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Title: The Story of Mankind

Author: Hendrik Van Loon

Release Date: July 24, 2014 [EBook #46399]

Language: English

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THE STORY OF MANKIND


BY HENDRIK VAN LOON, AB. PH.D.
Author of The Fall of the Dutch Republic, The Rise of the Dutch
Kingdom, The Golden Book of the Dutch Navigators,
A Short Story of Discovery, Ancient Man.

This book is fully illustrated with eight three-color


pages, over one hundred black and white pictures and
numerous animated maps and half-tones drawn by the
author.
Frontispiece
THE SCENE OF OUR HISTORY IS LAID UPON A LITTLE PLANET, LOST IN THE VASTNESS OF THE UNIVERSE.

Title Page
THE STORY OF
MANKIND

BY
HENDRIK VAN LOON

BONI AND LIVERIGHT

First Printing, November, 1921


Second Printing, December, 1921
Third Printing, January, 1922
Fourth Printing, February, 1922
Fifth Printing, February, 1922
Sixth Printing, March, 1922
Seventh Printing, April, 1922
Eighth Printing, May, 1922
Ninth Printing, May, 1922
Tenth Printing, June, 1922
Eleventh Printing, July, 1922
Twelfth Printing, July, 1922
Thirteenth Printing, August, 1922
Fourteenth Printing, August, 1922
Fifteenth Printing, September, 1922
Sixteenth Printing, September, 1922
Seventeenth Printing, September, 1922
Eighteenth Printing, October, 1922
Nineteenth Printing, November, 1922
Twentieth Printing, December, 1922
THE STORY OF MANKIND

COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY
BONI & LIVERIGHT, INC.

Copyright in All Countries

Printed in the United States of America

To JIMMIE
“What is the use of a book without pictures?” said Alice.

Hearth
FOREWORD

For Hansje and Willem:


WHEN I was twelve or thirteen years old, an uncle of mine who gave me my
love for books and pictures promised to take me upon a memorable expedition. I
was to go with him to the top of the tower of Old Saint Lawrence in Rotterdam.
And so, one fine day, a sexton with a key as large as that of Saint Peter opened
a mysterious door. “Ring the bell,” he said, “when you come back and want to
get out,” and with a great grinding of rusty old hinges he separated us from the
noise of the busy street and locked us into a world of new and strange
experiences.
For the first time in my life I was confronted by the phenomenon of audible
silence. When we had climbed the first flight of stairs, I added another discovery
to my limited knowledge of natural phenomena—that of tangible darkness. A
match showed us where the upward road continued. We went to the next floor
and then to the next and the next until I had lost count and then there came still
another floor, and suddenly we had plenty of light. This floor was on an even
height with the roof of the church, and it was used as a storeroom. Covered with
many inches of dust, there lay the abandoned symbols of a venerable faith which
had been discarded by the good people of the city many years ago. That which
had meant life and death to our ancestors was here reduced to junk and rubbish.
The industrious rat had built his nest among the carved images and the ever
watchful spider had opened up shop between the outspread arms of a kindly
saint.
The next floor showed us from where we had derived our light. Enormous
open windows with heavy iron bars made the high and barren room the roosting
place of hundreds of pigeons. The wind blew through the iron bars and the air
was filled with a weird and pleasing music. It was the noise of the town below
us, but a noise which had been purified and cleansed by the distance. The
rumbling of heavy carts and the clinking of horses’ hoofs, the winding of cranes
and pulleys, the hissing sound of the patient steam which had been set to do the
work of man in a thousand different ways—they had all been blended into a
softly rustling whisper which provided a beautiful background for the trembling
cooing of the pigeons.
Here the stairs came to an end and the ladders began. And after the first ladder
(a slippery old thing which made one feel his way with a cautious foot) there
was a new and even greater wonder, the town-clock. I saw the heart of time. I
could hear the heavy pulsebeats of the rapid seconds—one—two—three—up to
sixty. Then a sudden quivering noise when all the wheels seemed to stop and
another minute had been chopped off eternity. Without pause it began again—
one—two—three—until at last after a warning rumble and the scraping of many
wheels a thunderous voice, high above us, told the world that it was the hour of
noon.
On the next floor were the bells. The nice little bells and their terrible sisters.
In the centre the big bell, which made me turn stiff with fright when I heard it in
the middle of the night telling a story of fire or flood. In solitary grandeur it
seemed to reflect upon those six hundred years during which it had shared the
joys and the sorrows of the good people of Rotterdam. Around it, neatly
arranged like the blue jars in an old-fashioned apothecary shop, hung the little
fellows, who twice each week played a merry tune for the benefit of the country-
folk who had come to market to buy and sell and hear what the big world had
been doing. But in a corner—all alone and shunned by the others—a big black
bell, silent and stern, the bell of death.
Then darkness once more and other ladders, steeper and even more dangerous
than those we had climbed before, and suddenly the fresh air of the wide
heavens. We had reached the highest gallery. Above us the sky. Below us the city
—a little toy-town, where busy ants were hastily crawling hither and thither,
each one intent upon his or her particular business, and beyond the jumble of
stones, the wide greenness of the open country.
It was my first glimpse of the big world.
Since then, whenever I have had the opportunity, I have gone to the top of the
tower and enjoyed myself. It was hard work, but it repaid in full the mere
physical exertion of climbing a few stairs.
Besides, I knew what my reward would be. I would see the land and the sky,
and I would listen to the stories of my kind friend the watchman, who lived in a
small shack, built in a sheltered corner of the gallery. He looked after the clock
and was a father to the bells, and he warned of fires, but he enjoyed many free
hours and then he smoked a pipe and thought his own peaceful thoughts. He had
gone to school almost fifty years before and he had rarely read a book, but he
had lived on the top of his tower for so many years that he had absorbed the
wisdom of that wide world which surrounded him on all sides.
History he knew well, for it was a living thing with him. “There,” he would
say, pointing to a bend of the river, “there, my boy, do you see those trees? That
is where the Prince of Orange cut the dikes to drown the land and save Leyden.”
Or he would tell me the tale of the old Meuse, until the broad river ceased to be a
convenient harbour and became a wonderful highroad, carrying the ships of De
Ruyter and Tromp upon that famous last voyage, when they gave their lives that
the sea might be free to all.
Then there were the little villages, clustering around the protecting church
which once, many years ago, had been the home of their Patron Saints. In the
distance we could see the leaning tower of Delft. Within sight of its high arches,
William the Silent had been murdered and there Grotius had learned to construe
his first Latin sentences. And still further away, the long low body of the church
of Gouda, the early home of the man whose wit had proved mightier than the
armies of many an emperor, the charity-boy whom the world came to know as
Erasmus.
Finally the silver line of the endless sea and as a contrast, immediately below
us, the patchwork of roofs and chimneys and houses and gardens and hospitals
and schools and railways, which we called our home. But the tower showed us
the old home in a new light. The confused commotion of the streets and the
market-place, of the factories and the workshop, became the well-ordered
expression of human energy and purpose. Best of all, the wide view of the
glorious past, which surrounded us on all sides, gave us new courage to face the
problems of the future when we had gone back to our daily tasks.
History is the mighty Tower of Experience, which Time has built amidst the
endless fields of bygone ages. It is no easy task to reach the top of this ancient
structure and get the benefit of the full view. There is no elevator, but young feet
are strong and it can be done.
Here I give you the key that will open the door.
When you return, you too will understand the reason for my enthusiasm.
HENDRIK WILLEM VAN LOON.
CONTENTS

PAGE
1. THE SETTING OF THE STAGE 3
2. OUR EARLIEST ANCESTORS 9
3. PREHISTORIC MAN BEGINS TO MAKE THINGS FOR HIMSELF 13
4. THE EGYPTIANS INVENT THE ART OF WRITING AND THE RECORD OF HISTORY BEGINS 17
5. THE BEGINNING OF CIVILISATION IN THE VALLEY OF THE NILE 22
6. THE RISE AND FALL OF EGYPT 27
7. MESOPOTAMIA, THE SECOND CENTRE OF EASTERN CIVILISATION 29
8. THE SUMERIAN NAIL WRITERS, WHOSE CLAY TABLETS TELL US THE STORY OF ASSYRIA AND
BABYLONIA, THE GREAT SEMITIC MELTING-POT 32
9. THE STORY OF MOSES, THE LEADER OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE 38
10. THE PHŒNICIANS, WHO GAVE US OUR ALPHABET 42
11. THE INDO-EUROPEAN PERSIANS CONQUER THE SEMITIC AND THE EGYPTIAN WORLD 44
12. THE PEOPLE OF THE ÆGEAN SEA CARRIED THE CIVILISATION OF OLD ASIA INTO THE WILDERNESS
OF EUROPE 48
13. MEANWHILE THE INDO-EUROPEAN TRIBE OF THE HELLENES WAS TAKING POSSESSION OF GREECE 54
14. THE GREEK CITIES THAT WERE REALLY STATES 59
15. THE GREEKS WERE THE FIRST PEOPLE TO TRY THE DIFFICULT EXPERIMENT OF SELF-GOVERNMENT 62
16. HOW THE GREEKS LIVED 66
17. THE ORIGINS OF THE THEATRE, THE FIRST FORM OF PUBLIC AMUSEMENT 71
18. HOW THE GREEKS DEFENDED EUROPE AGAINST AN ASIATIC INVASION AND DROVE THE PERSIANS
BACK ACROSS THE ÆGEAN SEA 74
19. HOW ATHENS AND SPARTA FOUGHT A LONG AND DISASTROUS WAR FOR THE LEADERSHIP OF
GREECE 81
20. ALEXANDER THE MACEDONIAN ESTABLISHES A GREEK WORLD-EMPIRE, AND WHAT BECAME OF
THIS HIGH AMBITION 83
21. A SHORT SUMMARY OF CHAPTERS 1 TO 20 85
22. THE SEMITIC COLONY OF CARTHAGE ON THE NORTHERN COAST OF AFRICA AND THE INDO-
EUROPEAN CITY OF ROME ON THE WEST COAST OF ITALY FOUGHT EACH OTHER FOR THE
POSSESSION OF THE WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN AND CARTHAGE WAS DESTROYED 88
23. HOW ROME HAPPENED 105
24. HOW THE REPUBLIC OF ROME, AFTER CENTURIES OF UNREST AND REVOLUTION, BECAME AN
EMPIRE 109
25. THE STORY OF JOSHUA OF NAZARETH, WHOM THE GREEKS CALLED JESUS 119
26. THE TWILIGHT OF ROME 124
27. HOW ROME BECAME THE CENTRE OF THE CHRISTIAN WORLD 131
28. AHMED, THE CAMEL DRIVER, WHO BECAME THE PROPHET OF THE ARABIAN DESERT, AND WHOSE
FOLLOWERS ALMOST CONQUERED THE ENTIRE KNOWN WORLD FOR THE GREATER GLORY OF 138
ALLAH, THE “ONLY TRUE GOD”
29. HOW CHARLEMAGNE, THE KING OF THE FRANKS, CAME TO BEAR THE TITLE OF EMPEROR AND
TRIED TO REVIVE THE OLD IDEAL OF WORLD-EMPIRE 144
30. WHY THE PEOPLE OF THE TENTH CENTURY PRAYED THE LORD TO PROTECT THEM FROM THE FURY
OF THE NORSEMEN 150
31. HOW CENTRAL EUROPE, ATTACKED FROM THREE SIDES, BECAME AN ARMED CAMP AND WHY
EUROPE WOULD HAVE PERISHED WITHOUT THOSE PROFESSIONAL SOLDIERS AND
ADMINISTRATORS WHO WERE PART OF THE FEUDAL SYSTEM 155
32. CHIVALRY 159
33. THE STRANGE DOUBLE LOYALTY OF THE PEOPLE OF THE MIDDLE AGES, AND HOW IT LED TO
ENDLESS QUARRELS BETWEEN THE POPES AND THE HOLY ROMAN EMPERORS 162
34. BUT ALL THESE DIFFERENT QUARRELS WERE FORGOTTEN WHEN THE TURKS TOOK THE HOLY
LAND, DESECRATED THE HOLY PLACES AND INTERFERED SERIOUSLY WITH THE TRADE FROM
EAST TO WEST. EUROPE WENT CRUSADING 168
35. WHY THE PEOPLE OF THE MIDDLE AGES SAID THAT “CITY AIR IS FREE AIR” 174
36. HOW THE PEOPLE OF THE CITIES ASSERTED THEIR RIGHT TO BE HEARD IN THE ROYAL COUNCILS
OF THEIR COUNTRY 184
37. WHAT THE PEOPLE OF THE MIDDLE AGES THOUGHT OF THE WORLD IN WHICH THEY HAPPENED TO
LIVE 191
38. HOW THE CRUSADES ONCE MORE MADE THE MEDITERRANEAN A BUSY CENTRE OF TRADE AND
HOW THE CITIES OF THE ITALIAN PENINSULA BECAME THE GREAT DISTRIBUTING CENTRE FOR
THE COMMERCE WITH ASIA AND AFRICA 198
39. PEOPLE ONCE MORE DARED TO BE HAPPY JUST BECAUSE THEY WERE ALIVE. THEY TRIED TO
SAVE THE REMAINS OF THE OLDER AND MORE AGREEABLE CIVILISATION OF ROME AND GREECE
AND THEY WERE SO PROUD OF THEIR ACHIEVEMENTS THAT THEY SPOKE OF A “RENAISSANCE”
OR RE-BIRTH OF CIVILISATION 206
40. THE PEOPLE BEGAN TO FEEL THE NEED OF GIVING EXPRESSION TO THEIR NEWLY DISCOVERED JOY
OF LIVING . THEY EXPRESSED THEIR HAPPINESS IN POETRY AND IN SCULPTURE AND IN
ARCHITECTURE AND PAINTING, AND IN THE BOOKS THEY PRINTED 219
41. BUT NOW THAT PEOPLE HAD BROKEN THROUGH THE BONDS OF THEIR NARROW MEDIÆVAL
LIMITATIONS, THEY HAD TO HAVE MORE ROOM FOR THEIR WANDERINGS. THE EUROPEAN
WORLD HAD GROWN TOO SMALL FOR THEIR AMBITIONS. IT WAS THE TIME OF THE GREAT
VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY 224
42. CONCERNING BUDDHA AND CONFUCIUS 241
43. THE PROGRESS OF THE HUMAN RACE IS BEST COMPARED TO A GIGANTIC PENDULUM WHICH
FOREVER SWINGS FORWARD AND BACKWARD. THE RELIGIOUS INDIFFERENCE AND THE ARTISTIC
AND LITERARY ENTHUSIASM OF THE RENAISSANCE WERE FOLLOWED BY THE ARTISTIC AND
LITERARY INDIFFERENCE AND THE RELIGIOUS ENTHUSIASM OF THE REFORMATION 251
44. THE AGE OF THE GREAT RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSIES 262
45. HOW THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE “DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS” AND THE LESS DIVINE BUT MORE
REASONABLE “RIGHT OF PARLIAMENT” ENDED DISASTROUSLY FOR KING CHARLES I 279
46. IN FRANCE, ON THE OTHER HAND, THE “DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS” CONTINUED WITH GREATER
POMP AND SPLENDOR THAN EVER BEFORE AND THE AMBITION OF THE RULER WAS ONLY
TEMPERED BY THE NEWLY INVENTED LAW OF THE “BALANCE OF POWER” 296
47. THE STORY OF THE MYSTERIOUS MUSCOVITE EMPIRE WHICH SUDDENLY BURST UPON THE GRAND
POLITICAL STAGE OF EUROPE 301
48. RUSSIA AND SWEDEN FOUGHT MANY WARS TO DECIDE WHO SHALL BE THE LEADING POWER OF
NORTHEASTERN EUROPE 308
49. THE EXTRAORDINARY RISE OF A LITTLE STATE IN A DREARY PART OF NORTHERN GERMANY,
CALLED PRUSSIA 313
50. HOW THE NEWLY FOUNDED NATIONAL OR DYNASTIC STATES OF EUROPE TRIED TO MAKE
THEMSELVES RICH AND WHAT WAS MEANT BY THE MERCANTILE SYSTEM 317
51. AT THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EUROPE HEARD STRANGE REPORTS OF SOMETHING
WHICH HAD HAPPENED IN THE WILDERNESS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN CONTINENT. THE
DESCENDANTS OF THE MEN WHO HAD PUNISHED KING CHARLES FOR HIS INSISTENCE UPON HIS
“DIVINE RIGHTS” ADDED A NEW CHAPTER TO THE OLD STORY OF THE STRUGGLE FOR SELF-
GOVERNMENT 323
52. THE GREAT FRENCH REVOLUTION PROCLAIMS THE PRINCIPLES OF LIBERTY, FRATERNITY AND
EQUALITY UNTO ALL THE PEOPLE OF THE EARTH 334
53. NAPOLEON 349
54. AS SOON AS NAPOLEON HAD BEEN SENT TO ST. HELENA, THE RULERS WHO SO OFTEN HAD BEEN
DEFEATED BY THE HATED “CORSICAN” MET AT VIENNA AND TRIED TO UNDO THE MANY
CHANGES WHICH HAD BEEN BROUGHT ABOUT BY THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 361
55. THEY TRIED TO ASSURE THE WORLD AN ERA OF UNDISTURBED PEACE BY SUPPRESSING ALL NEW
IDEAS. THEY MADE THE POLICE-SPY THE HIGHEST FUNCTIONARY IN THE STATE AND SOON THE
PRISONS OF ALL COUNTRIES WERE FILLED WITH THOSE WHO CLAIMED THAT PEOPLE HAVE THE
RIGHT TO GOVERN THEMSELVES AS THEY SEE FIT 373
56. THE LOVE OF NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE, HOWEVER, WAS TOO STRONG TO BE DESTROYED IN THIS
WAY. THE SOUTH AMERICANS WERE THE FIRST TO REBEL AGAINST THE REACTIONARY
MEASURES OF THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA. GREECE AND BELGIUM AND SPAIN AND A LARGE
NUMBER OF OTHER COUNTRIES OF THE EUROPEAN CONTINENT FOLLOWED SUIT AND THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY WAS FILLED WITH THE RUMOR OF MANY WARS OF INDEPENDENCE 381
57. BUT WHILE THE PEOPLE OF EUROPE WERE FIGHTING FOR THEIR NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE, THE
WORLD IN WHICH THEY LIVED HAD BEEN ENTIRELY CHANGED BY A SERIES OF INVENTIONS,
WHICH HAD MADE THE CLUMSY OLD STEAM-ENGINE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY THE MOST
FAITHFUL AND EFFICIENT SLAVE OF MAN 402
58. THE NEW ENGINES WERE VERY EXPENSIVE AND ONLY PEOPLE OF WEALTH COULD AFFORD THEM.
THE OLD CARPENTER OR SHOEMAKER WHO HAD BEEN HIS OWN MASTER IN HIS LITTLE
WORKSHOP WAS OBLIGED TO HIRE HIMSELF OUT TO THE OWNERS OF THE BIG MECHANICAL
TOOLS, AND WHILE HE MADE MORE MONEY THAN BEFORE, HE LOST HIS FORMER
INDEPENDENCE AND HE DID NOT LIKE THAT 413
59. THE GENERAL INTRODUCTION OF MACHINERY DID NOT BRING ABOUT THE ERA OF HAPPINESS AND
PROSPERITY WHICH HAD BEEN PREDICTED BY THE GENERATION WHICH SAW THE STAGE COACH
REPLACED BY THE RAILROAD. SEVERAL REMEDIES WERE SUGGESTED, BUT NONE OF THESE
QUITE SOLVED THE PROBLEM 420
60. BUT THE WORLD HAD UNDERGONE ANOTHER CHANGE WHICH WAS OF GREATER IMPORTANCE
THAN EITHER THE POLITICAL OR THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTIONS. AFTER GENERATIONS OF
OPPRESSION AND PERSECUTION, THE SCIENTIST HAD AT LAST GAINED LIBERTY OF ACTION AND
HE WAS NOW TRYING TO DISCOVER THE FUNDAMENTAL LAWS WHICH GOVERN THE UNIVERSE 427
61. A CHAPTER OF ART 433
62. THE LAST FIFTY YEARS, INCLUDING SEVERAL EXPLANATIONS AND A FEW APOLOGIES 446
63. THE GREAT WAR, WHICH WAS REALLY THE STRUGGLE FOR A NEW AND BETTER WORLD 456
64. ANIMATED CHRONOLOGY 467

65. CONCERNING THE PICTURES 473


66. AN HISTORICAL READING LIST FOR CHILDREN 475
67. INDEX 484
LIST OF COLORED PICTURES

The Scene of Our History is Laid Upon a Little Planet, Lost in the
Vastness of the Universe Frontispiece
FACING

PAGE
Greece 84
Rome 126
The Norsemen Are Coming 156
The Castle 164
The Mediæval World 194
A New World 238
Buddha Goes into the Mountains 246
Moscow 306
LIST OF HALF TONE PICTURES

FACING

PAGE
The Temple 68
The Mountain-pass 148
The Mediæval Town 180
The Cathedral 220
The Blockhouse in the Wilderness 328
Off for Trafalgar 362
The Modern City 404
The Dirigible 430
LIST OF PICTURES AND ANIMATED MAPS

PAGE
1. High Up in the North 1
2. It Rained Incessantly 4
3. The Ascent of Man 5
4. The Plants Leave the Sea 6
5. The Growth of the Human Skull 9
6. Pre-history and History 11
7. Prehistoric Europe 15
8. The Valley of Egypt 23
9. The Building of the Pyramids 25
10. Mesopotamia, the Melting-pot of the Ancient World 30
11. A Tower of Babel 34
12. Nineveh 35
13. The Holy City of Babylon 36
14. The Wanderings of the Jews 39
15. Moses Sees the Holy Land 41
16. The Phœnician Trader 42
17. The Story of a Word 45
18. The Indo-Europeans and Their Neighbours 46
19. The Trojan Horse 48
20. Schliemann Digs for Troy 49
21. Mycenæ in Argolis 50
22. The Ægean Sea 51
23. The Island-Bridges Between Asia and Europe 52
24. An Ægean City on the Greek Mainland 54
25. The Achæans Take an Ægean City 55
26. The Fall of Cnossus 56
27. Mount Olympus, Where the Gods Lived 59
28. A Greek City-State 63
29. Greek Society 67
30. The Persian Fleet is Destroyed Near Mount Athos 75
31. The Battle of Marathon 76
32. Thermopylæ 78
33. The Battle of Thermopylæ 78
34. The Persians Burn Athens 79
35. Carthage 89
36. Spheres of Influence 90
37. How the City of Rome Happened 92
38. A Fast Roman Warship 97
39. Hannibal Crosses the Alps 99
40. Hannibal and the CEF 101
41. The Death of Hannibal 103
42. How Rome Happened 105
43. Civilisation Goes Westward 107
44. Cæsar Goes West 114
45. The Great Roman Empire 117
46. The Holy Land 121
47. When the Barbarians Got Through With a Roman City 126
48. The Invasions of the Barbarians 128
49. A Cloister 133
50. The Goths Are Coming! 134
51. The Flight of Mohammed 139
52. The Struggle Between the Cross and the Crescent 143
53. The Holy Roman Empire of German Nationality 147
54. The Home of the Norsemen 151
55. The Norsemen Go to Russia 152
56. The Normans Look Across the Channel 152
57. The World of the Norsemen 153
58. Henry IV at Canossa 165
59. The First Crusade 170
60. The World of the Crusaders 171
61. The Crusaders Take Jerusalem 172
62. The Crusader’s Grave 173
63. The Castle and the City 179
64. The Belfry 182
65. Gunpowder 183
66. The Spreading of the Idea of Popular Sovereignty 185
67. The Home of Swiss Liberty 188
68. The Abjuration of Philip II 189
69. Mediæval Trade 199
70. Great Nowgorod 202
71. The Hansa Ship 204
72. The Mediæval Laboratory 209
73. The Renaissance 210
74. Dante 212
75. John Huss 220
76. The Manuscript and the Printed Book 222
77. Marco Polo 225
78. How the World Grew Larger 227
79. The World of Columbus 230
80. The Great Discoveries. Western Hemisphere 233
81. The Great Discoveries. Eastern Hemisphere 234
82. Magellan 237
83. The Three Great Religions 243
84. The Great Moral Leaders 249
85. Luther Translates the Bible 257
86. The Inquisition 263
87. The Night of St. Bartholomew 268
88. Leyden Delivered by the Cutting of the Dikes 269
89. The Murder of William the Silent 270
90. The Armada is Coming! 271
91. The Death of Hudson 273
92. The Thirty Years War 275
93. Amsterdam in 1648 277
94. The English Nation 280
95. The Hundred Years War 281
96. John and Sebastian Cabot See the Coast of Newfoundland 284
97. The Elizabethan Stage 285
98. The Balance of Power 299
99. The Origin of Russia 303
100. Peter the Great in the Dutch Shipyard 308
101. Peter the Great Builds His New Capital 310
102. The Voyage of the Pilgrims 318
103. How Europe Conquered the World 321
104. Sea Power 322
105. The Fight for Liberty 323
106. The Pilgrims 324
107. How the White Man Settled in North America 325
108. In the Cabin of the Mayflower 327
109. The French Explore the West 328
110. The First Winter in New England 329
111. George Washington 331
112. The Great American Revolution 332
113. The Guillotine 337
114. Louis XVI 339
115. The Bastille 342
116. The French Revolution Invades Holland 347
117. The Retreat from Moscow 355
118. The Battle of Waterloo 358
119. Napoleon Goes Into Exile 359
120. The Spectre Which Frightened the Holy Alliance 364
121. The Real Congress of Vienna 367
122. The Monroe Doctrine 385
123. Giuseppe Mazzini 395
124. The First Steamboat 407
125. The Origin of the Steamboat 408
126. The Origin of the Automobile 409
127. Man-power and Machine-power 414
128. The Factory 416
129. The Philosopher 427
130. Galileo 429
131. Gothic Architecture 437
132. The Troubadour 442
133. The Pioneer 447
134. The Conquest of the West 451
135. War 457
137. ANIMATED CHRONOLOGY 467
142. THE END 472

THE STORY OF MANKIND


Mountain

HIGH up in the North in the land called Svithjod, there stands a rock. It is a
hundred miles high and a hundred miles wide. Once every thousand years a little
bird comes to this rock to sharpen its beak.
When the rock has thus been worn away, then a single day of eternity will
have gone by.
THE SETTING OF THE STAGE

WE live under the shadow of a gigantic question mark.


Who are we?
Where do we come from?
Whither are we bound?
Slowly, but with persistent courage, we have been pushing this question mark
further and further towards that distant line, beyond the horizon, where we hope
to find our answer.
We have not gone very far.
We still know very little but we have reached the point where (with a fair
degree of accuracy) we can guess at many things.
In this chapter I shall tell you how (according to our best belief) the stage was
set for the first appearance of man.
If we represent the time during which it has been possible for animal life to
exist upon our planet by a line of this length, then the tiny line just below
indicates the age during which man (or a creature more or less resembling man)
has lived upon this earth.

Man was the last to come but the first to use his brain for the purpose of
conquering the forces of nature. That is the reason why we are going to study
him, rather than cats or dogs or horses or any of the other animals, who, all in
their own way, have a very interesting historical development behind them.
IT RAINED INCESSANTLY
In the beginning, the planet upon which we live was (as
far as we now know) a large ball of flaming matter, a tiny
cloud of smoke in the endless ocean of space. Gradually, in the course of
millions of years, the surface burned itself out, and was covered with a thin layer
of rocks. Upon these lifeless rocks the rain descended in endless torrents,
wearing out the hard granite and carrying the dust to the valleys that lay hidden
between the high cliffs of the steaming earth.
Finally the hour came when the sun broke through the clouds and saw how
this little planet was covered with a few small puddles which were to develop
into the mighty oceans of the eastern and western hemispheres.
Then one day the great wonder happened. What had been dead, gave birth to
life.
The first living cell floated upon the waters of the sea.
For millions of years it drifted aimlessly with the currents. But during all that
time it was developing certain habits that it might survive more easily upon the
inhospitable earth. Some of these cells were happiest in the dark depths of the
lakes and the pools. They took root in the slimy sediments which had been
carried down from the tops of the hills and they became plants. Others preferred
to move about and they grew strange jointed legs, like scorpions and began to
crawl along the bottom of the sea amidst the plants and the pale green things that
looked like jelly-fishes. Still others (covered with scales) depended upon a
swimming motion to go from place to place in their search for food, and
gradually they populated the ocean with myriads of fishes.

THE ASCENT OF MAN

Meanwhile the plants had increased in number and they had to search for new
dwelling places. There was no more room for them at the bottom of the sea.
Reluctantly they left the water and made a new home in the marshes and on the
mud-banks that lay at the foot of the mountains. Twice a day the tides of the
ocean covered them with their brine. For the rest of the time, the plants made the
best of their uncomfortable situation and tried to survive in the thin air which
surrounded the surface of the planet. After centuries of training, they learned
how to live as comfortably in the air as they had done in the water. They
increased in size and became shrubs and trees and at last they learned how to
grow lovely flowers which attracted the attention of the busy big bumble-bees
and the birds who carried the seeds far and wide until the whole earth had
become covered with green pastures, or lay dark under the shadow of the big
trees.
But some of the fishes too had begun to leave the sea, THE PLANTS LEAVE THE SEA
and they had learned how to breathe with lungs as well as
with gills. We call such creatures amphibious, which means that they are able to
live with equal ease on the land and in the water. The first frog who crosses your
path can tell you all about the pleasures of the double existence of the
amphibian.
Once outside of the water, these animals gradually adapted themselves more
and more to life on land. Some became reptiles (creatures who crawl like lizards)
and they shared the silence of the forests with the insects. That they might move
faster through the soft soil, they improved upon their legs and their size
increased until the world was populated with gigantic forms (which the hand-
books of biology list under the names of Ichthyosaurus and Megalosaurus and
Brontosaurus) who grew to be thirty to forty feet long and who could have
played with elephants as a full grown cat plays with her kittens.
Some of the members of this reptilian family began to live in the tops of the
trees, which were then often more than a hundred feet high. They no longer
needed their legs for the purpose of walking, but it was necessary for them to
move quickly from branch to branch. And so they changed a part of their skin
into a sort of parachute, which stretched between the sides of their bodies and
the small toes of their fore-feet, and gradually they covered this skinny parachute
with feathers and made their tails into a steering gear and flew from tree to tree
and developed into true birds.
Then a strange thing happened. All the gigantic reptiles died within a short
time. We do not know the reason. Perhaps it was due to a sudden change in
climate. Perhaps they had grown so large that they could neither swim nor walk
nor crawl, and they starved to death within sight but not within reach of the big
ferns and trees. Whatever the cause, the million year old world-empire of the big
reptiles was over.
The world now began to be occupied by very different creatures. They were
the descendants of the reptiles but they were quite unlike these because they fed
their young from the “mammæ” or the breasts of the mother. Wherefore modern
science calls these animals “mammals.” They had shed the scales of the fish.
They did not adopt the feathers of the bird, but they covered their bodies with
hair. The mammals however developed other habits which gave their race a great
advantage over the other animals. The female of the species carried the eggs of
the young inside her body until they were hatched and while all other living
beings, up to that time, had left their children exposed to the dangers of cold and
heat, and the attacks of wild beasts, the mammals kept their young with them for
a long time and sheltered them while they were still too weak to fight their
enemies. In this way the young mammals were given a much better chance to
survive, because they learned many things from their mothers, as you will know
if you have ever watched a cat teaching her kittens to take care of themselves
and how to wash their faces and how to catch mice.
But of these mammals I need not tell you much for you know them well. They
surround you on all sides. They are your daily companions in the streets and in
your home, and you can see your less familiar cousins behind the bars of the
zoological garden.
And now we come to the parting of the ways when man suddenly leaves the
endless procession of dumbly living and dying creatures and begins to use his
reason to shape the destiny of his race.
One mammal in particular seemed to surpass all others in its ability to find
food and shelter. It had learned to use its fore-feet for the purpose of holding its
prey, and by dint of practice it had developed a hand-like claw. After
innumerable attempts it had learned how to balance the whole of the body upon
the hind legs. (This is a difficult act, which every child has to learn anew
although the human race has been doing it for over a million years.)
This creature, half ape and half monkey but superior to both, became the most
successful hunter and could make a living in every clime. For greater safety, it
usually moved about in groups. It learned how to make strange grunts to warn its
young of approaching danger and after many hundreds of thousands of years it
began to use these throaty noises for the purpose of talking.
This creature, though you may hardly believe it, was your first “man-like”
ancestor.
OUR EARLIEST ANCESTORS

WE know very little about the first “true” men. We have never seen their
pictures. In the deepest layer of clay of an ancient soil we have sometimes found
pieces of their bones. These lay buried amidst the broken skeletons of other
animals that have long since disappeared from the face of the earth.
Anthropologists (learned scientists who devote their lives to the study of man as
a member of the animal kingdom) have taken these bones and they have been
able to reconstruct our earliest ancestors with a fair degree of accuracy.

THE GROWTH OF THE HUMAN SKULL

The great-great-grandfather of the human race was a very ugly and


unattractive mammal. He was quite small, much smaller than the people of
today. The heat of the sun and the biting wind of the cold winter had coloured his
skin a dark brown. His head and most of his body, his arms and legs too, were
covered with long, coarse hair. He had very thin but strong fingers which made
his hands look like those of a monkey. His forehead was low and his jaw was
like the jaw of a wild animal which uses its teeth both as fork and knife. He wore
no clothes. He had seen no fire except the flames of the rumbling volcanoes
which filled the earth with their smoke and their lava.
He lived in the damp blackness of vast forests, as the pygmies of Africa do to
this very day. When he felt the pangs of hunger he ate raw leaves and the roots
of plants or he took the eggs away from an angry bird and fed them to his own
young. Once in a while, after a long and patient chase, he would catch a sparrow
or a small wild dog or perhaps a rabbit. These he would eat raw for he had never
discovered that food tasted better when it was cooked.
During the hours of day, this primitive human being prowled about looking
for things to eat.
When night descended upon the earth, he hid his wife and his children in a
hollow tree or behind some heavy boulders, for he was surrounded on all sides
by ferocious animals and when it was dark these animals began to prowl about,
looking for something to eat for their mates and their own young, and they liked
the taste of human beings. It was a world where you must either eat or be eaten,
and life was very unhappy because it was full of fear and misery.
In summer, man was exposed to the scorching rays of the sun, and during the
winter his children would freeze to death in his arms. When such a creature hurt
itself, (and hunting animals are forever breaking their bones or spraining their
ankles) he had no one to take care of him and he must die a horrible death.

PREHISTORY AND HISTORY

Like many of the animals who fill the Zoo with their strange noises, early man
liked to jabber. That is to say, he endlessly repeated the same unintelligible
gibberish because it pleased him to hear the sound of his voice. In due time he
learned that he could use this guttural noise to warn his fellow beings whenever
danger threatened and he gave certain little shrieks which came to mean “there is
a tiger!” or “here come five elephants.” Then the others grunted something back
at him and their growl meant, “I see them,” or “let us run away and hide.” And
this was probably the origin of all language.
But, as I have said before, of these beginnings we know so very little. Early
man had no tools and he built himself no houses. He lived and died and left no
trace of his existence except a few collar-bones and a few pieces of his skull.
These tell us that many thousands of years ago the world was inhabited by
certain mammals who were quite different from all the other animals—who had
probably developed from another unknown ape-like animal which had learned to
walk on its hind-legs and use its fore-paws as hands—and who were most
probably connected with the creatures who happen to be our own immediate
ancestors.
It is little enough we know and the rest is darkness.
PREHISTORIC MAN

PREHISTORIC MAN BEGINS TO MAKE THINGS FOR HIMSELF

EARLY man did not know what time meant. He kept no records of birthdays or
wedding anniversaries or the hour of death. He had no idea of days or weeks or
even years. But in a general way he kept track of the seasons for he had noticed
that the cold winter was invariably followed by the mild spring—that spring
grew into the hot summer when fruits ripened and the wild ears of corn were
ready to be eaten and that summer ended when sudden gusts of wind swept the
leaves from the trees and a number of animals were getting ready for the long
hibernal sleep.
But now, something unusual and rather frightening had happened. Something
was the matter with the weather. The warm days of summer had come very late.
The fruits had not ripened. The tops of the mountains which used to be covered
with grass now lay deeply hidden underneath a heavy burden of snow.
Then, one morning, a number of wild people, different from the other
creatures who lived in that neighbourhood, came wandering down from the
region of the high peaks. They looked lean and appeared to be starving. They
uttered sounds which no one could understand. They seemed to say that they
were hungry. There was not food enough for both the old inhabitants and the
newcomers. When they tried to stay more than a few days there was a terrible
battle with claw-like hands and feet and whole families were killed. The others
fled back to their mountain slopes and died in the next blizzard.
But the people in the forest were greatly frightened. All the time the days
grew shorter and the nights grew colder than they ought to have been.
Finally, in a gap between two high hills, there appeared a tiny speck of
greenish ice. Rapidly it increased in size. A gigantic glacier came sliding
downhill. Huge stones were being pushed into the valley. With the noise of a
dozen thunderstorms torrents of ice and mud and blocks of granite suddenly
tumbled among the people of the forest and killed them while they slept. Century
old trees were crushed into kindling wood. And then it began to snow.
It snowed for months and months. All the plants died and the animals fled in
search of the southern sun. Man hoisted his young upon his back and followed
them. But he could not travel as fast as the wilder creatures and he was forced to
choose between quick thinking or quick dying. He seems to have preferred the
former for he has managed to survive the terrible glacial periods which upon
four different occasions threatened to kill every human being on the face of the
earth.
In the first place it was necessary that man clothe himself lest he freeze to
death. He learned how to dig holes and cover them with branches and leaves and
in these traps he caught bears and hyenas, which he then killed with heavy
stones and whose skins he used as coats for himself and his family.
Next came the housing problem. This was simple. Many animals were in the
habit of sleeping in dark caves. Man now followed their example, drove the
animals out of their warm homes and claimed them for his own.
Even so, the climate was too severe for most people and the old and the young
died at a terrible rate. Then a genius bethought himself of the use of fire. Once,
while out hunting, he had been caught in a forest-fire. He remembered that he
had been almost roasted to death by the flames. Thus far fire had been an enemy.
Now it became a friend. A dead tree was dragged into the cave and lighted by
means of smouldering branches from a burning wood. This turned the cave into
a cozy little room.

PREHISTORIC EUROPE

And then one evening a dead chicken fell into the fire. It was not rescued until
it had been well roasted. Man discovered that meat tasted better when cooked
and he then and there discarded one of the old habits which he had shared with
the other animals and began to prepare his food.
In this way thousands of years passed. Only the people with the cleverest
brains survived. They had to struggle day and night against cold and hunger.
They were forced to invent tools. They learned how to sharpen stones into axes
and how to make hammers. They were obliged to put up large stores of food for
the endless days of the winter and they found that clay could be made into bowls
and jars and hardened in the rays of the sun. And so the glacial period, which
had threatened to destroy the human race, became its greatest teacher because it
forced man to use his brain.
HIEROGLYPHICS

THE EGYPTIANS INVENT THE ART OF WRITING AND THE RECORD


OF HISTORY BEGINS

THESE earliest ancestors of ours who lived in the great European wilderness
were rapidly learning many new things. It is safe to say that in due course of
time they would have given up the ways of savages and would have developed a
civilisation of their own. But suddenly there came an end to their isolation. They
were discovered.
A traveller from an unknown southland who had dared to cross the sea and the
high mountain passes had found his way to the wild people of the European
continent. He came from Africa. His home was in Egypt.
The valley of the Nile had developed a high stage of civilisation thousands of
years before the people of the west had dreamed of the possibilities of a fork or a
wheel or a house. And we shall therefore leave our great-great-grandfathers in
their caves, while we visit the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean,
where stood the earliest school of the human race.
The Egyptians have taught us many things. They were excellent farmers. They
knew all about irrigation. They built temples which were afterwards copied by
the Greeks and which served as the earliest models for the churches in which we
worship nowadays. They had invented a calendar which proved such a useful
instrument for the purpose of measuring time that it has survived with a few
changes until today. But most important of all, the Egyptians had learned how to
preserve speech for the benefit of future generations. They had invented the art
of writing.
We are so accustomed to newspapers and books and magazines that we take it
for granted that the world has always been able to read and write. As a matter of
fact, writing, the most important of all inventions, is quite new. Without written
documents we should be like cats and dogs, who can only teach their kittens and
their puppies a few simple things and who, because they cannot write, possess
no way in which they can make use of the experience of those generations of
cats and dogs that have gone before.
In the first century before our era, when the Romans came to Egypt, they
found the valley full of strange little pictures which seemed to have something to
do with the history of the country. But the Romans were not interested in
“anything foreign” and did not inquire into the origin of these queer figures
which covered the walls of the temples and the walls of the palaces and endless
reams of flat sheets made out of the papyrus reed. The last of the Egyptian
priests who had understood the holy art of making such pictures had died several
years before. Egypt deprived of its independence had become a store-house
filled with important historical documents which no one could decipher and
which were of no earthly use to either man or beast.
Seventeen centuries went by and Egypt remained a land of mystery. But in the
year 1798 a French general by the name of Bonaparte happened to visit eastern
Africa to prepare for an attack upon the British Indian Colonies. He did not get
beyond the Nile, and his campaign was a failure. But, quite accidentally, the
famous French expedition solved the problem of the ancient Egyptian picture-
language.
One day a young French officer, much bored by the dreary life of his little
fortress on the Rosetta river (a mouth of the Nile) decided to spend a few idle
hours rummaging among the ruins of the Nile Delta. And behold! he found a
stone which greatly puzzled him. Like everything else in Egypt it was covered
with little figures. But this particular slab of black basalt was different from
anything that had ever been discovered. It carried three inscriptions. One of these
was in Greek. The Greek language was known. “All that is necessary,” so he
reasoned, “is to compare the Greek text with the Egyptian figures, and they will
at once tell their secrets.”
The plan sounded simple enough but it took more than twenty years to solve
the riddle. In the year 1802 a French professor by the name of Champollion
began to compare the Greek and the Egyptian texts of the famous Rosetta stone.
In the year 1823 he announced that he had discovered the meaning of fourteen
little figures. A short time later he died from overwork, but the main principles
of Egyptian writing had become known. Today the story of the valley of the Nile
is better known to us than the story of the Mississippi River. We possess a
written record which covers four thousand years of chronicled history.
As the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics (the word means “sacred writing”) have
played such a very great rôle in history, (a few of them in modified form have
even found their way into our own alphabet,) you ought to know something
about the ingenious system which was used fifty centuries ago to preserve the
spoken word for the benefit of the coming generations.
Of course, you know what a sign language is. Every Indian story of our
western plains has a chapter devoted to strange messages written in the form of
little pictures which tell how many buffaloes were killed and how many hunters
there were in a certain party. As a rule it is not difficult to understand the
meaning of such messages.
Ancient Egyptian, however, was not a sign language. The clever people of the
Nile had passed beyond that stage long before. Their pictures meant a great deal
more than the object which they represented, as I shall try to explain to you now.
Suppose that you were Champollion, and that you were examining a stack of
papyrus sheets, all covered with hieroglyphics. Suddenly you came across a
picture of a man with a saw. “Very well,” you would say, “that means of course
that a farmer went out to cut down a tree.” Then you take another papyrus. It
tells the story of a queen who had died at the age of eighty-two. In the midst of a
sentence appears the picture of the man with the saw. Queens of eighty-two do
not handle saws. The picture therefore must mean something else. But what?
That is the riddle which the Frenchman finally solved. He discovered that the
Egyptians were the first to use what we now call “phonetic writing”—a system
of characters which reproduce the “sound” (or phone) of the spoken word and
which make it possible for us to translate all our spoken words into a written
form, with the help of only a few dots and dashes and pothooks.
Let us return for a moment to the little fellow with the saw. The word “saw”
either means a certain tool which you will find in a carpenter’s shop, or it means
the past tense of the verb “to see.”
This is what had happened to the word during the course of centuries. First of
all it had meant only the particular tool which it represented. Then that meaning
had been lost and it had become the past participle of a verb. After several
hundred years, the Egyptians lost sight of both these meanings and the picture
came to stand for a single letter, the letter S. A short sentence will show you
what I mean. Here is a modern English sentence as it would have been written in
hieroglyphics.
The either means one of these two round objects in your head, which allow
you to see or it means “I,” the person who is talking.
A is either an insect which gathers honey, or it represents the verb “to be”
which means to exist. Again, it may be the first part of a verb like “be-come” or
“be-have.” In this particular instance it is followed by which means a “leaf” or
“leave” or “lieve” (the sound of all three words is the same).
The “eye” you know all about.
Finally you get the picture of a . It is a giraffe. It is part of the old sign-
language out of which the hieroglyphics developed.
You can now read that sentence without much difficulty.
“I believe I saw a giraffe.”
Having invented this system the Egyptians developed it during thousands of
years until they could write anything they wanted, and they used these “canned
words” to send messages to friends, to keep business accounts and to keep a
record of the history of their country, that future generations might benefit by the
mistakes of the past.
THE NILE VALLEY

THE BEGINNING OF CIVILISATION IN THE VALLEY OF THE NILE

THE history of man is the record of a hungry creature in search of food.


Wherever food was plentiful, thither man has travelled to make his home.
The fame of the Valley of the Nile must have spread at an early date. From the
interior of Africa and from the desert of Arabia and from the western part of
Asia people had flocked to Egypt to claim their share of the rich farms. Together
these invaders had formed a new race which called itself “Remi” or “the Men”
just as we sometimes call America “God’s own country.” They had good reason
to be grateful to a Fate which had carried them to this narrow strip of land. In the
summer of each year the Nile turned the valley into a shallow lake and when the
waters receded all the grainfields and the pastures were covered with several
inches of the most fertile clay.
In Egypt a kindly river did the work of a million men and made it possible to
feed the teeming population of the first large cities of which we have any record.
It is true that all the arable land was not in the valley. But a complicated system
of small canals and well-sweeps carried water from the river-level to the top of
the highest banks and an even more intricate system of irrigation trenches spread
it throughout the land.

THE VALLEY OF EGYPT

While man of the prehistoric age had been obliged to spend sixteen hours out
of every twenty-four gathering food for himself and the members of his tribe, the
Egyptian peasant or the inhabitant of the Egyptian city found himself possessed
of a certain leisure. He used this spare time to make himself many things that
were merely ornamental and not the least bit useful.
More than that. One day he discovered that his brain was capable of thinking
all kinds of thoughts which had nothing to do with the problems of eating and
sleeping and finding a home for the children. The Egyptian began to speculate
upon many strange problems that confronted him. Where did the stars come
from? Who made the noise of the thunder which frightened him so terribly?
Who made the River Nile rise with such regularity that it was possible to base
the calendar upon the appearance and the disappearance of the annual floods?
Who was he, himself, a strange little creature surrounded on all sides by death
and sickness and yet happy and full of laughter?
He asked these many questions and certain people obligingly stepped forward
to answer these inquiries to the best of their ability. The Egyptians called them
“priests” and they became the guardians of his thoughts and gained great respect
in the community. They were highly learned men who were entrusted with the
sacred task of keeping the written records. They understood that it is not good
for man to think only of his immediate advantage in this world and they drew his
attention to the days of the future when his soul would dwell beyond the
mountains of the west and must give an account of his deeds to Osiris, the
mighty God who was the Ruler of the Living and the Dead and who judged the
acts of men according to their merits. Indeed, the priests made so much of that
future day in the realm of Isis and Osiris that the Egyptians began to regard life
merely as a short preparation for the Hereafter and turned the teeming valley of
the Nile into a land devoted to the Dead.
In a strange way, the Egyptians had come to believe that no soul could enter
the realm of Osiris without the possession of the body which had been its place
of residence in this world. Therefore as soon as a man was dead his relatives
took his corpse and had it embalmed. For weeks it was soaked in a solution of
natron and then it was filled with pitch. The Persian word for pitch was
“Mumiai” and the embalmed body was called a “Mummy.” It was wrapped in
yards and yards of specially prepared linen and it was placed in a specially
prepared coffin ready to be removed to its final home. But an Egyptian grave
was a real home where the body was surrounded by pieces of furniture and
musical instruments (to while away the dreary hours of waiting) and by little
statues of cooks and bakers and barbers (that the occupant of this dark home
might be decently provided with food and need not go about unshaven).

THE BUILDING OF THE PYRAMIDS

Originally these graves had been dug into the rocks of the western mountains
but as the Egyptians moved northward they were obliged to build their
cemeteries in the desert. The desert however is full of wild animals and equally
wild robbers and they broke into the graves and disturbed the mummy or stole
the jewelry that had been buried with the body. To prevent such unholy
desecration the Egyptians used to build small mounds of stones on top of the
graves. These little mounds gradually grew in size, because the rich people built
higher mounds than the poor and there was a good deal of competition to see
who could make the highest hill of stones. The record was made by King Khufu,
whom the Greeks called Cheops and who lived thirty centuries before our era.
His mound, which the Greeks called a pyramid (because the Egyptian word for
high was pir-em-us) was over five hundred feet high.
It covered more than thirteen acres of desert which is three times as much
space as that occupied by the church of St. Peter, the largest edifice of the
Christian world.
During twenty years, over a hundred thousand men were busy carrying the
necessary stones from the other side of the river—ferrying them across the Nile
(how they ever managed to do this, we do not understand), dragging them in
many instances a long distance across the desert and finally hoisting them into
their correct position. But so well did the King’s architects and engineers
perform their task that the narrow passage-way which leads to the royal tomb in
the heart of the stone monster has never yet been pushed out of shape by the
weight of those thousands of tons of stone which press upon it from all sides.
THE STORY OF EGYPT

THE RISE AND FALL OF EGYPT

THE river Nile was a kind friend but occasionally it was a hard taskmaster. It
taught the people who lived along its banks the noble art of “team-work.” They
depended upon each other to build their irrigation trenches and keep their dikes
in repair. In this way they learned how to get along with their neighbours and
their mutual-benefit-association quite easily developed into an organised state.
Then one man grew more powerful than most of his neighbours and he
became the leader of the community and their commander-in-chief when the
envious neighbours of western Asia invaded the prosperous valley. In due course
of time he became their King and ruled all the land from the Mediterranean to
the mountains of the west.
But these political adventures of the old Pharaohs (the word meant “the Man
who lived in the Big House”) rarely interested the patient and toiling peasant of
the grain fields. Provided he was not obliged to pay more taxes to his King than
he thought just, he accepted the rule of Pharaoh as he accepted the rule of
Mighty Osiris.
It was different however when a foreign invader came and robbed him of his
possessions. After twenty centuries of independent life, a savage Arab tribe of
shepherds, called the Hyksos, attacked Egypt and for five hundred years they
were the masters of the valley of the Nile. They were highly unpopular and great
hate was also felt for the Hebrews who came to the land of Goshen to find a
shelter after their long wandering through the desert and who helped the foreign
usurper by acting as his tax-gatherers and his civil servants.
But shortly after the year 1700 B.C. the people of Thebes began a revolution
and after a long struggle the Hyksos were driven out of the country and Egypt
was free once more.
A thousand years later, when Assyria conquered all of western Asia, Egypt
became part of the empire of Sardanapalus. In the seventh century B.C. it became
once more an independent state which obeyed the rule of a king who lived in the
city of Saïs in the Delta of the Nile. But in the year 525 B.C., Cambyses, the king
of the Persians, took possession of Egypt and in the fourth century B.C., when
Persia was conquered by Alexander the Great, Egypt too became a Macedonian
province. It regained a semblance of independence when one of Alexander’s
generals set himself up as king of a new Egyptian state and founded the dynasty
of the Ptolemies, who resided in the newly built city of Alexandria.
Finally, in the year 39 B.C., the Romans came. The last Egyptian queen,
Cleopatra, tried her best to save the country. Her beauty and charm were more
dangerous to the Roman generals than half a dozen Egyptian army corps. Twice
she was successful in her attacks upon the hearts of her Roman conquerors. But
in the year 30 B.C., Augustus, the nephew and heir of Cæsar, landed in
Alexandria. He did not share his late uncle’s admiration for the lovely princess.
He destroyed her armies, but spared her life that he might make her march in his
triumph as part of the spoils of war. When Cleopatra heard of this plan, she
killed herself by taking poison. And Egypt became a Roman province.
MESOPOTAMIA

MESOPOTAMIA—THE SECOND CENTRE OF EASTERN CIVILISATION

I AM going to take you to the top of the highest pyramid and I am going to ask
that you imagine yourself possessed of the eyes of a hawk. Way, way off, in the
distance, far beyond the yellow sands of the desert, you will see something green
and shimmering. It is a valley situated between two rivers. It is the Paradise of
the Old Testament. It is the land of mystery and wonder which the Greeks called
Mesopotamia—the “country between the rivers.”
The names of the two rivers are the Euphrates (which the Babylonians called
the Purattu) and the Tigris (which was known as the Diklat). They begin their
course amidst the snows of the mountains of Armenia where Noah’s Ark found a
resting place and slowly they flow through the southern plain until they reach the
muddy banks of the Persian gulf. They perform a very useful service. They turn
the arid regions of western Asia into a fertile garden.

MESOPOTAMIA, THE MELTING POT OF THE ANCIENT WORLD

The valley of the Nile had attracted people because it had offered them food
upon fairly easy terms. The “land between the rivers” was popular for the same
reason. It was a country full of promise and both the inhabitants of the northern
mountains and the tribes which roamed through the southern deserts tried to
claim this territory as their own and most exclusive possession. The constant
rivalry between the mountaineers and the desert-nomads led to endless warfare.
Only the strongest and the bravest could hope to survive and that will explain
why Mesopotamia became the home of a very strong race of men who were
capable of creating a civilisation which was in every respect as important as that
of Egypt.
THE SUMERIANS

THE SUMERIAN NAIL WRITERS, WHOSE CLAY TABLETS TELL US THE


STORY OF ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA, THE GREAT SEMITIC
MELTING-POT

THE fifteenth century was an age of great discoveries. Columbus tried to find a
way to the island of Kathay and stumbled upon a new and unsuspected
continent. An Austrian bishop equipped an expedition which was to travel
eastward and find the home of the Grand Duke of Muscovy, a voyage which led
to complete failure, for Moscow was not visited by western men until a
generation later. Meanwhile a certain Venetian by the name of Barbero had
explored the ruins of western Asia and had brought back reports of a most
curious language which he had found carved in the rocks of the temples of
Shiraz and engraved upon endless pieces of baked clay.
But Europe was busy with many other things and it was not until the end of
the eighteenth century that the first “cuneiform inscriptions” (so-called because
the letters were wedge-shaped and wedge is called “Cuneus” in Latin) were
brought to Europe by a Danish surveyor, named Niebuhr. Then it took thirty
years before a patient German school-master by the name of Grotefend had
deciphered the first four letters, the D, the A, the R and the SH, the name of the
Persian King Darius. And another twenty years had to go by until a British
officer, Henry Rawlinson, who found the famous inscription of Behistun, gave
us a workable key to the nail-writing of western Asia.
Compared to the problem of deciphering these nail-writings, the job of
Champollion had been an easy one. The Egyptians used pictures. But the
Sumerians, the earliest inhabitants of Mesopotamia, who had hit upon the idea of
scratching their words in tablets of clay, had discarded pictures entirely and had
evolved a system of V-shaped figures which showed little connection with the
pictures out of which they had been developed. A few examples will show you
what I mean. In the beginning a star, when drawn with a nail into a brick looked
as follows: . This sign however was too cumbersome and after a short while
when the meaning of “heaven” was added to that of star the picture was
simplified in this way which made it even more of a puzzle. In the same way an
ox changed from into and a fish changed from into . The sun was originally a
plain circle and became . If we were using the Sumerian script today we would
make an look like . This system of writing down our ideas looks rather
complicated but for more than thirty centuries it was used by the Sumerians and
the Babylonians and the Assyrians and the Persians and all the different races
which forced their way into the fertile valley.

A TOWER OF BABEL

The story of Mesopotamia is one of endless warfare and conquest. First the
Sumerians came from the North. They were a white people who had lived in the
mountains. They had been accustomed to worship their Gods on the tops of hills.
After they had entered the plain they constructed artificial little hills on top of
which they built their altars. They did not know how to build stairs and they
therefore surrounded their towers with sloping galleries. Our engineers have
borrowed this idea, as you may see in our big railroad stations where ascending
galleries lead from one floor to another. We may have borrowed other ideas from
the Sumerians but we do not know it. The Sumerians were entirely absorbed by
those races that entered the fertile valley at a later date. Their towers however
still stand amidst the ruins of Mesopotamia. The Jews saw them when they went
into exile in the land of Babylon and they called them towers of Bab-Illi, or
towers of Babel.

NINEVEH

In the fortieth century before our era, the Sumerians had entered
Mesopotamia. They were soon afterwards overpowered by the Akkadians, one
of the many tribes from the desert of Arabia who speak a common dialect and
who are known as the “Semites,” because in the olden days people believed
them to be the direct descendants of Shem, one of the three sons of Noah. A
thousand years later, the Akkadians were forced to submit to the rule of the
Amorites, another Semitic desert tribe whose great King Hammurabi built
himself a magnificent palace in the holy city of Babylon and who gave his
people a set of laws which made the Babylonian state the best administered
empire of the ancient world. Next the Hittites, whom you will also meet in the
Old Testament, overran the Fertile Valley and destroyed whatever they could not
carry away. They in turn were vanquished by the followers of the great desert
God, Ashur, who called themselves Assyrians and who made the city of Nineveh
the center of a vast and terrible empire which conquered all of western Asia and
Egypt and gathered taxes from countless subject races until the end of the
seventh century before the birth of Christ when the Chaldeans, also a Semitic
tribe, re-established Babylon and made that city the most important capital of
that day. Nebuchadnezzar, the best known of their Kings, encouraged the study
of science, and our modern knowledge of astronomy and mathematics is all
based upon certain first principles which were discovered by the Chaldeans. In
the year 538 B.C. a crude tribe of Persian shepherds invaded this old land and
overthrew the empire of the Chaldeans. Two hundred years later, they in turn
were overthrown by Alexander the Great, who turned the Fertile Valley, the old
melting-pot of so many Semitic races, into a Greek province. Next came the
Romans and after the Romans, the Turks, and Mesopotamia, the second centre of
the world’s civilisation, became a vast wilderness where huge mounds of earth
told a story of ancient glory.
THE HOLY CITY OF BABYLON
MOSES

THE STORY OF MOSES, THE LEADER OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE

SOME time during the twentieth century before our era, a small and
unimportant tribe of Semitic shepherds had left its old home, which was situated
in the land of Ur on the mouth of the Euphrates, and had tried to find new
pastures within the domain of the Kings of Babylonia. They had been driven
away by the royal soldiers and they had moved westward looking for a little
piece of unoccupied territory where they might set up their tents.
This tribe of shepherds was known as the Hebrews or, as we call them, the
Jews. They had wandered far and wide, and after many years of dreary
peregrinations they had been given shelter in Egypt. For more than five centuries
they had dwelt among the Egyptians and when their adopted country had been
overrun by the Hyksos marauders (as I told you in the story of Egypt) they had
managed to make themselves useful to the foreign invader and had been left in
the undisturbed possession of their grazing fields. But after a long war of
independence the Egyptians had driven the Hyksos out of the valley of the Nile
and then the Jews had come upon evil times for they had been degraded to the
rank of common slaves and they had been forced to work on the royal roads and
on the Pyramids. And as the frontiers were guarded by the Egyptian soldiers it
had been impossible for the Jews to escape.

