nobility into affairs, by substituting

for the ministries six councils; in which they occupied almost

all the places, and accorded to Parliament the right of

remonstrance. But two years had hardly passed when the

ministries were re-established, and the Parliament again

condemned to silence. It was plain that neither nobility nor

Parliament were to be the heirs of the absolute monarchy. ...

Debauchery had, until then, kept within certain limits;

cynicism of manners as well as of thought was now adopted

openly. The regent set the example. There had never been seen

such frivolity of conduct nor such licentious wit as that

exhibited in the wild meetings of the roués of the Duke of

Orleans. There had been formerly but one salon in France, that

of the king; a thousand were now open to a society which, no

longer occupied with religious questions, or with war, or the

grave futilities of etiquette, felt that pleasure and change

were necessities. ... Louis XV. attained his majority February

13, 1723, being then 13 years old. This terminated the regency

of the Duke of Orleans. But the king was still to remain a

long time under tutelage; the duke, in order to retain the

power after resigning the regency, had in advance given

[Cardinal] Dubois the title of prime minister. At the death of

the wretched Dubois he took the office himself, but held it

only four months, dying of apoplexy in December, 1723."

V. Duruy,

History of France,

chapters 52 and 55.

ALSO IN:

W. C. Taylor,

Memoirs of the House of Orleans,

volume 1, chapters 11-17,

and volume 2, chapters 1-3.

F. Rocquain,

The Revolutionary Spirit preceding the French Revolution,

chapter 1.

J. B. Perkins,

France under the Regency.

FRANCE: A. D. 1717-1719.

The Triple Alliance.

The Quadruple Alliance.

War with Spain.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1713-1725;

also, ITALY: A. D. 1715-1735.

FRANCE: A. D. 1717-1720.

John Law and his Mississippi Scheme.

"When the Regent Orleans assumed the government of France, he

found its affairs in frightful confusion. The public debt was

three hundred millions; putting the debt on one side, the

expenditure was only just covered by the revenue. St. Simon

advised him to declare a national bankruptcy. De Noailles,

less scrupulous, proposed to debase the coinage. ... In such

desperate circumstances, it was no wonder that the regent was

ready to catch eagerly at any prospect of success. A remedy

was proposed to him by the famous John Law of Lauriston. This

new light of finance had gambled in, and been banished from,

half the courts of Europe; he had figured in the English 'Hue

and Cry,' as 'a very tall, black, lean man, well-shaped, above

six feet high, large pock-holes in his face, big-nosed, speaks

broad and loud.' He was a big, masterful, bullying man, one of

keen intellect as well; the hero of a hundred romantic

stories. ... He studied finance at Amsterdam, then the great

school of commerce, and offered his services and the 'system'

which he had invented, first to Godolphin, when that nobleman

was at the head of affairs in England, then to Victor Amadeus,

duke of Savoy, then to Louis XIV., who, as the story goes,

refused any credit to a heretic. He invented a new combination

at cards, which became the despair of all the croupiers in

Europe; so successful was this last invention, that he arrived

for the second time at Versailles, in the early days of the

regency, with upwards of £120,000 at his disposal, and a copy

of his 'system' in his pocket. ... There was a dash of daring

in the scheme which suited well with the regent's peculiar

turn of mind; it was gambling on a gigantic scale. ...

Besides, the scheme was plausible and to a certain point

correct. The regent, with all his faults, was too clever a man

not to recognize the genius which gleamed in Law's dark eyes.

Law showed that the trade and commerce of every country was

crippled by the want of a circulating medium; specie was not

to be had in sufficient quantities; paper, backed by the

credit of the state, was the grand secret. He adduced the

examples of Great Britain, of Genoa, and of Amsterdam to prove

the advantage of a paper currency; he proposed to institute a

bank, to be called the 'Bank of France,' and to issue notes

guaranteed by the government and secured on the crown lands,

exchangeable at sight for specie, and receivable in payment of

taxes; the bank was to be conducted in the king's name, and to

be managed by commissioners appointed by the States-General.

The scheme of Law was based on principles which are now

admitted as economical axioms; the danger lay in the enormous

extent to which it was intended to push the scheme. ... While

the bank was in the hands of Law himself, it appears to have

been managed with consummate skill; the notes bore some

proportion to the amount of available specie; they contained a

promise to pay in silver of the same standard and weight as

that which existed at the time. A large dividend was declared;

then the regent stepped in. The name of the bank was changed

to that of the Royal Bank of France, the promise to pay in

silver of a certain weight and standard was dropped, and a

promise substituted to pay 'in silver coin.' This omission, on

the part of a prince who had already resorted to the expedient

of debasing the currency, was ominous, and did much to shake

public confidence; the intelligence that in the first year of

the new bank 1,000,000,000 of livres were fabricated, was not

calculated to restore it. But these trifles were forgotten in

the mad excitement which followed. Law had long been

elaborating a scheme which is for ever associated with his

name, and beside which the Bank of France sank into

insignificance. In 1717, the year before the bank had been

adopted by the regent, the billets d'état of 500 livres each

were worth about 160 livres in the market. Law, with the

assent of the regent, proposed to establish a company which

should engross all the trade of the kingdom, and all the

revenues of the crown, should carry on the business of

merchants in every part of the world, and monopolize the

farming of the taxes and the coining of money; the stock was

to be divided into 200,000 shares of 500 livres each. The

regent nearly marred the scheme at starting by inserting a

proviso that the depreciated billets d'état were to be

received at par in payment for the new stock, on which four

per cent. was guaranteed by the State." Law's company was

formed, under the name of the Company of the West, and

obtained for the basis of its operations a monopoly of the

trade of that vast territory of France in the valley of the

Mississippi which bore the name of Louisiana. The same

monopoly had been held for five years by one Crozat, who now

resigned it because he found it unprofitable; but the fact

received little attention.

See LOUISIANA: A. D. 1717-1718.

{1248}

"Louisiana was described as a paradise. ... Shareholders in

the company were told that they would enjoy the monopoly of

trade throughout French North America, and the produce of a

country rich in every kind of mineral wealth. Billets d'état

were restored to their nominal value; stock in the Mississippi

scheme was sold at fabulous prices; ingots of gold, which were

declared to have come from the mines of St. Barbe, were taken

with great pomp to the mint; 6,000 of the poor of Paris were

sent out as miners, and provided with tools to work in the new

diggings. New issues of shares were made; first 50,000, then

50,000 more; both at an enormous premium. The jobbers of the

rue Quincampoix found ordinary language inadequate to express

their delight: they invented a new slang for the occasion, and

called the new shares 'les filles,' and, 'les petites filles,'

respectively. Paris was divided between the 'Anti-system' party

who opposed Law, and the Mississippians who supported him. The

State borrowed from the company fifteen hundred millions;

government paid its creditors in warrants on the company. To

meet them, Law issued 100,000 new shares; which came out at a

premium of 1,000 per cent. The Mississippians went mad with

joy--they invented another new slang phrase; the 'cinq cents'

eclipsed the filles and the petites filles in favour. The

gates of Law's hotel had to be guarded by a detachment of

archers; the cashiers were mobbed in their bureaux; applicants

for shares sat in the ante-rooms; a select body slept for

several nights on the stairs; gentlemen disguised themselves

in Law's livery to obtain access to the great man. ... By this

time the charter of the company of Senegal had been merged in

the bank, which also became sole farmer of the tobacco duties;

the East India Company had been abolished, and the exclusive

privilege of trading to the East Indies, China, and the South

Seas, together with all the possessions of Colbert's company

were transferred to Law. The bank now assumed the style of the

Company of the Indies. Before the year [1719] was out the

regent had transferred to it the exclusive privilege of the

mint, and the contract of all the great farms. Almost every

branch of industry in France, its trade, its revenue, its

police, were now in the hands of Law. Every fresh privilege

was followed by a new issue of shares. ... The shares of 500

franks were now worth 10,000. The rue Quincampoix became

impassable, and an army of stockjobbers camped in tents in the

Place Vendome. ... The excitement spread to England [where the

South Sea Bubble was inflated by the madness of the hour].

See SOUTH SEA BUBBLE.

... Law's system and the South Sea scheme both went down

together. Both were calculated to last so long, and so long

only, as universal confidence existed; when it began to be

whispered that those in the secret were realizing their

profits and getting out of the impending ruin, the whole

edifice came down with a crash. ... No sooner was it evident

that the system was about to break down, than Law, the only

man who could at least have mitigated the blow, was banished."

Viscount Bury,

Exodus of the Western Nations,

volume 2, chapter 5.

ALSO IN:

C. Mackay,

Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions,

volume 1, chapter 1.

A. Thiers,

The Mississippi Bubble.

W. C. Taylor,

Memoirs of the House of Orleans,

volume 2, chapter 2.

C. Gayarre,

History of Louisiana, second series,

lecture 1.

Duke de Saint-Simon,

Memoirs:

abridged translation by St. John, volume 3, chapter 25,

and volume 4, chapters 4, and 13-15.

FRANCE: A. D. 1720.

The fortifying of Louisbourg.

See CAPE BRETON ISLAND: A. D. 1720-1745.

FRANCE: A. D. 1723-1774.

Character and reign of Louis XV.

The King's mistresses and their courtiers

who conducted the government.

State and feeling of the nation.

After the death of the Duke of Orleans, "a short period of

about two years and a-half comprehends the administration of

the Duke of Bourbon, or rather of his mistress, la Marquise de

Prie. Fleury [Cardinal] then appears on the stage, and dies in

1743. He was, therefore, minister of France for seventeen

years. On his death, the king (Louis XV.) undertook to be his

own prime minister; an unpromising experiment for a country at

any time. In this instance the result was only that the king's

mistress, Madame de Chateauroux, became the ruler of France,

and soon after Madame de Pompadour, another mistress, whose

reign was prolonged from 1745 to 1768. Different courtiers and

prelates were seen to hold the first offices of the state

during this apparent premiership of the monarch. The ladies

seem to have chosen or tolerated Cardinal Tençin, Argençon,

Orsy, Mauripaux, and Amelot, who, with the Dukes Noailles and

Richelieu, succeeded to Fleury. Afterwards, we have Argençon

and Machault, and then come the most celebrated of the

ministers or favourites of Madame de Pompadour, the Abbé de

Bemis and the Duc de Choiseul. The last is the most

distinguished minister after Fleury. He continued in favour

from 1758, not only to 1763, when Madame de Pompadour died,

but for a few years after. He was at length disgraced by la

Comtesse Dubarri, who had become the king's mistress soon

after the death of Madame de Pompadour, and remained so,

nearly to the death of the monarch himself, in 1774."

W. Smyth,

Lectures on the History of the French Revolution,

lecture 3.

"The regency of the Duke of Orleans lasted only eight years,

but it was not without a considerable effect upon the

destinies of the country. It was a break in the political and

the religious traditions of the reign of Louis XIV. The new

activity imparted to business during this period was an event

of equal importance. Nothing is more erroneous than to suppose

that constantly increasing misery at last excited revolt

against the government and the institutions of the old regime.

The Revolution in France at the close of the eighteenth

century was possible, not because the condition of the people

had grown worse, but because it had become better. The

material development of that country, during the fifty years

that preceded the convocation of the States General, had no

parallel in its past history. Neither the weight of taxation,

nor the extravagance of the court, nor the bankruptcy of the

government, checked an increase in wealth that made France in

1789 seem like a different land from France in 1715. The lot

of large classes was still miserable, the burden of taxation

upon a large part of the population was still grievous, there

were sections where Arthur Young could truly say that he found

only poverty and privileges, but the country as a whole was

more prosperous than Germany or Spain; it was far more

prosperous than it had been under Louis XIV. ...

{1249}

Such an improvement in material conditions necessitated both

social and political changes. ... But while social conditions

had altered, political institutions remained unchanged. New

wine had been poured in, but the old bottles were still used.

Tailles and corvées were no more severe in the eighteenth than

in the fifteenth century, but they were more odious. A feudal

privilege, which had then been accepted as a part of the law

of nature, was now regarded as contrary to nature. ... A

demand for social equality, for the abolition of privileges

and immunities by which any class profited at the expense of

others, was fostered by economical changes. It received an

additional impetus from the writings of theorists,

philosophers, and political reformers. The influence of

literature in France during the eighteenth century was

important, yet it is possible to overestimate it. The seed of

political and social change was shown by the writers of the

period, but the soil was already prepared to receive it. ...

The course of events, the conduct of their rulers, prepared

the minds of the French people for political change, and

accounted for the influence which literature acquired. The

doctrines of philosophers found easy access to the hearts of a

people with whom reverence for royalty and a tranquil

acceptance of an established government had been succeeded by

contempt for the king and hatred for the regime under which

they lived. We can trace this change of sentiment during the

reign of Louis XV. The popular affection which encircled his

cradle accompanied him when he had grown to be a man. ... Few

events are more noticeable in the history of the age than the

extraordinary expressions of grief and affection that were

excited by the illness of Louis XV. in 1744. ... A preacher

hailed him as Louis the well beloved, and all the nation

adopted the title. 'What have I done to be so loved?' the king

himself asked. Certainly he had done nothing, but the

explanation was correctly given. 'Louis XV. is dear to his

people, without having done anything for them, because the

French are, of all nations, most inclined to love their king.'

This affection, the result of centuries of fidelity and zeal

for monarchical institutions, and for the sovereigns by whom

they were personified, was wholly destroyed by Louis's

subsequent career. The vices to which he became addicted were

those which arouse feelings not only of reprehension, but of

loathing. They excited both aversion and contempt. The

administration of the country was as despicable as the

character of the sovereign. Under Louis XIV. there had been

suffering and there had been disaster, but France had always

preserved a commanding position in Europe. ... But now defeat

and dishonor were the fate of a people alike powerful and

proud. ... The low profligacy into which the king had sunk,

the nullity of his character, the turpitude of his mistress,

the weakness of his administration, the failure of all his

plans, went far toward destroying the feelings of loyalty that

had so long existed in the hearts of the French people. Some

curious figures mark the decline in the estimation in which

the king was held. In 1744, six thousand masses were said at

Nôtre Dame for the restoration of Louis XV. to health; in

1757, after the attempted assassination by Damiens, there were

six hundred; when the king actually lay dying, in 1774, there

were only three. The fall from six thousand to three measures

the decline in the affection and respect of the French people

for their sovereign. It was with a public whose sentiments had

thus altered that the new philosophy found acceptance."

J. B. Perkins,

France under the Regency,

chapter 1.

ALSO IN:

F. Rocquain,

The Revolutionary Spirit preceding the French Revolution,

chapters 2-8.

J. Murray,

French Finance and Financiers under Louis XV.

FRANCE: A. D. 1725.

The alliance of Hanover.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1713-1725.

FRANCE: A. D. 1727-1731.

Ineffectual congress at Soissons.

The Treaty of Seville, with Spain and England.

The Second Treaty of Vienna.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1726-1731.

FRANCE: A. D. 1733.

The First Family Compact of the Bourbons (France and Spain).

"The two lines of the house of Bourbon [in France and in

Spain] once more became in the highest degree prominent. ...

As early as November 1733 a Family Compact (the first of the

series) was concluded between them, in which they contemplated

the possibility of a war against England, but without waiting

for it entered into an agreement against the maritime

supremacy of that power. ... The commercial privileges granted

to the English in the Peace of Utrecht seemed to both courts

to be intolerable."

L. von Ranke,

History of England,

book 22, chapter 4 (volume 5).

"It is hardly too much to say that the Family Compact of 1733,

though even yet not generally known to exist, is the most

important document of the middle period of the 18th century

and the most indispensable to history. If that period seems to

us confused, if we lose ourselves in the medley of its

wars--war of the Polish election, war of Jenkins's ears, war

of the Austrian succession, colonial war of 1756--the simple

reason is that we do not know this treaty, which furnishes the

clue. From it we may learn that in this period, as in that of

Louis XIV. and in that of Napoleon, Europe struggled against

the ambitious and deliberately laid design of an ascendant

power, with this difference, that those aggressors were

manifest to all the world and their aims not difficult to

understand, whereas this aggression proceeded by ambuscade,

and, being the aggression not of a single state but of an

alliance, and a secret alliance, did not become clearly

manifest to Europe even when it had to a considerable extent

attained its objects. ... The first two articles define the

nature of the alliance, that it involves a mutual guarantee of

all possessions, and has for its object, first, the honour,

glory, and interests of both powers, and, secondly, their

defence against all damage, vexation, and prejudice that may

threaten them." The first declared object of the Compact is to

secure the position of Don Carlos, the Infant of Spain,

afterwards Charles III., in Italy, and "to obtain for him the

succession in Tuscany, protecting him against any attack that

may be attempted by the Emperor or by England. Next, France

undertakes to 'aid Spain with all her forces by land or sea,

if Spain should suspend England's enjoyment of commerce and

her other advantages, and England out of revenge should resort

to hostilities and insults in the dominions and states of the

crown of Spain, whether within or outside of Europe.'"

{1250}

Further articles provide for the making of efforts to induce

Great Britain to restore Gibraltar to Spain; set forth "that

the foreign policy of both states is to be guided exclusively

by the interests of the house"; denounce the Austrian

Pragmatic as "opposed to the security of the house of

Bourbon." "The King of France engages to send 32,000 infantry

and 8,000 cavalry into Italy, and to maintain other armies on

his other frontiers; also to have a squadron ready at Toulon,

either to join the Spanish fleet or to act separately, and

another squadron at Brest, 'to keep the English in fear and

jealousy'; also, in case of war with England breaking out, to

commission the largest possible number of privateers. Spain

also promises a fixed number of troops. The 11th and 12th

articles lay the foundation of a close commercial alliance to

be formed between France and Spain. Article 13 runs as

follows:--'His Catholic majesty, recognising all the abuses

which have been introduced into commerce, chiefly by the

British nation, in the eradication of which the French and

Spanish nations are equally interested, has determined to

bring everything back within rule and into agreement with the

letter of treaties'"--to which end the two kings make common

cause. "Finally the 14th article provides that the present

treaty shall remain profoundly secret as long as the

contracting parties shall judge it agreeable to their

interests, and shall be regarded from this day as an eternal

and irrevocable Family Compact. ... Here is the explanation of

the war which furnished the immediate occasion of the first

Compact, a war most misleadingly named from the Polish

election which afforded an ostensible pretext for it, and

deserving better to be called the Bourbon invasion of Italy.

Here too is sketched out the course which was afterwards taken

by the Bourbon courts in the matter of the Pragmatic Sanction.

Thirdly, here most manifestly is the explanation of that war

of Jenkins's ears, which we have a habit of representing as

forced upon Spain by English commercial cupidity, but which

appears here as deliberately planned in concert by the Bourbon

courts in order to eradicate the 'abuses which have been

allowed to creep into trade.'"

J. R. Seeley,

The House of Bourbon

(English History Review, January, 1886).

ALSO IN:

J. McCarthy,

History of the Four Georges,

chapter 22 (volume 2).

FRANCE: A. D. 1733-1735.

War with Austria, in Germany and Italy.

Final acquisition of Lorraine.

Naples and Sicily transferred to Spain.

In the war with Austria which was brought about by the

question of the Polish succession (see POLAND: A. D.

1732-1733), the French "struck at the Rhine and at Italy,

while the other powers looked on unmoved; Spain watching her

moment, at which she might safely interfere for her own

interests in Italy. The army of the Rhine, which reached

Strasburg in autumn 1733, was commanded by Marshal Berwick,

who had been called away from eight years of happy and

charming leisure at Fitz-James. With him served for the first

time in the French army their one great general of the coming

age, and he too a foreigner, Maurice, son of Augustus II. of

Poland and the lovely Countess of Königsmark. ... He is best

known to us as Marshal Saxe. It was too late to accomplish

much in 1733, and the French had to content themselves with

the capture of Kehl: in the winter the Imperialists

constructed strong lines at Ettlingen, a little place not far

from Carlsruhe, between Kehl, which the French held, and

Philipsburg, at which they were aiming. In the spring of 1734

French preparations were slow and feeble: a new power had

sprung up at Paris in the person of Belle-Isle, Fouquet's

grandson, who had much of the persuasive ambition of his

grandfather. He was full of schemes, and induced the aged

Fleury to believe him to be the coming genius of French

generalship; the careful views of Marshal Berwick suited ill

his soaring spirit; he wanted to march headlong into Saxony

and Bohemia. Berwick would not allow so reckless a scheme to

be adopted; still Belle-Isle, as lieutenant-general with an

almost independent command, was sent to besiege Trarbach on

the Moselle, an operation which delayed the French advance on

the Rhine. At last, however, Berwick moved forwards. By

skilful arrangements he neutralised the Ettlingen lines, and

without a battle forced the Germans to abandon them. Their

army withdrew to Heilbronn, where it was joined by Prince

Eugene. Berwick, freed from their immediate presence, and

having a great preponderance in force, at once sat down before

Philipsburg. There, on the 12th of June, as he visited the

trenches, he was struck by a ball and fell dead. So passed

away the last but one of the great generals of Louis XIV.:

France never again saw his like till the genius of the

Revolution evoked a new race of heroes. It was thought at

first that Berwick's death, like Turenne's, would end the

campaign, and that the French army must get back across the

Rhine. The position seemed critical, Philipsburg in front, and

Prince Eugene watching without. The Princes of the Empire,

however, had not put out any strength in this war, regarding

it chiefly as an Austrian affair; and the Marquis d'Asfeld,

who took the command of the French forces, was able to hold

on, and in July to reduce the great fortress of Philipsburg.

Therewith the campaign of the Rhine closed. In Italy things

had been carried on with more vigour and variety. The veteran

Villars, now 81 years old, was in command, under

Charles-Emmanuel, King of Sardinia. ... Villars found it quite

easy to occupy all the Milanese: farther he could not go; for

Charles-Emmanuel, after the manner of his family, at once

began to deal behind his back with the Imperialists and the

campaign dragged. The old Marshal, little brooking

interference and delay, for he still was full of fire, threw

up his command, and started for France: on the way he was

seized with illness at Turin, and died there five days after

Berwick had been killed at Philipsburg. With them the long

series of the generals of Louis XIV. comes to an end. Coigny

and the Duke de Broglie succeeded to the command. Not far from

Parma they fought a murderous battle with the Austrians, hotly

contested, and a Cadmean victory for the French: it arrested

their forward movement, and two months were spent in enforced

idleness. In September 1734 the Imperialists inflicted a heavy

check on the French at the Secchia; afterwards however

emboldened by this success, they fought a pitched battle at

Guastalla, in which, after a fierce struggle, the French

remained masters of the field. Their losses, the advanced time

of the year, and the uncertainty as to the King of Sardinia's

movements and intentions, rendered the rest of the campaign

unimportant.

{1251}

As however the Imperialists, in order to make head against the

French in the valley of the Po, had drawn all their available

force out of the Neapolitan territory, the Spaniards were able

to slip in behind them, and to secure that great prize. Don

Carlos landed at Naples and was received with transports of

joy: the Austrians were defeated at Bitonto; the Spaniards

then crossed into Sicily, which also welcomed them gladly; the

two kingdoms passed willingly under the rule of the Spaniards.

In 1735 Austria made advances in the direction of peace; for

the French had stirred up their old friend the Turk, who, in

order to save Poland, proposed to invade Hungary. Fleury, no

lover of war, and aware that England's neutrality could not

last forever, was not unwilling to treat: a Congress at Vienna

followed, and before the end of 1735 peace again reigned in

Europe. The terms of the Treaty of Vienna (3 October 1735)

were very favourable to France. Austria ceded Naples and

Sicily, Elba, and the States degli Presidii to Spain, to be

erected into a separate kingdom for Don Carlos: France

obtained Lorraine and Bar, which were given to Stanislaus

Leczinski on condition that he should renounce all claim to

the Polish Crown; they were to be governed by him under French

administration: Francis Stephen the former Duke obtained, as

an indemnity, the reversion of Tuscany, which fell to him in

the following year. Parma and Piacenza returned to the

Emperor, who also obtained from France a guarantee of the

Pragmatic Sanction. Thus France at last got firm hold of the

much-desired Lorraine country, though it was not absolutely

united to her till the death of Stanislaus in 1766."

G. W. Kitchin,

History of France,

book 6, chapter 2.

ALSO IN:

F. P. Guizot,

Popular History of France,

chapter 52 (volume 6).

FRANCE: A. D. 1738-1740.

The Question of the Austrian Succession.

Guarantee of the Pragmatic Sanction.

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1718-1738, and 1740.

FRANCE: A. D. 1740-1741.

Beginning of the War of the Austrian Succession.

Seizure of Silesia by Frederick the Great.

French responsibility for the war.

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1740-1741;

and 1741 (APRIL-MAY), (MAY-JUNE).

FRANCE: A. D. 1741-1743.

The War of the Austrian Succession in Italy.

See ITALY: A. D. 1741-1743;

and AUSTRIA: A. D. 1741, to 1743.

FRANCE: A. D. 1743 (October).

The Second Family Compact of the Bourbon kings.

"France and Spain signed a secret treaty of perpetual alliance

at Fontainebleau, October 25th, 1743. The treaty is remarkable

as the precursor of the celebrated Family Compact between the

French and Spanish Bourbons. The Spaniards, indeed, call it

the Second Family Compact, the first being the Treaty of

November 7th, 1733, of which, with regard to colonial affairs,

it was a renewal. But this treaty had a more special reference

to Italy. Louis XV. engaged to declare war against Sardinia,

and to aid Spain in conquering the Milanese. Philip V.

transferred his claims to that duchy to his son, the Infant

Don Philip, who was also to be put in possession of Parma and

Piacenza. All the possessions ceded by France to the King of

Sardinia, by the Treaty of Utrecht, were to be again wrested

from him. A public alliance was to be formed, to which the

Emperor Charles VII. was to accede; whose states, and even

something more, were to be recovered for him. Under certain

circumstances war was to be declared against England; in which

case France was to assist in the recovery of Gibraltar, and

also, if possible, of Minorca. The new colony of Georgia was

to be destroyed, the Asiento withdrawn from England, &c."

T. H. Dyer,

History of Modern Europe,

book 6, chapter 4 (volume 3).

FRANCE: A. D. 1743-1752.

Struggle of French and English for supremacy in India.

See INDIA: A. D. 1743-1752.

FRANCE: A. D. 1744-1745.

The War of the Austrian Succession in America.

See NEW ENGLAND: A. D. 1744, and 1745.

A. D. 1741-1747.

War of the Austrian Succession in Italy,

Germany and the Netherlands.

See ITALY: A. D. 1744, to 1746-1747;

AUSTRIA: A. D. 1743-1744;

and NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1745, and 1746-1747.

FRANCE: A. D. 1748 (October).

Termination and results of the War of the Austrian Succession.

See AIX-LA-CHAPELLE: A. D. 1748;

and NEW ENGLAND: A. D. 1745-1748.

FRANCE: A. D. 1748-1754.

Active measures in America to fortify possession of the Ohio

valley and the West.

See OHIO (VALLEY): A. D. 1748-1754.

FRANCE: A. D. 1749-1755.

Unsettled boundary disputes in America.

Preludes of the last contest with England for dominion in the

New World.

See NOVA SCOTIA: A. D. 1749-1755;

CANADA: A. D. 1750-1753;

OHIO (VALLEY): A. D. 1754.

FRANCE: A. D. 1755.

Causes and provocations of the Seven Years War.

See GERMANY: A.D. 1755-1756;

and ENGLAND: A. D. 1754-1755.

FRANCE: A. D. 1755.

Naval reverse on the Newfoundland coast.

See CANADA: A. D. 1755 (JUNE).

FRANCE: A. D. 1755-1762.

The Seven Years War: Campaigns in America.

See CANADA: A. D. 1750-1753, to 1760;

NOVA SCOTIA: A. D. 1749-1755, and 1755;

OHIO (VALLEY): A. D. 1748-1754, 1754, and 1755;

CAPE BRETON ISLAND: A. D. 1758-1760.

FRANCE: A. D. 1756 (May).

The Seven Years War: Minorca wrested from England.

See MINORCA: A. D. 1756.

FRANCE: A. D. 1757-1762.

The Seven Years War: Campaigns in Germany.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1757 (JULY-DECEMBER),

to 1759 (APRIL-AUGUST); 1760; and 1761-1762.

FRANCE: A. D. 1758-1761.

The Seven Years War: Loss of footing and influence in India.

Count Lally's failure.

See INDIA: A. D. 1758-1761.

FRANCE: A. D. 1760.

The Seven Years War: The surrender of Canada.

See CANADA: A. D. 1760.

FRANCE: A. D. 1761 (August).

The Third Family Compact of the Bourbon kings.

"On the 15th of August [1761] ... Grimaldi [Spanish ambassador

at the French court] and Choiseul [the ruling minister, at the

time, in France] signed the celebrated Family Compact. By this

treaty the Kings of France and Spain agreed for the future to

consider every Power as their enemy which might become the

enemy of either, and to guarantee the respective dominions in

all parts of the world which they might possess at the next

conclusion of peace. Mutual succours by sea and land were

stipulated, and no proposal of peace to their common enemies

was to be made, nor negotiation entered upon, unless by common

consent. The subjects of each residing in the European

dominions of the other were to enjoy the same commercial

privileges as the natives.

{1252}

Moreover, the King of Spain stipulated the accession of his

son, the King of Naples, to this alliance; but it was agreed

that no prince or potentate, except of the House of Bourbon,

should ever be admitted to its participation. Besides this

treaty, which in its words at least applied only to future and

contingent wars, and which was intended to be ultimately

published, there was also signed on the same day a special and

secret convention. This imported, that in case England and

France should still be engaged in hostilities on the 1st of

May 1762 Spain should on that day declare war against England,

and that France should at the same period restore Minorca to

Spain. ... Not only the terms but the existence of a Family

Compact were for some time kept scrupulously secret. Mr.

Stanley, however, gleaned some information from the scattered

hints of the Duke de Choiseul, and these were confirmed to

Pitt from several other quarters." As the result of the Family

Compact, England declared war against Spain on the 4th of

January, 1762. Pitt had gone out of office in October because

his colleagues and the King would not then consent to a

declaration of war against the Spanish Bourbons.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1760-1763.

The force of circumstances soon brought them to the measure.

Lord Mahon (Earl Stanhope),

History of England, 1713-1783,

chapter 37 (volume 4).

FRANCE: A. D. 1761-1764.

Proceedings against the Jesuits.

Their expulsion from the kingdom.

See JESUITS: A. D. 1761-1769.

FRANCE: A. D. 1763.

The end and results of the Seven Years War.

The Peace of Paris.

America lost, nothing gained.

See SEVEN YEARS WAR: A. D. 1763.

FRANCE: A. D. 1763.

Rights in the North American fisheries secured by the Treaty

of Paris.

See FISHERIES, NORTH AMERICAN: A. D. 1763.

FRANCE: A. D. 1768.

Acquisition of Corsica.

See CORSICA: A. D. 1729-1769.

FRANCE: A. D. 1774-1788.

The Court and Government of Louis XV!., his inheritance of

troubles, his vacillations, his helpless ministers.

Turgot, Necker, Calonne, Brienne.

Blind selfishness of the privileged orders.

The Assembly of Notables.

The Parliament of Paris.

"Louis XVI., an equitable prince, moderate in his

propensities, carelessly educated, but naturally of a good

disposition, ascended the throne [May 11, 1774] at a very

early age. He called to his side an old courtier, and

consigned to him the care of his kingdom; and divided his

confidence between Maurepas and the Queen, an Austrian

princess [Marie Antoinette], young, lively, and amiable, who

possessed a complete ascendency over him. Maurepas and the

Queen were not good friends. The King, sometimes giving way to

his minister, at others to his consort, began at an early

period the long career of his vacillations. ... The public

voice, which was loudly expressed, called for Turgot, one of

the class of economists, an honest, virtuous man, endowed with

firmness of character, a slow genius, but obstinate and

profound. Convinced of his probity, delighted with his plans

of reform, Louis XVI. frequently repeated: 'There are none

besides myself and Turgot who are friends of the people.'

Turgot's reforms were thwarted by the opposition of the

highest orders in the state, who were interested in

maintaining all kinds of abuses, which the austere minister

proposed to suppress. Louis XVI. dismissed him [1776] with

regret. During his whole life, which was only a long

martyrdom, he had the mortification to discern what was right,

to wish it sincerely, but to lack the energy requisite for

carrying it into execution. The King, placed between the

court, the parliaments, and the people, exposed to intrigues

and to suggestions of all sorts, repeatedly changed his

ministers. Yielding once more to the public voice, and to the

necessity for reform, he summoned to the finance department

Necker, a native of Geneva, who had amassed wealth as a

banker, a partisan and disciple of Colbert, as Turgot was of

Sully; an economical and upright financier, but a vain man,

fond of setting himself up for arbitrator in everything. ...

Necker re-established order in the finances, and found means

to defray the heavy expenses of the American war. ... But it

required something more than financial artifices to put an end

to the embarrassments of the exchequer, and he had recourse to

reform. He found the higher orders not less adverse to him

than they had been to Turgot; the parliaments, apprised of his

plans, combined against him, and obliged him to retire [1781].

The conviction of the existence of abuses was universal;

everybody admitted it. ... The courtiers, who derived

advantage from these abuses, would have been glad to see an

end put to the embarrassments of the exchequer, but without

its costing them a single sacrifice. ... The parliaments also

talked of the interests of the people, loudly insisted on the

sufferings of the poor, and yet opposed the equalization of

the taxes, as well as the abolition of the remains of feudal

barbarism. All talked of the public weal, few desired it; and

the people, not yet knowing who were its true friends,

applauded all those who resisted power, its most obvious

enemy. By the removal of Turgot and Necker, the state of

affairs was not changed: the distress of the treasury remained

the same. ... An intrigue brought forward M. de Calonne [in

1783, after brief careers in office of M. de Fleury and M.

d'Ormesson]. ... Calonne, clever, brilliant, fertile in

resources, relied upon his genius, upon fortune, and upon men,

and awaited the future with the most extraordinary apathy. ...

That future which had been counted upon now approached: it

became necessary at length to adopt decisive measures. It was

impossible to burden the people with fresh imposts, and yet

the coffers were empty. There was but one remedy which could

be applied; that was to reduce the expenses by the suppression

of grants; and if this expedient should not suffice, to extend

the taxes to a greater number of contributors, that is, to the

nobility and clergy. These plans, attempted successively by

Turgot and Necker, and resumed by Calonne, appeared to the

latter not at all likely to succeed, unless the consent of the

privileged classes themselves could be obtained. Calonne,

therefore, proposed to collect them together in an assembly,

to be called the Assembly of the Notables, in order to lay his

plans before them, and to gain their consent either by address or

by conviction. The assembly [which met February 22, 1787] was

composed of distinguished members of the nobility, clergy, and

magistracy, of a great number of masters of requests and some

magistrates of the provinces. ... Very warm discussions

ensued." The Notables at length "promised to sanction the

plans of Calonne, but on condition that a minister more moral

and more deserving of confidence should be appointed to carry

them into execution."

{1253}

Calonne, consequently, was dismissed, and replaced by M. de

Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse. "The Notables, bound by the

promises which they had made, readily consented to all that

they had at first refused: land-tax, stamp-duty, suppression

of the gratuitous services of vassals ('corvées'), provincial

assemblies, were all cheerfully granted. ... Had M. de Brienne

known how to profit by the advantages of his position; had he

actively proceeded with the execution of the measures assented

to by the Notables; had he submitted them all at once and

without delay to the parliament, at the instant when the

adhesion of the higher orders seemed to be wrung from

them--all would probably have been over; the parliament,

pressed on all sides, would have consented to everything. ...

Nothing of the kind, however, was done. By imprudent delays

occasion was furnished for relapses; the edicts were submitted

only one after another; the parliament had time to discuss, to

gain courage, and to recover from the sort of surprise by

which the Notables had been taken. It registered, after long

discussions, the edict enacting the second abolition of the

'corvées,' and another permitting the free exportation of

corn. Its animosity was particularly directed against the

land-tax; but it feared lest by a refusal it should enlighten

the public, and show that its opposition was entirely selfish.

It hesitated, when it was spared this embarrassment by the

simultaneous presentation of the edict on the stamp-duty and

the land-tax, and especially by opening the deliberations with

the former. The parliament had thus an opportunity of refusing

the first without entering into explanations respecting the

second; and, in attacking the stamp-duty, which affected the

majority of the payers of taxes, it seemed to defend the

interest of the public. At a sitting which was attended by the

peers, it denounced the abuses, the profligacy, and the

prodigality of the court, and demanded statements of

expenditure. A councillor, punning upon the 'états'

(statements) exclaimed ... --'It is not statements, but

States-General that we want.' ... The utterance of a single

word presented an unexpected direction to the public mind: it

was repeated by every mouth, and States-General were loudly

demanded."

A. Thiers,

History of the French Revolution

(American edition), volume 1, pages 17-21.

"There is no doubt that the French administrative body, at the

time when Louis XVI. began to reign, was corrupt and

self-seeking. In the management of the finances and of the

army, illegitimate profits were made. But this was not the

worst evil from which the public service was suffering. France

was in fact governed by what in modern times is called 'a

ring.' The members of such an organization pretend to serve

the sovereign, or the public, and in some measure actually do

so; but their rewards are determined by intrigue and favor,

and are entirely disproportionate to their services. They

generally prefer jobbery to direct stealing, and will spend a

million of the state's money in a needless undertaking, in

order to divert a few thousands into their own pockets. They

hold together against all the world, while trying to

circumvent each other. Such a ring in old France was the

court. By such a ring will every country be governed, where

the sovereign who possesses the political power is weak in

moral character or careless of the public interest; whether

that sovereign be a monarch, a chamber, or the mass of the

people. Louis XVI., king of France and of Navarre, was more

dull than stupid, and weaker in will than in intellect. ... He

was ... thoroughly conscientious, and had a high sense of the

responsibility of his great calling. He was not indolent,

although heavy, and his courage, which was sorely tested, was

never broken. With these virtues he might have made a good

king, had he possessed firmness of will enough to support a

good minister, or to adhere to a good policy. But such

strength had not been given him. Totally incapable of standing

by himself, he leant successively, or simultaneously, on his

aunt, his wife, his ministers, his courtiers, as ready to

change his policy as his adviser. Yet it was part of his

weakness to be unwilling to believe himself under the guidance

of any particular person; he set a high value on his own

authority, and was inordinately jealous of it. No one,

therefore, could acquire a permanent influence. Thus a

well-meaning man became the worst of sovereigns. ... Louis XV.

had been led by his mistresses; Louis XVI. was turned about by

the last person who happened to speak to him. The courtiers,

in their turn, were swayed by their feelings, or their

interests. They formed parties and combinations, and intrigued

for or against each other. They made bargains, they gave and

took bribes. In all these intrigues, bribes, and bargains, the

court ladies had a great share. They were as corrupt as the

men, and as frivolous. It is probable that in no government

did women ever exercise so great an influence. The factions

into which the court was divided tended to group themselves

round certain rich and influential families. Such were the

Noailles, an ambitious and powerful house, with which

Lafayette was connected by marriage; the Broglies, one of whom

had held the thread of the secret diplomacy which Louis XV.

had carried on behind the backs of his acknowledged ministers;

the Polignacs, new people, creatures of Queen Marie

Antoinette; the Rohans, through the influence of whose great

name an unworthy member of the family was to rise to high

dignity in the church and the state, and then to cast a deep

shadow on the darkening popularity of that ill-starred

princess. Such families as these formed an upper class among

nobles. ... It is not easy, in looking at the French

government in the eighteenth century, to decide where the

working administration ended, and where the useless court that

answered no real purpose began. ... There was the department of

hunting and that of buildings, a separate one for royal

journeys, one for the guard, another for police, yet another

for ceremonies. There were five hundred officers 'of the

mouth,' table-bearers distinct from chair-bearers. There were

tradesmen, from apothecaries and armorers at one end of the

list to saddle-makers, tailors and violinists at the other. ...

The military and civil households of the king and of the

royal family are said to have consisted of about fifteen

thousand souls, and to have cost forty-five million francs per

annum. The holders of many of the places served but three

months apiece out of every year, so that four officers and

four salaries were required, instead of one. With such a

system as this we cannot wonder that the men who administered

the French government were generally incapable and

self-seeking. Most of them were politicians rather than

administrators, and cared more for their places than for their

country. Of the few conscientious and patriotic men who

obtained power, the greater number lost it very speedily."

E. J. Lowell,

The Eve of the French Revolution,

chapter 2.

ALSO IN:

F. Rocquain,

The Revolutionary Spirit preceding the French Revolution,

chapters 9-11.

Mme. de Stael,

Considerations on the Principal Events

of the French Revolution,

chapters 3-10 (volume 1).

J. Necker,

On the French Revolution,

part. 1, section 1 (volume 1).

Condorcet,

Life of Turgot,

chapters 5-6.

L. Say,

Turgot,

chapters 5-7.

C. D. Yonge,

Life of Marie Antoinette,

chapters 8-21.

{1254}

FRANCE: A. D. 1778 (February).

Treaty with the United States of America.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1776-1778,

and 1778 (FEBRUARY).

FRANCE: A. D. 1780 (July).

Fresh aid to the United States of America.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1780 (July).

FRANCE: A. D. 1782.

Disastrous naval defeat by Rodney.

Unsuccessful siege of Gibraltar.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1780-1782.

FRANCE: A. D. 1782.

The negotiation of Peace between Great Britain and the United

States of America.

Dissatisfaction of the French minister.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1782 (SEPTEMBER),

and (SEPTEMBER-NOVEMBER).

FRANCE: A. D. 1784-1785.

The affair of the Diamond Necklace.

The chief actor in the affair of the diamond necklace, which

caused a great scandal and smirched the queen's name, was an

adventuress who called herself the Comtesse de Lamotte, and

claimed descent from Henry II., but who had been half servant,

half companion, to a lady of quality, and had picked up a

useful acquaintance with the manners and the gossip of court

society. "Madame de Lamotte's original patroness had a

visiting acquaintance with the Cardinal Prince Louis de Rohan,

and in her company her protégée learned to know him also.

Prince Louis, who had helped to receive Marie Antoinette at

Strasburg, had been the French ambassador at Vienna, where he

had disgusted and incensed Maria Theresa by his worldliness,

profligacy, and arrogance. She had at last procured his

withdrawal, and her letters expressing a positive terror lest

he should come near Marie Antoinette and acquire an influence

over her, were not without their effect. He was not allowed to

appear at Court, and for ten long years fretted and fumed

under a sense of the royal displeasure. ... He was now a man

bordering on fifty, grey-headed, rosy, 'pursy,' with nothing

save his blue blood and the great offices which he disgraced

to recommend him. Madame de Lamotte, hovering about Paris and

Versailles, where she had lodgings in La Belle Inage, tried to

make her own of backstairs gossip, and picked up a hint or

two. Suddenly a great idea struck her, founded on the history

of a magnificent necklace dangled before bright eyes, over

which many an excitable imagination gloated. The Queen had a

court jeweller, Bœhmer, who had formerly been jeweller to the

King of Saxony at Dresden. ... For a period of years he had

been collecting and assorting the stones which should form an

incomparable necklace, in row upon row, pendants and tassels

of lustrous diamonds, till the price reached the royal pitch

of from eighty to ninety thousand pounds English money. This

costly 'collar,' according to rumour, was ... meant, in the

beginning, for the Comtesse du Barry. In the end, it ... was

offered with confidence to the Queen. ... She declined to

buy--she had enough diamonds. ... There was nothing for it but

that Bœhmer should 'hawk' his necklace in every Court of

Europe, without success, till the German declared himself

ruined, and passionately protested that, if the Queen would

not buy the diamonds, there was no resource for him save to

throw himself into the Seine. But there was a resource,

unhappily for Bœhmer, unhappily for all concerned, most so for

the poor Queen. Madame de Lamotte, in keeping up her

acquaintance with Prince Louis de Rohan, began to hint darkly

that there might be ways of winning the royal favour. She

threw out cunning words about the degree of importance and

trust to which she had attained in the highest quarters at

Versailles; about the emptiness of the Queen's exchequer, with

consequent difficulties in the discharge of her charities;

about the secret royal desire for the famous necklace, which

the King would not enable Marie Antoinette to obtain. The

blinded and besotted Cardinal drank in these insinuations. The

black art was called in to deepen his convictions. In an age

when many men, especially many churchmen, believed in nothing,

in spite of their professions, naturally they were given over

to believe a lie. Cagliostro, astrologer and modern magician,

was flourishing in Paris, and by circles and signs he promised

the priest, De Rohan, progress in the only suit he had at

heart. Still the dupe was not so infatuated as to require no

proof of the validity of these momentous implications, and

proof was not wanting; notes were handed to him, to be

afterwards shown to Bœhmer, graciously acknowledging his

devotion, and authorising him to buy for the Queen the diamond

necklace. These notes were apparently written in the Queen's

hand (that school-girl's scrawl of which Maria Theresa was

wont to complain); but they were signed 'Marie Antoinette de

France,' a signature which so great a man as the Cardinal

ought to have known was never employed by the Queen, for the

very good reason that the termination 'de France' belonged to

the children and not to the wife of the sovereign. Even a

further assurance that all was right was granted. The

Cardinal, trembling in a fever of hope and expectation, was

told that a private interview with the Queen would be

vouchsafed to him at midnight in the Park of Versailles. At

the appointed hour, on the night of the 28th of July, 1784, De

Rohan, in a blue greatcoat and slouched hat, was stationed,

amidst shrouding, sultry darkness, in the neighbourhood of the

palace. Madame de Lamotte, in a black domino, hovered near to

give the signal of the Queen's approach. The whisper was

given, 'In the Hornbeam Arbour,' and the Cardinal hurried to

the spot, where he could dimly descry a tall lady in white,

with chestnut hair, blue eyes, and a commanding air, if he

could really have seen all these well-known attributes. He

knelt, but before he could do more than mutter a word of

homage and gratitude, the black domino was at his side again

with another vehement whisper, 'On vient' (They come).

{1255}

The lady in white dropped a rose, with the significant words,

'Vous savez ce que cela veut dire' (You know what that means),

and vanished before the 'Vite, vite' ('Quick, quick ') of the

black domino, for the sound of approaching footsteps was

supposed to indicate the approach of Madame and the Comtesse

d'Artois, and the Cardinal, in his turn, had to flee from

detection. What more could be required to convince a man of

the good faith of the lady. ... Bœhmer received a hint that he

might sell his necklace, through the Prince Cardinal Louis de

Rohan, to one of the great ones of the earth, who was to

remain in obscurity. The jeweller drew out his terms--sixteen

hundred thousand livres, to be paid in five equal instalments

over a year and a-half--to which he and Prince Louis affixed

their signatures. This paper Madame de Lamotte carried to

Versailles, and brought it back with the words written on the

margin, 'Bon Marie Antoinette de France.' In the meantime,

Bœhmer, the better to keep the secret, gave out that he had

sold the necklace to the Grand Turk for his favourite Sultana.

The necklace was, in fact, delivered to Prince Louis and by

him entrusted to Madame Lamotte, from whose hands it passed

--not into the Queen's. Having been taken to pieces, it was

sent in all haste out of the kingdom, while the Cardinal,

according to his own account, was still played with. ... It

goes without saying that no payment, except a small offer of

interest on the thirty thousand, was forthcoming. The Cardinal

and Bœhmer were betrayed into wrath, dismay, and despair.

Bœhmer took it upon him to apply, in respectful terms, to her

Majesty for payment; and when she said the whole thing was a

mistake, the man must be mad, and caused her words to be

written to him, he sought an interview with Madame Campan, the

first woman of the bedchamber, at her house at Crespy, where

he had been dining, and in the gardens there, in the middle of

a thunder-shower, astounded her with his version of the story.

... The Cardinal was taken to the Bastille. More arrests

followed, including those of Madame de Lamotte, staying

quietly in her house at Bar-sur-Aube, and the girl Gay

d'Oliva, an unhappy girl, tall and fair haired, taken from the

streets of Paris, and brought to the park of Versailles to

personate the Queen. It was said the Queen wept passionately

over the scandal--well she might. The court in which the case

was tried might prove the forgery, as in fact it did, though

not in the way she expected; but every Court in Europe would

ring with the story, and she had made deadly enemies, if not

of the Church itself, of the great houses of De Rohan, De

Soubise, De Guéménée, De Marsan, and their multitude of

allies. The process lasted nine months, and every exertion was

made for the deliverance of the princely culprit. ... The

result of the trial was that, though the Queen's signature was

declared false, Madame de Lamotte was sentenced to be whipped,

branded, and imprisoned for life, her husband was condemned to

the galleys, and a man called Villette de Retaux, who was the

actual fabricator of the Queen's handwriting, was sentenced to

be banished for life. The Cardinal Prince Louis de Rohan was

fully acquitted, with permission to publish what defence he

chose to write of his conduct. When he left the court, he was

escorted by great crowds, hurrahing over his acquittal,

because it was supposed to cover the Court with

mortification."

Sarah Tytler,

Marie Antoinette,

chapter 12.

ALSO IN:

T. Carlyle,

The Diamond Necklace

(Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, volume 5).

H. Vizetelly,

The Story of the Diamond Necklace.

FRANCE: A. D. 1787-1789.

Struggle of the Crown with the Parliament of Paris.

The demand for a meeting of the States-General yielded to.

Double representation of the Third Estate conceded.

The make-up of the States-General as elected by the three

Estates.

Banished to Troyes (August, 1787), in consequence of its

refusal to register two edicts relating to the stamp-duty and

the land-tax, the Parliament of Paris "grew weary of exile,

and the minister recalled it on condition that the two edicts

should be passed. But this was only a suspension of

hostilities; the necessities of the crown soon rendered the

struggle more obstinate and violent. The minister had to make

fresh applications for money; his existence depended on the

issue of several successive loans to the amount of

440,000,000. It was necessary to obtain the enrolment of them.

Brienne, expecting opposition from the parliament, procured

the enrolment of this edict, by a 'bed of justice,' and to

conciliate the magistracy and public opinion, the protestants

were restored to their rights in the same sitting, and Louis

XVI. promised an annual publication of the state of finances,

and the convocation of the states-general before the end of

five years. But these concessions were no longer sufficient:

parliament refused the enrolment, and rose against the

ministerial tyranny. Some of its members, among others the

duke of Orleans, were banished. Parliament protested by a

decree against 'lettres de cachet,' and required the recall of

its members. This decree was annulled by the king, and

confirmed by parliament. The warfare increased. The magistracy

of Paris was supported by all the magistracy of France, and

encouraged by public opinion. It proclaimed the rights of the

nation, and its own incompetence in matters of taxation; and,

become liberal from interest, and rendered generous by

oppression, it exclaimed against arbitrary imprisonment, and

demanded regularly convoked states-general. After this act of

courage, it decreed the irremovability of its members, and the

incompetence of any who might usurp their functions. This bold

manifesto was followed by the arrest of two members,

d'Eprémenil and Goislard, by the reform of the body, and the

establishment of a plenary court. Brienne understood that the

opposition of the parliament was systematic, that it would be

renewed on every fresh demand for subsidies, or on the

authorization of every loan. Exile was but a momentary remedy,

which suspended opposition, without destroying it. He then

projected the reduction of this body to judicial functions.

... All the magistracy of France was exiled on the same day,

in order that the new judicial organization might take place.

The keeper of the seals deprived the Parliament of Paris of

its political attributes, to invest with them a plenary court,

ministerially composed, and reduced its judicial competence in

favour of bailiwicks, the jurisdiction of which he extended.

Public opinion was indignant; the Châtelet protested, the

provinces rose, and the plenary court could neither be formed

nor act. Disturbances broke out in Dauphiné, Brittany,

Provence, Flanders, Languédoc, and Béarn; the ministry,

instead of the regular opposition of parliament, had to

encounter one much more animated and factious.

{1256}

The nobility, the third estate, the provincial states, and

even the clergy, took part in it. Brienne, pressed for money,

had called together an extraordinary assembly of the clergy,

who immediately made an address to the king, demanding the

abolition of his plenary court, and the recall of the

states-general: they alone could thenceforth repair the

disordered state of the finances, secure the national debt,

and terminate these disputes for power. ... Obtaining neither

taxes nor loans, unable to make use of the plenary court, and

not wishing to recall the parliaments, Brienne, as a last

resource, promised the convocation of the states-general. By

this means he hastened his ruin. ... He succumbed on the 25th

August, 1788. The cause of his fall was a suspension of the

payment of the interest on the debt, which was the

commencement of bankruptcy. This minister has been the most

blamed because he came last. Inheriting the faults, the

embarrassments of past times, he had to struggle with the

difficulties of his position with inefficient means. He tried

intrigue and oppression; he banished, suspended, disorganized

parliament; everything was an obstacle to him, nothing aided

him. After a long struggle, he sank under lassitude and

weakness; I dare not say from incapacity, for had he been far

stronger and more skilful, had he been a Richelieu or a Sully,

he would still have fallen. It no longer appertained to anyone

arbitrarily to raise money or to oppress the people. ... The

states-general had become the only means of government, and

the last resource of the throne. They had been eagerly

demanded by parliament and the peers of the kingdom, on the

13th of July, 1787; by the states of Dauphiné, in the assembly

of Vizille; by the clergy in its assembly at Paris. The

provincial states had prepared the public mind for them; and

the notables were their precursors. The king after having, on

the 18th of December, 1787, promised their convocation in five

years, on the 8th of August, 1788, fixed the opening for the

1st of May, 1789. Necker was recalled, parliament

re-established, the plenary court abolished, the bailiwicks

destroyed, and the provinces satisfied; and the new minister

prepared everything for the election of deputies and the

holding of the states. At this epoch a great change took place

in the opposition, which till then had been unanimous. Under

Brienne, the ministry had encountered opposition from all the

various bodies of the state, because it had sought to oppress

them. Under Necker, it met with resistance from the same

bodies, which desired power for themselves and oppression for

the people. From being despotic, it had become national, and

it still had them all equally against it. Parliament had

maintained a struggle for authority, and not for the public

welfare; and the nobility had united with the third estate,

rather against the government than in favour of the people.

Each of these bodies had demanded the states-general: the

parliament, in the hope of ruling them as it had done in 1614;

and the nobility, in the hope of regaining its lost influence.

Accordingly, the magistracy proposed as a model for the

states-general of 1789, the form of that of 1614, and public

opinion abandoned it; the nobility refused its consent to the

double representation of the third estate, and a division

broke out between these two orders. This double representation

was required by the intellect of the age, the necessity of

reform, and by the importance which the third estate had

acquired. It had already been admitted into the the provincial

assemblies. ... Opinion became daily more decided, and Necker

wishing, yet fearing, to satisfy it, and desirous of

conciliating all orders, of obtaining general approbation,

convoked a second assembly of notables on the 6th of November,

1788, to deliberate on the composition of the states-general,

and the election of its members. ... Necker, having been

unable to make the notables adopt the [double] representation

of the third estate, caused it to be adopted by the council.

The royal declaration of the 27th of November decreed, that

the deputies in the states-general should amount to at least a

thousand, and that the deputies of the third estate should be

equal in number to the deputies of the nobility and clergy

together. Necker moreover obtained the admission of the curés

into the order of the clergy, and of protestants into that of

the third estate. The district assemblies were convoked for

the elections; every one exerted himself to secure the

nomination of members of his own party, and to draw up

manifestoes setting forth his views. Parliament had but little

influence in the elections, and the court none at all. The

nobility selected a few popular deputies, but for the most

part devoted to the interests of their order, and as much

opposed to the third estate as to the oligarchy of the great

families of the court. The clergy nominated bishops and abbés

attached to privilege, and cures favourable to the popular

cause, which was their own; lastly, the third estate selected

men enlightened, firm and unanimous in their wishes. The

deputation of the nobility was comprised of 242 gentlemen, and

28 members of the parliament; that of the clergy, of 48

archbishops or bishops, 35 abbés or deans, and 208 curés; and

that of the communes, of two ecclesiastics, 12 noblemen, 18

magistrates of towns, 200 county members, 212 barristers, 16

physicians, and 216 merchants and agriculturists. The opening

of the states-general was fixed for the 5th of May, 1789."

F. A. Mignet,

History of the French Revolution,

introd.

ALSO IN:

W. Smyth,

Lectures on the History of the French Revolution,

lecture 6 (volume 1).

J. Necker,

On the French Revolution,

part 1, section 1.

FRANCE: A. D. 1789.

The condition of the people on the eve of the great

Revolution.

The sources and causes of its destructive fury.

"In 1789 three classes of persons, the Clergy, the Nobles, and

the King occupied the most prominent position in the State,

with all the advantages which it comports; namely, authority,

property, honors, or, at the very least, privileges,

immunities, favors, pensions, preferences, and the like. ...

The privileged classes number about 270,000 persons,

comprising of the nobility 140,000 and of the clergy 130,000.

This makes from 25,000 to 30,000 noble families; 23,000 monks

in 2,500 monasteries, and 37,000 nuns in 1,500 convents, and

60,000 curates and vicars in as many churches and chapels.

Should the reader desire a more distinct impression of them,

he may imagine on each square league of territory, and to each

thousand of inhabitants, one noble family in its weathercock

mansion, in each village a curate and his church, and, every

six or seven leagues, a conventual body of men or of women. ...

{1257}

A fifth of the soil belongs to the crown and the communes, a

fifth to the third estate, a fifth to the rural population, a

fifth to the nobles and a fifth to the clergy. Accordingly, if

we deduct the public lands, the privileged classes own one

half of the kingdom. This large portion, moreover, is at the

same time the richest, for it comprises almost all the large

and handsome buildings, the palaces, castles, convents, and

cathedrals, and almost all the valuable movable property. ...

Such is the total or partial exemption from taxation. The

tax-collectors halt in their presence, because the king well

knows that feudal property has the same origin as his own; if

royalty is one privilege seigniory is another; the king

himself is simply the most privileged among the privileged.

... After the assaults of 450 years, taxation, the, first of

fiscal instrumentalities, the most burdensome of all, leaves

feudal property almost intact. ... The privileged person

avoids or repels taxation, not merely because it despoils him,

but because it belittles him; it is a mark of plebeian

condition, that is to say, of former servitude, and he resists

the fisc as much through pride as through interest. ... La

Bruyère wrote, just a century before 1789, 'Certain

savage-looking beings, male and female, are seen in the

country, black, livid and sunburnt, and belonging to the soil

which they dig and grub with invincible stubbornness. They

seem capable of articulation, and, when they stand erect they

display human lineaments. They are, in fact, men. They retire

at night into their dens, where they live on black bread,

water and roots. They spare other human beings the trouble of

sowing, ploughing and harvesting, and thus should not be in

want of the bread they have planted.' They continue in want of

it during 25 years after this, and die in herds. I estimate

that in 1715 more than one-third of the population, six

millions, perish with hunger and of destitution. The picture,

accordingly, for the first quarter of the century preceding

the Revolution, far from being overdrawn, is the reverse; we

shall see that, during more than half a century, up to the

death of Louis XV., it is exact; perhaps, instead of weakening

any of its points, they should be strengthened. . . .

Undoubtedly the government under Louis XVI. is milder; the

intendants are more humane, the administration is less rigid,

the 'taille' becomes less unequal, and the 'corvée' is less

onerous through its transformation, in short, misery has

diminished, and yet this is greater than human nature can

bear. Examine administrative correspondence for the last

thirty years preceding the Revolution. Countless statements

reveal excessive suffering, even when not terminating in fury.

Life to a man of the lower class, to an artisan, or workman,

subsisting on the labor of his own hands, is evidently

precarious; he obtains simply enough to keep him from

starvation and he does not always get that. Here, in four

districts, 'the inhabitants live only on buckwheat,' and for

five years, the apple crop having failed, they drink only

water. There, in a country of vineyards, 'the vine-dressers

each year are reduced, for the most part, to begging their

bread during the dull season.' ... In a remote canton the

peasants cut the grain still green and dry it in the oven,

because they are too hungry to wait. ... Between 1750 and

1760, the idlers who eat suppers begin to regard with

compassion and alarm the laborers who go without dinners. Why

are the latter so impoverished, and by what chance, on a soil

as rich as that of France, do those lack bread who grow the

grain? In the first place, many farms remain uncultivated,

and, what is worse, many are deserted. According to the best

observers 'one-quarter of the soil is absolutely lying waste.

... Hundreds and hundreds of arpents of heath and moor form

extensive deserts.' ... This is not sterility but decadence.

The régime invented by Louis XIV. has produced its effect; the

soil for a century past is reverting back to a wild state. ... In

the second place, cultivation, when it does take place, is

carried on according to mediæval modes. Arthur Young, in 1789,

considers that French agriculture has not progressed beyond

that of the 10th century. Except in Flanders and on the plains

of Alsace, the fields lie fallow one year out of three and

oftentimes one year out of two. The implements are poor; there

are no ploughs made of iron; in many places the plough of

Virgil's time is still in use. ... Arthur Young shows that in

France those who lived on field labor, and they constituted

the great majority, are 76 per cent. less comfortable than the

same laborers in England, while they are 76 per cent. less

well fed and well clothed, besides being worse treated in

sickness and in health. The result is that, in seven-eighths

of the kingdom, there are no farmers but simply métayers.

['The poor people,' says Arthur Young, 'who cultivate the soil

here are métayers, that is, men who hire the land without ability

to stock it; the proprietor is forced to provide cattle and

seed, and he and his tenants divide the product.'] ... Misery

begets bitterness in a man; but ownership coupled with misery

renders him still more bitter"; and, strange as it appears,

the acquisition of land by the French peasants, in small

holdings, went on steadily during the 18th century, despite

the want and suffering which were so universal. "The fact is

almost incredible, but it is nevertheless true. We can only

explain it by the character of the French peasant, by his

sobriety, his tenacity, his rigor with himself, his

dissimulation, his hereditary passion for property and

especially for that of the soil. He had lived on privations

and economized sou after sou. ... Towards 1760, one-quarter of

the soil is said to have already passed into the hands of

agriculturists. ... The small cultivator, however, in becoming

a possessor of the soil assumed its charges. Simply as

day-laborer, and with his arms alone, he was only partially

affected by the taxes; 'where there is nothing the king loses

his dues.' But now, vainly is he poor and declaring himself

still poorer; the fisc has a hold on him and on every portion

of his new possessions. ... In 1715, the 'taille' [see TAILLE

AND GABELLE] and the poll-tax, which he alone pays, or nearly

alone, amounts to 66,000,000 livres, the amount is 93,000,000

in 1759 and 110,000,000 in 1789. ... 'I am miserable because

too much is taken from me. Too much is taken from me because

not enough is taken from the privileged. Not only do the

privileged force me to pay in their place, but, again, they

previously deduct from my earnings their ecclesiastical and

feudal dues. When, out of my income of 100 francs, I have

parted with 53 francs, and more, to the collector, I am

obliged again to give 14 francs to the seignior, also more

than 14 for tithes, and, out of the remaining 18 or 19 francs,

I have additionally to satisfy the excise-men.

{1258}

I alone, a poor man, pay two governments, one, the old

government [the seigniorial government of the feudal regime],

local and now absent, useless, inconvenient and humiliating,

and active only through annoyances, exemptions and taxes; and

the other [the royal government], recent, centralized,

everywhere present, which, taking upon itself all functions,

has vast needs and makes my meagre shoulders support its

enormous weight.' These, in precise terms, are the vague ideas

beginning to ferment in the popular brain and encountered on

every page of the records of the States-General. ... The

privileged wrought their own destruction. ... At their head,

the king, creating France by devoting himself to her as if his

own property, ended by sacrificing her as if his own property;

the public purse is his private purse, while passions, vanities,

personal weaknesses, luxurious habits, family solicitudes, the

intrigues of a mistress and the caprices of a wife, govern a

state of 26,000,000 men with an arbitrariness, a heedlessness,

a prodigality, an unskilfulness, an absence of consistency,

that would scarcely be overlooked in the management of a

private domain. The king and the privileged excel in one

direction, in good-breeding, in good taste, in fashion, in the

talent for self-display and in entertaining, in the gift of

graceful conversation, in finesse and in gayety, in the art of

converting life into a brilliant and ingenious festivity. ...

Through the habit, perfection and sway of polished intercourse

they stamped on the French intellect a classic form, which,

combined with recent scientific acquisitions, produced the

philosophy of the 18th century, the ill-repute of tradition,

the ambition of recasting all human institutions according to

the sole dictates of reason, the appliance of mathematical

methods to politics and morals, the catechism of the rights of

man, and other dogmas of anarchical and despotic character in

the 'Contrat Social.'--Once this chimera is born they welcome

it as a drawing-room fancy; they use the little monster as a

plaything, as yet innocent and decked with ribbons like a

pastoral lambkin; they never dream of it becoming a raging,

formidable brute; they nourish it, and caress it, and then,

opening their doors, they let it descend into the

streets.--Here, amongst a middle class which the government

has rendered ill-disposed by compromising its fortunes, which

the privileged have offended by restricting its ambition,

which is wounded by inequality through injured self-esteem,

the revolutionary theory gains rapid accessions, a sudden

asperity, and, in a few years, it finds itself undisputed

master of public opinion.--At this moment, and at its summons,

another colossal monster rises up, a monster with millions of

heads, a blind, startled animal, an entire people pressed

down, exasperated and suddenly loosed against the government

whose exactions have despoiled it, against the privileged

whose rights have reduced it to starvation."

H. A. Taine,

The Ancient Régime,

book 1, chapters 1, 2,

and book 5, chapters 1, 2, 5.

"When the facts of history are fully and impartially set

forth, the wonder is rather that sane men put up with the

chaotic imbecility, the hideous injustices, the shameless

scandals, of the 'Ancien Regime,' in the earlier half of the

century, many years before the political 'Philosophes' wrote a

line,--why the Revolution did not break out in 1754 or 1757,

as it was on the brink of doing, instead of being delayed, by

the patient endurance of the people, for another generation.

It can hardly be doubted that the Revolution of '89 owed many

of its worst features to the violence of a populace degraded

to the level of the beasts by the effect of the institutions

under which they herded together and starved; and that the

work of reconstruction which it attempted was to carry into

practice the speculations of Mably and of Rousseau. But, just

as little, does it seem open to question that, neither the

writhings of the dregs of the populace in their misery, nor

the speculative demonstrations of the Philosophers, would have

come to much, except for the revolutionary movement which had

been going on ever since the beginning of the century. The

deeper source of this lay in the just and profound griefs of

at least 95 per cent. of the population, comprising all its

most valuable elements, from the agricultural peasants to the

merchants and the men of letters and science, against the

system by which they were crushed, or annoyed, whichever way

they turned. But the surface current was impelled by the

official defenders of the 'Ancien Régime' themselves. It was

the Court, the Church, the Parliaments, and, above all, the

Jesuits, acting in the interests of the despotism of the

Papacy, who, in the first half of the 18th century,

effectually undermined all respect for authority, whether

civil or religious, and justified the worst that was or could

be said by the 'Philosophes' later on."

See

PORT ROYAL AND THE JANSENISTS: A. D. 1702-1715;

and JESUITS: A.D. 1761-1767.

Prof. T. H. Huxley,

Introduction to F. Rocquain's

"The Revolutionary Spirit preceding

the French Revolution"

"I took part in the opening of the States-General, and, in

spite of the pomp with which the royal power was still

surrounded, I there saw the passing away of the old regime.

The regime which preceded '89, should, it seems to me, be

considered from a two-fold aspect: the one, the general

condition of the country, and the other, the relations

existing between the government and the country. With regard

to the former, I firmly believe that, from the earliest days

of the monarchy, France had at no period been happier than she

was then. She had not felt the effects of any great misfortune

since the crash which followed Law's system. The long lasting

ministry of Cardinal de Fleury, doubtless inglorious, but wise

and circumspect, had made good the losses and lightened the

burdens imposed at the end of the reign of Louis XV. If, since

that time, several wars undertaken with little skill, and

waged with still less, had compromised the honor of her arms

and the reputation of her government; if they had even thrown

her finances into a somewhat alarming state of disorder, it is

but fair to say that the confusion resulting therefrom had

merely affected the fortune of a few creditors, and had not

tapped the sources of public prosperity; on the contrary, what

is styled the public administration had made constant

progress. If, on the one hand, the state had not been able to

boast of any great ministers, on the other, the provinces

could show many highly enlightened and clever intendants.

Roads had been opened connecting numerous points, and had been

greatly improved in all directions. It should not be forgotten

that these benefits are principally due to the reign of Louis

XV. Their most important result had been a progressive

improvement in the condition of agriculture.

{1259}

The reign of Louis XVI. had continued favoring this wise

policy, which had not been interrupted by the, maritime war

undertaken on behalf of American independence. Many

cotton-mills had sprung, up, while considerable progress had

been made in the manufacture of printed cotton fabrics, and of

steel, and in the preparing of skins. ... I saw the splendors

of the Empire. Since the Restoration I see daily new fortunes

spring up and consolidate themselves; still nothing so far

has, in my eyes, equalled the splendor of Paris during the

years which elapsed between 1783 and 1789. ... Far be it from

me to shut my eyes to the reality of the public prosperity

which we are now [1822] enjoying. I am cognizant of the

improvement in the condition of the country districts, and I

am aware of the fact that all that rests on this solid

foundation, even though its appearance may be somewhat more

humble, is much to be preferred to a grander exterior that

might hide a less assured solidity. I do not seek to disparage

the present time--far from it. I am ready to admit the

advantages which have accrued, in many respects, as the

results of the Revolution; as, for instance, the partition of

landed property, so often assailed, and which, so long as it

does not go beyond certain limits, tends to increase wealth,

by introducing into many families a well-being hitherto

unknown to them. But, nevertheless, when I question my reason

and my conscience as to the possible future of the France of

1789, if the Revolution had not burst, if the ten years of

destruction to which it gave birth had not weighed heavily

upon that beautiful country ... I am convinced that France, at

the time I am writing, would be richer and stronger than she

is to-day."

Chancellor Pasquier,

Memoirs,

pages 44-47.

"In the spring of 1789 who could have foreseen the bloody

catastrophe? Everything was tinged with hopefulness; the world

was dreaming of the Golden Age. ... Despite the previous

disorders, and seeds of discord contained in certain cahiers,

the prevailing sentiment was confidence. ... The people

everywhere hailed with enthusiasm the new era which was

dawning. With a firm king, with a statesman who knew what he

wished, and was determined to accomplish it, this confidence

would have been an incomparable force. With a feeble prince

like Louis XVI., with an irresolute minister like Necker, it

was an appalling danger. The public, inflamed by the anarchy

that had preceded the convocation of the States, disposed,

through its inexperience, to accept all Utopias, and impelled

by its peculiar character to desire their immediate

realization, naturally grew more exacting in proportion as

they were promised more, and more impatient and irritable as

their hopes became livelier and appeared better founded. In

the midst of this general satisfaction there was but one dark

spot,--the queen. The cheers which greeted the king were

silent before his wife. Calumny had done its work; and all the

nobles from the provinces, the country curates, the citizens

of the small towns, came from the confines of France imbued

with the most contemptible prejudices against this unfortunate

princess. Pamphlets, poured out against her by malicious

enemies; vague and mysterious rumours, circulated everywhere,

repeated in whispers, without giving any clew to their

source,--the more dangerous because indefinite, and the more

readily believed because infamous and absurd,--had so often

reiterated that the queen was author of all the evil, that the

world had come to regard her as the cause of the deficit, and

the only serious obstacle to certain efficacious reforms. 'The

queen pillages on all sides; she even sends money, it is said,

to her brother, the emperor,' wrote a priest of Maine, in his

parochial register, in 1781; and he attributed the motive of

the reunion of the Notables to these supposed depredations.

If, in 1781, such reports had penetrated to the remotest parts

of the country, and found credence with such enlightened men

as the Curé Boucher, one can judge what it must have been two

years later, when the convocation of the States-General had

inflamed the minds of the people. If the States should

encounter any inevitable obstacle in their path; if certain

imprudent promises should be unfulfilled; if promised reforms

should fail,--public resentment and ill-will, always on the

alert, would be sure to blame Marie Antoinette; they would

impute to her all the evil done, and all the good left undone.

The symptoms of this distrust were manifest at the outset.

'The deputies of the Third Estate,' Madame Campan observes,

'arrived at Versailles with the strongest prejudice against

the court. The evil sayings in Paris never failed to be spread

through the provinces: they believed that the king indulged in

the pleasures of the table to a most shameful excess; they

were persuaded that the queen exhausted the State treasury to

gratify her inordinate love of luxury; almost all wished to

visit Little Trianon. As the extreme simplicity of this

pleasure-house did not correspond with their ideas, they

insisted on being shown even the smallest closets, saying that

richly furnished apartments were being concealed from them.

Finally they designated one, which according to their account

was ornamented with diamonds, and twisted columns studded with

sapphires and rubies. The queen was amused at these mad

fancies, and told the king of them.'"

M. de la Rocheterie,

Life of Marie Antoinette,

volume 2, chapter 1.

ALSO IN:

A. de Tocqueville,

On the State of Society

in France before the Revolution.

A. Young,

Travels in France, 1787-89.

R. H. Dabney,

Causes of the French Revolution.

E. J. Lowell,

The Eve of the French Revolution.

FRANCE: A. D. 1789 (May).

Meeting of the States-General.

Conflict between the three Estates.

The question of three Houses or one.

"The opening of the States-general was fixed for the 5th of

May, 1789, and Versailles was chosen as the place of their

meetings. On the 4th, half Paris poured into that town to see

the court and the deputies marching in procession to the

solemn religious ceremony, which was to inaugurate the

important epoch. ... On the following day, the States-general,

to the number of 1,200 persons, assembled in the spacious and

richly decorated 'salle des menus plaisirs.' The King

appeared, surrounded by his family, with all the magnificence

of the ancient court, and was greeted by the enthusiastic

applause of the deputies and spectators." The king made a

speech, followed by Barentin, the keeper of the great seal,

and by Necker. The latter "could not prevail upon himself to

avow to the Assembly the real state of affairs. He announced

an annual deficit of 56,000,000 francs, and thereby confused

the mind of the public, which, since the meeting of the

Notables, had always been discussing a deficit of from

120,000,000 to 140,000,000.

{1260}

He was quite right in assuming that those 56,000,000 might be

covered by economy in the expenditure; but it was both

irritating and untrue, when he, on this ground, denied the

necessity of summoning the States-general, and called their

convocation a free act of royal favour. ... The balance of

income and expenditure might, indeed, easily be restored in

the future, but the deficit of former years had been

heedlessly allowed to accumulate, and by no one more than by

Necker himself. A floating debt of 550,000,000 had to be

faced--in other words, therefore, more than a whole year's

income had been expended in advance. ... The real deficit of

the year, therefore, at the lowest calculation, amounted to

more than 200,000,000, or nearly half the annual income. ...

These facts, then, were concealed, and thus the ministry was

necessarily placed in a false position towards the

States-general; the continuance of the former abuses was

perpetuated, or a violent catastrophe made inevitable. ... For

the moment the matter was not discussed. Everything yielded to

the importance of the constitutional question--whether the

three orders should deliberate in common or apart--whether

there should be one single representative body, or independent

corporations. This point was mooted at once in its full extent

on the question, whether the validity of the elections should

be scrutinised by each order separately, or by the whole

Assembly. We need not here enter into the question of right;

but of this there can be no doubt, that the government, which

virtually created the States-general afresh [since there had

been no national meeting of the Estates since the

States-general of 1614-see above: A. D. 1610-1619], had the

formal right to convoke them either in one way or the other,

as it thought fit. ... They [the government] infinitely

lowered their own influence and dignity by leaving a most

important constitutional question to the decision and the

wrangling of the three orders; and they frustrated their own

practical objects, by not decidedly declaring for the union of

the orders in one assembly. Every important measure of reform,

which had in view the improvement of the material and

financial condition of the country, would have been mutilated

by the clergy and rejected by the nobles. This was

sufficiently proved by the 'cahiers' of the electors ['written

instructions given by the electors to the deputies']. The

States themselves had to undertake what the government had

neglected. That which the government might have freely and

legally commanded, now led to violent revolution. But there

was no choice left; the commons would not tolerate the

continuance of the privileged orders; and the state could not

tolerate them if it did not wish to perish. The commons, who

on this point were unanimous, considered the system of a

single Assembly as a matter of course. They took care not to

constitute themselves as 'tiers état,' but remained passive,

and declared that they would wait until the Assembly should be

constituted as a whole. Thus slowly and cautiously did they

enter on their career. ... Indisputably the most important and

influential among them was Count Mirabeau, the representative

of the town of Aix in Provence, a violent opponent of

feudalism, and a restless participator in all the recent

popular commotions. He would have been better able than any

man to stimulate the Assembly to vigorous action; but even he

hesitated, and kept back his associates from taking any

violent steps, because he feared that the inconsistency and

inexperience of the majority would bring ruin on the state.

... It was only very gradually that the 'tiers état' began to

negotiate with the other orders. The nobles shewed themselves

haughty, dogmatical, and aggressive; and the clergy cautious,

unctuous, and tenacious. They tried the efficacy of general

conferences; but as no progress was found to have been made

after three weeks, they gave up their consultations on the

25th of May. The impatience of the public, and the necessities

of the treasury, continually increased; the government,

therefore, once more intervened, and Necker was called upon to

propose a compromise," which was coldly rejected by the

nobles, who "declared that they had long ago finished their

scrutiny, and constituted themselves as a separate order. They

thus spared the commons the dreaded honour of being the first

to break with the crown. The conferences were again closed on

the 9th of June. The leaders of the commons now saw that they

must either succumb to the nobility, or force the other orders

to submission."

H. von Sybel,

History of the French Revolution.,

book 1, chapter 2 (volume 1).

ALSO IN:

W. Smyth,

Lectures on the History of the French Revolution,

lecture 8 (volume 1).

Prince de Talleyrand,

Memoirs,

part 1 (volume 1).

FRANCE: A. D. 1789 (June).

The Third Estate seizes the reins, proclaims itself the

National Assembly, and assumes sovereign powers.

The passionate excitement of Paris.

Dismissal of Necker.

Rising of the mob.

"At last ... on the proposal of Sieyès [the Abbé, deputy for

Paris] and amid a storm of frantic excitement, the Third

Estate alone voted themselves 'the National Assembly,' invited

the other two orders to join them, and pushing their

pretensions to sovereignty to the highest point, declared that

the existing taxes, not having been consented to by the

nation, were all illegal. The National Assembly, however,

allowed them to be levied till its separation, after which

they were to cease if not formally regranted. This great

revolution was effected on June 17, and it at once placed the

Third Order in a totally new relation both to the other orders

and to the Crown. There were speedy signs of yielding among

some members of the privileged orders, and a fierce wave of

excitement supported the change. Malouet strongly urged that

the proper course was to dissolve the Assembly and to appeal

to the constituencies, but Necker declined, and a feeble and

ineffectual effort of the King to accomplish a reunion, and at

the same time to overawe the Third Order, precipitated the

Revolution. The King announced his intention of holding a

royal session on June 22, and he summoned the three orders to

meet him. It was his design to direct them to unite in order

to deliberate in common on matters of common interest, and to

regain the royal initiative by laying down the lines of a new

constitution. ... On Saturday, the 20th, however, the course

of events was interrupted by the famous scene in the tennis

court. Troops had lately been pouring to an alarming extent

into Paris, and exciting much suspicion in the popular party,

and the Government very injudiciously selected for the royal

session on the following Monday the hall in which the Third

Order assembled. The hall was being prepared for the occasion,

and therefore no meeting could be held.

{1261}

The members, ignorant of the fact, went to their chamber and

were repelled by soldiers. Furious at the insult, they

adjourned to the neighbouring tennis court [Jeu-de-Paume]. A

suspicion that the King meant to dissolve them was abroad, and

they resolved to resist such an attempt. With lifted hands and

in a transport of genuine, if somewhat theatrical enthusiasm,

they swore that they would never separate 'till the

constitution of the kingdom and the regeneration of public

order were established on a solid basis.' ... One single

member, Martin d'Auche, refused his assent. The Third Estate

had thus virtually assumed the sole legislative authority in

France, and like the Long Parliament in England had denied the

King's power to dissolve them. ... Owing to the dissension

that had arisen, the royal session was postponed till the

23rd, but on the preceding day the National Assembly met in a

church, and its session was a very important one, for on this

occasion a great body of the clergy formally joined it. One

hundred and forty-eight members of the clergy, of whom 134

were curés, had now given their adhesion. Two of the nobles,

separating from their colleagues, took the same course. Next

day the royal session was held. The project adopted in the

council differed so much from that of Necker that this

minister refused to give it the sanction of his presence.

Instead of commanding the three orders to deliberate together

in the common interest, it was determined in the revised

project that the King should merely invite them to do so. ...

It was ... determined to withdraw altogether from the common

deliberation 'the form of the constitution to be given to the

coming States-General,' and to recognise fully the essential

distinction of the three orders as political bodies, though

they might, with the approval of the Sovereign, deliberate in

common. Necker had proposed ... that the King should

decisively, and of his own authority, abolish all privileges

of taxation, but in the amended article the King only

undertook to give his sanction to this measure on condition of

the two orders renouncing their privileges. On the other hand,

the King announced to the Assembly a long series of articles

of reform which would have made France a thoroughly

constitutional country, and have swept away nearly all the

great abuses in its government. ... He annulled the

proceedings of June 17, by which the Third Estate alone

declared itself the Legislature of France. He reminded the

Assembly that none of its proceedings could acquire the force

of law without his assent, and he asserted his sole right as

French Sovereign to the command of the army and police. He

concluded by directing the three orders to withdraw and to

meet next day to consider his proposals. The King, with the

nobles and the majority of the clergy, at once withdrew, but

the Third Order defiantly remained. It was evident that the

attempt to conciliate, and the attempt to assert the royal

authority, had both failed. The Assembly proclaimed itself

inviolable. It confirmed the decrees which the King had

annulled. Sieyès declared, in words which excited a transport

of enthusiasm, that what the Assembly was yesterday it still

was to-day; and two days later, the triumph of the Assembly

became still more evident by the adhesion of 47 of the

nobility. After this defection the King saw the hopelessness

of resistance, and on the 27th he ordered the remainder of the

nobles to take the same course. ... In the mean time the real

rulers of the country were coming rapidly to the surface. ...

Groups of local agitators and of the scum of the Paris mob

began to overawe the representatives of the nation, and to

direct the course of its policy. Troops were poured into

Paris, but their presence was an excitement without being a

protection, for day after day it became more evident that

their discipline was gone, and that they shared the sympathies

and the passions of the mob. ... At the same time famine grew

daily more intense, and the mobs more passionate and more

formidable. The dismissal of Necker on the evening of July 11

was the spark which produced the conflagration that had long

been preparing. Next day Paris flew to arms. The troops with

few exceptions abandoned the King."

W. E. H. Lecky,

History of England in the 18th Century,

chapter 20 (volume 5).

ALSO IN:

E. Dumont,

Recollections of Mirabeau,

chapters 4-5.

FRANCE: A. D. 1789 (July).

The mob in arms.

Anarchy in Paris.

The taking of the Bastille.

"On the 12th of July, near noon, on the news of the dismissal

of Necker, a cry of rage arises in the Palais-Royal; Camille

Desmoulins, mounted on a table, announces that the Court

meditates 'a St. Bartholomew of patriots.' The crowd embrace

him, adopt the green cockade which he has proposed, and oblige

the dancing-saloons and theatres to close in sign of mourning:

they hurry off to the residence of Curtius [a plaster-cast

master], and take the busts of the Duke of Orleans and of

Necker and carry them about in triumph. Meanwhile, the

dragoons of the Prince de Lambesc, drawn up on the Place

Louis-Quinze, find a barricade of chairs at the entrance of

the Tuilleries, and are greeted with a shower of stones and

bottles. Elsewhere, on the Boulevard, before the Hôtel

Montmorency, some of the French Guards, escaped from their

barracks, fired on a loyal detachment of the 'Royal Allemand.'

The tocsin is sounding on all sides, the shops where arms are

sold are pillaged, and the Hôtel-de-Ville is invaded; 15 or 16

well-disposed electors, who meet there, order the districts to

be assembled and armed.--The new sovereign, the people in arms

and in the street, has declared himself. The dregs of society

at once come to the surface. During the night between the 12th

and 13th of July, 'all the barriers, from the Faubourg

Saint-Antoine to the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, besides those of

the Faubourgs Saint-Marcel and Saint-Jacques, are forced and

set on fire.' There is no longer an 'octroi'; the city is

without a revenue just at the moment when it is obliged to

make the heaviest expenditures. ... 'During this fearful

night, the bourgeoisie kept themselves shut up, each trembling

at home for himself and those belonging to him.' On the following

day, the 13th, the capital appears to be given up to bandits

and the lowest of the low. ... During these two days and

nights, says Bailly, 'Paris ran the risk of being pillaged,

and was only saved from the marauders by the national guard.'

... Fortunately the militia organized itself, and the

principal inhabitants and gentlemen enrol themselves; 48,000

men are formed into battalions and companies; the bourgeoisie

buy guns of the vagabonds for three livres apiece, and sabres

or pistols for twelve sous. At last, some of the offenders are

hung on the spot, and others disarmed, and the insurrection again

becomes political.

{1262}

But, whatever its object, it remains always wild, because it

is in the hands of the populace. ... There is no leader, no

management. The electors who have converted themselves into

the representatives of Paris seem to command the crowd, but it

is the crowd which commands them. One of them, Legrand, to

save the Hôtel-de-Ville, has no other resource but to send for

six barrels of gun-powder, and to declare to the assailants

that he is about to blow everything into the air. The

commandant whom they themselves have chosen, M. de Salles, has

twenty bayonets at his breast during a quarter of an hour,

and, more than once, the whole committee is near being

massacred. Let the reader imagine, on the premises where the

discussions are going on, and petitions are being made, 'a

concourse of 1,500 men pressed by 100,000 others who are

forcing an entrance,' the wainscoting cracking, the benches

upset one over another ... a tumult such as to bring to mind

'the day of judgment,' the death-shrieks, songs, yells, and

'people beside themselves, for the most part not knowing where

they are nor what they want.' Each district is also a petty

centre, while the Palais-Royal is the main centre. ... One

wave gathers here and another there, their strategy consists

in pushing and in being pushed. Yet, their entrance is

effected only because they are let in. If they get into the

Invalides it is owing to the connivance of the soldiers.--At

the Bastille, firearms are discharged from ten in the morning

to five in the evening against walls 40 feet high and 30 feet

thick, and it is by chance that one of their shots reaches an

'invalide' on the towers. They are treated the same as

children whom one wishes to hurt as little as possible. The

governor, on the first summons to surrender, orders the cannon

to be withdrawn from the embrasures; he makes the garrison swear

not to fire if it is not attacked; he invites the first of the

deputations to lunch; he allows the messenger dispatched from

the Hôtel-de-Ville to inspect the fortress; he receives

several discharges without returning them, and lets the first

bridge be carried without firing a shot. When, at length, he

does fire, it is at the last extremity, to defend the second

bridge, and after having notified the assailants that he is

going to do so. ... The people, in turn, are infatuated with

the novel sensations of attack and resistance, with the smell

of gunpowder, with the excitement of the contest; all they can

think of doing is to rush against the mass of stone, their

expedients being on a level with their tactics: A brewer

fancies that he can set fire to this block of masonry by

pumping over it spikenard and poppy-seed oil mixed with

phosphorus. A young carpenter, who has some archæological

notions, proposes to construct a catapult. Some of them think

that they have seized the governor's daughter, and want to

burn her in order to make the father surrender. Others set

fire to a projecting mass of buildings filled with straw, and

thus close up the passage. 'The Bastille was not taken by main

force,' says the brave Elie, one of the combatants; 'it was

surrendered before even it was attacked,' by capitulation, on

the promise that no harm should be done to anybody. The

garrison, being perfectly secure, had no longer the heart to

fire on human beings while themselves risking nothing, and, on

the other hand, they were unnerved by the sight of the immense

crowd. Eight or nine hundred men only were concerned in the

attack, most of them workmen or shopkeepers belonging to the

faubourg, tailors, wheelwrights, mercers, and wine-dealers,

mixed with the French Guards. The Place de la Bastille,

however, and all the streets in the vicinity, were crowded

with the curious who came to witness the sight; 'among them,'

says a witness, 'were a number of fashionable women of very

good appearance, who had left their carriages at some

distance.' To the 120 men of the garrison, looking down from

their parapets, it seemed as though all Paris had come out

against them. It is they, also, who lower the drawbridge and

introduce the enemy; everybody has lost his head, the besieged

as well as the besiegers, the latter more completely because

they are intoxicated with the sense of victory. Scarcely have

they entered when they begin the work of destruction, and the

latest arrivals shoot at random those that come earlier; 'each

one fires without heeding where or on whom his shot tells.'

Sudden omnipotence and the liberty to kill are a wine too

strong for human nature. ... Elie, who is the first to enter

the fortress, Cholat, Hulin, the brave fellows who are in

advance, the French Guards who are cognizant of the laws of

war, try to keep their word of honour; but the crowd pressing

on behind them know not whom to strike, and they strike at

random. They spare the Swiss soldiers who have fired on them,

and who, in their blue smocks, seem to them to be prisoners;

on the other hand, by way of compensation, they fall furiously

on the 'invalides' who opened the gates to them; the man who

prevented the governor from blowing up the fortress has his

wrist severed by the blow of a sabre, is twice pierced with a

sword and is hung, and the hand which had saved one of the

districts of Paris is promenaded through the streets in

triumph. The officers are dragged along and five of them are

killed, with three soldiers, on the spot, or on the way." M.

de Launay, the governor, after receiving many wounds, while

being dragged to the Hotel-de-Ville, was finally killed by

bayonet thrusts, and his head, cut from his body, was

placarded and borne through the streets upon a pitchfork.

H. A. Taine,

The French Revolution,

book 1, chapter 2 (volume 1).

"I was present at the taking of the Bastille. What has been

styled the fight was not serious, for there was absolutely no

resistance shown. Within the hold's walls were neither

provisions nor ammunition. It was not even necessary to invest

it. The regiment of gardes françaises which had led the

attack, presented itself under the walls on the rue Saint

Antoine side, opposite the main entrance, which was barred by

a drawbridge. There was a discharge of a few musket shots, to

which no reply was made, and then four or five discharges from

the cannon. It has been claimed that the latter broke the

chains of the drawbridge. I did not notice this, and yet I was

standing close to the point of attack. What I did see plainly

was the action of the soldiers, invalides, or others, grouped

on the platform of the high tower, holding their muskets stock

in the air, and expressing by all means employed under similar

circumstances their desire of surrendering. The result of this

so-called victory, which brought down so many favors on the

heads of the so-called victors, is well-known. The truth is,

that this great fight did not for a moment frighten the

numerous spectators who had flocked to witness its result.

Among them were many women of fashion, who, in order to be

closer to the scene, had left their carriages some distance

away."

Chancellor Pasquier,

Memoirs,

pages 55-56.

ALSO IN:

D. Bingham,

The Bastille,

volume 2, chapters 9-12.

R. A. Davenport,

History of the Bastile,

chapter 12.

J. Claretie,

Camille Desmoulins and his Wife,

chapter 1, section 4.

{1263}

FRANCE: A. D. 1789 (July).

Practical surrender of authority by the king.

Organization of the National Guard with Lafayette in command.

Disorder and riot in the provinces.

Hunger in the capital.

The murder of Foulon and Berthier.

"The next morning the taking of the Bastille bore its intended

fruit. Marshal de Broglie, who had found, instead of a loyal

army, only disaffected regiments which had joined or were

preparing to join the mob, sent in his resignation. ... The

king, deserted by his army, his authority now quite gone, had

no means of restoring order except through the Assembly. He

begged that body to undertake the work, promising to recall

the dismissed ministers. ... The power of the king had now

passed from him to the National Assembly. But that numerous

body of men, absorbed in interminable discussions on abstract

ideas, was totally incapable of applying its power to the

government of the country. The electors at the Hotel de Ville,

on the 15th of July, resolved that there must be a mayor to

direct the affairs of Paris, and a National Guard to preserve

order. Dangers threatened from every quarter. When the

question arose as to who should fill these offices, Moreau de

Saint Méry, the president of the electors, pointed to the bust

of Lafayette, which had been sent as a gift to the city of

Paris by the State of Virginia, in 1784. The gesture was

immediately understood, and Lafayette was chosen by

acclamation. Not less unanimous was the choice of Bailly for

mayor. Lafayette was now taken from the Assembly to assume the

more active employment of commanding the National Guard. While

the Assembly pursued the destruction of the old order and the

erection of a new, Lafayette, at the age of 82, became the

chief depositary of executive power. ... Throughout France,

the deepest interest was exhibited in passing events. ... The

victory of the Assembly over the king and aristocracy led the

people of the provinces to believe that their cause was

already won. A general demoralization ensued." After the

taking of the Bastille, "the example of rebellion thus set was

speedily followed. Rioting and lawlessness soon prevailed

everywhere, increased and imbittered by the scarcity of food.

In the towns, bread riots became continual, and the

custom-houses, the means of collecting the exorbitant taxes,

were destroyed. In the rural districts, châteaux were to be

seen burning on all sides. The towers in which were preserved

the titles and documents which gave to the nobleman his

oppressive rights were carried by storm and their contents

scattered. Law and authority were fast becoming synonymous

with tyranny; the word 'liberty,' now in every mouth, had no

other signification than license. Into Paris slunk hordes of

gaunt foot-pads from all over France; attracted by the

prospect of disorder and pillage. ... From such circumstances

naturally arose the National Guard. "The king had been asked,

on the 13th, by a deputation from the Assembly, "to confide

the care of the city to a militia," and had declined. The

military organization of citizens was then undertaken by the

electors at the Hotel de Ville, without his consent, and its

commander designated without his appointment. "The king was

obliged to confirm this choice, and he was thus deprived even

of the merit of naming the chief officer of the guard whose

existence had been forced upon him." On the 17th the king was

persuaded to visit the city, for the effect which his personal

presence would have, it was thought, upon the anxious and

excited public mind. Lafayette had worked with energy to

prepare his National Guard for the difficult duty of

preserving order and protecting the royal visitor on the

occasion. "So intense was the excitement and the

insurrectionary spirit of the time, so uncertain were the

boundaries between rascality and revolutionary zeal, that it

was difficult to establish the fact that the new guard was

created to preserve order and not to fight the king and

pillage the aristocracy. The great armed mob, now in process

of organization, had to be treated with great tact, lest it

should refuse to submit to authority in any shape." But short

as the time was, Lafayette succeeded in giving to the

powerless monarch a safe and orderly reception. "The king made

his will and took the sacraments before leaving Versailles,

for ... doubts were entertained that he would live to return."

He was met at the gates of Paris by the new mayor, Bailly, and

escorted through a double line of National Guards to the Hotel

de Ville. There he was obliged to fix on his hat the national

cockade, just brought into use, and to confirm the

appointments of Lafayette and Bailly. "Louis XVI. then

returned to Versailles, on the whole pleased, as the day had

been less unpleasant than had been expected. But the

compulsory acceptation of the cockade and the nominations

meant nothing less than the extinction of his authority. ...

Lafayette recruited his army from the bourgeois class, for the

good reason that, in the fever then raging for uncontrolled

freedom, that class was the only one from which the proper

material could be taken. The importance of order was impressed

on the bourgeois by the fact that they had, shops and houses

which they did not wish to see pillaged. ... The necessity for

strict police measures was soon to be terribly illustrated.

For a week past a large crowd composed of starving workmen,

country beggars, and army deserters, had thronged the streets,

angrily demanding food. The city was extremely short of

provisions, and it was impossible to satisfy the demands made

upon it. ... On July 22, an old man named Foulon, It member of

the late ministry, who had long been the object of public

dislike, and was now detested because it was rumored that he

said that 'the people might eat' grass,' was arrested in the

country, and brought to the Hotel de Ville, followed by a mob

who demanded his immediate judgment." Lafayette exerted vainly

his whole influence and his whole authority to protect the

wretched old man until he could be lodged in prison. The mob

tore its victim from his very hands and destroyed him on the

spot. The next day, Foulon's son-in-law, Berthier, the

Intendant of Paris, was arrested in the country, and the

tragedy was re-enacted. "Shocked by these murders and

disgusted by his own inability to prevent them, Lafayette sent

his resignation to the electors, and for some time persisted

in his refusal to resume his office. But no other man could be

found in Paris equally fitted for the place; so that on the

personal solicitation of the electors and a deputation from

the 60 districts of the city, he again took command."

B. Tuckerman,

Life of General Lafayette,

volume 1, chapters 9-10.

ALSO IN:

J. Michelet,

Historical View of the French

Revolution, book 2, chapters 1-2.

{1264}

FRANCE: A. D. 1789 (July-August).

Cause and character of the "Emigration."

"Everything, or nearly everything, was done by the party

opposed to the Revolution in the excitement of the moment;

nothing was the result of reasoning. Who, for instance,

reasoned out the emigration? It has oftentimes been asked how

so extraordinary a resolution came to be taken; how it had

entered the minds of men gifted with a certain amount of sense

that there was any advantage to be derived from abandoning all

the posts where they could still exercise power; of giving

over to the enemy the regiments they commanded, the localities

over which they had control; of delivering up completely to

the teachings of the opposite party the peasantry, over whom,

in a goodly number of provinces, a valuable influence might be

exerted, and among whom they still had many friends; and all

this, to return for the purpose of conquering, at the sword's

point, positions, a number of which at least could be held

without a fight. No doubt it has been offered as an objection,

that the peasantry set fire to châteaux, that soldiers

mutinied against their officers. This was not the case at the

time of what has been called the first emigration, and, at any

rate, such doings were not general; but does danger constitute

sufficient cause for abandoning an important post? ... What is

the answer to all this? Merely what follows. The voluntary

going into exile of nearly the whole nobility of France, of

many magistrates who were never to unsheath a sword, and

lastly, of a large number of women and children,--this

resolve, without a precedent in history, was not conceived and

determined upon as a State measure; chance brought it about. A

few, in the first instance, followed the princes who had been

obliged, on the 14th of July, to seek safety out of France,

and others followed them. At first, it was merely in the

nature of a pleasant excursion. Outside of France, they might

freely enjoy saying and believing anything and everything. ...

The wealthiest were the first to incur the expense of this

trip, and a few brilliant and amiable women of the Court

circle did their share to render most attractive the sojourn

in a number of foreign towns close to the frontier. Gradually

the number of these small gatherings increased, and it was

then that the idea arose of deriving advantage from them. It

occurred to the minds of a few men in the entourage of the

Comte d'Artois, and whose moving spirit was M. de Calonne,

that it would be an easy matter for them to create a kingdom

for their sovereign outside of France, and that if they could

not in this fashion succeed in giving him provinces to reign

over, he would at least reign over subjects, and that this

would serve to give him a standing in the eyes of foreign

powers, and determine them to espouse his cause. ... Thus in

'89, '90, and '91, there were a few who were compelled to fly

from actual danger; a small number were led away by a genuine

feeling of enthusiasm; many felt themselves bound to leave,

owing to a point of honor which they obeyed without reasoning

it out; the mass thought it was the fashion, and that it

looked well; all, or almost all, were carried away by

expectations encouraged by the wildest of letters, and by the

plotting of a few ambitious folk, who were under the

impression that they were building up their fortunes."

Chancellor Pasquier,

Memoirs,

pages 64-66.

FRANCE: A. D. 1789 (August).

The Night of Sacrifices.

The sweeping out of Feudalism.

"What was the Assembly doing at this period, when Paris was

waiting in expectation, and the capture of the Bastille was

being imitated all over France; when châteaux were burning,

and nobles flying into exile; when there was positive civil

war in many a district, and anarchy in every province? Why,

the Assembly was discussing whether or not the new

constitution of France should be prefaced by a Declaration of

the Rights of Man. In the discussion of this extremely

important question were wasted the precious days which

followed July 17. ... The complacency of these theorists was

rudely shaken on August 4, when Salomon read to the Assembly

the report of the Comité des Recherches, or Committee of

Researches, on the state of France. A terrible report it was.

Châteaux burning here and there; millers hung; tax-gatherers

drowned; the warehouses and depots of the gabelle burnt;

everywhere rioting, and nowhere peace. ... Among those who

listened to the clear and forcible report of Salomon were

certain of the young liberal noblesse who had just been dining

with the Duc de la Roehefoucauld-Liancourt, a wise and

enlightened nobleman. At their head was the Vicomte de

Noailles, a young man of thirty-three, who had distinguished

himself at the head of his regiment under his cousin,

Lafayette, in America. ... The Vicomte de Noailles was the

first to rush to the tribune. 'What is the cause of the evil

which is agitating the provinces?' he cried; and then he

showed that it arose from the uncertainty under which the

people dwelt, as to whether or not the old feudal bonds under

which they had so long lived and laboured were to be

perpetuated or abolished, and concluded an impassioned speech

by proposing to abolish them at once. One after another the

young liberal noblemen, and then certain deputies of the tiers

état, followed him with fresh sacrifices. First the old feudal

rights were abolished; then the rights of the dovecote and the

game laws; then the old copyhold services; then the tithes

paid to the Church, in spite of a protest from Siéyès; then

the rights of certain cities over their immediate suburbs and

rural districts were sacrificed; and the contention during

that feverish night was rather to remember something or other

to sacrifice than to suggest the expediency of maintaining

anything which was established. In its generosity the Assembly

even gave away what did not belong to it. The old dues paid to

the pope were abolished, and it was even declared that the

territory of Avignon, which had belonged to the pope since the

Middle Ages, should be united to France if it liked; and the

sitting closed with a unanimous decree that a statue should be

erected to Louis XVI., 'the restorer of French liberty.' Well

might Mirabeau define the night of August 4 as a mere 'orgie.'

... Noble indeed were the intentions of the deputies. ...

{1265}

Yet the results of this night of sacrifices were bad rather

than good. As Mirabeau pointed out, the people of France were

told that all the feudal rights, dues, and tithes had been

abolished that evening, but they were not told at the same

time that there must be taxes and other burdens to take their

place. It was of no use to issue a provisional order that all

rights, dues, and taxes remained in force for the present,

because the poor peasant would refuse to pay what was illegal,

and would not understand the political necessity of supporting

the revenue. ... This ill-considered mass of resolutions was

what was thrown in the face of France in a state of anarchy to

restore it to a state of order."

H. M. Stephens,

History of the French Revolution,

volume 1, chapter 5.

ALSO IN:

A. Thiers, History of the French Revolution,

(American edition), volume 1, pages 81-84.

FRANCE: A. D. 1789 (August-October).

Constitution-making and the Rights of Man.

The first emigration of nobles.

Famine in Paris.

Rumors of an intended flight of the King.

"One may look upon the peculiarity of the Assembly as being a

singular faith in the power of ideas. That was its greatness.

It firmly believed that truth shaped into laws would be

invincible. Two months--such was the calculation--would

suffice to construct the constitution. That constitution by

its omnipotent virtue would convince all men and bend them to

its authority, and the revolution would be completed. Such was

the faith of the National Assembly. The attitude of the people

was so menacing that many of the courtiers fled. Thus

commenced the first emigration. ... As if the minds of men

were not sufficiently agitated, there now were heard cries of

a great conspiracy of the aristocrats. The papers announced

that a plot had been discovered which was to have delivered

Brest to the English. Brest, the naval arsenal, wherein France

for whole centuries had expended her millions and her labours:

this given up to England! England would once more overrun France!

... It was amidst these cries of alarm--with on one hand the

emigration of the nobility, on the other the hunger of a

maddened people; with here an irresolute aristocracy, startled

at the audacity of the 'canaille,' and there a resolute

Assembly, prepared, at the hazard of their lives, to work out

the liberty of France; amidst reports of famine, of

insurrections, and wild disorders of all sorts, that we find

the National Assembly debating upon the rights of man,

discussing every article with metaphysical quibbling and

wearisome fluency, and, having finally settled each article,

making their famous Declaration. This Declaration, which was

solemnly adopted by the Assembly, on the 18th of August, was

the product of a whole century of philosophical speculation,

fixed and reduced to formulas, and bearing unmistakeable

traces of Rousseau. It declared the original equality of

mankind, and that the ends of social union are liberty,

property, security, and resistance to oppression. It declared

that sovereignty resides in the nation, from whence all power

emanates; that freedom consists in doing everything which does

not injure another; that law is the expression of the general

will; that public burdens should be borne by all the members

of the state in proportion to their fortunes; that the

elective franchise should be extended to all; that the

exercise of natural rights has no other limit than their

interference with the rights of others; that no man should be

persecuted for his religious opinions, provided he conform to

the laws and do not disturb the religion of the state; that

all men have the right of quitting the state in which they

were born, and of choosing another country, by renouncing

their rights of citizenship; that the liberty of the press is

the foremost support of public liberty, and the law should

maintain it, at the same time punishing those who abuse it by

distributing seditious discourses, or calumnies against

individuals." Having adopted its Declaration of the rights of

man, the Assembly proceeded to the drawing up of a

constitution which should embody the principles of the

Declaration, and soon found itself in passionate debate upon

the relations to be established between the national

legislature and the king. Should the king retain a veto upon

legislation? Should he have any voice in the making of laws?

"The lovers of England and the English constitution all voted

in favour of the veto. Even Mirabeau was for it." Robespierre,

just coming into notice, bore a prominent part in the

opposition. "The majority of the Assembly shared Robespierre's

views; and the King's counselors were at length forced to

propose a compromise in the shape of a suspensive veto;

namely, that the King should not have the absolute right of

preventing any law, but only the right of suspending it for

two, four, or six years. ... It was carried by a large

majority." Meantime, in Paris, "vast and incalculable was the

misery: crowds of peruke-makers, tailors, and shoemakers, were

wont to assemble at the Louvre and in the Champs Elysées,

demanding things impossible to be granted; demanding that the

old regulations should be maintained, and that new ones should

be made; demanding that the rate of daily wages should be

fixed; demanding ... that all the Savoyards in the country

should be sent away, and only Frenchmen employed. The bakers'

shops were besieged, as early as five o'clock in the morning,

by hungry crowds who had to stand 'en queue'; happy when they

had money to purchase miserable bread, even in this

uncomfortable manner. ... Paris was living at the mercy of

chance: its subsistence dependent on some arrival or other:

dependent on a convoy from Beauce, or a boat from Corbeuil.

The city, at immense sacrifices, was obliged to lower the

price of bread: the consequence was that the population for

more than ten leagues round came to procure provisions at

Paris. The uncertainty of the morrow augmented the

difficulties. Everybody stored up, and concealed provisions.

The administration sent in every direction, and bought up

flour, by fair means, or by foul. It often happened that at

midnight there was but half the flour necessary for the

morning market. Provisioning Paris was a kind of war. The

National Guard was sent to protect each arrival; or to secure

certain purchases by force of arms. Speculators were afraid;

farmers would not thrash any longer; neither would the miller

grind. 'I used to see,' says Bailly, 'good tradesmen, mercers

and goldsmiths, praying to be admitted among the beggars

employed at Montmartre, in digging the ground.' Then came

fearful whispers of the King's intention to fly to Metz. What

will become of us if the King should fly? He must not fly; we

will have him here; here amongst us in Paris! This produced

the famous insurrection of women ... on the 5th October."

G. H. Lewes,

Life of Robespierre,

chapter 9.

H. von Sybel,

History of the French Revolution,

book 1, chapters 3-4 (volume 1).

{1266}

FRANCE: A. D. 1789 (October).

The Insurrection of Women.

Their march to Versailles.

"A thought, or dim raw-material of a thought, was fermenting

all night [October 4-5], universally in the female head, and

might explode. In squalid garret, on Monday morning Maternity

awakes, to hear children weeping for bread. Maternity must

forth to the streets, to the herb-markets and Bakers'-queues;

meets there with hunger-stricken Maternity, sympathetic,

exasperative. O we unhappy women! But, instead of

Bakers'-queues, why not to Aristocrats' palaces, the root of

the matter? Allons! Let us assemble. To the Hôtel-de-Ville; to

Versailles; to the Lanterne! In one of the Guard houses of the

Quartier Saint-Eustache, 'a young woman' seizes a drum,--for

how shall National Guards give fire on women, on a young

woman? The young woman seizes the drum; sets forth, beating

it, 'uttering cries relative to the dearth of grains.'

Descend, O mothers; descend, ye Judiths, to food and

revenge!--All women gather and go; crowds storm all stairs,

force out all women: the female Insurrectionary Force,

according to Camille, resembles the English Naval one; there

is a universal 'Press of women.' Robust Dames of the Halle,

slim Mantua-makers, assiduous, risen with the dawn; ancient

Virginity tripping to matins; the Housemaid, with early broom;

all must go. Rouse ye, O, women; the laggard men will not act;

they say, we ourselves may act! And so, like snowbreak from

the mountains, for every staircase is a melted brook, it

storms; tumultuous, wild-shrilling, towards the

Hôtel-de-Ville. Tumultuous; with or without drum-music: for

the Faubourg Saint-Antoine also has tucked-up its gown; and

with besom-staves, fire-irons, and even rusty pistols (void of

ammunition), is flowing on. Sound of it flies, with a velocity

of sound, to the utmost Barriers. By seven o'clock, on this

raw October morning, fifth of the month, the Townhall will see

wonders. ... Grand it was, says Camille, to see so many

Judiths, from eight to ten thousand of them in all, rushing

out to search into the root of the matter! Not unfrightful it

must have been; ludicro-terrific, and most unmanageable. At

such hour the overwatched Three Hundred are not yet stirring:

none but some Clerks, a company of National Guards; and M. de

Gouvion, the Major-general. Gouvion has fought in America for

the cause of civil Liberty; a man of no inconsiderable heart,

but deficient in head. He is, for the moment, in his back

apartment; assuaging Usher Maillard, the Bastille-sergeant,

who has come, as too many do, with 'representations.' The

assuagement is still incomplete when our Judiths arrive. The

National Guards form on the outer stairs, with levelled

bayonets; the ten thousand Judiths press up, resistless; with

obtestations, with outspread hands,--merely to speak to the

Mayor. The rear forces them; nay from male hands in the rear,

stones already fly: the National Guard must do one of two

things; sweep the Place de Greve with cannon, or else open to

right and left. They open: the living deluge rushes in.

Through all rooms and cabinets, upwards to the topmost belfry:

ravenous; seeking arms, seeking Mayors, seeking justice;--

while, again, the better-dressed speak kindly to the Clerks;

point out the misery of these poor women; also their ailments,

some even of an interesting sort. Poor M. de Gouvion is

shiftless in this extremity;--a man shiftless, perturbed: who

will one day commit suicide. How happy for him that Usher

Maillard the shifty was there, at the moment, though making

representations! Fly back, thou shifty Maillard: seek the

Bastille Company; and O return fast with it; above all, with

thy own shifty head! For, behold, the Judiths can find no

Mayor or Municipal; scarcely, in the topmost belfry, can they

find poor Abbé Lefèvre the Powder-distributor. Him, for want

of a better, they suspend there: in the pale morning light;

over the top of all Paris, which swims in one's failing

eyes:--a horrible end? Nay the rope broke, as French ropes

often did; or else an Amazon cut it. Abbe Lefèvre falls, some

twenty feet, rattling among the leads; and lives long years

after, though always with 'a tremblement in the limbs.' And

now doors fly under hatchets; the Judiths have broken the

Armory; have seized guns and cannons, three money-bags,

paper-heaps; torches flare: in few minutes, our brave

Hôtel-de-Ville, which dates from the Fourth Henry, will, with

all that it holds, be in flames! In flames, truly,--were it

not that Usher Maillard, swift of foot, shifty of head, has

returned! Maillard, of his own motion,--for Gouvion or the

rest would not even sanction him,--snatches a drum: descends

the Porch-stairs, ran-tan, beating sharp, with loud rolls, his

Rogues'-march: To Versailles! Allons; à Versailles! As men

beat on kettle or warming-pan, when angry she-bees, or say,

flying desperate wasps, are to be hived; and the desperate

insects hear it, and cluster round it,--simply as round a

guidance, where there was none: so now these Menads round

shifty Maillard, Riding-Usher of the Châtelet. The axe pauses

uplifted; Abbé Lefèvre is left half-hanged: from the belfry

downwards all vomits itself. What rub-a-dub is that? Stanislas

Maillard, Bastille hero, will lead us to Versailles? Joy to

thee, Maillard; blessed art thou above Riding-Ushers! Away,

then, away! The seized cannon are yoked with seized

cart-horses: brown-locked Demoiselle Théroigne, with pike and

helmet, sits there as gunneress. ... Maillard (for his drum

still rolls) is, by heaven-rending acclamation, admitted

General. Maillard hastens the languid march. ... And now

Maillard has his Menads in the Champs Elysées (Fields

Tartarean rather); and the Hôtel-de-Ville has suffered

comparatively nothing. ... Great Maillard! A small nucleus of

Order is round his drum; but his outskirts fluctuate like the

mad Ocean: for Rascality male and female is flowing in on him,

from the four winds: guidance there is none but in his single

head and two drum-sticks. ... On the Elysian Fields there is

pause and fluctuation; but, for Maillard, no return. He

persuades his Menads, clamorous for arms and the Arsenal, that

no arms are in the Arsenal; that an unarmed attitude, and

petition to a National Assembly, will be the best: he hastily

nominates or sanctions generalesses, captains of tens and

fifties;--and so, in loosest-flowing order, to the rhythm of

some 'eight drums' (having laid aside his own), with the

Bastille Volunteers bringing up his rear, once more takes the

road. Chaillot, which will promptly yield baked loaves, is not

plundered; nor are the Sèvres Potteries broken. ... The press of

women still continues, for it is the cause of all Eve's

Daughters, mothers that are, or that ought to be. No

carriage-lady, were it with never such hysterics, but must

dismount, in the mud roads, in her silk shoes, and walk. In

this manner, amid wild October weather, they, a wild unwinged

stork-flight, through the astonished country wend their way."

T. Carlyle,

The French Revolution,

volume 1, book 7, chapters 4-5.

{1267}

FRANCE: A. D. 1789 (October).

The mob of men at Versailles, with Lafayette

and the National Guard.

The king and royal family brought to Paris.

Before the memorable 5th day of October closed, the movement

of the women upon Versailles was followed by an outpouring, in

the same direction, of the masculine mob of Paris, headed by

the National Guard. "The commander, Lafayette, opposed their

departure a long time, but in vain; neither his efforts nor

his popularity could overcome the obstinacy of the people. For

seven hours he harangued and retained them. At length,

impatient at this delay, rejecting his advice, they prepared

to set forward without him; when, feeling that it was now his

duty to conduct as it had previously been to restrain them, he

obtained his authorisation from the corporation, and gave the

word for departure about seven in the evening. "Meantime the

army of the amazons had arrived at Versailles, and excited the

terrors of the court. "The troops of Versailles flew to arms

and surrounded the château, but the intentions of the women

were not hostile. Maillard, their leader, had recommended them

to appear as suppliants, and in that attitude they presented

their complaints successively to the assembly and to the king.

Accordingly, the first hours of this turbulent evening were

sufficiently calm. Yet it was impossible but that causes of

hostility should arise between an excited mob and the

household troops, the objects of so much irritation. The

latter were stationed in the court of the château opposite the

national guard and the Flanders regiment. The space between

was filled by women and volunteers of the Bastille. In the

midst of the confusion, necessarily arising from such a

juxtaposition, a scuffle arose; this was the signal for

disorder and conflict. An officer of the guards struck a

Parisian soldier with his sabre, and was in turn shot in the

arm. The national guards sided against the household troops;

the conflict became warm, and would have been sanguinary, but

for the darkness, the bad weather, and the orders given to the

household troops, first to cease firing and then to retire.

... During this tumult, the court was in consternation; the

flight of the king was suggested, and carriages prepared; a

piquet of the national guard saw them at the gate of the

orangery, and having made them go back, closed the gate:

moreover, the king, either ignorant of the designs of the

court, or conceiving them impracticable, refused to escape.

Fears were mingled with his pacific intentions, when he

hesitated to repel the aggression or to take flight.

Conquered, he apprehended the fate of Charles I. of England;

absent, he feared that the duke of Orleans would obtain the

lieutenancy of the kingdom. But, in the meantime, the rain,

fatigue, and the inaction of the household troops, lessened

the fury of the multitude, and Lafayette arrived at the head

of the Parisian army. His presence restored security to the

court, and the replies of the king to the deputation from

Paris satisfied the multitude and the army. In a short time,

Lafayette's activity, the good sense and discipline of the

Parisian guard, restored order everywhere. Tranquillity

returned. The crowd of women and volunteers, overcome by

fatigue, gradually dispersed, and some of the national guard

were entrusted with the defence of the château, while others

were lodged with their companions in arms at Versailles. The

royal family, re-assured after the anxiety and fear of this

painful night, retired to rest about two o'clock in the

morning. Towards five, Lafayette, having visited the outposts

which had been confided to his care, and finding the watch

well kept, the town calm, and the crowds dispersed or

sleeping, also took a few moments repose. About six, however,

some men of the lower class, more enthusiastic than the rest,

and awake sooner than they, prowled round the château. Finding

a gate open, they informed their companions, and entered.

Unfortunately, the interior posts had been entrusted to the

household guards, and refused to the Parisian army. This fatal

refusal caused all the misfortunes of the night. The interior

guard had not even been increased; the gates scarcely visited,

and the watch kept as negligently as on ordinary occasions. These

men, excited by all the passions that had brought them to

Versailles, perceiving one of the household troops at a

window, began to insult him. He fired, and wounded one of

them. They then rushed on the household troops, who defended

the château breast to breast, and sacrificed themselves

heroically. One of them had time to warn the queen, whom the

assailants particularly threatened; and, half dressed, she ran

for refuge to the king. The tumult and danger were extreme in

the château. Lafayette, apprised of the invasion of the royal

residence, mounted his horse, and rode hastily to the scene of

danger. On the square he met some of the household troops

surrounded by an infuriated mob, who were on the point of

killing them. He threw himself among them, called some French

guards who were near, and, having rescued the household troops

and dispersed their assailants, he hurried to the château. He

found it already secured by the grenadiers of the French

guard, who, at the first noise of the tumult, had hastened and

protected the household troops from the fury of the Parisians.

But the scene was not over; the crowd assembled again in the

marble court under the king's balcony, loudly called for him,

and he appeared. They required his departure for Paris; he

promised to repair thither with his family, and this promise

was received with general applause. The queen was resolved, to

accompany him; but the prejudice against her was so strong

that the journey was not without danger; it was necessary to

reconcile her with the multitude. Lafayette proposed to her to

accompany him to the balcony; after some hesitation, she

consented. They appeared on it together, and to communicate by

a sign with the tumultuous crowd, to conquer its animosity, and

awaken its enthusiasm, Lafayette respectfully kissed the

queen's hand; the crowd responded with acclamations. It now

remained to make peace between them and the household troops.

Lafayette advanced with one of these, placed his own

tricoloured cockade on his hat, and embraced him before the

people, who shouted 'Vivent les gardes-du-corps!' Thus

terminated this scene; the royal family set out for Paris,

escorted by the army and its guards mixed with it."

F. A. Mignet,

History of the French Revolution,

chapter 2.

ALSO IN:

B. Tuckerman,

Life of Lafayette,

volume 1, chapter 11.

{1268}

FRANCE: A. D. 1789-1791.

The new constitution.

Appropriation and sale of Church property.

Issue of Assignats.

Abolition of titles of honor.

Civil constitution of the clergy.

The Feast of the Federation.

The Émigrés on the border and their conduct.

"The king was henceforth at the mercy of the mob. Deprived of

his guards, and at a distance from his army, he was in the

centre of the revolution; and surrounded by an excited and

hungry populace. He was followed to Paris by the Assembly;

and, for the present, was protected from further outrages by

Lafayette and the national guards. Mirabeau, who was now in

secret communication with the court, warned the king of his

danger, in the midst of the revolutionary capital. 'The mob of

Paris,' he said, 'will scourge the corpses of the king and

queen.' He saw no hope of safety for them, or for the State,

but in their withdrawal from this pressing danger, to

Fontainebleau or Rouen, and in a strong government, supported

by the Assembly, pursuing liberal measures, and quelling

anarchy. His counsels were frustrated by events; and the

revolution had advanced too far to be controlled by this

secret and suspected adviser of the king. Meanwhile, the

Assembly was busy with further schemes of revolution and

desperate finance. France was divided into departments: the

property of the Church was appropriated to meet the urgent

necessities of the State; the disastrous assignats were

issued: the subjection of the clergy to the civil power was

decreed: the Parliaments were superseded, and the judicature

of the country was reconstituted, upon a popular basis: titles

of honour, orders of knighthood, armorial bearings--even

liveries--were abolished: the army was reorganised, and the

privileges of birth were made to yield to service and

seniority. All Frenchmen were henceforth equal, as 'citoyens':

and their new privileges were wildly celebrated by the

planting of trees of liberty. The monarchy was still

recognised, but it stood alone, in the midst of revolution."

Sir T. E. May,

Democracy in Europe,

chapter 13 (volume 2).

"The monarchy was continued and liberally endowed; but it was

shorn of most of its ancient prerogatives, and reduced to a

very feeble Executive; and while it obtained a perilous veto

on the resolutions and acts of the Legislature, it was

separated from that power, and placed in opposition to it, by

the exclusion of the Ministers of the Crown from seats and

votes in the National Assembly. The Legislature was composed

of a Legislative Assembly, formed of a single Chamber alone,

in theory supreme, and almost absolute; but, as we have seen,

it was liable to come in conflict with the Crown, and it had

less authority than might be supposed, for it was elected by a

vote not truly popular, and subordinate powers were allowed to

possess a very large part of the rights of Sovereignty which

it ought to have divided with the King. This last portion of

the scheme was very striking, and was the one, too, that most

caused alarm among distant political observers. Too great

centralization having been one of the chief complaints against

the ancient Monarchy, this evil was met with a radical reform.

... The towns received extraordinary powers; their

municipalities had complete control over the National Guards

to be elected in them, and possessed many other functions of

Government; and Paris, by these means, became almost a

separate Commonwealth, independent of the State, and directing

a vast military force. The same system was applied to the

country; every Department was formed into petty divisions,

each with its National Guards, and a considerable share of

what is usually the power of the government. ... Burke's

saying was strictly correct, 'that France was split into

thousands of Republics, with Paris predominating and queen of

all.' With respect to other institutions of the State, the

appointment of nearly all civil functionaries, judicial and

otherwise, was taken from the Crown, and abandoned to a like

popular election; and the same principle was also applied to

the great and venerable institution of the Church, already

deprived of its vast estates, though the election of bishops

and priests by their flocks interfered directly with Roman

Catholic discipline, and probably, too, with religious dogma.

... Notwithstanding the opposition of Necker, who, though

hardly a statesman, understood finance, it was resolved to

sell the lands of the Church to procure funds for the

necessities of the State; and the deficit, which was

increasing rapidly, was met by an inconvertible currency of

paper, secured on the lands to be sold. This expedient ... was

carried out with injudicious recklessness. The Assignats, as

the new notes were called, seemed a mine of inexhaustible

wealth, and they were issued in quantities which, from the

first moment, disturbed the relations of life and commerce,

though they created a show of brisk trade for a time. In

matters of taxation the Assembly, too, exceeded the bounds of

reason and justice; exemptions previously enjoyed by the rich

were now indirectly extended to the poor; wealthy owners of

land were too heavily burdened, while the populace of the

towns went scot free. ... Very large sums, also, belonging to

the State, were advanced to the Commune of Paris, now rising

into formidable power. ... The funds so obtained were lavishly

squandered in giving relief to the poor of the capital in the

most improvident ways--in buying bread dear and reselling it

cheap, and in finding fanciful employment for artizans out of

work. The result, of course, was to attract to Paris many

thousands of the lowest class of rabble, and to add them to

the scum of the city. ... On the first anniversary [July 14,

1790] of the fall of the Bastille, and before the Constitution

had been finished ... a great national holiday [called the Feast

of the Federation] was kept; and, amidst multitudes of

applauding spectators, deputations from every Department in

France, headed by the authorities of the thronging capital,

defiled in procession to the broad space known as the Field of

Mars, along the banks of the Seine. An immense amphitheatre

had been constructed [converting the plain into a valley, by

the labor of many thousands, in a single week], and decorated

with extraordinary pomp; and here, in the presence of a

splendid Court, of the National Assembly, and of the

municipalities of the realm, and in the sight of a great

assemblage surging to and fro with throbbing excitement, the

King took an oath that he would faithfully respect the order

of things that was being established, while incense streamed

from high-raised altars, and the ranks of 70,000 National

Guards burst into loud cheers and triumphant music; and even

the Queen, sharing in the passion of the hour, and radiant

with beauty, lifted up in her arms the young child who was to

be the future chief of a disenthralled and regenerate people.

...

{1269}

The following week was gay with those brilliant displays which

Paris knows how to arrange so well; flowery arches covered the

site of the Bastille, fountains ran wine, and the night blazed

with fire; and the far-extending influence of France was

attested by enthusiastic deputations of 'friends of liberty'

from many parts of Europe, hailing the dawn of an era of

freedom and peace. The work, however, of the National Assembly

developed some of its effects ere long. The abolition of

titles of honor filled up the measure of the anger of the

Nobles; the confiscation of the property of the Church, above

all, the law as to the election of priests, known as the Civil

Constitution of the Clergy, shocked all religious or

superstitious minds. ... The emigration of the Nobles, which

had become very general from the 5th and 6th of October, went

on in daily augmenting numbers; and, in a short time, the

frontiers were edged with bands of exiles breathing vengeance

and hatred. In many districts the priests denounced as

sacrilege, what had been done to the Church, divided the

peasantry, and preached a crusade against what they called the

atheist towns; and angry mutinies broke out in the Army, which

left behind savage and relentless feelings. The relations

between the King and the Assembly, too, became strained, if

not hostile, at every turn of affairs, to the detriment of

anything like good government; and while Louis sunk into a

mere puppet, the Assembly, controlled in a great measure by

demagogues and the pampered mobs of Paris, felt authority

gradually slipping from it." To all the many destructive and

revolutionary influences at work was now added "the pitiful

conduct of those best known by the still dishonorable name of

'Émigrés.' In a few months the great majority of the

aristocracy of France had fled the kingdom, abandoned the

throne around which they had stood, breathing maledictions

against a contemptuous Nation, as arrogant as ever in the

impotence of want, and thinking only of a counter-revolution

that would cover the natal soil with blood. ... Their utter

want of patriotism and of sound feeling made thousands believe

that the state of society which had bred such creatures ought

to be swept away."

W. O'C. Morris,

The French Revolution and First Empire,

chapter 3.

ALSO IN:

H. Van Sybel,

History of the French Revolution,

book 1, chapter 5, and book 2, chapters 3-5.

M'me de Stael,

Considerations on the French Revolution,

part 2, chapters 12-19 (volume l).

E. Burke,

Reflections on the Revolution in France.

A. F. Bertrand de Moleville,

Annals of the French Revolution,

part 1, chapters 22-35 (volumes 2-3).

Duchess de Tourzell,

Memoirs,

volume 1, chapters 3-11.

W. H. Jervis,

The Gallican Church and the Revolution.,

chapters 1-4.

FRANCE: A. D. 1790.

The rise of the Clubs.

Jacobins, Cordeliers, Feuillants, Club Monarchique, and Club

of '89.

"Every party sought to gain the people; it was courted as

sovereign. After attempting to influence it by religion,

another means was employed, that of the clubs. At that period,

clubs were private assemblies, in which the measures of

government, the business of the state, and the decrees of the

assembly, were discussed; their deliberations had no

authority, but they exercised a certain influence. The first

club owed its origin to the Breton deputies, who already met

together at Versailles to consider the course of proceeding

they should take. When the national representatives were

transferred from Versailles to Paris, the Breton deputies and

those of the assembly who were of their views held their

sittings in the old convent of the Jacobins, which

subsequently gave its name to their meetings. It did not at

first cease to be a preparatory assembly, but as all things

increase in time, the Jacobin Club did not confine itself to

influencing the assembly; it sought also to influence the

municipality and the people, and received as associates

members of the municipality and common citizens. Its

organization became more regular, its action more powerful;

its sittings were regularly reported in the papers; it created

branch clubs in the provinces, and raised by the side of legal

power another power which first counselled and then conducted

it. The Jacobin Club, as it lost its primitive character and

became a popular assembly, had been forsaken by part of its

founders. The latter established another society on the plan

of the old one, under the name of the Club of '89. Siéyes,

Chapelier, Lafayette, La Rochefoucauld, directed it, as Lameth

and Barnave directed that of the Jacobins. Mirabeau belonged

to both, and by both was equally courted. These clubs, of

which the one prevailed in the assembly, and the other amongst

the people, were attached to the new order of things, though

in different degrees. The aristocracy sought to attack the

revolution with its own arms; it opened royalist clubs to

oppose the popular clubs. That first established, under the

name of the Club des Impartiaux, could not last because it

addressed itself to no class opinion. Reappearing under the

name of the Club Monarchique, it included among its members

all those whose views it represented. It sought to render

itself popular with the lower classes, and distributed bread;

but, far from accepting its overtures, the people considered

such establishments as a counter-revolutionary movement. It

disturbed their sittings, and obliged them several times to

change their place of meeting. At length, the municipal

authority found itself obliged, in January, 1791, to close

this club, which had been the cause of several riots."

F. A. Mignet,

History of the French Revolution,

chapter 3.

"At the end of 1790 the number of Jacobin Clubs was 200, many

of which--like the one in Marseilles--contained more than a

thousand members. Their organization extended through the

whole kingdom, and every impulse given at the centre in Paris

was felt at the extremities. ... It was far indeed from

embracing the majority of adult Frenchmen, but even at that

time it had undoubtedly become--by means of its strict

unity--the greatest power in the kingdom."

H. von Sybel,

History of the French Revolution,

book 1, chapter 5 (volume 1).

"This Jacobin Club soon divided itself into three other clubs:

first, that party which looked upon the Jacobins as lukewarm

patriots left it, and constituted themselves into the Club of

the Cordeliers, where Danton's voice of thunder made the halls

ring; and Camille Desmoulins' light, glancing wit played with

momentous subjects. The other party, which looked upon the

Jacobins as too fierce, constituted itself into the 'Club of

1789; friends of the monarchic constitution;' and afterwards

named Feuillant's Club, because it met in the Feuillant

Convent. Lafayette was their chief; supported by the

'respectable' patriots. These clubs generated many others, and

the provinces imitated them."

G. H. Lewes,

Life of Robespierre,

chapter 10.

{1270}

"The Cordeliers were a Parisian club; the Jacobins an immense

association extending throughout France. But Paris would stir

and rise at the fury of the Cordeliers; and Paris being once

in motion, the political revolutionists were absolutely

obliged to follow. Individuality was very powerful among the

Cordeliers. Their journalists, Marat, Desmoulins, Fréron,

Robert, Hébert and Fabre d'Églantine, wrote each for himself.

Danton, the omnipotent orator, would never write; but, by way

of compensation, Marat and Desmoulins, who stammered or

lisped, used principally to write, and seldom spoke. ... The

Cordeliers formed a sort of tribe, all living in the

neighbourhood of the club."

J. Michelet,

Historical View of the French Revolution,

book 4, chapters 7 and 5.

ALSO IN:

T. Carlyle,

The French Revolution,

volume 2, book 1, chapter 5.

H. A. Taine,

The French Revolution,

book 4 (volume 2).

FRANCE: A. D. 1790-1791.

Revolution at Avignon.

Reunion of the old Papal province with France decreed.

"The old residence of the Popes [Avignon] remained until the

year 1789 under the papal government, which, from its

distance, exercised its authority with great mildness, and

left the towns and villages of the country in the enjoyment of

a great degree of independence. The general condition of the

population was, however, much the same as in the neighbouring

districts of France--agitation in the towns and misery in the

country. It is not surprising, therefore, that the commotion

of August 4th should extend itself among the subjects of the

Holy see. Here, too, castles were burned, black mail levied on

the monasteries, tithes and feudal rights abolished. The city

of Avignon soon became the centre of a political agitation,

whose first object was to throw off the papal yoke, and then

to unite the country with France. ... In June, 1790, the

people of Avignon tore down the papal arms, and the Town

Council sent a message to Paris, that Avignon wished to be

united to France." Some French regiments were sent to the city

to maintain order; but "the greater part of them deserted, and

marched out with the Democrats of the town to take and sack

the little town of Cavaillon, which remained faithful to the

Pope. From this time forward civil war raged without

intermission. ... The Constituent Assembly, on the 14th of

September, 1791, decreed the reunion of the country with

France. Before the new government could assert its authority,

fresh and more dreadful atrocities had taken place," ending

with the fiendish massacre of 110 prisoners, held by a band of

ruffians who had taken possession of the papal castle.

H. von Sybel,

History of the French Revolution,

book 3, chapter 2 (volume 1).

FRANCE: A. D. 1790-1791.

The oath of the clergy.

First movements toward the European coalition

against French democracy.

Death of Mirabeau.

The King's flight and arrest at Varennes.

Rise of a Republican Party.

"By a decree of November 27th, 1790, the Assembly required the

clergy to take an oath of fidelity to the nation, the law and

the king, and to maintain the constitution. This oath they

were to take within a week, on pain of deprivation. The King,

before assenting to this measure, wished to procure the

consent of the Pope, but was persuaded not to wait for it, and

gave his sanction, December 3rd. ... Of 300 prelates and

priests, who had seats in the Assembly, those who sat on the

right unanimously refused to take the oath, while those who

sat on the left anticipated the day appointed for that

purpose. Out of 138 archbishops and bishops, only four

consented to swear, Talleyrand, Loménie de Brienne (now

Archbishop of Sens), the Bishop of Orleans, and the Bishop of

Viviers. The oath was also refused by the great majority of

the curés and vicars, amounting, it is said, to 50,000. Hence

arose the distinction of 'prêtres sermentés' and

'insermentés,' or sworn and non-juring priests. The brief of

Pius VI., forbidding the oath, was burnt at the Palais Royal,

as well as a mannikin representing the Pope himself in his

pontificals. Many of the deprived ecclesiastics refused to

vacate their functions, declared their successors intruders

and the sacraments they administered null, and excommunicated

all who recognised and obeyed them. Louis XVI., whose

religious feelings were very strong, was perhaps more hurt by

these attacks upon the Church than even by those directed

against his own prerogative. The death of Mirabeau, April 2nd

1791, was a great loss to the King, though it may well be

doubted whether his exertions could have saved the monarchy.

He fell a victim to his profligate habits, assisted probably

by the violent exertions he had recently made in the Assembly.

... He was honoured with a sumptuous funeral at the public

expense, to which, says a contemporary historian, nothing but

grief was wanting. In fact, to most of the members of the

Assembly, eclipsed by his splendid talents and overawed by his

reckless audacity, his death was a relief. ... After

Mirabeau's death, Duport, Barnave, and Lameth reigned supreme

in the Assembly, and Robespierre became more prominent. The

King had now begun to fix his hopes on foreign intervention.

The injuries inflicted by the decrees of the Assembly on

August 4th 1789, on several princes of the Empire, through

their possessions in Alsace, Franche Comté, and Lorraine,

might afford a pretext for a rupture between the German

Confederation and France. ... The German prelates, injured by

the Civil Constitution of the clergy, were among the first to

complain. By this act the Elector of Mentz was deprived of his

metropolitan rights over the bishoprics of Strasburg and

Spires; the Elector of Trèves of those over Metz, Toul,

Verdun, Nanci and St. Diez. The Bishops of Strasburg and Bale

lost their diocesan rights in Alsace. Some of these princes

and nobles had called upon the Emperor and the German body in

January 1790, for protection against the arbitrary acts of the

National Assembly. This appeal had been favourably

entertained, both by the Emperor Joseph II. and by the King of

Prussia; and though the Assembly offered suitable indemnities,

they were haughtily refused. ... The Spanish and Italian

Bourbons were naturally inclined to support their relative,

Louis XVI. ... The King of Sardinia, connected by

intermarriages with the French Bourbons, had also family

interests to maintain. Catherine II. of Russia had witnessed,

with humiliation and alarm, the fruits of the philosophy which

she had patronised, and was opposed to the new order of things

in France. ...

{1271}

All the materials existed for an extensive coalition against

French democracy. In this posture of affairs the Count

d'Artois, accompanied by Calonne, who served him as a sort of

minister, and by the Count de Durfort, who had been despatched

from the French Court, had a conference with the Emperor, now

Leopold II., at Mantua, in May 1791, in which it was agreed

that, towards the following July, Austria should march 35,000

men towards the frontiers of Flanders; the German Circles

15,000 towards Alsace; the Swiss 15,000 towards the Lyonnais;

the King of Sardinia 15,000 towards Dauphiné; while Spain was

to hold 20,000 in readiness in Catalonia. This agreement, for

there was not, as some writers have supposed, any formal

treaty, was drawn up by Calonne, and amended with the

Emperor's own hand. But the large force to be thus assembled

was intended only as a threatening demonstration, and

hostilities were not to be actually commenced without the

sanction of a congress. ... The King's situation had now

become intolerably irksome. He was, to all intents and

purposes, a prisoner at Paris. A trip, which he wished to make

to St. Cloud during the Easter of 1791, was denounced at the

Jacobin Club as a pretext for flight; and when he attempted to

leave the Tuileries, April 18th, the tocsin was rung, his

carriage was surrounded by the mob, and he was compelled to

return to the palace. ... A few days after ... the leaders of

the Revolution, who appear to have suspected his negociations

abroad, exacted that he should address a circular to his

ambassadors at foreign courts, in which he entirely approved

the Revolution, assumed the title of 'Restorer of French

liberty,' and utterly repudiated the notion that he was not

free and master of his actions." But the King immediately

nullified the circular by despatching secret agents with

letters "in which he notified that any sanction he might give

to the decrees of the Assembly was to be reputed null; that

his pretended approval of the constitution was to be

interpreted in an opposite sense, and that the more strongly

he should seem to adhere to it, the more he should desire to

be liberated from the captivity in which he was held. Louis

soon after resolved on his unfortunate flight to the army of

the Marquis de Bouillé at Montmédy. ... Having, after some

hair-breadth escapes, succeeded in quitting Paris in a

travelling berlin, June 20th, they [the King, Queen, and

family] reached St. Menehould in safety. But here the King was

recognised by Drouet, the son of the postmaster, who, mounting

his horse, pursued the royal fugitives to Varennes, raised an

alarm, and caused them to be captured when they already

thought themselves out of danger. In consequence of their

being rather later than was expected, the military

preparations that had been made for their protection entirely

failed. The news of the King's flight filled Paris with

consternation. The Assembly assumed all the executive power of

the Government, and when the news of the King's arrest

arrived, they despatched Barnave, Latour, Maubourg and Pétion

to conduct him and his family back to Paris. ... Notices had

been posted up in Paris, that those who applauded the King

should be horsewhipped, and that those who insulted him should

be hanged; hence he was received on entering the capital with

a dead silence. The streets, however, were traversed without

accident to the Tuileries, but as the royal party were

alighting, a rush was made upon them by some ruffians, and

they were with difficulty saved from injury. The King's

brother, the count of Provence, who had fled at the same time

by a different route, escaped safely to Brussels. This time

the King's intention to fly could not be denied; he had,

indeed, himself proclaimed it, by sending to the Assembly a

manifest, in which he explained his reasons for it, declared

that he did not intend to quit the kingdom, expressed his

desire to restore liberty and establish a constitution, but

annulled all that he had done during the last two years. ...

The King, after his return, was provisionally suspended from

his functions by a decree of the Assembly, June 25th. Guards

were placed over him and the Queen; the gardens of the

Tuileries assumed the appearance of a camp; sentinels were

stationed on the roof of the Palace, and even in the Queen's

bedchamber. ... From the period of the King's flight to

Varennes must be dated the first decided appearance of a

republican party in France. During his absence the Assembly

had been virtually sovereign, and hence men took occasion to

say, 'You see the public peace has been maintained, affairs

have gone on, in the usual way in the King's absence.' The

chief advocates of a republic were Brissot, Condorcet, and the

recently-established club of the Cordeliers. ... The

arch-democrat, Thomas Payne, who was now at Paris, also

endeavoured to excite the populace against the King. The

Jacobin Club had not yet gone this length; they were for

bringing Louis XVI. to trial and deposing him, but for

maintaining the monarchy."

T. H. Dyer,

History of Modern Europe,

book 7, chapters 2-3 (volume 4).

ALSO IN:

J. Michelet,

Historical View of the French Revolution,

book 4, chapters 8-14.

M'me Campan,

Memoirs of Marie Antoinette,

volume 2, chapters 5-7.

Marquis de Bouillé,

Memoirs,

chapters 8-11.

Duchess de Tourzel,

Memoirs,

volume 1, chapter 12.

A. B. Cochrane,

Francis I., and other Historical Studies,

volume 2 (The Flight of Varennes).

FRANCE: A. D. 1791 (July-September).

Attitude of Foreign Powers.

Coolness of Austria towards the Émigrés.

The Declaration of Pilnitz.

Completion of the Constitution.

Restoration of the King.

Tumult in the Champs de Mars.

Dissolution of the Constituent National Assembly.

"On the 27th of July, Prince Reuss presented a memorial [from

the Court of Austria] to the Court of Berlin, in which the

Emperor explained at length his views of a European Concert.

It was drawn up, throughout, in Leopold's usual cautious and

circumspect manner. ... In case an armed intervention should

appear necessary--they would take into consideration the

future constitution of France; but in doing so they were to

renounce, in honour of the great cause in which they were

engaged, all views of selfish aggrandizement. We see what a

small part the desire for war played in the drawing up of this

far-seeing plan. The document repeatedly urged that no step

ought to be taken without the concurrence of all the Powers,

and especially of England; and as England's decided aversion

to every kind of interference was well known, this stipulation

alone was sufficient to stamp upon the whole scheme, the

character of a harmless demonstration."

{1272}

At the same time Catharine II. of Russia, released from war

with the Turks, and bent upon the destruction of Poland,

desired "to implicate the Emperor as inextricably as possible

in the French quarrel, in order to deprive Poland of its most

powerful protector; she therefore entered with the greatest

zeal into the negociations for the support of Louis XVI. Her

old opponent, the brilliant King Gustavus of Sweden, declared

his readiness--on receipt of a large subsidy from Russia--to

conduct a Swedish army by sea to the coast of Flanders, and

thence, under the guidance of Bouillé, against Paris. ... But,

of course, every word he uttered was only an additional

warning to Leopold to keep the peace. ... Under these

circumstances he [the Emperor] was most disagreeably surprised

on the 20th of August, a few days before his departure for

Pillnitz, by the sudden and entirely unannounced and

unexpected arrival in Vienna of the Count d'Artois. It was not

possible to refuse to see him, but Leopold made no secret to

him of the real position of affairs. ... He asked permission

to accompany the Emperor to Pillnitz, which the latter, with

cool politeness, said that he had no scruple in granting, but

that even there no change of policy would take place. ...

Filled with such sentiments, the Emperor Leopold set out for

the conference with his new ally; and the King of Prussia came

to meet him with entirely accordant views. ... The

representations of d'Artois, therefore, made just as little

impression at Pillnitz, as they had done, a week before, at

Vienna. ... On the 27th, d'Artois received the joint answer of

the two Sovereigns, the tone and purport of which clearly

testified to the sentiments of its authors. ... The Emperor

and King gave their sanction to the peaceable residence of

individual Émigrés in their States, but declared that no armed

preparations would be allowed before the conclusion of an

agreement between the European Powers. To this rejection the

two Monarchs added a proposal of their own--contained in a

joint declaration--in which they spoke of the restoration of

order and monarchy in France as a question of the greatest

importance to the whole of Europe. They signified their

intention of inviting the coöperation of all the European

Powers. ... But as it was well ascertained that England would

take no part, the expressions they chose were really

equivalent to a declaration of non-intervention, and were

evidently made use of by Leopold solely to intimidate the

Parisian democrats. ... Thus ended the conference of Pillnitz,

after the two Monarchs had agreed to protect the constitution

of the Empire, to encourage the Elector of Saxony to accept

the crown of Poland, and to afford each other friendly aid in

every quarter. The statement, therefore, which has been a

thousand times repeated, that the first coalition for an

attack on the French Revolution was formed on this occasion,

has been shown to be utterly without foundation. As soon as

the faintest gleam of a reconciliation between Louis and the

National Assembly appeared, the cause of the Emigrés was

abandoned by the German Courts."

H. Von Sybel,

History of the French Revolution,

book 2, chapter 6. (volume l).

At Paris, meantime, "the commissioners charged to make their

report on the affair of Varennes presented it on the 16th of

July. In the journey, they said, there was nothing culpable;

and even if there were, the King was inviolable. Dethronement

could not result from it, since the King had not staid away

long enough, and had not resisted the summons of the

legislative body. Robespierre, Buzot, and Pétion repeated all

the well known arguments against the inviolability. Duport,

Barnave, and Salles answered them, and it was at length

resolved that the King could not be brought to trial on

account of his flight. ... No sooner was this resolution

passed than Robespierre rose, and protested strongly against

it, in the name of humanity. On the evening preceding this

decision, a great tumult had taken place at the Jacobins. A

petition to the Assembly was there drawn up, praying it to

declare that the King was deposed as a perfidious traitor to

his oaths, and that it would seek to supply his place by all

the constitutional means. It was resolved that this petition

should be carried on the following day to the Champ de Mars,

where everyone might sign it on the altar of the country. Next

day, it was accordingly carried to the place agreed upon, and

the crowd of the seditious was reinforced by that of the

curious, who wished to be spectators of the event. At this

moment the decree was passed, so that it was now too late to

petition. Lafayette arrived, broke down the barricades already

erected, was threatened and even fired at, but ... at length

prevailed on the populace to retire. ... But the tumult was

soon renewed. Two invalids, who happened to be, nobody knows

for what purpose, under the altar of the country, were

murdered, and then the uproar became unbounded. The Assembly

sent for the municipality, and charged it to preserve public

order. Bailly repaired to the Champ de Mars, ordered the red

flag to be unfurled, and, by virtue of martial law, summoned

the seditious to retire. ... Lafayette at first ordered a few

shots to be fired in the air: the crowd quitted the altar of

the country, but soon rallied. Thus driven to extremity, he

gave the word, 'Fire!' The first discharge killed some of the

rioters. Their number has been exaggerated. Some have reduced

it to 30, others have raised it to 400, and others to several

thousand. The last statement was believed at the moment, and

the consternation became general. ... Lafayette and Bailly

were vehemently reproached for the proceedings in the Champ de

Mars; but both of them, considering it their duty to observe

the law, and to risk popularity and life in its execution,

felt neither regret nor fear for what they had done. The

factions were overawed by the energy which they displayed. ...

About this time the Assembly came to a determination which has

since been censured, but the result of which did not prove so

mischievous as it has been supposed. It decreed that none of

its members should be re-elected. Robespierre was the proposer

of this resolution, and it was attributed to the envy which he

felt against his colleagues, among whom he had not shone. ...

The new Assembly was thus deprived of men whose enthusiasm was

somewhat abated, and whose legislative science was matured by

an experience of three years. ... The constitution was ...

completed with some haste, and submitted to the King for his

acceptance. From that moment his freedom was restored to him;

or, if that expression be objected to, the strict watch kept

over the palace ceased. ... After a certain number of days he

declared that he accepted the constitution. ... He repaired to

the Assembly, where he was received as in the most brilliant

times. Lafayette, who never forgot to repair the inevitable

evils of political troubles, proposed a general amnesty for

all acts connected with the Revolution, which was proclaimed

amidst shouts of joy, and the prisons were instantly thrown

open. At length, on the 30th of September [1791], Thouret, the

last president, declared that the Constituent Assembly had

terminated its sittings."

A. Thiers,

History of the French Revolution

(American edition), volume 1, pages 186-193.

ALSO IN:

M'me de Stael,

Considerations on the French Revolution,

part 2, chapters 22-23, and part 3, chapters 1-2.

H. C. Lockwood,

Constitutional History of France,

chapter 1., and appendix 1.

{1273}

FRANCE: A. D. 1791 (August).

Insurrection of slaves in San Domingo.

See HAYTI: A. D. 1632-1803.

FRANCE: A. D. 1791 (September).

Removal of all disabilities from the Jews.

See JEWS: A. D. 1791.

FRANCE: A. D. 1791 (October).

The meeting of the Legislative Assembly.

Its party divisions.

The Girondists and their leaders.

The Mountain.

"The most glorious destiny was predicted for the Constitution,

yet it did not live a twelve month; the Assembly that was to

apply it was but a transition between the Constitutional

Monarchy and the Republic. It was because the Revolution

partook much more of a social than of a political overthrow.

The Constitution had done all it could for the political part,

but the social fabric remained to be reformed; the ancient

privileged classes had been scotched, but not killed. ... The

new Legislative Assembly [which met October 1, its members

having been elected before the dissolution of the Constituent

Assembly] was composed of 745 deputies, mostly chosen from the

middle classes and devoted to the Revolution; those of the

Right and Extreme Right going by the name of Feuillants, those

of the Left and Extreme Left by the name of Jacobins. The

Right was composed of Constitutionalists, who counted on the

support of the National Guard and departmental authorities.

Their ideas of the Revolution were embodied in the

Constitution. ... They kept up some relations with the Court

by means of Barnave and the Lameths, but their pillar outside

the Assembly, their trusty counsellor, seems to have been

Lafayette. ... The Left was composed of men resolved at all

risks to further the Revolution, even at the expense of the

Constitution. They intended to go as far as a Republic, only

they lacked common unity of views, and did not form a compact

body. ... They reckoned among their numbers Vergniaud, Guadet,

and Gensonné, deputies of the Gironde [the Bordeaux region, on

the Garonne], powerful and vehement orators, and from whom

their party afterwards took the name of 'Girondins'; also

Brissot [de Warville] (born 1754), a talented journalist, who

had drawn up the petition for the King's deposition; and

Condorcet (born 1743), an ultra-liberal, but a brilliant

philosopher. Their leader outside the Assembly was Pétion

(born 1753), a cold, calculating, and dissembling Republican,

enjoying great popularity with the masses. The Extreme Left,

occupying in small numbers the raised seats in the Assembly,

from which circumstance they afterwards took the name of 'the

Mountain,' were auxiliaries of the 'Girondins' in their

attempts to further a Revolution which should be entirely in

the interest of the people. Their inspirers outside the

Assembly were Robespierre (born 1759), who controlled the club

of the Jacobins by his dogmatic rigorism and fame for

integrity; and Danton (born 1759), surnamed the Mirabeau of

the 'Breechless' (Sansculottes), a bold and daring spirit, who

swayed the new club of the Cordeliers. The Centre was composed

of nonentities, their moderation was inspired by fear, hence

they nearly always voted with the Left."

H. Van Laun,

The French Revolutionary Epoch,

book 1, chapter 2, section 3 (volume 1).

"The department of the Gironde had given birth to a new

political party in the twelve citizens who formed its

deputies. ... The names (obscure and unknown up to this

period), of Ducos, Guadet, Lafond-Ladebat, Grangeneuve,

Gensonné, Vergniaud, were about to rise into notice and renown

with the storms and disasters of their country; they were the

men who were destined to give that impulse to the Revolution

that had hitherto remained in doubt and indecision, before

which it still trembled with apprehension, and which was to

precipitate it into a republic. Why was this impulse fated to

have birth in the department of the Gironde and not in Paris?

Nought but conjectures can be offered on this subject. ...

Bordeaux was a commercial city, and commerce, which requires

liberty through interest, at last desires it through a love of

freedom. Bordeaux was the great commercial link between

America and France, and their constant intercourse with

America had communicated to the Gironde their love for free

institutions. Moreover Bordeaux ... was the birthplace of

Montaigne and Montesquieu, those two great republicans of the

French school."

A. de Lamartine,

History of the Girondists,

book 4, section 1 (volume 1).

"In the new National Assembly there was only one powerful and

active party--that of the Gironde. ... When we use the term

'parties' in reference to this Assembly, nothing more is meant

by it than small groups of from 12 to 20 persons, who bore the

sway in the rostra and in the Committees, and who alternately

carried with them the aimless crowd of Deputies. It is true,

indeed, that at the commencement of their session, 130

Deputies entered their names among the Jacobins, and about 200

among the Feuillants, but this had no lasting influence on the

divisions, and the majority wavered under the influence of

temporary motives. The party which was regarded as the 'Right'

had no opportunity for action, but saw themselves, from the

very first, obliged to assume an attitude of defence. ...

Outside the Chamber the beau ideal of this party,--General

Lafayette,--declared himself in favour of an American Senate,

but without any of the energy of real conviction. As he had

defended the Monarchy solely from a sense of duty, while all

the feelings of his heart were inclined towards a Republic, so

now, though he acknowledged the necessity of an upper Chamber,

the existing Constitution appeared to him to possess a more

ideal beauty. He never attained, on this point, either to

clear ideas or decided actions; and it was at this period that

he resigned his command of the National guard in Paris, and

retired for a while to his estate in Auvergne. ... The

Girondist Deputies ... were distinguished among the new

members of the Assembly by personal dignity, regular

education, and natural ability; and were, moreover, as ardent

in their radicalism as any Parisian demagogue. They

consequently soon became the darlings of all those zealous

patriots for whom the Cordeliers were too dirty and the

Feuillants too luke warm.

{1274}

External advantages are not without their weight, even in the

most terrible political crises, and the Girondists owe to the

magic of their eloquence, and especially to that of Vergniaud,

an enduring fame, which neither their principles nor their

deeds would have earned for them. ... The representatives of

Bordeaux had never occupied a leading position in the

Girondist party, to which they had given its name. The real

leadership of the Gironde fell singularly enough into the

hands of an obscure writer, a political lady, and a priest who

carried on his operations behind the scenes. It was their

hands that overthrew the throne of the Capets, and spread

revolution over Europe. ... The writer in this trio was

Brissot, who on the 16th of July had wished to proclaim the

Republic, and who now represented the capital in the National

Assembly, as a constitutional member. ... While Brissot shaped

the foreign policy of the Girondist party, its home affairs

were directed by Marie Jeanne Roland, wife of the quondam

Inspector of Factories at Lyons, with whom she had come the

year before to Paris, and immediately thrown herself into the

whirlpool of political life. As early as the year 1789, she

had written to a friend, that the National Assembly must

demand two illustrious heads, or all would be lost. ... She

was ... 36 years old, not beautiful, but interesting,

enthusiastic and indefatigable; with noble aims, but incapable

of discerning the narrow line which separates right from

wrong. ... When warned by a friend of the unruly nature of the

Parisian mob, she replied, that bloodhounds were after all

indispensable for starting the game. ... A less conspicuous,

but not less important, part in this association, was played

by the Abbé Sieyès. He did what neither Brissot nor Mad.

Roland could have done by furnishing his party with a

comprehensive and prospective plan of operations. ... Their

only clearly defined objects were to possess themselves of the

reins of government, to carry on the Revolution, and to

destroy the Monarchy by every weapon within their reach."

H. von Sybel,

History of the French Revolution,

book 3, chapter 1 (volume 1).

ALSO IN:

H. A. Taine,

The French Revolution,

book 4, (volume 2).

See, also, below.

FRANCE: A. D. 1791-1792.

Growth and spread of anarchy and civil war.

Activity of the Emigrés and the ejected priests.

Decrees against them vetoed by the King.

The Girondists in control of the government.

War with the German powers forced on by them.

"It was an ominous proof of the little confidence felt by

serious men in the permanence of the new Constitution, that

the funds fell when the King signed it. All the chief

municipal posts in Paris were passing into the hands of

Republicans, and when Bailly, in November, ceased to be Mayor

of Paris, he was succeeded in that great office by Pétion, a

vehement and intolerant Jacobin. Lafayette had resigned the

command of the National Guard, which was then divided under

six commanders, and it could no longer be counted on to

support the cause of order. Over a great part of France there

was a total insecurity of life and property, such as had

perhaps never before existed in a civilised country, except in

times of foreign invasion or successful rebellion. Almost all

the towns in the south--Marseilles, Toulon, Nîmes, Arles,

Avignon, Montpellier, Carpentras, Aix, Montauban--were centres

of Republicanism, brigandage, or anarchy. The massacres of

Jourdain at Avignon, in October, are conspicuous even among

the horrors of the Revolution. Caen in the following month was

convulsed by a savage and bloody civil war. The civil

constitution of the clergy having been condemned by the Pope,

produced an open schism, and crowds of ejected priests were

exciting the religious fanaticism of the peasantry. In some

districts in the south, the war between Catholic and

Protestant was raging as fiercely as in the 17th century,

while in Brittany, and especially in La Vendée, there were all

the signs of a great popular insurrection against the new

Government. Society seemed almost in dissolution, and there

was scarcely a department in which law was observed and

property secure. The price of corn, at the same time, was

rising fast under the influence of a bad harvest in the south,

aggravated by the want of specie, the depreciation of paper

money, and the enormously increased difficulties of transport.

The peasantry were combining to refuse the paper money. It was

falling rapidly in value. ... In the mean time the stream of

emigrants continued unabated, and it included the great body

of the officers of the army who had been driven from the

regiments by their own soldiers. ... At Brussels, Worms, and

Coblentz, emigrants were forming armed organisations."

W. E. H. Lecky,

History of England in the 18th century,

chapter 21 (volume 5).

"The revolution was threatened by two dangerous enemies, the

emigrants, who were urging on a foreign invasion, and the

non-juring bishops and priests who were doing all in their

power to excite domestic rebellion. The latter were really the

more dangerous. ... The Girondists clamoured for repressive

measures. On the 30th of October it was decreed that the count

of Provence, unless he returned within two months, should

forfeit all rights to the regency. On the 9th of November an

edict threatened the emigrants with confiscation and death

unless they returned to their allegiance before the end of the

year. On the 29th of November came the attack upon the

non-jurors. They were called upon to take the oath within

eight days, when lists were to be drawn up of those who

refused; these were then to forfeit their pensions, and if any

disturbance took place in their district they were to be

removed from it, or if their complicity were proved they were

to be imprisoned for two years. The king accepted the decree

against his brother, but he opposed his veto to the other two.

The Girondists and Jacobins eagerly seized the opportunity for

a new attack upon the monarchy. ... Throughout the winter

attention was devoted almost exclusively to foreign affairs.

It has been seen that the emperor was really eager for peace,

and that as long as he remained in that mood there was little

risk of any other prince taking the initiative. At the same

time it must be acknowledged that Leopold's tone towards the

French government was often too haughty and menacing to be

conciliatory, and also that the open preparations of the

emigrants in neighbouring states constituted an insult if not

a danger to France. The Girondists, the most susceptible of

men, only expressed the national sentiment in dwelling upon

this with bitterness, and in calling for vengeance. At the

same time they had conceived the definite idea that their own

supremacy could best be obtained and secured by forcing on a

foreign war.

{1275}

This was expressly avowed by Brissot, who took the lead of the

party in this matter. Robespierre, on the other hand, partly

through temperament and partly through jealousy of his

brilliant rivals, was inclined to the maintenance of peace.

But on this point the Feuillants were agreed with the Gironde,

and so a vast majority was formed to force the unwilling king

and ministers into war. The first great step was taken when

Duportail, who had charge of military affairs, was replaced by

Narbonne, a Feuillant. Louis XVI. was compelled to issue a

note (14 December, 1791) to the emperor and to the archbishop

of Trier to the effect that if the military force of the

emigrants were not disbanded by the 15th of January

hostilities would be commenced against the elector. The latter

at once ordered the cessation of the military preparations,

but the emigrants not only refused to obey but actually

insulted the French envoy. Leopold expressed his desire for

peace, but at the same time declared that any attack on the

electorate of Trier would be regarded as an act of hostility

to the empire. These answers were unsatisfactory, and Narbonne

collected three armies on the frontiers, under the command of

Rochambeau, Lafayette, and Luckner, and amounting together to

about 150,000 men. On the 25th of January an explicit

declaration was demanded from the emperor, with a threat that

war would be declared unless a satisfactory answer was

received by the 4th of March. Leopold II. saw all his hopes of

maintaining peace in western Europe gradually disappearing,

and was compelled to bestir himself. ... On the 7th of

February he finally concluded a treaty with the king of

Prussia. ... On the 1st of March, while still hoping to avoid

a quarrel, Leopold II. died of a sudden illness, and with him

perished the last possibility of peace. His son and successor,

Francis II., who was now 24, had neither his father's ability

nor his experience, and he was naturally more easily swayed by

the anti-revolutionary spirit. ... The Girondists combined all

their efforts for an attack upon the minister of foreign

affairs, Delessart, whom they accused of truckling to the

enemies of the nation. Delessart was committed to prison, and

his colleagues at once resigned. The Gironde now came into

office. The ministry of home affairs was given to Roland; of

war to Servan; of finance to Clavière. Dumouriez obtained the

foreign department, Duranthon that of justice, and Lacoste the

marine. Its enemies called it 'the ministry of the

Sansculottes.' ... On the 20th of April [1792] Louis XVI.

appeared in the assembly and read with trembling voice a

declaration of war against the king of Hungary and Bohemia."

R. Lodge,

History of Modern Europe,

chapter 22, section 20-21.

The sincere desire of the Emperor Leopold II. to avoid war

with France, and the restraining influence over the King of

Prussia which he exercised up to the time when Catherine II.

of Russia overcame it by the Polish temptation, are set forth

by H. von Sybel in passages quoted elsewhere.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1791-1792.

ALSO IN:

A. de Lamartine,

History of the Girondists,

books 6-14 (volume l).

A. F. Bertrand de Moleville,

Annals of the French Revolution,

part 2. chapters 1-14 (volume 5-6).

F. C. Schlosser,

History of the Eighteenth Century,

5th period, 2d division, chapter 1 (volume 6).

FRANCE: A. D. 1792 (April).

Fête to the Soldiers of Chateauvieux.

See LIBERTY CAP.

FRANCE: A. D. 1792 (April-July).

Opening of the war with Austria and Prussia.

French reverses.

"Hostilities followed close upon the declaration of war. At

this time the forces destined to come into collision were

posted as follows: Austria had 40,000 men in Belgium, and

25,000 on the Rhine. These numbers might easily have been

increased to 80,000, but the Emperor of Austria did no more

than collect 7,000 or 8,000 around Brisgau, and some 20,000

more around Rastadt. The Prussians, now bound into a close

alliance with Austria, had still a great distance to traverse

from their base to the theatre of war, and could not hope to

undertake active operations for a long time to come. France,

on the other hand, had already three strong armies in the

field. The Army of the North, under General Rochambeau, nearly

50,000 strong, held the frontier from Philippeville to

Dunkirk; General Lafayette commanded a second army of about

the same strength in observation from Philippeville to the

Lauter; and a third army of 40,000 men, under Marshal Luckner,

watched the course of the Rhine from Lauterbourg to the

confines of Switzerland. The French forces were strong,

however, on paper only. The French army had been mined, as it

seemed, by the Revolution, and had fallen almost to pieces.

The wholesale emigration of the aristocrats had robbed it of

its commissioned officers, the old experienced leaders whom

the men were accustomed to follow and obey. Again, the passion

for political discussion, and the new notions of universal

equality had fostered a dangerous spirit of license in the

ranks. ... While the regular regiments of the old

establishment were thus demoralised, the new levies were still

but imperfectly organised, and the whole army was unfit to

take the field. It was badly equipped, without transport, and

without those useful administrative services which are

indispensable for mobility and efficiency. Moreover, the

prestige of the French arms was at its lowest ebb. A long and

enervating peace had followed since the last great war, in

which the French armies had endured only failure and

ignominious defeat. It is not strange, then, that the foes

whom France had so confidently challenged, counted upon an

easy triumph over the revolutionary troops. The earliest

operations fully confirmed these anticipations. ... France

after the declaration of war had at once assumed the

initiative, and proceeded to invade Belgium. Here the Duke

Albert of Saxe-Teschen, who commanded the Imperialist forces,

held his forces concentrated in three principal corps: one

covered the line from the sea to Tournay; the second was at

Leuze; the third and weakest at Mons. The total of these

troops rose to barely 40,000, and Mons, the most important

point in the general line of defence, was the least strongly

held. All able strategist gathering together 30,000 men from

each of the French armies of the Centre and North, would have

struck at Mons with all his strength, cut Duke Albert's

communications with the Rhine, turned his inner flank, and

rolled him up into the sea. But no great genius as yet

directed the military energies of France. ... By Dumouriez's

advice, the French armies were ordered to advance against the

Austrians by several lines. Four columns of invasion were to

enter Belgium; one was to follow the sea coast, the second to

march on Tournay, the third to move from Valenciennes on Mons,

and the fourth, under Lafayette, on Givet or Namur.

{1276}

Each, according to the success it might achieve, was to

reinforce the next nearest to it, and all, finally, were to

converge on Brussels. At the very outset, however, the French

encountered the most ludicrous reverses. Their columns fled in

disorder directly they came within sight of the enemy.

Lafayette alone continued his march boldly towards Namur; but

he was soon compelled to retire by the news of the hasty

flight of the columns north of him. The French troops had

proved as worthless as their leaders were incapable; whole

brigades turned tail, crying that they were betrayed, casting

away their weapons as they ran, and displaying the most abject

cowardice and terror. Not strangely, after this pitiful

exhibition, the Austrians--all Europe, indeed--held the

military power of France in the utmost contempt. ... But now

the national danger stirred France to its inmost depths.

French spirit was thoroughly roused. The country rose as one

man, determined to offer a steadfast, stubborn front to its

foes. Stout-hearted leaders, full of boundless energy and

enthusiasm, summoned all the resources of the nation to stem

and roll back the tide of invasion. Immediate steps were taken

to put the defeated and disgraced armies of the frontier upon

a new footing. Lafayette replaced Rochambeau, with charge from

Longwy to the sea, his main body about Sedan; Luckner took the

line from the Moselle to the Swiss mountains, with

head-quarters at Metz. A third general, destined to come

speedily to the front, also joined the army as Lafayette's

lieutenant. This was Dumouriez, who, wearied and baffled by

Parisian politics, sought the freedom of the field."

A. Griffiths,

French Revolutionary Generals,

chapter 1.

FRANCE: A. D. 1792 (June-August).

The King's dismissal of Girondist ministers.

Mob demonstration of June 20.

Lafayette in Paris.

His failure.

The Country declared to be in Danger.

Gathering of volunteers in Paris.

Brunswick's manifesto.

Mob attack on the Tuileries, August 10.

Massacre of the Swiss.

"Servan, the minister of war, proposed the formation of an

armed camp for the protection of Paris. Much opposition was,

however, raised to the project, and the Assembly decreed (June

6) that 20,000 volunteers, recruited in the departments,

should meet at Paris to take part in the celebration of a

federal festival on July 14, the third anniversary of the fall

of the Bastille. The real object of those who supported the

decree was to have a force at Paris with which to maintain

mastery over the city should the Allies penetrate into the

interior. Louis left the decree unsanctioned, as he had the

one directed against nonjurors. The agitators of the sections

sought to get up an armed demonstration against this exercise

of the King's constitutional prerogative. Though armed

demonstrations were illegal, the municipality offered but a

perfunctory and half-hearted resistance. ... Louis, irritated

at the pressure put on him by Roland, Clavière, and Servan, to

sanction the two decrees, dismissed the three ministers from

office (June 13). Dumouriez, who had quarreled with his

colleagues, supported the King in taking this step, but in

face of the hostility of the Assembly himself resigned office

(June 15). Three days later a letter from Lafayette was read

in the Assembly. The general denounced the Jacobins as the

authors of all disorders, called on the Assembly to maintain

the prerogatives of the crown, and intimated that his army

would not submit to see the constitution violated (June 18).

Possibly the dismissal of the ministers and the writing of

this letter were measures concerted between the King and

Lafayette. In any case the King's motive was to excite

division between the constitutionalists and the Girondists, so

as to weaken the national defence. The dismissal of the ministers

was, however, regarded by the Girondists as a proof of the

truth of their worst suspicions, and no measures were taken to

prevent an execution of the project of making an armed, and

therefore illegal, demonstration against the royal policy. On

June 20, thousands of persons, carrying pikes or whatever

weapon came to hand, and accompanied by several battalions of

the national guard, marched from St. Antoine to the hall of

the Assembly. A deputation read an address demanding the

recall of the ministers. Afterwards the whole of the

procession, men, women and children, dancing, singing, and

carrying emblems, defiled through the chamber. Instigated by

their leaders they broke into the Tuileries. The King, who

took his stand on a window seat, was mobbed for four hours. To

please his unwelcome visitors, he put on his head a red cap,

such as was now commonly worn at the Jacobins as an emblem of

liberty, in imitation of that which was once worn by the

emancipated Roman slave. He declared his intention to observe

the constitution, but neither insult nor menace could prevail

on him to promise his sanction to the two decrees. The Queen,

separated from the King, sat behind a table on which she

placed the Dauphin, exposed to the gaze and taunts of the

crowds which slowly traversed the palace apartments. At last,

but not before night, the mob left the Tuileries without doing

further harm, and order was again restored. This insurrection

and the slackness, if not connivance, of the municipal

authorities, excited a widespread feeling of indignation

amongst constitutionalists. Lafayette came to Paris, and at

the bar of the Assembly demanded in person what he had before

demanded by letter (June 28). With him, as with other former

members of the constituent Assembly, it was a point of honour

to shield the persons of the King and Queen from harm. Various

projects for their removal from Paris were formed, but policy

and sentiment alike forbade Marie Antoinette to take advantage

of them. ... The one gleam of light on the horizon of this

unhappy Queen was the advance of the Allies. 'Better die,' she

one day bitterly exclaimed, 'than be saved by Lafayette and

the constitutionalists.' There was, no doubt, a possibility of

the Allies reaching Paris that summer, but this enormously

increased the danger of the internal situation. ... To rouse

the nation to a sense of peril the Assembly [July 11] caused

public proclamation to be made in every municipality that the

country was in danger. The appeal was responded to with

enthusiasm, and within six weeks more than 60,000 volunteers

enlisted. The Duke of Brunswick, the commander-in-chief of the

allied forces, published a manifesto, drawn up by the

emigrants. If the authors of this astounding proclamation had

deliberately intended to serve the purpose of those Frenchmen

who were bent on kindling zeal for the war, they could not

have done anything more likely to serve their purpose.

{1277}

The powers required the country to submit unconditionally to

Louis's mercy. All who offered resistance were to be treated

as rebels to their King, and Paris was to suffer military

execution if any harm befell the royal family. ... Meanwhile,

a second insurrection, which had for its object the King's

deposition, was in preparation. The Assembly, after declaring

the country in danger, had authorised the sections of Paris,

as well as the administrative authorities throughout France,

to meet at any moment. The sections had, in consequence, been

able to render themselves entirely independent of the

municipality. In each of the sectional or primary assemblies

from 700 to 3,000 active citizens had the right to vote, but

few cared to attend, and thus it constantly happened that a

small active minority spoke and acted in the name of an

apathetic constitutional majority. Thousands of volunteers

passed through Paris on their way to the frontier, some of

whom were purposely retained to take part in the insurrection.

The municipality of Marseilles, at the request of Barbaroux, a

young friend of the Rolands, sent up a band of 500 men, who

first sung in Paris the verses celebrated as the

'Marseillaise' [see MARSEILLAISE]. The danger was the greater

since every section had its own cannon and a special body of

cannoneers, who nearly to a man were on the side of the

revolutionists. The terrified and oscillating Assembly made no

attempt to suppress agitation, but acquitted (August 8)

Lafayette, by 406 against 280 votes, of a charge of treason

made against him by the left, on the ground that he had sought

to intimidate the Legislature. This vote was regarded as

tantamount to a refusal to pass sentence of deposition on

Louis. On the following night the insurrection began. Its

centre was in the Faubourg of St. Antoine, and it was

organised by but a small number of men. Mandat, the

commander-in-chief of the national guard, was an energetic

constitutionalist, who had taken well-concerted measures for

the defence of the Tuileries. But the unscrupulousness of the

conspirators was more than a match for his zeal. Soon after

midnight commissioners from 28 sections met together at the

Hotel de Ville, and forced the Council-General of the

Municipality to summon Mandat before it, and to send out

orders to the officers of the guard in contradiction to those

previously given. Mandat, unaware of what was passing, obeyed

the summons, and on his arrival was arrested and murdered.

After this the commissioners dispersed the lawful council and

usurped its place. At the Tuileries were about 950 Swiss and

more than 4,000 national guards. Early in the morning the

first bands of insurgents appeared. On the fidelity of the

national guards it was impossible to rely; and the royal

family, attended by a small escort, left the palace, and

sought refuge with the Assembly [which held its sessions in

the old Riding-School of the Tuileries, not far from the

palace, at one side of the gardens]. Before their departure

orders had been given to the Swiss to repel force by force,

and soon the sound of firing spread alarm through Paris. The

King sent the Swiss instructions to retire, which they

punctually obeyed. One column, passing through the Tuileries

gardens, was shot down almost to a man. The rest reached the

Assembly in safety, but several were afterwards massacred on

their way to prison. For 24 hours the most frightful anarchy

prevailed. Numerous murders were committed in the streets. The

assailants, some hundreds of whom had perished, sacked the

palace, and killed all the men whom they found there."

B. M. Gardiner,

The French Revolution,

chapter 5.

"Terror and fury ruled the hour. The Swiss, pressed on from

without, paralysed from within, have ceased to shoot; but not

to be shot. What shall they do? Desperate is the moment.

Shelter or instant death: yet How, Where? One party flies out

by the Rue de l'Echelle; is destroyed utterly, 'en entier.' A

second, by the other side, throws itself into the Garden;

'hurrying across a keen fusillade'; rushes suppliant into the

National Assembly; finds pity and refuge in the back benches

there. The third, and largest, darts out in column, 300

strong, towards the Champs Elysées: 'Ah, could we but reach

Courbevoye, where other Swiss are!' Wo! see, in such fusillade

the column 'soon breaks itself by diversity of opinion,' into

distracted segments, this way and that;--to escape in holes,

to die fighting from street to street. The firing and

murdering will not cease: not yet for long. The red Porters of

Hotels are shot at, be they 'Suisse' by nature, or Suisse only

in name. The very Firemen, who pump and labour on that smoking

Carrousel [which the mob had fired]; are shot at; why should

the Carrousel not burn? Some Swiss take refuge in private

houses; find that mercy too does still dwell in the heart of

man. The brave Marseillese are merciful, late so wroth; and

labour to save. ... But the most are butchered, and even

mangled. Fifty (some say Fourscore) were marched as prisoners,

by National Guards, to the Hôtel-de-Ville: the ferocious

people bursts through on them, in the Place-de-Greve;

massacres them to the last man. 'O Peuple, envy of the

universe!' Peuple, in mad Gaelic effervescence! Surely few

things in the history of carnage are painfuler. What

ineffaceable red streak, flickering so sad in the memory, is

that, of this poor column of red Swiss, 'breaking itself in

the confusion of opinions'; dispersing, into blackness and

death! Honour to you, brave men; honourable pity, through long

times! Not martyrs were ye; and yet almost more. He was no

King of yours, this Louis; and he forsook you like a King of

shreds and patches: ye were but sold to him for some poor

sixpence a-day; yet would ye work for your wages, keep your

plighted word: The work now was to die; and ye did it. Honour

to you, O Kinsmen; and may the old Deutsch 'Biederkeit' and'

Tapferkeit,' and Valour which is Worth and Truth, be they

Swiss, be they Saxon, fail in no age!"

T. Carlyle,

The French Revolution,

volume 2, book 6, chapter 7.

ALSO IN:

A. Thiers,

History of the French Revolution

(American edition), volume 1, pages 266-330.

Madame Campan,

Memoirs of Marie Antoinette,

volume 2, chapters 9-10.

J. Claretie,

Camille Desmoulins and his Wife,

chapter 3, sections 4-5.

A. F. Bertrand de Moleville,

Annals of the French Revolution,

part 2, chapters 18-28 (volumes 6-7).

Duchess de Tourzel,

Memoirs,

volume 2, chapters 8-10.

Count M. Dumas,

Memoirs,

chapter 4 (volume 1).

{1278}

FRANCE: A. D. 1792 (August).

Power seized by the insurrectionary Commune of Paris.

Dethronement and imprisonment of the King.

Conflict between the Girondins of the Assembly and the

Jacobins of the Commune.

Alarm at the advance of the Prussians.

The searching of the city for suspects.

Arrest of 3,000.

"While the Swiss were being murdered, the Legislative Assembly

were informed that a deputation wished to enter. At the head

of this deputation appeared Huguenin, who announced that a new

municipality for Paris had been formed, and that the old one

had resigned. This was, indeed, the fact. On the departure of

Santerre the commissioners of the sections had given orders to

the legitimate council-general of the municipality to resign,

and the council-general, startled by the events which were

passing, consented. The commissioners then called themselves

the new municipality, and proceeded, as municipal officers, to

send a deputation to the Assembly. The deputation almost

ordered that the Assembly should immediately declare the

king's dethronement, and, in the presence of the unfortunate

monarch himself, Vergniaud mounted the tribune, and proposed,

on behalf of the Committee of Twenty-one, that the French

people should be invited to elect a National Convention to

draw up a new Constitution, and that the chief of the

executive power, as he called the king, should be

provisionally suspended from his functions until the new

Convention had pronounced what measures should be adopted to

establish a new government and the reign of liberty and

equality. The motion was carried, and was countersigned by one

of the king's ministers, De Joly; and thus the old monarchy of

the Bourbons in France came to an end. But the Assembly had

not yet completed its work. The ministry was dismissed, as not

having the confidence of the people, and the Minister of War,

d'Abancourt, was ordered to be tried by the court at Orleans

for treason, in having brought the Swiss Guards to Paris. The

Assembly then prepared to elect new ministers. Roland,

Clavière, and Servan were recalled by acclamation to their

former posts. ... Danton was elected Minister of Justice by

222 votes against 60; Gaspard Monge, the great mathematician,

was elected Minister of Marine, on the nomination of

Condorcet; and Lebrun-Tondu, a friend of Brissot and

Dumouriez, and a former abbé, to the department of Foreign

Affairs. At the bidding of the self-elected municipality of

Paris the king had been suspended, and a new ministry

inaugurated, and this new municipality, which, it must be

remembered, only represented 28 sections of Paris, next

proceeded to send its decrees all over France. It was joined

on this very day by some of the extreme men who hoped through

its means to force a republic on France--notably by Camille

Desmoulins and Dubois-Dubais; and on the 11th it was still

further reinforced by the presence of Robespierre,

Billaud-Varenne, and Marat. The Legislative Assembly had

become a mere instrument in the hands of the Committee of

Twenty-one [a committee specially charged with watchfulness

over the safety of the public, and which foreshadowed the

later famous Committee of Public Safety]. The majority of the

deputies either left Paris, or, if they belonged to the right,

hid themselves, while those of the left had to obey every

order of their leaders, and left the transaction of temporary

business to the Committee of Twenty-one. This committee

practically ruled France for forty days, until the meeting of

the Convention; the Assembly always accepted its propositions

and sent the deputies it nominated on important missions; its

only rival was the insurrectionary commune, and the

internecine warfare between the Jacobins and the Girondins was

foreshadowed in the struggle between this Commune and the

Committee of Twenty-one. For, while the extreme Jacobins

filled the new Commune of Paris, the Committee of Twenty-one

consisted of Girondins and Feuillants, Brissot was its

president, Vergniaud its reporter, and Gensonné, Condorcet,

Lasource, Guadet, Lacépède, Lacuèe, Pastoret, Muraire, Delmas,

and Guyton-Morveau were amongst its members. On the evening of

August 10 the Assembly decreed that the difference between

active and passive citizens should be abolished, and that

every Frenchman of the age of 25 should have a vote for the

Convention. ... The last sight the king might have seen on the

night of August 10 was his palace of the Tuileries in flames,

where, for mischief, fire had been set to the stables. It

spread from building to building, and the Assembly only took

steps to check it when it threatened to spread to the houses

of the Rue Saint Honoré. ... On the day after this terrible

night the king was informed that rooms had been found for him

in the Convent of the Feuillants; and to four monastic cells,

which had not been inhabited since the dissolution of the

monastery two years before, the royal family was led, and

round them was placed a strong guard. Yet they were no more

prisoners in the Convent of the Feuillants than they had been

in the splendid palace of the Tuileries. ... The king's

nominal authority was annihilated; but though the course of

events left him a prisoner, it cannot be said that his

influence was diminished, for he had none left to diminish. It

was to the Girondins, rather than to the king, that the

results of August 10 brought unpleasant surprises. ... The

real power had gone to the Commune of Paris, and this was very

clearly perceived by Robespierre and by Marat. ... Though

Marat was received with the loudest cheers by the

insurrectionary commune, Robespierre was the man who really

became its leader. He had long expected the shock which had

just taken place, and had prepared himself for the crisis. The

first requisition was, of course, for a Convention. This had

been granted on the very first day. The second demand of the

Commune was the safe custody of the king, so that he should

not be able to escape to the army. This was conceded by the

Assembly on August 12, when they ordered that the king and

royal family should be taken to the old tower of the Temple,

and there strictly guarded under the superintendence of the

insurrectionary commune. Lafayette's sudden flight greatly

strengthened the position of the Commune of Paris. ...

Relieved from the fear of Lafayette's turning against them,

both the Girondins in the Legislative Assembly and the

Jacobins in the insurrectionary commune turned to the pursuit

of their own special plans, and naturally soon came into

violent collision. ... The Girondins were, above all things,

men of ideas; the Jacobins, above all things, practical men:

and of the issue of a struggle between them there could be

little doubt, though, at this period the Girondins had the

advantage of the best position. On August 15 the final blow

was struck at the unfortunate Feuillants, or

Constitutionalists. The last ministers of the king, as well

Duport du Tertre, Bertrand de Moleville, and Duportail, were

all ordered to be arrested, with Barnave and Charles de

Lameth. The Assembly followed up this action by establishing

the special tribunal of August 17, which held its first

sitting on the same evening at the Hotel de Ville.

{1279}

Robespierre was elected president, and refused the office. ...

The new tribunal was too slow to satisfy the leaders of the

Commune of Paris, for its first prisoner, Laporte, the old

intendant of the civil list, was not judged until August 21,

and then acquitted. This news made the Commune lose all

patience, and they determined to urge the Assembly to more

energetic measures. Under the pressure of the Commune the

Assembly took vigorous measures indeed. All the leaders of the

émigrés were sequestrated; all ecclesiastics who would not

take the oath were to be transported to French Guiana, and it

was decreed that the National Guard should enlist every man,

whether an active or a passive citizen. Much of this vigour on

the part of the Assembly was due, not only to the pressure of

the Commune, but to the rapid advance of the Prussians. ...

The Assembly ... decreed that an army of 30,000 men should be

raised in Paris, and that every man who had a musket issued to

him should be punished with death if he did not march at once.

... On August 28, on the motion of Danton, now Minister of

Justice, a general search for arms and suspects was ordered.

The gates of the city were closed on August 30; every street

was ordered to be illuminated; bodies of national guards

entered each house and searched it from top to bottom. Barely

1,000 muskets were seized, but more than 8,000 prisoners were

taken and shut up, not only in the prisons, but in all the

largest convents of Paris, which were turned into houses of

detention. Who should be arrested as a suspect depended

entirely on the municipal officer who happened to examine the

house, and these men acted under the orders of a special

committee established by the Commune, at the head of which sat

Marat. ... The residents in Paris at the time of the

Revolution seem to have been more struck by this

house-to-house visitation than by many other events which were

far more horrible."

H. M. Stephens,

History of the French Revolution,

volume 2, chapter 4.

ALSO IN:

Grace D. Elliot,

Journal of My Life during the French Revolution,

chapter 4.

Gouverneur Morris,

Life and Correspondence.,

edited by Sparks, volume 2, pages 203-217.

G. Long,

France and its Revolutions,

chapter 29.

FRANCE: A. D. 1792 (August).

Lafayette's unsuccessful resistance to the Jacobins.

His withdrawal from France.

"The news of the 10th of August was carried to Lafayette by

one of his own officers who happened to be in Paris on

business. He learned that the throne was overturned and the

Assembly in subjection, but he could not believe that the

cause of the constitutional monarchy was abandoned without a

struggle. He announced to the army the events that had taken

place, and conjured the men to remain true to the king and

constitution. The commissioners despatched by the Commune of

Paris to announce to the different armies the change of

government and to exact oaths of fidelity to it soon arrived

at Sedan within Lafayette's command. The general had them

brought before the municipality of Sedan and interrogated

regarding their mission. Convinced, from their own account,

that they were the agents of a faction which had unlawfully

seized upon power, he ordered their arrest and had them

imprisoned. Lafayette's moral influence in the army and the

country was still so great that the Jacobins knew that they

must either destroy him or win him over to their side. The

latter course was preferred. ... The imprisoned commissioners,

therefore, requested a private conference with Lafayette, and

offered him, on the part of their superiors in Paris, whatever

executive power he desired in the new government. It is

needless to say that Lafayette, whose sole aim was to

establish liberty in his country, refused to entertain the

idea of associating himself with the despotism of the mob. He

caused his own soldiers to renew their oath of fidelity to the

king, and communicated with Luckner on the situation. ...

Meanwhile, emissaries from the Commune were sent to Sedan to

influence the soldiers by bribes and threats to renounce their

loyalty to their commander. All the other armies and provinces

to which commissioners had been sent had received them and

taken the new oaths. Lafayette found himself alone in his

resistance. His attitude acquired, every day, more the

appearance of rebellion against authorities recognized by the

rest of France. New commissioners arrived, bringing with them

his dismissal from command. The army was wavering between

attachment to their general and obedience to government. On

the 19th of August, the Jacobins, seeing that they could not

win him over, caused the Assembly to declare him a traitor.

Lafayette had now to take an immediate resolution. France had

declared for the Paris Commune. The constitutional monarchy

was irretrievably destroyed. For the general to dispute with

his appointed successor the command of the army was to provoke

further disorders in a cause that had ceased to be that of the

nation and become only his own. Three possible courses

remained open to him,--to accept the Jacobin overtures and

become a part of their bloody despotism; to continue his

resistance and give his head to the guillotine; to leave the

country. He resolved to seek an asylum in a neutral territory

with the hope, as he himself somewhat naively expressed it,

'some day to be again of service to liberty and to France.'

Lafayette made every preparation for the safety of his troops,

placing them under the orders of Luckner until the arrival of

Dumouriez, the new general in command. He publicly

acknowledged responsibility for the arrest of the

commissioners and the defiance of Sedan to the Commune, in

order that the municipal officers who had supported him might

escape punishment. He included in his party his

staff-officers, whose association with him would have

subjected them to the fury of the Commune, and some others who

had also been declared traitors on account of obedience to his

orders. He then made his way to Bouillon, on the extreme

frontier. There, dismissing the escort, and sending back final

orders for the security of the army, he rode with his

companions into a foreign land."

B. Tuckerman,

Life of Lafayette,

volume 2, chapter 3.

{1280}

FRANCE: A. D. 1792 (August-September).

The September Massacres in the Paris prisons.

The house-to-house search for suspects was carried on during

the night of August 29 and the following day. "The next

morning, at daybreak, the Mairie, the sections, the ancient

prisons of Paris, and the convents that had been converted

into prisons, were crowded with prisoners. They were summarily

interrogated, and half of them, the victims of error or

precipitation, were set at liberty, or claimed by their

sections. The remainder were distributed in the prisons of the

Abbaye Saint Germain, the Conciergerie, the Châtelet, La

Force, the Luxembourg, and the ancient monasteries of the

Bernardins, Saint Firmin, and the Carmes; Bicêtre and the

Salpêtrière also opened their gates to receive fresh inmates.

The three days that followed this night were employed by the

commissaries in making a selection of the prisoners. Already

their death was projected. ... "We must purge the prisons, and

leave no traitors behind us when we hasten to the frontiers.'

Such was the cry put into the mouth of the people by Marat and

Danton. Such was the attitude of Danton on the brink of these

crimes. As for the part of Robespierre, it was the same as in

all these crises--on the debate concerning war, on the 20th of

June, and on the 10th of August. He did not act, he blamed;

but he left the event to itself, and when once accomplished he

accepted it as a progressive step of the Revolution. ... On

Sunday, the 2d of September, at three o'clock in the

afternoon, the signal for the massacre was given by one of

those accidents that seem so perfectly the effect of chance.

Five coaches, each containing six priests, started from the

Hôtel-de-Ville to the prison of the Abbaye ... escorted by

weak detachments of Avignonnais and Marseillais, armed with

pikes and sabers. ... Groups of men, women and children

insulted them as they passed, and their escort joined in the

invective threats and outrages of the populace. ... The

émeute, increasing in number at every step across the Rue

Dauphine, was met by another mob, that blocked up the

Carrefour Bussy, where municipal officers received enrolments

in the open air. The carriages stopped; and a man, forcing his

way through the escort, sprung on the step of the first

carriage, plunged his saber twice into the body of one of the

priests, and displayed it reeking with blood: the people

uttered a cry of horror. 'This frightens you, cowards!' said

the assassin, with a smile of disdain; 'You must accustom

yourselves to look on death.' With these [words] he again

plunged his saber into the carriage and continued to strike.

... The coaches slowly moved on, and the assassin, passing

from one to the other, and clinging with one hand to the door,

stabbed at random at all he could reach; while the assassins

of Avignon, who formed part of their escort, plunged their

bayonets into the interior; and the pikes, pointed against the

windows, prevented any of the priests from leaping into the

street. The long line of carriages moving slowly on, and

leaving a bloody trace behind them, the despairing cries and

gestures of the priests, the ferocious shouts of their

butchers, the yells of applause of the populace, announced

from a distance their arrival to the prisoners of the Abbaye.

The cortège stopped at the door of the prison, and the

soldiers of the escort dragged out by the feet eight dead

bodies. The priests who had escaped, or who were only wounded,

precipitated themselves into the prison; four of them were

seized and massacred on the threshold. ... The prisoners ...

cooped up in the Abbaye heard this prelude to murder at their

gates. ... The internal wickets were closed on them, and they

received orders to return to their chambers, as if to answer

the muster-roll. A fearful spectacle was visible in the outer

court: the last wicket opening into it had been transformed

into a tribunal; and around a large table--covered with

papers, writing materials, the registers of the prisons,

glasses, bottles, pistols, sabers, and pipes--were seated

twelve judges, whose gloomy features and athletic proportions

stamped them men of toil, debauch or blood. Their attire was

that of the laboring classes. ... Two or three of them

attracted attention by the whiteness of their hands and the

elegance of their shape; and that betrayed the presence of men

of intellect, purposely mingled with these men of action to

guide them. A man in a gray coat, a saber at his side, pen in

his hand, and whose inflexible features seemed as though they

were petrified, was seated at the center of the table, and

presided over the tribunal. This was the Huissier Maillard,

the idol of the mobs of the Faubourg Saint Marceau ... an

actor in the days of October, the 20th of June, and the 10th

of August. ... He had just returned from the Carmes, where he

had organized the massacre. It was not chance that had brought

him to the Abbaye at the precise moment of the arrival of the

prisoners, and with the prison registers in his hand. He had

received, the previous evening, the secret orders of Marat,

through the members of the Comité de Surveillance. Danton had

sent for the registers to the prison, and gone through them;

and Maillard was shown those he was to acquit and condemn. If

the prisoner was acquitted, Maillard said, 'Let this gentleman

be set at liberty'; if condemned, a voice said, 'A la Force.'

At these words the outer door opened, and the prisoner fell

dead as he crossed the threshold. The massacre commenced with

the Swiss, of whom there were 150 at the Abbaye, officers and

soldiers. ... They fell, one after another, like sheep in a

slaughter-house. The tumbrils were not sufficient to carry

away the corpses, and they were piled up on each side of the

court to make room for the rest to die: their commander, Major

Reding, was the last to fall. ... After the Swiss, the king's

guards, imprisoned in the Abbaye, were judged en masse. ...

Their massacre lasted a long time, for the people, excited by

what they had drank--brandy mingled with gun-powder-and

intoxicated by the sight of blood, prolonged their tortures.

... The whole night was scarcely enough to slay and strip

them."

A. de Lamartine,

History of the Girondists,

book 25 (volume 2).

"To moral intoxication is added physical intoxication, wine in

profusion, bumpers at every pause, revelry over corpses. ...

They dance ... and sing the 'carmagnole'; they arouse the

people of the quarter 'to amuse them,' and that they may have

their share of 'the fine fête.' Benches are arranged for

'gentlemen' and others for 'ladies': the latter, with greater

curiosity, are additionally anxious to contemplate at their

ease 'the aristocrats' already slain; consequently, lights are

required, and one is placed on the breast of each corpse.

Meanwhile, slaughter continues, and is carried to perfection.

A butcher at the Abbaye complains that 'the aristocrats die

too quick, and that those only who strike first have the

pleasure of it'; henceforth they are to be struck with the

backs of the swords only, and made to run between two rows of

their butchers, like soldiers formerly running a gauntlet. ...

{1281}

All the unfettered instincts that live in the lowest depths of

the heart start from the human abyss at once, not alone the

heinous instincts with their fangs, but likewise the foulest

with their slaver, while both packs fall furiously on women

whose noble or infamous repute brings them before the world;

on Madame de Lamballe, the Queen's friend; on Madame Desrues,

widow of the famous prisoner; on the flower-girl of the

Palais-Royal, who, two years before, had mutilated her lover,

a French guardsman, in a fit of jealousy. Ferocity here is

associated with lubricity to add profanation to torture, while

life is attacked through attacks on modesty. In Madame de

Lamballe, killed too quickly, the libidinous butchers could

only outrage a corpse, but for the widow, and especially the

flower-girl, they imagine the same as a Nero the fire-circle

of the Iroquois. ... At La Force, Madame de Lamballe is cut to

pieces. I cannot transcribe what Charlot, the hair-dresser,

did with her head. I merely state that another wretch, in the

Rue Saint-Antoine, bore off her heart and 'ate it.' They kill

and they drink, and drink and kill again. ... As the prisons

are to be cleaned out, it is as well to clean them all out,

and do it at once. After the Swiss, priests, the aristocrats,

and the 'white-skin gentlemen,' there remain convicts and

those confined through the ordinary channels of justice,

robbers, assassins, and those sentenced to the galleys in the

Conciergerie, in the Châtelet, and in the Tour St. Bernard,

with branded women, vagabonds, old beggars and boys confined

in Bicêtre and the Salpétrière. They are good for nothing,

cost something to feed, and, probably, cherish evil designs.

... This time, as the job is more foul, the broom is wielded

by fouler hands. ... At the Salpétrière, 'all the bullies of

Paris, former spies, ... libertines, the rascals of France and

all Europe, prepare beforehand for the operation,' and rape

alternates with massacre. ... At Bicêtre, however, it is crude

butchery, the carnivorous instinct alone satisfying itself.

Among other prisoners are 43 youths of the lowest class, from

17 to 19 years of age, placed there for correction by their

parents, or by those to whom they are bound. ... These the

band falls on, beating them to death with clubs. ... There are

six days and five nights of uninterrupted butchery, 171

murders at the Abbaye, 169 at La Force, 223 at the Châtelet,

328 at the Conciergerie, 73 at the Tour-Saint-Bernard, 120 at

the Carmelites, 79 at Saint-Firmin, 170 at Bicêtre, 35 at the

Salpétrière; among the dead, 250 priests, 3 bishops or

archbishops, general officers, magistrates, one former

minister, one royal princess, belonging to the best names in

France, and, on the other side, one negro, several low class

women, young scape-graces, convicts, and poor old men. ...

Fournier, Lazowski, and Bécard, the chiefs of robbers and

assassins, return from Orleans with 1,500 cut-throats. On the

way they kill M. de Brissac, M. de Lessart, and 42 others

accused of 'lèse-nation,' whom they arrested from their

judges' hands, and then, by way of surplus, 'following the

example of Paris,' 21 prisoners taken from the Versailles

prisons. At Paris the Minister of Justice thanks them, the

Commune congratulates them, and the sections feast them and

embrace them. ... All the journals approve, palliate, or keep

silent; nobody dares offer resistance. Property as well as

lives belong to whoever wants to take them. ... Like a man

struck on the head with a mallet, Paris, felled to the ground,

lets things go; the authors of the massacre have fully

attained their ends. The faction has fast hold of power, and

will maintain its hold. Neither in the Legislative Assembly

nor in the Convention will the aims of the Girondists be

successful against its tenacious usurpation. ... The Jacobins,

through sudden terror, have maintained their illegal

authority; through a prolongation of terror they are going to

establish their legal authority. A forced suffrage is going to

put them in office at the Hotel-de-Ville, in the tribunals, in

the National Guard, in the sections, and in the various

administrations."

H. A. Taine,

The French Revolution,

book 4, chapter 9 (volume 2).

ALSO IN:

A. Thiers,

History of the French Revolution,

(American edition.), volume 1, pages 350-368.

Sergent Marceau,

Reminiscences of a Regicide,

chapter 9.

A. Dobson,

The Princess de Lamballe

("Four Frenchwomen," chapter 3).

The Reign of Terror: A collection of Authentic

Narratives, volume 2.

J. B. Cléry,

Journal of Occurrences at the Temple.

Despatches of Earl Gower,

pages 225-229.

FRANCE: A. D. 1792 (September-November).

Meeting of the National Convention.

Abolition of royalty.

Proclamation of the Republic.

Adoption of the Era of the Republic.

Establishment of absolute equality.

The losing struggle of the Girondists with the Jacobins of the

Mountain.

"It was in the midst of these horrors [of the September

massacres] that the Legislative Assembly approached its

termination. ... The National Convention began [September 22]

under darker auspices. ... The great and inert mass of the

people were disposed, as in all commotions, to range

themselves on the victorious side. The sections of Paris,

under the influence of Robespierre and Marat, returned the

most revolutionary deputies; those of most other towns

followed their example. The Jacobins, with their affiliated

clubs, on this occasion exercised an overwhelming influence

over all France. ... At Paris, where the elections took place

on the 2d September, amidst all the excitement and horrors of

the massacres in the prisons, the violent leaders of the

municipality, who had organized the revolt of August 10th,

exercised an irresistible sway over the citizens. Robespierre

and Danton were the first named, amidst unanimous shouts of

applause; after them Camille Desmoulins, Tallien, Osselin,

Freron, Anacharsis Clootz, Fabre d'Eglantine, David, the

celebrated painter, Collot d'Herbois, Billaud Varennes,

Legendre, Panis, Sergent, almost all implicated in the

massacres in the prisons, were also chosen. To these was added

the Duke of Orleans, who had abdicated his titles, and was

called Philippe Égalité. ... The most conservative part of the

new Assembly were the Girondists who had overturned the

throne. From the first opening of the Convention, the

Girondists occupied the right, and the Jacobins the seats on

the summit of the left; whence their designation of 'The

Mountain' was derived. The former had the majority of votes,

the greater part of the departments having returned men of

comparatively moderate principles. But the latter possessed a

great advantage, in having on their side all the members of

the city of Paris, who ruled the mob, ... and in being

supported by the municipality, which had already grown into a

ruling power in the state, and had become the great centre of

the democratic party.

{1282}

A neutral body, composed of those members whose principles

were not yet declared, was called the Plain, or, Marais; it

ranged itself with the Girondists, until terror compelled its

members to coalesce with the victorious side. ... The two

rival parties mutually indulged in recriminations, in order to

influence the public mind. The Jacobins incessantly reproached

the Girondists with desiring to dissolve the Republic; to

establish three-and-twenty separate democratic states, held

together, like the American provinces, by a mere federal

union. ... Nothing more was requisite to render them in the

highest degree unpopular in Paris, the very existence of which

depended on its remaining, through all the phases of government,

the seat of the ruling power. The Girondists retorted upon

their adversaries charges better founded, but not so likely to

inflame the populace. They reproached them with endeavouring

to establish in the municipality of Paris a power superior to

the legislature of all France, with overawing the

deliberations of the Convention by menacing petitions, or the

open display of brute force; and secretly preparing for their

favourite leaders, Danton, Robespierre, and Marat, a

triumvirate of power, which would speedily extinguish all the

freedom which had been acquired. The first part of the

accusation was well-founded even then; of the last, time soon

afforded an ample confirmation. The Convention met at first in

one of the halls of the Tuileries, but immediately adjourned

to the Salle du Ménage, where its subsequent sittings were

held. Its first step was, on the motion of the Abbé Gregoire,

and amidst unanimous transports, to declare Royalty abolished

in France, and to proclaim a republic; and by another decree

it was ordered, that the old calendar taken from the year of

Christ's birth should be abandoned, and that all public acts

should be dated from the first year of the French republic.

This era began on the 22d September 1792. [See, also, below:

A. D. 1793 (OCTOBER).] ... A still more democratic

constitution than that framed by the Constituent and

Legislative Assemblies was at the same time established. All

the requisites for election to any office whatever were, on

the motion of the Duke of Orleans, abolished. It was no longer

necessary to select judges from legal men, nor magistrates

from the class of proprietors. All persons, in whatever rank,

were declared eligible to every situation; and the right of

voting in the primary assemblies was conferred on every man

above the age of 21 years. Absolute equality, in its literal

sense, was universally established. Universal suffrage was the

basis on which government rested." The leaders of the

Girondists soon opened attacks upon Robespierre and Marat,

accusing the former of aspiring to a dictatorship, and also

holding him responsible, with Marat and Danton, for the

September massacres; but Louvet and others who made the attack

were feebly supported by their party. Louvet "repeatedly

appealed to Pétion, Vergniaud, and the other leaders, to

support his statements; but they had not the firmness boldly

to state the truth. Had they testified a fourth part of what

they knew, the accusation must have been instantly voted, and

the tyrant crushed at once. As it was, Robespierre, fearful of

its effects, demanded eight days to prepare for his defence.

In the interval, the whole machinery of terror was put in

force. The Jacobins thundered out accusations against the

intrepid accuser, and all the leaders of the Mountain were

indefatigable in their efforts to strike fear into their

opponents. ... By degrees the impression cooled, fear resumed

its sway, and the accused mounted the tribune at the end of

the week with the air of a victor. ... It was now evident that

the Girondists were no match for their terrible adversaries.

The men of action on their side, Louvet, Barbaroux, and

Lanjuinais, in vain strove to rouse them to the necessity of

vigorous measures in contending with such enemies. Their

constant reply was, that they would not be the first to

commence the shedding of blood. Their whole vigour manifested

itself in declamation, their whole wisdom in abstract

discussion. They had now become humane in intention, and

moderate in counsel, though they were far from having been so

in the earlier stages of the Revolution. ... They were too

honourable to believe in the wickedness of their opponents,

too scrupulous to adopt the measures requisite to disarm, too

destitute of moral courage to be able to crush them. ... The

Jacobins ... while they were daily strengthening and

increasing the armed force of the sections at the command of

the municipality, ... strenuously resisted the slightest

approach towards the establishment of any guard or civic force

for the defence of the Convention. ... Aware of their weakness

from this cause, the Girondists brought forward a proposal for

an armed guard for the Convention. The populace was

immediately put in motion," and the overawed Convention

abandoned the measure. "In the midst of these vehement

passions, laws still more stringent and sanguinary were passed

against the priests and emigrants. ... First, it was decreed

that every Frenchman taken with arms in his hands against

France should be punished with death; and soon after, that

'the French emigrants are forever banished from the territory

of France, and those who return shall be punished with death.'

A third decree directed that all their property, movable and

immovable, should be confiscated to the service of the state.

These decrees were rigidly executed: and though almost

unnoticed amidst the bloody deeds which at the same period

stained the Revolution, ultimately produced the most lasting

and irremediable effects. At length the prostration of the

Assembly before the armed sections of Paris had become so

excessive, that Buzot and Barbaroux, the most intrepid of the

Girondists, brought forward two measures which, if they could

have been carried, would have emancipated the legislature from

this odious thraldom. Buzot proposed to establish a guard,

specially for the protection of the Convention, drawn from

young men chosen from the different departments. Barbaroux at

the same time brought forward four decrees. ... By the first,

the capital was to cease to be the seat of the legislature,

when it lost its claim to their presence by failing to protect

them from insult. By the second, the troops of the Fédérés and

the national cavalry were to be charged, along with the armed

sections, with the protection of the legislature. By the

third, the Convention was to constitute itself into a court of

justice, for the trial of all conspirators against its

authority. By the fourth, the Convention suspended the

municipality of Paris. ... The Jacobins skilfully availed

themselves of these impotent manifestations of distrust, to

give additional currency to the report that the Girondists

intended to transport the seat of government to the southern

provinces. This rumour rapidly gained ground with the

populace, and augmented their dislike at the ministry. ... All

these preliminary struggles were essays of strength by the two

parties, prior to the grand question which was now destined to

attract the eyes of Europe and the world. This was the trial

of Louis XVI."

Sir A. Alison,

History of Europe,

chapter 8 (volume 3).

ALSO IN:

G. H. Lewes,

Life of Robespierre,

chapter 16.

A. de Lamartine,

History of the Girondists,

books 29-31.

C. D. Yonge,

History of France under the Bourbons,

chapter 43 (volume 4).

J. Moore,

Journal in France, 1792,

volume 2.

{1283}

FRANCE: A. D. 1792 (September-December).

The war on the northern frontier.

Battle of Valmy.

Retreat of the invading army.

Custine in Germany and Dumouriez in the Netherlands.

Annexation of Savoy and Nice.

The Decree of December 15.

Proclamation of a republican crusade.

"The defence of France rested on General Dumouriez. ...

Happily for France the slow advance of the Prussian general

permitted Dumouriez to occupy the difficult country of the

Argonnes, where, while waiting for his reinforcements, he was

able for some time to hold the invaders in check. At length

Brunswick made his way past the defile which Dumouriez had

chosen for his first line of defence; but it was only to find

the French posted in such strength on his flank that any

further advance would imperil his own army. If the advance was

to be continued, Dumouriez must be dislodged. Accordingly, on

the 20th of September, Brunswick, facing half-round from his

line of march, directed his artillery against the hills of

Valmy, where Kellermann and the French left were encamped. The

cannonade continued for some hours, but it was followed by no

general attack. Already, before a blow had been struck, the

German forces were wasting away with disease. ... The King of

Prussia began to listen to the proposals of peace which were

sent to him by Dumouriez. A week spent in negotiations served

only to strengthen the French and to aggravate the scarcity

and sickness within the German camp. Dissensions broke out

between the Prussian and Austrian commanders; a retreat was

ordered; and, to the astonishment of Europe, the veteran

forces of Brunswick fell back before the mutinous soldiery and

unknown generals of the Revolution. ... In the meantime the

Legislative Assembly had decreed its own dissolution ... and

had ordered the election of representatives to frame a

constitution for France. ... The Girondins, who had been the

party of extremes in the Legislative Assembly, were the party

of moderation and order in the Convention. ... Monarchy was

abolished, and France declared a Republic (September 21).

Office continued in the hands of the Gironde; but the

vehement, uncompromising spirit of their rivals, the so-called

party of the Mountain, quickly made itself felt in all the

relations of France to foreign powers. The intention of

conquest might still be as sincerely disavowed as it had been

five months before; but were the converts to liberty to be

denied the right of uniting themselves to the French people by

their own free will? ... The scruples which had lately

condemned all annexation of territory vanished in that orgy of

patriotism which followed the expulsion of the invader and the

discovery that the Revolution was already a power in other

lands than France. ... Along the entire frontier, from Dunkirk

to the Maritime Alps, France nowhere touched a strong united, and

independent people; and along this entire frontier, except in

the country opposite Alsace, the armed proselytism of the

French Revolution proved a greater force than the influences

on which the existing order of things depended. In the Low

Countries, in the Principalities of the Rhine, in Switzerland,

in Savoy, in Piedmont itself, the doctrines of the Revolution

were welcomed by a more or less numerous class, and the armies

of France appeared for a moment as the missionaries of liberty

and right rather than as an invading enemy. No sooner had

Brunswick been brought to a stand by Dumouriez at Valmy than a

French division under Custine crossed the Alsatian frontier

and advanced upon Spires, where Brunswick had left large

stores of war. The garrison was defeated in an encounter

outside the town; Spires and Worms surrendered to Custine. In

the neighbouring fortress of Mainz, the key to western

Germany, Custine's advance was watched with anxious

satisfaction by a republican party among the inhabitants, from

whom the French general learnt that he had only to appear

before the city to become its master. ... At the news of the

capture of Spires, the Archbishop retired into the interior of

Germany, leaving the administration to a board of

ecclesiastics and officials, who published a manifesto calling

upon their 'beloved brethren' the citizens to defend

themselves to the last extremity, and then followed their

master's example. A council of war declared the city to be

untenable; and, before Custine had brought up a single

siege-gun, the garrison capitulated, and the French were

welcomed into Mainz by the partisans of the Republic (October

20). ... Although the mass of the inhabitants held aloof, a

Republic was finally proclaimed, and incorporated with the

Republic of France. The success of Custine's raid into Germany

did not divert the Convention from the design of attacking

Austria in the Netherlands, which Dumouriez had from the first

pressed upon the Government. It was not three years since the

Netherlands had been in full revolt against the Emperor

Joseph. ... Thus the ground was everywhere prepared for a

French occupation. Dumouriez crossed the frontier. The border

fortresses no longer existed: and after a single battle won by

the French at Jemappes on the 6th November, the Austrians,

finding the population universally hostile, abandoned the

Netherlands without a struggle. The victory of Jemappes, the

first pitched battle won by the Republic, excited an outburst

of revolutionary fervour in the Convention which deeply

affected the relations of France to Great Britain, hitherto a

neutral spectator of the war. A decree was passed for the

publication of a manifesto in all languages, declaring that

the French nation offered its alliance to all peoples who

wished to recover their freedom, and charging the generals of

the Republic to give their protection to all persons who had

suffered or might suffer in the cause of liberty. (November

19.) A week later Savoy and Nice were annexed to France, the

population of Savoy having almost unanimously declared in

favour of France on the outbreak of war between France and

Sardinia.

{1284}

On the 15th December the Convention proclaimed that a system

of social and political revolution was henceforth to accompany

every movement of its armies on foreign soil. 'In every

country that shall be occupied by the armies of the French

Republic'--such was the substance of the Decree of December

15th--'the generals shall announce the abolition of all

existing authorities; of nobility, of serfage, of every feudal

right and every monopoly; they shall proclaim the sovereignty

of the people. ... The French nation will treat as enemies any

people which, refusing liberty and equality, desires to

preserve its prince and privileged castes, or to make any

accommodation with them.' This singular announcement of a new

crusade caused the Government of Great Britain to arm."

C. A. Fyffe,

History of Modern Europe,

volume 1, chapter 2.

ALSO IN:

F. C. Schlosser,

History of the 18th Century,

volume 6, division 2, chapter 2, section 1.

E. Baines,

History of the Wars of the French Revolution,

book 1, chapters 3-5 (volume 1).

FRANCE: A.D. 1792 (November-December).

Charges against the King.

Jacobin clamor for his condemnation.

The contest in Convention.

"There were, without a doubt, in this conjuncture, a great

number of Mountaineers who, on this occasion, acted with the

greatest sincerity, and only as republicans, in whose eyes

Louis XVI. appeared guilty with respect to the revolution; and

a dethroned king was dangerous to a young democracy. But this

party would have been more clement, had it not had to ruin the

Gironde at the same time with Louis XVI. ... Party motives and

popular animosities combined against this unfortunate prince.

Those who, two months before, would have repelled the idea of

exposing him to any other punishment than that of

dethronement, were stupefied; so quickly does man lose in

moments of crisis the right to defend his opinions! ... After

the 10th of August, there were found in the offices of the

civil list documents which proved the secret correspondence of

Louis XVI. with the discontented princes, with the emigration,

and with Europe. In a report, drawn up at the command of the

legislative assembly, he was accused of intending to betray

the state and overthrow the revolution. He was accused of

having written, on the 16th April, 1791, to the bishop of

Clermont, that if he regained his power he would restore the

former government, and the clergy to the state in which they

previously were; of having afterwards proposed war, merely to

hasten the approach of his deliverers; ... of having been on

terms with his brothers, whom his public measures had

discountenanced; and, lastly, of having constantly opposed the

revolution. Fresh documents were soon brought forward in

support of this accusation. In the Tuileries, behind a panel

in the wainscot, there was a hole wrought in the wall, and

closed by an iron door. This secret closet was pointed out by

the minister, Roland, and there were discovered proofs of all

the conspiracies and intrigues of the court against the

revolution; projects with the popular leaders to strengthen

the constitutional power of the king, to restore the ancient

regime and the aristocrats; the manœuvres of Talon, the

arrangements with Mirabeau, the propositions accepted by

Bouillé, under the constituent assembly, and some new plots

under the legislative assembly. This discovery increased the

exasperation against Louis XVI. Mirabeau's bust was broken by

the Jacobins, and the convention covered the one which stood

in the hall where it held its sittings. For some time there

had been a question in the assembly as to the trial of this

prince, who, having been dethroned, could no longer be

proceeded against. There was no tribunal empowered to

pronounce his sentence, no punishment which could be inflicted

on him: accordingly, they plunged into false interpretations

of the inviolability granted to Louis XVI., in order to

condemn him legally. ... The committee of legislation,

commissioned to draw up a report on the question as to whether

Louis XVI. could be tried, and whether he could be tried by

the convention, decided in the affirmative. ... The discussion

commenced on the 13th of November, six days after the report

of the committee. ... This violent party [the Mountain], who

wished to substitute a coup d'etat for a sentence, to follow

no law, no form, but to strike Louis XVI. like a conquered

prisoner, by making hostilities even survive victory, had but

a very feeble majority in the convention; but without, it was

strongly supported by the Jacobins and the commune.

Notwithstanding the terror which it already inspired, its

murderous suggestions were repelled by the convention; and the

partisans of inviolability, in their turn, courageously

asserted reasons of public interest at the same time as rules

of justice and humanity. They maintained that the same men

could not be judges and legislators, the jury and the

accusers. ... In a political view, they showed the

consequences of the king's condemnation, as it would affect

the anarchical party of the kingdom, rendering it still more

insolent; and with regard to Europe, whose still neutral

powers it would induce to join the coalition against the

republic. But Robespierre, who during this long debate

displayed a daring and perseverance that presaged his power,

appeared at the tribune to support Saint Just, to reproach the

convention with involving in doubt what the insurrection had

decided, and with restoring, by sympathy and the publicity of

a defence, the fallen royalist party. 'The assembly,' said

Robespierre, 'has involuntarily been led far away from the

real question. Here we have nothing to do with trial: Louis is

not an accused man; you are not judges, you are, and can only

be statesmen. You have no sentence to pronounce for or against

a man, but you are called on to adopt a measure of public

safety; to perform an act of national precaution. A dethroned

king is only fit for two purposes, to disturb the tranquillity

of the state, and shake its freedom, or to strengthen one or

the other of them. Louis was king; the republic is founded;

the famous question you are discussing is decided in these few

words. Louis cannot be tried; he is already tried, he is

condemned, or the republic is not absolved.' He required that

the convention should declare Louis XVI. a traitor towards the

French, criminal towards humanity, and sentence him at once to

death, by virtue of the insurrection. The Mountaineers, by

these extreme propositions, by the popularity they attained

without, rendered condemnation in a measure inevitable. By

gaining an extraordinary advance on the other parties, it

obliged them to follow it, though at a distance. The majority

of the convention, composed in a large part of Girondists, who

dared not pronounce Louis XVI. inviolable, and of the Plain,

decided, on Pétion's proposition, against the opinion of the

fanatical Mountaineers and against that of the partisans of

inviolability, that Louis XVI. should be tried by the

convention. Robert Lindet then made, in the name of the

commission of the twenty-one, his report respecting Louis XVI.

The arraignment, setting forth the offences imputed to him,

was drawn up, and the convention summoned the prisoner to its

bar."

F. A. Mignet,

History of the French Revolution,

chapter 6.

ALSO IN:

G. H. Lewes,

Life of Robespierre,

chapter 17.

A. de Lamartine,

History of the Girondists,

books 32-33 (volume 2).

A. de Beauchesne,

Louis XVII.: His Life, his Suffering, his Death,

book 9.

{1285}

FRANCE: A. D. 1792-1793 (December-January).

The King's Trial and death sentence.

"On December 11, the ill-fated monarch, taken from his prison

to his former palace, appeared at the bar of his republican

judges, was received in silence and with covered heads, and

answered interrogatories addressed to him as 'Louis Capet,'

though with an air of deference. His passive constancy touched

many hearts. ... On the 26th the advocates of the King made an

eloquent defence for their discrowned client, and Louis added,

in a few simple words, that the 'blood of the 10th of August

should not be laid to his charge.' The debates in the Assembly

now began, and it soon became evident that the Jacobin faction

were making the question the means to further their objects,

and to hold up their opponents to popular hatred. They

clamored for immediate vengeance on the tyrant, declared that

the Republic could not be safe until the Court was smitten on

its head, and a great example had been given to Europe, and

denounced as reactionary and as concealed royalists all who

resisted the demands of patriotism. These ferocious invectives

were aided by the expedients so often employed with success,

and the capital and its mobs were arrayed to intimidate any

deputies who hesitated in the 'cause of the Nation.' The

Moderates, on the other hand, were divided in mind; a

majority, perhaps, condemning the King, but also wishing to

spare his life: and the Gironde leaders, halting between their

convictions, their feelings, their desires, and their fears,

shrank from a courageous and resolute course. The result was

such as usually follows when energy and will encounter

indecision. On January 14 [the 15th, according to Thiers and

others], 1793, the Convention declared Louis XVI. guilty, and

on the following day [the speaking and voting lasted through

the night of the 16th and the day after it] sentence of

immediate death was pronounced by a majority of one [but the

minority, in this view, included 26 votes that were cast for

death but in favor of a postponement of the penalty, on

grounds of political expediency], proposals for a respite and

an appeal to the people having been rejected at the critical

moment. The votes had been taken after a solemn call of the

deputies at a sitting protracted for days; and the spectacle

of the vast dim hall, of the shadowy figures of the awestruck

judges meting out the fate of their former Sovereign, and tier

upon tier of half-seen faces, looking, as in a theatre, on the

drama below, and breaking out into discordant clamor, made a

fearful impression on many eye-witnesses. One vote excited a

sensation of disgust even among the most ruthless chiefs of

the Mountain, though it was remarked that many of the

abandoned women who crowded the galleries shrieked

approbation. The Duke of Orleans, whose Jacobin professions

had caused him to be returned for Paris, with a voice in which

effrontery mingled with terror, pronounced for the immediate

execution of his kinsman. The minister of justice--Danton had

resigned--announced on the 20th the sentence to the King. The

captive received the message calmly, asked for three days to

get ready to die (a request, however, at once refused), and

prayed that he might see his family and have a confessor."

W. O'C. Morris,

The French Revolution, and First Empire,

chapter 5.

ALSO IN:

A. Thiers,

History of the French Revolution

(American edition), volume 2, pages 44-72.

A. F. Bertrand de Moleville,

Private Memoirs, relative to the last year of Louis XVI.,

chapters 39-40.

J. B. Cléry,

Journal of Occurrences at the Temple.

FRANCE: A. D. 1792-1793 (December-February).

Determination to incorporate the Austrian Netherlands and to

attack Holland.

Pitt's unavailing struggle for peace.

England driven to arms.

War with the Maritime Powers declared by the French.

"Since the beginning of December, the French government had

contracted their far-reaching schemes within definite limits.

They were compelled to give up the hope of revolutionizing the

German Empire and establishing a Republic in the British

Islands; but they were all the more determined in the resolve

to subject the countries which had hitherto been occupied in

the name of freedom, to the rule of France. This object was

more especially pursued in Belgium by Danton and three other

deputies, who were sent as Commissioners of the Convention to

that country on the 30th of November. They were directed to

enquire into the condition of the Provinces, and to consider

Dumouriez's complaints against Pache [the Minister at War] and

the Committee formed to purchase supplies for the army."

Danton became resolute in the determination to incorporate

Belgium and pressed the project inexorably. "It was a matter

of course that England would interpose both by word and deed

directly France prepared to take possession of Belgium. ...

England had guaranteed the possession of Belgium to the

Emperor in 1790--and the closing of the Scheldt to the Dutch,

and its political position in Holland to the House of Orange

in 1788. Under an imperative sense of her own interests, she

had struggled to prevent the French from gaining a footing in

Antwerp and Ostend. Prudence, fidelity to treaties, the

retrospect of the past and the hopes of the future--all called

loudly upon her not to allow the balance of Europe to be

disturbed, and least of all in Belgium."

H. von Sybel,

History of the French Revolution,

book 5, chapter 5 (volume 2).

"The French Government resolved to attack Holland, and ordered

its generals to enforce by arms the opening of the Scheldt. To

do this was to force England into war. Public opinion was

already pressing every day harder upon Pitt [see ENGLAND: A.

D. 1793-1796]. ... Across the Channel his moderation was only

taken for fear. ... The rejection of his last offers indeed

made a contest inevitable. Both sides ceased from diplomatic

communications, and in February 1793 France issued her

Declaration of War."

J. R. Green,

History of the English People,

book 9, chapter 4 (volume 4).

ALSO IN:

W. E. H. Lecky,

History of England in the 18th Century,

chapter 22 (volume 6).

Earl Stanhope,

Life of Pitt,

chapter 16 (volume 2).

Despatches of Earl Gower,

page 256-309.

{1286}

FRANCE: A. D. 1793 (January).

The execution of the king.

"To this conclusion, then, hast thou come, O hapless Louis!

The Son of Sixty Kings is to die on the Scaffold by form of

Law. Under Sixty Kings this same form of law, form of Society,

has been fashioning itself together these thousand years; and

has become, one way and other, a most strange Machine. Surely,

if needful, it is also frightful, this Machine: dead, blind:

not what it should be: which with swift stroke, or by cold

slow torture, has wasted the lives and souls of innumerable

men. And behold now a King himself or say rather Kinghood in

his person, is to expire here in cruel tortures;--like a

Phalaris shut in the belly of his own red-heated Brazen Bull!

It is ever so; and thou shouldst know it, O haughty tyrannous

man: injustice breeds injustice: curses and falsehoods do

verily return 'always home,' wide as they may wander. Innocent

Louis bears the sins of many generations: he too experiences

that man's tribunal is not in this Earth: that if he had no

higher one, it were not well with him. A King dying by such

violence appeals impressively to the imagination; as the like

must do, and ought to do. And yet at bottom it is not the King

dying, but the man! Kingship is a coat: the grand loss is of

the skin. The man from whom you take his Life, to him can the

whole combined world do more? ... A Confessor has come; Abbé

Edgeworth, of Irish extraction, whom the King knew by good

report, has come promptly on this solemn mission. Leave the

Earth alone, then, thou hapless King; it with its malice will

go its way, thou also canst go thine. A hard scene yet

remains: the parting with our loved ones. Kind hearts,

environed in the same grim peril with us; to be left here! Let

the reader look with the eyes of Valet Cléry through these

glass-doors, where also the Municipality watches: and see the

cruelest of scenes: 'At half-past eight, the door of the

ante-room opened: the Queen appeared first, leading her Son by

the hand: then Madame Royale and Madame Elizabeth: they all

flung themselves into the arms of the King. Silence reigned

for some minutes; interrupted only by sobs.' ... For nearly

two hours this agony lasts; then they tear themselves asunder.

'Promise that you will see us on the morrow.' He promises:

--Ah yes, yes: yet once; and go now, ye loved ones: cry to God

for yourselves and met!--It was a hard scene, but it is over.

He will not see them on the morrow. The Queen in passing

through the ante-room, glanced at the Cerberus Municipals;

and, with woman's vehemence, said through her tears, 'Vous

étes tous des scélérats.' King Louis slept sound, till five in

the morning, when Cléry, as he had been ordered, awoke him.

Cléry dressed his hair: while this went forward, Louis took a

ring from his watch, and kept trying it on his finger: it was

his wedding-ring, which he is now to return to the Queen as a

mute farewell. At half-past six, he took the Sacrament, and

continued in devotion, and conference with Abbé Edgeworth. He

will not see his family: it were too hard to bear. At eight

the Municipals enter: the King gives them his Will, and

messages and effects; which they, at first, brutally refuse to

take charge of: he gives them a roll of gold pieces, a hundred

and twenty-five louis; these are to be returned to

Malesherbes, who had lent them. At nine, Santerre says the

hour is come. The King begs yet to retire for three minutes.

At the end of three minutes, Santerre again says the hour is

come. 'Stamping on the ground with his right-foot, Louis

answers: Partons, Let us go.'--How the rolling of those drums

comes in, through the Temple bastions and bulwarks, on the

heart of a queenly wife; soon to be a widow! He is gone, then,

and has not seen us? ... At the Temple Gate were some faint

cries, perhaps from voices of pitiful women: Grace! Grace!

Through the rest of the streets there is silence as of the

grave. No man not armed is allowed to be there: the armed, did

any even pity, dare not express it, each man overawed by all

his neighbours. All windows are down, none seen looking

through them. All shops are shut. No wheel-carriage rolls,

this morning, in these streets but one only. 80,000 armed men

stand ranked, like armed statues of men; cannons bristle,

cannoneers with match burning, but no word or movement: it is

as a city enchanted into silence and stone: one carriage with

its escort, slowly rumbling, is the only sound. Louis reads,

in his Book of Devotion, the Prayers of the Dying: clatter of

this death-march falls sharp on the ear, in the great silence;

but the thought would fain struggle heavenward, and forget the

Earth. As the clock strikes ten, behold the Place de la

Revolution, once Place de Louis Quinze: the Guillotine,

mounted near the old Pedestal where once stood the Statue of

that Louis! Far round, all bristles with cannons and armed

men: spectators crowding in the rear; D'Orléans Egalité there

in cabriolet. ... Heedless of all Louis reads his Prayers of

the Dying; not till five minutes yet has he finished: then the

Carriage opens. What temper he is in? Ten different witnesses

will give ten different accounts of it. He is in the collision

of all tempers; arrived now at the black Mahlstrom and descent

of Death: in sorrow, in indignation, in resignation struggling

to be resigned. 'Take care of M. Edgeworth,' he straitly

charges the Lieutenant who is sitting with them: then they two

descend. The drums are beating: 'Taisez-vous, Silence!' he

cries 'in a terrible voice, d'une voix terrible.' He mounts

the scaffold, not without delay; he is in puce coat, breeches

of gray, white stockings. He strips off the coat; stands

disclosed in a sleeve-waistcoat of white flannel. The

executioners approach to bind him: he spurns, resists; Abbé

Edgeworth has to remind him how the Saviour, in whom men

trust, submitted to be bound. His hands are tied, his head

bare; the fatal moment is come. He advances to the edge of the

Scaffold, 'his face very red,' and says: 'Frenchmen, I die

innocent: it is from the Scaffold and near appearing before

God that I tell you so. I pardon my enemies; I desire that

France--' A General on horseback, Santerre or another, prances

out with uplifted hand: 'Tambours!' The drums drown the voice.

'Executioners, do your duty!' The Executioners, desperate lest

themselves be murdered (for Santerre and his Armed Ranks will

strike, if they do not), seize the hapless Louis: six of them

desperate, him singly desperate, struggling there; and bind

him to their plank. Abbé Edgeworth, stooping, bespeaks him:

'Son of Saint Louis, ascend to Heaven.' The Axe clanks down; a

King's Life is shorn away. It is Monday the 21st of January

1793. He was aged 38 years four months and 28 days.

{1287}

Executioner Samson shows the Head: fierce shouts of Vive la

République rises, and swells; caps raised on bayonets, hats

waving: students of the College of Four Nations take it up, on

the far Quais; fling it over Paris. D'Orléans drives off in

his cabriolet: the Townhall Councillors rub their hands,

saying, 'It is done, It is done.' ... In the coffee-houses

that evening, says Prudhomme, Patriot shook hands with Patriot

in a more cordial manner than usual. Not till some days after,

according to Mercier, did public men see what a grave thing it

was. A grave thing it indisputably is; and will have

consequences. ... At home this Killing of a King has divided

all friends; and abroad it has united all enemies. Fraternity

of Peoples, Revolutionary Propagandism; Atheism, Regicide;

total destruction of social order in this world! All Kings,

and lovers of Kings, and haters of Anarchy, rank in coalition;

as in a war for life."

T. Carlyle,

The French Revolution,

volume 3, book 2, chapter 8.

FRANCE: A. D. 1793 (February-April).

Increasing anarchy.

Degradation of manners.

Formation of the terrible Revolutionary Tribunal.

Treacherous designs of Dumouriez.

His invasion of Holland.

His defeat at Neerwinden and retreat.

His flight to the enemy.

