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Title: Great leaders
Author: Ferris, George T. (George Titus)
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Great leaders" ***
[Illustration: PERICLES.]
GREAT LEADERS
HISTORIC PORTRAITS
FROM THE GREAT HISTORIANS
SELECTED, WITH NOTES AND BRIEF BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES
BY G. T. FERRIS
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1889
COPYRIGHT, 1889,
BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
PREFACE.
Every one perusing the pages of the historians must have been impressed
with the graphic and singularly penetrative character of many of the
sketches of the distinguished persons whose doings form the staple of
history. These pen-portraits often stand out from the narrative with
luminous and vivid effect, the writers seeming to have concentrated upon
them all their powers of penetration and all their skill in graphic
delineation. Few things in literature are marked by analysis so close,
discernment so keen, or by effects so brilliant and dramatic. In some of
the later historians this feature is specially noticeable, but it was
Hume’s admirable portrayal of the character of Alfred the Great that
suggested the compilation of the present volume.
A selection such as this of the more striking passages in the great
historians will serve, it is believed, a double purpose--first as a
suitable introduction to these distinguished writers for those not
acquainted with them, and next as a means of stimulating a taste for the
study of history itself. It must be remembered that it is largely
through their sympathies for persons that readers generally find
pleasure in history. The sometimes noble and sometimes startling
personality of great leaders exerts a fascinating effect upon all
susceptible minds, and whatever brings this personality vividly before
us greatly strengthens our interest in the records of the past. For
these reasons this compilation will be found well adapted for the
reading class in high schools and seminaries.
It is desirable to explain that in some instances the selections do not
appear here exactly in the form of the original. Passages from different
pages are sometimes brought together, so as to give completeness to the
portrait, but in no other way has any liberty been taken with the text
of the authors.
In making the selections, the primary object was to secure, in each
instance, the most vivid and truthful portrait obtainable, but it was
also thought desirable to render the volume as representative of
historical literature as possible, and hence to include a wide range of
writers. The work will be found to be tolerably representative in this
particular, but some well-known historians do not appear, for the reason
that their methods did not yield suitable material.
The selections terminate with the period of Waterloo, because, while
great leaders have flourished since those days, the historical
perspective is not sufficient to permit that judicial estimate so
necessary for a truly valuable portrait.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
THEMISTOCLES AND ARISTIDES. By GEORGE GROTE 1
(_From the “History of Greece.”_)
PERICLES. By ERNST CURTIUS 6
(_From the “History of Greece.”_)
EPAMINONDAS. By ERNST CURTIUS 10
(_From the “History of Greece.”_)
ALEXANDER THE GREAT. By GEORGE GROTE 14
(_From the “History of Greece.”_)
HANNIBAL. By THEODOR MOMMSEN 19
(_From the “History of Rome.”_)
THE GRACCHI. By PLUTARCH 23
(_From “Plutarch’s Lives.”_)
CAIUS MARIUS. By JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE 27
(_From “Julius Cæsar--A Sketch.”_)
MITHRIDATES, KING OF PONTUS. By THEODOR MOMMSEN 32
(_From the “History of Rome.”_)
LUCIUS SYLLA. By JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE 37
(_From “Julius Cæsar--A Sketch.”_)
POMPEY. By THOMAS KERCHEVER ARNOLD 41
(_From the “History of Rome.”_)
SERTORIUS. By PLUTARCH 44
(_From “Plutarch’s Lives.”_)
JULIUS CÆSAR. By JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE 49
(_From “Julius Cæsar--A Sketch.”_)
TRAJAN. By CHARLES MERIVALE 53
(_From the “History of the Romans under the Empire.”_)
THE ANTONINES. By EDWARD GIBBON 56
(_From the “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”_)
ZENOBIA, QUEEN OF PALMYRA. By EDWARD GIBBON 60
(_From the “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”_)
CONSTANTINE, THE FIRST CHRISTIAN EMPEROR. By EDWARD
GIBBON 65
(_From the “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”_)
JULIAN THE APOSTATE. By EDWARD GIBBON 70
(_From the “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”_)
THEODOSIUS THE GREAT. By EDWARD GIBBON 77
(_From the “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”_)
ATTILA, THE SCOURGE OF GOD. By EDWARD GIBBON 83
(_From the “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”_)
BELISARIUS. By LORD MAHON 88
(_From the “Life of Belisarius.”_)
MOHAMMED, THE FOUNDER OF ISLAM. By EDWARD GIBBON 92
(_From the “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”_)
CHARLEMAGNE. By Sir JAMES STEPHEN 100
(_From “Lectures on the History of France.”_)
ALFRED THE GREAT, OF ENGLAND. By DAVID HUME 107
(_From the “History of England.”_)
OLAF TRYGGVESON, KING OF NORWAY. By THOMAS CARLYLE 111
(_From the “Early Kings of Norway.”_)
CNUT OR CANUTE OF ENGLAND, ALSO KING OF DENMARK.
By JOHN RICHARD GREEN 116
(_From the “Short History of the English People.”_)
WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. By JOHN RICHARD GREEN 120
(_From the “Short History of the English People.”_)
ROBERT GUISCARD. By EDWARD GIBBON 126
(_From the “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”_)
THOMAS À BECKET, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. By
DAVID HUME 130
(_From the “History of England.”_)
SALADIN. By EDWARD GIBBON 135
(_From the “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”_)
HENRY II, KING OF ENGLAND. By DAVID HUME 138
(_From the “History of England.”_)
GENGHIS OR ZINGIS KHAN. By EDWARD GIBBON 142
(_From the “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”_)
SIMON DE MONTFORT, EARL OF LEICESTER. By JOHN RICHARD
GREEN 148
(_From the “Short History of the English People.”_)
EDWARD I, KING OF ENGLAND. By JOHN RICHARD GREEN 153
(_From the “Short History of the English People.”_)
ROBERT BRUCE. By Sir ARCHIBALD ALISON 157
(_From “Essays.”_)
EDWARD III, KING OF ENGLAND. By DAVID HUME 163
(_From the “History of England.”_)
RIENZI. By EDWARD GIBBON 167
(_From the “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”_)
TIMOUR OR TAMERLANE. By EDWARD GIBBON 173
(_From the “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”_)
JEANNE D’ARC. By JOHN RICHARD GREEN 180
(_From the “Short History of the English People.”_)
MAHOMET OR MOHAMMED II. By EDWARD GIBBON 186
(_From the “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”_)
LORENZO DE’ MEDICI. By JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS 190
(_From the “Italian Renaissance.”_)
GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. By JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS 195
(_From the “Italian Renaissance.”_)
CÆSAR BORGIA. By CHARLES YRIARTE 201
(_From “Cæsar Borgia.”_)
CARDINAL WOLSEY. By JOHN RICHARD GREEN 208
(_From the “Short History of the English People.”_)
FRANCISCO PIZARRO.[1] By WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 211
(_From the “Conquest of Peru.”_)
HERNANDO CORTÉS. By WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 216
(_From the “History of the Conquest of Mexico.”_)
MARTIN LUTHER. By THOMAS CARLYLE 222
(_From the “Life of Martin Luther.”_)
IGNATIUS DE LOYOLA (SAINT), FOUNDER OF THE ORDER
OF JESUS. By Sir JAMES STEPHEN 230
(_From “Stephen’s Essays.”_)
THOMAS CROMWELL, EARL OF ESSEX. By JOHN RICHARD GREEN 235
(_From the “Short History of the English People.”_)
CHARLES V, EMPEROR OF GERMANY.[2] By JOHN LOTHROP
MOTLEY 240
(_From the “Rise of the Dutch Republic.”_)
WILLIAM OF NASSAU, PRINCE OF ORANGE. By JOHN LOTHROP
MOTLEY 248
(_From the “Rise of the Dutch Republic.”_)
JOHN KNOX. By JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE 255
(_From the “History of England.”_)
DUKE OF ALVA. By JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY 259
(_From the “Rise of the Dutch Republic.”_)
QUEEN ELIZABETH. By JOHN RICHARD GREEN 265
(_From the “Short History of the English People.”_)
MARY STUART, QUEEN OF SCOTS. By DAVID HUME 275
(_From the “History of England.”_)
JOHN PYM. By JOHN RICHARD GREEN 280
(_From the “Short History of the English People.”_)
HENRY IV, KING OF FRANCE. By JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY 284
(_From the “History of the United Netherlands.”_)
WALLENSTEIN, DUKE OF FRIEDLAND. By FRIEDRICH VON
SCHILLER 291
(_From the “History of the Thirty Years’ War.”_)
CARDINAL RICHELIEU. By Sir JAMES STEPHEN 299
(_From the “Lectures on the History of France.”_)
GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS, KING OF SWEDEN. By FRIEDRICH VON
SCHILLER 303
(_From the “History of the Thirty Years’ War.”_)
EARL OF STRAFFORD. By DAVID HUME 310
(_From the “History of England.”_)
OLIVER CROMWELL. By THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 315
(_From the “History of England.”_)
LORD HALIFAX. By THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 322
(_From the “History of England.”_)
LOUIS XIV OF FRANCE. By THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 327
(_From “Essays.”_)
WILLIAM III OF ENGLAND. By THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 329
(_From the “History of England.”_)
PETER THE GREAT, CZAR OF RUSSIA. By THOMAS BABINGTON
MACAULAY 339
(_From the “History of England.”_)
DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH. By WILLIAM E. H. LECKY 344
(_From the “History of England in the Eighteenth Century.”_)
SIR ROBERT WALPOLE. By WILLIAM E. H. LECKY 351
(_From the “History of England in the Eighteenth Century.”_)
FREDERICK THE GREAT. By THOMAS CARLYLE 357
(_From the “Life of Frederick the Great.”_)
WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM. By JOHN RICHARD GREEN 364
(_From the “Short History of the English People.”_)
EDMUND BURKE. By WILLIAM E. H. LECKY 369
(_From the “History of England in the Eighteenth Century.”_)
GEORGE WASHINGTON. By WILLIAM E. H. LECKY 378
(_From the “History of England in the Eighteenth Century.”_)
MIRABEAU. By THOMAS CARLYLE 384
(_From Carlyle’s “Essays.”_)
CHARLES JAMES FOX. By WILLIAM E. H. LECKY 389
(_From the “History of England in the Eighteenth Century.”_)
JEAN PAUL MARAT. By HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE 396
(_From the “French Revolution.”_)
PRINCE TALLEYRAND. By ARCHIBALD ALISON 400
(_From the “History of Europe.”_)
GEORGE JACQUES DANTON. By HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE 405
(_From the “French Revolution.”_)
ROBESPIERRE. By HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE 410
(_From the “French Revolution.”_)
WILLIAM PITT THE YOUNGER. By JOHN RICHARD GREEN 417
(_From the “Short History of the English People.”_)
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. By LOUIS ADOLPHE THIERS 423
(_From the “History of the Consulate and Empire.”_)
DUKE OF WELLINGTON. By ARCHIBALD ALISON 432
(_From the “History of Europe.”_)
LIST OF ENGRAVED PORTRAITS.
FACE PAGE
PERICLES 6
(_From antique bust, copy in the British Museum._)
ALEXANDER THE GREAT 14
(_From antique bust._)
HANNIBAL 20
(_From antique gem._)
JULIUS CÆSAR 49
(_From antique statue, Rome._)
MOHAMMED 92
(_From old print, likeness traditional._)
CHARLEMAGNE 100
(_From old line engraving._)
ALFRED THE GREAT 107
(_From old line engraving._)
WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR 120
(_Copy of painting from an ancient effigy._)
MARTIN LUTHER 222
(_From painting by Cranach._)
IGNATIUS DE LOYOLA 230
(_From portrait by Rubens._)
CHARLES V. 240
(_From portrait by Titian._)
WILLIAM OF NASSAU 248
RICHELIEU 299
(_From line engraving by Nanteuil._)
OLIVER CROMWELL 315
PETER THE GREAT 339
(_From line engraving by Petrus Anderloni._)
FREDERICK THE GREAT 357
GREAT LEADERS.
THEMISTOCLES AND ARISTIDES.
BY GEORGE GROTE.
[Athenian statesmen and soldiers, the first named born 514 B.C.,
died about 449; the second, surnamed “the Just,” died about 468
B.C., date of birth unknown. During the Persian invasions of
Greece, Themistocles was the most brilliant figure among the Greek
leaders; his genius was omnipresent, his resources boundless. He
created the maritime supremacy of Athens, and through him the great
victory of Salamis was won. His political ascendency was finally
lost through the distrust created by his unscrupulous and facile
character, and he died an exile in Persia, intriguing against his
native land. Aristides, less brilliant than his rival, was famous
for the stainless integrity and uprightness of his public life, and
his name has passed into history as the symbol of unswerving truth
and justice. He also contributed largely to the successful
leadership of the Hellenic forces against their Asiatic invaders.
References: Plutarch’s “Lives,” Grote’s “History of Greece,”
Curtius’s “History of Greece.”]
Neither Themistocles nor Aristides could boast of a lineage of gods and
heroes like the Æacid Miltiades;[3] both were of middling station and
circumstances. Aristides, son of Lysimachus, was on both sides of pure
Athenian blood. But the wife of Neocles, father of Themistocles, was a
foreign woman of Thrace or Caria; and such an alliance is the less
surprising since Themistocles must have been born in the time of the
Peisistratids,[4] when the status of an Athenian citizen had not yet
acquired its political value. There was a marked contrast between these
two eminent men--those points which stood most conspicuous in one being
comparatively deficient in the other.
In the description of Themistocles, which we have the advantage of
finding briefly sketched by Thucydides, the circumstance most
emphatically brought out is his immense force of spontaneous invention
and apprehension, without any previous aid either from teaching or
actual practice. The might of unassisted nature was never so strikingly
exhibited as in him; he conceived the complications of a present
embarrassment and divined the chances of a mysterious future with equal
sagacity and equal quickness. The right expedient seemed to flash on his
mind _extempore_, even in the most perplexing contingencies, without the
least necessity for premeditation.
Nor was he less distinguished for daring and resource in action. When
engaged on any joint affairs his superior competence marked him out as
the leader for others to follow; and no business, however foreign to his
experience, ever took him by surprise or came wholly amiss to him. Such
is the remarkable picture which Thucydides draws of a countryman whose
death nearly coincided in time with his own birth. The untutored
readiness and universality of Themistocles probably formed in his mind a
contrast to the more elaborate discipline and careful preliminary study
with which the statesmen of his own day--and Pericles specially the
greatest of them--approached the consideration and discussion of public
affairs. Themistocles had received no teaching from philosophers,
sophists, and rhetors, who were the instructors of well-born youth in
the days of Thucydides, and whom Aristophanes, the contemporary of the
latter, so unmercifully derides--treating such instruction as worse than
nothing, and extolling in comparison with it the unlettered courage, the
more gymnastic accomplishments of the victors at Marathon.
The general character given in Plutarch, though many of his anecdotes
are both trifling and apocryphal, is quite consistent with the brief
sketch just cited from Thucydides. Themistocles had an unbounded
passion, not merely for glory--insomuch as the laurels of Miltiades
acquired at Marathon deprived him of rest--but also for display of every
kind. He was eager to vie with men richer than himself in showy
exhibition--one great source, though not the only source of popularity
at Athens; nor was he at all scrupulous in procuring the means of doing
it. Besides being scrupulous in attendance on the ecclesia and
dicastery, he knew most of the citizens by name, and was always ready
for advice to them in their private affairs. Moreover, he possessed all
the tactics of the expert party-man in conciliating political friends
and in defeating personal enemies; and though in the early part of his
life sincerely bent upon the upholding and aggrandizement of his
country, and was on some most critical occasions of unspeakable value to
it, yet on the whole his morality was as reckless as his intelligence
was eminent.
He was grossly corrupt in the exercise of power and employing tortuous
means, sometimes, indeed, for ends in themselves honorable and
patriotic, but sometimes also merely for enriching himself. He ended a
glorious life by years of deep disgrace, with the forfeiture of all
Hellenic esteem and brotherhood--a rich man, an exile, a traitor, and a
pensioner of the Great King, pledged to undo his own previous work of
liberation accomplished at the victory of Salamis.
Of Aristides, unfortunately, we possess no description from the hand of
Thucydides; yet his character is so simple and consistent that we may
safely accept the brief but unqualified encomium of Herodotus and
Plato, expanded as it is in the biography of Plutarch and Cornelius
Nepos, however little the details of the latter can be trusted.
Aristides was inferior to Themistocles in resource, quickness,
flexibility, and power of coping with difficulties; but incomparably
superior to him--as well as to other rivals and contemporaries--in
integrity, public as well as private; inaccessible to pecuniary
temptation as well as to other seductive influences, and deserving as
well as enjoying the highest measure of personal confidence.
He is described as the peculiar friend of Clisthenes, the first founder
of the democracy; as pursuing a straight and single-handed course in
political life, with no solicitude for party-ties, and with little care
either to conciliate friends or to offend enemies; as unflinching in the
exposure of corrupt practices by whomsoever committed or upheld; as
earning for himself the lofty surname of the Just, not less by his
judicial decisions in the capacity of archon, than by his equity in
private arbitrations, and even his candor in public dispute; and as
manifesting throughout a long public life, full of tempting
opportunities, an uprightness without a flaw and beyond all suspicion,
recognized equally by his bitter contemporary the poet Timocreon, and by
the allies of Athens, upon whom he first assessed the tribute.
Few of the leading men in any part of Greece were without some taint on
their reputation, deserved or undeserved, in regard to pecuniary
probity; but whoever became notoriously recognized as possessing this
vital quality, acquired by means of it a firmer hold on the public
esteem than even eminent talents could confer. Thucydides ranks
conspicuous probity among the first of the many ascendant qualities
possessed by Pericles; and Nicias, equal to him in this respect, though
immeasurably inferior in every other, owed to it a still larger
proportion of that exaggerated confidence which the Athenian people
continued so long to repose in him.
The abilities of Aristides, though apparently adequate to every occasion
on which he was engaged, and only inferior when we compare him with so
remarkable a man as Thucydides, were put in the shade by this
incorruptible probity, which procured for him, however, along with the
general esteem, no inconsiderable amount of private enmity from jobbers,
whom he exposed, and even some jealousy from persons who heard it
proclaimed with offensive ostentation.
We are told that a rustic and unlettered citizen gave his ostracizing
vote and expressed his dislike against Aristides on the simple ground
that he was tired of hearing him always called the Just. Now the purity
of the most honorable man will not bear to be so boastfully talked of,
as if he were the only honorable man in the country; the less it is
obtruded the more deeply and cordially will it be felt; and the story
just alluded to, whether true or false, illustrates that natural
reaction of feeling produced by absurd encomiasts or perhaps by
insidious enemies under the mask of encomiasts, who trumpeted for
Aristides as the _Just_ man at Attica so as to wound the legitimate
dignity of every one else.
Neither indiscreet friends nor artful enemies, however, could rob him of
the lasting esteem of his countrymen, which he enjoyed with intervals of
their displeasure to the end of his life. Though he was ostracized
during a part of the period between the battles of Marathon and
Salamis--at a time when the rivalry between him and Themistocles was so
violent that both could not remain at Athens without peril--yet the
dangers of Athens during the invasion of Xerxes brought him back before
the ten years of exile were expired. His fortune, originally very
moderate, was still further diminished during the course of his life, so
that he died very poor, and the state was obliged to lend aid to his
children.
PERICLES.
BY ERNST CURTIUS.
[A distinguished statesman, who built up and consolidated the power
of Athens immediately after the Persian wars, born 495 B.C., died
429. His career was contemporaneous with the highest glory of
Athens in art, arms, literature, and oratory. As an orator Pericles
was second only to Demosthenes, as a statesman second to none.
References: Grote’s “History of Greece,” Curtius’s “History of
Greece,” Plutarch’s “Lives,” Bulwer’s “Athens.”]
Aspasia came to Athens when everything new and extraordinary, everything
which appeared to be an enlargement of ancient usage, a step forward and
a new acquisition, was joyously welcomed. Nor was it long before it was
recognized that she enchanted the souls of men by no mere arts of
deception of which she had learned the trick. Hers was a lofty and
richly endowed nature with a perfect sense of all that is beautiful, and
hers a harmonious and felicitous development. For the first time the
treasures of Hellenic culture were found in the possession of a woman
surrounded by the graces of her womanhood--a phenomenon which all men
looked on with eyes of wonder. She was able to converse with
irresistible grace on politics, philosophy, and art, so that the most
serious Athenians--even such men as Socrates--sought her out in order to
listen to her conversation.
But her real importance for Athens began on the day when she made the
acquaintance of Pericles, and formed with him a connection of mutual
love. It was a real marriage, which only lacked the civil sanction
because she was a foreigner; it was an alliance of the truest and
tenderest affection which death alone dissolved--the endless source of a
domestic felicity which no man needed more than the statesman, who lived
retired from all external recreations and was unceasingly engaged in the
labors of his life.
Doubtless the possession of this woman was in many respects invaluable
for Pericles. Not only were her accomplishments the delights of the
leisure hours which he allowed himself and the recreation of his mind
from its cares, but she also kept him in intercourse with the daily life
around him. She possessed what he lacked--the power of being perfectly
at ease in every kind of society; she kept herself informed of
everything that took place in the city; nor can distant countries have
escaped her attention, since she is said to have first acquainted
Pericles with Sicilian oratory, which was at that time developing
itself.
She was of use to him through her various connections at home and abroad
as well as by the keen glance of her feminine sagacity and by her
knowledge of men. Thus the foremost woman of her age lived in the
society of the man whose superiority of mind had placed him at the head
of the first city of the Hellenes, in loyal devotion to her friend and
husband; and although the mocking spirits at Athens eagerly sought out
every blemish which could be discovered in the life of Pericles, yet no
calumny was ever able to vilify this rare union and to blacken its
memory.
Pericles had no leisure for occupying himself with the management of his
private property. He farmed out his lands and intrusted the money to his
faithful slave Evangelus, who accurately knew the measure which his
master deemed the right one, and managed the household accordingly;
which, indeed, presented a striking contrast to those of the wealthy
families of Athens, and ill corresponded to the tastes of Pericles’s
sons as they grew up. For in it there was no overflow, no joyous and
reckless expenditure, but so careful an economy that everything was
calculated down to drachm and obolus.
Pericles was perfectly convinced that nothing short of a perfectly
blameless integrity and the severest self-abnegation could render
possible the permanency of his influence over his fellow-citizens and
prevent the exposure of even the smallest blot to his cavilers and
enemies. After Themistocles had for the first time shown how a statesman
and general might enrich himself, Pericles was in this respect the
admirer and most faithful follower of Aristides, and in the matter of
conscientiousness went even much further than Cimon, spurning on
principle every opportunity offered by the office of general for a
perfectly justifiable personal enrichment.
All attempts to bribe him remained useless. His lofty sentiments are
evidenced by the remark which he addressed to Sophocles, who fell in
love even in his old age: “Not only the hands, but the eyes also of a
general should practice continence.” The more vivid the appreciation he
felt for female charms the more highly must we esteem the equanimity to
which he had attained by means of a self-command which had become a
matter of habit with him; nor did anything make so powerful an
impression upon the changeable Athenians as the immovable calm of this
great man.
Pericles was neither a lengthy nor a frequent speaker. He avoided
nothing more scrupulously than superfluous words, and therefore as often
as he appeared before the people he prayed to Zeus to guard him from
useless words. But the brief words which he actually spoke made a
proportionately deep impression upon the citizens. His conception of his
calling was too solemn and lofty to permit him to consent to talk as the
multitude liked. He was not afraid when he found the citizens weak and
irresolute to express to them bitter truths and serious blame.
His speeches always endeavored to place every case in connection with
facts of a more general kind, so as to instruct and elevate the minds of
the citizens; he never grew weary of pointing out how no individual
happiness was conceivable from the welfare of the entire body; he proved
to the citizens the claim which he had established upon their
confidence; he clearly and concisely developed his political views,
endeavoring not to talk over his hearers, but to convince them; and when
the feeling of his own superiority was about to tempt him to despise the
multitude, he admonished himself to be patient and long suffering. “Take
heed, Pericles,” he cried to himself, “those whom thou rulest are
Hellenes, citizens of Athens.”
The principles of the statesmanship of Pericles were so simple that all
citizens were perfectly capable of understanding them; and he attached a
particular value to the idea that the Athenians instead of, like the
Lacedæmonians, seeking their strength in an affectation of secrecy, were
unwilling to overcome their enemies by deception and cunning stratagems.
As the Persian war had seemed inevitable to Themistocles, so the
struggle with Sparta loomed as certain before the eyes of Pericles. The
term of peace allowed before its outbreak had accordingly to be employed
by Athens in preparing herself for the struggle awaiting her forces.
When at last the critical hour arrived Athens was to stand before her
assailants firm and invincible, with her walls for a shield and her navy
for a sword.
The long schooling through which Pericles had passed in the art of war
and the rare combination of caution and energy which he had displayed in
every command held by him had secured him the confidence of the
citizens. Therefore they for a succession of years elected him general,
and as such invested him with an extraordinary authority, which reduced
the offices of the other nine generals to mere posts of honor which were
filled by persons agreeable to him. During the period of his
administration the whole centers of gravity of public life lay in this
office.
Inasmuch as Pericles, besides the authority of a “strategy” prolonged to
him in an extraordinary degree, also filled the office of superintendent
of the finances; inasmuch as he was repeatedly and for long periods of
years superintendent of public works; inasmuch as his personal influence
was so great that he could in all important matters determine the civic
elections according to his wish; it is easy to understand how he ruled
the state in time of war and peace, and how the power of both the
council and of the whole civic body in all essentials passed into his
hands.
He was the type of temperance and sobriety. He made it a rule never to
assist at a festive banquet; and no Athenian could remember to have seen
Pericles, since he stood at the head of the state, in the company of
friends over the wine-cup. He was known to no man except as one serious
and collected, full of grave thoughts and affairs. His whole life was
devoted to the service of the state, and his power accompanied by so
thorough a self-denial and so full a measure of labor that the multitude
in its love of enjoyment could surely not regard the possession of that
power as an enviable privilege. For him there existed only one road,
which he was daily seen to take, the road leading from his house to the
market-place and the council-hall, the seat of the government, where the
current business of state was transacted.
EPAMINONDAS.
BY ERNST CURTIUS.
[The greatest of the Theban generals and statesmen, and one of the
greatest men of antiquity; born about 418 B.C., killed on the
battle-field of Mantinea in the hour of victory, 362. He raised
Thebes from a subordinate place to the leadership of Greece by his
genius in arms and wisdom in council. Eminent as soldier,
statesman, and orator, Epaminondas was a model of virtue in his
private life, and was not only devoted to his native republic, but
in the largest sense a Greek patriot. References: Grote’s “History
of Greece,” Curtius’s “History of Greece,” Plutarch’s “Lives.”]
It would be difficult to find in the entire course of Greek history any
two statesmen who, in spite of differences in character and outward
conditions of life, resembled one another so greatly and were as men so
truly the peers of one another as Pericles and Epaminondas. In the case
of both these men the chief foundation of their authority was their
lofty and varied mental culture; what secured to them their intellectual
superiority was the love of knowledge which pervaded and ennobled the
whole being of either. Epaminondas like Pericles directs his native city
as the man in whom the civic community places supreme confidence, and
whom it therefore re-elects from year to year as general. Like Pericles,
Epaminondas left no successor behind him, and his death was also the
close of an historical epoch.
Epaminondas stood alone from the first; and while Pericles with all his
superiority yet stood essentially on the basis of Attic culture,
Epaminondas, on the other hand, was, so to speak, a stranger in his
native city. Nor was it ever his intention to be a Theban in the sense
in which Pericles was an Athenian. The object of his life was rather to
be a perfect Hellene, while his efforts as a statesman were likewise
simply an endeavor to introduce his fellow-citizens to that true
Hellenism which consisted in civic virtue and in love of wisdom.
In the very last hour of his life, when he was delighted by the
preservation of his shield, he showed himself a genuine Hellene; thus
again it was a genuinely Greek standpoint from which he viewed the war
against Sparta and Athens as a competitive contest for the honor of the
hegemony in Hellas, an honor which could only be justly won by mental
and moral superiority. The conflict was inevitable; it had become a
national duty, because the supremacy of Sparta had become a tyranny
dishonorable to the Hellenic nation. After Epaminondas liberated the
Greek cities from the Spartan yoke it became the object of his Bœotian
patriotism to make his own native city worthy and capable of assuming
the direction.
How far Epaminondas might have succeeded in securing a permanent
hegemony[5] over Greek affairs to the Thebans who shall attempt to
judge? He fell in the full vigor of his manhood on the battle-field
where the states, which withstood his policy, had brought their last
resources to bear. Of all statesmen, therefore, he is least to be judged
by the actual results of his policy. His greatness lies in this--that
from his childhood he incessantly endeavored to be to his
fellow-citizens a model of Hellenic virtue. Chaste and unselfish he
passed, ever true to himself, through a most active life, through all
the temptations of the most unexampled success in war, through the whole
series of trials and disasters.
Epaminondas was not merely the founder of a military organization. He
equally proved the inventiveness of his mind in contriving to obtain for
his country, which was wealthy neither by trade nor manufactures,
pecuniary resources sufficient for maintaining a land-army and a
war-navy commensurate with the needs of a great power. He made himself
master of all the productive ideas of earlier state administrations; and
in particular the Athenians naturally stood before his eyes as models
and predecessors.
On the one hand, he turned to account for his native city the
improvements made in arms and tactics, which were due to Xenophon,
Chabrias, and Iphicrates; on the other, the example of the Athenians
taught him that the question of the hegemony over Greece could only be
settled by sea. Finally, Epaminondas, more than any other Greek
statesman, followed in the footsteps of Periclean Athens in regarding
the public fostering of art and science as a main duty of that state
which desired to claim a position of primacy.
Personally he did his utmost to domesticate philosophy at Thebes, not
only as intellectual discourse carried on in select circles, but as the
power of higher knowledge which elevates and purifies the people. Public
oratory found a home at Thebes, together with the free constitution; and
not only did Epaminondas personally prove himself fully the equal of the
foremost orators in Athens--of Callistratus in particular--in power of
speech and in felicitous readiness of mind, but, as the embassy at Susa
shows, his friends too learned in a surprisingly short time to assert
the interests of Thebes by the side of the other states, which had long
kept up foreign relations with vigor, skill, and dignity.
In every department there were perceptible intellectual mobility and
vigorously sustained effort. Of the fine arts painting received a
specially successful development, distinguished by a thoughtful and
clear treatment of intellectual ideas. Of the architecture of this
period honorable evidence is to this day given by the well-preserved
remains of the fortifications of Messene, constructed under the
direction of Epaminondas--typical specimens of architecture constructed
in the grandest style. Plastic art likewise found a home at Thebes. It
was the endeavor of Epaminondas--although with prudent moderation--to
transfer the splendor of Periclean Athens to Thebes.
Through Epaminondas Thebes was raised to an equality with the city of
the Athenians, as a seat of a policy aiming at freedom and national
greatness. It thus became possible for the two cities to join hands in
the subsequent struggle for the independence of Greece. And, in this
sense, Epaminondas worked beforehand for the objects of Demosthenes. If
it is considered how, with his small resources, Epaminondas founded or
helped to found Mantinea, Messene, and Megalopolis; how through him
other places, such as Corone and Heraclea, likewise received Theban
settlers--the honor will not be denied him of having been in the royal
art of the foundation of cities the predecessor of Alexander and his
successors.
But he was also their predecessor in another point. By spreading Greek
manners and ways of life he enlarged the narrow boundaries of the land
of the Greeks, and introduced the peoples of the North into the sphere
of Greek history. In his own person he represented the ideas of a
general Hellenic character, which, unconditioned by local accidents, was
freely raised aloft above the distinction of states and tribes. Hitherto
only great statesmen had appeared who were great Athenians or Spartans.
In Epaminondas this local coloring is of quite inferior importance; he
was a Hellene first, and a Theban only in the second place. Thus he
prepared the standpoint from which to be a Hellene was regarded as an
intellectual privilege, independent of the locality of birth; and this
is the standpoint of Hellenism.
ALEXANDER THE GREAT.
BY GEORGE GROTE.
[Son of Philip, King of Macedon, born 356 B.C., died 323. The
greatest of the world’s conquerors in the extent and rapidity of
his conquests, he began with the consolidation of his father’s
conquests over the republics of Greece, overthrew the great Persian
Empire, and carried his arms to farther India, within a period of
thirteen years. At his death his dominions were divided among his
principal generals. References: Grote’s “History of Greece,”
Curtius’s “History of Greece,” Plutarch’s “Lives.”]
The first growth and development of Macedonia during the twenty-two
years preceding the battle of Chæronea, from an embarrassed secondary
state into the first of all known powers, had excited the astonishment
of contemporaries and admiration for Philip’s organizing genius; but the
achievements of Alexander during the twelve years of his reign, throwing
Philip into the shade, had been on a
[Illustration: ALEXANDER THE GREAT.]
scale so much grander and vaster, and so completely without serious
reverse or even interruption, as to transcend the measure, not only of
human expectation, but almost of human belief. All antecedent human
parallels--the ruin and captivity of the Lydian Crœsus, the expulsion
and mean life of the Syracusan Dionysius, both of them impressive
examples of the mutability of human condition--sunk into trifles
compared with the overthrow of the towering Persian Colossus.
Such were the sentiments excited by Alexander’s career even in the
middle of 330 B.C., more than seven years before his death. During the
following seven years his additional achievements had carried
astonishment yet further. He had mastered, in defiance of fatigue,
hardship, and combat, not merely all the eastern half of the Persian
Empire, but unknown Indian regions beyond its easternmost limits.
Besides Macedonia, Greece, and Thrace, he possessed all that immense
treasure and military force which had once made the Great King so
formidable. By no contemporary man had any such power ever been known or
conceived. With the turn of imagination then prevalent, many were
doubtless disposed to take him for a god on earth, as Grecian spectators
had once supposed with regard to Xerxes, when they beheld the
innumerable Persian host crossing the Hellespont.
Exalted to this prodigious grandeur, Alexander was at the time of his
death little more than thirty-two years old--the age at which a citizen
of Athens was growing into important commands; ten years less than the
age for a consul at Rome; two years younger than the age at which Timour
first acquired the crown and began his foreign conquests. His
extraordinary bodily powers were unabated; he had acquired a large stock
of military experience; and, what was still more important, his appetite
for further conquest was as voracious, and his readiness to purchase it
at the largest cost of toil or danger as complete as it had been when
he first crossed the Hellespont. Great as his past career had been, his
future achievements with such increased means and experience were likely
to be yet greater. His ambition would have been satisfied with nothing
less than the conquest of the whole habitable world as then known; and,
if his life had been prolonged, he probably would have accomplished it.
The patriotic feelings of Livy dispose him to maintain that Alexander,
had he invaded Italy and assailed Romans and Samnites, would have failed
and perished like his relative Alexander of Epirus. But this conclusion
can not be accepted. If we grant the courage and discipline of the Roman
infantry to have been equal to the best infantry of Alexander’s army,
the same can not be said of the Roman cavalry as compared with the
Macedonian companions. Still less is it likely that a Roman consul,
annually changed, would have been a match for Alexander in military
genius and combination; nor, even if personally equal, would he have
possessed the same variety of troops and arms, each effective in its
separate way, and all conspiring to one common purpose; nor, the same
unbounded influence over their minds in stimulating them to full effort.
Among all the qualities which go to constitute the highest military
excellence, either as a general or as a soldier, none was wanting in the
character of Alexander. Together with his own chivalrous
courage--sometimes, indeed, both excessive and unseasonable, so as to
form the only military defect which can be fairly imputed to him--we
trace in all his operations the most careful dispositions taken
beforehand, vigilant precaution in guarding against possible reverse,
and abundant resource in adapting himself to new contingencies. His
achievements are the earliest recorded evidence of scientific military
organization on a large scale, and of its overwhelming effects.
Alexander overawes the imagination more than any other personage of
antiquity by the matchless development of all that constitutes
effective force--as an individual warrior and as organizer and leader of
armed masses; not merely the blind impetuosity ascribed by Homer to
Ares, but also the intelligent, methodized, and all-subduing compression
which he personifies in Athene. But all his great qualities were fit for
use only against enemies, in which category, indeed, were numbered all
mankind, known and unknown, except those who chose to submit to him. In
his Indian campaigns amid tribes of utter strangers, we perceive that
not only those who stand on their defense, but also those who abandon
their property and flee to the mountains are alike pursued and
slaughtered.
Apart from the transcendent merits of Alexander as a general, some
authors give him credit for grand and beneficent views on the subject of
imperial government and for intentions highly favorable to the
improvement of mankind. I see no ground for adopting this opinion. As
far as we can venture to anticipate what would have been Alexander’s
future, we see nothing in prospect except years of ever repeated
aggression and conquest, not to be concluded till he had traversed and
subjugated all the inhabited globe. The acquisition of universal
dominion--conceived not metaphorically but literally, and conceived with
greater facility in consequence of the imperfect geographical knowledge
of the time--was the master-passion of his soul.
“You are a man like all of us, Alexander, except that you abandon your
home,” said the naked Indian to him, “like a medlesome destroyer, to
invade the most distant regions; enduring hardship yourself and
inflicting hardship on others.” Now, how an empire thus boundless and
heterogeneous, such as no prince as has yet ever realized, could have
been administered with any superior advantages to subjects, it would be
difficult to show. The mere task of acquiring and maintaining, of
keeping satraps and tribute-gatherers in authority as well as in
subordination, of suppressing resistances ever liable to recur in
regions distant by months of march, would occupy the whole life of a
world conquerer, without leaving any leisure for the improvements suited
to peace and stability--if we give him credit for such purposes in
theory.
In respect of intelligence and combining genius, Alexander was Hellenic
to the full; in respect of disposition and purpose, no one could be less
Hellenic. The acts attesting his Oriental violence of impulse,
unmeasured self-will, and exaction of reverence above the limits of
humanity, have been recounted. To describe him as a son of Hellas,
imbued with the political maxims of Aristotle, and bent on the
systematic diffusion of Hellenic culture for the improvement of mankind
is in my judgement an estimate of his character contrary to the
evidence.
Alexander is indeed said to have invited suggestions from Aristotle as
to the best mode of colonizing; but his temper altered so much after a
few years of Asiatic conquest, that he came not only to lose all
deference for Aristotle’s advice, but even to hate him bitterly. Instead
of “Hellenizing” Asia, he was tending to “Asiatize” Macedonia and
Hellas. His temper and character as modified by a few years of conquest
rendered him quite unfit to follow the course recommended by Aristotle
toward the Greeks--quite as unfit as any of the Persian kings, or as the
French Emperor Napoleon, to endure that partial frustration, compromise,
and smart from personal criticism, which is inseparable from the
position of a limited chief.
Plutarch states that Alexander founded more than seventy new cities in
Asia. So large a number of them is neither verifiable nor probable,
unless we either reckon up simple military posts or borrow from the list
of foundations established by his successors. Except Alexandria in
Egypt, none of the cities founded by Alexander himself can be shown to
have attained any great development. The process of “Hellenizing” Asia,
in as far as Asia was ever “Hellenized,” which has so often been
ascribed to Alexander, was in reality the work of the successors to his
great dominion.
We read that Alexander felt so much interest in the extension of science
that he gave to Aristotle the immense sum of eight hundred talents in
money, placing under his direction several thousand men, for the purpose
of prosecuting zoölogical researches. These exaggerations are probably
the work of those enemies of the philosopher who decried him as a
pensioner of the Macedonian court; but it is probable enough that
Philip, and Alexander in the earlier part of his reign, may have helped
Aristotle in the difficult process of getting together facts and
specimens for observation from esteem toward him personally rather than
from interest in his discoveries.
The intellectual turn of Alexander was toward literature, poetry, and
history. He was fond of the “Iliad” especially, as well as of the Attic
tragedians; so that Harpalus, being directed to send some books to him
in Upper Asia, selected as the most acceptable packet various tragedies
of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, with the dithyrambic poems of
Telestes and the histories of Philistus.
HANNIBAL.
BY THEODOR MOMMSEN.
[A Carthaginian statesman and soldier, one of the foremost generals
of antiquity, born 247 B.C., died 183. The series of Italian
campaigns in which he imperiled the very existence of Rome are
commented on by modern military critics as models of brilliancy and
daring, combined with far-sighted prudence. Finally compelled to
evacuate Italy, he was defeated and his army destroyed by Publius
Cornelius Scipio, afterward surnamed Africanus, at the battle of
Zama in Africa in 202. Exiled from Carthage, he spent the latter
years of his life in fomenting war against Rome among the Eastern
nations, and finally committed suicide to prevent being delivered
over to the hands of Rome. References: Mommsen’s “History of
Rome,” Plutarch’s “Lives.”]
When Hamilcar departed to take command in Spain, he enjoined his son
Hannibal, nine years of age, to swear at the altar of the Supreme God
eternal hatred to the Roman name, and reared him and his younger sons,
Hasdrubal and Mago--the “lion’s brood,” as he called them--in the camp,
as the inheritors of his projects, of his genius, and of his hatred.
The man whose head and heart had in a desperate emergency and amid a
despairing people paved the way for their deliverance, was no more when
it became possible to carry out his design. Whether his successor
Hasdrubal forbore to make the attack because the proper moment seemed to
him not yet to have arrived, or whether, a statesman rather than a
general, he believed himself unequal to the conduct of the enterprise,
we are unable to determine. When, at the beginning of 219 B.C., he fell
by the hand of an assassin, the Carthaginian officers of the Spanish
army summoned to fill his place Hannibal, the eldest son of Hamilcar.
He was still a young man, born in 247 B.C., and now, therefore, in his
twenty-ninth year; but his life had already been fraught with varied
experience. His first recollections picture to him his father fighting
in a distant land and conquering on Ercte; he shared that unconquered
father’s fortunes and sympathized with his feelings on the peace of
Catulus, on the bitter return home, and throughout the horrors of the
Libyan war. While still a boy he had followed his father to the camp,
and he soon distinguished himself.
His light and firmly built frame made him an excellent runner and boxer
and a fearless rider; the privation of sleep did not affect him, and he
knew like a soldier how to enjoy or to want his food. Although his youth
had been spent in
[Illustration: HANNIBAL.]
the camp, he possessed such culture as was bestowed on the noble
Phœnicians of the time; in Greek, apparently after he had become a
general, he made such progress under the guidance of his intimate friend
Sasilus of Sparta as to be able to compose state papers in that
language.
As he grew up, he entered the army of his father to perform his first
feats of arms under the paternal eye, and to see him fall in battle by
his side. Thereafter he had commanded the cavalry under his sister’s
husband Hasdrubal and distinguished himself by brilliant personal
bravery as well as by his talents as a leader. The voice of his comrades
now summoned him--their tried and youthful leader--to the chief command,
and he could now execute the designs for which his father and his
brother-in-law had died.
He took possession of the inheritance, and was worthy of it. His
contemporaries tried to cast stains of all sorts on his character; the
Romans charged him with cruelty, the Carthaginians with covetousness;
and it is true that he hated as only Oriental natures know how to hate,
and that a general who never fell short of money and stores can hardly
have been other than covetous. Nevertheless, though anger and envy and
meanness have written his history, they have not been able to mar the
pure and noble image which it presents.
Laying aside wretched inventions which furnished their own refutation,
and some things which his lieutenants Hannibal Monomachus, and Mago the
Samnite, were guilty of doing in his name, nothing occurs in the
accounts regarding him which may not be justified in the circumstances
and by the international law of the times; and all agree in this--that
he combined in rare perfection discretion and enthusiasm, caution and
energy.
He was peculiarly marked by that inventive craftiness which forms one of
the leading traits of the Phœnician character--he was fond of taking
singular and unexpected routes; ambushes and strategems of all sorts
were familiar to him; and he studied the character of his antagonists
with unprecedented care. By an unrivaled system of espionage--he had
regular spies even in Rome--he kept himself informed of the projects of
the enemy; he himself was frequently seen wearing disguises and false
hair in order to procure information on some point or another.
Every page of history attests his genius as a general; and his gifts as
a statesman were, after the peace with Rome, no less conspicuously
displayed in his reform of the Carthaginian constitution and in the
unparalleled influence which as an exiled strength he exercised in the
cabinets of the Eastern powers. The power which he wielded over men is
shown by his incomparable control over an army of various nations and
many tongues--an army which never in the worst times mutinied against
him. He was a great man; wherever he went he riveted the eyes of all.
Hannibal’s cautious and masterly execution of his plan of crossing the
Alps into Italy, instead of transporting his army by sea, in its
details, at all events, deserves our admiration, and, to whatever causes
the result may have been due--whether it was due mainly to the favor of
fortune or mainly to the skill of the general--the grand idea of
Hamilcar, that of taking up the conflict with Rome in Italy, was now
realized. It was his genius that projected the expedition; and the
unerring tact of historical tradition has always dwelt on the last link
in the great chain of preparatory steps, the passage of the Alps, with a
greater admiration than on the battles of the Trasimene Lake and of the
plain of Cannæ.
Hannibal knew Rome better, perhaps, than the Romans knew it themselves.
It was clearly apparent that the Italian federation was in political
solidity and in military resources far superior to an adversary who
received only precarious and irregular support from home; and that the
Phœnician foot-soldier was, notwithstanding all the pains taken by
Hannibal, far inferior in point of tactics to the legionary, had been
completely proved by the defensive movements of Scipio. From these
convictions flowed two fundamental principles which determined
Hannibal’s whole method of operations in Italy, viz., that the war
should be carried on somewhat adventurously, with constant changes in
the plan and in the theatre of operations; and that its favorable issue
could only be looked for as the result of political and not of military
successes--of the gradual loosening and breaking up of the Italian
federation.
This aim was the aim dictated to him by right policy, because mighty
conqueror though he was in battle, he saw very clearly that on each
occasion he vanquished the generals but not the city, and that after
each new battle, the Romans remained as superior to the Carthaginians as
he was personally superior to the Roman commanders. That Hannibal, even
at the height of his fortune, never deceived himself on this point is a
fact more wonderful than his wonderful battles.
THE GRACCHI.
BY PLUTARCH.
[Tiberius Sempronius and Caius Sempronius, sons of Tiberius
Gracchus by Cornelia, daughter of Scipio Africanus, the conqueror
of Hannibal and Carthage. The first, born 168 B.C., died in 133;
the second, born about 159 B.C., died in 121. The brothers, though
on both sides of the highest patrician rank and descent, espoused
the democratic cause. Both rose to the rank of tribune. Tiberius
carried through an agrarian law dividing the surplus lands of the
republic among the poor, and was killed in a popular _emeute_.
Caius caused to be passed a poor-law giving monthly distributions
of corn. He also transferred the judicial power largely to the
equites or knights, and proposed to extend the Roman franchise to
all Italy. He committed suicide to save himself from assassination.
References: Arnold’s “History of Rome” and Mommsen’s “History of
Rome.”]
Cornelia, taking upon herself the care of the household and the
education of her children, approved herself so discreet a matron, so
affectionate a mother, and so constant and noble-spirited a woman, that
Tiberius seemed to all men to have done nothing unreasonable in choosing
to die for such a woman, who, when King Ptolemy himself proffered her
his crown and would have married her, refused it and chose rather to
live a widow. In this state she continued and lost all her children,
except one daughter, who was married to Scipio the younger, and two
sons, Tiberius and Caius.
These she brought up with such care, that though they were without
dispute in natural endowments and disposition the first among the Romans
of their day, yet they seemed to owe their virtues even more to their
education than to their birth. And, as in the statues and pictures made
of Castor and Pollux, though the brothers resemble one another, yet
there is a difference to be perceived in their countenances between the
one who delighted in the cestus, and the other that was famous in the
course; so between these two youths, though there was a strong general
likeness in their common love of fortitude and temperance, in their
liberality, their eloquence, and their greatness of mind, yet in their
actions and administrations of public affairs, a considerable variation
showed itself.
Tiberius, in the form and expression of his countenance and in his
gesture and motion, was gentle and composed; but Caius, earnest and
vehement. And so in their public speeches to the people, the one spoke
in a quiet, orderly manner, standing throughout on the same spot; the
other would walk about on the hustings and in the heat of his orations
pull his gown off his shoulders, and was the first of all the Romans to
use such gestures. Caius’s oratory was impetuous and passionate, making
everything tell to the utmost, whereas Tiberius was gentle and
persuasive, awakening emotions of pity. His diction was pure and
carefully correct, while that of Caius was rich and vehement.
So likewise in their way of living and at their tables; Tiberius was
frugal and plain, Caius, compared with others, temperate and even
austere, but contrasting with his brother in a fondness for new fashions
and varieties. The same difference that appeared in their diction was
observable also in their tempers. The one was mild and reasonable; the
other rough and passionate, and to that degree that often in the midst
of speaking he was so hurried away by his passion against his judgment
that his voice lost its tone and he began to pass into mere abusive
talking, spoiling his whole speech.
As a remedy to this excess he made use of an ingenious servant of his,
one Licinius, who stood constantly behind him with a sort of pitch-pipe,
or instrument to regulate the voice by, and whenever he perceived his
master’s tone alter and break with anger, he struck a soft note with his
pipe, on hearing which Caius immediately checked the vehemence of his
passion and his voice grew quieter, and he allowed himself to be
recalled to temper.
Such are the differences between the two brothers, but their valor in
war against their country’s enemies, their justice in the government of
its subjects, their care and industry in office, and their self-command
in all that regarded their pleasures, were equally remarkable in both.
Tiberius was the elder by nine years; owing to which their actions as
public men were divided by the difference of the times in which those of
the one and those of the other were performed. The power they would have
exercised, had they both flourished together, could scarcely have failed
to overcome all resistance.
Their greatest detractors and their worst enemies could not but allow
that they had a genius to virtue beyond all other Romans, which was
improved also by a generous education. Besides, the Gracchi, happening
to live when Rome had her greatest repute for honor and virtuous
actions, might justly have been ashamed if they had not also left to the
next generation the whole inheritance of the virtues of their
ancestors.
The integrity of the two Romans, and their superiority to money was
chiefly remarkable in this--that in office and the administration of
public affairs they kept themselves from the imputation of unjust gain.
The chief things in general which they aimed at were the settlement of
cities and mending the highways; and in particular the boldest design
which Tiberius is famed for is the recovery of the public land; and
Caius gained his greatest reputation by the addition, for the exercise
of judicial powers, of three hundred of the order of knights to the same
number of senators.
Tiberius was the first who attempted to scale the walls of Carthage,
which was no mean exploit. We may add the peace which he concluded with
the Numantines, by which he saved the lives of twenty thousand Romans,
who otherwise had certainly been cut off. And Caius, not only at home,
but in war in Sardinia, displayed distinguished courage. So that their
early actions were no small argument that afterward they might have
rivaled the best of the Roman commanders if they had not died so young.
Of the Gracchi, neither the one nor the other was the first to shed the
blood of his fellow-citizens; and Caius is reported to have avoided all
manner of resistance, even when his life was aimed at, showing himself
always valiant against a foreign enemy, but wholly inactive in a
sedition. This was the reason that he went from his own house unarmed,
and withdrew when the battle began, and in all respects showed himself
anxious rather not to do any harm to others than not suffer any himself.
Even the very flight of the Gracchi must not be looked on as an argument
of a mean spirit, but an honorable retreat from endangering others.
The greatest crime that can be laid to Tiberius’s charge was the
disposing of his fellow-tribune, and seeking afterward a second
tribuneship for himself. Tiberius and Caius by nature had an excessive
desire for glory and honors. Beyond this, their enemies could find
nothing to bring against them; but as soon as the contention began with
their adversaries, their heat and passions would so far prevail beyond
their natural temper that by them, as by ill-winds, they were driven
afterward to all their rash undertakings. What would be more just and
honorable than their first design, had not the power and faction of the
rich, by endeavoring to abrogate that law, engaged them both in those
fatal quarrels, the one for his own preservation, the other to avenge
his brother’s death who was murdered without law or justice.
CAIUS MARIUS.
BY JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE.
[An able Roman general and leader of the democratic faction, born
157 B.C., died 86. The military skill of Marius finished the
Jugurthine war and saved Rome from the Cimbri and Teutons. Though
of plebeian birth he married into an eminent patrician family, and
became thereby the uncle of Julius Cæsar, who attached himself to
the Marian party in the political wars which raged between the
popular and patrician factions, the latter being led by Sylla. The
worst stain on the memory of Marius is the massacre which he
permitted at the beginning of his last consulate. References:
Mommsen’s “History of Rome,” Froude’s “Life of Cæsar,” Plutarch’s
“Lives.”]
Marius was born at Arpinum, a Latin township, seventy miles from the
capital. His father was a small farmer, and he was himself bred to the
plow. He joined the army early, and soon attracted notice by the
punctual discharge of his duties. In a time of growing looseness, Marius
was strict himself in keeping discipline and in enforcing it as he rose
in the service. He was in Spain when Jugurtha[6] was there, and made
himself specially useful to Scipio;[7] he forced his way steadily upward
by his mere soldier-like qualities to the rank of military tribune.
Rome, too, had learned to know him, for he was chosen tribune of the
people the year after the murder of Caius Gracchus. Being a self-made
man, he naturally belonged to the popular party. While in office he gave
offense in some way to the men in power, and was called before the
senate to answer for himself. But he had the right on his side, it is
likely, for they found him stubborn and impertinent, and they could make
nothing of their charges against him.
He was not bidding, however, at this time for the support of the mob. He
had the integrity and sense to oppose the largesses of corn, and he
forfeited his popularity by trying to close the public granaries before
the practice had passed into a system. He seemed as if made of a block
of hard Roman oak, gnarled and knotted but sound in all its fibers. His
professional merit continued to recommend him. At the age of forty he
became prætor,[8] and was sent to Spain, where he left a mark again by
the successful severity by which he cleared the provinces of banditti.
He was a man neither given himself to talking nor much talked about in
the world; but he was sought for wherever work was to be done, and he
had made himself respected and valued; for after his return from the
peninsula he had married into one of the most distinguished of the
patrician families.
Marius by this marriage became a person of social consequence. His
father had been a client of the Metelli; and Cæcelius Metellus, who must
have known Marius by reputation and probably in person, invited him to
go as second in command in the African campaign.[9] The war dragged on,
and Marius, perhaps ambitious, perhaps impatient at the general’s want
of vigor, began to think he could make quicker work of it. There was
just irritation that a petty African prince could defy the whole power
of Rome for so many years; and though a democratic consul had been
unheard of for a century, the name of Marius began to be spoken of as a
possible candidate. Marius consented to stand. The patricians strained
their resources to defeat him, but he was chosen with enthusiasm.
A shudder of alarm ran, no doubt, through the senate house when the
determination of the people was known. A successful general could not be
disposed of as easily as oratorical tribunes. Fortunately Marius was not
a politician. He had no belief in democracy. He was a soldier and had a
soldier’s way of thinking on government and the methods of it. His first
step was a reformation in the army. Hitherto the Roman legions had been
no more than the citizens in arms, called for the moment from their
various occupations to return to them when the occasion for their
services was past. Marius had perceived that fewer men, better trained
and disciplined, could be made more effective and be more easily
handled. He had studied war as a science. He had perceived that the
present weakness need be no more than an accident, and that there was a
latent force in the Roman state which needed only organization to resume
its ascendancy.
“He enlisted,” it was said, “the worst of the citizens”--men, that is to
say, who had no occupation, and became soldiers by profession; and as
persons without property could not have furnished themselves at their
own cost, he must have carried out the scheme proposed by Gracchus, and
equipped them at the expense of the state. His discipline was of the
sternest. The experiment was new; and men of rank who had a taste for
war in earnest, and did not wish that the popular party should have the
whole benefit and credit of the improvements were willing to go with
him; among them a dissipated young patrician, called Lucius Sylla, whose
name was also destined to be memorable.
Marius had formed an army barely in time to save Italy from being
totally overwhelmed. A vast migratory wave of population had been set in
motion behind the Rhine and Danube. The hunting-grounds were too strait
for the numbers crowded into them, and two enormous hordes were rolling
westward and southward in search of some new abiding-place. The Teutons
came from the Baltic down across the Rhine into Luxemburg. The Cimbri
crossed the Danube near its sources into Illyria. Both Teutons and
Cimbri were Germans, and both were making for Gaul by different routes.
Each division consisted of hundreds of thousands. They traveled with
their wives and children, their wagons, as with the ancient Scythians
and with the modern South African Dutch, being their homes. Two years
had been consumed in these wanderings, and Marius was by this time ready
for them.
Marius was continued in office, and was a fourth time consul. He had
completed his military reforms, and the army was now a professional
service with regular pay. Trained corps of engineers were attached to
each legion. The campaigns of the Romans were henceforth to be conducted
with spade and pickaxe as well as with sword and javelin, and the
soldiers learned the use of tools as well as of arms. The Teutons were
destroyed on the twentieth of July, 102 B.C. In the year following the
same fate overtook their comrades. The victories of Marius mark a new
epoch in Roman history. The legions were no longer the levy of the
citizens in arms, who were themselves the state for which they fought.
The legionaries were citizens still. They had votes and they used them;
but they were professional soldiers with the modes of thought which
belong to soldiers, and besides the power of the hustings was now the
power of the sword.
The danger from the Germans was no sooner gone than political anarchy
broke loose again. Marius, the man of the people, was the savior of his
country. He was made a consul a fifth time, and then a sixth. An
indifferent politician, however, he stood aloof in the fierce faction
contest between the aristocrats and the popular party. At last he had
almost withdrawn from public life, as he had no heart for the quarrel,
and did not care to exert his power. For eight years both he and his
rival Sylla kept aloof from politics and were almost unheard of.
When Sylla came to the front, it was as leader of the aristocratic power
in the state. Sulpicius Rufus, once a champion of the senate and the
most brilliant orator in Rome, went over to the people, and as tribune
demanded the deposition of Sylla. The latter replied by leading his
legionaries to Rome. Sulpicius was killed; Marius, the savior of his
country, had to fly for his life, pursued by assassins, with a price set
upon his head.
While Sylla was absent in the East prosecuting that magnificent campaign
against Mithridates, King of Pontus, which stamped him the first soldier
of his time, the popular party again raised its head. Old Marius, who
had been hunted through marsh and forest, and had been hiding with
difficulty in Africa, came back at the news that Italy had risen again.
Marius and Cinna joined their forces, appeared together at the gates of
the capital, and Rome capitulated. There was a bloody score to be wiped
out. Marius bears the chief blame for the scenes which followed. A price
had been set on his head, his house had been destroyed, his property had
been confiscated, he, himself, had been chased like a wild beast, and he
had not deserved such treatment. He had saved Italy, when but for him it
would have been wasted by the swords of the Germans.
His power had afterward been absolute, but he had not abused it for
party purposes. The senate had no reason to complain of him. His crime
in their eyes had been his eminence. They had now shown themselves as
cruel as they were worthless; and if public justice was disposed to make
an end of them, he saw no cause to interfere. From retaliatory political
vengeance the transition was easy to plunder and wholesale murder; and
for many days the wretched city was made a prey to robbers and
cut-throats.
So ended the year 87, the darkest and bloodiest which the guilty city
had yet experienced. Marius and Cinna were chosen consuls for the
ensuing year and a witch’s prophecy was fulfilled that Marius should
hold a seventh consulate. But the glory had departed from him. His sun
was already setting, redly, among crimson clouds. He lived but a
fortnight after his inauguration, and died in his bed at the age of
seventy-one. “The mother of the Gracchi,” said Mirabeau, “cast the dust
of her murdered sons into the air, and out of it sprang Caius Marius.”
MITHRIDATES, KING OF PONTUS.[10]
BY THEODOR MOMMSEN.
[Surnamed “the Great,” born about 132 B.C., died in 63. This
powerful Eastern monarch, who greatly extended his frontiers beyond
his original kingdom, was one of the most formidable barriers to
Roman power in Asia. He organized a league and severely taxed the
military resources of the republic. Sulla spent four years in
compelling him to submit to an honorable peace. In the second
Mithridatic war he was successively defeated by Lucullus and
Pompey. He finally committed suicide by the hands of one of his
mercenaries. References: Mommsen’s “History of Rome,” Arnold’s
“History of Rome.”]
Partly through the constant growth of oppression naturally incident to
every tyrannic government, partly through the indirect operation of the
Roman revolution--in the seizure, for instance, of the property of the
soil in the province of Asia by Caius Gracchus, in the Roman tenths and
customs, and in the human hunts which the collectors of revenue added to
their other avocations there--the Roman rule, barely tolerable from the
first, pressed so heavily on Asia, that neither the king’s crown nor the
peasant’s hut there was any longer safe from confiscation, that every
stalk of corn seemed to grow for Roman tribute, and every child of free
parents seemed born for the Roman slave-driver.
It is true that the Asiatic bore even this torture with his
inexhaustible passive endurance; but it was not patience or reflection
that made him bear it peacefully. It was rather the peculiarly Oriental
want of power to take the initiative; and in these peaceful lands, among
these effeminate nations, strange and terrible things might happen if
once there should appear among them a man who knew how to give the
signal for revolt.
There reigned at that time in the kingdom of Pontus Mithridates VI,
surnamed Eupator, who traced back his lineage on the father’s side, in
the sixteenth generation to King Darius, son of Hystaspes, in the eighth
to Mithridates I, the founder of the Pontic Empire, and was on the
mother’s side descended from the Alexandridæ and the Seleucidæ. After
the early death of his father, Mithridates Euergetes, who fell by the
hand of an assassin at Synope, he had received the title of king when a
boy of eleven years old; but the diadem had only brought to him trouble
and danger. It is said that in order to escape from the daggers of his
legal protectors, he became of his own accord a wanderer; and during
seven years, changing his resting-place night after night, a fugitive
in his own kingdom, led the life of a lonely hunter.
Thus the boy grew into a mighty man. Although our accounts regarding him
are in substance traceable to written records of contemporaries, yet the
legendary tradition, which is generated with the rapidity of lightning
in the East, early adorned the mighty king with many of the traits of
its Samson and Rustem. These traits, however, belong to his character
just as the crown of clouds belong to the highest mountain peaks; the
outline of the figure appears in both cases only more colored and
fantastic, not disturbed or essentially altered.
The armor which fitted the gigantic frame of King Mithridates excited
the wonder of the Asiatics, and still more that of the Italians. As a
runner he overtook the swiftest deer; as a rider he broke in the wildest
steed, and was able by changing horses to accomplish one hundred and
twenty miles in a day; as a charioteer he drove with sixteen in hand,
and gained in competition many a prize--it was dangerous, no doubt, in
such sport to carry off victory from the king.
In hunting on horseback he hit the game at full gallop, and never missed
his aim. He challenged competition at the table also; he arranged
banqueting matches and carried off in person the prizes proposed for the
most substantial eater and the hardest drinker. His intellectual wants
he satisfied by the wildest superstition--the interpretation of dreams
and of the Greek mysteries occupied not a few of the king’s hours--and
by a rude adoption of the Hellenic civilization. He was fond of Greek
art and music--that is to say, he collected precious articles, rich
furniture, old Persian and Greek articles of luxury--his cabinet of
rings was famous--he had constantly Greek historians, philosophers, and
poets in his train; and proposed prizes at his court festivals, not only
for the greatest eaters and drinkers, but also for the merriest jester
and the best singer.
Such was the man; the sultan corresponded. In the East, where the
relation between the ruler and the ruled bears the relation of natural
rather than of moral law, the subject resembles the dog alike in
fidelity and in falsehood, the ruler is cruel and distrustful. In both
respects Mithridates has hardly been surpassed. By his orders there died
or pined in perpetual captivity, for real or alleged treason, his
mother, his brother, his sister espoused to him, three of his sons, and
as many of his daughters. Still more revolting, perhaps, is the fact
that among his secret papers were found sentences of death, drawn up
beforehand, against his most confidential servants.
In like manner it was a genuine trait of the sultan that he afterward,
for the mere purpose of depriving his enemy of trophies of victory,
caused his whole harem to be killed, and distinguished his favorite
concubine, a beautiful Ephesian, by allowing her to choose the mode of
death. He prosecuted the experimental studies of poisons and antidotes
as an important branch of the business of government, and tried to inure
his body to particular poisons. He had early learned to look for treason
and assassination at the hands of everybody, especially his nearest
relations, and he had early learned to practice them against everybody,
and most of all against those nearest him; of which the necessary
consequence--attested by history--was that all his undertakings finally
miscarried through the perfidy of those whom he trusted.
At the same time we meet with isolated traits of high-minded justice.
When he punished traitors, he ordinarily spared those who were involved
in the crime solely through their personal relations with the leading
culprits; but such fits of equity are to be met with in every barbarous
tyrant. What really distinguishes Mithridates amid the multitude of
similar sultans is his boundless activity. He disappeared one fine
morning from his palace, and remained unheard of for months, so that he
was given over as lost; when he returned, he had wandered _incognito_
through all anterior Asia, and reconnoitered everywhere the country and
the people.
In like manner he was not only generally fluent in speech, but he
administered justice to each of the twenty-two nations over which he
ruled in its own language, without needing an interpreter--a trait
significant of the versatile East. His whole activity as a ruler bears
the same character. So far as we know, his energies, like those of every
other sultan, were spent in collecting treasures, in assembling
armies--which were usually, in his earlier years at least, led against
the enemy not by the king in person, but by some Greek _condottiere_--in
efforts to add new satrapies to the old.
Of higher elements--desire to advance civilization, earnest leadership
of the national opposition, special gifts of genius--there are found, in
our traditional accounts at least, no distinct traces in Mithridates,
and we have no reason to place him on a level even with the great rulers
of the Osmans, such as Mohammed II and Suleiman. Notwithstanding his
Hellenic culture, which sat on him not much better than his Roman armor
on his Cappadocians, he was throughout an Oriental of the ordinary
stamp, coarse, full of the most sensual appetites, superstitious, cruel,
perfidious, and unscrupulous, but so vigorous in organization, so
powerful in physical endowments, that his defiant laying about him and
his unshaken courage in resistance frequently look like talent,
sometimes even like genius.
Granting even that during the death-struggle of the republic it was
easier to offer resistance than in the times of Scipio or Trajan, and
that it was only in the complication of the Asiatic events with the
internal commotions of Italy that rendered it possible for Mithridates
to resist the Romans twice as long as Jugurtha did, it nevertheless
remains true that before the Parthian war he was the only enemy who gave
serious trouble to the Romans in the East, and that he defended himself
as the lion of the desert defends himself against the hunter.
But whatever judgment we may form as to the individual character of the
king, his historical position remains in a high degree significant. The
Mithridatic wars formed at once the last movement of the political
opposition offered by Hellas to Rome and the beginning of a revolt
against the Roman supremacy resting on very different and far deeper
grounds of antagonism--the national reaction of the Asiatics against the
Occidentals, a new passage in the huge duel between the West and the
East which has been transmitted from the struggle of Marathon to the
present generation, and will, perhaps, reckon its future by thousands of
years as it has reckoned its past.
LUCIUS SYLLA.
BY JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE.
[Lucius Cornelius Sulla or Sylla (Felix) dictator of Rome, born 138
B.C., died in 78. Leader of the aristocratic party in the state, he
destroyed the party of popular reform, became dictator, and
proscribed thousands of the best citizens of the republic, who were
hunted down like wild beasts. In the Social and the Samnite war, as
in the first war against Mithridates, he displayed the genius of a
great soldier, surpassing even that of his able rival Marius. He
reorganized the Roman Constitution, concentrated all power in the
hands of the senatorial oligarchy, and paved the way for Julius
Cæsar to overthrow the liberties of the republic, though the latter
belonged to the opposite party. References: Froude’s “Life of
Cæsar,” Plutarch’s “Lives,” Mommsen’s “History of Rome.”]
Lucius Sylla, a patrician of the purest blood, had inherited a moderate
fortune, and had spent it like other young men of rank, lounging in
theatres and amusing himself with dinner-parties. He was a poet, an
artist, and a wit, but each and everything with the languor of an
amateur. His favorite associates were actresses, and he had neither
obtained nor aspired to any higher reputation than that of a cultivated
man of fashion.
His distinguished birth was not apparent in his person. He had red hair,
hard blue eyes, and a complexion white and purple, with the colors so
ill-mixed, that his face was compared to a mulberry sprinkled with
flour. Ambition, he appeared to have none, and when he exerted himself
to be appointed quæstor[11] to Marius on the African expedition, Marius
was disinclined to take him as having no recommendation beyond
qualifications which the consul of the plebeians disdained and disliked.
Marius, however, soon discovered his mistake. Beneath his constitutional
indolence Sylla was by nature a soldier, a statesman, a diplomatist. He
had been too contemptuous of the common objects of politicians to
concern himself with the intrigues of the forum, but he had only to
exert himself to rise with easy ascendancy to the command of every
situation in which he might be placed.
The war of factions which exiled Marius, placed Sylla at the head of the
expedition against the King of Pontus. He defeated Mithridates, he drove
him back out of Greece and pursued him into Asia. He left him still in
possession of his hereditary kingdom; but he left him bound, so far as
treaties could bind so ambitious a spirit, to remain thenceforward on
his own frontiers. He recovered Greece, the islands, and the Roman
provinces in Asia Minor. He extorted an indemnity of five millions, and
executed many of the wretches who had been active in the murders. He
raised a fleet in Egypt with which he drove the pirates out of the
archipelago back into their own waters. He restored the shattered
prestige of Roman authority, and he won for himself a reputation which
his later cruelties could stain but not efface. During his Eastern
campaign, a period of more than four years, the popular party had
recovered ascendancy at Rome.
The time was come when Sylla was to demand a reckoning for what had been
done in his absence. No Roman general had deserved better of his
country; his task was finished. He had measured the difficulty of the
task which lay before him, but he had an army behind him accustomed to
victory, and recruited by thousands of exiles who had fled from the rule
of the democracy. He intended to re-enter Rome with the glories of his
conquests about him, for revenge, and a counter-revolution. Sylla had
lingered at Athens, collecting paintings and statues and
manuscripts--the rarest treasures on which he could lay his hands--to
decorate his Roman palace. On receiving the consul’s answer he sailed
for Brindisi in the spring of 83 with forty thousand legionaries and a
large fleet.
The war lasted for more than a year. At length the contest ended in a
desperate fight under the walls of Rome itself on the first of November,
B.C., 82. The popular army was at last cut to pieces, a few thousand
prisoners taken, but they were murdered afterward in cold blood. Young
Marius killed himself. Sertorius fled to Spain, and Sylla and the
aristocracy were masters of Rome and Italy. Sylla was under no
illusions. He understood the problem which he had in hand. He knew that
the aristocracy were detested by nine tenths of the people; he knew that
they deserved to be detested, but they were at least gentlemen by birth
and breeding.
The democrats, on the other hand, were insolent upstarts who, instead of
being grateful for being allowed to live and work and pay taxes and
serve in the army, had dared to claim a share in the government, had
turned against their masters, and had set their feet upon their necks.
They were ignorant, and without leaders could be controlled easily. The
guilt and danger lay with the men of wealth and intellect, the country
gentlemen, the minority of knights and patricians like Cinna,[12] who
had taken the popular side and deserted their own order. There was no
hope for an end of agitation till every one of these men had been rooted
out.
Appointed dictator, at his own direction, by the senate, he at once
outlawed every magistrate, every public servant, civil or municipal, who
had held office under the rule of Cinna. It mattered little to Sylla who
were included if none escaped who were really dangerous to him; and an
order was issued for a slaughter of the entire number, the confiscation
of their property, and the division of it between the informers and
Sylla’s friends and soldiers. It was one of those deliberate acts,
carried out with method and order, which are possible only in countries
in an advanced stage of civilization, and which show how thin is the
film spread over human ferocity by what is called progress and culture.
Four thousand seven hundred persons fell in the proscription of Sylla,
all men of education and fortune. Common report or private information
was at once indictment and evidence, and accusation was in itself
condemnation.
The political reform enforced by the dictator gave the senate complete
restrictive control over legislation and administration. All
constitutional progress which had been made in the interests of the
people was utterly swept away. The senate was made omnipotent and
irresponsible. Sylla’s career was drawing to its close, and the end was
not the least remarkable feature of it. He resigned the dictatorship and
became a private citizen again, amusing the leisure of his age, as he
had abused the leisure of his youth, with theatres and actresses and
dinner-parties.
He too, like so many of the great Romans, was indifferent to life; of
power for the sake of power he was entirely careless; and if his
retirement had been more dangerous to him than it really was, he
probably would not have postponed it. He was a person of singular
character, and not without many qualities which were really admirable.
He was free from any touch of charlatanry. He was true, simple, and
unaffected, and even without ambition in the mean and personal sense.
His fault, which he would have denied to be a fault, was that he had a
patrician disdain of mobs and suffrages and the cant of popular liberty.
The type repeats itself era after era. Sylla was but Graham of
Claverhouse in a Roman dress and with an ampler stage. His courage in
laying down his authority has often been commented on, but the risk
which he incurred was insignificant. Of assassination he was in no
greater danger than when dictator, while the temptation to assassinate
him was less. His influence was practically undiminished, and as long as
he lived he remained, and could not but remain, the first person in the
republic. He lived a year after his retirement and died 78 B.C., being
occupied at the time in writing his memoirs, which have been
unfortunately lost. He was buried gorgeously in the Campus Martius,
among the old kings of Rome.
POMPEY.
BY THOMAS KERCHEVER ARNOLD.
[Known as Cneius Pompeius Magnus (or the Great), born 106 B.C.,
assassinated in Egypt by one of his own officers in 48. Best known
as the most formidable rival of Julius Cæsar; his career was
eminently fortunate till he sunk before the ascendancy of a greater
man. He achieved brilliant victories for Rome, and was honored with
three triumphs. Pompey was identified in the factional wars of
Italy, with the party led by Sulla. He finally became triumvir in
the division of power with Cæsar and Crassus. In the civil war
which ensued Pompey was defeated by Cæsar at the battle of
Pharsalia in Thessaly. After this defeat he fled to Egypt, where,
as he was leaving the boat for the shore, he was stabbed in the
back.]
The tears shed for Pompey were not only those of domestic infliction;
his fate called forth a more general and honorable mourning. No man had
ever gained at so early an age the affections of his countrymen; none
had enjoyed them so largely, or preserved them so long with so little
interruption; and at the distance of eighteen centuries the feeling of
his contemporaries may be sanctioned by the sober judgment of history.
He entered upon life as a distinguished member of an oppressed party,
which was just arriving at its hour of triumph and retaliation; he saw
his associates plunged into rapine and massacre, but he preserved
himself pure from the contagion of their crimes; and when the death of
Sylla left him almost at the head of the aristocratical party, he served
them ably and faithfully with his sword, while he endeavored to mitigate
the evils of their ascendancy by restoring to the commons of Rome, on
the earliest opportunity, the most important of those privileges and
liberties which they had lost under the tyranny of their late master.
He received the due reward of his honest patriotism in the unusual
honors and trusts that were conferred on him; but his greatness could
not corrupt his virtue; and the boundless powers with which he was
repeatedly invested he wielded with the highest ability and uprightness
to the accomplishment of his task, and then, without any undue attempts
to prolong their duration, he honestly resigned them. At a period of
general cruelty and extortion toward the enemies and subjects of the
commonwealth, the character of Pompey in his foreign commands was marked
by its humanity and spotless integrity.
His conquest of the pirates was effected with wonderful rapidity, and
cemented by a merciful policy, which, instead of taking vengeance for
the past, accomplished the prevention of evil for the future. His
presence in Asia, when he conducted the war with Mithridates, was no
less a relief to the provinces from the tyranny of their governors, than
it was their protection against the arms of the enemy. It is true that
wounded vanity led him, after his return from Asia, to unite himself for
a time with some unworthy associates; and this connection, as it
ultimately led to all his misfortunes, so did it immediately tempt him
to the worst faults of his political life, and involved him in a career
of difficulty, mortification, and shame.
But after this disgraceful fall, he again returned to his natural
station, and was universally regarded as the fit protector of the laws
and liberties of his country when they were threatened by Cæsar’s
rebellion. In the conduct of the civil war he showed something of
weakness and vacillation; but his abilities, though considerable, were
far from being equal to those of his adversary. His inferiority was most
seen in that want of steadiness in the pursuit of his own plans which
caused him to abandon a system already sanctioned by success, and to
persuade himself that he might yield with propriety to the ill-judged
impatience of his followers for battle.
His death is one of the few tragical events of those times which may be
regarded with unmixed compassion. It was not accompanied, like that of
Cato and Brutus, with the rashness and despair of suicide; nor can it be
regarded like that of Cæsar, as the punishment of crimes, unlawfully
inflicted, indeed, yet suffered deservedly. With a character of rare
purity and tenderness in his domestic relations, he was slaughtered
before the eyes of his wife and son; while flying from the ruin of a
most just cause he was murdered by those whose kindness he was entitled
to claim.
His virtues have not been transmitted to posterity with their deserved
fame; and while the violent republican writers have exalted the memory
of Cato and Brutus; while the lovers of literature have extolled
Cicero; and the admirers of successful ability have lavished their
praises on Cæsar; Pompey’s many and rare merits have been forgotten in
the faults of his triumvirate, and in the weakness of temper which he
displayed in conduct of the last campaign.
But he must have been in no ordinary degree good and amiable for whom
his countrymen professed their enthusiastic love, unrestrained by
servility and unimpelled by faction; and though the events of his life
must now be gathered for the most part from unfriendly sources, yet we
think that they who read them impartially will continually cherish his
memory with a warmer regard.
SERTORIUS.
BY PLUTARCH.
[Quintus Sertorius, a Roman general of Sabine extraction, born
about 121 B.C., assassinated in Spain in 72. A prominent chief of
the Marian party, he fled to Spain and held possession of the
province against the dominant party at Rome for more than ten
years. He was the one leader among the adherents of Marius, as
Pompey was the one general among the followers of Sylla, who showed
moderation and the spirit of clemency. His greatness was chiefly
shown in his career in Spain. He displayed consummate generalship
and skill in holding all the armies of Rome at bay till he was
assassinated by one of his own officers.]
Sertorius at last utterly despaired of Rome, and hastened into Spain,
that by taking possession there beforehand he might secure a refuge to
his friends from their misfortunes at home. He armed all the Romans who
lived in those countries that were of military age, and undertook the
building of ships and the making of all sorts of warlike engines, by
which means he kept the cities in due obedience, showing himself gentle
in all peaceful business, and at the same time formidable to his
enemies by his great preparations for war.
When Sertorius was called to Mauritania to assist the enemies of Prince
Ascalis, and had made himself absolute master of the whole country, he
acted with great fairness to those who had confided in him, and who
yielded to his mercy. He restored to them their property, cities, and
government, accepting only of such acknowledgments as they themselves
freely offered. While he considered which way next to turn his arms, the
Lusitanians sent ambassadors to desire him to be their general. For
being terrified with the Roman power, and finding the necessity of
having a commander of great authority and experience in war; being also
sufficiently assured of his worth and valor by those who formerly had
known him, they were desirous to commit themselves specially to his
care.
In fact, Sertorius is said to have been of a temper unassailable either
by fear or pleasure, in adversity and dangers undaunted, and no ways
puffed up with prosperity. In straightforward fighting no commander of
his time was more bold and daring; and in whatever was to be performed
in war by stratagem, secrecy, or surprise, if any strong place was to be
secured, any pass to be gained speedily, for deceiving and overreaching
an enemy, there was no man equal to him in subtlety and skill.
In bestowing rewards and conferring honors upon those who had performed
good service in the wars he was bountiful and magnificent, and was no
less sparing and moderate in inflicting punishment. The Lusitanians
having sent for Sertorius, he left Africa, and being made general, with
absolute authority, he put all in order among them, and brought the
neighboring parts of Spain into subjection. Most of the tribes
voluntarily submitted themselves, won by the fame of his clemency and of
his courage; and to some extent also, he availed himself of cunning
artifices of his own devising to impose on them, and gain influence over
them.
Among which certainly that of the hind was not the least. Spanus, a
countryman who lived in those parts, meeting by chance a hind that had
recently calved flying from the hunters, let the dam go, and pursuing
the fawn took it, being wonderfully pleased with the rarity of the
color, which was all milk white. At that time Sertorius was living in
the neighborhood, and accepted gladly any presents of fruits, fowl, or
venison that the country afforded, and rewarded liberally those who
presented them.
The countryman brought him his young hind, which he took and was well
pleased with at first sight; but when in time he made it so tame and
gentle that it would come when he called, and follow him wherever he
went, and could endure the noise and tumult of the camp, knowing well
that uncivilized people are naturally prone to superstition, by little
and little he raised it to something supernatural, saying it was given
him by the goddess Diana, and that it revealed to him many secrets.
If he had received private intelligence that the enemies had made an
incursion into any part of the district under his command, or had
solicited any city to revolt, he pretended that the hind had informed
him of it in his sleep, and charged him to keep his forces in readiness.
Or, again, if he had notice that any of the commanders under him had got
a victory, he would hide the messengers and bring forth the hind crowned
with flowers, for joy of the good news that was to come, and would
encourage them to rejoice and sacrifice to the gods for the good account
they should soon receive of their prosperous success.
He was also highly honored for his introducing discipline and good order
among them, for he altered their furious mode of fighting, and brought
them to make use of Roman armor, taught them to keep their ranks, and
observe signals and watch-words; and out of a confused number of thieves
and robbers he constituted a well-disciplined army. That which delighted
them most, however, was the care he took of their children. He sent for
all the boys of noblest parentage out of all their tribes, and placed
them in the great city of Osca, where he appointed masters to instruct
them in the Latin and Greek learning.
His method of conducting the war against the Romans showed his military
skill and foresight. By rapidly assaulting them, by alarming them on all
sides, by ensnaring, circumventing, and laying ambushes for them, he cut
off all provisions by land, while with his piratical vessels he kept all
the coast in awe and hindered their supplies by sea. He thus forced the
Roman generals to dislodge and to separate from one another at the last;
Metellus departed into Gaul and Pompey wintered among the Vaccæans in a
wretched condition, where, being in extreme want of money, he wrote a
letter to the senate, to let them know that if they did not speedily
supply him he must draw off his army. To these extremities the chiefest
and most powerful commanders of the age were brought by the skill of
Sertorius; and it was the common opinion in Rome that he would be in
Italy before Pompey.
Sertorius showed the loftiness of his temper in calling together all the
Roman senators who had fled from Rome and had come and resided with him,
giving them the name of a senate. Out of these he chose prætors and
quæstors, and adorned his government with all the Roman laws and
institutions, and though he made use of the arms, riches, and cities of
the Spaniards, yet he never would even in word remit to them the
imperial authority, but set Roman officers and commanders over them,
intimating his purpose to restore liberty to the Romans, not to raise up
the Spaniards’ power against them.
He was a sincere lover of his country and had a great desire to return
home; but in his adverse fortune he showed undaunted courage, and
behaved himself toward his enemies in a manner free from all dejection
and mean spiritedness. In his prosperity and the height of his victories
he sent word to Metellus and Pompey that he was ready to lay down his
arms and lead a private life if he were allowed to return home,
declaring that he had rather live as the meanest citizen in Rome than,
exiled from it, be supreme commander of all other cities together.
His negotiations with Mithridates further argue the greatness of his
mind. For when Mithridates, recovering himself from his overthrow by
Sylla--like a strong wrestler that gets up to try another fall--was
again endeavoring to re-establish his power in Asia, at this time the
great fame of Sertorius was celebrated in all places. Accordingly,
Mithridates sends messengers into Spain with letters and instructions
and commission to promise ships and money toward the charge of the war
if Sertorius would confirm his pretensions on Asia, and authorize him to
possess all that he had surrendered to the Romans in his treaty with
Sylla.
Sertorius would by no means agree to it; declaring that King Mithridates
should exercise all royal power and authority over Bithynia and
Cappadocia--countries accustomed to a monarchical government and not
belonging to Rome--but that he could never consent that he should seize
or detain a province which, by the justest right and title, was
possessed by the Romans. For he looked upon it as his duty to enlarge
the Roman possessions by his conquering arms, and not to increase his
power by the diminution of Roman territories.
When this was related to Mithridates he was struck with amazement, and
said to his intimate friends: “What will Sertorius enjoin on us to do
when he comes to be seated in the Palatium at Rome, who, at present,
when he is driven out to the borders of the Atlantic Sea, sets bounds to
our kingdoms in the East, and threatens us with war if we attempt the
recovery of Asia?”
[Illustration: JULIUS CÆSAR.]
JULIUS CÆSAR.
BY JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE.
[A Roman general and statesman and founder of the empire, though
its first ruler was Octavianus, his nephew and adopted son, who
mounted the throne under the name of Augustus Cæsar. Born 100 B.C.,
assassinated in the senate-house 44 B.C. By many historians and
critics Julius Cæsar is regarded as the greatest man who lived
before the Christian era.]
In person Cæsar was tall and slight. His features were more refined than
was usual in Roman faces; the forehead was wide and high, the nose large
and thin, the lips full, the eyes dark gray, like an eagle’s, the neck
extremely thick and sinewy. His complexion was pale. His beard and
mustache were kept carefully shaved. His hair was short and naturally
scanty, falling off toward the end of his life, and leaving him
partially bald. His voice, especially when he spoke in public, was high
and shrill. His health was uniformly good, until his last year when he
became subject to epileptic fits.
He was a great bather, and scrupulously neat in his habits, abstemious
in his food, and careless in what it consisted, rarely or never touching
wine, and noting sobriety as the highest of qualities in describing any
new people. He was an athlete in early life, admirable in all manly
exercises, and especially in riding. From his boyhood it was observed of
him that he was the truest of friends, that he avoided quarrels, and was
easily appeased when offended. In manner he was quiet and
gentleman-like, with the natural courtesy of high breeding.
Like Cicero, Cæsar entered public life at the bar. It was by accident
that he took up the profession of the soldier; yet, perhaps, no
commander who ever lived showed greater military genius. The conquest of
Gaul was effected by a force numerically insignificant, which was
worked with the precision of a machine. The variety of uses to which it
was capable of being turned implied, in the first place, extraordinary
forethought in the selection of materials. Men whose nominal duty was
merely to fight were engineers, architects, and mechanics of the highest
order. In a few hours they could extemporize an impregnable fortress on
the highest hill-side. They bridged the Rhine in a week. They built a
fleet in a month.
The legions at Alesia held twice their number pinned within their works,
while they kept at bay the whole force of insurgent Gaul by scientific
superiority. The machine, which was thus perfect, was composed of human
beings who required supplies of tools and arms and clothes and food and
shelter; and for all these it depended on the forethought of its
commander. Maps there were none. Countries entirely unknown had to be
surveyed; routes had to be laid out; the depths and courses of rivers,
the character of mountain-passes had all to be ascertained. Allies had
to be found in tribes as yet unheard of.
He was rash, but with a calculated rashness which the event never failed
to justify. His greatest successes were due to the rapidity of his
movements, which brought him to the enemy before they heard of his
approach. No obstacles stopped him when he had a definite end in view.
Again and again by his own efforts he recovered a day that was half
lost. He once seized a panic-stricken standard-bearer, turned him
around, and told him that he had mistaken the direction of the enemy.
Yet he was singularly careful of his soldiers. He rarely fought a battle
at a disadvantage. When a gallant action was performed, he knew by whom
it had been done, and every soldier, however humble, might feel assured
that if he deserved praise he would have it. The army was Cæsar’s
family. In discipline, he was lenient to ordinary faults, and not
careful to make curious inquiries into such things. He liked his men to
enjoy themselves. Military mistakes in his officers he always endeavored
to excuse, never blaming them for misfortunes unless there had been a
defect of courage as well as of judgment.
Cicero has said of Cæsar’s oratory that he surpassed those who had
practiced no other art. His praise of him as a man of letters is yet
more delicately and gracefully emphatic. Most of his writings are lost;
but there remain seven books of commentaries on the wars in Gaul (the
eighth was added by another hand) and three books on the civil war,
containing an account of its causes and history. Of these it was that
Cicero said, in an admirable image, that fools might think to improve on
them, but that no wise man would try it; they were bare of ornament, the
dress of style dispensed with, like an undraped human figure in all its
lines as nature made it. In his composition, as in his actions, Cæsar is
entirely simple. He indulges in no images, no labored descriptions, no
conventional reflections. His art is unconscious, as the highest art
always is.
Of Cæsar it may be said that he came into the world at a special time
and for a special object. The old religions were dead from the Pillars
of Hercules to the Euphrates and the Nile, and the principles on which
human society had been constructed were dead also. There remained of
spiritual conviction only the common and human sense of justice and
morality; and out of this sense some ordered system of government had to
be constructed, under which quiet men could live and labor and eat the
fruit of their industry. Under a rule of this material kind there can be
no enthusiasm, no chivalry, no saintly aspirations, no patriotism of the
heroic type. It was not to last forever. A new life was about to dawn
for mankind.