THE WANDERINGS OF THE JEWS

After many years of suffering they were saved from their miserable fate by a
young Jew, called Moses, who for a long time had dwelt in the desert and there
had learned to appreciate the simple virtues of his earliest ancestors, who had
kept away from cities and city-life and had refused to let themselves be
corrupted by the ease and the luxury of a foreign civilisation.
Moses decided to bring his people back to a love of the ways of the patriarchs.
He succeeded in evading the Egyptian troops that were sent after him and led his
fellow tribesmen into the heart of the plain at the foot of Mount Sinai. During his
long and lonely life in the desert, he had learned to revere the strength of the
great God of the Thunder and the Storm, who ruled the high heavens and upon
whom the shepherds depended for life and light and breath. This God, one of the
many divinities who were widely worshipped in western Asia, was called
Jehovah, and through the teaching of Moses, he became the sole Master of the
Hebrew race.
One day, Moses disappeared from the camp of the Jews. It was whispered that
he had gone away carrying two tablets of rough-hewn stone. That afternoon, the
top of the mountain was lost to sight. The darkness of a terrible storm hid it from
the eye of man. But when Moses returned, behold! there stood engraved upon
the tablets the words which Jehovah had spoken unto the people of Israel amidst
the crash of his thunder and the blinding flashes of his lightning. And from that
moment, Jehovah was recognised by all the Jews as the Highest Master of their
Fate, the only True God, who had taught them how to live holy lives when he
bade them to follow the wise lessons of his Ten Commandments.
They followed Moses when he bade them continue their journey through the
desert. They obeyed him when he told them what to eat and drink and what to
avoid that they might keep well in the hot climate. And finally after many years
of wandering they came to a land which seemed pleasant and prosperous. It was
called Palestine, which means the country of the “Pilistu,” the Philistines, a
small tribe of Cretans who had settled along the coast after they had been driven
away from their own island. Unfortunately, the mainland, Palestine, was already
inhabited by another Semitic race, called the Canaanites. But the Jews forced
their way into the valleys and built themselves cities and constructed a mighty
temple in a town which they named Jerusalem, the Home of Peace.

MOSES SEES THE HOLY LAND

As for Moses, he was no longer the leader of his people. He had been allowed
to see the mountain ridges of Palestine from afar. Then he had closed his tired
eyes for all time. He had worked faithfully and hard to please Jehovah. Not only
had he guided his brethren out of foreign slavery into the free and independent
life of a new home but he had also made the Jews the first of all nations to
worship a single God.
THE PHŒNICIANS

THE PHŒNICIANS WHO GAVE US OUR ALPHABET

THE Phœnicians, who were the neighbours of the Jews, were a Semitic tribe
which at a very early age had settled along the shores of the Mediterranean.
They had built themselves two well-fortified towns, Tyre and Sidon, and within
a short time they had gained a monopoly of the trade of the western seas. Their
ships went regularly to Greece and Italy and Spain and they even ventured
beyond the straits of Gibraltar to visit the Scilly islands where they could buy
tin. Wherever they went, they built themselves small trading stations, which they
called colonies. Many of these were the origin of modern cities, such as Cadiz
and Marseilles.

THE PHŒNICIAN TRADER

They bought and sold whatever promised to bring them a good profit. They
were not troubled by a conscience. If we are to believe all their neighbours they
did not know what the words honesty or integrity meant. They regarded a well-
filled treasure chest the highest ideal of all good citizens. Indeed they were very
unpleasant people and did not have a single friend. Nevertheless they have
rendered all coming generations one service of the greatest possible value. They
gave us our alphabet.
The Phœnicians had been familiar with the art of writing, invented by the
Sumerians. But they regarded these pothooks as a clumsy waste of time. They
were practical business men and could not spend hours engraving two or three
letters. They set to work and invented a new system of writing which was greatly
superior to the old one. They borrowed a few pictures from the Egyptians and
they simplified a number of the wedge-shaped figures of the Sumerians. They
sacrificed the pretty looks of the older system for the advantage of speed and
they reduced the thousands of different images to a short and handy alphabet of
twenty-two letters.
In due course of time, this alphabet travelled across the Ægean Sea and
entered Greece. The Greeks added a few letters of their own and carried the
improved system to Italy. The Romans modified the figures somewhat and in
turn taught them to the wild barbarians of western Europe. Those wild
barbarians were our own ancestors, and that is the reason why this book is
written in characters that are of Phœnician origin and not in the hieroglyphics of
the Egyptians or in the nail-script of the Sumerians.
THE INDO-EUROPEANS

THE INDO-EUROPEAN PERSIANS CONQUER THE SEMITIC AND THE


EGYPTIAN WORLD

THE world of Egypt and Babylon and Assyria and Phœnicia had existed
almost thirty centuries and the venerable races of the Fertile Valley were getting
old and tired. Their doom was sealed when a new and more energetic race
appeared upon the horizon. We call this race the Indo-European race, because it
conquered not only Europe but also made itself the ruling class in the country
which is now known as British India.
These Indo-Europeans were white men like the Semites but they spoke a
different language which is regarded as the common ancestor of all European
tongues with the exception of Hungarian and Finnish and the Basque dialects of
Northern Spain.
When we first hear of them, they had been living along the shores of the
Caspian Sea for many centuries. But one day they had packed their tents and
they had wandered forth in search of a new home. Some of them had moved into
the mountains of Central Asia and for many centuries they had lived among the
peaks which surround the plateau of Iran and that is why we call them Aryans.
Others had followed the setting sun and they had taken possession of the plains
of Europe as I shall tell you when I give you the story of Greece and Rome.
For the moment we must follow the Aryans. Under the leadership of
Zarathustra (or Zoroaster) who was their great teacher many of them had left
their mountain homes to follow the swiftly flowing Indus river on its way to the
sea.

THE STORY OF A WORD

Others had preferred to stay among the hills of western Asia and there they
had founded the half-independent communities of the Medes and the Persians,
two peoples whose names we have copied from the old Greek history-books. In
the seventh century before the birth of Christ, the Medes had established a
kingdom of their own called Media, but this perished when Cyrus, the chief of a
clan known as the Anshan, made himself king of all the Persian tribes and
started upon a career of conquest which soon made him and his children the
undisputed masters of the whole of western Asia and of Egypt.

THE INDO-EUROPEANS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS

Indeed, with such energy did these Indo-European Persians push their
triumphant campaigns in the west that they soon found themselves in serious
difficulties with certain other Indo-European tribes which centuries before had
moved into Europe and had taken possession of the Greek peninsula and the
islands of the Ægean Sea.
These difficulties led to the three famous wars between Greece and Persia
during which King Darius and King Xerxes of Persia invaded the northern part
of the peninsula. They ravaged the lands of the Greeks and tried very hard to get
a foothold upon the European continent.
But in this they did not succeed. The navy of Athens proved unconquerable.
By cutting off the lines of supplies of the Persian armies, the Greek sailors
invariably forced the Asiatic rulers to return to their base.
It was the first encounter between Asia, the ancient teacher, and Europe, the
young and eager pupil. A great many of the other chapters of this book will tell
you how the struggle between east and west has continued until this very day.
THE ÆGEAN SEA

THE PEOPLE OF THE ÆGEAN SEA CARRIED THE CIVILISATION OF


OLD ASIA INTO THE WILDERNESS OF EUROPE

WHEN Heinrich Schliemann was a little boy his father told


THE TROJAN HORSE
him the story of Troy. He liked that story better than anything
else he had ever heard and he made up his mind, that as soon as he was big
enough to leave home, he would travel to Greece and “find Troy.” That he was
the son of a poor country parson in a Mecklenburg village did not bother him.
He knew that he would need money but he decided to gather a fortune first and
do the digging afterwards. As a matter of fact, he managed to get a large fortune
within a very short time, and as soon as he had enough money to equip an
expedition, he went to the northwest corner of Asia Minor, where he supposed
that Troy had been situated.

SCHLIEMANN DIGS FOR TROY

In that particular nook of old Asia Minor, stood a high mound covered with
grainfields. According to tradition it had been the home of Priamus the king of
Troy. Schliemann, whose enthusiasm was somewhat greater than his knowledge,
wasted no time in preliminary explorations. At once he began to dig. And he dug
with such zeal and such speed that his trench went straight through the heart of
the city for which he was looking and carried him to the ruins of another buried
town which was at least a thousand years older than the Troy of which Homer
had written. Then something very interesting occurred. If Schliemann had found
a few polished stone hammers and perhaps a few pieces of crude pottery, no one
would have been surprised. Instead of discovering such objects, which people
had generally associated with the prehistoric men who had lived in these regions
before the coming of the Greeks, Schliemann found beautiful statuettes and very
costly jewelry and ornamented vases of a pattern that was unknown to the
Greeks. He ventured the suggestion that fully ten centuries before the great
Trojan war, the coast of the Ægean had been inhabited by a mysterious race of
men who in many ways had been the superiors of the wild Greek tribes who had
invaded their country and had destroyed their civilisation or absorbed it until it
had lost all trace of originality. And this proved to be the case. In the late
seventies of the last century, Schliemann visited the ruins of Mycenæ, ruins
which were so old that Roman guide-books marvelled at their antiquity. There
again, beneath the flat slabs of stone of a small round enclosure, Schliemann
stumbled upon a wonderful treasure-trove, which had been left behind by those
mysterious people who had covered the Greek coast with their cities and who
had built walls, so big and so heavy and so strong, that the Greeks called them
the work of the Titans, those god-like giants who in very olden days had used to
play ball with mountain peaks.

MYCENÆ IN ARGOLIS

A very careful study of these many relics has done away with some of the
romantic features of the story. The makers of these early works of art and the
builders of these strong fortresses were no sorcerers, but simple sailors and
traders. They had lived in Crete, and on the many small islands of the Ægean
Sea. They had been hardy mariners and they had turned the Ægean into a center
of commerce for the exchange of goods between the highly civilised east and the
slowly developing wilderness of the European mainland.

THE ÆGEAN SEA

For more than a thousand years they had maintained an island empire which
had developed a very high form of art. Indeed their most important city,
Cnossus, on the northern coast of Crete, had been entirely modern in its
insistence upon hygiene and comfort. The palace had been properly drained and
the houses had been provided with stoves and the Cnossians had been the first
people to make a daily use of the hitherto unknown bathtub. The palace of their
King had been famous for its winding staircases and its large banqueting hall.
The cellars underneath this palace, where the wine and the grain and the olive-oil
were stored, had been so vast and had so greatly impressed the first Greek
visitors, that they had given rise to the story of the “labyrinth,” the name which
we give to a structure with so many complicated passages that it is almost
impossible to find our way out, once the front door has closed upon our
frightened selves.
THE ISLAND-BRIDGES BETWEEN ASIA AND EUROPE

But what finally became of this great Ægean Empire and what caused its
sudden downfall, that I can not tell.
The Cretans were familiar with the art of writing, but no one has yet been able
to decipher their inscriptions. Their history therefore is unknown to us. We have
to reconstruct the record of their adventures from the ruins which the Ægeans
have left behind. These ruins make it clear that the Ægean world was suddenly
conquered by a less civilised race which had recently come from the plains of
northern Europe. Unless we are very much mistaken, the savages who were
responsible for the destruction of the Cretan and the Ægean civilisation were
none other than certain tribes of wandering shepherds who had just taken
possession of the rocky peninsula between the Adriatic and the Ægean seas and
who are known to us as Greeks.
THE GREEKS

MEANWHILE THE INDO-EUROPEAN TRIBE OF THE HELLENES WAS


TAKING POSSESSION OF GREECE

THE Pyramids were a thousand years old and were beginning to show the first
signs of decay, and Hammurabi, the wise king of Babylon, had been dead and
buried several centuries, when a small tribe of shepherds left their homes along
the banks of the River Danube and wandered southward in search of fresh
pastures. They called themselves Hellenes, after Hellen, the son of Deucalion
and Pyrrha. According to the old myths these were the only two human beings
who had escaped the great flood, which countless years before had destroyed all
the people of the world, when they had grown so wicked that they disgusted
Zeus, the mighty God, who lived on Mount Olympus.

AN ÆGEAN CITY ON THE GREEK MAINLAND

Of these early Hellenes we know nothing. Thucydides, the historian of the fall
of Athens, describing his earliest ancestors, said that they “did not amount to
very much,” and this was probably true. They were very ill-mannered. They
lived like pigs and threw the bodies of their enemies to the wild dogs who
guarded their sheep. They had very little respect for other people’s rights, and
they killed the natives of the Greek peninsula (who were called the Pelasgians)
and stole their farms and took their cattle and made their wives and daughters
slaves and wrote endless songs praising the courage of the clan of the Achæans,
who had led the Hellenic advance-guard into the mountains of Thessaly and the
Peloponnesus.

THE ACHÆANS TAKE AN ÆGEAN CITY

But here and there, on the tops of high rocks, they saw the castles of the
Ægeans and those they did not attack for they feared the metal swords and the
spears of the Ægean soldiers and knew that they could not hope to defeat them
with their clumsy stone axes.
For many centuries they continued to wander from valley to valley and from
mountain side to mountain side. Then the whole of the land had been occupied
and the migration had come to an end.
That moment was the beginning of Greek civilisation. The Greek farmer,
living within sight of the Ægean colonies, was finally driven by curiosity to visit
his haughty neighbours. He discovered that he could learn many useful things
from the men who dwelt behind the high stone walls of Mycenæ and Tiryns.
He was a clever pupil. Within a short time he mastered the art of handling
those strange iron weapons which the Ægeans had brought from Babylon and
from Thebes. He came to understand the mysteries of navigation. He began to
build little boats for his own use.

THE FALL OF CNOSSUS

And when he had learned everything the Ægeans could teach him he turned
upon his teachers and drove them back to their islands. Soon afterwards he
ventured forth upon the sea and conquered all the cities of the Ægean. Finally in
the fifteenth century before our era he plundered and ravaged Cnossus and ten
centuries after their first appearance upon the scene the Hellenes were the
undisputed rulers of Greece, of the Ægean and of the coastal regions of Asia
Minor. Troy, the last great commercial stronghold of the older civilisation, was
destroyed in the eleventh century B.C. European history was to begin in all
seriousness.
THE GREEK CITIES

THE GREEK CITIES THAT WERE REALLY STATES

WE modern people love the sound of the word “big.” We pride ourselves upon
the fact that we belong to the “biggest” country in the world and possess the
“biggest” navy and grow the “biggest” oranges and potatoes, and we love to live
in cities of “millions” of inhabitants and when we are dead we are buried in the
“biggest cemetery of the whole state.”
A citizen of ancient Greece, could he have heard us talk, would not have
known what we meant. “Moderation in all things” was the ideal of his life and
mere bulk did not impress him at all. And this love of moderation was not
merely a hollow phrase used upon special occasions: it influenced the life of the
Greeks from the day of their birth to the hour of their death. It was part of their
literature and it made them build small but perfect temples. It found expression
in the clothes which the men wore and in the rings and the bracelets of their
wives. It followed the crowds that went to the theatre and made them hoot down
any playwright who dared to sin against the iron law of good taste or good sense.
The Greeks even insisted upon this quality in their politicians and in their
most popular athletes. When a powerful runner came to Sparta and boasted that
he could stand longer on one foot than any other man in Hellas the people drove
him from the city because he prided himself upon an accomplishment at which
he could be beaten by any common goose.
“That is all very well,” you will say, “and no doubt it is a great virtue to care
so much for moderation and perfection, but why should the Greeks have been
the only people to develop this quality in olden times?” For an answer I shall
point to the way in which the Greeks lived.

MOUNT OLYMPUS WHERE THE GODS LIVED

The people of Egypt or Mesopotamia had been the “subjects” of a mysterious


Supreme Ruler who lived miles and miles away in a dark palace and who was
rarely seen by the masses of the population. The Greeks on the other hand, were
“free citizens” of a hundred independent little “cities” the largest of which
counted fewer inhabitants than a large modern village. When a peasant who
lived in Ur said that he was a Babylonian he meant that he was one of millions
of other people who paid tribute to the king who at that particular moment
happened to be master of western Asia. But when a Greek said proudly that he
was an Athenian or a Theban he spoke of a small town, which was both his
home and his country and which recognised no master but the will of the people
in the market-place.
To the Greek, his fatherland was the place where he was born; where he had
spent his earliest years playing hide and seek amidst the forbidden rocks of the
Acropolis; where he had grown into manhood with a thousand other boys and
girls, whose nicknames were as familiar to him as those of your own
schoolmates. His Fatherland was the holy soil where his father and mother lay
buried. It was the small house within the high city-walls where his wife and
children lived in safety. It was a complete world which covered no more than
four or five acres of rocky land. Don’t you see how these surroundings must
have influenced a man in everything he did and said and thought? The people of
Babylon and Assyria and Egypt had been part of a vast mob. They had been lost
in the multitude. The Greek on the other hand had never lost touch with his
immediate surroundings. He never ceased to be part of a little town where
everybody knew every one else. He felt that his intelligent neighbours were
watching him. Whatever he did, whether he wrote plays or made statues out of
marble or composed songs, he remembered that his efforts were going to be
judged by all the free-born citizens of his home-town who knew about such
things. This knowledge forced him to strive after perfection, and perfection, as
he had been taught from childhood, was not possible without moderation.
In this hard school, the Greeks learned to excel in many things. They created
new forms of government and new forms of literature and new ideals in art
which we have never been able to surpass. They performed these miracles in
little villages that covered less ground than four or five modern city blocks.
And look, what finally happened!
In the fourth century before our era, Alexander of Macedonia conquered the
world. As soon as he had done with fighting, Alexander decided that he must
bestow the benefits of the true Greek genius upon all mankind. He took it away
from the little cities and the little villages and tried to make it blossom and bear
fruit amidst the vast royal residences of his newly acquired Empire. But the
Greeks, removed from the familiar sight of their own temples, removed from the
well-known sounds and smells of their own crooked streets, at once lost the
cheerful joy and the marvellous sense of moderation which had inspired the
work of their hands and brains while they laboured for the glory of their old city-
states. They became cheap artisans, content with second-rate work. The day the
little city-states of old Hellas lost their independence and were forced to become
part of a big nation, the old Greek spirit died. And it has been dead ever since.
GREEK SELF-GOVERNMENT

THE GREEKS WERE THE FIRST PEOPLE TO TRY THE DIFFICULT


EXPERIMENT OF SELF-GOVERNMENT

IN the beginning, all the Greeks had been equally rich and equally poor. Every
man had owned a certain number of cows and sheep. His mud-hut had been his
castle. He had been free to come and go as he wished. Whenever it was
necessary to discuss matters of public importance, all the citizens had gathered
in the market-place. One of the older men of the village was elected chairman
and it was his duty to see that everybody had a chance to express his views. In
case of war, a particularly energetic and self-confident villager was chosen
commander-in-chief, but the same people who had voluntarily given this man
the right to be their leader, claimed an equal right to deprive him of his job, once
the danger had been averted.
But gradually the village had grown into a city. Some people had worked hard
and others had been lazy. A few had been unlucky and still others had been just
plain dishonest in dealing with their neighbours and had gathered wealth. As a
result, the city no longer consisted of a number of men who were equally well-
off. On the contrary it was inhabited by a small class of very rich people and a
large class of very poor ones.
There had been another change. The old commander-in-chief who had been
willingly recognised as “headman” or “King” because he knew how to lead his
men to victory, had disappeared from the scene. His place had been taken by the
nobles—a class of rich people who during the course of time had got hold of an
undue share of the farms and estates.
These nobles enjoyed many advantages over the common crowd of freemen.
They were able to buy the best weapons which were to be found on the market
of the eastern Mediterranean. They had much spare time in which they could
practise the art of fighting. They lived in strongly built houses and they could
hire soldiers to fight for them. They were constantly quarrelling among each
other to decide who should rule the city. The victorious nobleman then assumed
a sort of Kingship over all his neighbours and governed the town until he in turn
was killed or driven away by still another ambitious nobleman.

A GREEK CITY-STATE

Such a King, by the grace of his soldiers, was called a “Tyrant” and during the
seventh and sixth centuries before our era every Greek city was for a time ruled
by such Tyrants, many of whom, by the way, happened to be exceedingly
capable men. But in the long run, this state of affairs became unbearable. Then
attempts were made to bring about reforms and out of these reforms grew the
first democratic government of which the world has a record.
It was early in the seventh century that the people of Athens decided to do
some housecleaning and give the large number of freemen once more a voice in
the government as they were supposed to have had in the days of their Achæan
ancestors. They asked a man by the name of Draco to provide them with a set of
laws that would protect the poor against the aggressions of the rich. Draco set to
work. Unfortunately he was a professional lawyer and very much out of touch
with ordinary life. In his eyes a crime was a crime and when he had finished his
code, the people of Athens discovered that these Draconian laws were so severe
that they could not possibly be put into effect. There would not have been rope
enough to hang all the criminals under their new system of jurisprudence which
made the stealing of an apple a capital offence.
The Athenians looked about for a more humane reformer. At last they found
some one who could do that sort of thing better than anybody else. His name was
Solon. He belonged to a noble family and he had travelled all over the world and
had studied the forms of government of many other countries. After a careful
study of the subject, Solon gave Athens a set of laws which bore testimony to
that wonderful principle of moderation which was part of the Greek character.
He tried to improve the condition of the peasant without however destroying the
prosperity of the nobles who were (or rather who could be) of such great service
to the state as soldiers. To protect the poorer classes against abuse on the part of
the judges (who were always elected from the class of the nobles because they
received no salary) Solon made a provision whereby a citizen with a grievance
had the right to state his case before a jury of thirty of his fellow Athenians.
Most important of all, Solon forced the average freeman to take a direct and
personal interest in the affairs of the city. No longer could he stay at home and
say “oh, I am too busy today” or “it is raining and I had better stay indoors.” He
was expected to do his share; to be at the meeting of the town council; and carry
part of the responsibility for the safety and the prosperity of the state.
This government by the “demos,” the people, was often far from successful.
There was too much idle talk. There were too many hateful and spiteful scenes
between rivals for official honor. But it taught the Greek people to be
independent and to rely upon themselves for their salvation and that was a very
good thing.
GREEK LIFE

HOW THE GREEKS LIVED

BUT how, you will ask, did the ancient Greeks have time to look after their
families and their business if they were forever running to the market-place to
discuss affairs of state? In this chapter I shall tell you.
In all matters of government, the Greek democracy recognised only one class
of citizens—the freemen. Every Greek city was composed of a small number of
free born citizens, a large number of slaves and a sprinkling of foreigners.
At rare intervals (usually during a war, when men were needed for the army)
the Greeks showed themselves willing to confer the rights of citizenship upon
the “barbarians” as they called the foreigners. But this was an exception.
Citizenship was a matter of birth. You were an Athenian because your father and
your grandfather had been Athenians before you. But however great your merits
as a trader or a soldier, if you were born of non-Athenian parents, you remained
a “foreigner” until the end of time.
The Greek city, therefore, whenever it was not ruled by a king or a tyrant, was
run by and for the freemen, and this would not have been possible without a
large army of slaves who outnumbered the free citizens at the rate of six or five
to one and who performed those tasks to which we modern people must devote
most of our time and energy if we wish to provide for our families and pay the
rent of our apartments.

GREEK SOCIETY

The slaves did all the cooking and baking and candlestick making of the entire
city. They were the tailors and the carpenters and the jewelers and the school-
teachers and the book-keepers and they tended the store and looked after the
factory while the master went to the public meeting to discuss questions of war
and peace or visited the theatre to see the latest play of Æschylus or hear a
discussion of the revolutionary ideas of Euripides, who had dared to express
certain doubts upon the omnipotence of the great god Zeus.
Indeed, ancient Athens resembled a modern club. All the freeborn citizens
were hereditary members and all the slaves were hereditary servants, and waited
upon the needs of their masters, and it was very pleasant to be a member of the
organisation.
But when we talk about slaves, we do not mean the sort of people about whom
you have read in the pages of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” It is true that the position of
those slaves who tilled the fields was a very unpleasant one, but the average
freeman who had come down in the world and who had been obliged to hire
himself out as a farm hand led just as miserable a life. In the cities, furthermore,
many of the slaves were more prosperous than the poorer classes of the freemen.
For the Greeks, who loved moderation in all things, did not like to treat their
slaves after the fashion which afterward was so common in Rome, where a slave
had as few rights as an engine in a modern factory and could be thrown to the
wild animals upon the smallest pretext.
The Greeks accepted slavery as a necessary institution, without which no city
could possibly become the home of a truly civilised people.
The slaves also took care of those tasks which nowadays are performed by the
business men and the professional men. As for those household duties which
take up so much of the time of your mother and which worry your father when
he comes home from his office, the Greeks, who understood the value of leisure,
had reduced such duties to the smallest possible minimum by living amidst
surroundings of extreme simplicity.
To begin with, their homes were very plain. Even the rich nobles spent their
lives in a sort of adobe barn, which lacked all the comforts which a modern
workman expects as his natural right. A Greek home consisted of four walls and
a roof. There was a door which led into the street but there were no windows.
The kitchen, the living rooms and the sleeping quarters were built around an
open courtyard in which there was a small fountain, or a statue and a few plants
to make it look bright. Within this courtyard the family lived when it did not rain
or when it was not too cold. In one corner of the yard the cook (who was a slave)
prepared the meal and in another corner, the teacher (who was also a slave)
taught the children the alpha beta gamma and the tables of multiplication and in
still another corner the lady of the house, who rarely left her domain (since it
was not considered good form for a married woman to be seen on the street too
often) was repairing her husband’s coat with her seamstresses (who were slaves,)
and in the little office, right off the door, the master was inspecting the accounts
which the overseer of his farm (who was a slave) had just brought to him.

THE TEMPLE

When dinner was ready the family came together but the meal was a very
simple one and did not take much time. The Greeks seem to have regarded
eating as an unavoidable evil and not a pastime, which kills many dreary hours
and eventually kills many dreary people. They lived on bread and on wine, with
a little meat and some green vegetables. They drank water only when nothing
else was available because they did not think it very healthy. They loved to call
on each other for dinner, but our idea of a festive meal, where everybody is
supposed to eat much more than is good for him, would have disgusted them.
They came together at the table for the purpose of a good talk and a good glass
of wine and water, but as they were moderate people they despised those who
drank too much.
The same simplicity which prevailed in the dining room also dominated their
choice of clothes. They liked to be clean and well groomed, to have their hair
and beards neatly cut, to feel their bodies strong with the exercise and the
swimming of the gymnasium, but they never followed the Asiatic fashion which
prescribed loud colours and strange patterns. They wore a long white coat and
they managed to look as smart as a modern Italian officer in his long blue cape.
They loved to see their wives wear ornaments but they thought it very vulgar
to display their wealth (or their wives) in public and whenever the women left
their home they were as inconspicuous as possible.
In short, the story of Greek life is a story not only of moderation but also of
simplicity. “Things,” chairs and tables and books and houses and carriages, are
apt to take up a great deal of their owner’s time. In the end they invariably make
him their slave and his hours are spent looking after their wants, keeping them
polished and brushed and painted. The Greeks, before everything else, wanted to
be “free,” both in mind and in body. That they might maintain their liberty, and
be truly free in spirit, they reduced their daily needs to the lowest possible point.
THE GREEK THEATRE

THE ORIGINS OF THE THEATRE, THE FIRST FORM OF PUBLIC


AMUSEMENT

AT a very early stage of their history the Greeks had begun to collect the
poems, which had been written in honor of their brave ancestors who had driven
the Pelasgians out of Hellas and had destroyed the power of Troy. These poems
were recited in public and everybody came to listen to them. But the theatre, the
form of entertainment which has become almost a necessary part of our own
lives, did not grow out of these recited heroic tales. It had such a curious origin
that I must tell you something about it in a separate chapter.
The Greeks had always been fond of parades. Every year they held solemn
processions in honor of Dionysos the God of the wine. As everybody in Greece
drank wine (the Greeks thought water only useful for the purpose of swimming
and sailing) this particular Divinity was as popular as a God of the Soda-
Fountain would be in our own land.
And because the Wine-God was supposed to live in the vineyards, amidst a
merry mob of Satyrs (strange creatures who were half man and half goat), the
crowd that joined the procession used to wear goat-skins and to hee-haw like
real billy-goats. The Greek word for goat is “tragos” and the Greek word for
singer is “oidos.” The singer who meh-mehed like a goat therefore was called a
“tragos-oidos” or goat singer, and it is this strange name which developed into
the modern word “Tragedy,” which means in the theatrical sense a piece with an
unhappy ending, just as Comedy (which really means the singing of something
“comos” or gay) is the name given to a play which ends happily.
But how, you will ask, did this noisy chorus of masqueraders, stamping
around like wild goats, ever develop into the noble tragedies which have filled
the theatres of the world for almost two thousand years?
The connecting link between the goat-singer and Hamlet is really very simple
as I shall show you in a moment.
The singing chorus was very amusing in the beginning and attracted large
crowds of spectators who stood along the side of the road and laughed. But soon
this business of hee-hawing grew tiresome and the Greeks thought dullness an
evil only comparable to ugliness or sickness. They asked for something more
entertaining. Then an inventive young poet from the village of Icaria in Attica hit
upon a new idea which proved a tremendous success. He made one of the
members of the goat-chorus step forward and engage in conversation with the
leader of the musicians who marched at the head of the parade playing upon
their pipes of Pan. This individual was allowed to step out of line. He waved his
arms and gesticulated while he spoke (that is to say he “acted” while the others
merely stood by and sang) and he asked a lot of questions, which the bandmaster
answered according to the roll of papyrus upon which the poet had written down
these answers before the show began.
This rough and ready conversation—the dialogue—which told the story of
Dionysos or one of the other Gods, became at once popular with the crowd.
Henceforth every Dionysian procession had an “acted scene” and very soon the
“acting” was considered more important than the procession and the meh-
mehing.
Æschylus, the most successful of all “tragedians” who wrote no less than
eighty plays during his long life (from 526 to 455) made a bold step forward
when he introduced two “actors” instead of one. A generation later Sophocles
increased the number of actors to three. When Euripides began to write his
terrible tragedies in the middle of the fifth century, B.C., he was allowed as many
actors as he liked and when Aristophanes wrote those famous comedies in which
he poked fun at everybody and everything, including the Gods of Mount
Olympus, the chorus had been reduced to the rôle of mere bystanders who were
lined up behind the principal performers and who sang “this is a terrible world”
while the hero in the foreground committed a crime against the will of the Gods.
This new form of dramatic entertainment demanded a proper setting, and soon
every Greek city owned a theatre, cut out of the rock of a nearby hill. The
spectators sat upon wooden benches and faced a wide circle (our present
orchestra where you pay three dollars and thirty cents for a seat). Upon this half-
circle, which was the stage, the actors and the chorus took their stand. Behind
them there was a tent where they made up with large clay masks which hid their
faces and which showed the spectators whether the actors were supposed to be
happy and smiling or unhappy and weeping. The Greek word for tent is “skene”
and that is the reason why we talk of the “scenery” of the stage.
When once the tragedy had become part of Greek life, the people took it very
seriously and never went to the theatre to give their minds a vacation. A new
play became as important an event as an election and a successful playwright
was received with greater honors than those bestowed upon a general who had
just returned from a famous victory.
THE PERSIAN WARS

HOW THE GREEKS DEFENDED EUROPE AGAINST ASIATIC INVASION


AND DROVE THE PERSIANS BACK ACROSS THE ÆGEAN SEA

THE Greeks had learned the art of trading from the Ægeans who had been the
pupils of the Phœnicians. They had founded colonies after the Phœnician
pattern. They had even improved upon the Phœnician methods by a more
general use of money in dealing with foreign customers. In the sixth century
before our era they had established themselves firmly along the coast of Asia
Minor and they were taking away trade from the Phœnicians at a fast rate. This
the Phœnicians of course did not like but they were not strong enough to risk a
war with their Greek competitors. They sat and waited nor did they wait in vain.
In a former chapter, I have told you how a humble tribe of Persian shepherds
had suddenly gone upon the warpath and had conquered the greater part of
western Asia. The Persians were too civilised to plunder their new subjects.
They contented themselves with a yearly tribute. When they reached the coast of
Asia Minor they insisted that the Greek colonies of Lydia recognize the Persian
Kings as their over-Lords and pay them a stipulated tax. The Greek colonies
objected. The Persians insisted. Then the Greek colonies appealed to the home-
country and the stage was set for a quarrel.
For if the truth be told, the Persian Kings regarded the Greek city-states as
very dangerous political institutions and bad examples for all other people who
were supposed to be the patient slaves of the mighty Persian Kings.
THE PERSIAN FLEET IS DESTROYED NEAR MOUNT ATHOS

Of course, the Greeks enjoyed a certain degree of safety because their country
lay hidden beyond the deep waters of the Ægean. But here their old enemies, the
Phœnicians, stepped forward with offers of help and advice to the Persians. If the
Persian King would provide the soldiers, the Phœnicians would guarantee to
deliver the necessary ships to carry them to Europe. It was the year 492 before
the birth of Christ, and Asia made ready to destroy the rising power of Europe.
As a final warning the King of Persia sent messengers to the Greeks asking for
“earth and water” as a token of their submission. The Greeks promptly threw the
messengers into the nearest well where they would find both “earth and water”
in large abundance and thereafter of course peace was impossible.
But the Gods of High Olympus watched over their children and when the
Phœnician fleet carrying the Persian troops was near Mount Athos, the Storm-
God blew his cheeks until he almost burst the veins of his brow, and the fleet
was destroyed by a terrible hurricane and the Persians were all drowned.

THE BATTLE OF MARATHON

Two years later more Persians came. This time they sailed across the Ægean
Sea and landed near the village of Marathon. As soon as the Athenians heard this
they sent their army of ten thousand men to guard the hills that surrounded the
Marathonian plain. At the same time they despatched a fast runner to Sparta to
ask for help. But Sparta was envious of the fame of Athens and refused to come
to her assistance. The other Greek cities followed her example with the
exception of tiny Plataea which sent a thousand men. On the twelfth of
September of the year 490, Miltiades, the Athenian commander, threw this little
army against the hordes of the Persians. The Greeks broke through the Persian
barrage of arrows and their spears caused terrible havoc among the disorganised
Asiatic troops who had never been called upon to resist such an enemy.
That night the people of Athens watched the sky grow red with the flames of
burning ships. Anxiously they waited for news. At last a little cloud of dust
appeared upon the road that led to the North. It was Pheidippides, the runner. He
stumbled and gasped for his end was near. Only a few days before had he
returned from his errand to Sparta. He had hastened to join Miltiades. That
morning he had taken part in the attack and later he had volunteered to carry the
news of victory to his beloved city. The people saw him fall and they rushed
forward to support him. “We have won,” he whispered and then he died, a
glorious death which made him envied of all men.
As for the Persians, they tried, after this defeat, to land near Athens but they
found the coast guarded and disappeared, and once more the land of Hellas was
at peace.
Eight years they waited and during this time the Greeks were not idle. They
knew that a final attack was to be expected but they did not agree upon the best
way to avert the danger. Some people wanted to increase the army. Others said
that a strong fleet was necessary for success. The two parties led by Aristides
(for the army) and Themistocles (the leader of the bigger-navy men) fought each
other bitterly and nothing was done until Aristides was exiled. Then
Themistocles had his chance and he built all the ships he could and turned the
Piræus into a strong naval base.
In the year 481 B.C. a tremendous Persian army appeared in Thessaly, a
province of northern Greece. In this hour of danger, Sparta, the great military
city of Greece, was elected commander-in-chief. But the Spartans cared little
what happened to northern Greece provided their own country was not invaded.
They neglected to fortify the passes that led into Greece.
THERMOPYLAE
A small detachment of Spartans under Leonidas had been told to
guard the narrow road between the high mountains and the sea
which connected Thessaly with the southern provinces. Leonidas obeyed his
orders. He fought and held the pass with unequalled bravery. But a traitor by the
name of Ephialtes who knew the little byways of Malis guided a regiment of
Persians through the hills and made it possible for them to attack Leonidas in the
rear. Near the Warm Wells—the Thermopylae—a terrible battle was fought.
When night came Leonidas and his faithful soldiers lay dead under the corpses
of their enemies.

THE BATTLE OF THERMOPYLAE

But the pass had been lost and the greater part of Greece fell into the hands of
the Persians. They marched upon Athens, threw the garrison from the rocks of
the Acropolis and burned the city. The people fled to the Island of Salamis. All
seemed lost. But on the 20th of September of the year 480 Themistocles forced
the Persian fleet to give battle within the narrow straits which separated the
Island of Salamis from the mainland and within a few hours he destroyed three
quarters of the Persian ships.

THE PERSIANS BURN ATHENS

In this way the victory of Thermopylae came to naught. Xerxes was forced to
retire. The next year, so he decreed, would bring a final decision. He took his
troops to Thessaly and there he waited for spring.
But this time the Spartans understood the seriousness of the hour. They left the
safe shelter of the wall which they had built across the isthmus of Corinth and
under the leadership of Pausanias they marched against Mardonius the Persian
general. The united Greeks (some one hundred thousand men from a dozen
different cities) attacked the three hundred thousand men of the enemy near
Plataea. Once more the heavy Greek infantry broke through the Persian barrage
of arrows. The Persians were defeated, as they had been at Marathon, and this
time they left for good. By a strange coincidence, the same day that the Greek
armies won their victory near Plataea, the Athenian ships destroyed the enemy’s
fleet near Cape Mycale in Asia Minor.
Thus did the first encounter between Asia and Europe end. Athens had
covered herself with glory and Sparta had fought bravely and well. If these two
cities had been able to come to an agreement, if they had been willing to forget
their little jealousies, they might have become the leaders of a strong and united
Hellas.
But alas, they allowed the hour of victory and enthusiasm to slip by, and the
same opportunity never returned.
ATHENS vs. SPARTA

HOW ATHENS AND SPARTA FOUGHT A LONG AND DISASTROUS WAR


FOR THE LEADERSHIP OF GREECE

ATHENS and Sparta were both Greek cities and their people spoke a common
language. In every other respect they were different. Athens rose high from the
plain. It was a city exposed to the fresh breezes from the sea, willing to look at
the world with the eyes of a happy child. Sparta, on the other hand, was built at
the bottom of a deep valley, and used the surrounding mountains as a barrier
against foreign thought. Athens was a city of busy trade. Sparta was an armed
camp where people were soldiers for the sake of being soldiers. The people of
Athens loved to sit in the sun and discuss poetry or listen to the wise words of a
philosopher. The Spartans, on the other hand, never wrote a single line that was
considered literature, but they knew how to fight, they liked to fight, and they
sacrificed all human emotions to their ideal of military preparedness.
No wonder that these sombre Spartans viewed the success of Athens with
malicious hate. The energy which the defence of the common home had
developed in Athens was now used for purposes of a more peaceful nature. The
Acropolis was rebuilt and was made into a marble shrine to the Goddess Athena.
Pericles, the leader of the Athenian democracy, sent far and wide to find famous
sculptors and painters and scientists to make the city more beautiful and the
young Athenians more worthy of their home. At the same time he kept a
watchful eye on Sparta and built high walls which connected Athens with the sea
and made her the strongest fortress of that day.
An insignificant quarrel between two little Greek cities led to the final
conflict. For thirty years the war between Athens and Sparta continued. It ended
in a terrible disaster for Athens.
During the third year of the war the plague had entered the city. More than
half of the people and Pericles, the great leader, had been killed. The plague was
followed by a period of bad and untrustworthy leadership. A brilliant young
fellow by the name of Alcibiades had gained the favor of the popular assembly.
He suggested a raid upon the Spartan colony of Syracuse in Sicily. An
expedition was equipped and everything was ready. But Alcibiades got mixed up
in a street brawl and was forced to flee. The general who succeeded him was a
bungler. First he lost his ships and then he lost his army, and the few surviving
Athenians were thrown into the stone-quarries of Syracuse, where they died
from hunger and thirst.
The expedition had killed all the young men of Athens. The city was doomed.
After a long siege the town surrendered in April of the year 404. The high walls
were demolished. The navy was taken away by the Spartans. Athens ceased to
exist as the center of the great colonial empire which it had conquered during the
days of its prosperity. But that wonderful desire to learn and to know and to
investigate which had distinguished her free citizens during the days of greatness
and prosperity did not perish with the walls and the ships. It continued to live. It
became even more brilliant.
Athens no longer shaped the destinies of the land of Greece. But now, as the
home of the first great university the city began to influence the minds of
intelligent people far beyond the narrow frontiers of Hellas.
ALEXANDER THE GREAT

ALEXANDER THE MACEDONIAN ESTABLISHES A GREEK WORLD-


EMPIRE, AND WHAT BECAME OF THIS HIGH AMBITION

WHEN the Achæans had left their homes along the banks of the Danube to look
for pastures new, they had spent some time among the mountains of Macedonia.
Ever since, the Greeks had maintained certain more or less formal relations with
the people of this northern country. The Macedonians from their side had kept
themselves well informed about conditions in Greece.
Now it happened, just when Sparta and Athens had finished their disastrous
war for the leadership of Hellas, that Macedonia was ruled by an extraordinarily
clever man by the name of Philip. He admired the Greek spirit in letters and art
but he despised the Greek lack of self-control in political affairs. It irritated him
to see a perfectly good people waste its men and money upon fruitless quarrels.
So he settled the difficulty by making himself the master of all Greece and then
he asked his new subjects to join him on a voyage which he meant to pay to
Persia in return for the visit which Xerxes had paid the Greeks one hundred and
fifty years before.
Unfortunately Philip was murdered before he could start upon this well-
prepared expedition. The task of avenging the destruction of Athens was left to
Philip’s son Alexander, the beloved pupil of Aristotle, wisest of all Greek
teachers. Alexander bade farewell to Europe in the spring of the year 334 B.C.
Seven years later he reached India. In the meantime he had destroyed Phœnicia,
the old rival of the Greek merchants. He had conquered Egypt and had been
worshipped by the people of the Nile valley as the son and heir of the Pharaohs.
He had defeated the last Persian king—he had overthrown the Persian empire—
he had given orders to rebuild Babylon—he had led his troops into the heart of
the Himalayan mountains and had made the entire world a Macedonian province
and dependency. Then he stopped and announced even more ambitious plans.
The newly formed Empire must be brought under the influence of the Greek
mind. The people must be taught the Greek language—they must live in cities
built after a Greek model. The Alexandrian soldier now turned school-master.
The military camps of yesterday became the peaceful centres of the newly
imported Greek civilisation. Higher and higher did the flood of Greek manners
and Greek customs rise, when suddenly Alexander was stricken with a fever and
died in the old palace of King Hammurabi of Babylon in the year 323.
Then the waters receded. But they left behind the fertile clay of a higher
civilisation and Alexander, with all his childish ambitions and his silly vanities,
had performed a most valuable service. His Empire did not long survive him. A
number of ambitious generals divided the territory among themselves. But they
too remained faithful to the dream of a great world brotherhood of Greek and
Asiatic ideas and knowledge.
They maintained their independence until the Romans added western Asia and
Egypt to their other domains. The strange inheritance of this Hellenistic
civilisation (part Greek, part Persian, part Egyptian and Babylonian) fell to the
Roman conquerors. During the following centuries, it got such a firm hold upon
the Roman world, that we feel its influence in our own lives this very day.

GREECE
A SUMMARY

A SHORT SUMMARY OF CHAPTERS 1 to 20

THUS far, from the top of our high tower we have been looking eastward. But
from this time on, the history of Egypt and Mesopotamia is going to grow less
interesting and I must take you to study the western landscape.
Before we do this, let us stop a moment and make clear to ourselves what we
have seen.
First of all I showed you prehistoric man—a creature very simple in his habits
and very unattractive in his manners. I told you how he was the most defenceless
of the many animals that roamed through the early wilderness of the five
continents, but being possessed of a larger and better brain, he managed to hold
his own.
Then came the glaciers and the many centuries of cold weather, and life on
this planet became so difficult that man was obliged to think three times as hard
as ever before if he wished to survive. Since, however, that “wish to survive”
was (and is) the mainspring which keeps every living being going full tilt to the
last gasp of its breath, the brain of glacial man was set to work in all earnestness.
Not only did these hardy people manage to exist through the long cold spells
which killed many ferocious animals, but when the earth became warm and
comfortable once more, prehistoric man had learned a number of things which
gave him such great advantages over his less intelligent neighbors that the
danger of extinction (a very serious one during the first half million years of
man’s residence upon this planet) became a very remote one.
I told you how these earliest ancestors of ours were slowly plodding along
when suddenly (and for reasons that are not well understood) the people who
lived in the valley of the Nile rushed ahead and almost over night, created the
first centre of civilisation.
Then I showed you Mesopotamia, “the land between the rivers,” which was
the second great school of the human race. And I made you a map of the little
island bridges of the Ægean Sea, which carried the knowledge and the science of
the old east to the young west, where lived the Greeks.
Next I told you of an Indo-European tribe, called the Hellenes, who thousands
of years before had left the heart of Asia and who had in the eleventh century
before our era pushed their way into the rocky peninsula of Greece and who,
since then, have been known to us as the Greeks. And I told you the story of the
little Greek cities that were really states, where the civilisation of old Egypt and
Asia was transfigured (that is a big word, but you can “figure out” what it
means) into something quite new, something that was much nobler and finer than
anything that had gone before.
When you look at the map you will see how by this time civilisation has
described a semi-circle. It begins in Egypt, and by way of Mesopotamia and the
Ægean Islands it moves westward until it reaches the European continent. The
first four thousand years, Egyptians and Babylonians and Phoenicians and a
large number of Semitic tribes (please remember that the Jews were but one of a
large number of Semitic peoples) have carried the torch that was to illuminate
the world. They now hand it over to the Indo-European Greeks, who become the
teachers of another Indo-European tribe, called the Romans. But meanwhile the
Semites have pushed westward along the northern coast of Africa and have made
themselves the rulers of the western half of the Mediterranean just when the
eastern half has become a Greek (or Indo-European) possession.
This, as you shall see in a moment, leads to a terrible conflict between the two
rival races, and out of their struggle arises the victorious Roman Empire, which
is to take this Egyptian-Mesopotamian-Greek civilisation to the furthermost
corners of the European continent, where it serves as the foundation upon which
our modern society is based.
I know all this sounds very complicated, but if you get hold of these few
principles, the rest of our history will become a great deal simpler. The maps will
make clear what the words fail to tell. And after this short intermission, we go
back to our story and give you an account of the famous war between Carthage
and Rome.
ROME AND CARTHAGE

THE SEMITIC COLONY OF CARTHAGE ON THE NORTHERN COAST OF


AFRICA AND THE INDO-EUROPEAN CITY OF ROME ON THE
WEST COAST OF ITALY FOUGHT EACH OTHER FOR THE
POSSESSION OF THE WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN AND
CARTHAGE WAS DESTROYED

THE little Phœnician trading post of Kart-hadshat stood on a low hill which
overlooked the African Sea, a stretch of water ninety miles wide which separates
Africa from Europe. It was an ideal spot for a commercial centre. Almost too
ideal. It grew too fast and became too rich. When in the sixth century before our
era, Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon destroyed Tyre, Carthage broke off all further
relations with the Mother Country and became an independent state—the great
western advance-post of the Semitic races.
Unfortunately the city had inherited many of the traits which for a thousand
years had been characteristic of the Phœnicians. It was a vast business-house,
protected by a strong navy, indifferent to most of the finer aspects of life. The
city and the surrounding country and the distant colonies were all ruled by a
small but exceedingly powerful group of rich men. The Greek word for rich is
“ploutos” and the Greeks called such a government by “rich men” a
“Plutocracy.” Carthage was a plutocracy and the real power of the state lay in the
hands of a dozen big ship-owners and mine-owners and merchants who met in
the back room of an office and regarded their common Fatherland as a business
enterprise which ought to yield them a decent profit. They were however wide
awake and full of energy and worked very hard.

CARTHAGE

As the years went by the influence of Carthage upon her neighbours increased
until the greater part of the African coast, Spain and certain regions of France
were Carthaginian possessions, and paid tribute, taxes and dividends to the
mighty city on the African Sea.
Of course, such a “plutocracy” was forever at the mercy of the crowd. As long
as there was plenty of work and wages were high, the majority of the citizens
were quite contented, allowed their “betters” to rule them and asked no
embarrassing questions. But when no ships left the harbor, when no ore was
brought to the smelting-ovens, when dockworkers and stevedores were thrown
out of employment, then there were grumblings and there was a demand that the
popular assembly be called together as in the olden days when Carthage had
been a self-governing republic.

SPHERES OF INFLUENCE

To prevent such an occurrence the plutocracy was obliged to keep the business
of the town going at full speed. They had managed to do this very successfully
for almost five hundred years when they were greatly disturbed by certain
rumors which reached them from the western coast of Italy. It was said that a
little village on the banks of the Tiber had suddenly risen to great power and was
making itself the acknowledged leader of all the Latin tribes who inhabited
central Italy. It was also said that this village, which by the way was called
Rome, intended to build ships and go after the commerce of Sicily and the
southern coast of France.
Carthage could not possibly tolerate such competition. The young rival must
be destroyed lest the Carthaginian rulers lose their prestige as the absolute rulers
of the western Mediterranean. The rumors were duly investigated and in a
general way these were the facts that came to light.
The west coast of Italy had long been neglected by civilisation. Whereas in
Greece all the good harbours faced eastward and enjoyed a full view of the busy
islands of the Ægean, the west coast of Italy contemplated nothing more exciting
than the desolate waves of the Mediterranean. The country was poor. It was
therefore rarely visited by foreign merchants and the natives were allowed to live
in undisturbed possession of their hills and their marshy plains.
The first serious invasion of this land came from the north. At an unknown
date certain Indo-European tribes had managed to find their way through the
passes of the Alps and had pushed southward until they had filled the heel and
the toe of the famous Italian boot with their villages and their flocks. Of these
early conquerors we know nothing. No Homer sang their glory. Their own
accounts of the foundation of Rome (written eight hundred years later when the
little city had become the centre of an Empire) are fairy stories and do not
belong in a history. Romulus and Remus jumping across each other’s walls (I
always forget who jumped across whose wall) make entertaining reading, but the
foundation of the City of Rome was a much more prosaic affair. Rome began as
a thousand American cities have done, by being a convenient place for barter
and horse-trading. It lay in the heart of the plains of central Italy. The Tiber
provided direct access to the sea. The land-road from north to south found here a
convenient ford which could be used all the year around. And seven little hills
along the banks of the river offered the inhabitants a safe shelter against their
enemies who lived in the mountains and those who lived beyond the horizon of
the nearby sea.

HOW THE CITY OF ROME HAPPENED

The mountaineers were called the Sabines. They were a rough crowd with an
unholy desire for easy plunder. But they were very backward. They used stone
axes and wooden shields and were no match for the Romans with their steel
swords. The sea-people on the other hand were dangerous foes. They were called
the Etruscans and they were (and still are) one of the great mysteries of history.
Nobody knew (or knows) whence they came; who they were; what had driven
them away from their original homes. We have found the remains of their cities
and their cemeteries and their waterworks all along the Italian coast. We are
familiar with their inscriptions. But as no one has ever been able to decipher the
Etruscan alphabet, these written messages are, so far, merely annoying and not at
all useful.
Our best guess is that the Etruscans came originally from Asia Minor and that
a great war or a pestilence in that country had forced them to go away and seek a
new home elsewhere. Whatever the reason for their coming, the Etruscans
played a great rôle in history. They carried the pollen of the ancient civilisation
from the east to the west and they taught the Romans who, as we know, came
from the north, the first principles of architecture and street-building and fighting
and art and cookery and medicine and astronomy.
But just as the Greeks had not loved their Ægean teachers, in this same way
did the Romans hate their Etruscan masters. They got rid of them as soon as they
could and the opportunity offered itself when Greek merchants discovered the
commercial possibilities of Italy and when the first Greek vessels reached Rome.
The Greeks came to trade, but they stayed to instruct. They found the tribes who
inhabited the Roman country-side (and who were called the Latins) quite willing
to learn such things as might be of practical use. At once they understood the
great benefit that could be derived from a written alphabet and they copied that
of the Greeks. They also understood the commercial advantages of a well-
regulated system of coins and measures and weights. Eventually the Romans
swallowed Greek civilisation hook, line and sinker.
They even welcomed the Gods of the Greeks to their country. Zeus was taken
to Rome where he became known as Jupiter and the other divinities followed
him. The Roman Gods however never were quite like their cheerful cousins who
had accompanied the Greeks on their road through life and through history. The
Roman Gods were State Functionaries. Each one managed his own department
with great prudence and a deep sense of justice, but in turn he was exact in
demanding the obedience of his worshippers. This obedience the Romans
rendered with scrupulous care. But they never established the cordial personal
relations and that charming friendship which had existed between the old
Hellenes and the mighty residents of the high Olympian peak.
The Romans did not imitate the Greek form of government, but being of the
same Indo-European stock as the people of Hellas, the early history of Rome
resembles that of Athens and the other Greek cities. They did not find it difficult
to get rid of their kings, the descendants of the ancient tribal chieftains. But once
the kings had been driven from the city, the Romans were forced to bridle the
power of the nobles, and it took many centuries before they managed to establish
a system which gave every free citizen of Rome a chance to take a personal
interest in the affairs of his town.
Thereafter the Romans enjoyed one great advantage over the Greeks. They
managed the affairs of their country without making too many speeches. They
were less imaginative than the Greeks and they preferred an ounce of action to a
pound of words. They understood the tendency of the multitude (the “plebs,” as
the assemblage of free citizens was called) only too well to waste valuable time
upon mere talk. They therefore placed the actual business of running the city into
the hands of two “consuls” who were assisted by a council of Elders, called the
Senate (because the word “senex” means an old man). As a matter of custom and
practical advantage the senators were elected from the nobility. But their power
had been strictly defined.
Rome at one time had passed through the same sort of struggle between the
poor and the rich which had forced Athens to adopt the laws of Draco and Solon.
In Rome this conflict had occurred in the fifth century B.C. As a result the
freemen had obtained a written code of laws which protected them against the
despotism of the aristocratic judges by the institution of the “Tribune.” These
Tribunes were city-magistrates, elected by the freemen. They had the right to
protect any citizen against those actions of the government officials which were
thought to be unjust. A consul had the right to condemn a man to death, but if the
case had not been absolutely proved the Tribune could interfere and save the
poor fellow’s life.
But when I use the word Rome, I seem to refer to a little city of a few
thousand inhabitants. And the real strength of Rome lay in the country districts
outside her walls. And it was in the government of these outlying provinces that
Rome at an early age showed her wonderful gift as a colonising power.
In very early times Rome had been the only strongly fortified city in central
Italy, but it had always offered a hospitable refuge to other Latin tribes who
happened to be in danger of attack. The Latin neighbours had recognised the
advantages of a close union with such a powerful friend and they had tried to
find a basis for some sort of defensive and offensive alliance. Other nations,
Egyptians, Babylonians, Phœnicians, even Greeks, would have insisted upon a
treaty of submission on the part of the “barbarians.” The Romans did nothing of
the sort. They gave the “outsider” a chance to become partners in a common “res
publica”—or common-wealth.
“You want to join us,” they said. “Very well, go ahead and join. We shall treat
you as if you were full-fledged citizens of Rome. In return for this privilege we
expect you to fight for our city, the mother of us all, whenever it shall be
necessary.”
The “outsider” appreciated this generosity and he showed his gratitude by his
unswerving loyalty.
Whenever a Greek city had been attacked, the foreign residents had moved
out as quickly as they could. Why defend something which meant nothing to
them but a temporary boarding house in which they were tolerated as long as
they paid their bills? But when the enemy was before the gates of Rome, all the
Latins rushed to her defence. It was their Mother who was in danger. It was their
true “home” even if they lived a hundred miles away and had never seen the
walls of the sacred Hills.
No defeat and no disaster could change this sentiment. In the beginning of the
fourth century B.C. the wild Gauls forced their way into Italy. They had defeated
the Roman army near the River Allia and had marched upon the city. They had
taken Rome and then they expected that the people would come and sue for
peace. They waited, but nothing happened. After a short time the Gauls found
themselves surrounded by a hostile population which made it impossible for
them to obtain supplies. After seven months, hunger forced them to withdraw.
The policy of Rome to treat the “foreigner” on equal terms had proved a great
success and Rome stood stronger than ever before.
This short account of the early history of Rome shows you the enormous
difference between the Roman ideal of a healthy state, and that of the ancient
world which was embodied in the town of Carthage. The Romans counted upon
the cheerful and hearty co-operation between a number of “equal citizens.” The
Carthaginians, following the example of Egypt and western Asia, insisted upon
the unreasoning (and therefore unwilling) obedience of “Subjects” and when
these failed they hired professional soldiers to do their fighting for them.
You will now understand why Carthage was bound to fear such a clever and
powerful enemy and why the plutocracy of Carthage was only too willing to
pick a quarrel that they might destroy the dangerous rival before it was too late.