"While the French were ... throwing down the gauntlet to all

Europe, their own country seemed sinking into anarchical

dissolution. Paris was filled with tumult, insurrection and

robbery. At the denunciations of Marat against 'forestallers,'

the shops were entered by the mob, who carried off articles at

their own prices, and sometimes without paying at all. The

populace was agitated by the harangues of low itinerant

demagogues. Rough and brutal manners were affected, and all

the courtesies of life abolished. The revolutionary leaders

adopted a dress called the 'carmagnole,' consisting of

enormous black pantaloons, a short jacket, a three-coloured

waistcoat, and a Jacobite wig of short black hair, a terrible

moustache, the 'bonnet rouge,' and an enormous sabre. [The

name Carmagnole was also given to a tune and a dance; it is

supposed to have borne originally some reference not now

understood to Carmagnola in Piedmont.] Moderate persons of no

strong political opinions were denounced as 'suspected,' and

their crime stigmatised by the newly coined word of

'moderantisme.' The variations of popular feeling were

recorded like the heat of the weather, or the rising of a

flood. The principal articles in the journals were entitled

'Thermometer of the Public Mind;' the Jacobins talked of ...

being 'up to the level.' Many of the provinces were in a

disturbed state. A movement had been organising in Brittany

ever since 1791, but the death of the Marquis de la Rouarie,

its principal leader, had for the present suspended it. A more

formidable insurrection was preparing in La Vendée. ... It was

in the midst of these disturbances, aggravated by a suspicion

of General Dumouriez's treachery, which we shall presently

have to relate, that the terrible court known as the

Revolutionary Tribunal was established. It was first formally

proposed in the Convention March 9th, by Carrier, the

miscreant afterwards notorious by his massacres at Nantes,

urged by Cambacérès on the 10th, and completed that very night

at the instance of Danton, who rushed to the tribune, insisted

that the Assembly should not separate, till the new Court had

been organised. ... The extraordinary tribunal of August 1792

had not been found to work fast enough, and it was now

superseded by this new one, which became in fact only a method

of massacring under the form of law. The Revolutionary

Tribunal was designed to take cognisance of all

counter-revolutionary attempts, of all attacks upon liberty,

equality, the unity and indivisibility of the Republic, the

internal and external safety of the State. A commission of six

members of the Convention was to examine and report upon the

cases to be brought before it, to draw up and present the acts

of accusation. The tribunal was to be composed of a jury to

decide upon the facts, five judges to apply the law, a public

accuser, and two substitutes; from its sentence there was no

appeal. Meanwhile Dumouriez had returned to the army, very

dissatisfied that he had failed in his attempts to save the

King and baffle the Jacobins. He had formed the design of

invading Holland, dissolving the Revolutionary Committee in

that country, annulling the decree of December 15th, offering

neutrality to the English, a suspension of arms to the

Austrians, reuniting the Belgian and Batavian republics, and

proposing to France a re-union with them. In case of refusal,

he designed to march upon Paris, dissolve the Convention,

extinguish Jacobinism; in short, to play the part of Monk in

England. This plan was confided to four persons only, among

whom Danton is said to have been one. ... Dumouriez, having

directed General Miranda to lay siege to Maestricht, left

Antwerp for Holland, February 22nd, and by March 4th had

seized Breda, Klundert and Gertruydenberg. Austria, at the

instance of England, had pushed forward 112,000 men under

Prince Josias of Saxe-Coburg. Clairfait, with his army, at

this time occupied Berghem, where he was separated from the

French only by the little river Roer and the fortress of

Juliers. Coburg, having joined Clairfait, March 1st, crossed

the Roer, defeated the French under Dampierre at Altenhoven,

and thus compelled Miranda to raise the siege of Maestricht,

and retire towards Tongres. Aix-la-Chapelle was entered by the

Austrians after a smart contest, and the French compelled to

retreat upon Liege, while the divisions under Stengel and

Neuilly, being cut off by this movement, were thrown back into

Limburg. The Austrians then crossed the Meuse, and took Liege,

March 6th. Dumouriez was now compelled to concentrate his

forces at Louvain. From this place he wrote a threatening

letter to the Convention, March 11th, denouncing the

proceedings of the ministry, the acts of oppression committed

in Belgium, and the decree of December 15th. This letter threw

the Committee of General Defence into consternation. It was

resolved to keep it secret, and Danton and Lacroix set off for

Dumouriez's camp, to try what they could do with him, but

found him inflexible. His proceedings had already unmasked his

designs. At Antwerp he had ordered the Jacobin Club to be

closed, and the members to be imprisoned, at Brussels he had

dissolved the legion of 'sans-culottes.' Dumouriez was

defeated by Prince Coburg at Neerwinden, March 18th, and again

on the 22nd at Louvain. In a secret interview with the

Austrian Colonel Mack, a day or two after, at Ath, he

announced to that officer his intention to march on Paris and

establish a constitutional monarchy, but nothing was said as

to who was to wear the crown.

{1288}

The Austrians were to support Dumouriez's advance upon Paris,

but not to show themselves except in case of need, and he was

to have the command of what Austrian troops he might select.

The French now continued their retreat, which, in consequence

of these negociations, was unmolested. The Archduke Charles

and Prince Coburg entered Brussels March 25th, and the Dutch

towns were shortly after retaken. When Dumouriez arrived with

his van at Courtrai, he was met by three emissaries of the

Jacobins, sent apparently to sound him. He bluntly told them

that his design was to save France, whether they called him

Cæsar, Cromwell or Monk, denounced the Convention as an

assembly of tyrants, said that he despised their decrees. ...

At St. Amand he was met by Beurnonville, then minister of war,

who was to supersede him in the command, and by four

commissaries despatched by the Convention." Dumouriez arrested

these, delivered them to Clairfait, and they were sent to

Maestricht. "The allies were so sanguine that Dumouriez's

defection would put an end to the Revolution, that Lord

Auckland and Count Stahremberg, the Austrian minister, looking

upon the dissolution and flight of the Convention as certain,

addressed a joint note to the States-General, requesting them

not to shelter such members of it as had taken any part in the

condemnation of Louis XVI. But Dumouriez's army was not with

him. On the road to Condé he was fired on by a body of

volunteers and compelled to fly for his life (April 4th)." The

day following he abandoned his army and went over to the

Austrian quarters at Tournay, with a few companions, thus

ending his political and military career. "The situation of

France at this time seemed almost desperate. The army of the

North was completely disorganised through the treachery of

Dumouriez; the armies of the Rhine and Moselle were

retreating; those of the Alps and Italy were expecting an

attack; on the eastern side of the Pyrenees the troops were

without artillery, without generals, almost without bread,

while on the western side the Spaniards were advancing towards

Bayonne. Brest, Cherbourg, the coasts of Brittany, were

threatened by the English. The ocean ports contained only six

ships of the line ready for sea, and the Mediterranean fleet

was being repaired at Toulon. But the energy of the

revolutionary leaders was equal to the occasion."

T. H. Dyer,

History of Modern Europe,

book 7, chapter 5 (volume 4).

ALSO IN

A. Griffiths,

French Revolutionary Generals,

chapter 5.

F. C. Schlosser,

History of the 18th Century,

volume 6, division 2, chapter 2, section 1-2.

C. MacFarlane,

The French Revolution,

volume 3, chapter 11.

FRANCE: A. D: 1793 (March-April).

The insurrection in La Vendee.

"Ever since the abolition of royalty and the constitution of

1790, that is, since the 10th of August, a condemnatory and

threatening silence had prevailed in Normandy. Bretagne

exhibited still more hostile sentiments, and the people there

were engrossed by fondness for the priests and the gentry.

Nearer to the banks of the Loire, this attachment amounted to

insurrection; and lastly, on the left bank of that river, in

the Bocage, Le Loroux, and La Vendée, the insurrection was

complete, and large armies of ten and twenty thousand men were

already in the field. ... It was particularly on this left

bank, in Anjou, and Upper and Lower Poitou, that the famous

war of La Vendée had broken out. It was in this part of France

that the influence of time was least felt, and that it had

produced least change in the ancient manners. The feudal

system had there acquired a truly patriarchal character; and

the Revolution, instead of operating a beneficial reform in

the country, had shocked the most kindly habits and been

received as a persecution. The Bocage and the Marais

constitute a singular country, which it is necessary to

describe, in order to convey an idea of the manners of the

population, and the kind of society that was formed there.

Setting out from Nantes and Saumur and proceeding from the

Loire to the sands of Olonne, Lucon, Fontenay, and Niort, you

meet with an unequal undulating soil, intersected by ravines

and crossed by a multitude of hedges, which serve to fence in

each field, and which have on this account obtained for the

country the name of the Bocage. As you approach the sea the

ground declines, till it terminates in salt marshes, and is

everywhere cut up by a multitude of small canals, which render

access almost impossible. This is what is called the Marais.

The only abundant produce in this country is pasturage,

consequently cattle are plentiful. The peasants there grew

only just sufficient corn for their own consumption, and

employed the produce of their herds and flocks as a medium of

exchange. It is well known that no people are more simple than

those subsisting by this kind of industry. Few great towns had

been built in these parts. They contained only large villages

of two or three thousand souls. Between the two high-roads

leading, the one from Tours to Poitiers, and the other from

Nantes to La Rochelle, extended a tract thirty leagues in

breadth, where there were none but cross-roads leading to

villages and hamlets. The country was divided into a great

number of small farms paying a rent of from five to six

hundred francs, each let to a single family, which divided the

produce of the cattle with the proprietor of the land. From

this division of farms, the seigneurs had to treat with each

family, and kept up a continual and easy intercourse with

them. The simplest mode of life prevailed in the mansions of

the gentry: they were fond of the chase, on account of the

abundance of game; the gentry and the peasants hunted

together, and they were all celebrated for their skill and

vigour. The priests, men of extraordinary purity of character,

exercised there a truly paternal ministry. ... When the

Revolution, so beneficent in other quarters, reached this

country, with its iron level, it produced profound agitation.

It had been well if it could have made an exception there, but

that was impossible. ... When the removal of the non-juring

priests deprived the peasants of the ministers in whom they

had confidence, they were vehemently exasperated, and, as in

Bretagne, they ran into the woods and travelled to a

considerable distance to attend the ceremonies of a worship,

the only true one in their estimation. From that moment a

violent hatred was kindled in their souls, and the priests

neglected no means of fanning the flames. The 10th of August

drove several Poitevin nobles back to their estates; the 21st

of January estranged them, and they communicated their

indignation to those about them. They did not conspire,

however, as some have conceived.

{1289}

The known dispositions of the country had incited men who were

strangers to it to frame plans of conspiracy. One had been

hatched in Bretagne, but none was formed in the Bocage; there

was no concerted plan there; the people suffered themselves to

be driven to extremity. At length, the levy of 300,000 men

excited in the month of March a general insurrection. ...

Obliged to take arms, they chose rather to fight against the

republic than for it. Nearly about the same time, that is, at

the beginning of March, the drawing was the occasion of an

insurrection in the Upper Bocage and in the Marais. On the

10th of March, the drawing was to take place at St. Florent,

near Ancenis, in Anjou. The young men refused to draw. The

guard endeavoured to force them to comply. The military

commandant ordered a piece of cannon to be pointed and fired

at the mutineers. They dashed forward with their bludgeons,

made themselves masters of the piece, disarmed the guard, and

were, at the same time, not a little astonished at their own

temerity. A carrier, named Cathelineau, a man highly esteemed

in that part of the country, possessing great bravery and

powers of persuasion, quitting his farm on hearing the

tidings, hastened to join them, rallied them, roused their

courage, and gave some consistency to the insurrection by his

skill in keeping it up. The very same day he resolved to

attack a republican post consisting of eighty men. The

peasants followed him with their bludgeons and their muskets.

After a first volley, every shot of which told, because they

were excellent marksmen, they rushed upon the post, disarmed

it, and made themselves master of the position. Next day,

Cathelineau proceeded to Chemillé, which he likewise took, in

spite of 200 republicans and three pieces of cannon. A

gamekeeper at the château of Maulevrier, named Stofflet, and a

young peasant of the village of Chanzeau, had on their part

collected a band of peasants. These came and joined

Cathelineau, who conceived the daring design of attacking

Chollet, the most considerable town in the country, the chief

place of a district, and guarded by 500 republicans. ... The

victorious band of Cathelineau entered Chollet, seized all the

arms that it could find, and made cartridges out of the

charges of the cannon. It was always in this manner that the

Vendeans procured ammunition. ... Another much more general

revolt had broken out in the Marais and the department of La

Vendée. At Machecoul and Challans, the recruiting was the

occasion of a universal insurrection. ... Three hundred

republicans were shot by parties of 20 or 30. ...In the

department of La Vendée, that is, to the south of the theatre

of this war, the insurrection assumed still more consistence.

The national guards of Fontenay, having set out on their march

for Chantonnay, were repulsed and beaten. Chantonnay was

plundered. General Verteuil, who commanded the 11th military

division, on receiving intelligence of this defeat, dispatched

General Marcé with 1,200 men, partly troops of the line, and

partly national guards. The rebels who were met at St.

Vincent, were repulsed. General Marcé had time to add 1,200

more men and nine pieces of cannon to his little army. In

marching upon St. Fulgent, he again fell in with the Vendeans

in a valley and stopped to restore a bridge which they had

destroyed. About four in the afternoon of the 18th of March,

the Vendeans, taking the initiative, advanced and attacked him

... and made themselves masters of the artillery, the

ammunition, and the arms, which the soldiers threw away that

they might be the lighter in their flight. These more

important successes in the department of La Vendée properly so

called, procured for the insurgents the name of Vendeans,

which they afterwards retained, though the war was far more

active out of La Vendée. The pillage committed by them in the

Marais caused them to be called brigands, though the greater

number did not deserve that appellation. The insurrection

extended into the Marais from the environs of Nantes to Les

Sables, and into Anjou and Poitou, as far as the environs of

Vihiers and Parthenay. ... Easter recalled all the insurgents

to their homes, from which they never would stay away long. To

them a war was a sort of sporting excursion of several days;

they carried with them a sufficient quantity of bread for the

time, and then returned to inflame their neighbours by the

accounts which they gave. Places of meeting were appointed for

the month of April. The insurrection was then general and

extended over the whole surface of the country. It might be

comprised in a line which, commencing at Nantes, would pass

through Pornic, the Isle of Noirmoutiers, Les Sables, Luçon,

Fontenay, Niort, and Parthenay, and return by Airvault,

Thouar, Doué, and St. Florent, to the Loire. The insurrection,

begun by men who were not superior to the peasants whom they

commanded, excepting by their natural qualities, was soon

continued by men of a higher rank. The peasants went to the

mansions and forced the nobles to put themselves at their

head. The whole Marais insisted on being commanded by

Charette. ... In the Bocage, the peasants applied to Messrs.

de Bonchamps, d'Elbée, and de Laroche-Jacquelein, and forced

them from their mansions to place them at their head." These

gentlemen were afterwards joined by M. de Lescure, a cousin of

Henri de Laroche-Jacquelin.

A. Thiers,

History of the French Revolution

(American edition), volume 2, pages 146-152.

ALSO IN

Sir A. Alison,

History of Europe,

chapter 12, (volume 3).

Marquise de Larochejaquelein,

Memoirs.

Henri Larochejaquelein and the War in La Vendée,

(Chambers Miscellany, volume 2).

L. I. Guiney,

Monsieur Henri

(de La Rochejaquelein.)

FRANCE: A. D. 1793 (March-June).

Vigorous measures of the Revolutionary government.

The Committee of Public Safety.

The final struggle of Jacobins and Girondins.

The fall of the Girondins.

The news of the defeat of Dumouriez at Neerwinden, which

reached Paris on the 21st, "brought about two important

measures. Jean Debry, on behalf of the Diplomatic Committee,

proposed that all strangers should be expelled from France

within eight days who could not give a good reason for their

residence, and on the same evening the Committee of General

Defence was reorganized and placed on another footing. This

committee had come into existence in January, 1793. It

originally consisted of 21 members, who were not directly

elected by the Convention, but were chosen from the seven most

important committees.

{1290}

But now, after the news of Neerwinden, a powerful committee

was directly elected. It consisted of 24 members, and the

first committee contained nine Girondins, nine deputies of the

Plain, and six Jacobins, including every representative man in

the Convention. ... The new Committee was given the greatest

powers, and after first proposing to the Convention that the

penalty of death should be decreed against every emigre over

fourteen, and to everyone who protected an emigre, it proposed

that Dumouriez should be summoned to the bar of the

Convention." Early in April, news of the desertion of

Dumouriez and the retreat of Custine, "made the Convention

decide on yet further measures to strengthen the executive.

Marat, who, like Danton and Robespierre, was statesman enough

to perceive the need of strengthening the executive, proposed

that enlarged powers should be given to the committees; and

Isnard, as the reporter of the Committee of General Defence,

proposed the establishment of a smaller committee of nine,

with supreme and unlimited executive powers--a proposal which

was warmly supported by every statesman in the Convention. ...

It is noticeable that every measure which strengthened the

terror when it was finally established was decreed while the

Girondins could command a majority in: the Convention, and

that it was a Girondin, Isnard, who proposed the immense

powers of the Committee of Public Safety [Comité de Salut

Public]. Upon April 6 Isnard brought up a decree defining the

powers of the new committee. It was to consist of nine

deputies; to confer in secret; to have supreme executive

power, and authority to spend certain sums of' money without

accounting for them, and it was to present a weekly report to

the Convention. These immense powers were granted under the

pressure of news from the frontier, and it was obvious that it

would not be long before such a powerful executive could

conquer the independence of the Convention. Isnard's proposals

were opposed by Buzot, but decreed; and on April 7 the first

Committee of Public Safety was elected. It consisted of the

following members:--Barère, Delmas, Bréard, Cambon, Danton,

Guyton-Morveau, Treilhard, Lacroix, and Robert Lindet. The

very first proposal of the new committee was that it should

appoint three representatives with every army from among the

deputies of the Convention, with unlimited powers, who were to

report to the committee itself. This motion was followed by a

very statesmanlike one from Danton. He perceived the folly of

the decree of November 18, which declared universal war

against all kings. ... On his proposition the fatal decree ...

was withdrawn, and it was made possible for France again to

enter into the comity of European nations. It is very obvious

that it was the foreign war which had developed the progress

of the Revolution with such astonishing rapidity in France. It

was Brunswick's manifesto which mainly caused the attack on

the Tuileries on August 10; it was the surrender of Verdun

which directly caused the massacres of September. It was the

battle of Neerwinden which established the Revolutionary

Tribunal, and that defeat and the desertion of Dumouriez which

brought about the establishment of the Committee of Public

Safety. The Girondins were chiefly responsible for the great

war, and its first result was to destroy them as a party. ...

Their early influence over the deputies of the Plain rested on

a belief in their statesmanlike powers, but as time went on

that influence steadily diminished. It was in vain for Danton

to attempt to make peace in the Convention; bitter words on

both sides had left too strong an impression ever to be

effaced. The Jacobin leaders despised the Girondins; the

Girondins hated the Jacobins for having won away power from

them. The Jacobins formed a small but very united body, of

which every member knew its own mind; they were determined to

carry on the Republic at all costs, and to destroy the

Girondins as quickly as they could. ... The desertion of

Dumouriez had caused strong measures to be taken by the

Convention, ... and all parties had concurred. ... But as soon

as these important measures had been taken, which the majority

of the Convention believed would enable France once more to

free her frontiers from the invaders, the Girondins and

Jacobins turned upon each other with redoubled ardour, and the

death-struggle between them recommenced. The Girondins

reopened the struggle with an attack upon Marat. Few steps

could have been more foolish, for Marat, though in many ways a

real statesman, had from the exaggeration of his language

never obtained the influence in the Convention to which his

abilities entitled him. ... But he remained the idol of the

people of Paris, and in attacking him the Girondins

exasperated the people of Paris in the person of their beloved

journalist. On April 11 Guadet read a placard in the

Convention, which Marat had posted on the walls of Paris, full

of his usual libellous abuse of the Girondins. It was referred

to the Committee of Legislation with other writings of Marat,"

and two days later, on the report of the Committee, it was

voted by the Convention (half of its members being absent),

that Marat should be sent before the Tribunal for trial. This

called out immediate demonstrations from Marat's Parisian

admirers. "On April 15, in the name of 35 sections of Paris,

Pache and Hébert demanded the expulsion from the Convention of

22 of the leading Girondists as 'disturbers of the public peace,'

including Brissot, Guadet, Vergniaud, Gensonné, Buzot,

Barbaroux, Louvet, Petion, and Lanjuinais. ... On April 22 the

trial of Marat took place. He was unanimously acquitted, although

most of the judges of the Revolutionary Tribunal sympathized

with the Girondins. ... The acquittal of Marat was a fearful

blow to the Girondin party; they had in no way discredited the

Jacobins, and had only made themselves unpopular in Paris. ...

The Commune of Paris steadily organized the more advanced

republicans of the city for an open attack upon the Girondins.

... Throughout the month of May, preparations for the final

struggle went on; it was recognized by both parties that they

must appeal to force, and arrangements for appealing to force

were made as openly for the coup d'état of May 31 as they had

been for that of August 10. On the one side, the Commune of

Paris steadily concentrated its armed strength and formed its

plan of action; on the other, the leading Girondins met daily

at the house of Valazé, and prepared to move decrees in the

Convention.'" But the Girondins were still divided among

themselves.

{1291}

Some wished to appeal to the provinces, against Paris, which

meant civil war; others opposed this as unpatriotic. On the

31st of May, and on the two days following, the Commune of

Paris called out its mob to execute the determined coup

d'état. On the last of these three days (June 2), the

Convention surrounded, imprisoned and terrorized by armed

ruffians, led by Henriot, lately appointed Commander of the

National Guard, submissively decreed that the proscribed

Girondin deputies, with others, to the number altogether of

31, should be placed under arrest in their own houses. This

"left the members of the Mountain predominant in the

Convention. The deputies of the Marsh or Plain were now docile

to the voice of the Jacobin leaders," whose supremacy was now

without dispute. On the preceding day, an attempt had been

made, on the order of the Commune, to arrest M. Roland and two

others of the ministers. Roland escaped, but Madame Roland,

the more important Girondist leader, was taken and consigned

to the Abbaye.

H. M. Stephens,

History of the French Revolution,

volume 2, chapters 7-8.

ALSO IN

H. A. Taine,

The French Revolution,

book 4, chapter 13.

W. Smyth,

Lectures on the History of the French Revolution,

lecture 37 (volume 2).

H. Von Sybel,

History of the French Revolution,

book 7, chapters 1-3 (volume 3).

FRANCE: A. D. 1793 (March-September).

Formation of the great European Coalition against

Revolutionary France.

The seeds of dissension and weakness in it.

"The impression made at St. Petersburg by the execution of

Louis was fully as vivid as at London: already it was evident

that these two capitals were the centres of the great contest

which was approaching. ... An intimate and confidential

correspondence immediately commenced between Count Woronzoff,

the Russian ambassador at London, and Lord Grenville, the

British secretary of state for foreign affairs, which

terminated in a treaty between the powers, signed in London on

the 25th of March. By this convention, which laid the basis of

the grand alliance which afterwards brought the war to a

glorious termination, it was provided that the two powers

should 'employ their respective forces, as far as

circumstances shall permit, in carrying on the just and

necessary war in which they find themselves engaged against

France; and they reciprocally engage not to lay down their

arms without restitution of all the conquests which may have

been made upon either of the respective powers, or upon such

other states or allies to whom, by common consent, they shall

extend the benefit of this treaty.' ... Shortly after [April

25], a similar convention was entered into between Great

Britain and Sardinia, by which the latter power was to receive

an annual subsidy of £200,000 during the whole continuance of

the war, and the former to keep on foot an army of 50,000 men;

and the English government engaged to procure for it entire

restitution of its dominions as they stood at the commencement

of the war. By another convention, with the cabinet of Madrid,

signed at Aranjuez on the 25th of May, they engaged not to

make peace till they had obtained full restitution for the

Spaniards 'of all places, towns, and territories which

belonged to them at the commencement of the war, and which the

enemy may have taken during its continuance.' A similar treaty

was entered into with the court of the Two Sicilies, and with

Prussia [July 12 and 14], in which the clauses, prohibiting

all exportation to France, and preventing the trade of

neutrals with it, were the same as in the Russian treaty.

Treaties of the same tenor were concluded in the course of the

summer with the Emperor of Germany [August 30], and the King

of Portugal [September 26]. Thus was all Europe arrayed in a

great league against Republican France, and thus did the

regicides of that country, as the first fruits of their cruel

triumph, find themselves excluded from the pale of civilized

nations. ... But while all Europe thus resounded with the note

of military preparation against France, Russia had other and

more interested designs in view. Amidst the general

consternation at the triumphs of the French republicans,

Catharine conceived that she would be permitted to pursue,

without molestation, her ambitious designs against Poland [See

POLAND: A. D. 1793-1796]. She constantly represented the

disturbances in that kingdom as the fruit of revolutionary

propagandism, which it was indispensable to crush in the first

instance. ... The ambitious views of Prussia were also ...

strongly turned in the same direction. ... Nor was it only the

ambitious projects of Russia and Prussia against the

independence of Poland which already gave ground for gloomy

augury as to the issue of the war. Its issue was more

immediately affected by the jealousy of Austria and Prussia,

which now broke out in the most undisguised manner, and

occasioned such a division of the allied forces as effectually

prevented any cordial or effective co-operation continuing to

exist between them. The Prussian cabinet, mortified at the

lead which the Imperial generals took in the common

operations, insisted upon the formation of two independent

German armies; one composed of Prussians, the other of

Austrians, to one or other of which the forces of all the

minor states should be joined: those of Saxony, Hanover, and

Hesse being grouped around the standards of Prussia; those of

Bavaria, Wirtemburg, Swabia, the Palatinate, and Franconia,

following the double-headed eagles of Austria. By this means,

all unity of action between the two grand allied armies was

broken up. ... Prince Cobourg was appointed generalissimo of

the allied Armies from the Rhine to the German ocean." In

April, a corps of 20,000 English had been landed in Holland,

"under the command of the Duke of York, and being united to

10,000 Hanoverians and Hessians, formed a total of 30,000 men

in British pay." Holland, as an ally of England, was already

in the Coalition, the French having declared war, in February,

against the two maritime powers, simultaneously.

Sir A. Alison,

History of Europe,

chapter 13 (volume 4).

ALSO IN

F. C. Schlosser,

History of the 18th Century,

volume  6, division 2, chapter 2, section 3.

FRANCE: A. D. 1793 (April-August):

Minister Genet in America.

Washington's proclamation of neutrality.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1793.

{1292}

FRANCE: A. D. 1793 (June).

Flight of most of the Girondists.

Their appeal to the country.

Insurrection in the provinces.

The rising at Lyons, Marseilles, Bordeaux, Toulon.

Progress of the Vendean revolt.

"After this day [of the events which culminated on the 2d of

June, but which are commonly referred to as being of 'the 31st

of May,' when they began], when the people made no other use

of their power than to display and to exercise the pressure of

Paris over the representation, they separated without

committing any excess. ... La Montaigne caused the committees

to be reinstated on the morrow, with the exception of that of

public safety. They threw into the majority their most decided

members. ... They deposed those ministers suspected of

attachment to the' conquered; sent commissioners into the

doubtful departments; annulled the project of the constitution

proposed by the Girondists; and charged the committee of

safety to draw up in eight days a project for the constitution

entirely democratical. They pressed forward the recruiting and

armament of the revolutionary army--that levy of patriotism en

masse. They decreed a forced loan of a million upon the rich.

They sent one after the other, accused upon accused, to the

revolutionary tribunal. Their sittings were no longer

deliberation, but cursory motions, decreed on the instant by

acclamation, and sent immediately to the different committees

for execution. They stripped the executive power of the little

independence and responsibility it heretofore retained.

Continually called into the bosom of their committees,

ministers became no more than the passive executors of the

measures they decreed. From this day, also, discussion was at

an end; action was all. The disappearance of the Girondists

deprived the Revolution of its voice. Eloquence was proscribed

with Vergniaud, with the exception of those few days when the

great party chiefs, Danton and Robespierre, spoke, not to

refute opinions, but to intimate their will, and promulgate

their orders. The Assemblies became almost mute. A dead

silence reigned henceforth in the Convention. In the meanwhile

the 22 Girondists [excepting Vergniaud, Gensonné, Ducos,

Tonfrède, and a few others, who remained under the decree of

arrest, facing all consequences], the members of the

Commission of Twelve, and a certain number of their friends,

warned of their danger by this first blow of ostracism, fled

into their departments, and hurried to protest against the

mutilation of the country. ... Robespierre, Danton, the

Committee of Public Safety, and even the people themselves,

seemed to shut their eyes to these evasions, as if desirous to

be rid of victims whom it would pain them to strike. Buzot,

Barbaroux, Guadet, Louvet, Salles, Pétion, Bergoing, Lesage,

Cressy, Kervélégan and Lanjuinais, threw themselves into

Normandy; and after having traversed it, inciting all the

departments between Paris and the Ocean, established at Caen

the focus and centre of insurrection against the tyranny of

Paris. They gave themselves the name of the Central Assembly

of Resistance to Oppression. Biroteau and Chasset had arrived

at Lyons. The armed sections of this town were agitated with

contrary and already bloody commotion [the Jacobin

municipality having been overthrown, after hard fighting, and

its chief, Chalier, put to death]. Brissot fled to Moulins,

Robaut St. Etienne to Nismes. Grangeneuve, sent by Vergniaud,

Tonfrède, and Ducos, to Bordeaux, raised troops ready to march

upon the capital. Toulouse followed the same impulse of

resistance to Paris. The departments of the west were on fire,

and rejoiced to see the republic, torn into contending

factions, offer them the aid of one of the two parties for the

restoration of royalty. The mountainous centre of France ...

was agitated. ... Marseilles enrolled 10,000 men at the voice

of Rebecqui and the young friends of Barbaroux. They

imprisoned the commissioners of the Convention, Roux and

Antiboul. Royalty, always brooding in the south, insensibly

transformed this movement of patriotism into a monarchical

insurrection. Rebecqui, in despair ... at seeing loyalty avail

itself of the rising in the south, escaped remorse by suicide,

throwing himself into the sea. Lyons and Bordeaux likewise

imprisoned the envoys of the Convention as Maratists. The

first columns of the combined army of the departments began to

move in all directions; 6,000 Marseillais were already at

Avignon, ready to reascend the Rhone, and form a junction with

the insurgents of Nismes and of Lyons. Brittany and Normandy

uniting, concentrated their first forces at Evreux."

A de Lamartine,

History of the Girondists,

book 43 (volume 3).

The royalists of the west, "during this almost general rising

of the departments, continued to extend their enterprises.

After their first victories, the Vendeans seized on Bressure,

Argenton, and Thouars. Entirely masters of their own country,

they proposed getting possession of the frontiers, and

opening the way to revolutionary France, as well as

communications with England. On the 6th of June, the Vendean

army, composed of 40,000 men, under Cathelineau, Lescure,

Stofflet, and La Rochejacquelin, marched on Saumur, which it

took by storm. It then prepared to attack and capture Nantes,

to secure the possession of its own country, and become

masters of the course of the Loire. Cathelineau, at the head

of the Vendean troops, left a garrison in Saumur, took

Angers, crossed the Loire, pretended to advance upon Tours

and Lemans, and then rapidly threw himself upon Nantes, which

he attacked on the right bank, while Charette was to attack

it on the left."

F. A. Mignet,

History of the French Revolution,

chapter 8.

FRANCE: A. D. 1793 (June-October).

The new Jacobin Constitution postponed.

Concentration of power in the Committee of Public Safety.

The irresistible machine of revolutionary government.

"It was while affairs were in this critical condition that the

Mountain undertook the sole conduct of the government in

France. They had hitherto resisted all attempts of the

Girondists to establish a new constitution in place of that of

1791. They now undertook the work themselves, and in four days

drew up a constitution, as simple as it was democratic, which

was issued on the 24th of June. Every citizen of the age of 21

could vote directly in the election of deputies, who were

chosen for a year at a time and were to sit in a single

assembly. The assembly had the sole power of making laws, but

a period was fixed during which the constituents could protest

against its enactments. The executive power was entrusted to

24 men, who were chosen by the assembly from candidates

nominated by electors chosen by the original voters. Twelve

out of the 24 were to be renewed every six months. But this

constitution was intended merely to satisfy the departments,

and was never put into practice. The condition of France

required a greater concentration of power, and this was

supplied by the Committee of Public Safety.

{1293}

Ever since the 6th of April the original members of the

Committee had been re-elected, but on the 10th of July its

composition was changed. Danton ceased to be a member, and

Barère was joined by Robespierre, St. Just, Couthon,

Billaud-Varennes, Collot d'Herbois, and, in a short time,

Carnot. These men became the absolute rulers of France. The

Committee had no difficulty in carrying their measures in the

Convention, from which the opposition party had disappeared.

All the state obligations were rendered uniform and inscribed

in 'the great book of the national debt.' The treasury was

filled by a compulsory loan from the rich. Every income

between 1,000 and 10,000 francs had to pay ten per cent., and

every excess over 10,000 francs had to be contributed in its

entirety for one year. To recruit the army a levee en masse

was decreed. 'The young men shall go to war; the married men

shall forge arms and transport supplies; the wives shall make

tents and clothes and serve in the hospitals; the children

shall tear old linen into lint; the aged shall resort to the

public places to excite the courage of the warriors and hatred

against kings.' Nor were measures neglected against domestic

enemies. On the 6th of September a revolutionary army,

consisting of 6,000 men and 1,200 artillery men, was placed at

the disposal of the Committee to carry out its orders

throughout France. On the 17th the famous 'law of the

suspects' was carried. Under the term  'suspect' were included

all those who by words, acts or writings had shown themselves

in favour of monarchy or of federalism, the relatives of the

emigrants, etc., and they were to be imprisoned until the

peace. As the people were in danger of famine, a maximum

price, already established for corn, was decreed for all

necessaries; if a merchant gave up his trade he became a

suspect, and the hoarding of provisions was punished by death.

On the 10th of October the Convention definitely transferred

its powers to the Committee, by subjecting all officials to

its authority and by postponing the trial of the new

constitution until the peace."

R. Lodge,

History of Modern Europe,

chapter 23, section 11.

The Committee of Public Safety--the "Revolutionary

Government," as Danton had named it, on the 2d of August, when

he demanded the fearful powers that were given to

it--"disposed of all the national forces; it appointed and

dismissed the ministers, generals, Representatives on Mission,

the judges and juries of the Revolutionary Tribunal. The

latter instrument became its strong arm; it was, in fact, a

court martial worked by civil magistrates. By its agents it

directed the departments and armies, the political situation

without and within, striking down at the same time the rebels

within and the enemies without: for, together with the

constitution were, of course, suspended the municipal laws and

the political machinery of the communes; and thus cities and

villages hitherto indifferent or opposed to the Revolution

were republicanized. By the Tribunal it disposed of the

persons of individuals; by requisition and the law of maximum

(with which we are going to be better acquainted) it disposed

of their fortunes. It can, indeed, be said that the whole of

France was placed in a state of siege; but that was the price

of its salvation. ... But Danton has committed, a great

mistake,--one that he and especially France, will come to rue.

He has declined to become a member of the Revolutionary

Government, which has been established on his motion. 'It is

my firm resolve not to be a member of such a government,' he

had said. In other words, he has declined re-election as a

member of the Committee de Salut Public, now it has been

erected into a dictatorship. He unfortunately lacked all

ambition. ... When afterwards, on September 8, one Gaston

tells the Convention, 'Danton has a mighty revolutionary head.

No one understands so well as he to execute what he himself

proposes. I therefore move that he be added to the

Revolutionary Government, in spite of his protest,' and it is

so unanimously ordered, he again peremptorily declines. 'No, I

will not be a member; but as a spy on it I intend to work.' A

most fateful resignation! for while he still for a short time

continues to exercise his old influence on the government,

both from the outside, in his own person, and inside the

Committee, in the person of Hérault de Sechelles, selected in

his place, he very soon loses ground more and more,--so much

so even that Hérault, his friend, is 'put in quarantine,' as

was said in the Committee. And very natural. A statesman

cannot have power when he shirks responsibility, and without

power he soon loses all influence with the multitude. Those

who now succeed him in power are Robespierre, Barère,

Billaud-Varennes, and Carnot,--the two last very good working

members, good men of the second rank, but after Danton not a

single man is left fit to be leader."

L. Gronlund,

Ça Ira! or Danton in the French Revolution,

chapter 4.

ALSO IN

C. A. Fyffe,

History of Modern Europe,

volume 1, chapter 2.

H. M. Stephens,

History of the French Revolution.

volume 2, chapter 9.

H. C. Lockwood,

Constitutional History of France,

chapter 1, and appendix 2.

FRANCE: A. D. 1793 (July).

The assassination of Marat.

"Amongst those who had placed faith in the Girondists and

their ideals was a young woman of Normandy, Charlotte Corday.

... When the mob of Paris rose and drove with insult from the

Convention those who in her eyes were the heroic defenders of

the universal principles of truth and justice, she bitterly

resented the wrong that had been done, not only to the men

themselves, but to that France of which she regarded them as

the true representatives. Owing to Marat's persistent cry for

a dictatorship and for shedding of blood, it was he who, in

the departments, was accounted especially responsible both for

the expulsion of the Girondists and for the tyranny which now

began to weigh as heavily upon the whole country as it had

long weighed upon the capital. Incapable as all then were of

comprehending the causes which had brought about the fall of

the Girondists, Charlotte Corday imagined that by putting an

end to this man's life, she could also put an end to the

system of government which he advocated. Informing her friends

that she wished to visit England, she left Caen and travelled

in the diligence to Paris. On her arrival she purchased a

knife, and afterwards obtained entrance into Marat's house on

the pretext that she brought news which she desired to

communicate to him. She knew that he would be eager to obtain

intelligence of the movements of the Girondist deputies still

in Normandy. Marat was ill at the time, and in a bath when

Charlotte Corday was admitted.

{1294}

She gave him the names of the deputies who were at Caen. 'In a

few days,' he said, as he wrote them hastily down, 'I will

have them all guillotined in Paris.' As she heard these words

she plunged the knife into his body and killed him on the

spot. The cry uttered by the murdered man was heard, and

Charlotte, who did not attempt to escape, was captured and

conveyed to prison amid the murmurs of an angry crowd. It had

been from the first her intention to sacrifice her life for

the cause of her country, and, glorying in her deed, she met

death with stoical indifference. 'I killed one man,' she said,

when brought before the revolutionary court, 'in order to save

the lives of 100,000 others.' ... His [Marat's] murder brought

about contrary results to those which the woman who ignorantly

and rashly had flung away her life hoped by the sacrifice to

effect. ... He was regarded as a martyr by no small portion of

the working population of Paris. ... His murder excited

indignation beyond the comparatively narrow circle of those

who took an active part in political life, while at the same

time it added a new impulse to the growing cry for blood."

B. M. Gardiner,

The French Revolution,

chapter 7.

ALSO IN

C. Mac Farlane,

The French Revolution,

volume 3, chapter 13.

J. Michelet,

Women of the French Revolution,

chapter 18-19.

Mrs. R. K. Van Alstine,

Charlotte Corday.

A. Dobson,

Four French Women,

chapter 1.

FRANCE: A. D. 1793 (July-December).

The civil war.

Sieges of Lyons and Toulon.

Submission of Caen, Marseilles and Bordeaux.

Crushing of the Vendeans.

"The insurgents in Calvados [Normandy] were easily suppressed;

at the very first skirmish at Vernon [July 13], the insurgent

troops fled. Wimpfen endeavoured to rally them in vain. The

moderate class, those who had taken up the defence of the

Girondists, displayed little ardour or activity. When the

constitution was accepted by the other departments, it saw the

opportunity for admitting that it had been in error, when it

thought it was taking arms against a mere factious minority.

This retractation was made at Caen, which had been the

headquarters of the revolt. The Mountain commissioners did not

sully this first victory with executions. General Carteaux on

the other hand, marched at the head of some troops against the

sectionary army of the south; he defeated its force, pursued

it to Marseilles, entered the town [August 23] after it, and

Provence would have been brought into subjection like

Calvados, if the royalists, who had taken refuge at Toulon,

after their defeat, had not called in the English to their

aid, and placed in their hands this key to France. Admiral

Hood entered the town in the name of Louis XVII., whom he

proclaimed king, disarmed the fleet, sent for 8,000 Spaniards

by sea, occupied the surrounding forts, and forced Carteaux,

who was advancing against Toulon, to fall back on Marseilles.

Notwithstanding this check, the conventionalists succeeded in

isolating the insurrection, and this was a great point. The

Mountain commissioners had made their entry into the rebel

capitals; Robert Lindet into Caen; Tallien into Bordeaux;

Barras and Fréron into Marseilles. Only two towns remained to

be taken Toulon and Lyons. A simultaneous attack from the

south, west, and centre was no longer apprehended, and in the

interior the enemy was only on the defensive. Lyons was

besieged by Kellermann, general of the army of the Alps; three

corps pressed the town on all sides. The veteran soldiers of

the Alps, the revolutionary battalions and the newly levied

troops, reinforced the besiegers every day. The people of

Lyons defended themselves with all the courage of despair. At

first, they relied on the assistance of the insurgents of the

south; but these having been repulsed by Carteaux, the

Lyonnese placed their last hope in the army of Piedmont, which

attempted a diversion in their favour, but was beaten by

Kellermann. Pressed still more energetically, they saw their

first position carried. Famine began to be felt, and courage

forsook them. The royalist leaders, convinced of the inutility

of longer resistance, left the town, and the republican army

entered the walls [October 9], where they awaited the orders

of the convention. A few months after, Toulon itself [in the

siege of which Napoleon Bonaparte commanded the artillery],

defended by veteran troops and formidable fortifications, fell

into the power of the republicans. The battalions of the army

of Italy, reinforced by those which the taking of Lyons left

disposable, pressed the place closely. After repeated attacks

and prodigies of skill and valour, they made themselves

masters of it, and the capture of Toulon finished what that of

Lyons had begun [December 19]. Everywhere the convention was

victorious. The Vendeans had failed in their attempt upon

Nantes, after having lost many men, and their

general-in-chief, Cathelineau. This attack put an end to the

aggressive and previously promising movement of the Vendean

insurrection. The royalists repassed the Loire, abandoned

Saumur, and resumed their former cantonments. They were,

however, still formidable; and the republicans, who pursued

them, were again beaten in La Vendée. General Biron, who had

succeeded General Berruyer, unsuccessfully continued the war

with small bodies of troops; his moderation and defective

system of attack caused him to be replaced by Canclaux and

Rossignol, who were not more fortunate than he. There were two

leaders, two armies, and two centres of operation; ... The

committee of public safety soon remedied this, by appointing

one sole general-in-chief, Lechelle, and by introducing war on

a large scale into La Vendée. This new method, aided by the

garrison of Mayence, consisting of 17,000 veterans, who,

relieved from operations against the coalesced powers after

the capitulation, were employed in the interior, entirely

changed the face of the war. The royalists underwent four

consecutive defeats, two at Châtillon, two at Cholet [the last

being October 17]. Lescure, Bonchamps, and d'Elbée were

mortally wounded: and the insurgents, completely beaten in

Upper Vendée, and fearing that they should be exterminated if

they took refuge in Lower Vendée, determined to leave their

country to the number of 80,000 persons. This emigration

through Brittany, which they hoped to arouse to insurrection,

became fatal to them. Repulsed before Granville, utterly

routed at Mons [Le Mans, December 12], they were destroyed at

Savenay [December 23], and barely a few thousand men, the

wreck of this vast emigration, returned to Vendée. These

disasters, irreparable for the royalist cause, the taking of

their land of Noir-moutiers from Charette, the dispersion of

the troops of that leader, the death of Laroche jacquelin,

rendered the republicans masters of the country.

{1295}

The committee of public safety, thinking, not without reason,

that its enemies were beaten but not subjugated, adopted a

terrible system of extermination to prevent them from rising

again. General Thurreau surrounded Vendée with sixteen

entrenched camps; twelve movable columns, called the infernal

columns, overran the country in every direction, sword and

fire in hand, scoured the woods, dispersed the assemblies, and

diffused terror throughout this unhappy country."

F. A. Mignet,

History of the French Revolution,

chapter 8.

ALSO IN

A. Thiers,

History of the French Revolution

(American edition), volume 2, pages 328-335,

and 398-410.

Marchioness de Larochejaquelain,

Memoirs.

A. des Echerolles,

Early Life,

volume 1, chapters 5-7.

FRANCE: A. D. 1793 (July-December).

Progress of the war of the Coalition.

Dissensions among the Allies.

Unsuccessful siege of Dunkirk.

French Victories of Hondschotten and Wattignies.

Operations on the Rhine and elsewhere.

"The civil war in which France for a moment appeared engulfed

was soon confined to a few narrowing centres. What, in the

meantime, had been the achievements of the mighty Coalition of

banded Europe? Success, that might have been great, was

attained on the Alpine and Pyrenean frontiers; and had the

Piedmontese and Spaniards been well led they could have

overrun Provence and Rousillon, and made the insurrection of

the South fatal. But here, as elsewhere, the Allies did

little; and, though defeated in almost every encounter, the

republican levies held their ground against enemies who

nowhere advanced. It was, however, in the North and the

North-east that the real prize of victory was placed; and no

doubt can exist that had unanimity in the councils of the

Coalition prevailed, or had a great commander been in its

camp, Paris might have been captured without difficulty, and

the Revolution been summarily put down. But the Austrians, the

Prussians, and the English, were divided in mind; they had no

General capable of rising above the most ordinary routine of

war; and the result was that the allied armies advanced

tardily on an immense front, each leader thinking of his own

plans only, and no one venturing to press forward boldly, or

to pass the fortresses on the hostile frontiers, though

obstacles like these could be of little use without the aid of

powerful forces in the field. In this manner half the summer

was lost in besieging Mayence, Valenciennes, and Condé; and

when, after the fall of these places [July-August], an attempt

was made to invade Picardy, dissensions between the Allies

broke out, and the British contingent was detached to besiege

Dunkirk, while the Austrians lingered in French Flanders,

intent on enlarging by conquest Belgium, at that period an

Austrian Province. Time was thus gained for the French armies,

which, though they had made an honorable resistance, had been

obliged to fall back at all points, and were in no condition

to oppose their enemy; and the French army in the North,

though driven nearly to the Somme, within a few marches of the

capital, was allowed an opportunity to recruit its strength,

and was not, as it might have been easily, destroyed. A part

of the hastily raised levies was now incorporated in its

ranks; and as these were largely composed of seasoned men from

the old army of the Bourbon Monarchy, and from the volunteers

of Valmy and Jemmapes, a respectable force was before long

mustered. At the peremptory command of the Jacobin Government,

this was at once directed against the invaders, who did not

know what an invasion meant. The Duke of York, assailed with

vigor and skill, was compelled to raise the siege of Dunkirk

[by the French victory at Hondschotten, September 8]; and, to

the astonishment of Europe, the divided forces of the halting

and irresolute Coalition began to recede before the enemies,

who saw victory yielded to them, and who, feeble soldiers as

they often were, were nevertheless fired by ardent patriotism.

As the autumn closed the trembling balance of fortune inclined

decidedly on the side of the Republic. The French recruits,

hurried to the frontier in masses, became gradually better

soldiers, under the influence of increasing success. Carnot, a

man of great but overrated powers, took the general direction

of military affairs; and though his strategy was not sound, it

was much better than the imbecility of his foes. At the same

time, the Generals of the fallen Monarchy having disappeared,

or, for the most part, failed, brilliant names began to emerge

from the ranks, and to lead the suddenly raised armies; and

though worthless selections were not seldom made, more than

one private and sergeant gave proof of capacity of no common

order. Terror certainly added strength to patriotism, for

thousands were driven to the camp by force, and death was the

usual penalty of a defeated chief; but it was not the less a

great national movement, and high honor is justly due to a

people which, in a situation that might have seemed hopeless,

made such heroic: and noble efforts, even though it triumphed

through the weakness of its foe. Owing to a happy inspiration

of Carnot, a detachment was rapidly marched from the Rhine,

where the Prussians remained in complete inaction; and with

this reinforcement Jourdan gained a victory at Wattignies

[October 16] over the Austrians, and opened the way into the

Low Countries. At the close of the year the youthful Hoche,

once a corporal, but a man of genius, who had given studious

hours to the theory of war, divided Brunswick from the

Austrian Würmser by a daring and able march through the

Vosges; and the baffled Allies were driven out of Alsace, the

borders of which they had just invaded. By these operations

the great Northern frontier, the really vulnerable part of

France, was almost freed from the invaders' presence; and,

though less was achieved on the Southern frontier, the enemies

of the Republic began to lose courage."

W. O'C. Morris,

The French Revolution,

chapter 6.

"The Prussians had remained wholly inactive for two months

after the fall of Mayence, contenting themselves with watching

the French in their lines at Weissenburg. Wearied at length by

the torpor of his opponents, Moreau assumed the initiative,

and attacked the Prussian corps at Pirmasens. This bold

attempt was repulsed (September 14) with the loss of 4,000

men; but it was not till a month later (October 13) that the

Allies resumed the offensive, when the Weissenburg lines were

stormed by a mixed force of Austrians and Prussians, and the

French fled in confusion almost to Strasburg. But this

important advantage led to no results, though the defeat of

the Republican movement was hailed by a royalist movement in

Alsace.

{1296}

The Austrians, immovable in their plans of conquest, refused

to occupy Strasburg in the name of Louis XVII.; and the

unfortunate royalists, abandoned to Republican vengeance, were

indiscriminately consigned to the guillotine by a decree of

the Convention, while the confederate army was occupied in the

siege of Landau. But the lukewarmness of the Prussians had now

become so evident, that it was only by the most vehement

remonstrances of the Austrian cabinet that they were prevented

from seceding altogether from the league; and the Republicans,

taking advantage of the disunion of their enemies, again

attacked the Allies (December 26), who were routed and driven

over the Rhine [abandoning the siege of Landau]; while the

victors, following up their success, retook Spires, and

advanced to the gates of Mannheim. The operations in the

Pyrenees and on the side of Savoy, during this campaign, led

to no important results. On the western extremity of the

Pyrenees, the Spaniards [had] entered France in the middle of

April, routed their opponents in several encounters, and drove

them into St. Jean Pied-de-Poet. An invasion of Roussillon, at

the same time, was equally successful; and the Spaniards

maintained themselves in the province till the end of the

year, taking the fortresses of Bellegarde and Collioure, and

routing two armies which attempted to dislodge them, at Truellas

(September 22) and Boulon (December 7). An attempt of the

Sardinians to expel the French from their conquests in Savoy

was less fortunate; and, at the close of the campaign, both

parties remained in their former position."

A. Alison,

Epitome of History of Europe,

pages 58-59 (chapter 13,

volume 4 of complete work).

ALSO IN:

H. Von Sybel,

History of the French Revolution,

book 8, chapter 2 (volume 3).

E. Baines,

History of the Wars of the French Revolution,

volume 1, chapters 9-11.

FRANCE: A. D. 1793 (August).

Emancipation in San Domingo proclaimed.

See HAYTI: A. D. 1632-1803.

FRANCE: A. D. 1793 (September-December).

The "Reign of Terror" becomes the "Order of the Day."

Trial and execution of Marie Antoinette, Madame Roland, and

the Girondists.

"On the 16th of September, the Faubourg Saint-Antoine

surrounded the Hôtel de Ville, clamoring for 'Bread.' Hébert

and Chaumette appeased the mob by vociferous harangues against

rich men and monopolists, and by promising to raise a

revolutionary army with orders to scour the country, empty the

granaries, and put the grain within reach of the people. 'The

next thing will he a guillotine for the monopolists,' added

Hébert. This had been demanded by memorials from the most

ultra provincial Jacobins. The next day the Convention

witnessed the terrible reaction of this scene. At the opening

of the session Merlin de Douai proposed and carried a vote for

the division of the revolutionary tribunal into four sections,

in order to remedy the dilatoriness complained of by

Robespierre and the Jacobins. The municipality soon arrived,

followed by a great crowd; Chaumette, in a furious harangue,

demanded a revolutionary army with a travelling guillotine.

The ferocious Billaud-Varennes declared that this was not

enough, and that all suspected persons must be arrested

immediately. Danton interposed with the powerful eloquence of

his palmy days; he approved of an immediate decree for the

formation of a revolutionary army, but made no mention of the

guillotine. ... Danton's words were impetuous, but his ideas

were politic and deliberate. His motions were carried, amid

general acclamation. But the violent propositions of

Billaud-Varennes and others were also carried. The decree

forbidding domiciliary visits and night arrests, which had

been due to the Girondists, was revoked. A deputation from the

Jacobins and the sections demanded the indictment of the

'monster' Brissot with his accomplices, Vergniaud, Gensonné,

and other 'miscreants.' 'Lawgivers,' said the spokesman of the

deputation, 'let the Reign of Terror be the order of the day!'

Barère, in the name of the Committee of Public Safety,

obtained the passage of a decree organizing an armed force to

restrain counter-revolutionists and protect supplies. Fear led

him to unite with the most violent, and to adopt the great

motto of the Paris Commune, 'Let the Reign of Terror be the

order of the day!' 'The royalists are conspiring,' he said;

'they want blood. Well they shall have that of the

conspirators, of the Brissots and Marie Antoinettes!' The

association of these two names shows what frenzy prevailed in

the minds of the people. The next day September 6, two of the

most formidable Jacobins, the cold, implacable

Billaud-Varennes and the fiery Collot d'Herbois, were added to

the Committee of Public Safety. Danton persisted in his

refusal to return to it. This proves how mistaken the

Girondists had been in accusing him of aspiring to the

dictatorship. He kept aloof from the Committee chiefly because

he knew that they were lost, and did not wish to contribute to

their fall. Before leaving the ministry Garat had tried to

prevent the Girondists from being brought to trial; upon

making known his wish to Robespierre and Danton, he found

Robespierre implacable, while Danton, with tears coursing down

his rugged cheeks replied, 'I cannot save them!' ... On the 10th

of October Saint-Just, in the name of the Committee of Public

Safety, read to the Assembly an important report upon the

situation of the Republic. It was violent and menacing to

others beside the enemies of the Mountain; Hébert and his gang

might well tremble. He inveighed not only against those who

were plundering the government, but against the whole

administration. ... Saint-Just's report had been preceded on

the 3d of October by a report from the new Committee of Public

Safety, concluding with the indictment of 40 deputies; 39 were

Girondists or friends of the Gironde; the fortieth was the

ex-Duke of Orleans. Twenty-one of these 39 were now in the

hands of their enemies, and of these 21 only 9 belonged to

the first deputies indicted on the 2d of June; the remainder

had left Paris hoping to organize outside resistance, and had

been declared outlawed. The deputies subsequently added to

this number were members of the Right who had signed protests

against the violation of the national representation on that

fatal day. ... It was decided at the same session to bring the

40 deputies, together with Marie Antoinette, to trial. The

Jacobins and the commune had long been demanding the trial of

the unhappy queen, and were raising loud clamors over the

plots for her deliverance.

{1297}

She might perhaps have escaped from the Temple if she would

have consented to leave her children. During July a sorrow

equal to that of the 21st of January had been inflicted on

her; she had been separated from her young son under the

pretence that she treated him like a king, and was bringing

him up to make 'a tyrant of him.' The child was placed in

another part of the Temple, and his education was intrusted to

a vulgar and brutal shoemaker, named Simon. Nevertheless the

fate of Marie Antoinette at this epoch was still doubtful;

neither the Committee of Public Safety nor the ministry

desired her death. While Lebrun, the friend of the Girondists,

was minister of foreign affairs, a project had been formed

which would have saved her life. Danton knew of it and aided

it. ... This plan was a negotiation with Venice, Tuscany, and

Naples, the three Italian States yet neutral, who were to

pledge themselves to maintain their wavering neutrality, in

consideration of a guaranty of the safety of Marie Antoinette

and her family. Two diplomatic agents who afterwards held high

posts in France, Marat and Sémonville, were intrusted with

this affair. As they were crossing from Switzerland into

Italy, they were arrested, in violation of the law of nations,

upon the neutral territory of the Grisons by an Austrian

detachment (July 25). ... At tidings of the arrest of the

French envoys, Marie Antoinette was separated from her

daughter and sister-in-law Elizabeth, and transferred to the

Conciergerie. On the 14th of October she appeared before the

revolutionary tribunal. To the accusation of the public

prosecutor, Fouquier-Tinville, made up of calumnies against

her private life, and for the most part well-founded

imputations against her political conduct, she opposed a

plausible defence, which effaced as far as possible her part

in the late government. ... The following questions were put

to the jurors: 'Has Marie Antoinette aided in movements

designed to assist the foreign enemies of the Republic to open

French territory to them and to facilitate the progress of

their arms? Has she taken part in a conspiracy tending to

incite civil war?' The answer was in the affirmative, and the

sentence of death was passed on her. The decisive portions

which we now possess of the queen's correspondence with

Austria had not then been made public; but enough was known to

leave no doubt of her guilt, which had the same moral excuses

as that of her husband. ... She met death [October 16] with

courage and resignation. The populace who had hated her so

much did not insult her last moments. ... A week after the

queen's death the Girondists were summoned before the

revolutionary tribunal. Brissot and Lasource alone had tried

to escape this bloody ordeal, and to stir up resistance

against it in the South. Vergniaud, Gensonné, and Valazé

remained unshaken in their resolve to await trial. Gensonné,

who had been placed in the keeping of a Swiss whose life he

had saved on the 10th of August, and who had become a

gendarme, might have escaped, but he refused to profit by this

man's gratitude. ... The act of indictment drawn up by the

ex-Feuillant Amar was only a repetition of the monstrous

calumnies which had circulated through the clubs and the

journals. Brissot was accused of having ruined the colonies by

advocating the liberation of slaves, and of having drawn

foreign arms upon France by declaring war on kings. The whole

trial corresponded to this beginning. ... On the 29th the

Jacobins appeared at the bar of the Convention, and called for

a decree giving the jurors of the revolutionary tribunal the

right to bring the proceedings to a close as soon as they

believed themselves sufficiently enlightened. Robespierre and

Barère supported the Jacobin demand. Upon Robespierre's motion

it was decreed that after three days' proceedings, the jurors

might declare themselves ready to render their verdict. The

next day the jurors availed themselves of their privilege, and

declared themselves sufficiently informed, although they had

not heard the evidence for acquittal, neither the accused nor

their counsel having been allowed to plead their cause.

Brissot, Vergniaud, Gensonné, Valazé, Bishop Fauchet, Ducos,

Boyer-Fonfrède, Lasource, and their friends were declared

guilty of having conspired against the unity and

indivisibility of the Republic, and against the liberty and

safety of the French people. ... Danton, who had not been an

accomplice in their death, had retired to his mother's home at

Arcis-sur-Aube, that he might not be a witness thereof. The

condemned were brought back to hear their sentence. The

greater part of them rose up with a common impulse, and cried,

'We are innocent! People, they are deceiving you!' The crowd

remained motionless and silent. ... At midnight they partook

of a last repast, passing the rest of the night in converse

about their native land, their remnant of life being cheered

by news of victory and pleasant sallies from young Ducos, who

might have escaped, but preferred to share his friend

Fonfréde's fate. Vergniaud had been given a subtle poison by

Condorcet, but threw it away, choosing to die with his

companions. One of his noble utterances gives us the key to

his life. 'Others sought to consummate the Revolution by

terror; I would accomplish it by love.' Next day, October 31,

at noon, the prisoners were led forth, and as the five carts

containing them left the Conciergerie, they struck up the

national hymn ... and shouts of 'Long live the Republic.' The

sounds died away as their number decreased, but did not cease

until the last of the 21 mounted the fatal platform. ... The

murderers of the Girondists were not likely to spare the

illustrious woman who was at once the inspiration and the

honor of that party, and the very same day Madame Roland who

had been for five months a prisoner at St. Pelagie and the

Abbaye, was transferred to the Conciergerie. Hébert and his

followers had long clamored for her head. During her captivity

she wrote her Memoirs, which unfortunately have not been

preserved complete; no other souvenir of the Revolution equals

this, although it is not always reliable, for Madame Roland

had feminine weaknesses of intellect, despite her masculine

strength of soul; she was prejudiced against all who disagreed

with her, and regarded caution and compromise with a noble but

impolitic scorn. ... The 18th Brumaire (November 10), she was

summoned before the revolutionary tribunal; when she left her

cell, clad in white, her dark hair, floating loosely over her

shoulders, a smile on her lips and her face sparkling with

life and animation. ...

{1298}

She was condemned in advance, not being allowed a word in her

own defence, and was declared guilty of being an author or

accomplice 'of a monstrous conspiracy against the unity and

indivisibility of the Republic.' She heard her sentence

calmly, saying to the judges: 'You deem me worthy the fate of

the great men you have murdered. I will try to display the

same courage on the scaffold.' She was taken directly to the

Place de la Revolution, a man condemned for treason being

placed in the same cart, who was overwhelmed with terror. She

passed the mournful journey in soothing him, and on reaching

the scaffold bid him mount first, that his sufferings might

not be prolonged. As she took her place in turn, her eye fell

on a colossal statue of Liberty, erected August 10, 1793. 'O

Liberty,' she cried, 'what crimes are committed in thy name!'

Some say that she said, 'O Liberty, how they have deceived

thee!' Thus died the noblest woman in history since the

incomparable Joan, who saved France! ... The bloody tribunal

never paused; famous men of every party succeeded each other

at the fatal bar, the ex-Duke of Orleans among them, but four

days earlier than Madame Roland. ... The day after Madame

Roland's trial began that of the venerable Bailli, ex-mayor of

Paris and ex-president of the Constituent Assembly, a man who

played a great part early in the Revolution, but faded out of

sight with the constituent power."

Henry Martin,

Popular History of France, 1789-1877,

volume 1, chapter 16.

ALSO IN

A. de Lamartine,

History of the Girondists,

chapters 46-52 (volume 3).

C. D. Yonge,

Life of Marie Antoinette,

chapter 39.

Madame Campan,

Memoirs of the Private Life of Marie Antoinette,

volume 2, conclusion.

S. Marceau,

Reminiscences of a Regicide,

chapter 11.

Count Beugnot,

Life,

volume 1, chapter 6.

Lord R. Gower,

Last Days of Marie Antoinette.

FRANCE: A. D. 1793 (October).

Life in Paris during the Reign of Terror.

Gaiety in the Prisons.

The Tricoteuses, or knitting women.

Revolutionary costumes and modes of speech.

The guillotine as plaything and ornament.

"By the end of October, 1793, the Committee of General

Security had mastered Paris, and established the Reign of

Terror there by means of the Revolutionary Tribunal, and could

answer to the Great Committee of Public Safety for the

tranquillity of the capital. There were no more riots; men

were afraid even to express their opinions, much less to

quarrel about them; the system of denunciation made Paris into

a hive of unpaid spies, and ordinary crimes, pocket-picking

and the like, vanished as if by magic. Yet it must not be

supposed that Paris was gloomy or dull; on the contrary, the

vast majority of citizens seemed glad to have an excuse to

avoid politics, of which they had had a surfeit during the

last four years, and to turn their thoughts to the literary

side of their favourite journals, to the theatres, and to art.

... The dull places of Paris were the Revolutionary

Committees, the Jacobin Club, the Convention, the Hôtel de

Brienne, where the Committee of General Security sat, and the

Pavillon de l'Egalité, formerly the Pavillon de Flore, in the

Tuileries, where the Great Committee of Public Safety

laboured. ... Elsewhere men were lighthearted and gay,

following their usual avocations, and busy in their pursuit of

pleasure or of gain. It is most essential to grasp the fact

that there was no particular difference, for the vast majority

of the population, in living in Paris during the Reign of

Terror and at other times. The imagination of posterity,

steeped in tales of the tumbrils bearing their burden to the

guillotine, and of similar stories of horror, has conceived a

ghastly picture of life at that extraordinary period, and it

is only after living for months amongst the journals, memoirs,

and letters of the time that one can realize the fact that to

the average Parisian the necessity of getting his dinner or

his evening's amusement remained the paramount thought of his

daily life. ... Strange to say, nowhere was life more happy

and gay than in the prisons of Paris, where the inmates lived

in the constant expectation that the haphazard chance of being

brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal and condemned to

death might befall them at any moment. ... A little more must

be said about the market-women, the tricoteuses, or

knitting-women of infamous memory. These market-women had been

treated as heroines ever since their march to Versailles in

October, 1789. ... They formed their societies after the

fashion of the Jacobin Club, presided over by Renée Audu,

Agnès Lefevre, Marie Louise Bouju, and Rose Lacombe, and went

about the streets of Paris insulting respectably dressed

people, and hounding on the sans-culottes to deeds of

atrocity. These Mænads were encouraged by Marat, and played an

important part in the street history of Paris, up to the Reign

of Terror, when their power was suddenly taken from them. On

May 21, 1793, they were excluded by a decree from the

galleries of the Convention; on May 26 they were forbidden to

form part of any political assembly; and when they appealed

from the Convention to the Commune of Paris, Chaumette

abruptly told them 'that the Republic had no need of Joans of

Arc.' Thus deprived of active participation in politics, the

market-women became the tricoteuses, or knitting-women, who

used to take their seats in the Place de la Revolution, and

watch the guillotine as they knitted. Their active power for

good or harm was gone. ... Life during the Terror in Paris ...

differed in little things, in little affectations of liberty

and equality, which are amusing to study. The fashions of

dress everywhere betrayed the new order of things. A few men,

such as Robespierre, might still go about with powdered hair

and in knee-breeches, but the ordinary male costume of the

time was designed to contrast in every way with the costume of

a dandy of the 'ancien régime.' Instead of breeches, the

fashion was to wear trousers; instead of shoes, top-boots; and

instead of shaving, the young Parisian prided himself on letting

his moustache grow. In female costume a different motive was

at work. Only David's art disciples ventured to imitate the

male apparel of ancient Greece and Rome, but such imitation

became the fashion among women. Waists disappeared; and

instead of stiffened skirts and narrow bodices, women wore

short loose robes, which they fancied resembled Greek chitons;

sandals took the place of high-heeled shoes; and the hair,

instead of being worked up into elaborate edifices, was

allowed to flow down freely. For ornaments, gun-metal and

steel took the place of gold, silver and precious stones. ...

The favourite design was the guillotine.

{1299}

Little guillotines were worn as brooches, as earrings and as

clasps, and the women of the time simply followed the fashion

without realizing what it meant. Indeed, the worship of the

guillotine was one of the most curious features of the epoch.

Children had toy guillotines given them; models were made to

cut off imitation heads, when wine or sweet syrup flowed in

place of blood; and hymns were written to La Sainte

Guillotine, and jokes made upon it, as the 'national razor.'

... It is well known that the desire to emphasize the

abolition of titles was followed by the abolition of the terms

'Monsieur' and 'Madame,' and that their places were taken by

'Citizen' and 'Citizeness;' and also how the use of the second

person plural was dropped, and it was considered a sign of a

good republican to tutoyer everyone, that is, to call them

'thou' and 'thee.' ... The Reign of Terror in Paris seems to

us an age of unique experiences, a time unparalleled in the

history of the world; yet to the great majority of

contemporaries it did not appear so; they lived their ordinary

lives, and it was only in exceptional cases that the serenity

of their days was interrupted, or that their minds were

exercised by anything more than the necessity of earning their

daily bread."

H. M. Stephens,

History of the French Revolution,

volume 2, chapter 10.

ALSO IN

J. Michelet,

Women of the French Revolution,

chapters 20-30.

FRANCE: A. D. 1793 (October).

The new republican calendar.

"Before the year ended the legislators of Paris voted that

there was no God, and destroyed or altered nearly everything

that had any reference to Christianity. Robespierre, who would

have stopped short at deism, and who would have preserved the

external decencies, was overruled and intimidated by Hébert

and his frowsy crew, who had either crept into the governing

committees or had otherwise made themselves a power in the

state. ... All popular journalists, patriots, and public

bodies, had begun dating 'First Year of Liberty,' or 'First

Year of the Republic;' and the old calendar had come to be

considered as superstitious and slavish, as an abomination in

the highest degree disgraceful to free and enlightened

Frenchmen. Various petitions for a change had been presented;

and at length the Convention had employed the mathematicians

Romme and Monge, and the astronomer Laplace, to make a new

republican calendar for the new era. These three philosophers,

aided by Fabre d'Eglantine, who, as a poet, furnished the

names, soon finished their work, which was sanctioned by the

Convention and decreed into universal use as early as the 5th

of October. It divided the year into four equal seasons, and

twelve equal months of 30 days each. The five odd days which

remained were to be festivals, and to bear the name of

'Sansculottides.' ... One of these five days was to be

consecrated to Genius, one to Industry, the third to Fine

Actions, the fourth to Rewards, the fifth to Opinion. ... In

leap-years, when there would be six days to dispose of, the

last of those days or Sansculottides was to be consecrated to

the Revolution, and to be observed in all times with all

possible solemnity. The months were divided into three

decades, or portions of ten days each, and, instead of the

Christian sabbath, once in seven days, the décadi, or tenth

day, was to be the day of rest. ... The decimal method of

calculation ... was to preside over all divisions: thus,

instead of our twenty-four hours to the day, and sixty minutes

to the hour, the day was divided into ten parts, and the tenth

was to be subdivided by tens and again by tens to the minutest

division of time. New dials were ordered to mark the time in

this new way, but, before they were finished, it was found

that the people were puzzled and perplexed by this last

alteration, and therefore this part of the calendar was

adjourned for a year, and the hours, minutes and seconds were

left as they were. As the republic commenced on the 21st of

September close on the [autumnal] equinox, the republican year

was made to commence at that season. The first month in the

year (Fabre d'Eglantine being god-father to them all) was

called Vendémiaire, or the vintage month, the second Brumaire,

or the foggy month, the third Frimaire, or the frosty month.

These were the three autumn months. Nivôse, Pluviôse, and

Ventôse, or the snowy, rainy and windy, were the three winter

months. Germinal, Floreal, and Prairial, or the bud month, the

flower month, and the meadow month, formed the spring season.

Messidor, Thermidor and Fructidor, or reaping month, heat

month, and fruit month, made the summer, and completed the

republican year. In more ways than one all this was calculated

for the meridian of Paris, and could suit no other physical or

moral climate. ... But the strangest thing about this

republican calendar was its duration. It lasted till the 1st

of January, 1806."

C. Mac Farlane,

The French Revolution,

volume 4, volume 3.

The Republican Calendar for the Year Two of the Republic

(September 22, 1793-Sept. 21, 1794) is synchronized with the

Gregorian Calendar as follows:

1 Vendémiaire = September 22;

1 Brumaire = October 22;

1 Frimaire = November 21;

1 Nivôse = December 21;

1 Pluviôse = January 20;

1 Ventôse = February 19;

1 Germinal = March 21;

1 Floreal = April 20;

1 Prairial = May 20;

1 Messidor = June 19;

1 Thermidor = July 19;

1 Fructidor= August 18;

1st to 5th Sansculottides = September 17-21.

H. M. Stephens,

History of the French Revolution,

volume 2, appendix 12.

ALSO IN

A. Thiers,

History of the French Revolution

(American edition), volume 2, pages 364-365.

FRANCE: A. D. 1793 (November).

Abandonment of Christianity.

The Worship of Reason instituted.

"The earliest steps towards a public abandonment of

Christianity appear to have been taken by Fouché, the future

minister of Police, and Duke of Otranto. ... He published at

Nevers (October 10, 1793) a decree" ordaining that "no forms

of religious worship be practised except within their

respective temples;" that "ministers of religion are

forbidden, under pain of imprisonment, to wear their official

costumes in any other places besides their temples;" and that

the inscription, "Death is an eternal sleep," should be placed

over the entrance to the cemetery. "This decree was reported

to the municipality of Paris by Chaumette, the fanatical

procureur of the Commune, and was warmly applauded. ... The

atheistical cabal of which he was the leader (his chief

associates being the infamous Hébert, the Prussian baron

Anacharsis Clootz, and Chabot, a renegade priest), now judged

that public feeling was ripe for an avowed and combined

onslaught on the profession of Christianity. ... They decreed

that on the 10th of November the 'Worship of Reason' should be

inaugurated at Notre Dame.

{1300}

On that day the venerable cathedral was profaned by a series

of sacrilegious outrages unparalleled in the history of

Christendom. A temple dedicated to 'Philosophy' was erected on

a platform in the middle of the choir. A motley procession of

citizens of both sexes, headed by the constituted authorities,

advanced towards it; on their approach, the Goddess of Reason,

impersonated by Mademoiselle Maillard, a well known figurante

of the opera, took her seat upon a grassy throne in front of

the temple; a hymn, composed in her honour by the poet

Chenier, was sung by a body of young girls dressed in white

and bedecked with flowers; and the multitude bowed the knee

before her in profound adoration. It was the 'abomination of

desolation sitting in the holy place.' At the close of this

grotesque ceremony the whole cortège proceeded to the hall of

the Convention, carrying with them their 'goddess,' who was

borne aloft in a chair of state on the shoulders of four men.

Having deposited her in front of the president, Chaumette

harangued the Assembly. ... He proceeded to demand that the

ci-devant metropolitical church should henceforth be the

temple of Reason and Liberty; which proposition was

immediately adopted. The 'goddess' was then conducted to the

president, and he and other officers of the House saluted her

with the 'fraternal kiss,' amid thunders of applause. After

this, upon the motion of Thuriot, the Convention in a body

joined the mass of the people, and marched in their company to

the temple of Reason, to witness a repetition of the impieties

above described. These demonstrations were zealously imitated

in the other churches of the capital. ... The interior of St.

Eustache was transformed into a 'guinguette,' or place of low

public entertainment. ... At St. Gervais a ball was given in

the chapel of the Virgin. In other churches theatrical

spectacles took place. ... Representatives of the people

thought it no shame to quit their curule chairs in order to

dance the 'carmagnole' with abandoned women in the streets

attired in sacerdotal garments. On Sunday, the 17th of

November, all the parish churches of Paris were closed by

authority, with three exceptions. ... Chaumette, at a sitting

of the Commune on the 26th of November, called for further

measures for the extermination of every vestige of Christian

worship;" and the Council of the Commune, on his demand,

ordered the closing of all churches and temples, of every

religious denomination; made priests and ministers of religion

responsible for any troubles that might arise from religious

opinions, and commanded the arrest as a "suspect" of any

person who should ask for the reopening of a church. "The

example set by Paris, at this melancholy period, was

faithfully repeated, if not surpassed in atrocity, throughout

the provinces. Religion was proscribed, churches closed,

Christian ordinances interdicted; the dreary gloom of

atheistical despotism overspread the land. ... These infamies

were too monstrous to be tolerated for any length of time. ...

Robespierre, who had marked the symptoms of a coming reaction,

boldly seized the opportunity, and denounced without mercy the

hypocritical faction which disputed his own march towards

absolute dictatorship."

W. H. Jervis,

The Gallican Church and the Revolution,

chapter 7.

ALSO IN

A. de Lamartine,

History of the Girondists,

book 52 (volume 3).

T. Carlyle,

The French Revolution,

book 5, chapter 4 (volume 3).

E. de Pressense,

Religion and the Reign of Terror,

book 2, chapter 2.

FRANCE: A. D. 1793-1794 (October-April).

The Terror in the Provinces.

Republican vengeance at Lyons, Marseilles, Toulon,

Bordeaux, Nantes.

Fusillades and Noyades.

"The insurgents of Lyons, Marseilles, Toulon, and Bordeaux,

were punished with pitiless severity. Lyons had revolted, and

the convention decreed [October 12] the destruction of the

city, the confiscation of the property of the rich, for the

benefit of the patriots, and the punishment of the insurgents

by martial law. Couthon, a commissioner well tried in cruelty,

hesitated to carry into execution this monstrous decree, and

was superseded by Collot d'Herbois and Fouché. Thousands of

workmen were employed in the work of destruction: whole

streets fell under their pickaxes: the prisons were gorged:

the guillotine was too slow for revolutionary vengeance, and

crowds of prisoners were shot, in murderous 'mitraillades.'

... At Marseilles, 12,000 of the richest citizens fled from

the vengeance of the revolutionists, and their property was

confiscated, and plundered. When Toulon fell before the

strategy of Bonaparte, the savage vengeance and cruelty of the

conquerors were indulged without restraint. ... The dockyard

labourers were put to the sword: gangs of prisoners were

brought out and executed by fusillades: the guillotine also

claimed its victims: the sans-culottes rioted in confiscation

and plunder. At Bordeaux, Tallien threw 15,000 citizens into

prison. Hundreds fell under the guillotine; and the

possessions and property of the rich were offered up to

outrage and robbery. But all these atrocities were far

surpassed in La Vendee. ... The barbarities of warfare were

yet surpassed by the vengeance of the conquerors, when the

insurrection was, at last, overcome. At Nantes, the monster

Carrier outstripped his rivals in cruelty and insatiable

thirst for blood. Not contented with wholesale mitraillades,

he designed that masterpiece of cruelty, the noyades; and

thousands of men, women and children who escaped the muskets

of the rabble soldiery were deliberately drowned in the waters

of the Loire. In four months, his victims reached 15,000. At

Angers, and other towns in La Vendee, these hideous noyades

were added to the terrors of the guillotine and the

fusillades."

Sir T. E. May,

Democracy in Europe,

chapter 14.

"One begins to be sick of 'death vomited in great floods.'

Nevertheless, hearest thou not, O Reader (for the sound

reaches through centuries), in the dead December and January

nights, over Nantes Town,--confused noises, as of musketry and

tumult, as of rage and lamentation; mingling with the

everlasting moan of the Loire waters there? Nantes Town is

sunk in sleep; but Représentant Carrier is not sleeping, the

wool-capped Company of Marat is not sleeping. Why unmoors that

flatbottomed craft, that 'gabarre'; about eleven at night;

with Ninety Priests under hatches? They are going to Belle

Isle? In the middle of the Loire stream, on signal given, the

gabarre is scuttled; she sinks with all her cargo. 'Sentence

of Deportation,' writes Carrier, 'was executed vertically.'

The Ninety Priests, with their gabarre-coffin, lie deep! It is

the first of the Noyades [November 16], what we may call

'Drownages' of Carrier; which have become famous forever.

{1301}

Guillotining there was at Nantes, till the Headsman sank worn

out: then fusillading 'in the Plain of Saint-Mauve;' little

children fusilladed, and women with children at the breast;

children and women, by the hundred and twenty; and by the five

hundred, so hot is La Véndee: till the very Jacobins grew

sick, and all but the Company of Marat cried, Hold! Wherefore

now we have got Noyading; and on the 24th night of Frostarious

year 2, which is 14th of December 1793, we have a second

Noyade; consisting of '138 persons.' Or why waste a gabarre,

sinking it with them? Fling them out; fling them out, with

their hands tied: pour a continual hail of lead over all the

space, till the last struggler of them be sunk! Unsound

sleepers of Nantes, and the Sea-Villages there-abouts, hear

the musketry amid the night-winds; wonder what the meaning of

it is. And women were in that gabarre; whom the Red Nightcaps

were stripping naked; who begged, in their agony, that their

smocks might not be stript from them. And young children were

thrown in, their mothers vainly pleading: 'Wolflings,'

answered the Company of Marat, 'who would grow to be wolves.'

By degrees, daylight itself witnesses Noyades: women and men

are tied together, feet and feet, hands and hands; and flung

in: this they call Mariage Républicain, Republican Marriage.

Cruel is the panther of the woods, the she-bear bereaved of

her whelps: but there is in man a hatred crueler than that.

Dumb, out of suffering now, as pale swollen corpses, the

victims tumble confusedly seaward along the Loire stream; the

tide rolling them back: clouds of ravens darken the River;

wolves prowl on the shoal-places: Carrier writes, 'Quel

torrent révolutionnaire, What a torrent of Revolution!' For

the man is rabid; and the Time is rabid. These are the Noyades

of Carrier; twenty-five by the tale, for what is done in

darkness comes to be investigated in sunlight: not to be

forgotten for centuries. ... Men are all rabid; as the Time

is. Representative Lebon, at Arras, dashes his sword into the

blood flowing from the Guillotine; exclaims, 'How I like it!'

Mothers, they say, by his orders, have to stand by while the

Guillotine devours their children: a band of music is

stationed near; and, at the fall of every head, strikes up its

'Ça-ira.'"

T. Carlyle,

The French Revolution,

volume 3, book 5, chapter 3.

ALSO IN

H. M. Stephens,

History of the French Revolution,

volume 2, chapter 11.

H. A. Taine,

The French Revolution,

book 5, chapter 1, section 9 (volume 3).

Horrors of the Prison of Arras

("The Reign of Terror: A Collection of Authentic

Narratives," volume 2).

Duchesse de Duras,

Prison Journals during the French Revolution

A. des Echerolles,

Early Life,

volume 1, chapters 7-13, and volume 2, chapter l.

See, also, FRANCE: 1794 (JUNE-JULY).

FRANCE: A. D. 1793-1794 (November-June).

The factions of the Mountain devour one another.

Destruction of the Hebertists.

Danton and his followers brought to the knife.

Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety.

The Feast of the Supreme Being.

"Robespierre was unutterably outraged by the proceedings of

the atheists. They perplexed him as a politician intent upon

order, and they afflicted him sorely as an ardent disciple of

the Savoyard Vicar. Hébert, however, was so strong that it

needed some courage to attack him, nor did Robespierre dare to

withstand him to the face. But he did not flinch from making

an energetic assault upon atheism and the excesses of its

partisans. His admirers usually count his speech of the 21st

of November one of the most admirable of his oratorical

successes. ... 'Atheism [he said] is aristocratic. The idea of

a great being who watches over oppressed innocence and

punishes triumphant crime is essentially the idea of the

people. This is the sentiment of Europe and the Universe; it

is the sentiment of the French nation. That people is attached

neither to priests, nor to superstitions, nor to ceremonies;

it is attached only to worship in itself, or in other words to

the idea of an incomprehensible Power, the terror of

wrong-doers, the stay and comfort of virtue, to which it

delights to render words of homage that are all so many

anathemas against injustice and triumphant crime.' This is

Robespierre's favourite attitude, the priest posing as

statesman. ... Danton followed practically the same line,

though saying much less about it. 'If Greece,' he said in the

Convention, 'had its Olympian games, France too shall

solemnize her sans-culottid days. ... If we have not honoured

the priest of error and fanaticism, neither do we wish to

honour the priest of incredulity: we wish to serve the people.

I demand that there shall be an end of these anti-religious

masquerades in the Convention.' There was an end of the

masquerading, but the Hébertists still kept their ground.

Danton, Robespierre, and the Committee were all equally

impotent against them for some months longer. The

revolutionary force had been too strong to be resisted by any

government since the Paris insurgents had carried both king

and assembly in triumph from Versailles in the October of

1789. It was now too strong for those who had begun to strive

with all their might to build a new government out of the

agencies that had shattered the old to pieces. For some months

the battle which had been opened by Robespierre's remonstrance

against atheistic intolerance, degenerated into a series of

masked skirmishes. ... Collot D'Herbois had come back in hot

haste from Lyons. ... Carrier was recalled from Nantes. ...

The presence of these men of blood gave new courage and

resolution to the Hébertists. Though the alliance was

informal, yet as against Danton, Camille Desmoulins, and the

rest of the Indulgents, as well as against Robespierre, they

made common cause. Camille Desmoulins attacked Hébert in

successive numbers of a journal ['Le Vieux Cordelier'] that is

perhaps the one truly literary monument of this stage of the

revolution. Hébert retaliated by impugning the patriotism of

Desmoulins in the Club, and the unfortunate wit,

notwithstanding the efforts of Robespierre on his behalf, was

for a while turned out of the sacred precincts. ... Even

Danton himself was attacked (December, 1793) and the integrity

of his patriotism brought into question. Robespierre made an

energetic defence of his great rival in the hierarchy of

revolution. ... Robespierre, in whom spasmodical courage and

timidity ruled by rapid turns, began to suspect that he had

been premature; and a convenient illness, which some supposed

to have been feigned, excused his withdrawal for some weeks

from a scene where he felt that he could no longer see clear.

We cannot doubt that both he and Danton were perfectly assured

that the anarchic party must unavoidably roll headlong into the

abyss.

{1302}

But the hour of doom was uncertain. To make a mistake in the

right moment, to hurry the crisis, was instant death.

Robespierre was a more adroit calculator than Danton. ... His

absence during the final crisis of the anarchic party allowed

events to ripen, without committing him to that initiative in

dangerous action which he had dreaded on the 10th of August,

as he dreaded it on every other decisive day of this burning

time. The party of the Commune became more and more daring in

their invectives against the Convention and the Committees. At

length they proclaimed open insurrection. But Paris was cold,

and opinion was divided. In the night of the 13th of March,

Hébert, Chaumette, Clootz, were arrested. The next day

Robespierre recovered sufficiently to appear at the Jacobin

Club. He joined his colleagues of the Committee of Public

Safety in striking the blow. On the 24th of March the

Ultra-Revolutionist leaders were beheaded. The first bloody

breach in the Jacobin ranks was speedily followed by the

second. The Right wing of the opposition to the Committee soon

followed the Left down the ways to dusty death, and the

execution of the Anarchists only preceded by a week the arrest

of the Moderates. When the seizure of Danton had once before

been discussed in the Committee, Robespierre resisted the

proposal violently. We have already seen how he defended

Danton at the Jacobin Club. ... What produced this sudden

tack? ... His acquiescence in the ruin of Danton is

intelligible enough on the grounds of selfish policy. The

Committee [of Public Safety] hated Danton for the good reason

that he had openly attacked them, and his cry for clemency was

an inflammatory and dangerous protest against their system.

Now Robespierre, rightly or wrongly, had made up his mind that

the Committee was the instrument by which, and which only, he

could work out his own vague schemes of power and

reconstruction. And, in any case, how could he resist the

Committee? ... All goes to show that Robespierre was really

moved by nothing more than his invariable dread of being left

behind, of finding himself on the weaker side, of not seeming

practical and political enough. And having made up his mind

that the stronger party was bent on the destruction of the

Dantonists, he became fiercer than Billaud himself. ... Danton

had gone, as he often did, to his native village of

Arcis-sur-Aube, to seek repose and a little clearness of sight

in the night that wrapped him about. He was devoid of personal

ambition; he never had any humour for mere factious struggles.

... It is not clear that he could have done anything. The

balance of force, after the suppression of the Hébertists, was

irretrievably against him, as calculation had already revealed to

Robespierre. ... After the arrest, and on the proceedings to

obtain the assent of the Convention to the trial of Danton and

others of its members, one only of their friends had the

courage to rise and demand that they should be heard at the

bar. Robespierre burst out in cold rage; he asked whether they

had undergone so many heroic sacrifices, counting among them

these acts of 'painful severity,' only to fall under the yoke

of a band of domineering intriguers; and he cried out

impatiently that they would brook no claim of privilege, and

suffer no rotten idol. The word was felicitously chosen, for

the Convention dreaded to have its independence suspected, and

it dreaded this all the more because at this time its

independence did not really exist. The vote against Danton was

unanimous, and the fact that it was so is the deepest stain on

the fame of this assembly. On the afternoon of the 16th

Germinal (April 5, 1794), Paris in amazement and some

stupefaction saw the once dreaded Titan of the Mountain fast

bound in the tumbril, and faring towards the sharp-clanging

knife [with Camille Desmoulins and others]. 'I leave it all in

a frightful welter,' Danton is reported to have said. 'Not a

man of them has an idea of government. Robespierre will follow

me; he is dragged down by me. Ah, better be a poor fisherman

than meddle with the governing of men!' ... After the fall of

the anarchists and the death of Danton, the relations between

Robespierre and the Committees underwent a change. He, who had

hitherto been on the side of government, became in turn an

agency of opposition. He did this in the interest of ultimate

stability, but the difference between the new position and the

old is that he now distinctly associated the idea of a stable

republic with the ascendency of his own religious conceptions.

... The base of Robespierre's scheme of social reconstruction

now came clearly into view; and what a base! An official

Supreme Being and a regulated Terror. ... How can we speak

with decent patience of a man who seriously thought that he

should conciliate the conservative and theological elements of

the society at his feet, by such an odious opera-piece as the

Feast of the Supreme Being. This was designed as a triumphant

ripost to the Feast of Reason, which Chaumette and his friends

had celebrated in the winter. ... Robespierre persuaded the

Convention to decree an official recognition of the Supreme

Being, and to attend a commemorative festival in honour of

their mystic patron. He contrived to be chosen president for

the decade in which the festival would fall. When the day came

(20th Prairial, June 8, 1794), he clothed himself with more

than even his usual care. As he looked out from the windows of

the Tuileries upon the jubilant crowd in the gardens, he was

intoxicated with enthusiasm. 'O Nature,' he cried, 'how

sublime thy power, how full of delight! How tyrants must grow

pale at the idea of such a festival as this!' In pontifical

pride he walked at the head of the procession, with flowers

and wheat-ears in his hand, to the sound of chants and

symphonies and choruses of maidens. On the first of the great

basins in the gardens, David, the artist, had devised an

allegorical structure for which an inauspicious doom was

prepared. Atheism, a statue of life size, was throned in the

midst of an amiable group of human Vices, with Madness by her

side, and Wisdom menacing them with lofty wrath. Great are the

perils of symbolism. Robespierre applied a torch to Atheism, but

alas, the wind was hostile, or else Atheism and Madness were

damp. They obstinately resisted the torch, and it was hapless

Wisdom who took fire. ... The whole mummery was pagan. ... It

stands as the most disgusting and contemptible anachronism in

history."

J. Morley,

Robespierre

(Critical Miscellanies, Second Series).

ALSO IN

T. Carlyle,

The French Revolution,

volume 3, book 6.

G. H. Lewes,

Life of Robespierre,

chapters 19-20.

L. Gronlund,

Ça ira: or Danton in the French Revolution,

chapter 6.

J. Claretie,

Camille Desmoulins and his Wife,

chapters 5-6.

{1303}

FRANCE: A. D. 1794 (March-July).

Withdrawal of Prussia from the European Coalition as an ally,

to become a mercenary.

Successes of the Republic.

Conquest of the Austrian Netherlands.

Advance to the Rhine.

Loss of Corsica.

Naval defeat off Ushant.

"While the alliance of the Great Powers was on the point of

dissolution from selfishness and jealousy, the French, with an

energy and determination, which, considering their

unparalleled difficulties, were truly heroic, had assembled

armies numbering nearly a million of men. The aggregate of the

allied forces did not much exceed 300,000. The campaign on the

Dutch and Flemish frontiers of France was planned at Vienna,

but had nearly been disconcerted at the outset by the refusal

of the Duke of York to serve under General Clairfait. ... The

Emperor settled the difficulty by signifying his intention to

take the command in person. Thus one incompetent prince who

knew little, was to be commanded by another incompetent prince

who knew nothing, about war; and the success of a great

enterprise was made subservient to considerations of punctilio

and etiquette. The main object of the Austrian plan was to

complete the reduction of the frontier fortresses by the

capture of Landrecy on the Sambre, and then to advance through

the plains of Picardy on Paris;--a plan which might have been

feasible the year before. ... The King of Prussia formally

withdrew from the alliance [March 13]; but condescended to

assume the character of a mercenary. In the spring of the

year, by a treaty with the English Government, his Prussian

Majesty undertook to furnish 62,000 men for a year, in

consideration of the sum of £1,800,000, of which Holland, by a

separate convention, engaged to supply somewhat less than a

fourth part. The organisation of the French army was effected

under the direction of Carnot. ... The policy of terror was

nevertheless applied to the administration of the army.

Custine and Houchard, who had commanded the last campaign, ...

were sent to the scaffold, because the arms of the republic

had failed to achieve a complete triumph under their

direction. ... Pichegru, the officer now selected to lead the

hosts of France, went forth to assume his command with the

knife of the executioner suspended over his head. His orders

were to expel the invaders from the soil and strongholds of

the republic, and to reconquer Belgium. The first step towards

the fulfilment of this commission was the recovery of the

three great frontier towns, Condé, Valenciennes, and Quesnoy.

The siege of Quesnoy was immediately formed; and Pichegru,

informed of or anticipating the plans of the Allies, disposed

a large force in front of Cambray, to intercept the operations

of ... the allied army upon Landrecy. ... On the 17th

[of April] a great action was fought in which the allies

obtained a success, sufficient to enable them to press the

siege of Landrecy. ... Pichegru, a few days after [April 26,

at the redoubts of Troisville] sustained a signal repulse from

the British, in an attempt to raise the siege of Landrecy; but

by a rapid and daring movement, he improved his defeat, and

seized the important post of Moucron. The results were, that

Clairfait was forced to fall back on Tournay; Courtray and

Menin surrendered to the French; and thus the right flanks of

the Allies were exposed. Landrecy, which, about the same time,

fell into the hands of the Allies, was but a poor compensation

for the reverses in West Flanders. The Duke of York, at the

urgent instance of the Emperor, marched to the relief of

Clairfait; but, in the meantime, the Austrian general, being

hard pressed, was compelled to fall back upon a position which

would enable him for a time to cover Bruges, Ghent, and

Ostend. The English had also to sustain a vigorous attack near

Tournay; but the enemy were defeated with the loss of 4,000

men. It now became necessary to risk a general action to save

Flanders, by cutting off that division of the French army

which had outflanked the Allies. By bad management and want of

concert this movement, which had been contrived by Colonel

Mack, the chief military adviser of the Emperor, was wholly

defeated [at Tourcoign, May 18]. ... The French took 1,500

prisoners and 60 pieces of cannon. A thousand English soldiers

lay dead on the field, and the Duke [of York] himself escaped

with difficulty. Four days after, Pichegru having collected a

great force, amounting, it has been stated, to 100,000 men,

made a grand attack upon the allied army [at Pont Achin]. ...

The battle raged from five in the morning until nine at night,

and was at length determined by the bayonet. ... In consequence

of this check, Pichegru fell back upon Lisle." It was after

this repulse that "the French executive, on the flimsy

pretence of a supposed attempt to assassinate Robespierre,

instigated by the British Government, procured a decree from

the Convention, that no English or Hanoverian prisoners should

be made. In reply to this atrocious edict, the Duke of York

issued a general order, enjoining forbearance to the troops

under his command. Most of the French generals ... refused to

become assassins. ... The decree was carried into execution in

a few instances only. ... The Allies gained no military

advantage by the action of Pont Achin on the 22nd of May. ...

The Emperor ... abandoned the army and retired to Vienna. He

left some orders and proclamations behind him, to which nobody

thought it worth while to pay any attention. On the 5th of June,

Pichegru invested Ypres, which Clairfait made two attempts to

retain, but without success. The place surrendered on the

17th; Clairfait retreated to Ghent; Walmoden abandoned Bruges;

and the Duke of York, forced to quit his position at Tournay,

encamped near Oudenarde. It was now determined by the Prince

of Coburg, who resumed the chief command after the departure

of the Emperor, to risk the fate of Belgium on a general

action, which was fought at Fleurus on the 26th of June. The

Austrians, after a desperate struggle, were defeated at all

points by the French army of the Sambre under Jourdan.

Charleroi having surrendered to the French ... and the Duke of

York being forced to retreat, any further attempt to save the

Netherlands was hopeless. Ostend and Mons, Ghent, Tournay, and

Oudenarde, were successively evacuated; and the French were

established at Brussels. When it was too late, the English

army was reinforced. ... It now only remained for the French

to recapture the fortresses on their own frontier which had

been taken from them in the last campaign. ...

{1304}

Landrecy ... fell without a struggle. Quesnoy ... made a

gallant [but vain] resistance. ... Valenciennes and Condé ...

opened their gates. ... The victorious armies of the Republic

were thus prepared for the conquest of Holland. ... The Prince

of Orange made an appeal to the patriotism of his countrymen;

but the republicans preferred the ascendancy of their faction

to the liberties of their country. ... The other military

operation's of the year, in which England was engaged, do not

require prolonged notice. The Corsicans, under the guidance of

their veteran chief, Paoli, ... sought the aid of England to

throw off the French yoke, and offered in return allegiance of

his countrymen to the British Crown. ... A small force was

despatched, and, after a series of petty operations, Corsica

was occupied by British troops, and proclaimed a part of the

British dominions. An expedition on a greater scale was sent

to the West Indies. Martinique, St. Lucie and Guadaloupe were

easily taken; but the large island of St. Domingo, relieved by

a timely arrival of succours from France, offered a formidable

[and successful] resistance. ... The campaign on the Rhine was

undertaken by the Allies under auspices ill calculated to

inspire confidence, or even hope. The King of Prussia, not

content with abandoning the cause, had done everything in his

power to thwart and defeat the operations of the Allies. ...

On the 22d of May, the Austrians crossed the Rhine and

attacked the French in their intrenchments without success. On

the same day, the Prussians defeated a division of the Republican

army [at Kaiserslautern], and advanced their head-quarters to

Deux-Ponts. Content with this achievement, the German armies

remained inactive for several weeks, when the French, having

obtained reinforcements, attacked the whole line of the German

posts. ... Before the end of the year the Allies were in full

retreat, and the Republicans in their turn had become the

invaders of Germany. They occupied the Electorate of Treves,

and they captured the important fort of Mannheim. Mentz also

was placed under a close blockade. ... At sea, England

maintained her ancient reputation. The French had made great

exertions to fit out a fleet, and 26 ships of the line were

assembled in the port of Brest," for the protecting of a

merchant fleet, laden with much needed food-supplies, expected

from America. Lord Howe, with an English fleet of 25 ships of

the line, was on the watch for the Brest fleet when it put to

sea. On the 1st of June he sighted and attacked it off Ushant,

performing the celebrated manœuvre of breaking the enemy's

line. Seven of the French ships were taken, one was sunk

during the battle, and 18, much crippled, escaped. The victory

caused great exultation in England, but it was fruitless, for

the American convoy was brought safely into Brest.

W. Massey,

History of England during the reign of George III.,

chapter 35 (volume 3).

ALSO IN

Sir A. Alison,

History of Europe, 1789-1815,

chapter 16 (volume 4).

F. C. Schlosser,

History of the 18th Century,

volume 6, division 2, chapter 2, section 3.

Capt. A. T. Mahan,

Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution

and Empire, chapter 8 (volume 1).

FRANCE: A. D. 1794 (June-July).

The monstrous Law of the 22d Prairial.

The climax of the Reign of Terror.

A summary of its horrors.

"On the day of the Feast of the Supreme Being, the guillotine

was concealed in the folds of rich hangings. It was the 20th

of Prairial. Two days later Couthon proposed to the Convention

the memorable Law of the 22d Prairial [June 10]. Robespierre

was the draftsman, and the text of it still remains in his own

writing. This monstrous law is simply the complete abrogation

of all law. Of all laws ever passed in the world it is the

most nakedly iniquitous. ... After the probity and good

judgment of the tribunal, the two cardinal guarantees in state

trials are accurate definition, and proof. The offence must be

capable of precise description, and the proof against an

offender must conform to strict rule. The Law of Prairial

violently infringed all three of these essential conditions of

judicial equity. First, the number of the jury who had power

to convict was reduced. Second, treason was made to consist in

such vague and infinitely elastic kinds of action as inspiring

discouragement, misleading opinion, depraving manners,

corrupting patriots, abusing the principles of the Revolution

by perfidious applications. Third, proof was to lie in the

conscience of the jury; there was an end of preliminary

inquiry, of witnesses in defence, and of counsel for the

accused. Any kind of testimony was evidence, whether material

or moral, verbal or written, if it was of a kind 'likely to

gain the assent of a man of reasonable mind.' Now, what was

Robespierre's motive in devising this infernal instrument? ...

To us the answer seems clear. We know what was the general aim

in Robespierre's mind at this point in the history of the

Revolution. His brother Augustin was then the representative

of the Convention with the army of Italy, and General

Bonaparte was on terms of close intimacy with him. Bonaparte

said long afterwards ... that he saw long letters from

Maximilian to Augustin Robespierre, all blaming the

Conventional Commissioners [sent to the provinces]--Tallien,

Fouché, Barras, Collot, and the rest--for the horrors they

perpetrated, and accusing them of ruining the Revolution by

their atrocities. Again, there is abundant testimony that

Robespierre did his best to induce the Committee of Public

Safety to bring those odious malefactors to justice. The text

of the Law ... discloses the same object. The vague phrases of

depraving manners and applying revolutionary principles

perfidiously, were exactly calculated to smite the band of

violent men whose conduct was to Robespierre the scandal of

the Revolution. And there was a curious clause in the law as

originally presented, which deprived the Convention of the

right of preventing measures against its own members.

Robespierre's general design in short was to effect a further

purgation of the Convention. ... If Robespierre's design was

what we believe it to have been, the result was a ghastly

failure. The Committee of Public Safety would not consent to

apply his law against the men for whom he had specially

designed it. The frightful weapon which he had forged was

seized by the Committee of General Security, and Paris was

plunged into the fearful days of the Great Terror. The number

of persons put to death by the Revolutionary Tribunal before

the Law of Prairial had been comparatively moderate. From the

creation of the Tribunal in April 1793, down to the execution

of the Hébertists in March 1794, the number of persons

condemned to death was 505.

{1305}

From the death of the Hébertists down to the death of

Robespierre, the number of the condemned was 2,158. One-half

of the entire number of victims, namely, 1,356, were

guillotined after the Law of Prairial. ... A man was informed

against; he was seized in his bed at five in the morning; at

seven he was taken to the Conciergerie; at nine he received

information of the charge against him; at ten he went into the

dock; by two in the afternoon he was condemned; by four his

head lay in the executioner's basket."

J. Morley,

Robespierre

(Critical Miscellanies: Second Series).

"Single indictments comprehended 20 or 30 people taken

promiscuously--great noblemen from Paris, day labourers from

Marseilles, sailors from Brest, peasants from Alsace--who were

accused of conspiring together to destroy the Republic. All

examination, discussion, and evidence were dispensed with; the

names of the victims were hardly read out to the jury, and it

happened, more than once, that the son was mistaken for the

father--an entirely innocent person for the one really

charged--and sent to the guillotine. The judges urged the jury

to pass sentences of death, with loud threats; members of the

Government committees attended daily, and applauded the bloody

verdicts with ribald jests. On this spot at least the strife

of parties was hushed."

H. von Sybel,

History of the French Revolution,

book 10, chapter 1 (volume 4).

"The first murders committed in 1793 proceeded from a real

irritation caused by danger. Such perils had now ceased; the

republic was victorious; people now slaughtered not from

indignation, but from the atrocious habit which they had

contracted. ... According to the law, the testimony of

witnesses was to be dispensed with only when there existed

material or moral proofs; nevertheless no witnesses were

called, as it was alleged that proofs of this kind existed in

every case. The jurors did not take the trouble to retire to

the consultation room. They gave their opinions before the

audience, and sentence was immediately pronounced. The accused

had scarcely time to rise and to mention their names. One day,

there was a prisoner whose name was not upon the list of the

accused, and who said to the Court, 'I am not accused; my name

is not on your list.' 'What signifies that?' said Fouquier,

'give it quick!' He gave it, and was sent to the scaffold like

the others. ... The most extraordinary blunders were

committed. ... More than once victims were called long after

they had perished. There were hundreds of acts of accusation

quite ready, to which there was nothing to add but the

designation of the individuals. ... The printing-office was

contiguous to the hall of the tribunal: the forms were kept

standing, the title, the motives, were ready composed; there

was nothing but the names to be added. These were handed

through a small loop-hole to the overseer. Thousands of copies

were immediately worked off and plunged families into mourning

and struck terror into the prisons. The hawkers came to sell

the bulletin of the tribunal under the prisoners' windows,

crying, 'Here are the names of those who have gained prizes in

the lottery of St. Guillotine.' The accused were executed on

the breaking up of the court, or at latest on the morrow, if

the day was too far advanced. Ever since the passing of the

Law of the 22d of Prairial, victims perished at the rate of 50

or 60 a day. 'That goes well,' said Fouquier-Tinville; 'heads

fall like tiles:' and he added, 'It must go better still next

decade; I must have 450 at least.'"

A. Thiers,

History of the French Revolution

(American edition), volume 3, pages 63-66.

"One hundred and seventy-eight tribunals, of which 40 are

ambulatory, pronounce in every part of the territory sentences

of death which are immediately executed on the spot. Between

April 6, 1793, and Thermidor 9, year II. [July 27, 1794], that

of Paris has 2,625 persons guillotined, while the provincial

judges do as much work as the Paris judges. In the small town

of Orange alone, they guillotine 331 persons. In the single

town of Arras they have 299 men and 93 women guillotined. At

Nantes, the revolutionary tribunals and military committees

have, on the average, 100 persons a day guillotined, or shot,

in all 1971. In the city of Lyons the revolutionary committee

admit 1684 executions, while Cadillot, one of Robespierre's

correspondents, advises him of 6,000.--The statement of these

murders is not complete, but 17,000 have been enumerated. ...

Even excepting those who had died fighting or who, taken with

arms in their hands, were shot down or sabred on the spot,

there were 10,000 persons slaughtered without trial in the

province of Anjou alone. ... It is estimated that, in the

eleven western departments, the dead of both sexes and of all

ages exceeded 400,000.--Considering the programme and

principles of the Jacobin sect, this is no great number; they

might have killed a good many more. But time was wanting;

during their short reign they did what they could with the

instrument in their hands. Look at their machine. ...

Organised March 30 and April 6,1793, the Revolutionary

Committees and the Revolutionary Tribunal had but seventeen

months in which to do their work. They did not drive ahead

with all their might until after the fall of the Girondists,

and especially after September, 1793, that is to say for a

period of eleven months. Its loose wheels were not screwed up

and the whole was not in running order under the impulse of

the central motor until after December, 1793, that is to say

during eight months. Perfected by the Law of Prairial 22, it

works for the past two months faster and better than before.

... Baudot and Jean Bon St. Andre, Carrier, Antonelle and

Guffroy had already estimated the lives to be taken at several

millions, and, according to Collot d'Herbois, who had a lively

imagination, 'the political perspiration should go on freely,

and not stop until from twelve to fifteen million Frenchmen

had been destroyed.'"

H. A. Taine,

The French Revolution,

book 8, chapter 1 (volume 3).

ALSO IN

W. Smyth,

Lectures on the History of the French Revolution,

Lectures 39-42 (volume 2).

Abbé Dumesnil,

Recollections of the Reign of Terror.

Count Beugnot,

Life,

volume 1, chapters 7-8.

J. Wilson,

The Reign of Terror and its Secret Police

(Studies in Modern Mind, etc.), chapter 7.

The Reign of Terror:

A collection of authentic narratives,

2 volumes.

{1306}

FRANCE: A. D. 1794 (July).

The Fall of Robespierre.

End of the Reign of Terror.

Robespierre "was already feeling himself unequal to the task

laid upon him. He said himself on one occasion: 'I was not

made to rule, I was made to combat the enemies of the

Revolution;' and so the possession of supreme power produced

in him no feeling of exultation. On the contrary, it preyed

upon his spirits, and made him fancy himself the object of

universal hatred. A guard now slept nightly at his house, and

followed him in all his walks. Two pistols lay ever at his

side. He would not eat food till some one else had tasted from

the dish. His jealous fears were awakened by every sign of

popularity in another. Even the successes of his generals

filled him with anxiety, lest they should raise up dangerous

rivals. He had, indeed ... grounds enough for anxiety. In the

Committee of Public Safety every member, except St. Just and

Couthon, viewed him with hatred and suspicion. Carnot resented

his interferences. The Terrorists were contemptuous of his

religious festivals, and disliked his decided supremacy. The

friends of Mercy saw with indignation that the number of

victims was increasing. The friends of Disorder found

themselves restrained, and were bored by his long speeches

about virtue and simplicity of life. He was hated for what was

good and for what was evil in his government; and meanwhile

the national distress was growing, and the cry of starvation

was heard louder than ever. Fortunately there was a splendid

harvest in 1794; but before it was gathered in Robespierre had

fallen. A somewhat frivolous incident did much to discredit

him. A certain old woman named Catherine Théot, living in an

obscure part of Paris, had taken to seeing visions. Some of

the Terrorists produced a paper, purporting to be written by

her, and declaring that Robespierre was the Messiah. The paper

was a forgery, but it served to cover Robespierre with

ridicule, and to rouse in him a fierce determination to

suppress those whom he considered his enemies in the Committee

and the Convention. For some time he had taken little part in

the proceedings of either of these bodies. His reliance was

chiefly on the Jacobin Club, the reorganized Commune, and the

National Guards, still under the command of Henriot. But on

July 26th [8th Thermidor] Robespierre came to the Convention

and delivered one of his most elaborate speeches, maintaining

that the affairs of France had been mismanaged; that the army

had been allowed to become dangerously independent; that the

Government must be strengthened and simplified; and that

traitors must be punished. He made no definite proposals, and

did not name his intended victims. The real meaning of the

speech was evidently that he ought to be made Dictator, but

that in order to obtain his end, it was necessary to conceal

the use he meant to make of his power. The members of the

Convention naturally felt that some of themselves were aimed

at. Few felt themselves safe; but Robespierre's dominance had

become so established that no one ventured at first to

criticize. It was proposed, and carried unanimously, that the

speech should be printed and circulated throughout France.

Then at length a deputy named Cambon rose to answer

Robespierre's attacks on the recent management of the

finances. Finding himself favourably listened to, he went on

to attack Robespierre himself. Other members of the hitherto

docile Convention now took courage; and it was decided that

the speech should be referred to the Committees before it was

printed. The crisis was now at hand. Robespierre went down as

usual to the Jacobin Club, where he was received with the

usual enthusiasm. The members swore to die with their leader,

or to suppress his enemies. On the following day [9th

Thermidor] St. Just attacked Billaud and Collot. Billaud

[followed and supported by Tallien] replied by asserting that

on the previous night the Jacobins had pledged themselves to

massacre the deputies. Then the storm burst. A cry of horror

and indignation arose; and as Billaud proceeded to give

details of the alleged conspiracy, shouts of 'Down with the

tyrant!' began to rise from the benches. Robespierre vainly

strove to obtain a hearing. He rushed about the chamber,

appealing to the several groups. As he went up to the higher

benches on the Left, he was met with the cry, 'Back, tyrant,

the shade of Danton repels you!' and when he sought shelter

among the deputies on the Right, and actually sat down in

their midst, they indignantly exclaimed, 'Wretch, that was

Vergniaud's seat!' Baited on all sides, his attempts to speak

became shrieks, which were scarcely audible, however, amid the

shouts and interruptions that rose from all the groups. His

voice grew hoarser ... till at length it failed him

altogether. Then one of the Mountain cried, 'The blood of

Danton chokes him!' Amid a scene of indescribable excitement

and uproar, a decree was passed that Robespierre and some of

his leading followers should be arrested. They were seized by

the officers of the Convention, and hurried off to different

prisons; so that, in case of a rescue, only one of them might

be released. There was room enough for fear. The Commune

organized an insurrection, as soon as they heard what the

Convention had done; and by a sudden attack the prisoners were

all delivered from the hands of their guards. Both parties now

hastily gathered armed forces. Those of the municipality were

by far the most numerous, and Henriot confidently ordered them

to advance. But the men refused to obey. The Sections mostly

declared for the Convention, and thus by an unexpected

reaction the Robespierian leaders found themselves almost

deserted. A detachment of soldiers forced their way into the

room where the small band of fanatics were drawing up a

Proclamation. A pistol was fired; and no one knows with

certainty whether Robespierre attempted suicide, or was shot

by one of his opponents. At any rate his jaw was fractured,

and he was laid out, a ghastly spectacle, on an adjacent

table. The room was soon crowded. Some spat at the prostrate

form. Others stabbed him with their knives. Soon he was

dragged [along with Couthon, St. Just, Henriot, and others]

before the Tribunal which he himself had instituted. The,

necessary formalities were hurried through, and the mangled

body was borne to the guillotine, where what remained to him

of life was quickly extinguished. Then, from the crowd, a man

stepped quickly up to the blood-stained corpse, and uttered

over him the words, 'Yes, Robespierre, there is a God!'"

J. E. Symes.

The French Revolution,

chapter 13.

{1307}

"Samson's work done, there bursts forth shout on shout of

applause. Shout, which prolongs itself not only over Paris,

but over France, but over Europe, and down to this generation.

Deservedly, and also undeservedly. O unhappiest Advocate of

Arras, wert thou worse than other Advocates? Stricter man,

according to his Formula, to his Credo and his Cant, of

probities, benevolences, pleasures-of-virtue, and suchlike,

lived not in that age. A man fitted, in some luckier settled

age, to have become one of those incorruptible barren

Pattern-Figures, and have had marble-tablets and

funeral-sermons. His poor landlord, the Cabinet-maker in the

Rue Saint-Honorè, loved him; his Brother died for him. May God

be merciful to him and to us! This is the end of the Reign of

Terror; new glorious Revolution named 'of Thermidor'; of

Thermidor 9th, year 2; which being interpreted into old

slave-style means 27th of July, 1794."

T. Carlyle,

The French Revolution,

book 6, chapter 7 (volume 3).

"He [Robespierre] had qualities, it is true, which we must

respect; he was honest, sincere, self-denying and consistent.

But he was cowardly, relentless, pedantic, unloving, intensely

vain and morbidly envious. ... He has not left the legacy to

mankind of one grand thought, nor the example of one generous

and exalted action."

G. H. Lewes,

Life of Robespierre.

Conclusion.

"The ninth of Thermidor is one of the great epochs in the

history of Europe. It is true that the three members of the

Committee of Public Safety [Billaud, Collot, and Barère],

who triumphed were by no means better men than the three

[Robespierre, Couthon, and St. Just], who fell. Indeed, we are

inclined to think that of these six statesmen the least bad

were Robespierre and St. Just, whose cruelty was the effect of

sincere fanaticism operating on narrow understandings and

acrimonious tempers. The worst of the six was, beyond all

doubt, Barère, who had no faith in any part of the system

which he upheld by persecution."

Lord Macaulay,

Barère's Memoirs

(Essays, volume 5).

ALSO IN

G. Everitt,

Guillotine the Great,

chapter 2.

J. W. Croker,

Robespierre (Quarterly Review,

September, 1835, volume 34).

W. Chambers,

Robespierre

(Chambers' Edin. Journal, 1852).

FRANCE: A. D. 1794-1795 (July-April).

Reaction against the Reign of Terror.

The Thermidorians and the Jeunesse Doree.

End of the Jacobin Club.

Insurrection of Germinal 12.

Fall of the Montagnards.

The White Terror in the Provinces.

"On the morning of the 10th of Thermidor all the people who

lived near the prisons of Paris crowded on the roofs of their

houses and cried, 'All is over! Robespierre is dead!' The

thousands of prisoners, who had believed themselves doomed to

death, imagined themselves rescued from the tomb. Many were

set free the same day, and all the rest regained hope and

confidence. Their feeling of deliverance was shared throughout

France. The Reign of Terror had become a sort of nightmare

that stifled the nation, and the Reign of Terror and

Robespierre were identical in the sight of the great majority.

... The Convention presented a strange aspect. Party remnants

were united in the coalition party called the 'Thermidorians.'

Many of the Mountaineers and of those who had been fiercest in

their missions presently took seats with the Right or Centre;

and the periodic change of Committees, so long contested, was

determined upon. Lots were drawn, and Barère, Lindet, and

Prieur went out; Carnot, indispensable in the war, was

re-elected until the coming spring; Billaud and Collot,

feeling out of place in the new order of things, resigned.

Danton's friends now prevailed; but, alas! the Dantonists were

not Danton."

H. Martin,

Popular History of France from the First Revolution,

chapter 22 (volume l).

"The Reign of Terror was practically over, but the

ground-swell which follows a storm continued for some time

longer. Twenty-one victims suffered on the same day with

Robespierre, 70 on the next; altogether 114 were condemned and

executed in the three days which followed his death. ... A

strong reaction against the 'Terreur' now set in. Upwards of

10,000 'suspects' were set free, and Robespierre's law of the

22 Prairial was abolished. Fréron, a leading Thermidorien,

organized a band of young men who called themselves the

Jeunesse Dorée [gilded youth], or Muscadins, and chiefly

frequented the Palais Royal. They wore a ridiculous dress, 'a

la Victime' [large cravat, black or green collar, and crape

around the arm, signifying relationship to some of the victims

of the revolutionary tribunal.--Thiers], and devoted

themselves to punishing the Jacobins. They had their hymn, 'Le

réveil du Peuple.' which they sang about the street, often

coming into collision with the sans-culottes shouting the

Marseillaise. On the 11th of November the Muscadins broke open

the hall of the celebrated club, turned out the members, and

shut it up for ever. ... The committees of Salut Public and

Sureté Générale were entirely remodelled and their powers much

restrained; also the Revolutionary Tribunal was reorganized on

the lines advocated by Camille Desmoulins in his proposal for

a Comité de Clémence--which cost him his life. Carrier and

Lebon suffered death for their atrocious conduct in La Vendée

and [Arras]; 73 members who had protested against the arrest

of the Girondins were recalled, and the survivors of the

leading Girondists, Louvet, Lanjuinais, Isnard,

Larévillière-Lépeaux and others, 22 in number, were restored

to their seats in the Convention."

Sergent Marceau,

Reminiscences of a Regicide,

part 2, chapter 12.

"Billaud, Collot, and other marked Terrorists, already

denounced in the Convention by Danton's friends, felt that

danger was every day drawing nearer to themselves. Their fate

was to all appearance sealed by the readmission to the

Convention (December 8) of the 73 deputies of the right,

imprisoned in 1793 for signing protests against the expulsion

of the Girondists. By the return of these deputies the

complexion of the Assembly was entirely altered. ... They now

sought to undo the work of the Convention since the

insurrection by which their party had been overwhelmed. They

demanded that confiscated property should be restored to the

relatives of persons condemned by the revolutionary courts;

that emigrants who had fled in consequence of Terrorist

persecutions should be allowed to return; that those deputies

proscribed on June 2,1793, who yet survived, should be

recalled to their seats. The Mountain, as a body, violently

opposed even the discussion of such questions. The

Thermidorians split into two divisions. Some in alarm rejoined

the Mountain; while others, headed by Tallien and Fréron,

sought their safety by coalescing with the returned members of

the right. A committee was appointed to report on accusations

brought against Collot, Billaud, Barère, and Vadier (December

27, 1794). In a few weeks the survivors of the proscribed

deputies entered the Convention amidst applause (March 8,

1795). ... There was at this time great misery prevalent in

Paris, and imminent peril of insurrection.

{1308}

After Robespierre's fall, maximum prices were no longer

observed, and assignats were only accepted in payment of goods

at their real value compared with coin. The result was a rapid

rise in prices, so that in December prices were double what

they had been in July, and were continuing to rise in

proportion as assignats decreased in value. ... The maximum

laws, already a dead letter, were repealed (December 24). The

abolition of maximum prices and requisitions increased the

already lavish expenditure of the Government, which, to meet

the deficit in its revenues, had no resource but to create

more assignats, and the faster these were issued the faster

they fell in value and the higher prices rose. In July 1794,

they had been worth 34 per cent. of their nominal value. In

December they were worth 22 per cent., and in May 1795 they

were worth only 7 per cent. ... At this time a pound of bread

cost eight shillings, of rice thirteen, of sugar seventeen,

and other articles were all proportionately dear. It is

literally true that more than half the population of Paris was

only kept alive by occasional distributions of meat and other

articles at low prices, and the daily distribution of bread at

three half-pence a pound. In February, however, this source of

relief threatened to fail. ... On April 1, or Germinal 12,

bread riots, begun by women, broke out in every section. Bands

collected and forced their way into the Convention, shouting

for bread, but offering no violence to the deputies. ... The

crowd was already dispersing when forces arrived from the

sections and cleared the House. The insurrection was a

spontaneous rising for bread, without method or combination.

The Terrorists had sought, but vainly, to obtain direction of

it. Had they succeeded, the Mountain would have had an

opportunity of proscribing the right. Their failure gave the

right the opportunity of proscribing the left. The

transportation to Cayenne of Billaud, Collot, Barère, and

Vadier was decreed, and the arrest of fifteen other

Montagnards, accused without proof, in several cases without

probability, of having been accomplices of the insurgents. ...

The insurrection of Germinal 12 gave increased strength to the

party of reaction. The Convention, in dread of the Terrorists,

was compelled to look to it for support. ... In the

departments famine, disorder, and crime prevailed, as well as

in Paris. ... From the first the reaction proceeded in the

departments with a more rapid step and in bolder form than in

Paris. ... In the departments of the south-east, where the

Royalists had always possessed a strong following, emigrants

of all descriptions readily made their way back; and here the

opponents of the Republic, instigated by a desire for

vengeance, or merely by party spirit, commenced a reaction

stained by crimes as atrocious as any committed during the

course of the revolution. Young men belonging to the upper and

middle classes were organised in bands bearing the names of

companies of Jesus and companies of the Sun, and first at

Lyons, then at Aix, Toulon, Marseilles, and other towns, they

broke into the prisons and murdered their inmates without

distinction of age or sex. Besides the Terrorist and the

Jacobin, neither the Republican nor the purchaser of State

lands was safe from their knives; and in the country numerous

isolated murders were committed. This lawless and brutal

movement, called the White Terror in distinction to the Red

Terror preceding Thermidor 9, was suffered for weeks to run

its course unchecked, and counted its victims by many

hundreds, spreading over the whole of Provence, besides the

departments of Rhone, Gard, Loire, Ain, and Jura."

B. M. Gardiner,

The French Revolution,

chapter 10.

ALSO IN

A. Thiers,

History of the French Revolution (American edition),

volume 3, pages 109-136; 149-175; 193-225.

H. von Sybel,

History of the French Revolution,

book 12, chapters 1-3.

J. Mallet du Pan,

Memoirs and Correspondence,

volume 2, chapters 5.

A. des Echerolles,

Early Life,

volume 2, chapter 8.

FRANCE: A. D. 1794-1795 (October-May).

Subjugation of Holland.

Overthrow of the Stadtholdership.

Establishment of the Batavian Republic.

Peace of Basle with Prussia.

Successes on the Spanish and Italian frontiers.

Crumbling of the Coalition.

"Pichegru having taken Bois le Duc, October 9th, the Duke of

York retreated to the Ar, and thence beyond the Waal. Venloo

fell October 27th, Maestricht November 4th, and the capture of

Nimeguen on the 9th, which the English abandoned after the

fall of Maestricht, opened to the French the road into

Holland. The Duke of York resigned the command to General

Walmoden, December 2nd, and returned into England. His

departure showed that the English government had abandoned all

hope of saving Holland. It had, indeed, consented that the

States-General should propose terms of accommodation to the

French; and two Dutch envoys had been despatched to Paris to

offer to the Committee of Public Welfare the recognition by

their government of the French Republic, and the payment of

200,000,000 florins within a year. But the Committee,

suspecting that these offers were made only with the view of

gaining time, paid no attention to them. The French were

repulsed in their first attempt to cross the Waal by General

Duncan with 8,000 English; but a severe frost enabled them to

pass over on the ice, January 11th, 1795. Nothing but a

victory could now save Holland. But Walmoden, instead of

concentrating his troops for the purpose of giving battle,

retreated over the Yssel, and finally over the Ems into

Westphalia, whence the troops were carried to England by sea

from Bremen. ... General Alvinzi, who held the Rhine between

Emmerich and Arnheim, having retired upon Wesel, Pichegru had

only to advance. On entering Holland, he called upon the

patriots to rise, and his occupation of the Dutch towns was

immediately followed by a revolution. The Prince of Orange,

the hereditary Stadtholder, embarked for England, January

19th, on which day Pichegru's advanced columns entered

Amsterdam. Next day the Dutch fleet, frozen up in the Texel,

was captured by the French hussars. Before the end of January

the reduction of Holland had been completed, and a provincial

[provisional?] government established at the Hague. The

States-General, assembled February 24th, 1795, having

received, through French influence, a new infusion of the

patriot party, pronounced the abolition of the Stadtholderate,

proclaimed the sovereignty of the people and the establishment

of the Batavian Republic. A treaty of Peace with France

followed, May 16th, and an-offensive alliance against all

enemies whatsoever till the end of the war, and against

England for ever.

{1309}

The sea and land forces to be provided by the Dutch were to

serve under French commanders. Thus the new republic became a

mere dependency of France. Dutch Flanders, the district on the

left bank of the Hondt, Maestricht, Venloo, were retained by

the French as a just indemnity for the expenses of the war, on

which account the Dutch were also to pay 100,000,000 florins;

but they were to receive, at the general peace, an equivalent

for the ceded territories. By secret articles, the Dutch were

to lend the French seven ships of war, to support a French

army of 25,000 men, &c. Over and above the requisitions of the

treaty, they were also called upon to reclothe the French

troops, and to furnish them with provisions. In short, though

the Dutch patriots had 'fraternised' with the French, and

received them with open arms, they were treated little better

than a conquered people. Secret negotiations had been for some

time going on between France and Prussia for a peace. ...

Frederick William II., ... satisfied with his acquisitions in

Poland, to which the English and Dutch subsidies had helped

him, ... abandoned himself to his voluptuous habits," and made

overtures to the French. "Perhaps not the least influential

among Frederick William's motives, was the refusal of the

maritime Powers any longer to subsidise him for doing nothing.

... The Peace of Basle, between the French Republic and the

King of Prussia, was signed April 5th 1795. The French troops

were allowed to continue the occupation of the Rhenish

provinces on the left bank. An article, that neither party

should permit troops of the enemies of either to pass over its

territories, was calculated to embarrass the Austrians. France

agreed to accept the mediation of Prussia for princes of the

Empire. ... Prussia should engage in no hostile enterprise

against Holland, or any other country occupied by French

troops; while the French agreed not to push their enterprises

in Germany beyond a certain line of demarcation, including the

Circles of Westphalia, Higher and Lower Saxony; Franconia, and

that part of the two Circles of the Rhine situate on the right

bank of the Main. ... Thus the King of Prussia, originally the

most ardent promoter of the Coalition, was one of the first to

desert it. By signing the Peace of Basle, he sacrificed

Holland, facilitated the invasion of the Empire by the French,

and thus prepared the ruin of the ancient German

constitution." In the meantime the French had been pushing war

with success on their Spanish frontier, recovering the ground

which they had lost in the early part of 1794. In the eastern

Pyrenees, Dugommier "retook Bellegarde in September, the last

position held by the Spaniards in France, and by the battle of

the Montagne Noire, which lasted from November 17th to the

20th, opened the way into Catalonia. But at the beginning of

this battle Dugommier was killed. Figuières surrendered

November 24th, through the influence of the French democratic

propaganda. On the west, Moncey captured St. Sebastian and

Fuentarabia in August, and was preparing to attack Pampeluna,

when terrible storms ... compelled him to retreat on the

Bidassoa, and closed the campaign in that quarter. On the side

of Piedmont, the French, after some reverses, succeeded in

making themselves masters of Mont Cenis and the passes of the

Maritime Alps, thus holding the keys of Italy; but the

Government, content with this success, ventured not at present

to undertake the invasion of that country." The King of

Sardinia, Victor Amadeus, remained faithful to his engagements

with Austria, although the French tempted him with an offer of

the Milanese, "and the exchange of the island of Sardinia for

territory more conveniently situated. With the Grand Duke of

Tuscany they were more successful. ... On February 9th 1795, a

treaty was signed by which the Grand Duke revoked his adhesion

to the Coalition. ... Thus Ferdinand was the first to desert

the Emperor, his brother. The example of Tuscany was followed

by the Regent of Sweden."

T. H. Dyer,

History of Modern Europe,

book 7, chapter 7 (volume 4).

ALSO IN

C. M. Davies,

History of Holland,

part 4, chapter 3 (volume 3).

L. P. Segur,

History of the Reign of Frederick William II. of Prussia,

volume 3.

FRANCE: A. D. 1794-1796.

Brigandage in La Vendée.

Chouannerie in Brittany.

The Disastrous Quiberon expedition.

End of the Vendean War.

"Since the defeat at Savenay, the Vendée was no longer the

scene of grand operations, but of brigandage and atrocities

without result. The peasants, though detesting the Revolution,

were anxious for peace; but, as there were still two chiefs,

Charette and Stoffiet, in the field, who hated each other,

this wish could scarcely be gratified. General Thurieu, sent

by the former Revolutionary Committee, had but increased this

detestation by allowing pillage and incendiarism. After the

death of Robespierre he was replaced by General Clancaux, who

had orders to employ more conciliatory measures. The defeat of

the rebel troops at Savenay, and their subsequent dispersion,

had led to a kind of guerilla warfare throughout the whole of

Brittany, known by the name of Chouannerie. ['A poor peasant,

named Jean Cottereau, had distinguished himself in this

movement above all his companions, and his family bore the

name of Chouans (Chat-huans) or night-owls. ... The name of

Chouan passed from him to all the insurgents of Bretagne,

although he himself never led more than a few hundred

peasants, who obeyed him, as they said, out of friendship.']

H. Von Sybel,

History of the French Revolution,

volume 4, page 238.

The Chouans attacked the public conveyances, infested the high

roads, murdered isolated bands of soldiers and functionaries.

Their chiefs were Scepeaux, Bourmont, Cadoudal, but especially

Puisaye ... formerly general of the Girondins, and who wanted

to raise a more formidable insurrection than had hitherto been

organised. Against them was sent Hoche [September, 1794], who

accustomed his soldiers to pacify rather than destroy, and

taught them to respect the habits, but above all the religion,

of the inhabitants. After some difficult negotiations with

Charette peace was concluded (15th February), but the

suppression of the Chouans was more difficult still, and Hoche

... displayed in this ungrateful mission all the talents and

humanity for which he was ever celebrated. Puisaye himself was

in England, having obtained Pitt's promise of a fleet and an

army, but his aide-de-camp concluded in his absence a treaty

similar to that of Charette. ... Stoffiet surrendered the

last.

{1310}

Not much dependence could be placed on either of these

pacifications, Charette himself having confessed in a letter

to the Count de Provence that they were but a trap for the

Republicans; but they proved useful, nevertheless, by

accustoming the country to peace." This deceptive state of

peace came to an end early in the summer of 1795. "The

conspiracy organised in London by Puisaye, assisted and

subsidised by Pitt, ... fitted out a fleet, which harassed the

French naval squadron, and then set sail for Brittany, where

the expedition made itself master of the peninsula of Quiberon

and the fort Penthièvre (27th June). The Brittany peasants,

suspicious of the Vendeans and hating the English, did not

respond to the call for revolt, and occasioned a loss of time

to the invaders, of which Hoche took advantage to bring

together his troops and to march on Quiberon, where he

defeated the vanguard of the émigrés, and surrounded them in

the peninsula. Puisaye [who had, it is said, about 10,000 men,

émigrés and Chouans] attempted to crush Hoche by an attack in

the rear, but was eventually out-manœuvred, Fort Penthièvre

was scaled during the night, and the émigrés were routed;

whilst the English squadron was caught in a hurricane and

could not come to their assistance, save with one ship, which

fired indiscriminately on friend and foe alike. Most of the

Royalists rushed into the sea, where nearly all of them

perished. Scarcely a thousand men remained, and these fought

heroically. It is said that a promise was given to them that

if they surrendered their lives should be spared, and,

accordingly, 711 laid down their arms (21st July). By order of

the Convention ... these 711 émigrés were shot. ... From his

camp at Belleville, Charette, one of the insurgent generals,

responded to this execution by the massacre of 2,000

Republican prisoners." In the following October another

expedition of Royalists, fitted out in England under the

auspices of Pitt, "landed at the Ile Dieu ... a small island

about eight miles from the mainland of Poitou, and was

composed of 2,500 men, who were destined to be the nucleus of

several regiments; it also had on board a large store of arms,

ammunition, and the Count d'Artois. Charette, named general

commander of the Catholic forces, was awaiting him with 10,000

men. The whole of the Vendée was ready to rise the moment the

prince touched French soil, but frivolous and undecided, he

waited six weeks in idleness, endeavouring to obtain from

England his recall. Hoche, to whom the command of the

Republican forces had been entrusted, took advantage of this

delay to cut off Charette from his communications, while he

held Stoffiet and the rest of the Brittany chiefs in check,

and occupied the coast with 30,000 men. The Count d'Artois,

whom Pitt would not recall, entreated the English commander to

set sail for England (December 17th, 1795), and the latter,

unable to manage his fleet on a coast without shelter,

complied with his request, leaving the prince on his arrival

to the deserved contempt of even his own partisans. Charette

in despair attempted another rising, hoping to be seconded by

Stofflet, but he was beaten on all sides by Hoche. This

general, who combined the astuteness of the statesman with the

valour of the soldier, succeeded in a short time in pacifying

the country by his generous but firm behaviour towards the

inhabitants. Charette, tracked from shelter to shelter, was

finally compelled to surrender, brought to Nantes, and shot

(March 24th). The same lot had befallen Stofflet a month

before at Angers. After these events Hoche led his troops into

Brittany, where he succeeded in putting an end to the

'Chouannerie.' The west returned to its normal condition."

H. Van Laun,

The French Revolutionary Epoch,

book 2, chapter 2, and book 3, chapter 1 (volume 1).

ALSO IN:

A. Thiers,

History of the French Revolution

(American edition), volume 3, pages 144-145; 188-193;

230-240; 281-305; 343-345; 358-363; 384-389.

FRANCE: A. D. 1795 (April).

The question of the Constitution.

Insurrection of the 1st Prairial and its failure.

Disarming of the Faubourgs.

End of Sansculottism.

Bourgeoisie dominant again.

"The events of the 12th of Germinal decided nothing. The

faubourgs had been repulsed, but not conquered. ... After so

many questions decided against the democratists, there still

remained one of the utmost importance--the constitution. On

this depended the ascendancy of the multitude or of the

bourgeoisie. The supporters of the revolutionary government

then fell back on the democratic constitution of '93, which

presented to them the means of resuming the authority they had

lost. Their opponents, on the other hand, endeavoured to

replace it by a constitution which would secure all the

advantage to them, by concentrating the government a little

more, and giving it to the middle class. For a month, both

parties were preparing for this last contest. The constitution

of 1793, having been sanctioned by the people, enjoyed a great

prestige. It was accordingly attacked with infinite

precaution. At first its assailants engaged to carry it into

execution without restriction; next they appointed a

commission of eleven members to prepare the 'lois organiques'

which were to render it practicable; by and by, they ventured

to suggest objections to it on the ground that it distributed

power too loosely, and only recognised one assembly dependent

on the people, even in its measures of legislation. At last, a

sectionary deputation went so far as to term the constitution

of '93 a decemviral constitution, dictated by terror. All its

partisans, at once indignant and filled with fears, organized

an insurrection to maintain it. ... The conspirators, warned

by the failure of the risings of the 1st and 12th Germinal,

omitted nothing to make up for their want of direct object and

of organization. On the 1st Prairial (20th of May) in the name

of the people, insurgent for the purpose of obtaining bread

and their rights, they decreed the abolition of the

revolutionary government, the establishment of the democratic

constitution of '93, the dismissal and arrest of the members

of the existing government, the liberation of the patriots,

the convocation of the primary assemblies on the 25th

Prairial, the convocation of the legislative assembly,

destined to replace the convention, on the 25th Messidor, and

the suspension of all authority not emanating from the people.

They determined on forming a new municipality, to serve as a

common centre; to seize on the barriers, telegraph, cannon,

tocsins, drums, and not to rest till they had secured repose,

happiness, liberty, and means of subsistence for all the

French nation. They invited the artillery, gendarmes, horse

and foot soldiers, to join the banners of the people, and

marched on the convention. Meantime, the latter was

deliberating on the means of preventing the insurrection. ...

{1311}

The committees came in all haste to apprise it of its danger;

it immediately declared its sitting permanent, voted Paris

responsible for the safety of the representatives of the

republic, closed its doors, outlawed all the leaders of the

mob, summoned the citizens of the sections to arms, and

appointed as their leaders eight commissioners, among whom

were Legendre, Henri la Riviere, Kervelegan, &c. These

deputies had scarcely gone, when a loud noise was heard

without. An outer door had been forced, and numbers of women

rushed into the galleries, crying 'Bread and the constitution

of '93!' ... The galleries were ... cleared; but the

insurgents of the faubourgs soon reached the inner doors, and,

finding them closed, forced them with hatchets and hammers,

and then rushed in amidst the convention. The Hall now became

a field of battle. The veterans and gendarmes, to whom the

guard of the assembly was confided, cried 'To arms!' The

deputy Auguis, sword in hand, headed them, and succeeded in

repelling the assailants, and even made a few of them

prisoners. But the insurgents, more numerous, returned to the

charge, and again rushed into the house. The deputy Feraud

entered precipitately, pursued by the insurgents, who fired

some shots in the house. They took aim at Boissy d'Anglas, who

was occupying the president's chair. ... Feraud ran to the

tribune, to shield him with his body; he was struck at with

pikes and sabres, and fell dangerously wounded. The insurgents

dragged him into the lobby, and, mistaking him for Freron, cut

off his head and placed it on a pike. After this skirmish they

became masters of the Hall. Most of the deputies had taken

flight. There only remained the members of the Crête [the

'Crest'--a name now given to the remnant of the party of 'The

Mountain'] and Boissy d'Anglas, who, calm, his hat on,

heedless of threat and insult, protested in the name of the

convention against this popular violence. They held out to him

the bleeding head of Feraud; he bowed respectfully before it.

They tried to force him, by placing pikes at his breast, to

put the propositions of the insurgents to the vote; he

steadily and courageously refused. But the Crêtois, who

approved of the insurrection, took possession of the bureaux

and of the tribune, and decreed, amidst the applause of the

multitude, all the articles contained in the manifesto of the

insurrection." Meantime "the commissioners despatched to the

sections had quickly gathered them together. ... The aspect of

affairs then underwent a change; Legendre, Kervelagan, and

Auguis besieged the insurgents, in their turn, at the head of

the sectionaries," and drove them at last from the hall of the

convention. "The assembly again became complete; the sections

received a vote of thanks, and the deliberations were resumed.

All the measures adopted in the interim were annulled, and

fourteen representatives, to whom were afterwards joined

fourteen others, were arrested, for organizing the

insurrection or approving it in their speeches. It was then

midnight; at five in the morning the prisoners were already

six leagues from Paris. Despite this defeat, the Faubourgs did

not consider themselves beaten; and the next day they advanced

en masse with their cannon against the convention. The

sections, on their side, marched for its defence." But a

collision was averted by negotiations, and the insurgents

withdrew, "after having received an assurance that the

Convention would assiduously attend to the question of

provisions, and would soon publish the organic laws of the

constitution of '93. ... Six democratic Mountaineers, Goujon,

Bourbotte, Romme, Duroy, Duquesnoy, and Soubrany were brought

before a military commission ... and ... condemned to death.

They all stabbed themselves with the same knife, which was

transferred from one to the other, exclaiming, 'Vive la

République!' Romme, Goujon, and Duquesnoy were fortunate

enough to wound themselves fatally; the other three were

conducted to the scaffold in a dying state, but faced death

with serene countenances. Meantime, the Faubourgs, though

repelled on the 1st, and diverted from their object on the 2nd

of Prairial, still had the means of rising," and the

convention ordered them to be disarmed. "They were encompassed

by all the interior sections. After attempting to resist, they

yielded, giving up some of their leaders, their arms, and

artillery. ... The inferior class was entirely excluded from

the government of the state; the revolutionary committees

which formed its assemblies were destroyed; the cannoneers

forming its armed force were disarmed; the constitution of

'93, which was its code, was abolished; and here the rule of

the multitude terminated. ... From that period, the middle

class resumed the management of the revolution without, and

the assembly was as united under the Girondists as it had

been, after the 2nd of June, under the Mountaineers."

F. A. Mignet,

History of the French Revolution,

chapter 10.

ALSO IN:

Duchesse d'Abrantes,

Memoirs,

chapters 12-14 (volume l).

T. Carlyle,

The French Revolution,

volume 3, book 7, chapters 4-6.

G. Long,

France and its Revolutions,

chapter 53.

FRANCE: A. D. 1795 (June-September).

Framing and adoption of the Constitution of the Year III.

Self-renewing decrees of the Convention.

Hostility in Paris to them.

Intrigues of the Royalists.

"The royalist party, beaten on the frontiers, and deserted by

the court of Spain, on which it placed most reliance, was now

obliged to confine itself to intrigues in the interior; and it

must be confessed that, at this moment, Paris offered a wide

field for such intrigues. The work of the constitution was

advancing; the time when the Convention was to resign its

powers, when France should meet to elect fresh

representatives, when a new Assembly should succeed that which

had so long reigned, was more favourable than any other for

counter-revolutionary manœuvres. The most vehement passions

were in agitation in the sections of Paris. The members of

them were not royalists, but they served the cause of royalty

without being aware of it. They had made a point of opposing

the Terrorists; they had animated themselves by the conflict;

they wished to persecute also; and they were exasperated

against the Convention, which would not permit this

persecution to be carried too far. They were always ready to

remember that Terror had sprung from its bosom; they demanded

of it a constitution and laws, and the end of the long

dictatorship which it had exercised. ... Behind this mass the

royalists concealed themselves. ... The constitution had been

presented by the commission of eleven. It was discussed during

the three months of Messidor, Thermidor, and Fructidor

[June-August], and was successively decreed with very little

alteration."

{1312}

The principal features of the constitution so framed, known as

the Constitution of the Year III., were the following: "A

Council, called 'The Council of the Five Hundred,' composed of

500 members, of, at least, thirty years of age, having

exclusively the right of proposing laws, one-third to be

renewed every year. A Council called 'The Council of the

Ancients,' composed of 250 members, of, at least, forty years

of age, all either widowers or married, having the sanction of

the laws, to be renewed also by one-third. An executive

Directory, composed of five members, deciding by a majority,

to be renewed annually by one-fifth, having responsible

ministers. ... The mode of nominating these powers was the

following: All the citizens of the age of twenty-one met of

right in primary assembly on every first day of the month of

Prairial, and nominated electoral assemblies. These electoral

assemblies met every 20th of Prairial, and nominated the two

Councils; and the two Councils nominated the Directory. ...

The judicial authority was committed to elective judges. ...

There were to be no communal assemblies, but municipal and

departmental administrations, composed of three, five, or more

members, according to the population: they were to be formed

by way of election. ... The press was entirely free. The

emigrants were banished for ever from the territory of the

republic; the national domains were irrevocably secured to the

purchasers; all religions were declared free, but were neither

acknowledged nor paid by the state. ... One important question

was started. The Constituent Assembly, from a parade of

disinterestedness, had excluded itself from the new

legislative body [the Legislative Assembly of 1791]; would the

Convention do the same?" The members of the Convention decided

this question in the negative, and "decreed, on the 5th of

Fructidor (August 22d), that the new legislative body should

be composed of two-thirds of the Convention, and that one new

third only should be elected. The question to be decided was,

whether the Convention should itself designate the two-thirds

to be retained, or whether it should leave that duty to the

electoral assemblies. After a tremendous dispute, it was

agreed on the 13th of Fructidor (August 30), that this choice

should be left to the electoral assemblies. It was decided

that the primary assemblies should meet on the 20th of

Fructidor (September 6th), to accept the constitution and the

two decrees of the 5th and the 13th of Fructidor. It was

likewise decided that, after giving their votes upon the

constitution and the decrees, the primary assemblies should

again meet and proceed forthwith, that is to say, in the year

III. (1795), to the elections for the 1st of Prairial in the

following year." The right of voting upon the constitution was

extended, by another decree, to the armies in the field. "No

sooner were these resolutions adopted, than the enemies of the

Convention, so numerous and so diverse, were deeply mortified

by them. ... The Convention, they said, was determined to

cling to power; ... it wished to retain by force a majority

composed of men who had covered France with scaffolds. ... All

the sections of Paris, excepting that of the Quinze-Vingts,

accepted the Constitution and rejected the decrees. The result

was not the same in the rest of France. ... On the 1st of

Vendémiaire, year IV. (September 23, 1795), the general result

of the votes was proclaimed. The constitution was accepted

almost unanimously, and the decrees by an immense majority of

the voters." The Convention now decreed that the new

legislative body should be elected in October and meet

November 6.

A. Thiers,

History of the French Revolution

(American edition), volume 3, pages 305-315.

ALSO IN:

H. Von Sybel,

History of the French Revolution,

book 12, chapter 4 (volume 4).

H. C. Lockwood,

Constitutional History of France,

chapter 1, and appendix 3.

J. Mallet du Pan,

Memoirs and Correspondence,

volume 2, chapter 8.

FRANCE: A. D. 1795 (June-December).

Death of the late King's son (Louis XVII.)

Treaty of Basle with Spain.

Acquisition of Spanish San Domingo.

Ineffectual campaign on the Rhine.

Victory at Loano.

"The Committees had formed great plans for the campaign of

1795; meaning to invade the territories of the allies, take

Mayence, and enter Southern Germany, go down into Italy, and

reach the very heart of Spain. But Carnot, Lindet, and Prieur

were no longer on the Committee, and their successors were not

their equals; army discipline was relaxed; a vulgar

reactionist had replaced Carnot in the war department and was

working ruin. ... The attack in Spain was to begin with the

Lower Pyrenees, by the capture of Pampeluna and a march upon

Castile, but famine and fever decimated the army of the

Western Pyrenees, and General Moncey was forced to postpone

all serious action till the summer. At the other end of the

Pyrenees, the French and Spaniards were fighting aimlessly at

the entry to Catalonia. The war was at a standstill; but the

negotiations went on between the two countries. The king of

Spain, as in honor bound, made the liberation of his young

kinsman, the son of Louis XVI., a condition of peace. This the

Republic would not grant, but the prisoner's death (June 8,

1795) removed the obstacle. The counter-revolutionists accused

the Committees of poisoning the child styled by the royalist

party Louis XVII. This charge was false; the poor little

prisoner died of scrofula, developed by inaction, ennui, and

the sufferings of a pitiless imprisonment, increased by the

cruel treatment of his jailers, a cobbler named Simon and his

wife. A rumor was also spread that the child was not dead, but

had been taken away and an impostor substituted, who had died.

Only one of the royal family now remained in the Temple, Louis

XVI.'s daughter, afterwards the Duchesse d'Angoulême. Spain

interceded for her, and she was exchanged. ... Peace with

Spain was also hastened by French successes beyond the

Pyrenees; General Marceau, being reinforced, took Vittoria and

Bilboa, and pushed on to the Ebro. On the 22d of July,

Barthelémi, the able French diplomatist, signed a treaty of

peace with Spain at Basle, restoring her Biscayan and

Catalonian provinces, and accepting Spanish mediation in favor

of the king of Naples, Duke of Parma, king of Portugal, and

'the other Italian powers,' including, though not mentioning,

the Pope; and Spain yielded her share of San Domingo, which

put a brighter face on French affairs in America. ...

Guadeloupe, Santa Lucia, and St. Eustache were restored to the

French. ... Spain soon made overtures for an alliance with

France, wishing to put down the English desire to rule the

seas; and, before the new treaty was signed, the army of the

Eastern Pyrenees was sent to reinforce the armies of the Alps

and Italy, who had only held their positions in the Apennines

and on the Ligurian coast against the Austrians and

Piedmontese by sheer force of will; but in the autumn of 1795

the face of affairs was changed.

{1313}

Now that Prussia had left the coalition, war on the Rhine went

on between France and Austria, sustained by the South German

States; France had to complete her mastery of the left bank by

taking Mayence and Luxembourg; and Austria's aim was to

dispute them with her. The French government charged Marceau

to besiege Mayence during the winter of 1794-95, but did not

furnish him the necessary resources, and, France not holding

the right bank, Kléber could only partially invest the town,

and both his soldiers and those blockading Luxembourg suffered

greatly from cold and privation. Early in March, 1795,

Pichegru was put in command of the armies of the Rhine and

Moselle, and Jourdan was ordered to support him on the left

(the Lower Rhine) with the army of Sambre-et-Meuse. Austria

took no advantage of the feeble state of the French troops,

and Luxembourg, one of the strongest posts in Europe,

receiving no help, surrendered (June 24) with 800 cannon and

huge store of provisions. The French now had the upper hand,

Pichegru and Jourdan commanding 160,000 men on the Rhine. One

of these men was upright and brave, but the other had treason

in his soul; though everybody admired Pichegru, 'the conqueror

of Holland.' ... In August, 1795, an agent of the Prince of

Condé, who was then at Brisgau, in the Black Forest, with his

corps of emigrants, offered Pichegru, who was in Alsace, the

title of Marshal of France and Governor of Alsace, the royal

castle of Chambord, a million down, an annuity of 200,000

livres, and a house in Paris, in the 'king's' name, thus

flattering at once his vanity and his greed. ... He was

checked by no scruples; utterly devoid of moral sense, he

hoped to gain his army by money and wine, and had no

discussion with the Prince of Condé save as to the manner of

his treason." In the end, Pichegru was not able to make his

treason as effective as he had bargained to do; but he

succeeded in spoiling the campaign of 1795 on the Rhine.

Jourdan crossed the river and took Dusseldorf, with 168

cannon, on the 6th of September, expecting a simultaneous

movement on the part of Pichegru, to occupy the enemy in the

latter's front. But Pichegru, though he took Mannheim, on the

18th of September, threw a corps of 10,000 men into the hands

of the Austrians, by placing it where it could be easily

overwhelmed, and permitted his opponent, Wurmser, to send

reinforcements to Clairfait, who forced Jourdan, in October,

to retreat across the Rhine. "Pichegru's perfidy had thwarted

a campaign which must have been decisive, and Jourdan's

retreat was followed by the enemy's offensive return to the

left bank [retaking Mannheim and raising the siege of

Mayence], and by reverses which would have been fatal had they

coincided with the outburst of royalist and reactionary plots

and insurrections in the West, and in Paris itself; but they

had luckily been stifled some time since, and as the

Convention concluded its career, the direction of the war

returned to the hands which guided it so well in 1793 and

1794."

H. Martin,

Popular History of France from the First Revolution,

chapter 24 (volume 1).

"The peace with Spain ... enabled the government to detach the

whole Pyrenean army to the support of General Scherer, who had

succeeded Kellermann in the command of the army of Italy. On

the 23d of November, the French attacked the Austrians in

their position at Loano, and, after a conflict of two days,

the enemy's centre was forced by Massena and Augereau, and the

Imperialists fled with the loss of 7,000 men, 80 guns, and all

their stores. But the season was too far advanced to prosecute

this success, and the victors took up winter quarters on the

ground they had occupied. ... The capture of the Cape of Good

Hope (September 16) by the British under Sir James Craig, was

the only other important event of this year."

Epitome of Alison's History of Europe,

sections 154 and 157

(chapter 18 of the complete work).

ALSO IN:

A. Griffiths,

French Revolutionary Generals,

chapter 13.

E. Baines,

History of the Wars of the French Revolution,

book. 1, chapters 19-20 (volume l).

A. de Beauchesne,

Louis XVII.: His Life, his Sufferings, his Death.

FRANCE: A. D. 1795 (October-December).

The Insurrection of the 13th Vendemiare, put down by

Napoleon Bonaparte.

Dissolution of the National Convention.

Organization of the government of the Directory.

Licentiousness of the time.

"The Parisians ... proclaimed their hostility to the

Convention and its designs. The National Guard, consisting of

armed citizens, almost unanimously sided with the enemies of

the Convention; and it was openly proposed to march to the

Tuilleries, and compel a change of measures by force of arms.

The Convention perceiving their unpopularity and danger, began

to look about them anxiously for the means of defence. There

were in and near Paris 5,000 regular troops, on whom they

thought they might rely, and who of course contemned the

National Guard as only half soldiers. They had besides some

hundreds of artillery men; and they now organised what they

called 'the Sacred Band,' a body of 1,500 ruffians, the most

part of them old and tried instruments of Robespierre. With

these means they prepared to arrange a plan of defence; and it

was obvious that they did not want materials, provided they

could find a skilful and determined head. The insurgent

sections placed themselves under the command of Danican, an

old general of no great skill or reputation. The Convention

opposed to him Menou; and he marched at the head of a column

into the section Le Pelletier to disarm the National Guard of

that district--one of the wealthiest of the capital. The

National Guard were found drawn up in readiness to receive him

at the end of the Rue Vivienne; and Menou, becoming alarmed,

and hampered by the presence of some of the' Representatives

of the People,' entered into a parley, and retired without

having struck a blow. The Convention judged that Menou was not

master of nerves for such a crisis; and consulted eagerly

about a successor to his command. Barras, one of their number,

had happened to be present at Toulon and to have appreciated

the character of Buonaparte. He had, probably, been applied to

by Napoleon in his recent pursuit of employment. Deliberating

with Tallien and Carnot, his colleagues, he suddenly said, 'I

have the man whom you want; it is a little Corsican officer,

who will not stand upon ceremony.' These words decided the

fate of Napoleon and of France. Buonaparte had been in the

Odeon Theatre when the affair of Le Pelletier occurred, had

run out, and witnessed the result. He now happened to be in

the gallery, and heard the discussion concerning the conduct

of Menou.

{1314}

He was presently sent for, and asked his opinion as to that

officer's retreat. He explained what had happened, and how the

evil might have been avoided, in a manner which gave

satisfaction. He was desired to assume the command, and

arranged his plan of defence as well as the circumstances

might permit; for it was already late at night, and the

decisive assault on the Tuilleries was expected to take place

next morning. Buonaparte stated that the failure of the march

of Menou had been chiefly owing to the presence of the

'Representatives of the People,' and refused to accept the

command unless he received it free from all such interference.

They yielded: Barras was named commander-in-chief; and

Buonaparte second, with the virtual control. His first care

was to despatch Murat, then a major of chasseurs, to Sablons,

five miles off, where fifty great guns were posted. The

Sectionaries sent a stronger detachment for these cannon

immediately afterwards; and Murat, who passed them in the

dark, would have gone in vain had he received his orders but a

few minutes later. On the 4th of October (called in the

revolutionary almanac the 13th Vendemiaire) the affray

accordingly occurred. Thirty thousand National Guards advanced

about two P. M., by different streets, to the siege of the

palace: but its defence was now in far other hands than those

of Louis XVI. Buonaparte, having planted artillery on all the

bridges, had effectually secured the command of the river, and

the safety of the Tuilleries on one side. He had placed cannon

also at all the crossings of the streets by which the National

Guard could advance towards the other front; and having posted

his battalions in the garden of the Tuilleries and Place du

Carousel, he awaited the attack. The insurgents had no cannon;

and they came along the narrow streets of Paris in close and

heavy columns. When one party reached the church of St. Roche,

in the Rue St. Honoré, they found a body of Buonaparte's

troops drawn up there, with two cannons. It is disputed on

which side the firing began; but in an instant the artillery

swept the streets and lanes, scattering grape-shot among the

National Guards, and producing such confusion that they were

compelled to give way. The first shot was a signal for all the

batteries which Buonaparte had established; the quays of the

Seine, opposite to the Tuilleries, were commanded by his guns

below the palace and on the bridges. In less than an hour the

action was over. The insurgents fled in all directions,

leaving the streets covered with dead and wounded; the troops

of the Convention marched into the various sections, disarmed

the terrified inhabitants, and before nightfall everything was

quiet. This eminent service secured the triumph of the

Conventionalists. ... Within five days from the Day of the

Sections Buonaparte was named second in command of the army of

the interior; and shortly afterwards, Barras finding his

duties as Director sufficient to occupy his time, gave up the

command-in-chief of the same army to his 'little Corsican

officer.'"

J. G. Lockhart,

Life of Napoleon Buonaparte,

chapter 3.

The victory of the 13th Vendemiaire "enabled the Convention

immediately to devote its attention to the formation of the

Councils proposed by it, two-thirds of which were to consist

of its own members. The first third, which was freely elected,

had already been nominated by the Reactionary party. The

members of the Directory were chosen, and the deputies of the

Convention, believing that for their own interests the

regicides should be at the head of the Government, nominated

La Réveillère-Lepeaux, Sièyes, Rewbel, Le Tourneur, and

Barras. Sièyes refused to act, and Carnot was elected in his

place. Immediately after this, the Convention declared its

session at an end, after it had had three years of existence,

from the 21st September, 1792, to the 28th October, 1795 (4th

Brumaire, Year IV.). ... The Directors were all, with the

exception of Carnot, of moderate capacity, and concurred in

rendering their own position the more difficult. At this

period there was no element of order or good government in the

Republic; anarchy and uneasiness everywhere prevailed, famine

had become chronic, the troops were without clothes,

provisions or horses; the Convention had spent an immense

capital represented by assignats, and had sold almost half of

the Republican territory, belonging to the proscribed classes

...; the excessive degree of discredit to which paper money

had fallen, after the issue of thirty-eight thousand millions,

had destroyed all confidence and all legitimate commerce. ...

Such was the general poverty, that when the Directors entered

the palace which had been assigned to them as a dwelling, they

found no furniture there, and were compelled to borrow of the

porter a few straw chairs and a wooden table, on the latter of

which they drew up the decree by which they were appointed to

office. Their first care was to establish their power, and

they succeeded in doing this by frankly following at first the

rules laid down by the Constitution. In a short time industry

and commerce began to raise their heads, the supply of

provisions became tolerably abundant, and the clubs were

abandoned for the workshops and the fields. The Directory

exerted itself to revive agriculture, industry, and the arts,

re-established the public exhibitions, and founded primary,

central, and normal schools. ... This period was distinguished

by a great licentiousness in manners. The wealthy classes, who

had been so long forced into retirement by the Reign of

Terror, now gave themselves up to the pursuit of pleasure

without stint, and indulged in a course of unbridled luxury,

which was outwardly displayed in balls, festivities, rich

costumes and sumptuous equipages. Barras, who was a man of

pleasure, favoured this dangerous sign of the reaction, and

his palace soon became the rendezvous of the most frivolous

and corrupt society. In spite of this, however, the wealthy

classes were still the victims, under the government of the

Directory, of violent and spoliative measures."

E. de Bonnechose,

History of France,

volume 2. pages 270-273.

{1315}

FRANCE: A. D. 1796 (April-October).

Triple attack on Austria.

Bonaparte's first campaign in Italy.

Submission of Sardinia.

Armistice with Naples and the Pope.

Pillage of art treasures.

Hostile designs upon Venice.

Expulsion of the Austrians from Lombardy.

Failure of the campaign beyond the Rhine.

"With the opening of the year 1796 the leading interest of

European history passes to a new scene. ... The Directory was

now able ... to throw its whole force into the struggle with

Austria. By the advice of Bonaparte a threefold movement was

undertaken against Vienna, by way of Lombardy, by the valley

of the Danube, and by the valley of the Main. General Jourdan,

in command of the army that had conquered the Netherlands, was

ordered to enter Germany by Frankfort; Moreau, a Breton

law-student in 1792, now one of the most skilful soldiers in

Europe, crossed the Rhine at Strasburg; Bonaparte himself,

drawing his scanty supplies along the coast-road from Nice,

faced the allied forces of Austria and Sardinia upon the

slopes of the Maritime Apennines, forty miles to the west of

Genoa. ... Bonaparte entered Italy proclaiming himself the

restorer of Italian freedom, but with the deliberate purpose

of using Italy as a means of recruiting the exhausted treasury

of France. His correspondence with the Directory exposes with

brazen frankness this well·considered system of plunder and

deceit, in which the general and the Government were cordially

at one. ... The campaign of 1796 commenced in April, in the

mountains above the coast-road connecting Nice and Genoa. ...

Bonaparte ... for four days ... reiterated his attacks at

Montenotte and at Millesimo, until he had forced his own army

into a position in the centre of the Allies [Austrians and

Piedmontese]; then, leaving a small force to watch the

Austrians, he threw the mass of his troops upon the

Piedmontese, and drove them back to within thirty miles of

Turin. The terror-stricken Government, anticipating an

outbreak in the capital itself, accepted an armistice from

Bonaparte at Cherasco (April 28). ... The armistice, which was

soon followed by a treaty of peace between France and

Sardinia, ceding Savoy to the Republic, left him free to

follow the Austrians, untroubled by the existence of some of

the strongest fortresses of Europe behind him. In the

negotiations with Sardinia, Bonaparte demanded the surrender

of the town of Valenza, as necessary to secure his passage

over the river Po. Having thus artfully led the Austrian

Beaulieu to concentrate his forces at this point, he suddenly

moved eastward along the southern bank of the river, and

crossed at Piacenza, 50 miles below the spot where Beaulieu

was awaiting him. ... The Austrian general, taken in the rear,

had no alternative but to abandon Milan and all the country

west of it, and to fall back upon the line of the Adda.

Bonaparte followed, and on the 10th of May attacked the

Austrians at Lodi. He himself stormed the bridge of Lodi at

the head of his Grenadiers. The battle was so disastrous to

the Austrians that they could risk no second engagement, and

retired upon Mantua and the line of the Mincio. Bonaparte now

made his triumphal entry into Milan (May 15). ... In return

for the gift of liberty, the Milanese were invited to offer to

their deliverers 20,000,000 francs, and a selection from the

paintings in their churches and galleries. The Dukes of Parma

and Modena, in return for an armistice, were required to hand

over forty of their best pictures, and a sum of money

proportioned to their revenues. The Dukes and the townspeople

paid their contributions with a good grace: the peasantry of

Lombardy, whose cattle were seized in order to supply an army

that marched without any stores of its own, rose in arms, and

threw themselves into Pavia, after killing all the French

soldiers who fell in their way. The revolt was instantly

suppressed, and the town of Pavia given up to pillage. ...

Instead of crossing the Apennines, Bonaparte advanced against

the Austrian positions upon the Mincio. ... A battle was

fought and lost by the Austrians at Borghetto. ... Beaulieu's

strength was exhausted; he could meet the enemy no more in the

field, and led his army out of Italy into the Tyrol, leaving

Mantua to be invested by the French. The first care of the

conqueror was to make Venice pay for the crime of possessing

territory intervening between the eastern and western extremes

of the Austrian district. Bonaparte affected to believe that

the Venetians had permitted Beaulieu to occupy Peschiera

before he seized upon Brescia himself. ... 'I have purposely

devised this rupture,' he wrote to the Directory (June 7th),

'in case you should wish to obtain five or six millions of

francs from Venice. If you have more decided intentions, I

think it would be well to keep up the quarrel.' The intention

referred to was the disgraceful project of sacrificing Venice

to Austria in return for the cession of the Netherlands. ...

The Austrians were fairly driven out of Lombardy, and

Bonaparte was now free to deal with Southern Italy. He

advanced into the States of the Church, and expelled the Papal

Legate from Bologna. Ferdinand of Naples ... asked for a

suspension of hostilities against his own kingdom ... and

Bonaparte granted the king an armistice on easy terms. The

Pope, in order to gain a few months' truce, had to permit the

occupation of Ferrara, Ravenna, and Ancona, and to recognise

the necessities, the learning, the taste, and the virtue of

his conquerors by a gift of 20,000,000 francs, 500

manuscripts, 100 pictures, and the busts of Marcus and Lucius

Brutus. ... Tuscany had indeed made peace with the French

Republic a year before, but ... while Bonaparte paid a

respectful visit to the Grand Duke at Florence, Murat

descended upon Leghorn, and seized upon everything that was

not removed before his approach. Once established in Leghorn,

the French declined to quit it. Mantua was meanwhile invested,

and thither Bonaparte returned. Towards the end of July an

Austrian relieving army, nearly double the strength of

Bonaparte's, descended from the Tyrol. It was divided into

three corps: one, under Quasdanovich, advanced by the road on

the west of Lake Garda; the others, under Wurmser, the

commander-in-chief, by the roads between the lake and the

river Adige. ... Bonaparte ... instantly broke up the siege of

Mantua, and withdrew from every position east of the river. On

the 30th July, Quasdanovich was attacked and checked at

Lonato. ... Wurmser, unaware of his colleague's repulse,

entered Mantua in triumph, and then set out, expecting to

envelop Bonaparte between two fires. But the French were ready

for his approach. Wurmser was stopped and defeated at

Castiglione (Aug. 3), while the western Austrian divisions

were still held in check at Lonato. ... In five days the skill

of Bonaparte and the unsparing exertions of his soldiery had

more than retrieved all that appeared to have been lost. The

Austrians retired into the Tyrol, leaving 15,000 prisoners in

the hands of the enemy. Bonaparte now prepared to force his

way into Germany by the Adige, in fulfilment of the original

plan of the campaign. In the first days of September he again

routed the Austrians, and gained possession of Roveredo and

Trent.

{1316}

Wurmser hereupon attempted to shut the French up in the

mountains by a movement southwards; but, while he operated

with insufficient forces between the Brenta and the Adige,

with a view of cutting Bonaparte off from Italy, he was

himself [defeated at Bassano, September 8, and] cut off from

Germany, and only escaped capture by throwing himself into

Mantua with the shattered remnant of his army. The road into

Germany through the Tyrol now lay open; but in the midst of

his victories Bonaparte learnt that the northern armies of

Moreau and Jourdan, with which he had intended to co-operate

in an attack upon Vienna, were in full retreat. Moreau's

advance into the valley of the Danube had, during the months

of July and August, been attended with unbroken military and

political success. The Archduke Charles, who was entrusted

with the defence of the Empire," fell back before Moreau, in

order to unite his forces with those of Wartensleben, who

commanded an army which confronted Jourdan. "The design of the

Archduke succeeded in the end, but it opened Germany to the

French for six weeks, and revealed how worthless was the

military constitution of the Empire, and how little the

Germans had to expect from one another. ... At length the

retreating movement of the Austrians stopped [and the Archduke

fought an indecisive battle with Moreau at Neresheim, August

11]. Leaving 30,000 men on the Lech to disguise his motions

from Moreau, Charles turned suddenly northwards from Neuberg

on the 17th August, met Wartensleben at Amberg, and attacked

Jourdan ... with greatly superior numbers. Jourdan was

defeated [September 3, at Würtzburg] and driven back in

confusion towards the Rhine. The issue of the campaign was

decided before Moreau heard of his colleague's danger. It only

remained for him to save his own army by a skilful retreat,"

in the course of which he defeated the Austrian general Latour

at Biberach, October 2, and fought two indecisive battles with

the Archduke, at Emmendingen, October 19, and at Huningen on

the 24th.

C. A. Fyffe,

History of Modern Europe,

volume 1, chapter 3.

ALSO IN:

A. Griffiths,

French Revolutionary Generals,

chapters 14-15.

General Jomini,

Life of Napoleon,

volume 1, chapter 2.

E. Baines,

History of the Wars of the French Revolution,

book 1, chapter 22 (volume 1).

C. Adams,

Great Campaigns, 1796-1870,

chapter 1.

FRANCE: A. D. 1796 (September).

Evacuation of Corsica by the English.

Its reoccupation by the French.

"Corsica, which had been delivered to the English by Paoli,

and occupied by them as a fourth kingdom annexed to the crown

of the King of Great Britain, had just been evacuated by its

new masters. They had never succeeded in subduing the interior

of the island, frequent insurrections had kept them in

continual alarm, and free communication between the various

towns could only be effected by sea. The victories of the

French army in Italy, under the command of one of their

countrymen, had redoubled this internal ferment in Corsica,

and the English had decided on entirely abandoning their

conquest. In September 1796 they withdrew their troops, and

also removed from Corsica their chief partisans, such as

General Paoli, Pozzo di Borgo, Beraldi and others, who sought

an asylum in England. On the first intelligence of the English

preparations for evacuating the island, Buonaparte despatched

General Gentili thither at the head of two or three hundred

banished Corsicans, and with this little band Gentili took

possession of the principal strongholds. ... On the 5th

Frimaire, year V. (November 25, 1796), I received a decree of

the Executive Directory ... appointing me

Commissioner-Extraordinary of the Government in Corsica, and

ordering me to proceed thither at once."

Count Miot de Melito,

Memoirs,

chapter 4.

FRANCE: A. D. 1796 (October).

Failure of peace negotiations with England.

Treaties with Naples and Genoa.

"It was France itself, more even than Italy, which was

succumbing under the victories in Italy, and was falling

rapidly under the military despotism of Bonaparte; while what

had begun as a mere war of defence was already becoming a war

of aggression against everybody. ... The more patriotic

members of the legislative bodies were opposed to what they

considered only a war of personal ambitions, and were desirous

of peace, and a considerable peace party was forming

throughout the country. The opportunity was taken by the

English government for making proposals for peace, and a

pass-port was obtained from the directory for lord Malmesbury,

who was sent to Paris as the English plenipotentiary. Lord

Malmesbury arrived in Paris on the 2nd of Brumaire (the 23rd

of October, 1796), and next day had his first interview with

the French minister Delacroix, who was chosen by the directory

to act as their representative. There was from the first an

evident want of cordiality and sincerity on the part of the

French government in this negotiation; and the demands they

made, and the political views entertained by them, were so

unreasonable, that, after it had dragged on slowly for about a

month, it ended without a result. The directory were secretly

making great preparations for the invasion of Ireland, and

they had hopes of making a separate and very advantageous

peace with Austria. Bonaparte had, during this time, become

uneasy on account of his position in Italy," and "urged the

directory to enter into negotiations with the different

Italian states in his rear, such as Naples, Rome, and Genoa,

and to form an offensive and defensive alliance with the king

of Sardinia, so that he might be able to raise reinforcements

in Italy. For this purpose he asked for authority to proclaim

the independence of Lombardy and of the states of Modena; so

that, by forming both into republics, he might create a

powerful French party, through which he might obtain both men

and provisions. The directory was not unwilling to second the

wishes of Bonaparte, and on the 19th of Vendemiaire (the 10th

of October) a peace was signed with Naples, which was followed

by a treaty with Genoa. This latter state paid two millions of

francs as an indemnity for the acts of hostility formerly

committed against France, and added two millions more as a

loan." The negotiation for an offensive alliance with Sardinia

failed, because the king demanded Lombardy.

T. Wright,

History of France,

volume 2, page 758.

ALSO IN:

W. E. H. Lecky,

History of England in the 18th Century,

chapter 27 (volume 7).

E. Burke,

Letters on a Regicide Peace.

{1317}

FRANCE: A. D. 1796-1797 (October-April).

Bonaparte's continued victories in Italy.

His advance into Carinthia and the Tyrol.

Peace preliminaries of Leoben.

"The failure of the French invasion of Germany ... enabled the

Austrians to make a fresh effort for the relief of [Würmser]

in Mantua. 40,000 men under Alvinzi and 18,000 under

Davidowich entered Italy from the Tyrol and marched by

different routes towards Verona. Bonaparte had employed the

recent interlude in consolidating French influence in Italy.

Against the wishes of the Directors he dethroned the duke of

Modena, and formed his territories into the Cispadane

Republic. Then he tried to induce Piedmont and Venice to join

France, but both states preferred to retain their neutral

position. This was another of the charges which the general

was preparing against Venice. On the news of the Austrian

advance, Bonaparte marched against Alvinzi, and checked him at

Carmignano (6 November). But meanwhile Davidowich had taken

Trent and was approaching Rivoli. Bonaparte, in danger of

being surrounded, was compelled to give way, and retreated to

Verona, while Alvinzi followed him. Never was the French

position more critical, and nothing but a very bold move could

save them. With reckless courage Bonaparte attacked Alvinzi at

Arcola, and after three days' hard fighting [November 15-17,

on the dykes and causeways of a marshy region] won a complete

victory. He then forced Davidowich to retreat to the Tyrol.

The danger was averted, and the blockade of Mantua was

continued. But Austria, as if its resources were

inexhaustible, determined on a fourth effort in January, 1797.

Alvinzi was again entrusted with the command, while another

detachment under Provera advanced from Friuli. Bonaparte

collected all his forces, marched against Alvinzi, and crushed

him at Rivoli (15 January). But meanwhile Provera had reached

Mantua, where Bonaparte, by a forced march, overtook him, and

won another complete victory in the battle of La Favorita. The

fate of Mantua was at last decided, and the city surrendered

on the 2nd of February. With a generosity worthy of the glory

which he had obtained, Bonaparte allowed Würmser and the

garrison to march out with the honours of war. He now turned

to Romagna, occupied Bologna and terrified the Pope into

signing the treaty of Tolentino. The temporal power was

allowed to exist, but within very curtailed limits. Not only

Avignon, but the whole of Romagna, with Ancona, was

surrendered to France. Even these terms, harsh as they were,

were not so severe as the Directors had wished. But Bonaparte

was beginning to play his own game; he saw that Catholicism

was regaining ground in France, and he wished to make friends

on what might prove after all the winning side. Affairs in

Italy were now fairly settled: two republics, the Cisalpine in

Lombardy, and the Cispadane, which included Modena, Ferrara,

and Bologna, had been created to secure French influence in

Italy. ... The French had occupied the Venetian territory from

Bergamo to Verona, and had established close relations with

those classes who were dissatisfied with their exclusion from

political power. When the republic armed against the danger of

a revolt, Bonaparte treated it as another ground for that

quarrel which he artfully fomented for his own purposes. But

at present he had other objects more immediately pressing than

the oppression of Venice. Jourdan's army on the Rhine had been

entrusted to Hoche, whose ambition had long chafed at the want

of an opportunity, and who was burning to acquire glory by

retrieving the disasters of the last campaign. Bonaparte, on

the other hand, was eager to anticipate a possible rival, and

determined to hurry on his own invasion of Austria, in order

to keep the war and the negotiations in his own hands. The

task of meeting him was entrusted to the archduke Charles, who

had won such a brilliant reputation in 1796, but who was

placed at a great disadvantage to his opponent by having to

obey instructions from Vienna. The French carried all before

them, Joubert occupied Tyrol, Masséna forced the route to

Carinthia, and Bonaparte himself, after defeating the archduke

on the Tagliamento, occupied Trieste and Carniola. The French

now marched over the Alps, driving the Austrians before them.

At Leoben, which they reached on 7th April, they were less

than eighty miles from Vienna. Here Austrian envoys arrived to

open negotiations. They consented to surrender Belgium,

Lombardy, and the Rhine frontier, but they demanded

compensation in Bavaria. This demand Bonaparte refused, but

offered to compensate Austria at the expense of a neutral

state, Venice. The preliminaries of Leoben, signed on the 18th

April, gave to Austria, Istria, Dalmatia, and the Venetian

provinces between the Oglio, the Po, and the Adriatic. At this

moment, Hoche and Moreau, after overcoming the obstacles

interposed by a sluggish government, were crossing the Rhine

to bring their armies to bear against Austria. They had

already gained several successes when the unwelcome news

reached them from Leoben, and they had to retreat. Bonaparte

may have failed to extort the most extreme terms from Austria,

but he had at any rate kept both power and fame to himself."

R. Lodge,

English of Modern Europe,

chapter 23.

ALSO IN:

F. Lanfrey,

History of Napoleon I.,

volume 1, chapters 5-7.

Memoirs of Napoleon dictated at St. Helena,

volume 4, chapters 1-4.

FRANCE: A. D. 1796-1797 (December-January):

Hoche's expedition to Ireland.

See IRELAND: A. D. 1791-1798.

FRANCE: A. D. 1797 (February-October).

British naval victories of Cape St. Vincent and Camperdown.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1797.

FRANCE: A. D. 1797 (April-May).

The overthrow of Venice by Bonaparte.

When Napoleon, in March, entered upon his campaign against the

Archduke Charles, "the animosity existing between France and

Venice had ... attained a height that threatened an open

rupture between the two republics, and was, therefore, of some

advantage to Austria. The Signoria saw plainly what its fate

would be should the French prove victorious; but though they

had 12,000 or 15,000 Slavonian troops ready at hand, and

mostly assembled in the capital, they never ventured to use

them till the moment for acting was past. On the Terra Firma,

the citizens of Brescia and Bergamo had openly renounced the

authority of St. Mark, and espoused the cause of France; the

country people, on the other hand, were bitterly hostile to

the new Republicans. Oppressed by requisitions, plundered and

insulted by the troops, the peasants had slain straggling and

marauding French soldiers; the comrades of the sufferers had

retaliated, and an open revolt was more than once expected.

General Battaglia, the Venetian providatore, remonstrated

against the open violence practised on the subjects of Venice;

Buonaparte replied by accusing the government of partiality

for Austria, and went so far as to employ General Andrieux to

instigate the people to rise against the senate. The

Directory, however, desired him to pause, and not to 'drive

the Venetians to extremity, till the opportunity, should have

arrived for carrying into effect the future projects

entertained against that state.'

{1318}

Both parties were watching their time, but the craven watches

in vain, for he is struck down long before his time to strike

arrives." A month later, when Napoleon was believed to be

involved in difficulties in Carinthia and the Tyrol, Venice

"had thrown off the mask of neutrality; the tocsin had sounded

through the communes of the Terra Firma, and a body of troops

had joined the insurgents in the attack on the citadel of

Verona. Not only were the French assailed wherever they were

found in arms, but the very sick were inhumanly slain in the

hospitals by the infuriated peasantry; the principal massacre

took place at Verona on Easter Monday [April 17], and cast a

deep stain on the Venetian cause and character." But even

while these sinister events were in progress, Bonaparte had

made peace with the humiliated Austrians, and had signed the

preliminary treaty of Leoben, which promised to give Venice to

them in exchange for the Netherlands. And now, with all his

forces set free, he was prepared to crush the venerable

Republic, and make it subservient to his ambitious schemes. He

"refused to hear of any accommodation: and, unfortunately, the

base massacre of Verona blackened the Venetian cause so much

as almost to gloss over the unprincipled violence of their

adversaries. 'If you could offer me the treasures of Peru,'

said Napoleon to the terrified deputies who came to sue for

pardon and offer reparation, 'if you could cover your whole

dominions with gold, the atonement would be insufficient.

French blood has been treacherously shed, and the Lion of St.

Mark must bite the dust.' On the 3d of May he declared war

against the republic, and French troops immediately advanced

to the shores of the lagunes. Here, however, the waves of the

Adriatic arrested their progress, for they had not a single

boat at command, whereas the Venetians had a good fleet in the

harbour, and an army of 10,000 or 15,000 soldiers in the

capital: they only wanted the courage to use them. Instead of

fighting, however, they deliberated; and tried to purchase

safety by gold, instead of maintaining it by arms. Finding the

enemy relentless, the Great Council proposed to modify their

government,--to render it more democratic, in order to please

the French commander,--to lay their very institutions at the

feet of the conqueror; and, strange to say, only 21 patricians

out of 690 dissented from this act of national degradation.

The democratic party, supported by the intrigues of Vittelan,

the French secretary of legation, exerted themselves to the

utmost. The Slavonian troops were disbanded, or embarked for

Dalmatia; the fleet was dismantled, and the Senate were

rapidly divesting themselves of every privilege, when, on the

31st of May, a popular tumult broke out in the capital. The

Great Council were in deliberation when shots were fired

beneath the windows of the ducal palace. The trembling

senators thought that the rising was directed against them,

and that their lives were in danger, and hastened to divest

themselves of every remnant of power and authority at the very

moment when the populace were taking arms in their favour.

'Long live St. Mark, and down with foreign dominion!' was the

cry of the insurgents, but nothing could communicate one spark

of gallant fire to the Venetian aristocracy. In the midst of

the general confusion, while the adverse parties were firing

on each other, and the disbanded Slavonians threatening to

plunder the city, these unhappy legislators could only

delegate their power to a hastily assembled provisional

government, and then separate in shame and for ever. The

democratic government commenced their career in a manner as

dishonourable as that of the aristocracy had been closed."

They "immediately despatched the flotilla to bring over the

French troops. A brigade under Baraguai d'Hilliers soon landed

[May 15] at the place of St. Mark; and Venice, which had

braved the thunders of the Vatican, the power of the emperors,

and the arms of the Othmans, ... now sunk for ever, and

without striking one manly blow or firing one single shot for

honour and fame! Venice counted 1300 years of independence,

centuries of power and renown, and many also of greatness and

glory, but ended in a manner more dishonourable than any state

of which history makes mention. The French went through the

form of acknowledging the new democratic government, but

retained the power in their own hands. Heavy contributions

were levied, all the naval and military stores were taken

possession of, and the fleet, having conveyed French troops to

the Ionian islands, was sent to Toulon."

T. Mitchell,

Principal Campaigns in the Rise of Napoleon,

chapter 6 (Fraser's Magazine, April, 1846).

ALSO IN:

E. Flagg,

Venice: The City of the Sea,

part 1, chapters 1-4 (volume 1).

Memoirs of Napoleon dictated at St. Helena,

volume 4, chapter 5.

FRANCE: A. D. 1797 (May-October).

Napoleon's political work in Italy.

Creation of the Ligurian and Cisalpine Republics.

Dismemberment of the Graubunden.

The Peace of Campo-Formio.

Venice given over to Austria, and Lombardy and the Netherlands

taken away.

"The revolution in Venice was soon followed by another in

Genoa, also organised by the plots of the French minister

there, Faypoult. The Genoese had in general shown themselves

favourable to France; but there existed among the nobles an

anti-French party; the Senate, like that of Venice, was too

aristocratic to suit Bonaparte's or the Directory's notions;

and it was considered that Genoa, under a democratic

constitution, would be more subservient to French interests.

An insurrection, prepared by Faypoult, of some 700 or 800 of

the lowest class of Genoese, aided by Frenchmen and Lombards,

broke out on May 22nd, but was put down by the great mass of

the real Genoese people. Bonaparte, however, was determined to

effect his object. He directed a force of 12,000 men on Genoa,

and despatched Lavalette with a letter to the Doge. ...

Bonaparte's threats were attended by the same magical effects

at Genoa as had followed them at Venice. The Senate

immediately despatched three nobles to treat with him, and on

June 6th was concluded the Treaty of Montebello. The

Government of Genoa recognised by this treaty the sovereignty

of the people, confided the legislative power to two Councils,

one of 300, the other of 500 members, the executive power to a

Senate of twelve, presided over by the Doge. Meanwhile a

provisional government was to be established. By a secret

article a contribution of four millions, disguised under the

name of a loan, was imposed upon Genoa.

{1319}

Her obedience was recompensed with a considerable augmentation

of territory, and the incorporation of the districts known as

the 'imperial fiefs.' Such was the origin of the Ligurian

Republic. Austrian Lombardy, after its conquest, had also been

formed into the 'Lombard Republic'; but the Directory had not

recognised it, awaiting a final settlement of Italy through a

peace with Austria. Bonaparte, after taking possession of the

Duchy of Modena and the Legations, had, at first, thought of

erecting them into an independent state under the name of the

'Cispadane Republic'; but he afterwards changed his mind and

united these states with Lombardy under the title of the

Cisalpine Republic. He declared, in the name of the Directory,

the independence of this new republic, June 29th 1797;

reserving, however, the right of nominating, for the first

time, the members of the Government and of the legislative

body. The districts of the Valteline, Chiavenna, and Bormio,

subject to the Grison League, in which discontent and

disturbance had been excited by French agents, were united in

October to the new state; whose constitution was modelled on

that of the French Republic. Bonaparte was commissioned by the

Directory to negociate a definitive peace with Austria, and

conferences were opened for that purpose at Montebello,

Bonaparte's residence near Milan. The negociations were

chiefly managed by himself, and on the part of Austria by the

Marquis di Gallo, the Neapolitan ambassador at Vienna, and

Count Meerfeld. ... The negociations were protracted six

months, partly through Bonaparte's engagements in arranging

the affairs of the new Italian republics, but more especially

by divisions and feuds in the French Directory." The Peace of

Campo Formio was concluded October 17. "It derived this name

from its having been signed in a ruined castle situated in a

small village of that name near Udine; a place selected on

grounds of etiquette in preference to the residence of either

of the negociators. By this treaty the Emperor ceded the

Austrian Netherlands to France; abandoned to the Cisalpine

Republic, which he recognised, Bergamo, Brescia, Crema,

Peschiera, the town and fortress of Mantua with their

territories, and all that part of the former Venetian

possessions to the south and west of a line which, commencing

in the Tyrol, traversed the Lago di Garda, the left bank of

the Adige, but including Porto Legnago on the right bank, and

thence along the left bank of the Po to its mouth. France was

to possess the Ionian Islands, and all the Venetian

settlements in Albania below the Gulf of Lodrino; the French

Republic agreeing on its side that the Emperor should have

Istria, Dalmatia, the Venetian isles in the Adriatic, the

mouths of the Cattaro, the city of Venice, the Lagoons, and

all the former Venetian terra firma to the line before

described. The Emperor ceded the Breisgau to the Duke of

Modena, to be held on the same conditions as he had held the

Modenese. A congress composed of the plenipotentiaries of the

German Federation was to assemble immediately, to treat of a

peace between France and the Empire. To this patent treaty was

added another secret one, by the principal article of which

the Emperor consented that France should have the frontier of

the Rhine, except the Prussian possessions, and stipulated

that the Imperial troops should enter Venice on the same day

that the French entered Mentz. He also promised to use his

influence to obtain the accession of the Empire to this

arrangement; and if that body withheld its consent, to give it

no more assistance than his contingent. The navigation of the

Rhine to be declared free. If, at the peace with the Empire,

the French Republic should make any acquisitions in Germany,

the Emperor was to obtain an equivalent there, and vice versa.

The Dutch Stadtholder to have a territorial indemnity. To the

King of Prussia were to be restored his possessions on the

left bank of the Rhine, and he was consequently to have no new

acquisitions in Germany. Princes and States of the Empire,

damnified by this treaty, to obtain a suitable indemnity. ...

By the Treaty of Campo Formio was terminated not only the

Italian campaign, but also the first continental war of the

Revolution. The establishment of Bonaparte's prestige and

power by the former was a result still more momentous in its

consequences for Europe than the fall of Venice and the

revolutionising of Northern Italy."

T. H. Dyer,

History of Modern Europe,

book 7, chapter 8 (volume 4).

ALSO IN:

A. Thiers,

History of the French Revolution

(American edition), volume 4, pages 214-225.

Sir W. Scott,

Life of Napoleon Buonaparte,

chapter 28.

Memoirs of Napoleon dictated at St. Helena,

chapters 6-8.

FRANCE: A. D. 1797 (September).

Conflict of the Directory and the two Councils.

The Revolutionary Coup d'État of the 18th of Fructidor.

Suppression of the Royalists and Moderates.

Practical overthrow of the Constitution.

"The inevitable dissension between the executive power and the

electoral power had already displayed itself at the conclusion

of the elections of the Year V. The elections were made for

the most part under the influence of the reactionary party,

which, whilst it refrained from conspiring for the overthrow

of the new Constitution, saw with terror that the executive

power was in the hands of men who had taken part in the

excesses and crimes of the Convention. Pichegru, whose

intrigues with the princes of the House of Bourbon were not

yet known, was enthusiastically made President of the Council

of Five Hundred, and Barbé-Marbois was made President of the

Ancients. Le Tourneur having become, by lot, the retiring

member of the Directory, Barthélemy, an upright and moderate

man, was chosen in his place. He, as well as his colleague,

Carnot, were opposed to violent measures; but they only formed

in the Directorate a minority which was powerless against the

Triumvirs Barras, Rewbel, and La Réveillère, who soon entered

upon a struggle with the two Councils. ... There were,

doubtless, amongst [their opponents] in the two Councils, some

Royalists, and ardent reactionists, who desired with all their

hearts the restoration of the Bourbons; but, according to the

very best testimony, the majority of the names which were

drawn from the electoral urn since the promulgation of the

Constitution of the Year III. were strangers to the Royalist

party. 'They did not desire,' to use the words of an eminent

and impartial historian of our own day [De Barante, 'Life of

Royer-Collard'], 'a counter-revolution, but the abolition of

the revolutionary laws which were still in force. They wished

for peace and true liberty, and the successive purification of

a Directorate which was the direct heir of the Convention. ...

But the Directorate was as much opposed to the Moderates as to

the Royalists.'

{1320}

It pretended to regard these two parties as one, and falsely

represented them as conspiring in common for the overthrow of

the Republic and the re-establishment of monarchy. ... If

there were few Royalists in the two Councils, there were also

few men determined to provoke on the part of the Directors a

recourse to violence against their colleagues. But as a great

number of their members had sat in the Convention, they

naturally feared a too complete reaction, and, affecting a

great zeal for the Constitution, they founded at the Hotel

Salm, under the name of the Constitutional Club, an

association which was widely opposed in its spirit and

tendency to that of the Hotel Clichy, in which were assembled

the most ardent members of the reactionary party [and hence

called Clichyans]. ... The Council of Five Hundred, on the

motion of a member of the Clichy Club, energetically demanded

that the Legislative power should have a share in determining

questions of peace or war. No general had exercised, in this

respect, a more arbitrary power than had Bonaparte, who had

negotiated of his own mere authority several treaties, and the

preliminaries of the peace of Campo Formio. He was offended at

these pretensions on the part of the Council of Five Hundred,

and entreated the Government to look to the army for support

against the Councils and the reactionary press. He even sent

to Paris, as a support to the policy of the Directors, General

Augereau, one of the bravest men of his army, but by no means

scrupulous as to the employment of violent means, and disposed

to regard the sword as the supreme argument in politics,

whether at home or abroad. The Directory gave him the command

of the military division of Paris. ... Henceforth a coup

d'état appeared inevitable. The Directors now marched some

regiments upon the capital, in defiance of a clause of the

Constitution which prohibited the presence of troops within a

distance of twelve leagues of Paris, unless in accordance with

a special law passed in or near Paris itself. The Councils

burst forth into reproaches and threats against the Directors,

to which the latter replied by fiery addresses to the armies,

and to the Councils themselves. It was in vain that the

Directors Carnot and Barthélemy endeavoured to quell the

rising storm; their three colleagues refused to listen to

them, and fixed the 18th Fructidor [September 4] for the

execution of their criminal projects. During the night

preceding that day, Augereau marched 12,000 men into Paris,

and in the morning these troops, under his own command,

supported by 40 pieces of cannon, surrounded the Tuileries, in

which the Councils held their sittings. The grenadiers of the

Councils' guard joined Augereau, who arrested with his own

hand the brave Ramel, who commanded that guard, and General

Pichegru, the President of the Council of Five Hundred. ...

The Directors ... published a letter written by Moreau, which

revealed Pichegru's treason; and at the same time nominated a

Committee for the purpose of watching over the public safety.

... Forty-two members of the Council of Five Hundred, eleven

members of that of the Ancients, and two of the Directors,

Carnot [who escaped, however, into Switzerland] and

Barthélemy, were condemned to be transported to the fatal

district of Sinnamari. ... The Directors also made the editors

of 35 journals the victims of their resentment. They had the

laws passed in favour of the priests and emigrants reversed,

and annulled the elections of 48 departments. Merlin de Douai

and François de Neufchâteau were chosen as successors to

Carnot and Barthélemy, who had been banished and proscribed by

their colleagues. That which took place on the 18th Fructidor

ruined the Constitutional and Moderate party, whilst it

resuscitated that of the Revolution."

E. de Bonnechose,

History of France, 4th period,

book 2, chapter 4 (volume 2).

"During these two days, Paris continued perfectly quiet. The

patriots of the fauxbourgs deemed the punishment of

transportation too mild. ... These groups, however, which were

far from numerous, disturbed not in the least the peace of

Paris. The sectionaries of Vendemiaire ... had no longer

sufficient energy to take up arms spontaneously. They suffered

the stroke of policy to be carried into effect without

opposition. For the rest, public opinion continued uncertain.

The sincere republicans clearly perceived that the royalist

faction had rendered an energetic measure inevitable, but they

deplored the violation of the laws and the intervention of the

military power. They almost doubted the culpability of the

conspirators on seeing such a man as Carnot mingled in their

ranks. They apprehended that hatred had too strongly

influenced the determinations of the Directory. Lastly, even,

though considering its determinations as necessary, they were

sad, and not without reason: for it became evident that that

constitution, on which they had placed all their hope, was not

the termination of our troubles and our discord. The mass of

the population submitted and detached itself much on that day

from political events. ... From that day, political zeal began

to cool. Such were the consequences of the stroke of policy

accomplished on the 18th of Fructidor. It has been asserted

that it had become useless at the moment when it was executed;

that the Directory, in frightening the royalist faction, had

already succeeded in overawing it; that, by persisting in this

stretch of power, it paved the way to military usurpation. ...

But ... the royalist faction ... on the junction of the new

third ... would infallibly have overturned everything, and

mastered the Directory. Civil war would then have ensued

between it and the armies. The Directory, in foreseeing this

movement and timely repressing it, prevented a civil war; and,

if it placed itself under the protection of the military, it

submitted to a melancholy but inevitable necessity."

A. Thiers,

History of the French Revolution

(American edition), volume 4, pages 205-206.

FRANCE: A. D. 1797-1798 (December-May).

Revolutionary intrigues in Rome.

French troops in possession of the city.

Formation of the Roman Republic.

Removal of the Pope.

"At Rome a permanent conspiracy was established at the French

Embassy, where Joseph Bonaparte, as the ambassador of the

Republic, was the centre of a knot of conspirators. On the

28th of December, 1797, came the first open attempt at

insurrection. General Duphot, a hot-headed young man, one of

the military attaches of the French Embassy, put himself at

the head of a handful of the disaffected, and led them to the

attack of one of the posts of the pontifical troops. In the

ensuing skirmish a chance shot struck down the French general,

and the rabble which followed him dispersed in all directions.

It was just the opportunity for which the Directory had been

waiting in order to break the treaty of Tolentino and seize

upon Rome.

{1321}

Joseph Bonaparte left the city the morning after the émeute,

and a column of troops was immediately detached from his

brother's army in the north of Italy and ordered to march on

Rome. It consisted of General Berthier's division and 6,000

Poles under Dombrowski, and it received the ominous title of

l'armée vengeresse--the avenging army. As they advanced

through the Papal territory they met with no sympathy, no

assistance, from the inhabitants, who looked upon them as

invaders rather than deliverers. 'The army,' Berthier wrote to

Bonaparte, 'has met with nothing but the most profound

consternation in this country, without seeing one glimpse of

the spirit of independence; only one single patriot came to

me, and offered to set at liberty 2,000 convicts.' This

liberal offer of a re-inforcement of 2,000 scoundrels the

French general thought it better to decline. ... At length, on

the 10th of February, Berthier appeared before Rome. ...

Wishing to avoid a useless effusion of blood, Pius VI. ordered

the gates to be thrown open, contenting himself with

addressing, through the commandant of St. Angelo, a protest to

the French general, in which he declared that he yielded only

to overwhelming force. A few days after, a self-elected

deputation of Romans waited upon Berthier, to request him to

proclaim Rome a republic, under the protection of France. As

Berthier had been one of the most active agents in getting up

this deputation, he, of course, immediately yielded to their

request. The French general then demanded of the Pope that he

should formally resign his temporal power, and accept the new

order of things. His reply was the same as that of every Pope

of whom such a demand has been made: 'We cannot--we will not!'

In the midst of a violent thunder-storm he was torn from his

palace, forced into a carriage, and carried away to Viterbo,

and thence to Siena, where he was kept a prisoner for three

months. Rome was ruled by the iron hand of a military

governor. ... Meanwhile, alarmed at the rising in Italy, the

Directory were conveying the Pope to a French prison. ...

After a short stay at Grenoble he was transferred to the

fortress of Valence, where, broken down by the fatigues of his

journey, he died on August 19th, 1799, praying for his enemies

with his last breath."

Chevalier O'Clery.

History of the Italian Revolution,

chapter 2, section 1.

ALSO IN:

C. A. Fyffe,

History of Modern Europe,

volume 1, chapter 4.

J. Miley,

History of the Papal States,

book 8, chapter 3 (volume 3).

J. E. Darras,

History of the Catholic Church, 8th period,

chapter 6 (volume 4).

T. Roscoe,

Memoirs of Scipio de Ricci.

volume 2, chapter 4.

FRANCE: A. D. 1797-1798 (December-September).

Invasion and subjugation of Switzerland.

Creation of the Helvetic Republic.

See SWITZERLAND: A. D. 1792-1798.

FRANCE: A. D. 1797-1799.

Hostile attitude toward the United States.

The X, Y, Z correspondence.

Nearness of war.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1797-1799.

FRANCE: A. D. 1798 (May-August).

Bonaparte's expedition to Egypt.

His seizure of Malta.

Pursuit by the English fleet under Nelson.

The Battle of the Nile.

"The treaty of Campo Formio, by which Austria obtained terms

highly advantageous to her interests, dissolved the offensive

and defensive alliance of the continental powers, and left

England alone in arms. The humiliation of this country was to

be the last and the greatest achievement of French ambition.

... During the autumn and winter of this year [1797-8],

preparations for a great armament were proceeding at Toulon,

and other harbours in possession of the French. The army of

Italy, clamorous for a promised donation of 1,000,000,000

francs, which the Directory were unable to pay, had been

flattered by the title of the army of England, and appeased by

the prospect of the plunder of this country. But whatever

might be the view of the Directory, or the expectation of the

army, Bonaparte had no intention of undertaking an enterprise

so rash as a descent upon the coast of England, while the

fleets of England kept possession of the seas. There was

another quarter from which the British Empire might be menaced

with a better chance of success. India could never be secure

while Egypt and the great eastern port of the Mediterranean

were in the possession of one of the great maritime powers.

Egypt had been an object of French ambition since the time of

Louis XIV. ... It was for Egypt, therefore, that the great

armament of Toulon was destined. The project was not indeed

considered a very hopeful one at Paris; but such was the dread

and hatred of the ruling faction for the great military genius

which had sprung out of the anarchy of France, and of the

30,000 creditors whom they were unable to satisfy, that the

issue of the expedition which they most desired was, that it

might never return from the banks of the Nile. ... The fleet,

consisting of thirteen ships of the line, with several

frigates, smaller vessels, and transports conveying 28,000

picked troops, with the full equipment for every kind of

military service, set sail on the 14th of May. Attached to

this singular expedition, destined for the invasion of a

friendly country, and the destruction of an unoffending

people, was a staff of professors, furnished with books, maps,

and philosophical instruments for prosecuting scientific

researches in a land which, to a Christian and a philosopher,

was the most interesting portion of the globe. The great

armament commenced its career of rapine by seizing on the

important island of Malta. Under the shallow pretence of

taking in water for a squadron which had left its anchorage

only two days, a portion of the troops were landed, and, after

a show of resistance, the degenerate knights, who had already

been corrupted, surrendered Malta, Gozo, and Cumino, to the

French Republic. A great amount of treasure and of munitions

of war, besides the possession of the strongest place in the

Mediterranean, were thus acquired without loss or delay. A

conquest of such importance would have amply repaid and

justified the expedition, if no ulterior object had been

pursued. But Bonaparte suffered himself to be detained no more

than twenty-four hours by this achievement; and having left a

garrison of 4,000 men in the island, and established a form of

civil government, after the French pattern, he shaped his

course direct for Alexandria. On the 1st of July, the first

division of the French troops were landed at Marabou, a few

miles from the city. Aboukir and Rosetta, which commanded the

mouths of the Nile, were occupied without difficulty.

Alexandria itself was incapable of any effectual defence, and,

after a few skirmishes with the handful of Janissaries which

constituted the garrison, the French entered the place; and

for several hours the inhabitants were given up to an

indiscriminate massacre.

{1322}

Bonaparte pushed forward with his usual rapidity, undeterred

by the horrors of the sandy desert, and the sufferings of his

troops. After two victories over the Mamelukes, one of which

was obtained within sight of the Pyramids [and called the

Battle of the Pyramids], the French advanced to Cairo; and

such was the terror which they had inspired, that the capital

of Egypt was surrendered without a blow. Thus in three weeks

the country had been overrun. The invaders had nothing to fear

from the hostility of the people; a rich and fertile country,

the frontier of Asia, was in their possession; but, in order

to hold the possession secure, it was necessary to retain the

command of the sea. The English Government, on their side,

considered the capture of the Toulon armament an object of

paramount importance; and Earl St. Vincent, who was still

blockading the Spanish ports, was ordered to leave Cadiz, if

necessary, with his whole fleet, in search of the French; but

at all events, to detach a squadron, under Sir Horatio Nelson,

on that service. ... Nelson left Gibraltar on the 8th of May,

with three ships of the line, four frigates, and a sloop. ...

He was reinforced, on the 5th of June, with ten sail of the

line. His frigates had parted company with him on the 20th of

May, and never returned." Suspecting that Egypt was

Bonaparte's destination, he made sail for Alexandria, but

passed the French expedition, at night, on the way, arrived in

advance of it, and, thinking his surmise mistaken, steered

away for the Morea and thence to Naples. It was not until the

1st of August that he reached the Egyptian coast a second

time, and found the French fleet, of sixteen sail, "at anchor

in line of battle, in the Bay of Aboukir. Nelson, having

determined to fight whenever he came up with the enemy,

whether by day or by night, immediately made the signal for

action. Although the French fleet lay in an open roadstead,

they had taken up a position so strong as to justify their

belief that they could not be successfully attacked by a force

less than double their own. They lay close in shore, with a

large shoal in their rear; in the advance of their line was an

island, on which a formidable battery had been erected; and

their flanks were covered by numerous gun-boats. ... The

general action commenced at sunset, and continued throughout

the night until six o'clock the following morning, a period of

nearly twelve hours. But in less than two hours, five of the

enemy's ships had struck; and, soon after nine o'clock, the

sea and shore, for miles around, were illuminated by a fire

which burst from the decks of the 'Orient,' the French

flag-ship, of 120 guns. In about half an hour she blew up,

with an explosion so appalling that for some minutes the

action was suspended, as if by tacit consent. At this time the

French Admiral Brueys was dead, ... killed by a chain-shot

before the ship took fire. Nelson also had been carried below,

with a wound which was, at first, supposed to be mortal. He

had been struck in the head with a fragment of langridge shot,

which tore away a part of the scalp. ... At three o'clock in

the morning four more of the French ships were destroyed or

taken. There was then an interval of two hours, during which

hardly a shot was fired on either side. At ten minutes to

seven another ship of the line, after a feeble attempt at

resistance, hauled down her colours. The action was now over.

Of the thirteen French ships of the line, nine had been taken,

and two had been burnt." Two ships of the line and two

frigates escaped. "The British killed and wounded were 895.

The loss of the French, including prisoners, was 5,225. Such

was the great battle of the Nile."

W. Massey,

History of England during the Reign of George III.,

chapter 39 (volume 4).

ALSO IN:

E. J. De La Gravière,

Sketches of the Last Naval War,

volume 1, part 3.

R. Southey,

Life of Nelson,

chapter 5.

Despatches and Letters of Lord Nelson,

volume 3.

Bonaparte,

Memoirs Dictated at St. Helena,

volume 2.

A. T. Mahan,

Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and

Empire,

chapter 9 (volume 1).

FRANCE: A. D. 1798-1799 (August-April).

Arming against the Second European Coalition.

The conscription.

Overthrow of the Neapolitan kingdom.

Seizure of Piedmont.

Campaigns in Switzerland, Italy, and on the upper Danube.

Early successes and final reverses.

"The Porte declared war against the French, and, entered into

an alliance with Russia and England (12th August). A Russian

fleet sailed from Sebastopol, and blockaded the Ionian

Islands; the English vessels found every Turkish port open to

them, and gained possession of the Levant trade, to the

detriment of France. Thus the failure of the Egyptian

expedition delivered the Ottoman Empire into the hands of two

Powers, the one intent upon its dismemberment, the other eager

to make itself master of its commerce; it gave England the

supremacy in the Mediterranean; it inaugurated the appearance

of Russia in southern Europe; it was the signal for a second

coalition." Russia, "under Catherine, had but taken a nominal

part in the first coalition, being too much occupied with the

annihilation of Poland. ... But now Catherine was dead, Paul

I., her son and successor, took the émigrés in his pay,

offered the Pretender an asylum at Mittau, promised his

protection to the Congress at Rastadt, and fitted out 100,000

troops. Naples had been in a great ferment since the creation

of the Roman Republic. The nobles and middle classes, imbued

with French ideas, detested a Court sold to the English, and

presided over by the imbecile Ferdinand, who left the cares of

his government to his dissolute Queen. She hated the French,

and now solicited Tuscany and Piedmont to unite with her to

deliver Italy from the sway of these Republicans. The Austrian

Court, of which Bonaparte had been the conscious or

unconscious dupe, instead of disarming after the Treaty of

Campo-Formio, continued its armaments with redoubled vigour,

and now demanded indemnities, on the pretext that it had

suffered from the Republican system which the French

introduced into Switzerland and Italy. The Directory very

naturally refused to accede to this; and thereupon Austria

prepared for war, and endeavoured to drag Prussia and the

German Empire into it. ... But Frederick William's successor

and the princess of the empire declined to recommence

hostilities with France, of which they had reason to fear the

enmity, though at present she was scarcely able to resist a

second coalition. The French nation, in fact, was sincerely

eager for peace. ...

{1323}

Nevertheless, and though there was little unity amongst them,

the Councils and the Directory prepared their measures of

defence; they increased the revenue, by creating a tax on

doors and windows; they authorised the sale of national

property to the amount of 125,000,000 francs; and finally, on

the report of Jourdan, they passed the famous law of

conscription (5th September), which compelled every Frenchman

to serve in the army from the age of 20 to that of 25, the

first immediate levy to consist of 200,000 troops. When the

victory of the Nile became known at Naples the court was a

prey to frenzied excitement. Taxes had already been doubled, a

fifth of the population called to arms, the nobles and middle

classes were tortured into submission. And when the report

spread that the Russians were marching through Poland, it was

resolved to commence hostilities by attacking the Roman

Republic, and to rouse Piedmont and Tuscany to rebellion.

Forty thousand Neapolitans, scarcely provided with arms,

headed by the Austrian general Mack, made their way into the

Roman states, guarded only by 18,000 French troops, dispersed

between the two seas (12th November). Championnet, their

commander, abandoned Rome, took up a position on the Tiber,

near Civita-Castellana, and concentrated all his forces on

that point. The King of Naples entered Rome, while Mack went

to encounter Championnet. The latter beat him, routed or

captured the best of his troops, and compelled him to retire

in disorder to the Neapolitan territory. Championnet, now at

the head of 25,000 men, returned to Rome, previous to marching

on Naples, where the greatest disorder prevailed. At the news

of his approach the Court armed the lazzaroni, and fled with

its treasures to the English fleet, abandoning the town to

pillage and anarchy (20th December, 1798). Mack, seeing his

army deserting him, and his officers making common cause with

the Republicans, concluded an armistice with Championnet, but

his soldiers revolted and compelled him to seek safety in the

French camp. On Championnet's appearance before Naples, which

the lazzaroni defended with fury, a violent battle ensued,

lasting for three days; however, some of the citizens

delivered the fort of St. Elmo to the French, and then the mob

laid down its arms (23rd January, 1799). The Parthenopeian

Republic [so called from one of the ancient names of the city

of Naples] was immediately proclaimed, a provisional

government organised, the citizens formed themselves into a

National Guard, and the kingdom accepted the Revolution. The

demand of Championnet for a war contribution of 27,000,000

francs roused the Calabrians to revolt; anarchy prevailed

everywhere; commissioners were sent by the Directory to

re-establish order. The French general had them arrested, but

he was deposed and succeeded by Macdonald. In commencing its

aggression the court of Naples had counted on the aid of the

King of Sardinia and the Grand Duke of Tuscany. But Piedmont,

placed between three republics, was herself sharing the

Revolutionary ferment; the King, who had concluded an alliance

with Austria, proscribed the democrats, who, in their turn,

declared war against him by means of the Ligurian Republic,

whither they had fled. When Championnet was compelled to

evacuate Rome, the Directory, afraid that Sardinia would

harass the French rear, had ordered Joubert, commanding the

army of Italy, to occupy Piedmont. The Piedmontese troops

opened every place to the French, entered into their ranks,

and the King [December 8, 1798] was forced to give up all

claims to Piedmont, and to take refuge in Sardinia ...

[retaining the latter, but abdicating the sovereignty of

Piedmont]. Tuscany being also occupied by the Republican

troops, the moment war was declared against Austria, Italy was

virtually under French dominion. These events but increased

the enmity of the Coalition, which hurried its preparations,

while the Directory, cheered by its successes, resolved to

take the offensive on all points. ... In the present struggle,

however, the conditions of warfare were changed. The lines of

invasion were no longer, as formerly, short and isolated, but

stretched from the Zuyder Zee to the Gulf of Tarentum, open to

be attacked in Holland from the rear, and at Naples by the

English fleet. ... Seventy thousand troops, under the Archduke

Charles, occupied Bavaria; General Hotze occupied the

Vorarlberg with 25,000 men; Bellegarde was with 45,000 in the

Tyrol; and 70,000 guarded the line of the Adige, headed by

Marshal Kray. Eighty thousand Russians, in two equal

divisions, were on their way to join the Austrians. The

division under Suwarroff was to operate with Kray, that one

under Korsakoff with the Archduke. Finally, 40,000 English and

Russians were to land in Holland, and 20,000 English and

Sicilians in Naples. The Directory, instead of concentrating

its forces on the Adige and near the sources of the Danube,

divided them. Fifteen thousand troops were posted in Holland,

under Brune; 8,000 at Mayence, under Bernadotte; 40,000 from

Strasburg to Bâle, under Jourdan; 30,000 in Switzerland, under

Masséna; 50,000 on the Adige, under Schérer; 30,000 at Naples,

under Macdonald. These various divisions were in reality meant

to form but one army, of which Massena was the centre, Jourdan

and Schérer the wings, Brune and Macdonald the extremities. To

Massena was confided the principal operation, namely, to

possess himself of the central Alps, in order to isolate the

two imperial armies of the Adige and Danube and to neutralise

their efforts. The Coalition having hit upon the same plan as

the Directory, ordered the Austrians under Bellegarde to

invade the Grisons, while on the other side a division was to

descend into the Valteline." Masséna's right wing, under

Lecourbe, defeated Bellegarde, crossed the upper Rhine and

made its way to the Inn. Schérer also advanced by the

Valteline to the upper Adige and joined operations with

Lecourbe. "While these two generals were spreading terror in

the Tyrol, Masséna made himself master of the Rhine from its

sources to the lake of Constance, receiving but one check in

the fruitless siege of Feldkirch, a position he coveted in

order to be able to support with his right wing the army of

the Danube, or with his left that of Italy. This check

compelled Lecourbe and Dessoles to slacken their progress, and

the various events on the Danube and the Po necessitated their

recall in a short time. Jourdan had crossed the Rhine at Kehl,

Bâle, and Schaffhausen (1st March), penetrated into the defile

of the upper Danube, and reached the village of Ostrach, where

he was confronted by the Archduke Charles, who had passed the

Iller, and who, after a sanguinary battle [March 21],

compelled him to retreat upon Tutlingen. The tidings of

Masséna's success having reached Jourdan, he wished to support

it by marching to Stockach, the key to the roads of

Switzerland and Germany; but he was once more defeated (25th

March), and retreated, not into Switzerland, whence he could

have joined Masséna, but to the Rhine, which he imagined to be

threatened. ...

{1324}

In Italy the Directory had given orders to Schérer to force

the Adige, and to drive the Austrians over the Piave and the

Brenta." He attacked and carried the Austrian camp of

Pastrengo, near Rivoli, on the 25th of March, 1799, inflicting

a loss of 8,000 on the enemy; but on the 5th of April, when

moving to force the lower Adige, he was defeated by Kray at

Magnano. "Schérer lost his head, fled precipitately, and did

not stop until he had put a safe distance between himself and

the enemy. ... The army of Switzerland, under Masséna,

dispersed in the mountains, with both its flanks threatened,

had no other means of salvation than to fall back behind the

Rhine."

H. Van Laun,

The French Revolutionary Epoch,

book 3, chapter 1, section 2 (volume 1).

ALSO IN:

R Southey,

Life of Nelson,

chapter 6 (volume 2).

A. Griffiths,

French Revolutionary Generals,

chapter 18.

A. Gallenga,

History of Piedmont,

volume 3, chapter 5.

P. Colletta,

History of the Kingdom of Naples,

book 3, chapter 2; book 4, chapter 1 (volume 1).

FRANCE: A. D. 1798-1799 (August-August).

Bonaparte's organization of government in Egypt.

His advance into Syria and repulse at Acre.

His victory at Aboukir and return to France.

"On hearing of the battle of Aboukir [better known as 'the

battle of the Nile'], a solitary sigh escaped from Napoleon.

'To France,' said he, 'the fates have decreed the empire of

the land--to England that of the sea.' He endured this great

calamity with the equanimity of a masculine spirit. He gave

orders that the seamen landed at Alexandria should be formed

into a marine brigade, and thus gained a valuable addition to

his army; and proceeded himself to organise a system of

government, under which the great natural resources of the

country might be turned to the best advantage. ... He was

careful to advance no claim to the sovereignty of Egypt, but

asserted, that having rescued it from the Mameluke usurpation,

it remained for him to administer law and justice, until the

time should come for restoring the province to the dominion of

the Grand Seignior. He then established two councils,

consisting of natives, principally of Arab chiefs and Moslem

of the church and the law, by whose advice all measures were,

nominally, to be regulated. They formed of course a very

subservient senate. ... The virtuosi and artists in his train,

meanwhile, pursued with indefatigable energy their scientific

researches; they ransacked the monuments of Egypt, and laid

the foundation, at least, of all the wonderful discoveries

which have since been made concerning the knowledge, arts,

polity (and even language), of the ancient nation. Nor were

their objects merely those of curiosity. They, under the

General's direction, examined into the long-smothered traces

of many an ancient device for improving the agriculture of the

country. Canals that had been shut up for centuries were

reopened; the waters of the Nile flowed once more where they

had been guided by the skill of the Pharaohs or the Ptolemies.

Cultivation was extended; property secured; and it cannot be

doubted that the signal improvements since introduced in

Egypt, are attributable mainly to the wise example of the

French administration. ... In such labours Napoleon passed the

autumn of 1798. ... General Dessaix, meanwhile, had pursued

Mourad Bey into Upper Egypt, where the Mamelukes hardly made a

single stand against him, but contrived by the excellence of

their horses, and their familiarity with the deserts, to avoid

any total disruption of their forces. ... The General, during

this interval of repose, received no communication from the

French Government; but rumours now began to reach his quarters

which might well give him new anxieties. The report of another

rupture with Austria gradually met with more credence; and it

was before long placed beyond a doubt, that the Ottoman Porte,

instead of being tempted into any recognition of the French

establishment in Egypt, had declared war against the Republic,

and summoned all the strength of her empire to pour in

overwhelming numbers on the isolated army of Buonaparte. ...

The General despatched a trusty messenger into India, inviting

Tippoo Saib to inform him exactly of the condition of the

English army in that region, and signifying that Egypt was

only the first post in a march destined to surpass that of

Alexander! 'He spent whole days,' writes his secretary, 'in

lying flat on the ground stretched upon maps of Asia.' At

length the time for action came. Leaving 15,000 in and about

Cairo, the division of Dessaix in Upper Egypt, and garrisons

in the chief towns,--Buonaparte on the 11th of February 1799

marched for Syria at the head of 10,000 picked men, with the

intention of crushing the Turkish armament in that quarter,

before their chief force (which he now knew was assembling at

Rhodes) should have time to reach Egypt by sea. Traversing the

desert which divides Africa from Asia, he took possession of the

fortress El-Arish (February 15), whose garrison, after a

vigorous assault, capitulated on condition that they should be

permitted to retreat into Syria, pledging their parole not to

serve again during the war. Pursuing his march, he took Gazah

(that ancient city of the Philistines) without opposition; but

at Jaffa (the Joppa of holy writ), the Moslem made a resolute

defence. The walls were carried by storm, 3,000 Turks died

with arms in their hands, and the town was given up during

three hours to the fury of the French soldiery--who never, as

Napoleon confessed, availed themselves of the license of war

more savagely than on this occasion. A party of the

garrison--amounting, according to Buonaparte, to 1,200 men,

but stated by others as nearly 3,000 in number--held out for

some hours longer in the mosques and citadel; but at length,

seeing no chance of rescue, grounded their arms on the 7th of

March. ... On the 10th--three days after their surrender--the

prisoners were marched out of Jaffa, in the centre of a

battalion under General Bon. When they had reached the

sand-hills, at some distance from the town, they were divided

into small parties, and shot or bayoneted to a man. They, like

true fatalists, submitted in silence; and their bodies were

gathered together into a pyramid, where, after the lapse of

thirty years, their bones are still visible whitening the

sand. Such was the massacre of Jaffa, which will ever form one

of the darkest stains on the name of Napoleon. He admitted the

fact himself;--and justified it on the double plea, that he

could not afford soldiers to guard so many prisoners, and that

he could not grant them the benefit of their parole, because

they were the very men who had already been set free on such

terms at' El-Arish. ...

{1325}

Buonaparte had now ascertained that the Pacha of Syria,

Achmet-Djezzar, was at St. Jean D'Acre (so renowned in the

history of the crusades), and determined to defend that place

to extremity, with the forces which had already been assembled

for the invasion of Egypt. He in vain endeavoured to seduce

this ferocious chief from his allegiance to the Porte, by

holding out the hope of a separate independent government,

under the protection of France. The first of Napoleon's

messengers returned without an answer; the second was put to

death; and the army moved on Acre in all the zeal of revenge,

while the necessary apparatus of a siege was ordered to be

sent round by sea from Alexandria. Sir Sidney Smith was then

cruising in the Levant with two British ships of the line, the

Tigre and the Theseus; and, being informed by the Pacha of the

approaching storm, hastened to support him, in the defence of

Acre. Napoleon's vessels, conveying guns and stores from

Egypt, fell into his hands, and he appeared off the town two

days before the French army came in view of it. He had on

board his ship Colonel Philippeaux, a French royalist of great

talents (formerly Buonaparte's school-fellow at Brienne); and

the Pacha willingly permitted the English commodore and this

skilful ally to regulate for him, as far as was possible, the

plan of his defence. The loss of his own heavy artillery, and

the presence of two English ships, were inauspicious omens;

yet Buonaparte doubted not that the Turkish garrison would

shrink before his onset, and he instantly commenced the siege.

He opened his trenches on the 18th of March. 'On that little

town' said he to one of his generals, as they were standing

together on an eminence, which still bears the name of Richard

Cœur-de-Lion--'on yonder little town depends the fate of the

East. Behold the Key of Constantinople, or of India.' ...

Meanwhile a vast Mussulman army had been gathered among the

mountains of Samaria, and was preparing to descend upon Acre,

and attack the besiegers in concert with the garrison of

Djezzar. Junot, with his division, marched to encounter them,

and would have been overwhelmed by their numbers, had not

Napoleon himself followed and rescued him (April 8) at

Nazareth, where the splendid cavalry of the Orientals were, as

usual, unable to resist the solid squares and well-directed

musketry of the French. Kleber with another division, was in

like manner endangered, and in like manner rescued by the

general-in-chief at Mount Tabor (April 15). The Mussulmans

dispersed on all hands; and Napoleon, returning to his siege,

pressed it on with desperate assaults, day after day, in which

his best soldiers were thinned, before the united efforts of

Djezzar's gallantry, and the skill of his allies." On the 21st

of May, when the siege had been prosecuted for more than two

months, Napoleon commanded a final assault. "The plague had

some time before this appeared in the camp; every day the

ranks of his legions were thinned by this pestilence, as well

as by the weapons of the defenders of Acre. The hearts of all

men were quickly sinking. The Turkish fleet was at hand to

reinforce Djezzar; and upon the utter failure of the attack of

the 21st of May, Napoleon yielded to stern necessity, and

began his retreat upon Jaffa. ... The name of Jaffa was

already sufficiently stained; but fame speedily represented

Napoleon as having now made it the scene of another atrocity,

not less shocking than that of the massacre of the Turkish

prisoners. The accusation, which for many years made so much

noise throughout Europe, amounts to this: that on the 27th of

May, when it was necessary for Napoleon to pursue his march

from Jaffa for Egypt, a certain number of the plague-patients

in the hospital were found to be in a state that held out no

hope whatever of their recovery; that the general, being

unwilling to leave them to the tender mercies of the Turks,

conceived the notion of administering opium, and so procuring

for them at least a speedy and an easy death; and that a

number of men were accordingly taken off in this method by his

command. ... Whether the opium was really administered or

not--that the audacious proposal to that effect was made by

Napoleon, we have his own admission; and every reader must

form his opinion--as to the degree of guilt which attaches to

the fact of having meditated and designed the deed. ... The

march onwards was a continued scene of misery; for the wounded

and the sick were many, the heat oppressive, the thirst

intolerable; and the ferocious Djezzar was hard behind, and

the wild Arabs of the desert hovered round them on every side,

so that he who fell behind his company was sure to be slain.

... Having at length accomplished this perilous journey [June

14], Buonaparte repaired to his old head-quarters at Cairo,

and re-entered on his great functions as the establisher of a

new government in the state of Egypt. But he had not long

occupied himself thus, ere new rumours concerning the beys on

the Upper Nile, who seemed to have some strong and urgent

motive for endeavouring to force a passage downwards, began to

be mingled with, and by degrees explained by, tidings daily

repeated of some grand disembarkation of the Ottomans,

designed to have place in the neighbourhood of Alexandria.

Leaving Dessaix, therefore, once more in command at Cairo, he

himself descended the Nile, and travelled with all speed to

Alexandria, where he found his presence most necessary. For,

in effect, the great Turkish fleet had already run into the

bay of Aboukir; and an army of 18,000, having gained the

fortress, were there strengthening themselves, with the view

of awaiting the promised descent and junction of the

Mamelukes, and then, with overwhelming superiority of numbers,

advancing to Alexandria, and completing the ruin of the French

invaders. Buonaparte, reaching Alexandria on the evening of

the 24th of July, found his army already posted in the

neighbourhood of Aboukir, and prepared to anticipate the

attack of the Turks on the morrow. ... The Turkish outposts

were assaulted early next morning, and driven in with great

slaughter; but the French, when they advanced, came within the

range of the batteries and also of the shipping that lay close

by the shore, and were checked. Their retreat might have ended

in a route, but for the undisciplined eagerness with which the

Turks engaged in the task of spoiling and maiming those that

fell before them--thus giving to Murat the opportunity of

charging their main body in flank with his cavalry, at the

moment when the French infantry, profiting by their disordered

and scattered condition, and rallying under the eye of

Napoleon, forced a passage to the entrenchments. From that

moment the battle was a massacre. ... Six thousand surrendered

at discretion: 12,000 perished on the field or in the sea. ...

Napoleon once more returned to Cairo on the 9th of August; but

it was only to make some parting arrangements as to the

administration, civil and military; for, from the moment of

his victory at Aboukir, he had resolved to entrust Egypt to

other hands, and Admiral Gantheaume was already preparing in

secret the means of his removal to France."

J. G. Lockhart,

Life of Napoleon Buonaparte,

chapter 12.

ALSO IN:

Duke of Rovigo,

Memoirs,

volume 1, chapters 9-11.

Memoirs of Napoleon dictated at St. Helena,

volume 2.

Letters from the army of Bonaparte in Egypt.

M. de Bourrienne,

Private Memoirs of Napoleon,

volume 1. chapter 15-23.

{1326}

FRANCE: A. D. 1799 (April-September).

Murder of the French envoys at Rastadt.

Disasters in North Italy.

Suwarroff's victories.

Anglo-Russian invasion of Holland and

capture of the Dutch Fleet.

"While the French armies were thus humiliated in the field,

the representatives of the republic at the congress of Rastadt

[where peace negotiations with the states of the empire had

been in progress for months] became the victims of a

sanguinary tragedy. As France had declared war against the

emperor [as sovereign of Austria], and not against the empire,

the congress had not necessarily been broken off; but the

representatives of the German states were withdrawn one after

another, until the successes of the Austrians rendered the

position of the French ministers no longer secure. At length

they received notice, from the nearest Austrian commander, to

depart within twenty-four hours; and the French

ministers--Jean Debry, Bonnier, and Roberjeot--left Rastadt

with their families and attendants late in the evening of the

8th of Floréal (the 28th of April). The night was very dark,

and they appear to have been apprehensive of danger. At a very

short distance from Rastadt they were surrounded by a troop of

Austrian hussars, who stopped the carriages, dragged the three

ministers out, and massacred them in the presence of their

wives and children. The hussars then plundered the carriages,

and took away, especially, all the papers. Fortunately for

Jean Debry, he had been stunned, but not mortally wounded; and

after the murderers were gone the cold air of the night

restored him to life. This crime was supposed to have been

perpetrated at the instigation of the imperial court, for

reasons which have not been very clearly explained; but the

representatives of the German states proclaimed loudly their

indignation. The reverses of the republican arms, and the

tragedy of Rastadt, were eagerly embraced by the opposition in

France as occasions for raising a violent outcry against the

directory. ... It was in the midst of this general

unpopularity of the directors that the elections of the year

VII. of the republic took place, and a great majority of the

patriots obtained admission to the councils, and thus

increased the numerical force of the opposition. ... The

directory had made great efforts to repair the reverses which

had marked the opening of the campaign. Jourdain had been

deprived of the command of the army of the Danube, which had

been placed, along with that of Switzerland, under the orders

of Masséna. The command of the army of Italy had been

transferred from Scherer to Moreau; and Macdonald had received

orders to withdraw his forces from Naples and the papal

states, in order to unite them with the army in Upper Italy.

The Russians under Suwarrow had now joined the Austrian army

in Italy; and this chief, who was in the height of his

reputation as a military leader, was made commander-in-chief

of the combined Austro-Russian forces, Melas commanding the

Austrians under him. Suwarrow advanced rapidly upon the Adda,

which protected the French lines; and, on the 8th of Floreal

(the 27th of April), forced the passage of that river in two

places, at Brivio and Trezzo, above and below the position

occupied by the division of Serrurier, which formed the French

left, and which was thus cut off from the rest of the army.

Moreau, who took the command of the French forces on the

evening of the same day, made a vain attempt to drive the

enemy back over the Adda at Trezzo, and thus recover his

communication with Serrurier; and that division was

surrounded, and, after a desperate resistance, obliged to lay

down its arms, with the exception of a small number of men who

made their way across the mountains into Piedmont. Victor's

division effected its retreat without much loss, and Moreau

concentrated his forces in the neighbourhood of Milan. This

disastrous engagement, which took place on the 9th of Floreal,

was known as the battle of Cassano. Moreau remained at Milan

two days to give the members of the government of the

Cisalpine republic, and all the Milanese families who were

politically compromised, time to make their escape in his

rear; after which he continued his retreat. ... He was allowed

to make this retreat without any serious interruption; for

Suwarrow, instead of pursuing him actively, lost his time at

Milan in celebrating the triumph of the anti-revolutionary

party." Moreau first "established his army in a strong

position at the confluence of the Tanaro and the Po, covered

by both rivers, and commanding all the roads to Genoa; so that

he could there, without great danger, wait the arrival of

Macdonald." But soon, finding his position made critical by a

general insurrection in Piedmont, he retired towards the

mountains of Genoa. "On the 6th of Prairial (the 25th of May),

Macdonald was at Florence; but he lost much time there; and it

was only towards the end of the republican month (the middle

of June), that he at length advanced into the plains of

Piacenza to form his junction with Moreau." On the Trebbia he

encountered Suwarrow's advance, under General Ott, and rashly

attacked it. Having forced back Ott's advanced guard, the

French suddenly found themselves confronted by Suwarrow

himself and the main body of his army. "Macdonald now resolved

to unite all his forces behind the Trebbia, and there risk a

battle; but he was anticipated by Suwarrow, who attacked him

next morning, and, after a very severe and sanguinary

engagement, the French were driven over the Trebbia. The

combat was continued next day, and ended again to the

disadvantage of the French; and their position had become so

critical, that Macdonald found it necessary to retreat upon

the river Nura, and to make his way round the Apennines to

Genoa. The French, closely pursued, experienced considerable

loss in their retreat, until Suwarrow, hearing Moreau's cannon

in his rear, discontinued the pursuit, in order to meet him."

Moreau routed Bellegarde, in Suwarrow's rear, and took 3,000

prisoners; but no further collision of importance occurred

during the next two months of the summer.

{1327}

"Suwarrow had been prevented by the orders of the Aulic

Council from following up with vigour his victory on the

Trebbia, and had been obliged to occupy himself with sieges

which employed with little advantage valuable time. Recruits

were reaching the French armies in Italy, and they were

restored to a state of greater efficiency. It was already the

month of Thermidor (the middle of July), and Moreau saw the

necessity of assuming the offensive and attacking the

Austro-Russians while they were occupied with the sieges; but

he was restrained by the orders of the directory to wait the

arrival of Joubert. The latter, who had just contracted an

advantageous marriage, by which the moderate party had hoped

to attach him to their cause, lost an entire month in the

celebration of his nuptial festivities, and only reached the

army of Italy in the middle of Thermidor (the beginning of

August), where he immediately succeeded Moreau in the command;

but he prevailed upon that able general to remain with him, at

least until after his first battle. The French army had taken

a good position in advance of Novi, and were preparing to act

against the enemy while he was still occupied in the sieges,

when news arrived that Alessandria and Mantua had surrendered,

and that Suwarrow was preparing to unite against them the

whole strength of his forces. Joubert immediately resolved to

fall back upon the Apennines, and there act upon the

defensive; but it was already too late, for Suwarrow had

advanced with such rapidity that he was forced to accept

battle in the position he occupied, which was a very strong

one. The battle began early in the morning of the 28th of

Thermidor (the 15th of August); and very early in the action

Joubert received a mortal wound from a ball which struck him

near the heart. The engagement continued with great fury

during the greater part of the day, but ended in the entire

defeat of the French, who retreated from the field of battle

in great confusion. The French lost about 10,000 men in killed

and wounded, and a great number of prisoners. The news of this

reverse was soon followed by disastrous intelligence from

another quarter. The English had prepared an expedition

against Holland, which was to be assisted by a detachment of

Russian troops. The English forces, under Abercromby, landed

near the mouth of the Helder in North Holland, on the 10th of

Fructidor (the 27th of August), and defeated the French and

Dutch republican army, commanded by Brune, in a decisive

engagement [at the English camp, established on a well-drained

morass, called the Zyp] on the 22nd of Fructidor (the 8th of

September). Brune retreated upon Amsterdam; and the Russian

contingent was thus enabled to effect its junction with the

English without opposition. As one of the first consequences

of this invasion, the English obtained possession of the whole

Dutch fleet, upon the assistance of which the French

government had counted in its designs against England. This

succession of ill news excited the revolutionary party to a

most unusual degree of violence."