Poetry and faith and devotion were to spring again out of the seeds
which were sleeping in the heart of humanity. But the life which is to
endure grows slowly; and as the soil must be prepared before the wheat
can be sown, so before the Kingdom of Heaven could throw up its shoots,
there was needed a kingdom of this world where the nations were neither
torn in pieces by violence, nor were rushing after false ideals and
spurious ambitions. Such a kingdom was the empire of the Cæsars, a
kingdom where peaceful men could work, think, and speak as they pleased,
and travel freely among provinces ruled for the most part by Gallios[13]
who protected life and property, and forbade fanatics to tear each other
to pieces for their religious opinions.
“It is not lawful for us to put any man to death,” was the complaint of
the Jewish priests to the Roman governor. Had Europe and Asia been
covered with independent nations, each with a local religion represented
in its ruling powers, Christianity must have been stifled in its cradle.
If St. Paul had escaped the Sanhedrim at Jerusalem, he would have been
torn to death by the silversmiths at Ephesus. The appeal to Cæsar’s
judgment-seat was the shield of his mission, and alone made possible his
success.
And this spirit which confined government to its simple duties, while it
left opinion unfettered, was specially present in Julius Cæsar himself.
From cant of all kinds he was totally free. He was a friend of the
people, but indulged in no enthusiasm for liberty. He never dilated on
the beauties of virtue, or complimented, as Cicero did, a Providence in
which he did not believe. He was too sincere to stoop to unreality. He
held to the facts of this life and to his own convictions; and as he
found no reason for supposing that there was a life beyond the grave, he
did not pretend to expect it. He respected the religion of the Roman
state as an institution established by the laws.
He encouraged or left unmolested the creeds and practices of the
uncounted sects and tribes who were gathered under the eagles. But his
own writings contain nothing to indicate that he himself had any
religious belief at all. He saw no evidence that the gods practically
interfered in human affairs. He never pretended that Jupiter was on his
side. He thanked his soldiers after a victory, but he did not order _Te
Deums_ to be sung for it; and in the absence of these conventionalisms
he perhaps showed more real reverence than he could have displayed by
the freest use of the formulas of piety. He fought his battles to
establish some tolerable degree of justice in the government of this
world; and he succeeded though he was murdered for doing it.
TRAJAN.
BY CHARLES MERIVALE.
[M. Ulpius Trajanus, successor as Roman emperor to Nerva, born A.D.
53, ascended the throne 99; died 118. One of the most illustrious
among those who wore the Roman purple, his reign was distinguished
as much by happiness and prosperity as by lofty virtues. As a
soldier, Trajan subdued the Dacians, completed the conquest of
Germany and Sarmatia, annexed Armenia to the empire, and subdued
the Parthians to the Roman yoke. His civic administration was no
less notable than his military conquests and organization.]
The princely prodigality of Trajan’s taste was defrayed by the plunder
or the tribute of conquered enemies, and seems to have laid at least no
extraordinary burden on his subjects. His rage for building had the
further merit of being directed for the most part to works of public
utility and interest. He built for the gods, the senate, and the people,
and not for himself; he restored the palaces, enlarged the halls and
places of public resort; but he was content himself with the palaces of
his predecessors. A writer three centuries later declares of Trajan that
he built the world over; and the wide diffusion and long continuance of
his fame beyond that of so many others of the imperial series may be
partly attributed to the constant recurrence of his name conspicuously
inscribed on the most solid and best known monuments of the empire.
The care of this wise and liberal ruler extended from the harbors,
aqueducts, and bridges to the general repair of the highways of the
empire. He was the great improver, though not the inventor of the system
of posts on the chief roads, which formed a striking feature of Roman
civilization as an instrument for combining the remotest provinces under
a central organization.
The legislation of this popular emperor is marked generally by a special
consideration for Italian interests. The measures by which he secured a
constant supply of grain from the provinces, exempting its exportation
from all duties, and stimulating the growers at one extremity of the
empire to relieve the deficiencies of another, were directed to the
maintenance of abundance in Rome and Italy. Thus, on the casual failure
of the harvest in Egypt, her empty granaries were at once replenished
from the superfluous stores of Gaul, Spain, or Africa.
Though Trajan’s mind did not rise to wide and liberal views for the
advantages of the provinces, he neglected no favorable opportunity for
the benefit of particular localities. His hand was open to bestow
endowments and largesses, to relieve public calamities, to increase
public enjoyments, to repair the ravages of earthquakes and tempests, to
construct roads and canals, theatres and aqueducts. The activity
displayed through the empire in works of this unproductive nature shows
a great command of money, an abundant currency, easy means of
transacting business, ample resources of labor, and well devised schemes
of combining and unfolding them. Judicious economy went ever hand in
hand with genuine magnificence.
The monuments of Roman jurisprudence contain many examples of Trajan’s
legislation. Like the great statesmen of the republic, he returned from
the camp to the city to take his seat daily on the tribunals with the
ablest judges for his assessors. He heard appeals from the highest
courts throughout his dominion, and the final sentence he pronounced
assumed the validity of a legal enactment. The clemency of Trajan was as
conspicuous as his love of justice, and to him is ascribed the noble
sentiment, that it is better that the guilty should escape than the
innocent suffer.
The justice, the modesty, the unwearied application of Trajan were
deservedly celebrated, no less than his valor in war and his conduct in
political affairs. But a great part of his amazing popularity was owing,
no doubt, to his genial demeanor and to the affection inspired by his
qualities as a friend and associate. The remains still existing of his
correspondence in the letters of Pliny bring out not only the manners of
the time, but in some degree the character of the prince also; and bear
ample testimony to his minute vigilance and unwearied application, his
anxiety for his subjects’ well-being, the ease with which he conducted
his intercourse with his friends, and the ease with which he inspired
them in return.
Trajan’s letters bespeak the polished gentleman no less than the
statesman. He was fond of society, and of educated and literary society.
He was proud of being known to associate with the learned, and felt
himself complimented when he bestowed on the rhetorician Dion the
compliment of carrying him in his own chariot. That such refinement of
taste was not incompatible with excess in the indulgences of the table
was the fault of the times, and more particularly of the habits of camp
life to which he had been accustomed. Intemperance was always a Roman
vice.
The affability of the prince, and the freedom with which he exchanged
with his nobles all the offices of ordinary courtesy and hospitality,
bathing, supping, or hunting as an equal in their company, constituted
one of his greatest charms in the eyes of a jealous patriciate which had
seen its masters too often engrossed by the flatteries of freedmen and
still viler associates.
But Trajan enjoyed also the distinction dear in Roman eyes of a fine
figure and a noble countenance. In stature he exceeded the common
height, and on public occasions, when he loved to walk bareheaded in the
midst of the senators, his gray hairs gleamed conspicuously above the
crowd. His features, as we may trace them unmistakably on his
innumerable busts and medals, were regular; and his face was the last of
the imperial series that retained the true Roman type--not in the
aquiline nose only, but in the broad and low forehead, the angular chin,
the firm, compressed lips, and generally in the stern compactness of its
structure.
The thick and straight-cut hair, smoothed over the brow without a curl
or parting, marks the simplicity of the man’s character in a voluptuous
age which delighted in the culture of flowing or frizzed locks. But the
most interesting characteristic of the figure I have so vividly before
me is the look of painful thought, which seems to indicate a constant
sense of overwhelming responsibilities, honorably and bravely borne,
yet, notwithstanding much assumed cheerfulness and self-abandonment,
ever irritating the nerves and weighing upon the conscience.
THE ANTONINES.
BY EDWARD GIBBON.
[Titus Antoninus Pius, born 86 A.D., mounted the throne 138, died
161; Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, adopted son and successor of the
preceding, born 121 A.D., mounted the throne 161, died 180. The
first of the Antonines was born of a respectable family, settled in
Gaul, became pro-consul of Asia under Hadrian, afterward of a
division of Italy, and was selected by Hadrian as his successor on
account of his ability and virtues. Marcus Aurelius was
distinguished not only as general and administrator, as a ruler of
the most exemplary and noble character, but his name has descended
to modern ages as that of the royal philosopher. His “Meditations”
constitute one of the Roman classics.]
Under Hadrian’s reign the empire flourished in peace and prosperity. He
encouraged the arts, reformed the laws, assisted military discipline,
and visited all his provinces in person. His vast and active genius was
equally suited to the most enlarged views and the minute details of
civil policy. But the ruling passions of his soul were curiosity and
vanity. As they prevailed and as they were attracted by different
objects, Hadrian was by turns an excellent prince, a ridiculous sophist,
and a jealous tyrant. The general tenor of his conduct deserved praise
for its equity and moderation. Yet in the first days of his reign he put
to death four consular senators, his personal enemies, and men who had
been deemed worthy of empire; and the tediousness of a painful illness
at last made him peevish and cruel.
The senate doubted whether they should pronounce him a god or a tyrant,
and the honors decreed to his memory were granted to the prayers of the
pious Antonines. The caprice of Hadrian influenced his choice of a
successor. After revolving in his mind several men of distinguished
merit whom he esteemed and hated, he adopted Ælius Verus, a gay and
voluptuous nobleman, recommended by uncommon beauty. But while Hadrian
was delighting himself with his own applause and the acclamations of the
soldiers, whose consent had been secured by an immense donative, the new
Cæsar was reft from imperial friendship by an untimely death.
He left only one son. Hadrian recommended the boy to the gratitude of
the Antonines. He was adopted by Pius, and on the accession of Marcus
was invested with an equal share of sovereign power. Among the many
vices of this younger Verus, he possessed one virtue--a dutiful
reverence for his wiser colleague, to whom he willingly abandoned the
ruder cares of empire. The philosophic emperor dissembled his follies,
lamented his early death, and cast a decent veil over his memory.
As soon as Hadrian’s caprice in friendship had been gratified or
disappointed, he resolved to deserve the thanks of posterity by placing
the most exalted merit on the Roman throne. His discerning eye easily
discovered a senator about fifty years of age, blameless in all the
offices of life, and a youth about seventeen, whose riper years opened
the fair prospect of every virtue. The elder of these was declared the
son and successor of Hadrian, on condition, however, that he himself
should immediately adopt the younger. The two Antonines (for it is of
them we are now speaking) governed the Roman world forty-two years with
the same invariable spirit of wisdom and virtue.
Although Pius had two sons, he preferred the welfare of Rome to the
interests of his family; gave his daughter Faustina in marriage to young
Marcus, obtained from the senate the tribunitial and consular powers and
pro-consular powers, and with a noble disdain, or rather ignorance of
jealousy, associated him to all the labors of government.
Marcus, on the other hand, revered the character of his benefactor,
loved him as a parent, obeyed him as his sovereign, and, after he was no
more, regulated his own administration by the example and maxims of his
predecessor. Their united reigns are possibly the only period in history
in which the happiness of a great people was the sole object of
government.
Titus Antoninus Pius has been justly denominated a second Numa. The same
love of religion, justice, and peace was the distinguishing
characteristic of both princes. But the situation of the latter opened a
much larger field for the exercise of these virtues. Numa could only
prevent a few neighboring villages from plundering each other’s
harvests. Antoninus diffused order and tranquillity over the greater
part of the earth. His reign is marked by the rare advantage of
furnishing very few materials for history; which is, indeed, little more
than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
In private life he was an amiable as well as a good man. The native
simplicity of his virtue was a stranger to vanity or affectation. He
enjoyed with moderation the conveniences of his fortune and the innocent
pleasures of society; and the benevolence of his soul displayed itself
in a cheerful serenity of temper.
The virtue of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was of a severer and more
laborious kind. It was the well-earned harvest of many a learned
conference, of many a patient lecture, and many a midnight lucubration.
At the age of twelve years he embraced the rigid doctrines of the
Stoics, which taught him to submit his body to his mind, his passions to
his reason; to consider virtue as the only good, vice as the only evil,
all things external as things indifferent. His “Meditations,” composed
in the tumult of a camp, are still extant; and he even condescended to
give lessons on philosophy in a more public manner than was perhaps
consistent with the modesty of a sage or the dignity of an emperor. But
his life was the noblest commentary on the philosophy of Zeno.
He was severe to himself, indulgent to the imperfections of others, just
and beneficent to all mankind. He regretted that the death of Ovidius
Cassius, who excited a rebellion in Syria, had disappointed him, by a
voluntary death, of the pleasure of converting an enemy into a friend;
and he justified the sincerity of that statement by moderating the zeal
of the senate against the adherents of the traitor.
War he detested as the disgrace and calamity of human nature; but when
the necessity of a just defense called on him to take up arms, he
readily exposed his person to eight winter campaigns on the frozen banks
of the Danube, the severity of which was at last fatal to the weakness
of his constitution. His memory was revered by a grateful posterity, and
above a century after his death, many persons preserved the image of
Marcus Antoninus among those of their household gods.
If a man were called on to fix the period in the history of the world
during which the condition of the human race was most happy and
prosperous he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from
the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus. The vast extent of
the Roman Empire was governed by absolute power under the guidance of
virtue and wisdom. The armies were restrained by the firm but gentle
hand of five successive emperors, whose characters and authority
commanded universal respect.
The forms of the civil administration were carefully preserved by Nerva,
Trajan, Hadrian, and the Antonines, who delighted in the image of
liberty, and were pleased with considering themselves as the accountable
ministers of the laws. Such princes deserved the honor of restoring the
republic had the Romans of their days been capable of enjoying a
rational freedom. The labors of these monarchs were overpaid by the
immense reward that inseparably waited on their success, by the honest
pride of virtue, and by the exquisite delight of beholding the general
happiness of which they were the authors.
ZENOBIA, QUEEN OF PALMYRA.
BY EDWARD GIBBON.
[Septimia Zenobia, of mixed Greek and Arab descent, dates of birth
and death doubtful. Twice married, she reached through her second
husband, Odenathus, Prince of Palmyra, a field for the exercise of
her great talents. She aspired to be Empress of Western Asia after
her husband’s death, and only succumbed to the superior genius or
fortune of Aurelian, the Roman Emperor. The unsuccessful issue of
two pitched battles and two sieges placed her in the power of Rome
(273 A.D.). The clemency of the victor, though it made the captive
an ornament of his triumph, loaded her with wealth and kindness,
while it relegated her to a private station.]
Modern Europe has produced several illustrious women who have sustained
with glory the weight of empire; nor is our own age destitute of such
distinguished characters. But if we except the doubtful achievements of
Semiramis, Zenobia is perhaps the only female whose superior genius
broke through the servile indolence imposed on her sex by the habits and
climate of Asia. She claimed her descent from the Macedonian kings of
Egypt, equaled in beauty her ancestor Cleopatra, and far surpassed that
princess in chastity and valor.
Zenobia was esteemed the most lovely as well as the most heroic of her
sex. She was of a dark complexion (for in speaking of a lady these
trifles become important); her teeth were of a pearly whiteness; and her
large black eyes sparkled with uncommon fire tempered by the most
attractive sweetness. Her voice was strong and harmonious. Her manly
understanding was strengthened and adorned by study. She was not
ignorant of the Latin tongue, but possessed in equal perfection the
Greek, the Syriac, and the Egyptian languages. She had drawn up for her
own use an epitome of Oriental history, and familiarly compared the
beauties of Homer and Plato under the tuition of the sublime Longinus.
This accomplished woman gave her hand to Odenathus, who from a private
station raised himself to the dominion of the East. She soon became the
friend and companion of a hero. In the intervals of war Odenathus
passionately delighted in the exercise of hunting. He pursued with ardor
the wild beasts of the desert--lions, panthers, and bears--and the ardor
of Zenobia in that dangerous amusement was not inferior to his own. She
had inured her constitution to fatigue, disdained the use of a covered
carriage, generally appeared on horseback in a military habit, and
sometimes marched several miles on foot at the head of the troops.
The success of Odenathus was in great measure ascribed to her
incomparable prudence and fortitude. Their splendid victories over the
Great King, whom they twice pursued as far as the gates of Ctesiphon,
laid the foundation of their united fame and power. The armies which
they commanded and the provinces which they had saved acknowledged not
any other sovereigns than their invincible chiefs. The senate and people
of Rome revered a stranger who had avenged their captive emperor, and
even the insensible son of Valerian accepted Odenathus for his
legitimate colleague.
After a successful expedition against the Gothic plunderers of Asia the
Palmyrenian prince returned to the city of Emesa in Syria. Invincible in
war, he was there cut off by domestic treason, and his favorite
amusement of hunting was the cause, or at least the occasion, of his
death. His nephew Mæonius presumed to dart his javelin before that of
his uncle; and, though admonished of his error, repeated his insolence.
As a monarch and as a sportsman Odenathus was provoked, took away his
horse--a mark of ignominy among barbarians--and chastised his rash youth
by a short confinement. The offense was soon forgot, but the punishment
was remembered; and Mæonius, with a few daring associates, assassinated
his uncle in the midst of a great entertainment. Herod, the son of
Odenathus, though not of Zenobia, a young man of soft and effeminate
temper, was killed with his father. But Mæonius obtained only the
pleasures of revenge by this bloody deed. He had scarcely time to assume
the title of Augustus before he was sacrificed by Zenobia to the memory
of her husband. With the assistance of his most faithful friends she
immediately filled the vacant throne and governed with manly counsels
Palmyra, Syria, and the East above five years. By the death of
Odenathus, that authority was at an end which the senate had granted
him only as a personal distinction; but his widow, disdaining both the
senate and Gallienus, obliged one of the Roman generals who was sent
against her to retreat into Europe with the loss of his army and his
reputation.
Instead of the little passions which so frequently perplex a female
reign, the administration of Zenobia was guided by the most judicious
maxims of policy. If it was expedient to pardon, she could calm her
resentment; if it were necessary to punish, she could impose silence on
the voice of pity. Her strict economy was accused of avarice; yet on
every proper occasion she appeared magnificent and liberal. The
neighboring states of Arabia, Armenia, and Persia dreaded her enmity and
solicited her alliance. To the dominions of Odenathus, which extended
from the Euphrates to the frontiers of Bithynia, his widow added the
inheritance of her ancestors, the populous and fertile kingdom of Egypt.
The Emperor Claudius acknowledged her merit, and was content that while
_he_ pursued the Gothic war, _she_ should pursue the dignity of the
empire in the East. The conduct, however, of Zenobia was attended with
some ambiguity; nor is it unlikely that she had conceived the design of
erecting an independent and hostile monarchy. She blended with the
popular manners of Roman princes the stately pomp of the courts of Asia,
and exacted from her subjects the same adoration that was paid to the
successors of Cyrus. She bestowed on her three sons a Latin education,
and often showed them to the troops adorned with the imperial purple.
For herself she reserved the diadem with the splendid but doubtful title
of Queen of the East.
When Aurelian passed over into Asia, against an adversary whose sex
alone could render her an object of contempt, his presence restored
obedience to the province of Bithynia, already shaken by the arts and
the arms of Zenobia. Advancing at the head of his legions, he accepted
the submission of Ancyra, and was admitted into Tyana after an obstinate
siege, by the help of a perfidious citizen. Zenobia would have ill
deserved her reputation had she indolently permitted the Emperor of the
West to approach within a hundred miles of her capital. The fate of the
East was decided in two great battles, so similar in almost every
circumstance that we can scarcely distinguish them from each other,
except by observing that the first was fought near Antioch and the
second near Emesa. After the defeat of Emesa Zenobia found it impossible
to collect a third army. Palmyra was the last resource of the widow of
Odenathus. She retired within the walls of her capital, made every
preparation for a vigorous resistance, and declared with the intrepidity
of a heroine that the last moment of her reign and of her life should be
the same. The siege of Palmyra was an object far more difficult and
important; and the emperor, who with incessant vigor pressed the attacks
in person, was himself wounded with a dart. “The Roman people,” says
Aurelian in an original letter, “speak with contempt of the war which I
am waging against a woman. They are ignorant both of the character and
power of Zenobia. It is impossible to enumerate her warlike preparations
of stones, of arrows, and of every species of missile weapons. Every
part of the walls is provided with two or three _balistæ_, and
artificial fires are thrown from her military engines. The fear of
punishment has armed her with a desperate courage. Yet still I trust in
the protecting deities of Rome, who have hitherto been favorable to all
my undertakings.” The firmness of Zenobia was supported by the hope that
in a very short time famine would compel the Roman army to repass the
desert. But from every part of Syria a regular succession of convoys
safely arrived in the camp, which was increased by the return of Probus
with his victorious troops from the conquest of Egypt. It was then that
Zenobia resolved to fly. She mounted the fleetest of her dromedaries,
and had already reached the banks of the Euphrates, about sixty miles
from Palmyra, when she was overtaken by the pursuit of Aurelian’s
light-horse, seized, and brought back a captive to the feet of the
emperor. Her capital soon afterward surrendered, and was treated with
unexpected lenity.
When the Syrian queen was brought into the presence of Aurelian he
sternly asked her how she had presumed to rise in arms against the
Emperor of Rome? The answer of Zenobia was a prudent mixture of respect
and firmness: “Because I disdained to consider as Roman emperors an
Aureolus or a Gallienus. You alone I acknowledge as my conqueror and
sovereign.”
However, in the treatment of his unfortunate rivals, Aurelian might
indulge his pride, he behaved toward them with a generous clemency which
was seldom exercised by the ancient conquerors. The emperor presented
Zenobia with an elegant villa at Tibur, or Tivoli, about twenty miles
from the capital. The Syrian queen insensibly sunk into a Roman matron,
her daughters married into noble families, and her race was not yet
extinct in the fifth century.
CONSTANTINE, THE FIRST CHRISTIAN EMPEROR.
BY EDWARD GIBBON.
[Caius Flavius Valerius Aurelius Claudius, surnamed “the Great,”
born 272 A.D., died 337. He was the son of Constantine Chlorus, who
was appointed _Cæsar_, or lieutenant-emperor of the western part of
the empire which was divided between the two _Augusti_, or
emperors, Diocletian and Maximian. Constantine assumed the purple
of empire by acclamation of his legions while commanding in Britain
in 306. While leading his army to Rome to take possession of the
capital, the legend relates that Constantine saw a blazing cross in
the sky inscribed with [Greek: hen tohutph nhika], “In this
conquer.” Thenceforward the Christian symbol was inscribed on the
standards and shields of the army, and Christianity became
recognized as the state Church, though Constantine did not profess
the religion till his deathbed. In the year 323 he took the field
against his brother-in-law Licinius, Emperor of the East, and by
the defeat and execution of the latter he became sole ruler of the
reunited empire. Among the most important events of his reign were
the founding of the new capital of Constantinople (330) on the site
of Byzantium, and the first great general Christian council (325),
held at Nice, in Asia Minor. By the decision of the latter the
Athanasian Creed, embodying the doctrine of the Trinity, was made
the orthodox belief of the Church, and Arianism was condemned as
heresy. The character of Constantine was stained by suspicion and
cruelty, to which his father-in-law, his brother-in-law, his son,
and his wife successively fell victims.]
The character of the prince who removed the seat of empire and
introduced such important changes into the civil and religious
constitution of his country has fixed the attention and divided the
opinions of mankind. By the grateful zeal of the Christians, the
deliverer of the Church has been decorated with every attribute of a
hero, and even of a saint; while the discontent of the vanquished party
has compared Constantine to the most abhorred of those tyrants who, by
their vice and weakness, dishonored the imperial purple. The same
passions have in some degree been perpetuated to succeeding generations,
and the character of Constantine is considered, even in the present age,
as an object either of satire or of panegyric. By the impartial union of
those defects which are confessed by his warmest admirers and of those
virtues which are acknowledged by his most implacable enemies we might
hope to delineate a just portrait of that extraordinary man which the
truth and candor of history should adopt without a blush. But it would
soon appear that the vain attempt to blend such discordant colors and to
reconcile such inconsistent qualities must produce a figure monstrous
rather than human, unless it is viewed in its proper and distinct
lights, by a careful separation of the different periods of the reign of
Constantine.
The person as well as the mind of Constantine had been enriched by
Nature with her choicest endowments. His stature was lofty, his
countenance majestic, his deportment graceful; his strength and
activity were displayed in every manly exercise, and from his earliest
youth to a very advanced season of life he preserved the vigor of his
constitution by a strict adherence to the domestic virtues of chastity
and temperance. He delighted in the social intercourse of familiar
conversation; and though he might sometimes indulge his disposition to
raillery with less reserve than was required by the severe dignity of
his station, the courtesy and liberality of his manners gained the
hearts of all who approached him. The sincerity of his friendship has
been suspected; yet he showed on some occasions that he was not
incapable of a warm and lasting attachment. The disadvantage of an
illiterate education had not prevented him from forming a just estimate
of the value of learning, and the arts and sciences derived some
encouragement from the munificent protection of Constantine. In the
dispatch of business, his diligence was indefatigable; and the active
powers of his mind were almost continually exercised in reading,
writing, or meditating, in giving audience to ambassadors, and in
examining the complaints of his subjects. Even those who censured the
propriety of his measures were compelled to acknowledge that he
possessed magnanimity to conceive and patience to execute the most
arduous designs without being checked either by the prejudices of
education or by the clamors of the multitude. In the field he infused
his own intrepid spirit into the troops, whom he conducted with the
talents of a consummate general; and to his abilities, rather than to
his fortune, we may ascribe the signal victories which he obtained over
the foreign and domestic foes of the republic. He loved glory as the
reward, perhaps as the motive of his labors.
The boundless ambition which, from the moment of his accepting the
purple at York, appears as the ruling passion of his soul, may be
justified by the dangers of his own situation, by the character of his
rivals, by the consciousness of superior merit, and by the prospect that
his success would enable him to restore peace and order to the
distracted empire. In his civil wars against Maxentius and Licinius, he
had engaged on his side the inclinations of the people, who compared the
undissembled vices of those tyrants with the spirit of wisdom and
justice which seemed to direct the general tenor of the administration
of Constantine.
Had Constantine fallen on the banks of the Tiber, or even in the plains
of Adrianople, such is the character which, with a few exceptions, he
might have transmitted to posterity. But the conclusion of his reign
(according to the moderate and indeed tender sentence of a writer of the
same age) degraded him from the rank which he had acquired among the
most deserving of the Roman princes. In the life of Augustus, we behold
the tyrant of the republic converted almost by imperceptible degrees
into the father of his country and of human kind. In that of
Constantine, we may contemplate a hero who had so long inspired his
subjects with love and his enemies with terror degenerating into a cruel
and dissolute monarch, corrupted by his fortune or raised by conquest
above the necessity of dissimulation. The general peace which he
maintained during the last fourteen years (A.D. 323-337) of his reign
was a period of apparent splendor rather than of real prosperity; and
the old age of Constantine was disgraced by the opposite yet
reconcilable vices of rapaciousness and prodigality. The accumulated
treasures found in the palaces of Maxentius and Licinius were lavishly
consumed; the various innovations introduced by the conqueror were
attended with an increasing expense; the cost of his buildings, his
court, and his festivals, required an immediate and plentiful supply;
and the oppression of the people was the only fund which could support
the magnificence of the sovereign.
His unworthy favorites, enriched by the boundless liberality of their
master, usurped with impunity the privilege of rapine and corruption. A
secret but universal decay was felt in every part of the public
administration, and the emperor himself, though he still retained the
obedience, gradually lost the esteem of his subjects. The dress and
manners which, toward the decline of life, he chose to affect, served
only to degrade him in the eyes of mankind. The Asiatic pomp, which had
been adopted by the pride of Diocletian, assumed an air of softness and
effeminacy in the person of Constantine. He is represented with false
hair of various colors laboriously arranged by the skillful artists of
the times, a diadem of a new and more expensive fashion, a profusion of
gems and pearls, of collars and bracelets, and a variegated flowing robe
of silk, most curiously embroidered with flowers of gold. In such
apparel, scarcely to be excused by the youth and folly of Elagabalus, we
are at a loss to discover the wisdom of an aged monarch and the
simplicity of a Roman veteran. A mind thus relaxed by prosperity and
indulgence was incapable of rising to that magnanimity which disdains
suspicion and dares to forgive. The deaths of Maximian and Licinius may,
perhaps, be justified by the maxims of policy, as they are taught in the
schools of tyrants; but an impartial narrative of the executions, or
rather murders, which sullied the declining age of Constantine will
suggest to our most candid thoughts the idea of a prince who could
sacrifice without reluctance the laws of justice and the feelings of
nature to the dictates either of his passions or of his interest.
The same fortune which so invariably followed the standard of
Constantine seemed to secure the hopes and comforts of his domestic
life. Those among his predecessors who had enjoyed the longest and most
prosperous reigns--Augustus, Trajan, and Diocletian--had been
disappointed of posterity; and the frequent revolutions had never
allowed sufficient time for any imperial family to grow up and multiply
under the shade of the purple. But the royalty of the Flavian line,
which had been first ennobled by the Gothic Claudius, descended through
several generations; and Constantine himself derived from his royal
father the hereditary honors which he transmitted to his children.
Besides the females and the allies of the Flavian house, ten or twelve
males, to whom the language of modern courts would apply the title of
princes of the blood, seemed, according to the order of their birth, to
be destined either to inherit or to support the throne of Constantine.
But in less than thirty years this numerous and increasing family was
reduced to the persons of Constantius and Julian, who alone had survived
a series of crimes and calamities such as the tragic poets have deplored
in the devoted lines of Pelops and of Cadmus.
JULIAN THE APOSTATE.
BY EDWARD GIBBON.
[Flavius Claudius Julianus, born 331 A.D., died 363. He was the
nephew of Constantine, and was made _Cæsar_ by his cousin the
Emperor Constantius in 355. On the death of the latter, Julian
became sole emperor in 361. Though bred in the Christian faith, his
deep sympathy with the philosophy and letters of Greece, and his
aversion to the factional bigotry of the Christian sects, caused
him, on assuming the purple, to discard the doctrines of Christ,
and attempt the restitution of paganism.]
The retired scholastic education of Julian, in which he had been more
conversant with books than with arms, with the dead than with the
living, left him in profound ignorance of the practical arts of war and
government; and when he awkwardly repeated some military exercise which
it was necessary for him to learn, he exclaimed, with a sigh, “Oh Plato,
Plato, what a task for a philosopher!” Yet even this speculative
philosophy, which men of business are too apt to despise, had filled the
mind of Julian with the noblest precepts and the most shining examples;
had animated him with the love of virtue, the desire of fame, and the
contempt of death. The habits of temperance recommended in the schools
are still more essential in the severe discipline of a camp. The simple
wants of nature regulated the measure of his food and sleep. Rejecting
with disdain the delicacies provided for his table, he satisfied his
appetite with the coarse and common fare which was allotted to the
meanest soldiers. During the rigor of a Gallic winter he never suffered
a fire in his bed-chamber; and after a short and interrupted slumber, he
frequently rose in the middle of the night from a carpet spread on the
floor, to dispatch any urgent business, to visit his rounds, or to steal
a few moments for the prosecution of his favorite studies.
The precepts of eloquence, which he had hitherto practiced on fancied
topics of declamation, were more usefully applied to excite or assuage
the passions of an armed multitude; and though Julian, from his early
habits of conversation and literature, was more familiarly acquainted
with the beauties of the Greek language, he had attained a competent
knowledge of the Latin tongue. Since Julian was not originally designed
for the character of a legislator or a judge, it is probable that the
civil jurisprudence of the Romans had not engaged any considerable share
of his attention; but he derived from his philosophic studies an
inflexible regard for justice, tempered by a disposition to clemency;
the knowledge of the general principles of equity and evidence; and the
faculty of patiently investigating the most intricate and tedious
questions which could be proposed for his discussion. The measures of
policy and the operations of war must submit to the various accidents of
circumstance and character, and the unpracticed student will often be
perplexed in the application of the most perfect theory. But, in the
acquisition of this important science, Julian was assisted by the active
vigor of his own genius, as well as by the wisdom and experience of
Sallust, an officer of rank, who soon conceived a sincere attachment for
a prince so worthy of his friendship; and whose incorruptible integrity
was adorned by the talent of insinuating the harshest truths, without
wounding the delicacy of a royal ear.
Julian was not insensible of the advantages of freedom. From his studies
he had imbibed the spirit of ancient sages and heroes; his life and
fortunes had depended on the caprice of a tyrant, and when he ascended
the throne his pride was sometimes mortified by the reflection that the
slaves who would not dare to censure his defects were not worthy to
applaud his virtues. He sincerely abhorred the system of Oriental
despotism which Diocletian, Constantine, and the patient habits of
fourscore years had established in the empire. A motive of superstition
prevented the execution of the design which Julian had frequently
meditated, of relieving his head from the weight of a costly diadem; but
he absolutely refused the title of _Dominus_, or _Lord_--a word which
was grown so familiar to the ears of the Romans that they no longer
remembered its servile and humiliating origin. The office, or rather the
name, of consul was cherished by a prince who contemplated with
reverence the ruins of the republic; and the same behavior which had
been assumed by the prudence of Augustus was adopted by Julian from
choice and inclination. On the calends of January (A.D. 363, January
1st), at break of day, the new consuls, Mamertinus and Nevitta, hastened
to the palace to salute the emperor. As soon as he was informed of their
approach he leaped from his throne, eagerly advanced to meet them, and
compelled the blushing magistrates to receive the demonstrations of his
affected humility. From the palace they proceeded to the senate. The
emperor, on foot, marched before their litters; and the gazing multitude
admired the image of ancient times, or secretly blamed a conduct which,
in their eyes, degraded the majesty of the purple. But the behavior of
Julian was uniformly supported. During the games of the Circus he had,
imprudently or designedly, performed the manumission of a slave in the
presence of the consul. The moment he was reminded that he had
trespassed on the jurisdiction of _another_ magistrate, he condemned
himself to pay a fine of ten pounds of gold, and embraced this public
occasion of declaring to the world that he was subject, like the rest of
his fellow-citizens, to the laws, and even to the forms of the republic.
The spirit of his administration and his regard for the place of his
nativity induced Julian to confer on the senate of Constantinople the
same honors, privileges, and authority which were still enjoyed by the
senate of ancient Rome.[14] A legal fiction was introduced, and
gradually established, that one half of the national council had
migrated into the East; and the despotic successors of Julian, accepting
the title of senators, acknowledged themselves the members of a
respectable body which was permitted to represent the majesty of the
Roman name. From Constantinople, the attention of the monarch was
extended to the municipal senates of the provinces. He abolished, by
repeated edicts, the unjust and pernicious exemptions which had
withdrawn so many idle citizens from the service of their country; and,
by imposing an equal distribution of public duties, he restored the
strength, the splendor, or, according to the glowing expression of
Libanius, the soul of the expiring cities of his empire. The venerable
age of Greece excited the most tender compassion in the mind of Julian,
which kindled into rapture when he recollected the gods, the heroes, and
the men superior to heroes and to gods, who had bequeathed to the latest
posterity the monuments of their genius or the example of their virtues.
He relieved the distress, and restored the beauty of the cities of
Epirus and Peloponnesus. Athens acknowledged him for her benefactor;
Argos, for her deliverer. The pride of Corinth, again rising from her
ruins with the honors of a Roman colony, exacted a tribute from the
adjacent republics for the purpose of defraying the games of the
Isthmus, which were celebrated in the amphitheatre with the hunting of
bears and panthers. From this tribute the cities of Elis, of Delphi, and
of Argos, which had inherited from their remote ancestors the sacred
office of perpetuating the Olympic, the Pythian, and the Nemean games,
claimed a just exemption. The immunity of Elis and Delphi was respected
by the Corinthians, but the poverty of Argos tempted the insolence of
oppression, and the feeble complaints of its deputies were silenced by
the decree of a provincial magistrate, who seems to have consulted only
the interest of the capital in which he resided. Seven years after this
sentence Julian allowed the cause to be referred to a superior tribunal,
and his eloquence was interposed--most probably with success--in the
defense of a city which had been the royal seat of Agamemnon and had
given to Macedonia a race of kings and conquerors.
The laborious administration of military and civil affairs, which were
multiplied in proportion to the extent of the empire, exercised the
abilities of Julian; but he frequently assumed the two characters of
orator and of judge, which are almost unknown to the modern sovereigns
of Europe. The arts of persuasion, so diligently cultivated by the first
Cæsars, were neglected by the military ignorance and Asiatic pride of
their successors; and if they condescended to harangue the soldiers,
whom they feared, they treated with silent disdain the senators, whom
they despised. The assemblies of the senate, which Constantius had
avoided, were considered by Julian as the place where he could exhibit,
with the most propriety, the maxims of a republican and the talents of a
rhetorician. He alternately practiced, as in a school of declamation,
the several modes of praise, of censure, of exhortation; and his friend
Libanius has remarked that the study of Homer taught him to imitate the
simple, concise style of Menelaus, the copiousness of Nestor, whose
words descended like the flakes of a winter’s snow, or the pathetic and
forcible eloquence of Ulysses.
The functions of a judge, which are sometimes incompatible with those of
a prince, were exercised by Julian, not only as a duty, but as an
amusement; and, although he might have trusted the integrity and
discernment of his prætorian prefects, he often placed himself by their
side on the seat of judgment. The acute penetration of his mind was
agreeably occupied in detecting and defeating the chicanery of the
advocates, who labored to disguise the truth of facts and to pervert the
sense of the laws. He sometimes forgot the gravity of his station, asked
indiscreet or unseasonable questions, and betrayed, by the loudness of
his voice and the agitation of his body, the earnest vehemence with
which he maintained his opinion against the judges, the advocates, and
their clients. But his knowledge of his own temper prompted him to
encourage, and even to solicit, the reproof of his friends and
ministers; and whenever they ventured to oppose the irregular sallies of
his passions, the spectators could observe the shame, as well as the
gratitude, of their monarch. The decrees of Julian were almost always
founded on the principles of justice; and he had the firmness to resist
the two most dangerous temptations which assault the tribunal of a
sovereign, under the specious forms of compassion and equity. He decided
the merits of the cause without weighing the circumstances of the
parties; and the poor, whom he wished to relieve, were condemned to
satisfy the just demands of a noble and wealthy adversary. He carefully
distinguished the judge from the legislator; and, though he meditated a
necessary reformation of the Roman jurisprudence, he pronounced sentence
according to the strict and literal interpretation of those laws which
the magistrates were bound to execute and the subjects to obey.
The generality of princes, if they were stripped of their purple and
cast naked into the world, would immediately sink to the lowest rank of
society, without a hope of emerging from their obscurity. But the
personal merit of Julian was, in some measure, independent of his
fortune. Whatever had been his choice of life, by the force of intrepid
courage, lively wit, and intense application, he would have obtained, or
at least he would have deserved, the highest honors of his profession;
and Julian might have raised himself to the rank of minister, or
general, of the state in which he was born a private citizen. If the
jealous caprice of power had disappointed his expectations, if he had
prudently declined the paths of greatness, the employment of the same
talents in studious solitude would have placed beyond the reach of kings
his present happiness and his immortal fame. When we inspect with
minute, or perhaps malevolent attention the portrait of Julian,
something seems wanting to the grace and perfection of the whole figure.
His genius was less powerful and sublime than that of Cæsar; nor did he
possess the consummate prudence of Augustus. The virtues of Trajan
appear more steady and natural, and the philosophy of Marcus is more
simple and consistent. Yet Julian sustained adversity with firmness, and
prosperity with moderation. After an interval of one hundred and twenty
years from the death of Alexander Severus, the Romans beheld an emperor
who made no distinction between his duties and his pleasures; who
labored to relieve the distress and to revive the spirit of his
subjects; and who endeavored always to connect authority with merit, and
happiness with virtue. Even faction, and religious faction, was
constrained to acknowledge the superiority of his genius, in peace as
well as in war; and to confess, with a sigh, that the apostate Julian
was a lover of his country, and that he deserved the empire of the
world.
The character of apostate has injured the reputation of Julian, and the
enthusiasm which clouded his virtues has exaggerated the real and
apparent magnitude of his faults. The vehement zeal of the Christians,
who despised the worship, and overturned the altars of those fabulous
deities, engaged their votary in a state of irreconcilable hostility
with a very numerous party of his subjects; and he was sometimes
tempted, by the desire of victory or the shame of a repulse, to violate
the laws of prudence, and even of justice. The triumph of the party
which he deserted and opposed, has fixed a stain of infamy on the name
of Julian; and the unsuccessful apostate has been overwhelmed with a
torrent of pious invectives, of which the signal was given by the
sonorous trumpet of Gregory Nazianzen.[15]
THEODOSIUS THE GREAT.
BY EDWARD GIBBON.
[Born in Spain, about 346 A.D., of a Visigothic family, and died
395. He was made _Augustus_, or co-Emperor of the West, by Gratian,
in 379, but became by his great abilities the practical ruler of
the two empires, with his imperial seat at Constantinople.
Theodosius twice reconquered the West, where usurpers had made
successful revolt, and became the acknowledged master of the whole
Roman world. He was the last great emperor who shone brightly by
his genius for military affairs and his skill in civil
administration. Theodosius became so dear to the Catholic heart by
his persecution of the Arian heretics that he was afterward
canonized. At his death the empire was again divided, falling to
his sons, Honorius and Arcadius.]
The same province, and, perhaps, the same city, which had given to the
throne the virtues of Trajan and the talents of Hadrian, was the
original seat of another family of Spaniards, who, in a less fortunate
age, possessed, near fourscore years, the declining Empire of Rome. They
emerged from the obscurity of municipal honors by the active spirit of
the elder Theodosius--a general whose exploits in Britain and Africa
have formed one of the most splendid parts of the annals of
Valentinian.[16] The son of that general, who likewise bore the name of
Theodosius, was educated, by skillful preceptors, in the liberal studies
of youth; but he was instructed in the art of war by the tender care and
severe discipline of his father. Under the standard of such a leader,
young Theodosius sought glory and knowledge in the most distant scenes
of military action; inured his constitution to the difference of seasons
and climates; distinguished his valor by sea and land; and observed the
various warfare of the Scots, the Saxons, and the Moors. His own merit,
and the recommendation of the conqueror of Africa, soon raised him to a
separate command; and, in the station of Duke of Mæsia, he vanquished an
army of Sarmatians, saved a province, deserved the love of the soldiers,
and provoked the envy of the court. His rising fortunes were soon
blasted by the disgrace and execution of his illustrious father; and
Theodosius obtained, as a favor, the permission of retiring to a private
life in his native province of Spain. He displayed a firm and temperate
character in the ease with which he adapted himself to this new
situation. His time was almost equally divided between the town and
country; the spirit which had animated his public conduct was shown in
the active and affectionate performance of every social duty; and the
diligence of the soldier was profitably converted to the improvement of
his ample patrimony, which lay between Valladolid and Segovia, in the
midst of a fruitful district, still famous for a most exquisite breed of
sheep. From the innocent, but humble labors of his farm, Theodosius was
transported, in less than four months, to the throne of the Eastern
Empire; and the whole period of the history of the world will not
perhaps afford a similar example of an elevation at the same time so
pure and so honorable.
The princes who peaceably inherit the scepter of their fathers claim and
enjoy a legal right, the more secure as it is absolutely distinct from
the merits of their personal characters. The subjects who, in a monarchy
or a popular state, acquire the possession of supreme power may have
raised themselves, by the superiority either of genius or virtue, above
the heads of their equals; but their virtue is seldom exempt from
ambition, and the cause of the successful candidate is frequently
stained by the guilt of conspiracy or civil war. Even in those
governments which allow the reigning monarch to declare a colleague, or
a successor, his partial choice, which may be influenced by the blindest
passions, is often directed to an unworthy object. But the most
suspicious malignity can not ascribe to Theodosius, in his obscure
solitude of Caucha, the arts, the desires, or even the hopes, of an
ambitious statesman; and the name of the exile would long since have
been forgotten if his genuine and distinguished virtues had not left a
deep impression in the imperial court. During the season of prosperity
he had been neglected, but in the public distress his superior merit was
universally felt and acknowledged. What confidence must have been
reposed in his integrity, since Gratian could trust that a pious son
would forgive, for the sake of the republic, the murder of his father!
What expectations must have been formed of his abilities, to encourage
the hope that a single man could save and restore the Empire of the
East! Theodosius was invested with the purple in the thirty-third year
of his age. The vulgar gazed with admiration on the manly beauty of his
face and the graceful majesty of his person, which they were pleased to
compare with the pictures and medals of the Emperor Trajan; while
intelligent observers discovered, in the qualities of his heart and
understanding, a more important resemblance to the best and greatest of
the Roman princes.
The orator, who may be silent without danger, may praise without
difficulty and without reluctance; and posterity will confess that the
character of Theodosius might furnish the subject of a sincere and ample
panegyric. The wisdom of his laws and the success of his arms rendered
his administration respectable in the eyes both of his subjects and of
his enemies. He loved and practiced the virtues of domestic life, which
seldom hold their residence in the palaces of kings. Theodosius was
chaste and temperate; he enjoyed without excess the sensual and social
pleasures of the table, and the warmth of his amorous passions was never
diverted from their lawful objects. The proud titles of imperial
greatness were adorned by the tender names of a faithful husband, an
indulgent father; his uncle was raised, by his affectionate esteem, to
the rank of a second parent. Theodosius embraced as his own the children
of his brother and sister, and the expressions of his regard were
extended to the most distant and obscure branches of his numerous
kindred. His familiar friends were judiciously selected from among those
persons who, in the equal intercourse of private life, had appeared
before his eyes without a mask; the consciousness of personal and
superior merit enabled him to despise the accidental distinction of the
purple; and he proved by his conduct that he had forgotten all the
injuries while he most gratefully remembered all the favors and services
which he had received before he ascended the throne of the Roman Empire.
The serious or lively tone of his conversation was adapted to the age,
the rank, or the character of his subjects whom he admitted into his
society, and the affability of his manners displayed the image of his
mind. Theodosius respected the simplicity of the good and virtuous;
every art, every talent of a useful, or even of an innocent nature, was
rewarded by his judicious liberality; and, except the heretics, whom he
persecuted with implacable hatred, the diffusive circle of his
benevolence was circumscribed only by the limits of the human race.
The government of a mighty empire may assuredly suffice to occupy the
time and the abilities of a mortal; yet the diligent prince, without
aspiring to the unsuitable reputation of profound learning, always
reserved some moments of his leisure for the instructive amusement of
reading. History, which enlarged his experience, was his favorite study.
The annals of Rome, in the long period of eleven hundred years,
presented him with a various and splendid picture of human life; and it
has been particularly observed that whenever he perused the cruel acts
of Cinna, of Marius, or of Sylla, he warmly expressed his generous
detestation of those enemies of humanity and freedom. His disinterested
opinion of past events was usefully applied as the rule of his own
actions; and Theodosius has deserved the singular commendation that his
virtues always seemed to expand with his fortune--the season of his
prosperity was that of his moderation; and his clemency appeared the
most conspicuous after the danger and success of the civil war. The
Moorish guards of the tyrant had been massacred in the first heat of the
victory, and a small number of the most obnoxious criminals suffered the
punishment of the law. But the emperor showed himself much more
attentive to relieve the innocent than to chastise the guilty. The
oppressed subjects of the West, who would have deemed themselves happy
in the restoration of their lands, were astonished to receive a sum of
money equivalent to their losses; and the liberality of the conqueror
supported the aged mother and educated the orphan daughters of Maximus.
A character thus accomplished might almost excuse the extravagant
supposition of the orator Pacatus, that, if the elder Brutus could be
permitted to revisit the earth, the stern republican would abjure, at
the feet of Theodosius, his hatred of kings, and ingenuously confess
that such a monarch was the most faithful guardian of the happiness and
dignity of the Roman people.
Yet the piercing eye of the founder of the republic must have discerned
two essential imperfections, which might, perhaps, have abated his
recent love of despotism. The virtuous mind of Theodosius was often
relaxed by indolence, and it was sometimes inflamed by passion. In the
pursuit of an important object, his active courage was capable of the
most vigorous exertions; but, as soon as the design was accomplished, or
the danger was surmounted, the hero sunk into inglorious repose; and,
forgetful that the time of a prince is the property of his people,
resigned himself to the enjoyment of the innocent but trifling pleasures
of a luxurious court. The natural disposition of Theodosius was hasty
and choleric; and, in a station where none could resist and few would
dissuade the fatal consequence of his resentment, the humane monarch was
justly alarmed by the consciousness of his infirmity and of his power.
It was the constant study of his life to suppress or regulate the
intemperate sallies of passion; and the success of his efforts enhanced
the merit of his clemency. But the painful virtue which claims the merit
of victory is exposed to the danger of defeat; and the reign of a wise
and merciful prince was polluted by an act of cruelty which would stain
the annals of Nero or Domitian. Within the space of three years, the
inconsistent historian of Theodosius must relate the generous pardon of
the citizens of Antioch and the inhuman massacre of the people of
Thessalonica.[17]
ATTILA, THE SCOURGE OF GOD.
BY EDWARD GIBBON.
[King of the Huns, the Etzel of German epic and legend, one of the
greatest conquerors known to history. Date of birth unknown, that
of death about 454 A.D. The dominion to which he succeeded included
the Northern tribes from the Rhine to the Volga. At different times
he ravaged the whole of Europe, and more than once threatened to
extirpate Western civilization. The defeat which he suffered at the
hands of the Roman general Ætius on the plains of Châlons-sur-Marne
checked his power, and was probably the most murderous battle ever
fought in Europe. Attila died from the bursting of an artery after
a night of debauch, the occasion of the last espousal that swelled
the army of his countless wives. By some of the chroniclers he is
supposed to have been the victim of the newly married wife’s
treachery. He was buried in triple coffins of iron, silver, and
gold.]
Attila, the son of Mundzuk, deduced his noble, perhaps his regal descent
from the ancient Huns, who had formerly contended with the monarchs of
China. His features, according to the observation of a Gothic historian,
bore the stamp of his national origin; and the portrait of Attila
exhibits the genuine deformity of a modern Calmuck; a large head, a
swarthy complexion, small, deep-seated eyes, a flat nose, a few hairs in
the place of a beard, broad shoulders, and a short, square body, of
nervous strength, though of a disproportioned form. The haughty step and
demeanor of the king of the Huns expressed the consciousness of his
superiority above the rest of mankind; and he had a custom of fiercely
rolling his eyes, as if he wished to enjoy the terror which he inspired.
Yet this savage hero was not inaccessible to pity; his suppliant enemies
might confide in the assurance of peace or pardon; and Attila was
considered by his subjects as a just and indulgent master. He delighted
in war; but, after he had ascended the throne in a mature age, his head
rather than his hand achieved the conquest of the North; and the fame
of an adventurous soldier was usefully exchanged for that of a prudent
and successful general. The effects of personal valor are so
inconsiderable, except in poetry or romance, that victory, even among
barbarians, must depend upon the degree of skill with which the passions
of the multitude are combined and guided for the service of a single
man. The Scythian conquerors, Attila and Zingis, surpassed their rude
countrymen in art rather than in courage; and it may be observed that
the monarchies, both of the Huns and of the Moguls, were erected by
their founders on the basis of popular superstition. The miraculous
conception which fraud and credulity ascribed to the virgin mother of
Zingis raised him above the level of human nature; and the naked prophet
who, in the name of the Deity, invested him with the empire of the
earth, pointed the valor of the Moguls with irresistible enthusiasm. The
religious arts of Attila were not less skillfully adapted to the
character of his age and country. It was natural enough that the
Scythians should adore with peculiar devotion the god of war; but as
they were incapable of forming either an abstract idea or a corporeal
representation, they worshiped their tutelar deity under the symbol of
an iron cimeter. One of the shepherds of the Huns perceived that a
heifer who was grazing had wounded herself in the foot, and curiously
followed the track of the blood till he discovered among the long grass
the point of an ancient sword, which he dug out of the ground and
presented to Attila.
That magnanimous or rather that artful prince accepted with pious
gratitude this celestial favor, and, as the rightful possessor of the
_sword of Mars_, asserted his divine and indefeasible claim to the
dominion of the earth. If the rites of Scythia were practiced on this
solemn occasion, a lofty altar, or rather a pile of faggots, three
hundred yards in length and in breadth, was raised in a spacious plain,
and the sword of Mars was placed erect on the summit of this rustic
altar, which was annually consecrated by the blood of sheep, horses,
and of the one hundredth captive. Whether human sacrifices formed any
part of the worship of Attila, or whether he propitiated the god of war
with the victims which he continually offered in the field of battle,
the favorite of Mars soon acquired a sacred character, which rendered
his conquests more easy and more permanent; and the barbarian princes
confessed, in the language of devotion or flattery, that they could not
presume to gaze with a steady eye on the divine majesty of the king of
the Huns. His brother, Bleda, who reigned over a considerable part of
the nation, was compelled to resign his scepter and his life. Yet even
this cruel act was attributed to a supernatural impulse; and the vigor
with which Attila wielded the sword of Mars convinced the world that it
had been reserved alone for his invincible arm. But the extent of his
empire affords the only remaining evidence of the number and importance
of his victories; and the Scythian monarch, however ignorant of the
value of science and philosophy, might perhaps lament that his
illiterate subjects were destitute of the art which could perpetuate the
memory of his exploits.
If a line of separation were drawn between the civilized and the savage
climates of the globe, between the inhabitants of cities who cultivated
the earth and the hunters and shepherds who dwelt in tents, Attila might
aspire to the title of supreme and sole monarch of the barbarians. He
alone among the conquerors of ancient and modern times united the two
mighty kingdoms of Germany and Scythia; and those vague appellations,
when they are applied to his reign, may be understood with an ample
latitude. Thuringia, which stretched beyond its actual limits as far as
the Danube, was in the number of his provinces; he interposed, with the
weight of a powerful neighbor, in the domestic affairs of the Franks;
and one of his lieutenants chastised and almost exterminated the
Burgundians of the Rhine. He subdued the islands of the ocean, the
kingdoms of Scandinavia, encompassed and divided by the waters of the
Baltic; and the Huns might derive a tribute of furs from that northern
region which has been protected from all other conquerors by the
severity of the climate and the courage of the natives. Toward the East,
it is difficult to circumscribe the dominion of Attila over the Scythian
deserts; yet we may be assured that he reigned on the banks of the
Volga; that the king of the Huns was dreaded, not only as a warrior but
as a magician; that he insulted and vanquished the Khan of the
formidable Geougen; and that he sent ambassadors to negotiate an equal
alliance with the Empire of China.
In the proud review of the nations who acknowledged the sovereignty of
Attila, and who never entertained during his lifetime the thought of a
revolt, the Gepidæ and the Ostrogoths were distinguished by their
numbers, their bravery, and the personal merit of their chiefs. The
renowned Ardaric, king of the Gepidæ, was the faithful and sagacious
counselor of the monarch, who esteemed his intrepid genius, while he
loved the mild and discreet virtues of the noble Walamir, king of the
Ostrogoths. The crowd of vulgar kings, the leaders of so many martial
tribes who served under the standard of Attila, were ranged in the
submissive order of guards and domestics round the person of their
master. They watched his nod, they trembled at his frown, and at the
first signal of his will they executed, without murmur or hesitation,
his stern and absolute commands. In time of peace, the dependent
princes, with their national troops, attended the royal camp in regular
succession; but when Attila collected his military force he was able to
bring into the field an army of five, or, according to another account,
of seven hundred thousand barbarians.
In all their invasions of the civilized empires of the South, the
Scythian shepherds have been uniformly actuated by a savage and
destructive spirit. The laws of war, that restrain the exercise of
national rapine and murder, are founded on two principles of substantial
interest; the knowledge of the permanent benefits which may be obtained
by a moderate use of conquest, and a just apprehension lest the
desolation which we inflict on the enemy’s country may be retaliated on
our own. But these considerations of hope and fear are almost unknown in
the pastoral state of nations. The Huns of Attila may, without
injustice, be compared to the Moguls and Tartars before their primitive
manners were changed by religion and luxury; and the evidence of
Oriental history may reflect some light on the short and imperfect
annals of Rome. After the Moguls had subdued the northern provinces of
China, it was seriously proposed, not in the hour of victory and
passion, but in calm, deliberate council, to exterminate all the
inhabitants of that populous country, that the vacant land might be
converted to the pasture of cattle. The firmness of a Chinese mandarin,
who insinuated some principles of rational policy into the mind of
Zingis, diverted him from the execution of this horrid design. But in
the cities of Asia, which yielded to the Moguls, the inhuman abuse of
the rights of war was exercised with a regular form of discipline which
may with equal reason, though not with equal authority, be imputed to
the victorious Huns. The inhabitants, who had submitted to their
discretion, were ordered to evacuate their houses, and to assemble in
some plain adjacent to the city, where a division was made of the
vanquished into three parts. The first class consisted of the soldiers
of the garrison and of the young men capable of bearing arms, and their
fate was instantly decided; they were either enlisted among the Moguls,
or they were massacred on the spot by the troops, who, with pointed
spears and bended bows, had formed a circle round the captive multitude.
The second class, composed of the young and beautiful women, of the
artificers of every rank and profession, and of the more wealthy or
honorable citizens, from whom a private ransom might be expected, was
distributed in equal or proportionable lots. The remainder, whose life
or death was alike useless to the conquerors, were permitted to return
to the city--which, in the mean while, had been stripped of its valuable
furniture--and a tax was imposed on those wretched inhabitants for the
indulgence of breathing their native air. Such was the behavior of the
Moguls when they were not conscious of any extraordinary rigor. But the
most casual provocation, the slightest motive, of caprice or
convenience, often provoked them to involve a whole people in an
indiscriminate massacre; and the ruin of some flourishing cities was
executed with such unrelenting perseverance that, according to their own
expression, horses might run without stumbling over the ground where
they had once stood. The three great capitals of Khorasan, Maru,
Neisabour, and Herat were destroyed by the armies of Zingis; and the
exact account which was taken of the slain amounted to 4,347,000
persons. Timur, or Tamerlane, was educated in a less barbarous age, and
in the profession of the Mohammedan religion; yet if Attila equaled the
hostile ravages of Tamerlane, either the Tartar or the Hun might deserve
the title of “the Scourge of God.”
BELISARIUS.
BY LORD MAHON.
[Born about 505 A.D., of Slavonic descent, died 565. He rose from a
soldier in the imperial guard to the supreme command of the
Byzantine armies. For thirty years the glory and bulwark of the
Greek empire, his genius for war has been rarely surpassed, and the
field of his triumphs extended from Persia to Italy and Northern
Africa. In spite of his priceless services to his sovereign, the
envious and treacherous Justinian was careful to deprive him of
power and place, when the empire could spare his genius at the head
of its armies. His name has become a synonym for loyalty that no
ingratitude could shake. He died in poverty and obscurity, though
it was in his power any time during a score of years to snatch the
purple from his unworthy master.]
In person Belisarius was tall and commanding, and presented a remarkable
contrast to the dwarfish and ungainly aspect of his rival Narses. His
features were regular and noble, and his appearance in the streets of
Constantinople after the Vandal and Gothic victories never failed to
attract the admiration of the people. His character may not unaptly be
compared to that of Marlborough, whom he equaled in talents and closely
resembled in his uxoriousness and love of money. As a military leader he
was enterprising, firm, and fearless; his conception was clear, and his
judgment rapid and decisive. His conquests were achieved with smaller
means than any other of like extent recorded in history. He frequently
experienced reverses in the field, but in no case did he fail without
some strong and sufficient reason for his failure, such as the mutiny of
his soldiers, the overwhelming number of his antagonists, or his total
want of necessary supplies; and it may be observed of him, as of
Arminius, that sometimes beaten in battle he was never overcome in war.
His superior tactics covered his defeats, retrieved his losses, and
prevented his enemies from reaping the fruits of victory; and it is
particularly mentioned that even in the most dangerous emergencies he
never lost his presence of mind.
Among the circumstances which contributed most strongly to his success
were the kindness which his adversaries met with at his hands, and the
strict discipline which he maintained among his soldiers. The moderation
of Belisarius appears the more entitled to praise from the fierceness
and disorder usual in his age. It was his first care after every victory
to extend mercy and protection to the vanquished, and to shield their
persons and, if possible, their property from injury. During a march the
trampling of the corn-fields by the cavalry was carefully avoided, and
the troops, as Procopius tells us, seldom ventured even to gather an
apple from the trees, while a ready payment to the villagers for any
provisions that they bought made them bless the name of Belisarius and
secured to the Roman camp a plentiful supply. To the soldiers who
transgressed these rules the general was stern and unforgiving; no rank
could defy, no obscurity could elude his justice; and, because he
punished severely, he had to punish but seldom. But while the licentious
and turbulent were repressed by the strong arm of Belisarius, his
liberality cheered and animated the deserving. The gift of a gold
bracelet or collar rewarded any achievement in battle; the loss of a
horse or weapon was immediately supplied out of his private funds, and
the wounded found in him a father and a friend. His private virtues
promoted and confirmed the discipline of his men; none ever saw him
overcome with wine, and the charms of the fairest captives from the
Goths or Vandals could not overcome his conjugal fidelity.
But the most striking and peculiar feature in the character of
Belisarius, as compared with that of other illustrious generals, was his
enduring and unconquerable loyalty. He was doubtless bound to Justinian
by many ties of gratitude, and the suspicion entertained of him in
Africa may be considered as fully counterbalanced by the triumph and
other honors which awaited his return. But from the siege of Ravenna
till his final departure from Italy he was, almost without intermission,
exposed to the most galling and unworthy treatment; he was insulted,
degraded, and despised; he was even attacked in his fame, when restored
to an important station, without any means for discharging its duties
and for sustaining his former reputation. It would be difficult to
repeat another instance of such signal and repeated ingratitude unless
in republics, where from the very nature of the government no crime is
so dangerous or so well punished as serving the state too well. When we
consider the frequency and therefore the ease of revolutions in this
age, the want of hereditary right in the imperial family, the strong
attachment of the soldiers to their victorious general, while the person
of Justinian was hateful even to his own domestic guards, it will, I
think, be admitted that a rebellion by Belisarius must have proved
successful and secure. On no occasion was he roused into the slightest
mark of disobedience or resentment; he bore every injury with unchanged
submission; he resisted the feelings of indignation, of revenge, of
self-interest, and even the thirst for glory, which, according to
Tacitus, is of all frailties the longest retained by the wise. Besides
him, no more than six generals have been named by one of our most
judicious critics as having deserved, without having worn a crown;[18]
and the smallness of this number should display the difficulty of
withstanding this brilliant temptation and enhance the reputation of
those who have withstood it.
The chief fault of Belisarius seems to have been his unbounded deference
and submission to his wife, which rendered him strangely blind and
afterward weakly forgiving to her infidelity. But its mischievous
effects were not confined to private life, and nearly all the errors
which can be charged upon his public career are imputed to this cause.
It was Antonina who assumed the principal part in the deposition of the
Pope, who urged the death of Constantine, who promoted the prosecution
of Photius; and in his whole conduct with regard to that worthless woman
Belisarius appears alternately the object of censure or ridicule. His
confidence in her must have tended to lower his official character, to
fetter and mislead his judgment, and to prevent his justice and
impartiality whenever her passions were concerned. The second reproach
to which the character of Belisarius appears liable is that of rapacity
in the latter part of his career. How highly would his fame have been
exalted by an honorable poverty, and how much would the animosity of his
enemies at court have abated, had they seen no spoils to gather from his
fall!
The life of Belisarius produced most important effects on the political
and social revolutions of the world. I have already endeavored to show
that his reduction of Africa probably contributed to the rapid progress
of the Mussulmans, but this and his other victories probably saved his
country from impending ruin. During the fifth century more than half the
provinces of the ancient empire had been usurped by the barbarians, and
the rising tide of their conquests must soon have overwhelmed the
remainder. The decline of the Byzantine Romans was threatened by the
youthful vigor of the Vandal and Ostrogothic kingdoms. Although the
founders of these mighty monarchies had been wisely solicitous for
peace, they left their successors fully able to undertake any projects
of invasion; and an alliance of these states against the Romans must
have been fatal to the last. Had not Belisarius arisen at this
particular juncture the Vandals, Goths, and Persians would in all
likelihood have divided the imperial provinces among them. The Arian
doctrines, of which the two former were zealous partisans, would then
probably have prevailed in the Christian world, the whole balance of
power in Europe would have undergone incalculable changes, and the
treasures of Greek and Roman genius would never have enlightened modern
times.
MOHAMMED,[19] THE FOUNDER OF ISLAM.
BY EDWARD GIBBON.
[Born 570 or 571 A.D., died 632. Like all the upper classes of
Mecca, his birthplace, the future prophet devoted himself to
commercial pursuits, and in his twenty-fifth year he married the
rich widow whose business he supervised. It was not till his
fortieth year that he
[Illustration: MOHAMMED.]
announced to the world his heavenly mission, his first converts
being his wife and his uncle Abu Taleb. He was compelled to fly
from Mecca to Medina, and the year of the flight known as the
“Hegira,” 622 A.D., is the foundation of the Mohammedan era. Within
a decade Mohammed converted nearly the whole of Arabia to his new
religion, and the dominion of his successors was spread with a
rapidity which is among the marvels of history.]
The plebeian birth of Mahomet is an unskillful calumny of the
Christians, who exalt instead of degrading the merit of their adversary.
His descent from Ishmael was a national privilege or fable; but if the
first steps of the pedigree are dark and doubtful, he could produce many
generations of pure and genuine nobility; he sprung from the tribe of
Koreish and the family of Hashem, the most illustrious of the Arabs, the
princes of Mecca, and the hereditary guardians of the Caaba. The
grandfather of Mahomet was Abdol Motalleb, the son of Hashem, a wealthy
and generous citizen who relieved the distress of famine with the
supplies of commerce. Mecca, which had been fed by the liberality of the
father, was saved by the courage of the son. The kingdom of Yemen was
subject to the Christian princes of Abyssinia; their vassal Abrahah was
provoked by an insult to avenge the honor of the cross; and the holy
city was invested by a train of elephants and an army of Africans. A
treaty was proposed, and in the first audience the grandfather of
Mahomet demanded the restitution of his cattle. “And why,” said Abrahah,
“do you not rather implore my clemency in favor of your temple, which I
have threatened to destroy?” “Because,” replied the intrepid chief, “the
cattle is my own; the Caaba belongs to the gods, and _they_ will defend
their house from injury and sacrilege.” The want of provisions, or the
valor of the Koreish, compelled the Abyssinians to a disgraceful
retreat; their discomfiture has been adorned with a miraculous flight of
birds, who showered down stones on the heads of the infidels; and the
deliverance was long commemorated by the era of the elephant.
The glory of Abdol Motalleb was crowned with domestic happiness, his
life was prolonged to the age of one hundred and ten years, and he
became the father of six daughters and thirteen sons. His best beloved
Abdallah was the most beautiful and modest of the Arabian youth.
Mahomet, or more properly Mohammed, the only son of Abdallah and Amina,
of the noble race of the Zahrites, was born at Mecca, four years after
the death of Justinian. In his early infancy he was deprived of his
father, his mother, and his grandfather; his uncles were strong and
numerous; and in the division of the inheritance the orphan’s share was
reduced to five camels and an Ethiopian maid-servant. At home and
abroad, in peace and war, Abu Taleb, the most respectable of his uncles,
was the guide and guardian of his youth; in his twenty-fifth year he
entered into the service of Cadijah, a rich and noble widow of Mecca,
who soon rewarded his fidelity with the gift of her hand and fortune.
The marriage contract, in the simple style of antiquity, recites the
mutual love of Mahomet and Cadijah; describes him as the most
accomplished of the tribe of Koreish; and stipulates a dowry of twelve
ounces of gold and twenty camels, which was supplied by the liberality
of his uncle. By this alliance the son of Abdallah was restored to the
station of his ancestors, and the judicious matron was content with his
domestic virtues, till, in the fortieth year of his age, he assumed the
title of a prophet and proclaimed the religion of the Koran.
According to the tradition of his companions, Mahomet was distinguished
by the beauty of his person, an outward gift which is seldom despised,
except by those to whom it has been refused. Before he spoke, the orator
engaged on his side the affections of a public or private audience. They
applauded his commanding presence, his majestic aspect, his piercing
eye, his gracious smile, his flowing beard, his countenance that painted
every sensation of the soul, and his gestures that enforced each
expression of the tongue. In the familiar offices of life he
scrupulously adhered to the grave and ceremonious politeness of his
country; his respectful attention to the rich and powerful was dignified
by his condescension and affability to the poorest citizens of Mecca;
the frankness of his manner concealed the artifice of his views, and the
habits of courtesy were imputed to personal friendship or universal
benevolence. His memory was capacious and retentive, his wit easy and
social, his imagination sublime, his judgment clear, rapid, and
decisive. He possessed the courage both of thought and action; and,
although his designs might gradually expand with his success, the first
idea which he entertained of his divine mission bears the stamp of an
original and superior genius. The son of Abdallah was educated in the
bosom of the noblest race, in the use of the purest dialect of Arabia;
and the fluency of his speech was corrected and enhanced by the practice
of discreet and seasonable silence. With these powers of eloquence
Mahomet was an illiterate barbarian; his youth had never been instructed
in the arts of reading and writing; the common ignorance exempted him
from shame or reproach, but he was reduced to a narrow circle of
existence, and deprived of those faithful mirrors which reflect to our
mind the minds of sages and heroes. Yet the book of nature and of man
was open to his view; and some fancy has been indulged in the political
and philosophical observations which are ascribed to the Arabian
_traveler_. He compares the nations and the religions of the earth;
discovers the weakness of the Persian and Roman monarchies; beholds,
with pity and indignation, the degeneracy of the times; and resolves to
unite, under one God and one king, the invincible spirit and primitive
virtues of the Arabs. Our more accurate inquiry will suggest that,
instead of visiting the courts, the camps, the temples of the East, the
two journeys of Mahomet into Syria were confined to the fairs of Bostra
and Damascus; that he was only thirteen years of age when he accompanied
the caravan of his uncle; and that his duty compelled him to return as
soon as he had disposed of the merchandise of Cadijah. In these hasty
and superficial excursions the eye of genius might discern some objects
invisible to his grosser companions; some seeds of knowledge might be
cast upon a fruitful soil; but his ignorance of the Syriac language must
have checked his curiosity, and I can not perceive in the life or
writings of Mahomet that his prospect was far extended beyond the limits
of the Arabian world.
From every region of that solitary world the pilgrims of Mecca were
annually assembled by the calls of devotion and commerce; in the free
concourse of multitudes, a simple citizen, in his native tongue, might
study the political state and character of the tribes, the theory and
practice of the Jews and Christians. Some useful strangers might be
tempted, or forced, to implore the rights of hospitality; and the
enemies of Mahomet have named the Jew, the Persian, and the Syrian monk
whom they accuse of lending their secret aid to the composition of the
Koran. Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the
school of genius; and the uniformity of a work denotes the hand of a
single artist. From his earliest youth Mahomet was addicted to religious
contemplation; each year, during the month of Ramadan, he withdrew from
the world and from the arms of Cadijah; in the cave of Hera, three miles
from Mecca, he consulted the spirit of fraud or enthusiasm, whose abode
is not in the heavens, but in the mind of the prophet. The faith which,
under the name of _Islam_, he preached to his family and nation, is
compounded of an eternal truth and a necessary fiction, that _there is
only one God, and that Mahomet is the apostle of God_.
It may, perhaps, be expected that I should balance his faults and
virtues, that I should decide whether the title of enthusiast or
impostor more properly belongs to that extraordinary man. Had I been
intimately conversant with the son of Abdallah, the task would still be
difficult, and the success uncertain; at the distance of twelve
centuries, I darkly contemplate his shade through a cloud of religious
incense; and could I truly delineate the portrait of an hour, the
fleeting resemblance would not equally apply to the solitary of Mount
Hera, to the preacher of Mecca, and to the conqueror of Arabia. The
author of a mighty revolution appears to have been endowed with a pious
and contemplative disposition; so soon as marriage had raised him above
the pressure of want, he avoided the paths of ambition and avarice; and
till the age of forty he lived with innocence, and would have died
without a name. The unity of God is an idea most congenial to nature and
reason; and a slight conversation with the Jews and Christians would
teach him to despise and detest the idolatry of Mecca. It was the duty
of a man and a citizen to impart the doctrine of salvation, to rescue
his country from the dominion of sin and error. The energy of a mind
incessantly bent on the same object would convert a general obligation
into a particular call; the warm suggestions of the understanding or the
fancy would be felt as the inspirations of heaven; the labor of thought
would expire in rapture and vision; and the inward sensation, the
invisible monitor, would be described with the form and attributes of an
angel of God.
From enthusiasm to imposture the step is perilous and slippery; the
demon of Socrates affords a memorable instance how a wise man may
deceive himself, how a good man may deceive others, how the conscience
may slumber in a mixed and middle state between self-illusion and
voluntary fraud. Charity may believe that the original motives of
Mahomet were those of pure and genuine benevolence; but a human
missionary is incapable of cherishing the obstinate unbelievers who
reject his claims, despise his arguments, and persecute his life; he
might forgive his personal adversaries, he may lawfully hate the enemies
of God; the stern passions of pride and revenge were kindled in the
bosom of Mahomet, and he sighed, like the prophet of Nineveh, for the
destruction of the rebels whom he had condemned. The injustice of Mecca
and the choice of Medina transformed the citizen into a prince, the
humble preacher into the leader of armies; but his sword was consecrated
by the example of the saints, and the same God who afflicts a sinful
world with pestilence and earthquakes might inspire for their conversion
or chastisement the valor of his servants. In the exercise of political
government he was compelled to abate of the stern rigor of fanaticism,
to comply in some measure with the prejudices and passions of his
followers, and to employ even the vices of mankind as the instruments of
their salvation. The use of fraud and perfidy, of cruelty and injustice,
were often subservient to the propagation of the faith; and Mahomet
commanded or approved the assassination of the Jews and idolaters who
had escaped from the field of battle. By the repetition of such acts the
character of Mahomet must have been gradually stained, and the influence
of such pernicious habits would be poorly compensated by the practice of
the personal and social virtues which are necessary to maintain the
reputation of a prophet among his secretaries and friends.
Of his last years ambition was the ruling passion; and a politician will
suspect that he secretly smiled (the victorious impostor!) at the
enthusiasm of his youth and the credulity of his proselytes. A
philosopher will observe that _their_ cruelty and _his_ success would
tend more strongly to fortify the assurance of his divine mission, that
his interest and religion were inseparably connected, and that his
conscience would be soothed by the persuasion that he alone was absolved
by the Deity from the obligation of positive and moral laws. If he
retained any vestige of his native innocence, the sins of Mahomet may be
allowed as an evidence of his sincerity. In the support of truth the
arts of fraud and fiction may be deemed less criminal, and he would have
started at the foulness of the means had he not been satisfied of the
importance and justice of the end. Even in a conqueror or a priest, I
can surprise a word or action of unaffected humanity; and the decree of
Mahomet that, in the sale of captives, the mothers should never be
separated from their children, may suspend or moderate the censure of
the historian.
The good sense of Mahomet despised the pomp of royalty; the apostle of
God submitted to the menial offices of the family; he kindled the fire,
swept the floor, milked the ewes, and mended with his own hands his
shoes and his woolen garment. Disdaining the penance and merit of a
hermit, he observed, without effort or vanity, the abstemious diet of an
Arab and a soldier. On solemn occasions he feasted his companions with
rustic and hospitable plenty; but in his domestic life, many weeks would
elapse without a fire being kindled on the hearth of the prophet. The
interdiction of wine was confirmed by his example; his hunger was
appeased with a sparing allowance of barley bread; he delighted in the
taste of milk and honey, but his ordinary food consisted of dates and
water. Perfumes and women were the two sensual enjoyments which his
nature required and his religion did not forbid. Their incontinence was
regulated by the civil and religious laws of the Koran; their incestuous
alliances were blamed, the boundless license of polygamy was reduced to
four legitimate wives or concubines; their rights, both of bed and of
dowry, were equitably determined; the freedom of divorce was
discouraged, adultery was condemned as a capital offense, and
fornication in either sex was punished with a hundred stripes. Such were
the calm and rational precepts of the legislator; but in his private
conduct Mahomet indulged the appetites of a man, and abused the claims
of a prophet. The youth, the beauty, the spirit of Ayesha, gave her a
superior ascendant; she was beloved and trusted by the prophet, and
after his death the daughter of Abubeker was long revered as the mother
of the faithful. During the twenty-four years of the marriage of Mahomet
with Cadijah, her youthful husband abstained from the right of
polygamy, and the pride or tenderness of the venerable matron was never
insulted by the society of a rival. After her death he placed her in the
rank of the four perfect women--with the sister of Moses, the mother of
Jesus, and Fatima, the best beloved of his daughters. “Was she not old?”
said Ayesha, with the insolence of a blooming beauty; “has not God given
you a better in her place?” “No, by God,” said Mahomet, with an effusion
of honest gratitude, “there never can be a better! she believed in me
when men despised me; she relieved my wants when I was poor and
persecuted by the world.”
CHARLEMAGNE.
BY SIR JAMES STEPHEN.
[Otherwise known as Charles I, or Charles the Great, Emperor of the
West and King of France, born 742 A.D., died 814. Grandson of
Charles Martel and son of Pepin, who, under the titular rank of
Mayor of the Palace and Duke of Austrasia, had exercised the
substantial functions of French sovereignty during the closing days
of the Merovingian kings. Charlemagne was the true founder of the
Carlovingian dynasty, and was by conquest the ruler over much of
what is now Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Italy.
He is one of the colossal figures in early European history. But
even his genius, though gifted with the finest traits of the
soldier, administrator, and law-maker, could not delay that
tremendous revolution of society, which intervened between the
collapse of the old Roman system and the establishment of
feudalism. The most important events of his reign were the
subjugation and conversion of the Saxons and the re-establishment
of the Western Empire.]
The political maxims which Charlemagne acquired by tradition and
inheritance had, to a certain extent, become obsolete when he himself
succeeded to the power of his ancestors and to the crown of his father,
Pepin. It was then no longer necessary to practice those hereditary arts
with a
[Illustration: CHARLEMAGNE.]
view to the great prize to which they had so long been subservient. But
the maxims by which the Carlovingian scepter had been won were not less
necessary in order to defend and to retain it. They afford the key to
more than half the history of the great conqueror from whom that dynasty
derives its name. The cardinal points to which throughout his long and
glorious reign his mind was directed with an inflexible tenacity of
purpose, were precisely those toward which his forefathers had bent
their attention. They were to conciliate the attachment of his German
subjects by studiously maintaining their old German institutions; to
anticipate instead of awaiting the invasions of the barbarous nations by
whom he was surrounded; to court the alliance and support of all other
secular potentates of the East and West; and to strengthen his own power
by the most intimate relations with the Church.
I have, however, already observed that Charlemagne had other rules or
habits of conduct which were the indigenous growth of his own mind. It
was only in a mind of surpassing depth and fertility that such maxims
could have been nurtured and made to yield their appropriate fruits;
for, first, he firmly believed that the power of his house could have no
secure basis except in the religious, moral, intellectual, and social
improvement of his subjects; and, secondly, he was no less firmly
persuaded that in order to effect that improvement it was necessary to
consolidate all temporal authority in Europe by the reconstruction of
the Cæsarian empire--that empire beneath the shelter of which religion,
law, and learning had so long and so widely flourished throughout the
dominions of imperial Rome.
Gibbon has remarked, that of all the heroes to whom the title of “the
Great” had 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--delights of which none are susceptible in the highest degree but
those whose more serious pursuits are sustained by the highest motives
and directed toward the highest ends; for the charms of social
intercourse, the play of 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. He was still a
stranger to every form of bodily disease when he entered his seventieth
year; and although he was thenceforward constrained to pay the usual
tribute to sickness and to pain, he maintained to the last a contempt
for the whole _materia medica_, and for the dispensers of it, which
Molière himself, in his gayest mood, might have envied. In defiance of
the gout, he still followed the chase, and still provoked his comrades
to emulate his feats in swimming, as though the iron frame which had
endured nearly threescore campaigns had been incapable of lassitude and
exempt from decay.
In the monastery of St. Gall, near the Lake of Constance, there was
living in the ninth century a monk who relieved the tedium of his
monotonous life and got the better, as he tells us, of much
constitutional laziness by collecting anecdotes of the mighty monarch,
with whose departed glories the world was at that time ringing. In this
amusing legend Charlemagne, the conqueror, the legislator, the patron of
learning, and the restorer of the empire, makes way for Charlemagne, the
joyous companion, amusing himself with the comedy or rather with the
farce of life, and contributing to it not a few practical jokes, which
stand in most whimsical contrast with the imperial dignity of the
jester. Thus, when he commands a whole levy of his blandest courtiers,
plumed and furred and silken as they stood, to follow him in the chase
through sleet and tempest, mud and brambles; or constrains an unhappy
chorister, who had forgotten his responses, to imitate the other members
of the choir by a long series of mute grimaces; or concerts with a Jew
peddler a scheme for palming off, at an enormous price, on an Episcopal
virtuoso, an embalmed rat, as an animal till then unknown to any
naturalist--these, and many similar facetiæ, which in any other hands
might have seemed mere childish frivolities, reveal to us, in the
illustrious author of them, that native alacrity of spirit and
child-like glee, which neither age nor cares nor toil could subdue, and
which not even the oppressive pomps of royalty were able to suffocate.
Nor was the heart which bounded thus lightly after whim or merriment
less apt to yearn with tenderness over the interior circle of his home.
While yet a child, he had been borne on men’s shoulders, in a buckler
for his cradle, to accompany his father in his wars; and in later life,
he had many a strange tale to tell of his father’s achievements. With
his mother, Bertha, the long-footed, he lived in affectionate and
reverend intimacy, which never knew a pause except on one occasion,
which may perhaps apologize for some breach even of filial reverence,
for Bertha had insisted on giving him a wife against his own consent.
His own parental affections were indulged too fondly and too long, and
were fatal both to the immediate objects of them and to his own
tranquillity. But with Eginhard and Alcuin and the other associates of
his severer labors, he maintained that grave and enduring friendship,
which can be created only on the basis of the most profound esteem, and
which can be developed only by that free interchange of thought and
feeling which implies the temporary forgetfulness of all the
conventional distinctions of rank and dignity.
It was a retributive justice which left Gibbon to deform, with such
revolting obscenities, the pages in which he waged his disingenuous
warfare against the one great purifying influence of human society. It
may also have been retributive justice which has left the glory of
Charlemagne to be overshadowed by the foul and unmerited reproach on
which Gibbon dwells with such offensive levity; for the monarch was
habitually regardless of that law, at once so strict and so benignant,
which has rendered chastity the very bond of domestic love and happiness
and peace. In bursting through the restraints of virtue, Charlemagne was
probably the willing victim of a transparent sophistry. From a nature so
singularly constituted as his, sweet waters or bitter might flow with
equal promptitude. That peculiarity of temperament in which his virtues
and his vices found their common root probably confounded the
distinctions of good and evil in his self-judgments, and induced him to
think lightly of the excesses of a disposition so often conducting him
to the most noble and magnanimous enterprises; for such was the revelry
of his animal life, so inexhaustible his nervous energies, so intense
the vibrations of each successive impulse along the chords of his
sensitive nature, so insatiable his thirst for activity, and so
uncontrollable his impatience of repose, that, 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 those 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.
But though many generals have eclipsed the fame of Charlemagne as a
strategist, no one ever rivaled his inflexible perseverance as a
conqueror. The Carlovingian crown may indeed be said to have been worn
on the tenure of continual conquests. It was on that condition alone
that the family of Pepin of Heristal could vindicate the deposition of
the Merovings and the pre-eminence of the Austrasian people; and each
member of that family, in his turn, gave an example of obedience to that
law, or tradition, of their house. But by none of them was it so well
observed as by Charlemagne himself. From his first expedition to his
last there intervened forty-six years, no one of which he passed in
perfect peace, nor without some military triumph. In six months he
reduced into obedience the great province or kingdom of Aquitaine. In
less than two years he drove the Lombard king into a monastic exile,
placing on his own brows the iron crown, and with it the sovereignty
over nearly all the Italian peninsula. During thirty-three successive
summers he invaded the great Saxon confederacy, until the deluge of
barbarism with which they threaten southern Europe was effectually and
forever repressed.
It has been alleged, indeed, that the Saxon wars were waged in the
spirit of fanaticism, and that the vicar of Christ placed the sword of
Mohammed in the hands of the sovereign of the Franks. It is, I think, an
unfounded charge, though sanctioned by Gibbon and by Warburton, and by
names of perhaps even greater authority than theirs. That the
alternative, “believe or die,” was sometimes proposed by Charlemagne to
the Saxons, I shall not, indeed, dispute. But it is not less true that,
before these terms were tendered to them, they had again and again
rejected his less formidable proposal, “be quiet and live.” In form and
in terms, indeed, their election lay between the Gospel and the sword.
In substance and in reality, they had to make their choice between
submission and destruction. A long and deplorable experience had already
shown that the Frankish people had neither peace nor security to expect
for a single year, so long as their Saxon neighbors retained their
heathen rites and the ferocious barbarism inseparable from them. Fearful
as may be the dilemma, “submit or perish,” it is that to which every
nation, even in our own
[Illustration: ALFRED THE GREAT.]
times, endeavors to reduce a host of invading and desolating foes; nor,
if we ourselves were now exposed to similar inroads, should we offer to
our assailants conditions more gentle or less peremptory.
ALFRED THE GREAT, OF ENGLAND.
BY DAVID HUME.
[Hereditary King of the West Saxons, and Over-king of all England,
born in 849 A.D., died 901. Alfred was the true founder of the
English monarchy, and one of the greatest monarchs in English
history. In his reign the English became essentially one people,
and the Danish invaders then settled in England were incorporated
with the Saxons. Alfred was not only a great soldier and statesman,
but was distinguished for intellectual greatness in the pursuit of
arts and letters. Under his patronage the Saxon court became the
source of civilizing influences that extended over all Northern and
Western Europe.]
The merit of this prince both in private and public life may with
advantage be set in opposition to that of any monarch or citizen which
the annals of any age or nation can present to us. He seems, indeed, to
be the model of that perfect character which, under the denomination of
sage or wise man, philosophers have been fond of delineating rather as a
fiction of their own imagination than in hopes of seeing it existing, so
happily were all his virtues tempered together, so justly were they
blended, and so powerfully did each prevent the other from exceeding its
proper boundaries. He knew how to reconcile the most enterprising spirit
with the coolest moderation, the most obstinate perseverance with the
easiest flexibility; the most severe justice with the gentlest lenity;
the greatest vigor in commanding with the most perfect affability of
deportment; the highest capacity and inclination for science with the
most shining talents for action. His civil and his military virtues are
almost equally the objects of our admiration, excepting only that the
former being more rare among princes as well as more useful seem chiefly
to challenge our applause.
Nature, also, as if desirous that so bright a production of her skill
should be set in the fairest light, had bestowed on him every bodily
accomplishment--vigor of limbs, dignity of air and shape, with a
pleasant, engaging, and open countenance. Fortune alone by throwing him
into that barbarous age deprived him of historians worthy to transmit
his fame to posterity; and we wish to see him delineated in more lively
colors, and with more peculiar strokes, that we may at least perceive
some of those specks and blemishes from which as a man it is impossible
he could be entirely exempted.
The better to guide the magistrates in the administration of justice,
Alfred framed a body of laws, which, though now lost, served long as the
basis of English jurisprudence, and is generally deemed the origin of
what is denominated the Common Law. The similarity of these institutions
to the customs of the ancient Germans, to the practice of the other
Northern conquerors, and to the Saxon laws during the heptarchy,
prevents us from regarding Alfred as the sole author of this plan of
government, and leads us rather to think that, like a wise man, he
contented himself with reforming, extending, and executing the
institutions which he found previously established.
But on the whole such success attended his legislation that everything
bore suddenly a new face in England. Robberies and iniquities of all
kinds were repressed by the punishment or reformation of criminals; and
so exact was the general police that Alfred, it is said, hung up by way
of bravado golden bracelets near the highways, and no man dared touch
them. Yet, amid these rigors of justice, this great prince preserved the
most sacred regard to the liberties of the people; and it is a memorable
sentiment preserved in his will that it was just the English should
ever remain as free as their own thoughts.
As good morals and knowledge are almost inseparable in every age, though
not in every individual, the care of Alfred for the encouragement of
learning among his subjects was another useful branch of his
legislation, and tended to reclaim the English from their former
dissolute and ferocious manners. But the king was guided in this pursuit
less by political views than by his natural bent and propensity toward
letters.
When he came to the throne he found the nation sunk into the grossest
ignorance and barbarism, proceeding from the continued disorders in the
government and from the ravages of the Danes. The monasteries were
destroyed, the monks butchered or dispersed, their libraries burned, and
thus the only seats of erudition in those ages were totally subverted.
Alfred himself complains that on his accession he knew not one person
south of the Thames who could so much as interpret the Latin service,
and very few in the northern parts who had reached even that pitch of
erudition. But this prince invited over the most celebrated scholars
from all parts of Europe; he established schools everywhere for the
instruction of his people; he founded--at least repaired--the University
of Oxford, and endowed it with many privileges, revenues, and
immunities. He gave preferment both in Church and state to such only as
made some proficiency in knowledge.
But the most effectual expedient adopted by Alfred for the encouragement
of learning was his own example, and the constant assiduity with which,
notwithstanding the multiplicity and urgency of his affairs, he employed
himself in the pursuit of knowledge. He usually divided his time into
three equal portions--one was employed in sleep, and the refection of
his body by diet and exercise; another, in the dispatch of business; a
third, in study and devotion. And that he might more exactly measure the
hours, he made use of burning tapers of equal length, which he fixed in
lanterns--an expedient suited to that rude age, when the geometry of
dialing and the mechanism of clocks and watches were entirely unknown.