A FAST ROMAN WARSHIP

But the Carthaginians, being good business men, knew that it never pays to
rush matters. They proposed to the Romans that their respective cities draw two
circles on the map and that each town claim one of these circles as her own
“sphere of influence” and promise to keep out of the other fellow’s circle. The
agreement was promptly made and was broken just as promptly when both sides
thought it wise to send their armies to Sicily where a rich soil and a bad
government invited foreign interference.
The war which followed (the so-called first Punic War) lasted twenty-four
years. It was fought out on the high seas and in the beginning it seemed that the
experienced Carthaginian navy would defeat the newly created Roman fleet.
Following their ancient tactics, the Carthaginian ships would either ram the
enemy vessels or by a bold attack from the side they would break their oars and
would then kill the sailors of the helpless vessel with their arrows and with fire
balls. But Roman engineers invented a new craft which carried a boarding bridge
across which the Roman infantrymen stormed the hostile ship. Then there was a
sudden end to Carthaginian victories. At the battle of Mylae their fleet was badly
defeated. Carthage was obliged to sue for peace, and Sicily became part of the
Roman domains.
Twenty-three years later new trouble arose. Rome (in quest of copper) had
taken the island of Sardinia. Carthage (in quest of silver) thereupon occupied all
of southern Spain. This made Carthage a direct neighbour of the Romans. The
latter did not like this at all and they ordered their troops to cross the Pyrenees
and watch the Carthaginian army of occupation.
The stage was set for the second outbreak between the two rivals. Once more
a Greek colony was the pretext for a war. The Carthaginians were besieging
Saguntum on the east coast of Spain. The Saguntians appealed to Rome and
Rome, as usual, was willing to help. The Senate promised the help of the Latin
armies, but the preparation for this expedition took some time, and meanwhile
Saguntum had been taken and had been destroyed. This had been done in direct
opposition to the will of Rome. The Senate decided upon war. One Roman army
was to cross the African sea and make a landing on Carthaginian soil. A second
division was to keep the Carthaginian armies occupied in Spain to prevent them
from rushing to the aid of the home town. It was an excellent plan and
everybody expected a great victory. But the Gods had decided otherwise.

HANNIBAL CROSSES THE ALPS

It was the fall of the year 218 before the birth of Christ and the Roman army
which was to attack the Carthaginians in Spain had left Italy. People were
eagerly waiting for news of an easy and complete victory when a terrible rumour
began to spread through the plain of the Po. Wild mountaineers, their lips
trembling with fear, told of hundreds of thousands of brown men accompanied
by strange beasts “each one as big as a house,” who had suddenly emerged from
the clouds of snow which surrounded the old Graian pass through which
Hercules, thousands of years before, had driven the oxen of Geryon on his way
from Spain to Greece. Soon an endless stream of bedraggled refugees appeared
before the gates of Rome, with more complete details. Hannibal, the son of
Hamilcar, with fifty thousand soldiers, nine thousand horsemen and thirty-seven
fighting elephants, had crossed the Pyrenees. He had defeated the Roman army
of Scipio on the banks of the Rhone and he had guided his army safely across the
mountain passes of the Alps although it was October and the roads were thickly
covered with snow and ice. Then he had joined forces with the Gauls and
together they had defeated a second Roman army just before they crossed the
Trebia and laid siege to Placentia, the northern terminus of the road which
connected Rome with the province of the Alpine districts.
The Senate, surprised but calm and energetic as usual, hushed up the news of
these many defeats and sent two fresh armies to stop the invader. Hannibal
managed to surprise these troops on a narrow road along the shores of the
Trasimene Lake and there he killed all the Roman officers and most of their
men. This time there was a panic among the people of Rome, but the Senate kept
its nerve. A third army was organised and the command was given to Quintus
Fabius Maximus with full power to act “as was necessary to save the state.”
Fabius knew that he must be very careful lest all be lost. His raw and
untrained men, the last available soldiers, were no match for Hannibal’s
veterans. He refused to accept battle but forever he followed Hannibal, destroyed
everything eatable, destroyed the roads, attacked small detachments and
generally weakened the morale of the Carthaginian troops by a most distressing
and annoying form of guerilla warfare.

HANNIBAL AND THE C. E. F.

Such methods however did not satisfy the fearsome crowds who had found
safety behind the walls of Rome. They wanted “action.” Something must be
done and must be done quickly. A popular hero by the name of Varro, the sort of
man who went about the city telling everybody how much better he could do
things than slow old Fabius, the “Delayer,” was made commander-in-chief by
popular acclamation. At the battle of Cannae (216) he suffered the most terrible
defeat of Roman history. More than seventy thousand men were killed. Hannibal
was master of all Italy.
He marched from one end of the peninsula to the other, proclaiming himself
the “deliverer from the yoke of Rome” and asking the different provinces to join
him in warfare upon the mother city. Then once more the wisdom of Rome bore
noble fruit. With the exceptions of Capua and Syracuse, all Roman cities
remained loyal. Hannibal, the deliverer, found himself opposed by the people
whose friend he pretended to be. He was far away from home and did not like
the situation. He sent messengers to Carthage to ask for fresh supplies and new
men. Alas, Carthage could not send him either.
The Romans with their boarding-bridges, were the masters of the sea.
Hannibal must help himself as best he could. He continued to defeat the Roman
armies that were sent out against him, but his own numbers were decreasing
rapidly and the Italian peasants held aloof from this self-appointed “deliverer.”
After many years of uninterrupted victories, Hannibal found himself besieged
in the country which he had just conquered. For a moment, the luck seemed to
turn. Hasdrubal, his brother, had defeated the Roman armies in Spain. He had
crossed the Alps to come to Hannibal’s assistance. He sent messengers to the
south to tell of his arrival and ask the other army to meet him in the plain of the
Tiber. Unfortunately the messengers fell into the hands of the Romans and
Hannibal waited in vain for further news until his brother’s head, neatly packed
in a basket, came rolling into his camp and told him of the fate of the last of the
Carthaginian troops.
With Hasdrubal out of the way, young Publius Scipio easily reconquered
Spain and four years later the Romans were ready for a final attack upon
Carthage. Hannibal was called back. He crossed the African Sea and tried to
organise the defences of his home-city. In the year 202 at the battle of Zama, the
Carthaginians were defeated. Hannibal fled to Tyre. From there he went to Asia
Minor to stir up the Syrians and the Macedonians against Rome. He
accomplished very little but his activities among these Asiatic powers gave the
Romans an excuse to carry their warfare into the territory of the east and annex
the greater part of the Ægean world.
Driven from one city to another, a fugitive without a
THE DEATH OF HANNIBAL
home, Hannibal at last knew that the end of his ambitious
dream had come. His beloved city of Carthage had been ruined by the war. She
had been forced to sign a terrible peace. Her navy had been sunk. She had been
forbidden to make war without Roman permission. She had been condemned to
pay the Romans millions of dollars for endless years to come. Life offered no
hope of a better future. In the year 190 B.C. Hannibal took poison and killed
himself.
Forty years later, the Romans forced their last war upon Carthage. Three long
years the inhabitants of the old Phœnician colony held out against the power of
the new republic. Hunger forced them to surrender. The few men and women
who had survived the siege were sold as slaves. The city was set on fire. For two
whole weeks the store-houses and the palaces and the great arsenal burned. Then
a terrible curse was pronounced upon the blackened ruins and the Roman legions
returned to Italy to enjoy their victory.
For the next thousand years, the Mediterranean remained a European sea. But
as soon as the Roman Empire had been destroyed, Asia made another attempt to
dominate this great inland sea, as you will learn when I tell you about
Mohammed.
THE RISE OF ROME

HOW ROME HAPPENED

THE Roman Empire was an accident. No one planned it. It “happened.” No


famous general or statesman or cut-throat ever got up and said “Friends,
Romans, Citizens, we must found an Empire. Follow me and together we shall
conquer all the land from the Gates of Hercules to Mount Taurus.”

HOW ROME HAPPENED

Rome produced famous generals and equally distinguished statesmen and cut-
throats, and Roman armies fought all over the world. But the Roman empire-
making was done without a preconceived plan. The average Roman was a very
matter-of-fact citizen. He disliked theories about government. When someone
began to recite “eastward the course of Roman Empire, etc., etc.,” he hastily left
the forum. He just continued to take more and more land because circumstances
forced him to do so. He was not driven by ambition or by greed. Both by nature
and inclination he was a farmer and wanted to stay at home. But when he was
attacked he was obliged to defend himself and when the enemy happened to
cross the sea to ask for aid in a distant country then the patient Roman marched
many dreary miles to defeat this dangerous foe and when this had been
accomplished, he stayed behind to administer his newly conquered provinces
lest they fall into the hands of wandering Barbarians and become themselves a
menace to Roman safety. It sounds rather complicated and yet to the
contemporaries it was so very simple, as you shall see in a moment.
In the year 203 B.C. Scipio had crossed the African Sea and had carried the war
into Africa. Carthage had called Hannibal back. Badly supported by his
mercenaries, Hannibal had been defeated near Zama. The Romans had asked for
his surrender and Hannibal had fled to get aid from the kings of Macedonia and
Syria, as I told you in my last chapter.
The rulers of these two countries (remnants of the Empire of Alexander the
Great) just then were contemplating an expedition against Egypt. They hoped to
divide the rich Nile valley between themselves. The king of Egypt had heard of
this and he had asked Rome to come to his support. The stage was set for a
number of highly interesting plots and counter-plots. But the Romans, with their
lack of imagination, rang the curtain down before the play had been fairly
started. Their legions completely defeated the heavy Greek phalanx which was
still used by the Macedonians as their battle formation. That happened in the
year 197 B.C. at the battle in the plains of Cynoscephalæ or “Dogs’ Heads,” in
central Thessaly.
The Romans then marched southward to Attica and informed the Greeks that
they had come to “deliver the Hellenes from the Macedonian yoke.” The Greeks,
having learned nothing in their years of semi-slavery, used their new freedom in
a most unfortunate way. All the little city-states once more began to quarrel with
each other as they had done in the good old days. The Romans, who had little
understanding and less love for these silly bickerings of a race which they rather
despised, showed great forbearance. But tiring of these endless dissensions they
lost patience, invaded Greece, burned down Corinth (to “encourage the other
Greeks”) and sent a Roman governor to Athens to rule this turbulent province. In
this way, Macedonia and Greece became buffer states which protected Rome’s
eastern frontier.
CIVILIZATION GOES WESTWARD

Meanwhile right across the Hellespont lay the Kingdom of Syria, and
Antiochus III, who ruled that vast land, had shown great eagerness when his
distinguished guest, General Hannibal, explained to him how easy it would be to
invade Italy and sack the city of Rome.
Lucius Scipio, a brother of Scipio the African fighter who had defeated
Hannibal and his Carthaginians at Zama, was sent to Asia Minor. He destroyed
the armies of the Syrian king near Magnesia (in the year 190 B.C.) Shortly
afterwards, Antiochus was lynched by his own people. Asia Minor became a
Roman protectorate and the small City-Republic of Rome was mistress of most
of the lands which bordered upon the Mediterranean.
THE ROMAN EMPIRE

HOW THE REPUBLIC OF ROME AFTER CENTURIES OF UNREST AND


REVOLUTION BECAME AN EMPIRE

WHEN the Roman armies returned from these many victorious campaigns, they
were received with great jubilation. Alas and alack! this sudden glory did not
make the country any happier. On the contrary. The endless campaigns had
ruined the farmers who had been obliged to do the hard work of Empire making.
It had placed too much power in the hands of the successful generals (and their
private friends) who had used the war as an excuse for wholesale robbery.
The old Roman Republic had been proud of the simplicity which had
characterised the lives of her famous men. The new Republic felt ashamed of the
shabby coats and the high principles which had been fashionable in the days of
its grandfathers. It became a land of rich people ruled by rich people for the
benefit of rich people. As such it was doomed to disastrous failure, as I shall
now tell you.
Within less than a century and a half, Rome had become the mistress of
practically all the land around the Mediterranean. In those early days of history a
prisoner of war lost his freedom and became a slave. The Roman regarded war
as a very serious business and he showed no mercy to a conquered foe. After the
fall of Carthage, the Carthaginian women and children were sold into bondage
together with their own slaves. And a like fate awaited the obstinate inhabitants
of Greece and Macedonia and Spain and Syria when they dared to revolt against
the Roman power.
Two thousand years ago a slave was merely a piece of machinery. Nowadays a
rich man invests his money in factories. The rich people of Rome (senators,
generals and war-profiteers) invested theirs in land and in slaves. The land they
bought or took in the newly-acquired provinces. The slaves they bought in open
market wherever they happened to be cheapest. During most of the third and
second centuries before Christ there was a plentiful supply, and as a result the
landowners worked their slaves until they dropped dead in their tracks, when
they bought new ones at the nearest bargain-counter of Corinthian or
Carthaginian captives.
And now behold the fate of the freeborn farmer!
He had done his duty toward Rome and he had fought her battles without
complaint. But when he came home after ten, fifteen or twenty years, his lands
were covered with weeds and his family had been ruined. But he was a strong
man and willing to begin life anew. He sowed and planted and waited for the
harvest. He carried his grain to the market together with his cattle and his
poultry, to find that the large landowners who worked their estates with slaves
could underbid him all along the line. For a couple of years he tried to hold his
own. Then he gave up in despair. He left the country and he went to the nearest
city. In the city he was as hungry as he had been before on the land. But he
shared his misery with thousands of other disinherited beings. They crouched
together in filthy hovels in the suburbs of the large cities. They were apt to get
sick and die from terrible epidemics. They were all profoundly discontented.
They had fought for their country and this was their reward. They were always
willing to listen to those plausible spell-binders who gather around a public
grievance like so many hungry vultures, and soon they became a grave menace
to the safety of the state.
But the class of the newly-rich shrugged its shoulders. “We have our army and
our policemen,” they argued, “they will keep the mob in order.” And they hid
themselves behind the high walls of their pleasant villas and cultivated their
gardens and read the poems of a certain Homer which a Greek slave had just
translated into very pleasing Latin hexameters.
In a few families however the old tradition of unselfish service to the
Commonwealth continued. Cornelia, the daughter of Scipio Africanus, had been
married to a Roman by the name of Gracchus. She had two sons, Tiberius and
Gaius. When the boys grew up they entered politics and tried to bring about
certain much-needed reforms. A census had shown that most of the land of the
Italian peninsula was owned by two thousand noble families. Tiberius Gracchus,
having been elected a Tribune, tried to help the freemen. He revived two ancient
laws which restricted the number of acres which a single owner might possess.
In this way he hoped to revive the valuable old class of small and independent
freeholders. The newly-rich called him a robber and an enemy of the state. There
were street riots. A party of thugs was hired to kill the popular Tribune. Tiberius
Gracchus was attacked when he entered the assembly and was beaten to death.
Ten years later his brother Gaius tried the experiment of reforming a nation
against the expressed wishes of a strong privileged class. He passed a “poor law”
which was meant to help the destitute farmers. Eventually it made the greater
part of the Roman citizens into professional beggars.
He established colonies of destitute people in distant parts of the empire, but
these settlements failed to attract the right sort of people. Before Gaius Gracchus
could do more harm he too was murdered and his followers were either killed or
exiled. The first two reformers had been gentlemen. The two who came after
were of a very different stamp. They were professional soldiers. One was called
Marius. The name of the other was Sulla. Both enjoyed a large personal
following.
Sulla was the leader of the landowners. Marius, the victor in a great battle at
the foot of the Alps when the Teutons and the Cimbri had been annihilated, was
the popular hero of the disinherited freemen.
Now it happened in the year 88 B.C. that the Senate of Rome was greatly
disturbed by rumours that came from Asia. Mithridates, king of a country along
the shores of the Black Sea, and a Greek on his mother’s side, had seen the
possibility of establishing a second Alexandrian Empire. He began his campaign
for world-domination with the murder of all Roman citizens who happened to be
in Asia Minor, men, women and children. Such an act, of course, meant war. The
Senate equipped an army to march against the King of Pontus and punish him
for his crime. But who was to be commander-in-chief? “Sulla,” said the Senate,
“because he is Consul.” “Marius,” said the mob, “because he has been Consul
five times and because he is the champion of our rights.”
Possession is nine points of the law. Sulla happened to be in actual command
of the army. He went east to defeat Mithridates and Marius fled to Africa. There
he waited until he heard that Sulla had crossed into Asia. He then returned to
Italy, gathered a motley crew of malcontents, marched on Rome and entered the
city with his professional highwaymen, spent five days and five nights,
slaughtering his enemies in the Senatorial party, got himself elected Consul and
promptly died from the excitement of the last fortnight.
There followed four years of disorder. Then Sulla, having defeated
Mithridates, announced that he was ready to return to Rome and settle a few old
scores of his own. He was as good as his word. For weeks his soldiers were busy
executing those of their fellow citizens who were suspected of democratic
sympathies. One day they got hold of a young fellow who had been often seen in
the company of Marius. They were going to hang him when some one interfered.
“The boy is too young,” he said, and they let him go. His name was Julius
Cæsar. You shall meet him again on the next page.
As for Sulla, he became “Dictator,” which meant sole and supreme ruler of all
the Roman possessions. He ruled Rome for four years, and he died quietly in his
bed, having spent the last year of his life tenderly raising his cabbages, as was
the custom of so many Romans who had spent a lifetime killing their fellow-
men.
But conditions did not grow better. On the contrary, they grew worse. Another
general, Gnæus Pompeius, or Pompey, a close friend of Sulla, went east to renew
the war against the ever troublesome Mithridates. He drove that energetic
potentate into the mountains where Mithridates took poison and killed himself,
well knowing what fate awaited him as a Roman captive. Next he re-established
the authority of Rome over Syria, destroyed Jerusalem, roamed through western
Asia, trying to revive the myth of Alexander the Great, and at last (in the year
62) returned to Rome with a dozen ship-loads of defeated Kings and Princes and
Generals, all of whom were forced to march in the triumphal procession of this
enormously popular Roman who presented his city with the sum of forty million
dollars in plunder.
It was necessary that the government of Rome be placed in the hands of a
strong man. Only a few months before, the town had almost fallen into the hands
of a good-for-nothing young aristocrat by the name of Catiline, who had
gambled away his money and hoped to reimburse himself for his losses by a
little plundering. Cicero, a public-spirited lawyer, had discovered the plot, had
warned the Senate, and had forced Catiline to flee. But there were other young
men with similar ambitions and it was no time for idle talk.
Pompey organised a triumvirate which was to take charge of affairs. He
became the leader of this Vigilante Committee. Gaius Julius Cæsar, who had
made a reputation for himself as governor of Spain, was the second in command.
The third was an indifferent sort of person by the name of Crassus. He had been
elected because he was incredibly rich, having been a successful contractor of
war supplies. He soon went upon an expedition against the Parthians and was
killed.

CÆSAR GOES WEST

As for Cæsar, who was by far the ablest of the three, he decided that he
needed a little more military glory to become a popular hero. He crossed the
Alps and conquered that part of the world which is now called France. Then he
hammered a solid wooden bridge across the Rhine and invaded the land of the
wild Teutons. Finally he took ship and visited England. Heaven knows where he
might have ended if he had not been forced to return to Italy. Pompey, so he was
informed, had been appointed dictator for life. This of course meant that Cæsar
was to be placed on the list of the “retired officers,” and the idea did not appeal
to him. He remembered that he had begun life as a follower of Marius. He
decided to teach the Senators and their “dictator” another lesson. He crossed the
Rubicon River which separated the province of Cis-alpine Gaul from Italy.
Everywhere he was received as the “friend of the people.” Without difficulty
Cæsar entered Rome and Pompey fled to Greece. Cæsar followed him and
defeated his followers near Pharsalus. Pompey sailed across the Mediterranean
and escaped to Egypt. When he landed he was murdered by order of young king
Ptolemy. A few days later Cæsar arrived. He found himself caught in a trap. Both
the Egyptians and the Roman garrison which had remained faithful to Pompey,
attacked his camp.
Fortune was with Cæsar. He succeeded in setting fire to the Egyptian fleet.
Incidentally the sparks of the burning vessels fell on the roof of the famous
library of Alexandria (which was just off the water front,) and destroyed it. Next
he attacked the Egyptian army, drove the soldiers into the Nile, drowned
Ptolemy, and established a new government under Cleopatra, the sister of the
late king. Just then word reached him that Pharnaces, the son and heir of
Mithridates, had gone on the war-path. Cæsar marched northward, defeated
Pharnaces in a war which lasted five days, sent word of his victory to Rome in
the famous sentence “veni, vidi, vici,” which is Latin for “I came, I saw, I
conquered,” and returned to Egypt where he fell desperately in love with
Cleopatra, who followed him to Rome when he returned to take charge of the
government, in the year 46. He marched at the head of not less than four
different victory-parades, having won four different campaigns.
Then Cæsar appeared in the Senate to report upon his adventures, and the
grateful Senate made him “dictator” for ten years. It was a fatal step.
The new dictator made serious attempts to reform the Roman state. He made it
possible for freemen to become members of the Senate. He conferred the rights
of citizenship upon distant communities as had been done in the early days of
Roman history. He permitted “foreigners” to exercise influence upon the
government. He reformed the administration of the distant provinces which
certain aristocratic families had come to regard as their private possessions. In
short he did many things for the good of the majority of the people but which
made him thoroughly unpopular with the most powerful men in the state. Half a
hundred young aristocrats formed a plot “to save the Republic.” On the Ides of
March (the fifteenth of March according to that new calendar which Cæsar had
brought with him from Egypt) Cæsar was murdered when he entered the Senate.
Once more Rome was without a master.

THE GREAT ROMAN EMPIRE

There were two men who tried to continue the tradition of Cæsar’s glory. One
was Antony, his former secretary. The other was Octavian, Cæsar’s grand-
nephew and heir to his estate. Octavian remained in Rome, but Antony went to
Egypt to be near Cleopatra with whom he too had fallen in love, as seems to
have been the habit of Roman generals.
A war broke out between the two. In the battle of Actium, Octavian defeated
Antony. Antony killed himself and Cleopatra was left alone to face the enemy.
She tried very hard to make Octavian her third Roman conquest. When she saw
that she could make no impression upon this very proud aristocrat, she killed
herself, and Egypt became a Roman province.
As for Octavian, he was a very wise young man and he did not repeat the
mistake of his famous uncle. He knew how people will shy at words. He was
very modest in his demands when he returned to Rome. He did not want to be a
“dictator.” He would be entirely satisfied with the title of “the Honourable.” But
when the Senate, a few years later, addressed him as Augustus—the Illustrious—
he did not object and a few years later the man in the street called him Cæsar, or
Kaiser, while the soldiers, accustomed to regard Octavian as their Commander-
in-chief referred to him as the Chief, the Imperator or Emperor. The Republic
had become an Empire, but the average Roman was hardly aware of the fact.
In 14 A.D. his position as the Absolute Ruler of the Roman people had become
so well established that he was made an object of that divine worship which
hitherto had been reserved for the Gods. And his successors were true
“Emperors”—the absolute rulers of the greatest empire the world had ever seen.
If the truth be told, the average citizen was sick and tired of anarchy and
disorder. He did not care who ruled him provided the new master gave him a
chance to live quietly and without the noise of eternal street riots. Octavian
assured his subjects forty years of peace. He had no desire to extend the frontiers
of his domains. In the year 9 A.D. he had contemplated an invasion of the
northwestern wilderness which was inhabited by the Teutons. But Varus, his
general, had been killed with all his men in the Teutoburg Woods, and after that
the Romans made no further attempts to civilise these wild people.
They concentrated their efforts upon the gigantic problem of internal reform.
But it was too late to do much good. Two centuries of revolution and foreign war
had repeatedly killed the best men among the younger generations. It had ruined
the class of the free farmers. It had introduced slave labor, against which no
freeman could hope to compete. It had turned the cities into beehives inhabited
by pauperized and unhealthy mobs of runaway peasants. It had created a large
bureaucracy—petty officials who were underpaid and who were forced to take
graft in order to buy bread and clothing for their families. Worst of all, it had
accustomed people to violence, to blood shed, to a barbarous pleasure in the pain
and suffering of others.
Outwardly, the Roman state during the first century of our era was a
magnificent political structure, so large that Alexander’s empire became one of
its minor provinces. Underneath this glory there lived millions upon millions of
poor and tired human beings, toiling like ants who have built a nest underneath a
heavy stone. They worked for the benefit of some one else. They shared their
food with the animals of the fields. They lived in stables. They died without
hope.
It was the seven hundred and fifty-third year since the founding of Rome.
Gaius Julius Cæsar Octavianus Augustus was living in the palace of the Palatine
Hill, busily engaged upon the task of ruling his empire.
In a little village of distant Syria, Mary, the wife of Joseph the Carpenter, was
tending her little boy, born in a stable of Bethlehem.
This is a strange world.
Before long, the palace and the stable were to meet in open combat.
And the stable was to emerge victorious.
JOSHUA OF NAZARETH

THE STORY OF JOSHUA OF NAZARETH, WHOM THE GREEKS CALLED


JESUS

IN the autumn of the year of the city 815 (which would be 62 A.D., in our way
of counting time) Æsculapius Cultellus, a Roman physician, wrote to his nephew
who was with the army in Syria as follows:

My dear Nephew,
A few days ago I was called in to prescribe for a sick man named Paul. He
appeared to be a Roman citizen of Jewish parentage, well educated and of
agreeable manners. I had been told that he was here in connection with a law-
suit, an appeal from one of our provincial courts, Cæsarea or some such place in
the eastern Mediterranean. He had been described to me as a “wild and violent”
fellow who had been making speeches against the People and against the Law. I
found him very intelligent and of great honesty.
A friend of mine who used to be with the army in Asia Minor tells me that he
heard something about him in Ephesus where he was preaching sermons about a
strange new God. I asked my patient if this were true and whether he had told
the people to rebel against the will of our beloved Emperor. Paul answered me
that the Kingdom of which he had spoken was not of this world and he added
many strange utterances which I did not understand, but which were probably
due to his fever.
His personality made a great impression upon me and I was sorry to hear that
he was killed on the Ostian Road a few days ago. Therefore I am writing this
letter to you. When next you visit Jerusalem, I want you to find out something
about my friend Paul and the strange Jewish prophet, who seems to have been
his teacher. Our slaves are getting much excited about this so-called Messiah,
and a few of them, who openly talked of the new kingdom (whatever that
means) have been crucified. I would like to know the truth about all these
rumours and I am
Your devoted Uncle,
ÆSCULAPIUS CULTELLUS.

Six weeks later, Gladius Ensa, the nephew, a captain of the VII Gallic
Infantry, answered as follows:

My dear Uncle,
I received your letter and I have obeyed your instructions.
Two weeks ago our brigade was sent to Jerusalem. There have been several
revolutions during the last century and there is not much left of the old city. We
have been here now for a month and to-morrow we shall continue our march to
Petra, where there has been trouble with some of the Arab tribes. I shall use this
evening to answer your questions, but pray do not expect a detailed report.
I have talked with most of the older men in this city but few have been able to
give me any definite information. A few days ago a pedler came to the camp. I
bought some of his olives and I asked him whether he had ever heard of the
famous Messiah who was killed when he was young. He said that he
remembered it very clearly, because his father had taken him to Golgotha (a hill
just outside the city) to see the execution, and to show him what became of the
enemies of the laws of the people of Judæa. He gave me the address of one
Joseph, who had been a personal friend of the Messiah and told me that I had
better go and see him if I wanted to know more.
This morning I went to call on Joseph. He was quite an old man. He had been
a fisherman on one of the fresh-water lakes. His memory was clear, and from
him at last I got a fairly definite account of what had happened during the
troublesome days before I was born.

THE HOLY LAND

Tiberius, our great and glorious emperor, was on the throne, and an officer of
the name of Pontius Pilatus was governor of Judæa and Samaria. Joseph knew
little about this Pilatus. He seemed to have been an honest enough official who
left a decent reputation as procurator of the province. In the year 783 or 784
(Joseph had forgotten when) Pilatus was called to Jerusalem on account of a riot.
A certain young man (the son of a carpenter of Nazareth) was said to be planning
a revolution against the Roman government. Strangely enough our own
intelligence officers, who are usually well informed, appear to have heard
nothing about it, and when they investigated the matter they reported that the
carpenter was an excellent citizen and that there was no reason to proceed
against him. But the old-fashioned leaders of the Jewish faith, according to
Joseph, were much upset. They greatly disliked his popularity with the masses of
the poorer Hebrews. The “Nazarene” (so they told Pilatus) had publicly claimed
that a Greek or a Roman or even a Philistine, who tried to live a decent and
honourable life, was quite as good as a Jew who spent his days studying the
ancient laws of Moses. Pilatus does not seem to have been impressed by this
argument, but when the crowds around the temple threatened to lynch Jesus, and
kill all his followers, he decided to take the carpenter into custody to save his
life.
He does not appear to have understood the real nature of the quarrel.
Whenever he asked the Jewish priests to explain their grievances, they shouted
“heresy” and “treason” and got terribly excited. Finally, so Joseph told me,
Pilatus sent for Joshua (that was the name of the Nazarene, but the Greeks who
live in this part of the world always refer to him as Jesus) to examine him
personally. He talked to him for several hours. He asked him about the
“dangerous doctrines” which he was said to have preached on the shores of the
sea of Galilee. But Jesus answered that he never referred to politics. He was not
so much interested in the bodies of men as in Man’s soul. He wanted all people
to regard their neighbours as their brothers and to love one single God, who was
the father of all living beings.
Pilatus, who seems to have been well versed in the doctrines of the Stoics and
the other Greek philosophers, does not appear to have discovered anything
seditious in the talk of Jesus. According to my informant he made another
attempt to save the life of the kindly prophet. He kept putting the execution off.
Meanwhile the Jewish people, lashed into fury by their priests, got frantic with
rage. There had been many riots in Jerusalem before this and there were only a
few Roman soldiers within calling distance. Reports were being sent to the
Roman authorities in Cæsarea that Pilatus had “fallen a victim to the teachings
of the Nazarene.” Petitions were being circulated all through the city to have
Pilatus recalled, because he was an enemy of the Emperor. You know that our
governors have strict instructions to avoid an open break with their foreign
subjects. To save the country from civil war, Pilatus finally sacrificed his
prisoner, Joshua, who behaved with great dignity and who forgave all those who
hated him. He was crucified amidst the howls and the laughter of the Jerusalem
mob.
That is what Joseph told me, with tears running down his old cheeks. I gave
him a gold piece when I left him, but he refused it and asked me to hand it to one
poorer than himself. I also asked him a few questions about your friend Paul. He
had known him slightly. He seems to have been a tent maker who gave up his
profession that he might preach the words of a loving and forgiving God, who
was so very different from that Jehovah of whom the Jewish priests are telling us
all the time. Afterwards, Paul appears to have travelled much in Asia Minor and
in Greece, telling the slaves that they were all children of one loving Father and
that happiness awaits all, both rich and poor, who have tried to live honest lives
and have done good to those who were suffering and miserable.
I hope that I have answered your questions to your satisfaction. The whole
story seems very harmless to me as far as the safety of the state is concerned.
But then, we Romans never have been able to understand the people of this
province. I am sorry that they have killed your friend Paul. I wish that I were at
home again, and I am, as ever,
Your dutiful nephew,
GLADIUS ENSA.
THE FALL OF ROME

THE TWILIGHT OF ROME

THE text-books of ancient History give the date 476 as the year in which Rome
fell, because in that year the last emperor was driven off his throne. But Rome,
which was not built in a day, took a long time falling. The process was so slow
and so gradual that most Romans did not realise how their old world was coming
to an end. They complained about the unrest of the times—they grumbled about
the high prices of food and about the low wages of the workmen—they cursed
the profiteers who had a monopoly of the grain and the wool and the gold coin.
Occasionally they rebelled against an unusually rapacious governor. But the
majority of the people during the first four centuries of our era ate and drank
(whatever their purse allowed them to buy) and hated or loved (according to
their nature) and went to the theatre (whenever there was a free show of fighting
gladiators) or starved in the slums of the big cities, utterly ignorant of the fact
that their empire had outlived its usefulness and was doomed to perish.
How could they realise the threatened danger? Rome made a fine showing of
outward glory. Well-paved roads connected the different provinces, the imperial
police were active and showed little tenderness for highwaymen. The frontier
was closely guarded against the savage tribes who seemed to be occupying the
waste lands of northern Europe. The whole world was paying tribute to the
mighty city of Rome, and a score of able men were working day and night to
undo the mistakes of the past and bring about a return to the happier conditions
of the early Republic.
But the underlying causes of the decay of the State, of which I have told you
in a former chapter, had not been removed and reform therefore was impossible.
Rome was, first and last and all the time, a city-state as Athens and Corinth
had been city-states in ancient Hellas. It had been able to dominate the Italian
peninsula. But Rome as the ruler of the entire civilised world was a political
impossibility and could not endure. Her young men were killed in her endless
wars. Her farmers were ruined by long military service and by taxation. They
either became professional beggars or hired themselves out to rich landowners
who gave them board and lodging in exchange for their services and made them
“serfs,” those unfortunate human beings who are neither slaves nor freemen, but
who have become part of the soil upon which they work, like so many cows, and
the trees.
The Empire, the State, had become everything. The common citizen had
dwindled down to less than nothing. As for the slaves, they had heard the words
that were spoken by Paul. They had accepted the message of the humble
carpenter of Nazareth. They did not rebel against their masters. On the contrary,
they had been taught to be meek and they obeyed their superiors. But they had
lost all interest in the affairs of this world which had proved such a miserable
place of abode. They were willing to fight the good fight that they might enter
into the Kingdom of Heaven. But they were not willing to engage in warfare for
the benefit of an ambitious emperor who aspired to glory by way of a foreign
campaign in the land of the Parthians or the Numidians or the Scots.
And so conditions grew worse as the centuries went by. The first Emperors
had continued the tradition of “leadership” which had given the old tribal
chieftains such a hold upon their subjects. But the Emperors of the second and
third centuries were Barrack-Emperors, professional soldiers, who existed by the
grace of their body-guards, the so-called Prætorians. They succeeded each other
with terrifying rapidity, murdering their way into the palace and being murdered
out of it as soon as their successors had become rich enough to bribe the guards
into a new rebellion.
Meanwhile the barbarians were hammering at the gates of the northern
frontier. As there were no longer any native Roman armies to stop their progress,
foreign mercenaries had to be hired to fight the invader. As the foreign soldier
happened to be of the same blood as his supposed enemy, he was apt to be quite
lenient when he engaged in battle. Finally, by way of experiment, a few tribes
were allowed to settle within the confines of the Empire. Others followed. Soon
these tribes complained bitterly of the greedy Roman tax-gatherers, who took
away their last penny. When they got no redress they marched to Rome and
loudly demanded that they be heard.

WHEN THE BARBARIANS GOT THROUGH WITH A ROMAN CITY

This made Rome very uncomfortable as an Imperial residence. Constantine


(who ruled from 323 to 337) looked for a new capital. He chose Byzantium, the
gate-way for the commerce between Europe and Asia. The city was renamed
Constantinople, and the court moved eastward. When Constantine died, his two
sons, for the sake of a more efficient administration, divided the Empire between
them. The elder lived in Rome and ruled in the west. The younger stayed in
Constantinople and was master of the east.

ROME

Then came the fourth century and the terrible visitation of the Huns, those
mysterious Asiatic horsemen who for more than two centuries maintained
themselves in Northern Europe and continued their career of bloodshed until
they were defeated near Chalons-sur-Marne in France in the year 451. As soon
as the Huns had reached the Danube they had begun to press hard upon the
Goths. The Goths, in order to save themselves, were thereupon obliged to invade
Rome. The Emperor Valens tried to stop them, but was killed near Adrianople in
the year 378. Twenty-two years later, under their king, Alaric, these same West
Goths marched westward and attacked Rome. They did not plunder, and
destroyed only a few palaces. Next came the Vandals, and showed less respect
for the venerable traditions of the city. Then the Burgundians. Then the East
Goths. Then the Alemanni. Then the Franks. There was no end to the invasions.
Rome at last was at the mercy of every ambitious highway robber who could
gather a few followers.
In the year 402 the Emperor fled to Ravenna, which was a sea-port and
strongly fortified, and there, in the year 475, Odoacer, commander of a regiment
of the German mercenaries, who wanted the farms of Italy to be divided among
themselves, gently but effectively pushed Romulus Augustulus, the last of the
emperors who ruled the western division, from his throne, and proclaimed
himself Patrician or ruler of Rome. The eastern Emperor, who was very busy
with his own affairs, recognised him, and for ten years Odoacer ruled what was
left of the western provinces.

THE INVASIONS OF THE BARBARIANS

A few years later, Theodoric, King of the East Goths, invaded the newly
formed Patriciate, took Ravenna, murdered Odoacer at his own dinner table, and
established a Gothic Kingdom amidst the ruins of the western part of the Empire.
This Patriciate state did not last long. In the sixth century a motley crowd of
Longobards and Saxons and Slavs and Avars invaded Italy, destroyed the Gothic
kingdom, and established a new state of which Pavia became the capital.
Then at last the imperial city sank into a state of utter neglect and despair. The
ancient palaces had been plundered time and again. The schools had been burned
down. The teachers had been starved to death. The rich people had been thrown
out of their villas which were now inhabited by evil-smelling and hairy
barbarians. The roads had fallen into decay. The old bridges were gone and
commerce had come to a standstill. Civilisation—the product of thousands of
years of patient labor on the part of Egyptians and Babylonians and Greeks and
Romans, which had lifted man high above the most daring dreams of his earliest
ancestors, threatened to perish from the western continent.
It is true that in the far east, Constantinople continued to be the centre of an
Empire for another thousand years. But it hardly counted as a part of the
European continent. Its interests lay in the east. It began to forget its western
origin. Gradually the Roman language was given up for the Greek. The Roman
alphabet was discarded and Roman law was written in Greek characters and
explained by Greek judges. The Emperor became an Asiatic despot, worshipped
as the god-like kings of Thebes had been worshipped in the valley of the Nile,
three thousand years before. When missionaries of the Byzantine church looked
for fresh fields of activity, they went eastward and carried the civilisation of
Byzantium into the vast wilderness of Russia.
As for the west, it was left to the mercies of the Barbarians. For twelve
generations, murder, war, arson, plundering were the order of the day. One thing
—and one thing alone—saved Europe from complete destruction, from a return
to the days of cave-men and the hyena.
This was the church—the flock of humble men and women who for many
centuries had confessed themselves the followers of Jesus, the carpenter of
Nazareth, who had been killed that the mighty Roman Empire might be saved
the trouble of a street-riot in a little city somewhere along the Syrian frontier.
RISE OF THE CHURCH

HOW ROME BECAME THE CENTRE OF THE CHRISTIAN WORLD

THE average intelligent Roman who lived under the Empire had taken very
little interest in the gods of his fathers. A few times a year he went to the temple,
but merely as a matter of custom. He looked on patiently when the people
celebrated a religious festival with a solemn procession. But he regarded the
worship of Jupiter and Minerva and Neptune as something rather childish, a
survival from the crude days of the early republic and not a fit subject of study
for a man who had mastered the works of the Stoics and the Epicureans and the
other great philosophers of Athens.
This attitude made the Roman a very tolerant man. The government insisted
that all people, Romans, foreigners, Greeks, Babylonians, Jews, should pay a
certain outward respect to the image of the Emperor which was supposed to
stand in every temple, just as a picture of the President of the United States is apt
to hang in an American Post Office. But this was a formality without any deeper
meaning. Generally speaking everybody could honour, revere and adore
whatever gods he pleased, and as a result, Rome was filled with all sorts of queer
little temples and synagogues, dedicated to the worship of Egyptian and African
and Asiatic divinities.
When the first disciples of Jesus reached Rome and began to preach their new
doctrine of a universal brotherhood of man, nobody objected. The man in the
street stopped and listened. Rome, the capital of the world, had always been full
of wandering preachers, each proclaiming his own “mystery.” Most of the self-
appointed priests appealed to the senses—promised golden rewards and endless
pleasure to the followers of their own particular god. Soon the crowd in the
street noticed that the so-called Christians (the followers of the Christ or
“anointed”) spoke a very different language. They did not appear to be
impressed by great riches or a noble position. They extolled the beauties of
poverty and humility and meekness. These were not exactly the virtues which
had made Rome the mistress of the world. It was rather interesting to listen to a
“mystery” which told people in the hey-day of their glory that their worldly
success could not possibly bring them lasting happiness.
Besides, the preachers of the Christian mystery told dreadful stories of the fate
that awaited those who refused to listen to the words of the true God. It was
never wise to take chances. Of course the old Roman gods still existed, but were
they strong enough to protect their friends against the powers of this new deity
who had been brought to Europe from distant Asia? People began to have
doubts. They returned to listen to further explanations of the new creed. After a
while they began to meet the men and women who preached the words of Jesus.
They found them very different from the average Roman priests. They were all
dreadfully poor. They were kind to slaves and to animals. They did not try to
gain riches, but gave away whatever they had. The example of their unselfish
lives forced many Romans to forsake the old religion. They joined the small
communities of Christians who met in the back rooms of private houses or
somewhere in an open field, and the temples were deserted.
This went on year after year and the number of Christians continued to
increase. Presbyters or priests (the original Greek meant “elder”) were elected to
guard the interests of the small churches. A bishop was made the head of all the
communities within a single province. Peter, who had followed Paul to Rome,
was the first Bishop of Rome. In due time his successors (who were addressed as
Father or Papa) came to be known as Popes.

A CLOISTER

The church became a powerful institution within the Empire. The Christian
doctrines appealed to those who despaired of this world. They also attracted
many strong men who found it impossible to make a career under the Imperial
government, but who could exercise their gifts of leadership among the humble
followers of the Nazarene teacher. At last the state was obliged to take notice.
The Roman Empire (I have said this before) was tolerant through indifference. It
allowed everybody to seek salvation after his or her own fashion. But it insisted
that the different sects keep the peace among themselves and obey the wise rule
of “live and let live.”
The Christian communities however, refused to practise any sort of tolerance.
They publicly declared that their God, and their God alone, was the true ruler of
Heaven and Earth, and that all other gods were impostors. This seemed unfair to
the other sects and the police discouraged such utterances. The Christians
persisted.

THE GOTHS ARE COMING

Soon there were further difficulties. The Christians refused to go through the
formalities of paying homage to the emperor. They refused to appear when they
were called upon to join the army. The Roman magistrates threatened to punish
them. The Christians answered that this miserable world was only the ante-room
to a very pleasant Heaven and that they were more than willing to suffer death
for their principles. The Romans, puzzled by such conduct, sometimes killed the
offenders, but more often they did not. There was a certain amount of lynching
during the earliest years of the church, but this was the work of that part of the
mob which accused their meek Christian neighbours of every conceivable crime,
(such as slaughtering and eating babies, bringing about sickness and pestilence,
betraying the country in times of danger) because it was a harmless sport and
devoid of danger, as the Christians refused to fight back.
Meanwhile, Rome continued to be invaded by the Barbarians and when her
armies failed, Christian missionaries went forth to preach their gospel of peace
to the wild Teutons. They were strong men without fear of death. They spoke a
language which left no doubt as to the future of unrepentant sinners. The Teutons
were deeply impressed. They still had a deep respect for the wisdom of the
ancient city of Rome. Those men were Romans. They probably spoke the truth.
Soon the Christian missionary became a power in the savage regions of the
Teutons and the Franks. Half a dozen missionaries were as valuable as a whole
regiment of soldiers. The Emperors began to understand that the Christian might
be of great use to them. In some of the provinces they were given equal rights
with those who remained faithful to the old gods. The great change however
came during the last half of the fourth century.
Constantine, sometimes (Heaven knows why) called Constantine the Great,
was emperor. He was a terrible ruffian, but people of tender qualities could
hardly hope to survive in that hard-fighting age. During a long and checkered
career, Constantine had experienced many ups and downs. Once, when almost
defeated by his enemies, he thought that he would try the power of this new
Asiatic deity of whom everybody was talking. He promised that he too would
become a Christian if he were successful in the coming battle. He won the
victory and thereafter he was convinced of the power of the Christian God and
allowed himself to be baptised.
From that moment on, the Christian church was officially recognised and this
greatly strengthened the position of the new faith.
But the Christians still formed a very small minority of all the people, (not
more than five or six percent,) and in order to win, they were forced to refuse all
compromise. The old gods must be destroyed. For a short spell the emperor
Julian, a lover of Greek wisdom, managed to save the pagan Gods from further
destruction. But Julian died of his wounds during a campaign in Persia and his
successor Jovian re-established the church in all its glory. One after the other the
doors of the ancient temples were then closed. Then came the emperor Justinian
(who built the church of Saint Sophia in Constantinople), who discontinued the
school of philosophy at Athens which had been founded by Plato.
That was the end of the old Greek world, in which man had been allowed to
think his own thoughts and dream his own dreams according to his desires. The
somewhat vague rules of conduct of the philosophers had proved a poor compass
by which to steer the ship of life after a deluge of savagery and ignorance had
swept away the established order of things. There was need of something more
positive and more definite. This the Church provided.
During an age when nothing was certain, the church stood like a rock and
never receded from those principles which it held to be true and sacred. This
steadfast courage gained the admiration of the multitudes and carried the church
of Rome safely through the difficulties which destroyed the Roman state.
There was however, a certain element of luck in the final success of the
Christian faith. After the disappearance of Theodoric’s Roman-Gothic kingdom,
in the fifth century, Italy was comparatively free from foreign invasion. The
Lombards and Saxons and Slavs who succeeded the Goths were weak and
backward tribes. Under those circumstances it was possible for the bishops of
Rome to maintain the independence of their city. Soon the remnants of the
empire, scattered throughout the peninsula, recognised the Dukes of Rome (or
bishops) as their political and spiritual rulers.
The stage was set for the appearance of a strong man. He came in the year 590
and his name was Gregory. He belonged to the ruling classes of ancient Rome,
and he had been “prefect” or mayor of the city. Then he had become a monk and
a bishop and finally, and much against his will, (for he wanted to be a missionary
and preach Christianity to the heathen of England,) he had been dragged to the
Church of Saint Peter to be made Pope. He ruled only fourteen years but when
he died the Christian world of western Europe had officially recognised the
bishops of Rome, the Popes, as the head of the entire church.
This power, however, did not extend to the east. In Constantinople the
Emperors continued the old custom which had recognised the successors of
Augustus and Tiberius both as head of the government and as High Priest of the
Established Religion. In the year 1453 the eastern Roman Empire was conquered
by the Turks. Constantinople was taken, and Constantine Paleologue, the last
Roman Emperor, was killed on the steps of the Church of the Holy Sophia.
A few years before, Zoë, the daughter of his brother Thomas, had married
Ivan III of Russia. In this way did the grand-dukes of Moscow fall heir to the
traditions of Constantinople. The double-eagle of old Byzantium (reminiscent of
the days when Rome had been divided into an eastern and a western part)
became the coat of arms of modern Russia. The Tsar who had been merely the
first of the Russian nobles, assumed the aloofness and the dignity of a Roman
emperor before whom all subjects, both high and low, were inconsiderable
slaves.
The court was refashioned after the oriental pattern which the eastern
Emperors had imported from Asia and from Egypt and which (so they flattered
themselves) resembled the court of Alexander the Great. This strange inheritance
which the dying Byzantine Empire bequeathed to an unsuspecting world
continued to live with great vigour for six more centuries, amidst the vast plains
of Russia. The last man to wear the crown with the double eagle of
Constantinople, Tsar Nicholas, was murdered only the other day, so to speak. His
body was thrown into a well. His son and his daughters were all killed. All his
ancient rights and prerogatives were abolished, and the church was reduced to
the position which it had held in Rome before the days of Constantine.
The western church however fared very differently, as we shall see in the next
chapter when the whole Christian world is going to be threatened with
destruction by the rival creed of an Arab camel-driver.
MOHAMMED

AHMED, THE CAMEL-DRIVER, WHO BECAME THE PROPHET OF THE


ARABIAN DESERT, AND WHOSE FOLLOWERS ALMOST
CONQUERED THE ENTIRE KNOWN WORLD FOR THE GREATER
GLORY OF ALLAH, THE ONLY TRUE GOD

SINCE the days of Carthage and Hannibal we have said nothing of the Semitic
people. You will remember how they filled all the chapters devoted to the story
of the Ancient World. The Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Phœnicians, the Jews,
the Arameans, the Chaldeans, all of them Semites, had been the rulers of western
Asia for thirty or forty centuries. They had been conquered by the Indo-
European Persians who had come from the east and by the Indo-European
Greeks who had come from the west. A hundred years after the death of
Alexander the Great, Carthage, a colony of Semitic Phœnicians, had fought the
Indo-European Romans for the mastery of the Mediterranean. Carthage had been
defeated and destroyed and for eight hundred years the Romans had been
masters of the world. In the seventh century, however, another Semitic tribe
appeared upon the scene and challenged the power of the west. They were the
Arabs, peaceful shepherds who had roamed through the desert since the
beginning of time without showing any signs of imperial ambitions.
Then they listened to Mohammed, mounted their horses and in less than a
century they had pushed to the heart of Europe and proclaimed the glories of
Allah, “the only God,” and Mohammed, “the prophet of the only God,” to the
frightened peasants of France.
The story of Ahmed, the son of Abdallah and Aminah, (usually known as
Mohammed, or “he who will be praised,”) reads like a chapter in the “Thousand
and One Nights.” He was a camel-driver, born in Mecca. He seems to have been
an epileptic and he suffered from spells of unconsciousness when he dreamed
strange dreams and heard the voice of the angel Gabriel, whose words were
afterwards written down in a book called the Koran. His work as a caravan
leader carried him all over Arabia and he was constantly falling in with Jewish
merchants and with Christian traders, and he came to see that the worship of a
single God was a very excellent thing. His own people, the Arabs, still revered
queer stones and trunks of trees as their ancestors had done, tens of thousands of
years before. In Mecca, their holy city, stood a little square building, the Kaaba,
full of idols and strange odds and ends of Hoo-doo worship.
Mohammed decided to be the Moses of the Arab THE FLIGHT OF MOHAMMED
people. He could not well be a prophet and a camel-driver
at the same time. So he made himself independent by marrying his employer, the
rich widow Chadija. Then he told his neighbours in Mecca that he was the long-
expected prophet sent by Allah to save the world. The neighbours laughed most
heartily and when Mohammed continued to annoy them with his speeches they
decided to kill him. They regarded him as a lunatic and a public bore who
deserved no mercy. Mohammed heard of the plot and in the dark of night he fled
to Medina together with Abu Bekr, his trusted pupil. This happened in the year
622. It is the most important date in Mohammedan history and is known as the
Hegira—the year of the Great Flight.
In Medina, Mohammed, who was a stranger, found it easier to proclaim
himself a prophet than in his home city, where every one had known him as a
simple camel-driver. Soon he was surrounded by an increasing number of
followers, or Moslems, who accepted the Islam, “the submission to the will of
God,” which Mohammed praised as the highest of all virtues. For seven years he
preached to the people of Medina. Then he believed himself strong enough to
begin a campaign against his former neighbours who had dared to sneer at him
and his Holy Mission in his old camel-driving days. At the head of an army of
Medinese he marched across the desert. His followers took Mecca without great
difficulty, and having slaughtered a number of the inhabitants, they found it quite
easy to convince the others that Mohammed was really a great prophet.
From that time on until the year of his death, Mohammed was fortunate in
everything he undertook.
There are two reasons for the success of Islam. In the first place, the creed
which Mohammed taught to his followers was very simple. The disciples were
told that they must love Allah, the Ruler of the World, the Merciful and
Compassionate. They must honour and obey their parents. They were warned
against dishonesty in dealing with their neighbours and were admonished to be
humble and charitable, to the poor and to the sick. Finally they were ordered to
abstain from strong drink and to be very frugal in what they ate. That was all.
There were no priests, who acted as shepherds of their flocks and asked that they
be supported at the common expense. The Mohammedan churches or mosques
were merely large stone halls without benches or pictures, where the faithful
could gather (if they felt so inclined) to read and discuss chapters from the
Koran, the Holy Book. But the average Mohammedan carried his religion with
him and never felt himself hemmed in by the restrictions and regulations of an
established church. Five times a day he turned his face towards Mecca, the Holy
City, and said a simple prayer. For the rest of the time he let Allah rule the world
as he saw fit and accepted whatever fate brought him with patient resignation.
Of course such an attitude towards life did not encourage the Faithful to go
forth and invent electrical machinery or bother about railroads and steamship
lines. But it gave every Mohammedan a certain amount of contentment. It bade
him be at peace with himself and with the world in which he lived and that was a
very good thing.
The second reason which explains the success of the Moslems in their warfare
upon the Christians, had to do with the conduct of those Mohammedan soldiers
who went forth to do battle for the true faith. The Prophet promised that those
who fell, facing the enemy, would go directly to Heaven. This made sudden
death in the field preferable to a long but dreary existence upon this earth. It
gave the Mohammedans an enormous advantage over the Crusaders who were in
constant dread of a dark hereafter, and who stuck to the good things of this world
as long as they possibly could. Incidentally it explains why even to-day Moslem
soldiers will charge into the fire of European machine guns quite indifferent to
the fate that awaits them and why they are such dangerous and persistent
enemies.
Having put his religious house in order, Mohammed now began to enjoy his
power as the undisputed ruler of a large number of Arab tribes. But success has
been the undoing of a large number of men who were great in the days of
adversity. He tried to gain the good will of the rich people by a number of
regulations which could appeal to those of wealth. He allowed the Faithful to
have four wives. As one wife was a costly investment in those olden days when
brides were bought directly from the parents, four wives became a positive
luxury except to those who possessed camels and dromedaries and date orchards
beyond the dreams of avarice. A religion which at first had been meant for the
hardy hunters of the high-skied desert was gradually transformed to suit the
needs of the smug merchants who lived in the bazaars of the cities. It was a
regrettable change from the original program and it did very little good to the
cause of Mohammedanism. As for the prophet himself, he went on preaching the
truth of Allah and proclaiming new rules of conduct until he died, quite
suddenly, of a fever on June the seventh of the year 632.
His successor as Caliph (or leader) of the Moslems was his father-in-law,
Abu-Bekr, who had shared the early dangers of the prophet’s life. Two years
later, Abu-Bekr died and Omar ibn Al-Khattab followed him. In less than ten
years he conquered Egypt, Persia, Phœnicia, Syria and Palestine and made
Damascus the capital of the first Mohammedan world empire.
Omar was succeeded by Ali, the husband of Mohammed’s daughter, Fatima,
but a quarrel broke out upon a point of Moslem doctrine and Ali was murdered.
After his death, the caliphate was made hereditary and the leaders of the faithful
who had begun their career as the spiritual head of a religious sect became the
rulers of a vast empire. They built a new city on the shores of the Euphrates, near
the ruins of Babylon and called it Bagdad, and organising the Arab horsemen
into regiments of cavalry, they set forth to bring the happiness of their Moslem
faith to all unbelievers. In the year 700 A.D. a Mohammedan general by the name
of Tarik crossed the old Gates of Hercules and reached the high rock on the
European side which he called the Gibel-al-tarik, the Hill of Tarik or Gibraltar.
Eleven years later in the battle of Xeres de la Frontera, he defeated the king of
the Visigoths and then the Moslem army moved northward and following the
route of Hannibal, they crossed the passes of the Pyrenees. They defeated the
Duke of Aquitania, who tried to halt them near Bordeaux, and marched upon
Paris. But in the year 732 (one hundred years after the death of the prophet,) they
were beaten in a battle between Tours and Poitiers. On that day, Charles Martel
(Charles the Hammer), the Frankish chieftain, saved Europe from a
Mohammedan conquest. He drove the Moslems out of France, but they
maintained themselves in Spain where Abd-ar-Rahman founded the Caliphate of
Cordova, which became the greatest centre of science and art of mediæval
Europe.

THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE CROSS AND THE CRESCENT

This Moorish kingdom, so-called because the people came from Mauretania
in Morocco, lasted seven centuries. It was only after the capture of Granada, the
last Moslem stronghold, in the year 1492, that Columbus received the royal grant
which allowed him to go upon a voyage of discovery. The Mohammedans soon
regained their strength in the new conquests which they made in Asia and Africa
and to-day there are as many followers of Mohammed as there are of Christ.
CHARLEMAGNE

HOW CHARLEMAGNE, THE KING OF THE FRANKS, CAME TO BEAR


THE TITLE OF EMPEROR AND TRIED TO REVIVE THE OLD IDEAL
OF WORLD-EMPIRE

THE battle of Poitiers had saved Europe from the Mohammedans. But the
enemy within—the hopeless disorder which had followed the disappearance of
the Roman police officer—that enemy remained. It is true that the new converts
of the Christian faith in Northern Europe felt a deep respect for the mighty
Bishop of Rome. But that poor bishop did not feel any too safe when he looked
toward the distant mountains. Heaven knew what fresh hordes of barbarians
were ready to cross the Alps and begin a new attack on Rome. It was necessary
—very necessary—for the spiritual head of the world to find an ally with a
strong sword and a powerful fist who was willing to defend His Holiness in case
of danger.
And so the Popes, who were not only very holy but also very practical, cast
about for a friend, and presently they made overtures to the most promising of
the Germanic tribes who had occupied north-western Europe after the fall of
Rome. They were called the Franks. One of their earliest kings, called
Merovech, had helped the Romans in the battle of the Catalaunian fields in the
year 451 when they defeated the Huns. His descendants, the Merovingians, had
continued to take little bits of imperial territory until the year 486 when king
Clovis (the old French word for “Louis”) felt himself strong enough to beat the
Romans in the open. But his descendants were weak men who left the affairs of
state to their Prime minister, the “Major Domus” or Master of the Palace.
Pepin the Short, the son of the famous Charles Martel, who succeeded his
father as Master of the Palace, hardly knew how to handle the situation. His
royal master was a devout theologian, without any interest in politics. Pepin
asked the Pope for advice. The Pope who was a practical person answered that
the “power in the state belonged to him who was actually possessed of it.” Pepin
took the hint. He persuaded Childeric, the last of the Merovingians to become a
monk and then made himself king with the approval of the other Germanic
chieftains. But this did not satisfy the shrewd Pepin. He wanted to be something
more than a barbarian chieftain. He staged an elaborate ceremony at which
Boniface, the great missionary of the European northwest, anointed him and
made him a “King by the grace of God.” It was easy to slip those words, “Dei
gratia,” into the coronation service. It took almost fifteen hundred years to get
them out again.
Pepin was sincerely grateful for this kindness on the part of the church. He
made two expeditions to Italy to defend the Pope against his enemies. He took
Ravenna and several other cities away from the Longobards and presented them
to His Holiness, who incorporated these new domains into the so-called Papal
State, which remained an independent country until half a century ago.
After Pepin’s death, the relations between Rome and Aix-la-Chapelle or
Nymwegen or Ingelheim, (the Frankish Kings did not have one official
residence, but travelled from place to place with all their ministers and court
officers,) became more and more cordial. Finally the Pope and the King took a
step which was to influence the history of Europe in a most profound way.
Charles, commonly known as Carolus Magnus or Charlemagne, succeeded
Pepin in the year 768. He had conquered the land of the Saxons in eastern
Germany and had built towns and monasteries all over the greater part of
northern Europe. At the request of certain enemies of Abd-ar-Rahman, he had
invaded Spain to fight the Moors. But in the Pyrenees he had been attacked by
the wild Basques and had been forced to retire. It was upon this occasion that
Roland, the great Margrave of Brittany, showed what a Frankish chieftain of
those early days meant when he promised to be faithful to his King, and gave his
life and that of his trusted followers to safeguard the retreat of the royal army.
During the last ten years of the eighth century, however, Charles was obliged
to devote himself exclusively to affairs of the South. The Pope, Leo III, had been
attacked by a band of Roman rowdies and had been left for dead in the street.
Some kind people had bandaged his wounds and had helped him to escape to the
camp of Charles, where he asked for help. An army of Franks soon restored
quiet and carried Leo back to the Lateran Palace which ever since the days of
Constantine, had been the home of the Pope. That was in December of the year
799. On Christmas day of the next year, Charlemagne, who was staying in
Rome, attended the service in the ancient church of St. Peter. When he arose
from prayer, the Pope placed a crown upon his head, called him Emperor of the
Romans and hailed him once more with the title of “Augustus” which had not
been heard for hundreds of years.
Once more Northern Europe was part of a Roman Empire, but the dignity was
held by a German chieftain who could read just a little and never learned to
write. But he could fight and for a short while there was order and even the rival
emperor in Constantinople sent a letter of approval to his “dear Brother.”
Unfortunately this splendid old man died in the year 814. His sons and his
grandsons at once began to fight for the largest share of the imperial inheritance.
Twice the Carolingian lands were divided, by the treaties of Verdun in the year
843 and by the treaty of Mersen-on-the-Meuse in the year 870. The latter treaty
divided the entire Frankish Kingdom into two parts. Charles the Bold received
the western half. It contained the old Roman province called Gaul where the
language of the people had become thoroughly romanized. The Franks soon
learned to speak this language and this accounts for the strange fact that a purely
Germanic land like France should speak a Latin tongue.

THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE OF GERMAN NATIONALITY

The other grandson got the eastern part, the land which the Romans had called
Germania. Those inhospitable regions had never been part of the old Empire.
Augustus had tried to conquer this “far east,” but his legions had been
annihilated in the Teutoburg Wood in the year 9 and the people had never been
influenced by the higher Roman civilisation. They spoke the popular Germanic
tongue. The Teuton word for “people” was “thiot.” The Christian missionaries
therefore called the German language the “lingua theotisca” or the “lingua
teutisca,” the “popular dialect” and this word “teutisca” was changed into
“Deutsch” which accounts for the name “Deutschland.”
As for the famous Imperial Crown, it very soon slipped off the heads of the
Carolingian successors and rolled back onto the Italian plain, where it became a
sort of plaything of a number of little potentates who stole the crown from each
other amidst much bloodshed and wore it (with or without the permission of the
Pope) until it was the turn of some more ambitious neighbour. The Pope, once
more sorely beset by his enemies, sent north for help. He did not appeal to the
ruler of the west-Frankish kingdom, this time. His messengers crossed the Alps
and addressed themselves to Otto, a Saxon Prince who was recognised as the
greatest chieftain of the different Germanic tribes.
Otto, who shared his people’s affection for the blue skies and the gay and
beautiful people of the Italian peninsula, hastened to the rescue. In return for his
services, the Pope, Leo VIII, made Otto “Emperor,” and the eastern half of
Charles’ old kingdom was henceforth known as the “Holy Roman Empire of the
German Nation.”

THE MOUNTAIN-PASS

This strange political creation managed to live to the ripe old age of eight
hundred and thirty-nine years. In the year 1801, (during the presidency of
Thomas Jefferson,) it was most unceremoniously relegated to the historical
scrapheap. The brutal fellow who destroyed the old Germanic Empire was the
son of a Corsican notary-public who had made a brilliant career in the service of
the French Republic. He was ruler of Europe by the grace of his famous Guard
Regiments, but he desired to be something more. He sent to Rome for the Pope
and the Pope came and stood by while General Napoleon placed the imperial
crown upon his own head and proclaimed himself heir to the tradition of
Charlemagne. For history is like life. The more things change, the more they
remain the same.
THE NORSEMEN

WHY THE PEOPLE OF THE TENTH CENTURY PRAYED THE LORD TO


PROTECT THEM FROM THE FURY OF THE NORSEMEN

IN the third and fourth centuries, the Germanic tribes of central Europe had
broken through the defences of the Empire that they might plunder Rome and
live on the fat of the land. In the eighth century it became the turn of the
Germans to be the “plundered-ones.” They did not like this at all, even if their
enemies were their first cousins, the Norsemen, who lived in Denmark and
Sweden and Norway.
What forced these hardy sailors to turn pirate we do not know, but once they
had discovered the advantages and pleasures of a buccaneering career there was
no one who could stop them. They would suddenly descend upon a peaceful
Frankish or Frisian village, situated on the mouth of a river. They would kill all
the men and steal all the women. Then they would sail away in their fast-sailing
ships and when the soldiers of the king or emperor arrived upon the scene, the
robbers were gone and nothing remained but a few smouldering ruins.

THE HOME OF THE NORSEMEN

During the days of disorder which followed the death of Charlemagne, the
Northmen developed great activity. Their fleets made raids upon every country
and their sailors established small independent kingdoms along the coast of
Holland and France and England and Germany, and they even found their way
into Italy. The Northmen were very intelligent. They soon learned to speak the
language of their subjects and gave up the uncivilised ways of the early Vikings
(or Sea-Kings) who had been very picturesque but also very unwashed and
terribly cruel.

THE NORSEMEN GO TO RUSSIA


Early in the tenth century a Viking by the name of Rollo had repeatedly
attacked the coast of France. The king of France, too weak to resist these
northern robbers, tried to bribe them into “being good.” He offered them the
province of Normandy, if they would promise to stop bothering the rest of his
domains. Rollo accepted this bargain and became “Duke of Normandy.”

THE NORMANS LOOK ACROSS THE CHANNEL

But the passion of conquest was strong in the blood of his children. Across the
channel, only a few hours away from the European mainland, they could see the
white cliffs and the green fields of England. Poor England had passed through
difficult days. For two hundred years it had been a Roman colony. After the
Romans left, it had been conquered by the Angles and the Saxons, two German
tribes from Schleswig. Next the Danes had taken the greater part of the country
and had established the kingdom of Cnut. The Danes had been driven away and
now (it was early in the eleventh century) another Saxon king, Edward the
Confessor, was on the throne. But Edward was not expected to live long and he
had no children. The circumstances favoured the ambitious dukes of Normandy.

THE WORLD OF THE NORSEMEN

In 1066 Edward died. Immediately William of Normandy crossed the channel,


defeated and killed Harold of Wessex (who had taken the crown) at the battle of
Hastings, and proclaimed himself king of England.
In another chapter I have told you how in the year 800 a German chieftain had
become a Roman Emperor. Now in the year 1066 the grandson of a Norse pirate
was recognised as King of England.
Why should we ever read fairy stories, when the truth of history is so much
more interesting and entertaining?
FEUDALISM

HOW CENTRAL EUROPE, ATTACKED FROM THREE SIDES, BECAME


AN ARMED CAMP AND WHY EUROPE WOULD HAVE PERISHED
WITHOUT THOSE PROFESSIONAL SOLDIERS AND
ADMINISTRATORS WHO WERE PART OF THE FEUDAL SYSTEM

THE following, then, is the state of Europe in the year one thousand, when
most people were so unhappy that they welcomed the prophecy foretelling the
approaching end of the world and rushed to the monasteries, that the Day of
Judgement might find them engaged upon devout duties.
At an unknown date, the Germanic tribes had left their old home in Asia and
had moved westward into Europe. By sheer pressure of numbers they had forced
their way into the Roman Empire. They had destroyed the great western empire,
but the eastern part, being off the main route of the great migrations, had
managed to survive and feebly continued the traditions of Rome’s ancient glory.
During the days of disorder which had followed, (the true “dark ages” of
history, the sixth and seventh centuries of our era,) the German tribes had been
persuaded to accept the Christian religion and had recognised the Bishop of
Rome as the Pope or spiritual head of the world. In the ninth century, the
organising genius of Charlemagne had revived the Roman Empire and had
united the greater part of western Europe into a single state. During the tenth
century this empire had gone to pieces. The western part had become a separate
kingdom, France. The eastern half was known as the Holy Roman Empire of the
German nation, and the rulers of this federation of states then pretended that they
were the direct heirs of Cæsar and Augustus.
Unfortunately the power of the kings of France did not stretch beyond the
moat of their royal residence, while the Holy Roman Emperor was openly defied
by his powerful subjects whenever it suited their fancy or their profit.
To increase the misery of the masses of the people, the triangle of western
Europe (look at page 128, please) was for ever exposed to attacks from three
sides. On the south lived the ever dangerous Mohammedans. The western coast
was ravaged by the Northmen. The eastern frontier (defenceless except for the
short stretch of the Carpathian mountains) was at the mercy of hordes of Huns,
Hungarians, Slavs and Tartars.
The peace of Rome was a thing of the remote past, a dream of the “Good Old
Days” that were gone for ever. It was a question of “fight or die,” and quite
naturally people preferred to fight. Forced by circumstances, Europe became an
armed camp and there was a demand for strong leadership. Both King and
Emperor were far away. The frontiersmen (and most of Europe in the year 1000
was “frontier”) must help themselves. They willingly submitted to the
representatives of the king who were sent to administer the outlying districts,
provided they could protect them against their enemies.
Soon central Europe was dotted with small principalities, each one ruled by a
duke or a count or a baron or a bishop, as the case might be, and organised as a
fighting unit. These dukes and counts and barons had sworn to be faithful to the
king who had given them their “feudum” (hence our word “feudal,”) in return
for their loyal services and a certain amount of taxes. But travel in those days
was slow and the means of communication were exceedingly poor. The royal or
imperial administrators therefore enjoyed great independence, and within the
boundaries of their own province they assumed most of the rights which in truth
belonged to the king.

THE NORSEMEN ARE COMING

But you would make a mistake if you supposed that the people of the eleventh
century objected to this form of government. They supported Feudalism because
it was a very practical and necessary institution. Their Lord and Master usually
lived in a big stone house erected on the top of a steep rock or built between
deep moats, but within sight of his subjects. In case of danger the subjects found
shelter behind the walls of the baronial stronghold. That is why they tried to live
as near the castle as possible and it accounts for the many European cities which
began their career around a feudal fortress.
But the knight of the early middle ages was much more than a professional
soldier. He was the civil servant of that day. He was the judge of his community
and he was the chief of police. He caught the highwaymen and protected the
wandering pedlars who were the merchants of the eleventh century. He looked
after the dikes so that the countryside should not be flooded (just as the first
noblemen had done in the valley of the Nile four thousand years before). He
encouraged the Troubadours who wandered from place to place telling the
stories of the ancient heroes who had fought in the great wars of the migrations.
Besides, he protected the churches and the monasteries within his territory, and
although he could neither read nor write, (it was considered unmanly to know
such things,) he employed a number of priests who kept his accounts and who
registered the marriages and the births and the deaths which occurred within the
baronial or ducal domains.
In the fifteenth century the kings once more became strong enough to exercise
those powers which belonged to them because they were “anointed of God.”
Then the feudal knights lost their former independence. Reduced to the rank of
country squires, they no longer filled a need and soon they became a nuisance.
But Europe would have perished without the “feudal system” of the dark ages.
There were many bad knights as there are many bad people to-day. But generally
speaking, the rough-fisted barons of the twelfth and thirteenth century were
hard-working administrators who rendered a most useful service to the cause of
progress. During that era the noble torch of learning and art which had
illuminated the world of the Egyptians and the Greeks and the Romans was
burning very low. Without the knights and their good friends, the monks,
civilisation would have been extinguished entirely, and the human race would
have been forced to begin once more where the cave-man had left off.
CHIVALRY

CHIVALRY

IT was quite natural that the professional fighting-men of the Middle Ages
should try to establish some sort of organisation for their mutual benefit and
protection. Out of this need for close organisation, Knighthood or Chivalry was
born.
We know very little about the origins of Knighthood. But as the system
developed, it gave the world something which it needed very badly—a definite
rule of conduct which softened the barbarous customs of that day and made life
more livable than it had been during the five hundred years of the Dark Ages. It
was not an easy task to civilise the rough frontiers-men who had spent most of
their time fighting Mohammedans and Huns and Norsemen. Often they were
guilty of back-sliding, and having vowed all sorts of oaths about mercy and
charity in the morning, they would murder all their prisoners before evening. But
progress is ever the result of slow and ceaseless labour, and finally the most
unscrupulous of knights was forced to obey the rules of his “class” or suffer the
consequences.
These rules were different in the various parts of Europe, but they all made
much of “service” and “loyalty to duty.” The Middle Ages regarded service as
something very noble and beautiful. It was no disgrace to be a servant, provided
you were a good servant and did not slacken on the job. As for loyalty, at a time
when life depended upon the faithful performance of many unpleasant duties, it
was the chief virtue of the fighting man.
A young knight therefore was asked to swear that he would be faithful as a
servant to God and as a servant to his King. Furthermore, he promised to be
generous to those whose need was greater than his own. He pledged his word
that he would be humble in his personal behaviour and would never boast of his
own accomplishments and that he would be a friend of all those who suffered,
(with the exception of the Mohammedans, whom he was expected to kill on
sight).
Around these vows, which were merely the Ten Commandments expressed in
terms which the people of the Middle Ages could understand, there developed a
complicated system of manners and outward behaviour. The knights tried to
model their own lives after the example of those heroes of Arthur’s Round Table
and Charlemagne’s court of whom the Troubadours had told them and of whom
you may read in many delightful books which are enumerated at the end of this
volume. They hoped that they might prove as brave as Lancelot and as faithful
as Roland. They carried themselves with dignity and they spoke careful and
gracious words that they might be known as True Knights, however humble the
cut of their coat or the size of their purse.
In this way the order of Knighthood became a school of those good manners
which are the oil of the social machinery. Chivalry came to mean courtesy and
the feudal castle showed the rest of the world what clothes to wear, how to eat,
how to ask a lady for a dance and the thousand and one little things of every-day
behaviour which help to make life interesting and agreeable.
Like all human institutions, Knighthood was doomed to perish as soon as it
had outlived its usefulness.
The crusades, about which one of the next chapters tells, were followed by a
great revival of trade. Cities grew over-night. The townspeople became rich,
hired good school teachers and soon were the equals of the knights. The
invention of gun-powder deprived the heavily armed “Chevalier” of his former
advantage and the use of mercenaries made it impossible to conduct a battle with
the delicate niceties of a chess tournament. The knight became superfluous.
Soon he became a ridiculous figure, with his devotion to ideals that had no
longer any practical value. It was said that the noble Don Quixote de la Mancha
had been the last of the true knights. After his death, his trusted sword and his
armour were sold to pay his debts.
But somehow or other that sword seems to have fallen into the hands of a
number of men. Washington carried it during the hopeless days of Valley Forge.
It was the only defence of Gordon, when he had refused to desert the people who
had been entrusted to his care, and stayed to meet his death in the besieged
fortress of Khartoum.
And I am not quite sure but that it proved of invaluable strength in winning
the Great War.
POPE vs. EMPEROR

THE STRANGE DOUBLE LOYALTY OF THE PEOPLE OF THE MIDDLE


AGES AND HOW IT LED TO ENDLESS QUARRELS BETWEEN THE
POPES AND THE HOLY ROMAN EMPERORS

IT is very difficult to understand the people of by-gone ages. Your own


grandfather, whom you see every day, is a mysterious being who lives in a
different world of ideas and clothes and manners. I am now telling you the story
of some of your grandfathers who are twenty-five generations removed, and I do
not expect you to catch the meaning of what I write without re-reading this
chapter a number of times.
The average man of the Middle Ages lived a very simple and uneventful life.
Even if he was a free citizen, able to come and go at will, he rarely left his own
neighbourhood. There were no printed books and only a few manuscripts. Here
and there, a small band of industrious monks taught reading and writing and
some arithmetic. But science and history and geography lay buried beneath the
ruins of Greece and Rome.
Whatever people knew about the past they had learned by listening to stories
and legends. Such information, which goes from father to son, is often slightly
incorrect in details, but it will preserve the main facts of history with astonishing
accuracy. After more than two thousand years, the mothers of India still frighten
their naughty children by telling them that “Iskander will get them,” and
Iskander is none other than Alexander the Great, who visited India in the year
330 before the birth of Christ, but whose story has lived through all these ages.
The people of the early Middle Ages never saw a text-book of Roman history.
They were ignorant of many things which every school-boy to-day knows before
he has entered the third grade. But the Roman Empire, which is merely a name
to you, was to them something very much alive. They felt it. They willingly
recognised the Pope as their spiritual leader because he lived in Rome and
represented the idea of the Roman super-power. And they were profoundly
grateful when Charlemagne, and afterwards Otto the Great, revived the idea of a
world-empire and created the Holy Roman Empire, that the world might again
be as it always had been.
But the fact that there were two different heirs to the Roman tradition placed
the faithful burghers of the Middle Ages in a difficult position. The theory
behind the mediæval political system was both sound and simple. While the
worldly master (the emperor) looked after the physical well-being of his
subjects, the spiritual master (the Pope) guarded their souls.
In practice, however, the system worked very badly. The Emperor invariably
tried to interfere with the affairs of the church and the Pope retaliated and told
the Emperor how he should rule his domains. Then they told each other to mind
their own business in very unceremonious language and the inevitable end was
war.
Under those circumstances, what were the people to do? A good Christian
obeyed both the Pope and his King. But the Pope and the Emperor were
enemies. Which side should a dutiful subject and an equally dutiful Christian
take?
It was never easy to give the correct answer. When the Emperor happened to
be a man of energy and was sufficiently well provided with money to organise
an army, he was very apt to cross the Alps and march on Rome, besiege the Pope
in his own palace if need be, and force His Holiness to obey the imperial
instructions or suffer the consequences.
But more frequently the Pope was the stronger. Then the Emperor or the King
together with all his subjects was excommunicated. This meant that all churches
were closed, that no one could be baptised, that no dying man could be given
absolution—in short, that half of the functions of mediæval government came to
an end.
More than that, the people were absolved from their oath of loyalty to their
sovereign and were urged to rebel against their master. But if they followed this
advice of the distant Pope and were caught, they were hanged by their near-by
Liege Lord and that too was very unpleasant.
Indeed, the poor fellows were in a difficult position and none fared worse than
those who lived during the latter half of the eleventh century, when the Emperor
Henry IV of Germany and Pope Gregory VII fought a two-round battle which
decided nothing and upset the peace of Europe for almost fifty years.
In the middle of the eleventh century there had been a strong movement for
reform in the church. The election of the Popes, thus far, had been a most
irregular affair. It was to the advantage of the Holy Roman Emperors to have a
well-disposed priest elected to the Holy See. They frequently came to Rome at
the time of election and used their influence for the benefit of one of their
friends.
In the year 1059 this had been changed. By a decree of Pope Nicholas II the
principal priests and deacons of the churches in and around Rome were
organised into the so-called College of Cardinals, and this gathering of
prominent churchmen (the word “Cardinal” meant principal) was given the
exclusive power of electing the future Popes.

THE CASTLE

In the year 1073 the College of Cardinals elected a priest by the name of
Hildebrand, the son of very simple parents in Tuscany, as Pope, and he took the
name of Gregory VII. His energy was unbounded. His belief in the supreme
powers of his holy office was built upon a granite rock of conviction and
courage. In the mind of Gregory, the Pope was not only the absolute head of the
Christian church, but also the highest Court of Appeal in all worldly matters.
The Pope who had elevated simple German princes to the dignity of Emperor
could depose them at will. He could veto any law passed by duke or king or
emperor, but whosoever should question a papal decree, let him beware, for the
punishment would be swift and merciless.
Gregory sent ambassadors to all the European courts to inform the potentates
of Europe of his new laws and asked them to take due notice of their contents.
William the Conqueror promised to be good, but Henry IV, who since the age of
six had been fighting with his subjects, had no intention of submitting to the
Papal will. He called together a college of German bishops, accused Gregory of
every crime under the sun and then had him deposed by the council of Worms.
The Pope answered with excommunication and a demand that the German
princes rid themselves of their unworthy ruler. The German princes, only too
happy to be rid of Henry, asked the Pope to come to Augsburg and help them
elect a new Emperor.
HENRY IV AT CANOSSA
Gregory left Rome and travelled northward. Henry, who
was no fool, appreciated the danger of his position. At all
costs he must make peace with the Pope, and he must do it at once. In the midst
of winter he crossed the Alps and hastened to Canossa where the Pope had
stopped for a short rest. Three long days, from the 25th to the 28th of January of
the year 1077, Henry, dressed as a penitent pilgrim (but with a warm sweater
underneath his monkish garb), waited outside the gates of the castle of Canossa.
Then he was allowed to enter and was pardoned for his sins. But the repentance
did not last long. As soon as Henry had returned to Germany, he behaved exactly
as before. Again he was excommunicated. For the second time a council of
German bishops deposed Gregory, but this time, when Henry crossed the Alps
he was at the head of a large army, besieged Rome and forced Gregory to retire
to Salerno, where he died in exile. This first violent outbreak decided nothing.
As soon as Henry was back in Germany, the struggle between Pope and Emperor
was continued.
The Hohenstaufen family which got hold of the Imperial German Throne
shortly afterwards, were even more independent than their predecessors.
Gregory had claimed that the Popes were superior to all kings because they (the
Popes) at the Day of Judgement would be responsible for the behaviour of all the
sheep of their flock, and in the eyes of God, a king was one of that faithful herd.
Frederick of Hohenstaufen, commonly known as Barbarossa or Red Beard, set
up the counter-claim that the Empire had been bestowed upon his predecessor
“by God himself” and as the Empire included Italy and Rome, he began a
campaign which was to add these “lost provinces” to the northern country.
Barbarossa was accidentally drowned in Asia Minor during the second Crusade,
but his son Frederick II, a brilliant young man who in his youth had been
exposed to the civilisation of the Mohammedans of Sicily, continued the war.
The Popes accused him of heresy. It is true that Frederick seems to have felt a
deep and serious contempt for the rough Christian world of the North, for the
boorish German Knights and the intriguing Italian priests. But he held his
tongue, went on a Crusade and took Jerusalem from the infidel and was duly
crowned as King of the Holy City. Even this act did not placate the Popes. They
deposed Frederick and gave his Italian possessions to Charles of Anjou, the
brother of that King Louis of France who became famous as Saint Louis. This
led to more warfare. Conrad V, the son of Conrad IV, and the last of the
Hohenstaufens, tried to regain the kingdom, and was defeated and decapitated at
Naples. But twenty years later, the French who had made themselves thoroughly
unpopular in Sicily were all murdered during the so-called Sicilian Vespers, and
so it went.
The quarrel between the Popes and the Emperors was never settled, but after a
while the two enemies learned to leave each other alone.
In the year 1273, Rudolph of Hapsburg was elected Emperor. He did not take
the trouble to go to Rome to be crowned. The Popes did not object and in turn
they kept away from Germany. This meant peace but two entire centuries which
might have been used for the purpose of internal organisation had been wasted in
useless warfare.
It is an ill wind however that bloweth no good to some one. The little cities of
Italy, by a process of careful balancing, had managed to increase their power and
their independence at the expense of both Emperors and Popes. When the rush
for the Holy Land began, they were able to handle the transportation problem of
the thousands of eager pilgrims who were clamoring for passage, and at the end
of the Crusades they had built themselves such strong defences of brick and of
gold that they could defy Pope and Emperor with equal indifference.
Church and State fought each other and a third party—the mediæval city—ran
away with the spoils.
THE CRUSADES

BUT ALL THESE DIFFERENT QUARRELS WERE FORGOTTEN WHEN


THE TURKS TOOK THE HOLY LAND, DESECRATED THE HOLY
PLACES AND INTERFERED SERIOUSLY WITH THE TRADE FROM
EAST TO WEST. EUROPE WENT CRUSADING

DURING three centuries there had been peace between Christians and Moslems
except in Spain and in the eastern Roman Empire, the two states defending the
gateways of Europe. The Mohammedans having conquered Syria in the seventh
century were in possession of the Holy Land. But they regarded Jesus as a great
prophet (though not quite as great as Mohammed), and they did not interfere
with the pilgrims who wished to pray in the church which Saint Helena, the
mother of the Emperor Constantine, had built on the spot of the Holy Grave. But
early in the eleventh century, a Tartar tribe from the wilds of Asia, called the
Seljuks or Turks, became masters of the Mohammedan state in western Asia and
then the period of tolerance came to an end. The Turks took all of Asia Minor
away from the eastern Roman Emperors and they made an end to the trade
between east and west.
Alexis, the Emperor, who rarely saw anything of his Christian neighbours of
the west, appealed for help and pointed to the danger which threatened Europe
should the Turks take Constantinople.
The Italian cities which had established colonies along the coast of Asia
Minor and Palestine, in fear for their possessions, reported terrible stories of
Turkish atrocities and Christian suffering. All Europe got excited.
Pope Urban II, a Frenchman from Reims, who had been educated at the same
famous cloister of Cluny which had trained Gregory VII, thought that the time
had come for action. The general state of Europe was far from satisfactory. The
primitive agricultural methods of that day (unchanged since Roman times)
caused a constant scarcity of food. There was unemployment and hunger and
these are apt to lead to discontent and riots. Western Asia in older days had fed
millions. It was an excellent field for the purpose of immigration.
Therefore at the council of Clermont in France in the year 1095 the Pope
arose, described the terrible horrors which the infidels had inflicted upon the
Holy Land, gave a glowing description of this country which ever since the days
of Moses had been overflowing with milk and honey, and exhorted the knights
of France and the people of Europe in general to leave wife and child and deliver
Palestine from the Turks.
A wave of religious hysteria swept across the continent. All reason stopped.
Men would drop their hammer and saw, walk out of their shop and take the
nearest road to the east to go and kill Turks. Children would leave their homes to
“go to Palestine” and bring the terrible Turks to their knees by the mere appeal
of their youthful zeal and Christian piety. Fully ninety percent of those
enthusiasts never got within sight of the Holy Land. They had no money. They
were forced to beg or steal to keep alive. They became a danger to the safety of
the highroads and they were killed by the angry country people.
The first Crusade, a wild mob of honest Christians, defaulting bankrupts,
penniless noblemen and fugitives from justice, following the lead of half-crazy
Peter the Hermit and Walter-without-a-Cent, began their campaign against the
Infidels by murdering all the Jews whom they met by the way. They got as far as
Hungary and then they were all killed.
This experience taught the Church a lesson. Enthusiasm alone would not set
the Holy Land free. Organisation was as necessary as good-will and courage. A
year was spent in training and equipping an army of 200,000 men. They were
placed under command of Godfrey of Bouillon, Robert, duke of Normandy,
Robert, count of Flanders, and a number of other noblemen, all experienced in
the art of war.
THE FIRST CRUSADE

In the year 1096 this second crusade started upon its long voyage. At
Constantinople the knights did homage to the Emperor. (For as I have told you,
traditions die hard, and a Roman Emperor, however poor and powerless, was
still held in great respect). Then they crossed into Asia, killed all the Moslems
who fell into their hands, stormed Jerusalem, massacred the Mohammedan
population, and marched to the Holy Sepulchre to give praise and thanks amidst
tears of piety and gratitude. But soon the Turks were strengthened by the arrival
of fresh troops. Then they retook Jerusalem and in turn killed the faithful
followers of the Cross.

THE WORLD OF THE CRUSADERS

During the next two centuries, seven other crusades took place. Gradually the
Crusaders learned the technique of the trip. The land voyage was too tedious and
too dangerous. They preferred to cross the Alps and go to Genoa or Venice
where they took ship for the east. The Genoese and the Venetians made this
trans-Mediterranean passenger service a very profitable business. They charged
exorbitant rates, and when the Crusaders (most of whom had very little money)
could not pay the price, these Italian “profiteers” kindly allowed them to “work
their way across.” In return for a fare from Venice to Acre, the Crusader
undertook to do a stated amount of fighting for the owners of his vessel. In this
way Venice greatly increased her territory along the coast of the Adriatic and in
Greece, where Athens became a Venetian colony, and in the islands of Cyprus
and Crete and Rhodes.
All this, however, helped little in settling the THE CRUSADERS TAKE JERUSALEM
question of the Holy Land. After the first enthusiasm
had worn off, a short crusading trip became part of the liberal education of every
well-bred young man, and there never was any lack of candidates for service in
Palestine. But the old zeal was gone. The Crusaders, who had begun their
warfare with deep hatred for the Mohammedans and great love for the Christian
people of the eastern Roman Empire and Armenia, suffered a complete change
of heart. They came to despise the Greeks of Byzantium, who cheated them and
frequently betrayed the cause of the Cross, and the Armenians and all the other
Levantine races, and they began to appreciate the virtues of their enemies who
proved to be generous and fair opponents.
Of course, it would never do to say this openly. But when the Crusader
returned home, he was likely to imitate the manners which he had learned from
his heathenish foe, compared to whom the average western knight was still a
good deal of a country bumpkin. He also brought with him several new food-
stuffs, such as peaches and spinach which he planted in his garden and grew for
his own benefit. He gave up the barbarous custom of wearing a load of heavy
armour and appeared in the flowing robes of silk or cotton which were the
traditional habit of the followers of the Prophet and were originally worn by the
Turks. Indeed the Crusades, which had begun as a punitive expedition against
the Heathen, became a course of general instruction in civilisation for millions of
young Europeans.
From a military and political point of view the Crusades THE CRUSADER’S GRAVE
were a failure. Jerusalem and a number of cities were taken
and lost. A dozen little kingdoms were established in Syria and Palestine and
Asia Minor, but they were re-conquered by the Turks and after the year 1244
(when Jerusalem became definitely Turkish) the status of the Holy Land was the
same as it had been before 1095.
But Europe had undergone a great change. The people of the west had been
allowed a glimpse of the light and the sunshine and the beauty of the east. Their
dreary castles no longer satisfied them. They wanted a broader life. Neither
Church nor State could give this to them.
They found it in the cities.
THE MEDIÆVAL CITY

WHY THE PEOPLE OF THE MIDDLE AGES SAID THAT “CITY AIR IS
FREE AIR”

THE early part of the Middle Ages had been an era of pioneering and of
settlement. A new people, who thus far had lived outside the wild range of
forest, mountains and marshes which protected the north-eastern frontier of the
Roman Empire, had forced its way into the plains of western Europe and had
taken possession of most of the land. They were restless, as all pioneers have
been since the beginning of time. They liked to be “on the go.” They cut down
the forests and they cut each other’s throats with equal energy. Few of them
wanted to live in cities. They insisted upon being “free,” they loved to feel the
fresh air of the hillsides fill their lungs while they drove their herds across the
wind-swept pastures. When they no longer liked their old homes, they pulled up
stakes and went away in search of fresh adventures.
The weaker ones died. The hardy fighters and the courageous women who had
followed their men into the wilderness survived. In this way they developed a
strong race of men. They cared little for the graces of life. They were too busy to
play the fiddle or write pieces of poetry. They had little love for discussions. The
priest, “the learned man” of the village (and before the middle of the thirteenth
century, a layman who could read and write was regarded as a “sissy”) was
supposed to settle all questions which had no direct practical value. Meanwhile
the German chieftain, the Frankish Baron, the Northman Duke (or whatever their
names and titles) occupied their share of the territory which once had been part
of the great Roman Empire and among the ruins of past glory, they built a world
of their own which pleased them mightily and which they considered quite
perfect.
They managed the affairs of their castle and the surrounding country to the
best of their ability. They were as faithful to the commandments of the Church as
any weak mortal could hope to be. They were sufficiently loyal to their king or
emperor to keep on good terms with those distant but always dangerous
potentates. In short, they tried to do right and to be fair to their neighbours
without being exactly unfair to their own interests.
It was not an ideal world in which they found themselves. The greater part of
the people were serfs or “villeins,” farmhands who were as much a part of the
soil upon which they lived as the cows and sheep whose stables they shared.
Their fate was not particularly happy nor was it particularly unhappy. But what
was one to do? The good Lord who ruled the world of the Middle Ages had
undoubtedly ordered everything for the best. If He, in his wisdom, had decided
that there must be both knights and serfs, it was not the duty of these faithful
sons of the church to question the arrangement. The serfs therefore did not
complain but when they were too hard driven, they would die off like cattle
which are not fed and stabled in the right way, and then something would be
hastily done to better their condition. But if the progress of the world had been
left to the serf and his feudal master, we would still be living after the fashion of
the twelfth century, saying “abracadabra” when we tried to stop a tooth-ache,
and feeling a deep contempt and hatred for the dentist who offered to help us
with his “science,” which most likely was of Mohammedan or heathenish origin
and therefore both wicked and useless.
When you grow up you will discover that many people do not believe in
“progress” and they will prove to you by the terrible deeds of some of our own
contemporaries that “the world does not change.” But I hope that you will not
pay much attention to such talk. You see, it took our ancestors almost a million
years to learn how to walk on their hind legs. Other centuries had to go by before
their animal-like grunts developed into an understandable language. Writing—
the art of preserving our ideas for the benefit of future generations, without
which no progress is possible—was invented only four thousand years ago. The
idea of turning the forces of nature into the obedient servants of man was quite
new in the days of your own grandfather. It seems to me, therefore, that we are
making progress at an unheard-of rate of speed. Perhaps we have paid a little too
much attention to the mere physical comforts of life. That will change in due
course of time and we shall then attack the problems which are not related to
health and to wages and plumbing and machinery in general.
But please do not be too sentimental about the “good old days.” Many people
who only see the beautiful churches and the great works of art which the Middle
Ages have left behind grow quite eloquent when they compare our own ugly
civilisation with its hurry and its noise and the evil smells of backfiring motor
trucks with the cities of a thousand years ago. But these mediæval churches were
invariably surrounded by miserable hovels compared to which a modern
tenement house stands forth as a luxurious palace. It is true that the noble
Lancelot and the equally noble Parsifal, the pure young hero who went in search
of the Holy Grail, were not bothered by the odor of gasoline. But there were
other smells of the barnyard variety—odors of decaying refuse which had been
thrown into the street—of pig-sties surrounding the Bishop’s palace—of
unwashed people who had inherited their coats and hats from their grandfathers
and who had never learned the blessing of soap. I do not want to paint too
unpleasant a picture. But when you read in the ancient chronicles that the King
of France, looking out of the windows of his palace, fainted at the stench caused
by the pigs rooting in the streets of Paris, when an ancient manuscript recounts a
few details of an epidemic of the plague or of small-pox, then you begin to
understand that “progress” is something more than a catchword used by modern
advertising men.
No, the progress of the last six hundred years would not have been possible
without the existence of cities. I shall, therefore, have to make this chapter a
little longer than many of the others. It is too important to be reduced to three or
four pages, devoted to mere political events.
The ancient world of Egypt and Babylonia and Assyria had been a world of
cities. Greece had been a country of City-States. The history of Phœnicia was the
history of two cities called Sidon and Tyre. The Roman Empire was the
“hinterland” of a single town. Writing, art, science, astronomy, architecture,
literature, the theatre—the list is endless—have all been products of the city.
For almost four thousand years the wooden bee-hive which we call a town had
been the workshop of the world. Then came the great migrations. The Roman
Empire was destroyed. The cities were burned down and Europe once more
became a land of pastures and little agricultural villages. During the Dark Ages
the fields of civilisation had lain fallow.
The Crusades had prepared the soil for a new crop. It was time for the harvest,
but the fruit was plucked by the burghers of the free cities.
I have told you the story of the castles and the monasteries, with their heavy
stone enclosures—the homes of the knights and the monks, who guarded men’s
bodies and their souls. You have seen how a few artisans (butchers and bakers
and an occasional candle stick maker) came to live near the castle to tend to the
wants of their masters and to find protection in case of danger. Sometimes the
feudal lord allowed these people to surround their houses with a stockade. But
they were dependent for their living upon the good-will of the mighty Seigneur
of the castle. When he went about they knelt before him and kissed his hand.
Then came the Crusades and many things changed. The migrations had driven
people from the north-east to the west. The Crusades made millions of people
travel from the west to the highly civilised regions of the south-east. They
discovered that the world was not bounded by the four walls of their little
settlement. They came to appreciate better clothes, more comfortable houses,
new dishes, products of the mysterious Orient. After their return to their old
homes, they insisted that they be supplied with those articles. The peddler with
his pack upon his back—the only merchant of the Dark Ages—added these
goods to his old merchandise, bought a cart, hired a few ex-crusaders to protect
him against the crime wave which followed this great international war, and
went forth to do business upon a more modern and larger scale. His career was
not an easy one. Every time he entered the domains of another Lord he had to
pay tolls and taxes. But the business was profitable all the same and the peddler
continued to make his rounds.
Soon certain energetic merchants discovered that the goods which they had
always imported from afar could be made at home. They turned part of their
homes into a work shop. They ceased to be merchants and became
manufacturers. They sold their products not only to the lord of the castle and to
the abbot in his monastery, but they exported them to nearby towns. The lord and
the abbot paid them with products of their farms, eggs and wines, and with
honey, which in those early days was used as sugar. But the citizens of distant
towns were obliged to pay in cash and the manufacturer and the merchant began
to own little pieces of gold, which entirely changed their position in the society
of the early Middle Ages.
It is difficult for you to imagine a world without money. In a modern city one
cannot possibly live without money. All day long you carry a pocket full of
small discs of metal to “pay your way.” You need a nickel for the street-car, a
dollar for a dinner, three cents for an evening paper. But many people of the
early Middle Ages never saw a piece of coined money from the time they were
born to the day of their death. The gold and silver of Greece and Rome lay
buried beneath the ruins of their cities. The world of the migrations, which had
succeeded the Empire, was an agricultural world. Every farmer raised enough
grain and enough sheep and enough cows for his own use.

THE CASTLE AND THE CITY

The mediæval knight was a country squire and was rarely forced to pay for
materials in money. His estates produced everything that he and his family ate
and drank and wore on their backs. The bricks for his house were made along the
banks of the nearest river. Wood for the rafters of the hall was cut from the
baronial forest. The few articles that had to come from abroad were paid for in
goods—in honey—in eggs—in fagots.
But the Crusades upset the routine of the old agricultural life in a very drastic
fashion. Suppose that the Duke of Hildesheim was going to the Holy Land. He
must travel thousands of miles and he must pay his passage and his hotel-bills.
At home he could pay with products of his farm. But he could not well take a
hundred dozen eggs and a cart-load of hams with him to satisfy the greed of the
shipping agent of Venice or the inn-keeper of the Brenner Pass. These gentlemen
insisted upon cash. His Lordship therefore was obliged to take a small quantity
of gold with him upon his voyage. Where could he find this gold? He could
borrow it from the Lombards, the descendants of the old Longobards, who had
turned professional money-lenders, who seated behind their exchange-table
(commonly known as “banco” or bank) were glad to let his Grace have a few
hundred gold pieces in exchange for a mortgage upon his estates, that they might
be repaid in case His Lordship should die at the hands of the Turks.
That was dangerous business for the borrower. In the end, the Lombards
invariably owned the estates and the Knight became a bankrupt, who hired
himself out as a fighting man to a more powerful and more careful neighbour.
His Grace could also go to that part of the town where the Jews were forced to
live. There he could borrow money at a rate of fifty or sixty percent. interest.
That, too, was bad business. But was there a way out? Some of the people of the
little city which surrounded the castle were said to have money. They had known
the young lord all his life. His father and their fathers had been good friends.
They would not be unreasonable in their demands. Very well. His Lordship’s
clerk, a monk who could write and keep accounts, sent a note to the best known
merchants and asked for a small loan. The townspeople met in the work-room of
the jeweller who made chalices for the nearby churches and discussed this
demand. They could not well refuse. It would serve no purpose to ask for
“interest.” In the first place, it was against the religious principles of most people
to take interest and in the second place, it would never be paid except in
agricultural products and of these the people had enough and to spare.

THE MEDIÆVAL TOWN

“But,” suggested the tailor who spent his days quietly sitting upon his table
and who was somewhat of a philosopher, “suppose that we ask some favour in
return for our money. We are all fond of fishing. But his Lordship won’t let us
fish in his brook. Suppose that we let him have a hundred ducats and that he give
us in return a written guarantee allowing us to fish all we want in all of his
rivers. Then he gets the hundred which he needs, but we get the fish and it will
be good business all around.”
The day his Lordship accepted this proposition (it seemed such an easy way of
getting a hundred gold pieces) he signed the death-warrant of his own power. His
clerk drew up the agreement. His Lordship made his mark (for he could not sign
his name) and departed for the East. Two years later he came back, dead broke.
The townspeople were fishing in the castle pond. The sight of this silent row of
anglers annoyed his Lordship. He told his equerry to go and chase the crowd
away. They went, but that night a delegation of merchants visited the castle.
They were very polite. They congratulated his Lordship upon his safe return.
They were sorry his Lordship had been annoyed by the fishermen, but as his
Lordship might perhaps remember he had given them permission to do so
himself, and the tailor produced the Charter which had been kept in the safe of
the jeweller ever since the master had gone to the Holy Land.
His Lordship was much annoyed. But once more he was in dire need of some
money. In Italy he had signed his name to certain documents which were now in
the possession of Salvestro dei Medici, the well-known banker. These documents
were “promissory notes” and they were due two months from date. Their total
amount came to three hundred and forty pounds, Flemish gold. Under these
circumstances, the noble knight could not well show the rage which filled his
heart and his proud soul. Instead, he suggested another little loan. The merchants
retired to discuss the matter.
After three days they came back and said “yes.” They were only too happy to
be able to help their master in his difficulties, but in return for the 345 golden
pounds would he give them another written promise (another charter) that they,
the townspeople, might establish a council of their own to be elected by all the
merchants and free citizens of the city, said council to manage civic affairs
without interference from the side of the castle?
His Lordship was confoundedly angry. But again, he needed the THE BELFRY
money. He said yes, and signed the charter. Next week, he repented.
He called his soldiers and went to the house of the jeweller and asked for the
documents which his crafty subjects had cajoled out of him under the pressure of
circumstances. He took them away and burned them. The townspeople stood by
and said nothing. But when next his Lordship needed money to pay for the
dowry of his daughter, he was unable to get a single penny. After that little affair
at the jeweller’s his credit was not considered good. He was forced to eat
humble-pie and offer to make certain reparations. Before his Lordship got the
first installment of the stipulated sum, the townspeople were once more in
possession of all their old charters and a brand new one which permitted them to
build a “city-hall” and a strong tower where all the charters might be kept
protected against fire and theft, which really meant protected against future
violence on the part of the Lord and his armed followers.
This, in a very general way, is what happened during the centuries
GUNPOWDER
which followed the Crusades. It was a slow process, this gradual
shifting of power from the castle to the city. There was some fighting. A few
tailors and jewellers were killed and a few castles went up in smoke. But such
occurrences were not common. Almost imperceptibly the towns grew richer and
the feudal lords grew poorer. To maintain themselves they were for ever forced
to exchange charters of civic liberty in return for ready cash. The cities grew.
They offered an asylum to run away serfs who gained their liberty after they had
lived a number of years behind the city walls. They came to be the home of the
more energetic elements of the surrounding country districts. They were proud
of their new importance and expressed their power in the churches and public
buildings which they erected around the old market place, where centuries
before the barter of eggs and sheep and honey and salt had taken place. They
wanted their children to have a better chance in life than they had enjoyed
themselves. They hired monks to come to their city and be school teachers.
When they heard of a man who could paint pictures upon boards of wood, they
offered him a pension if he would come and cover the walls of their chapels and
their town hall with scenes from the Holy Scriptures.
Meanwhile his Lordship, in the dreary and drafty halls of his castle, saw all
this up-start splendour and regretted the day when first he had signed away a
single one of his sovereign rights and prerogatives. But he was helpless. The
townspeople with their well-filled strong-boxes snapped their fingers at him.
They were free men, fully prepared to hold what they had gained by the sweat of
their brow and after a struggle which had lasted for more than ten generations.
MEDIÆVAL SELF-GOVERNMENT

HOW THE PEOPLE OF THE CITIES ASSERTED THEIR RIGHT TO BE


HEARD IN THE ROYAL COUNCILS OF THEIR COUNTRY

AS long as people were “nomads,” wandering tribes of shepherds, all men had
been equal and had been responsible for the welfare and safety of the entire
community.
But after they had settled down and some had become rich and others had
grown poor, the government was apt to fall into the hands of those who were not
obliged to work for their living and who could devote themselves to politics.
I have told you how this had happened in Egypt and in Mesopotamia and in
Greece and in Rome. It occurred among the Germanic population of western
Europe as soon as order had been restored. The western European world was
ruled in the first place by an emperor who was elected by the seven or eight most
important kings of the vast Roman Empire of the German nation and who
enjoyed a great deal of imaginary and very little actual power. It was ruled by a
number of kings who sat upon shaky thrones. The every-day government was in
the hands of thousands of feudal princelets. Their subjects were peasants or
serfs. There were few cities. There was hardly any middle class. But during the
thirteenth century (after an absence of almost a thousand years) the middle class
—the merchant class—once more appeared upon the historical stage and its rise
in power, as we saw in the last chapter, had meant a decrease in the influence of
the castle folk.

THE SPREADING OF THE IDEA OF POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY

Thus far, the king, in ruling his domains, had only paid attention to the wishes
of his noblemen and his bishops. But the new world of trade and commerce
which grew out of the Crusades forced him to recognise the middle class or
suffer from an ever-increasing emptiness of his exchequer. Their majesties (if
they had followed their hidden wishes) would have as lief consulted their cows
and their pigs as the good burghers of their cities. But they could not help
themselves. They swallowed the bitter pill because it was gilded, but not without
a struggle.
In England, during the absence of Richard the Lion Hearted (who had gone to
the Holy Land, but who was spending the greater part of his crusading voyage in
an Austrian jail) the government of the country had been placed in the hands of
John, a brother of Richard, who was his inferior in the art of war, but his equal as
a bad administrator. John had begun his career as a regent by losing Normandy
and the greater part of the French possessions. Next, he had managed to get into
a quarrel with Pope Innocent III, the famous enemy of the Hohenstaufens. The
Pope had excommunicated John (as Gregory VII had excommunicated the
Emperor Henry IV two centuries before). In the year 1213 John had been
obliged to make an ignominious peace just as Henry IV had been obliged to do
in the year 1077.
Undismayed by his lack of success, John continued to abuse his royal power
until his disgruntled vassals made a prisoner of their anointed ruler and forced
him to promise that he would be good and would never again interfere with the
ancient rights of his subjects. All this happened on a little island in the Thames,
near the village of Runnymede, on the 15th of June of the year 1215. The
document to which John signed his name was called the Big Charter—the
Magna Carta. It contained very little that was new. It re-stated in short and direct
sentences the ancient duties of the king and enumerated the privileges of his
vassals. It paid little attention to the rights (if any) of the vast majority of the
people, the peasants, but it offered certain securities to the rising class of the
merchants. It was a charter of great importance because it defined the powers of
the king with more precision than had ever been done before. But it was still a
purely mediæval document. It did not refer to common human beings, unless
they happened to be the property of the vassal, which must be safe-guarded
against royal tyranny just as the Baronial woods and cows were protected against
an excess of zeal on the part of the royal foresters.
A few years later, however, we begin to hear a very different note in the
councils of His Majesty.
John, who was bad, both by birth and inclination, solemnly had promised to
obey the great charter and then had broken every one of its many stipulations.
Fortunately, he soon died and was succeeded by his son Henry III, who was
forced to recognise the charter anew. Meanwhile, Uncle Richard, the Crusader,
had cost the country a great deal of money and the king was obliged to ask for a
few loans that he might pay his obligations to the Jewish money-lenders. The
large land-owners and the bishops who acted as councillors to the king could not
provide him with the necessary gold and silver. The king then gave orders that a
few representatives of the cities be called upon to attend the sessions of his Great
Council. They made their first appearance in the year 1265. They were supposed
to act only as financial experts who were not supposed to take a part in the
general discussion of matters of state, but to give advice exclusively upon the
question of taxation.
Gradually, however, these representatives of the “commons” were consulted
upon many of the problems and the meeting of noblemen, bishops and city
delegates developed into a regular Parliament, a place “où l’on parlait,” which
means in English where people talked, before important affairs of state were
decided upon.
But the institution of such a general advisory board with certain executive
powers was not an English invention, as seems to be the general belief, and
government by a “king and his parliament” was by no means restricted to the
British Isles. You will find it in every part of Europe. In some countries, like
France, the rapid increase of the Royal power after the Middle Ages reduced the
influence of the “parliament” to nothing. In the year 1302 representatives of the
cities had been admitted to the meeting of the French Parliament, but five
centuries had to pass before this “Parliament” was strong enough to assert the
rights of the middle class, the so-called Third Estate, and break the power of the
king. Then they made up for lost time and during the French Revolution,
abolished the king, the clergy and the nobles and made the representatives of the
common people the rulers of the land. In Spain the “cortes” (the king’s council)
had been opened to the commoners as early as the first half of the twelfth
century. In the German Empire, a number of important cities had obtained the
rank of “imperial cities” whose representatives must be heard in the imperial
diet.

THE HOME OF SWISS LIBERTY

In Sweden, representatives of the people attended the sessions of the Riksdag


at the first meeting of the year 1359. In Denmark the Daneholf, the ancient
national assembly, was re-established in 1314, and, although the nobles often
regained control of the country at the expense of the king and the people, the
representatives of the cities were never completely deprived of their power.
In the Scandinavian country, the story of representative government is
particularly interesting. In Iceland, the “Althing,” the assembly of all free
landowners, who managed the affairs of the island, began to hold regular
meetings in the ninth century and continued to do so for more than a thousand
years.

THE ABJURATION OF PHILIP II

In Switzerland, the freemen of the different cantons defended their assemblies


against the attempts of a number of feudal neighbours with great success.
Finally, in the Low Countries, in Holland, the councils of the different duchies
and counties were attended by representatives of the third estate as early as the
thirteenth century.
In the sixteenth century a number of these small provinces rebelled against
their king, abjured his majesty in a solemn meeting of the “Estates General,”
removed the clergy from the discussions, broke the power of the nobles and
assumed full executive authority over the newly-established Republic of the
United Seven Netherlands. For two centuries, the representatives of the town-
councils ruled the country without a king, without bishops and without
noblemen. The city had become supreme and the good burghers had become the
rulers of the land.
THE MEDIÆVAL WORLD

WHAT THE PEOPLE OF THE MIDDLE AGES THOUGHT OF THE WORLD


IN WHICH THEY HAPPENED TO LIVE

DATES are a very useful invention. We could not do without them but unless
we are very careful, they will play tricks with us. They are apt to make history
too precise. For example, when I talk of the point-of-view of mediæval man, I do
not mean that on the 31st of December of the year 476, suddenly all the people
of Europe said, “Ah, now the Roman Empire has come to an end and we are
living in the Middle Ages. How interesting!”
You could have found men at the Frankish court of Charlemagne who were
Romans in their habits, in their manners, in their out-look upon life. On the other
hand, when you grow up you will discover that some of the people in this world
have never passed beyond the stage of the cave-man. All times and all ages
overlap, and the ideas of succeeding generations play tag with each other. But it
is possible to study the minds of a good many true representatives of the Middle
Ages and then give you an idea of the average man’s attitude toward life and the
many difficult problems of living.
First of all, remember that the people of the Middle Ages never thought of
themselves as free-born citizens, who could come and go at will and shape their
fate according to their ability or energy or luck. On the contrary, they all
considered themselves part of the general scheme of things, which included
emperors and serfs, popes and heretics, heroes and swashbucklers, rich men,
poor men, beggar men and thieves. They accepted this divine ordinance and
asked no questions. In this, of course, they differed radically from modern
people who accept nothing and who are forever trying to improve their own
financial and political situation.
To the man and woman of the thirteenth century, the world hereafter—a
Heaven of wonderful delights and a Hell of brimstone and suffering—meant
something more than empty words or vague theological phrases. It was an actual
fact and the mediæval burghers and knights spent the greater part of their time
preparing for it. We modern people regard a noble death after a well-spent life
with the quiet calm of the ancient Greeks and Romans. After three score years of
work and effort, we go to sleep with the feeling that all will be well.
But during the Middle Ages, the King of Terrors with his grinning skull and
his rattling bones was man’s steady companion. He woke his victims up with
terrible tunes on his scratchy fiddle—he sat down with them at dinner—he
smiled at them from behind trees and shrubs when they took a girl out for a
walk. If you had heard nothing but hair-raising yarns about cemeteries and
coffins and fearful diseases when you were very young, instead of listening to
the fairy stories of Andersen and Grimm, you, too, would have lived all your
days in a dread of the final hour and the gruesome day of Judgment. That is
exactly what happened to the children of the Middle Ages. They moved in a
world of devils and spooks and only a few occasional angels. Sometimes, their
fear of the future filled their souls with humility and piety, but often it influenced
them the other way and made them cruel and sentimental. They would first of all
murder all the women and children of a captured city and then they would
devoutly march to a holy spot and with their hands gory with the blood of
innocent victims, they would pray that a merciful heaven forgive them their sins.
Yea, they would do more than pray, they would weep bitter tears and would
confess themselves the most wicked of sinners. But the next day, they would
once more butcher a camp of Saracen enemies without a spark of mercy in their
hearts.
Of course, the Crusaders were Knights and obeyed a somewhat different code
of manners from the common men. But in such respects the common man was
just the same as his master. He, too, resembled a shy horse, easily frightened by
a shadow or a silly piece of paper, capable of excellent and faithful service but
liable to run away and do terrible damage when his feverish imagination saw a
ghost.
In judging these good people, however, it is wise to remember the terrible
disadvantages under which they lived. They were really barbarians who posed as
civilised people. Charlemagne and Otto the Great were called “Roman
Emperors,” but they had as little resemblance to a real Roman Emperor (say
Augustus or Marcus Aurelius) as “King” Wumba Wumba of the Upper Congo
has to the highly educated rulers of Sweden or Denmark. They were savages
who lived amidst glorious ruins but who did not share the benefits of the
civilisation which their fathers and grandfathers had destroyed. They knew
nothing. They were ignorant of almost every fact which a boy of twelve knows
to-day. They were obliged to go to one single book for all their information. That
was the Bible. But those parts of the Bible which have influenced the history of
the human race for the better are those chapters of the New Testament which
teach us the great moral lessons of love, charity and forgiveness. As a handbook
of astronomy, zoölogy, botany, geometry and all the other sciences, the venerable
book is not entirely reliable. In the twelfth century, a second book was added to
the mediæval library, the great encyclopædia of useful knowledge, compiled by
Aristotle, the Greek philosopher of the fourth century before Christ. Why the
Christian church should have been willing to accord such high honors to the
teacher of Alexander the Great, whereas they condemned all other Greek
philosophers on account of their heathenish doctrines, I really do not know. But
next to the Bible, Aristotle was recognized as the only reliable teacher whose
works could be safely placed into the hands of true Christians.
His works had reached Europe in a somewhat roundabout way. They had gone
from Greece to Alexandria. They had then been translated from the Greek into
the Arabic language by the Mohammedans who conquered Egypt in the seventh
century. They had followed the Moslem armies into Spain and the philosophy of
the great Stagirite (Aristotle was a native of Stagira in Macedonia) was taught in
the Moorish universities of Cordova. The Arabic text was then translated into
Latin by the Christian students who had crossed the Pyrenees to get a liberal
education and this much travelled version of the famous books was at last taught
at the different schools of northwestern Europe. It was not very clear, but that
made it all the more interesting.
With the help of the Bible and Aristotle, the most brilliant men of the Middle
Ages now set to work to explain all things between Heaven and Earth in their
relation to the expressed will of God. These brilliant men, the so-called
Scholiasts or Schoolmen, were really very intelligent, but they had obtained their
information exclusively from books, and never from actual observation. If they
wanted to lecture on the sturgeon or on caterpillars, they read the Old and New
Testaments and Aristotle, and told their students everything these good books
had to say upon the subject of caterpillars and sturgeons. They did not go out to
the nearest river to catch a sturgeon. They did not leave their libraries and repair
to the backyard to catch a few caterpillars and look at these animals and study
them in their native haunts. Even such famous scholars as Albertus Magnus and
Thomas Aquinas did not inquire whether the sturgeons in the land of Palestine
and the caterpillars of Macedonia might not have been different from the
sturgeons and the caterpillars of western Europe.
When occasionally an exceptionally curious person like Roger Bacon
appeared in the council of the learned and began to experiment with magnifying
glasses and funny little telescopes and actually dragged the sturgeon and the
caterpillar into the lecturing room and proved that they were different from the
creatures described by the Old Testament and by Aristotle, the Schoolmen shook
their dignified heads. Bacon was going too far. When he dared to suggest that an
hour of actual observation was worth more than ten years with Aristotle and that
the works of that famous Greek might as well have remained untranslated for all
the good they had ever done, the scholiasts went to the police and said, “This
man is a danger to the safety of the state. He wants us to study Greek that we
may read Aristotle in the original. Why should he not be contented with our
Latin-Arabic translation which has satisfied our faithful people for so many
hundred years? Why is he so curious about the insides of fishes and the insides
of insects? He is probably a wicked magician trying to upset the established
order of things by his Black Magic.” And so well did they plead their cause that
the frightened guardians of the peace forbade Bacon to write a single word for
more than ten years. When he resumed his studies he had learned a lesson. He
wrote his books in a queer cipher which made it impossible for his
contemporaries to read them, a trick which became common as the Church
became more desperate in its attempts to prevent people from asking questions
which would lead to doubts and infidelity.