T. Wright,

History of France,

book 6, chapters 22-23 (volume 2).

ALSO IN:

H. Spalding,

Suvóroff,

chapters 7-8.

L. M. P. de Laverne,

Life of Field-Marshal Souvarof,

chapter 6.

E. Vehse,

Memoirs of the Court of Austria,

chapter 15, section 2 (volume 2).

J. Adolphus,

History of England: Reign of George III.,

chapter 108 (volume 7).

Gen. Sir H. Bunbury,

Narratives of the Great War with France,

pages 1-58.

FRANCE: A. D. 1799 (August-December).

Campaign in Switzerland.

Battle of Zurich.

Defeat of the Russians.

Suwarroff's retreat across the Alps.

Reverses in Italy, and on the Rhine.

Fall of the Parthenopean and Roman Republics.

Since the retreat of Massena in June, the Archduke Charles had

been watching the French on the Limmat and expecting the

arrival of Russian reinforcements under Korsakoff; "but the

Aulic Council, with unaccountable infatuation, ordered him at

this important juncture to repair with the bulk of his army to

the Rhine, leaving Switzerland to Korsakoff and the Russians.

Before these injudicious orders, however, could be carried

into effect, Massena had boldly assumed the offensive (August

14) by a false attack on Zurich, intended to mask the

operations of his right wing, which meanwhile, under Lecourbe,

was directed against the St. Gothard, in order to cut off the

communication between the allied forces in Switzerland and in

Italy. These attacks proved completely successful, ... a

French detachment ... seizing the St. Gothard, and

establishing itself at Airolo, on the southern declivity.

Lecourbe's left had meanwhile cleared the banks of the lake of

Zurich of the enemy, who were driven back into Glarus. To

obtain these brilliant successes on the right, Massena had

been obliged to weaken his left wing; and the Archduke, now

reinforced by 20, 000 Russians, attempted to avail himself of

this circumstance to force the passage of the Limmat, below

Zurich (August 16 and 17); but this enterprise, the success of

which might have altered the fate of the war, failed from the

defective construction of the pontoons; and the positive

orders of the Aulic Council forbade his remaining longer in

Switzerland. Accordingly, leaving 25,000 men under Hotze to

support Korsakoff, he marched for the Upper Rhine, where the

French, at his approach, abandoned the siege of Philipsburg,

and retired to Mannheim; but this important post, the defences

of which were imperfectly restored, was carried by a

coup-de-main (September 18), and the French driven with severe

loss over the Rhine. But this success was dearly bought by the

disasters in Switzerland, which followed the Archduke's

departure. It had been arranged that Suwarroff was to move

from Bellinzona (September 21), and after retaking the St.

Gothard combine with Korsakoff in a front attack on Massena,

while Hotze assailed him in flank. But Massena, who was now

the superior in numbers, determined to anticipate the arrival

of Suwarroff by striking a blow, for which the presumptuous

confidence of Korsakoff gave him increased facility. On the

evening of 24th September, the passage of the river was

surprised below Zurich, and the heights of Closter-Fahr

carried by storm; and, in the course of the next day,

Korsakoff, with his main army, was completely hemmed in at

Zurich by the superior generalship of the French commander,

who summoned the Russians to surrender. But the bravery shown

by Korsakoff in these desperate circumstances equalled his

former arrogance: on the 28th the Russian columns, issuing

from the town, forced their way with the courage of despair

through the surrounding masses of French, while a slender

rear-guard defended the ramparts of Zurich till the remainder

had extricated themselves.

{1328}

The town was at length entered, and a frightful carnage ensued

in the streets, in the midst of which the illustrious Lavater

was barbarously shot by a French soldier: while Korsakoff,

after losing 8,000 killed and wounded, 5,000 prisoners, 100

pieces of cannon, and all his ammunition, stores, and military

chest, succeeded in reaching Schaffhausen. The attack of Soult

above the lake (September 25) was equally triumphant. The

gallant Hotze, who commanded in that quarter, was killed in

the first encounter; and the Austrians, giving way in

consternation, were driven over the Thur, and at length over

the Rhine, with the loss of 20 guns and 3,000 prisoners.

Suwarroff in the meantime was gallantly performing his part of

the plan. On the 23d of September, the French posts at Airolo

and St. Gothard were carried, after a desperate resistance, by

the Russian main force, while their flank was turned by

Rosenberg; and Lecourbe, hastily retreating, broke down the

Devil's Bridge to check the advance of the enemy. A scene of

useless butchery followed, the two parties firing on each

other from the opposite brinks of the impassable abyss; but

the flank of the French was at length turned, the bridge

repaired, and the Russians, pressing on in triumph, joined the

Austrian division of Auffenberg, at Wasen, and repulsed the

French beyond Altdorf. But this was the limit of the old

marshal's success. After effecting with severe loss the

passage of the tremendous defiles and ridges of the

Schachenthal, between Altdorf and Mutten, he found that Linken

and Jellachich, who were to have moved from Coire to

co-operate with him, had again retreated on learning the

disaster at Zurich; and Suwarroff found himself in the midst

of the enemy, with Massena on one side and Molitor on the

other. With the utmost difficulty the veteran conqueror was

prevailed upon, for the first time in his life, to order a

retreat; which had become indispensable, and the heads of his

columns were turned towards Glarus and the Grisons. But though

the attack of Massena on their rear in the Muttenthal was

repulsed with the loss of 2,000 men, their onward route was

barred at Naefels by Molitor, who defied all the efforts of

Prince Bagrathion to dislodge him; and in the midst of a heavy

fall of snow, which obliterated the mountain paths, the

Russian army wound its way (October 5) in single file over the

rugged and sterile peaks of the Alps of Glarus. Numbers

perished of cold, or fell over the precipices; but nothing

could overcome the unconquerable spirit of the soldiers:

without fire or stores, and compelled to bivouac on the snow,

they still struggled on through incredible hardships, till the

dreadful march terminated (October 10) at Ilantz. Such was the

famous, passage of the Alps by Suwarroff. Korsakoff in the

meanwhile (October 1-7) had maintained a desperate conflict

near Constance, till the return of the Archduke checked the

efforts of the French; and the Allies, abandoning the St.

Gothard, and all the other posts they still held in

Switzerland, concentrated their forces on the Rhine, which

became the boundary of the two armies. ... In Italy, after the

disastrous battle of Novi, the Directory had given the

leadership of the armies, both of Italy and Savoy, to the

gallant Championnet, but he could muster only 54,000 troops

and 6,000 raw conscripts to oppose Melas, who had succeeded

Suwarroff in the command, and who had 68,000, besides his

garrisons and detachments. The proposition of Championnet had

been to fall back, with his army still entire, to the other

side of the Alps: but his orders were positive to attempt the

relief of Coni, then besieged by the Austrians; and after a

desultory warfare for several weeks, he commenced a decisive

movement for that purpose at the end of October, with 35,000

men. But before the different French columns could effect a

junction, they were separately assailed by Melas: the

divisions of Grenier and Victor were overwhelmed at Genola

(November 4), and defeated with the loss of 7,000 men; and

though St. Cyr repulsed the Imperialists (November 10) on the

plateau of Novi, Coni was left to its fate, and surrendered

with all its garrison (December 4). An epidemic disorder broke

out in the French army, to which Championnet himself, and

numerous soldiers, fell victims: the troops giving way to

despair, abandoned their standards by hundreds and returned to

France; and it was with difficulty that the eloquent

exhortations of St. Cyr succeeded in keeping together a

sufficient number to defend the Bochetta pass, in front of

Genoa, the loss of which would have entailed destruction on

the whole army. The discomfited Republicans were driven back

on their own frontiers; and, excepting Genoa, the tricolor

flag was everywhere expelled from Italy. At the same time the

campaign on the Rhine was drawing to a close. The army of

Massena was not strong enough to follow up the brilliant

success at Zurich, and the jealousies of the Austrians and

Russians, who mutually laid on each other the blame of the

late disasters, prevented their acting cordially in concert

against him. Suwarroff at length, in a fit of exasperation,

drew off his troops to winter quarters in Bavaria, and took no

further share in the war; and a fruitless attempt in November

against Philipsburg, by Lecourbe, who had been transferred to

the command on the lower Rhine, closed the operations in that

quarter."

Epitome of Alison's History of Europe,

sections 245-251

(chapter 28, volume 7 of complete work).

Meantime, the French had been entirely expelled from southern

Italy. On the withdrawal of Macdonald, with most of his army,

from Naples, "Cardinal Ruffo, a soldier, churchman, and

politician, put himself at the head of a numerous body of

insurgents, and commenced war against such French troops as

had been left in the south and in the middle of Italy. This

movement was actively supported by the British fleet. Lord

Nelson recovered Naples; Rome surrendered to Commodore

Trowbridge. Thus the Parthenopean and Roman republics were

extinguished forever. The royal family returned to Naples, and

that fine city and country were once more a kingdom. Rome, the

capital of the world, was occupied by Neapolitan troops."

Sir W. Scott,

Life of Napoleon,

chapter 38.

ALSO IN:

L. M. P. de Laverne,

Life of Souvarof,

chapter 6.

H. Spalding,

Suvoroff.

P. Colletta,

History of the Kingdom of Naples,

book 4, chapter 2 and book 5,

chapters 1-2 (volume 1).

T. J. Pettigrew,

Memoirs of Lord Nelson,

volume 1, chapters 8-9.

{1329}

FRANCE: A. D. 1799 (September-October).

Disastrous ending of the Anglo-Russian invasion of Holland.

Capitulation of the Duke of York.

Dissolution of the Dutch East India Company.

"It is very obvious that the Duke of York was selected in an

unlucky hour to be the commander-in-chief of this

Anglo-Russian expedition, when we compare the time in which

Abercrombie was alone on the marshy promontory of the Helder

... with the subsequent period. On the 10th of September

Abercrombie successfully repulsed the attack of General Brune,

who had come for the purpose from Haarlem to Alkmar; on the

19th the Duke of York landed, and soon ruined everything. The

first division of the Russians had at length arrived on the

15th, under the command of General Herrmann, for whom it was

originally destined, although unhappily it afterwards came

into the hands of General Korsakoff. The duke therefore

thought he might venture on a general attack on the 19th. In

this attack Herrmann led the right wing, which was formed by

the Russians, and Abercrombie, with whom was the Prince of

Orange, the left, whilst the centre was left to the Duke of

York, the commander-in-chief. This decisive battle was fought

at Bergen, a place situated to the north of Alkmar. The

combined army was victorious on both wings; and Horn, on the

Zuyder Zee, was occupied; the Duke of York, who was only a

general for parades and reviews, merely indulged the centre

with a few manœuvres hither and thither. ... The Russians,

therefore, who were left alone in impassible marshes,

traversed by ditches, and unknown to their officers, lost many

men, and were at length surrounded, and even their general

taken prisoner. The duke concerned himself very little about

the Russians, and had long before prudently retired into his

trenches; and, as the Russians were lost, Abercrombie and the

Crown Prince were obliged to relinquish Horn." The incapacity

of the commander-in-chief held the army paralyzed during the

fortnight following, suffering from sickness and want, while

it would still have been practicable to push forward to South

Holland. "A series of bloody engagements took place from the

2nd till the 6th of October, and the object of the attack upon

the whole line of the French and Batavian army would have been

attained had Abercrombie alone commanded. The English and

Russians, who call this the battle of Alkmar, were

indisputably victorious in the engagements of the 2nd and 3rd

of October. They even drove the enemy before them to the

neighbourhood of Haarlem, after having taken possession of

Alkmar; but on the 6th, Brune, who owes his otherwise very

moderate military renown to this engagement alone, having

received a reinforcement of some thousands on the 4th and 5th,

renewed the battle. The fighting on this day took place at

Castricum, on a narrow strip of land between the sea and the

lake of Haarlem, a position favourable to the French. The

French report is, as usual, full of the boasts of a splendid

victory; the English, however, remained in possession of the

field, and did not retire to their trenches behind Alkmar and

to the marshes of Zyp till the 7th. ... In not more than eight

days afterwards, the want in the army and the anxiety of its

incapable commander-in-chief became so great, the number of

the sick increased so rapidly, and the fear of the

difficulties of embarkation in winter so grew and spread, that

the duke accepted the most shameful capitulation that had ever

been offered to an English general, except at Saratoga. This

capitulation, concluded on the 19th of October, was only

granted because the English, by destroying the dykes, had it

in their power to ruin the country."

F. C. Schlosser,

History of the Eighteenth Century,

volume 7, pages 149-151.

"For the failure in accomplishing the great objects of

emancipating Holland and restoring its legitimate ruler; for

the clamorous joy with which her enemies, foreign and

domestic, hailed the event; the government of Great Britain

had many consolations. ... The Dutch fleet, which, in the

hands of an enterprising enemy, might have been so injuriously

employed, was a capture of immense importance: if Holland was

ever to become a friend and ally, we had abundant means of

promoting her prosperity and re-establishing her greatness; if

an enemy, her means of injury and hopes of rivalship were

effectually suppressed. Her East-India Company, ... long the

rival of our own in power and prosperity, whose dividends in

some years had risen to the amount of 40 per cent., now

finally closed its career, making a paltry final payment in

part of the arrears of dividends for the present and three

preceding years."

J. Adolphus,

History of England: Reign of George III.,

chapter 109 (volume 7).

ALSO IN:

G. R. Gleig,

Life of General Sir R. Abercromby

(Eminent British Military Commanders, volume 3).

FRANCE: A. D. 1799 (November).

Return of Bonaparte from Egypt.

The first Napoleonic Coup d'État.

Revolution of the 18th Brumaire.

End of the First Republic.

Creation of the Consulate.

"When Bonaparte, by means of the bundle of papers which Sidney

Smith caused to find their way through the French lines,

learned the condition of affairs in Europe, there was but one

course consistent with his character for him to pursue. There

was nothing more to be done in Egypt; there was everything to

be done in France. If he were to lead his army back, even in

case he should, by some miracle, elude the eager eyes of Lord

Nelson, the act would be generally regarded as a confession of

disaster. If he were to remain with the army, he could, at

best, do nothing but pursue a purely defensive policy; and if

the army were to be overwhelmed, it was no part of Napoleonism

to be involved in the disaster. ... It would be far shrewder

to throw the responsibility of the future of Egypt on another,

and to transfer himself to the field that was fast ripening

for the coveted harvest. Of course Bonaparte, under such

circumstances, did not hesitate as to which course to pursue.

Robbing the army of such good officers as survived, he left it

in command of the only one who had dared to raise his voice in

opposition to the work of the 18th Fructidor ... the heroic

but indignant Kléber. Was there ever a more exquisite revenge?

... On the arrival of Bonaparte in Paris everything seemed

ready to his hand. ... The policy which, in the seizure of

Switzerland and the Papal States, he had taken pains to

inaugurate before his departure for Egypt had borne its

natural fruit. As never before in the history of Europe,

England, Holland, Russia, Austria, Naples, and even Turkey had

joined hands in a common cause, and as a natural consequence

the Directory had been defeated at every point. Nor was it

unnatural for the people to attribute all these disasters to

the inefficiency of the government. The Directory had really

fallen into general contempt, and at the new election on the

30th Prairial it had been practically overthrown.

{1330}

Rewbell, who by his influence had stood at the head of

affairs, had been obliged to give way," and Sieyès had been

put in his place. "By the side of this fantastic statesman ...

Barras had been retained, probably for no other reason than

that he was sure to be found with the majority, while the

other members, Gohier, Moulins, and Roger-Ducos were men from

whose supposed mediocrity no very decided opposition could be

anticipated. Thus the popular party was not only revenged for

the outrages of Fructidor, but it had also made up the new

Directory of men who seemed likely to be nothing but clay in

the hands of Bonaparte. ... The manner in which the General

was received can have left no possible doubt remaining in his

mind as to the strength of his hold on the hearts of the

people. It must have been apparent to all that he needed but

to declare himself, in order to secure a well-nigh unanimous

support and following of the masses. But with the political

leaders the case, for obvious reasons, was far different. ...

His popularity was so overwhelming, that in his enmity the

leaders could anticipate nothing but annihilation, in his

friendship nothing but insignificance. ... The member of the

government who, at the time, wielded most influence, was

Sieyès, a man to whom personally the General had so

unconquerable an aversion, that Josephine was accustomed to

refer to him as her husband's béte noir. It was evident that

Sieyès was the most formidable obstacle to the General's

advance." As a first movement, Bonaparte endeavored to bring

about the removal of Sieyès from the Directory and his own

election to the place. Failing this, his party attempted the

immediate creation of a dictatorship. When that, too, was

found impracticable, Sieyès was persuaded to a reconciliation

and alliance with the ambitious soldier, and the two, at a

meeting, planned the proceedings "which led to that dark day

in French history known as the 18th Brumaire [November 9,

1799]. It remained only to get absolute control of the

military forces, a task at that time in no way difficult. The

officers who had returned with Bonaparte from Egypt were

impatient to follow wherever their master might lead. Moreau,

who, since the death of Hoche, was regarded as standing next

to Bonaparte in military ability, was not reluctant to cast in

his lot with the others, and Macdonald as well as Serurier

soon followed his example. Bernadotte alone would yield to

neither flattery nor intimidation. ... While Bonaparte was

thus marshalling his forces in the Rue de la Victoire, the way

was opening in the Councils. A commission of the Ancients,

made up of the leading conspirators, had worked all night

drawing up the proposed articles, in order that in the morning

the Council might have nothing to do but to vote them. The

meeting was called for seven o'clock, and care was taken not

to notify those members whose opposition there was reason to

fear. ... The articles were adopted without discussion. Those

present voted, first, to remove the sessions of the Councils

from Paris to Saint Cloud (a privilege which the constitution

conferred upon the Ancients alone), thus putting them at once

beyond the power of influencing the populace and of standing

in the way of Bonaparte. They then passed a decree giving to

Bonaparte the command of the military forces, at the same time

inviting him to come to the Assembly for the purpose of taking

the oath of allegiance to the Constitution." Bonaparte

appeared, accordingly, before the Council; but instead of

taking an oath of allegiance to the constitution, he made a

speech which he closed by declaring: "We want a Republic

founded on true liberty and national representation. We will

have it, I swear; I swear it in my own name and that of my

companions in arms." "Thus the mockery of the oath-taking in

the Council of Ancients was accomplished. The General had now

a more difficult part to perform in the Council of Five

Hundred. As the meeting of the Assembly was not to occur until

twelve o'clock of the following day, Bonaparte made use of the

intervening time in posting his forces and in disposing of the

Directory. ... There was one locality in the city where it was

probable aggressive force would be required. The Luxembourg

was the seat of the Directory, and the Directory must at all

hazards be crushed. ... Bonaparte knew well how to turn all

such ignominious service to account. In close imitation of

that policy which had left Kleber in Egypt, he placed the

Luxembourg in charge of the only man in the nation who could

now be regarded as his rival for popular favor. Moreau fell

into the snare, and by so doing lost a popularity which he was

never afterwards able to regain. Having thus placed his

military forces, Bonaparte turned his attention to the

Directors. The resignations of Sieyès and of Roger-Ducos he

already had upon his table. It remained only to procure the

others. Barras, without warning, was confronted by Talleyrand

and Bruix, who asked him without circumlocution to resign his

office," which he did, after slight hesitation. Gohier and

Moulins were addressed by Bonaparte in person, but firmly

resisted his importunities and his threats. They were then

made prisoners by Moreau. "The night of the 18th passed in

comparative tranquillity. The fact that there was no organized

resistance is accounted for by Lanfrey with a single mournful

statement, that 'nothing of the kind could be expected of a

nation that had been decapitated. All the men of rank in

France for the previous ten years, either by character or

genius or virtue, had been mown down, first by the scaffolds

and proscriptions, next by war.'" On the morrow, the 19th of

Brumaire (November 10) the sitting of the two councils began

at two o'clock. In the Council of Five Hundred the partisans

of Bonaparte were less numerous than in that of the Ancients,

and a powerful indignation at the doings of the previous day

began quickly to show itself. In the midst of a warm debate

upon the resignation of Barras, which had just been received,

"the door was opened, and Bonaparte, surrounded by his

grenadiers, entered the hall. A burst of indignation at once

arose. Every member sprang to his feet. 'What is this?' they

cried, 'swords here! armed men! Away! we will have no dictator

here.' Then some of the deputies, bolder than the others,

surrounded Bonaparte and overwhelmed him with invectives. 'You

are violating the sanctity of the laws; what are you doing,

rash man?' exclaimed Bigonnet. 'Is it for this that you have

conquered?' demanded Destrem, advancing towards him. Others

seized him by the collar of his coat, and, shaking him

violently, reproached him with treason. This reception, though

the General had come with the purpose of intimidating the

Assembly, fairly overwhelmed him.

{1331}

Eye-witnesses declare that he turned pale, and fell fainting

into the arms of his soldiers, who drew him out of the hall."

His brother Lucien, who was President of the Council, showed

better nerve. By refusing to put motions that were made to

vote, and finally by resigning his office and quitting the

chair, he threw the Council into confusion. Then, appearing to

the troops outside, who supposed him to be still President of

the Council, he harangued them and summoned them to clear the

chamber. "The grenadiers poured into the hall. A last cry of

'Vive la République' was raised, and a moment later the hall

was empty. Thus the crime of the conspirators was consummated,

and the First French Republic was at an end. After this action

it remained only to put into the hands of Bonaparte the

semblance of regular authority. ... A phantom of the Council

of Five Hundred--Cornet, one of them, says 30 members--met in

the evening and voted the measures which had been previously

agreed upon by the conspirators. Bonaparte, Sieyès, and

Roger-Ducos were appointed provisional consuls; 57 members of

the Council who had been most prominent in their opposition

were excluded from their seats; a list of proscriptions was

prepared; two commissioners chosen from the assemblies were

appointed to assist the consuls in their work of organization;

and, finally, ... they adjourned the legislative body until

the 20th of February."

C. K. Adams,

Democracy and Monarchy in France,

chapter 4.

ALSO IN:

P. Lanfrey,

History of Napoleon I.

A. Thiers,

History of the French Revolution

(American edition), volume 4, pages 407-430.

M. de Bourrienne,

Private Memoirs of Napoleon,

volume l, chapter 24-27.

Count Miot de Melito,

Memoirs,

chapter 9.

FRANCE: A. D. 1799 (November-December).

The constitution of the consulate.

Bonaparte as First Consul.

"During the three months which followed the 18th Brumaire,

approbation and expectation were general. A provisional

government had been appointed, composed of three consuls,

Bonaparte, Siéyes, and Roger-Ducos, with two legislative

commissioners, entrusted to prepare the constitution and a

definitive order of things. The consuls and the two

commissioners were installed on the 21st Brumaire. This

provisional government abolished the law respecting hostages

and compulsory loans; it permitted the return of the priests

proscribed since the 18th Fructidor; it released from prison

and sent out of the republic the emigrants who had been

ship-wrecked on the coast of Calais, and who for four years

were captives in France, and were exposed to the heavy

punishment of the emigrant army. All these measures were very

favourably received. But public opinion revolted at a

proscription put in force against the extreme republicans.

Thirty-six of them were sentenced to transportation to Guiana,

and twenty-one were put under serveillance in the department

of Charante-Inférieure, merely by a decree of the consuls on

the report of Fouché, minister of police. The public viewed

unfavourably all who attacked the government, but at the same

time it exclaimed against an act so arbitrary and unjust. The

consuls, accordingly, recoiled before their own act; they

first commuted transportation into surveillance, and soon

withdrew surveillance itself. It was not long before a rupture

broke out between the authors of the 18th Brumaire. During

their provisional authority it did not create much noise,

because it took place in the legislative commissions. The new

constitution was the cause of it. Siéyes and Bonaparte could

not agree on this subject: the former wished to institute

France, the latter to govern it as a master. ... Bonaparte

took part in the deliberations of the constituent committee,

with his instinct of power, he seized upon everything in the

ideas of Siéyes which was calculated to serve his projects,

and caused the rest to be rejected. ... On the 24th of

December, 1799 (Nivose, year VIII.), forty-five days after the

18th Brumaire, was published the constitution of the year

VIII.; it was composed of the wrecks of that of Siéyes, now

become a constitution of servitude."

F. A. Mignet,

History of the French Revolution,

chapter 14.

"The new constitution was still republic in name and

appearance, but monarchical in fact, the latter concealed, by

the government being committed, not to the hand of one

individual, but of three. The three persons so fixed upon were

denominated consuls, and appointed for ten years;--one of

them, however, was really ruler, although he only obtained the

modest name of First Consul. The rights which Bonaparte caused

to be given to himself made all the rest nothing more than

mere deception. The First Consul was to invite the others

merely to consultation on affairs of state, whilst he himself,

either immediately or through the senate, was to appoint to

all places of trust and authority, to decide absolutely upon

questions of peace or war, and to be assisted by a council of

state. ... In order to cover and conceal the power of the

First Consul, especially in reference to the appointment of

persons to offices of trust and authority, a senate was

created, which neither belonged to the people nor to the

government, but immediately from the very beginning was an

assembly of courtiers and placemen, and at a later period

became the mere tool of every kind of despotism, by rendering

it easy to dispense with the legislative body. The senate

consisted of eighty members, a part of whom were to be

immediately nominated from the lists of notability, and the

senate to fill up its own body from persons submitted to them

by the First Consul, the tribunate, and the legislative body.

Each senator was to have a salary of 25,000 f.; their meetings

were not public, and their business very small. From the

national lists the senate was also to select consuls,

legislators, tribunes, and judges of the Court of Cassation.

Large lists were first presented to the communes, on which,

according to Roederer, there stood some 500,000 names, out of

which the communes selected 50,000 for the departmental lists,

from which again 5,000 were to be chosen for the national

list. From these 5,000 names, selected from the departmental

list, or from what was termed the national list, the senate

was afterwards to elect the members of the legislature and the

high officers of government. The legislature was to consist of

two chambers, the tribunate and the legislative body--the

former composed of 100, and the latter of 300 members. The

chambers had no power of taking the initiative, that is, they

were obliged to wait till bills were submitted to them, and

could of themselves originate nothing: they were, however,

permitted to express wishes of all kinds to the government.

Each bill (projet de loi) was introduced into the tribunate by

three members of the council of state, and there defended by

them, because the tribunate alone had the right of discussion,

whilst the mere power of saying Yea or Nay was conferred upon

the members of the legislative body.

{1332}

The tribunate, having accepted the bill, sent three of its

members, accompanied by the members from the council of state,

to defend the measure in the assembly of the legislative body.

Every year one-fifth of the members of the legislative body

was to retire from office, being, however, always re-eligible

as long as their names remained on the national list. The

sittings of the legislative body alone were public, because

they were only permitted to be silent listeners to the

addresses of the tribunes or councillors of state, and to

assent to, or dissent from, the proposed law. Not above 100

persons were, however, allowed to be present as auditors; the

sittings were not allowed to continue longer than four months;

both chambers, however, might be summoned to an extraordinary

sitting. ... When the constitution was ready to be brought

into operation, Sieyes terminated merely as he had begun, and

Bonaparte saw with pleasure that he showed himself both

contemptible and venal. He became a dumb senator, with a

yearly income of 25,000 f.; and obtained 800,000 f. from the

directorial treasury, whilst Roger Ducos was obliged to go

away contented with a douceur of 120,000 f.; and, last of all,

Sieyes condescended to accept from Bonaparte a present of the

national domain of Crosne, which he afterwards exchanged for

another estate. For colleagues in his new dignity Bonaparte

selected very able and skilful men, but wholly destitute of

all nobility of mind, and to whom it never once occurred to

offer him any opposition; these were Cambacérès and Lebrun.

The former, a celebrated lawyer, although formerly a vehement

Jacobin, impatiently waited till Bonaparte brought forth again

all the old plunder; and then, covered with orders, he

strutted up and down the Palais Royal like a peacock, and

exhibited himself as a show. Lebrun, who was afterwards

created a duke, at a later period distinguished himself by

being the first to revive the use of hair powder; in fact, he

was completely a child and partisan of the olden times,

although for a time he had played the part of a Girondist. ...

As early as the 25th and 26th of December the First Consul took

up his abode in the Tuileries. There the name of citizen

altogether disappeared, for the consul's wife caused herself

again to be addressed as Madame. Everything which concerned

the government now began to assume full activity, and the

adjourned legislative councils were summoned for the 1st of

January, in order that they might be dissolved."

F. C. Schlosser,

History of the Eighteenth Century,

volume 7, pages 189-192.

ALSO IN:

P. Lanfrey,

History of Napoleon I.,

volume 1, chapters 13-14.

A. Thiers,

History of the Consulate and Empire,

books 1-2 (volume 1).

H. C. Lockwood,

Constitutional History of France,

chapter 2 and appendix 4.

FRANCE: A. D. 1800.

Convention with the United States.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1800.

FRANCE: A. D. 1800 (January-June).

Affairs in Egypt.

The repudiated Treaty of El Arish.

Kléber's victory at Heliopolis.

His assassination.

"Affairs in Egypt had been on the whole unfavourable to the

French, since that army had lost the presence of the

commander-in-chief. Kléber, on whom the command devolved, was

discontented both at the unceremonious and sudden manner in

which the duty had been imposed upon him, and with the

scarcity of means left to support his defence. Perceiving

himself threatened by a large Turkish force, which was

collecting for the purpose of avenging the defeat of the

vizier at Aboukir, he became desirous of giving up a

settlement which he despaired of maintaining. He signed

accordingly a convention with the Turkish plenipotentiaries,

and Sir Sidney Smith on the part of the British [at El Arish,

January 28, 1800], by which it was provided that the French

should evacuate Egypt, and that Kléber and his army should be

transported to France in safety, without being molested by the

British fleet. When the British government received advice of

this convention they refused to ratify it, on the ground that

Sir Sidney Smith had exceeded his powers in entering into it.

The Earl of Elgin having been sent out as plenipotentiary to

the Porte, it was asserted that Sir Sidney's ministerial

powers were superseded by his appointment. ... The truth was

that the arrival of Kléber and his army in the south of

France, at the very moment when the successes of Suwarrow gave

strong hopes of making some impression on her frontier, might

have had a most material effect upon the events of the war.

... The treaty of El Arish was in consequence broken off.

Kléber, disappointed of this mode of extricating himself, had

recourse to arms. The Vizier Jousseff Pacha, having crossed

the Desert and entered Egypt, received a bloody and decisive

defeat from the French general, near the ruins of the ancient

city of Heliopolis, on the 20th of March, 1800 [following

which Kléber crushed with great slaughter a revolt that had

broken out in Cairo]. The measures which Kléber adopted after

this victory were well calculated to maintain the possession

of the country, and reconcile the inhabitants to the French

government. ... While busied in these measures, he was cut

short by the blow of an assassin. A fanatic Turk, called

Soliman Haleby, a native of Aleppo, imagined he was inspired

by Heaven to slay the enemy of the Prophet and the Grand

Seignior. He concealed himself in a cistern, and springing out

on Kléber when there was only one man in company with him,

stabbed him dead [June 14]. ... The Baron Menou, on whom the

command now devolved, was an inferior person to Kléber. ...

Menou altered for the worse several of the regulations of

Kléber, and, carrying into literal execution what Buonaparte

had only written and spoken of, he became an actual

Mahommedan."

Sir W. Scott,

Life of Napoleon Buonaparte,

chapter 40.

ALSO IN:

A. Thiers,

History of the Consulate and Empire,

book 5 (volume 1).

{1333}

FRANCE: A. D. 1800-1801 (May-February).

Bonaparte's second Italian campaign.

The crossing of the Alps.

The Battle of Marengo.

Moreau in Germany.

Hohenlinden.

Austrian siege of Genoa.

"Preparations for the new campaign in spring were completed.

Moreau was made commander-in-chief of the army of the Rhine,

150,000 strong. The plan of the campaign was concerted between

the First Consul and Carnot, who had superseded Berthier as

Minister at War. The operations were conducted with the utmost

secrecy. Napoleon had determined to strike the decisive blow

against Austria in Italy, and to command there in person. By

an article in the Constitution the First Consul was forbidden

to take command of an army. To this interdiction he cheerfully

assented; but he evaded it, as soon as the occasion was ripe,

by giving the nominal command of the army of Italy to

Berthier. He began to collect troops at Dijon, which were, he

publicly announced, intended to advance upon Italy. They

consisted chiefly of conscripts and invalids, with a numerous

staff, and were called 'the army of reserve.' Meantime, while

caricatures of some ancient men with wooden legs and little

boys of twelve years old, entitled 'Bonaparte's Army of

Reserve,' were amusing the Austrian public, the real army of

Italy was formed in the heart of France, and was marching by

various roads towards Switzerland. ... The artillery was sent

piecemeal from different arsenals; the provisions necessary to

an army about to cross barren mountains were forwarded to

Geneva, embarked on the lake, and landed at Villeneuve, near

the entrance to the valley of the Simplon. The situation of

the French army in Italy had become critical. Massena had

thrown himself into Genoa with 12,000 men, and was enduring

all the rigours of a siege, pressed by 30,000 Austrians under

General Ott, seconded by the British fleet. Suchet, with the

remainder of the French army, about 10,000 strong, completely

cut off from communication with Massena, had concentrated his

forces on the Var, was maintaining an unequal contest with

Melas, the Austrian commander-in-chief, and strenuously

defending the French frontier. Napoleon's plan was to

transport his army across the Alps, plant himself in the rear

of the Austrians, intercept their communications, then

manœuvre so as to place his own army and that of Massena on

the Austrian right and left flanks respectively, cut off their

retreat, and finally give them battle at the decisive moment.

While all Europe imagined that the multifarious concerns of

the Government held the First Consul at Paris, he was

travelling at a rapid rate towards Geneva, accompanied only by

his secretary. He left Paris on the 6th of May, at two in the

morning, leaving Cambacérès to preside until his return, and

ordering Fouché to announce that he was about to review the

army at Dijon, and might possibly go as far as Geneva, but

would return in a fortnight. 'Should anything happen,' he

significantly added, 'I shall be back like a thunderbolt.' ...

On the 13th the First Consul reviewed the vanguard of his

army, commanded by General Lannes, at Lausanne. The whole army

consisted of nearly 70,000 men. Two columns, each of about

6,000 men, were put in motion, one under Tureau, the other

under Chabran, to take the routes of Mont Cenis and the Little

St. Bernard. A division consisting of 15,000 men, under

Moncey, detached from the army of the Rhine, was to march by

St. Gothard. Moreau kept the Austrian army of the Rhine, under

General Kray, on the defensive before Ulm [to which he had

forced his way in a series of important engagements, at Engen,

May 2, at Moeskirch, May 4, at Biberach, May 9, and at

Hochstadt, June 19], and held himself in readiness to cover

the operations of the First Consul in Italy. The main body of

the French army, in numbers about 40,000, nominally commanded

by Berthier, but in fact by the First Consul himself, marched

on the 15th from Lausanne to the village of St. Pierre, at the

foot of the Great St. Bernard, at which all trace of a

practicable road entirely ceased. General Marescot, the

engineer who had been sent forward from Geneva to reconnoitre,

reported the paths to be 'barely passable.' 'Set forward

immediately!' wrote Napoleon. Field forges were established at

St. Pierre to dismount the guns, the carriages and wheels were

slung on poles, and the ammunition-boxes carried by mules. A

number of trees were felled, then hollowed out, and the

pieces, being jammed into these rough cases, 100 soldiers were

attached to each and ordered to drag them up the steeps. ...

The whole army effected the passage of the Great St. Bernard

in three days."

R. H. Horne,

History of Napoleon Bonaparte,

chapter 18.

"From May 16 to May 19, the solitudes of the vast mountain

track echoed to the din and tumult of war, as the French

soldiery swept over its heights to reach the valley of the Po

and the plains of Lombardy. A hill fort, for a time, stopped

the daring invaders, but the obstacle was passed by an

ingenious stratagem; and before long Bonaparte, exulting in

hope, was marching from the verge of Piedmont on Milan, having

made a demonstration against Turin, in order to hide his real

purpose. By June 2 the whole French army, joined by the

reinforcement sent by Moreau, was in possession of the Lombard

capital, and threatened the line of its enemy's retreat, having

successfully accomplished the first part of the brilliant

design of its great leader. While Bonaparte was thus

descending from the Alps, the Austrian commander had been

pressing forward the siege of Genoa and his operations on the

Var. Masséna, however, stubbornly held out in Genoa; and

Suchet had defended the defiles of Provence with a weak force

with such marked skill that his adversary had made little

progress. When first informed of the terrible apparition of a

hostile army gathering upon his rear, Melas disbelieved what

he thought impossible; and when he could no longer discredit

what he heard, the movements by Mont Cenis and against Turin,

intended to perplex him, had made him hesitate. As soon,

however, as the real design of the First Consul was fully

revealed, the brave Austrian chief resolved to force his way

to the Adige at any cost; and, directing Ott to raise the

siege of Genoa, and leaving a subordinate to hold Suchet in

check, he began to draw his divided army together, in order to

make a desperate attack on the audacious foe upon his line of

retreat. Ott, however, delayed some days to receive the keys

of Genoa, which fell [June 4] after a defence memorable in the

annals of war; and, as the Austrian forces had been widely

scattered, it was June 12 [after a severe defeat at

Montebello, on the 9th, by Lannes] before 50,000 men were

assembled for an offensive movement round the well-known

fortresses of Alessandria. Meanwhile, the First Consul had

broken up from Milan; and, whether ill-informed of his enemy's

operations, or apprehensive that, after the fall of Genoa,

Melas would escape by a march southwards, he had advanced from

a strong position he had taken between the Ticino, the Adda,

and the Po, and had crossed the Scrivia into the plains of

Marengo, with forces disseminated far too widely. Melas boldly

seized the opportunity to escape from the weakened meshes of

the net thrown round him; and attacked Bonaparte on the

morning of June 14 with a vigor and energy which did him

honor.

{1334}

The battle raged confusedly for several hours; but the French

had begun to give way and fly, when the arrival of an isolated

division on the field [that of Desaix, who had been sent

southward by Bonaparte, and who turned back, on his own

responsibility, when he heard the sounds of battle] and the

unexpected charge of a small body of horsemen, suddenly

changed defeat into a brilliant victory. The importance was

then seen of the commanding position of Bonaparte on the rear

of his foe; the Austrian army, its retreat cut off, was

obliged to come to terms after a single reverse; and within a

few days an armistice was signed by which Italy to the Mincio

was restored to the French, and the disasters of 1799 were

effaced. ... While Italy had been regained at one stroke, the

campaign in Germany had progressed slowly; and though Moreau

was largely superior in force, he had met more than one check

near Ulm, on the Danube. The stand, however, made ably by

Kray, could not lessen the effects of Marengo; and Austria,

after that terrible reverse, endeavored to negotiate with the

dreaded conqueror. Bonaparte, however, following out a purpose

which he had already made a maxim of policy, and resolved if

possible to divide the Coalition, refused to treat with

Austria jointly with England, except on conditions known to be

futile; and after a pause of a few weeks hostilities were

resumed with increased energy. By this time, however, the

French armies had acquired largely preponderating strength;

and while Brune advanced victoriously to the Adige--the First

Consul had returned to the seat of government--Moreau in

Bavaria marched on the rivers which, descending from the Alps

to the Danube, form one of the bulwarks of the Austrian

Monarchy. He was attacked incautiously by the Archduke

John--the Archduke Charles, who ought to have been in command,

was in temporary disgrace at the Court--and soon afterwards

[December 3] he won a great battle at Hohenlinden, between the

Iser and the Inn, the success of the French being complete and

decisive, though the conduct of their chief has not escaped

criticism. This last disaster proved overwhelming, and Austria

and the States of the Empire were forced to submit to the

terms of Bonaparte. After a brief delay peace was made at

Luneville in February 1801."

W. O'C. Morris,

The French Revolution and First Empire,

chapter 10.

ALSO IN:

C. Botta,

Italy during the Consulate and Empire of Napoleon,

chapters 1-2.

Baron Jomini,

Life of Napoleon,

chapter 6 (volume l).

C. Adams,

Great Campaigns in Europe

from 1796 to 1870, chapter 2.

Duke de Rovigo,

Memoirs,

volume 1, chapters 19-20.

FRANCE: A. D. 1800-1801 (June-February).

The King of Naples spared at the intercession of the Russian

Czar.

The Czar won away from the Coalition.

The Pope befriended.

"Replaced in his richest territories by the allies, the King

of Naples was bound by every tie to assist them in the

campaign of 1800. He accordingly sent an army into the march

of Ancona, under the command of Count Roger de Damas. ...

Undeterred by the battle of Marengo, the Count de Damas

marched against the French general Miollis, who commanded in

Tuscany, and sustained a defeat by him near Sienna. Retreat

became now necessary, the more especially as the armistice

which was entered into by General Melas deprived the

Neapolitans of any assistance from the Austrians, and rendered

their whole expedition utterly hopeless. They were not even

included by name in the armistice, and were thus left exposed

to the whole vengeance of the French. ... At this desperate

crisis, the Queen of the Two Sicilies took a resolution which

seemed almost as desperate, and could only have been adopted

by a woman of a bold and decisive character. She resolved,

notwithstanding the severity of the season, to repair in

person to the court of the Emperor Paul, and implore his

intercession with the First Consul, in behalf of her husband

and his territories." The Russian autocrat was more than ready

to accede to her request. Disgusted and enraged at the

discomfiture of Suwarrow in Switzerland, dissatisfied with the

conduct of Austria in that unfortunate campaign, and equally

dissatisfied with England in the joint invasion of the

Batavian republic, he made prompt preparations to quit the

coalition and to ally himself with the First Consul of France.

Bonaparte welcomed his overtures and gave them every

flattering encouragement, conceding instantly the grace which

he asked on behalf of the King and Queen of Naples. "The

respect paid by the First Consul to the wishes of Paul saved

for the present the royal family of Naples; but Murat [who

commanded the army sent to central and southern Italy],

nevertheless, made them experience a full portion of the

bitter cup which the vanquished are generally doomed to

swallow. General Damas was commanded in the haughtiest terms

to evacuate the Roman States, and not to presume to claim any

benefit from the armistice which had been extended to the

Austrians. At the same time, while the Neapolitans were thus

compelled hastily to evacuate the Roman territories, general

surprise was exhibited when, instead of marching to Rome, and

re-establishing the authority of the Roman Republic, Murat,

according to the orders which he had received from the First

Consul, carefully respected the territory of the Church, and

reinstalled the officers of the Pope in what had been long

termed the patrimony of St. Peter's. This unexpected turn of

circumstances originated in high policy on the part of

Buonaparte. ... Besides evacuating the Ecclesiastical States,

the Neapolitans were compelled by Murat to restore various

paintings, statues, and other objects of art, which they had,

in imitation of Buonaparte, taken forcibly from the

Romans,--so captivating is the influence of bad example. A

French army of about 18,000 men was to be quartered in

Calabria. ... The harbours of the Neapolitan dominions were of

course to be closed against the English. A cession of part of

the isle of Elba, and the relinquishment of all pretensions

upon Tuscany, summed up the sacrifices of the King of Naples

[stipulated in the treaty of Foligno, signed in February,

1801], who, considering how often he had braved Napoleon, had

great reason to thank the Emperor of Russia for his effectual

mediation."

Sir W. Scott,

Life of Napoleon,

chapter 38.

FRANCE: A. D. 1801 (February).

The Peace of Luneville.

The Rhine boundary confirmed.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1801-1803.

FRANCE: A. D. 1801 (March).

Recovery of Louisiana from Spain.

See LOUISIANA: A. D. 1798-1803.

FRANCE: A. D. 1801.

Expedition against the Blacks of Hayti.

See HAYTI: A. D. 1632-1803.

{1335}

FRANCE: A. D. 1801-1802.

The import of the Peace of Luneville.

Bonaparte's preparations for conflict with England.

The Northern Maritime League.

English bombardment of Copenhagen and

summary crushing of the League.

Murder of the Russian Czar.

English expedition to Egypt.

Surrender of the French army.

Peace of Amiens.

"The treaty of Luneville was of far greater import than the

treaties which had ended the struggle of the first coalition.

... The significance then of the Peace of Luneville lay in

this, not only that it was the close of the earlier

revolutionary struggle for supremacy in Europe, the

abandonment by France of her effort to 'liberate the peoples,'

to force new institutions on the nations about her by sheer

dint of arms; but that it marked the concentration of all her

energies on a struggle with Britain for the supremacy of the

world. For England herself the event which accompanied it, the

sudden withdrawal of William Pitt from office, which took

place in the very month of the treaty, was hardly less

significant. ... The bulk of the old Ministry returned in a

few days to office with Mr. Addington at their head, and his

administration received the support of the whole Tory party in

Parliament. ... It was with anxiety that England found itself

guided by men like these. ... The country stood utterly alone;

while the peace of Luneville secured France from all hostility

on the Continent. ... To strike at England's wealth had been

among the projects of the Directory: it was now the dream of

the First Consul. It was in vain for England to produce, if he

shut her out of every market. Her carrying-trade must be

annihilated if he closed every port against her ships. It was

this gigantic project of a 'Continental System' that revealed

itself as soon as Buonaparte became finally master of France.

From France itself and its dependencies in Holland and the

Netherlands English trade was already excluded. But Italy also

was shut against her after the Peace of Luneville [and the

Treaty of Foligno with the King of Naples], and Spain not only

closed her own ports but forced Portugal to break with her

English ally. In the Baltic, Buonaparte was more active than

even in the Mediterranean. In a treaty with America, which was

destined to bring this power also in the end into his great

attack, he had formally recognized the rights of neutral

vessels which England was hourly disputing. ... The only

powers which now possessed naval resources were the powers of

the North. ... Both the Scandinavian states resented the

severity with which Britain enforced that right of search

which had brought about their armed neutrality at the close of

the American war; while Denmark was besides an old ally of

France; and her sympathies were still believed to be French.

The First Consul therefore had little trouble in enlisting

them in a league of Neutrals, which was in effect a

declaration of war against England, and which Prussia as

before showed herself ready to join. Russia indeed seemed

harder to gain." But Paul, the Czar, afraid of the opposition

of England to his designs upon Turkey, dissatisfied with the

operations of the coalition, and flattered by Bonaparte, gave

himself up to the influence of the latter. "It was to check

the action of Britain in the East that the Czar now turned to

the French Consul, and seconded his efforts for the formation

of a naval confederacy in the North, while his minister,

Rostopchin, planned a division of the Turkish Empire in Europe

between Russia and her allies. ... A squabble over Malta,

which had been blockaded since its capture by Buonaparte, and

which surrendered at last [September, 1800] to a British

fleet, but whose possession the Czar claimed as his own on the

ground of an alleged election as Grand Master of the Order of

St. John, served as a pretext for a quarrel with England; and

at the close of· 1800 Paul openly prepared for hostilities.

... The Danes, who throughout the year had been struggling to

evade the British right of search, at once joined this neutral

league, and were followed by Sweden in their course. ... But

dexterous as the combination was, it was shattered at a blow.

On the 1st of April, 1801, a British fleet of 18 men-of-war

[under Sir Hyde Parker, with Nelson second in command] forced

the passage of the Belt; appeared before Copenhagen, and at

once attacked the city and its fleet. In spite of a brave

resistance from the Danish batteries and gunboats six Danish

ships were taken, and the Crown Prince was forced to conclude

an armistice which enabled the English ships to enter the

Baltic. ... But their work was really over. The seizure of

English goods and the declaration of war had bitterly

irritated the Russian nobles, whose sole outlet for the sale

of the produce of their vast estates was thus closed to them;

and on the 24th of March, nine days before the battle of

Copenhagen, Paul fell in a midnight attack by conspirators in

his own palace. With Paul fell the Confederacy of the North.

... At the very moment of the attack on Copenhagen, a stroke

as effective wrecked his projects in the East. ... In March,

1801, a force of 15,000 men under General Abercrombie anchored

in Aboukir Bay. Deserted as they were by Buonaparte, the

French had firmly maintained their hold on Egypt. ... But

their army was foolishly scattered, and Abercrombie was able

to force a landing five days after his arrival on the coast.

The French however rapidly concentrated; and on the 21st of

March their general attacked the English army on the ground it

had won, with a force equal to its own. The battle [known as

the battle of Alexandria] was a stubborn one, and Abercrombie

fell mortally wounded ere its close; but after six hours'

fighting the French drew off with heavy loss; and their

retreat was followed by the investment of Alexandria and

Cairo. ... At the close of June the capitulation of the 13,000

soldiers who remained closed the French rule over Egypt."

Threatening preparations for an invasion of England were kept

up, and gunboats and flatboats collected at Boulogne, which

Nelson attacked unsuccessfully in August, 1801. "The First

Consul opened negotiations for peace at the close of 1801. His

offers were at once met by the English Government. ... The

negotiations which went on through the winter between England

and the three allied Powers of France, Spain, and the Dutch,

brought about in March, 1802, the Peace of Amiens." The treaty

secured "a pledge on the part of France to withdraw its forces

from Southern Italy, and to leave to themselves the republics

it had set up along its border in Holland, Switzerland, and

Piedmont. In exchange for this pledge, England recognized the

French government, restored all the colonies which they had

lost, save Ceylon and Trinidad, to France and its allies

[including the restoration to Holland of the Cape of Good Hope

and Dutch Guiana, and of Minorca and the citadel of Port Mahon

to Spain, while Turkey regained possession of Egypt],

acknowledged the Ionian Islands as a free republic, and

engaged to restore Malta within three months to its old

masters, the Knights of St. John."

J. R. Green,

History of the English People,

book 9, chapter 5 (volume 4).

ALSO IN:

R. Southey,

Life of Nelson,

chapter 7 (volume 2).

J. Gifford,

Political Life of Pitt,

chapter 47 (volume 6).

C. Joyneville,

Life and Times of Alexander I.,

volume 1, chapter 4.

A. Rambaud,

History of Russia,

volume 2, chapter 11-12.

G. R. Gleig,

Life of General Sir R. Abercromby

(Eminent British Military Commanders, volume 3).

{1336}

FRANCE: A. D. 1801-1803.

Domestic measures of Bonaparte.

His Legion of Honor.

His wretched educational scheme.

He is made First Consul for life.

His whittling away of the Constitution.

Revolutions instigated and dictated in the Dutch,

Swiss, and Cisalpine Republics.

Bonaparte president of the Italian Republic.

"The concordat was succeeded by the emigrants' recall, which

resolution was presented and passed April 26. The

irrevocability of the sale of national property was again

established, and amnesty granted to all emigrants but the

leaders of armed forces, and some few whose offences were

specially grave. The property of emigrants remaining unsold

was restored, excepting forests, which Bonaparte reserved to

be gradually returned as bribes to great families. ... Two

important projects were presented to the Tribunal and

Legislative Corps, the Legion of Honor, and free schools. The

Convention awarded prizes to the troops for special acts of

daring, and the First Consul increased and arranged the

distribution, but that was not enough: he wanted a vast system

of rewards, adapted to excite amour propre, repay service, and

give him a new and potent means of influencing civilians as

well as soldiers. He therefore conceived the idea of the

Legion of Honor, embracing all kinds of service and title to

public distinction. ... But this plan for forming an order of

chivalry was contested even by the Council of State as

offensive to that equality which its members were to defend

[under the oath prescribed to the Legion], and as a renewal of

aristocracy. It only passed the Tribunal and Legislative Corps

by a very small majority, and this after the removal of so

many of the opposition party. The institution of the Legion of

Honor was specious, and, despite the opposition it met within

its early days, suits a people who love distinction, despite

their passion for equality, provided it be not hereditary. As

for the educational scheme, it was wretched, doing absolutely

nothing for the primary schools. The state had no share in it.

The Commune was to provide the buildings when the pupils could

pay a teacher, thus forsaking the plans of the great

assemblies. The wisest statesmen desired to sustain in an

improved form the central schools founded by the Convention;

but Bonaparte meant to substitute barracks to educate young

men for his service. ... He diminished scientific study;

suppressed history and philosophy, which were incompatible

with despotism; and completed his system of secondary

instruction by creating 6,000 scholarships, to be used as

means of influence, like the ribbon of the Legion of Honor.

... All his measures succeeded, and yet he was not content: he

wanted to extend his power. ... Cambacérès ... , when the

Amiens treaty was presented to the Tribunal and Legislature,

... proposed, through the president of the former, that the

Senate should be invited to give the First Consul some token

of national gratitude (May 6, 1802). ... The Senate only voted

to prolong the First Consul's power for ten years (May 8),

with but one protesting voice, that of Lanjuinais, who

denounced the flagrant usurpation that threatened the

Republic. This was the last echo of the Gironde ringing

through the tame assemblies of the Consulate. Bonaparte was

very angry, having expected more; but Cambacérès' calmed him

and suggested a mode of evading the question, namely, to reply

that an extension of power could only be granted by the

people, and then to make the Council of State dictate the

formula to be submitted to the people, substituting a life

consulate for ten years. This was accordingly done. ... The

Council of State even added the First Consul's right to name

his successor. This he thought premature and likely to make

trouble, and therefore erased it. ... Registers were opened at

the record offices and mayoralties to receive votes, and there

were three million and a half votes in the affirmative; a few

thousand only daring to refuse, and many abstaining from

voting. La Fayette registered a 'no' ... and sent the First

Consul a noble letter. ... La Fayette then ceased the

relations he had hitherto maintained with the First Consul

since his return to France. ... The Senate counted the popular

vote on the proposal they did not make, and carried the result

to the Tuileries in a body, August 8, 1802; and the result was

proclaimed in the form of a Senatus-Consultum, in these terms:

'The French people name and the Senate proclaim Napoleon

Bonaparte First Consul for life.' This was the first official

use of the prenomen Napoleon, which was soon, in conformity

with royal custom, to be substituted for the family name of

Bonaparte. ... The next day various modifications of the

Constitution were offered to the Council of State. ... The

Senate were given the right to interpret and complete the

Constitution, to dissolve the Legislature and Tribunal, and,

what was even more, to break the judgment of tribunals, thus

subordinating justice to policy. But these extravagant

prerogatives could only be used at the request of the

government, The Senate was limited to 120 members, 40 of whom

the First Consul was to elect. The Tribunal was reduced to 50

members, and condemned to discuss with closed doors, divided

into sections. ... Despotism concentrated more and more.

Bonaparte took back his refusal to choose his successor, and

now claimed that right. He also formed a civil list of six

millions. ... The Senate agreed to everything, and the

Senatus-Consultum was published August 5. ... The Republic was

now but a name; ... Early in 1808 things grew dark on the

English shore," and "the loss of San Domingo [to which

Bonaparte had sent an expedition at the beginning of 1801]

seemed inevitable [see HAYTI: A. D. 1682-1808]. While making

this expedition, doomed to so fatal an end, Bonaparte

continued his haughty policy on the European continent. By

article second of the Luneville treaty France and Austria

mutually guaranteed the independence of the Dutch, Swiss,

Cisalpine, and Ligurian republics, and their freedom in the

adoption of whatever form of government they saw fit to

choose.

{1337}

Bonaparte interpreted this article by substituting for

independence his own more or less direct rule in those

republics. ... During the negotiations preceding the Amiens

treaty he stirred up a revolution in Holland. That country had

a Directory and two Chambers, as in the French Constitution of

year III., and he wished to impose a new constitution on the

Chambers, putting them more into his power; they refused, and

he expelled them by means of the Directory, whom he had won

over to his side. The Dutch Directory, in this imitation of

November 9, was sustained by French troops, occupying Holland

under Augereau, now reconciled to Bonaparte (September, 1801).

The new Constitution was put to popular vote. A certain number

voted against it. The majority did not vote. Silence was taken

for consent, and the new Constitution was proclaimed October

17, 1801. ... The English government protested, but did not

resist. At the same time he [Bonaparte] imposed on the

Cisalpine republic, but without conflict or opposition, a

constitution even more anti-liberal than the French one of

year VIII.; the president who there replaced the First Consul

having supreme power. But who was to be that President? The

Cisalpines for an instant were simple enough to think that

they could choose an Italian: they decided on Count Melzi,

well known in the Milanese. They were soon undeceived, when

Bonaparte called Cisalpine delegates to Lyons in midwinter.

These delegates were landowners, scholars, and merchants, some

hundreds in number, and his agents explained to them that none

but Bonaparte 'was worthy to govern their republic or able to

maintain it.' They eagerly offered him the presidency, which

he accepted in lofty terms, and took Melzi for vice-president

(January 25, 1802). Italian patriots were consoled for this

subjection by the change of name from Cisalpine to Italian

Republic, which seemed to promise the unity of Italy.

Bonaparte threw out this hope, never meaning to gratify it.

... He acted as master in Switzerland as well as Italy and

Holland. Since Switzerland had ceased to be the scene of war,

she had been given over to agitation, fluctuating between

revolutionary democracy and the old aristocracy joined to the

retrograde democracy of the small Catholic cantons. Modern

democracy was at strife with itself. ... Bonaparte encouraged

the strife, that Switzerland might call him in as arbiter.

Suddenly, late in July, 1802, he withdrew his troops, which

had occupied Switzerland ever since 1798. Civil war broke out

at once; the smaller Catholic cantons and the aristocrats of

Berne and Zurich overthrew the government established at Berne

by the moderate democrats. The government retired to Lausanne,

and the country was thus divided. Bonaparte then announced

that he would not suffer a Swiss counter-revolution, and that

if the parties could not agree he must mediate between them.

He summoned the insurrectional powers of Berne to dissolve,

and invited all citizens who had held office in the central

Swiss government within three years, to meet at Paris and

confer with him, announcing that 30,000 men under General Ney

were ready to support his mediation. The democratic government

at Lausanne were willing to receive the French; the

aristocratic government at Berne, anxious to restore the

Austrians, appealed to European powers, who replied by

silence, England only protesting against French interference.

... Bonaparte responded to the English protest by so

extraordinary a letter that his charge d'Affaires at London

dared not communicate it verbatim. It said that, if England

succeeded in drawing the continental powers into her cause,

the result would be to force France to 'conquer Europe! Who

knows how long it would take the First-Consul to revive the

Empire of the West?' (October 23, 1802). ... There was slight

resistance to Ney's troops in Switzerland. All the politicians

of the new democracy and some of the aristocrats went to Paris

at the First Consul's summons. He did not treat their country

as he had Holland and Italy, but gave her, instead, a vain

show of institutions, a constitution imposing on the different

parties a specious compromise. ... Switzerland was dependent

on France in regard to general policy, and was bound to

furnish her with troops; but, at least, she administered her

own affairs (January, 1803)."

H. Martin,

Popular History of France from the First Revolution,

volume 2, chapters 8-9.

ALSO IN:

F. C. Schlosser,

History of the 18th Century,

volume 7, pages 286-302.

Mrs. L. Hug and R. Stead,

Story of Switzerland,

chapters 30-31.

C. Botta,

Italy during the Consulate and Empire of Napoleon,

chapter 3.

M. Bourrienne,

Private Memoirs of Napoleon,

volume 2, chapters 20-26.

Duchess D' Abrantes,

Memoirs of Napoleon,

volume 1, chapter 80.

Count M. Dumas,

Memoirs,

chapter 9 (volume 2).

H. A. Taine,

The Modern Regime,

volume 1, book 3, chapter 3.

FRANCE: A. D. 1801-1804.

The Civil Code and the Concordat.

"Four years of peace separated the Treaty of Luneville from

the next outbreak of war between France and any Continental

Power. They were years of the extension of French influence in

every neighbouring State; in France itself, years of the

consolidation of Bonaparte's power, and of the decline of

everything that checked his personal rule. ... Among the

institutions which date from this period, two, equally

associated with the name of Napoleon, have taken a prominent

place in history, the Civil Code and the Concordat. Since the

middle of the 18th century the codification of law had been

pursued with more or less success by almost every Government

in the western continent. The Constituent Assembly of 1789 had

ordered the statutes by which it superseded the variety of

local customs in France to be thus cast into a systematic

form. ... Bonaparte instinctively threw himself into a task so

congenial to his own systematizing spirit, and stimulated the

efforts of the best jurists in France by his own personal

interest and pride in the work of legislation. A Commission of

lawyers, appointed by the First Consul, presented the

successive chapters of a Civil Code to the Council of State.

In the discussions in the Council of State Bonaparte himself

took an active, though not always a beneficial, part. ... In

March, 1804, France received the Code which, with few

alterations, has formed from that time to the present the

basis of its civil rights. ... It is probable that a majority

of the inhabitants of Western Europe believe that Napoleon

actually invented the laws which bear his name. As a matter of

fact, the substance of these laws was fixed by the successive

Assemblies of the Revolution; and, in the final revision which

produced the Civil Code, Napoleon appears to have originated

neither more nor less than several of the members of his

Council whose names have long been forgotten.

{1338}

He is unquestionably entitled to the honour of a great

legislator, not, however, as one who, like Solon or like

Mahomet, himself created a new body of law. ... Four other

Codes, appearing at intervals from the year 1804 to the year

1810, embodied, in a corresponding form, the Law of Commerce,

the Criminal Law, and the Rules of Civil and of Criminal

Process. ... Far more distinctively the work of Napoleon

himself was the reconciliation with the Church of Rome

effected by the Concordat [July, 1801]. It was a restoration

of religion similar to that restoration of political order

which made the public service the engine of a single will. The

bishops and priests, whose appointment the Concordat

transferred from their congregations to the Government, were

as much instruments of the First Consul as his prefects and

his gensdarmes. ... An alliance with the Pope offered to

Bonaparte the means of supplanting the popular organisation of

the Constitutional Church by an imposing hierarchy, rigid in

its orthodoxy and unquestioning in its devotion to himself. In

return for the consecration of his own rule, Bonaparte did not

shrink from inviting the Pope to an exercise of authority such

as the Holy See had never even claimed in France. The whole of

the existing French Bishops, both the exiled non-jurors and

those of the Constitutional Church, were summoned to resign

their sees into the hands of the Pope; against all who refused

to do so sentence of deposition was pronounced by the Pontiff.

... The sees were reorganised, and filled up by nominees of the

First Consul. The position of the great body of the clergy was

substantially altered in its relation to the Bishops.

Episcopal power was made despotic, like all other powers in

France. ... In the greater cycle of religious change, the

Concordat of Bonaparte appears in another light. ... It

converted the Catholicism of France from a faith already far

more independent than that of Fénélon and Bossuet into the

Catholicism which in our day has outstripped the bigotry of

Spain and Austria in welcoming the dogma of Papal

infallibility."

C. A. Fyffe,

History of Modern Europe,

volume 1, chapter 5.

"It is ... easy, from the official reports which have been

preserved, to see what part the First Consul took in the

framing of the Civil Code. While we recognise that his

intervention was advantageous on some minor points, ... we

must say that his views on the subjects of legislation in

which this intervention was most conspicuous, were most often

inspired by suggestions of personal interest, or by political

considerations which ought to have no weight with the

legislator. ... Bonaparte came by degrees to consider himself

the principal creator of a collective work to which he

contributed little more than his name, and which probably

would have been much better if the suggestions of a man of

action and executive authority had not been blended with the

views, necessarily more disinterested, larger and more humane,

of the eminent jurisconsults whose glory he tried to usurp."

P. Lanfrey,

History of Napoleon,

volume 2, chapter 5.

ALSO IN:

A. Thiers,

History of the Consulate and the Empire,

volume 1, books 12-14.

W. H. Jervis,

History of the Church of France,

volume 2, chapter 11.

J. E. Darras,

General History of the Catholic Church,

volume 4, pages 547-554.

The Code Napoleon, translated by Richards.

FRANCE: A. D. 1802.

Fourcroy's education law.

See EDUCATION, MODERN: EUROPEAN COUNTRIES,

FRANCE: A. D. 1565-1802.

FRANCE: A. D. 1802 (August-September).

Annexation of Piedmont, Parma, and the Isle of Elba.

A "flagrant act of the First Consul's at this time was the

seizure and annexation of Piedmont. Although that country was

reconquered by the Austro-Russian army in 1799, the-King of

Sardinia had not been restored when, by the battle of Marengo,

it came again into the possession of the French. Bonaparte

then united part of it to the Cisalpine Republic, and promised

to erect the rest into a separate State; but he afterwards

changed his mind; and by a decree of April 20th 1801, ordered

that Piedmont should form a military division of France. ...

Charles Emanuel, disgusted with the injustice and insults to

which he was exposed, having abdicated his throne in favour of

his brother Victor Emanuel, Duke of Aosta, June 4th 1802,

Bonaparte ... caused that part of Piedmont which had not been

united to the Italian Republic to be annexed to France, as the

27th Military Department, by a formal Senatus-Consulte of

September 11th 1802. A little after, October 11th, on the

death of Ferdinand de Bourbon, Duke of Parma, father of the

King of Etruria, that duchy was also seized by the rapacious

French Republic. The isle of Elba had also been united to

France by a Senatus-Consulte of August 26th."

T. H. Dyer,

History of Modern Europe,

book 7, chapter 11 (volume 4).

ALSO IN:

A. Gallenga,

History of Piedmont,

volume 3, chapter 5.

FRANCE: A. D. 1802-1803.

Complaints against the English press.

The Peltier trial.

The First Consul's rage.

War declared by Great Britain.

Detention of all the English in France, Italy, Switzerland and

the Netherlands.

Occupation of Hanover.

"Mr. Addington was wont to say in after years that the ink was

scarcely dry, after the signature of the treaty of Amiens,

when discontents arose which perilled the new peace. On the

24th of May [1802], M. Otto told Lord Glenbervie that if the

English press were not controlled from censuring Napoleon,

there must be a war to the death: and in the course of the

summer, six requisitions were formally made to the British

government, the purport of which was that the press must be

controlled; the royal emigrants sent to Warsaw; the island of

Jersey cleared of persons disaffected to the French

government; and all Frenchmen dismissed from Great Britain who

wore the decorations of the old monarchy. The reply was, that

the press was free in England; and that if any of the

emigrants broke the laws, they should be punished; but that

otherwise they could not be molested. The government, however,

used its influence in remonstrance with the editors of

newspapers which were abusive of the French. Cobbet was

pointed out by name by Napoleon, as a libeller who must be

punished; and Peltier, a royalist emigrant, who had published

some incentives to the assassination of the French ruler, or

prophecies which might at such a crisis be fairly regarded as

incentives. M. Peltier's object was to use his knowledge of

the tools of Napoleon, and his great political and literary

experience, in laying bare the character and policy of

Napoleon; and he began, in the summer of 1802, a journal, the

first number of which occasioned the demand for his

punishment.

{1339}

He was prosecuted by the Attorney-General, and defended by Sir

James Mackintosh, in a speech which was translated into nearly

all the languages of Europe, and universally considered one of

the most prodigious efforts of oratory ever listened to in any

age. The Attorney-General, Mr. Percival, declared in Court,

that he could hardly hope for an impartial decision from a

jury whose faculties had been so roused, dazzled and charmed.

... M. Peltier was found guilty; but the Attorney-General did

not call for judgment on the instant. War was then--at the

close of February [1808]--imminent; and the matter was

dropped. M: Peltier was regarded as a martyr, and, as far as

public opinion went, was rather rewarded than punished in

England. He was wont to say that he was tried in England and

punished in France. His property was confiscated by the

consular agents; and his only near relations, his aged father

and his sister, died at Nantes, through terror at his trial.

By this time the merchants of Great Britain were thoroughly

disgusted with France. Not only had Napoleon prevented all

commercial intercourse between the nations throughout the

year, but he had begun to, confiscate English merchant

vessels, driven by stress of weather into his ports. By this

time, too, the Minister's mind was made up as to the

impossibility of avoiding war. ... Napoleon had published

[January 30, 1803] a Report of an official agent of his,

Sebastiani, who had explored the Levant, striving as he went

to rouse the Mediterranean States to a desertion of England

and an alliance with France. He, reported of the British force

at Alexandria, and of the means of attack and defence there;

and his employer put forth this statement in the 'Moniteur,'

his own paper, while complaining of the insults of the English

press towards himself. Our ambassador at Paris, Lord

Whitworth, desired an explanation: and the reception of his

demand by the First Consul ... was characteristic. ... He sent

for Lord Whitworth to wait on him at nine in the morning of

the 18th; made him sit down; and then poured out his wrath 'in

the style of an Italian bully,' as the record has it: and the

term is not too strong; for he would not allow Lord Whitworth

to speak. The first impression was, that it was his design to

terrify England: but Talleyrand's anxiety to smooth matters

afterwards, and to explain away what his master had said,

shows that the ebullition was one of mere temper. And this was

presently confirmed by his behaviour to Lord Whitworth at a

levee, when the saloon was crowded with foreign ambassadors

and their suites, as well as with French courtiers. The whole

scene was set forth in the newspapers of every country.

Napoleon walked about, transported with passion: asked Lord

Whitworth if he did not know that a terrible storm had arisen

between the two governments; declared that England was a

violator of treaties; took to witness the foreigners present

that if England did not immediately surrender Malta, war was

declared; and condescended to appeal to them whether the right

was not on his side; and, when Lord Whitworth would have

replied, silenced him by a gesture, and observed that, Lady

Whitworth being out of health, her native air would be of

service to her; and she should, have it, sooner than she

expected.--After this, there could be little hope of peace in

the most sanguine mind. ... Lord Whitworth left Paris on the

12th of May; and at Dover met General Andreossi, on his way to

Paris. On the 16th, it became publicly known that war was

declared: and on the same day Admiral Cornwallis received

telegraphic orders which caused him to appear before Brest on

the 18th. On the 17th, an Order in Council, directing

reprisals, was issued; and with it the proclamation of an

embargo being laid on all French and Dutch ships in British

ports. ... On the next day, May 18th, 1803, the Declaration of

War was laid before parliament, and the feverish state, called

peace, which had lasted for one year and sixteen days, passed

into one of open hostility. The reason why the vessels of the

Dutch were to be seized with those of the French was that

Napoleon had filled Holland with French troops, and was

virtually master of the country. ... In July, the militia

force amounted to 173,000 men; and the deficiency was in

officers to command them. The minister proposed, in addition

to all the forces actually in existence, the formation of an

army of reserve, amounting to 50,000 men: and this was

presently agreed to. There was little that the parliament and

people of England would not have agreed to at this moment,

under the provocation of Napoleon's treatment of the English

in France. His first act was to order the detention, as

prisoners of war, of all the English then in the country,

between the ages of 18 and 60. The exasperation caused by this

cruel measure was all that he could have expected or desired.

Many were the young men thus doomed to lose, in wearing

expectation or despair, twelve of the best years of their

lives, cut off from family, profession, marriage,

citizenship--everything that young men most value. Many were

the parents separated for twelve long years from the young

creatures at home, whom they had left for a mere pleasure

trip: and many were the grey-haired fathers and mothers at

home who went down to the grave during those twelve years

without another sight of the son or daughter who was pining in

some small provincial town in France, without natural

occupation, and well nigh without hope. In June, the English

in Rouen were removed to the neighbourhood of Amiens; those in

Calais to, Lisle; those at Brussels to Valenciennes. Before

the month was out, all the English in Italy and Switzerland,

in addition to those in Holland, were made prisoners. How many

the whole amounted to does not appear to have been

ascertained: but  it was believed at the time that there were

11,000 in France, and 1,800 in Holland. The first pretence was

that these travellers were detained as hostages for the prizes

which Napoleon accused us of taking before the regular

declaration of war; but when proposals were made for an

exchange, he sent a savage answer that he would keep his

prisoners till the end of the war. It is difficult to conceive

how there could be two opinions about the nature of the man

after this act. The naval captures of which Napoleon

complained, as made prior to a declaration of war, were of two

merchant Ships taken by English frigates: and we find notices

of such being brought into port on the 25th of May. Whether

they were captured before the 18th, there is no record that we

can find. ... On the sea, our successes seemed a matter of

course; but meantime a blow was struck at Great Britain, and

especially at her sovereign, which proved that the national

exasperation against France was even yet capable of increase.

{1340}

On the breaking out of the war; George III. issued a

proclamation, as Elector of Hanover, declaring to Germany that

the Germanic states had nothing to fear in regard to the new

hostilities, as he was entering into war as King of Great

Britain, and not as Elector of Hanover. Whatever military

preparations were going forward in Hanover were merely of a

defensive character. Napoleon, however, set such defence at

defiance. On the 13th of June, news arrived of the total

surrender of Hanover to the French. ... Government resolved to

declare the Elbe and the Weser, and all the ports of Western

Germany, in a state of blockade; as the French had now command

over all the intermediate rivers. It was calculated that this

would annoy and injure Napoleon effectually, as it would cause

the ruin of foreign merchants trading from the whole series of

ports. English merchants would suffer deeply; but it was

calculated that English capital and stock would hold out

longer than those of foreign merchants. Thus was the sickening

process of private ruin, as a check to public aggression,

entered upon, before war had been declared a month."

H. Martineau,

History of England, 1800-1815,

book l, chapter 4.

ALSO IN:

M. de Bourrienne,

Private Memoirs of Napoleon,

volume 2, chapters 28-30.

Sir J. Mackintosh,

Speech in Defense of Jean Peltier

(Miscellaneous Works).

J. Ashton,

English Caricature and Satire on Napoleon I.,

volume 1, chapters 24-87.

FRANCE: A. D. 1803 (April-May).

Sale or Louisiana to the United States of America.

See LOUISIANA: A. D. 1798-1808;

and UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1803.

FRANCE: A. D. 1803.

Loss of San Domingo, or Hayti.

See HAYTI: A. D. 1682-1803.

FRANCE: A. D. 1804-1805.

Royalist plots and Bonaparte's use or them.

The abduction and execution or the Duc d'Enghien.

The First Consul becomes Emperor.

His coronation by the Pope.

His acceptance of the crown or Italy.

Annexation of Genoa to France.

The rupture with England furnished Bonaparte "with the

occasion of throwing off the last disguise and openly

restoring monarchy. It was a step which required all his

audacity and cunning. He had crushed Jacobinism, but two great

parties remained. There was first the more moderate

republicanism, which might be called Girondism, and was widely

spread among all classes and particularly in the army.

Secondly, there was the old royalism, which after many years

of helpless weakness had revived since Brumaire. These two

parties, though hostile to each other, were forced into a sort

of alliance by the new attitude of Bonaparte, who was hurrying

France at once into a new revolution at home and into an abyss

of war abroad. England, too, after the rupture, favoured the

efforts of these parties. Royalism from England began to open

communications with moderate republicanism in France. Pichegru

acted for the former, and the great representative of the

latter was Moreau, who had helped to make Brumaire in the

tacit expectation probably of rising to the consulate in due

course when Bonaparte's term should have expired, and was

therefore hurt in his personal claims as well as in his

republican principles. Bonaparte watched the movement through

his ubiquitous police, and with characteristic strategy

determined not merely to defeat it but to make it his

stepping-stone to monarchy. He would ruin Moreau by fastening

on him the stigma of royalism; he would persuade France to

make him emperor in order to keep out the Bourbons. He

achieved this with the peculiar mastery which he always showed

in villainous intrigue. ... Pichegru [who had returned

secretly to France from England some time in January, 1804]

brought with him wilder partisans, such as Georges [Cadoudal]

the Chouan. No doubt Moreau would gladly have seen and gladly

have helped an insurrection against Bonaparte. ... But

Bonaparte succeeded in associating him with royalist schemes

and with schemes of assassination. Controlling the Senate, he

was able to suppress the jury; controlling every avenue of

publicity, he was able to suppress opinion; and the army,

Moreau's fortress, was won through its hatred of royalism. In

this way Bonaparte's last personal rival was removed. There

remained the royalists, and Bonaparte hoped to seize their

leader, the Comte d'Artois, who was expected, as the police

knew, soon to join Pichegru and Georges at Paris. What

Bonaparte would have done with him we may judge from the

course he took when the Comte did not come. On March 15, 1804,

the Duc d'Enghien, grandson of the Prince de Condé, residing

at Ettenheim in Baden, was seized at midnight by a party of

dragoons, brought to Paris, where he arrived on the 20th,

confined in the castle of Vincennes, brought before a military

commission at two o'clock the next morning, asked whether he had

not borne arms against the republic, which he acknowledged

himself to have done, conducted to a staircase above the moat,

and there shot and buried in the moat. ... That the Due

d'Enghien was innocent of the conspiracy, was nothing to the

purpose; the act was political, not judicial; accordingly he

was not even charged with complicity. That the execution would

strike horror into the cabinets, and perhaps bring about a new

Coalition, belonged to a class of considerations which at this

time Bonaparte systematically disregarded. This affair led

immediately to the thought of giving heredity to Bonaparte's

power. The thought seems to have commended itself irresistibly

even to strong republicans and to those who were most shocked

by the murder. To make Bonaparte's position more secure seemed

the only way of averting a new Reign of Terror or new

convulsions. He himself felt some embarrassment. Like

Cromwell, he was afraid of the republicanism of the army, and

heredity pure and simple brought him face to face with the

question of divorcing Josephine. To propitiate the army, he

chose from the titles suggested to him--consul, stadtholder,

&c.--that of emperor, undoubtedly the most accurate, and

having a sufficiently military sound. The other difficulty

after much furious dissension between the two families of

Bonaparte and Beauharnais, was evaded by giving Napoleon

himself (but none of his successors) a power of adoption, and

fixing the succession, in default of a direct heir, natural or

adoptive, first in Joseph and his descendants, then in Louis

and his descendants. Except abstaining from the regal title,

no attempt was made to conceal the abolition of republicanism.

... The change was made by the constituent power of the

Senate, and the Senatus-Consulte is dated May 18, 1804. The

title of Emperor had an ulterior meaning.

{1341}

Adopted at the moment when Napoleon began to feel himself

master both in Italy and Germany, it revived the memory of

Charles the Great. To himself it was the more satisfactory on

that account, and, strange to say, it gave satisfaction rather

than offence to the Head of the Holy Roman Empire, Francis II.

Since Joseph, the Habsburg Emperors had been tired of their

title, which, being elective, was precarious. They were

desirous of becoming hereditary emperors in Austria, and they

now took this title (though without as yet giving up the

other). Francis II. bartered his acknowledgement of Napoleon's

new title against Napoleon's acknowledgement of his own. It

required some impudence to condemn Moreau for royalism at the

very moment that his rival was re-establishing monarchy. Yet

his trial began on May 15th. The death of Pichegru, nominally

by suicide, on April 6th, had already furnished the rising

sultanism with its first dark mystery. Moreau was condemned to

two years' imprisonment, but was allowed to retire to the

United States."

J. R. Seeley,

Short History of Napoleon I.,

chapter 8, section 4.

C. C. Fauriel,

The Last Days of the Consulate.

Chancellor Pasquier, in his Memoirs, narrates the

circumstances of the seizure of the Duc d'Enghien at

considerable length, and says: "This is what really occurred,

according to what I have been told by those better situated to

know. A council was held on the 9th of March: It is almost

certain that previous to this council, which was a kind of

official affair, a more secret one had been held at the house

of Joseph Bonaparte. At the first council, to which were

convened only a few persons, all on a footing of family

intimacy, it was discussed by order of the First Consul, what

would be proper to do with a prince of the House of Bourbon,

in case one should have him in one's power, and the decision

reached was that if he was captured on French territory, one

had the right to take his life, but not otherwise. At the

council held on the 9th, and which was composed of the three

Consuls, the Chief Justice, the Minister of Foreign Affairs,

and M. Fouché, although the latter had not then resumed the

post of Minister of Police, the two men who expressed contrary

opinions were M. de Talleyrand and M. de Cambacérès. M. de

Talleyrand declared that the prince should be sent to his

death. M. Lebrun, the Third Consul, contented himself with

saying that such an event would have a terrible echo

throughout the world. M. de Cambacérès contended earnestly

that it would be sufficient to hold the prince as hostage for

the safety of the First Consul. The latter sided with M. de

Talleyrand, whose counsels then prevailed. The discussion was

a heated one, and when the meeting of the council was over, M.

de Cambacérès thought it his duty to make a last attempt, so

he followed Bonaparte into his study, and laid before him with

perhaps more strength than might be expected from his

character, the consequences of the deed he was about to

perpetrate, and the universal horror it would excite. ... He

spoke in vain. In the privacy of his study, Bonaparte

expressed himself even with greater violence than he had done

at the council. He answered that the death of the duke would

seem to the world but a just reprisal for what was being

attempted against him personally; that it was necessary to

teach the House of Bourbon that the blows struck with its

sanction were liable to recoil on its own head; that this was

the only way of compelling it to abstain from its dastardly

schemes, and lastly, that matters had gone too far to retrace

one's steps. M. de Talleyrand supplied this last argument."

Chancellor Pasquier,

Memoirs,

volume 1, pages 190-191.

"Bonaparte's accession to the Empire was proclaimed with the

greatest pomp, without waiting to inquire whether the people

approved of his promotion or otherwise. The proclamation was

coldly received, even by the populace, and excited little

enthusiasm. ... The Emperor was recognised by the soldiery

with more warmth. He visited the encampments at Boulogne,"

and, afterwards, "accompanied with his Empress, who bore her

honours both gracefully and meekly, visited Aix-la-Chapelle

and the frontiers of Germany. They received the

congratulations of all the powers of Europe, excepting

England, Russia, and Sweden, upon their new exaltation. ...

But the most splendid and public recognition of his new rank

was yet to be made, by the formal act of coronation, which,

therefore, Napoleon determined should take place with

circumstances of solemnity which had been beyond the reach of

any temporal prince, however powerful, for many ages. ...

Though Charlemagne had repaired to Rome to receive

inauguration from the hands of the Pontiff of that day,

Napoleon resolved that he who now owned the proud, and in

Protestant eyes profane, title of Vicar of Christ, should

travel to France to perform the coronation. ... The Pope, and

the cardinals whom he consulted, implored the illumination of

Heaven upon their councils; but it was the stern voice of

necessity which assured them that, except at the risk of

dividing the Church by a schism, they could not refuse to

comply with Buonaparte's requisition. The Pope left Rome on

the 5th November. ... On the 2d December [1804] the coronation

took place in the ancient cathedral of Notre Dame. ... The

crown having been blessed by the Pope, Napoleon took it from

the altar with his own hands, and placed it on his brows. He

then put the diadem on the head of his Empress, as if

determined to show that his authority was the child of his own

actions. ... The northern states of Italy had followed the

example of France through all her change of models. ... The

authorities of the Italian (late Cisalpine) Republic, had a

prescient guess of what was expected of them. A deputation

appeared at Paris to declare the absolute necessity which they

felt, that their government should assume a monarchical and

hereditary form. On the 17th March [1805], they obtained an

audience of the Emperor, to whom they intimated the unanimous

desire of their countrymen that Napoleon, founder of the

Italian Republic, should be monarch of the Italian Kingdom.

... Buonaparte granted the petition of the Italian States, and

... upon the 11th April, ... with his Empress, set off to go

through the form of coronation as King of Italy. ... The new

kingdom was, in all respects, modeled on the same plan with

the French Empire. An order, called 'of the Iron Crown,' was

established on the footing of that of the Legion of Honour. A

large French force was taken into Italian pay, and Eugene

Beauharnais, the son of Josephine by her former marriage, who

enjoyed and merited the confidence of his father-in-law, was

created viceroy, and appointed to represent, in that

character, the dignity of Napoleon. Napoleon did not leave

Italy without further extension of his empire. Genoa, once the

proud and the powerful, resigned her independence, and her

Doge presented to the Emperor a request that the Ligurian

Republic ... should be considered in future as a part of the

French nation."

Sir W. Scott,

Life of Napoleon,

chapter 48 (Paris edition, 1828).

{1342}

"Genoa and the Ligurian Republic were incorporated with

France, June 3d 1805. ... The Duchies of Parma and Piacenza,

which, together with Guastalla, had been already seized, were

declared dependencies of the French Empire by an imperial

decree of July 21st. The principality of Piombino was bestowed

on Napoleon's sister Eliza, wife of the Senator Bacciocchi,

but on conditions which retained it under the Emperor's

suzerainty: and the little state was increased by the addition

of the Republic of Lucca."

T. H. Dyer,

History of Modern Europe,

book 1, chapter 11 (volume 4).

ALSO IN:

C. Botta,

Italy during the Consulate and Empire of Napoleon,

chapters 3-4.

Memoirs dictated by Napoleon to his

Generals at St. Helena,

volume 6, pages 219-225.

J. Fouché,

Memoirs,

pages 260-274.

Count Miot de Melito,

Memoirs,

chapters 16-17.

W. Hazlitt,

Life of Napoleon,

chapters 38-34 (volume 2).

Madame de Rémusat,

Memoirs,

book 1, chapters 4-10 (volume 1).

P. Lanfrey,

History of Napoleon,

volume 2, chapters 9-10.

M. de Bourrienne,

Private Memoirs of Napoleon,

volume 3, chapters 1-12.

FRANCE: A. D. 1805 (January-April).

The Third European Coalition.

"In England Pitt returned to office in May, 1804, and this in

itself was an evil omen for France. He enjoyed the confidence,

not only of his own nation but of Europe, and he at once set

to work to resume the threads of that coalition of which

England had formerly directed the resources. Alexander I. of

Russia had begun to see through the designs of Napoleon; he

found that he had been duped in the joint mediation in

Germany, he resented the occupation of Hanover and he ordered

his court to put on mourning for the duke of Enghien. Before

long he broke off diplomatic relations with France (September

1804), and a Russian war was now only a question of time.

Austria was the power most closely affected by Napoleon's

assumption of the imperial title. ... While hastening to

acknowledge Napoleon, Austria was busied in military

preparations and began to resume its old connection with

England. Prussia was the power on which France was accustomed

to rely with implicit confidence. But the occupation of

Hanover and the interference with the commerce of the Elbe had

weakened Frederick William III.'s belief in the advantages of

a neutral policy, and, though he could not make up his mind to

definite action, he began to open negotiations with Russia in

view of a rupture with France. The fluctuations of Prussian

policy may be followed in the alternating influence of the two

ministers of foreign affairs, Haugwitz and Hardenberg.

Meanwhile Napoleon, ignorant or reckless of the growing

hostility of the great powers, continued his aggressions at

the expense of the lesser states. ... These acts gave the

final impulse to the hostile powers, and before Napoleon

quitted Italy the Coalition had been formed. On the 11th of

April, 1805, a final treaty was signed between Russia and

England. The two powers pledged themselves to form an European

league against France, to conclude no peace without mutual

consent, to settle disputed points in a congress at the end of

the war, and to form a federal tribunal for the maintenance of

the system which should, then be established. The immediate

objects of the allies were the abolition of French rule in

Italy, Holland, Switzerland, and Hanover; the restoration of

Piedmont to the king of Sardinia; the protection of Naples;

and the erection of a permanent barrier against France by the

union of Holland and Belgium under the House of Orange. The

coalition was at once joined by Gustavus IV. of Sweden, who

inherited his father's devotion to the cause of legitimate

monarchy, and who hoped to recover power in Pomerania.

Austria, terrified for its Italian possessions by Bonaparte's

evident intention to subdue the whole peninsula, was driven

into the league. Prussia, in spite of the attraction of

recovering honour and independence, refused to listen to the

solicitations of England and Russia, and adhered to its feeble

neutrality. Of the other German states Bavaria, Baden, and

Wurtemberg were allies of France. As far as effective

operations were concerned, the coalition consisted only of

Austria and Russia. Sweden and Naples, which had joined

secretly, could not make efforts on a great scale, and England

was as yet content with providing subsidies and the invaluable

services of its fleet. It was arranged that, one Austrian army

under the archduke Charles should invade Lombardy, while Mack,

with a second army and the aid of Russia, should occupy

Bavaria and advance upon the Rhine."

R. Lodge,

History of Modern Europe,

chapter 24, sections 13-15.

ALSO IN:

Sir A. Alison,

History of Europe, 1789-1815,

chapter 39 (volume 9).

FRANCE: A. D. 1805 (March-December).

Napoleon's plans and preparations for the invasion of England.

Nelson's long pursuit of the French fleets.

His victory and death at Trafalgar.

Napoleon's rapid march to the Danube.

Capitulation of Mack at Ulm.

The French in Vienna.

The great battle of Austerlitz.

"While the coalition was forming, and Napoleon seemed wantonly

to be insulting Europe and ignoring the danger of exciting

fresh enemies, he was in fact urging on with all rapidity his

schemes for the invasion of England, which he probably hoped

might be so successful as to paralyse all action on the part

of the European powers. The constantly repeated

representations of his naval officers had forced him, much

against his will, to believe that his descent upon England

would be impracticable unless secured by the presence of his

fleet. In spite of the general voice of those who knew the

condition of the French navy, he determined to act with his

fleet on the same principles as he would have acted with his

army; a gigantic combination of various squadrons was to be

effected, and a fleet great enough to destroy all hope of

opposition to sweep the Channel. For this purpose the 18 ships

of the line at Brest under Admiral Gantheaume, the squadron at

Rochefort under Villeneuve, and the Toulon fleet under

Latouche-Tréville, were to unite. The last mentioned admiral

was intrusted with the chief command. Sailing up the coast of

France, he was to liberate from their blockade the squadrons

of Rochefort and Brest, and with their combined fleets appear

before Boulogne. But Latouche-Tréville died, and Napoleon

intrusted his plans to Villeneuve.

{1343}

Those plans, all of them arranged without regard to the bad

condition of the French ships, or to the uncertainty of the

weather, were frequently changed; at one time Villeneuve from

Toulon, and Missiessy, his successor, at Rochefort, were to

proceed to the West Indies, drawing the English fleet thither;

then Gantheaume was to appear from Brest, throw troops into

Ireland, and thus cover the flotilla. At another time, all the

fleets were to assemble at the West Indies, and, joining with

the Spanish fleet at Ferrol, appear in the Straits of Calais.

To complete this last measure Villeneuve set sail from Toulon

on the 30th of March 1805, joined Gravina at Cadiz, and

reached Martinique on the 13th of May with 20 ships of the

line, and 7 frigates. His voyage was so slow that Missiessy

had returned from the West Indies to France, and the junction

failed. In hot pursuit of Villeneuve, Nelson, who had at

length found out his destination, had hurried. At Martinique

Gantheaume, with the Brest fleet, should have joined

Villeneuve; unfortunately for him, Admiral Cornwallis

blockaded his fleet. Villeneuve therefore had to return to

Europe alone, sailing for Ferrol to pick up a squadron of 15

ships. He was then, at the head of 35 ships, ordered to appear

before Brest, liberate Gantheaume, and appear in the Channel.

Back again in pursuit of him Nelson sailed, but supposed that

he would return to the Mediterranean and not to Ferrol; he

therefore again missed him; but as he had found means to

inform the English Government that Villeneuve was returning to

Europe, Calder, with a fleet of 15 ships, was sent to

intercept him. The fleets encountered off Cape Finisterre

[Northwest corner of Spain]. The French had 27 vessels, Calder

but 18, and after an indecisive battle, in which two Spanish

ships were taken, he was afraid to renew the engagement; and

Villeneuve was thus enabled to reach Ferrol in safety.

However, all the operations towards concentration had led to

absolutely nothing, and the English fleets, which the

movements towards the West Indies were to have decoyed from

the Channel, were either still off the coast of France or in

immediate pursuit of the fleet of Villeneuve. Nelson returned

to Gibralter, and as soon as he found out where Villeneuve

was, he joined his fleet to that of Cornwallis before Brest,

and himself returned to England. ... Meanwhile Villeneuve had

not been able to get ready for sea till the 11th of August.

... He was afraid to venture northwards, and with the full

approbation of his Spanish colleague Gravina, determined to

avail himself of a last alternative which Napoleon had

suggested, and sailed to Cadiz. This was a fatal blow to the

gigantic schemes of Napoleon. Up till the 22nd of August he

still believed that Villeneuve would make his appearance, and

in fact wrote to him that day at Brest, closing his letter

with the words, 'England is ours.' As the time for his great

stroke drew near he grew nervously anxious, constantly

watching the Channel for the approach of the fleet, and at

last, when his Minister of Marine, Decrès, told him that the

fleet had gone to Cadiz, he broke forth in bitter wrath

against both his Minister and Villeneuve, whom he accused of

the most shameful weakness. But Napoleon was not a man who let

his success be staked upon one plan alone. Though studiously

hiding from his people the existence of the coalition, and not

scrupling to have recourse to forged letters and fabricated

news for the purpose, he was fully aware of its existence. ...

Without much difficulty, therefore, he at once resigned his

great plans upon England, and directed his army towards the

eastern frontier."

J. F. Bright,

History of England, period 3,

pages 1261-1264.

"In the first days of September, 1805, Napoleon's great army

was in full march across France and Germany, to attain the

Danube. ... The Allies ... had projected four separate and

ill-combined attacks; the first on Hanover and Holland by a

Russian and British force; the second, on Lower Italy by a

similar body; the third, by a great Austrian army on Upper

Italy; and the fourth, by a United Austrian and Russian army,

moving across Southern Germany to the Rhine. ... By this time,

the Austrian Mack had drawn close to the Inn, in order to

compel Bavaria to join the Allies, and was even making his way

to the Iller, but his army was far distant from that of the

Russian chief, Kutusoff, and still further from that of

Buxhöwden, the one in Galicia, the other in Poland. ...

Napoleon had seized this position of affairs, with the

comprehensive knowledge of the theatre of war, and the skill

of arranging armies upon it, in which he has no equals among

modern captains. He opposed Masséna to the Archdukes, with a

much weaker force, confident that his great lieutenant could

hold them in check. He neglected the attacks from the North

Sea, and the South; but he resolved to strike down Mack, in

overwhelming strength, should he advance without his Russian

supports. ... The great mass of the Grand Army had reached the

Main and Rhine by the last week of September. The left wing,

joined by the Bavarian forces, and commanded by Bernadotte and

Marmont, had marched from Hanover and Holland, and was around

Würtzburg; the centre, the corps of Soult, and Davoust, moved

from the channel, was at Spire and Mannheim, and the right

wing, formed of the corps of Ney and Lannes, with the Imperial

Guard, and the horse of Murat, filled the region between

Carlsruhe and Strasburg, the extreme right under Augereau,

which had advanced from Brittany, being still behind but

drawing towards Huningen. By this time Mack was upon the

Iller, holding the fortress of Ulm on the upper Danube, and

extending his forces thence to Memmingen. ... By the first

days of October the great French masses ... were in full march

from the Rhine to the Main, across Würtemberg and the

Franconian plains; and cavalry filled the approaches to the

Black Forest, in order to deceive and perplex Mack. ... The

Danube ere long was reached and crossed, at Donauwörth,

Ingolstadt, and other points; and Napoleon already stood on

the rear of his enemy, interposing between him and Vienna, and

cut him off from the Russians, even now distant. The net was

quickly drawn round the ill-fated Mack. ... By the third week

of October, the Grand Army had encompassed the Austrians on

every side, and Napoleon held his quarry in his grasp. Mack

... had not the heart to strike a desperate stroke, and to

risk a battle; and he capitulated at Ulm on the 19th of

October. Two divisions of his army had contrived to break out;

but one was pursued and nearly destroyed by Murat, and the

other was compelled by Augereau to lay down its arms, as it

was on its way to the hills of the Tyrol. An army of 85,000

men had thus, so to speak, been well-nigh effaced; and not

20,000 had effected their escape. France meanwhile had met a

crushing disaster on the element which England had made her

own.

{1344}

We have seen how Villeneuve had put into Cadiz, afraid to face

the hostile fleets off Brest; and how this had baffled the

project of the descent. Napoleon was indignant with his

ill-fated admiral. ... At a hint of disgrace the susceptible

Frenchman made up his mind, at any risk, to fight. By this

time Nelson had left England, and was off Cadiz with a

powerful fleet; and he actually weakened his force by four

sail-of-the-line, in order to lure his adversary out. On the

20th of October, 1805, the allied fleet was in the open sea;

it had been declared at a council of war, that a lost battle

was almost certain, so bad was the condition of many of the

crews; but Villeneuve was bent on challenging Fate; and almost

courted defeat, in his despair. ... On the morning of the

21st, the allied fleet, 33 war ships, and a number of

frigates, was off Cape Trafalgar [25 miles west of Gibraltar

on the coast of Spain], making for the Straits. ... Nelson

advanced slowly against his doomed enemy, with 27 ships and

their attendant frigates; the famous signal floated from his

mast, 'England expects every man to do his duty'; and, at

about noon, Collingwood pierced Villeneuve's centre; nearly

destroying the Santa Anna with a single broadside. Ere long

Nelson had, broken Villeneuve's line, with the Victory,

causing frightful destruction; and as other British ships came

up by degrees they relieved the leading ships from the

pressure of their foes, and completed the ruin already begun.

At about one, Nelson met his death wound, struck by a shot

from the tops of the Redoutable. ... Pierced through and

through, the shattered allied centre was soon a collection of

captured wrecks. ... Only 11 ships out of 33 escaped; and the

burning Achille, like the Orient at the Nile, added to the

grandeur and horrors of an appalling scene. Villeneuve, who

had fought most honourably in the Bucentaure, was compelled to

strike his flag before the death of Nelson. The van of the

allies that had fled at Trafalgar, was soon afterwards

captured by a British squadron. Though dearly bought by the

death of Nelson, the victory may be compared to Lepanto; and

it blotted France out as a great Power on the ocean; Napoleon

... never tried afterwards to meet England at sea. ... His

success, at this moment, had been so wonderful, that what he

called 'the loss of a few ships at sea,' seemed a trifling and

passing rebuff of fortune. ... He had discomfitted the whole

plan of the Allies; and the failure of the attack on the main

scene of the theatre had caused all the secondary attacks to

fail. ... Napoleon, throwing out detachments to protect his

flanks, had entered Vienna on the 14th of November. ... The

House of Hapsburg and its chief had fled. ... Extraordinary as

his success had been, the position of the Emperor had, in a

few days, become grave. ... Napoleon had not one hundred

thousand men in hand--apart from the bodies that covered his

flanks--to make head against his converging enemies. Always

daring, however, he resolved to attack the Allies before they

could receive aid from Prussia; and he marched from Vienna

towards the close of November; having taken careful

precautions to guard his rear. ... By this time the Allies

were around Olmütz, the Archdukes were not many marches away,

and a Prussian army was nearly ready to move. Had the Russians

and Austrians fallen back from Olmütz and effected their

junction with the Archdukes, they could, therefore, have.

opposed the French with a force more than two-fold in numbers.

... But the folly and presumption which reigned among the young

nobles surrounding the Czar--Alexander was now at the head of

his army--brought on the Coalition deserved punishment, and

pedantry had its part in an immense disaster. The force of

Napoleon appeared small, his natural line of retreat was

exposed, and a theorist in the Austrian camp persuaded the

Czar and the Austrian Emperor, who was at the head of his

troops at Olmütz, to consent to a magnificent plan of

assailing Napoleon by the well-known method of Frederick the

Great, in the Seven Years' War, of turning his right wing, by

an attack made, in the oblique order, in great force, and of

cutting him off from his base at Vienna, and driving him,

routed, into, Bohemia. This grand project on paper, which

involved a march across the front of the hostile army within

reach of the greatest of masters of war, was hailed with

exultation. ... The Allies were soon in full march from

Olmütz, and preparations were made for the decisive movement

in the night of the 1st December, 1805. Napoleon had watched

the reckless false step being made by his foes with unfeigned

delight; 'that army is mine,' he proudly exclaimed. ... The

sun of Austerlitz rose on the 2nd, the light of victory often

invoked by Napoleon. ... The dawn of the winter's day revealed

three large columns, succeeded by a fourth at no great

distance, toiling through a tract of marshes and frozen lakes,

to outflank Napoleon's right on the Goldbach, the allied

centre, on the tableland of Prätzen, immediately before the

French front, having been dangerously weakened by this great

turning movement. The assailants were opposed by a small force

only, under Davoust, one of the best of the marshals. ... Ere

long Napoleon, who, like a beast of prey, had reserved his

strength until it was time to spring, launched Soult in force

against the Russian and Austrian centre, enfeebled by the

detachment against the French right and exposed to the whole

weight of Napoleon's attacks; and Prätzen was stormed after a

fierce struggle, in which Bernadotte gave the required aid to

Soult. The allied centre was thus rent asunder. Lannes

meanwhile had defeated the allied right. ... Napoleon now

turned with terrible energy and in overwhelming strength

against the four columns, that had assailed his right, but had

begun to retreat. His victorious centre was aided by his

right, now set free; the Russians and Austrians were struck

with panic, a horrible scene of destruction followed, the

flying troops were slain or captured in thousands; and

multitudes perished, engulfed in the lakes, the French

artillery shattering their icy surface. The rout was decisive,

complete, and appalling; about 80,000 of the Allies were

engaged; they lost all their guns and nearly half their

numbers, and the remains of their army were a worthless wreck.

Napoleon had only 60,000 men in the fight. ... The memorable

campaign of 1805 is, perhaps, the grandest of Napoleon's

exploits in war."

W. O'C. Morris,

Napoleon,

chapter 7.

ALSO IN:

A. Thiers,

History of the Consulate and Empire,

book 22 (volume 2).

R. Southey,

Life of Nelson,

chapters 8-9 (volume 2).

W. C. Russell,

Nelson and the Naval Supremacy of England,

chapters 17-20.

Lord Nelson,

Dispatches and Letters,

volumes 6-7.

Capt. E. J. de la Gravière,

Sketches of the last Naval War,

part 6 (volume 2).

C. Adams,

Great Campaigns in Europe, from 1796 to 1870,

chapter 3.

Baron de Marbot,

Memoirs,

volume 1, chapters 20-23.

A. T. Mahan,

Influences of Sea Power upon the French Revolution,

chapters 15-16 (volume 2).

{1345}

FRANCE: A. D. 1805-1806 (December-August).

The Peace of Presburg.

Humiliation of Austria.

Formation of the Confederation of the Rhine.

Extinction of the Holy Roman Empire.

The goading of Prussia to war.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1805-1806;

and 1806 (JANUARY-AUGUST).

FRANCE: A. D. 1805-1806 (December-September).

Dethronement of the dynasty of Naples.

Bestowal of the crown upon Joseph Bonaparte.

The treaty of Presburg was "immediately followed by a measure

hitherto unprecedented in European history--the pronouncing a

sentence of dethronement against an independent, sovereign,

for no other cause than his having contemplated hostilities

against the French Emperor; On the 26th December [1805] a

menacing proclamation proceeded from Presburg ... which

evidently bore marks of Napoleon's composition, against the

house of Naples. The conqueror announced that Marshal St. Cyr

would advance by rapid strides to Naples, 'to punish the

treason of a criminal queen, and precipitate her from the

throne. We have pardoned that infatuated king, who thrice has

done everything to ruin himself. Shall we pardon him a fourth

time? ... No! The dynasty of Naples has ceased to reign--its

existence is incompatible with the repose of Europe and the

honour of my crown.' ... The ominous announcement, made from

the depths of Moravia, that the dynasty of Naples had ceased

to reign, was not long allowed to remain a dead letter.

Massena was busily employed, in January, in collecting his

forces in the centre of Italy, and before the end of that

month 50,000 men, under the command of Joseph Buonaparte, had

crossed the Pontifical States and entered the Neapolitan

territory in three columns, which marched on Gaeta, Capua, and

Itri. Resistance was impossible; the feeble Russian and

English forces which had disembarked to support the Italian

levies, finding the whole weight of the war likely to be

directed against them, withdrew to Sicily; the court,

thunderstruck by the menacing proclamation of 27th December,

speedily followed their example. ... In vain the intrepid

Queen Caroline, who still remained at Naples, armed the

lazzaroni, and sought to infuse into the troops a portion of

her own indomitable courage; she was seconded by none; Capua

opened its gates; Gaeta was invested; the Campagna filled with

the invaders; she, vanquished but not subdued, compelled to

yield to necessity, followed her timid consort to Sicily; and,

on the 15th February, Naples beheld its future sovereign,

Joseph Buonaparte, enter its walls. ... During the first

tumult of invasion, the peasantry of Calabria ... submitted to

the enemy. ... But the protraction of the siege of Gaeta,

which occupied Massena with the principal army of the French,

gave them time to recover from their consternation. ... A

general insurrection took place in the beginning of March, and

the peasants stood firm in more than one position; but they

were unable to withstand the shock of the veterans of France,

and in a decisive action in the plain of Campo-Tenese their

tumultuary levies, though 15,000 strong, were entirely

dispersed. The victorious Reynier penetrated even to Reggio,

and the standards of Napoleon waved on its towers, in sight of

the English videtts on the shores of Sicily. When hostilities

had subsided, Joseph repaired in person to the theatre of war.

... He received at Savigliano, the principal town of the

province, the decree, by which Napoleon created him king of

the two Sicilies. By so doing, however, he was declared not to

lose his contingent right of succession to the throne of

France; but the two crowns were never to be united."

Sir A. Alison,

History of Europe, 1789-1815,

chapter 40, section 150,

and chapter 42, sections 21-23,(volume 9).

"Joseph's tenure of his new dominion was yet incomplete. The

fortress of Gaeta still held out, ... and the British in

Sicily (who had already taken the Isle of Capri, close to the

capital) sent 5,000 men to their aid under Sir John Stuart,

who encountered at Maida (July 6) a French corps of 7.500,

under Reynier. The battle presented one of the rare instances

in which French and British troops have actually crossed

bayonets; but French enthusiasm sank before British

intrepidity, and the enemy were driven from the field with the

loss of half their number. The victory of Maida had a

prodigious moral effect in raising the spirits and

self-confidence of the British soldiery; but its immediate

results were less considerable. The French were indeed driven

from Calabria, but the fall of Gaeta (July 18th), after the

loss of its brave governor, the Prince of Hesse-Philipsthal,

released the main army under Massena: the British exposed to

be attacked by overwhelming numbers, re-embarked (September 5)

for Palermo, and the Calabrian insurrection was suppressed with

great bloodshed. But an amnesty was at length ... published by

Joseph, who devoted himself with great zeal and admirable

judgment to heal the wounds of his distracted kingdom."

Epitome of Alison's History of Europe,

section 398.

ALSO IN:

P. Colletta,

History of the Kingdom of Naples,

book 5, chapter 4, and book 6, chapters 1-3.

C. Botta,

Italy during the Consulate and Empire of Napoleon,

chapter 4.

FRANCE: A. D. 1806 (January-October).

Napoleon's triumphant return to Paris.

Death of Pitt.

Peace negotiations with England.

King making and prince making by the Corsican Cæsar.

ON the 27th of December, the day after the signing of the

Treaty of Presburg, Napoleon left Vienna for Paris. "En route

for Paris he remained a week at Munich to be present at the

marriage of Eugene Beauharnais to the Princess Augusta,

daughter of the King of Bavaria. Josephine joined him, and the

whole time was passed in fêtes and rejoicings. On this

occasion he proclaimed Eugene his adopted son, and, in default

of issue of his own, his successor in the kingdom of Italy.

Accompanied by Josephine, Napoleon re-entered Paris on the

26th of January, 1806, amidst the most enthusiastic

acclamations. The national vanity was raised to the highest

pitch by the glory and extent of territory he had acquired.

The Senate at a solemn audience besought him to accept the

title of 'the Great'; and public rejoicings lasting many days

attested his popularity. An important political event in

England opened new views of security and peace to the empire,

William Pitt, the implacable enemy of the Revolution, had died

on the 23rd of January, at the early age of 47; and the

Government was entrusted to the hands of his great opponent,

Charles James Fox.

{1346}

The disastrous results of the war of which Pitt had been the

mainstay probably hastened his death. After the capitulation

of Ulm he never rallied. The well-known friendship of Fox for

Napoleon, added to his avowed principles, afforded the

strongest hopes that England and France were at length

destined to cement the peace of the world by entering into

friendly relations. Aided by Talleyrand, who earnestly

counselled peace, Napoleon made overtures to the English

Government through Lord Yarmouth, who was among the détenus.

He offered to yield the long-contested point of

Malta--consenting to the continued possession of that island,

the Cape of Good Hope, and other conquests in the East and

West Indies by Great Britain, and proposing generally that the

treaty should be conducted on the uti possidetis principle:

that is, allowing each party to retain whatever it had

acquired in the course of the war. Turkey acknowledged

Napoleon as Emperor and entered into amicable relations with

the French nation; and what was still more important, Russia

signed a treaty of peace in July, influenced by the pacific

inclinations of the English Minister. Napoleon resolved to

surround his throne with an order of nobles, and to place

members of his family on the thrones of the conquered

countries adjoining France in order that they might become

parts of his system and co-operate in his plans. Two decrees

of the 31st of March declared Joseph Bonaparte King of Naples,

and Murat Grand Duke of Berg and Cleves. Louis Bonaparte was

made King of Holland a few months afterwards, and Jerome King

of Westphalia in the following year. The Princess Pauline

received the principality of Guastalla, and Talleyrand,

Bernadotte, and Berthier those of Benevento, Ponte-Corvo, and

Neufchâtel. Fifteen dukedoms were created and bestowed on the

most distinguished statesmen and generals of the empire, each

with an income amounting to a fifteenth part of the revenue of

the province attached to it. These became grand fiefs of the

empire. Cambacérès and Lebrun were made Dukes of Parma and

Placenza; Savary, Duke of Rovigo; Junot, of Abrantes; Lannes,

of Montebello, &c. The manners of some of these Republican

soldiers were ill adapted to courtly forms, and afforded

amusement to the members of the ancient and legitimate order.

... Napoleon's desire to conciliate and form alliances with

the established dynasties and aristocracies of Europe kept

pace with his daring encroachments on their hitherto exclusive

dignity. Besides the marriage of Eugene Beauharnais to a

Princess of Bavaria, an alliance was concluded between the

hereditary Prince of Baden and Mademoiselle Stephanie

Beauharnais, a niece of the Empress. The old French noblesse

were also encouraged to appear at the Tuileries. During the

Emperor's visit at Munich the Republican calendar was

abolished and the usual mode of computing time restored in

France. ... The negotiations with England went on tardily, and

the news of Fox's alarming state of health excited the gravest

fears in the French Government. Lord Lauderdale arrived in

Paris, on the part of England, in the month of August; but

difficulties were continually started, and before anything was

decided the death of Fox gave the finishing blow to all hope

of peace. Lord Lauderdale demanded his passports and left

Paris in October. Napoleon wished to add Sicily to his

brother's new kingdom of Naples; but British ships were able

to protect the King and Queen of Naples in that insular

position, and the English Government refused to desert their

allies on this occasion or to consent to any compensation or

adjustment offered. On this point principally turned the

failure of the attempt at peace as far as can be discovered

from the account of the negotiations."

R. H. Horne,

History of Napoleon,

chapter 26.

ALSO IN:

Madame de Rémusat,

Memoirs,

chapters 16-21 (volume 2).

Duke of Rovigo,

Memoirs,

volume 1, part 2, chapters 18-21.

P. Lanfrey,

History of Napoleon,

volume 2, chapter 15.

FRANCE: A. D. 1806 (October).

The subjugation of Prussia at Jena.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1806 (OCTOBER).

FRANCE: A. D. 1806-1807.

Napoleon's campaign against the Russians.

Eylau and Friedland.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1806-1807;

and 1807 (FEBRUARY-JUNE).

FRANCE: A.D. 1806-1810.

Commercial warfare with England.

British Orders in Council and Napoleon's Berlin and Milan

Decrees.

The "Continental System."

"As the war advanced, after the Peace of Amiens, the neutrals

became bolder and more aggressive. "American ships were

constantly arriving at Dutch and French ports with sugar,

coffee, and other productions of the French and Spanish West

Indies. And East India goods were imported by them into Spain,

Holland, and France. ... By the rivers and canals of Germany

and Flanders goods were floated into the warehouses of the

enemy, or circulated far the supply of his customers in

neutral countries. ... It was a general complaint, therefore,

that the enemy carried on colonial commerce under the neutral

flag, cheaply as well as safely; that he was enabled not only

to elude British hostilities, but to rival British merchants

and planters in the European markets; that by the same means

the hostile treasuries were filled with a copious stream of

revenue; and that by this licentious use of the neutral flag,

the enemy was enabled to employ his whole military marine for

purposes of offensive war, without being obliged to maintain a

squadron or a ship for the defence of his colonial ports. ...

Such complaints made against neutral states found a powerful

exposition in a work entitled 'War in Disguise and the Frauds

of the Neutral Flag,' supposed to have been written by Mr.

James Stephen, the real author of the orders in Council. The

British Government did not see its way at once to proceed in

the direction of prohibiting to neutral ships the colonial

trade, which they had enjoyed for a considerable time; but the

first step was taken to paralyse the resources of the enemy,

and to restrict the trade of neutrals, by the issue of an

order in Council in May 1806, declaring that all the coasts,

ports, and rivers from the Elbe to Brest should be considered

blockaded, though the only portion of those coasts rigorously

blockaded was that included between the Ostend and the mouth

of the Seine, in the ports of which preparations were made for

the invasion of England. The northern ports of Germany and

Holland were left partly open, and the navigation of the

Baltic altogether free. Napoleon, then in the zenith of his

power, saw, in this order in Council, a fresh act of

wantonness, and he met it by the issue of the Berlin decree of

November 21, 1806. In that document, remarkable for its

boldness and vigour, Napoleon charged England with having set

at nought the dictates of international law, with having made

prisoners of war of private individuals, and with having taken

the crews out of merchant ships.

{1347}

He charged this country with having captured private property

at sea extended to commercial parts the restrictions of

blockade applicable only to fortified places, declared as

blockaded places which were not invested by naval forces, and

abused the right of blockade in order to benefit her own trade

at the expense of the commerce of Continental states. He

asserted the right of combating the enemy with the same arms

used against himself, especially when such enemy ignored all

ideas of justice and every liberal sentiment which

civilisation imposes. He announced his resolution to apply to

England the same usages which she had established in her

maritime legislation. He laid dawn the principles which France

was resolved to act upon until England should recognise that

the rights of war are the same on land as on sea. ... And upon

these premises the decree ordered,

1st, That the British islands should be declared in a state

of blockade.

2nd, That all commerce and correspondence with the British

islands should be prohibited; and that letters addressed to

England or Englishmen, written in the English language,

should be detained and taken.

3rd, That every British subject found in a country occupied

by French troops, or by those of their allies, should be

made a prisoner of war.

4th, That all merchandise and property belonging to British

subjects should be deemed a good prize.

5th, That all commerce in English merchandise should be

prohibited, and that all merchandise belonging to England

or her colonies, and of British manufacture, should be

deemed a good prize. And

6th, That no vessel coming direct from England or her

colonies be allowed to enter any French port, or any port

subject to French authority; and that every vessel which,

by means of a false declaration, should evade such

regulations, should at once be captured.

The British Government lost no time in retaliating against

France far so bald a course; and, on January 7, 1807, an order

in Council was issued, which, after reference to the orders

issued by France, enjoined that no vessel should be allowed to

trade from one enemy's port to another, or from one port to

another of a French ally's coast shut against English vessels;

and ordered the commanders of the ships of war and privateers

to warn every neutral vessel coming from any such port, and

destined to another such port, to discontinue her voyage, and

that any vessel, after being so warned, which should be found

proceeding to another such port should be captured and

considered as lawful prize. This order in Council having

reached Napoleon at Warsaw, he immediately ordered the

confiscation of all English merchandise and colonial produce

found in the Hanseatic Towns. ... But Britain, in return, went

a step further, and, by order in Council of November 11, 1807,

declared all the ports and places of France, and those of her

allies, and of all countries where the English flag was

excluded, even though they were not at war with Britain,

should be placed under the same restrictions for commerce and

navigation as if they were blockaded, and consequently that

ships destined to those ports should be liable to the visit of

British cruisers at a British station, and there subjected to

a tax to be imposed by the British Parliament. Napoleon was at

Milan when this order in Council was issued, and forthwith, on

December 17, the famous decree appeared, by which he imposed

on neutrals just the contrary of what was prescribed to them

by England, and further declared that every vessel, of

whatever nation, that submitted to the order in Council of

November 11, should by that very act become denationalised,

considered as British property, and condemned as a good prize.

The decree placed the British islands in a state of blockade,

and ordered that every ship, of whatever nation, and with

whatever cargo, proceeding from English ports or English

colonies to countries occupied by English troops, or going to

England, should be a good prize. This England answered by the

order in Council of April 26, 1809, which revoked the order of

1807 as regards America, but confirmed the blockade of all the

parts of France and Holland, their colonies and dependencies.

And then France, still further incensed against England,

issued the tariff of Trianon, dated August 5, 1810, completed

by the decree of St. Cloud of September 12, and of

Fontainebleau of October 19, which went the length of ordering

the seizure and burning of all British goods found in France,

Germany, Holland, Italy, Spain, and in every place occupied by

French troops. ... The princes of the Rhenish Confederation

hastened to execute it, same for the purpose of enriching

themselves by the wicked deed, same out of hatred towards the

English, and some to show their devotion towards their master.

From Carlsruhe to Munich, from Cassel to Dresden and Hamburg,

everywhere, bonfires were made of English goods. And so

exacting were the French that when Frankfort exhibited the

least hesitation in carrying out the decree, French troops

were sent to execute the order. By means such as these [known

as the Continental System of Napoleon] the commerce of the

world was greatly deranged, if not destroyed altogether, and

none suffered more from them than England herself."

L. Levi,

History of British Commerce,

part 2, chapter 4

(with appended text of Orders and Decrees).

"The object of the Orders in Council was ... twofold: to

embarrass France and Napoleon by the prohibition of direct

import and export trade, of all external commerce, which for

them could only be carried on by neutrals; and at the same

time to force into the Continent all the British products or

manufactures that it could take. ... The whole system was

then, and has since been, roundly abused as being in no sense

a military measure, but merely a gigantic exhibition of

commercial greed; but this simply begs the question. To win

her fight Great Britain was obliged not only to weaken

Napoleon, but to increase her own strength. The battle between

the sea and the land was to be fought out on Commerce. England

had no army wherewith to meet Napo lean; Napoleon had no navy

to cope with that of his enemy. As in the case of an

impregnable fortress, the only alternative for either of these

contestants was to reduce the other by starvation. On the

common frontier, the coast line, they met in a deadly strife

in which no weapon was drawn. The imperial soldiers were

turned into coast-guards-men to shut out Great Britain from

her markets; the British ships became revenue cutters to

prohibit the trade of France. The neutral carrier, pocketing

his pride, offered his service to either for pay, and the

other then regarded him as taking part in hostilities.

{1348}

The ministry, in the exigencies of debate, betrayed some lack

of definite conviction as to their precise aim. Sometimes the

Orders were justified as a military measure of retaliation;

sometimes the need of supporting British commerce as essential

to her life and to her naval strength was alleged; and, their,

opponents in either case taunted them with inconsistency.

Napoleon, with despotic simplicity, announced clearly his

purpose of ruining England through her trade, and the ministry

really needed no other arguments than his avowals. 'Salus

civitatis suprema lex.' To call the measures of either not

military, is as inaccurate as it would be to call the ancient

practice of circumvallation, unmilitary, because the only

weapon used for it was the spade. ... The Orders in Council

received various modifications, due largely to the importance

to Great Britain of the American market, which absorbed a

great part of her manufactures; but these modifications,

though sensibly lightening the burden upon neutrals and

introducing some changes of form, in no sense departed from

the spirit of the originals. The entire series was finally

withdrawn in June, 1812, but too late to avert the war with

the United States, which was declared in the same month.

Napoleon never revoked his Berlin and Milan decrees, although

by a trick he induced an over-eager President of the United

States to believe that he had done so. ... The true function

of Great Britain in this long struggle can scarcely be

recognized unless there be a clear appreciation of the fact

that a really great national movement, like the French

Revolution, or a really great military power under an

incomparable general, like the French Empire under Napoleon,

is not to be brought to terms by ordinary military successes,

which simply destroy the organized force opposed. ... If the

course of aggression which Bonaparte had inherited from the

Revolution was to continue, there were needed, not the

resources of the Continent only, but of the world. There was

needed also a diminution of ultimate resistance below the

stored-up aggressive strength of France; otherwise, however

procrastinated, the time must come when the latter should

fail. On both these points Great Britain withstood Napoleon.

She shut him off from the world, and by the same act prolonged

her own powers of endurance beyond his power of aggression.

This in the retrospect of history was the function of Great

Britain, in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic period; and that

the successive ministries of Pitt and his followers pursued

the course best fitted, upon the whole, to discharge that

function, is their justification to posterity."

Capt. A. T. Mahan,

The Influence of Sea Power upon the

French Revolution and Empire,

chapters 18-19 (volume 2).

ALSO IN:

H. Adams,

History of the United States,

volume 3, chapters 4 and 16,

and volume 4, chapter 4.

Lord Brougham,

Life and Times, by himself,

chapter 10 (volume 2).

See also:

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1804-1809.

FRANCE: A. D. 1807 (February-September).

The Turkish alliance.

Ineffective attempts of England against Constantinople

and in Egypt.

See TURKS: A. D. 1806-1807.

FRANCE: A. D. 1807 (June-July).

The Treaties of Tilsit with Russia and Prussia.

The latter shorn of half her territory.

Formation of the kingdom of Westphalia.

Secret understandings between Napoleon and the Czar.

See GERMANY. A. D. 1807 (JUNE-JULY).

FRANCE: A. D. 1807 (July-December).

The seeming power and real weakness of Napoleon's empire.

"The dangers ... that lay hid under the new arrangement of the

map of Europe [by, the Treaty of Tilsit], and in the results

of French conquests, were as yet withdrawn from almost every

eye; and the power of Napoleon was now at its height, though

his empire was afterwards somewhat enlarged. ... If England

still stood in arms against it, she was without an avowed ally

on the Continent; and, drawing to itself the great Power of

the North, it appeared to threaten the civilized world with

that universal and settled domination which had not been seen

since the fall of Rome. The Sovereign of France from the

Scheldt to the Pyrenees, and of Italy from the Alps to the

Tiber, Napoleon held under his immediate sway the fairest and

most favored part of the Continent; and yet this was only the

seat and centre of that far-spreading and immense authority.

One of his brothers, Louis, governed the Batavian Republic,

converted into the kingdom of Holland; another, Joseph wore

the old Crown of Naples; and a third, Jerome, sat on the new

throne of Westphalia; and he had reduced Spain to a simple

dependency, while, with Austria humbled and Prussia crushed,

he was supreme in Germany from the Rhine to the Vistula,

through his confederate, subject, or allied States. This

enormous Empire, with its vassal appendages, rested on great

and victorious armies in possession of every point of vantage

from the Niemen to the Adige and the Garonne, and proved as

yet to be irresistible; and as Germany, Holland, Poland, and

Italy swelled the forces of France with large contingents, the

whole fabric of conquest seemed firmly cemented. Nor was the

Empire the mere creation of brute force and the spoil of the

sword; its author endeavoured, in some measure, to consolidate

it through better and more lasting influences. Napoleon,

indeed, suppressed the ideas of 1789 everywhere, but he

introduced his Code and large social reforms into most of the

vassal or allied States; he completed the work of destroying

Feudalism which the Revolution had daringly begun and he left

a permanent mark on the face of Europe, far beyond the limit

of Republican France, in innumerable monuments of material

splendour. ... Nor did the Empire at this time appear more

firmly established abroad than within the limits of the

dominant State which had become mistress of Continental

Europe. The prosperity of the greater part of France was

immense; the finances, fed by the contributions of war, seemed

overflowing and on the increase; and if sounds of discontent

were occasionally heard, they were lost in the universal

acclaim which greeted the author of the national greatness,

and the restorer of social order and welfare. ... In the

splendour and success of the Imperial era, the animosities and

divisions of the past disappeared, and France seemed to form a

united people. If, too, the cost of conquest was great, and

exacted a tribute of French blood, the military power of the

Empire shone with the brightest radiance of martial renown;

Marengo, Austerlitz, Jena, and Friedland could in part console

even thinned households. ...

{1349}

The magnificent public works with which Napoleon adorned this

part of his reign increased this sentiment of national

grandeur; it was now that the Madeleine raised its front, and

the Column, moulded from captured cannon; ... and Paris,

decked out with triumphal arches, with temples of glory, and

with stately streets, put on the aspect of ancient Rome,

gathering into her lap the gorgeous spoils of subjugated and

dependent races. ... Yet, notwithstanding its apparent

strength, this structure of conquest and domination was

essentially weak, and liable to decay. The work of the sword,

and of new-made power, it was in opposition to the nature of

things. ... The material and even social benefits conferred by

the Code, and reform of abuses, could not compensate

vanquished but martial races for the misery and disgrace of

subjection; and, apart from the commercial oppression [of the

Continental System, which destroyed commerce in order to do

injury to England], ... the exasperating pressure of French

officials, the exactions of the victorious French armies, and

the severities of the conscription introduced among them,

provoked discontent in the vassal States on which the yoke of

the Empire weighed. ... The prostration, too, of Austria and

Prussia ... had a direct tendency to make these powers forget

their old discords in common suffering, and to bring to an end

the internal divisions through which France had become supreme

in Germany. ... The triumphant policy of Tilsit contained the

germs of a Coalition against France more formidable than she

had yet experienced. At the same time, the real strength of

the instrument by which Napoleon maintained his power was

being gradually but surely impaired; the imperial armies were

more and more filled with raw conscripts and ill-affected

allies, as their size increased with the extension of his

rule; and the French element in them, on which alone reliance

could be placed in possible defeat, was being dissipated,

exhausted, and wasted. ... Nor was the Empire, within France

itself, free from elements of instability and decline. The

finances, well administered as they were, were so burdened by

the charges of war that they were only sustained by conquest;

and flourishing as their condition seemed, they had been often

cruelly strained of late, and were unable to bear the shock of

disaster. The seaports were beginning to suffer from the

policy adopted to subdue England. ... Meanwhile, the continual

demands on the youth of the nation for never-ceasing wars were

gradually telling on its military power; Napoleon, after

Eylau, had had recourse to the ruinous expedient of taking

beforehand the levies which the conscription raised; and

though complaints were as yet rare, the anticipation of the

resources of France, which filled the armies with feeble boys,

unequal to the hardships of a rude campaign, had been noticed

at home as well as abroad. Nor were the moral ills of this

splendid despotism less certain than its bad material results.

... The inevitable tendency of the Empire, even at the time of

its highest glory, was to lessen manliness and self-reliance,

to fetter and demoralize the human mind, and to weaken

whatever public virtue and mental independence France

possessed; and its authority had already begun to disclose

some of the harsher features of Cæsarian despotism."

W. O'C. Morris,

The French Revolution and First Empire,

chapter 12.

"Notwithstanding so many brilliant and specious appearances,

France did not possess either true prosperity or true

greatness. She was not really prosperous; for not only was

there no feeling of security, a necessary condition for the

welfare of nations, but all the evils produced by so many

years of war still weighed heavily on her. ... She was not

really great, for all her great men had either been banished

or put to silence. She could still point with pride to her

generals and soldiers, although the army, which, if brave as

ever, had gradually sunk from the worship of the country and

liberty to that of glory, and from the worship of glory to

that of riches, was corrupt and degenerate; but where were her

great citizens? Where were her great orators, her great

politicians, her great philosophers, her great writers of

every kind? Where, at least, were their descendants? All who

had shown a spark of genius or pride had been sacrificed for

the benefit of a single man. They had disappeared; some

crushed under the wheels of his chariot, others forced to live

obscurely in some unknown retreat, and, what was graver still,

their race seemed extinct. ... France was imprisoned, as it

were, in an iron net, and the issues were closed to all the

generous and ardent youth that had either intellectual or

moral activity."

P. Lanfrey,

History of Napoleon,

volume 3, chapter 5.

ALSO IN:

H. A. Taine;

The Modern Regime,

book 1, chapter 2,

and book 3, chapter 3 (volume 1).

FRANCE: A. D. 1807 (September-November).

Forcible seizure of the Danish fleet by the English.

Frustration of Napoleon's plans.

Alliance with Denmark.

War with Sweden.

See SCANDINAVIAN STATES: A. D. 1807-1810.

FRANCE: A. D. 1807 (October-November).

French invasion and occupation of Portugal.

Flight of the royal family to Brazil.

Delusive treaty of partition with Spain.

See PORTUGAL: A. D. 1807.

FRANCE: A. D. 1807-1808.

Napoleon's alienation of Talleyrand and others.

Charles Maurice Talleyrand de Perigord, made Bishop of Autun

by King Louis XVI:, in 1789, and Prince of Benevento by

Napoleon, in 1806, had made his first appearance in public

life as one of the clerical deputies in the States-General of

1789, and had taken the popular side. He was the only bishop

having a benefice in France who took the new oath required of

the clergy, and he proposed the appropriation of church

property to the wants of the public treasury. He subsequently

consecrated the first French bishops appointed under the new

constitution, and was excommunicated therefor by the Pope. On

the approach of the Terror he escaped from France and took

refuge first in England, afterwards in the United States. In

1795 he was permitted to return to Paris, and he took an

important part in the revolution of the 18th Brumaire which

overthrew the Directory and made Napoleon First Consul. In the

new government he received the post of Minister of Foreign

Affairs, which he retained under the Empire, until 1807, when

he obtained permission to retire, with the title of

"vice-grand electeur." "M. de Talleyrand, the Empire once

established and fortunate, had attached himself to it with a

sort of enthusiasm. The poesy of victory, and the eloquence of

an exalted imagination, subdued for a time the usual

nonchalance and moderation of his character. He entered into

all Napoleon's plans for reconstituting an empire of the

Francs, and reviving the system of fiefs and feudal

dignitaries. ...

{1350}

'Any other system,' he said, 'but a military one, is in our

circumstances at present impossible. I am, then, for making

that system splendid, and compensating France for her liberty

by her grandeur.' The principality he enjoyed, though it by no

means satisfied him, was a link between him and the policy

under which he held it. ... But he had a strong instinct for

the practical; all governments, according to his theory, might

be made good, except an impossible one. A government depending

on constant success in difficult undertakings, at home and

abroad, was, according to his notions, impossible. This idea,

after the Peace of Tilsit, more or less haunted him. It made

him, in spite of himself, bitter against his chief--bitter at

first, more because he liked him than because he disliked him.

He would still have aided to save the Empire, but he was

irritated because he thought he saw the Empire drifting into a

system which would not admit of its being saved. A sentiment of

this kind, however, is as little likely to be pardoned by one

who is accustomed to consider that his will must be law, as a

sentiment of a more hostile nature. Napoleon began little by

little to hate the man for whom he had felt at one time a

predilection, and if he disliked anyone, he did that which it

is most dangerous to do, and most useless; that is, he wounded

his pride without diminishing his importance. It is true that

M. de Talleyrand never gave any visible sign of being

irritated. But few, whatever the philosophy with which they

forgive an injury, pardon an humiliation; and thus, stronger

and stronger grew by degrees that mutual dissatisfaction which

the one vented at times in furious reproaches, and the other

disguised under a studiously respectful indifference. This

carelessness as to the feelings of those whom it would have

been wiser not to offend, was one of the most fatal errors of

the conqueror. ... He had become at this time equally

indifferent to the hatred and affection of his adherents; and

... fancied that everything depended on his own merits, and

nothing on the merits of his agents. The victory of Wagram,

and the marriage with Marie-Louise, commenced, indeed, a new

era in his history. Fouché was dismissed, though not without

meriting a reprimand for his intrigues; and Talleyrand fell

into unequivocal disgrace, in some degree provoked by his

witticisms; whilst round these two men gathered a quiet and

observant opposition, descending with the clever adventurer to

the lowest classes, and ascending with the dissatisfied noble

to the highest. ... M. de Talleyrand's house then (the only

place, perhaps, open to all persons, where the government of

the day was treated without reserve) became a sort of

'rendezvous' for a circle which replied to a victory by a bon

mot, and confronted the borrowed ceremonies of a new court by

the natural graces and acknowledged fashions of an old one."

Sir H. L. Bulwer,

Historical Characters,

volume 1: Talleyrand, part 4, sections 9-10.

ALSO IN:

C. K. McHarg,

Life of Prince Talleyrand,

chapters 1-13.

Memoirs of Talleyrand,

volume 1.

FRANCE: A. D. 1807-1808.

Napoleon's over-ingenious plottings in Spain

for the theft of the crown.

The popular rising.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1807-1808.

FRANCE: A. D. 1807-1808 (November-February).

Napoleon in Italy.

His arbitrary changes in the Italian constitution.

His annexation of Tuscany to France.

His quarrel with the Pope and seizure of the Papal States.

"Napoleon ... set out for Italy, where great political changes

were in progress. Destined, like all the subordinate thrones

which surrounded the great nation, to share in the rapid

mutations which its government underwent, the kingdom of Italy

was soon called upon to accept a change in its constitution.

Napoleon, in consequence, suppressed the legislative body, and

substituted in its room a Senate, which was exclusively

intrusted with the power of submitting observations to

government on the public wants, and of superintending the

budget and public expenditure. As the members of this Senate

were nominated and paid by government; this last shadow of

representative institutions became a perfect mockery.

Nevertheless Napoleon was received with unbounded adulation by

all the towns of Italy; their deputies, who waited upon him at

Milan, vied with each other in elegant flattery. He was the

Redeemer of France, but the Creator of Italy: they had

supplicated heaven for his safety, for his victories; they

offered him the tribute of their eternal love and fidelity.

Napoleon received their adulation in the most gracious manner;

but he was careful not to lose sight of the main object of his

policy, the consolidation of his dominions, the rendering them

all dependent on his imperial crown, and the fostering of a

military spirit among his subjects. ... From Milan the Emperor

travelled by Verona and Padua to Venice; he there admired the

marble palaces, varied scenery, and gorgeous architecture of

the Queen of the Adriatic, which appeared to extraordinary

advantage amidst illuminations, fireworks, and rejoicings; and

returning to Milan, arranged, with an authoritative hand, all

the affairs of the peninsula. The discontent of Melzi, who

still retained a lingering partiality for the democratic

institutions which he had vainly hoped to see established in

his country, was stifled by the title of Duke of Lodi. Tuscany

was taken from the King of Etruria, on whom Napoleon had

settled it, and united to France by the title of the

department of Taro; while magnificent public works were set on

foot at Milan to dazzle the ardent imagination of the

Italians, and console them for the entire loss of their

national independence and civil liberty. The cathedral was

daily adorned with fresh works of sculpture; its exterior

decorated and restored to its original purity, while thousands

of pinnacles and statues rose on all sides, glittering in

spotless brilliancy in the blue vault of heaven. The Forum of

Buonaparte was rapidly advancing; the beautiful basso-relievos

of the arch of the Simplon already entranced the admiring gaze

of thousands; the roads of the Simplon and Mount Cenis were

kept in the finest order, and daily attracted fresh crowds of

strangers to the Italian plains. But in the midst of all this

external splendour, the remains of which still throw a halo

round the recollection of the French domination in Italy, the

finances of all the states were involved in hopeless

embarrassment, and suffering of the most grinding kind

pervaded all classes of the people. ... The encroachments thus

made on the Italian peninsula were not the only ones which

Napoleon effected, in consequence of the liberty to dispose of

western Europe acquired by him at the treaty of Tilsit. The

territory of the great nation was rounded also on the side of

Germany and Holland.

{1351}

On the 11th of November, the important town and territory of

Flushing were ceded to France by the King of Holland, who

obtained, in return, merely an elusory equivalent in East

Friesland. On the 21st of January following, a decree of the

senate united to the French empire, besides these places, the

important towns of Kehl Cassel, and Wesel, on the right bank

of the Rhine. Shortly after, the French troops, who had

already taken possession of the whole of Tuscany, in virtue of

the resignation forced upon the Queen of Etruria, invaded the

Roman territories, and made themselves masters of the ancient

capital of the world. They immediately occupied the castle of

St. Angelo, and the gates of the city, and entirely

dispossessed the papal troops [see PAPACY: A. D. 1808-1814].

... France now, without disguise, assumed the right of

annexing neutral and independent states to its already

extensive dominions, by no other authority than the decree of

its own legislature."

Sir A. Alison,

History of Europe, 1789-1815,

chapter 51, sections 51-53 (volume 11).

ALSO IN:

C. Botta,

Italy during the Consulate and Empire of Napoleon,

chapter 5.

FRANCE: A. D. 1807-1809.

The American embargo and non-intercourse laws.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1804-1809, and 1808.

FRANCE: A.D. 1808 (May-September).

Bestowal of the Spanish crown on Joseph Bonaparte.

The national revolt.

French reverses.

Flight of Joseph Bonaparte from Madrid.

Landing of British forces in the Peninsula.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1808 (MAY-SEPTEMBER).

FRANCE: A. D. 1808 (September-October).

Imperial conference and Treaty of Erfurt.

The assemblage of kings.

"Napoleon's relations with the Court of Russia, at one time

very formal, became far more amicable, according as Spanish

affairs grew complicated. After the capitulation of Baylen

they became positively affectionate. The Czar was too

clear-sighted not to understand the meaning of this gradation.

He quickly understood that the more difficulties Napoleon

might create for himself in Spain, the more would he be forced

to make concessions to Russia. ... The Russian alliance, which

at Tilsit had only been an arrangement to flatter Napoleon's

ambition, had now become a necessity to him. Each side felt

this; hence the two sovereigns were equally impatient to meet

again; the one to strengthen an alliance so indispensable to

the success of his plans, the other to derive from it all the

promised advantages. It was settled, therefore, that the

desired interview should take place at Erfurt towards the end

of September, 1808. ... The two Emperors met on the 27th of

September, on the road between Weimar and Erfurt. They

embraced each other with that air of perfect cordiality of

which kings alone possess the secret, especially when their

intention is rather to stifle than to embrace. They made their

entry into the town on horseback together, amidst an immense

concourse of people. Napoleon had wished by its magnificence

to render the reception worthy of the illustrious guests who

had agreed to meet at Erfurt. He had sent thither from the

storehouses of the crown, bronzes, porcelain, the richest

hangings, and the most sumptuous furniture. He desired that

the Comédie-Française should heighten the brilliant effects of

these fêtes by performing the chief masterpieces of our stage,

from 'Cinna' down to 'La Mort de César,' before this royal

audience. ... All the natural adherents of Napoleon hastened

to answer his appeal by flocking to Erfurt, for he did not

lose sight of his principal object, and his desire was to

appear before Europe surrounded by a court composed of kings.

In this cortege were to be seen those of Bavaria, of

Wurtemburg, of Saxony, of Westphalia, and Prince William of

Prussia; and beside these stars of first magnitude twinkled

the obscure Pleiades of the Rhenish Confederation. The

reunion, almost exclusively German, was meant to prove to

German idealists the vanity of their dreams. Were not all

present who had any weight in Germany from their power, rank,

or riches? Was it not even hinted that the Emperor of Austria

had implored the favour, without being able to obtain it, of

admission to the conferences of Erfurt? This report was most

improbable. ... The kings of intellect came in their turn to

bow down before Cæsar. Goethe and Wieland were presented to

Napoleon; they appeared at his court, and by their glory

adorned his triumph. German patriotism was severely tried at

Erfurt; but it may be said that of all its humiliations the

one which the Germans most deeply resented was that of

beholding their greatest literary genius decking himself out

with Napoleon's favours [the decoration of the Legion of

Honour, which Goethe accepted]. ... The theatrical effect

which Napoleon had in view in this solemn show at Erfurt

having once been produced, his principal object was attained,

for the political questions which remained for settlement with

Alexander could not raise any serious difficulty. In view of

the immediate and certain session of two such important

provinces as those of Wallachia and Moldavia, the Czar,

without much trouble, renounced that division of the Ottoman

Empire with which he had been tantalised for more than a year.

... He bound himself ... by the Treaty of Erfurt to continue his

co-operation with Napoleon in the war against England (Article

2), and, should it so befall, also against Austria (Article

10); but the affairs in Spain threw every attack upon England

into the background. ... The only very distinct engagement

which the treaty imposed on Alexander was the recognition of

the new order of things established by France in Spain.'"

P. Lanfrey,

History of Napoleon,

volume 3, chapter 10.

ALSO IN:

Prince Talleyrand,

Memoirs,

volume 1.

FRANCE: A. D. 1808-1809.

Reverses in Portugal.

Napoleon in the field.

French victories resumed.

The check at Corunna.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1808-1809 (AUGUST-JANUARY).

FRANCE: A. D. 1809 (January-September).

Reopened war with Austria.

Napoleon's advance to Vienna.

His defeat at Aspern and victory at Wagram.

The Peace of Schönbrunn.

Fresh acquisitions of territory.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1809 (JANUARY-JUNE),

and (JULY-SEPTEMBER).

FRANCE: A. D. 1809 (February-July).

Wellington's check to the French in Spain and Portugal.

His passage of the Douro.

Battle of Talavera.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1809 (FEBRUARY-JULY).

FRANCE: A. D. 1809 (May).

Annexation of the States of the Church.

Removal of the Pope to Savona.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1808-1814.

FRANCE: A. D. 1809 (December).

Withdrawal of the English from Spain into Portugal.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1809 (AUGUST-DECEMBER).

{1352}

FRANCE: A. D. 1810 (February-December).

Annexations of territory to the empire.

Holland, the Hanse Towns, and the Valais in Switzerland.

Other reconstructions of the map of Germany.

"It was not till December 10th 1810 [after the abdication of

King Louis--see NETHERLANDS (HOLLAND): A. D. 1806-1810] that

Holland was united to France by a formal senatus-consulte. By

the first article of the same law, the Hanse Towns [Hamburg,

Bremen, and Lubeck], the Duchy of Lauenburg, and the countries

situated between the North Sea and a line drawn from the

confluence of the Lippe with the Rhine to Halteren, from

Halteren to the Ems above Telgte, from the Ems to the

confluence of the Werra with the Weser, and from Stolzenau on

that river to the Elbe, above the confluence of the Stecknitz,

were at the same time incorporated with the French Empire. ...

The line described would include the northern part of

Westphalia and Hanover, and the duchy of Oldenburg. ... The

Duke of Oldenburg having appealed to the Emperor of Russia,

the head of his house, against this spoliation, Napoleon

offered to compensate him with the town and territory of

Erfurt and the lordship of Blankenheim, which had remained

under French administration since the Peace of Tilsit. But

this offer was at once rejected, and Alexander reserved, by a

formal protest, the rights of his relative. This annexation

was only the complement of other incorporations with the

French Empire during the year 1810. Early in the year, the

Electorate of Hanover had been annexed to the Kingdom of

Westphalia. On February 16th Napoleon had erected the Grand

Duchy of Frankfort, and presented it to the Prince Primate of

the Confederation of the Rhine, with a reversal in favour of

Eugene Beauharnais. On November 12th the Valais in Switzerland

was also annexed to France, with the view of securing the road

over the Simplon. Of all these annexations, that of the Hanse

Towns and the districts on the North Sea was the most

important, and one of the principal causes of the war that

ensued between France and Russia. These annexations were made

without the slightest negociation with any European cabinet,

and it would be superfluous to add, without even a pretext of

right, though the necessity of them from the war with England

was alleged as the motive."

T. H. Dyer,

History of Modern Europe,

book 7, chapter 15, with foot-note (volume 4).

"'The English,' said Napoleon, 'have torn asunder the public

rights of Europe; a new order of things governs the universe.

Fresh guarantees having become necessary to me, the annexation

of the mouths of the Scheldt, of the Meuse, of the Rhine, of

the Ems, of the Weser, and of the Elbe to the Empire appears

to me to be the first and the most important. ... The

annexation of the Valais is the anticipated result of the

immense works that I have been making for the past ten years

in that part of the Alps.' And this was all. To justify such

violence he did not condescend to allege any pretext--to urge

forward opportunities that were too long in developing, or to

make trickery subserve the use of force--he consulted nothing

but his policy; in other words, his good pleasure. To take

possession of a country, it was sufficient that the country

suited him: he said so openly, as the simplest thing in the

world, and thought proper to add that these new usurpations

were but a beginning, the first, according to his own

expression, of those which seemed to him still necessary. And

it was Europe, discontented, humbled, driven wild by the

barbarous follies of the continental system, that he thus

defied, as though he wished at any cost to convince every one

that no amicable arrangement or conciliation was possible; and

that there was but one course for governments or men of spirit

to adopt, that of fighting unto death."

P. Lanfrey,

History of Napoleon,

volume 4, chapter 2.

FRANCE: A. D. 1810-1812.

Continued hostile attitude towards

the United States of America.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1810-1812.

FRANCE: A. D. 1810-1812.

The War in the Peninsula.

Wellington's Lines of Torres Vedras.

French retreat from Portugal.

English advance into Spain.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1809-1810 (OCTOBER-SEPTEMBER),

and 1810-1812.

FRANCE: A. D. 1810-1812.

Napoleon's divorce from Josephine and marriage to

Marie-Louise of Austria.

His rupture with the Czar and

preparations for war with Russia.

"Napoleon now revived the idea which he had often entertained

before, of allying himself with one of the great ruling

families. A compliant senate and a packed ecclesiastical

council pronounced his separation from Josephine Beauharnais,

who retired with a magnificent pension to Malmaison, where she

died. As previous marriage proposals to the Russian court had

not been cordially received, Napoleon now turned to Austria.

The matter was speedily arranged with Metternich, and in

March, 1810, the archduchess Maria Louisa arrived in France as

the emperor's wife. The great importance of the marriage was

that it broke the last links which bound Russia to France, and

thus overthrew the alliance of Tilsit. Alexander had been

exasperated by the addition of Western Galicia to the

grand-duchy of Warsaw, which he regarded as a step towards the

restoration of Poland, and therefore as a breach of the

engagement made at Tilsit. The annexation of Oldenburg, whose

duke was a relative of the Czar, was a distinct personal

insult. Alexander showed his irritation by formally deserting

the continental system, which was more ruinous to Russia than

to almost any other country, and by throwing his ports open to

British commerce (December 1810). ... The chief grievance to

Russia was the apparent intention of Napoleon to do something

for the Poles. The increase of the grand-duchy of Warsaw by

the treaty of Vienna was so annoying to Alexander, that he

began to meditate on the possibility of restoring Poland

himself, and making it a dependent kingdom for the Czar, in

the same way as Napoleon had treated Italy. He even went so

far as to sound the Poles on the subject; but he found that

they had not forgotten the three partitions of their country,

and that their sympathies were rather with France than with

Russia. At the same time Napoleon was convinced that until

Russia was subdued his empire was unsafe, and all hopes of

avenging himself upon England were at an end. All through the

year 1811 it was known that war was inevitable, but neither

power was in a hurry to take the initiative. Meanwhile the

various powers that retained nominal independence had to make

up their minds as to the policy they would pursue. For no

country was the decision harder than for Prussia. Neutrality

was out of the question, as the Prussian territories, lying

between the two combatants, must be occupied by one or the

other.

{1353}

The friends and former Colleagues of Stein were unanimous for

a Russian alliance and a desperate struggle for liberty. But

Hardenberg, who had become chancellor in 1810, was too prudent

to embark in a contest, which at the time was hopeless. The

Czar had not been so consistent in his policy as to be a very

desirable ally; and, even with Russian assistance, it was

certain that the Prussian frontiers could not be defended

against the French, who had already garrisons in the chief

fortresses. Hardenberg fully sympathised with the patriots,

but he sacrificed enthusiasm to prudence, and offered the

support of Prussia to France. The treaty was arranged on the

24th of February, 1812. Frederick William gave the French a

free passage through his territories, and undertook to furnish

20,000 men for service in the field, and as many more for

garrison duty. In return for this Napoleon guaranteed the

security of the Prussian kingdom as it stood, and held out the

prospect of additions to it. It was an unnatural and hollow

alliance, and was understood to be so by the Czar.

Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and other friends of Stein resigned

their posts, and many Prussian officers entered the service of

the Czar. Austria, actuated by similar motives, adopted the same

policy, but with less reluctance. After this example had been

set by the two great powers, none of the lesser states of

Germany dared to disobey the peremptory orders of Napoleon.

But Turkey and Sweden, both of them old allies of France, were

at this crisis in the opposition. ... The Swedes were

threatened with starvation by Napoleon's stern command to

close their ports not only against English, but against all

German vessels. Bernadotte, who had just been adopted as the

heir of the childless Charles XIII.; determined to throw in

his lot with his new country, rather than with his old

commander. He had also hopes of compensating Sweden for the

loss of Finland by wresting Norway from the Danes, and this

would never be agreed to by France. Accordingly Sweden

prepared to support the cause of Alexander."

R. Lodge,

History of Modern Europe,

chapter 24, sections 88 and 41.

"Napoleon's Russian expedition should not be regarded as an

isolated freak of insane pride. He himself regarded it as the

unfortunate effect of a fatality, and he betrayed throughout

an unwonted reluctance and perplexity. 'The war must take

place,' he said, 'it lies in the nature of things.' That is,

it arose naturally, like the other Napoleonic wars, out of the

quarrel with England. Upon the Continental system he had

staked everything. He had united all Europe in the crusade

against England, and no state, least of all such a state as

Russia, could withdraw from the system without practically

joining England. Nevertheless, we may wonder that, if he felt

obliged to make war on Russia, he should have chosen to wage

it in the manner he did, by an overwhelming invasion. For an

ordinary war his resources were greatly superior to those of

Russia. A campaign on the Lithuanian frontier would no doubt

have been unfavourable to Alexander, and might have forced him

to concede the points at issue. Napoleon had already

experienced in Spain the danger of rousing national spirit. It

seems, however, that this lesson had been lost on him."

J. R. Seeley,

Short History of Napoleon,

chapter 5, section 3.

"Warnings and cautions were not ... wanting to him. He had

been at several different times informed of the desperate

plans of Russia and her savage resolve to destroy all around

him, provided he could be involved in the destruction of the

Empire. He was cautioned, with even more earnestness, of the

German conspiracies. Alquier transmitted to him from Stockholm

a significant remark of Alexander's: 'If the Emperor Napoleon

should experience a reverse, the whole of Germany will rise to

oppose his retreat, or to prevent the arrival of his

reinforcements.' His brother Jerome, who was still better

situated for knowing what was going on in Germany, informed

him, in the month of January, 1811, of the proposal that had

been made to him to enter into a secret league against France,

but the only thanks he received from Napoleon was reproach for

having encouraged such overtures by his equivocal conduct. ...

Marshal Davout and General Rapp transmitted him identically

the same information from Hamburg and Dantzig. But far from

encouraging such confidential communications, Napoleon was

irritated by them. ... 'I do not know why Rapp meddles in what

does not concern him [he wrote]. ... I beg you will not place

such rhapsodies under my eyes. My time is too precious to

waste on such twaddle.' ... In presence of such hallucination,

caused by pride and infatuation, we seem to hear Macbeth in

his delirium insulting the messengers who announced to him the

approach· of the enemy's armies."

P. Lanfrey,

History of Napoleon,

volume 4, chapter 6.

"That period ought to have been esteemed the happiest of

Napoleon's life. What more could the wildest ambition desire?

... All obeyed him. Nothing was wanting to make him happy!

Nothing, if he could be happy who possessed not a love of

justice. ... The being never existed who possessed ampler

means for promoting the happiness of mankind. Nothing was

required but justice and prudence. The nation expected these

from him, and granted him that unlimited confidence which he

afterwards so cruelly abused. ... Instead of considering with

calmness and moderation how he might best employ his vast

resources, he ruminated on projects beyond the power of man to

execute; forgetting what innumerable victims must be

sacrificed in the vain attempt. ... He aspired at universal

despotism, for no other reason than because a nation, isolated

from the continent and profiting by its happy situation, had

refused to submit to his intolerable·yoke. ... In the hope of

conquering that invincible enemy, he vainly endeavoured to

grasp the extremities of Europe. ... Misled by his rash and

hasty temper, he adopted a false line of politics, and

converted in the north, as he had done before in the south,

the most useful and powerful of his allies into a dangerous

enemy."

E. Labaume,

Circumstantial Narrative of the Campaign in Russia,

part 1, book 1.

ALSO IN:

C. Joyneville,

Life and Times of Alexander I.,

volume 2, chapter 3.

Imbert de Saint Amand,

Memoirs of the Empress Marie Louise.

FRANCE: A. D. 1812 (June).

The captive Pope brought to Fontainebleau.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1808-1814.

FRANCE: A. D. 1812 (June-August).

Defeat by the English in Spain at Salamanca.

Abandonment of Madrid by King Joseph.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1812 (JUNE-AUGUST).

{1354}

FRANCE: A. D. 1812 (June-December).

Napoleon's Russian campaign.

The advance to Moscow.

The burning of the city.

The retreat and its horrors.

See RUSSIA: A. D. 1812.

FRANCE: A. D. 1812-1813 (December-March)

Napoleon's return from Russia.

His measures for creating a new army.

"Whilst Europe, agitated at once by hope, by fear, and by

hatred, was inquiring what had become of Napoleon, whether he

had perished or had been saved, he was crossing in a

sledge--accompanied by the Duke of Vicenza, the Grand Marshal

Duroc, Count Lobau, General Lefevre-Desnouettes, and the

Mameluke Rustan--the vast, plains of Lithuania, of Poland, and

of Saxony, concealed by thick furs; for if his name had been

imprudently uttered, or his countenance recognised, a tragical

catastrophe would have instantly ensued. The man who had so

greatly excited the admiration of nations, who was the object

of their ... superstition, would not at that moment have

escaped their fury. In two places only did he allow himself to

be known, Warsaw and Dresden.  ... That he might not occasion

too great surprise, he caused himself to be preceded by an

officer with a few lines for the 'Moniteur,' saying that on

December 5 he had assembled his generals at Smorgoni, had

delegated  the command to King Murat, only so long as military

operations were interrupted by the cold, that he had traversed

Warsaw and Dresden, and that he was about to arrive in Paris

to take in hand the affairs of the Empire. ... Napoleon

followed close on the steps of the officer who was to announce

his arrival. On December 18, at half-past 11 P. M., he entered

the Tuileries. ... On the next morning, the 19th, he received

the ministers and grandees of the court ... with extreme

hauteur, maintaining a tranquil but severe aspect, appearing

to expect explanations instead of affording them himself,

treating foreign affairs as of minor consequence, and those of

a domestic nature as of principal import, demanding some light

upon these last,--in short, questioning others in order to

avoid being questioned himself. ... On Sunday, the 20th of

December, the second day after his arrival, Napoleon received

the Senate, the Council of State, and the principal branches

of the administration," which severally addressed to him the

most fulsome flatteries and assurances of support. "After an

infuriated populace basely outraging vanquished princes,

nothing can be seen more melancholy than these great bodies

prostrating themselves at the feet of a power, bestowing upon

it a degree of admiration which increases with its errors,

speaking with ardour of their fidelity, already about to

expire, and swearing to die in its cause when they are on the

eve of hailing the accession of another. Happy are those

countries whose established Constitutions spare them these

humiliating spectacles!" As speedily as possible, Napoleon

applied himself to the recreation of his lost army, by

anticipating the conscription for 1814, and by making new

calls upon the classes which had already furnished their

contingents. All his measures were submissively sanctioned by

the obsequious Senate; but many murmurs of discontent were

heard among the people, and some movements of resistance

needed to be put down. "However, when the enlightened classes

of a country approve a measure, their support is extremely

efficacious. In France, all those classes perceiving that it

was necessary energetically to defend the country against a

foreign enemy, though the Government had been still more in

the wrong than they were, the levies were effected, and the

high functionaries, sustained by a moral acquiescence which

they had not always obtained, fulfilled their duty, though in

heart full of sad and sinister forebodings."

A. Thiers,

History of the Consulate and the Empire,

book 47 (volume 4).

ALSO IN:

Duchess d'Abrantes, Memoirs of Napoleon,

volume 2, chapter 43.

FRANCE: A. D. 1812-1813.

Germanic rising against Napoleon.

War of Liberation.

Lützen.

Bautzen.

Dresden.

Leipsic.

The retreat of the French from beyond the Rhine.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1812-1813,

to 1813 (OCTOBER-DECEMBER).

FRANCE: A. D. 1813 (February-March).

The new Concordat signed and retracted by the Pope.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1808-1814.

FRANCE: A. D. 1813 (June-November).

Defeat at Vittoria and in the Pyrenees.

Retreat from Spain.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1812-1814.

FRANCE: A. D. 1813 (November-December).

Dutch independence regained.

See NETHERLANDS (HOLLAND): A. D. 1813.

FRANCE: A. D. 1814 (January).

The Pope set free to return to Rome.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1808-1814.

FRANCE: A. D. 1814 (January-March).

The allied invasion.

Napoleon's campaign of defense.

His cause lost.

Surrender of Paris.

"The battle of Leipzig was the overthrow of the French rule in

Germany; there only remained, as evidence of what they had

lost, 150,000 men, garrisons of the fortresses of the Vistula,

the Oder, and the Elbe. Each success of the allies had been

marked by the desertion of one of the peoples that had

furnished its contingent to the Grand Army of 1812: after

Prussia, Austria; at Leipzig the Saxons: the French had not

been able to regain the Rhine except by passing over the

bodies of the Bavarians at Hanau. Baden, Wurtemberg, Hesse,

and Darmstadt declared their defection at nearly the same

time; the sovereigns were still hesitating whether to separate

themselves from Napoleon, when their people and regiments,

worked upon by the German patriots, had already passed into

the allied camp. Jerome Bonaparte had again quitted Cassel;

Denmark found Itself forced to adhere to the Coalition.

Napoleon had retired to the left bank of the Rhine. Would

Alexander cross this natural frontier of revolutionary France?

'Convinced,' says M. Bogdanovitch, 'by the experience of many

years, that neither losses inflicted on Napoleon, nor treaties

concluded with him, could check his insatiable ambition,

Alexander would not stop at setting free the involuntary

allies of France, and resolved to pursue the war till he had

overthrown his enemy.' The allied sovereigns found themselves

reunited at Frankfort, and an immediate march to Paris was

discussed. Alexander, Stein. Blücher, Gneisenau, and all the

Prussians were on the side of decisive action. The Emperor

Francis and Metternich only desired Napoleon to be weakened,

as his downfall would expose Austria to another danger, the

preponderance of Russia on the Continent. Bernadotte insisted

on Napoleon's dethronement, with the ridiculous design of

appropriating the crown of France, traitor as he was to her

cause. England would have preferred a solid and immediate

peace to a war which would exhaust her in subsidies, and

augment her already enormous debt. These divergencies, these

hesitations, gave Napoleon time to strengthen his position.

{1355}

After Hanau, in the opinion of Ney, 'the allies might have

counted their stages to Paris.' Napoleon had re-opened the

negotiations. The relinquishment of Italy (when Murat on his

side negotiated the preservation of his kingdom of Naples), of

Holland, of Germany, and of Spain, and the confinement of

France between her natural boundaries of the Rhine and the

Alps; such were the 'Conditions of Frankfort.' Napoleon sent

an answer to Metternich, 'that he consented to the opening of

a congress at Mannheim: that the conclusion of a peace which

would insure the independence of all the nations of the earth

had always been the aim of his policy.' This reply seems

evasive, but could the proposals of the allies have been

serious? Encouraged by disloyal Frenchmen, they published the

declaration of Frankfort, by which they affirmed 'that they

did not make war with France, but against the preponderance

which Napoleon had long exercised beyond the limits of his

empire.' Deceitful assurance, too obvious snare, which could

only take in a nation weary of war, enervated by twenty-two

years of sterile victories, and at the end of its resources!

During this time Alexander, with the deputies of the Helvetian

Diet summoned at Frankfort, discussed the basis of a new Swiss

Confederation. Holland was already raised by the partisans of

the house of Orange, and entered by the Prussians. The

campaign of France began. Alexander issued at Freiburg a

proclamation to his troops. ... He refused to receive

Caulaincourt at Freiburg, declaring that he would only treat

in France. 'Let us spare the French negotiator the trouble of

the journey,' he said to Metternich. 'It does not seem to me a

matter of indifference to the allied sovereigns, whether the

peace with France is signed on this side of the Rhine, or on

the other, in the very heart of France. Such an historical

event is well worth a change of quarters.' Without counting

the armies of Italy and the Pyrenees, Napoleon had now a mere

handful of troops, 80,000 men, spread from Nimeguen to Bâle,

to resist 500,000 allies. The army of the North

(Wintzingerode) invaded Holland, Belgium, and the Rhenish

provinces; the army of Silesia (Blücher) crossed the Rhine

between Mannheim and Coblentz and entered Nancy; the army of

Bohemia (Schwartzenberg) passed through Switzerland, and

advanced on Troyes, where the Royalists demanded the

restoration of the Bourbons. Napoleon was still able to bar

for some time the way to his capital. He first attacked the

army of Silesia; he defeated the vanguard, the Russians of

Sacken, at St. Didier, and Blücher at Brienne; but at La

Rothière he encountered the formidable masses of the Silesian

and Bohemian armies, and after a fierce battle (1st February,

1814) had to fall back on Troyes. After this victory had

secured their junction, the two armies separated again, the

one to go down the Marne, the other the Seine, with the

intention of reuniting at Paris. Napoleon profited by this

mistake. He threw himself on the left flank of the army of

Silesia, near Champeaubert, where he dispersed the troops of

Olsoufief and Poltaratski, inflicting on them a loss of 2,500

men, and took the generals prisoners. At Montmirail, in spite

of the heroism of Zigrote and Lapoukhine, he defeated Sacken;

the Russians alone lost 2,800 men and five guns (11th

February). At Château Thierry, he defeated Sacken and York

reunited, and again the Russians lost 1,500 men and five guns.

At Vauchamp it was the turn of Blücher, who lost 2,000

Russians, 4,000 Prussians, and fifteen guns. The army of

Silesia was in terrible disorder. 'The peasants, exasperated

by the disorder inseparable from a retreat, and excited by

exaggerated rumours of French successes, took up arms, and

refused supplies. The soldiers suffered both from cold and

hunger, Champagne affording no wood for bivouac fires. When

the weather became milder, their shoes wore out, and the men,

obliged to make forced marches with bare feet, were carried by

hundreds into the hospitals of the country' (Bogdanovitch).

Whilst the army of Silesia retreated in disorder on the army

of the North, Napoleon, with 50,000 soldiers full of

enthusiasm, turned on that of Bohemia, crushed the Bavarians

and Russians at Mormans, the Wurtembergers at Montereau, the

Prussians at Méry: these Prussians made part of the army of

Blücher, who had detached a corps to hang on the rear of

Napoleon. This campaign made a profound impression on the

allies. Castlereagh expressed, in Alexander's presence, the

opinion that peace should be made before they were driven

across the Rhine. The military chiefs began to feel uneasy.

Sesslavine sent news from Joigny that Napoleon had 180,000 men

at Troyes. A general insurrection of the eastern provinces was

expected in the rear of the allies. It was the firmness of

Alexander which maintained the Coalition, it was the military

energy of Blücher which saved it. Soon after his disasters he

received reinforcements from the army of the North, and took

the offensive against the marshals; then, hearing of the

arrival of Napoleon at La Ferté Gaucher, he retreated in great

haste, finding an unexpected refuge at Soissons, which had

just been taken by the army of the North. At Craonne (March 7)

and at Laon (10th to 12th March), with 100,000 men against

80,000, and with strong positions, he managed to repulse all

the attacks of Napoleon. At Craonne, however, the Russian loss

amounted to 5,000 men, the third of their effective force. The

battle of Laon cost them 4,000 men. Meanwhile, De Saint

Priest, a general in Alexander's service, had taken Rheims by

assault, but was dislodged by Napoleon after a fierce

struggle, where the émigré commander was badly wounded, and

4,000 of his men were killed (13th, March). The Congress of

Châtillon-sur-Seine was opened on the 28th of February. Russia

was represented by Razoumovski and Nesselrode, Napoleon by

Caulaincourt, Austria by Stadion and Metternich. The

conditions proposed to Napoleon were the reduction of France

to its frontiers of 1792, and the right of the allies to

dispose, without reference to him, of the reconquered

countries. Germany was to be a confederation of independent

States, Italy to be divided into free States, Spain to be

restored to Ferdinand, and Holland to the house of Orange.

Leave France smaller than I found her? Never!' said Napoleon.

Alexander and the Prussians would not hear of a peace which

left Napoleon on the throne. Still, however, they negotiated.

Austria and England were both agreed not to push him to

extremities, and many times proposed to treat. After

Napoleon's great success against Blücher, Castlereagh declared

for peace.  'It would not be a peace,' cried the Emperor of

Russia; 'it would be a truce which would not allow us to

disarm one moment. I cannot come 400 leagues every day to your

assistance.

{1356}

No peace, as long as Napoleon is on the throne.' Napoleon, in

his turn, intoxicated by his success, enjoined Caulaincourt

only to treat on the basis of Frankfort--natural frontiers.

... As fortune returned· to the allies, the congress was

dissolved (19th of March). The Bourbon princes were already in

France; Louis XVIII. was on the point of being proclaimed.

Alexander, tired of seeing the armies of Bohemia and Silesia

fly in turn before thirty or forty thousand French, caused the

allies to adopt the fatal plan of a march on Paris, which was

executed in eight days. Blücher and Schwartzenberg united,

with 200,000 men, were to bear down all opposition on their

passage. The first act in the drama was the battle of

Arcissur-Aube, where the Russians took six guns from Napoleon.

The latter conceived a bold scheme, which perhaps might have

saved him if Paris could have resisted, but which was his

ruin. He threw himself on the rear of the allied army,

abandoning to them the route to Paris, but reckoning on

raising Eastern France, and cutting off their retreat to the

Rhine. The allies, uneasy for one moment, were reassured by an

intercepted letter of Napoleon's, and by the letters of the

Parisian royalists, which revealed to them the weakness of the

capital. 'Dare all!' writes Talleyrand to them. They, in their

turn, deceived Napoleon, by causing him to be followed by a

troop of cavalry, continued their march, defeated Marmont and

Mortier, crushed the National Guards of Pacthod (battle of La

Fère-Champenoise); and arrived in sight of Paris. Barclay de

Tolly, forming the centre, first attacked the plateau of

Romainville, defended by Marmont; on his left, the Prince of

Wurtemberg threatened Vincennes; and on his right, Blücher

deployed before Montmartre, which was defended by Mortier. The

heights of Chaumont and those of Montmartre were taken;

Marmont and Mortier with Moncey were thrown back on the

ramparts. Marmont obtained an armistice from Colonel Orlof, to

treat for the capitulation of Paris. King Joseph, the Empress

Marie-Louise, and all the Imperial Government had already fled

to the Loire. Paris was recommended to the generosity of the

allied monarchs'; the army could retire on the road to

Orleans. Such was the battle of Paris; it had cost, according

to M. Bogdanovitch, 8,400 men to the allies, and 4,000 to the

French (30th March).  ... The allied troops maintained a

strict discipline, and were not quartered on the inhabitants.

Alexander had not come as a friend of the Bourbons--the

fiercest enemy of Napoleon, was least bitter against the

French; he intended leaving them the choice of their

government. He had not favoured any of the intrigues of the

émigrés, and had scornfully remarked to Jomini, 'What are the

Bourbons to me?'"

A. Rambaud,

History of Russia,

volume 2, chapter 12.

ALSO IN:

C. Joyneville,

Life and Times of Alexander I.,

volume 3, chapter 1.

M. de Beauchamp,

Narrative of the Invasions of France, 1814-15.

Duke de Rovigo,

Memoirs,

volume 3, part 2, chapters 20-32.

J. Philippart,

Campaign in Germany and France, 1818,

volume 1, pages 279 and after, and volume 2.

FRANCE: A. D. 1814 (January-May).

Desertion of Napoleon by Murat.

Murat's treaty with the allies.

French evacuation of Italy.

See ITALY: A. D. 1814.

FRANCE: A. D. 1814 (February-April).

Reverses in the south.

Wellington's invasion.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1812-1814.

FRANCE: A. D. 1814 (March-April).

Friendly reception of the Allies in Paris.

Collapse of the empire.

Abdication of Napoleon.

Treaty of Fontainebleau.

"At an early hour in the morning [of the 31st of March], the

Allied troops had taken possession of the barriers, and

occupied the principal avenues leading to the city. Picquets

of the Cossacks of the Guard were stationed at the corners of

the principal streets. Vast multitudes thronged the

Boulevards, in anxious and silent expectation of pending

events. The royalists alone were active. The leaders, a small

band indeed, had early assembled in the Place Louis XV.,

whence, with Bourbon banners displayed, they proceeded along

the principal streets, haranguing the people and National

Guard; but though not interfered with by the police,--for all

seemed to feel that the Imperial government was at an

end,--they were listened to with such perfect indifference,

that many began to think their cause absolutely hopeless. It

was between ten and eleven o'clock when the procession began

to enter the city. Light horsemen of the Russian Guard opened

the march; at the head of the main column rode the Emperor of

Russia and the King of Prussia. ... Then followed 35,000 men,

cavalry, infantry, and artillery, the elite of the armies, in

all the pride and circumstance of war and conquest. At first

the multitude looked on in silent amazement; but the

affability of the officers, above all, the condescending

manner of the Czar, dispelled any fear they might still

entertain; and shouts of 'Vive Alexander!' began to be heard;

cries of 'Vive le Roi de Prusse!' were soon added. ... The

shouts of welcome increased at every step. The conquerors were

now hailed as liberators; 'Vivent les Allies!' 'Vivent nos

liberateurs!' sounded through the air, mingled at last with

the long-forgotten cry of 'Vive le Roi!' 'Vivent les

Bourbons!' ... The Emperor Alexander had no sooner seen the

troops file past on the Place Louis XV., than he repaired to

the hôtel of Talleyrand, where in the evening, a council was

assembled to deliberate on the important step next to be

taken, and, on the best mode of turning the glorious victories

achieved to an honourable and beneficial account. ... The

points discussed were:

I. The possibility, on sufficient guarantees, of a peace

with Napoleon;

II. The plan of regency under Marie Louise; and,

III. The restoration of the Bourbons.

The choice was not without difficulties. The first plan was

easily dismissed; as the reception of the Allies proved

clearly that the power of Napoleon was broken. The second

seemed more likely to find favour, as promising to please the

Emperor of Austria; but was finally rejected, as being, in

fact, nothing more than a continuance of the Imperial reign

under a different title. Against the restoration of the

Bourbons, it was urged that the nation at large had evinced no

desire for their recall, and seemed to have almost forgotten

them. This, Talleyrand said, was owing entirely to the

Congress of Chatillon, and the negotiations carried on with

Napoleon; introducing at the same time, the Abbé de Pradt and

Baron Louis, who fully confirmed the assertion. On being asked

how he expected to obtain a declaration in favour of the

exiled family, Talleyrand replied, that he was certain of the

Senate; and that their vote would influence Paris, the example

of which would be followed by all France.

{1357}

Alexander having on this assurance taken the opinion of the

King of Prussia and Prince Schwarzenberg, signed a declaration

to the effect that 'the Allies would treat no more with

Napoleon Bonaparte, or with any member of his family.' A

proclamation was issued at the same time, calling on the

conservative Senate to assemble and form a provisional

government, for the purpose of drawing up a constitution

suitable to the wishes of the French people. This the Allies

promised to guarantee; as it was their wish, they said, to see

France 'powerful, happy, and prosperous.' A printer was ready

in attendance; and before dark, this memorable decree was seen

placarded in all the streets of Paris. The inconstant populace

had not even waited for such a sig   nal, and had been already

engaged in destroying the emblems of the Imperial government; an

attempt had even been made to pull down the statue of Napoleon

from the summit of the column of Austerlitz, in the Place

Vendome! The decisive impulse thus given, events moved rapidly

forward. Caulaincourt's zealous efforts in favour of his

master could effect nothing after the declaration already

noticed. On the 2d, he took his departure for Fontainbleau;

having, however, received the assurance that Napoleon would be

suitably provided for. ... The funds rose five per cent., and all

other public securities in proportion, on the very day after

the occupation of the capital; and wherever the Allied

Sovereigns appeared in public, they were loudly cheered and

hailed as liberators. From the first, officers of the Allied

armies filled the public walks, theatres, and coffee-houses,

and mixed with the people as welcome guests rather than as

conquering invaders. The press, so long enslaved by Napoleon,

took the most decided part against its oppressor; and from

every quarter injurious pamphlets, epigrams, and satires, now

poured upon the fallen ruler. Madame de Staël had

characterised him as 'Robespierre on horseback'; De Pradt had

more wittily termed him 'Jupiter Scapin'; and these sayings

were not forgotten. But by far the most vivid sensation was

produced by Chateaubriand's tract of 'Bonaparte and the

Bourbons'; 30,000 copies of which are said to have been sold

in two days. In proportion as the popular hatred of the

Emperor evinced itself, grew the boldness of his adversaries.

On the first of April, the Municipal Council of Paris met and

already declared the throne vacant; on the next day, the

Conservative Senate formed a Provisional Government, and

issued a decree, declaring, first,'That Napoleon Bonaparte had

forfeited the throne and the right of inheritance established in

his family; 2d, That the people and army of France were

disengaged and freed from the oath of fidelity which they had

taken to him and his constitution.' ... The members of the

Legislative Assembly who happened to be in Paris, followed the

example of the Senate. The Assembly had been dissolved in

January, and could not meet constitutionally unless summoned

by the Sovereign; this objection was, however, set aside, and

the Assembly having met, ratified the act of deposition passed

by the Senate. All the public functionaries, authorities and

constituted bodies in and near Paris, hastened to send in

their submission to the new powers: it was a general race in

which honour was not always the prize of speed; for every

address, every act of submission sent in to the new

government, teemed with invectives against the deposed ruler.

... It was in the night between the 2d and 3d, that

Caulaincourt returned from his mission, and informed Napoleon

of the events which had passed. ... In what manner the Emperor

received these fatal tidings we are not told. ... At first it

would seem that he entertained, or affected to entertain,

thoughts of resorting to arms; for in the morning he reviewed

his Guard, and addressed them in the following

terms:--'Officers and soldiers of my Old Guard, the enemy has

gained three marches on us, and outstripped us at Paris. Some

factious men, emigrants whom I had pardoned, have surrounded

the Emperor Alexander; they have mounted the white cockade,

and would force us to do the same. In a few days I shall

attack the enemy, and force them to quit the capital. I rely

on you: am I right?' The troops readily replied with loud

cheers to this address, calling out 'To Paris! 'to Paris!' but

the Marshals and senior officers were by no means so zealous

in the cause. ... The Generals and Marshals ... followed the

Emperor to his apartments after the review; and having advised

him to negotiate with the Allies, on the principle of a

personal abdication, ended by informing him, that they would

not accompany him if he persisted in the proposed attack on

Paris. The scene which followed seems to have been of a very

undignified description. Napoleon was almost convulsed with

rage; he tore and trampled under foot the decree of the

Senate; vowed vengeance against the whole body, who should

yet, he said, be made to pay for their deed of 'felony'; but

ended, nevertheless, by ignobly signing the abdication

demanded of him. We say ignobly; for nothing can be more

debasing in character, than to sink down from a very tempest

of passion to tame submission. ... The act of abdication was

worded in the following terms: 'The Allied powers having

proclaimed that the Emperor Napoleon is the sole obstacle to

the re-establishment of peace in Europe, the Emperor Napoleon,

faithful to his oath, declares that he is ready to descend

from the throne, to quit France, and even to relinquish life,

for the good of the country, which is inseparable from the

rights of his son, from those of the regency in the person of

the Empress, and from the maintenance of the laws of the

empire. Done at our Palace of Fontainbleau, 4th April 1814.

Napoleon.' Caulaincourt, Marshals Ney and M'Donald, were

appointed to carry this conditional abdication to Paris. ...

The commissioners on returning to Fontainbleau found the

Emperor in his cabinet, impatiently awaiting the result of

their mission. Marshal Ney was the first to speak; and in that

abrupt, harsh and not very respectful tone which he had lately

assumed towards his falling sovereign, told him at once, that

'France, the army and the cause of peace, demanded his

unconditional abdication.' Caulaincourt added, that the full

sovereignty of the Isle of Elba, with a suitable

establishment, had been offered by the Emperor Alexander; and

Marshal M'Donald, who had so zealously defended the cause of

his master, confirmed the statement,--declaring also that, 'in

his opinion, the Imperial cause was completely lost, as they

had all three'--the commissioners--'failed against a

resolution irrevocably fixed.' 'What!' exclaimed Napoleon,

'not only my own abdication, but that of Marie Louise, and of

my son? This is rather too much at once.'

{1358}

And with these words he delayed the answer till next day,

intending, he said, to consider the subject, and consult the

army; ... Words ran high between the fallen chieftain and his

former subordinates; there were altercations, recriminations,

and painful scenes, and it was only when Napoleon had signed

the following unconditional abdication that perfect calm was

restored:--'The Allied Sovereigns having declared that the

Emperor Napoleon is the only obstacle to the re-establishment

of a general peace, the Emperor Napoleon, faithful to his

oath, declares, that he renounces, for himself and his heirs,

the throne of France and Italy; and that there is no personal

sacrifice, not even that of life itself, which he is not

willing to make for the interest of France. Napoleon.

Fontainbleau, 6th April 1814.' This deplorable document is

written in so agitated and faltering a hand as to be almost

illegible. ... According to the treaty signed at Paris on the

10th, and usually called the Treaty of Fontainbleau, Napoleon,

from being Emperor of France and King of Italy, became Emperor

of Elba! He was to have a guard and a navy suited to the

extent of his dominions, and to receive from France a pension

of six millions of francs annually. The Duchies of Parma,

Placentia and Guastala, were to be conferred in sovereignty on

Marie Louise and her heirs. Two millions and a half of francs

were further to be paid annually by the French government to

the Empress Josephine and other members of the Bonaparte

family. Splendid as these terms were for a dethroned and

defenceless monarch, Napoleon ratified the treaty with

reluctance, and delayed the signature as long as possible;

still clinging, it would seem, to some vague hope of returning

fortune. It is even related by Fain, Norvins, Constant, and in

the pretended Memoirs of Caulaincourt, that he attempted to

commit suicide by taking poison, 'and was only saved by the

weakness of the dose, and the remedies administered by his

attendants, who, hearing his groans, hastened to his bedside.

It is certain that he was very unwell on the following

morning, the 18th April, a circumstance easily accounted for

by the anxiety he had undergone; but there can be little

difficulty in rejecting the tale of poison, for, it is

mentioned in none of the St. Helena Memoirs."

Lieutenant-Colonel J. Mitchell,

The Fall of Napoleon,

book 8, chapter 8 (volume 2).

ALSO IN:

M. de Bourrienne,

Private Memoirs of Napoleon,

volume 4, chapters 20-23.

Duke of Rovigo,

Memoirs,

volume 4, part 1, chapters 4-10.

Prince Talleyrand,

Memoirs,

part 7 (volume 2).

FRANCE: A. D. 1814 (April-June).

Departure of Napoleon for Elba.

Louis XVIII. called to the throne.

Settlement of the constitution.

Evacuation of France by the Allies.

The Treaty of Paris.

Determination of the new boundaries of the kingdom.

"April 20, everything being ready for Napoleon's journey, and

the commissioners of the four great powers who were to

accompany him having arrived, the former drew up the imperial

guard in the grand courtyard at Fontainebleau to take leave of

them. 'Soldiers,' said he, 'I have one mission left to fulfil

in life,--to recount to posterity the glorious deeds we have

done together.' Would to Heaven he had kept his word and done

nothing else! He kissed the flag, and his brave soldiers, who

only saw the man who so often led them on to victory, burst

into tears. Seven or eight hundred of them were to form the

army left to him who had had a million soldiers at his

command, and they were sent in advance, Napoleon going by

another road, unescorted save by General Drouot, Bertrand, and

the four foreign commissioners with their people. In the first

departments through which they passed ... the people who had

been eye-witnesses of the invasion forgot the evil wrought by

Napoleon, and only saw the defender of his country. They

shouted 'Long live the Emperor! Down with foreigners!' But

beyond Lyons, where the foe never penetrated, the population

became hostile: old royalist and Catholic passions were

revived in proportion as they went farther south; the mob

cried 'Long live the King! down with the tyrant!' and others

howled 'Long live the allies!' At Avignon and Organ a furious

rabble attacked the carriages, demanding that the tyrant

should be handed over to them to be hung or thrown into the

Rhone. The man who braved the storm of shot and shell with

utter indifference gave way before these ignoble perils, and

disguised himself; otherwise the commissioners could scarcely

have saved his life at Orgon. The sad journey closed at the

Gulf of St. Raphael, on the coast of Provence. ... An English

frigate awaited him and bore him to Elba, where he landed at

Porto-Ferraio, May 4. While the Empire was crumbling to dust

... and the fallen Emperor went into exile, the new government

was working hard to hold its own at Paris. The royalists were

at sword's points with the national sovereignty party in the

commission chosen by the senate to draw up a constitution. The

pretender's agent, Abbé de Montesquiou, failed to win

acceptance of the principle that royal right is superior to

the nation's will; and the formula adopted was as follows:

'The French people freely call to the throne of France, Louis

Stanislas Xavier de France, brother of the late king, and,

after him, the other members of the house of Bourbon.' Thus

they did not recognize in the king whom they elected the title

of Louis XVIII., and did not admit that between him and his

brother, Louis XVI., there had been a rightful king, the poor

child who died in the Temple and whom royalists called Louis

XVII. The reign of Louis Stanislas Xavier was to date from the

day when he swore allegiance to the Constitution: the

executive power was vested in the king, who shared the

legislative power with the Senate and a Chamber of Deputies.

The Constitution sanctioned individual liberty, freedom of

worship and the press, the sale of national goods, the public

debt, and proclaimed oblivion of all acts committed since the

beginning of the Revolution. The principles of 1789 were

maintained, and in the sad state of France there was nothing

better to be done than to rally round this Constitution, which

was voted by the Senate, April 6, and accepted by the

Legislature. ... The Senate's lack of popularity gave the

royalist party hope that the act of April 6 might be

retracted, and at this time that party won a faint success in

a matter on which they laid great stress. Count d' Artois was

on his way to Paris, and declared that he would not lay aside

the white cockade on entering. The temporary government

ordered the national guard to assume the white cockade, and

let Count d'Artois in without conditions (April 12), He was

received in solemn state, the marshals marching before him,

still wearing their tri-colored cockades and plumes, which the

government dared not attack.

{1359}

The rabble was cold, but the middle classes received the

prince favorably and he proved gracious to every one. ...

D'Artois ... insisted on being recognized, unconditionally, as

lieutenant-general of the kingdom, as he had entered Paris

without making terms; but this time the Senate and temporary

government did not yield. They intended that the prince should

make a solemn promise, in his brother's name, in regard to the

Constitution. The czar interfered and explained to D' Artois

that the allies were pledged to the Senate and the nation, and

he was forced to submit and receive the lieutenant-generalcy

of the kingdom from the Senate, 'until Louis Stanislas Xavier

of France should accept the Constitutional Charter.' ... The

day after his proclamation as lieutenant-general, the white

cockade was finally adopted, and ... imposed upon the army and

various public buildings, though the national cockade was

still worn by many French soldiers from the Garonne to the

Elbe, and many warlike deeds still signalized the final

efforts of their arms, even after Napoleon had laid aside his

sword. ... By degrees the truce became universal, and the next

question was to fix the terms of peace. ... The enemy held

nothing but Paris and the unfortified towns, French garrisons

still occupying all the strongholds of France, old and new,

and several important places far beyond the Rhine. ... This

was a powerful means of gaining, not the preservation of the

natural frontiers, which could no longer be hoped for, but at

least an important advance on the limits of the ancient

monarchy. Unluckily a movement, natural but hasty, broke out

all over France, to claim the immediate evacuation of her soil

by foreign armies;"--an impatience which allowed no time for

bargaining in the matter, and which precipitated an agreement

(April 23) with the allied powers "to leave the French

dominion as it had been on the 1st of January, 1792, in

proportion as the places still occupied beyond those limits by

French troops should be evacuated and restored to the allies.

... This compact surrendered to the allies, without any

compensation, 58 strongholds, 12,600 pieces of ordnance,

arsenals and magazines filled with vast supplies." The new

king, calling himself Louis XVIII., arrived in Paris on the 3d

of May, from England, where he had latterly resided. He had

offended the czar, ruffled public feeling in France, even

before he arrived, by saying publicly to the English people

that he owed his restoration, under Providence, to them.

Negotiations for a definite treaty of peace were opened at

once. "At Metternich's suggestion, the allies decided to

conclude their arrangements with France in Paris, and to

reserve general arrangements with Europe for a congress at

Vienna.

See VIENNA: THE CONGRESS OF.

Talleyrand did not object, although this plan was evidently

unfavorable to France. ... The royal council directed

Talleyrand to try to win for the northern frontier those

million people promised beyond the old limits; but Louis X

VIII., by angering the czar, completed the sad work of April

23. Alexander thought of renewing with the Bourbons the

alliance that he had planned with Napoleon, and marrying to

the Duke de Berri, Louis's nephew, that one of his sisters to

whom Napoleon preferred Marie Louise. Louis ... responded

churlishly to the czar's advances. Accordingly, when France

demanded a solid frontier, including the South of Belgium, ...

Lord Castlereagh absolutely refused, and was supported by

Prussia, hostile to France, and by Austria, indifferent on

that score, but disposed to follow England in everything.

Russia did not side with France. ... The allies were willing

to grant, in place of the old dominion of the monarchy, on the

Rhine side, the line of the Queich, which opened communication

with Landau, and to the southeast the department of Vaucluse

(once County Venaissin) given up by the Pope, besides Chambéry

and a part of Savoy; finally, in the Jura region, Montbéliard.

This made nearly 600,000 people. As for the colonies, England

reluctantly returned Martinique, Guadeloupe, and the Isle of

Bourbon, but refused to restore the Isle de France [or

Mauritius, captured in 1810], that great military post which

is to the Indian Ocean what Malta is to the Mediterranean.

This island was bravely defended for some years by its

governor. ... The English declared that they would also keep

Malta, taken from France, and the Cape of Good Hope, wrested

from Holland, saying that all these belonged to them, being on

the road to India. ... Secret articles provided that Holland,

under the rule of the House of Orange, should be increased by

the countries ceded by France, between the sea, the French

frontier of 1790, and the Meuse (Austrian Netherlands and

Liége). The countries ceded by France on the left bank of the

Rhine were to be divided as 'compensation' among the German

states. Austria was to have the country bounded by the Po,

Ticino, and Lake Maggiore, that is, the old Venetian states,

Milan, and Mantua. The territory of the former Republic of

Genoa was to be given to the King of Sardinia. Such was the

end of the wars of the Empire. Republican France reached the

goal of the old monarchy, the natural limits of ancient Gaul;

the Empire lost them."

H. Martin,

Popular History of France,

volume 2, chapter 17.

"The Peace of Paris [signed May 30] was followed by some

subsidiary treaties. ... By a Convention of June 3rd between

Austria and Bavaria, Maximilian Joseph restored to Austria the

Tyrol with the Vorarlberg, the principality of Salzburg, the

district of the Inn and the Hausrück. During the visit of the

Emperor Alexander and the King of Prussia to London in June,

it was agreed that the Article of the Peace of Paris

stipulating the aggrandisement of Holland, should, be carried

out by the annexation of Belgium to that country, an

arrangement which was accepted by the Sovereign of the

Netherlands, July 21st 1814."

T. H. Dyer,

History of Modern Europe,

book 7, chapter 16.

ALSO IN:

A. de Lamartine,

History of the Restoration,

books 13-14 and 16 (volumes 1-2).

E. E. Crowe,

History of the Reigns of Louis XVIII. and Charles X.,

volume 1, chapter 3.

{1360}

FRANCE: A. D. 1814-1815.

Ten months of Bourbon rule and its follies.

Return of Napoleon from Elba.

Flight of the King.

The Hundred Days.

Preparations for war.

"The peace of Paris did not endure a year. Ten months of

Bourbon rule, vengeful, implacable, stupid; alike violent in

act and in language; sufficed to bring France once more to the

brink of revolution. Two acts alone are sufficient to

demonstrate the folly of the royalists--the resumption of the

white flag, and the changing of the numbers of the regiments.

A prudent king would have adopted the tricolour when he agreed

to a constitutional charter, and would have refrained from

wounding military sensibility by destroying the numbers of the

regiments. But more stupid than these acts was the political

policy pursued, a policy which aroused on all sides suspicions

of what was worse than the grinding but gilded despotism of

Napoleon--namely, that the Government favoured a forcible

resumption of the confiscated lands, the restoration of

tithes, and of the abolished exactions and imposts of

feudalism. It has been surmised, and with much reason, that

had Napoleon not reappeared a popular movement would have

extorted from the king a really constitutional government. In

that case France might have taken some real steps towards a

free government, and the bases of liberty rather than of

equality might have been laid. But while the Powers were

wrangling at Vienna, and the Bourbons were irritating France,

Napoleon was watching from Elba for the opportunity of

resuming empire. It was not in the nature of the man to yield

passively to anything, even to the inevitable. So long as a

chance remained he looked out keenly for the propitious hour.

He selected Elba as a residence because thence 'he could keep

an eye upon France and upon the Bourbons.' It was his duty, he

said, to guard the throne of France for his family and for his

son. Thus, in making peace at Fontainebleau, he only bowed to

a storm he could not then resist, and cherished in his mind

the project of an imperial restoration. The hour for which he

waited came at length. February, 1815, he had arrived at the

conclusion that with the aid of the army he could overthrow

the Bourbons, whose government, he said, was good for priests,

nobles, and countesses of the old time, but worth nothing to

the living generation. The army, he knew, was still, and would

be always, devoted to him. ... He had weighed all the chances

for and against the success of his enterprise, and he had

arrived at the conclusion that he should succeed; for,

'Fortune had never deserted him on great occasions.' It has

been said that his departure was precipitated by a report of

the dissolution of the Congress of Vienna. ... It is possible,

indeed, that the rumour of an intention to confine him upon an

island in the Atlantic may have exercised some influence over

him; but the real reasons for the selection of the 26th of

February were that he was tired of inactivity, and convinced

that the favourable moment had arrived. Therefore, instructing

Murat to second him by assuming a strong position in front of

Ancona, he embarked his faithful Thousand, and set sail for

France. On the 1st of March he landed on the shores of the

Gulf of Juan, and on the 20th he entered the Tuileries. As he

had predicted, the army rallied to the tricolour; the generals

could neither restrain nor guide their soldiers; the Bourbon

dukes and princes, and the brave Duchess of Angoulême--'the

only man of the family'--were utterly powerless before the

universal military disaffection; and one after the other they

were chased out of France. The army had restored Napoleon.

Louis XVIII. drove out of Paris by the road to St. Denis on

the 19th, a few hours before Napoleon, on the 20th, drove in

by the Barrier of Italy; and on the 23rd, after a short stay

at Lille, the King was safe in Ghent. 'The great question is,'

wrote Lord Castlereagh to the Duke of Wellington three days

afterwards, while yet in ignorance of the event, 'can the

Bourbons get Frenchmen to fight for them against Frenchmen?'

The result showed that they could not. In the then state of

France the army was master of France. Louis and his ministers

had done nothing to conciliate, and almost everything to

irritate, the people; and even so early as November, 1814,

Wellington did not see what means the King had of resisting

the attack of a few hundred officers determined to risk

everything. During the period occupied by Napoleon in passing

from Elba to Paris, the conduct of' the sovereigns and

diplomatists assembled at Vienna offered a striking contrast

to the weakness and inaptitude of the Bourbons. ... That there

was fear in Vienna is manifest, but the acts of the Allied

Powers show that fear speedily gave place to resolution. For,

as early as the 12th of' March, before the Allies knew where

Napoleon was, or anything about him, except that he was

somewhere at large in France, they drew up that famous

declaration, and signed it the next day, in which they

declared that he had broken the sole legal tie to which his

existence was attached, and that it was possible to keep with

him 'neither peace nor truce.' 'The Powers, in consequence,'

so runs this document, 'declare that Napoleon Buonaparte is

placed beyond the pale of civil and social relations, and

that, as a common enemy and disturber of the peace of the

world, he has delivered himself over to public justice.' This

declaration, which has been the subject of vehement criticism,

was the natural consequence of the prevailing and correct

appreciation of Napoleon's character. There was not a nation

in Europe which felt the slightest particle of confidence or

trust in him. Hence this declaration, made so promptly, was

drawn up in ignorance of any professions he might make,

because, beforehand, Europe felt that no professions of his

could be relied on. The news of his success was followed by a

treaty, adopted on the 25th of March, renewing the alliance of

Chaumont, whereby Great Britain, Russia, Austria, and Prussia

bound themselves to provide each 150,000 men; to employ, in

addition, all their resources, and to work together for the

common end--the maintenance of the Treaty of Paris, and of the

stipulations determined on and signed at the Congress of

Vienna. Further, they engaged not to lay down their arms but

by common consent; nor before the object of the war should

have been attained; nor, continues the document, 'until

Buonaparte shall have been rendered absolutely unable to

create disturbance, and to renew attempts for possessing

himself of supreme power in France.' All the Powers of Europe

generally, and Louis XVIII. specially, were invited to accede

to the treaty; but, at the instance of Lord Castlereagh, the

Four Great Powers declared in the most solemn manner that,

although they desired to see his Most Christian Majesty

restored to the throne, and also to contribute to that

'auspicious result,' yet that their 'principles' would not

permit them to prosecute the war 'with a view of imposing any

particular Government on France.' With Napoleon they refused

to hold any communication whatever; and when he sent couriers

to announce that he intended to observe existing treaties,

they were stopped on the frontiers. ...

{1361}

Wellington, on his own responsibility, acted for England,

signed treaties, undertook heavy engagements in her name, and

agreed to command an army to be assembled in Belgium; and

having satisfied, as well as he could, the clamour of 'all'

for subsidies from England, he took his departure from Vienna

on the 29th of March, and arrived in Brussels on the 4th of

April. The British Parliament and nation confirmed readily the

proceedings of the Government and of the Duke of Wellington at

Vienna. ... Napoleon had formed a Ministry on the very evening

of his return to the Tuileries. ... He felt certain that war

would ensue. Knowing that at the moment when he returned from

Elba a large part of the best troops of England were in

America, that the German force on the Rhine was weak, and that

the Russian armies were in Poland, he calculated that the

Allied Powers would not be in a position to open the campaign,

at the earliest, until the middle of July; and, for a moment,

he hoped that, by working on the feelings of his

father-in-law, the Emperor of Austria, and by rousing the

anger of the Emperor Alexander against his allies, he would be

able, if not to reduce his enemies to two, England and

Prussia, at least to defer the period of hostilities until the

autumn. ... Before his great schemes of military preparation

were half complete he found himself compelled by events to

begin the war. What he actually did accomplish between March

and June has been the subject of fierce controversy. His

friends exaggerate, his enemies undervalue, his exertions and

their results. But no candid inquirer can fail to see, that if

his energetic activity during this period is far below that of

the Convention when threatened by Europe, it is far above the

standard fixed by his passionate crimes. The real reason why

he failed to raise a larger military force during the hundred

days was that his genius worked upon exhausted materials. The

nation, to use an expressive vulgarism, was 'used up.' ... The

proper conscription for 1815 had been levied in the autumn of

1813. The drafts on the rising generation had been

anticipated, and hence there remained little available except

the old soldiers. ... The result of Napoleon's prodigious

exertions to augment the military force of France appears to

be this: Napoleon found ready to his hand a force of 228,972

men of all arms, officers included, giving a disposable

effective of 155,000 men ready to take the field. By the 18th

of June he had raised this force to 276,982 men, officers

included: that is 247,609 of the line, and 29,373 of the

Imperial Guard. The number disposable for war was 198,180; and

it therefore follows that Napoleon had increased the general

effective by 53,010 men, and that part of it disposable for

war by 48, 180."

G. Hooper,

Waterloo,

book 1, chapter 1.

ALSO IN:

Imbert de Saint-Amand,

The Duchess of Angouléme and the two Restorations,

part 1.

F. P. Guizot,

Memoirs of My Time,

volume 1, chapter 3.

J. C. Ropes,

The First Napoleon,

lecture 6.

E. E. Crowe,

History of the Reigns of Louis XVIII. and Charles X.,

volume 1, chapters 4-6.

R. H. Horne,

Life of Napoleon, chapters 41-42.

General Sir N. Campbell,

Napoleon at Fontainebleau and Elba.

FRANCE: A. D. 1814-1815.

The Congress of Vienna and the fruits of its labors.

See VIENNA, THE CONGRESS OF.

FRANCE: A. D. 1815 (June).

Napoleon's last campaign.

His final defeat and overthrow at Waterloo.

"The nearest troops of the allies were the Prussian army in

the Rhenish provinces, and the army of British, Dutch,

Belgians, Bunswickers, and Hanoverians, occupying Belgium.

Napoleon's scheme, the best in his desperate circumstances,

was to expel the British and Prussians, who were moving west,

from Belgium, win the Rhine frontier--to arouse the enthusiasm

of all France--before the Austrians were ready, and carry the

war out of France. The Duke of Wellington proceeded to

Belgium, for the first and last time to measure his skill with

Napoleon's, and Marshal Blücher took over from Kleist the

command of the Prussians. The two armies, the Prussian and the

British, took up a line extending from Liege to the sea. The

country on this line was open along the west, affording by

nature little means of resisting an invasion, but most of the

fortresses commanding the roads had been put in a state of

moderate repair. The Prussians held the line of the Meuse and

Sambre to beyond Charleroi, the head-quarters being at Namur.

They numbered about 117,000 men ... with 312 guns. ... The

motley mass of the British and their allies numbered 106,000

men ... with 196 guns. ... So entirely ignorant were the

allies of Napoleon's movements, that on the very day on which

he burst across the frontier, Wellington wrote to the Czar,

who was at Vienna, respecting the general invasion of France.

At that time the frontier of France approached within six

miles of Charleroi (which is itself but 34 miles by the main

road from Brussels). The Charleroi road was not only the most

direct to Brussels, but was unprotected by fortresses; and the

line of the allied armies was weakest here at the point of

junction between them. ... It was against the central weak

point that Napoleon resolved to move, down the basins of the

Sambre and the Meuse. ... The mass of the troops was being

assembled within a league of the frontier, but behind some

small hills which completely screened them from the enemy's

outposts. To conceal his designs to the last moment, the line

of sentries along the frontier was tripled, and any attempt to

pass the line was forbidden under pain of death. The

arrangements were being carried out by Soult, who on the 2nd

June had been appointed chief of the staff. ... The army

concentrated on the frontier consisted (according to Colonel

Chesney) of 90,000 infantry and 22,000 cavalry--in all 112,000

men--344 guns. ... Napoleon, accompanied by his brother

Jerome, arrived in the camp, and in the evening of the 14th

his soldiers, already elated by his presence, were excited to

the highest pitch of enthusiasm by an address from Napoleon.

... A general order fixed the attack upon the allies' position

for three o'clock in the following morning (15th)." At the

appointed time "the French left was in motion, Reille

proceeding from Solre down the right bank of the Sambre. He

was soon brought into collision with the Prussian outposts

near Thuin: he drove them back and secured at ten o'clock the

bridge of Marchiennes." The movements of other corps were

delayed by various causes. Nevertheless, "of the Prussians

only Ziethen's corps, and of Wellington's army only

Perponcher's Dutch-Belgians, were as yet near the menaced

position; while 40,000 French had passed the Sambre at

Marchiennes and 70,000 more were entering Charleroi. When

Reille deployed in front of Gosselies, the Prussians called in

their detachments and retired from it, upon Fleurus, ...

leaving open the road through Quatre Bras to Brussels.

{1362}

Ney, who had just come up, then took command of the left, ...

which was now directed upon Quatre Bras; and Napoleon galloped

off to the road between Charleroi and Fleurus, where the

retiring Prussians were concentrating. ... At dark Ziethen

[with the First Prussian corps] still held Fleurus with his

advanced guard, and the wood on its south, the bulk of his

troops lay for the night upon the hill of Ligny, above the

village of Bry. His loss during the day's manœuvring has been

estimated at 2,000. On the French left, Ney... had come in

contact with the advance guard of Wellington's army, a

battalion of Nassauers and a light battery, in front of the

village of Frasnes, two miles from Quatre Bras, the name

applied to the farm-buildings at the intersection of the four

main roads,--Brussels, Nivelles, Charleroi, Namur. ... After a

few cannon-shots the outpost fell back from Frasnes to Quatre

Bras." Ney, after a reconnoissance, postponed attack until

morning. "It had been intended by Napoleon that the whole army

should have crossed the Sambre before noon; but from the

several delays ... when night fell on the 15th, half of the

cavalry of the guard, two of Grouchy's reserve divisions,

Lobau's corps, and one-half of Gérard's corps were still on

the south of the river. Apparently relying on secret

information from Paris--which contradicted the rumours that

Napoleon was about to join the army--Wellington had been

lulled into a false security, and the reports as to the

concentration had been neglected. News of the enemy's advance

across the Sambre did not reach him till three o'clock in the

afternoon of the 15th, when the Prince of Orange in person

reported the skirmish at Thuin. As he did not yet know the

point of concentration, the British general, 'never

precipitate or nervous' (Hooper), merely issued orders for all

the troops to be in readiness. ... At night intelligence was

received from Mons that the French concentration was at

Charleroi, and orders were issued for the immediate movement

of the troops. ... Wellington and the Prince of Orange, with

several of the staff' officers, went--it is said, to prevent a

panic in Brussels--to the Duchess of Richmond's ball, where

'Belgium's capital had gathered then her beauty and her

chivalry,' and, 'while all went merry as a marriage bell,' the

staff officers stole away one by one. The Duke himself,

'throwing away golden minutes' (Hamley), as if to show his

confidence in his fortunes, remained to a late hour to return

thanks after supper for the health of the Prince Regent of

Great Britain, which the Prince of Orange proposed. ...

Blücher had received, at his head-quarters at Namur, news on

the morning of the 14th of the French concentration, and he

had ordered forward the corps of Pirch and Thielemann. ...

Napoleon did not foresee Blücher's promptitude, and nothing

was done in the early morning of the 16th to proceed with the

execution of the intended surprise. . . .... No orders were

issued by the Emperor till eight, when Napoleon's resolution

was taken,--to strike at the Prussians, who would, he

believed, if defeated, retire upon their natural base of

communications, through Namur and Liege, and he would thus be

left to deal separately with the British, who could not move

from their base, the sea. The French army was to advance in

two wings, the left under Ney, the right under Grouchy, with

the reserve under the Emperor himself. Ney was to capture

Quatre Bras, reconnoitre the Brussels road, and hold himself

in readiness to march to Brussels, which Napoleon hoped to be

able to enter the following morning. ... Napoleon had 64,000

men to attack the position at Ligny; Ney on the left wing had

45,000 for Quatre Bras; Lobau had 10,000 to support either

wing of the Grand Army; 5,000 troops were in the rear; and the

victorious wing, whether Ney's or Grouchy's, was to wheel

round and manœuvre in the direction of the other. Thielemann

having come up before the French delivered their attack,

Blücher had 85,000 men on the field. Wellington arrived at

Quatre Bras (which is 20 miles from Brussels) at 11 o'clock in

the forenoon. As Marshal Ney gave no sign of an imminent

attack, Wellington galloped over, about seven miles, to confer

with Blücher. ... Wellington, after some discussion, in which

he expressed his disapproval of Blücher's position, agreed to

move to the rear of the Prussians, to act as a reserve, if his

own position at Quatre Bras were not attacked. ... He reached

Quatre Bras when his own position was being assailed, and no

help could be sent to Blücher. ... At about three o'clock,

when the heavy cannonade a few miles to the west intimated

that a desperate battle was in progress at Quatre Bras, the

signal for attack [on the Prussians, at Ligny] was given. The

French left sped forward with impetuosity; the resistance was

vigorous but futile, and the enemy streamed through the

village. Blücher immediately moved forward fresh troops and

re-took the village, but was unable to retain it. ... Thrice

the Grenadiers forced their way into and through the village,

but only to be driven back again." But "Blücher gradually

exhausted his reserves, and when, in the dusk, Napoleon saw

the last battalion moved forward and the ground behind Ligny

vacant, he exclaimed, 'they are lost!' The Guards and the

Cuirassiers were immediately ordered to attack," and the

wearied Prussian infantry were broken by their onset. "The

fugitives led precipitately over the fields and along the

roads to the east, and the order for the whole to retire was

immediately given. ... Blücher himself gathered a few of his

squadrons to check the hot pursuit near Sombreffe, and thrice

led them to the charge. His squadrons were broken, and after

the last charge his horse fell dead, and the veteran marshal

lay under it. His aid-de-camp, Nostitz, stood by him, and

covered him with a cloak; the Cuirassiers galloped past

without noticing him. ... Gneisenau, who took temporary

command from the accident to Blücher, ordered a retreat upon

Wavre, with the view of joining Bülow's corps and keeping open

the communications with Wellington. ... The loss on each side

has been very variously estimated. Napoleon put his own loss

at 7,000 men, Charras puts it at 11,000, and the loss of the

Prussians at 18,000. The retreat upon Wavre abandoned the

communications with Namur and Liege, through which the

Prussian supplies came from the lower Rhine, for a new line by

Louvain, but it kept the Prussians on a line parallel to the

road on which Wellington must retreat, and thus still enabled

the two armies to aid each other. 'This noble daring at once

snatched from Napoleon the hoped-for fruits of his victory,

and the danger Ligny had for a few hours averted was left

impending over him' (Chesney)."

H. R. Clinton,

The War in the Peninsula and Wellington's Campaigns

in France and Belgium, chapter 12.

{1363}

On Wellington's return to Quatre Bras from his interview with

Blücher, he found, as stated above, that the Prince of Orange

had already became desperately engaged with the superior

forces of Ney. "The Duke's presence gave new life to the

battle, and when Picton's division, followed by the

Brunswickers and Van Merle's Belgian horse, arrived, he took

the offensive, pushing forward right up to the edge of the

farm of Gemioncourt. Ney, reinforced by the rest of Reille's

corps and part of Kellerman's cavalry, violently retorted, and

in the charge, which partially broke into spray before the

squares, Wellington ran the risk of death or capture. But he

leaped his horse over the 92d Highlanders lining the ditch on

the Namur road, while his gallant pursuers, cut up by the

infantry fire, were killed or driven off. Ney was further

reinforced by more guns and cavalry, and Wellington's brigades

continued to arrive in parcels. The Marshal was always

superior in horsemen and cannon, but after 5 o'clock his

opponent had larger numbers of foot. Holding firmly to the

cross-roads and, the highway to Namur, Wellington became the

stronger as the day waned; and when the Guards emerged from

the Nivelles road and the Allies pressed forward, Ney, who had

no fresh troops, was driven back, and his antagonist remained

at sundown master of the whole field of battle. The position

was maintained, but the cost was great, for there were no

fewer than 4,600 killed and wounded, more than half being

British soldiers. The thunder of cannon to the eastward had

also died away, but none knew as yet at Quatre Bras how

Blücher had fared at the hands of his redoubtable foe.

Wellington, who slept at his head-quarters in Genappe, was on

the field and scrutinising his outposts at daybreak an the

17th. Soon after came a report, confirmed a little later, that

the Prussians had retreated on Wavre. ... Napoleon had a

belief that Blücher would retreat upon Liège, which caused him

at a late hour in the day to despatch Grouchy to that side,

and thus touch was lost. While the French were cooking and

Napoleon was pondering, definite intelligence was brought to

Wellington, who, learning for certain that Blücher was at

Wavre, promised to stand fast himself at Mont St. Jean and

fight, if Blücher would support him with two corps. The

intrepid Marshal replied that he would came with his whole

army, and Wellington got the famous answer before night. Thus

was made, between generals who thoroughly trusted each other,

that combination which led to the Battle of Waterloo. It was

no chance combat, but the result of a deliberate design,

rendered capable of execution, even when Blücher was wounded,

by his resolve to retreat upon Wavre, and by Napoleon, who

acted on conjecture that the Prussians would hurry towards

their base at Liege. The morning at Quatre Bras was peaceful;

the Allies cooked their food before starting rearward.

Wellington, it is said, lay down for a moment, and snatched

perhaps a little sleep. There was no stir in front or on the

exposed left flank; and, covered by a strong display of

horsemen, the Allied divisions tramped steadily towards Mont

St. Jean. ... The retreat continued all day. A thunderstorm,

so often a precursor of Wellington's battles, deluged the

fields with rain, and pursuer and pursued struggling through

the mire, were drenched to the skin by nightfall. ... The

results of two days' warfare may be thus summed up. Napoleon

had inflicted a defeat, yet not a decisive defeat, upon the

Prussians, who escaped from his ken to Wavre. He had then, at

a late hour on the 17th, detached Grouchy with 33,000 men to

follow them, and Grouchy at night from Gembloux reported that

they had retired in three directions. Moving himself in the

afternoon, Napoleon, uniting with Ney, had pursued Wellington

to Mont St. Jean, and slept in the comfortable belief that he

had separated the Allies. At that very time Wellington, who

had assembled his whole force except 17,000 men, ... was in

close communication with Blücher, and intended on the 18th to

stop Napoleon by delivering battle, and to hold him fast until

Blücher could cut in on his right flank and rear. Thus it was

the Allies who were united practically, and the French army

which was separated into two groups unable to support each

other. ... The tempest which burst over the retreating columns

on the 17th followed them to their bivouacs and raged all

night, and did not cease until late on the fateful Sunday.

Wellington, mounting his faithful Copenhagen at break of day,

rode from the village of Waterloo to the field, where the

armies on both sides, protected by watchful sentries, were

still contending with the mischiefs inflicted by the storm.

The position was the crest of a gentle slope stretching from

Smohain to the Nivelles road, having upon and in advance of

its right the château, garden, and wood of Hougoumont, and in

the centre, where the Charleroi road cut through the little

ridge, the farm of La Haye Sainte. Both these posts were

occupied, but the latter, unfortunately, not so solidly as

Hougoumont. ... The position was well filled by the 69,000 men

of all arms and 156 guns which were present that day.

Napoleon, who slept at the farm of Caillou, and who had been

out on foot to the front during the night, was also early in

the field, and glad of the gift which he thought fortune had

placed in his hands. When Reille had joined him from Genappe,

he had 72,000 men, all admirable soldiers, and 240 guns, with

which to engage in combat, and he reckoned that the chances

were ninety to ten in his favour. He mounted his charger,

reconnoitred his opponent's position, and then gave the orders

which, promptly and finely obeyed, disclosed the French array.

... It was now nearly eleven o'clock, and, although his

opponent knew it not, Wellington had got news of the march

from Wavre of Bulow, whose leading troops were actually, at

that time, close to the wood of St. Lambert on the French

right; while Grouchy was at Sart les Walhain, between Gembloux

and Wavre. It is not practicable here to give a full account of

the battle of Waterloo; we can only describe its broad

outlines. The first gun was fired about twenty or thirty

minutes past eleven, and preluded a dashing and sustained

attack an Hougoumont, which failed to carry the house, garden,

or orchard, but did gain the wood. It was probably intended to

divert attention from the attack on the left and centre, which

Ney, massing his guns opposite the British left, was preparing

to execute. Wellington watched and in some measure controlled

the fight for Hougoumont, and then rode off to the centre,

taking post at a solitary tree which grew near the Charleroi

road above La Haye Sainte.

{1364}

Ney at half past one sent forward the whole of D'Erlon's

corps, and although some of them pushed close up to and over

the Wavre road, stormed the orchard of La Haye Sainte and took

the Pappelotte farm, yet at the critical moment Sir William

Ponsonby's Union Brigade of horse charged into the French

infantry, already shattered by the fire of Picton's troops,

and the net result of the combined operation was that two

eagles and 3,000 prisoners were captured, while nearly that

number of killed and wounded remained on the ground. On the

other side of La Haye Sainte the Household Brigade, led by

Lord Anglesea in person, charged in upon and routed a large

body of French cuirassiers. The grand attack thus completely

failed, and the centre, like the right, remained intact. It

was just before this combat began that Napoleon saw something

like troops towards St. Lambert and despatched two brigades of

light cavalry to reconnoitre. A Prussian staff officer was

caught beyond Planchenoit, and from him came the unexpected

and unwelcome information that the whole Prussian army was

approaching. ... The signs of danger on his right flank, the

punishment of D'Erlon's corps, the ineffectual attempt upon

the British Guards in and about Hougoumont, were followed by a

kind of pause and the combat reverted to cannonading and

skirmishing. But towards four o'clock Napoleon, increasing the

fire of his artillery, threw forward a mass of cavalry, forty

squadrons, and then began that series of reiterated onsets of

horse which lasted for two hours. ... Twice they were driven

down the slope, and the third time, when they came on, they

were strengthened by Kellerman and Guyot until they reached a

force of 77 squadrons, or 12,000 men; but these also were

repulsed, the British horse, what remained of them, charging

when the French were entangled among the squares and

disordered by the musketry and guns. Four times these fine

troopers charged, yet utterly failed to penetrate or move a

single foot battalion. But some time before the final effort,

Ney by a fierce attack got possession of La Haye Sainte, and

thus, just as the cavalry were exhausted, the French infantry

were established within sixty yards of the Allied centre. And

although the Emperor was obliged to detach one-half of his

Guard to the right, because Blucher had brought into play

beyond Planchenoit against Lobau nearly 80,000 men, still the

capture of La Haye Sainte was justly regarded as a grave

event. Wellington during the cavalry fight had moved three

brigades on his right nearer to Hougoumont, and had called up

Chassé and his Belgians to support them; and it was a little

before this time that he cried out to Brigadier-General Adam,

'By G--, Adam, I think we shall beat them yet! ... The crisis

of the battle had come for Napoleon. Unable after eight hours'

conflict to do more than capture La Haye Sainte; hardly

pressed by the Prussians, now strong and aggressive; owing

such success as he had obtained to the valour and discipline

of his soldiers--the Emperor delivered his last stroke, not

for victory--he could no longer hope to win--but for safety.

He sent forward the last ten battalions of his Guard to assail

the British right, and directed the whole remaining infantry

force available to attack all along the line. The Guard

marched onward in two columns, which came successively in

contact with their opponents. Napier's guns and the British

Guards, who rising from the ground showed across the head of

the first column, fired heavily and charging drove them in

confusion back towards La Belle Alliance; and the second

column, struck in flank by the musketry of the 52nd and 95th

was next broken by a bayonet charge and pursued by Colonel

Colborne to and beyond the Charleroi road. As Ziethen's

Prussians were falling upon the French near Pappelotte, and

Pirch and Bulow wrestling with the Imperial Guard in

Planchenoit, Wellington ordered the whole of the British line

to advance. The cheers arising on the right where he was,

extended along the front and gave new strength to the wearied

soldiers. He led the way. As he neared the Charleroi road, the

riflemen, full of Peninsular memories, began to cheer him as

he galloped up, but he called out, 'No cheering, my lads;

forward and complete your victory.' He found that good

soldier, Colborne, halted for a moment before three squares of

the rallied Imperial Guard. 'Go on, Colborne,' he said;

'better attack them, they won't stand.' Nor did they.

Wellington then turned to the right, where Vivian's Light

Cavalry were active in the gloom, and we next find him once

more with the 52nd near Rossomme, the farthest point of the

advance, where that regiment halted after its grand march over

the battlefield. Somewhere on the highway he met Blucher, who had

so nobly kept his word, and it was then that Gneisenau

undertook to chase the fugitives over the frontier. The

French, or perhaps we should say the Napoleonic army, was

destroyed, and the power which its mighty leader had built up

on the basis of its astonishing successes was gone for ever."

G. Hooper,

Wellington,

chapter 9.

ALSO IN:

D. Gardner,

Quatre Bras, Ligny, and Waterloo.

Lieutenant Colonel C. C. Chesney,

Waterloo Lectures.

W. Siborne,

History of the War in France and Belgium in 1819.

General Sir J. S. Kennedy,

Notes on the Battle of Waterloo.

W. H. Maxwell,

Life of Wellington,

volume 8, chapters 28-32.

G. R. Gleig,

Story of the Battle of Waterloo.

W. O'C. Morris,

Great Commanders of Modern Times,

and the Campaign of 1815.

FRANCE: A. D. 1815 (June-August).

Napoleon's return to Paris.

His final abdication.

His surrender of himself to the English.

His captivity at St. Helena.

"The vanquished army had lost 200 pieces of ordnance, and

80,000 men hors de combat or prisoners; as many more remained,

independently of Grouchy's 85,000 men; but the difficulty was

to rally them in presence of an enemy, that had taken lessons

in audacity and activity from Napoleon himself. The loss of

the allies was not less considerable, but there remained to

them 150,000 men, the confidence of victory, and the certainty

of being seconded by 300,000 allies, who were crossing the

Rhine from Mentz to Bäle. Such was the issue of this struggle,

commenced under such happy auspices, and which resulted more

fatal to France than the battles of Poitiers and Azincourt. It

must be admitted, that this disaster was the work of a

multitude of unheard-of circumstances: if Napoleon can be

reproached for certain faults, it must be allowed that fortune

dealt cruelly with him in the lesser details, and that his

enemies, in return, were as fortunate as they showed

themselves skillful.

{1365}

However unjust be the spirit of party, we are forced to render

homage to the merits of two generals, who, unexpectedly

attacked in their cantonments extending from Dinant and Liège

to Renaix, near Tournay, had taken such wise measures as to be

in condition next morning for giving battle to equal forces,

and for afterwards conquering by an able concentration of the

two armies. ... In the very battle of Waterloo, the French

might be censured for having attempted the first attack in

masses too deep. This system was never successful against the

murderous fire of English infantry and artillery.  ... There

were likewise extraordinary charges of cavalry, which, being

devoid of support, became heroic but useless struggles.

Notwithstanding all this, it is almost certain that Napoleon

would have remained master of the field of battle, but for the

arrival of 65,000 Prussians on his rear; a decisive and

disastrous circumstance, that to prevent was not entirely in

his power. As soon as the enemy led 130,000 men on the

battle-field, with scarcely 50,000 to oppose them, all was

lost. ... Napoleon had but one course left him, which was to

direct Grouchy through the Ardennes on Laon; to collect at

this point all that could be drawn from the interior, from

Metz and from Rapp's corps, leaving but garrisons in Lorraine

and Alsace. The imperial cause was very much shaken, put not

entirely lost; should all Frenchmen determine on opposing

Europe with the courage of the Spartans of Leonidas, the

energy of the Russians in 1812, or of the Spaniards of

Palafox. Unfortunately for them, as·for Napoleon, opinion was

very much divided on this subject, and the majority still

believing that the struggle interested only the power of the

emperor and his family, the fate of the country seemed of

little consequence. Prince Jerome had collected 25,000 men in

rear of Avesnes: he was ordered to lead them to Laon; there

remained 200 pieces of artillery, beside those of Grouchy. ...

Reaching Loon on the 19th, where he had at first resolved to

await the junction of Grouchy and Jerome, the emperor

discussed, with the small number of the trustworthy who had

followed him, the course he should adopt after this frightful

disaster. Should he repair to Paris, and concert with the

chambers and his ministers, or else remain with the army,

demanding of the chambers to invest him with dictatorial power

and an unlimited confidence, under the conviction that he

would obtain from them the most energetic measures, for saving

France and conquering her independence, on heaps of ruins? As

it always happens, his generals were divided in opinion; some

wished him to proceed to Paris, and deposit the crown into the

hands of the nation's delegates, or receive it from them a

second time, with the means of defending it. Others, with a

better appreciation of the views of the deputies, affirmed,

that far from sympathizing with Napoleon, and seconding him,

they would accuse him of having lost France, and would

endeavor to save the country by losing the emperor. ...

Lastly, the most prudent thought that Napoleon should not go

to Paris, but remain at the head of the army, in order to

treat with the sovereigns himself, by offering to abdicate in

favor of his son. It is said, that Napoleon inclined to the

idea of remaining at Laon with the army; but the advice of the

greatest number determined him, and he departed for Paris."

Baron de Jomini,

History of the Campaign of Waterloo,

pages 184-189.

"It was a moment of unrelieved despair for the public men who

gathered round him on his return to Paris, and among these

were several whose fame was of earlier date than his own. La

Fayette, the man of 1789; Carnot, organizer of victory to the

Convention; Lucien, who had decided the revolution of

Brumaire,--all these met in that comfortless deliberation.

Carnot was for a dictatorship of public safety, that is, for

renewing his great days of 1793; Lucien too liked the Roman

sound of the word dictator. 'Dare!' he said to his brother,

but the spring of that terrible will was broken at last. 'I

have dared too much already;' said Napoleon. Meanwhile, in the

Chamber of Representatives the, word was not dictatorship but

liberty. Here La Fayette caused the assembly to vote itself

permanent, and to declare guilty of high treason whoever

should attempt to dissolve it. He hinted that, if the word

abdication were not soon pronounced on the other side, he

would himself pronounce the word 'dechéance.' The second

abdication took place on June 22d. 'I offer myself a sacrifice

to the hatred of the enemies of France. My public life is

finished, and I proclaim my son, under the title of Napoleon

II., Emperor of the French.' On the 25th he retired to

Malmaison, where Josephine had died the year before. He had by

no means yet ceased to hope. When his son was passed over by

the Chamber of Representatives, who named an executive

commission of five, he protested that he had not intended to

make way for a new Directory. ... On the 27th he went so far

as to offer his services once more as general, 'regarding

myself still as the first soldier of the nation;' He was met

by a refusal, and left Malmaison on the 29th for Rochefort,

well furnished with books on the United States. France was by

this time entering upon another Reign of Terror. Massacre had

begun at Marseilles as early as the 25th. What should Napoleon

do? He had been formerly the enemy of every other nation, and

now he was the worst enemy, if not of France, yet of the

triumphant faction in France. He lingered some days at

Rochefort, where he had arrived on July 3d, and then, finding

it impossible to escape the vigilance of the English cruisers,

went on the 15th on board the 'Bellerophon' and surrendered

himself to Captain Maitland. It was explained to him that no

conditions could be accepted, but that he would be 'conveyed

to England to be received in such manner as the Prince Regent

should deem expedient:' He had written at the Île d'Aix the

following characteristic letter to the Prince Regent:--'Royal

Highness,--A prey to the factions which divide my country and

to the enmity of the powers of Europe, I have terminated my

public career, and I come, like Themistocles, to seat myself

at the hearth of the British people. I place myself under the

protection of its laws, which I claim from your Royal Highness

as the most powerful, the most constant, and the most generous

of my enemies.' It was perhaps the only course open to him. In

France his life could scarcely have been spared, and Blücher

talked of executing him on the spot where the Duc d'Enghien

had fallen. He therefore could do nothing but what he did. His

reference to Themistocles shows that he was conscious of

being the worst enemy that England had ever had.

{1366}

Perhaps he remembered that at the rupture of the treaty of

Amiens he had studied to envenom the contest by detaining the

English residents in France. Still he might reflect, on the

other hand, that England was the only great country which had

not been trampled down and covered with massacre by his

soldiers. It would have been inexcusable if the English

Government had given way to vindictive feelings, especially as

they could well afford to be magnanimous, having just won the

greatest of all victories. But it was necessary to deprive him

of the power of exciting new wars, and the experiment of Elba

had shown that this involved depriving him of his liberty. The

frenzy which had cost·the lives of millions must be checked. This

was the principle laid down in the declaration of March 15th,

by which he had been excommunicated as a public enemy. It was

therefore necessary to impose some restraint upon him. He must

be separated from his party and from all the revolutionary

party in Europe. So long as he remained in Europe this would

involve positive imprisonment. The only arrangement therefore

which would allow him tolerable personal comfort and enjoyment

of life, was to send him out of Europe. From these

considerations grew the decision of the Government to send him

to St. Helena. An Act of Parliament was passed 'for the better

detaining in custody Napoleon Bonaparte,' and another Act for

subjecting St. Helena to a special system of government. He

was kept on board the 'Bellerophon' till August 4th, when he

was transferred to the 'Northumberland.' On October 15th he

arrived at St. Helena, accompanied by Counts Montholon, Las

Cases, and Bertrand, with their families, General Gourgaud,

and a number of servants. In April, 1816, arrived Sir Hudson

Lowe, an officer who had been knighted for bringing the news

of the capture of Paris in 1814, as governor. The rest of his

life, which continued till May 5, 1821, was occupied partly in

quarrels with this governor, which have now lost their

interest, partly in the task he had undertaken at the time of

his first abdication, that of relating his past life. He did

not himself write this narrative, nor does it appear that he

even dictated it word for word. It is a report made partly by

General Gourgaud, partly by Count Montholon, of Napoleon's

impassioned recitals; but they assure us that this report, as

published, has been read and corrected throughout by him. It

gives a tolerably complete account of the period between the

siege of Toulon and the battle of Marengo. On the later period

there is little, except a memoir on the campaign of 1815, to

which the editors of the Correspondence have been able to add

another on Elba and the Hundred Days."

J. R. Seeley,

Short History of Napoleon I.,

chapter 6, section 5.

ALSO IN:

Count de Las Cases,

Life, Exile and Conversations of Napoleon.

General Count Montholon,

History of the Captivity of Napoleon.

W. Forsyth,

History of the Captivity of Napoleon.

B. E. O'Meara,

Napoleon in Exile.

Sir W. Scott,

Life of Napoleon,

volume 2, chapters 49-56.

A. Thiers,

History of the Consulate and the Empire,

chapters 61-62 (volume 5).

FRANCE: A. D. 1815 (July-November).

English and Prussian armies in Paris.

Return of Louis XVIII.

Restoration of the art-spoils or Napoleon.

Indemnities demanded.

Russian, Austrian and Spanish armies on French soil.

The second Treaty or Paris.

"The 7th of July was the proudest day in the annals of

England. On that day her victorious army, beaded by

Wellington, made their public entry, along with the Prussians,

into Paris, where an English drum had not been heard for

nearly four hundred years. ... The French regarded them with

melancholy hearts and anxious looks. Few persons were to be

seen in the streets. ... The English established themselves in

the Bois de Boulogne in a regular camp; the Prussians

bivouacked in the churches, on the quays, and in the principal

streets. On the following day Louis, who had followed in the

rear of the English army from Ghent, made his public entrance,

escorted by the national guard. But his entry was attended by

still more melancholy circumstances, and of sinister augury to

the future stability of his dynasty. Even the royalists were

downcast; their patriotic feelings were deeply wounded by the

defeat of France. ... There was something in the restoration

of the monarch by the arms of the old rivals and enemies of

France which added inexpressibly to its bitterness. ... The

reality of subjugation was before their eyes. Blucher kept

aloof from all intercourse with the court, and haughtily

demanded a contribution of 100,000,000 francs ... for the pay

of his troops, as Napoleon had done from the Prussians at

Berlin. Already the Prussian soldiers insisted with loud cries

that the pillar of Austerlitz should be pulled down, as

Napoleon had destroyed the pillar of Rosbach; and Blucher was

so resolute to destroy the bridge of Jena, that he had

actually begun operations by running mines under the arches

for blowing it up. ... Wellington as steadily resisted the

ruthless act, but he had great difficulty in maintaining his

point; and it was only by his placing a sentinel on the

bridge, and repeated and earnest remonstrances, that the

destruction of that beautiful monument was prevented. ... A

still more melancholy humiliation than they had yet

experienced ere long befell the French nation. The Allied

sovereigns now arrived in Paris, and insisted upon the

restoration of the objects of art in the museum of the Louvre,

which had been pillaged from their respective states by the

orders of Napoleon. The justice of this demand could not be

contested: it was only wresting the prey from the robber. ...

Nothing wounded the French so profoundly as this breaking up

of the trophies of the war. It told them, in language not to

be misunderstood, that conquest had now reached their doors:

the iron went into the soul of the nation. A memorial from all

the artists of Europe at Rome claimed for the Eternal City the

entire restoration of the immortal works of art which had once

adorned it. The Allied sovereigns acceded to the just demand;

and Canova, impassioned for the arts and the city of his

choice, hastened to Paris to superintend the removal. It was

most effectually done. The bronze horses ... [from Venice]

were restored to their old station in front of the Church of

St. Mark. The Transfiguration and the Last Communion of St.

Jerome resumed their place in the halls of the Vatican; the

Apollo and the Laocoon again adorned the precincts of St.

Peter's; the Venus was enshrined anew amidst beauty in the

Tribune of Florence; and the Descent from the Cross by Rubens

was restored to the devout worship of the Flemings in the

cathedral of Antwerp. ...

{1367}

The claims preferred by the different Allied powers for

restitution not merely of celebrated objects of art, but of

curiosities and valuable articles of all kinds, which had been

carried off by the French during their occupation of the

different countries of Europe, especially under Napoleon, were

immense, and demonstrated at once the almost incredible length

to which the system of spoliation and robbery had been carried

by the republican and imperial authorities. Their amount may

be estimated by one instance from an official list, prepared

by the Prussian authorities in 1815, It appears that, during

the years 1806 and 1807, there had been violently taken from

the Prussian states, on the requisition of M. Donore, and

brought to Paris,--statues, paintings, antiquities, cameos,

manuscripts, maps, gems, antiques, rarities, and other

valuable articles, the catalogue of which occupies 53 closely

printed pages of M. Schoell's valuable Recueil. Among them are

127 paintings, many of them of the very highest value, taken from

the palaces of Berlin and Potsdam alone; 187 statues, chiefly

antique, taken from the same palaces during the same period;

and 86 valuable manuscripts and documents seized in the city

of Aix-la-Chapelle, on the occupation of that city, then a

neutral power, in 1803, by the armies of the First Consul on

the invasion of Hanover. The total articles reclaimed by the

Prussians exceeded two thousand. ... The claims of states and

cities for indemnity on account of' the enormous exactions

made from them by the French generals, under the authority of

the Convention and the Emperor, were still more extraordinary.