And by such a regular distribution of his time, though he often labored
under great bodily infirmities, this martial hero who fought in person
fifty-six battles by sea and land, was able, during a life of no
extraordinary length, to acquire more knowledge, and even to compose
more books, than most studious men, though blessed with greatest leisure
and application, have in more fortunate ages made the object of their
uninterrupted industry. And he deemed it no wise derogatory from his
other great characters of sovereign, legislator, warrior, and politician
thus to lead the way to his people in the pursuit of literature.
He invited from all quarters industrious foreigners to repeople his
country, which had been desolated by the ravages of the Danes. He
introduced and encouraged manufactures of all kinds, and no inventor or
improver of any ingenious art did he suffer to go unrewarded. He
prompted men of activity to betake themselves to navigation, to push
commerce into the most remote countries, and to acquire riches by
propagating industry among their fellow-citizens. He set apart a seventh
portion of his own revenue for maintaining a number of workmen, whom he
constantly employed in rebuilding the ruined cities, castles, palaces,
and monasteries. Even the elegancies of life were brought to him from
the Mediterranean and the Indies; and his subjects, by seeing those
productions of the peaceful arts, were taught to respect the virtues of
justice and industry, from which alone they could rise. Both living and
dead Alfred was regarded by foreigners, no less than by his own
subjects, as the greatest prince after Charlemagne that appeared in
Europe during several ages, and as one of the wisest and best that had
ever adorned the annals of any nation.
OLAF TRYGGVESON, KING OF NORWAY.
BY THOMAS CARLYLE.
[Earliest of the Norwegian kings who succeeded in implanting
Christianity in the soil of Norse paganism. Exact date of birth
unknown; died 1000 A.D. Son of Tryggve, a former under-king, or
jarl, of Norway, slain by Hakon Jarl, who had usurped the supreme
power about 975. Olaf spent his early years as a sea-rover, and
became the most celebrated viking of his age. He conquered and slew
Hakon in 995, and became king. During his reign of five years he
revolutionized his kingdom. He lost his life in a great sea-battle
with the combined fleets of Denmark and Norway. The facts of his
career are mostly drawn from the saga of Snorro Sturleson.]
Tryggveson made a stout and, in effect, victorious and glorious struggle
for himself as king. Daily and hourly vigilant to do so, often enough by
soft and even merry methods--for he was a witty, jocund man, and had a
fine ringing laugh in him, and clear, pregnant words ever ready--or, if
soft methods would not serve, then by hard and even hardest he put down
a great deal of miscellaneous anarchy in Norway, was especially busy
against heathenism (devil-worship and its rites); this, indeed, may be
called the focus and heart of all his royal endeavor in Norway, and of
all the troubles he now had with his people there. For this was a
serious, vital, all-comprehending matter; devil-worship, a thing not to
be tolerated one moment longer than you could by any method help! Olaf’s
success was intermittent, of varying complexion, but his effort, swift
or slow, was strong and continual, and, on the whole, he did succeed.
Take a sample of that wonderful conversion process:
Once, in beginning a parliamentary address, so soon as he came to touch
upon Christianity the Bonders rose in murmurs, in vociferations and
jingling of arms, which quite drowned the royal voice; declared they
had taken arms against King Hakon the Good to compel him to desist from
his Christian proposals, and they did not think King Olaf a higher man
than him (Hakon the Good). The king then said, “He purposed coming to
them next Yule to their great sacrificial feast to see for himself what
their customs were,” which pacified the Bonders for this time. The
appointed place of meeting was again a Hakon-Jarl Temple, not yet done
to ruin, chief shrine in those Trondhjem parts, I believe; there should
Tryggveson appear at Yule. Well, but before Yule came, Tryggveson made a
great banquet in his palace at Trondhjem, and invited far and wide all
manner of important persons out of the district as guests there. Banquet
hardly done, Tryggveson gave some slight signal, upon which armed men
strode in, seized eleven of these principal persons, and the king said:
“Since he himself was to become a heathen again and do sacrifice, it was
his purpose to do it in the highest form, namely, that of human
sacrifice, and this time not of slaves and malefactors, but of the best
men in the country!” In which stringent circumstances the eleven seized
persons and company at large gave unanimous consent to baptism,
straightway received the same, and abjured their idols, but were not
permitted to go home till they had left, in sons, brothers, and other
precious relatives, sufficient hostages in the king’s hands.
By unwearied industry of this and better kinds, Tryggveson had trampled
down idolatry so far as form went--how far in substance may be greatly
doubted. But it is to be remembered withal that always on the back of
these compulsory adventures there followed English bishops, priests, and
preachers, whereby to the open-minded conviction, to all degrees of it,
was attainable, while silence and passivity became the duty or necessity
of the unconvinced party. In about two years Norway was all gone over
with a rough harrow of conversion. Heathenism, at least, constrained to
be silent and outwardly conformable.
Olaf Tryggveson, though his kingdom was the smallest of the Norse three,
had risen to a renown over all the Norse world, which neither he of
Denmark nor he of Sweden could pretend to rival. A magnificent,
far-shining man, more expert in all “bodily exercises,” as the Norse
called them, than any man had ever been before him or after was. Could
keep five daggers in the air, always catching the proper fifth by its
handle, and sending it aloft again; could shoot supremely, throw a
javelin with either hand; and, in fact, in battle usually threw two
together. These, with swimming, climbing, leaping, were the then
admirable fine arts of the North, in all which Tryggveson appears to
have been the Raphael and the Michael Angelo at once. Essentially
definable, too, if we look well into him, as a wild bit of real heroism
in such rude guise and environment--a high, true, and great human soul.
A jovial burst of laughter in him withal; a bright, airy, wise way of
speech; dressed beautifully and with care; a man admired and loved
exceedingly by those he liked; dreaded as death by those he did not
like. “Hardly any king,” says Snorro, “was ever so well obeyed; by one
class out of zeal and love, by the rest out of dread.” His glorious
course, however, was not to last long.
Tryggveson had already ships and navies that were the wonder of the
North. Especially in building war-ships--the Crane, the Serpent, last of
all, the Long Serpent--he had, for size, for outward beauty, and inward
perfection of equipment, transcended all example.
A new sea expedition undertaken by Olaf became an object of attention to
all neighbors; especially Queen Sigrid the Proud and Svein
Double-Beard,[20] her now king, were attentive to it.
“This insolent Tryggveson,” Queen Sigrid would often say, and had long
been saying, to her Svein, “to marry thy sister without leave had or
asked of thee; and now flaunting forth his war navies as if he, king
only of paltry Norway, were the big hero of the North! Why do you suffer
it, you kings really great?”
By such persuasions and reiterations King Svein of Denmark, King Olaf of
Sweden, and Jarl Eric, now a great man there, grown rich by prosperous
sea-robbery and other good management, were brought to take the matter
up, and combine strenuously for destruction of King Olaf Tryggveson on
this grand Wendland expedition of his.
King Olaf Tryggveson, unacquainted with all this, sailed away in summer
with his splendid fleet, went through the belts with prosperous winds,
under bright skies, to the admiration of both shores. Such a fleet, with
its shining Serpents, long and short, and perfection of equipment and
appearance, the Baltic never saw before.
Olaf’s chief captains, seeing the enemy’s fleet come out and how the
matter lay, strongly advised King Olaf to elude this stroke of
treachery, and with all sail hold on his course, fight being now on so
unequal terms. Snorro says the king, high on the quarter-deck where he
stood, replied: “Strike the sails! never shall men of mine think of
flight. I never fled from battle. Let God dispose of my life; but flight
I will never take!” And so the battle arrangements immediately began,
and the battle with all fury went loose, and lasted hour after hour till
almost sunset, if I well recollect. “Olaf stood on the Serpent’s
quarter-deck,” says Snorro, “high over the others. He had a gilt shield
and a helmet inlaid with gold; over his armor he had a short red coat,
and was easily distinguished from other men.”
The Danish fleet, the Swedish fleet, were both of them quickly dealt
with, and successively withdrew out of shotrange. And then Jarl Eric
came up and fiercely grappled with the Long Serpent, or rather with her
surrounding comrades, and gradually, as they were beaten empty of men,
with the Long Serpent herself. The fight grew ever fiercer, more
furious. Eric was supplied with new men from the Swedes and Danes; Olaf
had no such resource, except from the crews of his own beaten ships; and
at length this also failed him, all his ships, except the Long Serpent,
being beaten and emptied. Olaf fought on unyielding. Eric twice boarded
him, was twice repulsed. Olaf kept his quarter-deck, unconquerable,
though left now more and more hopeless, fatally short of help. A tall
young man, called Einar Tamberskelver, very celebrated and important
afterward in Norway, and already the best archer known, kept busy with
his bow. Twice he nearly shot Jarl Eric in his ship. “Shoot me that
man!” said Jarl Eric to a bowman near him; and, just as Tamberskelver
was drawing his bow the third time, an arrow hit it in the middle and
broke it in two. “What is this that has broken?” asked King Olaf.
“Norway from thy hand, king,” answered Tamberskelver. Tryggveson’s men,
he observed with surprise, were striking violently on Eric’s, but to no
purpose; nobody fell. “How is this?” asked Tryggveson. “Our swords are
notched and blunted, king; they do not cut.” Olaf stepped down to his
arm-chest, delivered out new swords, and it was observed, as he did it,
blood ran trickling from his wrist, but none knew where the wound was.
Eric boarded a third time. Olaf, left with hardly more than one man,
sprang overboard (one sees that red coat of his still glancing in the
evening sun), and sank in the deep waters to his long rest.
Rumor ran among his people that he still was not dead; grounding on some
movement by the ships of that traitorous Sigwald, they fancied Olaf had
dived beneath the keels of his enemies, and got away with Sigwald, as
Sigwald himself evidently did. “Much was hoped, supposed, spoken,” says
one old mourning Skald; “but the truth was, Olaf Tryggveson was never
seen in Norseland more.” Strangely he remains still a shining figure to
us--the wildly beautifulest man in body and in soul that one has ever
heard of in the North.
CNUT OR CANUTE OF ENGLAND, ALSO KING OF DENMARK.
BY JOHN RICHARD GREEN.
[Date of birth uncertain, died 1035 or 1036. He succeeded to the
command of the Danish invaders of England on the death of his
father Svein, and on the death of Eadmund Ironsides, the Saxon
king, he became the acknowledged King of England in 1017. His
exercise of power was marked by great qualities of justice,
ability, and devotion to the interests of his acquired kingdom; and
his name has been transmitted in history as a worthy successor of
the Great Alfred.]
The first of our foreign masters was the Dane. The countries of
Scandinavia which had so long been the mere starting points of the
pirate bands who had ravaged England and Ireland had now settled down
into comparative order. It was the aim of Svein to unite them in a great
Scandinavian Empire, of which England should be the head; and this
project, interrupted for a time by his death, was resumed with yet
greater vigor by his son Cnut. Fear of the Dane was still great in the
land, and Cnut had no sooner appeared off the English coast than Wessex,
Mercia, and Northumberland joined in owning him for their lord, and in
discarding again the rule of Æthelred, who had returned on the death of
Svein. When Æthelred’s death in 1016 raised his son Eadmund Ironside to
the throne, the loyalty of London enabled him to struggle bravely for a
few months against the Danes; but a decisive victory at Assandun and the
death of his rival left Cnut master of the realm. Conqueror as he was,
the Dane was no foreigner in the sense that the Norman was a foreigner
after him. His language differed little from the English tongue. He
brought in no new system of tenure or government. Cnut ruled, in fact,
not as a foreign conqueror but as a native king. The good-will and
tranquillity of England were necessary for the success of his larger
schemes in the north, where the arms of his English subjects aided him
in later years in uniting Denmark and Norway beneath his sway.
Dismissing, therefore, his Danish “host,” and retaining only a trained
body of household troops or hus-carls to serve in sudden emergencies,
Cnut boldly relied for support within his realm on the justice and good
government he secured it. His aim during twenty years seems to have been
to obliterate from men’s minds the foreign character of his rule, and
the bloodshed in which it had begun. The change in himself was as
startling as the change in his policy. When he first appears in England,
it is as the mere northman, passionate, revengeful, uniting the guile of
the savage with his thirst for blood. His first acts of government were
a series of murders. Eadric of Mercia, whose aid had given him the
crown, was felled by an axe-blow at the king’s signal; a murder removed
Eadwig, the brother of Eadmund Ironside, while the children of Eadmund
were hunted even into Hungary by his ruthless hate. But from a savage
such as this Cnut rose suddenly into a wise and temperate king. Stranger
as he was, he fell back on “Eadgar’s law,” on the old constitution of
the realm, and owned no difference between conqueror and conquered,
between Dane and Englishman. By the creation of four earldoms--those of
Mercia, Northumberland, Wessex, and East Anglia--he recognized
provincial independence, but he drew closer than of old the ties which
bound the rulers of these great dependencies to the Crown. He even
identified himself with the patriotism which had withstood the stranger.
The Church had been the center of national resistance to the Dane, but
Cnut sought above all its friendship. He paid homage to the cause for
which Ælfheah had died, by his translation of the archbishop’s body to
Canterbury. He atoned for his father’s ravages by costly gifts to the
religious houses. He protected English pilgrims against the robber-lords
of the Alps. His love for monks broke out in the song which he composed
as he listened to their chant at Ely: “Merrily sang the monks in Ely
when Cnut King rowed by” across the vast fen-waters that surrounded
their abbey. “Row, boatmen, near the land, and hear we these monks
sing.”
Cnut’s letter from Rome to his English subjects marks the grandeur of
his character and the noble conception he had formed of kingship. “I
have vowed to God to lead a right life in all things,” wrote the king,
“to rule justly and piously my realms and subjects, and to administer
just judgment to all. If heretofore I have done aught beyond what was
just, through headiness or negligence of youth, I am ready with God’s
help to amend it utterly.” No royal officer, either for fear of the king
or for favor of any, is to consent to injustice, none is to do wrong to
rich or poor “as they would value my friendship and their own
well-being.” He especially denounces unfair exactions: “I have no need
that money be heaped together for me by unjust demands.” “I have sent
this letter before me,” Cnut ends, “that all the people of my realm may
rejoice in my well-doing; for, as you yourselves know, never have I
spared nor will I spare to spend myself and my toil in what is needful
and good for my people.”
Cnut’s greatest gift to his people was that of peace. With him began the
long internal tranquillity which was from this time to be the special
note of our national history. During two hundred years, with the one
terrible interval of the Norman Conquest, and the disturbance under
Stephen, England alone among the kingdoms of Europe enjoyed unbroken
repose. The wars of her kings lay far from her shores, in France or
Normandy, or, as with Cnut, in the more distant lands of the north. The
stern justice of their government secured order within. The absence of
internal discontent under Cnut--perhaps, too, the exhaustion of the
kingdom after the terrible Danish inroads--is proved by its quiet during
his periods of absence. Everything witnesses to the growing wealth and
prosperity of the country. A great part of English soil was, indeed,
still utterly uncultivated.
Wide reaches of land were covered with wood, thicket and scrub, or
consisted of heaths and moor. In both the east and the west there were
vast tracts of marsh land; fens nearly one hundred miles long severed
East Anglia from the midland counties; sites like that of Glastonbury or
Athelney were almost inaccessible. The beaver still haunted marshy
hollows such as those which lay about Beverley, the London craftsmen
chased the wild boar and the wild ox in the woods of Hampstead, while
wolves prowled round the homesteads of the north. But peace, and the
industry it encouraged, were telling on this waste; stag and wolf were
retreating before the face of man, the farmer’s axe was ringing in the
forest, and villages were springing up in the clearings. The growth of
commerce was seen in the rich trading-ports of the eastern coast. The
main trade lay probably in skins and ropes and ship-masts; and, above
all, in the iron and steel that the Scandinavian lands so long supplied
to Britain. But Dane and Norwegian were traders over a yet wider field
than the northern seas; their barks entered the Mediterranean, while the
overland route through Russia brought the wares of Constantinople and
the East. “What do you bring to us?” the merchant is asked in an old
English dialogue. “I bring skins, silks, costly gems, and gold,” he
answers, “besides various garments, pigment, wine, oil, and ivory, with
brass and copper and tin, silver and gold, and such like.” Men from the
Rhineland and from Normandy, too, moored their vessels along the Thames,
on whose rude wharves were piled a strange medley of goods--pepper and
spices from the far East, crates of gloves and gray cloths (it may be
from the Lombard looms), sacks of wool, iron-work from Liége, butts of
French wine and vinegar, and with them the rural products of the country
itself--cheese, butter, lard, and eggs, with live swine and fowls.
Cnut’s one aim was to win the love of his people, and all tradition
shows how wonderful was his success. But the greatness of his rule hung
solely on the greatness of his temper, and at his death the empire he
had built up at once fell to pieces.
WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.
BY JOHN RICHARD GREEN.
[The illegitimate son of Robert, surnamed Le Diable, duke of
Normandy, and his father’s successor, born 1027; died, 1087.
Claiming right of inheritance under a pretended bequest of Edward
the Confessor, the Saxon king of England, he levied a great army of
adventurers from all Europe, and in the great battle of Senlac, or,
as it is sometimes known, Hastings, he defeated the Saxons and
their King Harold, who had been elected by the voice of the
_Wittenegamotte_, or Great Council of England, on October 14, 1066.
Harold was slain, and the Norman conqueror was crowned. William’s
transcendent abilities as a ruler, though stained by cruelty and
rapacity, made his reign the greatest epoch in early English
history.]
William the Great, as men of his own day styled him, William the
Conqueror, as by one event he stamped himself on our history, was now
Duke of Normandy. The full grandeur of his indomitable will, his large
and patient statesmanship, the loftiness of aim which lifts him out of
the petty incidents of his age, were as yet only partly disclosed. But
there never was a moment from his boyhood when he was not among the
greatest of men. His life was one long mastering of difficulty after
difficulty. The shame of his birth remained in his name of “the
Bastard.” His father, Duke Robert, had seen Arlotta, the daughter of a
tanner of the town, washing her linen in the little brook by
[Illustration: WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.]
Falaise, and, loving her, had made her the mother of his boy. Robert’s
departure on a pilgrimage from which he never returned left William a
child-ruler among the most turbulent baronage in Christendom, and
treason and anarchy surrounded him as he grew to manhood. Disorder broke
at last into open revolt. Surprised in his hunting-seat at Valognes by
the rising of the Bessin and Cotentin districts, in which the pirate
temper and lawlessness lingered longest, William had only time to dash
through the fords of Vire with the rebels on his track. A fierce combat
of horse on the slopes of Val-ès-dunes, to the southeastward of Caen,
left him master of the duchy, and the old Scandinavian Normandy yielded
forever to the new civilization which streamed in with French alliances
and the French tongue. William was himself a type of the transition. In
the young duke’s character the old world mingled strangely with the new,
the pirate jostled roughly with the statesman. William was the most
terrible, as he was the last outcome of the northern race.
The very spirit of the “sea-wolves” who had so long “lived on the
pillage of the world” seemed embodied in his gigantic form, his enormous
strength, his savage countenance, his desperate bravery, the fury of his
wrath, the ruthlessness of his revenge. “No knight under heaven,” his
enemies confessed, “was William’s peer.” Boy as he was, horse and man
went down before his lance at Val-ès-dunes. All the fierce gayety of his
nature broke out in the chivalrous adventures of his youth, in his rout
of fifteen Angevins with but five soldiers at his back, in his defiant
ride over the ground which Geoffry Martel claimed from him--a ride with
hawk on fist as though war and the chase were one. No man could bend his
bow. His mace crashed its way through a ring of English warriors to the
foot of the standard. He rose to his greatest heights in moments when
other men despaired. His voice rang out like a trumpet to rally his
soldiers as they fled before the English charge at Senlac. In his
winter march on Chester he strode afoot at the head of his fainting
troops, and helped with his own hands to clear a road through the
snowdrifts. With the northman’s daring broke out the northman’s
pitilessness. When the townsmen of Alençon hung raw hides along their
walls in scorn of the baseness of his birth, with cries of “Work for the
tanner!” William tore out his prisoners’ eyes, cut off their hands and
feet, and flung them into the town.
At the close of his greatest victory he refused Harold’s body a grave.
Hundreds of Hampshire men were driven from their homes to make him a
hunting-ground, and his harrying of Northumbria left the north of
England a desolate waste. There is a grim, ruthless ring about his very
jests. In his old age Philip of France mocked at the Conqueror’s
unwieldy bulk and at the sickness which confined him to his bed at
Rouen. “King William has as long a lying-in,” laughed his enemy, “as a
woman behind her curtains!” “When I get up,” swore William, “I will go
to mass in Philip’s land, and bring a rich offering for my churching. I
will offer a thousand candles for my fee. Flaming brands shall they be,
and steel shall glitter over the fire they make.” At harvest-tide town
and hamlet flaring into ashes along the French border fulfilled the
Conqueror’s vow. There is the same savage temper in the loneliness of
his life. He recked little of men’s love or hate. His grim look, his
pride, his silence, his wild outbursts of passion, spread terror through
his court. “So stark and fierce was he,” says the English chronicler,
“that none dared resist his will.” His graciousness to Anselm only
brought out into stronger relief the general harshness of his tone. His
very wrath was solitary. “To no man spake he, and no man dared speak to
him,” when the news reached him of Harold’s accession to the throne. It
was only when he passed from the palace to the loneliness of the woods
that the king’s temper unbent. “He loved the wild deer as though he had
been their father. Whosoever should slay hart or hind man should blind
him.” Death itself took its color from the savage solitude of his life.
Priests and nobles fled as the last breath left him, and the Conqueror’s
body lay naked and lonely on the floor.
It is not to his victory at Senlac, but to the struggle which followed
his return from Normandy, that William owes his title of the
“Conqueror.” The struggle which ended in the fens of Ely had wholly
changed William’s position. He no longer held the land merely as elected
king; he added to his elective right the right of conquest. The system
of government which he originated was, in fact, the result of the double
character of his power. It represented neither the purely feudal system
of the Continent nor the system of the older English royalty. More
truly, perhaps, it may be said to have represented both. As the
successor of Eadward, William retained the judicial and administrative
organization of the older English realm. As the conqueror of England he
introduced the military organization of feudalism so far as was
necessary for the secure possession of his conquests. The ground was
already prepared for such an organization; we have seen the beginnings
of English feudalism in the warriors, the “companions,” or “thegns,” who
were personally attached to the king’s war-band, and received estates
from the folk-land in reward for their personal services. In later times
this feudal distribution of estates had greatly increased, as the bulk
of the nobles followed the king’s example and bound their tenants to
themselves by a similar process of subinfeudation. On the other hand,
the pure freeholders, the class which formed the basis of the original
English society, had been gradually reduced in number, partly through
imitation of the class above them, but still more through the incessant
wars and invasions which drove them to seek protectors among the thegns
at the cost of their independence. Feudalism, in fact, was superseding
the older freedom in England even before the reign of William, as it had
already superseded it in Germany or France. But the tendency was
quickened and intensified by the Conquest; the desperate and universal
resistance of his English subjects forced William to hold by the sword
what the sword had won, and an army strong enough to crush at any moment
a national revolt was necessary for the preservation of his throne. Such
an army could only be maintained by a vast confiscation of the soil. The
failure of the English risings cleared the way for its establishment;
the greater part of the higher nobility fell in battle or fled into
exile, while the lower thegnhood either forfeited the whole of their
lands or redeemed a portion of them by the surrender of the rest.
The dependence of the Church on the royal power was strictly enforced.
Homage was exacted from bishop as from baron. No royal tenant could be
excommunicated without the king’s leave. No synod could legislate
without his previous assent and subsequent confirmation of its decrees.
No papal letters could be received within the realm save by his
permission. William firmly repudiated the claims which were now
beginning to be put forward by the court of Rome. When Gregory VII
called on him to do fealty for his realm, the king sternly refused to
admit the claim. “Fealty I have never willed to do, nor do I will to do
it now. I have never promised it, nor do I find that my predecessors did
it to yours.”
The Conquest was hardly over when the struggle between the baronage and
the crown began. The wisdom of William’s policy in the destruction of
the great earldoms which had overshadowed the throne was shown in an
attempt at their restoration made by Roger, the son of his minister,
William Fitz-Osbern, and by the Breton Ralf de Guader, whom the king had
rewarded for his services at Senlac with the earldom of Norfolk. The
rising was quickly suppressed, Roger thrown into prison, and Ralf driven
over sea; but the intrigues of the baronage soon found another leader in
William’s half-brother, the Bishop of Bayeux. Under pretense of aspiring
by arms to the papacy, Bishop Odo collected money and men; but the
treasure was at once seized by the royal officers, and the bishop
arrested in the midst of the court. Even at the king’s bidding no
officer would venture to seize on a prelate of the Church; it was with
his own hands that William was forced to effect his arrest. “I arrest
not the bishop, but the Earl of Kent,” laughed the Conqueror, and Odo
remained a prisoner till William’s death.
It was, in fact, this vigorous personality of William which proved the
chief safeguard of his throne. “Stark he was,” says the English
chronicler, “to men that withstood him. Earls that did aught against his
bidding he cast into bonds; bishops he stripped of their bishoprics,
abbots of their abbacies. He spared not his own brother; first he was in
the land, but the king cast him into bondage. If a man would live and
hold his lands, need it were that he should follow the king’s will.”
But, stern as his rule was, it gave peace to the land. Even amid the
sufferings which necessarily sprang from the circumstances of the
Conquest itself, from the erection of castles, or the inclosure of
forests, or the exactions which built up the great hoard at Winchester,
Englishmen were unable to forget “the good peace he made in the land, so
that a man might fare over his realm with a bosom full of gold.” Strange
touches of a humanity far in advance of his age contrasted with the
general temper of his government. One of the strongest traits in his
character was his aversion to shed blood by process of law; he formally
abolished the punishment of death, and only a single execution stains
the annals of his reign. An edict yet more honorable to him put an end
to the slave-trade which had till then been carried on at the port of
Bristol. The pitiless warrior, the stern and awful king was a tender and
faithful husband, an affectionate father. The lonely silence of his
bearing broke into gracious converse with pure and sacred souls like
Anselm. If William was “stark” to rebel and baron, men noted that he was
“mild to those that loved God.”
ROBERT GUISCARD.
BY EDWARD GIBBON.
[Born about 1015, died 1085. This Norman adventurer, the sixth son
of a small baron, became Duke of Apulia and Calabria in Italy by
conquest, and founded the Kingdom of Naples, which existed till
1860. Equally distinguished by personal prowess, generalship, and
diplomatic astuteness, he filled a large figure in the affairs of
his time, and was one of the stoutest bulwarks against Saracenic
aggression.]
The pedigree of Robert Guiscard is variously deduced from the peasants
and the dukes of Normandy--from the peasants, by the pride and ignorance
of a Grecian princess; from the dukes, by the ignorance and flattery of
the Italian subjects. His genuine descent may be ascribed to the second
or middle order of private nobility. He sprang from a race of
_valvassors_ or _bannerets_, of the diocese of Coutances, in the lower
Normandy; the castle of Hauteville was their honorable seat, his father
Tancred was conspicuous in the court and army of the duke, and his
military service was furnished by ten soldiers or knights. Two
marriages, of a rank not unworthy of his own, made him the father of
twelve sons, who were educated at home by the impartial tenderness of
his second wife. But a narrow patrimony was insufficient for this
numerous and daring progeny; they saw around the neighborhood the
mischiefs of poverty and discord, and resolved to seek in foreign wars a
more glorious inheritance. Two only remained to perpetuate the race and
cherish their father’s age; their ten brothers, as they successively
attained the vigor of manhood, departed from the castle, passed the
Alps, and joined the Apulian camp of the Normans.
The elder were prompted by native spirit; their success encouraged their
younger brethren, and the three first in seniority--William, Drogo, and
Humphrey--deserved to be the chiefs of their nation and the founders of
the new republic. Robert was the eldest of the seven sons of the second
marriage, and even the reluctant praise of his foes has endowed him with
the heroic qualities of a soldier and a statesman. His lofty stature
surpassed the tallest of his army; his limbs were cast in the true
proportion of strength and gracefulness, and to the decline of life he
maintained the patient vigor of health and the commanding dignity of his
form. His complexion was ruddy, his shoulders were broad, his hair and
beard were long and of a flaxen color, his eyes sparkled with fire, and
his voice, like that of Achilles, could impress obedience and terror
amid the tumult of battle. In the ruder ages of chivalry such
qualifications are not below the notice of the poet or historian. They
may observe that Robert at once, and with equal dexterity, could wield
in the right hand his sword, his lance in the left; that in the battle
of Civitella he was thrice unhorsed, and that in the close of that
memorable day he was adjudged to have borne away the prize of valor from
the warriors of the two armies. His boundless ambition was founded on
the consciousness of superior worth; in the pursuit of greatness he was
never arrested by the scruples of justice, and seldom moved by the
feelings of humanity. Though not insensible of fame, the choice of open
or clandestine means was determined only by his present advantage. The
surname of _Guiscard_[21] was applied to this master of political
wisdom, which is too often confounded with the practice of dissimulation
and deceit; and Robert is praised by the Apulian poet for excelling the
cunning of Ulysses and the eloquence of Cicero. Yet these arts were
disguised by an appearance of military frankness; in his highest fortune
he was accessible and courteous to his fellow-soldiers, and, while he
indulged the prejudices of his new subjects, he affected in his dress
and manners to maintain the ancient fashion of his country.
He grasped with a rapacious, that he might distribute with a liberal
hand; his primitive indigence had taught the habits of frugality; the
gain of a merchant was not below his attention, and his prisoners were
tortured with slow and unfeeling cruelty to force a discovery of their
secret treasure. According to the Greeks, he departed from Normandy with
only five followers on horseback and thirty on foot; yet even this
allowance appears too bountiful. The sixth son of Tancred of Hauteville
passed the Alps as a pilgrim, and his first military band was levied
among the adventurers of Italy. His brothers and countrymen had divided
the fertile lands of Apulia, but they guarded their shares with the
jealousy of avarice; the aspiring youth was driven forward to the
mountains of Calabria, and in his first exploits against the Greeks and
the natives it is not easy to discriminate the hero from the robber. To
surprise a castle or a convent, to ensnare a wealthy citizen, to plunder
the adjacent villages for necessary food, were the obscure labors which
formed and exercised the powers of his mind and body. The volunteers of
Normandy adhered to his standard; and, under his command, the peasants
of Calabria assumed the name and character of Normans.
As the genius of Robert expanded with his fortune, he awakened the
jealousy of his elder brother, by whom, in a transient quarrel, his life
was threatened and his liberty restrained. After the death of Humphrey
the tender age of his sons excluded them from the command; they were
reduced to a private estate by the ambition of their guardian and uncle,
and Guiscard was exalted on a buckler and saluted Count of Apulia and
general of the republic. With an increase of authority and of force he
resumed the conquest of Calabria, and soon aspired to a rank that should
raise him forever above the heads of his equals. By some acts of rapine
or sacrilege he had incurred a papal excommunication, but Nicholas II
was easily persuaded that the divisions of friends could terminate only
in their mutual prejudice; that the Normans were the faithful champions
of the Holy See, and it was safer to trust the alliance of a prince than
the caprice of an aristocracy. A synod of one hundred bishops was
convened at Melphi, and the count interrupted an important enterprise to
guard the person and execute the decrees of the Roman pontiff. His
gratitude and policy conferred on Robert and his posterity the ducal
title, with the investiture of Apulia, Calabria, and all the lands, both
in Italy and Sicily, which his sword could rescue from the schismatic
Greeks and the unbelieving Saracens. This apostolic sanction might
justify his arms, but the obedience of a free and victorious people
could not be transferred without their consent, and Guiscard dissembled
his elevation till the ensuing campaign had been illustrated by the
conquest of Consenza and Reggio. In the hour of triumph he assembled his
troops, and solicited the Normans to confirm by their suffrage the
judgment of the vicar of Christ; the soldiers hailed with joyful
acclamations their valiant duke, and the counts, his former equals,
pronounced the oath of fidelity with hollow smiles and secret
indignation.
After this inauguration Robert styled himself, “by the grace of God and
St. Peter, Duke of Apulia, Calabria, and hereafter of Sicily”; and it
was the labor of twenty years to deserve and realize these lofty
appellations. Such tardy progress in a narrow space may seem unworthy of
the abilities of the chief and the spirit of the nation, but the Normans
were few in number, their resources were scanty, their service was
voluntary and precarious. The bravest designs of the duke were sometimes
opposed by the free voice of his parliament of barons; the twelve counts
of popular election conspired against his authority, and against their
perfidious uncle the sons of Humphrey demanded justice and revenge. By
his policy and vigor Guiscard discovered their plots, suppressed their
rebellions, and punished the guilty with death or exile; but in these
domestic feuds his years and the national strength were unprofitably
consumed. After the defeat of his foreign enemies--the Greeks,
Lombards, and Saracens--their broken forces retreated to the strong and
populous cities of the sea-coast. They excelled in the arts of
fortification and defense; the Normans were accustomed to serve on
horseback in the field, and their rude attempts could only succeed by
the efforts of persevering courage. The resistance of Salerno was
maintained above eight months; the siege or blockade of Bari lasted
nearly four years. In these actions the Norman duke was the foremost in
every danger; in every fatigue the last and most patient. As he pressed
the citadel of Salerno a huge stone from the rampart shattered one of
his military engines, and by a splinter he was wounded in the breast.
Before the gates of Bari he lodged in a miserable hut or barrack,
composed of dry branches, and thatched with straw--a perilous station,
on all sides open to the inclemency of the winter and the spears of the
enemy.
The Italian conquests of Robert correspond with the limits of the
present kingdom of Naples, and the countries united by his arms have not
been dissevered by the revolutions of seven hundred years.
THOMAS À BECKET, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY.
BY DAVID HUME.
[Born in 1119, died by assassination in the Cathedral Church of
Canterbury in 1170. For a long time the Chancellor of England and
favorite adviser of the king, Henry II, he became on his
installation as archbishop the resolute advocate of papal
aggression against the rights and claims of the English kings to
the supreme control of national affairs.]
Thomas à Becket, the first man of English descent who, since the Norman
conquest, had, during the course of a whole century, risen to any
considerable station, was born of reputable parents in the city of
London; and being endowed both with industry and capacity, he early
insinuated himself into the favor of Archbishop Theobald, and obtained
from that prelate some preferments and offices. By their means he was
enabled to travel for improvement to Italy, where he studied the civil
and canon law at Bologna; and on his return, he appeared to have made
such proficiency in knowledge that he was promoted by his patron to the
Archdeaconry of Canterbury, an office of considerable trust and profit.
He was afterward employed with success by Theobald in transacting
business at Rome; and, on Henry’s accession, he was recommended to that
monarch as worthy of further preferment. Henry, who knew that Becket had
been instrumental in supporting that resolution of the archbishop which
had tended so much to facilitate his own advancement to the throne, was
already prepossessed in his favor; and finding, on further acquaintance,
that his spirit and abilities entitled him to any trust, he soon
promoted him to the dignity of chancellor, one of the first civil
offices in the kingdom. The chancellor, in that age, beside the custody
of the great seal, had possession of all vacant prelacies and abbeys; he
was the guardian of all such minors and pupils as were the king’s
tenants; all baronies which escheated to the crown were under his
administration; he was entitled to a place in council, even though he
were not particularly summoned; and as he exercised also the office of
secretary of state, and it belonged to him to countersign all
commissions, writs, and letters patent, he was a kind of prime minister,
and was concerned in the dispatch of every business of importance.
Besides exercising this high office, Becket, by the favor of the king or
archbishop, was made Provost of Beverley, Dean of Hastings, and
Constable of the Tower; he was put in possession of the honors of Eye
and Berkham, large baronies that had escheated to the crown; and, to
complete his grandeur, he was intrusted with the education of Prince
Henry, the king’s eldest son and heir of the monarchy.
The pomp of his retinue, the sumptuousness of his furniture, the luxury
of his table, the munificence of his presents, corresponded to these
great preferments; or rather exceeded anything that England had ever
before seen in any subject. His historian and secretary, Fitz-Stephens,
mentions, among other particulars, that his apartments were every day in
winter covered with clean straw or hay, and in summer with green rushes
or boughs, lest the gentlemen who paid court to him, and who could not,
by reason of their great number, find a place at table, should soil
their fine clothes by sitting on a dirty floor. A great number of
knights were retained in his service; the greatest barons were proud of
being received at his table; his house was a place of education for the
sons of the chief nobility; and the king himself frequently vouchsafed
to partake of his entertainments. As his way of life was splendid and
opulent, his amusements and occupations were gay, and partook of the
cavalier spirit, which, as he had only taken deacon’s orders, he did not
think unbefitting his character. He employed himself at leisure hours in
hunting, hawking, gaming, and horsemanship; he exposed his person in
several military actions; he carried over, at his own charge, seven
hundred knights to attend the king in his wars at Toulouse; in the
subsequent wars on the frontiers of Normandy he maintained, during forty
days, twelve hundred knights, and four thousand of their train; and in
an embassy to France with which he was intrusted he astonished that
court with the number and magnificence of his retinue.
Becket, who, by his complaisance and good humor, had rendered himself
agreeable, and by his industry and abilities useful, to his master,
appeared to him the fittest person for supplying the vacancy made by the
death of Theobald. As he was well acquainted with the king’s intentions
of retrenching, or rather confining within the ancient bounds, all
ecclesiastical privileges, and always showed a ready disposition to
comply with them, Henry, who never expected any resistance from that
quarter, immediately issued orders for electing him Archbishop of
Canterbury. But this resolution, which was taken contrary to the opinion
of Matilda and many of the ministers, drew after it very unhappy
consequences; and never prince of so great penetration appeared, in the
issue, to have so little understood the genius and character of his
minister.
No sooner was Becket installed in this high dignity, which rendered him
for life the second person in the kingdom, with some pretentions of
aspiring to be the first, than he totally altered his demeanor and
conduct, and endeavored to acquire the character of sanctity, of which
his former busy and ostentatious course of life might, in the eyes of
the people, have naturally bereaved him. Without consulting the king, he
immediately returned into his hands the commission of chancellor,
pretending that he must thenceforth detach himself from secular affairs
and be solely employed in the exercise of his spiritual function, but in
reality, that he might break off all connections with Henry, and apprise
him that Becket, as Primate of England, was now become entirely a new
personage. He maintained in his retinue and attendants alone his ancient
pomp and luster, which was useful to strike the vulgar; in his own
person he affected the greatest austerity and most rigid mortification,
which, he was sensible, would have an equal or a greater tendency to the
same end. He wore sackcloth next his skin, which, by his affected care
to conceal it, was necessarily the more remarked by all the world; he
changed it so seldom, that it was filled with dirt and vermin; his usual
diet was bread, his drink water, which he even rendered further
unpalatable by the mixture of unsavory herbs; he tore his back with the
frequent discipline which he inflicted on it; he daily on his knees
washed, in imitation of Christ, the feet of thirteen beggars, whom he
afterward dismissed with presents; he gained the affection of the monks
by his frequent charities to the convents and hospitals; every one who
made profession of sanctity was admitted to his conversation, and
returned full of panegyrics on the humility as well as on the piety and
mortification of the holy primate; he seemed to be perpetually employed
in reciting prayers and pious lectures, or in perusing religious
discourses; his aspect wore the appearance of seriousness and mental
recollection and secret devotion; and all men of penetration plainly saw
that he was meditating some great design, and that the ambition and
ostentation of his character had turned itself toward a new and more
dangerous object.
Four gentlemen of the king’s household, Reginald Fitz-Urse, William de
Traci, Hugh de Moreville, and Richard Brito, taking certain passionate
expressions to be a hint for Becket’s death, immediately communicated
their thoughts to each other, and, swearing to avenge their prince’s
quarrel, secretly withdrew from court. Some menacing expressions which
they had dropped gave a suspicion of their design, and the king
dispatched a messenger after them, charging them to attempt nothing
against the person of the primate; but these orders arrived too late to
prevent their fatal purpose. The four assassins, though they took
different roads to England, arrived nearly about the same time at
Saltwoode, near Canterbury, and being there joined by some assistants
they proceeded in great haste to the archiepiscopal palace. They found
the primate, who trusted entirely to the sacredness of his character,
very slenderly attended; and, though they threw out many menaces and
reproaches against him, he was so incapable of fear that, without using
any precautions against their violence, he immediately went to St.
Benedict’s Church to hear vespers. They followed him thither, attacked
him before the altar, and having cloven his head with many blows retired
without meeting any opposition. This was the tragical end of Thomas à
Becket, a prelate of the most lofty, intrepid, and inflexible spirit,
who was able to cover to the world, and probably to himself, the
enterprises of pride and ambition under the disguise of sanctity and of
zeal for the interests of religion: an extraordinary personage, surely,
had he been allowed to remain in his first station, and had directed the
vehemence of his character to the support of law and justice, instead of
being engaged, by the prejudices of the times, to sacrifice all private
duties and public connections to ties which he imagined or represented
as superior to every civil and political consideration. But no man who
enters into the genius of that age can reasonably doubt of this
prelate’s sincerity.
SALADIN.
BY EDWARD GIBBON.
[MALEK AL-NASIR SALAH ED-DIN ABU MODHAFER YUSUF, Sultan of Egypt
and Syria, born 1137, died 1193. Of Kurdish descent he finally rose
from a subordinate rank to royal power. His name stands embalmed in
history and tradition as the most noble and chivalrous of those
Saracen rulers whom the Christian powers fought against during the
Crusades.]
The hilly country beyond the Tigris is occupied by the pastoral tribes
of the Kurds, a people hardy, strong, savage, impatient of the yoke,
addicted to rapine, and tenacious of the government of their national
chiefs. The resemblance of name, situation, and manners, seems to
identify them with the Carduchians of the Greeks; and they still defend
against the Ottoman Porte the antique freedom which they asserted
against the successors of Cyrus. Poverty and ambition prompted them to
embrace the profession of mercenary soldiers; the service of his father
and uncle prepared the reign of the great Saladin, and the son of Job or
Ayub, a simple Kurd, magnanimously smiled at his pedigree, which
flattery deduced from the Arabian caliphs. So unconscious was Noureddin
of the impending ruin of his house that he constrained the reluctant
youth to follow his Uncle Shiracouh into Egypt; his military character
was established by the defense of Alexandria, and, if we may believe the
Latins, he solicited and obtained from the Christian general the
_profane_ honors of knighthood. On the death of Shiracouh, the office of
grand vizier was bestowed on Saladin, as the youngest and least powerful
of the emirs; but with the advice of his father, whom he invited to
Cairo, his genius obtained the ascendant over his equals, and attached
the army to his person and interest. While Noureddin lived, these
ambitious Kurds were the most humble of his slaves; and the indiscreet
murmurs of the divan were silenced by the prudent Ayub, who loudly
protested that at the command of the sultan he himself would lead his
son in chains to the foot of the throne. “Such language,” he added in
private, “was prudent and proper in an assembly of your rivals; but we
are now above fear and obedience, and the threats of Noureddin shall not
extort the tribute of a sugar-cane.” His seasonable death relieved them
from the odious and doubtful conflict; his son, a minor of eleven years
of age, was left for a while to the emirs of Damascus, and the new lord
of Egypt was decorated by the caliph with every title that could
sanctify his usurpation in the eyes of the people.
Nor was Saladin long content with the possession of Egypt; he despoiled
the Christians of Jerusalem, and the Atabeks of Damascus, Aleppo, and
Diarbekir; Mecca and Medina acknowledged him for their temporal
protector; his brother subdued the distant regions of Yemen, or the
happy Arabia; and at the hour of his death, his empire was spread from
the African Tripoli to the Tigris, and from the Indian Ocean to the
mountains of Armenia. In the judgment of his character, the reproaches
of treason and ingratitude strike forcibly on _our_ minds, impressed, as
they are, with the principle and experience of law and loyalty. But his
ambition may in some measure be excused by the revolutions of Asia,
which had erased every notion of legitimate succession; by the recent
example of the Atabeks themselves; by his reverence to the son of his
benefactor, his humane and generous behavior to the collateral branches;
by _their_ incapacity and _his_ merit; by the approbation of the caliph,
the sole source of all legitimate power; and, above all, by the wishes
and interest of the people, whose happiness is the first object of
government. In _his_ virtues, and in those of his patron, they admired
the singular union of the hero and the saint; for both Noureddin and
Saladin are ranked among the Mahometan saints; and the constant
meditation of the holy war appears to have shed a serious and sober
color over their lives and actions.
The youth of the latter was addicted to wine and women, but his aspiring
spirit soon renounced the temptations of pleasure for the graver follies
of fame and dominion. The garment of Saladin was of coarse woolen, water
was his only drink, and while he emulated the temperance, he surpassed
the chastity of his Arabian prophet. Both in faith and practice he was a
rigid Mussulman; he ever deplored that the defense of religion had not
allowed him to accomplish the pilgrimage of Mecca; but at the stated
hours, five times each day, the sultan devoutly prayed with his
brethren; the involuntary omission of fasting was scrupulously repaid,
and his perusal of the Koran on horseback between the approaching armies
may be quoted as a proof, however ostentatious, of piety and courage.
The superstitious doctrine of the sect of Shafei was the only study that
he deigned to encourage. The poets were safe in his contempt, but all
profane science was the object of his aversion, and a philosopher who
had vented some speculative novelties was seized and strangled by the
command of the royal saint. The justice of his divan was accessible to
the meanest suppliant against himself and his ministers; and it was only
for a kingdom that Saladin would deviate from the rule of equity. While
the descendants of Seljuk and Zenghi held his stirrup and smoothed his
garments, he was affable and patient with the meanest of his servants.
So boundless was his liberality that he distributed twelve thousand
horses at the siege of Acre; and, at the time of his death, no more than
forty-seven drachms of silver and one piece of gold coin were found in
the treasury; yet in a martial reign, the tributes were diminished, and
the wealthy citizens enjoyed without fear or danger the fruits of their
industry. Egypt, Syria, and Arabia, were adorned by the royal
foundations of hospitals, colleges, and mosques, and Cairo was fortified
with a wall and citadel; but his works were consecrated to public use,
nor did the sultan indulge himself in a garden or palace of private
luxury. In a fanatic age, himself a fanatic, the genuine virtues of
Saladin commanded the esteem of the Christians: the Emperor of Germany
gloried in his friendship, the Greek emperor solicited his alliance, and
the conquest of Jerusalem diffused, and perhaps magnified, his fame both
in the East and West.
HENRY II, KING OF ENGLAND.
BY DAVID HUME.
[Born 1113, died 1189. Henry was the grandson of Henry I, the
great-grandson of William the Conqueror by the distaff side, and
son of Geoffrey Plantagenet, Duke of Anjou. He was first of the
Plantagenet dynasty of English kings. His reign was brilliantly
distinguished by the further establishment of legal institutions
and a rigid regard for justice to all classes of his subjects.]
Thus died, in the fifty-eighth year of his age, and thirty-fifth of his
reign, the greatest prince of his time, for wisdom, virtue, and
abilities, and the most powerful in extent of dominion of all those that
had ever filled the throne of England. His character, in private as well
as in public life, is almost without a blemish, and he seems to have
possessed every accomplishment, both of body and mind, which makes a
man either estimable or amiable. He was of a middle stature, strong and
well proportioned; his countenance was lively and engaging; his
conversation affable and entertaining; his elocution easy, persuasive,
and ever at command. He loved peace, but possessed both bravery and
conduct in war, was provident without timidity, severe in the execution
of justice without rigor, and temperate without austerity. He preserved
health, and kept himself from corpulency, to which he was somewhat
inclined, by an abstemious diet and by frequent exercise, particularly
hunting. When he could enjoy leisure, he recreated himself either in
learned conversation or in reading, and he cultivated his natural
talents by study above any prince of his time. His affections, as well
as his enmities, were warm and durable, and his long experience of the
ingratitude and infidelity of men never destroyed the natural
sensibility of his temper, which disposed him to friendship and society.
His character has been transmitted to us by several writers who were his
contemporaries, and it extremely resembles, in its most remarkable
features, that of his maternal grandfather, Henry I, excepting only that
ambition, which was a ruling passion in both, found not in the first
Henry such unexceptionable means of exerting itself, and pushed that
prince into measures which were both criminal in themselves and were the
cause of further crimes, from which his grandson’s conduct was happily
exempted.
This prince, like most of his predecessors of the Norman line, except
Stephen, passed more of his time on the Continent than in this island;
he was surrounded with the English gentry and nobility when abroad; the
French gentry and nobility attended him when he resided in England; both
nations acted in the government as if they were the same people; and, on
many occasions, the legislatures seem not to have been distinguished. As
the king and all the English barons were of French extraction, the
manners of that people acquired the ascendant, and were regarded as the
models of imitation. All foreign improvements, therefore, such as they
were, in literature and politeness, in laws and arts, seem now to have
been, in a good measure, transplanted into England, and that kingdom was
become little inferior, in all the fashionable accomplishments, to any
of its neighbors on the Continent. The more homely but more sensible
manners and principles of the Saxons were exchanged for the affectations
of chivalry and the subtleties of school philosophy; the feudal ideas of
civil government, the Romish sentiments in religion, had taken entire
possession of the people; by the former, the sense of submission toward
princes was somewhat diminished in the barons; by the latter, the
devoted attachment to papal authority was much augmented among the
clergy. The Norman and other foreign families established in England had
now struck deep root, and being entirely incorporated with the people,
whom at first they oppressed and despised, they no longer thought that
they needed the protection of the crown for the enjoyment of their
possessions, or considered their tenure as precarious. They aspired to
the same liberty and independence which they saw enjoyed by their
brethren on the Continent, and desired to restrain those exorbitant
prerogatives and arbitrary practices which the necessities of war and
the violence of conquest had at first obliged them to indulge in their
monarch. That memory also of a more equal government under the Saxon
princes, which remained with the English, diffused still further the
spirit of liberty, and made the barons both desirous of more
independence to themselves, and willing to indulge it to the people. And
it was not long ere this secret revolution in the sentiments of men
produced, first violent convulsions in the state, then an evident
alteration in the maxims of government.
The history of all the preceding kings of England since the Conquest
gives evident proofs of the disorders attending the feudal
institutions--the licentiousness of the barons, their spirit of
rebellion against the prince and laws, and of animosity against each
other; the conduct of the barons in the transmarine dominions of those
monarchs afforded, perhaps, still more flagrant instances of these
convulsions, and the history of France during several ages consists
almost entirely of narrations of this nature. The cities, during the
continuance of this violent government, could neither be very numerous
nor populous, and there occur instances which seem to evince that,
though these are always the first seat of law and liberty, their police
was in general loose and irregular, and exposed to the same disorders
with those by which the country was generally infested. It was a custom
in London for great numbers, to the amount of a hundred or more, the
sons and relations of considerable citizens, to form themselves into a
licentious confederacy, to break into rich houses and plunder them, to
rob and murder the passengers, and to commit with impunity all sorts of
disorder. By these crimes it had become so dangerous to walk the streets
by night that the citizens durst no more venture abroad after sunset
than if they had been exposed to the incursions of a public enemy. The
brother of the Earl of Ferrars had been murdered by some of those
nocturnal rioters, and the death of so eminent a person, which was much
more regarded than that of many thousands of an inferior station, so
provoked the king that he swore vengeance against the criminals, and
became thenceforth more rigorous in the execution of the laws.
Henry’s care in administering justice had gained him so great a
reputation that even foreign and distant princes made him arbiter, and
submitted their differences to his judgment. Sanchez, King of Navarre,
having some controversies with Alphonso, King of Castile, was contented,
though Alphonso had married the daughter of Henry, to choose this prince
for a referee; and they agreed, each of them to consign three castles
into neutral hands as a pledge of their not departing from his award.
Henry made the cause be examined before his great council, and gave a
sentence which was submitted to by both parties. These two Spanish kings
sent each a stout champion to the court of England, in order to defend
his cause by arms in case the way of duel had been chosen by Henry.
GENGHIS OR ZINGIS KHAN.
BY EDWARD GIBBON.
[An Asiatic conqueror, born about 1160, died 1227. His conquests
extended over the greater part of Asia, and touched Eastern Europe.
He belonged to that type exemplified by Alexander the Great,
Attila, Timour, and Napoleon, who made war for the mere passion and
glory of conquest, although he seems to have been by no means
destitute of generous and magnanimous qualities.]
From the spacious highlands between China, Siberia, and the Caspian Sea,
the tide of emigration and war has repeatedly been poured. These ancient
seats of the Huns and Turks were occupied in the twelfth century by many
pastoral tribes, of the same descent and similar manners, which were
united and (A.D. 1206-1227) led to conquest by the formidable Zingis. In
his ascent to greatness, that barbarian (whose private appellation was
Temugin) had trampled on the necks of his equals. His birth was noble,
but it was in the pride of victory that the prince or people deduced his
seventh ancestor from the immaculate conception of a virgin. His father
had reigned over thirteen hordes, which composed about thirty or forty
thousand families, above two thirds refused to pay tithes or obedience
to his infant son, and at the age of thirteen, Temugin fought a battle
against his rebellious subjects. The future conqueror of Asia was
reduced to fly and to obey, but he rose superior to his fortune, and in
his fortieth year he had established his fame and dominion over the
circumjacent tribes. In a state of society in which policy is rude and
valor is universal the ascendant of one man must be founded on his power
and resolution to punish his enemies and recompense his friends. His
first military league was ratified by the simple rites of sacrificing a
horse and tasting of a running stream; Temugin pledged himself to divide
with his followers the sweets and the bitters of life, and, when he had
shared among them his horses and apparel, he was rich in their gratitude
and his own hopes. After his first victory, he placed seventy caldrons
on the fire, and seventy of the most guilty rebels were cast headlong
into the boiling water. The sphere of his attraction was continually
enlarged by the ruin of the proud and the submission of the prudent; and
the boldest chieftains might tremble when they beheld, enchased in
silver, the skull of the khan of the Keraites, who, under the name of
Prester John, had corresponded with the Roman pontiff and the princes of
Europe. The ambition of Temugin condescended to employ the arts of
superstition, and it was from a naked prophet who could ascend to heaven
on a white horse that he accepted the title of Zingis, the _most great_,
and a divine right to the conquest and dominion of the earth. In a
general _couroultai_, or diet, he was seated on a felt, which was long
afterward revered as a relic, and solemnly proclaimed great khan, or
emperor, of the Moguls and Tartars. Of these kindred, though rival
names, the former had given birth to the imperial race, and the latter
has been extended, by accident or error, over the spacious wilderness of
the north.
The code of laws which Zingis dictated to his subjects was adapted to
the preservation of domestic peace and the exercise of foreign
hostility. The punishment of death was inflicted on the crimes of
adultery, murder, perjury, and the capital thefts of a horse or an ox;
and the fiercest of men were mild and just in their intercourse with
each other. The future election of the great kahn was vested in the
princes of his family and the heads of the tribes, and the regulations
of the chase were essential to the pleasures and plenty of a Tartar
camp. The victorious nation was held sacred from all servile labors,
which were abandoned to slaves and strangers, and every labor was
servile except the profession of arms. The service and discipline of the
troops, who were armed with bows, cimeters, and iron maces, and divided
by hundreds, thousands, and ten thousands, were the institutions of a
veteran commander. Each officer and soldier was made responsible, under
pain of death, for the safety and honor of his companions; and the
spirit of conquest breathed in the law that peace should never be
granted unless to a vanquished and suppliant enemy.
But it is the religion of Zingis that best deserves our wonder and
applause. The Catholic inquisitors of Europe, who defended nonsense by
cruelty, might have been confounded by the example of a barbarian, who
anticipated the lessons of philosophy, and established by his laws a
system of pure theism and perfect toleration. His first and only article
of faith was the existence of one God, the author of all good, who fills
by his presence the heavens and earth, which he has created by his
power. The Tartars and Moguls were addicted to the idols of their
peculiar tribes, and many of them had been converted by the foreign
missionaries to the religions of Moses, of Mahomet, and of Christ. These
various systems in freedom and concord were taught and practiced within
the precincts of the same camp, and the bonze, the imaum, the rabbi, the
Nestorian and the Latin priest, enjoyed the same honorable exemption
from service and tribute. In the mosque of Bokhara, the insolent victor
might trample the Koran under his horse’s feet, but the calm legislator
respected the prophets and pontiffs of the most hostile sects. The
reason of Zingis was not informed by books--the khan could neither read
nor write--and, except the tribe of the Igours, the greatest part of the
Moguls and Tartars were as illiterate as their sovereign. The memory of
their exploits was preserved by tradition; sixty-eight years after the
death of Zingis, these traditions were collected and transcribed. The
brevity of their domestic annals may be supplied by the Chinese,
Persians, Armenians, Syrians, Arabians, Greeks, Russians, Poles,
Hungarians, and Latins; and each nation will deserve credit in the
relation of their own disasters and defeats.
The arms of Zingis and his lieutenants successively reduced the hordes
of the desert, who pitched their tents between the wall of China and the
Volga; and the Mogul emperor became the monarch of the pastoral world,
the lord of many millions of shepherds and soldiers, who felt their
united strength, and were impatient to rush on the mild and wealthy
climates of the south. His ancestors had been the tributaries of the
Chinese emperors, and Temugin himself had been disgraced by a title of
honor and servitude. The court of Pekin was astonished by an embassy
from its former vassal, who, in the tone of the king of nations, exacted
the tribute and obedience which he had paid, and who affected to treat
the _son of heaven_ as the most contemptible of mankind. A haughty
answer disguised their secret apprehensions, and their fears were soon
justified by the march of innumerable squadrons, who pierced on all
sides the feeble rampart of the great wall. Ninety cities were stormed,
or starved, by the Moguls; ten only escaped; and Zingis, from a
knowledge of the filial piety of the Chinese, covered his vanguard with
their captive parents--an unworthy, and by degrees a fruitless, abuse of
the virtue of his enemies. His invasion was supported by the revolt of
one hundred thousand Khitans who guarded the frontier, yet he listened
to a treaty, and a princess of China, three thousand horses, five
hundred youths and as many virgins, and a tribute of gold and silk were
the price of his retreat. In his second expedition, he compelled the
Chinese emperor to retire beyond the Yellow River to a more southern
residence. The siege of Pekin was long and laborious; the inhabitants
were reduced by famine to decimate and devour their fellow-citizens;
when their ammunition was spent, they discharged ingots of gold and
silver from their engines; but the Moguls introduced a mine to the
center of the capital, and the conflagration of the palace burned above
thirty days. China was desolated by Tartar war and domestic faction, and
the five northern provinces were added to the empire of Zingis.
In the west he touched the dominions of Mohammed, sultan of Carizme, who
reigned from the Persian Gulf to the borders of India and Turkestan; and
who, in the proud imitation of Alexander the Great, forgot the servitude
and ingratitude of his fathers to the house of Seljuk. It was the wish
of Zingis to establish a friendly and commercial intercourse with the
most powerful of the Moslem princes; nor could he be tempted by the
secret solicitations of the caliph of Bagdad, who sacrificed to his
personal wrongs the safety of the Church and state. A rash and inhuman
deed provoked and justified the Tartar arms in the invasion of the
southern Asia. A caravan of three ambassadors and one hundred and fifty
merchants was arrested and murdered at Otrar, by the command of
Mohammed; nor was it till after a demand and denial of justice, till he
had prayed and fasted three nights on a mountain, that the Mogul emperor
appealed to the judgment of God and his sword. Our European battles,
says a philosophic writer, are petty skirmishes, if compared to the
numbers that have fought and fallen in the fields of Asia. Seven hundred
thousand Moguls and Tartars are said to have marched under the standard
of Zingis and his four sons. In the vast plains that extend to the north
of the Sihon or Jaxartes, they were encountered by four hundred thousand
soldiers of the sultan; and in the first battle, which was suspended by
the night, one hundred and sixty thousands Carizmians were slain.
The Persian historians will relate the sieges and reduction of Otrar,
Cogende, Bochara, Samarcand, Carizme, Herat, Merou, Nisabour, Balch, and
Candahar; and the conquest of the rich and populous countries of
Transoxiana, Carizme, and Chorasan. The destructive hostilities of
Attila and the Huns have long since been elucidated by the example of
Zingis and the Moguls; and in this more proper place I shall be content
to observe, that, from the Caspian to the Indus, they ruined a tract of
many hundred miles, which was adorned with the habitations and labors of
mankind, and that five centuries have not been sufficient to repair the
ravages of four years. The Mogul conqueror yielded with reluctance to
the murmurs of his weary and wealthy troops, who sighed for the
enjoyment of their native land. Incumbered with the spoils of Asia, he
slowly measured back his footsteps, betrayed some pity for the misery of
the vanquished, and declared his intention of rebuilding the cities
which had been swept away by the tempest of his arms. After he had
repassed the Oxus and Jaxartes, he was joined by two generals, whom he
had detached with thirty thousand horse to subdue the western provinces
of Persia. They had trampled on the nations which opposed their passage,
penetrated through the gates of Derbend, traversed the Volga and the
Desert, and accomplished the circuit of the Caspian Sea, by an
expedition which had never been attempted and has never been repeated.
The return of Zingis was signalized by the overthrow of the rebellious
or independent kingdoms of Tartary; and he died in the fulness of years
and glory, with his last breath exhorting and instructing his sons to
achieve the conquest of the Chinese Empire.
SIMON DE MONTFORT, EARL OF LEICESTER.
BY JOHN RICHARD GREEN.
[A valiant soldier, astute politician, and public-spirited reformer
of the thirteenth century, born about 1200, died 1265. The son of
that De Montfort who led the cruel crusade against the Albigenses
of southern France, Simon became in early life an English subject,
received the highest honors from Henry III, and also secured the
hand of his sister in marriage. He sympathized with and became a
leader of the English barons in demanding the necessary concessions
to complete and enforce that great charter wrung from King John at
Runnymede; and finally took up arms to constrain Henry. In the
civil war which ensued Simon of Montfort was for the most part
victorious, but finally found himself forsaken by the fickle
baronage whose cause he had espoused. He was obliged to throw
himself on the support of the people. In the last Parliament he
convoked, in the year of his death, he summoned knights and
burgesses to sit by the side of the barons and bishops, thus
creating a new force in the English constitution, which wrought a
great change in the political system of the country. He was slain
and his army defeated some months later at the battle of Evesham by
Prince Edward.]
When a thunderstorm once forced the king, as he was rowing on the
Thames, to take refuge at the palace of the Bishop of Durham, Earl Simon
of Montfort, who was a guest of the prelate, met the royal barge with
assurances that the storm was drifting away, and that there was nothing
to fear. Henry’s petulant wit broke out in his reply: “If I fear the
thunder,” said the king, “I fear you, Sir Earl, more than all the
thunder in the world.”
The man whom Henry dreaded as the champion of English freedom was
himself a foreigner, the son of a Simon de Montfort whose name had
become memorable for his ruthless crusade against the Albigensian
heretics in southern Gaul. Though fourth son of this crusader, Simon
became possessor of the English earldom of Leicester, which he inherited
through his mother, and a secret match with Eleanor, the king’s sister
and widow of the second William Marshal, linked him to the royal house.
The baronage, indignant at this sudden alliance with a stranger, rose in
a revolt which failed only through the desertion of their head, Earl
Richard of Cornwall; while the censures of the Church on Eleanor’s
breach of a vow of chastity, which she had made at her first husband’s
death, were hardly averted by a journey to Rome. Simon returned to find
the changeable king quickly alienated from him and to be driven by a
burst of royal passion from the realm. He was, however, soon restored to
favor, and before long took his stand in the front rank of the patriot
leaders. In 1248 he was appointed governor of Gascony, where the stern
justice of his rule and the heavy taxation which his enforcement of
order made necessary earned the hatred of the disorderly nobles. The
complaints of the Gascons brought about an open breach with the king. To
Earl Simon’s offer of the surrender of his post if the money he had
spent in the royal service were, as Henry had promised, repaid him, the
king hotly retorted that he was bound by no promise to a false traitor.
Simon at once gave Henry the lie; “and but that thou bearest the name of
king it had been a bad hour for thee when thou utteredst such a word!” A
formal reconciliation was brought about, and the earl once more returned
to Gascony, but before winter had come he was forced to withdraw to
France. The greatness of his reputation was shown in an offer which its
nobles made him of the regency of their realm during the absence of King
Lewis on the crusade. But the offer was refused, and Henry, who had
himself undertaken the pacification of Gascony, was glad before the
close of 1253 to recall its old ruler to do the work he had failed to
do.
Simon’s character had now thoroughly developed. He had inherited the
strict and severe piety of his father; he was assiduous in his
attendance on religious services, whether by night or day; he was the
friend of Grosseteste and the patron of the Friars. In his
correspondence with Adam Marsh we see him finding patience under his
Gascon troubles in the perusal of the Book of Job. His life was pure and
singularly temperate; he was noted for his scant indulgence in meat,
drink, or sleep. Socially he was cheerful and pleasant in talk; but his
natural temper was quick and ardent, his sense of honor keen, his speech
rapid and trenchant. His impatience of contradiction, his fiery temper,
were in fact the great stumbling-blocks in his after career. But the one
characteristic which overmastered all was what men at that time called
his “constancy,” the firm, immovable resolve which trampled even death
under foot in its loyalty to the right. The motto which Edward I chose
as his device, “Keep troth,” was far truer as the device of Earl Simon.
We see in his correspondence with what a clear discernment of its
difficulties both at home and abroad he “thought it unbecoming to
decline the danger of so great an exploit” as the reduction of Gascony
to peace and order; but once undertaken, he persevered in spite of the
opposition he met with, the failure of all support or funds from
England, and the king’s desertion of his cause, till the work was done.
There is the same steadiness of will and purpose in his patriotism. The
letters of Grosseteste show how early he had learned to sympathize with
the bishop in his resistance to Rome, and at the crisis of the contest
he offers him his own support and that of his associates. He sends to
Adam Marsh a tract of Grosseteste’s on “the rule of a kingdom and of a
tyranny,” sealed with his own seal. He listens patiently to the advice
of his friends on the subject of his household or his temper. “Better is
a patient man,” writes honest Friar Adam, “than a strong man, and he who
can rule his own temper than he who storms a city.” “What use is it to
provide for the peace of your fellow-citizens and not guard the peace of
your own household?” It was to secure “the peace of his
fellow-citizens” that the earl silently trained himself as the tide of
misgovernment mounted higher and higher, and the fruit of his discipline
was seen when the crisis came. While other men wavered and faltered and
fell away, the enthusiastic love of the people gathered itself round the
stern, grave soldier who “stood like a pillar,” unshaken by promise or
threat or fear of death, by the oath he had sworn.
In England affairs were going from bad to worse. The Pope still weighed
heavily on the Church. Two solemn confirmations of the charter failed to
bring about any compliance with its provisions. In 1248, in 1249, and
again in 1255, the great council fruitlessly renewed its demand for a
regular ministry, and the growing resolve of the nobles to enforce good
government was seen in their offer of a grant on condition that the
chief officers of the crown were appointed by the council. Henry
indignantly refused the offer, and sold his plate to the citizens of
London to find payment for his household. The barons were mutinous and
defiant. “I will send reapers and reap your fields for you,” Henry had
threatened Earl Bigod of Norfolk when he refused him aid. “And I will
send you back the heads of your reapers,” retorted the earl. Hampered by
the profusion of the court and by the refusal of supplies, the crown was
penniless, yet new expenses were incurred by Henry’s acceptance of a
papal offer of the kingdom of Sicily in favor of his second son, Edmund.
Shame had fallen on the English arms, and the king’s eldest son, Edward,
had been disastrously defeated on the Marches by Llewelyn of Wales. The
tide of discontent, which was heightened by a grievous famine, burst its
bounds in the irritation excited by the new demands from both Henry and
Rome with which the year 1258 opened, and the barons repaired in arms to
a great council summoned at London. The past half-century had shown both
the strength and weakness of the charter--its strength as a
rallying-point for the baronage, and a definite assertion of rights
which the king could be made to acknowledge; its weakness in providing
no means for the enforcement of its own stipulations. Henry had sworn
again and again to observe the charter, and his oath was no sooner taken
than it was unscrupulously broken.
The victory of Lewes placed Earl Simon at the head of the state. “Now
England breathes in the hope of liberty,” sang a poet of the time; “the
English were despised like dogs, but now they have lifted up their head
and their foes are vanquished.” The song announces with almost legal
precision the theory of the patriots. “He who would be in truth a king,
he is a ‘free king’ indeed if he rightly rule himself and his realm. All
things are lawful to him for the government of his kingdom, but nothing
for its destruction. It is one thing to rule according to a king’s duty,
another to destroy a kingdom by resisting the law.... Let the community
of the realm advise, and let it be known what the generality, to whom
their own laws are best known, think on the matter. They who are ruled
by the laws know those laws best; they who make daily trial of them are
best acquainted with them; and since it is their own affairs which are
at stake, they will take more care, and will act with an eye to their
own peace.... It concerns the community to see what sort of men ought
justly to be chosen for the weal of the realm.” The constitutional
restrictions on the royal authority, the right of the whole nation to
deliberate and decide on its own affairs, and to have a voice in the
selection of the administrators of government, had never been so clearly
stated before.
It was impossible to make binding terms with an imprisoned king, yet to
release Henry without terms was to renew the war. A new Parliament was
summoned in January, 1265, to Westminster, but the weakness of the
patriotic party among the baronage was shown in the fact that only
twenty-three earls and barons could be found to sit beside the hundred
and twenty ecclesiastics. But it was just this sense of his weakness
that drove Earl Simon to a constitutional change of mighty issue in our
history. As before, he summoned two knights from every county. But he
created a new force in English politics when he summoned to sit beside
them two citizens from every borough. The attendance of delegates from
the towns had long been usual in the county courts when any matter
respecting their interests was in question; but it was the writ issued
by Earl Simon that first summoned the merchant and the trader to sit
beside the knight of the shire, the baron, and the bishop in the
Parliament of the realm.
EDWARD I, KING OF ENGLAND.
BY JOHN RICHARD GREEN.
[Surnamed Longshanks, born 1239, crowned 1274, died 1307. Son of
Henry III, he defeated and slew Simon de Montfort in his father’s
reign and took part in the fourth crusade. On his accession to the
throne he completed the subjugation of Wales and in all ways
approved himself an able and powerful monarch. The most signal
events of his reign were those connected with the subjugation of
Scotland. At first successful, it was only in the last months of
his long reign that Robert Bruce’s coronation as King of the Scots
opened the way for a final defeat of English claims and arms under
Edward II.]
In his own time, and among his own subjects, Edward was the object of
almost boundless admiration. He was in the truest sense a national king.
At the moment when the last trace of foreign conquest passed away, when
the descendants of those who won and those who lost at Senlac blended
for ever into an English people, England saw in her ruler no stranger,
but an Englishman. The national tradition returned in more than the
golden hair or the English name which linked him to our earlier kings.
Edward’s very temper was English to the core. In good as in evil he
stands out as the typical representative of the race he ruled; like
them willful and imperious, tenacious of his rights, indomitable in his
pride, dogged, stubborn, slow of apprehension, narrow in sympathy, but
like them, too, just in the main, unselfish, laborious, conscientious,
haughtily observant of truth and self-respect, temperate, reverent of
duty, religious. He inherited, indeed, from the Angevins their fierce
and passionate wrath; his punishments, when he punished in anger, were
without pity; and a priest who ventured at a moment of storm into his
presence with a remonstrance dropped dead from sheer fright at his feet.
But for the most part his impulses were generous, trustful, averse from
cruelty, prone to forgiveness. “No man ever asked mercy of me,” he said,
in his old age, “and was refused.” The rough soldierly nobleness of his
nature breaks out at Falkirk, where he lay on the bare ground among his
men, or in his refusal during a Welsh campaign to drink of the one cask
of wine which had been saved from marauders. “It is I who have brought
you into this strait,” he said to his thirsty fellow-soldiers, “and I
will have no advantage of you in meat or drink.” A strange tenderness
and sensitiveness to affection lay, in fact, beneath the stern
imperiousness of his outer bearing. Every subject throughout his realm
was drawn closer to the king who wept bitterly at the news of his
father’s death, though it gave him a crown; whose fiercest burst of
vengeance was called out by an insult to his mother; whose crosses rose
as memorials of his love and sorrow at every spot where his wife’s bier
rested. “I loved her tenderly in her lifetime,” wrote Edward to
Eleanor’s friend the Abbot of Cluny; “I do not cease to love her now she
is dead.” And as it was with mother and wife, so it was with his people
at large. All the self-concentrated isolation of the earlier Angevins
disappears in Edward. He was the first English king since the Conquest
who loved his people with a personal love and craved for their love back
again. To his trust in them we owe our Parliament, to his care for them
the great statutes which stand in the forefront of our laws. Even in
his struggles with her England understood a temper which was so
perfectly her own, and the quarrels between king and people during his
reign are quarrels where, doggedly as they fought, neither disputant
doubted for a moment the worth or affection of the other. Few scenes in
our history are more touching than that which closes the long contest
over the charter, when Edward stood face to face with his people in
Westminster Hall, and with a sudden burst of tears owned himself frankly
in the wrong.
But it was just this sensitiveness, this openness to outer impressions
and outer influences, that led to the strange contradictions which meet
us in Edward’s career. Under the first king, whose temper was distinctly
English, a foreign influence told most fatally on our manners, our
literature, our national spirit. The rise of France into a compact and
organized monarchy from the time of Philip Augustus was now making its
influence dominant in Western Europe. The “chivalry” so familiar in
Froissart, that picturesque mimicry of high sentiment, of heroism, love,
and courtesy, before which all depth and reality of nobleness
disappeared to make room for the coarsest profligacy, the narrowest
caste-spirit, and a brutal indifference to human suffering, was
specially of French creation. There was a nobleness in Edward’s nature
from which the baser influences of this chivalry fell away. His life was
pure, his piety, save when it stooped to the superstition of the time,
manly and sincere, while his high sense of duty saved him from the
frivolous self-indulgence of his successors. But he was far from being
wholly free from the taint of his age. His passionate desire was to be a
model of the fashionable chivalry of his day. He had been famous from
his very youth as a consummate general; Earl Simon had admired the skill
of his advance at Evesham, and in his Welsh campaign he had shown a
tenacity and force of will which wrested victory out of the midst of
defeat. He could head a furious charge of horse at Lewes, or organize a
commissariat which enabled him to move army after army across the
harried Lowlands. In his old age he was quick to discover the value of
the English archery, and to employ it as a means of victory at Falkirk.
But his fame as a general seemed a small thing to Edward when compared
with his fame as a knight. He shared to the full his people’s love of
hard fighting. His frame, indeed, was that of a born soldier--tall,
deep-chested, long of limb, capable alike of endurance or action. When
he encountered Adam Gurdon, a knight of gigantic size and renowned
prowess, after Evesham, he forced him single-handed to beg for mercy. At
the opening of his reign he saved his life by sheer fighting in a
tournament at Challon. It was this love of adventure which lent itself
to the frivolous unreality of the new chivalry. At his “Round Table of
Kenilworth” a hundred lords and ladies, “clad all in silk,” renewed the
faded glories of Arthur’s court. The false air of romance which was soon
to turn the gravest political resolutions into outbursts of sentimental
feeling appeared in his “Vow of the Swan,” when rising at the royal
board he swore on the dish before him to avenge on Scotland the murder
of Comyn. Chivalry exerted on him a yet more fatal influence in its
narrowing of his sympathy to the noble class, and in its exclusion of
the peasant and the craftsman from all claim to pity. “Knight without
reproach” as he was, he looked calmly on at the massacre of the burghers
of Berwick, and saw in William Wallace nothing but a common robber.
Hardly less powerful than the French notion of chivalry in its influence
on Edward’s mind was the new French conception of kingship, feudality,
and law. The rise of a lawyer class was everywhere hardening customary
into written rights, allegiance into subjection, loose ties, such as
commendation, into a definite vassalage. But it was specially through
French influence, the influence of St. Lewis and his successors, that
the imperial theories of the Roman law were brought to bear upon this
natural tendency of the time. When the “sacred majesty” of the Cæsars
was transferred by a legal fiction to the royal head of a feudal
baronage, every constitutional relation was changed. The “defiance” by
which a vassal renounced service to his lord became treason, his
after-resistance “sacrilege.” That Edward could appreciate what was
sound and noble in the legal spirit around him was shown in his reforms
of our judicature and our Parliament; but there was something as
congenial to his mind in its definiteness, its rigidity, its narrow
technicalities. He was never willfully unjust, but he was too often
captious in his justice, fond of legal chicanery, prompt to take
advantage of the letter of the law. The high conception of royalty which
he had borrowed from St. Lewis united with this legal turn of mind in
the worst acts of his reign. Of rights or liberties unregistered in
charter or roll Edward would know nothing, while his own good sense was
overpowered by the majesty of his crown. It was incredible to him that
Scotland should revolt against a legal bargain which made her national
independence conditional on the terms extorted from a claimant of her
throne; nor could he view in any other light but as treason the
resistance of his own baronage to an arbitrary taxation which their
fathers had borne. It is in the very anomalies of such a character, in
its strange union of justice and wrong-doing, of nobleness and meanness,
that we must look for any fair explanation of much that has since been
bitterly blamed in Edward’s conduct and policy.
ROBERT BRUCE.
BY SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON.
[Born Lord of Annandale and Earl of Carrick 1274, died King of
Scotland 1329. Robert Bruce was descended from the younger branch
of the royal line of Scotland, to which succession had reverted by
the death of Margaret, the “Maiden of Norway.” Brought up in the
English court, where he was a favorite of Edward I, who claimed to
be over-lord of Scotland, and, as such, feudal superior of her
kings, he had vacillated in his course in the wars which had been
carried on by Edward to enforce that claim. In 1306 he threw off
all indecision, accepted the Scottish crown, and was invested at
Scone. Severely defeated at the beginning by the lieutenants of
Edward, he was relieved, by the death of the latter while marching
to take personal command, of his most dangerous antagonist. Edward
II for some years did not push aggression against Scotland, and the
Scottish monarch had recovered nearly all his dominions, when
Edward marched against him with a great army. The Scots gained an
overwhelming victory at the battle of Bannockburn in 1314, and
royal Scottish authority was re-established. The complete
independence of Scotland was not acknowledged however, till 1328,
in the reign of Edward III.]
Toward a due understanding of the extraordinary merits of Robert Bruce
it is necessary to take a cursory view of the power with which he had to
contend and of the resources of that kingdom, which, at that critical
juncture, Providence committed to his charge. The power of England,
against which it was his lot to struggle, was, perhaps, the most
formidable which then existed in Europe. The native valor of her people,
distinguished even under the weakest reign, was then led on and animated
by a numerous and valiant feudal nobility. That bold and romantic spirit
of enterprise which led the Norman arms to the throne of England and
enabled Roger de Hauteville, with thirty followers, to win the crown of
the Two Sicilies still animated the English nobles; and to this
hereditary spirit was added the remembrance of the matchless glories
which their arms had acquired in Palestine.
The barons who were then arrayed against Robert Bruce were the
descendants of those iron warriors who combated for Christendom under
the walls of Acre, and defeated the whole Saracen strength in the battle
of Ascalon; the banners that were then unfurled for the conquest of
Scotland were those which had waved victorious over the arms of Saladin;
and the sovereign who led them bore the crown that had been worn by
Richard in the Holy Wars, and wielded in his sword the terror of that
mighty name at which even the accumulated hosts of Asia were appalled.
Nor were the resources of England less formidable for nourishing and
maintaining the war. The prosperity which had grown up with the equal
laws of our Saxon ancestors, and which the tyranny of the early Norman
kings had never completely extinguished, had revived and spread under
the wise and beneficent reigns of Henry II and Edward I. The legislative
wisdom of the last monarch had given to the English law greater
improvements than it had ever received in any subsequent reigns, while
his heroic valor had subdued the rebellious spirit of his barons and
trained their united strength to submission to the throne. The
acquisition of Wales had removed the only weak point of his wide
dominion and added a cruel and savage race to the already formidable
mass of his armies. The navy of England already ruled the seas, and was
prepared to carry ravage and desolation over the wide and defenseless
Scottish coast; while a hundred thousand men armed in the magnificent
array of feudal war and led on by the ambition of a feudal nobility
poured into a country which seemed destined only to be their prey.
But, most of all, in the ranks of this army were found the intrepid
yeomanry of England--that peculiar and valuable body of men which has in
every age contributed as much to the stability of English character as
the celebrity of the English arms, and which then composed those
terrible archers whose prowess rendered them so formidable to all the
armies of Europe. These men, whose valor was warmed by the consciousness
of personal freedom and whose strength was nursed among the inclosed
fields and green pastures of English liberty, conferred, till the
discovery of firearms rendered personal accomplishments of no avail, a
matchless advantage on the English armies. The troops of no other nation
could produce a body of men in the least comparable to them, either in
strength, discipline, or individual valor; and such was the dreadful
efficacy with which they used their weapons that not only did they
mainly contribute to the subsequent triumphs of Cressy and Azincourt,
but at Poitiers and Hamildon Hill they alone gained the victory, with
hardly any assistance from the feudal tenantry.
These troops were well known to the Scottish soldiers, and had
established their superiority over them in many bloody battles, in which
the utmost efforts of undisciplined valor had been found unavailing
against their practiced discipline and superior equipment. The very
names of the barons who headed them were associated with an unbroken
career of conquest and renown, and can hardly be read yet without a
feeling of exultation.
Names that to fear were never known,
Bold Norfolk’s Earl de Brotherton
And Oxford’s famed De Vere;
Ross, Montague, and Manly came,
And Courtney’s pride and Percy’s fame,
Names known too well in Scotland’s war
At Falkirk, Methoven, and Dunbar,
Blazed broader yet in after years
At Cressy red and fell Poitiers.
Against this terrible force, before which in the succeeding reign the
military power of France was compelled to bow, Bruce had to array the
scanty troops of a barren land and the divided force of a turbulent
nobility. Scotland was in his time fallen low, indeed, from that state
of peace and prosperity in which she was found at the first invasion of
Edward I, and on which so much light has been thrown by the ingenious
research of our own times. The disputed succession had sowed the seeds
of inextinguishable jealousies among the nobles. The gold of England had
corrupted many to betray their country’s cause; and the fatal ravages of
English invasion had desolated the whole plains, from which resources
for carrying on the war could be drawn.
All the heroic valor, the devoted patriotism, and the personal prowess
of Wallace had been unable to stem the torrent of English invasion; and
when he died the whole nation seemed to sink under the load against
which his unexampled fortitude had long enabled it to struggle. These
unhappy jealousies among the nobles, to which his downfall was owing,
still continued and almost rendered hopeless any attempt to combine
their forces; while the thinned population and ruined husbandry of the
country seemed to prognosticate nothing but utter extirpation from a
continuance of the war. Nor was the prospect less melancholy from a
consideration of the combats which had taken place. The short spear and
light shield of the Scotch had been found utterly unavailing against the
iron panoply and powerful horses of the English barons, while the hardy
and courageous mountaineers perished in vain under the dreadful tempest
of the English archery.
What, then, must have been the courage of the youthful prince, who,
after having been driven for shelter to an island on the north of
Ireland, could venture with only forty followers to raise the standard
of independence in Scotland against the accumulated force of this mighty
power! What the resources of that understanding, which, though
intimately acquainted from personal service with the tried superiority
of the English arms, could foresee in his barren and exhausted country
the means of combatting them! What the ability of that political conduct
which could reunite the jarring interests and smother the deadly feuds
of the Scottish nobles! And what the capacity of that noble warrior who,
in the words of the contemporary historian,[22] could “unite the prowess
of the first knight to the conduct of the greatest general of his age,”
and was able in the space of six years to raise the Scottish arms from
the lowest point of depression to such a pitch of glory that even the
redoubted archers and haughty chivalry of England fled at the sight of
the Scottish banner!
Nor was it only in the field that the great and patriotic conduct of
Robert Bruce was displayed. In endeavor to restore the almost ruined
fortunes of his country and to heal the wounds which a war of
unparalleled severity had brought upon this people he exhibited the same
wise and beneficent policy. Under his auspicious rule, husbandry
revived, arts were encouraged, and the turbulent barons were awed into
subjection. Scotland recovered during his administration in a great
measure from the devastation that had preceded it; and the peasants,
forgetting the stern warrior in the beneficent monarch, long remembered
his sway under the name of the “good King Robert’s reign.”
But the greatness of his character appeared most of all from the events
that occurred after his death. When the capacity with which he and his
worthy associates Randolph and Douglas had counterbalanced the
superiority of English arms was withdrawn, the fabric which they had
supported fell to the ground. In the very first battle which was fought
after his death at Hamildon Hill, a larger army than that which
conquered at Bannockburn was overthrown by the archers of England,
without a single knight couching his spear. Never at any subsequent
period was Scotland able to stand the more powerful arms of the English
yeomanry. Thenceforward her military history is little more than a
melancholy catalogue of continued defeats, occasioned rather by
treachery on the part of her nobles or incapacity in her generals than
any defect of valor in her soldiers; and the independence of the
monarchy was maintained rather by the terror which the name of Bruce and
the remembrance of Bannockburn had inspired than by the achievements of
any of the successors to his throne.
The merits of Robert Bruce as a warrior are very generally acknowledged;
and the eyes of Scottish patriotism turn with the greater exultation to
his triumphs from the contrast which their splendor affords to the
barren annals of the subsequent reigns. But the important consequences
of his victories are not sufficiently appreciated. But for his bold and
unconquerable spirit, Scotland might have shared with Ireland the
severity of English conquest; and instead of exulting now in the
prosperity of our country, the energy of our peasantry, and the
patriotic spirit of our resident landed proprietors, we might have been
deploring with her an absent nobility, an oppressive tenantry, a bigoted
and ruined people.
EDWARD III, KING OF ENGLAND.
BY DAVID HUME.
[Son of Edward II of England and Isabella of France, born 1312,
crowned 1327, died 1377. Edward achieved the highest renown by his
Scotch and French wars, the latter of which he undertook as
claimant of the French throne through his mother. Though the latter
part of his life was marked by many misfortunes, the achievements
of his reign stamp it as among the most important in the earlier
English annals. It was not until this period that the English
language became universally recognized as the national speech, and
the various race elements were thoroughly welded and made
homogeneous.]
The English are apt to consider with peculiar fondness the history of
Edward III, and to esteem his reign, as it was one of the longest, the
most glorious, also, that occurs in the annals of their nation. The
ascendant which they then began to acquire over France, their rival and
supposed national enemy, makes them cast their eyes on this period with
great complacency, and sanctifies every measure which Edward embraced
for that end. But the domestic government of this prince is really more
admirable than his foreign victories; and England enjoyed, by the
prudence and vigor of his administration, a longer interval of domestic
peace and tranquillity than she had been blessed with in any former
period, or than she experienced for many ages after. He gained the
affections of the great, yet curbed their licentiousness; he made them
feel his power, without their daring, or even being inclined, to murmur
at it; his affable and obliging behavior, his munificence and
generosity, made them submit with pleasure to his dominion; his valor
and conduct made them successful in most of their enterprises; and their
unquiet spirits, directed against a public enemy, had no leisure to
breed those disturbances to which they were naturally so much inclined,
and which the frame of the government seemed so much to authorize.
This was the chief benefit which resulted from Edward’s victories and
conquests. His foreign wars were in other respects neither founded in
justice nor directed to any salutary purpose. His attempt against the
King of Scotland, a minor and a brother-in-law, and the revival of his
grandfather’s claim of superiority over that kingdom were both
unreasonable and ungenerous; and he allowed himself to be too easily
seduced, by the glaring prospect of French conquests, from the
acquisition of a point which was practicable, and which, if attained,
might really have been of lasting utility to his country and his
successors. The success which he met with in France, though chiefly
owing to his eminent talents, was unexpected; and yet from the very
nature of things, not from any unforeseen accidents, was found, even
during his lifetime, to have procured him no solid advantages. But the
glory of a conqueror is so dazzling to the vulgar, the animosity of
nations is so violent, that the fruitless desolation of so fine a part
of Europe as France is totally disregarded by us, and is never
considered as a blemish in the character or conduct of this prince; and,
indeed, from the unfortunate state of human nature, it will commonly
happen that a sovereign of genius, such as Edward, who usually finds
everything easy in his domestic government, will turn himself toward
military enterprises, where alone he meets with opposition, and where
he has full exercise for his industry and capacity.
It is remarked by an elegant historian that conquerors, though usually
the bane of human kind, proved often, in those feudal times, the most
indulgent of sovereigns. They stood most in need of supplies from their
people; and not being able to compel them by force to submit to the
necessary impositions, they were obliged to make them some compensation
by equitable laws and popular concessions. This remark is, in some
measure, though imperfectly, justified by the conduct of Edward III. He
took no steps of moment without consulting his Parliament and obtaining
their approbation, which he afterward pleaded as a reason for their
supporting his measures. The Parliament, therefore, rose into greater
consideration during his reign, and acquired more regular authority than
in any former time; and even the House of Commons, which during
turbulent and factious periods, was naturally depressed by the greater
power of the crown and barons, began to appear of some weight in the
constitution. In the later years of Edward, the king’s ministers were
impeached in Parliament, particularly Lord Latimer, who fell a sacrifice
to the authority of the Commons; and they even obliged the king to
banish his mistress by their remonstrances. Some attention was also paid
to the election of their members; and lawyers, in particular, who were
at that time men of character somewhat inferior, were totally excluded
from the House during several Parliaments.