THE MEDIÆVAL WORLD

This, however, was not done out of any wicked desire to keep people ignorant.
The feeling which prompted the heretic hunters of that day was really a very
kindly one. They firmly believed—nay, they knew—that this life was but the
preparation for our real existence in the next world. They felt convinced that too
much knowledge made people uncomfortable, filled their minds with dangerous
opinions and led to doubt and hence to perdition. A mediæval Schoolman who
saw one of his pupils stray away from the revealed authority of the Bible and
Aristotle, that he might study things for himself, felt as uncomfortable as a
loving mother who sees her young child approach a hot stove. She knows that he
will burn his little fingers if he is allowed to touch it and she tries to keep him
back, if necessary she will use force. But she really loves the child and if he will
only obey her, she will be as good to him as she possibly can be. In the same
way the mediæval guardians of people’s souls, while they were strict in all
matters pertaining to the Faith, slaved day and night to render the greatest
possible service to the members of their flock. They held out a helping hand
whenever they could and the society of that day shows the influence of
thousands of good men and pious women who tried to make the fate of the
average mortal as bearable as possible.
A serf was a serf and his position would never change. But the Good Lord of
the Middle Ages who allowed the serf to remain a slave all his life had bestowed
an immortal soul upon this humble creature and therefore he must be protected
in his rights, that he might live and die as a good Christian. When he grew too
old or too weak to work he must be taken care of by the feudal master for whom
he had worked. The serf, therefore, who led a monotonous and dreary life, was
never haunted by fear of to-morrow. He knew that he was “safe”—that he could
not be thrown out of employment, that he would always have a roof over his
head (a leaky roof, perhaps, but a roof all the same), and that he would always
have something to eat.
This feeling of “stability” and of “safety” was found in all classes of society.
In the towns the merchants and the artisans established guilds which assured
every member of a steady income. It did not encourage the ambitious to do
better than their neighbours. Too often the guilds gave protection to the “slacker”
who managed to “get by.” But they established a general feeling of content and
assurance among the labouring classes which no longer exists in our day of
general competition. The Middle Ages were familiar with the dangers of what
we modern people call “corners,” when a single rich man gets hold of all the
available grain or soap or pickled herring, and then forces the world to buy from
him at his own price. The authorities, therefore, discouraged wholesale trading
and regulated the price at which merchants were allowed to sell their goods.
The Middle Ages disliked competition. Why compete and fill the world with
hurry and rivalry and a multitude of pushing men, when the Day of Judgement
was near at hand, when riches would count for nothing and when the good serf
would enter the golden gates of Heaven while the bad knight was sent to do
penance in the deepest pit of Inferno?
In short, the people of the Middle Ages were asked to surrender part of their
liberty of thought and action, that they might enjoy greater safety from poverty
of the body and poverty of the soul.
And with a very few exceptions, they did not object. They firmly believed that
they were mere visitors upon this planet—that they were here to be prepared for
a greater and more important life. Deliberately they turned their backs upon a
world which was filled with suffering and wickedness and injustice. They pulled
down the blinds that the rays of the sun might not distract their attention from
that chapter in the Apocalypse which told them of that heavenly light which was
to illumine their happiness in all eternity. They tried to close their eyes to most
of the joys of the world in which they lived that they might enjoy those which
awaited them in the near future. They accepted life as a necessary evil and
welcomed death as the beginning of a glorious day.
The Greeks and the Romans had never bothered about the future but had tried
to establish their Paradise right here upon this earth. They had succeeded in
making life extremely pleasant for those of their fellow men who did not happen
to be slaves. Then came the other extreme of the Middle Ages, when man built
himself a Paradise beyond the highest clouds and turned this world into a vale of
tears for high and low, for rich and poor, for the intelligent and the dumb. It was
time for the pendulum to swing back in the other direction, as I shall tell you in
my next chapter.
MEDIÆVAL TRADE

HOW THE CRUSADES ONCE MORE MADE THE MEDITERRANEAN A


BUSY CENTRE OF TRADE AND HOW THE CITIES OF THE ITALIAN
PENINSULA BECAME THE GREAT DISTRIBUTING CENTRE FOR
THE COMMERCE WITH ASIA AND AFRICA

THERE were three good reasons why the Italian cities should have been the
first to regain a position of great importance during the late Middle Ages. The
Italian peninsula had been settled by Rome at a very early date. There had been
more roads and more towns and more schools than anywhere else in Europe.
The barbarians had burned as lustily in Italy as elsewhere, but there had been
so much to destroy that more had been able to survive. In the second place, the
Pope lived in Italy and as the head of a vast political machine, which owned land
and serfs and buildings and forests and rivers and conducted courts of law, he
was in constant receipt of a great deal of money. The Papal authorities had to be
paid in gold and silver as did the merchants and ship-owners of Venice and
Genoa. The cows and the eggs and the horses and all the other agricultural
products of the north and the west must be changed into actual cash before the
debt could be paid in the distant city of Rome. This made Italy the one country
where there was a comparative abundance of gold and silver. Finally, during the
Crusades, the Italian cities had become the point of embarkation for the
Crusaders and had profiteered to an almost unbelievable extent.
MEDIÆVAL TRADE

And after the Crusades had come to an end, these same Italian cities remained
the distributing centres for those Oriental goods upon which the people of
Europe had come to depend during the time they had spent in the near east.
Of these towns, few were as famous as Venice. Venice was a republic built
upon a mud bank. Thither people from the mainland had fled during the
invasions of the barbarians in the fourth century. Surrounded on all sides by the
sea they had engaged in the business of salt-making. Salt had been very scarce
during the Middle Ages, and the price had been high. For hundreds of years
Venice had enjoyed a monopoly of this indispensable table commodity (I say
indispensable, because people, like sheep, fall ill unless they get a certain
amount of salt in their food). The people had used this monopoly to increase the
power of their city. At times they had even dared to defy the power of the Popes.
The town had grown rich and had begun to build ships, which engaged in trade
with the Orient. During the Crusades, these ships were used to carry passengers
to the Holy Land, and when the passengers could not pay for their tickets in
cash, they were obliged to help the Venetians who were for ever increasing their
colonies in the Ægean Sea, in Asia Minor and in Egypt.
By the end of the fourteenth century, the population had grown to two hundred
thousand, which made Venice the biggest city of the Middle Ages. The people
were without influence upon the government which was the private affair of a
small number of rich merchant families. They elected a senate and a Doge (or
Duke), but the actual rulers of the city were the members of the famous Council
of Ten,—who maintained themselves with the help of a highly organised system
of secret-service men and professional murderers, who kept watch upon all
citizens and quietly removed those who might be dangerous to the safety of their
high-handed and unscrupulous Committee of Public Safety.
The other extreme of government, a democracy of very turbulent habits, was
to be found in Florence. This city controlled the main road from northern Europe
to Rome and used the money which it had derived from this fortunate economic
position to engage in manufacturing. The Florentines tried to follow the example
of Athens. Noblemen, priests and members of the guilds all took part in the
discussions of civic affairs. This led to great civic upheaval. People were forever
being divided into political parties and these parties fought each other with
intense bitterness and exiled their enemies and confiscated their possessions as
soon as they had gained a victory in the council. After several centuries of this
rule by organised mobs, the inevitable happened. A powerful family made itself
master of the city and governed the town and the surrounding country after the
fashion of the old Greek “tyrants.” They were called the Medici. The earliest
Medici had been physicians (medicus is Latin for physician, hence their name),
but later they had turned banker. Their banks and their pawnshops were to be
found in all the more important centres of trade. Even today our American pawn-
shops display the three golden balls which were part of the coat of arms of the
mighty house of the Medici, who became rulers of Florence and married their
daughters to the kings of France and were buried in graves worthy of a Roman
Cæsar.
Then there was Genoa, the great rival of Venice, where the merchants
specialised in trade with Tunis in Africa and the grain depots of the Black Sea.
Then there were more than two hundred other cities, some large and some small,
each a perfect commercial unit, all of them fighting their neighbours and rivals
with the undying hatred of neighbours who are depriving each other of their
profits.
Once the products of the Orient and Africa had been brought to these
distributing centres, they must be prepared for the voyage to the west and the
north.
Genoa carried her goods by water to Marseilles, from where they were
reshipped to the cities along the Rhone, which in turn served as the market
places of northern and western France.

GREAT NOVGOROD

Venice used the land route to northern Europe. This ancient road led across the
Brenner pass, the old gateway for the barbarians who had invaded Italy. Past
Innsbrück, the merchandise was carried to Basel. From there it drifted down the
Rhine to the North Sea and England, or it was taken to Augsburg where the
Fugger family (who were both bankers and manufacturers and who prospered
greatly by “shaving” the coins with which they paid their workmen), looked
after the further distribution to Nuremberg and Leipzig and the cities of the
Baltic and to Wisby (on the Island of Gotland) which looked after the needs of
the Northern Baltic and dealt directly with the Republic of Novgorod, the old
commercial centre of Russia which was destroyed by Ivan the Terrible in the
middle of the sixteenth century.
The little cities on the coast of north-western Europe had an interesting story
of their own. The mediæval world ate a great deal of fish. There were many fast
days and then people were not permitted to eat meat. For those who lived away
from the coast and from the rivers, this meant a diet of eggs or nothing at all. But
early in the thirteenth century a Dutch fisherman had discovered a way of curing
herring, so that it could be transported to distant points. The herring fisheries of
the North Sea then became of great importance. But some time during the
thirteenth century, this useful little fish (for reasons of its own) moved from the
North Sea to the Baltic and the cities of that inland sea began to make money.
All the world now sailed to the Baltic to catch herring and as that fish could only
be caught during a few months each year (the rest of the time it spends in deep
water, raising large families of little herrings) the ships would have been idle
during the rest of the time unless they had found another occupation. They were
then used to carry the wheat of northern and central Russia to southern and
western Europe. On the return voyage they brought spices and silks and carpets
and Oriental rugs from Venice and Genoa to Bruges and Hamburg and Bremen.
Out of such simple beginnings there developed an important system of
international trade which reached from the manufacturing cities of Bruges and
Ghent (where the almighty guilds fought pitched battles with the kings of France
and England and established a labour tyranny which completely ruined both the
employers and the workmen) to the Republic of Novgorod in northern Russia,
which was a mighty city until Tsar Ivan, who distrusted all merchants, took the
town and killed sixty thousand people in less than a month’s time and reduced
the survivors to beggary.
That they might protect themselves against pirates and excessive tolls and
annoying legislation, the merchants of the north founded a protective league
which was called the “Hansa.” The Hansa, which had its headquarters in
Lübeck, was a voluntary association of more than one hundred cities. The
association maintained a navy of its own which patrolled the seas and fought and
defeated the Kings of England and Denmark when they dared to interfere with
the rights and the privileges of the mighty Hanseatic merchants.
I wish that I had more space to tell you some of the wonderful stories of this
strange commerce which was carried on across the high mountains and across
the deep seas amidst such dangers that every voyage became a glorious
adventure. But it would take several volumes and it cannot be done here.
Besides, I hope that I have told you enough about the Middle Ages to make you
curious to read more in the excellent books of which I shall give you a list at the
end of this volume.

THE HANSA SHIP

The Middle Ages, as I have tried to show you, had been a period of very slow
progress. The people who were in power believed that “progress” was a very
undesirable invention of the Evil One and ought to be discouraged, and as they
happened to occupy the seats of the mighty, it was easy to enforce their will
upon the patient serfs and the illiterate knights. Here and there a few brave souls
sometimes ventured forth into the forbidden region of science, but they fared
badly and were considered lucky when they escaped with their lives and a jail
sentence of twenty years.
In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the flood of international commerce
swept over western Europe as the Nile had swept across the valley of ancient
Egypt. It left behind a fertile sediment of prosperity. Prosperity meant leisure
hours and these leisure hours gave both men and women a chance to buy
manuscripts and take an interest in literature and art and music.
Then once more was the world filled with that divine curiosity which has
elevated man from the ranks of those other mammals who are his distant cousins
but who have remained dumb, and the cities, of whose growth and development
I have told you in my last chapter, offered a safe shelter to these brave pioneers
who dared to leave the very narrow domain of the established order of things.
They set to work. They opened the windows of their cloistered and studious
cells. A flood of sunlight entered the dusty rooms and showed them the cobwebs
which had gathered during the long period of semi-darkness.
They began to clean house. Next they cleaned their gardens.
Then they went out into the open fields, outside the crumbling town walls, and
said, “This is a good world. We are glad that we live in it.”
At that moment, the Middle Ages came to an end and a new world began.
THE RENAISSANCE

PEOPLE ONCE MORE DARED TO BE HAPPY JUST BECAUSE THEY


WERE ALIVE. THEY TRIED TO SAVE THE REMAINS OF THE
OLDER AND MORE AGREEABLE CIVILISATION OF ROME AND
GREECE AND THEY WERE SO PROUD OF THEIR ACHIEVEMENTS
THAT THEY SPOKE OF A RENAISSANCE OR RE-BIRTH OF
CIVILISATION

THE Renaissance was not a political or religious movement. It was a state of


mind.
The men of the Renaissance continued to be the obedient sons of the mother
church. They were subjects of kings and emperors and dukes and murmured not.
But their outlook upon life was changed. They began to wear different clothes
—to speak a different language—to live different lives in different houses.
They no longer concentrated all their thoughts and their efforts upon the
blessed existence that awaited them in Heaven. They tried to establish their
Paradise upon this planet, and, truth to tell, they succeeded in a remarkable
degree.
I have quite often warned you against the danger that lies in historical dates.
People take them too literally. They think of the Middle Ages as a period of
darkness and ignorance. “Click,” says the clock, and the Renaissance begins and
cities and palaces are flooded with the bright sunlight of an eager intellectual
curiosity.
As a matter of fact, it is quite impossible to draw such sharp lines. The
thirteenth century belonged most decidedly to the Middle Ages. All historians
agree upon that. But was it a time of darkness and stagnation merely? By no
means. People were tremendously alive. Great states were being founded. Large
centres of commerce were being developed. High above the turretted towers of
the castle and the peaked roof of the town-hall, rose the slender spire of the
newly built Gothic cathedral. Everywhere the world was in motion. The high and
mighty gentlemen of the city-hall, who had just become conscious of their own
strength (by way of their recently acquired riches) were struggling for more
power with their feudal masters. The members of the guilds who had just
become aware of the important fact that “numbers count” were fighting the high
and mighty gentlemen of the city-hall. The king and his shrewd advisers went
fishing in these troubled waters and caught many a shining bass of profit which
they proceeded to cook and eat before the noses of the surprised and
disappointed councillors and guild brethren.
To enliven the scenery during the long hours of evening when the badly
lighted streets did not invite further political and economic dispute, the
Troubadours and Minnesingers told their stories and sang their songs of romance
and adventure and heroism and loyalty to all fair women. Meanwhile youth,
impatient of the slowness of progress, flocked to the universities, and thereby
hangs a story.
The Middle Ages were “internationally minded.” That sounds difficult, but
wait until I explain it to you. We modern people are “nationally minded.” We are
Americans or Englishmen or Frenchmen or Italians and speak English or French
or Italian and go to English and French and Italian universities, unless we want
to specialise in some particular branch of learning which is only taught
elsewhere, and then we learn another language and go to Munich or Madrid or
Moscow. But the people of the thirteenth or fourteenth century rarely talked of
themselves as Englishmen or Frenchmen or Italians. They said, “I am a citizen
of Sheffield or Bordeaux or Genoa.” Because they all belonged to one and the
same church they felt a certain bond of brotherhood. And as all educated men
could speak Latin, they possessed an international language which removed the
stupid language barriers which have grown up in modern Europe and which
place the small nations at such an enormous disadvantage. Just as an example,
take the case of Erasmus, the great preacher of tolerance and laughter, who wrote
his books in the sixteenth century. He was the native of a small Dutch village. He
wrote in Latin and all the world was his audience. If he were alive to-day, he
would write in Dutch. Then only five or six million people would be able to read
him. To be understood by the rest of Europe and America, his publishers would
be obliged to translate his books into twenty different languages. That would
cost a lot of money and most likely the publishers would never take the trouble
or the risk.
Six hundred years ago that could not happen. The greater part of the people
were still very ignorant and could not read or write at all. But those who had
mastered the difficult art of handling the goose quill belonged to an international
republic of letters which spread across the entire continent and which knew of no
boundaries and respected no limitations of language or nationality. The
universities were the strongholds of this republic. Unlike modern fortifications,
they did not follow the frontier. They were to be found wherever a teacher and a
few pupils happened to find themselves together. There again the Middle Ages
and the Renaissance differed from our own time. Nowadays, when a new
university is built, the process (almost invariably) is as follows: Some rich man
wants to do something for the community in which he lives or a particular
religious sect wants to build a school to keep its faithful children under decent
supervision, or a state needs doctors and lawyers and teachers. The university
begins as a large sum of money which is deposited in a bank. This money is then
used to construct buildings and laboratories and dormitories. Finally professional
teachers are hired, entrance examinations are held and the university is on the
way.
But in the Middle Ages things were done differently. A wise man said to
himself, “I have discovered a great truth. I must impart my knowledge to
others.” And he began to preach his wisdom wherever and whenever he could
get a few people to listen to him, like a modern soap-box orator. If he was an
interesting speaker, the crowd came and stayed. If he was dull, they shrugged
their shoulders and continued their way. By and by certain young men began to
come regularly to hear the words of wisdom of this great teacher. They brought
copy-books with them and a little bottle of ink and a goose quill and wrote down
what seemed to be important. One day it rained. The teacher and his pupils
retired to an empty basement or the room of the “Professor.” The learned man
sat in his chair and the boys sat on the floor. That was the beginning of the
University, the “universitas,” a corporation of professors and students during the
Middle Ages, when the “teacher” counted for everything and the building in
which he taught counted for very little.
As an example, let me tell you of something that THE MEDIÆVAL LABORATORY
happened in the ninth century. In the town of Salerno
near Naples there were a number of excellent physicians. They attracted people
desirous of learning the medical profession and for almost a thousand years
(until 1817) there was a university of Salerno which taught the wisdom of
Hippocrates, the great Greek doctor who had practised his art in ancient Hellas
in the fifth century before the birth of Christ.
Then there was Abelard, the young priest from Brittany, who early in the
twelfth century began to lecture on theology and logic in Paris. Thousands of
eager young men flocked to the French city to hear him. Other priests who
disagreed with him stepped forward to explain their point of view. Paris was
soon filled with a clamouring multitude of Englishmen and Germans and Italians
and students from Sweden and Hungary and around the old cathedral which
stood on a little island in the Seine there grew the famous University of Paris.
In Bologna in Italy, a monk by the name of Gratian had compiled a text-book
for those whose business it was to know the laws of the church. Young priests
and many laymen then came from all over Europe to hear Gratian explain his
ideas. To protect themselves against the landlords and the innkeepers and the
boarding-house ladies of the city, they formed a corporation (or University) and
behold the beginning of the university of Bologna.
Next there was a quarrel in the University of Paris. We do not THE RENAISSANCE
know what caused it, but a number of disgruntled teachers
together with their pupils crossed the channel and found a hospitable home in a
little village on the Thames called Oxford, and in this way the famous University
of Oxford came into being. In the same way, in the year 1222, there had been a
split in the University of Bologna. The discontented teachers (again followed by
their pupils) had moved to Padua and their proud city thenceforward boasted of a
university of its own. And so it went from Valladolid in Spain to Cracow in
distant Poland and from Poitiers in France to Rostock in Germany.
It is quite true that much of the teaching done by these early professors would
sound absurd to our ears, trained to listen to logarithms and geometrical
theorems. The point, however, which I want to make is this—the Middle Ages
and especially the thirteenth century were not a time when the world stood
entirely still. Among the younger generation, there was life, there was
enthusiasm, and there was a restless if somewhat bashful asking of questions.
And out of this turmoil grew the Renaissance.
But just before the curtain went down upon the last scene of the Mediæval
world, a solitary figure crossed the stage, of whom you ought to know more than
his mere name. This man was called Dante. He was the son of a Florentine
lawyer who belonged to the Alighieri family and he saw the light of day in the
year 1265. He grew up in the city of his ancestors while Giotto was painting his
stories of the life of St. Francis of Assisi upon the walls of the Church of the
Holy Cross, but often when he went to school, his frightened eyes would see the
puddles of blood which told of the terrible and endless warfare that raged forever
between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, the followers of the Pope and the
adherents of the Emperors.
When he grew up, he became a Guelph, because his father had been one
before him, just as an American boy might become a Democrat or a Republican,
simply because his father had happened to be a Democrat or a Republican. But
after a few years, Dante saw that Italy, unless united under a single head,
threatened to perish as a victim of the disordered jealousies of a thousand little
cities. Then he became a Ghibelline.
He looked for help beyond the Alps. He hoped that a mighty emperor might
come and re-establish unity and order. Alas! he hoped in vain. The Ghibellines
were driven out of Florence in the year 1302. From that time on until the day of
his death amidst the dreary ruins of Ravenna, in the year 1321, Dante was a
homeless wanderer, eating the bread of charity at the table of rich patrons whose
names would have sunk into the deepest pit of oblivion but for this single fact,
that they had been kind to a poet in his misery. During the many years of exile,
Dante felt compelled to justify himself and his actions when he had been a
political leader in his home-town, and when he had spent his days walking along
the banks of the Arno that he might catch a glimpse of the lovely Beatrice
Portinari, who died the wife of another man, a dozen years before the Ghibelline
disaster.
He had failed in the ambitions of his career. He had faithfully served the town
of his birth and before a corrupt court he had been accused of stealing the public
funds and had been condemned to be burned alive should he venture back within
the realm of the city of Florence. To clear himself before his own conscience and
before his contemporaries, Dante then created an Imaginary World and with
great detail he described the circumstances which had led to his defeat and
depicted the hopeless condition of greed and lust and hatred which had turned
his fair and beloved Italy into a battlefield for the pitiless mercenaries of wicked
and selfish tyrants.
He tells us how on the Thursday before Easter of the year 1300 he had DANTE
lost his way in a dense forest and how he found his path barred by a
leopard and a lion and a wolf. He gave himself up for lost when a white figure
appeared amidst the trees. It was Virgil, the Roman poet and philosopher, sent
upon his errand of mercy by the Blessed Virgin and by Beatrice, who from high
Heaven watched over the fate of her true lover. Virgil then takes Dante through
Purgatory and through Hell. Deeper and deeper the path leads them until they
reach the lowest pit where Lucifer himself stands frozen into the eternal ice
surrounded by the most terrible of sinners, traitors and liars and those who have
achieved fame and success by lies and by deceit. But before the two wanderers
have reached this terrible spot, Dante has met all those who in some way or other
have played a rôle in the history of his beloved city. Emperors and Popes,
dashing knights and whining usurers, they are all there, doomed to eternal
punishment or awaiting the day of deliverance, when they shall leave Purgatory
for Heaven.
It is a curious story. It is a handbook of everything the people of the thirteenth
century did and felt and feared and prayed for. Through it all moves the figure of
the lonely Florentine exile, forever followed by the shadow of his own despair.
And behold! when the gates of death were closing upon the sad poet of the
Middle Ages, the portals of life swung open to the child who was to be the first
of the men of the Renaissance. That was Francesco Petrarca, the son of the
notary public of the little town of Arezzo.
Francesco’s father had belonged to the same political party as Dante. He too
had been exiled and thus it happened that Petrarca (or Petrarch, as we call him)
was born away from Florence. At the age of fifteen he was sent to Montpellier in
France that he might become a lawyer like his father. But the boy did not want to
be a jurist. He hated the law. He wanted to be a scholar and a poet—and because
he wanted to be a scholar and a poet beyond everything else, he became one, as
people of a strong will are apt to do. He made long voyages, copying
manuscripts in Flanders and in the cloisters along the Rhine and in Paris and
Liège and finally in Rome. Then he went to live in a lonely valley of the wild
mountains of Vaucluse, and there he studied and wrote and soon he had become
so famous for his verse and for his learning that both the University of Paris and
the king of Naples invited him to come and teach their students and subjects. On
the way to his new job, he was obliged to pass through Rome. The people had
heard of his fame as an editor of half-forgotten Roman authors. They decided to
honour him and in the ancient forum of the Imperial City, Petrarch was crowned
with the laurel wreath of the Poet.
From that moment on, his life was an endless career of honour and
appreciation. He wrote the things which people wanted most to hear. They were
tired of theological disputations. Poor Dante could wander through hell as much
as he wanted. But Petrarch wrote of love and of nature and the sun and never
mentioned those gloomy things which seemed to have been the stock in trade of
the last generation. And when Petrarch came to a city, all the people flocked out
to meet him and he was received like a conquering hero. If he happened to bring
his young friend Boccaccio, the story teller, with him, so much the better. They
were both men of their time, full of curiosity, willing to read everything once,
digging in forgotten and musty libraries that they might find still another
manuscript of Virgil or Ovid or Lucretius or any of the other old Latin poets.
They were good Christians. Of course they were! Everyone was. But no need of
going around with a long face and wearing a dirty coat just because some day or
other you were going to die. Life was good. People were meant to be happy. You
desired proof of this? Very well. Take a spade and dig into the soil. What did you
find? Beautiful old statues. Beautiful old vases. Ruins of ancient buildings. All
these things were made by the people of the greatest empire that ever existed.
They ruled all the world for a thousand years. They were strong and rich and
handsome (just look at that bust of the Emperor Augustus!). Of course, they
were not Christians and they would never be able to enter Heaven. At best they
would spend their days in purgatory, where Dante had just paid them a visit. But
who cared? To have lived in a world like that of ancient Rome was heaven
enough for any mortal being. And anyway, we live but once. Let us be happy
and cheerful for the mere joy of existence.
Such, in short, was the spirit that had begun to fill the narrow and crooked
streets of the many little Italian cities.
You know what we mean by the “bicycle craze” or the “automobile craze.”
Some one invents a bicycle. People who for hundreds of thousands of years have
moved slowly and painfully from one place to another go “crazy” over the
prospect of rolling rapidly and easily over hill and dale. Then a clever mechanic
makes the first automobile. No longer is it necessary to pedal and pedal and
pedal. You just sit and let little drops of gasoline do the work for you. Then
everybody wants an automobile. Everybody talks about Rolls-Royces and
Flivvers and carburetors and mileage and oil. Explorers penetrate into the hearts
of unknown countries that they may find new supplies of gas. Forests arise in
Sumatra and in the Congo to supply us with rubber. Rubber and oil become so
valuable that people fight wars for their possession. The whole world is
“automobile mad” and little children can say “car” before they learn to whisper
“papa” and “mamma.”
In the fourteenth century, the Italian people went crazy about the newly
discovered beauties of the buried world of Rome. Soon their enthusiasm was
shared by all the people of western Europe. The finding of an unknown
manuscript became the excuse for a civic holiday. The man who wrote a
grammar became as popular as the fellow who nowadays invents a new spark-
plug. The humanist, the scholar who devoted his time and his energies to a study
of “homo” or mankind (instead of wasting his hours upon fruitless theological
investigations), that man was regarded with greater honour and a deeper respect
than was ever bestowed upon a hero who had just conquered all the Cannibal
Islands.
In the midst of this intellectual upheaval, an event occurred which greatly
favoured the study of the ancient philosophers and authors. The Turks were
renewing their attacks upon Europe. Constantinople, capital of the last remnant
of the original Roman Empire, was hard pressed. In the year 1393 the Emperor,
Manuel Paleologue, sent Emmanuel Chrysoloras to western Europe to explain
the desperate state of old Byzantium and to ask for aid. This aid never came. The
Roman Catholic world was more than willing to see the Greek Catholic world go
to the punishment that awaited such wicked heretics. But however indifferent
western Europe might be to the fate of the Byzantines, they were greatly
interested in the ancient Greeks whose colonists had founded the city on the
Bosphorus five centuries after the Trojan war. They wanted to learn Greek that
they might read Aristotle and Homer and Plato. They wanted to learn it very
badly, but they had no books and no grammars and no teachers. The magistrates
of Florence heard of the visit of Chrysoloras. The people of their city were
“crazy to learn Greek.” Would he please come and teach them? He would, and
behold! the first professor of Greek teaching alpha, beta, gamma to hundreds of
eager young men, begging their way to the city of the Arno, living in stables and
in dingy attics that they might learn how to decline the verb παιδευω παιδευεις
παιδευει and enter into the companionship of Sophocles and Homer.
Meanwhile in the universities, the old schoolmen, teaching their ancient
theology and their antiquated logic; explaining the hidden mysteries of the old
Testament and discussing the strange science of their Greek-Arabic-Spanish-
Latin edition of Aristotle, looked on in dismay and horror. Next, they turned
angry. This thing was going too far. The young men were deserting the lecture
halls of the established universities to go and listen to some wild-eyed
“humanist” with his new-fangled notions about a “reborn civilization.”
They went to the authorities. They complained. But one cannot force an
unwilling horse to drink and one cannot make unwilling ears listen to something
which does not really interest them. The schoolmen were losing ground rapidly.
Here and there they scored a short victory. They combined forces with those
fanatics who hated to see other people enjoy a happiness which was foreign to
their own souls. In Florence, the centre of the Great Rebirth, a terrible fight was
fought between the old order and the new. A Dominican monk, sour of face and
bitter in his hatred of beauty, was the leader of the mediæval rear-guard. He
fought a valiant battle. Day after day he thundered his warnings of God’s holy
wrath through the wide halls of Santa Maria del Fiore. “Repent,” he cried,
“repent of your godlessness, of your joy in things that are not holy!” He began to
hear voices and to see flaming swords that flashed through the sky. He preached
to the little children that they might not fall into the errors of these ways which
were leading their fathers to perdition. He organised companies of boy-scouts,
devoted to the service of the great God whose prophet he claimed to be. In a
sudden moment of frenzy, the frightened people promised to do penance for their
wicked love of beauty and pleasure. They carried their books and their statues
and their paintings to the market place and celebrated a wild “carnival of the
vanities” with holy singing and most unholy dancing, while Savonarola applied
his torch to the accumulated treasures.
But when the ashes cooled down, the people began to realise what they had
lost. This terrible fanatic had made them destroy that which they had come to
love above all things. They turned against him, Savonarola was thrown into jail.
He was tortured. But he refused to repent for anything he had done. He was an
honest man. He had tried to live a holy life. He had willingly destroyed those
who deliberately refused to share his own point of view. It had been his duty to
eradicate evil wherever he found it. A love of heathenish books and heathenish
beauty in the eyes of this faithful son of the Church, had been an evil. But he
stood alone. He had fought the battle of a time that was dead and gone. The Pope
in Rome never moved a finger to save him. On the contrary, he approved of his
“faithful Florentines” when they dragged Savonarola to the gallows, hanged him
and burned his body amidst the cheerful howling and yelling of the mob.
It was a sad ending, but quite inevitable. Savonarola would have been a great
man in the eleventh century. In the fifteenth century he was merely the leader of
a lost cause. For better or worse, the Middle Ages had come to an end when the
Pope had turned humanist and when the Vatican became the most important
museum of Roman and Greek antiquities.
THE AGE OF EXPRESSION

THE PEOPLE BEGAN TO FEEL THE NEED OF GIVING EXPRESSION TO


THEIR NEWLY DISCOVERED JOY OF LIVING. THEY EXPRESSED
THEIR HAPPINESS IN POETRY AND IN SCULPTURE AND IN
ARCHITECTURE AND IN PAINTING AND IN THE BOOKS THEY
PRINTED

IN the year 1471 there died a pious old man who had spent seventy-two of his
ninety-one years behind the sheltering walls of the cloister of Mount St. Agnes
near the good town of Zwolle, the old Dutch Hanseatic city on the river Ysel. He
was known as Brother Thomas and because he had been born in the village of
Kempen, he was called Thomas à Kempis. At the age of twelve he had been sent
to Deventer, where Gerhard Groot, a brilliant graduate of the universities of
Paris, Cologne and Prague, and famous as a wandering preacher, had founded
the Society of the Brothers of the Common Life. The good brothers were humble
laymen who tried to live the simple life of the early Apostles of Christ while
working at their regular jobs as carpenters and house-painters and stone masons.
They maintained an excellent school, that deserving boys of poor parents might
be taught the wisdom of the Fathers of the church. At this school, little Thomas
had learned how to conjugate Latin verbs and how to copy manuscripts. Then he
had taken his vows, had put his little bundle of books upon his back, had
wandered to Zwolle and with a sigh of relief he had closed the door upon a
turbulent world which did not attract him.
Thomas lived in an age of turmoil, pestilence and sudden death. In JOHN HUSS
central Europe, in Bohemia, the devoted disciples of Johannes Huss,
the friend and follower of John Wycliffe, the English reformer, were avenging
with a terrible warfare the death of their beloved leader who had been burned at
the stake by order of that same Council of Constance, which had promised him a
safe-conduct if he would come to Switzerland and explain his doctrines to the
Pope, the Emperor, twenty-three cardinals, thirty-three archbishops and bishops,
one hundred and fifty abbots and more than a hundred princes and dukes who
had gathered together to reform their church.
In the west, France had been fighting for a hundred years that she might drive
the English from her territories and just then was saved from utter defeat by the
fortunate appearance of Joan of Arc. And no sooner had this struggle come to an
end than France and Burgundy were at each other’s throats, engaged upon a
struggle of life and death for the supremacy of western Europe.
In the south, a Pope at Rome was calling the curses of Heaven down upon a
second Pope who resided at Avignon, in southern France, and who retaliated in
kind. In the far east the Turks were destroying the last remnants of the Roman
Empire and the Russians had started upon a final crusade to crush the power of
their Tartar masters.

THE CATHEDRAL

But of all this, Brother Thomas in his quiet cell never heard. He had his
manuscripts and his own thoughts and he was contented. He poured his love of
God into a little volume. He called it the Imitation of Christ. It has since been
translated into more languages than any other book save the Bible. It has been
read by quite as many people as ever studied the Holy Scriptures. It has
influenced the lives of countless millions. And it was the work of a man whose
highest ideal of existence was expressed in the simple wish that “he might
quietly spend his days sitting in a little corner with a little book.”
Good Brother Thomas represented the purest ideals of the Middle Ages.
Surrounded on all sides by the forces of the victorious Renaissance, with the
humanists loudly proclaiming the coming of modern times, the Middle Ages
gathered strength for a last sally. Monasteries were reformed. Monks gave up the
habits of riches and vice. Simple, straight-forward and honest men, by the
example of their blameless and devout lives, tried to bring the people back to the
ways of righteousness and humble resignation to the will of God. But all to no
avail. The new world rushed past these good people. The days of quiet
meditation were gone. The great era of “expression” had begun.
Here and now let me say that I am sorry that I must use so many “big words.”
I wish that I could write this history in words of one syllable. But it cannot be
done. You cannot write a text-book of geometry without reference to a
hypotenuse and triangles and a rectangular parallelopiped. You simply have to
learn what those words mean or do without mathematics. In history (and in all
life) you will eventually be obliged to learn the meaning of many strange words
of Latin and Greek origin. Why not do it now?
When I say that the Renaissance was an era of expression, I mean this: People
were no longer contented to be the audience and sit still while the emperor and
the pope told them what to do and what to think. They wanted to be actors upon
the stage of life. They insisted upon giving “expression” to their own individual
ideas. If a man happened to be interested in statesmanship like the Florentine
historian, Niccolò Macchiavelli, then he “expressed” himself in his books which
revealed his own idea of a successful state and an efficient ruler. If on the other
hand he had a liking for painting, he “expressed” his love for beautiful lines and
lovely colours in the pictures which have made the names of Giotto, Fra
Angelico, Rafael and a thousand others household words wherever people have
learned to care for those things which express a true and lasting beauty.

THE MANUSCRIPT AND THE PRINTED BOOK

If this love for colour and line happened to be combined with an interest in
mechanics and hydraulics, the result was a Leonardo da Vinci, who painted his
pictures, experimented with his balloons and flying machines, drained the
marshes of the Lombardian plains and “expressed” his joy and interest in all
things between Heaven and Earth in prose, in painting, in sculpture and in
curiously conceived engines. When a man of gigantic strength, like Michael
Angelo, found the brush and the palette too soft for his strong hands, he turned
to sculpture and to architecture, and hacked the most terrific creatures out of
heavy blocks of marble and drew the plans for the church of St. Peter, the most
concrete “expression” of the glories of the triumphant church. And so it went.
All Italy (and very soon all of Europe) was filled with men and women who
lived that they might add their mite to the sum total of our accumulated treasures
of knowledge and beauty and wisdom. In Germany, in the city of Mainz, Johann
zum Gänsefleisch, commonly known as Johann Gutenberg, had just invented a
new method of copying books. He had studied the old woodcuts and had
perfected a system by which individual letters of soft lead could be placed in
such a way that they formed words and whole pages. It is true, he soon lost all
his money in a law-suit which had to do with the original invention of the press.
He died in poverty, but the “expression” of his particular inventive genius lived
after him.
Soon Aldus in Venice and Etienne in Paris and Plantin in Antwerp and Froben
in Basel were flooding the world with carefully edited editions of the classics
printed in the Gothic letters of the Gutenberg Bible, or printed in the Italian type
which we use in this book, or printed in Greek letters, or in Hebrew.
Then the whole world became the eager audience of those who had something
to say. The day when learning had been a monopoly of a privileged few came to
an end. And the last excuse for ignorance was removed from this world, when
Elzevier of Haarlem began to print his cheap and popular editions. Then
Aristotle and Plato, Virgil and Horace and Pliny, all the goodly company of the
ancient authors and philosophers and scientists, offered to become man’s faithful
friend in exchange for a few paltry pennies. Humanism had made all men free
and equal before the printed word.
THE GREAT DISCOVERIES

BUT NOW THAT PEOPLE HAD BROKEN THROUGH THE BONDS OF


THEIR NARROW MEDIÆVAL LIMITATIONS, THEY HAD TO HAVE
MORE ROOM FOR THEIR WANDERINGS. THE EUROPEAN WORLD
HAD GROWN TOO SMALL FOR THEIR AMBITIONS. IT WAS THE
TIME OF THE GREAT VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY

THE Crusades had been a lesson in the liberal art of travelling. But very few
people had ever ventured beyond the well-known beaten track which led from
Venice to Jaffe. In the thirteenth century the Polo brothers, merchants of Venice,
had wandered across the great Mongolian desert and after climbing mountains as
high as the moon, they had found their way to the court of the great Khan of
Cathay, the mighty emperor of China. The son of one of the Polos, by the name
of Marco, had written a book about their adventures, which covered a period of
more than twenty years. The astonished world had gaped at his descriptions of
the golden towers of the strange island of Zipangu, which was his Italian way of
spelling Japan. Many people had wanted to go east, that they might find this
gold-land and grow rich. But the trip was too far and too dangerous and so they
stayed at home.

MARCO POLO

Of course, there was always the possibility of making the voyage by sea. But
the sea was very unpopular in the Middle Ages and for many very good reasons.
In the first place, ships were very small. The vessels on which Magellan made
his famous trip around the world, which lasted many years, were not as large as a
modern ferryboat. They carried from twenty to fifty men, who lived in dingy
quarters (too low to allow any of them to stand up straight) and the sailors were
obliged to eat poorly cooked food as the kitchen arrangements were very bad
and no fire could be made whenever the weather was the least bit rough. The
mediæval world knew how to pickle herring and how to dry fish. But there were
no canned goods and fresh vegetables were never seen on the bill of fare as soon
as the coast had been left behind. Water was carried in small barrels. It soon
became stale and then tasted of rotten wood and iron rust and was full of slimy
growing things. As the people of the Middle Ages knew nothing about microbes
(Roger Bacon, the learned monk of the thirteenth century seems to have
suspected their existence, but he wisely kept his discovery to himself) they often
drank unclean water and sometimes the whole crew died of typhoid fever.
Indeed the mortality on board the ships of the earliest navigators was terrible. Of
the two hundred sailors who in the year 1519 left Seville to accompany
Magellan on his famous voyage around the world, only eighteen returned. As
late as the seventeenth century when there was a brisk trade between western
Europe and the Indies, a mortality of 40 percent was nothing unusual for a trip
from Amsterdam to Batavia and back. The greater part of these victims died of
scurvy, a disease which is caused by lack of fresh vegetables and which affects
the gums and poisons the blood until the patient dies of sheer exhaustion.
Under those circumstances you will understand that the sea did not attract the
best elements of the population. Famous discoverers like Magellan and
Columbus and Vasco da Gama travelled at the head of crews that were almost
entirely composed of ex-jailbirds, future murderers and pickpockets out of a job.
These navigators certainly deserve our admiration for the courage and the
pluck with which they accomplished their hopeless tasks in the face of
difficulties of which the people of our own comfortable world can have no
conception. Their ships were leaky. The rigging was clumsy. Since the middle of
the thirteenth century they had possessed some sort of a compass (which had
come to Europe from China by way of Arabia and the Crusades) but they had
very bad and incorrect maps. They set their course by God and by guess. If luck
was with them they returned after one or two or three years. In the other case,
their bleached bones remained behind on some lonely beach. But they were true
pioneers. They gambled with luck. Life to them was a glorious adventure. And
all the suffering, the thirst and the hunger and the pain were forgotten when their
eyes beheld the dim outlines of a new coast or the placid waters of an ocean that
had lain forgotten since the beginning of time.
HOW THE WORLD GREW LARGER

Again I wish that I could make this book a thousand pages long. The subject
of the early discoveries is so fascinating. But history, to give you a true idea of
past times, should be like those etchings which Rembrandt used to make. It
should cast a vivid light on certain important causes, on those which are best and
greatest. All the rest should be left in the shadow or should be indicated by a few
lines. And in this chapter I can only give you a short list of the most important
discoveries.
Keep in mind that all during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the
navigators were trying to accomplish just one thing—they wanted to find a
comfortable and safe road to the empire of Cathay (China), to the island of
Zipangu (Japan) and to those mysterious islands, where grew the spices which
the mediæval world had come to like since the days of the Crusades, and which
people needed in those days before the introduction of cold storage, when meat
and fish spoiled very quickly and could only be eaten after a liberal sprinkling of
pepper or nutmeg.
The Venetians and the Genoese had been the great navigators of the
Mediterranean, but the honour for exploring the coast of the Atlantic goes to the
Portuguese. Spain and Portugal were full of that patriotic energy which their age-
old struggle against the Moorish invaders had developed. Such energy, once it
exists, can easily be forced into new channels. In the thirteenth century, King
Alphonso III had conquered the kingdom of Algarve in the southwestern corner
of the Spanish peninsula and had added it to his dominions. In the next century,
the Portuguese had turned the tables on the Mohammedans, had crossed the
straits of Gibraltar and had taken possession of Ceuta, opposite the Arabic city of
Ta’Rifa (a word which in Arabic means “inventory” and which by way of the
Spanish language has come down to us as “tariff,”) and Tangiers, which became
the capital of an African addition to Algarve.
They were ready to begin their career as explorers.
In the year 1415, Prince Henry, known as Henry the Navigator, the son of
John I of Portugal and Philippa, the daughter of John of Gaunt (about whom you
can read in Richard II, a play by William Shakespeare) began to make
preparations for the systematic exploration of northwestern Africa. Before this,
that hot and sandy coast had been visited by the Phœnicians and by the
Norsemen, who remembered it as the home of the hairy “wild man” whom we
have come to know as the gorilla. One after another, Prince Henry and his
captains discovered the Canary Islands—re-discovered the island of Madeira
which a century before had been visited by a Genoese ship, carefully charted the
Azores which had been vaguely known to both the Portuguese and the
Spaniards, and caught a glimpse of the mouth of the Senegal River on the west
coast of Africa, which they supposed to be the western mouth of the Nile. At
last, by the middle of the Fifteenth Century, they saw Cape Verde, or the Green
Cape, and the Cape Verde Islands, which lie almost halfway between the coast of
Africa and Brazil.
But Henry did not restrict himself in his investigations to the waters of the
Ocean. He was Grand Master of the Order of Christ. This was a Portuguese
continuation of the crusading order of the Templars which had been abolished by
Pope Clement V in the year 1312 at the request of King Philip the Fair of France,
who had improved the occasion by burning his own Templars at the stake and
stealing all their possessions. Prince Henry used the revenues of the domains of
his religious order to equip several expeditions which explored the hinterland of
the Sahara and of the coast of Guinea.
But he was still very much a son of the Middle Ages and spent a great deal of
time and wasted a lot of money upon a search for the mysterious “Prester John,”
the mythical Christian Priest who was said to be the Emperor of a vast empire
“situated somewhere in the east.” The story of this strange potentate had first
been told in Europe in the middle of the twelfth century. For three hundred years
people had tried to find “Prester John” and his descendants. Henry took part in
the search. Thirty years after his death, the riddle was solved.

THE WORLD OF COLUMBUS

In the year 1486 Bartholomew Diaz, trying to find the land of Prester John by
sea, had reached the southernmost point of Africa. At first he called it the Storm
Cape, on account of the strong winds which had prevented him from continuing
his voyage toward the east, but the Lisbon pilots who understood the importance
of this discovery in their quest for the India water route, changed the name into
that of the Cape of Good Hope.
One year later, Pedro de Covilham, provided with letters of credit on the
house of Medici, started upon a similar mission by land. He crossed the
Mediterranean and after leaving Egypt, he travelled southward. He reached
Aden, and from there, travelling through the waters of the Persian Gulf which
few white men had seen since the days of Alexander the Great, eighteen
centuries before, he visited Goa and Calicut on the coast of India where he got a
great deal of news about the island of the Moon (Madagascar) which was
supposed to lie halfway between Africa and India. Then he returned, paid a
secret visit to Mecca and to Medina, crossed the Red Sea once more and in the
year 1490 he discovered the realm of Prester John, who was no one less than the
Black Negus (or King) of Abyssinia, whose ancestors had adopted Christianity
in the fourth century, seven hundred years before the Christian missionaries had
found their way to Scandinavia.
These many voyages had convinced the Portuguese geographers and
cartographers that while the voyage to the Indies by an eastern sea-route was
possible, it was by no means easy. Then there arose a great debate. Some people
wanted to continue the explorations east of the Cape of Good Hope. Others said,
“No, we must sail west across the Atlantic and then we shall reach Cathay.”
Let us state right here that most intelligent people of that day were firmly
convinced that the earth was not as flat as a pancake but was round. The
Ptolemean system of the universe, invented and duly described by Claudius
Ptolemy, the great Egyptian geographer, who had lived in the second century of
our era, which had served the simple needs of the men of the Middle Ages, had
long been discarded by the scientists of the Renaissance. They had accepted the
doctrine of the Polish mathematician, Nicolaus Copernicus, whose studies had
convinced him that the earth was one of a number of round planets which turned
around the sun, a discovery which he did not venture to publish for thirty-six
years (it was printed in 1543, the year of his death) from fear of the Holy
Inquisition, a Papal court which had been established in the thirteenth century
when the heresies of the Albigenses and the Waldenses in France and in Italy
(very mild heresies of devoutly pious people who did not believe in private
property and preferred to live in Christ-like poverty) had for a moment
threatened the absolute power of the bishops of Rome. But the belief in the
roundness of the earth was common among the nautical experts and, as I said,
they were now debating the respective advantages of the eastern and the western
routes.
Among the advocates of the western route was a Genoese mariner by the
name of Cristoforo Colombo. He was the son of a wool merchant. He seems to
have been a student at the University of Pavia where he specialised in
mathematics and geometry. Then he took up his father’s trade but soon we find
him in Chios in the eastern Mediterranean travelling on business. Thereafter we
hear of voyages to England but whether he went north in search of wool or as the
captain of a ship we do not know. In February of the year 1477, Colombo (if we
are to believe his own words) visited Iceland, but very likely he only got as far
as the Faröe Islands which are cold enough in February to be mistaken for
Iceland by any one. Here Colombo met the descendants of those brave
Norsemen who in the tenth century had settled in Greenland and who had visited
America in the eleventh century, when Leif’s vessel had been blown to the coast
of Vineland, or Labrador.

THE GREAT DISCOVERIES, WESTERN HEMISPHERE

What had become of those far western colonies no one knew. The American
colony of Thorfinn Karlsefne, the husband of the widow of Leif’s brother
Thorstein, founded in the year 1003, had been discontinued three years later on
account of the hostility of the Esquimaux. As for Greenland, not a word had
been heard from the settlers since the year 1440. Very likely the Greenlanders
had all died of the Black Death, which had just killed half the people of Norway.
However that might be, the tradition of a “vast land in the distant west” still
survived among the people of the Faröe and Iceland, and Colombo must have
heard of it. He gathered further information among the fishermen of the northern
Scottish islands and then went to Portugal where he married the daughter of one
of the captains who had served under Prince Henry the Navigator.

THE GREAT DISCOVERIES, EASTERN HEMISPHERE

From that moment on (the year 1478) he devoted himself to the quest of the
western route to the Indies. He sent his plans for such a voyage to the courts of
Portugal and Spain. The Portuguese, who felt certain that they possessed a
monopoly of the eastern route, would not listen to his plans. In Spain, Ferdinand
of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, whose marriage in 1469 had made Spain into
a single kingdom, were busy driving the Moors from their last stronghold,
Granada. They had no money for risky expeditions. They needed every peseta
for their soldiers.
Few people were ever forced to fight as desperately for their ideas as this
brave Italian. But the story of Colombo (or Colon or Columbus, as we call him,)
is too well known to bear repeating. The Moors surrendered Granada on the
second of January of the year 1492. In the month of April of the same year,
Columbus signed a contract with the King and Queen of Spain. On Friday, the
3rd of August, he left Palos with three little ships and a crew of 88 men, many of
whom were criminals who had been offered indemnity of punishment if they
joined the expedition. At two o’clock in the morning of Friday, the 12th of
October, Columbus discovered land. On the fourth of January of the year 1493,
Columbus waved farewell to the 44 men of the little fortress of La Navidad
(none of whom was ever again seen alive) and returned homeward. By the
middle of February he reached the Azores where the Portuguese threatened to
throw him into gaol. On the fifteenth of March, 1493, the admiral reached Palos
and together with his Indians (for he was convinced that he had discovered some
outlying islands of the Indies and called the natives red Indians) he hastened to
Barcelona to tell his faithful patrons that he had been successful and that the road
to the gold and the silver of Cathay and Zipangu was at the disposal of their most
Catholic Majesties.
Alas, Columbus never knew the truth. Towards the end of his life, on his
fourth voyage, when he had touched the mainland of South America, he may
have suspected that all was not well with his discovery. But he died in the firm
belief that there was no solid continent between Europe and Asia and that he had
found the direct route to China.
Meanwhile, the Portuguese, sticking to their eastern route, had been more
fortunate. In the year 1498, Vasco da Gama had been able to reach the coast of
Malabar and return safely to Lisbon with a cargo of spice. In the year 1502 he
had repeated the visit. But along the western route, the work of exploration had
been most disappointing. In 1497 and 1498 John and Sebastian Cabot had tried
to find a passage to Japan but they had seen nothing but the snowbound coasts
and the rocks of Newfoundland, which had first been sighted by the Northmen,
five centuries before. Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine who became the Pilot
Major of Spain, and who gave his name to our continent, had explored the coast
of Brazil, but had found not a trace of the Indies.
In the year 1513, seven years after the death of Columbus, the truth at last
began to dawn upon the geographers of Europe. Vasco Nuñez de Balboa had
crossed the Isthmus of Panama, had climbed the famous peak in Darien, and had
looked down upon a vast expanse of water which seemed to suggest the
existence of another ocean.
Finally in the year 1519 a fleet of five small Spanish ships under command of
the Portuguese navigator, Ferdinand de Magellan, sailed westward (and not
eastward since that route, was absolutely in the hands of the Portuguese who
allowed no competition) in search of the Spice Islands. Magellan crossed the
Atlantic between Africa and Brazil and sailed southward. He reached a narrow
channel between the southernmost point of Patagonia, the “land of the people
with the big feet,” and the Fire Island (so named on account of a fire, the only
sign of the existence of natives, which the sailors watched one night). For almost
five weeks the ships of Magellan were at the mercy of the terrible storms and
blizzards which swept through the straits. A mutiny broke out among the sailors.
Magellan suppressed it with terrible severity and sent two of his men on shore
where they were left to repent of their sins at leisure. At last the storms quieted
down, the channel broadened, and Magellan entered a new ocean. Its waves
were quiet and placid. He called it the Peaceful Sea, the Mare Pacifico. Then he
continued in a western direction. He sailed for ninety-eight days without seeing
land. His people almost perished from hunger and thirst and ate the rats that
infested the ships, and when these were all gone they chewed pieces of sail to
still their gnawing hunger.

MAGELLAN

In March of the year 1521 they saw land. Magellan called it the land of the
Ladrones (which means robbers) because the natives stole everything they could
lay hands on. Then further westward to the Spice Islands!
Again land was sighted. A group of lonely islands. Magellan called them the
Philippines, after Philip, the son of his master Charles V, the Philip II of
unpleasant historical memory. At first Magellan was well received, but when he
used the guns of his ships to make Christian converts he was killed by the
aborigines, together with a number of his captains and sailors. The survivors
burned one of the three remaining ships and continued their voyage. They found
the Moluccas, the famous Spice Islands; they sighted Borneo and reached Tidor.
There, one of the two ships, too leaky to be of further use, remained behind with
her crew. The “Vittoria,” under Sebastian del Cano, crossed the Indian Ocean,
missed seeing the northern coast of Australia (which was not discovered until the
first half of the seventeenth century when ships of the Dutch East India
Company explored this flat and inhospitable land), and after great hardships
reached Spain.
This was the most notable of all voyages. It had taken three years. It had been
accomplished at a great cost both of men and money. But it had established the
fact that the earth was round and that the new lands discovered by Columbus
were not a part of the Indies but a separate continent. From that time on, Spain
and Portugal devoted all their energies to the development of their Indian and
American trade. To prevent an armed conflict between the rivals, Pope
Alexander VI (the only avowed heathen who was ever elected to this most holy
office) had obligingly divided the world into two equal parts by a line of
demarcation which followed the 50th degree of longitude west of Greenwich, the
so-called division of Tordesillas of 1494. The Portuguese were to establish their
colonies to the east of this line, the Spaniards were to have theirs to the west.
This accounts for the fact that the entire American continent with the exception
of Brazil became Spanish and that all of the Indies and most of Africa became
Portuguese until the English and the Dutch colonists (who had no respect for
Papal decisions) took these possessions away in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries.

A NEW WORLD

When news of the discovery of Columbus reached the Rialto of Venice, the
Wall street of the Middle Ages, there was a terrible panic. Stocks and bonds
went down 40 and 50 percent. After a short while, when it appeared that
Columbus had failed to find the road to Cathay, the Venetian merchants
recovered from their fright. But the voyages of da Gama and Magellan proved
the practical possibilities of an eastern water-route to the Indies. Then the rulers
of Genoa and Venice, the two great commercial centres of the Middle Ages and
the Renaissance, began to be sorry that they had refused to listen to Columbus.
But it was too late. Their Mediterranean became an inland sea. The overland
trade to the Indies and China dwindled to insignificant proportions. The old days
of Italian glory were gone. The Atlantic became the new centre of commerce and
therefore the centre of civilisation. It has remained so ever since.
See how strangely civilisation has progressed since those early days, fifty
centuries before, when the inhabitants of the Valley of the Nile began to keep a
written record of history. From the river Nile, it went to Mesopotamia, the land
between the rivers. Then came the turn of Crete and Greece and Rome. An
inland sea became the centre of trade and the cities along the Mediterranean
were the home of art and science and philosophy and learning. In the sixteenth
century it moved westward once more and made the countries that border upon
the Atlantic become the masters of the earth.
There are those who say that the world war and the suicide of the great
European nations has greatly diminished the importance of the Atlantic Ocean.
They expect to see civilisation cross the American continent and find a new
home in the Pacific. But I doubt this.
The westward trip was accompanied by a steady increase in the size of ships
and a broadening of the knowledge of the navigators. The flat-bottomed vessels
of the Nile and the Euphrates were replaced by the sailing vessels of the
Phœnicians, the Ægeans, the Greeks, the Carthaginians and the Romans. These
in turn were discarded for the square rigged vessels of the Portuguese and the
Spaniards. And the latter were driven from the ocean by the full-rigged craft of
the English and the Dutch.
At present, however, civilisation no longer depends upon ships. Aircraft has
taken and will continue to take the place of the sailing vessel and the steamer.
The next centre of civilisation will depend upon the development of aircraft and
water power. And the sea once more shall be the undisturbed home of the little
fishes, who once upon a time shared their deep residence with the earliest
ancestors of the human race.
BUDDHA AND CONFUCIUS

CONCERNING BUDDHA AND CONFUCIUS

THE discoveries of the Portuguese and the Spaniards had brought the
Christians of western Europe into close contact with the people of India and of
China. They knew of course that Christianity was not the only religion on this
earth. There were the Mohammedans and the heathenish tribes of northern
Africa who worshipped sticks and stones and dead trees. But in India and in
China the Christian conquerors found new millions who had never heard of
Christ and who did not want to hear of Him, because they thought their own
religion, which was thousands of years old, much better than that of the West. As
this is a story of mankind and not an exclusive history of the people of Europe
and our western hemisphere, you ought to know something of two men whose
teaching and whose example continue to influence the actions and the thoughts
of the majority of our fellow-travellers on this earth.
In India, Buddha was recognised as the great religious teacher. His history is
an interesting one. He was born in the Sixth Century before the birth of Christ,
within sight of the mighty Himalaya Mountains, where four hundred years
before Zarathustra (or Zoroaster), the first of the great leaders of the Aryan race
(the name which the Eastern branch of the Indo-European race had given to
itself), had taught his people to regard life as a continuous struggle between
Ahriman, and Ormuzd, the Gods of Evil and Good. Buddha’s father was
Suddhodana, a mighty chief among the tribe of the Sakiyas. His mother, Maha
Maya, was the daughter of a neighbouring king. She had been married when she
was a very young girl. But many moons had passed beyond the distant ridge of
hills and still her husband was without an heir who should rule his lands after
him. At last, when she was fifty years old, her day came and she went forth that
she might be among her own people when her baby should come into this world.
It was a long trip to the land of the Koliyans, where Maha Maya had spent her
earliest years. One night she was resting among the cool trees of the garden of
Lumbini. There her son was born. He was given the name of Siddhartha, but we
know him as Buddha, which means the Enlightened One.
In due time, Siddhartha grew up to be a handsome young prince and when he
was nineteen years old, he was married to his cousin Yasodhara. During the next
ten years he lived far away from all pain and all suffering, behind the protecting
walls of the royal palace, awaiting the day when he should succeed his father as
King of the Sakiyas.
But it happened that when he was thirty years old, he drove outside of the
palace gates and saw a man who was old and worn out with labour and whose
weak limbs could hardly carry the burden of life. Siddhartha pointed him out to
his coachman, Channa, but Channa answered that there were lots of poor people
in this world and that one more or less did not matter. The young prince was
very sad but he did not say anything and went back to live with his wife and his
father and his mother and tried to be happy. A little while later he left the palace
a second time. His carriage met a man who suffered from a terrible disease.
Siddhartha asked Channa what had been the cause of this man’s suffering, but
the coachman answered that there were many sick people in this world and that
such things could not be helped and did not matter very much. The young prince
was very sad when he heard this but again he returned to his people.