... The vast amount of these claims for indemnities in money

or territories, and the angry feelings with which they were

urged, were of sinister augury to the French nation, and

augmented, in a most serious degree, the difficulties

experienced by those who were intrusted with the conduct of

the negotiations. But, be they what they may, the French had

no means of resisting them; all they could trust to was the

moderation or jealousies of their conquerors. The force which,

during the months of July and August, advanced from all

quarters into their devoted territory, was immense, and such

as demonstrated that, if Napoleon had not succeeded in

dissolving the alliance by an early victory in the

Netherlands, the contest, even without the battle of Waterloo,

would have been hopeless. The united armies of Russians and

Austrians, 350,000 strong, under Schwartzenberg and Barclay de

Tolly, crossed the Rhine in various places from Bâle to

Coblentz, and, pressing rapidly forward, soon occupied the

whole eastern provinces of France. The Austrians and

Piedmontese, a hundred thousand more; passed Mont Cenis, or

descended the Rhone, from Geneva to Lyons. The Spaniards made

their appearance in Bearn or Roussillon. The armies of Blucher

and Wellington, now reinforced to 200,000 effective men,

occupied Paris, its environs, Normandy, and Picardy. Eighty

thousand Prussians and Germans, in addition, were advancing

through the Rhenish provinces and Belgium. Before the Allied

sovereigns returned to Paris, in the middle of July, the

French territory was occupied by 800,000 men, to oppose which

no considerable force remained but the army beyond the Loire,

which mustered 65,000 combatants. ... Austria insisted upon

getting back Lorraine and Alsace; Spain put in a claim to the

Basque provinces; Prussia alleged that her security would be

incomplete unless Mayence, Luxembourg, and all the frontier

provinces of France adjoining her territory, were ceded to

her; and the King of the Netherlands claimed the whole of the

French fortresses of the Flemish barrier. The monarchy of

Louis seemed on the eve of dissolution; and so complete was

the prostration of the vanquished, that there appeared no

power capable of preventing it. It was with no small

difficulty, and more from the mutual jealousies of the

different powers than any other cause, that these natural

reprisals for French rapacity were prevented from taking

place. The negotiation was protracted at Paris till late in

autumn; Russia, which had nothing to gain by the proposed

partition, took part with France throughout its whole

continuance; and the different powers, to support their

pretensions in this debate, maintained their armies, who had

entered on all sides, on the French soil; so that above

800,000 foreign troops were quartered on its inhabitants for

several months. At length, however, by the persevering efforts

of Lord Castlereagh, M. Nesselrode, and M. Talleyrand, all

difficulties were adjusted, and the second treaty of Paris was

concluded in November 1815, between France and the whole

Allied powers. By this treaty, and the relative conventions

which were signed the same day, conditions of a very onerous

kind were imposed upon the restored government. The French

frontier was restored to the state in which it stood in 1790,

by which means the whole of the territory, far from

inconsiderable, gained by the treaty of 1814, was resumed by

the Allies. In consequence of this, France lost the fortresses

of Landau, Sarre-Louis, Philipville, and Marienburg, with the

adjacent territory of each. Versoix, with a small district

round it, was ceded to the canton of Geneva; the fortress of

Huningen was to be demolished; but the little country of the

Venaisin, the first conquest of the Revolution, was preserved

to France. Seven hundred millions of francs (£28,000,000

sterling) were to be paid to the Allied powers for the

expenses of the war; in addition to which it was stipulated

that an army of 150,000 men, composed of 80,000 from each of

the great powers of England, Russia, Austria, and Prussia, and

the lesser powers of Germany, was to occupy, for a period not

less than three, or more than five years, the whole frontier

fortresses of France; ... and this large force was to be

maintained entirely at the expense of the French government.

In addition to this, the different powers obtained indemnities

for the spoliations inflicted on them by France during the

Revolution, which amounted to the enormous sum of 735,000,000

of francs more (£29,400,000 sterling). A hundred millions of

francs were also provided to the smaller powers as an

indemnity for the expenses of the war; so that the total sums

which France had to pay, besides maintaining the army of

occupation, amounted to no less than fifteen hundred and

thirty-five millions of francs, or £61,400,000 sterling. ...

Great Britain, in a worthy spirit, surrendered the whole sum

falling to her out of the indemnity for the war, amounting to

nearly £5,000,000 sterling, to the King of the Netherlands, to

restore the famous barrier against France which Joseph II. had

so insanely demolished."

Sir A. Alison,

History of Europe, 1789-1815,

chapter 95 (volume 20).

ALSO IN:

Prince de Talleyrand,

Memoirs,

part 9 (volume 8).

E. Hertslet,

The Map of Europe by Treaty,

Number 40 (volume 1).

{1368}

FRANCE: A. D. 1815 (September).

The Holy Alliance.

See HOLY ALLIANCE.

FRANCE: A. D. 1815-1830.

The restored monarchy.

Louis XVIII. and Charles X.

Career of the Reactionaries.

Conquest of Algiers.

Ordinances of July.

Revolution.

Abdication and exile of the king.

"France was defeated but not crushed. Indeed she had gained

Avignon and some districts of Alsace since 1792, and she had

gained social and political stability by having millions of

peasants as small proprietors in the soil; moreover, as

Napoleon always waged his wars at the expense of his conquered

foes, the French national debt was after all the wars only

one-sixth of the debt of Great Britain. So France soon rose to

a position of strength and prosperity hardly equalled in all

Europe, in spite of bad harvests, political unrest, and the

foreign occupation which ended in 1818. The royalists, after a

quarter of a century of repression, now revenged themselves

with truly French vehemence. In France a victorious party

generally crushes its opponents; and the elections, held

during the full swing of the royalist reaction, sent up to

Paris a Legislative Assembly 'more royalist than the king

himself.' Before it assembled, Louis XVIII., in spite of his

promise only to punish those who were declared by the Assembly

to be traitors, proscribed fifty-seven persons who had

deserted to Napoleon in the 'Hundred Days.' ... Of the

proscribed men thirty-eight were banished and a few were shot.

Among the latter the most illustrious was Marshal Ney, whose

past bravery did not shield him from the extreme penalty for

the betrayal of the military oath. ... This impolitic

execution rankled deep in the breasts of all Napoleon's old

soldiers, but for the present all opposition was swept away in

the furious tide of reaction. Brune, one of Napoleon's

marshals, was killed by the royalist populace of Avignon; and

the Protestants of the south, who were suspected of favouring

Napoleon's home policy, suffered terrible outrages at Nimes

and Uzès in this 'white terror.' The restored monarchy had far

stronger executive powers than the old system wielded before

1789, for it now drew into its hands the centralised powers

which, under the Directory and the Empire, had replaced the

old cumbrous provincial system; but even this gain of power

did not satisfy the hot-headed royalists of the Chamber. They

instituted judicial courts under a provost (prévôt), which

passed severe sentences without right of appeal. Dismissing

the comparatively Liberal ministers Talleyrand and Fouché,

Louis in September 1816 summoned a more royalist ministry

under the Duc de Richelieu, which was itself hurried on by the

reactionaries. Chateaubriand fanned the flames of royalist

passion by his writings, until the king even found it

necessary to dissolve this mischievous Chamber, and the new

deputies who assembled (February 1817) showed a more moderate

spirit. France was soon delivered from the foreign armies of

occupation, for the sovereigns of Russia, Austria, and

Prussia, meeting at Aix-la-Chapelle (September 1818), in order

to combat revolutionary attempts, decided that an early

evacuation of French territory would strengthen the Bourbon

rule in France; and they renewed the Quadruple Alliance, which

aimed at upholding existing treaties. The discontent in

Germany and Italy awakened a sympathetic echo in France, which

showed itself in the retirement of the Duc de Richelieu and

the accession of a more progressive minister, Decazes

(November 1819). This check to the royalist reaction was soon

swept away by an event of sinister import. The Duc de Berry,

second son of the Comte d'Artois, was assassinated (February

1820), as he was leaving the opera-house, by a fanatic who

aimed at cutting off the direct Bourbon line (February 1820).

His design utterly failed, for a posthumous son, the

celebrated Comte de Chambord, was born in September 1820; and

the only result was a new outburst of royalist fury. Liberty

of the press was suspended, and a new complicated electoral

system restricted the franchise to those who paid at least

1,000 francs a year in direct taxation: the, Chamber of

Deputies, a fifth part of which was renewed every year by an

electorate now representing only the wealthy, became every

year more reactionary, while the Left saw its numbers decline.

The Ultra-royalist ministry of Villèle soon in its turn

aroused secret conspiracies, for the death of Napoleon (May 5,

1821) was now awakening a feeling of regret for the

comparative liberty enjoyed in France during the Empire.

Military conspiracies were formed, only to be discovered and

crushed, and the veteran republican Lafayette was thought to

be concerned in a great attempt projected in the eastern

departments with its headquarters at Belfort; and the terrible

society of the Carbonari secretly spread its arms through the

south of France, where it found soil as favourable as in Italy

itself. ... A revolution in Spain held Ferdinand a prisoner in

his palace at Madrid. Louis determined to uphold the throne of

his Bourbon relative, and sent an army which quickly effected

its object (1823). 'The Pyrenees no longer exist,' exclaimed

Louis XVIII. In fact, everywhere in Europe absolutism seemed

to be triumphant, and the elections of December 1823 sent up a

further reinforcement to the royalist party; also the

approaching end of the sensible old king foreshadowed a period

of still more violent reaction under his hot-headed brother

Charles. Louis XVIII. died on September 16, 1824, At his death

the restoration seemed firmly established. ... France had

quickly recovered from twenty years of warfare, and was

thought to have the strongest government in Europe. Always the

chief of the reactionary nobles, Charles had said, 'It is only

Lafayette and I who have not changed since 1789.' Honest,

sincere, and affable as the new king was, yet his popularity

soon vanished when it was seen how entirely he was under the

control of his confessor; and the ceremonies of his coronation

at Rheims showed that he intended to revive the almost

forgotten past. In Guizot's words, 'Louis XVIII was a moderate

of the old system and a liberal-minded inheritor of the 18th

century: Charles X. was a true Émigré, and a submissive bigot'

Among the first bills which Charles proposed to the Chambers was

one to indemnify those who had lost their lands in the

Revolution. To give these lands back would have caused general

unsettlement among thousands of small cultivators; but the

former landowners received an indemnity of a milliard of

francs, which they exclaimed against for its insufficiency

just as loudly as the radicals did for its extravagance: by

this tardy act of justice the State endeavoured to repair some

of the unjust confiscations of the revolutionary era. ...

{1369}

The attempts made by the Jesuits to regain their legal status

in France, in spite of the prohibition dating from before the

fall of the old regime, aroused further hostility to the king,

who was well known to favour their cause. Nothing, however, so

strengthened the growing opposition in the Chambers and in the

country at large as a rigorous measure aimed at the

newspapers, pamphlets, and books which combated the clerical

reaction. These publications were to pay a stamp duty per

page, while crushing fines were devised to ruin the offending

critics. One of the leaders of the opposition, Casimir Périer,

exclaimed against this measure as ruinous to trade: 'Printing

would be suppressed in France and transferred to Belgium.' The

king persevered in his mad enterprise: he refused to receive a

petition from the most august literary society in Europe, the

Académie Française, and cashiered its promoters as if they

were clerks under his orders. Strange to say, the Chamber of

Deputies passed the measure, while that of the Peers rejected

it--an event greeted by illuminations all over Paris (April

1827). A few days afterwards, at a review of the National

Guards in Paris, the troops raised cries for the liberty of

the press and for the charter granted in 1815. The next day

they were disbanded by royal command, but were foolishly

allowed to retain their arms, which were soon to be used

against the government. Charles next created seventy-six new

peers to outvote his opponents in the Upper House. He also

dissolved the Chamber of Deputies, but found the new members

less pliable. Finally, Charles had to give way for the time,

and accept a more moderate ministry under Martignac in place

of the reactionary Villèle Cabinet. ... Charles was soon able

to dismiss this ministry, the last hope of conciliation, and

formed (August 1829) a ministry under Count Polignac, one of

whose colleagues was the General Bourmont who had deserted to

the allies the day before Waterloo. The king's speech at the

opening of the next session (March 1830) was curt and

threatening, and the Chamber was soon prorogued. Reform

banquets, a custom which the French borrowed from English

reformers, increased the agitation, which the Polignac

ministry vainly sought to divert by ambitious projects of

invasion and partition of some neighbouring States. The only

practical outcome of these projects was the conquest of the

pirate stronghold of Algiers. This powerful fortress had been

bombarded and reduced by Lord Exmouth with the British fleet

in 1816, and the captives, mostly Italians, were released from

that den of slave-dealers; but the Dey of Algiers had resumed

his old habits, complaints from the French were met by

defiance, and at last the French envoy quitted the harbor amid

a shower of bullets. A powerful expedition effected a landing

near the strongly-fortified harbour, and easily beat back the

native attack; and then from the land side soon battered down

the defences of the city.

See BARBARY STATES: A. D. 1830.

Thus the city which had long been the terror of Mediterranean

sailors became the nucleus of the important French colony of

Algeria (July 4,1830). The design of Charles X. and of his

reactionary Polignac ministry to divert the French people from

domestic grievances to foreign conquest needed the genius and

strength of a Napoleon to ensure success. The mere fact of the

expedition being Under the command of the hated General

Bourmont had made it unpopular. ... So, although the victory

was triumphantly announced throughout France, yet the

elections sent up a majority hostile to the king.

Nevertheless, with his usual blind obstinacy, Charles on the

25th July 1830 issued the famous ordinances which brought

matters to a crisis. The first suspended the liberty of the

press, and placed books under a strict censorship; the second

dissolved the newly-elected Chamber of Deputies; the third

excluded licensed dealers (patentés) from the franchise; the

fourth summoned a new Chamber under the new conditions, every

one of which violated the charter granted by the late king.

The Parisians at once flew to arms, and raised barricades in

the many narrow streets which then favoured street-defence.

Marmont, hated by the people as being the first of Napoleon's

marshals who had treated with the allies, was to quell the

disturbances with some 20,000 troops of the line; but on the

second day's fighting (July 28) the insurgents, aided by the

disbanded National Guards, and veterans of the empire, beat

back the troops; and on the third day the royal troops, cut

off from food and supplies, and exhausted by the heat, gave

way before the tri-colour flag; the defection of two line

regiments left the Louvre unguarded; a panic spread among

other regiments, and soon the tri-colour floated above the

Tuileries. Charles thereupon set the undignified example, soon

to be followed by so many kings and, princes, of giving way

when it was too late. He offered to withdraw the hated

ordinances, but was forced to flee from St. Cloud. He then

tried the last expedient, also doomed to failure, of

abdicating in favour of his little grandson the Duc de

Bordeaux, since better known as the Comte de Chambord.

Retiring slowly with his family to Cherbourg, the baffled

monarch set out for a second and last exile, spent first at

Holyrood Palace, Edinburgh, and ended at Göritz in Bohemia.

More than 5,000 civilians and 700 soldiers were killed or

wounded in these terrible 'three days' of July 1830, which

ended all attempts to re-establish the tyranny of the old

régime. The victims were appropriately buried in the Place de

la Bastille. They freed not France alone, but dealt a fierce

blow at the system of Metternich."

J. H. Rose,

Century of Continental History,

chapter 23.

ALSO IN:

D. Turnbull,

The French Revolution of 1830.

A. de Lamartine,

The Restoration of Monarchy in France,

books 32-50 (volumes 3-4).

E. E. Crowe,

History of the Reigns of Louis XVIII.

and Charles X.

Prince de Talleyrand,

Memoirs,

part 10 (volumes 3-4).

G. L. Dickinson,

Revolution and Reaction in Modern France,

chapter 3.

FRANCE: A. D. 1822:

The Congress of Verona.

French intervention in Spain approved.

See VERONA: THE CONGRESS OF.

FRANCE: A. D. 1823-1827.

Interference in Spain to suppress the revolution and reinstate

King Ferdinand.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1814-1827.

FRANCE: A. D. 1827-1829.

Intervention on behalf of Greece.

Battle of Navarino.

See GREECE: A. D. 1821-1829.

{1370}

FRANCE: A. D. 1830-1840.

The monarchy renewed under Louis Philippe.

Its steady drift from the constitutional course.

"The Constitutional party set their hopes on Louis Philippe,

Duke of Orleans. This prince, born in 1773, was the son of

that notorious 'Egalité' who during the revolution had ended

his checkered career under the guillotine. His grandmother was

the noble Elizabeth Charlotte, a native of the Palatinate, who

had the misfortune to be the wife of the effeminate Duke of

Orleans, brother of Louis XIV. Louis Philippe was a Bourbon,

like King Charles; but the opposition of several members of

this Orleans branch of the royal house had caused it to be

regarded as a separate family. From his youth up he had

displayed a great deal of popular spirit and common-sense. ...

Seemingly created by his nature and career to be a citizen

king, he had long since, as early as 1814, determined to

accept the throne in case it were offered him." The offer came

in 1830 with the revolution of July. On the 31st of that month

he accepted the office of lieutenant-general of the kingdom,

conferred by the vote of a meeting of fifty delegates. "The

'Society of the Friends of the People' [an organization of the

pronounced republicans], not very well pleased with this result

of the 'great week' [as the week of the revolution was

called], laid before Lafayette, on the following day," their

programme, "and commissioned him to make the duke guarantee

the popular rights therein set forth by his signature. With

this document in his pocket, Lafayette made his ... visit to

Louis Philippe in the Palais Royal. In the course of

conversation he said to him, 'You know that I am a republican,

and consider the American constitution the most perfect.' 'I

am of the same opinion,' replied the duke; 'no one could have

been two years in America and not share that view. But do you

think that that constitution could be adopted in France in its

present condition--with the present state of popular opinion?'

'No,' said Lafayette; 'what France needs is a popular monarchy

surrounded by republican--thoroughly

republican--institutions.' 'There I quite agree with you,'

rejoined Louis Philippe. Enchanted with this political

harmony, the old general considered it unnecessary to present

the programme, and went security to the republicans for the

duke, the patriot, of 1789. ... On the 3d of August the

Chamber was opened by the Duke of Orleans, and the abdication

of the king and dauphin announced. ... The question whether

the constitution was to be changed, and how, gave rise to an

animated contest between radicals and liberals. The confidence

in Louis Philippe was so great, that they were content with a

few improvements. The throne was declared vacant, and Louis

Philippe proclaimed king of the French. ... August 8th, Louis

Philippe appeared in the Palais Bourbon, took the oath to the

constitution, and was thereupon proclaimed king. ... None of

the great monarchs had so difficult a task as Louis Philippe.

If he attached himself to the majority of his people and

showed himself in earnest with 'the republican institutions

which ought to surround the throne,' he had all the

continental powers against him; if he inclined toward the

absolute system of the latter, then not alone the extreme

parties, but also the men of the constitutional monarchy, ...

rose against him. ... His system, which he himself named a

happy medium (juste milieu), would have been a happy medium if

he had struck the middle and kept it; but he gradually swerved

so much toward the right that the middle was far to his left.

From the outset he had three parties against him--Legitimists,

Bonapartists, and Republicans." At intervals, there were

demonstrations and insurrections undertaken in the interest of

each of these. In July, 1835, the assassination of the king

was attempted, by the explosion of an infernal machine, which

killed and wounded sixty people. "The whole Republican party

was unjustly made responsible for this attempt, and new blows

were struck at the juries and the Press. Every Press offence

involving a libel of the king or the administration was to be

tried from this time on before the Court of Peers, and the

composition of that body rendered conviction certain. With

these September laws' the reaction was complete, the power of

the Republicans was broken. Their activity did not cease,

however. Their numerous societies continued to exist in

secret, and to the political affiliated themselves the social

societies, which ... demanded, among other impossibilities,

the abolition of private property. It was these baleful

excrescences which deprived republicanism of all credit, and

outbreaks like that of May 12th, 1839, where a few hundred

members of the 'Society of the Seasons,' with Barbès and

Blanqui at their head, disarmed military posts and proclaimed

the republic, found not the slightest response. The repeated

attempts which were made on the king's life were also

unsuccessful." The relations of Louis Philippe "to foreign

powers became better the more he approximated to their system,

putting restraints upon societies, the Press, and juries, and

energetically crushing popular revolts. Naturally he was by

this very means constantly further estranging the mass of the

people. ... What the Legitimists and Republicans had not

effected--a change of government--the Napoleonids now took in

hand." Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, son of ex-king Louis of

Holland and Hortense Beauharnais, made his appearance among

the soldiers of the garrison at Strasburg, October 30, 1836,

with the expectation that they would proclaim him emperor and

set the example of a rising in his favor. But the attempt was

a wretched failure; Louis Napoleon was arrested and

contemptuously sent out of the country, to America, without

punishment. In 1840 he repeated his undertaking, at Boulogne,

more abortively than in the first instance; was again made

prisoner, and was consigned, this time, to the castle of Ham,

from which he escaped six years later. "All the world laughed

at his folly; but without the scenes of Strasburg and

Boulogne, and the martyrdom of a six years' imprisonment, his

name certainly would not have produced such an effect in the

year 1848."

W. Miller,

Political History of Recent Times,

sections 7 and 14.

ALSO IN:

L. Blanc,

History of Ten Years, 1830-1840.

F. P. Guizot,

Memoirs to Illustrate the History of My Own Time,

volumes 3-4.

FRANCE: A. D. 1831-1832.

Intervention in the Netherlands.

Siege of Antwerp.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1830-1832.

FRANCE: A. D. 1833-1840.

The Turko-Egyptian question and its settlement.

See TURKS: A. D. 1831-1840.

FRANCE: A. D. 1833-1846.

The subjugation of Algeria.

War with Abd-el-Kader.

See BARBARY STATES: A. D.1830-1846.

{1371}

FRANCE: A. D. 1841-1848.

The limited electoral body and its corruption.

Agitation for reform.

The suppressed banquet at Paris and the

revolution which followed.

Abdication and flight of the king.

"The monarchy of Louis Philippe lasted for 18 years. But the

experiment was practicable only so long as the throne rested

on a small body of obedient electors. The qualification for

the franchise was so high that it was held only by 200,000

people. So small a constituency could, be 'managed' by the

skill of M. Guizot and M. Thiers [who were the chief rivals of

the time in political leadership]. It could be 'managed'

through gifts of places, bribes, the influence of local

magnates, and the pressure of public officials. There was

never perhaps so corrupt an electoral body. ... M. Guizot, who

was an austere puritan at home, and who has entered into a

competition with Saint Augustin as a writer of religious

meditations, raised many sneers to the lips of worldlings, not

only by lending his hand to the infamous intrigue of the

Spanish Marriages, but by allowing his subordinates to traffic

in places for the sake of getting votes. His own hands, of

course, were clean; no one spoke a whisper against his

personal purity. But he seemed to have much practical sympathy

with the advice which Pitt, in one of Landor's 'Imaginary

Conversations,' gives to his young disciple Canning. Pecuniary

corruption was the very breath of life to the constitutional

monarchy. The voters were bought as freely as if they had

stood in the market-place. The system admirably suited the

purpose of the little family party of princes and

parliamentary chiefs who ruled the country. But it was as

artificial and fleeting as the sand castles which a child

builds on the edge of the advancing tide."

J. Macdonell,

France since the First Empire,

pages 172-174.

"The population of France was then 34,000,000, and the

privilege of the political franchise was vested exclusively in

those who paid in direct taxes a sum not less than £8. This

class numbered little more than 200,000. ... The government

had 130,000 places at its disposal, and the use which was made

of these during the 18 years of Louis Philippe's reign was

productive of corruption more widespread and shameless than

France had known since the first revolution. In the scarcely

exaggerated language used by M. de Lamartine, the government

had 'succeeded in making of a nation of citizens a vile band

of beggars.' It was obvious to all who desired the

regeneration of France that reform must begin with the

representation of the people. To this end the liberals

directed much effort. They did not as yet propose universal

suffrage, and their leaders were divided between an extension

of the franchise to all who paid £2 of direct taxes and an

extension, which went no lower than £4. The demand for reform

was resisted by the government. ... Among the leaders of the

liberal party were men of high character and commanding

influence. Arago, Odillon Barrot, Louis Blanc, Thiers,

Lamartine, were formidable assailants for the strongest

government to encounter. Under their guidance the agitation

for reform assumed dimensions exceedingly embarrassing and

even alarming. For once France borrowed from England her

method of political agitation. Reform banquets, attended by

thousands of persons, were held in all the chief towns, and

the pressure of a peaceful public opinion was employed to

obtain the remedy of a great wrong. The police made feeble

attempts to prevent such gatherings, but were ordinarily

unsuccessful. But the king and M. Guizot, strong in the

support of the army and a purchased majority of the deputies,

and apparently little aware of the vehemence of the popular

desire, made no effort to satisfy or propitiate. Louis

Philippe had wisely set a high value on the maintenance of

cordial relations with England. ... The Queen of England

gratified him by a visit [1843], which he returned a few

months after. ... During these visits there was much

conversation regarding a Spanish matter which was then of some

interest. The Spanish government was looking around to find

suitable husbands for their young queen and her sister. The

hands of the princesses were offered to two sons of Louis

Philippe. But ... England looked with disfavour upon a close

alliance between the crowns of France and Spain. The king

would not offend England. He declined the hand of the Spanish

queen, but accepted that of her sister for his fourth son, the

Duc de Montpensier. Queen Victoria and her ministers approved

of that marriage on the condition voluntarily offered by King

Louis, that it should not take place till the Spanish queen

was married and had children. But in a few years the king

violated his pledge, and pressed upon Spain an arrangement

under which the two marriages were celebrated together [1846].

... To Louis Philippe himself the transaction was calamitous.

He had broken his kingly word, and he stood before Europe and

before his own people a dishonoured man. ... Circumstances

made it easy for the opposition to enhance the general

discontent. Many evidences of shameless corruption were at

this time brought to light. ... The crops failed in 1845 and

1846, and prices rose to a famine point. ... The demand for

parliamentary reform became constantly more urgent; but M.

Guizot heeded it not. The reformers took up again their work

of agitation. They announced a great procession and reform

banquet. The police, somewhat hesitatingly, interdicted the

demonstration, and its promoters resolved to submit; but the

people, insufficiently informed of these movements, gathered

for the procession in the early morning. All that day

[February 22, 1848] the streets were thronged, and the

excitement of the people increased from hour to hour; but few

soldiers were seen, and consequently no conflict occurred.

Next morning the strategic points of the city were garrisoned

by a strong force of soldiers and national guards, and the

people saw that the government feared them. Business was

suspended, and the constantly rising agitation foretold

irrepressible tumults. The men of the faubourgs appeared once

more. Towards evening a few barricades were thrown up, and a

few gunsmiths' shops were plundered. Worst of all, the

national guard appeared to sympathize with the people. ... To

appease the angry mob, no measure seemed so hopeful as the

sacrifice of the ministry. Guizot resigned. Thiers and Odillon

Barrot, chiefs of the liberal party, were received into the

cabinet. Marshal Bugeaud was appointed to command the troops.

But before the day closed a disaster had occurred which made

all concession vain. Before one of the public offices there

was stationed a battalion of infantry, around which there

surged an excited crowd. A shot came from the crowd, and was

promptly responded to by a volley which killed or wounded 50

persons.

{1372}

The bodies of the victims were placed on waggons and drawn

along the streets, that the fury of the people might be

excited to the highest pitch. During that sleepless night,

Marshal Bugeaud, skilfully directing the forces which he

commanded, had taken the barricades and effectively checked

the rioters. But in early morning the new ministers ordered

him to desist and withdraw his troops. They deemed it useless

to resist. Concession was, in their view, the only avenue to

tranquillity. The soldiers retired; the crowds pressed on to

the Tuileries." The king, terrified by their approach, was

persuaded to sign an abdication in favor of his grandson, the

Comte de Paris, and to fly in haste, with his family, from the

palace and from Paris. A week later the royal family "reached

the coast and embarked for England, ... their majesties

travelling under the lowly but well-chosen incognito of Mr.

and Mrs. Smith. ... Immediately on the departure of the king,

a provisional government was organized, with M. Lamartine at

its head."

R. Mackenzie,

The Nineteenth Century,

book 3, chapter 1.

ALSO IN:

F. P. Guizot,

France under Louis Philippe.

M. Caussidière,

Memoirs,

volume 1.

FRANCE: A. D. 1848 (February-May).

The three months of Provisional Government.

Its extraordinary measures.

Its absolutism.

Creation or the Ateliers Nationaux.

The consequences.

On the morning of February 24th--the morning of the king's

flight--M. de Lamartine, entering the Palais Bourbon, where

the Chamber of Deputies held its meetings, found in the

vestibule seven or eight persons waiting for him. "Who they

were we are not told--or what they were, except that they

belonged to the newspaper press. Even the names of the papers

with which they were connected are not expressly

stated--though the 'National' and 'Réforme' are indicated.

They demanded a secret conference. Lamartine took them into a

distant apartment." There they "proposed to him to substitute

for Louis-Philippe the Comte de Paris as king, and the Duchess

of Orleans as regent, and to place him [Lamartine] over them

minister." "Lamartine does not appear to have been surprised

at the proposal. He does not appear to have doubted the power

of seven or eight journalists to dethrone a king, create a

regent, and appoint a minister! And he was right. The

'National' and the 'Réforme,' whose representatives stood

before him, did more than all this, a couple of hours after.

... He objected to their scheme that such an arrangement would

not last, and declared himself in favour of a republic, based

on universal suffrage; ... they expressed their conviction,

and separated, agreed, apparently, on the course of action to

be pursued.' A few hours later, the Chamber was invaded by a

body of rioters, fresh from the sack of the Tuileries. The

Duchess of Orleans, who had presented herself at the Chamber

with her two children, fled before them. "M. Sauzet, the

President, disappeared. Lamartine [who was speaking] remained

in the tribune, and desired Dupont de l'Eure to take the

vacant chair." Thereupon a Provisional Government was

appointed, in some fashion not clearly detailed. It underwent

certain changes, by unexplained additions, within the

following day or two, but "in the 'Moniteur' of February 27

(the third day of the existence of the Provisional

Government), its members are arranged thus:--MM. Arago, Dupont

de l'Eure, Albert (ouvrier), F. Marrast, F. Flocon, Lamartine,

Marie, L. Blanc, Crémieux, Ledru Rollin, Garnier Pagès. ...

Within two days after its formation it was on the brink of

ruin under an attack from the Terrorists [or Red Republicans,

who assumed the red flag as their standard]. ... The contest

had left the members of the government in a state of mind

which M. de Lamartine thinks peculiarly favourable to wise

legislation. ... 'Every member of the Council sought [he

says], in the depths of his heart and of his intellect, for

some great reform, some great legislative, political, or moral

improvement. Some proposed the instantaneous abolition of

negro slavery. Others, the abolition of the restrictions

imposed by the laws of September upon the press. Some, the

proclamation of fraternity among nations, in order to abolish

war by abolishing conquest. Some, the abolition of the

qualification of electors. And all, the principles of mutual

charity among all classes of citizens. As quickly as these

great democratic truths, rather felt than discussed, were

converted into decrees, they were printed in a press set up at

the door of the council-room, thrown from the windows to the

crowd, and despatched by couriers through the departments.'

... The important decrees, which actually bear date February

25 or 26, and which may therefore be referred to this evening

of instinct, inspiration, and enthusiasm, are these:--The

18th, which sets at liberty all persons detained on political

grounds. The 19th, by which the government--

1, Engages to secure the existence of the operative

(ouvrier) by employment:

2, Engages to secure employment (garantir du travail) to

all citizens:

3, Admits that operatives ought to combine in order to

enjoy the fruits of their labour:

4, And promises to return to the operatives, whose property

it is, the million which will fall in from the civil list.

The 22nd, which dissolves the Municipal Guards. The 26th,

which declares that the actual government of France is

republican, and that the nation will immediately be called on

to ratify by its votes this resolution of the government and

of the people of Paris. The 29th, which declares that Royalty,

under any name whatever, ... is abolished. ... And the 30th,

which directs the immediate establishment of national

workshops (ateliers natlonaux). We confess that, we agree with

Lamartine in thinking that they bear the stamp of instinct

much more than that of reason. ... The declaration that the

actual government of France was republican ... was palpably

untrue. The actual government of France at that time was as

far removed from republicanism as it was possible for a

government to be. It was a many-headed Dictatorship--a

despotic oligarchy. Eleven men--some appointed in the offices

of a newspaper, and the others by a mob which had broken into

the Chamber of Deputies--ruled France, during three months,

with an absoluteness of which there is no other example in

history. ... They dissolved the Chamber of Deputies; they

forbade the peers to meet; they added 200,000 men to the

regular army, and raised a new metropolitan army of 20,000

more at double the ordinary pay; to meet this expense they

added 45 centimes to the direct taxes; they restricted the

Bank from cash payments; they made its paper a legal tender,

and then required it to lend them fifty millions; ... they

altered the hours of labour throughout France, and, subjected

to heavy fines any master who should allow his operatives to

remain at work for the accustomed period. ...

{1373}

The necessary consequence of the 19th decree, promising

employment to all applicants, was the creation of the ateliers

nationaux by the 30th. These workshops were immediately opened

in the outskirts Of Paris. A person who wished to take

advantage of the offers of the Government took from the person

with whom he lodged a certificate that he was an inhabitant of

the Department de la Seine. This certificate he carried to the

mairie of his arrondissement, and obtained an order of

admission to an atelier. If he was received and employed

there, he obtained an order on his mairie for forty sous. If

he was not received, after having applied at all of them, and

found them all full, he received an order for thirty sous.

Thirty sous is not high pay; but it was to be had for doing

nothing; and hopes of advancement were held out. Every body of

eleven persons formed an escouade; and their head, the

escouadier, elected by his companions, got half a franc a day

extra. Five escouades formed a brigade; and the brigadier,

also elected by his subordinates, received three francs a day.

Above these again were the lieutenants, the chefs de

compagnie, the chefs de service, and the chefs

d'arrondissement, appointed by the Government, and receiving

progressively higher salaries. Besides this, bread was

distributed to their families in proportion to the number of

children. The hours supposed to be employed in labour were

nine and a half. ... This semi-military organisation, regular

payment, and nominal work produced results which we cannot

suppose to have been unexpected by the Government. M. Emile

Thomas tells us that in one mairie, that containing the

Faubourg St.-Antoine, a mere supplemental bureau enrolled,

from March 12 to 20, more than 1,000 new applicants every day.

We have before us a list of those who had been enrolled on May

19, and it amounts to 87,942. A month later it amounted to

125,000--representing, at 4 to a family, 600,000 persons--more

than one half of the population of Paris. To suppose that such

an army as this could be regularly organised, fed, and paid,

for months in idleness, and then quietly disbanded, was a

folly of which the Provisional Government was not long guilty.

They soon saw that the monster which they had created could

not be subdued, if it could be subdued at all, by any means

short of civil war. ... 'A thunder-cloud (says M. de

Lamartine) was always before our eyes. It was formed by the

ateliers nationaux; This army of 120,000 work-people, the

great part of whom were idlers and agitators, was the deposit

of the misery, the laziness, the vagrancy, the vice, and the

sedition which the flood of the revolution had cast up and

left on its shores.' ... As they were managed, the ateliers

nationaux, it is now admitted, produced or aggravated the very

evils which they professed to cure or to palliate. They

produced or continued the stagnation of business which they

were to remedy; and, when they became absolutely intolerable,

the attempt to put an end to them occasioned the civil war

which they were to prevent."

N. W. Senior,

Journals kept in France and Italy, 1848-1852,

volume 1, pages 14-59.

ALSO IN:

Marquis of Normandy,

A Year of Revolution,

chapters 8-11 (volume l).

L. Blanc,

Historical Revelations, 1848.

A. de Lamartine,

History of the Revolution of 1848.

J. P. Simpson,

Pictures from Revolutionary Paris.

FRANCE: A. D. 1848 (April-December).

The Constituent National Assembly, and the Constitution of the

Second Republic.

Savage and terrible insurrection of the workmen of the

Ateliers Nationaux.

Vigorous dictatorship of Cavaignac.

Appearance of Louis Napoleon.

His election to the Presidency of the Republic.

The election by universal suffrage of a Constituent National

Assembly, twice deferred on account of fears of popular

turbulence, took place on the 23d of April, and resulted in

the return of a very Conservative majority, largely composed

of Napoleonists, Legitimists and Orleanists. The meeting of

the Assembly was opened on the 7th of May. "The moderates were

anxious to invest M. de Lamartine with a dictatorial

authority," which he declined. "Eventually an executive

commission of five was appointed. ... The commission consisted

of Arago, Garnier Pagès, Marie, Lamartine, and Ledru Rollin.

... This conciliatory executive commission was elected by the

Assembly on the 10th of May. On the 15th, the 'concilliated'

mob broke into the chamber, insulted the deputies, turned them

out, proclaimed a provisional government, and then marched to

the Hôtel de Ville, where they were installed with due

revolutionary solemnity;" but the National Guard rallied to

the support of the government, and the insurrection was

promptly suppressed. "Eleven vacancies in the Assembly had to

be filled in the department of the Seine, on account of double

returns. These elections produced fresh uneasiness in Paris.

Eighth on the list stood Louis Napoleon Bonaparte; and among

the names mentioned as candidates was that of Prince de

Joinville, the most popular of the Orleans princes. The

executive commission appears to have been more afraid of the

latter than of the former; and to prevent the disagreeable

circumstance of France returning him to the Assembly as one of

her representatives, they thought themselves justified in

declaring the whole Orleans family incapable of serving France

in any capacity. ... Louis Napoleon, on the first proclamation

of the Republic, had at once offered his services; but was by

the Provisional Government requested to withdraw, as his great

name might trouble the republic. ... Two Bonapartes had been

elected members for Corsica, and three sat in the Assembly;

but, as the next heir of the Emperor, Louis Napoleon caused

them much uneasiness. ... Already mobs had gone about the

Boulevard crying 'Vive l'Empereur.' The name of Bonaparte was

not unpopular with the bourgeoisie; it was a guarantee of

united and strong government to all. On his election, Louis

Napoleon wrote to the President of the Assembly: a phrase in

his letter gave considerable offence. Some days before,

Lamartine had proposed his exclusion from the Assembly and the

country; but, as it appeared he was in no way implicated in

the seditious cries, they voted his admission by a large

majority. The phrase which gave umbrage was: 'If the country

imposes duties upon me, I shall know how to fulfill them.' ...

However, by a subsequent letter, dated the 15th, he restored

confidence by saying he would resign rather than be a cause of

tumult. But the real difficulties of the government arose from

a different cause.

{1374}

The National Assembly bore with impatience the expense of the

Ateliers Nationaux: It was enough to submit to the factious

spirit of those bodies; but it was too much to pay them for

keeping on foot an organized insurrection, ever ready to break

out and deluge the capital in blood. The executive commission

had been desirous of finding means gradually to lessen the

numbers receiving wages; and on the 12th of May, it was

resolved to close the lists. The commission foresaw that if

the Ateliers were at once abolished, it would produce a

rebellion in Paris; and they hoped, first, by preventing any

more being inscribed, and then by setting them to task-work,

that they should gradually get the numbers reduced. ... But

the Assembly would not wait; they ordered all the workmen

between 18 and 25 years old, and unmarried, to be drafted into

the army, or to be discharged; and they were breaking them up

so rapidly, that if the workmen wanted to fight it was evident

that it must be done at once or not at all. ... General

Cavaignac, who had been sent for from Africa, was on his

arrival in Paris named Minister at War, and had command of the

troops. ... Preparations for the conflict commenced on Thursday

the 22nd of June; but it was noon of the following day ere the

first shot was fired. It is said, that had the executive

commission known what they were about, the heads of the

insurrection might have been all arrested in the meantime, for

they were walking about all day, and at one time met in the

Jardin des Plantes. The fighting on the 23d continued all day,

with much slaughter, and little practical result. ... The

extent of the insurgent lines swallowed up the troops, so

that, though great numbers were in Paris, there appeared to be

a deficiency of them, and loud complaints were made against

the inefficiency of the executive commission. During the night

the fighting ceased, and both parties were occupied in

strengthening their positions. The Assembly was sitting in

permanence; they were highly incensed against the executive

commission, and wished them to send in their resignations; but

the latter refused, saying it was cowardly to do so in the face

of insurrection. The Assembly then formally deposed the

commission, and appointed Cavaignac dictator; to which

arrangement the executive commission at once assented. The

General instantly ordered the National Guards to prevent

assemblages in the streets, and that no one should go out

without a pass: anyone going about, out of uniform, without

permission, was walked home. In this manner many persons

carrying ammunition to the insurgents were arrested. At noon,

he sent a flag of truce with a proclamation, offering an

amnesty to the rebels, at the suggestion of the ex-prefect

Caussidière; but it was unhesitatingly rejected. This latter

personage, though he was not among the barricades, was by many

thought to be the head of the insurrection. The troops of the

insurgents were managed with great military skill, showing

that persons of military knowledge must have had the command;

though no one knew who were their leaders. ... During the

early part of the day, the fighting was mainly on the southern

side of the river. The church of St. Gervais and the bridges

were carried with great slaughter, as well as the church of

St. Severin, and their great head-quarters the Pantheon; and

by four o'clock, the troops had conquered the whole of the

south bank of the Seine. On the other side, a hot engagement

was going on in the Faubourgs Poissonnière and St. Denis:

these were carried with great loss at a late hour, whence the

insurrection was forced back to its great stronghold, the Clos

St. Lazare; which defied every effort of General Lamoricière

to take it on Saturday. An unfinished hospital served as a

citadel, and several churches and public buildings as

out-posts; while the old city wall, which they had loop-holed,

enabled them to fire on the troops in comparative security;

but the buildings were breached with cannon, and the

insurgents by four o'clock on Sunday were dispersed. ... A

desperate struggle was going on at a late hour in the Faubourg

du Temple; and on the Monday morning the insurgents made a

stand behind the Canal St. Martin, where they sent to treat on

condition of retaining their arms. But Cavaignac would hear of

no terms. It was thought, at one time, that they had

surrendered; when some soldiers, going within the lines, were

surprised and murdered. Hostilities at once began again, and

the insurgents were finally subdued by one o'clock on Monday

the 26th. The victory was dearly bought: 8,000 were

ascertained to have been killed or wounded; and, as many

bodies were thrown into the Seine unrecognised, this is much

under the number. Nearly 14,000 prisoners were taken, and

3,000 of these died of gaol fever. ... The excellent

Archbishop of Paris, Denis Auguste Affre, fell a sacrifice to

his Christian benevolence. Horrified at the slaughter, he,

attended by two of his vicars carrying the olive-branch of

peace, passed between the combatants. The firing ceased at his

appearance; but, from the discharge of a single musket, it

began again: he, nevertheless, mounted the barricade and

descended into the midst of the insurgents, and was, in the

act of addressing them, when some patriot, fearing the effect

of his exhortations, shot him from a window. ... General

Cavaignac, immediately after the pacification of Paris, laid

down the temporary dictatorship with which he had been

invested by the Assembly; but their gratitude for the

salvation of society led them to appoint him President of the

Council, with the power to name his own Ministry. He at once

sent adrift all the red republican party, and chose a Ministry

from among the moderate class of republicans; to which he

afterwards added some members of the old opposition. ...

Prince Louis Napoleon was again thrust upon the Assembly, by

being elected for Corsica; but he wrote a letter on the 8th of

July, saying, that though he did not renounce the honour of

one day sitting as a representative of the people, he would

wait till the time when his return to France could not in any

way serve as a pretext to the enemies of the republic. ... On

Tuesday, the 26th of September, shortly after the president

had taken his seat, Louis Napoleon appeared quietly in the

chamber, and placed himself on one of the back benches. ...

The discussion of the constitution, which had been referred to

a committee, was the only subject of interest, except the

important question of how the president should be elected. It

was proposed by some that the assembly itself should elect a

president, a proposition which was eventually negatived by a

large majority.

{1375}

The real object was to exclude Louis Napoleon, whose great

name gave him every chance of success, if an appeal were made

to the universal suffrage of the nation, which the republicans

distrusted. Another amendment was moved to exclude all

pretenders to the throne; on which, allusion being made to

Louis Napoleon, he mounted the rostrum, and denied that he was

a pretender. ... The red republicans were desirous of having

no president, and that the constituent assembly itself should

name the ministers. It was not the only constitutional point

in dispute: for weeks and months, the debate on the

constitution dragged its weary length along; amendments were

discussed, and the work when turned out was, as might have

been expected, a botch after all. ... It was eventually

agreed, that to give validity to the election of a president

it should be necessary that he should have more than a half of

all the votes given; that is to say, more votes than all the

other candidates put together; if not, the assembly was to

choose between the highest candidate on the list and his

competitors, by which means they hoped to be able to get rid

of Bonaparte. ... The constitution was proclaimed on the 10th

of November. ... The legitimist and Orleanist parties refused

to start a candidate for fear of weakening Bonaparte, and thus

throwing the choice into the hands of the assembly, who would

choose General Cavaignac. Both these parties gave the former

at least a negative support; and as M. Thiers declared that

nine-tenths of the country were opposed to the General as too

revolutionary, it was clear that in the country itself

reaction was going on faster than in the assembly. ... Louis

Napoleon's chief support was from the inhabitants of the

country districts, the peasantry. ... On the 10th of December,

5,534,520 votes were recorded for Louis Napoleon. General

Cavaignac had 1,448,302. Then came Ledru Rollin; then Raspail.

Lamartine got 17,914; 23,219 were disallowed, as being given

for some of the banished royal family. The total number of

voters was 7,449,471."

E. S. Cayley,

The European Revolution of 1848,

volume 1, chapters 4-5.

ALSO IN:

J. F. Corkran,

History of the Constituent

National Assembly from May, 1848.

Marquis of Normanby,

A Year of Revolution,

chapters 13-15(volume 2).

H. C. Lockwood,

Constitutional History of France,

chapter 5, and appendix 8.

FRANCE: A. D. 1849.

Intervention at Rome, to crush the revolutionary republic and

restore the Pope.

French capture and occupation of the city.

See ITALY: A. D. 1848-1849.

FRANCE: A. D. 1849-1850.

Disagreement with England in Greece.

The Don Pacifico affair.

See GREECE: A. D.1846-1850.

FRANCE: A. D.1851.

The plot of the Coup d'État.

"In the beginning of the winter of 1851 France was still a

republic; but the Constitution of 1848 had struck no root.

There was a feeling that the country had been surprised and

coerced into the act of declaring itself a republic, and that

a monarchical system of government was the only one adapted

for France. The sense of instability which sprang from this

belief was connected with an agonising dread of insurrections.

... Moreover, to those who watched and feared, it seemed that

the shadow on the dial was moving on with a terrible

steadiness to the hour when a return to anarchy was, as it

were, pre-ordained by law; for the constitution requited that

a new president should be chosen in the spring of the

following year. ... In general, France thought it best that,

notwithstanding the Rule of the Constitution, which stood in

the way, the then President should be quietly re-elected; and

a large majority of the Assembly, faithfully representing this

opinion, had come to a vote which sought to give it effect;

but their desire was baffled by an unwise provision of the

Republican Charter which had laid it down that no

constitutional change should take place without the sanction

of three-fourths of the Assembly. By this clumsy bar the

action of the State system was hampered, and many whose minds

generally inclined them to respect legality were forced to

acknowledge that the Constitution wanted a wrench." The

President of the republic, Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte,

"had always wished to bring about a change in the

constitution, but, originally, he had hoped to be able to do

this with the aid and approval of some at least of the

statesmen and eminent generals of the country." But, "although

there were numbers in France who would have been heartily glad

to see the Republic crushed by some able dictator, there were

hardly any public men who believed that in the President of

the Republic they would find the man they wanted. Therefore

his overtures to the gentlemen of France were always rejected.

Every statesman to whom he applied refused to entertain his

proposals. Every general whom he urged always said that for

whatever he did he must have 'an order from the Minister of

War.' The President being thus rebuffed, his plan of changing

the form of government with the assent of some of the leading

statesmen and generals of the country degenerated into schemes

of a very different kind; and at length he fell into the hands

of persons of the quality of Persigny, Morny, and Fleury. ...

The President had been a promoter of the law of the 31st of

May, restricting the franchise, but he now became the champion

of universal suffrage. To minds versed in politics this change

might have sufficed to disclose the nature of the schemes upon

which the Chief of the State was brooding; but, from first to

last, words tending to allay suspicion had been used with

great industry and skill. From the moment of his coming before

the public in February 1848, the Prince laid hold of almost

every occasion he could find for vowing, again and again, that

he harbored no schemes against the Constitution. ... It was

natural that in looking at the operation which changed the

Republic into an Empire, the attention of the observer should

be concentrated upon the person who, already the Chief of the

State, was about to attain to the throne; and there seems to

be no doubt, that what may be called the literary part of the

transaction was performed by the President in person. He was

the lawyer of the confederacy. He no doubt wrote the

Proclamations, the Plebiscites, and the Constitutions, and all

such like things; but it seems that the propelling power which

brought the plot to bear was mainly supplied by Count de Morny,

and by a resolute Major, named Fleury. M. Morny was a man of

great daring, and gifted with more than common powers of

fascination. He had been a member of the Chamber of Deputies

in the time of the monarchy; but he was rather known to the

world as a speculator than as a politician. He was a buyer and

seller of those fractional and volatile interests in trading

adventures, which go by the name of 'Shares.' ...

{1376}

He knew how to found a 'company,' and he now undertook to

establish institutions which were destined to be more

lucrative to him than any of his former adventures; ... It

seems, however, that the man who was the most able to make the

President act, to drive him deep into his own plot, and

fiercely carry him through it, was Major Fleury. ... He was

daring and resolute, and his daring was of the kind which

holds good in the moment of danger. If Prince Louis Bonaparte

was bold and ingenious in designing, Fleury was the man to

execute. ... The language held by the generals who declared

that they would act under the authority of the Minister of War

and not without it, suggested the contrivance which was

resorted to. Fleury determined to find a military man capable

of command, capable of secrecy, and capable of a great

venture. The person chosen was to be properly sounded, and if

he seemed willing, was to be admitted into the plot. He was

then to be made Minister of War, in order that through him the

whole of the land forces should be at the disposal of the

plotters. Fleury went to Algeria to find the instrument

required, and he so well performed his task that he hit upon a

general officer who was christened, it seems, Jacques Arnaud

Le Roy, but was known at this time as Achille St. Arnaud. ...

He readily entered into the plot. From the moment that Prince

Louis Bonaparte and his associates had entrusted their secret

to the man of Fleury's selection, it was perhaps hardly

possible for them to flinch, for the exigencies of St. Arnaud,

formerly Le Roy, were not likely to be on so modest a scale as

to consist with the financial arrangements of a Republic

governed by law, and the discontent of a person of his quality

with a secret like that in his charge would plainly bring the

rest of the brethren into danger. He was made Minister of War.

This was on the 27th of October. At the same time M. Maupas or

de Maupas was brought into the Ministry. ... Persigny,

properly Fialin, was in the plot. He was descended on one side

of an ancient family, and disliking his father's name he seems

to have called himself for many years after the name of his

maternal grandfather. ... It was necessary to take measures

for paralyzing the National Guard, but the force was under the

command of General Perrot, a man whose honesty could not be

tampered with. To dismiss him suddenly would be to excite

suspicion. The following expedient was adopted: the President

appointed as Chief of the Staff of the National Guard, a

person named Vieyra. The past life and the then repute of this

person were of such a kind, that General Perrot, it seems,

conceived himself insulted by the nomination, and instantly

resigned. That was what the brethren of the Elysée wanted. On

Sunday, the 30th, General Lawæstine was appointed to the

command. ... His function was--not to lead the force of which

he took the command but--to prevent it from acting. ... Care

had been taken to bring into Paris and its neighborhood the

regiments most likely to serve the purpose of the Elysée, and

to give the command to generals who might be expected to act

without scruples. The forces in Paris and its neighborhood

were under the orders of General Magnan. ... From time to time

the, common soldiery were gratified with presents of food and

wine, as well, as with an abundance of flattering words, and

their exasperation against civilians was so well kept alive

that men used to African warfare were brought into the humor

for calling the Parisians 'Bedouins.' There was massacre in

the very sound. The army of Paris was in the temper required.

It was necessary for the plotters to have the concurrence of

M. St. Georges, the director Of the state printing-office. M.

St. Georges was suborned. Then all was ready. On the Monday

night between the 1st and 2d of December, the President had

his usual assembly at the Elysée. Ministers who were loyally

ignorant of what was going on were mingled with those who were

in the plot. ... At the usual hour the assembly began to

disperse, and by eleven o'clock there were only three guests

who remained. These were Morny (who had previously taken care

to show himself at one of the theatres), Maupas, and St.

Arnaud, formerly Le Roy. There was, besides, an orderly

officer of the President, called Colonel Beville, who was

initiated in the secret. ... They were to strike the blow that

night. ... By and by they were apprised that an order which had

been given for the movement of a battalion of gendarmerie, had

duly taken effect without exciting remark. ... The President

entrusted a packet of manuscripts to Colonel Beville, and

despatched him to the state printing office. It was in the

streets which surround this building that the battalion of

gendarmerie had been collected. When Paris was hushed in

sleep, the battalion came quietly out, and folded round the

state printing-office. From that moment until their work was

done the printers were all close captives, for no one of them

was suffered to go out. ... It is said that there was

something like resistance, but in the end, if not at first,

the printers obeyed. Each compositor stood whilst he worked

between two policemen, and, the manuscript being cut into many

pieces, no one could make out the sense of what he was

printing. By these proclamations the President asserted that

the Assembly was a hot-bed of plots; declared it dissolved;

pronounced for universal suffrage; proposed a new

constitution; vowed anew that his duty was to maintain the

Republic; and placed Paris and the twelve surrounding

departments under martial law. In one of the proclamations, he

appealed to the army, and strove to whet its enmity against

civilians, by reminding it of the defeats inflicted upon the

troops in 1830 and 1848. The President wrote letters

dismissing the members of the government who were not in the

plot; but he did not cause these letters to be delivered until

the following morning. He also signed a paper appointing Morny

to the Home Office. ... The order from the Minister of War was

probably signed by half-past two in the morning, for at three it

was in the hands of Magnan. At the same hour Maupas (assigning

for pretext the expected arrival of foreign refugees), caused

a number of Commissaries to be summoned in all haste to the

Prefecture of Police. At half-past three in the morning these

men were in attendance. ... It was then that, for the first

time, the main secret of the confederates passed into the

hands of a number of subordinate agents. During some hours of

that night every one of those humble Commissaries had the

destinies of France in his hands; for he might either obey the

Minister, and so place his country in the power of the Elysée,

or he might obey the law, denounce the plot, and bring its

contrivers to trial. Maupas gave orders for the seizure at the

same minute of the foremost Generals of France, and several of

her leading Statesmen.

{1377}

Parties of the police, each under the orders of a Commissary,

were to be at the doors of the persons to be arrested some

time beforehand, but the seizures were not to take place until

a quarter past six. ... At the appointed minute, and whilst it

was still dark, the designated houses were entered. The most

famous generals of France were seized. General Changarnier,

General Bedeau, General Lamoricière, General Cavaignac, and

General Leflô were taken from their beds, and carried away

through the sleeping city and thrown into prison. In the same

minute the like was done with some of the chief members and

officers of the Assembly, and amongst others with Thiers,

Miot, Baze, Colonel Charras, Roger du Nord, and several of the

democratic leaders. Some men believed to be the chiefs of

secret societies were also seized. The general object of these

night arrests was that, when morning broke, the army should be

without generals inclined to observe the law, that the

Assembly should be without the machinery for convoking it, and

that all the political parties in the State should be

paralyzed by the disappearance of their chiefs. The number of

men thus seized in the dark was seventy-eight. Eighteen of

these were members of the Assembly. Whilst it was still dark,

Morny, escorted by a body of infantry, took possession of the

Home Office, and prepared to touch the springs of that

wondrous machinery by which a clerk can dictate to a nation.

Already he began to tell 40,000 communes of the enthusiasm

with which the sleeping city had received the announcement of

measures not hitherto disclosed. When the light of the morning

dawned, people saw the Proclamations on the walls, and slowly

came to hear that numbers of the foremost men of France had

been seized in the night-time, and that every General to whom

the friends of law and order could look for help was lying in

one or other of the prisons. The newspapers, to which a man

might run in order to know truly what others thought and

intended, were all seized and stopped. The gates of the

Assembly were closed and guarded, but the Deputies, who began

to flock thither, found means to enter by passing through one

of the official residences which formed Part of the building.

They had assembled in the Chamber in large numbers, and some

of them having caught Dupin, their reluctant President, were

forcing him to come and take the chair, when a body of

infantry burst in and drove them out, striking some of them

with the butt-ends of their muskets. ... Driven from their

Chamber, the Deputies assembled at the Mayoralty of the 10th

arrondissement. There, upon the motion of the illustrious,

Berryer, they resolved that the act of Louis Bonaparte was a

forfeiture of the Presidency, and they directed the judges of

the Supreme Court to meet and proceed to the judgment of the

President and his accomplices. These resolutions had just been

voted, when a battalion of the Chasseurs de Vincennes entered

the courtyard. ... An aide-de-camp of General Magnan came with

a written order directing the officer in command of the

battalion to clear the hall, to do this if necessary by force,

and to carry off to the prison of Mazas any Deputies offering

resistance. ... The number of Deputies present at this moment

was 220. The whole Assembly declared that they resisted, and

would yield to nothing short of force. ... They were carried

off, some to the Fort of Mount Valerian, some to the fortress

of Vincennes, and some to the prison of Mazas. ... By the laws

of the Republic, the duty of taking cognizance of offences

against the Constitution was cast upon the Supreme Court. The

Court was sitting, when an armed force entered the hall, and

the judges were driven from the bench, but not until they had

made a judicial order for the impeachment of the President."

A. W. Kinglake,

The Invasion of the Crimea,

volume 1, chapter 14.

ALSO IN:

E. Tênot,

Paris in December, 1851,

chapters 1-4.

V. Hugo,

Napoleon the Little.

M. de Maupas,

The Story of the Coup d'État.

B. Jerrold,

Life of Napoleon III.,

book 8 (volume 3).

FRANCE: A. D. 1851.

The bloody Triumph of the Coup d'État.

Destruction of the Second Republic.

"The second part of the Coup d'État, which drenched the

boulevards with innocent blood, has cast a shade of horror

over the whole transaction that time has been unable to

efface. Paris is never so reduced in a crisis, whether the

cause be just or unjust, that she is bereft of hands to erect

and defend barricades in her streets. In the Faubourg St.

Antoine an incipient rising on the 2d was suppressed

immediately by the troops. The volcanic district from the

Hôtel de Ville northward to the boulevards also showed signs

of uneasiness, and throughout the morning of the 3d the

military were busy pulling down partially completed barricades

and dispersing small bodies of insurgents. There seems to be

little question that the army was embittered against the

populace. If this were so, the proclamation circulated by the

president through the ranks on the 2d was not calculated to

appease it. He styled the soldiers as the 'flower of the

nation.' He pointed out to them that his interests and theirs

were the same, and that they had suffered together in the past

from the course of the Assembly. He reminded them of the years

1830 and 1848, when the army had fought the people in the

streets of Paris, and concluded by an allusion to the military

grandeur of the Bonapartes. During the afternoon of the 3d and

morning of the 4th the troops remained inactive; pending

orders from the minister of war, and in this interval several

strong barricades were erected in the restless quarters. On

the afternoon of the 4th the boulevards, from the Madeleine to

the Rue du Sentier, were occupied by a great body of troops

awaiting orders to move east through the Boulevard Bonne

Nouvelle upon the barricaded district. The soldiers stood at

ease, and the officers lounged about, smoking their cigars.

The sidewalks, windows, and balconies were crowded with men,

women, and children, thoughtless onlookers of the great

military display. Suddenly a single shot was heard. It was

fired from a window near the Rue du Sentier. The troops at the

head of the column faced sharply to the south, and commenced a

deliberate fusillade upon the crowded walks and balconies. The

battalions farther west caught the murderous contagion, until

the line of fire extended into the Boulevard des Italiens. In

a few moments the beautiful boulevards were converted into a

bloody pandemonium. The sidewalks were strewn with corpses and

stained with blood. The air was rent with shrieks and groans

and the breaking of glass, while the steady, incessant

rattling of the musketry was intensified by an occasional

cannon-shot, that brought down with a crash the masonry from

some fine façade.

{1378}

This continued for nearly twenty minutes, when a lack of

people to kill seems to have restrained the mad volleys of the

troops. If any attempt was made by officers to check their

men, it was wholly unavailing, and in some cases miserable

fugitives were followed into buildings and massacred. Later in

the day the barricades were attacked, and their defenders

easily overcome. By night-fall insurgent Paris was thoroughly

cowed. These allegations, though conflicting with sworn

statements of Republicans and Imperialists, can hardly be

refuted. The efforts of the Napoleonic faction to portray the

thoughtless crowd of the boulevards as desperate and

bloody-minded rebels have never been successful, while the

opposition so brilliantly represented by the author of

'Histoire d'un Crime' have been too fierce and immoderate in

their accusations to win public credence. The questions as to

who fired the first shot, and whether it was fired as a signal

for, or a menace against the military, are points on which

Frenchmen of different political parties still debate. It is

charitable to accept M. Hugo's insinuation that the soldiery

were drunk with the president's wine, even though the fact

implies a low state of discipline in the service. To what

extent was the president responsible for the boulevard horror?

M. Victor Hugo and M. de Maupas do not agree upon this point,

and it seems useless to discuss it. Certain facts are

indisputable. We know the army bore small love toward the

Parisians, and we know it was in the streets by order of the

president. We know that the latter was in bad company, and

playing a dangerous game. We may discard M. Victor Hugo's

statement as to the orders issued by the president from the

Elysée on the fatal day, but we cannot disguise the fact that

the boulevard horror subdued Paris, and crowned his cause with

success. In other words, Louis Napoleon was the gainer by the

slaughter of unoffending men, women, and children, and in

after-years, when referring to the 4th of December, he found

it for his interest to distort facts, and make figures lie.

... Louis Napoleon had expressly stated in the proclamation

that astonished Paris on the 2d that he made the people judge

between him and the Assembly. The citizens of France were

called upon to vote on the 20th and 21st of December 'Yes' or

'No' to the question as to whether the president should be

sustained in the measures he had taken, should be empowered to

draw up a new constitution, and should retain the presidential

chair for a period of ten years."

H. Murdock,

The Reconstruction of Europe,

chapter 2.

ALSO IN:

V. Hugo,

History of a Crime.

E. Tênot,

Paris in December, 1851,

chapters 5-6.

M. de Maupas,

Story of the Coup d'État,

chapters 18-24 (volume 2).

Count H. de Viel Castel,

Memoirs,

volume 1, chapter 4.

FRANCE: A. D. 1851-1852.

Transportation and exile of republicans.

The dictator's constitution for France.

Rapid progress of despotism.

The Second Empire ordained.

Elevation of Napoleon III. to the throne.

"The struggle was over: terror of the victors followed.

Thirty-two departments were in a state of siege. More than

100,000 citizens were languishing in prison. Trial followed

trial in rapid succession, the cases being classed under three

heads: 1st, persons found armed, or against whom serious

charges existed; 2d, persons charged with minor offences; 3d,

dangerous persons. The first class was judged at once by a

council of war, the second sent to various tribunals, the

third transported without trial. Many prisoners were not even

questioned. Numbers were set free; but multitudes were still

held. Under these conditions the date of the plebiscite,

December 20 and 21, approached. Notices were posted to the

effect that 'any person seeking to disturb the polls or to

question the result of the ballot would be tried by a council

of war.' All liberty of choice was taken from the electors,

many of whom were arrested on suspicion of exciting others to

vote against the president of the republic. When the lists

were published it was found that the 'ayes' had carried the

day, although many did not vote at all. Indubitably the

figures were notably swelled by violence and fraud. ...

December 31, ex-Minister Baroche presented the result of the

ballots to the prince-president,--a strange title now given to

Louis Napoleon, for the time being, in lieu of another. ...

Next day, January 1, 1852, Archbishop Sibour celebrated a Te

Deum in Notre Dame, the prince-president sitting under a

canopy. ... While the man of December 2 lodged in the palace

of kings, the chief representatives of the republic were cast

into exile. The executors of the plot treated the captive

representatives very differently according as they were

conservative or republican. When the prisoners were told that

a distinction was to be made among them, they honorably

refused to give their names, but they were betrayed by an

usher of the Assembly. The republicans were then sent to

Mazas, and treated like common thieves, M. Thiers alone being

allowed a bed instead of the ordinary hammock. The other party

were soon set free, with but few exceptions, and on the 8th of

January the generals imprisoned at Ham, with their companion,

Questor Baze, were sent to Belgium. Next day a series of

proscriptions came out. All persons 'convicted of taking part

in the recent insurrections' were to be transported, some to

Guiana, some to Algiers. A second decree expelled from France,

Algiers, and the French colonies, 'as a measure of public

safety,' sixty representatives of the Left, including Victor

Hugo and certain others, for whom it was reserved to aid in

the foundation of a third republic. A third decree commanded

the temporary absence from France and Algiers of eighteen

other representatives, including the generals, with Thiers, De

Rémusat, and several members of the Left, among them Edgar

Quinet and Emile de Girardin. ... The next step was to

establish the famous 'mixed commissions' in every province.

These commissions were to try the numerous prisoners still

held captive. ... The mixed commissions of 1852, as the

historian of the coup d'état (M. Eugène Ténot) declares,

'decided, without legal proceedings, without hearing of

witnesses, without public trial, the fate of thousands and

thousands of republicans.' They have left the indelible memory

of one of the most monstrous events known in history. An act

equally extraordinary in another way was the promulgation of

the new constitution framed by the dictator alone (January 14,

1852). ... The constitution of 1852 began by a 'recognition,

confirmation, and guarantee of the great principles proclaimed

in 1789, which are the foundation of the public rights and

laws of France.'

{1379}

But it did not say one word about the freedom of the press,

nor about freedom of clubs and association. ... 'The

government of the French republic is intrusted to Prince Louis

Napoleon Bonaparte for the term of ten years.' In the preface

Louis Napoleon threw aside the fiction of irresponsibility

'which deceives public sentiment'; the constitution therefore

declares the leader of the state responsible to the French

people, but omits to say how this responsibility may be

realized; the French people have no resource save revolution.

... The legislative body was to consist of 262 members (one

for each 3,500 electors), chosen for five years by universal

suffrage. This body would vote upon the laws and taxes. Louis

Napoleon, having profited so largely by the repeal of the law

of May 31, could scarcely refuse to retain direct universal

suffrage, but he essentially altered its character by various

modifications. He also so reduced the importance of the only

great body still elective, that he had little or nothing to

fear from it. Another assembly, the Senate, was to be composed

of eighty members, which number might be increased to 150. The

senators were irremovable, and were to be chosen by the

president of the republic, with the exception of cardinals,

marshals, and admirals, who were senators by right. The

president might give each senator an income of 80,000 francs.

The Senate was the guardian of the constitution and of 'the

public liberty.' ... The executive power chose all mayors, and

was at liberty to select them outside the town council. In

fact, the constitution of 1852 surpassed the constitution of

the year VIII. as a piece of monarchic reaction. It entailed

no consulate, but an empire,--dictatorship and total

confiscation of public liberty. ... Despotism spread daily in

every direction. On the 17th of February the liberty of the

press was notably reduced, and severe penalties were affixed

to any infraction. In fact, the press was made dependent on

the good-will of the president. Education was next attacked, a

decree of March 9, 1852, stripping the professors of the

University of all the pledges and principles granted by the

First Empire. ... The new power, in 1852, labored to turn all

the forces of the country to material interests, while it

stifled all moral interests. It suppressed education and the

press, and constantly stimulated the financial and industrial

movement. ... Numberless railroad companies now sprang to

life, and roads were rapidly built upon a grand scale. The

government adopted the system of grants on a long term of

years,--say ninety-nine,--plus the guarantee of a small rate

of interest. In everything the cry was for instant success, at

any cost. Great financial operations followed on the heels of

the first grants to railroad companies. ... This year's

budget, like the constitution, was the work of a single man.

The dictator settled it by a decree; then, having ordered the

elections for his Chamber of Deputies, just before his

constitution went into operation, he raised the universal

state of siege (March 28). This was only a feint, for his

government was a permanent state of siege. ... The official

candidates presented, or rather imposed, were generally

elected; the republicans failed to vote throughout a great

part of the country. ... March 29, the prince-president

proceeded to install the great state bodies at the Tuileries.

It was thought that he would hint in his speech that he

expected the title of Emperor, but he left that point vague,

and still talked of preserving the republic. ... During the

session a rumor was current that Louis Napoleon was to be

proclaimed emperor on the 10th of May, after the distribution

of eagles to the army; but this was not carried out. The

dictator had no desire to be made emperor in this fashion. He

meant to do it more artfully, and to make it seem that the

nation forced the accomplishment of his wishes upon him. He

therefore undertook a fresh journey through the provinces. ...

The watchword was everywhere given by the authorities and

influential persons, whose example was imitated by the crowd,

irreconcilable opponents keeping silent. ... He returned to

Paris, October 16, and was received in state at the Orleans

station. The official bodies greeted him with shouts of 'Long

live the Emperor!' ... Next day, the following paragraph

appeared in the 'Moniteur': 'The tremendous desire for the

restoration of the empire manifested throughout France, makes

it incumbent upon the president to consult the Senate upon the

subject.' The Senate and Legislature were convened November 4;

the latter was to verify the votes, should the Senate decide

that the people must be consulted in regard to a change in the

form of government, which no one doubted would be the case.

... The Senate ... passed a decree for the submission of the

restoration of the hereditary empire for popular acceptance

(November 7); the senators then went in a body to St. Cloud to

inform the prince-president of this decision. ... The people

were then called upon to vote for the plebiscite decreed by

the Senate (November 20 and 21). Republican and legitimist

protests were circulated in despite of the police, the

government publishing them in the official organ, the

'Moniteur,' as if in defiance, thinking that the excessive

violence of the republican proscripts of London and Guernsey

would alarm the peace-loving public. The result of the vote

was even greater than that of December 20, 1851; the

authenticity of the figures may indeed be doubted, but there

is not a doubt that there was really a large majority in favor

of the plebiscite. France abandoned the struggle! On the

evening of December 1, the three great state bodies, the two

Chambers and the State Council, went to St. Cloud, and the

president of the Legislature presented the result of the

ballot to the new emperor, who sat enthroned, between his

uncle Jerome and his cousin Napoleon."

H. Martin,

Popular History of France,

1789-1878, volume 3, chapter 15.

ALSO IN:

H. C. Lockwood,

Constitutional History of France,

chapter 6, and appendix 9.

FRANCE: A. D. 1853-1856.

The Crimean war.

See RUSSIA: A. D. 1853-1854, to 1854-1856.

FRANCE: A. D. 1857-1860.

Allied operations with England in China.

See CHINA: A. D. 1856-1860.

FRANCE: A. D. 1858.

The Orsini attempt to assassinate Napoleon III.

Complaints against England.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1858-1859.

FRANCE: A. D. 1859.

Alliance with Sardinia and war with Austria.

Victories of Magenta and Solferino.

Liberation of Lombardy.

Peace of Villafranca.

Acquisition of Savoy and Nice.

See ITALY: A. D. 1856-1859, and 1859-1861.

{1380}

FRANCE: A. D. 1860.

The Chevalier-Cobden commercial treaty with England.

See TARIFF LEGISLATION (FRANCE): A. D. 1858-1860.

FRANCE: A. D.1860-1870.

Modifications of the imperial constitution.

"Originally ... the power of the Legislative Body was limited

to voting and rejecting as a whole the laws submitted to it by

the Executive; there was no such thing as criticism or control

of the general policy of the reign: but the year 1860 opened a

period of development in the direction of liberty; by a decree

of the November of that year the Emperor permitted the

Deputies to draw up an address in answer to his speech, giving

them thereby the opportunity to criticise his policy; by that

of December 1861 he allowed them to vote the budget by

sections, that is to say, to discuss and, if desirable, reject

its items; by that of January 1867 he substituted for the

Address the right of questioning the Ministers, who might be

delegated to the Chamber by the Emperor to take part in

certain definite discussions; lastly, by that of September

1869 he gave to the Legislative Body the right of initiating

laws, removed the restrictions hitherto retained on the right

of amendment and of questions, and made the Ministers

responsible to the Chamber. Thus the Constitution was

deliberately modified, by the initiative of the Emperor

himself, from the form of imperial despotism to that of

parliamentary monarchy: this modified Constitution was

submitted to a plebiscite in May 1870, and once more the

people ratified the Empire by over seven million votes against

a million and a half."

G. L. Dickinson,

Revolution and Reaction in Modern France,

chapter 7, section 8.

FRANCE: A. D.1861-1867.

Intervention in Mexico and its humiliating failure.

See MEXICO: A. D. 1861-1867.

FRANCE: A. D. 1862.

Commercial treaty with Germany.

See TARIFF LEGISLATION (GERMANY): A. D. 1853-1892.

FRANCE: A. D. 1866.

Withdrawal of troops from Rome.

See ITALY: A. D. 1862-1866.

FRANCE: A. D. 1866-1870.

Territorial concessions demanded from Germany.

The Luxemburg question.

War temporarily averted.

See GERMANY. A.D. 1866-1870.

FRANCE: A. D. 1867.

Last defense of Papal sovereignty at Rome.

Defeat of Garibaldi at Mentana.

See ITALY: A.D. 1867-1870.

FRANCE: A. D. 1870 (June-July).

"The Hohenzollern incident."

Unjustifiable declaration of war against Prussia.

"Towards the last of June, 1870, there arose what is known as

the 'Hohenzollern incident,' which assumed so much importance,

as it led up to the Franco-German War. In June, 1868, Queen

Isabella had been chased from Spain, and had sought refuge in

France. The Spanish Cortes, maintaining the monarchical form,

offered the Crown of Spain to Prince Hohenzollern, a relation

of the King of Prussia.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1866-1878.

The French Minister at Madrid telegraphed that Prince Leopold

Hohenzollern had been nominated to the throne of Spain, and

had accepted. This produced the utmost excitement and

indignation among the French people. The Paris press teemed

with articles more or less violent, calling on the government

to prevent this outrage, even at the cost of war. The journals

of all shades were unanimous in the matter, contending that it

was an insult and a peril to France, and could not be

tolerated. The Opposition in the Chamber made the incident an

occasion for attacking the government, alleging that it was

owing to its weak and vacillating policy that France was

indebted to her fresh humiliation. The government journals,

however, laid the whole blame upon the ambition of Count

Bismarck, who had become to them a bête noire. ... Both

parties vied with each other in showing the extent of their

dislike to the great Prussian Chancellor. Much pressure was

soon brought to bear in the proper quarters; the result of

this was the withdrawal of the Hohenzollern candidacy.

Explanations were made, better counsels seemed to prevail, and

all immediate trouble appeared averted. It seemed quite

certain that all danger of a war between France and Germany

was at an end, and all being quiet on the banks of the Seine,

on the 3d of July I left Paris in pursuit of health and

recreation at the healing waters of Carlsbad, of far-off

Bohemia. I was in excellent relations with the Duke de

Gramont, and everything appeared to be serene. I had hardly

reached Carlsbad, when scanty news was received of a somewhat

threatening character. I could hardly believe that anything

very serious was likely to result; yet I was somewhat uneasy.

Going to drink the water at one of the health-giving springs,

early in the morning of July 15th, my Alsatian valet brought

me the startling news, that a private telegram, received at

midnight, gave the intelligence that France had declared war

against Germany. The news fell upon the thousands of visitors

and the people of Carlsbad, like a clap of thunder in a

cloudless sky, and the most intense excitement prevailed. The

nearest railroad station to Carlsbad, at that time, was Eger.

... I rode all night from Carlsbad to Eger. Taking the

railroad from Eger to Paris, and passing through Bavaria,

Baden, Darmstadt and the valley of the Rhine, the excitement

was something prodigious, recalling to me the days at home of

the firing upon Sumter, in 1861. The troops were rushing to

the depots; the trains were all blocked, and confusion

everywhere reigned supreme. After great delays, and much

discomfort, and a journey of fifty-two hours, I reached Paris

at ten o'clock at night, July 18th. The great masses of

people, naturally so excitable and turbulent, had been

maddened by the false news so skilfully disseminated, that

King William, at Ems, had insulted the French nation through

its Ambassador. ... It soon turned out that all the reports

which had been spread over Paris, that King William had

insulted the French Ambassador were utterly false, and had not

the slightest foundation. The French Ambassador, M. Benedetti,

denied that he had received the least indignity from the

Emperor. The plain truth seemed to be that the French

Ambassador courteously approached the Emperor, while walking

in the garden of the Kursaal, and spoke to him in relation to

the pending difficulties then existing between the two

countries. The good old king was kind and polite, as he always

is to every one with whom he comes in contact, and when M.

Benedetti commenced talking in relation to matters of such a

grave character, he politely stated that he would have to talk

upon such questions with the German Foreign Office. All that

was very proper, and nobody thought of it, or supposed that

there was any indignity, as there was not the slightest

intended. ...

{1381}

The exaggerations in Paris and France of this simple incident

surpassed all bounds, and they were apparently made to inflame

the people still more. It really appeared that the Government

of France had determined to have war with Germany, coûte que

coûte [at all costs]. The alleged causes growing out of the

talk that Germany was to put a German prince on the throne of

Spain were but a mere pretext. The Hohenzollern candidature

had been withdrawn, and there was no necessity or sense in any

further trouble. But the truth was that, after eighteen years

of peace, the courtiers and adventurers who surrounded the

Emperor seemed to think that it was about time to have a war,

to awaken the martial spirit of the French people, to plant

the French eagles in triumph in the capital of some foreign

country, and, as a consequence, to fix firmly on the throne

the son of Napoleon the Third, and restore to the Imperial

crown the lustre it had lost."

E. B. Washburne,

Recollections of a Minister to France,

volume 1, chapter 2.

ALSO IN:

W. Müller,

Political History of Recent Times,

section 25.

G. B. Malleson,

The Refounding of the German Empire,

chapter 11;

W. Rüstow,

The War for the Rhine Frontier, 1870,

chapter 6 (volume 1).

FRANCE: A. D. 1870 (July-August).

Disastrous opening of the war.

Defeats at Wörth, Spichern and Gravelotte.

Bazaine's army shut up in Metz.

"July 23d Napoleon intrusted the regency to the empress for

the period of his absence from Paris. ... On the 28th, ...

accompanied by his son, [he] left for Metz, to assume command

of the army. ... The army consisted of eight corps. Of these,

the 1st, under Marshal MacMahon, was stationed at Strasburg;

the 2d, under General Frossard, at St. Avold; the 3d, under

Marshal Bazaine, at Metz; the 4th, under General Ladmirault,

at Diedenhofen (Thionville); the 5th, under General Failly, at

Bitsch; the 6th, under Marshal Canrobert, in the camp at

Châlons; the 7th, under General Felix Douay, at Belfort; the

8th,--the Imperial Guard--under General Bourbaki, at Nancy.

Accordingly, the French forces were divided into two groups,

the larger stationed on the Moselle, and the smaller in

Alsace. To the latter belonged the 1st and 7th corps, both of

which were placed under the command of Marshal MacMahon, with

orders to prevent the crown prince's army from entering

Alsace. The larger group comprised the 2d, 3d, and 4th corps.

... The 6th and 8th were to have formed the reserve; but the

greatly superior numbers of Prince Frederic Charles and

Steinmetz, who were advancing against this larger group,

necessitated the immediate bringing of those corps to the

front. The connection between the two groups was to be

maintained by the 5th corps, stationed at Bitsch. Skirmishing

of the advanced posts and collisions between reconnoitering

parties began on the 19th of July. The most important of these

minor engagements was that at Saarbrücken, on the 2d of August

[the French claiming a victory]. ... August 4th the crown

prince crossed the French frontier and attacked the town of

Weissenburg, on the little river Lauter. ... Weissenburg was

successfully carried by Prussian and Bavarian battalions

combined, and the Geisberg by sixteen battalions of Prussians

alone. ... August 5th MacMahon with his corps took up his

position at Wörth, fortifying the heights westward from

Sauerbach, together with the villages of Froschweiler and

Elsasshausen, in the intention of meeting at that place the

advancing columns of the crown prince, whose attack he

expected on the 7th. To strengthen his army sufficiently for

the task required of it he endeavored to bring up General

Felix Douay's corps from Belfort and Mühlhausen, and that of

General Failly from Bitsch; but only one division of the

former arrived in time, and a division of the latter which was

sent to his support did not reach the neighborhood of the

battle-field until the evening of the 6th, in time to afford a

partial protection on the retreat. Consequently, MacMahon was

left with not more than 45,000 men to face the crown prince's

whole army. ... On the morning of the 6th the advance guard of

the 5th corps became involved in a sharp action with the

enemy," and "from a mere skirmish of the advance guard

resulted the decisive battle of Wörth. ... After Wörth itself

had been carried, the fighting was most severe around the

fortified village of Froschweiler. This was finally taken, and

a desperate charge of the French cuirassiers repulsed.

Thereupon MacMahon's army broke and fled in wild confusion,

some toward the passes of the Vosges, others to Strasburg or

Bitsch. ... The trophies of victory were numerous and

valuable: 200 officers and 9,000 men prisoners. ... The French

lost 6,000 dead and wounded; the German loss was 489 officers

and 10,153 men--a loss greater than that of Sadowa. ...

MacMahon, with about 15,000 of his defeated troops, reached

Zabern on the morning of the 7th, and set out thence for

Châlons, whither Generals Douay and Failly were also directed

to lead their forces. A new army was to be formed at that

point, and northern Alsace was abandoned to the crown prince's

victorious troops. The Badish division received orders to march

against Strasburg, and by the 9th the whole corps was

assembled before that city, Hagenau having been taken by the

cavalry on the way. ... Preparations for a siege were made, a

regular siege corps being formed ... and placed under the

command of General Werder. With the remainder of the third

army the crown prince left Wörth on the 8th of August, marched

through the unguarded passes of the Vosges, and entered Nancy

on the 16th. ... Detachments were left behind to blockade

Bitsch and Pfalzburg. At Nancy the prince rested for a few

days and waited for decisive news from the Saar and Moselle. A

second victory was won on the 6th of August at Spichern [or

Forbach]. Like the battle of Wörth, this action was not the

result of a strategical combination, but rather of a

misunderstanding. ... Frossard [whose corps was encountered at

Spichern] fell back on Metz by way of Saargemünd. Bazaine, who,

although not more than seven or eight miles from the field of

battle, had made no attempt to come to Frossard's assistance,

led his corps to the same place. In this battle, owing to the

unfavorable nature of the ground, the losses of the conquerors

were heavier than those of the conquered. The Germans had 223

officers and 4,648 men dead, wounded, and missing; while the

French, according to their own reports, lost 249 officers and

3,829 men, 2,000 of whom were taken prisoners. August 7th the

victors continued their forward march, capturing great stores

of provisions in Forbach. On the 9th St. Avold was taken, and

foraging parties advanced almost to Metz.

{1382}

Marching through the Rhenish Palatinate, part of Prince

Frederic Charles's army directed its course toward Metz by way

of Saarbrücken, and part through Saargemünd. ... In the

imperial head-quarters at Metz the greatest consternation

prevailed. ... It was [finally] decided to concentrate five

army corps on the right bank of the Moselle, at Metz, and to

form a second army, consisting of four corps, under MacMahon's

command, in the camp at Châlons. The first line of defence on

the Rhine and Saar had been abandoned, and France was to be

defended on the Moselle. By this decision Alsace and Lorraine

were surrendered to the foe at the very outset." On the 9th of

August the French emperor transferred the chief command from

himself to Marshal Bazaine, while Lebœuf at the same time

withdrew from the direction of the staff. Simultaneously, at

Paris, the Grammont-Ollivier ministry resigned, and was

succeeded by a cabinet formed under the presidency of Count

Palikao (General Montauban). "New levies were called into the

field, comprising all unmarried men between the ages of 25 and

30 not already enrolled in the 'garde mobile.' ... In the

German head-quarters ... it was resolved in some way to make

Bazaine's army harmless, either by shutting him up in Metz or

by pushing him northward to the Belgian frontier. ... The task

was a difficult one. ... All depended upon what course Bazaine

might conclude to pursue, and the energy with which he

executed his plans. It was his purpose to leave Metz with the

field army and join MacMahon at Châlons. There would then be

300,000 French at that place to block the German march to

Paris. In that event the Germans would have to leave 60,000

men before Metz ... and Diedenhofen, and would not have enough

left to venture an attack on the united and well-intrenched

armies at Châlons. Accordingly, the union of those two armies

must be prevented at any price, and Bazaine be attacked before

Metz. The execution of this plan led to the severe fighting

near that city--the battle of Colombey-Nouilly (Borny), on the

14th, Vionville on the 16th, and Gravelotte on the 18th." The

battle of Gravelotte was "the first battle in the war in which

a pre-arranged plan [Moltke's] was actually carried out. ... It

was a brilliant victory, and followed by important results.

Bazaine's army was shut up in the fortress and among the

outlying forts, and rendered unavailable for further service

in the field. The losses of the French amounted to about

13,000 men, including 600 officers; the German loss was 899

officers and 19,260 men, of whom 328 officers and 4,909 men

were killed outright. The number of combatants on the side of

the French was about 140,000, on the side of the Germans

178,818, the former having 550, and the latter 822 cannon. It

must be remembered, however, that the French occupied a

position very much of the nature of a fortress, which had to

be carried by storm."

W. Müller,

Political History of Recent Times,

section 25.

ALSO IN:

Count H. von Moltke,

The Franro-German War of 1870-71,

section 1.

Colonel A. Borbstaedt and Major F. Dwyer,

The Franco-German War,

chapters 10-29.

FRANCE: A. D. 1870 (August-September).

Investment of Metz by the Germans.

Disastrous attempt of MacMahon to rescue Bazaine.

The catastrophe at Sedan.

"The huge, stubborn, vehement and bloody conflict waged in the

rural tract between the northern edges of the Bois de Vaux and

the Forest of Jaumont, which the French Marshal called the

'Defence of the Lines of Amanvillers,' the French Army, 'the

Battle of St. Privat,' and the Germans the battle of

'Gravelotte--St. Privat,' established the mastery of the

latter over 'the Army of the Rhine.' Marshal Bazaine had not

proved strong enough to extricate the Army he was suddenly

appointed to command from the false position in which it had

been placed by the errors and hesitations of the Emperor and

Marshal Lebœuf. ... The German leaders forthwith resolved, and

acted on the resolve, to take the largest advantage of success.

When the broadening day showed that the French were encamped

under the guns of the fort, and that they did not betray the

faintest symptom of fighting for egress on any side, the place

was deliberately invested. ... Soon the blockade was so far

completed that only adventurous scouts were able at rare

intervals to work their way through the German lines. As early

as the forenoon of the 19th, the King had decided to form what

came to be called the 'Army of the Meuse' out of the Corps

which were not needed to uphold the investment of Metz, and

thus place himself in a condition to assail the French Army

collecting at Chalons. ... This formidable force was put under

the command of the Crown Prince of Saxony, who had shown

himself to be an able soldier. Consequently, there remained

behind to invest Bazaine, seven Corps d'Armée and a Division

of Reserve under General von Kummer. ... One Army had been

literally imprisoned, another remained at large, and behind it

were the vast resources of France. Three Marshals were cooped

up in the cage on the Moselle; one, MacMahon, and the Emperor

were still in the field; and upon the forces with them it was

resolved to advance at once, because prudence required that

they should be shattered before they could be completely

organized, and while the moral effect of the resounding blows

struck in Alsace and Lorraine had lost none of its terrible

power. Therefore the King and General von Moltke started on

the morrow of victory to march on Paris through the plains of

Champagne."

G. Hooper,

The Campaign of Sedan,

chapter 10.

"While the German invasion had thus been rolling from Lorraine

into the flats of Champagne, the shattered right wing of the

army of the Rhine, with reinforcements sent off from Paris,

had been drawn together in the well-known plains made

memorable by the defeat of Attila. By 20 August the first and

fifth French corps marched rapidly from the Upper Moselle to

the Marne, had been joined by the seventh corps from Belfort

and by the twelfth formed in and despatched from Paris; and

this force, numbering perhaps 130,000 men, with from 400 to

500 guns, had been concentrated round the great camp of

Châlons. Macmahon was given the supreme command, and the first

operations of the experienced chief showed that he understood

the present state of affairs, and were in accord with the

rules of strategy. Bazaine, he knew, was in peril near Metz,

and certainly had not attained the Meuse; and he was at the

head of the last army which France could assemble for the

defence of her capital.

{1383}

In these circumstances, impressed perhaps by the grand

memories of the campaign of 1814, he most properly resolved to

fall back towards Paris; but as Bazaine was possibly not far

distant, and a position on the flank of the German advance

might afford a favourable opportunity to strike, he withdrew

northwards on the 21st to Rheims, in the double hope that he

would approach his colleague and threaten the communications

of the advancing enemy. This, we repeat, was following the art

of war, and had Macmahon firmly adhered to his purpose, there

would have been no Sedan and no treaty of Frankfort. Unhappily

the marshal, a hero in the field, was deficient in real

strength of character, and at this critical moment evil

counsels and false information shook, and at last changed, a

resolve that ought to have never faltered. A new

administration had been formed in Paris, and Palikao, the

minister of war, devoted to the Empire, and especially bent on

satisfying the demands of the excited capital, which

passionately insisted on the relief of Bazaine, had conceived

a project by which he hoped that this great object would be

effected and the 'dynasty' be restored in popular opinion. The

army of the Meuse, he argued, was near that stream, round

Verdun; the third army was far away to the south; there was a

considerable interval between the two masses; and the army of

Châlons, then at Rheims, was not far from the Upper Meuse. In

those circumstances it was quite practicable, should Macmahon

rapidly advance to the Meuse, to overpower with his largely

superior force the army of the Meuse before support could be

sent from the distant third army; and the enemy in his path

being swept aside, the marshal could then descend on Metz,

fall with the collected strength of the army of Châlons on the

divided fragments of the investing force, and triumphantly

effect his junction with Bazaine, having routed, perhaps, the

first and second armies before the third could appear on the

scene. The defiles and woods of the Argonne and the Ardennes,

stretching between the French and the German armies, Palikao

insisted, would form a screen to conceal the advance of the

army of Chãlons, and would greatly facilitate the proposed

movement. This project reached Macmahon on 21 August, and may

be pronounced one of the most reckless ever designed by a

desperate gambler in war. ... Macmahon at first refused to

listen to what he condemned as a hopeless project; but bad

advisers found their way to him, and his resolution was

already yielding when a calamitous event fixed his shifting

purpose. A despatch from Bazaine, obscure and untrue,

announced that he was on his way northward. Macmahon inferred

that his beleaguered colleague had left Metz and eluded his

foes, and, thinking that he would reach Bazaine before long,

in an evil hour for France and for himself, he consented to

attempt the march to the Meuse."

W. O'C. Morris,

The Campaign of Sedan

(English Historical Review., April, 1888).

"It was not until the afternoon of August 23 that MacMahon's

army passed through Rheims. Anxious, and knowing that

everything depended on speed, he addressed some columns as

they toiled onwards, reminding them that French soldiers had

marched thirty miles a day under the sun of Africa. The

difference, however, was great between raids made by a few

light regiments and the advance of a raw unwieldy mass; and

though the marshal endeavoured to hurry them forward, he was

confronted with almost insurmountable obstacles. Scarcely had

the army made a march towards establishing itself at

Bethniville, on the Suippe, when commissariat difficulties

obliged him to re-approach the line of the railway. He made a

movement on his left, and reached Rethel on the 24th, in order

to obtain for his troops several days' subsistence. This

distribution occupied the whole of the 25th. ... As the

direction of the French movement could not now be concealed,

at this point MacMahon made arrangements for marching with all

possible rapidity. It may be doubted, however, whether

Napoleon himself, at the head of the grand army could have

made the haste which the marshal designed with his raw and

partly demoralized troops. ... His army was altogether unequal

to forced marches, and moved at this critical moment with the

sluggishness inherent in its defective organization.

Encumbered with stragglers, badly pioneered, and checked by

hindrances of every kind, it made hardly ten miles a day; and

it was the 27th of August before its right column, still far

from the Meuse, passed through Vouziers, and the left reached

Le Chêne. ... On the 27th it was openly boasted of in Paris

that MacMahon had gained at least forty-eight hours' start of

the Crown Prince, and his coming success was firmly counted on

by the imperialist cabinet, whereas, in reality, the whole

scheme was foiled beforehand by Von Moltke's and General

Blumenthal's prompt combination. ... If in fighting, in the

boldness of their cavalry, the activity of their staff, the

cool firing of their infantry, and the skilful tactical use of

their guns, the superiority of the Germans to their

antagonists had been already proved; it only required the

contrast now presented between the movements of the two armies

to show, that in no point had the difference of training and

moral feeling told more in favour of the invaders than in that

of the marching, on which the elder Napoleon so often relied

for his advantage over these very Germans. ... Between the

27th and the morning of the 29th, the right column of the

French army had only its outposts at Buzancy, while the left,

though its outposts touched Stenay, was only at Stonne and

Beaumont, both columns spreading a long way backward; in other

words, they were still a march from the Meuse, which they

ought to have passed three days before, and their rearward

divisions were yet distant. The German armies, from the 26th

to the 29th, made astonishing exertions to close on MacMahon

as he crossed towards the Meuse, and success was already

within their grasp. The force of the Crown Prince of Saxony,

in two columns, had reached the Meuse at Dun on the 27th, and

was thus in a position to arrest and retard the vanguard of

the French whenever it attempted to cross the river. Meanwhile

the army of the Crown Prince of Prussia, hastening forward by

Varennes and Grand Prè, and to the left by Senuc and Suippe,

had arrived close to the line of march of MacMahon's right

column, and by the evening of the 28th had occupied it about

Vouziers. A step farther, and this immense army would be upon

the positions of the luckless French, who, assailed in flank

and rear by superior numbers, could not fail to be involved in

terrible disaster. ... MacMahon [on the 27th], observing that

the enemy so completely surrounded him, felt more than ever

satisfied that it would be impossible to carry out the plan

which had been prescribed to him at Paris; and to save, if

possible, the sole army which France had at her disposal, he

accordingly resolved to turn back in a westerly direction. ...

{1384}

The same evening he sent ... [a] telegram to the Count

Palikao, at Paris. ... In reply to this, the government sent a

telegram to the emperor at eleven o'clock the same night,

telling him that if they abandoned Bazaine there would

certainly be a revolution in Paris, and they would themselves

be attacked by all the enemy's forces. ... The emperor admits

that he could unquestionably have set this order aside, but

'he was resolved not to oppose the decision of the regency,

and had resigned himself to submit to the consequences of the

fatality which attached itself to all the resolutions of the

government.' 'As for MacMahon, he again bowed to the decision

intimated to him from Paris, and once more turned towards

Metz. These orders and counter-orders naturally occasioned

further delay, and the French headquarters had reached no

farther than Stonne on the 28th. ... On Monday, August 29, De

Failly occupied the country between Beaumont and Stonne, on

the left bank of the Meuse; while the main body of the French

army, under MacMahon in person, had crossed the river, and

were encamped on the right bank at Vaux, between Mouzon and

Carignan, and on the morning of the 30th the emperor

telegraphed to Paris that a brilliant victory might be

expected. MacMahon's position was in a sharp wedge of country

formed by the confluence of the rivers Meuse and Chiers, and

it was his intention to advance towards Montmèdy. The other

part of his army was close to the river on its left bank. ...

The battle--or rather series of battles, for the fighting

extended over three days--which was to decide whether or not

he would reach Metz and liberate Bazaine, began in earnest a

little before noon on Tuesday, August 30."

H. M. Hozier,

The Franco-Prussian War,

volume 1, chapter 13.

"The retreating French were concentrated, or rather massed,

under the walls of Sedan, in a valley commonly called the Sink

of Givonne. The army consisted of twenty-nine brigades,

fifteen divisions, and four corps d'armée, numbering ninety

thousand men. 'It was there,' says Victor Hugo, 'no one could

guess what for, without order, without discipline, a mere

crowd of men, waiting, as it seemed, to be seized by an

immensely powerful hand. It seemed to be under no particular

anxiety. The men who composed it knew, or thought they knew,

that the enemy was far away. Calculating four leagues as a

day's march, they believed the Germans to be at three days'

distance. The commanders, however, towards nightfall, made

some preparations for safety. The whole army formed a sort of

horse-shoe, its point turning towards Sedan. This disposition

proved that its chiefs believed themselves in safety. The

valley was one of those which the Emperor Napoleon used to

call a "bowl," and which Admiral Van Tromp designated by a

less polite name. No place could have been better calculated

to shut in an army. Its very numbers were against it. Once in,

if the way out were blocked, it could never leave it again.

Some of the generals,--General Wimpfen among them--saw this,

and were uneasy; but the little court around the emperor was

confident of safety. "At worst," they said, "we can always

reach the Belgian frontier." The commonest military

precautions were neglected. The army slept soundly on the

night of August 31. At the worst they believed themselves to

have a line of retreat open to Mézières, a town on the

frontier of Belgium. No cavalry reconnoissance was made that

night; the guards were not doubled. The French believed

themselves more than forty miles from the German army. They

behaved as if they thought that army unconcentrated and

ill-informed, attempting vaguely several things at once, and

incapable of converging on one point, namely, Sedan. They

thought they knew that the column under the Prince of Saxony

was marching upon Châlons, and that the Crown Prince of

Prussia was marching upon Metz. But that night, while the

French army, in fancied security, was sleeping at Sedan, this

is what was passing among the enemy. By a quarter to two A. M.

the army of the Prince of Saxony was on its march eastward

with orders not to fire a shot till five o'clock, and to make

as little noise as possible. They marched without baggage of

any kind. At the same hour another division of the Prussian

army marched, with equal noiselessness, from another direction

on Sedan, while the Würtemburgers secured the road to

Mézières, thereby cutting off the possibility of a retreat

into Belgium. At the same moment, namely, five o'clock,--on

all the hills around Sedan, at all points of the compass,

appeared a dense dark mass of German troops, with their

commanders and artillery. Not one sound had been heard by the

French army, not even an order. Two hundred and fifty thousand

men were in a Circle on the heights round the Sink of Givonne.

They had come as stealthily and as silently as serpents. They

were there when the sun rose, and the French army were

prisoners.'

Victor Hugo,

Choses Vues.

The battle was one of artillery. The German guns commanded

every part of the crowded valley. Indeed the fight was simply

a massacre. There was no hope for the French, though they

fought bravely. Their best troops, the Garde Impériale, were

with Bazaine at Metz. Marshal MacMahon was wounded very early

in the day. The command passed first to General Ducrot, who

was also disabled, and afterwards to Wimpfen, a brave African

general who had hurried from Algeria just in time to take part

in this disastrous day. He told the emperor that the only hope

was for the troops to cut their way out of the valley; but the

army was too closely crowded, too disorganized, to make this

practicable. One Zouave regiment accomplished this feat, and

reached Belgium. That night--the night of September 1--an

aide-de-camp of the Emperor Napoleon carried this note to the

camp of the king of Prussia:--Monsieur Mon Frère,--Not having

been able to die in midst of my troops, it only remains for me

to place my sword in the hands of your Majesty. I am your

Majesty's good brother, Napoleon. ... With Napoleon III. fell

not only his own reputation as a ruler, but the glory of his

uncle and the prestige of his name. The fallen emperor and

Bismarck met in a little house upon the banks of the Meuse.

Chairs were brought out, and they talked in the open air. It

was a glorious autumn morning. The emperor looked care-worn,

as well he might. He wished to see the king of Prussia before

the articles of capitulation were drawn up: but King William

declined the interview. When the capitulation was signed,

however, he drove over to visit the captive emperor at a

château where the latter had taken refuge.

{1385}

Their interview was private; only the two sovereigns were

present. The French emperor afterwards expressed to the Crown

Prince of Prussia his deep sense of the courtesy shown him. He

was desirous of passing as unnoticed as possible through

French territory, where, indeed, exasperation against him, as

the first cause of the misfortunes of France, was so great

that his life would have been in peril. The next day he

proceeded to the beautiful palace at Cassel called

Wilhelmshöhe, or William's Rest. It had been built at ruinous

expense by Jerome Bonaparte while king of Westphalia, and was

then called Napoleon's Rest. ... Thus eighty thousand men

capitulated at Sedan, and were marched as prisoners into

Germany; one hundred and seventy-five thousand French soldiers

remained shut up in Metz, besides a few thousand more in

Strasburg, Phalsbourg, Toul, and Belfort. But the road was

open to Paris, and thither the various German armies marched,

leaving the Landwehr, which could not be ordered to serve

beyond the limits of Germany, to hold Alsace and Lorraine,

already considered a part of the Fatherland."

E. W. Latimer,

France in the Nineteenth Century,

chapter 12.

"The German army had lost in the battle of Sedan about 460

officers and 8,500 men killed and wounded. On the French side

the loss sustained in the battle and at the capitulation

amounted according to their returns to the following: Killed

3,000 men; wounded 14,000; prisoners (in the battle) 21,000;

prisoners (at the capitulation) 83,000; disarmed in Belgium

3,000; total 124,000."

The Franco-German War: German Official Account,

part 1, volume 2, page 408.

ALSO IN:

Capt. G. Fitz-George,

Plan of the battle of Sedan, with Memoir.

A. Forbes,

My Experiences of the War between France and Germany,

part 1, chapter 4 (volume l).

Colonel. A. Borbstaedt and Major F. Dwyer,

The Franco-German War,

chapters 30-40.

G. B. Malleson,

The Refounding of the German Empire,

chapter 14.

FRANCE: A. D. 1870 (September).

Revolution at Paris.

Collapse of the empire.

Self-constitution of the Government of National Defense.

At Paris, the whole truth of the tremendous disaster at Sedan

was but slowly learned. On the afternoon of Saturday,

September 3, Count de Palikao intimated a little part of it,

only, "in a statement to the Corps Législatif, announcing that

Marshal Bazaine, after a vigorous sally, had been obliged to

retire again under the walls of Metz, and that Macmahon, after

a series of combats, attended by reverses and successes--

having at the outset driven a part of the enemy's army into

the Meuse--had been compelled to retreat to Sedan and

Mézières, a portion of his army having taken refuge in

Belgium. The junction of the two armies had therefore not been

made. The situation was serious, calmly observed the Minister

of War, but not hopeless. Not hopeless! when the truth was

that one army was blockaded and the other prisoner, and that

there were no reserves. ... At a midnight sitting Count de

Palikao, still determined to conceal a portion of the truth,

intimated that part of Marshal Macmahon's army had been driven

back into Sedan, that the remainder had capitulated, and that

the Emperor had been made prisoner. M. Jules Favre met this

announcement of fresh disasters by a motion, declaring the

Emperor and his dynasty to have forfeited all rights conferred

by the Constitution, demanding the appointment of a

Parliamentary Committee invested with the governing power, and

having for its special mission the expulsion of the enemy from

French territory, and further maintaining General Trochu in

his post as Governor of Paris. The Chamber then adjourned till

the morrow. But Paris had touched one of those crises when, as

Pascal says, a grain of sand will give a turn to history and

change the life of nations, and the morrow brought with it the

downfall of the Ministry, of the dynasty, of the Empire, and of

that bizarre constitutional edifice which had been kept

waiting so long for its complemental crown. ... It had been

intimated that the Corps Législatif would reassemble at noon,

before which time numerous groups collected on the Place de la

Concorde, and eventually swelled to a considerable crowd. The

bridge leading to the Palais Bourbon was guarded by a

detachment of mounted gendarmes, and numerous

sergents-de-ville. ... Battalions of National Guards having,

however, arrived, the gendarmes, after flourishing their

swords, opened their ranks and allowed them to pass, followed

by a considerable portion of the crowd, shouting 'Vive la

République!' and singing the 'Chant du Départ.' The iron gates

of the Palais Bourbon having been opened to admit a deputation

of National Guards, the crowd precipitated itself forward, and

in a few minutes the steps and courtyard were alike invaded.

Cries of 'Vive la Garde Nationale!' 'Vive la Ligne!' 'Vive la

République!' resounded on all sides, and the soldiers who

occupied the court of the Palais Bourbon, after making a show

of resistance, ended by hoisting the butt ends of their rifles

in the air in sign of sympathy, joining at the same time in the

shouts of the crowd, while the latter, encountering no further

opposition, proceeded to invade the passages of the Chamber,

at the moment Count de Kératry was attacking the Ministry for

surrounding the Corps Législatif with troops and

sergents-de-ville, contrary to the orders of General Trochu.

Count de Palikao, having explained the relative positions of

the Governor of Paris and the Minister of War, introduced a

bill instituting a Council of Government and National Defence,

composed of five members elected by the Legislative Body, the

ministers to be appointed with the approval of the members of

this Council, and he, Count de Palikao, to occupy the post of

Lieutenant-General. M. Jules Favre having claimed priority for

the motion which he had introduced the day before, M. Thiers,

pleading the necessity for union, next moved that:--'In view

of existing circumstances, the Chamber appoints a Commission

of Government and National Defence. A Constituent Assembly

will be convoked as soon as circumstances permit.' The Chamber

having declared in favour of their urgency, these several

propositions were eventually referred to the Bureau, and the

sitting was suspended. It was during this period that the

crowd penetrated into the Salles des Quatre Colonnes and de la

Paix. ... At half-past two, when the sitting was resumed, the

galleries were crowded and very noisy. The members of the Left

only were in their places. It was in vain the President

attempted to obtain silence, in vain the solemn huissiers

commanded it. MM. Gambetta and Crémieux appeared together at

the tribune, and the former begged of the people to remain

quiet. ...

{1386}

A partial silence having been secured, Count de Palikao,

followed by a few members of the majority, entered the

Chamber, but did not essay to speak. ... A minute or two

afterwards, the clamour arose again, and a noisy multitude

commenced invading the floor of the hall. ... Nothing was left

to the President but to put on his hat and retire, which he

did, together with Count de Palikao and the members by whom

the latter had been accompanied. By this time the Chamber was

completely invaded by National and Mobile Guards, in company

with an excited crowd, whose advance it was in vain now to

attempt to repel. M. Jules Favre, having mounted the tribune,

obtained a moment's silence. 'No scenes of violence,' cried

he; 'let us reserve our arms for our enemies.' Finding it

utterly impossible to obtain any further hearing inside the

Chamber, M. Gambetta, accompanied by the members of the Left,

proceeded to the steps of the peristyle, and there announced

the dethronement of the Emperor to the people assembled

outside. Accompanied by one section of the crowd, they now

hurried to the Hôtel de Ville, and there installed themselves

as a Provisional Government, whilst another section took

possession of the Tuileries--whence the Empress had that

morning taken flight--as national property. A select band of

Republicans, mindful of what Count--now Citoyen--Henri

Rochefort had done to bring Imperialism into disrepute,

proceeded to the prison of Sainte Pélagie and conducted the

author of the Lanterne, and other political prisoners, in

triumph to the Hôtel de Ville. The deputies who quitted the

Chamber when it was invaded by the mob, met that same

afternoon at the President's residence, and sent a deputation

to the Hôtel de Ville, with a proposal to act in common with

the new Government. This proposition was, however, declined,

on the score of the Republic having been already proclaimed

and accepted by the population of Paris. At an evening meeting

of nearly two hundred deputies, held under the presidency of

M. Thiers, MM. Jules Favre and Simon attended on the part of

the Provisional Government to explain that they were anxious

to secure the support of the deputies, whom they hinted,

however, could best serve their country in the departments.

After this unequivocal rebuff, the deputies, who had in the

meantime been apprised that seals had been placed on the doors

of the Corps Législatif, saw that nothing remained to them but

to protest, and protest they accordingly did against the

events of the afternoon. ... Not one of the two hundred

deputies present so much as dared suggest the breaking of the

seals and the assembling in the Legislative Chamber. ... The

Government which grasped the reins of power on the utter

collapse of Imperial institutions was a mob-named one in the

fullest sense of the term, the names having been chalked by

the populace on the pillars of the portico of the Palais

Bourbon during that invasion of the Chamber on the Sunday

afternoon which resulted in the overthrow of the Imperial

regime. The list appears to have been accepted by the

principal members of the Left, who, although they would have

preferred disassociating themselves from M. Rochefort,

nevertheless felt that it was impossible to leave him out of

the combination, and therefore adroitly--and not

inappropriately, as the safety of Paris was especially in

their keeping--made it embrace all the deputies for Paris,

save, as M. Jules Simon observed, the most illustrious

--meaning M. Thiers, who refused to join it. ... The

Government of National Defence, as it elected to style itself,

on M. Rochefort's suggestion, was composed of the following

members:--General Trochu, president; Jules Favre, Vice

President and Minister for Foreign Affairs; Emanuel Arago;

Crémieux, Minister of Justice; Jules Ferry, Secretary; Leon

Gambetta, Minister of the Interior; Garnier-Pagès;

Glais-Bizoin; Eugene Pelletan; Ernest Picard, Minister of

Finance; Henri Rochefort; and Jules Simon, Minister of Public

Instruction. Subsequently it associated with it General Le

Flô, Minister of War; Admiral Fourichon, Minister of Marine;

M. Dorian, Minister of Public Works; and M. Magnin, Minister

of Agriculture and Commerce. These, with Count de Kératry,

charged with the Prefecture of Police, M. Etienne Arago,

appointed Mayor of Paris, composed altogether no less than

eighteen members, upwards of two-thirds of whom were Bretons,

advocates, or journalists. ... For some days the new

Government was prodigal of proclamations and decrees. Its

first acts were to close the doors of the Palais Bourbon and

the Palais du Luxembourg, and dissolve the Corps Législatif

and abolish the Senate as bouches inutiles politiques, to

issue proclamations to the army, or rather the debris of one,

justifying the Revolution and appealing to the troops to

continue their heroic efforts for the defence of the country,

and to the National Guard, thanking them for their past, and

asking for their future patriotism. It released all

functionaries from their oaths, dismissed the ambassadors at

foreign courts, appointed prefects in all the departments, and

new mayors in the twenty arrondissements of the capital,

proclaimed the complete liberty of the press, ordered all

Germans not provided with special permission to remain, to

quit the departments of the Seine and Seine-et-Oise within

four-and-twenty hours. ... It pressed forward the provisioning

of the city and its works of defence, increased the herds of

sheep and oxen and the stores of corn and flour, provisionally

abolished all local customs and octroi dues, and fixed the price

of butcher's meat, armed the outer forts and the enceinte,

blew up or mined all the bridges and fired all the woods in

the environs, razed thousands of houses to the ground, felled

roadside trees, and constructed huge barricades with them;

laid in fact all the beautiful suburbs in waste; listened to

the thousand and one wild schemes put forth by patriotic

madmen for exterminating the invaders, and launched a huge

captive balloon, which hovered daily over Paris to give timely

notice of their dreaded arrival."

H. Vizetelly, editor,

Paris in Peril,

chapter 1.

ALSO IN:

J. Favre,

The Government of the National Defence, June-October.

W. Rüstow,

The War for the Rhine Frontier,

chapter 22 (volume 2).

{1387}

FRANCE: A. D. 1870 (September-October).

Futile striving for allies and for peace without

territorial sacrifices.

Investment of Paris.

Gambetta's organization of defense in the provinces.

Bazaine's surrender at Metz.

"The Government of National Defence ... imagined that the fall

of the Empire would simplify the cruel position of France

towards the enemy. The Dynasty which had declared war being

reversed, and the men now in power having been throughout

opposed to war and in favour of German unity, and now

demanding nothing but peace, what motive could the King of

Prussia have to continue the invasion of France? It was

further to be considered that free France would defend her

integrity to the last drop of her blood; that she would

voluntarily give up neither an inch of her territory nor a

stone of her fortresses. Such were the ideas which the new

Minister of Foreign Affairs, M. Jules Favre, expressed on the

6th of September, in a circular addressed to the French agents

in foreign countries. The Cabinet of Berlin was not slow in

disabusing him of these convictions. Far from accepting the

view that the Emperor Napoleon was the sole promoter of war,

Count Bismarck, in two despatches of the 13th and of the 16th

of September, threw the responsibility of the conflict on the

French nation. He stated that the vast majority of the

Chambers had voted for war, and that the Emperor was justified

in assuring the King that he had been forced into a war to

which he was personally averse. ... In order to be secure

against future aggression, Germany would ask for guarantees

from the French nation itself, and not from a transitory

Government. ... In any case, Germany would require Strasburg

and Metz. Thus the accession to power of the Republican

Government did not modify the reciprocal positions of the two

belligerents. Nevertheless, hope was entertained in Paris that

the friendly intervention of the great powers might induce the

victor to soften his rigour;" but intervention was declined by

the Berlin Cabinet and not undertaken. "On the 19th of

September the investment of Paris was completed. At the desire

of the French Government, the English Cabinet applied to the

German head-quarters, with the object of obtaining for M.

Jules Favre an interview with Count Bismarck. This request

having been granted, the two statesmen held conferences, on

the 19th and 20th of September, at Ferrières, a castle of

Baron Rothschild near Meaux. During these interviews the

French Minister was sentimental and the German Minister coldly

logical. They could not come to an agreement on any single

point. ... The Government of Paris ... again proclaimed that

France would not cede an inch of her territory. Meanwhile, in

consequence of the investment of Paris, the Government of

National Defence was divided into two parts; some of its

Delegates withdrew to Tours, forming a delegation of the

central Government which remained in Paris. The German armies

had continued their onward march, as well as their operations

against the fortresses. Toul capitulated on the 23rd and

Strasburg on the 28th of September. On the 5th of October,

King William had established his headquarters at Versailles."

Meantime "the Government of National Defence made a last

attempt to secure allies, or at least the help of powerful

mediators. With this object M. Thiers, who had placed himself

at the disposal of the Administration of the 4th of September,

was sent on a mission to the European Courts. From the 12th of

September till the 20th of October, the old statesman visited

in succession London, Vienna, St. Petersburg, and Florence. In

none of these cities were his measures attended with happy

results." At St. Petersburg and at London he was told--and he

was himself convinced--"that the King of Prussia was

compelled to consider the public opinion of Germany, and that

France would have to resign herself to territorial

sacrifices." He returned to France to advise, and to procure

authority for, a conference with the German Chancellor. But

events had already occurred which aggravated the forlorn

condition of France. "The youngest and most enterprising

member of the Government of Paris, M. Gambetta, had left the

Capital on the 8th of October in a balloon for Tours. It was

his intention to organise national defence in the Provinces.

The day after his arrival at Tours, he issued a fiery

Proclamation to the French people. ... With an energy that

called forth universal admiration, the Government of Tours,

over which Gambetta presided as Dictator, organised

resistance, formed a new army, and gathered together every

possible resource for defence both in men and in materials.

All these efforts could not arrest the progress of the

invasion. From the 11th to the 31st of October, the Germans

took successively Orleans, Soissons, Schlestadt and Dijon.

Round Paris they repulsed the sallies of Malmaison, Champigny,

and le Bourget. But all these defeats of heroic soldiers waned

when compared to the appalling and decisive catastrophe of

Metz. After the battle of Gravelotte, Marshal Bazaine had

unsuccessfully attempted several sallies. ... On the 7th of

October, after an unfortunate battle at Woippy, lasting nine

hours, Bazaine considered the situation desperate. His only

thought was to obtain the most favourable conditions he could,

and with this object he sent General Boyer to the headquarters

at Versailles." After two weeks of negotiation, "on the 21st

of October, the army encamped within the walls of Metz found

itself without provisions. ... Negotiations with Prince

Frederick Charles, nephew of the King and Commander-in-chief

of the besieging Army, were opened on the 25th, and terminated

on the 27th of October. The conditions were identical with

those of Sedan: capitulation of the town and its forts with

all the material of war, all the army of the Rhine to be

prisoners and the officers to be liberated on parole."

E. Simon,

The Emperor William and his Reign,

chapter 13 (volume 2).

"The French Army of the Rhine at the time of the surrender

still numbered 173,000 men, inclusive of 6,000 officers and

20,000 men remaining temporarily in Metz as sick or

convalescent."

The Franco-German War: German Official Account,

part 2, volume 1, page 201.

ALSO IN:

A. Forbes,

My Experiences of the War between France and Germany,

part 2 (volume 1).

FRANCE: A. D. 1870-1871.

The war in the provinces.

Unsuccessful attempts to relieve the capital.

Distress in Paris.

Capitulation and armistice.

"The surrender of Metz and the release of the great army of

Prince Frederick Charles by which it was besieged fatally

changed the conditions of the French war of national defence.

Two hundred thousand of the victorious troops of Germany under

some of their ablest generals were set free to attack the

still untrained levies on the Loire and in the north of

France, which, with more time for organisation, might well

have forced the Germans to raise the siege of Paris. The army

once commanded by Steinmetz was now reconstituted, and

despatched under General Manteuffel towards Amiens; Prince

Frederick Charles moved with the remainder of his troops

towards the Loire. Aware that his approach could not long be

delayed, Gambetta insisted that Aurelle de Paladines should

begin the march on Paris.

{1388}

The general attacked Tann at Coulmiers on the 9th of November,

defeated him, and re-occupied Orleans, the first real success

that the French had gained in the war. There was great alarm

at the German headquarters at Versailles; the possibility of a

failure of the siege was discussed; and 40,000 troops were

sent southwards in haste to the support of the Bavarian

general. Aurelle, however, did not move upon the capital: his

troops were still unfit for the enterprise; and he remained

stationary on the north of Orleans, in order to improve his

organisation, to await reinforcements, and to meet the attack

of Frederick Charles in a strong position. In the third week

of November the leading divisions of the army of Metz

approached, and took post between Orleans and Paris. Gambetta

now insisted that the effort should be made to relieve the

capital. Aurelle resisted, but was forced to obey. The

garrison of Paris had already made several unsuccessful

attacks upon the lines of their besiegers, the most vigorous

being that of Le Bourget on the 30th of October, in which

bayonets were crossed. It was arranged that in the last days

of November General Trochu should endeavour to break out on

the southern side, and that simultaneously the army of the

Loire should fall upon the enemy in front of it and endeavour

to force its way to the capital. On the 28th the attack upon

the Germans on the north of Orleans began. For several days

the struggle was renewed by one division after another of the

armies of Aurelle and Prince Frederick Charles. Victory

remained at last with the Germans; the centre of the French

position was carried; the right and left wings of the army

were severed from one another and forced to retreat, the one

up the Loire, the other towards the west. Orleans on the 5th

of December passed back into the hands of the Germans. The

sortie from Paris, which began with a successful attack by

General Ducrot upon Champigny beyond the Marne, ended after

some days of combat in the recovery by the Germans of the

positions which they had lost, and in the retreat of Ducrot

into Paris. In the same week Manteuffel, moving against the

relieving army of the north, encountered it near Amiens,

defeated it after a hard struggle, and gained possession of

Amiens itself. After the fall of Amiens, Manteuffel moved upon

Rouen. This city fell into his hands without resistance. ...

But the Republican armies, unlike those which the Germans had

first encountered, were not to be crushed at a single blow.

Under the energetic command of Faidherbe the army of the north

advanced again upon Amiens. Goeben, who was left to defend the

line of the Somme, went out to meet him, defeated him on the

23rd of December, and drove him back to Arras. But again,

after a week's interval, Faidherbe pushed forward. On the 3rd

of January he fell upon Goeben's weak division at Bapaume, and

handled it so severely that the Germans would on the following

day have abandoned their position, if the French had not

themselves been the first to retire. Faidherbe, however, had

only fallen back to receive reinforcements. After some days'

rest he once more sought to gain the road to Paris, advancing

this time by the eastward line through St. Quentin. In front

of this town Goeben attacked him. The last battle of the army

of the North was fought on the 19th of January. The French

general endeavoured to disguise his defeat, but the German

commander had won all that he desired. Faidherbe's army was

compelled to retreat northwards in disorder; its part in the

war was at an end. During the last three weeks of December

there was a pause in the operations of the Germans on the

Loire. ... Gambetta ... had ... determined to throw the army

of Bourbaki, strengthened by reinforcements from the south,

upon Germany itself. The design was a daring one, and had the

... French armies been capable of performing the work which

Gambetta required of them, an inroad into Baden, or even the

reconquest of Alsace, would most seriously have affected the

position of the Germans before Paris. But Gambetta

miscalculated the power of young, untrained troops,

imperfectly armed, badly fed, against a veteran army. In a

series of hard-fought struggles the army of the Loire under

General Chanzy was driven back at the beginning of January

from Vendôme to Le Mans. On the 12th, Chanzy took post before

this city and fought his last battle. While he was making a

vigorous resistance in the centre of the line, the Breton

regiments stationed on his right gave way; the Germans pressed

round him, and gained possession of the town. Chanzy retreated

towards Laval, leaving thousands of prisoners in the hands of the

enemy, and saving only the debris of an army. Bourbaki in the

meantime, with a numerous but miserably equipped force, had

almost reached Belfort. ... Werder had evacuated Dijon and

fallen back upon Vesoul; part of his army was still occupied

in the siege of Belfort. As Bourbaki approached he fell back

with the greater part of his troops in order to cover the

besieging force, leaving one of his lieutenants to make a

flank attack upon Bourbaki at Villersexel. This attack, one of

the fiercest in the war, delayed the French for two days, and

gave Werder time to occupy the strong positions that he had

chosen about Montbéliard. Here, on the 15th of January, began

a struggle which lasted for three days. The French, starving

and perishing with cold, though far superior in number to

their enemy, were led with little effect against the German

entrenchments. On the 18th Bourbaki began his retreat. Werder

was unable to follow him; Manteuffel with a weak force was

still at some distance, and for a moment it seemed possible

that Bourbaki, by a rapid movement westwards, might crush this

isolated foe. Gambetta ordered Bourbaki to make the attempt:

the commander refused to court further disaster with troops

who were not fit to face an enemy, and retreated towards

Pontarlier in the hope of making his way to Lyons. But

Manteuffel now descended in front of him; divisions of

Werder's army pressed down from the north; the retreat was cut

off; and the unfortunate French general, whom a telegram from

Gambetta removed from his command, attempted to take his own

life. On the 1st of February, the wreck of his army, still

numbering 85,000 men, but reduced to the extremity of weakness

and misery, sought refuge beyond the Swiss frontier. The war

was now over. Two days after Bourbaki's repulse at Montbéliard

the last unsuccessful sortie was made from Paris. There now

remained provisions only for another fortnight; above 40,000

of the inhabitants had succumbed to the privations of the

siege; all hope of assistance from the relieving armies before

actual famine should begin disappeared.

{1389}

On the 23rd of January Favre sought the German Chancellor at

Versailles in order to discuss the conditions of a general

armistice and of the capitulation of Paris. The negotiations

lasted for several days; on the 28th an armistice was signed

with the declared object that elections might at once be

freely held for a National Assembly, which should decide

whether the war should be continued, or on what conditions

peace should be made. The conditions of the armistice were

that the forts of Paris and all their material of war should

be handed over to the German army; that the artillery of the

enceinte should be dismounted; and that the regular troops in

Paris should, as prisoners of war, surrender their arms. The

National Guard were permitted to retain their weapons and

their artillery. Immediately upon the fulfilment of the first

two conditions all facilities were to be given for the entry

of supplies of food into Paris. The articles of the armistice

were duly executed, and on the 30th of January the Prussian

flag waved over the forts of the French capital."

C. A. Fyffe,

History of Modern Europe,

volume 3, chapter 6.

ALSO IN:

H. Murdock,

The Reconstruction of Europe,

chapters 29-30.

Daily News Correspondence of the War

chapters 13-21.

Cassell's History of the War,

volume 1, chapter 36,

volume 2; chapters 1-18.

Comte d'Herrison,

Journal of a Staff Officer in Paris.

E. B. Washburne,

Recollections of a Minister to France,

volume 1, chapters 5-10.

J. A. O'Shea,

An Iron-bound City.

F. T. Marzials,

Life of Gambetta,

chapter 5.

H. von Moltke,

The Franco-German War of 1870-71,

sections 3-7.

T. G. Bowles,

The Defence of Paris.

W. Rüstow,

The War for the Rhine Frontier, 1870,

volume 3.

FRANCE: A. D. 1871 (January-May).

Preliminaries of Peace signed at Versailles.

The Treaty of Frankfort.

Cession of Alsace and one-fifth of Lorraine.

Five milliards of indemnity.

"On the afternoon of January 28 [1871] the capitulation of

Paris was signed, and an armistice agreed upon to expire on

February 19 at noon. The provinces occupied by the armies of

Bourbaki and Munteuffel were alone excluded from this

agreement. On January 29 the German troops quietly took

possession of the Paris forts. The regulars and mobiles became

prisoners of war, with the exception of 12,000 men who were

left under arms to preserve order. At the earnest request of

Favre the National Guard were allowed to retain their arms. If

Favre urged this as a measure to counteract the imperialistic

ideas supposed to be still cherished by the prisoners

returning from Germany, it was a political crime as well as a

military folly. The National Guard became the armed Commune.

... While the armies withdrew to the lines stipulated in the

armistice, the elections went quietly forward. The assembly

convened at Bordeaux, and manifested a spirit that won for it

universal respect. On February 17 M. Thiers was appointed

chief of the executive power, and having named his ministry,

he repaired to Versailles to arrange the preliminaries of

peace. The conferences that followed with the German

chancellor were perhaps the most trying ordeals to which the

Frenchman had ever been subjected. No peace was possible save

on the basis of the cession of miles of territory and the

strongest of fortresses. France must also pay a war indemnity

of no less than five milliards of francs. Bismarck, it is

true, thought Thiers 'too sentimental for business, ... hardly

fit indeed to buy or sell a horse,' but no diplomatist,

however astute, could have made better terms for stricken

France. So thought the assembly at Bordeaux; and when Thiers

announced the result of his mission with a quivering lip, he

had its sympathy and support. On the 2d of March the assembly

formally ratified the peace preliminaries by a vote of 546 to

107. It had been stipulated in the armistice that the German

troops should not occupy Paris. The extension of time granted

by the Germans entitled them to some compensation, and the

entry of Paris was the compensation claimed. The troops

detailed for this purpose were not chosen at random. To the

Frenchman who on the 1st day of March beheld them pass along

the Avenue de Malakoff or the Champs Elysées it was an ominous

pageant. It was a German and not a Prussian army that he

beheld. ... That night the Hessians smoked their pipes on the

Trocadéro, and the Bavarians stacked their arms in the Place

de la Concorde, while the lights blazing from the palace of

the Elysée announced the German military headquarters. On the

third day of the month, the Bordeaux Assembly having ratified

the peace preliminaries, the German troops marched out, and

Paris was left to herself again. The war was over. Beyond the

Rhineland, in Bavaria and Würtemberg as well as in the north,

all was joy and enthusiasm over the return of the army that

had answered before the world the question, 'What is the

German Fatherland?' On the 10th of May the definite treaty of

peace was signed at Frankfort by which France ceded Alsace and

a portion of Lorraine, including the fortresses of Metz and

Strasburg, to her conqueror."

H. Murdock,

The Reconstruction of Europe,

chapter 30.

The following are the heads of the Preliminary Treaty

concluded at Versailles, to which the final Treaty of

Frankfort conformed:

"1. France renounces in favour of the German Empire the

following rights: the fifth part of Lorraine including Metz

and Thionville, and Alsace less Belfort.

2. France will pay the sum of five milliards of francs, of

which one milliard is to be paid in 1871 and the remaining

four milliards by instalments extending over three years.

3. The German troops will begin to evacuate the French

territory as soon as the Treaty is ratified. They will then

evacuate the interior of Paris and some departments lying in

the western region. The evacuation of the other departments

will take place gradually after payment of the first milliard,

and proportionately to the payment of the other four

milliards. Interest at the rate of five per cent. per annum

will be paid on the amount remaining due from the date of the

ratification of the Treaty.

4. The German troops will not levy any requisitions in the

departments occupied by them, but will be maintained at the

cost of France. A delay will be granted to the inhabitants of

the territories annexed to choose between the two

nationalities.

6. Prisoners of war will be immediately set at liberty.

7. Negotiations for a definitive Treaty of Peace will be

opened at Brussels after the ratification of this Treaty.

8. The administration of the departments occupied by the

German troops will be entrusted to French officials, but under

the control of the chiefs of the German Corps of occupation.

9. The present Treaty confers upon the Germans no rights

whatever in the portions of territories not occupied.

10. This Treaty will have to be ratified by the

National Assembly of France."

C. Lowe,

Prince Bismarck,

volume 1, chapter 9.

ALSO IN:

E. Hertslet,

The Map of Europe by Treaty,

volume 3, numbers 438 and 446.

{1390}

FRANCE: A. D. 1871 (March-May).

Insurrection of the Communists of Paris.

Second siege and reduction of the capital.

"On the 3d of March the German army of occupation--which had

been in the assigned part of the city since the 1st--marched

off through the Arc de Triomphe, and on the 7th the German

headquarters were moved from Versailles. The great

Franco-Prussian War was over. ... But before ... peace could

be attained, the country had yet to suffer from the so-called

patriots of the Red Republicans worse outrage than it had

endured at the hands of the German invaders. When the

negotiations for the capitulation of Paris were in progress,

Count Bismarck had warned M. Favre of the danger of allowing,

as he proposed, the National Guard to retain their arms; and

the members of the Government of National Defence might

themselves have seen the risk they were incurring, had they

calmly considered the various émeutes that had taken place

during the siege, and in which the National Guard had always

played such a conspicuous part on the side of disaffection.

Now, in the full consciousness of their strength--somewhere

about 100,000--and in their possession of a powerful

artillery,--for during the German occupation they had, on the

pretext of keeping them safe, got a large number of cannon

into their hands,--they seemed determined to attempt the

revival of the Reign of Terror. ... The appointment of General

d'Aurelle de Paladines as their commander gave great offence,

and on the 9th March an attempt to place the tricolor on the

column in the Place de la Bastille instead of the red flag of

revolution led to an outbreak. A promise in the event of the

cannon being given up, of the continuance of pay till

'ordinary work was resumed,' was disregarded, and the

dismissal of D'Aurelle and the full recognition of the right

of the National Guard to elect its own officers demanded. An

effort of the government to seize the cannon in the Place des

Vosges failed, and it was now clear enough that more energetic

action than negotiations must take place. On the morning of the

18th March a large force of regular troops under Generals

Vinoy and Lecomte proceeded to Montmarte and took possession

of the guns; but the want of horses for their immediate

removal gave time for the Reds to assemble and frustrate the

effort, while, worst of all, a large number of the regular

troops fraternized with the insurgents. General Lecomte and

General Clement Thomas were taken prisoners and almost

immediately shot. The outbreak, thus begun, spread rapidly;

for, through some unaccountable timidity of the government,

the government forces were withdrawn from the city, and the

insurgents left free to act as they pleased. They seized

General Chanzy at the Orleans railway station, took possession

of the Ministry of Justice and the Hôtel de Ville, and threw

up barricades round all the revolutionary quarters. The

Central Committee of the National Guard, the leading man of

which was Assi, ... summoned the people of Paris to meet 'in

their comitia for the communal elections,' and declared their

intention of resigning their power into the hands of the

Commune thus chosen. The National Assembly removed from

Bordeaux and held its sittings at Versailles: but bitter as

was the feeling of the majority of the Deputies against the

new turbulence, the position of affairs prevented any action

from being taken against the insurgents. The removal of

General d'Aurelle and the appointment of Admiral Saisset in

his place was of no avail. A number of the inhabitants of

Paris, styling themselves 'Men of Order,' attempted to

influence affairs by a display of moral force, but they were

fired on and dispersed. The Assembly was timid, and apparently

quite unable to bring its troops into play. ... Through

Admiral Saisset concessions were offered, but the demands of

the Communists increased with the prospect of obtaining

anything. They now modestly demanded that they should

supersede the Assembly wherever there was any prospect of

collision of power, and be allowed to control the finances;

and as a very natural consequence the negotiations were

abandoned. This was on the 25th of March, and on the 26th the

Commune was elected, the victory of the Reds being very easily

gained, as hardly any of those opposed to them voted. Two days

afterwards the Commune was proclaimed at the Hôtel de Ville,

the members who had been elected being seated on a platform in

red arm-chairs. The leading man of the new system was the

honest but hot-headed and utopian Deleseluze; Cluseret, a man

of considerable military genius, who had led a life of a very

wild nature in America, and who was the soul of the resistance

when the actual fighting began, was Delegate of War; Grousset,

of Foreign Affairs; and Rigault, of Public Safety. The new

government applied itself vigorously to changes; conscription

was abolished, and the authority of the Versailles government

declared 'null and void.' Seeing that a desperate struggle

must inevitably ensue, a very large number of the inhabitants

of Paris quitted the city, and the German authorities allowed

the prisoners from Metz and Sedan to return so as to swell the

forces at the disposal of M. Thiers. They also intimated that,

in view of the altered circumstances, it might again become

necessary for them to occupy the forts they had already

evacuated. The first shot in the second siege of Paris, in

which Frenchmen were arrayed against Frenchmen, was fired on

the 2d April, when a strong division of the Versailles army

advanced against the National Guards posted at Courbevoie, and

drove them into Paris across the Pont de Neuilly. During the

ensuing night a large force of insurgents gathered, and were

on the morning of the 3d led in three columns against

Versailles. Great hopes had been placed on the sympathy of the

regular troops, but they were doomed to disappointment. ...

The expedition ... not only failed, but it ... cost the

Commune two of its leading men,--Duval, and that Flourens who

had already made himself so conspicuous in connection with

revolutionary outbreaks under the Empire and the Government of

National Defence,--both of whom were taken and promptly shot

by the Versailles authorities. The failure and the executions

proved so exasperating that the 'Commune of Paris' issued a

proclamation denouncing the Versailles soldiers as banditti.

... They had ample means of gratifying their passion for

revenge, for they had in their hands a number of leading men,

including Darboy, Archbishop of Paris, and M. Bonjean,

President of the Court of Cassation, and these--two hundred in

all--they proclaimed their intention of holding as hostages.

{1391}

M. Thiers was still hesitating, and waiting for a force

sufficiently powerful to crush all opposition; and in this he

was no doubt right, for any success of the Communists, even of

the most temporary character, would have proved highly

dangerous. The Germans had granted permission to the

government to increase their original 30,000 troops to

150,000, and prisoners of Metz and Sedan had been pouring

steadily back from Germany for this purpose. On the 8th April

Marshal MacMahon took command of the forces at Versailles. A

premature attack on the forts of Issy, Vanves, and Montrouge

on the 11th failed, but on the 17th and 19th several of the

insurgent positions were carried; on the 25th the bombardment

of Issy and Vanves was begun, and from that time onwards

operations against the city were carried on with the greatest

activity, the insurgents being on all occasions put to the

sword in a most merciless manner. Issy was taken on the 8th

May, and Vanves on the 4th, and the enceinte laid bare. Inside

Paris all this time there was nothing but jealousy. ... First

one leader, and then another, was tried, found wanting, and

disgraced. ... On the 21st May the defenders of the wall at

the gate of St. Cloud were driven from their positions by the

heavy artillery fire, and the besieging army, having become

aware of the fact, pushed forward and secured this entrance to

the city; and by the evening of the 22d there were 80,000

Versaillists within the walls. Next day they gained fresh

ground, and were ready to re-occupy the Tuileries and the

Hôtel de Ville; but before this was possible the Communists,

mad with despair, had resolved on that series of outrages

against humanity that will make their names detested and their

cause distrusted as long as the story of their crimes stands

recorded in the annals of history. They had already

perpetrated more than one act of vandalism. ... On the 12th

May, in accordance with a public decree, they had destroyed

the private residence of M. Thiers with all its pictures and

books; on the 16th the magnificent column erected in the Place

Vendome in memory of Napoleon I., and crowned by his statue,

was undermined at one side and then pulled to the ground by

means of ropes and utterly destroyed; and now on the 24th, in

the last efforts of despairing rage, bands of men and women,

still more frantic and eager for blood than were those of the

Reign of Terror, rushed through the doomed city. Early in the

morning the Tuileries, the Hôtel de Ville, the Ministry of

Finance, the Palais d'Orsay, and other public and private

buildings were seen to be on fire. The Louvre, too, with all

its inestimable treasures, was in flames, and was saved with

the greatest difficulty. If the Commune was to perish, it had

clearly resolved that the city was to perish with it. Men and

women marched about in bands with petroleum, and aided the

spread of the conflagration by firing the city in different

places. Heedless of the flames, the Versailles troops pressed

on, eager, if possible, to save the lives of the 200 hostages,

but, alas, in vain. A passion for blood had seized on the

Commune, and its last expiring effort was to murder in cold

blood, not only a large number of the hostages, but also

batches of fresh victims, seized indiscriminately about the

streets by bands of men and women, and dragged off to instant

death. On the 26th Belleville was captured, and on the 27th

and 28th the Cemetery of Père la Chaise was the scene of the

final struggle,--a struggle of such a desperate nature--for

there was no quarter--that, for days after, the air of the

district was literally fraught with pestilence. Many of the

leaders of the Commune had fallen in the final contest, and

all the others who were captured by the Versailles troops

during the fighting were at once shot. Of the 30,000 prisoners

who had fallen into the hands of the government, a large

number, both men and women, were executed without mercy, and

the rest distributed in various prisons to await trial, as

also were Rossel, Assi, Grousset, and others, who were

captured after the resistance was at an end. Cluseret

succeeded in making good his escape. ... Of the prisoners,

about 10,000 were set free without trial, and the others were

sentenced by various courts-martial during the following

months and on through the coming year, either to death,

transportation or imprisonment."

H. Martin,

Popular History of France from the First Revolution,

volume 3, chapter 24.

ALSO IN:

E. B. Washburne,

Recollections of a Minister to France,

volume 2, chapters 5-7.

P. Vésinier,

History of the Commune of Paris.

P. O. Lissagaray,

History of the Commune of 1871.

W. P. Fetridge,

Rise and Fall of the Paris Commune.

J. Leighton,

Paris under the Commune.

FRANCE: A. D. 1871 (April-May).

The government of the Commune in Paris.

"For the conduct of affairs the Communal Council divided

itself into ten 'commissions,' of finance, war, public safety,

external relations, education, justice, labour and exchange,

provisions, the public service, and the general executive. Of

these the most efficient appears to have been that of finance;

by advances from the bank and by the revenues of the post, the

telegraph, the octrois, &c., means were found to provide for

the current expenditure. The other commissions were admittedly

inefficient, and especially the one which was most important

for the moment, that of war:--'as to a general plan,' says

Lissagaray, 'there never was one: the men were abandoned to

themselves, being neither cared for nor controlled;' 'at the

Ministry,' says Gastyne, 'no one is at his place. They pass

their time in running after one another. The most

insignificant Lieutenant will take orders from nobody, and

wants to give them to everybody. They smoke, chat and chaff.

They dispute with the contractors. They buy irresponsibly

right and left because the dealers give commissions or have

private relations with the officials;' 'in the army of

Versailles,' said a member of the Commune, 'they don't get

drunk: in ours they are never sober;' 'the administration of

war,' said another, 'is the organisation of disorganisation;'

'I feel myself,' said Rossel, on resigning his command,

'incapable of any longer bearing the responsibility of a

command where everyone deliberates and no one obeys. The

central committee of artillery has deliberated and prescribed

nothing. The Commune has deliberated and resolved upon

nothing. The Central Committee deliberates and has not yet

known how to act. ... My predecessor committed the fault of

struggling against this absurd situation. I retire, and have

the honour to ask you for a cell at Mazas.' The same

incompetence, leading to the same result of anarchy, was

displayed by the Executive Commission:--'in less than a

fortnight,' said Grosset, 'conflicts of every kind had arisen;

the Executive Commission gave orders which were not executed;

each particular commission, thinking itself sovereign in its

turn, gave orders too, so that the Executive Commission could

have no real responsibility.'

{1392}

On April 20 the Executive Commission was replaced by a

committee, composed of a delegate from each of the nine other

commissions; still efficiency could not be secured, and at the

end of the month it was proposed to establish a Committee of

Public Safety. This proposition was prompted by the traditions

of 1793, and brought into overt antagonism the two conflicting

tendencies of the Commune: there were some of its members who

were ready to save the movement by a despotism, to secure at

every cost a strong administration, and impose the Commune, if

need be by terror, upon Paris and the provinces. ... On the

other hand there was a strong minority which opposed the

proposal, on the ground that it was tantamount to an

abdication on the part of the Communal Council. ... The

appointment of the Committee was carried by forty-five votes

to twenty-three; many of those who voted for it regarded it as

merely another 'Executive Commission,' subordinate to, and at

any moment subject to dismissal by, the Commune; and so, in

effect, it proved; it was neither more terrible nor more

efficient than the body to which it succeeded; it came into

existence on the 1st of May, and on the 9th the complaint was

already advanced that 'your Committee of Public Safety has not

answered our expectations; it has been an obstacle, instead of a

stimulus;' on the 10th a new committee was appointed, with

similar results; all that the innovation achieved was to bring

into clear relief the fact that there existed in the Commune a

Jacobin element ready to recur to the traditions of 1793, and

to make Paris the mistress of France by the guillotine or its

modern equivalent."

G. L. Dickinson,

Revolution and Reaction in Modern France,

pages 267-270.

FRANCE: A. D. 1871-1876.

The Assembly at Bordeaux.

Thiers elected Chief of the Executive Power.

The founding of the Republic.

The recovery of order and prosperity.

Resignation of Thiers.

Election of Marshal MacMahon.

Plans of the Monarchists defeated.

Adoption of the Constitution of 1875.

"The elections passed off more quietly than was to be

expected, and the Assembly which came together at Bordeaux on

the 13th of February exactly represented the sentiment of the

nation at that particular moment. France being eager for

peace, the Assembly was pacific. It was also somewhat

unrepublican, for the Republic had been represented in the

provinces only by Gambetta, the promoter of war to the knife,

who had sacrificed the interests of the Republic to what he

conceived to be the interests of the national honor. Politics

had, in truth, been little thought of, and Thiers was elected

in 27 departments upon very diverse tickets, rather on account

of his opposition to the war and his efforts in favor of peace

than on account of his fame as a liberal orator and historian.

Moved by the same impulse, the Assembly almost unanimously

appointed him Chief of the Executive Power of the French

Republic, and intrusted to him the double task of governing

the country and of treating with the German Emperor. ... It

was apparently in the name of the Republic that peace was

negotiated and the Government gradually reconstructed. ... The

Assembly, however, which was all-powerful, held that to change

the form of government was one of its rights. It might have

been urged that the electors had scarcely contemplated this,

and that the Monarchists were in the majority simply because

they represented peace, while in the provinces the Republic

had meant nothing but war to the hilt. But these distinctions

were not thought of in the press of more urgent business,

namely, the treaty which was to check the shedding of blood,

and the rudiments of administrative reconstruction. No

monarchy would have been willing to assume the responsibility

of this Treaty. ... The Right accordingly consented to accept

the name of Republic as a makeshift, provided it should be

talked about as little as possible. Thiers had come to think,

especially since the beginning of the war, that the Republic

was the natural heir of Napoleon III. ... He had, however,

been struck with the circumstance that so many Legitimists had

been elected to the Assembly, and he was no more eager than

they to stop to discuss constitutions. ... He was the more

disposed to wait, inasmuch as he saw in the Chamber the very

rapid formation and growth of a group in which he had great

confidence. Of these deputies M. Jules Simon has given a

better definition than they could themselves formulate,--for

this political philosopher has written a masterly history of

these years. ... Here is what Simon says of this party in the

Assembly: 'There were in this body some five-score firm

spirits who were alike incapable either of forsaking the

principles whereon all society rests, or of giving up freedom.

Of all forms of government they would have preferred

constitutional monarchy, had they found it established, or

could they have restored it by a vote without resort to force.

But they quickly perceived that neither the Legitimists nor

the Bonapartists would consent to the constitutional form;

that such a monarchy could obtain a majority neither in the

Parliament nor among the people. ... Some of these men

entertained for the Republic a distrust which, at first,

amounted to aversion. Being persuaded, however, that they must

choose between the Republic and the Empire ... they did not

despair of forming a Republic at once liberal and

conservative. In a word, they thrust aside the Legitimate

Monarchy as chimerical, Republican and Cæsarian dictatorship

as alike hateful. ... Of this party M. Thiers was not merely

the head, but the body also.' ... But there was another party,

which, although the least numerous in the Assembly and split

into factions at that, was the most numerous in the

country,--the Republican party."

P. de Rémusat,

Thiers,

chapters 6-7.

{1393}

"In the wake of Thiers followed such men as Rémusat, Casimir

Périer, Leon Say, and Lafayette. This added strength made the

Republicans the almost equal rivals of the other parties

combined. So great was Thiers' influence that, despite his

conversion to Republicanism, he was still able to control the

Monarchical Assembly. A threat of resignation, so great was

the dread of what might follow it, and so jealous were the

Monarchists of two shades and the Imperialists of each other,

was enough to bring the majority to the President's terms. It

was under such political conditions that the infant Republic,

during its first year, undertook the tasks of preserving

peace, of maintaining internal order, of retrieving disaster,

of tempting back prosperity and thrift to the desolated land,

of relieving it of the burdens imposed by war, and, at the

same time, of acquiring for itself greater security and

permanency. The recovery of France was wonderfully rapid; her

people began once more to taste sweet draughts of liberty; the

indemnity was almost half diminished; and her industries, at

the end of the year, were once more in full career. But the

Republic was a long way from complete and unquestioned

recognition. The second year of the Republic (1872-73) was

passed amid constant conflicts between the rival parties.

Thiers still maintained his ascendency, and stoutly adhered to

his defence of Republican institutions; but the Assembly was

restive under him, and energetic attempts were made to bring

about a fusion between the Legitimists and the Orleanists.

These attempts were rendered futile by the obstinacy of the

Count of Chambord, who would yield nothing, either of

principle or even of symbol, to his cousin of Orleans. The

want of harmony among the Monarchists postponed the

consideration of what should be the permanent political

constitution of France until November of the year 1872, when a

committee of thirty was chosen to recommend constitutional

articles. Against this the Republicans protested. They

declared that the Assembly had only been elected to make peace

with Germany; ... that dissolution was the only further act

that the Assembly was competent to perform. This indicated the

confidence of the Republicans in their increased strength in

the country; and the fact that the Monarchists refused to

dissolve shows that they were not far from holding this

opinion of their opponents. Despite the rivalries and

bitterness of the factions, the Republic met with no serious

blow from the time of its provisional establishment in

February, 1871, until May, 1873. Up to the latter period two

thirds of the enormous indemnity had been paid, and the German

force of occupation had almost entirely retired from French

territory. ... But in Italy, 1873, a grave misfortune, alike

to France and to the Republican institutions, occurred. At

last the Monarchical reactionists of the Assembly had gathered

courage to make open war upon President Thiers. Perceiving

that his policy was having the effect of nourishing and adding

ever new strength to the Republican cause, and that every

month drifted them further from the opportunity and hope of

restoring Monarchy or Empire ... they now forgot their own

differences, and resolved, at all hazards, to get rid of the

Republic's most powerful protector. ... The Duc de Broglie,

the leader of the reactionary Monarchists, offered a

resolution in the Assembly which was tantamount to a

proposition of want of confidence in President Thiers. After

an acrimonious debate, in which Thiers himself took part, De

Broglie's motion was passed by a majority of fourteen. The

President had no alternative but to resign; and thus the

executive power, at a critical moment, passed out of

Republican into Monarchical hands. Marshal MacMahon was at

once chosen President. ... MacMahon was strongly Catholic in

religion; and so far as he was known to have any political

opinions, they wavered between Legitimism and

Imperialism--they were certainly as far as possible from

Republicanism. Now was formed and matured a deliberate project

to overthrow the young Republic, and to set up Monarchy in its

place. All circumstances combined to favor its success. The

new President was found to be at least willing that the thing

should, if it could, be done. His principal minister, De

Broglie, entered warmly into the plot. The Orleanist princes

agreed to waive their claims, and the Count of Paris was

persuaded to pay a visit to the Count of Chambord at his

retreat at Frohsdorf, to acknowledge the elder Bourbon's right

to the throne, and to abandon his own pretensions. The

Assembly was carefully canvassed, and it was found that a

majority could be relied upon to proclaim, at the ripe moment,

Chambord as king, with the title of Henry V. The Republic was

now, in the early autumn of 1873, in the most serious and real

peril. It needed but a word from the Bourbon pretender to

overthrow it, and to replace it by the throne of the Capets

and the Valois. Happily, the old leaven of Bourbon bigotry

existed in 'Henry V.' He conceded the point of reigning with

parliamentary institutions, but he would not accept the

tricolor as the flag of the restored monarchy. He insisted

upon returning to France under the white banner of his

ancestors. To him the throne was not worth a piece of cloth.

To his obstinacy in clinging to this trifle of symbolism the

Republic owed its salvation. The scheme to restore the

monarchy thus fell through. The result was that the two wings

of Monarchists flew apart again, and the Republicans, being

now united and patient under the splendid leadership of

Gambetta, once more began to wax in strength. It only remained

to the Conservatives to make the best of the situation--to

proceed to the forming of a Constitution, and to at least

postpone to as late a period as possible the permanent

establishment of the Republic. The first step was to confirm

MacMahon in the Presidency for a definite period; and 'the

Septennate,' giving him a lease of power for seven years--that

is, until the autumn of 1880--was voted. ... It was not until

late in the year 1875 that the Constitution which is now the

organic law of France was finally adopted.

See CONSTITUTION OF FRANCE.

The chief circumstance which impelled a majority of the

Assembly to take this decisive step was the alarming revival

of Imperialism in the country. This was shown in the success

of Bonapartists in isolated elections to fill vacancies. Much

as the Royalists distrusted a Republic, they dreaded yet more

the restoration of the Empire; and the rapid progress made by

the partisans of the Empire forced them to adopt what was

really a moderate Republican Constitution. This Constitution

provided that the President of the Republic should be elected

by a joint convention of the Senate and the Chamber of

Deputies; that the Senate should consist of 300 members, of

whom 75 were to be elected for life by the Assembly, and the

remaining 225 by electoral colleges, composed of the deputies,

the councillors-general, the members of the councils

d'arrondissement, and delegates chosen from municipal

councils; that the vacancies in the life senatorships should

be filled by the Senate itself, while the term of the Senators

elected by the colleges should be nine years, one third

retiring every three years; that the Chamber of Deputies

should consist of 533 members, and that the deputies should be

chosen by single districts, instead of, as formerly, in groups

by departments: that the President could only dissolve the

Chamber of Deputies with the consent of the Senate; that money

bills should originate in the Lower Chamber, and that the

President should have the right of veto.

{1394}

The 'Septennate' organized and the Constitution adopted, the

Assembly, which had clung to power for about five years, had

no reason for continued existence, and at last dissolved early

in 1876, having provided that the first general election under

the new order of things should take place in February. ... The

result of the elections proved three things--the remarkable

growth of Republican sentiment; the great progress made, in

spite of the memory of Sedan, by the Bonapartist propaganda;

and the utter hopelessness of any attempt at a Royalist

restoration."

G. M. Towle,

Modern France,

chapter 4.

ALSO IN:

J. Simon,

The Government of M. Thiers.

F. Le Goff,

Life of Thiers,

chapters 8-9.

FRANCE: A. D. 1872-1889.

Reform of Public Instruction.

See

EDUCATION, MODERN: EUROPEAN COUNTRIES.

FRANCE: A. D. 1833-1889.

FRANCE: A. D. 1875-1889.

Stable settlements of the Republic.

Presidencies of MacMahon and Grevy.

Military operations in Tunis, Madagascar and Tonquin.

Revision of the constitution.

Expulsion of the princes.

Boulangerism.

Election of M. Sadi Carnot to the presidency.

"The last day of the year 1875 saw a final prorogation of this

monarchist assembly which had established the Republic. It had

been in existence nearly five years. The elections to the

Senate gave a small majority to the Republicans. Those to the

Chamber of Deputies (February, 1876) gave about two-thirds of

its 532 seats to Republicans, mostly moderate Republicans. The

ministry to which the leadership of this assembly was soon

confided, was therefore naturally a ministry of moderate

Republicans. M. Dufaure was prime minister, and M. Léon Say

minister of finance. ... The Dufaure ministry was not

long-lived, being succeeded before the year 1876 closed, by a

ministry led by M. Jules Simon, a distinguished orator and

writer. The tenure of French cabinets in general has been so

little permanent under the Third Republic, that in the

nineteen years which have elapsed since the fall of the

Empire, twenty-five cabinets have had charge of the executive

government. ... Few events had marked the history of the Simon

ministry when, suddenly, in May, 1877, the President of the

Republic demanded its resignation. Much influenced of late by

Monarchist advisers, he had concluded that the moderate

Republican cabinets did not possess the confidence of the

chambers, and, feeling that the responsibility of maintaining

the repose and security of France rested upon him, had

resolved, rather than allow the management of the affairs of

the country to fall into the hands of M. Gambetta and the

Radicals, to appoint a ministry of conservatives, trusting

that the country would ratify the step. A ministry was

organized under the Duke of Broglie, and the Chamber of

Deputies was first prorogued, and then, with the consent of

the Senate, dissolved. The death of M. Thiers in September

caused a great national demonstration in honor of that

patriotic statesman, 'the liberator of the territory.' The

result of the ensuing elections was a complete victory for the

Republicans, who secured nearly three-fourths of the seats in

the new Chamber. The Marshal, appointing a ministry composed

of adherents of his policy who were not members of the

Assembly, attempted to make head against the majority, but was

forced in December to yield to the will of the people and of

their representatives, and to recall M. Dufaure and the

moderate Republicans to office. The year 1878 therefore passed

off quietly, being especially distinguished by the great

success of the universal exhibition held at Paris. ... At the

beginning of 1879 elections were held in pursuance of the

provisions of the constitution, for the renewal of a portion

of the Senate. ... Elections were held for the filling of 82

seats. Of these the Republicans won 66, the Monarchist groups

16. This was a loss of 42 seats on the part of the latter, and

assured to the Republicans a full control of the Senate. It

had also the effect of definitively establishing the Republic

as the permanent government of France. The Republican leaders

therefore resolved to insist upon extensive changes in the

personnel of the Council of State and the judiciary body. ...

When they also proposed to make extensive changes in other

departments, Marshal MacMahon, who foresaw the impossibility

of maintaining harmonious relations with the cabinets which

the Republican majority would now demand, took these new

measures as a pretext, and, on January 30, 1879, resigned the

office of President of the Republic. On the same day the

Senate and Chamber, united in National Assembly, elected as

his successor, for the constitutional term of seven years, M.

Jules Grevy, president of the Chamber of Deputies a moderate

Republican who enjoyed general respect. M. Grévy was 71 years

old. M. Gambetta was chosen to succeed him as president of the

Chamber. The cabinet was remodelled, M. Dufaure resigning his

office and being succeeded by M. Waddington. In the

reorganized ministry one of the most prominent of the new

members was M. Jules Ferry, its minister of education. He soon

brought forward two measures which excited violent discussion:

the one dealing with the regulation of superior education, the

other with the constitution of the Supreme Council of Public

Instruction. ... In March, 1880, the Senate rejected the bill

respecting universities. The ministry, now composed of members

of the 'pure Left' (instead of a mixture of these and the Left

Centre) under M. de Freycinet, resolved to enforce the

existing laws against non-authorized congregations. The

Jesuits were warned to close their establishments; the others,

to apply for authorization. Failing to carry out these

decrees, M. de Freycinet was forced to resign, and was

succeeded as prime minister by M. Ferry, under whose orders

the decrees were executed in October and November,

establishments of the Jesuits and others, to the number of

nearly 300, being forcibly closed and their inmates dispersed.

Laws were also passed in the same year and in 1881 for the

extension of public education, and a general amnesty

proclaimed for persons engaged in the insurrection of the

commune. In April and May, 1881, on pretext of chastising

tribes on the Tunisian frontier of Algeria, who had committed

depredations on the French territories in Northern Africa, a

military force from Algeria entered Tunis, occupied the

capital, and forced the Bey to sign a treaty by which he put

himself and his country under the protectorate of France. ...

{1395}

The elections, in August, resulted in a Chamber composed of

467 Republicans, 47 Bonapartists, and 43 Royalists, whereas

its predecessor had consisted of 387 Republicans, 81

Bonapartists, and 61 Royalists. In response to a general

demand, M. Gambetta became prime minister on the meeting of

the new Assembly in the autumn. ... But his measures failed to

receive the support of the Chamber, and he was forced to

resign after having held the office of prime minister but two

months and a half (January, 1882). On the last day of that

year M. Gambetta, still the most eminent French statesman of

the time, died at Paris, aged forty-four. ... The death of

Gambetta aroused the Monarchists to renewed activity. Prince

Napoleon issued a violent manifesto, and was arrested. Bills

were brought in which were designed to exclude from the soil

of France and of French possessions all members of families

formerly reigning in France. Finally, however, after a

prolonged contest, a decree suspending the dukes of Aumale,

Chartres, and Alençon from their functions in the army was

signed by the President. Some months later, August, 1883, the

Count of Chambord ('Henry V.') died at Frohsdorf; by this

event the elder branch of the house of Bourbon became extinct

and the claims urged by both Legitimists and Orleanists were

united in the person of the Count of Paris. During the year

1882 alleged encroachments upon French privileges and

interests in the northwestern portion of Madagascar had

embroiled France in conflict with the Hovas, the leading tribe

of that island. The French admiral commanding the squadron in

the Indian Ocean demanded in 1883 the placing of the

northwestern part of the island under a French protectorate,

and the payment of a large indemnity. These terms being

refused by the queen of the Hovas, Tamatave was bombarded and

occupied, and desultory operations continued until the summer

of 1883, when an expedition of the Hovas resulted in a signal

defeat of the French. A treaty was then negotiated, in

accordance with which the foreign relations of the island were

put under the control of France, while the queen of Madagascar

retained the control of internal affairs and paid certain

claims. A treaty executed in 1874 between the emperor of Annam

and the French had conceded to the latter a protectorate over

that country. His failure completely to carry out his

agreement, and the presence of Chinese troops in Tonquin, were

regarded as threatening the security of the French colony of

Cochin China. A small expedition sent out [1882] under

Commander Rivière to enforce the provision of the treaty was

destroyed at Hanoi. Reinforcements were sent out. But the

situation was complicated by the presence of bands of 'Black

Flags,' brigands said to be unauthorized by the Annam

government, and by claims on the part of China to a suzerainty

over Tonquin. A treaty was made with Annam in August, 1883,

providing for the cession of a province to France, and the

establishment of a French protectorate over Annam and Tonquin.

This, however, did not by any means wholly conclude

hostilities in that province. Sontay was taken from the Black

Flags in December, and Bacninh occupied in March, 1884. The

advance of the French into regions over which China claimed

suzerainty, and which were occupied by Chinese troops, brought

on hostilities with that empire. In August, 1884, Admiral

Courbet destroyed the Chinese fleet and arsenal at Foo-chow;

in October he seized points on the northern end of the island

of Formosa, and proclaimed a blockade of that portion of the

island. On the frontier between Tonquin and China the French

gained some successes, particularly in the capture of

Lang-Sön; yet the climate, and the numbers and determination

of the Chinese troops, rendered it impossible for them to

secure substantial results from victories. Finally, after a

desultory and destructive war, a treaty was signed in June,

1885, which arranged that Formosa should be evacuated, that

Annam should in future have no diplomatic relations except

through France, and that France should have virtually complete

control over both it and Tonquin, though the question of

Chinese suzerainty was left unsettled. ... It was not felt

that the expeditions against Madagascar, Annam, and China had

achieved brilliant success. They had, moreover, been a source

of much expense to France; at first popular, they finally

caused the downfall of the ministry which ordered them. That

ministry, the ministry of M. Jules Ferry, ... remained in

power an unusual length of time,--a little more than two

years. Its principal achievement in domestic affairs consisted

in bringing about the revision of the constitution, which,

framed by the Versailles Assembly in 1875, was felt by many to

contain an excessive number of Monarchical elements. ... In

1885, after the fall of the Ferry cabinet, a law was passed

providing for scrutin de liste; each department being entitled

to a number of deputies proportioned to the number of its

citizens, the deputies for each were to be chosen on a general

or departmental ticket. In the same year a law was passed

declaring ineligible to the office of President of the

Republic, senator or deputy, any prince of families formerly

reigning in France. ... In December the National Assembly

re-elected M. Grévy President of the Republic. In the ministry

led by M. de Freycinet, which held office during the year 1886,

great prominence was attained by the minister of war, General

Boulanger, whose management of his department and political

conduct won him great popularity. ... The increasing activity

of the agents of the Monarchist party, the strength which that

party had shown in the elections of the preceding year, and

the demonstrations which attended the marriage of the daughter

of the Count of Paris to the crown prince of Portugal, incited

the Republican leaders to more stringent measures against the

princes of houses formerly reigning in France. The government

was intrusted by law with discretionary power to expel them

all from France, and definitely charged to expel actual

Claimants of the throne and their direct heirs. The Count of

Paris and his son the Duke of Orleans, Prince Napoleon and his

son Prince Victor, were accordingly banished by presidential

decree in June, 1886. General Boulanger struck off from the

army-roll the names of all princes of the Bonaparte and

Bourbon families. The Duke of Aumale, indignantly protesting,

was also banished; in the spring of 1889 he was permitted to

return. Meanwhile, within the Republican ranks, dissensions

increased. The popularity of General Boulanger became more and

more threatening to the cabinets of which he was a member. An

agitation in his favor, conducted with much skill, caused fear

lest he were aspiring to a military dictatorship

of France. ...

{1396}

In the autumn of 1887, an inquiry into the conduct of General

Caffarel, deputy to the commander-in-chief, accused of selling

decorations, implicated by Daniel Wilson, son-in-law of M.

Grévy, who was alleged to have undertaken to obtain

appointments to office and lucrative contracts in return for

money. M. Grévy's unwise attempts to shield his son-in-law

brought about his own fall. The chambers, determined to force

his resignation, refused to accept any ministry proposed by

him. After much resistance and irritating delays he submitted,

and resigned the presidency of the Republic on December 2,

1887. On the next day the houses met in National Assembly at

Versailles to chose the successor of M. Grévy. ... The most

prominent candidates for the Republicans were M. Ferry and M.

de Freycinet; the former, however, was unpopular with the

country. The followers of both, finding their election

impossible, resolved to cast their votes for M. Sadi Carnot, a

Republican of the highest integrity and universally respected.

M. Carnot, a distinguished engineer, grandson of the Carnot

who had, as minister of war, organized the victories of the

armies of the Revolution, was accordingly elected President of

the French Republic. ... The chief difficulties encountered by

the cabinet arose out of the active propagandism exercised in

behalf of General Boulanger. ... His name ... became the

rallying-point of those who were hostile to the parliamentary

system, or to the Republican government in its present form.

Alarmed both by his singular popularity and by his political

intrigues, the government instituted a prosecution of him

before the High Court of Justice; upon this he fled from the

country, and the dangers of the agitation in his favor were,

for the time at least, quieted. On May 5, 1889, the

one-hundredth anniversary of the assembly of the

States-General was held at Versailles. On the next day,

President Carnot formally opened the Universal Exhibition at

Paris, the greatest of the world's fairs which have been held

in that city."

V. Duruy,

History of France,

pages 666-677.

ALSO IN:

H. C. Lockwood,

Constitutional History of France,

chapter 7, and appendix 10.

J. G. Scott,

France and Tonkin.

F. T. Marzials,

Life of Gambetta.

E. W. Latimer,

France in the 19th Century,

chapters 18-20.

Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social

Science, March, 1893, supplement.

FRANCE: A. D. 1877-1882.

Anglo-French control of Egyptian finances.

See EGYPT: A. D. 1875-1882 and 1882-1883.

FRANCE: A. D. 1884-1885.

Territorial claims in Africa.

The Berlin Conference.

See AFRICA: A. D. 1884-1889.

FRANCE: A. D. 1892-1893.

The Panama Canal scandal.

See PANAMA CANAL.

FRANCE: A. D. 1893.

Election of Deputies.

Elections for a new Chamber of Deputies were held in France,

ending on Sunday, September 3, 1893. The resulting division of

parties in the Chamber is stated as follows: "Opportunists

[those, that is, who would shape political action by

circumstances--by opportunities--and not by hard and fast

principles], 292; Converted Monarchists [who accept the

Republic as a fixed fact], 35; Unconverted Monarchists, 58;

and Radicals, including Socialists, 187. As the Converted

Monarchists will vote with the Government, there will be a

heavy Government majority to begin with; but ... it is not

perfectly reliable, and is singularly deficient in marked

men."

Spectator, Sept. 9, 1893.

----------FRANCE: End----------

FRANCESCO MARIA, Duke of Milan, A. D. 1521-1535.

FRANCESCO SFORZA, Duke of Milan, A. D. 1450-1466.

FRANCHE COMTÉ.

In the dissolution of the last kingdom of Burgundy (see

BURGUNDY, THE LAST KINGDOM: A. D. 1032), its northern part

maintained a connection with the Empire, which had then become

Germanic, much longer than the southern. It became divided

into two chief states--the County Palatine of Burgundy, known

afterwards as Franche Comté, or the "free county," and Lesser

Burgundy, which embraced western Switzerland and northern

Savoy. "The County Palatine of Burgundy often passed from one

dynasty to another, and it is remarkable for the number of

times that it was held as a separate state by several of the

great princes of Europe. It was held by the Emperor Frederick

Barbarossa in right of his wife; the marriage of one of his

female descendants carried it to Philip the Fifth of France.

Then it became united with the French duchy of Burgundy under

the dukes of the House of Valois. Saving a momentary French

occupation after the death of Charles the Bold, it remained

with them and their Austrian and Spanish representatives. ...

But, through all these changes of dynasty, it remained an

acknowledged fief of the Empire, till its annexation to France

under Lewis the Fourteenth. The capital of this county, it

must be remembered, was Dole. The ecclesiastical metropolis of

Besançon, though surrounded by the county, remained a free

city of the Empire from the days of Frederick Barbarossa [A.

D. 1152-1190] to those of Ferdinand the Third [A. D.

1637-1657]. It was then merged in the county, and along with

the county it passed to France."

E. A. Freeman,

Historical Geography of Europe,

chapter 8, section 5.

FRANCHE COMTÉ: A. D. 1512.

Included in the Circle of Burgundy.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1493-1519.

FRANCHE COMTÉ: A. D. 1648.

Still held to form a part of the Empire.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1648.

FRANCHE COMTÉ: A. D. 1659.

Secured to Spain.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1659-1661.

FRANCHE COMTÉ: A. D. 1674.

Final conquest by Louis XIV. and incorporation with France.

See NETHERLANDS (HOLLAND): A. D. 1674-1678;

also, NIMEGUEN, PEACE OF.

----------FRANCHE COMTÉ: End----------

FRANCHISE, Elective, in England.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1884-1885.

FRANCIA, Doctor, The dictatorship of.

See PARAGUAY: A. D. 1608-1873.

FRANCIA.

See FRANCE: 9TH CENTURY.

also, GERMANY: A. D. 843-962.

FRANCIS

(called Phœbus), King of Navarre, A. D. 1479-1503.

Francis I. (of Lorraine), Germanic Emperor, 1745-1765.

Francis I., King of France, 1515-1547.

Francis I., King of Naples or the Two Sicilies, 1825-1830.

Francis II.,

Germanic Emperor, 1792-1806;

Emperor of Austria, 1806-1835;

King of Hungary and Bohemia, 1792-1835.

Francis II., King of France, 1559-1560.

Francis II., King of Naples or the Two Sicilies,

A. D. 1859-18.61.

Francis Joseph I., Emperor of Austria, 1848;

King of Hungary and Bohemia, 1848-.

{1397}

FRANCISCANS.

See MENDICANT ORDERS,

also, BEGUINES, ETC.

FRANCO-GERMAN, OR FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR, The.

See FRANCE: A.. D. 1870 (JUNE-JULY), to 1870-1871.

FRANCONIA: The Duchy and the Circle.

"Among the great duchies [of the old Germanic kingdom or

empire of the ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries], that of

Eastern Francia, Franken, or Franconia, is of much less

importance in European history than that of Saxony. It gave

the ducal title to the bishops of Würzburg; but it cannot be

said to be in any sense continued in any modern state. Its

name gradually retreated, and the circle of Franken or

Franconia took in only the most eastern part of the ancient

duchy.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1493--1519.

The western and northern part of the duchy, together with a

good deal of territory which was strictly Lotharingian, became

part of the two Rhenish circles. Thus Fulda, the greatest of

German abbeys, passed away from the Frankish name. In

north-eastern Francia, the Hessian principalities grew up to

the north-west. Within the Franconian circle lay Würzburg, the

see of the bishops who bore the ducal title, the other great

bishopric of Bamberg, together with the free city of Nürnberg,

and various smaller principalities. In the Rhenish lands, both

within and without the old Francia, one chief characteristic

is the predominance of the ecclesiastical principalities,

Mainz, Köln, Worms, Speyer, and Strassburg. The chief temporal

power which arose in this region was the Palatinate of the

Rhine, a power which, like others, went through many unions

and divisions, and spread into four circles, those of Upper

and Lower Rhine, Westfalia and Bavaria. This last district,

though united with the Palatine Electorate, was, from the

early part of the fourteenth century, distinguished from the

Palatinate of the Rhine as the Oberpfalz or Upper Palatinate."

E. A. Freeman,

Historical Geography of Europe,

chapter 8, section 1.

See, also,

ALEMANNI: A. D. 496-504.

FRANCONIA, The Electorate of.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1125-1152.

FRANCONIAN OR SALIC IMPERIAL HOUSE.

The emperors, Conrad II., Henry III., Henry IV., and Henry V.,

who reigned from 1024 until 1125, over the Germanic-Roman or

Holy Roman Empire, were of the Salic or Franconian house.

See GERMANY: A. D. 973--1122.

FRANKALMOIGN.

See FEUDAL TENURES.

FRANKFORT, Treaty of.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1871 (JANUARY-MAY).

FRANKFORT ON THE MAIN, Origin of.

See ALEMANNI: A. D. 496-504.

FRANKFORT ON THE MAIN: A. D. 1287.

Declared an imperial city.

See CITIES, IMPERIAL AND FREE, OF GERMANY.

FRANKFORT ON THE MAIN: A. D. 1525.

Formal establishment of the Reformed Religion.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1522-1525.

FRANKFORT ON THE MAIN: A. D. 1744.

The "Union" formed by Frederick the Great.

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1743-1744.

FRANKFORT ON THE MAIN: A. D. 1759.

Surprised by the French.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1759 (APRIL-AUGUST).

FRANKFORT ON THE MAIN: A. D. 1801-1803.

One of six free cities which survived the Peace of Luneville.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1801-1803.

FRANKFORT ON THE MAIN: A. D. 1806.

Loss of municipal freedom.

Transfer, as a grand duchy, to the ancient Elector of Mayence.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1805-1806.

FRANKFORT ON THE MAIN: A. D. 1810.

Erected into a grand duchy by Napoleon.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1810 (FEBRUARY-DECEMBER).

FRANKFORT ON THE MAIN: A. D. 1810-1815.

Loss and recovery of autonomy as a "free city."

See CITIES, IMPERIAL AND FREE, OF GERMANY;

and VIENNA, THE CONGRESS OF.

FRANKFORT ON THE MAIN: A. D. 1848-1849.

Meeting of the German National Assembly.

Its work, its failure, and its end.

Riotous outbreak in the city.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1848 (MARCH-SEPTEMBER)

and 1848-1850.

FRANKFORT ON THE MAIN: A. D. 1866.

Absorption by Prussia.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1866.

----------FRANKFORT ON THE MAIN: End----------

FRANKLIN, Benjamin, and the early American Press.

See PRINTING: A. D. 1704-1729.

FRANKLIN, Benjamin: His plan of Union in 1754.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1754.

FRANKLIN, Benjamin:

Colonial representative in England.

Return to America.

See PENNSYLVANIA: A.D. 1757-1762;

and UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1765-1768, 1766, 1775 (JANUARY-MARCH),

and (APRIL-JUNE).

FRANKLIN, Benjamin: Signing of the Declaration of Independence.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1776 (JULY).

FRANKLIN, Benjamin: Mission to France:

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1776-1778, 1778 (FEBRUARY),

1782 (SEPTEMBER-NOVEMBER).

FRANKLIN, Benjamin:

Framing of the Federal Constitution.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1787.

FRANKLIN, The ephemeral state of.

See TENNESSEE: A. D. 1785;

and 1785-1796.

FRANKLIN, Tennessee, Battles at and near.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1863 (FEBRUARY-APRIL: TENNESSEE),

and 1864 (NOVEMBER: TENNESSEE).

FRANKLIN, OR FRANKLEYN, The.

"'There is scarce a small village,' says Sir John Fortescue

[15th century] 'in which you may not find a knight, an

esquire, or some substantial householder (paterfamilias)

commonly called a frankleyn, possessed of considerable estate;

besides others who are called freeholders, and many yeomen of

estate sufficient to make a substantial jury.' ... By a

frankleyn in this place we are to understand what we call a

country squire, like the frankleyn of Chaucer; for the word

esquire in Fortescue's time was only used in its limited

sense, for the sons of peers and knights, or such as had

obtained the title by creation or some other legal means."

H. Hallam,

The Middle Ages,

chapter 8, part 3, with note (volume 3).

FRANKPLEDGE.

An old English law required all men to combine in associations

of ten, and to become standing sureties for one another,

--which was called "frankpledge."

W. Stubbs,

Constitutional History of England,

chapter 5, section 41.

{1398}

FRANKS: Origin and earliest history.

"It is well known that the name of 'Frank' is not to be found

in the long list of German tribes preserved to us in the

'Germania' of Tacitus. Little or nothing is heard of them

before the reign of Gordian III. In A. D. 240 Aurelian, then a

tribune of the sixth legion stationed on the Rhine, encountered a

body of marauding Franks near Mayence and drove them back into

their marshes. The word 'Francia' is also found at a still

earlier date, in the old Roman chart called the 'Charta

Peutingeria,' and occupies on the map the right bank of the

Rhine from opposite Coblentz to the sea. The origin of the

Franks has been the subject of frequent debate, to which

French patriotism has occasionally lent some asperity. ... At

the present day, however, historians of every nation,

including the French, are unanimous in considering the Franks

as a powerful confederacy of German tribes, who in the time of

Tacitus inhabited the north-western parts of Germany bordering

on the Rhine. And this theory is so well supported by many

scattered notices, slight in themselves, but powerful when

combined, that we can only wonder that it should ever have

been called in question. Nor was this aggregation of tribes

under the new name of Franks a singular instance; the same

took place in the case of the Alemanni and Saxons. ... The

etymology of the name adopted by the new confederacy is also

uncertain. The conjecture which has most probability in its

favour is that adopted long ago by Gibbon, and confirmed in

recent times by the authority of Grimm, which connects it with

the German word Frank (free). ... Tacitus speaks of nearly all

the tribes, whose various appellations were afterwards merged

in that of Frank, as living in the neighbourhood of the Rhine.

Of these the principal were the Sicambri (the chief people of

the old Iscævonian tribe), who, as there is reason to believe,

were identical with the Salian Franks. The confederation

further comprised the Bructeri, the Chamavi, Ansibarii,

Tubantes, Marsi, and Chasuarii, of whom the five last had

formerly belonged to the celebrated Cheruscan league, which,

under the hero Arminius, destroyed three Roman legions in the

Teutoburgian Forest. The strongest evidence of the identity of

these tribes with the Franks, is the fact that, long after

their settlement in Gaul, the distinctive names of the

original people were still occasionally used as synonymous

with that of the confederation. ... The Franks advanced upon

Gaul from two different directions, and under the different

names of Salians, and Ripuarians, the former of whom we have

reason to connect more particularly with the Sicambrian tribe.

The origin of the words Salian and Ripuarian, which are first

used respectively by Ammianus Marcellinus and Jornandes, is

very obscure, and has served to exercise the ingenuity of

ethnographers. There are, however, no sufficient grounds for a

decided opinion. At the same time it is by no means improbable

that the river Yssel, Isala or Sal (for it has borne all these

appellations), may have given its name to that portion of the

Franks who lived along its course. With still greater

probability may the name Ripuarii, or Riparii, be derived from

'Ripa,' a term used by the Romans to signify the Rhine. These

dwellers on 'the Bank' were those that remained in their

ancient settlements while their Salian kinsmen were advancing

into the heart of Gaul."

W. C. Perry,

The Franks,

chapter 2.

ALSO IN:

P. Godwin,

History of France: Ancient Gaul,

book 3, chapters 9 and 11.

T. Smith,

Arminius,

part 2, chapter 3.

FRANKS: A. D. 253.

First appearance in the Roman world.

"When in the year 253 the different generals of Rome were once

more fighting each other for the imperial dignity, and the

Rhine-legions marched to Italy to fight out the cause of their

emperor Valerianus against ... Aemilianus of the Danube-army,

this seems to have been the signal for the Germans pushing

forward, especially towards the lower Rhine. These Germans

were the Franks, who appear here for the first time, perhaps

new opponents only in name; for, although the identification

of them, already to be met with in later antiquity, with

tribes formerly named on the lower Rhine--partly, the Chamavi

settled beside the Bructeri, partly the Sugambri formerly

mentioned subject to the Romans--is uncertain and at least

inadequate, there is here greater probability than in the case

of the Alamanni that the Germans hitherto dependent on Rome, on

the right bank of the Rhine, and the Germanic tribes

previously dislodged from the Rhine, took at that time--under

the collective name of the 'Free'--the offensive in concert

against the Romans."

T. Mommsen,

History of Rome,

book 8, chapter 4.

FRANKS: A. D. 277.

Repulse from Gaul, by Probus.

See GAUL: A. D. 277.

FRANKS: A. D. 279.

Escape from Pontus.

See SYRACUSE: A. D. 279.

FRANKS: A. D. 295-297.

In Britain.

See BRITAIN: A. D. 288-297.

FRANKS: A. D. 306.

Defeat by Constantine.

Constantine the Great, A. D. 306, fought and defeated the

Salian Franks in a great battle and "carried off a large

number of captives to Treves, the chief residence of the

emperor, and a rival of Rome itself in the splendour of its

public buildings. It was in the circus of this city, and in

the presence of Constantine, that the notorious 'Ludi

Francici' were celebrated; at which several thousand Franks,

including their kings Regaisus and Ascaricus, were compelled

to fight with wild beasts, to the inexpressible delight of the

Christian spectators."

W. C. Perry,

The Franks,

chapter 2.

FRANKS: A. D. 355.

Settlement in Toxandria.

See GAUL: A. D. 355-361;

also, TOXANDRIA.

FRANKS: 5th-10th Centuries.

Barbarities of the conquest of Gaul.

State of society under the rule of the conquerors.

Evolution of Feudalism.

See GAUL: 5TH-8TH, and 5TH-10TH CENTURIES.

FRANKS: A. D. 406-409.

Defense of Roman Gaul.

See GAUL: A. D. 406-409.

FRANKS: A. D. 410-420.

The Franks join in the attack on Gaul.

After vainly opposing the entrance of Vandals, Burgundians and

Sueves into Gaul, A. D. 406, "the Franks, the valiant and

faithful allies of the Roman republic, were soon [about A. D.

410-420] tempted to imitate the invaders whom they had so

bravely resisted. Treves, the capital of Gaul, was pillaged by

their lawless bands; and the humble colony which they so long

maintained in the district of Toxandria, in Brabant,

insensibly multiplied along the banks of the Meuse and

Scheldt, till their independent power filled the whole extent

of the Second, or Lower, Germany. ... The ruin of the opulent

provinces of Gaul may be dated from the establishment of these

barbarians, whose alliance was dangerous and oppressive, and

who were capriciously impelled, by interest or passion, to

violate the public peace."

E. Gibbon,

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,

chapter 31.

{1399}

"They [the Franks] resisted the great invasion of the Vandals

in the time of Stilicho, but did not scruple to take part in

the subsequent ravages. Among the confusions of that

disastrous period, indeed, it is not improbable that they

seized the cities of Spires, Strasburg, Amiens, Arras,

Therouane and Tournai, and by their assaults on Trèves

compelled the removal of the præfectural government to Arles.

Chroniclers who flourished two centuries later refer to the

year 418 large and permanent conquests in Gaul by a visionary

king called Pharamund, from whom the French monarchy is

usually dated. But history seeks in vain for any authentic

marks of his performances."

P. Godwin,

History of France: Ancient Gaul,

book 3, chapter 11, section 5.

FRANKS: A. D. 448-456.

Origin of the Merovingian dynasty.

The royal dynasty of the kingdom of the Franks as founded by

Clovis is called the Merovingian. "It is thought that the

kings of the different Frankish people were all of the same

family, of which the primitive ancestor was Meroveus

(Meer-wig, warrior of the sea). After him those princes were

called Merovingians (Meer-wings); they were distinguished by

their long hair, which they never cut. A Meroveus, grandfather

of Clovis, reigned, it is said, over the Franks between 448

and 456; but only his name remains, in some antient

historians, and we know absolutely nothing more either of his

family, his power, or of the tribe which obeyed him: so that

we see no reason why his descendants had taken his name. ...

The Franks appear in history for the first time in the year

241. Some great captain only could, at this period, unite

twenty different people in a new confederation; this chief

was, apparently, the Meroveus, whose name appeared for such a

long time as a title of glory for his descendants, although

tradition has not preserved any trace of his victories."

J. C. L. S. de Sismondi,

The French under the Merovingians,

chapter 3.

FRANKS: A. D. 451.

At the battle of Châlons.

See HUNS: A. D. 451.

FRANKS: A. D. 481-511.

The kingdom of Clovis.

"The Salian Franks had ... associated a Roman or a Romanized

Gaul, Aegidius, with their native chief in the leadership of

the tribe. But, in the year 481, the native leadership passed

into the hands of a chief who would not endure a Roman

colleague, or the narrow limits within which, in the general

turmoil of the world, his tribe was cramped. He is known to

history by the name of Clovis, or Chlodvig, which through many

transformations, became the later Ludwig and Louis. Clovis

soon made himself feared as the most ambitious, the most

unscrupulous, and the most energetic of the new Teutonic

founders of states. Ten years after the fall of the Western

empire [which was in 476], seven years before the rise of the

Gothic kingdom of Theoderic, Clovis challenged the Roman

patrician, Syagrius of Soissons, who had succeeded to

Aegidius, defeated him in a pitched field, at Nogent, near

Soissons (486), and finally crushed Latin rivalry in northern

Gaul. Ten years later (496), in another famous battle, Tolbiac

(Zülpich), near Cologne, he also crushed Teutonic rivalry, and

established his supremacy over the kindred Alamanni of the

Upper Rhine. Then he turned himself with bitter hostility

against the Gothic power in Gaul. The Franks hated the Goths,

as the ruder and fiercer of the same stock hate those who are

a degree above them in the arts of peace, and are supposed to

be below them in courage and the pursuits of war. There was

another cause of antipathy. The Goths were zealous Arians; and

Clovis, under the influence of his wife Clotildis, the niece

of the Burgundian Gundobad, and in consequence, it is said, of

a vow made in battle at Tolbiac, had received Catholic baptism

from St. Remigius of Rheims.

See CHRISTIANITY: A. D. 496-800.

The Frank king threw his sword into the scale against the

Arian cause, and became the champion and hope of the Catholic

population all over Gaul. Clovis was victorious. He crippled

the Burgundian kingdom (500), which was finally destroyed by

his sons (534). In a battle near Poitiers, he broke the power

of the West Goths in Gaul; he drove them out of Aquitaine,

leaving them but a narrow slip of coast, to seek their last

settlement and resting-place in Spain; and, when he died, he

was recognized by all the world, by Theoderic, by the Eastern

emperor, who honoured him with the title of the consulship, as

the master of Gaul. Nor was his a temporary conquest. The

kingdom of the West Goths and the Burgundians had become the

kingdom of the Franks. The invaders had at length arrived who

were to remain. It was decided that the Franks, and not the

Goths, were to direct the future destinies of Gaul and

Germany, and that the Catholic faith, and not Arianism, was to

be the religion of these great realms."

R. W. Church,

Beginning of the Middle Ages,

chapter 2.

ALSO IN:

W. C. Perry,

The Franks,

chapter 2.

J. C. L. S. de Sismondi,

The French under the Merovingians,

translated by Bellingham,

chapters 4-5.

See, also, GOTHS (VISIGOTHS): A. D. 507-509.

FRANKS: A. D. 481-768.

Supremacy in Germany, before Charlemagne.

See GERMANY: A. D. 481-768.

FRANKS: A. D. 496.

Conversion to Christianity.

See above: A. D. 481-511;

also, ALEMANNI: A. D. 496-504.

FRANKS: A. D. 496-504.

Overthrow of the Alemanni.

See ALEMANNI: A. D. 496-504;

also, SUEVI: A. D. 460-500.

FRANKS: A. D. 511-752.

The house of Clovis.

Ascendancy of the Austrasian Mayors of the Palace.

On the death of Clovis, his dominion, or, speaking more

strictly, the kingly office in his dominion, was divided among

his four sons, who were lads, then, ranging in age from twelve

to eighteen. The eldest reigned in Metz, the second at

Orleans, the third in Paris, and the youngest at Soissons.

These princes extended the conquests of their father, subduing

the Thuringians (A. D. 515-528), overthrowing the kingdom of

the Burgundians (A. D. 523-534), diminishing the possessions

of the Visigoths in Gaul (A. D. 531-532), acquiring Provence

from the Ostrogoths of Italy and securing from the Emperor

Justinian a clear Roman-imperial title to the whole of Gaul.

The last survivor of the four brother-kings, Clotaire I.,

reunited the whole Frank empire under his own sceptre, and on

his death, A. D. 561, it was again divided among his four

sons. Six years later, on the death of the elder, it was

redivided among the three survivors. Neustria fell to

Chilperic, whose capital was at Soissons, Austrasia to

Sigebert, who reigned at Metz, and Burgundia to Guntram, who

had his seat of government at Orleans. Each of the kings took

additionally a third of Aquitaine, and Provence was shared

between Sigebert and Guntram. "It was agreed on this occasion

that Paris, which was rising into great importance, should be

held in common by all, but visited by none of the three kings

without the consent of the others." The reign of these three

brothers and their sons, from 561 to 613, was one long

revolting tragedy of civil war, murder, lust, and treachery,

made horribly interesting by the rival careers of the evil

Fredegunda and the great unfortunate Brunhilda, queens of

Neustria and Austrasia, respectively.

{1400}

In 613 a second Clotaire surviving his royal kin, united the

Frank monarchy once more under a single crown. But power was

fast slipping from the hands of the feeble creature who wore

the crown, and passing to that one of his ministers who

succeeded in making himself the representative of

royalty--namely, the Mayor of the Palace. There was a little

stir of energy in his son, Dagobert, but from generation to

generation, after him, the Merovingian kings sank lower into

that character which gave them the name of the fainéant kings

("rois fainéans")--the slothful or lazy kings--while the

mayors of the palace ruled vigorously in their name and

tumbled them, at last, from the throne. "While the Merovingian

race in its decline is notorious in history as having produced

an unexampled number of imbecile monarchs, the family which

was destined to supplant them was no less wonderfully prolific

in warriors and statesmen of the highest class. It is not

often that great endowments are transmitted even from father

to sou, but the line from which Charlemagne sprang presents to

our admiring gaze an almost uninterrupted succession of five

remarkable men, within little more than a single century. Of

these the first three held the mayoralty of Austrasia [Pepin

of Landen, Pepin of Heristal, and Carl, or Charles Martel, the

Hammer]; and it was they who prevented the permanent

establishment of absolute power on the Roman model, and

secured to the German population of Austrasia an abiding

victory over that amalgam of degraded Romans and corrupted

Gauls which threatened to leaven the European world. To them,

under Providence, we owe it that the centre of Europe is at

this day German, and not Gallo-Latin." Pepin of Heristal,

Mayor in Austrasia, broke the power of a rival Neustrian

family in a decisive battle fought near the village of Testri,

A. D. 687, and gathered the reins of the three kingdoms

(Burgundy included) into his own hands. His still more

vigorous son, Charles Martel, won the same ascendancy for

himself afresh, after a struggle which was signalized by three

sanguinary battles, at Amblève (A. D. 716), at Vinci, near

Cambrai (717) and at Soissons (718). When firm in power at

home, he turned his arms against the Frisians and the

Bavarians, whom he subdued, and against the obstinate Saxons,

whose country he harried six times without bringing them to

submission. His great exploit in war, however, was the repulse

of the invading Arabs and Moors, on the memorable battle-field

of Tours (A. D.732), where the wave of Mahommedan invasion was

rolled back in western Europe, never to advance beyond the

Pyrenees again. Karl died in 741, leaving three sons, among

whom his power was, in the Frank fashion, divided. But one of

them resigned, in a few years, his sovereignty, to become a

monk; another was deposed, and the third, Pepin, surnamed "The

Little," or "The Short," became supreme. He contented himself, as

his father, his grandfather, and his great grandfather had

done, with the title of Mayor of the Palace, until 752, when,

with the approval of the Pope and by the act of a great

assembly of leudes and bishops at Soissons, he was lifted on

the shield and crowned and anointed king of the Franks, while

the last of the Merovingians was shorn of his long royal locks

and placed in a monastery. The friendliness of the Pope in this

matter was the result and the cementation of an alliance which

bore important fruits. As the champion of the church, Pepin

made war on the Lombards and conquered for the Papacy the

first of its temporal dominions in Italy. In his own realm, he

completed the expulsion of the Moors from Septimania, crushed

an obstinate revolt in Aquitaine, and gave a firm footing to

the two thrones which, when he died in 768, he left to his

sons, Carl and Carloman, and which became in a few years the

single throne of one vast empire, under Carl--Carl the Great--

Charlemagne.

W. C. Perry,

The Franks,

chapters 3-6.

ALSO IN:

P. Godwin,

History of France: Ancient Gaul,

chapters 12-15.

J. C. L. S. de Sismondi,

The French under the Merovingians,

chapters 6-13.

See, also,

AUSTRASIA AND NEUSTRIA, and MAYOR OF THE PALACE.

FRANKS: A. D. 528.

Conquest of Thuringia.

See THURINGIANS, THE.

FRANKS: A. D. 539-553.

Invasion of Italy.

Formal relinquishment of Gaul to them.

During the Gothic war in Italy,--when Belisarius was

reconquering the cradle of the Roman Empire for the Eastern

Empire which still called itself Roman, although its seat was

at Constantinople,--both sides solicited the help of the

Franks. Theudebert, who reigned at Metz, promised his aid to

both, and kept his word. "He advanced [A. D. 539, with 100,000

men] toward Pavia, where the Greeks and Goths were met, about

to encounter, and, with an unexpected impartiality, attacked

the astonished Goths, whom he drove to Ravenna, and then,

while the Greeks were yet rejoicing over his performance, fell

upon them with merciless fury, and dispersed them through

Tuscany." Theudebert now became fired with an ambition to

conquer all Italy; but his savage army destroyed everything in

its path so recklessly, and pursued so unbridled a course,

that famine and pestilence soon compelled a retreat and only

one-third of its original number recrossed the Alps.

Notwithstanding, this treachery, the emperor Justinian renewed

his offers of alliance with the Franks (A.D. 540), and

"pledged to them, as the price of their fidelity to his cause,

besides the usual subsidies, the relinquishment of every

lingering claim, real or pretended, which the empire might

assert to the sovereignty of the Gauls. The Franks accepted

the terms, and 'from that time,' say the Byzantine

authorities, 'the German chiefs presided at the games of the

circus, and struck money no longer, as usual, with the effigy

of the emperors, but with their own image and superscription.

Theudebert, who was the principal agent of these transactions,

if he ratified the provisions of the treaty, did not fulfill

them in person, but satisfied himself with sending a few

tributaries to the aid of his ally. But his first example

proved to be more powerful than his later, and large swarms of

Germans took advantage of the troubles in Italy to overrun the

country and plunder and slay at will. For twelve years, under

various leaders, but chiefly under two brothers of the

Alemans, Lutherr and Bukhelin, they continued to harass the

unhappy object of all barbaric resentments, till the sword of

Narses finally exterminated them [A. D. 553]."

P. Godwin,

History of France: Ancient Gaul,

book 3, chapter 12.

ALSO IN:

E. Gibbon,

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,

chapter 41.

{1401}

FRANKS: A. D. 547.

Subjugation of Bavarians and Alemanni.

See BAVARIA: A. D. 547.

FRANKS: A. D. 768-814.

Charlemagne, Emperor of the Romans.

As a crowned dynasty, the Carlovingians or Carolingians or

Carlings begin their history with Pepin the Short. As an

established sovereign house, they find their founder in 'King

Pepin's father, the great palace mayor, Carl, or Charles

Martel, if not in his grandfather, Pepin Heristal. But the

imperial splendor of the house came to it from the second of

its kings, whom the French call 'Charlemagne,' but whom

English readers ought to know as Charles the Great. The French

form of the name has been always tending to represent

'Charlemagne' as a king of France, and modern historians

object to it for that reason. "France, as it was to be and as

we know it, had not come into existence in his [Charlemagne's]

days. What was to be the France of history was then but one

province of the Frank kingdom, and one with which Charles was

personally least connected. ... Charles, king of the Franks,

was, above all things, a German. ... It is entirely to mistake

his place and his work to consider him in the light of a

specially 'French' king, a predecessor of the kings who

reigned at Paris and brought glory upon France. ... Charles

did nothing to make modern France. The Frank power on which he

rose to the empire was in those days still mainly German; and

his characteristic work was to lay the foundations of modern

and civilized Germany, and, indirectly, of the new

commonwealth of nations, which was to arise in the West of

Europe."

R. W. Church,

The Beginnings of the Middle Ages,

chapter 7.

"At the death of King Pippin the kingdom of the Franks was

divided into two parts, or rather ... the government over the

kingdom was divided, for some large parts of the territory

seem to have been in the hands of the two brothers together.

The fact is, that we know next to nothing about this division,

and hardly more about the joint reign of the brothers. The

only thing really clear is, that they did not get along very

well together, that Karl was distinctly the more active and

capable of the two, and that after four years the younger

brother, Karlmann, died, leaving two sons. Here was a chance

for the old miseries of division to begin again; but

fortunately the Franks seem by this time to have had enough of

that, and to have seen that their greatest hope for the future

lay in a united government. The widow and children of Karlmann

went to the court of the Lombard king Desiderius and were

cared for by him. The whole Frankish people acknowledged

Charlemagne as their king. Of course he was not yet called

Charlemagne, but simply Karl, and he was yet to show himself

worthy of the addition 'Magnus.' ... The settlement of Saxony

went on, with occasional military episodes, by the slower, but

more certain, processes of education and religious conversion.

It appears to us to be anything but wise to force a religion

upon a people at the point of the sword; but the singular fact

is, that in two generations there was no more truly devout

Christian people, according to the standards of the time, than

just these same Saxons. A little more than a hundred years

from the time when Charlemagne had thrashed the nation into

unwilling acceptance of Frankish control, the crown of the

Empire he founded was set upon the head of a Saxon prince. The

progress in friendly relations between the two peoples is seen in

the second of the great ordinances by which Saxon affairs were

regulated. This edict, called the 'Capitulum Saxonicum,' was

published after a great diet at Aachen, in 797, at which, we

are told, there came together not only Franks, but also Saxon

leaders from all parts of their country, who gave their

approval to the new legislation. The general drift of these

new laws is in the direction of moderation. ... The object of

this legislation was, now that the armed resistance seemed to

be broken, to give the Saxons a government which should be as

nearly as possible like that of the Franks. The absolute

respect and subjection to the Christian Church is here, as it

was formerly, kept always in sight. The churches and

monasteries are still to be the centres from which every

effort at civilization is to go out. There can be no doubt

that the real agency in this whole process was the organized

Church. The fruit of the great alliance between Frankish

kingdom and Roman papacy was beginning to be seen. The papacy

was ready to sanction any act of her ally for the fair promise

of winning the great territory of North Germany to its

spiritual allegiance. The most solid result of the campaigns

of Charlemagne was the founding of the great bishoprics of

Minden, Paderborn, Verden, Bremen, Osnabrück, and Halberstadt.

... About these bishoprics, as, on the whole, the safest

places, men came to settle. Roads were built to connect them;

markets sprang up in their neighborhood; and thus gradually,

during a development of centuries, great cities grew up, which

came to be the homes of powerful and wealthy traders, and gave

shape to the whole politics of the North. Saxony was become a

part of the Frankish Empire, and all the more thoroughly so,

because there was no royal or ducal line there which had to be

kept in place."

E. Emerton,

Introduction to the Study of the Middle Ages,

chapter 13.

Between 768 and 800 Charlemagne extinguished the Lombard

kingdom and made himself master of Italy, as the ally and

patron of the Pope, bearing the old Roman title of Patrician;

he crossed the Pyrenees, drove the Saracens southward to the

Ebro, and added a "Spanish March" to his empire (see SPAIN: A.

D. 778); he broke the obstinate turbulence of the Saxons, in a

series of bloody campaigns which (see SAXONS: A. D. 772-804)

consumed a generation; he extirpated the troublesome Avars,

still entrenched along the Danube, and he held with an always

firm hand the whole dominion that came to him by inheritance

from his father. "He had won his victories with Frankish arms,

and he had taken possession of the conquered countries in the

name of the Frankish people. Every step which he had taken had

been with the advice and consent of the nation assembled in

the great meetings of the springtime, and his public documents

carefully express the share of the nation in his great

achievements. Saxony, Bavaria, Lombardy, Aquitaine, the

Spanish Mark, all these great countries, lying outside the

territory of Frankland proper, had been made a part of its

possession by the might of his arm and the wisdom of his

counsel. But when this had all been done, the question arose,

by what right he should hold all this power, and secure it so

that it should not fall apart as soon as he should be gone.

{1402}

As king of the Franks it was impossible that he should not

seem to the conquered peoples, however mild and beneficent his

rule might be, a foreign prince; and though he might be able

to force them to follow his banner in war, and submit to his

judgment in peace, there was still wanting the one common

interest which should bind all these peoples, strangers to the

Franks and to each other, into one united nation. About the

year 800 this problem seems to have been very much before the

mind of Charlemagne. If we look at the boundaries of his

kingdom, reaching from the Eider in the north to the Ebro and

the Garigliano in the south, and from the ocean in the west to

the Elbe and the Enns in the east, we shall say as the people

of his own time did, 'this power is Imperial.' That word may

mean little to us, but in fact it has often in history been

used to describe just the kind of power which Charlemagne in

the year 800 really had. ... The idea of empire includes under

this one term, kingdoms, duchies, or whatever powers might be

in existence; all, however, subject to some one higher force,

which they feel to be necessary for their support. ... But

where was the model upon which Charlemagne might build his new

empire? Surely nowhere but in that great Roman Empire whose

western representative had been finally allowed to disappear

by Odoacer the Herulian in the year 476. ... After Odoacer the

Eastern Empire, with its capital at Constantinople, still

lived on, and claimed for itself all the rights which had

belonged to both parts. That Eastern Empire was still alive at

the time of Charlemagne. We have met with it once or twice in

our study of the Franks. Even Clovis had been tickled with the

present of the title of Consul, sent him by the Eastern

Emperor; and from time to time, as the Franks had meddled with

the affairs of Italy, they had been reminded that Italy was in

name still a part of the Imperial lands. ... But now, when

Charlemagne himself was thinking of taking the title of

Emperor, he found himself forced to meet squarely the

question, whether there could be two independent Christian

Emperors at the same time. ... On Christmas Day, in the year

800, Charlemagne was at Rome. He had gone thither at the

request of the Pope Leo, who had been accused of dreadful

crimes by his enemies in the city, and had been for a time

deprived of his office. Charlemagne had acted as judge in the

case, and had decided in favor of Leo. According to good

Teutonic custom, the pope had purified himself of his charges

by a tremendous oath on the Holy Trinity, and had again

assumed the duties of the papacy. The Christmas service was

held in great state at St. Peter's. While Charlemagne was

kneeling in prayer at the grave of the Apostle, the pope

suddenly approached him, and, in the presence of all the

people, placed upon his head a golden crown. As he did so, the

people cried out with one voice, 'Long life and victory to

Charles Augustus, the mighty Emperor, the Peace-bringer,

crowned by God!' Einhard, who ought to have known, assures us

that Charles was totally surprised by the coronation, and

often said afterward that if he had known of the plan he would

not have gone into the church, even upon so high a festival.

It is altogether probable that the king had not meant to be

crowned at just that moment and in just that way; but that he

had never thought of such a possibility seems utterly

incredible. By this act Charlemagne was presented to the world

as the successor of the ancient Roman Emperors of the West,

and so far as power was concerned, he was that. But he was

more. His power rested, not upon any inherited ideas, but upon

two great facts: first, he was the head of the Germanic Race;

and second, he was the temporal head of the Christian Church.

The new empire which he founded rested on these two

foundations."

E. Emerton,

Introduction to the Study of the Middle Ages,

chapter 14.

The great empire which Charles labored, during all the

remainder of his life, to organize in this Roman imperial

character, was vast in its extent. "As an organized mass of

provinces, regularly governed by imperial officers, it seems

to have been nearly bounded, in Germany, by the Elbe, the

Saale, the Bohemian mountains, and a line drawn from thence

crossing the Danube above Vienna, and prolonged to the Gulf of

Istria. Part of Dalmatia was comprised in the duchy of Friuli.

In Italy the empire extended not much beyond the modern

frontier of Naples, if we exclude, as was the fact, the duchy

of Benevento from anything more than a titular subjection. The

Spanish boundary ... was the Ebro."

H. Hallam,

The Middle Ages,

chapter 1, part 1.

"The centre of his realm was the Rhine; his capitals Aachen

[or Aix-la-Chapelle] and Engilenheim [or Ingelheim]; his army

Frankish; his sympathies as they are shewn in the gathering of

the old hero-lays, the composition of a German grammar, ...

were all for the race from which he sprang. ... There were in

his Empire, as in his own mind, two elements; those two from

the union and mutual action and reaction of which modern

civilization has arisen. These vast domains, reaching from the

Ebro to the Carpathian mountains, from the Eyder to the Liris,

were all the conquests of the Frankish sword, and were still

governed almost exclusively by viceroys and officers of

Frankish blood. But the conception of the Empire, that which

made it a State and not a mere mass of subject tribes, ... was

inherited from an older and a grander system, was not Teutonic

but Roman--Roman in its ordered rule, in its uniformity and

precision, in its endeavour to subject the individual to the

system--Roman in its effort to realize a certain limited and

human perfection, whose very completeness shall exclude the

hope of further progress." With the death of Charles in 814

the territorial disruption of his great empire began. "The

returning wave of anarchy and barbarism swept up violent as

ever, yet it could not wholly obliterate the past: the Empire,

maimed and shattered though it was, had struck its roots too

deep to be overthrown by force." The Teutonic part and the

Romanized or Latinized part of the empire were broken in two,

never to unite again; but, in another century, it was on the

German and not the Gallo-Latin side of the line of its

disruption that the imperial ideas and the imperial titles of

Charlemagne came to life again, and his Teutonic Roman

Empire--the "Holy Roman Empire," as it came to be called--was

resurrected by Otto the Great, and established for eight

centuries and a half of enduring influence in the politics of

the world.

J. Bryce,

The Holy Roman Empire,

chapter 5.

{1403}

"Gibbon has remarked, that of all the heroes to whom the title

of 'The Great' has been given, Charlemagne alone has retained

it as a permanent addition to his name. The reason may perhaps

be, that in no other man were ever united, in so large a

measure, and in such perfect harmony, the qualities which, in

their combination, constitute the heroic character, such as

energy, or the love of action; ambition, or the love of power;

curiosity, or the love of knowledge; and sensibility, or the

love of pleasure--not, indeed, the love of forbidden, of

unhallowed, or of enervating pleasure, but the keen relish for

those blameless delights by which the burdened mind and jaded

spirits recruit and renovate their powers. ... For the charms

of social intercourse, the play of a buoyant fancy, the

exhilaration of honest mirth, and even the refreshment of

athletic exercises, require for their perfect enjoyment that

robust and absolute health of body and of mind which none but

the noblest natures possess, and in the possession of which

Charlemagne exceeded all other men. His lofty stature, his

open countenance, his large and brilliant eyes, and the

dome-like structure of his head, imparted, as we learn from

Eginhard, to all his attitudes the dignity which becomes a

king, relieved by the graceful activity of a practiced

warrior. ... Whether he was engaged in a frolic or a chase--

composed verses or listened to homilies--fought or

negotiated--cast down thrones or built them up--studied,

conversed, or legislated, it seemed as if he, and he alone,

were the one wakeful and really living agent in the midst of

an inert, visionary, and somnolent generation. The rank held

by Charlemagne among great commanders was achieved far more by

this strange and almost superhuman activity than by any

pre-eminent proficiency in the art or science of war. He was

seldom engaged in any general action, and never undertook any

considerable siege, excepting that of Pavia, which, in fact,

was little more than a protracted blockade. But, during

forty-six years of almost unintermitted warfare, he swept over

the whole surface of Europe, from the Ebro to the Oder, from

Bretagne to Hungary, from Denmark to Capua, with such a

velocity of movement, and such a decision of purpose, that no

power, civilized or barbarous, ever provoked his resentment

without rapidly sinking beneath his prompt and irresistible

blows. And though it be true, as Gibbon has observed, that he

seldom, if ever, encountered in the field a really formidable

antagonist, it is not less true that, but for his military

skill, animated by his sleepless energy, the countless

assailants by whom he was encompassed must rapidly have become

too formidable for resistance. For to Charlemagne is due the

introduction into modern warfare of the art by which a general

compensates for the numerical inferiority of his own forces to

that of his antagonists--the art of moving detached bodies of

men along remote but converging lines with such mutual concert

as to throw their united forces at the same moment on any

meditated point of attack. Neither the Alpine marches of

Hannibal nor those of Napoleon were combined with greater

foresight, or executed with greater precision, than the

simultaneous passages of Charlemagne and Count Bernard across

the same mountain ranges, and their ultimate union in the

vicinity of their Lombard enemies."

Sir J. Stephen,

Lectures on the History of France,

lecture 3.

ALSO IN:

E. Gibbon,

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,

chapter 49.

See, also,

GERMANY: A. D. 800.

FRANKS: A. D. 814-962.

Dissolution of the Carolingian Empire.

Charlemagne, at his death, was succeeded by his son Ludwig, or

Louis the Pious--the single survivor of three sons among whom

he had intended that his great empire should be shared. Mild

in temper, conscientious in character, Louis reigned with

success for sixteen years, and then lost all power of control,

through the turbulence of his family and the disorders of his

times. He "tried in vain to satisfy his sons (Lothar, Lewis,

and Charles) by dividing and redividing: they rebelled; he was

deposed, and forced by the bishops to do penance, again

restored, but without power, a tool in the hands of contending

factions. On his death the sons flew to arms, and the first of

the dynastic quarrels of modern Europe was fought out on the

field of Fontenay. In the partition treaty of Verdun [A. D.

843] which followed, the Teutonic principle of equal division

among heirs triumphed over the Roman one of the transmission

of an indivisible Empire: the practical sovereignty of all

three brothers was admitted in their respective territories, a

barren precedence only reserved to Lothar, with the imperial

title which he, as the eldest, already enjoyed. A more

important result was the separation of the Gaulish and German

nationalities. ... Modern Germany proclaims the era of A. D.

843 the beginning of her national existence and celebrated its

thousandth anniversary [in 1843]. To Charles the Bald was

given Francia Occidentalis; that is to say, Neustria and

Aquitaine; to Lothar, who as Emperor must possess the two

capitals, Rome and Aachen, a long and narrow kingdom

stretching from the North Sea to the Mediterranean, and

including the northern half of Italy; Lewis (surnamed, from

his kingdom, the German) received all east of the Rhine,

Franks, Saxons, Bavarians, Austria, Carinthia, with possible

supremacies over Czechs and Moravians beyond. Throughout these

regions German was spoken; through Charles's kingdom a corrupt

tongue, equally removed from Latin and from modern French.

Lothar's, being mixed and having no national basis, was the

weakest of the three, and soon dissolved into the separate

sovereignties of Italy, Burgundy and Lotharingia, or, as we

call it, Lorraine. On the tangled history of the period that

follows it is not possible to do more than touch. After

passing from one branch of the Carolingian line to another,

the imperial sceptre was at last possessed and disgraced by

Charles the Fat, who united all the dominions of his

great-grandfather. This unworthy heir could not avail himself

of recovered territory to strengthen or defend the expiring

monarchy. He was driven out of Italy in A. D. 887 and his

death in 888 has been usually taken as the date of the

extinction of the Carolingian Empire of the West. ... From all

sides the torrent of barbarism which Charles the Great had

stemmed was rushing down upon his empire. ... Under such

strokes the already loosened fabric swiftly dissolved. No one

thought of common defence or wide organization: the strong

built castles, the weak became their bondsmen, or took shelter

under the cowl: the governor--count, abbot, or

bishop--tightened his grasp, turned a delegated into an

independent, a personal into a territorial authority, and

hardly owned a distant and feeble suzerain. ... In Germany,

the greatness of the evil worked at last its cure.

[1404 moved to end of FRANKS.]

{1405}

When the male line of the eastern branch of the Carolingians

had ended in Lewis (surnamed the Child), son of Arnulf [A. D.

911], the chieftains chose and the people accepted Conrad the

Franconian, and after him Henry the Saxon duke, both

representing the female line of Charles. Henry laid the

foundations of a firm monarchy, driving back the Magyars and

Wends, recovering Lotharingia, founding towns to be centres of

orderly life and strongholds against Hungarian irruptions. He

had meant to claim at Rome his kingdom's rights, rights which

Conrad's weakness had at least asserted by the demand of

tribute; but death overtook him, and the plan was left to be

fulfilled by Otto his son."

J. Bryce,

The Holy Roman Empire,

chapter 6.

"The division of 888 was really the beginning of the modern

states and the modern divisions of Europe. The Carolingian

Empire was broken up into four separate kingdoms: the Western

Kingdom, answering roughly to France, the Eastern Kingdom or

Germany, Italy, and Burgundy. Of these, the three first remain

as the greatest nations of the Continent: Burgundy, by that

name, has vanished; but its place as a European power is

occupied, far more worthily than by any King or Cæsar, by the

noble confederation of Switzerland."

E. A. Freeman,

The Franks and the Gauls.

(Historical Essays, 1st series, number 7.)

ALSO IN:

E. F. Henderson,

Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages,

book 2, numbers 3.

P. Godwin,

History of France: Ancient Gaul,

chapter 18.

R. W. Church,

The Beginning of the Middle Ages,

chapter 8.

F. Guizot,

History of Civilization,

lecture 24.

Sir F. Palgrave,

History of Normandy and France,

volumes 1-2.

See, also,

GERMANY: A. D. 843-962;

and FRANCE: A. D. 843, and after.

FRANKS: A. D. 843-962.

Kingdom of the East Franks.

See GERMANY: A. D. 843-962.

----------End: FRANKS ----------

CENTRAL EUROPE AT THE PEACE OF VERDUN 843 A. D.

CENTRAL EUROPE 888 A. D.

----------------------------------

FRATRES MINORES.

See MENDICANT ORDERS.

FRATRICELLI, The.

See BEGUINES, ETC.

FRAZIER'S FARM, OR GLENDALE, Battle of.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1862 (JUNE-JULY: VIRGINIA).

FREDERICIA, Battle of (1849).

See SCANDINAVIAN STATES (DENMARK): A. D. 1848-1862.

FREDERICIA, Siege of (1864).

See GERMANY: A. D. 1861-1866.

FREDERICK I.

(called Barbarossa), Emperor, A. D. 1155-1190;

King of Germany, 1152-1190;

King of Italy, 1155-1190.

Frederick I., King of Denmark and Norway, 1523-1533.

Frederick I., King of Prussia, 1701-1713;

Frederick III., Elector of Brandenburg, 1688-1713.

Frederick I., Elector of Brandenburg, 1417-1440.

Frederick II.,

Emperor, 1220-1250;

King of Germany, 1212-1250.

See ITALY: A. D. 1183-1250;

and GERMANY: A. D. 1138-1268.

Frederick II., King of Denmark and Norway, 1558-1588.

Frederick II., King of Naples, 1496-1503.

Frederick II. (called The Great),

King of Prussia, 1740-1786.

Frederick II., King of Sicily, 1295-1337.

Frederick II., Elector of Brandenburg, 1440-1470.

Frederick III., Emperor, and King of Germany, 1440-1493.

Frederick III., German Emperor and King of Prussia,

1888, March-June.

Frederick III., King of Denmark and Norway, 1648-1670.

Frederick III., King of Sicily, 1355-1377.

Frederick IV., King of Denmark and Norway, 1609-1730.

Frederick V., King of Denmark and Norway, 1746-1766.

Frederick V., Elector of the Palatinate

(and King-elect of Bohemia),

and the Thirty Years' War.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1618-1620, 1620, 1621-1623,

1631-1632, and 1648.

Frederick VI.,

King of Denmark and Norway, 1808-1814;

King of Denmark, 1814-1839.

Frederick VII., King of Denmark, 1848-1863.

Frederick Augustus I.,

Elector of Saxony, 1694-1733;

King of Poland,1697-1704 (deposed), and 1709-1733.

Frederick Augustus II.,

Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, 1733-1763.

Frederick Henry, Stadtholder of the United Provinces,

1625-1647.

Frederick William (called The Great Elector),

Elector of Brandenburg, 1640-1688.

Frederick William I., King of Prussia, 1713-1740.

Frederick William II., King of Prussia, 1786-1797.

Frederick William III., King of Prussia, 1797-1840.

Frederick William IV., King of Prussia, 1840-1861.

----------FREDERICK: End----------

FREDERICKSBURG, Battle of.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D.1862 (OCTOBER-DECEMBER: VIRGINIA).

FREDERICKSBURG:

Sedgwick's demonstration against.

See

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1863 (APRIL-MAY: VIRGINIA).

----------FREDERICKSBURG: End----------

FREDERICKSHALL.

Siege by the Swedes.

Death of Charles XII. (1718).

See SCANDINAVIAN STATES (SWEDEN): A. D. 1707-1718.

FREDERICKSHAMM, Peace of (1809).

See SCANDINAVIAN STATES: A. D. 1807-1810.

FREDLINGEN, Battle of (1703).

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1702-1704.

FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1843.

FREE CITIES.

See CITIES, IMPERIAL AND FREE, OF GERMANY;

also, ITALY: A. D. 1056-1152, and after.

FREE COMPANIES, The.

See ITALY: A. D. 1343-1393;

and FRANCE: A. D. 1360-1380.

FREE LANCES.

See LANCES, FREE.

FREE MASONS.

"The fall of the Knights Templars has been connected with the

origin of the Freemasons, and the idea has prevailed that the

only secret purpose of the latter was the reestablishment of

the suppressed order. Jacques de Molai, while a prisoner in

Paris, is said to have created four new lodges, and the day

after his execution, eight knights, disguised as masons, are

said to have gone to gather up the ashes of their late Grand

Master. To conceal their designs, the new Templars assumed the

symbols of the trade, but took, it is said, the name of Francs

'Maçons' to distinguish themselves from ordinary craftsmen,

and also in memory of the general appellation given to them in

Palestine. Even the allegories of Freemasonry, and the ceremonies

of its initiations, have been explained by a reference to the

history of the persecutions of the Templars. The Abbé Barruel

says, that 'every thing--the signs, the language, the names of

grand master, of knight, of temple--all, in a word, betray the

Freemasons as descendants of the proscribed knights.' Lessing,

in Germany, gave some authority to this opinion, by asserting

positively that 'the lodges of the Templars were in the very

highest repute in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and

that out of such a lodge, which had been constantly kept up in

London, was established the society of Freemasons, in the

seventeenth century, by Sir Christopher Wren.'

{1406}

Lessing is of opinion that the name Mason has nothing to do

with the English meaning of the word, but comes from

Massonney, a 'lodge' of the Knights Templars. This idea may

have caused the Freemasons to amalgamate the external ritual

of the Templars with their own, and to found the higher French

degrees which have given colour to the very hypothesis which

gave rise to their introduction. But the whole story appears

to be most improbable, and only rests upon the slight

foundation of fancied or accidental analogies. Attempts have

also been made to show that the Freemasons are only a

continuation of the fraternities of architects which are

supposed to have originated at the time of the building of

Solomon's Temple. The Egyptian priests are supposed to have

taught those who were initiated a secret and sacred system of

architecture; this is said to have been transmitted to the

Dionysiac architects, of whom the first historical traces are

to be found in Asia Minor, where they were organized into a

secret fraternity. ... It is, however; a mere matter of

speculation whether the Jewish and Dionysiac architects were

closely connected, but there is some analogy between the

latter and the Roman guilds, which Numa is said to have first

introduced, and which were probably the prototypes of the

later associations of masons which flourished until the end of

the Roman Empire. The hordes of barbarians which then

ruthlessly swept away whatever bore the semblance of luxury

and elegance, did not spare the noblest specimens of art, and

it was only when they became converted to Christianity, that

the guilds were re-established. During the Lombard rule they

became numerous in Italy. ... As their numbers increased,

Lombardy no longer sufficed for the exercise of their art, and

they travelled into all the countries where Christianity, only

recently established, required religious buildings. ... These

associations, however, became nearly crushed by the power of

the monastic institutions, so that in the early part of the

Middle Ages the words artist and priest became nearly

synonymous; but in the twelfth century they emancipated

themselves, and sprang into new life. The names of the authors

of the great architectural creations of this period are almost

all unknown; for these were not the work of individuals, but

of fraternities. ... In England guilds of masons are said to

have existed in the year 926, but this tradition is not

supported by history; in Scotland similar associations were

established towards the end of the fifteenth century. The Abbé

Grandidier regards Freemasonry as nothing more than a servile

imitation of the ancient and useful fraternity of true masons

established during the building of the Cathedral of Strasburg,

one of the masterpieces of Gothic architecture, and which caused

the fame of its builders to spread throughout Europe. In many

towns similar fraternities were established. ... The origin of

the Freemasons of the present day is not to be attributed to

these fraternities, but to the Rosicrucians [see ROSICRUCIANS]

who first appeared at the beginning of the seventeenth

century."

A. P. Marras,

Secret Fraternities of the Middle Ages,

chapters 7-8.

ALSO IN:

J. G. Findel,

History of Freemasonry.

C. W. Heckethorn,

Secret Societies of all Ages and Countries,

book 8 (volume 1).

FREE-SOIL PARTY, The.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1848.

FREE SPIRIT, Brethren and Sisters of the.

See BEGUINES.

FREE TRADE IN ENGLAND.

See TARIFF LEGISLATION (ENGLAND): A. D. 1836-1839;

1842; 1845-1846; and 1846-1879.

FREEDMEN OF THE SOUTH.

The emancipated slaves of the United States of America.

FREEDMEN'S BUREAU, The.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1865-1866.

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS: A. D. 1695.

Expiration of the Censorship law in England.

See PRINTING: A. D. 1695.

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS: A. D. 1734.

Zenger's trial at New York.

Vindication of the rights of the colonial Press.

See NEW YORK: A. D. 1720-1734.

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS: A. D. 1755.

Liberty attained in Massachusetts.

See PRINTING: A. D. 1535-1709.

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS: A. D. 1762-1764.

Prosecution of John Wilkes.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1762-1764.

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS: A. D. 1771.

Last contest of the British Parliament with the Press.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1771.

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS: A. D. 1817.

The trials of William Hone.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1816-1820.

----------FREEDOM OF THE PRESS: End----------

FREEHOLD.

See FEUDAL TENURES.

FREEMAN'S FARM, Battle of.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1777 (JULY-OCTOBER).

FREGELLÆ.

Fregellæ, a Latin colony, founded by the Romans, B. C. 329, in

the Volscian territory, on the Liris, revolted in B. C. 125.

and was totally destroyed. A Roman colony, named Fabrateria,

was founded near the site.

G. Long,

Decline of the Roman Republic,

volume 1, chapter 17.

FREIBURG (in the Breisgau).

Freiburg became a free city in 1120, but lost its freedom a

century later, and passed, in 1368, under the domination of

the Hapsburgs.

FREIBURG: A. D. 1638.

Capture by Duke Bernhard.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1634-1639.

FREIBURG: A. D. 1644.

Siege and capture by the Imperialists.

Attempted recovery by Condé and Turenne.

The three days battle.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1643-1644.

FREIBURG: A. D. 1677.

Taken by the French.

See NETHERLANDS (HOLLAND): A. D. 1674-1678.

FREIBURG: A. D. 1679.

Retained by France.

See NIMEGUEN, THE PEACE OF.

FREIBURG: A. D. 1697.

Restored to Germany.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1697.

FREIBURG: A. D. 1713-1714.

Taken and given up by the French.

See UTRECHT: A. D. 1712-1714.

FREIBURG: A. D. 1744-1748.

Taken by the French and restored to Germany.

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1744-1745;

and AIX-LA-CHAPELLE: THE CONGRESS.

----------FREIBURG: End----------

FREJUS, Origin of.

See FORUM JULII.

FREMONT, General John C.,

The conquest of California.

See CALIFORNIA: A. D. 1846-1847.

Defeat in Presidential election.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1856.

Command in the west.

Proclamation of Freedom.

Removal.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1861 (JULY-SEPTEMBER: MISSOURI),

and (AUGUST-OCTOBER: MISSOURI).

Command in West Virginia.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1862. (MAY-JUNE: VIRGINIA).

{1407}

FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR.

The four intercolonial wars of the 17th and 18th centuries, in

America, commonly known, respectively, as "King William's

War," "Queen Anne's War," "King George's War," and the French

and Indian War, were all of them conflicts with the French and

Indians of Canada, or New France; but the last of the series

(coincident with the "Seven Years War" in Europe) became

especially characterized in the colonies by that designation.

Its causes and chief events are to be found related under the

following headings:

CANADA: A.D. 1750-1753,1755, 1756, 1756-1757, 1758,

1759,1760;

NOVA SCOTIA: A. D.1749-1755, 1755;

OHIO (VALLEY): A. D. 1748-1754, 1754, 1755;

CAPE BRETON ISLAND: A. D. 1758-1760;

also, for an account of the accompanying Cherokee War,

SOUTH CAROLINA: A. D. 1759-1761.

FRENCH FURY, The.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1581-1584.

FRENCH SPOLIATION CLAIMS.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1800.

FRENCHTOWN (now Monroe, Mich.), Battle at.

See

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1812-1813.

HARRISON'S NORTHWESTERN CAMPAIGN.

FRENTANIANS, The.

See SABINES.

FRIARS.

"Carmelite Friars,"

"White Friars."

See CARMELITE FRIARS.

Austin Friars;

See AUSTIN CANONS.

"Preaching Friars,"

"Begging Friars,"

"Minor Friars,"

"Black Friars,"

"Grey Friars."

See MENDICANT ORDERS.

FRIEDLAND, Battle of.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1807 (FEBRUARY-JUNE).

FRIEDLINGEN, Battle of.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1702.

FRIENDS, The Society of.

See QUAKERS.

FRIENDS OF THE PEOPLE; The Society of the.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1830-1840.

FRIESLAND.

Absorbed in the dominions of the House of Burgundy (1430).

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1417-1430.

FRIGIDUS, Battle of the (A. D. 394).

See ROME: A. D. 379-395.

FRILING, The.

See LÆTI.

FRIMAIRE, The month.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1793 (OCTOBER).

FRISIANS, The.

"Beyond the Batavians, upon the north, dwelt the great Frisian

family, occupying the regions between the Rhine and Ems. The

Zuyder Zee and the Dollart, both caused by the terrific

inundations of the 13th century, and not existing at this

period [the early Roman Empire], did not then interpose

boundaries between kindred tribes."

J. L. Motley,

Rise of the Dutch Republic,

introduction, section. 2.

"The Frisians, adjoining [the Batavi] ... in the coast

district that is still named after them, as far as the lower

Ems, submitted to Drusus and obtained a position similar to

that of the Batavi. There was imposed on them instead of

tribute simply the delivery of a number of bullocks' hides for

the wants of the army; on the other hand they had to furnish

comparatively large numbers of men for the Roman service. They

were the most faithful allies of Drusus as afterwards of

Germanicus."

T. Mommsen,

History of Rome,

book 8, chapter 4.

FRISIANS: A. D. 528-729.

Struggles against the Frank dominion, before Charlemagne.

See GERMANY: A. D. 481-768.

FRITH-GUILDS.

See GUILDS, MEDIÆVAL.

FROEBEL AND THE KINDERGARTEN.

See EDUCATION, MODERN: REFORMS &c.: 1816-1892.

FROG'S POINT, Battle At.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1776 (SEPTEMBER-NOVEMBER).

FRONDE, FRONDEURS, The.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1647-1648, 1649, 1650-1651, 1651-1653;

and BORDEAUX: A. D. 1652-1653.

FRONT ROYAL, Stonewall Jackson's capture of.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1862 (MAY-JUNE: VIRGINIA).

FRONTENAC, Count, in New France.

See CANADA: A. D. 1669-1687, to 1696.

FRONTENAC, Fort.

See KINGSTON, CANADA.

FRUCTIDOR, The Month.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1793 (OCTOBER).

FRUCTIDOR: The Coup d'Etat of the Eighteenth of.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1797 (SEPTEMBER).

FRUELA I.,

King of Leon and the Asturias, or Oviedo, A. D. 757-768.

Fruela II., King of Leon and the Asturias, or Oviedo,

A. D. 923-925.

FRUMENTARIAN LAW, The First.

See ROME: B. C. 133-121.

FUEGIANS, The.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: PATAGONIANS.

FUENTES D'ONORO, Battle of (1811).

See SPAIN: A. D. 1810-1812.

FUFIAN LAW, The.

See ÆLIAN AND FUFIAN LAWS.

FUGGERS, The.

"Hans Fugger was the founder of the Fugger family, whose

members still possess extensive estates and authority as

princes and counts in Bavaria and Wurtemburg. He came to

Augsburg in 1365 as a poor but energetic weaver's apprentice,

acquired citizenship by marrying a burgher's daughter, and,

after completing an excellent masterpiece, was admitted into

the guild of weavers. ... Hans Fugger died in 1409, leaving

behind him a fortune of 3,000 florins, which he had made by

his skill and diligence. This was a considerable sum in those

days, for the gold mines of the New World had not yet been

opened up, and the necessaries of life sold for very low

prices. The sons carried on their father's business, and with

so much skill and success that they were always called the

rich Fuggers. The importance and wealth of the family

increased every day. By the year 1500 it was not easy to find

a frequented route by sea or land where Fugger's wares were

not to be seen. On one occasion the powerful Hanseatic league

seized twenty of their ships, which were sailing with a cargo

of Hungarian copper, down the Vistula to Cracow and Dantzic.

Below ground the miner worked for Fugger, above it the

artisan. In 1448 they lent 150,000 florins to the then

Archdukes of Austria, the Emperor Frederick the Third (father

of Maximilian) and his brother Albert. In 1509 a century had

passed since the weaver Hans Fugger had died leaving his

fortune of 3,000 florins, acquired by his laborious industry.

His grand-children were now the richest merchants in Europe;

without the aid of their money the mightiest princes of the

continent could not complete any important enterprise, and

their family was connected with the noblest houses by the ties

of relationship. They were raised to the rank of noblemen and

endowed with honourable privileges by the Emperor Maximilian

the First."

A. W. Grube,

Heroes of History and Legend,

chapter 13.

{1408}

FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW, AND ITS REPEAL.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1850, and 1864 (JUNE).

FULAHS, The.

See AFRICA: THE INHABITING RACES.

FULFORD, Battle of.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1066 (SEPTEMBER).

FULTON'S FIRST STEAMBOAT.

See STEAM NAVIGATION: THE BEGINNINGS.

FUNDAMENTAL AGREEMENT OF NEW HAVEN.

See CONNECTICUT: A. D. 1639.

FUNDAMENTAL ORDERS OF CONNECTICUT.

See CONNECTICUT: A. D. 1636-1639.

FUORUSCITI.

In Italy, during the Guelf and Ghibelline contests of the 13th

and 14th centuries (see ITALY: A. D. 1215-1293), "almost every

city had its body of 'fuorusciti';--literally, 'those who had

gone out';--proscripts and exiles, in fact, who represented

the minorities ... in the different communities;--Ghibelline

fuorusciti from Guelph cities, and Guelph fuorusciti from

Ghibelline cities."

T. A. Trollope,

History of the Commonwealth of Florence,

volume 1, page 380.

FÜRST.

Prince; the equivalent German title.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1125-1152.

FURY, The French.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1581-1584.

FURY, The Spanish.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1575-1577.

FUSILLADES.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1793-1794 (OCTOBER-APRIL).

FUTTEH ALI SHAH,

Shah of Persia, A. D. 1798-1834.

FUTTEHPORE, Battle of (1857).