Edward granted about twenty parliamentary confirmations of the great
charter; and these concessions are commonly appealed to as proofs of his
great indulgence to the people and his tender regard for their
liberties. But the contrary presumption is more natural. If the maxims
of Edward’s reign had not been in general somewhat arbitrary, and if the
great charter had not been frequently violated, the Parliament would
never have applied for these frequent confirmations, which could add no
force to a deed regularly observed, and which could serve to no other
purpose than to prevent the contrary precedents from turning into a
rule, and acquiring authority. It was indeed the effect of the irregular
government during those ages that a statute which had been enacted some
years, instead of acquiring, was imagined to lose force by time, and
needed to be often renewed by recent statutes of the same sense and
tenor. Hence, likewise, that general clause, so frequent in old acts of
Parliament, that the statutes enacted by the king’s progenitors should
be observed--a precaution which, if we do not consider the circumstances
of the times, might appear absurd and ridiculous. The frequent
confirmations of the privileges of the Church proceeded from the same
cause.
There is not a reign among those of the ancient English monarchs which
deserves more to be studied than that of Edward III, nor one where the
domestic transactions will better discover the true genius of that kind
of mixed government which was then established in England. The struggles
with regard to the validity and authority of the great charter were now
over; the king was acknowledged to lie under some limitations; Edward
himself was a prince of great capacity, not governed by favorites, not
led astray by any unruly passion, sensible that nothing could be more
essential to his interest than to keep on good terms with his people;
yet, on the whole, it appears, that the government at best was only a
barbarous monarchy, not regulated by any fixed maxims nor bounded by any
certain undisputed rights which in practice were regularly observed. The
king conducted himself by one set of principles, the barons by another,
the Commons by a third, the clergy by a fourth. All these systems of
government were opposite and incompatible; each of them prevailed in its
turn, as incidents were favorable to it; a great prince rendered the
monarchical power predominant; the weakness of a king gave reins to the
aristocracy: a superstitious age saw the clergy triumphant; the people,
for whom chiefly government was instituted, and who chiefly deserve
consideration, were the weakest of the whole. But the Commons, little
obnoxious to any other order, though they sunk under the violence of
tempests, silently reared their head in more peaceable times; and while
the storm was brewing were courted on all sides, and thus received still
some accession to their privileges, or at worst some confirmation of
them.
RIENZI.
BY EDWARD GIBBON.
[Cola Gabrini Rienzi, the “last of the Roman tribunes,” born about
1312, died by assassination during a popular _emeute_, 1354.
Inspired by his patriotic enthusiasm and made powerful by his
eloquence, Rienzi, during the troubles in Rome ensuing on the
removal of the Papal See to Avignon, organized an insurrection
against the turbulent and factious nobles. The latter were crushed
and driven from Rome, and Rienzi rose to supreme power under the
title of “tribune.” Success, however, corrupted the republican
virtues of the _parvenu_ tribune of the new republic; and his
arrogance and splendor soon laid heavy burdens of taxation on the
people, which provoked a reaction. He was finally driven from power
and compelled to seek safety in flight. The return of the barons
and their iron oppression, however, paved the way for the
successful return of Rienzi to the chief magistracy in 1354.
Unwarned by experience he again resumed the pomp and pride of
royalty, and was shortly after killed in an insurrection of the
citizens of Rome.]
In a quarter of the city which was inhabited only by mechanics and Jews,
the marriage of an innkeeper and a washerwoman produced the future
deliverer of Rome. From such parents Nicholas Rienzi Gabrini could
inherit neither dignity nor fortune; and the gift of a liberal
education, which they painfully bestowed, was the cause of his glory and
untimely end. The study of history and eloquence, the writings of
Cicero, Seneca, Livy, Cæsar, and Valerius Maximus elevated above his
equals and contemporaries the genius of the young plebeian; he perused
with indefatigable diligence the manuscripts and marbles of antiquity;
loved to dispense his knowledge in familiar language; and was often
provoked to exclaim: “Where are now these Romans? their virtue, their
justice, their power? Why was I not born in those happy times?” When the
republic addressed to the throne of Avignon an embassy of the three
orders, the spirit and eloquence of Rienzi recommended him to a place
among the thirteen deputies of the commons. The orator had the honor of
haranguing Pope Clement VI, and the satisfaction of conversing with
Petrarch, a congenial mind; but his aspiring hopes were chilled by
disgrace and poverty, and the patriot was reduced to a single garment
and the charity of the hospital. From this misery he was relieved by the
sense of merit or smile of favor; and the employment of apostolic notary
afforded him a daily stipend of five gold florins, a more honorable and
extensive connection, and the right of contrasting, both in words and
actions, his own integrity with the vices of the state. The eloquence of
Rienzi was prompt and persuasive; the multitude is always prone to envy
and censure; he was stimulated by the loss of a brother and the impunity
of the assassins; nor was it possible to excuse or exaggerate the public
calamities.
A prophecy, or rather a summons, affixed on the church door of St.
George, was the first public evidence of his designs; a nocturnal (May
20, A.D. 1347) assembly of a hundred citizens on Mount Aventine, the
first step to their execution. After an oath of secrecy and aid, he
represented to the conspirators the importance and facility of their
enterprise; that the nobles, without union or resources, were strong
only in the fear of their imaginary strength; that all power, as well as
right, was in the hands of the people; that the revenues of the
apostolical chamber might relieve the public distress; and that the Pope
himself would approve their victory over the common enemies of
government and freedom. After securing a faithful band to protect his
first declaration, he proclaimed through the city, by sound of trumpet,
that on the evening of the following day all persons should assemble
without arms before the church of St. Angelo to provide for the
re-establishment of the good estate. The whole night was employed in the
celebration of thirty masses of the Holy Ghost, and in the morning,
Rienzi, bareheaded, but in complete armor, issued from the church,
encompassed by the hundred conspirators.
The Pope’s vicar, the simple Bishop of Orvieto, who had been persuaded
to sustain a part in this singular ceremony, marched on his right hand,
and three great standards were borne aloft as the emblems of their
design. In the first, the banner of _liberty_, Rome was seated on two
lions, with a palm in one hand and a globe in the other; St. Paul, with
a drawn sword, was delineated in the banner of _justice_; and in the
third, St. Peter held the keys of _concord_ and _peace_. Rienzi was
encouraged by the presence and applause of an innumerable crowd, who
understood little and hoped much; and the procession slowly rolled
forward from the castle of St. Angelo to the Capitol. His triumph was
disturbed by some secret emotions which he labored to suppress; he
ascended without opposition, and with seeming confidence, the citadel of
the republic, harangued the people from the balcony, and received the
most flattering confirmation of his acts and laws. The nobles, as if
destitute of arms and counsels, beheld in silent consternation this
strange revolution; and the moment had been prudently chosen, when the
most formidable, Stephen Colonna, was absent from the city. On the first
rumor, he returned to his palace, affected to despise this plebeian
tumult, and declared to the messenger of Rienzi that at his leisure he
would cast the madman from the windows of the Capitol. The great bell
instantly rang an alarm, and so rapid was the tide, so urgent was the
danger, that Colonna escaped with precipitation to the suburb of St.
Laurence; from thence, after a moment’s refreshment, he continued the
same speedy career till he reached in safety his castle of Palestrina,
lamenting his own imprudence, which had not trampled the spark of this
mighty conflagration. A general and peremptory order was issued from the
Capitol to all the nobles that they should peaceably retire to their
estates; they obeyed, and their departure secured the tranquillity of
the free and obedient citizens of Rome.
Never, perhaps, has the energy and effect of a single mind been more
remarkably felt than in the sudden though transient reformation of Rome
by the tribune Rienzi. A den of robbers was converted to the discipline
of a camp or convent; patient to hear, swift to redress, inexorable to
punish, his tribunal was always accessible to the poor and stranger; nor
could birth or dignity or the immunities of the Church protect the
offender or his accomplices. The privileged houses, the private
sanctuaries in Rome, on which no officer of justice would presume to
trespass, were abolished; and he applied the timber and iron of their
barricades in the fortifications of the Capitol. The venerable father of
the Colonna was exposed in his own palace to the double shame of being
desirous and of being unable to protect a criminal. A mule, with a jar
of oil, had been stolen near Capranica, and the lord of the Ursini
family was condemned to restore the damage and to discharge a fine of
four hundred florins for his negligence in guarding the highways. Nor
were the persons of the barons more inviolate than their lands or
houses, and, either from accident or design, the same impartial rigor
was exercised against the heads of the adverse factions.
Peter Agapet Colonna, who had himself been senator of Rome, was arrested
in the street for injury or debt; and justice was appeased by the tardy
execution of Martin Ursini, who, among his various acts of violence and
rapine, had pillaged a shipwrecked vessel at the mouth of the Tiber.
His name, the purple of two cardinals, his uncles, a recent marriage,
and a mortal disease were disregarded by the inflexible tribune, who had
chosen his victim. The public officers dragged him from his palace and
nuptial bed; his trial was short and satisfactory; the bell of the
Capitol convened the people. Stripped of his mantle, on his knees, with
his hands bound behind his back, he heard the sentence of death, and,
after a brief confession, Ursini was led away to the gallows. After such
an example, none who were conscious of guilt could hope for impunity,
and the flight of the wicked, the licentious, and the idle soon purified
the city and territory of Rome. In this time (says the historian) the
woods began to rejoice that they were no longer infested with robbers;
the oxen began to plow; the pilgrims visited the sanctuaries; the roads
and inns were replenished with travelers; trade, plenty, and good faith
were restored in the markets; and a purse of gold might be exposed
without danger in the midst of the highway. As soon as the life and
property of the subject are secure, the labors and rewards of industry
spontaneously revive. Rome was still the metropolis of the Christian
world, and the fame and fortunes of the tribune were diffused in every
country by the strangers who had enjoyed the blessings of his
government.
The deliverance of his country inspired Rienzi with a vast and perhaps
visionary idea of uniting Italy in a great federative republic, of which
Rome should be the ancient and lawful head, and the free cities and
princes the members and associates. His pen was not less eloquent than
his tongue, and his numerous epistles were delivered to swift and trusty
messengers. On foot, with a white wand in their hand, they traversed the
forests and mountains; enjoyed, in the most hostile states, the sacred
security of ambassadors; and reported, in the style of flattery or
truth, that the highways along their passage were lined with kneeling
multitudes, who implored Heaven for the success of their undertaking.
Beyond the Alps, more especially at Avignon, the revolution was the
theme of curiosity, wonder, and applause. Petrarch had been the private
friend, perhaps the secret counselor, of Rienzi; his writings breathe
the most ardent spirit of patriotism and joy; and all respect for the
Pope, all gratitude for the Colonna, was lost in the superior duties of
a Roman citizen. The poet-laureate of the Capitol maintains the act,
applauds the hero, and mingles with some apprehension and advice the
most lofty hopes of the permanent and rising greatness of the republic.
While Petrarch indulged these prophetic visions the Roman hero was fast
declining from the meridian of fame and power; and the people who had
gazed with astonishment on the ascending meteor began to mark the
irregularity of its course and the vicissitudes of light and obscurity.
More eloquent than judicious, more enterprising than resolute, the
faculties of Rienzi were not balanced by cool and commanding reason; he
magnified in a tenfold proportion the objects of hope and fear; and
prudence, which could not have erected, did not presume to fortify his
throne. In the blaze of prosperity his virtues were insensibly tinctured
with the adjacent vices--justice with cruelty, liberality with
profusion, and the desire of fame with puerile and ostentatious vanity.
He might have learned that the ancient tribunes, so strong and sacred in
the public opinion, were not distinguished in style, habit, or
appearance from an ordinary plebeian; and that as often as they visited
the city on foot a single _viator_, or beadle, attended the exercise of
their office. The Gracchi would have frowned or smiled could they have
read the sonorous titles and epithets of their successor, “NICHOLAS,
SEVERE AND MERCIFUL; DELIVERER OF ROME; DEFENDER OF ITALY; FRIEND OF
MANKIND, AND OF LIBERTY, PEACE, AND JUSTICE; TRIBUNE AUGUST.” His
theatrical pageants had prepared the revolution; but Rienzi abused, in
luxury and pride, the political maxim of speaking to the eyes as well as
the understanding of the multitude. From nature he had received the
gift of a handsome person till it was swelled and disfigured by
intemperance; and his propensity to laughter was corrected in the
magistrate by the affectation of gravity and sternness. He was clothed,
at least on public occasions, in a party-colored robe of velvet or satin
lined with fur and embroidered with gold. The rod of justice, which he
carried in his hand, was a scepter of polished steel, crowned with a
globe and cross of gold, and inclosing a small fragment of the true and
holy wood. In his civil and religious processions through the city he
rode on a white steed, the symbol of royalty. The great banner of the
republic, a sun with a circle of stars, a dove with an olive-branch, was
displayed over his head; a shower of gold and silver was scattered among
the populace; fifty guards with halberds encompassed his person; a troop
of horse preceded his march, and their cymbals and trumpets were of
massy silver.
These extraordinary spectacles might deceive or flatter the people; and
their own vanity was gratified in the vanity of their leader. But in his
private life he soon deviated from the strict rule of frugality and
abstinence; and the plebeians, who were awed by the splendor of the
nobles, were provoked by the luxury of their equal. His wife, his son,
his uncle (a barber in name and profession), exposed the contrast of
vulgar manners and princely expense; and without acquiring the majesty,
Rienzi degenerated into the vices of a king.
TIMOUR OR TAMERLANE.
BY EDWARD GIBBON.
[Tamerlane, corruption of Timour Lenk (“the lame”), born 1336, died
1405. One of the greatest conquerors of history, he was a second
Genghis Khan, whom he resembled much in character. His descendants
speedily lost the greater part of his conquests, and the last of
his family fell before the power of the English East India Company
in India, of which he had become a mere pensioner, though nominally
the “Great Mogul” and Emperor of Delhi.]
The conquest and monarchy of the world was the first object of the
ambition of Timour. To live in the memory and esteem of future ages was
the second wish of his magnanimous spirit. All the civil and military
transactions of his reign were diligently recorded in the journals of
his secretaries; the authentic narrative was revised by the persons best
informed of each particular transaction, and it is believed in the
empire and family of Timour that the monarch himself composed the
“Commentaries” of his life and the “Institutions” of his government. But
these cares were ineffectual for the preservation of his fame, and these
precious memorials in the Mogul or Persian language were concealed from
the world, or at least from the knowledge of Europe. The nations which
he vanquished exercised a base and impotent revenge; and ignorance has
long repeated the tale of calumny which had disfigured the birth and
character, the person, and even the name of _Tamerlane_. Yet his real
merit would be enhanced, rather than debased, by the elevation of a
peasant to the throne of Asia; nor can his lameness be a theme of
reproach, unless he had the weakness to blush at a natural, or perhaps
an honorable, infirmity.
In the eyes of the Moguls, who held the indefeasible succession of the
house of Zingis, he was doubtless a rebel subject; yet he sprang from
the noble tribe of Berlass; his fifth ancestor, Carashar Nevian, had
been the vizier of Zagatai in his new realm of Transoxiana; and in the
ascent of some generations the branch of Timour is confounded, at least
by the females, with the imperial stem. He was born forty miles to the
south of Samarcand, in the village of Sebzar, in the fruitful territory
of Cash, of which his fathers were the hereditary chiefs, as well as of
a toman of ten thousand horse. His birth was cast on one of those
periods of anarchy which announce the fall of the Asiatic dynasties, and
opened a new field to adventurous ambition. The khans of Zagatai were
extinct, the emirs aspired to independence, and their domestic feuds
could only be suspended by the conquest and tyranny of the khans of
Kashgar, who, with an army of Getes or Calmucks, invaded the Transoxian
kingdom.
From the twelfth year of his age, Timour had entered the field of
action; in the twenty-fifth he stood forth as the deliverer of his
country; and the eyes and wishes of the people were turned toward a hero
who suffered in their cause. The chiefs of the law and of the army had
pledged their salvation to support him with their lives and fortunes;
but in the hour of danger they were silent and afraid; and, after
waiting seven days on the hills of Samarcand, he retreated to the desert
with only sixty horsemen. The fugitives were overtaken by a thousand
Getes, whom he repulsed with incredible slaughter, and his enemies were
forced to exclaim, “Timour is a wonderful man; fortune and the divine
favor are with him.” But in this bloody action his own followers were
reduced to ten, a number which was soon diminished by the desertion of
three Carizmians. He wandered in the desert with his wife, seven
companions, and four horses; and sixty-two days was he plunged in a
loathsome dungeon, whence he escaped by his own courage and the remorse
of the oppressor. After swimming the broad and rapid stream of the
Jihoon, or Oxus, he led, during some months, the life of a vagrant and
outlaw, on the borders of the adjacent states. But his fame shone
brighter in adversity; he learned to distinguish the friends of his
person, the associates of his fortune, and to apply the various
characters of men for their advantage, and above all for his own. On his
return to his native country, Timour was successively joined by the
parties of his confederates, who anxiously sought him in the desert; nor
can I refuse to describe, in his pathetic simplicity, one of their
fortunate encounters. He presented himself as a guide to three chiefs,
who were at the head of seventy horse. “When their eyes fell upon me,”
says Timour, “they were overwhelmed with joy; and they alighted from
their horses; and they came and kneeled; and they kissed my stirrup. I
also came down from my horse, and took each of them in my arms. And I
put my turban on the head of the first chief; and my girdle, rich in
jewels and wrought with gold, I bound on the loins of the second; and
the third, I clothed in my own coat. And they wept, and I wept also; and
the hour of prayer was arrived, and we prayed. And we mounted our
horses, and came to my dwelling; and I collected my people, and made a
feast.”
His trusty hands were soon increased by the bravest of the tribes; he
led them against a superior foe, and after some vicissitudes of war, the
Getes were finally driven from the kingdom of Transoxiana. He had done
much for his own glory, but much remained to be done, much art to be
exerted, and some blood to be spilled, before he could teach his equals
to obey him as their master. The birth and power of Emir Houssein
compelled him to accept a vicious and unworthy colleague, whose sister
was the best beloved of his wives. Their union was short and jealous;
but the policy of Timour in their frequent quarrels exposed his rival to
the reproach of injustice and perfidy; and, after a small defeat,
Houssein was slain by some sagacious friends, who presumed, for the last
time, to disobey the commands of their lord.
At the age of thirty-four, and in a general diet or _couroultai_, he was
invested with imperial command, but he affected to revere the house of
Zingis; and while the Emir Timour reigned over Zagatai and the East, a
nominal khan served as a private officer in the armies of his servant. A
fertile kingdom, five hundred miles in length and in breadth, might have
satisfied the ambition of a subject; but Timour aspired to the dominion
of the world, and before his death the crown of Zagatai was one of the
twenty-seven crowns which he had placed on his head.
The fame of Timour has pervaded the East and West; his posterity is
still invested with the imperial title; and the admiration of his
subjects, who revered him almost as a deity, may be justified in some
degree by the praise or confession of his bitterest enemies. Although he
was lame of a hand and foot, his form and stature were not unworthy of
his rank; and his vigorous health, so essential to himself and to the
world, was corroborated by temperance and exercise. In his familiar
discourse he was grave and modest, and, if he was ignorant of the Arabic
language, he spoke with fluency and elegance the Persian and Turkish
idioms. It was his delight to converse with the learned on topics of
history and science; and the amusement of his leisure hours was the game
of chess, which he improved or corrupted with new refinements. In his
religion he was a zealous though not perhaps an orthodox Mussulman; but
his sound understanding may tempt us to believe, that a superstitious
reverence for omens and prophecies, for saints and astrologers, was only
affected as an instrument of policy.
In the government of a vast empire, he stood alone and absolute, without
a rebel to oppose his power, a favorite to seduce his affections, or a
minister to mislead his judgment. It was his firmest maxim that,
whatever might be the consequence, the word of the prince should never
be disputed or recalled; but his foes have maliciously observed that the
commands of anger and destruction were more strictly executed than those
of beneficence and favor. His sons and grandsons, of whom Timour left
six-and-thirty at his decease, were his first and most submissive
subjects; and whenever they deviated from their duty they were
corrected, according to the laws of Zingis, with the bastinado, and
afterward restored to honor and command. Perhaps his heart was not
devoid of the social virtues; perhaps he was not incapable of loving his
friends and pardoning his enemies; but the rules of morality are founded
on the public interest, and it may be sufficient to applaud the wisdom
of a monarch, for the liberality by which he is not impoverished, and
for the justice by which he is strengthened and enriched. To maintain
the harmony of authority and obedience, to chastise the proud, to
protect the weak, to reward the deserving, to banish vice and idleness
from his dominions, to secure the traveler and merchant, to restrain the
depredations of the soldier, to cherish the labors of the husbandman, to
encourage industry and learning, and, by an equal and moderate
assessment, to increase the revenue, without increasing the taxes--are
indeed the duties of a prince; but, in the discharge of these duties, he
finds an ample and immediate recompense. Timour might boast that at his
accession to the throne Asia was the prey of anarchy and rapine, while
under his prosperous monarchy a child, fearless and unhurt, might carry
a purse of gold from the east to the west. Such was his confidence of
merit, that from this reformation he derived an excuse for his victories
and a title to universal dominion.
The following observations will serve to appreciate his claim to the
public gratitude; and perhaps we shall conclude that the Mogul emperor
was rather the scourge than the benefactor of mankind. If some partial
disorders, some local oppressions, were healed by the sword of Timour,
the remedy was far more pernicious than the disease. By their rapine,
cruelty, and discord, the petty tyrants of Persia might afflict their
subjects; but whole nations were crushed under the footsteps of the
reformer. The ground which had been occupied by flourishing cities, was
often marked by his abominable trophies--by columns or pyramids of human
heads. Astrakhan, Carizme, Delhi, Ispahan, Bagdad, Aleppo, Damascus,
Boursa, Smyrna, and a thousand others were sacked or burned or utterly
destroyed in his presence and by his troops; and perhaps his conscience
would have been startled if a priest or philosopher had dared to number
the millions of victims whom he had sacrificed to the establishment of
peace and order. His most destructive wars were rather inroads than
conquests. He invaded Turkistan, Kipzak, Russia, Hindostan, Syria,
Anatolia, Armenia, and Georgia, without a hope or a desire of preserving
those distant provinces. Thence he departed laden with spoil; but he
left behind him neither troops to awe the contumacious, nor magistrates
to protect the obedient natives. When he had broken the fabric of their
ancient government he abandoned them to the evils which his invasion had
aggravated or caused; nor were these evils compensated by any present or
possible benefits.
The kingdoms of Transoxiana and Persia were the proper field which he
labored to cultivate and adorn as the perpetual inheritance of his
family. But his peaceful labors were often interrupted, and sometimes
blasted, by the absence of the conqueror. While he triumphed on the
Volga or the Ganges, his servants, and even his sons, forgot their
master and their duty. The public and private injuries were poorly
redressed by the tardy rigor of inquiry and punishment; and we must be
content to praise the “Institutions” of Timour, as the specious idea of
a perfect monarchy. Whatsoever might be the blessings of his
administration, they evaporated with his life. To reign, rather than to
govern, was the ambition of his children and grandchildren--the enemies
of each other and of the people. A fragment of the empire was upheld
with some glory by Sharokh, his youngest son; but after _his_ decease,
the scene was again involved in darkness and blood, and, before the end
of a century, Transoxiana and Persia were trampled by the Uzbecks from
the north, and the Turkomans of the black and white sheep. The race of
Timour would have been extinct, if a hero, his descendant in the fifth
degree, had not fled before the Uzbeck arms to the conquest of
Hindostan. His successors (the great Moguls) extended their sway from
the mountains of Cashmir to Cape Comorin, and from Candahar to the Gulf
of Bengal. Since the reign of Aurungzebe, their empire has been
dissolved, the treasures of Delhi have been rifled by a Persian robber,
and the richest of their kingdoms is now possessed by a company of
Christian merchants, of a remote island in the northern ocean.[23]
JEANNE D’ARC.
BY JOHN RICHARD GREEN.
[A French heroine, otherwise known as La Pucelle and the Maid of
Orleans, date of birth uncertain, burned at the stake by English
influence as a sorceress at Rouen in 1431. Her enthusiasm and the
belief in the supernatural mission so inspired the French and
daunted the English as to turn the tide of war against the latter,
and was a main cause of ending that series of English invasions
which had imperiled the national existence of France.]
Jeanne d’Arc was the child of a laborer of Domrémy, a little village in
the neighborhood of Vaucouleurs on the borders of Lorraine and
Champagne. Just without the cottage where she was born began the great
woods of the Vosges, where the children of Domrémy drank in poetry and
legend from fairy ring and haunted well, hung their flower garlands on
the sacred trees, and sang songs to the “good people,” who might not
drink of the fountain because of their sins. Jeanne loved the forest;
its birds and beasts came lovingly to her at her childish call. But at
home men saw nothing in her but “a good girl, simple and pleasant in her
ways,” spinning and sewing by her mother’s side while the other girls
went to the fields, attended to the poor and sick, fond of church, and
listening to the church-bell with a dreamy passion of delight which
never left her. The quiet life was soon broken by the storm of war as it
at last came home to Domrémy. As the outcasts and wounded passed by the
young peasant-girl gave them her bed and nursed them in their sickness.
Her whole nature summed itself up in one absorbing passion: she “had
pity,” to use the phrase forever on her lip, “on the fair realm of
France.”
As her passion grew she recalled old prophecies that a maid from the
Lorraine border should save the land; she saw visions; St. Michael
appeared to her in a flood of blinding light, and bade her go to the
help of the king and restore to him his realm. “Messire,” answered the
girl, “I am but a poor maiden; I know not how to ride to the wars, or to
lead men-at-arms.” The archangel returned to give her courage, and to
tell her of “the pity” that there was in heaven for the fair realm of
France. The girl wept, and longed that the angels who appeared to her
would carry her away, but her mission was clear. It was in vain that her
father, when he heard her purpose, swore to drown her ere she should go
to the field with men-at-arms. It was in vain that the priest, the wise
people of the village, the captain of Vaucouleurs, doubted and refused
to aid her. “I must go to the king,” persisted the peasant-girl, “even
if I wear my limbs to the very knees.... I had far rather rest and spin
by my mother’s side,” she pleaded, with a touching pathos, “for this is
no work of my choosing, but I must go and do it, for my Lord wills it.”
“And who,” they asked, “is your Lord?” “He is God.” Words such as these
touched the rough captain at last; he took Jeanne by the hand and swore
to lead her to the king. When she reached Chinon she found hesitation
and doubt. The theologians proved from their books that they ought not
to believe her. “There is more in God’s book than in yours,” Jeanne
answered, simply. At last Charles received her in the midst of a throng
of nobles and soldiers. “Gentle Dauphin,” said the girl, “my name is
Jeanne the Maid. The heavenly King sends me to tell you that you shall
be anointed and crowned in the town of Rheims, and you shall be
lieutenant of the heavenly King who is the King of France.”
The girl was in her eighteenth year, tall, finely formed, with all the
vigor and activity of her peasant rearing, able to stay from dawn to
nightfall on horseback without meat or drink. As she mounted her
charger, clad in white armor from head to foot, with the great white
banner studded with _fleur-de-lis_ waving over her head, she seemed “a
thing wholly divine, whether to see or hear.” The ten thousand
men-at-arms who followed her from Blois, rough plunderers whose only
prayer was that of La Hire, “Sire Dieu, I pray you to do for La Hire
what La Hire would do for you were you captain-at-arms and he God,” left
off their oaths and foul living at her word and gathered round the
altars on their march. Her shrewd peasant humor helped her to manage the
wild soldiery, and her followers laughed over their camp-fires at the
old warrior who had been so puzzled by her prohibition of oaths that she
suffered him still to swear by his _bâton_. In the midst of her
enthusiasm her good sense never left her. The people crowded round her
as she rode along, praying her to work miracles, and bringing crosses
and chaplets to be blessed by her touch. “Touch them yourself,” she said
to an old Dame Margaret; “your touch will be just as good as mine.” But
her faith in her mission remained as firm as ever. “The Maid prays and
requires you,” she wrote to Bedford, “to work no more distraction in
France, but to come in her company to rescue the Holy Sepulchre from the
Turk.”--“I bring you,” she told Dunois when he sallied out of Orleans to
meet her, “the best aid ever sent to any one, the aid of the King of
Heaven.”
The besiegers looked on overawed as she entered Orleans, and, riding
round the walls, bade the people look fearlessly on the dreaded forts
which surrounded them. Her enthusiasm drove the hesitating generals to
engage the handful of besiegers, and the enormous disproportion of
forces at once made itself felt. Fort after fort was taken till only the
strongest remained, and then the council of war resolved to adjourn the
attack. “You have taken your counsel,” replied Jeanne, “and I take
mine.” Placing herself at the head of the men-at-arms, she ordered the
gates to be thrown open, and led them against the fort. Few as they
were, the English fought desperately, and the Maid, who had fallen
wounded while endeavoring to scale its walls, was borne into a vineyard,
while Dunois sounded the retreat. “Wait a while!” the girl imperiously
pleaded, “eat and drink! So soon as my standard touches the wall you
shall enter the fort.” It touched, and the assailants burst in. On the
next day the siege was abandoned, and the force which had conducted it
withdrew in good order to the north.
In the midst of her triumph, Jeanne still remained the pure,
tender-hearted peasant-girl of the Vosges. Her first visit as she
entered Orleans was to the great church, and there, as she knelt at
mass, she wept in such a passion of devotion that “all the people wept
with her.” Her tears burst forth afresh at her first sight of bloodshed
and of the corpses strewed over the battle-field. She grew frightened at
her first wound, and only threw off the touch of womanly fear when she
heard the signal for retreat.
Yet more womanly was the purity with which she passed through the brutal
warriors of a mediæval camp. It was her care for her honor that had led
her to clothe herself in a soldier’s dress. She wept hot tears when told
of the foul taunts of the English, and called passionately on God to
witness her chastity. “Yield thee, yield thee, Glasdale,” she cried to
the English warrior whose insults had been foulest, as he fell wounded
at her feet; “you called me harlot! I have great pity on your soul.” But
all thought of herself was lost in the thought of her mission. It was in
vain that the French generals strove to remain on the Loire. Jeanne was
resolute to complete her task, and, while the English remained
panic-stricken around Paris, the army followed her from Gien through
Troyes, growing in number as it advanced, till it reached the gates of
Rheims. With the coronation of Charles, the Maid felt her errand to be
over. “O gentle king, the pleasure of God is done!” she cried, as she
flung herself at the feet of Charles VII, and asked leave to go home.
“Would it were his pleasure,” she pleaded with the archbishop, as he
forced her to remain, “that I might go and keep sheep once more with my
sisters and my brothers; they would be so glad to see me again!”
The policy of the French court detained her while the cities of the
north of France opened their gates to the newly consecrated king.
Bedford, however, who had been left without money or men, had now
received re-enforcements, and Charles, after a repulse before the walls
of Paris, fell back behind the Loire, while the towns on the Oise
submitted again to the Duke of Burgundy. In this later struggle Jeanne
fought with her usual bravery, but with the fatal consciousness that her
mission was at an end, and during the defense of Compiègne she fell into
the power of the Bastard of Vendôme, to be sold by her captor into the
hands of the Duke of Burgundy, and by the duke into the hands of the
English. To the English her triumphs were victories of sorcery, and
after a year’s imprisonment she was brought to trial on a charge of
heresy before an ecclesiastical court with the Bishop of Beauvais at its
head. Throughout the long process which followed every art was employed
to entangle her in her talk. But the simple shrewdness of the
peasant-girl foiled the efforts of her judges. “Do you believe,” they
asked, “that you are in a state of grace?” “If I am not,” she replied,
“God will put me in it. If I am, God will keep me in it.” Her capture,
they argued, showed that God had forsaken her. “Since it has pleased God
that I should be taken,” she answered, meekly, “it is for the best.”
“Will you submit,” they demanded, at last, “to the judgment of the
Church militant?” “I have come to the King of France,” Jeanne replied,
“by commission from God and from the Church triumphant above; to that
Church I submit.... I had far rather die,” she ended, passionately,
“than renounce what I have done by my Lord’s command.” They deprived
her of mass. “Our Lord can make me hear it without your aid,” she said,
weeping. “Do your voices,” asked the judges, “forbid you to submit to
the Church and the Pope?” “Ah, no! Our Lord first served.”
Sick, and deprived of all religious aid, it is no wonder that, as the
long trial dragged on and question followed question, Jeanne’s firmness
wavered. On the charge of sorcery and diabolical possession she still
appealed firmly to God. “I hold to my Judge,” she said, as her earthly
judges gave sentence against her, “to the King of Heaven and Earth. God
has always been my lord in all that I have done. The devil has never had
power over me.” It was only with a view to be delivered from the
military prison and transferred to the prisons of the Church that she
consented to a formal abjuration of heresy. She feared, in fact, among
the English soldiery those outrages to her honor, to guard against which
she had from the first assumed the dress of a man. In the eyes of the
Church her dress was a crime, and she abandoned it; but a renewed insult
forced her to resume the one safeguard left her, and the return to it
was treated as a relapse into heresy, which doomed her to death. A great
pile was raised in the market-place of Rouen where her statue stands
now. Even the brutal soldiers who snatched the hated “witch” from the
hands of the clergy and hurried her to her doom were hushed as she
reached the stake. One indeed passed to her a rough cross he had made
from a stick he held, and she clasped it to her bosom. “O Rouen, Rouen!”
she was heard to murmur, as her eyes ranged over the city from the lofty
scaffold, “I have great fear lest you suffer for my death.... Yes; my
voices were of God!” she suddenly cried, as the last moment came; “they
have never deceived me!” Soon the flames reached her, the girl’s head
sank on her breast, there was one cry of “Jesus!” “We are lost,” an
English soldier muttered, as the crowd broke up; “we have burned a
saint!”
MAHOMET OR MOHAMMED II.
BY EDWARD GIBBON.
[Surnamed the Great and the Victorious, born 1430, died 1481. His
main title to fame is that he consummated the dreams of his
predecessors, and after a siege of nearly two months, with a force
of two hundred and fifty thousand men and a large fleet, carried
the city of Constantinople by storm on May 29, 1453.]
The siege of Constantinople by the Turks attracts our first attention to
the person and character of the great destroyer. Mahomet II was the son
of the second Amurath; and though his mother had been decorated with the
titles of Christian and princess, she is more probably confounded with
the numerous concubines who peopled from every climate the harem of the
sultan. His first education and sentiments were those of a devout
Mussulman; and as often as he conversed with an infidel, he purified his
hands and face by the legal rites of ablution. Age and empire appear to
have relaxed this narrow bigotry; his aspiring genius disdained to
acknowledge a power above his own, and in his looser hours he presumed
(it is said) to brand the Prophet of Mecca as a robber and impostor. Yet
the sultan persevered in a decent reverence for the doctrine and
discipline of the Koran. His private indiscretion must have been sacred
from the vulgar ear, and we should suspect the credulity of strangers
and sectaries, so prone to believe that a mind which is hardened against
truth must be armed with superior contempt for absurdity and error.
Under the tuition of the most skillful masters, Mahomet advanced with an
early and rapid progress in the paths of knowledge; and, besides his
native tongue, it is affirmed that he spoke or understood five
languages--the Arabic, the Persian, the Chaldean or Hebrew, the Latin,
and the Greek. The Persian might indeed contribute to his amusement, and
the Arabic to his edification; and such studies are familiar to the
Oriental youth. In the intercourse of the Greeks and Turks, a conqueror
might wish to converse with the people over whom he was ambitious to
reign; his own praises in Latin poetry or prose might find a passage to
the royal ear; but what use or merit could recommend to the statesman or
the scholar the uncouth dialect of his Hebrew slaves?
The history and geography of the world were familiar to his memory; the
lives of the heroes of the East, perhaps of the West, excited his
emulation; his skill in astrology is excused by the folly of the times,
and supposes some rudiments of mathematical science; and a profane taste
for the arts is betrayed in his liberal invitation and reward of the
painters of Italy. But the influence of religion and learning was
employed without effect on his savage and licentious nature. I will not
transcribe, nor do I firmly believe, the stories of his fourteen pages,
whose bellies were ripped open in search of a stolen melon, or of the
beauteous slave whose head he severed from her body, to convince the
Janizaries that their master was not the votary of love. His sobriety is
attested by the silence of the Turkish annals, which accuse three, and
three only, of the Ottoman line of the vice of drunkenness.
But it can not be denied that his passions were at once furious and
inexorable; that in the palace, as in the field, a torrent of blood was
spilled on the slightest provocation; and that the noblest of the
captive youth were often dishonored by his unnatural lust. In the
Albanian war he studied the lessons, and soon surpassed the example, of
his father; and the conquest of two empires, twelve kingdoms, and two
hundred cities--a vain and flattering account--is ascribed to his
invincible sword. He was doubtless a soldier, and possibly a general.
Constantinople has sealed his glory; but if we compare the means, the
obstacles, and the achievements, Mahomet II must blush to sustain a
parallel with Alexander or Timour. Under his command, the Ottoman forces
were always more numerous than their enemies; yet their progress was
bounded by the Euphrates and the Adriatic, and his arms were checked by
Huniades and Scanderbeg, by the Rhodian knights and by the Persian king.
In the reign of Amurath he twice (A.D. 1451, February 9--A. D. 1481,
July 2) tasted of royalty, and twice descended from the throne; his
tender age was incapable of opposing his father’s restoration, but never
could he forgive the viziers who had recommended that salutary measure.
His nuptials were celebrated with the daughter of a Turkoman emir, and
after a festival of two months he departed from Adrianople with his
bride to reside in the government of Magnesia. Before the end of six
weeks he was recalled by a sudden message from the divan, which
announced the decease of Amurath and the mutinous spirit of the
Janizaries. His speed and vigor commanded their obedience; he passed the
Hellespont with a chosen guard, and at a distance of a mile from
Adrianople, the viziers and emirs, the imams and cadis, the soldiers and
the people, fell prostrate before the new sultan. They affected to weep,
they affected to rejoice. He ascended the throne at the age of
twenty-one years, and removed the cause of sedition by the death, the
inevitable death, of his infant brothers. The ambassadors of Europe and
Asia soon appeared to congratulate his accession and solicit his
friendship, and to all he spoke the language of moderation and peace.
The confidence of the Greek emperor was revived by the solemn oaths and
fair assurances with which he sealed the ratification of the treaty; and
a rich domain on the banks of the Strymon was assigned for the annual
payment of three hundred thousand aspers, the pension of an Ottoman
prince, who was detained at his request in the Byzantine court. Yet the
neighbors of Mahomet might tremble at the severity with which a youthful
monarch reformed the pomp of his father’s household; the expenses of
luxury were applied to those of ambition, and a useless train of seven
thousand falconers was either dismissed from his service or enlisted in
his troops. In the first summer of his reign he visited with an army the
Asiatic provinces; but after humbling the pride, Mahomet accepted the
submission, of the Caramanian, that he might not be diverted by the
smallest obstacle from the execution of his great design.
The Mahometan, and more especially the Turkish casuists, have pronounced
that no promise can bind the faithful against the interest and duty of
their religion, and that the sultan may abrogate his own treaties and
those of his predecessors. The justice and magnanimity of Amurath had
scorned this immoral privilege; but his son, though the proudest of men,
could stoop from ambition to the basest arts of dissimulation and
deceit. Peace was on his lips, while war was in his heart; he
incessantly sighed for the possession of Constantinople; and the Greeks,
by their own indiscretion, afforded the first pretense of the fatal
rupture.
From the first hour of the memorable 29th of May, when the beleaguered
city was carried by storm, disorder and rapine prevailed in
Constantinople till the eighth hour of the same day, when the sultan
himself passed in triumph through the gate of St. Romanus. He was
attended by his viziers, bashaws, and guards, each of whom (says a
Byzantine historian) was robust as Hercules, dexterous as Apollo, and
equal in battle to any ten of the race of ordinary mortals. The
conqueror gazed with satisfaction and wonder on the strange though
splendid appearance of the domes and palaces, so dissimilar from the
style of Oriental architecture. In the hippodrome, or _atmeidan_, his
eye was attracted by the twisted column of the three serpents; and as a
trial of his strength he shattered with his iron mace or battle-axe the
under jaw of one of these monsters, which in the eyes of the Turks were
the idols or talismans of the city. At the principal door of St. Sophia
he alighted from his horse and entered the dome; and such was his
jealous regard for that monument of his glory, that on observing a
zealous Mussulman in the act of breaking the marble pavement, he
admonished him with his cimeter, that, if the spoil and captives were
granted to the soldiers, the public and private buildings had been
reserved for the prince. By his command the metropolis of the Eastern
Church was transformed into a mosque, the rich and portable instruments
of superstition had been removed; the crosses were thrown down, and the
walls, which were covered with images and mosaics, were washed and
purified and restored to a state of naked simplicity. On the same day,
or on the ensuing Friday, the _muezzin_ or crier ascended the most lofty
turret, and proclaimed the _ezan_, or public invitation, in the name of
God and his prophet. The imam preached, and Mahomet II performed the
_namaz_ of prayer and thanksgiving on the great altar where the
Christian mysteries had so lately been celebrated before the last of the
Cæsars. From St. Sophia he proceeded to the august but desolate mansion
of a hundred successors of the great Constantine, but which in a few
hours had been stripped of the pomp of royalty. A melancholy reflection
on the vicissitudes of human greatness forced itself on his mind; and he
repeated an elegant distich of Persian poetry: “The spider hath wove his
web in the imperial palace; and the owl hath sung her watch-song on the
towers of Afrasiab.”
LORENZO DE’ MEDICI.
BY JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.
[Surnamed the “Magnificent,” born 1448, died 1492. The Medici
family had in the latter part of the fourteenth century become one
of the most influential and powerful in the Florentine Republic. It
had amassed vast wealth in the pursuits of commerce, and spent it
with the munificence of the most public-spirited princes. Cosmo de’
Medici about the year 1420 became the leading man of the state, and
practically exercised control over the republic, though without
definite authority, as ruler. The splendor of the family culminated
in his grandson Lorenzo, who for a quarter of a century held the
powers of the state in the palm of his hand, and made the city of
Florence the most brilliant center of literature, learning, art,
and refined luxury in Europe. Though he curtailed the liberties of
the people, the city reached under him the highest degree of
opulence and power it had ever attained. Eminent as statesman,
poet, and scholar, the enthusiastic patron of authors and artists,
munificent in his endowment of schools and libraries, he was the
most favorable example of the Italian tyrants of the middle ages;
and his life was the source of a stream of influences which helped
to revolutionize his own age and that which succeeded it.]
In one point Lorenzo was inferior to his grandfather. He had no
commercial talent. After suffering the banking business of the Medici to
fall into disorder, he became virtually bankrupt, while his personal
expenditure kept continually increasing. In order to retrieve his
fortunes it was necessary for him to gain complete disposal of the
public purse. This was the real object of the constitutional revolution
of 1480, whereby his privy council assumed the active functions of the
state. Had Lorenzo been as great in finance as in the management of men,
the way might have been smoothed for his son Piero in the disastrous
year of 1494.
If Lorenzo neglected the pursuit of wealth, whereby Cosmo had raised
himself from insignificance to the dictatorship of Florence, he
surpassed his grandfather in the use he made of literary patronage. It
is not paradoxical to affirm that in his policy we can trace the
subordination of a genuine love of art and letters to statecraft. The
new culture was one of the instruments that helped to build his
despotism. Through his thorough and enthusiastic participation in the
intellectual interests of his age, he put himself into close sympathy
with the Florentines, who were glad to acknowledge for their leader by
far the ablest of the men of parts in Italy.
According as we choose our point of view, we may regard him either as a
tyrant, involving his country in debt and dangerous wars, corrupting the
morals and enfeebling the spirit of the people, and systematically
enslaving the Athens of the modern world for the sake of founding a
petty principality; or else as the most liberal-minded noble of his
epoch, born to play the first part in the Florentine Republic, and
careful to use his wealth and influence for the advancement of his
fellow-citizens in culture, learning, arts, and the amenities of life.
Savonarola and the Florentine historians adopt the former of these two
opinions. Sismondi, in his passion for liberty, arrays against Lorenzo
the political assassinations he permitted, the enervation of Florence,
the national debt incurred by the republic, and the exhausting wars with
Sixtus carried on in his defense.
His panegyrists, on the contrary, love to paint him as the pacificator
of Italy, the restorer of Florentine poetry, the profound critic, and
the generous patron. The truth lies in the combination of these two
apparently contradictory judgments. Lorenzo was the representative man
of his nation at a moment when political institutions were everywhere
inclining to despotism, and when the spiritual life of the Italians
found its noblest expression in art and literature. The principality of
Florence was thrust upon him by the policy of Cosimo, by the vote of the
chief citizens, and by the example of the sister republics, all of whom,
with the exception of Venice, submitted to the sway of rulers. Had he
wished, he might have found it difficult to preserve the commonwealth in
its integrity. Few but _doctrinaires_ believed in a _governo misto_;
only aristocrats desired a _governo stretto_; all but democrats dreaded
a _governo largo_. And yet a new constitution must have been framed
after one of these types, and the Florentines must have been educated to
use it with discretion, before Lorenzo could have resigned his office of
dictator with any prospect of freedom for the city in his charge. Such
unselfish patriotism, in the face of such overwhelming difficulties, and
in antagonism to the whole tendency of the age, was not to be expected
from an oligarch of the Renaissance born in the purple, and used from
infancy to intrigue.
Lorenzo was a man of marvelous variety and range of mental power. He
possessed one of those rare natures fitted to comprehend all knowledge
and to sympathize with the most diverse forms of life. While he never
for one moment relaxed his grasp on politics, among philosophers he
passed for a sage, among men of letters for an original and graceful
poet, among scholars for a Grecian sensitive to every nicety of Attic
idiom, among artists for an amateur gifted with refined discernment and
consummate taste. Pleasure-seekers knew in him the libertine who jousted
with the boldest, danced and masqueraded with the merriest, sought
adventures in the streets at night, and joined the people in their
May-day games and carnival festivities. The pious extolled him as an
author of devotional lauds and mystery-plays, a profound theologian, a
critic of sermons. He was no less famous for his jokes and repartees
than for his pithy apothegms and maxims, as good a judge of cattle as of
statues, as much at home in the bosom of his family as in the riot of an
orgy, as ready to discourse on Plato as to plan a campaign or to plot
the death of a dangerous citizen.
An apologist may always plead that Lorenzo was the epitome of his
nation’s most distinguished qualities, that the versatility of the
Renaissance found in him its fullest incarnation. It was the duty of
Italy in the fifteenth century not to establish religious or
constitutional liberty, but to resuscitate culture. Before the
disastrous wars of invasion had begun, it might well have seemed even to
patriots as though Florence needed a Mæcenas more than a Camillus.
Therefore, the prince who in his own person combined all
accomplishments, who knew by sympathy and counsel how to stimulate the
genius of men superior to himself in special arts and sciences, who
spent his fortune lavishly on works of public usefulness, whose palace
formed the rallying-point of wit and learning, whose council-chamber was
the school of statesmen, who expressed his age in every word and every
act, in his vices and his virtues, his crimes and generous deeds, can
not be fairly judged by an abstract standard of republican morality. It
is nevertheless true that Lorenzo enfeebled and enslaved Florence. At
his death he left her socially more dissolute, politically weaker,
intellectually more like himself, than he found her. He had not the
greatness to rise above the spirit of his century, or to make himself
the Pericles instead of the Pisistratus of his republic. In other words,
he was adequate, not superior to, Renaissance Italy.
This, then, was the man round whom the greatest scholars of the third
period assembled, at whose table sat Angelo, Poliziano, Cristoforo
Landino, Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Leo Battista
Alberti, Michael Angelo Buonarotti, Luigi Pulci. The mere enumeration of
these names suffices to awake a crowd of memories in the mind of those
to whom Italian art and poetry are dear. Lorenzo’s villas, where this
brilliant circle met for grave discourse or social converse, heightening
the sober pleasures of Italian country life with all that wit and
learning could produce of delicate and rare, have been so often sung by
poets and celebrated by historians that Careggi, Caffagiolo, and Poggio
a Cajano are no less familiar to us than the studious shades of Academe.
“In a villa overhanging the towers of Florence,” writes the austere
Hallam, moved to more than usual eloquence in the spirit-stirring beauty
of his theme, “on the steep slope of that lofty hill crowned by the
mother city, the ancient Fiesole, in gardens which Tully might have
envied, with Ficino, Landino, and Politian at his side, he delighted his
hours of leisure with the beautiful visions of Platonic philosophy, for
which the summer stillness of an Italian sky appears the most congenial
accompaniment.” As we climb the steep slope of Fiesole or linger beneath
the rose trees that shed their petals from Careggi’s garden walls, once
more in our imagination “the world’s great age begins anew”; once more
the blossoms of that marvelous spring unclose. While the sun goes down
beneath the mountains of Carrara, and the Apennines grow purple-golden,
and Florence sleeps beside the silvery Arno, and the large Italian stars
come forth above, we remember how those mighty master spirits watched
the sphering of new planets in the spiritual skies. Savonarola in his
cell below once more sits brooding over the servility of Florence, the
corruption of a godless church. Michael Angelo, seated between Ficino
and Poliziano, with the voices of the prophets vibrating in his memory,
and with the music of Plato sounding in his ears, rests chin on hand and
elbow upon knee, like his own Jeremiah, lost in contemplation, whereof
the after-fruits shall be the Sistine Chapel and the Medicean tombs.
Then, when the strain of thought, “unsphering Plato from the skies,”
begins to weary, Pulci breaks the silence with a brand-new canto of
Morgante, or a singing boy is bidden to tune his mandoline to Messer
Angelo’s last made _ballatta_.
GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA.
BY JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.
[An Italian reformer, a member of the Dominican order of monks,
born 1452, executed 1498. His fervid eloquence as a preacher, and
his fierce denunciation of the vice and corruption of the Italian
Renaissance speedily made Savonarola a power to be reckoned with in
Florentine affairs. After the death of Lorenzo the Magnificent, the
prophet’s activity extended to political as well as religious
ideals, and he preached an austere theocratic republic and the
deposition of the Pope. The return of the Medici family to power
was the downfall of Savonarola’s hopes; and he and two of his
companion reformers were strangled and their bodies burned.]
We now visit San Gemignano in order to study some fading frescoes of
Gozzoli and Ghirlandajo, or else for the sake of its strange feudal
towers, tall pillows of brown stone, crowded together within the narrow
circle of the town walls. Very beautiful is the prospect from these
ramparts on a spring morning, when the song of nightingales and the
scent of acacia flowers ascend together from the groves upon the slopes
beneath. The gray Tuscan landscape for scores and scores of miles all
round melts into blueness, like the blueness of the sky, flecked here
and there with wandering cloud-shadows. Let those who pace the
grass-grown streets of the hushed city remember that here the first
flash of authentic genius kindled in Savonarola’s soul. Here for the
first time he prophesied, “The Church will be scourged, then
regenerated, and this quickly.” These are the celebrated three
conclusions, the three points to which Savonarola in all his prophetic
utterances adhered.
But not yet had he fully entered on his vocation. His voice was weak,
his style uncertain; his soul, we may believe still wavering between
strange dread and awful joy, as he beheld, through many a backward
rolling mist of doubt, the mantle of the prophets descend upon him.
Already he had abandoned the schoolmen for the Bible. Already he had
learned by heart each voice of the Old and New Testaments. Pondering on
their texts, he had discovered four separate interpretations for every
suggestion of Sacred Writ. For some of the pregnant utterances of the
prophets he found hundreds, pouring forth metaphor and illustration in
wild and dazzling profusion of audacious, uncouth imagery. The flame
which began to smolder in him at San Gemignano burst forth into a blaze
at Brescia, in 1486. Savonarola was now aged thirty-four. “Midway upon
the path of life,” he opened the book of Revelation; he figured to the
people of Brescia the four-and-twenty elders rising to denounce the sins
of Italy, and to declare the calamities that must ensue. He pictured to
them their city flowing with blood. His voice, which now became the
interpreter of his soul, in its resonance and earnestness and piercing
shrillness, thrilled his hearers with strange terror. Already they
believed his prophecy; and twenty-six years later, when the soldiers of
Gascon de Foix slaughtered six thousand souls in the streets of Brescia,
her citizens recalled the apocalyptic warnings of the Dominican monk.
As Savonarola is now launched upon his vocation of prophecy, this is the
right moment to describe his personal appearance and his style of
preaching. We have abundant material for judging what his features were,
and how they flashed beneath the storm of inspiration. Fra Bartolommeo,
one of his followers, painted a profile of him in the character of St.
Peter Martyr. This shows all the benignity and grace of expression which
his stern lineaments could assume. It is a picture of the sweet and
gentle nature latent within the fiery arraigner of his nation at the bar
of God. In contemporary medals the face appears hard, keen,
uncompromising, beneath its heavy cowl. But the noblest portrait is an
intaglio engraved by Giovanni della Corniole, now to be seen in the
Uffizi at Florence. Of this work Michael Angelo, himself a disciple of
Savonarola, said that art could go no further. We are therefore
justified in assuming that the engraver has not only represented fully
the outline of Savonarola’s face, but has also indicated his peculiar
expression.
A thick hood covers the whole head and shoulders. Beneath it can be
traced the curve of a long and somewhat flat skull, rounded into
extraordinary fullness at the base and side. From a deeply sunken
eye-socket emerges, scarcely seen, but powerfully felt, the eye that
blazed with lightning. The nose is strong, prominent, and aquiline, with
wide nostrils, capable of terrible dilation under the stress of vehement
emotion. The mouth has full, compressed, projecting lips. It is large,
as if made for a torrent of eloquence; it is supplied with massive
muscles, as if to move with energy and calculated force and utterance.
The jaw-bone is hard and heavy, the cheek-bone emergent; between the two
the flesh is hollowed, not so much with the emaciation of monastic
vigils as with the athletic exercise of wrestling in the throes of
prophecy. The face, on the whole, is ugly, but not repellent; and, in
spite of its great strength, it shows signs of feminine sensibility.
Like the faces of Cicero and Demosthenes, it seems the fit machine for
oratory. But the furnaces hidden away behind that skull, beneath that
cowl, have made it haggard with a fire not to be found in the serener
features of the classic orators. Savonarola was a visionary and a monk.
The discipline of the cloister left its trace upon him. The wings of
dreams have winnowed and withered that cheek as they passed over it. The
spirit of prayer quivers upon those eager lips. The color of
Savonarola’s flesh was brown; his nerves were exquisitely sensitive yet
strong; like a network of wrought steel, elastic, easily overstrained,
they recovered their tone and temper less by repose than by the
evolution of fresh electricity. With Savonarola fasts were succeeded by
trances, and trances by tempests of vehement improvisation. From the
midst of such profound debility that he could scarcely crawl up the
pulpit steps, he would pass suddenly into the plenitude of power,
filling the Dome of Florence with denunciations, sustaining his
discourse by no mere trick of rhetoric that flows to waste upon the lips
of shallow preachers, but marshaling the phalanx of embattled arguments
and pointed illustrations, pouring his thought forth in columns of
continuous flame, mingling figures of sublimest imagery with reasonings
of severest accuracy, at one time melting his audience to tears, at
another freezing them with terror, again quickening their souls with
prayers and pleadings and blessings that had in them the sweetness of
the very spirit of Christ.
His sermons began with scholastic exposition; as they advanced, the
ecstasy of inspiration fell upon the preacher, till the sympathies of
the whole people of Florence gathered round him, met and attained, as it
were, to single consciousness in him. He then no longer restrained the
impulse of his oratory, but became the mouth-piece of God, the
interpreter to themselves of all that host. In a fiery _crescendo_,
never flagging, never losing firmness of grasp or lucidity of vision, he
ascended the altar-steps of prophecy, and, standing like Moses on the
mount between the thunders of God and the tabernacles of the plain,
fulminated period after period of impassioned eloquence. The walls of
the church re-echoed with sobs and wailings, dominated by one ringing
voice.
The scribe to whom we owe the fragments of these sermons at times breaks
off with these words: “Here I was so overcome with weeping that I could
not go on.” Pico della Mirandola tells us that the mere sound of
Savonarola’s voice, startling the stillness of the Duomo, thronged
through all its space with people, was like a clap of doom; a cold
shiver ran through the marrow of his bones, the hairs of his head stood
on end, as he listened. Another witness reports: “These sermons caused
such terror, alarm, sobbing, and tears that every one passed through the
streets without speaking, more dead than alive.”
Such was the preacher, and such was the effect of his oratory. The theme
on which he loved to dwell was this: “Repent! A judgment of God is at
hand. A sword is suspended over you. Italy is doomed for her
iniquity--for the sins of the Church, whose adulteries have filled the
world--for the sins of the tyrants who encourage crime and trample upon
souls--for the sins of you people, you fathers and mothers, you young
men, you maidens, you children that lisp blasphemy!” Nor did Savonarola
deal in generalities. He described in plain language every vice; he laid
bare every abuse; so that a mirror was held up to the souls of his
hearers, in which they saw their most secret faults appallingly betrayed
and ringed around with fire. He entered with particularity into the
details of the coming woes. One by one he enumerated the bloodshed, the
ruin of cities, the trampling down of provinces, the passage of armies,
the desolating wars that were about to fall on Italy. You may read
pages of his sermons which seem like vivid narratives of what afterward
took place in the sack of Prato, in the storming of Brescia, in the
battle of the Ronco, in the cavern-massacre of Vicenza. No wonder that
he stirred his audience to their center. The hell within them was
revealed. The coming down above them was made manifest. Ezekiel and
Jeremiah were not more prophetic. John crying to a generation of vipers,
“Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” was not more weighty
with the mission of authentic inspiration.
“I began,” Savonarola writes himself with reference to a course of
sermons delivered in 1491--“I began publicly to expound the Revelation
in our Church of St. Mark. During the course of the year I continued to
develop to the Florentines these three propositions: That the Church
would be renewed in our time; that before that renovation God would
strike all Italy with a fearful chastisement; that these things would
happen shortly.” It is by right of the foresight of a new age, contained
in these three famous so-called conclusions, that Savonarola deserves to
be named the Prophet of the Renaissance. He was no apostle of reform; it
did not occur to him to reconstruct the creed, to dispute the discipline
or to criticise the authority of the Church. He was no founder of a new
order; unlike his predecessors, Dominic and Francis, he never attempted
to organize a society of saints or preachers; unlike his successors,
Caraffe the Theatine, and Loyola the Jesuit, he enrolled no militia for
the defense of the faith, constructed no machinery for education.
Starting with simple horror at the wickedness of the world, he had
recourse to the old prophets. He steeped himself in Bible studies. He
caught the language of Malachi and Jeremiah. He became convinced that
for the wickedness of Italy a judgment was imminent. From that
conclusion he rose upon the wings of faith to the belief that a new age
would dawn. The originality of his intuition consisted in this, that
while Italy was asleep, and no man trembled for the future, he alone
felt that the stillness of the air was fraught with thunder, that its
tranquillity was like that which precedes a tempest blown from the very
nostrils of the God of hosts.
CÆSAR BORGIA.
BY CHARLES YRIARTE.
[Son of Pope Alexander VI, at first prelate, then soldier and
statesman, born about 1457, died 1507. All the contemporary annals
concur in giving Cæsar Borgia nearly every private vice, and stamp
him as murderer, sensualist, and a man of ruthless ambition.
Successively made bishop and cardinal in his earlier years, he was
finally secularized and became Duke of Romagna and Valentinois.
After having dispossessed the rulers of many small principalities
and united them into a duchy, he is believed to have nourished the
scheme of founding a united Italy. After some years of vicissitudes
Cæsar lost his political ascendency by the election of a pope
inimical to his interests, and his military power by the jealousy
of the Kings of France and Spain. A consummate soldier and
politician, he showed during the short period during which he
exercised the functions of a ruler all the traits of a wise,
upright, and public-spirited sovereign, in shining contrast with
the hideous crimes which had blackened his career as a man. Cæsar
Borgia was the model on which Machiavelli drew his “Prince,” in the
celebrated politico-historical treatise of that title.]
Was Cæsar merely going straight before him, led by the insatiable
ambition which lays hands upon all within its reach, or was he aiming at
a distinct end, at the realization of a vast conception? Granting that
he had no dreams of reconstituting the kingdom of Central Italy himself,
Florence at least felt herself threatened. As long ago as his first
campaign, when, after making himself master of Imola and Forli, he was
still besieging Cesena preparatory to his entry into Pesaro and his
progress to Rome by way of Urbino, the Florentine Republic had sent
Soderini on a mission to him, to find out his intentions and his terms.
The following year, with increased anxiety, as she felt herself
approached more closely through the taking of Arezzo, which had fallen
into the hands of Cæsar’s troops, she sent him Machiavelli, the most
clear-sighted of her secretaries. The spectacle of these two champions
face to face is one unique in history. From the day when he arrived in
the camp, Machiavelli, who had recognized in the Duke of Valentinois a
terrible adversary, felt that it was of vital interest to the state that
he should not lose sight of him for a moment. As a point of fact, he
never left his side up to the day when he saw him hunted down like a
wild beast, vanquished by destiny, fettered beyond all power of doing
harm to any one.
Of course, we may refuse to accept the verdict of the secretary of the
Florentine Republic. Gregorovius, the celebrated author of the “History
of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages,” goes so far as to say that it
is a reproach to the memory of the founder of political science that he
made a blood-stained adventurer like Cæsar the “Italian Messiah”--the
precursor, in a word, of Italian unity. Again, P. Villari, in his fine
work “N. Machiavelli e suoi tempi,” says that the Florentine secretary,
though he was an eyewitness of the actual deeds of Valentinois, made of
him an imaginary personage, to whom he attributed the great ideas by
which he himself was animated.
Still, we have a right to point out that in history purpose is
controlled by action. A great number of the heroic deeds and of the
portentous decisions which have determined the lofty destiny of empires
have not been the consequence of long premeditation; they have often
been the result of the passions and desires of mankind, or simply that
of the need of action natural to a vigorous mind. Undoubtedly the
immediate object of Alexander VI was the aggrandizement of his children,
and the increase of their territory; he cared only for the power of the
Church insomuch as it augmented that of his own family, but the deeds
accomplished by father and son contributed none the less to
reconstitute the temporal dominion of the Church--a work which, after
its completion by Julius II, was destined to continue for more than
three centuries, from 1510 to 1860.
The ambitious Cæsar himself was turning aside the current for his own
particular advantage. When Julius II assumed the triple crown, the
officers who held the fortresses of Romagna with one accord refused to
give them up to the Church, considering them as the lawful conquest and
personal property of their leader. Machiavelli looked only at the
results; this is the justification of the opinion which he expresses
concerning Valentinois in his book, “Il Principe,” in the “Legazione,”
the “Descrizione dei fatti di Romagna,” and the “Decennale.” He was
present when these things were done; he calculated the effect of the
events he witnessed. From his observation of Cæsar at work, he noted the
strength of his will and the resources of his mind, his strategic
talents, and his administrative faculty; and as within certain limits
the acts of Valentinois tended toward a distinct goal, an ideal not
unlike that at which he himself aimed, the Florentine secretary was not
the man to be squeamish about ways and means. What did it matter to him
whose hand struck at the despots of the petty principalities of Italy?
What cared he about the personal ambition of the man who, after
overthrowing them, busied himself at once with the organization of their
states, gave them laws, kept them under stern discipline, and ended by
winning the affections of the people?
Once the idea of union was accepted, a prince of more blameless private
life would succeed Cæsar, and there was always so much progress made
toward the realization of the great conception. The Sforza had fallen;
the princes of the houses of Este and Mantua were not equal to such a
task; Lorenzo de’ Medici was no soldier. Impatient to reach his end,
Machiavelli cast his eyes around in vain; nowhere could he find a
personality capable of great undertakings. Cæsar alone, with his youth
and daring, quick to seize an opportunity, free from scruples, imposing
by his magnificence--Cæsar, who always went straight to the very core of
a matter, a consummate soldier, full of high purposes and lofty
schemes--seemed the one man capable of aiming at the goal and attaining
it. From that time forward, the secretary made him the incarnation of
his ideal prince, removing from his character the hideous elements which
lurked beneath the fair exterior of the skillful diplomate and hardy
soldier.
Of these “high purposes” of which Machiavelli speaks we have also other
proofs, without speaking of the, in a manner, prophetic declaration of
the young cardinal who, at twenty, fixed his eyes on the example of the
Roman Cæsar, and took as his motto “CUM NUMINE CÆSARIS OMEN.” Some of
the contemporaries of the Duke of Valentinois have expressed themselves
in distinct terms regarding him. We have here some real revelations of
his personal intentions which are free from the _après coup_ of the
judgments pronounced by later historians. Speaking of the war which the
Spaniards were carrying on to prevent the Pope from extending his
dominions beyond the Neapolitan frontier, Signor Villari recognizes the
fact that Alexander VI had declared his intention of making Italy “all
one piece.” As for Cæsar, we read in the dispatches of Collenuccio, the
ambassador of Ferrara, that Francesco Maria, Duke of Urbino, had taken
into his service a secretary who had been for some time in Cæsar’s
employ, and that this person averred that he had heard the Duke of
Romagna say that he had “deliberately resolved to make himself _King of
Italy_.” Here we have it in so many words.
As regards Machiavelli, could we collect in one page all the traits of
character sketched from nature, scattered here and there in his
dispatches to the Florentine Signoria, we should have a literary
portrait of Valentinois, signed with the name of the most sagacious
observer that ever honored Italian diplomacy. Cæsar had never learned
the art of war, yet it would be impossible to pass with greater facility
from the Consistory to the camp than he did. He was no mere warrior.
Brave and impetuous as he was, he had more serious work in hand than the
exchanging of sword-thrusts. He was at once a general, a strategist, and
an administrator. Hardly had he taken a town when he made laws for it,
and organized its administration; the breaches in its fortifications
were repaired, and its defense and retention made as safe as if the
conquest were final. No sooner had Imola, Forli, and Cesena fallen into
his power, than he sent for Leonardo da Vinci to provide for a
sufficient supply of water, to repair the fortresses, and to erect
public monuments. He founded _Monts de Piété_, set up courts of justice,
and did the work of civilization everywhere. The cities which fell under
his sway never misunderstood his efforts; they looked back on the time
of his supremacy with regret.
“This lord is ever noble and magnificent; when his sword is in his
hand, his courage is so great that the most arduous undertakings
seem easy to him; in the pursuit of glory or advantage he shrinks
from no toil or fatigue. He has the good-will of his soldiers; he
has secured the best troops in Italy: it is thus that he makes
himself formidable and victorious. Add to this, that fortune is
constantly favorable to him. He is of solitary habits, and he
possesses craft, promptness, the spirit of order and good fortune;
he has an extraordinary power of profiting by opportunity very
secret (_molto segreto_). He controls himself with prudence; (_gran
conoscitore della occasione_.”)
So Machiavelli warned the Florentines not to treat Cæsar “like the other
barons, but as a new power in Italy, with whom they might conclude
treaties and alliances, rather than offer him an appointment as
_condottiere_.” The purely military element, which was Machiavelli’s
speciality, did not escape the attention of the secretary. Once he had
found the right man, the next requisite was the proper tool to work
with--that is, the army; and so, when he saw these well-disciplined
battalions, and the perfect order that reigned among them, the system of
supplies secured by treaties, the regular equipment, and, above all, the
formidable artillery, “in which department Cæsar alone is as strong as
all the sovereigns of Italy put together,” the Secretary of the Republic
recognized in Cæsar a born commander, for whom he prophesied the most
lofty career.
Cæsar’s life was very short, and the vicissitudes of his fortune
followed each other in rapid succession. In youth he was a murderer, in
youth a conqueror, and in youth he died. His period of activity as a
general extended from the autumn of 1499 to April, 1503, and his actual
reign as Duke of Romagna lasted only two years.
On the 26th of January, 1500, having accomplished the first half of his
task, he entered Rome as a conqueror--on which occasion a representation
was given of the triumph of Cæsar with the various episodes of the life
of the Roman Cæsar shown in _tableaux vivants_, suggested by the painter
Mantegna. Eleven allegorical cars started from the Piazza Navona, Borgia
himself, crowned with laurel, representing in his own person the
conqueror of the world. Before his departure for his second campaign, he
had, as we have already seen, caused the assassination of Lucrezia’s
second husband, Alfonso de Bisceglie, to prepare for the third marriage
of his sister, who was this time to become Duchess of Ferrara, and thus
secure him an alliance which would forward his projects as Duke of
Romagna. On the 27th of September, 1500, he left Rome again to complete
his work, but returned quickly to take part in the war which the King of
France had carried into the Neapolitan kingdom, when he possessed
himself of the city of Capua, thus acquitting his obligation toward his
protector, Louis XII. On the 29th of November his father changed his
title of Vicar of the Holy See to that of Duke of Romagna.
The year 1503 proved an eventful one for him. No longer contented with
his duchy, he prepared to attack Bologna and to threaten Florence. The
day before he set forth on this great undertaking, on the 5th of August,
he assisted, together with Alexander VI, at a banquet given in the
vineyard of the Cardinal of Corneto, at the gates of Rome. On their
return both were taken ill so suddenly that the cardinal was suspected
of having poisoned them. The old man breathed his last on the 18th of
August. Cæsar, younger and more vigorous, struggled against his malady
with extraordinary energy. He wrapped himself, as in a cloak, in the
still quivering carcass of a newly disemboweled mule to overcome the
shiverings brought on by fever, and then was thrown, still covered with
blood, into a vessel of iced water, to bring about the reaction
necessary to save his life. This man of iron seemed to prevail against
Nature herself. He knew that, once his father dead and himself unable to
move, all his enemies would rush upon him at once to crush him. It was
the decisive moment of his life. He first sent his bravo, Micheletto, to
seize the pontifical treasure, thus making sure of a sum of three
hundred thousand ducats, the sinews of resistance. The nine thousand
men-at-arms under his orders, the one disciplined force in the city,
made him master of Rome; the Sacred College set all their hopes upon
this dying man, for he alone possessed sufficient authority to prevent
anarchy.
It is a strange spectacle--the representatives of all nations accredited
to the Holy See assembling at his bedside to negotiate with him, and
Cæsar, weak and helpless as he is, making himself responsible for the
preservation of order, while the Sacred College formed itself into
conclave to elect the new Pope. In order not to put any pressure upon
the cardinals by his presence, the Duke of Valentinois retired to Nepi.
He left Rome, carried on the shoulders of his guards, livid and
shivering with fever. Around his litter walked the ambassadors of Spain,
France, and the empire, and mingled with the troops could be seen his
mother Vanozza, his brother Squillace, and his sister-in-law
Sancha--all three in danger of their lives in excited Rome. One of the
Borgias had been killed, and Fabio Orsini, descendant of one of the
Roman barons ruined by Alexander VI, had steeped his hands in the
detested blood, and sworn to visit all who bore that hated name with the
same fate.
CARDINAL WOLSEY.
BY JOHN RICHARD GREEN.
[Thomas Wolsey, born of low origin 1471, died 1530. After a
university education and taking priest’s orders he was rapidly made
private chaplain to Henry VII, and, on the accession of Henry VIII,
he became the favorite of the new king, and soon afterward lord
chancellor and cardinal. Wolsey’s diplomatic and ministerial genius
became one of the great powers in Europe while he managed English
affairs, a period of about eleven years, and at home his
magnificence rivaled that of the king himself. His fall from power
grew out of his opposition to the king’s marriage with Anne
Boleyn.]
Thomas Wolsey was the son of a wealthy townsman of Ipswich, whose
ability had raised him into notice at the close of the preceding reign,
and who had been taken by Bishop Fox into the service of the crown. His
extraordinary powers hardly, perhaps, required the songs, dances, and
carouses with his indulgence in which he was taunted by his enemies, to
aid him in winning the favor of the young sovereign. From the post of
favorite he soon rose to that of minister. Henry’s resentment at
Ferdinand’s perfidy enabled Wolsey to carry out a policy which reversed
that of his predecessors. The war had freed England from the fear of
French pressure. Wolsey was as resolute to free her from the dictation
of Ferdinand, and saw in a French alliance the best security for English
independence. In 1514 a treaty was concluded with Louis. The same
friendship was continued to his successor, Francis I, whose march across
the Alps for the reconquest of Lombardy was facilitated by Henry and
Wolsey, in the hope that while the war lasted England would be free from
all fear of attack, and that Francis himself might be brought to
inevitable ruin. These hopes were defeated by his great victory at
Marignano. But Francis, in the moment of triumph, saw himself confronted
by a new rival. Master of Castile and Aragon, of Naples and the
Netherlands, the new Spanish king, Charles V, rose into a check on the
French monarchy such as the policy of Henry or Wolsey had never been
able to construct before.
The alliance of England was eagerly sought by both sides, and the
administration of Wolsey, amid all its ceaseless diplomacy, for seven
years kept England out of war. The peace, as we have seen, restored the
hopes of the New Learning; it enabled Colet to reform education, Erasmus
to undertake the regeneration of the Church, More to set on foot a new
science of politics. But peace, as Wolsey used it, was fatal to English
freedom. In the political hints which lie scattered over the “Utopia,”
More notes with bitter irony the advance of the new despotism. It was
only in “Nowhere” that a sovereign was “removable on suspicion of a
design to enslave his people.” In England the work of slavery was being
quietly wrought, hints the great lawyer, through the law. “There will
never be wanting some pretense for deciding in the king’s favor; as that
equity is on his side, or the strict letter of the law, or some forced
interpretation of it; or if none of these, that the royal prerogative
ought, with conscientious judges, to outweigh all other considerations.”
We are startled at the precision with which More maps out the expedients
by which the law courts were to lend themselves to the advance of
tyranny till their crowning judgment in the case of ship-money. But
behind these judicial expedients lay great principles of absolutism,
which, partly from the example of foreign monarchies, partly from the
sense of social and political insecurity, and yet more from the
isolated position of the crown, were gradually winning their way in
public opinion. “These notions,” he goes boldly on, “are fostered by the
maxim that the king can do no wrong, however much he may wish to do it;
that not only the property but the persons of his subjects are his own;
and that a man has a right to no more than the king’s goodness thinks
fit not to take from him.” In the hands of Wolsey these maxims were
transformed into principles of state. The checks which had been imposed
on the action of the sovereign by the presence of great prelates and
nobles at his council were practically removed. All authority was
concentrated in the hands of a single minister. Henry had munificently
rewarded Wolsey’s services to the crown. He had been promoted to the See
of Lincoln and thence to the Archbishopric of York. Henry procured his
elevation to the rank of cardinal, and raised him to the post of
chancellor. The revenues of two sees whose tenants were foreigners fell
into his hands; he held the bishopric of Winchester and the abbacy of
St. Albans; he was in receipt of pensions from France and Spain, while
his official emoluments were enormous. His pomp was almost royal.
A train of prelates and nobles followed him wherever he moved; his
household was composed of five hundred persons of noble birth, and its
chief posts were held by knights and barons of the realm. He spent his
vast wealth with princely ostentation. Two of his houses--Hampton Court
and York House, the later Whitehall--were splendid enough to serve at
his fall as royal palaces. His school at Ipswich was eclipsed by the
glories of his foundation at Oxford, whose name of Cardinal College has
been lost in its later title of Christ-church. Nor was this magnificence
a mere show of power. The whole direction of home and foreign affairs
rested with Wolsey alone; as chancellor he stood at the head of public
justice; his elevation to the office of legate rendered him supreme in
the Church. Enormous as was the mass of work which he undertook, it was
thoroughly done; his administration of the royal treasury was
economical; the number of his dispatches is hardly less remarkable than
the care bestowed upon each; even More, an avowed enemy, confesses that
as chancellor he surpassed all men’s expectations. The court of
chancery, indeed, became so crowded through the character of expedition
and justice which it gained under his rule that subordinate courts had
to be created for its relief. It was this concentration of all secular
and ecclesiastical power in a single hand which accustomed England to
the personal government which began with Henry VIII; and it was, above
all, Wolsey’s long tenure of the whole Papal authority within the realm,
and the consequent suspension of appeals to Rome, that led men to
acquiesce at a later time in Henry’s claim of religious supremacy; for,
proud as was Wolsey’s bearing and high as were his natural powers, he
stood before England as the mere creature of the king. Greatness,
wealth, authority he held, and owned he held, simply at the royal will.
In raising his low-born favorite to the head of Church and state, Henry
was gathering all religious as well as all civil authority into his
personal grasp. The nation which trembled before Wolsey learned to
tremble before the king who could destroy Wolsey by a breath.
FRANCISCO PIZARRO.
BY WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT.
[One of the Spanish conquerors of America, born about 1471, died
1541. The illegitimate son of a Spanish general, his childhood was
spent in a peasant’s hut. Going as an adventurer to the New World,
he took part in several important expeditions, among them Balboa’s
settlement of Darien. In 1524, Pizarro, with a brother adventurer,
Almagro, in an attempt on New Grenada, got intelligence of the
great Peruvian empire of the Incas. It was not till 1531 that
Pizarro, having secured full commission and extraordinary
concessions from Charles V., was able to raise a force of two
hundred and fifty men to attempt the conquest, which was
brilliantly successful. He reigned as viceroy, and was finally
assassinated by a son of his old comrade Almagro, whom he had put
to death.]
Pizarro was tall in stature, well-proportioned, and with a countenance
not unpleasing. Bred in camps, with nothing of the polish of a court, he
had a soldier-like bearing, and the air of one accustomed to command.
But, though not polished, there was no embarrassment or rusticity in his
address, which, where it served his purpose, could be plausible and even
insinuating. The proof of it is the favorable impression made by him, on
presenting himself, after his second expedition--stranger as he was to
all its forms and usages--at the punctilious court of Castile.
Unlike many of his countrymen, he had no passion for ostentatious dress,
which he regarded as an incumbrance. The costume which he most affected
on public occasions was a black cloak, with a white hat, and shoes of
the same color; the last, it is said, being in imitation of the Great
Captain, whose character he had early learned to admire in Italy, but to
which his own, certainly, bore very faint resemblance.
He was temperate in eating, drank sparingly, and usually rose an hour
before dawn. He was punctual in attendance to business, and shrank from
no toil. He had, indeed, great powers of patient endurance. Like most of
his nation, he was fond of play, and cared little for the quality of
those with whom he played; though, when his antagonist could not afford
to lose, he would allow himself, it is said, to be the loser--a mode of
conferring an obligation much commended by a Castilian writer for its
delicacy.
Though avaricious, it was in order to spend, and not to hoard. His ample
treasure, more ample than those, probably, that ever before fell to the
lot of an adventurer, were mostly dissipated in his enterprises, his
architectural works, and schemes of public improvement, which, in a
country where gold and silver might be said to have lost their value
from their abundance, absorbed an incredible amount of money. While he
regarded the whole country, in a manner, as his own, and distributed it
freely among his captains, it is certain that the princely grant of
territory, with twenty thousand vassals, made to him by the Crown, was
never carried into effect; nor did his heirs ever reap the benefit of
it.
Though bold in action and not easily turned from his purpose, Pizarro
was slow in arriving at a decision. This gave him an appearance of
irresolution foreign to his character. Perhaps the consciousness of this
led him to adopt the custom of saying “No,” at first, to applicants for
favor; and afterward, at leisure, to revise his judgment, and grant what
seemed to him expedient. He took the opposite course from his comrade
Almagro, who, it was observed, generally said “Yes,” but too often
failed to keep his promise. This was characteristic of the careless and
easy nature of the latter, governed by impulse rather than principle.
It is hardly necessary to speak of the courage of a man pledged to such
a career as that of Pizarro. Courage, indeed, was a cheap quality among
the Spanish adventurers, for danger was their element. But he possessed
something higher than mere animal courage, in that constancy of purpose
which was rooted too deeply in his nature to be shaken by the wildest
storms of fortune. It was this inflexible constancy which formed the key
to his character, and constituted the secret of his success. A
remarkable evidence of it was given in his first expedition, among the
mangroves and dreary marshes of Choco. He saw his followers pining
around him under the blighting malaria, wasting before an invisible
enemy, and unable to strike a stroke in their own defense. Yet his
spirit did not yield, nor did he falter in his enterprise.
There is something oppressive to the imagination in this war against
nature. In the struggle of man against man, the spirits are raised by a
contest conducted on equal terms; but in a war with the elements we feel
that, however bravely we may contend, we can have no power to control.
Nor are we cheered on by the prospect of glory in such a contest; for,
in the capricious estimate of human glory, the silent endurance of
privations, however painful, is little, in comparison with the
ostentatious trophies of victory. The laurel of the hero--alas for
humanity that it should be so!--grows best on the battle-field.
This inflexible spirit of Pizarro was shown still more strongly when, in
the little island of Gallo, he drew the line on the sand which was to
separate him and his handful of followers from their country and from
civilized man. He trusted that his own constancy would give strength to
the feeble, and rally brave hearts around him for the prosecution of his
enterprise. He looked with confidence to the future, and he did not
miscalculate. This was heroic, and wanted only a nobler motive for its
object to constitute the true moral sublime.
Yet the same feature in his character was displayed in a manner scarcely
less remarkable when, landing on the coast, and ascertaining the real
strength and civilization of the Incas, he persisted in marching into
the interior at the head of a force of less than two hundred men. In
this he undoubtedly proposed to himself the example of Cortés, so
contagious to the adventurous spirits of that day, and especially to
Pizarro, engaged as he was in a similar enterprise. Yet the hazard
assumed by Pizarro was far greater than that of the conqueror of Mexico,
whose force was nearly three times as large, while the terrors of the
Inca name--however justified by the result--were as widely spread as
those of the Aztecs.
It was, doubtless, in imitation of the same captivating model that
Pizarro planned the seizure of Atahualpa. But the situations of the two
Spanish captains were as dissimilar as the manner in which their acts
of violence were conducted. The wanton massacre of the Peruvians
resembled that perpetrated by Alvarado in Mexico, and might have been
attended with consequences as disastrous if the Peruvian character had
been as fierce as that of the Aztecs. But the blow which roused the
latter to madness broke the tamer spirits of the Peruvians. It was a
bold stroke, which left so much to chance that it scarcely merited the
name of policy.
When Pizarro landed in the country, he found it distracted by a contest
for the crown. It would seem to have been for his interest to play off
one party against the other, throwing his own weight into the scale that
suited him. Instead of this, he resorted to an act of audacious violence
which crushed them both at a blow. His subsequent career afforded no
scope for the profound policy displayed by Cortés, when he gathered
conflicting nations under his banner and directed them against a common
foe. Still less did he have the opportunity of displaying the tactics
and admirable strategy of his rival. Cortés conducted his military
operations on the scientific principles of a great captain at the head
of a powerful host. Pizarro appears only as an adventurer, a fortunate
knight-errant. By one bold stroke he broke the spell which had so long
held the land under the dominion of the Incas. The spell was broken, and
the airy fabric of their empire, built on the superstition of ages,
vanished at a touch. This was good fortune, rather than the result of
policy.
But, as no picture is without its lights, we must not, in justice to
Pizarro, dwell exclusively on the darker features of his portrait. There
was no one of her sons to whom Spain was under larger obligations for
extent of empire, for his hand won for her the richest of the Indian
jewels that once sparkled in her imperial diadem. When we contemplate
the perils he braved, the sufferings he patiently endured, the
incredible obstacles he overcame, the magnificent results he effected
with his single arm, as it were, unaided by the government--though
neither a good nor a great man, in the highest sense of that term--it is
impossible not to regard him as a very extraordinary one.
HERNANDO CORTÉS.
BY WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT.
[The Spanish conqueror of Mexico, born 1485, died 1547. Born of a
noble race, he was educated at the University of Salamanca, but
soon devoted his attention to arms. He turned his eyes to America
in 1504, and sailing thither, held various minor offices of trust,
civic and military, till the discovery of Mexico. Cortés was
appointed by Velasquez, the governor-general, to the command of the
new expedition designed for Mexico in 1518. Though afterward
superseded by his jealous superior, he succeeded in evading the
enforcement of the decree, and landed at Tabasco, Mexico, on March
4, 1519. He burned his ships and committed himself to success or
death. His army contained only five hundred and fifty Spaniards,
but with these, and the native allies whom he seduced by his arts,
he conquered the Mexican Empire in little more than two years.
Though he was rewarded with titles and wealth, he was ungratefully
treated by the king--a common fate of the great servants of
Spain--and died in retirement, out of court favor.]
Cortés, at the time of the Mexican Conquest, was thirty-three or
thirty-four years of age. In stature he was rather above the middle
size. His countenance was pale, and his large dark eyes gave an
expression of gravity to his countenance not to have been expected in
one of his cheerful temperament. His figure was slender, at least till
later life; but his chest was deep, his shoulders broad, his frame
muscular and well proportioned. It presented the union of agility and
vigor which qualified him to excel in fencing, horsemanship, and the
other general exercises of chivalry. In his diet he was temperate,
careless of what he ate, and drinking little; while to toil and
privation he seemed perfectly indifferent. His dress--for he did not
disdain the impression produced by such adventitious aids--was such as
to set off his handsome figure to advantage, neither gaudy, nor
striking, nor rich. He wore few ornaments, and usually the same, but
those were of a great price. His manners, frank and soldier-like,
concealed a most cool and calculating spirit. With his gayest humor
there mingled a settled air of resolution which made those who
approached him feel that they must obey; and which infused something
like awe into the attachment of his most devoted followers. Such a
combination, in which love was tempered by authority, was the one
probably best calculated to inspire devotion in the rough and turbulent
spirits among whom his lot was to be cast.
The history of the Conquest is necessarily that of Cortés, who is, if I
may so say, not merely the soul but the body of the enterprise; present
everywhere in person, out in the thick of the fight, or in the building
of the works, with his sword or with his musket, sometimes leading his
soldiers, and sometimes directing his little navy. The negotiations,
intrigues, correspondence, are all conducted by him; and, like Cæsar, he
wrote his own Commentaries in the heat of the stirring scenes which form
the subject of them. His character is marked with the most opposite
traits, embracing qualities apparently the most incompatible. He was
avaricious, yet liberal; bold to desperation, yet cautious and
calculating in his plans; magnanimous, yet very cunning; courteous and
affable in his deportment, yet inexorably stern; lax in his notions of
morality, yet (not uncommon) a sad bigot.
The great feature in his character was constancy of purpose; a constancy
not to be daunted by danger, nor baffled by disappointment, nor wearied
out by impediments and delays.
He was a knight-errant in the literal sense of the word. Of all the band
of adventurous cavaliers whom Spain, in the sixteenth century, sent
forth on the career of discovery and conquest, there was none more
deeply filled with the spirit of romantic enterprise than Hernando
Cortés. Dangers and difficulties, instead of deterring, seemed to have a
charm in his eyes. They were necessary to rouse him to a full
consciousness of his powers. He grappled with them at the outset, and,
if I may so express myself, seemed to prefer to take his enterprises by
the most difficult side. He conceived, at the first moment of his
landing in Mexico, the design of its conquest. When he saw the strength
of its civilization, he was not turned from his purpose. When he was
assailed by the superior force of Narvaez, he still persisted in it; and
when he was driven in ruin from the capital, he still cherished his
original idea. How successfully he carried it into execution, we have
seen. After the few years of repose which succeeded the Conquest, his
adventurous spirit impelled him to that dreary march across the marshes
of Chiapa; and, after another interval, to seek his fortunes on the
stormy Californian gulf. When he found that no other continent remained
for him to conquer, he made serious proposals to the emperor to equip a
fleet at his own expense, with which he would sail to the Moluccas, and
subdue the Spice Islands for the crown of Castile!
This spirit of knight-errantry might lead us to under-value his talents
as a general, and to regard him merely in the light of a lucky
adventurer. But this would be doing him injustice; for Cortés was
certainly a great general, if that man be one who performs great
achievements with the resources which his own genius has created. There
is probably no instance in history where so vast an enterprise has been
achieved by means apparently so inadequate. He may be truly said to have
effected the conquest by his own resources. If he was indebted for his
success to the co-operation of the Indian tribes, it was the force of
his genius that obtained command of such materials. He arrested the arm
that was lifted to smite him, and made it do battle in his behalf. He
beat the Tlascalans, and made them his stanch allies. He beat the
soldiers of Narvaez, and doubled his effective force by it. When his
own men deserted him he did not desert himself. He drew them back by
degrees, and compelled them to act by his will till they were all as one
man. He brought together the most miscellaneous collection of
mercenaries who ever fought under one standard--adventurers from Cuba
and the isles, craving for gold; hidalgos, who came from the old country
to win laurels; broken-down cavaliers, who hoped to mend their fortunes
in the New World; vagabonds flying from justice; the grasping followers
of Narvaez, and his own reckless veterans--men with hardly a common tie,
and burning with the spirit of jealousy and faction; wild tribes of the
natives from all parts of the country, who had been sworn enemies from
their cradles, and who had met only to cut one another’s throats and to
procure victims for sacrifice; men, in short, differing in race, in
language, and in interests, with scarcely anything in common among them.