THE THREE GREAT RELIGIONS

A few weeks passed. One evening Siddhartha ordered his carriage in order to
go to the river and bathe. Suddenly his horses were frightened by the sight of a
dead man whose rotting body lay sprawling in the ditch beside the road. The
young prince, who had never been allowed to see such things, was frightened,
but Channa told him not to mind such trifles. The world was full of dead people.
It was the rule of life that all things must come to an end. Nothing was eternal.
The grave awaited us all and there was no escape.
That evening, when Siddhartha returned to his home, he was received with
music. While he was away his wife had given birth to a son. The people were
delighted because now they knew that there was an heir to the throne and they
celebrated the event by the beating of many drums. Siddhartha, however, did not
share their joy. The curtain of life had been lifted and he had learned the horror
of man’s existence. The sight of death and suffering followed him like a terrible
dream.
That night the moon was shining brightly. Siddhartha woke up and began to
think of many things. Never again could he be happy until he should have found
a solution to the riddle of existence. He decided to find it far away from all those
whom he loved. Softly he went into the room where Yasodhara was sleeping
with her baby. Then he called for his faithful Channa and told him to follow.
Together the two men went into the darkness of the night, one to find rest for
his soul, the other to be a faithful servant unto a beloved master.
The people of India among whom Siddhartha wandered for many years were
just then in a state of change. Their ancestors, the native Indians, had been
conquered without great difficulty by the war-like Aryans (our distant cousins)
and thereafter the Aryans had been the rulers and masters of tens of millions of
docile little brown men. To maintain themselves in the seat of the mighty, they
had divided the population into different classes and gradually a system of
“caste” of the most rigid sort had been enforced upon the natives. The
descendants of the Indo-European conquerors belonged to the highest “caste,”
the class of warriors and nobles. Next came the caste of the priests. Below these
followed the peasants and the business men. The ancient natives, however, who
were called Pariahs, formed a class of despised and miserable slaves and never
could hope to be anything else.
Even the religion of the people was a matter of caste. The old Indo-Europeans,
during their thousands of years of wandering, had met with many strange
adventures. These had been collected in a book called the Veda. The language of
this book was called Sanskrit, and it was closely related to the different
languages of the European continent, to Greek and Latin and Russian and
German and two-score others. The three highest castes were allowed to read
these holy scriptures. The Pariah, however, the despised member of the lowest
caste, was not permitted to know its contents. Woe to the man of noble or
priestly caste who should teach a Pariah to study the sacred volume!
The majority of the Indian people, therefore, lived in misery. Since this planet
offered them very little joy, salvation from suffering must be found elsewhere.
They tried to derive a little consolation from meditation upon the bliss of their
future existence.
Brahma, the all-creator who was regarded by the Indian people as the supreme
ruler of life and death, was worshipped as the highest ideal of perfection. To
become like Brahma, to lose all desires for riches and power, was recognised as
the most exalted purpose of existence. Holy thoughts were regarded as more
important than holy deeds, and many people went into the desert and lived upon
the leaves of trees and starved their bodies that they might feed their souls with
the glorious contemplation of the splendours of Brahma, the Wise, the Good and
the Merciful.
Siddhartha, who had often observed these solitary wanderers who were
seeking the truth far away from the turmoil of the cities and the villages, decided
to follow their example. He cut his hair. He took his pearls and his rubies and
sent them back to his family with a message of farewell, which the ever faithful
Channa carried. Without a single follower, the young prince then moved into the
wilderness.
Soon the fame of his holy conduct spread among the mountains. Five young
men came to him and asked that they might be allowed to listen to his words of
wisdom. He agreed to be their master if they would follow him. They consented,
and he took them into the hills and for six years he taught them all he knew
amidst the lonely peaks of the Vindhya Mountains. But at the end of this period
of study, he felt that he was still far from perfection. The world that he had left
continued to tempt him. He now asked that his pupils leave him and then he
fasted for forty-nine days and nights, sitting upon the roots of an old tree. At last
he received his reward. In the dusk of the fiftieth evening, Brahma revealed
himself to his faithful servant. From that moment on, Siddhartha was called
Buddha and he was revered as the Enlightened One who had come to save men
from their unhappy mortal fate.
The last forty-five years of his life, Buddha spent within the valley of the
Ganges River, teaching his simple lesson of submission and meekness unto all
men. In the year 488 before our era, he died, full of years and beloved by
millions of people. He had not preached his doctrines for the benefit of a single
class. Even the lowest Pariah might call himself his disciple.
This, however, did not please the nobles and the priests and the merchants
who did their best to destroy a creed which recognised the equality of all living
creatures and offered men the hope of a second life (a reincarnation) under
happier circumstances. As soon as they could, they encouraged the people of
India to return to the ancient doctrines of the Brahmin creed with its fasting and
its tortures of the sinful body. But Buddhism could not be destroyed. Slowly the
disciples of the Enlightened One wandered across the valleys of the Himalayas,
and moved into China. They crossed the Yellow Sea and preached the wisdom of
their master unto the people of Japan, and they faithfully obeyed the will of their
great master, who had forbidden them to use force. To-day more people
recognise Buddha as their teacher than ever before and their number surpasses
that of the combined followers of Christ and Mohammed.

BUDDHA GOES INTO THE MOUNTAINS

As for Confucius, the wise old man of the Chinese, his story is a simple one.
He was born in the year 550 B.C. He led a quiet, dignified and uneventful life at a
time when China was without a strong central government and when the Chinese
people were at the mercy of bandits and robber-barons who went from city to
city, pillaging and stealing and murdering and turning the busy plains of northern
and central China into a wilderness of starving people.
Confucius, who loved his people, tried to save them. He did not have much
faith in the use of violence. He was a very peaceful person. He did not think that
he could make people over by giving them a lot of new laws. He knew that the
only possible salvation would come from a change of heart, and he set out upon
the seemingly hopeless task of changing the character of his millions of fellow
men who inhabited the wide plains of eastern Asia. The Chinese had never been
much interested in religion as we understand that word. They believed in devils
and spooks as most primitive people do. But they had no prophets and
recognised no “revealed truth.” Confucius is almost the only one among the
great moral leaders who did not see visions, who did not proclaim himself as the
messenger of a divine power; who did not, at some time or another, claim that he
was inspired by voices from above.
He was just a very sensible and kindly man, rather given to lonely wanderings
and melancholy tunes upon his faithful flute. He asked for no recognition. He
did not demand that any one should follow him or worship him. He reminds us
of the ancient Greek philosophers, especially those of the Stoic School, men who
believed in right living and righteous thinking without the hope of a reward but
simply for the peace of the soul that comes with a good conscience.
Confucius was a very tolerant man. He went out of his way to visit Lao-Tse,
the other great Chinese leader and the founder of a philosophic system called
“Taoism,” which was merely an early Chinese version of the Golden Rule.
Confucius bore no hatred to any one. He taught the virtue of supreme self-
possession. A person of real worth, according to the teaching of Confucius, did
not allow himself to be ruffled by anger and suffered whatever fate brought him
with the resignation of those sages who understand that everything which
happens, in one way or another, is meant for the best.
At first he had only a few students. Gradually the number increased. Before
his death, in the year 478 B.C., several of the kings and the princes of China
confessed themselves his disciples. When Christ was born in Bethlehem, the
philosophy of Confucius had already become a part of the mental make-up of
most Chinamen. It has continued to influence their lives ever since. Not however
in its pure, original form. Most religions change as time goes on. Christ preached
humility and meekness and absence from worldly ambitions, but fifteen
centuries after Golgotha, the head of the Christian church was spending millions
upon the erection of a building that bore little relation to the lonely stable of
Bethlehem.
Lao-Tse taught the Golden Rule, and in less than three centuries the ignorant
masses had made him into a real and very cruel God and had buried his wise
commandments under a rubbish-heap of superstition which made the lives of the
average Chinese one long series of frights and fears and horrors.
Confucius had shown his students the beauties of honouring their Father and
their Mother. They soon began to be more interested in the memory of their
departed parents than in the happiness of their children and their grandchildren.
Deliberately they turned their backs upon the future and tried to peer into the
vast darkness of the past. The worship of the ancestors became a positive
religious system. Rather than disturb a cemetery situated upon the sunny and
fertile side of a mountain, they would plant their rice and wheat upon the barren
rocks of the other slope where nothing could possibly grow. And they preferred
hunger and famine to the desecration of the ancestral grave.

THE GREAT MORAL LEADERS

At the same time the wise words of Confucius never quite lost their hold upon
the increasing millions of eastern Asia. Confucianism, with its profound sayings
and shrewd observations, added a touch of common-sense philosophy to the soul
of every Chinaman and influenced his entire life, whether he was a simple
laundryman in a steaming basement or the ruler of vast provinces who dwelt
behind the high walls of a secluded palace.
In the sixteenth century the enthusiastic but rather uncivilised Christians of the
western world came face to face with the older creeds of the East. The early
Spaniards and Portuguese looked upon the peaceful statues of Buddha and
contemplated the venerable pictures of Confucius and did not in the least know
what to make of those worthy prophets with their far-away smile. They came to
the easy conclusion that these strange divinities were just plain devils who
represented something idolatrous and heretical and did not deserve the respect of
the true sons of the Church. Whenever the spirit of Buddha or Confucius seemed
to interfere with the trade in spices and silks, the Europeans attacked the “evil
influence” with bullets and grapeshot. That system had certain very definite
disadvantages. It has left us an unpleasant heritage of ill-will which promises
little good for the immediate future.
THE REFORMATION

THE PROGRESS OF THE HUMAN RACE IS BEST COMPARED TO A


GIGANTIC PENDULUM WHICH FOREVER SWINGS FORWARD
AND BACKWARD. THE RELIGIOUS INDIFFERENCE AND THE
ARTISTIC AND LITERARY ENTHUSIASM OF THE RENAISSANCE
WERE FOLLOWED BY THE ARTISTIC AND LITERARY
INDIFFERENCE AND THE RELIGIOUS ENTHUSIASM OF THE
REFORMATION

OF course you have heard of the Reformation. You think of a small but
courageous group of pilgrims who crossed the ocean to have “freedom of
religious worship.” Vaguely in the course of time (and more especially in our
Protestant countries) the Reformation has come to stand for the idea of “liberty
of thought.” Martin Luther is represented as the leader of the vanguard of
progress. But when history is something more than a series of flattering speeches
addressed to our own glorious ancestors, when to use the words of the German
historian Ranke, we try to discover what “actually happened,” then much of the
past is seen in a very different light.
Few things in human life are either entirely good or entirely bad. Few things
are either black or white. It is the duty of the honest chronicler to give a true
account of all the good and bad sides of every historical event. It is very difficult
to do this because we all have our personal likes and dislikes. But we ought to
try and be as fair as we can be, and must not allow our prejudices to influence us
too much.
Take my own case as an example. I grew up in the very Protestant centre of a
very Protestant country. I never saw any Catholics until I was about twelve years
old. Then I felt very uncomfortable when I met them. I was a little bit afraid. I
knew the story of the many thousand people who had been burned and hanged
and quartered by the Spanish Inquisition when the Duke of Alba tried to cure the
Dutch people of their Lutheran and Calvinistic heresies. All that was very real to
me. It seemed to have happened only the day before. It might occur again. There
might be another Saint Bartholomew’s night, and poor little me would be
slaughtered in my nightie and my body would be thrown out of the window, as
had happened to the noble Admiral de Coligny.
Much later I went to live for a number of years in a Catholic country. I found
the people much pleasanter and much more tolerant and quite as intelligent as
my former countrymen. To my great surprise, I began to discover that there was
a Catholic side to the Reformation, quite as much as a Protestant.
Of course the good people of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, who
actually lived through the Reformation, did not see things that way. They were
always right and their enemy was always wrong. It was a question of hang or be
hanged, and both sides preferred to do the hanging. Which was no more than
human and for which they deserve no blame.
When we look at the world as it appeared in the year 1500, an easy date to
remember, and the year in which the Emperor Charles V was born, this is what
we see. The feudal disorder of the Middle Ages has given way before the order
of a number of highly centralised kingdoms. The most powerful of all sovereigns
is the great Charles, then a baby, in a cradle. He is the grandson of Ferdinand and
Isabella and of Maximilian of Habsburg, the last of the mediæval knights, and of
his wife Mary, the daughter of Charles the Bold, the ambitious Burgundian duke
who had made successful war upon France, but had been killed by the
independent Swiss peasants. The child Charles, therefore, has fallen heir to the
greater part of the map, to all the lands of his parents, grandparents, uncles,
cousins and aunts in Germany, in Austria, in Holland, in Belgium, in Italy, and in
Spain, together with all their colonies in Asia, Africa and America. By a strange
irony of fate, he has been born in Ghent, in that same castle of the counts of
Flanders, which the Germans used as a prison during their recent occupation of
Belgium, and although a Spanish king and a German emperor, he receives the
training of a Fleming.
As his father is dead (poisoned, so people say, but this is never proved), and
his mother has lost her mind (she is travelling through her domains with the
coffin containing the body of her departed husband), the child is left to the strict
discipline of his Aunt Margaret. Forced to rule Germans and Italians and
Spaniards and a hundred strange races, Charles grows up a Fleming, a faithful
son of the Catholic Church, but quite averse to religious intolerance. He is rather
lazy, both as a boy and as a man. But fate condemns him to rule the world when
the world is in a turmoil of religious fervour. Forever he is speeding from
Madrid to Innsbruck and from Bruges to Vienna. He loves peace and quiet and
he is always at war. At the age of fifty-five, we see him turn his back upon the
human race in utter disgust at so much hate and so much stupidity. Three years
later he dies, a very tired and disappointed man.
So much for Charles the Emperor. How about the Church, the second great
power in the world? The Church has changed greatly since the early days of the
Middle Ages, when it started out to conquer the heathen and show them the
advantages of a pious and righteous life. In the first place, the Church has grown
too rich. The Pope is no longer the shepherd of a flock of humble Christians. He
lives in a vast palace and surrounds himself with artists and musicians and
famous literary men. His churches and chapels are covered with new pictures in
which the saints look more like Greek Gods than is strictly necessary. He divides
his time unevenly between affairs of state and art. The affairs of state take ten
percent of his time. The other ninety percent goes to an active interest in Roman
statues, recently discovered Greek vases, plans for a new summer home, the
rehearsal of a new play. The Archbishops and the Cardinals follow the example
of their Pope. The Bishops try to imitate the Archbishops. The village priests,
however, have remained faithful to their duties. They keep themselves aloof
from the wicked world and the heathenish love of beauty and pleasure. They stay
away from the monasteries where the monks seem to have forgotten their ancient
vows of simplicity and poverty and live as happily as they dare without causing
too much of a public scandal.
Finally, there are the common people. They are much better off than they have
ever been before. They are more prosperous, they live in better houses, their
children go to better schools, their cities are more beautiful than before, their
firearms have made them the equal of their old enemies, the robber-barons, who
for centuries have levied such heavy taxes upon their trade. So much for the
chief actors in the Reformation.
Now let us see what the Renaissance has done to Europe, and then you will
understand how the revival of learning and art was bound to be followed by a
revival of religious interests. The Renaissance began in Italy. From there it
spread to France. It was not quite successful in Spain, where five hundred years
of warfare with the Moors had made the people very narrow minded and very
fanatical in all religious matters. The circle had grown wider and wider, but once
the Alps had been crossed, the Renaissance had suffered a change.
The people of northern Europe, living in a very different climate, had an
outlook upon life which contrasted strangely with that of their southern
neighbours. The Italians lived out in the open, under a sunny sky. It was easy for
them to laugh and to sing and to be happy. The Germans, the Dutch, the English,
the Swedes, spent most of their time indoors, listening to the rain beating on the
closed windows of their comfortable little houses. They did not laugh quite so
much. They took everything more seriously. They were forever conscious of
their immortal souls and they did not like to be funny about matters which they
considered holy and sacred. The “humanistic” part of the Renaissance, the
books, the studies of ancient authors, the grammar and the text-books, interested
them greatly. But the general return to the old pagan civilisation of Greece and
Rome, which was one of the chief results of the Renaissance in Italy, filled their
hearts with horror.
But the Papacy and the College of Cardinals was almost entirely composed of
Italians and they had turned the Church into a pleasant club where people
discussed art and music and the theatre, but rarely mentioned religion. Hence the
split between the serious north and the more civilised but easy-going and
indifferent south was growing wider and wider all the time and nobody seemed
to be aware of the danger that threatened the Church.
There were a few minor reasons which will explain why the Reformation took
place in Germany rather than in Sweden or England. The Germans bore an
ancient grudge against Rome. The endless quarrels between Emperor and Pope
had caused much mutual bitterness. In the other European countries where the
government rested in the hands of a strong king, the ruler had often been able to
protect his subjects against the greed of the priests. In Germany, where a
shadowy emperor ruled a turbulent crowd of little princelings, the good burghers
were more directly at the mercy of their bishops and prelates. These dignitaries
were trying to collect large sums of money for the benefit of those enormous
churches which were a hobby of the Popes of the Renaissance. The Germans felt
that they were being mulcted and quite naturally they did not like it.
And then there is the rarely mentioned fact that Germany was the home of the
printing press. In northern Europe books were cheap and the Bible was no longer
a mysterious manuscript owned and explained by the priest. It was a household
book of many families where Latin was understood by the father and by the
children. Whole families began to read it, which was against the law of the
Church. They discovered that the priests were telling them many things which,
according to the original text of the Holy Scriptures, were somewhat different.
This caused doubt. People began to ask questions. And questions, when they
cannot be answered, often cause a great deal of trouble.
The attack began when the humanists of the North opened fire upon the
monks. In their heart of hearts they still had too much respect and reverence for
the Pope to direct their sallies against his Most Holy Person. But the lazy,
ignorant monks, living behind the sheltering walls of their rich monasteries,
offered rare sport.
The leader in this warfare, curiously enough, was a very faithful son of the
church. Gerard Gerardzoon, or Desiderius Erasmus, as he is usually called, was a
poor boy, born in Rotterdam in Holland, and educated at the same Latin school
of Deventer from which Thomas à Kempis had graduated. He had become a
priest and for a time he had lived in a monastery. He had travelled a great deal
and knew whereof he wrote. When he began his career as a public pamphleteer
(he would have been called an editorial writer in our day) the world was greatly
amused at an anonymous series of letters which had just appeared under the title
of “Letters of Obscure Men.” In these letters, the general stupidity and arrogance
of the monks of the late Middle Ages was exposed in a strange German-Latin
doggerel which reminds one of our modern limericks. Erasmus himself was a
very learned and serious scholar, who knew both Latin and Greek and gave us
the first reliable version of the New Testament, which he translated into Latin
together with a corrected edition of the original Greek text. But he believed with
Horace, the Roman poet, that nothing prevents us from “stating the truth with a
smile upon our lips.”
In the year 1500, while visiting Sir Thomas More in England, he took a few
weeks off and wrote a funny little book, called the “Praise of Folly,” in which he
attacked the monks and their credulous followers with that most dangerous of all
weapons, humor. The booklet was the best seller of the sixteenth century. It was
translated into almost every language and it made people pay attention to those
other books of Erasmus in which he advocated reform of the many abuses of the
church and appealed to his fellow humanists to help him in his task of bringing
about a great rebirth of the Christian faith.
But nothing came of these excellent plans. Erasmus LUTHER TRANSLATES THE BIBLE
was too reasonable and too tolerant to please most of
the enemies of the church. They were waiting for a leader of a more robust
nature.
He came, and his name was Martin Luther.
Luther was a North-German peasant with a first-class brain and possessed of
great personal courage. He was a university man, a master of arts of the
University of Erfurt; afterwards he joined a Dominican monastery. Then he
became a college professor at the theological school of Wittenberg and began to
explain the scriptures to the indifferent ploughboys of his Saxon home. He had a
lot of spare time and this he used to study the original texts of the Old and New
Testaments. Soon he began to see the great difference which existed between the
words of Christ and those that were preached by the Popes and the Bishops.
In the year 1511, he visited Rome on official business. Alexander VI, of the
family of Borgia, who had enriched himself for the benefit of his son and
daughter, was dead. But his successor, Julius II, a man of irreproachable personal
character, was spending most of his time fighting and building and did not
impress this serious minded German theologian with his piety. Luther returned to
Wittenberg a much disappointed man. But worse was to follow.
The gigantic church of St. Peter which Pope Julius had wished upon his
innocent successors, although only half begun, was already in need of repair.
Alexander VI had spent every penny of the Papal treasury. Leo X, who
succeeded Julius in the year 1513, was on the verge of bankruptcy. He reverted
to an old method of raising ready cash. He began to sell “indulgences.” An
indulgence was a piece of parchment which in return for a certain sum of money,
promised a sinner a decrease of the time which he would have to spend in
purgatory. It was a perfectly correct thing according to the creed of the late
Middle Ages. Since the church had the power to forgive the sins of those who
truly repented before they died, the church also had the right to shorten, through
its intercession with the Saints, the time during which the soul must be purified
in the shadowy realms of Purgatory.
It was unfortunate that these Indulgences must be sold for money. But they
offered an easy form of revenue and besides, those who were too poor to pay,
received theirs for nothing.
Now it happened in the year 1517 that the exclusive territory for the sale of
indulgences in Saxony was given to a Dominican monk by the name of Johan
Tetzel. Brother Johan was a hustling salesman. To tell the truth he was a little too
eager. His business methods outraged the pious people of the little duchy. And
Luther, who was an honest fellow, got so angry that he did a rash thing. On the
31st of October of the year 1517, he went to the court church and upon the doors
thereof he posted a sheet of paper with ninety-five statements (or theses),
attacking the sale of indulgences. These statements had been written in Latin.
Luther had no intention of starting a riot. He was not a revolutionist. He objected
to the institution of the Indulgences and he wanted his fellow professors to know
what he thought about them. But this was still a private affair of the clerical and
professorial world and there was no appeal to the prejudices of the community of
laymen.
Unfortunately, at that moment when the whole world had begun to take an
interest in the religious affairs of the day, it was utterly impossible to discuss
anything, without at once creating a serious mental disturbance. In less than two
months, all Europe was discussing the ninety-five theses of the Saxon monk.
Every one must take sides. Every obscure little theologian must print his own
opinion. The papal authorities began to be alarmed. They ordered the Wittenberg
professor to proceed to Rome and give an account of his action. Luther wisely
remembered what had happened to Huss. He stayed in Germany and he was
punished with excommunication. Luther burned the papal bull in the presence of
an admiring multitude and from that moment, peace between himself and the
Pope was no longer possible.
Without any desire on his part, Luther had become the leader of a vast army of
discontented Christians. German patriots like Ulrich von Hutten, rushed to his
defence. The students of Wittenberg and Erfurt and Leipzig offered to defend
him should the authorities try to imprison him. The Elector of Saxony reassured
the eager young men. No harm would befall Luther as long as he stayed on
Saxon ground.
All this happened in the year 1520. Charles V was twenty years old and as the
ruler of half the world, was forced to remain on pleasant terms with the Pope. He
sent out calls for a Diet or general assembly in the good city of Worms on the
Rhine and commanded Luther to be present and give an account of his
extraordinary behaviour. Luther, who now was the national hero of the Germans,
went. He refused to take back a single word of what he had ever written or said.
His conscience was controlled only by the word of God. He would live and die
for his conscience.
The Diet of Worms, after due deliberation, declared Luther an outlaw before
God and man, and forbade all Germans to give him shelter or food or drink, or to
read a single word of the books which the dastardly heretic had written. But the
great reformer was in no danger. By the majority of the Germans of the north the
edict was denounced as a most unjust and outrageous document. For greater
safety, Luther was hidden in the Wartburg, a castle belonging to the Elector of
Saxony, and there he defied all papal authority by translating the entire Bible
into the German language, that all the people might read and know the word of
God for themselves.
By this time, the Reformation was no longer a spiritual and religious affair.
Those who hated the beauty of the modern church building used this period of
unrest to attack and destroy what they did not like because they did not
understand it. Impoverished knights tried to make up for past losses by grabbing
the territory which belonged to the monasteries. Discontented princes made use
of the absence of the Emperor to increase their own power. The starving
peasants, following the leadership of half-crazy agitators, made the best of the
opportunity and attacked the castles of their masters and plundered and
murdered and burned with the zeal of the old Crusaders.
A veritable reign of disorder broke loose throughout the Empire. Some princes
became Protestants (as the “protesting” adherents of Luther were called) and
persecuted their Catholic subjects. Others remained Catholic and hanged their
Protestant subjects. The Diet of Speyer of the year 1526 tried to settle this
difficult question of allegiance by ordering that “the subjects should all be of the
same religious denomination as their princes.” This turned Germany into a
checkerboard of a thousand hostile little duchies and principalities and created a
situation which prevented the normal political growth for hundreds of years.
In February of the year 1546 Luther died and was put to rest in the same
church where twenty-nine years before he had proclaimed his famous objections
to the sale of Indulgences. In less than thirty years, the indifferent, joking and
laughing world of the Renaissance had been transformed into the arguing,
quarrelling, back-biting, debating-society of the Reformation. The universal
spiritual empire of the Popes came to a sudden end and the whole of western
Europe was turned into a battle-field, where Protestants and Catholics killed
each other for the greater glory of certain theological doctrines which are as
incomprehensible to the present generation as the mysterious inscriptions of the
ancient Etruscans.
RELIGIOUS WARFARE

THE AGE OF THE GREAT RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSIES

THE sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the age of religious controversy.
If you will notice you will find that almost everybody around you is forever
“talking economics” and discussing wages and hours of labor and strikes in their
relation to the life of the community, for that is the main topic of interest of our
own time.
The poor little children of the year 1600 or 1650 fared worse. They never
heard anything but “religion.” Their heads were filled with “predestination,”
“transubstantiation,” “free will,” and a hundred other queer words, expressing
obscure points of “the true faith,” whether Catholic or Protestant. According to
the desire of their parents they were baptised Catholics or Lutherans or
Calvinists or Zwinglians or Anabaptists. They learned their theology from the
Augsburg catechism, composed by Luther, or from the “institutes of
Christianity,” written by Calvin, or they mumbled the Thirty-Nine Articles of
Faith which were printed in the English Book of Common Prayer, and they were
told that these alone represented the “True Faith.”
They heard of the wholesale theft of church property perpetrated by King
Henry VIII, the much-married monarch of England, who made himself the
supreme head of the English church, and assumed the old papal rights of
appointing bishops and priests. They had a nightmare whenever some one
mentioned the Holy Inquisition, with its dungeons and its many torture
chambers, and they were treated to equally horrible stories of how a mob of
outraged Dutch Protestants had got hold of a dozen defenceless old priests and
hanged them for the sheer pleasure of killing those who professed a different
faith. It was unfortunate that the two contending parties were so equally
matched. Otherwise the struggle would have come to a quick solution. Now it
dragged on for eight generations, and it grew so complicated that I can only tell
you the most important details, and must ask you to get the rest from one of the
many histories of the Reformation.
The great reform movement of the Protestants had been THE INQUISITION
followed by a thoroughgoing reform within the bosom of the
Church. Those popes who had been merely amateur humanists and dealers in
Roman and Greek antiquities, disappeared from the scene and their place was
taken by serious men who spent twenty hours a day administering those holy
duties which had been placed in their hands.
The long and rather disgraceful happiness of the monasteries came to an end.
Monks and nuns were forced to be up at sunrise, to study the Church Fathers, to
tend the sick and console the dying. The Holy Inquisition watched day and night
that no dangerous doctrines should be spread by way of the printing press. Here
it is customary to mention poor Galileo, who was locked up because he had been
a little too indiscreet in explaining the heavens with his funny little telescope and
had muttered certain opinions about the behaviour of the planets which were
entirely opposed to the official views of the church. But in all fairness to the
Pope, the clergy and the Inquisition, it ought to be stated that the Protestants
were quite as much the enemies of science and medicine as the Catholics and
with equal manifestations of ignorance and intolerance regarded the men who
investigated things for themselves as the most dangerous enemies of mankind.
And Calvin, the great French reformer and the tyrant (both political and
spiritual) of Geneva, not only assisted the French authorities when they tried to
hang Michael Servetus (the Spanish theologian and physician who had become
famous as the assistant of Vesalius, the first great anatomist), but when Servetus
had managed to escape from his French jail and had fled to Geneva, Calvin
threw this brilliant man into prison and after a prolonged trial, allowed him to be
burned at the stake on account of his heresies, totally indifferent to his fame as a
scientist.
And so it went. We have few reliable statistics upon the subject, but on the
whole, the Protestants tired of this game long before the Catholics, and the
greater part of honest men and women who were burned and hanged and
decapitated on account of their religious beliefs fell as victims of the very
energetic but also very drastic church of Rome.
For tolerance (and please remember this when you grow older), is of very
recent origin and even the people of our own so-called “modern world” are apt
to be tolerant only upon such matters as do not interest them very much. They
are tolerant towards a native of Africa, and do not care whether he becomes a
Buddhist or a Mohammedan, because neither Buddhism nor Mohammedanism
means anything to them. But when they hear that their neighbour who was a
Republican and believed in a high protective tariff, has joined the Socialist party
and now wants to repeal all tariff laws, their tolerance ceases and they use almost
the same words as those employed by a kindly Catholic (or Protestant) of the
seventeenth century, who was informed that his best friend whom he had always
respected and loved had fallen a victim to the terrible heresies of the Protestant
(or Catholic) church.
“Heresy” until a very short time ago was regarded as a disease. Nowadays
when we see a man neglecting the personal cleanliness of his body and his home
and exposing himself and his children to the dangers of typhoid fever or another
preventable disease, we send for the board-of-health and the health officer calls
upon the police to aid him in removing this person who is a danger to the safety
of the entire community. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a heretic, a
man or a woman who openly doubted the fundamental principles upon which his
Protestant or Catholic religion had been founded, was considered a more terrible
menace than a typhoid carrier. Typhoid fever might (very likely would) destroy
the body. But heresy, according to them, would positively destroy the immortal
soul. It was therefore the duty of all good and logical citizens to warn the police
against the enemies of the established order of things and those who failed to do
so were as culpable as a modern man who does not telephone to the nearest
doctor when he discovers that his fellow-tenants are suffering from cholera or
small-pox.
In the years to come you will hear a great deal about preventive medicine.
Preventive medicine simply means that our doctors do not wait until their
patients are sick, then step forward and cure them. On the contrary, they study
the patient and the conditions under which he lives when he (the patient) is
perfectly well and they remove every possible cause of illness by cleaning up
rubbish, by teaching him what to eat and what to avoid, and by giving him a few
simple ideas of personal hygiene. They go even further than that, and these good
doctors enter the schools and teach the children how to use tooth-brushes and
how to avoid catching colds.
The sixteenth century which regarded (as I have tried to show you) bodily
illness as much less important than sickness which threatened the soul, organised
a system of spiritual preventive medicine. As soon as a child was old enough to
spell his first words, he was educated in the true (and the “only true”) principles
of the Faith. Indirectly this proved to be a good thing for the general progress of
the people of Europe. The Protestant lands were soon dotted with schools. They
used a great deal of very valuable time to explain the Catechism, but they gave
instruction in other things besides theology. They encouraged reading and they
were responsible for the great prosperity of the printing trade.
But the Catholics did not lag behind. They too devoted much time and thought
to education. The Church, in this matter, found an invaluable friend and ally in
the newly-founded order of the Society of Jesus. The founder of this remarkable
organisation was a Spanish soldier who after a life of unholy adventures had
been converted and thereupon felt himself bound to serve the church just as
many former sinners, who have been shown the errors of their way by the
Salvation Army, devote the remaining years of their lives to the task of aiding
and consoling those who are less fortunate.
The name of this Spaniard was Ignatius de Loyola. He was born in the year
before the discovery of America. He had been wounded and lamed for life and
while he was in the hospital he had seen a vision of the Holy Virgin and her Son,
who bade him give up the wickedness of his former life. He decided to go to the
Holy Land and finish the task of the Crusades. But a visit to Jerusalem had
shown him the impossibility of the task and he returned west to help in the
warfare upon the heresies of the Lutherans.
In the year 1534 he was studying in Paris at the Sorbonne. Together with
seven other students he founded a fraternity. The eight men promised each other
that they would lead holy lives, that they would not strive after riches but after
righteousness, and would devote themselves, body and soul, to the service of the
Church. A few years later this small fraternity had grown into a regular
organisation and was recognised by Pope Paul III as the Society of Jesus.
Loyola had been a military man. He believed in discipline, and absolute
obedience to the orders of the superior dignitaries became one of the main
causes for the enormous success of the Jesuits. They specialised in education.
They gave their teachers a most thorough-going education before they allowed
them to talk to a single pupil. They lived with their students and they entered
into their games. They watched them with tender care. And as a result they
raised a new generation of faithful Catholics who took their religious duties as
seriously as the people of the early Middle Ages.
The shrewd Jesuits, however, did not waste all their efforts upon the education
of the poor. They entered the palaces of the mighty and became the private tutors
of future emperors and kings. And what this meant you will see for yourself
when I tell you about the Thirty Years War. But before this terrible and final
outbreak of religious fanaticism, a great many other things had happened.
Charles V was dead. Germany and Austria had been left to his brother
Ferdinand. All his other possessions, Spain and the Netherlands and the Indies
and America had gone to his son Philip. Philip was the son of Charles and a
Portuguese princess who had been first cousin to her own husband. The children
that are born of such a union are apt to be rather queer. The son of Philip, the
unfortunate Don Carlos, (murdered afterwards with his own father’s consent,)
was crazy. Philip was not quite crazy, but his zeal for the Church bordered
closely upon religious insanity. He believed that Heaven had appointed him as
one of the saviours of mankind. Therefore, whosoever was obstinate and refused
to share his Majesty’s views, proclaimed himself an enemy of the human race
and must be exterminated lest his example corrupt the souls of his pious
neighbours.
Spain, of course, was a very rich country. All the gold and silver of the new
world flowed into the Castilian and Aragonian treasuries. But Spain suffered
from a curious economic disease. Her peasants were hard working men and even
harder working women. But the better classes maintained a supreme contempt
for any form of labour, outside of employment in the army or navy or the civil
service. As for the Moors, who had been very industrious artisans, they had been
driven out of the country long before. As a result, Spain, the treasure chest of the
world, remained a poor country because all her money had to be sent abroad in
exchange for the wheat and the other necessities of life which the Spaniards
neglected to raise for themselves.
THE NIGHT OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW
Philip, ruler of the most powerful nation of the
sixteenth century, depended for his revenue upon the
taxes which were gathered in the busy commercial bee-hive of the Netherlands.
But these Flemings and Dutchmen were devoted followers of the doctrines of
Luther and Calvin and they had cleansed their churches of all images and holy
paintings and they had informed the Pope that they no longer regarded him as
their shepherd but intended to follow the dictates of their consciences and the
commands of their newly translated Bible.
This placed the king in a very difficult position. He could not possibly tolerate
the heresies of his Dutch subjects, but he needed their money. If he allowed them
to be Protestants and took no measures to save their souls he was deficient in his
duty toward God. If he sent the Inquisition to the Netherlands and burned his
subjects at the stake, he would lose the greater part of his income.
Being a man of uncertain will-power he hesitated a long time. He tried
kindness and sternness and promises and threats. The Hollanders remained
obstinate, and continued to sing psalms and listen to the sermons of their
Lutheran and Calvinist preachers. Philip in his despair sent his “man of iron,”
the Duke of Alba, to bring these hardened sinners to terms. Alba began by
decapitating those leaders who had not wisely left the country before his arrival.
In the year 1572 (the same year that the French Protestant leaders were all killed
during the terrible night of Saint Bartholomew), he attacked a number of Dutch
cities and massacred the inhabitants as an example for the others. The next year
he laid siege to the town of Leyden, the manufacturing center of Holland.

LEYDEN DELIVERED BY THE CUTTING OF THE DYKES

Meanwhile, the seven small provinces of the northern Netherlands had formed
a defensive union, the so-called union of Utrecht, and had recognised William of
Orange, a German prince who had been the private secretary of the Emperor
Charles V, as the leader of their army and as commander of their freebooting
sailors, who were known as the Beggars of the Sea. William, to save Leyden, cut
the dykes, created a shallow inland sea, and delivered the town with the help of a
strangely equipped navy consisting of scows and flat-bottomed barges which
were rowed and pushed and pulled through the mud until they reached the city
walls.
It was the first time that an army of the THE MURDER OF WILLIAM THE SILENT
invincible Spanish king had suffered such a
humiliating defeat. It surprised the world just as the Japanese victory of Mukden,
in the Russian-Japanese war, surprised our own generation. The Protestant
powers took fresh courage and Philip devised new means for the purpose of
conquering his rebellious subjects. He hired a poor half-witted fanatic to go and
murder William of Orange. But the sight of their dead leader did not bring the
Seven Provinces to their knees. On the contrary it made them furiously angry. In
the year 1581, the Estates General (the meeting of the representatives of the
Seven Provinces) came together at the Hague and most solemnly abjured their
“wicked king Philip” and themselves assumed the burden of sovereignty which
thus far had been invested in their “King by the Grace of God.”
This is a very important event in the history of the great struggle for political
liberty. It was a step which reached much further than the uprising of the nobles
which ended with the signing of the Magna Carta. These good burghers said
“Between a king and his subjects there is a silent understanding that both sides
shall perform certain services and shall recognise certain definite duties. If either
party fails to live up to this contract, the other has the right to consider it
terminated.” The American subjects of King George III in the year 1776 came to
a similar conclusion. But they had three thousand miles of ocean between
themselves and their ruler and the Estates General took their decision (which
meant a slow death in case of defeat) within hearing of the Spanish guns and
although in constant fear of an avenging Spanish fleet.
The stories about a mysterious Spanish fleet that was to THE ARMADA IS COMING
conquer both Holland and England, when Protestant Queen
Elizabeth had succeeded Catholic “Bloody Mary” was an old one. For years the
sailors of the waterfront had talked about it. In the eighties of the sixteenth
century, the rumour took a definite shape. According to pilots who had been in
Lisbon, all the Spanish and Portuguese wharves were building ships. And in the
southern Netherlands (in Belgium) the Duke of Parma was collecting a large
expeditionary force to be carried from Ostend to London and Amsterdam as
soon as the fleet should arrive.
In the year 1586 the Great Armada set sail for the north. But the harbours of
the Flemish coast were blockaded by a Dutch fleet and the Channel was guarded
by the English, and the Spaniards, accustomed to the quieter seas of the south,
did not know how to navigate in this squally and bleak northern climate. What
happened to the Armada once it was attacked by ships and by storms I need not
tell you. A few ships, by sailing around Ireland, escaped to tell the terrible story
of defeat. The others perished and lie at the bottom of the North Sea.
Turn about is fair play. The British and the Dutch Protestants now carried the
war into the territory of the enemy. Before the end of the century, Houtman, with
the help of a booklet written by Linschoten (a Hollander who had been in the
Portuguese service), had at last discovered the route to the Indies. As a result the
great Dutch East India Company was founded and a systematic war upon the
Portuguese and Spanish colonies in Asia and Africa was begun in all
seriousness.
It was during this early era of colonial conquest that a curious lawsuit was
fought out in the Dutch courts. Early in the seventeenth century a Dutch Captain
by the name of van Heemskerk, a man who had made himself famous as the
head of an expedition which had tried to discover the North Eastern Passage to
the Indies and who had spent a winter on the frozen shores of the island of Nova
Zembla, had captured a Portuguese ship in the straits of Malacca. You will
remember that the Pope had divided the world into two equal shares, one of
which had been given to the Spaniards and the other to the Portuguese. The
Portuguese quite naturally regarded the water which surrounded their Indian
islands as part of their own property and since, for the moment, they were not at
war with the United Seven Netherlands, they claimed that the captain of a
private Dutch trading company had no right to enter their private domain and
steal their ships. And they brought suit. The directors of the Dutch East India
Company hired a bright young lawyer, by the name of De Groot or Grotius, to
defend their case. He made the astonishing plea that the ocean is free to all
comers. Once outside the distance which a cannon ball fired from the land can
reach, the sea is or (according to Grotius) ought to be, a free and open highway
to all the ships of all nations. It was the first time that this startling doctrine had
been publicly pronounced in a court of law. It was opposed by all the other
seafaring people. To counteract the effect of Grotius’ famous plea for the “Mare
Liberum,” or “Open Sea,” John Selden, the Englishman, wrote his famous
treatise upon the “Mare Clausum” or “Closed Sea” which treated of the natural
right of a sovereign to regard the seas which surrounded his country as
belonging to his territory. I mention this here because the question had not yet
been decided and during the last war caused all sorts of difficulties and
complications.

THE DEATH OF HUDSON

To return to the warfare between Spaniard and Hollander and Englishman,


before twenty years were over the most valuable colonies of the Indies and the
Cape of Good Hope and Ceylon and those along the coast of China and even
Japan were in Protestant hands. In 1621 a West Indian Company was founded
which conquered Brazil and in North America built a fortress called Nieuw
Amsterdam at the mouth of the river which Henry Hudson had discovered in the
year 1609.
These new colonies enriched both England and the Dutch Republic to such an
extent that they could hire foreign soldiers to do their fighting on land while they
devoted themselves to commerce and trade. To them the Protestant revolt meant
independence and prosperity. But in many other parts of Europe it meant a
succession of horrors compared to which the last war was a mild excursion of
kindly Sunday-school boys.
The Thirty Years War which broke out in the year 1618 and which ended with
the famous treaty of Westphalia in 1648 was the perfectly natural result of a
century of ever increasing religious hatred. It was, as I have said, a terrible war.
Everybody fought everybody else and the struggle ended only when all parties
had been thoroughly exhausted and could fight no longer.
In less than a generation it turned many parts of central Europe into a
wilderness, where the hungry peasants fought for the carcass of a dead horse
with the even hungrier wolf. Five-sixths of all the German towns and villages
were destroyed. The Palatinate, in western Germany, was plundered twenty-eight
times. And a population of eighteen million people was reduced to four million.
The hostilities began almost as soon as Ferdinand II of the House of Habsburg
had been elected Emperor. He was the product of a most careful Jesuit training
and was a most obedient and devout son of the Church. The vow which he had
made as a young man, that he would eradicate all sects and all heresies from his
domains, Ferdinand kept to the best of his ability. Two days before his election,
his chief opponent, Frederick, the Protestant Elector of the Palatinate and a son-
in-law of James I of England, had been made King of Bohemia, in direct
violation of Ferdinand’s wishes.
At once the Habsburg armies marched into Bohemia. The young king looked
in vain for assistance against this formidable enemy. The Dutch Republic was
willing to help, but, engaged in a desperate war of its own with the Spanish
branch of the Habsburgs, it could do little. The Stuarts in England were more
interested in strengthening their own absolute power at home than spending
money and men upon a forlorn adventure in far away Bohemia. After a struggle
of a few months, the Elector of the Palatinate was driven away and his domains
were given to the Catholic house of Bavaria. This was the beginning of the great
war.
Then the Habsburg armies, under Tilly and Wallenstein, fought their way
through the Protestant part of Germany until they had reached the shores of the
Baltic. A Catholic neighbour meant serious danger to the Protestant king of
Denmark. Christian IV tried to defend himself by attacking his enemies before
they had become too strong for him. The Danish armies marched into Germany
but were defeated. Wallenstein followed up his victory with such energy and
violence that Denmark was forced to sue for peace. Only one town of the Baltic
then remained in the hands of the Protestants. That was Stralsund.

THE THIRTY YEARS WAR

There, in the early summer of the year 1630, landed King Gustavus Adolphus
of the house of Vasa, king of Sweden, and famous as the man who had defended
his country against the Russians. A Protestant prince of unlimited ambition,
desirous of making Sweden the centre of a great Northern Empire, Gustavus
Adolphus was welcomed by the Protestant princes of Europe as the saviour of
the Lutheran cause. He defeated Tilly, who had just successfully butchered the
Protestant inhabitants of Magdeburg. Then his troops began their great march
through the heart of Germany in an attempt to reach the Habsburg possessions in
Italy. Threatened in the rear by the Catholics, Gustavus suddenly veered around
and defeated the main Habsburg army in the battle of Lützen. Unfortunately the
Swedish king was killed when he strayed away from his troops. But the
Habsburg power had been broken.
Ferdinand, who was a suspicious sort of person, at once began to distrust his
own servants. Wallenstein, his commander-in-chief, was murdered at his
instigation. When the Catholic Bourbons, who ruled France and hated their
Habsburg rivals, heard of this, they joined the Protestant Swedes. The armies of
Louis XIII invaded the eastern part of Germany, and Turenne and Condé added
their fame to that of Baner and Weimar, the Swedish generals, by murdering,
pillaging and burning Habsburg property. This brought great fame and riches to
the Swedes and caused the Danes to become envious. The Protestant Danes
thereupon declared war upon the Protestant Swedes who were the allies of the
Catholic French, whose political leader, the Cardinal de Richelieu, had just
deprived the Huguenots (or French Protestants) of those rights of public worship
which the Edict of Nantes of the year 1598 had guaranteed them.
The war, after the habit of such encounters, did not decide anything, when it
came to an end with the treaty of Westphalia in 1648. The Catholic powers
remained Catholic and the Protestant powers stayed faithful to the doctrines of
Luther and Calvin and Zwingli. The Swiss and Dutch Protestants were
recognised as independent republics. France kept the cities of Metz and Toul and
Verdun and a part of Alsace. The Holy Roman Empire continued to exist as a
sort of scare-crow state, without men, without money, without hope and without
courage.

AMSTERDAM IN 1648

The only good the Thirty Years War accomplished was a negative one. It
discouraged both Catholics and Protestants from ever trying it again. Henceforth
they left each other in peace. This however did not mean that religious feeling
and theological hatred had been removed from this earth. On the contrary. The
quarrels between Catholic and Protestant came to an end, but the disputes
between the different Protestant sects continued as bitterly as ever before. In
Holland a difference of opinion as to the true nature of predestination (a very
obscure point of theology, but exceedingly important in the eyes of your great-
grandfather) caused a quarrel which ended with the decapitation of John of
Oldenbarneveldt, the Dutch statesman, who had been responsible for the success
of the Republic during the first twenty years of its independence, and who was
the great organising genius of her Indian trading company. In England, the feud
led to civil war.
But before I tell you of this outbreak which led to the first execution by
process-of-law of a European king, I ought to say something about the previous
history of England. In this book I am trying to give you only those events of the
past which can throw a light upon the conditions of the present world. If I do not
mention certain countries, the cause is not to be found in any secret dislike on
my part. I wish that I could tell you what happened to Norway and Switzerland
and Serbia and China. But these lands exercised no great influence upon the
development of Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I therefore
pass them by with a polite and very respectful bow. England however is in a
different position. What the people of that small island have done during the last
five hundred years has shaped the course of history in every corner of the world.
Without a proper knowledge of the background of English history, you cannot
understand what you read in the newspapers. And it is therefore necessary that
you know how England happened to develop a parliamentary form of
government while the rest of the European continent was still ruled by absolute
monarchs.
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION

HOW THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE “DIVINE RIGHT” OF KINGS AND


THE LESS DIVINE BUT MORE REASONABLE “RIGHT OF
PARLIAMENT” ENDED DISASTROUSLY FOR KING CHARLES I

CÆSAR, the earliest explorer of north-western Europe, had crossed the Channel
in the year 55 B.C. and had conquered England. During four centuries the country
then remained a Roman province. But when the Barbarians began to threaten
Rome, the garrisons were called back from the frontier that they might defend
the home country and Britannia was left without a government and without
protection.
As soon as this became known among the hungry Saxon tribes of northern
Germany, they sailed across the North Sea and made themselves at home in the
prosperous island. They founded a number of independent Anglo-Saxon
kingdoms (so called after the original invaders, the Angles or English and the
Saxons) but these small states were for ever quarrelling with each other and no
King was strong enough to establish himself as the head of a united country. For
more than five hundred years, Mercia and Northumbria and Wessex and Sussex
and Kent and East Anglia, or whatever their names, were exposed to attacks
from various Scandinavian pirates. Finally in the eleventh century, England,
together with Norway and northern Germany became part of the large Danish
Empire of Canute the Great and the last vestiges of independence disappeared.

THE ENGLISH NATION

The Danes, in the course of time, were driven away but no sooner was
England free, than it was conquered for the fourth time. The new enemies were
the descendants of another tribe of Norsemen who early in the tenth century had
invaded France and had founded the Duchy of Normandy. William, Duke of
Normandy, who for a long time had looked across the water with an envious eye,
crossed the Channel in October of the year 1066. At the battle of Hastings, on
October the fourteenth of that year, he destroyed the weak forces of Harold of
Wessex, the last of the Anglo-Saxon Kings and established himself as King of
England. But neither William nor his successors of the House of Anjou and
Plantagenet regarded England as their true home. To them the island was merely
a part of their great inheritance on the continent—a sort of colony inhabited by
rather backward people upon whom they forced their own language and
civilisation. Gradually however the “colony” of England gained upon the
“Mother country” of Normandy. At the same time the Kings of France were
trying desperately to get rid of the powerful Norman-English neighbours who
were in truth no more than disobedient servants of the French crown. After a
century of warfare the French people, under the leadership of a young girl by the
name of Joan of Arc, drove the “foreigners” from their soil. Joan herself, taken a
prisoner at the battle of Compiègne in the year 1430 and sold by her Burgundian
captors to the English soldiers, was burned as a witch. But the English never
gained foothold upon the continent and their Kings were at last able to devote all
their time to their British possessions. As the feudal nobility of the island had
been engaged in one of those strange feuds which were as common in the middle
ages as measles and small-pox, and as the greater part of the old landed
proprietors had been killed during these so-called Wars of the Roses, it was quite
easy for the Kings to increase their royal power. And by the end of the fifteenth
century, England was a strongly centralised country, ruled by Henry VII of the
House of Tudor, whose famous Court of Justice, the “Star Chamber” of terrible
memory, suppressed all attempts on the part of the surviving nobles to regain
their old influence upon the government of the country with the utmost severity.

THE HUNDRED YEARS WAR

In the year 1509 Henry VII was succeeded by his son Henry VIII, and from
that moment on the history of England gained a new importance for the country
ceased to be a mediæval island and became a modern state.
Henry had no deep interest in religion. He gladly used a private disagreement
with the Pope about one of his many divorces to declare himself independent of
Rome and make the church of England the first of those “nationalistic churches”
in which the worldly ruler also acts as the spiritual head of his subjects. This
peaceful reformation of 1534 not only gave the house of Tudor the support of the
English clergy, who for a long time had been exposed to the violent attacks of
many Lutheran propagandists, but it also increased the Royal power through the
confiscation of the former possessions of the monasteries. At the same time it
made Henry popular with the merchants and tradespeople, who as the proud and
prosperous inhabitants of an island which was separated from the rest of Europe
by a wide and deep channel, had a great dislike for everything “foreign” and did
not want an Italian bishop to rule their honest British souls.
In 1547 Henry died. He left the throne to his small son, aged ten. The
guardians of the child, favoring the modern Lutheran doctrines, did their best to
help the cause of Protestantism. But the boy died before he was sixteen, and was
succeeded by his sister Mary, the wife of Philip II of Spain, who burned the
bishops of the new “national church” and in other ways followed the example of
her royal Spanish husband.
Fortunately she died, in the year 1558, and was succeeded by Elizabeth, the
daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, the second of his six wives, whom he
had decapitated when she no longer pleased him. Elizabeth, who had spent some
time in prison, and who had been released only at the request of the Holy Roman
Emperor, was a most cordial enemy of everything Catholic and Spanish. She
shared her father’s indifference in the matter of religion but she inherited his
ability as a very shrewd judge of character, and spent the forty-five years of her
reign in strengthening the power of the dynasty and in increasing the revenue
and possessions of her merry islands. In this she was most ably assisted by a
number of men who gathered around her throne and made the Elizabethan age a
period of such importance that you ought to study it in detail in one of the
special books of which I shall tell you in the bibliography at the end of this
volume.
Elizabeth, however, did not feel entirely safe upon her throne. She had a rival
and a very dangerous one. Mary, of the house of Stuart, daughter of a French
duchess and a Scottish father, widow of king Francis II of France and daughter-
in-law of Catherine of Medici (who had organised the murders of Saint
Bartholomew’s night), was the mother of a little boy who was afterwards to
become the first Stuart king of England. She was an ardent Catholic and a
willing friend to those who were the enemies of Elizabeth. Her own lack of
political ability and the violent methods which she employed to punish her
Calvinistic subjects, caused a revolution in Scotland and forced Mary to take
refuge on English territory. For eighteen years she remained in England, plotting
forever and a day against the woman who had given her shelter and who was at
last obliged to follow the advice of her trusted councilors “to cutte off the
Scottish Queen’s heade.”
The head was duly “cutte off” in the year 1587 and caused a war with Spain.
But the combined navies of England and Holland defeated Philip’s Invincible
Armada, as we have already seen, and the blow which had been meant to destroy
the power of the two great anti-Catholic leaders was turned into a profitable
business adventure.
JOHN AND SEBASTIAN CABOT SEE THE COAST OF NEWFOUNDLAND

For now at last, after many years of hesitation, the English as well as the
Dutch thought it their good right to invade the Indies and America and avenge
the ills which their Protestant brethren had suffered at the hands of the
Spaniards. The English had been among the earliest successors of Columbus.
British ships, commanded by the Venetian pilot Giovanni Caboto (or Cabot), had
been the first to discover and explore the northern American continent in 1496.
Labrador and Newfoundland were of little importance as a possible colony. But
the banks of Newfoundland offered a rich reward to the English fishing fleet. A
year later, in 1497, the same Cabot had explored the coast of Florida.