See INDIA: A. D. 1857-1858 (JULY-JUNE).

FYLFOT-CROSS, The.

See TRI-SKELION.

FYRD, The.

"The one national army [in Saxon England, before the Norman

Conquest] was the fyrd, a force which had already received in

the Karolingian legislation the name of landwehr by which the

German knows it still. The fyrd was in fact composed of the

whole mass of free landowners who formed the folk: and to the

last it could only be summoned by the voice of the folk-moot.

In theory therefore such a host represented the whole

available force of the country. But in actual warfare its

attendance at the king's war-call was limited by practical

difficulties. Arms were costly; and the greater part of the

fyrd came equipped with bludgeons and hedge-stakes, which

could do little to meet the spear and battleaxe of the

invader."

J. R. Green,

The Conquest of England,

p. 133.

G.

GA, The.

See GAU.

GABELLE The.

"In the spring of the year 1343, the king [Philip de Valois,

king of France] published an ordinance by which no one was

allowed to sell salt in France unless he bought it from the

store-houses of the crown, which gave him the power of

committing any degree of extortion in an article that was of

the utmost necessity to his subjects. This obnoxious tax,

which at a subsequent period became one of the chief sources

of the revenue of the crown of France, was termed a gabelle, a

word of Frankish or Teutonic origin, which had been in use

from the earliest period to signify a tax in general, but

which was from this time almost restricted to the

extraordinary duty on salt. ... This word gabelle is the same

as the Anglo-Saxon word 'gafol,' a tax."

T. Wright,

History of France,

volume 1, page 364, and foot-note.

See, also, TAILEE AND GABELLE.

GABINIAN LAW, The.

See ROME: B.C. 69-63.

GACHUPINES AND GUADALUPES.

In the last days of Spanish rule in Mexico, the Spanish

official party bore the name of Gachupines, while the native

party, which prepared for revolution, were called Guadalupes.

E. J. Payne,

History of European Colonies,

p. 303.

The name of the Guadalupes was adopted by the Mexicans "in

honour of 'Our Lady of Guadalupe,' the tutelar protectress of

Mexico;" while that of the Gachupines "was a sobriquet

gratuitously bestowed upon the Spanish faction."

W. H. Chynoweth,

The Fall of Maximilian,

page 3.

GADEBUSCH, Battle of (1712).

See SCANDINAVIAN STATES (SWEDEN): A. D. 1707-1718.

GADENI, The.

See BRITAIN, CELTIC TRIBES.

GADES (Modern Cadiz); Ancient commerce of.

"At this period [early in the last century before Christ]

Gades was undoubtedly one of the most important emporiums of

trade in the world: her citizens having absorbed a large part

of the commerce that had previously belonged to Carthage. In

the time of Strabo they still retained almost the whole trade

with the Outer Sea, or Atlantic coasts."

E. H. Bunbury,

History of Ancient Geography,

chapter 18, section 6 (volume 2).

See, also, UTICA.

GADSDEN PURCHASE, The.

See ARIZONA: A. D. 1853.

GAEL.

See CELTS.

GAETA: A. D. 1805-1806.

Siege and Capture by the French.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1805-1806 (DECEMBER-SEPTEMBER).

GAETA: A. D. 1848.

The refuge of Pope Pius IX.

See ITALY: A.. D. 1848-1849.

GAFOL.

A payment in money, or kind, or work, rendered in the way of

rent by a villein-tenant to his lord, among the Saxons and

early English. The word signified tribute.

F. Seebohm,

English Village Community,

chapters 2 and 5.

GAG, The Atherton.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1836.

GAGE, General Thomas, in the command and government at Boston.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1774 (MARCH-APRIL);

1775 (APRIL), (APRIL-MAY), and (JUNE).

GAI SABER, El.

See PROVENCE: A. D. 1179-1207.

GAINAS, The.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 547-633.

GAINES' MILL, Battle of.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1862 (JUNE-JULY: VIRGINIA).

GALATA, The Genoese colony.

See GENOA: A. D. 1261-1299;

also CONSTANTINOPLE: A. D. 1261-1453, and 1348-1355.

{1409}

GALATÆ, The.

See GAULS.

GALATIA.-GALATIANS.

In 280 B. C. a body of Gauls, or Celts, invaded Greece, under

Brennus, and in the following year three tribes of them

crossed into Asia Minor. There, as in Greece, they committed

terrible ravages, and were a desolating scourge to the land,

sometimes employed as mercenaries by one and another of the

princes who fought over the fragments of Alexander's Empire,

and sometimes roaming for plunder on their own account.

Antiochus, son of Seleueus, of Syria, is said to have won a

great victory over them; but it was not until 239 B. C. that

they were seriously checked by Attalus, King of Pergamus, who

defeated them in a great battle and forced them to settle in

the part of ancient Phrygia which afterwards took its name

from them, being called Galatia, or Gallo-Græcia, or Eastern

Gaul. When the Romans subjugated Asia Minor they found the

Galatæ among their most formidable enemies. The latter were

permitted for a time to retain a certain degree of

independence, under tetrarchs, and afterwards under kings of

their own. But finally Galatia became a Roman province. "When

St. Paul preached among them, they seemed fused into the

Hellenistic world, speaking Greek like the rest of Asia; yet

the Celtic language long lingered among them and St. Jerome

says he found the country people still using it in his day

(fourth century A. D.)."

J. P. Mahaffy,

Story of Alexander's Empire,

chapter 8.

See, also, GAULS: B. C. 280-279.

INVASION OF GREECE.

GALBA, Roman Emperor, A. D. 68-69.

GALEAZZO MARIO, Duke of Milan, A.D. 1466-1476.

GALERIUS, Roman Emperor, A. D. 305-311.

GALICIA (Spain), Settlement of Sueves and Vandals in.

See SPAIN: A. D. 409-414.

GALILEE.

The Hebrew name Galil, applied originally to a little section

of country, became in the Roman age, as Galilæa, the name of

the whole region in Palestine north of Samaria and west of the

river Jordan and the Sea of Galilee. Ewald interprets the name

as meaning the "march" or frontier land; but in Smith's

"Dictionary of the Bible" it is said to signify a "circle" or

"circuit." It had many heathen inhabitants and was called

Galilee of the Gentiles.

H. Ewald,

History of Israel,

book 5, section 1.

GALLAS, The.

See AFRICA: THE INHABITING RACES;

and ABYSSINIA: 15th-19th CENTURIES.

GALLATIN, Albert, Negotiation of the Treaty of Ghent.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1814 (DECEMBER).

GALLDACHT.

See PALE, THE ENGLISH.

GALLEON OR GALEON.--GALERA.--GALEAZA.--GALEASSES.

See CARAVELS;

also, ENGLAND: A. D. 1588;

also, PERU: A. D. 1550-1816.

GALLI, The.

See GAULS.

GALLIA.

See GAUL.

GALLIA BRACCATA, COMATA AND TOGATA.

"The antient historians make some allusion to another division

of Gaul, perhaps introduced by the soldiers, for it was

founded solely upon the costume of the inhabitants. Gallia

Togata, near the Rhone, comprehended the Gauls who had adopted

the toga and the Roman manners. In Gallia Comata, to the north

of the Loire, the inhabitants wore long plaited hair, which we

find to this day among the Bas Britons. Gallia Bracata, to the

south of the Loire, wore, for the national costume, trousers

reaching from the hips to the ancles, called 'braccæ.'"

J. C. L. S. de Sismondi,

The French under the Merovingians,

translated by Bellingham,

chapter 2, note.

GALLIA CISALPINA.

See ROME: B. C. 390-347.

GALLICAN CHURCH: A. D. 1268.

The Pragmatic Sanction of St. Louis.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1268.

GALLICAN CHURCH: A. D. 1438.

The Pragmatic Sanction of Charles VII., affirming some of the

decrees of the reforming Council of Basel.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1438.

GALLICAN CHURCH: A. D. 1515-1518.

Abrogation of the Pragmatic Sanction.

The Concordat of Bologna.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1515-1518.

GALLICAN CHURCH: A. D. 1653-1713.

The conflict of Jesuits and Jansenists.

Persecution of the latter.

The Bull Unigenitus and its tyrannical enforcement.

See PORT ROYAL AND THE JANSENISTS.

GALLICAN CHURCH: A. D. 1791-1792.

The civil constitution of the clergy.

The oath prescribed by the National Assembly.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1789-1791; 1790-1791;

and 1791-1792.

GALLICAN CHURCH: A. D. 1793.

Suppression of Christian worship in Paris and other parts of

France.

The worship of Reason.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1793 (NOVEMBER).

GALLICAN CHURCH: A. D. 1802.

The Concordat of Napoleon.

Its Ultramontane influence.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1801-1804.

GALLICAN CHURCH: A. D. 1833-1880.

The Church and the Schools.

See EDUCATION, MODERN: FRANCE: A. D. 1833-1889.

----------GALLICAN CHURCH: End----------

GALLICIA, The kingdom of.

See SPAIN: A. D. 713-737.

GALLIENUS, Roman Emperor, A. D. 253-268.

GALLOGLASSES.

The heavy-armed foot-soldiers of the

Irish in their battles with the

English during the 14th century.

See, also, RAPPAREE.

GALLS.

See IRELAND: 9TH-10TH CENTURIES.

GALLUS, Trebonianus, Roman Emperor, A. D. 251-253.

GAMA, Voyage of Vasco da.

See PORTUGAL: A. D. 1463-1498.

GAMBETTA AND THE DEFENSE OF FRANCE.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1870 (SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER),

and 1870-1871.

GAMMADION, The.

See TRI-SKELION.

GAMORI.

See GEOMORI.

GANAWESE OR KANAWHAS, The.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: ALGONQUIAN FAMILY.

GANDARIANS, The.

See GEDROSIANS.

GANDASTOGUES, OR CONESTOGAS, The.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: SUSQUEHANNAS.

GANGANI, The.

See IRELAND, TRIBES OF EARLY CELTIC INHABITANTS.

{1410}

GANGWAY, The.

On the floor of the English House of Commons, "the long lines

of seats rise gradually on each side of the chair--those to

the Speaker's right being occupied by the upholders of the

Government, and those to the left accommodating the

Opposition. One length of seating runs in an unbroken line

beneath each of the side galleries, and these are known as the

'back benches.' The other lengths are divided into two nearly

equal parts by an unseated gap of about a yard wide. This is

'the gangway.' Though nothing more than a convenient means of

access for members, this space has come to be regarded as the

barrier that separates the thick and thin supporters of the

rival leaders from their less fettered colleagues--that is to

say, the steady men from the Radicals, Nationalists, and

free-lances generally."

Popular Account of Parliamentary Procedure,

page 6.

GAON.-THE GAONATE.

See JEWS: 7th CENTURY.

GARAMANTES, The.

The ancient inhabitants of the north African region now called

Fezzan, were known as the Garamantes.

E. H. Bunbury,

History of Ancient Geography,

chapter 8, section 1.

GARCIA,

King of Leon and the Asturias, or Oviedo, A. D. 910-914.

Garcia I., King of Navarre, 885-891.

Garcia II., King of Spain, 925-970.

Garcia III., King of Navarre, 1035-1054.

Garcia IV., King of Navarre, 1134-1150.

GARFIELD, General James A.

Campaign in Kentucky.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1862 (JANUARY-FEBRUARY; KENTUCKY-TENNESSEE).

Presidential election.

Administration.

Assassination.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1880, and 1881.

GARIBALD, King of the Lombards, A. D. 672-673.

GARIBALDI'S ITALIAN CAMPAIGNS.

See ITALY; A. D. 1848-:1849; 1856-1859;

1859-1861; 1862-1866; and 1867-1870.

GARIGLIANO, Battle of the (1503).

See ITALY: A. D. 1501-1504.

GARITIES, The.

See AQUITAINE: THE ANCIENT TRIBES.

GARRISON, William Lloyd, and the American Abolitionists.

See SLAVERY, NEGRO: A. D. 1828-1832.

GARTER, Knights of the Order of the.

"About this time [A. D. 1343] the king of England [Edward

III.] resolved to rebuild and embellish the great castle of

Windsor, which king Arthur had first founded in time past, and

where he had erected and established that noble round table

from whence so many gallant knights had issued forth, and

displayed the valiant prowess of their deeds at arms over the

world. King Edward, therefore, determined to establish an

order of knighthood, consisting of himself, his children, and

the most gallant knights in Christendom, to the number of

forty. He ordered it to be denominated 'knights of the blue

garter,' and that the feast should be celebrated every year at

Windsor, upon St. George's day. He summoned, therefore, all

the earls, barons, and knights of his realm, to inform them of

his intentions; they heard it with great pleasure; for it

appeared to them highly honourable, and capable of increasing

love and friendship. Forty knights were then elected,

according to report and estimation the bravest in Christendom,

who sealed, and swore to maintain and keep the feast and the

statutes which had been made. The king founded a chapel at

Windsor, in honour of St. George, and established canons,

there to serve God, with a handsome endowment. He then issued

his proclamation for this feast by his heralds, whom he sent

to France, Scotland, Burgundy, Hainault, Flanders, Brabant,

and the empire of Germany, and offered to all knights and

squires, that might come to this ceremony, passports to last

for fifteen days after it was over. The celebration of this

order was fixed for St. George's day next ensuing, to be held

at Windsor, 1344."

Froissart (Johnes),

Chronicles,

book 1, chapter 100.

"The popular tradition, derived from Polydore Vergil, is that,

having a festival at Court, a lady chanced to drop her garter,

when it was picked up by the King. Observing that the incident

made the bye-standers smile significantly, Edward exclaimed in

a tone of rebuke, 'Honi soit qui mal y pense'--'Dishonoured

be he who thinks evil of it': and to prevent any further

innuendos, he tied the garter round his own knee. This

anecdote, it is true, has been characterized by some as an

improbable fable; why, we know not. ... Be the origin of the

institution, however, what it may, no Order in Europe is so

ancient, none so illustrious, for 'it exceeds in majesty,

honour and fame all chivalrous fraternities in the world.' ...

By a Statute passed on the 17th January, 1805, the Order is to

consist of the Sovereign and twenty-five Knights Companions,

together with such lineal descendants of George III. as may be

elected, always excepting the Prince of Wales, who is a

constituent part of the original institution. Special Statutes

have since, at different times, been proclaimed for the

admission of Sovereigns and extra Knights."

Sir B. Burke,

Book of Orders of Knighthood,

page 98.

ALSO IN:

J. Buswell,

Historical Account of the Knights of the Garter.

C. M. Yonge,

Cameos from English History,

2d series, chapter 3.

GARUMNI, The Tribe of the.

See AQUITAINE: THE ANCIENT TRIBES.

GASCONY.--GASCONS: Origin.

See AQUITAINE: A. D. 681-768.

GASCONY: A. D. 778.

The ambuscade at Roncesvalles.

See SPAIN: A. D. 778.

GASCONY: A. D. 781.

Embraced in Aquitaine.

See AQUITAINE: A. D. 781.

GASCONY: 11th Century.

The Founding of the Dukedom.

See BURGUNDY: A. D. 1032.

----------GASCONY: End----------

GASIND, The.

See COMITATUS.

GASPE, The burning of the.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1772.

GASTEIN, Convention of (1865).

See GERMANY: A. D. 1861-1866.

GATES, General Horatio, and the American Revolution.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1775 (MAY-AUGUST);

1777 (JULY-OCTOBER);

1777-1778; 1780 (FEBRUARY-AUGUST); 1780-1781.

GATH.

See PHILISTINES.

GATHAS, The.

See ZOROASTRIANS.

{1411}

GAU, OR GA, The.

"Next [after the Mark, in the settlements of the Germanic

peoples] in order of constitution, if not of time, is the

union of two, three, or more Marks in a federal bond for

purposes of a religious, judicial, or even political

character. The technical name for such a union is in Germany a

Gau or Bant; in England the ancient name Ga has been almost

universally superseded by that of Scir or Shire. For the most

part the natural divisions of the country are the divisions

also of the Ga; and the size of this depends upon such

accidental limits as well as upon the character and

dispositions of the several collective bodies which we have

called Marks. The Ga is the second and final form of unsevered

possession; for every larger aggregate is but the result of a

gradual reduction of such districts, under a higher political

or administrative unity, different only in degree and not in

kind from what prevailed individually in each. The kingdom is

only a larger Ga than ordinary; indeed the Ga itself was the

original kingdom. ... Some of the modern shire-divisions of

England in all probability have remained unchanged from the

earliest times; so that here and there a now existent Shire

may be identical in territory with an ancient Ga. But it may

be doubted whether this observation can be very extensively

applied."

J. M. Kemble,

The Saxons in England.

book 1, chapter 8.

GAUGAMELA, OR ARBELA, Battle of (B. C. 331).

See MACEDONIA: B. C. 384-380.

GAUL: described by Cæsar.

"Gallia, in the widest sense of the term, is divided into

three parts, one part occupied by the Belgae, a second by the

Aquitani, and a third by a people whom the Romans name Galli,

but in their own tongue they are named Celtae. These three

people differ in language and social institutions. The Garumna

(Garonne) is the boundary between the Aquitani and the Celtae:

the rivers Matrona (Marne, a branch of the Seine) and the

Sequana (Seine) separate the Celtae from the Belgae. ... That

part of Gallia which is occupied by the Celtae begins at the

river Rhone: it is bounded by the Garonne, the Ocean and the

territory of the Belgae; on the side of the Sequani and the

Helvetii it also extends to the Rhine. It looks to the north.

The territory of the Belgae begins where that of the Celtae

ends: it extends to the lower part of the Rhine; it looks

towards the north and the rising sun. Aquitania extends from

the Garonne to the Pyrenean mountains and that part of the

Ocean which borders on Spain. It looks in a direction between

the setting sun and the north."

Julius Cæsar,

Gallic Wars,

book 1, chapter 1;

translated by G. Long

(Decline of the Roman Republic,

volume 8, chapter 22).

GAUL: B. C. 125-121.

First Roman conquests.

See SALYES; ALLOBROGES; and ÆDUI.

GAUL: B. C. 58-51.

Cæsar's conquest.

Cæsar was consul for the year 695 A. U. (B. C. 59). At the

expiration of his consulship he secured, by vote of the

people, the government of the two Gauls (see ROME: B. C.

68-58), not for one year, which was the customary term, but

for five years--afterwards extended to ten. Cisalpine Gaul

(northern Italy) had been fully subjugated and was tranquil;

Transalpine Gaul (Gaul west and north of the Alps, or modern

France, Switzerland and Belgium) was troubled and threatening.

In Transalpine Gaul the Romans had made no conquests beyond

the Rhone, as yet, except along the coast at the south. The

country between the Alps and the Rhone, excepting certain

territories of Massilia (Marseilles) which still continued to

be a free city, in alliance with Rome, had been fully

appropriated and organized as a province--the Provence of

later times. The territory between the Rhone and the Cevennes

mountains was less fully occupied and controlled. Cæsar's

first proceeding as proconsul in Gaul was to arrest the

migration of the Helvetii, who had determined to abandon their

Swiss valleys and to seize some new territory in Gaul. He blocked

their passage through Roman Gaul, then followed them in their

movement eastward of the Rhone, attacked and defeated them

with great slaughter, and forced the small remnant to return

to their deserted mountain homes. The same year (B. C. 58) he

drove out of Gaul a formidable body of Suevic Germans who had

crossed the Rhine some years before under their king,

Ariovistus. They were almost annihilated. The next year (B. C.

57) he reduced to submission the powerful tribes of the

Belgian region, who had provoked attack by leaguing themselves

against the Roman intrusion in Gaul. The most obstinate of

those tribes--the Nervii--were destroyed. In the following

year (B. C. 56) Cæsar attacked and nearly exterminated the

Veneti, a remarkable maritime people, who occupied part of

Armorica (modern Brittany); he also reduced the coast tribes

northwards to submission, while one of his lieutenants,

Crassus, made a conquest of Aquitania. The conquest of Gaul

was now apparently complete, and next year (B. C. 55), after

routing and cutting to pieces another horde of Germanic

invaders--the Usipetes and Tenctheri--who had ventured across

the lower Rhine, Cæsar traversed the channel and invaded

Britain. This first invasion, which had been little more than

a reconnoissance, was repeated the year following (B. C. 54),

with a larger force. It was an expedition having small

results, and Cæsar returned from it in the early autumn to

find his power in Gaul undermined everywhere by rebellious

conspiracies. The first outbreak occurred among the Belgæ, and

found its vigorous leader in a young chief of the Eburones,

Ambiorix by name. Two legions, stationed in the midst of the

Eburones, were cut to pieces while attempting to retreat. But

the effect of this great disaster was broken by the bold

energy of Cæsar, who led two legions, numbering barely 7,000

men, to the rescue of his lieutenant Cicero (brother of the

orator) whose single legion, camped in the Nervian territory,

was surrounded and besieged by 60,000 of the enemy. Cæsar and

his 7,000 veterans sufficed to rout the 60,000 Belgians.

Proceeding with similar vigor to further operations, and

raising new legions to increase his force, the proconsul had

stamped the rebellion out before the close of the year 58 B.

C., and the Eburones, who led in it, had ceased to exist. But

the next year (B. C. 52) brought upon him a still more serious

rising, of the Gallic tribes in central Gaul, leagued with the

Belgians. Its leader was Vercingetorix, a gallant and able

young chief of the Arverni. It was begun by the Carnutes, who

massacred the Roman settlers in their town of Genabum

(probably modern Orleans, but some say Gien, farther up the

Loire). Cæsar was on the Italian side of the Alps when the

news reached him, and the Gauls expected to be able to prevent

his joining the scattered Roman forces in their country. But

his energy baffled them, as it had baffled them many times

before. He was across the Alps, across the Rhone, over the

Cevennes--through six feet of snow in the passes--and in

their midst, with such troops as he could gather in the

Province, before they dreamed of lying in wait for him. Then,

leaving most of these forces with Decimus Brutus, in a strong

position, he stole away secretly, recrossed the Cevennes, put

himself at the head of a small body of cavalry at Vienne on

the Rhone, and rode straight through the country of the

insurgents to join his veteran legions, first at Langres and

afterwards at Sens.

{1412}

In a few weeks he was at the head of a strong army, had taken

the guilty town of Genabum and had given it up to fire and the

sword. A little later the capital of the Bituriges, Avaricum

(modern Bourges), suffered the same fate. Next, attempting to

reduce the Arvernian town of Gergovia, he met with a check and

was placed in a serious strait. But with the able help of his

lieutenant Labienus, who defeated a powerful combination of

the Gauls near Lutetia (modern Paris), he broke the toils,

reunited his army, which he had divided, routed Vercingetorix

in a great battle fought in the valley of the Vingeanne, and

shut him up, with 80,000 men, in the city of Alesia. The siege

of Alesia (modern Alise-Sainte-Reine, west of Dijon) which

followed, was the most extraordinary of Cæsar's military

exploits in Gaul. Holding his circumvallation of the town,

against 80,000 within its walls and thrice as many swarming

outside of it, he scattered the latter and forced the

surrender of the former. His triumph was his greatest shame.

Like a very savage, he dragged the knightly Vercingetorix in

his captive train, exhibited him at a subsequent "triumph" in

Rome, and then sent him to be put to death in the ghastly

Tullianum. The fall of Alesia practically ended the revolt;

although even the next year found some fighting to be done,

and one stronghold of the Cadurci, Uxellodunum (modern

Puy-d'Issolu, near Vayrac), held out with great obstinacy. It

was taken by tapping with a tunnel the spring which supplied

the besieged with water, and Cæsar punished the obstinacy of

the garrison by cutting off their hands. Gaul was then deemed

to be conquered and pacified, and Cæsar was prepared for the

final contest with his rivals and enemies at Rome.

Cæsar,

Gallic War.

ALSO IN:

G. Long,

Decline of the Roman Republic,

volume 4.

Napoleon III.,

History of Cæsar.

C. Merivale,

History of the Romans under the Empire,

chapters 6-7, 10, and 12 (volumes 1-2).

T. A. Dodge,

Cæsar,

chapters 4-25.

GAUL: 2d-3d Century.

Introduction of Christianity.

See CHRISTIANITY: A. D. 100-312 (GAUL).

GAUL: A. D. 277.

The invaders driven back by Probus.

"The most important service which Probus [Roman Emperor, A. D.

276-282] rendered to the republic was the deliverance of Gaul,

and the recovery of seventy flourishing cities oppressed by

the barbarians of Germany, who, since the death of Aurelian,

had ravaged that great province with impunity. Among the

various multitude of those fierce invaders, we may

distinguish, with some degree of clearness, three great

armies, or rather nations, successively vanquished by the

valour of Probus. He drove back the Franks into their

morasses; a descriptive circumstance from whence we may infer

that the confederacy known by the manly appellation of 'Free'

already occupied the flat maritime country, intersected and

almost overflown by the stagnating waters of the Rhine, and

that several tribes of the Frisians and Batavians had acceded

to their alliance. He vanquished the Burgundians [and the

Lygians]. ... The deliverance of Gaul is reported to have cost

the lives of 400,000 of the invaders--a work of labour to the

Romans, and of expense to the emperor, who gave a piece of

gold for the head of every barbarian."

E. Gibbon,

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,

chapter 12.

See, also, LYGIANS.

GAUL: A. D. 287.

Insurrection of the Bagauds.

See BAGAUDS;

also, DEDITITIUS.

GAUL: A. D. 355-361.

Julian's recovery of the province from the barbarians.

During the civil wars and religious quarrels which followed

the death of Constantine the Great--more especially in the

three years of the usurpation of Magnentius, in the west (A.

D. 350-353), Gaul was not only abandoned, for the most part,

to the barbarians of Germany, but Franks and Alemanni were

invited by Constantius to enter it. "In a little while a large

part of the north and east of Gaul were in their almost

undisputed possession. The Alamans seized upon the countries

which are now called Alsace and Lorraine; the Franks secured

for themselves Batavia and Toxandria: forty-five flourishing

cities, among them Cologne, Treves, Spires, Worms, and

Strasburg, were ravaged; and, in short, from the sources of

the Rhine to its mouth, forty miles inland, there remained no

safety for the population but in the strongly fortified

towns." In this condition of the Gallic provinces, Julian, the

young nephew of the emperor, was raised to the rank of Cæsar

and sent thither with a trifling force of men to take the

command. "During an administration of six years [A. D.

355-361] this latest Cæsar revived in Gaul the memory of the

indefatigable exploits and the vigorous rule of the first

Cæsar. Insufficient and ill-disciplined as his forces were,

and baffled and betrayed as he was by those who should have

been his aids, he drove the fierce and powerful tribes of the

Alamans, who were now the hydra of the western provinces,

beyond the Upper Rhine; the Chamaves, another warlike tribe,

he pursued into the heart of their native forests; while the

still fiercer and more warlike Franks were dislodged from

their habitations on the Meuse, to accept of conditions from

his hands. ... A part of these, called the Salians, and

destined to figure hereafter, were allowed to settle in

permanence in Toxandria, between the Meuse and the Scheld,

near the modern Tongres. ... By three successful expeditions

beyond the Rhine [he] restored to their friends a multitude of

Roman captives, recovered the broken and down-trodden lines of

the empire, humiliated many of the proud chiefs of the

Germans, and impressed a salutary awe and respect upon their

truculent followers. ... He spent the intervals of peace which

his valor procured in recuperating the wasted energies of the

inhabitants. Their dilapidated cities were repaired, the

excesses of taxation retrenched, the deficient harvests

compensated by large importations of corn from Britain, and

the resources of suspended industry stimulated into new

action. Once more, says Libanius, the Gauls ascended from the

tombs to marry, to travel, to enjoy the festivals, and to

celebrate the public games."

P. Godwin,

History of France: Ancient Gaul,

book 2, chapter 7.

ALSO IN:

E. Gibbon,

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,

chapter 19.

GAUL: A. D. 365-367.

Expulsion of the Alemanni by Valentinian.

See ALEMANNI: A. D. 365-367.

GAUL: A. D. 378.

Invasion of the Alemanni.

Their destruction by Gratian.

See ALEMANNI: A. D. 378.

{1413}

GAUL: A. D. 406-409.

The breaking of the Rhine barrier.

The same year (A. D. 406) in which Radagaisus, with his motley

barbaric horde, invaded Italy and was destroyed by Stilicho, a

more fatal assault was made upon Gaul. Two armies, in which

were gathered up a vast multitude of Suevi, Vandals, Alans and

Burgundians, passed the Rhine. The Franks opposed them as

faithful allies of the Roman power, and defeated a Vandal army

in one great battle, where 20,000 of the invaders were slain;

but the Alans came opportunely to the rescue of their friends

and forced the Frank defenders of Gaul to give way. "The

victorious confederates pursued their march, and on the last

day of the year, in a season when the waters of the Rhine were

most probably frozen, they entered without opposition the

defenceless provinces of Gaul. This memorable passage of the

Suevi, the Vandals, the Alani, and the Burgundians, who never

afterwards retreated, may be considered as the fall of the

Roman empire in the countries beyond the Alps; and the

barriers which had so long separated the savage and the

civilized nations of the earth were, from that fatal moment,

levelled with the ground. ... The flourishing city of Mentz

was surprised and destroyed, and many thousand Christians were

inhumanly massacred in the church. Worms perished after a long

and obstinate siege; Strasburg, Spires, Rheims, Tournay,

Arras, Amiens, experienced the cruel oppression of the German

yoke; and the consuming flames of war spread from the banks of

the Rhine over the greatest part of the seventeen provinces of

Gaul. That rich and extensive country, as far as the ocean,

the Alps, and the Pyrenees, was delivered to the barbarians,

who drove before them in a promiscuous crowd the bishop, the

senator, and the virgin, laden with the spoils of their houses

and altars."

E. Gibbon,

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,

chapter 30.

GAUL: A. D. 407-411.

Reign of the usurper Constantine.

See BRITAIN: A. D. 407.

GAUL: A. D. 410-419.

Establishment of the Visigoths in the kingdom of Toulouse.

See GOTHS (VISIGOTHS): A. D. 410-419.

GAUL: A. D. 410-420.

The Franks join in the attack on Gaul.

See FRANKS: A. D. 410-420.

GAUL: 5th-8th Centuries.

Barbarities of the Frank conquest.

The conquests of the Franks in Gaul, under Clovis, began in

486 and ended with his death in 511 (see FRANKS: A. D.

481-511). "In the year 532, Theoderik, one of the sons and

successors of Chlodowig, said to those Frankish warriors whom

he commanded: 'Follow me as far as Auvergne, and I will make

you enter a country where you will take as much gold and

silver as you possibly can desire; where you can carry away in

abundance flocks, slaves, and garments.' The Franks took up

arms and once more crossing the Loire, they advanced on the

territory of the Bituriges and Arvernes. These paid with

interest for the resistance they had dared to the first

invasion. Everything amongst them was devastated; the churches

and monasteries were razed to their foundations. The young men

and women were dragged, their hands bound, after the luggage

to be sold as slaves. The inhabitants of this unfortunate

country perished in large numbers or were ruined by the

pillage. Nothing was left them of what they had possessed,

says an ancient chronicle, except the land, which the

barbarians could not carry away. Such were the neighbourly

relations kept up by the Franks with the Gallic populations

which had remained beyond their limits. Their conduct with

respect to the natives of the northern provinces was hardly

less hostile. When Hilperik, the son of Chlother, wished, in

the year 584, to send his daughter in marriage to the king of

the West Goths, or Visigoths, settled in Spain, he came to

Paris and carried away from the houses belonging to the 'fisc'

a great number of men and women, who were heaped up in

chariots to accompany and serve the bride elect. Those who

refused to depart, and wept, were put in prison: several

strangled themselves in despair. Many people of the best

families enlisted by force into this procession, made their

will, and gave their property to the churches. 'The son,' says

a contemporary, 'was separated from his father, the mother

from her daughter; they departed sobbing, and pronouncing deep

curses; so many persons in Paris were in tears that it might

be compared to the desolation of Egypt.' In their domestic

misfortunes the kings of the Franks sometimes felt remorse,

and trembled at the evil they had done. ... But this momentary

repentance soon yielded to the love of riches, the most

violent passion of the Franks. Their incursions into the south

of Gaul recommenced as soon as that country, recovered from its

terrors and defeats, no longer admitted their garrisons nor

tax collectors. Karle, to whom the fear of his arms gave the

surname of Marteau, made an inroad as far as Marseilles; he

took possession of Lyons, Arles, and Vienne, and carried off

an immense booty to the territory of the Franks. When this

same Karle, to insure his frontiers, went to fight the

Saracens in Aquitania, he put the whole country to fire and

sword; he burnt Bérgiers, Agde, and Nûnes; the arenas of the

latter city still bear traces of the fire. At death of Karle,

his two sons, Karlemann and Peppin, continued the great

enterprise of replacing the inhabitants of the south, to whom

the name of Romans was still given, under the yoke of the

Franks. ... Southern Gaul was to the sons of the Franks what

entire Gaul had been to their fathers; a country, the riches

and climate of which attracted them incessantly, and saw them

return as enemies, as soon as it did not purchase peace of

them."

A. Thierry,

Narratives of the Merovingian Era, Historical Essays, etc.,

essay 24.

GAUL: 5th-10th Centuries.

The conquerors and the conquered.

State of society under the barbarian rule.

The evolution of Feudalism.

"After the conclusion of the great struggles which took place

in the fourth and fifth centuries, whether between the German

conquerors and the last forces of the empire, or between the

nations which had occupied different portions of Gaul, until

the Franks remained sole masters of the country, two races,

two populations, which had nothing in common but religion,

appear forcibly brought together, and, as it were, face to

face with each other, in one political community. The

Gallo-Roman population presents under the same law very

different and very unequal conditions; the barbarian

population comprises, together with its own peculiar

classifications of ranks and conditions, distinct laws and

nationalities. In the first we find citizens absolutely free,

coloni, or husbandmen belonging to the lands of a proprietor,

and domestic slaves deprived of all civil rights; in the

second, we see the Frankish race divided into two tribes, each

having its own peculiar law [the law of the Salic Franks or Salic

law, and the law of the Ripuarian Franks or Ripuarian law];

the Burgundians, the Goths, and the rest of the Teutonic

races, who became subjected, either of their own accord or by

force, to, the Frankish empire, governed by other and entirely

different laws; but among them all, as well as among the

Franks, we find at least three social conditions--two degrees

of liberty, and slavery.

{1414}

Among these incongruous states of existence, the criminal law

of the dominant race established, by means of the scale of

damages for crime or personal injury, a kind of hierarchy--

the starting-point of that movement towards an assimilation

and gradual transformation, which, after the lapse of four

centuries, from the fifth to the tenth, gave rise to the

society of the feudal times. The first rank in the civil order

belonged to the man of Frankish origin, and to the Barbarian who

lived under the law of the Franks; in the second rank was

placed the Barbarian, who lived under the law of his own

country; next came the native freeman and proprietor, the

Roman possessor, and, in the same degree, the Lidus or German

colonus; after them, the Roman tributary--i. e., the native

colonus; and, last of all, the slave, without distinction of

origin. These various classes, separated on the one hand by

distance of rank, on the other by difference of laws, manners,

and language, were far from being equally distributed between

the cities and the rural districts. All that was elevated in

the Gallo-Roman population, of whatever character it might be,

was found in the cities, where its noble, rich, and

industrious families dwelt, surrounded by their domestic

slaves; and, among the people of that race, the only constant

residents in the country were the half-servile coloni and the

agricultural slaves. On the contrary, the superior class of

the German population established itself in the country, where

each family, independent and proprietary, was maintained on

its own domain by the labour of the Lidi whom it had brought

thither, or of the old race of coloni who belonged to the

soil. The only Germans who resided in the cities were a small

number of officers in the service of the Crown, and of

individuals without family and patrimony, who, in spite of

their original habits, sought a livelihood by following some

employment. The social superiority of the dominant race rooted

itself firmly in the localities inhabited by them, and passed,

as has been already remarked, from the cities to the rural

districts. By degrees, also, it came to pass that the latter

drew off from the former the upper portion of their

population, who, in order to raise themselves still higher,

and to mix with the conquerors, imitated, as far as they were

able, their mode of life. ... While Barbarism was thus

occupying or usurping all the vantage points of the social

state, and civil life in the intermediate classes was arrested

in its progress, and sinking gradually to the lowest

condition, even to that of personal servitude, an ameliorating

movement already commenced before the fall of the empire,

still continued, and declared itself more and more loudly. The

dogma of a common brotherhood in the eyes of God, and of one

sole redemption for all mankind, preached by the Church to the

faithful of every race, touched the heart and awakened the

mind in favour of the slave, and, in consequence,

enfranchisements became more frequent, or a treatment more

humane was adopted on the part of the masters, whether Gauls

or Germans by origin. The latter, moreover, had imported from

their country, where the mode of life was simple and without

luxury, usages favourable to a modified slavery. The rich

barbarian was waited upon by free persons--by the children of

his relatives, his clients and his friends; the tendency of

his national manners, different from that of the Roman,

induced him to send the slave out of his house, and to

establish him as a labourer or artisan on some portion of land

to which he then became permanently attached, and the

destination of which he followed, whether it were inherited or

sold. ... Domestic slavery made the man a chattel, a mere

piece of moveable property. The slave, settled on a spot of

land, from that time entered into the category of real

property. At the same time that this last class, which

properly bore the name of serfs, was increased at the expense

of the first, the classes of the coloni and Lidi would

naturally multiply simultaneously, by the very casualties of

ruin and adverse circumstances which, at a period of incessant

commotions, injured the condition of the freemen. ... In the

very heart of the Barbarian society, the class of small

proprietors, which had originally formed its strength and

glory, decreased, and finally became extinct by sinking into

vassalage, or a state of still more ignoble dependence, which

partook more or less of the character of actual servitude. ...

The freemen depressed towards servitude met the slave who had

reached a sort of half liberty. Thus, through the whole extent

of Gaul, was formed a vast body of agricultural labourers and

rural artisans, whose lot, though never uniform, was brought

more and more to a level of equality; and the creative wants

of society produced a new sphere of industry in the country,

while the cities remained stationary, or sank more and more

into decay. ... On every large estate where improvement

flourished, the cabins of those employed, Lidi, coloni or

slaves, grouped as necessity or convenience suggested, were

multiplied and peopled more numerously, till they assumed the

form of a hamlet. When these hamlets were situated in a

favourable position ... they continued to increase till they

became villages. ... The building of a church soon raised the

village to the rank of a parish; and, as a consequence, the

new parish took its place among the rural circonscriptions.

... Thence sprung, altogether spontaneously, under the

sanction of the intendant, joined to that of the priest, rude

outlines of a municipal organization, in which the church

became the depository of the acts which, in accordance with

the Roman law, were inscribed on the registers of the city. It

is in this way that beyond the towns, the cities, and the

boroughs, where the remains of the old social condition

lingered in an increasing state of degradation, elements of

future improvement were formed. ... This modification, already

considerably advanced in the ninth century, was completed in

the course of the tenth. At that period, the last class of the

Gallo-Frankish society disappeared--viz., that of persons

held as chattels, bought, exchanged, transferred from one

place to another, like any other kind of moveable goods. The

slave now belonged to the soil rather than to the person; his

service, hitherto arbitrary, was changed into customary dues

and regulated employment; he had a settled abode, and, in

consequence, a right of possession in the soil on which he was

dependent. This is the earliest form in which we distinctly

trace the first impress of the modern world upon the civil

state.

{1415}

The word serf henceforward took its definite meaning; it

became the generic name of a mixed condition of servitude and

freedom, in which we find blended together the states of the

colonus and Lidus--two names which occur less and less

frequently in the tenth century, till they entirely disappear.

This century, the point to which all the social efforts of the

four preceding ones which had elapsed since the Frankish

conquest had been tending, saw the intestine struggle between

the Roman and German manners brought to a conclusion by an

important revolution. The latter definitively prevailed, and

from their triumph arose the feudal system; that is to say, a

new form of the state, a new constitution of property and

domestic life, a parcelling out of the sovereignty and

jurisdiction, all the public powers transformed into demesnial

privileges, the idea of nobility devoted to the profession of

arms, and that of ignobility to industry and labour. By a

remarkable coincidence, the complete establishment of this

system is the epoch when the distinction of races terminates

in Frankish Gaul--when all the legal consequences of

diversity of origin between Barbarians and Romans, conquerors

and subjects, disappear. The law ceases to be personal, and

becomes local; the German codes and the Roman code itself are

replaced by custom; it is the territory and not the descent

which distinguishes the inhabitant of the Gallic soil;

finally, instead of national distinctions, one mixed

population appears, to which the historian is able

henceforward to give the name of French."

A. Thierry,

Formation and Progress of the Tiers État in France,

volume 1, chapter 1.

GAUL: A. D. 412-453.

The mixed administration, Roman and barbarian.

"A prætorian prefect still resided at Trèves; a vicar of the

seventeen Gallic provinces at Aries: each of these provinces

had its Roman duke; each of the hundred and fifteen cities of

Gaul had its count; each city its curia, or municipality. But,

collaterally with this Roman organisation, the barbarians,

assembled in their 'mallum,' of which their kings were

presidents, decided on peace and war, made laws, or

administered justice. Each division of the army had its Graf

Jarl, or Count; each subdivision its centenary, or

hundred-man; and all these fractions of the free population

had the same right of deciding by suffrage in their own

mallums, or peculiar courts, all their common affairs. In

cases of opposition between the barbarian and the Roman

jurisdiction, the overbearing arrogance of the one, and the

abject baseness of the other, soon decided the question of

supremacy. In some provinces the two powers were not

concurrent: there were no barbarians between the Loire and the

Meuse, nor between the Alps and the Rhone; but the feebleness

of the Roman government was only the more conspicuous. A few

great proprietors cultivated a part of the province with the

aid of slaves; the rest was desert, or only inhabited by

Bagaudæ, runaway slaves, who lived by robbery. Some towns

still maintained a show of opulence, but not one gave the

slightest sign of strength; not one enrolled its militia, nor

repaired its fortifications. ... Honorius wished to confer on

the cities of southern Gaul a diet, at which they might have

deliberated on public affairs: he did not even find public

spirit enough to accept the offered privilege."

J. C. L. de Sismondi,

Fall of the Roman Empire,

chapter 7 (volume 1).

GAUL: A. D. 451.

Attila's invasion.

See HUNS: A. D. 451.

GAUL: A. D. 453-484.

Extension of the Visigothic kingdom.

See GOTHS (VISIGOTHS): A. D. 453-484.

GAUL: A. D. 457-486.

The last Roman sovereignty.

The last definite survival of Roman sovereignty in Gaul

lingered until 486 in a district north of the Seine, between

the Marne and the Oise, which had Soissons for its capital. It

was maintained there, in the first instance, by Ægidius, a

Gallic noble whom Marjorian, one of the last of the emperors

at Rome, made Master-General of Gaul. The respect commanded by

Ægidius among the surrounding barbarians was so great that the

Salian Franks invited him to rule over them, in place of a

licentious young king, Childeric, whom they had driven into

exile. He was king of these Franks, according to Gregory of

Tours, for eight years (457-464), until he died. Childeric

then returned, was reinstated in his kingdom and became the

father of Clovis (or Chlodwig), the founder of the great Frank

monarchy. But a son of Ægidius, named Syagrius, was still the

inheritor of a kingdom, known as, the "Kingdom of Syagrius,"

embracing, as has been said, the country around Soissons,

between the Seine, the Marne and the Oise, and also including,

in the opinion of some writers, Troyes and Auxerre. The first

exploit of Clovis--the beginning of his career of

conquest--was the overthrow of this "king of the Romans," as

Syagrius was called, in a decisive battle fought at Soissons,

A. D. 486, and the incorporation of his kingdom into the Frank

dominions. Syagrius escaped to Toulouse, but was surrendered

to Clovis and put to death.

P. Godwin,

History of France: Ancient Gaul,

book 3, chapter 11.

ALSO IN:

W. C. Perry,

The Franks,

chapter 2.

GAUL: A. D. 474.

Invasion of Ostrogoths.

See GOTHS (OSTROGOTHS): A. D. 473-474.

GAUL: A. D. 507-509.

Expulsion of the Visigoths.

See GOTHS (VISIGOTHS): A. D. 507-509.

GAUL: A. D. 540.

Formal relinquishment of the country to the Franks by

Justinian.

See FRANKS: A. D. 539-553.

GAULS.

"The Gauls, properly so called, the Galatæ of the Greeks, the

Galli of the Romans, and the Gael of modern history, formed

the van of the great Celtic migration which had poured

westward at various intervals during many hundred years. ...

Having overrun the south of Gaul and penetrated into Spain,

they lost a part of the territory thus acquired, and the

restoration of the Iberian fugitives to Aquitania placed a

barrier between the Celts in Spain and their brethren whom

they had left behind them in the north. In the time of the

Romans the Galli were found established in the centre and east

of the country denominated Gaul, forming for the most part a

great confederation, at the head of which stood the Arverni.

It was the policy of the Romans to raise the Ædui into

competition with this dominant tribe. ... The Arverni, whose

name is retained in the modern appellation of Auvergne,

occupied a large district in the middle and south of Gaul, and

were surrounded by tributary or dependent clans. The Ædui lay

more to the north and east, and the centre of their

possessions is marked by the position of their capital

Bibracte, the modern Autun, situated in the highlands which

separate the waters of the Loire, the Seine and the Saone. ...

{1416}

Other Gallic tribes stretched beyond the Saone: the Sequani,

who afterwards made an attempt to usurp this coveted

preeminence (the valley of the Doubs formed the centre of the

Sequanese territory, which reached to the Jura and the Rhine);

the Helvetii and other mountain races, whose scanty pastures

extended to the sources of the Rhine; the Allobroges, who

dwelt upon the Isere and Rhone, and who were the first of

their race to meet and the first to succumb before the prowess

of the Roman legions. According to the classification both of

Cæsar and Strabo, the Turones, Pictones and Santones must be

comprised under the same general denomination."

C. Merivale,

History of the Romans,

chapter 5 (volume 1).

See, also, CELTS.

GAUL: B. C. 390-347.

Invasions of Italy.

Destruction of Rome.

See ROME: B. C. 390-347.

GAUL: B. C. 295-191.

Roman conquest of the Cisalpine tribes.

See ROME: B. C. 295-191.

GAUL: B. C. 280-279.

Invasion of Greece.

In the year 280 B. C. the Gauls, who had long before passed

from northern Italy around the Adriatic to its eastern coast,

made their first appearance in Macedonia and northern Greece.

The Macedonian throne was occupied at the time by the infamous

usurper, Ptolemy Ceraunus (see MACEDONIA: B. C. 297-280), and

the Celtic savages did one good service to Greece by slaying

him, in the single battle that was fought. The whole open

country was abandoned to them, for a time, and they swept it,

as far southward as the valley of the Peneus, in Thessaly; but

the walled cities were safe. After ravaging the country for

some months the Gauls appear to have retired; but it was only

to return again the next year in more formidable numbers and

under a chief, Brennus, of more vigor and capability. On this

occasion the country suffered fearfully from the barbaric

swarm, but defended itself with something like the spirit of

the Greece of two centuries before. The Ætolians were

conspicuous in the struggle; the Peloponnesian states gave

little assistance. The policy of defense was much the same as

at the time of the Persian invasion, and the enemy was

confronted in force at the pass of Thermopylæ. Brennus made a

more desperate attempt to force the pass than Xerxes had done

and was beaten back with a tremendous slaughter of his Gauls.

But he found traitors, as Xerxes had done, to guide him over

the mountains, and the Greeks at Thermopylæ, surrounded by the

enemy, could only escape by sea. The Gauls marched on Delphi,

eager for the plunder of the great temple, and there they met

with some fatal disaster. Precisely what occurred is not

known. According to the Greeks, the god protected his

sanctuary, and the accounts they have left are full of

miracles and prodigies--of earthquakes, lightnings, tempests,

and disease. The only clear facts seem to be that Delphi was

successfully defended; that the Gauls retreated in disorder

and were destroyed in vast numbers before the remnant of them

got away from the country. Brennus is said to have killed

himself to escape the wrath of his people for the failure of

the expedition. One large body of the great army had separated

from the rest and gone eastward into Thrace, before the

catastrophe occurred. These subsequently passed over to Asia

and pursued there an adventurous career, leaving a historic

name in the country.

See GALATIA.

C. Thirlwall,

History of Greece,

chapter 60.

----------GAUL: End----------

GAULS, Præfect of the.

See PRÆTORIAN PRÆFECTS.

GAUSARAPOS, OR GUUCHIES, The.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: PAMPAS TRIBES.

GAVELKIND, Irish.

"The Irish law of succession in landed property, known as that

of Irish gavelkind, was a logical consequence of the theory of

tribal ownership. If a member of the tribe died, his piece of

land did not descend by right to his eldest son, or even to

all his children equally. Originally, it reverted to its sole

absolute owner, the tribe, every member of which had a right

to use proportionate to his tribal status. This was

undoubtedly the essential principle of inheritance by

gavelkind."

S. Bryant,

Celtic Ireland,

chapter 6.

ALSO IN:

Sir H. Maine,

Early History of Institutions,

lecture 7.

GAVELKIND, Kentish.

See FEUDAL TENURES.

GAVEREN, Battle of (1453).

See GHENT: A. D. 1451-1453.

GAZA: Early history.

See PHILISTINES.

GAZA: B. C. 332.

Siege by Alexander.

In his march from Phœnicia to Egypt (see MACEDONIA, &c.: B. C.

334-330), Alexander the Great was compelled to pause for

several months and lay siege to the ancient Philistine city of

Gaza. It was defended for the Persian king by a brave eunuch

named Batis. In the course of the siege, Alexander received a

severe wound in the shoulder, which irritated his savage

temper. When the town was at length taken by storm, he gave no

quarter. Its male inhabitants were put to the sword and the

women and children sold to slavery. The eunuch Batis, being

captured alive, but wounded, was dragged by the feet at the

tail of a chariot, driven at full speed by Alexander himself.

The "greatest of conquerors" proved himself often enough, in

this way, to be the greatest of barbarians--in his age.

G. Grote,

History of Greece,

part 2, chapter 93.

GAZA: B. C. 312.

Battle between Ptolemy and Demetrius.

See MACEDONIA: B. C. 315-310.

GAZA: B. C. 100.

Destruction by Alexander Jannæus.

Gaza having sided with the Egyptian king, in a war between

Alexander Jannæus, one of the Asmonean kings of the Jews, and

Ptolemy Lathyrus of Egypt and Cyprus, the former laid siege to

the city, about 100 B. C., and acquired possession of it after

several months, through treachery. He took his revenge by

massacring the inhabitants and reducing the city to ruins. It

was rebuilt not long afterwards by the Romans.

G. Long,

Decline of the Roman Republic,

volume 3, chapter 9.

GAZA: A. D. 1516.

Defeat of the Mamelukes by the Turks.

See TURKS: A. D. 1481-1520.

----------GAZA: End----------

GAZACA.

See ECBATANA.

GAZARI, The.

See CATHARISTS.

GAZNEVIDES, OR GHAZNEVIDES.

See TURKS: A. D. 999-1183.

GEARY ACT, The.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1892.

GEDDES, Jenny, and her stool.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1637.

{1417}

GEDROSIANS, The.

"Close to the Indus, and beyond the bare, hot, treeless shores

of the ocean, the southern part of the plain [of eastern Iran]

consists of sandy flats, in which nothing grows but prickly

herbs and a few palms. The springs are a day's journey from

each other, and often more. This region was possessed by a

people whom Herodotus calls Sattagydæ and the companions of

Alexander of Macedonia, Gedrosians. ... Neighbours of the

Gandarians, who, as we know, dwelt on the right bank of the

Indus down to the Cabul, the Gedrosians led a wandering,

predatory life; under the Persian kings, they were united into

one satrapy with the Gandarians."

M. Duncker,

History of Antiquity,

book 7, chapter 1 (volume 5).

GEIZA II., King of Hungary, A. D. 1141-1160.

GELA, Founding of.

See SYRACUSE, FOUNDING OF.

GELASIUS II., Pope, A. D. 1118-1119.

GELEONTES.

See PHYLÆ.

GELHEIM, Battle of (1298).

See GERMANY: A. D. 1273-1308.

GELONI, The.

An ancient colony of Greeks intermixed with natives which

shared the country of the Budini, on the steppes between the

Ural Mountains and the Caspian Sea.

G. Grote, History of Greece,

part 2, volume 3, chapter 17.

GELVES, Battle of (1510).

See BARBARY STATES: A. D. 1505-1510.

GEMARA, The.

See TALMUD.

GEMBLOURS, Battle of (1578).

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1577-1581.

GEMEINDE.--GEMEINDERATH.

See SWITZERLAND: A. D. 1848-1890.

GEMOT.

A meeting, assembly, council, moot.

See WITENAGEMOT.

GENABUM, OR CENABUM.

The principal town of the Gallic tribe called the Carnutes;

identified by most archæologists with the modern city of

Orleans, France, though some think its site was at Gien.

See GAUL, CÆSAR'S CONQUEST OF.

GENAUNI, The.

See RHÆTIANS.

GENERAL PRIVILEGE OF ARAGON.

See CORTES, THE EARLY SPANISH.

GENERALS, Execution of the Athenian.

See GREECE: B. C. 406.

GENET, "Citizen," the mission of.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1793.

GENEVA: Beginnings of the city.

See HELVETII, THE ARRESTED MIGRATION OF THE.

GENEVA: A. D. 500.

Under the Burgundians.

See BURGUNDIANS: A. D. 500.

GENEVA: 10th Century.

In the kingdom of Arles.

See BURGUNDY: A. D. 843-933.

GENEVA: A. D. 1401.

Acquisition of the Genevois, or County, by the House of Savoy.

The city surrounded.

See SAVOY: 11TH-15TH CENTURIES.

GENEVA: A. D. 1504-1535.

The emancipation of the city from the Vidomme and the

Prince-Bishop.

Triumph of the Reformation.

"Geneva was nominally a free city of the Empire, but had in

reality been governed for some centuries by its own bishop,

associated with a committee of lay-assessors, and controlled

by the general body of the citizens, in whose hands the

ultimate power of taxation, and of election of the magistrates

and regulation of the police, rested. The prince-bishop did

not exercise his temporal jurisdiction directly, but through

an officer called the Vidomme (vice-dominus), whose rights had

in the 15th century become hereditary in the dukes of Savoy.

These rights appear to have been exercised without any

considerable attempt at encroachment till the beginning of the

following century, when Charles III. succeeded to the ducal

crown (1504). To his ambition the bishop, John, a weak and

willing tool of the Savoy family, to which he was nearly

allied, ceded everything; and the result was a tyrannical

attempt to destroy the liberties of the Genevese. The Assembly

of the citizens rose in arms; a bitter and sanguinary contest

ensued between the Eidgenossen [Confederates] or Patriot party

on the one side, and the Mamelukes or monarchical party on the

other side. By the help of the free Helvetian states,

particularly Berne and Friburg, the Patriots triumphed, the

friends of Savoy were banished, the Vidommate abolished, and

its powers transferred to a board of magistrates. The conduct

of the bishops in this conflict ... helped greatly, as may be

imagined, to shake the old hierarchical authority in Geneva;

and when, in 1532, Farel first made his appearance in the

city, he found a party not indisposed to join him in his eager

and zealous projects of reform. He had a hard fight for it,

however, and was at first obliged to yield, and leave the city

for a time; and it was not till August 1535 that he and Viret

and Froment succeeded in abolishing the mass, and establishing

the Protestant faith."

J. Tulloch,

Leaders of the Reformation,

pages 161-162.

ALSO IN:

J. Planta,

History of the Helvetic Confederacy,

book 2, chapter 6 (volume 2).

I. Spon,

History of the City and State of Geneva,

book 2.

See, also, SWITZERLAND: A. D. 1531-1648.

GENEVA: A. D. 1536.

The coming of Calvin.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1521-1535.

GENEVA: A. D. 1536-1564.

Calvin's Ecclesiastical State.

"Humanly speaking, it was a mere accident which caused Calvin

to yield to the entreaties of his friends to remain in the

city where he was to begin his renowned efforts in the cause

of reform. Geneva had been from ancient times one of the most

flourishing imperial cities of the Burgundian territory; it

was situated on the frontiers of several countries where the

cross roads of various nationalities met. The city, which in

itself was remarkable, belonged originally to the German

empire; the language of its inhabitants was Romanic; it was

bounded on one side by Burgundy, on the other by German

Switzerland. ... Geneva was apparently in a state of

political, ecclesiastical, and moral decay. With the

puritanical strictness of Geneva, as it afterwards became,

before the mind's eye, it is difficult to picture the Geneva

of that day. An unbridled love of pleasure, a reckless

wantonness, a licentious frivolity had taken possession of

Genevan life, while the State was the plaything of intestine

and foreign feuds. ... Reformers had already appeared in the

city: Vinet, Farel, Theodore Beza; they were Frenchmen, Farel

a near neighbour of Geneva. These French Reformers are of

quite a different stamp from our Germans, who, according as

Luther or Melancthon is taken as their type, have either a

plebeian popular, or learned theological character. They are

either popular orators of great power and little polish, or

they belong to the learned circles, and keep strictly to this

character. In France they were mostly men belonging not to the

lower, but to the middle and higher ranks of society, refined

and cultivated; and in this fact lay the weakness of

Calvinism, which knew well how to rule the masses, but never

to gain their affection. ...

{1418}

His [Calvin's] greatness ... was shown in the fanatical zeal

with which he entered the city, ready to stake his life for

his cause. He began to teach, to found a school, to labour on

the structure which was the idea of his life, to introduce

reforms in doctrine, worship, the constitution and discipline

of the Church, and he preached with that powerful eloquence

only possessed by those in whom character and teaching are in

unison. The purified worship was to take place within bare,

unadorned walls; no picture of Christ, nor pomp of any kind,

was to disturb the aspirations of the soul. Life outside the

temple was also to be a service of God; games, swearing,

dancing, singing, worldly amusements, and pleasure were

regarded by him as sins, as much as real vice and crime. He

began to form little congregations, like those in the early

ages of the Church, and it need scarcely be said that even in

this worldly and pleasure-loving city the apparition of this

man, in the full vigour of life, all conviction and

determination, half prophet and half tribune, produced a

powerful impression. The number of his outward followers

increased, but they were outward followers only. Most of them

thought it would be well to make use of the bold Reformer to

oppose the bishop, and that he would find means of

establishing a new and independent Church, but they seemed to

regard freedom as libertinism. Calvin therefore regarded the

course things were taking with profound dissatisfaction. ...

So he delivered some extremely severe sermons, which half

frightened and half estranged his hearers; and at Easter,

1538, when the congregation came to partake of the Lord's

Supper, he took the unheard-of step of sending them all back

from the altar, saying, 'You are not worthy to partake of the

Lord's body; you are just what you were before; your

sentiments, your morals, and your conduct are unchanged.' This

was more than could be hazarded without peril to his life. The

effect was indescribable; his own friends disapproved of the

step. But that did not dismay him. He had barely time to flee

for his life, and he had to leave Geneva in a state of

transition--a chaos which justified a saying of his own, that

defection from one Church is not renovation by another. He was

now once more an exile. He wandered about on the frontiers of

his country, in the German cities of Strasburg, Basle, &c.,

and we several times meet with him in the religious

discussions between 1540 and 1550. ... But a time came when

they wished him back at Geneva. ... In September, 1541, he

returned and began his celebrated labours. Endowed with

supreme power, like Lycurgus at Sparta, he set to work to make

Geneva a city of the Lord--to found an ecclesiastical state in

which religion, public life, government, and the worship of

God were to be all of a piece, and an extraordinary task it

was. Calvinistic Geneva became the school of reform for

western Europe, and scattered far and wide the germs of

similar institutions. In times when Protestantism elsewhere

had become cool, this school carried on the conflict with the

mediæval Church. Calvin was implacable in his determination to

purify the worship of God of all needless adjuncts. All that

was calculated to charm and affect the senses was abolished;

spiritual worship should be independent of all earthly things,

and should consist of edification by the word, and simple

spiritual songs. All the traditional externals that Luther had

retained--altars, pictures, ceremonials, and decorations of

every kind--were dispensed with. ... Calvin next established a

system of Church discipline which controlled the individual in

every relation of life, and ruled him from the cradle to the

grave. He retained all the means by which ecclesiastical

authority enforced obedience on the faithful in the Middle

Ages--baptism, education up to confirmation, penance, penal

discipline, and excommunication. ... Calvin began his labours

late in the autumn of 1541, and he acquired and maintained

more power than was ever exercised by the most powerful popes.

He was indeed only the 'preacher of the word,' but through his

great influence he was the lawgiver, the administrator, the

dictator of the State of Geneva. There was nothing in the

commonwealth that had not been ordained by him, and this

indicates a remarkable aspect of his character. The

organization of the State of Geneva began with the ordinances

of the 2nd of January, 1542. There were four orders of

officials--pastors, teachers, elders, and deacons. The

Consistory was formed of the pastors and elders. ... It was

the special duty of the Consistory, which was composed of the

clergy and twelve laymen, to see that the ordinances were duly

observed, and it was the supreme tribunal of morals. The

twelve laymen were elected for a year, by the council of two

hundred, on the nomination by the clergy. The Consistory met

every Thursday to see that everything in the church was in

order. They had the power of excommunication, but this only

consisted in exclusion from the community of the faithful, and

the loss of the privilege of partaking of the Lord's Supper.

It also decided questions relating to marriage. The deacons

had the care of the poor and of almsgiving. Calvin himself was

the soul of the whole organization. But he was a cold, stiff,

almost gloomy being, and his character produces a very

different impression from the genial warmth of Luther, who

could be cheerful and merry with his family. Half Old

Testament prophet, half Republican demagogue, Calvin could do

anything in his State, but it was by means of his personal

influence, the authority of his words, 'the majesty of his

character,' as was said by a magistrate of Geneva after his

death. He was to the last the simple minister, whose frugal

mode of life appeared to his enemies like niggardliness. After

a reign of twenty-three years, he left behind him the

possessions of a mendicant monk. ... No other reformer

established so rigid a church discipline. ... All noisy games,

games of chance, dancing, singing of profane songs, cursing

and swearing, were forbidden, and ... church-going and

Sabbath-keeping were strictly enjoined. The moral police took

account of everything. Every citizen had to be at home by nine

o'clock, under heavy penalties. Adultery, which had previously

been punished by a few days' imprisonment and a small fine,

was now punished by death. ... At a time when Europe had no

solid results of reform to show, this little State of Geneva

stood up as a great power; year by year it sent forth apostles

into the world, who preached its doctrines everywhere, and it

became the most dreaded counterpoise to Rome, when Rome no

longer had any bulwark to defend her. ... It formed a weighty

counterpoise to the desperate efforts which the ancient Church

and monarchical power were making to crush the spirit of the

Reformation.

{1419}

It was impossible to oppose Caraffa, Philip II., and the

Stuarts, with Luther's passive resistance; men were wanted who

were ready to wage war to the knife, and such was the

Calvinistic school. It everywhere accepted the challenge;

throughout all the conflicts for political and religious

liberty, up to the time of the first emigration to America, in

France, the Netherlands, England, and Scotland, we recognise

the Genevan school. A little bit of the world's history was

enacted in Geneva, which forms the proudest portion of the

sixteenth and seventeenth centuries."

L. Häusser,

The Period of the Reformation,

chapter 18.

ALSO IN:

P. Henry,

Life and Times of Calvin,

parts 2-3.

J. H. Merle D'Aubigne,

History of the Reformation in the time of Calvin,

books 9 and 11.

F. P. Guizot,

Calvin,

chapters 12-22.

L. von Ranke,

Civil Wars and Monarchy in France, 16th-17th Centuries,

chapter 8.

GENEVA: A. D. 1570.

Treaty with the Duke of Savoy.

Agreement of non-molestation.

See SAVOY: A. D. 1559-1580.

GENEVA: A. D. 1602-1603.

The escalade of the Savoyards and its repulse.

Treaty of St. Julien.

Finding a pretext in some hostile manifestations which had

appeared among the Genevese during a conflict between the

French king and himself, Charles Emanuel I., duke of Savoy,

chose to consider himself at war with Geneva, and "determined

to fight out his quarrel without further notice. The night of

the 11th to the 12th of December, 1602.. is forever memorable

in the annals of Geneva. 4,000 Savoyards, aided by darkness,

attempted the escalade of its walls; an unforeseen accident

disconcerted them; the citizens exhibited the most heroic

presence of mind; the ladders by which the aggressors ascended

were shot down by a random cannon-ball; the troops outside

fell into confusion; those who had already entered the town

were either mowed down in fight or hung on the scaffold on the

morrow; thus the whole enterprise miscarried. It was in vain

that the Duke came forward with his whole host, and tried to

prevail by open force where stratagem had failed. He was

thwarted by the intervention of the French and Swiss, and

compelled by their threats to sign the Treaty of St. Julien

(July 21st, 1603), which secured the independence of the

Genevese. Charles nevertheless did not, to his last day, give

up his designs upon that city."

A. Gallenga,

History of Piedmont,

volume 3, chapter 2.

GENEVA: A. D. 1798.

Forcibly united to the French Republic.

See SWITZERLAND: A. D. 1792-1798.

GENEVA: A. D. 1814.

United with the Swiss Confederation.

See SWITZERLAND: A. D. 1803-1848.

GENEVA: A. D. 1815.

United as a canton to the Swiss Confederation, by the Congress

of Vienna.

See VIENNA, THE CONGRESS OF.

----------GENEVA: End----------

GENEVA CONVENTION, The.

See RED CROSS.

GENEVA TRIBUNAL OF ARBITRATION.

See ALABAMA CLAIMS: A. D. 1871, and 1871-1872.

GENEVOIS, The.

See SAVOY AND PIEDMONT: 11TH-15TH CENTURIES.

GENGHIS KHAN, The conquests of.

See MONGOLS: A. D. 1153-1227.

GENOA:

Origin and rise of the city.

"Genoa, anciently Genua, was the chief maritime city of

Liguria, and afterwards a Roman municipium. Under the Lombards

the constant invasions of the Saracens united the professions

of trade and war, and its greatest merchants became also its

greatest generals, while its naval captains were also

merchants. The Crusades were of great advantage to Genoa [see

CRUSADES: A. D. 1104-1111] in enabling it to establish trading

settlements as far as the Black Sea; but the power of Pisa in

the East, as well as its possession of Corsica and Sardinia,

led to wars between it and Genoa, in which the Genoese took

Corsica [see CORSICA: EARLY HISTORY] and drove the Pisans out

of Sardinia. By land the Genoese territory was extended to

Nice on one side and to Spezia on the other."

A. J. C. Hare,

Cities of Northern and Central Italy,

volume 1, page 30.

GENOA: A. D. 1256-1257.

Battles with the Venetians at Acre.

See VENICE: A. D. 1256-1257.

GENOA: A. D. 1261-1299.

The supplanting of Venice at Constantinople and in the Black

Sea trade.

Colonies in the Crimea.

Wars with Venice.

Victory at Curzola and favorable treaty of peace.

During the Latin dynasty in Constantinople the Genoese never

gained the first place in the commerce of the Black Sea. ...

It was Venice who held the key of all this commerce, at

Constantinople; when, after diverting the whole course of the

fourth Crusade, she induced Christendom to waste its energies

on subduing the Greek empire for her benefit [see BYZANTINE

EMPIRE: A.D. 1203-1204]. With the exiled Greek dynasty,

however, the Genoese were always on the best of terms, at

Trebizond, Nicea, and in Roumania; and recognizing that as

long as the Latins were all-powerful in Constantinople she

would have to relinquish the cream of the Black Sea commerce

to the Queen of the Adriatic, she at length determined to

strike a bold stroke and replace a Greek again on the throne."

This was accomplished in 1261, when Baldwin II. fled from the

Byzantine capital and Michael Paleologus took possession of

his throne and crown (see GREEK EMPIRE OF NICÆA: A. D.

1204-1261). For the assistance given in that revolution, the

Genoese obtained the treaty of Ninfeo, "which firmly

established their influence in the Black Sea. ... Thus did the

brave mariner-town of Genoa turn the scale of the vast, but

rotten, Eastern Empire; and her reward was manifold. The

grateful emperor gave her streets and quays in Constantinople,

immunity from tribute, and a free passage for her commerce.

... In addition to these excellent terms in the treaty of

Ninfeo, the emperor conceded to various Genoese private

families numerous islands in the Archipelago. ... But the

great nucleus of this power was the streets, churches, and

quays in Constantinople which were allotted to the Genoese,

and formed a vast emporium of strength and commerce, which

must have eventually led to entire possession of

Constantinople, had not the 'podesta,' or ruler of the Genoese

colony there, thought fit, from personal motives, or from large

offers made him by the Venetians, to attempt a restoration of

the Latin line. ... His conspiracy was discovered, and the

Genoese were sent away in a body to Eraclea. However, on

representation from home that it was none of their doing, and

that Guercio had been acting entirely on his own account, the

emperor yielded in perpetuity to the Genoese the town of Pera,

on the sole condition that the governors should do him homage

[see, also, CONSTANTINOPLE: A. D. 1261-1453]. ...

{1420}

Thus were the Genoese established in this commanding position;

here they had a separate government of their own, from here

they ruled the road of commerce from China to Europe; and,

taking advantage of the weakness of the emperors, they were

able to do much as they wished about building fortresses and

palaces, with gardens to the water's edge; and thus from Pera,

with its citadel of Galata behind it, they were enabled to

dictate what terms they pleased to ships passing to and from

the Bosphorus." In the Black Sea, "from time immemorial, the

small tongue of land now known as the Crimea, then as the

Tauric Chersonese, was the mart towards which all the caravan

trade of Asia was directed by this northern road, and upon

this tongue of land sprang up a group of noble cities which,

until finally seized by the Turks, were without exception

Genoese property. Of these, Caffa was the chief. When this

city was built on the ruins of Theodosia, and by whom, is

somewhat shrouded in mystery. Certain it is that Genoa had a

colony here soon after the first Crusade. ... Second only to

Caffa in importance, and better known to us by name, was the

town of Crim, which gave its name eventually to the whole

peninsula, which originally it had got from the Crim Tatars.

... Prior to its cession to the Genoese, it had been the

residence of a Tatar emperor. ... Here, then, in this narrow

tongue of land, which we now call the Crimea, was the kernel

of Genoese prosperity. As long as she flourished here she

flourished at home. And when at length the Turkish scourge

swept over this peninsula and swallowed up her colonies, the

Ligurian Republic, by a process of slow decay, withered like a

sapless tree." The supplanting of the Venetians at

Constantinople by the Genoese, and the great advantages gained

by the latter in the commerce of the Black Sea, led

necessarily to war between the rival republics. "To maintain

her newly acquired influence in the East, Genoa sent forth a

fleet under the joint command of Pierino Grimaldi, a noble,

and Perchelto Mallone, the people's representative. They

encountered the Venetian squadron at Malvasia [1263] which was

greatly inferior to their own. But as the combatants were just

warming to their work, Mallone, actuated by party spirit,

withdrew his ships and sailed away. The Venetians could

scarcely believe what they saw; they anticipated some deep

laid stratagem, and withdrew for a while from the contest.

When however they beheld Mallone's galleys fairly under sail,

they wonderingly attacked Grimaldi and his 13 ships and

obtained an easy victory. Grimaldi fell at his post. ... This

fatal day of Malvasia [sometimes called the battle of Sette

Pozzi] might easily have secured Venice her lost place in the

Black Sea had she been able to follow up her victory, but with

inexplicable want of vigour she remained inactive." Genoa,

meantime, recovered from the disaster and sent out another

fleet which captured a rich squadron of Venetian merchant

ships in the Adriatic, taking large booty. "It surprises us

immensely to find how for the next thirty years Genoa was able

to keep up a desultory warfare with Venice, when she was at

the height of her struggle with Pisa; and it surprises us

still more that Venice raised not a hand to assist Pisa,

though she was on most friendly terms with her, and when by so

doing she could have ruined Genoa. ... After the fall of Pisa

at Meloria, in 1296 [1284], Genoa could transfer her attention

with all the greater vigour to her contest against Venice.

Four years after this victory men's minds were again bent on

war. Venice cared not to pay a tax to her rival on all ships

which went to Caffa, Genoa resented the treatment she had

received in Cyprus, and thus the rivals prepared for another

and more determined contest for supremacy." The Venetians sent

a fleet to operate in the Black Sea. "Fire was set to the

houses of Galata, irreparable damage was done to Caffa, and in

the Archipelago everything Genoese was burnt, and then off

they sailed for Cyprus, whilst the Genoese were squabbling

amongst themselves. With much trouble the many rulers of Genoa

succeeded at length in adjusting their difference, and a

goodly array of 76 galleys was entrusted to the care of Lamba

D'Oria to punish the Venetians for their depredations. ...

Much larger was the force Venice produced for the contest, and

when the combatants met off Curzola, amongst the Dalmatian

islands, the Genoese were anxious to come to terms, and sought

them, but the Venetians haughtily refused. ... This battle of

Curzola [September 8, 1298] was a sharp and vehement struggle,

and resulted in terrible loss to the Venetians, four of whose

galleys alone escaped to tell the tale. ... Had Lamba D'Oria

but driven the contest home, Venice was ill-prepared to meet

him; as it was, he determined to sail off to Genoa, taking

with him the Venetian admiral ... Dandolo. Chained to the mast

of his own vessel, and unable to sustain the effects of his

humiliation, there, as he stood, Dandolo dashed his head

against the mast and died. ... The natural result of such a

victory was a most favourable peace for Genoa, signed under

the direction of Matteo Visconti, lord of Milan, in 1299; and

thus the century closed on Genoa as without doubt the most

powerful state in Italy, and unquestionably the mistress of

the Mediterranean. ... The next outbreak of war between the

two Republics had its origin in the occupation of the island

of Chios, in 1349," and Genoa in that struggle encountered not

the Venetians alone, but the Greeks and Catalans in alliance

with them.

See CONSTANTINOPLE: A. D. 1348-1355.

J. T. Bent,

Genoa: How the Republic rose and fell,

chapters 6 and 8.

ALSO IN:

W. C. Hazlitt,

History of the Venetian Republic,

chapter 11 (volume 2).

GENOA: A. D. 1282-1290.

War with Pisa.

The great victory of Meloria.

Capture of the chain of the Pisan harbor.

See PISA: A. D. 1063-1293.

GENOA: A. D. 1313.

Alliance with the Emperor Henry VII. against Naples.

See ITALY: A. D. 1310-1313.

GENOA: A. D. 1318-1319.

Feuds of the four great families.

Siege of the city by the exiles and the Lombard princes, and

its defense by the King of Naples.

See ITALY: A. D. 1313-1330.

GENOA: A. D. 1348-1355.

War with the Greeks, Venetians and Aragonese.

See CONSTANTINOPLE: AD. 1348-1355.

GENOA: A. D. 1353.

Annexed by the Visconti to their Milanese principality.

See MILAN: A. D. 1277-1447.

GENOA: A. D. 1378-1379.

Renewed war with Venice.

The victory at Pola.

See VENICE: A. D. 1378-1379.

{1421}

GENOA: A. D. 1379-1381.

The disastrous war of Chioggia.

Venice triumphant.

See VENICE: A. D. 1379-1381.

GENOA: A. D. 1381-1422.

A succession of foreign masters.

The King of France, the Marquis of Monferrat

and the Duke of Milan.

The history of Genoa for more than a century after the

disastrous War of Chioggia "is one long and melancholy tissue

of internal and external troubles, coming faster and faster

upon one another as the inherent vitality of the Republic grew

weaker. ... During this period we have a constant and

unhealthy craving for foreign masters, be they Marquises of

Monferrato, Dukes of Milan, or the more formidable subverters

of freedom, the kings of France. ... In 1396 ... Adorno [then

doge of Genoa], finding himself unable to tyrannize as he

wished, decided on handing over the government to Charles VI.

of France. In this he was ably backed up by many members of

the old nobility, as the signatures to the treaty testify. The

king was to be entitled 'Defender of the Commune and People,'

and was to respect in every way the existing order of things.

So on the 27th of November, in that year, the great bell in

the tower of the ducal palace was rung, the French standard

was raised by the side of the red cross of Genoa, and in the

great council hall, where her rulers had sat for centuries,

now sat enthroned the French ambassadors, whilst Antoniotto

Adorno handed over to them the sceptre and keys of the city.

These symbols of government were graciously restored to him,

with the admonition that he should no longer be styled 'doge,'

but 'governor' in the name of France. Thus did Adorno sell his

country for the love of power, preferring to be the head of

many slaves, rather than to live as a subordinate in a free

community. The first two governors sent by France after

Adorno's death were unable to cope with the seething mass of

corruption they found within the city walls, until the Marshal

Boucicault was sent, whose name was far famed for cruelty in

Spain against the Moors, in Bulgaria against the Turks, and in

France against the rebels." The government of Boucicault was

hard and cruel, and "his name is handed down by the Genoese as

the most hateful of her many tyrants." In 1409 they took

advantage of his absence from the city to bring in the Marquis

of Monferrato, who established himself in his place. "It was

but for a brief period that the Genoese submitted to the

Marquis of Monferrato; they preferred to return to their doges

and internal quarrels. ... Throughout the city nothing was

heard but the din of arms. Brother fought against brother,

father against son, and for the whole of an unusually chill

December, in 1414, there was not a by-path in Genoa which was

not paved with lances, battle-axes and dead bodies. ... Out of

this fiery trial Genoa at length emerged with Tommaso

Campofregoso as her doge, one of the few bright lights which

illumined Liguria during the early part of this century. ...

The Genoese arms during this time of quiescence again shone

forth with something of their ancient brilliancy. Corsica was

subdued, and a substantial league was formed with Henry V. of

England, ... 1421, by which perpetual friendship and peace by

land and sea was sworn. Short, however, was the period during

which Genoa could rest contented at home. Campofregoso was

driven from the dogeship, and Filippo Maria, Visconti of

Milan, was appointed protector of the Republic [1422], and

through this allegiance the Genoese were drawn into an

unprofitable war for the succession in Naples, in which the

Duke of Milan and the Pope supported the claims of Queen

Joanna and her adopted son, Louis of Anjou, against Alphonso

of Aragon."

J. T. Bent,

Genoa,

chapter 9.

The Universal History,

chapter 73, sections 3-4 (volume 25).

GENOA: A. D. 1385-1386.

Residence of Pope Urban VI.

See ITALY (SOUTHERN): A. D. 1343-1389.

GENOA: A. D. 1407-1448.

The Bank of St. George.

"The Bank of St. George was founded in Genoa in the year 1407.

It was an immense success and a great support to the

government. It gradually became a republic within the

republic, more peaceful and better regulated than its

mistress." In 1448 the administration of Corsica and of the

Genoese colonies in the Levant was transferred to the Bank,

which thenceforward appointed governors and conducted colonial

affairs.

G. B. Malleson,

Studies from Genoese History,

page 75.

ALSO IN:

J. T. Bent,

Genoa,

chapter 11.

See, also,

CORSICA: EARLY HISTORY.

GENOA: A. D. 1421-1435.

Submission to the Duke of Milan, and recovery of the freedom

of the city.

See ITALY: A. D. 1412-1447.

GENOA: A. D. 1458-1464.

Renewed struggles of domestic faction and changes of foreign

masters.

Submission to the Dukes of Milan.

"Genoa, wearied with internal convulsions, which followed each

other incessantly, had lost all influence over the rest of

Italy; continually oppressed by faction, it no longer

preserved even the recollection of liberty. In 1458, it had

submitted to the king of France, then Charles VII.; and John

of Anjou, duke of Calabria, had come to exercise the functions

of governor in the king's name. He made it, at the same time,

his fortress, from whence to attack the kingdom of Naples.

See ITALY: A. D. 1447-1480.

But this war had worn out the patience of the Genoese; they

rose against the French; and, on the 17th of July, 1461,

destroyed the army sent to subdue them by René of Anjou. The

Genoese had no sooner thrown off a foreign yoke than they

became divided into two factions,--the Adorni and the Fregosi,

[severally partisans of two families of that name which

contended for the control of the republic]: both had at

different times, and more than once, given them a doge. The

more violent and tyrannical of these factious magistrates was

Paolo Fregoso, also archbishop of Genoa, who had returned to

his country, in 1462, as chief of banditti; and left it again,

two years afterwards, as chief of a band of pirates. The

Genoese, disgusted with their independence, which was

disgraced by so many crimes and disturbances, had, on the 13th

of April, 1464, yielded to Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan;

and afterwards remained subject to his son Galeazzo."

J. C. L. de Sismondi,

History of the Italian Republics,

chapter 11.

ALSO IN:

B. Duffy,

The Tuscan Republics,

chapter 23.

GENOA: A. D. 1475.

Loss of possessions in the Crimea.

See TURKS: A. D. 1451-1481.

{1422}

GENOA: A. D. 1500-1507.

Capitulation to Louis XII. of France, conqueror of Milan.

Revolt and subjugation.

By the conquest of Milan (see ITALY: A. D. 1499-1500), Louis

XII. of France acquired the signoria of Genoa, which had been

held by the deposed duke, Ludovico Sforza. "According to the

capitulation, one half of the magistrates of Genoa should be

noble, the other half plebeian. They were to be chosen by the

suffrages of their fellow-citizens; they were to retain the

government of the whole of Liguria, and the administration of

their own finances, with the reservation of a fixed sum

payable yearly to the king of France. But the French could

never comprehend that nobles were on an equality with

villains; that a king was bound by conditions imposed by his

subjects; or that money could be refused to him who had force.

All the capitulations of Genoa were successively violated; while

the Genoese nobles ranged themselves on the side of a king

against their country: they were known to carry insolently

about them a dagger, on which was inscribed, 'Chastise

villains'; so impatient were they to separate themselves from

the people, even by meanness and assassination. That people

could not support the double yoke of a foreign master and of

nobles who betrayed their country. On the 7th of February,

1507, they revolted, drove out the French, proclaimed the

republic, and named a new doge; but time failed them to

organize their defence. On the 3d of April, Louis advanced

from Grenoble with a powerful army. He soon arrived before

Genoa: the newly-raised militia, unable to withstand veteran

troops, were defeated. Louis entered Genoa on the 29th of

April; and immediately sent the doge and the greater number of

the generous citizens, who had signalized themselves in the

defence of their country, to the scaffold."

J. C. L. de Sismondi,

History of the Italian Republics,

chapter 14.

ALSO IN:

L. von Ranke,

History of the Latin and Teutonic Nations

from 1494 to 1514,

page 260.

GENOA: A. D. 1527-1528.

French dominion momentarily restored and then overthrown by

Andrew Doria.

The republic revived.

See ITALY: A. D. 1527-1529.

GENOA: A. D. 1528-1559.

The conspiracy of Fiesco and its failure.

Revolt and recovery of Corsica.

"Sustained by the ability of Doria, and protected by the arms

of Charles V., the Republic, during near nineteen years

subsequent to this auspicious revolution, continued in the

enjoyment of dignified independence and repose. But, the

memorable conspiracy of Louis Fiesco, Count of Lavagna, the

Catiline of Liguria, had nearly subverted Genoa, and reduced

it anew to the obedience of France, or exposed it once more to

all the misfortunes of anarchy. The massacre of Doria and his

family constituted one of the primary objects of the plot;

while the dissimulation, intrepidity, and capacity, which

marked its leader ... have rendered the attempt one of the

most extraordinary related in modern history. It was

accompanied with complete success till the moment of its

termination. Jeannetin Doria, the heir of that house, having

perished by the dagger, and Andrew, his uncle, being with

difficulty saved by his servants, who transported him out of

the city, the Genoese Senate was about to submit

unconditionally to Fiesco, when that nobleman, by a sudden and

accidental death, at once rendered abortive his own hopes and

those of his followers. The government, resuming courage,

expelled the surviving conspirators; and Doria, on his return

to the city, sullied the lustre of his high character, by

proceeding to acts of cruelty against the brothers and

adherents of the Count of Lavagna. Notwithstanding this

culpable and vindictive excess, he continued invariably firm

to the political principles which he had inculcated, for

maintaining the freedom of the Commonwealth. Philip, Prince of

Spain, son of Charles V., having visited Genoa in the

succeeding year, attempted to induce the senate, under

specious pretences of securing their safety, to consent to the

construction of a citadel, garrisoned by Spaniards. But he found

in that assembly, as well as in Doria, an insurmountable

opposition to the measure, which was rejected with unanimous

indignation. The island of Corsica, which had been subjected

for ages to Genoa, and which was oppressed by a tyrannical

administration, took up arms at this period [1558-1559]; and

the French having aided the insurgents, they maintained a long

and successful struggle against their oppressors. But the

peace concluded at Cateau between Philip, King of Spain, and

Henry II., in which the Spanish court dictated terms to

France, obliged that nation to evacuate their Corsican

acquisitions, and to restore the island to the Genoese.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1547-1559.

Soon afterwards [1559], at the very advanced age of ninety,

Andrew Doria expired in his own palace, surrounded by the

people on whom he had conferred freedom and tranquillity;

leaving the Commonwealth in domestic repose and undisturbed by

foreign war."

Sir N. W. Wraxall,

History of France, 1574-1610,

volume 2, pages 43-44.

ALSO IN:

G. B. Malleson,

Studies from Genoese History,

chapter 1-3.

GENOA: A. D. 1625-1626.

Unsuccessful attack by France and Savoy.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1624-1626.

GENOA: A. D. 1745.

The republic sides with Spain and France in the War of the

Austrian Succession.

See ITALY: A. D. 1745.

GENOA: A. D. 1746-1747.

Surrendered to the Austrians.

Popular rising.

Expulsion of the Austrian garrison.

Long siege and deliverance of the city.

See ITALY: A. D. 1746-1747.

GENOA: A. D. 1748.

Territory secured by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle.

See AIX-LA-CHAPELLE: A. D. 1748.

GENOA: A. D. 1768.

Cession of Corsica to France.

See CORSICA: A. D. 1729-1769.

GENOA: A. D. 1796.

Treaty of peace with France.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1796 (OCTOBER).

GENOA: A. D. 1797.

Revolution forced by Bonaparte.

Creation of the Ligurian Republic.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1797 (MAY-OCTOBER).

GENOA: A. D. 1800.

Siege by the Austrians.

Masséna's defense.

Surrender of the city.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1800-1801 (MAY-FEBRUARY).

GENOA: A. D. 1805.

Surrender of independence.

Annexation to France.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1804-1805.

GENOA: A. D. 1814.

Reduction of the forts by English troops.

Surrender of the French garrison.

See ITALY: A. D. 1814.

GENOA: A. D. 1814-1815.

Annexation to the kingdom of Sardinia.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1814 (APRIL-JUNE);

and VIENNA, THE CONGRESS OF.

----------GENOA: End----------

GENOLA, Battle of (1799).

See FRANCE: A. D. 1799 (AUGUST-DECEMBER).

{1423}

GENS, GENTES, GENTILES.

"When Roman history begins, there were within the city, and

subordinate to the common city government, a large number of

smaller bodies, each of which preserved its individuality and

some semblance of governmental machinery. These were clans

[gens], and in prehistoric times each of them is taken to have

had an independent political existence, living apart, worshiping

its own gods, and ruled over by its own chieftain. This clan

organization is not supposed to have been peculiar at all to

Rome, but ancient society in general was composed of an

indefinite number of such bodies, which, at the outset,

treated with each other in a small way as nations might treat

with each other to-day. It needs to be noted, however, that,

at any rate, so far as Rome is concerned, this is a matter of

inference, not of historical proof. The earliest political

divisions in Latium of which we have any trace consisted of

such clans united into communities. If they ever existed,

separately, therefore their union must have been deliberate

and artificial, and the body thus formed was the canton

('civitas' or 'populus'). Each canton had a fixed common

stronghold ('capitolium,' 'height,' or 'arx'--cf. 'arceo'

--'citadel') situated on some central elevation. The clans

dwelt around in hamlets ('vici' or 'pagi') scattered through

the canton. Originally, the central stronghold was not a place

of residence like the 'pagi,' but a place of refuge ... and a

place of meeting. ... In all of this, therefore, the clan

seems to lie at the very foundation. ... Any clan in the

beginning, of course, must have been simply a family. When it

grew so large as to be divided into sections, the sections

were known as families ('familiæ') and their union was the

clan. In this view the family, as we find it existing in the

Roman state, was a subdivision of the clan. In other words,

historically, families did not unite to form clans, but the

clan was the primitive thing, and the families were its

branches. Men thus recognized kinship of a double character.

They were related to all the members of their clan as

'gentiles,' and again more closely to all the members of their

branch of the clan at once as 'gentiles' and also as 'agnati.'

As already stated, men belonged to the same family ('agnati')

when they could trace their descent through males from a

common ancestor who gave its name to the family, or, what is

the same thing, was its eponym. Between the members of a clan

the chief evidence of relationship in historical times was

tradition. ... We have thus outlined what is known as the

patriarchal theory of society, and hinted at its application

to certain facts in Roman history. It should be remembered,

however, that it is only a theory, and that it is open to some

apparent and to some real criticism."

A. Tighe,

Development of the Roman Constitution,

chapter 2.

T. Mommsen,

History of Rome, book 1,

chapter 5.

"The patricians were divided into certain private

associations, called Gentes, which we may translate Houses or

Clans. All the members of each Gens were called gentiles; and

they bore the same name, which always ended in -ius; as for

instance, every member of the Julian Gens was a Julius; every

member of the Cornelian Gens was a Cornelius, and so on. Now

in every Gens there were a number of Families which were

distinguished by a name added to the name of the Gens. Thus

the Scipios, Sullas, Cinnas, Cethegi, Lentuli, were all

families of the Cornelian Gens. Lastly, every person of every

Family was denoted by a name prefixed to the name of the Gens.

The name of the person was, in Latin, prænomen; that of the

Gens or House, nomen, that of the Family, cognomen. Thus Caius

Julius Cæsar was a person of the Cæsar Family in the Julian

Gens; Lucius Cornelius Scipio was a person of the Scipio

Family in the Cornelian Gens; and so forth."

H. G. Liddell,

History of Rome,

book 1, chapter 3.

"There is no word in the English language which satisfactorily

renders the Latin word 'gens.' The term 'clan' is apt to

mislead; for the Scotch Highland clans were very different

from the Roman 'gentes.' The word 'House' is not quite

correct, for it always implies relationship, which was not

essential in the 'gens'; but for want of a better word we

shall use 'House' to express 'gens,' except where the spirit

of the language rejects the term and requires 'family'

instead. The German language has in the word 'Geschlecht' an

almost equivalent term for the Latin 'gens'."

W. Ihne,

History of Rome,

book 1, chapter 13, foot-note.

ALSO IN:

Fustel de Coulanges,

The Ancient City,

book 2, chapter 10.

On the Greek gens, see PHYLÆ.

GENSERIC AND THE VANDALS.

See VANDALS: A. D. 429-439.

GENTILES.

See GENS.

GENUCIAN LAW, The.

A law which prohibited the taking of interest for loans is

said to have been adopted at Rome, B. C. 342, on the proposal

of the tribune Genucius; but modern historians are skeptical

as to the actual enactment of the law.

W. Ihne,

History of Rome,

book 3, chapter 5.

GEOK TEPE, Siege and capture of (1881).

See RUSSIA: A. D. 1869-1881.

GEOMORI, OR GAMORI, The.

"As far as our imperfect information enables us to trace,

these early oligarchies of the Grecian states, against which

the first usurping despots contended, contained in themselves

more repulsive elements of inequality, and more mischievous

barriers between the component parts of the population, than

the oligarchies of later days. ... The oligarchy was not (like

the government so denominated in subsequent times) the

government of a rich few over the less rich and the poor, but

that of a peculiar order, sometimes a Patrician order, over

all the remaining society. ... The country-population, or

villagers who tilled the land, seem in these early times to

have been held to a painful dependence on the great

proprietors who lived in the fortified town, and to have been

distinguished by a dress and habits of their own, which often

drew upon them an unfriendly nickname. ... The governing

proprietors went by the name of the Gamori, or Geomori,

according as the Doric or Ionic dialect might be used in

describing them, since they were found in states belonging to

one race as well as to the other. They appear to have

constituted a close order, transmitting their privileges to

their children, but admitting no new members to a

participation. The principle called by Greek thinkers a

Timocracy (the apportionment of political rights and

privileges according to comparative property) seems to have

been little, if at all, applied in the earlier times. We know

no example of it earlier than Solon."

G. Grote,

History of Greece,

part 2, chapter 9.

GEONIM, The.

See JEWS: 7TH CENTURY.

GEORGE I.,

King of England (first of the Hanoverian or Brunswick line),

A. D. 1714-1727.

George II., King of England," 1727-1760.

George III., King of England, 1760-1820.

George IV., King of England, 1820-1830.

George Podiebrad, King of Bohemia, 1458-1471.

George William, Elector of Brandenburg, 1619-1640.

----------GEORGE: End----------

{1424}

GEORGIA: The Aboriginal Inhabitants.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: APALACHES,

MUSKHOGEAN FAMILY, CHEROKEES.

GEORGIA: A. D. 1539-1542.

Traversed by Hernando de Soto.

See FLORIDA: A. D. 1528-1542.

GEORGIA: A. D. 1629.

Embraced in the Carolina grant to Sir Robert Heath.

See AMERICA: A. D. 1629.

GEORGIA: A. D. 1663.

Embraced in the Carolina grant to Monk,

Clarendon, and others.

See NORTH CAROLINA: A. D. 1663-1670.

GEORGIA: A. D. 1732-1739.

Oglethorpe's colony.

"Among the members of Parliament during the rule of Sir Robert

Walpole was one almost unknown to us now, but deserving of

honour beyond most men of his time. His name was James

Oglethorpe. He was a soldier, and had fought against the Turks

and in the great Marlborough wars against Louis XIV. In

advanced life he became the friend of Samuel Johnson. Dr.

Johnson urged him to write some account of his adventures. 'I

know no one,' he said, 'whose life would be more interesting:

if I were furnished with materials I should be very glad to

write it.' Edmund Burke considered him 'a more extraordinary

person than any he had ever read of.' John Wesley 'blessed God

that ever he was born.' Oglethorpe attained the great age of

ninety-six, and died in the year 1785. ... In Oglethorpe's

time it was in the power of a creditor to imprison, according

to his pleasure, the man who owed him money and was not able

to pay it. It was a common circumstance that a man should be

imprisoned during a long series of years for a trifling debt.

Oglethorpe had a friend upon whom this hard fate had fallen.

His attention was thus painfully called to the cruelties which

were inflicted upon the unfortunate and helpless. He appealed

to Parliament, and after inquiry a partial remedy was

obtained. The benevolent exertions of Oglethorpe procured

liberty for multitudes who but for him might have ended their

lives in captivity. This, however, did not content him.

Liberty was an incomplete gift to men who had lost, or perhaps

had scarcely ever possessed, the faculty of earning their own

maintenance. Oglethorpe devised how lie might carry these

unfortunates to a new world, where, under happier auspices,

they might open a fresh career. He obtained [A. D. 1732] from

King George II. a charter by which the country between the

Savannah and the Alatamaha, and stretching westward to the

Pacific, was erected into the province of Georgia. It was to

be a refuge for the deserving poor, and next to them for

Protestants suffering persecution. Parliament voted £10,000 in

aid of the humane enterprise, and many benevolent persons were

liberal with their gifts. In November the first exodus of the

insolvent took place. Oglethorpe sailed with 120 emigrants,

mainly selected from the prisons--penniless, but of good

repute. He surveyed the coasts of Georgia, and chose a site

for the capital of his new State. He pitched his tent where

Savannah now stands, and at once proceeded to mark out the

line of streets and squares. Next year the colony was joined

by about a hundred German Protestants, who were then under

persecution for their beliefs. ... The fame of Oglethorpe's

enterprise spread over Europe. All struggling men, against

whom the battle of life went hard, looked to Georgia as a land

of promise. They were the men who most urgently required to

emigrate; but they were not always the men best fitted to

conquer the difficulties of the immigrant's life. The progress

of the colony was slow. The poor persons of whom it was

originally composed were honest but ineffective, and could not

in Georgia more than in England find out the way to become

self-supporting. Encouragements were given which drew from

Germany, from Switzerland, and from the Highlands of Scotland

men of firmer texture of mind--better fitted to subdue the

wilderness and bring forth its treasures. With Oglethorpe

there went out, on his second expedition to Georgia [1736],

the two brothers John and Charles Wesley. Charles went as

secretary to the Governor. John was even then, although a very

young man, a preacher of unusual promise. ... He spent two

years in Georgia, and these were unsuccessful years. His

character was unformed; his zeal out of proportion to his

discretion. The people felt that he preached 'personal

satires' at them. He involved himself in quarrels, and at last

had to leave the colony secretly, fearing arrest at the

instance of some whom he had offended. He returned to begin

his great career in England, with the feeling that his

residence in Georgia had been of much value to himself, but of

very little to the people whom he sought to benefit. Just as

Wesley reached England, his fellow-labourer George Whitefield

sailed for Georgia. ... He founded an Orphan-House at

Savannah, and supported it by contributions--obtained easily

from men under the power of his unequalled eloquence. He

visited Georgia very frequently, and his love for that colony

remained with him to the last. Slavery was, at the outset,

forbidden in Georgia. It was opposed to the gospel, Oglethorpe

said, and therefore not to be allowed. He foresaw, besides, what

has been so bitterly experienced since, that slavery must

degrade the poor white labourer. But soon a desire sprung up

among the less scrupulous of the settlers to have the use of

slaves. Within seven years from the first landing, slave-ships

were discharging their cargo at Savannah."

R. Mackenzie,

America: A History,

book 1, chapter 10.

ALSO IN:

T. M. Harris,

Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe,

chapters 1-10.

R. Wright,

Memoir of General James Oglethorpe,

chapters 1-9.

For text of charter, etc., see in

G. White,

Historical Collections of Georgia,

pages. 1-20.

GEORGIA: A. D. 1734.

The settlement of the Salzburgers.

"As early as October the 12th, 1732, the 'Society for the

Propagation of Christian Knowledge' expressed to the Trustees

a desire 'that the persecuted Salzburgers should have an

asylum provided for them in Georgia.' ... These Germans

belonged to the Archbishopric of Salzburg, then the most

eastern district of Bavaria; but now forming a detached

district in upper Austria, and called Salzburg from the broad

valley of the Salzer, which is made by the approximating of

the Norric and Rhetian Alps. Their ancestors, the Vallenges of

Piedmont, had been compelled by the barbarities of the Dukes

of Savoy, to find a shelter from the storms of persecution in

the Alpine passes and vales of Salzburg and the Tyrol, before

the Reformation; and frequently since had they been hunted out

by the hirelings and soldiery of the Church of Rome. ...

{1425}

The quietness which they had enjoyed for nearly half a century

was now rudely broken in upon by Leopold, Count of Firmian and

Archbishop of Salzburg, who determined to reduce them to the

Papal faith and power. He began in the year 1729, and, ere he

ended in 1732, not far from 30,000 had been driven from their

homes, to seek among the Protestant States of Europe that

charity and peace which were denied them in the glens and

fastnesses of their native Alps. More than two-thirds settled

in the Prussian States; the rest spread themselves over

England, Holland, and other Protestant countries. Thrilling is

the story of their exile. The march of these Salzburgers

constitutes an epoch in the history of Germany. ... The

sympathies of Reformed Christendom were awakened on their

behalf, and the most hospitable entertainment and assistance

were everywhere given them." Forty-two families, numbering 78

persons, accepted an invitation to settle in Georgia,

receiving allotments of land and provisions until they could

gather a harvest. They arrived at Savannah in March, 1734, and

were settled at a spot which they selected for themselves,

about thirty miles in the interior. "Oglethorpe marked out for

them a town; ordered workmen to assist in building houses; and

soon the whole body of Germans went up to their new home at

Ebenezer."

W. B. Stevens,

History of Georgia,

book 2, chapter 2 (volume 1).

ALSO IN:

F. Shoberl,

Persecutions of Popery,

chapter 9 (volume 2).

E. B. Speirs,

The Salzburgers

(English History Review, October, 1890).

GEORGIA: A. D. 1735-1749.

The Slavery question.

Original exclusion and subsequent admission of negro slaves.

Among the fundamental regulations of the Trustees was one

prohibiting negro slavery in the colony. "It was policy and

not philanthropy which prohibited slavery; for, though one of

the Trustees, in a sermon to recommend charity, declared, 'Let

avarice defend it as it will, there is an honest reluctance in

humanity against buying and selling, and regarding those of

our own species as our wealth and possessions'; and though

Oglethorpe himself, speaking of slavery as against 'the gospel

as well as the fundamental law of England', asserted, 'we

refused, as Trustees, to make a law permitting such a horrid

crime'; yet in the official publications of that body its

inhibition is based only on political and prudential, and not

on humane and liberal grounds; and even Oglethorpe owned a

plantation and negroes near Parachucla in South Carolina,

about forty miles above Savannah. ... Their [the Trustees']

design was to provide for poor but honest persons, to erect a

barrier between South Carolina and the Spanish settlements,

and to establish a wine and silk-growing colony. It was

thought by the Trustees that neither of these designs could be

secured if slavery was introduced. ... But while the Trustees

disallowed negroes, they instituted a system of white slavery

which was fraught with evil to the servants and to the colony.

These were white servants, consisting of Welch, English, or

German, males and females--families and individuals--who were

indented to individuals or the Trustees, for a period of from

four to fourteen years. ... On arriving in Georgia, their

service was sold for the term of indenture, or apportioned to

the inhabitants by the magistrates, as their necessities

required. ... Two years had not elapsed since the landing of

Oglethorpe before many complaints originated from this cause;

and in the summer of 1735 a petition, signed by seventeen

freeholders, setting forth the unprofitableness of white

servants, and the necessity for negroes, was carried by Mr.

Hugh Sterling to the Trustees, who, however, resented the

appeal as an insult to their honour. ... The plan for

substituting white for black labour failed through the

sparseness of the supply and the refractoriness of the

servants. As a consequence of the inability of the settlers to

procure adequate help, the lands granted them remained

uncleared, and even those which the temporary industry of the

first occupants prepared remained uncultivated. ... There

accumulated on the Trustees' hands a body of idle, clamourous,

mischief-making men, who employed their time in declaiming

against the very government whose charity both fed and clothed

them. ... For nearly fifteen years from 1735, the date of the

first petition for negroes, and the date of their express law

against their importation, the Trustees refused to listen to

any similar representations, except to condemn them," and they

were supported by the Salzburgers and the Highlanders, both of

whom opposed the introduction of negro slaves. But finally, in

1749, the firmness of the Trustees gave way and they yielded

to the clamor of the discontented colony. The importation of

black slaves was permitted, under certain regulations intended

to diminish the evils of the institution. "The change in the

tenure of grants, and the permission to hold slaves, had an

immediate effect on the prosperity of the colony."

W. B. Stevens,

History of Georgia,

book 2, chapter 9 (volume 1).

GEORGIA: A. D. 1738-1743.

War with the Spaniards of Florida.

Discontents in the colony.

"The assiento enjoyed under the treaty of Utrecht by the

English South Sea Company, the privilege, that is, of

transporting to the Spanish colonies a certain number of

slaves annually, ... was made a cover for an extensive

smuggling trade on the part of the English, into which private

merchants also entered. ... To guard against these systematic

infractions of their laws, the Spaniards maintained a numerous

fleet of vessels in the preventive service, known as 'guarda

costas,' by which some severities were occasionally exercised

on suspected or detected smugglers. These severities, grossly

exaggerated, and resounded throughout the British dominions,

served to revive in England and the colonies a hatred of the

Spaniards, which, since the time of Philip II., had never

wholly died out. Such was the temper and position of the two

nations when the colonization of Georgia was begun, of which

one avowed object was to erect a barrier against the

Spaniards, among whom the runaway slaves of South Carolina

were accustomed to find shelter, receiving in Florida an

assignment of lands, and being armed and organized into

companies, as a means of strengthening that feeble colony. A

message sent to St. Augustine to demand the surrender of the

South Carolina runaways met with a point blank refusal, and

the feeling against the Spaniards ran very high in

consequence. ... Oglethorpe ... returned from his second visit

to England [Sept. 1738], with a newly-enlisted regiment of

soldiers, and the appointment, also, of military commander for

Georgia and the Carolinas, with orders 'to give no offense,

but to repel force by force.' Both in Spain and England the

administrators of the government were anxious for peace. ...

The ferocious clamors of the merchants and the mob ...

absolutely forced Walpole into a war.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1739-1741.--THE WAR OF JENKINS' EAR.

{1426}

Travelling 300 miles through the forests, Oglethorpe held at

Coweta, on the Chattahoochee, just below the present site of

Columbus, a new treaty with the Creeks, by which they

confirmed their former cessions, acknowledged themselves

subject to the King of Great Britain, and promised to exclude

from their territories all but English settlers. After

finishing the treaty, Oglethorpe returned through the woods by

way of Augusta to Savannah, where he found orders from England

to make an attack on Florida. He called at once on South

Carolina and the Creeks for aid, and in the mean time made an

expedition, in which he captured the Fort of Picolata, over

against St. Augustine, thus securing the navigation of the St.

John's, and cutting off the Spaniards from their forts at St.

Mark's and Pensacola. South Carolina entered very eagerly into

the enterprise. Money was voted; a regiment, 500 strong, was

enlisted, partly in North Carolina and Virginia. This addition

raised Oglethorpe's force to 1,200 men. The Indians that

joined him were as many more. Having marched into Florida, he

took a small fort or two, and, assisted by several ships of

war, laid siege to St. Augustine. But the garrison was 1,000

strong, besides militia. The fortifications proved more

formidable than had been expected. A considerable loss was

experienced by a sortie from the town, falling heavily on the

Highland Rangers. Presently the Indians deserted, followed by

part of the Carolina regiment, and Oglethorpe was obliged to

give over the enterprise. ... From the time of this repulse,

the good feeling of the Carolinians toward Oglethorpe came to

an end. Many of the disappointed Georgia emigrants had removed

to Charleston, and many calumnies against Oglethorpe were

propagated, and embodied in a pamphlet published there. The

Moravians also left Georgia, unwilling to violate their

consciences by bearing arms. Most unfortunately for the new

colony, the Spanish war withdrew the Highlanders and others of

the best settlers from their farms to convert them into

soldiers."

R. Hildreth,

History of the United States,

chapter 25 (volume 2).

"After the late incursion into Florida, the General kept

possession of a southern region which the Spaniards had

claimed as their own; and, as they had taken encouragement

from the successful defence of St. Augustine, and the

well-known dissensions on the English side, it was to be

expected that they would embrace the earliest opportunity of

taking their revenge. ... The storm, which had been so long

anticipated, burst upon the colony in the year 1742. The

Spaniards had ... fitted out, at Havana, a fleet said to

consist of 56 sail and 7,000 or 8,000 men. The force was

probably not quite so great; if it was, it did not all reach

its destination," being dispersed by a storm, "so that only a

part of the whole number succeeded in reaching St. Augustine.

The force was there placed under the command of Don Manuel de

Monteano, the Governor of that place. ... The fleet made its

appearance on the coast of Georgia on the 21st of June"; but

all its attempts, first to take possession of the Island of

Amelia, and afterwards to reduce the forts at Frederica, were

defeated by the vigor and skill of General Oglethorpe. After

losing heavily in a fight called the Battle of the Bloody

Marsh, the Spaniards retreated about the middle of July. The

following year they prepared another attempt; but Oglethorpe

anticipated it by a second demonstration on his own part

against St. Augustine, which had no other result than to

disconcert the plans of the enemy.

W. B. O. Peabody,

Life of Oglethorpe

(Library of American Biographies, 2d series, volume 2),

chapters 11-12.

"While Oglethorpe was engaged in repelling the Spaniards, the

trustees of Georgia had been fiercely assailed by their

discontented colonists. They sent Thomas Stevens to England

with a petition containing many charges of mismanagement,

extravagance, and peculation, to which the trustees put in an

answer. After a thorough examination of documents and

witnesses in committee of the whole, and hearing counsel, the

House of Commons resolved that 'the petition of Thomas Stevens

contains false, scandalous, and malicious charges'; in

consequence of which Stevens, the next day, was brought to the

bar, and reprimanded on his knees. ... Oglethorpe himself had

been a special mark of the malice and obloquy of the

discontented settlers. ... Presently his lieutenant colonel, a

man who owed everything to Oglethorpe's favor, re-echoing the

slanders of the colonists, lodged formal charges against him.

Oglethorpe proceeded to England to vindicate his character,

and the accuser, convicted by a court of inquiry of falsehood,

was disgraced and deprived of his commission. Appointed a

major general, ordered to join the army assembled to oppose

the landing of the Pretender, marrying also about this time,

Oglethorpe did not again return to Georgia. The former scheme

of administration having given rise to innumerable complaints,

the government of that colony was intrusted to a president and

four counselors."

R. Hildreth,

History of the United States,

chapter. 25 (volume 2).

ALSO IN:

C. C. Jones,

History of Georgia,

chapters 17-22 (volume 1).

GEORGIA: A. D. 1743-1764.

Surrender to the Crown.

Government as a royal province.

"On Oglethorpe's departure [1743], William Stephens, the

secretary, was made President, and continued in office until

1751, when he was succeeded by Henry Parker. The colony, when

Stephens came into office, comprised about 1,500 persons. It

was almost at a stand-still. The brilliant prospects of the

early days were dissipated, and immigration had ceased, thanks

to the narrow policy and feeble government of the Trustees. An

Indian rising, in 1749, headed by Mary Musgrove, Oglethorpe's

Indian interpreter, and her husband, one Bosomworth, who laid

claim to the whole country, came near causing the destruction

of the colony, and was only repressed by much negotiation and

lavish bribes. The colony, thus feeble and threatened,

struggled on, until it was relieved from danger from the

Indians and from the restrictive laws, and encouraged by the

appointment of Parker, and the establishment of a

representative government. This produced a turn in the affairs

of Georgia. Trade revived, immigration was renewed, and

everything began to wear again a more hopeful look. Just at

this time, however, the original trust was on the point of

expiring by limitation.

{1427}

There was a party in the colony who desired a renewal of the

charter; but the Trustees felt that their scheme had failed in

every way, except perhaps as a defence to South Carolina, and

when the limit of the charter was reached, they turned the

colony over to the Crown. ... A form of government was

established similar to those of the other royal provinces, and

Captain John Reynolds was sent out as the first Governor." The

administration of Reynolds produced wide discontent, and in

1757 he was recalled, being "succeeded by Henry Ellis as

Lieutenant-governor. The change proved fortunate, and brought

rest to the colony. Ellis ruled peaceably and with general

respect for more than two years, and was then promoted to the

governorship of Nova Scotia. In the same year his successor

arrived at Savannah, in the person of James Wright, who

continued to govern the province until it was severed from

England by the Revolution. The feebleness of Georgia had

prevented her taking part in the union of the colonies, and

she was not represented in the Congress at Albany. Georgia

also escaped the ravages of the French war, partly by her

distant situation, and partly by the prudence of Governor

Ellis; and the conclusion of that war gave Florida to England,

and relieved the colony from the continual menace of Spanish

aggression. A great Congress of southern Governors and Indian

chiefs followed, in which Wright, more active than his

predecessor, took a prominent part. Under his energetic and

firm rule, the colony began to prosper greatly, and trade

increased rapidly; but the Governor gained at the same time so

much influence, and was a man of so much address, that he not

only held the colony down at the time of the Stamp Act, but

seriously hampered its action in the years which led to

revolution."

H. C. Lodge,

Short History of the English Colonies in America,

chapter 9.

GEORGIA: A. D. 1760-1775.

Opening events of the Revolution.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1760-1775, to 1775.

GEORGIA: A. D. 1775-1777.

The end of royal government.

Constitutional organization of the state."

The news of the battle of Lexington reached Savannah on the

night of the 10th of May, 1775, and produced intense

excitement among all classes. On the night of the 11th, Noble

Wimberly Jones, Joseph Habersham, Edward Telfair, and a few

others, impressed with the necessity of securing all military

stores, and preserving them for colonial use, took from the

King's magazine, in Savannah, about 500 pounds of powder. ...

Tradition asserts that part of this powder was sent to Boston,

and used by the militia at the battle of Bunker Hill. ... The

activity of the Liberty party, and its rapid increase, ...

gave Governor Wright just cause for alarm; and he wrote to

General Gage, expressing his amazement that these southern

provinces should be left in the situation they are, and the

Governors and King's officers, and friends of Government,

naked and exposed to the resentment of an enraged people.' ...

The assistance so earnestly solicited in these letters would

have been promptly rendered, but that they never reached their

destination. The Committee of Safety at Charleston withdrew them

from their envelopes, as they passed through the port, and

substituted others, stating that Georgia was quiet, and there

existed no need either of troops or vessels." The position of

Governor Wright soon became one of complete powerlessness and

he begged to be recalled. In January, 1776, however, he was

placed under arrest, by order of the Council of Safety, and

gave his parole not to leave town, nor communicate with the

men-of-war which had just arrived at Tybee; notwithstanding

which he made his escape to one of the King's ships on the

11th of February. "The first effective organization of the

friends of liberty in the province took place among the

deputies from several parishes, who met in Savannah, on the

18th January, 1775, and formed what has been called 'A

Provincial Congress.' Guided by the action of the other

colonies, a 'Council of Safety' was created, on the 22d June,

1775, to whom was confided the general direction of the

measures proper to be pursued in carrying out resistance to

the tyrannical designs of the King and Parliament. William

Ewen was the first President of this Council of Safety, and

Seth John Cuthbert was the Secretary. On the 4th July, the

Provincial Congress (now properly called such, as every parish

and district was represented) met in Savannah, and elected as

its presiding officer Archibald Bulloch. This Congress

conferred upon the 'Council of Safety,' 'full power upon every

emergency during the recess of Congress.'" Soon finding the

need of a more definite order of government, the Provincial

Congress, on the 15th of April, 1776, adopted provisionally,

for six months, a series of "Rules and Regulations," under

which Archibald Bulloch was elected President and

Commander-in-chief of Georgia, and John Glen, Chief Justice.

After the Declaration of Independence, steps were taken toward

the settling of the government of the state on a permanent

basis. On the proclamation of President Bulloch a convention

was elected which met in Savannah in October, and which framed

a constitution that was ratified on the 5th of February, 1777.

W. B. Stevens,

History of Georgia,

book 4, chapter 2,

and book 5, chapter 1 (volume 2).

GEORGIA: A. D. 1776-1778.

The war in the North.

The Articles of Confederation.

The alliance with France.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A.D. 1776, to 1778.

GEORGIA: A. D. 1778-1779.

Savannah taken and the state subjugated by the British.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1778-1779.

GEORGIA: A. D. 1779.

Unsuccessful attack on Savannah by the French and Americans.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1779 (SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER).

GEORGIA: A. D. 1780.

Successes of the British arms in South Carolina.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1780 (FEBRUARY-AUGUST).

GEORGIA: A. D. 1780-1783.

Greene's campaign in the South.

Lafayette and Washington in Virginia.

Siege of Yorktown and surrender of Cornwallis.

Peace.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A. D. 1780, to 1783.

GEORGIA: A. D. 1787-1788.

The formation and adoption of the Federal Constitution.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1787, and 1787-1789.

GEORGIA: A. D. 1802.

Cession of Western land claims to the United States.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:  A. D. 1781-1786

and MISSISSIPPI: A. D. 1798-1804.

GEORGIA: A. D. 1813-1814.

The Creek War.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1813-1814 (AUGUST-APRIL).

GEORGIA: A. D. 1816-1818.

The First Seminole War.

See FLORIDA: A. D. 1816-1818.

{1428}

GEORGIA: A. D. 1861 (January).

Secession from the Union.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1861 (JANUARY-FEBRUARY).

GEORGIA: A. D. 1861 (October-December).

Savannah threatened.

The Union forces in possession of the mouth of the river.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1861 (OCTOBER-DECEMBER: SOUTH CAROLINA-GEORGIA).

GEORGIA: A. D. 1862 (February-April).

Reduction of Fort Pulaski and sealing up of the port of

Savannah by the National Forces.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1862 (FEBRUARY-APRIL: GEORGIA-FLORIDA).

GEORGIA: A. D. 1864 (May-September).

Sherman's campaign against Atlanta.

The capture of the city.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:  A. D. 1864 (MAY: GEORGIA),

and (MAY-SEPTEMBER: GEORGIA).

GEORGIA: A. D. 1864 (September-October).

Military occupation of Atlanta.

Removal of the inhabitants.

Hood's Raid to Sherman's rear.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1864 (SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER: GEORGIA).

GEORGIA: A. D. 1864 (November-December).

Destruction of Atlanta.

Sherman's March to the Sea.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1864 (NOVEMBER-DECEMBER: GEORGIA).

GEORGIA: A. D. 1865 (March-May).

Wilson's Raid.

Capture of Jefferson Davis.

End of the Rebellion.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1865 (APRIL-MAY).

GEORGIA: A. D. 1865-1868.

Reconstruction.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1865 (MAY-JULY), and after, to 1868-1870.

----------GEORGIA: End----------

GEOUGEN, The.

See TURKS: SIXTH CENTURY.

GEPIDÆ, The.

See GOTHS: ORIGIN OF;

HUNS; LOMBARDS: EARLY HISTORY;

and AVARS.

GERALDINES, The.

The Geraldines of Irish history were descendants of Maurice

and William Fitzgerald, two of the first among the

Anglo-Norman adventurers to engage in the conquest of

Ireland, A. D. 1169-1170. Their mother was a Welsh princess,

named Nest, or Nesta, who is said to have been the mistress

of Henry I. of England, and afterwards to have married the

Norman baron, Gerald Fitz Walter, who became the father of

the Fitzgeralds.  "Maurice Fitzgerald, the eldest of the

brothers, became the ancestor both of the Earls of Kildare

and Desmond; William, the younger, obtained an immense grant

of land in Kerry from the McCarthys, indeed as time went on

the lordship of the Desmond Fitzgeralds grew larger and

larger, until it covered nearly as much ground as many a

small European kingdom. Nor was this all. The White Knight,

the Knight of Glyn, and the Knight of Kerry were all three

Fitzgeralds, all descended from the same root, and all owned

large tracts of country. The position of the Geraldines of

Kildare was even more important, on account of their close

proximity to Dublin. In later times their great keep at

Maynooth dominated the whole Pale, while their followers

swarmed everywhere, each man with a 'G' embroidered upon his

breast in token of his allegiance. By the beginning of the

16th century their power had reached to, perhaps, the highest

point ever attained in these islands by any subject. Whoever

might be called the Viceroy in Ireland it was the Earl of

Kildare who practically governed the country."

Hon. E. Lawless,

The Story of Ireland,

chapter 14.

See, also,

IRELAND: A. D. 1515;

and for some account of the subsequent rebellion and fall

of the Geraldines, see

IRELAND: A. D. 1535-1553.

GERALDINES, League of the.

See IRELAND: A. D. 1559-1603.

GERBA, OR JERBA, The disaster at. (1560).

See BARBARY STATES: A. D. 1543-1560.

GEREFA.

"The most general name for the fiscal, administrative and

executive officer among the Anglosaxons was Gerefa, or as it

is written, in very early documents geroefa: but the peculiar

functions of the individuals comprehended under it were

further defined by a prefix compounded with it, as scirgerefa,

the reeve of the shire or sheriff: tungerefa, the reeve of the

farm or bailiff. The exact meaning and etymology of this name

have hitherto eluded the researches of our best scholars."

J. M. Kemble,

The Saxons in England,

book 2, chapter 5 (volume 2).

See, also, SHIRE; and EALDORMAN.

GERGESENES, The.

One of the tribes of the Canaanites, whose territory is

believed by Lenormant to have "included all Decapolis and even

Galilee," and whose capital he places at Gerasa, now Djerash,

in Perea.

F. Lenormant and E. Chevallier,

Manual of Ancient History,

book 6, chapter 1 (volume 2).

GERGITHIAN SIBYL.

See CUMÆ.

GERGITHIANS, The.

See TROJA;

and, ASIA MINOR: THE GREEK COLONIES.

GERGOVIA OF THE ARVERNI.

"The site of Gergovia of the Arverni is supposed to be a hill

on the bank of the Allier, two miles from the modern Clermont

in Auvergne. The Romans seem to have neglected Gergovia, and

to have founded the neighbouring city, to which they gave the

name Augustonemetum. The Roman city became known afterwards as

Civitas Arvernorum, in the middle ages Arverna, and then, from

the situation of its castle, clarus mons, Clermont."

C. Merivale,

History of the Romans,

chapter 12 (volume 2, page 20, foot-note).

For an account of Cæsar's reverse at Gergovia of the Arverni,

See GAUL: B. C. 58-51.

GERGOVIA OF THE BOIANS.

See BOIANS.

GERIZIM.

"The sacred centre of the Samaritans is Gerizim, the 'Mount of

Blessings.' On. its summit a sacred rock marks the site where,

according to their tradition, Joshua placed the Tabernacle and

afterwards built a temple, restored later by Sanballat on the

return of the Israelites from captivity. On the slope of the

mountain the Feast of the Passover is still celebrated in

accordance with the injunctions of the Law."

C. R. Conder,

Syrian Stone Lore,

chapter 4.

GERMAN, High and Low.

The distinction, made between High German and Low German is

that resulting from differences of language, etc., between the

Germanic peoples which dwelt anciently in the low, flat

countries along the German Ocean and the Baltic, and those

which occupied the higher regions of the upper Rhine, Elbe and

Danube.

GERMAN EAST AFRICAN AND WEST AFRICAN ASSOCIATIONS.

See AFRICA: A. D. 1884-1889.

GERMAN EMPIRE, The Constitution of the new.

See CONSTITUTION OF GERMANY.

----------------------------------

A Logical Outline of German History

Ethnological

Social and political.

Intellectual, moral and religious.

Foreign.

IN WHICH THE DOMINANT CONDITIONS AND

INFLUENCES ARE DISTINGUISHED BY COLORS.

3d-5th Centurles. The Wanderinag of the nations.

Germany was slow in finding the definite place in geography

and history that belongs to it at the present day. It was no

more at first than a name, applied with large vagueness to the

country beyond the Rhine and the Danube, where many restless

tribes, of kindred language and character, were unstably

distributed. In time, the tribes crowded one another into wide

wandering movements, were pushed and pressed together into

confederacies and nations, and went swarming over the Danube

and the Rhine into Roman provinces, to take possession of them

and to be the new masters of the European world; but it was

the Germans, not Germany, who began then to be historic.

5th-9th Centuries--Empire of the Franks.

As a fact in history, Germany emerged first with the Franks,

out of the dust-clouds of the wandering time and the darker

clouds of the Gallic conquest. Fast seated on the great

dividing river, the Rhine, the Franks reached backward into

the land which gave them birth, and forward into the land

which took their name, and gathered a broad empire out of

both. But always the two parts of it refused to be held

together. Neither by Clovis, the first conqueror, nor by

Charlemagne, after three hundred years, were the Kingdom of

the East Franks and the Kingdom of the West Franks bound fast

into one.  Under Charlemagne's successors, the Kingdom of the

East Franks began to be Germany, in the growing of the fact as

well as the name.

A. D. 962.--The Holy Roman Empire.

But no sooner had a Kingdom of Germany been created than it

was strangely deprived of the distinctness needful to the

making of a nation. The adventurous Otho, its second Saxon

king, who reclaimed Italy and revived the imperial sovereignty

of Charlemagne, diminished the weight and dignity of his

Germanic realm as much as he advanced himself and his

successors in title and rank. By that elevation of its kings

to a pseudo-Roman throne, Germany lost its own proper place in

history, and was obscured by the shadow of an empire which

soon existed as a shadow only. Its elective kings, forsaking

the title of Kings of Germany, and calling themselves Kings of

the Romans, even while they waited for an imperial coronation

at the hands of the Pope, made the nationalizing of Germany,

as France was being nationalized, by its monarchy, impossible.

10th-18th Centuries.--Contests In Italy.

For three centuries, the ambitions and the interests of the

imperialized monarchy were ultramontane. Its Teutonic seat was

a mere resting-place between Italian expeditions. Its quarrels

with the Popes cast all questions of German politics into the

background. It took no root in German feeling, rallied no

national sentiment, gathered no increase of authority, sent

out from itself no centralizing influences, judicial or

administrative, to resist the dissolving forces of feudalism.

And nowhere else in Europe was the action of those forces so

destructive of political unity. That great Fatherland of the

German peoples, where the slow solidification of a nation

should have been going on as surely as in France, was crumbled

by them into petty principalities, which time only hardened in

their separateness.

A. D. 1273-1440--Rise of the House of Hapsburg.

When, at last, the crown came to be settled in one fast-rooted

and enduring House, it was not fortunately placed. Territorially

the Hapsburgs were planted on the verge of the Teutonic land,

where they fronted the Hungarians and the Svavs and were

threatened by the approaching Turks. Speaking figuratively,

they stood with their backs to Germany, facing their greater

dangers and their greater opportunities, east and south.

Their personal dominions were acquired for the most part

outside of the Teutonic line. Their immediate subjects were of

many alien races, with a few of Greman blood. Their kingship

of Hungary was more substantial in its political weight than

any Germanic sovereignty that they held. From the beginning of

its remarkable dynastic career, the House of Austria was in

all respects quite at one side of the great people whose crown

had unhappily passed to its keeping. The emperor-kings, throned

with less reality at Vienna than at Presburg and Prague, lost

more and more their German character, receded more and more

from the range of German influence. Thus Germany was robbed

again of the centralizing constraints which a vigorous, rising

monarchy of the true stamp, not falsified by a fictitious

imperialization, would have brought to bear upon it, for the

unifying of a great nation.

A. D. 1477-1496.--Burgundian and Spanish marriages.

The marriagcs which linked the Austrian House with the

sovereign families of Burgundy and Spain only drew it still

farther away, and made it more alien than before to the people

of the German North. The imperial government was brought then

under influences from Spain which opposed every tendency of

their feeling and thought. While the strong Teutonic mind

worked its slow way towards personal freedom,--towards

fearless inquiry and independent belief,--a contrary movement

went on in the Austrian court. Between Germany at large and

the circle in which Vienna stood really a center and a

capital, a widening inteliectual breach began when the

Hapsburg brain was narrowed by the astringent blood of

Castile. This appeared, not alone in the rupture of the

religious Reformation, but in all the advances that were made,

from the sixteenth century down, in science, philosophy,

literature and art.

Some advance was always made; but the modern impulses which

woke early in the German race were wastefully spent, during

many generations, for want of any national concentration. No

large channel opened to them; no worthy spirit directed them.

The pettiness of petty politics and courts belittled in most

ways, for a lamentable time, the workings of German energy and

genius.

A. D. 1618.--Brandenburg—Prussia.

The Thirty Years War made chaos in Germany complete. No

semblance of substance in the empire remained. The Kaiser had

become a sovereign less honored than the King of France,

and Vienna a capital less considered than Paris. But the

first nucleus of nationality took form in that chaos, when

Brandenburg drew Prussia to itself, in the union which

produced a new kingdom at the North. The rise of Prussia was

the rise of German nationality. It brought to bear on the

German people the first centralizing influence that had acted

upon them since their kings took the crown of Rome. For the

first time in their history they felt the pull of a force

which drew them towards common lines of action.

A. D. 1740-1786.--Frederick the Great.

A. D. 1800-1813.--Struggle with Napoleon.

The aggrandizement of Prussia by Frederick the Great, though

iniquitous when considered in itself, was splendid work for

Germany. It prepared, for the perils of the next generation, a

power which Napoleon could humble at the moment, but which he

could not crush. It gave footing for the great heroic rally of

the Germanic people, whereby they conquered their place in the

world and secured their future.

A. D. 1866.--The Seven Weeks War

A. D. 1870-1871.--The Franco-German War.

A. D. 1871.--The Empire.

In all that has come to pass since Leipsic and Waterloo, the

logical sequence is plainer than history is wont to show it.

From men of the first decade in this century, who put the

school and the camp side by side in Prussian training, there

came more than from Bismarck or Moltke of the power which

triumphed at Sadowa and Sedan, which has constructed a new and

true Empire of Germany, with its capital at Berlin, and which

has dismissed Austria from German reckonings as mistress or as

rival, but to make of her an ally and a friend.

Within the last third of the nineteenth century, the Germans

may be said to have opened a great national career, such as

the English, their kinsmen, had entered upon nearly two

hundred years before. The energies of their powerful race have

been centered at last, and are acting with new potency, in

commerce and colonization, abroad, and in all modes of human

advancement, at home.

----------End: A Logical Outline of German History ------

{1429}

GERMAN FLATS: A. D.1765.

Treaty with the Indians.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1765-1768.

GERMAN FLATS: A. D. 1778.

Destruction by Brant.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1778 (JUNE-NOVEMBER).

GERMAN NATIONS, The wandering of.

See GOTHS; FRANKS; ALEMANNI; MARCOMANNI;

QUADI; GEPIDÆ; SAXONS; ANGLES; BURGUNDIANS;

VANDALS; SUEVI; LOMBARDS.

GERMAN UNIVERSITIES.

See EDUCATION, MEDIÆVAL: GERMANY.

GERMANIA.

"On the origin of the name Germania see Waitz D. V. G. i. 24;

he rejects all German derivations and concludes that it is

originally Gallic, the name given (as Tacitus indicates) by

the Gauls first to the Tungri, and afterwards to all the

kindred tribes. The meaning may be either 'good shouters'

(Grimm), or, according to other writers, 'East-men,' or

'neighbours.'"

W. Stubbs,

Constitutional History of England,

volume 1, page 17, note.

GERMANIANS, The.

See CARMANIANS.

GERMANIC CONFEDERATION,

The First.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1814-1820.

The Second.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1870 (SEPTEMBER-DECEMBER).

GERMANIC DIET, The.

See DIET, GERMANIC.

GERMANIC PEOPLES OF THE ALEMANNIC LEAGUE.

See ALEMANNI: A.-D. 213.

GERMANICUS, Campaigns of.

See GERMANY: A. D. 14-16.

GERMANTOWN, Battle of.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1777 (JANUARY-DECEMBER).

GERMANY:

The national name.

"The nations of the Germania had no common name recognised by

themselves, and were content, when, ages after, they had

realised their unity of tongue and descent, to speak of their

language simply as the Lingua Theotisca, the language of the

people (theod).  ... Whence the name 'Deutsch.' Zeuss derives

it rather from the root of 'deuten,' to explain, so that

'theotisc' should mean 'significant.' But the root of 'theod'

and 'deuten' is the same. ... The general name by which the

Romans knew them [Germani] was one which they had received

from their Gallic neighbours."

W. Stubbs,

Constitutional History of England,

volume 1, chapter 3, and foot-note.

"In Gothic we have 'thiuda,' people; 'thiudisks,' belonging to

the people. ... The High-German, which looks upon Sanskrit 't'

and Gothic 'th' as 'd,' possesses the same word, as 'diot,'

people; 'diutisc,' popularis; hence Deutsch, German, and

'deuten,' to explain, literally to Germanize."

F. Max Müller,

Lectures on the Science of Language,

2d series, lecture. 5.

The account which Tacitus gives of the origin of the name

Germany is this: "The name Germany ... they [the Germans] say,

is modern and newly introduced, from the fact that the tribes

which first crossed the Rhine and drove out the Gauls, and are

now called Tungrians, were then called Germans. Thus what was

the name of a tribe, and not of a race, gradually prevailed,

till all called themselves by this self-invented name of

Germans, which the conquerors had first employed to inspire

terror."

Tacitus,

Germany;

translated by Church and Brodribb, chapter 2.

"It is only at the mouth of the Elbe that the Germany of the

really historical period begins: and this is a Germany only in

the eyes of scholars, antiquarians, and generalizing

ethnologists. Not one of the populations to whom the name is

here extended would have attached any meaning to the word,

except so far as they had been instructed by men who had

studied certain Latin writers. There was no name which was, at

one and the same time, native and general. There were native

names, but they were limited to special populations. There was

a general name, but it was one which was applied by strangers

and enemies. What this name was for the northern districts, we

know beforehand. It was that of Saxones and Saxonia in Latin;

of Sachsen and Sachsenland in the ordinary German. Evidence,

however, that any German population ever so named itself is

wholly wanting, though it is not impossible that some

unimportant tribe may have done so: the only one so called

being the Saxons of Ptolemy, who places them, along with

several others, in the small district between the Elbe and the

Eyder, and on three of the islands off the coast. ... The

Franks gave it its currency and generality; for, in the eyes

of a Frank, Saxony and Friesland contained all those parts of

Germany which, partly from their difference of dialect, partly

from their rudeness, partly from their paganism, and partly

from the obstinacy of their resistance, stood in contrast to

the Empire of Charlemagne and his successors. A Saxon was an

enemy whom the Franks had to coerce, a heathen whom they had

to convert. What more the term meant is uncertain."

R. G. Latham,

Introduction to Kemble's "Horæ Ferales."

See, also, TEUTONES.

GERMANY: As known to Tacitus.

"Germany is separated from the Galli, the Rhæti, and Pannonii,

by the rivers Rhine and Danube; mountain ranges, or the fear

which each feels for the other, divide it from the Sarmatæ and

Daci. Elsewhere ocean girds it, embracing broad peninsulas and

islands of unexplored extent, where certain tribes and

kingdoms are newly known to us, revealed by war. The Rhine

springs from a precipitous and inaccessible height of the

Rhætian Alps, bends slightly westward, and mingles with the

Northern Ocean. The Danube pours down from the gradual and

gently rising slope of Mount Abnoba, and visits many nations,

to force its way at last through six channels into the Pontus;

a seventh mouth is lost in marshes. The Germans themselves I

should regard as aboriginal, and not mixed at all with other

races through immigration or intercourse. For, in former

times, it was not by land but on shipboard that those who

sought to emigrate would arrive; and the boundless and, so to

speak, hostile ocean beyond us, is seldom entered by a sail

from our world. And, besides the perils of rough and unknown

seas, who would leave Asia, or Africa, or Italy for Germany,

with its wild country, its inclement skies, its sullen manners

and aspect, unless indeed it were his home?

{1430}

In their ancient songs, their only way of remembering or

recording the past, they celebrate an earth-born god, Tuisco,

and his son Mannus, as the origin of their race, as their

founders. To Mannus they assign three sons, from whose names,

they say, the coast tribes are called Ingævones; those of the

interior, Herminones; all the rest, Istævones. Some, with the

freedom of conjecture permitted by antiquity, assert that the

god had several descendants, and the nation several

appellations, as Marsi, Gambrivii, Suevi, Vandilii, and that

these are genuine old names. The name Germany, on the other

hand, they say, is modern and newly introduced."

Tacitus,

Germany:

translated by A. J. Church and W. J. Brodribb,

chapters 1-2.

GERMANY: B. C. 12-9.

Campaigns of Drusus.

The first serious advance of the Roman arms beyond the Rhine

was made in the reign of Augustus, by the emperor's step-son,

Drusus. Cæsar had crossed the river, only to chastise and

terrify the tribes on the right bank which threatened Gaul.

Agrippa, some years later, repeated the operation, and

withdrew, as Cæsar had done. But Drusus invaded Germany with

intentions of conquest and occupation. His first campaign was

undertaken in the spring of the year 12 B. C. He crossed the

Rhine and drove the Usipetes into their strongholds; after

which he embarked his legions on transport ships and moved

them down the river to the ocean, thence to coast northwards

to the mouth of the Ems, and so penetrate to the heart of the

enemy's country. To facilitate this bold movement, he had

caused a channel to be cut from the Rhine, at modern Arnheim,

to the Zuyder Zee, utilizing the river Yssel. The expedition

was not successful and retreated overland from the Frisian

coast after considerable disaster and loss. The next year,

Drusus returned to the attack, marching directly into the

German country and advancing to the banks of the Weser, but

retreating, again, with little to show of substantial results.

He established a fortified outpost, however, on the Lippe, and

named it Aliso. During the same summer, he is said to have

fixed another post in the country of the Chatti. Two years

then passed before Drusus was again permitted by the emperor

to cross the Rhine. On his third campaign he passed the Weser

and penetrated the Hercynian forest as far as the Elbe,--the

Germans declining everywhere to give him battle. Erecting a

trophy on the bank of the Elbe, he retraced his steps, but

suffered a fall from his horse, on the homeward march, which

caused his death. "If the Germans were neither reduced to

subjection, nor even overthrown in any decisive engagement, as

the Romans vainly pretended, yet their spirit of aggression

was finally checked and from thenceforth, for many

generations, they were fully occupied with the task of

defending themselves."

C. Merivale,

History of the Romans,

chapter 36.

GERMANY: B. C. 8-A. D. 11.

Campaigns of Tiberius.

The work of Roman conquest in Germany, left unfinished by

Drusus, was taken up by his brother Tiberius (afterwards

emperor) under the direction of Augustus. Tiberius crossed the

Rhine, for the first time, B. C. 8. The frontier tribes made

no resistance, but offered submission at once. Tiberius sent

their chiefs to Augustus, then holding his court at Lugdunum

(Lyons), to make terms with the emperor in person, and

Augustus basely treated them as captives and threw them into

prison. The following year found the German tribes again under

arms, and Tiberius again crossed the Rhine; but it was only to

ravage the country, and not to remain. Then followed a period

of ten years, during which the emperor's step-son,

dissatisfied with his position and on ill terms with Augustus,

retired to Rhodes. In the summer of A. D. 4, he returned to

the command of the legions on the Rhine. Meantime, under other

generals,--Domitius and Vinicius,--they had made several

campaigns beyond the river; had momentarily crossed the Elbe;

had constructed a road to the outposts on the Weser; had

fought the Cherusci, with doubtful results, but had not

settled the Roman power in Germany. Tiberius invaded the

country once more, with a powerful force, and seems to have

crushed all resistance in the region between the lower Rhine

and the Weser. The following spring, he repeated, with more

success, the movement of Drusus by land and sea, sending a

flotilla around to the Elbe and up that stream, to a point

where it met and co-operated with a column moved overland,

through the wilderness. A single battle was fought and the

Germans defeated; but, once more, when winter approached, the

Romans retired and no permanent conquest was made. Two years

later (A. D. 6), Tiberius turned his arms against the powerful

nation of the Marcomanni, which had removed itself from the

German mark, or border, into the country formerly occupied, by

the Boii--modern Bohemia. Here, under their able chief Marbod,

or Maroboduus, they developed a formidable military

organization and became threatening to the Roman frontiers on

the Upper Danube. Two converging expeditions, from the Danube

and from the Rhine, were at the point of crushing the

Marcomanni between them, when news of the alarming revolt, in

Pannonia and Dalmatia, called the "Batonian War," caused the

making of a hasty peace with Maroboduus. The Batonian or

Pannonian war occupied Tiberius for nearly three years. He had

just brought it to a close, when intelligence reached Rome of

a disaster in Germany which filled the empire with horror and

dismay. The tribes in northwestern Germany, between the lower

Rhine and the Elbe, supposed to be cowed and submissive, had

now found a leader who could unite them and excite them to

disdain the Roman yoke. This leader was Arminius, or Hermann,

a young chief of the Cherusci, who had been trained in the

Roman military service and admitted to Roman citizenship, but

who hated the oppressors of his country with implacable

bitterness. The scheme of insurrection organized by Arminius

was made easy of execution by the insolent carelessness and

the incapacity of the Roman commander in Germany, L.

Quintilius Varus. It succeeded so well that Varus and his

army,--three entire legions, horse, foot and

auxiliaries,--probably 20,000 men in all,--were overwhelmed in

the Teutoburger Wald, north of the Lippe, and destroyed. Only

a few skulking fugitives reached the Rhine and escaped to tell

the fate of the rest. This was late in the summer of A. D. 9.

In the following spring Tiberius was sent again to the Rhine

frontier, with as powerful a levy of men and equipments as the

empire could collect. He was accompanied by his nephew,

Germanicus, son of Drusus, destined to be his successor in the

field of German conquest.

{1431}

But dread and fear were in the Roman heart, and the campaign

of Tiberius, delayed another twelve months, until A. D. 11,

was conducted too cautiously to accomplish any important

result. He traversed and ravaged a considerable region of the

German country, but withdrew again across the Rhine and left

it, apparently, unoccupied. This was his last campaign.

Returning to Rome, he waited only two years longer for the

imperial sovereignty to which he succeeded on the death of

Augustus, who had made him, by adoption, his son and his heir.

C. Merivale,

History of the Romans,

chapters 36-38.

ALSO IN:

T. Mommsen,

History of Rome,

book 8, chapter 1.

Sir E. Creasy,

Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World,

chapter 5.

T. Smith,

Arminius, part 1,

chapters 4-6.

GERMANY: A. D. 14-16.

Campaigns of Germanicus.

Germanicus--the son of Drusus--was given the command on the

Rhine at the beginning of the year 13 A. D. The following

year, Augustus died and Tiberius became emperor; whereupon

Germanicus found himself no longer restrained from crossing

the river and assuming the offensive against Arminius and his

tribes. His first movement, that autumn, was up the valley of

the Lippe, which he laid waste, far and wide. The next spring,

he led one column, from Mentz, against the Chatti, as far as

the upper branches of the Weser, while he sent another farther

north to chastise the Cherusci and the Marsi, surprising and

massacring the latter at their feast of Tanfana. Later in the

same year, he penetrated, by a double expedition,--moving by

sea and by land, as his father had done before,--to the

country between the Ems and the Lippe, and laid waste the

territory of the Bructeri, and their neighbors. He also

visited the spot where the army of Varus had perished, and

erected a monument to the dead. On the return from this

expedition, four legions, under Cæcina, were beset in the same

manner that Varus had been, and under like difficulties; but

their commander was of different stuff and brought them safely

through, after punishing his pursuers severely. But the army

had been given up as lost, and only the resolute opposition of

Agrippina, the wife of Germanicus, had prevented the Roman

commander at Vetera, on the Rhine, from destroying the bridge

there, and abandoning the legions to their supposed fate. In

the spring of A. D. 16, Germanicus again embarked his army,

80,000 strong, at the mouth of the Rhine, on board transports,

and moved it to the mouth of the Ems, where the fleet

remained. Thence he marched up the Ems and across to the

Weser, and was encountered, in the country of the Cherusci, by

a general levy of the German tribes, led by Arminius and

Inguiomerus. Two great battles were fought, in which the

Romans were victorious. But, when returning from this

campaign, the fleet encountered a storm in which so much of it

perished, with the troops on board, that the disaster threw a

heavy cloud of gloom over the triumph of Germanicus. The young

general was soon afterwards recalled, and three years later he

died,--of poison, as is supposed,--at Antioch. "The central

government ceased from this time to take any warm interest in

the subjugation of the Germans; and the dissensions of their

states and princes, which peace was not slow in developing,

attracted no Roman emissaries to the barbarian camps, and

rarely led the legions beyond the frontier, which was now

allowed to recede finally to the Rhine."

C. Merivale,

History of the Romans,

chapter 42.

ALSO IN:

T. Mommsen,

History of Rome,

book 8, chapter 1.

T. Smith,

Arminius,

part 1, chapter 7.

GERMANY: 3d Century.

Beginning of the "Wandering of the Nations."

"Towards the middle of the third century, ... a change becomes

perceptible in the relations and attitude of the German

peoples. Many of the nations, which have been celebrated in

the annals of the classical writers, disappear silently from

history; new races, new combinations and confederacies start

into life, and the names which have achieved an imperishable

notoriety from their connection with the long decay and the

overthrow of the Roman Empire, come forward, and still

survive. On the soil whereon the Sigambri, Marsi, Chauci, and

Cherusci had struggled to preserve a rude independence, Franks

and Saxons lived free and formidable; Alemanni were gathered

along the foot of the Roman wall which connected the Danube

with the Rhine, and had, hitherto, preserved inviolate the

Agri decumates; while eastern Germany, allured by the hope of

spoil, or impelled by external pressure, precipitated itself

under the collective term of Goths upon the shrinking

settlements of the Dacia and the Danube. The new appellations

which appear in western Germany in the third century have not

unnaturally given rise to the presumption that unknown peoples

had penetrated through the land, and overpowered the ancient

tribes, and national vanity has contributed to the delusion.

As the Burgundians ... were flattered by being told they were

descendants of Roman colonists, so the barbarian writers of a

later period busied their imaginations in the solitude of

monastic life to enhance the glory of their countrymen, by the

invention of what their inkling of classical knowledge led

them to imagine a more illustrious origin. ... Fictions like

these may be referred to as an index of the time when the

young barbarian spirit, eager after fame, and incapable of

balancing probabilities, first gloated over the marvels of

classical literature, though its refined and delicate beauties

eluded their grosser taste; but they require no critical

examination; there are no grounds for believing that Franks,

Saxons, or Alemanni, were other than the original inhabitants

of the country, though there is a natural difficulty arising

from the want of written contemporary evidence in tracing the

transition, and determining the tribes of which the new

confederacies were formed. At the same time, though no

immigration of strangers was possible, a movement of a

particular tribe was not unfrequent. The constant internal

dissensions of the Germans, combined with their spirit of

warlike enterprise, led to frequent domestic wars; and the

vanquished sometimes chose rather to seek an asylum far from

their native soil, where they might live in freedom, than

continue as bondmen or tributaries to the conqueror. Of such a

nature were the wanderings of the Usipites and Teuchteri

[Tenchteri] in Cæsar's time, the removal of the Ubii from

Nassau to the neighbourhood of Cöln and Xanthen; and to this

must be ascribed the appearance of the Burgundians, who had

dwelt beyond the Oder, in the vicinity of the Main and the

Necker. Another class of national emigrations, were those

which implied a final abandonment of the native Germany with

the object of seeking a new settlement among the possessions

of the sinking empire.

{1432}

Those of the Goths, Vandals, Alans, Sueves, the second

movement of the Burgundians, may be included in this category;

the invasions of the Franks, Alemanni, and Saxons, on the

contrary, cannot be called national emigrations, for they

never abandoned, with their families, their original

birthplace; their outwanderings, like the emigrations of the

present day, were partial; their occupation of the enemy's

territory was, in character, military and progressive; and,

with the exception of the Anglo-Saxon settlement in Britain,

their connection with the original stock was never

interrupted. In all the migrations of German peoples spoken of

from Cæsar downwards, the numbers of the emigrants appear to

be enormously exaggerated. The Usipites and Teuchteri are

estimated by Cæsar at 430,000 souls. How could such a

multitude find nourishment during a three years' wandering? If

80,000 Burgundian Wehrmen came to the Rhine to the assistance

of Valentinian, as Cassiodorius, Jerome, and other chroniclers

state, the numbers of the whole nation must have approached

400,000, and it is impossible to believe that such a mass

could obtain support in the narrow district lying between the

Alemanni, the Hermunduri, and the Chatti. In other cases,

vague expressions, and still more the wonderful achievements

of the Germans in the course of their emigrations, have led to

the supposition of enormous numbers; but Germany could not

find nourishment for the multitudes which have been ascribed

to it. Corn at that period was little cultivated; it was not

the food of the people, whose chief support was flesh. ... The

conquests of the barbarians may be ascribed as much to the

weakness of their adversaries, to their want of energy and

union, as to their own strength. There was, in fact, no enemy

to meet them in the field; and their domination was, at least,

as acceptable to the provincial inhabitants as that of the

imbecile, but rapacious ministers of the Roman government. ...

It was not the lust of wandering, but the influence of

external circumstances which brought them to the vicinity of

the Danube: at first the aggressions of the Romans, then the

pressure of the Huns and the Sclavonic tribes. The whole

intercourse of Germany with Rome must be considered as one

long war, which began with the invasion of Cæsar; which, long

restrained by the superior power of the enemy, warmed with his

growing weakness, and only ended with the extinction of the

Roman name. The wars of the third, fourth, and fifth

centuries, were only a continuance of the ancient hostility.

There might be partial truce, or occasional intermission; some

tribes might be almost extirpated by the sword; some, for a

time, bought off by money; but Rome was the universal enemy,

and much of the internal restlessness of the Germans was no

more than the natural movement towards the hostile borders. As

the invasion of northern Germany gave rise to the first great

northern union, so the conquest of Dacia brought Goths from

the Vistula to the south, while the erection of the giant wall

naturally gathered the Suevic tribes along its limits, only

waiting for the opportunity to break through. Step by step

this battle of centuries was fought; from the time of

Caracalla the flood turned, wave followed wave like the

encroaching tide, and the ancient landmarks receded bit by

bit, till Rome itself was buried beneath the waters. ... Three

great confederacies of German tribes, more or less united by

birth, position, interest, or language, may be discerned,

during this period, in immediate contact with the Romans---the

Alemanni, the Goths, and the Franks. A fourth, the Saxons, was

chiefly known from its maritime voyages off the coast of Gaul

and Britain. There were also many independent peoples which

cannot be enumerated among any of the political confederacies,

but which acted for themselves, and pursued their individual

ends: such were the Burgundians, the Alans, the Vandals, and

the Lombards."

T. Smith,

Arminius,

part 2, chapter 1.

ALSO IN:

R. G. Latham,

Nationalities of Europe,

volume 2, chapter 21.

See, also,

ALEMANNI; MARCOMANNI; QUADI; GOTHS;

GEPIDÆ; SAXONS; ANGLES, FRANKS;

BURGUNDIANS; VANDALS; SUEVI; LOMBARDS;

and, also, Appendix A, volume 1.

GERMANY: A. D. 277.

Invasion by Probus.

The vigorous emperor Probus, who, in the year 277, drove from

Gaul the swarms of invaders that had ravaged the unhappy

province with impunity for two years past, then crossed the

Rhine and harried the country of the marauders, as far as the

Elbe and the Neckar. "Germany, exhausted by the ill success of

the last emigration, was astonished by his presence. Nine of

the most considerable princes repaired to his camp and fell

prostrate at his feet. Such a treaty was humbly received by

the Germans as it pleased the conqueror to dictate." Probus

then caused a stone wall, strengthened at intervals with

towers, to be built from the Danube, near Neustadt and

Ratisbon, to Wimpfen on the Neckar, and thence to the Rhine,

for the protection of the settlers of the "Agri Decumates."

But the wall was thrown down, a few years afterwards, by the

Alemanni.

E. Gibbon,

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,

chapter 12.

GERMANY: 5th Century.

Conversion of the Franks.

See CHRISTIANITY: A. D. 496-800.

GERMANY: A. D. 481-768.

Acquisition of supremacy by the Franks.

The original dominions of Clovis, or Chlodwig--with whose

reign the career of the Franks as a consolidated people

began--corresponded nearly to the modern kingdom of Belgium.

His first conquests were from the Romans, in the neighboring

parts of Gaul, and when those were finished, "the king of the

Franks began to look round upon the other German nations

settled upon its soil, with a view to the further extension of

his power. A quarrel with the Alemanni supplied the first

opportunity for the gratification of his ambition. For more

than a century the Alemanni had been in undisturbed possession

of Alsace, and the adjoining districts; Mainz, Worms, Speyer,

Strasburg, Basel, Constanz, Bregenz, lay within their

territory. ... The Vosegen range was a bulwark on the side of

Gaul, waste lands separated them from the Burgundians, who

were settled about the Jura and in the south-west part of

Helvetia, and the Moselle divided them from the Ripuarian

Franks. It is unknown whether they formed a state distinct

from their brethren on the right of the Rhine; probably such

was the case, for the Alemanni, at all times, were divided

into separate tribes, between which, however, was generally a

common union; nor is it certain whether the Alsatian Alemanni

were under one or several Adelings; a single king is mentioned

as having fallen in the battle with Chlodwig, who may have

been merely an elected military leader.

{1433 and 1434 moved forward for continuity}

{1435}

Equally obscure is the cause of their war with Chlodwig,

though it has been assumed, perhaps too hastily, by all recent

historians, that the Frank king became involved in it as an

ally of the Ripuarians. The Ripuarian Franks were settled, as

the name imports, upon the banks of the Rhine, from the

Moselle downwards; their chief seat was the city of Cologne.

It is probable that they consisted of the remains of the

ancient Ubii, strengthened by the adventurers who crossed over

on the first invasion, and the name implies that they were

regarded by the Romans as a kind of limitanean soldiery. For,

in the common parlance of the Romans of that period, the tract

of land lying along the Rhine was called Ripa, in an absolute

sense, and even the river itself was not unfrequently

denominated by the same title. Ripuarii are Ripa-wehren,

Hreop, or Hrepa-wehren, defenders of the shore. About the

close of the fifth century these Ripuarii were under the

government of a king, named Sigebert, usually called 'the

lance.' The story told by modern writers is, that this

Sigebert, having fallen into dispute with the Alemanni, called

upon Chlodwig for assistance, a call which the young king

willingly listened to. The Alemanni had invaded the Ripuarian

territory, and advanced within a short distance of Cologne,

when Chlodwig and his Franks joined the Ripuarii; a battle

took place at Zülpich, about twenty-two English miles from

Cologne, which, after a fierce struggle, ended in the defeat

of the Alemanni. ... Chlodwig was following up his victory

over the Alemanni, perhaps with unnecessary ferocity, when he

was stopped in his course by a flattering embassy from the

great Theodorich. Many of the Alemanni had submitted, after

the death of their chief, on the field of battle. 'Spare us,'

they cried, 'for we are now thy people!' but there were many

who, abhorring the Frank yoke, fled towards the south, and

threw themselves under the protection of the Ostrogothic king,

who had possessed himself of the ancient Rhætia and

Vindelicia."

T. Smith,

Arminius,

part 2, chapter 4.

The sons of Clovis pushed their conquests on the Germanic as

well as on the Gallic side of the Rhine. Theodoric, or

Theuderik, who reigned at Metz, with the aid of his brother

Clotaire, or Chlother, of Soissons, subjugated the

Thuringians, between A. D. 515 and 528. "How he [Theuderik]

acquired authority over the Alemans and the Bavarians is not

known. Perhaps in the subjugation of Thuringia he had taken

occasion to extend his sway over other nations; but from this

time forth we find not only these, but the Saxons more to the

north, regarded as the associates or tributaries of the

Eastern or Ripuarian Franks. From the Elbe to the Meuse, and

from the Northern Ocean to the sources of the Rhine, a region

comprising a great part of ancient Germany, the ascendency of

the Franks was practically acknowledged, and a kingdom was

formed [Austrasia--Oster-rike--the Eastern Kingdom] which was

destined to overshadow all the other Mérovingian states; The

various tribes which composed its Germanic accretions, remote

and exempt from the influences of the Roman civilization,

retained their fierce customs and their rude superstitions,

and continued to be governed by their hereditary dukes; but

their wild masses marched under the standards of the Franks,

and conceded to those formidable conquerors a certain degree

of political supremacy." When, in 558, Clotaire, by the death

of his brothers, became the sole king of the Franks, his

empire embraced all Roman Gaul, except Septimania, still held

by the Visigoths, and Brittany, but slightly subjected; "while

in ancient Germany, from the Rhine to the Weser, the powerful

duchies of the Alemans, the Thuringians, the Bavarians, the

Frisons, and the Saxons, were regarded not entirely as

subject, and yet as tributary provinces." During the next

century and a half, the feebleness of the Merovingians lost

their hold upon these German tributaries. "As early as the

time of Chlother II. the Langobards had recovered their

freedom; under Dagobert [622-638], the Saxons; under Sighebert

II. [638-656], the Thuringians; and now, during the late

broils [670-687], the Alemans, the Bavarians and the Frisons."

But the vigorous Mayors of the Palace, Pepin Heristal and Karl

Martel, applied themselves resolutely to the restoration of

the Frank supremacy, in Germany as well as in Aquitaine. Pepin

"found the task nearly impossible. Time and again he assailed the

Frisons, the Saxons, the Bavarians, and the Alemans, but could

bind them to no truce nor peace for any length of time. No

less than ten times the Frisons resumed their arms, while the

revolts of the others were so incessant that he was compelled

to abandon all hope of recovering the southern or Roman part

of Gaul, in order to direct his attention exclusively to the

Germans. The aid which he received from the Christian

missionaries rendered him more successful among them. Those

intrepid propagandists pierced where his armies could not. ...

The Franks and the Popes of Rome had a common interest in this

work of the conversion of the Germans, the Franks to restrain

irruptions, and the Popes to carry their spiritual sway over

Europe." Pepin left these unfinished German wars to his son

Karl, the Hammer, and Karl prosecuted them with characteristic

energy during his first years of power. "Almost every month he

was forced into some expedition beyond the Rhine. ... The

Alemans, the Bavarians, and the Frisons, he succeeded in

subjecting to a formal confession at least of the Frankish

supremacy; but the turbulent and implacable Saxons baffled his

most strenuous efforts. Their wild tribes had become, within a

few years, a powerful and numerous nation; they had

appropriated the lands of the Thuringians and Hassi, or Catti,

and joined to themselves other confederations and tribes; and,

stretching from the Rhine to the Elbe, offered their marshes

and forests a free asylum to all the persecuted sectaries of

Odhinn, to all the lovers of native and savage independence.

Six times in succession the armies of Karl penetrated the

wilderness they called their home, ravaging their fields and

burning their cabins, but the Saxon war was still renewed. He

left it to the energetic labors of other conquerors, to

Christian missionaries, ... to break the way of civilization

into those rude and darkened realms." Karl's sons Pepin and

Karloman crushed revolts of the Alemans, or Suabians, and the

Bavarians in 742, and Karloman humbled the Saxons in a great

campaign (744), compelling them in large numbers to submit to

Christian baptism. After that, Germany waited for its first

entire master--Charlemagne.

P. Godwin,

History of France: Ancient Gaul,

chapters 12-15.

ALSO IN:

W. C. Perry,

The Franks,

chapters 2-6.

See, also,

FRANKS, and AUSTRASIA.

{1433 moved here for continuity}

FIFTH CENTURY.

CONTEMPORANEOUS EVENTS.

* Uncertain date.

A. D. 402.

Defeat of Alaric by Stilicho.

Birth of Phocion* (d. 317).

404.

Removal of the capital of the Western Empire from Rome to

Ravenna.*

Banishment of the Patriarch, John Chrysostom, from

Constantinople; burning of the Church of Saint Sophia.

406.

Barbarian inroad of Radagaisus into Italy.

Breaking of the Rhine barrier by German tribes;

overwhelming invasion of Gaul by Vandals, Alans, Suevi, and

Burgundians.

407.

Usurpation of Constantine in Britain and Gaul.

408.

Death of the Eastern Emperor, Arcadius, and accession of

Theodosius II.

Execution of Stilicho at Ravenna;

massacre of barbarian hostages in Italy;

blockade of Rome by Alaric.

409.

Invasion of Spain by the Vandals, Suevi, and Alans.

410.

Siege, capture and pillage of Rome by Alaric; his death.

Abandonment of Britain by the Empire.

The barbarian attack upon Gaul joined by the Franks.

412.

Gaul entered by the Visigoths

Cyril made Patriarch of Alexandria.

414.

Title of Augusta taken by Pulcheria at Constantinople.

415.

Visigothic conquest of Spain begun.

Persecution of Jews at Alexandria; death of Hypatia.

418.

Founding of the Gothic kingdom of Toulouse in Aquitaine.

422.

War between Persia and the Eastern Empire

partition of Armenia.

423.

Death of Honorius, Emperor in the West;

usurpation of John the Notary.

425.

Accession of the Western Emperor, Valentinian III., under the

regency of Placidia; formal and legal separation of the

Eastern and Western Empires.

428.

Conquests of the Vandals in Spain.

Nestorius made Patriarch of Constantinople.

429.

Vandal conquests in Africa begun.

430.

Siege of Hippo Regius in Africa;

death of Saint Augustine, bishop of Hippo.

431.

Third General Council of the Church, held at Ephesus.

433.

Beginning of the reign of Attila, king of the Huns. *

435.

Nestorius exiled to the Libyan desert.

439.

Carthage taken by the Vandals.

440.

Leo the Great elected Pope.

441.

Invasion of the Eastern Empire by Attila and the Huns.

443.

Conquest and settlement of Savoy by the Burgundians.

446.

Thermopylæ passed by the Huns;

humiliating purchase of peace with them by the Eastern

Emperor.

449.

Landing in Britain of the Jutes under Hengist and Horsa.*

Meeting of the so-called Robber Synod at Ephesus.

450.

Death of the Eastern Emperor, Theodosius II., and accession of

Pulcheria.

451.

Great defeat of the Huns at Chalons;

retreat of Attila from Gaul.

Fourth General Council of the Church, held at Chalcedon.

452.

Invasion of Italy by Attila; origin of Venice.

453.

Death of Attila; dissolution of his empire.

Death of Pulcheria, Empress in the East.

455.

Murder of Valentinian III., Emperor in the West;

usurpation of Maximus.

Rome pillaged by the Vandals.

Birth of Theodoric the Great (d. 526).

456.

Supremacy of Ricimer, commander of the barbarian mercenaries,

in the Western Empire; Avitus deposed.

457.

Marjorian, first of the imperial puppets of Ricimer, raised to

the throne of the Western Empire.

Accession of Leo I., Emperor in the East.

461.

Marjorian deposed; Severus made Emperor in the West.

Death of Pope Leo the Great and election of Pope Hilarius.

467.

Anthemius made Emperor in the West.

472.

Siege and storming of Rome by Ricimer;

death of Anthemius, and of Ricimer;

Olybrius and Glycerius successive emperors.

473.

Ostrogothic invasion of Italy diverted to Gaul.

474.

Julius Nepos Emperor in the West;

accession of Zeno in the Eastern Empire.

475.

Romulus Augustulus made Emperor in the West.

476.

Romulus Augustulus dethroned by Odoacer:

extinction for more than three centuries of the Western line

of emperors.

477.

Beginning of Saxon conquests in Britain.

480.

Birth of Saint Benedict (d. 543).

481.

Founding of the Frank kingdom by Clovis.

486.

Overthrow of the kingdom of Syagrius, the last Roman

sovereignty in Gaul.

488.

Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, commissioned by the Eastern

Emperor to invade Italy.

489.

Defeat of Odoacer by Theodoric at Verona.

491.

Accession of Anastasius, Emperor in the East.

Capture of Anderida by the South Saxons.

492.

Election of Pope Gelasius I.

493.

Surrender of Odoacer at Ravenna;

his murder;

Theodoric king of Italy.

494. Landing of Cerdic and his band of Saxons in Britain. *

496.

Defeat of the Alemanni at Tolbiac by Clovis, king of the Franks;

baptism of Clovis.

{1434 moved here for continuity}

SIXTH CENTURY.

CONTEMPORANEOUS EVENTS.

* Uncertain date.

A. D. 504.

Expulsion of the Alemanni from the Middle Rhine by the Franks.

505.

Peace between Persia and the Eastern Empire.

507.

Overthrow of the Gothic kingdom of Toulouse by Clovis.

511.

Death of Clovis;

partition of the Frank kingdom among his sons.

Monophysite riot at Constantinople.

512.

Second Monophysite riot at Constantinople.

515.

Publication of the monastic rule of Saint Benedict.

518.

Death of the Eastern Emperor, Anastasius, and accession of

Justin I.

519.

Cerdic and Cynric become kings of the West Saxons.

525.

Execution of Boethius and Symmachus by Theodoric, king of

Italy.

526.

Death of Theodoric and accession of Athalaric.

Great earthquake at Antioch.

War between Persia and the Eastern Empire.

527.

Accession of Justinian in the Eastern Empire.

528.

Conquest of Thuringia by the Franks.

529.

Defeat of the Persians, at Dara, by the Roman general

Belisarius.

Closing of the schools at Athens.

Publication of the Code of Justinian.

531.

Accession of Chosroes, or Nushirvan, to the throne of Persia.

532.

End of War between Persia and the Eastern Empire.

Nika sedition at Constantinople.

533.

Overthrow of the Vandal kingdom in Africa by Belisarius.

Publication of the Pandects of Justinian.

534.

Conquest of the Burgundians by the Franks.

535.

Recovery of Sicily from the Goths by Belisarius.

536.

Rome taken from the Goths by Belisarius for Justinian.

537.

Unsuccessful siege of Rome by the Goths.

539.

Destruction of Milan by the Goths.

Invasion of Italy by the Franks.

540.

Surrender of Ravenna to Belisarius;

his removal from command.

Invasion of Syria by Chosroes, king of Persia;

storming and sacking of Antioch.

Formal relinquishment of Gaul to the Franks by Justinian.

Vigilius made Pope.

541.

Gothic successes under Totila, in Italy.

End of the succession of. Roman Consuls.

Defense of the East by Belisarius.

542.

Great Plague in the Roman Empire.

543.

Surrender of Naples to Totila.

Death of Saint Benedict.

Invasion of Spain by the Franks.

544.

Belisarius again in command in Italy.

546.

Totila's siege, capture and pillage of Rome.

547.

The city of Rome totally deserted for six weeks.

Founding of the kingdom of Bernicia (afterward included in

Northumberland) in England.

Subjection of the Bavarians to the Franks.

548.

Death of the Eastern Empress, Theodora.

549.

Second siege and capture of Rome by Totila.

Beginning of the Lazic War.

552.

Totila defeated and killed by the imperial army under Narses.

553.

End of the Ostrogothic kingdom in Italy;

restoration of the imperial sovereignty.

Fifth General Council of the Church, at Constantinople.

Establishment of the Exarch at Ravenna, representing the

Emperor at Constantinople.

555.

Pelagius I. made Pope.

558.

Reunion of the Frank empire under Clothaire I.

560.

John III. made Pope.

563.

Founding of the monastery of Iona, in Scotland, by Saint Columba.

565.

Death of Belisarius and of the Eastern Emperor Justinian;

accession of Justin II.

566.

Conquest of the Gepidæ in Dacia by the Lombards and Avars.

567.

Division of the Frank dominion into the three kingdoms of

Austrasia, Neustria and Burgundy.

568.

Invasion of Italy by the Lombards;

siege of Pavia.

570.

Birth of Mahomet. *

572.

Renewed war of the Eastern Empire with Persia.

573.

Murder of Alboin, king of the Lombards.

Subjugation of the Suevi by the Visigoths in Spain.

574.

Benedict I. made Pope.

578.

Accession of the Eastern Emperor Tiberius Constantinus.

Pelagius II. made Pope.

582.

Accession of Maurice, Emperor in the East.

588.

Kingdom of Northumberland, in England, founded by the union of

Bernicia and Deira under Æthelric.

589.

Abandonment of Arianism by the Goths in Spain.

590.

Gregory the Great elected Pope.

591.

Peace between Persia and the Eastern Empire.

597.

Mission of Saint Augustine to England.

Death of Saint Columba.

---------End of moved pages 1433 and 1434----------

{1436}

GERMANY: A. D. 687-800.

Rise of the Carolingians and the Empire of Charlemagne.

"Towards the close of the Merovingian period, ... the kingdom

of the Franks ... was divided into four great districts, or

kingdoms as they were called: Austrasia, or the eastern

kingdom, from the river Rhine to the Meuse, with Metz as its

principal city; Neustria, or the western kingdom, extending

from Austrasia to the ocean on the west, and to the Loire on

the south; Aquitaine, south of that river to the foot of the

Pyrenees; and Burgundy, from the Rhone to the Alps, including

Switzerland. These four kingdoms became, before the extinction

of the Merovingian race, consolidated into two,--viz., Austrasia

and Neustria, Eastern and Western Francia,--modern Germany

and modern France, roughly speaking,--of which the first was

to gain the pre-eminence, as it was the seat of the power of

that race of Charlemagne which seized upon the kingdoms of the

Merovingians. But in these kingdoms, while the family of

Clovis occupied them, the royal power became more and more

feeble as time went on, a condition which is illustrated by

the title given in history to these kings,--that of 'rois

fainéants.'... The most powerful officer of a Frankish king

was his steward, or, as he was called, the mayor of his

palace. ... In Austrasia the office had become hereditary in

the family of Pepin of Landen (a small village near Liège),

and under its guidance the degenerate children of Clovis in

that kingdom fought for the supremacy with those equally

degenerate in Neustria, at that time also under the real

control of another mayor of the palace, called Ebroin. The

result of this struggle, after much bloodshed and misery, was

reached in the year 687 at the battle of Testry, in which the

Austrasians completely defeated the Neustrians. ... The

Merovingian princes were still nominally kings, while all the

real power was in the hands of the descendants of Pepin of

Landen, mayors of the palace, and the policy of government was

as fully settled by them as if they had been kings de jure as

well as de facto. This family produced in its earlier days

some persons who have become among the most conspicuous

figures in history:--Pepin, the founder; Pepin le Gros, of

Héristal; Charles, his son, commonly called Martel, or the

Hammerer; Pepin le Bref, under whom the Carlovingian dynasty

was, by aid of the Pope, recognized as the lawful successor of

the Merovingians, even before the extinction of that race;

and, lastly, Charles, surnamed the Great, or Charlemagne, one

of the few men of the human race who, by common consent, have

occupied the foremost rank in history. ... The object of Pepin

of Héristal was two-fold,--to repress the disposition of the

turbulent nobles to encroach upon the royal authority, and to

bring again under the yoke of the Franks those tribes in

Germany who had revolted against the Frankish rule owing to

the weakness of the Merovingian government. He measurably

accomplished both objects. ... He seems to have had what

perhaps is the best test at all times of the claims of a man

to be a real statesman: some consciousness of the true nature

of his mission,--the establishment of order. ... His son and

successor, Charles Martel, was even more conspicuous for the

possession of this genius of statesmanship, but he exhibited

it in a somewhat different direction. He, too, strove to hold

the nobles in check, and to break the power of the Frisian and

the Saxon tribes; and he fought besides, fortunately for his

fame, one of the fifteen decisive battles in the history of

the world, that of Poitiers, in 732, by which the Saracens,

who had conquered Spain, and who had strong hopes of gaining

possession of the whole of Western Europe, were driven back

from Northern France, never to return. ... His son, Pepin le

Bref, is equally conspicuous with the rest in history, but in

a somewhat different way. He continued the never-ending wars

in Germany and in Gaul with the object of securing peace by

the sword, and with more or less success. But his career is

noteworthy principally because he completed the actual

deposition of the last of the Merovingian race, whose nominal

servants but real masters he and his predecessors, mayors of

the palace, had been, and because he sought and obtained the

sanction of the Church for this usurpation. ... The Pope's

position at this time was one of very great embarrassment.

Harassed by the Lombards, who were not only robbers, but who

were also Arians, and who admitted none of the Catholic clergy

to their councils,--with no succor from the Emperors at

Constantinople (whose subject he nominally was) against the

Lombards, and, indeed, in open revolt against them because as

bishop and patriarch of the West he had forbidden the

execution of the decree against the placing of images in the

churches,--for these and many such reasons he sorely needed

succor, and naturally in his necessity he turned to the

powerful King of the Franks. The coronation of Pepin le Bref,

first by St. Boniface, and then by the Pope himself, was the

first step in the fulfilment of the alliance on his part.

Pepin was soon called upon to do his share of the work. Twice

at the bidding of the Pope he descended from the Alps, and,

defeating the Lombards, was rewarded by him and the people of

Rome with the title of Patrician. ... On the death of Pepin,

the Lombards again took up arms and harassed the Church's

territory. Charlemagne, his successor, was called upon to come

to the rescue, and he swept the Lombard power in Italy out of

existence, annexing its territory to the Frankish kingdom, and

confirming the grant of the Exarchate and of the Pentapolis

which his father had made to the Popes. This was in the year

774. ... For twenty-five years Charlemagne ruled Rome

nominally as Patrician, under the supremacy, equally nominal,

of the Emperor at Constantinople. The true sovereign,

recognized as such, was the Pope or Bishop of Rome, but the

actual power was in the hands of the mob, who at one time

towards the close of the century, in the absence of both

Emperor and Patrician, assaulted the Pope while conducting a

procession, and forced him to abandon the city. This Pope,

Leo, with a fine instinct as to the quarter from which succor

could alone come, hurried to seek Charlemagne, who was then in

Germany engaged in one of his never-ending wars against the

Saxons. The appeal for aid was not made in vain, and Charles

descended once more from the Alps in the summer of 799, with

his Frankish hosts. On Christmas day, A. D. 800, in the Church

of St. Peter ... Pope Leo, during the mass, and after the

reading of the gospel, placed upon the brow of Charlemagne,

who had abandoned his northern furs for the dress of a Roman

patrician, the diadem of the Cæsars, and hailed him Imperator

Semper Augustus, while the multitude shouted, 'Carolo, Augusto

a Deo coronato magno et pacifico Imperatori Vita et Victoria.'

In that shout and from that moment one of the most fruitful

epochs of history begins."

C. J. Stillé,

Studies in Mediæval History,

chapter 3.

See, also, FRANKS: A. D. 768-814.

{1437}

GERMANY: A. D. 800.

Charlemagne's restoration of the Roman Empire.

"Three hundred and twenty-four years had passed since the last

Cæsar of the West resigned his power into the hands of the

senate, and left to his Eastern brother the sole headship of

the Roman world. To the latter Italy had from that time been

nominally subject; but it was only during one brief interval,

between the death of Totila the last Ostrogothic king and the

descent of Alboin the first Lombard, that his power had been

really effective. In the further provinces, Gaul, Spain,

Britain, it was only a memory. But the idea of a Roman Empire

as a necessary part of the world's order had not vanished: it

had been admitted by those who seemed to be destroying it; it

had been cherished by the Church; was still recalled by laws

and customs; was dear to the subject populations, who fondly

looked back to the days when slavery was at least mitigated by

peace and order. ... Both the extinction of the Western Empire

in [A.D. 476] ... and its revival in A. D. 800 have been very

generally misunderstood in modern times. ... When Odoacer

compelled the abdication of Romulus Augustulus, he did not

abolish the Western Empire as a separate power, but caused it

to be reunited with or sink into the Eastern, so that from

that time there was, as there had been before Diocletian, a

single undivided Roman Empire. In A. D. 800 the very memory of

the separate Western Empire, as it had stood from the death of

Theodosius till Odoacer, had, so far as appears, been long

since lost, and neither Leo nor Charles nor anyone among their

advisers dreamt of reviving it. They, too, like their

predecessors, held the Roman Empire to be one and indivisible,

and proposed by the coronation of the Frankish king, not to

proclaim a severance of the East and West, but to reverse the

act of Constantine, and make Old Rome again the civil as well

as the ecclesiastical capital of the Empire that bore her

name. ... Although therefore we must in practice speak during

the next seven centuries (down till A. D. 1453, when

Constantinople fell before the Mohammedan) of an Eastern and a

Western Empire, the phrase is in strictness incorrect, and was

one which either court ought to have repudiated. The

Byzantines always did repudiate it; the Latins usually;

although, yielding to facts, they sometimes condescended to

employ it themselves. But their theory was always the same.

Charles was held to be the legitimate successor, not of

Romulus Augustulus, but of Basil, Heraclius, Justinian,

Arcadius, and all the Eastern line. ... North Italy and Rome

ceased for ever to own the supremacy of Byzantium; and while

the Eastern princes paid a shameful tribute to the Mussulman,

the Frankish Emperor--as the recognised head of

Christendom--received from the patriarch of Jerusalem the keys

of the Holy Sepulchre and the banner of Calvary; the gift of

the Sepulchre itself, says Eginhard, from Aaron king of the

Persians [the Caliph Haroun el Rashid]. ... Four centuries

later, when Papacy and Empire had been forced into the mortal

struggle by which the fate of both was decided, three distinct

theories regarding the coronation of Charles will be found

advocated by three different parties, all of them plausible,

all of them to some extent misleading. The Swabian Emperors

held the crown to have been won by their great predecessor as

the prize of conquest, and drew the conclusion that the

citizens and bishop of Rome had no rights as against

themselves. The patriotic party among the Romans, appealing to

the early history of the Empire, declared that by nothing but the

voice of their senate and people could an Emperor be lawfully

created, he being only their chief magistrate, the temporary

depositary of their authority. The Popes pointed to the

indisputable fact that Leo imposed the crown, and argued that

as God's earthly vicar it was then his, and must always

continue to be their right to give to whomsoever they would an

office which was created to be the handmaid of their own. Of

these three it was the last view that eventually prevailed."

J. Bryce,

The Holy Roman Empire,

chapter 4-5.

ALSO IN:

J. I. Mombert,

History of Charles the Great,

chapter 14.

See, also, FRANKS: A. D. 768-814.

GERMANY: A. D. 805.

Conquest of the Avars.

Creation of the Austrian March.

See AVARS, and AUSTRIA: A. D. 805-1246.

GERMANY: A. D. 814-843.

Division of the Empire of Charlemagne.

"There was a manifest conflict, during his later years, in the

court, in the councils, in the mind of Charlemagne [who died

in 814], between the King of the Franks and the Emperor of the

West; between the dissociating, independent Teutonic

principle, and the Roman principle of one code, one dominion,

one sovereign. The Church, though Teutonic in descent, was

Roman in the sentiment of unity. ... That unity had been

threatened by the proclaimed division of the realm between the

sons of Charlemagne. The old Teutonic usage of equal

distribution seemed doomed to prevail over the august unity of

the Roman Empire. What may appear more extraordinary, the

kingdom of Italy was the inferior appanage: it carried not

with it the Empire, which was still to retain a certain

supremacy; that was reserved for the Teutonic sovereign. It

might seem as if this were but the continuation of the Lombard

kingdom, which Charlemagne still held by the right of

conquest. It was bestowed on Pepin; after his death entrusted

to Bernhard, Pepin's illegitimate but only son. Wiser counsels

prevailed. The two elder sons of Charlemagne died without

issue; Louis the third son was summoned from his kingdom of

Aquitaine, and solemnly crowned [813] at Aix-la-Chapelle, as

successor to the whole Empire."

H. H. Milman,

History of Latin Christianity,

book 5, chapter 2 (volume 2).

{1438}

"Instead of being preoccupied with the care of keeping the

empire united, Louis divided it in the year 817 by giving

kingdoms to his three sons. The eldest, Lothaire, had Italy;

Louis, Bavaria; Pepin, Aquitaine. A nephew of the emperor,

Bernard, imagined himself wronged by this partition, and took

up arms to hold Italy. Vanquished without striking a blow, he

delivered himself up to his uncle, who caused his eyes to be

put out. He expired under that torture. Louis reproached

himself later for that cruel death, and to expiate it,

subjected himself to a public penance. In 823, there was born

to him a fourth son. To make him a sharer of his inheritance,

the emperor, annulling in 829 the partition of 817, gave him

Germany, thus depriving his elder sons of part of the

inheritance previously assigned them. This provoked the

resentment of those princes; they rose in rebellion against

their father, and the rest of the reign of Louis was only a

succession of impious contests with his turbulent sons. In

833, he deposed Pepin, and gave his kingdom of Aquitaine to

his youngest born, Charles. Twice deposed himself, and twice

restored, Louis only emerged from the cloister, for which he

was so well fitted, to repeat the same faults. When Louis the

Good-natured died in 840, it was not his cause only which he

had lost through his weakness, but that of the empire. Those

intestine quarrels presaged its dismemberment, which ere long

happened. The sons of Louis, to serve their own ambition, had

revived the national antipathies of the different races.

Lothaire placed himself at the head of the Italians; Louis

rallied the Germans round him, and Charles the Bald the Franks

of Gaul, who were henceforward called Frenchmen. Those three

peoples aspired to break up the union whose bond Charlemagne

had imposed upon them, as the three brothers aspired to form

each for himself a kingdom. The question was decided at the

great battle of Fontanet, near Auxerre, in 841. Lothaire, who

fought therein for the preservation of the empire and of his

authority, was conquered. By the treaty of Verdun [843--see

VERDUN, TREATY OF] it was decided that Louis should have

Germany to the east of the Rhine; Charles, France to the west

of the Scheld, the Meuse, the Saone, and the Rhone; finally,

Lothaire, Italy, with the long range of country comprised

between the Alps and the Cevennes, the Jura, the Saone, the

Rhine, and the Meuse, which from his name was called

Lotharingia. This designation is still to be traced in one of

the recently French provinces, Lorraine."

S. Menzies,

History of Europe from the Decadence  of

the Western Empire to the Reformation,

chapter. 13.

GERMANY: A. D. 843.

Accession of Louis II.

GERMANY: A. D. 843-962.

Treaty of Verdun.

Definite separation from France.

The kingdom of the East Franks.

The partition of the empire of Charlemagne among his three

grandsons, by the Treaty of Verdun, A. D. 843, gave to Charles

the Bald a kingdom which nearly coincided with France, as

afterwards existing under that name, "before its Burgundian

and German annexations.

See VERDUN, TREATY OF;

also, FRANKS: A. D. 814-962.

It also founded a kingdom which roughly answered to the later

Germany before its great extension to the East at the expense

of the Slavonic nations. And as the Western kingdom was formed

by the addition of Aquitaine to the Western Francia, so the

Eastern kingdom was formed by the addition of the Eastern

Francia to Bavaria. Lewis of Bavaria [surnamed 'the German']

became king of a kingdom which we are tempted to call the

kingdom of Germany. Still it would as yet be premature to

speak of France at all, or even to speak of Germany, except in

the geographical sense. The two kingdoms are severally the

kingdoms of the Eastern and of the Western Franks. ... The

Kings had no special titles, and their dominions had no

special names recognized in formal use. Every king who ruled

over any part of the ancient Francia was a king of the Franks.

... The Eastern part of the Frankish dominions, the lot of

Lewis the German and his successors, is thus called the

Eastern Kingdom, the Teutonic Kingdom. Its king is the King of

the East-Franks, sometimes simply the King of the Eastern men,

sometimes the King of Germany. ... The title of King of

Germany is often found in the ninth century as a description,

but it was not a formal title. The Eastern king, like other

kings, for the most part simply calls himself' Rex,' till the

time came when his rank as King of Germany, or of the

East-Franks, became simply a step towards the higher title of

Emperor of the Romans. ... This Eastern or German kingdom, as

it came out of the division of 887 [after the deposition of

Charles III., called Charles the Fat,. who came to the throne

in 881, and who had, momentarily reunited all the Frankish

crowns, except that of Burgundy], had, from north to south,.

nearly the same extent as the Germany of later times. It

stretched from the Alps to the Eider. Its southern boundaries

were somewhat fluctuating. Verona and Aquileia are sometimes

counted as a German march, and the boundary between, Germany

and Burgundy, crossing the modern Switzerland, often changed.

To the north-east the kingdom hardly stretched beyond the

Elbe, except in the small Saxon land between the Elbe and the

Eider [called 'Saxony beyond the Elbe'--modern Holstein]. The

great extension of the German power over the Slavonic lands

beyond the Elbe had hardly yet begun. To the southeast lay the

two border-lands or marks; the Eastern Mark, which grew into

the later duchy of, Oesterreich or the modern Austria, and to

the south of it the mark of Kärnthen or Carinthia. But the

main part of the kingdom consisted of the great duchies of

Saxony, Eastern Francia, Alemannia, and Bavaria. Of these the

two names of Saxony and Bavaria must be carefully marked as

having widely different meanings from those which they bear on

the modern map. Ancient Saxony lies, speaking roughly, between

the Eider, the Elbe, and the Rhine, though it never actually

touches the last-named river. To the south of Saxony lies the

Eastern Francia, the centre and kernel of the German kingdom.

The Main and the Neckar both join the Rhine within its

borders. To the south of Francia lie Alemannia and Bavaria.

This last, it must be remembered, borders on Italy, with

Bötzen for its frontier town. Alemannia is the land in which

both the Rhine and the Danube take their source; it stretches

on both sides of the Bodensee or Lake of Constanz, with the

Rætian Alps as its southern boundary. For several ages to

come, there is no distinction, national or even provincial,

between the lands north and south of the Bodensee."

E. A. Freeman,

Historical Geography of Europe,

chapter 6, section 1.

ALSO IN:

Sir F. Palgrave,

History of Normandy and England,

volumes 1-2.

On the indefiniteness of the name of the Germanic kingdom in

this period,

See FRANCE: 9TH CENTURY.

GERMANY: A. D. 881.

Accession of Charles III. (called The Fat), afterwards King of

all the Franks and Emperor.

GERMANY: A. D. 888.

Accession of Arnulf, afterwards Emperor.

GERMANY: A. D. 899.

Accession of Louis III. (called The Child).

GERMANY: A. D. 911.

Election of Conrad I.

{1439}

GERMANY: A. D. 911-936.

Conrad the Franconian and Henry the Fowler.

Beginning of the Saxon line.

Hungarian invasion.

The building of towns.

In 911, on the death of Louis, surnamed the Child, the German

or East-Frank branch of the dynasty of Charlemagne had become

extinct. "There remained indeed Charles the Simple,

acknowledged as king in some parts of France, but rejected in

others, and possessing no personal claims to respect. The

Germans therefore wisely determined to chose a sovereign from

among themselves. They were at this time divided into five

nations, each under its own duke, and distinguished by

difference of laws, as well as of origin; the Franks, whose

territory, comprising Franconia and the modern Palatinate, was

considered as the cradle of the empire, and who seem to have

arrogated some superiority over the rest, the Suabians, the

Bavarians, the Saxons ... and the Lorrainers, who occupied the

left bank of the Rhine as far as its termination. The choice

of these nations in their general assembly fell upon Conrad,

duke of Franconia, according to some writers, or at least a

man of high rank, and descended through females from

Charlemagne. Conrad dying without male issue, the crown of

Germany was bestowed [A. D. 919] upon Henry the Fowler, duke

of Saxony, ancestor of the three Othos, who followed him in

direct succession. To Henry, and to the first Otho [A. D.

936-973], Germany was more indebted than to any sovereign

since Charlemagne."

H. Hallam,

The Middle Ages,

chapter 5.

"In 924, the Hungarians, who were as much dreaded as the angel

of destruction, re-appeared. They came from the grassy plains

of Hungary, mounted on small and ugly, but strong horses, and

swept along the Danube like a hailstorm. Wherever they came

they set fire to farms, hamlets, and towns, and killed all

living creatures or carried them off. And often they bound

their prisoners to the tails of their horses, and dragged them

along till they died from the dreadful torture. Their very

figures inspired disgust and terror, for their faces were

brown, and disfigured by scars to absolute hideousness; their

heads were shaven, and brutal ferocity and rapacity shone out

of their deep-set eyes. And though the Germans fought bravely,

these enemies always overmatched them, because they appeared

now here, now there, on their fleet horses, and fell upon

isolated districts before they were expected or could be

stopped. ... When on a sudden the terrible cry, 'The

Hungarians are coming, the Hungarians are coming,' resounded

through the land, all fled who could, as if the wild legions

of hell were marching through Saxony and Thuringia. King

Henry, however, would not fly, but encountered them in combat,

like a true knight. Yet he lost the battle, either because he

was ill, or because his soldiers were too few, and

unaccustomed to the enemy's mode of fighting, which enabled

them to conquer while they were fleeing. Henry was obliged to

shut himself up in the royal palace of Werla, near Goslar,

which he bravely defended. The Hungarians stormed it again and

again, but they could not scale the walls; while Henry's men

by a daring sally took a Hungarian chieftain prisoner, which

so terrified the besiegers that they concluded a truce for

nine years on condition that their chief should be released,

and that Henry should engage to pay a yearly tribute. Henry

submitted to the dishonourable sacrifice that he might husband

his strength for better times. ... How important it was to

have fortified places which could not be stormed by cavalry,

and therefore afforded a safe refuge to the neighbouring

peasantry, Henry recognised in 929, when the Hungarians

marched through Bavaria and Suabia to Lorraine, plundered the

time-honoured monastery of St. Gall, and burnt the suburbs of

Constance, but could not take the fortified town itself.

Henry, accordingly, published an order throughout the land,

that at suitable places large fortresses should be built, in

which every ninth man from the neighbouring district must take

garrison duty. Certainly living in towns was contrary to the

customs of the North Germans, and here and there there was

much resistance; but they soon recognised the wisdom of the

royal order, and worked night and day with such diligence that

there soon arose throughout the land towns with stately towers

and strong walls, behind whose battlements the armed burghers

defiantly awaited the Hungarians. Hamburg was then fortified,

Itzehoe built, the walls of Magdeburg, Halle, and Erfurt

extended, for these towns had stood since the time of

Charlemagne. Quedlinburg, Merseburg, Meissen, Wittenberg,

Goslar, Soest, Nordhausen, Duderstadt, Gronau, Pölde, were

rebuilt, and many others of which the old chroniclers say

nothing. Those who dwelt in the cities were called burghers,

and in order that they might not be idle they began to

practise many kinds of industry, and to barter their goods

with the peasants. The emperor encouraged the building of

towns, and granted emancipation to every slave who repaired to

a town, allowed the towns to hold fairs and markets, granted

to them the right of coining money and levying taxes, and gave

them many landed estates and forests. Under such encouragement

town life rapidly developed, and the emperor, in his disputes

with the lawless nobility, always received loyal support from

his disciplined burghers. After a few centuries the towns,

which had now generally become republics, under the name of

'free imperial towns,' became the seats of the perfection of

European trade, science, and culture. ... These incalculable

benefits are due to Henry's order to build towns."

A. W. Grübe,

Heroes of History and Legend,

chapter 8.

At the expiration of the nine years truce, the Hungarians

resumed their attacks, and were defeated by Henry in two

bloody battles.

GERMANY: A. D. 936-973.

Restoration of the Roman Empire by

Otho I. called the Great.

"Otho the Great, son and successor of Henry I., added the

kingdom of Italy to the conquests of his father, and procured

also the Imperial dignity for himself, and his successors in

Germany. Italy had become a distinct kingdom since the

revolution, which happened (888) at the death of the Emperor

Charles the Fat. Ten princes in succession occupied the throne

during the space of seventy-three years. Several of these

princes, such as Guy, Lambert, Arnulf, Louis of Burgundy, and

Berenger I., were invested with the Imperial dignity. Berenger

I., having been assassinated (924), this latter dignity ceased

entirely, and the city of Rome was even dismembered from the

kingdom of Italy. The sovereignty of that city was seized by

the famous Marozia, widow of a nobleman named Alberic. She

raised her son to the pontificate by the title of John XI.;

and the better to establish her dominion, she espoused Hugo

King of Italy (932), who became, in consequence of this

marriage, master of Rome. But Alberic, another son of Marozia,

soon stirred up the people against this aspiring princess and

her husband Hugo.

{1440}

Having driven Hugo from the throne, and shut up his mother in

prison, he assumed to himself the sovereign authority, under

the title of Patrician of the Romans. At his death (954) he

transmitted the sovereignty to his son Octavian, who, though

only nineteen years of age, caused himself to be elected pope,

by the title of John XII. This epoch was one most disastrous

for Italy. The weakness of the government excited factions

among the nobility, gave birth to anarchy, and fresh

opportunity for the depredations of the Hungarians and Arabs,

who, at this period, were the scourge of Italy, which they

ravaged with impunity. Pavia, the capital of the kingdom, was

taken, and burnt by the Hungarians. These troubles increased

on the accession of Berenger II. (950), grandson of Berenger

I. That prince associated his son Adelbert with him in the

royal dignity; and the public voice accused them of having

caused the death of King Lothaire, son and successor of Hugo.

Lothaire left a young widow, named Adelaide, daughter of

Rodolph II., King of Burgundy and Italy. To avoid the

importunities of Berenger II., who wished to compel her to

marry his son Adelbert, this princess called in the King of

Germany to her aid. Otho complied with the solicitations of

the distressed queen; and, on this occasion, undertook his

first expedition into Italy (951). The city of Pavia, and

several other places, having fallen into his hands, he made

himself be proclaimed King of Italy, and married the young

queen, his protégée. Berenger and his son, being driven for

shelter to their strongholds, had recourse to negociation.

They succeeded in obtaining for themselves a confirmation of

the royal title of Italy, on condition of doing homage for it

to the King of Germany. ... It appears that it was not without

the regret, and even contrary to the wish of Adelaide, that

Otho agreed to enter into terms of accommodation with

Berenger. ... Afterwards; however, he lent a favourable ear to

the complaints which Pope John XII. and some Italian noblemen

had addressed to him against Berenger and his son; and took

occasion, on their account, to conduct a new army into Italy

(961). Berenger, too feeble to oppose him, retired a second

time within his fortifications. Otho marched from Pavia to

Milan, and there made himself be crowned King of Italy; from

thence he passed to Rome, about the commencement of the

following year. Pope John XII., who had himself invited him,

and again implored his protection against Berenger, gave him,

at first, a very brilliant reception; and revived the Imperial

dignity in his favour, which had been dormant for thirty-eight

years. It was on the 2d of February, 962, that the Pope

consecrated and crowned him Emperor; but he had soon cause to

repent of this proceeding. Otho, immediately after his

coronation at Rome, undertook the siege of St. Leon, a

fortress in Umbria, where Berenger and his queen had taken

refuge. While engaged in the siege, he received frequent

intimations from Rome, of the misconduct and immoralities of

the Pope. The remonstrances which he thought it his duty to

make on this subject, offended the young pontiff, who

resolved, in consequence, to break off union with the Emperor.

Hurried on by the impetuosity of his character, he entered

into a negociation with Adelbert; and even persuaded him to

come to Rome, in order to concert with him measures of

defence. On the first news of this event, Otho put himself at

the head of a large detachment, with which he marched directly

to Rome. The Pope, however, did not think it advisable to wait

his approach, but fled with the King, his new ally. Otho, on

arriving at the capital, exacted a solemn oath from the clergy

and the people, that henceforth they would elect no pope

without his counsel, and that of the Emperor and his

successors. Having then assembled a council, he caused Pope

John XII. to be deposed; and Leo VIII. was elected in his

place. This latter Pontiff was maintained in the papacy, in

spite of all the efforts which his adversary made to regain

it. Berenger II., after having sustained a long siege at St.

Leon, fell at length (964) into the hands of the conqueror,

who sent him into exile at Bamberg, and compelled his son,

Adelbert, to take refuge in the court of Constantinople. All

Italy, to the extent of the ancient kingdom of the Lombards,

fell under the dominion of the Germans; only a few maritime

towns in Lower Italy, with the greater part of Apulia and

Calabria, still remained in the power of the Greeks. This

kingdom, together with the Imperial dignity, Otho transmitted

to his successors on the throne of Germany. From this time the

Germans held it to be an inviolable principle, that as the

Imperial dignity was strictly united with the royalty of

Italy, kings elected by the German nation should, at the same

time, in virtue of that election, become Kings of Italy and

Emperors. The practice of this triple coronation, viz., of

Germany, Italy, and Rome, continued for many centuries; and

from Otho the Great, till Maximilian I. (1508), no king of

Germany took the title of Emperor, until after he had been

formally crowned by the Pope."

C. W. Koch,

The Revolutions of Europe,

period 3.

"At the first glance it would seem as if the relation in which

Otho now stood to the pope was the same as that occupied by

Charlemagne; on a closer inspection, however; we find a wide

difference. Charlemagne's connexion with the see of Rome was

produced by mutual need; it was the result of long epochs of

political combination embracing the development of various

nations; their mutual understanding rested on an internal

necessity, before which all opposing views and interests gave

way. The sovereignty of Otho the Great, on the contrary,

rested on a principle fundamentally opposed to the

encroachment of spiritual influences. The alliance was

momentary; the disruption of it inevitable. But when, soon

after, the same pope who had invoked his aid, John XII.,

placed himself at the head of a rebellious faction, Otho was

compelled to cause him to be formally deposed, and to crush

the faction that supported him by repeated, exertions of

force, before he could obtain perfect obedience; he was

obliged to raise to the papal chair a pope on whose

co-operation he could rely. The popes have often asserted that

they transferred the empire to the Germans; and if they

confined this assertion to the Carolingian race, they are not

entirely wrong. The coronation of Charlemagne was the result

of their free determination. But if they allude to the German

emperors, properly so called, the contrary of their statement

is just as true; not only Carlmann and Otho the Great, but

their successors, constantly had to conquer the imperial

throne, and to defend it, when conquered, sword in hand.

{1441}

It has been said that the Germans would have done more wisely

if they had not meddled with the empire; or, at least, if they

had first worked out their own internal political

institutions, and then, with matured minds, taken part in the

general affairs of Europe. But the things of this world are

not wont to develop themselves so methodically. A nation is

often compelled by circumstances to increase its territorial

extent, before its internal growth is completed. For was it of

slight importance to its inward progress that Germany thus

remained in unbroken connexion with Italy?--the depository of

all that remained of ancient civilisation, the source whence

all the forms of Christianity had been derived. The mind of

Germany has always unfolded itself by contact with the spirit

of antiquity, and of the nations of Roman origin. ... The

German imperial government revived the civilising and

Christianising tendencies which had distinguished the reigns

of Charles Martell and Charlemagne. Otho the Great, in

following the course marked out by his illustrious

predecessors, gave it a fresh national importance by planting

German colonies in Slavonian countries simultaneously with the

diffusion of Christianity. He Germanised as well as converted

the population he had subdued. He confirmed his father's

conquests on the Saale and the Elbe, by the establishment of

the bishoprics of Meissen and Osterland. After having

conquered the tribes on the other side the Elbe in those long

and perilous campaigns where he commanded in person, he

established there, too, three bishoprics, which for a time

gave an extraordinary impulse to the progress of conversion.

... And even where the project of Germanising the population

was out of the question, the supremacy of the German name was

firmly and actively maintained. In Bohemia and Poland

bishoprics were erected under German metropolitans; from

Hamburg Christianity found its way into the north;

missionaries from Passau traversed Hungary, nor is it

improbable that the influence of these vast and sublime

efforts extended even to Russia. The German empire was the

centre of the conquering religion; as itself advanced, it

extended the ecclesiastico-military State of which the Church

was an integral part; it was the chief representative of the

unity of western Christendom, and hence arose the necessity

under which it lay of acquiring a decided ascendancy over the

papacy. This secular and Germanic principle long retained the

predominancy it had triumphantly acquired. ... How magnificent

was the position now occupied by the German nation,

represented in the persons of the mightiest princes of Europe

and united under their sceptre; at the head of an advancing

civilisation, and of the whole of western Christendom; in the

fullness of youthful aspiring strength! We must here however

remark and confess, that Germany did not wholly understand her

position, nor fulfil her mission. Above all, she did not

succeed in giving complete reality to the idea of a western

empire, such as appeared about to be established under Otho I.

Independent and often hostile, though Christian powers arose

through all the borders of Germany; in Hungary and in Poland,

in the northern as well as in the southern possessions of the

Normans; England and France were snatched again from German

influence. Spain laughed at the German claims to a universal

supremacy; her kings thought themselves emperors; even the

enterprises nearest home--those across the Elbe--were for a

time stationary or retrograde. If we seek for the causes of

these unfavourable results, we need only turn our eyes on the

internal condition of the empire, where we find an incessant

and tempestuous struggle of all the forces of the nation.

Unfortunately the establishment of a fixed rule of succession

to the imperial crown was continually prevented by events."

L. Ranke,

History of the Reformation in Germany,

introduction.

See, also, ITALY: A. D. 961-1039;

and ROMAN EMPIRE, THE HOLY.

GERMANY: A. D. 955.

Great defeat and repulse of the Hungarians by Otho I.

See HUNGARIANS: A. D. 934-955.

GERMANY: A. D. 973-1122.

End of the Saxon line.

Election of the Franconians.

Reformation of the Papacy.

Contest of Henry IV. with the Head of the Church.

The question of Investitures.

"Otho II. had a short and troubled reign, 973-983 A. D.,

having to repress the Slavi, the Danes, the Greeks of Lower

Italy, and to defend Lorraine against the French. He died at

Rome in his twenty-eighth year. 983 A. D. Otho III. (aged

three years) succeeded under the regency of his mother,

Theophania (a Greek princess), who had to contend with the

rebellious nobles, the Slavi, the Poles, the Bohemians, and

with France, which desired to conquer Lorraine. This able lady

died 991 A. D. Otho III. made three expeditions into Italy,

and in 998 A. D. put down the republic of Rome, which had been

created by the patrician Crescentius. The resistance of

Crescentius had been pardoned the preceding year, but on this

occasion he was publicly beheaded on the battlements of Rome,

in view of the army and of the people. In 999 A. D. Otho

placed his tutor Gerbert in the papal chair as Sylvester II.

The tutor and the emperor were in advance of their age. The

former had gleaned from Saracen translations from the Greek,

as well as from Latin literature, and was master of the

science of the day. It is supposed that they had planned to

remove the seat of empire to Rome--a project which, had he

lived, he would not have been able to carry out, for the

centre of political power had long moved northward: he died at

the early age of twenty-two, 1002 A. D. Henry II. (the Holy),

Duke of Bavaria, was elected emperor, and had to battle, like

his predecessors, with rebellious nobles, with the Poles, and

Bohemians, and the Slavi. He was thrice in Italy, and died

1024 A. D. 'Perhaps, with the single exception of St. Louis

IX., there was no other prince of the middle ages so uniformly

swayed by justice.' Conrad II. (the Salic) of Franconia was

elected emperor in a diet in the plains between Mentz and

Worms, near Oppenheim, which was attended by princes, nobles,

and 50,000 people altogether. His reign was remarkable for the

justice and mercy which he always kept in view. The kingdom of

Aries and Burgundy was united to the empire, 1033 A. D. He

checked the Poles, the Hungarians, and the Lombards, and gave

Schleswiek to Denmark as a fief. In 1037 A. D. he granted to

the lower vassals of the empire the hereditary succession to

their offices and estates, and so extended the privileges of

the great nobles, as to make them almost independent of the

crown. Henry III. succeeded, 1039 A. D., and established the

imperial power with a high hand."

W. B. Boyce,

Introduction to the Study of History,

pages 230-231.

{1442}

"Henry III. was, as sovereign, able, upright, and resolute;

and his early death--for his reign was cut short by disasters

that preyed upon his health--is one of the calamities of

history. The cause of the Roman Court he judged with vigor and

good sense. His strong hand, more than any man's, dragged the

Church out of the slough it had fallen into [see ROME: A. D.

962-1057]. ... A few years before, in 1033, a child ten years

old, son of one of the noble houses, had been put on the papal

throne, under the name of Benedict IX.; and was restored to it

by force of arms, five years later, when he had grown into a

lewd, violent, and wilful boy of fifteen. At the age of

twenty-one he was weary of the struggle, and sold out, for a

large sum of money paid down, to a rich purchaser,--first

plundering the papal treasury of all the funds he could lay

his hands on. His successor, Gregory VI., naturally complained

of his hard bargain, which was made harder by another claimant

(Sylvester III.), elected by a different party; while no law

that could possibly be quoted or invented would make valid the

purchase and sale of the spiritual sovereignty of the world,

which in theory the Papacy still was. Gregory appears to have

been a respectable and even conscientious magistrate, by the

standard of that evil time. But his open purchase of the

dignity not only gave a shock to whatever right feeling there

was left, but it made the extraordinary dilemma and scandal of

three popes at once,--a knot which the German king, now

Emperor, was called in to cut. ... The worthless Benedict was

dismissed, as having betrayed his charge. The impotent

Sylvester was not recognized at all. The respectable Gregory

was duly convinced of his deep guilt of Simony,--because he

had 'thought that the gift of God could be purchased with

money,'--and was suffered as a penitent to end his days in

peace. A fourth, a German ecclesiastic, who was clean of all

these intrigues, was set in the chair of Peter, where he

reigned righteously for two years under the name of Clement

II."

J. H. Allen,

Christian History in its Three Great Periods:

Second period,

pages 57-58.

"With the popes of Henry's appointment a new and most powerful

force rose to the control of the papacy--a strong and earnest

movement for reformation which had arisen outside the circle

of papal influence during the darkest days of its degradation,

indeed, and entirely independent of the empire. This had

started from the monastery of Cluny, founded in 910, in

eastern France, as a reformation of the monastic life, but it

involved gradually ideas of a wider reformation throughout the

whole church. Two great sins of the time, as it regarded them,

were especially attacked, the marriage of priests and simony,

or the purchase of ecclesiastical preferment for money,

including also appointments to church offices by temporal

rulers. ... The earnest spirit of Henry III. was not out of

sympathy with the demand for a real reformation, and with the

third pope of his appointment, Leo IX., in 1048, the ideas of

Cluny obtained the direction of affairs. ... One apparently

insignificant act of Leo's had important consequences. He

brought back with him to Rome the monk Hildebrand. He had been

brought up in a monastery in Rome in the strictest ideas of

Cluny, had been a supporter of Gregory VI., one of the three

rival popes deposed by Henry, who, notwithstanding his

outright purchase of the papacy, represented the new reform

demand, and had gone with him into exile on his deposition. It

does not appear that he exercised any decisive influence

during the reign of Leo IX., but so great was his ability and

such the power of his personality that very soon he became the

directing spirit in the papal policy, though his influence

over the papacy before his own pontificate was not so great

nor so constant as it has sometimes been said to have been. So

long as Henry lived the balance of power was decidedly in favor

of the emperor, but in 1056 happened that disastrous event,

which occurred so many times at critical points of imperial

history, from Arnulf to Henry VI., the premature death of the

emperor. His son, Henry IV., was only six years old at his

father's death, and a minority followed just in the crisis of

time needed to enable the feudal princes of Germany to recover

and strengthen their independence against the central

government, and to give free hands to the papacy to carry out

its plans for throwing off the imperial control. Never again

did an emperor occupy, in respect either to Germany or the

papacy, the vantage-ground on which Henry III. had stood. ...

The triumph of the reform movement and of its ecclesiastical

theory is especially connected with the name of Hildebrand, or

Gregory VII., as he called himself when pope, and was very

largely, if not entirely, due to his indomitable spirit and

iron will, which would yield to no persuasion or threats or

actual force. He is one of the most interesting personalities

of history. ... The three chief points which the reform party

attempted to gain were the independence of the church from all

outside control in the election of the pope, the celibacy of

the clergy, and the abolition of simony or the purchase of

ecclesiastical preferment. The foundation for the first of

these was laid under Nicholas II. by assigning the selection

of the pope to the college of cardinals in Rome, though it was

only after some considerable time that this reform was fully

secured. The second point, the celibacy of the clergy, had

long been demanded by the church, but the requirement had not

been strictly enforced, and in many parts of Europe married

clergy were the rule. ... As interpreted by the reformers, the

third of their demands, the suppression of simony, was as great a

step in advance and as revolutionary as the first.

Technically, simony was the sin of securing an ecclesiastical

office by bribery, named from the incident recorded in the

eighth chapter of the Acts concerning Simon Magus. But at this

time the desire for the complete independence of the church

had given to it a new and wider meaning which made it include

all appointment to positions in the church by laymen,

including kings and the emperor. ... According to the

conception of the public law the bishop was an officer of the

state. He had, in the great majority of cases, political

duties to perform as important as his ecclesiastical duties.

The lands which formed the endowment of his office had always

been considered as being, still more directly than any other

feudal land, the property of the state. ...

{1443}

It was a matter of vital importance whether officers

exercising such important functions and controlling so large a

part of its area--probably everywhere as much as one-third of

the territory--should be selected by the state or by some

foreign power beyond its reach and having its own peculiar

interests to seek. But this question of lay investiture was as

vitally important for the church as for the state. ... It was

as necessary to the centralization and independence of the

church that it should choose these officers as that it should

elect the head of all--the pope. This was not a question for

Germany alone. Every northern state had to face the same

difficulty. ... The struggle was so much more bitter and

obstinate with the emperor than with any other sovereign

because of the close relation of the two powers one to

another, and because the whole question of their relative

rights was bound up with it. It was an act of rebellion on the

part of the papacy against the sovereign, who had controlled

it with almost absolute power for a century, and it was rising

into an equal, or even superior, place beside the emperor of

what was practically a new power, a rival for his imperial

position. ... It was absolutely impossible that a conflict

with these new claims should be avoided as soon as Henry IV.

arrived at an age to take the government into his own hands

and attempted to exercise his imperial rights as he understood

them."

G. B. Adams,

Civilization During the Middle Ages,

chapter 10.

"At Gregory's accession, he [Henry] was a young man of

twenty-three. His violence had already driven a whole district

into rebellion. ... The Pope sided with the insurgents. He

summoned the young king to his judgment-seat at Rome;

threatened at his refusal to 'cut him off as a rotten limb';

and passed on him the awful sentence of excommunication. The

double terror of rebellion at home and the Church's curse at

length broke down the passionate pride of Henry. Humbled and

helpless, he crossed the Alps in midwinter, groping among the

bleak precipices and ice-fields,--the peasants passing him in

a rude sledge of hide down those dreadful slopes,--and went

to beg absolution of Gregory at the mountain castle of

Canossa. History has few scenes more dramatic than that which

shows the proud, irascible, crest-fallen young sovereign

confronted with the fiery, little, indomitable old man. To

quote Gregory's own words:--'Here he came with few attendants,

and for three days before the gate--his royal apparel laid

aside, barefoot, clad in wool, and weeping abundantly--he

never ceased to implore the aid and comfort of apostolic

mercy, till all there present were moved with pity and

compassion; insomuch that, interceding for him with many

prayers and tears they all wondered at my strange severity,

and some even cried out that it was not so much the severe

dignity of an apostle as the cruel wrath of a tyrant. Overcome

at length by the urgency of his appeal and the entreaties of

all present, I relaxed the bond of anathema, and received him

to the favor of communion and the bosom of our holy Mother the

Church.' It was a truce which one party did not mean nor the

other hope to keep. It was policy, not real terror or

conviction, that had led Henry to humble himself before the

Pope. It was policy, not contrition or compassion, that had

led Gregory (against his better judgment, it is said) to

accept his Sovereign's penance. In the war of policy, the man

of the world prevailed. Freed of the Church's curse, he

quickly won back the strength he had lost. He overthrew in

battle the rival whom Gregory upheld. He swept his rebellious

lands with sword and flame. He carried his victorious army to

Rome, and was there crowned Emperor by a rival Pope [1084].

Gregory himself was only saved by his ferocious allies, Norman

and Saracen, at cost of the devastation of half the

capital,--that broad belt of ruin which still covers the half

mile between the Coliseum and the Lateran gate. Then, hardly

rescued from the popular wrath, he went away to die, defeated

and heart-broken, at Salerno, with the almost despairing words

on his lips: 'I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity, and

therefore I die in exile!' But 'a spirit hath not flesh or

bones,' as a body hath, and so it will not stay mangled and

bruised. The victory lay, after all, with the combatant who

could appeal to fanaticism as well as force."

J. H. Allen,

Christian History in its Three Great Periods:

second period,

pages 69-72.

"Meanwhile, the Saxons had recognized Hermann of Luxemburg as

their King, but in 1087 he resigned the crown: and another

claimant, Eckbert, Margrave of Meissen, was murdered. The

Saxons were now thoroughly' weary of strife, and as years and

bitter experience had softened the character of Henry, they

were the more willing to return to their allegiance. Peace was

therefore, for a time, restored in Germany. The Papacy did not

forgive Henry. He was excommunicated several times, and in

1091 his son Conrad was excited to rebel against him. In 1104

a more serious rebellion was headed by the Emperor's second

son Henry, who had been crowned King, on promising not to

seize the government during his father's lifetime, in 1099.

The Emperor was treated very cruelly, and had to sign his own

abdication at Ingelheim in 1105. A last effort was made on his

behalf by the Duke of Lotharingia; but worn out by his sorrows

and struggles, Henry died in August, 1106. His body lay in a

stone coffin in an unconsecrated chapel at Speyer for five

years. Not till 1111, when the sentence of excommunication was

removed, was it properly buried. Henry V. was not so obedient

to the Church as the Papal party had hoped. He stoutly

maintained the very point which had brought so much trouble on

his father. The right of investiture, he declared, had always

belonged to his predecessors, and he was not to give up what

they had handed on to him. In 1110 he went to Rome,

accompanied by a large army. Next year Pope Paschal II. was

forced to crown him Emperor: but as soon as the Germans had

crossed the Alps again Paschal renewed all his old demands.

The struggle soon spread to Germany. The Emperor was

excommunicated; and the discontented princes, as eager as ever

to break the royal power, sided with the Pope against him. Peace

was not restored till 1122, when Calixtus II. was Pope. In

that year, in a Diet held at Worms, both parties agreed to a

compromise, called the Concordat of Worms."

J. Sime,

History of Germany,

chapter 8.

{1444}

"The long-desired reconciliation was effected in the form of

the following concordat. The emperor renounced the right of

investiture with the ring and crosier, and conceded that all

bishoprics of the empire should be filled by canonical

election and free consecration; the election of the German

bishops (not of the Italian and Burgundian) should be held in

presence of the emperor; the bishops elect should receive

investiture, but only of their fiefs and regalia, by the

sceptre in Germany before, in Italy and in Burgundy after,

their consecration; for these grants they should promise

fidelity to the emperor; contested elections should be decided

by the emperor in favour of him who should be considered by

the provincial synod to possess the better right. Finally he

should restore to the Roman Church all the possessions and

regalia of St. Peter. This convention secured to the Church

many things, and above all, the freedom of ecclesiastical

elections. Hitherto, the different Churches had been compelled

to give their consent to elections that had been made by the

king; but now the king was pledged to consent to the elections

made by the Churches; and although these elections took place

in his presence, he could not refuse his consent and

investiture without violating the treaty, in which he had

promised that for the future elections should be according to

the canons. This, and the great difference, that the king,

when he gave the ring and crosier, invested the bishop elect

with his chief dignity, namely, his bishopric, but now granted

him by investiture with the sceptre, only the accessories,

namely the regalia, was felt by Lothaire, the successor of

Henry, when he required of pope Innocent II. the restoration

of the right of investiture. Upon one important point, the

homage which was to be sworn to the king, the concordat was

silent. By not speaking of it, Calixtus seemed to tolerate it,

and the Roman see therefore permitted it, although it had been

prohibited by Urban and Paschal. It is certain that Calixtus

was as fully convinced as his predecessors, that the condition

of vassals, to which bishops and abbots were reduced by their

oath of homage, could hardly be reconciled with the nature and

dignity of the episcopacy, or with the freedom of the Church,

but he perhaps foresaw, that by insisting too strongly upon

its discontinuance, he might awaken again the unholy war, and

without any hopes of benefit, inflict many evils upon the

Church. Sometime later Adrian endeavoured to free the Italian

bishops from the homage, instead of which, the emperor was to

be content with an oath of fidelity: but Frederick I. would

not renounce the homage unless they resigned the regalia. The

greatest concession made by the papal see in this concordat,

was, that by its silence it appeared to have admitted the

former pretensions of the emperors to take a part in the

election of the Roman pontiff. ... In the following year the

concordat was ratified in the great council of three hundred

bishops, the ninth general council of the Church, which was

convened by Calixtus in Rome."

J. J. I. Döllinger,

History of the Church,

volume 3, pages 345-347.

See, also, PAPACY: A. D. 1056-1122;

CANOSSA; ROME: A. D. 1081-1084;

and SAXONY: A. D. 1073-1075.

ALSO IN:

A. F. Villemain,

Life of Gregory VII.,

book 2.

Comte C. F. Montalembert,

The Monks of the West,

book 19.

H. H. Milman,

History of Latin Christianity,

books 6-8.

W. R. W. Stephens,

Hildebrand and His Times.

E. F. Henderson,

Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages,

book 4.

GERMANY: A. D. 1101.

Disastrous Crusade under Duke Welf of Bavaria.

See CRUSADES: A. D. 1101-1102.

GERMANY: A. D. 1125.

Election of Lothaire II., King, afterwards Emperor.

GERMANY: A. D. 1125-1152.

The rise of the College of Electors.

The election of Lothaire II., in 1125, when a great assembly

of nobles and church dignitaries was convened at Mentz, and

when certain of the chiefs made a selection of candidates to

be voted for, has been regarded by some historians--Hallam,

Comyn and Dunham, for example--as indicating the origin of the

German electoral college. They have held that a right of

"pretaxation," or preliminary choice, was gradually acquired

by certain princes, which grew into the finally settled

electoral right. But this view is now looked upon as more than

questionable, and is not supported by the best authorities.

"The phrase electoral princes (electores principes) first

occurs in the Privilegium majus Austriacum, which dates from

1156, but it does not appear what princes were intended, and

the accounts extant of the elections of the rival kings,

Philip and Otho (IV.) in 1198, show beyond question that the

right of election was not then limited to a few princes. The

election of Frederick II. (1213) is only described by the

authorities in general terms. They inform us that many princes

took part in the proceedings. The following brief passage

concerning the royal elections occurs in the Auctor Vetus de

Beneficiis: 'When the king elected by the Germans goes to Rome

to be 'consecrated (the) six princes who first cast their

votes for him shall by rights accompany him that the justice

of his election may be evident to the Pope.' The

Sachsenspiegel Lehurecht substantially copies this sentence,

but designates as the six princes: 'the Bishop of Mentz and of

Treves and of Cologne, and the Palsgrave of the Rhine, the

Duke of Saxony, and the Margrave of Brandenburg.' The

Sachsenspiegel of Landrecht is still more explicit: 'In voting

for Emperor, the first shall be the Bishop of Mentz; the

second, the (Bishop) of Treves; the third, the (Bishop) of

Cologne. The first of the laymen to vote is the Palsgrave of

the Rhine, the steward of the Empire; the second, the Duke of

Saxony, the marshal; the third, the Margrave of Brandenburg,

the chamberlain. The butler of the Empire (is) the King of

Bohemia. He has no vote because he is not German.' The obvious

inference is that these three temporal princes voted before

the rest because they were respectively the steward, marshal,

and chamberlain. In the chronicle of Albert of Stade, the

inference is given as fact in these words: 'The Palsgrave

votes because he is steward, the Duke of Saxony because (he

is) marshal, and the Margrave of Brandenburg, because (he is)

chamberlain.' The mere fact that the right of casting the

first six votes attached to six particular princes implies

that their votes greatly outweighed those of their

fellow-princes, and this is well known to have been the case

in all the elections held in the thirteenth century subsequent

to that of Frederick II. Only two others were associated with

them in the double election of Richard of Cornwall and

Alphonso of Castile (1256), namely, the King of Bohemia and

the Duke of Bavaria. The whole number of participants was

therefore eight, yet Urban IV., in a letter written March 31,

1263, to Richard of Cornwall, mentions the King of Bohemia

alone as associated with them, and incidentally states that

the 'princes having a voice' in the royal elections were

'seven in number.' It seems as if this must have been the

statement of an idea rather than of a fact, although a college

of seven electors was a recognized institution ten years

later, as the circumstances attending the election of Rudolph

of Hapsburg, demonstrate."

S. E. Turner,

A Sketch of the Germanic Constitution,

chapter 4.

{1445}

The Mark of Brandenburg was raised to the rank of an

Electorate in 1356--not in 1152 as erroneously stated by

Carlyle. The Margraf then became Kurfürst--"one of the Seven

who have a right ... to choose, to 'kieren' the Romish Kaiser;

and who are therefore called Kur Princes, Kurfürste, or

Electors. ... Fürst (prince) I suppose is equivalent

originally to our noun of number, 'First.' The old verb

'kieren' (participle 'erkoren' still in use, not to mention

'Val-kyr' and other instances) is essentially the same word as

our 'choose,' being written 'kiesen' as well as 'kieren.' Nay,

say the etymologists, it is also written 'Küssen ('to

kiss,'--to choose with such emphasis!), and is not likely to

fall obsolete in that form.--The other Six Electoral

Dignitaries, who grew to Eight by degrees, and may be worth

noting once by the readers of this book, are:

1. Three Ecclesiastical, Mainz, Cöln, Trier (Mentz, Cologne,

Treves), Archbishops all. ...

2. Three Secular, Sachsen, Pfalz, Böhmen (Saxony, Palatinate,

Bohemia); of which the last, Böhmen, since it fell from being

a kingdom in itself, to being a Province of Austria, is not

very vocal in the Diets.

These Six, with Brandenburg, are the Seven Kurfürsts in old

time; Septemvirs of the Country, so to speak. But now Pfalz,

in the Thirty-Years War (under our Prince Rupert's Father,

whom the Germans call the 'Winter-King'), got abrogated, put

to the ban, so far as an indignant Kaiser could; and the vote

and Kur of Pfalz was given to his Cousin of Baiern

(Bavaria),--so far as an indignant Kaiser could.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1621-1623.

However, at the Peace of Westphalia (1648) it was found

incompetent to any Kaiser to abrogate Pfalz or the like of

Pfalz, a Kurfürst of the Empire. So, after jargon

inconceivable, it was settled, that Pfalz must be reinstated,

though with territories much clipped, and at the bottom of the

list, not the top as formerly; and that Baiern, who could not

stand to be balked after twenty-years possession, must be made

Eighth Elector.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1648.

The Ninth, we saw (Year 1692), was Gentleman Ernst of Hanover.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1648-1705.

There never was any Tenth."

T. Carlyle,

Frederick the Great,

book 2, chapter 4.

"All the rules and requisites of the election were settled by

Charles the Fourth in the Golden Bull [A. D. 1356--see below:

A. D. 1347-1493], thenceforward a fundamental law of the

Empire."

J. Bryce,

The Holy Roman Empire,

chapter 14.

GERMANY: A. D. 1138-1268.

The house of Suabia, or the Hohenstaufen.

Its struggles in Germany and Italy, and its end.

The Factions of the

Guelfs and Ghibellines.

Frederick Barbarossa and Frederick the Second.

On the death of Henry V., in 1125, the male line of the house

of Franconia became extinct. Frederick, duke of Suabia, and

his brother Conrad, duke of the Franks, were grandchildren of

Henry IV. on their mother's side, and, inheriting the

patrimonial estates, were plainly the heirs of the crown, if

the crown was to be recognized as hereditary and dynastic. But

jealousy of their house and a desire to reassert the elective

dependence of the imperial office prevailed against their

claims and their ambition. At an election which was denounced

as irregular, the choice fell upon Lothaire of Saxony. The old

imperial family was not only set aside, but its bitterest

enemies were raised over it. The consequences were a feud and

a struggle which grew and widened into the long-lasting,

far-reaching, historical conflict of Guelfs and Ghibellines.

See GUELFS AND GHIBELLINES;

also, SAXONY: DISSOLUTION OF THE OLD DUCHY.

The Saxon emperor Lothaire found his strongest support in the

great Wölf, Welf, or Guelf nobleman, Henry the Proud, duke of

Bavaria, to whom he (Lothaire) now gave his daughter in

marriage, together with the dukedom of Saxony, and whom he

intended to make his successor on the imperial throne. But the

scheme failed. On Lothaire's death, in 1138, the partisans of

the Suabian family carried the election of Conrad (the

Crusader--see CRUSADES: A. D. 1147-1149), and the dynasty most

commonly called Hohenstaufen rose to power. It took the name

of Hohenstaufen from its original family seat on the lofty

hill of Staufen, in Suabia, overlooking the valley of the

Rems. Its party, in the wars and factions of the time,

received the name of the Waiblingen, from the birth-place of

the Suabian duke Frederick--the little town of Waiblingen in

Franconia. Under the tongue of the Italians, when these party

names and war-cries were carried across the Alps, Waiblingen

became Ghibelline and Welf became Guelf. During the first half

century of the reign of the Hohenstaufen, the history of

Germany is the history, for the most part, of the strife in

which the Guelf dukes, Henry the Proud and Henry the Lion, are

the central figures, and which ended in the breaking up of the

old powerful duchy of Saxony. But Italy was the great

historical field of the energies and the ambitions of the

Hohenstaufen emperors. There, Frederick Barbarossa (Frederick

Red beard, as the Italians called him), the second of the

line, and Frederick II., his adventurous grandson, fought

their long, losing battle with the popes and with the

city-republics of Lombardy and Tuscany.

U. Balzani,

The Popes and the Hohenstaufen.

Frederick Barbarossa, elected Emperor in 1152, passed into

Italy in 1154. "He came there on the invitation of the Pope,

of the Prince of Capua, and of the towns which had been

subjected to the ambition of Milan. He marched at the head of

his German feudatories, a splendid and imposing array. His

first object was to crush the power of Milan, and to exalt

that of Pavia, the head of a rival league. Nothing could stand

against him. At Viterbo he was compelled to hold the stirrup

of the Pope, and in return for this submission he received the

crown from the Pontiff's hands in the Basilica of St. Peter.

He returned northwards by the valley of the Tiber, dismissed

his army at Ancona, and with difficulty escaped safely into

Bavaria. His passage left little that was solid and durable

behind it. He had effected nothing against the King of Naples.

His friendship with the Pope was illusory and short-lived. The

dissensions of the North, which had been hushed for a moment

by his presence, broke out again as soon as his back was

turned. He had, however, received the crown of Charles the

Great from the hands of the successor of St. Peter. But

Frederick was not a man to brook easily the miscarriage of his

designs. In 1158 he collected another army at Ulm. Brescia was

quickly subdued; Lodi, which had been destroyed by the

Milanese, was rebuilt, and Milan itself was reduced to terms.

{1446}

This peace lasted but for a short time; Milan revolted, and

was placed under the ban of the Empire. The fate of Cremona

taught the Milanese what they had to expect from the clemency

of the Emperor. After a desultory warfare, regular siege was

laid to the town. On March 1, 1162, Milan, reduced by famine,

surrendered at discretion, and a fortnight later all the

inhabitants were ordered to leave the town. The circuit of the

walls was partitioned out among the most pitiless enemies of

its former greatness, and the inhabitants of Lodi, of Cremona,

of Pavia, of Novara, and of Como were encouraged to wreak

their vengeance on their defeated rival. For six days the

imperial army laboured to overturn the walls and public

buildings, and when the Emperor left for Pavia, on Palm Sunday

1162, not a fiftieth part of the city was standing. This terrible

vengeance produced a violent reaction. The homeless fugitives

were received by their ancient enemies, and local jealousies

were merged in common hatred of the common foe. Frederick had

already been excommunicated by Pope Alexander III. as the

supporter of his rival Victor. Verona undertook to be the

public vindicator of discontent. Five years after the

destruction of Milan the Lombard league numbered fifteen towns

amongst its members. Venice, Verona, Vicenza, Treviso,

Ferrara, Brescia, Bergamo, Cremona, Milan, Lodi, Piacenza,

Parma, Modena, and Bologna. The confederation solemnly engaged

to expel the Emperor from Italy. The towns on the frontier of

Piedmont asked and obtained admission to the league, and to

mark the dawn of freedom a new town was founded on the low

marshy ground which is drained by the Bormida and the Tanaro,

and which afterwards witnessed the victory of Marengo. It was

named by its founders Alessandria, in honour of the Pope, who

had vindicated their independence of the Empire. ... The

Lombard league had unfortunately a very imperfect

constitution. It had no common treasure, no uniform rules for

the apportionment of contributions; it existed solely for the

purposes of defence against the external foe. The time was not

yet come when self-sacrifice and self-abnegation could lay the

foundations of a united Italy. Frederick spent six years in

preparing vengeance. In 1174 he laid siege to the new

Alexandria, but did not succeed in taking it. A severe

struggle took place two years later. In 1176 a new army

arrived from Germany, and on May 29 Frederick Barbarossa was

entirely defeated at Legnano. In 1876 the seventh hundred

anniversary of the battle was celebrated on the spot where it

was gained, and it is still regarded as the birthday of

Italian freedom."

O. Browning,

Guelphs and Ghibellines,

chapter 1.

See, also, ITALY: A. D. 1154-1162 to 1174-1183.

"The end was that the Emperor had to make peace with both the

Pope and the cities, and in 1183 the rights of the cities were

acknowledged in a treaty or law of the Empire, passed at

Constanz or Constance in Swabia. In the last years of his

reign, Frederick went on the third Crusade, and died on the

way.

See CRUSADES: A. D. 1188-1192.

Frederick was succeeded by his son Henry the Sixth, who had

already been chosen King, and who in the next year, 1191, was

crowned Emperor. The chief event of his reign was the conquest

of the Kingdom of Sicily, which he claimed in right of his

wife Constance, the daughter of the first King William. He

died in 1197, leaving his son Frederick a young child, who had

already been chosen King in Germany, and who succeeded as

hereditary King in Sicily. The Norman Kingdom of Sicily thus

came to an end, except so far as it was continued through

Frederick, who was descended from the Norman Kings through his

mother. On the death of the Emperor Henry, the election of

young Frederick seems to have been quite forgotten, and the

crown was disputed between his uncle Philip of Swabia and Otto

of Saxony. He was son of Henry the Lion, who had been Duke of

Saxony and Bavaria, but who had lost the more part of his

dominions in the time of Frederick Barbarossa. Otto's mother

was Matilda, daughter of Henry the Second of England. ... Both

Kings were crowned, and, after the death of Philip, Otto was

crowned Emperor in 1209. But presently young Frederick was

again chosen, and in 1220 he was crowned Emperor, and reigned

thirty years till his death in 1250. This Frederick the

Second, who joined together so many crowns, was called the

Wonder of the World. And he well deserved the name, for

perhaps no King that ever reigned had greater natural gifts,

and in thought and learning he was far above the age in which

he lived. In his own kingdom of Sicily he could do pretty much

as he pleased, and it flourished wonderfully in his time. But in

Germany and Italy he had constantly to struggle against

enemies of all kinds. In Germany he had to win the support of

the Princes by granting them privileges which did much to

undermine the royal power, and on the other hand he showed no

favour to the rising power of the cities. In Italy he had

endless strivings with one Pope after another, with Innocent

the Third; Honorius the Third, Gregory the Ninth, and Innocent

the Fourth; as well as with the Guelfic cities, which

withstood him much as they had withstood his grandfather. He

was more than once excommunicated by the Popes, and in 1245

Pope Innocent the Fourth held a Council at Lyons, in which he

professed to depose the Emperor. More than one King was chosen

in opposition to him in Germany, just as had been done in the

time of Henry the Fourth, and there were civil wars all his

time, both in Germany and in Italy, while a great part of the

Kingdom of Burgundy was beginning to slip away from the Empire

altogether."