Yet this motley congregation was assembled in one camp, compelled to
bend to the will of one man, to consort together in harmony, to breathe,
as it were, one spirit, and to move on a common principle of action! It
is in this wonderful power over the discordant masses thus gathered
under his banner that we recognize the genius of the great commander no
less than in the skill of his military operations.
His power over the minds of his soldiers was a natural result of their
confidence in his abilities. But it is also to be attributed to his
popular manners--that happy union of authority and companionship which
fitted him for the command of a band of roving adventurers. It would not
have done for him to have fenced himself round with the stately reserve
of a commander of regular forces. He was embarked with his men in a
common adventure, and nearly on terms of equality, since he held his
commission by no legal warrant. But while he indulged this freedom and
familiarity with his soldiers, he never allowed it to interfere with
their strict obedience, nor to impair the severity of discipline. When
he had risen to higher consideration, although he affected more state,
he still admitted his veterans to the same intimacy. “He preferred,”
says Diaz, “to be called ‘Cortés’ by us, to being called by any title;
and with good reason,” continues the enthusiastic old cavalier, “for the
name of Cortés is as famous in our day as was that of Cæsar among the
Romans, or of Hannibal among the Carthaginians.” He showed the same kind
regard toward his ancient comrades in the very last act of his life; for
he appropriated a sum by his will for the celebration of two thousand
masses for the souls of those who had fought with him in the campaigns
of Mexico.
His character has been unconsciously traced by the hand of a master--
“And oft the chieftain deigned to aid
And mingle in the mirth they made;
For though, with men of high degree,
The proudest of the proud was he,
Yet, trained in camps, he knew the art
To win the soldier’s hardy heart.
They love a captain to obey,
Boisterous as March, yet fresh as May;
With open hand, and brow as free,
Lover of wine and minstrelsy;
Ever the first to scale a tower,
As venturous in a lady’s bower;
Such buxom chief shall lead his host
From India’s fires to Zembla’s frost.”
Cortés, without much violence, might have sat for this portrait of
Marmion.
Cortés was not a vulgar conqueror. He did not conquer from the mere
ambition of conquest. If he destroyed the ancient capital of the Aztecs,
it was to build up a more magnificent capital on its ruins. If he
desolated the land and broke up its existing institutions, he employed
the short period of his administration in digesting schemes for
introducing there a more improved culture and a higher civilization. In
all his expeditions he was careful to study the resources of the
country, its social organization, and its physical capacities. He
enjoined it on his captains to attend particularly to these objects. If
he was greedy of gold, like most of the Spanish cavaliers in the New
World, it was not to hoard it, nor merely to lavish it in the support of
a princely establishment, but to secure funds for prosecuting his
glorious discoveries. Witness his costly expeditions to the Gulf of
California.
His enterprises were not undertaken solely for mercenary objects, as is
shown by the various expeditions he set on foot for the discovery of a
communication between the Atlantic and the Pacific. In his schemes of
ambition he showed a respect for the interests of science, to be
referred partly to the natural superiority of his mind, but partly, no
doubt, to the influence of early education. It is, indeed, hardly
possible that a person of his wayward and mercurial temper should have
improved his advantages at the university, but he brought away from it a
tincture of scholarship seldom found among the cavaliers of the period,
and which had its influence in enlarging his own conceptions. His
celebrated letters are written with a simple elegance that, as I have
already had occasion to remark, have caused them to be compared to the
military narrative of Cæsar. It will not be easy to find in the
chronicles of the period a more concise yet comprehensive statement, not
only of the events of his campaigns, but of the circumstances most
worthy of notice in the character of the conquered countries.
Cortés was not cruel; at least, not cruel as compared with most of those
who followed his iron trade. The path of the conqueror is necessarily
marked with blood. He was not too scrupulous, indeed, in the execution
of his plans. He swept away the obstacles which lay in his track; and
his fame is darkened by the commission of more than one act which his
boldest apologist will find it hard to vindicate. But he was not cruel.
He allowed no outrage on his unresisting foes. This may seem small
praise, but it is an exception to the usual conduct of his countrymen in
their conquests, and it is something to be in advance of one’s time. He
was severe, it may be added, in enforcing obedience to his orders for
protecting their persons and their property. With his licentious crew,
it was sometimes not without hazard that he was so. After the Conquest,
he sanctioned the system of _repartimientos_; but so did Columbus. He
endeavored to regulate it by the most humane laws, and continued to
suggest many important changes for ameliorating the condition of the
natives. The best commentary on his conduct, in this respect, is the
deference that was shown him by the Indians, and the confidence with
which they appealed to him for protection in all their subsequent
distresses.
MARTIN LUTHER.
BY THOMAS CARLYLE.
[Leader of the German Reformation, born 1483, died 1546. Educated
at the University of Erfurt, and originally intending to become a
lawyer, he was carried by religious enthusiasm into an Augustinian
convent. After taking orders he became in a few years Professor of
Philosophy in the Wittenberg University, and Doctor of Theology. It
was not till the promulgation of indulgences for sin, issued by
Pope Leo V to raise funds for the building of the Cathedral of St.
Peter’s at Rome, that Luther took a stand antagonistic to the Roman
Church. He posted ninety-five Latin theses on the door of the
Wittenberg church as a protest, which contained the germ of the
Protestant doctrine. This bold act kindled a fire throughout
Europe. Luther’s celebrated disputation with Doctor Eck, and his
fierce pamphlets against Rome, which were scattered broadcast by
the press, added fuel to the flames, and he was soon supported by
the sympathy and adherence of many of the nobles, particularly
George of Saxony, the reformer’s own electoral prince, as well as
by the support of large masses of the people. Luther was
excommunicated in 1520, and in the same year was summoned to answer
before Charles V, the German emperor,
[Illustration: MARTIN LUTHER.]
at the Diet of Worms. The reformer defended himself with great
eloquence and vigor, but was placed under the ban of the Empire,
and thenceforward became both a religious and political outlaw. The
Lutheran reformation rapidly spread to France, Switzerland, the
Scandinavian kingdoms, England, and Scotland, during the life of
its apostle, and shook the power of the Roman hierarchy to its very
center. Luther was protected in his work by a powerful band of
German princes, and when he died the larger part of North Germany
had accepted his doctrine. He was perhaps the most extraordinary
figure of an age prolific in great men.]
The Diet of Worms and Luther’s appearance there on the 17th of April,
1521, may be considered as the greatest scene in modern European
history; the point, indeed, from which the whole subsequent history of
civilization takes its rise. After multiplied negotiations and
disputations, it had come to this. The young Emperor Charles V, with all
the princes of Germany, papal nuncios, dignitaries, spiritual and
temporal, are assembled there: Luther is to appear and answer for
himself, whether he will recant or not. The world’s pomp and power sits
there on this hand; on that, stands up for God’s truth one man, the poor
miner, Hans Luther’s son. Friends had reminded him of Huss, advised him
not to go; he would not be advised. A large company of friends rode out
to meet him, with still more earnest warnings; he answered, “Were there
as many devils in Worms as there are roof-tiles, I would on.” The
people, on the morrow, as he went to the hall of the diet, crowded the
windows and house-tops, some of them calling out to him, in solemn
words, not to recant. “Whosoever denieth me before men!” they cried to
him, as in a kind of solemn petition and adjuration. Was it not in
reality a petition too--the petition of the whole world lying in dark
bondage of soul, paralyzed under a black spectral nightmare and
triple-hatted chimera, calling itself Father in God, and what not--“Free
us; it rests with thee; desert us not!”
Luther did not desert us. His speech of two hours distinguished itself
by its respectful, wise, and honest tone; submissive to whatsoever
could lawfully claim submission, not submissive to any more than that.
His writings, he said, were partly his own, partly derived from the Word
of God. As to what was his own, human infirmity entered into it;
unguarded anger, blindness, many things, doubtless, which it were a
blessing for him could he abolish altogether. But as to what stood on
sound truth and the Word of God, he could not recant it. How could he?
“Confute me,” he concluded, “by proofs of Scripture, or else by plain,
just arguments. I can not recant otherwise; for it is neither safe nor
prudent to do aught against conscience. Here stand I; I can do no other.
God assist me!” It is, as we say, the greatest moment in the modern
history of men. English Puritanism, England and its Parliaments,
Americas, and the vast work done in these two centuries; French
Revolution, Europe and its work everywhere at present--the germ of it
all lay there. Had Luther in that moment done other, it had all been
otherwise! The European world was asking him: Am I to sink ever lower
into falsehood, stagnant putrescence, loathsome, accursed death; or,
with what paroxysm, to cast the falsehoods out of me, and be cured and
live?
Great wars, contentions, and disunion followed out of this Reformation,
which last down to our day, and are yet far from ended. Great talk and
crimination has been made about these. They are lamentable, undeniable;
but, after all, what has Luther or his cause to do with them? It seems
strange reasoning to charge the Reformation with all this. When Hercules
turned the purifying river into King Augeas’s stables, I have no doubt
the confusion that resulted was considerable all around, but I think it
was not Hercules’s blame; it was some other’s blame! The Reformation
might bring what results it liked when it came, but the Reformation
simply could not help coming.
Of Luther I will add now, in reference to all these wars and bloodshed,
the noticeable fact that none of them began so long as he continued
living. The controversy did not get to fighting so long as he was there.
To me it is a proof of his greatness in all senses, this fact. How
seldom do we find a man that has stirred up some vast commotion, who
does not himself perish, swept away in it! Such is the usual course of
revolutionists. Luther continued, in a good degree, sovereign of this
greatest revolution; all Protestants, of what rank or function soever,
looking much to him for guidance; and he held it peaceably, continued
firm at the center of it. A man to do this must have a kingly faculty;
he must have the gift to discern at all turns where the true heart of
the matter lies, and to plant himself courageously on that, as a strong,
true man, that other true men may rally round him there. He will not
continue leader of men otherwise. Luther’s clear, deep force of
judgment, his force of all sorts--of _silence_, of tolerance and
moderation among others--are very notable in these circumstances.
Tolerance, I say; a very genuine kind of tolerance: he distinguishes
what is essential, and what is not; the unessential may go very much as
it will. A complaint comes to him that such and such a reformed preacher
“will not preach without a cassock.” “Well,” answers Luther, “what harm
will a cassock do the man? Let him have a cassock to preach in; let him
have three cassocks, if he find benefit in them!” His conduct in the
matter of Carlstadt’s wild image-breaking; of the Anabaptists; of the
Peasants’ war, shows a noble strength, very different from spasmodic
violence. With sure, prompt insight, he discriminates what is what; a
strong, just man, he speaks forth what is the wise course, and all men
follow him in that. Luther’s written works give similar testimony of
him. The dialect of these speculations is now grown obsolete for us, but
one still reads them with a singular attraction. And, indeed, the mere
grammatical diction is still legible enough. Luther’s merit in literary
history is of the greatest; his dialect became the language of all
writing. They are not well written, these four-and-twenty quartos of
his; written hastily, with quite other than literary objects. But in no
books have I found a more robust, genuine, I will say noble, faculty of
a man than in these. A rugged honesty, homeliness, simplicity; a rugged,
sterling sense and strength. He flashes out illumination from him; his
smiting idiomatic phrases seem to cleave into the very secret of the
matter. Good humor too, nay, tender affection, nobleness, and depth.
This man could have been a poet too! He had to _work_ an epic poem, and
not write one. I call him a great thinker; as, indeed, his greatness of
heart already betokens that.
Richter says of Luther’s words, “His words are half-battles.” They may
be called so. The essential quality of him was, that he could fight and
conquer--that he was a right piece of human valor. No more valiant man,
no mortal heart to be called _braver_, that one has record of, ever
lived in that Teutonic kindred whose character is valor. His defiance of
the “devils” in Worms was not a mere boast, as the like might be if now
spoken. It was a faith of Luther’s that there were devils, spiritual
denizens of the pit, continually besetting men. Many times in his
writings this turns up, and a most small sneer has been grounded on it
by some.
In the room of the Wartburg, where he sat translating the Bible, they
still show you a black spot on the wall, the strange memorial of one of
these conflicts. Luther was translating one of the Psalms; he was worn
down with long labor, with sickness, abstinence from food; there rose
before him some hideous, indefinable image, which he took for the Evil
One, to forbid his work. Luther started up with fiend-defiance, flung
his inkstand at the specter, and it disappeared! The spot still remains
there, a curious monument of several things. Any apothecary’s apprentice
can now tell us what we are to think of this apparition in a scientific
sense; but the man’s heart that dare rise defiant, face to face, against
hell itself, can give no higher proof of fearlessness. The thing he
will quail before exists not on this earth or under it. Fearless enough!
“The devil is aware,” writes he on one occasion, “that this does not
proceed out of fear in me. I have seen and defied innumerable devils.”
Of Duke George, of Leipsic, a great enemy of his, he said, “Duke George
is not equal to one devil--far short of a devil! If I had business at
Leipsic, I would ride into Leipsic, though it rained Duke Georges for
nine days running.” What a reservoir of dukes to ride into!
At the same time, they err greatly who imagine that this man’s courage
was ferocity--mere coarse, disobedient obstinacy and savagery--as many
do. Far from that. There may be an absence of fear, which arises from
the absence of thought or affection, from the presence of hatred and
stupid fury. We do not value the courage of the tiger highly. With
Luther it was far otherwise; no accusation could be more unjust than
this mere ferocious violence brought against him. A most gentle heart
withal, full of pity and love, as, indeed, the truly valiant heart ever
is. The tiger before a _stronger_ foe flies. The tiger is not what we
call valiant, only fierce and cruel. I know few things more touching
than those soft breathings of affection--soft as a child’s or a
mother’s--in this great, wild heart of Luther. So honest, unadulterated
with any cant; homely, rude in their utterance; pure as water welling
from the rock. What, in fact, was all this downpressed mood of despair
and reprobation which we saw in his youth but the outcome of
pre-eminent, thoughtful gentleness, affections too keen and pure? It is
the curse such men as the poor poet Cowper fall into. Luther, to a
slight observer, might have seemed a timid, weak man; modesty,
affectionate, shrinking tenderness the chief distinction of him. It is a
noble valor which is roused in a heart like this, once stirred up into
defiance, all kindled into a heavenly blaze.
In Luther’s “Table-Talk,” a posthumous book of anecdotes and sayings
collected by his friends--the most interesting now of all the books
proceeding from him--we have many beautiful, unconscious displays of the
man and what sort of nature he had. His behavior at the death-bed of his
little daughter--so still, so great and loving--is among the most
affecting things. He is resigned that his little Magdalene should die,
yet longs inexpressibly that she might live--follows, in awe-struck
thought, the flight of her little soul through those unknown realms.
Awestruck--most heartfelt, we can see; and sincere--for, after all
dogmatic creeds and articles, he feels what nothing it is that we know
or can know. His little Magdalene shall be with God, as God wills; for
Luther, too, that is all.
Once he looks out from his solitary Patmos, the castle of Coburg, in the
middle of the night. The great vault of immensity, long flights of
clouds sailing through it--dumb, gaunt, huge--who supports all that?
“None ever saw the pillars of it; yet it is supported.” God supports it.
We must know that God is great, that God is good; and trust, where we
can not see. Returning home from Leipsic once, he is struck by the
beauty of the harvest-fields. How it stands, that golden yellow corn, on
its fair taper stem, its golden head bent, all rich and waving there;
the meek earth, at God’s kind bidding, has produced it once again--the
bread of man! In the garden of Wittenberg, one evening at sunset, a
little bird has perched for the night. That little bird, says Luther;
above it are the stars and deep heaven of worlds; yet it has folded its
little wings; gone trustfully to rest there as in its home. The maker of
it has given it, too, a home! Neither are mirthful turns wanting--there
is a great, free, human heart in this man.
The common speech of him has a rugged nobleness; idiomatic, expressive,
genuine; gleams here and there with beautiful poetic tints. One feels
him to be a great brother man. His love of music, indeed--is not this,
as it were, the summary of all these affections in him? Many a wild
unutterability he spoke forth from him in the tones of his flute. The
devils fled from his flute, he says. Death-defiance on the one hand, and
such love of music on the other--I could call these the two opposite
poles of a great soul; between these two all great things had room.
Luther’s face is to me expressive of him. In Kranach’s best portraits I
find the true Luther. A rude plebeian face, with its huge, crag-like
brows and bones--the emblem of rugged energy--at first, almost a
repulsive face. Yet in the eyes especially there is a wild, silent
sorrow; an unnamable melancholy, the element of all gentle and fine
affections; giving to the rest the true stamp of nobleness. Laughter was
in this Luther, as we said; but tears also were there. Tears also were
appointed him; tears and hard toil. The basis of his life was sadness,
earnestness. In his latter days, after all triumphs and victories, he
expresses himself heartily weary of living. He considers that God alone
can and will regulate the course things are taking, and that perhaps the
day of judgment is not far. As for him, he longs for one thing--that God
would release him from his labor, and let him depart and be at rest.
They understood little of the man who cite this in discredit of him! I
will call this Luther a true great man; great in intellect, in courage,
affection, and integrity; one of our most lovable and precious men.
Great, not as a hewn obelisk, but as an Alpine mountain; so simple,
honest, spontaneous; not setting up to be great at all; there for quite
another purpose than being great! Ah, yes, unsubduable granite, piercing
far and wide into the heavens; yet, in the clefts of its fountains,
green, beautiful valleys with flowers! A right spiritual hero and
prophet; once more, a true son of nature and fact, for whom these
centuries, and many that are to come yet, will be thankful to Heaven.
IGNATIUS DE LOYOLA (SAINT), FOUNDER OF THE ORDER OF JESUS.
BY SIR JAMES STEPHEN.
[Don Inigo Lopez de Recalde de Loyola, born in 1491, died in 1556.
The scion of one of the noblest families in Spain, he was courtier
and soldier till he was severely wounded in defending the city of
Pampeluna against the French. A prisoner and a cripple, he became a
religious enthusiast and ascetic, and conceived the idea of forming
a body of religious soldiery for the defense of the Roman hierarchy
against the assaults of its foes. After studying for the priesthood
and taking orders, he went to Rome and with some difficulty
persuaded the pontiff Paul III, who dreaded the fanatical
discipline of such an order as much as he recognized its value, to
issue a bull in sanction of his plan. The Society of Jesus was thus
organized, and soon became, as it has continued to be, the most
powerful bulwark of Romanism, the most active center of aggression
and propagandism. The foundation of this order is recognized by
historians as an epoch in the history of religion.]
Descended from an illustrious family, Ignatius had in his youth been a
courtier and a cavalier, and, if not a poet, at least a cultivator of
poetry. At the siege of Pampeluna his leg was broken, and, after the
failure of mere vulgar leeches, was set by a touch from the hand of the
prince of apostles. Yet St. Peter’s therapeutic skill was less perfect
than might have been expected from so exalted a chirurgeon; for a
splinter still protruded through the skin, and the limb was shrunk and
shortened. To regain his fair proportions, Ignatius had himself
literally stretched upon the rack; and expiated by a long confinement to
his couch this singular experiment to reduce his refractory bones and
sinews. Books of knighthood relieved the lassitude of sickness, and when
these were exhausted, he betook himself to a series of still more
marvelous romances. In the legends of the Saints the disabled soldier
discovered a new field of
[Illustration: LOYOLA.]
emulation and glory. Compared with their self-conquests and high
rewards, the achievements and the renown of Roland and of Amadis waxed
dim. Compared with the peerless damsel for whose smiles Palladius had
fought and died, how transcendently glorious the image of female
loveliness and angelic purity which had irradiated the hermit’s cell and
the path of the way-worn pilgrims!
Far as the heavens are above the earth would be the plighted fealty of
the knight of the Virgin Mother beyond the noblest devotion of merely
human chivalry. In her service he would cast his shield over the Church
which ascribed to her more than celestial dignities, and bathe in the
blood of her enemies the sword once desecrated to the mean ends of
worldly ambition. Nor were these vows unheeded by her to whom they were
addressed. Environed in light, and clasping her infant to her bosom, she
revealed herself to the adoring gaze of her champion. At that heavenly
vision all fantasies of worldly and sensual delight, like exorcised
demons, fled from his soul into eternal exile. He rose, suspended at her
shrine his secular weapons, performed there his nocturnal devotions, and
with returning day retired to consecrate his future life to the glory of
the _Virgo Deipara_.
To these erotic dreams succeeded stern realities; convulsive agonies of
prayer, wailings of remorse, and self-inflicted bodily torments.
Exchanging dresses with a beggar, he lined his gabardine with prickly
thorns, fasted to the verge of starvation, assumed the demeanor of an
idiot, became too loathsome for human contact, and then, plunging into a
gloomy cavern, surrendered himself up to such wrestlings with the evil
spirit, and to such vicissitudes of rapture and despair, that in the
storm of turbid passions his reason had nearly given way.
At the verge of madness, Ignatius paused. That noble intellect was not
to be whelmed beneath the tempest in which so many have sunk, nor was
his deliverance to be accomplished by any vulgar methods. Standing on
the steps of a Dominican church, he recited the office of Our Lady,
when suddenly heaven itself was laid open to the eyes of the worshiper.
That ineffable mystery which the author of the Athanasian creed has
labored in vain to enunciate in words, was disclosed to him as an
object, not of faith, but of actual sight. To his spiritualized sense
was disclosed the actual process by which the host is transubstantiated,
and the other Christian verities which it is permitted to common man to
receive but as exercises of their belief, became to him the objects of
immediate inspection and of direct consciousness. For eight successive
days his body reposed in an unbroken trance, while his spirit thus
imbibed disclosures for which the tongues of men have no appropriate
language.
Ignatius returned to this sublunary sphere with a mission not unmeet for
an envoy from the empyrean world, of which he had thus become a
temporary denizen. He returned to earth to establish a theocracy, of
which he should himself be the first administrator, and to which every
tribe and kindred of men should be subject. He returned no longer a
sordid, half-distracted anchorite, but, strange to tell, a man
distinguished not more by the gigantic magnitude of his designs than by
the clear good sense, the profound sagacity, the calm perseverance, and
the flexible address with which he was to pursue them. History affords
no more perfect illustration how readily delirious enthusiasm and the
shrewdness of the exchange may combine and harmonize in minds of the
heroic order. A Swedenborg-Franklin reconciling in himself these
antagonist propensities is no monster of the fancy.
Of all the occupations to which man can devote the earlier years of his
life, none probably leaves on the character an impress so deep and
indelible as the profession of arms. In no other calling is the whole
range of our sympathetic affections, whether kindly or the reverse,
called into such habitual and active exercise, nor does any other
stimulate the mere intellectual powers with a force so irresistible
when once they are effectually aroused from their accustomed torpor.
Loyola was a soldier to the last breath he drew, a general whose
authority none might question, a comrade on whose cordiality all might
rely, sustaining all the dangers and hardships he exacted from his
followers, and in his religious campaigns a strategist of consummate
skill and most comprehensive survey. It was his maxim that war ought to
be aggressive, and that even an inadequate force might be wisely
weakened by detachments on a distant service, if the prospect of success
was such that the vague and perhaps exaggerated rumor of it would strike
terror into nearer foes and animate the hopes of irresolute allies. To
conquer Lutheranism by converting to the faith of Rome the barbarous or
half-civilized nations of the earth was, therefore, among the earliest
of his projects.
Though not in books, yet in the far nobler school of active and
especially of military life, Loyola had learned the great secret of
government--at least, of his government. It was that the social
affections, if concentrated within a well-defined circle, possess an
intensity and endurance unrivaled by those passions of which self is the
immediate object. He had the sagacity to perceive that emotions like
those with which a Spartan or a Jew had yearned over the land and the
institutions of their fathers--emotions stronger than appetite, vanity,
ambition, avarice, or death itself--might be kindled in the members of
his order; if he could detect and grasp those mainsprings of human
action of which the Greek and the Hebrew legislators had obtained the
mastery. Nor did he seek them in vain.
Some unconscious love of power, a mind bewildered by many gross
superstitions and theoretical errors, and perhaps some tinge of
insanity, may be ascribed to Ignatius Loyola; but no dispassionate
reader of his writings or of his life will question his integrity, or
deny to him the praise of a devotion at once sincere, habitual, and
profound. It is not to the glory of the reformers to depreciate the name
of their greatest antagonist, or to think meanly of him to whom more
than any other man it is owing that the Reformation was stayed and the
Church of Rome rescued from her impending doom.
From amid the controversies which then agitated the world had emerged
two great truths, of which, after three hundred years’ debate, we are
yet to find the reconcilement. It was true that the Christian
commonwealth should be one consentient body, united under one supreme
head, and bound together a community of law, of doctrine, and of
worship. It was also true that each member of that body must for
himself, on his own responsibility and at his own peril, render that
worship, study that law, and seek the guidance of the Supreme Ruler.
Here was a problem for the learned and wise, for schools, and presses,
and pulpits. But it is not by sages nor in the spirit of philosophy that
such problems receive their practical solution. Wisdom may be the
ultimate arbiter, but it is seldom the immediate agent in human affairs.
It is by antagonist passions, prejudices, and follies that the equipoise
of this most belligerent planet of ours is chiefly preserved, and so it
was in the sixteenth century. The German pointed the way to that sacred
solitude where beside the worshiper himself none may enter; the Spaniard
to that innumerable company which with one accord still chant the
liturgies of remotest generations. Chieftains in the most momentous
warfare of which this earth had been the theatre since the subversion of
paganism, each was a rival worthy of the other in capacity, courage,
disinterestedness, and love of the truth, and yet how marvelous the
contrast!
Unalluring and, on the whole, unlovely as it is, the image of Loyola
must ever command the homage of the world. No other uninspired man,
unaided by military or civil power, and making no appeal to the passions
of the multitude, has had the genius to conceive, the courage to
attempt, and the success to establish a polity teeming with results at
once so momentous and so distinctly foreseen. Amid his ascetic follies
and his half-crazy visions, and despite all the coarse daubing with
which the miracle-mongers of his church have defaced it, his character
is destitute neither of sublimity nor of grace. Men felt that there had
appeared among them one of those monarchs who reign in right of their
own native supremacy, and to whom the feebler will of others must yield
either a ready or a reluctant allegiance. It was a conviction recorded
by his disciples on his tomb in these memorable and significant words:
“Whoever thou mayst be who hast portrayed to thine own imagination
Pompey nor Cæsar or Alexander, open thine eyes to the truth, and let
this marble teach thee how much greater a conqueror than they was
Ignatius.”
THOMAS CROMWELL, EARL OF ESSEX.
BY JOHN RICHARD GREEN.
[Born about 1498, executed 1540. Cromwell began his public career
as secretary of Cardinal Wolsey, and made a brilliant reputation
for administrative ability before his patron’s fall. He acquired
the notice of Henry VIII by his loyalty to the disgraced cardinal
when all other friends had deserted him. By the king’s favor he
received the highest offices of the state, and was made Prime
Minister, finally becoming earl of Essex. Cromwell was the
political leader of the English Reformation, and the most effective
instrument in concentrating power in the hands of the king. His
impeachment and execution for high treason, however he may have
deserved his fate for his cruelty and unscrupulousness, was gross
ingratitude on the part of Henry.]
The debate on the suppression of the monasteries was the first instance
of opposition with which Cromwell had met, and for some time longer it
was to remain the only one. While the great revolution which struck down
the Church was in progress, England looked silently on. In all the
earlier ecclesiastical changes, in the contest over the Papal
jurisdiction and Papal exactions, in the reform of the Church courts,
even in the curtailment of the legislative independence of the clergy,
the nation as a whole had gone with the king. But from the enslavement
of the clergy, from the gagging of the pulpits, from the suppression of
the monasteries, the bulk of the nation stood aloof. It is only through
the stray depositions of royal spies that we catch a glimpse of the
wrath and hate which lay seething under this silence of a whole people.
For the silence was a silence of terror. Before Cromwell’s rise and
after his fall from power the reign of Henry VIII witnessed no more than
the common tyranny and bloodshed of the time. But the years of
Cromwell’s administration form the one period in our history which
deserves the name which men have given to the rule of Robespierre. It
was the English Terror. It was by terror that Cromwell mastered the
king. Cranmer could plead for him at a later time with Henry as “one
whose surety was only by your majesty, who loved your majesty, as I ever
thought, no less than God.”
But the attitude of Cromwell toward the king was something more than
that of absolute dependence and unquestioning devotion. He was “so
vigilant to preserve your majesty from all treasons,” adds the primate,
“that few could be so secretly conceived but he detected the same from
the beginning.” Henry, like every Tudor, was fearless of open danger,
but tremulously sensitive to the slightest breath of hidden disloyalty.
It was on this inner dread that Cromwell based the fabric of his power.
He was hardly secretary before a host of spies were scattered broadcast
over the land. Secret denunciations poured into the open ear of the
minister. The air was thick with tales of plots and conspiracies, and
with the detection and suppression of each Cromwell tightened his hold
on the king. And as it was by terror that he mastered the king, so it
was by terror that he mastered the people. Men felt in England, to use
the figure by which Erasmus paints the time, “as if a scorpion lay
sleeping under every stone.” The confessional had no secrets for
Cromwell. Men’s talk with their closest friends found its way to his
ear. “Words idly spoken,” the murmurs of a petulant abbot, the ravings
of a moon-struck nun, were, as the nobles cried passionately at his
fall, “tortured into treason.” The only chance of safety lay in silence.
“Friends who used to write and send me presents,” Erasmus tells us, “now
send neither letter nor gifts, nor receive any from any one, and this
through fear.”
But even the refuge of silence was closed by a law more infamous than
any that has ever blotted the statute-book of England. Not only was
thought made treason, but men were forced to reveal their thoughts on
pain of their very silence being punished with the penalties of treason.
All trust in the older bulwarks of liberty was destroyed by a policy as
daring as it was unscrupulous. The noblest institutions were degraded
into instruments of terror. Though Wolsey had strained the law to the
utmost, he had made no open attack on the freedom of justice. If he had
shrunk from assembling Parliaments, it was from his sense that they were
the bulwarks of liberty. Under Cromwell the coercion of juries and the
management of judges rendered the courts mere mouth-pieces of the royal
will: and where even this shadow of justice proved an obstacle to
bloodshed, Parliament was brought into play to pass bill after bill of
attainder. “He shall be judged by the bloody laws he has himself made,”
was the cry of the council at the moment of his fall, and, by a singular
retribution, the crowning injustice which he sought to introduce even
into the practice of attainder--the condemnation of a man without
hearing his defense--was only practiced on himself.
But ruthless as was the Terror of Cromwell, it was of a nobler type than
the Terror of France. He never struck uselessly or capriciously, or
stooped to the meaner victims of the guillotine. His blows were
effective just because he chose his victims from among the noblest and
the best. If he struck at the Church, it was through the Carthusians,
the holiest and the most renowned of English churchmen. If he struck at
the baronage, it was through the Courtenays and the Poles, in whose
veins flowed the blood of kings. If he struck at the New Learning, it
was through the murder of Sir Thomas More. But no personal
vindictiveness mingled with his crime. In temper, indeed, so far as we
can judge from the few stories which lingered among his friends, he was
a generous, kind-hearted man, with pleasant and winning manners which
atoned for a certain awkwardness of person, and with a constancy of
friendship which won him a host of devoted adherents. But no touch
either of love or hate swayed him from his course.
The student of Macchiavelli had not studied the “Prince” in vain. He had
reduced bloodshed to a system. Fragments of his papers still show us
with what a business-like brevity he ticked off human lives among the
casual “remembrances” of the day. “Item, the Abbot of Reading to be sent
down to be tried and executed at Reading.” “Item, to know the king’s
pleasure touching Master More.” “Item, when Master Fisher shall go to
his execution, and the other.” It is indeed this utter absence of all
passion, of all personal feeling, that makes the figure of Cromwell the
most terrible in our history. He has an absolute faith in the end he is
pursuing, and he simply hews his way to it as a woodman hews his way
through the forest, axe in hand.
His single will forced on a scheme of foreign policy whose aim was to
bind England to the cause of the Reformation while it bound Henry
helplessly to his minister. The daring boast which his enemies laid
afterward to his charge, whether uttered or not, is but the expression
of his system. “In brief time he would bring things to such a pass that
the king with all his power should not be able to hinder him.” His plans
rested, like the plan which proved fatal to Wolsey, on a fresh marriage
of his master. The short-lived royalty of Anne Boleyn had ended in
charges of adultery and treason, and in her death in May, 1536. Her
rival and successor in Henry’s affections, Jane Seymour, died the next
year in childbirth; and Cromwell replaced her with a German consort,
Anne of Cleves, a sister-in-law of the Lutheran elector of Saxony. He
dared even to resist Henry’s caprice, when the king revolted on their
first interview at the coarse features and unwieldy form of his new
bride. For the moment Cromwell had brought matters “to such a pass” that
it was impossible to recoil from the marriage.
The marriage of Anne of Cleves, however, was but the first step in a
policy which, had it been carried out as he designed it, would have
anticipated the triumphs of Richelieu. Charles and the house of Austria
could alone bring about a Catholic reaction strong enough to arrest and
roll back the Reformation; and Cromwell was no sooner united with the
princes of North Germany than he sought to league them with France for
the overthrow of the emperor. Had he succeeded, the whole face of Europe
would have been changed, Southern Germany would have been secured for
Protestantism, and the Thirty Years’ War averted. He failed as men fail
who stand ahead of their age. The German princes shrank from a contest
with the emperor, France from a struggle which would be fatal to
Catholicism; and Henry, left alone to bear the resentment of the House
of Austria, and chained to a wife he loathed, turned savagely on
Cromwell. The nobles sprang on him with a fierceness that told of their
long-hoarded hate. Taunts and execrations burst from the lords at the
council table, as the Duke of Norfolk, who had been charged with the
minister’s arrest, tore the ensign of the garter from his neck. At the
charge of treason Cromwell flung his cap on the ground with a passionate
cry of despair. “This, then,” he exclaimed, “is my guerdon for the
services I have done! On your consciences, I ask you, am I a traitor?”
Then, with a sudden sense that all was over, he bade his foes “make
quick work, and not leave me to languish in prison.” Quick work was
made, and a yet louder burst of popular applause than that which hailed
the attainder of Cromwell hailed his execution.
CHARLES V, EMPEROR OF GERMANY.
BY JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY.
[Charles V, of Germany, and king of Spain under title of Charles I,
born 1500, died 1558. This fortunate monarch inherited from his
father, Archduke Philip of Austria, the Hapsburg dominion in
Germany; through his grandmother, the dukedom of Burgundy, which
included the Netherlands; and through his maternal grandfather,
Ferdinand of Spain, the magnificent dominion of the latter country
in both the New and Old Worlds. He was elected Emperor of Germany
by the diet in 1519, and was the most rich and powerful prince in
Christendom. Among the notable events of his reign were the
outbreak of Luther’s reformation, the defeat and capture of Francis
I of France, the capture and sack of Rome by his generalissimo, the
Constable de Bourbon, the two defeats of the Turkish power in
Hungary, and the severe punishment of the Mohammedan pirates of
Africa. Though Charles could turn his arms against the pontiff when
policy dictated, and was not a religious bigot, he strained every
nerve to suppress the Lutheran reformation for political reasons.
He was at last, however, obliged to assent to a certain degree of
religious toleration, fixed by the Nuremburg agreement in 1532, and
that of Augsburg in 1548. He abdicated in favor of his son Philip
in 1556, and spent the last two years of his life in the convent of
Yuste in Spain.]
The edicts and the Inquisition were the gifts of Charles to the
Netherlands, in return for their wasted treasure and their constant
obedience. For this his name deserves to be handed down to eternal
infamy, not only throughout the Netherlands but in every land where a
single heart beats for political or religious freedom. To eradicate
these institutions after they had been watered and watched by the care
of his successor, was the work of an eighty years’ war, in the course of
which millions of lives were sacrificed. Yet
[Illustration: CHARLES THE FIFTH.]
the abdicating emperor had summoned his faithful estates around him, and
stood up before them in his imperial robes for the last time, to tell
them of the affectionate regard which he had always borne them, and to
mingle his tears with theirs.
Could a single phantom have risen from one of the many thousand graves
where human beings had been thrust alive by his decree, perhaps there
might have been an answer to the question propounded by the emperor amid
all that piteous weeping. Perhaps it might have told the man, who asked
his hearers to be forgiven if he had ever unwittingly offended them,
that there was a world where it was deemed an offence to torture,
strangle, burn, and drown one’s innocent fellow-creatures. The usual but
trifling excuse for such enormities can not be pleaded for the emperor.
Charles was no fanatic. The man whose armies sacked Rome, who laid
sacrilegious hand on Christ’s vicegerent, and kept the infallible head
of the Church a prisoner to serve his own political ends, was _then_ no
bigot. He believed in nothing, save that when the course of his imperial
will was impeded and the interests of his imperial house in jeopardy,
pontiffs were wont to succumb as well as anabaptists. It was the
political heresy which lurked in the restiveness of the religious
reformers under dogma, tradition, and supernatural sanction to temporal
power, which he was disposed to combat to the death. He was too shrewd a
politician not to recognize the connection between aspirations for
religious and for political freedom. His hand was ever ready to crush
both heresies in one. Had he been a true son of the Church, a faithful
champion of her infallibility, he would not have submitted to the peace
of Passau so long as he could bring a soldier to the field.
Yet he acquiesced in the Reformation for Germany, while the fires were
burning for the reformers and were ever blazing in the Netherlands,
where it was death even to allude to the existence of the peace of
Passau. Nor did he acquiesce only from compulsion, for, long before his
memorable defeat by Maurice, he had permitted the German troops, with
whose services he could not dispense, regularly to attend Protestant
worship performed by their own Protestant chaplains. Lutheran preachers
marched from city to city of the Netherlands under the imperial banner,
while the subjects of those patrimonial provinces were daily suffering
on the scaffold for their non-conformity.
The influence of this garrison-preaching upon the progress of the
Reformation in the Netherlands is well known. Charles hated Lutherans,
but he required soldiers, and he thus helped by his own policy to
disseminate what, had he been the fanatic which he perhaps became in
retirement, he would have sacrificed his life to crush. It is quite true
that the growing Calvinism of the provinces was more dangerous, both
religiously and politically, than the Protestantism of the German
princes, which had not yet been formally pronounced heresy; but it is
thus the more evident that it was political rather than religious
heterodoxy which the despot wished to suppress.
No man, however, could have been more observant of religious rites. He
heard mass daily. He listened to a sermon every Sunday and holiday. He
confessed and received the sacrament four times a year. He was sometimes
to be seen in his tent at midnight on his knees before a crucifix, with
eyes and hands uplifted. He ate no meat in Lent, and used extraordinary
diligence to discover and to punish any man, whether courtier or
plebeian, who failed to fast during the whole forty days. He was too
good a politician not to know the value of broad phylacteries and long
prayers. He was too nice an observer of human nature not to know how
easily mint and cummin could still outweigh the “weightier matters of
law, judgment, mercy, and faith”; as if the founder of the religion
which he professed, and to maintain which he had established the
inquisition and the edicts, had never cried “woe” upon the Pharisees.
Yet there is no doubt that the emperor was at times almost popular in
the Netherlands, and that he was never as odious as his successor. There
were some deep reasons for this, and some superficial ones; among
others, a singularly fortunate manner. He spoke German, Spanish,
Italian, French, and Flemish, and could assume the characteristics of
each country as easily as he could use its language. He could be stately
with Spaniards, familiar with Flemings, witty with Italians. He could
strike down a bull in the ring like a matador at Madrid, or win the
prize in the tourney like a knight of old; he could ride at the ring
with the Flemish nobles, hit the popinjay with his cross-bow among
Antwerp artisans, or drink beer and exchange rude jests with the boors
of Brabant. For virtues such as these his grave crimes against God and
man, against religion and chartered and solemnly-sworn rights, have been
palliated, as if oppression became more tolerable because the oppressor
was an accomplished linguist and a good marksman.
But the great reason for his popularity, no doubt, lay in his military
genius. Charles was inferior to no general of his age. “When he was born
into the world,” said Alva, “he was born a soldier”; and the emperor
confirmed the statement and reciprocated the compliment, when he
declared that “the three first captains of the age was himself first,
and then the Duke of Alva and Constable Montmorency.” It is quite true
that all his officers were not of the same opinion, and many were too
apt to complain that his constant presence in the field did more harm
than good, and “that his Majesty would do much better to stay at home.”
There is, however, no doubt that he was both a good soldier and a good
general. He was constitutionally fearless, and he possessed great energy
and endurance. He was ever the first to arm when a battle was to be
fought, and the last to take off his harness. He commanded in person and
in chief, even when surrounded by veterans and crippled by the gout. He
was calm in great reverses. It was said that he was never known to
change color except upon two occasions--after the fatal destruction of
his fleet at Algiers, and in the memorable flight from Innspruck.
He was of a phlegmatic, stoical temperament, until shattered by age and
disease; a man without sentiment and without a tear. It was said by
Spaniards that he was never seen to weep, even at the death of his
nearest relatives and friends, except on the solitary occasion of the
departure of Don Ferrante Gonzaga from court. Such a temperament was
invaluable in the stormy career to which he had devoted his life. He was
essentially a man of action, a military chieftain. “Pray only for my
health and my life,” he was accustomed to say to the young officers who
came to him from every part of his dominions to serve under his banners,
“for so long as I have these I will never leave you idle--at least in
France. I love peace no better than the rest of you. I was born and bred
to arms, and must of necessity keep on my harness till I can bear it no
longer.” The restless energy and the magnificent tranquillity of his
character made him a hero among princes, an idol with his officers, a
popular favorite everywhere. The promptness with which, at much personal
hazard, he descended like a thunderbolt in the midst of the Ghent
insurrection; the juvenile ardor with which the almost bed-ridden man
arose from his sickbed to smite the Protestants at Mühlberg; the grim
stoicism with which he saw sixty thousand of his own soldiers perish in
the wintry siege of Metz--all insured him a large measure of that
applause which ever follows military distinction, especially when the
man who achieves it happens to wear a crown. He combined the personal
prowess of a knight of old with the more modern accomplishments of a
scientific tactician. He could charge the enemy in person like the most
brilliant cavalry officer, and he thoroughly understood the arrangements
of a campaign, the marshaling and victualing of troops, and the whole
art of setting and maintaining an army in the field.
Yet, though brave and warlike as the most chivalrous of his
ancestors--Gothic, Burgundian, or Suabian--he was entirely without
chivalry. Fanaticism for the faith, protection for the oppressed,
fidelity to friend or foe, knightly loyalty to a cause deemed sacred,
the sacrifice of personal interests to great ideas, generosity of hand
and heart--all those qualities which unite with courage and constancy to
make up the ideal chevalier, Charles not only lacked but despised. He
trampled on the weak antagonist, whether burgher or petty potentate. He
was false as water. He inveigled his foes, who trusted to his imperial
promises, by arts unworthy an emperor or a gentleman. He led about the
unfortunate John Frederic, of Saxony, in his own language, “like a bear
in a chain,” ready to be slipped upon Maurice should “the boy” prove
ungrateful. He connived at the famous forgery of the prelate of Arras,
to which the Landgrave Philip owed his long imprisonment--a villainy
worse than many for which humbler rogues have suffered by thousands upon
the gallows. The contemporary world knew well the history of his frauds,
on scale both colossal and minute, and called him familiarly “Charles
qui triche.”
The absolute master of realms on which the sun perpetually shone, he was
not only greedy for additional dominion, but he was avaricious in small
matters, and hated to part with a hundred dollars. To the soldier who
brought him the sword and gauntlets of Francis I he gave a hundred
crowns, when ten thousand would have been less than the customary
present; so that the man left his presence full of desperation. The
three soldiers who swam the Elbe, with their swords in their mouths, to
bring him the boats with which he passed to the victory of Mühlberg,
received from his imperial bounty a doublet, a pair of stockings, and
four crowns apiece. His courtiers and ministers complained bitterly of
his habitual niggardliness, and were fain to eke out their slender
salaries by accepting bribes from every hand rich enough to bestow them.
In truth, Charles was more than anything else a politician,
notwithstanding his signal abilities as a soldier.
If to have founded institutions which could last be the test of
statesmanship, he was even a statesman, for many of his institutions
have resisted the pressure of three centuries; but those of Charlemagne
fell as soon as his hand was cold, while the works of many ordinary
legislators have attained to a perpetuity denied to the statutes of
Solon or Lycurgus. Durability is not the test of merit in human
institutions. Tried by the only touchstone applicable to governments,
their capacity to insure the highest welfare of the governed, we shall
not find his polity deserving of much admiration. It is not merely that
he was a despot by birth and inclination, nor that he naturally
substituted, as far as was practicable, the despotic for the republican
element wherever his hand can be traced. There may be possible good in
despotisms, as there is often much tyranny in democracy. Tried, however,
according to the standard by which all governments may be measured,
those laws of truth and divine justice which all Christian nations
recognize, and which are perpetual, whether recognized or not, we shall
find little to venerate in the life-work of the emperor. The interests
of his family, the security of his dynasty--these were his end and aim.
The happiness or the progress of his people never furnished even the
indirect motives of his conduct, and the result was a baffled policy and
a crippled and bankrupt empire at last.
He knew men--especially he knew their weaknesses, and he knew how to
turn them to account. He knew how much they would bear, and that little
grievances would sometimes inflame more than vast and deliberate
injustice. Therefore he employed natives mainly in the subordinate
offices of his various states, and he repeatedly warned his successor
that the haughtiness of Spaniards and the incompatibility of their
character with the Flemish would be productive of great difficulties and
dangers. It was his opinion that men might be tyrannized more
intelligently by their own kindred, and in this, perhaps, he was right.
He was indefatigable in the discharge of business; and if it were
possible that half a world could be administered as if it were the
private property of an individual, the task would have been, perhaps, as
well accomplished by Charles as by any man. He had not the absurdity of
supposing it possible for him to attend to the details of every
individual affair in every one of his realms, and he therefore intrusted
the stewardship of all specialties to his various ministers and agents.
It was his business to know men and to deal with affairs on a large
scale, and in this he certainly was superior to his successor. His
correspondence was mainly in the hands of Granvelle the elder, who
analyzed letters received, and frequently wrote all but the signatures
of the answers. The same minister usually possessed the imperial ear,
and farmed it out for his own benefit. In all this there was, of course,
room for vast deception; but the emperor was quite aware of what was
going on, and took a philosophic view of the matter as an inevitable
part of his system. Granvelle grew enormously rich under his eye by
trading on the imperial favor and sparing his Majesty much trouble.
Charles saw it all, ridiculed his peculations, but called him his “bed
of down.” His knowledge of human nature was, however, derived from a
contemplation mainly of its weaknesses, and was therefore one-sided. He
was often deceived and made many a fatal blunder, shrewd politician
though he was. He involved himself often in enterprises which could not
be honorable or profitable, and which inflicted damage on his greatest
interests. He often offended men who might have been useful friends, and
converted allies into enemies. “His Majesty,” said a keen observer who
knew him well, “has not in his career shown the prudence which was
necessary to him. He has often offended those whose love he might have
conciliated, converted friends into enemies, and let those perish who
were his most faithful partisans.” Thus it must be acknowledged that
even his boasted knowledge of human nature and his power of dealing with
men was rather superficial and empirical than the real gift of genius.
WILLIAM OF NASSAU, PRINCE OF ORANGE.
BY JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY.
[Surnamed “the Silent,” founder of the independence of the
Netherlands, born 1533, assassinated 1584. Though the scion of a
Protestant family, the Prince of Orange was educated to arms and
diplomacy at the court of Charles V, by whom he was greatly beloved
and trusted. On the accession of Philip he was made a Councilor of
State to assist Margaret of Parma in her regency over the
Netherlands. All ties of loyalty were gradually destroyed by his
love of country, so terribly outraged by the cruelties of a bigoted
king and his no less bigoted agents. On Alva’s arrival with Spanish
troops the prince returned to Germany, and thus saved himself from
the headsman, the fate which befell counts Egmont and Horn, two of
the most eminent Flemish patriots. In the uprising of the
Netherlands, which followed, the Prince of Orange was the most
eminent figure, and to the consummate skill with which he guided
the fate of his people their ultimate success was due. William, at
the head of his brave Flemings, and with the capricious assistance
of France and England, wore out three of the greatest generals of
the age, the Duke of Alva, Don John of Austria, and Prince
Alexander Farnese. The price put on his assassination by the King
of Spain was finally earned by Baltazar Gérard, a Burgundian
fanatic.]
In person, Orange was above the middle height, perfectly well made and
sinewy, but rather spare than stout. His eyes, hair, beard, and
complexion were brown; his head was small, symmetrically shaped,
combining the alertness and compactness characteristic of the soldier,
with the capacious brow furrowed prematurely with the horizontal lines
of
[Illustration: WILLIAM OF NASSAU.]
thought, denoting the statesman and the sage. His physical appearance
was, therefore, in harmony with his organization, which was of antique
model. Of his moral qualities, the most prominent was his piety. He was
more than anything else a religious man. From his trust in God he ever
derived support and consolation in the darkest hours. Implicitly relying
upon Almighty wisdom and goodness, he looked danger in the face with a
constant smile, and endured incessant labors and trials with a serenity
which seemed more than human. While, however, his soul was full of
piety, it was tolerant of error.
Sincerely and deliberately himself a convert to the Reformed Church, he
was ready to extend freedom of worship to Catholics on the one hand, and
to Anabaptists on the other; for no man ever felt more keenly than he,
that the reformer who becomes in his turn a bigot is doubly odious.
His firmness was allied to his piety. His constancy in bearing the whole
weight of as unequal a struggle as men have ever undertaken, was the
theme of admiration even to his enemies. The rock in the ocean,
“tranquil amid raging billows,” was the favorite emblem by which his
friends expressed their sense of his firmness. From the time when, as a
hostage in France, he first discovered the plan of Philip to plant the
Inquisition in the Netherlands, up to the last moment of his life, he
never faltered in his determination to resist that iniquitous scheme.
This resistance was the labor of his life. To exclude the Inquisition,
to maintain the ancient liberties of his country, was the task which he
appointed to himself when a youth of three-and-twenty. Never speaking a
word concerning a heavenly mission, never deluding himself or others
with the usual phraseology of enthusiasts, he accomplished the task,
through danger, amid toils, and with sacrifices such as few men have
ever been able to make on their country’s altar; for the disinterested
benevolence of the man was as prominent as his fortitude.
A prince of high rank and with royal revenues, he stripped himself of
station, wealth, almost, at times, of the common necessaries of life,
and became, in his country’s cause, nearly a beggar as well as an
outlaw. Nor was he forced into his career by an accidental impulse from
which there was no recovery. Retreat was ever open to him. Not only
pardon but advancement was urged upon him again and again. Officially
and privately, directly and circuitously, his confiscated estates,
together with indefinite and boundless favors in addition, were offered
to him on every great occasion. On the arrival of Don John at the Breda
negotiations, at the Cologne conferences, we have seen how calmly these
offers were waved aside, as if their rejection was so simple that it
hardly required many words for its signification; yet he had mortgaged
his estate so deeply that his heirs hesitated at accepting their
inheritance, for fear it should involve them in debt. Ten years after
his death, the account between his executors and his brother John
amounted to one million four hundred thousand florins due to the Count,
secured by various pledges of real and personal property, and it was
finally settled upon this basis.
He was, besides, largely indebted to every one of his powerful
relatives, so that the payment of the incumbrances upon his estate very
nearly justified the fears of his children. While on the one hand,
therefore, he poured out these enormous sums like water, and firmly
refused a hearing to the tempting offers of the royal government, upon
the other hand he proved the disinterested nature of his services by
declining, year after year, the sovereignty over the provinces, and by
only accepting in the last days of his life, when refusal had become
almost impossible, the limited, constitutional supremacy over that
portion of them which now makes the realm of his descendants. He lived
and died, not for himself, but for his country. “God pity this poor
people!” were his dying words.
His intellectual faculties were various and of the highest order. He had
the exact, practical, and combining qualities which make the great
commander, and his friends claimed that, in military genius, he was
second to no captain in Europe. This was, no doubt, an exaggeration of
partial attachment, but it is certain that the Emperor Charles had an
exalted opinion of his capacity for the field. His fortification of
Philippeville and Charlemont, in the face of the enemy; his passage of
the Meuse in Alva’s sight; his unfortunate but well-ordered campaign
against that general; his sublime plan of relief, projected and
successfully directed at last from his sick bed, for the besieged city
of Leyden, will always remain monuments of his practical military skill.
Of the soldier’s great virtues--constancy in disaster, devotion to duty,
hopefulness in defeat--no man ever possessed a larger share. He arrived,
through a series of reverses, at a perfect victory. He planted a free
commonwealth under the very battery of the Inquisition, in defiance of
the most powerful empire existing. He was, therefore, a conqueror in the
loftiest sense, for he conquered liberty and a national existence for a
whole people. The contest was long, and he fell in the struggle, but the
victory was to the dead hero, not to the living monarch.
It is to be remembered, too, that he always wrought with inferior
instruments. His troops were usually mercenaries, who were but too apt
to mutiny upon the eve of battle, while he was opposed by the most
formidable veterans of Europe, commanded successively by the first
captains of the age. That, with no lieutenant of eminent valor or
experience save only his brother Louis, and with none at all after that
chieftain’s death, William of Orange should succeed in baffling the
efforts of Alva, Requescens, Don John of Austria, and Alexander
Farnese--men whose names are among the most brilliant in the military
annals of the world--is in itself sufficient evidence of his warlike
capacity. At the period of his death, he had reduced the number of
obedient provinces to two--only Artois and Hainault acknowledging
Philip--while the other fifteen were in open revolt, the greater part
having solemnly forsworn their sovereign.
The supremacy of his political genius was entirely beyond question. He
was the first statesman of the age. The quickness of his perception was
only equaled by the caution which enabled him to mature the results of
his observations. His knowledge of human nature was profound. He
governed the passions and sentiments of a great nation as if they had
been but the keys and chords of one vast instrument; and his hand rarely
failed to evoke harmony even out of the wildest storms. The turbulent
city of Ghent, which could obey no other master, which even the haughty
emperor could only crush without controlling, was ever responsive to the
master-hand of Orange. His presence scared away Imbize and his bat-like
crew, confounded the schemes of John Casimir, frustrated the wiles of
Prince Chimay, and while he lived, Ghent was what it ought always to
have remained, the bulwark, as it had been the cradle, of popular
liberty. After his death it became its tomb.
Ghent, saved twice by the policy, the eloquence, the self-sacrifices of
Orange, fell within three months of his murder into the hands of Parma.
The loss of this most important city, followed in the next year by the
downfall of Antwerp, sealed the fate of the southern Netherlands. Had
the prince lived, how different might have been the country’s fate! If
seven provinces could dilate, in so brief a space, into the powerful
commonwealth which the republic soon became, what might not have been
achieved by the united seventeen--a confederacy which would have united
the adamantine vigor of the Batavian and Frisian races with the subtler,
more delicate, and more graceful national elements in which the genius
of the Frank, the Roman, and the Romanized Celt were so intimately
blended. As long as the father of the country lived, such a union was
possible. His power of managing men was so unquestionable that there was
always a hope, even in the darkest hour; for men felt implicit reliance
as well on his intellectual resources as on his integrity.
This power of dealing with his fellow-men he manifested in the various
ways in which it has been usually exhibited by statesmen. He possessed a
ready eloquence--sometimes impassioned, oftener argumentative, always
rational. His influence over his audience was unexampled in the annals
of that country or age; yet he never condescended to flatter the people.
He never followed the nation, but always led her in the path of duty and
of honor, and was much more prone to rebuke the vices than to pander to
the passions of his hearers. He never failed to administer ample
chastisement to parsimony, to jealousy, to insubordination, to
intolerance, to infidelity, wherever it was due, nor feared to confront
the states or the people in their most angry hours, and to tell them the
truth to their faces. This commanding position he alone could stand
upon, for his countrymen knew the generosity which had sacrificed his
all for them, the self-denial which had eluded rather than sought
political advancement, whether from king or people, and the untiring
devotion which had consecrated a whole life to toil and danger in the
cause of their emancipation.
While, therefore, he was ever ready to rebuke, and always too honest to
flatter, he at the same time possessed the eloquence which could
convince or persuade. He knew how to reach both the mind and the heart
of his hearers. His orations, whether extemporaneous or prepared; his
written messages to the states-general, to the provincial authorities,
to the municipal bodies; his private correspondence with men of all
ranks, from emperors and kings down to secretaries, and even children,
all show an easy flow of language, a fullness of thought, a power of
expression rare in that age, a fund of historical allusion, a
considerable power of imagination, a warmth of sentiment, a breadth of
view, a directness of purpose, a range of qualities, in short, which
would in themselves have stamped him as one of the master-minds of his
century, had there been no other monument to his memory than the remains
of his spoken or written eloquence.
The bulk of his performances in this department was prodigious. Not even
Philip was more industrious in the cabinet. Not even Granvelle held a
more facile pen. He wrote and spoke equally well in French, German, or
Flemish; and he possessed, besides, Spanish, Italian, Latin. The weight
of his correspondence alone would have almost sufficed for the common
industry of a lifetime; and although many volumes of his speeches and
letters have been published, there remain in the various archives of the
Netherlands and Germany many documents from his hand which will probably
never see the light. If the capacity for unremitted intellectual labor
in an honorable cause be the measure of human greatness, few minds could
be compared to the “large composition” of this man. The efforts made to
destroy the Netherlands by the most laborious and painstaking of tyrants
were counteracted by the industry of the most indefatigable of patriots.
He went through life bearing the load of a people’s sorrows upon his
shoulders with a smiling face. Their name was the last word upon his
lips, save the simple affirmative, with which the soldier who had been
battling for the right all his lifetime commended his soul in dying “to
his great captain, Christ.” The people were grateful and affectionate,
for they trusted the character of their “Father Wiliam,” and not all the
clouds which calumny could collect ever dimmed to their eyes the
radiance of that lofty mind to which they were accustomed, in their
darkest calamities, to look for light. As long as he lived he was the
guiding star of a whole brave nation, and when he died the little
children cried in the streets.
JOHN KNOX.
BY JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE.
[The greatest of the Scotch religious reformers, born in 1505, died
1572, distinguished for a stern fanaticism as intolerant as that of
the Roman Church, against which he battled. He had suffered
bitterly from persecution during his earlier life, and for
lengthened periods been an exile from Scotland, but remained always
the head and front of the new propaganda till the establishment of
the Reformed religion in 1560, which carried with it the
interdiction of Roman Catholicism. On the arrival of the young
queen Mary Stuart from France, in 1561, Knox soon became the
sharpest critic of her life and policy. His unsparing antagonism
and influence with the Protestant lords did much to make Mary’s
position a very difficult one, and to precipitate the events which
finally drove her from Scotland and made her an English prisoner.
Knox was known to have been an ardent advocate of Mary’s death long
prior to the queen’s execution at Fotheringay.]
Our primary characteristic of a hero, that he is sincere, applies
emphatically to Knox. It is not denied anywhere that this, whatever
might be his other qualities or faults, is among the truest of men. With
a singular instinct he holds to the truth and fact; the truth alone is
there for him, the rest a mere shadow and a deceptive nonentity. However
feeble, forlorn the reality may seem, on that and that only _can_ he
take his stand. In the galleys of the river Loire--whither Knox and the
others, after their castle of St. Andrews was taken, had been sent as
galley-slaves--some officer or priest one day presented them an image of
the Virgin Mother, requiring that they, the blasphemous heretics, should
do it reverence. “Mother? Mother of God?” said Knox, when the turn came
to him: “This is no Mother of God; this is a _pented bredd_--a piece of
wood, I tell you, with paint on it! She is fitter for swimming, I think,
than for being worshiped,” added Knox, and flung the thing into the
river. It was not very cheap jesting there; but come of it what might,
this thing to Knox was and must continue nothing other than the real
truth; it was a _pented bredd_: worship it he would not.
He told his fellow-prisoners, in this darkest time, to be of courage;
the cause they had was a true one, and must and would prosper; the whole
world could not put it down. Reality is of God’s making; it is alone
strong. How many _pented bredds_, pretending to be real, are fitter to
swim than to be worshiped! This Knox can not live but by fact: he clings
to reality as the shipwrecked sailor to the cliff. He is an instance to
us how a man by sincerity itself becomes heroic; it is the grand gift he
has. We find in Knox a good, honest, intellectual talent, no
transcendent one; a narrow, inconsiderable man as compared with Luther,
but in heartfelt, instinctive adherence to truth, in _sincerity_, as we
say, he has no superior; nay, one might ask, What equal he has? The
heart of him is of the true prophet cast. “He lies there,” said the Earl
of Morton at his grave, “who never feared the face of man.” He
resembles, more than any of the moderns, an old Hebrew prophet. The same
inflexibility, intolerance, rigid, narrow-looking adherence to God’s
truth, stern rebuke in the name of God to all that forsake truth; an old
Hebrew prophet in the guise of an Edinburgh minister of the sixteenth
century. We are to take him for that; not require him to be other.
Knox’s conduct to Queen Mary, the harsh visits he used to make in her
own palace to reprove her there, have been much commented upon. Such
cruelty, such coarseness fill us with indifference. On reading the
actual narrative of the business, what Knox said and what Knox meant, I
must say one’s tragic feeling is rather disappointed. They are not so
coarse, these speeches; they seem to me about as fine as the
circumstances would permit. Knox was not there to do the courtier; he
came on another errand. Whoever, reading these colloquies of his with
the queen, thinks they are vulgar insolences of a plebeian priest to a
delicate high lady, mistakes the purport and essence of them
altogether. It was unfortunately not possible to be polite with the
Queen of Scotland, unless one proved untrue to the nation and cause of
Scotland.
A man who did not wish to see the land of his birth made a hunting-field
for intriguing, ambitious Guises, and the cause of God trampled under
foot of falsehoods, formulas, and the devil’s cause, had no method of
making himself agreeable. “Better that women weep,” said Morton, “than
that bearded men be forced to weep.” Knox was the constitutional
opposition party in Scotland; the nobles of the country, called by their
station to take that post, were not found in it; Knox had to go, or no
one. The hapless queen--but still the more hapless country, if _she_
were made happy! Mary herself was not without sharpness enough, among
her other qualities. “Who are you,” said she once, “that presume to
school the nobles and sovereign of this realm?” “Madam, a subject born
within the same,” answered he. Reasonably answered! If the “subject”
have truth to speak, it is not the “subject’s” footing that will fail
him here.
We blame Knox for his intolerance. Well, surely it is good that each of
us be as tolerant as possible. Yet, at bottom, after all the talk there
is and has been about it, what is tolerance? Tolerance is to tolerate
the unessential, and to see well what that is. Tolerance has to be
noble, measured, just in its very wrath, when it can tolerate no longer.
But, on the whole, we are not altogether here to tolerate. We are here
to resist, to control, and vanquish withal. We do not “tolerate”
falsehoods, thieveries, iniquities, when they fasten on us; we say to
them, Thou art false! thou art not tolerable! We are here to extinguish
falsehoods, and to put an end to them in some wise way. I will not
quarrel so much with the way; the doing of the thing is our great
concern. In this sense Knox was, full surely, intolerant.
A man sent to row in the French galleys, and such like, for teaching
the truth in his own land, can not always be in the mildest humor. I am
not prepared to say that Knox had a soft temper, nor do I know that he
had what we call an ill temper. An ill nature he decidedly had not.
Kind, honest affections dwell in the much-enduring, hard-worn,
ever-battling man. That he _could_ rebuke queens, and had such weight
among those proud, turbulent nobles--proud enough, whatever else they
were--and could maintain to the end a kind of virtual presidency and
sovereignty over that wild realm, he who was only “a subject born within
the same”; this of itself will prove to us that he was found, close at
hand, to be no mean, acrid man, but at heart a healthful, strong,
sagacious man. Such alone can bear rule in that kind. They blame him for
pulling down cathedrals, and so forth, as if he were a seditious,
rioting demagogue; precisely the reverse is seen to be the fact in
regard to cathedrals and the rest of it, if we examine. Knox wanted no
pulling down of stone edifices; he wanted leprosy and darkness thrown
out of the lives of men. Tumult was not his element. It was the tragic
feature of his life that he was forced to dwell so much in that. Every
such man is the born enemy of disorder--hates to be in it; but what
then? Smooth falsehood is not order. It is the general sum-total of
_dis_order. Order is _truth_--each thing standing on the basis that
belongs to it. Order and falsehood can not subsist together.
Withal, unexpectedly enough, this Knox has a vein of drollery in him,
which I like much, in combination with his other qualities. He has a
true eye for the ridiculous. His history, with its rough earnestness, is
curiously enlivened with this. When the two prelates, entering Glasgow
Cathedral, quarrel about precedence, march rapidly up, take to hustling
one another, twitching one another’s rochets, and at last flourishing
their crosiers like quarter-staves, it is a great sight for him every
way. Not mockery, scorn, bitterness alone, though there is enough of
that too; but a true, loving, illuminating laugh mounts up over the
earnest visage; not a loud laugh; you would say a laugh in the _eyes_
most of all. An honest-hearted, brotherly man; brother to the high,
brother also to the low; sincere in his sympathy with both. He had his
pipe of Bordeaux too, we find, in that old Edinburgh house of his--a
cheery, social man, with faces that loved him. They go far wrong who
think this Knox was a gloomy, spasmodic, shrieking fanatic. Not at all;
he is one of the solidest of men. Practical, cautious, hopeful, patient;
a most shrewd, observing, quietly discerning man. In fact, he has very
much the type of character we assign to the Scotch at present. A certain
sardonic taciturnity is in him; insight enough, and a stouter heart than
he himself knows of. He has the power of holding his peace over many
things which do not vitally concern him--“They, what are they?” But the
thing which does vitally concern him, that thing he will speak of, and
in a tone the whole world shall be made to hear, all the more emphatic
for his long silence.
This prophet of the Scotch is to me no hateful man. He had a sore fight
of an existence; wrestling with popes and principalities; in defeat,
contention, life-long struggle; rowing as a galley-slave, wandering as
an exile. A sore fight; but he won it. “Have you hope?” they asked him
in his last moment, when he could no longer speak. He lifted his finger,
“pointed upward with his finger,” and so died. Honor to him. His works
have not died. The letter of his work dies, as of all men’s, but the
spirit of it never.
DUKE OF ALVA.
BY JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY.
[Ferdinando Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alva, a Spanish statesman
and general, born 1508, died 1582. From his earliest years a
soldier, the dominating passion of his soul was hatred of heretics
and infidels. He bore a distinguished part in the wars and
negotiations of Charles V’s splendid reign, and on the accession of
Philip II was equally honored by that monarch. On the outbreak of
the rebellion in the Netherlands, Alva was sent thither with an
army, as viceroy. His six years of rule was one of the most bloody
and atrocious episodes in modern history. His great opponent was
the Prince of Orange. Utterly failing in stamping out the
rebellion, he was recalled by his master in 1573.]
Ferdinando Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alva, was the most successful and
experienced general of Spain, or of Europe. No man studied more deeply,
or practiced more constantly the military science. In the most important
of all arts at that epoch, he was the most consummate artist. In the
only honorable profession of the age, he was the most thorough and the
most pedantic professor. Since the days of Demetrius Poliorcetes, no man
had besieged so many cities. Since the days of Fabius Cunctator, no
general had avoided so many battles, and no soldier, courageous as he
was, ever attained to a more sublime indifference to calumny or
depreciation. Having proved in his boyhood, at Fontarabia, and in his
maturity, at Mühlberg, that he could exhibit heroism and headlong
courage, when necessary, he could afford to look with contempt upon the
witless gibes which his enemies had occasionally perpetrated at his
expense. Conscious of holding his armies in his hand, by the power of an
unrivalled discipline, and the magic of a name illustrated by a hundred
triumphs, he could bear with patience and benevolence the murmurs of his
soldiers when their battles were denied them.
He was born in 1508, of a family which boasted imperial descent. A
Palæologus, brother of a Byzantine emperor, had conquered the city of
Toledo, and transmitted its appellation as a family name. The father of
Ferdinando, Don Garcia, had been slain on the Isle of Gerbes, in battle
with the Moors, when his son was but four years of age. The child was
brought up by his grandfather, Don Frederic, and trained from his
tenderest infancy to arms. Hatred to the infidel, and a determination to
avenge his father’s blood crying to him from a foreign grave, were the
earliest of his instincts. As a youth he was distinguished for his
prowess. His maiden sword was fleshed at Fontarabia, where, although but
sixteen years of age, he was considered by his constancy in hardship, by
his brilliant and desperate courage, and by the example of military
discipline which he afforded to the troops, to have contributed in no
small degree to the success of the Spanish arms.
In 1530 he accompanied the emperor in his campaign against the Turks.
Charles, instinctively recognizing the merit of the youth who was
destined to be the life-long companion of his toils and glories,
distinguished him with his favor at the opening of his career. Young,
brave, and enthusiastic, Ferdinando de Toledo at this period was as
interesting a hero as ever illustrated the pages of Castilian romance.
His mad ride from Hungary to Spain and back again, accomplished in
seventeen days, for the sake of a brief visit to his newly-married wife,
is not the least attractive episode in the history of an existence which
was destined to be so dark and sanguinary. In 1535 he accompanied the
emperor on his memorable expedition to Tunis. In 1546 and 1547 he was
generalissimo in the war against the Smalcaldian league. His most
brilliant feat of arms--perhaps the most brilliant exploit of the
emperor’s reign--was the passage of the Elbe and the battle of Mühlberg,
accomplished in spite of Maximilian’s bitter and violent reproaches, and
the tremendous possibilities of a defeat. That battle had finished the
war.
The gigantic and magnanimous John Frederic, surprised at his devotions
in the church, fled in dismay, leaving his boots behind him, which for
their superhuman size were ridiculously said afterward to be treasured
among the trophies of the Toledo house. The rout was total. “I came, I
saw, and God conquers,” said the emperor, in pious parody of his
immortal predecessor’s epigram. Maximilian, with a thousand apologies
for his previous insults, embraced the heroic Don Ferdinand over and
over again, as, arrayed in a plain suit of blue armor, unadorned save
with the streaks of his enemies’ blood, he returned from pursuit of the
fugitive. So complete and so sudden was the victory, that it was found
impossible to account for it save on the ground of miraculous
interposition. Like Joshua in the vale of Ajalon, Don Ferdinand was
supposed to have commanded the sun to stand still for a season, and to
have been obeyed. Otherwise, how could the passage of the river, which
was only concluded at six in the evening, and the complete overthrow of
the Protestant forces, have all been accomplished within the narrow
space of an April twilight?
The reply of the duke to Henry II of France, who questioned him
subsequently upon the subject, is well known. “Your Majesty, I was too
much occupied that evening with what was taking place on the earth
beneath, to pay much heed to the evolutions of the heavenly bodies.”
Spared as he had been by his good fortune from taking any part in the
Algerine expedition, or in witnessing the ignominious retreat from
Innspruck, he was obliged to submit to the intercalation of the
disastrous siege of Metz in the long history of his successes. Doing the
duty of a field-marshal and a sentinel, supporting his army by his
firmness and his discipline when nothing else could have supported them,
he was at last enabled, after half the hundred thousand men with whom
Charles had begun the siege had been sacrificed, to induce his imperial
master to raise the siege before the remaining fifty thousand had been
frozen or starved to death.
The culminating career of Alva seemed to have closed in the mist which
gathered around the setting star of the empire. Having accompanied
Philip to England in 1554, on his matrimonial expedition, he was
destined in the following year, as viceroy and generalissimo of Italy,
to be placed in a series of false positions. A great captain engaged in
a little war, the champion of the cross in arms against the successor
of St. Peter, he had extricated himself at last with his usual
adroitness, but with very little glory. To him had been allotted the
mortification, to another the triumph. The luster of his own name seemed
to sink in the ocean, while that of a hated rival, with new spangled
ore, suddenly “flamed in the forehead of the morning sky.” While he had
been paltering with a dotard, whom he was forbidden to crush, Egmont had
struck down the chosen troops of France and conquered her most
illustrious commanders. Here was the unpardonable crime which could only
be expiated by the blood of the victor. Unfortunately for his rival, the
time was now approaching when the long-deferred revenge was to be
satisfied.
On the whole, the Duke of Alva was inferior to no general of his age. As
a disciplinarian, he was foremost in Spain, perhaps in Europe. A
spendthrift of time, he was an economist of blood, and this was,
perhaps, in the eyes of humanity, his principal virtue. “Time and myself
are two,” was a frequent observation of Philip, and his favorite general
considered the maxim as applicable to war as to politics. Such were his
qualities as a military commander. As a statesman, he had neither
experience nor talent. As a man, his character was simple. He did not
combine a great variety of vices, but those which he had were colossal,
and he possessed no virtues. He was neither lustful nor intemperate, but
his professed eulogists admitted his enormous avarice, while the world
has agreed that such an amount of stealth and ferocity, of patient
vindictiveness and universal bloodthirstiness, were never found in a
savage beast of the forest, and but rarely in a human bosom. His history
was now to show that his previous thrift of human life was not derived
from any love of his kind. Personally he was stern and overbearing. As
difficult of access as Philip himself, he was even more haughty to those
who were admitted to his presence.
The duke’s military fame was unquestionable when he came to the
provinces, and both in stricken fields and in long campaigns he showed
how thoroughly it had been deserved; yet he left the Netherlands a
baffled man. The prince might be many times defeated, but he was not
conquered. As Alva penetrated into the heart of the ancient Batavian
land, he found himself overmatched as he had never been before, even by
the most potent generals of his day. More audacious, more inventive,
more desperate than all the commanders of that or any other age, the
spirit of national freedom now taught the oppressor that it was
invincible, except by annihilation. The same lesson had been read in the
same thickets by the Nervii to Julius Cæsar, by the Batavians to the
legions of Vespasian; and now a loftier and a purer flame than that
which inspired the national struggles against Rome glowed within the
breasts of the descendants of the same people, and inspired them with
the strength which comes from religious enthusiasm.
As an administrator of the civil and judicial affairs of the country,
Alva at once reduced its institutions to a frightful simplicity. In the
place of the ancient laws of which the Netherlander were so proud, he
substituted the Blood Council. This tribunal was even more arbitrary
than the Inquisition. Never was a simpler apparatus for tyranny devised
than this great labor-saving machine. Never was so great a quantity of
murder and robbery achieved with such dispatch and regularity.
Sentences, executions, and confiscations, to an incredible extent, were
turned out daily with an appalling precision. For this invention Alva is
alone responsible. The tribunal and its councilors were the work and the
creatures of his hand, and faithfully did they accomplish the dark
purpose of their existence. Nor can it be urged, in extenuation of the
governor’s crimes, that he was but the blind and fanatically loyal slave
of his sovereign.
A noble nature could not have contaminated itself with such
slaughter-house work, but might have sought to mitigate the royal
policy without forswearing allegiance. A nature less rigid than iron
would at least have manifested compunction, as it found itself converted
into a fleshless instrument of massacre. More decided than his master,
however, he seemed by his promptness to rebuke the dilatory genius of
Philip. The king seemed, at times, to loiter over his work, teasing and
tantalizing his appetite for vengeance before it should be gratified.
Alva, rapid and brutal, scorned such epicureanism. He strode with
gigantic steps over haughty statutes and popular constitutions; crushing
alike the magnates who claimed a bench of monarchs for their jury, and
the ignoble artisans who could appeal only to the laws of their land.
From the pompous and theatrical scaffolds of Egmont and Horn, to the
nineteen halters prepared by Master Karl to hang up the chief bakers and
brewers of Brussels on their own thresholds; from the beheading of the
twenty nobles on the horse-market, in the opening of the governor’s
career, to the roasting alive of Uitenhoove at its close; from the block
on which fell the honored head of Antony Straalen, to the obscure chair
in which the ancient gentlewoman of Amsterdam suffered death for an act
of vicarious mercy; from one year’s end to another’s--from the most
signal to the most squalid scenes of sacrifice, the eye and hand of the
great master directed without weariness the task imposed by the
sovereign.
QUEEN ELIZABETH.
BY JOHN RICHARD GREEN.
[Daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, second queen-regnant of
England, born 1533, crowned 1558, died 1603. As princess during the
reign of her sister, Queen Mary, she was subjected to many perils
on account of her devotion to Protestantism. Shortly after her
accession to the throne she was declared illegitimate by the pope
and the Catholic kings of Europe, and a claim of the English
succession set up for Mary, Queen of Scots. Threatened on all
sides, Queen Elizabeth bore herself with consummate skill and
prudence, and even managed to make herself felt aggressively in
continental affairs. The more striking events of her reign were the
defeat of the great Spanish Armada, probably the most brilliant and
complete sea-victory recorded in history, and the execution of
Mary, Queen of Scots, her rival and captive. Queen Elizabeth’s
reign shines as probably the most remarkable known for its
intellectual flowering in every branch of human energy.]
England’s one hope lay in the character of her queen. Elizabeth was now
in her twenty-fifth year. Personally she had more than her mother’s
beauty; her figure was commanding, her face long but queenly and
intelligent, her eyes quick and fine. She had grown up amid the liberal
culture of Henry’s court a bold horsewoman, a good shot, a graceful
dancer, a skilled musician, and an accomplished scholar. She studied
every morning the Greek Testament, and followed this by the tragedies of
Sophocles or orations of Demosthenes, and could “rub up her rusty Greek”
at need to bandy pedantry with a vice-chancellor. But she was far from
being a mere pedant. The new literature which was springing up around
her found constant welcome in her court. She spoke Italian and French as
fluently as her mother-tongue. She was familiar with Ariosto and Tasso.
Even amid the affectation and love of anagrams and puerilities which
sullied her later years, she listened with delight to the “Faery Queen,”
and found a smile for “Master Spenser” when he appeared in her presence.
Her moral temper recalled in its strange contrasts the mixed blood
within her veins.
She was at once the daughter of Henry and of Anne Boleyn. From her
father she inherited her frank and hearty address, her love of
popularity and of free intercourse with the people, her dauntless
courage, and her amazing self-confidence. Her harsh, manlike voice, her
impetuous will, her pride, her furious outbursts of anger, came to her
with her Tudor blood. She rated great nobles as if they were
school-boys; she met the insolence of Essex with a box on the ear; she
would break now and then into the gravest deliberations to swear at her
ministers like a fish-wife. But strangely in contrast with the violent
outlines of her Tudor temper stood the sensuous, self-indulgent nature
she derived from Anne Boleyn. Splendor and pleasure were with Elizabeth
the very air she breathed. Her delight was to move in perpetual
progresses from castle to castle through a series of gorgeous pageants,
fanciful and extravagant as a caliph’s dream. She loved gayety and
laughter and wit. A happy retort or a finished compliment never failed
to win her favor. She hoarded jewels. Her dresses were innumerable. Her
vanity remained, even to old age, the vanity of a coquette in her teens.
No adulation was too fulsome for her, no flattery of her beauty too
gross. “To see her was heaven,” Hatton told her, “the lack of her was
hell.” She would play with her rings that her courtiers might note the
delicacy of her hands; or dance a coranto that the French ambassador,
hidden dexterously behind a curtain, might report her sprightliness to
his master. Her levity, her frivolous laughter, her unwomanly jests,
gave color to a thousand scandals. Her character, in fact, like her
portraits, was utterly without shade. Of womanly reserve or
self-restraint she knew nothing. No instinct of delicacy veiled the
voluptuous temper which had broken out in the romps of her girlhood and
showed itself almost ostentatiously throughout her later life. Personal
beauty in a man was a sure passport to her liking. She patted handsome
young squires on the neck when they knelt to kiss her hand, and fondled
her “sweet Robin,” Lord Leicester, in the face of the court.
It was no wonder that the statesmen whom she outwitted held Elizabeth
almost to the last to be little more than a frivolous woman, or that
Philip of Spain wondered how “a wanton” could hold in check the policy
of the Escurial. But the Elizabeth whom they saw was far from being all
of Elizabeth. The willfulness of Henry, the triviality of Anne Boleyn,
played over the surface of a nature hard as steel, a temper purely
intellectual, the very type of reason untouched by imagination or
passion. Luxurious and pleasure-loving as she seemed, Elizabeth lived
simply and frugally, and she worked hard. Her vanity and caprice had no
weight whatever with her in state affairs. The coquette of the
presence-chamber became the coolest and hardest of politicians at the
council-board. Fresh from the flattery of her courtiers, she would
tolerate no flattery in the closet; she was herself plain and downright
of speech with her counselors, and she looked for a corresponding
plainness of speech in return. If any trace of her sex lingered in her
actual statesmanship, it was seen in the simplicity and tenacity of
purpose that often underlies a woman’s fluctuations of feeling.
It was this, in part, which gave her her marked superiority over the
statesmen of her time. No nobler group of ministers ever gathered round
a council-board than those who gathered round the council-board of
Elizabeth. But she was the instrument of none. She listened, she
weighed, she used or put by the counsels of each in turn, but her policy
as a whole was her own. It was a policy not of genius but of good sense.
Her aims were simple and obvious: to preserve her throne, to keep
England out of war, to restore civil and religious order. Something of
womanly caution and timidity, perhaps, backed the passionless
indifference with which she set aside the larger schemes of ambition
which were ever opening before her eyes. She was resolute in her refusal
of the Low Countries. She rejected with a laugh the offers of the
Protestants to make her “head of the religion” and “mistress of the
seas.” But her amazing success in the end sprang mainly from this wise
limitation of her aims. She had a finer sense than any of her counselors
of her real resources; she knew instinctively how far she could go and
what she could do. Her cold, critical intellect was never swayed by
enthusiasm or by panic either to exaggerate or to underestimate her
risks or her power.
Of political wisdom, indeed, in its larger and more generous sense
Elizabeth had little or none; but her political tact was unerring. She
seldom saw her course at a glance, but she played with a hundred
courses, fitfully and discursively, as a musician runs his fingers over
the key-board, till she hit suddenly upon the right one. Her nature was
essentially practical and of the present. She distrusted a plan, in
fact, just in proportion to its speculative range or its outlook into
the future. Her notion of statesmanship lay in watching how things
turned out around her, and in seizing the moment for making the best of
them. A policy of this limited, practical, tentative order was not only
best suited to the England of her day, to its small resources and the
transitional character of its religious and political belief, but it was
one eminently suited to Elizabeth’s peculiar powers. It was a policy of
detail, and in details her wonderful readiness and ingenuity found scope
for their exercise. “No war, my lords,” the queen used to cry
imperiously at the council-board, “No war!” but her hatred of war sprang
less from her aversion to blood or to expense, real as was her aversion
to both, than from the fact that peace left the field open to the
diplomatic manœuvres and intrigues in which she excelled. Her delight in
the consciousness of her ingenuity broke out in a thousand puckish
freaks--freaks in which one can hardly see any purpose beyond the
purpose of sheer mystification. She reveled in “by-ways” and “crooked
ways.” She played with grave cabinets as a cat plays with a mouse, and
with much of the same feline delight in the mere embarrassment of her
victims. When she was weary of mystifying foreign statesmen, she turned
to find fresh sport in mystifying her own ministers.
Had Elizabeth written the story of her reign, she would have prided
herself not on the triumph of England or the ruin of Spain, but on the
skill with which she had hoodwinked and outwitted every statesman in
Europe during fifty years. Nor was her trickery without political value.
Ignoble, inexpressibly wearisome as the queen’s diplomacy seems to us
now, tracing it as we do through a thousand dispatches, it succeeded in
its main end. It gained time, and every year that was gained doubled
Elizabeth’s strength. Nothing is more revolting in the queen, but
nothing is more characteristic than her shameless mendacity. It was an
age of political lying, but in the profusion and recklessness of her
lies Elizabeth stood without a peer in Christendom. A falsehood was to
her simply an intellectual means of meeting a difficulty; and the ease
with which she asserted or denied whatever suited her purpose, was only
equaled by the cynical indifference with which she met the exposure of
her lies as soon as their purpose was answered. The same purely
intellectual view of things showed itself in the dexterous use she made
of her very faults. Her levity carried her gayly over moments of
detection and embarrassment where better women would have died of shame.
She screened her tentative and hesitating statesmanship under the
natural timidity and vacillation of her sex. She turned her very luxury
and sports to good account. There were moments of grave danger in her
reign, when the country remained indifferent to its perils, as it saw
the queen give her days to hawking and hunting and her nights to dancing
and plays. Her vanity and affectation, her womanly fickleness and
caprice, all had their part in the diplomatic comedies she played with
the successive candidates for her hand. If political necessities made
her life a lonely one, she had at any rate the satisfaction of averting
war and conspiracies by love-sonnets and romantic interviews, or of
gaining a year of tranquillity by the dexterous spinning out of a
flirtation.
As we track Elizabeth through her tortuous mazes of lying and intrigue,
the sense of her greatness is almost lost in a sense of contempt. But,
wrapped as they were in a cloud of mystery, the aims of her policy were
throughout temperate and simple, and they were pursued with a singular
tenacity. The sudden acts of energy which from time to time broke her
habitual hesitation proved that it was no hesitation of weakness.
Elizabeth could wait and finesse; but when the hour was come she could
strike, and strike hard. Her natural temper indeed tended to a rash
self-confidence rather than to self-distrust. She had, as strong natures
always have, an unbounded confidence in her luck. “Her Majesty counts
much on Fortune,” Walsingham wrote bitterly; “I wish she would trust
more in Almighty God.” The diplomatists who censured at one moment her
irresolution, her delay, her changes of front, censure at the next her
“obstinacy,” her iron will, her defiance of what seemed to them
inevitable ruin. “This woman,” Philip’s envoy wrote after a wasted
remonstrance, “this woman is possessed by a hundred thousand devils.”
To her own subjects, indeed, who knew nothing of her manœuvres and
retreats, of her “by-ways” and “crooked ways,” she seemed the embodiment
of dauntless resolution. Brave as they were, the men who swept the
Spanish main or glided between the icebergs of Baffin Bay never doubted
that the palm of bravery lay with their queen. Her steadiness and
courage in the pursuit of her aims was equaled by the wisdom with which
she chose the men to accomplish them. She had a quick eye for merit of
any sort, and a wonderful power of enlisting its whole energy in her
service. The sagacity which chose Cecil and Walsingham was just as
unerring in its choice of the meanest of her agents. Her success,
indeed, in securing from the beginning of her reign to its end, with the
single exception of Leicester, precisely the right men for the work she
set them to do, sprang in great measure from the noblest characteristic
of her intellect. If in loftiness of aim her temper fell below many of
the tempers of her time, in the breadth of its range, in the
universality of its sympathy, it stood far above them all. Elizabeth
could talk poetry with Spenser and philosophy with Bruno; she could
discuss euphuism with Lyly, and enjoy the chivalry of Essex; she could
turn from talk of the last fashions to pore with Cecil over dispatches
and treasury books; she could pass from tracking traitors with
Walsingham to settle points of doctrine with Parker, or to calculate
with Frobisher the chances of a northwest passage to the Indies. The
versatility and many-sidedness of her mind enabled her to understand
every phase of the intellectual movement of her day, and to fix by a
sort of instinct on its higher representatives. But the greatness of the
queen rests above all on her power over her people.
We have had grander and nobler rulers, but none so popular as Elizabeth.
The passion of love, of loyalty, of admiration, which finds its most
perfect expression in the “Faery Queen,” throbbed as intensely through
the veins of her meanest subjects. To England, during her reign of half
a century, she was a virgin and a Protestant queen; and her immorality,
her absolute want of religious enthusiasm, failed utterly to blur the
brightness of the national idea. Her worst acts broke fruitlessly
against the general devotion. A Puritan, whose hand she cut off in a
freak of tyrannous resentment, waved his hat with the hand that was
left, and shouted, “God save Queen Elizabeth!” Of her faults, indeed,
England beyond the circle of her court knew little or nothing. The
shiftings of her diplomacy were never seen outside the royal closet. The
nation at large could only judge her foreign policy by its main
outlines, by its temperance and good sense, and above all by its
success. But every Englishman was able to judge Elizabeth in her rule at
home, in her love of peace, her instinct of order, the firmness and
moderation of her government, the judicious spirit of conciliation and
compromise among warring factions, which gave the country an unexampled
tranquillity at a time when almost every other country in Europe was
torn with civil war. Every sign of the growing prosperity, the sight of
London as it became the mart of the world, of stately mansions as they
rose on every manor, told, and justly told, in Elizabeth’s favor.
In one act of her civil administration she showed the boldness and
originality of a great ruler; for the opening of her reign saw her face
the social difficulty which had so long impeded English progress, by the
issue of a commission of inquiry which ended in the solution of the
problem by the system of poor-laws. She lent a ready patronage to the
new commerce; she considered its extension and protection as a part of
public policy, and her statue in the center of the London Exchange was a
tribute on the part of the merchant class to the interest with which she
watched and shared personally in its enterprises. Her thrift won a
general gratitude. The memories of the Terror and of the martyrs threw
into bright relief the aversion from bloodshed which was conspicuous in
her earlier reign, and never wholly wanting through its fiercer close.