THE ELIZABETHAN STAGE

Then had come the busy years of Henry VII and Henry VIII when there had
been no money for foreign explorations. But under Elizabeth, with the country at
peace and Mary Stuart in prison, the sailors could leave their harbour without
fear for the fate of those whom they left behind. While Elizabeth was still a
child, Willoughby had ventured to sail past the North Cape and one of his
captains, Richard Chancellor, pushing further eastward in his quest of a possible
road to the Indies, had reached Archangel, Russia, where he had established
diplomatic and commercial relations with the mysterious rulers of this distant
Muscovite Empire. During the first years of Elizabeth’s rule this voyage had
been followed up by many others. Merchant adventurers, working for the benefit
of a “joint stock Company” had laid the foundations of trading companies which
in later centuries were to become colonies. Half pirate, half diplomat, willing to
stake everything on a single lucky voyage, smugglers of everything that could be
loaded into the hold of a vessel, dealers in men and merchandise with equal
indifference to everything except their profit, the sailors of Elizabeth had carried
the English flag and the fame of their Virgin Queen to the four corners of the
Seven Seas. Meanwhile William Shakespeare kept her Majesty amused at home,
and the best brains and the best wit of England co-operated with the queen in her
attempt to change the feudal inheritance of Henry VIII into a modern national
state.
In the year 1603 the old lady died at the age of seventy. Her cousin, the great-
grandson of her own grandfather Henry VII and son of Mary Stuart, her rival
and enemy, succeeded her as James I. By the Grace of God, he found himself the
ruler of a country which had escaped the fate of its continental rivals. While the
European Protestants and Catholics were killing each other in a hopeless attempt
to break the power of their adversaries and establish the exclusive rule of their
own particular creed, England was at peace and “reformed” at leisure without
going to the extremes of either Luther or Loyola. It gave the island kingdom an
enormous advantage in the coming struggle for colonial possessions. It assured
England a leadership in international affairs which that country has maintained
until the present day. Not even the disastrous adventure with the Stuarts was able
to stop this normal development.
The Stuarts, who succeeded the Tudors, were “foreigners” in England. They
do not seem to have appreciated or understood this fact. The native house of
Tudor could steal a horse, but the “foreign” Stuarts were not allowed to look at
the bridle without causing great popular disapproval. Old Queen Bess had ruled
her domains very much as she pleased. In general however, she had always
followed a policy which meant money in the pocket of the honest (and
otherwise) British merchants. Hence the Queen had been always assured of the
wholehearted support of her grateful people. And small liberties taken with some
of the rights and prerogatives of Parliament were gladly overlooked for the
ulterior benefits which were derived from her Majesty’s strong and successful
foreign policies.
Outwardly King James continued the same policy. But he lacked that personal
enthusiasm which had been so very typical of his great predecessor. Foreign
commerce continued to be encouraged. The Catholics were not granted any
liberties. But when Spain smiled pleasantly upon England in an effort to
establish peaceful relations, James was seen to smile back. The majority of the
English people did not like this, but James was their King and they kept quiet.
Soon there were other causes of friction. King James and his son, Charles I,
who succeeded him in the year 1625 both firmly believed in the principle of their
“divine right” to administer their realm as they thought fit without consulting the
wishes of their subjects. The idea was not new. The Popes, who in more than one
way had been the successors of the Roman Emperors (or rather of the Roman
Imperial ideal of a single and undivided state covering the entire known world),
had always regarded themselves and had been publicly recognised as the “Vice-
Regents of Christ upon Earth.” No one questioned the right of God to rule the
world as He saw fit. As a natural result, few ventured to doubt the right of the
divine “Vice-Regent” to do the same thing and to demand the obedience of the
masses because he was the direct representative of the Absolute Ruler of the
Universe and responsible only to Almighty God.
When the Lutheran Reformation proved successful, those rights which
formerly had been vested in the Papacy were taken over by the many European
sovereigns who became Protestants. As head of their own national or dynastic
churches they insisted upon being “Christ’s Vice-Regents” within the limit of
their own territory. The people did not question the right of their rulers to take
such a step. They accepted it, just as we in our own day accept the idea of a
representative system which to us seems the only reasonable and just form of
government. It is unfair therefore to state that either Lutheranism or Calvinism
caused the particular feeling of irritation which greeted King James’s oft and
loudly repeated assertion of his “Divine Right.” There must have been other
grounds for the genuine English disbelief in the Divine Right of Kings.
The first positive denial of the “Divine Right” of sovereigns had been heard in
the Netherlands when the Estates General abjured their lawful sovereign King
Philip II of Spain, in the year 1581. “The King,” so they said, “has broken his
contract and the King therefore is dismissed like any other unfaithful servant.”
Since then, this particular idea of a king’s responsibilities towards his subjects
had spread among many of the nations who inhabited the shores of the North
Sea. They were in a very favourable position. They were rich. The poor people
in the heart of central Europe, at the mercy of their Ruler’s body-guard, could
not afford to discuss a problem which would at once land them in the deepest
dungeon of the nearest castle. But the merchants of Holland and England who
possessed the capital necessary for the maintenance of great armies and navies,
who knew how to handle the almighty weapon called “credit,” had no such fear.
They were willing to pit the “Divine Right” of their own good money against the
“Divine Right” of any Habsburg or Bourbon or Stuart. They knew that their
guilders and shillings could beat the clumsy feudal armies which were the only
weapons of the King. They dared to act, where others were condemned to suffer
in silence or run the risk of the scaffold.
When the Stuarts began to annoy the people of England with their claim that
they had a right to do what they pleased and never mind the responsibility, the
English middle classes used the House of Commons as their first line of defence
against this abuse of the Royal Power. The Crown refused to give in and the
King sent Parliament about its own business. Eleven long years, Charles I ruled
alone. He levied taxes which most people regarded as illegal and he managed his
British kingdom as if it had been his own country estate. He had capable
assistants and we must say that he had the courage of his convictions.
Unfortunately, instead of assuring himself of the support of his faithful
Scottish subjects, Charles became involved in a quarrel with the Scotch
Presbyterians. Much against his will, but forced by his need for ready cash,
Charles was at last obliged to call Parliament together once more. It met in April
of 1640 and showed an ugly temper. It was dissolved a few weeks later. A new
Parliament convened in November. This one was even less pliable than the first
one. The members understood that the question of “Government by Divine
Right” or “Government by Parliament” must be fought out for good and all.
They attacked the King in his chief councillors and executed half a dozen of
them. They announced that they would not allow themselves to be dissolved
without their own approval. Finally on December 1, 1641, they presented to the
King a “Grand Remonstrance” which gave a detailed account of the many
grievances of the people against their Ruler.
Charles, hoping to derive some support for his own policy in the country
districts, left London in January of 1642. Each side organised an army and
prepared for open warfare between the absolute power of the crown and the
absolute power of Parliament. During this struggle, the most powerful religious
element of England, called the Puritans, (they were Anglicans who had tried to
purify their doctrines to the most absolute limits), came quickly to the front. The
regiments of “Godly men,” commanded by Oliver Cromwell, with their iron
discipline and their profound confidence in the holiness of their aims, soon
became the model for the entire army of the opposition. Twice Charles was
defeated. After the battle of Naseby, in 1645, he fled to Scotland. The Scotch
sold him to the English.
There followed a period of intrigue and an uprising of the Scotch
Presbyterians against the English Puritan. In August of the year 1648 after the
three-days’ battle of Preston Pans, Cromwell made an end to this second civil
war, and took Edinburgh. Meanwhile his soldiers, tired of further talk and
wasted hours of religious debate, had decided to act on their own initiative. They
removed from Parliament all those who did not agree with their own Puritan
views. Thereupon the “Rump,” which was what was left of the old Parliament,
accused the King of high treason. The House of Lords refused to sit as a tribunal.
A special tribunal was appointed and it condemned the King to death. On the
30th of January of the year 1649, King Charles walked quietly out of a window
of White Hall onto the scaffold. That day, the Sovereign People, acting through
their chosen representatives, for the first time executed a ruler who had failed to
understand his own position in the modern state.
The period which followed the death of Charles is usually called after Oliver
Cromwell. At first the unofficial Dictator of England, he was officially made
Lord Protector in the year 1653. He ruled five years. He used this period to
continue the policies of Elizabeth. Spain once more became the arch enemy of
England and war upon the Spaniard was made a national and sacred issue.
The commerce of England and the interests of the traders were placed before
everything else, and the Protestant creed of the strictest nature was rigourously
maintained. In maintaining England’s position abroad, Cromwell was successful.
As a social reformer, however, he failed very badly. The world is made up of a
number of people and they rarely think alike. In the long run, this seems a very
wise provision. A government of and by and for one single part of the entire
community cannot possibly survive. The Puritans had been a great force for
good when they tried to correct the abuse of the royal power. As the absolute
Rulers of England they became intolerable.
When Cromwell died in 1658, it was an easy matter for the Stuarts to return to
their old kingdom. Indeed, they were welcomed as “deliverers” by the people
who had found the yoke of the meek Puritans quite as hard to bear as that of
autocratic King Charles. Provided the Stuarts were willing to forget about the
Divine Right of their late and lamented father and were willing to recognise the
superiority of Parliament, the people promised that they would be loyal and
faithful subjects.
Two generations tried to make a success of this new arrangement. But the
Stuarts apparently had not learned their lesson and were unable to drop their bad
habits. Charles II, who came back in the year 1660, was an amiable but
worthless person. His indolence and his constitutional insistence upon following
the easiest course, together with his conspicuous success as a liar, prevented an
open outbreak between himself and his people. By the act of Uniformity in 1662
he broke the power of the Puritan clergy by banishing all dissenting clergymen
from their parishes. By the so-called Conventicle Act of 1664 he tried to prevent
the Dissenters from attending religious meetings by a threat of deportation to the
West Indies. This looked too much like the good old days of Divine Right.
People began to show the old and well-known signs of impatience, and
Parliament suddenly experienced difficulty in providing the King with funds.
Since he could not get money from an unwilling Parliament, Charles
borrowed it secretly from his neighbour and cousin, King Louis of France. He
betrayed his Protestant allies in return for 200,000 pounds per year, and laughed
at the poor simpletons of Parliament.
Economic independence suddenly gave the King great faith in his own
strength. He had spent many years of exile among his Catholic relations and he
had a secret liking for their religion. Perhaps he could bring England back to
Rome! He passed a Declaration of Indulgence which suspended the old laws
against the Catholics and Dissenters. This happened just when Charles’ younger
brother James was said to have become a Catholic. All this looked suspicious to
the man in the street. People began to fear some terrible Popish plot. A new spirit
of unrest entered the land. Most of the people wanted to prevent another
outbreak of civil war. To them Royal Oppression and a Catholic King—yea,
even Divine Right,—were preferable to a new struggle between members of the
same race. Others however were less lenient. They were the much-feared
Dissenters, who invariably had the courage of their convictions. They were led
by several great noblemen who did not want to see a return of the old days of
absolute royal power.
For almost ten years, these two great parties, the Whigs (the middle class
element, called by this derisive name because in the year 1640 a lot of Scottish
Whiggamores or horse-drovers headed by the Presbyterian clergy, had marched
to Edinburgh to oppose the King) and the Tories (an epithet originally used
against the Royalist Irish adherents but now applied to the supporters of the
King) opposed each other, but neither wished to bring about a crisis. They
allowed Charles to die peacefully in his bed and permitted the Catholic James II
to succeed his brother in 1685. But when James, after threatening the country
with the terrible foreign invention of a “standing army” (which was to be
commanded by Catholic Frenchmen), issued a second Declaration of Indulgence
in 1688, and ordered it to be read in all Anglican churches, he went just a trifle
beyond that line of sensible demarcation which can only be transgressed by the
most popular of rulers under very exceptional circumstances. Seven bishops
refused to comply with the Royal Command. They were accused of “seditious
libel.” They were brought before a court. The jury which pronounced the verdict
of “not guilty” reaped a rich harvest of popular approval.
At this unfortunate moment, James (who in a second marriage had taken to
wife Maria of the Catholic house of Modena-Este) became the father of a son.
This meant that the throne was to go to a Catholic boy rather than to his older
sisters, Mary and Anne, who were Protestants. The man in the street again grew
suspicious. Maria of Modena was too old to have children! It was all part of a
plot! A strange baby had been brought into the palace by some Jesuit priest that
England might have a Catholic monarch. And so on. It looked as if another civil
war would break out. Then seven well-known men, Whigs and Tories, wrote a
letter asking the husband of James’s oldest daughter Mary, William III the
Stadtholder or head of the Dutch Republic, to come to England and deliver the
country from its lawful but entirely undesirable sovereign.
On the fifth of November of the year 1688, William landed at Torbay. As he
did not wish to make a martyr out of his father-in-law, he helped him to escape
safely to France. On the 22nd of January of 1689 he summoned Parliament. On
the 13th of February of the same year he and his wife Mary were proclaimed
joint sovereigns of England and the country was saved for the Protestant cause.
Parliament, having undertaken to be something more than a mere advisory
body to the King, made the best of its opportunities. The old Petition of Rights
of the year 1628 was fished out of a forgotten nook of the archives. A second and
more drastic Bill of Rights demanded that the sovereign of England should
belong to the Anglican church. Furthermore it stated that the king had no right to
suspend the laws or permit certain privileged citizens to disobey certain laws. It
stipulated that “without consent of Parliament no taxes could be levied and no
army could be maintained.” Thus in the year 1689 did England acquire an
amount of liberty unknown in any other country of Europe.
But it is not only on account of this great liberal measure that the rule of
William in England is still remembered. During his lifetime, government by a
“responsible” ministry first developed. No king of course can rule alone. He
needs a few trusted advisors. The Tudors had their Great Council which was
composed of Nobles and Clergy. This body grew too large. It was restricted to
the small “Privy Council.” In the course of time it became the custom of these
councillors to meet the king in a cabinet in the palace. Hence they were called
the “Cabinet Council.” After a short while they were known as the “Cabinet.”
William, like most English sovereigns before him, had chosen his advisors
from among all parties. But with the increased strength of Parliament, he had
found it impossible to direct the politics of the country with the help of the
Tories while the Whigs had a majority in the house of Commons. Therefore the
Tories had been dismissed and the Cabinet Council had been composed entirely
of Whigs. A few years later when the Whigs lost their power in the House of
Commons, the king, for the sake of convenience, was obliged to look for his
support among the leading Tories. Until his death in 1702, William was too busy
fighting Louis of France to bother much about the government of England.
Practically all important affairs had been left to his Cabinet Council. When
William’s sister-in-law, Anne, succeeded him in 1702 this condition of affairs
continued. When she died in 1714 (and unfortunately not a single one of her
seventeen children survived her) the throne went to George I of the House of
Hanover, the son of Sophie, grand-daughter of James I.
This somewhat rustic monarch, who never learned a word of English, was
entirely lost in the complicated mazes of England’s political arrangements. He
left everything to his Cabinet Council and kept away from their meetings, which
bored him as he did not understand a single sentence. In this way the Cabinet got
into the habit of ruling England and Scotland (whose Parliament had been joined
to that of England in 1707) without bothering the King, who was apt to spend a
great deal of his time on the continent.
During the reign of George I and George II, a succession of great Whigs (of
whom one, Sir Robert Walpole, held office for twenty-one years) formed the
Cabinet Council of the King. Their leader was finally recognised as the official
leader not only of the actual Cabinet but also of the majority party in power in
Parliament. The attempts of George III to take matters into his own hands and
not to leave the actual business of government to his Cabinet were so disastrous
that they were never repeated. And from the earliest years of the eighteenth
century on, England enjoyed representative government, with a responsible
ministry which conducted the affairs of the land.
To be quite true, this government did not represent all classes of society. Less
than one man in a dozen had the right to vote. But it was the foundation for the
modern representative form of government. In a quiet and orderly fashion it took
the power away from the King and placed it in the hands of an ever increasing
number of popular representatives. It did not bring the millennium to England,
but it saved that country from most of the revolutionary outbreaks which proved
so disastrous to the European continent in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries.
THE BALANCE OF POWER

IN FRANCE ON THE OTHER HAND THE “DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS”


CONTINUED WITH GREATER POMP AND SPLENDOUR THAN
EVER BEFORE AND THE AMBITION OF THE RULER WAS ONLY
TEMPERED BY THE NEWLY INVENTED LAW OF THE “BALANCE
OF POWER”

AS a contrast to the previous chapter, let me tell you what happened in France
during the years when the English people were fighting for their liberty. The
happy combination of the right man in the right country at the right moment is
very rare in History. Louis XIV was a realisation of this ideal, as far as France
was concerned, but the rest of Europe would have been happier without him.
The country over which the young king was called to rule was the most
populous and the most brilliant nation of that day. Louis came to the throne when
Mazarin and Richelieu, the two great Cardinals, had just hammered the ancient
French Kingdom into the most strongly centralised state of the seventeenth
century. He was himself a man of extraordinary ability. We, the people of the
twentieth century, are still surrounded by the memories of the glorious age of the
Sun King. Our social life is based upon the perfection of manners and the
elegance of expression attained at the court of Louis. In international and
diplomatic relations, French is still the official language of diplomacy and
international gatherings because two centuries ago it reached a polished elegance
and a purity of expression which no other tongue had as yet been able to equal.
The theatre of King Louis still teaches us lessons which we are only too slow in
learning. During his reign the French Academy (an invention of Richelieu) came
to occupy a position in the world of letters which other countries have flattered
by their imitation. We might continue this list for many pages. It is no matter of
mere chance that our modern bill-of-fare is printed in French. The very difficult
art of decent cooking, one of the highest expressions of civilisation, was first
practised for the benefit of the great Monarch. The age of Louis XIV was a time
of splendour and grace which can still teach us a lot.
Unfortunately this brilliant picture has another side which was far less
encouraging. Glory abroad too often means misery at home, and France was no
exception to this rule. Louis XIV succeeded his father in the year 1643. He died
in the year 1715. That means that the government of France was in the hands of
one single man for seventy-two years, almost two whole generations.
It will be well to get a firm grasp of this idea, “one single man.” Louis was the
first of a long list of monarchs who in many countries established that particular
form of highly efficient autocracy which we call “enlightened despotism.” He
did not like kings who merely played at being rulers and turned official affairs
into a pleasant picnic. The Kings of that enlightened age worked harder than any
of their subjects. They got up earlier and went to bed later than anybody else,
and felt their “divine responsibility” quite as strongly as their “divine right”
which allowed them to rule without consulting their subjects.
Of course, the king could not attend to everything in person. He was obliged
to surround himself with a few helpers and councillors. One or two generals,
some experts upon foreign politics, a few clever financiers and economists
would do for this purpose. But these dignitaries could act only through their
Sovereign. They had no individual existence. To the mass of the people, the
Sovereign actually represented in his own sacred person the government of their
country. The glory of the common fatherland became the glory of a single
dynasty. It meant the exact opposite of our own American ideal. France was
ruled of and by and for the House of Bourbon.
The disadvantages of such a system are clear. The King grew to be everything.
Everybody else grew to be nothing at all. The old and useful nobility was
gradually forced to give up its former shares in the government of the provinces.
A little Royal bureaucrat, his fingers splashed with ink, sitting behind the
greenish windows of a government building in far-away Paris, now performed
the task which a hundred years before had been the duty of the feudal Lord. The
feudal Lord, deprived of all work, moved to Paris to amuse himself as best he
could at the court. Soon his estates began to suffer from that very dangerous
economic sickness, known as “Absentee Landlordism.” Within a single
generation, the industrious and useful feudal administrators had become the
well-mannered but quite useless loafers of the court of Versailles.
Louis was ten years old when the peace of Westphalia was concluded and the
House of Habsburg, as a result of the Thirty Years War, lost its predominant
position in Europe. It was inevitable that a man with his ambition should use so
favourable a moment to gain for his own dynasty the honours which had
formerly been held by the Habsburgs. In the year 1660 Louis had married Maria
Theresa, daughter of the King of Spain. Soon afterward, his father-in-law, Philip
IV, one of the half-witted Spanish Habsburgs, died. At once Louis claimed the
Spanish Netherlands (Belgium) as part of his wife’s dowry. Such an acquisition
would have been disastrous to the peace of Europe, and would have threatened
the safety of the Protestant states. Under the leadership of Jan de Witt,
Raadpensionaris or Foreign Minister of the United Seven Netherlands, the first
great international alliance, the Triple Alliance of Sweden, England and Holland,
of the year 1664, was concluded. It did not last long. With money and fair
promises Louis bought up both King Charles and the Swedish Estates. Holland
was betrayed by her allies and was left to her own fate. In the year 1672 the
French invaded the low countries. They marched to the heart of the country. For
a second time the dikes were opened and the Royal Sun of France set amidst the
mud of the Dutch marshes. The peace of Nimwegen which was concluded in
1678 settled nothing but merely anticipated another war.

THE BALANCE OF POWER

A second war of aggression from 1689 to 1697, ending with the Peace of
Ryswick, also failed to give Louis that position in the affairs of Europe to which
he aspired. His old enemy, Jan de Witt, had been murdered by the Dutch rabble,
but his successor, William III (whom you met in the last chapter), had
checkmated all efforts of Louis to make France the ruler of Europe.
The great war for the Spanish succession, begun in the year 1701,
immediately after the death of Charles II, the last of the Spanish Habsburgs, and
ended in 1713 by the Peace of Utrecht, remained equally undecided, but it had
ruined the treasury of Louis. On land the French king had been victorious, but
the navies of England and Holland had spoiled all hope for an ultimate French
victory; besides the long struggle had given birth to a new and fundamental
principle of international politics, which thereafter made it impossible for one
single nation to rule the whole of Europe or the whole of the world for any
length of time.
That was the so-called “balance of power.” It was not a written law but for
three centuries it has been obeyed as closely as are the laws of nature. The
people who originated the idea maintained that Europe, in its nationalistic stage
of development, could only survive when there should be an absolute balance of
the many conflicting interests of the entire continent. No single power or single
dynasty must ever be allowed to dominate the others. During the Thirty Years
War, the Habsburgs had been the victims of the application of this law. They,
however, had been unconscious victims. The issues during that struggle were so
clouded in a haze of religious strife that we do not get a very clear view of the
main tendencies of that great conflict. But from that time on, we begin to see
how cold, economic considerations and calculations prevail in all matters of
international importance. We discover the development of a new type of
statesman, the statesman with the personal feelings of the slide-rule and the
cash-register. Jan de Witt was the first successful exponent of this new school of
politics. William III was the first great pupil. And Louis XIV with all his fame
and glory, was the first conscious victim. There have been many others since.
THE RISE OF RUSSIA

THE STORY OF THE MYSTERIOUS MOSCOVITE EMPIRE WHICH


SUDDENLY BURST UPON THE GRAND POLITICAL STAGE OF
EUROPE

IN the year 1492, as you know, Columbus discovered America. Early in the
year, a Tyrolese by the name of Schnups, travelling as the head of a scientific
expedition for the Archbishop of Tyrol, and provided with the best letters of
introduction and excellent credit tried to reach the mythical town of Moscow. He
did not succeed. When he reached the frontiers of this vast Moscovite state
which was vaguely supposed to exist in the extreme Eastern part of Europe, he
was firmly turned back. No foreigners were wanted. And Schnups went to visit
the heathen Turk in Constantinople, in order that he might have something to
report to his clerical master when he came back from his explorations.
Sixty-one years later, Richard Chancellor, trying to discover the North-eastern
passage to the Indies, and blown by an ill wind into the White Sea, reached the
mouth of the Dwina and found the Moscovite village of Kholmogory, a few
hours from the spot where in 1584 the town of Archangel was founded. This
time the foreign visitors were requested to come to Moscow and show
themselves to the Grand Duke. They went and returned to England with the first
commercial treaty ever concluded between Russia and the western world. Other
nations soon followed and something became known of this mysterious land.
Geographically, Russia is a vast plain. The Ural mountains are low and form
no barrier against invaders. The rivers are broad but often shallow. It was an
ideal territory for nomads.
While the Roman Empire was founded, grew in power and disappeared again,
Slavic tribes, who had long since left their homes in Central Asia, wandered
aimlessly through the forests and plains of the region between the Dniester and
Dnieper rivers. The Greeks had sometimes met these Slavs and a few travellers
of the third and fourth centuries mention them. Otherwise they were as little
known as were the Nevada Indians in the year 1800.
Unfortunately for the peace of these primitive peoples, a very convenient
trade-route ran through their country. This was the main road from northern
Europe to Constantinople. It followed the coast of the Baltic until the Neva was
reached. Then it crossed Lake Ladoga and went southward along the Volkhov
river. Then through Lake Ilmen and up the small Lovat river. Then there was a
short portage until the Dnieper was reached. Then down the Dnieper into the
Black Sea.
The Norsemen knew of this road at a very early date. In the ninth century they
began to settle in northern Russia, just as other Norsemen were laying the
foundation for independent states in Germany and France. But in the year 862,
three Norsemen, brothers, crossed the Baltic and founded three small dynasties.
Of the three brothers, only one, Rurik, lived for a number of years. He took
possession of the territory of his brothers, and twenty years after the arrival of
this first Norseman, a Slavic state had been established with Kiev as its capital.

THE ORIGIN OF RUSSIA

From Kiev to the Black Sea is a short distance. Soon the existence of an
organised Slavic State became known in Constantinople. This meant a new field
for the zealous missionaries of the Christian faith. Byzantine monks followed the
Dnieper on their way northward and soon reached the heart of Russia. They
found the people worshipping strange gods who were supposed to dwell in
woods and rivers and in mountain caves. They taught them the story of Jesus.
There was no competition from the side of Roman missionaries. These good
men were too busy educating the heathen Teutons to bother about the distant
Slavs. Hence Russia received its religion and its alphabet and its first ideas of art
and architecture from the Byzantine monks and as the Byzantine empire (a relic
of the eastern Roman empire) had become very oriental and had lost many of its
European traits, the Russians suffered in consequence.
Politically speaking these new states of the great Russian plains did not fare
well. It was the Norse habit to divide every inheritance equally among all the
sons. No sooner had a small state been founded but it was broken up among
eight or nine heirs who in turn left their territory to an ever increasing number of
descendants. It was inevitable that these small competing states should quarrel
among themselves. Anarchy was the order of the day. And when the red glow of
the eastern horizon told the people of the threatened invasion of a savage Asiatic
tribe, the little states were too weak and too divided to render any sort of defence
against this terrible enemy.
It was in the year 1224 that the first great Tartar invasion took place and that
the hordes of Jenghiz Khan, the conqueror of China, Bokhara, Tashkent and
Turkestan made their first appearance in the west. The Slavic armies were beaten
near the Kalka river and Russia was at the mercy of the Mongolians. Just as
suddenly as they had come they disappeared. Thirteen years later, in 1237,
however, they returned. In less than five years they conquered every part of the
vast Russian plains. Until the year 1380 when Dmitry Donskoi, Grand Duke of
Moscow, beat them on the plains of Kulikovo, the Tartars were the masters of
the Russian people.
All in all, it took the Russians two centuries to deliver themselves from this
yoke. For a yoke it was and a most offensive and objectionable one. It turned the
Slavic peasants into miserable slaves. No Russian could hope to survive unless
he was willing to creep before a dirty little yellow man who sat in a tent
somewhere in the heart of the steppes of southern Russia and spat at him. It
deprived the mass of the people of all feeling of honour and independence. It
made hunger and misery and maltreatment and personal abuse the normal state
of human existence. Until at last the average Russian, were he peasant or
nobleman, went about his business like a neglected dog who has been beaten so
often that his spirit has been broken and he dare not wag his tail without
permission.
There was no escape. The horsemen of the Tartar Khan were fast and
merciless. The endless prairie did not give a man a chance to cross into the safe
territory of his neighbour. He must keep quiet and bear what his yellow master
decided to inflict upon him or run the risk of death. Of course, Europe might
have interfered. But Europe was engaged upon business of its own, fighting the
quarrels between the Pope and the emperor or suppressing this or that or the
other heresy. And so Europe left the Slav to his fate, and forced him to work out
his own salvation.
The final saviour of Russia was one of the many small states, founded by the
early Norse rulers. It was situated in the heart of the Russian plain. Its capital,
Moscow, was upon a steep hill on the banks of the Moskwa river. This little
principality, by dint of pleasing the Tartar (when it was necessary to please), and
opposing him (when it was safe to do so), had, during the middle of the
fourteenth century made itself the leader of a new national life. It must be
remembered that the Tartars were wholly deficient in constructive political
ability. They could only destroy. Their chief aim in conquering new territories
was to obtain revenue. To get this revenue in the form of taxes, it was necessary
to allow certain remnants of the old political organization to continue. Hence
there were many little towns, surviving by the grace of the Great Khan, that they
might act as tax-gatherers and rob their neighbours for the benefit of the Tartar
treasury.
The state of Moscow, growing fat at the expense of the surrounding territory,
finally became strong enough to risk open rebellion against its masters, the
Tartars. It was successful and its fame as the leader in the cause of Russian
independence made Moscow the natural centre for all those who still believed in
a better future for the Slavic race. In the year 1453, Constantinople was taken by
the Turks. Ten years later, under the rule of Ivan III, Moscow informed the
western world that the Slavic state laid claim to the worldly and spiritual
inheritance of the lost Byzantine Empire, and such traditions of the Roman
empire as had survived in Constantinople. A generation afterwards, under Ivan
the Terrible, the grand dukes of Moscow were strong enough to adopt the title of
Cæsar, or Tsar, and to demand recognition by the western powers of Europe.
In the year 1598, with Feodor the First, the old Muscovite dynasty,
descendants of the original Norseman Rurik, came to an end. For the next seven
years, a Tartar half-breed, by the name of Boris Godunow, reigned as Tsar. It was
during this period that the future destiny of the large masses of the Russian
people was decided. This Empire was rich in land but very poor in money. There
was no trade and there were no factories. Its few cities were dirty villages. It was
composed of a strong central government and a vast number of illiterate
peasants. This government, a mixture of Slavic, Norse, Byzantine and Tartar
influences, recognised nothing beyond the interest of the state. To defend this
state, it needed an army. To gather the taxes, which were necessary to pay the
soldiers, it needed civil servants. To pay these many officials it needed land. In
the vast wilderness on the east and west there was a sufficient supply of this
commodity. But land without a few labourers to till the fields and tend the cattle,
has no value. Therefore the old nomadic peasants were robbed of one privilege
after the other, until finally, during the first year of the seventeenth century, they
were formally made a part of the soil upon which they lived. The Russian
peasants ceased to be free men. They became serfs or slaves and they remained
serfs until the year 1861, when their fate had become so terrible that they were
beginning to die out.

MOSCOW

In the seventeenth century, this new state with its growing territory which was
spreading quickly into Siberia, had become a force with which the rest of Europe
was obliged to reckon. In 1613, after the death of Boris Godunow, the Russian
nobles had elected one of their own number to be Tsar. He was Michael, the son
of Feodor, of the Moscow family of Romanow who lived in a little house just
outside the Kremlin.
In the year 1672 his great-grandson, Peter, the son of another Feodor, was
born. When the child was ten years old, his step-sister Sophia took possession of
the Russian throne. The little boy was allowed to spend his days in the suburbs
of the national capital, where the foreigners lived. Surrounded by Scotch
barkeepers, Dutch traders, Swiss apothecaries, Italian barbers, French dancing
teachers and German school-masters, the young prince obtained a first but rather
extraordinary impression of that far-away and mysterious Europe where things
were done differently.
When he was seventeen years old, he suddenly pushed Sister Sophia from the
throne. Peter himself became the ruler of Russia. He was not contented with
being the Tsar of a semi-barbarous and half-Asiatic people. He must be the
sovereign head of a civilised nation. To change Russia overnight from a
Byzantine-Tartar state into a European empire was no small undertaking. It
needed strong hands and a capable head. Peter possessed both. In the year 1698,
the great operation of grafting Modern Europe upon Ancient Russia was
performed. The patient did not die. But he never got over the shock, as the
events of the last five years have shown very plainly.
RUSSIA vs. SWEDEN

RUSSIA AND SWEDEN FIGHT MANY WARS TO DECIDE WHO SHALL


BE THE LEADING POWER OF NORTH-EASTERN EUROPE

IN the year 1698, Tsar Peter set forth upon his first voyage to western Europe.
He travelled by way of Berlin and went to Holland and to England. As a child he
had almost been drowned sailing a home-made boat in the duck pond of his
father’s country home. This passion for water remained with him to the end of
his life. In a practical way it showed itself in his wish to give his land-locked
domains access to the open sea.
While the unpopular and harsh young ruler
PETER THE GREAT IN THE DUTCH SHIPYARD
was away from home, the friends of the old
Russian ways in Moscow set to work to undo all his reforms. A sudden rebellion
among his life-guards, the Streltsi regiment, forced Peter to hasten home by the
fast mail. He appointed himself executioner-in-chief and the Streltsi were hanged
and quartered and killed to the last man. Sister Sophia, who had been the head of
the rebellion, was locked up in a cloister and the rule of Peter began in earnest.
This scene was repeated in the year 1716 when Peter had gone on his second
western trip. That time the reactionaries followed the leadership of Peter’s half-
witted son, Alexis. Again the Tsar returned in great haste. Alexis was beaten to
death in his prison cell and the friends of the old-fashioned Byzantine ways
marched thousands of dreary miles to their final destination in the Siberian lead
mines. After that, no further outbreaks of popular discontent took place. Until
the time of his death, Peter could reform in peace.
It is not easy to give you a list of his reforms in chronological order. The Tsar
worked with furious haste. He followed no system. He issued his decrees with
such rapidity that it is difficult to keep count. Peter seemed to feel that
everything that had ever happened before was entirely wrong. The whole of
Russia therefore must be changed within the shortest possible time. When he
died he left behind a well-trained army of 200,000 men and a navy of fifty ships.
The old system of government had been abolished over night. The Duma, or
convention of Nobles, had been dismissed and in its stead, the Tsar had
surrounded himself with an advisory board of state officials, called the Senate.
Russia was divided into eight large “governments” or provinces. Roads were
constructed. Towns were built. Industries were created wherever it pleased the
Tsar, without any regard for the presence of raw material. Canals were dug and
mines were opened in the mountains of the east. In this land of illiterates,
schools were founded and establishments of higher learning, together with
Universities and hospitals and professional schools. Dutch naval engineers and
tradesmen and artisans from all over the world were encouraged to move to
Russia. Printing shops were established, but all books must be first read by the
imperial censors. The duties of each class of society were carefully written down
in a new law and the entire system of civil and criminal laws was gathered into a
series of printed volumes. The old Russian costumes were abolished by Imperial
decree, and policemen, armed with scissors, watching all the country roads,
changed the long-haired Russian moujiks suddenly into a pleasing imitation of
smooth-shaven west-Europeans.
In religious matters, the Tsar tolerated no division of power. There must be no
chance of a rivalry between an Emperor and a Pope as had happened in Europe.
In the year 1721, Peter made himself head of the Russian Church. The
Patriarchate of Moscow was abolished and the Holy Synod made its appearance
as the highest source of authority in all matters of the Established Church.
PETER THE GREAT BUILDS HIS NEW CAPITAL

Since, however, these many reforms could not be successful while the old
Russian elements had a rallying point in the town of Moscow, Peter decided to
move his government to a new capital. Amidst the unhealthy marshes of the
Baltic Sea the Tsar built this new city. He began to reclaim the land in the year
1703. Forty thousand peasants worked for years to lay the foundations for this
Imperial city. The Swedes attacked Peter and tried to destroy his town and illness
and misery killed tens of thousands of the peasants. But the work was continued,
winter and summer, and the ready-made town soon began to grow. In the year
1712, it was officially declared to be the “Imperial Residence.” A dozen years
later it had 75,000 inhabitants. Twice a year the whole city was flooded by the
Neva. But the terrific will-power of the Tsar created dykes and canals and the
floods ceased to do harm. When Peter died in 1725 he was the owner of the
largest city in northern Europe.
Of course, this sudden growth of so dangerous a rival had been a source of
great worry to all the neighbours. From his side, Peter had watched with interest
the many adventures of his Baltic rival, the kingdom of Sweden. In the year
1654, Christina, the only daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, the hero of the Thirty
Years War, had renounced the throne and had gone to Rome to end her days as a
devout Catholic. A Protestant nephew of Gustavus Adolphus had succeeded the
last Queen of the House of Vasa. Under Charles X and Charles XI, the new
dynasty had brought Sweden to its highest point of development. But in 1697,
Charles XI died suddenly and was succeeded by a boy of fifteen, Charles XII.
This was the moment for which many of the northern states had waited.
During the great religious wars of the seventeenth century, Sweden had grown at
the expense of her neighbours. The time had come, so the owners thought, to
balance the account. At once war broke out between Russia, Poland, Denmark
and Saxony on the one side, and Sweden on the other. The raw and untrained
armies of Peter were disastrously beaten by Charles in the famous battle of
Narva in November of the year 1700. Then Charles, one of the most interesting
military geniuses of that century, turned against his other enemies and for nine
years he hacked and burned his way through the villages and cities of Poland,
Saxony, Denmark and the Baltic provinces, while Peter drilled and trained his
soldiers in distant Russia.
As a result, in the year 1709, in the battle of Poltawa, the Moscovites
destroyed the exhausted armies of Sweden. Charles continued to be a highly
picturesque figure, a wonderful hero of romance, but in his vain attempt to have
his revenge, he ruined his own country. In the year 1718, he was accidentally
killed or assassinated (we do not know which) and when peace was made in
1721, in the town of Nystadt, Sweden had lost all of her former Baltic
possessions except Finland. The new Russian state, created by Peter, had become
the leading power of northern Europe. But already a new rival was on the way.
The Prussian state was taking shape.
THE RISE OF PRUSSIA

THE EXTRAORDINARY RISE OF A LITTLE STATE IN A DREARY PART


OF NORTHERN GERMANY, CALLED PRUSSIA

THE history of Prussia is the history of a frontier district. In the ninth century,
Charlemagne had transferred the old centre of civilisation from the
Mediterranean to the wild regions of northwestern Europe. His Frankish soldiers
had pushed the frontier of Europe further and further towards the east. They had
conquered many lands from the heathenish Slavs and Lithuanians who were
living in the plain between the Baltic Sea and the Carpathian Mountains, and the
Franks administered those outlying districts just as the United States used to
administer her territories before they achieved the dignity of statehood.
The frontier state of Brandenburg had been originally founded by
Charlemagne to defend his eastern possessions against raids of the wild Saxon
tribes. The Wends, a Slavic tribe which inhabited that region, were subjugated
during the tenth century and their market-place, by the name of Brennabor,
became the centre of and gave its name to the new province of Brandenburg.
During the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a succession
of noble families exercised the functions of imperial governor in this frontier
state. Finally in the fifteenth century, the House of Hohenzollern made its
appearance, and as Electors of Brandenburg, commenced to change a sandy and
forlorn frontier territory into one of the most efficient empires of the modern
world.
These Hohenzollerns, who have just been removed from the historical stage
by the combined forces of Europe and America, came originally from southern
Germany. They were of very humble origin. In the twelfth century a certain
Frederick of Hohenzollern had made a lucky marriage and had been appointed
keeper of the castle of Nuremberg. His descendants had used every chance and
every opportunity to improve their power and after several centuries of watchful
grabbing, they had been appointed to the dignity of Elector, the name given to
those sovereign princes who were supposed to elect the Emperors of the old
German Empire. During the Reformation, they had taken the side of the
Protestants and the early seventeenth century found them among the most
powerful of the north German princes.
During the Thirty Years War, both Protestants and Catholics had plundered
Brandenburg and Prussia with equal zeal. But under Frederick William, the
Great Elector, the damage was quickly repaired and by a wise and careful use of
all the economic and intellectual forces of the country, a state was founded in
which there was practically no waste.
Modern Prussia, a state in which the individual and his wishes and aspirations
have been entirely absorbed by the interests of the community as a whole—this
Prussia dates back to the father of Frederick the Great. Frederick William I was a
hard working, parsimonious Prussian sergeant, with a great love for bar-room
stories and strong Dutch tobacco, an intense dislike of all frills and feathers,
(especially if they were of French origin,) and possessed of but one idea. That
idea was Duty. Severe with himself, he tolerated no weakness in his subjects,
whether they be generals or common soldiers. The relation between himself and
his son Frederick was never cordial, to say the least. The boorish manners of the
father offended the finer spirit of the son. The son’s love for French manners,
literature, philosophy and music was rejected by the father as a manifestation of
sissy-ness. There followed a terrible outbreak between these two strange
temperaments. Frederick tried to escape to England. He was caught and court-
martialed and forced to witness the decapitation of his best friend who had tried
to help him. Thereupon as part of his punishment, the young prince was sent to a
little fortress somewhere in the provinces to be taught the details of his future
business of being a king. It proved a blessing in disguise. When Frederick came
to the throne in 1740, he knew how his country was managed from the birth
certificate of a pauper’s son to the minutest detail of a complicated annual
Budget.
As an author, especially in his book called the “Anti-Macchiavelli,” Frederick
had expressed his contempt for the political creed of the ancient Florentine
historian, who had advised his princely pupils to lie and cheat whenever it was
necessary to do so for the benefit of their country. The ideal ruler in Frederick’s
volume was the first servant of his people, the enlightened despot after the
example of Louis XIV. In practice, however, Frederick, while working for his
people twenty hours a day, tolerated no one to be near him as a counsellor. His
ministers were superior clerks. Prussia was his private possession, to be treated
according to his own wishes. And nothing was allowed to interfere with the
interest of the state.
In the year 1740 the Emperor Charles VI, of Austria, died. He had tried to
make the position of his only daughter, Maria Theresa, secure through a solemn
treaty, written black on white, upon a large piece of parchment. But no sooner
had the old emperor been deposited in the ancestral crypt of the Habsburg
family, than the armies of Frederick were marching towards the Austrian frontier
to occupy that part of Silesia for which (together with almost everything else in
central Europe) Prussia clamored, on account of some ancient and very doubtful
rights of claim. In a number of wars, Frederick conquered all of Silesia, and
although he was often very near defeat, he maintained himself in his newly
acquired territories against all Austrian counter-attacks.
Europe took due notice of this sudden appearance of a very powerful new
state. In the eighteenth century, the Germans were a people who had been ruined
by the great religious wars and who were not held in high esteem by any one.
Frederick, by an effort as sudden and quite as terrific as that of Peter of Russia,
changed this attitude of contempt into one of fear. The internal affairs of Prussia
were arranged so skillfully that the subjects had less reason for complaint than
elsewhere. The treasury showed an annual surplus instead of a deficit. Torture
was abolished. The judiciary system was improved. Good roads and good
schools and good universities, together with a scrupulously honest
administration, made the people feel that whatever services were demanded of
them, they (to speak the vernacular) got their money’s worth.
After having been for several centuries the battle field of the French and the
Austrians and the Swedes and the Danes and the Poles, Germany, encouraged by
the example of Prussia, began to regain self-confidence. And this was the work
of the little old man, with his hook-nose and his old uniforms covered with snuff,
who said very funny but very unpleasant things about his neighbours, and who
played the scandalous game of eighteenth century diplomacy without any regard
for the truth, provided he could gain something by his lies. This in spite of his
book, “Anti-Macchiavelli.” In the year 1786 the end came. His friends were all
gone. Children he had never had. He died alone, tended by a single servant and
his faithful dogs, whom he loved better than human beings because, as he said,
they were never ungrateful and remained true to their friends.
THE MERCANTILE SYSTEM

HOW THE NEWLY FOUNDED NATIONAL OR DYNASTIC STATES OF


EUROPE TRIED TO MAKE THEMSELVES RICH AND WHAT WAS
MEANT BY THE MERCANTILE SYSTEM

WE have seen how, during the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, the
states of our modern world began to take shape. Their origins were different in
almost every case. Some had been the result of the deliberate effort of a single
king. Others had happened by chance. Still others had been the result of
favourable natural geographic boundaries. But once they had been founded, they
had all of them tried to strengthen their internal administration and to exert the
greatest possible influence upon foreign affairs. All this of course had cost a
great deal of money. The mediæval state with its lack of centralised power did
not depend upon a rich treasury. The king got his revenues from the crown
domains and his civil service paid for itself. The modern centralised state was a
more complicated affair. The old knights disappeared and hired government
officials or bureaucrats took their place. Army, navy, and internal administration
demanded millions. The question then became—where was this money to be
found?

THE VOYAGE OF THE PILGRIMS

Gold and silver had been a rare commodity in the middle ages. The average
man, as I have told you, never saw a gold piece as long as he lived. Only the
inhabitants of the large cities were familiar with silver coin. The discovery of
America and the exploitation of the Peruvian mines changed all this. The centre
of trade was transferred from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic seaboard. The
old “commercial cities” of Italy lost their financial importance. New
“commercial nations” took their place and gold and silver were no longer a
curiosity.
Through Spain and Portugal and Holland and England, precious metals began
to find their way to Europe. The sixteenth century had its own writers on the
subject of political economy and they evolved a theory of national wealth which
seemed to them entirely sound and of the greatest possible benefit to their
respective countries. They reasoned that both gold and silver were actual wealth.
Therefore they believed that the country with the largest supply of actual cash in
the vaults of its treasury and its banks was at the same time the richest country.
And since money meant armies, it followed that the richest country was also the
most powerful and could rule the rest of the world.
We call this system the “mercantile system,” and it was accepted with the
same unquestioning faith with which the early Christians believed in Miracles
and many of the present-day American business men believe in the Tariff. In
practice, the Mercantile system worked out as follows: To get the largest surplus
of precious metals a country must have a favourable balance of export trade. If
you can export more to your neighbour than he exports to your own country, he
will owe you money and will be obliged to send you some of his gold. Hence
you gain and he loses. As a result of this creed, the economic program of almost
every seventeenth century state was as follows:
1. Try to get possession of as many precious metals as you can.
2. Encourage foreign trade in preference to domestic trade.
3. Encourage those industries which change raw materials into exportable
finished products.
4. Encourage a large population, for you will need workmen for your factories
and an agricultural community does not raise enough workmen.
5. Let the State watch this process and interfere whenever it is necessary to do
so.
Instead of regarding International Trade as something akin to a force of nature
which would always obey certain natural laws regardless of man’s interference,
the people of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries tried to regulate their
commerce by the help of official decrees and royal laws and financial help on
the part of the government.
In the sixteenth century Charles V adopted this Mercantile System (which was
then something entirely new) and introduced it into his many possessions.
Elizabeth of England flattered him by her imitation. The Bourbons, especially
King Louis XIV, were fanatical adherents of this doctrine and Colbert, his great
minister of finance, became the prophet of Mercantilism to whom all Europe
looked for guidance.
The entire foreign policy of Cromwell was a practical application of the
Mercantile System. It was invariably directed against the rich rival Republic of
Holland. For the Dutch shippers, as the common-carriers of the merchandise of
Europe, had certain leanings towards free-trade and therefore had to be
destroyed at all cost.
It will be easily understood how such a system must affect the colonies. A
colony under the Mercantile System became merely a reservoir of gold and
silver and spices, which was to be tapped for the benefit of the home country.
The Asiatic, American and African supply of precious metals and the raw
materials of these tropical countries became a monopoly of the state which
happened to own that particular colony. No outsider was ever allowed within the
precincts and no native was permitted to trade with a merchant whose ship flew
a foreign flag.
Undoubtedly the Mercantile System encouraged the development of young
industries in certain countries where there never had been any manufacturing
before. It built roads and dug canals and made for better means of transportation.
It demanded greater skill among the workmen and gave the merchant a better
social position, while it weakened the power of the landed aristocracy.

HOW EUROPE CONQUERED THE WORLD

On the other hand, it caused very great misery. It made the natives in the
colonies the victims of a most shameless exploitation. It exposed the citizens of
the home country to an even more terrible fate. It helped in a great measure to
turn every land into an armed camp and divided the world into little bits of
territory, each working for its own direct benefit, while striving at all times to
destroy the power of its neighbours and get hold of their treasures. It laid so
much stress upon the importance of owning wealth that “being rich” came to be
regarded as the sole virtue of the average citizen. Economic systems come and
go like the fashions in surgery and in the clothes of women, and during the
nineteenth century the Mercantile System was discarded in favor of a system of
free and open competition. At least, so I have been told.

SEA POWER
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

AT THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EUROPE HEARD


STRANGE REPORTS OF SOMETHING WHICH HAD HAPPENED IN
THE WILDERNESS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN CONTINENT. THE
DESCENDANTS OF THE MEN WHO HAD PUNISHED KING
CHARLES FOR HIS INSISTENCE UPON HIS “DIVINE RIGHTS”
ADDED A NEW CHAPTER TO THE OLD STORY OF THE STRUGGLE
FOR SELF-GOVERNMENT

FOR the sake of convenience, we ought to go back a few


THE FIGHT FOR LIBERTY
centuries and repeat the early history of the great struggle for
colonial possessions.
As soon as a number of European nations had been created upon the new basis
of national or dynastic interests, that is to say, during and immediately after the
Thirty Years War, their rulers, backed up by the capital of their merchants and
the ships of their trading companies, continued the fight for more territory in
Asia, Africa and America.

THE PILGRIMS

The Spaniards and the Portuguese had been exploring the Indian Sea and the
Pacific Ocean for more than a century ere Holland and England appeared upon
the stage. This proved an advantage to the latter. The first rough work had
already been done. What is more, the earliest navigators had so often made
themselves unpopular with the Asiatic and American and African natives that
both the English and the Dutch were welcomed as friends and deliverers. We
cannot claim any superior virtues for either of these two races. But they were
merchants before everything else. They never allowed religious considerations to
interfere with their practical common sense. During their first relations with
weaker races, all European nations have behaved with shocking brutality. The
English and the Dutch, however, knew better where to draw the line. Provided
they got their spices and their gold and silver and their taxes, they were willing
to let the native live as it best pleased him.

HOW THE WHITE MAN SETTLED IN NORTH AMERICA

It was not very difficult for them therefore to establish themselves in the
richest parts of the world. But as soon as this had been accomplished, they began
to fight each other for still further possessions. Strangely enough, the colonial
wars were never settled in the colonies themselves. They were decided three
thousand miles away by the navies of the contending countries. It is one of the
most interesting principles of ancient and modern warfare (one of the few
reliable laws of history) that “the nation which commands the sea is also the
nation which commands the land.” So far this law has never failed to work, but
the modern airplane may have changed it. In the eighteenth century, however,
there were no flying machines and it was the British navy which gained for
England her vast American and Indian and African colonies.
The series of naval wars between England and Holland in the seventeenth
century does not interest us here. It ended as all such encounters between
hopelessly ill-matched powers will end. But the warfare between England and
France (her other rival) is of greater importance to us, for while the superior
British fleet in the end defeated the French navy, a great deal of the preliminary
fighting was done on our own American continent. In this vast country, both
France and England claimed everything which had been discovered and a lot
more which the eye of no white man had ever seen. In 1497 Cabot had landed in
the northern part of America and twenty-seven years later, Giovanni Verrazano
had visited these coasts. Cabot had flown the English flag. Verrazano had sailed
under the French flag. Hence both England and France proclaimed themselves
the owners of the entire continent.
During the seventeenth century, some ten small English colonies had been
founded between Maine and the Carolinas. They were usually a haven of refuge
for some particular sect of English dissenters, such as the Puritans, who in the
year 1620 went to New England, or the Quakers, who settled in Pennsylvania in
1681. They were small frontier communities, nestling close to the shores of the
ocean, where people had gathered to make a new home and begin life among
happier surroundings, far away from royal supervision and interference.

IN THE CABIN OF THE MAYFLOWER

The French colonies, on the other hand, always remained a possession of the
crown. No Huguenots or Protestants were allowed in these colonies for fear that
they might contaminate the Indians with their dangerous Protestant doctrines and
would perhaps interfere with the missionary work of the Jesuit fathers. The
English colonies, therefore, had been founded upon a much healthier basis than
their French neighbours and rivals. They were an expression of the commercial
energy of the English middle classes, while the French settlements were
inhabited by people who had crossed the ocean as servants of the king and who
expected to return to Paris at the first possible chance.
Politically, however, the position of the English colonies was far from
satisfactory. The French had discovered the mouth of the Saint Lawrence in the
sixteenth century. From the region of the Great Lakes they had worked their way
southward, had descended the Mississippi and had built several fortifications
along the Gulf of Mexico. After a century of exploration, a line of sixty French
forts cut off the English settlements along the Atlantic seaboard from the interior.

THE FRENCH EXPLORE THE WEST

The English land grants, made to the different colonial companies had given
them “all land from sea to sea.” This sounded well on paper, but in practice,
British territory ended where the line of French fortifications began. To break
through this barrier was possible but it took both men and money and caused a
series of horrible border wars in which both sides murdered their white
neighbours, with the help of the Indian tribes.

THE BLOCKHOUSE IN THE WILDERNESS

As long as the Stuarts had ruled England there had been no danger of war with
France. The Stuarts needed the Bourbons in their attempt to establish an
autocratic form of government and to break the power of Parliament. But in
1689 the last of the Stuarts had disappeared from British soil and Dutch William,
the great enemy of Louis XIV succeeded him. From that time on, until the Treaty
of Paris of 1763, France and England fought for the possession of India and
North America.
During these wars, as I have said before, the English navies invariably beat
the French. Cut off from her colonies, France lost most of her possessions, and
when peace was declared, the entire North American continent had fallen into
British hands and the great work of exploration of Cartier, Champlain, La Salle,
Marquette and a score of others was lost to France.

THE FIRST WINTER IN NEW ENGLAND


Only a very small part of this vast domain was inhabited. From Massachusetts
in the north, where the Pilgrims (a sect of Puritans who were very intolerant and
who therefore had found no happiness either in Anglican England or Calvinist
Holland) had landed in the year 1620, to the Carolinas and Virginia (the tobacco-
raising provinces which had been founded entirely for the sake of profit),
stretched a thin line of sparsely populated territory. But the men who lived in this
new land of fresh air and high skies were very different from their brethren of
the mother country. In the wilderness they had learned independence and self-
reliance. They were the sons of hardy and energetic ancestors. Lazy and
timourous people did not cross the ocean in those days. The American colonists
hated the restraint and the lack of breathing space which had made their lives in
the old country so very unhappy. They meant to be their own masters. This the
ruling classes of England did not seem to understand. The government annoyed
the colonists and the colonists, who hated to be bothered in this way, began to
annoy the British government.
Bad feeling caused more bad feeling. It is not necessary to repeat here in
detail what actually happened and what might have been avoided if the British
king had been more intelligent than George III or less given to drowsiness and
indifference than his minister, Lord North. The British colonists, when they
understood that peaceful arguments would not settle the difficulties, took to
arms. From being loyal subjects, they turned rebels, who exposed themselves to
the punishment of death when they were captured by the German soldiers, whom
George hired to do his fighting after the pleasant custom of that day, when
Teutonic princes sold whole regiments to the highest bidder.
The war between England and her American colonies lasted seven years.
During most of that time, the final success of the rebels seemed very doubtful. A
great number of the people, especially in the cities, had remained loyal to their
king. They were in favour of a compromise, and would have been willing to sue
for peace. But the great figure of Washington stood guard over the cause of the
colonists.
Ably assisted by a handful of brave men, he used his steadfast but badly
equipped armies to weaken the forces of the king. Time and again when defeat
seemed unavoidable, his strategy turned the tide of battle. Often his men were
ill-fed. During the winter they lacked shoes and coats and were forced to live in
unhealthy dug-outs. But their trust in their great leader was absolute and they
stuck it out until the final hour of victory.
But more interesting than the campaigns of Washington or the diplomatic
triumphs of Benjamin Franklin who was in Europe getting money from the
French government and the Amsterdam bankers, was an event which occurred
early in the revolution. The representatives of the different colonies had gathered
in Philadelphia to discuss matters of common importance. It was the first year of
the Revolution. Most of the big towns of the sea coast were still in the hands of
the British. Reinforcements from England were arriving by the ship load. Only
men who were deeply convinced of the righteousness of their cause would have
found the courage to take the momentous decision of the months of June and
July of the year 1776.

GEORGE WASHINGTON

In June, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia proposed a motion to the Continental


Congress that “these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and
independent states, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British
crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great
Britain is and ought to be, totally dissolved.”
The motion was seconded by John Adams of Massachusetts. It was carried on
July the second and on July fourth, it was followed by an official Declaration of
Independence, which was the work of Thomas Jefferson, a serious and
exceedingly capable student of both politics and government and destined to be
one of the most famous of our American presidents.