E. A. Freeman,

General Sketch of European History,

chapter 11.

"It is probable that there never lived a human being endowed

with greater natural gifts, or whose natural gifts were,

according to the means afforded him by his age, more

sedulously cultivated, than the last Emperor of the House of

Swabia. There seems to be no aspect of human nature which was

not developed to the highest degree in his person. In

versatility of gifts, in what we may call manysidedness of

character, he appears as a sort of mediæval Alkibiadês, while

he was undoubtedly far removed from Alkibiadês' utter lack of

principle or steadiness of any kind. Warrior, statesman,

lawgiver, scholar, there was nothing in the compass of the

political or intellectual world of his age which he failed to

grasp. In an age of change, when, in every corner of Europe

and civilized Asia, old kingdoms, nations, systems, were

falling and new ones rising, Frederick was emphatically the

man of change, the author of things new and unheard of--he was

stupor mundi et immutator mirabilis.

{1447}

A suspected heretic, a suspected Mahometan, he was the subject

of all kinds of absurd and self-contradictory charges; but the

charges mark real features in the character of the man. He was

something unlike any other Emperor or any other man. ... Of

all men, Frederick the Second might have been expected to be

the founder of something, the beginner of some new era,

political or intellectual. He was a man to whom some great

institution might well have looked back as its creator, to

whom some large body of men, some sect or party or nation,

might well have looked back as their prophet or founder or

deliverer. But the most gifted of the sons of men has left

behind him no such memory, while men whose gifts cannot bear a

comparison with his are reverenced as founders by grateful

nations, churches, political and philosophical parties.

Frederick in fact founded nothing, and he sowed the seeds of

the destruction of many things. His great charters to the

spiritual and temporal princes of Germany dealt the death-blow

to the Imperial power, while he, to say the least, looked

coldly on the rising power of the cities and on those

commercial Leagues which were in his time the best element of

German political life. In fact, in whatever aspect we look at

Frederick the Second, we find him, not the first, but the

last, of every series to which he belongs. An English writer

[Capgrave], two hundred years after his time, had the

penetration to see that he was really the last Emperor. He was

the last Prince in whose style the Imperial titles do not seem

a mockery; he was the last under whose rule the three Imperial

kingdoms retained any practical connexion with one another and

with the ancient capital of all. ... He was not only the last

Emperor of the whole Empire; he might almost be called the

last King of its several Kingdoms. After his time Burgundy

vanishes as a kingdom. ... Italy too, after Frederick,

vanishes as a kingdom; any later exercise of the royal

authority in Italy was something which came and went wholly by

fits and starts. ... Germany did not utterly vanish, or utterly

split in pieces, like the sister kingdoms; but after Frederick

came the Great Interregnum, and after the Great Interregnum

the royal power in Germany never was what it had been before.

In his hereditary Kingdom of Sicily he was not absolutely the

last of his dynasty, for his son Manfred ruled prosperously

and gloriously for some years after his death. But it is none

the less clear that from Frederick's time the Sicilian Kingdom

was doomed. ... Still more conspicuously than all was

Frederick the last Christian King of Jerusalem, the last

baptized man who really ruled the Holy Land or wore a crown in

the Holy City. ... In the world of elegant letters Frederick

has some claim to be looked on as the founder of that modern

Italian language and literature which first assumed a

distinctive shape at his Sicilian court. But in the wider

field of political history Frederick appears nowhere as a

creator, but rather everywhere as an involuntary destroyer.

... Under Frederick the Empire and everything connected with

it seems to crumble and decay while preserving its external

splendour. As soon as its brilliant possessor is gone, it at

once falls asunder. It is a significant fact that one who in

mere genius, in mere accomplishments, was surely the greatest

prince who ever wore a crown, a prince who held the greatest

place on earth, and who was concerned during a long reign in

some of the greatest transactions of one of the greatest ages,

seems never, even from his own flatterers, to have received

that title of Great which has been so lavishly bestowed on far

smaller men. ... Many causes combined to produce this singular

result, that a man of the extraordinary genius of Frederick,

and possessed of every advantage of birth, office, and

opportunity, should have had so little direct effect upon the

world. It is not enough to attribute his failure to the many

and great faults of his moral character. Doubtless they were

one cause among others. But a man who influences future ages

is not necessarily a good man. ... The weak side in the

brilliant career of Frederick is one which seems to have been

partly inherent in his character, and partly the result of the

circumstances in which he found himself. Capable of every

part, and in fact playing every part by turns, he had no

single definite object, pursued honestly and steadfastly,

throughout his whole life. With all his powers, with all his

brilliancy, his course throughout life seems to have been in a

manner determined for him by others. He was ever drifting into

wars, into schemes of policy, which seem to be hardly ever of

his own choosing. He was the mightiest and most dangerous

adversary that the Papacy ever had. But he does not seem to

have withstood the Papacy from any personal choice, or as the

voluntary champion of any opposing principle. He became the

enemy of the Papacy, he planned schemes which involved the

utter overthrow of Papacy, yet he did so simply because he

found that no Pope would ever let him alone. ... The most

really successful feature in Frederick's career, his

acquisition of Jerusalem [see CRUSADES: A. D. 1216-1229], is

not only a mere episode in his life, but it is something that

was absolutely forced upon him against his will. ... With

other Crusaders the Holy War was, in some cases, the main

business of their lives; in all cases it was something

seriously undertaken as a matter either of policy or of

religious duty. But the Crusade of the man who actually did

recover the Holy City is simply a grotesque episode in his

life. Excommunicated for not going, excommunicated again for

going, excommunicated again for coming back, threatened on

every side, he still went, and he succeeded. What others had

failed to win by arms, he contrived to win by address, and all

that came of his success was that it was made the ground of

fresh accusations against him. ... For a man to influence his

age, he must in some sort belong to his age. He should be

above it, before it, but he should not be foreign to it. ...

But Frederick belongs to no age; intellectually he is above

his own age, above every age; morally it can hardly be denied

that he was below his age; but in nothing was he of his age."

E. A. Freeman,

The Emperor Frederick the Second

(Historical Essays, volume 1, Essay 10).

For an account of Frederick's brilliant Sicilian court, and of

some of the distinguishing features of his reign in Southern

Italy, as well as of the end of his family, in the tragical

deaths of his son Manfred and his grandson Conradin (1268).

See ITALY: A. D. 1183-1250.

ALSO IN:

T. L. Kington,

History of Frederick the Second.

J. Bryce,

The Holy Roman Empire,

chapters 10-13.

H. H. Milman,

History of Latin Christianity,

book 8, chapter 7, and book 9.

{1448}

GERMANY: A. D. 1142-1152.

Creation of the Electorate of Brandenburg.

See BRANDENBURG: A. D. 1142-1152.

GERMANY: A. D. 1156.

The Margravate of Austria created a Duchy.

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 805-1246.

GERMANY: A. D. 1180-1214.

Bavaria and the Palatinate of the Rhine acquired by the house

of Wittelsbach.

See BAVARIA: A. D. 1180-1356.

GERMANY: A. D. 1196-1197.

The Fourth Crusade.

See CRUSADES: A. D. 1196-1197.

GERMANY: 13th Century.

The rise of the Hanseatic League.

See HANSA TOWNS.

GERMANY: 13th Century.

Cause of the multiplication of petty principalities and

states.

"While the duchies and counties of Germany retained their

original character of offices or governments, they were of

course, even though considered as hereditary, not subject to

partition among children. When they acquired the nature of

fiefs, it was still consonant to the principles of a feudal

tenure that the eldest son should inherit according to the law

of primogeniture; an inferior provision or appanage, at most,

being reserved for the younger children. The law of England

favoured the eldest exclusively; that of France gave him great

advantages. But in Germany a different rule began to prevail

about the thirteenth century. An equal partition of the

inheritance, without the least regard to priority of birth,

was the general law of its principalities. Sometimes this was

effected by undivided possession, or tenancy in common; the

brothers residing together, and reigning jointly. This tended

to preserve the integrity of dominion; but as it was

frequently incommodious, a more usual practice was to divide

the territory. From such partitions are derived those numerous

independent principalities of the same house, many of which still

subsist in Germany. In 1589 there were eight reigning princes

of the Palatine family; and fourteen, in 1675, of that of

Saxony. Originally these partitions were in general absolute

and without reversion; but, as their effect in weakening

families became evident, a practice was introduced of making

compacts of reciprocal succession, by which a fief was

prevented from escheating to the empire, until all the male

posterity of the first feudatory should be extinct. Thus,

while the German empire survived, all the princes of Hesse or

of Saxony had reciprocal contingencies of succession, or what

our lawyers call cross-remainders, to each other's dominions.

A different system was gradually adopted. By the Golden Bull

of Charles IV. the electoral territory, that is, the

particular district to which the electoral suffrage was

inseparably attached, became incapable of partition, and was

to descend to the eldest son. In the 15th century the present

house of Brandenburg set the first example of establishing

primogeniture by law; the principalities of Anspach and

Bayreuth were dismembered from it for the benefit of younger

branches; but it was declared that all the other dominions of

the family should for the future belong exclusively to the

reigning elector. This politic measure was adopted in several

other families; but, even in the 16th century, the prejudice

was not removed, and some German princes denounced curses on

their posterity, if they should introduce the impious custom

of primogeniture. ... Weakened by these subdivisions, the

principalities of Germany in the 14th and 15th centuries

shrink to a more and more diminutive size in the scale of

nations."

H. Hallam,

The Middle Ages,

chapter 5 (volume 2).

See, also,

CITIES, IMPERIAL AND FREE, OF GERMANY.

GERMANY: A. D. 1212.

The Children's Crusade.

See CRUSADES: A. D. 1212.

GERMANY: A. D. 1231-1315.

Relations of the Swiss Forest Cantons to the Empire and to the

House of Austria.

See SWITZERLAND: THE THREE FOREST CANTONS.

GERMANY: A. D. 1250-1272.

Degradation of the Holy Roman Empire.

The Great Interregnum.

Anarchy and disorder universal.

Election of Rudolf of Hapsburg.

"With Frederick [the Second] fell the Empire. From the ruin

that overwhelmed the greatest of its houses it emerged, living

indeed, and destined to a long life, but so shattered,

crippled, and degraded, that it could never more be to Europe

and to Germany what it once had been. ... The German kingdom

broke down beneath the weight of the Roman Empire. To be

universal sovereign Germany had sacrificed her own political

existence. The necessity which their projects in Italy and

disputes with the Pope laid the Emperors under of purchasing

by concessions the support of their own princes, the ease with

which in their absence the magnates could usurp, the

difficulty which the monarch returning found in resuming the

privileges of his crown, the temptation to revolt and set up

pretenders to the throne which the Holy See held out, these

were the causes whose steady action laid the foundation of

that territorial independence which rose into a stable fabric

at the era of the Great Interregnum. Frederick II. had, by two

Pragmatic Sanctions, A. D. 1220 and 1232, granted, or rather

confirmed, rights already customary, such as to give the

bishops and nobles legal sovereignty in their own towns and

territories, except when the Emperor should be present; and

thus his direct jurisdiction became restricted to his narrowed

domain, and to the cities immediately dependent on the crown.

With so much less to do, an Emperor became altogether a less

necessary personage; and hence the seven magnates of the

realm, now by law or custom sole electors, were in no haste to

fill up the place of Conrad IV., whom the supporters of his

father Frederick had acknowledged. William of Holland [A. D.

1254] was in the field, but rejected by the Swabian party: on

his death a new election was called for, and at last set on

foot. The archbishop of Cologne advised his brethren to choose

some one rich enough to support the dignity, not strong enough

to be feared by the electors: both requisites met in the

Plantagenet Richard, earl of Cornwall, brother of the English

Henry III. He received three, eventually four votes, came to

Germany, and was crowned at Aachen [A. D. 1256]. But three of

the electors, finding that his bribe to them was lower than to

the others, seceded in disgust, and chose Alfonso X. of

Castile, who, shrewder than his competitor, continued to watch

the stars at Toledo, enjoying the splendours of his title

while troubling himself about it no further than to issue now

and then a proclamation. Meantime the condition of Germany was

frightful. The new Didius Julianus, the chosen of princes

baser than the prætorians whom they copied, had neither the

character nor the outward power and resources to make himself

respected. Every floodgate of anarchy was opened: prelates and

barons extended their domains by war: robber-knights infested

the highways and the rivers: the misery of the weak, the

tyranny and violence of the strong, were such as had not been

seen for centuries.

{1449}

Things were even worse than under the Saxon and Franconian

Emperors; for the petty nobles who had then been in some

measure controlled by their dukes were now, after the

extinction of the great houses, left without any feudal

superior. Only in the cities was shelter or peace to be found.

Those of the Rhine had already leagued themselves for mutual

defence, and maintained a struggle in the interests of

commerce and order against universal brigandage. At last, when

Richard had been some time dead, it was felt that such things

could not go on for ever: with no public law, and no courts of

justice, an Emperor, the embodiment of legal government, was

the only resource. The Pope himself, having now sufficiently

improved the weakness of his enemy, found the disorganization

of Germany beginning to tell upon his revenues, and threatened

that if the electors did not appoint an Emperor, he would.

Thus urged, they chose, in 1272 [1273?], Rudolf, count of

Hapsburg, founder of the house of Austria. From this point

there begins a new era. We have seen the Roman Empire revived

in A. D. 800, by a prince whose vast dominions gave ground to

his claim of universal monarchy; again erected, in A. D. 962,

on the narrower but firmer basis of the German kingdom. We

have seen Otto the Great and his successors during the three

following centuries, a line of monarchs of unrivalled vigour

and abilities, strain every nerve to make good the pretensions

of their office against the rebels in Italy and the

ecclesiastical power. Those efforts had now failed signally

and hopelessly. Each successive Emperor had entered the strife

with resources scantier than his predecessors, each had been

more decisively vanquished by the Pope, the cities, and the

princes. The Roman Empire might, and, so far as its practical

utility was concerned, ought now to have been suffered to

expire; nor could it have ended more gloriously than with the

last of the Hohenstaufen. That it did not so expire, but lived

on 600 years more, till it became a piece of antiquarianism

hardly more venerable than ridiculous--till, as Voltaire said,

all that could be said about it was that it was neither holy,

nor Roman, nor an empire--was owing partly indeed to the

belief, still unshaken, that it was a necessary part of the

world's order, yet chiefly to its connection, which was by

this time indissoluble, with the German kingdom. The Germans

had confounded the two characters of their sovereign so long,

and had grown so fond of the style and pretensions of a

dignity whose possession appeared to exalt them above the

other peoples of Europe, that it was now too late for them to

separate the local from the universal monarch. If a German

king was to be maintained at all, he must be Roman Emperor;

and a German king there must still be. ... That head, however,

was no longer what he had been. The relative position of

Germany and France was now exactly the reverse of that which

they had occupied two centuries earlier. Rudolf was as

conspicuously a weaker sovereign than Philip III. of France,

as the Franconian Emperor Henry III. had been stronger than

the Capetian Philip I. In every other state of Europe the

tendency of events had been to centralize the administration

and increase the power of the monarch, even in England not to

diminish it: in Germany alone had political union become

weaker, and the independence of the princes more confirmed."

J. Bryce,

The Holy Roman Empire,

chapter 13.

See, also, ITALY: A. D. 1250-1520.

GERMANY: A. D. 1273-1308.

The first Hapsburg kings of the Romans, Rodolph and Albert.

The choice made (A. D. 1273) by the German Electors of Rodolph

of Hapsburg for King of the Romans (see AUSTRIA: A. D.

1246-1282), was duly approved and confirmed by Pope Gregory

X., who silenced, by his spiritual admonitions, the rival

claims of King Alfonso of Castile. But Rodolph, to secure this

papal confirmation of his title, found it necessary to

promise, through his ambassadors, a renewal of the

Capitulation of Otho IV., respecting the temporalities of the

Pope. This he repeated in person, on meeting the Pope at

Lausanne, in 1275, On that occasion, "an agreement was entered

into which afterwards ratified to the Church the long disputed

gift of Charlemagne, comprising Ravenna, Æmilia, Bobbio,

Cesena, Forumpopoli, Forli, Faenza, Imola, Bologna, Ferrara,

Comacchio, Adria, Rimini, Urbino, Monteferetro, and the

territory of Bagno. Rodolph also bound himself to protect the

privileges of the Church, and to maintain the freedom of

Episcopal elections, and the right of appeal in all

ecclesiastical causes; and having stipulated for receiving the

imperial crown in Rome he promised to undertake an expedition

to the holy land. If Rodolph were sincere in these last

engagements, the disturbed state of his German dominions

afforded him an apology for their present non-fulfilment: but

there is good reason for believing that he never intended to

visit either Rome or Palestine; and his indifference to Italy

has even been the theme of panegyric with his admirers. The

repeated and mortifying reverses of the two Frederics were

before his eyes; there was little to excite his sympathy with

the Italians; and though Lombardy seemed ready to acknowledge

his supremacy, the Tuscan cities evinced aspirations after

independence." During the early years of Rodolph's reign he

was employed in establishing his authority, as against the

contumacy of Ottocar, King of Bohemia, and the Duke of Bavaria.

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1246-1282.

Meantime, Gregory X. and three short-lived successors in the

papal office passed away, and Nicholas III. had come to it

(1277). That vigorous pontiff called Rodolph to account for

not having yet surrendered the states of the Church in due

form, and whispered a hint of excommunication and interdict.

"Rodolph was too prudent to disregard this admonition: he

evaded the projected crusade and journey to Rome; but he took

care to send thither an emissary, who in his name surrendered

to the Pope the territory already agreed on. ... During his

entire reign Rodolph maintained his indifference towards

Italy." His views "were rather directed to the wilds of

Hungary and Germany than to the delicious regions of the

south. ... He compelled Philip, Count of Savoy, to surrender

Morat, Payerne, and Guminen, which had been usurped from the

Empire. By a successful expedition across the Jura, he brought

back to obedience Otho IV. Count of Burgundy; and forced him

to renounce the allegiance he had proffered to Philip III.

King of France. ... He crushed an insurrection headed by an

impostor, who had persuaded the infatuated multitude to

believe that he was the Emperor Frederic II.

{1450}

And he freed his dominions from rapine and desolation by the

destruction of several castles, whose owners infested the

country with their predatory incursions." Before his death, in

1291, Rodolph "grew anxious to secure to his son Albert the

succession to the throne, and his nomination by the Electors

ere the grave closed upon himself. ... But all his entreaties

were unavailing; he was coldly reminded that he himself was

still the 'King,' and that the Empire was too poor to support

two kings. Rodolph might now repent his neglect to assume the

imperial crown: but the character of Albert seems to have been

the real obstacle to his elevation. With many of the great

qualities of his father, this prince was deficient in his

milder virtues; and his personal bravery and perseverance were

tainted with pride, haughtiness; and avarice." On Rodolph's

death, the Electors chose for his successor Adolphus, Count of

Nassau, a choice of which they soon found reason to repent. By

taking pay from Edward I. of England, for an alliance with the

latter against the King of France, and by attempts to enforce

a purchased claim upon the Landgraviate of Thuringia, Adolphus

brought himself into contempt, and in 1298 he was solemnly

deposed by the Electors, who now conferred the kingship upon

Albert of Austria whom they had rejected six years before.

"The deposed sovereign was, however, strongly supported; and

he promptly collected his adherents, and marched at the head

of a vast army against Albert, who was not unprepared for his

reception. A great battle took place at Gelheim, near Worms;

and, after a bloody contest, the troops of Adolphus were

entirely defeated," and he himself was slain. But Albert, now

unopposed in Germany, found his title disputed at Rome.

Boniface VIII., the most arrogant of all popes, refused to

acknowledge the validity of his election, and drove him into a

close alliance with the Pope's implacable and finally

triumphant enemy, Philip IV. of France (see PAPACY: A. D.

1294-1348). He was soon at enmity, moreover, with a majority

of the Electors who had given the crown to him, and they,

stimulated by the Pope, were preparing to depose him, as they

had deposed Adolphus. But Albert's energy broke up their

plans. He humbled their leader, the Archbishop-Elector of

Mentz, and the rest became submissive. The Pope now came to

terms with him, and invited him to Rome to receive the

imperial crown; also offering to him the crown of France, if

he would take it from the head of the excommunicated Philip;

but while these proposals were under discussion, Boniface

suffered humiliations at the hands of the French king which

caused his death. During most of his reign, Albert was busy

with undertakings of ambition and rapacity which had no

success. He attempted to seize the counties of Holland,

Zealand, and Friesland, as fiefs reverting to the crown, on

the death of John, Count of Holland, in 1299. He claimed the

Bohemian crown in 1306, when Wenceslaus V., the young king,

was assassinated, and invaded the country; but only to be

beaten back. He was defeated at Lucka, in 1308, when

attempting to grasp the inheritance of the Landgrave of

Thuringia--under the very transaction which had chiefly caused

his predecessor Adolphus to be deposed, and he himself

invested with the Roman crown. Finally, he was in hostilities

with the Swiss Forest Cantons, and was leading his forces

against them, in May, 1308, when he was assassinated by

several nobles, including his cousin John, whose enmity he had

incurred.

Sir R. Comyn,

History of the Western Empire,

chapters 14-17 (volume 1).

ALSO IN;

W. Coxe,

History of the House of Austria,

chapter 5 (volume 1).

GERMANY: A. D. 1282.

Acquisition of the duchy of Austria by the House of Hapsburg.

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1246-1282.

GERMANY: A. D. 1308-1313.

The reign of Henry of Luxemburg.

The king (subsequently crowned emperor) chosen to succeed

Albert was Count Henry of Luxemburg, an able and excellent

prince. The new sovereign was crowned as Henry VII. "Henry did

not make the extension of his private domains his object, yet

favoring fortune brought it to him in the largest measure.

Since the death of Wenzel III., the succession to the throne

of Bohemia had been a subject of constant struggles. A very

small party was in favor of Austria; but the chief power was

in the hands of Henry of Carinthia, husband of Anna, Wenzel's

eldest daughter. But he was hated by the people, whose hopes

turned more and more to Elizabeth, a younger daughter of

Wenzel; though she was kept in close confinement by Henry, who

was about to marry her, it was supposed, below her rank. She

escaped, fled to the emperor, and implored his aid. He gave

her in marriage to his young son John, sending him to Bohemia

in charge of Peter Aichspalter; to take possession of the

kingdom. He did so, and it remained for more than a century in

the Luxemburg family. This King John of Bohemia was a man of

mark. His life was spent in the ceaseless pursuit of

adventure--from tournament to tournament, from war to war,

from one enterprise to another. We meet him now in Avignon,

and now in Paris; then on the Rhine, in Prussia, Poland, or

Hungary, and then prosecuting large plans in Italy, but hardly

ever in his own kingdom. Yet his restless activity

accomplished very little, apart from some important

acquisitions in Silesia. Henry then gave attention to the

public peace; came to an understanding with Leopold and

Frederick, the proud sons of Albert, and put under the ban

Everard of Wirtemberg, long a fomenter of disturbances,

sending against him a strong imperial army. ... At the Diet of

Spires, in September, 1309, it was cheerfully resolved to

carry out Henry's cherished plan of reviving the traditional

dignity of the Roman emperors by an expedition to the Eternal

City. Henry expected thus to renew the authority of his title

at home, as well as in Italy, where, in the traditional view,

the imperial crown was as important and as necessary as in

Germany. Every thing here had gone to confusion and ruin since

the Hohenstaufens had succumbed to the bitter hostility of the

popes. The contending parties still called themselves Guelphs

and Ghibellines, though they retained little of the original

characteristics attached to these names. A formal embassy,

with Matteo Visconti at its head, invited Henry to Milan; and

the parties every where anticipated his coming with hope. The

great Florentine poet, Dante, hailed him as a saviour for

distracted Italy. Thus, with the pope's approval, he crossed

the Alps in the autumn of 1310, attended by a splendid escort

of princes of the empire.

{1451}

The news of his approach excited general wonder and

expectation, and his reception at Milan in December was like a

triumph. He was crowned King of Lombardy without opposition.

But when, in the true imperial spirit, he announced that he

had come to serve the nation, and not one or another party,

and proved his sincerity by treating both parties alike, all

whose selfish hopes were deceived conspired against him.

Brescia endured a frightful siege for four months, showing

that the national hatred of German rule still survived. At

length a union of all his adversaries was formed under King

Robert of Naples, the grandson of Charles of Anjou, who put

Conradin to death. Meanwhile Henry VII. went to Rome, May

1312, and received the crown of the Cæsars from four

cardinals, plenipotentiaries of the pope, in the church of St.

John Lateran, south of the Tiber, St. Peter's being occupied

by the Neapolitan troops. But many of his German soldiers left

him, and he retired, with a small army, to Pisa, after an

unsuccessful effort to take Florence. From the faithful city

of Pisa he proclaimed King Robert under the ban, and, in

concert with Frederick of Sicily, prepared for war by land and

sea. But the pope, now a mere tool of the King of France,

commanded an armistice; and when Henry, in an independent

spirit, hesitated to obey, Clement V. pronounced the ban of

the Church against him. It never reached the emperor, who died

suddenly in the monastery of Buon-Convento: poisoned, as the

German annalists assert, by a Dominican monk, in the

sacramental cup, August 24, 1313. He was buried at Pisa.

Meanwhile his army in Bohemia had been completely successful

in establishing King John on the throne."

C. T. Lewis,

A History of Germany,

book 3, chapter 10.

See, also, ITALY: A. D. 1310-1313.

GERMANY: A. D. 1314-1347.

Election of rival emperors, Lewis (Ludowic) of Bavaria and

Frederic of Austria.

Triumph of Lewis at the Battle of Mühldorf.

Papal interference and excommunication of Lewis.

Germany under interdict.

Unrelenting hostility of the Church.

"The death of Heinric [Henry] replunged Germany into horrors

to which, since the extinction of the Swabian line of

emperors, it had been a stranger. The Austrian princes, who

had never forgiven the elevation of the Luxemburg family,

espoused the interests of Frederic, their head; the Bohemians

as naturally opposed them. From the accession of John, the two

houses were of necessity hostile; and it was evident that

there could be no peace in Germany until one of them was

subjected to the other. The Bohemians, indeed, could not hope

to place their king on the vacant throne, since their project

would have found an insurmountable obstacle in the jealousy of

the electors; but they were at least resolved to support the

pretensions of a prince hostile to the Austrians. ... The diet

being convoked at Frankfort, the electors repaired thither,

but with very different views; for, as their suffrages were

already engaged, while the more numerous party proclaimed the

duke of Bavaria as Ludowic V., another no less eagerly

proclaimed Frederic. Although Ludowic was a member of the

Austro-Hapsburg family--his mother being a daughter of Rodolf

I.--he had always been the enemy of the Austrian princes, and

in the same degree the ally of the Luxemburg faction. The two

candidates being respectively crowned kings of the Romans,

Ludowic at Aix-la-Chapelle, by the archbishop of

Mentz--Frederic at Bonn, by the metropolitan of Cologne, a

civil war was inevitable: neither had virtue enough to

sacrifice his own rights to the good of the state. ... The

contest would have ended in favour of the Austrians, but for

the rashness of Frederic, who, in September 1322, without

waiting for the arrival of his brother Leopold, assailed

Ludowic between Mahldorf and Ettingen in Bavaria. ... The

battle was maintained with equal valour from the rising to the

setting sun; and was evidently in favour of the Austrians,

when an unexpected charge in flank by a body of cavalry under

the margrave of Nuremburg decided the fortune of the day.

Heinric of Austria was first taken prisoner; and Frederic

himself, who disdained to flee, was soon in the same

condition. To his everlasting honour, Ludowic received

Frederic with the highest assurances of esteem; and though the

latter was conveyed to the strong fortress of Trapnitz, in the

Upper Palatinate, he was treated with every indulgence

consistent with his safe custody. But the contest was not yet

decided; the valiant Leopold was still at the head of a

separate force; and pope John XXII., the natural enemy of the

Ghibelins, incensed at some succours which Ludowic sent to

that party in Lombardy, excommunicated the king of the Romans,

and declared him deposed from his dignity. Among the

ecclesiastics of the empire this iniquitous sentence had its

weight; but had not other events been disastrous to the king,

he might have safely despised it. By Leopold he was signally

defeated; he had the mortification to see the inconstant king

of Bohemia join the party of Austria; and the still heavier

misfortune to learn that the ecclesiastical and two or three

secular electors were proceeding to another choice--that of

Charles de Valois, whose interests were warmly supported by

the pope. In this emergency, his only chance of safety was a

reconciliation with his enemies; and Frederic was released on

condition of his renouncing all claim to the empire. But

though Frederic sincerely resolved to fulfil his share of the

compact, Leopold and the other princes of his family refused;

and their refusal was approved by the pope. With the

magnanimity of his character, Frederic, unable to execute the

engagements which he had made, voluntarily surrendered himself

to his enemy. But Ludowic, who would not be outdone in

generosity, received him, not as a prisoner, but a friend.

'They ate,' says a contemporary writer, 'at the same table,

slept on the same couch;' and when the King left Bavaria, the

administration of that duchy was confided to Frederic. Two

such men could not long remain even politically hostile; and

by another treaty, it was agreed that they should exercise

conjointly the government of the empire. When this arrangement

was condemned both by the pope and the electors, Ludowic

proposed to take Italy as his seat of government, and leave

Germany to Frederic. But the death [1326] of the war-like

Leopold--the great support of the Austrian cause--and the

continued opposition of the states to any compromise, enabled

Ludowic to retain the sceptre of the kingdom; and in 1329,

that of Frederic strengthened his party. But his reign was

destined to be one of troubles. ... His open warfare against

the head of the church did not much improve his affairs, the

vindictive pope, in addition to the former sentence, placing

all Germany under an interdict. ...

{1452}

In 1338, the diet of Frankfort issued a declaration for ever

memorable in the annals of freedom. That the imperial

authority depended on God alone; that the pope had no temporal

influence, direct or indirect, within the empire; ... it

concluded by empowering the emperor (Ludowic while in Italy

[see ITALY: A. D. 1313-1330] had received the imperial crown

from the anti-pope whom he had created in opposition to John

XXII.) to raise, of his own authority, the interdict which,

during four years, had oppressed the country. Another diet,

held the following year, ratified this bold declaration. ...

But this conduct of the diet was above the comprehension of

the vulgar, who still regarded Ludowic as under the curse of

God and the church. ... Unfortunately for the national

independence, Ludowic himself contradicted the tenor of his

hitherto spirited conduct, by mean submissions, by humiliating

applications for absolution. They were unsuccessful; and he

had the mortification to see the king of Bohemia, who had

always acted an unaccountable part, become his bitter enemy.

... From this moment the fate of Ludowic was decided. In

conjunction with the pope and the French king, Charles of

Bohemia, who in 1346 succeeded to his father's kingdom and

antipathy, commenced a civil war; and in the midst of these

troubled scenes the emperor breathed his last [October 11,

1347]. Twelve months before the decease of Ludowic, Charles of

Bohemia [son of John, the blind king of Bohemia, who fell,

fighting for the French, at the battle of Crecy], assisted by

Clement VI., was elected king of the Romans."

S. A. Dunham,

History of the Germanic Empire,

book 1, chapter 4 (volume 1).

ALSO IN:

J. I. von Döllinger,

Studies in European History,

chapter 5.

J. C. Robertson,

History of the Christian Church,

book 8, chapter 2, V. 7.

M. Creighton,

History of the Papacy during the Period of the Reformation,

introduction, chapter 2.

GERMANY: A. D. 1347-1493.

The Golden Bull of Charles IV.

The Luxemburg line of emperors, and the reappearance of the

Hapsburgs.

The Holy Roman Empire as it was at the end of the Middle Ages.

"John king of Bohemia did not himself wear the imperial crown;

but three of his descendants possessed it, with less

interruption than could have been expected. His son Charles

IV. succeeded Louis of Bavaria in 1347; not indeed without

opposition, for a double election and a civil war were matters

of course in Germany. Charles IV. has been treated with more

derision by his contemporaries, and consequently by later

writers, than almost any prince in history; yet he was

remarkably successful in the only objects that he seriously

pursued. Deficient in personal courage, insensible of

humiliation, bending without shame to the pope, to the

Italians, to the electors, so poor and so little reverenced as

to be arrested by a butcher at Worms for want of paying his

demand, Charles IV. affords a proof that a certain dexterity

and cold-blooded perseverance may occasionally supply, in a

sovereign, the want of more respectable qualities. He has been

reproached with neglecting the empire. But he never deigned to

trouble himself about the empire, except for his private'

ends. He did not neglect the kingdom of Bohemia, to which he

almost seemed to render Germany a province. Bohemia had been

long considered as a fief of the empire, and indeed could

pretend to an electoral vote by no other title. Charles,

however, gave the states by law the right of choosing a king,

on the extinction of the royal family, which seems derogatory

to the imperial prerogative. ... He constantly resided at

Prague, where he founded a celebrated university, and

embellished the city with buildings. This kingdom, augmented

also during his reign by the acquisition of Silesia, he

bequeathed to his son Wenceslaus, for whom, by pliancy towards

the electors and the court of Rome, he had procured, against

all recent example, the imperial succession. The reign of

Charles IV. is distinguished in the constitutional history of

the empire by his Golden Bull [1356]; an instrument which

finally ascertained the prerogatives of the electoral college.

See above: A. D. 1125-1152.

The Golden Bull terminated the disputes which had arisen

between different members of the same house as to their right

of suffrage, which was declared inherent in certain definite

territories. The number was absolutely restrained to seven.

The place of legal imperial elections was fixed at Frankfort;

of coronations, at Aix-la-Chapelle: and the latter ceremony

was to be performed by the arch-bishop of Cologne. These

regulations, though consonant to ancient usage, had not always

been observed, and their neglect had sometimes excited

questions as to the validity of elections. The dignity of

elector was enhanced by the Golden Bull as highly as an

imperial edict could carry it: they were declared equal to

kings, and conspiracy against their persons incurred the

penalty of high treason. Many other privileges are granted to

render them more completely sovereign within their dominions.

It seems extraordinary that Charles should have voluntarily

elevated an oligarchy, from whose pretensions his predecessors

had frequently suffered injury. But he had more to apprehend

from the two great families of Bavaria and Austria, whom he

relatively depressed by giving such a preponderance to the

seven electors, than from any members of the college. By his

compact with Brandenburg [see BRANDENBURG: A. D. 1168-1417] he

had a fair prospect of adding a second vote to his own. ...

The next reign, nevertheless, evinced the danger of investing

the electors with such preponderating authority. Wenceslaus

[elected in 1378], a supine and voluptuous man, less

respected, and more negligent of Germany, if possible, than

his father, was regularly deposed by a majority of the

electoral college in 1400. ... They chose Robert count

palatine instead of Wenceslaus; and though the latter did not

cease to have some adherents, Robert has generally been

counted among the lawful emperors. Upon his death [1410] the

empire returned to the house of Luxemburg; Wenceslaus himself

waiving his rights in favour of his brother Sigismund of

Hungary." On the death of Sigismund, in 1437, the house of

Austria regained the imperial throne, in the person of Albert,

duke of Austria, who had married Sigismund's only daughter,

the queen of Hungary and Bohemia. "He died in two years,

leaving his wife pregnant with a son, Ladislaus Posthumus, who

afterwards reigned in the two kingdoms just mentioned; and the

choice of the electors fell upon Frederic duke of Styria,

second-cousin of the last emperor, from whose posterity it

never departed, except in a single instance, upon the

extinction of his male line in 1740.

{1453}

Frederic III. reigned 53 years [1440-1493], a longer period

than any of his predecessors; and his personal character was

more insignificant. ... Frederic, always poor, and scarcely

able to protect himself in Austria from the seditions of his

subjects, or the inroads of the king of Hungary, was yet

another founder of his family, and left their fortunes

incomparably more prosperous than at his accession. The

marriage of his son Maximilian with the heiress of Burgundy

[see NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1477] began that aggrandizement of the

house of Austria which Frederic seems to have anticipated. The

electors, who had lost a good deal of their former spirit, and

were grown sensible of the necessity of choosing a powerful

sovereign, made no opposition to Maximilian's becoming king of

the Romans in his father's lifetime."

H. Hallam,

The Middle Ages,

chapter 5 (volume 2).

"It is important to remark that, for more than a century after

Charles IV. had fixed his seat in Bohemia, no emperor

appeared, endowed with the vigour necessary to uphold and

govern the empire. The bare fact that Charles's successor,

Wenceslas, was a prisoner in the hands of the Bohemians,

remained for a long time unknown in Germany: a simple decree

of the electors' sufficed to dethrone him. Rupert the Palatine

only escaped a similar fate by death. When Sigismund of

Luxemburg, (who, after many disputed elections, kept

possession of the field,) four years after his election,

entered the territory of the empire of which he was to be

crowned sovereign, he found so little sympathy that he was for

a moment inclined to return to Hungary without accomplishing

the object of his journey. The active part he took in the

affairs of Bohemia, and of Europe generally, has given him a

name; but in and for the empire, he did nothing worthy of

note. Between the years 1422 and 1430 he never made his

appearance beyond Vienna; from the autumn of 1431 to that of

1433 he was occupied with his coronation journey to Rome; and

during the three years from 1434 to his death he never got

beyond Bohemia and Moravia; nor did Albert II., who has been

the subject of such lavish eulogy, ever visit the dominions of

the empire. Frederic III., however, far outdid all his

predecessors. During seven-and-twenty years, from 1444 to

1471, he was never seen within the boundaries of the empire.

Hence it happened that the central action and the visible

manifestation of sovereignty, in as far as any such existed in

the empire, fell to the share of the princes, and more

especially of the prince-electors. In the reign of Sigismund

we find them convoking the diets, and leading the armies into

the field against the Hussites: the operations against the

Bohemians were attributed entirely to them. In this manner the

empire became, like the papacy, a power which acted from a

distance, and rested chiefly upon opinion. ... The emperor was

regarded, in the first place, as the supreme feudal lord, who

conferred on property its highest and most sacred sanction.

... Although he was regarded as the head and source of all

temporal jurisdiction, yet no tribunal found more doubtful

obedience than his own. The fact that royalty existed in

Germany had almost been suffered to fall into oblivion; even

the title had been lost. Henry VII. thought it an affront to

be called King of Germany, and not, as he had a right to be

called before any ceremony of coronation, King of the Romans.

In the 15th century the emperor was regarded pre-eminently as

the successor of the ancient Roman Cæsars, whose rights and

dignities had been transferred, first to the Greeks, and then

to the Germans in the persons of Charlemagne and Otho the

Great; as the true secular head of Christendom. ... The

opinion was confidently entertained in Germany that the other

sovereigns of Christendom, especially those of England, Spain,

and France, were legally subject to the crown of the empire:

the only controversy was, whether their disobedience was

venial, or ought to be regarded as sinful."

L. von Ranke,

History of the Reformation in Germany,

volume 1, pages 52-56.

ALSO IN:

Sir R. Comyn,

History of the Western Empire,

chapter 24 (volume l).

E. F. Henderson,

Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages,

book 2, number 10.

See, also,

AUSTRIA: A. D. 1330-1364, to 1471-1491.

GERMANY: A. D. 1363-1364.

Tyrol acquired by the House of Austria, with the reversion of

the crowns of Bohemia and Hungary.

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1330-1364.

GERMANY: A. D. 1378.

Final surrender of the Arelate to France.

See BURGUNDY: A. D. 1127-1378.

GERMANY: A. D. 1386-1388.

Defeat of the Austrians by the Swiss at Sempach and Naefels.

See SWITZERLAND: A. D. 1386-1388.

GERMANY: A. D. 1405-1434.

The Bohemian Reformation and the Hussite wars.

See BOHEMIA: A. D. 1405-1415, and 1419-1434.

GERMANY: A. D. 1414-1418.

Failure of demands for Church Reform in the Council of

Constance.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1414-1418.

GERMANY: A. D. 1417.

The Electorate of Brandenburg conferred on the Hohenzollerns.

"The March of Brandenburg is one of those districts which was

first peopled by the advance of the German nation towards the

east during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It was in

the beginning, like Silesia, Mecklenburg, Pomerania, Prussia,

and Livonia, a German colony settled upon an almost

uncultivated soil: from the very first, however, it seems to

have given the greatest promise of vigour. ... Possession was

taken of the soil upon the ground of the rights of the

princely Ascanian house--we know not whether these rights were

founded upon inheritance, purchase, or cession. The process of

occupation was so gradual that the institutions of the old

German provinces, like those constituting the northern march,

had time to take firm root in the newly-acquired territory;

and owing to the constant necessity for unsheathing the sword,

the colonists acquired warlike habits which tended to give them

spirit and energy. ... The Ascanians were a warlike but

cultivated race, incessantly acquiring new possessions, but

generous and openhanded; and new life followed in their

footsteps. They soon took up an important political position

among the German princely houses: their possessions extended

over a great part of Thuringia, Moravia, Lausitz, and Silesia;

the electoral dignity which they assumed gave to them and to

their country a high rank in the Empire. In the Neumark and in

Pomerelllen the Poles retreated before them, and on the

Pomeranian coasts they protected the towns founded by the

Teutonic order from the invasion of the Danes. It has been

asked whether this race might not have greatly extended its

power; but they were not destined even to make the attempt.

{1454}

It is said that at the beginning of the fourteenth century

nineteen members of this family were assembled on the

Margrave's Hill near Rathenau. In the year 1320, of all these

not one remained, or had even left an heir. ... In Brandenburg

... it really appeared as if the extinction of the ruling

family would entail ruin upon the country. It had formed a

close alliance with the imperial power--which at that moment

was the subject of contention between the two great families

of Wittelsbach and Luxemburg--was involved in the quarrels of

those two races, injured by all their alternations of fortune,

and sacrificed to their domestic and foreign policy, which was

totally at variance with the interests of Brandenburg. At the

very beginning of the struggle the March of Brandenburg lost

its dependencies. ... At length the Emperor Sigmund, the last

of the house of Luxemburg, found himself so fully occupied

with the disturbances in the Empire and the dissensions in the

Church, that he could no longer maintain his power in the

March, and intrusted the task to his friend and relation,

Frederick, Burgrave of Nürnberg, to whom he lay under very

great obligations, and who had assisted him with money at his

need. ... It was a great point gained, after so long a period

of anarchy, to find a powerful and prudent prince ready to

undertake the government of the province. He could do nothing

in the open field against the revolted nobles, but he assailed

and vanquished them in their hitherto impregnable strong-holds

surrounded with walls fifteen feet thick, which he demolished

with his clumsy but effective artillery. In a few years he had

so far succeeded that he was able to proclaim a Landfriede, or

public peace, according to which each and everyone who was an

enemy to him, or to those comprehended in the peace, was

considered and treated as the enemy of all. But the effect of

all this would have been but transient, had not the Emperor,

who had no son, and who was won by Frederick's numerous

services and by his talents for action, made the Electorate

hereditary in his family. ... The most important day in the

history of the March of Brandenburg and the family of Zollern

was the 18th of April, 1417, when in the market-place of

Constance the Emperor Sigmund formally invested the Burgrave

with the dignity of Elector, placed in his hands the flag with

the arms of the March and received from him the oath of

allegiance. From this moment a prospect was afforded to the

territory of Brandenburg of recovering its former prosperity

and increasing its importance, while to the house of Zollern a

career of glory and usefulness was opened worthy of powers

which were thus called into action."

L. von Ranke,

Memoirs of the House of Brandenburg,

book 1, chapter 2.

See, also, BRANDENBURG: A. D. 1168-1417;

and HOHENZOLLERN, RISE OF THE HOUSE OF.

GERMANY: A. D. 1467-1471.

Crusade against George Podiebrad, king of Bohemia.

See BOHEMIA: A. D. 1458-1471.

GERMANY: A. D. 1467-1477.

Relations of Charles the Bold of Burgundy to the Empire.

See BURGUNDY: A. D. 1467, and 1476-1477.

GERMANY: A. D. 1492-1514.

The Bundschuh insurrections of the Peasantry.

Several risings of the German peasantry, in the later part of

the 15th and early part of the 16th century, were named from

the Bundschuh, or peasants' clog, which the insurgents bore as

their emblem or pictured on their banners. "While the peasants

in the Rhætian Alps were gradually throwing off the yoke of

the nobles and forming the 'Graubund' [see SWITZERLAND: A. D.

1396-1499], a struggle, was going on between the neighbouring

peasantry of Kempten (to the east of Lake Constance) and their

feudal lord, the Abbot of Kempten. It began in 1423, and came

to an open rebellion in 1492. It was a rebellion against new

demands not sanctioned by ancient custom, and though it was

crushed, and ended in little good to the peasantry (many of

whom fled into Switzerland), yet it is worthy of note because

in it for the first time appears the banner of the Bundschuh.

The next rising was in Elsass (Alsace), in 1493, the peasants

finding allies in the burghers of the towns along the Rhine,

who had their own grievances. The Bundschuh was again their

banner, and it was to Switzerland that their anxious eyes were

turned for help. This movement also was prematurely discovered

and put down. Then, in 1501, other peasants, close neighbours

to those of Kempten, caught the infection, and in 1502, again

in Elsass, but this time further north, in the region about

Speyer and the Neckar, lower down the Rhine, nearer Franconia,

the Bundschuh was raised again. It numbered on its recruit

rolls many thousands of peasants from the country round, along

the Neckar and the Rhine. The wild notion was to rise in arms,

to make themselves free, like the Swiss, by the sword, to

acknowledge no superior but the Emperor, and all Germany was

to join the League. They were to pay no taxes or dues, and

commons, forests, and rivers were to be free to all. Here,

again, they mixed up religion with their demands, and 'Only

what is just before God' was the motto on the banner of the

Bundschuh. They, too, were betrayed, and in savage triumph the

Emperor Maximilian ordered their property to be confiscated,

their wives and children to be banished, and themselves to be

quartered alive. ... Few ... really fell victims to this cruel

order of the Emperor. The ringleaders dispersed, fleeing some

into Switzerland and some into the Black Forest. For ten years

now there was silence. The Bundschuh banner was furled, but

only for a while. In 1512 and 1513, on the east side of the

Rhine, in the Black Forest and the neighbouring districts of

Würtemberg, the movement was again on foot on a still larger

scale. It had found a leader in Joss Fritz. A soldier, with

commanding presence and great natural eloquence, ... he bided

his time. ... Again the League was betrayed ... and Joss

Fritz, with the banner under his clothes, had to fly for his

life to Switzerland. ... He returned after a while to the

Black Forest, went about his secret errands, and again bided

his time. In 1514 the peasantry of the Duke Ulrich of

Würtemberg rose to resist the tyranny of their lord [in a

combination called 'the League of Poor Conrad']. ... The same

year, in the valleys of the Austrian Alps, in Carinthia,

Styria, and Crain, similar risings of the peasantry took

place, all of them ending in the triumph of the nobles."

F. Seebohm,

The Era of the Protestant Revolution,

part 1, chapter 4.

See, also, below: A. D. 1524-1525.

GERMANY: A. D. 1493.

Maximilian I. becomes emperor.

{1455}

GERMANY: A. D. 1493-1519.

The reign of Maximilian.

His personal importance and his imperial powerlessness.

Constitutional reforms in the Empire.

The Imperial Chamber.

The Circles.

The Aulic Council.

"Frederic [the Third] died in 1493, after a protracted and

inglorious reign of 53 years. ... On the death of his father,

Maximilian had been seven years king of the Romans; and his

accession to the imperial crown encountered no opposition. ...

Scarcely had he ascended the throne, when Charles VIII., king

of France, passed through the Milanese into the south of

Italy, and seized on Naples without opposition.

See ITALY: A. D. 1494-1496.

Maximilian endeavoured to rouse the German nation to a sense

of its danger, but in vain. ... With difficulty he was able to

despatch 3,000 men to aid the league, which Spain, the pope,

the Milanese, and the Venetians had formed, to expel the

ambitious intruders from Italy. To cement his alliance with

Fernando the Catholic, he married his son Philip to Juana, the

daughter of the Spaniard. The confederacy triumphed; not

through the efforts of Maximilian, but through the hatred of

the Italians to the Gallic yoke. ... Louis XII., who succeeded

to Charles (1498), ... forced Philip to do homage for

Flanders; surrendering, indeed, three inconsiderable towns,

that he might be at liberty to renew the designs of his house

on Lombardy and Naples. ... The French had little difficulty

in expelling Ludovico Moro, the usurper of Milan, and in

retaining possession of the country during the latter part of

Maximilian's reign.

See ITALY: A. D. 1499-1500.

Louis, indeed, did homage for the duchy to the Germanic head;

but such homage was merely nominal: it involved no tribute, no

dependence. The occupation of this fine province by the French

made no impression on the Germans; they regarded it as a fief

of the house of Austria, not of the empire: but even if it had

stood in the latter relation, they would not have moved one

man, or voted one florin, to avert its fate. That the French

did not obtain similar possession of Naples, and thereby

become enabled to oppose Maximilian with greater effect, was

owing to the valour of the Spanish troops, who retained the

crown in the house of Aragon. His disputes with the Venetians

were inglorious to his arms; they defeated his armies, and

encroached considerably on his Italian possessions. He was

equally unsuccessful with the Swiss, whom he vainly persuaded

to acknowledge the supremacy of his house. ... For many of his

failures ... he is not to be blamed. To carry on his vast

enterprises he could command only the resources of Austria:

had he been able to wield those of the empire, his name would

have been more formidable to his enemies; and it is no slight

praise, that with means so contracted he could preserve the

Netherlands against the open violence, no less than the subtle

duplicity, of France. But the internal transactions of

Maximilian's reign are those only to which the attention of

the reader can be directed with pleasure. In 1495 we witness

the entire abolition of the right of diffidation [private

warfare, see LANDFRIEDE],--a right which from time immemorial

had been the curse of the empire. ... The passing of the

decree which for ever secured the public peace, by placing

under the ban of the empire, and fining at 2,000 marks in

gold, every city, every individual that should hereafter send

or accept a defiance, was nearly unanimous. In regard to the

long-proposed tribunal [to take cognizance of all violations

of the public tranquillity], which was to retain the name of

the Imperial chamber, Maximilian relaxed much from the

pretensions of his father. ... It was solemnly decreed that

the new court should consist of one grand judge, and of 16

assessors, who were presented by the states, and nominated by

the emperor. ... Though a new tribunal was formed, its

competency, its operation, its support, its constitution, the

enforcement of its decisions, were left to chance; and many

successive diets--even many generations--were passed before

anything like an organised system could be introduced into it.

For the execution of its decrees the Swabian league was soon

employed; then another new authority, the Council of Regency.

... But these authorities were insufficient to enforce the

execution of the decrees emanating from the chamber; and it

was found necessary to restore the proposition of the circles,

which had been agitated in the reign of Albert II. ...

Originally they comprised only--

1. Bavaria,

2. Franconia,

3. Saxony,

4. the Rhine,

5. Swabia,  and

6. Westphalia; thus excluding the states of Austria and the

electorates. But this exclusion was the voluntary act of the

electors, who were jealous of a tribunal which might encroach

on their own privileges. In 1512, however, the opposition of

most appears to have been removed; for four new circles were

added.

7. The circle of Austria comprised the hereditary dominions of

that house.

8. That of Burgundy contained the states inherited from

Charles the Rash in Franche-Comté; and the Netherlands.

9. That of the Lower Rhine comprehended the three

ecclesiastical electorates and the Palatinate.

10. That of Upper Saxony extended over the electorate of that

name and the march of Brandenburg. ...

Bohemia and Prussia ... refused to be thus partitioned. Each

of these circles had its internal organisations, the elements

of which were promulgated in 1512, but which was considerably

improved by succeeding diets. Each had its hereditary

president, or director, and its hereditary prince convoked,

both offices being frequently vested in the same individual.

... Each circle had its military chief, elected by the local

states, whose duty it was to execute the decrees of the

imperial Chamber. Generally this office was held by the prince

director. ... The establishment of the Imperial Chamber was

... disagreeable to the emperor. To rescue from its

jurisdiction such causes as he considered lay more peculiarly

within the range of his prerogative, and to encroach by

degrees on the jurisdiction of this odious tribunal,

Maximilian, in 1501, laid the foundation of the celebrated

Aulic Council. But the competency of this tribunal was soon

extended; from political affairs, investitures, charters, and

the numerous matters which concerned the Imperial chancery, it

immediately passed to judicial crimes. ... By an imperial

edict of 1518, the Aulic Council was to consist of 18 members,

all nominated by the emperor. Five only were to be chosen from

the states of the empire, the rest from those of Austria.

About half were legists, the other half nobles, but all

dependent on their chief. ... When he [Maximilian] laboured to

make this council as arbitrary in the empire as in Austria, he

met with great opposition. ... But his purpose was that of

encroachment no less than of defence; and his example was so

well imitated by his successors, that in most cases the Aulic

Council was at length acknowledged to have a concurrent

jurisdiction with the Imperial Chamber, in many the right of

prevention over its rival."

S. A. Dunham,

History of the Germanic Empire,

book 3, chapter 1 (volume 2).

{1456}

"The received opinion which recognises in [Maximilian] the

creative founder of the later constitution of the empire, must

be abandoned. ... He had not the power of keeping the princes

of the empire together; ... on the contrary, everything about

him split into parties. It followed of necessity that abroad

he rather lost than gained ground. ... The glory which

surrounds the memory of Maximilian, the high renown which he

enjoyed even among his contemporaries, were therefore not won

by the success of his enterprises, but by his personal

qualities. Every good gift of nature had been lavished upon

him in profusion. ... He was a man ... formed to excite

admiration, and to inspire enthusiastic attachment; formed to

be the romantic hero, the exhaustless theme of the people."

L. von Ranke,

History of the Reformation in Germany,

volume 1, pages 379-381.

ALSO IN:

L. von Ranke,

History of the Latin and Teutonic Nations

from 1494 to 1514,

book 1, chapter 3,

and book 2, chapters 2 and 4.

See, also, AUSTRIA: A. D. 1477-1495.

GERMANY: A. D.1496-1499.

The Swabian war.

Practical separation of the Swiss Confederacy from the Empire.

See SWITZERLAND: A. D. 1396-1499.

GERMANY: A. D. .1508-1509.

The League of Cambrai against Venice.

See VENICE: A. D. 1508-1509.

GERMANY: A. D. 1513-1515.

The emperor in the pay of England.

Peace with France.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1513-1515.

GERMANY: A. D. 1516.

Abortive invasion of Milaness by Maximilian.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1516-1517.

GERMANY: A. D. 1517-1523.

Beginning of the movement of Religious Reformation.

Papal Indulgences, and Luther's attack on them.

"The Reformation, like all other great social convulsions, was

long in preparation. It was one part of that general progress,

complex in its character, which marked the fifteenth century

and the opening of the sixteenth as the period of transition

from the Middle Ages to modern civilization. ... But while the

Reformation was one part of a change extending over the whole

sphere of human knowledge and activity, it had its own

specific origin and significance. These are still, to some

extent, a subject of controversy. ... One of its causes, as

well as one of the sources of its great power, was the

increasing discontent with the prevailing corruption and

misgovernment in the Church, and with papal interference in

civil affairs. ... The misconduct of the popes in the last

half of the fifteenth century was not more flagrant than that

of their predecessors in the tenth century. But the fifteenth

century was an age of light. What was done by the pontiffs was

not done in a corner, but under the eyes of all Europe.

Besides, there was now a deep-seated craving, especially in

the Teutonic peoples, who had so long been under the tutelage

of a legal, judaizing form of Christianity, for a more

spiritual type of religion. ... The Reformation may be viewed

in two aspects. On the one hand it is a religious revolution

affecting the beliefs, the rites, the ecclesiastical

organization of the Church, and the form of Christian life. On

the other hand, it is a great movement in which sovereigns and

nations are involved; the occasion of wars and treaties; the

close of an old, and the introduction of a new, period in the

history of culture and civilization. Germany, including the

Netherlands and Switzerland, was the stronghold of the

Reformation. It was natural that such a movement should spring

up and rise to its highest power among a people in whom a love of

independence was mingled with a yearning for a more spiritual

form of religion than was encouraged by mediæval

ecclesiasticism. Hegel has dwelt with eloquence upon the fact

that while the rest of the world was gone out to America or to

the Indies, in quest of riches and a dominion that should

encircle the globe, a simple monk, turning away from empty

forms and the things of sense, was finding him whom the

disciples once sought in a sepulchre of stone. Unquestionably

the hero of the Reformation was Martin Luther. ... As an

English writer has pointed out, Luther's whole nature was

identified with his great work, and while other leaders, like

Melancthon and even Calvin, can be separated in thought from

the Reformation, Luther, apart from the Reformation, would

cease to be Luther.' ... In 1517 John Tetzel, a hawker of

indulgences, the proceeds of which were to help pay for the

building of St. Peter's Church, appeared in the neighborhood

of Wittenberg. To persuade the people to buy his spiritual

wares, he told them, as Luther himself testifies, that as soon

as their money clinked in the bottom of the chest the souls of

their deceased friends forthwith went up to heaven. Luther was

so struck with the enormity of this traffic that he determined

to stop it. He preached against it, and on October 31, 1517,

he posted on the door of the Church of All Saints, at

Wittenberg, his ninety-five theses. [For the full text of

these, see PAPACY: A. D. 1517], relating to the doctrine and

practice of selling indulgences. Indulgences ... were at first

commutations of penance by the payment of money. The right to

issue them had gradually become the exclusive prerogative of

the popes. The eternal punishment of mortal sin being remitted

or commuted by the absolution of the priest, it was open to the

pope or his agents, by a grant of indulgences, to remove the

temporal or terminable penalties, which might extend into

purgatory. For the benefit of the needy he could draw upon the

treasury of merit stored up by Christ and the saints. Although

it was expressly declared by Pope Sixtus IV., that souls are

delivered from purgatorial fires in a way analogous to the

efficacy of prayer, and although contrition was theoretically

required of the recipient of an indulgence, it often appeared

to the people as a simple bargain, according to which, on

payment of a stipulated sum, the individual obtained a full

discharge from the penalties of sin, or procured the release

of a soul from the flames. Luther's theses assailed the

doctrines which made this baneful traffic possible. ...

Unconsciously to their author, they struck a blow at the

authority of Rome and of the priesthood. Luther had no thought

of throwing off his allegiance to the Roman Church. Even his

theses were only propositions, propounded for academic debate,

according to the custom in mediæval universities. He concluded

them with the solemn declaration that he affirmed nothing, but

left all to the judgment of the Church. ...

{1457}

The theses stirred up a commotion all over Germany. ... A

controversy arose between the new champion of reform and the

defenders of indulgences. It was during this dispute that

Luther began to realize that human authority was against him

and to see the necessity of planting himself more distinctly

on the Scriptures. His clear arguments and resolute attitude

won the respect of the Elector of Saxony, who, though he often

sought to restrain his vehemence, nevertheless protected him

from his enemies. This the elector was able to do because of

his political importance, which became still greater when,

after the death of Maximilian, he was made regent of Northern

Germany."

G. P. Fisher,

History of the Christian Church,

pages 287-293.

"At first neither Luther, nor others, saw to what the contest

about the indulgences would lead. The Humanists believed it to

be only a scholastic disputation, and Hutten laughed to see

theologians engaged in a fight with each other. It was not

till the Leipzig disputation (1519), where Luther stood

forward to defend his views against Eck, that the matter

assumed a grave aspect, took another turn, and after the

appearance of Luther's appeals 'To the Christian Nobility of

the German Nation,' 'On the Babylonian Captivity,' and against

Church abuses, that it assumed national importance. All the

combustible materials were ready, the spark was thrown among

them, and the flames broke out from every quarter. Hundreds of

thousands of German hearts glowed responsive to the complaints

which the Wittenberg monk flung against Papal Rome, in a

language whose sonorous splendour and iron strength were now

first heard in all the fulness, force, and beauty of the

German idiom. That was an imperishable service rendered to his

country by Luther. He wrote in German, and he wrote such

German. The papal ban hurled back against him in 1520 was

disregarded. He burnt it outside the gate of Wittenberg by the

leper hospital, in the place where the rags and plague-stained

garments of the lepers were wont to be consumed. The nobility,

the burghers, the peasants, all thrilled at his call. Now the

moment had come for a great emperor, a second Charlemagne, to

stand forward and regenerate at once religion and the empire.

There was, however, at the head of the state, only Charles V.,

the grandson of Maximilian, a man weak where he ought to have

been strong, and strong where he ought to have been weak, a

Spanish Burgundian prince, of Romance stock, who despised and

disliked the German tongue, the tongue of the people whose

imperial crown he bore, a prince whose policy was to combat

France and humble it. It was convenient for him, at the time,

to have the pope on his side, so he looked with dissatisfied

eyes on the agitation in Germany. The noblest hearts among the

princes bounded with hope that he would take the lead in the

new movement. The lesser nobility, the cities, the peasantry,

all expected of the emperor a reformation of the empire

politically and religiously. ... But all hopes were dashed.

Charles V. as little saw his occasion as had Maximilian. He

took up a hostile position to the new movement at once. He

was, however, brought by the influential friends of Luther,

among whom first of all was the Elector of Saxony, to hear

what the reformer had to say for himself, before he placed him

under the ban of the empire. Luther received the imperial

safe-conduct, and was summoned to the Diet of Worms, there to

defend himself. He went, notwithstanding that he was warned

and reminded of the fate of Huss. 'I will go to Worms,' said

he, 'even were as many devils set against me as there are

tiles on the roofs.' It was probably on this journey that the

thoughts entered his mind which afterwards (1530) found their

expression in that famous chorale, 'Eine feste Burg ist unser

Gott,' which became the battle-song of Protestants. Those were

memorable days, the 17th and 18th of April, 1521, in which a

poor monk stood up before the emperor and all the estates of

the empire, undazzled by their threatening splendour, and

conducted his own case. At that moment when he closed his

defence with the stirring words, 'Let me be contradicted out

of Holy Scripture--till that is done I will not recant. Here

stand I. I can do no other, so help me God, amen!' then he had

reached the pinnacle of his greatness. The result is well known.

The emperor and his papal adviser remained unmoved, and the

ban was pronounced against the heretic. Luther was carried off

by his protector, the Elector of Saxony, and concealed in the

Wartburg, where he worked at his translation of the Bible. ...

Brandenburg, Hesse, and Saxony declared in favour of reform.

In 1523 Magdeburg, Wismar, Rostock, Stettin, Danzig, Riga,

expelled the monks and priests, and appointed Lutheran

preachers. Nürnberg and Breslau hailed the Reformation with

delight."

S. Baring-Gould,

The Church in Germany,

chapter 18.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1516-1517, to 1522-1525.

ALSO IN:

L. von Ranke,

History of the Reformation in Germany.

L. Hausser,

The Period of the Reformation.

J. H. Merle d'Aubigne,

History of the Reformation.

M. J. Spaulding,

History of the Protestant Reformation.

F. Seebohm,

The Era of the Protestant Revolution.

P. Bayne,

Martin Luther.

C. Beard,

Martin Luther and the Reformation.

J. Köstlin,

Life of Luther.

GERMANY: A. D. 1519,

Contest for the imperial crown,

Three royal candidates in the field.

Election of Charles V., the Austro-Spanish monarch of many

thrones.

In his last years, Maximilian made great efforts to secure the

Imperial Crown for his grandson Charles, who had already

inherited, through his mother Joanna, of Spain, the kingdoms

of Castile, Aragon, and the Two Sicilies, and through his

father, Philip of Austria, the duchy of Burgundy and the many

lordships of the Netherlands. "In 1518 he obtained the consent

of the majority of the electors to the Roman crown being

bestowed on that prince. The electors of Treves and Saxony

alone opposed the project, on the ground that, as Maximilian

had never received the Imperial crown [but was styled Emperor

Elect] he was himself still King of the Romans, and that

consequently Charles could not assume a dignity that was not

vacant. To obviate this objection, Maximilian pressed Leo to

send the golden crown to Vienna; but this plan was defeated by

the intrigues of the French court. Francis, who intended to

become a candidate for the Imperial crown, intreated the Pope

not to commit himself by such an act; and while these

negociations were pending, Maximilian died at Wels, in Upper

Austria, January 12th 1519. ... Three candidates for the

Imperial crown appeared in the field: the Kings of Spain,

France, and England.

{1458}

Francis I. [of France] was now at the height of his

reputation. His enterprises had hitherto been crowned with

success, the popular test of ability, and the world

accordingly gave him credit for a political wisdom which he

was far from possessing. He appears to have gained three or

four of the Electors by the lavish distribution of his money,

which his agent, Bonnivet, was obliged to carry through

Germany on the backs of horses; for the Fuggers, the rich

bankers of Augsburg, were in the interest of Charles, and

refused to give the French any accommodation. But the bought

votes of these venal Electors could not be depended on, some

of whom sold themselves more than once to different parties.

The infamy of Albert, Elector of Mentz, in these transactions,

was particularly notorious. The chances of Henry VIII. [of

England] were throughout but slender. Henry's hopes, like

those of Francis, were chiefly founded on the corruptibility

of the Electors, and on the expectation that both his rivals,

from the very magnitude of their power, might be deemed

ineligible. Of the three candidates the claims of Charles

seemed the best founded and the most deserving of success. The

House of Austria had already furnished six emperors, of whom

the last three had reigned eighty years, as if by an

hereditary succession. Charles's Austrian possessions made him

a German prince, and from their situation constituted him the

natural protector of Germany against the Turks. The previous

canvass of Maximilian had been of some service to his cause,

and all these advantages he seconded, like his competitors, by

the free use of bribery. ... Leo X., the weight of whose

authority was sought both by Charles and Francis, though he

seemed to favour each, desired the success of neither. He

secretly advised the Electors to choose an emperor from among

their own body; and as this seemed an easy solution of the

difficulty, they unanimously offered the crown to Frederick

the Wise, Elector of Saxony. But Frederick magnanimously

refused it, and succeeded in uniting the suffrages of the

Electors in favour of Charles; principally on the ground that

he was the sovereign best qualified to meet the great danger

impending from the Turk. ... The new Emperor, now in his 20th

year, assumed the title of Charles V. ... He was proclaimed as

'Emperor Elect,' the title borne by his grandfather, which he

subsequently altered to that of 'Emperor Elect of the Romans,'

a designation adopted by his successors, with the omission of

the word 'elect,' down to the dissolution of the empire."

T. H. Dyer,

History of Modern Europe,

book 2, chapter 2 (volume l).

On his election to the Imperial throne, Charles ceded to his

younger brother, Ferdinand, all the German possessions of the

family. The latter, therefore, became Archduke of Austria, and

the German branch of the House of Austria was continued

through him; while Charles himself became the founder of a new

branch of the House--the Spanish.

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1496-1526.

ALSO IN:

W. Robertson,

History of the Reign of Charles V.,

book 1.

J. S. Brewer,

The Reign of Henry VIII.,

chapter 11 (volume 1).

J. Van Praet,

Essays on the Political History of the 15th-17th Centuries,

chapter 2, (volume 1).

GERMANY: A. D. 1520-1521.

The Capitulation of Charles V.

His first Diet, at Worms, and its political measures.

The election of Charles V. "was accompanied with a new and

essential alteration in the constitution of the empire.

Hitherto a general and verbal promise to confirm the Germanic

privileges had been deemed a sufficient security; but as the

enormous power and vast possessions of the new emperor

rendered him the object of greater jealousy and alarm than his

predecessors, the electors digested into a formal deed or

capitulation all their laws, customs, and privileges, which

the ambassadors of Charles signed before his election, and

which he himself ratified before his coronation; and this

example has been followed by his successors. It consisted of

36 articles, partly relating to the Germanic body in general,

and partly to the electors and states in particular. Of those

relating to the Germanic body in general, the most prominent

were, not to confer the escheated fiefs, but to re-unite and

consolidate them, for the benefit of the emperor and empire;

not to intrust the charges of the empire to any but Germans;

not to grant dispensations of the common law; to use the

German language in the proceedings of the chancery; and to put

no one arbitrarily to the ban, who had not been previously

condemned by the diet or imperial chamber. He was to maintain

the Germanic body in the exercise of its legislative powers,

in its right of declaring war and making peace, of passing

laws on commerce and coinage, of regulating the contingents,

imposing and directing the perception of ordinary

contributions, of establishing and superintending the superior

tribunals, and of judging the personal causes of the states.

Finally, he promised not to cite the members of the Germanic

body before any tribunal except those of the empire, and to

maintain them in their legitimate privileges of territorial

sovereignty. The articles which regarded the electors were of

the utmost importance, because they confirmed the rights which

had been long contested with the emperors. ... Besides these

concessions, be promised not to make any attempt to render the

imperial crown hereditary in his family, and to re-establish the

council of regency, in conformity with the advice of the

electors and great princes of the empire. On the 6th of

January, 1521, Charles assembled his first diet at Worms,

where he presided in person. At his proposition the states

passed regulations to terminate the troubles which had already

arisen during the short interval of the interregnum, and to

prevent the revival of similar disorders. ... The imperial

chamber was re-established in all its authority, and the

public peace again promulgated, and enforced by new penalties.

In order to direct the affairs of the empire during the

absence of Charles, a council of regency was established. ...

It was to consist of a lieutenant-general, appointed by the

emperor, and 22 assessors, of' whom 18 were nominated by the

states, and four by Charles, as possessor of the circles of

Burgundy and Austria. ... At the same time an aid of 20,000

foot and 4,000 horse was granted, to accompany the emperor in

his expedition to Rome; but the diet endeavoured to prevent

him from interfering, as Maximilian had done, in the affairs

of Italy, by stipulating that these troops were only to be

employed as an escort, and not for the purpose of aggression."

W. Coxe,

History of the House of Austria,

chapter 26 (volume 1).

ALSO IN:

L. von Ranke,

History of the Reformation in Germany,

book 2, chapter 4 (volume 1).

{1459}

GERMANY: A. D. 1522-1525.

Systematic organization and adoption in northern Germany of

the Lutheran Reformation.

The Diets at Nuremberg.

The Catholic League of Ratisbon.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1522-1525.

GERMANY: A. D. 1524-1525.

The Peasants' War.

"A political ferment, very different from that produced by the

Gospel, had long been troubling the empire. The people,

weighed down under civil and ecclesiastical oppression,

attached in many places to the lands belonging to the lords,

and sold with them, threatened to rise, and furiously burst

their chains. In Holland, at the end of the preceding century,

the peasants had mustered around standards inscribed with the

words 'bread' and 'cheese,' to them the two necessaries of

life. In 1503 the 'Cobblers' League' ['Bundschuh'--see

GERMANY: A. D. 1492-1514] had burst forth in the neighbourhood

of Spires. In 1513 this was renewed in Brisgau, and encouraged

by the priests. In 1514 Wurtemburg had witnessed 'the League

of poor Conrad,' the object of which was to uphold 'the

justice of God' by revolt. In 1515 terrible commotions had

taken place in Carinthia and Hungary. These insurrections were

stifled by torrents of blood, but no relief had been given to

the peoples. A political reform was as much wanted as a

religious one. The people had a right to it, but they were not

ripe to enjoy it. Since the commencement of the Reformation

these popular agitations had been suspended, the minds of men

being absorbed with other thoughts. ... But everything showed

that peace would not last long. ... The main dykes which had

hitherto kept the torrent back were broken, and nothing could

restrain its fury. Perhaps it must be admitted that the

movement communicated to the people by the Reform gave new

force to the discontent which was fermenting in the nation.

... Erasmus did not hesitate to say to Luther: 'We are now

reaping the fruits of the seed you have sown.' ... The evil

was augmented by the pretensions of certain fanatical men, who

laid claim to celestial inspirations. ... The most

distinguished of these enthusiasts was Thomas Münzer. ... His

first appearance was at Zwickau. He left Wittenberg after

Luther's return [from his concealment at Wartburg, 1522],

dissatisfied with the inferior part he had played, and he

became pastor of the little town of Alstadt in Thuringia.

There he could not long be at rest, and he accused the

reformers of founding a new papacy by their attachment to the

letter, and of forming churches which were not pure and holy.

He regarded himself as called of God to bear a remedy for so

great an evil. ... He maintained that to obey princes,

'destitute of reason,' was to serve God and Belial at the same

time. Then, marching at the head of his parishioners, to a

chapel which was visited by pilgrims from all quarters, he

pulled it to the ground. After this exploit he was obliged to

quit the country, wandered over Germany, and came to

Switzerland, spreading as he went, wherever people would hear

him, his plan for a universal revolution. In every place he

found elements ready for his purpose. He threw his powder upon

the burning coals, and a violent explosion soon followed. ...

The revolt commenced in those regions of the Black Forest, and

the sources of the Danube, which were so often the scene of

popular disturbances. On the 19th of July, 1524, the

Thurgovian peasantry rose against the Abbot of Reichenau, who

would not grant them an evangelical preacher. Thousands soon

gathered around the little town of Tengen, to liberate an

ecclesiastic who was imprisoned there. The revolt spread, with

inconceivable rapidity, from Suabia to the Rhine countries, to

Franconia, to Thuringia, and to Saxony. In January, 1525, the

whole of these countries were in insurrection. Towards the end

of that month the peasants published a declaration in twelve

articles, asking the liberty to choose their own pastors, the

abolition of petty tithes, serfdom, the duties on inheritance,

and liberty to hunt, fish, cut wood, &c., and each demand was

supported by a passage of Scripture."

J. H. Merle D'Aubigné,

The Story of the Reformation,

part 3, chapter 8,

(History of the Reformation, book 10, chapters 10-11).

"Had the feudal lords granted proper and fair reforms long

ago, they would never have heard of these twelve articles. But

they had refused reform, and they now had to meet revolution.

And they knew of but one way of meeting it, namely, by the

sword. The lords of the Swabian League sent their army of foot

and horsemen, under their captain, George Truchsess. The poor

peasants could not hold out against trained soldiers and

cavalry. Two battles on the Danube, in which thousands of

peasants were slain, or drowned in the river, and a third

equally bloody one in Algau, near the Boden See, crushed this

rebellion in Swabia, as former rebellions had so often been

crushed before. This was early in April 1525. But in the

meantime the revolution had spread further north. In the

valley of the Neckar a body of 6,000 peasants had come

together, enraged by the news of the slaughter of their fellow

peasants in the south of Swabia." They stormed the castle of the

young Count von Helfenstein, who had recently cut the throats

of some peasants who met him on the road, and put the Count to

death, with 60 of his companions. "A yell of horror was raised

through Germany at the news of the peasants' revenge. No yell

had risen when the Count cut peasants' throats, or the Swabian

lords slew thousands of peasant rebels. Europe had not yet

learned to mete out the same measure of justice to noble and

common blood. ... The revolution spread, and the reign of

terror spread with it. North and east of the valley of the

Neckar, among the little towns of Franconia, and in the

valleys of the Maine, other bands of peasants, mustering by

thousands, destroyed alike cloisters and castles. Two hundred

of these lighted the night with their flames during the few

weeks of their temporary triumph. And here another feature of

the revolution became prominent. The little towns were already

... passing through an internal revolution. The artisans were

rising against the wealthier burghers, overturning the town

councils, and electing committees of artisans in their place,

making sudden changes in religion, putting down the Mass,

unfrocking priests and monks, and in fact, in the interests of

what they thought to be the gospel, turning all things upside

down. ... It was during the Franconian rebellion that the

peasants chose the robber knight Goetz von Berlichingen as

their leader. It did them no good. More than a robber chief

was needed to cope with soldiers used to war. ... While all

this was going on in the valleys of the Maine, the revolution

had crossed the Rhine into Elsass and Lothringen, and the

Palatinate about Spires and Worms, and in the month of May had

been crushed in blood, as in Swabia and Franconia.

{1460}

South and east, in Bavaria, in the Tyrol, and in Carinthia

also, castles and monasteries went up in flames, and then,

when the tide of victory turned, the burning houses and farms

of the peasants lit up the night and their blood flowed

freely. Meanwhile Münzer, who had done so much to stir up the

peasantry in the south to rebel, had gone north into

Thuringia, and headed a revolution in the town of Mülhausen,

and became a sort of Savonarola of a madder kind. ... But the

end was coming. The princes, with their disciplined troops,

came nearer and nearer. What could Münzer do with his 8,000

peasants? He pointed to a rainbow and expected a miracle, but

no miracle came. The battle, of course, was lost; 5,000

peasants lay dead upon the field near the little town of

Frankenhausen, where it was fought. Münzer fled and concealed

himself in a bed, but was found and taken before the princes,

thrust into a dungeon, and afterwards beheaded. So ended the

wild career of this misguided, fanatical, self-deceived, but

yet, as we must think, earnest and in many ways heroic spirit.

... The princes and nobles now everywhere prevailed over the

insurgent peasants. Luther, writing on June 21, 1525,

says:--'It is a certain fact, that in Franconia 11,000

peasants have been slain. Markgraf Casimir is cruelly severe

upon his peasants, who have twice broken faith with him. In

the Duchy of Wurtemberg, 6,000 have been killed; in different

places in Swabia, 10,000. It is said that in Alsace the Duke

of Lorraine has slain 20,000. Thus everywhere the wretched

peasants are cut down.' ... Before the Peasants' War was ended

at least 100,000 perished, or twenty times as many as were put

to death in Paris during the Reign of Terror in 1793. ...

Luther, throughout the Peasants' War, sided with the ruling

powers. ... The reform he sought was by means of the civil

power; and in order to clear himself and his cause from all

participation in the wild doings of the peasantry, he publicly

exhorted the princes to crush their rebellion."

F. Seebohm,

The Era of the Protestant Revolution,

part 2, chapter 5.

ALSO IN:

L. von Ranke,

History of the Reformation in Germany,

book 3, chapter 6 (volume 2).

P. Bayne,

Martin Luther: His Life and Work,

book 11 (volume 2).

J. Köstlin,

Life of Luther,

part 4, chapter 5.

C. W. C. Oman,

The German Peasant War of 1525

(English History Review, volume 5).

GERMANY: A. D. 1525-1529.

League of Torgau.

The Diets at Spires.

Legal recognition of the Reformed Religion, and the withdrawal

of it.

The Protest which gave rise to the name "Protestants."

See PAPACY: A. D.1525-1529.

GERMANY: A. D. 1529.

Turkish invasion of Austria.

Siege of Vienna.

See HUNGARY: A. D. 1526-1567.

GERMANY: A. D. 1530.

The Diet at Augsburg.

The signing and reading of the Protestant Confession of Faith.

The condemnatory decree.

Breach between the Protestants and the emperor.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1530-1531.

GERMANY: A. D. 1530-1532.

The Augsburg Decree.

Alarm of the Protestants.

Their League of Smalkalde and alliance with the king of

France.

Pacification of Nuremberg with the emperor.

Expulsion of the Turks from Hungary.

The decree issued by the Diet at Augsburg was condemnatory of

most of the tenets peculiar to the protestants, "forbidding

any person to protect or tolerate such as taught them,

enjoining a strict observance of the established rites, and

prohibiting any farther innovation, under severe penalties.

All orders of men were required to assist with their persons

and fortunes in carrying this decree into execution; and such

as refused to obey it were declared incapable of acting as

judges, or of appearing as parties in the imperial chamber,

the supreme court of judicature in the empire. To all which

was subjoined a promise, that an application should be made to

the pope, requiring him to call a general council within six

months, in order to terminate all controversies by its

sovereign decisions. The severity of this decree, which was

considered as a prelude to the most violent persecution,

alarmed the protestants, and convinced them that the emperor

was resolved on their destruction." Under these circumstances,

the protestant princes met at Smalkalde, December 22, 1530,

and there "concluded a league of mutual defence against all

aggressors, by which they formed the protestant states of the

empire into one regular body, and, beginning already to

consider themselves as such, they resolved to apply to the

kings of France and England, and to implore them to patronise

and assist their new confederacy. An affair not connected with

religion furnished them with a pretence for courting the aid

of foreign princes.'" This was the election of the emperor's

brother, Ferdinand, to be King of the Romans, against, which

they had protested vigorously. "When the protestants, who

were' assembled a second time at Smalkalde [February, 1531],

received an account of this transaction, and heard, at the

same time, that prosecutions were commenced in the imperial

chamber against some of their number, on account of their

religious principles, they thought it necessary, not only to

renew their former confederacy, but immediately to despatch

their ambassadors into France and England." The king of France

"listened with the utmost eagerness to the complaints of the

protestant princes; and, without seeming to countenance their

religious opinions, determined secretly to cherish those

sparks of political discord which might be afterwards kindled

into a flame. For this purpose he sent William de Bellay, one

of the ablest negotiators in France, into Germany, who,

visiting the courts of the malecontent princes, and

heightening their ill-humour by various arts, concluded an

alliance between them, and his master, which, though concealed

at that time, and productive of no immediate effects, laid the

foundation of a union fatal on many occasions to Charles's

ambitious projects. ... The king of England [Henry VIII.],

highly incensed against Charles, in complaisance to whom, the

pope had long retarded, and now openly opposed, his divorce

[from Catharine of Aragon], was no less disposed than Francis

to strengthen a league which might be rendered so formidable

to the emperor. But his favourite project of the divorce led

him into such a labyrinth of schemes and negotiations, and he

was, at the same time, so intent on abolishing the papal

jurisdiction in England, that he had no leisure for foreign

affairs. This obliged him to rest satisfied with giving

general promises, together with a small supply in money, to

the confederates of Smalkalde. Meanwhile, many circumstances

convinced Charles that this was not a juncture" in which he

could afford to let his zeal for the church push him to

extremities with the protestants.

{1461}

"Negotiations were, accordingly, carried on by his direction

with the elector of Saxony and his associates; after many

delays ... terms of pacification were agreed upon at Nuremberg

[July 23], and ratified solemnly in the diet at Ratisbon

[August 3]. In this treaty it was stipulated: that universal

peace be established in Germany, until the meeting of a

general council, the convocation of which within six months

the emperor shall endeavour to procure; that no person shall

be molested on account of religion; that a stop shall be put

to all processes begun by the imperial chamber against

protestants, and the sentences already passed to their

detriment shall be declared void. On their part, the

protestants engaged to assist the emperor with all their

forces in resisting the invasion of the Turks. ... The

protestants of Germany, who had hitherto been viewed only as a

religious sect, came henceforth to be considered as a

political body of no small consequence. The intelligence which

Charles received of Solyman's having entered Hungary, at the

head of 300,000 men, brought the deliberations of the diet at

Ratisbon to a period. ... The protestants, as a testimony of

their gratitude to the emperor, exerted themselves with

extraordinary zeal, and brought into the field forces which

exceeded in number the quota imposed on them; and the

catholics imitating their example, one of the greatest and

best-appointed armies that had ever been levied in Germany

assembled near Vienna. ... It amounted in all to 90,000

disciplined foot, and 30,000 horse, besides a prodigious swarm

of irregulars. Of this vast army ... the emperor took the

command in person; and mankind waited in suspense the issue of

a decisive battle between the two greatest monarchs in the

world. But each of them dreading the other's power and good

fortune, they both conducted their operations with such

excessive caution, that a campaign for which such immense

preparations had been made ended without any memorable event.

Solyman, finding it impossible to gain ground upon an enemy

always attentive and on his guard, marched back to

Constantinople towards the end of autumn. ... About the

beginning of this campaign, the elector of Saxony died, and

was succeeded by his son John Frederick. ... Immediately after

the retreat of the Turks, Charles, impatient to revisit Spain,

set out, on his way thither, for Italy."

W. Robertson,

History of the Reign of Charles V.,

book 5.

ALSO IN:

L. von Ranke,

History of the Reformation in Germany,

book 6, chapters 1-8 (volume 3).

H. Stebbing,

History of the Reformation,

chapters 12-13 (volume 2).

GERMANY: A. D. 1532-1536.

Fanaticism of the Anabaptists of Münster.

Siege and capture of the city.

See ANABAPTISTS OF MÜNSTER.

GERMANY: A. D. 1533-1546.

Mercenary aspects of the Reformation.

Protestant intolerance.

Union with the Swiss Reformers.

The Catholic Holy League.

Preparations for war.

"During the next few years [after the peace concluded at

Nuremberg] there was no open hostility between the two

religious parties. ... But there was dissension enough. In the

first place there was much disputation as to the meaning of

the articles concluded at Nuremberg. The catholic princes,

under the pretext that, if no man was to be disturbed for his

faith, or for things depending on faith, he was still amenable

for certain offences against the church, which were purely of a

civil nature, were eager that the imperial chamber should take

cognisance of future cases, at least, where protestants should

seek to invade the temporalities of the church. ... But

nothing was effected; the tribunal was too powerless to

enforce its decrees. In 1534, the protestants, in a public

assembly, renounced all obedience to the chamber; yet they did

not cease to appropriate to themselves the property of such

monasteries and churches as, by the conversion of catholics to

their faith--and that faith was continually progressive--lay

within their jurisdiction. We need scarcely observe, that the

prospect of spoliation was often the most powerful inducement

with the princes and nobles to change their religion. When

they, or the magistracy of any particular city, renounced the

faith hitherto established, the people were expected to follow

the example: the moment Lutheranism was established in its place,

the ancient faith was abolished; nobody was allowed to profess

it; and, with one common accord, all who had any prospect of

benefiting by the change threw themselves on the domains of

the expelled clergy. That the latter should complain before

the only tribunal where justice could be expected, was

natural; nor can we be surprised that the plunderers should

soon deny, in religious affairs, the jurisdiction of that

tribunal. From the departure of the emperor to the year 1538,

some hundreds of domains were thus seized, and some hundreds

of complaints addressed to him by parties who resolved to

interpret the articles of Nuremberg in their own way. The

protestants declared, in a letter to him, that their

consciences would not allow them to tolerate any papist in

their states. ... By espousing the cause of the exiled duke of

Wittemberg, they procured a powerful ally. ... But a greater

advantage was the union of the sacramentarians [the Swiss

reformers, who accepted the doctrine of Zwingli respecting the

purely symbolical significance of the commemoration of the

Lord's Supper--see SWITZERLAND: A. D. 1528-1531] with the

Lutherans. Of such a result, at the diet of Augsburg, there

was not the least hope; but Bucer, being deputed by the

imperial cities to ascertain whether a union might not be

effected, laboured so zealously at the task that it was

effected. He consented to modify some of his former opinions;

or at least to wrap them in language so equivocal that they

might mean anything or nothing at the pleasure of the holder.

The Swiss, indeed, especially those of Zurich, refused to

sanction the articles on which Luther and Bucer had agreed.

Still, by the union of all protestant Germany under the same

banners, much was gained. ... In the meantime, the dissensions

between the two great parties augmented from day to day. To

pacify them, Charles sent fruitless embassies. Roused by the

apparent danger, in 1538, the catholic princes formed, at

Nuremberg, a counter league to that of Smalcald [calling it

the Holy League]. ... The death of Luther's old enemy, George,

duke of Saxony [1539], transferred the dominion of that

prince's states into the hands of [his brother Henry] a

Lutheran. Henry, duke of Brunswick, was now the only great

secular prince in the north of Germany who adhered to the

Roman catholic faith. ... A truce was concluded at Frankfort,

in 1539; but it could not remove the existing animosity, which

was daily augmented. Both parties were in the wrong. ...

{1462}

At the close of 1540, Worms was the scene of a conference very

different from that where, 20 years before, Luther had been

proscribed. There was an interminable theological disputation.

... As little good resulted, Charles, who was hastening from

the Low Countries to his German dominions, evoked the affair

before a diet at Ratisbon, in April, 1541. ... The diet of

Ratisbon was well attended; and never did prince exert himself

more zealously than Charles to make peace between his angry

subjects. But ... all that could be obtained was, that things

should be suffered to remain in their present state until a

future diet or a general council. The reduction of Buda,

however, by the Turks, rendered king Ferdinand, his brother,

and the whole of Germany, eager for an immediate settlement of

the dispute. ... Hence the diet of Spires in 1542. If, in

regard to religion, nothing definitive was arranged, except

the selection of Trent as the place most suitable for a

general council, one good end was secured--supplies for the

war with the Turks. The campaign, however, which passed

without an action, was inglorious to the Germans, who appear

to have been in a lamentable state of discipline. Nor was the

public satisfaction much increased by the disputes of the

Smalcald league with Henry of Brunswick. The duke was angry

with his subjects of Brunswick and Breslau, who adhered to the

protestant league; and though he had reason enough to be

dissatisfied with both, nothing could be more vexatious than

his conduct towards them. In revenge, the league of Smalcald

sent 19,000 men into the field,--a formidable display of

protestant power!--and Henry was expelled from his hereditary

states, which were seized by the victors. He invoked the aid

of the imperial chamber, which cited the chiefs of the league;

but as, in 1538, the competency of that tribunal had been

denied in religious, so now it was denied in civil matters.

... The following years exhibit on both sides the same

jealousy, the same duplicity, often the same violence where

the mask was no longer required, with as many ineffectual

attempts to procure a union between them. ... The progress of

events continued to favour the reformers. They had already two

votes in the electoral college,--those of Saxony and Brandenburg;

they were now to have the preponderance; for the elector

palatine and Herman archbishop of Cologne abjured their

religion, thus placing at the command of the reformed party

four votes against three. But this numerical superiority did

not long remain. ... The pope excommunicated the archbishop,

deposed him from his dignity, and ordered the chapter to

proceed to a new election; and when Herman refused to obey,

Charles sent troops to expel him, and to install the

archbishop elect, Count Adolf of Nassau. Herman retired to his

patrimonial estates, where he died in the profession of the

reformed religion. These events mortified the members of the

Smalcald league; but they were soon partially consoled by the

capture of Henry duke of Brunswick [1546], who had the

temerity to collect troops and invade his patrimonial

dominions. Their success gave umbrage to the emperor. ... He

knew that the confederates had already 20,000 men under arms,

and that they were actively, however secretly, augmenting

their forces. His first care was to cause troops to be as

secretly collected in his hereditary states; his second, to

seduce, if possible, some leaders of the protestants. With

Maurice duke of Saxony he was soon successful; and eventually

with the two margraves of Brandenburg, who agreed to make

preparations for a campaign and join him at the proper moment.

... His convocation of the diet at Ratisbon [1546], which

after a vain parade ended in nothing, was only to hide his

real designs. As he began to throw off the mask, the reformed

theologians precipitately withdrew; and both parties took the

field, but not until they had each published a manifesto to

justify this extreme proceeding. In each there was much truth,

and more falsehood."

S. A. Dunham,

History of the Germanic Empire,

book 3, chapter 2 (volume 3).

GERMANY: A. D. 1542-1544.

War with Francis I. of France.

Battle of Cerisoles.

Treaty of Crespy.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1532-1547.

GERMANY: A. D. 1542-1563.

The beginning of the Roman Catholic reaction.

The Council of Trent.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1537-1563.

GERMANY: A. D. 1546-1552.

War of Charles against the Protestants.

The treachery of Maurice of Saxony.

The battle of Muhlberg.

The emperor's proposed "Interim" and its failure.

His reverse of fortune.

Protestantism triumphant.

The Treaty of Passau.

"Luther's death [which occurred in 1546] made no change in the

resolution which Charles had at last taken to crush the

Reformation in his German dominions by force of arms; on the

contrary, he was more than ever stimulated to carry out his

purpose by two occurrences: the adoption of the new religion

by one who was not only an Elector of the Empire, but one of

the chief prelates of the Church, the Prince-Archbishop of

Cologne. ... The other event that influenced him was the

refusal of the Protestants to accept as binding the decrees of

the Council of Trent, which was composed of scarcely any

members but a few Italian and Spanish prelates, and from which

they appealed to either a free general Council or a national

Council of the Empire; offering, at the same time, if Charles

should prefer it, to submit the whole question of religion to

a joint Commission, composed of divines of each party. These

remonstrances, however, the Emperor treated with contempt. He

had been for some time secretly raising troops in different

quarters; and, early in 1546, he made a fresh treaty with the

Pope, by which he bound himself instantly to commence warlike

operations, and which, though it had been negotiated, as a

secret treaty, Paul instantly published, to prevent any

retraction or delay on his part. War therefore now began,

though Charles professed to enter upon it, not for the purpose

of enforcing a particular religious belief on the recusants,

but for that of re-establishing the Imperial authority, which,

as he affirmed, many of the confederate princes had disowned.

Such a pretext he expected to sow disunion in the body, some

members of which were far from desirous to weaken the great

confederacy of the Empire: and, in effect, it did produce a

hesitation in their early steps that had the most important

consequences on the first campaign; for, in spite of the

length of time during which he had secretly been preparing for

war, when it came they were more ready than he. They at once

took the field with an army of 90,000 men and 120 guns, while

he, for the first few weeks after the declaration of war, had

hardly 10,000 men with him in Ratisbon. ...

{1463}

But the advantage of a single over a divided command was

perhaps never more clearly exemplified than in the first

operations of the two armies. He, as the weaker party, took up

a defensive position near Ingolstadt; but, though they

advanced within sight of his lines, they could not agree on

the mode of attack, or even on the prudence of attacking him

at all. ... At last, the confederates actually drew off, and

Charles, advancing, made himself master of many important

towns, which their irresolution alone had enabled him to

approach." Meanwhile the Emperor had won an important ally.

This was Duke Maurice, of the Albertine line of the House of

Saxony (see SAXONY: A. D. 1180-1553), to whom several

opportune deaths had given the ducal seat unexpectedly, in

1541, and whose ambition now hungered for the Electorate,

which was held by the other (the Ernestine) branch of the

family. He conceived the idea of profiting by the troubles of

the time to win possession of it. "With this view, though he

also was a Protestant, he tendered his services to the

Emperor, who, in spite of his youth, discerned in him a

promise of very superior capacity, gladly accepted his aid,

and promised to reward him with the territories which he

coveted. The advantages which Protestantism eventually derived

from Maurice's success has blinded some historians to the

infamy of the conduct by which he achieved it. ... The Elector

[John Frederick] was his [second] cousin; the Landgrave of

Hesse was his father-in-law. Pleading an unwillingness while

so young (he was barely 21) to engage in the war, he

volunteered to undertake the protection of his cousin's

dominions during his absence in the field. His offer was

thankfully accepted; but he was no sooner installed in his

charge than he began to negotiate with the enemy to invade the

territories which he had bound himself to protect. And on

receiving from Charles a copy of a decree, called the Ban of

the Empire, which had just been issued against both the

Elector and the Landgrave, he at once raised a force of his

own, with which he overran one portion of [the Elector's]

dominions, while a division of the Imperial army attacked the

rest; and he would probably have succeeded at once in subduing

the whole Electorate, had the main body of the Protestants

been able to maintain the war on the Danube." But Charles's

successes there brought about a suspension ol hostilities

which enabled the Elector to return and "chastise Maurice for

his treachery; to drive him not only from the towns and

districts which he had seized, but to strip him also of the

greater part of the territory which belonged to him by

inheritance." Charles was unable, at first, to give any

assistance to his ally. The Elector, however, who was the

worst of generals, so scattered his forces that when, "on the

23d of April [1547], Charles reached the Elbe and prepared to

attack him, he had no advantage over his assailant but that of

position. That indeed was very strong. He lay at Muhlberg, on

the right bank of the river, which at that point is 300 yards

wide and more than four feet deep, with a stream so rapid as

to render the passage, even for horsemen, a task of great

difficulty and danger." Against the remonstrances of his

ablest general, the Duke of Alva, Charles, favored by a heavy

fog, led his army across the river and boldly attacked. The

Ejector attempted to retreat, but his retreat became a rout.

Many fell, but many more were taken prisoners, including the

Elector and the Landgrave of Hesse. The victory was decisive

for the time, and Charles used it without moderation or

generosity. He declared a forfeiture of the whole Electorate

of Saxony by John Frederick, and conferred it upon the

treacherous Maurice; and, "though Maurice was son-in-law of

the Landgrave of Hesse, he stripped that prince of his

territories, and, by a device scarcely removed from the tricks

of a kidnapper, threw him also into prison." Charles seemed

now to be completely master of the situation in Germany, and

there was little opposition to his will in a diet which he

convened at Augsburg.

C. D. Yonge,

Three Centuries of Modern History,

chapter 4.

"He opened the Diet of Augsburg (September 1, 1547), in the

hope of finally bringing about the union so long desired and

so frequently attempted, but which he despaired of effecting

through a council which the Protestants had rejected in

advance. ... By the famous 'Interim' of Augsburg--the joint

production of Julius von Pflug, Bishop of Naumberg; Michael

Helding, coadjutor of Mentz; and the wily and subtle John

Agricola, preacher to the Elector of Brandenburg--Protestants

were permitted to receive the Holy Eucharist under both kinds;

the Protestant clergy already married to retain their wives;

and a tacit approval given to the retention of property

already taken from the Church. This instrument was, from

beginning to end, a masterpiece of duplicity, and as such

satisfied no party. The Catholics of Germany, the Protestants,

and the Court of Rome, each took exception to it. ... Maurice,

the new Elector of Saxony, unwilling to give the Interim an

unconditional approval, consulted with a number of Protestant

theologians, headed by Melancthon, as to how far he might

accept its provisions with a safe conscience. In reply they

drew up what is known as the Leipsig Interim (1548), in which

they stated that questions of ritual and ceremony, and others

of minor importance, which they designated by the generic word

adiaphora, might be wholly overlooked; and even in points of a

strictly doctrinal character, they expressed themselves

favourable to concession and compromise. ... Such Lutheran

preachers as professed to be faithful followers of their

master, made a determined opposition to the 'Interim,' and

began a vigorous assault upon its adiaphoristic clauses. The

Anti-adiaphorists, as they were called, were headed by Flacius

Illyricus, who being an ardent disciple of Luther's, and

possessing somewhat of his courage and energy, repaired to

Magdeburg, whose bold citizens were as defiant of imperial

power as they were contemptuous of papal authority. But in

spite of this spirited opposition, the Interim was gradually

accepted by several Protestant countries and cities--a fact

which encouraged the emperor at the Diet of Augsburg, in 1550,

to make a final effort to have the Protestants attend the

sessions of the Council of Trent, again opened by Pope Julius

III. ... After a short delay, deputies from Brandenburg,

Würtemberg, and Saxony began to appear at Trent; and even the

Wittenberg theologians, headed by Melancthon, were already on

their way to the Council, when Maurice of Saxony, having

secured all the advantages he hoped to obtain by an alliance

with the Catholic party, and regardless of the obligations by

which he was bound, proceeded to betray both the emperor and

his country.

{1464}

Having received a commission to carry into effect the ban of

the empire passed upon Magdeburg, he was in a position to

assemble a large body of troops in Germany without exciting

suspicion, or revealing his ulterior purposes. Besides uniting

to himself, as confederates in his plot, John Albert, Duke of

Mecklenburg; Albert, Margrave of Brandenburg; and William,

Landgrave of Hesse, eldest son of Philip of Hesse, he entered

into a secret treaty (Oct. 5, 1551) with Henry II., King of

France, who, as was pretended, coming into Germany as the

saviour of the country, seized the cities of Metz, Toul, and

Verdun. Maurice also held out to Henry the prospect of

securing the imperial crown. Everything being in readiness for

action, Maurice advancing through Thuringia, seized the city

of Augsburg, and suddenly made his appearance before

Innspruck, whence the emperor, who lay sick of a severe attack

of the gout, was hastily conveyed on a litter, through the

passes of the mountains, to Villach, in Carinthia. While

Maurice was thus making himself master of Innspruck, the King

of the French was carrying out his part of the programme by

actively prosecuting the war in Lorraine. Charles V., now

destitute of the material resources necessary to carry on a

successful campaign against the combined armies of the French

king and the German princes, and despairing of putting an end

to the obstinate conflict by his personal endeavours, resolved

to re-establish, if possible, his waning power by peaceful

negotiations. To this end, he commissioned his brother

Ferdinand to conclude the Treaty of Passau (July 30, 1552),

which provided that Philip of Hesse should be set at liberty,

and gave pledges for the speedy settlement of all religious

and political differences by a Diet, to be summoned at an

early day. It further provided that neither the emperor nor

the Protestant princes should put any restraint upon freedom

of conscience, and that all questions arising in the interval

between the two parties should be referred for settlement to

an Imperial Commission, composed of an equal number of

Catholics and Protestants. In consequence of the war then

being carried on by the empire against France for the recovery

of the three bishoprics of Lorraine of which the French had

taken possession, the Diet did not convene until February 5,

1555."

J. Alzog,

Manual of Universal Church History,

volume 3, pages 276-279.

ALSO IN:

W. Robertson,

History of the Reign of Charles V.,

books 8-10 (volume 2-3).

L. von Ranke,

Civil Wars and Monarchy in France,

chapter 6.

E. E. Crowe,

Cardinal Granvelle and Maurice of Saxony

(Eminent Foreign Statesmen, volume 1).

L. Häusser,

The Period of the Reformation,

chapters 15-17.

G. P. Fisher,

History of the Reformation,

chapter 5.

F. Kohlrausch,

History of Germany,

chapter 20.

GERMANY: A. D. 1547.

Pragmatic Sanction of Charles V., changing the relations of

the Netherland provinces to the Empire.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1547.

GERMANY: A. D. 1552-1561.

Battle of Sievershausen and death of Maurice.

The Religious Peace of Augsburg.

Abdication of Charles V.

Succession of Ferdinand I.

The halting of the Reformation and the rally of Catholic

resistance.

By the treaty of Passau, Maurice of Saxony bound himself to

defend the empire against the French and the Turks. "He

accordingly took the field against the latter, but with little

success, the imperial commander, Castaldo, contravening all

his efforts by plundering Hungary and drawing upon himself the

hatred of the people. Charles, meanwhile, marched against the

French, and, without hesitation, again deposed the corporative

governments reinstated by Maurice, on his way through

Augsburg, Ulm, Esslingen, etc. Metz, valiantly defended by the

Duke de Guise, was vainly besieged for some months, and the

Emperor was at length forced to retreat. The French were,

nevertheless, driven out of Italy. The aged emperor now sighed

for peace. Ferdinand, averse to open warfare, placed his hopes

on the imperceptible effect of a consistently pursued system

of suppression and Jesuitical obscurantism. Maurice was

answerable for the continuance of the peace, the terms of

which he had prescribed. ... Albert the Wild [of Brandenburg]

was the only one among the princes who was still desirous of

war. Indifferent to aught else, he marched at the head of some

thousand followers through central Germany, murdering and

plundering as he passed along, with the intent of once more

laying the Franconian and Saxon bishoprics waste in the name

of the gospel. The princes at length formed the Heidelberg

confederacy against this monster and the emperor put him under

the bann of the empire, which Maurice undertook to execute,

although he had been his old friend and companion in arms.

Albert was engaged in plundering the archbishopric of

Magdeburg, when Maurice came up with him at Sievershausen. A

murderous engagement took place (A. D. 1553). Three of the

princes of Brunswick were slain. Albert was severely wounded,

and Maurice fell at the moment when victory declared in his

favour, in the 33d year of his age, in the midst of his

promising career. ... Every obstacle was now removed, and a

peace, known as the religious peace of Augsburg, was concluded

by the diet held in that city, A. D. 1555. This peace was

naturally a mere political agreement provisionally entered

into by the princes for the benefit, not of religion, but of

themselves. Popular opinion was dumb, knights, burgesses, and

peasants bending in lowly submission to the mandate of their

sovereigns. By this treaty, branded in history as the most

lawless ever concerted in Germany, the principle 'cujus regio,

ejus religio,' the faith of the prince must be that of the

people, was laid down, By it not only all the Reformed

subjects of a Catholic prince were exposed to the utmost

cruelty and tyranny, but the religion of each separate country

was rendered dependent on the caprice of the reigning prince;

of this the Pfalz offered a sad example, the religion of the

people being thus four times arbitrarily changed. ... Freedom

of belief, confined to the immediate subjects of the empire,

for instance, to the reigning princes, the free nobility, and

the city councillors, was monopolized by at most 20,000

privileged persons. ... The false peace concluded at Augsburg

was immediately followed by Charles V. 's abdication of his

numerous crowns [see NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1555]. He would

willingly have resigned that of the empire to his son Philip,

had not the Spanish education of that prince, his gloomy and

bigoted character, inspired the Germans with an aversion as

unconquerable as that with which he beheld them.

{1465}

Ferdinand had, moreover, gained the favour of the German

princes. Charles, nevertheless, influenced by affection

towards his son, bestowed upon him one of the finest of the

German provinces, the Netherlands, besides Spain, Milan,

Naples, and the West Indies (America). Ferdinand received the

rest of the German hereditary possessions of his house,

besides Bohemia and Hungary. ... Ferdinand I., opposed in his

hereditary provinces by a predominating Protestant party,

which he was compelled to tolerate, was politically

overbalanced by his nephew, Philip II., in Spain and Italy,

where Catholicism flourished. The preponderance of the Spanish

over the Austrian branch of the house of Habsburg exercised

the most pernicious influence on the whole of Germany, by

securing to the Catholics a support which rendered

reconciliation impossible. ... The religious disputes and

petty egotism of the several estates of the empire had utterly

stifled every sentiment of patriotism, and not a dissentient

voice was raised against the will of Charles V., which

bestowed the whole of the Netherlands, one of the finest of

the provinces of Germany, upon Spain, the division and

consequent weakening of the powerful house of Habsburg being

regarded by the princes with delight. At the same time that

the power of the Protestant party was shaken by the peace of

Augsburg, Cardinal Caraffa mounted the pontifical throne as

Paul IV., the first pope who, following the plan of the

Jesuits, abandoned the system of defence for that of attack.

The Reformation no sooner ceased to progress, than a

preventive movement began [see PAPACY: A. D. 1537-1563]. ...

Ferdinand I. was in a difficult position. Paul IV. refused to

acknowledge him on account of the peace concluded between him

and the Protestants, whom he was unable to oppose, and whose

tenets he refused to embrace, notwithstanding the expressed

wish of the majority of his subjects. Like his brother, he

intrigued and diplomatized until his Jesuitical confessor,

Bobadilla, and the new pope, Pius IV., again placed him on

good terms with Rome, A. D. 1559. ... Augustus, elector of

Saxony, the brother of Maurice, alarmed at the fresh alliance

between the emperor and pope, convoked a meeting of the

Protestant leaders at Naumberg. His fears were, however,

allayed by the peaceful proposals of the emperor (A. D. 1561).

... A last attempt to save the unity of the German church, in

the event of its separation from that of Rome, was made by

Ferdinand, who convoked the spiritual electoral princes, the

archbishops and bishops, for that purpose to Vienna, but the

consideration with which he was compelled to treat the pope

rendered his efforts weak and ineffectual. ... The

Protestants, blind to the unity and strength resulting from

the policy of the Catholics, weakened themselves more and more

by division."

W. Menzel,

History of Germany,

sections 197-198 (volume 2).

GERMANY: A. D. 1556-1558.

Abdication of the emperor, Charles V., and election of his

brother, Ferdinand.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1555.

GERMANY: A. D. 1556-1609.

The degeneracy of the Reformation.

Internal hostilities of Protestantism.

Tolerant reigns of Ferdinand I. and Maximilian II.

Renewed persecution under Rudolf II.

The risings against him.

His cessions and abdications.

"Germany was externally at peace. When the peace was broken in

Protestant states, the Protestants themselves, that is, a part

of their divines, were the cause of' the disturbance. These

were 'frantic' Lutherans. The theologian Flacius, at Jena,

openly attacked Melancthon as a 'traitor to the church,' on

account of his strivings for peace. The religious

controversies in the bosom of the adherents of the Augsburg

Confession had been since Luther's death inflamed to madness

by a strict Lutheran party, by slaves of the letter, who raged

not only against the Zwinglian and Calvinistic reformations,

but against Melancthon and those who sympathized with him. The

theological pugilists disgraced Protestantism, and aroused such

a spirit of persecution that Melancthon died on the 19th of

April, 1560, 'weary and full of anxiety of soul about the

future of the Reformation and the German nation.' His

followers, 'Lutheran' preachers and professors, were

persecuted, banished, imprisoned, on account of suspicion of

being inclined to the 'Reformed' [Calvinistic] as

distinguished from 'Evangelical' views; prayers for the

'extirpation of heresy' were offered in the churches of

Saxony, and a medal struck 'to commemorate the victory of

Christ over the Devil and Reason,' that is, over Melancthon

and his moderate party. ... Each parson and professor held

himself to be a divinely inspired watchman of Zion, who had to

watch over purity of doctrine. ... The universal prevalence of

'trials for witchcraft' in Protestant districts, with their

chambers of torture and burnings at the stake, marked the new

priestcraft of Lutheran Protestantism in its debasement into a

dogmatizing church. This quickly degenerating Protestant Church

comprised a mass of separate churches, because the vanity and

selfishness of the court clergy at every court, and the

professors of every university, would have a church of their

own. ... Every misfortune to the 'Reformed' churches caused a

malevolent joy in the Lutheran camp, and every common measure

against the common enemy was rejected by the Lutheran clergy

from hatred to the 'Reformed.' ... The emperor Ferdinand I.

had long been convinced that some change was required in the

Church of Rome. As he wrote to his ambassador in Trent, 'If a

reform of the Church did not proceed from the Church herself,

he would undertake the charge of it in Germany.' He never

ceased to offer his mediation between the two religious

parties. He thought, and thought justly, that a compromise was

possible in Germany. ... The change which gradually took place

in the head and heart of Ferdinand had not extended to those

who sat in St. Peter's chair. Ferdinand I., to improve the

moral state of the old Church, insisted most strongly on the

abolition of the celibacy of the clergy; this the Pope

declared the most indispensable prop of the Papacy. As thus

his proposals came to naught, he attempted to introduce the

proposed reformation into his hereditary domains; but just as

he was beginning to be the Reformer of these provinces, death

removed him from the world, on the 25th of July, 1564. ... His

oldest son and successor, Maximilian II., ... was out and out

German. Growing up in the great movement of the time, the

Emperor Maximilian II. was warmly devoted to the new ideas. He

hated the Jesuits and the Papacy. ...

{1466}

He remained in the middle between Protestants and Catholics,'

but really above both. ... He favored the Reformation in his

Austrian dominions; at the very time when Philip II. of Spain,

the son of Charles V., had commenced the bloodiest persecution

against the Reformed Church in the Netherlands ... ; at the

very time when the French court, ruled and led by Jesuits, put

into execution the long-prepared conspiracy of St.

Bartholomew. ... He never ceased to call the kings of France

and Spain to gentleness and toleration. ... 'I have no power,'

said the emperor, 'over consciences, and may constrain no

man's faith.' The princes unanimously elected the son of

Maximilian as King of the Romans, and Max received another

gratification: he was elected king by the gallant nation of

the Poles. Thus the house of Austria was again powerfully

strengthened. Hungary, Poland, Bohemia, and Germany, united

under one ruler, formed a power which could meet Turkey and

Russia. The Turks and the Russians were pressing forward. The

Turkish wars, more than anything else, prevented Max from

carrying out his long-cherished plan and giving a constitution

to the empire and church of the Germans. He who towered high

above the Papal party and the miserable controversies of

Protestant divines, and whose clear mind saw what the times

required, would have had every qualification for such a task.

But in the midst of his great projects, Maximilian II. died,

in his 49th year, on the 12th of October, 1576; as emperor,

honest, mild and wise, and elevated above all religious

controversies to a degree that no prince has ever reached. He

had always been a rock of offence to the Catholic party. ...

But Rudolf [son of Maximilian II.], when he became emperor

[1576], surrounded by secret Jesuits who had been his teachers

and advisers, became the humblest slave of the order and let

it do what it would. Rudolf had been sent by his father for

the interests of his own house to the Spanish court; a

terrible punishment now followed this self-seeking. Rudolf

confirmed liberty of conscience only to the nobles, not to the

citizens or peasants. He forbade the two latter classes to

visit the Evangelical churches, he closed their schools,

ordered them to frequent Catholic churches, threatened

disobedience with banishment, and even in the case of nobles

he dismissed from his court charges all who were not strict

papists. The people of Vienna and Austria hated him for these

orders. ... Without any judicial investigation he threatened

free cities with 'execution.' Aix la Chapelle expelled his

troops. Gebhard, the elector of Cologne, married a Countess

von Mansfeld and went over to Protestantism. ... The

Protestants supported him badly; Lutherans and Calvinists were

at bitter feud with each other, and weakened themselves in the

struggle. ... It was a croaking of ravens, and a great field

of the dead was not far off. ... The Emperor Rudolf, ... on a

return journey from Rome, vowed to Our Lady of Loretto, 'his

Generalissima,' to extirpate heretics at the risk of his life.

In his hereditary estates he ordered all who were not papists

to leave the territory. Soon afterwards he pulled down the

Evangelical churches, and dispersed the citizens by arms. He

intended soon to begin the same proceedings in Hungary and

Bohemia; but in Hungary the nation rose in defence of its

liberty and faith. The receipt of the intelligence that the

Hungarian malcontents were progressing victoriously

produced--what there had been symptoms of before--insanity.

The members of the house of Austria assembled, and declared

'The Emperor Rudolf can be no longer head of the house,

because unfortunately it is too plain that his Roman Imperial

Majesty ... was not competent or fit to govern the kingdoms.'

The Archduke Matthias [eldest brother of Rudolf] was elected

head of the Austrian house [1606]. He collected an army of

20,000 men, and made known that he would depose the emperor

from the government of his hereditary domains. Rudolf's

Jesuitical flatterers had named him the 'Bohemian Solomon.' He

now, in terror, without drawing sword, ceded Hungary and Austria

to Matthias, and gave him also the government of Moravia.

Matthias guaranteed religious liberty to the Austrians. Rudolf

did the same to the Bohemians and Silesians by the 'Letters of

Majesty.' Rudolf, to escape deposition by Matthias, abdicated

the throne of Bohemia."

W. Zimmerman,

Popular History of Germany,

book 5, chapter 2 (volume 4).

ALSO IN:

F. Kohlrausch,

History of Germany,

chapter 21.

GERMANY: A. D. 1608-1618.

The Evangelical Union and the Catholic League.

The Jülich-Cleve contest.

Troubles in Bohemia.

The beginning of the Thirty Years War.

"Many Protestants were alarmed by the attempts Rudolf had made

to put them down, and especially by his allowing the Duke of

Bavaria to seize the free city of Donauwörth, formerly a

Bavarian town, and make it Catholic. In 1608 a number of

Protestants joined together and formed, for ten years, a

league called The Union. Its formation was due chiefly to the

exertions of Prince Christian of Anhalt, who had busily

intrigued with Henry IV. of France; but its head was the

Elector Palatine. As the latter belonged to the Reformed

Church, the Lutherans for the most part treated the Union

coldly; and the Elector of Saxony would have nothing to do

with it. It soon had an opportunity of acting. Duke William of

Jülich, who held Jülich, Cleve, and other lands, died in 1609.

John Sigmund, Elector of Brandenburg, and the Palsgrave of

Neuberg, both members of the Union, claimed to be his heirs,

and took possession of his lands. The Emperor Rudolf sent his

brother, the Archduke Leopold, Bishop of Passau, to drive out

these princes. The Union thereupon formed an alliance with

Henry IV. of France [see FRANCE: A. D. 1599-1610], and, coming

to the aid of its members, scattered the forces of the

Archduke in 1610. The Catholics now took fright, and hastened

to form a League which should hold the Union in check. It was

formed for nine years, and the supreme command was given to

Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria. The death of Henry IV. took away

from the Union its chief source of strength, so that it shrank

from a general war. The two princes, however, who had given

rise to the quarrel, kept for a time the Jülich-Cleve

territory. In 1611 [1618] the power of the Elector of

Brandenburg was further increased by his succeeding to the

Duchy of Prussia. From this time East Prussia was always

joined to the Mark or Electorate of Brandenburg. It was now,

therefore, that the house of Brandenburg laid the foundations

of its future greatness. Matthias, in order to pacify the

Austrian States, granted them full religious liberty.

{1467}

In 1609 the Bohemian States also obtained from Rudolf a Royal

Charter, called 'The Letter of Majesty,' conceding to

nobility, knights and towns perfect freedom in religious

matters, and the right to build Protestant churches and

schools on their own and on the royal lands. Bohemia showed no

gratitude for this favour. Suspecting his designs, the

Bohemians even shut Rudolf up in his castle at Prague in 1611,

and asked Matthias to come to their aid. He did so, and seized

the supreme power. Next year Rudolf died. Matthias was crowned

at Frankfurt with great pomp, but he was no better fitted for

the throne than his brother. He was compelled to yield much to

the Protestants, yet favoured the Jesuits in their continued

efforts to convert Germany. His government was so feeble that

his brothers at length made him accept Ferdinand, Duke of

Styria, as his coadjutor. In 1617 Ferdinand was elected as

Rudolf's successor to the crowns of Bohemia and Hungary, and

from this time all real power in the Habsburg possessions was

wielded by him. Ferdinand was a young man, but had already

given proof of great energy of character. ... The Protestants

looked forward with dread to his reign if he should receive

the Imperial crown. Styria had become almost wholly Lutheran.

When Ferdinand succeeded his father, he had driven out the

Protestant families, and made the land altogether Catholic. No

Catholic prince had ever shown himself more reckless as to the

means by which he served his church. The Protestants,

therefore, had good reason to fear that if he became Emperor

he would renew the policy of Charles V., and try to bring back

the old state of things, in which there was but one Church as

there was but one Empire. Events proved that these fears were

well founded. The last days of Matthias were very troubled.

Two Protestant churches were built in Bohemia, one in the

territory of the Archbishop of Prague, the other in that of

the Abbot of Braunau. These princes, with permission of the

Emperor, pulled down one of the churches and shut up the

other. The Protestants complained; but their appeal was met by

the reply that the Letter of Majesty did not permit them to

build churches on the lands of ecclesiastics. This answer

excited great indignation in Bohemia; and a rumour was got up

that it had not come from the Emperor, but had been written in

Prague. On May 23, 1618, a number of Protestants, headed by Count

Thurn, marched to the Council Hall of the Royal Castle, and

demanded to be told the real facts. When the councillors

hesitated, two of them, with the private secretary, were

seized and thrown out of the window.

See BOHEMIA: A. D. 1611-1618.

The Protestants then took possession of the Royal Castle,

drove the Jesuits out of Bohemia, and appointed a council of

thirty nobles to carry on the government." These events formed

the beginning of the "Thirty Years War."

J. Sime,

History of Germany,

chapter 14.

"The Thirty Years' War was the last struggle which marked the

progress of the Reformation. This war, whose direction and

object were equally undetermined, may be divided into four

distinct portions, in which the Elector Palatine, Denmark,

Sweden, and France played in succession the principal part. It

became more and more complicated, until it spread over the

whole of Europe. It was prolonged indefinitely by various

causes.

I. The intimate union between the two branches of the house of

Austria and of the Catholic party--their opponents, on the

other hand, were not homogeneous.

II. The inaction of England, the tardy intervention of France,

the poverty of Denmark and Sweden, &c. The armies which took

part in the Thirty Years' War were no longer feudal militias,

they were permanent armies, although their sovereigns were

incapable of supporting them. They lived at the expense of the

countries which they laid waste. The ruined peasant turned

soldier and sold himself to the first comer."

J. Michelet,

Summary of Modern History,

chapter 12.

ALSO IN:

A. Gindely,

History of the Thirty Years' War,

chapters 1-3 (volume 1).

T. Carlyle,

History of Frederick the Great,

book 3, chapter 14 (volume 1).

GERMANY: A. D. 1612.

Election of the Emperor Matthias.

GERMANY: A. D. 1618-1620.

The Thirty Years War: Hostilities in Bohemia precipitated by

Ferdinand.

His election to the imperial throne and his deposition in

Bohemia.

Acceptance of the Bohemian crown by Frederick, the Palatine

Elector.

His unsupported situation.

The Treaty of Ulm.

"The emperor was not a little disconcerted when he received

the news of what was passing [in Bohemia]. For whence could he

receive the aid necessary to put down these revolutionary acts

and restore order in Bohemia? Discontent, indeed, was scarcely

less formidably expressed even in his Austrian territories,

whilst in Hungary its demonstration was equally as serious.

Conciliation appeared to be the only means of preserving to

the house of Austria that important country, and even the

confessor and usual counsellor of the emperor, Cardinal

Klesel, the most zealous opponent of the Protestants, advised

that course. But such considerations were most strenuously

opposed by young Ferdinand. ... At his instigation, and that

of the other archdukes, backed by the pope, the pacific

Cardinal Klesel was unexpectedly arrested, and charged with a

variety of crimes. The intention was to remove him from the

presence of the old and weak emperor, who was now without

support, and obliged to resign all to the archdukes. From this

moment the impotency of the emperor was complete, and all

hopes of an amicable pacification of Bohemia lost. The

Bohemians, likewise, took to arms, and possessed themselves of

every city in their country as far as Budweis and Pilsen,

which were still occupied by the imperial troops. They

obtained assistance, quite unlooked for, in the person of one

who may be regarded as one of the most remarkable heroes of

that day. ... Count Ernest of Mansfield, a warrior from his

youth, was of a bold and enterprising spirit; he had already

encountered many dangers, and had just been raising some

troops for the Duke of Savoy against the Spaniards. The duke,

who now no longer required them, gave him permission to serve

in the cause of the Evangelical Union in Germany; and by that

body he was despatched with 3,000 men to Bohemia, as having

apparently received his appointment from that country. He

appeared there quite unexpectedly, and immediately took from

the imperial army the important city of Pilsen [November 21,

1618]. ... The Emperor Matthias died on the 10th of March,

1619 ... and the Bohemians, who acknowledged his sovereignty

while living, now resolved to renounce his successor

Ferdinand, whose hostile intentions were already too clearly

expressed. Ferdinand attained the throne under circumstances

the most perplexing.

{1468}

Bohemia in arms, and threatening Vienna itself with invasion;

Silesia and Moravia in alliance with them; Austria much

disposed to unite with them; Hungary by no means firmly

attached, and externally menaced by the Turks; besides which,

encountering in every direction the hatred of the Protestants,

against whom his zeal was undisguised. ... Count Thurn

advanced upon Vienna with a Bohemian army. ... He came before

Vienna, and his men fired, even upon the imperial castle

itself, where Ferdinand, surrounded by open and secret foes,

had taken up his quarters. He dared not leave his capital, for

by so doing Austria, and with it the preservation of the

empire itself, must have been sacrificed. But his enemies

looked upon him as lost; and they already spoke of confining

him in a convent, and educating his children in the Protestant

faith. ... Count Thurn was obliged soon to return to Bohemia,

as Prague was menaced by the armies of Austria, and Ferdinand

availed himself of this moment in order to undertake another

hazardous and daring project. ... He ... resolved to proceed

to Frankfort to attend the election of emperor. The spiritual

electors had been gained over; Saxony also adhered closely to

the house of Austria; Brandenburg was not unfriendly; hence

the opposition of the palatinate alone against him could

accomplish nothing; accordingly Ferdinand was unanimously

chosen emperor on the 28th of August, 1619." Just two days

previously, on the 26th of August, the Bohemians, at a general

assembly of the states, had formally deposed Ferdinand from

the kingship of their nation, and proceeded to elect another

king in his place. "The Catholics proposed the Duke of Savoy

and Maximilian of Bavaria, whilst, in the Protestant interest,

the Elector John George of Saxony, and Frederick V., of the

palatinate, were put forward. The latter obtained the

election, being a son-in-law of King James I. of England, from

whom they expected assistance, and who personally was regarded

as resolute, magnanimous, and generous. The incorporated

provinces of Moravia, Silesia and Lusatia supported the

election, and even the Catholic states of Bohemia pledged

their fidelity and obedience. Frederick was warned against

accepting so dangerous a crown by Saxony, Bavaria, and even by

his father-in-law; but his chaplain, Scultetus, and his own

consort, Elizabeth, who as the daughter of a king aspired to a

royal crown, persuaded him with all their influence to accept

it. Frederick was accordingly ruled by them, received the

regal dignity in Bohemia, and was crowned at Prague with great

pomp on the 25th of October, 1619. ... Ferdinand in returning

from Frankfort passed on to Munich, and there concluded with

the Duke of Bavaria that important treaty which secured to him

the possession of Bohemia. These two princes had been

companions in youth, and the Evangelical Union had by several

incautious proceedings irritated the duke. Maximilian

undertook the chief command in the cause of the Catholic

party, and stipulated with the house of Austria that he should

be indemnified for every outlay and loss incurred, to the

extent even, if necessary, of the surrender of the territories

of Austria itself into his hands. With Spain, also, the

emperor succeeded in forming an alliance, and the Spanish

general, Spinola, received orders to invade the countries of

the palatinate from the Netherlands. Subsequently the Elector

of Mentz arranged a convention at Mülhausen with the Elector

John George of Saxony, the Elector of Cologne, and the

Landgrave Lewis of Darmstadt, wherein it was determined to

render all possible assistance to the emperor for the

maintenance of his kingdom and the imperial dignity.

Frederick, the new Bohemian king, was now left with no other

auxiliary but the Evangelical Union; for the Transylvanian

prince, Bethlen Gabor, was, notwithstanding all his promises,

a very dubious and uncertain ally, whilst the troops he sent

into Moravia and Bohemia were not unlike a horde of savage

banditti. Meanwhile the union commenced its preparations for

war, as well as the league. The whole of Germany resembled a

grand depot for recruiting. Every eye was directed to the

Swabian district, where the two armies were to meet; there,

however, at Ulm, on the 3rd of July, 1620, they unexpectedly

entered into a compact, in which the forces of the union

engaged to lay down their arms, and both parties pledged each

other to preserve peace and tranquillity. The unionists felt

themselves too weak to maintain the contest, since Saxony was

now likewise against them, and Spinola threatened them from

the Netherlands. It was, however, a great advantage for the

emperor, that Bohemia was excluded from this treaty, for, now

the forces of the league were at liberty to aid him in

subjugating his royal adversary. Maximilian of Bavaria,

therefore, immediately took his departure, and on his war

reduced the states of Upper Austria to the obedience due to

Ferdinand, joined the imperial army, and made a spirited

attack upon Bohemia. On the other side, the Elector of Saxony

took possession of Lusatia in the name of the emperor."

F. Kohlrausch,

History of Germany,

chapter 22.

ALSO IN:

S. R. Gardiner,

History of England, 1603-1642,

chapters 29-32 (volume 3).

W. Coxe,

History of the House of Austria,

chapters 46-48 (volume 2).

Miss Benger,

Memoirs of Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia,

chapters 6-9 (volumes 1-2).

GERMANY: A. D. 1620.

The Thirty Years War: Disappointment of the Bohemians in

their elected king.

Frederick's offensive Calvinism.

Defeat of his army before Prague.

Loss of Bohemian liberties.

Prostration of Protestantism.

"The defection of the Union accelerated the downfall of

Frederick; but its cordial support could scarcely have

hindered it. For the Bohemians had been disappointed in their

king, disappointed in the strength they had expected from him

through his connexions, equally disappointed in the man, and

in the hopes of protection and sympathy which they had

expected from him in the exercise of their religion. Within a

month of his coronation the metropolitan church was spoiled of

its images, the crucifix cut in pieces, the statues of the

saints cast out, broken, and burnt, the ornaments used in

divine service, and venerable in the eyes of Catholics and

Lutherans alike, scattered here and there, and turned upside

down with contempt and execration. These proceedings, which

were presumed, not without reason, to have the king's

authority--for during their enactment the court chaplain

addressed the people in praise of this purgation of the

temple--called forth loud complaints and increased the

disaffection which, more than any external force brought

against Frederick, produced his ruin.

{1469}

Early in November Maximilian appeared before Prague, and found

the Bohemians, under Christian van Anhalt, skilfully and

strongly posted on the Weissenberg [White Mountain] to offer

battle. The cautious Bucquoi would have declined the offer,

and attacked the city from another point; but an enthusiastic

friar who broke in upon the conference of the leaders, and,

exhibiting a mutilated image of the Virgin, reproached them

with their hesitation, put to flight all timid counsels. The

battle began at twelve o'clock. It was a Sunday, the octave of

the festival of All Saints [November 8, 1620]. ... In the

Catholic army Bucquoi was at the head of the Imperial

division. Tilly commanded in chief, and led the front to the

battle. He was received with a heavy fire; and for half an

hour the victory trembled in the balance: then the Hungarians,

who had been defeated by the Croats the day before, fled, and

all the efforts of the Duke of Saxe Weimar to rally them

proved fruitless. Soon the whole Bohemian army, Germans,

English, horse and foot, fled in disorder. One gallant little

band of Moravians only, under the Count of Thurn and the young

Count of Sehlick, maintained their position, and, with the

exception of their leaders, fell almost to a man. The battle

lasted only an hour; but the victory was not the less

complete. A hundred banners, ten guns, and a rich spoil fell

into the hands of the victors. Four thousand of the Bohemian

army, but scarcely as many hundreds of their opponents (if we

may believe their account), lay dead upon the field. ...

Frederick had returned from the army the day before, with the

intelligence that the Bavarians were only eight (English)

miles distant; but relying on the 28,000 men which he had to

cover his capital, he felt that night no uneasiness. ... He

had invited the English ambassadors to dine; and he remained

to entertain them. After dinner he mounted his horse to ride

to the Star Park; but before he could get out of the city

gate, he was met with the news of the total overthrow of his

army. His negotiations with Maximilian failing, or receiving

no answer, the next morning he prepared for flight. ...

Accompanied by his queen, Van Anhalt, the Prince of Hohenlohe,

and the Count of Thurn, he made a precipitate retreat from

Prague, leaving behind him the insignia of that monarchy which

he had not the wisdom to firmly establish, nor resolution to

defend to the last. It must be confessed, however, that his

position, after the defeat at Prague, was not altogether so

promising, and consequently his abandonment of his capital not

altogether so pusillanimous, as some have represented."

B. Chapman,

History of Gustavus Adolphus,

chapter 5.

"Frederick fled for his life through North Germany, till he

found a refuge at the Hague. The reign of the Bohemian

aristocracy was at an end. ... The chiefs perished on the

scaffold. Their lands were confiscated, and a new German and

Catholic nobility arose. ... The Royal Charter was declared to

have been forfeited by rebellion, and the Protestant churches

in the towns and on the royal estates had nothing to depend on

but the will of the conqueror. The ministers of one great body

--the Bohemian Brethren--were expelled at once. The Lutherans

were spared for a time."

S. R. Gardiner,

The Thirty Years' War,

chapter 3, section 1.

ALSO IN:

C. A. Peschek,

Reformation and Anti-Reformation in Bohemia,

volume 1, chapter 9.

See, also, BOHEMIA: A. D. 1621-1648;

and HUNGARY: A. D. 1606-1660.

GERMANY: A. D. 1621-1623.

The Thirty Years War:

The Elector Palatine placed under the ban.

Dissolution of the Evangelical Union.

Invasion and conquest of the Palatinate.

Transfer of the electoral dignity to the Duke of Bavaria.

"Ferdinand, though firm, patient, and resigned in adversity,

was stern, vengeful, and overbearing in prosperity. He was

urged by many motives of resentment, policy, and zeal to

complete the ruin of the elector Palatine, and he did not

possess sufficient magnanimity to resist the temptation.

Having squandered away the confiscated property among his

Jesuits and favourites, he had still many allies and adherents

whose fidelity he was desirous to reward; he was anxious to

recover Upper Austria, which he had mortgaged to the duke of

Bavaria, as a pledge for the expenses of the war; he wished to

regain possession of Lusatia; and he was bound in honour to

satisfy the elector of Saxony for his opportune assistance.

... These motives overbearing an considerations of justice and

prudence, Ferdinand published the ban of the empire [January

22, 1621], of his own authority, against the elector Palatine

and his adherents the prince of Anhalt, the count of

Hohenlohe, and the duke of Jaegendorf. The execution of this

informal sentence he intrusted to the archduke Albert, as

possessor of the circle of Burgundy, and to the duke of

Bavaria, commanding the former to occupy the Lower, and the

latter the Upper Palatinate. This vigorous act was instantly

followed by the most decisive effects; for the Protestants

were terrified by the prospect of sharing the fate of the

unfortunate elector. The members of the union now felt the

fatal consequences of their own indecision and want of

foresight. ... Threatened at once by Spinola [commanding the

Spanish auxiliaries from the Netherlands] and the duke of

Bavaria, and confounded by the growing power of the emperor,

they vied in abandoning a confederacy which exposed them to

his vengeance. On the 12th of April, 1621, they concluded at

Mentz a treaty of neutrality, by which they promised not to

interfere in the affairs of the Palatinate, agreed to disband

their troops within a month, and to enter into no new

confederacy to the disadvantage of the emperor. This

dishonourable treaty was followed by the dissolution of the

union, which, on its expiration, was not renewed. During these

events, Spinola, having completed the reduction of the Lower

Palatinate, was occupied in the siege of Frankendahl, which

was on the point of surrendering, and its capture must have

been followed by the submission of Heidelberg and Manheim. The

duke of Bavaria had been still more successful in the Upper

Palatinate, and had rapidly subjugated the whole province,

together with the district of Cham. The elector Palatine,

deserted by the Protestant union, and almost abandoned by his

relatives, the kings of England and Denmark, owed the first

revival of his hopes of restoration to Mansfeld, an

illegitimate adventurer, with no other resources than plunder

and devastation. Christian of Brunswick, administrator of

Halberstadt, distinguished indeed by illustrious birth, but

equally an adventurer, and equally destitute of territory or

resources, espoused his cause, as well from ties of affinity

[he was the cousin of Elizabeth, the electress Palatine, or

queen of Bohemia, as she preferred to be called] as from a

chivalrous attachment to his beautiful consort; and George

Frederic, margrave of Baden, even abdicated his dignity to

devote himself to his support."

{1470}

Mansfeld, who had held his ground in Bohemia for nearly a year

after the battle of the White Mountain, now became hard

pressed there by Tilly, and suddenly escaped by forced marches

(October, 1621,) into the Lower Palatinate. "Here he found a

more favourable field of action; for Spinola being recalled

with the greater part of the Spanish forces, had left the

remainder to Gonzales de Cordova, who, after reducing several

minor fortresses, was pressing the siege of Frankendahl. The

name of the brave adventurer drew to his standard multitudes

of the troops, who had been disbanded by the Protestant union,

and he was joined by a party of English, who had been sent for

the defence of the Palatinate. Finding himself at the head of

20,000 men, he cleared the country in his passage, relieved

Frankendahl, and provided for the safety of Heidelberg and

Manheim. Unable, however, to subsist in a district so recently

the seat of war, he turned into Alsace, where he increased his

forces; from thence he invaded the neighbouring bishoprics of

Spire and Strasburgh, levying heavy contributions, and giving

up the rich domains of those sees to the devastations of his

troops. Encouraged by this gleam of hope, the elector Palatine

quitted his asylum in Holland, passed in disguise through

Loraine and Alsace, joined Mansfeld, and gave his name and

countenance to this predatory army." Mansfeld, recrossing the

Rhine, effected a junction with the margrave of Baden; and

Christian of Brunswick, after pillaging the rich sees of Lower

Saxony, was on his way with a considerable force to unite with

both. "At the same time the duke of Wirtemberg, the landgrave

of Hesse, and other Protestant princes, began to arm, and

hopes were even entertained of the revival of the Protestant

union. Tilly, who had followed Mansfeld from Bohemia, had in

vain endeavoured to prevent his junction with the margrave of

Baden. Defeated at Mingelsheim by Mansfeld, on the 29th of

April, 1622, he had been reduced to the defensive, and in this

situation saw a powerful combination rising on every side

against the house of Austria. He waited therefore for an

opportunity of attacking those enemies singly, whom he could

not resist when united, and that opportunity was presented by

the separation of the margrave of Baden from Mansfeld, and his

attempt to penetrate into Bavaria. Tilly suddenly drew

together the Spanish troops, and with this accession of force

defeated, on the 6th of May, the margrave at Wimpfen, with the

loss of half his army, and took his whole train of artillery

and military chest. Leaving Mansfeld employed in the siege of

Ladenburgh, he next directed his attention to Christian of

Brunswick, routed him on the 20th of June, at Hoechst

[Höchst], as he was crossing the Main, pursued him till his

junction with Mansfeld, and drove their united forces beyond

the Rhine, again to seek a refuge and subsistence in Alsace.

These successes revived the cause of Ferdinand; the margrave

of Baden retired from the contest; the duke of Wirtemberg and

the other Protestant princes suspended their armaments; and

although Mansfeld and Christian of Brunswick laid siege to

Saverne, and evinced a resolution to maintain the contest to

the last extremity, yet the elector Palatine again gave way to

that weakness which had already lost him a crown." He was

persuaded by his witless father-in-law, James I. of England,

to trust his cause to negotiations in which the latter was

being duped by the emperor. He consented, accordingly, "to

disavow his intrepid defenders, to dismiss them from his

service, to retire again into Holland, and wait the mercy of

the emperor. By this disavowal, Mansfeld and Christian were

left without a name to countenance their operations; and after

various negotiations, feigned or real, for entering into the

service of the emperor, Spain, or France, they accepted the

overtures of the Prince of Orange and forced their way through

the Spanish army which attempted to oppose their passage, to

join at Breda the troops of the United Provinces. The places

in Alsace and the bishopric of Spire which had been occupied

by the enemy were recovered by the archduke Leopold; and

Tilly, having completed the conquest of the Palatinate by the

capture of Heidelberg and Manheim, directed his attacks

against the forces which Mansfeld and Christian of Brunswick

had again assembled. After a short continuance in Holland,

Mansfeld, in November, had led his predatory army into the

rich province of East Friesland, conquered the principal

fortresses, and extorted enormous contributions from the duke,

who was in alliance with Spain. On the other hand, Christian,

passing into Lower Saxony, persuaded the states of the circle

to collect an army of observation amounting to 12,000 men, and

intrust him with the command; and he soon increased this army

to almost double that number, by the usual incitements of

pillage and plunder. These levies attracting the attention of

the emperor, his threats, together with the advance of Tilly,

compelled the Saxon states to dismiss Christian and his army.

Thus left a second time without authority, he pushed towards

Westphalia, with the hope of joining Mansfeld and renewing

hostilities in the Palatinate; his design was however

anticipated by Tilly, who overtook him at Loen [or Stadtlohn],

in the district of Munster, and defeated him with the loss of

6,000 killed and 4,000 prisoners, in August, 1623. The

victorious general then turned towards East Friesland; but

Mansfeld, who had hitherto maintained himself in that country,

avoided an unequal contest by disbanding his troops, and

withdrawing into Holland, in January, 1624. ... Having

despoiled the elector Palatine of all his dominions, and

delivered himself from his enemies in Germany, Ferdinand had

proceeded to carry his plans into execution, by transferring

the electoral dignity to the duke of Bavaria, and dividing the

conquered territories among his adherents. ... He gained the

elector of Saxony, by promising him the revenues and perhaps

the cession of Lusatia; and the landgrave of Hesse Darmstadt,

by offering to favour his pretensions to the succession of

Marburgh, which he was contesting with the landgrave of Hesse

Cassel. ... Having thus gained those whose opposition was most

likely to frustrate his design, he paid little regard to the

feeble threats of James, and to the remonstrances of the king

of Denmark. ... He summoned, on the 25th of February, 1623, a

meeting of the electors and princes who were most devoted to

his cause at Ratisbon, and, in concurrence with the majority

of this irregular assembly, transferred the Palatine

electorate, with all its honours, privileges, and offices, to

Maximilian, duke of Bavaria.

{1471}

To keep up, however, the hopes of the elector Palatine and his

adherents, and not to drive his family and connections to

desperation, the whole extent of the plan was not developed;

the partition of his territories was deferred, the transfer of

the electorate was made only for the life of Maximilian, and

the rights of the sons and collateral heirs of the unfortunate

elector were expressly reserved."

W. Coxe,

History of the House of Austria,

chapter 49 (volume 2).

ALSO IN:

A. Gindely,

History of the Thirty Years' War,

volume 1, chapter 7.

F. Schiller,

History of the Thirty Years' War,

book 2.

C. R. Markham,

The Fighting Veres;

part 2, chapter 3.

GERMANY: A. D. 1624-1626.

The Thirty Years War:

Alliance of England, Holland, and Denmark to support the

Protestant cause.

Creation of the imperial army of Wallenstein, and its first

campaigns.

"Had the Emperor been as wise as he was resolute, it is

probable that, victorious in every direction, he might have

been able to conclude a permanent peace with the Protestant

Party. But the bigotry which was a very part of his nature was

spurred on by his easy triumphs to refuse to sheathe the sword

until heresy had been rooted out from the land. In vain did

the Protestant princes, who had maintained a selfish and

foolish neutrality, remonstrate against the continuance of

hostilities after the avowed object for which those

hostilities were undertaken had been gained. In the opinion of

Ferdinand II. the real object still remained to be

accomplished. Under these critical circumstances the

emigrants, now grown numerous [see BOHEMIA: A. D. 1621-1648],

and the awakened Protestant princes, earnestly besought the

aid of a foreign power. It was their representations which at

length induced three nations of the reformed faith--England,

Holland, and Denmark--to ally themselves to assist their

oppressed brethren.

See, also, FRANCE: A. D. 1624-1626.

England agreed to send subsidies, Holland to supply troops.

The command of the delivering army was confided to Christian

IV., King of Denmark (1625). He was to be supported in Germany

by the partisan Mansfeldt, by Prince Christian of Brunswick,

and by the Protestants of Lower Saxony, who had armed

themselves to resist the exactions of the Emperor. Ferdinand

II., after vainly endeavouring to ward off hostilities by

negotiations, despatched Tilly to the Weser to meet the enemy.

Tilly followed the course of that river as far as Minden,

causing to be occupied, as he marched, the places which

commanded its passage. Pursuing his course northwards, he

crossed the river at Neuburg (midway between Minden and

Bremen), and occupied the principality of Kalenberg. The King

of Denmark was near at hand, in the Duchy of Brunswick,

anxious, for the moment, to avoid a battle. Tilly, superior to

him in numbers, was as anxious to fight one. As though the

position of the King of Denmark were not already sufficiently

embarrassing, the Emperor proceeded at this period to make it

almost unendurable by launching upon him likewise an imperial

army. ... Up to the period of the complete overthrow and

expulsion from the Palatinate of Frederic V., ex-King of

Bohemia, Ferdinand had been indebted for all his successes to

Maximilian of Bavaria. It was Maximilian who, as head of the

Holy League, had reconquered Bohemia for the Emperor: it was

Maximilian's general, Tilly, who had driven the Protestant

armies from the Palatinate; and it was the same general who

was now opposing the Protestants of the north in the lands

watered by the Weser. Maximilian had been rewarded by the

cession to him of the Palatinate, but it was not advisable

that so near a neighbour of Austria should be made too strong.

It was this feeling, this jealousy of Maximilian, which now

prompted Ferdinand to raise, for the first time in this war,

an imperial army, and to send it to the north. This army was

raised by and at the expense of Albert Wenzel Eusebius of

Waldstein, known in history as Wallenstein. A Czech by

nationality, born in 1583 of noble parents, who belonged to

one of the most advanced sects of the reformers but who died

whilst their son was yet young, Wallenstein had, when yet a

child, been committed to the care of his uncle, Albert

Slavata, an adherent of the Jesuits, and by him educated at

Olmütz in the strictest Catholic faith." By marrying, first, a

rich widow, who soon died, and then an heiress, daughter of

Count Harrach, and by purchasing with the fortune thus

acquired many confiscated estates, he had become possessed of

enormous wealth. He had already won distinction as a soldier.

"For his faithful services, Ferdinand in 1623 nominated

Wallenstein to be Prince, a title changed, the year following,

into that of Duke of Friedland. At this time the yearly income

he derived from his various estates, all economically managed,

was calculated to be 30,000,000 florins--little short of

£2,500,000." Wallenstein now, in 1625, "divining his master's

wishes, and animated by the ambition born of natural ability,

offered to raise and maintain, at his own cost, an army of

50,000 men, and to lead it against the enemy. Ferdinand

eagerly accepted the offer. Named Generalissimo and Field

Marshal in July of the same year, Wallenstein marched at the

head of 30,000 men, a number which increased almost daily,

first to the Weser, thence, after noticing the positions of

Tilly and of King Christian, to the banks of the Elbe, where

he wintered. ... In the spring ... Mansfeldt, with the view to

prevent a junction between Tilly and Wallenstein, marched

against the latter, and, though his troops were fewer in

number, took up a position at Dessau in full view of the

imperial camp, and there intrenched himself. Here Wallenstein

attacked (25 April 1626) and completely defeated him. Not

discouraged by this overthrow, and still bearing in mind the

main object of the campaign, Mansfeldt fell back into

Brandenburg, recruited there his army, called to himself the

Duke of Saxe-Weimar and then suddenly dashed, by forced

marches, towards Silesia and Moravia, with the intention of

reaching Hungary, where Bethlen Gabor had promised to meet

him." Wallenstein followed and "pressed him so hard that,

though Mansfeldt did effect a junction with Bethlen Gabor, it

was with but the skeleton of his army. Despairing of success

against numbers vastly superior, Bethlen Gabor withdrew from

his new colleague, and Mansfeldt, reduced to despair,

disbanded his remaining soldiers, and sold his camp-equipage

to supply himself with the means of flight (September).

See HUNGARY: A. D. 1606-1660.

{1472}

He died soon after (30th November). ... Wallenstein then

retraced his steps to the north. Meanwhile Tilly, left to deal

with Christian IV., had followed that prince into Lower

Saxony, had caught, attacked, and completely defeated him at

Lutter (am Barenberge), the 27th July 1626. This victory gave

him complete possession of that disaffected province, and,

despite a vigorous attempt made by the Margrave George

Frederic of Baden to wrest it from him, he held it till the

return of Wallenstein from the pursuit of Mansfeldt. As two

stars of so great a magnitude could not shine in the same

hemisphere, it was then decided that Tilly should carry the

war into Holland, whilst to Wallenstein should be left the

honour of dealing with the King of Denmark and the Protestant

princes of the north."

G. B. Malleson,

The Battle-fields of Germany,

chapter 1.

ALSO IN:

W. Zimmermann,

Popular History of Germany,

book 5, chapter 2 (volume 4).

GERMANY: A. D. 1627-1629.

The Thirty Years War:

Wallenstein's campaign against the Danes.

His power and his oppression in Germany.

The country devoured by his army.

Unsuccessful siege of Stralsund.

First succor from the king of Sweden.

The Peace of Lubeck.

The Edict of Restitution.

"Wallenstein opened the campaign of 1627 at the head of a

refreshed and well-equipped army of 40,000 men. His first

effort was directed against Silesia; and the Danish troops,

few in number, and ill commanded, gave way at his approach. To

prevent the fugitives from infringing on the neutrality of

Brandenburg, he occupied the whole electorate. Mecklenburg and

Pomerania soon shared the same fate. Remonstrances and

assurances of perfect neutrality were treated with absolute

scorn; and Wallenstein declared, in his usual haughty style,

that 'the time had arrived for dispensing altogether with

electors; and that Germany ought to be governed like France

and Spain, by a single and absolute sovereign.' In his rapid

march towards the frontiers of Holstein, he acted fully up to

the principle he had laid down, and naturally exercised

despotic power, as the representative of the absolute monarch

of whom he spoke. ... He ... followed up the Danes, defeated

their armies in a series of actions near Heiligenhausen,

overran the whole peninsula of Jutland before the end of the

campaign, and forced the unhappy king to seek shelter, with

the wrecks of his army, in the islands beyond the Belt. ...

Brilliant as the campaign of 1627 proved in its general

result, few very striking feats of arms were performed during

its progress. ... Now it was that the princes and states of

Lower Germany began to feel the consequences of their

pusillanimous conduct; and the very provinces which had just

before refused to raise troops for their own protection, were

obliged to submit, without a murmur, to every species of

insult and exaction. Wallenstein's army, augmented to 100,000

men, occupied the whole country; and the lordly leader

following, on a far greater scale, the principle on which

Mansfeld had acted, made the war maintain the war, and

trampled alike on the rights of sovereigns and of subjects.

And terrible was the penalty now paid for the short-sighted

policy which avarice and cowardice had suggested, and which

cunning had vainly tried to disguise beneath affected

philanthropy, and a generous love of peace. Provided with

imperial authority, and at the head of a force that could no

longer be resisted, Wallenstein made the empire serve as a

vast storehouse, and wealthy treasury for the benefit of the

imperial army. He forbade even sovereigns and electors to

raise supplies in their own countries, and was justly termed

'the princes' scourge, and soldiers' idol.' The system of

living by contributions had completely demoralised the troops.

Honour and discipline were entirely gone; and it was only

beneath the eye of the stern and unrelenting commander, that

anything like order continued to be observed. Dissipation and

profligacy reigned in all ranks: bands of dissolute persons

accompanied every regiment, and helped to extinguish the last

sparks of morality in the breast of the soldier. The generals

levied arbitrary taxes; the inferior officers followed the

example of their superiors; and the privates, soon ceasing to

obey those whom they ceased to respect, plundered in every

direction; while blows, insults, or death awaited all who

dared to resist. ... The sums extorted, in this manner, prove

that Germany must have been a wealthy country in the 17th

century; for the money pressed out of some districts, by the

imperial troops, far exceeds anything which the same quarters

could now be made to furnish. Complaints against the author of

such evils were, of course, not wanting; but the man

complained of had rendered the Emperor all-powerful in

Germany: from the Adriatic to the Baltic, Ferdinand reigned

absolute, as no monarch had reigned since the days of the

Othos. This supremacy was due to Wallenstein alone; and what

could the voice of the humble and oppressed effect against

such an offender? Or when did the voice of suffering nations,

arrest the progress of power and ambition? During the winter

that followed on the campaign of 1627, Wallenstein repaired to

Prague, to claim [and to receive] from the Emperor, who was

residing in the Bohemian capital, additional rewards for the

important services so lately rendered. The boon solicited was

nothing less than the Duchy of Mecklenburg, which was to be

taken from its legitimate princes, on the ground of their

having joined the King of Denmark, and bestowed on the

successful general. ... Hitherto the ocean had alone arrested

the progress of Wallenstein: a fleet was now to be formed,

which should enable him to give laws beyond the Belts, and

perhaps beyond the Baltic also. Every seaport in Mecklenburg

and Pomerania is ordered to be taken possession of and

fortified. ... The siege of Stralsund, which was resolved upon

early in 1628, constitutes one of the most memorable

operations of the war. Not merely because it furnishes an

additional proof of what may be effected by skill, courage and

resolution, against vastly superior forces, but because its

result influenced, in an eminent degree, some of the most

important events that followed. When Wallenstein ordered the

seaports along the coast of Pomerania to be occupied,

Stralsund, claiming its privilege as an imperial and Hanseatic

free town, refused to admit his troops. ... After a good deal

of negotiation, which only cost the people of Stralsund some

large sums of money, paid away in presents to the imperial

officers, Arnheim invested the place on the 7th of May with

8,000 men. ...

{1473}

The town ... , unable to obtain assistance from the Duke of

Pomerania, the lord superior of the province, who, however

willing, had no means of furnishing relief, placed itself

under the protection of Sweden; and Gustavus Adolphus, fully

sensible of the importance of the place, immediately

dispatched the celebrated David Leslie, at the head of 600

men, to aid in its defence. Count Brahe, with 1,000 more, soon

followed; so that when Wallenstein reached the army on the

27th of June, he found himself opposed by a garrison of

experienced soldiers, who had already retaken all the outworks

which Arnheim had captured in the first instance. ... Rain

began to fall in such torrents that the trenches were entirely

filled, and the flat moor ground, on which the army was encamped,

became completely inundated and untenable. The proud spirit of

Friedland, unused to yield, still persevered; but sickness

attacked the troops, and the Danes having landed at Jasmund,

he was obliged to march against them with the best part of his

forces; and in fact to raise the siege. ... The Danes having

effected their object, in causing the siege of Stralsund to be

raised, withdrew their troops from Jasmund, and landed them

again at Wolgast. Here, however, Wallenstein surprised, and

defeated them with great loss. ... There being on all sides a

willingness to bring the war to an end, peace was ...

concluded at Lubeck in January 1629. By this treaty the Danes

recovered, without reserve or indemnity, all their former

possessions; only pledging themselves not again to interfere

in the affairs of the Empire. ... The peace of Lubeck left

Wallenstein absolute master in Germany, and without an equal

in greatness: his spirit seemed to hover like a storm-charged

cloud over the land, crushing to the earth every hope of

liberty and successful resistance. Mansfeld and Christian of

Brunswick had disappeared from the scene; Frederick V. had

retired into obscurity. Tilly and Pappenheim, his former

rivals, now condescended to receive favours, and to solicit

pensions and rewards through the medium of his intercession.

Even Maximilian of Bavaria was second in greatness to the

all-dreaded Duke of Friedland: Europe held no uncrowned head

that was his equal in fame, and no crowned head that surpassed

him in power. ... Ferdinand, elated with success, had

neglected the opportunity, again afforded him by the peace of

Lubeck, for restoring tranquillity to the empire. ... Instead

of a general peace, Ferdinand signed the fatal Edict of

Restitution, by which the Protestants were called upon to

restore all the Catholic Church property they had sequestrated

since the religious pacification of 1555: such sequestration

being, according to the Emperor's interpretation, contrary to

the spirit of the treaty of Passau. The right of

long-established possession was here entirely overlooked; and

Ferdinand forgot, in his zeal for the church, that he was

actually setting himself up as a judge, in a case in which he

was a party also. It was farther added, that, according to the

same treaty, freedom of departure from Catholic countries, was

the only privilege which Protestants had a right to claim from

Catholic princes. This decree came like a thunder-burst over

Protestant Germany. Two archbishopricks, 12 bishopricks, and a

countless number of convents and clerical domains, which the

Protestants had confiscated, and applied to their own

purposes, were now to be surrendered. Imperial commissioners

were appointed to carry the mandate into effect, and, to

secure immediate obedience, troops were placed at the disposal

of the new officials. Wherever these functionaries appeared,

the Protestant service was instantly suspended; the churches

deprived of their bells; altars and pulpits pulled down; all

Protestant books, bibles and catechisms were seized; and

gibbets were erected to terrify those who might be disposed to

resist. All Protestants who refused to change their religion

were expelled from Augsburg: summary proceedings of the same

kind were resorted to in other places. Armed with absolute

power, the commissioners soon proceeded from reclaiming the

property of the church to seize that of individuals. The

estates of all persons who had served under Mansfeld, Baden,

Christian of Brunswick; of all who had aided Frederick V., or

rendered themselves obnoxious to the Emperor, were seized and

confiscated. ... The Duke of Friedland, who now ruled with

dictatorial sway over Germany, had been ordered to carry the

Edict of Restitution into effect, in all the countries

occupied by his troops. The task, if we believe historians,

was executed with unbending rigour."

J. Mitchell,

Life of Wallenstein,

chapters 2-3.

ALSO IN:

L. Häusser,

The Period of the Reformation,

1517 to 1648, chapter 33.

GERMANY: A. D. 1627-1631.

War of the Emperor and Spain with France, over the succession

to the duchy of Mantua.

See ITALY: A. D. 1627-1631.

GERMANY: A. D. 1630.

The Thirty Years War:

Universal hostility to Wallenstein.

His dismissal by the Emperor.

The rising of a new champion of Protestantism in Sweden.

"Wallenstein had ever shown great toleration in his own

domains; but it is not to be denied that ... he aided to carry

out the edict [of Restitution] in the most barbarous and

relentless manner. It would be as tedious as painful to dwell

upon all the cruelties which were committed, and the

oppression that was exercised, by the imperial commissioners;

but a spirit of resistance was aroused in the hearts of the

German people, which only waited for opportunity to display

itself. Nor was it alone against the emperor that wrath and

indignation was excited. Wallenstein drew down upon his head

even more dangerous enmity than that which sprung up against

Ferdinand. He ruled in Germany with almost despotic sway; for

the emperor himself seemed at this time little more than a

tool in his hands. His manners were unpopular, stern,

reserved, and gloomy. . . . Princes were kept waiting in his

ante-chamber; and all petitions and remonstrances against his

stern decrees were treated with the mortifying scorn which

adds insult to injury. The magnificence of his train, the

splendor of his household, the luxury and profusion that

spread every where around him, afforded continual sources of

envy and jealous hate to the ancient nobility of the empire.

The Protestants throughout the land were his avowed and

implacable enemies; and the Roman Catholic princes viewed him

with fear and suspicion. Maximilian of Bavaria, whose star had

waned under the growing luster of Wallenstein's renown, who

had lost that authority in the empire which he knew to be due

to his services and his genius, solely by the rise and

influence of Wallenstein, and whose ambitious designs of

ruling Germany through an emperor dependent upon him for

power, had been frustrated entirely by the genius which placed

the imperial throne upon a firm and independent basis, took no

pains to conceal his hostility to the Duke of Friedland. ...

{1474}

Though the soldiery still generally loved him, their officers

hated the hand that put a limit to the oppression by which

they throve, and would fain have resisted its power. ... While

these feelings were gathering strength in Germany; while

Wallenstein, with no friends, though many supporters, saw

himself an object of jealousy or hatred to the leaders of

every party throughout the empire; and while the suppressed

but cherished indignation of all Protestant Germany was

preparing for the emperor a dreadful day of reckoning, events

were taking place in other countries which hurried on rapidly

the dangers that Wallenstein had foreseen. In France, a weak

king, and a powerful, politic, and relentless minister,

appeared in undissembled hostility to the house of Austria;

and the famous Cardinal de Richelieu busied himself,

successfully, to raise up enemies to the German branch of that

family. ... In Poland, Sigismund, after vainly contending with

Gustavus Adolphus, and receiving an inefficient aid from

Germany, was anxious to conclude the disastrous war with

Sweden. Richelieu interfered; Oxenstiern negotiated on the

part of Gustavus; and a truce of six years was concluded in

August, 1629, by which the veteran and victorious Swedish

troops were set free to act in any other direction. A great

part of Livonia was virtually ceded to Gustavus, together with

the towns and territories of Memel, Braunsberg and Elbingen,

and the strong fortress of Pillau. At the same time, Richelieu

impressed upon the mind of Gustavus the honor, the advantage,

and the necessity of reducing the immense power of the

emperor, and delivering the Protestant states of Germany from

the oppression under which they groaned. ... Confident in his

own powers of mind and warlike skill, supported by the love

and admiration of his people, relying on the valor and

discipline of' his troops, and foreseeing all the mighty

combinations which were certain to take place in his favor,

Gustavus hesitated but little. He consulted with his

ministers, indeed heard and answered every objection that

could be raised; and then applied to the Senate at Stockholm

to insure that his plans were approved, and that his efforts

would be seconded by his people. His enterprise met with the

most enthusiastic approbation; and then succeeded all the

bustle of active preparation. ... While this storm was

gathering in the North, while the towns of Sweden were

bristling with arms, and her ports filled with ships,

Ferdinand was driven or persuaded to an act the most fatal to

himself, and the most favorable to the King of Sweden. A Diet

was summoned to meet at Ratisbon early in the year 1630; and

the chief object of the emperor in taking a step so dangerous

to the power he had really acquired, and to the projects so

boldly put forth in his name, seems to have been to cause his

son to be elected King of the Romans. ... The name of the

archduke, King of Hungary, is proposed to the Diet for

election as King of the Romans, and a scene of indescribable

confusion and murmuring takes place: A voice demands that,

before any such election is considered, the complaints of the

people of Germany against the imperial armies shall be heard;

and then a perfect storm of accusations pours down. Every sort

of tyranny and oppression, every sort of cruelty and exaction,

every sort of licentiousness and vice is attributed to the

emperor's troops; but the hatred and the charges all

concentrate themselves upon the head of the great commander of

the imperial forces; and there is a shout for his instant

dismissal. ... Ferdinand hesitated, and affected much surprise

at the charges brought against his general and his armies. He

yielded in the end, however; and it is said, upon very good

authority, that his ruinous decision was brought about by the

arts of the same skillful politician who had conjured up the

storm which now menaced the empire from the north. Richelieu

had sent an embassador to Ratisbon. ... In the train of the

embassador came the well-known intriguing friar, Father

Joseph, the most unscrupulous and cunning of the cardinal's

emissaries; and he, we are assured, found means to persuade

the emperor that, by yielding to the demand of the electors

and removing Wallenstein for a time, he might obtain the

election of the King of Hungary, and then reinstate the Duke

of Friedland in his command as soon as popular anger had

subsided. However that might be, Ferdinand, as I have said,

yielded, openly expressing his regret at the step he was about

to take, and the apprehensions which he entertained for the

consequences. Count Questenberg and another nobleman, who had

been long on intimate terms with Wallenstein, were sent to the

camp to notify to him his removal from command, and to soften

the disgrace by assuring him of the emperor's gratitude and

affection."

G. P. R. James,

Dark Scenes of History: Wallenstein,

chapters 3-4.

ALSO IN:

S. R. Gardiner,

The Thirty Years' War,

chapter 7, section 3.

A. Gindely,

History of the Thirty Years' War,

volume 2, chapter 1.

GERMANY: A. D. 1630-1631.

The Thirty Years War:

The Coming of Gustavus Adolphus.

His occupation of Pomerania and Brandenburg.

The horrible fate of Magdeburg at the hands of Tilly's

ruffians.

"On June 24, 1630, one hundred years, to a day, after the

Augsburg Confession was promulgated, Gustavus Adolphus landed

on the coast of Pomerania, near the mouth of the river Peene,

with 13,000 men, veteran troops, whose rigid discipline was

sustained by their piety, and who were simple-minded, noble,

and glowing with the spirit of the battle. He had reasons

enough for declaring war against Ferdinand, even if 10,000 of

Wallenstein's troops had not been sent to aid Sigismund

against him. But the controlling motive, in his own mind, was

to succor the imperiled cause of religious freedom in Germany.

Coming as the protector of the evangelic Church, he expected

to be joined by the Protestant princes. But he was

disappointed. Only the trampled and tortured people of North

Germany, who in their despair were ready for revolts and

conspiracies of their own, welcomed him as their deliverer

from the bandits of Wallenstein and the League. Gustavus

Adolphus appeared before Stettin, and by threats compelled the

old duke, Bogislaw XIV., to open to him his capital city, He

then took measures to secure possession of Pomerania. His army

grew rapidly, while that of the emperor was widely dispersed,

so that he now advanced into Brandenburg. George William, the

elector, was a weak prince, though a Protestant, and a brother

of the Queen of Sweden; he was guided by his Catholic

chancellor, Schwarzenberg, and had painfully striven to keep

neutral throughout the war, neither side, however, respecting

his neutrality.

{1475}

In dread of the plans of Gustavus Adolphus concerning

Pomerania and Prussia, he held aloof from him. Meanwhile

Tilly, general-in-chief of the troops of the emperor and the

League, drew near, but suddenly turned aside to New

Brandenburg, in the Mecklenburg territory, now occupied by the

Swedes, captured it after three assaults, and put the garrison

to the sword (1631). He then laid siege to Magdeburg. Gustavus

Adolphus took Frankfort-on-the-Oder, where there was an

imperial garrison, and treated it, in retaliation, with the

same severity. Thence, in the spring of 1631, he set out for

Berlin. ... In Potsdam he heard of the fall of Magdeburg. He

then marched with flying banners into Berlin, and compelled

the elector to become his ally. Magdeburg was the strong

refuge of Protestantism, and the most important trading centre

in North Germany. It had resisted the Augsburg Interim of

1548, and now resisted the Edict of Restitution, rejected the

newly appointed prince bishop, Leopold William, son of the

emperor himself, and refused to receive the emperor's

garrison. The city was therefore banned by the emperor, and

was besieged for many weeks by Pappenheim, a general of the

League, who was then reinforced by Tilly himself with his

army. Gustavus Adolphus was unable to make an advance, in view

of the equivocal attitude of the two great Protestant electors,

without exposing his rear to garrisoned fortresses. From

Brandenburg as well as Saxony he asked in vain for help to

save the Protestant city. Thus Magdeburg fell, May 10, 1631.

The citizens were deceived by a pretended withdrawal of the

enemy. But suddenly, at early dawn, the badly guarded

fortifications were stormed."

C. T. Lewis,

History of Germany,

chapter 18, sections 3-4.

Two gates of the city having been opened by the storming

party, "Tilly marched in with part of his infantry.

Immediately occupying the principal streets, he drove the

citizens with pointed cannon into their dwellings, there to

await their destiny. They were not long held in suspense; a

word from Tilly decided the fate of Magdeburg. Even a more

humane general would in vain have recommended mercy to such

soldiers; but Tilly never made the attempt. Left by their

general's silence masters of the lives of all the citizens,

the soldiery broke into the houses to satiate their most

brutal appetites. The prayers of innocence excited some

compassion in the hearts of the Germans, but none in the rude

breasts of Pappenheim's Walloons. Scarcely had the savage

cruelty commenced, when the other gates were thrown open, and

the cavalry, with the fearful hordes of the Croats, poured in

upon the devoted inhabitants. Here commenced a scene of

horrors for which history has no language--poetry no pencil.

Neither innocent childhood, nor helpless old age; neither

youth, sex, rank, nor beauty, could disarm the fury of the

conquerors. Wives were abused in the arms of their husbands,

daughters at the feet of their parents; and the defenceless

sex exposed to the double sacrifice of virtue and life. No

situation, however obscure, or however sacred, escaped the

rapacity of the enemy. In a single church fifty-three women

were found beheaded. The Croats amused themselves with

throwing children into the flames; Pappenheim's Walloons with

stabbing infants at the mother's breast. Some officers of the

League, horror-struck at this dreadful scene, ventured to

remind Tilly that he had it in his power to stop the carnage.

'Return in an hour,' was his answer; 'I will see what I can

do; the soldier must have some reward for his danger and

toils.' These horrors lasted with unabated fury, till at last

the smoke and flames proved a check to the plunderers. To

augment the confusion and to divert the resistance of the

inhabitants, the Imperialists had, in the commencement of the

assault, fired the town in several places. The wind rising

rapidly, spread the flames, till the blaze became universal.

Fearful, indeed, was the tumult amid clouds of smoke, heaps of

dead bodies, the clash of swords, the crash of falling ruins,

and streams of blood. The atmosphere glowed; and the

intolerable heat forced at last even the murderers to take

refuge in their camp. In less than twelve hours, this strong,

populous, and flourishing city, one of the finest in Germany,

was reduced to ashes, with the exception of two churches and a

few houses. ... The avarice of the officers had saved 400 of

the richest citizens, in the hope of extorting from them an

exorbitant ransom. But this humanity was confined to the

officers of the League, whom the ruthless barbarity of the

Imperialists caused to be regarded as guardian angels.

Scarcely had the fury of the flames abated, when the

Imperialists returned to renew the pillage amid the ruins and

ashes of the town. Many were suffocated by the smoke; many

found rich booty in the cellars, where the citizens had

concealed their more valuable effects. On the 13th of May,

Tilly himself appeared in the town, after the streets had been

cleared of ashes and dead bodies. Horrible and revolting to

humanity was the scene that presented itself. The living

crawling from under the dead, children wandering about with

heart-rending cries, calling for their parents; and infants

still sucking the breasts of their lifeless mothers. More than

6,000 bodies were thrown into the Elbe to clear the streets; a

much greater number had been consumed by the flames. The whole

number of the slain was reckoned at not less than 30,000. The

entrance of the general, which took place on the 14th, put a

stop to the plunder, and saved the few who had hitherto

contrived to escape. About a thousand people were taken out of

the cathedral, where they had remained three days and two

nights, without food, and in momentary fear of death."

F. Schiller,

History of the Thirty Years' War,

book 2.

ALSO IN:

Sir E. Cust,

Lives of the Warriors of the

Thirty Years' War, part 1.

GERMANY: A. D. 1631 (January).

The Thirty Years War:

The Treaty of Bärwalde between Gustavus Adolphus and the king

of France.

"On the 13th of January, 1631, the Treaty of Barwalde was

concluded between France and Sweden. Hard cash had been the

principal subject of the negotiation, and Louis XIII. had

agreed to pay Gustavus a lump sum of $120,000 in consideration

of his recent expenditure,--a further sum of $400,000 a year

for six years to come. Until that time, or until a general

peace, if such should supervene earlier, Sweden was to keep in

the field an army of 30,000 foot and 6, 000 horse. The object

of the alliance was declared to be 'the protection of their

common friends, the security of the Baltic, the freedom of

commerce, the restitution of the oppressed members of the

Empire, the destruction of the newly erected fortresses in the

Baltic, the North Sea, and in the Grisons territory, so that

all should be left in the state in which it was before the

German war had begun.'

{1476}

Sweden was not to 'violate the Imperial constitution' where

she conquered; she was to leave the Catholic religion

undisturbed in all districts where she found it existing. She

was to observe towards Bavaria and the League--the spoilt

darlings of Richelieu's anti-Austrian policy--friendship or

neutrality, so far as they would observe it towards her. If,

at the end of six years, the objects were not accomplished,

the treaty was to be renewed."

C. R. L. Fletcher,

Gustavus Adolphus and the Struggle

of Protestantism for Existence,

chapter 9.

GERMANY: A. D. 1631.

The Thirty Years War:

The elector of Brandenburg brought to terms by the king of

Sweden.

The elector of Saxony frightened into line.

Defeat of Tilly at Leipsig (Breitenfeld).

Effects of the great victory.

"Loud were the cries against Gustavus for not having relieved

Magdeburg. To answer them he felt himself bound to publish a

careful apology. In this document he declared, among other

things, that if he could have obtained from the Elector of

Brandenburg the passage of Küstrin he might not only have

raised the siege of Magdeburg but have destroyed the whole of

the Imperial army. The passage, however, had been denied him;

and though the preservation of Magdeburg so much concerned the

Elector of Saxony, he could obtain from him a passage toward

it neither by Wittemberg, nor the Bridge of Dessau, nor such

assistance in provision and shipping as was necessary for the

success of the enterprise. ... Something more than mere

persuasion had induced the Elector of Brandenburg, after the

capture of Francfort, to grant Gustavus possession of Spandau

for a month. The month expired on the 8th of June; and the

elector demanded back his stronghold. The king, fettered by

his promise, surrendered it; but the next day, having marched

to Berlin and pointed his guns against the palace, the ladies

came forth as mediators, and the elector consented both to

surrender Spandau again and to pay, for the maintenance of the

Swedish troops, a monthly subsidy of 30,000 rix-dollars. At

the end of May Tilly removed from Magdeburg and the Elbe to

Ascherleben. This enabled the king to take Werben, on the

confluence of the Elbe and Havel, where, after the reduction

of Tangermünde and Havelberg, he established his celebrated

camp." In the latter part of July, Tilly made two attacks on

the king's camp at Werben, and was repulsed on both occasions

with heavy loss. "In the middle of August, Gustavus broke up

his camp. His force at that time, according to the

muster-rolls, amounted to 13,000 foot, and 8,850 cavalry. He

drew towards Leipsig, then threatened by Tilly, who, having

been joined at Eisleben by 15,000 men under Fürstenburg, now

possessed an army 40,000 strong to enforce the emperor's ban

against the Leipsig decrees [or resolutions of a congress of

Protestant princes which had assembled at Leipsig in February,

1631, moved to some organized common action by the Edict of

Restitution] within the limits of the electorate. The Elector

of Saxony was almost frightened out of his wits by the

impending danger. ... His grief and rage at the fall of

Magdeburg had been so great that, for two days after receiving

the news, he would admit no one into his presence. But that

dire event only added to his perplexity; he could resolve

neither upon submission, nor upon vengeance. In May, indeed,

terrified by the threats of Ferdinand, he discontinued his

levies, and disbanded a part of his troops already enlisted:

but in June he sent Arnim to Gustavus with such overtures that

the king drank his health, and seemed to have grown sanguine

in the hope of his alliance. In July, his courage still

rising, he permitted Gustavus to recruit in his dominions. In

August, his courage falling again at the approach of

Fürstenburg, he gave him and his troops a free passage through

Thuringia." But now, later in the same month, he sent word to

Gustavus Adolphus "that not only Wittemberg but the whole

electorate was open to him; that not only his son, but

himself, would serve under the king; that he would advance one

month's payment for the Swedish troops immediately, and give

security for two monthly payments more. ... Gustavus rejoiced

to find the Duke of Saxony in this temper, and, in pursuance

of a league now entered into with him, and the Elector of

Brandenburg, crossed the Elbe at Wittemberg on the 4th of

September. The Saxons, from 16,000 to 20,000 strong, moving

simultaneously from Torgau, the confederated armies met at

Düben on the Mulda, three leagues from Leipsig. At a

conference held there, it was debated whether it would be

better to protract the war or to hazard a battle. The king

took the former side, but yielded to the strong

representations of the Duke of Saxony. ... On the 6th of

September the allies came within six or eight miles of the

enemy, where they halted for the night. ... Breitenfeld, the

place at which Tilly, urged by the importunity of Pappenheim,

had chosen to offer battle, was an extensive plain, in part

recently ploughed, about a mile from Leipsig and near the

cemetery of that city. Leipsig had surrendered to Tilly two

days before. The Imperial army, estimated at 44,000 men,

occupied a rising ground on the plain. ... The army was drawn

up in one line of great depth, having the infantry in the

centre, the cavalry on the wings, according to the Spanish

order of battle, The king subdivided his army, about 20,000

strong, into centre and wings, each of which consisted of two

lines and a reserve. ... To this disposition is attributed, in

a great degree, the success of the day. ... The files being so

comparatively shallow, artillery made less havoc among them.

Then, again, the division of the army into small maniples,

with considerable intervals between each, gave space for

evolutions, and the power of throwing the troops with rapidity

wherever their services or support might be found requisite.

... The battle began at 12 o'clock." It only ended with the

setting of the sun; but long before that time the great army

of Tilly was substantially destroyed. It had scattered the

Saxons easily enough, and sent them flying, with their

worthless elector; but Gustavus and his disciplined, brave,

powerfully handled Swedes had broken and ruined the stout but

clumsy imperial lines. "It is scarcely possible to exaggerate

the importance of this success. On the event of that day, as

Gustavus himself said, the whole (Protestant) cause, 'summa

rei,' depended. The success was great in itself. The numbers

engaged on either side had been nearly equal. Not so their

loss. The Imperial loss in killed and wounded, according to

Swedish computation, was from 8,000 to 10,000; according to

the enemy's own account, between 6,000 and 7,000; while all

seem to agree that the loss on the side of the allies was only

2,700, of which 2,000 were Saxon, 700 Swedes. Besides,

Gustavus won the whole of the enemy's artillery, and more than

100 standards. Then the army of Tilly being annihilated left

him free to choose his next point of attack, almost his next

victory."

B. Chapman,

History of Gustavus Adolphus,

chapter 8.

{1477}

"The battle of Breitenfeld was an epoch in war, and it was an

epoch in history. It was an epoch in war, because first in it

was displayed on a great scale the superiority of mobility

over weight. It was an epoch in history, because it broke the

force upon which the revived Catholicism had relied for the

extension of its empire over Europe. ... 'Germany might tear

herself and be torn to pieces for yet another half-generation,

but the actual result of the Thirty-Years' War was as good as

achieved.'"

C. R. L. Fletcher,

Gustavus Adolphus and the Struggle

of Protestantism for Existence,

chapter 11.

ALSO IN:

G. B. Malleson,

The Battle-fields of Germany,

chapter 1.

GERMANY: A. D. 1631-1632.

The Thirty Years War:

Movements and plans of the Swedish king in southern Germany.

Temporary recovery of the Palatinate.

Occupation of Bavaria.

The Saxons in Bohemia.

Battle of the Lech.

Death of Tilly.

Wallenstein's recall.

Siege and relief of Nuremberg.

Battle of Lützen, and death of Gustavus Adolphus.

"This battle, sometimes called Breitenwald [Breitenfeld],

sometimes the First Battle of Leipsic, ... was the first

victory on the Protestant side that had been achieved. It was

Tilly's first defeat after thirty battles. It filled with joy

those who had hitherto been depressed and hopeless. Cities

which had dreaded to declare themselves for fear of the fate

of Magdeburg began to lift up their heads, and vacillating

princes to think that they could safely take the part which

they preferred. Gustavus knew, however, that he must let the

Germans do as much as possible for themselves, or he should

arouse their national jealousy of him as a foreign conqueror.

So he sent the Elector of Saxony to awaken the old spirit in

Bohemia. As for himself, his great counsellor, Oxenstierna,

wanted him to march straight on Vienna, but this was not his

object. He wanted primarily to deliver the northern states,

and to encourage the merchant cities, Ulm, Augsburg,

Nuremberg, which had all along been Protestant, and to deliver

the Palatinate from its oppressors. And, out of mortification,

a strange ally offered himself, namely, Wallenstein, who

wanted revenge on the Catholic League which had insisted on

his dismissal, and the Emperor who had yielded to them. ... He

said that if Gustavus would trust him, he would soon get his

old army together again, and chase Ferdinand and the Jesuits

beyond the Alps. But Gustavus did not trust him, though he sat

quiet at Prague while the Saxons were in possession of the

city, plundering everywhere, and the Elector sending off to

Dresden fifty waggon-loads filled with the treasures of the

Emperor Rudolf's museum. ... Many exiles returned, and there

was a general resumption of the Hussite form of worship.

Gustavus had marched to Erfurt, and then turned towards the

Maine, where there was a long row of those prince bishoprics

established on the frontier by the policy of

Charlemagne--Wurtzburg, Bamberg, Fulda, Köln, Triers, Mentz,

Wurms, Spiers. These had never been secularised and were

popularly called the Priests' Lane. They had given all their

forces to the Catholic League, and Gustavus meant to repay

himself upon them. He permitted no cruelties, no persecutions;

but he levied heavy contributions, and his troops made merry

with the good Rhenish wine when he kept his Christmas at

Mentz. He invited the dispossessed Elector Palatine to join

him, and Frederick started for the camp, after the christening

of his thirteenth child. ... The suite was numerous enough to

fill forty coaches, escorted by seventy horse--pretty well

for an exiled prince dependent on the bounty of Holland and

England. ... There was the utmost enthusiasm for the Swede in

England, and the Marquess of Hamilton obtained permission to

raise a body of volunteers to join the Swedish standards, and

in the August of 1631 brought 6,000 English and Scots in four

small regiments; but they proved of little use ... many dying.

... So far as the King's plans can be understood, he meant to

have formed a number of Protestant principalities, and united

them in what he called 'Corpus Evangelicorum' around the

Baltic and the Elbe, as a balance to the Austrian Roman

Catholic power in southern Germany. Frederick wanted to raise

an army of his own people and take the command, but to this

Gustavus would not consent, having probably no great

confidence in his capacity. All the Palatinate was free from

the enemy except the three fortresses of Heidelberg,

Frankenthal, and Kreuznach, and the last of these was

immediately besieged. ... In the midst of the exultation

Frederick was grieved to learn that his beautiful home at

Heidelberg had been ravaged by fire, probably by the Spanish

garrison in expectation of having to abandon it. But as Tilly

was collecting his forces again, Gustavus would not wait to

master that place or Frankenthal, and recrossed the Rhine. Sir

Harry Vane had been sent as ambassador from Charles I. to

arrange for the restoration of the Palatinate, the King

offering £10,000 a mouth for the expense of the war, and

proposing that if, as was only too probable, he should be

prevented from performing this promise, some of the fortresses

should be left as guarantees in the hands of the Swedes.

Frederick took great and petulant offence at this stipulation,

and complained, with tears in his eyes, to Vane and the

Marquess of Hamilton. ... He persuaded them to suppress this

article, though they warned him that if the treaty failed it

would be by his own fault. It did in fact fail, for, as usual,

the English money was not forthcoming, and even if it had

been, Gustavus declared that he would be no man's servant for

a few thousand pounds. Frederick also refused the King's own

stipulation, that Lutherans should enjoy equal rights with

Calvinists. Moreover, the Swedish success had been

considerably more than was desired by his French allies. ...

Louis XIII. was distressed, but Richelieu silenced him, only

attempting to make a treaty with the Swedes by which the

Elector of Bavaria and the Catholic League should be neutral

on condition of the restoration of the bishops. To this,

however, Gustavus could not fully consent, and imposed

conditions which the Catholics could not accept. Tilly was

collecting his forces and threatening Nuremberg, but the Swedes

advanced, and he was forced to retreat, so that it was as a

deliverer that, on the 31st March [1632], Gustavus was received

in beautiful old Nuremberg with a rapture of welcome. ...

{1478}

Tilly had taken post on the Lech, and Maximilian was

collecting an army in Bavaria. The object of Gustavus was now

to beat one or other of them before they could join together:

so he marched forward, took Donauwerth, and tried to take

Ingoldstadt, but found it would occupy too much time, and,

though all the generals were of a contrary opinion, resolved

to attack Tilly and force the passage of the Lech. The

Imperialists had fortified it to the utmost, but in their very

teeth the Swedes succeeded in taking advantage of a bend in

the river to play on them with their formidable artillery,

construct a pontoon bridge, and, after a desperate struggle,

effect a passage. Tilly was struck by a cannon-shot in the

knee," and died soon afterwards. "On went Gustavus to Augsburg

... where the Emperor had expelled the Lutheran pastors and

cleared the municipal council of Protestant burgomasters. In

restoring the former state of things, Gustavus took a fresh

step, making the magistrates not only swear fidelity to him as

an ally till the end of the war, but as a sovereign. This made

the Germans begin to wonder what were his ulterior views. Then

he marched on upon Bavaria, intending to bridge the Danube and

take Ratisbon, but two strong forts prevented this. ... He,

however, made his way into the country between the Inn and the

Lech, Maximilian retreating before him. ... At Munich the

inhabitants brought him their keys. As they knelt he said,

'Rise, worship God, not man.' ... To compensate the soldiers

for not plundering the city, the King gave them each a crown

on the day of their entrance. ... Catholic Germany was in

despair. There was only one general in whom there was any

hope, and that was the discarded Wallenstein. ... He made

himself be courted. He would not come to Vienna, only to Znaim

in Moravia, where he made his terms like an independent

prince. ... At last he undertook to collect an army, but

refused to take the command for more than three months. His

name was enough to bring his Friedlanders flocking to his

standard. Not only Catholics, but Protestants came, viewing

Gustavus as a foreign invader. ... Wallenstein received

subsidies not only from the Emperor, but from the Pope and the

King of Spain, towards levying and equipping them, and by the

end of the three months he had the full 40,000 all in full

order for the march. Then he resigned the command. ... He

affected to be bent only on going back to his tower and his

stars at Prague [the study of astrology being his favorite

occupation], and to yield slowly to the proposals made him. He

was to be Generalissimo, neither Emperor nor Archduke was ever

to enter his camp; he was to name all his officers, and have

absolute control. ... Moreover, he might levy contributions as

he chose, and dispose as he pleased of lands and property

taken from the enemy; Mecklenburg was to be secured to him,

together with further rewards yet unspecified; and when

Bohemia was freed from the enemy, the Emperor was to live

there, no doubt under his control. ... There was no help for

it, and Wallenstein thus became the chief power in the Empire,

in fact a dictator. The power was conferred on him in April.

The first thing he did was to turn the Saxons out of Bohemia,

which was an easy matter." At Egra, Wallenstein was joined by

the Elector of Bavaria, which raised the Catholic force to

60,000. "The whole army marched upon Nuremberg, and Gustavus,

with only 20,000 men, dashed back to its defence. Wallenstein

had intrenched himself on an eminence called Fürth." As

Nuremberg was terribly distressed, his own army suffering, and

being infected with the lawless habits of German warfare,

Gustavus found it necessary to attempt (August 24) the

storming of the Imperialists' camp. He was repulsed, after

losing 3,000 of his Swedes and thrice as many Germans. He then

returned to Bavaria, while Wallenstein, abandoning his hope of

taking Nuremberg, moved into Saxony and began ravaging the

country. The Swedish king followed him so quickly that he had,

no time to establish the fortified camp he had intended, but

was forced to take up an intrenched position at Lützen. There

he was attacked on the 6th of November, 1632, and defeated in

a desperate battle, which became one of the memorable

conflicts in history because it brought to an end the great

and splendid career of Gustavus Adolphus, the Swede. The king

fell as he was leading a charge, and the fierce fight went on

over his body until the enemy had been driven from the field.

C. M. Yonge,

Cameos from English History,

6th series, chapter 19.

ALSO IN:

G. B. Malleson,

Battle-fields of Germany,

chapters 2-3.

R. C. Trench,

Gustavus Adolphus in Germany.

J. L. Stevens,

History of Gustavus Adolphus,

chapters 15-18.

GERMANY: A. D. 1631-1641.

The Thirty Years War:

The war in Lorraine.

Possession of the duchy taken by the French.

See LORRAINE: A. D. 1624-1663.

GERMANY: A. D. 1632-1634.

The Thirty Years War:

Retirement of Wallenstein to Bohemia.

Oxenstiern in the leadership of the Protestant cause.

Union of Heilbronn.

Inaction and suspicious conduct of Wallenstein.

The Ban pronounced against him.

His assassination.

"The account of the battle [of Lützen] transmitted by

Wallenstein to the Imperial Court, led Ferdinand to think that

he had gained the day. ... But ... the reputed conqueror was

glad to shelter himself behind the mountains of the Bohemian

frontier. After the battle, Wallenstein found it necessary to

evacuate Saxony in all haste; and, leaving garrisons at

Leipsic, Plauen, Zwickau, Chemnitz, Freiberg, Meissen, and

Frauenstein, he reached Bohemia without further loss, and put

his army into winter-quarters. After his arrival at Prague, he

caused many of his officers to be executed for their conduct

at Lützen, among whom were several who belonged to families of

distinction, nor would he allow them to plead the Emperor's

pardon. A few he rewarded. The harshness of his proceedings

increased the hatred already felt for him by many of his

officers, and especially the Italian portion: of them. ...

Axel Oxenstiern, the Swedish Chancellor, succeeded, on the

death of Gustavus Adolphus, to the supreme direction of the

affairs of Sweden in Germany, and was invested by the Council

at Stockholm with full powers both to direct the army and to

negotiate with the German courts. Duke Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar

retained the military command of the Swedish-German army,

divisions of which were cantoned from the Baltic to the

Danube.

{1479}

After driving the Imperialists from Saxony, Bernhard had

hastened into Franconia, the bishoprics of which, according to

a promise of Gustavus, were to be erected in his favour into a

duchy; but, after taking Bamberg, his assistance was invoked

by General Horn, on the Upper Danube. One of the first cares

of Oxenstiern was to consolidate the German alliance; and, in

March 1633, he summoned a meeting at Heilbronn of the States

of the four Circles of the Upper and Lower Rhine, Franconia,

and Suabia, as well as deputies from Nuremberg, Strasburg,

Frankfort, Ulm, Augsburg, and other cities of the empire. The

assembly was also attended by ambassadors from France,

England, and Holland; and on April 9th was effected the Union

of Heilbronn. Brandenburg and Saxony stood aloof; nor was

France, though she renewed the alliance with Sweden, included

in the Union. The French minister at Heilbronn assisted,

however, in the formation of the Union, although he

endeavoured to limit the power of Oxenstiern, to whom the

conduct of the war was intrusted. At the same time, the Swedes

also concluded a treaty with the Palatinate, now governed, or

rather claimed to be governed, by Louis Philip, brother of the

Elector Frederick V., as guardian and regent for the latter's

youthful son Charles Louis. The unfortunate Frederick had

expired at Mentz in his 37th year, not many days after the

death of Gustavus Adolphus. ... Swedish garrisons were to be

maintained in Frankenthal, Bacharach, Kaub, and other places;

Mannheim was to be at the disposal of the Swedes so long as

the war should last. ... After the junction of Duke Bernhard

with Horn, the Swedish army,--for so we shall continue to call

it, though composed in great part of Germans,--endeavoured to

penetrate into Bavaria; but the Imperial General Altringer,

aided by John von Werth, a commander of distinction, succeeded

in covering Munich, and enabled Maximilian to return to his

capital. The Swedish generals were also embarrassed by a

mutiny of their mercenaries, as well as by their own

misunderstandings and quarrels; and all that Duke Bernhard was

able to accomplish in the campaign of 1633, besides some

forays into Bavaria, was the capture of Ratisbon in November."

T. H. Dyer,

History of Modern Europe,

book 4, chapter 6 (volume 2).

Wallenstein, meantime, had been doing little. "After a long

period of inaction in Bohemia, he marched during the summer of

1633, with imperial pomp and splendor, into Silesia. There he

found a mixed army of Swedes, Saxons, and Brandenburgers, with

Matthias Thurn, who began the war, among them. Wallenstein

finally shut in this army [at Steinau] so that he might have

captured it; but he let it go, and went back to Bohemia, where

he began to negotiate with Saxony for peace. Meanwhile the

alliance formed at Heilbronn had brought Maximilian of Bavaria

into great distress. Regensburg [Ratisbon], hitherto occupied by

him, and regarded as an outwork of Bavaria and Austria, had

been taken by Bernard of Weimar. But Wallenstein, whom the

emperor sent to the rescue, only went into the Upper

Palatinate, and then returned to Bohemia. He seemed to look

upon that country as a strong and commanding position from

which he could dictate peace. He carried on secret

negotiations with France, Sweden, and all the emperor's

enemies. He had, indeed, the power to do this under his

commission; but his attitude toward his master became

constantly more equivocal. The emperor was anxious to be rid

of him without making him an enemy, and wished to give to his

own son, the young King of Hungary, the command in chief. But

the danger of losing his place drove Wallenstein to bolder

schemes. At his camp at Pilsen, all his principal officers

were induced by him to unite in a written request that he

should in no case desert them--a step which seemed much like a

conspiracy. But some of the generals, as Gallas, Aldringer,

and Piccolomini, soon abandoned Wallenstein, and gave warning

to the emperor. He secretly signed a patent deposing

Wallenstein, and placed it in the hands of Piccolomini and

Gallas, January 24, 1634, but acted with the profoundest

dissimulation until he had made sure of most of the commanders

who served under him. Then, suddenly, on February 18,

Wallenstein, his brother-in-law Tertzski, Ilow, Neumann, and

Kinsky were put under the ban, and the general's possessions

were confiscated. Now, at length, Wallenstein openly revolted,

and began to treat with the Swedes for desertion to them; but

they did not fully trust him. Attended only by five Sclavonic

regiments, who remained faithful to him, he went to Eger,

where he was to meet troops of Bernard of Weimar; but before

he could join them, he and the friends named above were

assassinated, February 25, by traitors who had remained in his

intimate companionship, and whom he trusted, under the command

of Colonel Butler, an Irishman, employed by Piccolomini."

C. T. Lewis,

History of Germany,

chapter 18, section 10.

ALSO IN:

F. Schiller,

History of the Thirty Years' War,

book 4.

J. Mitchell,

Life of Wallenstein,

chapters 8-10.

Sir E. Cust,

Lives of the Warriors of the Thirty Years' War,

part 1.

GERMANY: A, D. 1634-1639.

The Thirty Years War:

Successes of the Imperialists.

Their victory at Nördlingen.

Richelieu and France become active in the war.

Duke Bernhard's conquest of Alsace.

Richelieu's appropriation of the conquest for France.

"Want of union among the Protestants prevented them from

deriving all the benefit which they had at first anticipated

from Wallenstein's death. The King of Hungary assumed the

command of the army, and by the aid of money, which was

plentifully distributed, the soldiers were, without

difficulty, kept in obedience; not the slightest attempt was

any where made to resist the Emperor's orders. On the other

hand, Bernhard of Weimar and Field-Marshal Horn were masters

of Bavaria. In July 1634, they gained a complete victory at

Landshut, over General Altringer, who was slain in the action.

... The Swedes, who had so long been victorious, were, in their

turn, destined to taste the bitterness of defeat. 15,000

Spaniards, under the Cardinal Infant, son of Philip III.,

entered Germany [see NETHERLANDS: A.D. 1621-1633, and

1635-1638], and in conjunction with the imperial army, under

the King of Hungary, laid siege to Nördlingen. Field-Marshal

Horn, and Bernhard of Weimar, hurried to the relief of the

place. Owing to the superiority of the enemy, who was besides

strongly intrenched, the Swedish commanders had no intention

to hazard a battle, before the arrival of the Rhin-graff Count

Otho, with another division of the army, which was already

close at hand; but the impetuosity of the Duke of Weimar lost

every thing.

{1480}

Horn had succeeded in carrying a hill, called the Amsberg, a

strong point, which placed him in communication with the town,

and almost secured the victory. Bernhard, thinking that so

favourable an opening should not be neglected, hurried on to

the attack of another post. It was taken and retaken; both

armies were gradually, and without method, drawn into the

combat, which, after eight hours' duration, ended in the

complete defeat of the Swedes. Horn was made prisoner; and

Bernhard escaped on a borrowed horse. ... The defeat of'

Nördlingen almost ruined the Swedish cause in Germany; the

spell of invincibility was gone, and the effects of the panic

far surpassed those which the sword had produced. Strong

fortresses were abandoned before the enemy came in sight;

provinces were evacuated, and armies, that had been deemed

almost inconquerable, deserted their chiefs, and broke into

bands of lawless robbers, who pillaged their way in every

direction. Bavaria, Suabia and Franconia were lost; and it was

only behind the Rhine that the scattered fugitives could again

be brought into something like order. ... The Emperor refused

to grant the Swedes any other terms of peace than permission

to retire from the empire. The Elector of Saxony, forgetful of

what was due to his religion, and forgetful of all that Sweden

had done for his country, concluded, at Prague, a separate

peace with the Emperor; and soon afterwards joined the

Imperialists against his former allies. The fortunes of the

Protestants would have sunk beneath this additional blow, had

not France come to their aid. Richelieu had before only

nourished the war by means of subsidies, and had, at one time,

become nearly as jealous of the Swedes as of the Austrians;

but no sooner was their power broken, than the crafty priest

took an active share in the contest."

J. Mitchell,

Life of Wallenstein,

chapter 10.

"Richelieu entered resolutely into the contest, and in 1635

displayed enormous diplomatic activity. He wished not only to

reduce Austria, but, at the same time, Spain. Spanish

soldiers, Spanish treasure, and Spanish generals made in great

part the strength of the imperial armies, and Spain besides

never ceased to ferment internal troubles in France. Richelieu

signed the treaty of Compiegne with the Swedes against

Ferdinand II. By its conditions he granted them considerable

subsidies in order that they should continue the war in

Germany. He made the treaty of St. Germain en Laye with

Bernard of Saxe Weimar, to whom he promised an annual

allowance of money as well as Alsace, provided that he should

remain in arms to wrest Franche-Comté from Philip IV. He made

the treaty of Paris with the Dutch, who were to help the King

of France to conquer Flanders, which was to be divided between

France and the United Provinces. He made the treaty of Rivoli

with the dukes of Savoy, of Parma, and of Mantua, who were to

undertake in concert with France the invasion of the

territories of Milan and to receive a portion of the spoils of

Spain. At the same time he declared war against the Spanish

Government, which had arrested and imprisoned the Elector of

Trèves, the ally of France, and refused to surrender him when

demanded. Hostilities immediately began on five different

theatres of war--in the Low Countries, on the Rhine, in

Eastern Germany, in Italy, and in Spain. The army of the

Rhine, commanded by Cardinal de la Valette, was to operate in

conjunction with the corps of Bernard of Saxe Weimar against

the Imperialists, commanded by Count Gallas. To this army

Turenne was attached. It consisted of 20,000 infantry, 5,000

cavalry, and 14 guns. This was the army upon which Richelieu

mainly relied. ... Valette was to annoy the enemy without

exposing himself, and was not to approach the Rhine; but

induced by Bernard, who had a dashing spirit and wished to

reconquer all he had lost, encouraged by the terror of the

Imperialists who raised the siege of Mayence, he determined to

pass the river. He was not long in repenting of that step. He

established his troops round Mayence and revictualled this

place, which was occupied by a Swedish garrison, throwing in

all the supplies of which the town had need. The Imperialists,

who had calculated on this imprudence, immediately took to

cutting off his supplies, so that soon everything was wanting

in the French camp. ... The scourge of famine threatened the

French: it was necessary to retreat, to recross the Rhine, to

pass the Sarre, and seek a refuge at Metz. Few retreats have

been so difficult and so sad. The army was in such a pitiable

condition that round Mayence the men had to be fed with roots

and green grapes, and the horses with branches of trees. ...

The sick and the weary were abandoned, the guns were buried,

villages were burnt to stay the pursuit of the enemy, and to

prevent the wretched soldiers who would fall out of the ranks

from taking refuge in them."

H. M. Hozier,

Turenne,

chapter 2.

"Meanwhile, Saxony had concluded with the Emperor at Pirna, at

the close of 1634, a convention which ripened into a treaty of

alliance, to which almost all the princes of Northern Germany

subscribed, at Prague, in the month of May following. The

Electors of Saxony and Brandenburg were thus changed into

enemies of Sweden. The Swedish General, Banner [or Baner],

who, at the period of the battle of Nördlingen, had been

encamped side by side with the Saxon army on the White Hill

near Prague, had, on the first indication of wavering on the

part of its Elector, managed skilfully to withdraw his troops

from the dangerous proximity. On the 22nd October 1635, he

defeated the Saxon army, at Dömitz on the Elbe, then invaded

Brandenburg, took Havelberg, and even threatened Berlin.

Compelled by the approach of a Saxon and Imperialist army to

quit his prey, he turned and beat the combined army at

Wittstock (24th September 1636). After that battle, he drew

the reinforced Imperialists, commanded by Gallas, after him

into Pomerania; there he caused them great losses by cutting

off their supplies, then forced them back into Saxony, and,

following them up closely, attacked and beat them badly at

Chemnitz (4th April, 1639)." In the south, Duke Bernhard had

gained meantime some solid successes. After his retreat from

Mayence, in 1635, he had concluded his secret treaty with

Richelieu, placing himself wholly at the service of France,

and receiving the promise of 4,000,000 francs yearly, for the

support of his army, and the ultimate sovereignty of Alsace

for himself. "Having concerted measures with La Valette

[1636],  ... he invaded Lorraine, drove the enemy thence,

taking Saarburg and Pfalzburg, and then, entering Alsace, took

Saverne. His career of conquest in Alsace was checked by the

invasion of Burgundy by Gallas, with an army of 40,000 men.

{1481}

Duke Bernhard marched with all haste to Dijon, and forced

Gallas to fall back, with great loss, beyond the Saone

(November 1636). Pursuing his advantages, early the following

year he forced the passage of the Saone at Gray, despite the

vivid resistance of Prince Charles of Lorraine (June 1637),

and pursued that commander as far as Besançon. Reinforced

during the autumn, he marched towards the Upper Rhine, and,

undertaking a winter campaign, captured Lauffenburg, after a

skirmish with John of Werth; then Säckingen and Waldshut, and

laid siege to Rheinfelden. The Imperialist army, led by John

of Werth, succeeded, indeed, after a very hot encounter, in

relieving that place; but three days later Duke Bernhard

attacked and completely defeated it (21st February 1638),

taking prisoners not only John of Werth himself, but the

generals, Savelli, Enkefort, and Sperreuter. The consequences

of this victory were the fall of Rheinfelden, Rötteln,

Neuenberg, and Freiburg. Duke Bernhard then laid siege to

Breisach (July 1638). ... The Imperial general, Götz, advanced

at the head of a force considerably outnumbering that of Duke

Bernhard. Leaving a portion of his army before the place, Duke

Bernhard then drew to himself Turenne, who was lying in the

vicinity with 3,000 men, fell upon the Imperialists at

Wittenweiher (30th July), completely defeated them, and

captured their whole convoy. Another Imperialist army, led by

the Duke of Lorraine in person, shared a similar fate at

Thann, in the Sundgau, on the 4th October following. Götz, who

was hastening with a strengthened army to support the Duke of

Lorraine, attacked Duke Bernhard ten days later, but was

repulsed with great loss. Breisach capitulated on the 7th

December. Duke Bernhard took possession of it in his own name,

and foiled all the efforts of Richelieu to secure it for

France, by garrisoning it with German soldiers. To compensate

the French Cardinal Minister for Breisach, Duke Bernhard

undertook a winter campaign to drive the Imperialists from

Franche-Comté. Entering that province at the end of December,

he speedily made himself master of its richest part. He then

returned to Alsace with the resolution to cross the Rhine and

carry the war once again into Bavaria," and then, in junction

with Banner, to Vienna. "He had made all the necessary

preparations for this enterprise, had actually sent his army

across the Rhine, when he died very suddenly, not without

suspicion of poison, at Neuberg am Rhein (8th July, 1639). The

lands he had conquered he bequeathed to his brother. ... But

Richelieu paid no attention to the wishes of the dead general.

Before any of the family could interfere, he had secured all

the fortresses in Alsace, even Breisach, which was its key,

for France."

G. B. Malleson,

The Battle-fields of Germany,

chapter 5.

"During [1639] Piccolomini, at the head of the Imperialist and

Spanish troops, gave battle to the French at Diedenhofen. The

battle took place on the 7th of June, and the French were

beaten and suffered great losses."

A. Gindely,

History of the Thirty Years' War,

chapter 8.

ALSO IN:

Sir E. Cust,

Lives of the Warriors of the Thirty Years' War,

part 2.

S. R. Gardiner,

The Thirty Years' War,

chapter 9, section 5.

GERMANY: A. D. 1635-1638.

The Thirty Years War:

Campaigns in the Netherlands.

The Dutch and French against the Spaniards.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1635-1638.

GERMANY: A. D. 1636-1637.

Diet at Ratisbon.

Attempted negotiations of peace.

Death of the Emperor Ferdinand II

"An electoral diet was assembled at Ratisbon, by the emperor

in person, on the 15th of September, 1636, for the ostensible

purpose of restoring peace, for which some vague negotiations

had been opened under the mediation of the pope and the king

of Denmark, and congresses appointed at Hamburgh and Cologne;

but with the real view of procuring the election of his son

Ferdinand as king of the Romans. ... Ferdinand was elected

with only the fruitless protest of the Palatine family, and

the dissenting voice of the elector of Treves. ... The emperor

did not long survive this happy event. He died on the 15th of

February, 1637. ... Ferdinand ... seems to have been the first

who formally established the right of primogeniture in all his

hereditary territories. By his testament, dated May 10th.

1621, he ordered that all his Austrian dominions should

devolve on his eldest male descendant, and fixed the majority

at 18 years."

W. Coxe,

History of the House of Austria,

chapter 56 (volume 2).

GERMANY: A. D. 1637.

Election of the Emperor Ferdinand III.

GERMANY: A. D. 1640-1645.

The Thirty Years War:

Campaigns of Baner and Torstenson.

The second Breitenfeld.

Jankowitz.

Mergentheim.

Allerheim.

War in Denmark.

Swedish army in Austria.

Saxony forced to neutrality.

"The war still went on for eight years, but the only influence

that it exerted upon the subsequent Peace was that it overcame

the last doubts of the Imperial court as to the indispensable

principles of the Peace. ... The first event of importance on

the theatre of war after Bernhard's death was Baner's attempt

to join the army of Weimar in central Germany. Not in a

condition to pass the winter in Bohemia, and threatened in

Saxony and Silesia, he ... commenced [March, 1640] a retreat

amidst fearful devastations, crossed the Elbe at Leitmeritz,

and arrived April 3rd at Zwickau. He succeeded in joining with

the mercenaries of Weimar and the troops of Lüneburg and Hesse

at Saalfeld;" but no joint action was found possible. "Until

December, the war on both sides consisted of marches hither

and thither, accompanied with horrible devastation; but

nothing decisive occurred. In September the Diet met at

Ratisbon. While wearisome attempts were being made to bend the

obstinacy of Austria, Baner resolved to compel her to yield by

a bold stroke, to invade the Upper Palatinate, to surprise

Ratisbon, and to put an end to the Diet and Emperor together.

... Not without difficulty Guebriant [commanding the French in

Alsace] was induced to follow, and to join Baner at Erfurt.

... But the surprise of Ratisbon was a failure. ... The armies

now separated again. Baner exhausted his powers of persuasion

in vain to induce Guebriant to go with him. The French went

westward. Hard pressed himself, Baner proceeded by forced

marches towards Bohemia, and by the end of March reached

Zwickau, where he met Guebriant again, and they had a sharp

conflict with the Imperialists on the Saal. There Baner died,

on the 21st of May, 1641, leaving his army in a most critical

condition, The warfare of the Swedish-French arms was come to

a standstill.

{1482}

Both armies were near dissolution, when, in November,

Torstenson, the last of the Gustavus Adolphus school of

generals, and the one who most nearly equalled the master,

appeared with the Swedish army, and by a few vigorous strokes,

which followed each other with unexampled rapidity, restored

the supremacy of its arms. ... After three months of rest,

which he mainly devoted to the reorganization and payment of

his army, by the middle of January [1642] he had advanced

towards the Elbe and the Altmark; and as the Imperial forces

were weakened by sending troops to the Rhine, he formed the

great project of proceeding through Silesia to the Austrian

hereditary dominions. On April 3rd he crossed the Elbe at

Werben, between the Imperial troops, increased his army to

20,000 men, stormed Glogau on May 4th, stood before

Schweidnitz on the 30th, and defeated Francis Albert of

Lauenburg; Schweidnitz, Neisse, and Oppeln fell into his

hands. Meanwhile Guebriant, after subduing the defiant and

mutinous spirit of his troops by means of money and promises,

had, on January 17th, defeated the Imperialists near Kempen,

not far from Crefeld [at Hulst], for which he was honoured

with the dignity of marshal. But this was a short-lived gleam

of light, and was soon followed by dark days, occasioned by

want of money and discontent in the camp. ... He had turned

eastward from the Rhine to seek quarters for his murmuring

troops in nether Germany, when Torstenson effected a decision

in Saxony. After relieving Glogau, and having in vain tried to

enter Bohemia, he had joined the detachments of Königsmark and

Wrangel, and on October 30th he appeared before Leipzig. On

November 2nd there was a battle near Breitenfeld, which ended

in a disastrous defeat of the Imperialists and Leipzig

surrendered to Torstenson three weeks afterwards. In spite of

all the advantages which Torstenson gained for himself, it

never came to a united action with the French; and the first

victory won by the French in the Netherlands, in May, 1643,

did not alter this state of things. Torstenson ... was

suddenly called to a remote scene of war in the north. King

Christian IV. of Denmark had been persuaded, by means of the

old Danish jealousy of Sweden, to take up arms for the

Emperor. He declared war just as Torstenson was proceeding to

Austria. Vienna was now saved; but so much the worse for

Denmark. In forced marches, which were justly admired,

Torstenson set out from Silesia towards Denmark at the end of

October, conducted a masterly campaign against the Danes, beat

them wherever he met with them, conquered Holstein and

Schleswig, pushed on to Jutland, then, while Wrangel and Horn

carried on the war (till the peace of Brömsebro, August,

1645), he returned and again took up the war against the

Imperialists, everywhere an unvanquished general. The

Imperialists under the incompetent Gallas intended to give

Denmark breathing-time by creating a diversion; but it did not

save Denmark, and brought another defeat upon themselves.

Gallas did not bring back more than 2,000 men from Magdeburg

to Bohemia, and they were in a very disorganized state. He was

pursued by Torstenson, while Ragoczy threatened Hungary. The

Emperor hastily collected what forces he could command, and

resolved to give battle. Torstenson had advanced as far as

Glattau in February, and on March 6th, 1645, a battle was

fought near Jankowitz, three miles from Tabor. It was the most

brilliant victory ever gained by the Swedes. The Imperial army

was cut to pieces; several of its leaders imprisoned or

killed. In a few weeks Torstenson conquered Moravia and

Austria as far as the Danube. Not far from the capital itself

he took possession of the Wolfsbrücke. As in 1618, Vienna was

in great danger." But the ill-success of the French "always

counterbalanced the Swedes' advantages. Either they were

beaten just as the Swedes were victorious, or could not turn a

victory to account. So it was during this year [1645]. The

west frontier of the empire was guarded on the imperial side

by Mercy, together with John of Werth, after he was liberated

from prison. On 26th March, Turenne crossed the Rhine, and

advanced towards Franconia. There he encamped near Mergentheim

and Rosenberg. On 5th May, a battle near Mergentheim ended

with the entire defeat of the French, and Turenne escaped with

the greatest difficulty by way of Hammelburg, towards Fulda.

The victors pushed on to the Rhine. To avenge this defeat,

Enghien was sent from Paris, and, at the beginning of July,

arrived at Spires, with 12,000 men. His forces, together with

Königsmark's, the remnant of Turenne's and the Hessians,

amounted to 30,000 men. At first Mercy dexterously avoided a

battle under unfavourable circumstances, but on August 3d the

contest was inevitable. A bloody battle was fought between

Nördlingen and Donauwörth, near Allerheim [called the battle

of Nordlingen, by the French], which was long doubtful, but,

after tremendous losses, resulted in the victory of the

French. Mercy's fall, Werth's imprudent advance, and a final

brave assault of the Hessians, decided the day. But the

victors were so weakened that they could not fully take

advantage of it. Condé was ill; and in the autumn Turenne was

compelled, not without perceptible damage to the cause, to

retreat with his army to the Neckar and the Rhine. Neither had

Torstenson been able to maintain his position in Austria. He

had been obliged to raise the siege of Brunn, and learnt at

the same time that Ragoczy had just made peace with the

Emperor. Obliged to retire to Bohemia, he found his forces

considerably diminished. Meanwhile, Kônigsmark had won an

important advantage. While Torstenson was in Austria he gained

a firm footing in Saxony. Then came the news of Allerheim, and

of the peace of Brömsebro. Except Dresden and Königstein, all

the important points were in the hands of the Swedes; so, on

the 6th of September [1645], the Elector John George concluded

a treaty of neutrality for six months. Besides money and

supplies, the Swedes received Leipzig, Torgau, and the right

of passage through the country. Meanwhile, Torstenson had

retreated into the north-east of Bohemia, and severe physical

sufferings compelled him to give up the command. He was

succeeded by Charles Gustavus Wrangel."

L. Hausser,

The Period of the Reformation,

1517 to 1648, chapter 39.

ALSO IN:

W. Coxe,

History of the House of Austria,

chapter 58 (volume 2).

GERMANY: A. D. 1642-1643.

The Thirty Years War:

Condé's victory at Rocroi and campaign on the Moselle.

See FRANCE: A.D. 1642-1648, and 1643.

{1483}

GERMANY: A. D. 1643-1644.

The Thirty Years War:

Campaigns of Turenne and Condé against Merci, on the Upper

Rhine.

Dütlingen.

Freiburg.

Philipsburg.

"After the death of Bernard of Saxe Weimar, Marshal Guébriant

had been placed in command of the troops of Weimar. He had

besieged and taken Rottweil in Suabia, but had there been

killed. Rantzau, who succeeded him in command of the Weimar

army, marched (24-25 November, 1643) upon Dütlingen [or

Tuttlingen], on the Upper Rhine, was there beaten by Mercy and

made prisoner, with the loss of many officers and 7,000

soldiers. This was a great triumph for the Bavarians; a

terrible disaster for France. The whole of the German infantry

in the French service was dispersed or taken, the cavalry

retreated as they best could upon the Rhine. ... Circumstances

required active measures. Plenipotentiaries had just assembled

at Münster to begin the negotiations which ended with the

peace of Westphalia. It was desired that the French Government

should support the French diplomatist by quick successes. ...

Turenne was sent to the Rhine with reinforcements. ... He

re-established discipline, and breathed into [the army] a new

spirit. ... At the same time, by negotiations, the prisoners

who had been taken at Dütlingen were restored to France, the

gaps in the ranks were filled up, and in the spring of 1644

Turenne found himself at the head of 9,000 men, of whom 5,000

were cavalry, and was in a position to take the field." He

"pushed through the Black Forest, and near the source of the

Danube gained a success over a Bavarian detachment. For some

reason which is not clear he threw a garrison into Freiburg,

and retired across the Rhine. Had he remained near the town he

would have prevented Mercy from investing it. So soon as

Turenne was over the river, Mercy besieged Freiburg, and

although Turenne advanced to relieve the place, a stupid error

of some of his infantry made him fail, and Freiburg

capitulated to Mercy."

H. M. Hozier,

Turenne,

chapter 3 and 5.

"Affairs being in so bad a state about the Black Forest, the

Great Condé, at that time Duc d'Enghien, was brought up, with

10,000 men; thus raising the French to a number above the

enemy's. He came crowned with the immortal laurels of Rocroi;

and in virtue of his birth, as a prince of the blood-royal,

took precedence of the highest officers in the service. Merci,

a capable and daring general, aware of his inferiority, now

posted himself a short distance from Freyburg, in a position

almost inaccessible. He garnished it with felled trees and

intrenchments, mountains, woods, and marshes, which of

themselves defied attack." Turenne advocated a flank movement,

instead of a direct assault upon Merci's position; but Condé,

reckless of his soldiers' lives, persisted in leading them

against the enemy's works. "A terrible action ensued (August

3, 1644). Turenne made a long detour through a defile; Condé,

awaiting his arrival on the ground, postponed the assault till

three hours before sunset, and then ascended the steep. Merci

had the worse, and retreated to a fresh position on the Black

Mountain, where he successfully repulsed for one day Condé's

columns (August 5). In this action Gaspard Merci was killed.

Condé now adopted the flank movement, which, originally

recommended by Turenne, would have saved much bloodshed; and

Merci, hard pressed, escaped by a rapid retreat, leaving

behind him his artillery and baggage (August 9). These are the

'three days of Freyburg.' To retake the captured Freyburg after

their victory ... was the natural suggestion first heard." But

Turenne persuaded Condé that the reduction of Philipsburg was

more important. "Philipsburg was taken after a short siege;

and its fall was accompanied by the submission of the adjacent

towns of Germersheim, Speier, Worms, Mentz, Oppenheim and

Landau. Condé at this conjuncture left the Upper Rhine, and

took away his regiments with him."

T. O. Cockayne,

Life of Turenne,

pages 20-22.

ALSO IN:

G. B. Malleson,

The Battle-fields of Germany,

chapter 6.

GERMANY: A. D. 1646-1648.

The Thirty Years War:

Its final campaigns.

The sufferings of Bavaria.

Truce and peace negotiations initiated by the Elector

Maximilian.

The ending of the war at Prague.

"The retreat of the French [after the battle of Allerheim]

enabled the enemy to turn his whole force upon the Swedes in

Bohemia. Gustavus Wrangel, no unworthy successor of Banner and

Torstensohn, had, in 1646, been appointed Commander-in-chief

of the Swedish army. ... The Archduke, after reinforcing his

army ... moved against Wrangel, in the hope of being able to

overwhelm him by his superior force before Koenigsmark could

join him, or the French effect a diversion in his favour.

Wrangel, however, did not await him." He moved through Upper

Saxony and Hesse, to Weimar, where he was joined by the flying

corps of Koenigsmark. Finally, after much delay, he was joined

likewise by Turenne and the French. "The junction took place

at Giessen, and they now felt themselves strong enough to meet

the enemy. The latter had followed the Swedes into Hesse, in

order to intercept their commissariat, and to prevent their

union with Turenne. In both designs they had been

unsuccessful; and the Imperialists now saw themselves cut off

from the Maine, and exposed to great scarcity and want from

the loss of their magazines. Wrangel took advantage of their

weakness to execute a plan by which he hoped to give a new

turn to the war. ... He determined to follow the course of the

Danube, and to break into the Austrian territories through the

midst of Bavaria. ... He moved hastily, ... defeated a

Bavarian corps near Donauwerth, and passed that river, as well

as the Lech, unopposed. But by wasting his time in the

unsuccessful siege of Augsburg, he gave opportunity to the

Imperialists, not only to relieve that city, but also to

repulse him as far as Lauingen. No sooner, however, had they

turned towards Suabia, with a view to remove the war from

Bavaria, than, seizing the opportunity, he repassed the Lech,

and guarded the passage of it against the Imperialists

themselves. Bavaria now lay open and defenceless before him;

the French and Swedes quickly overran it; and the soldiery

indemnified themselves for all dangers by frightful outrages,

robberies, and extortions. The arrival of the Imperial troops,

who at last succeeded in passing the Lech at Thierhaupten,

only increased the misery of this country, which friend and

foe indiscriminately plundered. And now, for the first time

during the whole course of this war, the courage of

Maximilian, which for eight-and-twenty years had stood

unshaken amidst fearful dangers, began to waver. Ferdinand

II., his school-companion at Ingolstadt, and the friend of his

youth, was no more; and, with the death of his friend and

benefactor, the strong tie was dissolved which had linked the

Elector to the House of Austria. ...

{1484}

Accordingly, the motives which the artifices of France now put

in operation, in order to detach him from the Austrian

alliance, and to induce him to lay down his arms, were drawn

entirely from political considerations. ... The Elector of

Bavaria was unfortunately led to believe that the Spaniards

alone were disinclined to peace, and that nothing but Spanish

influence had induced the Emperor so long to resist a

cessation of hostilities. Maximilian detested the Spaniards,

and could never forgive their having opposed his application

for the Palatine Electorate. ... All doubts disappeared; and,

convinced of the necessity of this step, he thought he should

sufficiently discharge his obligations to the Emperor if he

invited him also to share in the benefit of the truce. The

deputies of the three crowns, and of Bavaria, met at Ulm, to

adjust the conditions. But it was soon evident, from the

instructions of the Austrian ambassador, that it was not the

intention of the Emperor to second the conclusion of a truce,

but if possible· to prevent it. ... The good intentions of the

Elector of Bavaria, to include the Emperor in the benefit of

the truce, having been thus rendered unavailing, he felt

himself justified in providing for his own safety. ... He

agreed to the Swedes extending their quarters in Suabia and

Franconia, and to his own being restricted to Bavaria and the

Palatinate. The conquests which he had made in Suabia were

ceded to the allies, who, on their part, restored to him what

they had taken from Bavaria. Cologne and Hesse Cassel were

also included in the truce. After the conclusion of this

treaty, upon the 14th March, 1647, the French and Swedes left

Bavaria. ... Turenne, according to agreement, marched into

Wurtemburg, where he forced the Landgrave of Darmstadt and the

Elector of Mentz to imitate the example of Bavaria, and to

embrace the neutrality. And now, at last, France seemed to

have attained the great object of its policy, that of

depriving the Emperor of the support of the League, and of his

Protestant allies. ... But ... after a brief crisis, the

fallen power of Austria rose again to a formidable strength.

The jealousy which France entertained of Sweden, prevented it

from permitting the total ruin of the Emperor, or allowing the

Swedes to obtain such a preponderance in Germany, which might

have been destructive to France herself. Accordingly, the

French minister declined to take advantage of the distresses

of Austria; and the army of Turenne, separating from that of

Wrangel, retired to the frontiers of the Netherlands. Wrangel,

indeed, after moving from Suabia into Franconia, taking

Schweinfurt, ... attempted to make his way into Bohemia, and

laid siege to Egra, the key of that kingdom. To relieve this

fortress, the Emperor, put his last army in motion, and placed

himself at its head. But ... on his arrival Egra was already

taken." Meantime the Emperor had engaged in intrigues with the

Bavarian officers and had nearly seduced the whole army of the

Elector. The latter discovered this conspiracy in time to

thwart it; but he now suddenly, on his own behalf, struck

hands with the Emperor again, and threw over his late

agreements with the Swedes and French. "He had not derived

from the truce the advantages he expected. Far from tending to

accelerate a general peace, it had a pernicious influence upon

the negociations at Munster and Osnaburg, and had made the

allies bolder in their demands." Maximilian, therefore,

renounced the truce and began hostilities anew. "This

resolution, and the assistance which he immediately despatched

to the Emperor in Bohemia, threatened materially to injure the

Swedes, and Wrangel was compelled in haste to evacuate that

kingdom. He retired through Thuringia into Westphalia and

Lunenburg, in the hope of forming a junction with the French

army under Turenne, while the Imperial and Bavarian army

followed him to the Weser, under Melander and Gronsfeld. His

ruin was inevitable if the enemy should overtake him before

his junction with Turenne; but the same consideration which

had just saved the Emperor now proved the salvation of the

Swedes. ... The Elector of Bavaria could not allow the Emperor

to obtain so decisive a preponderance as, by the sudden

alteration of affairs, might delay the chances of a general

peace. ... Now that the power of the Emperor threatened once

more to attain a dangerous superiority, Maximilian at once

ceased to pursue the Swedes. ... Melander, prevented by the

Bavarians from further pursuing Wrangel, crossed by Jena and

Erfurt into Hesse. ... In this exhausted country, his army was

oppressed by want, while Wrangel was recruiting his strength,

and remounting his cavalry in Lunenburg. Too weak to maintain

his wretched quarters against the Swedish general, when he

opened the campaign in the winter of 1648, and marched against

Hesse, he was obliged to retire with disgrace, and take refuge

on the banks of the Danube. ... Turenne received permission to

join the Swedes; and the last campaign of this eventful war

was now opened by the united armies. Driving Melander before

them along the Danube, they threw supplies into Egra, which

was besieged by the Imperialists, and defeated the Imperial

and Bavarian armies on the Danube, which ventured to oppose

them at Susmarshausen, where Melander was mortally wounded."

They then forced a passage of the Lech, at the point where

Gustavus Adolphus formerly overcame Tilly, and ravaged Bavaria

once more; while nothing but a prolonged rain-storm, which

flooded the Inn, saved Austria from a similar devastation.

Koenigsmark, with his flying corps, entered Bohemia,

penetrated to Prague and surprised and captured the lesser

side of the city (the Kleinsite), thus acquiring the

reputation of "closing the Thirty Years' War by the last

brilliant achievement. This decisive stroke, which vanquished

the Emperor's irresolution, cost the Swedes only the loss of a

single man. But the old town, the larger half of Prague, which

is divided into two parts by the Moldau, by its vigorous

resistance wearied out the efforts of the Palatine, Charles

Gustavus, the successor of Christina on the throne, who had

arrived from Sweden with fresh troops. ... The approach of

winter at last drove the besiegers into their quarters, and in

the meantime the intelligence arrived that a peace had been

signed at Munster, on the 24th October,"--the "solemn and ever

memorable and sacred treaty which is known by the name of the

Peace of Westphalia."

F. Schiller,

History of the Thirty Years' War,

book 5.

ALSO IN:

G. B. Malleson,

The Battle-fields of Germany,

chapter 7.

{1485}

GERMANY: The Thirty Years War:

Its horrors.

Its destructiveness.

The state of the country at its close.

"The materials of which the armies were composed passed

inevitably from bad to worse. This, which had been a civil war

at the first, did not continue such for long; or rather it

united presently all the dreadfulness of a civil war and a

foreign. It was not long before the hosts which trampled the

German soil had in large part ceased to be German; every

region of Europe sending of its children, and, as it would

seem, of those whom it must have been gladdest to be rid of,

to swell the ranks of the destroyers. ... From all quarters

they came trooping, not singly, but in whole battalions. ...

All armies draw after them a train of camp-followers; they are

a plague which in the very nature of things is inevitable. But

never perhaps did this evil rise to so enormous a height as

now. Toward the close of this War an Imperial army of 40,000

men was found to be attended by the ugly accompaniment of

140,000 of these. The conflict had in fact by this time lasted

so long that the soldiery had become as a distinct nation,

camping in the midst of another; and the march of an army like

the migration of some wild nomade horde, moving with wives and

children through the land. And not with these only. There were

others too in its train, as may easily be supposed. ... It is

a thought to make one shudder, the passage of one of these

armies with its foul retinue through some fair and smiling and

well-ordered region--what it found, and what it must have left

it, and what its doings there will have been. Bear in mind

that there was seldom in these armies any attempt whatever at

a regular commissariat; rations being never issued except to

the actual soldiers, and most irregularly to them; that the

soldier's pay too was almost always enormously in arrear, so

that he could not purchase even if he would. ... It was indeed

the bitterest irony of all, that this War, which claimed at the

outset to be waged for the highest religious objects, for the

glory of God and for the highest interests of His Church,

should be signalized ere long by a more shameless treading

under foot of all laws human and divine, disgraced by worse

and wickeder outrages against God, and against man, the image

of God, than probably any war which modern Christendom has

seen. The three master sins of our fallen nature, hate, lust,

and covetousness, were all rampant to the full. ... Soon it

became evident that there was no safety in almost any

remoteness from that which might be the scene of warfare at

the actual moment. When all in their immediate neighbourhood

was wasted, armed bands variously disguised, as merchants, as

gipsies, as travellers, or sometimes as women, would penetrate

far into the land. ... Nor was the condition of the larger

towns much better. ... It did not need actual siege or capture

to make them acquainted with the miseries of the time. With no

draught-cattle to bring firewood in, there was no help for it

but that abandoned houses, by degrees whole streets, and

sometimes the greater part of a town, should be pulled down to

prevent those of its inhabitants who remained from perishing

by cold, the city thus living upon and gradually consuming

itself. ... Under conditions like these, it is not wonderful

that the fields were left nearly or altogether untilled; for

who would sow what he could never hope to reap? ... What

wonder that famine, thus invited, should before long have

arrived? ... Persons were found dead in the fields with grass

in their mouths; while the tanners' and knackers' yards were

beset for the putrid carcasses of beasts; the multitudes,

fierce with hunger, hardly enduring to wait till the skin had

been stript away. The bodies of malefactors, broken on the

wheel, were secretly removed to serve for food; or men climbed

up the gibbets, and tore down the bodies which were suspended

there, and devoured them. This, indeed, was a supply which was

not likely to fail. ... Prisoners in Alsace were killed that

they might be eaten. Children were enticed from home. ...

Putting all together, it is not too much to say that the

crowning horrors of Samaria, of Jerusalem, of Saguntum, found

their parallels, and often worse than their parallels, in

Christian Germany only two centuries ago. I had thought at one

time that there were isolated examples of these horrors, one

here, one there, just enough to warrant the assertion that

such things were done; but my conviction now is that they were

very frequent indeed, and in almost every part of the land.

... Districts which had for centuries been in the occupation

of civilized men were repossessed by forests. ... When Peace

was at length proclaimed, and Germany had leisure to take an

inventory of her losses, it was not altogether impossible to

make a rude and rough estimate. ... The statistics, so far as

they were got together, tell a terrible tale. ... Of the

population it was found that three-fourths, in some parts a

far larger proportion, had perished; or, not having perished,

were not less effectually lost to their native land, having

fled to Switzerland, to Holland, and to other countries, never

to return from them again. Thus in one group of twenty

villages which had not exceptionally suffered, 85 per cent.,

or more than four-fifths of the inhabitants, had disappeared.

... Of the houses, three-fourths were destroyed. ... Careful

German writers assure us that there are districts which at

this present day [1872] have just attained the population, the

agricultural wealth, the productive powers which they had when

the War commenced."

R. C. Trench,

Gustavus Adolphus in Germany, and other

Lectures on the Thirty Years' War,

lectures 3 and 5.

See, also, BOHEMIA: A. D. 1621-1648.

GERMANY: A. D. 1648.

The Peace of Westphalia.

Cession of Alsace to France.

Separation of Switzerland from the Empire.

Loosening of the constitutional bonds of the Empire.

"The opening of the peace negotiations between the Emperor and

his enemies was ... fixed for the 25th of March, 1642, and the

cities of Münster and Osnabrück as the places of the sitting;

but neither in this year nor in the next did it take place. It

was not until the year 1644 that in the former of these

cities" were assembled the following: The Papal Nuncio and the

envoy of the Republic of Venice, acting as mediators, two

imperial ambassadors, two representatives of France, three of

Spain, and the Catholic Electors; later came also the Catholic

Princes. To Osnabrück, Sweden sent two ambassadors and France

three, while the Electors, the German Princes and the imperial

cities were represented. Questions of etiquette, which demanded

prior settlement, occupied months, and serious matters when

reached were dealt with slowly and jealously, with many

interruptions. It was not until the 24th of October, 1648,

that the articles of peace forming the two treaties of Münster

and Osnabrück, and known together as the Peace of Westphalia,

were signed by all the negotiators at Münster.

{1486}

The more important of the provisions of the two instruments

were the following "To France was secured the perpetual

possession of the Bishoprics of Metz, Toul, and Verdun, as

also Moyenvic and Pignerol, with the right to keep a garrison

in Philipsburg, and finally Breisach, Alsace, with its ten

imperial cities, and the Sundgau. The Emperor bound himself to

gain the assent of the Archduke Ferdinand, of Tyrol and Spain,

to this last-named cession. France made good to the Archduke this

loss by the payment of 3,000,000 francs. Although it was not

expressly provided that the connection with the Empire of the

German provinces ceded to France should be dissolved, yet the

separation became, as a matter of fact, a complete one. The

Emperor did not summon the Kings of France to the Diets of the

Empire, and the latter made no demand for such summons. ... In

relation to Italy, the French treaty provided that the peace

concluded in 1631 [see ITALY: A. D. 1627-1631] should remain

in force, except the part relating to Pignerol. ['Pinerolo was

definitely put under the French overlordship.']

G. W. Kitchin,

History of France,

volume 3, page 98.

Switzerland was made independent of the German Empire; but the

Circle of Burgundy [the Spanish Netherlands and Franche-Comté]

was still to form a part of the Empire, and after the close of

the war between France and Spain, in which the Emperor and the

Empire were to take no part, was to be included in the peace.