Above all, there was a general confidence in her instinctive knowledge
of the national temper. Her finger was always on the public pulse. She
knew exactly when she could resist the feeling of her people, and when
she must give way before the new sentiment of freedom which her policy
unconsciously fostered. But when she retreated, her defeat had all the
grace of victory; and the frankness and unreserve of her surrender won
back at once the love that her resistance had lost. Her attitude at
home, in fact, was that of a woman whose pride in the well-being of her
subjects, and whose longing for their favor, was the one warm touch in
the coldness of her natural temper. If Elizabeth could be said to love
anything, she loved England. “Nothing,” she said to her first Parliament
in words of unwonted fire, “nothing, no worldly thing under the sun, is
so dear to me as the love and good-will of my subjects.” And the love
and good-will which were so dear to her she fully won.
She clung, perhaps, to her popularity the more passionately that it hid
in some measure from her the terrible loneliness of her life. She was
the last of the Tudors, the last of Henry’s children; and her nearest
relatives were Mary Stuart and the house of Suffolk, one the avowed, the
other the secret, claimant of her throne. Among her mother’s kindred she
found but a single cousin. Whatever womanly tenderness she had, wrapped
itself around Leicester; but a marriage with Leicester was impossible,
and every other union, could she even have bent to one, was denied to
her by the political difficulties of her position. The one cry of
bitterness which burst from Elizabeth revealed her terrible sense of the
solitude of her life. “The Queen of Scots,” she cried at the birth of
James, “has a fair son, and I am but a barren stock.” But the loneliness
of her position only reflected the loneliness of her nature. She stood
utterly apart from the world around her, sometimes above it, sometimes
below it, but never of it. It was only on its intellectual side that
Elizabeth touched the England of her day. All its moral aspects were
simply dead to her.
It was a time when men were being lifted into nobleness by the new moral
energy which seemed suddenly to pulse through the whole people, when
honor and enthusiasm took colors of poetic beauty, and religion became a
chivalry. But the finer sentiments of the men around her touched
Elizabeth simply as the fair tints of a picture would have touched her.
She made her market with equal indifference out of the heroism of
William of Orange or the bigotry of Philip. The noblest aims and lives
were only counters on her board. She was the one soul in her realm whom
the news of St. Bartholomew stirred to no thirst for vengeance; and
while England was thrilling with its triumph over the Armada, its queen
was coolly grumbling over the cost, and making her profit out of the
spoiled provisions she had ordered for the fleet that saved her. To the
voice of gratitude, indeed, she was for the most part deaf. She accepted
services such as were never rendered to any other English sovereign
without a thought of return. Walsingham spent his fortune in saving her
life and throne, and she left him to die a beggar.
But, as if by a strange irony, it was to this very want of sympathy that
she owed some of the grander features of her character. If she was
without love, she was without hate. She cherished no petty resentments;
she never stooped to envy or suspicion of the men who served her. She
was indifferent to abuse. Her good-humor was never ruffled by the
charges of wantonness and cruelty with which the Jesuits filled every
court in Europe. She was insensible to fear. Her life became at last the
mark for assassin after assassin, but the thought of peril was the one
hardest to bring home to her. Even when the Catholic plots broke out in
her very household, she would listen to no proposals for the removal of
Catholics from her court.
MARY STUART, QUEEN OF SCOTS.
BY DAVID HUME.
[Daughter of James V of Scotland and Mary of Lorraine, a princess
of the Guise family of France, born 1542, died 1587. As
great-granddaughter of Henry VII of England, Mary was heir to the
English throne after the failure of direct descendants of Henry
VIII, the last of whom was Queen Elizabeth. At the age of sixteen
she was married to the dauphin of France; and, as she was put
forward as claimant of the English throne (even as against
Elizabeth, whom the Catholic powers of Europe affected to treat as
the illegitimate daughter of Henry VIII), the arms of England were
quartered with those of France and Scotland on her escutcheon.
Mary’s persistence in protruding this claim, under advice of her
Catholic friends, was a main cause of the misfortunes of her sad
and romantic career. On the death of Mary’s husband, Francis II of
France, she returned to Scotland to resume the functions of
government, thoroughly imbued with Catholic and French notions of
policy, and already antagonistic to a large portion of her
subjects, who had become fanatically Protestant under the
leadership of such men as John Knox. Henceforward the Queen of
Scots was embarked on a sea of troubles, which are familiar
history. She married Lord Darnley in 1565, against the wish of her
own Protestant subjects and of Queen Elizabeth; and on the murder
of Darnley by the Earl of Bothwell, she consummated her follies by
espousing the latter. The rebellion which ensued resulted first in
her imprisonment by her own subjects, and afterward, consequent on
her escape and defeat in battle by the Protestant lords, her
confinement by the Queen of England, on whom she had thrown herself
for protection. For nineteen years Mary was the inmate of
successive English prisons, though not rigorously treated
otherwise. The numerous conspiracies in which she was implicated by
the enthusiasm of her supporters in England and France, some of
which involved the assassination of Elizabeth, and all of which
looked to the complete overthrow of Protestantism, at last caused
her trial and condemnation by an English commission. The signature
to the death-warrant has been claimed by some historians to have
been a forgery; by others to have been genuine, but its commission
under the great seal an act without Elizabeth’s consent. But the
weight of evidence shows Elizabeth’s conduct to have been a piece
of consummate duplicity, and that she manœuvred to receive the
benefits of Mary’s death without incurring the odium of its
authority. There is no personage in history whose character has
been the subject of more controversy. A school of English
historical critics, among whom are Carlyle, Froude, and Kingsley,
stigmatize her as the incarnation of all that was brilliantly
wicked; while others, equally distinguished, soften her errors and
eulogize her virtues as the victim of circumstances, and one “far
more sinned against than sinning.”]
Her change of abode and situation was very little agreeable to the
Scottish princess. Besides her natural preposessions in favor of a
country in which she had been educated from her earliest infancy, and
where she had borne so high a rank, she could not forbear both
regretting the society of that people, so celebrated for their humane
disposition and their respectful attachment to their sovereign, and
reflecting on the disparity of the scene which lay before her. It is
said that, after she was embarked at Calais, she kept her eyes fixed on
the coast of France, and never turned them from that beloved object till
darkness fell and intercepted it from her view. She then ordered a couch
to be spread for her in the open air, and charged the pilot that if in
the morning the land were still in sight, he should awake her, and
afford her one parting view of that country in which all her affections
were centered. The weather proved calm, so that the ship made little way
in the night-time, and Mary had once more an opportunity of seeing the
French coast. She sat up on her couch, and, still looking toward the
land, often repeated these words: “Farewell, France, farewell; I shall
never see thee more.”
The first aspect, however, of things in Scotland was more favorable, if
not to her pleasure and happiness, at least to her repose and security,
than she had reason to apprehend. No sooner did the French galleys
appear off Leith, than people of all ranks, who had long expected their
arrival, flocked toward the shore with an earnest impatience to behold
and receive their young sovereign. Some were led by duty, some by
interest, some by curiosity; and all combined to express their
attachment to her, and to insinuate themselves into her confidence on
the commencement of her administration. She had now reached her
nineteenth year, and the bloom of her youth and amiable beauty of her
person were further recommended by the affability of her address, the
politeness of her manners, and the elegance of her genius. Well
accomplished in all the superficial but engaging graces of a court, she
afforded, when better known, still more promising indications of her
character; and men prognosticated both humanity from her soft and
obliging deportment, and penetration from her taste in all the refined
arts of music, eloquence, and poetry. And as the Scots had long been
deprived of the presence of their sovereign, whom they once despaired
ever more to behold among them, her arrival seemed to give universal
satisfaction; and nothing appeared about the court but symptoms of
affection, joy, and festivity.
But there was one circumstance which blasted all these promising
appearances, and bereaved Mary of that general favor which her
agreeable manners and judicious deportment gave her just reason to
expect. She was still a papist; and though she published, soon after her
arrival, a proclamation enjoining every one to submit to the established
religion, the preachers and their adherents could neither be reconciled
to a person polluted with so great an abomination, nor lay aside their
jealousies of her future conduct. It was with great difficulty she could
obtain permission for saying mass in her own chapel; and had not the
people apprehended that, if she had here met with a refusal, she would
instantly have returned to France, the zealots never would have granted
her even that small indulgence. The cry was, “Shall we suffer that idol
to be again erected within the realm?”
The whole life of Mary was, from the demeanor of these men, filled with
bitterness and sorrow. The rustic apostle John Knox scruples not, in his
history, to inform us that he once treated her with such severity that
she lost all command of temper, and dissolved in tears before him; yet,
so far from being moved with youth and beauty, and royal dignity reduced
to that condition, he persevered in his insolent reproofs; and when he
relates this incident, he discovers a visible pride and satisfaction in
his own conduct. The pulpits had become mere scenes of railing against
the vices of the court; among which were always noted, as the principal,
feasting, finery, dancing, balls, and whoredom, their necessary
attendant. Some ornaments which the ladies at that time wore upon their
petticoats, excited mightily the indignation of the preachers; and they
affirmed that such vanity would provoke God’s vengeance, not only
against these foolish women but against the whole realm.
Mary, whose age, condition, and education invited her to liberty and
cheerfulness, was curbed in all amusements by the absurd severity of
these reformers; and she found, every moment, reason to regret her
leaving that country from whose manners she had, in her early youth,
received the first impressions. Her two uncles, the Duke of Aumale and
the Grand Prior, with the other French nobility, soon took leave of her;
the Marquis of Elbeuf remained some time longer; but after his departure
she was left to the society of her own subjects--men unacquainted with
the pleasures of conversation, ignorant of arts and civility, and
corrupted beyond their usual rusticity by a dismal fanaticism, which
rendered them incapable of all humanity or improvement. Though Mary had
made no attempt to restore the ancient religion, her popery was a
sufficient crime; though her behavior was hitherto irreproachable, and
her manners sweet and engaging, her gayety and ease were interpreted as
signs of dissolute vanity; and to the harsh and preposterous usage which
this princess met with may in part be ascribed those errors of her
subsequent conduct, which seemed so little of a piece with the general
tenor of her character.
Mary was a woman of great accomplishments both of body and mind, natural
as well as acquired, but unfortunate in her life, and during one period
very unhappy in her conduct. The beauties of her person and graces of
her air combined to make her the most amiable of women; and the charms
of her address and conversation aided the impression which her lovely
figure made on the hearts of all beholders. Ambitious and active in her
temper, yet inclined to cheerfulness and society; of a lofty spirit,
constant and even vehement in her purpose, yet polite, and gentle, and
affable in her demeanor, she seemed to partake only so much of the male
virtues as to render her estimable, without relinquishing those soft
graces which compose the proper ornament of her sex.
In order to form a just idea of her character, we must set aside one
part of her conduct, while she abandoned herself to the guidance of a
profligate man, and must consider these faults, whether we admit them to
be imprudences or crimes, as the result of an inexplicable though not
uncommon inconstancy in the human mind, of the frailty of our nature, of
the violence of passion, and of the influence which situations, and
sometimes momentary incidents, have on persons whose principles are not
thoroughly confirmed by experience and reflection. Enraged by the
ungrateful conduct of her husband, seduced by the treacherous counsels
of one in whom she reposed confidence, transported by the violence of
her own temper, which never lay sufficiently under the guidance of
discretion, she was betrayed into actions which may with some difficulty
be accounted for, but which admit of no apology, nor even of
alleviation. An enumeration of her qualities might carry the appearance
of a panegyric; an account of her conduct must in some parts wear the
aspect of severe satire and invective.
Her numerous misfortunes, the solitude of her long and tedious
captivity, and the persecutions to which she had been exposed on account
of her religion, had wrought her up to a degree of bigotry during her
later years; and such were the prevalent spirit and principles of the
age, that it is the less wonder if her zeal, her resentment, and her
interest uniting, induced her to give consent to a design which
conspirators, actuated only by the first of these motives, had formed
against the life of Elizabeth.
JOHN PYM.
BY JOHN RICHARD GREEN.
[Born 1584, died in 1643. Leader of the House of Commons in its
contest with Charles I, he was the most able and indefatigable
opponent of royal usurpation, and the most active agent in the
impeachment of the Earl of Strafford. From a pamphlet written just
before his death, when war in the field had begun between king and
people, it seems doubtful whether he would not in the end have
resisted the usurpation of power by Cromwell and the Independents,
and supported the king as the least of two evils.]
If Strafford embodied the spirit of tyranny, John Pym, the leader of the
Commons from the first meeting of the new houses at Westminster, stands
out for all after time as the embodiment of law. A Somersetshire
gentleman of good birth and competent fortune, he entered on public life
in the Parliament of 1614, and was imprisoned for his patriotism at its
close. He had been a leading member in that of 1620, and one of the
“twelve ambassadors” for whom James ordered chairs to be set at
Whitehall. Of the band of patriots with whom he had stood side by side
in the constitutional struggle against the earlier despotism of Charles
he was almost the sole survivor. Coke had died of old age; Cotton’s
heart was broken by oppression; Eliot had perished in the tower;
Wentworth had apostatized. Pym alone remained, resolute, patient as of
old; and as the sense of his greatness grew silently during the eleven
years of deepening misrule, the hope and faith of better things clung
almost passionately to the man, who never doubted of the final triumph
of freedom and the law. At their close, Clarendon tells us, in words all
the more notable for their bitter tone of hate, “he was the most popular
man, and the most able to do hurt, that has lived at any time.”
He had shown he knew how to wait, and when waiting was over he showed he
knew how to act. On the eve of the Long Parliament he rode through
England to quicken the electors to a sense of the crisis which had come
at last; and on the assembling of the Commons, he took his place not
merely as member for Tavistock but as their acknowledged head. Few of
the country gentlemen, indeed, who formed the bulk of the members, had
sat in any previous House; and of the few, none represented in so
eminent a way the parliamentary tradition on which the coming struggle
was to turn. Pym’s eloquence, inferior in boldness and originality to
that of Eliot or Wentworth, was better suited by its massive and
logical force to convince and guide a great party; and it was backed by
a calmness of temper, a dexterity and order in the management of public
business, and a practical power of shaping the course of debate, which
gave a form and method to parliamentary proceedings such as they had
never had before. Valuable, however, as these qualities were, it was a
yet higher quality which raised Pym into the greatest, as he was the
first, of parliamentary leaders.
Of the five hundred members who sat round him at St. Stephen’s, he was
the one man who had clearly foreseen, and as clearly resolved how to
meet, the difficulties which lay before them. It was certain that
Parliament would be drawn into a struggle with the Crown. It was
probable that in such a struggle the House of Commons would be hampered,
as it had been hampered before, by the House of Lords. The legal
antiquaries of the older constitutional school stood helpless before
such a conflict of co-ordinate powers--a conflict for which no provision
had been made by the law, and on which precedents threw only a doubtful
and conflicting light. But, with a knowledge of precedent as great as
their own, Pym rose high above them in his grasp of constitutional
principles. He was the first English statesman who discovered, and
applied to the political circumstances around him, what may be called
the doctrine of constitutional proportion. He saw that, as an element of
constitutional life, Parliament was of higher value than the Crown; he
saw, too, that in Parliament itself the one essential part was the House
of Commons. On these two facts he based his whole policy in the contest
which followed.
When Charles refused to act with the Parliament, Pym treated the refusal
as a temporary abdication on the part of the sovereign, which vested the
executive power in the two Houses until new arrangements were made. When
the Lords obstructed public business, he warned them that obstruction
would only force the Commons “to save the kingdom alone.” Revolutionary
as these principles seemed at the time, they have both been recognized
as bases of our constitution since the days of Pym. The first principle
was established by the Convention and Parliament which followed on the
departure of James II; the second by the acknowledgement on all sides,
since the Reform Bill of 1832, that the government of the country is
really in the hands of the House of Commons, and can only be carried on
by ministers who represent the majority of that House. Pym’s temper,
indeed, was the very opposite of the temper of a revolutionist. Few
natures have ever been wider in their range of sympathy or action.
Serious as his purpose was, his manners were genial, and even courtly;
he turned easily from an invective against Strafford to a chat with Lady
Carlisle; and the grace and gayety of his social tone, even when the
care and weight of public affairs were bringing him to the grave, gave
rise to a hundred silly scandals among the prurient royalists. It was
this striking combination of genial versatility with a massive force in
his nature which marked him out from the first moment of power as a born
ruler of men. He proved himself at once the subtlest of diplomatists and
the grandest of demagogues. He was equally at home in tracking the
subtle intricacies of royalist intrigues, or in kindling popular passion
with words of fire. Though past middle life when his work really
began--for he was born in 1584, four years before the coming of the
Armada--he displayed from the first meeting of the Long Parliament the
qualities of a great administrator, an immense faculty for labor, a
genius for organization, patience, tact, a power of inspiring confidence
in all whom he touched, calmness and moderation under good fortune or
ill, an immovable courage, an iron will. No English ruler has ever shown
greater nobleness of natural temper or a wider capacity for government
than the Somersetshire squire, whom his enemies, made clear-sighted by
their hate, greeted truly enough as “King Pym.”
HENRY IV, KING OF FRANCE.
BY JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY.
[First French king of the Bourbon family, born king of Navarre
1553, assassinated 1610. Educated a Huguenot, he, as representing
this religious party, was married to Marguerite de Valois, the
sister of Charles IX, to signalize the pretended reconciliation of
religious differences, a few days before the massacre of St.
Bartholomew. For four years he was detained at the French court and
compelled to abjure his faith, till he succeeded in escaping and
putting himself at the head of the Protestant forces. After a life
of remarkable vicissitudes, Henry of Navarre became _de jure_ king
of France as the next of surviving blood after Henry III, but was
not crowned till 1794, at which time he, for political reasons,
again and finally abjured Protestantism. Paris, and shortly
afterward the whole of France, then submitted to his rule. During
his reign of sixteen years Henry showed the highest qualities of
the great ruler, and his genius promised to make him as powerful a
potentate as Charles V had been, when he fell by the knife of the
assassin Ravaillac.]
At his very name a figure seems to leap forth from the mist of three
centuries, instinct with ruddy, vigorous life. Such was the intense
vitality of the Bearnese prince, that even now he seems more thoroughly
alive and recognizable than half the actual personages who are fretting
their hour upon the stage.
We see at once a man of moderate stature, light, sinewy, and strong; a
face browned with continual exposure; small, mirthful, yet commanding
blue eyes, glittering from beneath an arching brow, and prominent
cheek-bones; a long, hawk’s nose, almost resting upon a salient chin; a
pendent mustache, and a thick, brown, curly beard, prematurely grizzled;
we see the mien of frank authority and magnificent good-humor; we hear
the ready sallies of the shrewd Gascon mother-wit; we feel the
electricity which flashes out of him and sets all hearts around him on
fire, when the trumpet sounds to battle. The headlong, desperate
charge, the snow-white plume waving where the fire is hottest, the large
capacity for enjoyment of the man, rioting without affectation in the
_certaminis gaudia_, the insane gallop, after the combat, to lay its
trophies at the feet of the Cynthia of the minute, and thus to forfeit
its fruits--all are as familiar to us as if the seven distinct wars, the
hundred pitched battles, the two hundred sieges, in which the Bearnese
was personally present, had been occurrences of our own day.
He at last was both king and man, if the monarch who occupied the throne
was neither. He was the man to prove, too, for the instruction of the
patient letter-writer of the Escorial,[24] that the crown of France was
to be won with foot in stirrup and carbine in hand, rather than to be
caught by the weaving and casting of the most intricate nets of
diplomatic intrigue, though thoroughly weighted with Mexican gold.
The king of Navarre was now thirty-one years old; for the three Henrys
were nearly of the same age. The first indications of his existence had
been recognized amid the cannon and trumpets of a camp in Picardy, and
his mother had sung a gay Bearnese song as he was coming into the world
at Pau. “Thus,” said his grandfather, Henry of Navarre, “thou shalt not
bear to us a morose and sulky child.” The good king without a kingdom,
taking the child as soon as born in the lappel of his dressing-gown, had
brushed his infant lips with a clove of garlic and moistened them with a
drop of generous Gascon wine. “Thus,” said the grandfather again, “shall
the boy be both merry and bold.” There was something mythologically
prophetic in the incidents of his birth.
The best part of Navarre had been long since appropriated by Ferdinand
of Aragon. In France there reigned a young and warlike sovereign with
four healthy boys. But the newborn infant had inherited the lilies of
France from St. Louis, and a later ancestor had added to the escutcheon
the motto “_Espoir_.” His grandfather believed that the boy was born to
revenge upon Spain the wrongs of the house of Albret, and Henry’s nature
seemed ever pervaded with Robert of Clermont’s device.
The same sensible grandfather, having different views on the subject of
education from those manifested by Catharine de Medici toward her
children, had the boy taught to run about bareheaded and barefooted,
like a peasant, among the mountains and rocks of Béarn, till he became
as rugged as a young bear and as nimble as a kid. Black bread and beef
and garlic were his simple fare; and he was taught by his mother and his
grandfather to hate lies and liars, and to read the Bible.
When he was fifteen, the third religious war broke out. Both his father
and grandfather were dead. His mother, who had openly professed the
Reformed faith since the death of her husband, who hated it, brought her
boy to the camp at Rochelle, where he was received as the chief of the
Huguenots. His culture was not extensive. He had learned to speak the
truth, to ride, to shoot, to do with little sleep and less food. He
could also construe a little Latin, and had read a few military
treatises; but the mighty hours of an eventful life were now to take him
by the hand and to teach him much good and much evil, as they bore him
onward. He now saw military treatises expounded practically by
professors like his uncle Condé, and Admiral Coligny, and Lewis Nassau
in such lecture rooms as Laudun, and Jarnac, and Moncontour, and never
was apter scholar.
The peace of Arnay-le-Duc succeeded, and then the fatal Bartholomew
marriage with the Messalina of Valois. The faith taught in the mountains
of Béarn was no buckler against the demand of “The mass, or death!”
thundered at his breast by the lunatic Charles, as he pointed to
thousands of massacred Huguenots. Henry yielded to such conclusive
arguments, and became a Catholic. Four years of court-imprisonment
succeeded, and the young king of Navarre, though proof to the artifices
of his gossip Guise, was not adamant to the temptations spread for him
by Catharine de Medici. In the harem entertained for him in the Louvre,
many pitfalls entrapped him, and he became a stock-performer in the
state comedies and tragedies of that plotting age.
A silken web of palace-politics, palace-diplomacy, palace-revolutions
enveloped him. Schemes and counter-schemes, stratagems and conspiracies,
assassinations and poisonings; all the state machinery which worked so
exquisitely in fair ladies’ chambers, to spread havoc and desolation
over a kingdom, were displayed before his eyes. Now campaigning with one
royal brother against Huguenots, now fighting with another on their
side, now solicited by the queen-mother to attempt the life of her son,
now implored by Henry III to assassinate his brother, the Bearnese, as
fresh antagonisms, affinities, combinations, were developed, detected,
neutralized almost daily, became rapidly an adept in Medician
state-chemistry. Charles IX in his grave, Henry III on the throne,
Alençon in the Huguenot camp--Henry at last made his escape. The brief
war and peace of Mercœur succeeded, and the king of Navarre formally
abjured the Catholic creed. The parties were now sharply defined. Guise
mounted upon the League, Henry astride upon the Reformation, were
prepared to do battle to the death. The temporary “war of the amorous”
was followed by the peace of Fleix.
Four years of peace again--four fat years of wantonness and riot
preceding fourteen hungry, famine-stricken years of bloodiest civil war.
The voluptuousness and infamy of the Louvre were almost paralleled in
vice, if not in splendor, by the miniature court at Pau. Henry’s Spartan
grandfather would scarcely have approved the courses of the youth whose
education he had commenced on so simple a scale. For Margaret of
Valois, hating her husband, and living in most undisguised and
promiscuous infidelity to him, had profited by her mother’s lessons. A
seraglio of maids of honor ministered to Henry’s pleasures, and were
carefully instructed that the peace and war of the kingdom were
playthings in their hands. While at Paris royalty was hopelessly sinking
in a poisonous marsh, there was danger that even the hardy nature of the
Bearnese would be mortally enervated by the atmosphere in which he
lived.
The unhappy Henry III, baited by the Guises, worried by the Alençon and
his mother, implored the king of Navarre to return to Paris and the
Catholic faith. M. de Segur, chief of Navarre’s council, who had been
won over during a visit to the capital, where he had made the discovery
that “Henry III was an angel, and his ministers devils,” came back to
Pau, urging his master’s acceptance of the royal invitation. Henry
wavered. Bold D’Aubigné, stanchest of Huguenots and of his friends, next
day privately showed Segur a palace window opening on a very steep
precipice over the Bayse, and cheerfully assured him that he should be
flung from it did he not instantly reverse his proceedings and give his
master different advice. “If I am not able to do the deed myself,” said
D’Aubigné, “here are a dozen more to help me.” The chief of the council
cast a glance behind him, saw a number of grim Puritan soldiers, with
their hats plucked down upon their brows, looking very serious; so made
his bow, and quite changed his line of conduct.
But Henry--no longer the unsophisticated youth who had been used to run
barefoot among the cliffs of Coarraze--was grown too crafty a politician
to be entangled by Spanish or Medician wiles. The duke of Anjou was now
dead. Of all the princes who had stood between him and the throne, there
was none remaining save the helpless, childless, superannuated youth who
was its present occupant. The king of Navarre was legitimate heir to
the crown of France. “_Espoir_” was now in letters of light upon his
shield, but he knew that his path to greatness led through manifold
dangers, and that it was only at the head of his Huguenot chivalry that
he could cut his way. He was the leader of the nobles of Gascony, and
Dauphiny, and Guienne, in their mountain fastnesses; of the weavers,
cutlers, and artisans in their thriving manufacturing and trading towns.
It was not Spanish gold, but carbines and cutlasses, bows and bills,
which could bring him to the throne of his ancestors.
And thus he stood the chieftain of that great, austere party of
Huguenots, the men who went on their knees before the battle, beating
their breasts with their iron gantlets, and singing in full chorus a
psalm of David before smiting the Philistines hip and thigh.
Their chieftain, scarcely their representative--fit to lead his Puritans
on the battle-field--was hardly a model for them elsewhere. Yet, though
profligate in one respect, he was temperate in every other. In food,
wine, and sleep, he was always moderate. Subtle and crafty in
self-defence, he retained something of his old love of truth, of his
hatred for liars. Hardly generous, perhaps, he was a friend of justice;
while economy in a wandering king like himself was a necessary virtue,
of which France one day was to feel the beneficent action. Reckless and
headlong in appearance, he was in truth the most careful of men. On the
religious question most cautious of all, he always left the door open
behind him, disclaimed all bigotry of opinion, and earnestly implored
the papists to seek, not his destruction, but his instruction. Yet,
prudent as he was by nature in every other regard, he was all his life
the slave of one woman or another; and it was by good luck rather than
by sagacity that he did not repeatedly forfeit the fruits of his courage
and conduct in obedience to his master-passion.
Always open to conviction on the subject of his faith, he repudiated
the appellation of heretic. A creed, he said, was not to be changed like
a shirt, but only on due deliberation and under special advice. In his
secret heart he probably regarded the two religions as his chargers, and
was ready to mount alternately the one or the other, as each seemed the
more likely to bear him safely in battle. The Bearnese was no Puritan,
but he was most true to himself and to his own advancement. His highest
principle of action was to reach his goal, and to that principle he was
ever loyal. Feeling, too, that it was for the interest of France that he
should succeed, he was even inspired--compared with others on the
stage--by an almost lofty patriotism.
Amiable by nature and by habit, he had preserved the most unimpaired
good-humor throughout the horrible years which succeeded St.
Bartholomew, during which he carried his life in his hand, and learned
not to wear his heart upon his sleeve. Without gratitude, without
resentment, without fear, without remorse, entirely arbitrary, yet with
the capacity to use all men’s judgments; without convictions, save in
regard to his dynastic interests, he possessed all the qualities
necessary to success. He knew how to use his enemies. He knew how to use
his friends, to abuse them, and to throw them away. He refused to
assassinate Francis Alençon at the bidding of Henry III, but he
attempted to procure the murder of the truest of his own friends, one of
the noblest characters of the age, whose breast showed twelve scars
received in his service--Agrippa D’Aubigné--because the honest soldier
had refused to become his pimp, a service the king had implored upon his
knees.
Beneath the mask of perpetual, careless good-humor, lurked the keenest
eye, a subtle, restless, widely combining brain, and an iron will.
Native sagacity had been tempered into consummate elasticity by the
fiery atmosphere in which feebler natures had been dissolved. His wit
was as flashing and as quickly unsheathed as his sword. Desperate,
apparently reckless temerity on the battle-field was deliberately
indulged in, that the world might be brought to recognize a hero and
chieftain in a king. The do-nothings of the Merovingian line had been
succeeded by the Pepins; to the effete Carlovingians had come a Capet;
to the impotent Valois should come a worthier descendant of St. Louis.
This was shrewd Gascon calculation, aided by constitutional
fearlessness. When dispatch-writing, invisible Philips, star-gazing
Rudolphs, and petticoated Henrys sat upon the thrones of Europe, it was
wholesome to show the world that there was a king left who could move
about in the bustle and business of the age, and could charge as well as
most soldiers at the head of his cavalry; that there was one more
sovereign fit to reign over men, besides the glorious virgin who
governed England.
Thus courageous, crafty, far-seeing, consistent, untiring,
imperturbable, he was born to command, and had a right to reign. He had
need of the throne, and the throne had still more need of him.
WALLENSTEIN, DUKE OF FRIEDLAND.
BY FRIEDRICH VON SCHILLER.
[Albrecht Wenzel Eusebius von Wallenstein, a distinguished Austrian
general, the most noted opponent of Gustavus Adolphus in the Thirty
Years’ War, born 1583, assassinated 1634. Wallenstein had already
achieved the most brilliant rank among the Imperialist generals,
except Tilly, when the defeat of the latter made the ambitious
soldier, whose great wealth and unscrupulous daring had excited the
jealousy of the Emperor Ferdinand, again a necessity to the
Catholic cause. Wallenstein, who had raised and subsisted an
immense army at his own expense at a time of pressing imperial
need, had afterward been retired from command. When called again to
the help of the imperial cause, Wallenstein dictated his own terms,
which practically left Ferdinand a mere puppet in his hands. Though
Gustavus Adolphus was victor at the battle of Lützen, it was at the
cost of his own life, a result welcomed by the Catholic league as a
great victory. Wallenstein reorganized his army, and was again
ordered by the emperor to lay down his baton on the just suspicion
that he was negotiating with the Swedes disloyally. His official
removal was made known to his principal generals, and Wallenstein,
deserted by a large portion of his troops, was assassinated by a
conspiracy of his minor officers, who had become satisfied that it
would be impracticable to secure his person alive, or to prevent
his immediate junction with the advancing Swedes.]
Count Wallenstein, afterward Duke of Friedland, was an experienced
officer, and the richest nobleman in Bohemia. From his earliest youth he
had been in the service of the house of Austria, and several campaigns
against the Turks, Venetians, Bohemians, Hungarians, and Transylvanians
had established his reputation. He was present as colonel at the battle
of Prague, and afterward, as major-general, had defeated a Hungarian
force in Moravia. The emperor’s gratitude was equal to his services, and
a large share of the confiscated estates of the Bohemian insurgents was
their reward. Possessed of immense property, excited by ambitious views,
confident of his own good fortune, and still more encouraged by the
existing state of circumstances, he offered, at his own expense and that
of his friends, to raise and clothe an army for the emperor, and even
undertook the cost of maintaining it if he were allowed to augment it to
fifty thousand men.
The project was universally ridiculed as the chimerical offering of a
visionary brain; but the offer was highly valuable, if its promises
should be but partly fulfilled. Certain circles in Bohemia were assigned
to him as depots, with authority to appoint his own officers. In a few
months he had twenty thousand men under arms, with which, quitting the
Austrian territories, he soon afterward appeared on the frontiers of
Lower Saxony with thirty thousand. The emperor had lent this armament
nothing but his name. The reputation of the general, the prospect of
rapid promotion, and the hope of plunder, attracted to his standard
adventurers from all quarters of Germany, and even sovereign princes,
stimulated by the desire of glory or of gain, offered to raise regiments
for the service of Austria.
The secret how Wallenstein had purposed to fulfill his extravagant
designs was now manifest. He had learned the lesson from Count
Mansfeld,[25] but the scholar surpassed his master. On the principle
that war must support war, Mansfeld and the Duke of Brunswick had
subsisted their troops by contributions levied indiscriminately on
friend and enemy; but this predatory life was attended with all the
inconvenience and insecurity which accompany robbery. Like fugitive
banditti, they were obliged to steal through exasperated and vigilant
enemies; to roam from one end of Germany to another; to watch their
opportunity with anxiety, and to abandon the most fertile territories
whenever they were defended by a superior army. If Mansfeld and Duke
Christian had done such great things in the face of these difficulties,
what might not be expected if the obstacles were removed; when the army
raised was numerous enough to overawe in itself the most powerful states
of the empire; when the name of the emperor insured impunity to every
outrage; and when, under the highest authority, and at the head of an
overwhelming force, the same system of warfare was pursued which these
two adventurers had hitherto adopted at their own risk, and with only an
untrained multitude?
Wallenstein was at the head of an army of nearly a hundred thousand men,
who adored him, when the sentence of his dismissal arrived. Most of the
officers were his creatures--with the common soldiers his hint was law.
His ambition was boundless, his pride indomitable, his imperious spirit
could not brook an injury unavenged. One moment would now precipitate
him from the height of grandeur into the obscurity of a private station.
To execute such a sentence upon such a delinquent seemed to require
more address than it cost to obtain it from the judge. Accordingly, two
of Wallenstein’s most intimate friends were selected as heralds of these
evil tidings, and instructed to soften them as much as possible by
flattering assurances of the continuance of the emperor’s favor.
Wallenstein had ascertained the purport of their message before the
imperial ambassadors arrived. He had time to collect himself, and his
countenance exhibited an external calmness while grief and rage were
storming in his bosom. He had made up his mind to obey. The emperor’s
decision had taken him by surprise before circumstances were ripe or his
preparations complete for the bold measures he had contemplated. His
extensive estates were scattered over Bohemia and Moravia, and by their
confiscation the emperor might at once destroy the sinews of his power.
He looked, therefore, to the future for revenge, and in this hope he was
encouraged by the predictions of an Italian astrologer, who led his
imperious spirit like a child in leading-strings. Seni had read in the
stars that his master’s brilliant career was not yet ended, and that
bright and glorious prospects still awaited him. It was, indeed,
unnecessary to consult the stars to foretell that an enemy, Gustavus
Adolphus, would ere long render indispensable the services of such a
general as Wallenstein.
“The Emperor is betrayed,” said Wallenstein to the messengers; “I pity
but forgive him. It is plain that the grasping spirit of the Bavarian
dictates to him. I grieve that, with so much weakness, he has sacrificed
me; but I will obey.” He dismissed the emissaries with princely
presents, and, in a humble letter, besought the continuance of the
emperor’s favor and of the dignities he had bestowed upon him.
The murmurs of the army were universal on hearing of the dismissal of
their general, and the greater part of his officers immediately quitted
the imperial service. Many followed him to his estates in Bohemia and
Moravia; others he attached to his interests by pensions, in order to
command their services when the opportunity should offer.
But repose was the last thing that Wallenstein contemplated when he
returned to private life. In his retreat he surrounded himself with a
regal pomp which seemed to mock the sentence of degradation. Six gates
led to the palace he inhabited in Prague, and a hundred houses were
pulled down to make way for his courtyard. Similar palaces were built on
his other numerous estates. Gentlemen of the noblest houses contended
for the honor of serving him, and even imperial chamberlains resigned
the golden key to the emperor to fill a similar office under
Wallenstein. He maintained sixty pages, who were instructed by the
ablest masters. His antechamber was protected by fifty life-guards. His
table never consisted of less than one hundred covers, and his seneschal
was a person of distinction. When he traveled his baggage and suite
accompanied him in a hundred wagons drawn by six or four horses; his
court followed in sixty carriages attended by fifty led horses. The pomp
of his liveries, the splendor of his equipages, and the decorations of
his apartments were in keeping with all the rest. Six barons and as many
knights were in constant attendance about his person, and ready to
execute his slightest order. Twelve patrols went their rounds about his
palace to prevent any disturbance. His busy genius required silence. The
noise of coaches was to be kept away from his residence, and the streets
leading to it were frequently blocked up with chains. His own circle was
as silent as the approaches to his palace. Dark, reserved, and
impenetrable, he was more sparing of his words than of his gifts, while
the little that he spoke was harsh and imperious. He never smiled, and
the coldness of his temperament was proof against sensual seductions.
Ever occupied with grand schemes, he despised all those idle amusements
in which so many waste their lives. The correspondence he kept up with
the whole of Europe was chiefly managed by himself, and, that as little
as possible might be trusted to the silence of others, most of the
letters were written by his own hand. He was a man of large stature,
thin, of a sallow complexion, with short, red hair, and small, sparkling
eyes. A gloomy and forbidding seriousness sat upon his brow, and his
magnificent presents alone retained the trembling crowd of his
dependents.
In this stately obscurity did Wallenstein silently but not inactively
await the hour of revenge. The victorious career of Gustavus Adolphus
soon gave him a presentiment of its approach. Not one of his lofty
schemes had been abandoned, and the emperor’s ingratitude had loosened
the curb of his ambition. The dazzling splendor of his private life
bespoke high soaring projects, and, lavish as a king, he seemed already
to reckon among his certain possessions those which he contemplated with
hope.
Wallenstein, at the age of fifty, terminated his active and
extraordinary life. To ambition he owed both his greatness and his ruin.
With all his failings he possessed great and admirable qualities; and,
had he kept himself within due bounds, he would have lived and died
without an equal. The virtues of the ruler and of the hero--prudence,
justice, firmness, and courage--are strikingly prominent features in his
character; but he wanted the gentler virtues of the man, which adorn the
hero and make the ruler beloved. Terror was the talisman with which he
worked; extreme in his punishments as in his rewards, he knew how to
keep alive the zeal of his followers, while no general of ancient or
modern times could boast of being obeyed with equal alacrity. Submission
to his will was more prized by him than bravery; for, if the soldiers
work by the latter, it is on the former that the general depends. He
continually kept up the obedience of his troops by capricious orders,
and profusely rewarded the readiness to obey even trifles, because he
looked rather to the act itself than its object. He once issued a
decree, with the penalty of death on disobedience, that none but red
sashes should be worn in the army. A captain of horse no sooner heard
the order, than, pulling off his gold-embroidered sash, he trampled it
under foot. Wallenstein, on being informed of the circumstance, promoted
him on the spot to the rank of colonel.
His comprehensive glance was always directed to the whole, and in all
his apparent caprice, he steadily kept in view some general scope or
bearing. The robberies committed by the soldiers in a friendly country
had led to the severest orders against marauders; and all who should be
caught thieving were threatened with the halter. Wallenstein himself
having met a straggler in the open country upon the field, commanded him
to be seized without trial, as a transgressor of the law, and, in his
usual voice of thunder, exclaimed, “Hang the fellow,” against which no
opposition ever availed. The soldier pleaded and proved his innocence,
but the irrevocable sentence had gone forth. “Hang, then, innocent,”
cried the inexorable Wallenstein, “the guilty will have then more reason
to tremble.” Preparations were already making to execute the sentence,
when the soldier, who gave himself up for lost, formed the desperate
resolution of not dying without revenge. He fell furiously upon his
judge, but was overpowered by numbers and disarmed before he could
fulfil his design. “Now let him go,” said the duke, “it will excite
sufficient terror.”
His munificence was supported by an immense income, which was estimated
at three millions of florins yearly, without reckoning the enormous sums
which he raised under the name of contributions. His liberality and
clearness of understanding raised him above the religious prejudices of
his age; and the Jesuits never forgave him for having seen through their
system, and for regarding the pope as nothing more than a bishop of
Rome.
But as no one ever yet came to a fortunate end who quarrelled with the
Church, Wallenstein, also, must augment the number of its victims.
Through the intrigues of monks, he lost at Ratisbon the command of the
army, and at Egra his life; by the same arts, perhaps, he lost what was
of more consequence, his honorable name and good repute with posterity.
For, in justice, it must be admitted that the pens which have traced the
history of this extraordinary man are not untinged with partiality, and
that the treachery of the duke, and his designs upon the throne of
Bohemia, rest not so much upon proved facts, as upon probable
conjecture. No documents have yet been brought to light which disclose
with historical certainty the secret motives of his conduct; and among
all his public and well-attested actions, there is, perhaps, not one
which could have had an innocent end. Many of his most obnoxious
measures proved nothing but the earnest wish he entertained for peace;
most of the others are explained and justified by the well-founded
distrust he entertained of the emperor, and the excusable wish of
maintaining his own importance. It is true, that his conduct toward the
Elector of Bavaria looks too like an unworthy revenge, and the dictates
of an implacable spirit; but still, none of his actions perhaps warrant
us in holding his treason to be proved. If necessity and despair at last
forced him to deserve the sentence which had been pronounced against him
while innocent, still this will not justify that sentence. Thus
Wallenstein fell, not because he was a rebel, but he became a rebel
because he fell. Unfortunate in life that he made a victorious party his
enemy, but still more unfortunate in death, that the same party survived
him and wrote his history.
[Illustration: CARDINAL RICHELIEU.]
CARDINAL RICHELIEU.
BY SIR JAMES STEPHEN.
[Armand Jean Duplessis, Cardinal and Duke de Richelieu, born 1585,
died 1642. Originally trained to arms, as Marquis du Chillon, he
decided to take orders, studied theology and was made Bishop of
Luçon in 1607. During the minority of Louis XIII he enjoyed the
confidence of the queen regent, Maria de’ Medici, and in 1622
received the cardinal’s hat. In spite of the dislike of the king he
became prime minister and practically ruled France till his death.
Though a prince of the Church, Richelieu secretly assisted the
parliamentary party in the English Revolution of 1640; and gave
most important assistance both in money and armies, as a matter of
state policy, to the Protestants during the Thirty Years’ War.]
Richelieu was one of the rulers of mankind in virtue of an inherent and
indefeasible birthright. His title to command rested on that sublime
force of will and decision of character by which, in an age of great
men, he was raised above them all. It is a gift which supposes and
requires in him on whom it is conferred convictions too firm to be
shaken by the discovery of any unperceived or unheeded truths. It is,
therefore, a gift which, when bestowed on the governors of nations, also
presupposes in them the patience to investigate, the capacity to
comprehend, and the genius to combine, all those views of the national
interest, under the guidance of which their inflexible policy is to be
conducted to its destined consummation; for the stoutest hearted men, if
acting in ignorance, or under the impulse of haste or of error, must
often pause, often hesitate, and not seldom recede. Richelieu was
exposed to no such danger. He moved onward to his predetermined ends
with that unfaltering step which attests, not merely a stern
immutability of purpose, but a comprehensive survey of the path to be
trodden, and a profound acquaintance with all its difficulties and all
its resources. It was a path from which he could be turned aside
neither by his bad nor by his good genius; neither by fear, lassitude,
interest, nor pleasure; nor by justice, pity, humanity, nor conscience.
The idolatrous homage of mere mental power, without reference to the
motives by which it is governed, or to the ends to which it is
addressed--that blind hero-worship, which would place Wallenstein and
Gustavus Adolphus on the same level, and extol with equal warmth the
triumphs of Cromwell and of Washington, though it be a modern fashion,
has certainly not the charm of novelty. On the contrary, it might, in
the language of the Puritans, be described as one of the “old follies of
the old Adam”; and to the influence of that folly the reputation of
Richelieu is not a little indebted.
In his estimate, the absolute dominion of the French crown and the
grandeur of France were convertible terms. They seemed to him but as two
different aspects of the great consummation to which every hour of his
political life was devoted. In approaching that ultimate goal, there
were to be surmounted many obstacles which he distinctly perceived, and
of which he has given a very clear summary in his “Testament Politique.”
“When it pleased your majesty,” he says, “to give me not only a place in
your council, but a great share in the conduct of your affairs, the
Huguenots divided the state with you. The great lords were acting, not
as your subjects, but as independent chieftains. The governors of your
provinces were conducting themselves like so many sovereign princes.
Foreign affairs and alliances were disregarded. The interest of the
public was postponed to that of private men. In a word, your authority
was, at that time so torn to shreds, and so unlike what it ought to be,
that, in the confusion, it was impossible to recognize the genuine
traces of your royal power.”
Before his death, Richelieu had triumphed over all these enemies, and
had elevated the house of Bourbon upon their ruins. He is, I believe,
the only human being who ever conceived and executed, in the spirit of
philosophy, the design of erecting a political despotism; not, indeed a
despotism like that of Constantinople or Teheran, but a power which,
being restrained by religion, by learning, and by public spirit, was to
be exempted from all other restraints; a dynasty which, like a kind of
subordinate providence, was to spread wide its arms for the guidance and
shelter of the subject multitude, itself the while inhabiting a region
too lofty to be ever darkened by the mists of human weakness or of human
corruption.
To devise schemes worthy of the academies of Laputa, and to pursue them
with all the relentless perseverance of Cortés or of Clive, has been
characteristic of many of the statesmen of France, both in remote and in
recent times. Richelieu was but a more successful Mirabeau. He was not
so much a minister as a dictator. He was rather the depositary than the
agent of the royal power. A king in all things but the name, he reigned
with that exemption from hereditary and domestic influences which has so
often imparted to the papal monarchs a kind of preterhuman energy, and
has so often taught the world to deprecate the celibacy of the throne.
Richelieu was the heir of the designs of Henry IV, and the ancestor of
those of Louis XIV. But they courted, and were sustained by, the
applause and the attachment of their subjects. He passed his life in one
unintermitted struggle with each, in turn, of the powerful bodies over
which he ruled. By a long series of well-directed blows, he crushed
forever the political and military strength of the Huguenots. By his
strong hand, the sovereign courts were confined to their judicial
duties, and their claims to participate in the government of the state
were scattered to the winds. Trampling under foot all rules of judicial
procedure and the clearest principles of justice, he brought to the
scaffold one after another of the proudest nobles of France, by
sentences dictated by himself to extraordinary judges of his own
selection; thus teaching the doctrine of social equality by lessons too
impressive to be misinterpreted or forgotten by any later generation.
Both the privileges, in exchange for which the greater fiefs had
surrendered their independence, and the franchises, for the conquest of
which the cities, in earlier times, had successfully contended, were
alike swept away by this remorseless innovator. He exiled the mother,
oppressed the wife, degraded the brother, banished the confessor, and
put to death the kinsmen and favorites of the king, and compelled the
king himself to be the instrument of these domestic severities. Though
surrounded by enemies and by rivals, his power ended only with his life.
Though beset by assassins, he died in the ordinary course of nature.
Though he had waded to dominion through slaughter, cruelty, and wrong,
he passed to his great account amid the applause of the people, with the
benedictions of the Church; and, as far as any human being ever could
perceive, in hope, in tranquility, and in peace.
What, then, is the reason why so tumultuous a career reached at length
so serene a close? The reason is that, amid all his conflicts, Richelieu
wisely and successfully maintained three powerful alliances. He
cultivated the attachment of men of letters, the favor of the commons,
and the sympathy of all French idolaters of the national glory.
He was a man of extensive, if not of profound, learning, a theologian of
some account, and an aspirant for fame as a dramatist, a wit, a poet,
and a historian. But if his claims to admiration as a writer were
disputable, none contended his title to applause as a patron of
literature and of art. The founder of a despotism in the world of
politics, he aspired also to be the founder of a commonwealth in the
world of letters. While crushing the national liberties, he founded the
French Academy as the sacred shrine of intellectual freedom and
independence. Acknowledging no equal in the state, he forbade the
acknowledgment, in that literary republic, of any superiority save that
of genius. While refusing to bare his head to any earthly potentate, he
would permit no eminent author to stand bareheaded in his presence. By
these cheap and not dishonest arts, he gained an inestimable advantage.
The honors he conferred on the men of learning of his age they largely
repaid, by placing under his control the main-springs of public opinion.
To conciliate the commons of France, Richelieu even ostentatiously
divested himself of every prejudice hostile to his popularity. A prince
of the Church of Rome, he cherished the independence of the Gallican
Church and clergy. The conqueror of the Calvinists, he yet respected the
rights of conscience. Of noble birth and ancestry, his demeanor was
still that of a tribune of the people. But it was not by demeanor alone
that he labored to win their regard. He affected the more solid praise
of large and salutary reformations.
GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS, KING OF SWEDEN.
BY FRIEDRICH VON SCHILLER.
[Known as the Protector of the Protestant Faith, the most brilliant
hero of the Thirty Years’ War, and one of the greatest soldiers of
modern times, born 1594, killed at the battle of Lutzen, 1632. In
1630, the Swedish king having satisfactorily disposed of the
various national difficulties which had so far embarrassed his
career, threw the weight of his gantlet into the struggle going on
between the Catholic league, headed by Ferdinand of Austria, and
the Protestant princes of Germany. The great genius of Gustavus
Adolphus, who taught an entirely new system of tactics, made him
irresistible, and in two years he firmly established a Protestant
ascendancy in German affairs which no power afterward could break.
Wallenstein was his most brilliant antagonist. After the death of
the Swedish hero, the generals who had been trained in his school
continued the war with various vicissitudes till peace was
declared, substantially granting the rights for which the
Protestant chieftains had been fighting.]
Gustavus Adolphus had not completed his seventeenth year when the
Swedish throne became vacant by the death of his father; but the early
maturity of his genius enabled the Estates to abridge in his favor the
legal period of minority. With a glorious conquest over himself, he
commenced a reign which was to have victory for its constant
attendant--a career which was to begin and end in success. The young
Countess of Brahe, the daughter of a subject, had gained his early
affections, and he had resolved to share with her the Swedish throne;
but, constrained by time and circumstances, he made his attachment yield
to the higher duties of a king, and heroism again took exclusive
possession of a heart which was not destined by nature to confine itself
within the limits of quiet domestic happiness.
Christian IV of Denmark, who ascended the throne before the birth of
Gustavus, in an inroad upon Sweden, had gained some considerable
advantages over the father of that hero. Gustavus Adolphus hastened to
put an end to this destructive war, and, by prudent sacrifices, obtained
a peace in order to turn his arms against the czar of Muscovy. The
questionable fame of a conqueror never tempted him to spend the blood of
his subjects in unjust wars; but he never shrunk from a just one. His
arms were successful against Russia, and Sweden was augmented by several
important provinces on the east.
In the meantime, Sigismund of Poland retained against the son the same
sentiments of hostility which the father had provoked, and left no
artifice untried to shake the allegiance of his subjects, to cool the
ardor of his friends, and to embitter his enemies. Neither the great
qualities of his rival, nor the repeated proofs of devotion which Sweden
gave to her loved monarch, could extinguish in this infatuated prince
the foolish hope of regaining his lost throne. All Gustavus’s overtures
were haughtily rejected. Unwillingly was this really peaceful king
involved in a tedious war with Poland, in which the whole of Livonia and
Polish Prussia were successively conquered. Though constantly
victorious, Gustavus Adolphus was always the first to hold out the hand
of peace.
After the unsuccessful attempt of the king of Denmark to check the
emperor’s[26] progress, Gustavus Adolphus was the only prince in Europe
to whom oppressed liberty could look for protection--the only one who,
while he was personally qualified to conduct such an enterprise, had
both political motives to recommend and wrongs to justify it. Before the
commencement of the war in Lower Saxony, important political interests
induced him, as well as the king of Denmark, to offer his services and
his army for the defense of Germany; but the offer of the latter had, to
his own misfortune, been preferred. Since that time Wallenstein and the
emperor had adopted measures which must have been equally offensive to
him as a man and as a king. Imperial troops had been dispatched to the
aid of the Polish king, Sigismund, to defend Prussia against the Swedes.
When the king complained to Wallenstein of this act of hostility, he
received for answer, “The emperor has more soldiers than he wants for
himself; he must help his friends.” The Swedish ambassadors had been
insolently ordered by Wallenstein to withdraw from the conference at
Lubeck; and when, unawed by this command, they were courageous enough to
remain, contrary to the law of nations, he had threatened them with
violence.
Ferdinand had also insulted the Swedish flag, and intercepted the king’s
dispatches to Transylvania. He also threw every obstacle in the way of a
peace between Poland and Sweden, supported the pretensions of Sigismund
to the Swedish throne, and denied the right of Gustavus to the title of
king. Deigning no regard to the repeated remonstrances of Gustavus, he
rather aggravated the offence by new grievances than conceded the
required satisfaction.
So many personal motives, supported by important considerations, both of
policy and religion, and seconded by pressing invitations from Germany,
had their full weight with a prince who was naturally the more jealous
of his royal prerogative the more it was questioned, who was flattered
by the glory he hoped to gain as Protector of the Oppressed, and
passionately loved war as the element of his genius.
But the strongest pledge for the success of his undertaking Gustavus
found in himself. Prudence demanded that he should embrace all the
foreign assistance he could, in order to guard his enterprise from the
imputation of rashness; but all his confidence and courage were entirely
derived from himself. He was indisputably the greatest general of his
age, and the bravest soldier in the army which he had formed. Familiar
with the tactics of Greece and Rome, he had discovered a more effective
system of warfare, which was adopted as a model by the most eminent
commanders of subsequent times. He reduced the unwieldly squadrons of
cavalry, and rendered their movements more light and rapid; and, with
the same view, he widened the intervals between his battalions. Instead
of the usual array in a single line, he disposed his forces in two
lines, that the second might advance in the event of the first giving
way.
He made up for his want of cavalry, by placing infantry among the horse;
a practice which frequently decided the victory. Europe first learned
from him the importance of infantry. All Germany was astonished at the
strict discipline which, at the first, so creditably distinguished the
Swedish army within their territories; all disorders were punished with
the utmost severity--particularly impiety, theft, gambling, and
duelling. The Swedish articles of war enforced frugality. In the camp,
the king’s tent not excepted, neither silver nor gold was to be seen.
The general’s eye looked as vigilantly to the morals as to the martial
bravery of his soldiers; every regiment was ordered to form round its
chaplain for morning and evening prayers. In all these points the
lawgiver was also an example. A sincere and ardent piety exalted his
courage. Equally free from the coarse infidelity which leaves the
passions of the barbarian without control; and from the grovelling
superstition of Ferdinand, who humbled himself to the dust before the
Supreme Being, while he haughtily trampled on his fellow creature--in
the height of his success he was ever a man and a Christian; in the
height of his devotion a king and a hero.
The hardships of war he shared with the meanest soldier in his army;
maintained a calm serenity amid the hottest fury of battle; his glance
was omnipresent, and he intrepidly forgot the danger while he exposed
himself to the greatest peril. His natural courage, indeed, too often
made him forget the duty of a general; and the life of a king ended in
the death of a common soldier. But such a leader was followed to victory
alike by the coward and the brave, and his eagle glance marked every
heroic deed which his example had inspired. The fame of their sovereign
excited in the nation an enthusiastic sense of their own importance;
proud of their king, the peasant in Finland and Gothland joyfully
contributed his pittance; the soldier willingly shed his blood; and the
lofty energy which his single mind had imparted to the nation long
survived its creator.
If Gustavus Adolphus owed his successes chiefly to his own genius, at
the same time, it must be owned, he was greatly favored by fortune and
by circumstance. Two great advantages gave him a decided superiority
over the enemy. While he removed the scene of war into the lands of the
League, drew their youths as recruits, enriched himself with booty, and
used the revenue of their fugitive princes as his own, he at once took
from the enemy the means of effectual resistance, and maintained an
expensive war with little cost to himself. And, moreover, while his
opponents, the princes of the League, divided among themselves, and
governed by different and conflicting interests, acted without
unanimity, and therefore without energy; while the generals were
deficient in authority, their troops in obedience, the operations of
their scattered armies without concert; while the general was separated
from the lawgiver and the statesman; these several functions were united
in Gustavus Adolphus, the only source from which authority flowed, the
sole object to which the eye of the warrior turned; the soul of his
party, the inventor as well as the executor of his plans. In him,
therefore, the Protestants had a center of unity and harmony, which was
altogether wanting to their opponents. No wonder, then, if favored by
such advantages, at the head of such an army, with such a genius to
direct it, and guided by such political prudence, Gustavus Adolphus was
irresistible.
With the sword in one hand, and mercy in the other, he traversed Germany
as a conqueror, a lawgiver, and a judge, in as short a time almost as
the tourist of pleasure. The keys of towers and fortresses were
delivered to him, as if to a native sovereign. No fortress was
inaccessible; no river checked his victorious career. He conquered by
the very terror of his name.
History, too often confined to the ungrateful task of analyzing the
uniform play of human passions, is occasionally rewarded by the
appearance of events which strike like a hand from heaven into the
nicely adjusted machinery of human plans, and carry the contemplative
mind to a higher order of things. Of this kind, is the sudden retirement
of Gustavus Adolphus from the scene; stopping for a time the whole
movement of the political machine, and disappointing all the
calculations of human prudence. Yesterday, the very soul, the great and
animating principle of his own creation; to-day struck unpitiably to the
ground in the very midst of his eagle flight; untimely torn from a whole
world of great designs, and from the ripening harvest of his
expectations, he left his bereaved party disconsolate; and the proud
edifice of his past greatness sank into ruins. The Protestant party had
identified its hopes with its invincible leader, and scarcely can it now
separate them from him; with him, they now fear all good fortune is
buried. But it was no longer the benefactor of Germany who fell at
Lutzen; the beneficent part of his career, Gustavus Adolphus had already
terminated; and now the greatest service which he could render to the
liberties of Germany was--to die.
The ambition of the Swedish monarch aspired unquestionably to establish
a power within Germany, and to attain a firm footing in the center of
the empire, which was inconsistent with the liberties of the Estates.
His aim was the imperial crown; and this dignity, supported by his
power, and maintained by his energy and activity, would in his hands be
liable to more abuse than had ever been feared from the House of
Austria. Born in a foreign country, educated in the maxims of arbitrary
power, and by principles and enthusiasm a determined enemy to popery, he
was ill qualified to maintain inviolate the constitution of the German
States, or to respect their liberties. The coercive homage which
Augsburg, with many other cities, was forced to pay to the Swedish
crown, bespoke the conqueror, rather than the protector of the empire;
and this town, prouder of the title of a royal city than of the higher
dignity of the freedom of the empire, flattered itself with the
anticipation of becoming the capital of his future kingdom.
His ill-disguised attempts upon the Electorate of Mentz, which he first
intended to bestow upon the Elector of Brandenburg, as the dower of his
daughter Christina, and afterward destined for his chancellor and friend
Oxenstiern, evinced plainly what liberties he was disposed to take with
the constitution of the empire. His allies, the Protestant princes, had
claims on his gratitude, which could be satisfied only at the expense of
their Roman Catholic neighbors, and particularly of the immediate
Ecclesiastical Chapters; and it seems probable a plan was early formed
for dividing the conquered provinces (after the precedent of the
barbarian hordes who overran the German empire) as a common spoil, among
the German and Swedish confederates. In his treatment of the Elector
Palatine, he entirely belied the magnanimity of the hero, and forgot the
sacred character of a protector. The Palatinate was in his hands, and
the obligations both of justice and honor demanded its full and
immediate restoration to the legitimate sovereign. But, by a subtlety
unworthy of a great mind, and disgraceful to the honorable title of
protector of the oppressed, he eluded that obligation. He treated the
Palatinate as a conquest wrested from the enemy, and thought that this
circumstance gave him a right to deal with it as he pleased. He
surrendered it to the Elector as a favor, not as a debt; and that, too,
as a Swedish fief, fettered by conditions which diminished half its
value, and degraded this unfortunate prince into a humble vassal of
Sweden. One of these conditions obliged the Elector, after the
conclusion of the war, to furnish, along with the other princes, his
contribution toward the maintenance of the Swedish army--a condition
which plainly indicates the fate which, in the event of the ultimate
success of the king, awaited Germany. His sudden disappearance secured
the liberties of Germany, and saved his reputation, while it probably
spared him the mortification of seeing his own allies in arms against
him, and all the fruits of his victories torn from him by a
disadvantageous peace.
EARL OF STRAFFORD.
BY DAVID HUME.
[Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, born 1593, executed 1641. At
first a leading member of the opposition to Charles I in
Parliament, he afterward joined the court party and became
successively Viscount Wentworth and Earl of Strafford. As governor
of Ireland, he organized the first standing army in English annals;
and afterward formulated the policy of “Thorough”--an executive
system which would have made Charles an absolute monarch, free of
parliamentary or other shackles. His remarkable political genius
inspired such dread that Parliament looked on his death as
essential to their cause. He was impeached as a traitor, an
indictment undoubtedly true, but which could not be legally proved.
He was finally condemned by a bill of attainder. The worst blot on
Charles I is that he should have yielded up Strafford to his foes
with hardly a struggle. Though traitor to his country, he was the
most loyal and devoted of servants to his king. Hume’s estimate of
Strafford is more lenient than that of other historians.]
In the former situation of the English Government, when the sovereign
was in a great measure independent of his subjects, the king chose his
ministers either from personal favor, or from an opinion of their
abilities, without any regard to their parliamentary interest or
talents. It has since been the maxim of princes, wherever popular
leaders encroach too much on royal authority, to confer offices on them,
in expectation that they will afterward become more careful not to
diminish that power which has become their own. These politics were now
embraced by Charles; a sure proof that a secret revolution had happened
in the constitution, and had necessitated the prince to adopt new maxims
of government. But the views of the king were at this time so repugnant
to those of the Puritans that the leaders whom he gained lost from that
moment all interest with their party, and were even pursued as traitors
with implacable hatred and resentment.
This was the case with Sir Thomas Wentworth, whom the king created first
a baron, then a viscount, and afterward Earl of Strafford; made him
president of the council of York, and deputy of Ireland; and regarded
him as his chief minister and counsellor. By his eminent talents and
abilities Strafford merited all the confidence which his master reposed
in him; his character was stately and austere--more fitted to procure
esteem than love; his fidelity to the king was unshaken; but as he now
employed all his counsels to support the prerogative, which he had
formerly bent all his endeavors to diminish, his virtue seems not to
have been entirely pure, but to have been susceptible of strong
impressions from private interest and ambition.
The death of Strafford was too important a stroke of party to be left
unattempted by any expedient however extraordinary. Besides the great
genius and authority of that minister, he had threatened some of the
popular leaders with an impeachment; and had he not himself been
suddenly prevented by the impeachment of the Commons, he had, that very
day, it was thought, charged Pym, Hambden, and others with treason for
having invited the Scots to invade England. A bill of attainder was,
therefore, brought into the Lower House immediately after finishing
these pleadings; and preparatory to it a new proof of the earl’s guilt
was produced, in order to remove such scruples as might be entertained
with regard to a method of proceeding so unusual and irregular.
Sir Henry Vane, secretary, had taken some notes of a debate in council
after the dissolution of the last Parliament; and being at a distance,
he had sent the keys of his cabinet, as was pretended, to his son, Sir
Henry, in order to search for some papers, which were necessary for
completing a marriage settlement. Young Vane, falling upon this paper of
notes, deemed the matter of the utmost importance, and immediately
communicated it to Pym, who now produced the paper before the House of
Commons. The question before the council was, _offensive or defensive
war with the Scots_. The king proposes this difficulty, “But how can I
undertake offensive war, if I have no more money?” The answer ascribed
to Strafford was in these words: “Borrow of the city a hundred thousand
pounds; go on vigorously to levy ship-money. Your majesty having tried
the affections of your people, you are absolved and loose from all rules
of government, and may do what power will admit. Your majesty, having
tried all ways, shall be acquitted before God and man. And you have an
army in Ireland, which you may employ to reduce this kingdom to
obedience; for I am confident the Scots can not hold out five months.”
There followed some counsels of Laud and Cottington, equally violent,
with regard to the king’s being absolved from all rules of government.
The evidence of Secretary Vane, though exposed to such insurmountable
objections, was the real cause of Strafford’s unhappy fate, and made the
bill of attainder pass the Commons with no greater opposition than that
of fifty-nine dissenting votes. But there remained two other branches of
the legislature, the king and the lords, whose assent was requisite; and
these, if left to their free judgment, it was easily foreseen, would
reject the bill without scruple or deliberation. To overcome this
difficulty, the popular leaders employed expedients, for which they were
beholden partly to their own industry, partly to the indiscretion of
their adversaries.
Strafford, in passing from his apartment to Tower Hill, where the
scaffold was erected, stopped under Laud’s windows, with whom he had
long lived in intimate friendship, and entreated the assistance of his
prayers in those awful moments which were approaching. The aged primate
dissolved in tears; and having pronounced, with a broken voice, a tender
blessing on his departing friend, sank into the arms of his attendants.
Strafford, still superior to his fate, moved on with an elated
countenance, and with an air even of greater dignity than what usually
attended him. He wanted that consolation which commonly supports those
who perish by the stroke of injustice and oppression; he was not buoyed
up by glory, nor by the affectionate compassion of the spectators. Yet
his mind, erect and undaunted, found resources within itself, and
maintained its unbroken resolution amid the terrors of death and the
triumphant exultations of his misguided enemies. His discourse on the
scaffold was full of decency and courage. “He feared,” he said, “that
the omen was bad for the intended reformation of the state, that it
commenced with the shedding of innocent blood.”
Having bid a last adieu to his brother and friends who attending him,
and having sent a blessing to his nearer relations who were absent--“And
now,” said he, “I have nigh done! One stroke will make my wife a widow,
my dear children fatherless, deprive my poor servants of their indulgent
master, and separate me from my affectionate brother and all my friends!
But let God be to you and them all in all!” Going to disrobe and prepare
himself for the block, “I thank God,” said he, “that I am nowise afraid
of death, nor am daunted with any terrors; but do as cheerfully lay down
my head at this time, as ever I did when going to repose!” With one blow
was a period put to his life by the executioner.
Thus perished, in the forty-ninth year of his age, the Earl of
Strafford, one of the most eminent personages that has appeared in
England. Though his death was loudly demanded as a satisfaction to
justice, and an atonement for the many violations of the constitution,
it may safely be affirmed that the sentence by which he fell was an
enormity greater than the worst of those which his implacable enemies
prosecuted with so much cruel industry. The people in their rage had
totally mistaken the proper object of their resentment. All the
necessities, or more properly speaking, the difficulties, by which the
king had been induced to use violent expedients for raising supply were
the result of measures previous to Strafford’s favor; and if they arose
from ill conduct, he, at least, was entirely innocent.
Even those violent expedients themselves, which occasioned the complaint
that the constitution was subverted, had been all of them conducted, so
far as appeared, without his counsel or assistance. And whatever his
private advice might be, this salutary maxim he failed not, often and
publicly, to inculcate in the king’s presence, that if any
[Illustration: OLIVER CROMWELL.]
inevitable necessity ever obliged the sovereign to violate the laws,
this license ought to be practiced with extreme reserve, and as soon as
possible a just atonement be made to the constitution for any injury
which it might sustain from such dangerous precedents. The first
Parliament after the restoration reversed the bill of attainder; and
even a few weeks after Strafford’s execution this very Parliament
remitted to his children the more severe consequences of his sentence,
as if conscious of the violence with which the prosecution had been
conducted.
OLIVER CROMWELL.
BY THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.
[Lord Protector of the English Commonwealth, and leader of the
Revolution of 1640, born 1599, died 1658. Descended from a good
race, connected with some of the best families in England, he
became identified with the Puritan cause in the contest with King
Charles I. He took active part in hostilities from the first,
formed the famous Ironsides, and reorganized the parliamentary
army, of which he soon became the chief general. He was active in
the formation of the High Commission, which tried and condemned the
king, and thenceforward was the ruler of England. It was not till
1651, however, that he became the titular Lord Protector, and
reorganized the government mainly on the lines of monarchy.]
The soul of his party was Oliver Cromwell. Bred to peaceful occupations,
he had, at more than forty years of age, accepted a commission in the
parliamentary army. He saw precisely where the strength of the Royalists
lay, and by what means alone that strength could be overpowered. He saw
that it was necessary to reconstruct the army of the Parliament. He saw
also that there were abundant and excellent materials for the purpose,
materials less showy, indeed, but more solid, than those of which the
gallant squadrons of the king were composed. It was necessary to look
for recruits who were not mere mercenaries, for recruits of decent
station and grave character, fearing God and zealous for public liberty.
With such men he filled his own regiment, and, while he subjected them
to a discipline more rigid than had ever before been known in England,
he administered to their intellectual and moral nature stimulants of
fearful potency. Cromwell made haste to organize the whole army on the
same principles on which he had organized his own regiment. As soon as
this process was complete, the event of the war was decided. The
Cavaliers had now to encounter natural courage equal to their own,
enthusiasm stronger than their own, and discipline such as was utterly
wanting to them. It soon became a proverb that the soldiers of Fairfax
and Cromwell were men of a different breed from the soldiers of Essex.
At Naseby took place the first great encounter between the Royalists and
the remodeled army of the Houses. The victory of the Roundheads was
complete and decisive. It was followed by other triumphs in rapid
succession. In a few months the authority of the Parliament was fully
established over the whole kingdom. Charles fled to the Scots, and was
by them, in a manner which did not much exalt their national character,
delivered up to his English subjects.
In war this strange force was irresistible. The stubborn courage
characteristic of the English people was, by the system of Cromwell, at
once regulated and stimulated. Other leaders have maintained orders as
strict. Other leaders have inspired their followers with zeal as ardent.
But in his camp alone the most rigid discipline was found in company
with the fiercest enthusiasm. His troops moved to victory with the
precision of machines, while burning with the wildest fanaticism of
crusaders. From the time when the army was remodeled to the time when it
was disbanded, it never found, either in the British islands or on the
Continent, an enemy who could stand its onset. In England, Scotland,
Ireland, Flanders, the Puritan warriors, often surrounded by
difficulties, sometimes contending against threefold odds, not only
never failed to conquer, but never failed to destroy and break in pieces
whatever force was opposed to them. They at length came to regard the
day of battle as a day of certain triumph, and marched against the most
renowned battalions of Europe with disdainful confidence. Turenne was
startled by the shout of stern exultation with which his English allies
advanced to the combat, and expressed the delight of a true soldier,
when he learned that it was ever the fashion of Cromwell’s pikemen to
rejoice greatly when they beheld the enemy; and the banished Cavaliers
felt an emotion of national pride, when they saw a brigade of their
countrymen, outnumbered by foes and abandoned by friends, drive before
it in headlong rout the finest infantry of Spain. The military saints
resolved that, in defiance of the old laws of the realm, and of the
almost universal sentiment of the realm, the king should expiate his
crimes with blood. In order to accomplish their purpose, it was
necessary that they should first break in pieces every part of the
machinery of government. A revolutionary tribunal was created. That
tribunal pronounced Charles a tyrant, a traitor, a murderer, and a
public enemy; and his head was severed from his shoulders before
thousands of spectators in front of the banqueting hall of his own
palace.
King, Lords, and Commons, had now in turn been vanquished and destroyed;
and Cromwell seemed to be left the sole heir of the powers of all three.
Yet were certain limitations still imposed on him by the very army to
which he owed his immense authority. That singular body of men was, for
the most part, composed of zealous republicans. In the act of enslaving
their country, they had deceived themselves into the belief that they
were emancipating her. The book which they most venerated furnished them
with a precedent, which was frequently in their mouths. It was true that
the ignorant and ungrateful nation murmured against its deliverers.
Even so had another chosen nation murmured against the leader who
brought it, by painful and dreary paths, from the house of bondage to
the land flowing with milk and honey. Yet had that leader rescued his
brethren in spite of themselves; nor had he shrunk from making terrible
examples of those who contemned the proffered freedom, and pined for the
fleshpots, the taskmasters and the idolatries of Egypt. The object of
the warlike saints who surrounded Cromwell was the settlement of a free
and pious commonwealth. For that end they were ready to employ, without
scruple, any means, however violent and lawless. It was not impossible,
therefore, to establish by their aid a dictatorship such as no king had
even exercised: but it was probable that their aid would be at once
withdrawn from a ruler who, even under strict constitutional restraints,
should venture to assume the kingly name and dignity.
The sentiments of Cromwell were widely different. He was not what he had
been; nor would it be just to consider the change which his views had
undergone as the effect merely of selfish ambition. He had, when he came
up to the Long Parliament, brought with him from his rural retreat
little knowledge of books, no experience of great affairs, and a temper
galled by the long tyranny of the government and of the hierarchy. He
had, during the thirteen years which followed, gone through a political
education of no common kind. He had been a chief actor in a succession
of revolutions. He had been long the soul, and at last the head, of a
party. He had commanded armies, won battles, negotiated treaties,
subdued, pacified, and regulated kingdoms. It would have been strange
indeed if his notions had been still the same as in the days when his
mind was principally occupied by his fields and his religion, and when
the greatest events which diversified the course of his life were a
cattle fair or a prayer meeting at Huntingdon. He saw that some schemes
of innovation for which he had once been zealous, whether good or bad
in themselves, were opposed to the general feeling of the country, and
that, if he persevered in those schemes, he had nothing before him but
constant troubles, which must be suppressed by the constant use of the
sword. He therefore wished to restore, in all essentials, that ancient
constitution which the majority of the people had always loved, and for
which they now pined.
The course afterward taken by Monk was not open to Cromwell. The memory
of one terrible day separated the great regicide for ever from the house
of Stuart. What remained was that he should mount the ancient English
throne, and reign according to the ancient English polity. If he could
effect this, he might hope that the wounds of the lacerated state would
heal fast. Great numbers of honest and quiet men would speedily rally
round him. Those Royalists whose attachment was rather to institutions
than to persons, to the kingly office than to King Charles I or King
Charles II, would soon kiss the hand of King Oliver. The peers, who now
remained sullenly at their country houses, and refused to take any part
in public affairs, would, when summoned to their House by the writ of a
king in possession, gladly resume their ancient functions.
Northumberland and Bedford, Manchester and Pembroke, would be proud to
bear the crown and the spurs, the scepter and the globe, before the
restorer of aristocracy. A sentiment of loyalty would gradually bind the
people to the new dynasty; and, on the decease of the founder of that
dynasty, the royal dignity might descend with general acquiescence to
his posterity.
The ablest Royalists were of opinion that these views were correct, and
that, if Cromwell had been permitted to follow his own judgment, the
exiled line would never have been restored. But his plan was directly
opposed to the feelings of the only class which he dared not offend. The
name of king was hateful to the soldiers. Some of them were indeed
unwilling to see the administration in the hands of any single person.
The great majority, however, were disposed to support their general, as
elective first magistrate of a commonwealth, against all factions which
might resist his authority: but they would not consent that he should
assume the regal title, or that the dignity, which was the just reward
of his personal merit, should be declared hereditary in his family. All
that was left to him was to give to the new republic a constitution as
like the constitution of the old monarchy as the army would bear.
Had he been a cruel, licentious, and rapacious prince, the nation might
have found courage in despair, and might have made a convulsive effort
to free itself from military domination. But the grievances which the
country suffered, though such as excited serious discontent, were by no
means such as impel great masses of men to stake their lives, their
fortunes, and the welfare of their families against fearful odds. The
taxation, though heavier than it had been under the Stuarts, was not
heavy when compared with that of the neighboring states and with the
resources of England. Property was secure. Even the Cavalier, who
refrained from giving disturbance to the new settlement, enjoyed in
peace whatever the civil troubles had left him. The laws were violated
only in cases where the safety of the Protector’s person and government
was concerned. Justice was administered between man and man with an
exactness and purity not before known. Under no English government,
since the Reformation, had there been so little religious persecution.
The unfortunate Roman Catholics, indeed, were held to be scarcely within
the pale of Christian charity. But the clergy of the fallen Anglican
Church were suffered to celebrate their worship on condition that they
would abstain from preaching about politics. Even the Jews, whose public
worship had, ever since the thirteenth century, been interdicted, were,
in spite of the strong opposition of jealous traders and fanatical
theologians, permitted to build a synagogue in London.
The Protector’s foreign policy at the same time extorted the ungracious
approbation of those who most detested him. The Cavaliers could scarcely
refrain from wishing that one who had done so much to raise the fame of
the nation had been a legitimate king; and the Republicans were forced
to own that the tyrant suffered none but himself to wrong his country,
and that, if he had robbed her of liberty, he had at least given her
glory in exchange. After half a century during which England had been of
scarcely more weight in European politics than Venice or Saxony, she at
once became the most formidable power in the world, dictated terms of
peace to the United Provinces, avenged the common injuries of
Christendom on the pirates of Barbary, vanquished the Spaniards by land
and sea, seized one of the finest West Indian islands, and acquired on
the Flemish coast a fortress which consoled the national pride for the
loss of Calais. She was supreme on the ocean. She was the head of the
Protestant interest. All the reformed churches scattered over Roman
Catholic kingdoms acknowledged Cromwell as their guardian. The Huguenots
of Languedoc, the shepherds who, in the hamlets of the Alps, professed a
Protestantism older than that of Augsburg, were secured from oppression
by the mere terror of his great name. The Pope himself was forced to
preach humanity and moderation to popish princes. For a voice which
seldom threatened in vain had declared that, unless favor were shown to
the people of God, the English guns should be heard in the castle of
Saint Angelo. In truth, there was nothing which Cromwell had, for his
own sake and that of his family, so much reason to desire as a general
religious war in Europe. In such a war he must have been the captain of
the Protestant armies. The heart of England would have been with him.
His victories would have been hailed with a unanimous enthusiasm unknown
in the country since the rout of the Armada, and would have effaced the
stain which one act, condemned by the general voice of the nation, has
left on his splendid fame. Unhappily for him he had no opportunity of
displaying his admirable military talents, except against the
inhabitants of the British isles.
While he lived his power stood firm, an object of mingled aversion,
admiration, and dread to his subjects. Few indeed loved his government;
but those who hated it most hated it less than they feared it. Had it
been a worse government, it might perhaps have been overthrown in spite
of all its strength. Had it been a weaker government, it would certainly
have been overthrown in spite of all its merits. But it had moderation
enough to abstain from those oppressions which drive men mad; and it had
a force and energy which none but men driven mad by oppression would
venture to encounter.
It has often been affirmed, but with little reason, that Oliver died at
a time fortunate for his renown, and that, if his life had been
prolonged, it would probably have closed amid disgraces and disasters.
It is certain that he was, to the last, honored by his soldiers, obeyed
by the whole population of the British islands, and dreaded by all
foreign powers; that he was laid among the ancient sovereigns of England
with funeral pomp such as London had never before seen, and that he was
succeeded by his son Richard as quietly as any king had ever been
succeeded by any Prince of Wales.
LORD HALIFAX.
BY THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.
[George Savile, Marquis of Halifax, one of the most brilliant of
seventeenth century statesmen, born 1630, died 1695. He was a most
important figure in the reigns of Charles II, James II, and of
William III, and amid the dissensions and disturbances of the
period his sanity, moderation, and wisdom did much to assuage the
most dangerous party conflicts. Macaulay’s characterization of him
is among the noted historic portraits.]
Among the statesmen of those times Halifax was, in genius, the first.
His intellect was fertile, subtle, and capacious. His polished,
luminous, and animated eloquence, set off by the silver tones of his
voice, was the delight of the House of Lords. His conversation
overflowed with thought, fancy, and wit. His political tracts well
deserve to be studied for their literary merit, and fully entitle him to
a place among English classics. To the weight derived from talents so
great and various he united all the influence which belongs to rank and
ample possessions. Yet he was less successful in politics than many who
enjoy smaller advantages. Indeed, those intellectual peculiarities which
make his writings valuable frequently impeded him in the contests of
active life. For he always saw passing events, not in the point of view
in which they commonly appear to one who bears a part in them, but in
the point of view in which, after the lapse of many years, they appear
to the philosophic historian. With such a turn of mind, he could not
long continue to act cordially with any body of men. All the prejudices,
all the exaggerations, of both the great parties in the state moved his
scorn. He despised the mean arts and unreasonable clamors of demagogues.
He despised still more the doctrines of divine right and passive
obedience. He sneered impartially at the bigotry of the Churchman and at
the bigotry of the Puritan.
He was equally unable to comprehend how any man should object to saints’
days and surplices, and how any man should persecute any other man for
objecting to them. In temper he was what, in our time, is called a
Conservative, in theory he was a Republican. Even when his dread of
anarchy and his disdain for vulgar delusions led him to side for a time
with the defenders of arbitrary power, his intellect was always with
Locke and Milton. Indeed, his jests upon hereditary monarchy were
sometimes such as would have better become a member of the Calf’s Head
Club than a privy councilor of the Stuarts. In religion he was so far
from being a zealot that he was called by the uncharitable an atheist;
but this imputation he vehemently repelled; and in truth, though he
sometimes gave scandal by the way in which he exerted his rare powers
both of reasoning and of ridicule on serious subjects, he seems to have
been by no means unsusceptible of religious impressions.
He was the chief of those politicians whom the two great parties
contemptuously called trimmers. Instead of quarreling with this
nickname, he assumed it as a title of honor, and vindicated, with great
vivacity, the dignity of the appellation. Everything good, he said,
trims between extremes. The temperate zone trims between the climate in
which men are roasted and the climate in which they are frozen. The
English Church trims between the Anabaptist madness and the Papist
lethargy. The English constitution trims between Turkish despotism and
Polish anarchy. Virtue is nothing but a just temper between propensities
any one of which, if indulged to excess, becomes vice. Nay, the
perfection of the Supreme Being himself consists in the exact
equilibrium of attributes, none of which could preponderate without
disturbing the whole moral and physical order of the world.
Thus Halifax was a trimmer on principle. He was also a trimmer by the
constitution both of his head and of his heart. His understanding was
keen, skeptical, inexhaustibly fertile in distinctions and objections;
his taste refined; his sense of the ludicrous exquisite; his temper
placid and forgiving, but fastidious, and by no means prone either to
malevolence or to enthusiastic admiration. Such a man could not long be
constant to any band of political allies. He must not, however, be
confounded with the vulgar crowd of renegades. For though, like them, he
passed from side to side, his transition was always in the direction
opposite to theirs. He had nothing in common with those who fly from
extreme to extreme, and who regard the party which they have deserted
with an animosity far exceeding that of consistent enemies. His place
was on the debatable ground between the hostile divisions of the
community, and he never wandered far beyond the frontier of either. The
party to which he at any moment belonged was the party which, at that
moment, he liked least, because it was the party of which at that moment
he had the nearest view. He was, therefore, always severe upon his
violent associates, and was always in friendly relations with his
moderate opponents. Every faction in the day of its insolent and
vindictive triumph incurred his censure; and every faction, when
vanquished and persecuted, found in him a protector. To his lasting
honor it must be mentioned that he attempted to save those victims whose
fate has left the deepest stain both on the Whig and on the Tory name.
He had greatly distinguished himself in opposition, and had thus drawn
on himself the royal displeasure, which was, indeed, so strong that he
was not admitted into the Council of Thirty without much difficulty and
long altercation. As soon, however, as he had obtained a footing at
court, the charms of his manner and of his conversation made him a
favorite. He was seriously alarmed by the violence of the public
discontent. He thought that liberty was for the present safe, and that
order and legitimate authority were in danger. He therefore, as was his
fashion, joined himself to the weaker side. Perhaps his conversion was
not wholly disinterested. For study and reflection, though they had
emancipated him from many vulgar prejudices, had left him a slave to
vulgar desires. Money he did not want; and there is no evidence that he
ever obtained it by any means which, in that age, even severe censors
considered as dishonorable; but rank and power had strong attractions
for him. He pretended, indeed, that he considered titles and great
offices as baits which could allure none but fools, that he hated
business, pomp, and pageantry, and that his dearest wish was to escape
from the bustle and glitter of Whitehall to the quiet woods which
surrounded his ancient mansion in Nottinghamshire; but his conduct was
not a little at variance with his professions. In truth he wished to
command the respect at once of courtiers and of philosophers, to be
admired for attaining high dignities, and to be at the same time admired
for despising them.
More than one historian has been charged with partiality to Halifax. The
truth is that the memory of Halifax is entitled in an especial manner to
the protection of history. For what distinguishes him from all other
English statesmen is this, that through a long public life, and through
frequent and violent revolutions of public feeling, he almost invariably
took that view of the great questions of his time which history has
finally adopted. He was called inconstant, because the relative position
in which he stood to the contending factions was perpetually varying. As
well might the pole star be called inconstant because it is sometimes to
the east and sometimes to the west of the pointers. To have defended the
ancient and legal constitution of the realm against a seditious populace
at one conjuncture, and against a tyrannical government at another; to
have been the foremost champion of order in the turbulent Parliament of
1680, and the foremost champion of liberty in the servile Parliament of
1685; to have been just and merciful to Roman Catholics in the days of
the Popish Plot, and to Exclusionists in the days of the Rye House Plot;
to have done all in his power to save both the head of Strafford and the
head of Russell; this was a course which contemporaries, heated by
passion, and deluded by names and badges, might not unnaturally call
fickle, but which deserves a very different name from the late justice
of posterity.
LOUIS XIV OF FRANCE.
BY THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.
[Grandson of Henry IV, the greatest of the French Bourbon kings,
though he himself was also called Le Grand, or The Great. Born
1638, died 1715. His reign was distinguished for the brilliant men
he gathered at his court and the unparalleled reverses which befell
his power and prosperity in his closing years.]
The reign of Louis XIV is the time to which ultra-royalists refer as the
golden age of France. It was, in truth, one of those periods which shine
with an unnatural and delusive splendor. Concerning Louis XIV himself,
the world seems at last to have formed a correct judgment. He was not a
great general; he was not a great statesman; but he was, in one sense of
the word, a great king. Never was there so consummate a master of what
our James I would have called kingcraft--of all those arts which most
advantageously display the merits of a prince and most completely hide
his defects. Though his internal administration was bad, though military
triumphs which gave splendor to the early part of his reign were not
achieved by himself, though his later years were crowded with defeats
and humiliations, though he was so ignorant that he scarcely understood
the Latin of his mass-book, though he fell under the control of a
cunning Jesuit and of a more cunning old woman, he succeeded in passing
himself off on his people as a being above humanity.
And this is the more extraordinary, because he did not seclude himself
from the public gaze, like those Oriental despots whose faces are never
seen, and whose very names it is a crime to pronounce lightly. It has
been said that no man is a hero to his valet; and all the world saw as
much of Louis XIV as his valet could see. Five hundred people assembled
to see him shave and put on his breeches in the morning. He then knelt
down by the side of his bed and said his prayer, the ecclesiastics on
their knees and the laymen with their hats before their faces. He walked
about his garden with a train of two hundred courtiers at his heels. All
Versailles came to see him dine and sup. He was put to bed at night in
the midst of a crowd as great as that which had met to see him rise in
the morning. He took his very emetics in state, and vomited majestically
in the presence of all the _grandes_ and _petites entrées_. Yet, though
he constantly exposed himself to the public gaze in situations in which
it is scarcely possible for any man to preserve much personal dignity,
he to the last impressed those who surrounded him with deepest awe and
reverence. The illusion which he produced on his worshipers can be
compared only to those illusions to which lovers are proverbially
subject during the season of courtship; it was an illusion which
affected even the senses.
The contemporaries of Louis thought him tall. Voltaire, who might have
seen him, and who had lived with some of the most distinguished members
of his court, speaks repeatedly of his majestic stature. Yet it is as
certain as any fact can be that he was rather below than above the
middle size. He had, it seems, a way of holding himself, a way of
walking, a way of swelling his chest and rearing his head, which
deceived the eyes of the multitude. Eighty years after his death the
royal cemetery was violated by the revolutionists; his coffin was
opened, his body was dragged out, and it appeared that the prince whose
majestic figure had been so extolled was, in truth, a little man. His
person and his government have had the same fate. He had the art of
making both appear grand and august, in spite of the clearest evidence
that both were below the ordinary standard. Death and time have exposed
both the deceptions. The body of the great king has been measured more
justly than it was measured by the courtiers who were afraid to look
above his shoe-tie. His public character has been scrutinized by men
free from the hopes and fears of Boileau and Molière. In the grave the
most majestic of princes is only five feet eight. In history the hero
and the politician dwindles into a vain and feeble tyrant, the slave of
priests and women; little in war, little in government, little in
everything but the art of simulating greatness.
He left to his infant successor a famished and miserable people, a
beaten and humbled army, provinces turned into deserts by misgovernment
and persecution, factions dividing the court, a schism raging in the
Church, an immense debt, an empty treasury, immeasurable palaces, an
innumerable household, inestimable palaces and furniture. All the sap
and nutriment of the state seemed to have been drawn to feed one bloated
and unwholesome excrescence. The nation was withered. The court was
morbidly flourishing. Yet it does not appear that the associations which
attached the people to the monarchy had lost strength during his reign.
He had neglected or sacrificed their dearest interests, but he had
struck their imaginations.
WILLIAM III OF ENGLAND.
BY THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
[William Henry of Nassau, Prince of Orange and Stadtholder of
Holland, born 1650, raised to the English throne as king consort
with Mary daughter of James II, in 1688, died 1702. One of the
ablest monarchs in English annals, his accession to the throne of
Great Britain was one of the turning points in modern history, and
effectually consummated those reforms in the English Constitution
inaugurated in the revolution of 1640.]