No aid was to be rendered to the Duke of Lorraine against

France, although the Emperor and the Empire were left free to

mediate for him a peace. Sweden received Hither Pomerania,

including the Island of Rügen, from Further Pomerania the

Island of Wollin and several cities, with their surroundings,

among which were Stettin, as also the expectancy of Further

Pomerania in case of the extinction of the house of

Brandenburg. Furthermore, it received the city of Wismar, in

Mecklenburg, and the Bishoprics of Bremen [secularized and

made a Grand Duchy] and Verden, with reservation of the rights

and immunities of the city of Bremen. Sweden was to hold all

the ceded territory as feudal tenures of the Empire, and be

represented for them in the Imperial Diet. ... Brandenburg

received for its loss of Pomerania the Bishoprics of

Halberstadt, Minden, and Camin, and the expectancy of that of

Magdeburg as soon as this should become vacant by the death of

its Administrator, the Saxon Prince, although the four

bailiwicks separated from it were to remain with Saxony as

provided in the Peace of Prague. ... The house of

Brunswick-Lüneberg was to renounce its right to the

coadjutorship of Magdeburg, Bremen, Halberstadt, and

Ratzeburg, and, in return for this renunciation, was to

alternate with a Catholic prelate in the possession of the

Bishopric of Osnabrück. ... To Duke Maximilian of Bavaria was

conveyed the Electorate, together with the Upper Palatinate,

to be hereditary in his family of the line of William, for

which he, on the other hand, was to surrender to the Emperor

the account of the 13,000,000 florins which he had made for

the execution of the sentence against the Palsgrave Frederic.

To the Palsgrave, Charles Lewis, son of the proscribed Elector

[Frederic, who had died in 1632], was given back the Lower

Palatinate, while a new Electorate, the eighth, was created

for him. ... There were numerous provisions relating to the

restoration of the Dukes of Würtemberg, the Margraves of

Baden, and the Counts of Nassau and those of Hanau to several

parts of the territories which either belonged to them or were

contested. A general amnesty was indeed provided, and everyone

was to be restored to the possession of the lands which he had

held before the war. This general article was, however,

limited by various special provisions, as that in relation to

the Palsgrave, and was not to be applied to Austria at all.

... Specially important are the sections which relate to the

settlement of religious grievances. The treaty of Passau and

the Augsburg religious peace were confirmed; the 1st of

January, 1624, was fixed as the time which was to govern

mutual reclamations between the Catholics and Protestants;

both parties were secured the right to all ecclesiastical

foundations, whether in mediate or immediate connection with

the Empire, which they severally held in possession on the

first day of January, 1624; if any such had been taken from

them after this date, restoration was to be made, unless

otherwise specially provided. The Ecclesiastical Reservation

was acknowledged by the Protestants, and Protestant holders of

ecclesiastical property were freely admitted to the Imperial

Diets. The right of reformation was conceded to the Estates,

and permission to emigrate to the subjects; while it was at

the same time provided that, if in 1624 Protestant subjects of

Catholic Princes, or the reverse, enjoyed freedom of religion,

this right should not in the future be diminished. It was

specially granted for Silesia that all the concessions which

had been made before the war to the Dukes of Liegnitz,

Münsterburg, and Oels, and to the city of Breslau, relating to

the free exercise of the Augsburg Confession, should remain in

force. ... Finally, the Reformed--that is, the adherents of

Calvinism--were placed upon the same ground with those of the

Augsburg Confession; and it was provided that if a Lutheran

Estate of the Empire should become a Calvinist, or the

reverse, his subjects should not be forced to change with

their Prince."

A. Gindely,

History of the Thirty Years' War,'

volume 2, chapter 10.

"The emperor, in his own name, and in behalf of his family and

the 'empire, ceded the full sovereignty of Upper and Lower

Alsace, with the prefecture of Haguenau, or the ten towns

[Haguenau, Schelestadt, Weissemburgh, Colmar, Landau,

Oberenheim, Rosheim, Munster in the Val de St. Gregoire,

Kaiserberg, and Turingheim], and their dependencies. But by

one of those contradictions which are common in treaties, when

both parties wish to preserve their respective claims, another

article was introduced, binding the king of France to leave

the ecclesiastics and immediate nobility of those provinces in

the immediacy which they had hitherto possessed with regard to

the Roman empire, and not to pretend to any sovereignty over

them, but to remain content with such rights as belonged to

the house of Austria. Yet this was again contradicted by a

declaration, that this exception should not derogate from the

supreme sovereignty before yielded to the king of France."

W. Coxe,

History of the House of Austria,

chapter 59 (volume 2).

{1487}

"Respecting the rights of sovereignty due to the princes and

the relations of the states of the empire with the emperor,

the Peace of Westphalia contained such regulations as must in

the course of time produce a still greater relaxation of those

ties, already partially loosened, which held together the

empire in one entirety. ... At the Peace of Westphalia the

independence of the princes was made completely legal. They

received the entire right of sovereignty over their territory,

together with the power of making war, concluding peace, and

forming alliances among themselves, as well as with foreign

powers, provided such alliances were not to the injury of the

empire. But what a feeble obstacle must this clause have

presented? For henceforward, if a prince of the empire, having

formed an alliance with a foreign power, became hostile to the

emperor, he could immediately avail himself of the pretext

that it was for the benefit of the empire, the maintenance of

his rights, and the liberty of Germany. And in order that the

said pretext might, with some appearance of right, be made

available on every occasion, foreigners established themselves

as the guardians of the empire; and accordingly France and

Sweden took upon themselves the responsibility of legislating

as guarantees, not only for the Germanic constitution, but for

everything else that was concluded in the Peace of Westphalia

at Münster and Osnaburg. Added to this, in reference to the

imperial cities, whose rights had hitherto never been

definitively fixed, it was now declared that they should

always be included under the head of the other states, and

that they should command a decisive voice in the diets;

thenceforth, therefore, their votes and those of the other

states--the electoral and other princes--should be of equal

validity."

F. Kohlrausch,

History of Germany,

chapter 26.

Peace between Spain and the United Provinces was embodied in a

separate treaty, but negotiated at Münster, and concluded and

signed a few months earlier in the same year. The war between

Spain and France went on.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1646-1648.

GERMANY: A. D. 1648.

Effects of the Peace of Westphalia on the Empire.

It becomes a loose confederacy and purely German.

"It may ... be said of this famous peace, as of the other

so-called 'fundamental law of the Empire,' the Golden Bull,

that it did no more than legalize a condition of things

already in existence, but which by being legalized acquired

new importance. ... While the political situation, to use a

current phrase, had changed within the last two hundred years,

the eyes with which men regarded it had changed still more.

Never by their fiercest enemies in earlier times, not once by

the Popes or Lombard republicans in the heat of their strife

with the Franconian and Swabian Cæsars, had the Emperors been

reproached as mere German kings, or their claim to be the

lawful heirs of Rome denied. The Protestant jurists of the

16th or rather of the 17th century were the first persons who

ventured to scoff at the pretended lordship of the world, and

declare their Empire to be nothing more than a German

monarchy, in dealing with which no superstitious reverence

need prevent its subjects from making the best terms they

could for themselves, and controlling a sovereign whose

religious predilections made him the friend of their enemies.

... It was by these views ... that the states, or rather

France and Sweden acting on their behalf, were guided in the

negotiations of Osnabrück and Münster. By extorting a full

recognition of the sovereignty of all the princes, Catholics

and Protestants alike, in their respective territories, they

bound the Emperor from any direct interference with the

administration, either in particular districts or throughout

the Empire. All affairs of public importance, including the

rights of making war or peace, of levying contributions,

raising troops, building fortresses, passing or interpreting

laws, were henceforth to be left entirely in the hands of the

Diet. ... Both Lutherans and Calvinists were declared free

from all jurisdiction of the Pope or any Catholic prelate.

Thus the last link which bound Germany to Rome was snapped,

the last of the principles by virtue of which the Empire had

existed was abandoned. For the Empire now contained and

recognized as its members persons who formed a visible body at

open war with the Holy Roman Church; and its constitution

admitted schismatics to a full share in all those civil rights

which, according to the doctrines of the early Middle Age,

could be enjoyed by no one who was out of the communion of the

Catholic Church. The Peace of Westphalia was therefore an

abrogation of the sovereignty of Rome, and of the theory of

Church and State with which the name of Rome was associated.

And in this light was it regarded by Pope Innocent X., who

commanded his legate to protest against it, and subsequently

declared it void by the bull 'Zelo domus Dei.' ... The Peace

of Westphalia is an era in imperial history not less clearly

marked than the coronation of Otto the Great, or the death of

Frederick II. As from the days of Maximilian it had borne a

mixed or transitional character, well expressed by the name

Romano-Germanic, so henceforth it is in everything but title

purely and solely a German Empire. Properly, indeed, it was no

longer an empire at all, but a Confederation, and that of the

loosest sort. For it had no common treasury, no efficient

common tribunals, no means of coercing a refractory member;

its states were of different religions, were governed

according to different forms, were administered judicially and

financially without any regard to each other. ... There were

300 petty principalities between the Alps and the Baltic, each

with its own laws, its own courts, ... its little armies, its

separate coinage, its tolls and custom-houses on the frontier,

its crowd of meddlesome and pedantic officials. ... This

vicious system, which paralyzed the trade, the literature, and

the political thought of Germany, had been forming itself for

some time, but did not become fully established until the

Peace of Westphalia, by emancipating the princes from imperial

control, had made them despots in their own territories."

J. Bryce,

The Holy Roman Empire,

chapter 19.

{1488}

GERMANY: A. D. 1648-1705.

After the Peace of Westphalia.

French influence in the Empire.

Creation of the Ninth Elector.

After the Peace of Westphalia, the remainder of the reign of

Ferdinand III. "passed in tranquillity. ... He caused his son

to be elected king of the Romans, under the title of Ferdinand

IV.; but the young prince, already king of Bohemia and

Hungary, preceded him to the tomb, and left the question of

the succession to be decided by a diet. Ferdinand III. died in

1657. ... The interregnum, and, indeed, the century which

followed the death of Ferdinand, showed the alarming

preponderance of the influence gained by France in the affairs

of the empire, and the consequent criminality of the princes

who had first invoked the assistance of that power. Her recent

victories, her character as joint guarantee of the treaty of

Westphalia, and the contiguity of her possessions to the

states of the empire, encouraged her ministers to demand the

imperial crown for the youthful Louis XIV. Still more

extraordinary is the fact that four of the electors were

gained, by that monarch's gold, to espouse his views. ...

Fortunately for Germany and for Europe, the electors of

Treves, Brandenburg, and Saxony, were too patriotic to

sanction this infatuated proposal; they threatened to elect a

native prince of their own authority,--a menace which caused

the rest to co-operate with them; so that, after some

fruitless negotiations, Leopold, son of the late emperor, king

of Bohemia and of Hungary, was raised to the vacant dignity.

His reign was one of great humiliation to his house and to the

empire. Without talents for government, without generosity,

feeble, bigoted, and pusillanimous, he was little qualified to

augment the glory of the country. ... Throughout his long

reign [1657-1705], he had the mortification to witness, on the

part of Louis XIV., a series of the most unprovoked, wanton, and

unprincipled usurpations ever recorded in history. ...

Internally, the reign of Leopold affords some interesting

particulars. ... Not the least is the establishment of a ninth

electoral dignity in favour of Ernest Augustus, Duke of

Brunswick Lunenburg, who then became (1692) the first elector

of Hanover. This was the act of Leopold, in return for

important aid in money and troops from two princes of that

house; but it could not be effected without the concurrence of

the electoral body, who long resisted it. ... The

establishment of a permanent diet, attended, not by the

electors in person, but by their representatives, is one of

the most striking peculiarities of Leopold's reign."

S. A. Dunham,

History of the Germanic Empire,

book 3, chapter 3 (volume 3).

See, DIET, THE GERMANIC.

GERMANY: A. D. 1648-1780.

The Austrian incubus.

"Before the Thirty Years' War the territories of the German

Hapsburgs were not very considerable. The greatest part of

Hungary was in the hands of the Turks; the Tyrol belonged to a

collateral line; and, in the other provinces, the independence

of the Nobility was much stronger than the sovereignty of the

Archdukes. The Nobles were all zealous protestants, so that a

monarchical power could only be created after a victory of the

Catholic faith. For the first time since 1621, the crown was

seen in these regions to assume a really dominant position.

Efforts in this direction had been zealously carried on since

1648; the Tyrolese Estates now lost their most important

privileges; and, above all, the Emperor succeeded, by the help

of Polish and German troops, in driving out the Turks from

Hungary, and at the same time crushing the national freedom of

the Magyars with frightful bloodshed. By these victories the

Monarchy gained, in the first place, a large increase of

territory--which placed it nearly on a level with France. In

the second place it acquired at home the power of raising as

many taxes and soldiers as were necessary to increase the army

to the extent of its wishes; and of distributing its officials

and troops--without distinction of nation--as imperial

servants, throughout its dominions. And thus it secured

submission at home and disposable strength for its operations

abroad. Here it stopped short. As it had no national, and,

consequently, no warm and natural relation to any of its

provinces--which were merely used as passive tools to promote

the lofty aims of the Hapsburg family--the Government had no

intention of using its power at home for the furtherance of

the public good, or the building up of a generally useful

Administration. The Nobility had no longer the strength to

resist the demands of the Crown for men and money, but it

still retained exemption from taxes, the jurisdiction and

police among its own peasants, and a multitude of feudal

rights, which, often enough, degraded the peasant to the

condition of a serf, and everywhere bound down agriculture in

the most galling bonds. Of manufactures there were little or

none; trade was carried on on the system of guilds. The State

officials exercised but little influence over the internal

affairs of the Communes, or Provinces; and the privileged

orders had full liberty to prosecute their own interests among

their inferiors with inconsiderate selfishness. In this

aristocracy, the Church, from its wealth and its close

internal unity, assumed the first place; and its superior

importance was still farther enhanced by the fact of its being

the chief bond of unity between the otherwise so loosely

compacted portions of the Empire. ... The Church attached the

Nobility to the Government; for we must not forget that a very

considerable portion of the estates of the Nobles had passed

into the hands of new possessors who had received them as a

reward for being good catholics. The Church, too, taught all

the youth of the Empire--in all its different languages--

obedience to the House of Hapsburg, and received from the

Crown, in return, exclusive control of the national education.

It formed, in spite of the resistance of nationalities, a sort

of public opinion in favour of the unity of the Empire; and the

Crown, in return, excluded all non-catholic opinions from the

schools, from literature and religion. Austria, therefore,

continued to be catholic, even after 1648; and by this we

mean, not only that its Princes were personally devout--or

that the Catholic clergy were supported in the performance of

their spiritual functions--or that the institutions of the

Church were liberally supported--but also that the State

directed its policy according to ecclesiastical views, made

use of the Church for political purposes, and crushed every

movement hostile to it in all other spheres of the national

life. In Austria, therefore, it was not merely a question of

theological differences, but of the deepest and most

comprehensive points of distinction between the mediæval and

the modern world. Austria was still, in its whole nature, a

Mediæval State or Confederacy of States. The consequences of

this condition were most strikingly seen in its relation to

Germany. In the first place, there was a complete separation,

in regard to all mental and spiritual matters, between the

great body of the Empire, and its powerful Eastern member.

This was the period, in which Germany was awaking to a new

intellectual life in modern Europe, and laying the foundation

of its modern science in every branch--in History and

Statistics, Chemistry and Geology, Jurisprudence and

Philosophy--and assuming by its Literature, an equal rank with

other nations in national refinement and civilization.

{1489}

By the works of genius which this period produced Austria

remained entirely uninfluenced; and it has been said, that

Werther had only been made known to the Viennese in the form

of fireworks in the Prater. The literary policy allowed no

seed of modern culture to enter the Empire; and the Jesuit

schools had rendered the soil unfit for its reception. All the

progress of German civilization, at this period, was based on

the principle of the independence of the mind in art and

science. The education of the Jesuits, on the contrary, though

unsurpassed where the object is to prepare men for a special

purpose, commences by disowning individual peculiarities, and

the right of a man to choose his own career. There was, at

this time, no other characteristic of an Austrian than an

entire estrangement from the progress of the German mind. ...

The progress of the people in science and art, in politics and

military strength, was only seen in the larger secular

territories, which, after 1648, enjoyed their own sovereignty;

and even these were checked in their movements at every step

by the remnants of the Imperial Constitution. The Members of

the Empire alone, in whom the decaying remains of Mediæval

existence still lingered on--the Ecclesiastical Princes--the

small Counts--the Imperial Knights and the Imperial

Towns,--clung to the Emperor and the Imperial Diet. In these,

partly from their small extent of territory, partly from the

inefficiency of their institutions, neither active industry,

nor public spirit, nor national pride, were to be found. In

all which tended to elevate the nation, and raise its hopes

for the future, they took, at this period, as little part as

Austria herself. ... The Imperial constitution, therefore, was

inwardly decayed, and stood in no relation to the internal

growth of the nation. ... There was the same divergence

between Austria and Germany with respect to their foreign

interests, as we have observed in their internal relations.

After the Turks had been driven from Hungary, and the Swedes

from the half of' Pomerania, Germany had only two neighbours

whom it was a matter of vital importance to watch,--the Poles

and the French. In the South, on the contrary, it had no

interests in opposition to Italy, except the protection of its

frontier by the possession or the neutrality of the Alpine

passes. And yet it was just towards Italy that the eyes of the

House of Hapsburg had been uninterruptedly directed for centuries

past. The favourite traditions of the family, and their

political and ecclesiastical interest in securing the support

of the Pope, and thereby that of the Clergy, constantly

impelled them to consolidate and extend their dominion in that

country. All other considerations yielded to this; and this is

intelligible enough from an Austrian point of view; but it was

not on that account less injurious to the German Empire. How

strikingly was this opposition of interests displayed at the

end of the glorious war of the Spanish succession, when the

Emperor rejected a peace which would have restored Strasburg

and Alsace to the Empire, because only Naples, and not Sicily

also, was offered to Austria! How sharply defined do the same

relations present themselves to our view, in the last years of

the Hapsburg dynasty, at the peace of Vienna in 1738!--on

which occasion the Emperor--in order at least to gain Tuscany,

as a compensation for the loss of Naples,--gave up Lorraine to

the French, without even consulting the Empire, which he had

dragged into the war. Austria thus maintained a predominant

influence in Italy; but the Empire, during the whole century

after the Peace of Westphalia, did not obtain a single

noteworthy advantage over France. How much more was this the

case with respect to Poland, which during the whole period of

the religious wars had been the most zealous ally of Spain and

the Hapsburgs, and which subsequently seemed to threaten no

danger to Austrian interests."

H. Von Sybel,

History of the French Revolution,

book 2, chapter 1 (volume 1).

GERMANY: A. D. 1658.

Election of the Emperor, Leopold I.

GERMANY: A. D. 1660-1664.

Renewed war with the Turks.

Victory of St. Gothard.

Transylvania liberated.

A twenty years truce.

See HUNGARY: A. D. 1660-1664.

GERMANY: A. D. 1672-1679.

The war of the Coalition against Louis XIV.

See NETHERLANDS (HOLLAND): A. D. 1672-1674,

and 1674-1678;

also NIMEGUEN, PEACE OF.

GERMANY: A. D. 1675-1678.

War with Sweden.

Battle of Fehrbellin.

See BRANDENBURG: A.D. 1640-1688;

and SCANDINAVIAN STATES (SWEDEN): A. D. 1644-1697.

GERMANY: A. D. 1679-1681.

The final absorption of Alsace and Les Trois-Evêchés by

France, with boundaries widened.

Bold encroachments of the French Chambers of Reannexation.

The seizure of Strasburg.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1679-1681.

GERMANY: A. D. 1686.

The League of Augsburg against Louis XIV.

"The Duke of Orleans, the French King's brother, had married

the sister of the Elector Palatine, the last of the House of

Simmern, who died in May 1685, when his next relative, the

Count Palatine Philip William, Duke of Neuberg, took

possession of the Electorate. The Duchess of Orleans had by

her marriage contract renounced all her feudal rights to the

Palatinate, but not her claims to the allodial property and

the moveables of her family." These latter claims, taken in

hand by Louis XIV. on behalf of his sister-in-law, were made

so formidable that the new Elector appealed to the Empire for

protection, "and, thus redoubled the uneasiness felt in

Germany, and indeed throughout the greater part of Europe,

respecting the schemes of Louis. The Prince of Orange availed

himself of these suspicions to forward his plans against

Louis. He artfully inflamed the general alarm, and at length

succeeded in inducing the Emperor Leopold, the Kings of Spain,

and Sweden, as princes of the Empire, the Electors of Saxony

and Bavaria, the circles of Suabia, Franconia, Upper Saxony,

and Bavaria, to enter into the celebrated League of Augsburg

(July 9th 1686). The object of this league was to maintain the

Treaties of Münster and Nimeguen and the Truce of Ratisbon. If

any of the members of it was attacked he was to be assisted by

the whole confederacy; 60,000 men were to be raised, who were

to be frequently drilled, and to form a camp during some weeks

of every year, and a common fund for their support was to be

established at Frankfort. The League was to be in force only

for three years, but might be prolonged at the expiration of

that term should the public safety require it. The Elector

Palatine, who was in fact the party most directly interested,

acceded to the League early in September, as well as the Duke

of Holstein Gottorp."

T. H. Dyer,

History of Modern Europe,

book 5, chapter 5 (volume 3).

{1490}

"To Madame's great anger France set up a claim to the

Palatinate on her behalf, Louvois persuading the King and the

royal family that with a few vigorous measures the Palatinate

would be abandoned by the Neubourgs and annexed to France as

part of Madame's dowry. This led to the devastation of the

states, to which Madame [Charlotte Elizabeth, the Duchess of

Orleans] so often and so bitterly alludes during the next ten

years. Obliged by Louis XIV. 's policy to represent herself as

desirous to recover her rights over her father's and brother's

succession, in many documents which she was never even shown,

Madame protested in all her private letters against France's

action in the matter, and made every one at court thoroughly

aware of her grief and disapproval of what the king was doing

on her behalf."

Life and Letters of Charlotte Elizabeth,

Princess Palatine,

chapter 2.

GERMANY: A. D. 1689-1696.

The War of the League of Augsburg, or Grand Alliance,

against Louis XIV.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1689-1690 to 1695-1696.

GERMANY: A. D. 1690.

The second Devastation of the Palatinate.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1689-1690.

GERMANY: A. D. 1700.

Interest in the question of the Spanish Succession.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1698-1700.

GERMANY: A. D. 1700.

Prussia raised to the dignity of a kingdom.

See PRUSSIA: A. D. 1700.

GERMANY: A. D. 1700-1740.

The first king of Prussia and his shabby court.

The second king, his Brobdingnagian army

and his extraordinary character.

The up-bringing of Frederick the Great.

The "Great Elector" of Brandenburg "left to his son Frederic a

principality as considerable as any which was not called a

kingdom."

See BRANDENBURG: A. D. 1640-1688.

"Frederic aspired to the style of royalty. Ostentatious and

profuse, negligent of his true interests and of his high

duties, insatiably eager for frivolous distinctions, he added

nothing to the real weight of the state which he governed:

perhaps he transmitted his inheritance to his children

impaired rather than augmented in value; but he succeeded in

gaining the great object of his life, the title of King. In

the year 1700 he assumed this new dignity. He had, on that

occasion to undergo all the mortifications which fall to the

lot of ambitious upstarts. Compared with the other crowned

heads of Europe, he made a figure resembling that which a

Nabob or a Commissary, who had bought a title, would make in

the company of Peers whose ancestors had been attainted for

treason against the Plantagenets. The envy of the class which

Frederic quitted, and the civil scorn of the class into which

he intruded himself, were marked in very significant ways. ...

Frederic was succeeded by his son, Frederic William, a prince

who must be allowed to have possessed some talents for

administration, but whose character as disfigured by odious

vices, and whose eccentricities were such as had never before

been seen out of a madhouse. He was exact and diligent in the

transacting of business; and he was the first who formed the

design of obtaining for Prussia a place among the European

powers, altogether out of proportion to her extent and

population, by means of a strong military organization. Strict

economy enabled him to keep up a peace establishment of 60,000

troops. These troops were disciplined in such a manner, that,

placed beside them, the household regiments of Versailles and

St. James's would have appeared an awkward squad. The master

of such a force could not but be regarded by all his

neighbours as a formidable enemy and a valuable ally. But the

mind of Frederic William was so ill regulated, that all his

inclinations became passions, and all his passions partook of

the character of moral and intellectual disease. His parsimony

degenerated into sordid avarice. His taste for military pomp

and order became a mania, like that of a Dutch burgomaster for

tulips, or that of a member of the Roxburghe Club for Caxtons.

While the envoys of the Court of Berlin were in a state of

such squalid poverty as moved the laughter of foreign

capitals; while the food placed before the princes and

princesses of the blood-royal of Prussia was too scanty to

appease hunger, and so bad that even hunger loathed it, no

price was thought too extravagant for tall recruits. The

ambition of the king was to form a brigade of giants, and

every country was ransacked by his agents for men above the

ordinary stature. ... Though his dominant passion was the love

of military display, he was yet one of the most pacific of

princes. We are afraid that his aversion to war was not the

effect of humanity, but was merely one of his thousand whims.

His feeling about his troops seems to have resembled a miser's

feeling about his money. He loved to collect them, to count

them, to see them increase; but he could not find it in his

heart to break in upon the precious hoard. He looked forward

to some future time when his Patagonian battalions were to

drive hostile infantry before them like sheep: but this future

time was always receding; and it is probable that, if his life

had been prolonged 30 years, his superb army would never have

seen any harder service than a sham fight in the fields near

Berlin. But the great military means which he had collected

were destined to be employed by a spirit far more daring and

inventive than his own. Frederic, surnamed the Great, son of

Frederic William, was born in January 1712. It may safely be

pronounced that he had received from nature a strong and sharp

understanding, and a rare firmness of temper and intensity of

will. As to the other parts of his character, it is difficult

to say whether they are to be ascribed to nature, or to the

strange training which he underwent. The history of his

boyhood is painfully interesting. Oliver Twist in the parish

work-house, Smike at Dotheboys Hall, were petted children when

compared with this wretched heir-apparent of a crown. The

nature of Frederic William was hard and bad, and the habit of

exercising arbitrary power had made him frightfully savage.

His rage constantly vented itself to right and left in curses

and blows. When his Majesty took a walk, every human being

fled before him, as if a tiger had broken loose from a

menagerie. ... But it was in his own house that he was most

unreasonable and ferocious. His palace was hell, and he the

most execrable of fiends. ... Early in the year 1740, Frederic

William met death with a firmness and dignity worthy of a

better and wiser man; and Frederic, who had just completed his

28th year, became king of Prussia."

Lord Macaulay,

Frederic the Great (Essays).

{1491}

"Frederick William I. became ... the founder of the first

modern State in Germany. His was a nature in which the

repulsive and the imposing, the uncouth and the admirable,

were closely united. In his manners a rough and unrefined

peasant, in his family a tyrant, in his government a despot,

choleric almost to madness, his reign would have been a curse

to the country, had he not united with his unlimited power a

rare executive ability and an incorruptible fidelity to duty;

and from first to last he consecrated all his powers to the

common weal. By him effective limitations were put upon the

independent action of the provinces, and upon the overgrown

privileges of the estates. He did not do away with the guilds

of the different orders, but placed them under the strict

control of a strongly centralized superintendence, and

compelled their members to make every necessary sacrifice for

the sake of assisting him in his efforts for the prosperity

and power of Prussia. It is astonishing to see with what

practical judgment he recognized a needed measure both in

general and in detail; how he trained a body of officials,

suited in all grades to the requirements of their position;

how he disciplined them in activity, prudence, and rectitude,

by strict inspection, by encouraging instruction, and by

brutal punishments; how he enforced order and economy in the

public finances; how he improved the administration of his own

domains, so that it became a fruitful example to all

proprietors; and how, full of the desire to make the peasants

free owners of the soil, although he did not yet venture on

such a radical measure, he nevertheless constantly protected

the poor against the arbitrariness and oppression of the

higher classes. ... There was no department of life to which

he did not give encouragement and assistance; it is also true

that there was none which he did not render subservient to his

own will, and the products of which he did not make conducive

to the one great end,--the independence and aggrandizement of

the State. So that he who was the ruler of, at most, three

million people, created, without exhausting the country, a

standing army of eighty thousand men: a remarkably skilful and

ready army, which he disciplined with barbarous severity on

the slightest occasion, at the same time that he looked out

for the welfare of every soldier even in the smallest detail,

according to his saying, that 'a king's warrior must live

better than a gentleman's servant.' What he had in his mind,

almost a hundred years before Scharnhorst, was the universal

obligation of military service; but it fared with him in

regard to this as in regard to the freedom of the peasants:

strong as he was, he could not turn the world he lived in

upside down; he contented himself with bequeathing his best

ideas to a more propitious future. The foundations of the

government rested upon the estates in spite of all monarchical

reforms. Thus, beside the federative Empire of the Hapsburgs,

arose the small, compact Prussian State, which, by reason of

the concentration of its forces, was a match for its

five-times-larger rival."

H. Von Sybel,

The Founding of the German Empire by William I.,

book 1, chapter 2 (volume 1).

ALSO IN:

T. Carlyle,

History of Frederick II., called the Great,

book 3, chapter 19, books 5-10 (volumes 1-2).

GERMANY: A. D. 1702.

The War of the Spanish Succession:

Siege of Landau.

Battle of Friedlingen.

On the part of the Imperialists, the War of the Spanish

Succession was opened on the Rhine frontier in June 1702, by a

movement of the army commanded by the Margrave Louis of Baden,

which "came over the Rhine and laid siege to the important

fortress of Landau,--the bulwark of Alsace as it was then

regarded. The Margrave was subsequently joined by the

Emperor's eldest son, the young King of the Romans, who

desired to share in the glory, though not in the toils of the

expected conquest. ... The Maréchal de Catinat, one of the

soldiers of whom France has most reason to be proud,--the

virtuous Catinat as Rousseau terms him--held command at this

period in Alsace. So inferior were his numbers that he could

make no attempt to relieve Landau. But after its reduction an

opportunity appeared in which by detaching a portion of his

army he might retrieve the fortunes of France in another

quarter. The Elector of Bavaria, after much irresolution, had

openly espoused the cause of Louis. He seized upon the city of

Ulm and issued a proclamation in favor of his new ally. To

support his movements an enterprising and ambitious officer,

the Marquis de Villars, was sent across the Rhine with part of

the army of Alsace. The declaration of the Elector of Bavaria

and the advance of Villars into Germany disquieted in no

slight degree the Prince Louis of Baden. Leaving a sufficient

garrison in Landau, he also passed the Rhine. The two armies

met at Friedlingen on the 14th of October. Louis of Baden, a

ponderous tactician bred in the wars against the Turks, might

out-manœuvre some Grand Vizier, but was no match for the

quick-witted Frenchman. He was signally defeated with the loss

of 3,000 men; soon after which, the season being now far

advanced, Villars led back his army to winter quarters in

France. His victory of Friedlingen gained for him at

Versailles the rank of Maréchal de France."

Earl Stanhope (Lord Mahon),

History of England: Reign of Queen Anne,

chapter 2.

ALSO IN:

W. Coxe,

History of the House of Austria,

chapter 68 (volume 2).

See, also; NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1702-1704,

and SPAIN: A. D. 1702.

GERMANY: A. D. 1703.

The War of the Spanish Succession:

Campaigns on the Upper Rhine and in Bavaria.

"Early in June [A. D. 1703], Marshal Tallard assumed the

command of the French forces in Alsace, ... took Prissac on

the 7th of September, and invested Landau on the 16th of

October. The allies, under the Prince of Hesse, attempted to

raise the siege, but were defeated with considerable loss;

and, soon after, Landau surrendered, thus terminating with

disaster the campaign on the Upper Rhine. Still more

considerable were the losses sustained in Bavaria. Marshal

Villars commanded there, and, at the head of the French and

Bavarians, defeated General Stirum, who headed the

Imperialists, on the 20th of September. In December, Marshal

Marsin, who had succeeded Villars in the command, made himself

master of the important city of Augsburg, and in January,

1704, the Bavarians got possession of Passau. Meanwhile, a

formidable insurrection had broken out in Hungary, which so

distracted the cabinet of Vienna that the capital seemed to be

threatened by the combined forces of the French and Bavarians

after the fall of Passau. ... Instead of confining the war to

one of posts and sieges in Flanders and Italy, it was resolved

[by the French] to throw the bulk of their forces at once into

Bavaria, and operate against Austria from the heart of

Germany, by pouring down the valley of the Danube.

{1492}

The advanced post held there by the Elector of Bavaria in

front, forming a salient angle, penetrating, as it were, into

the Imperial dominions, the menacing aspect of the Hungarian

insurrection in the rear, promised the most successful issue

to this decisive operation. For this purpose, Marshal Tallard,

with the French army on the Upper Rhine, received orders to

cross the Black Forest and advance into Swabia, and unite with

the Elector of Bavaria, which he accordingly did at Donawerth,

in the beginning of July. Marshal Villeroy, with forty

battalions and thirty-nine squadrons, was to break off from

the army in Flanders and support the advance by a movement on

the Moselle, so as to be in a condition to join the main army

on the Danube, of which it would form, as it were, the left

wing; while Vendôme, with the army of Italy, was to penetrate

into the Tyrol, and advance by Innspruck on Salzburg. The

united armies, which it was calculated, after deducting all

the losses of the campaign, would muster 80,000 combatants,

was then to move direct by Lintz and the valley of the Danube

on Vienna, while a large detachment penetrated into Hungary to

lend a hand to the already formidable insurrection in that

kingdom. The plan was grandly conceived. ... Marlborough, by

means of the secret information which he obtained from the

French head-quarters, had got full intelligence of it, and its

dangers to the allies, if it succeeded, struck him as much as

the chances of great advantage to them if ably thwarted. His

line was instantly taken."

A. Alison,

Military Life of Marlborough,

chapter 2, sections 30-33.

The measures taken by Marlborough to defeat the plans of the

French in this campaign are briefly stated in the account of

his first campaigns in the Netherlands.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1702-1704.

ALSO IN:

H. Martin,

History of France: Age of Louis XIV.

(translated by M. L. Booth), volume 2, chapter 5.

W. Coxe,

History of the House of Austria,

chapter 69 (volume 2).

GERMANY: A. D. 1704.

The War of the Spanish Succession:

Marlborough and Prince Eugene on the Danube.

The Battle of Blenheim.

"Marlborough, with his motley army of English, Dutch, Danes

and Germans, concealing his main purpose, was marching south

along the Rhine, with a design to strike his critical blow, by

attacking the French armies that were forming for the campaign

of the Danube, and thus protect the Emperor and Vienna, and

punish the Elector of Bavaria, whose territories would be then

exposed. On the route, Marlborough was joined by Prince Eugene

and the Margrave of Baden: but as a new French force was

approaching, Prince Eugene was sent to keep it in check.

Marlborough and the Prince of Baden, with united forces of

about 60,000 men, then advanced, in rapid marches, and took,

by gallant assault, the fortifications of the Schellenberg in

Bavaria, and the old town of Donauworth, a critical and

commanding position on the Danube. The allies were now masters

of the main passages of the Danube--and had a strong place as

a basis of action. The allied leaders thereupon sent troops

into the heart of Bavaria, and devastated the country even to

the vicinity of Munich--burning and destroying as they

marched, and taking several minor fortresses. Marlborough's

forces and those of Prince Eugene were distant from each other

some forty miles, when came the news of the march of a French

army of 25,000 men under Tallard, to form a junction with the

others, to succor the Elector, and take revenge for the defeat

of the Schellenberg. Two French Marshals, Tallard and Marsin,

were now in command: their design was to attack Marlborough

and Eugene's armies in detail. By rapid marches, Marlborough

crossed the Danube and joined Prince Eugene near Donauworth,

and thereupon occurred one of the most important and decisive

contests of modern times, fought between the old town of

Hochstadt and the village of Blenheim, about fifteen miles

south of Donauworth. The skilful tactics of the allied

generals precipitated the battle. The allied French and

Bavarians numbered 60,000 [56,000; Malleson] men--the English,

Dutch and Germans and other allies, about 53,000 [52,000;

Malleson]. The allies were allowed to cross an intervening

brook without opposition, and form their lines. A great

charge, in full force, of the allies was then made; they broke

the enemy's extended line; and an ensuing charge of cavalry

scattered his forces right and left, and drove many into the

Danube. More than 14,000 French and Bavarians, who had not

struck a blow, except to defend their position, entrenched and

shut up in the village of Blenheim, waiting for orders to

move, were then surrounded by the victorious allies, and

compelled to surrender as prisoners of war. The scattered

remnants of the French and Bavarian army either disbanded, or

were driven over the Rhine. The garrison at Ulm capitulated,

and the Elector fled into France."

J. W. Gerard,

The Peace of Utrecht,

chapter 16.

"The armies of Marchin and of Max Emanuel [of Bavaria] had

been defeated; that of Tallard had been annihilated. Whilst

the loss of the victors in killed and wounded reached 12,000

men, that of the French and Bavarians exceeded 14,000. In

addition, the latter lost 13,000 men taken prisoners, 47

pieces of cannon, 25 standards, and 90 colours. Such was the

battle of Blenheim. It was one of the decisive battles of

history, and it changed the character of the war. Up to that

moment, the action of France against. Germany had been

aggressive; thenceforward it became purely defensive.

Blenheim, in fact, dashed to the ground the hopes of Louis

XIV. and Max Emanuel of Bavaria. It saved the house of

Habsburg in Germany, and helped it greatly in Hungary. It

showed likewise that it was possible to inflict a crushing

defeat on the armies of Louis XIV."

Colonel G. B. Malleson,

Prince Eugene of Savoy,

chapter 6.

"Marlborough [after the battle], having detached part of his

force to besiege Ulm, drew near with the bulk of his army to

the Rhine, which he passed near Philipsburg on the 6th of

September, and soon after commenced the siege of Landau, on

the French side; Prince Louis, with 20,000 men, forming the

besieging force, and Eugene and Marlborough, with 30,000, the

covering army. Villeroi, with the French army, abandoned an

intrenched camp which he had constructed to cover the town.

Marlborough followed, and made every effort to bring the

French marshal to battle, but in vain. ... Ulm surrendered on

the 16th of September, ... which gave the allies a solid

foundation on the Danube, and effectually crushed the power of

the Elector of Bavaria, who, isolated now in the midst of his

enemies, had no alternative but to abandon his dominions and

seek refuge in Brussels, where he arrived in the end of

September. ...

{1493}

The Electress of Bavaria, who had been left regent of that

state in the absence of the Elector in Flanders, had now no

resource left but submission; and a treaty was accordingly

concluded in the beginning of November, by which she agreed to

disband all her troops. Trêves and Traerbach were taken in the

end of December; the Hungarian insurrection was suppressed;

Landau capitulated in the beginning of the same month; a

diversion which the enemy attempted toward Trêves was defeated

by Marlborough's activity and vigilance, and that city put in

a sufficient posture of defense; and, the campaign being now

finished, that accomplished commander returned to the Hague

and London."

A. Alison,

Military Life of Marlborough,

chapter 2.

ALSO IN:

G. B. Malleson,

Battle-fields of Germany,

chapter 10.

W. Coxe,

Memoirs of Marlborough,

chapters 22-26 (volume 1).

J. H. Burton,

History of the Reign of Queen Anne,

chapter 6 (volume 1).

H. Martin,

History of France: Age of Louis XIV.,

volume 2, chapter 5.

GERMANY: A. D. 1705.

The Election of the Emperor Joseph I.

GERMANY: A. D. 1705.

The War of the Spanish Succession:

The dissolution of Bavaria.

"The campaign of 1705 was destitute of any important events on

the side of Germany. ... In Bavaria, the peasants, irritated

by the oppressions of the Austrian government, rose in a body

in the autumn, and, could they have been supported by France,

would have placed the Emperor in great danger; but without

that aid the insurrection only proved fatal to themselves. The

insurgents were beaten in detail, and the Emperor now resolved

on the complete dissolution of Bavaria as a state. The four

elder sons of Maximilian were carried to Klagenfurt in

Carinthia, to be there educated under the strictest inspection

as Counts of Wittelsbach, while the younger sons were

consigned to the care of a court lady at Munich, and the

daughters sent to a convent. The Electress, who had been on a

visit to Venice, was not permitted to return to her dominions,

and the Elector Maximilian, as well as the Elector of Cologne,

was, by a decree of the Electoral College, placed under the

ban of the Empire. The Upper Palatinate was restored to the

Elector Palatine. ... The remaining Bavarian territories were

confiscated, and divided among various princes."

T. H. Dyer,

History of Modern Europe,

book 5, chapter 6 (volume 3).

W. Coxe,

History of the House of Austria,

chapter 72 (volume 3).

The campaign of 1705 in the Netherlands was unimportant; but

in Spain it had brilliant results.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1705;

and NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1705.

GERMANY: A. D. 1706-1711.

The War of the Spanish Succession:

Successes of the French.

During 1706, little was attempted on either side by the forces

which watched each other along the Rhine. In 1707 Villars, the

French commander, obtained liberty to act. "The Emperor,

greatly preoccupied with Hungary, had furnished but

indifferent resources to the new general of the army of the

Rhine, Brandenburg-Baireuth; the German army was ill paid and

in bad condition in its immense lines on the right bank, which

extended along the Rhine from Philippsburg as far as

Stolhofen, then, in a square, from Stolhofen to the Black

Mountains by Bühl. May 22, the lines were attacked

simultaneously at four points. ... The success was complete;

the enemy fled into the mountains, abandoning artillery,

baggage, and munitions, and did not stop till beyond the

Neckar. The lines were razed; Swabia and a part of Franconia

were put under contribution. Villars marched on Stuttgart,

crossed the Neckar, and subjected the whole country to ransom

as far as the Danube. The enemies in vain rallied and

reinforced themselves with tardy contingents of the Empire;

they could not prevent Villars from laying under contribution

the Lower Neckar, then the country between the Danube and Lake

Constance, and from maintaining himself beyond the Rhine till

he went into winter-quarters. French parties scoured the

country as conquerors as far as the fatal field of Hochstadt."

At the beginning of the campaign of 1708, it was the plan of

the allies to make their chief attack on France "by the way of

the Rhine and the Moselle, with two armies of 60,000 men each,

under the command of the Elector of Hanover and Eugene, whilst

Marlborough occupied the great French army in Flanders." But

this plan was changed. "Eugene left the Elector of Hanover in

the north of Swabia, behind the lines of Etlingen, which the

allies had raised during the winter to replace the lines of

Bühl at Stolhofen, and, with 24,000 soldiers collected on the

Moselle, he marched by the way of Coblentz towards Belgium

(June 30). The French forces of the Rhine and the Moselle

followed this movement." The campaign then ensuing in the

Netherlands was that which was signalized by Marlborough and

Eugene's victory at Oudenarde and the siege of Lille. In 1709,

"the attention of Europe, as in 1708, was chiefly directed to

Flanders; but it was not only on that side that France was

menaced. France was to be encroached upon at once on the north

and the east. Whilst the great allied army penetrated into

Artois, the army of the Rhine and the army of the Alps were to

penetrate, the latter into Bresse by the way of Savoy, the

former into Franche-Comté by the way of Alsace, and to combine

their operations. ... The Germans had not taken the offensive

in Alsace till in the month of August. Marshal Harcourt, with

over 20,000 men, had covered himself with the lines of the

Lauter: the Elector of Hanover, who had crossed the Rhine at

Philippsburg with superior forces, did not attack Harcourt,

and strove to amuse him whilst 8,000 or 9,000 Germans, left in

Swabia with General Merci, moved rapidly on Neuberg ... and

established there a tête-du-pont in order to enter Upper

Alsace." By swiftly sending a sufficient force to attack and

defeat Merci at Neuberg, August 26, Harcourt completely

frustrated these plans. "The Elector of Hanover recrossed the

river and retired behind the lines of Etlingen." During the

two following years the French and German forces on the side

of the Rhine did little more than observe one another.

H. Martin,

History of France: Age of Louis XIV:,

volume 2, chapters 5-6.

Meantime, Ramillies, Oudenarde and Malplaquet had been fought

in the Netherlands; Prince Eugene had won his victory at

Turin, and the contest had been practically decided in Spain,

at Almanza.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1706-1707,

1708-1709, 1710-1712;

ITALY: A. D. 1701-1713;

SPAIN: A. D. 1706, 1707,  and 1707-1710;

and ENGLAND: A. D. 1710-1712.

ALSO IN:

W. Coxe,

History of the House of Austria,

chapters 75-79 (volume 3).

F. P. Guizot,

Popular History of France,

chapter 45 (volume 5).

GERMANY: A. D. 1711.

Election of the Emperor Charles VI.

{1494}

GERMANY: A. D. 1711.

The War of the Spanish Succession:

Change in the circumstances of the war.

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1711.

GERMANY: A. D. 1713-1719.

The Emperor's continued differences with the King of Spain.

The Triple Alliance.

The Quadruple Alliance.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1713-1725.

GERMANY: A. D. 1714.

Ending of the War of the Spanish Succession:

The Peace of Utrecht and the Treaty of Rastadt.

See UTRECHT: A. D. 1712-1714.

GERMANY: A. D. 1732-1733.

Interference in the election of the King of Poland.

See POLAND: A. D. 1732-1733.

GERMANY: A. D. 1733-1735.

The War of the Polish Succession.

Cession of Lorraine to France.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1733-1735.

GERMANY: A. D. 1740.

The question of the Austrian Succession.

The Pragmatic Sanction.

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1718-1738, and 1740.

GERMANY: A. D. 1740-1756.

Early years of the reign of Frederick the Great in Prussia.

The War of the Austrian Succession.

When Frederick II., known as Frederick the Great, succeeded

his father, in 1740, "nobody had the least suspicion that a

tyrant of extraordinary military and political talents, of

industry more extraordinary still, without fear, without

faith, and without mercy, had ascended the throne."

Lord Macaulay,

Frederic the Great (Essays).

The reign of Frederick II. "was expected to be an effeminate

one; but when at the age of twenty-nine he became king, he

forgot his pleasures, thought of nothing but glory, and no

longer employed himself but in attention to his finances, his

army, his policy, and his laws. His provinces were scattered,

his resources weak, his power precarious; his army of seventy

thousand soldiers was more remarkable for handsomeness of the

men, and the elegance of their appearance, than for their

discipline. He augmented it, instructed it, exercised it, and

fortune began to open the field of glory to him at the moment

he was fully prepared to enjoy her favours. Charles XII. was

dead, and his station filled by a king without authority.

Russia, deprived of Peter the Great, who had only rough-hewn

her civilization, languished under the feeble government of

the Empress Anne, and of a cruel and ignorant minister.

Augustus III. King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, a Prince

devoid of character, could not inspire him with any dread.

Louis XV., a weak and peaceable king, was governed by Cardinal

Fleuri, who loved peace, but always by his weakness suffered

himself to be drawn into war. He presented to Frederic rather

a support than an obstacle. The court of France had espoused

the cause of Charles VII. against Francis I. Maria Theresa,

wife of Francis, and Queen of Hungary, saw herself threatened

by England, Holland, and France; and whilst she had but little

reason to hope the preservation of her hereditary dominions,

that arrogant princess wished to place her husband on the

Imperial Throne. This quarrel kindled the flames of war in

Europe; the genius of Frederic saw by a single glance that the

moment was arrived for elevating Prussia to the second order of

powers; he made an offer to Maria Theresa to defend her, if

she would cede Silesia to him, and threatened her with war in

case of refusal. The Empress, whose firmness nothing could

shake, impoliticly refused that proposition; war was declared,

and Frederic entered Silesia at the head of eighty thousand

men. This first war lasted eighteen months.

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1740 to 1741.

Frederic, by gaining five battles, shewed that Europe would

recognize one great man more in her bloody annals. He had

begun the war from ambition, and contrary to strict justice;

he concluded it with ability, but by the abandonment of France

his ally, without giving her information of it, and he thus

put in practice, when he was seated on the throne, the

principles of Machiavel, whom he had refuted before he

ascended it. Men judge according to the event. The hero was

absolved by victory from the wrongs with which justice

reproached him; and this brilliant example serves to confirm

men in that error, too generally and too lightly adopted, that

ability in politics is incompatible with the strict rule of

morality. Four years after, in [1744], Frederic again took up

arms.

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1743-1744 to 1744-1745.

He invaded Bohemia, Upper Silesia, and Moravia. Vienna thought

him at her gates; but the defection of the Bavarians, the

retreat of the French, and the return of Prince Charles into

Bohemia, rapidly changed the face of affairs. The position of

Frederic became as dangerous as it had been menacing; he was

on the point of being lost, and he saw himself compelled to

retire with as much precipitation, as he had advanced with

boldness. The gaining the battle of Hohen-Friedberg saved him.

That retreat and that victory fixed the seal to his

reputation. It was after this action that he wrote to Louis

XV. 'I have just discharged in Silesia the bill of exchange

which your majesty drew on me at Fontenoy.' A letter so much

the more modest, as Frederic had conquered, and Louis had only

been witness to a victory. He displayed the same genius and the

same activity in the campaign of 1745, and once more abandoned

France in making his separate peace at Dresden. By this treaty

Francis was peaceably assured of the empire, and the cession

of Silesia was confirmed to Frederic. France during this war

committed some wrongs, which might palliate the abandonment of

Prussia. The French did not keep Prince Charles within bounds,

they made no diversion into Germany, and fought no where but

in Flanders. ... In 1756, Europe was again in a flame. France

and England declared war against each other, and both sought

alliances; Frederic ranged himself on the side of England, and

by that became the object of the unreflecting vengeance of the

French, and of the alliance of that power with Austria;

Austria also formed an alliance with the Court of Petersburg

by means of a Saxon secretary; Frederic discovered the project

of the Courts of Petersburg, Dresden, and Vienna, to invade

the Prussian dominions. He was before-hand with them, and

began the war by some conquests."

L. P. Ségur, the elder,

History of the Principal Events of the Reign of Frederic

William II., King of Prussia,

volume 1, pages 2-6.

GERMANY: A. D. 1742.

The Elector of Bavaria crowned Emperor (Charles VII.).

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1741 (OCTOBER).

GERMANY: A. D. 1745.

The consort of Maria Theresa elected Emperor (Francis I.).

Rise of the imperial house of Hapsburg-Lorraine.

See AUSTRIA: A. D.1745 (SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER);

also, 1744-1745.

GERMANY: A. D. 1748.

End and results of the War of the Austrian Succession.

See AIX-LA-CHAPELLE. THE CONGRESS.

{1495}

GERMANY: A. D. 1755-1756.

The Seven Years War:

Its causes and provocations.

"The great national quarrel between England and the powers

which restrained her free movements on the sea and her

extension of colonies, had never ceased. England would have

the freedom of the sea: and on land she pushed population and

ploughs where France paraded soldiers. In such a struggle war

must come, but, by laws invariable as the laws of nature, the

population will win in the end. After much bickering, blows

began in 1754, and at the beginning of 1755 England despatched

the ill-fated Braddock with a small force, which was destroyed

in July. ... As yet, however, the quarrel was only colonial.

England embittered it by seizing French ships without any

declaration of war. But why did Frederick [of Prussia] strike

in, if indeed he desired peace? In truth there was no choice

for him. As early as 1752-53 his secret agents had discovered

that Austria, Russia and Saxony were hatching a plot for the

destruction of Prussia, and such a partition as afterwards

befell unhappy Poland. In 1753 a Saxon official, Mentzel by

name, began to supply the Prussian agents with copies of

secret documents from the archives at Dresden, which proved

that, during the whole of the peace, negotiations had been

proceeding for a simultaneous attack on Frederick, though the

astute Brühl [Saxon minister], mindful of former defeats,

objected to playing the part of jackal to the neighbouring

lions. In short, by the end of 1755 the king knew that

preparations were already on foot in Austria and Russia, and

that he would probably be attacked next year certainly, or, at

latest, the year after. A great war was coming between England

and France, in which the continental power would attack

Hanover, and tread closely on the skirts of Prussia. The

situation was dangerous, and became terribly menacing when

England bargained with Russia to subsidise a Muscovite army of

55,000 men for defence of Hanover. Russia consented with

alacrity. Money was all that the czarina needed for her

preparations against Frederick, and in the autumn of 1755 she

assembled, not 55,000, but 70,000 men on the Prussian

frontier, nominally for the use of England. But throughout the

winter all the talk at St. Petersburg was of Frederick's

destruction in the coming spring. It was time for him to stir.

His first move was one of policy. He offered England a

'neutrality convention' by which the two powers jointly should

guarantee the German Reich against all foreign intervention

during the coming war. On the 16th of January, 1756, the

convention was signed in London, and the Russian agreement

thrown over, as it could well be, since it had not been

ratified. Europe was now ranking herself for the struggle. In

preceding years, the Austrian diplomatist, Kaunitz, had so

managed the French court, especially through the medium of

Madame de Pompadour, that Louis XV. was now on the side of

Maria Theresa, who had bowed her neck so far as to write to

the French king's mistress as 'Ma Cousine,' while Frederick

forgot policy, and spoke of the Pompadour in slighting terms.

'Je ne la connais pas,' said he once, and was never forgiven.

... The agreement with Russia to partition Prussia had already

been made, and Frederick's sharp tongue had betrayed him into

calling the czarina that 'Infame catin du nord.' Saxony waited

for the appearance of her stronger neighbours in order to join

them. England alone was Frederick's ally."

Colonel C. B. Brackenbury,

Frederick the Great,

chapter 9.

"The secret sources of the Third Silesian War, since called

'Seven-Years War,' go back to 1745; nay, we may say, to the

First Invasion of Silesia in 1740. For it was in Maria

Theresa's incurable sorrow at loss of Silesia, and her

inextinguishable hope to reconquer it, that this and all

Friedrich's other Wars had their origin. ... Traitor Menzel

the Saxon Kanzellist ... has been busy for Prussia ever since

'the end of 1752.' Got admittance to the Presses; sent his

first Excerpt 'about the time of Easter-Fair 1753,'--time of

Voltaire's taking wing. And has been at work ever since.

Copying Despatches from the most secret Saxon Repositories;

ready always on Excellency Maltzahn's indicating the Piece

wanted [Maltzahn being the Prussian Minister at Dresden]. ...

Menzel ... lasted in free activity till 1757; and was then put

under lock and key. Was not hanged: sat prisoner for

twenty-seven years after; over-grown with hair, legs and arms

chained together, heavy iron-bar uniting both ankles; diet

bread-and-water;--for the rest, healthy; and died, not very

miserable it is said, in 1784."

T. Carlyle,

History of Friedrich II. of Prussia,

book 17, chapter 1 (volume 7).

ALSO IN:

Duc de Broglie,

The King's Secret,

chapters 1-2 (volume 1).

Frederick II.,

History of the Seven Years War

(Posthumous Works, volume 2), chapter 3.

H. Tuttle,

History of Prussia, 1745-1756

(volume 3), chapters 6-9.

F. Von Raumer,

Contributions to Modern History:

Frederick II. and his Times, chapters 24-28.

See, also,

ENGLAND: A. D. 1754-1755;

and AUSTRIA: A. D. 1755-1763.

GERMANY: A. D. 1756.

The Seven Years War:

Frederick strikes the first blow.

Saxony subdued.

"Finding that the storm was wholly inevitable, and must burst

on him next year, he [Frederick], with bold sagacity,

determined to forestall it. First, then, in August, 1756, his

ambassador at Vienna had orders to demand of the Empress Queen

a statement of her intentions, to announce war as the

alternative, and to declare that he would accept no answer 'in

the style of an oracle.' The answer, as he expected, was

evasive. Without further delay an army of 60,000 Prussians,

headed by Frederick in person, poured into Saxony. The Queen

of Poland was taken in Dresden: the King of Poland [Augustus

III. Elector of Saxony, and, by election, King of Poland] and

his troops were blockaded in Pirna. Thus did Frederick

commence that mighty struggle which is known to Germans by the

name of the Seven Years' War. The first object of the Prussian

monarch at Dresden was to obtain possession of the original

documents of the coalition against him, whose existence he

knew by means of the traitor Menzel. The Queen of Poland, no

less aware than Frederick of the importance of these papers,

had carried them to her own bed-chamber. She sat down on the

trunk which contained the most material ones, and declared to

the Prussian officer sent to seize them that nothing but force

should move her from the spot. [The official account of this

occurrence which Carlyle produces represents the Queen as

'standing before the door' of the 'archive apartment' in which

the compromising documents were locked up, she having

previously sealed the door.] This officer was of Scottish

blood, General Keith, the Earl Marischal's brother.

{1496}

'All Europe,' said the Queen, 'would exclaim against this

outrage; and then, sir, you will be the victim; depend upon

it, your King is a man to sacrifice you to his own honour!'

Keith, who knew Frederick's character, was startled, and sent

for further orders; but on receiving a reiteration of the

first he did his duty. The papers were then made public,

appended to a manifesto in vindication of Frederick's conduct;

and they convinced the world that, although the apparent

aggressor in his invasion of Saxony, he had only acted on the

principles of self-defence. Meanwhile, the Prussian army

closely blockaded the Saxon in Pirna, but the Austrian, under

Marshal Brown, an officer of British extraction, was advancing

to its relief through the mountain passes of Bohemia.

Frederick left a sufficient force to maintain the blockade,

marched against Brown with the remainder, and gave him battle

at Lowositz [or Lobositz] on the 1st of October. It proved a

hard-fought day; the King no longer found, as he says in one

of his letters, the old Austrians he remembered; and his loss

in killed and wounded was greater than theirs [3,308 against

2,984]; but victory declared on his side. Then retracing his

steps towards Pirna he compelled, by the pressure of famine,

the whole Saxon army, 17,000 strong, to an unconditional

surrender. The officers were sent home on parole, but the

soldiers were induced, partly by force and partly by

persuasion, to enlist in the Prussian ranks, and swear

fidelity to Frederick. Their former sovereign, King Augustus,

remained securely perched on his castle-rock of Königstein,

but, becoming weary of confinement, solicited, and was most

readily granted, passports to Warsaw. During the whole winter

Frederick fixed his head-quarters at Dresden, treating Saxony

in all respects as a conquered province, or as one of his own.

Troops and taxes were levied throughout that rich and populous

land with unsparing rigour, and were directed against the very

cause which the sovereign of that land had embraced."

Lord Mahon (Earl Stanhope),

History of England, 1713-1783,

chapter 33 (volume  4).

ALSO IN:

T. Carlyle,

History of Friedrich II.,

book 17, chapters 4-8 (volume 7).

Lord Dover,

Life of Frederick IL,

volume 2, chapter 1.

GERMANY: A.-D. 1756-1757.

The Seven Years War:

Frederick under the Ban of the Empire.

The coalition against Frederick.

"All through the winter Austria strained every nerve to

consolidate her alliances, and she did not scruple to use her

position at the head of the Empire, in order to drag that body

into the quarrel that had arisen between two of its members.

On his own responsibility, without consulting the electors,

princes, and cities, the Emperor passed sentence on Frederick,

and condemned him, unheard, as a disturber of the peace. Many

of the great cities altogether refused to publish the

Emperor's decree, and even among the states generally

subservient to Austria there were some that were alarmed at so

flagrant a disregard of law and precedent. It may have seemed

a sign of what was to be expected should Prussia be

annihilated, and no state remain in Germany that dared to lift

up its voice against Austria. Nevertheless, in spite of this

feeling, and in spite of the opposition of nearly all the

Protestant states, Austria succeeded in inducing the Empire to

espouse her cause. In all three colleges of electors, princes,

and cities she obtained a majority, and at a diet held on

January 17, 1757, it was resolved that an army of the Empire

should be set on foot for the purpose of making war on

Prussia. Some months later Frederick was put to the ban of the

Empire. But the use of this antiquated weapon served rather to

throw ridicule on those who employed it than to injure him

against whom it was launched. ... It has been calculated that

the population of the States arrayed against Frederick the

Great amounted to 90,000,000, and that they put 430,000 men

into the field in the year 1757. The population of Prussia was

4,500,000, her army 200,000 strong; but, after deducting the

garrisons of the fortresses, there remained little over

150,000 men available for service in the field. The odds

against Frederick were great, but they were not absolutely

overwhelming. His territories were scattered and difficult of

defence, the extremities hardly defensible at all; but he

occupied a central position from which he might, by rapidity

of movement, be able to take his assailants in detail, unless

their plans were distinguished by a harmony unusual in the

efforts of a coalition."

F. W. Longman,

Frederick the Great and the Seven Years' War,

chapter 8, section 3.

GERMANY: A. D. 1756-1758.

War of Prussia with Sweden in Pomerania.

See SCANDINAVIAN STATES (SWEDEN): A. D. 1720-1792.

GERMANY: A. D. 1757 (April-June).

The Seven Years War:

Frederick's, invasion of Bohemia.

Victory at Prague and defeat at Kolin.

"At the commencement of 1757, the grand confederacy against

the king of Prussia was consolidated by the efforts and

intrigues of the court of Vienna. The French had drawn

together 80,000 men on the Rhine, under the command of marshal

d' Etrées; the army of execution was assembling in the empire;

the Swedes were preparing to penetrate into Pomerania, and

60,000 Russians were stationed on the frontiers of Livonia,

waiting the season of action to burst into the kingdom of

Prussia. With this favourable aspect of affairs, the empress

prepared for the campaign by augmenting her forces in Hungary

and Bohemia to 150,000 men; the main army, stationed in the

vicinity of Prague, was commanded by Prince Charles, who was

assisted by the skill of marshal Brown, and the other corps

intrusted to count Daun. Frederic possessed too much foresight

and vigilance to remain inactive while his enemies were

collecting their forces; he therefore resolved to carry the

war into the heart of the Austrian territories, and by a

decisive stroke to shake the basis of the confederacy. He

covered this plan with consummate address; he affected great

trepidation and uncertainty, and, to deceive the Austrians

into a belief that he only intended to maintain himself in

Saxony, put Dresden in a state of defence, broke down the

bridges, and marked out various camps in the vicinity. In the

midst of this apparent alarm three Prussian columns burst into

Bohemia, in April, and rapidly advanced towards Prague. ...

The Austrians, pressed on all sides, retreated with

precipitation under the walls of Prague, on the southern side

of the Moldau, while the Prussians advancing towards the

capital formed two bodies; one under Schwerin remaining at

Jung Bunzlau, and the other, headed by the king, occupying the

heights between the Moldau and the Weisseberg.

{1497}

Expecting to be joined by marshal Daun, who was hastening from

Moravia, the Austrians remained on the defensive; but prince

Charles took so strong a position as seemed to defy all

apprehensions of an attack. ... These obstacles, however, were

insufficient to arrest the daring spirit of Frederic, who

resolved to attack the Austrians before the arrival of Daun.

Leaving a corps under prince Maurice above Prague, he crossed

the Moldau near Rostock and Podabe on the 5th of May, with

16,000 men, and on the following morning at break of day was

joined by the corps under marshal Schwerin. ... Victory

declared on the side of the Prussians, but was purchased by

the loss of their best troops, not less than 18,000, even by

the avowal of the king, being killed, with many of his bravest

officers, and Schwerin, the father of the Prussian discipline,

and the guide of Frederic in the career of victory. Of the

Austrians 8,000 were killed and wounded, 9,000 made prisoners,

and 28,000 shut up within the walls of Prague. ... A column of

16,000 Austrians made good their retreat along the Moldau to

join the army of marshal Daun. Prague was instantly blockaded

by the victorious army, and not less than 100,000 souls were

confined within the walls, almost without the means of

subsistence. They were soon reduced to the greatest

extremities. ... In this disastrous moment the house of

Austria was preserved from impending destruction by the skill

and caution of a general, who now, for the first time,

appeared at the head of an army. This general was Leopold

count Daun, a native of Bohemia. ... Daun had marched through

Moravia towards Prague, to effect a junction with prince

Charles. On arriving at Boehmischgrod, within a few miles of

Prague, he was apprised of the recent defeat, and halted a few

days to collect the fugitives, till his corps swelled so

considerably that Frederic detached against him the prince of

Bevern with 20,000 men." Daun declined battle and retreated,

until he had collected an army of 60,000 men and restored

their courage. He then advanced, forcing back the prince of

Bevern, and when Frederick, joining the latter with

reinforcements, attacked him at Kolin, on the 18th of June, he

inflicted on the Prussian king a disastrous defeat--the first

which Frederick had known. The Prussian troops, "for the first

time defeated, gave way to despondency, and in their retreat

exclaimed, 'This is our Pultawa.' Daun purchased the victory

with the loss of 9,000 men; but on the side of the Prussians

not less than 14,000 were killed, wounded, and taken

prisoners, and 43 pieces of artillery, with 22 standards, fell

into the hands of the Austrians. Maria Theresa ... conveyed in

person the news of this important victory to the countess

Daun, and instituted the military order of merit, or the Order

of Maria Theresa, with which she decorated the commander and

officers who had most signalised themselves, and dated its

commencement from the æra of that glorious victory. To give

repose to the troops, and to replace the magazines which had

been destroyed by the Prussians, Daun remained several days on

the field of battle; and as he advanced to Prague found that

the Prussians had raised the siege on the 20th of June, and

were retreating with precipitation towards Saxony and

Lusatia."

W. Coxe,

History of the House of Austria,

chapter 112 (volume 3).

ALSO IN:

Colonel C. B. Brackenbury,

Frederick the Great,

chapters 11-12.

F. Kugler,

Pict. History of Germany during the

Reign of Frederick the Great,

chapter 25.

GERMANY: A. D. 1757 (July-December).

The Seven Years War:

Darkening and brightening of Frederick's career.

Closter-Seven.

Rossbach.

Leuthen.

The enemies of the King of Prussia "were now closing upon him

from every side. The provinces beyond the Vistula became the

prey of Russian hordes, to which only one division of

Prussians under Marshal Lehwald was opposed. In the result,

however, their own devastations, and the consequent want of

supplies, proved a check to their further progress during this

campaign. In Westphalia above 80,000 effective French soldiers

were advancing, commanded by the Mareschal d'Estrées, a

grandson of the famous minister Louvois. The Duke of

Cumberland, who had undertaken to defend his father's

electorate against them, was at the head of a motley army of

scarce 50,000 men. ... His military talents were not such as

to supply his want of numbers or of combination; he allowed

the French to pass the deep and rapid Weser unopposed; he gave

them no disturbance when laying waste great part of the

Electorate; he only fell back from position to position until

at length the enemy came up with him at the village of

Hastenback near Hameln. There, on the 26th of July, an action

was fought, and the Duke was worsted with the loss of several

hundred men, The only resource of His Royal Highness was a

retreat across the wide Lüneberg moors, to cover the town of

Stade towards the mouth of the Elbe, where the archives and

other valuable effects from Hanover had been already deposited

for safety." Intrigue at Versailles having recalled D'Estrées

and sent the Duke de Richelieu into his place, the latter

pressed the Duke of Cumberland so closely, hemming him in and

cutting off his communications, that he was soon glad to make

terms. On the 8th of September the English Duke signed, at

Closter-Seven, a convention under which the auxiliary troops

in his army were sent home, the Hanoverians dispersed, and

only a garrison left at Stade. "After the battle of Kolin and

the Convention of Closter-Seven, the position of Frederick,--

hemmed in on almost every side by victorious enemies,--was not

only most dangerous but well-nigh desperate. To his own eyes

it seemed so. He resolved in his thoughts, and discussed with

his friends, the voluntary death of Otho as a worthy example

to follow. Fully resolved never to fall alive into the hands

of his enemies, nor yet to survive any decisive overthrow, he

carried about his person a sure poison in a small glass phial.

Yet ... he could still, with indomitable skill and energy, make

every preparation for encountering the Prince de Soubise. He

marched against the French commander at the head of only

22,000 men; but these were veterans, trained in the strictest

discipline, and full of confidence in their chief. Soubise, on

the other hand, owed his appointment in part to his

illustrious lineage, as head of the House of Rohan, and still

more to Court-favour, as the minion of Madame de Pompadour,

but in no degree to his own experience or abilities. He had

under his orders nearly 40,000 of his countrymen, and nearly

20,000 troops of the Empire; for the Germanic diet also had

been induced to join the league against Frederick. On the 5th

of November the two armies came to a battle at Rosbach [or

Rossbach], close to the plain of Lützen, where in the

preceding century Gustavus Adolphus conquered and fell.

{1498}

By the skilful manœvres of Frederick the French were brought

to believe that the Prussians intended nothing but retreat,

and they advanced in high spirits as if only to pursue the

fugitives. Of a sudden they found themselves attacked with all

the compactness of discipline, and all the courage of despair.

The troops of the Empire, a motley crew, fled at the first

fire. ... So rapid was the victory that the right wing of the

Prussians, under Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, was never

engaged at all. Great numbers of the French were cut down in

their flight by the Prussian cavalry, not a few perished in

the waters of the Saale, and full 7,000 were made prisoners,

with a large amount of baggage, artillery and standards. ...

The battle of Rosbach was not more remarkable for its military

results than for its moral influence. It was hailed throughout

Germany as a triumph of the Teutonic over the Gallic race. ...

So precarious was now Frederick's position that the battle of

Rosbach, as he said himself, gained him nothing but leisure to

fight another battle elsewhere. During his absence on the

Saale, the Austrian armies had poured over the mountains into

Silesia; they had defeated the Prussians under the Duke of

Bevern; they had taken the main fortress, Schweidnitz, and the

capital, Breslau; nearly the whole province was already

theirs. A flying detachment of 4,000 cavalry, under General

Haddick, had even pushed into Brandenburg, and levied a

contribution from the city of Berlin [entering one of the

suburbs of the Prussian capital and holding it for twelve

hours]. The advancing season seemed to require winter

quarters, but Frederick never dreamed of rest until Silesia

was recovered. He hastened by forced marches from the Saale to

the Oder, gathering reinforcements while he went along. As he

drew near Breslau, the Imperial commander, Prince Charles of

Lorraine, flushed with recent victory and confident in

superior numbers, disregarded the prudent advice of Marshal

Daun, and descended from an almost inaccessible position to

give the King of Prussia battle on the open plain. ... On the

5th of December, one month from the battle of Rosbach, the two

armies met at Leuthen, a small village near Breslau, Frederick

with 40,000, Prince Charles of Lorraine with between 60,000

and 70,000 men. For several hours did the conflict rage

doubtfully and fiercely. It was decided mainly by the skill

and the spirit of the Prussian monarch. 'The battle of

Leuthen,' says Napoleon, 'was a master-piece. Did it even

stand alone it would of itself entitle Frederick to immortal

fame.' In killed, wounded and taken, the Austrians lost no

less than 27,000 men; above 50 standards, above 100 cannon,

above 4,000 waggons, became the spoil of the victors; Breslau

was taken, Schweidnitz blockaded, Silesia recovered; the

remnant of the Imperial forces fled back across the mountains;

and Frederick, after one of the longest and most glorious

campaigns that History records, at length allowed himself and

his soldiers some repose."

Lord Mahon (Earl Stanhope),

History of England, 1713-1783,

chapter 34 (volume 4).

ALSO IN:

T. Carlyle,

History of Friedrich II.,

book 18, chapters 5-10.

Lord Dover,

Life of Frederick II.,

volume 2, chapters 3-4.

Sir E. Cust,

Annals of the Wars of the 18th Century,

volume 2, pages 217-240.

GERMANY: A. D. 1758.

The Seven Years War:

Campaign in Hanover.

Siege of Olmütz.

Russian defeat at Zorndorf.

Prussian defeat at Hochkirch.

"Before the end of 1757, England began to take a more active

part on the Continent. Lord Chatham brought about the

rejection of the Convention of Closter-Zeven by Parliament,

and the recall of Cumberland by the king. The efficient Prince

Ferdinand of Brunswick was proposed by Frederick and made

commander of the English and Hanoverian forces. He opened the

campaign of 1758 in the winter. The French, under Clermont,

being without discipline or control, he drove them in headlong

flight out of their winter-quarters in Hanover and Westphalia,

to the Rhine and across it; and on June 23 defeated them at

the battle of Crefeld. A French army under Soubise afterward

crossed the Rhine higher up, and Ferdinand, retreated, but

succeeded in protecting the west as far as the Weser against

General Contades. Frederick first retook Schweidnitz, April

16. He then, in order to prevent the junction of the Russians

and Austrians, ventured to attack Austria, and invaded

Moravia. His brother, Prince Henry, had but a small force in

Saxony, and Frederick thought that he could best cover that

country by an attack on Austria. But the siege of Olmütz

detained him from May until July, and his prospects grew more

doubtful. The Austrians captured a convoy of 300 wagons of

military stores, which Ziethen was to have escorted to him.

[Instead of 800, the convoy comprised 3,000 to 4,000 wagons,

of which only 200 reached the Prussian camp, and its

destruction by General Loudon completely frustrated

Frederick's plan of campaign.] Frederick raised the siege,

and, by an admirable retreat, brought his army through Bohemia

by way of Königgrätz to Landshut. Here he received bad news.

The Russians, under Fermor, were again in Prussia, occupying

the eastern province, but treating it mildly as a conquered

country, where the empress already received the homage of the

people. They then advanced, with frightful ravages, through

Pomerania and Neumark to the Oder, and were now near Küstrin,

which they laid in ashes. Frederick made haste to meet them.

He was so indignant at the desolation of the country and the

suffering of his people that he forbade quarter to be given.

The report of this fact also embittered the Russians. At

Zorndorf, Frederick met the enemy, 50,000 strong, August 25,

1758. They were drawn up in a great square or phalanx, in the

ancient, half-barbarous manner. A frightfully bloody fight

followed, since the Russians would not yield, and were cut

down in heaps. Seidlitz, the victor of Rossbach, by a timely

charge of his cavalry, captured the Russian artillery, and

crushed their right wing. On the second day the Russians were

driven back, but not without inflicting heavy loss on the

Prussians, who, though they suffered much less than their

enemies, left more than one third of their force on the field.

The Russians were compelled to withdraw from Prussia.

Frederick then hastened to Saxony, where his brother Henry was

sorely pressed by Daun and the imperial army. He could not

even wait to relieve Silesia, where Neisse, his principal

fortress, was threatened. Daun, hearing of his approach, took

up a position in his way, between Bautzen and Görlitz. But

Frederick, whose contempt for this prudent and slow general

was excessive, occupied a camp in a weak and exposed position,

at Hochkirch, under Daun's very eyes, against the protest of

his own generals.

{1499}

He remained there three days unmolested; but on October 14,

the day fixed for advancing, the Austrians attacked him with

twice his numbers. A desperate fight took place in the burning

village; the Prussians were driven out, and lost many guns.

Frederick himself was in imminent danger, and his friends

Keith and Duke Francis of Brunswick fell at his side. Yet the

army did not lose its spirit or its discipline. Within eleven

days Frederick, who had been joined by his brother Henry, was

in Silesia, and relieved Neisse and Kosel. Thus the campaign

of 1758 ended favorably to Frederick. The pope sent Daun a

consecrated hat and sword, as a testimonial for his victory at

Hochkirch."

C. T. Lewis,

History of Germany,

book 5, chapter 23, sections 7-9.

ALSO IN:

G. B. Malleson,

Military Life of Loudon,

chapters 7-8.

F. Kugler,

Pict. History of Germany during the

Reign of Frederick the Great,

chapters 29-31.

Frederick II.,

History of the Seven Years War

(Posthumous Works, volume 2),  chapter 8.

GERMANY: A. D. 1759 (April-August).

The Seven Years War:

Prince Ferdinand's Hanoverian campaign.

Defeat at Bergen and victory at Minden.

In the Hanoverian field of war, where Prince Ferdinand of

Brunswick held command, the campaign of 1759 was important,

and prosperous in the end for the allies of Prussia. "Besides

the Hanoverians and Hessians in British pay, he [Prince

Ferdinand] had under his direction 10,000 or 12,000 British

soldiers, amongst whom, since the death of the Duke of

Marlborough, Lord George Sackville was the senior officer. The

French, on their part, were making great exertions, under the

new administration of the Duke de Choiseul; large

reinforcements were sent into Germany, and early in the year

they surprised by stratagem the free city of Frankfort and

made it the place of arms for their southern army. No object

could be of greater moment to Ferdinand than to dislodge them

from this important post." Marching quickly, with 30,000 of

his army, he attacked the French, under the Duke de Broglie,

at Bergen, on the Nidda, in front of Frankfort, April 13, and

was repulsed, after heavy fighting, with a loss of 2,000 men.

"This reverse would, it was supposed, reduce Prince Ferdinand

to the defensive during the remainder of the campaign. Both De

Broglie and Contades eagerly pushed forward, their opponents

giving way before them. Combining their forces, they reduced

Cassel, Munster, and Minden, and they felt assured that the

whole Electorate must soon again be theirs. Already had the

archives and the most valuable property been sent off from

Hanover to Stade. Already did a new Hastenbeck--a new

Closter-Seven--rise in view. But it was under such

difficulties that the genius of Ferdinand shone forth. With a

far inferior army (for thus much is acknowledged, although I

do not find the French numbers clearly or precisely stated),

he still maintained his ground on the left of the Weser, and

supplied every defect by his superiority of tactics. He left a

detachment of 5,000 men exposed, and seemingly unguarded, as a

bait to lure De Contades from his strong position at Minden.

The French Mareschal was deceived by the feint, and directed

the Duke De Broglie to march forward and profit by the

blunder, as he deemed it to be. On the 1st of August,

accordingly, De Broglie advanced into the plain, his force

divided in eight columns." Instead of the small corps

expected, he found the whole army of the allies in front of

him. De Contades hurried to his assistance, and the French,

forced to accept battle in an unfavorable position, were

overcome. At the decisive moment of their retreat, "the Prince

sent his orders to Lord George Sackville, who commanded the

whole English and some German cavalry on the right wing of the

Allies, and who had hitherto been kept back as a reserve. The

orders were to charge and overwhelm the French in their

retreat, before they could reach any clear ground to rally.

Had these orders been duly fulfilled, it is acknowledged by

French writers that their army must have been utterly

destroyed; but Lord George either could not or would not

understand what was enjoined on him. ... Under such

circumstances the victory of Minden would not have been signal

or complete but for a previous and most high-spirited

precaution of Prince Ferdinand. He had sent round to the rear

of the French a body of 10,000 men, under his nephew--and also

the King of Prussia's--the Hereditary Prince of Brunswick.

... Thus Ferdinand became master of the passes, and the French

were constrained to continue their retreat in disorder. Upon the

whole, their loss was 8,000 men killed, wounded, or taken, 30

pieces of artillery, and 17 standards. ... Great was the

rejoicing in England at the victory of Minden"; but loud the

outcry against Lord George Sackville, who was recalled and

dismissed from all his employments.

Lord Mahon (Earl Stanhope),

History of England, 1713-1783,

chapter 36 (volume 4).

ALSO IN:

Sir E. Cust,

Annals of the Wars of the 18th Century,

volume 2, pages 327-333.

GERMANY: A. D. 1759 (July-November).

The Seven Years War:

Disasters of Frederick.

Kunersdorf.

Dresden.

Maxen.

"Three years of the war were gone and the ardour of

Frederick's' enemies showed no signs of abating. The war was

unpopular in the Russian army, but the Czarina thought no

sacrifice too great for the gratification of her hatred.

France was sick of it too, and tottering on the verge of

national bankruptcy, but Louis was kept true to his

engagements by domestic influences and by the unbending

determination of Maria Theresa never to lay down arms until

Prussia was thoroughly humbled. ... Already Frederick was at

his wits' end for men and money. Of the splendid infantry

which had stormed the heights at Prague, and stemmed the rout

of Kollin, very little now remained. ... Moreover, Austria,

relying on her vastly larger population, had ceased to

exchange prisoners, and after the end of 1759 Russia followed

her example. ... Frederick's pecuniary difficulties were even

greater still. But for the English subsidy he could hardly

have subsisted at all. ... The summer was half gone before

there was any serious fighting. Frederick had got together

125,000 men of some sort, besides garrison troops, but he no

longer felt strong enough to take the initiative, and the

Austrians were equally indisposed to attack without the

co-operation of their allies. Towards the middle of July the

Russians, under Count Soltikoff, issued from Posen, advanced

to the Oder', and, after defeating a weak Prussian corps near

Kay, took possession of Frankfort.

{1500}

It now became necessary for the king to march in person

against them, the more especially as Laudon [or Loudon] with

18,000 Austrians was on his way to join Soltikoff. Before he

could reach Frankfort, Laudon, eluding with much dexterity the

vigilance of his enemies, effected his junction, and

Frederick, with 48,000 men, found himself confronted by an

army 78,000 strong. The Russians were encamped on the heights

of Kunersdorf, east of Frankfort." Frederick attacked them,

August 12, with brilliant success at first, routing their left

wing and taking 70 guns, with several thousand prisoners. "The

Prussian generals then besought the king to rest content with

the advantage he had gained. The day was intensely hot; his

soldiers had been on foot for twelve hours, and were suffering

severely from thirst and exhaustion; moreover, if the Russians

were let alone, they would probably go off quietly in the

night, as they had done after Zorndorf. Unhappily Frederick

refused to take counsel. He wanted to destroy the Russian

army, not merely to defeat it; he had seized the Frankfort

bridge and cut off its retreat." He persisted in his attack

and was beaten off. "The Prussians were in full retreat when

Laudon swept down upon them with eighteen fresh squadrons. The

retreat became a rout more disorderly than in any battle of

the war except Rossbach. The king, stupefied with his

disaster, could hardly be induced to quit the field, and was

heard to mutter, 'Is there then no cursed bullet that can

reach me?' The defeat was overwhelming. Had it been properly

followed up, it must have put an end to the war, and

Kunersdorf would have ranked among the decisive battles of the

world. Berlin lay open to the enemy; the royal family fled to

Magdeburg. For the first (and last) time in his life Frederick

gave way utterly to despair. 'I have no resources left,' he wrote

to the minister Finckenstein the evening after the battle,

'and to tell the truth I hold all for lost. I shall not

survive the ruin of my country. Farewell for ever.' The same

night he resigned the command of the army to General Finck.

Eighteen thousand, five hundred of his soldiers were killed,

wounded, or prisoners, and the rest were so scattered that no

more than 3,000 remained under his command. All the artillery

was lost, and most of his best generals were killed or

wounded. ... By degrees, however, the prospect brightened. The

fugitives kept coming in, and the enemy neglected to give the

finishing stroke. Frederick shook off his despair, and resumed

the command of his army. Artillery was ordered up from Berlin,

and the troops serving against the Swedes were recalled from

Pomerania. Within a week of Kunersdorf he was at the head of

33,000 men, and in a position to send relief to Dresden, which

was besieged by an Austrian and Imperialist army. The relief,

as it happened, arrived just too late." Dresden was

surrendered by its commandant, Schmettau, on the 4th of

September, to the great wrath of Frederick. By a wonderful

march of fifty-eight miles in fifty hours, Prince Henry, the

brother of Frederick, prevented the Austrians from gaining the

whole electorate of Saxony. The Russians and the Austrians

quarrelled, the former complaining that they were left to do

all the fighting, and presently they withdrew into Poland.

"With the departure of the Russians, the campaign would

probably have ended, had not Frederick's desire to close it

with a victory led him into a fresh disaster, hardly less

serious and far more disgraceful than that of Kunersdorf. ...

With the view of hastening the retreat of the Austrians, and

of driving them, if possible, into the difficult Pirna

country, he ordered General Finck to take post with his corps

at Maxen, to bar their direct line of communications with

Bohemia." As the result, Finck, with his whole corps, of

12,000, were overwhelmed and taken prisoners. "The

capitulation of Maxen was no less destructive of Frederick's

plans than galling to his pride. The Austrians now retained

Dresden, a place of great strategical importance, though the

king, in the hope of dislodging them, exposed the wrecks of

his army to the ruinous hardships of a winter campaign, in

weather of unusual severity, and borrowed 12,000 men of

Ferdinand of Brunswick to cover his flank while so engaged.

The new year had commenced before he allowed his harassed

troops to go into winter-quarters."

F. W. Longman,

Frederick the Great and the Seven Years War,

chapter 10, section 2.

ALSO IN:

T. Carlyle,

History of Friedrich II.;

book 19, chapters 4-7.

Frederick II.,

History of the Seven Years War

(Posthumous Works, volume 3), chapter 10.

GERMANY: A. D. 1760.

The Seven Years War:

Saxony reconquered by Frederick.

Dresden bombarded.

Battles of Liegnitz, Torgau and Warburg.

"The campaign of 1759 had extended far into the winter, and

Frederick conceived the bold idea of renewing it while the

vigilance of his enemies was relaxed in winter quarters, and

of making another effort to drive the Austrians from Saxony.

His head-quarters were at Freyberg. Having received

reinforcements from Prince Ferdinand, and been joined by

12,000 men under the hereditary prince, he left the latter to

keep guard behind the Mulde, and in January 1760, at a time

when the snow lay deep upon the ground, he made a fierce

spring upon the Austrians, who were posted at Dippoldiswalde;

but General Maguire, who commanded there, baffled him by the

vigilance and skill with which he guarded every pass, and

compelled him to retrace his steps to Freyberg. When the

winter had passed and the regular campaign had opened, Laudohn

[Loudon], one of the most active of the Austrian generals--the

same who had borne a great part in the victories of

Hochkirchen and Kunersdorf--entered Silesia, surprised with a

greatly superior force the Prussian General Fouqué, compelled

him, with some thousands of soldiers, to surrender [at

Landshut, June 22], and a few days later reduced the important

fortress of Glatz [July 26]. Frederick, at the first news of

the danger of Fouqué, marched rapidly towards Silesia, Daun

slowly following, while an Austrian corps, under General Lacy,

impeded his march by incessant skirmishes. On learning the

surrender of Fouqué, Frederick at once turned and hastened

towards Dresden. It was July, and the heat was so intense that

on a single day more than a hundred of his soldiers dropped dead

upon the march. He hoped to gain some days upon Daun, who was

still pursuing, and to become master of Dresden before

succours arrived. As he expected, he soon outstripped the

Austrian general, and the materials for the siege were

collected with astonishing rapidity, but General Maguire, who

commanded at Dresden, defended it with complete success till

the approach of the Austrian army obliged Frederick to retire.

{1501}

Baffled in his design, he took a characteristic vengeance by

bombarding that beautiful city with red-hot balls,

slaughtering multitudes of its peaceable inhabitants, and

reducing whole quarters to ashes; and he then darted again

upon Silesia, still followed by the Austrian general. Laudohn

had just met with his first reverse, having failed in the

siege of Breslau [an attempted surprise and a brief

bombardment]; on August 15, when Daun was still far off,

Frederick fell upon him and beat him in the battle of

Liegnitz. [The statement that 'Daun was still far off' appears

to be erroneous. Loudon and Daun had formed a junction four

days before, and had planned a concerted attack on Frederick's

camp; Loudon was struck and defeated while making the movement

agreed upon, and Daun was only a few miles away at the time.]

Soon after, however, this success was counterbalanced by Lacy

and Totleben, who; at the head of some Austrians and Russians,

had marched upon Berlin, which, after a brave resistance, was

once more captured and ruthlessly plundered; but on the

approach of Frederick the enemy speedily retreated. Frederick

then turned again towards Saxony, which was again occupied by

Daun, and on November 3 he attacked his old enemy in his

strong entrenchments at Torgau. Daun, in addition to the

advantage of position, had the advantage of great numerical

superiority, for his army was reckoned at 65,000, while that

of Frederick was not more than 44,000. But the generalship of

Frederick gained the victory. General Ziethen succeeded in

attacking the Austrians in the rear, gaining the height, and

throwing them into confusion. Daun was wounded and disabled,

and General O'Donnell, who was next in command, was unable to

restore the Austrian line. The day was conspicuous for its

carnage, even among the bloody battles of the Seven Years'

War: 20,000 Austrians were killed, wounded, or prisoners,

while 14,000 Prussians were left on the field. The battle

closed the campaign for the year, leaving all Saxony in the

possession of the Prussians, with the exception of Dresden,

which was still held by Maguire. The English and German army,

under Prince Ferdinand, succeeded in the meantime in keeping

at bay a very superior French army, under Marshal Broglio; and

several slight skirmishes took place, with various results.

The battle of Warburg, which was the most important, was won

chiefly by the British cavalry, but Prince Ferdinand failed in

his attempts to take Wesel and Gottingen; and at the close of

the year the French took up their quarters at Cassel."

W. E. H. Lecky,

History of England, 18th Century,

chapter 8 (volume 2).

ALSO IN:

W. Coxe,

History of the House of Austria,

chapter 115 (volume 3).

G. B. Malleson,

Military Life of Loudon,

chapter 10.

T. Carlyle,

History of Friedrich II.,

book 20, chapters 1-6.

GERMANY: A. D. 1761-1762.

The Seven Years War:

The closing campaigns.

"All Frederick's exertions produced him only 96,000 men for

defence of Silesia and Saxony this year [1761]. Prince Henry

had to face Daun in Saxony; the king himself stood in Silesia

against Loudon and the Russians under Butterlin. Loudon opened

the campaign by advancing against Goltz, near Schweidnitz, in

April. Goltz had only 12,000 to his adversary's 30,000, but

posted himself so well that Loudon could not attack him.

Reinforcements came gradually to Loudon, raising his army to

72,000, but orders from Vienna obliged him to remain inactive

till he could be joined near Neisse by the Russians with

60,000. Goltz, manœuvring against the Russians, was taken

prisoner. The king himself delayed the junction of his enemies

for some time, but could not now offer battle. The junction

took place the 18th of August. He then struck at Loudon's

communications, but the thrust was well parried, and on the

20th of August, Frederick, for the first time, was reduced to

an attitude of pure defence. He formed an intrenched camp at

Bunzelwitz, and lay there, blocking the way to Schweidnitz.

Loudon's intreaties could not persuade the Russians to join

him in full force to attack the position, and on the 9th of

September Butterlin's army fell back across the Oder, leaving

20,000 of his men to act under Loudon. Frederick remained a

fortnight longer in the camp of Bunzelwitz, but was then

forced to go, as his army was eating up the magazines of

Schweidnitz. Again he moved against Loudon's magazines, but

the Austrian general boldly marched for Schweidnitz, and

captured the place by assault on the night of the 30th

September--1st October. No fight took place between London and

the king. They both went into winter quarters in

December--Prussians at Strehlen, Austrians at Kunzendorf, and

Russians about Glatz. ... In the western theatre Ferdinand

defeated Broglio and Soubise at Vellinghausen [or

Wellinghausen, or Kirch-Denkern, as the battle, fought July

15, is differently called], the English contingent again

behaving gloriously. ... Prince Henry and Daun manœuvred

skilfully throughout the campaign, but never came to serious

blows. Frederick is described as being very gloomy in mind

this winter. The end of the year left him with but 60,000 men

in Saxony, Silesia, and the north. Eugene of Wurtemburg had

5,000 to hold back the Swedes, Prince Henry 25,000 in Saxony,

the king himself 30,000. But the agony of France was

increasing; Maria Theresa had to discharge 20,000 men from

want of money, and Frederick's bitter enemy, 'cette infame

Catin du Nord' [the czarina Elizabeth], was failing fast in

health. A worse blow to the king than the loss of a battle had

been the fall of Pitt, in October, and with him all hope of

English subsidies. Still, the enemies of Prussia were almost

exhausted. One more year of brave and stubborn resistance, and

Prussia must be left in peace. By extraordinary exertions, and

a power of administrative organisation which was one of his

greatest qualities, Frederick not only kept up his 60, 000,

but doubled their number. In the spring he had 70,000 for his

Silesian army, 40,000 for Prince Henry in Saxony, and 10,000

for the Swedes or other purposes. Best news of all, the

czarina died on the 5th of January, 1762, and Peter, who

succeeded her--only for a short time, poor boy--was an ardent

admirer of the great king. Frederick at once released and sent

home his Russian prisoners, an act which brought back his

Prussians from Russia. On the 23rd February Peter declared his

intention to be at peace and amity with Frederick, concluded

peace on the 5th of May, and a treaty of alliance a month

later. The Swedes, following suit, declared peace on the 22nd

of May, and Frederick could now give his sole attention to the

Austrians." For a few weeks, only, the Prussian king had a

Russian contingent of 20,000 in alliance with him, but could

make no use of it.

{1502}

It was recalled in July, by the revolution at St. Petersburg,

which deposed the young czar, Peter, in favour of his

ambitious consort, Catherine. Frederick succeeded in

concealing the fact long enough to frighten Daun by a show of

preparations for attacking him, with the Russian troops

included in his army, and the Austrian general retired to

Glatz and Bohemia. Frederick then took Schweidnitz, and

marched on Dresden. "Daun followed heavily. Like a

prize-fighter knocked out of time, he had no more fight in

him. Prince Henry had two affairs with the Reich's army and

its Austrian contingent. Forced to retire from Freyburg on the

15th, he afterwards attacked them on the 29th of October and

defeated them by a turning movement. They had 40,000, he 30,

000. The Austrian contingent suffered most. In the western

theatre Ferdinand held his own and had his usual successes.

His part in the war was to defend only, and he never failed to

show high qualities as a general. Thus, nowhere had

Frederick's enemies succeeded in crushing his defences. For

seven years the little kingdom of Prussia had held her ground

against the three great military powers, France, Austria, and

Russia. All were now equally exhausted. The constancy,

courage, and ability of Frederick were rewarded at last; on

the 15th of February, 1763, the treaty of Hubertsburg was

signed, by which Austria once more agreed to the cession of

Silesia. Prussia was now a Great Power like the rest, her

greatness resting on no shams, as she had proved."

Colonel C. B. Brackenbury,

Frederick the Great,

chapter 18.

ALSO IN:

Sir E. Cust,

Annals of the Wars of the 18th Century,

volume 3, pages 57-87.

Frederick II.,

History of the Seven Years War

(Posthumous Works, volume 3), chapters 14-16.

GERMANY: A. D. 1763.

The end, results and costs of the Seven Years War.

The Peace of Hubertsburg and Peace of Paris.

See SEVEN YEARS WAR.

GERMANY: A. D. 1763-1790.

A period of peace and progress.

Intellectual cultivation.

Accession of the Emperor Joseph II.

His character and his reforms.

Accession of Leopold II.

"The peace of nearly thirty years which followed the

Seven-Years' War in Germany was a time of rich mental activity

and growth. Court life itself, if its vanities were not

abolished, still acquired a more enlightened and humane tone.

The fierce passions of the princes no longer exclusively

controlled it: there was something of regard for education,

for art and science, and for the public welfare. This is

particularly true of courts which were intimately connected

with Prussia; as that of Brunswick, where Duke Charles,

Frederick II.'s brother-in-law, though personally an

extravagant prince, founded an institution of learning which

brought together many of the best intellects of Germany (1740

to 1760), or that of Anhalt-Dessau, where the famous

'Philanthropinum' was established. Several princes imitated

Frederick's military administration, and that sometimes on a

scale so small as to be ludicrous. Prince William of

Lippe-Schaumburg founded in his little territory a fortress

and a school of war. But this school educated Scharnhorst, and

the prince himself won fame in distant lands. He invited

Herder to his little court at Bückeburg. Weimar, too, imitated

Frederick's example, where the Duchess Amalie, daughter of

Charles of Brunswick, and her intellectual son, Charles

Augustus, made their little cities Weimar and Jena places of

gathering for the greatest men of genius of the time. Among

the petty Thuringian princes of this period, there were others

of noble character. In 1764 the Saxon throne was ascended by

Frederick Augustus, grandson of Augustus III., but, being a

minor, he could not be elected king of Poland. This put an end

to the union of the two titles, which had been the cause of

immeasurable evil to Saxony and to Germany. When the young

elector attained his majority, the government of Saxony was

greatly improved, and a period of prosperity followed. Duke

Charles Eugene of Wirtemberg (1737-1793), during his early

years, rivaled Louis XV. in extravagance and immorality, but

in after-days was greatly changed. He founded the Charles

School, at which Schiller was educated. Baden enjoyed a high

degree of prosperity under Charles Frederick (1746-1811). Even

the spiritual lords, on the whole, threw their influence in

favor of enlightenment and progress. ... The prelates of

Cologne, Trèves, Mayence, and Salzburg, strange to say, agreed

at Ems in 1786 to renounce the supremacy of Rome, and to found

an independent German Catholic Church; but the plan was broken

down by the resistance of the inferior clergy and of the

Emperor Joseph II. Some of the German states were slow to take

part in the general progress. Bavaria was constantly retarded

by the influence of the Jesuits. ... The Palatinate, too, was

under luxurious and idle rulers, mostly in the pay of France.

In some territories the boundless extravagance of the princes

was a terrible burden upon their subjects. ... Men who

professed enlightenment and humanity were often shamefully

tyrannical. The courts of Cassel and Wirtemberg sold their

people by regiments to England, to fight against the

independence of the North American Colonies. ...

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1776 (JANUARY-JUNE).

Austria shared in the general intellectual awakening of

Germany. Maria Theresa was a firm, strong character, with a

clear mind and sincere desire for the people's welfare. She

found Austria in decay, and was able to introduce many

reforms. She alleviated the condition of the peasants, who

were still mostly serfs. The nobles had before lived mainly

for show, but she provided institutions for their education.

... It was a condition of the Peace of Hubertsburg that

Frederick II. should give his electoral vote for the eldest

son of Francis I. None of the other electors objected to the

choice, and on March 27, 1764, they performed the ceremony of

choosing Joseph 'King of the Romans,' but without power to

interfere with the government during his father's life.

Francis I. died August 18, 1765, and his son Joseph II.

(1765-1790) was then crowned emperor in the traditional

fashion. He was also associated with his mother in the

government of' Austria; but she retained the royal power

mainly in her own hands, assigning to her son the executive

control of military affairs. Joseph II. was an impetuous and

intellectual character, all aglow with the new ideas of

enlightenment and progress, and was perhaps more deeply

impressed by the example of Frederick II. than any other

prince of the age. ... At the same time, Joseph II. was eager

to aggrandize Austria, and at least to obtain an equivalent

for Silesia.

{1503}

For a long time Austria had been longing to acquire Bavaria,

and there now seemed to be some reason to hope for success,

The ancient line of electors of the house of Wittelsbach died

out in 1777 with Maximilian Joseph (December 30). The next

heir was the Elector Palatine, Charles Theodore, also Duke of

Jülich and Berg, who was not eager to obtain Bavaria, since,

by the Peace of Westphalia, he must then forfeit the

electorate of the Palatinate. ... Under these circumstances

Joseph II. made an unfounded claim to Lower Bavaria, under a

pretended grant of the Emperor Sigismund in 1426. A secret

treaty was made by him with Charles Theodore, by which he was

to pay that prince a large sum of money for Lower Bavaria; and

soon after Maximilian Joseph's death, Joseph II. occupied the

land with troops. Frederick II., who was ever jealous of the

growth of Austria, resolved to prevent this acquisition. ...

See BAVARIA: A. D. 1777-1779.

Thus the war of the Bavarian Succession broke out (1778-79).

... By the death of Maria Theresa, November 29, 1780, her son

Joseph II. became sole monarch of Austria. ... Joseph II. was

a man of large mind and noble aims. Like Frederick, he was

unwearying in labor, accessible to everyone, and eager to

assume his share of work or responsibility. The books and the

people's memory are full of anecdotes of him, though he was

far from popular during his life. But he lacked the strong

practical sense and calculating foresight of the veteran

Prussian king. In his zeal for reforms he hastened to heap one

upon another in confusion. Torture was abolished, and for a

time even the death penalty. Rigid equality before the law was

introduced, and slavery done away.

See SLAVERY, MEDIÆVAL: GERMANY.

His reforms in the Church were still more sweeping. He closed

more than half of the monasteries, and devoted their estates

to public instruction; he introduced German hymns of praise

and the German Bible. By his Edict of Toleration, June 22,

1781, he secured to all Protestants throughout the Austrian

states their civil rights and freedom of worship, 'in houses

of prayer without bells or towers.' ... He zealously followed

up Maria Theresa's policy of consolidating Austria into one

state; and it was this course which made him enemies. He

offended the powerful nobility of Hungary by abolishing

serfdom (November 1, 1781), and the whole people by the

measures he took to promote the use of the German language. In

the Netherlands, he alienated from him the powerful clergy by

his innovations; and they stirred up against him the people,

already aggrieved by the loss of some of their ancient

liberties. A revolution broke out among them in 1788, and was

threatening to extend to Hungary and Bohemia, when the emperor

suddenly died, still in the full vigor of manhood, at the age

of forty-nine, February 20, 1790. ... After his death, the

progress of reform was checked in Austria; but he had awakened

new and strong forces there, and a complete return to the

ancient system was impossible. ... Leopold II. (1790-1792),

who succeeded his brother Joseph II., both in Austria and as

emperor, was a self-indulgent but prudent ruler."

C. T. Lewis,

History of Germany,

book 5, chapter 24, sections 8-18.

GERMANY: A. D. 1772-1773.

The first Partition of Poland.

See POLAND: A. D. 1763-1773.

GERMANY: A. D. 1787.

Prussian intervention in Holland.

Restoration of the expelled stadtholder.

See NETHERLANDS (HOLLAND): A. D. 1746-1787.

GERMANY: A. D. 1791.

The forming of the Coalition against French democracy.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1790-1791;

and 1791 (JULY-SEPTEMBER).

GERMANY: A. D. 1791-1792.

The question of war with France, and the question of the

Partition of Poland.

Motives and action of Prussia and Austria.

"After the acceptance of the Constitution by Louis XVI.

[September--see FRANCE: A. D. 1791 (JULY-SEPTEMBER)], the

Emperor indulged for a time a confident hope, that the French

question was solved, and that he was relieved from all fear of

trouble from that quarter. He had cares enough upon him to

make him heartily congratulate himself on this result. ... In

foreign affairs, the Polish question--the next in importance

to the French--was still unsettled, and daily presented fresh

difficulties. ... The fact that Russia began to show the

greatest favour to the Emigrés, and to preach at Berlin and

Vienna a crusade against the wicked Jacobins, only served to

confirm the Emperor in his peaceful sentiments. He rightly

concluded that Catharine wished to entangle the German Powers

in a struggle with France, that she might have her own way in

Poland; and he was not at all inclined to be the dupe of so

shallow an artifice. ... At the same time he set about

bringing his alliance with Prussia to a definite conclusion,

in order to secure to himself a firm support for every

emergency. On the 17th of November--a week after the

enactment of the first edict against the Emigrés--Prince Reuss

made a communication on this subject to the Prussian Ministry,

and on this occasion declared himself empowered to commence at

any moment the formal draft of an alliance. ... 'We are now

convinced,' wrote the Ministers to their ambassador at Vienna,

'that Austria will undertake nothing against France.' This

persuasion was soon afterwards fully confirmed by Kaunitz, who

descanted in the severest terms on the intrigues of the

Emigrés on the Rhine, which it was not in the interest of any

Power to support. It was ridiculous, he said, in the French

Princes, and in Russia and Spain, to declare the acceptance of

the constitution by the King compulsory, and therefore void;

and still more so to dispute the right of Louis XVI. to alter

the constitution at all. He said that they would vainly

endeavour to goad Austria into a war, which could only have

the very worst consequences for Louis and the present

predominance of the moderate party in France. ... Here, again,

we see that without the machinations of the Girondists, the

revolutionary war would never have been commenced. It is true,

indeed, that at this time a very perceptible change took place

in the opinions of the second German potentate--the King of

Prussia. Immediately after the Congress of Pillnitz, great

numbers of French Emigrés, who had been driven from Vienna by

the coldness of Leopold, had betaken themselves to Berlin. At

the Prussian Court they met with a hospitable reception, and

aroused in the King, by their graphic descriptions, a warm

interest for the victims of the Revolution. ... He loaded the

Emigrés with marks of favour of every kind, and thereby

excited in them the most exaggerated hopes.

{1504}

Yet the King was far from intending to risk any important

interest of the State for the sake of his protégés; he had no

idea of pursuing an aggressive policy towards France; and the

only point in which he differed from Leopold was in the

feeling with which he regarded the development of the warlike

tendencies of the French. His Ministers, moreover, were,

without exception, possessed by the same idea as Prince

Kaunitz; that a French war would be a misfortune to all

Europe." As the year 1791 drew towards its close,

"unfavourable news arrived from Paris. The attempts of the

Feuillants had failed; Lafayette had separated himself from

them and from the Court; and the zeal and confidence of

victory among the Democrats were greater than ever. The

Emigrés in Berlin were jubilant; they had always declared that

no impression was to be made upon the Jacobins except by the

edge of the sword, and that all hopes founded on the stability

of a moderate middle party were futile. The King of Prussia

agreed with them, and determined to begin the unavoidable

struggle as quickly as possible. He told his Ministers that

war was certain, and that Bischoffswerder ought to go once

more to the Emperor. ... Bischoffswerder, having received

instructions from the King himself, left Berlin, and arrived

in Vienna, after a speedy journey, on the 28th of February.

But he was not destined again to discuss the fate of Europe

with his Imperial patron; for on the 29th the smallpox showed

itself, of which Leopold died after three days sickness. The

greatest consternation and confusion reigned in Vienna. ... No

one knew to whom the young King Francis--he was as yet only

king of Hungary and Bohemia--would give his confidence, or

what course he would take; nay, his weakly and nervous

constitution rendered it doubtful whether he could bear--even

for a short period--the burdens of his office. For the present

he confirmed the Ministers in their places, and expressed to them

his wish to adhere to the political system of his father. ...

He ... ordered one of his most experienced Generals, Prince

Hohenlohe-Kirchberg, to be summoned to Vienna, that he might

take council with Bischoffswerder respecting the warlike

measures to be adopted by both Powers, in case of a French

attack. At the same time, however, the Polish question was, if

possible, to be brought to a decision, and Leopold's plan in

all its details was to be categorically recommended for

adoption, both in Berlin and Petersburg. ... The Austrian

Minister, Spielmann, had prepared the memorial on Poland,

which Prince Reuss presented at Berlin, on the 10th of March.

It represented that Austria and Prussia had the same interest

in stopping a source of eternal embarrassment and discussion,

by strengthening the cause of peace and order in Poland. That

herein lay an especially powerful motive to make the crown of

that country hereditary; that for both Powers the Elector of

Saxony would be the most acceptable wearer of that crown. ...

The important point, the memorial went on to say, was this,

that Poland should no longer be dependent on the predominant

influence of any one neighbouring Power. ... When the King had

read this memorial, in which the Saxon-Polish union was

brought forward, not as an idea of the feeble Elector, but as

a proposal of powerful Austria; he cried out, 'We must never

give our consent to this.' He agreed with his Ministers in the

conclusion that nothing would be more dangerous to Prussia,

than the formation of such a Power as would result from the

proposed lasting union of Poland and Saxony--a Power, which,

in alliance with Austria, could immediately overrun Silesia,

and in alliance with Russia, might be fatal to East Prussia.

... In the midst of this angry and anxious excitement, which

for a moment alienated his heart from Austria, the King

received a fresh and no less important despatch from

Petersburg. Count Golz announced the first direct

communication of Russia respecting Poland. 'Should Poland'

[wrote the Russian Vice Chancellor] 'be firmly and lastingly

united to Saxony, a Power of the first rank will arise, and

one which will be able to exercise the most sensible pressure

upon each of its neighbours. We are greatly concerned in this,

in consequence of the extension of our Polish frontier; and

Prussia is no less so, from the inevitable increase which

would ensue of Saxon influence in the German Empire. We

therefore suggest, that Prussia, Austria, and Russia, should

come to an intimate understanding with one another on this

most important subject.' ... This communication sounded

differently in the ears of the King from that which he had

received from Austria. The fears which agitated his own mind

and those of the Russian chancellor were identical. While

Austria called upon him to commit a political suicide, Russia

offered her aid in averting the most harassing danger, and

even opened a prospect of a considerable territorial increase.

The King had no doubt to which of the two Powers he ought to

incline. He would have come to terms with Russia on the spot,

had not an insurmountable obstacle existed in the new path

which was opened to the aggrandizement of Prussia,--viz., the

Polish treaty of 1790; in which Prussia had expressly bound

herself to protect the independence and integrity of Poland.

... He decided that there was no middle course between the

Russian and Austrian plans. On the one side was his Polish

treaty of 1790, the immediate consequence of which would be a

new breach, and perhaps a war, with Russia, and the final

result such a strengthening of Poland, as would throw back the

Prussian State into that subordinate position, both in Germany

and Europe, which it had occupied in the seventeenth century.

On the other side there was, indeed, a manifest breach of

faith, but also the salvation of Prussia from a perilous

dilemma, and perhaps the extension of her boundaries by a

goodly Polish Province. If he wavered at all in this conflict

of feeling, the Parisian complications soon put an end to his

doubts. In quick succession came the announcements that

Delessart's peaceful Ministry had fallen; that King Louis had

suffered the deepest humiliation; and that the helm of the

State had passed into the hands of the Girondist war party. A

declaration of war on the part of France against Francis· II.

might be daily expected, and the Russian-Polish contest would

then only form the less important moiety of the European

catastrophe. Austria would now be occupied for a long time in

the West; there could be no more question of the formation of

a Polish-Saxon State; and Austria could no longer be reckoned

upon to protect the constitution of 1791, or even to repel a

Russian invasion of Poland. Prussia was bound to aid the

Austrians against France, and for many months the King had

cherished no more ardent wish than to fulfil this obligation

with all his power.

{1505}

Simultaneously to oppose the Empress Catharine, was out of the

question. ... The King wrote on the 12th of March to his

Ministers as follows: ... 'Russia is not far removed from

thoughts of a new partition; and this would indeed be the most

effectual means of limiting the power of a Polish King,

whether hereditary or elective. I doubt, however, whether in

this case a suitable compensation could be found for Austria;

and whether, after such a curtailment of the power of Poland,

the Elector of Saxony would accept the crown. Yet if Austria

could be compensated, the Russian plan would be the most

advantageous for Prussia,--always provided that Prussia

received the whole left bank of the Vistula, by the

acquisition of which that distant frontier--so hard to be

defended--would be well rounded off. This is my judgment

respecting Polish affairs.' This was Poland's sentence of

death. It was not, as we have seen, the result of a

long-existing greed, but a suddenly seized expedient, which

seemed to be accompanied with the least evil, in the midst of

an unexampled European crisis. ... On the 20th of April the

French National Assembly proclaimed war against the King of

Hungary and Bohemia. A fortnight later the Prince of

Hohenlohe-Kirchberg appeared in Berlin to settle some common

plan for the campaign; and at the same time Kaunitz directed

Prince Reuss to enter into negociations on the political

question of expenditure and compensation. Count Schulenburg

... immediately sent a reply to the Prince, to the effect that

Prussia--as it had uniformly declared since the previous

summer--could only engage in the war on condition of receiving

an adequate compensation. ... Both statesmen well knew with

what secret mistrust each of these Powers contemplated the

aggrandizement of the other; their deliberations were

therefore conducted with slow and anxious caution, and months

passed by before their respective demands were reduced to any

definite shape."

H. von Sybel,

History of the French Revolution,

book 4, chapter 1 (volume 2).

GERMANY: A. D. 1792.

Accession of the Emperor Francis II.

GERMANY: A. D. 1792-1793.

War with Revolutionary France.

The Coalition.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1791-1792; 1792 (APRIL-.JULY),

and (SEPTEMBER-DECEMBER);

1792-1793 (DECEMBER-FEBRUARY);

1793 (FEBRUARY-APRIL), (MARCH-SEPTEMBER),

and (JULY-DECEMBER).

GERMANY: A. D. 1192-1796.

The second and third Partitions of Poland.

See POLAND: A. D. 1791-1792; and 1793-1796.

GERMANY: A. D. 1794.

Withdrawal of Prussia from the Coalition.

French conquest of the Austrian Netherlands and successes on

the Rhine.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1794 (MARCH-JULY).

GERMANY: A. D. 1795.

Treaty of Basle between Prussia and France.

Crumbling of the Coalition.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1794-1795 (OCTOBER-MAY).

GERMANY: A. D. 1796-1797.

Expulsion of Austria from Italy.

Bonaparte's first campaigns.

Advance of Moreau and Jourdan beyond the Rhine.

Their retreat.

Peace preliminaries of Leoben.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1796 (APRIL-OCTOBER);

and 1796-1797 (OCTOBER-APRIL).

GERMANY: A. D. 1797 (October).

The Treaty of Campo Formio between Austria and France.

Austrian cession of the Netherlands and Lombardy and

acquisition of Venice.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1797 (MAY-OCTOBER).

GERMANY: A. D. 1798.

The second Coalition against Revolutionary France.

Prussia and the Empire withheld from it.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1798-1799 (AUGUST-APRIL).

GERMANY: A. D. 1799.

The Congress at Rastadt.

Murder of French envoys.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1799 (APRIL-SEPTEMBER).

GERMANY: A. D. 1800 (May-December).

The disastrous campaigns of Marengo and Hohenlinden.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1800-1801 (MAY-FEBRUARY).

GERMANY: A. D. 1801-1803.

The Peace of Luneville.

Territorial cessions and changes.

The settlement of indemnities in the Empire.

Confiscation and secularization of the ecclesiastical

principalities.

Absorption of Free Cities.

Re-constitution of the Electoral College.

"By the treaty of Luneville, which the Emperor Francis was

obliged to subscribe, 'not only as Emperor of Austria, but in

the name of the German empire,' Belgium and all the left bank

of the Rhine were again formally ceded to France; Lombardy was

erected into an independent state, and the Adige declared the

boundary betwixt it and the dominions of Austria; Venice, with

all its territorial possessions as far as the Adige, was

guaranteed to Austria; the Duke of Modena received the Brisgau

in exchange for his duchy, which was annexed to the Cisalpine

republic; the Grand Duke of Tuscany, the Emperor's brother,

gave up his dominions to the infant Duke of Parma, a branch of

the Spanish family [who was thereupon raised to royal rank by the

fiat of Bonaparte, who transformed the grand-duchy of Tuscany

into the kingdom of Etruria], on the promise of an indemnity

in Germany; France abandoned Kehl, Cassel, and

Ehrenbreitstein, on condition that these forts should remain

in the situation in which they were when given up; the princes

dispossessed by the cession of the left bank of the Rhine were

promised an indemnity in the bosom of the Empire; the

independence of the Batavian, Helvetic, Cisalpine and Ligurian

republics was guaranteed, and their inhabitants declared 'to

have the power of choosing whatever form of government they

preferred.' These conditions did not differ materially from

those contained in the treaty of Campo Formio, or from those

offered by Napoleon previous to the renewal of the war. ...

The article which compelled the Emperor to subscribe this

treaty as head of the empire, as well as Emperor of Austria,

gave rise in the sequel ... to the most painful internal

divisions in Germany. By a fundamental law of the empire, the

Emperor could not bind the electors and states of which he was

the head, without either their concurrence or express powers

to that effect previously conferred. ... The emperor hesitated

long before he subscribed such a condition, which left the

seeds of interminable discord in the Germanic body; but the

conqueror was inexorable, and no means of evasion could be

found. He vindicated himself to the electors in a dignified

letter, dated 8th February 1801, the day before that when the

treaty was signed. ... The electors and princes of the empire

felt the force of this touching appeal; they commiserated the

situation of the first monarch in Christendom, compelled to

throw himself on his subjects for forgiveness of a step which

he could not avoid; and one of the first steps of the Diet of

the empire, assembled after the treaty of Luneville was

signed, was to give it their solemn ratification, grounded on

the extraordinary situation in which the Emperor was then

placed.

{1506}

But the question of indemnities to the dispossessed princes

was long and warmly agitated. It continued for above two years

to distract the Germanic body; the intervention both of France

and Russia was required to prevent the sword being drawn in

these internal disputes; and by the magnitude of the changes

which were ultimately made, and the habit of looking to

foreign protection which was acquired, the foundation was laid

of that league to support separate interests which afterwards,

under the name of the Confederation of the Rhine, so well

served the purposes of French ambition, and broke up the

venerable fabric of the German empire."

Sir A. Alison,

History of Europe, 1789-1815,

chapter 32 (volume 7).

"Germany: lost by this treaty about 24,000 square miles of its

best territory and 3,500,000 of its people; while the princes

were indemnified by the plunder of their peers. But the

hardest task, the satisfactory distribution of this plunder,

remained. While the Diet at Regensburg, after much complaint

and management, assigned the arrangement of these affairs to a

committee, the princely bargainers were in Paris, employing

the most disgraceful means to obtain the favor of Talleyrand

and other influential diplomatists. On the 25th of February,

1803, the final decision of the delegation or committee of the

empire was adopted by the Diet, and promulgated with the approval

of the emperor, Francis II., and of Prussia and Bavaria. It

confiscated all the spiritual principalities in Germany,

except that the Elector of Mayence, Charles Theodore of

Dalberg, received Regensburg, Aschaffenburg, and Wetzlar, as

an indemnity, and retained a seat and a voice in the imperial

Diet. Of the 48 free cities of the empire, six only

remained--Hamburg, Bremen, Lubeck, Frankfort, Nuremburg, and

Augsburg. Austria obtained the bishoprics of Trent and Brixen;

Prussia, as a compensation for the loss of 1,018 square miles

with 122,000 inhabitants west of the Rhine, received 4,875

square miles, with 580,000 inhabitants, including the

endowments of the religious houses of Hildesheim and

Paderborn, and most of Münster; also Erfurt and Eichsfeld, and

the free cities of Nordhausen, Mülhausen, and Goslar; Hanover

obtained Osnabruck; to Bavaria, in exchange for the

Palatinate, were assigned Würzburg, Bamberg, Freisingen,

Augsburg, and Passau, besides a number of cities of the

empire, in all about 6,150 square miles, to compensate for

4,240, vastly increasing its political importance. Wirtemberg,

too, was richly compensated for the loss of the Mömpelgard by

the confiscation of monastery endowments and free cities in

Suabia. But Baden made the best bargain of all, receiving

about 1,270 square miles of land, formerly belonging to

bishops or to the Palatinate, in exchange for 170. After this

acquisition, Baden extended, though in patches, from the

Neckar to the Swiss border. By building up these three South

German states, Napoleon sought to erect a barrier for himself

against Austria and Prussia. With the same design,

Hesse-Darmstadt and Nassau were much enlarged. There were

multitudes of smaller changes, under the name of

'compensations and indemnities.' Four new lay electorates were

established in the place of the three secularized prelacies,

and were given to Baden, Wirtemberg, Hesse-Cassel, and

Salzburg. But they never had occasion to take part in the

election of an emperor."

C. T. Lewis,

History of Germany,

chapter 25, sections 26-27.

ALSO IN:

A. Thiers,

History of the Consulate and the Empire,

books 7 and 15 (volume 1).

J. R. Seeley,

Life and Times of Stein,

part 1, chapter 4 (volume 1).

GERMANY: A. D. 1803.

Bonaparte's seizure of Hanover in his war with England.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1802-1803.

GERMANY: A. D. 1805 (January-April).

The third Coalition against France.

Prussian Neutrality.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1805 (JANUARY-APRIL).

GERMANY: A. D. 1805 (September-December).

Napoleon's overwhelming campaign.

The catastrophes at Ulm and Austerlitz.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1805 (MARCH-DECEMBER).

GERMANY: A. D. 1805-1806.

The Peace of Presburg.

Territorial losses of Austria.

Aggrandizement of Bavaria and Würtemberg, which become

kingdoms, and Baden a grand duchy.

The Confederation of the Rhine.

End of the Holy Roman Empire.

"On the 6th of December, hostilities ceased, and the Russians

retired by way of Galicia, but in accordance with the terms of

the armistice, the French troops continued to occupy all the

lands they had invaded, Austria, Tyrol, Venetia, Carniola,

Carinthia, and Styria; within Bohemia they were to have the

circle of Tabor, together with Brno and Znoymo in Moravia and

Pozsony (Pressburg) in Hungary. The Morava (March) and the

Hungarian frontier formed the line of demarcation between the

two armies. A definitive peace was signed at Pressburg on the

26th of December, 1805. Austria recognized the conquests of

France in Holland and Switzerland and the annexation of Genoa,

and ceded to the kingdom of Italy Friuli, Istria, Dalmatia with

its islands, and the Bocche di Cattaro. A little later, by the

explanatory Act of Fontainebleau, she lost the last of her

possessions to the west of the Isonzo, when she exchanged

those portions of the counties of Gorico and Gradisca which

are situated on the right bank of that river for the county of

Montefalcone in Istria. The new kingdoms of Bavaria and

Würtemberg [brought into existence by this treaty, through the

recognition of them by the Emperor Francis] were aggrandized

at the expense of Austria. Bavaria obtained Vorarlberg, the

county of Hohenembs, the town of Lindau, and the whole of

Tyrol, with Brixen and Trent. Austrian Suabia was given to

Würtemberg, while Breisgau and the Ortenau were bestowed on

the new grand duke of Baden. One compensation alone, the duchy

of Salzburg, fell to Austria for all her sacrifices, and this

has remained in her possession ever since. The old bishopric

of Würzburg was created an electorate and granted to Ferdinand

III. of Tuscany and Salzburg. Altogether the monarchy lost

about 25,400 square miles and nearly 3,000,000 of inhabitants.

She lost Tyrol with its brave and loyal inhabitants and the

Vörlande which had assured Austrian influence in Germany;

every possession on the Rhine, in the Black Forest, and on the

Lower Danube; she no longer touched either Switzerland or

Italy, and she ceased to be a maritime power. Besides all

this, she had to pay forty millions for the expenses of the

war, while she was exhausted by contributions and

requisitions. Vienna had suffered much, and the French army

had carried off the 2,000 cannons and the 100,000 guns which

had been contained in her arsenals. On the 16th of January,

1806, the emperor Francis returned to his capital.

{1507}

He was enthusiastically received, and the Viennese returned to

the luxurious and easy way of life which has always

characterized them. ... Austria seemed no longer to have any

part to play in German politics. Bavaria, Würtemberg and Baden

had been formed into a separate league--the Confederation of

the Rhine--under French protection. On the 1st of August,

1806, these states announced to the Reichstag at Ratisbon that

they looked upon the empire as at an end, and on the 6th,

Francis II. formally resigned the empire altogether, and

released all the Imperial officials from their engagements to

him. Thus the sceptre of Charlemagne fell from the hands of

the dynasty which had held it without interruption from 1438."

L. Leger,

History of Austro-Hungary,

chapter 25.

"Every bond of union was dissolved with the diet of the empire

and with the imperial chamber. The barons and counts of the

empire and the petty princes were mediatised; the princes of

Hohenlohe, Oettingen, Schwarzenberg, Thurn, and Taxis, the

Truchsess von Waldburg, Fürstenberg, Fugger, Leiningen,

Löwenstein, Solms, Hesse-Homburg, Wied-Runkel, and

Orange-Fulda, became subject to the neighbouring Rhenish

confederated princes. Of the remaining six imperial free

cities, Augsburg and Nuremberg fell to Bavaria; Frankfurt,

under the title of grand-duchy, to the ancient elector of

Mayence, who was again transferred thither from Ratisbon. The

ancient Hanse-towns, Hamburg, Lübeck, and Bremen, alone

retained their freedom."

W. Menzel,

History of Germany,

chapter 253 (volume 3).

"A swift succession of triumphs had left only one thing still

preventing the full recognition of the Corsican warrior as

sovereign of Western Europe, and that one was the existence of

the old Romano-Germanic Empire. Napoleon had not long assumed

his new title when he began to mark a distinction between 'la

France' and 'l'Empire Française.' France had, since A. D.

1792, advanced to the Rhine, and, by the annexation of

Piedmont, had overstepped the Alps; the French Empire

included, besides the kingdom of Italy, a mass of dependent

states, Naples, Holland, Switzerland, and many German

principalities, the allies of France in the same sense in

which the 'socii populi Romani' were allies of Rome. When the

last of Pitt's coalitions had been destroyed at Austerlitz,

and Austria had made her submission by the peace of Presburg,

the conqueror felt that his hour was come. He had now overcome

two Emperors, those of Austria and Russia, claiming to

represent the old and new Rome respectively, and had in

eighteen months created more kings than the occupants of the

Germanic throne in as many centuries. It was time, he thought,

to sweep away obsolete pretensions, and claim the sole

inheritance of that Western Empire, of which the titles and

ceremonies of his court presented a grotesque imitation. The

task was an easy one after what had been already accomplished.

Previous wars and treaties had so redistributed the

territories and changed the constitution of the Germanic

Empire that it could hardly be said to exist in anything but

name. ... The Emperor Francis, partly foreboding the events

that were at hand, partly in order to meet Napoleon's

assumption of the imperial name by depriving that name of its

peculiar meaning, began in A. D. 1805 to style himself

'Hereditary Emperor of Austria,' while retaining at the same

time his former title. The next act of the drama was one in

which we may more readily pardon the ambition of a foreign

conqueror than the traitorous selfishness of the German

princes, who broke every tie of ancient friendship and duty to

grovel at his throne. By the Act of the Confederation of the

Rhine, signed at Paris, July 12th, 1806, Bavaria, Würtemberg,

Baden, and several other states, sixteen in all, withdrew from

the body and repudiated the laws of the Empire, while on

August 1st the French envoy at Regensburg announced to the

Diet that his master, who had consented to become Protector of

the Confederate princes, no longer recognized the existence of

the Empire. Francis II. resolved at once to anticipate this

new Odoacer, and by a declaration, dated August 6th, 1806,

resigned the imperial dignity. His deed states that finding it

impossible, in the altered state of things, to fulfil the

obligations imposed by his capitulation, he considers as

dissolved the bonds which attached him to the Germanic body,

releases from their allegiance the states who formed it, and

retires to the government of his hereditary dominions under

the title of 'Emperor of Austria.' Throughout, the term

'German Empire' (Deutsches Reich) is employed. But it was the

crown of Augustus, of Constantine, of Charles, of Maximilian,

that Francis of Hapsburg laid down, and a new era in the

world's history was marked by the fall of its most venerable

institution. One thousand and six years after Leo the Pope had

crowned the Frankish king, eighteen hundred and fifty-eight

years after Cæsar had conquered at Pharsalia, the Holy Roman

Empire came to its end."

J. Bryce,

The Holy Roman Empire,

chapter 20.

GERMANY: A. D. 1806 (January-August).

The Confederation of the Rhine.

Cession of Hanover to Prussia.

Double dealing and weakness of the latter.

Her submission to Napoleon's insults and wrongs.

Final goading of the nation to war.

"The object at which all French politicians had aimed since

the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, the exclusion of both

Austria and Prussia from influence in Western Germany, was now

completely attained. The triumph of French statesmanship, the

consummation of two centuries of German discord, was seen in

the Act of Federation subscribed by the Western German

Sovereigns in the summer of 1806. By this Act the Kings of

Bavaria and Würtemberg, the Elector of Baden, and 13 minor

princes, united themselves, in the League known as the Rhenish

Confederacy, under the protection of the French Emperor, and

undertook to furnish contingents, amounting to 63,000 men, in

all wars in which the French Empire should engage. Their

connection with the ancient Germanic Body was completely

severed; the very town in which the Diet of the Empire had

held its meetings was annexed by one of the members of the

Confederacy. The Confederacy itself, with a population of

8,000,000, became for all purposes of war and foreign policy a

part of France. Its armies were organised by French officers;

its frontiers were fortified by French engineers; its treaties

were made for it at Paris. In the domestic changes which took

place within these States the work of consolidation begun in

1801 was carried forward with increased vigour. Scores of tiny

principalities which had escaped dissolution in the earlier

movement were now absorbed by their stronger neighbours. ...

{1508}

With the establishment of the Rhenish Confederacy and the

conquest of Naples, Napoleon's empire reached, but did not

overpass, the limits within which the sovereignty of France

might probably have been long maintained. ... If we may judge

from the feeling with which Napoleon was regarded in Germany

down to the middle of the year 1806, and in Italy down to a

much later date, the Empire then founded might have been

permanently upheld, if Napoleon had abstained from attacking

other States." During the winter of 1806, Count Haugwitz, the

Prussian minister, had visited Paris "for the purpose of

obtaining some modification in the treaty which he had signed

[at the palace of Schönbrunn, near Vienna] on behalf of

Prussia after the battle of Austerlitz. The principal feature

in that treaty had been the grant of Hanover to Prussia by the

French Emperor in return for its alliance. This was the point

which above all others excited King Frederick William's fears

and scruples; He desired to acquire Hanover, but he also

desired to derive his title rather from its English owner

[King George III., who was also Elector of Hanover] than from

its French invader. It was the object of Haugwitz' visit to

Paris to obtain an alteration in the terms of the treaty which

should make the Prussian occupation of Hanover appear to be

merely provisional, and reserve to the King of England at

least a nominal voice in its ultimate transfer. In full

confidence that Napoleon would agree to such a change, the

King of Prussia, on taking possession of Hanover in January,

1806, concealed the fact of its cession to himself by

Napoleon, and published an untruthful proclamation. ... The

bitter truth that the treaty between France and Prussia

contained no single word reserving the rights of the Elector,

and that the very idea of qualifying the absolute cession of

Hanover was an afterthought, lay hidden in the conscience of

the Prussian Government. Never had a Government more

completely placed itself at the mercy of a pitiless enemy.

Count Haugwitz, on reaching Paris, was received by Napoleon

with a storm of indignation and contempt. Napoleon declared

that the ill-faith of Prussia had made an end even of that

miserable pact which had been extorted after Austerlitz, and

insisted that Prussia should openly defy Great Britain by

closing the ports of Northern Germany to British vessels, and

by declaring itself endowed by Napoleon with Hanover in virtue

of Napoleon's own right of conquest. Haugwitz signed a second

and more humiliating treaty [February 15] embodying these

conditions; and the Prussian Government, now brought into the

depths of contempt, but unready for immediate war, executed

the orders of its master. ... A decree was published excluding

the ships of England from the ports of Prussia and from those

of Hanover itself (March 28, 1806). It was promptly followed

by the seizure of 400 Prussian vessels in British harbours,

and by the total extinction of Prussian maritime commerce by

British privateers. Scarcely was Prussia committed to this

ruinous conflict with Great Britain when Napoleon opened

negotiations for peace with Mr. Fox's Government. The first

condition required by Great Britain was the restitution of

Hanover to King George III. It was unhesitatingly granted by

Napoleon. Thus was Prussia to be mocked of its prey, after it

had been robbed of all its honour. ... There was scarcely a

courtier in Berlin who did not feel that the yoke of the

French had become past endurance; even Haugwitz himself now

considered war as a question of time. The patriotic party in

the capital and the younger officers of the army bitterly

denounced the dishonoured Government, and urged the King to

strike for the credit of his country. ... Brunswick was

summoned to the King's council to form plans of a campaign;

and appeals for help were sent to Vienna, to St. Petersburg,

and even to the hostile Court of London. The condition of

Prussia at this critical moment was one which filled with the

deepest alarm those few patriotic statesmen who were not

blinded by national vanity or by a slavery to routine. ...

Early in the year 1806 a paper was drawn up by Stein,

exposing, in language seldom used by a statesman, the

character of the men by whom Frederick William was surrounded,

and declaring that nothing but a speedy change of system could

save the Prussian State from utter downfall and ruin. Two

measures of immediate necessity were specified by Stein, the

establishment of a responsible council of Ministers, and the

removal of Haugwitz and all his friends from power. ... The

army of Prussia ... was nothing but the army of Frederick the

Great grown twenty years older. ... All Southern Germany was

still in Napoleon's hands. The appearance of a Russian force

in Dalmatia, after that country had been ceded by Austria to

the French Emperor, had given Napoleon an excuse for

maintaining his troops in their positions beyond the Rhine. As

the probability of a war with Prussia became greater and greater,

Napoleon tightened his grasp upon the Confederate States.

Publications originating among the patriotic circles of

Austria were beginning to appeal to the German people to unite

against a foreign oppressor. An anonymous pamphlet, entitled

'Germany in its Deep Humiliation,' was sold by various

booksellers in Bavaria, among others by Palm, a citizen of

Nuremberg. There is no evidence that Palm was even acquainted

with the contents of the pamphlet; but ... Napoleon ...

required a victim to terrify those who, among the German

people, might be inclined to listen to the call of patriotism.

Palm was not too obscure for the new Charlemagne. The innocent

and unoffending man, innocent even of the honourable crime of

attempting to save his country, was dragged before a tribunal

of French soldiers, and executed within twenty-four hours of

his trial, in pursuance of the imperative orders of Napoleon

(August 26). ... Several years later, ... the story of Palm's

death was one of those that kindled the bitterest sense of

wrong; at the time, it exercised no influence upon the course

of political events. Prussia had already resolved upon war."

C. A. Fyffe,

History of Modern Europe,

volume 1, chapters 6-7.

ALSO IN:

Sir W. Scott,

Life of Napoleon,

chapters 51-52.

J. R. Seeley,

Life and Times of Stein,

part 2, chapters 4-5 (volume 1).

P. Lanfrey,

History of Napoleon,

volume 2, chapter 15.

{1509}

GERMANY: A. D. 1806 (October).

Napoleon's sudden invasion of Prussia.

The decisive battle of Jena.

Prostration of the Prussian Kingdom.

"The Emperor of Russia ... visited Berlin, when the feelings

of Prussia, and indeed of all the neighbouring states, were in

this fever of excitement. He again urged Frederick William to

take up arms in the common cause, and offered to back him with

all the forces of his own great empire. The English

government, taking advantage of the same crisis, sent Lord

Morpeth to Berlin, with offers of pecuniary supplies--about

the acceptance of which, however, the anxiety of Prussia on

the subject of Hanover created some difficulty. Lastly,

Buonaparte, well informed of what was passing in Berlin, and

desirous, since war must be, to hurry Frederick into the field

ere the armies of the Czar could be joined with his, now

poured out in the 'Moniteur' such abuse on the persons and

characters of the Queen, Prince Louis, and every illustrious

patriot throughout Prussia, that the general wrath could no

longer be held in check. War-like preparations of every kind

filled the kingdom during August and September. On the 1st of

October the Prussian minister at Paris presented a note to

Talleyrand, demanding, among other things, that the formation

of a confederacy in the north of Germany should no longer be

thwarted by French interference, and that the French troops

within the territories of the Rhenish League should recross

the Rhine into France, by the 8th of the same month of

October. But Napoleon was already in person on the German side

of the Rhine; and his answer to the Prussian note was a

general order to his own troops, in which he called on them to

observe in what manner a German sovereign still dared to

insult the soldiers of Austerlitz. The conduct of Prussia, in

thus rushing into hostilities without waiting for the advance

of the Russians, was as rash as her holding back from Austria

during the campaign of Austerlitz had been cowardly. As if

determined to profit by no lesson, the Prussian council also

directed their army to advance towards the French, instead of

lying on their own frontier--a repetition of the great leading

blunder of the Austrians in the preceding year. The Prussian

army accordingly invaded the Saxon provinces, and the Elector

... was compelled to accept the alliance which the cabinet of

Berlin urged on him, and to join his troops with those of the

power by which he had been thus insulted and wronged. No

sooner did Napoleon know that the Prussians had advanced into

the heart of Saxony, than he formed the plan of his campaign;

and they, persisting in their advance, and taking up their

position finally on the Saale, afforded him, as if studiously,

the means of repeating, at their expense, the very manœvres which

had ruined the Austrians in the preceding campaign." The flank

of the Prussian position was turned,--the bridge across the

Saale, at Saalfield, having been secured, after a hot

engagement with the corps of Prince Louis of Prussia who fell

in the fight,--"the French army passed entirely round them;

Napoleon seized Naumburg and blew up the magazines

there,--announcing, for the first time, by this explosion, to

the King of Prussia and his generalissimo the Duke of

Brunswick, that he was in their rear. From this moment the

Prussians were isolated, and cut off from all their resources,

as completely as the army of Mack was at Ulm, when the French

had passed the Danube and overrun Suabia. The Duke of

Brunswick hastily endeavoured to concentrate his forces for

the purpose of cutting his way back again to the frontier

which he had so rashly abandoned. Napoleon, meantime, had

posted his divisions so as to watch the chief passages of the

Saale, and expected, in confidence, the assault of his

outwitted opponent. It was now that he found leisure to answer

the manifesto of Frederick William. ... His letter, dated at

Gera, is written in the most elaborate style of insult. ...

The Prussian King understood well, on learning the fall of

Naumburg, the imminent danger of his position; and his army

was forthwith set in motion, in two great masses; the former,

where he was in person present, advancing towards Naumburg;

the latter attempting, in like manner, to force their passage

through the French line in the neighbourhood of Jena. The

King's march was arrested at Auerstadt by Davoust, who, after

a severely contested action, at length repelled the assailant.

Napoleon himself, meanwhile, was engaged with the other great

body of the Prussians. Arriving on the evening of the 13th

October at Jena, he perceived that the enemy were ready to

attempt the advance next morning, while his own heavy train

was still six-and-thirty hours' march in his rear. Not

discouraged with this adverse circumstance, the Emperor

laboured all night in directing and encouraging his soldiery

to cut a road through the rocks, and draw up by that means

such light guns as he had at command to a position on a lofty

plateau in front of Jena, where no man could have expected

beforehand that any artillery whatever should be planted. ...

Lannes commanded the centre, Augereau the right, Soult the

left, and Murat the reserve and cavalry. Soult had to sustain

the first assault of the Prussians, which was violent--and

sudden; for the mist lay so thick on the field that the armies

were within half-gunshot of each other ere the sun and wind

rose and discovered them, and on that instant Mollendorf

charged. The battle was contested well for some time on this

point; but at length Ney appeared in the rear of the Emperor

with a fresh division; and then the French centre advanced to

a general charge, before which the Prussians were forced to

retire. They moved for some space in good order; but Murat now

poured his masses of cavalry on them, storm after storm, with

such rapidity and vehemence that their rout became inevitable.

It ended in the complete breaking up of the army--horse and

foot all flying together, in the confusion of panic, upon the

road to Weimar. At that point the fugitives met and mingled

with their brethren flying, as confusedly as themselves, from

Auerstadt. In the course of this disastrous day 20,000

Prussians were killed or taken, 300 guns, 20 generals, and 60

standards. The Commander-in-Chief, the Duke of Brunswick,

being wounded in the face with a grape-shot, was carried early

off the field, never to recover. ... The various routed

divisions roamed about the country, seeking separately the

means of escape: they were in consequence destined to fall an

easy prey. ... The Prince of Hohenlohe at length drew together

not less than 50,000 of these wandering soldiers," and retreated

towards the Oder; but was forced, in the end, to lay down his

arms at Prentzlow. "His rear, consisting of about 10,000,

under the command of the celebrated General Blucher, was so

far behind as to render it possible for them to attempt

escape. Their heroic leader traversed the country with them

for some time unbroken, and sustained a variety of assaults,

from far superior numbers, with the most obstinate resolution.

{1510}

By degrees, however, the French, under Soult, hemmed him in on

one side, Murat on the other, and Bernadotte appeared close

behind him. He was thus forced to throw himself into Lubeck,

where a severe action was fought in the streets of the town,

on the 6th of November. The Prussian, in this battle, lost

4,000 prisoners, besides the slain and wounded: he retreated

to Schwerta, and there, it being impossible for him to go

farther without violating the neutrality of Denmark, on the

morning of the 7th, Blucher at length laid down his arms. ...

The strong fortresses of the Prussian monarchy made as

ineffectual resistance as the armies in the field. ...

Buonaparte, in person, entered Berlin on the 25th of October;

and before the end of November, except Konigsberg--where the

King himself had found refuge, and gathered round, him a few

thousand troops ... --and a few less important fortresses, the

whole of the German possessions of the house of Brandenburg

were in the hands of the conqueror. Louis Buonaparte, King of

Holland, meanwhile had advanced into Westphalia and occupied

that territory also, with great part of Hanover, East

Friesland, Embden, and the dominions of Hesse-Cassel."

J. G. Lockhart,

Life of Napoleon,

chapter 20.

ALSO IN:

C. Adams,

Great Campaigns in Europe from 1796 to 1870,

chapter. 4.

Baron Jomini,

Life of Napoleon,

chapter 9 (volume 2),

Memoirs of Napoleon dictated at St. Helena,

volume 6, pages 60-72.

Sir A. Alison,

History of Europe, 1789-1815,

chapter 43 (volume 10).

Duke of Rovigo,

Memoirs,

volume 1, part 2, chapters 21-23.

GERMANY: A. D. 1806 (October-December).

Napoleon's ungenerous use of his victory.

His insults to the Queen of Prussia.

The kingdom governed as conquered territory.

The French advance into Poland, to meet the Russians.

Saxony made a kingdom.

"Napoleon made a severe and ungenerous use of his victory. The

old Duke of Brunswick, respectable from his age, his

achievements under the Great Frederick, and the honourable

wounds he had recently received on the field of battle, and

who had written a letter to Napoleon, after the battle of

Jena, recommending his subjects to his generosity, was in an

especial manner the object of invective. His states were

overrun, and the official bulletins disgraced by a puerile

tirade against a general who had done nothing but discharge

his duty to his sovereign. For this he was punished by the

total confiscation of his dominions. So virulent was the

language employed, and such the apprehensions in consequence

inspired, that the wounded general was compelled, with great

personal suffering, to take refuge in Altona, where he soon

after died. The Queen, whose spirit in prosperous and

constancy in adverse fortune had justly endeared her to her

subjects, and rendered her the admiration of all Europe, was

pursued in successive bulletins with unmanly sarcasms; and a

heroic princess, whose only fault, if fault it was, had been

an excess of patriotic ardour, was compared to Helen, whose

faithless vices had involved her country in the calamities

consequent on the siege of Troy. The whole dominions of the

Elector of Hesse Cassel were next seized; and that prince, who

had not even combated at Jena, but merely permitted, when he

could not prevent, the entry of the Prussians into his

dominions, was dethroned and deprived of all his possessions.

... The Prince of Orange, brother-in-law to the King of

Prussia, ... shared the same fate: while to the nobles of

Berlin he used publicly the cruel expression, more withering

to his own reputation than theirs,--'I will render that

noblesse so poor that they shall be obliged to beg their

bread.' ... Meanwhile the French armies, without any further

resistance, took possession of the whole country between the

Rhine and the Oder; and in the rear of the victorious bands

appeared, in severity unprecedented even in the revolutionary

armies, the dismal scourge of contributions. Resolved to

maintain the war exclusively on the provinces which were to be

its theatre, Napoleon had taken only 24,000 francs in specie

across the Rhine in the military chest of the army. It soon

appeared from whom the deficiency was to be supplied. On the

day after the battle of Jena appeared a proclamation,

directing the levy of an extraordinary war contribution of

159,000,000 francs (£6,300,000) on the countries at war with

France, of which 100,000,000 was to be borne by the Prussian

states to the west of the Vistula, 25,000,000 by the Elector

of Saxony [who had already detached himself from his alliance

with Prussia], and the remainder by the lesser states in the

Prussian confederacy. This enormous burden ... was levied with

unrelenting severity. ... Nor was this all. The whole civil

authorities who remained in the abandoned provinces were

compelled to take an oath of fidelity to the French

Emperor,--an unprecedented step, which clearly indicated the

intention of annexing the Prussian dominions to the great

nation. ... Early in November there appeared an elaborate

ordinance, which provided for the complete civil organisation

and military occupation of the whole country from the Rhine to

the Vistula. By this decree the conquered states were divided

into four departments; those of Berlin, of Magdeburg, of

Stettin, and of Custrin; the military and civil government of

the whole conquered territory was intrusted to a

governor-general at Berlin, having under him eight commanders

of provinces into which it was divided. ... The same system of

government was extended to the duchy of Brunswick, the states

of Hesse and Hanover, the duchy of Mecklenburg, and the Hanse

towns, including Hamburg, which was speedily oppressed by

grievous contributions. ... The Emperor openly announced his

determination to retain possession of all these states till

England consented to his demands on the subject of the liberty

of the seas. ... Meanwhile the negotiations for the conclusion of

a separate peace between France and Prussia were resumed. ...

The severity of the terms demanded, as well as ... express

assurances that no concessions, how great soever, could lead

to a separate accommodation, as Napoleon was resolved to

retain all his conquests until a general peace, led, as might

have been expected, to the rupture of the negotiations.

Desperate as the fortunes of Prussia were, ... the King ...

declared his resolution to stand or fall with the Emperor of

Russia [who was vigorously preparing to fulfil his promise of

help to the stricken nation]. This refusal was anticipated by

Napoleon. It reached him at Posen, whither he had advanced on

his road to the Vistula; and nothing remained but to enter

vigorously on the prosecution of the war in Poland.

{1511}

To this period of the war belongs the famous Berlin decree

[see FRANCE: A. D. 1806-1810] of the 21st November against the

commerce of Great Britain. ... Napoleon ... at Posen, in

Prussian Poland, gave audience to the deputies of that unhappy

kingdom, who came to implore his support to the remains of its

once mighty dominion. His words were calculated to excite

hopes which his subsequent conduct never realised. ... While

the main body of the French army was advancing by rapid

strides from the Oder to the Vistula, Napoleon, ever anxious

to secure his communications, and clear his rear of hostile

bodies, caused two different armies to advance to support the

flanks of the invading force. ... The whole of the north of

Germany was overrun by French troops, while 100,000 were

assembling to meet the formidable legions of Russia in the

heart of Poland. Vast as the forces of Napoleon were, such

prodigious efforts, over so great an extent of surface,

rendered fresh supplies indispensable. The senate at Paris was

ready to furnish them; and on the requisition of the Emperor

80,000 were voted from the youth who were to arrive at the

military age in 1807. ... A treaty, offensive and defensive,

between Saxony and France, was the natural result of these

successes. This convention, arranged by Talleyrand, was signed

at Posen, on the 12th December. It stipulated that the Elector

of Saxony should be elevated to the dignity of king; he was

admitted into the Confederation of the Rhine, and his

contingent fixed at 20,000 men. By a separate article, it was

provided that the passage of foreign troops across the kingdom

of Saxony should take place without the consent of the sovereign:

a provision which sufficiently pointed it out as a military

outpost of the great nation--while, by a subsidiary treaty,

signed at Posen three days afterwards, the whole minor princes

of the House of Saxony were also admitted into the

Confederacy."

Sir A. Alison,

History of Europe, 1789-1815,

chapter 43, sections 87-99 (volume 10).

ALSO IN:

P. Lanfrey,

History of Napoleon,

volume 2, chapter 16.

Mrs. S. Austin,

Germany from 1760 to 1814,

page 294, and after.

E. H. Hudson,

Life and Times of Louisa,

Queen of Prussia, volume 2, chapters 8-9.

GERMANY: A. D. 1806-1807.

Opening of Napoleon's campaign against the Russians.

The deluding of the Poles.

indecisive battle of Eylau.

The campaign against the Russians "opened early in the winter.

The 1st of November, the Russians and French marched towards

the Vistula, the former from the Memel, the latter from the

Oder. Fifty thousand Russians pressed forward under General

Benningsen; a second and equal army followed at a distance

with a reserve force. Some of the Russian forces on the

Turkish frontier were recalled, but were still remote. The

first two Russian armies, with the remaining Prussians,

numbered about 120,000. England made many promises and kept

few of them, thinking more of conquering Spanish and Dutch

colonies than of helping her allies. Her aid was limited to a

small reinforcement of the Swedes guarding Swedish Pomerania,

the only portion of Northern Germany not yet in French power.

Gustavus II., the young King of Sweden, weak and impulsive,

rushed headlong, without a motive, into the ... alliance

[against Napoleon], destined to be so fatal to Sweden. ...

Eighty thousand men under Murat crossed the Oder and entered

Prussian Poland, and an equal number stood ready to sustain

them. November 9, Davout's division entered Posen, the

principal town of the Polish provinces still preserving the

national sentiment, and whose people detested Prussian rule

and resented the treachery with which Prussia dismembered

Poland after swearing alliance with her. All along the road,

the peasants hastened to meet the French; and at Posen, Davout

was hailed with an enthusiasm which moved even him, cold and

severe as he was, and he urged Napoleon to justify the hopes

of Poland, who looked to him as her savior. The Russian

vanguard reached Warsaw before the French, but made no effort

to remain there, and recrossed the Vistula. November 28,

Davout and Murat entered the town, and public delight knew no

bounds. It would be a mere illusion to fancy that sentiments

of right and justice had any share in Napoleon's resolve, and

that he was stirred by a desire to repair great wrongs. His

only question was whether the resurrection of Poland would

increase his greatness or not; and if he told the Sultan that

he meant to restore Poland, it was because he thought Turkey

would assist him the more willingly against Russia. He also

offered part of Silesia to Austria, if she would aid him in

the restoration of Poland by the cession of her Polish

provinces; but it was not a sufficient offer, and therefore

not serious. The truth was that he wanted promises from the

Poles before he made any to them. ... Thousands of Poles

enlisted under the French flag and joined the Polish legions

left from the Italian war. Napoleon established a provisional

government of well-known Poles in Warsaw, and required nothing

but volunteers of the country. He had seized without a blow

that line of the Vistula which the Prussian king would not

barter for a truce, and might have gone into winter-quarters

there; but the Russians were close at hand on the opposite

shore, in two great divisions 100,000 strong, in a wooded and

marshy country forming a sort of triangle, whose point touches

the union of the Narew and Ukra rivers with the Vistula, a few

leagues below Warsaw. The Russians communicated with the sea

by a Prussian corps stationed between them and Dantzic.

Napoleon would not permit them to hold this post, and resolved

to strike a blow, before going into winter-quarters, which

should cut them off from the sea and drive them back towards

the Memel and Lithuania. He crossed the Vistula, December 23,

and attacked the Russians between the Narew and the Ukra. A

series of bloody battles followed [the most important being at

Pultusk and Golymin, December 26] in the dense forests and deep

bogs of the thawing land. Napoleon said that he had discovered

a fifth element in Poland,--mud. Men and horses stuck in the

swamp and the cannons could not be extricated. Luckily the

Russians were in the incompetent hands of General Kamenski,

and both parties fought in the dark, the labyrinth of swamps

and woods preventing either army from guessing the other's

movements. The Russians were finally driven, with great loss,

beyond the Narew towards the forests of Belostok, and a

Prussian corps striving to assist them was driven back to the

sea. ... The grand army did not long enjoy the rest it so much

needed; for the Russians, whose losses were more than made up

by the arrival of their reserves, suddenly resumed the

offensive.

{1512}

General Benningsen, who gave a fearful proof of his sinister

energy by the murder of Paul I., had been put in command in

Kamenski's place. Marching round the forests and traversing

the line of lakes which divide the basin of the Narew from

those watercourses flowing directly to the sea, he reached the

maritime part of old Prussia, intending to cross the Vistula

and drive the French from their position in Poland. He had

hoped to surprise the French left wing, lying between the

Passarge and Lower Vistula, but arrived too late. Ney and

Bernadotte rapidly concentrated their forces and fought with a

bravery which arrested the Russians (January 25 and 27).

Napoleon came to the rescue, and having once driven the enemy

into the woods and marshes of the interior, now strove to turn

those who meant to turn him, by an inverse action forcing them

to the sea-coast. ... Benningsen then halted beyond Eylau, and

massed his forces to receive battle next day [February 8]. He

had about 70,000 men, twice the artillery of Napoleon (400

guns against 200), and hoped to be joined betimes by a

Prussian corps. Napoleon could only dispose of 60,000 out of

his 300,000 men,--Ney being some leagues away and Bernadotte

out of reach. ... The battlefield was a fearful sight next

day. Twelve thousand Russians and 10,000 French lay dying and

dead on the vast fields of snow reddened with blood. The

Russians, besides, carried off 15,000 wounded. 'What an

ineffectual massacre" cried Ney, as he traversed the scene of

carnage. This was too true; for although Napoleon drove the

Russians to the sea, it was not in the way he desired.

Benningsen succeeded in reaching Konigsberg, where he could

rest and reinforce his army, and Napoleon was not strong

enough to drive him from this last shelter."

H. Martin,

Popular History of France from 1789,

volume 2, chapter 11.

ALSO IN:

Baron Jomini,

Life of Napoleon,

chapter 10 (volume 2).

C. Joyneville,

Life and Times of Alexander I.,

volume 1, chapter 8.

J. C. Ropes,

The First Napoleon,

lecture 3.

Baron de Marbot,

Memoirs,

volume 1, chapters 29-30.

GERMANY: A. D. 1806-1810.

Commercial blockade by the English Orders in Council and

Napoleon's Decrees.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1806-1810.

GERMANY: A. D. 1807 (February-June).

Closer alliance of Prussia and Russia.

Treaty of Bartenstein.

Napoleon's victory at Friedland.

End of the campaign.

The effect produced in Europe by the doubtful battle of Eylau

"was unlucky for France; in Paris the Funds fell. Bennigsen

boldly ordered the Te Deum to be sung. In order to confirm his

victory, re-organise his army, reassure France, re-establish

the opinion of Europe, encourage the Polish insurrection, and

to curb the ill-will of Germany and Austria, Napoleon remained

a week at Eylau. He negotiated: on one side he caused

Talleyrand to write to Zastrow, the Prussian foreign minister,

to propose peace and his alliance; he sent Bertrand to Memel

to offer to re-establish the King of Prussia, on the condition

of no foreign intervention. He also tried to negotiate with

Bennigsen; to which the latter made answer, 'that his master

had charged him to fight, and not negotiate.' After some

hesitation, Prussia ended by joining her fortunes to those of

Russia. By the convention of Bartenstein (25th April, 1807)

the two sovereigns came to terms on the following points:

1. The re-establishment of Prussia within the limits of 1805.

2. The dissolution of the Confederation of the Rhine.

3. The restitution to Austria of the Tyrol and Venice.

4. The accession of England to the coalition, and the

aggrandisement of Hanover.

5. The co-operation of Sweden.

6. The restoration of the house of Orange, and indemnities to

the kings of Naples and Sardinia.

This document is important; it nearly reproduces the

conditions offered to Napoleon at the Congress of Prague, in

1813. Russia and Prussia proposed then to make a more pressing

appeal to Austria, Sweden, and England; but the Emperor

Francis was naturally undecided, and the Archduke Charles,

alleging the state of the finances and the army, strongly

advised him against any new intervention. Sweden was too weak;

and notwithstanding his fury against Napoleon, Gustavus III.

had just been forced to treat with Mortier. The English

minister showed a remarkable inability to conceive the

situation; he refused to guarantee the new Russian loan of a

hundred and fifty millions, and would lend himself to no

maritime diversion. Napoleon showed the greatest diplomatic

activity. The Sultan Selim III. declared war against Russia;

General Sebastiani, the envoy at Constantinople, put the

Bosphorus in a state of defence, and repulsed the English

fleet [see TURKS: A. D. 1806-1807]; General Gardane left for

Ispahan, with a mission to cause a Persian outbreak in the

Caucasus. Dantzig had capitulated [May 24, after a long

siege], and Lefèbvre's 40,000 men were therefore ready for

service. Masséna took 36,000 of them into Italy, In the

spring, Bennigsen, who had been reinforced by 10,000 regular

troops, 6,000 Cossacks, and the Imperial Guard, being now at

the head of 100,000 men, took the offensive; Gortchakof

commanding the right and Bagration the left. He tried, as in

the preceding year, to seize Ney's division; but the latter

fought, as he retired, two bloody fights, at Gutstadt and

Ankendorff. Bennigsen, again in danger of being surrounded,

retired on Heilsberg. He defended himself bravely (June 10);

but the French, extending their line on his right, marched on

Eylau, so as to cut him off from Konigsberg. The Russian

generalissimo retreated; but being pressed, he had to draw up

at Friedland, on the Alle. The position he had taken up was

most dangerous. All his army was enclosed in an angle of the

Alle, with the steep bed of the river at their backs, which in

case of misfortune left them only one means of retreat, over

the three bridges of Friedland. ... 'Where are the Russians

concealed?' asked Napoleon when he came up. When he had noted

their situation, he exclaimed, 'It is not every day that one

surprises the enemy in such a fault.' He put Lannes and Victor

in reserve, ordered Mortier to oppose Gortchakof on the left

and to remain still, as the movement which 'would be made by

the right would pivot on the left.' As to Ney, he was to cope

on the right with Bagration, who was shut in by the angle of

the river; he was to meet them 'with his head down,' without

taking any care of his own safety. Ney led the charge with

irresistible fury; the Russians were riddled by his artillery

at 150 paces: he successively crushed the chasseurs of the

Russian Guard, the Ismaïlovski, and the Horse Guards, burnt

Friedland by shells, and cannonaded the bridges which were the

only means of retreat. ... The Russian left wing was almost

thrown into the river; Bagration, with the Semenovski and

other troops, was hardly able to cover the defeat.

{1513}

On the Russian right, Gortchakof, who had advanced to attack

the immovable Mortier, had only time to ford the Alle. Count

Lambert retired with 29 guns by the left bank; the rest fled

by the right bank, closely pursued by the cavalry. Meanwhile

Murat, Davoust, and Soult, who had taken no part in the

battle, arrived before Konigsberg. Lestocq, with 25,000 men,

tried to defend it, but on learning the disaster of Friedland

he hastily evacuated it. Only one fortress now remained to

Frederick William--the little town of Memel. The Russians had

lost at Friedland from 15,000 to 20,000 men, besides 80 guns

(June 14, 1807). ... Alexander had no longer an army. Only one

man, Barclay de Tolly, proposed to continue the war; but in

order to do this it would be necessary to re-enter Russia, to

penetrate into the very heart of the empire, to burn

everything on the way, and only present a desert to the enemy.

Alexander hoped to get off more cheaply. He wrote a severe

letter to Bennigsen, and gave him powers to treat."

A. Rambaud,

History of Russia,

volume 2, chapter 12.

ALSO IN:

Duke de Rovigo,

Memoirs,

volume 2, part 1, chapters 4-6.

GERMANY: A. D. 1807 (June-July).

The Treaty of Tilsit.

Its known and its unknown agreements.

"Alexander I. now determined to negotiate in person with the

rival emperor, and on the 25th of June the two sovereigns met

at Tilsit, on a raft which was moored in the middle of the

Niemen. The details of the conference are a secret, as

Napoleon's subsequent account of it is untrustworthy, and no

witnesses were present. All that is certain is that Alexander

I., whose character was a curious mixture of nobility and

weakness, was completely won over by his conqueror. ...

Napoleon, ... instead of attempting to impose extreme terms

upon a country which it was impossible to conquer, ... offered

to share with Russia the supremacy in Europe which had been

won by French arms. The only conditions were the abandonment

of the cause of the old monarchies, which seemed hopeless, and

an alliance with France against England. Alexander had several

grievances against the English government, especially the

lukewarm support that had been given in recent operations, and

made no objection to resume the policy of his predecessors in

this respect. Two interviews sufficed to arrange the basis of

an agreement. Both sovereigns abandoned their allies without

scruple. Alexander gave up Prussia and Sweden, while Napoleon

deserted the cause of the Poles, who had trusted to his zeal

for their independence, and of the Turks, whom his envoy had

recently induced to make war upon Russia. The Treaty of Tilsit

was speedily drawn up; on the 7th of July peace was signed

between France and Russia, on the 9th between France and

Prussia. Frederick William III. had to resign the whole of his

kingdom west of the Elbe, together with all the acquisitions

which Prussia had made in the second and third partitions of

Poland. The provinces that were left, amounting to barely half

of what he had inherited, were burthened with the payment of

an enormous sum as compensation to France. The district west

of the Elbe was united with Hesse-Cassel, Brunswick, and

ultimately with Hanover, to form the kingdom of Westphalia,

which was given to Napoleon's youngest brother, Jerome. Of

Polish Prussia, one province, Bialystock, was added to Russia,

and the rest was made into the grand duchy of Warsaw, and

transferred to Saxony. Danzig, with the surrounding territory,

was declared a free state under Prussian and Saxon protection,

but it was really subject to France, and remained a centre of

French power on the Baltic. All trade between Prussia and

England was cut off. Alexander I., on his side, recognised all

Napoleon's new creations in Europe--the Confederation of the

Rhine, the kingdoms of Italy, Naples, Holland, and Westphalia,

and undertook to mediate between France and England. But the

really important agreement between France and Russia was to be

found, not in the formal treaties, but in the secret

conventions which were arranged by the two emperors. The exact

text of these has never been made public, and it is probable

that some of the terms rested upon verbal rather than on

written understandings, but the general drift of them is

unquestionable. The bribe offered to Alexander was the

aggrandisement of Russia in the East. To make him an

accomplice in the acts of Napoleon, he was to be allowed to

annex Finland from Sweden, and Moldavia and Wallachia from

Turkey. With regard to England, Russia undertook to adopt

Napoleon's blockade-system, and to obtain the adhesion of

those states which still remained open to English

trade--Sweden, Denmark, and Portugal."

H. Lodge,

History of Modern Europe,

chapter 24, section 25.

"'I thought,' said Napoleon at St. Helena, 'it would benefit

the world to drive these brutes, the Turks, out of Europe. But

when I reflected what power it would give to Russia, from the

number of Greeks in the Turkish dominions who may be

considered Russians, I refused to consent to it, especially as

Alexander wanted Constantinople, which would have destroyed

the equilibrium of power in Europe. France would gain Egypt,

Syria, and the islands; but those were nothing to what Russia

would have obtained.' This coincides with Savary's [Duke de

Rovigo's] statement, that Alexander told him Napoleon said he

was under no engagements to the new Sultan, and that changes

in the world inevitably changed the relations of states to one

another; and again, Alexander said that, in their

conversations at Tilsit, Napoleon often told him he did not

require the evacuation of Moldavia and Wallachia; he would

place things in a train to dispense with it, and it was not

possible to suffer longer the presence of the Turks in Europe.

'He even left me,' said Alexander, 'to entertain the project

of driving them back into Asia. It is only since that he has

returned to the idea of leaving Constantinople to them, and

some surrounding provinces.' Due day, when Napoleon was

talking to Alexander, he asked his secretary, M. Meneval, for

the map of Turkey, opened it, then renewed the conversation;

and placing his finger on Constantinople said several times to

the secretary, though not loud enough to be heard by

Alexander, 'Constantinople, Constantinople, never. It is the

capital of the world.' ... It is very evident in their

conversations that Napoleon agreed to his [Alexander's]

possessing himself of the Turkish Empire up to the Balkan, if

not beyond; though Bignon denies that any plan for the actual

partition of Turkey was embodied in the treaty of Tilsit.

Hardenberg, not always well informed, asserts that it was.

{1514}

Savary says he could not believe that Napoleon would have

abandoned the Turks without a compensation in some other

quarter; and he felt certain Alexander had agreed in return to

Napoleon's project for the conquest of Spain, 'which the

Emperor had very much at heart'"

C. Joyneville,

Life and Times of Alexander I.,

volume 1, chapter 8.

ALSO IN:

Sir A. Alison,

History of Europe, 1789-1815,

chapter 46 (volume 10).

Count Miot de Melito,

Memoirs,

chapter 24.

P. Lanfrey,

History of Napoleon,

chapters 3-4.

Prince de Talleyrand,

Memoirs,

part 3 (volume 1).

A. Thiers,

History of the Consulate and the Empire,

book 27 (volume 2).

GERMANY: A. D. 1807 (July).

The collapse of Prussia and its Causes.

"For the five years that followed, Prussia is to be conceived,

in addition to all her other humiliations, as in the hands of

a remorseless creditor whose claims are decided by himself

without appeal, and who wants more than all he can get. She is

to be thought of as supporting for more than a year after the

conclusion of the Treaty a French army of more than 150,000

men, then as supporting a French garrison in three principal

fortresses, and finally, just before the period ends, as

having to support the huge Russian expedition in its passage

through the country. ... It was not in fact from the Treaty of

Tilsit, but from the systematic breach of it, that the

sufferings of Prussia between 1807 and 1813 arose. It is

indeed hardly too much to say that the advantage of the Treaty

was received only by France, and that the only object Napoleon

can have had in signing it was to inflict more harm on Prussia

than he could inflict by simply continuing the war. Such was

the downfall of Prussia. The tremendousness of the catastrophe

strikes us less because we know that it was soon retrieved,

and that Prussia rose again and became greater than ever. But

could this recovery be anticipated? A great nation, we say,

cannot be dissolved by a few disasters; patriotism and energy

will retrieve everything. But precisely these seemed wanting.

The State seemed to have fallen in pieces because it had no

principle of cohesion, and was only held together by an

artificial bureaucracy. It had been created by the energy of

its government and the efficiency of its soldiers, and now it

appeared to come to an end because its government had ceased

to be energetic and its soldiers to be efficient. The

catastrophe could not but seem as irremediable as it was

sudden and complete." There may be discerned "three distinct

causes for it. First, the undecided and pusillanimous policy

pursued by the Prussian government since 1803 had an evident

influence upon the result by making the great Powers,

particularly England and Austria, slow to render it

assistance, and also by making the commanders, especially

Brunswick, irresolute in action because they could not, even

at the last moment, believe the war to be serious. This

indecision we have observed to have been connected with a

mal-organisation of the Foreign Department. Secondly, the

corruption of the military system, which led to the surrender

of the fortresses. Thirdly, a misfortune for which Prussia was

not responsible, its desertion by Russia at a critical moment,

and the formation of a close alliance between Russia and

France."

J. R. Seeley,

Life and Times of Stein,

part 2, chapter 5 (volume 1).

GERMANY: A. D. 1807-1808.

The great Revolutionary Reforms of Hardenberg, Stein and

Scharnhorst.

Edict of Emancipation.

Military reorganization.

Beginning of local self-government.

Seeds of a new national life.

"The work of those who resisted Napoleon--even if no one of

them should ever be placed in the highest class of the

benefactors of mankind--has in some cases proved enduring, and

nowhere so much as in Germany. They began two great works--the

reorganisation of Prussia and the revival of the German

nationality, and time has deliberately ratified their views.

Without retrogression, without mistake, except the mistake

which in such matters is the most venial that can be

committed, that, namely, of over-caution, of excessive

hesitation, the edifice which was then founded has been raised

higher and higher till it is near completion. ... Because

Frederick-William III. remains quietly seated on the throne

through the whole period, we remain totally unaware that a

Prussian revolution took place then--a revolution so

comprehensive that the old reign and glories of Frederick may

fairly be said to belong to another world--to an 'ancien

regime' that has utterly passed away. It was a revolution

which, though it did not touch the actual framework of

government in such a way as to substitute one of Aristotle's

forms of government for another, yet went so far beyond

government, and made such a transformation both in industry

and culture, that it deserves the name of revolution far more,

for instance, than our English Revolution of the 17th century.

... In Prussia few of the most distinguished statesmen, few even

of those who took the lead in her liberation from Napoleon,

were Prussians. Blücher himself began life in the service of

Sweden, Scharnhorst was a Hanoverian, so was Hardenberg, and

Stein came from Nassau. Niebuhr was enticed to Berlin from the

Bank of Copenhagen. Hardenberg served George III. and

afterwards the Duke of Brunswick before he entered the service

of Frederick-William II.; and when Stein was dismissed by

Frederick-William III. in the midst of the war of 1806, though

he was a man of property and rank, he took measures to

ascertain whether they were in want of a Finance Minister at

St. Petersburg. ... We misapprehend the nature of what took

place when we say, as we usually do, that some important and

useful reforms were introduced by Stein, Hardenberg, and

Scharnhorst. In the first place, such a word as reform is not

properly applied to changes so vast, and in the second place.

the changes then made or at least commenced, went far beyond

legislation. We want some word stronger than reform which

shall convey that one of the greatest events of modern history

now took place in Prussia. Revolution would convey this, but

unfortunately we appropriate that word to changes in the form

of government, or even mere changes of dynasty, provided they

are violent, though such changes are commonly quite

insignificant compared to what now took place in Prussia. ...

The form of government indeed was not changed. Not merely did

the king continue to reign, but no Parliament was created even

with powers ever so restricted. Another generation had to pass

away before this innovation, which to us seems the beginning

of political life, took place. But a nation must be made

before it can be made free, and, as we have said, in Prussia

there was an administration (in great disorder) and an army,

but no nation.

{1515}

When Stein was placed at the head of affairs in the autumn of

1807, he seems, at first, hardly to have been aware that

anything was called for beyond the reform of the

administration, and the removal of some abuses in the army.

Accordingly he did reform the administration from the top to

the bottom, remodelling the whole machinery both of central

and local government which had come down from the father of

Frederick the Great. But the other work also was forced upon

him, and he began to create the nation by emancipating the

peasantry, while Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were brooding over

the ideas which, five years later, took shape in the Landwehr

of East Prussia. Besides emancipating the peasant he

emancipated industry,--everywhere abolishing that strange

caste system which divided the population rigidly into nobles,

citizens, and peasants, and even stamped every acre of land in

the country with its own unalterable rank as noble, or

citizen, or peasant land. Emancipation, so to speak, had to be

given before enfranchisement. The peasant must have something

to live for; freewill must be awakened in the citizen; and he

must be taught to fight for something before he could receive

political liberty. Of such liberty Stein only provided one

modest germ. By his Städteordnung he introduced popular

election into the towns. Thus Prussia and France set out

towards political liberty by different roads. Prussia began

modestly with local liberties, but did not for a long time

attempt a Parliament. France with her charte, and in imitation

of France many of the small German States, had grand popular

Parliaments, but no local liberties. And so for a long time

Prussia was regarded as a backward State. ... It was only by

accident that Stein stopped short at municipal liberties and

created no Parliament. He would have gone further, and in the

last years of the wartime Hardenberg did summon deliberative

assemblies, which, however, fell into disuse again after the

peace. ... In spite however of all reaction, the change

irrevocably made by the legislation of that time was similar

to that made in France by the Revolution, and caused the age

before Jena to be regarded as an 'ancien regime.' But in

addition to this, a change had been made in men's minds and

thoughts by the shocks of the time, which prepared the way for

legislative changes which have taken place since. How

unprecedented in Prussia, for instance, was the dictatorial

authority wielded by Hardenberg early in 1807, by Stein in the

latter part of that year and in 1808, and by Hardenberg again

from 1810 onwards! Before that time in the history of Prussia

we find no subject eclipsing or even approaching the King in

importance. Prussia had been made what she was almost entirely

by her electors and kings. In war and organisation alike all

had been done by the Great Elector or Frederick-William I., or

Frederick the Great. But now this is suddenly changed. Everything

now turns on the minister. Weak ministers are expelled by

pressure put upon the king, strong ones are forced upon him.

He is compelled to create a new ministerial power much greater

than that of an English Prime Minister, and more like that of

a Grand Vizier, and by these dictators the most comprehensive

innovations are made. The loyalty of the people was not

impaired by this; on the contrary, Stein and Hardenberg saved

the Monarchy; but it evidently transferred the Monarchy,

though safely, to a lower pedestal."

J. R. Seeley,

Prussian History (Macmillan's Magazine,

volume 36, pages 342-351).

ALSO IN:

J. R. Seeley,

Life and Times of Stein,

parts 3-5 (volumes 1-2).

R. B. D. Morier,

Agrarian Legislation of Prussia

(Systems of Land Tenure: Cobden Club Essays,

chapter 5).

GERMANY: A. D. 1808.

The Awakening of the national spirit.

Effects of the Spanish rising, and of Fichte's Addresses.

The beginnings of the great rising in Spain against Napoleon

(see SPAIN: A. D. 1808, and after) "were watched by Stein from

Berlin while he was engaged in negotiating with Daru; we can

imagine with what feelings! His cause had been, since his

ministry began, substantially the same as that of Spain; but

he had perhaps understood it himself but dimly, at any rate

hoped but faintly to see it prosper. But now he ripens at once

into a great nationality statesman; the reforms of Prussia

begin at once to take a more military stamp, and to point more

decisively to a great uprising of the German race against the

foreign oppressor. The change of feeling which took place in

Prussia after the beginning of the Spanish troubles is very

clearly marked in Stein's autobiography. After describing the

negotiations at Paris and Berlin, ... he begins a new

paragraph thus: 'The popular war which had broken out in Spain

and was attended with good success, had heightened the

irritation of the inhabitants of the Prussian State caused by

the humiliation they had suffered. All thirsted for revenge;

plans of insurrection, which aimed at exterminating the French

scattered about the country, were arranged; among others, one

was to be carried out at Berlin, and I had the greatest

trouble to keep the leaders, who confided their intentions to

me, from a premature outbreak. We all watched the progress of

the Spanish war and the commencement of the Austrian, for the

preparations of that Power had not remained a secret;

expectation was strained to the highest point; pains were

necessary to moderate the excited eagerness for resistance in

order to profit by it in more favourable circumstances. ...

Fichte's Addresses to the Germans, delivered during the French

occupation of Berlin and printed under the censorship of M.

Bignon, the Intendant, had a great effect upon the feelings of

the cultivated class.' ... That in the midst of such weighty

matters he should remember to mention Fichte's Addresses is a

remarkable testimony to the effect produced by them on the

public mind, and at the same time it leads us to conjecture

that they must have strongly influenced his own. They had been

delivered in the winter at Berlin and of course could not be

heard by Stein, who was then with the King, but they were not

published till April. As affecting public opinion therefore,

and also as known to Stein, the book was almost exactly of the

same date as the Spanish Rebellion, and it is not unnatural

that he should mention the two influences together. ... When

the lectures were delivered at Berlin a rising in Spain was

not dreamed of, and even when they were published it had not

taken place, nor could clearly be foreseen. And yet they teach

the same lesson. That doctrine of nationality which was taught

affirmatively by Spain had been suggested to Fichte's mind by

the reductio ad absurdum which events had given to the

negation of it in Germany.

{1516}

Nothing could be more convincing than the concurrence of the

two methods of proof at the same moment, and the prophetic

elevation of these discourses (which may have furnished a

model to Carlyle) was well fitted to drive the lesson home,

particularly to a mind like Stein's, which was quite capable

of being impressed by large principles. ... Fichte's Addresses

do not profess to have in the first instance nationality for

their subject. They profess to inquire whether there exists

any grand comprehensive remedy for the evils with which

Germany is afflicted. They find such a remedy where Turgot

long before had looked for deliverance from the selfishness to

which he traced all the abuses of the old regime, that is, in

a grand system of national education. Fichte reiterates the

favourite doctrine of modern Liberalism, that education as

hitherto conducted by the Church has aimed only at securing

for men happiness in another life, and that this is not

enough, inasmuch as they need also to be taught how to bear

themselves in the present life so as to do their duty to the

state, to others and themselves. He is as sure as Turgot that

a system of national education will work so powerfully upon

the nation that in a few years they will not be recognisable,

and he explains at great length what should be the nature of

this system, dwelling principally upon the importance of

instilling a love of duty for its own sake rather than for

reward. The method to be adopted is that of Pestalozzi. Out of

fourteen lectures the first three are entirely occupied with

this. But then the subject is changed, and we find ourselves

plunged into a long discussion of the peculiar characteristics

which distinguish Germany from other nations and particularly

other nations of German origin. At the present day this

discussion, which occupies four lectures, seems hardly

satisfactory; but it is a striking deviation from the fashion

of that age. ... But up to this point we perceive only that

the subject of German nationality occupies Fichte's mind very

much, and that there was more significance than we first

remarked in the title, Addresses to the German Nation;

otherwise we have met with nothing likely to seem of great

importance to a statesman. But the eighth Lecture propounds

the question, 'What is a Nation in the higher signification of

the word, and what is patriotism? It is here that he delivers

what might seem a commentary on the Spanish Revolution, which

had not yet taken place. ... Fichte proclaims the Nation not

only to be different from the State, but to be something far

higher and greater. ... Applied to Germany this doctrine would

lead to the practical conclusion that a united German State

ought to be set up in which the separate German States should

be absorbed. ... In the lecture before us he contents himself

with advising that patriotism as distinguished from loyalty to

the State should be carefully inculcated in the new education,

and should influence the individual German Governments. It

would not indeed have been safe for Fichte to propose a

political reform, but it rather appears that he thought it an

advantage rather than a disadvantage that the Nation and the

State should be distinct. ... I should not have lingered so

long over this book if it did not strike me as the prophetical

or canonical book which announces and explains a great

transition in Modern Europe, and the prophecies of which began

to be fulfilled immediately after its publication by the

rising in Spain. ... It is this Spanish Revolution which when

it has extended to the other countries we call the

Anti-Napoleonic Revolution of Europe. It gave Europe years of

unparalleled bloodshed, but at the same time years over which

there broods a light of poetry; for no conception can be more

profoundly poetical than that which now woke up in every part

of Europe, the conception of the Nation. Those years also led

the way to the great movements which have filled so much of

the nineteenth century, and have rearranged the whole central

part of the map of Europe on a more natural system."

J. R. Seeley,

Life and Times of Stein,

part 4, chapter 1 (volume 2).

GERMANY: A. D. 1808 (January).

Kehl, Cassel and Wesel annexed to France.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1807-1808 (NOVEMBER-FEBRUARY).

GERMANY: A. D. 1808 (April-December).

The Tugendbund, and Stein's relations to it.

"English people think of Stein almost exclusively in connexion

with land laws. But the second and more warlike period of his

Ministry has also left a faint impression in the minds of many

among us, who are in the habit of regarding him as the founder

of the Tugendbund. In August and September [1808], the very

months in which Stein was taking up his new position, this

society was attracting general attention, and accordingly this

is the place to consider Stein's relation to it. That he was

secretly animating and urging it on must have seemed at the

time more than probable, almost self-evident. It aimed at the

very objects which he had at heart, it spoke of him with warm

admiration, and in general it used language which seemed an

echo of his own. ... Whatever his connexion with the

Tugendbund may have been, it cannot have commenced till April,

1808, for it was in that month that the Tugendbund began its

existence, and therefore nothing can be more absurd than to

represent Stein as beginning to revolutionise the country with

the help of the Tugendbund, for his revolutionary edict had

been promulgated in the October before. ... In his

autobiography ... Stein [says]: 'An effect and not the cause

of this passionate national indignation at the despotism of

Napoleon was the Tugendbund, of which I was no more the

founder than I was a member, as I can assert on my honour and

as is well known to its originators. About July, 1808, there

was formed at Königsberg a society consisting of several

officers, for example, Colonel Gneisenau, Grolmann, &c., and

learned men, such as Professor Krug, in order to combat

selfishness and to rouse the nobler moral feelings; and

according to the requirements of the existing laws they

communicated their statutes and the list of their members to

the King's Majesty, who sanctioned the former without any

action on my part, it being my belief in general that there

was no need of any other institute but to put new life into

the spirit of Christian patriotism, the germ of which lay

already in the existing institutions of State and Church. The

new Society held its meetings, but of the proceedings I knew

nothing, and when later it proposed to exert an indirect

influence upon educational and military institutions I

rejected the proposal as encroaching on the department of the

civil and ecclesiastical governing bodies. As I was driven

soon afterwards out of the public service, I know nothing

of the further operations of this Society.' ...

{1517}

He certainly seems to intend his readers to understand that he

had not even any indirect or underhand connexion with it, but

from first to last stood entirely aloof, except in one case

when he interfered to restrain its action. It is even possible

that by telling us that he had nothing to do with the step

taken by the King when he sanctioned the statutes of the

society he means to hint that; had his advice been taken, the

society would not have been even allowed to exist. ... The

principal fact affirmed by Stein is indeed now beyond

controversy; Stein was certainly not either the founder or a

member of the Tugendbund. The society commonly known by that

name, which however designated itself as the Moral and

Scientific Union, was founded by a number of persons, of whom

many were Freemasons, at Konigsberg in the month of April.

Professor Krug, mentioned by Stein, was one of them; Gneisenau

and Grolmann, whom he also mentions, were not among the first

members, and Gneisenau, it seems, was never a member. The

statutes were drawn by Krug, Bardeleben and Baersch, and if

anyone person can be called the Founder of the Tugendbund, the

second of these, Bardeleben, seems best to deserve the title.

The Order of Cabinet by which the society was licensed is

dated Konigsberg, June 30th, and runs as follows: 'The revival

of morality, religion, serious taste and public spirit, is

assuredly most commendable; and, so far as the society now

being formed under the name of a Virtue Union (Tugendverein)

is occupied with this within the limits of the laws of the

country and without any interference in politics or public

administration, His Majesty the King of Prussia approves the

object and constitution of the society.' ... From Konigsberg

missionaries went forth who established branch associations,

called Chambers, in other towns, first those of the Province

of Prussia, Braunsberg, Elbing, Graudenz, Eylau, Hohenstein,

Memel, Stallupöhnen; then in August and September Bardeleben

spread the movement with great success through Silesia. The

spirit which animated the new society could not but be

approved by every patriot. They had been deeply struck with

the decay of the nation, as shown in the occurrences of the

war, and their views of the way in which it might be revived

were much the same as those of Stein and Fichte. The only

question was whether they were wise in organising a society in

order to promulgate these views, whether such a society was

likely to do much good, and also whether it might not by

possibility do much harm. Stein's view, as he has given it,

was that it was not likely to do much good, and that such an

organisation was unnecessary. ... It did not follow because he

desired Estates or Parliaments that he was prepared to

sanction a political club. ... It may well have seemed to him

that to suffer a political club to come into existence was to

allow the guidance of the Revolution which he had begun to

pass out of his hands. There appears, then, when we consider

it closely, nothing unnatural in the course which Stein

declares himself to have taken."

J. R. Seeley,

Life and Times of Stein,

part 4, chapter 3 (volume 2).

ALSO IN:

T. Frost,

Secret Societies of the European Revolution,

volume 1, chapter 4.

GERMANY: A. D. 1808 (September-October).

Imperial conference and Treaty of Erfurt.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1808 (SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER).

GERMANY: A. D. 1809 (January-June).

Outburst of Austrian feeling against France.

Reopening of war.

Napoleon's advance to Vienna.

His defeat at Aspern and perilous situation.

Austrian reverses in Italy and Hungary.

"The one man of all the Austrians who felt the least amount of

hatred against France, was, perhaps, the Emperor. All his

family and all his people--nobles and priests, the middle

classes and the peasantry--evinced a feeling full of anger

against the nation which had upset Europe. ... By reason of

the French, the disturbers and spoilers, the enemies of the

human race, despisers of morality and religion alike, Princes

were suffering in their palaces, workmen in their shops,

business men in their offices, priests in their churches,

soldiers in their camps, peasants in their huts. The movement

of exasperation was irresistible. Everyone said that it was a

mistake to have laid down their arms; that they ought against

France to have fought on to the bitter end, and to have

sacrificed the last man and the last florin; that they had

been wrong in not having gone to the assistance of Prussia

after the Jena Campaign; and that the moment had arrived for

all the Powers to coalesce against the common enemy and crush

him. ... All Europe had arrived at a paroxysm of indignation.

What was she waiting for before rising? A signal. That signal

Austria was about to give. And this time with what chances of

success! The motto was to be 'victory or death.' But they were

sure of victory. The French army, scattered from the Oder to

the Tagus, from the mountains of Bohemia to the Sierra Morena,

would not be able to resist the onslaught of so many nations

eager to break their bonds. ... Vienna, in 1809, indulged in

the same language, and felt the same passions, that Berlin did

in 1806. ... The Landwehr, then only organized a few months,

were impatiently awaiting the hour when they should measure

themselves against the Veterans of the French army. Volunteers

flocked in crowds to the colours. Patriotic subscriptions

flowed in. ... Boys wanted to leave school to fight. All

classes of society vied with each other in zeal, courage, and

a spirit of sacrifice. When the news was made public that the

Archduke Charles had, on the 20th of February, 1809, been

appointed Generalissimo, there was an outburst of joy and

confidence from one end of the Empire to the other."

Imbert de Saint-Amand,

Memoirs of the Empress Marie Louise,

part 1, chapter 2.

"On receiving decisive intelligence of these hostile

preparations, Napoleon returned with extraordinary expedition

from Spain to Paris, in January, 1809, and gave orders to

concentrate his forces in Germany, and call out the full

contingents of the Confederation of the Rhine. Some further

time was consumed by the preparations on either side. At last,

on the 8th of April, the Austrian troops crossed the frontiers

at once on the Inn, in Bohemia, in the Tyrol and in Italy. The

whole burthen of the war rested on Austria alone, for Prussia

remained neutral, and Russia, now allied to France, was even

bound to make a show at least, though it were no more, of

hostility to Austria. On the same day on which the Austrian

forces crossed the frontiers, the Tyrol rose in insurrection

[see below: A. D. 1809-1810 (APRIL-FEBRUARY)], and was swept

clear of the enemy in four days, with the exception of a

Bavarian garrison, that still held out in Kufstein.

{1518}

The French army was at this time dispersed over a line of

forty leagues in extent, with numerous undefended apertures

between the corps; so that the fairest possible opportunity

presented itself to the Austrians for cutting to pieces the

scattered forces of the French, and marching in triumph to the

Rhine. As usual, however, the archduke's early movements were

subjected to most impolitic delays by the Aulic Council; and

time was allowed Napoleon to arrive on the theatre of war

(April 17), and repair the faults committed by his

adjutant-general, Berthier. He instantly extricated his army

from its perilous position--almost cut in two by the advance

of the Austrians--and, beginning on the 19th, he beat the

latter in five battles on five successive days, at Thaun,

Abensberg, Landshut, Eckmühl, and Ratisbon. The Archduke

Charles retired into Bohemia to collect reinforcements, but

General Hiller was, in consequence of the delay in repairing

the fortifications of Linz, unable to maintain that place, the

possession of which was important, on account of its forming a

connecting point between Bohemia and the Austrian Oberland.

Hiller, however, at least saved his honour by pushing forward

to the Traun, and in a fearfully bloody encounter at

Ebersberg, captured three French eagles, one of his colours

alone falling into the enemy's hands. He was, nevertheless,

compelled to retire before the superior forces of the French,

and crossing over at Krems to the left bank of the Danube, he

formed a junction with the Archduke Charles. The way was now

clear to Vienna, which, after a slight show of defence,

capitulated to Napoleon on the 12th of May. The Archduke

Charles had hoped to reach the capital before the French, and

to give battle to them beneath its walls; but as he had to

make a circuit whilst the French pushed forward in a direct

line, his plan was frustrated, and he arrived, when too late,

from Bohemia. Both armies, separated by the Danube, stood

opposed to one another in the vicinity of the imperial city.

Both commanders were desirous of coming to a decisive

engagement. The French had secured the island of Lobau, to

serve as a mustering place, and point of transit across the

Danube. The archduke allowed them to establish a bridge of

boats, being resolved to await them on the Marchfeld. There it

was that Rudolph of Habsburg, in the battle against Ottakar,

had laid the foundation of the greatness of the house of

Austria; and there the political existence of that house and

the fate of the monarchy were now to be decided. Having

crossed the river, Napoleon was received on the opposite bank,

near Aspern and Esslingen, by his opponent, and, after a

dreadful battle [in which Marshal Lannes was killed], that was

carried on with unwearied animosity for two days, May 21st and

22nd, 1809, he was completely beaten, and compelled to fly for

refuge to the island of Lobau. The rising stream had,

meanwhile, carried away the bridge, Napoleon's sole chance of

escape to the opposite bank. For two days he remained on the

island with his defeated troops, without provisions, and in

hourly expectation of being cut to pieces; the Austrians,

however, neglected to turn the opportunity to advantage, and

allowed the French leisure to rebuild the bridge, a work of

extreme difficulty. During six weeks afterwards, the two

armies continued to occupy their former positions under the

walls of Vienna, on the right and left banks of the Danube,

narrowly watching each other's movements, and preparing for a

final struggle. Whilst these events were in progress, the

Archduke John had successfully penetrated into Italy, where he

had totally defeated the Viceroy Eugene at Salice, on the 16th

of April. Favoured by the simultaneous revolt of the Tyrolese,

he might have obtained the most decisive results from this

victory, but the extraordinary progress of Napoleon down the

valley of the Danube rendered necessary the concentration of

the whole forces of the monarchy for the defence of the

capital. Having begun a retreat, he was pursued by Eugene, and

defeated on the Piave, with great loss, on the 8th of May.

Escaping thence, without further molestation, to Villach, in

Carinthia, he received intelligence of the fall of Vienna,

together with a letter from the Archduke Charles, of the 15th

of May, directing him to move with all his forces upon Lintz,

to act on the rear and communications of Napoleon. Instead of

obeying these orders, he thought proper to march into Hungary,

abandoning the Tyrol and the whole projected operations on the

Upper Danube to their fate. His disobedience was disastrous to

the fortunes of his house, for it caused the fruits of the

victory at Aspern to be lost. He might have arrived, with

50,000 men, on the 24th or 25th, at Lintz, where no one

remained but Bernadotte and the Saxons, who were incapable of

offering any serious resistance. Such a force, concentrated on

the direct line of Napoleon's communications, immediately

after his defeat at Aspern, on the 22nd, would have deprived

him of all means of extricating himself from the most perilous

situation in which he had yet been placed since ascending the

consular throne. After totally defeating Jellachich in the

valley of the Muhr, Eugene desisted from his pursuit of the

army of Italy, and joined Napoleon at Vienna. The Archduke

John united his forces at Raab with those of the Hungarian

insurrection, under his brother, the Palatine. The viceroy

again marched against him, and defeated him at Raab on the

14th of June. The Palatine remained with the Hungarian

insurrection in Komorn; Archduke John moved on to Presburg. In

the north, the Archduke Ferdinand, who had advanced as far as

Warsaw, had been driven back by the Poles: under Poniatowsky,

and by a Russian force sent by the Emperor Alexander to their

aid, which, on this success, invaded Galicia."

W. K. Kelly,

History of the House of Austria (Continuation of Coxe),

chapter 4.

ALSO IN:

Sir A. Alison,

History of Europe, 1789-1815,

chapter 56-57 (volume 12).

Duke de Rovigo,

Memoirs,

volume 2, part 2, chapters 3-12.

Baron Jomini,

Life of Napoleon,

chapter 14 (volume 3).

Baron de Marbot,

Memoirs,

volume 1, chapters 42-48.

GERMANY: A. D. 1809 (April-July).

Risings against the French in the North.

"A general revolt against the French had nearly taken place in

Saxony and Westphalia, where the enormous burdens imposed on

the people, and the insolence of the French troops, had

kindled a deadly spirit of hostility against the oppressors.

Everywhere the Tugendbund were in activity; and the advance of

the Austrians towards Franconia and Saxony, at the beginning

of the war, blew up the flame. The two first attempts at

insurrection, headed respectively by Katt, a Prussian officer

(April 3), and Dornberg, a Westphalian colonel (April 23),

proved abortive; but the enterprise of the celebrated Schill

was of a more formidable character.

{1519}

This enthusiastic patriot, then a colonel in the Prussian

army, had been compromised in the revolt of Dornberg; and

finding himself discovered, he boldly raised the standard

(April 29) at the head of 600 soldiers. His force speedily

received accessions, but failing in his attempts on Wittenberg

and Magdeburg, he moved towards the Baltic, in hope of succour

from the British cruisers, and at last threw himself into

Stralsund. Here he was speedily invested; the place was

stormed (May 31), and the gallant Schill slain in the assault,

a few hours only before the appearance of the British vessels

--the timely arrival of which might have secured the place,

and spread the rising over all Northern Germany. The Duke of

Brunswick-Oels, with his 'black band' of volunteers, had at

the same time invaded Saxony from Bohemia; and though then

obliged to retreat, he made a second incursion in June,

occupied Dresden and Leipsic, and drove the King of Westphalia

into France. After the battle of Wagram he made his way across

all Northern Germany, and was eventually conveyed, with his

gallant followers, still 2,000 strong, to England."

Epitome of Alison's History of Europe,

sections 525-526.

GERMANY: A. D. 1809 (July-September).

Napoleon's victory at Wagram.

The Peace of Schonbrunn.

Immense surrender of Austrian territory.

"The operation of establishing the bridges between the French

camp and the left bank of the Danube commenced on the night of

the 30th of June; and during the night of the 4th of July the

whole French army, passing between the villages of Enzersdorf

and Muhlleuten, debouched on the Marchfeld, wheeling to their

left. Napoleon was on horseback in the midst of them by

daylight; all the Austrian fortifications erected to defend

the former bridge were turned, the villages occupied by their

army taken, and the Archduke Charles was menaced both in flank

and rear, the French line of battle appuyed on Enzersdorf

being at a right angle to his left wing. Under these

circumstances the Archduke, retiring his left, attempted to

outflank the French right, while Napoleon bore down upon his

centre at Wagram. This village became the scene of a

sanguinary struggle, and one house only remained standing when

night closed in. The Archduke sent courier after courier to

hasten the advance of his brother, between whom and himself

was Napoleon, whose line on the night of the 5th extended from

Loibersdorf on the right to some two miles beyond Wagram on

the left. Napoleon passed the night in massing his centre,

still determining to manœuvre by his left in order to throw

back the Archduke Charles on that side before the Archduke

John could come up on the other. At six o'clock on the morning

of the 6th of July he commanded the attack in person.

Disregarding all risk, he appeared throughout the day in the

hottest of the fire, mounted on a snow-white charger,

Euphrates, a present from the Shah of Persia. The Archduke

Charles as usual committed the error which Napoleon's enemies

had not even yet learned was invariably fatal to them:

extending his line too greatly he weakened his centre, at the

same time opening tremendous assaults on the French wings,

which suffered dreadfully. Napoleon ordered Lauriston to

advance upon the Austrian centre with a hundred guns,

supported by two whole divisions of infantry in column. The

artillery, when within half cannon-shot, opened a terrific

fire: nothing could withstand such a shock. The infantry, led

by Macdonald, charged; the Austrian line was broken and the

centre driven back in confusion. The right, in a panic,

retrograded; the French cavalry then bore down upon them and

decided the battle, the Archduke still fighting to secure his

retreat, which he at length effected in tolerably good order.

By noon the whole Austrian army was abandoning the contest.

Their defeat so demoralized them that the Archduke John, who

came up on Napoleon's right before the battle was over, was

glad to retire with the rest, unnoticed by the enemy. That

evening the Marchfeld and Wagram were in possession of the

French. The population of Vienna had watched the battle from

the roofs and ramparts of the city, and saw the retreat of

their army with fear and gloom. Between 300,000 and 400,000

men were engaged, and the loss on both sides was nearly equal.

About 20,000 dead and 30,000 wounded strewed the ground; the

latter were conveyed to the hospitals of Vienna. ... Twenty

thousand Austrians were taken prisoners, but the number would

have been greater had the French cavalry acted with their

usual spirit. Bernadotte, issuing a bulletin, almost assuming

to himself the sole merit of the victory, was removed from his

command. Macdonald was created a marshal of the empire on the

morning after the battle. ... The battle of Wagram was won

more by good fortune than skill. Napoleon's strategy was at

fault, and had the Austrians fought as stoutly as they did at

Aspern, Napoleon would have been signally defeated. Had the

Archduke John acted promptly and vigorously, he might have

united with his brother's left--which was intact--and

overwhelmed the French. ... The defeated army retired to

Znaim, followed by the French; but further resistance was

abandoned by the Emperor of Austria. The Archduke Charles

solicited an armistice on the 9th; hostilities ceased, and

Napoleon returned to the palace of Schonbrunn while the

plenipotentiaries settled the terms of peace. ... English

Ministers displayed another instance of their customary spirit

of procrastination. Exactly eight days after the armistice of

Znaim, which assured them that Austria was no longer in a

position to profit by or co-operate with their proceedings,

they sent more than 80,000 fighting men, under the command of

Lord Chatham, to besiege Antwerp. ...

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1809 (JULY-DECEMBER).

Operations against Naples proved equally abortive. ... In

Spain alone English arms were successful. Sir Arthur Wellesley

won the battle of Talavera on the 28th of July. ...

See SPAIN: A. D. 1809 (FEBRUARY-JULY).

A treaty of peace, between France and Austria was signed on

the 14th of October at Vienna [sometimes called the Treaty of

Vienna, but more commonly the Peace of Schonbrunn]. The

Emperor of Austria ceded Salzburg and a part of Upper Austria

to the Confederation of the Rhine; part of Bohemia, Cracow,

and Western Galicia to the King of Saxony as Grand Duke of

Warsaw; part of Eastern Galicia to the Emperor of Russia; and

Trieste, Carniola, Friuli, Villach, and some part of Croatia

and Dalmatia to France: thus connecting the kingdom of Italy

with Napoleon's Illyrian possessions, making him master of the

entire coast of the Adriatic, and depriving Austria of its

last seaport. It was computed that the Emperor Francis gave up

territory to the amount of 45,000 square miles, with a

population of nearly 4,000,000. He also paid a large

contribution in money."

R. H. Horne,

Life of Napoleon,

chapter 32.

{1520}

"The cessions made directly to Napoleon were the county of

Görtz, or Goricia, and that of Montefalcone, forming the

Austrian Friuli; the town and government of Trieste, Carniola,

the circle of Villach in Carinthia, part of Croatia and

Dalmatia, and the lordship of Räzuns in the Grison territory.

All these provinces, with the exception of Räzuns, were

incorporated by a decree of Napoleon, with Dalmatia and its

islands, into a single state with the name of the Illyrian

Provinces. They were never united with France, but always

governed by Napoleon as an independent state. A few districts

before possessed by Napoleon were also incorporated with them:

as Venetian Istria and Dalmatia with the Bocca di Cattaro,

Ragusa, and part of the Tyrol. ... The only other articles of

the treaty of much importance are the recognition by Austria

of any changes made, or to be made, in Spain, Portugal, and

Italy; the adherence of the Emperor to the prohibitive system

adopted by France and Russia, and his engaging to cease all

correspondence and relationship with Great Britain. By a

decree made at Ratisbon, April 24th, 1809, Napoleon had

suppressed the Teutonic Order in all the States belonging to

the Rhenish Confederation, reannexed its possessions to the

domains of the prince in which they were situated, and

incorporated Mergentheim, with the rights, domains, and

revenues attached to the Grand Mastership of the Order, with

the Kingdom of Würtemberg. These dispositions were confirmed

by the Treaty of Schönbrunn. The effect aimed at by the Treaty

of Schönbrunn was to surround Austria with powerful states,

and thus to paralyse all her military efforts. ... The Emperor

of Russia ... was very ill satisfied with the small portion of

the spoils assigned to him, and the augmentation awarded to

the duchy of Warsaw. Hence the first occasion of coldness

between him and Napoleon, whom he suspected of a design to

reestablish the Kingdom of Poland."

T. H. Dyer,

History of Modern Europe,

book 7, chapter 14 (volume 4).

ALSO IN:

Sir A. Alison,

History of Europe, 1789-1815,

chapters 59-60 (volume 13).

General Count M. Dumas,

Memoirs,

chapter 13 (volume 2).

E. Baines,

History of the Wars of the French Revolution,

book 4, chapter 9 (volume 3).

J. C. Ropes,

The First Napoleon,

lecture 4.

GERMANY: A. D. 1809-1810.

Humboldt's reform of Public Instruction in Prussia.

See EDUCATION, MODERN:

EUROPEAN COUNTRIES.-PRUSSIA: A. D. 1809.

GERMANY: A. D. 1809-1810 (April-February).

The revolt in the Tyrol.

Heroic struggle of Andrew Hofer and his countrymen.

"The Tyrol, for centuries a possession of Austria, was ceded

to Bavaria by the Peace of Presburg in 1805. The Bavarians

made many innovations, in the French style, some good and some

bad; but the mountaineers, clinging to their ancient ways,

resisted them all alike. They hated the Bavarians as foreign

masters forced upon them; and especially detested the military

conscription, to which Austria had never subjected them. The

priests had an almost unlimited influence over these faithful

Catholics, and the Bavarians, who treated them rudely, were

regarded as innovators and allies of revolutionary France.

Thus the country submitted restlessly to the yoke of the Rhine

League until the spring of 1809. A secret understanding was

maintained with Austria and the Archduke John, and the people

never abandoned the hope of returning to their Austrian

allegiance. When the great war of 1809 began, the Emperor

Francis summoned all his people to arms. The Tyrolese answered

the call. ... They are a people trained in early life to the

use of arms, and to activity, courage, and ready devices in

hunting, and in traveling on their mountain paths. Austria

could be sure of the faithfulness of the Tyrol, and made haste

to occupy the country. When the first troops were seen entering

the passes, the people arose and drove away the Bavarian

garrisons. The alarm was soon sounded through the deepest

ravines of the land. Never was there a more united people, and

each troop or company chose its own officers, in the ancient

German style, from among their strongest and best men. Their

commanders were hunters, shepherds, priests: the former

gamekeeper, Speckbacher; the innkeeper, Martin Teimer; the

fiery Capuchin monk, Haspinger, whose sole weapon in the field

was a huge ebony crucifix, and many more of like peaceful

occupations. At the head of the whole army was a man who, like

Saul, towered by a head above all others, while his handsome

black beard fell to his girdle--Andrew Hofer, formerly an

innkeeper at Passeyr--a man of humble piety and simple

faithfulness, who fairly represented the people he led. He

regarded the war as dutiful service to his religion, his

emperor, and his country. The whole land soon swarmed with

little bands of men, making their way to Innsprück (April,

1809), whence the Bavarian garrison fled. Meanwhile a small

French corps came from Italy to relieve them. Though fired

upon by the peasants from every ravine and hill, they passed

the Brenner, and reached the Iselberg, near Innsprück. But

here they were surrounded on every side, and forced to

surrender. The first Austrian soldiers, under General

Chasteler, then reached the capital, and their welcome was a

popular festival. The liberators, as the Tyrolese soldiers

regarded themselves, committed no cruelties, but carried on

their enterprise in the spirit of a national jubilee. The

tidings of the disasters at Regensburg [Ratisbon] now came

upon them like a thunderbolt. The withdrawal of the Austrian

army then left the Tyrol without protection. Napoleon treated

the war as a mutiny, and set a price upon Chasteler's head.

Neither Chasteler nor any of the Austrian officers with him

understood the warfare of the peasantry. The Tyrolese were

left almost wholly to themselves, but they resolved to defend

their mountains. On May 11 the Bavarians under Wrede again set

out, from Salzburg, captured the pass of the Strub after a

bloody fight, and then climbed into the valley of the Inn.

They practiced frightful cruelties in their way. A fierce

struggle took place at the little village of Schwatz; the

Bavarians burned the place, and marched to Innsprück.

Chasteler withdrew, and the Bavarians and French, under Wrede

and Lefevre, entered the capital. The country again appeared

to be subdued. But cruelty had embittered the people. Wrede

was recalled, with his corps, by Napoleon; and now Hofer, with

his South Tyrolese, recrossed the Brenner Pass. Again the

general alarm was given, the leaders called to arms, and again

every pass, every wall of rock, every narrow road was seized.

The struggle took place at the Iselberg.

{1521}

The Bavarians, 7,000 in number, were defeated with heavy loss.

The Tyrol now remained for several months undisturbed, during

the campaign around Vienna. After the battle of Aspern, an

imperial proclamation formally assured the Tyrolese that they

should never be severed from the Austrian Empire; and that no

peace should be signed unless their indissoluble union with

the monarchy were recognized. The Tyrolese quietly trusted the

emperor's promise, until the armistice of Znaim. But in this

the Tyrol was not mentioned, and the French and their allies

prepared to chastise the loyal and abandoned country."

C. T. Lewis,

History of Germany,

chapter 28.

"In the mouth of July, an army of 40,000 French and Bavarians

attacked the Tyrol from the German side; while from Italy,

General Rusca, with 18,000 men, entered from Clagenfurth, on

the southern side of the Tyrolese Alps. Undismayed by this

double and formidable invasion, they assailed the invaders as

they penetrated into their fastnesses, defeated and destroyed

them. The fate of a division of 10,000 men, belonging to the

French and Bavarian army, which entered the Upper Innthal, or

Valley of the Inn, will explain in part the means by which

these victories were obtained. The invading troops advanced in

a long column up a road bordered on the one side by the river

Inn, there a deep and rapid torrent, where cliffs of immense

height overhang both road and river. The vanguard was

permitted to advance unopposed as far as Prutz, the object of

their expedition. The rest of the army were therefore induced

to trust themselves still deeper in this tremendous pass,

where the precipices, becoming more and more narrow as they

advanced, seemed about to close above their heads. No sound

but of the screaming of the eagles disturbed from, their

eyries, and the roar of the river, reached the ears of the

soldier, and on the precipices, partly enveloped in a hazy

mist, no human forms showed themselves. At length the voice of

a man was heard calling across the ravine, 'Shall we

begin?'--'No,' was returned in an authoritative tone of voice,

by one who, like the first speaker, seemed the inhabitant of

some upper region. The Bavarian detachment halted, and sent to

the general for orders;' when presently was heard the terrible

signal, 'In the name of the Holy Trinity, cut all loose!' Huge

rocks, and trunks of trees, long prepared and laid in heaps

for the purpose, began now to descend rapidly in every

direction, while the deadly fire of the Tyrolese, who never

throw away a shot, opened from every bush, crag, or corner of

rock, which would afford the shooter cover. As this dreadful

attack was made on the whole line at once, two-thirds of the

enemy were instantly destroyed; while the Tyrolese, rushing

from their shelter, with swords, spears, axes, scythes, clubs

and all other rustic instruments which could be converted into

weapons, beat down and routed the shattered remainder. As the

vanguard, which had reached Prutz, was obliged to surrender,

very few of the 10,000 invaders are computed to have

extricated themselves from the fatal pass. But not all the

courage of the Tyrolese, not all the strength of their

country, could possibly enable them to defend themselves, when

the peace with Austria had permitted Buonaparte to engage his

whole immense means for the acquisition of these mountains.

Austria too--Austria herself, in whose cause they had

incurred all the dangers of war, instead of securing their

indemnity by some stipulations in the treaty, sent them a cold

exhortation to lay down their arms. Resistance, therefore, was

abandoned as fruitless; Hofer, chief commander of the

Tyrolese, resigned his command, and the Bavarians regained the

possession of a country which they could never have won back

by their own efforts. Hofer, and about thirty chiefs of these

valiant defenders of their country, were put to death

[February, 1810], in poor revenge for the loss their bravery

had occasioned. But their fame, as their immortal spirit, was

beyond the power of the judge alike and executioner; and the

place where their blood was shed, becomes sacred to the

thoughts of freedom, as the precincts of a temple to those of

religion."

Sir W. Scott,

Life of Napoleon,

volume 2, chapter 7.

ALSO IN:

Sir A. Alison,

History of Europe, 1789-1815,

chapter 58 (volume 12).

History of Hofer

(Quarterly Review, July, 1817).

C. H. Hall,

Life of Andrew Hofer.

GERMANY: A. D. 1810.

Annexation of the Hanse Towns and territory on the North Sea

to France.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1810 (FEBRUARY-DECEMBER).

GERMANY: A. D. 1810-1812.

Marriage of the Archduchess Marie Louise

of Austria to Napoleon.

Alliance of German powers with Napoleon against Russia.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1810-1812.

GERMANY: A. D. 1812.

The Russian campaign of Napoleon and its disastrous ending.

See RUSSIA: A. D. 1812 (JUNE-SEPTEMBER),

(SEPTEMBER), and (OCTOBER-DECEMBER).

GERMANY: A. D. 1812-1813.

The Teutonic uprising against Napoleon.

Beginning of the War of Liberation.

Alliance of Prussia and Russia.

"During Napoleon's march on Moscow and his fatal return,

Macdonald remained on the Lower Dwina, before Riga, with an

observation corps of Prussians and Poles, nor had he ever

received an order to retreat from Napoleon. Learning of the

misfortunes of the grand army, he went from the Dwina towards

the Niemen. As he passed through Courland, General York,

commander of the Prussian troops, allowed him to lead the way

with the Poles, and then signed an agreement of neutrality

with the Russians (December 30, 1812). The Prussian troops,

from a military spirit of honor, had fought the Russians

bravely; they retained some scruples relative to the worthy

marshal under whom they served, and forsook without betraying

him, that is, they left him time to escape. This was a most

important event and the beginning of the inevitable defection

of Germany. The attitude of Czar Alexander decided General

York; the former was completely dazzled by his triumphs, and

aspired to nothing less than to destroy Napoleon and liberate

Europe, even France! With mingled enthusiasm and calculation,

he promised all things to all men; on returning to Wilna, he

granted an amnesty for all acts committed in Poland against

Russian authority. On the one hand, he circulated a rumor that

he was about to make himself King of Poland, and, on the other

hand, he announced to the Prussians that he was ready to

restore the Polish provinces taken from them by Napoleon. He

authorized ex-Minister Stein to take possession, as we may

say, of Old Prussia, just evacuated by the French, and to

promise the speedy enfranchisement of Germany, protesting, at

the same time, that he would not dispute 'the legitimate

greatness' of France.

{1522}

The French army, on hearing of York's defection, left

Königsberg with ten or twelve thousand sick men and eight or

ten thousand armed troops, withdrawing to the Vistula and

thence to Warta and Posen. General Rapp had succeeded in

gathering at Dantzic, the great French depot of stores and

reserves, 25,000 men, few of whom had gone through the Russian

campaign, and a division of almost equal numbers occupied

Berlin. The French had in all barely 80,000 men, from Dantzic

to the Rhine, not including their Austrian and Saxon allies,

who had fallen back on Warsaw and seemed disposed to fight no

more. Murat, to whom Napoleon confided the remains of the

grand army, followed the Emperor's example and set out to

defend his Neapolitan kingdom, leaving the chief command to

Prince Eugene. Great agitation prevailed around the feeble

French forces still occupying Germany. The Russians

themselves, worn out, did not press the French very hotly; but

York and Stein, masters of Königsberg, organized and armed Old

Prussia without awaiting authorization from the king, who was

not considered as a free agent, being under foreign rule.

Pamphlets, proclamations, and popular songs were circulated

everywhere, provoking the people to rebellion. The idea of

German union ran like wildfire from the Niemen to the Rhine;

federal union, not unity in a single body or state, which was

not thought of then."

H. Martin,

Popular History of France from 1789,

volume 2, chapter 16.

"The king of Prussia had suddenly abandoned Berlin [January,

1813], which was still in the hands of the French, for

Breslau, whence he declared war against France. A conference

also took place between him and the emperor Alexander at

Calisch [Kalisch], and, on the 28th of February, 1813, an

offensive and defensive alliance was concluded between them.

The hour for vengeance had at length arrived. The whole

Prussian nation, eager to throw off the hated yoke of the

foreigner, to obliterate their disgrace in 1806, to regain

their ancient name, cheerfully hastened to place their lives

and property at the service of the impoverished government.

The whole of the able-bodied population was put under arms.

The standing army was increased: to each regiment were

appended troops of volunteers, Jaegers, composed of young' men

belonging to the higher classes, who furnished their own

equipments: a numerous Landwehr, a sort of militia, was, as in

Austria, raised besides the standing army, and measures were

even taken to call out, in case of necessity, the heads of

families and elderly men remaining at home, under the name of

the Landsturm. The enthusiastic people, besides furnishing the

customary supplies and paying the taxes, contributed to the

full extent of their means towards defraying the immense

expense of this general arming. Every heart throbbed high with

pride and hope. ... More loudly than even in 1809 in Austria

was the German cause now discussed, the great name of the

German empire now invoked in Prussia, for in that name alone

could all the races of Germany be united against their

hereditary foe. The celebrated proclamation, promising

external and internal liberty to Germany, was, with this view,

published at Calisch by Prussia and Russia. Nor was the appeal

vain. It found an echo in every German heart, and such plain

demonstrations of the state of the popular feeling on this

side the Rhine were made, that Davoust sent serious warning to

Napoleon, who contemptuously replied, 'Pah! Germans never can

become Spaniards!' With his customary rapidity he levied in

France a fresh army 300,000 strong, with which he so

completely awed the Rhenish confederation as to compel it once

more to take the field with thousands of Germans against their

brother Germans. The troops, however, reluctantly obeyed, and

even the traitors were but lukewarm, for they doubted of

success. Mecklenburg alone sided with Prussia. Austria

remained neutral. A Russian corps under General Tettenborn had

preceded the rest of the troops and reached the coasts of the

Baltic. As early as the 24th of March, 1813, it appeared in

Hamburg and expelled the French authorities from the city. The

heavily oppressed people of Hamburg, whose commerce had been

totally annihilated by the continental system, gave way to the

utmost demonstrations of delight, received their deliverers

with open arms, revived their ancient rights, and immediately

raised a Hanseatic corps destined to take the field against

Napoleon. Dörnberg, the ancient foe to France, with another

flying squadron took the French division under Morand

prisoner, and the Prussian, Major Hellwig (the same who, in

1806, liberated the garrison of Erfurt), dispersed, with

merely 120 hussars, a Bavarian regiment 1,300 strong and

captured five pieces of artillery. In January, the peasantry

of the upper country had already revolted against the

conscription, and, in February, patriotic proclamations had

been disseminated throughout Westphalia under the signature of

the Baron von Stein. In this month, also, Captain Maas and two

other patriots, who had attempted to raise a rebellion, were

executed. As the army advanced, Stein was nominated chief of

the provisional government of the still unconquered provinces

of Western Germany. The first Russian army, 17,000 strong,

under Wittgenstein, pushed forward to Magdeburg, and, at

Mökern, repulsed 40,000 French who were advancing upon Berlin.

The Prussians, under their veteran general, Blücher, entered

Saxony and garrisoned Dresden, on the 27th of March, 1813,

after an arch of the fine bridge across the Elbe [had] been

uselessly blown up by the French. Blücher, whose gallantry in

the former wars had gained for him the general esteem and

whose kind and generous disposition had won the affection of

the soldiery, was nominated generalissimo of the Prussian

forces, but subordinate in command to Wittgenstein, who

replaced Kutusow as generalissimo of the united forces of

Russia and Prussia. The Emperor of Russia and the King of

Prussia accompanied the army and were received with loud

acclamations by the people of Dresden and Leipzig."

W. Menzel,

History of Germany,

chapter 260 (volume 3).

Bernadotte, the adopted Crown Prince and expectant King of

Sweden, had been finally thrown into the arms of the new

Coalition against Napoleon, by the refusal of the latter to

take Norway from Denmark and give it to Sweden. "The

disastrous retreat of the French from Moscow ... led to the

signature of the Treaty of Stockholm on the 2d of March, 1813,

by which England acceded to the union of Norway to Sweden, and a

Swedish force was sent to Pomerania under General Sandels. On

the 18th of May, 1813, Bernadotte landed at Stralsund."

Lady Bloomfield,

Biographical Sketch of Bernadotte

(Memoir of Lord Bloomfield, volume 1, page 31).

ALSO IN:

J. R. Seeley,

Life and Times of Stein,

part 7 (volume 3).

A. Thiers,

History of the Consulate and the Empire,

book 47 (volume 4).

{1523}

GERMANY: A. D. 1813 (April-May).

Battle of Lützen.

Humiliation of the King of Saxony.

"On the 14th April, Napoleon left Paris to assume the command

of the army. Previous to his departure, with a view, perhaps,

of paying a compliment to the Emperor of Austria, the Empress

Marie Louise was appointed regent in his absence; but Prince

Schwarzenberg, who had arrived on a special mission from

Vienna, was treated only as the commander of an auxiliary

corps, to which orders would immediately be transmitted. On

the 16th he reached Mayence, where, for the last time, vassal

princes assembled courtier-like around him; and on the 20th he

was already at Erfurt, in the midst of his newly-raised army.

The roads were everywhere crowded with troops and artillery,

closing in towards the banks of the Saale. From Italy, Marshal

Bertrand joined with 40,000 men, old trained soldiers; the

Viceroy brought an equal number from the vicinity of

Magdeburg; and Marshal Macdonald having, on the 29th, taken

Merseburg by assault, the whole army, which Bade, the ablest

and most accurate of the authors who have written on this

campaign, estimates at 140,000 men, was assembled for action.

With this mighty force Napoleon determined to seek out the

enemy, and bring them quickly to battle. The Russian and

Prussian armies were no sooner united, after the alliance

concluded between the sovereigns, than they crossed the Elbe,

occupied Dresden, which the King of Saxony had abandoned, and

advanced to the banks of the Saale. General Blücher commanded

the Prussians, and Count Wittgenstein the Russian corps; and,

death having closed the career of old Marshal Kutusoff, ...

the command of both armies devolved upon the last mentioned

officer. Informed of the rapid advance of the French, the

allied monarchs joined their forces, which were drawn together

in the plains between the Saale and the Elbe; their numerous

cavalry giving them perfect command of this wide and open

country. Napoleon, always anxious for battle, determined to

press on towards Leipzig, behind which he expected to find the

Allied army, who, as it proved, were much nearer than he

anticipated. At the passage of the Rippach, a small stream

that borders the wide plain of Lützen, he already encountered

a body of Russian cavalry and artillery under Count

Winzingerode; and as the French were weak in horse, they had

to bring the whole of Marshal Ney's corps into action before

they could oblige the Russians to retire. Marshal Bessieres,

the commander of the Imperial Guard, was killed. ... On the

evening of the 1st of May, Napoleon established his quarters

in the small town of Lützen. The Allies, conscious of the vast

numerical superiority of the French, did not intend to risk a

general action on the left bank of the Elbe; but the length of

the hostile column of march, which extended from beyond

Naumberg almost to the gates of Leipzig, induced Scharnhorst

to propose an advance from the direction of Borna and Pegau

against the right flank of the enemy, and a sudden attack on

the centre of their line in the plain of Lützen. It was

expected that a decisive blow might be struck against this

centre, and the hostile army broken before the distant wings

could close up and take an effective part in the battle. The

open nature of the country, well adapted to the action of

cavalry, which formed the principal strength of the Allies,

spoke in favour of the plan. ... The bold attempt was

immediately resolved upon, and the onset fixed for the

following morning. The annals of war can hardly offer a plan

of battle more skilfully conceived than the one of which we

have here spoken; but unfortunately the execution fell far

short of the admirable conception. Napoleon, with his Guards

and the corps of Lauriston, was already at the gates of

Leipzig, preparing for an attack on the city, when about one

o'clock [May 2] the roar of artillery burst suddenly on the

ear, and gathering thicker and thicker as it rolled along,

proclaimed that a general action was engaged in the plain of

Lützen,--proclaimed that the army was taken completely at

fault, and placed in the most imminent peril. ... The Allies,

who, by means of their numerous cavalry, could easily mask

their movement, had advanced unobserved into the plain of

Lützen," and the action was begun by a brigade of Blücher's

corps attacking the French in the village of Great-Görschen

(Gross-Görschen). "Reinforcements ... poured in from both

sides, and the narrow and intersected ground between the

villages became the scene of a most murderous and

closely-contested combat of infantry. ... But no attempt was

made to employ the numerous and splendid cavalry, that stood

idly exposed, on open plain, to the shot of the French

artillery. ... When night put an end to the combat,

Great-Görschen was the sole trophy of the murderous fight that

remained in the hands of the Allies. ... On the side of the

Allies, 2,000 Russians and 8,000 Prussians had been killed or

wounded: among the slain was Prince Leopold of Hessen-Homburg;

among the wounded was the admirable Scharnhorst, who died a

few weeks afterwards. ... The loss sustained by the French is

not exactly known; but ... Jomini tells us that the 3d corps,

to which he was attached as chief of the staff, had alone 500

officers and 12,000 men 'hors de combat.' Both parties laid

claim to the victory: the French, because the Allies retired

on the day after the action; the Allies, because they remained

masters of part of the captured battlefield, had taken two

pieces of artillery, and 800 prisoners. ... The Allies

alleged, or pretended perhaps, that it was their intention to

renew the action on the following morning: in the Prussian

army every man, from the king to the humblest soldier, was

anxious indeed to continue the fray; and the wrath of Blücher,

who deemed victory certain, was altogether boundless when he

found the retreat determined upon. But ... opinion has, by

degrees, justified Count Wittgenstein's resolution to recross

the Elbe and fall back on the reinforcements advancing to join

the army. ... On the 8th of May, Napoleon held his triumphal

entrance into Dresden. ... On the advance of the Allies, the

Saxon monarch had retired to Ratisbon, and from thence to

Prague, intending, as he informed Napoleon, to join his

efforts to the mediation of Austria. Orders had, at the same

time, been given to General Thielman, commanding the Saxon

troops at Torgau, to maintain the most perfect neutrality, and

to admit neither of the contending parties within the walls of

the fortress. Exasperated by this show of independence,

Napoleon caused the following demands to be submitted to the

King, allowing him only six hours to determine on their

acceptance or refusal;

{1524}

1. 'General Thielman and the Saxon troops instantly evacuate

Torgau, and form the 7th corps under General Réynier; and all

the resources of the country to be at the disposal of the

Emperor, in conformity with the principles of the

Confederation of the Rhine.'

2. 'The Saxon Cavalry'--some regiments had accompanied the

King--'return immediately to Dresden.'

3. 'The King declares, in a letter to the Emperor, that he is

still a member of the Confederation of the Rhine, and ready to

fulfil all the obligations which it imposes upon him.'

'If these conditions are not immediately complied with,' says

Napoleon in the instructions to his messenger, 'you will cause

his Majesty to be informed that he is guilty of felony, has

forfeited the Imperial protection, and has ceased to reign.'

... Frederick Augustus, finding himself threatened with the

loss of his crown by an overbearing conqueror already in

possession of his capital, ... yielded in an evil hour to

those imperious demands, and returned to Dresden. ... Fortune

appeared again to smile upon her spoiled and favoured child;

and he resolved, on his part, to leave no expedient untried to

make the most of her returning aid. The mediation of Austria,

which from the first had been galling to his pride, became

more hateful every day, as it gradually assumed the appearance

of an armed interference, ready to enforce its demands by

military means. ... Tidings having arrived that the allied

army, instead of continuing their retreat, had halted and

taken post at Bautzen, he immediately resolved to strike a

decisive blow in the field, as the best means of thwarting the

pacific efforts of his father-in-law."

Lieutenant Colonel J. Mitchell,

The Fall of Napoleon,

book 2, chapter 1 (volume 2).

ALSO IN:

Sir A. Alison,

History of Europe, 1789-1815,

chapter 75 (volume 13).

Duchess d'Abrantes,

Memoirs of Napoleon,

volume 2, chapter 44.

GERMANY: A. D. 1813 (May-August).

Battle of Bautzen.

Armistice of Pleswitz.

Accession of Austria and Great Britain to the Coalition

against Napoleon.

"While the Emperor paused at Dresden, Ney made various

demonstrations in the direction of Berlin, with the view of

inducing the Allies to quit Bautzen; but it soon became

manifest that they had resolved to sacrifice the Prussian

capital, if it were necessary, rather than forego their

position. ... Having replaced by wood-work some arches of the

magnificent bridge over the Elbe at Dresden, which the Allies

had blown up on their retreat, Napoleon now moved towards

Bautzen, and came in sight of the position on the morning of

the 21st of May. Its strength was obviously great. In their

front was the river Spree: wooded hills supported their right,

and eminences well fortified their left. The action began with

an attempt to turn their right, but Barclay de Tolly

anticipated this movement, and repelled it with such vigour

that a whole column of 7,000 dispersed and fled into the hills

of Bohemia for safety. The Emperor then determined to pass the

Spree in front of the enemy, and they permitted him to do so,

rather than come down from their position. He took up his

quarters in the town of Bautzen, and his whole army bivouacked

in presence of the Allies. The battle was resumed at daybreak

on the 22d; when Ney on the right, and Oudinot on the left;

attempted simultaneously to turn the flanks of the position;

while Soult and Napoleon himself directed charge after charge

on the centre. During four hours the struggle was maintained

with unflinching obstinacy; the wooded heights, where Blucher

commanded, had been taken and retaken several times--the

bloodshed on either side had been terrible--ere ... the Allies

perceived the necessity either of retiring, or of continuing

the fight against superior numbers on disadvantageous ground.

They withdrew accordingly; but still with all the deliberate

coolness of a parade, halting at every favourable spot and

renewing their cannonade. 'What,' exclaimed Napoleon, 'no

results! not a gun! not a prisoner!--these people will not

leave me so much as a nail.' During the whole day he urged the

pursuit with impetuous rage, reproaching even his chosen

generals as 'creeping scoundrels,' and exposing his own person

in the very hottest of the fire." His closest friend, Duroc,

Grand Master of the Palace, was mortally wounded by his side,

before he gave up the pursuit. "The Allies, being strongly

posted during most of the day, had suffered less than the

French; the latter had lost 15,000, the former 10,000 men.

They continued their retreat into Upper Silesia; and

Buonaparte advanced to Breslau, and released the garrison of

Glogau. Meanwhile the Austrian, having watched these

indecisive though bloody fields, once more renewed his offers

of mediation. The sovereigns of Russia and Prussia expressed

great willingness to accept it; and Napoleon also appears to

have been sincerely desirous for the moment of bringing his

disputes to a peaceful termination. He agreed to an armistice

[of six weeks], and in arranging its conditions agreed to fall

back out of Silesia; thus enabling the allied princes to

reopen communications with Berlin. The lines of country to be

occupied by the armies, respectively, during the truce, were

at length settled, and it was signed on the 1st of June [at

Poischwitz, though the negotiations were mostly carried on at

Pleswitz, whence the Armistice is usually named]. The French

Emperor then returned to Dresden, and a general congress of

diplomatists prepared to meet at Prague. England alone refused

to send any representative to Prague, alleging that Buonaparte

had as yet signified no disposition to recede from his

pretensions on Spain, and that he had consented to the

armistice with the sole view of gaining time for political

intrigue and further military preparation. It may be doubted

whether any of the allied powers who took part in the Congress

did so with much hope that the disputes with Napoleon could

find a peaceful end. ... But it was of the utmost importance

to gain time for the advance of Bernadotte; for the arrival of

new reinforcements from Russia; for the completion of the

Prussian organization; and, above all, for determining the

policy of Vienna. Metternich, the Austrian minister, repaired

in person to Dresden, and while inferior diplomatists wasted

time in endless discussions at Prague, one interview between

him and Napoleon brought the whole question to a definite

issue. The Emperor ... assumed at once that Austria had no

wish but to drive a good bargain for herself, and asked

broadly, 'What is your price? Will Illyria satisfy you? I only

wish you to be neutral--I can deal with these Russians and

Prussians single-handed.'

{1525}

Metternich stated plainly that the time in which Austria could

be neutral was past; that the situation of Europe at large

must be considered; ... that events had proved the

impossibility of a steadfast peace unless the sovereigns of

the Continent were restored to the rank of independence; in a

word, that the Rhenish Confederacy must be broken up; that

France must be contented with the boundary of the Rhine, and

pretend no longer to maintain her usurped and unnatural

influence in Germany. Napoleon replied by a gross personal

insult: 'Come, Metternich,' said he, 'tell me honestly how

much the English have given you to take their part against

me.' The Austrian court at length sent a formal document,

containing its ultimatum, the tenor of which Metternich had

sufficiently indicated in this conversation. Talleyrand and

Fouché, who had now arrived from Paris, urged the Emperor to

accede to the proffered terms. They represented to him the

madness of rousing all Europe to conspire for his destruction,

and insinuated that the progress of discontent was rapid in

France itself. Their arguments were backed by intelligence of

the most disastrous character from Spain. ...

See SPAIN: A. D. 1812-1814.

Napoleon was urged by his military as well as political

advisers, to appreciate duly the crisis which his affairs had

reached. ... He proceeded to insult both ministers and

generals ... and ended by announcing that he did not wish for

any plans of theirs, but their service in the execution of

his. Thus blinded by arrogance and self-confidence, and

incapable of weighing any other considerations against what he

considered as the essence of his personal glory, Napoleon

refused to abate one iota of his pretensions--until it was too

late. Then, indeed, ... he did show some symptoms of

concession. A courier arrived at Prague with a note, in which

he signified his willingness to accede to a considerable

number of the Austrian stipulations. But this was on the 11th

of August. The day preceding was that on which, by the

agreement, the armistice was to end. On that day Austria had

to sign an alliance, offensive and defensive, with Russia and

Prussia. On the night between the 10th and 11th, rockets

answering rockets, from height to height along the frontiers

of Bohemia and Silesia, had announced to all the armies of the

Allies this accession of strength, and the immediate

recommencement of hostilities."

J. G. Lockhart,

Life of Napoleon Buonaparte,

chapters 32-33.

"On the 14th of June Great Britain had become a party to the

treaty concluded between Russia and Prussia. She had promised

assistance in this great struggle; but no aid could have been

more effectual than that which she was rendering in the

Peninsula."

C. Knight,

Popular History of England,

chapter 32 (volume 7).

ALSO IN:

G. R. Gleig,

The Leipsic Campaign,

chapters 7-16.

A. Thiers,

History of the Consulate and the Empire,

book 48-49 (volume 4).

Prince Metternich,

Memoirs, 1773-1815,

book 1, chapter 8 (volume 1).

J. R. Seeley,

Life and Times of Stein,

part 7, chapters 4-5 (volume 3).

J. Philippart,

Northern Campaign, 1812-1813,

volume 2.

GERMANY: A. D. 1813 (August).

Great battle and victory of Napoleon at Dresden.

French defeats at Kulm, Gross-Beeren and the Katzbach.

"Dresden, during the armistice, had been converted by Napoleon

into such a place of strength that it might be called one

citadel. All the trees in the neighbourhood, as well as those

which had formed the ornament of the public gardens and walks

of that beautiful capital, were cut down and converted into

abattis and palisades; redoubts, field-works, and fosses had

been constructed. The chain of fortresses garrisoned by French

troops secured to Napoleon the rich valley of the Elbe.

Hamburg, Dantzic, and many strong places on the Oder and

Vistula were in his possession. ... His army assembled at the

seat of war amounted to nearly 300,000 men, including the

Bavarian reserve of 25,000 under General Wrede, and he had

greatly increased his cavalry. This powerful force was divided

into eleven army corps, commanded by Vandamme, Victor, Bertrand,

Ney, Lauriston, Marmont, Reynier, Poniatowski, Macdonald,

Oudinot, and St. Cyr. Murat, who, roused by the news of the

victories of Lutzen and Bautzen, had left his capital, was

made commander-in-chief of all the cavalry. ... Davoust held

Hamburg with 20,000 men. Augereau with 24,000 occupied

Bavaria. The armies of the allies were computed at nearly

400,000 men, including the divisions destined to invade Italy.

Those ready for action at the seat of war in Germany were

divided into three great masses,--the army of Bohemia,

consisting mainly of Austrians commanded by Prince

Schwartzenburg; the army of Silesia, commanded by Blucher; and

the troops under the command of Bernadotte, stationed near

Berlin. These immense hosts were strong in cavalry and

artillery, and in discipline and experience far exceeded the

French soldiers, who were nearly all young conscripts. Two

Frenchmen of eminence were leaders in the ranks of the enemies

of France,--Bernadotte and Moreau; Jomini, late chief of the

engineer department in Napoleon's army, was a Swiss. These

three men, well instructed by the great master of the art of

war, directed the counsels of the allied Sovereigns and taught

them how to conquer. Bernadotte pointed out that Napoleon lay

in Dresden with his guard of five-and-twenty thousand men,

while his marshals were stationed in various strong positions

on the frontiers of Saxony. The moment a French corps d'armée

was attacked Napoleon would spring from his central point upon

the flank of the assailants, and as such a blow would be

irresistible he would thus beat the allied armies in detail.

To obviate this danger Bernadotte recommended that the first

general who attacked a French division and brought Napoleon

into the field should retreat, luring the Emperor onward in

pursuit, when the other bodies of allied troops,

simultaneously closing upon his rear, should surround him and

cut him off from his, base. This plan was followed: Blucher

advanced from Silesia, menacing the armies of Macdonald and

Ney, and Napoleon, with the activity expected, issued from

Dresden on the 15th of August, rapidly reached the point of

danger, and assumed the offensive. But he was unable to bring

the Prussian general to a decisive action, for Blucher,

continuing to retreat before him, the pursuit was only

arrested by an estafette reporting on the 23rd that the main

body of the allies threatened Dresden. On the 25th, at 4 in

the afternoon, 200,000 allied troops led by Schwartzenburg

appeared before that city. St. Cyr, who had been left to

observe the passes of the Bohemian mountains with 20,000 men,

retreated before the irresistible torrent and threw himself

into the Saxon capital, which he prepared to defend with his

own forces and the garrison left by the Emperor.

{1526}

It was a service of the last importance. With Dresden Napoleon

would lose his recruiting depot and supplies of every kind.

... The Austrian commander-in-chief deferred the attack till

the following day, replying to the expostulations of Jomini

that Napoleon was engaged in the Silesian passes. Early on the

morning of the 26th the allies advanced to the assault in six

columns, under cover of a tremendous artillery fire. They

carried one great redoubt, then another, and closed with the

defenders of the city at every point, shells and balls falling

thick on the houses, many of which were on fire. St. Cyr

conducted the defence with heroism; but before midday a

surrender was talked of. ... Suddenly, from the opposite bank

of the Elbe columns of soldiers were seen hastening towards

the city. They pressed across the bridges, swept through the

streets, and with loud shouts demanded to be led into battle,

although they had made forced marches from the frontiers of

Silesia. Napoleon, with the Old Guard and cuirassiers, was in

the midst of them. His enemies had calculated on only half his

energy and rapidity, and had forgotten that he could return as

quickly as he left. The Prussians had penetrated the Grosse

Garten on the French left, and so close was the Russian fire

that Witgenstein's guns enfiladed the road by which Napoleon

had to pass; consequently, to reach the city in safety, he was

compelled to dismount at the most exposed part, and, according

to Baron Odeleben (one of his aides-de-camp), creep along on his

hands and knees (ventre à terre). Napoleon halted at the

palace to reassure the King of Saxony, and then joined his

troops who were already at the gates. Sallies were made by Ney

and Mortier under his direction. The astonished assailants

were driven back. The Young Guard recaptured the redoubts, and

the French army deployed on the plateau lately in possession

of their enemies. ... The fury of the fight gradually

slackened, and the armies took up their positions for the

night. The French wings bivouacked to the right and left of

the city, which itself formed Napoleon's centre. The allies

were ranged in a semicircle cresting the heights. ... They had

not greatly the advantage in numbers, for Klenau's division

never came up; and Napoleon, now that Victor and Marmont's

corps had arrived, concentrated nearly 200,000 men. ... The

next day broke in a tempest of wind and rain. At six o'clock

Napoleon was on horseback, and ordered his columns to advance.

Their order of battle has been aptly compared to 'a fan when

it expands.' Their position could scarcely have been worse.

... Knowing that in case of disaster retreat would be almost

an impossibility, Napoleon began an attack on both flanks of

the allied army, certain that their defeat would demoralize

the centre, which he could overwhelm by a simultaneous

concentric attack, supported by the fire of 100 guns. The

stormy weather which concealed their movements favoured them;

and Murat turning and breaking the Austrian left, and Ney

completely rolling up the Austrian right, the result was a

decisive victory. By three in the afternoon of the 27th the

battle was concluded, and the allies were in full retreat,

pursued by the French. The roads to Bohemia and those to the

south were barred by Murat's and Vandamme's corps, and the

allied Sovereigns were obliged to take such country paths and

byways as they could find--which had been rendered almost

impassable by the heavy rain. They lost 25,000 prisoners, 40

standards, 60 pieces of cannon, and many waggons. The killed

and wounded amounted on each side to seven or eight thousand.

The first cannon-shot fired by the guard under the

direction of Napoleon mortally wounded Moreau while talking to

the Emperor Alexander. ... The French left wing, composed of

the three corps of Vandamme, St. Cyr, and Marmont, were

ordered to march by their left along the Pirna road in pursuit

of the foe, who was retreating into Bohemia in three columns,

and had traversed the gorges of the Hartz Mountains in safety,

though much baggage, several ammunition waggons, and 2,000

prisoners, fell into the hands of the French. The Russians,

under Ostermann, halted on the plain of Culm [or Kulm] for the

arrival of Kleist's Prussians; the Austrians hurried along the

Prague route. Vandamme marched boldly on, neglecting even the

precaution of guarding the defile of Peterswald in his rear.

Trusting to the rapid advance of the other French corps, he

was lured on by the hope of capturing the allied Sovereigns in

their headquarters at Toplitz. Barclay de Tolly, having

executed a rapid detour from left to right, brought the bulk

of his Russian forces to bear on Vandamme, who, on reaching

Culm, was attacked in front and rear [August 29-30], surprised

and taken, losing the whole of his artillery and between 7,000

and 8,000 prisoners; the rest of his corps escaped and

rejoined the army. This disaster totally deranged Napoleon's

plans, which would have led him to follow up the pursuit

towards Bohemia in person. Oudinot was ordered to march

against Bülow's corps at Berlin and the Swedes commanded by

Bernadotte, taking with him the divisions of Bertrand and

Reynier--a force of 80,000 men. Reynier, who marched in

advance, fell in with the allies at Gross-Beeren, attacked

them precipitately and suffered severely, his division,

chiefly composed of Saxons, taking flight. Oudinot also

sustained considerable losses, and retreated to Torgau on the

Elbe. Girard, sallying out of Magdeburg with 5,000 or 6,000

men, was defeated near Leibnitz, with the loss of 1,000 men,

and some cannon and baggage. Macdonald encountered Blucher in

the plains between Wahlstadt and the Katzbach under

disadvantageous circumstances [August 26], and was obliged to

retire in disorder."

R. H. Horne,

History of Napoleon,

chapter 37.

"The great battle of the Katzbach, the counterpart to that of

Hohenlinden, [was] one of the most glorious ever gained in the

annals of European fame. Its trophies were immense. ...

Eighteen thousand prisoners, 103 pieces of cannon, and 230

caissons, besides 7,000 killed and wounded, presented a total

loss to the French of 25,000 men."

Sir A. Alison,

History of Europe,

chapter 80, section 68 (volume 17).

"Of the battle of Kulm it is not too much to say that it was

the most critical in the whole war of German liberation. The

fate of the coalition was determined absolutely by its

results. Had Vandamme been strong enough to keep his hold of

Bohemia, and to block up from them the mouths of the passes,

the allied columns, forced back into the exhausted mountain

district through which they were retreating, must have

perished for lack of food, or dissolved themselves."

G. R. Gleig,

The Leipzig Campaign,

chapter 27.

{1527}

ALSO IN:

Baron Jomini,

Life of Napoleon,

chapter 20 (volume 4).

Major C. Adams,

Great Campaigns in Europe,

1796 to 1870, chapter 5.

GERMANY: A. D. 1813 (September-October).

French reverse at Dennewitz.

Napoleon's evacuation of Dresden.

Allied concentration at Leipsic.

Preparations for the decisive battle.

"The [allied] Army of the North had been nearly idle since the

battle of Grossbeeren. The Prussian generals were extremely

indignant against Bernadotte, whose slowness and inaction were

intolerable to them. It took them, under his orders, a

fortnight to advance as far as a good footman could march in a

day. They then unexpectedly met a new French army advancing

against them from a fortified camp at Wittenberg. Napoleon had

now assigned to Marshal Ney--the bravest of the brave'--the

work of beating 'the Cossack hordes and the poor militia,' and

taking Berlin. Under him were Oudinot, Regnier, Bertrand, and

Arrighi, with 70,000 men. On September 6 Tauenzien met their

superior forces at Jüterbogk, but sustained himself valiantly

through a perilous fight. Bernadotte was but two hours' march

away, but as usual disregarded Bülow's request to bring aid.

But Bülow himself brought up his corps on the right, and took

the brunt of the battle, extending it through the villages

south of Jüterbogk, of which Dennewitz was the centre. The

Prussians took these villages by storm, and when evening came

their victory was complete, though Bernadotte had not

stretched out a hand to help them. ... Bülow bore the name of

Dennewitz afterward in honor of his victory. Ney reported to

his master that he was entirely defeated. Napoleon unwisely

ascribed his defeat entirely to the Saxons, who fought well

that day for him, but for the last time. By his reproaches he

entirely alienated the people from him. The French loss in

this battle was 10,000 killed and wounded, and 10,000

prisoners, besides 80 guns. The Prussians lost in killed and

wounded more than 5,000. Thus five victories had been won by

the Allies in a fortnight, compensating fully for the loss of

the battle of Dresden. The way to the Elbe lay open to the

Army of the North. But Bernadotte continued to move with

extreme slowness. Bülow and Tauenzien seriously proposed to

Blücher to leave the Swedish prince, whom they openly

denounced as a traitor. Blücher approached the Elbe across the

Lausitz from Bohemia, and it would have been easy to cross the

river and unite the two armies, threatening Napoleon's rear,

and making Dresden untenable for him. Napoleon advanced in

vain against Blücher to Bausitz. The Prussian general wisely

avoided a battle. Then the emperor turned against the Army of

Bohemia, but it was too strong in its position in the valley

of Teplitz, with the mountains in its rear, to be attacked.

Then again he moved toward Blücher, but again failed to bring

about an action. At this time public opinion throughout Europe

was undergoing a rapid change, and Napoleon's name was losing

its magic. The near prospect of his fall made the nations he

had oppressed eager and impatient for it, and his German

allies and subjects lost all regard and hope for his cause. On

October 8 the Bavarian plenipotentiary, General Wrede,

concluded a treaty with Austria at Ried, by the terms of which

Bavaria left Napoleon and joined the allies. This important

defection, though it had been for some weeks expected, was

felt by the French emperor as a severe blow to his prospects.

Napoleon's circle of movement around Dresden began to be

narrowed. The Russian reserves under Benningsen, 57,000

strong, were also advancing through Silesia toward Bohemia.

Blücher was therefore not needed in Bohemia, and he pressed

forward vigorously to cross the Elbe. His army advanced along

the right bank of the Black Elster to its mouth above

Wittenberg. On the opposite bank of the Elbe, in the bend of

the stream, stands the village of Wartenburg, and just at the

bend Blücher built two bridges of boats without opposition. On

October 3 York's corps crossed the river. But now on the west

side, among the thickets and swamps before the village, arose

a furious struggle with a body of 20,000 French, Italians, and

Germans of the Rhine League under Bertrand. York displayed

eminent patience, coolness, and judgment, and won a decided

victory out of a great danger. Bernadotte, though with much

hesitation, also crossed the Elbe at the mouth of the Mulde,

and the army of the North and of Silesia were thus united in

Napoleon's rear. It was now evident that the successes of

these armies had brought the French into extreme danger, and

the allied sovereigns resolved upon a concerted attack.

Leipsic was designated as the point at which the armies should

combine. Napoleon could no longer hold Dresden, lest he should

be cut off from France by a vastly superior force. The

partisan corps of the allies were also growing bolder and more

active far in Napoleon's rear, and on October 1 Czernicheff

drove Jerome out of Cassel and proclaimed the kingdom of

Westphalia dissolved. This was the work of a handful of

Cossacks, without infantry and artillery; but though Jerome

soon returned, the moral effect of this sudden and easy

overthrow of one of Napoleon's military kingdoms was immense.

On October 7 Napoleon left Dresden, and marched to the Mulde.

Blücher's forces were arrayed along both sides of this stream,

below Düben. But he quietly and successfully retired, on

perceiving Napoleon's purpose to attack him, and moved

westward to the Saale, in order to draw after him Bernadotte

and the Northern army. The plan was successful, and the united

armies took up a position behind the Saale, extending from

Merseburg to Alsleben, Bernadotte occupying the northern end

of the line next to the Elbe. Napoleon, disappointed in his

first effort, now formed a plan whose boldness astonished both

friend and foe. He resolved to cross the Elbe, to seize Berlin

and the Marches, now uncovered, and thus, supported by his

fortresses of Magdeburg, Stettin, Dantzic, and Hamburg, where

he still had bodies of troops and magazines, to give the war

an entirely new aspect. But the murmurs of his worn-out

troops, and even of his generals, compelled him to abandon

this plan, which was desperate, but might have been effectual.

The suggestion of it terrified Bernadotte, whose province of

Lower Pomerania would be threatened, and he would have

withdrawn in headlong haste across the Elbe had not Blücher

persisted in detaining him. Napoleon now resolved to march

against the Bohemian army at Leipsic. On October 14, on

approaching the city from the north, he heard cannon-shots on

the opposite side. It was the advanced guard of the main army,

which was descending from the Erz-Gebirge range, after a sharp

but indecisive cavalry battle with Murat at the village of

Liebertwolkwitz, south of Dresden.

{1528}

In the broad, thickly settled plains around Leipsic, the

armies of Europe now assembled for the final and decisive

conflict. Napoleon's command included Portuguese, Spaniards,

Neapolitans, and large contingents of Germans from the Rhine

League, as well as the flower of the French youth; while the

allies brought against him Cossacks and Calmucks, Swedes and

Magyars, besides all the resources of Prussian patriotism and

Austrian discipline. Never since the awful struggle at

Chalons, which saved Western civilization from Attila, had

there been a strife so well deserving the name of 'the battle

of the nations.' West of the city of Leipsic runs the Pleisse,

and flows into the Elster on the northwest side. Above their

junction, the two streams run for some distance near one

another, inclosing a sharp angle of swampy land. The great

highway to Lindenau from Leipsic crosses the Elster, and then

runs southwesterly to Lützen and Weissenfels. South of the

city and east of the Pleisse lie a number of villages, of

which Wachau, Liebertwolkwitz, and Probstheida, nearer the

city, were important points during the battle. The little

river Partha approaches the city on the east, and then runs

north, reaching the Elster at Gohlis. Napoleon occupied the

villages north, east and south of the city, in a small circle

around it."

C. T. Lewis,

History of Germany,

chapter 30, sections 7-11.

ALSO IN:

E. Baines,

History of the Wars of the French Revolution,

book 4, chapter 23 (volume 3).

GERMANY: A. D. 1813 (October).

"The Battle of the Nations."

"The town of Leipsic has four sides and four gates. ... On the

south is the rising ground called the Swedish Camp; and

another called the Sheep-walk, bordering on the banks of the

Pleisse. To this quarter the Grand Army of the Allies was seen

advancing on the 15th of October. Buonaparte made his

arrangements accordingly. Bertrand and Poniatowski defended

Lindenau and the east side of the city, by which the French

must retreat. Augereau was posted farther to the left, on the

elevated plain of Wachau, and on the south, Victor, Lauriston,

and Macdonald confronted the advance of the Allies with the

Imperial Guards placed as a reserve. On the north, Marmont was

placed between Mœckern and Euterist, to make head against

Blücher, should he arrive in time to take part in the battle.

On the opposite quarter, the sentinels of the two armies were

within musket-shot of each other, when evening fell. ... The

number of men who engaged the next morning was estimated at

136,000 French, and 230,000 on the part of the Allies. ...

Napoleon remained all night in the rear of his own Guards,

behind the central position, facing a village called Gossa,

occupied by the Austrians. At daybreak on the 16th of October

the battle began, The French position was assailed along all

the southern front with the greatest fury. ... The Allies

having made six desperate attempts, ... all of them

unsuccessful, Napoleon in turn assumed the offensive. ... This

was about noon. The village of Gossa was carried by the

bayonet. Macdonald made himself master of the Swedish Camp;

and the eminence called the Sheep-walk was near being taken in

the same manner. The impetuosity of the French had fairly

broken through the centre of the Allies, and Napoleon sent the

tidings of his success to the King of Saxony, who ordered all

the bells in the city to be rung. ... The King of Naples, with

Latour-Maubourg and Kellermann, poured through the gap in the

enemy's centre at the head of the whole body of cavalry, and

thundered forward as far as Magdeburg, a village in the rear

of the Allies, bearing down General Rayefskoi with the

Grenadiers of the Russian reserve. At this moment, while the

French were disordered by their own success, Alexander, who

was present, ordered forward the Cossacks of his Guard, who,

with their long lances, bore back the dense body of cavalry

that had so nearly carried the day. Meantime, as had been

apprehended, Blücher arrived before the city, and suddenly

came into action with Marmont, being three times his numbers.

He in consequence obtained great and decided advantages; and

before night-fall had taken the village of Mœckern, together

with 20 pieces of artillery and 2,000 prisoners. But on the

south side the contest continued doubtful. Gossa was still

disputed. ... General Mehrfeldt fell into the hands of the

French. The battle raged till night-fall, when it ceased by

mutual consent. ... The armies slept on the ground they had

occupied during the day. The French on the southern side had

not relinquished one foot of their original position, though

attacked by such superior numbers. Marmont had indeed been

forced back by Blücher, and compelled to crowd his line of

defence nearer the walls of Leipsic. Thus pressed on all sides

with doubtful issues, Buonaparte availed himself of the

capture of General Mehrfeldt to demand an armistice and to

signify his acceptance of the terms proposed by the Allies,

but which were now found to be too moderate. ... Napoleon

received no answer till his troops had recrossed the Rhine;

and the reason assigned is, that the Allies had pledged

themselves solemnly to each other to enter into no treaty with

him 'while a single individual of the French army remained in

Germany.' ... The 17th was spent in preparations on both

sides, without any actual hostilities. At eight o'clock on the

morning of the 18th they were renewed with tenfold fury.

Napoleon had considerably contracted his circuit of defence,

and the French were posted on an inner line, nearer to

Leipsic, of which Probtsheyda was the central point. ...

Barclay, Wittgenstein, and Kleist advanced on Probtsheyda,

where they were opposed by Murat, Victor, Augereau, and

Lauriston, under the eye of Napoleon himself. On the left

Macdonald had drawn back his division to a village called

Stoetteritz. Along this whole line the contest was maintained

furiously on both sides; nor could the terrified spectators,

from the walls and steeples of Leipsic, perceive that it

either receded or advanced. About two o'clock the Allies

forced their way ... into Probtsheyda; the camp-followers

began to fly; the tumult was excessive. Napoleon ... placed

the reserve of the Old Guard in order, led them in person to

recover the village, and saw them force their entrance ere he

withdrew to the eminence from whence he watched the battle.

... The Allies, at length, felt themselves obliged to desist

from the murderous attacks on the villages which cost them so

dear; and, withdrawing their troops, kept up a dreadful fire

with their artillery.

{1529}

The French replied with equal spirit, though they had fewer

guns; and, besides, their ammunition was falling short. Still,

however, Napoleon completely maintained the day on the south

of Leipsic, where he commanded in person. On the northern

side, the yet greater superiority of numbers placed Ney in a

precarious situation; and, pressed hard both by Blücher and

the Crown-Prince, he was compelled to draw nearer the town,

and had made a stand on an eminence called Heiterblick, when

on a sudden the Saxons, who were stationed in that part of the

field, deserted from the French and went over to the enemy. In

consequence of this unexpected disaster, Ney was unable any

longer to defend himself. It was in vain that Buonaparte

dispatched his reserves of cavalry to·fill up the chasm that

had been made; and Ney drew up the remainder of his forces

close under the walls of Leipsic. The battle once more ceased

at all points. ... Although the French army had thus kept its

ground up to the last moment on these two days, yet there was

no prospect of their being able to hold out much longer at

Leipsic. ... All things counselled a retreat, which was

destined (like the rest of late) to be unfortunate. ... The

retreat was commenced in the night-time; and Napoleon spent a

third harassing night in giving the necessary orders for the

march. He appointed Macdonald and Poniatowski ... to defend

the rear. ... A temporary bridge which had been erected had

given way, and the old bridge on the road to Lindenau was the

only one that remained for the passage of the whole French

army. But the defence of the suburbs had been so gallant and

obstinate that time was allowed for this purpose. At length

the rear-guard itself was about to retreat, when, as they

approached the banks of the river, the bridge blew up by the

mistake of a sergeant of a company of sappers who ... set fire

to the mine of which he had charge before the proper moment.

This catastrophe effectually barred the escape of all those

who still remained on the Leipsic side of the river, except a

few who succeeded in swimming across, among whom was Marshal

Macdonald. Poniatowski ... was drowned in making the same

attempt. In him, it might be said, perished the last of the

Poles. About 25,000 French were made prisoners of war, with a

great quantity of artillery and baggage."

W. Hazlitt,

Life of Napoleon,

chapter 50 (volume 3).

"The battle of Leipsic was over. Already had the allied

sovereigns entered the town, and forcing, not without

difficulty, their way through the crowd, passed on to the

market-place. Here, the house in which the King of Saxony had

lodged was at once made known to them by the appearance of the

Saxon troops whom Napoleon had left to guard their master. ...

Moreover, the King himself ... stood bare-headed on the steps

of the stairs. But the Emperor of Russia, who appears at once

to have assumed the chief direction of affairs, took no notice

of the suppliants. ... The battle of Leipsic constitutes one

of those great hinges on which the fortunes of the world may

be said from time to time to turn. The importance of its

political consequence cannot be overestimated. ... As a great

military operation, the one feature which forces itself

prominently upon our notice is the enormous extent of the

means employed on both sides to accomplish an end. Never since

the days when Persia poured her millions into Greece had armies

so numerous been marshalled against each other. Nor does

history tell of trains of artillery so vast having been at any

time brought into action with more murderous effect. ... About

1,300 pieces, on the one side, were answered, during two days,

by little short of 1,000 on the other. ... We look in vain for

any manifestations of genius or military skill, either in the

combinations which rendered the battle of Leipsic inevitable,

or in the arrangements according to which the attack and

defence of the field were conducted. ... It was the triumph,

not of military skill, but of numbers."

G. R. Gleig,

The Leipsic Campaign,

chapter 41.

"No more here than at Moscow must we seek in the failure of

the leader's talents the cause of such deplorable results,--

for he was never more fruitful in resource, more bold, more

resolute, nor more a soldier,--but in the illusions of pride,

in the wish to regain at a blow an immense fortune which he

had lost, in the difficulty of acknowledging to himself his

defeat in time, in a word, in all those errors which we may

discern in miniature and caricature in an ordinary gambler,

who madly risks riches acquired by folly; errors which are

found on a large and terrible scale in this gigantic gambler,

who plays with human blood as others play with money. As

gamblers lose their fortunes twice,--once from not knowing

where to stop, and a second time from wishing to restore it at

a single cast,--so Napoleon endangered his at Moscow by wishing

to make it exorbitantly large, and in the Dresden campaign by

seeking to restore it in its full extent. The cause was always

the same, the alteration not in the genius, but in the

character, by the deteriorating influence of unlimited power

and success."

A. Thiers,

History of the Consulate and the Empire,

book 50 (volume 4).

ALSO IN:

Duke de Rovigo,

Memoirs,

volume 3, part 2, chapter 17.

J. C. Ropes,

The First Napoleon.

Baron de Marbot,

Memoirs,

volume 2, chapter  38-39.

GERMANY: A. D. 1813 (October-December).

Retreat of Napoleon beyond the Rhine.

Battle of Hanau.

Fall of the kingdom of Westphalia.

Surrender of French garrisons and forces.

Liberation achieved.

"Blucher, with Langeron and Sacken, moved in pursuit of the

French army, which, disorganised and dejected, was wending its

way towards the Rhine. At the passage of the Unstrutt, at

Freyberg, 1,000 prisoners and 18 guns were captured by the

Prussian hussars; but on the 23d the French reached Erfurth,

the citadels and magazines of which afforded them at once

security and relief from their privations. Here Napoleon

halted two days, employed in reorganising his army, the

thirteen corps of which were now formed into six, commanded by

Victor, Ney, Bertrand, Augereau, Marmont, and Macdonald, and

amounting in all to less than 90,000 men; while twice that

number were left blockaded in the fortresses on the Elbe, the

Oder, and the Vistula. On the 25th, after parting for the last

time with Murat, who here quitted him and returned to Naples,

he resumed his march, retreating with such rapidity through

the Thuringian forest, that the Cossacks alone of the pursuing

army could keep up with the retiring columns--while the men

dropped, exhausted by fatigue and hunger, or deserted their

ranks by hundreds; so that when the fugitive host approached

the Maine, not more than 50,000 remained effective round their

colours--10,000 had fallen or been made prisoners, and at

least 30,000 were straggling in the rear. But here fresh

dangers awaited them.

{1530}

After the treaty of the 8th October, by which Bavaria had

acceded to the grand alliance, an Austro-Bavarian force under

Marshal Wrede had moved in the direction of Frankfort, and was

posted, to the number of 45,000 men, in the oak forest near

Hanau across the great road to Mayence, and blocking up

entirely the French line of retreat. The battle commenced at

11 A. M. on the 30th; but the French van, under Victor and

Macdonald, after fighting its way through the forest, was

arrested, when attempting to issue from its skirts, by the

concentric fire of 70 pieces of cannon, and for four hours the

combat continued, till the arrival of the guards and main body

changed the aspect of affairs. Under cover of the terrible

fire of Drouot's artillery, Sebastiani and Nansouty charged

with the cavalry of the guard, and overthrew everything

opposed to them, and Wrede at length drew off his shattered

army behind the Kinzig. Hanau was bombarded and taken, and

Mortier and Marmont, with the rear divisions, cut their way

through on the following day, with considerable loss to their

opponents. The total losses of the Allies amounted to 10,900

men, of whom 4,000 were prisoners; and the victory threw a

parting ray of glory over the long career of the revolutionary

arms in Germany. On the 2d of November the French reached

Mayence, and Napoleon, after remaining there six days to

collect the remains of his army, set out for Paris, where he

arrived on the 9th; and thus the French eagles bade a final

adieu to the German plains. In the mean time, the Allied

troops, following closely on the footsteps of the retreating

French, poured in prodigious strength down the valley of the

Maine. On the 5th of November the Emperor Alexander entered

Frankfort in triumph, at the head of 20,000 horse; and on the

9th the fortified post of Hochheim, in advance of the

tête-du-pont of Mayence at Cassel, was stormed by Giulay. From

the heights beyond the town the victorious armies of Germany

beheld the winding stream of the Rhine; a shout of enthusiasm

ran from rank to rank as they saw the mighty river of the

Fatherland, which their arms had liberated; those in the rear

hurried to the front, and soon a hundred thousand voices

joined in the cheers which told the world that the war of

independence was ended and Germany delivered. Nothing now

remained but to reap the fruits of this mighty victory; yet so

vast was the ruin that even this was a task of time and

difficulty. The rickety kingdom of Westphalia fell at once,

never more to rise; the revolutionary dynasty in Berg followed

its fate; and the authority of the King of Britain was

re-established by acclamation in Hanover, at the first

appearance of Bernadotte and Benningsen. The reduction of

Davoust, who had been left in Hamburg with 25,000 French and

10,000 Danes, was an undertaking of more difficulty; and

against him Walmoden and Bernadotte moved with 40,000 men. The

French marshal had taken up a position on the Stecknitz; but,

fearful of being cut off from Hamburg, he retired behind the

Bille on the advance of the Allies, separating himself from

the Danes, who were compelled to capitulate. The operations of

the Crown-Prince against Denmark, the ancient rival of Sweden,

were now pushed with a vigour and activity strongly

contrasting with his luke-warmness in the general campaign;

and the court of Copenhagen, seeing its dominions on the point

of being overrun, signed an armistice on the 15th December, on

which was soon after based a permanent treaty [of Kiel]. ...

See SCANDINAVIAN STATES: A. D. 1813-1814.

When Napoleon (Oct. 7) marched northwards from Dresden, he had

left St. Cyr in that city with 30,000 men, opposed only by a

newly-raised Russian corps under Tolstoi, which St. Cyr, by a

sudden attack, routed with the loss of 3,000 men and 10 guns.

But no sooner was the battle of Leipsic decided, than Dresden

was again blockaded by 50.000 men under Klenau and Tolstoi;

and St. Cyr, who was encumbered with a vast number of sick and

wounded, and was almost without provisions, was obliged, after

a fruitless sortie on the 6th November, to surrender on the

11th, on condition of being sent with his troops to France.

The capitulation, however, was disallowed by Schwartzenberg,

and the whole were made prisoners of war--a proceeding which

the French, not without some justice, declaim against as a

gross breach of faith--and thus no less than 32 generals,

1,795 officers, and 33,000 rank and file, with 240 pieces of

cannon, fell into the power of the Allies. The fall of Dresden

was soon followed by that of the other fortresses on the

Vistula and the Oder. Stettin, with 8,000 men and 350 guns,

surrendered on the 21st November; and Torgau, which contained

the military hospitals and reserve parks of artillery left by

the grand army on its retreat from the Elbe, yielded at

discretion to Tauenzein (December 26), after a siege of two

months. But such was the dreadful state of the garrison, from

the ravages of typhus fever, that the Allies dared not enter

this great pest-house till the 10th January; and the terrible

epidemic which issued, from its walls made the circuit, during

the four following years, of every country in Europe. Dantzic,

with its motley garrison of 35,000 men, had been blockaded

ever since the Moscow retreat; but the blockading corps, which

was not of greater strength, could not confine the French

within the walls; and Rapp made several sorties in force

during the spring and summer, by which he procured abundance

of provisions. It was not till after the termination of the

armistice of Pleswitz that the siege was commenced in form;

and after sustaining a severe bombardment, Rapp, deprived of

all hope by the battle of Leipsic, capitulated (November 29)

with his garrison, now reduced by the sword, sickness, and

desertion, to 16,000 men. Zamosc, with 3,000 men, surrendered

on the 22d December, and Modlin, with 1,200, on the 25th; and

at the close of the year, France retained beyond the Rhine

only Hamburg, Magdeburg, and Wittenberg, on the Elbe; Custrin

and Glogau on the Oder; and the citadels of Erfurth and

Würtzburg, which held out after the capitulation of the

towns."

Epitome of Alison's History of Europe,

sections 737-742

(chapter 82, volume 17, in complete work).

"The princes of the Confederation of the Rhine, with the

exception of the captive King of Saxony, and one or two minor

princes, deserted Napoleon, and entered into treaties with the

Allies."

T. H. Dyer,

History of Modern Europe,

volume 4, page 538.

ALSO IN:

M. Bourrienne,

Private Memoirs of Napoleon,

volume 4, chapter 16.

The Year of Liberation: Journal of the Defence of Hamburgh.

J. Philippart,

Campaign in Germany and France, 1813,

volume 1, pages 230-278.

GERMANY: A. D. 1814.

The Allies in France and in possession of Paris.

Fall of Napoleon.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1814 (JANUARY-MARCH),

and (MARCH-APRIL).

{1531}

GERMANY: A. D. 1814 (May).

Readjustment of French boundaries by the Treaty of Paris.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1814 (APRIL-JUNE).

GERMANY: A. D. 1814-1815.

The Congress of Vienna.

Its territorial and political readjustments.

See VIENNA, THE CONGRESS OF.

GERMANY: A. D. 1814-1820.

Reconstruction of Germany.

The Germanic Confederation and its constitution.

"Germany was now utterly disintegrated. The Holy Roman Empire

had ceased to exist; the Confederation of the Rhine had

followed it; and from the Black Forest to the Russian frontier

there was nothing but angry ambitions, vengeances, and fears.

If there was ever to be peace again in all these wide regions,

it was clearly necessary to create something new. What was to

be created was a far more difficult question; but already, on

the 30th of May 1814, the powers had come to some sort of

understanding, if not with regard to the means to be pursued,

at least with regard to the end to be attained. In the Treaty

of Paris we find these words: 'Les états de l'Allemagne seront

indépendants et unis par un lien fédératif.' But how was this to

be effected? There were some who wished the Holy Roman Empire

to be restored. ... Of course neither Prussia, Bavaria, nor

Wurtemberg, could look kindly upon a plan so obviously

unfavourable to them; but not even Austria really wished it,

and indeed it had few powerful friends. Then there was a

project of a North and South Germany, with the Maine for

boundary; but this was very much the reverse of acceptable to

the minor princes, who had no idea of being grouped like so

many satellites, some around Austria and some around Prussia.

Next came a plan of reconstruction by circles, the effect of

which would have been to have thrown all the power of Germany

into the hands of a few of the larger states. To this all the

smaller independent states were bitterly opposed, and it broke

down, although supported by the great authority of Stein, as

well as by Gagern. If Germany had been in a later phase of

political development, public opinion would perhaps have

forced the sovereigns to consent to the formation of a really

united Fatherland with a powerful executive and a national

parliament--but the time for that had not arrived. What was

the opposition of a few hundred clear-sighted men with their

few thousand followers, that it should prevail over the

masters of so many legions? What these potentates cared most

about were their sovereign rights, and the dream of German

unity was very readily sacrificed to the determination of each

of them to be, as far as he possibly could, absolute master in

his own dominions. Therefore it was that it soon became

evident that the results of the deliberation on the future of

Germany would be, not a federative state, but a confederation

of states--a Staaten-Bund, not a Bundes-Staat. There is no

doubt, however, that much mischief might have been avoided if

all the stronger powers had worked conscientiously together to

give this Staaten-Bund as national a character as possible.

... Prussia was really honestly desirous to effect something

of this kind, and Stein, Hardenberg, William von Humboldt,

Count Münster, and other statesmen, laboured hard to bring it

about. Austria, on the other hand, aided by Bavaria,

Wurtemberg, and Baden, did all she could to oppose such

projects. Things would perhaps have been settled better than

they ultimately were, if the return of Napoleon from Elba had

not frightened all Europe from its propriety, and turned the

attention of the sovereigns towards warlike preparations. ...

The document by which the Germanic Confederation is created is

of so much importance that we may say a word about the various

stages through which it passed. First, then, it appears as a

paper drawn up by Stein in March 1814, and submitted to

Hardenberg, Count Münster, and the Emperor Alexander. Next, in

the month of September, it took the form of an official plan,

handed by Hardenberg to Metternich, and consisting of

forty-one articles. This plan contemplated the creation of a

confederation which should have the character rather of a

Bundes-Staat than of a Staaten-Bund; but it went to pieces in

consequence of the difficulties which we have noticed above,

and out of it, and of ten other official proposals, twelve

articles were sublimated by the rival chemistry of Hardenberg

and Metternich. Upon these twelve articles the representatives

of Austria, Prussia, Hanover, and Wurtemberg, deliberated.

Their sittings were cut short partly by the ominous appearance

which was presented in the autumn of 1814 by the Saxon and Polish

questions, and partly by the difficulties from the side of

Bavaria and Wurtemberg, which we have already noticed. The

spring brought a project of the Austrian statesman Wessenberg,

who proposed a Staaten-Bund rather than a Bundes-Staat; and

out of this and a new Prussian project drawn up by W. von

Humboldt, grew the last sketch, which was submitted on the 23d

of May 1815 to the general conference of the plenipotentiaries

of all Germany. They made short work of it at the last, and

the Federal-Act (Bundes-Acte) bears date June 8th, 1815. This

is the document which is incorporated in the principal act of

the Congress of Vienna, and placed under the guarantee of

eight European powers, including France and England.

Wurtemberg, Baden, and Hesse-Homburg, did not form part of the

Confederation for some little time--the latter not till 1817;

but after they were added to the powers at first consenting,

the number of the sovereign states in the Confederation was

altogether thirty-nine. ... The following are the chief

stipulations of the Federal Act. The object of the

Confederation is the external and internal security of

Germany, and the independence and inviolability of the

confederate states. A diète fédérative (Bundes-Versammlung) is

to be created, and its attributions are sketched. The Diet is,

as soon as possible, to draw up the fundamental laws of the

Confederation. No state is to make war with another on any

pretence. All federal territories are mutually guaranteed.

There is to be in each state a 'Landständische

Verfassung'--'il y aura des assemblées d'états dans tous les

pays de la Confedération.' Art. 14 reserves many rights to the

mediatised princes. Equal civil and political rights are

guaranteed to all Christians in all German States, and

stipulations are made in favour of the Jews. The Diet did not

actually assemble before the 5th of November 1816. Its first

measures, and, above all, its first words, were not unpopular.

The Holy Allies, however, pressed with each succeeding month

more heavily upon Germany, and got at last the control of the

Confederation entirely into their hands.

{1532}

The chief epochs in this sad history were the Congress of

Carlsbad, 1819--the resolutions of which against the freedom

of the press were pronounced by Gentz to be a victory more

glorious than Leipzig; the ministerial conferences which

immediately succeeded it at Vienna; and the adoption by the

Diet of the Final Act (Sehluss Acte) of the Confederation on

the 8th of June 1820. The following are the chief stipulations

of the Final Act:--The Confederation is indissoluble. No new

member can be admitted without the unanimous consent of all

the states, and no federal territory can be ceded to a foreign

power without their permission. The regulations for the

conduct of business by the Diet are amplified and more

carefully defined. All quarrels between members of the

Confederation are to be stopped before recourse is had to

violence. The Diet may interfere to keep order in a state

where the government of that state is notoriously incapable of

doing so. Federal execution is provided for in case any

government resists the authority of the Diet. Other articles

declare the right of the Confederation to make war and peace

as a body, to guard the rights of each separate state from

injury, to take into consideration the differences between its

members and foreign nations, to mediate between them, to

maintain the neutrality of its territory, to make war when a

state belonging to the Confederation is attacked in its

non-federal territory if the attack seems likely to endanger

Germany."

M. E. G. Duff,

Studies in European Politics,

chapter 5.

ALSO IN:

J. R. Seeley,

Life and Times of Stein,

part 8 (volume 3).

E. Hertslet,

The Map of Europe by Treaty,

volume 1, number 26

(Text of Federative Constitution).

See, also, VIENNA: CONGRESS OF.

GERMANY: A. D. 1815.

Napoleon's return from Elba.

The Quadruple Alliance.

The Waterloo campaign and its results.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1814-1815.

GERMANY: A. D. 1815.

Final Overthrow of Napoleon.

The Allies again in Paris.

Second treaty with France.

Restitutions and indemnities.

French frontier of 1790 re-established.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1815 (JUNE),

(JULY-NOVEMBER).

GERMANY: A. D. 1815.

The Holy Alliance.

See HOLY ALLIANCE.

GERMANY: A. D. 1817-1820.

The Burschenschaft.

Assassination of Kotzebue.

The Karlsbad Conference.

"In 1817, the students of several Universities assembled at

the Wartburg in order to celebrate the tercentenary of the

Reformation. In the evening, a small number of them, the

majority having already left, were carried away by

enthusiastic zeal, and, in imitation of Luther, burnt a number

of writings recently published against German freedom,

together with other emblems of what was considered hateful in

the institutions of some of the German States. These youthful

excesses were viewed by the Governments as symptoms of grave

peril. At the same time, a large number of students united to

form one great German Burschenschaft [association of

students], whose aim was the cultivation of a love of country,

a love of freedom, and the moral sense. Thereupon increased

anxiety on the part of the Governments, followed by vexatious

police interference. Matters grew worse in consequence of the

rash act of a fanatical student, named Sand. It became known

that the Russian Government was using all its powerful

influence to have liberal ideas suppressed in Germany, and

that the play-wright Kotzebue had secretly sent to Russia

slanderous and libellous reports on German patriots. Sand

travelled to Mannheim and thrust a dagger into Kotzebue's

heart. The consequences were most disastrous to the cause of

freedom in Germany. The distrust of the Governments reached

its height: it was held that this bloody deed must needs be

the result of a wide-spread conspiracy: the authorities

suspected demagogues everywhere. Ministers, of course at the

instigation of Metternich, met at Karlsbad, and determined on

repressive measures. These were afterwards adopted by the

Federal Diet at Frankfort, which henceforth became an

instrument in the hands of the Emperor Francis and his

Minister for guiding the internal policy of the German States.

Accordingly, the cession of state-constitutions was opposed,

and prosecutions were instituted throughout Germany against

all who identified themselves with the popular movement; many

young men were thrown into prison; gymnastic and other

societies were arbitrarily suppressed; a rigid censorship of

the press was established, and the freedom of the Universities

restrained; various professors, among them Arndt, whose songs had

helped to fire the enthusiasm of the Freiheitskämpfer--the

soldiers of Freedom--in the recent war, were deprived of their

offices; the Burschenschaft was dissolved, and the wearing of

their colours, the future colours of the German Empire, black,

red, and gold, was forbidden. ... The Universities continued

to uphold the national idea; the Burschenschaft soon secretly

revived as a private association, and as early as 1820 there

again existed at most German Universities, Burschenschaften,

which, though their aims were not sharply defined, bore a

political colouring and placed the demand for German Unity in

the foreground."

G. Krause,

The Growth of German Unity,

chapter 8.

GERMANY: A. D. 1819-1847.

Arbitrary rulers and discontented subjects.

The ferment before revolution.

Formation of the Zollverein.

"The history of Germany during the thirty years of peace which

followed [the Congress of Carlsbad] is marked by very few

events of importance. It was a season of gradual reaction on

the part of the rulers; and of increasing impatience and

enmity on the part of the people. Instead of becoming loving

families, as the Holy Alliance designed, the States (except

some of the little principalities) were divided into two

hostile classes. There was material growth everywhere; the

wounds left by war and foreign occupation were gradually

healed; there was order, security for all who abstained from

politics, and a comfortable repose for such as were

indifferent to the future. But it was a sad and disheartening

period for the men who were able to see clearly how Germany,

with all the elements of a freer and stronger life existing in

her people, was falling behind the political development of

other countries. The three days' Revolution of 1830, which

placed Louis Philippe on the throne of France, was followed by

popular uprisings in some parts of Germany. Prussia and

Austria were too strong, and their people too well held in

check, to be affected; but in Brunswick the despotic Duke,

Karl, was deposed, Saxony and Hesse-Cassel were obliged to

accept co-rulers (out of their reigning families) and the

English Duke, Ernest Augustus, was made viceroy of Hannover.

{1533}

These four States also adopted a constitutional form of

government. The German Diet, as a matter of course, used what

power it possessed to counteract these movements, but its

influence was limited by its own laws of action. The hopes and

aspirations of the people were kept alive, in spite of the

system of repression, and some of the smaller States took

advantage of their independence to introduce various measures

of reform. As industry, commerce and travel increased, the

existence of so many boundaries, with their custom-houses,

taxes and other hindrances, became an unendurable burden.

Bavaria and Würtemberg formed a customs union in 1828, Prussia

followed, and by 1836 all of Germany except Austria was united

in the Zollverein (Tariff Union) [see TARIFF LEGISLATION

(GERMANY): A. D. 1833], which was not only a great material

advantage, but helped to inculcate the idea of a closer

political union. On the other hand, however, the monarchical

reaction against liberal government was stronger than ever.

Ernest Augustus of Hannover arbitrarily overthrew the

constitution he had accepted, and Ludwig I. of Bavaria,

renouncing all his former professions, made his land a very

nest of absolutism and Jesuitism. In Prussia, such men as

Stein, Gneisenau, and Wilhelm von Humboldt had long lost their

influence, while others of less personal renown, but of

similar political sentiments, were subjected to contemptible

forms of persecution. In March, 1835, Francis II. of Austria

died, and was succeeded by his son, Ferdinand I., a man of

such weak intellect that he was in some respects idiotic. On

the 7th of June, 1840, Frederick William III. of Prussia died,

and was also succeeded by his son, Frederick William IV., a

man of great wit and intelligence, who had made himself

popular as Crown-prince, and whose accession the people hailed

with joy, in the enthusiastic belief that better days were

coming. The two dead monarchs, each of whom had reigned 43

years, left behind them a better memory among their people

than they actually deserved. They were both weak, unstable and

narrow-minded; had they not been controlled by others, they

would have ruined Germany; but they were alike of excellent

personal character, amiable, and very kindly disposed towards

their subjects so long as the latter were perfectly obedient

and reverential. There was no change in the condition of

Austria, for Metternich remained the real ruler, as before. In

Prussia a few unimportant concessions were made, an amnesty

for political offences was declared, Alexander von Humboldt

became the king's chosen associate, and much was done for

science and art; but in their main hope of a liberal

reorganization of the government, the people were bitterly

deceived. Frederick William IV. took no steps towards the

adoption of a Constitution; he made the censorship and the

supervision of the police more severe; he interfered in the

most arbitrary and bigoted manner in the system of religious

instruction in the schools; and all his acts showed that his

policy was to strengthen his throne by the support of the

nobility and the civil service, without regard to the just

claims of the people. Thus, in spite of the external quiet and

order, the political atmosphere gradually became more sultry

and disturbed. ... There were signs of impatience in all

quarters; various local outbreaks occurred, and the aspects

were so threatening that in February, 1847, Frederick William

IV. endeavored to silence the growing opposition by ordering

the formation of a Legislative Assembly. But the provinces

were represented, not the people, and the measure only

emboldened the latter to clamor for a direct representation.

Thereupon, the king closed the Assembly, after a short

session, and the attempt was probably productive of more harm

than good. In most of the other German States, the situation

was very similar; everywhere there were elements of

opposition, all the more violent and dangerous, because they

had been kept down with a strong hand for so many years."

B. Taylor,

History of Germany,

chapter 37.

ALSO IN:

C. A. Fyffe,

History of Modern Europe,

volume 2, chapters 5 and 7.

See, also, AUSTRIA: A. D.1815-1835.

GERMANY: A. D. 1820-1822.

The Congresses of Troppau, Laybach and Verona.

See VERONA, THE CONGRESS OF.

GERMANY: A. D. 1835-1846.

Death of the Emperor Francis I. of Austria.

Accession of Ferdinand I.

Extinction of the Polish republic of Cracow.

Its annexation to Austria.

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1815-1846.

GERMANY: A. D. 1839-1840.

The Turko-Egyptian question and its settlement.

Quadruple Alliance.

See TURKS: A. D. 1831-1840.

GERMANY: A. D. 1848 (March).

Revolutionary outbreaks.

The King of Prussia heads a national movement.

Mistaken battle of soldiers and citizens at Berlin.

"The French revolution of February, the flight of Louis

Philippe and the fall of the throne of the barricades, and the

proclamation of a republic, had kindled from one end to the

other of Europe the enthusiasm of the republican party. The

conflagration rapidly extended itself. The Rhenish provinces

of Prussia, whose near neighbourhood and former connexion with

France made them more peculiarly combustible, broke out with a

cry for the most extensive reforms; that is to say, for

representative institutions, the passion for which had spread

over the whole of Germany. ... The reform fever which had

attacked the Rhenish provinces quickly spread to the rest of

the body politic. The urban populace--a class in all countries

rarely incited to agitation--took the lead. They were headed

by the students. Breslau, Königsberg, and Berlin, were in

violent commotion. In the month of March, a great open air

meeting was held at Berlin: it ended in a riot. The troops

were called out to act against the mob. For near a week,

Berlin was in a state of chronic disturbance. The troops acted

with great firmness. The mob gathered together, but did not

show much fight; but they were dispersed with difficulty, and

continued to offer a passive resistance to the soldiers. On

the 15th, ten persons were said to have been killed, and over

100 wounded. At the same time, similar scenes were, being

enacted at Breslau and Königsberg, where several persons lost

their lives. A deputation from the Rhenish provinces arrived

at Berlin on the 18th, bearing a petition from Cologne to the

king for reform. He promised to grant it. ... Finding he could

not keep the movement in check, he resolved to put himself at

the head of it. It was probably the only course open to him,

if he would preserve his crown. ...

{1534}

The king must have previously had the questions which were

agitating Germany under careful consideration; for he at once

published a proclamation embodying the whole of them: the

unity of Germany, by forming it into a federal state, with a

federal representation; representative institutions for the

separate states; a general military system for all Germany,

under one federal banner; a German fleet; a tribunal for

settling disputes between the states, and a right for all

Germans to settle and trade in any part of Germany they

thought fit; the whole of Germany formed into one customs

union, and included in the Zollverein; one system of money,

weights, and measures; and the freedom of the press. These

were the subjects touched upon. ... The popularity of the

proclamation with the mob-leaders was unbounded, and the mob

shouted. Every line of it contained their own ideas,

vigorously expressed. Their delight was proportionate to their

astonishment. A crowd got together at the palace to express

their gratitude; the king came out of a window, and was loudly

cheered. Two regiments of dragoons unluckily mistook the

cheering for an attack, and began pushing them back by forcing

their horses forward. ... Unfortunately, as the conflict (if

conflict it could be called, which was only a bout of which

could push hardest) was going forward, two musket-shots were

fired by a regiment of infantry. It appears that the muskets

went off accidentally. No one was injured by them. It is not

clear they were not blank cartridges; but the people took

fright. They imagined that there was a design to slaughter

them. At once they rushed to arms; barricades were thrown up

in every street. ... Sharpshooters placed themselves in the

windows and behind the barricades, and opened a fire on the

soldiery. These, exasperated by what they thought an unfair

species of fighting, were by no means unwilling for the fray.

... The troops carried barricade after barricade, and gave no

quarter even to the unresisting. As they took the houses, they

slaughtered all the sharpshooters they found in them, not very

accurately discriminating those engaged in hostilities from

those who were not. Horrible cruelties were committed on both

sides. ... The flight raged for fifteen hours. Either the king

lost his head when it began, or the troops, having their blood

up, would not stop. ... The firing began at two o'clock on the

18th of March, and the authorities succeeded in withdrawing

the troops and stopping it the next morning at five o'clock,

they having been during that time successful at all points.

... The king put out a manifesto at seven o'clock, declaring

that the whole business arose from an unlucky misunderstanding

between the troops and the people, as it unquestionably did,

and the people appear to have been aware of the fact and

ashamed of themselves. ... A general amnesty was proclaimed

for all parties concerned, and orders were given to form at

once a burgher guard to supply the place of the military, who

were to be withdrawn. A new ministry was appointed, of a

liberal character. ... The troops were marched out of the

town, and were cheered by the people. ... It is estimated

that, of the populace, about 200 were killed: 187 received a

public funeral. No accurate account of the wounded can be

obtained. ... Of the troops, according to the official

returns, there fell 3 officers and 17 non-commissioned

officers and privates; of wounded there were 14 officers, 14

non-commissioned officers, and 225 privates, and 1 surgeon.

... The king's object was to divert popular enthusiasm into

another channel; he therefore assumed the lead in the

regeneration of Germany. On the 21st he issued a proclamation,

enlarging on these views, and rode through the streets with

the proscribed German tricolor on his helmet, and was

vociferously cheered as he passed along. Prussia was not the

first of the German states where the old order of things was

overturned. During the whole of the month of March, Germany

underwent the process of revolution. ... On the 3d of March

... the new order of things ... began at Wurtemberg. The Duke

of Hesse-Darmstadt abdicated. In Bavaria, things took a more

practical turn. The people insisted on the dismissal of the

king's mistress, Lola Montez: she was sent away, but, trusting

to the king's dotage, she came back, police or no police--was

received by the king--he created her Countess of Lansfeldt.

This was a climax to which the people were not prepared to

submit. ... The king was compelled to expel her, to annul her

patent of naturalization, and resume the grant he had made of

property in her favour. This was more than he could stand, and

he shortly after abdicated in favour of his heir. In Saxony

the king gave way, after his troops had refused to act, and

the freedom of the press was established, and other popular

demands granted. In Vienna, the old system of Metternich was

abolished, after a revolution which was little more than a

street row. The king of Hanover refused to move, but was

eventually induced to receive Stube as one of his ministers,

who had been previously in prison for his opinions. However,

he was firmer than most of his brother monarchs, and his

country suffered less than the rest of Germany in

consequence."

E. S. Cayley,

The European Revolutions of 1848,

volume 2: Germany, chapter 2.

ALSO IN:

C. E. Maurice,

The Revolutionary Movement of 1848-9,

chapter 7.

GERMANY: A. D. 1848 (March-September).

Election and meeting of the National Assembly at Frankfort.

Resignation of the Diet.

Election of Archduke John to be Administrator of Germany.

Powerlessness of the new government.

Troubles rising from the Schleswig-Holstein question.

Outbreak at Frankfort.

The setting in of Reaction.

"In south-western Germany the liberal party set itself at the

head of the movement. ... The Heidelberg assembly of March

5th, consisting of the former opposition leaders in the

various Chambers, issued a call to the German nation, and

chose a commission of seven men, who were to make propositions

with regard to a permanent parliament and to summon a

preliminary parliament at Frankfort. This preliminary

parliament assembled in St. Paul's church, March 31st. ... The

majority, consisting of constitutional monarchists, resolved

that an assembly chosen by direct vote of the people ...

should meet in the month of May, with full and sovereign power

to frame a constitution for all Germany. ... These measures

did not satisfy the radical party, whose leaders were Hecker

and Struve. As their proposition to set up a sovereign

assembly, and republicanize Germany, was rejected, they left

Frankfort, and held in the highlands of Baden popular meetings

at which they demanded the proclamation of the republic.

{1535}

A Hesse-Darmstadt corps under Frederic von Gagern ... was sent

to disperse them. An engagement took place at Kandern, in

which Gagern was shot, but Hecker and his followers were put

to flight. ... The disturbances in Odenwald, and in the Main

and Tauber districts, once the home of the peasant war, were

of a different description. There the country people rose

against the landed proprietors, destroyed the archives, with

the odious tithe and rental books, and demolished a few

castles. The Diet, which in the meantime continued its

illusory existence, thought to extricate itself from the

present difficulties by a few concessions. It ... invited the

governments to send confidential delegates to undertake, along

with its members, a revision of the constitution of the

confederation. ... These confidential delegates, among them

the poet Uhland, from Würtemberg, began their work on the 30th

of March. The elections for the National Assembly stirred to

their innermost fibres the German people, dreaming of the

restoration of their former greatness. May 18th about 320

delegates assembled in the Imperial Hall, in the Römer (the

Rathhaus), at Frankfort. ... Never has a political assembly

contained a greater number of intellectual and scholarly

men--men of character and capable of self-sacrifice; but it

certainly was not the forte of these numerous professors and

jurists to conduct practical politics. The moderate party was

decidedly in the majority. ... It was decided ... that a

provisional central executive should be created in the place

of the Diet, and created, not by the National Assembly in

concert with the princes, but by the National Assembly alone.

June 27th, following out the bold conception of its president,

the assembly decided to appoint an irresponsible

administrator, with a responsible ministry; and June 29th,

Archduke John of Austria was chosen Administrator of Germany

by 436 votes out of 546. He made his entry into Frankfort July

11th, and entered upon his office on the following day. The

hour of the Diet had struck, apparently for the last time. It

resigned its authority into the hands of the Administrator,

and, after an existence of 32 years, left the stage unmourned.

Archduke John was a popular prince, who found more pleasure in

the mountain air of Tyrol and Styria than in the perfumed

atmosphere of the Vienna court. But, as a novice 66 years of

age, he was not equal to the task of governing, and as a

thorough Austrian he lacked a heart for all Germany. The main

question for him and for the National Assembly was, what force

they could apply in case the individual governments refused

obedience to the decrees issued in the name of the National

Assembly. This was the Achilles's heel of the German

revolution. ... Orders were issued by the federal minister of

war that all the troops of the Confederation should swear

allegiance to the federal administrator on the 6th of August;

but Prussia and Austria, with the exception of the Vienna

garrison, paid no attention to these orders; Ernest Augustus,

in Hanover, successfully set his hard head against them, and

only the lesser states obeyed. ... There certainly was no

other way out of the difficulty than by the formation of a

parliamentary army. ... Instead of meeting these dangers

resolutely, and in a common-sense way, the Assembly left

matters to go as they would, outside of Frankfort. One

humiliation was submitted to after another, while the

Assembly, busying itself for months with a theoretical

question, as if it were a juristic faculty, entered into a

detailed consideration of the fundamental rights of the German

people. The Schleswig-Holstein question, which had just

entered upon a new phase of its existence, was the first

matter of any importance to manifest the disagreement between

the central administration and the separate governments; and

it opened, as well, a dangerous gulf in the Assembly itself.

The question at issue was one of succession [see SCANDINAVIAN

STATES (DENMARK): A. D. 1848-1862]. ... The Estates of the

duchies [Schleswig and Holstein] established a provisional

government, applied at Frankfort for the admission of

Schleswig into the German confederation, and besought armed

assistance both there and at Berlin. The preliminary

parliament [this having occurred in April, before the meeting

of the National Assembly] approved the application of

Schleswig for admission, and commissioned Prussia, in

conjunction with the 10th army corps of the Confederation, to

occupy Schleswig and Holstein. On the 21st of April, 1848,

General Wrangel crossed the Eider as commander of the forces

of the Confederation; and on the 23d, in conjunction with the

Schleswig-Holstein troops, he drove the Danes out of the

Danewerk. On the following day the Danes were defeated at

Oeversee by the 10th army corps, and all Schleswig-Holstein

was free. Wrangel entered Jutland and imposed a war tax of

3,000,000 thalers (about $2,250,000). He meant to occupy this

province until the Danes--who, owing to the inexcusable

smallness of the Prussian navy, were in a position unhindered

to injure the commerce of the Baltic--had indemnified Prussia

for her losses; but Prussia, touched to the quick by the

destruction of her commerce, and intimidated by the

threatening attitude of Russia, Sweden, and England, recalled

her troops, and concluded an armistice at Malmö, in Sweden, on

the 26th of August. All measures of the provisional government

were pronounced invalid; a common government for the duchies

was to be appointed, one half by Denmark, and the other by the

German confederation; the Schleswig troops were to be

separated from those of Holstein; and the war was not to be

renewed before the 1st of April, 1849--i. e., not in the

winter, a time unfavorable for the Danes. This treaty was

unquestionably no masterpiece on the part of the Prussians.

All the advantage was on the side of the conquered Danes. ...

It was not merely the radicals who urged, if not the final

rejection, at least a provisional cessation of the armistice,

and the countermanding of the order to retreat. ... A bill to

that effect, demanded by the honor of Germany, had scarcely

been passed by the majority, on the 5th of September, when the

moderate party reflected that such action, involving a breach

with Prussia, must lead to civil war and revolution, and call

into play the wildest passions of the already excited people.

In consequence of this the previous vote was rescinded, and

the armistice of Malmö accepted by the Assembly, after the

most excited debates, September 16th. This gave the radicals a

welcome opportunity to appeal to the fists of the lower

classes, and imitate the June outbreak of the social democrats

in Paris. ...

{1536}

A collision ensued [September 18]; barricades were erected,

but were carried by the troops without much bloodshed. ...

General Auerswald and Prince Lichnowsky, riding on horseback

near the city, were followed by a mob. They took refuge in a

gardener's house on the Bornheimer-heide, but were dragged out

and murdered with the most disgraceful atrocities. Thereupon

the city was declared in a state of siege, all societies were

forbidden, and strong measures were taken for the maintenance

of order. The March revolution had passed its season, and

reaction was again beginning to bloom. ... Reaction drew

moderate men to its side, and then used them as

stepping-stones to immoderation."

W. Müller,

Political History of Recent Times,

section 17.

ALSO IN:

Sir A. Alison,

History of Europe, 1815-1852,

chapter 53.

GERMANY: A. D. 1848-1849.

Revolutionary risings in Austria and Hungary.

Bombardment of Vienna.

The war in Hungary.

Abdication of the Emperor Ferdinand.

Accession of Francis Joseph.

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1848-1849.

GERMANY: A. D. 1848-1850.

The Prussian National Assembly, and its dissolution.

The work and the failure of the National Assembly of

Frankfort.

Refusal of the imperial crown by the King of Prussia.

End of the movement for Germanic unity.

"The elections for the new Prussian Constituent Assembly, as

well as for the Frankfort Parliament, were to take place (May

1). The Prussian National Assembly was to meet May 22. The

Prussian people, under the new election law, if left to

themselves, would have quietly chosen a body of competent

representatives; but the revolutionary party thought nothing

could be done without the ax and the musket. ... The people of

Berlin, from March to October, were ... really in the hands of

the mob. ... The newly-elected Prussian National Assembly was

opened by the king, May 21. ... One of the first resolutions

proceeded from Behrend of the Extreme Left. 'The Assembly

recognizes the revolution, and declares that the combatants

who fought at the barricades, on March 18 and 19, merit the

thanks of the country.' ... The motion was rejected. On

issuing from the building into the street, after the sitting,

the members who had voted against it, were received by the mob

with threats and insults. ... In the evening of the same day,

in consequence of the rejection of the Behrend resolution, the

arsenal was attacked by a large body of laborers. The

burgher-guard were not prepared, and made a feeble defense.

There was a great riot. The building was stormed and partially

plundered. ... The sketch of a constitution proposed by the

king was now laid before the Assembly. It provided two

Chambers--a House of Lords, and a House of Commons. The last

to be elected by the democratic electoral law; the first to

consist of all the princes of the royal house in their own

right, and, in addition, 60 members from the wealthiest of the

kingdom to be selected by the king, their office hereditary.

This constitution was immediately rejected. On the rejection

of the constitution the ministry Camphausen resigned. ... The

Assembly, elected exclusively to frame a constitution, instead

of performing its duty ... attempted to legislate, with

despotic power, on subjects over which it had no jurisdiction.

As the drama drew nearer its close, the Assembly became more

open in its intention to overthrow the monarchy. On October 12

discussions began upon a resolution to strike from the king's

title the words, 'By the grace of God,' and to abolish all

titles of nobility and distinctions of rank. The Assembly

building, during the sitting, was generally surrounded by

threatening crowds. ... Of course, during this period business

was suspended, and want, beggary, and drunkenness, as well as

lawless disorder, increased. ... The writer was one day alone

in the diplomatic box, following an excited debate. A speaker

in the tribune was urging the overthrow of the monarchy, when

suddenly the entire Assembly was struck mute with

stupefaction. The Prince of Prussia, the late Emperor William

I., supposed to be in England, in terror for his life,

appeared at the door, accompanied by two officers, all three

in full uniform, and marched directly up to the tribune. The

Assembly could not have been more astounded had old Barbarossa

himself, with his seven-hundred-years-long beard, marched into

the hall out of his mountain cave. ... After a slight delay,

the President, Mr. von Grabow, accorded the tribune to the

prince. He ascended and made a short address, which was

listened to, with breathless attention, by every individual

present. He spoke with the assurance of an heir to a throne

which was not in the slightest danger of being abolished; but

he spoke with the modesty and good sense of a prince who

frankly accepted the vast transformation which the government

had undergone, and who intended honestly to endeavor to carry

out the will of the whole nation. ... This was one of many

occasions on which the honesty and superiority of the prince's

character made itself felt even by his enemies. ... Berlin was

now thoroughly tired of street tumults and the horn of the

burgher-guard. ... The Prussian troops which had been engaged

in the Schleswig-Holstein war, were now placed under General

Wrangel. ... He proceeded without delay to encircle the city

with the 25,000 troops. At the same time, a cabinet order of

the king (September 21) named a new ministry. ... At this

moment, the revolution over all Europe was nearly exhausted.

Cavaignac had put down the June insurrection. The Prussian

flag waved above the flag of Germany. The Frankfort Parliament

was rapidly dying out. ... On November 2, Count Brandenburg

stated to the Assembly that the king had requested him to form

a new ministry. ... On the same day, Count Brandenburg, with

his colleagues, appeared in the hall of the Prussian National

Assembly, and announced his desire to read a message from his

Majesty the King. ... 'As the debates are no longer free in

Berlin, the Assembly is hereby adjourned to November 27. It

will then meet, and thereafter hold its meetings, not in

Berlin, but in Brandenburg' (fifty miles from Berlin). After

reading the message, Count Brandenburg, his colleagues, and

all the members of the Right retired. ... The Assembly ...

adjourned, and met again in the evening. ... On November 10,

the Assembly met again. Their debates were interrupted by

General Wrangel, who had entered Berlin by the Brandenburg

gate, at the head of 25,000 troops. ... An officer from

General Wrangel entered the hall and politely announced that

he had received orders to disperse the Assembly. The members

submitted, and left the hall. ...

{1537}

An order was now issued dissolving the burgher-guard. On the

12th, Berlin was declared in a state of siege. ... During the

state of siege, the Assembly met again under the presidency of

Mr. von Unruh. A body of troops entered the hall, and

commanded the persons present to leave it. President von Unruh

declared he could not consistently obey the order. There was,

he said, no power higher than the Assembly. The soldiers did

not fire on him, or cut him down with their sabers; but

good-naturedly lifted his chair with him in it, and gently

deposited both in the street. ... On November 27, Count

Brandenburg went to Brandenburg to open the Assembly; but he

could not find any. It had split into two parts. ... There was

no longer a quorum. Thus the Prussian National Assembly

disappeared. On December 5; appeared a royal decree,

dissolving the National Assembly. ... Then appeared a

provisional octroyirte electoral law, for the election of two

Chambers. ... The new Chambers met February 26, 1849. ...

Prussia had thus closed the revolution of 1848, as far as she

was concerned. Bismarck was elected member of the Second

Chamber." Meantime, in the Frankfort Parliament, "the great

question, Austria's position with regard to the new Germany,

came up in the early part of November, 1848. Among many

propositions, we mention three: I. Austria should abandon her

German provinces. ... II. Austria should remain as a separate

whole, with all her provinces. ... III. The Austrian plan. All

the German States, and all the Austrian provinces (German and

non-German), should be united into one gigantic empire ...

with Austria at the head. ... Meanwhile, the debates went on

upon the questions: What shall be the form, and who shall be

the chief of what may be called the Prussian-Germany? Among

the various propositions (all rejected) were the following: 1.

A Directory, consisting of Austria, Prussia, Bavaria,

Würtemberg, and Saxony. II. The King of Prussia and Emperor of

Austria to alternate in succession every six years, as

Emperor. III. A chief magistracy, to which every German

citizen might aspire. IV. Revival of the old Bundestag, with

certain improvements. On January 23, 1849, the resolution that

one of the reigning German princes should be elected, with the

title of Emperor of Germany, was adopted (258 against 211). As

it was plain the throne could be offered to no one but

Prussia, this was a breach between the Parliament and Austria.

... The first reading of the constitution was completed,

February 3, 1849. The middle and smaller German States

declared themselves ready to accept it, but the kingdoms

remained silent. ... The real question before the Parliament

was, whether Prussia or Austria should be leader of Germany.

... On March 27, the hereditability passed by a majority of

four. On March 28, the constitution, with the democratic

electoral law, universal suffrage, the ballot, and the

suspensive veto, was voted and accepted. ... President Simson

then called the name of each member to vote upon the question

of the Emperor. There were 290 votes for Frederic William IV.

... A deputation, consisting of 30 of the most distinguished

members, was immediately sent to Berlin to communicate to the

king his election as Emperor. ... To the offer of the crown,

his Majesty replied he 'could not accept without the consent

of all the governments, and without having more carefully

examined the constitution.' ... Austria instantly rejected the

constitution, protested against the authority of the

Parliament, and recalled all her representatives from

Frankfort. The King of Würtemberg accepted; but rejected the

House of Hohenzollern as head of the Empire. Bavaria, Hanover,

Saxony, rejected; 28 of the smaller German States accepted. In

these were included the free-cities Hamburg, Bremen, Lubeck.

... On April 28, Prussia addressed a circular note to the

governments, inviting them to send representatives to Berlin,

for the purpose of framing a new constitution. The note added:

In case of any attempt to force the Frankfort constitution

upon the country, Prussia was ready to render to the

governments all necessary assistance. ... On May 3, an

insurrection broke out in Saxony. ... On May 6, Prussian

troops appeared, called by the Saxon government, and attacked

the barricades. The battle lasted three days. ... The

insurgents abandoned the city. Dresden was declared in a state

of siege. ... The King of Prussia now recalled [from the

Frankfort Parliament] all the Prussian representatives. ... By

the gradual disappearance of most of the moderate members ...

the Parliament, now a mere revolutionary committee, dwindled

down to about 100 members. A resolution, proposed by Carl

Vogt, was passed to transfer the sittings to Stuttgart. ... On

June 6, the Rump Parliament in Stuttgart elected a central

government of its own. ... The Assembly was then dispersed.

... The German revolutions commenced and ended in the Grand

Duchy of Baden. ... By a mutiny in the regular army, it

intrenched itself in the first-class fortress, Rastadt. There

were, in all, three attempts at revolution in Baden [and one

in the Palatinate]. ... A large number of the leaders were

tried and shot. ... It was for taking part in this

insurrection that Gottfried Kinkel was sentenced to

imprisonment for life in the fortress of Spandau. Carl Schurz

aided him in escaping."

T. S. Fay,

The Three Germanys,

chapters 25-26 (volume 2).

ALSO IN:

C. A. Fyffe,

History of Modern Europe,

volume 3, chapter 2.

H. von Sybel,

The Founding of the German Empire,

books 2-5 (volumes 1-2).

See, also, CONSTITUTION OF PRUSSIA.

GERMANY: A. D. 1848-1862.

Opening of the Schleswig-Holstein question.

War with Denmark.

See SCANDINAVIAN STATES (DENMARK): A. D. 1848-1862.

GERMANY: A. D. 1853-1875.

Commercial treaties with Austria and France.

Progress towards free trade.

See TARIFF LEGISLATION (GERMANY): A. D. 1853-1892.

GERMANY: A. D. 1861-1866.

Advent of King William I. and Prince Bismarck in Prussia.

Reopening of the Schleswig-Holstein question.

Conquest of the duchies by Prussia and Austria.

Consequent quarrel and war.

"King Frederic William IV. [of Prussia], never a man of strong

head, had for years been growing weaker and more eccentric.

... In the early part of 1857, symptoms of softening of the

brain began to show themselves. That disorder so developed

itself that in October, 1857, he gave a delegation to the

Prince of Prussia [his brother] to act as regent; but the

first commission was only for three months. ... The Prince's

temporary commission was renewed from time to time; but it

soon became apparent that Frederic William's case was

hopeless, and his brother was formally installed as Regent in

October, 1858.

{1538}

Ultimately, the King died in January, 1861, and his brother

succeeded to the throne as William I." In September, 1862,

Otto von Bismarck became the new King's chief minister, with

General Roon for Minister of War, appointed to carry out a

reorganization of the Prussian army which King William had

determined to effect. Bismarck found his first opportunity for

the aggrandizement of Prussia in a reopening of the

Schleswig-Holstein question, which came about in November,

1863, when "Frederic of Denmark died, and Prince Christian

succeeded to the throne of that kingdom. Already before his

accession, the duchies were possessions of the Danish

monarchy, but had in certain respects a separate

administrative existence. This Denmark, in the year of

Christian's accession, had materially infringed in the case of

Sleswig, by a law which virtually incorporated that duchy with

the Danish monarchy. The German Confederation protested

against this 'Danification' of Sleswig, and having pronounced

a decree of Federal execution against the new King of Denmark

as Duke of Holstein and, in virtue of that duchy, a member of

the German Confederation, sent into Holstein Federal troops

belonging to the smaller States of the Confederation. The

Confederation, as a collective body, favoured the

establishment of the independence of the duchies, and had with

it the wishes probably of the great mass of the German nation.

But the independence of Sleswig and Holstein scarcely suited

the views of Bismarck. He desired the annexation to Prussia of

at all events Holstein, because in Holstein is the great

harbour of Kiel, all important in view of the new fleet with

which he purposed equipping Prussia; if Sleswig could be

compassed along with Holstein, so much the better. But there

were two difficulties in Bismarck's way. Prussia was a

co-signatory of the Treaty of London. If he were to grasp at

the duchies single-handed, a host of enemies might confront

him. England was burning to take up arms in the cause of the

father of the beautiful princess she had adopted as her own.

The German Confederation would oppose Prussia's naked effort

to aggrandise herself; and Austria, in the double character of

a party to the Treaty of London and of a member of the

Confederation, would rejoice in the opportunity to strike a

blow at a power of whose rising pretensions she had begun to

be jealous. The wily Bismarck had to dissemble. He made the

proposal to Austria that the two states should ignore their

participation as individual States in the Treaty of London,

and that as corporate members of the German Confederation they

should constitute themselves the executors of the Federal

decree, and put aside the minor states whose troops had been

charged with that office. Austria acceded. It was a bad hour

for her when she did, yet she moves no compassion for the

misfortunes which befell her as the issue. ... The Diet had to

submit. The Austro-Prussian troops marched through Holstein

into Sleswig, and on the 2nd of February, 1864, struck at the

Danes occupying the Dannewerke. ... The venerable Marshal

Wrangel was commander-in-chief of the combined forces until

after the fall of Düppel, when Prince Frederic Charles

succeeded him in that position; but throughout the campaign

the control of the dispositions was mainly exercised by the

Red Prince. But neither strategy nor tactics were very

strenuously brought into use for the discomfiture of the

unfortunate Danes. Their ruin was wrought partly because of

the overwhelmingly superior force of their allied opponents,

partly because of their own unpreparedness for war in almost

everything save the possession of heroic bravery; but most of

all by the fire of the needle-gun and the Prussian advantage

in the possession of rifled artillery. Only part of the

Prussian infantry had used the needle-gun in the reduction of

the Baden insurrection in 1848; now, however, the whole army

was equipped with it. ... In their retreat from the Dannewerke

into the Düppel position, the Danes suffered severely from the

inclemency of the weather, and fought a desperate rear-guard

engagement with the Austrians. ... The Prussians undertook the

task of reducing Düppel; the Austrians marched northward into

Jutland, and driving back the Danish troops they encountered

in their march, sat down before the fortress of Fredericia,

and swept the Little Belt with their cannon. The sieges, both

of Düppel and of Fredericia, were conducted with extreme

inertness." But the former was taken and the latter abandoned.

"The Danish war was terminated by the Treaty of Vienna on the

30th October, 1864, under which the duchies of Sleswig,

Holstein, and Lauenburg were handed over to the sovereigns of

Austria and Prussia. ... Out of the Danish war of 1864 grew

almost inevitably the war of 1866, between Prussia and

Austria. The wolves quite naturally wrangled over the carcase,

and the astuter wolf had so much the better of the wrangle

that the duller one, unless he chose to be partly bullied,

partly tricked out of his share, had no alternative but to

fight for it, with the result that he clean lost that and a

great deal more besides. The future of the Elbe Duchies was

played at pitch and toss with between Prussia and Austria for

the best part of a year; the details of the game were too

intricate to be followed here. The condominium of the two

Powers in the duchies produced constant friction, which was

probably Bismarck's intention, especially as Prussia had taken

care to keep stationed in them twice as many troops as Austria

had left there. Relations were becoming very strained when in

August, 1865, the Emperor Francis Joseph and King William met

at the little watering-place of Gastein, and from their

interview originated the short-lived arrangement known as the

Convention of Gastein. By that compact, while the two Powers

preserved the common sovereignty over the duchies, Austria

accepted the administration of Holstein, Prussia undertaking

that of Sleswig. Prussia was to have rights of way through

Holstein to Sleswig, was given over the right of construction

of a North Sea and Baltic Canal; and while Kiel was

constituted a Federal harbour, Prussia was authorised to

construct there the requisite fortifications and marine

establishments, and to maintain an adequate force for the

protection of these. Assuming the arrangement to be

provisional, as on all hands it was regarded, Prussia clearly

had the advantage under it. ... But the Gastein Convention

contained another provision--that Austria should sell to

Prussia all her rights in the duchy of Lauenburg (an outlying

appanage of Holstein) for the sum of 2,500,000 thalers: thus

making market of rights of which she was but a trustee for the

German Confederation.

{1539}

The Convention of Gastein pleased nobody, but that mattered

little to Bismarck. ... Bickerings recommenced before the year

1865 was out, and early in 1866 Austria began to arm. ... In

March, 1866, a secret treaty was formed between Italy and

Prussia. ... Prussia threw the Convention of Gastein to the

winds by civilly but masterfully turning the Austrian brigade

of occupation out of Holstein. Then Austria in the Federal

Diet, complaining that by this act Prussia had disturbed the

peace of the German Confederation, moved for a decree of

Federal execution against that state, to be enforced by the

Confederation's armed strength. On the 14th June, Austria's

motion was carried by the Diet, its last act; for Prussia next

day wrecked the flimsy organisation of the German Confederation,

by declaring war against three of its component members,

Hanover, Hesse, and Saxony. There was no formal declaration of

war between Austria and Prussia, only a notification of

intended hostile action sent by the Prussian commanders to the

Austrian foreposts. On the 17th the Emperor Francis Joseph

published his war manifesto; King William on the 18th emitted

his to 'My People;' on the 20th, Italy declared war against

Austria and Bavaria."

A. Forbes,

William of Germany,

chapters 7-8.

ALSO IN:

H. von Sybel,

The Founding of the German Empire,

books 9-16 (volumes 3-4).

C. Lowe,

Prince Bismarck,

chapters 5-7 (volume 1),

and appendices. A, B, C (volume 2).

J. G. L. Hesekiel,

Life of Bismarck,

book 5, chapter 3.

Count von Beust,

Memoirs,

volume 1, chapters 22-28.

GERMANY: A. D. 1862.

The Schleswig-Holstein question.

See SCANDINAVIAN STATES (DENMARK): A. D. 1848-1862.

GERMANY: A. D. 1866.

The Seven Weeks War.

Defeat of Austria.

Victory and Supremacy of Prussia.

Her Absorption of Hanover, Hesse, Nassau, Frankfort and

Schleswig-Holstein.

Formation of the North German Confederation.

Exclusion of Austria from the Germanic organization.

"Prussia had built excellent railroads throughout the country,

and quietly placed her troops on the frontier; within 14 days

she had 500,000 men under arms. By the end of May they were on

the frontiers ready for action, while Austria was only half

prepared, and her allies only beginning to arm. On the 14th of

June the diet, by a vote of nine to six, had ordered the

immediate mobilization of a federal army; whereupon Prussia

declared the federal compact dissolved and extinguished. In

Vienna and the petty courts men said, 'Within fourteen days

after the outbreak of hostilities the allied armies will enter

Berlin in triumph and dictate peace; the power of Prussia will

be broken by two blows.' The Legitimists were exultant; even

the majority of the democracy in South Germany joined with the

Ultramontane party in shouting for Austria. On the 10th of June,

Bismark laid before the German governments the outlines of a

new federal constitution, but was not listened to; on the 15th

he made proposals to the states in the immediate neighborhood

of Prussia for a peace on these foundations, and demanded

their neutrality, adding that if they declined his peaceful

offers he would treat them as enemies. The cabinets of Dresden

and Hanover, of Cassel and Wiesbaden, declined them.

Immediately, on the night of the 15th and 16th of June,

Prussian troops entered Hanover, Hesse and Saxony. In four or

five days Prussia had disarmed all North Germany, and broken

all resistance from the North Sea to the Main. On the 18th of

June, the Prussian general Bayer entered Cassel; the Elector

was surprised at Wilhelmshöhe. As he still refused all terms

he was arrested by the direct order of the king of Prussia and

sent as a prisoner to Stettin. On the 17th, General Vogel von

Falkenstein entered Hanover. King George with his army of

18,000 men sought to escape to South Germany. After a gallant

struggle at Langensalza on the 27th, his brave troops were

surrounded. The King capitulated on the 29th. His army was

disbanded, he himself allowed to go to Vienna. On the 18th the

Prussians were in Dresden; on the 19th, in Leipzig; by the

20th, all Saxony except the fortress of Königstein was in

their hands. The king and army of Saxony, on the approach of

the Prussians, had left the country by the railroads to

Bohemia to form a junction with the Austrians. The Saxon army

consisted of 23,000 men and 60 cannon. Everyone had expected

Austria to occupy a country of such strategic value as Saxony

before the Prussians could touch it. The Austrian army

consisted of seven corps, 180,000 infantry, 24,000 cavalry,

762 guns. The popular opinion had forced the emperor to make

Benedek the commander-in-chief in Bohemia. Everything there

was new to him. The Prussians were divided into three armies:

the army of the Elbe, 40,000 men, under Herwarth von

Bittenfeld; the first army, 100,000 men, under Prince

Frederick Charles; the second or Silesian army under the Crown

Prince, 116,000 strong. The reserve consisted of 24,000

Landwehr. The whole force in this quarter numbered 280,000 men

and 800 guns. ... The Prussians knew what they were fighting

for. To the Austrians the idea of this war was something

strange. At Vienna, Benedek had spoken against war; after the

first Prussian successes, he had in confidence advised the

emperor to make peace as soon as possible. As he was unable,

from want of means, to attack, he concentrated his army

between Josephstadt and the county of Glatz. He thought only

of defence. ... On the 23rd of June the great Prussian army

commenced contemporaneously its march to Bohemia from the

Riesengebirge, from Lusatia, from Dresden. It advanced from

four points to Josephstadt-Koniggrätz, where the junction was

to take place. Bismarck had ordered, from financial as well as

political reasons, that the war must be short. The Prussian

armies had at all points debouched from the passes and entered

Bohemia before a single Austrian corps had come near these

passes. ... In a couple of days Benedek lost in a series of

fights against the three Prussian advancing armies nearly

35,000 men; five of his seven corps had been beaten. He

concentrated these seven corps at Koniggrätz in the ground

before this fortress; he determined to accept battle between

the Elbe and the Bistritz. He had, however, previously

reported to the emperor that his army after its losses was not

in a condition for a pitched battle. He wished to retire to

Moravia and avoid a battle till he had received

reinforcements. This telegram of Benedek arrived in the middle

of the exultation which filled the court of Vienna after

hearing of the victory over the Italians at Custozza.

See ITALY: A. D. 1862-1866.

{1540}

The emperor replied by ordering him briefly to give battle

immediately. Benedek, on the 1st of July, again sent word to

the emperor, 'Your majesty must conclude peace.' Yet on these

repeated warnings came the order to fight at once. Benedek had

provided for such an answer by his arrangements for July the

2nd. He had placed his 500 guns in the most favorable

positions, and occupied the country between the Elbe and the

little river Bistritz for the extent of a league. As soon as

the Prussians heard of this movement they resolved to attack

the Austrians on the 3d. On the 2d the king, accompanied by

Count Bismarck, Von Roon and Von Moltke, had joined the army.

He assumed command of the three armies. The Crown Prince and

Herwarth were ordered to advance against Königgrätz. Part of

the Crown Prince's army were still five German miles from the

intended battle ground. Prince Frederick Charles and Herwarth

had alone sustained the whole force of Austria in the struggle

around Sadowa, which began at 8 o'clock in the morning.

Frederick Charles attacked in the centre over against Sadowa;

Herwarth on the right at Nechanitz; the Crown Prince was to

advance on the left from Königinhof. The Crown Prince received

orders at four o'clock in the morning; he could not in all

probability reach the field before one or two o'clock after

noon. All depended on his arrival in good time. Prince

Frederick Charles forced the passage of the Bistritz and took

Sadowa and other places, but could not take the heights. His

troops suffered terribly from the awful fire of the Austrian

batteries. The King himself and his staff came under fire,

from which the earnest entreaties of Bismarck induced him to

retire. About one o'clock the danger in the Prussian centre

was great. After five hours of fighting they could not

advance, and began to talk of retreat. On the right, things

were better. Herwarth had defeated the Saxons, and threatened

the Austrian left. Yet, if the army of the Crown Prince did

not arrive, the battle was lost, for the Prussian centre was

broken. But the Crown Prince brought the expected succor.

About two o'clock came the news that a part of the Crown

Prince's army had been engaged since one o'clock. The

Austrians, attacked on their right flank and rear, had to give

way in front. Under loud shouts of 'Forward,' Prince Frederick

Charles took the Wood of Sadowa at three, and the heights of

Lipa at four o'clock. At this very time, four o'clock, Benedek

had already given orders to retreat. ... From the ... first

the Prussians were superior to the Austrians in ammunition,

provisions and supplies. They had a better organization,

better preparation, and the needle-gun, which proved very

destructive to the Austrians. The Austrian troops fought with

thorough gallantry. ... Respecting this campaign, an Austrian

writes: 'Given in Vienna a powerful coterie which reserves to

itself all the high commands and regards the army as its

private estate for its own private benefit, and defeat is

inevitable.' The Austrians lost at Sadowa, according to the

official accounts at Vienna, 174 cannon, 18,000 prisoners. 11

colors, 4,190 killed, 11,900 wounded, 21,400 missing,

including the prisoners. The Prussians acknowledged a loss of

only 10,000 men. The result of the battle was heavier for

Austria than the loss in the action and the retreat. The

armistice which Benedek asked for on the 4th of July was

refused by the Prussians: a second request on the 10th was

also rejected. On the 5th of July the emperor of Austria

sought the mediation of France to restore peace. ... All

further movements were put a stop to by the five days'

armistice, which began on the 22d of July at noon, and was

followed by an armistice for four weeks. ... Hostilities were

at an end on Austrian territory when the war began on the Main

against the allies of Austria. The Bavarian army, under the

aged Prince Charles, distinguished itself by being driven by

the less numerous forces of Prussia under General Falkenstein

across the Saale and the Main. ... The eighth federal army

corps of 50,000 men, composed of contingents from Baden,

Würtemberg, Electoral Hesse, Hesse-Darmstadt, Nassau, and

12,000 Austrians under Prince Alexander of Hesse, was so

mismanaged that the Würtemberg contingent believed itself sold

and betrayed. ... On the 16th of July, in the evening,

Falkenstein entered Frankfort, and in the name of the king of

Prussia took possession of this Free City, of Upper Hesse and

Nassau. Frankfort, on account of its Austrian sympathies, had

to pay a contribution of six millions of gulden to

Falkenstein, and on the 19th of July a further sum of nineteen

millions to Manteuffel, the successor of Falkenstein. The

latter sum was remitted when the hitherto Free City became a

Prussian city. Manteuffel, in several actions from the 23d to

the 26th of July, drove the federal army back to Würzburg;

Göben defeated the army of Baden at Werbach, and that of

Würtemberg at Tauberbischofsheim; before this the eighth

federal army corps joined the Bavarian army, and on the 25th

and 26th of July the united forces were defeated at Gerschheim

and Rossbrunn, and on the 27th, the citadel of Würzburg was

invested. The court of Vienna had abandoned its South German

allies when it concluded the armistice; it had not included

its allies either in the armistice or the truce. ... On the

29th of July, the Baden troops marched off homewards in the

night, the Austrians marched to Bohemia, the Bavarians

purchased an armistice by surrendering Würzburg to the

Prussians. Thus of the eighth army corps, the Würtembergers

and Hessians alone kept the field. On the 2d of August these

remains of the eighth army corps were included in the

armistice of Nicholsburg. ... On the 23d of August peace was

signed between Austria and Prussia at Prague. Bismarck treated

Austria with great consideration, and demanded only twenty

millions of thalers as war indemnity; Würtemberg had to pay

eight millions of gulden, Baden six millions, Hesse-Darmstadt

three millions, Bavaria thirty millions of gulden. The

Würtemberg minister, Varnbüler, and the Baden minister,

Freydorf, offered to form an offensive and defensive alliance

with Prussia for the purpose of saving the ruling families,

and in alarm lest Bavaria and Hesse-Darmstadt might seek in

their territories compensation for cessions to Prussia.

Bavaria also formed an alliance with Prussia, and ceded a

small district in the north. Hesse-Darmstadt ceded

Hesse-Homburg and some pieces of territory, and entered the

North German Confederation, giving to Prussia the right of

keeping a garrison in Mainz.

{1541}

Austria renounced her claims on Schleswig and Holstein,

acknowledged the dissolution of the German Confederation and a

modification of Germany by which Austria was excluded. It

recognized the creation of the North German Confederation, the

union of Venetia to Italy, the territorial alterations in

North Germany. Prussia acknowledged the territorial

possessions of Austria with the sole exception of Venetia; and

also of Saxony; and undertook to obtain the assent of the King

of Italy to the peace. Prussia announced the incorporation of

Schleswig-Holstein, the Free City of Frankfort, the Kingdom of

Hanover, the Electorate of Hesse, and the Duchy of Nassau,

subject to the payment of annual incomes to the deposed

princes. The Kingdom of Saxony, the two Mecklenburgs, the

Hanse-towns, Oldenburg, Brunswick, and the Thuringian states

entered the North German Confederation. Prussia now contained

twenty-four millions of inhabitants, or including the Northern

Confederation, twenty-nine millions. The military forces of

the Confederation were placed under the command of Prussia.

The states north of the Main were at liberty to form a

Southern Confederation, the connection of which with the

Northern Confederation was to be a subject of future

discussion. Moreover, Bavaria, Baden and Würtemberg had

engaged 'in case of war to place their whole military force at

the disposal of Prussia,' and Prussia guaranteed their

sovereignty and the integrity of their territory. Saxony paid

ten millions of thalers as a war indemnity. Prussia received

on the whole, as war indemnities, eighty-two millions of

gulden. Thus ended in the year 1866 the struggle [known as the

Seven Weeks War] between Austria and Prussia for the

leadership of Germany."

W. Zimmermann,

Popular History of Germany,

book 6, chapter 3 (v. 4).

ALSO IN:

H. von Sybel,

The Founding of the German Empire,

books 17-20 (volume 5).

Major C. Adams,

Great Campaigns in Europe from 1796 to 1870,

chapter 10.

Count von Beust,

Memoirs,

volume 1, chapters 29-34.

G. B. Malleson,

The Refounding of the German Empire,

chapters 6-10.

GERMANY: A. D. 1866-1867.

Foreshadowings of the new Empire.

"We may make the statement that in the autumn of 1866 the

German Empire was founded. ... The Southern States were not

yet members of the Confederation, but were already, to use an

old expression, relatives of the Confederation

(Bundesverwandte) in virtue of the offensive and defensive

alliances with Prussia and of the new organization of the

Tariff-Union. ... The natural and inevitable course of events

must here irresistibly break its way, unless some circumstance

not to be foreseen should throw down the barriers beforehand.

How soon such a crisis might take place no one could at that

time estimate. But in regard to the certainty of the final

result there was in Germany no longer any doubt. ...

Three-fourths of the territory of this Empire was dominated by

a Government that was in the first place efficient in military

organization, guided by the firm hand of King William,

counselled by the representatives of the North German

Sovereigns, and recognized by all the Powers of Europe. The

opening of that Parliament was near at hand, that should in

common with this Government determine the limitations to be

placed upon the powers of the Confederation in its relation to

the individual states and also the functions of the new

Reichstag in the legislation and in the control of the

finances of the Confederation. ... It was, in the first place,

certain that the functions of the future supreme Confederate

authority would be in general the same as those specified in

the Imperial Constitution of 1849. ... The most radical

difference between 1849 and 1866 consisted in the form of the

Confederate Government. The former period aimed at the

appointment of a Constitutional and hereditary emperor, with

responsible ministers, to the utter exclusion of the German

sovereigns: whereas now the plan included all of these

sovereigns in a Confederate Council (Bundesrath) organized

after the fashion of the old Confederate Diet, with committees

for the various branches of the administration, and under the

presidency of the King of Prussia, who should occupy a

superior position in virtue of the conduct, placed in his

hands once for all, of the foreign policy, the army and the

navy, but who otherwise in the Confederate Council, in spite

of the increase of his votes, could be outvoted like every

other prince by a decree of the Majority. ... Before the time

of the peace-conferences, when all definite arrangements of

Germany's future seemed suspended in the balance and

undecided, the Crown Prince Frederick William, who in general

had in mind for the supreme head of the Confederation a higher

rank and position of power than did the Ring, maintained that

his father should bear the title of King of Germany. Bismarck

reminded him that there were other Kings in Germany: the Kings

of Hanover, of Saxony, etc. 'These,' was the reply, 'will then

take the title of Dukes.' 'But they will not agree to that.'

'They will have to!' cried His Royal Highness. After the

further course of events, the Crown Prince indeed gave up his

project; but in the early part of 1867 he asserted that the

King should assume the title of German Emperor, arguing that

the people would connect no tangible idea with the title of

President of the Confederation, whereas the renewal of the

imperial dignity would represent to them the actual

incorporation of the unity finally attained, and the

remembrance of the old glory and power of the Empire would

kindle all hearts. This idea, as we have experienced and

continue to experience its realization, was in itself

perfectly correct: But it was evidently at that time

premature: a North German empire would have aroused no

enthusiasm in the north, and would have seriously hindered the

accomplishment of the national aim in the south. King William

rejected this proposition very decidedly: in his own simple

way he wished to be nothing more than Confederate

Commander-in-chief and the first among his peers."

H. von Sybel,

The Founding of the German Empire by William I.,

book 20, chapter 4 (volume 5).

{1542}

GERMANY: A. D. 1866-1870.

Territorial concessions demanded by France.

Rapid progress of German unification.

The Zollparlament.

The Luxemburg question.

French determination for war.

"The conditions of peace ... left it open to the Southern

States to choose what relationship they would form with the

Northern Confederation. This was a compromise between Bismarck

and Napoleon, the latter fearing a United Germany, the former

preferring to restrict himself to what was attainable at the

time, and taking care not to humiliate or seriously to injure

Austria, whose friendship he foresaw that Germany would need.

Meanwhile Napoleon's interference continued. Scarcely had

Benedetti, who had followed Bismarck to the battle-fields,

returned to Berlin, when he received orders from his

Government to demand not less than the left bank of the Rhine

as a compensation for Prussia's increase of territory. For

this purpose he submitted the draft of a treaty by which

Prussia was even to bind herself to lend an active support to

the cession of the Bavarian and Hessian possessions west of

the Rhine! ... Bismarck would listen to no mention of ceding

German territory. 'Si vous refusez,' said the conceited

Corsican, 'c'est la guerre.'--'Eh bien, la guerre,' replied

Bismarck calmly. Just as little success had Benedetti with

King William. 'Not a clod of German soil, not a chimney of a

German village,' was William's kingly reply. Napoleon was not

disposed at the time to carry out his threat. He disavowed

Benedetti's action, declaring that the instructions had been

obtained from him during his illness and that he wished to

live in peace and friendship with Prussia. Napoleon's

covetousness had at least one good effect: it furthered the

work of German union. Bavaria and Würtemberg, who during the

war had sided with Austria, had at first appealed to Napoleon

to mediate between them and Prussia. But when the Ministers of

the four South German States appeared at Berlin to negotiate

with Bismarck, and Benedetti's draft-treaty was communicated

to them, there was a complete change of disposition. They then

wished to go much further than the Prussian Statesman was

prepared to go: they asked, in order to be protected from

French encroachments, to be admitted into the North German

Confederation. But Bismarck would not depart from the

stipulations of the Treaty of Nikolsburg. The most important

result of the negotiations was that secret treaties were

concluded by which the Southern States bound themselves to an

alliance with the Northern Confederation for the defence of

Germany, and engaged to place their troops under the supreme

command of the Prussian King in the event of any attack by a

foreign Power. In a military sense Klein-Deutschland was now

one, though not yet politically. ... That Prussia was the

truly representative German State had been obvious to the

thoughtful long before: the fact now stood out in clear light

to all who would open their eyes to see. Progress had

meanwhile been made with the construction of the North German

Confederation, which embraced all the States to the north of

the river Main. Its affairs were to be regulated by a

Reichstag elected by universal suffrage and by a Federal

Council formed of the representatives of the North German

Governments. In a military sense it was a Single State,

politically a Confederate State, with the King of Prussia as

President. This arrangement was not of course regarded as

final: and in his speech from the throne to the North German

Reichstag, King William emphasized the declaration that

Germany, so long torn, so long powerless, so long the theatre

of war for foreign nations, would henceforth strive to recover

the greatness of her past. ... A first step towards 'bridging

over the Main,' i. e., causing South and North to join hands

again, was taken by the creation of a Zollparlament, or

'Customs Parliament, which was elected by the whole of

Klein-Deutschland, and met at Berlin, henceforth the capital

of Germany. It was also a step in advance that Baden and

Hesse-Darmstadt signed conventions, by which their military

system was put on the same footing as that of the North German

Confederation. Baden indeed would willingly have entered into

political union with the North, had the same disposition

prevailed at the time in the other South German States. The

National Liberals however had to contend with strong

opposition from the Democrats in Würtemberg, and from the

Ultramontanes in Bavaria. The latter were hostile to Prussia

on account of her Protestantism, the former on account of the

stern principles and severe discipline that pervaded her

administration. ... In the work of German unification the

Bonapartes have an important share. ... By outraging the

principle of nationality, Napoleon I. had re-awakened the

feeling of nationality among Germans: Napoleon III., by

attempting to prevent the unification of Germany, actually

hastened it on. ... When King William had replied that he

would not yield up an inch of German soil, 'patriotic pangs'

at Prussian successes and the thirst for 'compensation'

continued to disturb the sleep of the French Emperor, and as

he was unwilling to appear baffled in his purpose, he returned

to the charge. On the 16th of August, 1866, through his

Ambassador Benedetti, he demanded 'the cession of Landau,

Saarbrücken, Saarlouis, and Luxemburg, together with Prussia's

consent to the annexation of Belgium by France. If that could

not be obtained, he would be satisfied with Luxemburg and

Belgium; he would even exclude Antwerp from the territory

claimed that it might be created a free town. Thus he hoped to

spare the susceptibilities of England. As a gracious return he

offered the alliance of France. After his first interview

Benedetti gave up his demand for the three German towns, and

submitted a new scheme, according to which Germany should

induce the King of the Netherlands to a cession of Luxemburg,

and should support France in the conquest of Belgium; whilst,

on his part, Napoleon would permit the formation of a federal

union between the Northern Confederation and the South German

States, and would enter into a defensive and offensive

alliance with Germany. Count Bismarck treated these

propositions, as he himself has stated, 'in a dilatory

manner,' that is to say, he did not reject them, but he took

good care not to make any definite promises. When the Prussian

Prime Minister returned from his furlough to Berlin, towards

the end of 1866, Benedetti resumed his negotiations, but now

only with regard to Luxemburg, still garrisoned by Prussian

troops as at the time of the old Germanic Confederation.

Though the Grand-Duchy of Luxemburg did not belong to the new

North German Confederation, Bismarck was not willing to allow

it to be annexed by France. Moltke moreover declared that the

fortress could only be evacuated by the Prussian troops if the

fortifications were razed. But without its fortifications

Napoleon would not have it. And when, with regard to the

Emperor's intentions upon Belgium, Prussia offered no active

support, but only promised observance of neutrality, France

renounced the idea of an alliance with Prussia, and entered

into direct negotiations with the King of Holland, as

Grand-Duke of Luxemburg.

{1543}

Great excitement was thereby caused in Germany, and, as a

timely warning to France, Bismarck surprised the world with

the publication of the secret treaties between Prussia and the

South German States. But when it became known that the King of

Holland was actually consenting to the sale of his rights in

Luxemburg to Napoleon, there was so loud a cry of indignation

in all parts of Germany, there was so powerful a protest in

the North German Parliament against any sale of German

territory by the King of Holland, that Count Bismarck, himself

surprised at the vigour of the patriotic outburst, declared to

the Government of the Hague that the cession of Luxemburg

would be considered a casus belli. This peremptory declaration

had the desired effect: the cession did not take place. This

was the first success in European politics of a united

Germany, united not yet politically, but in spirit. That was

satisfactory. A Conference of the Great Powers then met in

London [May, 1867]: by its decision, Luxemburg was separated

from Germany, and,--to give some kind of satisfaction to the

Emperor of the French,--was formed into a neutral State. From

a national point of view, that was unsatisfactory. ... The

danger of an outbreak of war between France and Germany had

only been warded off for a time by the international

settlement of the Luxemburg question. ... In the early part of

July, 1870, Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, at the

request of the Spanish Government; became a candidate for the

Spanish throne. Napoleon III. seized the occasion to carry

into effect his hostile intentions against Germany."

G. Krause,

The Growth of German Unity,

chapter 13-14.

ALSO IN:

E. Simon,

The Emperor William and his Reign,

chapter 9-10 (volume l).

C. A. Fyffe,

History of Modern Europe,

volume 3, chapter 5-6.

GERMANY: A. D. 1870 (June-July).

"The Hohenzollern incident."

French Declaration of War.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1870 (JUNE-JULY).

GERMANY: A. D. 1870 (September-December).

The Germanic Confederation completed.

Federative treaties with the states of South Germany.

Suggestion of the Empire.

"Having decided on taking Strasburg and Metz from France"

Prussia "could only justify that conquest by considerations of

the safety of South Germany, and she could only defend these

interests by effecting the union of North and South. She found

it necessary to realise this union at any price, even by some

concessions in favour of the autonomy of those States, and

especially of Bavaria. Such was the spirit in which

negotiations were opened, in the middle of September, 1870,

between Bavaria and Prussia, with the participation of Baden,

Wurtemberg and Hesse-Darmstadt. ... Prussia asked at first for

entire and unreserved adhesion to the Northern Confederation,

a solution acceptable to Baden, Wurtemberg and

Hesse-Darmstadt, but not to Bavaria, who demanded for herself

the preservation of certain rights, and for her King a

privileged position in the future Confederation next to the

King of Prussia. The negotiations with Baden and

Hesse-Darmstadt came to a conclusion on the 15th of November;

and on the 25th, Wurtemberg accepted the same arrangement.

These three States agreed to the constitution, slightly

modified, of the Northern Confederation; the new treaties were

completed by military conventions, establishing the fusion of

the respective Corps d'Armée with the Federal Army of the

North, under the command of the King of Prussia. The Treaty

with Bavaria was signed at Versailles on the 23rd of November.

The concessions obtained by the Cabinet of Munich were reduced

to mere trifles. ... The King of Bavaria was allowed the

command of his army in time of peace. He was granted the

administration of the Post-Office and partial autonomy of

indirect contributions. A committee was conceded, in the

Federal Council, for Foreign Affairs, under the Presidency of

Bavaria. The right of the King of Prussia, as President of

this Council, to declare war, was made conditional on its

consent. Such were the Treaties submitted on the 24th of

November to the sanction of the Parliament of the North,

assembled in an Extraordinary Session. They met with intense

opposition from the National Liberal and from the Progressive

Party," but "the Parliament sanctioned the treaties on the

10th of December. According to the Treaties, the new

association received the title of Germanic Confederation, and

the King of Prussia that of its President. These titles were

soon to undergo an important alteration. The King of Bavaria,

satisfied with the concessions, more apparent than real, made

by the Prussian Cabinet to his rights of sovereignty,

consented to defer to the wishes of King William. On the 4th

of December, King Louis addressed him [King William] a letter,

informing him that he had invited the Confederate sovereigns

to revive the German Empire and confer the title of Emperor on

the President of the Confederation. ... The sovereigns

immediately gave their consent, so that the Imperial titles

could be introduced into the new Constitution before the final

ote of the Parliament of the North. ... To tell the truth, King

William attached slight importance to the votes of the various

Chambers. He was not desirous of receiving his new dignity

from the hands of a Parliament; the assent of the sovereigns

was in his eyes far more essential."

E. Simon,

The Emperor William and his Reign,

chapter 13 (volume 2).

ALSO IN:

G. Freytag,

The Crown Prince and the Imperial Crown.

GERMANY: A. D. 1870-1871.

Victorious war with France.

Siege of Paris.

Occupation of the city.

Enormous indemnity exacted.

Acquisition of Alsace and part of Lorraine.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1870 (JULY-AUGUST)

to 1871 (JANUARY-MAY).

GERMANY: A. D. 1871 (January).

Assumption of the Imperial dignity by King William,

at Versailles.

"Early in December the proposition came from King Ludwig of

Bavaria to King William, that the possession of the

presidential rights of the Confederacy vested in the Prussian

monarch should be coupled with the imperial title. The King of

Saxony spoke to the same purport; and in one day a measure

providing for the amendment of the Constitution by the

substitution of the words 'Emperor' and 'Empire' for

'President' and 'Confederation' was passed through the North

German Parliament, which voted also an address to his Majesty,

from which the following is an extract: 'The North German

Parliament, in unison with the Princes of Germany, approaches

with the prayer that your Majesty will deign to consecrate the

work of unification by accepting the Imperial Crown of Germany.

{1544}

The Teutonic Crown on the head of your Majesty will

inaugurate, for the re-established Empire of the German

nation, an era of power, of peace, of well-being, and of

liberty secured under the protection of the laws.' The address

of the German Parliament was presented to the King at

Versailles on Sunday, the 18th of December, by its speaker,

Herr Simson, who, as speaker of the Frankfort Parliament in

1848, had made the identical proffer to William's brother and

predecessor [see above: A. D. 1848-1850]. ... The formal

ratification of assent to the Prussian King's assumption of

the imperial dignity had yet to be received from the minor

German States; but this was a foregone conclusion, and the

unification of Germany really dates from that 18th of

December, and from the solemn ceremonial in the prefecture of

Versailles."

A. Forbes,

William of Germany,

chapter 12.

King William's formal assumption of the Imperial dignity took

place on the 18th of January, 1871. "The Crown Prince was

entrusted with all the preparations for the ceremony. Every

regiment in the army of investment was instructed to send its

colours in charge of an officer and two non-commissioned

officers to Versailles, and all the higher officers who could

be spared from duty were ordered to attend, for the army was

to represent the German nation at this memorable scene. The

Crown Prince escorted his father from the Prefecture to the

palace of Versailles, where all the German Princes or their

representatives were assembled in the Galerie des Glaces. A

special service was read by the military chaplains, and then

the Emperor, mounting on the dais, announced his assumption of

Imperial authority, and instructed his Chancellor to read the

Proclamation issued to the whole German nation. Then the Crown

Prince, as the first subject of the Empire, came forward and

performed the solemn act of homage, kneeling down before his

Imperial Father. The Emperor raised him and clasped to his

arms the son who had toiled and fought and borne so great a

share in achieving what many generations had desired in vain."

R. Rodd,

Frederick, Crown Prince and Emperor,

chapter 5.

ALSO IN:

C. Lowe,

Prince Bismarck,

chapter 9 (volume 1).

GERMANY: A. D. 1871 (April).

The Constitution of the new Empire.

By a proclamation dated April 16, 1871, the German Emperor

ordered, "in the name of the German Empire, by and with the

consent of the Council of the Confederation and of the

Imperial Diet," that "in the place of the Constitution of the

German Confederation," as agreed to in November 1870, there be

substituted a Constitution for the German Empire,--the text of

which appeared as an appendix to this imperial decree. For a

full translation of the text of the Constitution,

See CONSTITUTION OF GERMANY.

ALSO IN:

E. Hertslet,

The Map of Europe by Treaty,

volume 3, Number 442.

C. Lowe,

Prince Bismarck,

appendix F. (volume 2).

GERMANY: A. D. 1871-1879.

Organization of the government of Alsace-Lorraine as an

imperial province.

"How to garner the territorial harvest of the

war--Alsace-Lorraine--was a question which greatly vexed the

parliamentary mind. Several possible solutions had presented

themselves. The conquered provinces might be made neutral

territory, which, with Belgium on one side, and Switzerland on

the other, would thus interpose a continuous barrier against

French aggression from the mouth of the Rhine to its source.

But one fatal objection, among several others, to the adoption

of this course, was the utter lack, in the Alsace-Lorrainers,

of the primary condition of the existence of all neutral

States--a determination on the part of the neutralised people

themselves to be and remain neutral. And none knew better than

Bismarck that it would take years of the most careful nursing

to reconcile the kidnapped children of France to their

adoptive parent. For him, the only serious question was

whether Alsace-Lorraine should be annexed to Prussia, or be

made an immediate Reichsland (Imperial Province). 'From the

very first,' he said, 'I was most decidedly for the latter

alternative, first--because there is no reason why dynastic

questions should be mixed up with political ones; and,

secondly--because I think it will be easier for the Alsatians

to take to the name of "German" than to that at of "Prussian,"

the latter being detested in France in comparison with the

other.' In its first session, accordingly, the Diet was asked

to pass a law incorporating Alsace-Lorraine with the Empire,

and placing the annexed provinces under a provisional

dictatorship till the 1st January, 1874, when they would enter

into the enjoyment of constitutional rights in common with the

rest of the nation. But the latter clause provoked much

controversy. ... A compromise was ultimately effected by which

the duration of the dictatorship, or period within which the

Imperial Government alone was to have the right of making laws

for Alsace-Lorraine, was shortened till 1st January, 1873;

while the Diet, on the other hand, was only to have

supervision of such loans or guarantees as affected the

Empire. In the following year, however, the Diet came to the

conclusion that, after all, the original term fixed for the

dictatorship was the more advisable of the two, and prolonged

it accordingly. For the next three years, therefore, the

Reichsland was governed from the Wilhelmstrasse, as India is

ruled from Downing Street. ... In the beginning of 1874 ...

fifteen deputies from Alsace-Lorraine--now thus far admitted

within the pale of the Constitution--took their seats in the

second German Parliament. Of these fifteen deputies, five were

out-and-out French Protesters, and the rest Clericals--seven

of the latter being clergymen, including the Bishops of Metz

and Strasburg. They entered the Diet in a body, with much

theatrical pomp, the clergy wearing their robes; and one of

the French Protesters--bearing the unfortunate name of

Teutsch--immediately tabled a motion that the inhabitants of

Alsace-Lorraine, having been annexed to Germany without being

themselves consulted, should now be granted an opportunity of

expressing their opinion on the subject by a plebiscite. ...

The motion of French Mr. Teutsch, who spoke fluent German, was

of course rejected; whereupon he and several of his

compatriots straightway returned home, and left the Diet to

deal with the interests of their constituents as it liked.

Those of his colleagues who remained behind only did so to

complain of the 'intolerable tyranny' under which the

provinces were groaning, and to move for the repeal of the law

(of December, 1871) which invested the local Government with

dictatorial powers. ...

{1545}

Believing home-rule to be one of the best guarantees of

federal cohesion, Bismarck determined to try the effect of

this cementing agency on the newest part of the Imperial

edifice; and, in the autumn of 1874, he advised the Emperor to

grant the Alsace-Lorrainers (not by law, but by ordinance,

which could easily be revoked) a previous voice on all bills

to be submitted to the Reichstag on the domestic and fiscal

affairs of the provinces. ... In the following summer (June,

1875), therefore, there met at Strasburg the first

Landesausschuss, or Provincial Committee, composed of

delegates, thirty in number, from the administrative District

Councils. ... So well, indeed, on the whole, did this

arrangement work, that within two years of its creation the

Landesausschuss was invested with much broader powers. ...

Thus it came about that, while the Reichsland continued to be

governed from Berlin, the making of its laws was more and more

confined to Strasburg. ... The party of the Irreconcilables

had been gradually giving way to the Autonomists, or those who

subordinated the question of nationality to that of home-rule.

Rapidly gaining in strength, this latter party at last (in the

spring of 1879) petitioned the Reichstag for an independent

Government, with its seat in Strasburg, for the representation

of the Reichsland in the Federal Council, and for an

enlargement of the functions of the Provincial Committee.

Nothing could have been more gratifying to Bismarck than this

request, amounting, as it did, to a reluctant recognition of

the Treaty of Frankfort on the part of the Alsace-Lorrainers.

He therefore replied that he was quite willing to confer on

the provinces 'the highest degree of independence compatible

with the military security of the Empire.' The Diet, without

distinction of party, applauded his words; and not only that,

but it hastened to pass a bill embodying ideas at which the

Chancellor himself had hinted in the previous year. By this

bill, the government of Alsace-Lorraine was to centre in a

Statthalter, or Imperial Viceroy, living at Strasburg, instead

of, as heretofore, in the chancellor. ... Without being a

Sovereign, this Statthalter was to exercise all but sovereign

rights. ... For this high office the Emperor selected the

brilliant soldier-statesman, Marshal Manteuffel. ...

Certainly, His Majesty could not possibly have chosen a better

man for the responsible office, which the Marshal assumed on

the 1st October, 1879. Henceforth, the conquered provinces

entered an entirely new phase of their existence. ... Whether

the Reichsland will ever ripen into an integral part of

Prussia, or into a regular Federal State with a Prussian

prince for its Sovereign, the future alone can show."

C. Lowe,

Prince Bismarck,

chapter 14 (volume 2).

GERMANY: A. D. 1873-1887.

The Culturkampf.

The "May Laws" and their repeal.

"The German Culturkampf, or civilization-fight, as its

illustrious chief promoter is said to have named it, may

equally well be styled the religion combat, or education

strife. ... The arena of the Culturkampf in Germany is,

strictly speaking, Prussia and Hesse Darmstadt--pre-eminently

the former. According to the last census, taken December 1,

1880, the population of Prussia is 27,278,911. Of these, the

Protestants are 17,645,462, being 64.7 per cent., and the

Catholics 9,205,136, or 34.1 per cent., of the total

population. The remainder are principally Jews, amounting to

363,790, or 1.334 per cent. It was on the 9th of January,

1873, that Dr. Falk, Minister of Public Worship, first

introduced into the Prussian Diet the bills, which were

afterwards to be known as the May Laws [so called because they

were generally passed in the month of May, although in

different years, but also called the Falk Laws, from the

Minister who framed them]. These laws, which, for the future,

were to regulate the relations of Church and State, purported

to apply to the Evangelical or united Protestant State Church

of Prussia ... as well as to the Catholic Church. Their

professed main objects were: first, to insure greater liberty

to individual lay members of those churches; secondly, to

secure a German and national, rather than an 'Ultramontane'

and non-national, training for the clergy; and, thirdly, to

protect the inferior clergy against the tyranny of their

superiors--which simply meant, as proved in the sequel, the

withdrawal of priests and people, in matters spiritual, from

the jurisdiction of the bishops, and the separation of

Catholic Prussia from the Centre of Unity; thus substituting a

local or national Church, bound hand and foot, under State

regulation, for a flourishing branch of the Universal Church.

To promote these objects, it was provided, that all

Ecclesiastical seminaries should be placed under State

control; and that all candidates for the priesthood should

pass a State examination in the usual subjects of a liberal

education; and it was further provided, that the State should

have the right to confirm or to reject all appointments of

clergy. These bills were readily passed: and all the religious

orders and congregations were suppressed, with the provisional

exception of those which devoted themselves to the care of the

sick; and all Catholic seminaries were closed. ... The Bishops

refused to obey the new laws, which in conscience they could

not accept; and they subscribed a collective declaration to

this effect, on the 26th of May 1873. On the 7th of August

following, Pope Pius IX. addressed a strong letter of

remonstrance to the Emperor William; but entirely without

effect, as may be seen in the Imperial reply of the 5th of

September. In punishment of their opposition, several of the

Bishops and great numbers of their clergy were fined,

imprisoned, exiled, and deprived of their salaries. Especially

notable among the victims of persecution, were the venerable

Archbishop of Cologne, Primate of Prussia, the Bishop of

Munster, the Prince Bishop of Breslau, the Bishop of

Paderborn, and Cardinal Ledochowski, Archbishop of Gnesen and

Posen, on whom, then in prison, a Cardinal's hat was conferred

by the Pope, in March 1875, as a mark of sympathy, encouragement,

and approval. ... The fifteen Catholic dioceses of Prussia

comprised, in January 1873, a Catholic aggregate of 8,711,535

souls. They were administered by 4,627 parish-priests, and

3,812 coadjutor-priests, or curates, being a total of 8,439

clergy. Eight years later, owing to the operation of the May

Laws, there were exiled or dead, without being replaced, 1,770

of these clergy, viz., 1,125 parish-priests, and 645,

coadjutor-priests; and there were 601 parishes, comprising

644,697 souls, quite destitute of clerical care, and 584

parishes, or 1,501,994 souls, partially destitute thereof.

Besides these 1,770 secular priests, dead or exiled, and not

replaced, there were the regular clergy (the members of

religious orders), all of whom had been expelled."

J. N. Murphy,

The Chair of Peter,

chapter 29.

{1546}

"Why was the Kulturkampf undertaken? This is a question often

asked, and answered in different ways. That Ultramontanism is

a danger to the Empire is the usual explanation; but proof is

not producible. ... Ultramontanism, as it is understood in

France and Belgium, has never taken root in Germany. It was

represented by the Jesuits, and when they were got rid of,

Catholicism remained as a religion, but not as a political

factor. ... The real purpose of the Kulturkampf has been, I

conceive, centralisation. It has not been waged against the

Roman Church only, for the same process has been followed with

the Protestant Churches. It was intolerable in a strong

centralising Government to have a Calvinist and a Lutheran

Church side by side, and both to call themselves Protestant.

It interfered with systematic and neat account-keeping of

public expenditure for religious purposes. Consequently, in

1839, the King of Prussia suppressed Calvinism and

Lutheranism, and established a new Evangelical Church on their

ruins, with constitution and liturgy chiefly of his own

drawing up. The Protestant churches of Baden, Nassau, Hesse,

and the Bavarian Palatinate have also been fused and organised

on the Prussian pattern. In Schleswig-Holstein and in Hanover

existed pure Lutherans, but they, for uniformity's sake, have

been also recently unified and melted into the Landeskirche of

Prussia. A military government cannot tolerate any sort of

double allegiance in its subjects. Education and religion,

medicine and jurisprudence, telegraphs and post-office, must

be under the jurisdiction of the State. ... From the point of

view of a military despotism, the May laws are reasonable and

necessary. As Germany is a great camp, the clergy, Protestant

and Catholic, must be military chaplains amenable to the

general in command. ... I have no doubt whatever that this is

the real explanation of the Kulturkampf, and that all other

explanations are excuses and inventions. ... The Chancellor,

when he began the crusade, had probably no idea of the

opposition he would meet with, and when the opposition

manifested itself, it irritated him, and made him more dogged

in pursuing his scheme."

S. Baring-Gould,

Germany, Present and Past,

chapter 13 (volume 2).

"The passive resistance of the clergy and laity, standing on

their own ground, and acting together in complete agreement,

succeeded in the end. The laity had recognised their own

priests, even when suspended by government, and had resolutely

refused to receive others; and both priests and laity insisted

upon the Church regulating its own theological education.

Prussia and Baden became weary of the contest. In 1880 and

1881 the 'May Laws' were suspended, and, after negotiation

with Leo XIII., they were to a large extent repealed. By this

change, completed In April, 1887, the obligations of civil

marriage and the vesting of Catholic property in the hands of

lay trustees were retained, but the legislative interference

with the administration of the Church, including the education

required for the priesthood, was wholly abandoned. The

Prussian Government had entirely miscalculated its power with

the Church."

S. Baring-Gould,

The Church in Germany,

chapter 21.

By the Bill passed in 1887, "all religious congregations which

existed before the passing of the law of May 31, 1875, were to

be allowed to re-establish themselves, provided their objects

were purely religious, charitable, or contemplative. ... The

Society of Jesus, which is a teaching order, was not included

in this permission. But Prince Bismarck's determination never

to readmit the Jesuits is well known. ... The Bill left very

few vestiges of the May laws remaining."

Annual Register, 1887,

part 1, page 245.

ALSO IN:

C. Lowe,

Prince Bismarck,

chapters 12-13 (volume 2).

GERMANY: A. D. 1878-1879.

Prince Bismarck's economic revolution.

Adoption of the Protective policy.

See TARIFF LEGISLATION (GERMANY): A. D. 1853-1892.

GERMANY: A. D. 1878-1893.

The Socialist Parties.

See SOCIALIST PARTIES IN GERMANY.

GERMANY: A. D. 1882.

The Triple Alliance.

See TRIPLE ALLIANCE.

GERMANY: A. D. 1884-1889.

Colonization in Africa.

Territorial seizures.

The Berlin Conference.

See AFRICA: A. D. 1884-1891.

GERMANY: A. D. 1888.

Death of the Emperor William I.

Accession and death of Frederick III.

Accession of William II.

The Emperor William died on the 9th of March, 1888. He was

succeeded by his son, proclaimed under the title of Frederick

III. The new Emperor was then at San Remo, undergoing

treatment for a mortal malady of the throat. He returned at

once to Berlin, where an unfavorable turn of the disease soon

appeared. "Consequently an Imperial decree, dated the 21st of

March, was addressed to the Crown Prince and published,

expressing the wish of the Emperor that the Prince should make

himself conversant with the affairs of State by immediate

participation therein. His Imperial Highness was accordingly

entrusted with the preparation and discharge of such State

business as the Emperor should assign to him, and he was

empowered in the performance of this duty to affix all

necessary signatures, as the representative of the Emperor,

without obtaining an especial authorisation on each occasion.

... The insidious malady from which the Emperor suffered

exhibited many fluctuations," but the end came on the 15th of

June, his reign having lasted only three months. He was

succeeded by his eldest son, who became Emperor William II.

Eminent Persons:

Biographies reprinted from The Times,

volume 4, pages 112-115.

ALSO IN:

R. Rodd,

Frederick, Crown Prince and Emperor.

G. Freytag,

The Crown Prince.

GERMANY: A. D. 1888.

The end of the Free Cities.

"The last two cities to uphold the name and traditions of the

Hanseatic League, Hamburg and Bremen, have been incorporated

into the German Zoll Verein, thus finally surrendering their

old historical privileges as free ports. Lübeck took this step

some twenty-two years ago [1866], Hamburg and Bremen not till

October, 1888--so long had they resisted Prince Bismarck's

more or less gentle suasions to enter his Protection League.

... They, and Hamburg in particular, held out nobly, jealous,

and rightly jealous, of the curtailment of those privileges

which distinguished them from the other cities of the German

Empire. It was after the foundation of this empire that the

claim of the two cities to remain free ports was conceded and

ratified in the Imperial Constitution of April, 1871, though

the privilege, in the case of Hamburg, was restricted to the

city and port, and withdrawn from the rest of the State, which

extends to the mouth of the Elbe and embraces about 160 square

miles, while the free-port territory was reduced to 28 square

miles.

{1547}

This was the first serious interference with the city's

liberty, and others followed, perhaps rather of a petty,

annoying, than of a seriously aggressive, character, but

enough to show the direction in which the wind was blowing. It

was in 1880 that the proposal to include Hamburg in the

Customs Union was first politically discussed. ... In May,

1881, ... was drafted a proposal to the effect that the whole

of the city and port of Hamburg should be included in the Zoll

Verein." After long and earnest discussion the proposition was

adopted by the Senate and the House of Burgesses. "The details

for carrying into effect this conclusion have occupied seven

years, and the event was finally celebrated with great pomp,

the Emperor William II. coming in person to enhance the

solemnity of the sacrifice brought by the burghers of the erst

free city for the common weal of the German Fatherland. ...

The last and only privilege the three once powerful Hanseatic

cities retain is that of being entitled, like the greatest

States in the empire, to send their own representatives to the

Bundesrath and to the Reichstag."

H. Zimmern,

The Hansa Towns, period 3,

chapter 8, note.

GERMANY: A. D. 1888-1889.

Prussian Free School laws.

See EDUCATION, MODERN: EUROPEAN COUNTRIES.

PRUSSIA: 1885-1889.

GERMANY: A. D. 1889-1890.

Rupture between Emperor William II. and Chancellor Bismarck.

Retirement of the great Chancellor.

Soon after the accession of William II., signs of discord

between the young Emperor and the veteran statesman,

Chancellor Bismarck, began to appear. "In March, 1889, the

Minister of Finance had drawn up a Bill for the reform of the

income tax, which had been sanctioned by the Emperor; suddenly

Prince Bismarck interfered, declaring that it was against the

agrarian interest, and the Landtag, summoned expressly to vote

that Bill, was dismissed 're inacta.' Count Waldersee, the

Chief of the General Staff, an eminent and independent man,

and standing high in favour, had for years been a thorn in the

Chancellor's side, who looked upon him as a possible rival; he

had tried to overthrow him under Frederic III., but had not

succeeded, Moltke protesting that the general was

indispensable to the army. When Waldersee, in the summer of

1889, accompanied the Emperor to Norway, a letter appeared in

the Hamburger Nachrichten, to the effect that in a Memoir he

had directed his sovereign's attention to the threatening

character of the Russian armaments, and had advised, in

contradiction to the Chancellor's policy, the forcing of war

upon Russia. The Count from Trondhjem addressed a telegraphic

denial to the paper, stating that he had never presented such

a Memoir; but the Nachrichten registered this declaration in a

garbled form and in small type, and the Norddeutsche Zeitung,

which at the same time had published an article, to the effect

that according to General von Clausewitz, war is only the

continuation of a certain policy, and that therefore the Chief

of the General Staff must needs be under the order of the

Foreign Minister, took no notice of the Count's protest. ...

In the winter session of the Reichstag the Government

presented a Bill tending to make the law against

Social-Democracy a permanent one, but even the pliant National

Liberals objected to the clause that the police should be

entitled to expel Social-Democrats from the large towns. They

would have been ready to grant that permission for two years,

but the Government did not accept this, and the Bill fell to

the ground. The reason, which at that time was not generally

understood, was, that there existed already a hitch between

the policy of the Chancellor and that of the Emperor, who had

arrived at the conviction that the law against Social

Democrats was not only barren, but had increased their power.

This difference was accentuated by the Imperial decree of

February 4 in favour of the protection of children's and

women's labour, which the Chancellor had steadily resisted,

and by the invitation of an international conference for that

end. Prince Bismarck resigned the Ministry of Commerce, and

was replaced by Herr von Berlepsch, who was to preside at the

conference. The elections for the Reichstag were now at hand,

a new surprise was expected for maintaining the majority

obtained by the cry of 1887; but it did not come, and the

result was a crushing defeat of the Chancellor. Perhaps even

then the Emperor had discerned that he could not go on with

Bismarck, and that it would be difficult to get rid of him, if

he obtained another majority for five years. At least it seems

certain that William II. already in the beginning of February

had asked General von Caprivi whether he would be ready to

take the Chancellor's place. Affairs were now rapidly pushing

to a crisis. Bismarck asked the Emperor that, in virtue of a

Cabinet order of 1852, his colleagues should be bound to

submit beforehand to him any proposals of political importance

before bringing it to the cognizance of the Sovereign. The

Emperor refused, and insisted upon that order being cancelled.

The last drop which made the cup overflow was an interview of the

Chancellor with Windthorst. The Emperor, calling upon Bismarck

the next morning, asked to hear what had passed in that

conversation; the Chancellor declined to give any account of

it, as he could not submit his intercourse with deputies to

any control, and added that he was ready to resign."

The Change of Government in Germany

(Fortnightly Review, August, 1890),

pages 301-304.

"Early on the 17th of March the Emperor sent word that he was

waiting for Bismarck's resignation. The Prince refused to

resign, on grounds of conscience and of self-respect. ... The

Emperor must dismiss him. A second messenger came, in the

course of the day, with a direct order from the Emperor that

the Prince should send in his resignation within a given

number of hours. At the same time Bismarck was informed that

the Emperor intended to make him Duke of Lauenburg. The Prince

responded that he might have had that title before if he had

wished it. He was then assured (referring to the grounds on

which he had previously declined the title) that the Emperor

would pledge himself to secure such a legislative grant as

would suffice for the proper maintenance of the ducal dignity.

Bismarck declined this also, declaring that he could not be

expected to close such a career as his had been 'by running

after a gratuity such as is given to a faithful letter-carrier

at New Year's.' His resignation, of course, he would send in

as soon as possible, but he owed it to himself and to history

to draw up a proper memorial. This he took two days to write.

... He has since repeatedly demanded the publication of this

memorial, but without success. ... On March 20, the Emperor,

in a most graciously worded letter (which was immediately

published), accepted Bismarck's 'resignation.' ... The

immediate nomination of his successor [General von Caprivi]

forced Bismarck to quit the Chancellor's official residence in

such haste that ... 'Bismarck himself compared his exit to the

expulsion of a German family from Paris in 1870.'"

Nation, March 22, 1894 (reviewing 'Das Deutsche

Reich zur Zeit Bismarcks,' von Dr. Hans Blum).

{1548}

GERMANY: A. D. 1890.

Settlement of African claims with England.

Acquisition of Heligoland.

See AFRICA: A. D. 1884-1891.

GERMANY: A. D. 1894.

Reconciliation of Bismarck with the Emperor.

In January, 1894, the complete rupture of friendly relations

between Prince Bismarck and the Emperor, and the Emperor's

government, which had existed since the dismissal of the

former, was terminated by a dramatic reconciliation. The

Emperor made a peace-offering, upon the occasion of the

Prince's recovery from an illness, by sending his

congratulations, with a gift of wine. Prince Bismarck

responded amiably, and was then invited to Berlin, to be

entertained as a guest in the royal palace. The invitation was

accepted, the visit promptly made on the 26th of January, and

an enthusiastic reception was accorded to the venerable

ex-chancellor at the capital, by court and populace alike.

----------GERMANY: End----------

GERMINAL, The month.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1793 (OCTOBER).

GERONA, Siege of.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1809. (FEBRUARY-JUNE).

GERONTES.

Spartan senators, or members of the Gerusia.

See SPARTA: THE CONSTITUTION, &c.

GERONTOCRACY.

See HAYTI: A.D. 1804-1880.

GEROUSIA.

See GERUSIA.

GERRY, Elbridge, and the framing of the Federal Constitution.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1787.

GERRYMANDERING.

"In the composition of the House of Representatives [of the

Congress of the United States] the state legislatures play a

very important part. For the purposes of the election a state

is divided into districts corresponding to the number of

representatives the state is entitled to send to Congress.

These electoral districts are marked out by the legislature,

and the division is apt to be made by the preponderating party

with an unfairness that is at once shameful and ridiculous.

The aim, of course, is so to lay out the districts 'as to

secure in the greatest possible number of them a majority for

the party which conducts the operation. This is done sometimes

by throwing the greatest possible number of hostile voters

into a district which is anyhow certain to be hostile,

sometimes by adding to a district where parties are equally

divided some place in which the majority of friendly voters is

sufficient to turn the scale. There is a district in

Mississippi (the so-called Shoe-String District) 250 miles

long by 30 broad, and another in Pennsylvania resembling a

dumb-bell. ... In Missouri a district has been contrived

longer, if measured along its windings, than the state itself,

into which as large a number as possible of the negro voters

have been thrown.' This trick is called gerrymandering, from

Elbridge Gerry, of Massachusetts, who was vice-president of

the United States from 1813 to 1817. It seems to have been

first devised in 1788 by the enemies of the Federal

Constitution in Virginia, in order to prevent the election of

James Madison to the first Congress, and fortunately it was

unsuccessful. It was introduced some years afterward into

Massachusetts. In 1812, while Gerry was governor of that

state, the Republican legislature redistributed the districts

in such wise that the shapes of the towns forming a single

district in Essex county gave to the district a somewhat

dragon-like contour. This was indicated upon a map of

Massachusetts which Benjamin Russell, an ardent Federalist and

editor of the 'Centinel,' hung up over the desk in his office.

The celebrated painter, Gilbert Stuart, coming into the office

one day and observing the uncouth figure, added with his

pencil a head, wings and claws, and exclaimed, 'That will do

for a salamander!' 'Better say a Gerrymander!' growled the

editor; and the outlandish name, thus duly coined, soon came

into general currency."

J. Fiske,

Civil Government in the U. S.,

pages 216-218.

ALSO IN:

J. Bryce,

The American Commonwealth,

volume 1, page 121.

J. W. Dean,

The Gerrymander (New England History

and Genealogical Register, October, 1892).

GERSCHHEIM, Battle of.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1866.

GERTRUYDENBERG: Prince Maurice's siege and capture of.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1588-1593.

GERTRUYDENBERG: Conferences at.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1710.

GERUSIA, OR GEROUSIA, The.

"There is the strongest reason to believe that among the

Dorians, as in all the heroic states, there was, from time

immemorial, a council of elders. Not only is it utterly

incredible that the Spartan council (called the gerusia, or

senate) was first instituted by Lycurgus, it is not even clear

that he introduced any important alteration in its

constitution or functions. It was composed of thirty members,

corresponding to the number of the 'obes,' a division as

ancient as that of the tribes, which alone would suffice to

refute the legend that the first council was formed of the

thirty who aided Lycurgus in his enterprise, even without the

conclusive fact that two of the 'obes' were represented by the

kings. ... So far as we know, the twenty-eight colleagues of

the kings were always elected by the people, without regard to

any qualification besides age and personal merit. The mode of

election breathes a spirit of primitive simplicity: the

candidates, who were required to have reached the age of

sixty, presented themselves in succession to the assembly, and

were received with applause proportioned to the esteem in

which they were held by their fellow-citizens. These

manifestations of popular feeling were noted by persons

appointed for the purpose, who were shut up in an adjacent

room, where they could hear the shouts, but could not see the

competitors. He who in their judgment had been greeted with

the loudest plaudits, won the prize--the highest dignity in

the commonwealth next to the throne. The senators held their

office for life."

C. Thirlwall,

History of Greece,

chapter 8 (volume 1).

{1549}

ALSO IN:

G. F. Schöman,

Antiquity of Greece: The State,

part 3, chapter 1.

See, also, SPARTA: THE CONSTITUTION, &c.

GES TRIBES, The.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES:

TUPI.

GUARANI.

TUPUYAS.

GESITHS.--GESITHCUND.

See COMITATUS;

and ENGLAND: A. D. 958.

GESORIACUM.

The principal Roman port and naval station on the Gallic side

of the English Channel--afterwards called Bononia-modern

Boulogne. "Gesoriacum was the terminus of the great highway,

or military marching road, which had been constructed by

Agrippa across Gaul."

H. M. Scarth,

Roman Britain,

chapter 4.

GETA, Roman Emperor, A. D. 211-212.

GETÆ, The.

See DACIA; THRACIANS; SARMATIA;

and GOTHS, ORIGIN OF.

GETTYSBURG, Battle of.

See UNITED UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1863 (JUNE-JULY: PENNSYLVANIA).

GETULIANS, The.

See LIBYANS.

GEWISSAS, The.

This was the earlier name of the West Saxons.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 477-527.

GHAZNEVIDES, OR GAZNEVIDES.

See TURKS: A. D. 999-1183.

GHENT: A. D. 1337.

Revolt under Jacques Van Arteveld.

See FLANDERS: A. D. 1335-1337.

GHENT: A. D. 1345.

The end of Jacques Van Arteveld.

See FLANDERS: A. D. 1345.

GHENT: A. D. 1379-1381.

The revolt of the White-Hoods.

The captaincy of Philip Van Arteveld.

See FLANDERS: A. D. 1379-1381.

GHENT: A. D. 1382-1384.

Resistance to the Duke of Burgundy.

See FLANDERS: A. D. 1382.

GHENT: A. D. 1451-1453.

Revolt against the taxes of Philip of Burgundy.

In 1450, Philip, Duke of Burgundy, having exhausted his usual

revenues, rich as they were, by the unbounded extravagance of

his court, laid a heavy tax on salt in Flanders. The sturdy

men of Ghent were little disposed to submit to an imposition

so hateful as the French "gabelle"; still less when, the next

year, a new duty on grain was demanded from them. They rose in

revolt, put on their white hoods, and prepared for war. It was

an unfortunate contest for them. They were defeated in nearly

every engagement; each encounter was a massacre, with no

quarter given on either side; the surrounding country was laid

waste and depopulated. A final battle, fought at Gavre, or

Gaveren, July 22, 1453, went against them so murderously that

they submitted and went on their knees to the duke--not

metaphorically, but actually. "The citizens were deprived of

the banners of their guilds; and the duke was henceforward to

have an equal voice with them in the appointment of their

magistrates, whose judicial authority was considerably

abridged; the inhabitants likewise bound themselves to

liquidate the expenses of the war, and to pay the gabelle for

the future." The Hollanders and Zealanders lent their

assistance to the duke against Ghent, and were rewarded by

some important concessions.

C. M. Davies,

History of Holland,

part 2, chapter 1 (volume 1).

"The city lost her jurisdiction, her dominion over the

surrounding country. She had no longer any subjects, was

reduced to a commune, and a commune, too, in ward two gates,

walled up forever, were to remind her of this grave change of

state. The sovereign banner of Ghent, and the trades' banners,

were handed over to Toison d'Or, who unceremoniously thrust

them into a sack and carried them off."

J. Michelet,

History of France,

book 12, chapter 1 (volume 2).

GHENT: A. D. 1482-1488.

In trouble with the Austrian ducal guardian.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1482-1493.

GHENT: A. D. 1539-1540.

The last peal of the great bell Roland.

Once more, in 1539, Ghent became the scene of a memorable

rising of the people against the oppressive exactions of their

foreign masters. "The origin of the present dispute between

the Ghenters and the court was the subsidy of 1,200,000

guilders, demanded by the governess [sister of the emperor

Charles V.] in 1536, which ... it was found impossible to levy

by a general tax throughout the provinces. It was therefore

divided in proportional shares to each; that of Flanders being

fixed at 400,000 guilders, or one-third of the whole. ... The

citizens of Ghent ... persisted in refusing the demand,

offering, instead, to serve the emperor as of old time, with

their own troops assembled under the great standard of the

town. ... The other cities of Flanders showed themselves

unwilling to espouse the cause of the Ghenters, who, finding

they had no hope of support from them, or of redress from the

emperor, took up arms, possessed themselves of the forts in

the vicinity of Ghent, and despatched an embassy to Paris to

offer the sovereignty of their city to the king." The French

king, Francis I., not only gave them no encouragement, but

permitted the emperor, then in Spain, to pass through France,

in order to reach the scene of disturbance more promptly. In

the winter of 1540, the latter presented himself before Ghent,

at the head of a German army, and the unhappy city could do

nothing but yield itself to him.

C. M. Davies,

History of Holland,

part 2, chapter 5 (volume 1).

At the time of this unsuccessful revolt and the submission of

the city to Charles V., "Ghent was, in all respects, one of

the most important cities in Europe. Erasmus, who, as a

Hollander and a courtier, was not likely to be partial to the

turbulent Flemings, asserted that there was no town in all

Christendom to be compared to it for size, power, political

constitution, or the culture of its inhabitants. It was, said

one of its inhabitants at the epoch of the insurrection,

rather a country than a city. ... Its streets and squares were

spacious and elegant, its churches and other public buildings

numerous and splendid. The sumptuous church of Saint John or

Saint Bavon, where Charles V. had been baptized, the ancient

castle whither Baldwin Bras de Fer had brought the daughter of

Charles the Bald [see FLANDERS: A. D. 863], the city hall with

its graceful Moorish front, the well-known belfry, where for

three centuries had perched the dragon sent by the Emperor

Baldwin of Flanders from Constantinople, and where swung the

famous Roland, whose iron tongue had called the citizens,

generation after generation, to arms, whether to win battles

over foreign kings at the head of their chivalry, or to plunge

their swords in each others' breasts, were all conspicuous in

the city and celebrated in the land. Especially the great bell

was the object of the burghers' affection, and, generally, of

the sovereign's hatred; while to all it seemed, as it were, a

living historical personage, endowed with the human powers and

passions which it had so long directed and inflamed. ...

Charles allowed a month of awful suspense to intervene between

his arrival and his vengeance.

{1550}

Despair and hope alternated during the interval. On the 17th

of March, the spell was broken by the execution of 19 persons,

who were beheaded as ringleaders. On the 29th of April, he

pronounced sentence upon the city. ... It annulled all the

charters, privileges, and laws of Ghent. It confiscated all

its public property, rents, revenues, houses, artillery,

munitions of war, and in general everything which the

corporation, or the traders, each and all, possessed in

common. In particular, the great bell Roland was condemned and

sentenced to immediate removal. It was decreed that the

400,000 florins, which had caused the revolt, should forthwith

be paid, together with an additional fine by Ghent of 150,000,

besides 6,000 a year, forever after."

J. L. Motley,

The Rise of the Dutch Republic,

introduction, section 11.

GHENT: A. D. 1576.

The Spanish Fury.

The treaty of the "Pacification of Ghent."

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1575-1577.

GHENT: A. D. 1584.

Disgraceful surrender to the Spaniards.

Decline of the city.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1584-1585.

GHENT: A. D. 1678.

Siege and capture by the French.

See NETHERLANDS (HOLLAND): A. D. 1674-1678.

GHENT: A. D. 1678.

Restored to Spain.

See NIMEGUEN, PEACE OF.

GHENT: A. D. 1706.

Occupied by Marlborough.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1706-1707.

GHENT: A. D. 1708-1709.

Taken by the French and retaken by the Allies.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1708-1709.

GHENT: A. D. 1745-1748.

Surrendered to the French, and restored to Austria.

See NETHERLANDS (AUSTRIAN PROVINCES): A. D.1745;

and AIX-LA-CHAPELLE: A. D. 1748.

GHENT: A. D. 1814.

Negotiation of the Treaty of Peace between Great Britain and

the United States.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A.D. 1814 (DECEMBER).

----------GHENT: End----------

GHERIAH, Battle of (1763).

See INDIA: A. D. 1757-1772.

GHIBELINS.

See GUELFS AND GHIBELLINES.

GHILDE.

See GUILDS.

GHORKAS, OR GOORKAS, English war with the.

See INDIA: A. D. 1805-1816.

GIAN GALEAZZO,

Lord of Milan, A. D. 1378-1396;

Duke, 1396-1402.

Gian Galeazzo II., Duke of Milan, 1476-1494.

GIBBORIM, The.

King David's chosen band of six hundred, his heroes, his

"mighty men," his standing army.

H. Ewald,

History of Israel,

book 3.

GIBEON, Battle of.

See BETH-HORON, BATTLES OF.

GIBEONITES, The.

The Gibeonites were a "remnant of the Amorites, and the

children of Israel had sworn unto them" (ii Samuel xxi., 2).

Saul violated the pledged faith of his nation to these people

and "sought to slay them." After Saul's death there came a

famine which was attributed to his crime against the

Gibeonites; whereupon David sought to make atonement to them.

They would accept nothing but the execution of vengeance upon

seven of Saul's family, and David gave up to them two sons of

Saul's concubine, Rizpah, and five sons of Michel, the

daughter of Saul, whom they hanged.

H. Ewald,

History of Israel,

book 3.

GIBRALTAR, Origin of the name.

See SPAIN: A. D. 711-713.

GIBRALTAR: A. D. 1309-1460.

Taken by the Christians, recovered by the Moors, and finally

wrested from them, after several sieges.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1273-1460.

GIBRALTAR: A. D. 1704.

Capture by the English.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1703-1704.

GIBRALTAR: A. D. 1713.

Ceded by Spain to England.

See UTRECHT: A. D. 1712-1714.

GIBRALTAR: A. D. 1727.

Abortive siege by the Spaniards.

The lines of San Roque.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1726-1731.

GIBRALTAR: A. D. 1780-1782.

Unsuccessful siege by the Spaniards and French.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1780-1782.

----------GIBRALTAR: End----------

GILBERT, Sir Humphrey:

Expedition to Newfoundland.

See AMERICA: A. D. 1583.

GILBOA, Battles of.

See MEGIDDO.

GILDO, Revolt of.

See ROME: A. D. 396-398.

GILDS.

See GUILDS.

GILEAD.

See JEWS: ISRAEL UNDER THE JUDGES.

GILLMORE, General Q. A.

Siege and reduction of Fort Pulaski.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1862 (FEBRUARY-APRIL: GEORGIA-FLORIDA).

The siege of Charleston.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1863 (JULY: S. CAROLINA),

and (AUGUST-DECEMBER: SOUTH CAROLINA).

GIOVANNA.

See JOANNA.

GIOVANNI MARIA, Duke of Milan, A. D. 1402-1412.

GIPSIES.

See GYPSIES.

GIRONDINS.-GIRONDISTS, The.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1791 (OCTOBER); 1791-1792;

1792 (JUNE-AUGUST), (AUGUST), (SEPTEMBER-NOVEMBER);

1793 (MARCH-JUNE), (JUNE), (JULY-DECEMBER),

(SEPTEMBER-DECEMBER); 1793-1794 (OCTOBER-APRIL).

GIRTON COLLEGE.

See EDUCATION, MODERN: REFORMS, &c.: 1865-1883.

GITANOS.

See GYPSIES.

GIURGEVO, Battle of (1595).

See BALKAN AND DANUBIAN STATES,

14TH-18TH CENTURIES (ROUMANIA, ETC.).

GLADIATORS, Revolt of the.

See SPARTACUS.

GLADSTONE MINISTRIES.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1868-1870; 1873-1880 to 1885;

1885-1886; and 1892-1893.

GLATZ, Capture of.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1760.

GLENCO, Massacre of.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1692.

GLENDALE, Battle of.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A. D. 1862 (JUNE-JULY: VIRGINIA).

GLENDOWER'S REBELLION.

See WALES: A. D. 1402-1413.

GLENMALURE, Battle of (1580).

See IRELAND: A. D. 1559-1603.

GLEVUM.

Glevum was a large colonial city of the Romans in Britain,

represented by the modern city of Gloucester. It "was a town

of great importance, as standing not only on the Severn, near

the place where it opened out into the Bristol Channel, but

also as being close to the great Roman iron district of the

Forest of Dean."

T. Wright,

Celt, Roman and Saxon,

chapter 5.

{1551}

GLOGAU, The storming of (1642).

See GERMANY: A. D. 1640-1645.

GLOSSATORS, The.

See BOLOGNA: 11TH CENTURY.--SCHOOL OF LAW.

GLOUCESTER, Origin of.

See GLEVUM.

GLOUCESTER: A. D. 1643.

Siege of.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1643 (AUGUST-SEPTEMBER).

GLYCERIUS, Roman Emperor (Western), A. D. 473-474.

GNOSTICS-GNOSTICISM.

"In a word ... Gnosticism was a philosophy of religion; but in

what sense was it this? The name of Gnosticism--Gnosis--does

not belong exclusively to the group of phenomena with whose

historical explanation we are here concerned. Gnosis is a

general idea; it is only as defined in one particular manner

that it signifies Christian Gnosticism in a special sense:

Gnosis is higher Knowledge, Knowledge that has a clear

perception of the foundations on which it rests, and the

manner in which its structure has been built up; a Knowledge

that is completely that which, as Knowledge, it is called to

be. In this sense it forms the natural antithesis to Pistis,

Faith [whence Pistics, believing Christians]: if it is desired

to denote Knowledge in its specific difference from faith, no

word will mark the distinction more significantly than Gnosis.

But we find that, even in this general sense, the Knowledge

termed Gnosis is a religious Knowledge rather than any other;

for it is not speculative Knowledge in general, but only such

as is concerned with religion. ... In its form and contents

Christian Gnosticism is the expansion and development of

Alexandrian religious philosophy; which was itself an offshoot

of Greek philosophy. ... The fundamental character of

Gnosticism in all its forms is dualistic. It is its

sharply-defined, all-pervading dualism that, more than

anything else, marks it directly for an offspring of paganism.

... In Gnosticism the two principles, spirit and matter, form

the great and general antithesis, within the bounds of which

the systems move with all that they contain. ... A further

leading Gnostic conception is the Demiurgus. The two highest

principles being spirit and matter, and the true conception of

a creation of the world being thus excluded, it follows in the

Gnostic systems, and is a characteristic feature of them, that

they separate the creator of the world from the supreme God,

and give him a position subordinate to the latter. He is

therefore rather the artificer than the creator of the world.

... The oldest Gnostic sects are without doubt those whose

name is not derived from a special founder, but only stand for

the general notion of Gnosticism. Such a name is that of the

Ophites or Naassenes. The Gnostics are called Ophites,

brethren of the Serpent, not after the serpent with which the

fathers compared Gnosticism, meaning to indicate the dangerous

poison of its doctrine, and to suggest that it was the hydra,

which as soon as it lost one head at once put forth another;

but because the serpent was the accepted symbol of their lofty

Knowledge. ... The first priests and supporters of the dogma

were, according to the author of the Philosophoumena, the

so-caned Naassenes--a name derived from the Hebrew name of

the serpent. They afterwards called themselves Gnostics,

because they asserted that they alone knew the things that are

deepest. From this root the one heresy divided into various

branches; for though these heretics all taught a like

doctrine, their dogmas were various."

F. C. Baur,

The Church History of the First Three Centuries,

volume 1, pages 187-202.

"Bigotry has destroyed their [the Gnostics'] writings so

thoroughly, that we know little of them except from hostile

sources. They called themselves Christians, but cared little

for the authority of bishops or apostles, and borrowed freely

from cabalists, Parsees, astrologers, and Greek philosophers,

in building up their fantastic systems. ... Much as we may

fear that the Gnostic literature was more remarkable for

boldness in speculation than for, clearness of reasoning or

respect for facts, it is a great pity that it should have been

almost entirely destroyed by ecclesiastical bigotry."

F. M. Holland,

The Rise of Intellectual Liberty,

chapter 3, section 6.

ALSO IN:

J. L. von Mosheim,

Historical Commentaries on the State of Christianity,

century 1,

sections 60-70, century 2, sections 41-65.

C. W. King,

The Gnostics and their Remains.

A. Neander,

General History of the Christian Religion and Church,

volume 2.

See, also, DOCETISM.

GOA, Acquisition by the Portuguese (1510).

See INDIA: A. D. 1498-1580.

GODERICH MINISTRY, The.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1827-1828.

GODFREY DE BOUILLON:

His crusade and his kingdom of Jerusalem.

See CRUSADES: A. D. 1096-1099;

and JERUSALEM: A. D. 1099, and 1099-1144.

GODOLO, Battle of (1849).

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1848-1849.

GODOLPHIN AND THE ENGLISH TREASURY.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1710-1712.

GODWINE, Earl: Ascendancy in England.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1042-1066.

GOIDEL, The.

See CELTS, THE.

GOITO, Battles of(1848).

See ITALY: A. D. 1848-1849.

GOLD DISCOVERY IN AUSTRALIA.

See AUSTRALIA: A. D. 1839-1855.

GOLD DISCOVERY IN CALIFORNIA.

See CALIFORNIA: A. D. 1848-1849.

GOLDEN BIBLE, The.

See MORMONISM: A. D. 1805-1830.

GOLDEN BOOK OF VENICE.

See VENICE: A. D. 1032-1319.

GOLDEN BOUGH, The.

See ARICIAN GROVE.

GOLDEN BULL, Byzantine.

A document to which the emperor attached his golden seal was

called by the Byzantines, for that reason, a chrysobulum or

golden bull. The term was adopted in the Western or Holy Roman

Empire.

G. Finlay,

History of the Byzantine and Greek Empires,

page 190.

GOLDEN BULL OF CHARLES IV., The.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1347-1493;

and 13TH CENTURY.

GOLDEN BULL OF HUNGARY.

See HUNGARY: A. D. 1114-1301.

GOLDEN CHERSONESE.

See CHRYSE.

{1552}

GOLDEN CIRCLE, Knights of the.

David Christy published his 'Cotton is King' in the year

[1856] in which Buchanan was elected [President of the United

States], and the Knights of the Golden Circle appear to have

organized about the same time. The Golden Circle had its

centre at Havana, Cuba, and with a radius of sixteen degrees

(about 1,200 miles) its circumference took in Baltimore, St.

Louis, about half of Mexico, all of Central America, and the

best portions of the coast along the Caribbean Sea. The

project was, to establish an empire with this circle for its

territory, and by controlling four great staples--rice,

tobacco, sugar, and cotton--practically govern the

commercial world. Just how great a part this secret

organization played in the scheme of secession, nobody that

was not in its counsels can say; but it is certain that it

boasted, probably with truth, a membership of many

thousands."

Rossiter Johnson,

Short History of the War of Secession,

page 24.

During the American Civil War, the Order of the Knights of

the Golden Circle was extended (1862-1864) through the

Northern States, as a secret treasonable organization, in aid

of the Southern Rebellion.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1864 (OCTOBER).

GOLDEN FLEECE, Knights of the Order of the.

"It was on the occasion of his marriage [A. D. 1430] that

Philip [Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, Count of Flanders,

etc.], desirous of instituting a national order of knighthood,

chose for its insignia a 'golden fleece,' with the motto,

'Pretium non vile laborum,'--not to be condemned is the reward

of labour. ... For the first time labour was given heraldic

honours. The pride of the country had become laden with

industrial recollections, its hope full of industrial

triumphs; if feudalism would keep its hold, it must adopt or

affect the national feeling. No longer despised was the

recompense of toil; upon the honour of knighthood it should so

be sworn; nay knighthood would henceforth wear appended to its

collar of gold no other emblem than its earliest and most

valued object--a golden fleece."

W. T. McCullagh,

Industrial History of Free Nations,

volume 2, chapter 10.

"This order of fraternity, of equality between nobles, in

which the duke was admonished, 'chaptered,' just the same as

any other, this council, to which he pretended to communicate

his affairs, was at bottom a tribunal where the haughtiest

found the duke their judge; he could honour or dishonour them

by a sentence of the order. Their scutcheon answered for them;

hung up in St. Jean's, Ghent, it could either be erased or

blackened. ... The great easily consoled themselves for

degradation at Paris by lawyers, when they were glorified by

the duke of Burgundy in a court of chivalry in which kings

took their seat."

J. Michelet,

History of France,

book 12, chapter 4.

"The number of the members was originally fixed at 31,

including the sovereign, as the head and chief of the

institution. They were to be: 'Gentilshommes de nom et d'armes

sans reproche.' In 1516, Pope Leo X. consented to increase the

number to 52, including the head. After the accession of

Charles V., in 1556, the Austro-Spanish, or, rather, the

Spanish-Dutch line of the house of Austria, remained in

possession of the Order. In 1700, the Emperor Charles VI. and

King Philip of Spain both laid claim to it. ... It now passes

by the respective names of the Spanish or Austrian. 'Order of

the Golden Fleece,' according to the country where it is

issued."

Sir B. Burke,

Book of Orders of Knighthood,

page 6.

ALSO IN:

J. F. Kirk,

History of Charles the Bold,

book 1, chapter 2.

GOLDEN GATE, The.

"The Bay of San Francisco is separated by [from] the sea by

low mountain ranges. Looking from the peaks of the Sierra

Nevada, the coast mountains present an apparently continuous

line, with only a single gap, resembling a mountain pass. This

is the entrance to the great bay. ... On the south, the

bordering mountains come down in a narrow ridge of broken

hills, terminating in a precipitous point, against which the

sea breaks heavily. On the northern side, the mountain

presents a bold promontory, rising in a few miles to a height

of two or three thousand feet. Between these points is the

strait--about one mile broad in the narrowest part, and five

miles long from the sea to the bay. To this Gate I gave the

name of Chrysopylæ, or Golden Gate; for the same reasons that

the harbor of Byzantium (Constantinople afterwards), was

called Chrysoceras, or Golden Horn. Passing through this gate,

the bay opens to the right and left, extending in each

direction about 35 miles, making a total length of more than

70, and a coast of about 275 miles."

J. C. Fremont,

Memoirs of my life,

volume 1, page 512.

GOLDEN HORDE, The.

See MONGOLS: A. D. 1238-1391.

GOLDEN HORN, The.

See BYZANTIUM.

GOLDEN HORSESHOE, Knights of the.

See VIRGINIA: A. D. 1710-1716.

GOLDEN HOUSE, The.

The imperial palace at Rome, as restored by Nero after the

great fire, was called the Golden House. It was destroyed by

Vespasian.

C. Merivale,

History of the Romans under the Empire,

chapters 53 and 90.

GOLDEN, OR BORROMEAN, LEAGUE, The.

See SWITZERLAND: A. D. 1579-1630.

GOLDEN SPUR, Order of the.

An order of knighthood instituted in 1550 by Pope Paul III.

GOLDSBORO, General Sherman's march to.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1865

(FEBRUARY-MARCH: THE CAROLINAS),

and (FEBRUARY-MARCH: N. CAROLINA).

GOLIAD, Massacre at (1836).

See TEXAS: A. D. 1824-1836.

GOLOWSTSCHIN, Battle of (1708).

See SCANDINAVIAN STATES (SWEDEN): A. D. 1707-1718.

GOLYMIN, Battle of (1806).

See GERMANY: A. D. 1806-1807.

GOMER, OR OMER, The.

See EPHAH.

GOMERISTS. See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1603-1619.

GOMPHI.

Gomphi, a city on the border of Thessaly, shut its gates

against Cæsar, shortly before the battle of Pharsalia. He

halted one day in his march, stormed the town and gave it up

to his soldiers to be sacked.

G. Long,

Decline of the Roman Republic,

volume 5, chapter 15.

GONDS, The.

See INDIA: THE ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS.

GONFALONIERE.

See CARROCCIO.

GONZAGA, The House of.

"The house of Gonzaga held sovereign power at Mantua, first as

captains, then as marquesses, then as dukes, for nearly 400

years" (1328-1708).

E. A. Freeman,

Historical Geography of Europe,

volume 1, page 243.

GOOD ESTATE OF RIENZI, The.

See ROME: A. D. 1347-1354.

GOOD HOPE, Cape of:

The Discovery and the Name.

See PORTUGAL: A. D.1463-1498.

GOOD HOPE, Cape of:

The Colonization.

See SOUTH AFRICA.

{1553}

GOORKAS, OR GURKHAS, OR GHORKAS, The.

See INDIA: THE ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS;

and A. D. 1805-1816.

GOOROO, OR GURU.

See SIKHS.

GORDIAN I. and II., Roman Emperors, A. D. 238.

Gordian III., Roman Emperor, A. D. 238-244.

GORDIAN KNOT, Cutting the.

"It was about February or March 333 B. C., when Alexander

reached Gordium; where he appears to have halted for some

time, giving to the troops which had been with him in Pisidia

a repose doubtless needful. While at Gordium, he performed the

memorable exploit familiarly known as the cutting of the

Gordian knot. There was preserved in the citadel an ancient

waggon of rude structure, said by the legend to have once

belonged to the peasant Gordius and his son Midas--the

primitive rustic kings of Phrygia, designated as such by the

Gods and chosen by the people. The cord (composed of fibres

from the bark of the cornel tree), attaching the yoke of this

waggon to the pole, was so twisted and entangled as to form a

knot of singular complexity, which no one had ever been able

to untie. An oracle had pronounced, that to the person who

should untie it the empire of Asia was destined. ...

Alexander, on inspecting the knot, was as much perplexed as

others had been before him, until at length, in a fit of

impatience, he drew his sword and severed the cord in two. By

everyone this was accepted as a solution of the problem."

G. Grote,

History of Greece,

part 2, chapter 93.

GORDON, General Charles George,

In China.

See CHINA: A. D.1850-1864.

In the Soudan.

See EGYPT: A. D. 1870-1883, and 1884-1885.

GORDON RIOTS, The.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1778-1780.

GORDYENE, OR CORDYENE, OR CORDUENE.

The tribes of the Carduchi which anciently occupied the region

of northern Mesopotamia, east of the Tigris, have given their

name permanently to the country, but in variously modified

forms. In the Greek and Roman period it was known as Gordyene,

Cordyene, Corduene; at the present day it is Kurdistan. Under

the Parthian domination in Asia, Gordyene was a tributary

kingdom. In the early part of the last century B. C. it was

conquered by Tigranes, king of Armenia, who chose a site

within it for building his vast new capital, Tigranocerta, to

populate which twelve Greek cities were stripped of

inhabitants. It was included among the conquests of Trajan for

the Romans, but relinquished by Hadrian.

G. Rawlinson,

Sixth Great Oriental Monarchy,

chapter 10, and after.

See, also, CARDUCHI, THE.

GORGES, Sir Ferdinando, and the colonization of Maine.

See NEW ENGLAND: A. D. 1621-1631, and 1635;

also MAINE: A. D. 1639.

GORM, King of Denmark, A. D. 883-941.

GOROSZLO, Battle of (1601).

See BALKAN AND DANUBIAN STATES: 14TH-18TH CENTURIES

(ROUMANIA, &c.).

GORTYN.

See CRETE.

GOSHEN, Land of.

See JEWS: THE ROUTE OF THE EXODUS.

GOSNOLD'S VOYAGE TO NEW ENGLAND.

See AMERICA: A. D. 1602-1605.

GOSPORT NAVY YARD, Abandonment and destruction of the.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1861 (APRIL).

GOTHA, Origin of the Dukedom of.

See SAXONY: A. D. 1180-1553.

GOTHI MINORES, The.

See GOTHS: A. D. 341-381.

GOTHIA, in central Europe.

See GOTHS (VISIGOTHS): A. D. 376.

GOTHIA, in Gaul.

Septimania, the strip of land along the Mediterranean between

the Pyrenees and the Rhone, was the last possession of the

Goths in Gaul, and the name Gothia became for a time attached

to it.

E. A. Freeman,

Historical Geography of Europe,

chapter 5, section 5.

See GOTHS (VISIGOTHS): A. D. 419-451.

GOTHINI, The.

The Gotini or Gothini were a people of ancient Germany who

"are probably to be placed in Silesia, about Breslau." "The

Gotini and Osi [who held a part of modern Gallicia, under the

Carpathian mountains] are proved by their respective Gallic

and Pannonian tongues, as well as by the fact of their

enduring tribute, not to be Germans. ... The Gotini, to

complete their degradation, actually work iron mines."

Tacitus,

Minor Works,

translated by Church and Brodribb:

The Germany, with geographical notes.

GOTHLAND IN SWEDEN.

See GOTHS: ORIGIN OF THE.

GOTHONES, The.

A tribe in ancient Germany, mentioned by Tacitus. They

"probably dwelt on either side of the Vistula, the Baltic

being their northern boundary. Consequently, their settlements

would coincide with portions of Pomerania and Prussia. Dr.

Latham thinks they were identical with the Æstii."

Church and Brodribb,

Geographical Notes to the Germany of Tacitus.

See GOTHS, ORIGIN OF THE.

GOTHS, Origin of the.

"The Scandinavian origin of the Goths has given rise to much

discussion, and has been denied by several eminent modern

scholars. The only reasons in favor of their Scandinavian

origin are the testimony of Jornandes and the existence of the

name of Gothland in Sweden; but the testimony of Jornandes

contains at the best only the tradition of the people

respecting their origin, which is never of much value; and the

mere fact of the existence of the name of Gothland in Sweden

is not sufficient to prove that this country was the original

abode of the people. When the Romans first saw the Goths, in

the reign of Caracalla, they dwelt in the land of the Getæ [on

the northern side of the lower Danube]. Hence Jornandes,

Procopius, and many other writers, both ancient and modern,

supposed the Goths to be the same as the Getæ of the earlier

historians. But the latter writers always regarded the Getæ as

Thracians; and if their opinion was correct, they could have

had no connection with the Goths. Still, it is a startling

fact that a nation called Gothi should have emigrated from

Germany, and settled accidentally in the country of a people

with a name so like their own as that of Getæ. This may have

happened by accident, but certainly all the probabilities are

against it. Two hypotheses have been brought forward in modern

times to meet this difficulty. One is that of Grimm, in his

History of the German Language, who supposes that there was no

migration of the Goths at all, that they were on the Lower

Danube from the beginning, and that they were known to the

earlier Greek and Latin writers as Getæ: but the great

objection to this opinion is the general belief of the earlier

writers that the Getæ were Thracians, and the latter were

certainly not Germans.

{1554}

The other is that of Latham, who supposes, with much

ingenuity, that the name of Get, or Goth, was the general name

given by the Slavonic nations to the Lithuanians. According to

this theory, the Goth-ones, or Guth-ones, at the mouth of the

Vistula, mentioned by Tacitus and Ptolemy, are Lithuanians,

and the Get-æ, on the Danube, belong to the same nation.

Latham also believes that the Goths of a later period were

Germans who migrated to the Danube, but that they did not bear

the name of Goths till they settled in the country of the

Getæ.

See Latham,

The Germania of Tacitus,

Epil., p. xxxviii., seq."

W. Smith,

Note to Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,

chapter 10.

"The first clear utterance of tradition among the Goths points

to Sweden as their home. It is true that this theory of the

Swedish origin of the Goths has of late been strenuously

combatted, but until it is actually disproved (if that be

possible) it seems better to accept it as a 'working

hypothesis,' and, at the very least, a legend which influenced

the thoughts and feelings of the nation itself. Condensing the

narrative of Jornandes ... we get some such results as these:

'The island of Scanzia [peninsula of Norway and Sweden] lies

in the Northern Ocean, opposite the mouths of the Vistula, in

shape like a cedar-leaf. In this island, a warehouse of

nations ("officina gentium"), dwelt the Goths, with many other

tribes,' whose uncouth names are for the most part forgotten,

though the Swedes, the Fins, the Heruli, are familiar to us.

'From this island the Goths, under their king Berig, set forth

in search of new homes. They had but three ships, and as one

of these during their passage always lagged behind, they

called her "Gepanta," "the torpid one," and her crew, who ever

after showed themselves more sluggish and clumsy than their

companions when they became a nation, bore a name derived from

this circumstance, Gepidae, the Loiterers'." Settling, first,

near the mouth of the Vistula, these Gothic wanderers

increased in numbers until they were forced once more to

migrate southward and eastward, seeking a larger and more

satisfactory home. In time, they reached the shores of the

Euxine. "The date of this migration of the Goths is uncertain;

but, as far as we can judge from the indications afforded by

contemporary Roman events, it was somewhere between 100 and

200 A. D. At any rate, by the middle of the third century, we

find them firmly planted in the South of Russia. They are now

divided into three nations, the Ostrogoths on the East, the

Visigoths on the West, the lazy Gepidae a little to the

rear--that is, to the North of both. ... It is important for

us to remember that these men are Teutons of the Teutons. ...

Moreover, the evidence of language shows that among the

Teutonic races they belonged to the Low German family of

peoples: more nearly allied, that is to say, to the Dutch, the

Frieslanders, and to our own Saxon forefathers, all of whom

dwelt by the flat shores of the German Ocean or the Baltic

Sea, than to the Suabians and other High German tribes who

dwelt among the hills."

T. Hodgkin,

Italy and Her Invaders,

introduction, chapter 3 (volume 1).

ALSO IN:

T. Mommsen,

History of Rome,

book 8, chapter 6.

T. Smith,

Arminius,

part 2, chapter 2.

See, also, VANDALS.

GOTHS:

Acquisition of Bosphorus.

"The little kingdom of Bosphorus; whose capital was situated

on the straits through which the Mæotis communicates itself to

the Euxine, was composed of degenerate Greeks and

half-civilized barbarians. It subsisted as an independent

state from the time of the Peloponnesian war, was at last

swallowed up by the ambition of Mithridates, and, with the

rest of his dominions, sunk under the weight of the Roman

arms. From the reign of Augustus the kings of Bosphorus were

the humble but not useless allies of the empire. By presents,

by arms, and by a slight fortification drawn across the

isthmus, they effectually guarded, against the roving

plunderers of Sarmatia, the access of a country which, from

its peculiar situation and convenient harbours, commanded the

Euxine Sea and Asia Minor. As long as the sceptre was

possessed by a lineal succession of kings, they acquitted

themselves of their important charge with vigilance and

success. Domestic factions, and the fears or private interest

of obscure usurpers who seized on the vacant throne, admitted

the Goths [already, in the third century, in possession of the

neighboring region about the mouth of the Dneiper] into the

heart of Bosphorus. With the acquisition of a superfluous

waste of fertile soil, the conquerors obtained the command of

a naval force sufficient to transport their armies to the

coast of Asia."

E. Gibbon,

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,

chapter 10.

GOTHS: A. D. 244-251.

First invasions of the Roman Empire.

As early as the reign of Alexander Severus (A. D. 222-235) the

Goths, then inhabiting the Ukraine, had troubled Dacia with

incursions; but it was not until the time of the Emperor

Philip, called the Arabian (244-249), that they invaded the

Empire in force, passing through Dacia and crossing the Danube

into Mœsia (Bulgaria). They had been bribed by a subsidy to

refrain from pillaging Roman territory, but complained that

their "stipendia" had not been paid. They made their way

without opposition to the city of Marcianopolis, which Trajan

had founded in honor of his sister, and which was the capital

of one of the two provinces into which Mœsia had been divided.

The inhabitants ransomed themselves by the payment of a large

sum of money, and the barbarians retired. But their expedition

had been successful enough to tempt a speedy repetition of it,

and the year 250 found them, again, in Mœsia, ravaging the

country with little hindrance. The following year they crossed

the Hæmus or Balkan mountains and laid siege to the important

city of Philippopolis--capital of Thrace, founded by Philip of

Macedon. Now, however, a capable and vigorous emperor, Decius,

was briefly wearing the Roman purple. He met the Goths and

fought them so valiantly that 30,000 are said to have been

slain; yet the victory remained with the barbarians, and

Philippopolis was not saved. They took it by storm, put

100,000 of its inhabitants to the sword and left nothing in

the ruins of the city worth carrying away. Meantime the

enterprising Roman emperor had reanimated and recruited his

troops and had secured positions which cut off the retreat of

the Gothic host. The peril of the barbarians seemed so great,

in fact, that they offered to surrender their whole booty and

their captives, if they might, on so doing, march out of the

country undisturbed. Decius sternly rejected the proposition,

and so provoked his dangerous enemies to a despair which was

fatal to him. In a terrible battle that was fought before the

close of the year 251, at a place in Mœsia called Forum

Trebonii, the Roman emperor perished, with the greater part of

his army. The successor of Decius, Gallus, made haste to

arrange a payment of annual peace-money to the Goths, which

persuaded them to retire across the Danube.

E. Gibbon,

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,

chapter 10.

ALSO IN:

T. Hodgkin,

Italy and Her Invaders,

introduction, chapter 8 (volume 1).

{1555}

GOTHS: A. D. 258-267.

Naval expeditions in the East.

Having acquired command of a port and a navy by their conquest

of or alliance with the little kingdom of Bosporus in the

Chersonesus Taurica (modern Crimea), the Goths launched forth

boldly upon a series of naval marauding expeditions, which

spread terror and destruction along the coasts of the Euxine,

the Ægean and the straits between. The first city to suffer

was Pityus, on the Euxine, which they totally destroyed, A. D.

258. The next was Trebizond, which fell a victim to the

negligence with which its strong walls were guarded. The Goths

loaded their ships with the enormous booty that they took from

Trebizond, and left it almost a ruined city of the dead.

Another expedition reached Bithynia, where the rich and

splendid cities of Chalcedon, Nicea, Nicomedia, Prusa, Apamæa,

nd others were pillaged and more or less wantonly destroyed. "In

the year 267, another fleet, consisting of 500 vessels, manned

chiefly by the Goths and Heruls [or Heruli], passed the

Bosphorus and the Hellespont. They seized Byzantium and

Chrysopolis, and advanced, plundering the islands and coasts

of the Ægean Sea, and laying waste many of the principal

cities of the Peloponnesus. Cyzicus, Lemnos, Skyros, Corinth,

Sparta, and Argos are named as having suffered by their

ravages. From the time of Sylla's conquest of Athens, a period

of nearly 350 years had elapsed, during which Attica had

escaped the evils of war; yet when the Athenians were called

upon to defend their homes against the Goths, they displayed a

spirit worthy of their ancient fame. An officer, named

Cleodamus, had been sent by the government from Byzantium to

Athens, in order to repair the fortifications, but a division

of these Goths landed at the Piræus and succeeded in carrying

Athens by storm, before any means were taken for its defence.

Dexippus, an Athenian of rank in the Roman service, soon

contrived to reassemble the garrison of the Acropolis; and by

joining to it such of the citizens as possessed some knowledge

of military discipline, or some spirit for warlike enterprise,

he formed a little army of 2,000 men. Choosing a strong

position in the Olive Grove, he circumscribed the movements of

the Goths, and so harassed them by a close blockade that they

were soon compelled to abandon Athens. Cleodamus, who was not

at Athens when it was surprised, had in the meantime assembled

a fleet and gained a naval victory over a division of the

barbarian fleet, These reverses were a prelude to the ruin of

the Goths. A Roman fleet entered the Archipelago, and a Roman

army, under the emperor Gaillenus, marched into Illyricum; the

separate divisions of the Gothic expedition were everywhere

overtaken by these forces, and destroyed in detail. During

this invasion of the empire, one of the divisions of the

Gothic army crossed the Hellespont into Asia, and succeeded in

plundering the cities of the Troad, and in destroying the

celebrated temple of Diana of Ephesus. ... The celebrity of

Athens, and the presence of the historian Dexippus, have given

to this incursion of the barbarians a prominent place in

history; but many expeditions are casually mentioned which

must have inflicted greater losses on the Greeks, and spread

devastation more widely over the country."

G. Finlay,

Greece Under the Romans,

chapter 1, section 14.

ALSO IN:

E. Gibbon,

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,

chapter 10.

GOTHS: A. D. 268-270.

Defeat by Claudius.

"Claudius II. and his successor Aurelian, notwithstanding the

shortness of their reigns, effectually dissipated the

mosquito-swarms of barbarian invaders and provincial usurpers

who were ruining the unhappy dominions of Gallienus. The two

campaigns (of 268 and 269) in which the Emperor Claudius

vanquished the barbarians are related with great brevity, and

in such a shape that it is not easy to harmonise even the

scanty details which are preserved for us. It seems clear,

however, that the Goths (both Ostrogoths and Visigoths), with

all their kindred tribes, poured themselves upon Thrace and

Macedonia in vaster numbers than ever. The previous movements

of these nations had been probably but robber-inroads: this

was a national immigration. ... A few years earlier, so vast

an irruption must inevitably have ruined the Roman Empire. But

now, under Claudius, the army, once more subjected to strict

discipline, had regained, or was rapidly regaining, its tone,

and the Gothic multitudes, vainly precipitating themselves

against it, by the very vastness of their unwieldy masses,

hastened their own destruction. A great battle was fought at

Naissus (Nisch, in Servia), a battle which was not a complete

victory, which according to one authority was even a defeat

for the Romans, but since the barbarians as an immediate

consequence of it lost 50,000 men, their doubtful victory may

fairly be counted as a defeat. In the next campaign they were

shut up in the intricate passes of the Balkans by the Roman

cavalry. Under the pressure of famine they killed and ate the

cattle that drew their waggons, so parting with their last

chance of return to their northern homes. ... At length the

remnants of the huge host seem to have disbanded, some to have

entered the service of their conqueror as 'foederati,' and

many to have remained as hired labourers to plough the fields

which they had once hoped to conquer. ... The vast number of

unburied corpses bred a pestilence, to which the Emperor fell

a victim. His successor Aurelian, the conqueror of Zenobia ...

made peace wisely as well as war bravely, and, prudently

determining on the final abandonment of the Roman province of

Dacia, he conceded to the Goths the undisturbed possession of

that region [A. D. 270], on condition of their not crossing

the Danube to molest Moesia. Translating these terms into the

language of modern geography, we may say, roughly, that the

repose of Servia and Bulgaria was guaranteed by the final

separation from the Roman Empire of Hungary, Transylvania,

Moldavia, and Wallachia, which became from this time forward

the acknowledged home of the Gothic nation. ... For about a

century (from 270 to 365) the Goths appear to have been with

little exception at peace with Rome."

T. Hodgkin,

Italy and Her Invaders,

introduction, chapter 3.

{1556}

GOTHS: A. D. 341-381.

Conversion to Christianity.

The introduction of Christianity among the Goths seems to have

begun while they were yet on the northern side of the Danube

and the Black Sea. It first resulted, no doubt, from the

influence of many Christian captives who were swept from their

homes in Mœsia, Greece, and Asia Minor, and carried away to

spend their lives in slavery among the barbarians. To these

were probably added a considerable number of Christian

refugees from Roman persecution, before the period of

Constantine. But it was not until the time of Ulfilas, the

great apostle and bishop of the Goths (supposed to have held

the office of bishop among them from about A. D. 341 to 381),

that the development and organization of Christianity in the

Gothic nation assumed importance. Ulfilas is represented to

have been a descendant of one of the Christian captives

alluded to above. Either as an ambassador or as a hostage, he

seems to have passed some years in his early manhood at

Constantinople. There he acquired a familiar knowledge of the

Greek and Latin languages, and became fitted for his great

work--the reducing of the Gothic language to a written form,

with an alphabet partly invented, partly adapted from the

Greek, and the translation of the Bible into that tongue. The

early labors of Ulfilas among his countrymen beyond the Danube

were interrupted by an outbreak of persecution, which drove

him, with a considerable body of Christian Goths, to seek

shelter within the Roman empire. They were permitted to settle

in Mœsia, at the foot of the Balkans, round about Nicopolis,

and near the site of modern Tirnova. There they acquired the

name of the Gothi Minores, or Lesser Goths. From this Gothic

settlement of Ulfilas in Mœsia the alphabet and written

language to which he gave form have been called Mœso-Gothic.

The Bible of Ulfilas--the first missionary translation of the

Scriptures--with the personal labors of the apostle and his

disciples, were powerfully influential, without doubt, in the

Christianizing of the whole body of the Goths, and of their

German neighbors, likewise. But Ulfilas had imbibed the

doctrines of Arianism, or of Semi-Arianism, at Constantinople,

and he communicated that heresy (as it was branded by the

Athanasian triumph) to all the barbarian world within the

range of Gothic influence. It followed that, when the kingdoms

of the Goths, the Vandals, and the Burgundians were

established in the west, they had to contend with the

hostility of the orthodox or Catholic western church, and were

undermined by it. That hostility had much to do with the

breaking down of those states and with the better success of

the orthodox Franks.

C. A. A. Scott,

Ulfilas, Apostle of the Goths.

See, also, FRANKS: A. D. 481-511.

GOTHS: (Ostrogoths) A. D. 350-375.

The empire of Ermanaric or Hermanric.

"Ermanaric, who seems to have been chosen king about the year

350, was a great warrior, like many of his predecessors; but

his policy, and the objects for which he fought, were markedly

different from theirs. ... Ermanaric made no attempt to invade

the provinces of the Roman Empire; but he resolved to make his

Ostrogothic kingdom the centre of a great empire of his own.

The seat of his kingdom was, as tradition tells us, on the

banks of the Dnieper [and it extended to the Baltic]. ... A

Roman historian compares Ermanaric to Alexander the Great; and

many ages afterwards his fame survived in the poetic

traditions of Germans, Norsemen and Anglo-Saxons. ...

Ermanaric was the first king since Ostrogotha who belonged to

the Amaling family. ... Henceforward the kingship of the

Ostrogoths became hereditary among the descendants of

Ermanaric. During this time the Visigoths appear to have been

practically independent, divided into separate tribes ruled by

their own 'judges' or chieftains; but ... it is probable that in

theory they acknowledged the supremacy of the Ostrogothic

king. ... Ermanaric died in the year 375, and the Ostrogoths

were subdued by the Hunnish king Balamber. For a whole century

they remained subject to the Huns." One section of the

Ostrogothic nation escaped from the Hunnish conquest and

joined the Visigoths, who found a refuge on the Roman side of

the Danube. The bulk of the nation bore the yoke until the

death of the great Hun king, Attila, in 453, when the strife

between his sons gave them an opportunity to throw it off.

H. Bradley,

Story of the Goths,

chapter 5.

"The forecast of European history which then [during the reign

of Hermanric] seemed probable would have been that a great

Teutonic Empire, stretching from the Danube to the Don, would

take the place which the colossal Slav Empire now holds in the

map of Europe, and would be ready, as a civilised and

Christianised power, to step into the place of Eastern Rome

when, in the fulness of centuries, the sceptre should drop

from the nerveless hands of the Cæsars of Byzantium."

T. Hodgkin,

Italy and Her Invaders,

book 4, chapter 1.

GOTHS: (Visigoths) A. D. 376.

Admission into the Roman Empire.

"Let us suppose that we have arrived at the year (364) when

the feeble and timid Valens was placed on the Eastern throne

by his brother Valentinian. At that time, Ulfilas would be in

the fifty-third year of his age and the twenty-third of his

episcopate. Hermanric, king of the Ostrogoths, a centenarian

and more, was still the most important figure in the loosely

welded Gothic confederacy. His special royalty may possibly

have extended over Northern Hungary, Lithuania, and Southern

Russia. The 'torpid' Gepidæ, dwelt to the north of him, to the

south and west the Visigoths, whose settlements may perhaps

have occupied the modern countries of Roumania, Transylvania

and Southern Hungary. The two great nations, the Ostrogoths

and Visigoths, were known at this time to the Romans, perhaps

among themselves also, by the respective names of the

Gruthungi and Thervingi, but it will be more convenient to

disregard these appellations and speak of them by the names

which they made conspicuous in later history."

T. Hodgkin,

Italy and Her Invaders,

introduction, chapter 3.

This was the situation of Gothia, or the Gothic Empire of

Central Europe, when the Huns made their appearance on the

scene. "An empire, formerly powerful, the first monarchy of

the Huns, had been overthrown by the Sienpi, at a distance of

500 leagues from the Roman frontier, and near to that of

China, in the first century of the Christian era. ... The

entire nation of the Huns, abandoning to the Sienpi its

ancient pastures bordering on China, had traversed the whole

north of Asia by a march of 1,300 leagues. This immense horde,

swelled by all the conquered nations whom it carried along in

its passage, bore down on the plains of the Alans, and

defeated them on the banks of the Tanais in a great battle.

{1557}

It received into its body a part of the vanquished tribe,

accompanied by which it continued to advance towards the West;

while other Alans, too haughty to renounce their independence,

had retreated, some into Germany, whence we shall see them

afterwards pass into Gaul; others into the Caucasian

mountains, where they preserve their name to this day. The

Goths, who bordered on the Alans, had fertilised by their

labours the rich plains which lie to the north of the Danube

and of the Black Sea. More civilised than any of the kindred

Germanic tribes, they began to make rapid progress in the

social sciences. ... This comparatively fortunate state of

things was suddenly interrupted by the appearance of the

Huns,--the unlooked-for arrival of that savage nation,

which, from the moment it crossed the Borysthenes, or the

Dnieper, began to burn their villages and their crops; to

massacre, without pity, men, women, and children; to devastate

and destroy whatever came within the reach of a Scythian

horseman. ... The great Hermanric, whose kingdom extended from

the Baltic to the Black Sea, would not have abandoned his

sceptre to the Huns without a struggle; but at this very time

he was murdered by a domestic enemy. The nations he had

subjugated prepared on every side for rebellion. The

Ostrogoths, after a vain resistance, broke their alliance with

the Visigoths; while the latter, like an affrighted flock of

sheep, trooping together from all parts of their vast

territory to the right bank of the Danube, refused to combat

those superhuman beings by whom they were pursued. They

stretched out their supplicating hands to the Romans on the

other bank, entreating that they might be permitted to seek a

refuge from the butchery which threatened them, in those wilds

of Mœsia and Thrace which were, almost valueless to the

empire." Their prayer was granted by the Emperor Valens, on

the condition that they surrender their arms and that the sons

of their chief men be given as hostages to the Romans. The

great Visigothic nation was then (A. D. 376) transported

across the Danube to the Mœsian shore--200,000 warriors in

number, besides children and women and slaves in proportion.

But the Roman officers charged with the reception of the Goths

were so busy in plundering the goods and outraging the

daughters and wives of their guests that they neglected to

secure the arms of the grim warriors of the migration. Whence

great calamities ensued.

J. C. L. de Sismondi,

Fall of the Roman Empire,

chapters 3 and 5 (volume 1).

GOTHS: (Visigoths): A. D. 378.

Defeat and destruction of Valens.

When the Visigothic nation was permitted to cross the Danube,

A. D. 376, to escape from the Huns, and was admitted into

Lower Mœsia, nothing seems to have been left undone that would

exasperate and make enemies of these unwelcome colonists.

Every possible extortion and outrage was practised upon them.

To buy food, they were driven to part, first, with their

slaves, then with their household goods, and finally with

their children, whom they sold. In despair, at last, they

showed signs of revolt, and the fatuous Roman commander

precipitated it by a murderous outrage at Marcianople (modern

Shumla). In a battle which soon followed near that town, the

Romans were disastrously beaten. The Visigoths were now joined

by a large body of Ostrogoths, who passed the Danube without

resistance, and received into their ranks, moreover, a

considerable force of Gothic soldiers who had long been in the

service of the empire. The open country of Mœsia and Thrace was

now fully exposed to them (the fortified cities they could not

reduce), and they devastated it for a time without restraint.

But Valens, the emperor in the east, and Gratian in the west,

exerted themselves in co-operation to gather forces against

them, and for two years there was a doubtful struggle carried

on. The most serious battle, that of The Willows (Ad Salices),

fought in the region now called the Dobrudscha, was a victory

to neither side. On the whole the Romans appear to have had

some advantage in these campaigns, and to have narrowed the

range of the Gothic depredations. But the host of the

barbarians was continually increased by fresh reinforcements

from beyond the Danube. Even their own ferocious enemies, Huns

and Alans, were permitted to join their standard. Yet, in face

of this fact, the folly and jealousy of the Emperor Valens led

him to stake all on the chances of a battle which he made

haste to rush into, when he learned that his nephew Gratian

was marching to his assistance from the west. He coveted the

sole honors of a victory; but death and infamy for himself and

an overwhelming calamity to the empire were what he achieved.

The battle was fought near Hadrianople, on the 9th day of

August, A. D. 378. Two-thirds of the Roman army perished on

the awful field, and the body of the emperor was never found.

T. Hodgkin,

Italy and Her Invaders,

book 1, chapter 1.

ALSO IN:

E. Gibbon,

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,

chapters 26.

H. Bradley,

Story of the Goths,

chapter 8.

See, also, ROME: A. D, 363-379.

GOTHS: A. D. 379-382.

Settlement of the Goths by Theodosius, in Mœsia and Thrace.

"The forces of the East were nearly annihilated at the

terrible battle of Adrianople: more than 60,000 Roman soldiers

perished in the fight or in the pursuit; and the time was long

past when such a loss could have been easily repaired by fresh

levies. Nevertheless, even after this frightful massacre, the

walls of Adrianople still opposed an unconquerable resistance

to the barbarians. Valour may supply the place of military

science in the open field, but civilised nations recover all

the advantages of the art of war in the attack or defence of

fortified towns. ... The Goths, leaving Adrianople in their

rear, advanced, ravaging all around them, to the foot of the

walls of Constantinople; and, after some unimportant

skirmishes, returned westward through Macedonia, Epirus and

Dalmatia. From the Danube to the Adriatic, their passage was

marked by conflagration and blood. Whilst the European

provinces of the Greek empire sunk under these calamities, the

Asiatic provinces took a horrible vengeance on the authors of

them." The Gothic youths who had been required as hostages

when the nation crossed the Danube, and those who were

afterwards sold by their starving parents, were now gathered

together in different cities of the Asiatic provinces and

massacred in cold blood, at a given signal, on the same day

and hour. By this atrocious act, all possible reconciliation

with the Goths might well seem to be destroyed. The prospect

was discouraging enough to the new emperor who now ascended

the vacant throne of Valens (A. D. 379),--the soldier

Theodosius, son of Theodosius who delivered Britain from the

Scots.

{1558}

Chosen by the Emperor Gratian to be his colleague and Emperor

of the East, Theodosius undertook a most formidable task. "The

abandonment of the Danube had opened the entrance of the

empire, not only to the Goths, but to all the tribes of

Germany and Scythia. ... The blood of the young Goths which

had been shed in Asia was daily avenged with interest over all

that remained of Mœsian, Thrasian, Dalmatian, or Grecian race.

It was more particularly during these four years of

extermination that the Goths acquired the fatal celebrity

attached to their name, which is still that of the destroyers

of civilisation. Theodosius began by strengthening the

fortified cities, recruiting the garrisons, and exercising his

soldiers in small engagements whenever he felt assured of

success; he then waited to take advantage of circumstances; he

sought to divide his enemies by intrigue, and, above all,

strenuously disavowed the rapacity of the ministers of Valens,

or the cruelty of Julius; he took every occasion of declaring

his attachment and esteem for the Gothic people, and at length

succeeded in persuading them that his friendship was sincere.

... The very victories of the Goths, their pride, their

intemperance, at length impaired their energy. Fritigern, who,

in the most difficult moments, had led them on with so much

ability, was dead; the jealousies of independent tribes were

rekindled. ... It was by a series of treaties, with as many

independent chieftains, that the nation was at length induced

to lay down its arms: the last of these treaties was concluded

on the 30th of October, 382. It restored peace to the Eastern

empire, six years after the Goths crossed the Danube. This

formidable nation was thus finally established within the

boundary of the empire of the East. The vast regions they had

ravaged were abandoned to them, if not in absolute

sovereignty, at least on terms little at variance with their

independence. The Goths settled in the bosom of the empire had

no kings; their hereditary chiefs were consulted under the

name of judges, but their power was unchanged. ... The Goths

gave a vague sort of recognition to the sovereignty of the

Roman emperor; but they submitted neither to his laws, his

magistrates, nor his taxes. They engaged to maintain 40,000

men for the service of Theodosius; but they were to remain a

distinct army. ... It was, probably, at this period that their

apostle, bishop Ulphilas, who had translated the Gospels into

their tongue, invented the Mœso-Gothic character, which bears

the name of their new abode."

J. C. L. de Sismondi,

Fall of the Roman Empire,

chapter 5 (volume 1).

ALSO IN:

E. Gibbon,

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,

chapter 26.

GOTHS: A. D. 395.

Alaric's invasion of Greece.

"The death of Theodosius [A. D. 395] threw the administration

of the Eastern Empire into the hands of Rufinus, the minister

of Arcadius; and that of the Western into those of Stilicho,

the guardian of Honorius. The discordant elements which

composed the Roman empire began to reveal all their

incongruities under these two ministers. ... The two ministers

hated one another with all the violence of aspiring ambition."

G. Finlay,

Greece under the Romans,

chapter 2, section 8.

"The animosity existing between Stilicho and the successive

ministers of the Eastern Emperor (an animosity which does not

necessarily imply any fault on the part of the former) was one

most potent cause of the downfall of the Western Empire. ...

Alaric (the all-ruler) surnamed Baltha (the bold) was the

Visigothic chieftain whose genius taught him the means of

turning this estrangement between the two Empires to the best

account. He was probably born about 360. His birth-place was

the island Peuce, in the Delta of the Danube, apparently south

of what is now termed the Sulina mouth of that river. We have

already met with him crossing the Alps as a leader of

auxiliaries in the army of Theodosius."

T. Hodgkin,

Italy and Her Invaders,

book 1, chapter 4.

"At this time [A. D. 395] Alaric, partly from disgust at not

receiving all the preferment which he expected, and partly in

the hope of compelling the government of the Eastern Empire to

agree to his terms, quitted the imperial service and retired

towards the frontiers, where he assembled a force sufficiently

large to enable him to act independently of all authority.

Availing himself of the disputes between the ministers of the

two emperors, and perhaps instigated by Rufinus or Stilicho to

aid their intrigues, he established himself in the provinces

to the south of the Danube. In the year 395 he advanced to the

walls of Constantinople; but the movement was evidently a

feint. ... After this demonstration, Alaric marched into

Thrace and Macedonia, and extended his ravages into Thessaly.

... When the Goth found the northern provinces exhausted, he

resolved to invade Greece and Peloponnesus, which had long

enjoyed profound tranquillity. ... Thermopylæ was left

unguarded, and Alaric entered Greece without encountering any

resistance. The ravages committed by Alaric's army have been

described in fearful terms; villages and towns were burnt, the

men were murdered, and the women and children carried away to

be sold as slaves by the Goths. ... The walls of Thebes had

been rebuilt, and it was in such a state of defence that

Alaric could not venture to besiege it, but hurried forward to

Athens. He concluded a treaty with the civil and military

authorities, which enabled him to enter that city without

opposition. ... Athens evidently owed its good treatment to

the condition of its population, and perhaps to the strength

of its walls, which imposed some respect on the Goths; for the

rest of Attica did not escape the usual fate of the districts

through which the barbarians marched. The town of Eleusis, and

the great temple of Ceres, were plundered and then destroyed.

... Alaric marched unopposed into the Peloponnesus, and, in a

short time, captured almost every city in it without meeting

with any resistance. Corinth, Argos, and Sparta were all

plundered by the Goths." Alaric wintered in the Peloponnesus;

in the following spring he was attacked, not only by the

forces of the Eastern Empire, whose subjects he had outraged,

but by Stilicho, the energetic minister of the Roman West.

Stilicho, in a vigorous campaign, drove the Goths into the

mountains on the borders of Elis and Arcadia; but they escaped

and reached Epirus, with their plunder (see ROME: A. D.

396-398). "The truth appears to be that Alaric availed himself

so ably of the jealousy with which the court of Constantinople

viewed the proceedings of Stilicho, as to negotiate a treaty,

by which he was received into the Roman service, and that he

really entered Epirus as a general of Arcadius. ... He

obtained the appointment of Commander-in-chief of the imperial

forces in Eastern' Illyricum, which be held for four years.

During this time he prepared his troops to seek his fortune in

the Western Empire."

G. Finlay,

Greece under the Romans,

chapter 2, section 8.

{1559}

"The birth of Alaric, the glory of his past exploits, and the

confidence in his future designs, insensibly united the body

of the nation under his victorious standard; and, with the

unanimous consent of the barbarian chieftains, the

Master-general of Illyricum was elevated, according to ancient

custom, on a shield, and solemnly proclaimed king of the

Visigoths."

E. Gibbon,

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,

chapter 30.

GOTHS: A. D. 400.

Failure of Gainas at Constantinople.

His defeat and death.

See ROME: A. D. 400-518.

GOTHS: (Visigoths): A. D. 400-403.

Alaric's first invasion of Italy.

After Alaric had become a commissioned general of the Eastern

Empire and had been placed in command of the great præfecture

of Eastern Illyricum, he "remained quiet for three years,

arming and drilling his followers, and waiting for the

opportunity to make a bold stroke for a wider and more secure

dominion. In the autumn of the year 400, knowing that Stilicho

was absent on a campaign in Gaul, Alaric entered Italy. For

about a year and a half the Goths ranged almost unresisted

over the northern part of the peninsula. The emperor, whose

court was then at Milan, made preparations for taking refuge

in Gaul; and the walls of Rome were hurriedly repaired in

expectation of an attack. On the Easter Sunday of the year 402

(March 19), the camp of Alaric, near Pollentia, was surprised

by Stilicho, who rightly guessed that the Goths would be

engaged in worship, and would not imagine their Roman

fellow-Christians less observant of the sacred day than

themselves. Though unprepared for battle, the barbarians made

a desperate stand, but at last they were beaten. ... Alaric

was able to retreat in good order, and he soon after crossed

the Po with the intention of marching against Rome. However,

his troops began to desert in large numbers, and he had to

change his purpose. In the first place he thought of invading

Gaul, but Stilicho overtook him and defeated him heavily at

Verona [A. D. 403]. Alaric himself narrowly escaped capture by

the swiftness of his horse. Stilicho, however, was not very

anxious for the destruction of Alaric, as he thought he might

some day find him a convenient tool in his quarrels with the

ministers of Arcadius [the Emperor of the East]. So he offered

Alaric a handsome bribe to go away from Italy"--[back to

Illyria].

H. Bradley,

Story of the Goths,

chapter 10.

ALSO IN:

T. Hodgkin,

Italy and Her Invaders,

book 1, chapter 5.

E. Gibbon,

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,

chapter 30.

GOTHS: (Visigoths): A. D. 408-410.

Alaric's three sieges and sack of Rome.

His death.

See ROME: A. D. 408-410.

GOTHS: (Visigoths): A. D. 410-419.

Founding of the kingdom of Toulouse.

On the death of Alaric (A. D. 410), his brother-in-law,

Ataulphus, or Atawulfs, was chosen king by the wandering

Visigothic nation, and the new king succeeded in negotiating a

treaty of peace with the court at Ravenna. As the result of

it, the Goths moved northwards and, at the beginning of the

year 412, they passed out of Italy into Gaul. A number of

usurpers had risen in the western provinces, during the five

years since 407, encouraged by the disorders of the time, and

Ataulphus accepted a commission from Honorius to put them down

and to restore the imperial authority in southern Gaul. The

commission was faithfully executed in one of its parts; but

the authority which the Gothic king established was, rather,

his own, than that of the imperial puppet at Ravenna. Before

the end of 413, he was master of most of the Gallic region on

the Mediterranean (though Marseilles resisted him), and

westward to the Atlantic. Then, at Narbonne, he married Galla

Placidia, sister of Honorius, who had been a prisoner in the

camp of the Goths for four years, but who was gallantly wooed,

it would seem, and gently and truly won, by her Gothic lover.

Apparently still commissioned by the Roman emperor, though

half at war with him, and though his marriage with Placidia

was haughtily forbidden and unrecognized, Ataulphus next

carried his arms into Spain, already ravaged by Vandals, Alans

and Suevic bands. But there he was cut off in the midst of his

conquests, by assassination, in August, 415. The Goths,

however, pursued their career under another valiant king,

Wallia, who conquered the whole of Spain and meditated the

invasion of Africa; but was persuaded to give up both

conquests and prospects to Honorius, in exchange for a

dominion which embraced the fairest portions of Gaul. "His

victorious Goths, forty-three years after they had passed the

Danube, were established, according to the faith of treaties,

in the possession of the second Aquitaine, a maritime province

between the Garonne and the Loire, under the civil and

ecclesiastical jurisdiction of Bordeaux. ... The Gothic limits

were enlarged by the additional gift of some neighboring

dioceses; and the successors of Alaric fixed their royal

residence at Toulouse, which included five populous quarters,

or cities, within the spacious circuit of its walls. ... The

Gothic limits contained the territories of seven

cities--namely, those of Bordeaux, Périgueux, Angoulême, Agen,

Saintes, Poitiers, and Toulouse. Hence the district obtained

the name of Septimania."

E. Gibbon,

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,

chapter 31 (with note by Dr. Wm. Smith).

It was at the end of the year 418, that the Goths settled

themselves in their new kingdom, of Toulouse. The next year,

Wallia died, and was succeeded by Theodoric, a valorous

soldier of the race of the Balthings, who played a

considerable part in the history of the next thirty years.

H. Bradley,

Story of the Goths,

chapter 11-12.

ALSO IN:

T. Hodgkin,

Italy and Her Invaders,

book 1, chapter 8 (volume 1).

GOTHS: (The Visigoths): A. D.419-451.

The Kingdom of Toulouse.

"By the peace which their king Wallia concluded with Honorius

(416) after the restoration of Placidia, they [the Visigoths]

had obtained legal possession of the district called Aquitania

Secunda, together with the territory round Toulouse, all of

which allotment went by the name of Septimania or Gothia. For

ten years (419-429) there had been firm peace between

Visigoths and Romans; then, for ten years more (429-439),

fierce and almost continued war, Theodoric, king of the

Visigoths, endeavouring to take Arles and Narbonne; Aetius and

his subordinate Litorius striving to take the Gothic capital

of Toulouse, and all but succeeding. And in these wars Aetius

had availed himself of his long-standing friendship with the

Huns to enlist them as auxiliaries against the warriors of

Theodoric, dangerous allies who plundered friends and enemies.

... For the last twelve years (439-451) there had been peace,

but scarcely friendship, between the Courts of Ravenna and

Toulouse."

T. Hodgkin,

Italy and Her Invaders,

book 2, chapter 3 (volume 2).

{1560}

As the successor of Wallia, who died in 419, the Visigoths

chose Theoderic, "who seems to have been a Balthing, though

not related either to Wallia or to Atawulf. You must be

careful not to confound this Visigoth Theoderic, or his son of

the same name, with the great Theoderic the Amaling, who began

to reign over the Ostrogoths about the year 475. Theoderic the

Visigoth was not such a great man as his namesake, but he must

have been both a brave soldier and an able ruler, or he could

not have kept the affection and obedience of his people for

thirty-two years. His great object was to extend his kingdom,

which was hemmed in on the north by the Franks, ... and on the

west by another people of German invaders, the Burgunds; while

the Roman Empire still kept possession of some rich cities,

such as Arles and Narbonne [the first named of which Theoderic

besieged unsuccessfully in 425, the last named in 437], which

were temptingly close to the Gothic boundary on the south. ...

In the year 450 the Visigoths and the Romans were drawn more

closely together by the approach of a great common danger. ...

The Huns ... had, under their famous king, Attila, moved

westward, and were threatening to over-run both Gaul and

Italy."

H. Bradley,

Story of the Goths,

chapter 12.

See HUNS: A. D. 451.

GOTHS: (Ostrogoths and Visigoths): A. D. 451.

At the battle of Chalons.

See HUNS: A. D. 451.

GOTHS: (Ostrogoths): A. D. 453.

Breaking the yoke of the Huns.

See HUNS: A. D. 453.

GOTHS: (Visigoths): A. D. 453-484.

Extension of the kingdom of Toulouse.

"The Visigoths were governed from 453 to 466 by Theodoric the

Second, son of Theodoric the First, and grandson of Alaric.

... The reign of Theodoric was distinguished by conquests. On

the one hand he drove the Suevians as far as the extremity of

Gallicia. ... On the other hand, in 462, he rendered himself

master of the town of Narbon, which was delivered up to him by

its count; he also carried his arms towards the Loire; but his

brother Frederic, whom he had charged with the conquest of the

Armorici, and who had taken possession of Chinon, was killed

in 463 near Orleans, in a battle which he gave to Count

Ægidius. Theodoric finally extended the dominion of the

Visigoths to the Rhone; he even attacked Arles and Marseille,

but he could not subjugate them. After a glorious reign of

thirteen years, he was killed in the month of August, 466, by

his brother Euric, by whom he was succeeded. ... Euric ...

attacked, in 473, the province of Auvergne. ... He conquered

it in 475 and caused his possession of it to be confirmed by

the emperor Nepos. He had at that period acquired the Loire

and the Rhone as frontiers; in Spain he subjected the whole of

the province of Taragon. ... He afterwards conquered Provence,

and was acknowledged a sovereign in Arles and at Marseille,

towards the year 480. No prince, whether civilized or

barbarian, was at that period so much feared as Euric; and,

had he lived longer, it would undoubtedly have been to the

Visigoths, and not to the Franks, that the honor would have

belonged of reconstituting the Gallic provinces; but he died

at Arles towards the end of the year 484, leaving an only son

of tender age, who was crowned under the name of Alaric the

Second."

J. C. L. S. de Sismondi,

The French under the Merovingians;

translated by Bellingham, chapter 4.

GOTHS: (Ostrogoths): A. D. 473-474.

Invasions of Italy and Gaul.

"The Ostrogothic brother-kings, who served under Attila at the

battle in Champagne, on the overthrow of the Hunnish Empire

obtained for themselves a goodly settlement in Pannonia, on

the western bank of the Danube. For near twenty years they had

been engaged in desultory hostilities with their barbarian

neighbours, with Sueves and Rugians on the north, with Huns

and Sarmatians on the south. Now, as their countryman,

Jornandes, tells us with admirable frankness, 'the spoils of

these neighbouring nations were dwindling, and food and

clothing began to fail the Goths.' ... They clustered round

their kings, and clamoured to be led forth to war--whither

they cared not, but war must be. Theodemir, the elder king,

took counsel with his brother Widemir, and they resolved to

commence a campaign against the Roman Empire. Theodemir, as

the more powerful chieftain, was to attack the stronger Empire

of the East; Widemir, with his weaker forces, was to enter

Italy. He did so, but, like so many of the northern

conquerors, he soon found a grave in the beautiful but deathly

land. His son, the younger Widemir, succeeded to his designs

of conquest, but Glycerius [Roman emperor, for the moment]

approached him with presents and smooth words, and was not

ashamed to suggest that he should transfer his arms to Gaul,

which was still in theory, and partially in fact, a province

of the Empire. The sturdy bands of Widemir's Ostrogoths

descended accordingly into the valleys of the Rhone and the

Loire; they speedily renewed the ancient alliance with the

Visigothic members of their scattered nationality, and helped

to ruin yet more utterly the already desperate cause of

Gallo-Roman freedom."

T. Hodgkin,

Italy and Her Invaders,

book 3, chapter 7 (volume 2).

GOTHS: (Ostrogoths): A. D. 473-488.

Rise of Theodoric.

The greater mass of the Ostrogoth nation who followed

Theodemir (or Theudemer) the elder of the royal brothers, into

the territories of the Eastern Empire, were rapidly successful

in their adventures. The Court at Constantinople made little

attempt to oppose them with arms, but bribed them to peace by

gifts of money and a large cession of territory in Macedonia.

"Amongst the cities which were abandoned to them was Pella,

famous as the birthplace of Alexander the Great. Just after

the conclusion of this treaty (in the year 474) Theudemer

died, and his son Theoderic, at the age of twenty years, began

his long and glorious reign as king of the Ostrogoths."

Theodoric had been reared in the imperial court at

Constantinople, from his eighth to his eighteenth year, his

father having pledged him to the emperor as a hostage for the

fulfilment of a treaty of peace. He understood, therefore, the

corrupt politics of the empire and its weakness, and he made the

most of his knowledge.

{1561}

Sometimes at peace with the reigning powers and sometimes at

war; sometimes ravaging the country to the very gates of the

impregnable capital, and sometimes settled quietly on lands

along the southern bank of the Danube which he had taken in

exchange for the Maeedonian tract; sometimes in league and

sometimes in furious rivalry with another Gothic chieftain and

adventurer, called Theodoric Strabo, whose origin and whose

power are somewhat of a mystery--the seriousness to the

Eastern Empire of the position and the strength of Theodoric

and his Ostrogoths went on developing until the year 488. That

year, the statesmen at Constantinople were illuminated by an

idea. They proposed to Theodoric to migrate with his nation

into Italy and to conquer a kingdom there. The Emperor Zeno,

to whom the Roman senate had surrendered the sovereignty of

the Western Roman Empire, and into whose hands the barbarian

who extinguished it, Odoacer, or Odovacar, had delivered the

purple robes--the Emperor Zeno, in the exercise of his

imperial function, authorized the conquest to be made.

Theodoric did not hesitate to accept a commission so

scrupulously legal.

H. Bradley,

Story of the Goths,

chapters 14-15.

GOTHS: (Ostrogoths): A. D. 488-526.

The kingdom of Theodoric in Italy.

See ROME: A. D. 488-526.

GOTHS: (Ostrogoths): A. D. 493-525.

Theodoric in German legend.

See VERONA: A. D. 493-525.

GOTHS: (Visigoths): A. D. 507-509.

The kingdom of Toulouse overthrown by the Franks.

"If the successors of Euric had been endowed with genius and

energy equal to his, it is possible that the Visigoths might

have made themselves masters of the whole Western world. But

there was in the kingdom one fatal element of weakness, which

perhaps not even a succession of rulers like Euric could have

long prevented from working the destruction of the State. The

Visigoth kings were Arians; the great mass of their subjects

in Gaul were Catholics, and the hatred between religious

parties was so great that it was almost impossible for a

sovereign to win the attachment of subjects who regarded him

as a heretic." After 496, when Clovis, the king of the Franks,

renounced his heathenism, professed Christianity, and was

baptized by a Catholic bishop, the Catholics of Southern Gaul

began almost openly to invite him to the conquest of their

country. In the year 507 he responded to the invitation, and

declared war against the Visigoth, giving simply as his ground

of war that it grieved him to see the fairest part of Gaul in

the hands of the Arians. "The rapidity of Clovis's advance was

something quite unexpected by the Visigoths. Alaric still

clung to the hope of being able to avoid a battle until the

arrival of Theodoric's Ostrogoths [from his great kinsman in

Italy] and wished to retreat," but the opinion of his officers

forced him to make a stand. "He drew up his army on 'the field

of Voclad' (the name still survives as Vouillé or Vouglé), on

the banks of the Clain, a few miles south of Poitiers, and

prepared to receive the attack of the Franks. The battle which

followed decided the fate of Gaul. The Visigoths were totally

defeated, and their king was killed. Alaric's son, Amalaric, a

child five years of age, was carried across the Pyrenees into

Spain. During the next two years Clovis conquered, with very

little resistance, almost all the Gaulish dominions of the

Visigoths, and added them to his own. The 'Kingdom of

Toulouse' was no more. ... But Clovis was not allowed to

fulfil his intention of thoroughly destroying their [the

Visigothic] power, for the great Theoderic of Italy took up

the cause of his grandson Amalaric. The final result of many

struggles between Theoderic and the Franks was that the

Visigoths were allowed to remain masters of Spain, and of a

strip of sea-coast bordering on the Gulf of Lyons. ... This

diminished kingdom ... lasted just 200 years."

H. Bradley,

The Story of the Goths,

chapter 12.

ALSO IN:

T. Hodgkin,

Italy and Her Invaders,

book 4, chapter 9.

W. C. Perry,

The Franks,

chapter 2.

E. Gibbon,

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,

chapter 38.

See, also, ARLES: A. D. 508-510.

GOTHS: (Visigoths): A. D. 507-711.

The kingdom in Spain.

The conquests of Clovis, king of the Franks, reduced the

dominion of the Visigoths on the northern side of the Pyrenees

to a small strip of Roman Narbonensis, along the gulf of

Lyons; but most of Spain had come under their rule at that

time and remained so. Amalaric, son of Alaric II. (and

grandson, on the maternal side, of the great Ostrogothic king,

Theodoric, who ruled both Gothic kingdoms during the minority

of Amalaric), reigned after the death of Theodoric until 531,

when he was murdered. He had made Narbonne his capital, until

he was driven from it, in a war with one of the sons of

Clovis. It was recovered; but the seat of government became

fixed at Toledo. During the reign of his successor, the Franks

invaded Spain (A.D. 543), but were beaten back from the walls

of Cæsaraugusta (modern Saragossa), and retreated with

difficulty and disaster. The Visigoths were now able to hold

their ground against the conquerors of Gaul, and the limits of

their kingdom underwent little subsequent change, until the

coming of the Moors. "The Gothic kings, in spite of bloody

changes and fierce opposition from their nobility, succeeded

in identifying themselves with the land and the people whom

they had conquered. They guided the fortunes of the country

with a distinct purpose and vigorous hand. By Leovigild

(572-586) the power of the rebellious nobility was broken, and

the independence and name of the Sueves of Gallicia

extinguished. The still more dangerous religious conflict

between the Catholic population and the inherited Arianism of

the Goths was put down, but at the cost of the life of his

son, Herminigild, who had married a Frank and Catholic

princess, and who placed himself at the head of the Catholics.

But Leovigild was the last Arian king. This cause of

dissension was taken away by his son Reccared (568-601), who

solemnly abandoned Arianism, and embraced with zeal the

popular Catholic creed. He was followed by the greater part of

his Arian subjects, but the change throughout the land was not

accomplished without some fierce resistance. It led among

other things to the disappearance of the Gothic language, and

of all that recalled the Arian days, and to the destruction in

Spain of what there was of Gothic literature, such as the

translation of the Bible, supposed to be tainted with

Arianism. But it determined the complete fusion of the Gothic

and Latin population. After Reccared, two marked features of

the later Spanish character began to show themselves. One was

the great prominence in the state of the ecclesiastical

element. The Spanish kings sought in the clergy a counterpoise

to their turbulent nobility. The great church councils of

Toledo became the legislative assemblies of the nation; the

bishops in them took precedence of the nobles; laws were made

there as well as canons; and seventeen of these councils are

recorded between the end of the fourth century and the end of

the seventh.

{1562}

The other feature was that stern and systematic intolerance

which became characteristic of Spain. Under Sisebut (612-620),

took place the first expulsion of the Jews. ... The Gothic

realm of Spain was the most flourishing and the most advanced

of the new Teutonic kingdoms. ... But however the Goths in

Spain might have worked out their political career, their

course was rudely arrested. ... While the Goths had been

settling their laws, while their kings had been marshalling

their court after the order of Byzantium, the Saracens had

been drawing nearer and nearer."

R. W. Church,

The Beginning of the Middle Ages,

chapter 5.

ALSO IN:

H. Bradley,

Story of the Goths,

chapters 29-35.

S. A. Dunham,

History of Spain and Portugal,

book 2.

H. Coppée,

Conquest of Spain by the Arab-Moors,

book 2.

GOTHS: (Ostrogoths): A. D. 535-553.

Fall of the kingdom of Theodoric.

Recovery of Italy by Justinian.

See ROME: A. D. 535-553.

GOTHS: (Ostrogoths): A. D. 553.

Their disappearance from History.

"Totila and Teia, last of the race of Ostrogoth kings, fell as

became their heroic blood, sword in hand, upon the field of

battle. Then occurred a singular phenomenon,--the

annihilation and disappearance of a great and powerful people

from the world's history. ... A great people, which had

organized an enlightened government, and sent 200,000 fighting

men into the field of battle, is annihilated and forgotten. A

wretched remnant, transported by Narses to Constantinople,

were soon absorbed in the miserable proletariat of a

metropolitan city. The rest fell by the sword, or were

gradually amalgamated with the mixed population of the

peninsula. The Visigoth kingdom in Gaul and Spain, which had

been overshadowed by the glories of the great Theodoric,

emerges into independent renown, and takes up the traditions

of the Gothic name. In the annals of Europe, the Ostrogoth is

heard of no more."

J. G. Sheppard,

The Fall of Rome,

lecture 6.

GOTHS: (Visigoths): A. D. 711-713.

Fall of the kingdom in Spain.

See SPAIN: A. D. 711-713.

----------GOTHS: End----------

GOURGUES, Dominic de, The vengeance of.

See FLORIDA: A. D. 1567-1568.

GOWRIE PLOT, The.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1600.

GRACCHI, The.

See ROME: B. C. 133-121.

GRACES OF CHARLES I. TO THE IRISH.

See IRELAND: A. D. 1625.

GRAF.-GRAFIO.

"The highest official dignitary of which the Salic law [law of

the Sulian Franks] makes mention is the Grafio (Graf, Count),

who was appointed by the king, and therefore protected by a

triple ... leodis [weregild]. His authority and jurisdiction

extended over a district answering to the gau (canton) of

later times, in which he acted as the representative of the

king, and was civil and military governor of the people."

W. C. Perry,

The Franks,

chapter 10.

See, also, MARGRAVE.

GRAFTON-CHATHAM MINISTRY, The.

See ENGLAND: A. D.1765-1768, and 1770.

GRAHAM'S DIKE.

See ROMAN WALLS IN BRITAIN.

GRAMPIANS, OR MONS GRANPIUS.

Victoriously fought by the Romans under Agricola with the

tribes of Caledonia, A. D. 86. Mr. Skene fixes the battle

ground at the junction of the Isla with the Tay.

See BRITAIN: A. D. 78-84.

GRAN CHACO, The.

"This tract of flat country, lying between the tropic and 29°

South, extends eastward to the Parana and Paraguay, and

westward to the province of Santiago del Estero. Its area is

180,000 square miles. About one-third belongs to Paraguay, and

a small part to Bolivia, but the bulk is in the Argentine

Republic. ... The Gran Chaco is no desert, but a rich alluvial

lowland, fitted for colonization, which is hindered by the

want of knowledge of the rivers and their shiftings."

The American Naturalist,

volume 23, page 799.

"In the Quitchoane language, which is the original language of

Peru, they call 'chacu,' those great flocks of deer, goats,

and such other wild animals, which the inhabitants of this

part of America drive together when they hunt them; and this

name was given to the country we speak of, because at the time

Francis Pizarro made himself master of a great part of the

Peruvian empire, a great number of its inhabitants took refuge

there. Of 'Chacu', which the Spaniards pronounce 'Chacou"

custom has made 'Chaco.' It appears that, at first, they

comprehended nothing under this name but the country lying

between the mountains of the Cordilliere, the Pilco Mayo, and

the Red River; and that they extended it, in process of time,

in proportion as other nations joined the Peruvians, who had

taken refuge there to defend their liberties against the

Spaniards."

Father Charlevoix,

History of Paraguay,

book 3 (volume l).

For an account of the tribes of the Gran Chaco,

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: PAMPAS TRIBES.

GRANADA:

The rise of the city.

Granada "was small and unimportant until the year 1012. Before

that time, it was considered a dependency of Elvira [the

neighboring ancient Roman city of Illiberis]; but, little by

little, the people of Elvira migrated to it, and as it grew

Elvira dwindled into insignificance."

H. Coppée,

Conquest of Spain by the Arab-Moors,

book 6, chapter 5, note (volume 2).

GRANADA: A. D. 711.

Taken by the Arab-Moors.

See SPAIN: A. D. 711-713.

GRANADA: A. D. 1238.

The founding of the Moorish kingdom.

Its vassalage to the King of Castile.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1212-1238.

GRANADA: A. D. 1238-1273.

The kingdom under its founder.

The building of the Alhambra.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1238-1273.

GRANADA: A. D. 1273-1460.

Slow decay and crumbling of the Moorish kingdom.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1273-1460.

GRANADA: A. D. 1476-1492.

The fall of the Moorish kingdom.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1476-1492.

----------GRANADA: End----------

GRANADA, Treaty of.

See ITALY: A. D: 1501-1504.

GRANADINE CONFEDERATION, The.

See COLOMBIAN STATES: A. D. 1830-1886.

GRAND ALLIANCES against Louis XIV.

See

FRANCE: A. D. 1689-1690, to 1695-1696;

SPAIN: A. D. 1701-1702;

and ENGLAND: A. D. 1701-1702.

{1563}

GRAND ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC.

"The Grand Army of the Republic was organized April 6, 1866,

in Decatur, the county seat of Macon County, Illinois. Its

originator was Dr. Benjamin F. Stephenson, a physician of

Springfield, Illinois, who had served during the war as

surgeon of the 14th Illinois Infantry. He had spent many weeks

in study and plans so that the Order might be one that would

meet with the general approval of the surviving comrades of

the war, and thus insure their hearty co-operation. He made a

draft of a ritual, and sent it by Captain John S. Phelps to

Decatur, where two veterans, Messrs. Coltrin and Prior, had a

printing-office. These gentlemen, with their employees, who

had been in the service, were first obligated to secrecy, and

the ritual was then placed in type in their office. Captain

Phelps returned to Springfield with proofs of the ritual, but

the comrades in Decatur were so interested in the project,

that, with the active assistance of Captain M. F. Kanan and

Dr. J. W. Routh, a sufficient number of names were at once

secured to an application for charter, and these gentlemen

went to Springfield to request Dr. Stephenson to return with

them and organize a post at Decatur. The formation of a post

was under way in Springfield, but not being ready for muster,

Dr. Stephenson, accompanied by several comrades, proceeded to

Decatur, and, as stated, on April 6, 1866, mustered post No.1,

with General Isaac C. Pugh as post commander, and Captain

Kanan as adjutant. The latter gave material aid to Dr.

Stephenson in the work of organizing other posts, and Dr.

Routh served as chairman of a committee to revise the ritual.

The title, 'The Grand Army of the Republic, U. S.,' was

formally adopted that night. Soon after this, post No.2 was

organized at Springfield with General Jules C. Webber as

commander. ... Nothing was done in the Eastern States about

establishing posts until the opportunity was given for

consultation on this subject at a national soldiers' and

sailors' convention, held in Pittsburg in September, 1866,

when prominent representatives from Eastern States were

obligated and authorized to organize posts. The first posts so

established were posts Nos. 1 in Philadelphia, and 3 in

Pittsburg, by charters direct from the acting

commander-in-chief, Dr. Stephenson; and post 2, Philadelphia,

by charter received from General J. K. Proudfit, department

commander of Wisconsin. A department convention was held at

Springfield, Illinois, July 12, 1866, and adopted resolutions

declaring the objects of the G. A. R. General John W. Palmer

was elected the first Department Commander. ... The first

national convention was held at Indianapolis, Ind., November

20, 1866. ... General Stephen A. Hurlbut, of Illinois, was

elected Commander-in-Chief. General Thomas B. McKean, of New

York, Senior Vice-Commander-in-Chief; General Nathan Kimball,

of Indiana, Junior Vice-Commander-in-Chief; and Dr.

Stephenson, Adjutant-General. The objects of the Order cannot

be more briefly stated than from the articles and regulations.

1. To preserve and strengthen those kind and fraternal

feelings which bind together the Soldiers, Sailors, and

Marines who united to suppress the late Rebellion, and to

perpetuate the memory and history of the dead.

2. To assist such former comrades in arms as need help and

protection, and to extend needful aid to the widows and

orphans of those who have fallen.

3. To maintain true allegiance to the United States of

America, based upon a paramount respect for, and fidelity to,

its Constitution and laws, to discountenance whatever tends to

weaken loyalty, incites to insurrection, treason, or

rebellion, or in any manner impairs the efficiency and

permanency of our free institutions; and to encourage the

spread of universal liberty, equal rights, and justice to all

men.

Article IV. defines the qualifications of members in the

following terms: Soldiers and Sailors of the United States

Army, Navy, or Marine Corps who served between April 12, 1861,

and April 29, 1865, in the war for the suppression of the

Rebellion, and those having been honorably discharged

therefrom after such service, and of such State regiments as

were called into active service and subject to the orders of

United States general officers, between the dates mentioned,

shall be eligible to membership in the Grand Army of the

Republic. No person shall be eligible who has at any time

borne arms against the United States. ... The second national

encampment was held in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, Pa.,

January 15, 1868. ... General John A. Logan, of Illinois, was

elected Commander-in-Chief. ... That which tended most to

attract public attention to the organization was the issuance

of the order of General Logan early in his administration, in

1868, directing the observance of May 30th as Memorial Day.

... At the national encampment, held May 11, 1870, at

Washington, D. C., the following article was adopted as a part

of the rules and regulations: 'The national encampment hereby

establishes a Memorial Day, to be observed by the members of

the Grand Army of the Republic, on the 30th day of May

annually, in commemoration of the deeds of our fallen

comrades. When such day occurs on Sunday, the preceding day

shall be observed, except where, by legal enactment, the

succeeding day is made a legal holiday, when such day shall be

observed.' Memorial Day has been observed as such every year

since throughout the country wherever a post of the Grand Army

of the Republic has been established. In most of the States

the day has been designated as a holiday."

W. H. Ward, editor,

Records of Members of the

Grand Army of the Republic,

pages 6-9.

ALSO IN:

G. S. Merrill,

The Grand Army of the Republic

(New England Magazine, August, 1890).

GRAND ARMY REMONSTRANCE, The.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1648 (NOVEMBER-DECEMBER).

GRAND COUNCIL, The.

See VENICE: A. D. 1032-1319.

GRAND MODEL, The.

The "fundamental constitutions" framed by the philosopher,

John Locke, for the Carolinas, were so called in their day.

See NORTH CAROLINA: A. D. 1669-1693.

GRAND PENSIONARY, The.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1651-1660.

GRAND REMONSTRANCE, The.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1641 (NOVEMBER).

GRAND SERJEANTY.

See FEUDAL TENURES.

GRAND SHUPANES.

See SHUPANES.

GRANDELLA, OR BENEVENTO, Battle of (1266).

See ITALY (SOUTHERN): A. D. 1250-1268.

GRANDI OF FLORENCE, The.

See FLORENCE: A. D. 1250-1293.

GRANGE, The.

Grangers.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1877-1891.

GRANICUS, Battle of the (B. C. 334).

See MACEDONIA: B. C. 334-330.

{1564}

GRANSON, Battle of (1476).

See BURGUNDY: A. D. 1476-1477.

GRANT, General Ulysses S.

First Battle at Belmont.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1861

(SEPTEMBER-NOVEMBER: ON THE MISSISSIPPI).

Capture of Forts Henry and Donelson.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1862

(JANUARY-FEBRUARY: KENTUCKY-TENNESSEE).

Battle of Shiloh, or Pittsburg Landing.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1862

(FEBRUARY-APRIL: TENNESSEE).

Under Halleck at Corinth.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1862

(APRIL-MAY: TENNESSEE-MISSISSIPPI).

Command of the Armies of the Mississippi and Tennessee.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1862

(JUNE-OCTOBER: TENNESSEE-KENTUCKY).

Iuka and Corinth.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1862

(SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER: MISSISSIPPI).

Campaign against Vicksburg.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1863

(JANUARY-APRIL: ON THE MISSISSIPPI),

and (APRIL-JULY: ON THE MISSISSIPPI).

The Chattanooga campaign.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1863

(OCTOBER-NOVEMBER: TENNESSEE).

In chief command of the whole army.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1864

(MARCH-APRIL).

Last campaign.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1864

(MAY: VIRGINIA) to 1865 (APRIL: VIRGINIA).

Presidential election, re-election and Administration.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1868

(NOVEMBER), to 1876-1877.

GRANVELLE'S MINISTRY IN THE NETHERLANDS.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1555-1559, to 1562-1566.

GRASSHOPPER WAR, The.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: SHAWANESE.

GRATIAN, Roman Emperor (Western), A. D. 367-383.

GRAUBUNDEN: Achievement of independence.

See SWITZERLAND: A. D. 1396-1499.

The Valtelline revolt and war.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1624-1626.

Dismemberment by Bonaparte.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1797 (MAY-OCTOBER).

GRAVE: A. D. 1586.

Siege and capture by the Prince of Parma.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1585-1586.

GRAVE: A. D. 1593.

Capture by Prince Maurice.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1588-1593.

----------GRAVE: End----------

GRAVELINES: A. D. 1383.

Capture and destruction by the English.

See FLANDERS: A. D. 1383.

GRAVELINES: A. D. 1652.

Taken by the Spaniards.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1652.

GRAVELINES: A. D. 1658.

Siege and capture by the French.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1655-1658.

GRAVELINES: A. D. 1659.

Ceded to France.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1659-1661.

----------GRAVELINES: End----------

GRAVELOTTE, OR ST. PRIVAT, Battle of.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1870 (JULY-AUGUST).

GRAYBACKS, BOYS IN GRAY.

See BOYS IN BLUE.

GREAT BELL ROLAND, The.

See GHENT: A. D. 1539-1540.

GREAT BRIDGE, Battle at (1775).

See VIRGINIA: A. D. 1775-1776.

GREAT BRITAIN: Adoption of the name for the United Kingdoms of

England and Scotland.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1707.

GREAT CAPTAIN, The.

This was the title commonly given to the Spanish general,

Gonsalvo de Cordova, after his campaign against the French in

Italy.

See ITALY: A. D. 1501-1504.

GREAT COMPANY, The.

See ITALY: A. D. 1343-1393.

GREAT CONDÉ, The.

See CONDÉ.

GREAT DAYS OF AUVERGNE, The.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1665.

GREAT ELECTOR, The.

See BRANDENBURG: A. D. 1640-1688.

GREAT INTERREGNUM, The.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1250-1272.

GREAT KANAWHA, Battle of the.

See OHIO (VALLEY): A. D. 1774.

GREAT KING, The.

A title often applied to the kings of the ancient Persian

monarchy.

GREAT MEADOWS, Washington's first battle and capitulation at.

See OHIO (VALLEY): A. D. 1754.

GREAT MOGULS.

The Mongol sovereigns of India.

See INDIA: A. D. 1399-1605.

GREAT PEACE, The.

See BRETIGNY, TREATY OF.

GREAT POWERS, The.

The six larger and stronger nations of Europe,--England,

Germany, France, Austria, Russia and Italy,--are often

referred to as "the great powers." Until the rise of united

Italy, the "great powers" of Europe were five in number.

GREAT PRIVILEGE, or Great Charter of Holland, The.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D.1477, and after.

GREAT RUSSIA.

See RUSSIA, GREAT.

GREAT SALT LAKE CITY, The founding of.

See MORMONISM: A. D. 1846-1848.

GREAT SCHISM, The.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1377-1417;

and ITALY: A. D. 1343-1389, and 1378.

GREAT TREK, The.

See SOUTH AFRICA. A. D. 1806-1881.

GREAT WALL OF CHINA.

See CHINA: THE ORIGIN OF THE PEOPLE.

GREAT WEEK, The.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1830-1840.

GREAT YAHNI, Battle of (1877).

See TURKS: A.D. 1877-1878.

GREAVES.

The greaves which formed part of the armour of the ancient

Greeks were "leggings formed of a pewter-like metal, which

covered the lower limbs down to the instep; and they were

fastened by clasps. ... Homer designates them as 'flexible';

and he frequently speaks of the Greek soldiery as being

well-equipped with this important defence--not only, that is,

well provided with greaves, but also having them so well

formed and adjusted that they would protect the limbs of the

warrior without in any degree affecting his freedom of

movement and action. These greaves, as has been stated, appear

to have been formed of a metal resembling the alloy that we

know as pewter."

C. Boutell,

Arms and Armour in Antiquity and the Middle Ages,

chapter 2, section 3.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY FOR READY REFERENCE, VOLUME 2, EL DORADO TO GREAVES ***

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