The place which William Henry, Prince of Orange-Nassau, occupies in the
history of England and of mankind is so great that it may be desirable
to portray with some minuteness the strong lineaments of his
character.[27]
He was now in his thirty-seventh year. But both in body and in mind he
was older than other men of the same age. Indeed, it might be said that
he had never been young. His external appearance is almost as well known
to us as to his own captains and counselors. Sculptors, painters, and
medallists exerted their utmost skill in the work of transmitting his
features to posterity; and his features were such that no artist could
fail to seize, and such as, once seen, could never be forgotten. His
name at once calls up before us a slender and feeble frame, a lofty and
ample forehead, a nose curved like the beak of an eagle, an eye rivaling
that of an eagle in brightness and keenness, a thoughtful and somewhat
sullen brow, a firm and somewhat peevish mouth, a cheek pale, thin, and
deeply furrowed by sickness and by care. That pensive, severe, and
solemn aspect could scarcely have belonged to a happy or a good-humored
man. But it indicates in a manner not to be mistaken capacity equal to
the most arduous enterprises, and fortitude not to be shaken by reverses
or dangers.
Nature had largely endowed William with the qualities of a great ruler,
and education had developed those qualities in no common degree. With
strong natural sense, and rare force of will, he found himself, when
first his mind began to open, a fatherless and motherless child, the
chief of a great but depressed and disheartened party, and the heir to
vast and indefinite pretensions, which excited the dread and aversion of
the oligarchy then supreme in the United Provinces. The common people,
fondly attached during three generations to his house, indicated,
whenever they saw him, in a manner not to be mistaken, that they
regarded him as their rightful head. The able and experienced ministers
of the republic, mortal enemies of his name, came every day to pay their
feigned civilities to him, and to observe the progress of his mind. The
first movements of his ambition were carefully watched; every unguarded
word uttered by him was noted down; nor had he near him any adviser on
whose judgment reliance could be placed.
He was scarcely fifteen years old when all the domestics who were
attached to his interest, or who enjoyed any share of his confidence,
were removed from under his roof by the jealous government. He
remonstrated with energy beyond his years, but in vain. Vigilant
observers saw the tears more than once rise in the eyes of the young
state prisoner. His health, naturally delicate, sank for a time under
the emotions which his desolate situation had produced. Such situations
bewilder and unnerve the weak, but call forth all the strength of the
strong. Surrounded by snares in which an ordinary youth would have
perished, William learned to tread at once warily and firmly. Long
before he reached manhood he knew how to keep secrets, how to baffle
curiosity by dry and guarded answers; how to conceal all passions under
the same show of grave tranquillity. Meanwhile he made little
proficiency in fashionable or literary accomplishments. The manners of
the Dutch nobility of that age wanted the grace which was found in the
highest perfection among the gentlemen of France, and which, in an
inferior degree, embellished the court of England; and his manners were
altogether Dutch. Even his countrymen thought him blunt. To foreigners
he often seemed churlish. In his intercourse with the world in general
he appeared ignorant or negligent of those arts which double the value
of a favor and take away the sting of a refusal. He was little
interested in letters or science. The discoveries of Newton and
Liebnitz, the poems of Dryden and Boileau, were unknown to him. Dramatic
performances tired him, and he was glad to turn away from the stage and
to talk about public affairs, while Orestes was raving, or while
Tartuffe was pressing Elmira’s hand.
He had, indeed, some talent for sarcasm, and not seldom employed, quite
unconsciously, a natural rhetoric, quaint, indeed, but vigorous and
original. He did not, however, in the least affect the character of a
wit or of an orator. His attention had been confined to those studies
which form strenuous and sagacious men of business. From a child he
listened with interest when high questions of alliance, finance, and war
were discussed. Of geometry he learned as much as was necessary for the
construction of a ravelin or a horn-work. Of languages, by the help of a
memory singularly powerful, he learned as much as was necessary to
enable him to comprehend and answer without assistance everything that
was said to him and every letter which he received. The Dutch was his
own tongue. With the French he was not less familiar. He understood
Latin, Italian, and Spanish. He spoke and wrote English and German,
inelegantly, it is true, and inexactly, but fluently and intelligibly.
No qualification could be more important to a man whose life was to be
passed in organizing great alliances, and in commanding armies assembled
from different countries.
The faculties which are necessary for the conduct of important business
ripened in him at a time of life when they have scarcely begun to
blossom in ordinary men. Since Octavius the world had seen no such
instance of precocious statesmanship. Skillful diplomatists were
surprised to hear the weighty observations which at seventeen the prince
made on public affairs, and still more surprised to see a lad, in
situations in which he might have been expected to betray strong
passion, preserve a composure as imperturbable as their own. At eighteen
he sat among the fathers of the commonwealth--grave, discreet, and
judicious as the oldest among them. At twenty-one, in a day of gloom and
terror, he was placed at the head of the administration. At twenty-three
he was renowned throughout Europe as a soldier and a politician. He had
put domestic factions under his feet; he was the soul of a mighty
coalition; and he had contended with honor in the field against some of
the greatest generals of the age.
His personal tastes were those rather of a warrior than of a statesman,
but he, like his great-grandfather, the silent prince who founded the
Batavian commonwealth, occupies a far higher place among statesmen than
among warriors. The event of battles, indeed, is not an unfailing test
of the abilities of a commander; and it would be peculiarly unjust to
apply this test to William, for it was his fortune to be almost always
opposed to captains who were consummate masters of their art, and to
troops far superior in discipline to his own. Yet there is reason to
believe that he was by no means equal, as a general in the field, to
some who ranked far below him in intellectual powers. To those whom he
trusted he spoke on this subject with the magnanimous frankness of a man
who had done great things, and could well afford to acknowledge some
deficiencies. He had never, he said, served an apprenticeship to the
military profession. He had been placed, while still a boy, at the head
of an army. Among his officers there had been none competent to instruct
him. His own blunders and their consequences had been his only lessons.
“I would give,” he once exclaimed, “a good part of my estates to have
served a few campaigns under the Prince of Condé before I had to command
against him.”
It is not improbable that the circumstance which prevented William from
attaining any eminent dexterity in strategy may have been favorable to
the general vigor of his intellect. If his battles were not those of a
great tactician, they entitled him to be called a great man. No disaster
could for one moment deprive him of his firmness or of the entire
possession of all his faculties. His defeats were repaired with such
marvelous celerity that, before his enemies had sung the Te Deum, he was
again ready for the conflict; nor did his adverse fortune ever deprive
him of the respect and confidence of his soldiers. That respect and
confidence he owed in no small measure to his personal courage. Courage,
in the degree which is necessary to carry a soldier without disgrace
through a campaign, is possessed, or might, under proper training, be
acquired by the great majority of men. But courage like that of William
is rare indeed. He was proved by every test; by war, by wounds, by
painful and depressing maladies, by raging seas, by the imminent and
constant risk of assassination--a risk which has shaken very strong
nerves, a risk which severely tried even the adamantine fortitude of
Cromwell. Yet none could ever discover what that thing was which the
Prince of Orange feared. His advisers could with difficulty induce him
to take any precaution against the pistols and daggers of conspirators.
Old sailors were amazed at the composure which he preserved amid roaring
breakers on a perilous coast. In battle his bravery made him conspicuous
even among tens of thousands of brave warriors, drew forth the generous
applause of hostile armies, and was scarcely ever questioned even by the
injustice of hostile factions.
During his first campaigns he exposed himself like a man who sought for
death, was always foremost in the charge and last in the retreat, fought
sword in hand, in the thickest press, and with a musket ball in his arm
and the blood streaming over his cuirass, still stood his ground and
waved his hat under the hottest fire. His friends adjured him to take
more care of a life invaluable to his country; and his most illustrious
antagonist, the great Condé, remarked, after the bloody day of Seneff,
that the Prince of Orange had in all things borne himself like an old
general, except in exposing himself like a young soldier. William denied
that he was guilty of temerity. It was, he said, from a sense of duty
and on a cool calculation of what the public interest required, that he
was always at the post of danger. The troops which he commanded had been
little used to war, and shrank from a close encounter with the veteran
soldiery of France. It was necessary that their leader should show them
how battles were to be won. And in truth more than one day which had
seemed hopelessly lost was retrieved by the hardihood with which he
rallied his broken battalions and cut down the cowards who set the
example of flight. Sometimes, however, it seemed that he had a strange
pleasure in venturing his person. It was remarked that his spirits were
never so high and his manners never so gracious and easy as amid the
tumult and carnage of a battle. Even in his pastimes he liked the
excitement of danger. Cards, chess, and billiards gave him no pleasure.
The chase was his favorite recreation, and he loved it most when it was
most hazardous. His leaps were sometimes such that his boldest
companions did not like to follow him. He seemed to have thought the
most hardy field sports of England effeminate, and to have pined in the
great park of Windsor for the game which he had been used to drive to
bay in the forests of Guelders--wolves and wild boars, and huge stags
with sixteen antlers.
The audacity of his spirit was the more remarkable because his physical
organization was unusually delicate. From a child he had been weak and
sickly. In the prime of manhood his complaints had been aggravated by a
severe attack of small-pox. He was asthmatic and consumptive. His
slender frame was shaken by a constant hoarse cough. He could not sleep
unless his head was propped by several pillows, and could scarcely draw
his breath in any but the purest air. Cruel headaches frequently
tortured him. Exertion soon fatigued him. The physicians constantly kept
up the hopes of his enemies by fixing some date beyond which, if there
were anything certain in medical science, it was impossible that his
broken constitution could hold out. Yet, through a life which was one
long disease, the force of his mind never failed, on any great occasion,
to bear up his suffering and languid body.
He was born with violent passions and quick sensibilities; but the
strength of his emotions was not suspected by the world. From the
multitude his joy and his grief, his affection and his resentment, were
hidden by a phlegmatic serenity which made him pass for the most
coldblooded of mankind. Those who brought him good news could seldom
detect any sign of pleasure. Those who saw him after a defeat looked in
vain for any trace of vexation. He praised and reprimanded, rewarded and
punished, with the stern tranquillity of a Mohawk chief; but those who
knew him well and saw him near were aware that under all this ice a
fierce fire was constantly burning. It was seldom that anger deprived
him of power over himself; but when he was really enraged the first
outbreak of his passion was terrible. It was, indeed, scarcely safe to
approach him. On these rare occasions, however, as soon as he regained
his self-command he made such ample reparation to those whom he had
wronged as tempted them to wish that he would go into a fury again. His
affection was as impetuous as his wrath. Where he loved, he loved with
the whole energy of his strong mind. When death separated him from what
he loved, the few who witnessed his agonies trembled for his reason and
his life. To a very small circle of intimate friends, on whose fidelity
and secrecy he could absolutely depend, he was a different man from the
reserved and stoical William whom the multitude supposed to be destitute
of human feelings. He was kind, cordial, open, even convivial and
jocose, would sit at table many hours, and would bear his full share in
festive conversation.
To him England was always a land of exile, visited with reluctance, and
quitted with delight. Even when he rendered to her those services of
which to this day we feel the happy effects, her welfare was not his
chief object. Whatever patriotic feeling he had was for Holland. There
was the stately tomb where slept the great politician whose blood, whose
name, whose temperament, and whose genius he had inherited. There the
very sound of his title was a spell which had, through three
generations, called forth the affectionate enthusiasm of boors and
artisans. The Dutch language was the language of his nursery. Among the
Dutch gentry he had chosen his early friends. The amusements, the
architecture, the landscape of his native country had taken hold on his
heart. To her he turned with constant fondness from a prouder and fairer
rival. In the gallery of Whitehall he pined for the familiar House in
the Wood at the Hague, and never was so happy as when he could quit the
magnificence of Windsor for his far humbler seat at Loo.
During his splendid banishment it was his consolation to create around
him, by building, planting, and digging, a scene which might remind him
of the formal piles of red brick, of the long canals, and of the
symmetrical flower-beds among which his early life had been passed. Yet
even his affection for the land of his birth was subordinate to another
feeling which early became supreme in his soul, which mixed itself with
all his passions, which impelled him to marvelous enterprises, which
supported him when sinking under mortification, pain, sickness, and
sorrow, which, toward the close of his career, seemed during a short
time to languish, but which soon broke forth again fiercer than ever,
and continued to animate him even while the prayer for the departing was
read at his bedside. That feeling was enmity to France, and to the
magnificent king who, in more than one sense, represented France, and
who to virtues and accomplishments eminently French joined in large
measure that unquiet, unscrupulous, and vainglorious ambition which has
repeatedly drawn on France the resentment of Europe.
It is not difficult to trace the progress of the sentiment which
gradually possessed itself of William’s whole soul. When he was little
more than a boy his country had been attacked by Lewis in ostentatious
defiance of justice and public law, had been overrun, had been
desolated, had been given up to every excess of rapacity,
licentiousness, and cruelty. The Dutch had in dismay humbled themselves
before the conqueror, and had implored mercy. They had been told in
reply that, if they desired peace, they must resign their independence,
and do annual homage to the House of Bourbon. The injured nation,
driven to despair, had opened its dykes, and had called in the sea as an
ally against the French tyranny. It was in the agony of that conflict,
when peasants were flying in terror before the invaders, when hundreds
of fair gardens and pleasure-houses were buried beneath the waves, when
the deliberations of the States were interrupted by the fainting and the
loud weeping of ancient senators who could not bear the thought of
surviving the freedom and glory of their native land, that William had
been called to the head of affairs.
The French monarchy was to him what the Roman republic was to Hannibal,
what the Ottoman power was to Scanderbeg, what the Southron domination
was to Wallace. Religion gave her sanction to that intense and
unquenchable animosity. Hundreds of Calvinistic preachers proclaimed
that the same power which had set apart Samson from the womb to be the
scourge of the Philistine, and which had called Gideon from the
threshing-floor to smite the Midianite, had raised up William of Orange
to be the champion of all free nations and of all pure Churches; nor was
this notion without influence on his own mind. To the confidence which
the heroic fatalist placed in his high destiny and in his sacred cause
is to be partly attributed his singular indifference to danger. He had a
great work to do; and till it was done nothing could harm him. Therefore
it was that, in spite of the prognostications of physicians, he
recovered from maladies which seemed hopeless, that bands of assassins
conspired in vain against his life, that the open skiff to which he
trusted himself on a starless night, amid raging waves, and near a
treacherous shore, brought him safe to land, and that, on twenty fields
of battle, the cannon balls passed him by to right and left. The ardor
and perseverance with which he devoted himself to his mission have
scarcely any parallel in history.
[Illustration: PETER THE GREAT.]
PETER THE GREAT, CZAR OF RUSSIA.
BY THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.
[Creator of the modern Russian empire, born 1672; died 1725.
Shortly after assuming the throne of a nation of barbarians, and
vigorously repressing internal disturbances, he began that series
of reforms by which he hoped to civilize his people. He spent
seventeen months traveling and studying the arts and sciences,
which had made other nations great. On returning to Russia he
enforced many revolutionary changes with the strictness of a
despot, and introduced institutions before unknown to Russia. He
built St. Petersburg in the marshes at the mouth of the Neva, and
displayed extraordinary energy in recasting the whole military and
civil polity of the nation. He displayed marked ability as a
soldier in his wars with his neighbors, but his genius shone most
brightly in civil administration, though he never ceased to be a
barbarian and the sternest of despots.]
Our ancestors were not a little surprised to learn that a young
barbarian, who had, at seventeen years of age, become the autocrat of
the immense region stretching from the confines of Sweden to those of
China, and whose education had been inferior to that of an English
farmer or shopman, had planned gigantic improvements, had learned enough
of some languages of Western Europe to enable him to communicate with
civilized men, had begun to surround himself with able adventurers from
various parts of the world, had sent many of his young subjects to study
languages, arts, and sciences in foreign cities, and finally had
determined to travel as a private man, and to discover, by personal
observation, the secret of the immense prosperity and power enjoyed by
some communities whose whole territory was far less than the hundredth
part of his dominions.
It might have been expected that France would have been the first object
of his curiosity. For the grace and dignity of the French Court, the
splendor of the French Court, the discipline of the French armies, and
the genius and learning of the French writers, were then renowned all
over the world. But the Czar’s mind had early taken a strange ply which
it retained to the last. His empire was of all empires the least capable
of being made a great naval power. The Swedish provinces lay between his
states and the Baltic. The Bosphorus and the Dardanelles lay between his
states and the Mediterranean. He had access to the ocean only in a
latitude in which navigation is, during a great part of every year,
perilous and difficult. On the ocean he had only a single port,
Archangel; and the whole shipping of Archangel was foreign. There did
not exist a Russian vessel larger than a fishing boat. Yet, from some
cause which can not now be traced, he had a taste for maritime pursuits
which amounted to a passion, indeed almost to a monomania. His
imagination was full of sails, yardarms, and rudders. That large mind,
equal to the highest duties of the general and the statesman, contracted
itself to the most minute details of naval architecture and naval
discipline.
The chief ambition of the great conqueror and legislator was to be a
good boatswain and a good ship’s carpenter. Holland and England
therefore had for him an attraction which was wanting to the galleries
and terraces of Versailles. He repaired to Amsterdam, took a lodging in
the dockyard, assumed the garb of a pilot, put down his name on the list
of workmen, wielded with his own hand the caulking iron and the mallet,
fixed the pumps, and twisted the ropes. Ambassadors who came to pay
their respects to him were forced, much against their will, to clamber
up the rigging of a man-of-war, and found him enthroned on the
cross-trees.
Such was the prince whom the populace of London now crowded to behold.
His stately form, his intellectual forehead, his piercing black eye, his
Tartar nose and mouth, his gracious smile, his frown black with all the
stormy rage and hate of a barbarian tyrant, and above all a strange
nervous convulsion which sometimes transformed his countenance, during
a few moments, into an object on which it was impossible to look without
terror, the immense quantities of meat which he devoured, the pints of
brandy which he swallowed, and which, it was said, he had carefully
distilled with his own hands, the fool who jabbered at his feet, the
monkey which grinned at the back of his chair, were, during some weeks,
popular topics of conversation. He meanwhile shunned the public gaze
with a haughty shyness which inflamed curiosity. He went to a play; but
as soon as he perceived that pit, boxes, and gallery were staring, not
at the stage, but at him, he retired to a back bench where he was
screened from observation by his attendants. He was desirous to see a
sitting of the House of Lords; but, as he was determined not to be seen,
he was forced to climb up to the leads, and to peep through a small
window. He heard with great interest the royal assent given to a bill
for raising fifteen hundred thousand pounds by land-tax, and learned
with amazement that this sum, though larger by one half than the whole
revenue which he could wring from the population of the immense empire
of which he was absolute master, was but a small part of what the
Commons of England voluntarily granted every year to their
constitutional king.
William judiciously humored the whims of his illustrious guest, and
stole to Norfolk Street so quietly that nobody in the neighborhood
recognized his Majesty in the thin gentleman who got out of the
modest-looking coach at the czar’s lodgings. The czar returned the visit
with the same precautions, and was admitted into Kensington House by a
back door. It was afterward known that he took no notice of the fine
pictures with which the palace was adorned. But over the chimney of the
royal sitting-room was a plate which, by an ingenious machinery,
indicated the direction of the wind, and with this plate he was in
raptures.
He soon became weary of his residence. He found that he was too far
from the objects of his curiosity, and too near to the crowds to which
he was himself an object of curiosity. He accordingly removed to
Deptford, and was there lodged in the house of John Evelyn, a house
which had long been a favorite resort of men of letters, men of taste,
and men of science. Here Peter gave himself up to his favorite pursuits.
He navigated a yacht every day up and down the river. His apartment was
crowded with models of three-deckers and two-deckers, frigates, sloops,
and fire-ships. The only Englishman of rank in whose society he seemed
to take much pleasure was the eccentric Caermarthen, whose passion for
the sea bore some resemblance to his own, and who was very competent to
give an opinion about every part of a ship from the stem to the stern.
Caermarthen, indeed, became so great a favorite that he prevailed on the
czar to consent to the admission of a limited quantity of tobacco into
Russia. There was reason to apprehend that the Russian clergy would cry
out against any relaxation of the ancient rule, and would strenuously
maintain that the practice of smoking was condemned by that text which
declares that man is defiled, not by those things which enter in at the
mouth, but by those things which proceed out of it. This apprehension
was expressed by a deputation of merchants who were admitted to an
audience of the czar; but they were reassured by the air with which he
told them that he knew how to keep priests in order.
He was indeed so free from any bigoted attachment to the religion in
which he had been brought up that both Papists and Protestants hoped at
different times to make him a proselyte. Burnet, commissioned by his
brethren, and impelled, no doubt, by his own restless curiosity and love
of meddling, repaired to Deptford and was honored with several
audiences. The czar could not be persuaded to exhibit himself at St.
Paul’s, but he was induced to visit Lambeth Palace. There he saw the
ceremony of ordination performed, and expressed warm approbation of the
Anglican ritual. Nothing in England astonished him so much as the
archiepiscopal library. It was the first good collection of books that
he had seen; and he declared that he had never imagined that there were
so many printed volumes in the world.
The impression which he made on Burnet was not favorable. The good
bishop could not understand that a mind which seemed to be chiefly
occupied with questions about the best place for a capstan and the best
way of rigging a jury-mast might be capable, not merely of ruling an
empire, but of creating a nation. He claimed that he had gone to see a
great prince, and had found only an industrious shipwright. Nor does
Evelyn seem to have formed a much more favorable opinion of his august
tenant. It was, indeed, not in the character of tenant that the czar was
likely to gain the good word of civilized men. With all the high
qualities which were peculiar to himself, he had all the filthy habits
which were then common among his countrymen. To the end of his life,
while disciplining armies, founding schools, framing codes, organizing
tribunals, building cities in deserts, joining distant seas by
artificial rivers, he lived in his palace like a hog in a sty; and, when
he was entertained by other sovereigns, never failed to leave on their
tapestried walls and velvet state beds unequivocal proof that a savage
had been there. Evelyn’s house was left in such a state that the
Treasury quieted his complaints with a considerable sum of money.
Toward the close of March the czar visited Portsmouth, saw a sham
sea-fight at Spithead, watched every movement of the contending fleets
with intense interest, and expressed in warm terms his gratitude to the
hospitable government which had provided so delightful a spectacle for
his amusement and instruction. After passing more than three months in
England, he departed in high good-humor.
DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH.
BY WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY.
[John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, born 1650, died 1722. All his
early fortunes were due to the favor of James II, but he deserted
his patron, and his intrigues carried over a large following of the
English nobility to the cause of the Prince of Orange. For this he
was rewarded with the dukedom of Marlborough. Politically
Marlborough was a traitor to nearly every cause he served, and was
continually plotting to undermine William as he had done in the
case of James. To Anne, under whom he reaped his great military
glory, though he had distinguished himself at an earlier period, he
was probably loyal. The victories which established his place among
the leading soldiers of modern times were Blenheim, in 1704;
Ramillies, in 1706; Oudenarde, in 1708; Malplaquet, in 1709; and
the capture of Bouchain, in 1711. He achieved eminence as a
statesman and administrator as well as a soldier, but it is in the
latter capacity that he ranks among the great men of the world.]
Beyond comparison the greatest of English generals, Marlborough raised
his country to a height of military glory such as it had never attained
since the days of Poitiers and of Agincourt, and his victories appeared
all the more dazzling after the ignominious reigns of the last two
Stuarts, and after the many failures that checkered the enterprises of
William. His military genius, though once bitterly decried by party
malignity, will now be universally acknowledged, and it was sufficient
to place him among the greatest captains who have ever lived. Hardly any
other modern general combined to an equal degree the three great
attributes of daring, caution, and sagacity, or conducted military
enterprises of equal magnitude and duration without losing a single
battle or failing in a single siege. He was one of the very few
commanders who appear to have shown equal skill in directing a campaign,
in winning a battle, and in improving a victory. It can not, indeed, be
said of him, as it may be said of Frederick the Great, that he was at
the head of a small power, with almost all Europe in arms against it,
and that nearly every victory he won was snatched from an army
enormously outnumbering his own. At Blenheim and Oudenarde the French
exceeded by a few thousands the armies of the allies. At Ramillies the
army of Marlborough was slightly superior. At Malplaquet the opposing
forces were almost equal. Nor did the circumstances of Marlborough admit
of a military career of the same brilliancy, variety, and magnitude of
enterprise as that of Napoleon.
But both Frederick and Napoleon experienced crushing disasters, and both
of them had some advantages which Marlborough did not possess. Frederick
was the absolute ruler of a state which had for many years been governed
exclusively on the military principle, in which the first and almost the
sole object of the government had been to train and discipline the
largest and most perfect army the nation could support. Napoleon was the
absolute ruler of the foremost military power on the Continent at a time
when the enthusiasm of a great revolution had given it an unparalleled
energy, when the destruction of the whole hierarchy of rank and the
opening of all posts to talent had brought an extraordinary amount of
ability to the forefront, and when the military administrations of
surrounding nations were singularly decrepit and corrupt. Marlborough,
on the other hand, commanded armies consisting in a great degree of
confederates and mercenaries of many different nationalities, and under
many different rulers. He was thwarted at every step by political
obstacles, and by the much graver obstacles arising from divided command
and personal or national jealousies; he contended against the first
military nation of the Continent, at a time when its military
organization had attained the highest perfection, and when a long
succession of brilliant wars had given it a school of officers of
consummate skill.
But great as were his military gifts, they would have been insufficient
had they not been allied with other qualities well fitted to win the
admiration of men. Adam Smith has said, with scarcely an exaggeration,
that “it is a characteristic almost peculiar to the great Duke of
Marlborough, that ten years of such uninterrupted and such splendid
successes as scarce any other general could boast of, never betrayed him
into a single rash action, scarcely into a single rash word or
expression.” Nothing in his career is more admirable than the unwearied
patience, the inimitable skill, the courtesy, the tact, the self-command
with which he employed himself during many years in reconciling the
incessant differences, overcoming the incessant opposition, and soothing
the incessant jealousies of those with whom he was compelled to
co-operate. His private correspondence abundantly shows how gross was
the provocation he endured, how keenly he felt it, how nobly he bore it.
As a negotiator he ranks with the most skillful diplomatists of his age,
and it was no doubt his great tact in managing men that induced his old
rival Bolingbroke, in one of his latest writings, to describe him as not
only the greatest general, but also “the greatest minister our country
or any other has produced.” Chesterfield, while absurdly depreciating
his intellect, admitted that “his manner was irresistible,” and he added
that, of all men he had ever known, Marlborough “possessed the graces in
the highest degree.” Nor was his character without its softer side.
Though he can not, I think, be acquitted of a desire to prolong war in
the interests of his personal or political ambition, it is at least true
that no general ever studied more, by admirable discipline and by
uniform humanity, to mitigate its horrors. Very few friendships among
great political or military leaders have been as constant or as
unclouded by any shade of jealousy as the friendship between Marlborough
and Godolphin, and between Marlborough and Eugene.
His conjugal fidelity, in a time of great laxity and under temptations
and provocations of no common order, was beyond reproach. His attachment
to the Church of England was at one time the great obstacle to his
advancement. It appears never to have wavered through all the
vicissitudes of his life; and no one who reads his most private letters
with candor can fail to perceive that a certain vein of genuine piety
ran through his nature, however inconsistent it may appear with some
portions of his career.
Yet it may be questioned whether, even in the zenith of his fame, he was
really popular. He had grave vices, and they were precisely of that kind
which is most fatal to public men. His extreme rapacity in acquiring and
his extreme avarice in hoarding money contrasted forcibly with the
lavish generosity of Ormond, and alone gave weight to the charges of
peculation that were brought against him. It is true that this, like all
his passions, was under control. Torcy soon found that it was useless to
attempt to bribe him, and he declined, as we have seen, with little
hesitation, the enormously lucrative post of governor of the Austrian
Netherlands when he found that the appointment aroused the strong and
dangerous hostility of the Dutch. In these cases his keen and far-seeing
judgment perceived clearly his true interest, and he had sufficient
resolution to follow it. Yet still, like many men who have risen from
great poverty to great wealth, avarice was the passion of his life, and
the rapacity both of himself and of his wife was insatiable. Besides
immense grants from Blenheim and marriage portions given by the queen to
their daughters, they at one time received between them an annual income
of public money of more than sixty-four thousand pounds.
Nor can he be acquitted of very gross and aggravated treachery to those
he served. It is, indeed, not easy to form a fair estimate in this
respect of the conduct of public men at the period of the revolution.
Historians rarely make sufficient allowance for the degree in which the
judgments and dispositions even of the best men are colored by the
moral tone of the age, society, or profession in which they live, or for
the temptations of men of great genius and of natural ambition in times
when no highly scrupulous man could possibly succeed in public life.
Marlborough struggled into greatness from a very humble position, in one
of the most profligate periods of English politics, and he lived through
a long period when the ultimate succession of the crown was very
doubtful. A very large proportion of the leading statesmen during this
long season of suspense made such overtures to the deposed dynasty as
would at least secure them from absolute ruin in the event of a change,
and their conduct is surely susceptible of much palliation.
The apparent interests and the apparent wishes of the nation hung so
evenly and oscillated so frequently that strong convictions were rare,
and even good men might often be in doubt. But the obligations of
Churchill to James were of no common order, and his treachery was of no
common dye. He had been raised by the special favor of his sovereign
from the position of a page to the peerage, to great wealth, to high
command in the army. He had been trusted by him with the most absolute
trust. He not only abandoned him in the crisis of his fate, with
circumstances of the most deliberate and aggravated treachery, but also
employed his influence over the daughter of his benefactor to induce her
to fly from her father and to array herself with his enemies. Such
conduct, if it had indeed been dictated, as he alleged, solely by a
regard for the interests of Protestantism, would have been certainly, in
the words of Hume, “a signal sacrifice to public virtue of every duty in
private life”; and it “required ever after the most upright,
disinterested, and public-spirited behavior, to render it justifiable.”
How little the later career of Marlborough fulfilled this condition is
well known.
When we find that, having been loaded under the new Government with
titles, honors, and wealth, having been placed in the inner council and
intrusted with the most important state secrets, he was one of the
first Englishmen to enter into negotiations with St. Germain’s; that he
purchased his pardon from James by betraying important military secrets
to the enemies of his country, and that, during a great part of his
subsequent career, while holding office under the Government, he was
secretly negotiating with the Pretender, it is difficult not to place
the worst construction upon his public life. It is probable, indeed,
that his negotiations with the Jacobites were never sincere, that he had
no real desire for a restoration, and that his guiding motive was much
less ambition than a desire to secure what he possessed; but these
considerations only slightly palliate his conduct. At the period of his
downfall his later acts of treason were for the most part unknown, but
his conduct toward James weighed heavily upon his reputation, and his
intercourse with the Pretender, though not proved, was at least
suspected by many. Neither Hanoverians nor Jacobites trusted him,
neither Whigs nor Tories could regard him without reserve as their own.
And with this feeling of distrust there was mingled a strong element of
fear. In the latter years of Queen Anne the shadow of Cromwell fell
darkly across the path of Marlborough. To those who prefer the violent
methods of a reforming despotism to the slow process of parliamentary
amelioration, to those who despise the wisdom of following public
opinion and respecting the prejudices and the associations of a nation,
there can be no better lesson than is furnished by the history of
Cromwell. Of his high and commanding abilities it is not here necessary
to speak, nor yet of the traits of magnanimity that may, no doubt, be
found in his character. Everything that great genius and the most
passionate sympathy could do to magnify these has in this century been
done, and a long period of unqualified depreciation has been followed by
a reaction of extravagant eulogy.
But the more the qualities of the man are exalted the more significant
are the lessons of his life. Despising the national sentiment of
loyalty, he and his party dethroned and beheaded the king. Despising the
ecclesiastical sentiment, they destroyed the Church. Despising the deep
reverence for the constitution, they subverted the Parliament. Despising
the oldest and most cherished customs of the people, they sought to mold
the whole social life of England in the die of an austere Puritanism.
They seemed for a time to have succeeded, but the result soon appeared.
Republican equality was followed by the period of most obsequious,
servile loyalty England has ever known. The age when every amusement was
denounced as a crime was followed by the age when all virtue was treated
as hypocrisy, and when the sense of shame seemed to have almost vanished
from the land. The prostration of the Church was followed, with the full
approbation of the bulk of the nation, by the bitter, prolonged
persecution of Dissenters. The hated memory of the Commonwealth was for
more than a century appealed to by every statesman who desired to
prevent reform or discredit liberty, and the name of Cromwell gathered
around it an intensity of hatred approached by no other in the history
of England. This was the single sentiment common in all its vehemence to
the Episcopalians of England, the Presbyterians of Scotland, and the
Catholics of Ireland, and it had more than once considerable political
effects. The profound horror of military despotism, which is one of the
strongest and most salutary of English sentiments, has been, perhaps,
the most valuable legacy of the Commonwealth. In Marlborough, for the
first time since the restoration, men saw a possible Cromwell, and they
looked forward with alarm to the death of the queen as a period
peculiarly propitious to military usurpation. Bolingbroke never
represented more happily the feelings of the people than in the
well-known scene at the first representation of the “Cato” of Addison.
Written by a great Whig writer, the play was intended to advocate Whig
sentiments; but when the Whig audience had made the theatre ring with
applause at every speech on the evil of despotism and arbitrary
principles, the Tory leader availed himself of the pause between the
acts to summon the chief actor, to present him with a purse of money,
and to thank him publicly for having defended the cause of liberty so
well against a perpetual military dictator.
SIR ROBERT WALPOLE.
BY WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY.
[Afterward Earl of Orford, born 1676, died 1745; one of the most
powerful forces in the history of English politics. Without
brilliancy of talent, and utterly corrupt both as man and
statesman, he was in many ways a patriot and a far-sighted
supporter of the best interests of his country. He was first made
prime minister in 1715, and in 1717 brought forward a scheme for
the reduction of the public debt, which may be regarded as the
earliest germ of a national sinking fund. After the accession of
George II he became the foremost political figure of his time, and
kept his position against all attacks by great political dexterity
and the favor of Queen Caroline. He held the premiership for
twenty-one years, and was the first of the great English finance
ministers.]
It is worthy of notice that the long ascendency of Walpole was in no
degree owing to any extraordinary brilliancy of eloquency. He was a
clear and forcible reasoner, ready in reply, and peculiarly successful
in financial exposition, but he had little or nothing of the temperament
or the talent of an orator. It is the custom of some writers to decry
parliamentary institutions as being simply government by talking, and to
assert that when they exist mere rhetorical skill will always be more
valued than judgment, knowledge, or character. The enormous exaggeration
of such charges may be easily established. It is, no doubt, inevitable
that where business is transacted chiefly by debate, the talent of a
debater should be highly prized; but it is perfectly untrue that
British legislatures have shown less skill than ordinary sovereigns in
distinguishing solid talent from mere showy accomplishments, or that
parliamentary weight has in England been usually proportioned to
oratorical power.
St. John was a far greater orator than Harley; Pulteney was probably a
greater orator than Walpole; Stanley in mere rhetorical skill was
undoubtedly the superior of Peel. Godolphin, Pelham, Castlereagh,
Liverpool, Melbourne, Althorpe, Wellington, Lord J. Russell, and Lord
Palmerston are all examples of men who, either as statesmen or as
successful leaders of the House of Commons, have taken a foremost place
in English politics without any oratorical brilliancy. Sheridan,
Plunket, and Brougham, though orators of almost the highest class, left
no deep impression on English public life; the ascendancy of Grey and
Canning was very transient, and no Opposition since the early Hanoverian
period sank so low as that which was guided by Fox. The two Pitts and
Mr. Gladstone are the three examples of speakers of transcendent power
exercising for a considerable time a commanding influence over English
politics. The younger Pitt is, I believe, a real instance of a man whose
solid ability bore no kind of proportion to his oratorical skill, and
who, by an almost preternatural dexterity in debate, accompanied by
great decision of character, and assisted by the favor of the king, by
the magic of an illustrious name, and by a great national panic,
maintained an authority immensely greater than his deserts. But in this
respect he stands alone. The pinnacle of glory to which the elder Pitt
raised his country is a sufficient proof of the almost unequaled
administrative genius which he displayed in the conduct of a war; and in
the sphere of domestic policy it may be questioned whether any other
English minister since the accession of the house of Brunswick has
carried so many measures of magnitude and difficulty or exhibited so
perfect a mastery over the financial system of the country as the great
living statesman.
The qualities of Walpole were very different, but it is impossible, I
think, to consider his career with adequate attention without
recognizing 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 coloring on which the reputation of statesmen largely
depends.
Without any remarkable originality of thought or creative genius, he
possessed in a high degree one quality of a great statesman--the power
of judging new and startling events in the moments of excitement or of
panic as they would be judged by ordinary men when the excitement, the
novelty, and the panic had passed. 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 ascendency 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 honor which marks a
high-minded man. In the opinion of most of his contemporaries, Townshend
and Walpole had good reason to complain of the intrigues by which
Sunderland and Stanhope obtained the supreme power in 1717; but this
does not justify the factious manner in which Walpole opposed every
measure the new ministry brought forward--even the Mutiny Act, which was
plainly necessary to keep the army in discipline; even the repeal of the
Occasional Conformity and Schism Acts, though he had himself denounced
those acts as more like laws of Julian the Apostate than of a Christian
legislature.
He was sincerely tolerant in his disposition, and probably did as much
for the benefit of the Dissenters as could have been done without
producing a violent and dangerous reaction of opinion; but he took no
measure to lighten the burden of the Irish penal code, and he had no
scruple in availing himself of the strong feeling against the English
Catholics and non-jurors to raise one hundred thousand pounds, by a
special tax upon their estates, or in promising the Dissenters that he
would obtain the repeal of the Test Act, when he had no serious
intention of doing so. He warned the country faithfully against the
South Sea scheme, but when his warning was disregarded he proceeded to
speculate skillfully and successfully in it himself. He labored long and
earnestly to prevent the Spanish war, which he knew to be eminently
impolitic; but when the clamors of his opponents had made it inevitable
he determined that he would still remain at the helm, and he accordingly
declared it himself. He governed the country mildly and wisely, but he
was resolved at all hazards to secure for himself a complete monopoly of
power; he steadily opposed the reconciliation of the Tories with the
Hanoverian dynasty, lest it should impair his ascendancy, surrounded
himself with colleagues whose faculties rarely rose above the tamest
mediocrity, drove from power every man of real talent who might
possibly become his rival, and especially repelled young men of promise,
character, and ambition, whom a provident statesman, desirous of
perpetuating his policy beyond his lifetime, would especially seek to
attract.
The scandal and also the evil effects of his political vices were
greatly increased by that total want of decorum which Burke has justly
noted as the weakest point of his character. In this respect his public
and private life resembled one another. That he lived for many years in
open adultery and indulged to excess in the pleasures of the table were
facts which in the early part of the eighteenth century were in
themselves not likely to excite much attention; but his boisterous
revelries at Houghton exceeded even the ordinary license of the country
squires of his time, and the gross sensuality of his conversation was
conspicuous in one of the coarsest periods of English history. When he
did not talk of business, it was said, he talked of women; politics and
obscenity were his tastes. There seldom was a court less addicted to
prudery than that of George II, but even its tolerance was somewhat
strained by a minister who jested with the queen upon the infidelity of
her husband; who advised her on one occasion to bring to court a
beautiful but silly woman as a “safe fool” for the king to fall in love
with; who, on the death of the queen, urged her daughters to summon
without delay the two mistresses of the king in order to distract the
mind of their father; who at the same time avowed, with a brutal
frankness, as the scheme of his future policy, that though he had been
for the wife against the mistress, he would be henceforth for the
mistress against the daughters.
In society he had the weakness of wishing to be thought a man of
gallantry and fashion, and his awkward addresses, rendered the more
ludicrous by a singularly corpulent and ungraceful person, as well as
the extreme coarseness into which he usually glided when speaking to and
of women, drew down upon him much ridicule and some contempt. 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. He appears to have cordially accepted the
maxim that government must be carried on by corruption or by force, and
he deliberately made the former the basis of his rule. He bribed George
II by obtaining for him a civil list exceeding by more than one hundred
thousand pounds a year that of his father. He bribed the queen by
securing for her a jointure of one hundred thousand pounds a year, when
his rival, Sir Spencer Compton, could only venture to promise sixty
thousand pounds. He bribed the dissenting ministers to silence by the
Regium Donum for the benefit of their widows. He employed the vast
patronage of the crown uniformly and steadily with the single view of
sustaining his political position, and there can be no doubt that a
large proportion of the immense expenditure of secret-service money
during his administration was devoted to the direct purchase of members
of Parliament.
His influence upon young men appears to have been peculiarly pernicious.
If we may believe Chesterfield, he was accustomed to ask them in a tone
of irony upon their entrance into Parliament whether they too were going
to be saints or Romans, and he employed all the weight of his position
to make them regard purity and patriotism as ridiculous or unmanly. Of
the next generation of statesmen, Fox, the first Lord Holland,[28] was
the only man of remarkable ability who can be said to have been his
disciple, and he was, perhaps, the most corrupt and unscrupulous of the
statesmen of his age.
[Illustration: FREDERICK THE GREAT.]
FREDERICK THE GREAT.
BY THOMAS CARLYLE.
[Otherwise Frederick II, third king of Prussia, son of Frederick
William I, and grandson of George I of England, born 1712, died
1786. Regarded in his youth, before his accession to the throne, as
a spendthrift and voluptuary or as a prince of weak and vacillating
character, his accession to the throne in 1740 instantly brought
out his true character as the most able and masterful of rulers.
His protracted wars with odds against him, often of four to one, in
which he fought the banded armies of Europe, stamped him as a
soldier of splendid genius and iron tenacity of endurance and
purpose. During the Seven Years’ War he stood with only five
million subjects against a hundred million. On the declaration of
peace he devoted himself, with the same energy, to the restoration
of the commerce, agriculture, and industries of Prussia as that
with which he had fought her enemies, and with as much success.
Frederick was not only a great soldier and civil administrator,
though on somewhat despotic lines, but keenly sympathetic with
literature, art, and science. All these he encouraged and fostered
by every means. He was the true founder of the Prussian monarchy.]
About fourscore years ago there used to be seen sauntering on the
terraces of Sans Souci, for a short time in the afternoon, or you might
have met him elsewhere at an earlier hour, riding or driving in a rapid
business manner on the open roads or through the scraggy woods and
avenues of that intricate amphibious Potsdam region, a highly
interesting lean little old man, of alert though slightly stooping
figure, whose name among strangers was King _Friedrich the Second_, or
Frederick the Great of Prussia, and at home among the common people, who
much loved and esteemed him, was _Vater Fritz_--Father Fred--a name of
familiarity which had not bred contempt in that instance. He is a king,
every inch of him, though without the trappings of a king. Presents
himself in a Spartan simplicity of vesture; no crown but an old military
cocked hat--generally old, or trampled and kneaded into absolute
_softness_ if new--no scepter but one like Agamemnon’s, a walking-stick
cut from the woods, which serves also as a riding-stick (with which he
hits the horse “between the ears,” say authors)--and for royal robes, a
mere soldier’s blue coat with red facings, coat likely to be old, and
sure to have a good deal of Spanish snuff on the breast of it; rest of
the apparel dim, unobtrusive in color or cut, ending in high overknee
military boots, which may be brushed (and, I hope, kept soft with an
underhand suspicion of oil), but are not permitted to be blackened or
varnished; Day and Martin with their soot-pots forbidden to approach.
The man is not of godlike physiognomy, any more than of imposing stature
or costume; close-shut mouth with thin lips, prominent jaws and nose,
receding brow, by no means of Olympian height; head, however, is of long
form, and has superlative gray eyes in it. Not what is called a
beautiful man; nor yet, by all appearance, what is called a happy. On
the contrary, the face bears evidence of many sorrows, as they are
termed, of much hard labor done in this world, and seems to anticipate
nothing but more still coming. Quiet stoicism, capable enough of what
joys there were, but not expecting any worth mention; great unconscious
and some conscious pride, well tempered with a cheery mockery of
humor--are written on that old face, which carries its chin well
forward, in spite of the slight stoop about the neck; snuffy nose,
rather flung into the air, under its old cocked hat--like an old snuffy
lion on the watch; and such a pair of eyes as no man or lion or lynx of
that century bore elsewhere, according to all the testimony we have.
“Those eyes,” says Mirabeau, “which, at the bidding of his great soul,
fascinated you with seduction or with terror (_portaient, au gré de son
âme héroïque, la séduction ou la terreur_).” Most excellent potent
brilliant eyes, swift-darting as the stars, steadfast as the sun; gray,
we said, of the azure-gray color; large enough, not of glaring size;
the habitual expression of them vigilance and penetrating sense,
rapidity resting on depth, which is an excellent combination, and gives
us the notion of a lambent outer radiance springing from some great
inner sea of light and fire in the man.
The voice, if he speak to you, is of similar physiognomy--clear,
melodious, and sonorous; all tones are in it, from that of ingenuous
inquiry, graceful sociality, light-flowing banter (rather prickly for
most part), up to definite word of command, up to desolating word of
rebuke and reprobation; a voice “the clearest and most agreeable in
conversation I ever heard,” says witty Dr. Moore. “He speaks a great
deal,” continues the doctor, “yet those who hear him regret that he does
not speak a good deal more. His observations are always lively, very
often just, and few men possess the talent of repartee in greater
perfection.”
This was a man of infinite mark to his contemporaries, who had witnessed
surprising feats from him in the world; very questionable notions and
ways, which he had contrived to maintain against the world and its
criticisms, as an original man has always to do, much more an original
ruler of men. The world, in fact, had tried hard to put him down, as it
does, unconsciously or consciously, with all such, and after the most
conscious exertions, and at one time a dead-lift spasm of all its
energies for seven years, had not been able. Principalities and powers,
imperial, royal, czarish, papal, enemies innumerable as the sea-sand,
had risen against him, only one helper left among the world’s potentates
(and that one only while there should be help rendered in return), and
he led them all such a dance as had astonished mankind and them.
No wonder they thought him worthy of notice! Every original man of any
magnitude is--nay, in the long run, who or what else is? But how much
more if your original man was a king over men; whose movements were
polar, and carried from day to day those of the world along with them.
The Samson Agonistes--were his life passed like that of Samuel Johnson
in dirty garrets, and the produce of it only some bits of written
paper--the Agonistes, and how he will comport himself in the Philistine
mill; this is always a spectacle of truly epic and tragic nature, the
rather if your Samson, royal or other, is not yet blinded or subdued to
the wheel, much more if he vanquish his enemies, _not_ by suicidal
methods, but march out at last flourishing his miraculous fighting
implement, and leaving their mill and them in quite ruinous
circumstances, as this King Friedrich fairly managed to do.
For he left the world all bankrupt, we may say; fallen into bottomless
abysses of destruction; he still in a paying condition, and with footing
capable to carry his affairs and him. When he died, in 1786, the
enormous phenomenon since called FRENCH REVOLUTION was already growling
audibly in the depths of the world, meteoric-electric coruscations
heralding it all round the horizon. Strange enough to note, one of
Friedrich’s last visitors was Gabriel Honoré Riquetti, Comte de
Mirabeau. These two saw one another; twice, for half an hour each time.
The last of the old gods and the first of the modern Titans--before
Pelion leaped on Ossa, and the foul earth taking fire at last, its vile
mephitic elements went up in volcanic thunder. This also is one of the
peculiarities of Friedrich, that he is hitherto the last of the kings;
that he ushers in the French Revolution, and closes an epoch of
world-history. Finishing off forever the trade of king, think many, who
have grown profoundly dark as to kingship and him.
The French Revolution may be said to have, for about half a century,
quite submerged Friedrich, abolished him from the memories of men; and
now, on coming to light again, he is found defaced under strange mud
incrustations, and the eyes of mankind look at him from a singularly
changed, what we must call oblique and perverse point of vision. This is
one of the difficulties in dealing with his history--especially if you
happen to believe both in the French Revolution and in him--that is to
say, both that real kingship is eternally indispensable, and also that
the destruction of sham kingship (a frightful process) is occasionally
so.
On the breaking out of the formidable explosion and suicide of his
century, Friedrich sank into comparative obscurity, eclipsed amid the
ruins of that universal earthquake, the very dust of which darkened all
the air, and made of day a disastrous midnight--black midnight, broken
only by the blaze of conflagrations--wherein, to our terrified
imaginations, were seen, not men, French and other, but ghastly
portents, stalking wrathful, and shapes of avenging gods.
It must be owned the figure of Napoleon was titanic; especially to the
generation that looked on him, and that waited shuddering to be devoured
by him. In general, in that French Revolution, all was on a huge scale;
if not greater than anything in human experience, at least more
grandiose. All was recorded in bulletins, too, addressed to the shilling
gallery; and there were fellows on the stage with such a breadth of
saber, extent of whiskerage, strength of windpipe, and command of men
and gunpowder as had never been seen before. How they bellowed, stalked,
and flourished about, counterfeiting Jove’s thunder to an amazing
degree! Terrific Drawcansir figures of enormous whiskerage, unlimited
command of gunpowder; not without sufficient ferocity, and even a
certain heroism, stage heroism, in them; compared with whom, to the
shilling gallery, and frightened, excited theatre at large, it seemed as
if there had been no generals or sovereigns before; as if Friedrich,
Gustavus, Cromwell, William Conqueror, and Alexander the Great were not
worth speaking of henceforth.
All this, however, in half a century is considerably altered. The
Drawcansir equipments getting gradually torn off, the natural size is
seen better; translated from the bulletin style into that of fact and
history, miracles, even to the shilling gallery, are not so miraculous.
It begins to be apparent that there lived great men before the era of
bulletins and Agamemnon. Austerlitz and Wagram shot away more
gunpowder--gunpowder, probably, in the proportion of ten to one, or a
hundred to one; but neither of them was tenth part such a beating to
your enemy as that of Rossbach, brought about by strategic art, human
ingenuity and intrepidity, and the loss of one hundred and sixty-five
men. Leuthen, too, the battle of Leuthen (though so few English readers
ever heard of it) may very well hold up its head beside any victory
gained by Napoleon or another. For the odds were not far from three to
one; the soldiers were of not far from equal quality; and only the
general was consummately superior, and the defeat a destruction.
Napoleon did, indeed, by immense expenditure of men and gunpowder,
overrun Europe for a time; but Napoleon never, by husbanding and wisely
expending his men and gunpowder, defended a little Prussia against all
Europe, year after year for seven years long, till Europe had enough,
and gave up the enterprise as one it could not manage. So soon as the
Drawcansir equipments are well torn off and the shilling gallery got to
silence, it will be found that there were great kings before Napoleon,
and likewise an art of war, grounded on veracity and human courage and
insight, not upon Drawcansir rodomontade, grandiose Dick-Turpinism,
revolutionary madness, and unlimited expenditure of men and gunpowder.
“You may paint with a very big brush, and yet not be a great painter,”
says a satirical friend of mine. This is becoming more and more
apparent, as the dust-whirlwind and huge uproar of the last generation
gradually dies away again.
Friedrich is by no means one of the perfect demigods; and there are
various things to be said against him with good ground. To the last, a
questionable hero; with much in him which one could have wished not
there, and much wanting which one could have wished. But there is one
feature which strikes you at an early period of the inquiry. That in his
way he is a reality; that he always means what he speaks; grounds his
actions, too, on what he recognizes for the truth; and, in short, has
nothing whatever of the hypocrite or phantasm. Which some readers will
admit to be an extremely rare phenomenon.
We perceive that this man was far indeed from trying to deal
swindler-like with the facts around him; that he honestly recognized
said facts wherever they disclosed themselves, and was very anxious also
to ascertain their existence where still hidden or dubious. For he knew
well, to a quite uncommon degree, and with a merit all the higher as it
was an unconscious one, how entirely inexorable is the nature of facts,
whether recognized or not, ascertained or not; how vain all cunning of
diplomacy, management and sophistry, to save any mortal who does _not_
stand on the truth of things, from sinking in the long run. Sinking to
the very mudgods, with all his diplomacies, possessions, achievements;
and becoming an unnamable object, hidden deep in the cesspools of the
universe. This I hope to make manifest; this which I long ago discerned
for myself, with pleasure, in the physiognomy of Friedrich and his life.
Which, indeed, was the first real sanction, and has all along been my
inducement and encouragement, to study his life and him. How this man,
officially a king withal, comported himself in the eighteenth century,
and managed _not_ to be a liar and charlatan as his century was,
deserves to be seen a little by men and kings, and may silently have
didactic meanings in it.
He that was honest with his existence has always meaning for us, be he
king or peasant. He that merely shammed and grimaced with it however
much, and with whatever noise and trumpet-blowing, he may have cooked
and eaten in this world, can not long have any. Some men do _cook_
enormously (let us call it _cooking_, what a man does in obedience to
his _hunger_ merely, to his desires and passions merely)--roasting whole
continents and populations, in the flames of war or other discord;
witness the Napoleon above spoken of. For the appetite of man in that
respect is unlimited; in truth, infinite; and the smallest of us could
eat the entire solar system, had we the chance given, and then cry, like
Alexander of Macedon, because we had no more solar systems to cook and
eat. It is not the extent of the man’s cookery that can much attach me
to him; but only the man himself, and what of strength he had to wrestle
with the mud-elements, and what of victory he got for his own benefit
and mine.
WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM.
BY JOHN RICHARD GREEN.
[Born in 1708, died 1778, one of the most eminent of English
statesmen and orators. Educated at Eton and Oxford, he spent a
short term in the army, but found his true vocation on being
elected to Parliament in 1737. It was not till 1755 that he became
virtual prime minister. Under his control the arms and diplomacy of
England became generally victorious throughout the world. It was
largely owing to his support that Frederick the Great was finally
victorious over his enemies, and that a great and consistent
foreign policy was inaugurated that raised the nation to a lofty
pitch of glory. The elder Pitt was known as the “great commoner,”
and it was thought derogatory to his fame when he accepted a
peerage. He was the firm and eloquent advocate of the American
colonists in their claims against the mother-country.]
It is this personal and solitary grandeur which strikes us most as we
look back to William Pitt. The tone of his speech and action stands out
in utter contrast with the tone of his time. In the midst of a society
critical, polite, indifferent, simple even to the affectation of
simplicity, witty and amusing but absolutely prosaic, cool of heart and
of head, skeptical of virtue and enthusiasm, skeptical above all of
itself, Pitt stood absolutely alone. The depth of his conviction, his
passionate love for all that he deemed lofty and true, his fiery energy,
his poetic imaginativeness, his theatrical airs and rhetoric, his
haughty self-assumption, his pompousness and extravagance, were not more
puzzling to his contemporaries than the confidence with which he
appealed to the higher sentiments of mankind, the scorn with which he
turned from a corruption which had till then been the great engine of
politics, the undoubting faith which he felt in himself, in the grandeur
of his aims, and in his power to carry them out. “I know that I can save
the country,” he said to the Duke of Devonshire on his entry into the
ministry, “and I know no other man can.” The groundwork of Pitt’s
character was an intense and passionate pride; but it was a pride which
kept him from stooping to the level of the men who had so long held
England in their hands. He was the first statesman since the restoration
who set the example of a purely public spirit.
Keen as was his love of power, no man ever refused office so often or
accepted it with so strict a regard to the principles he professed. “I
will not go to court,” he replied to an offer which was made him, “if I
may not bring the constitution with me.” For the corruption about him he
had nothing but disdain. He left to Newcastle the buying of seats and
the purchase of members. At the outset of his career Pelham appointed
him to the most lucrative office in his administration, that of
paymaster of the forces; but its profits were of an illicit kind, and
poor as he was, Pitt refused to accept one farthing beyond his salary.
His pride never appeared in loftier and nobler form than in his attitude
toward the people at large. No leader had ever a wider popularity than
“the great commoner,” as Pitt was styled, but his air was always that of
a man who commands popularity, not that of one who seeks it. He never
bent to flatter popular prejudice. When mobs were roaring themselves
hoarse for “Wilkes and liberty,” he denounced Wilkes as a worthless
profligate; and when all England went mad in its hatred of the Scots,
Pitt haughtily declared his esteem for a people whose courage he had
been the first to enlist on the side of loyalty.
His noble figure, the hawk-like eye which flashed from the small, thin
face, his majestic voice, the fire and grandeur of his eloquence, gave
him a sway over the House of Commons far greater than any other minister
has possessed. He could silence an opponent with a look of scorn, or
hush the whole House with a single word. But he never stooped to the
arts by which men form a political party, and at the height of his power
his personal following hardly numbered half a dozen members.
His real strength, indeed, lay not in Parliament, but in the people at
large. His significant title of “the great commoner” marks a political
revolution. “It is the people who have sent me here,” Pitt boasted with
a haughty pride when the nobles of the cabinet opposed his will. He was
the first to see that the long political inactivity of the public mind
had ceased, and that the progress of commerce and industry had produced
a great middle class which no longer found its representatives in the
legislature. “You have taught me,” said George II, when Pitt sought to
save Byng by appealing to the sentiment of Parliament, “to look for the
voice of my people in other places than within the House of Commons.”
It was this unrepresented class which had forced him into power. During
his struggle with Newcastle the greater towns backed him with the gift
of their freedom and addresses of confidence. “For weeks,” laughs Horace
Walpole, “it rained gold boxes.” London stood by him through good report
and evil report, and the wealthiest of English merchants, Alderman
Beckford, was proud to figure as his political lieutenant. The temper of
Pitt indeed harmonized admirably with the temper of the commercial
England which rallied round him, with its energy, its self-confidence,
its pride, its patriotism, its honesty, its moral earnestness. The
merchant and the trader were drawn by a natural attraction to the one
statesman of their time whose aims were unselfish, whose hands were
clean, whose life was pure and full of tender affection for wife and
child. But there was a far deeper ground for their enthusiastic
reverence and for the reverence which his country has borne Pitt ever
since.
He loved England with an intense and personal love. He believed in her
power, her glory, her public virtue, till England learned to believe in
herself. Her triumphs were his triumphs, her defeats his defeats. Her
dangers lifted him high above all thought of self or party spirit. “Be
one people,” he cried to the factions who rose to bring about his fall;
“forget everything but the public! I set you the example!” His glowing
patriotism was the real spell by which he held England. But even the
faults which checkered his character told for him with the middle
classes. The Whig statesmen who preceded him had been men whose pride
expressed itself in a marked simplicity and absence of pretense. Pitt
was essentially an actor, dramatic in the cabinet, in the House, in his
very office. He transacted business with his clerks in full dress. His
letters to his family, genuine as his love for them was, are stilted and
unnatural in tone. It was easy for the wits of his day to jest at his
affectation, his pompous gait, the dramatic appearance which he made on
great debates with his limbs swathed in flannel and his crutch by his
side. Early in life Walpole sneered at him for bringing into the House
of Commons “the gestures and emotions of the stage.” But the classes to
whom Pitt appealed were classes not easily offended by faults of taste,
and saw nothing to laugh at in the statesman who was borne into the
lobby amid the tortures of the gout, or carried into the House of Lords
to breathe his last in a protest against national dishonor.
Above all Pitt wielded the strength of a resistless eloquence. The power
of political speech had been revealed in the stormy debates of the long
Parliament, but it was cramped in its utterance by the legal and
theological pedantry of the time. Pedantry was flung off by the age of
the revolution, but in the eloquence of Somers and his rivals we see
ability rather than genius, knowledge, clearness of expression,
precision of thought, the lucidity of the pleader or the man of
business, rather than the passion of the orator. Of this clearness of
statement Pitt had little or none. He was no ready debater like Walpole,
no speaker of set speeches like Chesterfield. His set speeches were
always his worst, for in these his want of taste, his love of effect,
his trite quotations and extravagant metaphors came at once to the
front. That with defects like these he stood far above every orator of
his time was due above all to his profound conviction, to the
earnestness and sincerity with which he spoke. “I must sit still,” he
whispered once to a friend, “for when once I am up everything that is in
my mind comes out.” But the reality of his eloquence was transfigured by
a large and poetic imagination, and by a glow of passion which not only
raised him high above the men of his own day, but set him in the front
rank among the orators of the world. The cool reasoning, the wit, the
common sense of his age made way for a splendid audacity, a sympathy
with popular emotion, a sustained grandeur, a lofty vehemence, a command
over the whole range of human feeling. He passed without an effort from
the most solemn appeal to the gayest raillery, from the keenest sarcasm
to the tenderest pathos. Every word was driven home by the grand
self-consciousness of the speaker. He spoke always as one having
authority. He was in fact the first English orator whose words were a
power, a power not over Parliament only, but over the nation at large.
Parliamentary reporting was as yet unknown, and it was only in detached
phrases and half-remembered outbursts that the voice of Pitt reached
beyond the walls of St. Stephen’s. But it was especially in these sudden
outbursts of inspiration, in these brief passionate appeals, that the
power of his eloquence lay. The few broken words we have of him stir the
same thrill in men of our day which they stirred in the men of his own.
But passionate as was Pitt’s eloquence, it was the eloquence of a
statesman, not of a rhetorician. Time has approved almost all his
greater struggles, his defense of the liberty of the subject against
arbitrary imprisonment under “general warrants,” of the liberty of the
press against Lord Mansfield, of the rights of constituencies against
the House of Commons, of the constitutional rights of America against
England itself. His foreign policy was directed to the preservation of
Prussia, and Prussia has vindicated his foresight by the creation of
Germany. We have adopted his plans for the direct government of India by
the crown, which when he proposed them were regarded as insane. Pitt was
the first to recognize the liberal character of the Church of England.
He was the first to sound the note of parliamentary reform. One of his
earliest measures shows the generosity and originality of his mind. He
quieted Scotland by employing its Jacobites in the service of their
country, and by raising the Highland regiments among its clans. The
selection of Wolfe and Amherst as generals showed his contempt for
precedent and his inborn knowledge of men.
EDMUND BURKE.
BY WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY.
[One of the greatest of English statesmen and orators, born in
Ireland in 1730, died 1797. He entered Parliament in 1766, and at
the beginning of the American troubles at once identified himself
with the policy of conciliation and moderation. During his long
parliamentary career Burke distinguished himself in connection with
every political problem which agitated the British Empire, though
he never became prime minister, and was for the most of his life a
member of the opposition. Burke’s speech at the trial of Warren
Hastings is regarded by many critics as the greatest oration ever
delivered in any forum. He was scarcely less distinguished as a
writer on political and philosophical questions than as statesman
and orator.]
There are few men whose depth and versatility have been both so fully
recognized by their contemporaries and whose pre-eminence in many widely
different spheres is so amply attested. Adam Smith declared that he had
found no other man who, without communication, had thought out the same
conclusions on political economy as himself. Winstanley, the Camden
Professor of Ancient History, bore witness to his great knowledge of the
“philosophy, history, and filiation of languages, and of the principles
of etymological deduction.” Arthur Young, the first living authority on
agriculture, acknowledged his obligations to him for much information
about his special pursuits, and it was in a great degree his passion for
agriculture which induced Burke, when the death of his elder brother had
improved his circumstances, to incumber himself with a heavy debt by
purchasing that Beaconsfield estate where some of his happiest days were
spent. His conversational powers were only equaled, and probably not
surpassed, by those of Johnson. Goldsmith described him as “winding into
his subject, like a serpent.” “Like the fabled object of the fairy’s
favors,” said Wilberforce, “whenever he opened his mouth pearls and
diamonds dropped from him.” Grattan pronounced him the best talker he
had ever known. Johnson, in spite of their violent political
differences, always spoke of him with generous admiration. “Burke is an
extraordinary man. His stream of mind is perpetual.... His talk is the
ebullition of his mind. He does not talk for a desire of distinction,
but because his mind is full.... He is the only man whose common
conversation corresponds with the general fame which he has in the
world. Take up what topic you please, he is ready to meet you.... No man
of sense could meet Mr. Burke by accident under a gateway to avoid a
shower without being convinced that he was the first man in England.” It
is not surprising that “he is the first man in the House of Commons, for
he is the first man everywhere.” He once declared that “he knew but two
men who had risen considerably above the common standard--Lord Chatham
and Edmund Burke.”
The admirable proportion which subsisted between his different powers,
both moral and intellectual, is especially remarkable. Genius is often,
like the pearl, the offspring or the accompaniment of disease, and an
extraordinary development of one class of faculties is too frequently
balanced by an extraordinary deficiency of others. But nothing of this
kind can be found in Burke.
His intellectual energy was fully commensurate with his knowledge, and
he had rare powers of bringing illustrations and methods of reasoning
derived from many spheres to bear on any subject he touched, and of
combining an extraordinary natural facility with the most untiring and
fastidious labor. In debate images, illustrations, and arguments rose to
his lips with a spontaneous redundance that astonished his hearers; but
no writer elaborated his compositions more carefully, and his printers
were often aghast at the multitude of his corrections and alterations.
Nor did his intellectual powers in any degree dry up or dwarf his moral
nature. There is no public man whose character is more clearly reflected
in his life and in his intimate correspondence; and it may be
confidently said that there is no other public man whose character was
in all essential respects more transparently pure. Weak health, deep and
fervent religious principles, and studious habits, saved him from the
temptations of youth; and amid all the vicissitudes and corruption of
politics his heart never lost its warmth, or his conscience its
sensitiveness.
There were faults, indeed, which were only too apparent in his character
as in his intellect--an excessive violence and irritability of temper;
personal antipathies, which were sometimes carried beyond all the
bounds of reason; party spirit, which was too often suffered to obscure
his judgment and to hurry him into great intemperance and exaggeration
of language. But he was emphatically a good man; and in the higher moral
qualities of public as of private life he has not often been surpassed.
That loyal affection with which he clung through his whole life to the
friends of his early youth; that genuine kindness which made him, when
still a poor man, the munificent patron of Barry and Crabbe, and which
showed itself in innumerable acts of unobtrusive benevolence; that
stainless purity and retiring modesty of nature which made his domestic
life so different from that of some of the greatest of his
contemporaries; that depth of feeling which made the loss of his only
son the death-knell of the whole happiness of his life, may be traced in
every stage of his public career. “I know the map of England,” he once
said, “as well as the noble lord, or as any other person, and I know
that the way I take is not the road to preferment.” Fidelity to his
engagements, a disinterested pursuit of what he believed to be right, in
spite of all the allurements of interest and of popularity; a deep and
ardent hatred of oppression and cruelty in every form; a readiness at
all times to sacrifice personal pretensions to party interests; a
capacity of devoting long years of thankless labor to the service of
those whom he had never seen, and who could never reward him, were the
great characteristics of his life, and they may well make us pardon many
faults of temper, judgment, and taste.
In Parliament he had great obstacles to contend with. An Irishman
unconnected with any of the great governing families, and without any of
the influence derived from property and rank, he entered Parliament late
in life and with habits fully formed, and during the greater part of his
career he spoke as a member of a small minority in opposition to the
strong feeling of the House. He was too old and too rigid to catch its
tone, and he never acquired that subtle instinct or tact which enables
some speakers to follow its fleeting moods and to strike with unfailing
accuracy the precise key which is most in harmony with its prevailing
temper. “Of all politicians of talent I ever knew,” wrote Horace
Walpole, “Burke has least political art,” and his defects so increased
with age that the time came when he was often listened to with
undisguised impatience. He spoke too often, too vehemently, and much too
long; and his eloquence, though in the highest degree intellectual,
powerful, various, and original, was not well adapted to a popular
audience.
He had little or nothing of that fire and majesty of declamation with
which Chatham thrilled his hearers, and often almost overawed
opposition, and as a parliamentary debater he was far inferior to
Charles Fox. That great master of persuasive reasoning never failed to
make every sentence tell upon his hearers, to employ precisely and
invariably the kind of arguments that were most level with their
understandings, to subordinate every other consideration to the single
end of convincing and impressing those who were before him. Burke was
not inferior to Fox in readiness and in the power of clear and cogent
reasoning. His wit, though not of the highest order, was only equaled by
that of Townshend, Sheridan, and perhaps North, and it rarely failed in
its effect upon the House. He far surpassed every other speaker in the
copiousness and correctness of his diction, in the range of knowledge he
brought to bear on every subject of debate, in the richness and variety
of his imagination, in the gorgeous beauty of his descriptive passages,
in the depth of the philosophical reflections and the felicity of the
personal sketches which he delighted in scattering over his speeches.
But these gifts were frequently marred by a strange want of judgment,
measure, and self-control.
His speeches were full of episodes and digressions, of excessive
ornamentation and illustration, of dissertations on general principles
of politics, which were invaluable in themselves, but very unpalatable
to a tired or excited house waiting eagerly for a division. As Grattan
once said, “they were far better suited to a patient reader than an
impatient hearer.” Passionately in earnest in the midst of a careless or
half-hearted assembly, seeking in all measures their essential and
permanent tendencies, while his hearers thought chiefly of their
transient and personal aspects, discussing first principles and remote
consequences, among men whose minds were concentrated on the struggle of
the hour, constantly led away by the endless stream of ideas and images
which were forever surging from his brain, he was often interrupted by
his impatient hearers. There is scarcely a perceptible difference
between the style of his essays and the style of his published speeches;
and if the reader selects from his works the few passages which possess
to an eminent degree the flash and movement of spoken rhetoric, he will
be quite as likely to find them in the former as in the latter.
Like most men of great imaginative power, he possessed a highly strung
and oversensitive nervous organization, and the incessant conflicts of
parliamentary life brought it at last into a condition of irritability
that was wholly morbid and abnormal. Though eminently courteous and
amenable to reason in private life, in public he was often petulant,
intractable, and ungovernably violent. His friends sometimes held him
down by the skirts of his coat to restrain the outbursts of his anger.
He spoke with a burning brain and with quivering nerves. The rapid,
vehement, impetuous torrent of his eloquence, kindling as it flowed and
the nervous motions of his countenance reflected the ungovernable
excitement under which he labored; and while Fox could cast off without
an effort the cares of public life and pass at once from Parliament to a
night of dissipation at Brooks’s, Burke returned from debate jaded,
irritated, and soured.
With an intellect capable of the very highest efforts of judicial
wisdom he combined the passions of the most violent partisan, and in the
excitement of debate these too often obtained the ascendency. Few things
are more curious than the contrast between the feverish and passionate
excitement with which he threw himself into party debates and the
admirably calm, exhaustive, and impartial summaries of the rival
arguments which he afterward drew up for the “Annual Register.” Though a
most skillful and penetrating critic, and though his English style is
one of the very finest in the language, his taste was not pure. Even his
best writings are sometimes disfigured by strangely coarse and repulsive
images, and gross violations of taste appear to have been frequent in
his speeches. It is probable that in his case the hasty reports in the
“Parliamentary History” and in the “Cavendish Debates” are more than
commonly defective, for Burke was a very rapid speaker, and his language
had the strongly marked individuality which reporters rarely succeed in
conveying; but no one who judged by these reports would place his
speeches in the first rank, and some of them are wild and tawdry almost
to insanity.
Nor does he appear to have possessed any histrionic power. His voice had
little charm. He had a strong Irish accent, and Erskine described his
delivery as “execrable,” and declared that in some of his finest
speeches he emptied the house.
Gerard Hamilton once said that while everywhere else Burke seemed the
first man, in the House of Commons he appeared only the second. At the
same time there is ample evidence that with all his defects he was from
the first a great power in the House, and that in the early part of his
career, and almost always on occasions of great importance, his
eloquence had a wonderful power upon his hearers. Pitt passed into the
House of Lords almost immediately after Burke had entered the Commons.
Fox was then a boy; Sheridan had not yet become a member; and his
fellow-countryman, Barré, though a rhetorician of great if somewhat
coarse power, was completely eclipsed by the splendor and the variety of
the talents of Burke. Charles Townshend alone, who shone for a few years
with a meteoric brilliancy in English politics, was regarded as his
worthy rival. Johnson wrote to Langton with great delight that Burke by
his first speeches in the House had “gained more reputation than perhaps
any man at his first appearance ever gained before.”
“An Irishman, Mr. Burke, is sprung up,” wrote the American General Lee,
who was then watching London politics with great care, “who has
astonished everybody with the power of his eloquence and his
comprehensive knowledge in all our exterior and internal politics and
commercial interests. He wants nothing but that sort of dignity annexed
to rank and property in England to make him the most considerable man in
the Lower House.” Grattan, who on a question of oratory was one of the
most competent of judges, wrote in 1769, “Burke is unquestionably the
first orator among the Commons of England, boundless in knowledge,
instantaneous in his apprehensions, and abundant in his language. He
speaks with profound attention and acknowledged superiority,
notwithstanding the want of energy, the want of grace, and the want of
elegance in his manner.” Horace Walpole, who hated Burke, acknowledged
that he was “versed in every branch of eloquence,” that he possessed
“the quickest conception, amazing facility of elocution, great strength
of argumentation, all the power of imagination, and memory,” that even
his unpremeditated speeches displayed “a choice and variety of language,
a profusion of metaphors, and a correctness of diction that was
surprising,” and that in public, though not in private life his wit was
of the highest order, “luminous, striking, and abundant.” He complained,
however, with good reason that he “often lost himself in a torrent of
images and copiousness,” that “he dealt abundantly too much in
establishing general positions,” that he had “no address or
insinuation”; that his speeches often showed a great want of sobriety
and judgment, and “the still greater want of art to touch the passions.”
But though their length, their excursiveness, and their didactic
character did undoubtedly on many occasions weary and even empty the
House, there were others in which Burke showed a power both of
fascinating and of moving, such as very few speakers have attained.
Gibbon, whose sinecure place was swept away by the Economical Reform
Bill of 1782, bears testimony to the “delight with which that diffusive
and ingenious orator, Mr. Burke, was heard by all sides of the House,
and even by those whose existence he proscribed.” Walpole has himself
repeatedly noticed the effect which the speeches of Burke produced upon
the hearers. Describing one of those against the American war, he says
that the wit of one part “excited the warmest and most continued bursts
of laughter even from Lord North, Rigby, and the ministers themselves,”
while the pathos of another part “drew iron tears down Barré’s cheek,”
and Governor Johnston exclaimed that “he was now glad that strangers
were excluded, as if they had been admitted Burke’s speech would have
excited them to tear ministers to pieces as they went out of the House.”
Sir Gilbert Elliot, describing one of Burke’s speeches on the Warren
Hastings impeachment, says: “He did not, I believe, leave a dry eye in
the whole assembly.” Making every allowance for the enthusiasm of a
French Royalist for the author of the “Reflections on the French
Revolution,” the graphic description by the Duke de Levis of one of
Burke’s latest speeches on that subject is sufficient to show the
magnetism of his eloquence even at the end of his career. “He made the
whole House pass in an instant from the tenderest emotions of feeling to
bursts of laughter; never was the electric power of eloquence more
imperiously felt. This extraordinary man seemed to raise and quell the
passions of his auditors with as much ease and as rapidly as a skillful
musician passes into the various modulations of his harpsichord. I have
witnessed many, too many political assemblages and striking scenes where
eloquence performed a noble part, but the whole of them appear insipid
when compared with this amazing effort.”
GEORGE WASHINGTON.
BY WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY.
[Commander-in-chief of the American armies during the Revolution,
and first President of the United States, born 1732, died 1799.
Washington’s first notable appearance in public life was in the
Braddock expedition of 1755, when, at the age of twenty-three, as
commander of the provincials in the British force, he saved the
remains of the defeated army. Thenceforward he became one of the
most important figures in Virginia. After five years of military
service he resigned his commission and retired to private life,
except doing his duty as member of the Provincial Assembly. When
the colonies took up arms, in 1775, Washington received the
unanimous call to the chief command. At the close of hostilities
General Washington resigned his commission and retired to Mount
Vernon, shunning all connection with public affairs. He was made
president of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, and on the
promulgation of the Constitution, it was his transcendent
popularity which was the most important influence in securing its
ratification by the requisite number of States. He was elected
first President, and served for two terms.]
Perhaps the most difficult question, however, was the appointment of a
commander-in-chief; and on no other subject did the Congress exhibit
more conspicuous wisdom. When only twenty-three, Washington had been
appointed commander of the Virginian forces against the French; and in
the late war, though he had met with one serious disaster, and had no
opportunity of obtaining any very brilliant military reputation, he had
always shown himself an eminently brave and skillful soldier. His great
modesty and taciturnity kept him in the background, both in the
provincial legislature and in the Continental Congress; but though his
voice was scarcely ever heard in debate, his superiority was soon felt
in the practical work of the committees. “If you speak of solid
information or sound judgment,” said Patrick Henry about this time,
“Colonel Washington is unquestionably the greatest man in the Congress.”
He appeared in the assembly in uniform, and in military matters his
voice had an almost decisive weight. Several circumstances distinguished
him from other officers, who in military service might have been his
rivals.
He was of an old American family. He was a planter of wealth and social
position, and being a Virginian, his appointment was a great step toward
enlisting that important colony cordially in the cause. The capital
question now pending in America was, how far the other colonies would
support New England in the struggle. In the preceding March, Patrick
Henry had carried a resolution for embodying and reorganizing the
Virginia militia, and had openly proclaimed that an appeal to arms was
inevitable; but as yet New England had borne almost the whole burden.
The army at Cambridge was a New England army, and General Ward, who
commanded it, had been appointed by Massachusetts. Even if Ward were
superseded, there were many New England competitors for the post of
commander; the army naturally desired a chief of their own province, and
there were divisions and hostilities among the New England deputies. The
great personal merit of Washington and the great political importance of
securing Virginia, determined the issue; and the New England deputies
ultimately took a leading part in the appointment. The second place was
given to General Ward, and the third to Charles Lee, an English soldier
of fortune who had lately purchased land in Virginia and embraced the
American cause with great passion. Lee had probably a wider military
experience than any other officer in America, but he was a man of no
settled principles, and his great talents were marred by a very
irritable and capricious temper.
To the appointment of Washington, far more than to any other single
circumstance, is due the ultimate success of the American Revolution,
though in purely intellectual powers Washington was certainly inferior
to Franklin, and perhaps to two or three others of his colleagues. There
is a theory which once received the countenance of some considerable
physiologists, though it is now, I believe, completely discarded, that
one of the great lines of division among men may be traced to the
comparative development of the cerebrum and the cerebellum. To the first
organ it was supposed belong those special gifts or powers which make
men poets, orators, thinkers, artists, conquerors, or wits. To the
second belong the superintending, restraining, discerning, and directing
faculties which enable men to employ their several talents with sanity
and wisdom, which maintain the balance and the proportion of intellect
and character, and make sound judgments and well-regulated lives. The
theory, however untrue in its physiological aspect, corresponds to a
real distinction in human minds and characters, and it was especially in
the second order of faculties that Washington excelled. His mind was not
quick or remarkably original. His conversation had no brilliancy or wit.
He was entirely without the gift of eloquence, and he had very few
accomplishments. He knew no language but his own, and except for a
rather strong turn for mathematics, he had no taste which can be called
purely intellectual. There was nothing in him of the meteor or the
cataract, nothing that either dazzled or overpowered. A courteous and
hospitable country gentleman, a skillful farmer, a very keen sportsman,
he probably differed little in tastes and habits from the better members
of the class to which he belonged; and it was in a great degree in the
administration of a large estate and in assiduous attention to county
and provincial business that he acquired his rare skill in reading and
managing men.
As a soldier the circumstances of his career brought him into the blaze
not only of domestic, but of foreign criticism, and it was only very
gradually that his superiority was fully recognized. Lee, who of all
American soldiers had seen most service in the English army, and Conway,
who had risen to great repute in the French army, were both accustomed
to speak of his military talents with extreme disparagement; but
personal jealousy and animosity undoubtedly colored their judgments.
Kalb, who had been trained in the best military schools of the
Continent, at first pronounced him to be very deficient in the strength,
decision, and promptitude of a general; and, although he soon learned to
form the highest estimate of his military capacity, he continued to
lament that an excessive modesty led him too frequently to act upon the
opinion of inferior men, rather than upon his own most excellent
judgment. In the army and the Congress more than one rival was opposed
to him. He had his full share of disaster; the operations which he
conducted, if compared with great European wars, were on a very small
scale; and he had the immense advantage of encountering in most cases
generals of singular incapacity.
It may, however, be truly said of him that his military reputation
steadily rose through many successive campaigns, and before the end of
the struggle he had outlived all rivalry, and almost all envy. He had a
thorough knowledge of the technical part of his profession, a good eye
for military combinations, and an extraordinary gift of military
administration. Punctual, methodical, and exact in the highest degree,
he excelled in managing those minute details which are so essential to
the efficiency of an army, and he possessed to an eminent degree not
only the common courage of a soldier, but also that much rarer form of
courage which can endure long-continued suspense, bear the weight of
great responsibility, and encounter the risks of misrepresentation and
unpopularity. For several years, and usually in the neighborhood of
superior forces, he commanded a perpetually fluctuating army, almost
wholly destitute of discipline and respect for authority, torn by the
most violent personal and provincial jealousies, wretchedly armed,
wretchedly clothed, and sometimes in imminent danger of starvation.
Unsupported for the most part by the population among whom he was
quartered, and incessantly thwarted by the jealousy of Congress, he kept
his army together by a combination of skill, firmness, patience, and
judgment which has rarely been surpassed, and he led it at last to a
signal triumph.
In civil as in military life, he was pre-eminent among his
contemporaries for the clearness and soundness of his judgment, for his
perfect moderation and self-control, for the quiet dignity and the
indomitable firmness with which he pursued every path which he had
deliberately chosen. Of all the great men in history he was the most
invariably judicious, and there is scarcely a rash word or action or
judgment recorded of him. Those who knew him well, noticed that he had
keen sensibilities and strong passions; but his power of self-command
never failed him, and no act of his public life can be traced to
personal caprice, ambition, or resentment. In the despondency of
long-continued failure, in the elation of sudden success, at times when
his soldiers were deserting by hundreds and when malignant plots were
formed against his reputation, amid the constant quarrels, rivalries,
and jealousies of his subordinates, in the dark hour of national
ingratitude, and in the midst of the most universal and intoxicating
flattery, he was always the same calm, wise, just, and single-minded
man, pursuing the course which he believed to be right, without fear or
favor or fanaticism; equally free from the passions that spring from
interest and from the passions that spring from imagination. He never
acted on the impulse of an absorbing or uncalculating enthusiasm, and he
valued very highly fortune, position, and reputation; but at the command
of duty he was ready to risk and sacrifice them all.
He was in the highest sense of the words a gentleman and a man of honor,
and he carried into public life the severest standard of private morals.
It was at first the constant dread of large sections of the American
people that if the old government were overthrown, they would fall into
the hands of military adventurers, and undergo the yoke of military
despotism. It was mainly the transparent integrity of the character of
Washington that dispelled the fear. It was always known by his friends,
and it was soon acknowledged by the whole nation and by the English
themselves, that in Washington America had found a leader who could be
induced by no earthly motive to tell a falsehood, or to break an
engagement, or to commit any dishonorable act. Men of this moral type
are happily not rare, and we have all met them in our experience; but
there is scarcely another instance in history of such a man having
reached and maintained the highest position in the convulsions of civil
war and of a great popular agitation.
It is one of the great advantages of the long practice of free
institutions, that it diffuses through the community a knowledge of
character and a soundness of judgment which save it from the enormous
mistakes that are almost always made by enslaved nations when suddenly
called upon to choose their rulers. No fact shows so eminently the high
intelligence of the men who managed the American Revolution as their
selection of a leader whose qualities were so much more solid than
brilliant, and who was so entirely free from all the characteristics of
a demagogue. It was only slowly and very deliberately that Washington
identified himself with the revolutionary cause.
No man had a deeper admiration for the British constitution, or a more
sincere wish to preserve the connection and to put an end to the
disputes between the two countries. In Virginia the revolutionary
movement was preceded and prepared by a democratic movement of the
yeomanry of the province, led by Patrick Henry, against the planter
aristocracy, and Washington was a conspicuous member of the latter. In
tastes, manners, instincts, and sympathies he might have been taken as
an admirable specimen of the better type of English country gentleman,
and he had a great deal of the strong conservative feeling which is
natural to the class. From the first promulgation of the Stamp Act,
however, he adopted a conviction that a recognition of the sole right of
the colonies to tax themselves was essential to their freedom, and as
soon as it became evident that Parliament was resolved at all hazards to
assert and exercise its authority of taxing America, he no longer
hesitated. An interesting letter to his wife, however, shows clearly
that he accepted the proffered command of the American forces with
extreme diffidence and reluctance, and solely because he believed that
it was impossible for him honorably to refuse it. He declined to accept
from Congress any emoluments for his service beyond the simple payment
of his expenses, of which he was accustomed to draw up most exact and
methodical accounts.
MIRABEAU.
BY THOMAS CARLYLE.
[Count Gabriel Honoré Riquetti, born 1749, died 1791; distinguished
as statesman and orator in the days preceding the French
Revolution. The heir of a noble name, his early life was one of
wild excess and eccentric adventure, but already marked by the
intellectual daring and brilliancy which afterward made his name
famous. In 1789 he was elected to the States-General from Aix as
representative, however, of the Third Estate (the Commons), not of
the nobility to which he belonged. Already strongly infected by
liberal theories, his energy, intellectual power and eloquence soon
made him the foremost figure in the great legislative body. At
first antagonistic to royal pretension, he finally recognized the
dangers of the coming revolution at an early stage, and attempted
to stem the current. His efforts to reconcile clashing interests
from 1789 to 1791 were characterized by the most splendid powers
of the orator and statesman. His premature death removed the only
barrier to the rising revolutionary tide. He was the idol of the
populace, and it is believed by many historians that, had he lived,
the French Revolution would have flowed in a different channel.]
Which of these six hundred individuals, in plain white cravat, that have
come up to regenerate France, might one guess would become their _king_?
For a king or leader they, as all bodies of men, must have; be their
work what it may, there is one man there who, by character, faculty,
position, is fittest of all to do it; that man, as future not yet
elected king, walks there among the rest. He with the thick black locks,
will it be? With the _hure_, as himself calls it, or black
_boar’s-head_, fit to be “shaken” as a senatorial portent? Through whose
shaggy beetle-brows, and rough-hewed, seamed, carbuncled face, there
look natural ugliness, small-pox, incontinence, bankruptcy--and burning
fire of genius; like comet-fire glaring fuliginous through murkiest
confusions? It is _Gabriel Honoré Riquetti Mirabeau_, the
world-compeller; man-ruling deputy of Aix! According to the Baroness de
Staël, he steps proudly along, though looked at askance here; and shakes
his black _chevelure_, or lion’s-mane, as if prophetic of great deeds.
Yes, reader, that is the type-Frenchman of this epoch; as Voltaire was
of the last. He is French in his aspirations, acquisitions, in his
virtues, in his vices; perhaps more French than any other man--and
intrinsically such a mass of manhood too. Mark him well. The National
Assembly were all different without that one; nay, he might say with the
old despot: “The National Assembly? I am that.”
Of a southern climate, of wild southern blood; for the Riquettis, or
Arrighettis, had to fly from Florence and the Guelfs, long centuries
ago, and settled in Provence, where from generation to generation they
have ever approved themselves a peculiar kindred; irascible,
indomitable, sharp-cutting, true, like the steel they wore; of an
intensity and activity that sometimes verged toward madness, yet did
not reach it. One ancient Riquetti, in mad fulfillment of a mad vow,
chains two mountains together; and the chain, with its “iron star of
five rays,” is still to be seen. May not a modern Riquetti _un_chain so
much, and set it drifting--which also shall be seen?
Destiny has work for that swart burly-headed Mirabeau; Destiny has
watched over him, prepared him from afar. Did not his grandfather, stout
_Col-d’Argent_ (Silver-Stock, so they named him), shattered and slashed
by seven-and-twenty wounds in one fell day, lie sunk together on the
bridge at Casano; while Prince Eugene’s cavalry galloped and regalloped
over him--only the flying sergeant had thrown a camp-kettle over that
loved head; and Vendôme, dropping his spy-glass, moaned out, “Mirabeau
is _dead_, then!” Nevertheless he was not dead: he awoke to breath, and
miraculous surgery--for Gabriel was yet to be. With his _silver-stock_
he kept his scarred head erect, through long years; and wedded; and
produced tough Marquis Victor, the _Friend of Men_. Whereby at last in
the appointed year, 1749, this long-expected rough-hewed Gabriel Honoré
did likewise see the light; roughest lion’s whelp ever littered of that
rough breed. How the old lion (for our old marquis too was lion-like,
most unconquerable, kingly-genial, most perverse) gazed wondering on his
offspring; and determined to train him as no lion had yet been! It is in
vain, oh Marquis! This cub, though thou slay him and flay him, will not
learn to draw in dogcart of political economy, and be a _Friend of Men_;
he will not be thou, but must and will be himself, another than thou.
Divorce lawsuits, “whole family save one in prison, and three-score
_Lettres-de-Cachet_” for thy own sole use, do but astonish the world.
Our luckless Gabriel, sinned against and sinning, has been in the Isle
of Rhé and heard the Atlantic from his tower; in the castle of If, and
heard the Mediterranean at Marseilles. He has been in the fortress of
Joux, and forty-two months, with hardly clothing to his back, in the
dungeon of Vincennes--all by _Lettre-de-Cachet_ from his lion father. He
has been in Pontarlier jails (self-constituted prisoner); was noticed
fording estuaries of the sea (at low water), in flight from the face of
men. He has pleaded before Aix parliaments (to get back his wife); the
public gathering on roofs, to see since they could not hear; “the
clatter-teeth (_claque-dents_)!” snarls singular old Mirabeau,
discerning in such admired forensic eloquence nothing but two clattering
jaw-bones, and a head vacant, sonorous, of the drum species.
But as for Gabriel Honoré, in these strange wayfarings, what has he not
seen and tried! From drill-sergeants to prime-ministers, to foreign and
domestic booksellers, all manner of men he has seen. All manner of men
he has gained; for, at bottom, it is a social, loving heart, that wild,
unconquerable one--more especially all manner of women. From the
archer’s daughter at Saintes to that fair young Sophie Madame Monnier,
whom he could not but “steal,” and be beheaded for--in effigy! For,
indeed, hardly since the Arabian prophet lay dead to Ali’s admiration
was there seen such a love-hero, with the strength of thirty men. In
war, again, he has helped to conquer Corsica; fought duels, irregular
brawls; horsewhipped calumnious barons. In literature, he has written on
“Despotism,” on “Lettres-de-Cachet”; Erotics Sapphic-Werterean,
Obscenities, Profanities; books on the “Prussian Monarchy,” on
“Cagliostro,” on “Calonne,” on “The Water-Companies of Paris”--each book
comparable, we will say, to a bituminous alarm-fire; huge, smoky,
sudden! The fire-pan, the kindling, the bitumen were his own; but the
lumber, of rags, old wood and nameless combustible rubbish (for all is
fuel to him), was gathered from hucksters and ass-panniers of every
description under heaven. Whereby, indeed, hucksters enough have been
heard to exclaim: Out upon it, the fire is _mine_!
Nay, consider it more generally, seldom had man such a talent for
borrowing. The idea, the faculty of another man he can make his; the man
himself he can make his. “All reflex and echo (_tout de reflet et de
réverbère_)!” snarls old Mirabeau, who can see, but will not. Crabbed
old Friend of Men! it is his sociality, his aggregative nature; and will
now be the quality of qualities for him. In that forty years’ “struggle
against despotism” he has gained the glorious faculty of _self-help_,
and yet not lost the glorious natural gift of _fellowship_, of being
helped. Rare union; this man can live self-sufficing--yet lives also in
the life of other men; can make men love him, work with him; a born king
of men!
But consider further how, as the old marquis still snarls, he has “made
away with (_humé_, swallowed, snuffed-up) all _formulas_”--a fact,
which, if we meditate it, will in these days mean much. This is no man
of system, then; he is only a man of instincts and insights. A man,
nevertheless, who will glare fiercely on any object, and see through it
and conquer it; for he has intellect, he has will, force beyond other
men. A man not with _logic-spectacles_, but with an _eye_! Unhappily
without decalogue, moral code, or theorem of any fixed sort, yet not
without a strong living soul in him, and sincerity there; a reality, not
an artificiality, not a sham! And so he, having struggled “forty years
against despotism,” and “made away with all formulas,” shall now become
the spokesman of a nation bent to do the same. For is it not precisely
the struggle of France also to cast off despotism; to make away with
_her_ old formulas--having found them naught, worn out, far from the
reality? She will make away with _such_ formulas--and even go _bare_, if
need be, till she have found new ones.
Toward such work, in such manner, marches he, this singular Riquetti
Mirabeau. In fiery rough figure, with black Samson-locks under the
slouch-hat, he steps along there. A fiery fuliginous mass, which could
not be choked and smothered, but would fill all France with smoke. And
now it has got _air_; it will burn its whole substance, its whole
smoke-atmosphere, too, and fill all France with flame. Strange lot!
Forty years of that smoldering, with foul fire-damp and vapor enough;
then victory over that--and like a burning mountain he blazes
heaven-high; and for twenty-three resplendent months pours out in flame
and molten fire-torrents all that is in him, the Pharos and wonder-sign
of an amazed Europe--and then lies hollow, cold forever! Pass on, thou
questionable Gabriel Honoré, the greatest of them all; in the whole
national deputies, in the whole nation, there is none like and none
second to thee.
CHARLES JAMES FOX.
BY WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY.
[An eminent orator and statesman, born 1749, died 1806. Fox was
noted as being the greatest man of his age in parliamentary debate.
He was the son of Sir Henry Fox, afterward Lord Holland, and was
elected to Parliament while scarcely yet of age. Fox was identified
with the Whig party, and contributed greatly to the success and
firm establishment of liberal and reform principles in politics,
though his private life was careless and dissolute. Though peerless
as a debater, Fox was unsuccessful in commanding public respect and
confidence during his short experiment as premier, and was for the
most of his career a leader of the opposition. The memory of Fox is
endeared to Americans by his sympathy with our revolutionary
struggle, his persistent efforts to prevent the war before it
began, and to secure an early concession of American independence
after the beginning of hostilities.]
Charles James Fox was the third son of the first Lord Holland, the old
rival of Pitt. He had entered Parliament irregularly and illegally in
November, 1768, when he had not yet completed his twentieth year, and in
February, 1770, he had been made a lord of the admiralty in the
Government of Lord North. The last political connection of Lord Holland
had been with Bute, and his son appears to have accepted the heritage of
his Tory principles without inquiry or reluctance. His early life was in
the highest degree discreditable, and gave very little promise of
greatness. His vehement and passionate temperament threw him speedily
into the wildest dissipation, and the almost insane indulgence of his
father gratified his every whim. When he was only fourteen Lord Holland
had brought him to the gambling-table at Spa, and, at a time when he had
hardly reached manhood, he was one of the most desperate gamblers of his
day. Lord Holland died in 1774, but before his death he is said to have
paid no less than one hundred and forty thousand pounds in extricating
his son from gambling debts. The death of his mother and the death of
his elder brother in the same year brought him a considerable fortune,
including an estate in the Isle of Thanet and the sinecure office of
clerk of the pells in Ireland, which was worth two thousand three
hundred pounds a year; but in a short time he was obliged to sell or
mortgage everything he possessed. He himself nicknamed his antechamber
the Jerusalem Chamber from the multitude of Jews who haunted it. Lord
Carlisle was at one time security for him to the extent of fifteen or
sixteen thousand pounds. During one of the most critical debates in 1781
his house was in the occupation of the sheriffs. He was even debtor for
small sums to chairmen and to waiters at Brooks’s; and although in the
latter part of his life he was partly relieved by a large subscription
raised by his friends, he never appears to have wholly emerged from the
money difficulties in which his gambling tastes had involved him. Nor
was this his only vice.
With some men the passion for gambling is an irresistible moral
monomania, the single morbid taint in a nature otherwise faultless and
pure. With Fox it was but one of many forms of an insatiable appetite
for vicious excitement, which continued with little abatement during
many years of his public career. In 1777, during a long visit to Paris,
he lived much in the society of Madame du Deffand, and that very acute
judge of character formed an opinion of him which was, on the whole,
very unfavorable. He has much talent, she said, much goodness of heart
and natural truthfulness, but he is absolutely without principle, he has
a contempt for every one who has principle, he lives in a perpetual
intoxication of excitement, he never gives a thought to the morrow, he
is a man eminently fitted to corrupt youth. In 1779, when he was already
one of the foremost politicians in England, he was one night drinking at
Almack’s with Lord Derby, Major Stanley, and a few other young men of
rank, when they determined at three in the morning to make a tour
through the streets, and amused themselves by instigating a mob to break
the windows of the chief members of the Government.
His profligacy with women during a great part of his life was notorious,
though he appears at last to have confined himself to his connection
with Mrs. Armistead, whom he secretly married in September, 1795. He was
the soul of a group of brilliant and profligate spendthrifts, who did
much to dazzle and corrupt the fashionable youth of the time; and in
judging the intense animosity with which George III always regarded him,
it must not be forgotten that his example and his friendship had
probably a considerable influence in encouraging the Prince of Wales in
those vicious habits and in that undutiful course of conduct which
produced so much misery in the palace and so much evil in the nation.
One of the friends of Charles Fox summed up his whole career in a few
significant sentences. “He had three passions--women, play, and
politics. Yet he never formed a creditable connection with a woman. He
squandered all his means at the gaming-table, and, except for eleven
months, he was invariably in opposition.”
That a man of whom all this can be truly said should have taken a high
and honorable place in English history, and should have won for himself
the perennial love and loyalty of some of the best Englishmen of his
time, is not a little surprising, for a life such as I have described
would with most men have destroyed every fiber of intellectual energy
and of moral worth. But in truth there are some characters which nature
has so happily compounded that even vice is unable wholly to degrade
them, and there is a charm of manner and of temper which sometimes
accompanies the excesses of a strong animal nature that wins more
popularity in the world than the purest and the most self-denying
virtue. Of this truth Fox was an eminent example. With a herculean
frame, with iron nerves, with that happy vividness and buoyancy of
temperament that can ever throw itself passionately into the pursuits
and the impressions of the hour, and can then cast them aside without an
effort, he combined one of the sweetest of human tempers, one of the
warmest of human hearts.
Nothing in his career is more remarkable than the spell which he cast
over men who in character and principles were as unlike as possible to
himself. “He is a man,” said Burke, “made to be loved, of the most
artless, candid, open, and benevolent disposition; disinterested in the
extreme, of a temper mild and placable to a fault, without one drop of
gall in his whole constitution.” “The power of a superior man,” said
Gibbon, “was blended in his attractive character with the softness and
simplicity of a child. Perhaps no human being was ever more perfectly
exempt from the taint of malevolence, vanity, or falsehood.” “He
possessed,” said Erskine, “above all men I ever knew, the most gentle,
and yet the most ardent spirit.” He retained amid all his vices a
capacity for warm and steady friendship, a capacity for struggling
passionately and persistently in opposition, for an unpopular cause; a
purity of taste and a love of literature which made him, with the
exception of Burke, the foremost scholar among the leading members of
the House of Commons; an earnestness, disinterestedness, and simplicity
of character which was admitted and admired even by his political
opponents.
He resembled Bolingbroke in his power of passing at once from scenes of
dissipation into the House of Commons, and in retaining in public
affairs during the most disorderly periods of his private life all his
soundness of judgment and all his force of eloquence and of decision.
Gibbon described how he “prepared himself” for one important debate by
spending twenty-two previous hours at the hazard table and losing eleven
thousand pounds. Walpole extols the extraordinary brilliancy of the
speech which he made on another occasion, when he had but just arrived
from Newmarket and had been sitting up drinking the whole of the
preceding night, and he states that in the early period of his brilliant
opposition to the American policy of North he was rarely in bed before
five in the morning, or out of it before two in the afternoon. Yet, like
Bolingbroke, he never lost the taste and passion for study even at the
time when he was most immersed in a life of pleasure.
At Eton and Oxford he had been a very earnest student, and few of his
contemporaries can have had a wider knowledge of the imaginative
literatures of Greece, Italy, or France. He was passionately fond of
poetry, and a singularly delicate and discriminating critic; but he
always looked upon literature chiefly from its ornamental and
imaginative side. Incomparably the most important book relating to the
art of government which appeared during his lifetime was the “Wealth of
Nations,” but Fox once owned that he had never read it; and the history
which was his one serious composition added nothing to his reputation.
In books, however, he found an unfailing solace in trouble and
disappointment. One morning, when one of his friends having heard that
Fox on the previous night had been completely ruined at the
gaming-table, went to visit and console him, he found him tranquilly
reading Herodotus in the original. “What,” he said, “would you have a
man do who has lost his last shilling?”
His merits as a politician can only he allowed with great deductions and
qualifications. But little stress should indeed be laid on the sudden
and violent change in his political principles, which was faintly
foreshadowed in 1772 and fully accomplished in 1774, though that change
did undoubtedly synchronize with his personal quarrel with Lord North.
Changes of principle and policy, which at forty or fifty would indicate
great instability of character, are very venial at twenty-four or
twenty-five, and from the time when Fox joined the Whig party his career
through long years of adversity and of trial was singularly consistent.
I can not, however, regard a politician either as a great statesman or a
great party leader who left so very little of permanent value behind
him, who offended so frequently and so bitterly the national feelings of
his countrymen, who on two memorable occasions reduced his party to the
lowest stage of depression, and who failed so signally during a long
public life in winning the confidence of the nation.
His failure is the more remarkable as one of the features most
conspicuous both in his speeches and his letters is the general
soundness of his judgment, and his opinions during the greater part of
his life were singularly free from every kind of violence, exaggeration,
and eccentricity. Much of it was due to his private life, much to his
divergence from popular opinion on the American question and on the
question of the French Revolution, and much also to an extraordinary
deficiency in the art of party management, and to the frequent
employment of language which, though eminently adapted to the immediate
purposes of debate, was certain from its injudicious energy to be
afterward quoted against him. Like more than one great master of words,
he was trammeled and injured at every stage of his career by his own
speeches. The extreme shock which the disastrous coalition of 1784 gave
to the public opinion of England was largely, if not mainly, due to the
outrageous violence of the language with which Fox had in the preceding
years denounced Lord North, and a similar violence made his breach with
the court irrevocable, and greatly aggravated his difference with the
nation on the question of the French Revolution.
But if his rank as a statesman and as a party leader is by no means of
the highest order, he stood, by the concurrent testimony of all his
contemporaries, in the very first line, if not in the very first place,
among English parliamentary debaters. He threw the whole energy of his
character into his career, and he practiced it continually till he
attained a dexterity in debate which to his contemporaries appeared
little less than miraculous. “During five whole sessions,” he once said,
“I spoke every night but one, and I regret only that I did not speak on
that night.” With a delivery that in the beginning of his speeches was
somewhat slow and hesitating, with little method, with great repetition,
with no grace of gesture, with an utter indifference to the mere oratory
of display, thinking of nothing but how to convince and persuade the
audience who were immediately before him, never for a moment forgetting
the vital issue, never employing an argument which was not completely
level with the apprehensions of his audience, he possessed to the very
highest degree the debating qualities which an educated political
assembly of Englishmen most highly value.
The masculine vigor and strong common sense of his arguments, his
unfailing lucidity, his power of grasping in a moment the essential
issue of a debate, his skill in hitting blots and throwing the arguments
on his own side into the most vivid and various lights, his marvelous
memory in catching up the scattered threads of a debate, the rare
combination in his speeches of the most glowing vehemence of style with
the closest and most transparent reasoning, and the air of intense
conviction which he threw into every discussion, had never been
surpassed. He was one of the fairest of debaters, and it was said that
the arguments of his opponents were very rarely stated with such
masterly power as by Fox himself before he proceeded to grapple with,
and to overthrow them.
He possessed to the highest degree what Walpole called the power of
“declaiming argument,” and that combination of rapidity and soundness of
judgment which is the first quality of a debater. “Others,” said Sir
George Savile, “may have had more stock, but Fox had more ready money
about him than any of his party.” “I believe,” said Lord Carlisle,
“there never was a person yet created who had the faculty of reasoning
like him.” “Nature,” said Horace Walpole, “had made him the most
wonderful reasoner of the age.” “He possessed beyond all moderns,” wrote
Mackintosh, “that union of reason, simplicity, and vehemence which
formed the prince of orators.” “Had he been bred to the bar,” wrote
Philip Francis, “he would in my judgment have made himself in a shorter
time, and with much less application than any other man, the most
powerful litigant that ever appeared there.” “He rose by slow degrees,”
said Burke, “to be the most brilliant and accomplished debater the world
ever saw.” His finest speeches were wholly unpremeditated, and the
complete subordination in them of all rhetorical and philosophical
ambition to the immediate purpose of the debate has greatly impaired
their permanent value; but, even in the imperfect fragments that remain,
the essential qualities of his eloquence may be plainly seen.
JEAN PAUL MARAT.
BY HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE.
[A leader of the revolutionary Reign of Terror in France, born in
1744, assassinated by Charlotte Corday in 1793. His energy and
ferocity made him a power, which he never could have become by his
talents. He was the right hand of Robespierre, and the principal
agent in the destruction of the Girondist party in 1793. With
Danton and Robespierre he formed the triumvirate which turned
France into a vast human shambles.]
Three men among the Jacobins--Marat, Danton, and Robespierre--merited
distinction and possessed authority. Owing to a malformation, or
distortion, of head and heart, they fulfilled the requisite conditions.
Of the three, Marat is the most monstrous; he borders on the lunatic, of
which he displays the chief characteristics--furious exaltation,
constant overexcitement, feverish restlessness, an inexhaustible
propensity for scribbling, that mental automatism and tetanus of the
will under the constraint and rule of a fixed idea, and, in addition to
this, the usual physical symptoms, such as sleeplessness, a livid tint,
bad blood, foulness of dress and person, with, during the last five
months of his life, irritations and eruptions over his whole body.
Issuing from incongruous races, born of a mixed blood, and tainted with
serious moral commotions, he harbors within him a singular germ;
physically he is an abortion, morally a pretender, and one who covets
all places of distinction.
His father, who was a physician, intended from his early childhood that
he should be a _savant_; his mother, an idealist, meant that he should
be a philanthropist, while he himself always steered his course toward
both summits. “At five years of age,” he says, “it would have pleased me
to be a schoolmaster, at fifteen a professor, at eighteen an author, and
a creative genius at twenty,” and afterward, up to the last, an apostle
and martyr to humanity. “From my earliest infancy I had an intense love
of fame, which changed its object at various stages of my life, but
which never left me for a moment.” He rambled over Europe or vegetated
in Paris for thirty years, living a nomadic life in subordinate
positions; hissed as an author, distrusted as a man of science, and
ignored as a philosopher; a third rate political writer, aspiring to
every sort of celebrity and to every honor, constantly presenting
himself as a candidate and as constantly rejected--too great a
disproportion between his faculties and ambition.
Talentless, possessing no critical acumen, and of mediocre intelligence,
he was fitted only to teach some branch of the sciences, or to practice
some one of the arts, either as professor or doctor, more or less bold
and lucky, or to follow, with occasional slips on one side or the other,
some path clearly marked out for him. Never did man with such
diversified culture possess such an incurably perverted intellect. Never
did man, after so many abortive speculations and such repeated
malpractices, conceive and maintain so high an opinion of himself. Each
of these two sources in him augments the other; through his faculty of
not seeing things as they are, he attributes to himself virtue and
genius; satisfied that he possesses genius and virtue, he regards his
misdeeds as merits and his crotchets as truths.
Thenceforth, and spontaneously, his malady runs its own course and
becomes complex; next to the ambitious delirium comes the _mania for
persecution_. In effect, the evident or demonstrated truths which he
supplies should strike the public at once; if they burn slowly or miss
fire, it is owing to their being stamped out by enemies or the envious;
manifestly, they have conspired against him, and against him plots have
never ceased. First came the philosophers’ plot; when his treatise on
“Man” reached Paris from Amsterdam, “they felt the blow I struck at
their principles and had the book stopped at the custom-house.” Next
came the plot of the doctors, who “ruefully estimated my enormous gains.
Were it necessary, I could prove that they often met together to
consider the best way to destroy my reputation.” Finally, came the plot
of the academicians; “the disgraceful persecution I had to undergo from
the Academy of Sciences for two years, after being satisfied that my
discoveries on light upset all that it had done for a century, and that
I was quite indifferent about becoming a member of its body.... Would it
be believed that these scientific charlatans succeeded in underrating
my discoveries throughout Europe, in exciting every society of _savants_
against me, and in closing against me all the newspapers!” Naturally,
the would-be-persecuted man defends himself--that is to say, he attacks.
Naturally, as he is the aggressor, he is repulsed and put down, and,
after creating imaginary enemies, he creates real ones, especially in
politics, where, on principle, he daily preaches insurrection and
murder.
Naturally, in fine, he is prosecuted, convicted at the Chatelet Court,
tracked by the police, obliged to fly and wander from one hiding-place
to another; to live like a bat “in a cellar, underground, in a dark
dungeon”; once, says his friend Panis, he passed “six weeks on one of
his buttocks,” like a madman in his cell, face to face with his
reveries. It is not surprising that, with such a system, the reverie
should become more intense, more and more gloomy, and at last settle
down into a _confirmed nightmare_; that, in his distorted brain, objects
should appear distorted; that, even in full daylight, men and things
should seem awry, as in a magnifying, dislocating mirror; that
frequently, on the numbers (of his journal) appearing too blood-thirsty,
and his chronic disease too acute, his physician should bleed him to
arrest these attacks and prevent their return. When a madman sees
everywhere around him--on the floors, on the walls, on the
ceiling--toads, scorpions, spiders, swarms of crawling, loathsome
vermin, he thinks only of crushing them, and the disease enters on its
last stage; after the ambitious delirium, the mania for persecution, and
the settled nightmare, comes the homicidal mania. At the outset a few
lives would have sufficed: “Five hundred heads ought to have fallen when
the Bastile was taken, and all would then have gone on well.” But,
through lack of foresight and timidity, the evil was allowed to spread,
and the more it spread the larger the amputation should have been. With
the sure, keen eye of the surgeon, Marat gives its dimensions; he has
made his calculation beforehand. In September, 1792, in the Council at
the Commune, he estimates approximatively forty thousand as the number
of heads that should be laid low. Six weeks later, the social abscess
having enormously increased, the figures swell in proportion; he now
demands two hundred and seventy thousand heads, always on the score of
humanity, “to insure public tranquillity,” on condition that the
operation be intrusted to him, as the summary, temporary justiciary.
Save this last point the rest is granted to him; it is unfortunate that
he could not see with his own eyes the complete fulfillment of his
programme, the batches condemned by the revolutionary tribunal, the
massacres of Lyons and Toulon, the drownings of Nantes. From first to
last he was in the right line of the revolution; lucid on account of his
blindness, thanks to his crazy logic, thanks to the concordance of his
personal malady with the public malady, to the precocity of his complete
madness alongside of the incomplete or tardy madness of the rest, he
alone steadfast, remorseless, triumphant, perched aloft, at the first
bound, on the sharp pinnacle, which his rivals dared not climb, or only
stumbled up.
PRINCE TALLEYRAND.
BY ARCHIBALD ALISON.
[Charles Maurice Prince de Talleyrand-Perigord, one of the most
distinguished of modern French statesmen and diplomatists, born in
1754, died in 1838. Originally a churchman, he became Bishop of
Autun in 1788, though notorious for loose and licentious living.
During the period of the revolution Talleyrand was in England and
America. He returned to France in 1797, and under the Directory was
called to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. He was of great
assistance to Napoleon in accomplishing his _coup d’état_, and
thenceforward was the French ruler’s trusted adviser in all matters
of state till 1807, when a coldness grew on Napoleon’s part.
Talleyrand’s bitter and pungent criticisms on Napoleon’s policy so
enraged the emperor that he finally deprived him of his lucrative
offices. In 1812 he foretold the coming downfall of Napoleon, and
the accomplishment of the prediction achieved for him the
admiration of Europe. While the allies were advancing on Paris in
1814, Talleyrand was in secret communication with them. After the
restoration of the Bourbons, Talleyrand took but little part in
public affairs till 1830, when, as ambassador to England, he
negotiated an important treaty settling the status of the peninsula
kingdoms of Spain and Portugal.]
Never was character more opposite to that of the Russian autocrat than
that of his great coadjutor in the pacification and settlement of
Europe, Prince Talleyrand. This most remarkable man was born at Paris in
1754, so that in 1814 he was already sixty years of age. He was
descended of an old family, and had for his maternal aunt the celebrated
Princess of Ursius, who played so important a part in the war of the
succession at the court of Philippe V.[29] Being destined for the
Church, he early entered the seminary of St. Sulpice, and even there was
remarkable for the delicate vein of sarcasm, nice discrimination, and
keen penetration, for which he afterward became so distinguished in
life. At the age of twenty-six he was appointed agent-general for the
clergy, and in that capacity his administrative talents were so
remarkable that they procured for him the situation of Bishop of Autun,
which he held in 1789, when the revolution broke out. So remarkable had
his talents become at this period that Mirabeau, in his secret
correspondence with Berlin, pointed him out as one of the most eminent
men of the age.
He was elected representative of the clergy of his diocese for the
Constitute Assembly, and was one of the first of that rank in the Church
who voted on the 29th of May for the junction of the ecclesiastical body
with the _Tiers État_. He also took the lead in all the measures, then
so popular, which had for their object to spoliate the Church, and apply
its possessions to the service of the state; accordingly, he himself
proposed the suppression of tithes and the application of the property
of the Church to the public treasury. In all these measures he was deaf
to the remonstrances of the clergy whom he represented, and already he
had severed all the cords which bound him to the Church.
His ruling principle was not any peculiar enmity to religion, but a
fixed determination to adhere to the dominant party, whatever it was,
whether in Church or state; to watch closely the signs of the times, and
throw in his lot with that section of the community which appeared
likely to gain the superiority. In February, 1790, he was appointed
President of the Assembly, and from that time forward, down to its
dissolution, he took a leading part in all its measures. He was not,
however, an orator; knowledge of men and prophetic sagacity were his
great qualifications. Generally silent in the hall of debate, he soon
gained the lead in the council of deliberation or committee of
management. He officiated as constitutional bishop to the great scandal
of the more orthodox clergy in the great _fête_ on the 14th of July,
1790, in the Champ de Mars; but he had already become fearful of the
excesses of the popular party, and was, perhaps, the only person to whom
Mirabeau on his deathbed communicated his secret views and designs for
the restoration of the French monarchy.
Early in 1792 he set out on a secret mission to London, where he
remained till the breaking out of the war in February, 1793, and enjoyed
much of the confidence of Mr. Pitt. He naturally enough became an object
of jealousy to both parties, being denounced by the Jacobins as an
emissary of the court, and by the Royalists as an agent of the Jacobins;
and, in consequence, he was accused and condemned in his absence, and
only escaped by withdrawing to America, where he remained till 1795
engaged in commercial pursuits. It was not the least proof of his
address and sagacity that he thus avoided equally the crimes and the
dangers of the Reign of Terror, and returned to Paris at the close of
that year with his head on his shoulders, and without deadly hostility
to any party in his heart.
His influence and abilities soon caused themselves to be felt; the
sentence of death, which had been recorded against him in his absence,
was soon recalled; he became a leading member of the Club of Salm, which
in 1797 was established to counterbalance the efforts of the Royalists
in the Club of Clichy; and on the triumph of the revolutionists by the
violence of Augereau in July, 1797, he was appointed Minister of Foreign
Affairs. Nevertheless, aware of the imbecility of the directorial
government, he entered warmly into the views of Napoleon, upon his
return from Egypt, for its overthrow. He was again made Minister of
Foreign Affairs by that youthful conqueror after the 18th Brumaire, and
continued, with some few interruptions, to be the soul of all foreign
negotiations and the chief director of foreign policy, down to the
measures directed against Spain in 1807. On that occasion, however, his
wonted sagacity did not desert him; he openly disapproved of the attack
on the peninsula, and was, in consequence, dismissed from office, which
he did not again hold till he was appointed chief of the provisional
government on the 1st of April, 1814. He had thus the singular address,
though a leading character under both _régimes_, to extricate himself
both from the crimes of the revolution and the misfortunes of the
Empire.
He was no ordinary man who could accomplish so great a prodigy and yet
retain such influence as to step, as it were, by common consent into the
principal direction of affairs on the overthrow of Napoleon. His power
of doing so depended not merely on his great talents; they alone, if
unaccompanied by other qualifications, would inevitably have brought him
to the guillotine under the first government or the prisons of state
under the last. It was his extraordinary versatility and flexibility of
disposition, and the readiness with which he accommodated himself to
every change of government and dynasty which he thought likely to be
permanent, that mainly contributed to this extraordinary result. Such
was his address that, though the most changeable character in the whole
revolution, he contrived never to lose either influence or reputation by
all his tergiversations; but, on the contrary, went on constantly rising
to the close of his career, when above eighty years of age, in weight,
fortune, and consideration.
The very fact of his having survived, both in person and influence, so
many changes of government, which had proved fatal to almost all his
contemporaries, of itself constituted a colossal reputation; and when he
said, with a sarcastic smile, on taking the oath of fidelity to Louis
Philippe in 1830, “_C’est le treisiéme_,” the expression, repeated from
one end of Europe to the other, produced a greater admiration for his
address than indignation at his perfidy.
He has been well described as the person in existence who had the least
hand in producing, and the greatest power of profiting, by revolutions.
He was not destitute of original thought, but wholly without the
generous feeling, the self-forgetfulness, which prompt the great in
character as well as talent to bring forth their conceptions in word or
action, at whatever hazard to themselves or their fortunes. His object
always was not to direct, but to observe and guide the current; he never
opposed it when he saw it was irresistible, nor braved its dangers where
it threatened to be perilous, but quietly withdrew until an opportunity
occurred, by the destruction alike of its supporters and its opponents,
to obtain its direction. In this respect his talents very closely
resembled those of Metternich, of whom a character has already been
drawn; but he was less consistent than the wary Austrian diplomatist,
and, though equaled by him in dissimulation, he was far his superior in
perfidy.
It cost him nothing to contradict and violate his oaths whenever it
suited his interest to do so, and the extraordinary and almost unbroken
success of his career affords, as well as that of Napoleon, the most
striking confirmation of the profound saying of Johnson--that no man
ever raised himself from private life to the supreme direction of
affairs, in whom great abilities were not combined with certain
meannesses, which would have proved altogether fatal to him in ordinary
life.
Yet was he without any of the great vices of the revolution; his
selfishness was constant, his cupidity unbounded, his hands often
sullied by gold, but he was not cruel or unforgiving in his disposition,
and few, if any, deeds of blood stain his memory. His witticisms and
_bon mots_ were admirable, and repeated from one end of Europe to the
other; yet was his reputation in this respect, perhaps, greater than the
reality, for, by common consent, every good saying at Paris during his
life-time was ascribed to the ex-Bishop of Autun. But none perhaps more
clearly reveals his character and explains his success in life than the
celebrated one, “That the principal object of language is to conceal the
thought.”
GEORGE JACQUES DANTON.
BY HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE.
[A principal leader in French revolutionary times, born 1759,
executed 1794. He was one of the first to advocate violent
measures, organized the attack on the Tuileries in 1792, and was
principally instrumental in bringing on the dreadful September
massacres of the same year, when all those confined in the Paris
prisons were slaughtered. On being elected to the convention, he
was foremost in forcing on the trial of the king, and afterward, as
a member of the Committee of Public Safety, in breaking the power
of the Girondists, though he would have spared their lives. He
incurred the hate of Robespierre by those inclinations to mercy and
moderation which would have put an end to the Reign of Terror, and
was sent to the scaffold by the plots of his cunning and implacable
adversary.]
Between the demagogue and the highwayman the resemblance is close; both
are leaders of bands, and each requires an opportunity to organize his
band. Danton, to organize his band, required the revolution. “Of low
birth, without a patron,” penniless, every office being filled, and “the
Paris bar unattainable,” admitted a lawyer after “a struggle,” he for a
long time strolled about the streets without a brief, or frequented the
coffee-houses, the same as similar men nowadays frequent the beer-shops.
At the Café de l’École, the proprietor, a good-natured old fellow “in a
small round perruque, gray coat, and a napkin on his arm,” circulated
among his tables smiling blandly, while his daughter sat in the rear as
cashier. Danton chatted with her, and demanded her hand in marriage. To
obtain her he had to mend his ways, purchase an attorneyship in the
Court of the Royal Council, and find bondsmen and indorsers in his small
native town.
Wedded and lodged in the gloomy Passage du Commerce, “more burdened with
debts than with causes,” tied down to a sedentary profession which
demands vigorous application, accuracy, a moderate tone, a respectable
style, and blameless deportment; obliged to keep house on so small a
scale that, without the help of a _louis_ regularly advanced to him each
week by his coffee-house father-in-law, he could not make both ends
meet; his free-and-easy tastes, his alternately impetuous and indolent
disposition, his love of enjoyment and of having his own way, his rude,
violent instincts, his expansiveness, creativeness, and activity, all
rebel; he is ill-calculated for the quiet routine of our civil careers;
it is not the steady discipline of an old society that suits him, but
the tumultuous brutality of a society going to pieces, or one in a state
of formation. In temperament and character he is a _barbarian_, and a
barbarian born to command his fellow-creatures, like this or that vassal
of the sixth century or baron of the tenth century.
A colossus with the head of a “Tartar,” pitted with the small-pox,
tragically and terribly ugly, with a mask convulsed like that of a
growling “bull-dog,” with small, cavernous, restless eyes buried under
the huge wrinkles of a threatening brow, with a thundering voice, and
moving and acting like a combatant, full-blooded, boiling over with
passion and energy, his strength in its outbursts seeming illimitable,
like the forces of Nature, roaring like a bull when speaking, and heard
through closed windows fifty yards off in the street, employing
immoderate imagery, intensely in earnest, trembling with indignation,
revenge, and patriotic sentiments, able to arouse savage instincts in
the most tranquil breast and generous instincts in the most brutal,
profane, using emphatic terms, cynical, not monotonously so, and
affectedly like Hébert, but spontaneously and to the point, full of
crude jests worthy of Rabelais, possessing a stock of jovial sensuality
and good-humor, cordial and familiar in his ways, frank, friendly in
tone; in short, outwardly and inwardly the best-fitted for winning the
confidence and sympathy of a Gallic-Parisian populace, and all
contributing to the formation of “his inborn, practical popularity,” and
to make of him “a grand seignior of _sans-culotterie_.”
Thus endowed for playing a part, there is a strong temptation to act it
the moment the theatre is ready, whether this be a mean one, got up for
the occasion, and the actors rogues, scamps, and prostitutes, or the
part an ignoble one, murderous, and finally fatal to him who undertakes
it. He comprehended from the first the ultimate object and definite
result of the revolution, that is to say, the dictatorship of the
violent minority. Immediately after the “14th of July,” 1789, he
organized in his quarter of the city a small independent republic,
aggressive and predominant, the center of the faction, a refuge for the
riff-raff and a rendezvous for fanatics, a pandemonium composed of every
available madcap, every rogue, visionary, shoulder-hitter, newspaper
scribbler, and stump-speaker, either a secret or avowed plotter of
murder, Camille Desmoulins, Fréron, Hébert, Chaumette, Clootz,
Théroigne, Marat--while, in this more than Jacobin state, the model in
anticipation of that he is to establish later, he reigns, as he will
afterward reign, the permanent president of the district, commander of
the battalion, orator of the club, and the concocter of bold
undertakings. In order to set the machine up, he cleared the ground,
fused the metal, hammered out the principal pieces, filed off the
blisterings, designed the action, adjusted the minor wheels, set it
a-going and indicated what it had to do, and, at the same time, he
forged the plating which guarded it from the foreigner and against all
outward violence. The machine being his, why, after constructing it, did
he not serve as its engineer?
Because, if competent to construct it, he was not qualified to manage
it. In a crisis he may take hold of the wheel himself, excite an
assembly or a mob in his favor, carry things with a high hand, and
direct an executive committee for a few weeks. But he dislikes regular,
persistent labor; he is not made for studying documents, for poring over
papers, and confining himself to administrative routine. Never, like
Robespierre and Billaud, can he attend to both official and police
duties at the same time, carefully reading minute daily reports,
annotating mortuary lists, extemporizing ornate abstractions, coolly
enunciating falsehoods, and acting out the patient, satisfied
inquisitor; and, especially, he can never become the systematic
executioner.
On the one hand, his eyes are not obscured by the gray veil of theory;
he does not regard men through the “Contrat-Social” as a sum of
arithmetical units, but as they really are, living, suffering, shedding
their blood, especially those he knows, each with his peculiar
physiognomy and demeanor. Compassion is excited by all this when one has
any feeling, and he had. Danton had a heart; he had the quick
sensibilities of a man of flesh and blood stirred by the primitive
instincts, the good ones along with the bad ones, instincts which
culture had neither impaired nor deadened, which allowed him to plan and
permit the September massacre, but which did not allow him to practice,
daily and blindly, systematic and wholesale murder. Already in
September, “cloaking his pity under his bellowing,” he had shielded or
saved many eminent men from the butchers. When the ax is about to fall
on the Girondists, he is “ill with grief” and despair. “I am unable to
save them,” he exclaimed, “and big tears streamed down his cheeks.”
On the other hand, his eyes are not covered by the bandage of incapacity
or lack of forethought. He detected the innate vice of the system, the
inevitable and approaching suicide of the revolution. “The Girondists
forced us to throw ourselves upon the _sans-culotterie_ which has
devoured them, which will devour us, and which will eat itself up.” “Let
Robespierre and Saint-Just alone, and there will soon be nothing left in
France but a Thebaid of political Trappists.” At the end he sees more
clearly still. “On a day like this I organized the revolutionary
tribunal.... I ask pardon for it of God and man.... In revolutions,
authority remains with the greatest scoundrels.... It is better to be a
poor fisherman than govern men.”
Nevertheless, he professed to govern them; he constructed a new machine
for the purpose, and, deaf to its creaking, it worked in conformity with
its structure and the impulse he gave to it. It towers before him, this
sinister machine, with its vast wheel and iron cogs grinding all France,
their multiplied teeth pressing out each individual life, its steel
blade constantly rising and falling, and, as it plays faster and faster,
daily exacting a larger and larger supply of human material, while those
who furnish this supply are held to be as insensible and as senseless as
itself. Danton can not, or will not, be so. He gets out of the way,
diverts himself, gambles, forgets; he supposes that the titular
decapitators will probably consent to take no notice of him; in any
case, they do not pursue him; “they would not dare do it.... No one must
lay hands on me; I am the ark.” At the worst he prefers “to be
guillotined rather than guillotine.” Having said or thought this, he is
ripe for the scaffold.
ROBESPIERRE.
BY HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE.
[Maximilian Marie Isadore de Robespierre, the most powerful figure
among the French revolutionists, born 1758, guillotined 1794. By
profession an attorney, he was elected to the Constituent Assembly,
the States General, in 1789, from Arras. Profoundly imbued with the
theories of Rousseau, he was from the beginning a fierce assailant
of the monarchy, and after Mirabeau’s death rapidly acquired a
commanding position in public affairs. In the National Convention,
which succeeded the dissolution of the States General and the
abdication and imprisonment of Louis XVI, Robespierre was a
prominent leader, and identified himself with the extreme party,
the Jacobins, called the “Mountain,” from the elevated seats on
which they sat. During this earlier part of his political career he
affected opposition to capital punishment, and remonstrated with
Danton against the September massacres. He led the Jacobins,
however, in demanding the trial and death of the king, and proposed
the decree organizing the Committee of Public Safety, which was
clothed with omnipotent sway. When he became a member of this
terrible body he speedily instituted what is known as “the Reign of
Terror,” beginning with the destruction of the Girondists, against
whom he formulated the deadly epigram: “There are periods in
revolutions when to live is a crime.” Danton was sacrificed to his
envy and fears as a dangerous rival. Robespierre’s overthrow, after
about a year of practical dictatorship, was owing to two causes,
which inspired the wavering courage of his opponents in the
convention. The mistress of Tallien, a prominent revolutionist, lay
in prison expecting a daily call to the guillotine. Carnot (the
grandfather of the present chief of the French republic) attended a
dinner-party at which Robespierre was present. The heat of the day
had caused the guests to throw off their coats, and Carnot in
looking for a paper took Robespierre’s coat by mistake, in the
pocket of which he saw the memorandum containing the names of those
prescribed for the guillotine, among them his own and those of
other guests. On the 9th Thermidor, July 27, 1794, occurred the
outbreak in the convention which broke Roberspierre’s power, and on
the following day sent him to the guillotine, thus ending the Reign
of Terror.]
Marat and Danton finally become effaced, or efface themselves, and the
stage is left to Robespierre who absorbs attention. If we would
comprehend him we must look at him as he stands in the midst of his
surroundings. At the last stage of an intellectual vegetation passing
away, he remains on the last branch of the eighteenth century, the most
abortive and driest offshoot of the classical spirit. He has retained
nothing of a worn-out system of philosophy but its lifeless dregs and
well-conned formulæ, the formulæ of Rousseau, Mably, and Raynal,
concerning “the people, nature, reason, liberty, tyrants, factions,
virtue, morality,” a ready-made vocabulary, expressions too ample, the
meaning of which, ill-defined by the masters, evaporates in the hands of
the disciple. He never tries to get at this; his writings and speeches
are merely long strings of vague abstract periods; there is no telling
fact in them, no distinct, characteristic detail, no appeal to the eye
evoking a living image, no personal, special observation, no clear,
frank, original impression.
It might be said of him that he never saw anything with his own eyes,
that he neither could nor would see, that false conceptions have
intervened and fixed themselves between him and the object; he combines
these in logical sequence, and simulates the absent thought by an
affected jargon, and this is all. The other Jacobins alongside of him
likewise use the same scholastic jargon; but none of them expatiate on
it so lengthily. For hours, we grope after him in the vague shadows of
political speculation, in the cold and perplexing mist of didactic
generalities, trying in vain to make something out of his colorless
tirades, and we grasp nothing. We then, astonished, ask what all this
talk amounts to, and why he talks at all; the answer is, that he has
said nothing and that he talks only for the sake of talking, the same as
a sectary preaching to his congregation, neither the preacher nor his
audience ever wearying, the one of turning the dogmatic crank, and the
other of listening. So much the better if the hopper is empty; the
emptier it is the easier and faster the crank turns. And better still,
if the empty term he selects is used in a contrary sense; the sonorous
words justice, humanity, mean to him piles of human heads, the same as a
text from the gospels means to a grand inquisitor the burning of
heretics.
Now, his first passion, his principal passion, is literary vanity. Never
was the chief of a party, sect, or government, even at critical moments,
such an incurable, insignificant rhetorician, so formal, so pompous, and
so vapid. On the eve of the 9th of Thermidor, when it was necessary to
conquer or die, he enters the tribune with a set speech, written and
rewritten, polished and repolished, overloaded with studied ornaments
and bits for effect, coated by dint of time and labor, with the academic
varnish, the glitter of symmetrical antitheses, rounded periods,
exclamations, preteritions, apostrophes, and other tricks of the pen.
There is no sign of true inspiration in his elaborate eloquence, nothing
but recipes, and those of a worn-out art--Greek and Roman commonplaces,
Socrates and the hemlock, Brutus and his dagger, classic metaphors like
“the flambeaux of discord,” and “the vessel of state,” words coupled
together and beauties of style which a pupil in rhetoric aims at on the
college bench; sometimes a grand bravura air, so essential for parade in
public; oftentimes a delicate strain of the flute, for, in those days,
one must have a tender heart; in short, Marmontel’s method in
“Belisarius,” or that of Thomas in his “Eloges,” all borrowed from
Rousseau, but of inferior quality, like a sharp, thin voice strained to
imitate a rich, powerful voice; a sort of involuntary parody, and the
more repulsive because a word ends in a blow, because a sentimental,
declamatory Trissotin poses as statesman, because the studied elegances
of the closet become pistol shots aimed at living breasts, because an
epithet skillfully directed sends a man to the guillotine.
Robespierre, unlike Danton, has no cravings. He is sober; he is not
tormented by his senses; if he gives way to them, it is only no further
than he can help, and with a bad grace; in the Rue Saintonge in Paris,
“for seven months,” says his secretary, “I knew of but one woman that he
kept company with, and he did not treat her very well.... Very often he
would not let her enter his room”; when busy, he must not be disturbed;
he is naturally steady, hard-working, studious and fond of seclusion, at
college a model pupil, at home in his province an attentive advocate, a
punctual deputy in the Assembly, everywhere free of temptation and
incapable of going astray. “Irreproachable” is the word which, from
early youth, an inward voice constantly repeats to him in low tones to
console him for obscurity and patience. Thus has he ever been, is now,
and ever will be; he says this to himself, tells others so, and on this
foundation, all of a piece, he builds up his character. He is not, like
Desmoulins, to be seduced by dinners; like Barnave, by flattery; like
Mirabeau and Danton, by money; like the Girondists, by the insinuating
charm of ancient politeness and select society; like the Dantonists, by
the bait of joviality and unbounded license--he is the incorruptible.
“Alone, or nearly alone, I do not allow myself to be corrupted; alone,
or nearly alone, I do not compromise the right; which two merits I
possess in the highest degree. A few others may live correctly, but they
oppose or betray principles; a few others profess to have principles,
but they do not live correctly. No one else leads so pure a life or is
so loyal to principles; no one else joins to so fervent a worship of
truth so strict a practice of virtue; I am the unique.” What can be more
agreeable than this mute soliloquy? It is gently heard the first day in
Robespierre’s address to the Third Estate of Arras; it is uttered aloud
the last day in his great speech in the convention; during the interval,
it crops out and shines through all his compositions, harangues, or
reports, in exordiums, parentheses, and perorations, permeating every
sentence like the drone of a bagpipe. In three years a chorus of a
thousand voices, which he formed and led indefatigably, rehearses to him
in unison his own litany, his most sacred creed, the hymn of three
stanzas composed by him in his own honor, and which he daily recites to
himself in a low tone of voice, and often in a loud one: “Robespierre
alone has discovered the ideal citizen! Robespierre alone attains to it
without exaggeration or shortcomings! Robespierre alone is worthy of and
able to lead the revolution!” Cool infatuation carried thus far is
equivalent to a raging fever, and Robespierre almost attains to the
ideas and the ravings of Marat.
First, in his own eyes, he, like Marat, is a persecuted man, and, like
Marat, he poses himself as a “martyr,” but more skillfully and keeping
within bounds, affecting the resigned and tender air of an innocent
victim, who, offering himself as a sacrifice, ascends to heaven,
bequeathing to mankind the imperishable souvenir of his virtues. “I
excite against me the self-love of everybody; I sharpen against me a
thousand daggers. I am a sacrifice to every species of hatred.... To the
enemies of my country, to whom my existence seems an obstacle to their
heinous plots, I am ready to sacrifice it, if their odious empire is to
endure; ... let their road to the scaffold be the pathway of crime, ours
shall be that of virtue; ... let the hemlock be got ready for me, I
await it on this hallowed spot. I shall at least bequeath to my country
an example of constant affection for it, and to the enemies of humanity
the disgrace of my death.”
Naturally, as always with Marat, he sees around him only “evil-doers,”
“intriguers,” and “traitors.” Naturally, as with Marat, common sense
with him is perverted, and, like Marat again, he thinks at random. “I am
not obliged to reflect,” said he to Garat, “I always rely on first
impressions.” “For him,” says the same authority, “the best reasons are
suspicions,” and nought makes headway against suspicions, not even the
most positive evidence.
Such assurance, equal to that of Marat, is terrible and worse in its
effect, for Robespierre’s list of conspirators is longer than that of
Marat. Political and social, in Marat’s mind, the list comprehends only
aristocrats and the rich; theological and moral in Robespierre’s mind,
it comprehends all atheists and dishonest persons--that is to say,
nearly the whole of his party. In this narrow mind, given up to
abstractions and habitually classifying men under two opposite headings,
whoever is not with him on the good side is against him on the bad side,
and, on the bad side, the common understanding between the factious of
every flag and the rogues of every degree is natural. Add all this
vermin to that which Marat seeks to crush out; it is no longer by
hundreds of thousands, but by millions, exclaim Baudot, Jean Bon St.
André, and Guffroy, that the guilty must be counted and heads laid low!
And all these heads, Robespierre, according to his maxims, must strike
off. He is well aware of this; hostile as his intellect may be to
precise ideas, he, when alone in his closet, face to face with himself,
sees clearly, as clearly as Marat. Marat’s chimera, on first spreading
out its wings, bore its frenzied rider swiftly onward to the charnel
house; that of Robespierre, fluttering and hobbling along, reaches the
goal in its turn; in its turn, it demands something to feed on, and the
rhetorician, the professor of principles, begins to calculate the
voracity of the monstrous brute on which he is mounted. Slower than the
other, this one is still more ravenous, for, with similar claws and
teeth, it has a vaster appetite. At the end of three years Robespierre
has overtaken Marat, at the extreme point reached by Marat at the
outset, and the theorist adopts the policy, the aim, the means, the
work, and almost the vocabulary of the maniac; armed dictatorship of the
urban mob, systematic maddening of the subsidized populace, war against
the bourgeoisie, extermination of the rich, proscription of opposition
writers, administrators, and deputies.
Both monsters demand the same food; only, Robespierre adds “vicious men”
to the ration of his monster, by way of extra and preferable game.
Henceforth, he may in vain abstain from action, take refuge in his
rhetoric, stop his chaste ears, and raise his hypocritical eyes to
heaven, he can not avoid seeing or hearing under his immaculate feet the
streaming gore, and the bones crashing in the open jaws of the
insatiable monster which he has fashioned and on which he prances.
Destructive instincts, long repressed by civilization, thus devoted to
butchery, become aroused. His feline physiognomy, at first “that of a
domestic cat, restless but mild, changes into the savage mien of the
wild-cat, and next to the ferocious mien of the tiger. In the
Constituent Assembly he speaks with a whine, in the convention he froths
at the mouth.” The monotonous drone of a stiff sub-professor changes
into the personal accent of furious passion; he hisses and grinds his
teeth; sometimes, on a change of scene, he affects to shed tears. But
his wildest outbursts are less alarming than his affected sensibility.
The festering grudges, corrosive envies, and bitter schemings which have
accumulated in his breast are astonishing. The gall vessels are full,
and the extravasated gall overflows on the dead. He never tires of
re-executing his guillotined adversaries, the Girondists, Chaumette,
Hébert, and especially Danton, probably because Danton was the active
agent in the revolution of which he was simply the incapable pedagogue;
he vents his posthumous hatred on this still warm corpse in artful
insinuations and obvious misrepresentations. Thus, inwardly corroded by
the venom it distills, his physical machine gets out of order, like that
of Marat, but with other symptoms. When speaking in the tribune “his
hands crisp with a sort of nervous contraction”; sudden tremors agitate
“his shoulders and neck, shaking him convulsively to and fro.” “His
bilious complexion becomes livid,” his eyelids quiver under his
spectacles, and how he looks! “Ah,” said a _Montagnard_, “you would have
voted as we did on the 9th of Thermidor, had you seen his green
eyeballs!” “Physically as well as morally,” he becomes a second Marat,
suffering all the more because his delirium is not steady, and because
his policy, being a moral one, forces him to exterminate on a grander
scale.
But he is a discreet Marat, of a timid temperament, anxious, keeping his
thoughts to himself, made for a schoolmaster or a pleader, but not for
taking the lead or for governing, always acting hesitatingly, and
ambitious to be rather the Pope, than the dictator of the revolution. He
would prefer to remain a political Grandison; he keeps the mask on to
the very last, not only to the public and to others, but to himself and
in his inmost conscience. The mask, indeed, has adhered to his skin; he
can no longer distinguish one from the other; never did impostor more
carefully conceal intentions and acts under sophisms, and persuade
himself that the mask was his face, and that in telling a lie, he told
the truth.
When nature and history combine to produce a character they succeed
better than even man’s imagination. Neither Moliere in his “Tartuffe,”
nor Shakespeare in his “Richard III,” dared bring on the stage a
hypocrite believing himself sincere, and a Cain that regarded himself as
an Abel.
WILLIAM PITT THE YOUNGER.
BY JOHN RICHARD GREEN.
[Son of the Earl of Chatham, born 1759, died 1806, and hardly less
distinguished than his father as a statesman and orator. He became
prime minister at the age of twenty-five, and showed a genius as
parliamentary leader which has never been surpassed and rarely
equaled, retaining him in power in spite of his feebleness in the
conduct of war and diplomacy. His great talents found their most
congenial field in the management of home affairs, being the
prototype of Mr. Gladstone in this respect. It is the younger
Pitt’s glory that with no able man in his own party to support him,
he held power so long unshaken by the incessant assaults of such
men as Burke, Fox, Sheridan, and Lord North.]
When Parliament came together after the overthrow of the Coalition, the
minister of twenty-five was master of England as no minister had been
before. Even the king yielded to his sway, partly through gratitude for
the triumph he had won for him over the Whigs, partly from a sense of
the madness which was soon to strike him down, but still more from a
gradual discovery that the triumph which he had won over his political
rivals had been won, not to the profit of the crown, but of the nation
at large. The Whigs, it was true, were broken, unpopular, and without a
policy, while the Tories clung to the minister who had “saved the king.”
But it was the support of a new political power that really gave his
strength to the young minister. The sudden rise of English industry was
pushing the manufacturer to the front; and all that the trading classes
loved in Chatham, his nobleness of temper, his consciousness of power,
his patriotism, his sympathy with a wider world than the world within
the Parliament house, they saw in his son. He had little indeed of the
poetic and imaginative side of Chatham’s genius, of his quick perception
of what was just and what was possible, his far-reaching conceptions of
national policy, his outlook into the future of the world.
Pitt’s flowing and sonorous commonplaces rang hollow beside the broken
phrases which still make his father’s eloquence a living thing to
Englishmen. On the other hand, he possessed some qualities in which
Chatham was utterly wanting. His temper, though naturally ardent and
sensitive, had been schooled in a proud self-command. His simplicity and
good taste freed him from his father’s ostentation and extravagance.
Diffuse and commonplace as his speeches seem, they were adapted as much
by their very qualities of diffuseness and commonplace as by their
lucidity and good sense to the intelligence of the middle classes whom
Pitt felt to be his real audience. In his love of peace, his immense
industry, his dispatch of business, his skill in debate, his knowledge
of finance, he recalled Sir Robert Walpole; but he had virtues which
Walpole never possessed, and he was free from Walpole’s worst defects.
He was careless of personal gain. He was too proud to rule by
corruption. His lofty self-esteem left no room for any jealousy of
subordinates. He was generous in his appreciation of youthful merits;
and the “boys” he gathered round him, such as Canning and Lord
Wellesley, rewarded his generosity by a devotion which death left
untouched. With Walpole’s cynical inaction Pitt had no sympathy
whatever. His policy from the first was one of active reform, and he
faced every one of the problems, financial, constitutional, religious,
from which Walpole had shrunk. Above all, he had none of Walpole’s scorn
of his fellow-men. The noblest feature in his mind was its wide
humanity.
His love for England was as deep and personal as his father’s love, but
of the sympathy with English passion and English prejudice which had
been at once his father’s weakness and strength he had not a trace. When
Fox taunted him with forgetting Chatham’s jealousy of France and his
faith that she was the natural foe of England, Pitt answered nobly that
“to suppose any nation can be unalterably the enemy of another is weak
and childish.” The temper of the time and the larger sympathy of man
with man, which especially marks the eighteenth century as a
turning-point in the history of the human race, was everywhere bringing
to the front a new order of statesmen, such as Turgot and Joseph II,
whose characteristics were a love of mankind and a belief that as the
happiness of the individual can only be secured by the general happiness
of the community to which he belongs, so the welfare of individual
nations can only be secured by the general welfare of the world. Of
these Pitt was one. But he rose high above the rest in the consummate
knowledge, and the practical force which he brought to the realization
of his aims.
Pitt’s strength lay in finance; and he came forward at a time when the
growth of English wealth made a knowledge of finance essential to a
great minister. The progress of the nation was wonderful. Population
more than doubled during the eighteenth century, and the advance of
wealth was even greater than that of population. The war had added a
hundred millions to the national debt, but the burden was hardly felt.
The loss of America only increased the commerce with that country; and
industry had begun that great career which was to make Britain the
workshop of the world. Though England already stood in the first rank of
commercial states at the accession of George III, her industrial life at
home was mainly agricultural. The wool-trade had gradually established
itself in Norfolk, the West Riding of Yorkshire, and the counties of the
southwest; while the manufacture of cotton was still almost limited to
Manchester and Bolton, and remained so unimportant that in the middle of
the eighteenth century the export of cotton goods hardly reached the
value of fifty thousand a year. There was the same slow and steady
progress in the linen trade of Belfast and Dundee and the silks of
Spitalfields. The processes of manufacture were too rude to allow any
large increase of production. It was only where a stream gave force to
turn a mill-wheel that the wool-worker could establish his factory; and
cotton was as yet spun by hand in the cottages, the “spinsters” of the
family sitting with their distaffs round the weaver’s handloom. But had
the processes of manufacture been more efficient, they would have been
rendered useless by the want of a cheap and easy means of transport. The
older main roads, which had lasted fairly through the middle ages, had
broken down in later times before the growth of traffic and the increase
of wagons and carriages.
The new lines of trade lay often along mere country lanes which had
never been more than horse-tracks. Much of the woolen trade, therefore,
had to be carried on by means of long trains of pack-horses; and in the
case of yet heavier goods, such as coal, distribution was almost
impracticable, save along the greater rivers or in districts accessible
from the sea. A new era began when the engineering genius of Brindley
joined Manchester with its port of Liverpool in 1767, by a canal which
crossed the Irwell on a lofty aqueduct; the success of the experiment
soon led to the universal introduction of water-carriage, and Great
Britain was traversed in every direction by three thousand miles of
navigable canals. At the same time a new importance was given to the
coal which lay beneath the soil of England. The stores of iron which had
lain side by side with it in the northern counties had lain there
unworked through the scarcity of wood, which was looked upon as the only
fuel by which it could be smelted.
In the middle of the eighteenth century a process for smelting iron with
coal turned out to be effective; and the whole aspect of the iron trade
was at once revolutionized. Iron was to become the working material of
the modern world; and it is its production of iron which more than all
else has placed England at the head of industrial Europe. The value of
coal as a means of producing mechanical force was revealed in the
discovery by which Watt in 1765 transformed the steam-engine from a mere
toy into the most wonderful instrument which human industry has ever had
at its command. The invention came at a moment when the existing supply
of manual labor could no longer cope with the demands of the
manufacturers. Three successive inventions in twelve years, that of the
spinning-jenny in 1764 by the weaver Hargreaves, of the spinning-machine
in 1768 by the barber Arkwright, of the “mule” by the weaver Crompton in
1776, were followed by the discovery of the power-loom. But these would
have been comparatively useless had it not been for the revelation of a
new and inexhaustible labor-force in the steam-engine. It was the
combination of such a force with such means of applying it that enabled
Britain during the terrible years of her struggle with France and
Napoleon to all but monopolize the woolen and cotton trades, and raised
her into the greatest manufacturing country that the world had seen.
To deal wisely with such a growth required a knowledge of the laws of
wealth which would have been impossible at an earlier time. But it had
become possible in the days of Pitt. If books are to be measured by the
effect which they have produced on the fortunes of mankind the “Wealth
of Nations” must rank among the greatest of books. Its author was Adam
Smith, an Oxford scholar and a professor at Glasgow. Labor, he
contended, was the one source of wealth, and it was by freedom of labor,
by suffering the worker to pursue his own interest in his own way, that
the public wealth would best be promoted. Any attempt to force labor
into artificial channels, to shape by laws the course of commerce, to
promote special branches of industry in particular countries, or to fix
the character of the intercourse between one country and another, is not
only a wrong to the worker or the merchant, but actually hurtful to the
wealth of a state. The book was published in 1776, at the opening of the
American war, and studied by Pitt during his career as an undergraduate
at Cambridge. From that time he owned Adam Smith for his master. He had
hardly become minister before he took the principles of the “Wealth of
Nations” as the groundwork of his policy. The ten earlier years of his
rule marked a new point of departure in English statesmanship. Pitt was
the first English minister who really grasped the part which industry
was to play in promoting the welfare of the world. He was not only a
peace minister and a financier, as Walpole had been, but a statesman who
saw that the best security for peace lay in the freedom and widening of
commercial intercourse between nations; that public economy not only
lessened the general burdens but left additional capital in the hands of
industry; and that finance might be turned from a mere means of raising
revenue into a powerful engine of political and social improvement.
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.
BY LOUIS ADOLPHE THIERS.
[Emperor of France, born in Corsica 1769, died a prisoner on the
island of St. Helena in 1821. Educated at the military schools of
Brienne and Paris, Napoleon became a sous-lieutenant of artillery
at the age of sixteen. He had become a captain when the revolution
reached its height in the Reign of Terror. Though never an actor in
the horrors of Jacobin rule, he was supposed to have been a warm
friend of Robespierre. After the fall of the terrorists Napoleon
took the side of the convention, and at the head of its troops
dispersed the infuriated mob of Montagnards with the famous “whiff
of grapeshot” which blew up the last remains of the party of 1793.
After his marriage with Josephine Beauharnais, the young soldier
was appointed to the command of the army of Italy. In two years
Napoleon, in a series of splendid battles, annihilated four
Austrian armies, liberated Italy, and forced Austria to a
humiliating peace. After the failure of the Egyptian expedition
Napoleon returned to France, and by the _coup d’état_ of December,
1799, attained supreme power as first consul. The second Italian
campaign of 1800 was no less brilliant than the first, culminating
in the battle of Marengo. In 1802 Napoleon was made life-consul,
“the swelling prologue of the imperial theme,” for nine months
later he assumed the title of emperor, and was crowned by Pope Pius
VII at Notre Dame. The year 1812 was the beginning of the disasters
which finally dethroned him. The terrible Russian campaign, and the
utter defeat of his arms in Spain by Lord Wellesley, afterward Duke
of Wellington, marked a change in the clock of destiny. The great
European coalition of 1813 brought overwhelming forces against him,
resulting in the great battle of Dresden, lasting three
days--October 16th, 17th, and 18th--which broke the French power.
The allies entered Paris, March 31, 1814, and Napoleon abdicated on
April 11th. His exile in Elba lasted less than ten months, and on
his return to France two hundred thousand men rallied to him at his
call. The battle of Waterloo, fought on June 15, 1815, ended in his
overwhelming defeat at the hands of the Duke of Wellington,
assisted by Marshal Blücher. Napoleon’s second abdication was
followed by his surrender to the English, and his exile to St.
Helena for the rest of his life.]
Napoleon was endowed by nature with a clear, penetrating, vast,
comprehensive, and peculiarly active mind, nor had he less decision of
character than clearness of intellect. He always seized at once the
decisive argument, in battle the most effective movement. To conceive,
resolve, and perform were with him but one indivisible act, so wonderful
was his rapidity, that not a moment was spent in reflection between
perception and action. Any obstacle presented to such a mind by a
trifling objection, by indolence, weakness, or disaffection, served but
to cause his anger to spring forth and cover you with its foam. Had he
chosen some civil profession where success can only be attained by
persuading men and winning them over, he might have endeavored to subdue
or moderate his fiery temperament, but flung into the career of arms,
and endowed with the sovereign faculty of seeing the surest means of
conquest at a glance, he became at one bound the ruler of Italy, at a
second the master of the French Republic, at a third the sovereign of
Europe.
What wonder that a nature formed so impetuous by God should become more
so from success; what wonder if he were abrupt, violent, domineering,
and unbending in his resolutions! If apart from the battle-field he
exercised that tact so necessary in civil business, it was in the
council of state, though even there he decided questions with a sagacity
and clearness of judgment that astonished and subdued his hearers,
except on some few occasions when he was misled for a moment by passion
or want of sufficient knowledge of the subject under discussion. Both
nature and circumstances combined to make him the most despotic and
impetuous of men.
In contemplating his career, it does not appear that this fiery,
despotic nature revealed itself at once or altogether. In his youth he
was lean, taciturn, and even sad--sad from concentrated ambition that
feeds upon itself until it finds an outlet and attains the object of its
desires. As a young man he was sometimes rude, morose, until becoming
the object of universal admiration he became more open, calm, and
communicative--lost the meagerness that made his countenance so
expressive, and, as one may say, unfolded himself. Consul for life,
emperor, conqueror at Marengo and Austerlitz, still exercising some
little restraint on himself, he seemed to have reached the apogee of his
moral existence; and his figure, then moderately stout, was radiant with
regular and manly beauty. But soon, when nations submitted and
sovereigns bowed before him, he was no longer restrained by respect for
man or even for nature. He dared, attempted all things; spoke without
restraint; was gay, familiar, and often intemperate in language. His
moral and physical nature became more developed, nor did his extreme
stoutness diminish his Olympian beauty; his fuller countenance still
preserved the eagle glance; and when descending from his accustomed
height from which he excited admiration, fear, and hatred, he became
merry, familiar, and almost vulgar, he could resume his dignity in a
moment, for he was able to descend without demeaning himself. And when
at length, in advancing life, he is supposed to be less active or less
daring, because of his increasing _embonpoint_, or because Fortune had
ceased to smile on him, he bounds more impetuously than ever on his
charger, and shows that for his ardent mind matter is no burden,
misfortune no restraint.
Such were the successive developments of this extraordinary nature. It
is not easy to estimate Napoleon’s moral qualities, for it is rather
difficult to discover goodness in a soldier who was continually strewing
the earth with dead, or friendship in a man who never knew an equal, or
probity in a potentate in whose power were the riches of the universe.
Still, though an exception to all ordinary rules, we may occasionally
catch some traits of the moral physiognomy of this extraordinary man.
In all things promptness was his distinctive characteristic. He would
become angry, but would recover his calmness with wonderful facility,
almost ashamed of his excitement, laughing at it if he could do so
without compromising his dignity, and would again address with
affectionate words or gestures the officer he had overpowered by his
burst of passion. His anger was sometimes affected for the purpose of
intimidating subalterns who neglected their duty. When real, his
displeasure passed like a flash of lightning; when affected, it lasted
as long as it was needed. When he was no longer obliged to command,
restrain, or impel men, he became gentle, simple, and just, just as
every man of great mind is who understands human nature, and appreciates
and pardons its weaknesses because he knows that they are inevitable. At
St. Helena, deprived of all external prestige, his power departed,
without any other ascendant over his companions than that derived from
his intellect and disposition, Napoleon ruled them with absolute sway,
won them by unchanging amiability; and that to such a degree that having
feared him for the greater part of their lives, they ended by loving him
for the remainder. On the battle-field he had acquired an insensibility
that was almost fearful; he could behold unmoved the ground covered with
a hundred thousand lifeless bodies, for none had ever caused so much
human blood to flow as he.
This insensibility was, so to speak, a consequence of his profession.
Often in the evening he would ride over the battle-field, which in the
morning he had strewed with all the horrors of war, to see that the
wounded were removed, a proceeding that might be the result of policy,
but was not; and he frequently sprang from his horse to assure himself
whether in an apparently lifeless body the vital spark did not still
linger. At Wagram he saw a fine young man, in the uniform of the
cuirassiers, lying on the ground with his face covered with clotted
blood; he sprang at once from his horse, supported the head of the
wounded youth on his knee, restored him by the aid of some spirituous
remedy, and said, smiling: “He will recover, it is one more saved!”
These are no proofs of want of feeling.
In everything connected with finance he was almost avaricious, disputing
even about a centime, while he would give millions to his friends,
servants, or the poor. Having discovered that a distinguished _savant_
who had accompanied him to Egypt was in embarrassed circumstances, he
sent him a large sum, blaming him at the same time for not having told
him of his position. In 1813, having expended all his ready money, and
learning that a lady of high birth, who had once been very rich, was in
want of the necessaries of life, he immediately appointed her a pension
of twenty-four thousand francs, as much as fifty thousand at the present
time, and being told that she was eighty-four years of age, “Poor
woman,” he said, “let her be paid four years in advance.” These, we must
repeat, are no indications of want of kindness of disposition.
Having but little time to devote to private friendships, removed from
them by his superiority to other men, but still, under the influence of
time and habit, he did become attached to some, so strongly attached as
to be indulgent even to weakness to those he loved. This was the case
with regard to his relatives, whose pretensions often provoked his
anger; yet, seeing them annoyed, he relented, and to gratify them, often
did what he knew to be unwise. Although the admiration he had felt for
the Empress Josephine passed away with time, and though she had, by many
thoughtless acts, lowered herself in the esteem he always entertained
for her, he had for her, even after his divorce, the most profound
affection. He wept for Duroc, but in secret, as though it were a
weakness.
As to his probity, we know not by what standard to estimate such a
quality in a man who from the very commencement of his public career had
immense riches at his command. When he became commander-in-chief of the
army in Italy and was master of all the wealth of the country, he first
supplied his army abundantly, and then sent assistance to the army on
the Rhine, reserving nothing for himself, or at most only a sum
sufficient to purchase a small house, Rue de la Victoire, a purchase for
which one year’s pay would have sufficed; and had he died in Egypt, his
widow would have been left destitute. Was this the result of pride,
disdain of vulgar enjoyments, or honesty? Perhaps there was a little of
all in this forbearance, which was not unexampled among our generals,
though certainly as rare then as it has ever been. He punished
dishonesty with extreme severity, which might be attributed to his love
of order; but, what was still better, and seemed to indicate that he
possessed the quality of honesty himself, was the positive affection he
showed for honest people, carried so far as to take keen pleasure in
their society.
Still this man, whom God had made so great and so good, was not a
virtuous man, for virtue consists in a fixed idea of duty, to which all
our inclinations, all our desires, moral and physical, must be
subjected, and which could not be the case with one who, of all that
ever lived, put least restraint upon his passions. But if wholly
deficient in what is abstractly understood as virtue, he possessed
certain special virtues, particularly those of a warrior and statesman.
He was temperate, not prone to sensual gratifications, and, it not
exactly chaste he was not a libertine, never, except on occasions of
ceremony, remained more than a few minutes at table; he slept on a hard
bed though his constitution was rather weak than strong, bore, without
even perceiving it, an amount of fatigue that would have exhausted the
most vigorous soldiers; and was capable of prodigious exertion when
mentally occupied with some great undertaking.
He did more than brave danger, he seemed unconscious of its existence,
and was ever to be found wherever he was needed to see, direct, or
command. Such was his character as a soldier; as a general he was not
inferior.
Never had the cares of a vast military command been borne with more
coolness, vigor, or presence of mind. If he were occasionally excited
or angry, the officers who knew him best said that all _was going on
well_. When the danger became serious, he was calm, mild, encouraging,
not wishing to add the excitement attendant on his displeasure to that
which naturally arose from the circumstances; he remained perfectly
calm, a power acquired by the habit of restraining his emotions in great
emergencies, and, calculating the extent of the danger, turning it
aside, and thus triumphing over fortune. Formed for great emergencies
and familiarized by habit to every species of peril, he stood by, in
1814, a calm spectator of the suicidal destruction of his own power, a
destruction achieved by his ambition; and still he hoped when all around
despaired, because he perceived resources undivined by anybody else, and
under all vicissitudes, soaring on the wings of genius above the shock
of circumstances, and with the resignation of a self-judged mind he
accepted the deserved punishment of his faults.
Such, in our opinion, was this man, so strange, so self-contradicting,
so many-sided. If among the principal traits of his character there is
one more prominent than the rest, it is a species of moral intemperance.
A prodigy of genius and passion, flung into the chaos of a revolution,
his nature unfolds and develops itself therein. He masters that wild
confusion, replaces it by his own presence, and displays the energy,
audacity, and fickleness of that which he replaced. Succeeding to men
who stopped at nothing, either in virtue or crime, in heroism or
cruelty, surrounded by men who laid no restraints on their passions, he
laid none on his; they wished to convert the world into a universal
republic, he would have it an equally boundless monarchy; they turned
everything into chaos, he formed an almost tyrannical unity; they
disorganized everything, he re-established order; they defied
sovereigns, he dethroned them; they slaughtered men on the scaffold, he
on the battle-field, where blood was shrouded in glory. He immolated
more human beings than did any Asiatic conqueror, and within the narrow
precincts of Europe, peopled with opposing nations, he conquered a
greater space of territory than Tamerlane or Genghis Khan amid the
deserts of Asia.
It was reserved for the French revolution, destined to change the aspect
of European society, to produce a man who would fix the attention of the
world as powerfully as Charlemagne, Cæsar, Hannibal, and Alexander. He
possessed every qualification that could strike, attract, and fix the
attention of mankind, whether we consider the greatness of the part he
was destined to perform, the vastness of the political convulsions he
caused, the splendor, extent, and profundity of his genius, or his
majestic gravity of thought. This son of a Corsican gentleman, who
received the gratuitous military education that ancient royalty bestowed
on the sons of the poor nobility, had scarcely left school when in a
sanguinary tumult he obtained the rank of commander-in-chief, then left
the Parisian army for that of Italy, conquered that country in a month,
successively destroyed all the forces of the European coalition, wrested
from them the peace of Campo-Formio, and then becoming too formidable to
stand beside the government of the republic, he went to seek a new
destiny in the East, passed through the English fleet with five hundred
ships, conquered Egypt at a stride, then thought of following
Alexander’s footsteps in the conquest of India. But suddenly recalled to
the West by the renewal of the European war, after having attempted to
imitate Alexander, he imitated and equaled Hannibal in crossing the
Alps, again overpowered the coalition, and compelled it to accept the
peace of Luneville, and at thirty years of age this son of a poor
Corsican nobleman had already run through a most extraordinary career.
Become pacific for a while, he by his laws laid the basis of modern
society; but again yielding to the impulses of his restless genius, he
once more attacked Europe, vanquished her in three battles--Austerlitz,
Jena, and Friedland--set up and threw down kingdoms, placed the crown
of Charlemagne on his head; and when kings came to offer him their
daughters, chose the descendant of the Cæsars, who presented him with a
son that seemed destined to wear the most brilliant crown in the
universe. He advanced from Cadiz to Moscow, where he was subjected to
the greatest catastrophe on record, rose again, but was again defeated,
and confined in a small island, from which he emerged with a few hundred
faithful soldiers, recovered the crown of France in twenty days,
struggled again against exasperated Europe, sank for the last time at
Waterloo, and having sustained greater wars than those of the Roman
Empire, went--he, the child of a Mediterranean isle--to die on an island
in the ocean, bound like Prometheus by the fear and hatred of kings to a
rock.
This son of a poor Corsican nobleman has indeed played in the world the
parts of Alexander, Hannibal, Cæsar, and Charlemagne! He possessed as
much genius as the greatest among them; acquired as much fame as the
most celebrated, and unfortunately shed more blood than any of them. In
a moral point of view, he is inferior to the best of these great men but
superior to the worst. His ambition was not as futile as that of
Alexander, nor as depraved as that of Cæsar, but it was not as
respectable as Hannibal’s, who sacrificed himself to save his country
the misfortune of being conquered. His ambition was that usual with
conquerors who seek to rule after having aggrandized their native land.
Still he loved France and cherished her glory as dearly as his own.
As a ruler he sought what was right, but sought it as a despot, nor did
he pursue it with the consistency or religious perseverance of
Charlemagne. In variety of talents he was inferior to Cæsar, who, being
compelled to win over his fellow-citizens before ruling them, had to
learn how to persuade as well as how to fight, and could speak, write,
and act with a certain simple majesty. Napoleon, on the other hand,
having acquired power by warfare, had no need of oratory, nor possibly,
though endowed with natural eloquence, could he ever have acquired it,
since he never would have taken the trouble of patiently analyzing his
thought in presence of a deliberative assembly. He could write as he
thought, with force and dignity, but he was sometimes a little
declamatory like his mother, the French revolution; he argued with more
force than Cæsar, but could not narrate with his extreme simplicity or
exquisite taste. He was inferior to the Roman dictator in the variety of
his talents, but superior as a general, both by his peculiar military
genius and by the daring profundity and inexhaustible fertility of his
plans, in which he had but one equal or superior (which we can not
decide)--Hannibal; for he was as daring, as prudent, as subtle, as
inventive, as terrible, and as obstinate as the Carthaginian general,
with one advantage of living at a later period. Succeeding to Hannibal,
Cæsar, the Nassaus, Gustavus Adolphus, Condé, Turenne, and Frederick, he
brought military art to its ultimate perfection. God alone can estimate
the respective merits of such men; all we can do is to sketch some
prominent traits of their wonderful characters.
DUKE OF WELLINGTON.
BY ARCHIBALD ALISON.
[Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, third son of the Earl of
Mornington, born 1769, died 1852. Previous to taking command of the
British armies in Spain against the French, Sir Arthur Wellesley
had achieved great distinction and the rank of major-general in
India. Shortly after his appointment to the Spanish command as
lieutenant-general in 1808, he was raised to the peerage as
Viscount Wellington; and his brilliant success against Napoleon’s
most eminent marshals stamped him as one of the first soldiers of
the age. In 1815 Wellington was placed at the head of the English
forces and their allies, to meet Napoleon in that last convulsive
struggle which ended with the battle of Waterloo. Made
field-marshal and duke for his eminent services, Wellington
afterward signalized his capacity for civil administration as
little inferior to his military skill, and as premier displayed the
most wise and liberal statesmanship.]
The name of no commander in the long array of British greatness will
occupy so large a space in the annals of the world as that of
Wellington; and yet there are few whose public characters possess, with
so many excellences, so simple and unblemished a complexion. It is to
the purity and elevation of his principles in every public situation
that this enviable distinction is to be ascribed. Intrusted early in
life with high command, and subjected from the first to serious
responsibility, he possessed that singleness of heart and integrity of
purpose which, even more than talent or audacity, are the foundations of
true and moral courage, and the only pure path to public greatness; a
sense of duty, a feeling of honor, a generous patriotism, a
forgetfulness of self, constituted the spring of all his actions.
He was ambitious, but it was to serve his king and country only;
fearless, because his whole heart was wound up in these noble objects;
disinterested, because the enriching of himself or his family never for
a moment crossed his mind; insensible to private fame when it interfered
with public duty, indifferent to popular obloquy when it arose from
rectitude of conduct. Like the Roman patriot, he wished rather to be
than appear deserving. “Esse quam bonus malebat, ita quo minus gloriam
petebat eo magis adsequebatur.” Greatness was forced upon him, both in
military and political life, rather because he was felt to be worthiest,
than because he desired to be the first; he was the architect of his own
fortune, but he became so almost unconsciously, while solely engrossed
in constructing that of his country. He has left undone many things, as
a soldier, which might have added to his fame, and done many things, as
a statesman, which were fatal to his power; but he omitted the first
because they would have endangered his country, and committed the second
because he felt them to be essential to its salvation.
It is the honor of England, and of human nature, that such a man should
have risen at such a time to the rule of her armies and her councils;
but he experienced with Themistocles and Scipio Africanus the mutable
tenure of popular applause and the base ingratitude of those whom he had
saved. Having triumphed over the arms of the threatened tyrant, he was
equally immovable in the presence of the insane citizens; and it is hard
to say whether his greatness appeared most when he struck down the
conqueror of Europe on the field of Waterloo, or was himself with
difficulty rescued from death on its anniversary, eighteen years
afterward, in the streets of London.
A constant recollection of these circumstances, and of the peculiar and
very difficult task which was committed to his charge, is necessary in
forming a correct estimate of the Duke of Wellington’s military
achievements. The brilliancy of his course is well known; an unbroken
series of triumphs from Vimiero to Toulouse; the entire expulsion of the
French from the Peninsula; the planting of the British standard in the
heart of France; the successive defeat of those veteran marshals who had
so long conquered in every country of Europe; the overthrow of Waterloo;
the hurling of Napoleon from his throne; and the termination, in one
day, of the military empire founded on twenty years of conquest. But
these results, great and imperishable as they are, convey no adequate
idea, either of the difficulties with which Wellington had to contend,
or of the merit due to his transcendent exertions. With an army seldom
superior in number to a single corps of the French marshals; with troops
dispirited by recent disasters, and wholly unaided by practical
experience; without any compulsory law to recruit his ranks, or any
strong national passion for war to supply its wants, he was called on to
combat successively vast armies, composed, in great part, of veteran
soldiers, perpetually filled by the terrible powers of the conscription,
headed by the chiefs who, risen from the ranks, and practically
acquainted with the duties of war in all its grades, had fought their
way from the grenadier’s musket to the marshal’s baton, and were
followed by men who, trained in the same school, were animated by the
same ambition.
Still more, he was the general of a nation in which the chivalrous and
mercantile qualities are strongly blended together; which, justly proud
of its historic glory, is unreasonably jealous of its military
expenditure; which, covetous beyond measure of warlike renown, is
ruinously impatient of pacific preparation; which starves its
establishment when danger is over, and yet frets at defeat when its
terrors are present; which dreams, in war, of Cressy and Agincourt, and
ruminates, in peace, on economic reduction.
He combated at the head of an alliance formed of heterogeneous states,
composed of discordant materials, in which ancient animosities and
religious divisions were imperfectly suppressed by recent fervor or
present danger; in which corruption often paralyzed the arm of
patriotism, and jealousy withheld the resources of power. He acted under
the direction of a ministry which, albeit zealous and active, was alike
inexperienced in hostility and unskilled in combinations; in presence of
an opposition which, powerful in eloquence, supported by faction, was
prejudiced against the war, and indefatigable to arrest it; for the
interests of a people, who, although ardent in the cause and
enthusiastic in its support, were impatient of disaster and prone to
depression, and whose military resources, how great soever, were
dissipated in the protection of a colonial empire which encircled the
earth.
Nothing but the most consummate prudence, as well as ability in conduct,
could with such means have achieved victory over such an enemy, and the
character of Wellington was singularly fitted for the task. Capable,
when the occasion required or opportunity was afforded, of the most
daring enterprises, he was yet cautious and wary in his general conduct;
prodigal of his own labor, regardless of his own person, he was
avaricious only of the blood of his soldiers. Endowed by Nature with an
indomitable soul, a constitution of iron, he possessed that tenacity of
purpose and indefatigable activity which is ever necessary to great
achievements; prudent in council, sagacious in design, he was yet prompt
and decided in action. No general ever revolved the probable dangers of
an enterprise more anxiously before undertaking it, none possessed in a
higher degree the eagle eye, the arm of steel, necessary to carry it
into execution.
By the steady application of these rare qualities he was enabled to
raise the British military force from an unworthy state of depression to
an unparalleled pitch of glory; to educate, in presence of the enemy,
not only his soldiers in the field, but his rulers in the cabinet; to
silence, by avoiding disaster, the clamor of his enemies; to strengthen,
by progressive success, the ascendency of his friends; to augment, by
the exhibition of its results, the energy of the government; to rouse,
by deeds of glory, the enthusiasm of the people.
Skillfully seizing the opportunity of victory, he studiously avoided the
chances of defeat; aware that a single disaster would at once endanger
his prospects, discourage his countrymen, and strengthen his opponents,
he was content to forego many opportunities of earning fame, and stifle
many desires to grasp at glory; magnanimously checking the aspirations
of genius, he trusted for ultimate success rather to perseverance in a
wise, than audacity in a daring course. He thus succeeded during six
successive campaigns, with a comparatively inconsiderable army, in
maintaining his ground against the vast and veteran forces of Napoleon,
in defeating successively all his marshals, baffling successively all
his enterprises, and finally rousing such an enthusiastic spirit in the
British Empire as enabled its Government to put forth its immense
resources on a scale worthy of its present greatness and ancient renown,
and terminate a contest of twenty years by planting the English standard
on the walls of Paris.
THE END.
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* * * * *
THE
HISTORICAL REFERENCE-BOOK,
COMPRISING:
_A Chronological Table of Universal History, a Chronological Dictionary
of Universal History, a Biographical Dictionary_.
WITH GEOGRAPHICAL NOTES.
FOR THE USE OF STUDENTS, TEACHERS, AND READERS.
_By LOUIS HEILPRIN._
New edition. Crown 8vo. Half leather, $3.00.
“A second revised edition of Mr. Louis Heilprin’s ‘Historical
Reference-Book’ has just appeared, marking the well-earned success of
this admirable work--a dictionary of dates, a dictionary of events (with
a special gazetteer for the places mentioned), and a concise
biographical dictionary, all in one, and all in the highest degree
trustworthy. Mr. Heilprin’s revision is as thorough as his original
work. Any one can test it by running over the list of persons deceased
since this manual first appeared. Corrections, too, have been made, as
we can testify in one instance at least.”--_New York Evening Post._
“One of the most complete, compact, and valuable works of reference yet
produced.”--_Troy Daily Times._
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space.”--_Philadelphia American._
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place in every public and private library.”--_Boston Beacon._
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York Home Journal._
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student.”--_Detroit Free Press._
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find the information of which he is in search, the volume is far in
advance of any work of its kind with which we are acquainted.”--_Boston
Saturday Evening Gazette._
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accompany the historical incidents are a novel addition, and exceedingly
helpful._ The size also commends it, making it convenient for constant
reference, while the three divisions and careful elimination of minor
and uninteresting incidents make it much easier to find dates and events
about which accuracy is necessary. Sir William Hamilton avers that too
retentive a memory tends to hinder the development of the judgment by
presenting too much for decision. A work like this is thus better than
memory. It is a ‘mental larder’ which needs no care, and whose contents
are ever available.”--_New York University Quarterly._
New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] This and the succeeding selection from the works of Prescott are
included by kind permission of Messrs. Lippincott & Co.
[2] This and other selections from the works of Motley are included by
kind permission of Messrs. Harper & Brothers.
[3] Miltiades claimed descent from Æacus, the fabled son of Jupiter,
father of Peleus and Telamon, and grandfather of Achilles and Ajax the
Greater, the chiefs of the Greek heroes before Troy.--G. T. F.
[4] Peisistratos was the tyrant of Athens, the overthrow of whose
family, about 510 B.C., laid the foundation of the Athenian
democracy.--G. T. F.
[5] The leadership in a league or confederation, as to-day it may be
said Prussia possesses the “hegemony” of Germany.--G. T. F.
[6] Jugurtha was a Numidian prince, who at one time served in the Roman
armies. He afterward usurped the Numidian kingdom in Africa, and, after
a tedious war, was subjugated by the Romans, brought to Rome, and
starved in his dungeon.--G. T. F.
[7] Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus (Minor), the final destroyer of
Carthage.--G. T. F.
[8] A Roman magistrate, inferior to consul, appointed to rule a
province.--G. T. F.
[9] The war against Jugurtha.
[10] This kingdom was situated in Asia Minor, on the southern and
eastern shores of the Euxine (Black) Sea, between Bithynia and Armenia.
With the first-named region it constituted the extreme north-western
portion of what is now Asiatic Turkey.--G. T. F.
[11] The office charged with financial administration. A military prætor
was at the head of the pay and commissary department.--G. T. F.
[12] Publius Cornelius Cinna, consul from 86 B.C. to 83.--G. T. F.
[13] Gallio was the proconsul of Achaia, and the elder brother of the
philosopher Seneca. The Apostle Paul was brought before his
judgment-seat by the Jews, and he thus answered: “If it were a matter of
wrong or wicked lewdness, O ye Jews, reason would that I should bear
with you. But if it be a question of words and names, and of your law,
look ye to it; for I will be no judge of such matters.” Acts 18: 14, 15.
The name has become a synonym for the attitude of philosophical
indifference. (G.F.F.)
[14] The legal fiction of the republic and of its governmental machinery
was carefully perpetuated by Augustus and his successors in the empire
until the destruction of the Western Empire. Public acts were in the
name of the “senate and people of Rome.” The same pious fraud continued
in the Empire of the East till the reign of Justinian.--G. T. F.
[15] This historian was one of the most bitter and bigoted of the
writers under the new Christian epoch; and his partisanship was pursued
with an acrimony unworthy of the great cause in which he was
retained.--G. T. F.
[16] The Emperor Julian was succeeded by Jovian, one of his generals,
who was at once proclaimed by the troops. Before, however, he could
march to Constantinople he died from a fit of indigestion, or of poison.
Valentinian, a general of Pannonian ancestry distinguished for his
military skill and courage, was then proclaimed.--G. T. F.
[17] Theodosius, though justly provoked by the contumacy of the people
of Antioch in casting down and destroying his statues, consulted pride
rather than justice in the severe measures which he at first proposed,
which would have depopulated Antioch, confiscated its wealth, and
destroyed its rank as a capital. The punishment of Thessalonica, on the
other hand, though cruel and excessive, was prompted by a cause more
adequate. A favorite general, Botheric, was brutally assassinated by the
turbulent populace in a circus riot. The wrath of the outraged emperor
was only satiated by a promiscuous massacre of from seven to fifteen
thousand people.--G. T. F.
[18] The characters mentioned by Sir William Temple, the author alluded
to, are Belisarius, Ætius, John Hunniades, Gonsalvo of Cordova,
Scanderbeg, Alexander Duke of Parma, and the Prince of Orange.
[19] Gibbon, while recognizing the correct orthography of the name
Mohammed, prefers to use the then popular substitute of “Mahomet,” as
that by which the Arabian prophet was almost universally known.--G. T.
F.
[20] The sister of Svein had fled to Olaf’s court for protection against
a detested marriage, whereon Olaf had become enamored of and married the
fair fugitive. As Queen Sigrid had formerly been jilted by Olaf his
marriage had been a sore blow to her.--G. T. F.
[21] Derived from an old Italian word meaning astuteness or
shrewdness.--G. T. F.
[22] Froissart’s “Chronicles.”
[23] The reader scarcely needs to be informed that, in the time of
Gibbon, the British East India Company was the practical maister of
Hindostan.
[24] Philip II, king of Spain.--G. T. F.
[25] A noted Protestant general, to whom Wallenstein had been opposed in
more than one campaign.
[26] Ferdinand of Austria, the head of the Catholic League of Germany
and Spain, by whom the Thirty Years’ War was inaugurated.--G. T. F.
[27] The time of life selected by Macaulay for this picture was just
prior to William’s accession to the English throne.--G. T. F.
[28] Father of Charles James Fox, whose picture is given by Lecky in
another sketch.--G. T. F.
[29] King of Spain.
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