THE GREAT AMERICAN REVOLUTION

When news of this event reached Europe, and was followed by the final
victory of the colonists and the adoption of the famous Constitution of the year
1787 (the first of all written constitutions) it caused great interest. The dynastic
system of the highly centralised states which had been developed after the great
religious wars of the seventeenth century had reached the height of its power.
Everywhere the palace of the king had grown to enormous proportions, while the
cities of the royal realm were being surrounded by rapidly growing acres of
slums. The inhabitants of those slums were showing signs of restlessness. They
were quite helpless. But the higher classes, the nobles and the professional men,
they too were beginning to have certain doubts about the economic and political
conditions under which they lived. The success of the American colonists
showed them that many things were possible which had been held impossible
only a short time before.
According to the poet, the shot which opened the battle of Lexington was
“heard around the world.” That was a bit of an exaggeration. The Chinese and
the Japanese and the Russians (not to speak of the Australians and the Hawaiians
who had just been re-discovered by Captain Cook, whom they had killed for his
trouble) never heard of it at all. But it carried across the Atlantic Ocean. It
landed in the powder house of European discontent and in France it caused an
explosion which rocked the entire continent from Petrograd to Madrid and
buried the representatives of the old statecraft and the old diplomacy under
several tons of democratic bricks.
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

THE GREAT FRENCH REVOLUTION PROCLAIMS THE PRINCIPLES OF


LIBERTY, FRATERNITY AND EQUALITY UNTO ALL THE PEOPLE
OF THE EARTH

BEFORE we talk about a revolution it is just as well that we explain just what
this word means. In the terms of a great Russian writer (and Russians ought to
know what they are talking about in this field) a revolution is “a swift overthrow,
in a few years, of institutions which have taken centuries to root in the soil, and
seem so fixed and immovable that even the most ardent reformers hardly dare to
attack them in their writings. It is the fall, the crumbling away in a brief period,
of all that up to that time has composed the essence of social, religious, political
and economic life in a nation.”
Such a revolution took place in France in the eighteenth century when the old
civilisation of the country had grown stale. The king in the days of Louis XIV
had become EVERYTHING and was the state. The Nobility, formerly the civil
servant of the federal state, found itself without any duties and became a social
ornament of the royal court.
This French state of the eighteenth century, however, cost incredible sums of
money. This money had to be produced in the form of taxes. Unfortunately the
kings of France had not been strong enough to force the nobility and the clergy
to pay their share of these taxes. Hence the taxes were paid entirely by the
agricultural population. But the peasants living in dreary hovels, no longer in
intimate contact with their former landlords, but victims of cruel and
incompetent land agents, were going from bad to worse. Why should they work
and exert themselves? Increased returns upon their land merely meant more
taxes and nothing for themselves and therefore they neglected their fields as
much as they dared.
Hence we have a king who wanders in empty splendour through the vast halls
of his palaces, habitually followed by hungry office seekers, all of whom live
upon the revenue obtained from peasants who are no better than the beasts of the
fields. It is not a pleasant picture, but it is not exaggerated. There was, however,
another side to the so-called “Ancien Régime” which we must keep in mind.
A wealthy middle class, closely connected with the nobility (by the usual
process of the rich banker’s daughter marrying the poor baron’s son) and a court
composed of all the most entertaining people of France, had brought the polite
art of graceful living to its highest development. As the best brains of the
country were not allowed to occupy themselves with questions of political
economics, they spent their idle hours upon the discussion of abstract ideas.
As fashions in modes of thought and personal behaviour are quite as likely to
run to extremes as fashion in dress, it was natural that the most artificial society
of that day should take a tremendous interest in what they considered “the
simple life.” The king and the queen, the absolute and unquestioned proprietors
of France, and all its colonies and dependencies, together with their courtiers,
went to live in funny little country houses all dressed up as milk-maids and
stable-boys and played at being shepherds in a happy vale of ancient Hellas.
Around them, their courtiers danced attendance, their court-musicians composed
lovely minuets, their court barbers devised more and more elaborate and costly
headgear, until from sheer boredom and lack of real jobs, this whole artificial
world of Versailles (the great show place which Louis XIV had built far away
from his noisy and restless city) talked of nothing but those subjects which were
furthest removed from their own lives, just as a man who is starving will talk of
nothing except food.
When Voltaire, the courageous old philosopher, playwright, historian and
novelist, and the great enemy of all religious and political tyranny, began to
throw his bombs of criticism at everything connected with the Established Order
of Things, the whole French world applauded him and his theatrical pieces
played to standing room only. When Jean Jacques Rousseau waxed sentimental
about primitive man and gave his contemporaries delightful descriptions of the
happiness of the original inhabitants of this planet, (about whom he knew as
little as he did about the children, upon whose education he was the recognised
authority,) all France read his “Social Contract” and this society in which the
king and the state were one, wept bitter tears when they heard Rousseau’s appeal
for a return to the blessed days when the real sovereignty had lain in the hands of
the people and when the king had been merely the servant of his people.
When Montesquieu published his “Persian Letters” in which two
distinguished Persian travellers turn the whole existing society of France topsy-
turvy and poke fun at everything from the king down to the lowest of his six
hundred pastry cooks, the book immediately went through four editions and
assured the writer thousands of readers for his famous discussion of the “Spirit
of the Laws” in which the noble Baron compared the excellent English system
with the backward system of France and advocated instead of an absolute
monarchy the establishment of a state in which the Executive, the Legislative
and the Judicial powers should be in separate hands and should work
independently of each other. When Lebreton, the Parisian book-seller,
announced that Messieurs Diderot, d’Alembert, Turgot and a score of other
distinguished writers were going to publish an Encyclopædia which was to
contain “all the new ideas and the new science and the new knowledge,” the
response from the side of the public was most satisfactory, and when after
twenty-two years the last of the twenty-eight volumes had been finished, the
somewhat belated interference of the police could not repress the enthusiasm
with which French society received this most important but very dangerous
contribution to the discussions of the day.
Here, let me give you a little warning. When you read a novel
THE GUILLOTINE
about the French revolution or see a play or a movie, you will
easily get the impression that the Revolution was the work of the rabble from the
Paris slums. It was nothing of the kind. The mob appears often upon the
revolutionary stage, but invariably at the instigation and under the leadership of
those middle-class professional men who used the hungry multitude as an
efficient ally in their warfare upon the king and his court. But the fundamental
ideas which caused the revolution were invented by a few brilliant minds, and
they were at first introduced into the charming drawing-rooms of the “Ancien
Régime” to provide amiable diversion for the much-bored ladies and gentlemen
of his Majesty’s court. These pleasant but careless people played with the
dangerous fireworks of social criticism until the sparks fell through the cracks of
the floor, which was old and rotten just like the rest of the building. Those sparks
unfortunately landed in the basement where age-old rubbish lay in great
confusion. Then there was a cry of fire. But the owner of the house who was
interested in everything except the management of his property, did not know
how to put the small blaze out. The flame spread rapidly and the entire edifice
was consumed by the conflagration, which we call the Great French Revolution.
For the sake of convenience, we can divide the French Revolution into two
parts. From 1789 to 1791 there was a more or less orderly attempt to introduce a
constitutional monarchy. This failed, partly through lack of good faith and
stupidity on the part of the monarch himself, partly through circumstances over
which nobody had any control.
From 1792 to 1799 there was a Republic and a first effort to establish a
democratic form of government. But the actual outbreak of violence had been
preceded by many years of unrest and many sincere but ineffectual attempts at
reform.
When France had a debt of 4000 million francs and the treasury was always
empty and there was not a single thing upon which new taxes could be levied,
even good King Louis (who was an expert locksmith and a great hunter but a
very poor statesman) felt vaguely that something ought to be done. Therefore he
called for Turgot, to be his Minister of Finance. Anne Robert Jacques Turgot,
Baron de l’Aulne, a man in the early sixties, a splendid representative of the fast
disappearing class of landed gentry, had been a successful governor of a
province and was an amateur political economist of great ability. He did his best.
Unfortunately, he could not perform miracles. As it was impossible to squeeze
more taxes out of the ragged peasants, it was necessary to get the necessary
funds from the nobility and clergy who had never paid a centime. This made
Turgot the best hated man at the court of Versailles. Furthermore he was obliged
to face the enmity of Marie Antoinette, the queen, who was against everybody
who dared to mention the word “economy” within her hearing. Soon Turgot was
called an “unpractical visionary” and a “theoretical professor” and then of course
his position became untenable. In the year 1776 he was forced to resign.
After the “professor” there came a man of Practical Business Sense. He was
an industrious Swiss by the name of Necker who had made himself rich as a
grain speculator and the partner in an international banking house. His ambitious
wife had pushed him into the government service that she might establish a
position for her daughter who afterwards as the wife of the Swedish minister in
Paris, Baron de Staël, became a famous literary figure of the early nineteenth
century.
Necker set to work with a fine display of zeal just as Turgot had done. In 1781
he published a careful review of the French finances. The king understood
nothing of this “Compte Rendu.” He had just sent troops to America to help the
colonists against their common enemies, the English. This expedition proved to
be unexpectedly expensive and Necker was asked to find the necessary funds.
When instead of producing revenue, he published more figures and made
statistics and began to use the dreary warning about “necessary economies” his
days were numbered. In the year 1781 he was dismissed as an incompetent
servant.
After the Professor and the Practical Business Man came the LOUIS XVI
delightful type of financier who will guarantee everybody 100 per cent. per
month on their money if only they will trust his own infallible system. He was
Charles Alexandre de Calonne, a pushing official, who had made his career both
by his industry and his complete lack of honesty and scruples. He found the
country heavily indebted, but he was a clever man, willing to oblige everybody,
and he invented a quick remedy. He paid the old debts by contracting new ones.
This method is not new. The result since time immemorial has been disastrous.
In less than three years more than 800,000,000 francs had been added to the
French debt by this charming Minister of Finance who never worried and
smilingly signed his name to every demand that was made by His Majesty and
by his lovely Queen, who had learned the habit of spending during the days of
her youth in Vienna.
At last even the Parliament of Paris (a high court of justice and not a
legislative body) although by no means lacking in loyalty to their sovereign,
decided that something must be done. Calonne wanted to borrow another
80,000,000 francs. It had been a bad year for the crops and the misery and
hunger in the country districts were terrible. Unless something sensible were
done, France would go bankrupt. The King as always was unaware of the
seriousness of the situation. Would it not be a good idea to consult the
representatives of the people? Since 1614 no Estates General had been called
together. In view of the threatening panic there was a demand that the Estates be
convened. Louis XVI however, who never could take a decision, refused to go as
far as that.
To pacify the popular clamour he called together a meeting of the Notables in
the year 1787. This merely meant a gathering of the best families who discussed
what could and should be done, without touching their feudal and clerical
privilege of tax-exemption. It is unreasonable to expect that a certain class of
society shall commit political and economic suicide for the benefit of another
group of fellow-citizens. The 127 Notables obstinately refused to surrender a
single one of their ancient rights. The crowd in the street, being now exceedingly
hungry, demanded that Necker, in whom they had confidence, be reappointed.
The Notables said “No.” The crowd in the street began to smash windows and
do other unseemly things. The Notables fled. Calonne was dismissed.
A new colourless Minister of Finance, the Cardinal Loménie de Brienne, was
appointed and Louis, driven by the violent threats of his starving subjects, agreed
to call together the old Estates General as “soon as practicable.” This vague
promise of course satisfied no one.
No such severe winter had been experienced for almost a century. The crops
had been either destroyed by floods or had been frozen to death in the fields. All
the olive trees of Provence had been killed. Private charity tried to do something
but could accomplish little for eighteen million starving people. Everywhere
bread riots occurred. A generation before these would have been put down by the
army. But the work of the new philosophical school had begun to bear fruit.
People began to understand that a shotgun is no effective remedy for a hungry
stomach and even the soldiers (who came from among the people) were no
longer to be depended upon. It was absolutely necessary that the king should do
something definite to regain the popular goodwill, but again he hesitated.
Here and there in the provinces, little independent Republics were established
by followers of the new school. The cry of “no taxation without representation”
(the slogan of the American rebels a quarter of a century before) was heard
among the faithful middle classes. France was threatened with general anarchy.
To appease the people and to increase the royal popularity, the government
unexpectedly suspended the former very strict form of censorship of books. At
once a flood of ink descended upon France. Everybody, high or low, criticised
and was criticised. More than 2000 pamphlets were published. Loménie de
Brienne was swept away by a storm of abuse. Necker was hastily called back to
placate, as best he could, the nation-wide unrest. Immediately the stock market
went up thirty per cent. And by common consent, people suspended judgment
for a little while longer. In May of 1789 the Estates General were to assemble
and then the wisdom of the entire nation would speedily solve the difficult
problem of recreating the kingdom of France into a healthy and happy state.
This prevailing idea, that the combined wisdom of the people would be able to
solve all difficulties, proved disastrous. It lamed all personal effort during many
important months. Instead of keeping the government in his own hands at this
critical moment, Necker allowed everything to drift. Hence there was a new
outbreak of the acrimonious debate upon the best ways to reform the old
kingdom. Everywhere the power of the police weakened. The people of the Paris
suburbs, under the leadership of professional agitators, gradually began to
discover their strength, and commenced to play the rôle which was to be theirs
all through the years of the great unrest, when they acted as the brute force
which was used by the actual leaders of the Revolution to secure those things
which could not be obtained in a legitimate fashion.
THE BASTILLE

As a sop to the peasants and the middle class, Necker decided that they should
be allowed a double representation in the Estates General. Upon this subject, the
Abbé Siéyès then wrote a famous pamphlet, “To what does the Third Estate
Amount?” in which he came to the conclusion that the Third Estate (a name
given to the middle class) ought to amount to everything, that it had not
amounted to anything in the past, and that it now desired to amount to
something. He expressed the sentiment of the great majority of the people who
had the best interests of the country at heart.
Finally the elections took place under the worst conditions imaginable. When
they were over, 308 clergymen, 285 noblemen and 621 representatives of the
Third Estate packed their trunks to go to Versailles. The Third Estate was
obliged to carry additional luggage. This consisted of voluminous reports called
“cahiers” in which the many complaints and grievances of their constituents had
been written down. The stage was set for the great final act that was to save
France.
The Estates General came together on May 5th, 1789. The king was in a bad
humour. The Clergy and the Nobility let it be known that they were unwilling to
give up a single one of their privileges. The king ordered the three groups of
representatives to meet in different rooms and discuss their grievances
separately. The Third Estate refused to obey the royal command. They took a
solemn oath to that effect in a squash court (hastily put in order for the purpose
of this illegal meeting) on the 20th of June, 1789. They insisted that all three
Estates, Nobility, Clergy and Third Estate, should meet together and so informed
His Majesty. The king gave in.
As the “National Assembly,” the Estates General began to discuss the state of
the French kingdom. The King got angry. Then again he hesitated. He said that
he would never surrender his absolute power. Then he went hunting, forgot all
about the cares of the state and when he returned from the chase he gave in. For
it was the royal habit to do the right thing at the wrong time in the wrong way.
When the people clamoured for A, the king scolded them and gave them
nothing. Then, when the Palace was surrounded by a howling multitude of poor
people, the king surrendered and gave his subjects what they had asked for. By
this time, however, the people wanted A plus B. The comedy was repeated.
When the king signed his name to the Royal Decree which granted his beloved
subjects A and B they were threatening to kill the entire royal family unless they
received A plus B plus C. And so on, through the whole alphabet and up to the
scaffold.
Unfortunately the king was always just one letter behind. He never understood
this. Even when he laid his head under the guillotine, he felt that he was a much-
abused man who had received a most unwarrantable treatment at the hands of
people whom he had loved to the best of his limited ability.
Historical “ifs,” as I have often warned you, are never of any value. It is very
easy for us to say that the monarchy might have been saved “if” Louis had been
a man of greater energy and less kindness of heart. But the king was not alone.
Even “if” he had possessed the ruthless strength of Napoleon, his career during
these difficult days might have been easily ruined by his wife who was the
daughter of Maria Theresa of Austria and who possessed all the characteristic
virtues and vices of a young girl who had been brought up at the most autocratic
and mediæval court of that age.
She decided that some action must be taken and planned a counter-revolution.
Necker was suddenly dismissed and loyal troops were called to Paris. The
people, when they heard of this, stormed the fortress of the Bastille prison, and
on the fourteenth of July of the year 1789, they destroyed this familiar but much-
hated symbol of Autocratic Power which had long since ceased to be a political
prison and was now used as the city lock-up for pickpockets and second-story
men. Many of the nobles took the hint and left the country. But the king as usual
did nothing. He had been hunting on the day of the fall of the Bastille and he had
shot several deer and felt very much pleased.
The National Assembly now set to work and on the 4th of August, with the
noise of the Parisian multitude in their ears, they abolished all privileges. This
was followed on the 27th of August by the “Declaration of the Rights of Man,”
the famous preamble to the first French constitution. So far so good, but the
court had apparently not yet learned its lesson. There was a wide-spread
suspicion that the king was again trying to interfere with these reforms and as a
result, on the 5th of October, there was a second riot in Paris. It spread to
Versailles and the people were not pacified until they had brought the king back
to his palace in Paris. They did not trust him in Versailles. They liked to have
him where they could watch him and control his correspondence with his
relatives in Vienna and Madrid and the other courts of Europe.
In the Assembly meanwhile, Mirabeau, a nobleman who had become leader of
the Third Estate, was beginning to put order into chaos. But before he could save
the position of the king he died, on the 2nd of April of the year 1791. The king,
who now began to fear for his own life, tried to escape on the 21st of June. He
was recognised from his picture on a coin, was stopped near the village of
Varennes by members of the National Guard, and was brought back to Paris.
In September of 1791, the first constitution of France was accepted, and the
members of the National Assembly went home. On the first of October of 1791,
the legislative assembly came together to continue the work of the National
Assembly. In this new gathering of popular representatives there were many
extremely revolutionary elements. The boldest among these were known as the
Jacobins, after the old Jacobin cloister in which they held their political
meetings. These young men (most of them belonging to the professional classes)
made very violent speeches and when the newspapers carried these orations to
Berlin and Vienna, the King of Prussia and the Emperor decided that they must
do something to save their good brother and sister. They were very busy just
then dividing the kingdom of Poland, where rival political factions had caused
such a state of disorder that the country was at the mercy of anybody who
wanted to take a couple of provinces. But they managed to send an army to
invade France and deliver the king.
Then a terrible panic of fear swept throughout the land of France. All the pent-
up hatred of years of hunger and suffering came to a horrible climax. The mob of
Paris stormed the palace of the Tuileries. The faithful Swiss bodyguards tried to
defend their master, but Louis, unable to make up his mind, gave order to “cease
firing” just when the crowd was retiring. The people, drunk with blood and noise
and cheap wine, murdered the Swiss to the last man, then invaded the palace,
and went after Louis who had escaped into the meeting hall of the Assembly,
where he was immediately suspended of his office, and from where he was taken
as a prisoner to the old castle of the Temple.
But the armies of Austria and Prussia continued their advance and the panic
changed into hysteria and turned men and women into wild beasts. In the first
week of September of the year 1792, the crowd broke into the jails and murdered
all the prisoners. The government did not interfere. The Jacobins, headed by
Danton, knew that this crisis meant either the success or the failure of the
revolution, and that only the most brutal audacity could save them. The
Legislative Assembly was closed and on the 21st of September of the year 1792,
a new National Convention came together. It was a body composed almost
entirely of extreme revolutionists. The king was formally accused of high
treason and was brought before the Convention. He was found guilty and by a
vote of 361 to 360 (the extra vote being that of his cousin the Duke of Orleans)
he was condemned to death. On the 21st of January of the year 1793, he quietly
and with much dignity suffered himself to be taken to the scaffold. He had never
understood what all the shooting and the fuss had been about. And he had been
too proud to ask questions.
Then the Jacobins turned against the more moderate element in the
convention, the Girondists, called after their southern district, the Gironde. A
special revolutionary tribunal was instituted and twenty-one of the leading
Girondists were condemned to death. The others committed suicide. They were
capable and honest men but too philosophical and too moderate to survive
during these frightful years.
In October of the year 1793 the Constitution was suspended by the Jacobins
“until peace should have been declared.” All power was placed in the hands of a
small committee of Public Safety, with Danton and Robespierre as its leaders.
The Christian religion and the old chronology were abolished. The “Age of
Reason” (of which Thomas Paine had written so eloquently during the American
Revolution) had come and with it the “Terror” which for more than a year killed
good and bad and indifferent people at the rate of seventy or eighty a day.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION INVADES HOLLAND

The autocratic rule of the King had been destroyed. It was succeeded by the
tyranny of a few people who had such a passionate love for democratic virtue
that they felt compelled to kill all those who disagreed with them. France was
turned into a slaughter house. Everybody suspected everybody else. No one felt
safe. Out of sheer fear, a few members of the old Convention, who knew that
they were the next candidates for the scaffold, finally turned against Robespierre,
who had already decapitated most of his former colleagues. Robespierre, “the
only true and pure Democrat,” tried to kill himself but failed. His shattered jaw
was hastily bandaged and he was dragged to the guillotine. On the 27th of July,
of the year 1794 (the 9th Thermidor of the year II, according to the strange
chronology of the revolution), the reign of Terror came to an end, and all Paris
danced with joy.
The dangerous position of France, however, made it necessary that the
government remain in the hands of a few strong men, until the many enemies of
the revolution should have been driven from the soil of the French fatherland.
While the half-clad and half-starved revolutionary armies fought their desperate
battles of the Rhine and Italy and Belgium and Egypt, and defeated every one of
the enemies of the Great Revolution, five Directors were appointed, and they
ruled France for four years. Then the power was vested in the hands of a
successful general by the name of Napoleon Bonaparte, who became “First
Consul” of France in the year 1799. And during the next fifteen years, the old
European continent became the laboratory of a number of political experiments,
the like of which the world had never seen before.
NAPOLEON

NAPOLEON

NAPOLEON was born in the year 1769, the third son of Carlo Maria Buonaparte,
an honest notary public of the city of Ajaccio in the island of Corsica, and his
good wife, Letizia Ramolino. He therefore was not a Frenchman, but an Italian
whose native island (an old Greek, Carthaginian and Roman colony in the
Mediterranean Sea) had for years been struggling to regain its independence,
first of all from the Genoese, and after the middle of the eighteenth century from
the French, who had kindly offered to help the Corsicans in their struggle for
freedom and had then occupied the island for their own benefit.
During the first twenty years of his life, young Napoleon was a professional
Corsican patriot—a Corsican Sinn Feiner, who hoped to deliver his beloved
country from the yoke of the bitterly hated French enemy. But the French
revolution had unexpectedly recognised the claims of the Corsicans and
gradually Napoleon, who had received a good training at the military school of
Brienne, drifted into the service of his adopted country. Although he never
learned to spell French correctly or to speak it without a broad Italian accent, he
became a Frenchman. In due time he came to stand as the highest expression of
all French virtues. At present he is regarded as the symbol of the Gallic genius.
Napoleon was what is called a fast worker. His career does not cover more
than twenty years. In that short span of time he fought more wars and gained
more victories and marched more miles and conquered more square kilometers
and killed more people and brought about more reforms and generally upset
Europe to a greater extent than anybody (including Alexander the Great and
Jenghis Khan) had ever managed to do.
He was a little fellow and during the first years of his life his health was not
very good. He never impressed anybody by his good looks and he remained to
the end of his days very clumsy whenever he was obliged to appear at a social
function. He did not enjoy a single advantage of breeding or birth or riches. For
the greater part of his youth he was desperately poor and often he had to go
without a meal or was obliged to make a few extra pennies in curious ways.
He gave little promise as a literary genius. When he competed for a prize
offered by the Academy of Lyons, his essay was found to be next to the last and
he was number 15 out of 16 candidates. But he overcame all these difficulties
through his absolute and unshakable belief in his own destiny, and in his own
glorious future. Ambition was the main-spring of his life. The thought of self,
the worship of that capital letter “N” with which he signed all his letters, and
which recurred forever in the ornaments of his hastily constructed palaces, the
absolute will to make the name Napoleon the most important thing in the world
next to the name of God, these desires carried Napoleon to a pinnacle of fame
which no other man has ever reached.
When he was a half-pay lieutenant, young Bonaparte was very fond of the
“Lives of Famous Men” which Plutarch, the Greek historian, had written. But he
never tried to live up to the high standard of character set by these heroes of the
older days. Napoleon seems to have been devoid of all those considerate and
thoughtful sentiments which make men different from the animals. It will be
very difficult to decide with any degree of accuracy whether he ever loved
anyone besides himself. He kept a civil tongue to his mother, but Letizia had the
air and manners of a great lady and after the fashion of Italian mothers, she knew
how to rule her brood of children and command their respect. For a few years he
was fond of Josephine, his pretty Creole wife, who was the daughter of a French
officer of Martinique and the widow of the Vicomte de Beauharnais, who had
been executed by Robespierre when he lost a battle against the Prussians. But the
Emperor divorced her when she failed to give him a son and heir and married the
daughter of the Austrian Emperor, because it seemed good policy.
During the siege of Toulon, where he gained great fame as commander of a
battery, Napoleon studied Macchiavelli with industrious care. He followed the
advice of the Florentine statesman and never kept his word when it was to his
advantage to break it. The word “gratitude” did not occur in his personal
dictionary. Neither, to be quite fair, did he expect it from others. He was totally
indifferent to human suffering. He executed prisoners of war (in Egypt in 1798)
who had been promised their lives, and he quietly allowed his wounded in Syria
to be chloroformed when he found it impossible to transport them to his ships.
He ordered the Duke of Enghien to be condemned to death by a prejudiced
court-martial and to be shot contrary to all law on the sole ground that the
“Bourbons needed a warning.” He decreed that those German officers who were
made prisoner while fighting for their country’s independence should be shot
against the nearest wall, and when Andreas Hofer, the Tyrolese hero, fell into his
hands after a most heroic resistance, he was executed like a common traitor.
In short, when we study the character of the Emperor, we begin to understand
those anxious British mothers who used to drive their children to bed with the
threat that “Bonaparte, who ate little boys and girls for breakfast, would come
and get them if they were not very good.” And yet, having said these many
unpleasant things about this strange tyrant, who looked after every other
department of his army with the utmost care, but neglected the medical service,
and who ruined his uniforms with Eau de Cologne because he could not stand
the smell of his poor sweating soldiers; having said all these unpleasant things
and being fully prepared to add many more, I must confess to a certain lurking
feeling of doubt.
Here I am sitting at a comfortable table loaded heavily with books, with one
eye on my typewriter and the other on Licorice the cat, who has a great fondness
for carbon paper, and I am telling you that the Emperor Napoleon was a most
contemptible person. But should I happen to look out of the window, down upon
Seventh Avenue, and should the endless procession of trucks and carts come to a
sudden halt, and should I hear the sound of the heavy drums and see the little
man on his white horse in his old and much-worn green uniform, then I don’t
know, but I am afraid that I would leave my books and the kitten and my home
and everything else to follow him wherever he cared to lead. My own
grandfather did this and Heaven knows he was not born to be a hero. Millions of
other people’s grandfathers did it. They received no reward, but they expected
none. They cheerfully gave legs and arms and lives to serve this foreigner, who
took them a thousand miles away from their homes and marched them into a
barrage of Russian or English or Spanish or Italian or Austrian cannon and
stared quietly into space while they were rolling in the agony of death.
If you ask me for an explanation, I must answer that I have none. I can only
guess at one of the reasons. Napoleon was the greatest of actors and the whole
European continent was his stage. At all times and under all circumstances he
knew the precise attitude that would impress the spectators most and he
understood what words would make the deepest impression. Whether he spoke
in the Egyptian desert, before the backdrop of the Sphinx and the pyramids, or
addressed his shivering men on the dew-soaked plains of Italy, made no
difference. At all times he was master of the situation. Even at the end, an exile
on a little rock in the middle of the Atlantic, a sick man at the mercy of a dull
and intolerable British governor, he held the centre of the stage.
After the defeat of Waterloo, no one outside of a few trusted friends ever saw
the great Emperor. The people of Europe knew that he was living on the island
of St. Helena—they knew that a British garrison guarded him day and night—
they knew that the British fleet guarded the garrison which guarded the Emperor
on his farm at Longwood. But he was never out of the mind of either friend or
enemy. When illness and despair had at last taken him away, his silent eyes
continued to haunt the world. Even to-day he is as much of a force in the life of
France as a hundred years ago when people fainted at the mere sight of this
sallow-faced man who stabled his horses in the holiest temples of the Russian
Kremlin, and who treated the Pope and the mighty ones of this earth as if they
were his lackeys.
To give you a mere outline of his life would demand a couple of volumes. To
tell you of his great political reform of the French state, of his new codes of laws
which were adopted in most European countries, of his activities in every field
of public activity, would take thousands of pages. But I can explain in a few
words why he was so successful during the first part of his career and why he
failed during the last ten years. From the year 1789 until the year 1804,
Napoleon was the great leader of the French revolution. He was not merely
fighting for the glory of his own name. He defeated Austria and Italy and
England and Russia because he, himself, and his soldiers were the apostles of the
new creed of “Liberty, Fraternity and Equality” and were the enemies of the
courts while they were the friends of the people.
But in the year 1804, Napoleon made himself Hereditary Emperor of the
French and sent for Pope Pius VII to come and crown him, even as Leo III, in
the year 800 had crowned that other great King of the Franks, Charlemagne,
whose example was constantly before Napoleon’s eyes.
Once upon the throne, the old revolutionary chieftain became an unsuccessful
imitation of a Habsburg monarch. He forgot his spiritual Mother, the Political
Club of the Jacobins. He ceased to be the defender of the oppressed. He became
the chief of all the oppressors and kept his shooting squads ready to execute
those who dared to oppose his imperial will. No one had shed a tear when in the
year 1806 the sad remains of the Holy Roman Empire were carted to the
historical dustbin and when the last relic of ancient Roman glory was destroyed
by the grandson of an Italian peasant. But when the Napoleonic armies had
invaded Spain, had forced the Spaniards to recognise a king whom they detested,
had massacred the poor Madrilenes who remained faithful to their old rulers,
then public opinion turned against the former hero of Marengo and Austerlitz
and a hundred other revolutionary battles. Then and only then, when Napoleon
was no longer the hero of the revolution but the personification of all the bad
traits of the Old Régime, was it possible for England to give direction to the fast-
spreading sentiment of hatred which was turning all honest men into enemies of
the French Emperor.
The English people from the very beginning had felt deeply disgusted when
their newspapers told them the gruesome details of the Terror. They had staged
their own great revolution (during the reign of Charles I) a century before. It had
been a very simple affair compared to the upheaval of Paris. In the eyes of the
average Englishman a Jacobin was a monster to be shot at sight and Napoleon
was the Chief Devil. The British fleet had blockaded France ever since the year
1798. It had spoiled Napoleon’s plan to invade India by way of Egypt and had
forced him to beat an ignominious retreat, after his victories along the banks of
the Nile. And finally, in the year 1805, England got the chance it had waited for
so long.
Near Cape Trafalgar on the southwestern coast of Spain, Nelson annihilated
the Napoleonic fleet, beyond a possible chance of recovery. From that moment
on, the Emperor was landlocked. Even so, he would have been able to maintain
himself as the recognised ruler of the continent had he understood the signs of
the times and accepted the honourable peace which the powers offered him. But
Napoleon had been blinded by the blaze of his own glory. He would recognise
no equals. He could tolerate no rivals. And his hatred turned against Russia, the
mysterious land of the endless plains with its inexhaustible supply of cannon-
fodder.

THE RETREAT FROM MOSCOW

As long as Russia was ruled by Paul I, the half-witted son of Catherine the
Great, Napoleon had known how to deal with the situation. But Paul grew more
and more irresponsible until his exasperated subjects were obliged to murder
him, (lest they all be sent to the Siberian lead-mines) and the son of Paul, the
Emperor Alexander, did not share his father’s affection for the usurper whom he
regarded as the enemy of mankind, the eternal disturber of the peace. He was a
pious man who believed that he had been chosen by God to deliver the world
from the Corsican curse. He joined Prussia and England and Austria and he was
defeated. He tried five times and five times he failed. In the year 1812 he once
more taunted Napoleon until the French Emperor, in a blind rage, vowed that he
would dictate peace in Moscow. Then, from far and wide, from Spain and
Germany and Holland and Italy and Portugal, unwilling regiments were driven
northward, that the wounded pride of the great Emperor might be duly avenged.
The rest of the story is common knowledge. After a march of two months,
Napoleon reached the Russian capital and established his headquarters in the
holy Kremlin. On the night of September 15 of the year 1812, Moscow caught
fire. The town burned four days. When the evening of the fifth day came,
Napoleon gave the order for the retreat. Two weeks later it began to snow. The
army trudged through mud and sleet until November the 26th when the river
Berezina was reached. Then the Russian attacks began in all seriousness. The
Cossacks swarmed around the “Grande Armée” which was no longer an army
but a mob. In the middle of December the first of the survivors began to be seen
in the German cities of the East.
Then there were many rumours of an impending revolt. “The time has come,”
the people of Europe said, “to free ourselves from this insufferable yoke.” And
they began to look for old shotguns which had escaped the eye of the ever-
present French spies. But ere they knew what had happened, Napoleon was back
with a new army. He had left his defeated soldiers and in his little sleigh had
rushed ahead to Paris, making a final appeal for more troops that he might
defend the sacred soil of France against foreign invasion.
Children of sixteen and seventeen followed him when he moved eastward to
meet the allied powers. On October 16, 18, and 19 of the year 1813, the terrible
battle of Leipzig took place where for three days boys in green and boys in blue
fought each other until the Elster ran red with blood. On the afternoon of the
17th of October, the massed reserves of Russian infantry broke through the
French lines and Napoleon fled.
Back to Paris he went. He abdicated in favour of his small son, but the allied
powers insisted that Louis XVIII, the brother of the late king Louis XVI, should
occupy the French throne, and surrounded by Cossacks and Uhlans, the dull-
eyed Bourbon prince made his triumphal entry into Paris.
As for Napoleon, he was made the sovereign ruler of the little island of Elba
in the Mediterranean where he organised his stable boys into a miniature army
and fought battles on a chess board.
But no sooner had he left France than the people began to realise what they
had lost. The last twenty years, however costly, had been a period of great glory.
Paris had been the capital of the world. The fat Bourbon king who had learned
nothing and had forgotten nothing during the days of his exile disgusted
everybody by his indolence.
On the first of March of the year 1815, when the representatives of the allies
were ready to begin the work of unscrambling the map of Europe, Napoleon
suddenly landed near Cannes. In less than a week the French army had deserted
the Bourbons and had rushed southward to offer their swords and bayonets to the
“little Corporal.” Napoleon marched straight to Paris where he arrived on the
twentieth of March. This time he was more cautious. He offered peace, but the
allies insisted upon war. The whole of Europe arose against the “perfidious
Corsican.” Rapidly the Emperor marched northward that he might crush his
enemies before they should be able to unite their forces. But Napoleon was no
longer his old self. He felt sick. He got tired easily. He slept when he ought to
have been up directing the attack of his advance-guard. Besides, he missed many
of his faithful old generals. They were dead.
Early in June his armies entered Belgium. On the 16th of that month he
defeated the Prussians under Blücher. But a subordinate commander failed to
destroy the retreating army as he had been ordered to do.
Two days later, Napoleon met Wellington near Waterloo. It was the 18th of
June, a Sunday. At two o’clock of the afternoon, the battle seemed won for the
French. At three a speck of dust appeared upon the eastern horizon. Napoleon
believed that this meant the approach of his own cavalry who would now turn
the English defeat into a rout. At four o’clock he knew better. Cursing and
swearing, old Blücher drove his deathly tired troops into the heart of the fray.
The shock broke the ranks of the guards. Napoleon had no further reserves. He
told his men to save themselves as best they could, and he fled.

THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO

For a second time, he abdicated in favor of his son. Just one hundred days
after his escape from Elba, he was making for the coast. He intended to go to
America. In the year 1803, for a mere song, he had sold the French colony of
Louisiana (which was in great danger of being captured by the English) to the
young American Republic. “The Americans,” so he said, “will be grateful and
will give me a little bit of land and a house where I may spend the last days of
my life in peace and quiet.” But the English fleet was watching all French
harbours. Caught between the armies of the Allies and the ships of the British,
Napoleon had no choice. The Prussians intended to shoot him. The English
might be more generous. At Rochefort he waited in the hope that something
might turn up. One month after Waterloo, he received orders from the new
French government to leave French soil inside of twenty-four hours. Always the
tragedian, he wrote a letter to the Prince Regent of England (George III, the king,
was in an insane asylum) informing His Royal Highness of his intention to
“throw himself upon the mercy of his enemies and like Themistocles, to look for
a welcome at the fireside of his foes....”
NAPOLEON GOES INTO EXILE

On the 15th of July he went on board the “Bellerophon” and surrendered his
sword to Admiral Hotham. At Plymouth he was transferred to the
“Northumberland” which carried him to St. Helena. There he spent the last seven
years of his life. He tried to write his memoirs, he quarrelled with his keepers
and he dreamed of past times. Curiously enough he returned (at least in his
imagination) to his original point of departure. He remembered the days when he
had fought the battles of the Revolution. He tried to convince himself that he had
always been the true friend of those great principles of “Liberty, Fraternity and
Equality” which the ragged soldiers of the convention had carried to the ends of
the earth. He liked to dwell upon his career as Commander-in-Chief and Consul.
He rarely spoke of the Empire. Sometimes he thought of his son, the Duke of
Reichstadt, the little eagle, who lived in Vienna, where he was treated as a “poor
relation” by his young Habsburg cousins, whose fathers had trembled at the very
mention of the name of Him. When the end came, he was leading his troops to
victory. He ordered Ney to attack with the guards. Then he died.
But if you want an explanation of this strange career, if you really wish to
know how one man could possibly rule so many people for so many years by the
sheer force of his will, do not read the books that have been written about him.
Their authors either hated the Emperor or loved him. You will learn many facts,
but it is more important to “feel history” than to know it. Don’t read, but wait
until you have a chance to hear a good artist sing the song called “The Two
Grenadiers.” The words were written by Heine, the great German poet who lived
through the Napoleonic era. The music was composed by Schumann, a German
who saw the Emperor, the enemy of his country, whenever he came to visit his
imperial father-in-law. The song therefore is the work of two men who had every
reason to hate the tyrant.
Go and hear it. Then you will understand what a thousand volumes could not
possibly tell you.
THE HOLY ALLIANCE

AS SOON AS NAPOLEON HAD BEEN SENT TO ST. HELENA THE


RULERS WHO SO OFTEN HAD BEEN DEFEATED BY THE HATED
“CORSICAN” MET AT VIENNA AND TRIED TO UNDO THE MANY
CHANGES THAT HAD BEEN BROUGHT ABOUT BY THE FRENCH
REVOLUTION

THE Imperial Highnesses, the Royal Highnesses, their Graces the Dukes, the
Ministers Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, together with the plain Excellencies
and their army of secretaries, servants and hangers-on, whose labours had been
so rudely interrupted by the sudden return of the terrible Corsican (now
sweltering under the hot sun of St. Helena) went back to their jobs. The victory
was duly celebrated with dinners, garden parties and balls at which the new and
very shocking “waltz” was danced to the great scandal of the ladies and
gentlemen who remembered the minuet of the old Régime.
For almost a generation they had lived in retirement. At last the danger was
over. They were very eloquent upon the subject of the terrible hardships which
they had suffered. And they expected to be recompensed for every penny they
had lost at the hands of the unspeakable Jacobins who had dared to kill their
anointed king, who had abolished wigs and who had discarded the short trousers
of the court of Versailles for the ragged pantaloons of the Parisian slums.
You may think it absurd that I should mention such a detail. But, if you please,
the Congress of Vienna was one long succession of such absurdities and for
many months the question of “short trousers vs. long trousers” interested the
delegates more than the future settlement of the Saxon or Spanish problems. His
Majesty the King of Prussia went so far as to order a pair of short ones, that he
might give public evidence of his contempt for everything revolutionary.
Another German potentate, not to be outdone in this noble hatred for the
revolution, decreed that all taxes which his subjects had paid to the French
usurper should be paid a second time to the legitimate ruler who had loved his
people from afar while they were at the mercy of the Corsican ogre. And so on.
From one blunder to another, until one gasps and exclaims “but why in the name
of High Heaven did not the people object?” Why not indeed? Because the people
were utterly exhausted, were desperate, did not care what happened or how or
where or by whom they were ruled, provided there was peace. They were sick
and tired of war and revolution and reform.
In the eighties of the previous century they had all danced around the tree of
liberty. Princes had embraced their cooks and Duchesses had danced the
Carmagnole with their lackeys in the honest belief that the Millennium of
Equality and Fraternity had at last dawned upon this wicked world. Instead of
the Millennium they had been visited by the Revolutionary commissary who had
lodged a dozen dirty soldiers in their parlor and had stolen the family plate when
he returned to Paris to report to his government upon the enthusiasm with which
the “liberated country” had received the Constitution, which the French people
had presented to their good neighbours.
When they had heard how the last outbreak of revolutionary disorder in Paris
had been suppressed by a young officer, called Bonaparte, or Buonaparte, who
had turned his guns upon the mob, they gave a sigh of relief. A little less liberty,
fraternity and equality seemed a very desirable thing. But ere long, the young
officer called Buonaparte or Bonaparte became one of the three consuls of the
French Republic, then sole consul and finally Emperor. As he was much more
efficient than any ruler that had ever been seen before, his hand pressed heavily
upon his poor subjects. He showed them no mercy. He impressed their sons into
his armies, he married their daughters to his generals and he took their pictures
and their statues to enrich his own museums. He turned the whole of Europe into
an armed camp and killed almost an entire generation of men.

OFF FOR TRAFALGAR

Now he was gone, and the people (except a few professional military men)
had but one wish. They wanted to be let alone. For awhile they had been allowed
to rule themselves, to vote for mayors and aldermen and judges. The system had
been a terrible failure. The new rulers had been inexperienced and extravagant.
From sheer despair the people turned to the representative men of the old
Régime. “You rule us,” they said, “as you used to do. Tell us what we owe you
for taxes and leave us alone. We are busy repairing the damage of the age of
liberty.”
The men who stage-managed the famous congress certainly did their best to
satisfy this longing for rest and quiet. The Holy Alliance, the main result of the
Congress, made the policeman the most important dignitary of the State and held
out the most terrible punishment to those who dared criticise a single official act.
Europe had peace, but it was the peace of the cemetery.
The three most important men at Vienna were the Emperor Alexander of
Russia, Metternich, who represented the interests of the Austrian house of
Habsburg, and Talleyrand, the erstwhile bishop of Autun, who had managed to
live through the different changes in the French government by the sheer force of
his cunning and his intelligence and who now travelled to the Austrian capital to
save for his country whatever could be saved from the Napoleonic ruin. Like the
gay young man of the limerick, who never knew when he was slighted, this
unbidden guest came to the party and ate just as heartily as if he had been really
invited. Indeed, before long, he was sitting at the head of the table entertaining
everybody with his amusing stories and gaining the company’s good will by the
charm of his manner.

THE SPECTRE WHICH FRIGHTENED THE HOLY ALLIANCE

Before he had been in Vienna twenty-four hours he knew that the allies were
divided into two hostile camps. On the one side were Russia, who wanted to take
Poland, and Prussia, who wanted to annex Saxony; and on the other side were
Austria and England, who were trying to prevent this grab because it was against
their own interest that either Prussia or Russia should be able to dominate
Europe. Talleyrand played the two sides against each other with great skill and it
was due to his efforts that the French people were not made to suffer for the ten
years of oppression which Europe had endured at the hands of the Imperial
officials. He argued that the French people had been given no choice in the
matter. Napoleon had forced them to act at his bidding. But Napoleon was gone
and Louis XVIII was on the throne. “Give him a chance,” Talleyrand pleaded.
And the Allies, glad to see a legitimate king upon the throne of a revolutionary
country, obligingly yielded and the Bourbons were given their chance, of which
they made such use that they were driven out after fifteen years.
The second man of the triumvirate of Vienna was Metternich, the Austrian
prime minister, the leader of the foreign policy of the house of Habsburg. Wenzel
Lothar, Prince of Metternich-Winneburg, was exactly what the name suggests.
He was a Grand Seigneur, a very handsome gentleman with very fine manners,
immensely rich, and very able, but the product of a society which lived a
thousand miles away from the sweating multitudes who worked and slaved in
the cities and on the farms. As a young man, Metternich had been studying at the
University of Strassburg when the French Revolution broke out. Strassburg, the
city which gave birth to the Marseillaise, had been a centre of Jacobin activities.
Metternich remembered that his pleasant social life had been sadly interrupted,
that a lot of incompetent citizens had suddenly been called forth to perform tasks
for which they were not fit, that the mob had celebrated the dawn of the new
liberty by the murder of perfectly innocent persons. He had failed to see the
honest enthusiasm of the masses, the ray of hope in the eyes of women and
children who carried bread and water to the ragged troops of the Convention,
marching through the city on their way to the front and a glorious death for the
French Fatherland.
The whole thing had filled the young Austrian with disgust. It was uncivilised.
If there were any fighting to be done it must be done by dashing young men in
lovely uniforms, charging across the green fields on well-groomed horses. But to
turn an entire country into an evil-smelling armed camp where tramps were
overnight promoted to be generals, that was both wicked and senseless. “See
what came of all your fine ideas,” he would say to the French diplomats whom
he met at a quiet little dinner given by one of the innumerable Austrian grand-
dukes. “You wanted liberty, equality and fraternity and you got Napoleon. How
much better it would have been if you had been contented with the existing order
of things.” And he would explain his system of “stability.” He would advocate a
return to the normalcy of the good old days before the war, when everybody was
happy and nobody talked nonsense about “everybody being as good as
everybody else.” In this attitude he was entirely sincere and as he was an able
man of great strength of will and a tremendous power of persuasion, he was one
of the most dangerous enemies of the Revolutionary ideas. He did not die until
the year 1859, and he therefore lived long enough to see the complete failure of
all his policies when they were swept aside by the revolution of the year 1848.
He then found himself the most hated man of Europe and more than once ran the
risk of being lynched by angry crowds of outraged citizens. But until the very
last, he remained steadfast in his belief that he had done the right thing.
He had always been convinced that people preferred peace to liberty and he
had tried to give them what was best for them. And in all fairness, it ought to be
said that his efforts to establish universal peace were fairly successful. The great
powers did not fly at each other’s throat for almost forty years, indeed not until
the Crimean war between Russia and England, France and Italy and Turkey, in
the year 1854. That means a record for the European continent.

THE REAL CONGRESS OF VIENNA


The third hero of this waltzing congress was the Emperor Alexander. He had
been brought up at the court of his grand-mother, the famous Catherine the
Great. Between the lessons of this shrewd old woman, who taught him to regard
the glory of Russia as the most important thing in life, and those of his private
tutor, a Swiss admirer of Voltaire and Rousseau, who filled his mind with a
general love of humanity, the boy grew up to be a strange mixture of a selfish
tyrant and a sentimental revolutionist. He had suffered great indignities during
the life of his crazy father, Paul I. He had been obliged to witness the wholesale
slaughter of the Napoleonic battle-fields. Then the tide had turned. His armies
had won the day for the Allies. Russia had become the saviour of Europe and the
Tsar of this mighty people was acclaimed as a half-god who would cure the
world of its many ills.
But Alexander was not very clever. He did not know men and women as
Talleyrand and Metternich knew them. He did not understand the strange game
of diplomacy. He was vain (who would not be under the circumstances?) and
loved to hear the applause of the multitude and soon he had become the main
“attraction” of the Congress while Metternich and Talleyrand and Castlereagh
(the very able British representative) sat around a table and drank a bottle of
Tokay and decided what was actually going to be done. They needed Russia and
therefore they were very polite to Alexander, but the less he had personally to do
with the actual work of the Congress, the better they were pleased. They even
encouraged his plans for a Holy Alliance that he might be fully occupied while
they were engaged upon the work at hand.
Alexander was a sociable person who liked to go to parties and meet people.
Upon such occasions he was happy and gay but there was a very different
element in his character. He tried to forget something which he could not forget.
On the night of the 23rd of March of the year 1801 he had been sitting in a room
of the St. Michael Palace in Petersburg, waiting for the news of his father’s
abdication. But Paul had refused to sign the document which the drunken
officers had placed before him on the table, and in their rage they had put a scarf
around his neck and had strangled him to death. Then they had gone downstairs
to tell Alexander that he was Emperor of all the Russian lands.
The memory of this terrible night stayed with the Tsar who was a very
sensitive person. He had been educated in the school of the great French
philosophers who did not believe in God but in Human Reason. But Reason
alone could not satisfy the Emperor in his predicament. He began to hear voices
and see things. He tried to find a way by which he could square himself with his
conscience. He became very pious and began to take an interest in mysticism,
that strange love of the mysterious and the unknown which is as old as the
temples of Thebes and Babylon.
The tremendous emotion of the great revolutionary era had influenced the
character of the people of that day in a strange way. Men and women who had
lived through twenty years of anxiety and fear were no longer quite normal.
They jumped whenever the door-bell rang. It might mean the news of the “death
on the field of honour” of an only son. The phrases about “brotherly love” and
“liberty” of the Revolution were hollow words in the ears of sorely stricken
peasants. They clung to anything that might give them a new hold on the terrible
problems of life. In their grief and misery they were easily imposed upon by a
large number of impostors who posed as prophets and preached a strange new
doctrine which they dug out of the more obscure passages of the Book of
Revelations.
In the year 1814, Alexander, who had already consulted a large number of
wonder-doctors, heard of a new seeress who was foretelling the coming doom of
the world and was exhorting people to repent ere it be too late. The Baroness von
Krüdener, the lady in question, was a Russian woman of uncertain age and
similar reputation who had been the wife of a Russian diplomat in the days of
the Emperor Paul. She had squandered her husband’s money and had disgraced
him by her strange love affairs. She had lived a very dissolute life until her
nerves had given way and for a while she was not in her right mind. Then she
had been converted by the sight of the sudden death of a friend. Thereafter she
despised all gaiety. She confessed her former sins to her shoemaker, a pious
Moravian brother, a follower of the old reformer John Huss, who had been
burned for his heresies by the Council of Constance in the year 1415.
The next ten years the Baroness spent in Germany making a specialty of the
“conversion” of kings and princes. To convince Alexander, the Saviour of
Europe, of the error of his ways was the greatest ambition of her life. And as
Alexander, in his misery, was willing to listen to anybody who brought him a ray
of hope, the interview was easily arranged. On the evening of the fourth of June
of the year 1815, she was admitted to the tent of the Emperor. She found him
reading his Bible. We do not know what she said to Alexander, but when she left
him three hours later, he was bathed in tears, and vowed that “at last his soul had
found peace.” From that day on the Baroness was his faithful companion and his
spiritual adviser. She followed him to Paris and then to Vienna and the time
which Alexander did not spend dancing he spent at the Krüdener prayer-
meetings.
You may ask why I tell you this story in such great detail? Are not the social
changes of the nineteenth century of greater importance than the career of an ill-
balanced woman who had better be forgotten? Of course they are, but there exist
any number of books which will tell you of these other things with great
accuracy and in great detail. I want you to learn something more from this
history than a mere succession of facts. I want you to approach all historical
events in a frame of mind that will take nothing for granted. Don’t be satisfied
with the mere statement that “such and such a thing happened then and there.”
Try to discover the hidden motives behind every action and then you will
understand the world around you much better and you will have a greater chance
to help others, which (when all is said and done) is the only truly satisfactory
way of living.
I do not want you to think of the Holy Alliance as a piece of paper which was
signed in the year 1815 and lies dead and forgotten somewhere in the archives of
state. It may be forgotten but it is by no means dead. The Holy Alliance was
directly responsible for the promulgation of the Monroe Doctrine, and the
Monroe Doctrine of America for the Americans has a very distinct bearing upon
your own life. That is the reason why I want you to know exactly how this
document happened to come into existence and what the real motives were
underlying this outward manifestation of piety and Christian devotion to duty.
The Holy Alliance was the joint labour of an unfortunate man who had
suffered a terrible mental shock and who was trying to pacify his much-disturbed
soul, and of an ambitious woman who after a wasted life had lost her beauty and
her attraction and who satisfied her vanity and her desire for notoriety by
assuming the rôle of self-appointed Messiah of a new and strange creed. I am not
giving away any secrets when I tell you these details. Such sober minded people
as Castlereagh, Metternich and Talleyrand fully understood the limited abilities
of the sentimental Baroness. It would have been easy for Metternich to send her
back to her German estates. A few lines to the almighty commander of the
imperial police and the thing was done.
But France and England and Austria depended upon the good-will of Russia.
They could not afford to offend Alexander. And they tolerated the silly old
Baroness because they had to. And while they regarded the Holy Alliance as
utter rubbish and not worth the paper upon which it was written, they listened
patiently to the Tsar when he read them the first rough draft of this attempt to
create the Brotherhood of Men upon a basis of the Holy Scriptures. For this is
what the Holy Alliance tried to do, and the signers of the document solemnly
declared that they would “in the administration of their respective states and in
their political relations with every other government take for their sole guide the
precepts of that Holy Religion, namely the precepts of Justice, Christian Charity
and Peace, which far from being applicable only to private concerns must have
an immediate influence on the councils of princes, and must guide all their steps
as being the only means of consolidating human institutions and remedying their
imperfections.” They then proceeded to promise each other that they would
remain united “by the bonds of a true and indissoluble fraternity, and considering
each other as fellow-countrymen, they would on all occasions and in all places
lend each other aid and assistance.” And more words to the same effect.
Eventually the Holy Alliance was signed by the Emperor of Austria, who did
not understand a word of it. It was signed by the Bourbons who needed the
friendship of Napoleon’s old enemies. It was signed by the King of Prussia, who
hoped to gain Alexander for his plans for a “greater Prussia,” and by all the little
nations of Europe who were at the mercy of Russia. England never signed,
because Castlereagh thought the whole thing buncombe. The Pope did not sign
because he resented this interference in his business by a Greek-Orthodox and a
Protestant. And the Sultan did not sign because he never heard of it.
The general mass of the European people, however, soon were forced to take
notice. Behind the hollow phrases of the Holy Alliance stood the armies of the
Quintuple Alliance which Metternich had created among the great powers.
These armies meant business. They let it be known that the peace of Europe
must not be disturbed by the so-called liberals who were in reality nothing but
disguised Jacobins, and hoped for a return of the revolutionary days. The
enthusiasm for the great wars of liberation of the years 1812, 1813, 1814 and
1815 had begun to wear off. It had been followed by a sincere belief in the
coming of a happier day. The soldiers who had borne the brunt of the battle
wanted peace and they said so.
But they did not want the sort of peace which the Holy Alliance and the
Council of the European powers had now bestowed upon them. They cried that
they had been betrayed. But they were careful lest they be heard by a secret-
police spy. The reaction was victorious. It was a reaction caused by men who
sincerely believed that their methods were necessary for the good of humanity.
But it was just as hard to bear as if their intentions had been less kind. And it
caused a great deal of unnecessary suffering and greatly retarded the orderly
progress of political development.
THE GREAT REACTION

THEY TRIED TO ASSURE THE WORLD AN ERA OF UNDISTURBED


PEACE BY SUPPRESSING ALL NEW IDEAS. THEY MADE THE
POLICE-SPY THE HIGHEST FUNCTIONARY IN THE STATE AND
SOON THE PRISONS OF ALL COUNTRIES WERE FILLED WITH
THOSE WHO CLAIMED THAT PEOPLE HAVE THE RIGHT TO
GOVERN THEMSELVES AS THEY SEE FIT

TO undo the damage done by the great Napoleonic flood was almost
impossible. Age-old fences had been washed away. The palaces of two score
dynasties had been damaged to such an extent that they had to be condemned as
uninhabitable. Other royal residences had been greatly enlarged at the expense of
less fortunate neighbours. Strange odds and ends of revolutionary doctrine had
been left behind by the receding waters and could not be dislodged without
danger to the entire community. But the political engineers of the Congress did
the best they could and this is what they accomplished.
France had disturbed the peace of the world for so many years that people had
come to fear that country almost instinctively. The Bourbons, through the mouth
of Talleyrand, had promised to be good, but the Hundred Days had taught
Europe what to expect should Napoleon manage to escape for a second time.
The Dutch Republic, therefore, was changed into a Kingdom, and Belgium
(which had not joined the Dutch struggle for independence in the sixteenth
century and since then had been part of the Habsburg domains, first under
Spanish rule and thereafter under Austrian rule) was made part of this new
kingdom of the Netherlands. Nobody wanted this union either in the Protestant
North or in the Catholic South, but no questions were asked. It seemed good for
the peace of Europe and that was the main consideration.
Poland had hoped for great things because a Pole, Prince Adam Czartoryski,
was one of the most intimate friends of Tsar Alexander and had been his
constant advisor during the war and at the Congress of Vienna. But Poland was
made a semi-independent part of Russia with Alexander as her king. This
solution pleased no one and caused much bitter feeling and three revolutions.
Denmark, which had remained a faithful ally of Napoleon until the end, was
severely punished. Seven years before, an English fleet had sailed down the
Kattegat and without a declaration of war or any warning had bombarded
Copenhagen and had taken away the Danish fleet, lest it be of value to
Napoleon. The Congress of Vienna went one step further. It took Norway (which
since the union of Calmar of the year 1397 had been united with Denmark) away
from Denmark and gave it to Charles XIV of Sweden as a reward for his betrayal
of Napoleon, who had set him up in the king business. This Swedish king,
curiously enough, was a former French general by the name of Bernadotte, who
had come to Sweden as one of Napoleon’s adjutants, and had been invited to the
throne of that good country when the last of the rulers of the house of Holstein-
Gottorp had died without leaving either son or daughter. From 1815 until 1844
he ruled his adopted country (the language of which he never learned) with great
ability. He was a clever man and enjoyed the respect of both his Swedish and his
Norwegian subjects, but he did not succeed in joining two countries which
nature and history had put asunder. The dual Scandinavian state was never a
success and in 1905, Norway, in a most peaceful and orderly manner, set up as
an independent kingdom and the Swedes bade her “good speed” and very wisely
let her go her own way.
The Italians, who since the days of the Renaissance had been at the mercy of a
long series of invaders, also had put great hopes in General Bonaparte. The
Emperor Napoleon, however, had grievously disappointed them. Instead of the
United Italy which the people wanted, they had been divided into a number of
little principalities, duchies, republics and the Papal State, which (next to
Naples) was the worst governed and most miserable region of the entire
peninsula. The Congress of Vienna abolished a few of the Napoleonic republics
and in their place resurrected several old principalities which were given to
deserving members, both male and female, of the Habsburg family.
The poor Spaniards, who had started the great nationalistic revolt against
Napoleon, and who had sacrificed the best blood of the country for their king,
were punished severely when the Congress allowed His Majesty to return to his
domains. This vicious creature, known as Ferdinand VII, had spent the last four
years of his life as a prisoner of Napoleon. He had improved his days by knitting
garments for the statues of his favourite patron saints. He celebrated his return
by re-introducing the Inquisition and the torture-chamber, both of which had
been abolished by the Revolution. He was a disgusting person, despised as much
by his subjects as by his four wives, but the Holy Alliance maintained him upon
his legitimate throne and all efforts of the decent Spaniards to get rid of this
curse and make Spain a constitutional kingdom ended in bloodshed and
executions.
Portugal had been without a king since the year 1807 when the royal family
had fled to the colonies in Brazil. The country had been used as a base of supply
for the armies of Wellington during the Peninsula war, which lasted from 1808
until 1814. After 1815 Portugal continued to be a sort of British province until
the house of Braganza returned to the throne, leaving one of its members behind
in Rio de Janeiro as Emperor of Brazil, the only American Empire which lasted
for more than a few years, and which came to an end in 1889 when the country
became a republic.
In the east, nothing was done to improve the terrible conditions of both the
Slavs and the Greeks who were still subjects of the Sultan. In the year 1804
Black George, a Servian swineherd, (the founder of the Karageorgevich dynasty)
had started a revolt against the Turks, but he had been defeated by his enemies
and had been murdered by one of his supposed friends, the rival Servian leader,
called Milosh Obrenovich, (who became the founder of the Obrenovich dynasty)
and the Turks had continued to be the undisputed masters of the Balkans.
The Greeks, who since the loss of their independence, two thousand years
before, had been subjects of the Macedonians, the Romans, the Venetians and
the Turks, had hoped that their countryman, Capo d’Istria, a native of Corfu, and
together with Czartoryski, the most intimate personal friend of Alexander, would
do something for them. But the Congress of Vienna was not interested in Greeks,
but was very much interested in keeping all “legitimate” monarchs, Christian,
Moslem and otherwise, upon their respective thrones. Therefore nothing was
done.
The last, but perhaps the greatest blunder of the Congress was the treatment of
Germany. The Reformation and the Thirty Years War had not only destroyed the
prosperity of the country, but had turned it into a hopeless political rubbish heap,
consisting of a couple of kingdoms, a few grand-duchies, a large number of
duchies and hundreds of margravates, principalities, baronies, electorates, free
cities and free villages, ruled by the strangest assortment of potentates that was
ever seen off the comic opera stage. Frederick the Great had changed this when
he created a strong Prussia, but this state had not survived him by many years.
Napoleon had blue-penciled the demand for independence of most of these
little countries, and only fifty-two out of a total of more than three hundred had
survived the year 1806. During the years of the great struggle for independence,
many a young soldier had dreamed of a new Fatherland that should be strong
and united. But there can be no union without a strong leadership, and who was
to be this leader?
There were five kingdoms in the German speaking lands. The rulers of two of
these, Austria and Prussia, were kings by the Grace of God. The rulers of three
others, Bavaria, Saxony and Wurtemberg, were kings by the Grace of Napoleon,
and as they had been the faithful henchmen of the Emperor, their patriotic credit
with the other Germans was therefore not very good.
The Congress had established a new German Confederation, a league of
thirty-eight sovereign states, under the chairmanship of the King of Austria, who
was now known as the Emperor of Austria. It was the sort of make-shift
arrangement which satisfied no one. It is true that a German Diet, which met in
the old coronation city of Frankfort, had been created to discuss matters of
“common policy and importance.” But in this Diet, thirty-eight delegates
represented thirty-eight different interests and as no decision could be taken
without a unanimous vote (a parliamentary rule which had in previous centuries
ruined the mighty kingdom of Poland), the famous German Confederation
became very soon the laughing stock of Europe and the politics of the old
Empire began to resemble those of our Central American neighbours in the
forties and the fifties of the last century.
It was terribly humiliating to the people who had sacrificed everything for a
national ideal. But the Congress was not interested in the private feelings of
“subjects,” and the debate was closed.
Did anybody object? Most assuredly. As soon as the first feeling of hatred
against Napoleon had quieted down—as soon as the enthusiasm of the great war
had subsided—as soon as the people came to a full realisation of the crime that
had been committed in the name of “peace and stability” they began to murmur.
They even made threats of open revolt. But what could they do? They were
powerless. They were at the mercy of the most pitiless and efficient police
system the world had ever seen.
The members of the Congress of Vienna honestly and sincerely believed that
“the Revolutionary Principle had led to the criminal usurpation of the throne by
the former emperor Napoleon.” They felt that they were called upon to eradicate
the adherents of the so-called “French ideas” just as Philip II had only followed
the voice of his conscience when he burned Protestants or hanged Moors. In the
beginning of the sixteenth century a man who did not believe in the divine right
of the Pope to rule his subjects as he saw fit was a “heretic” and it was the duty
of all loyal citizens to kill him. In the beginning of the nineteenth century, on the
continent of Europe, a man who did not believe in the divine right of his king to
rule him as he or his Prime Minister saw fit, was a “heretic,” and it was the duty
of all loyal citizens to denounce him to the nearest policeman and see that he got
punished.
But the rulers of the year 1815 had learned efficiency in the school of
Napoleon and they performed their task much better than it had been done in the
year 1517. The period between the year 1815 and the year 1860 was the great era
of the political spy. Spies were everywhere. They lived in palaces and they were
to be found in the lowest gin-shops. They peeped through the key-holes of the
ministerial cabinet and they listened to the conversations of the people who were
taking the air on the benches of the Municipal Park. They guarded the frontier so
that no one might leave without a duly viséd passport and they inspected all
packages, that no books with dangerous “French ideas” should enter the realm of
their Royal masters. They sat among the students in the lecture hall and woe to
the Professor who uttered a word against the existing order of things. They
followed the little boys and girls on their way to church lest they play hookey.
In many of these tasks they were assisted by the clergy. The church had
suffered greatly during the days of the revolution. The church property had been
confiscated. Several priests had been killed and the generation that had learned
its cathechism from Voltaire and Rousseau and the other French philosophers
had danced around the Altar of Reason when the Committee of Public Safety
had abolished the worship of God in October of the year 1798. The priests had
followed the “émigrés” into their long exile. Now they returned in the wake of
the allied armies and they set to work with a vengeance.
Even the Jesuits came back in 1814 and resumed their former labours of
educating the young. Their order had been a little too successful in its fight
against the enemies of the church. It had established “provinces” in every part of
the world, to teach the natives the blessings of Christianity, but soon it had
developed into a regular trading company which was for ever interfering with
the civil authorities. During the reign of the Marquis de Pombal, the great
reforming minister of Portugal, they had been driven out of the Portuguese lands
and in the year 1773 at the request of most of the Catholic powers of Europe, the
order had been suppressed by Pope Clement XIV. Now they were back on the
job, and preached the principles of “obedience” and “love for the legitimate
dynasty” to children whose parents had hired shop windows that they might
laugh at Marie Antoinette driving to the scaffold which was to end her misery.
But in the Protestant countries like Prussia, things were not a whit better. The
great patriotic leaders of the year 1812, the poets and the writers who had
preached a holy war upon the usurper, were now branded as dangerous
“demagogues.” Their houses were searched. Their letters were read. They were
obliged to report to the police at regular intervals and give an account of
themselves. The Prussian drill master was let loose in all his fury upon the
younger generation. When a party of students celebrated the tercentenary of the
Reformation with noisy but harmless festivities on the old Wartburg, the
Prussian bureaucrats had visions of an imminent revolution. When a theological
student, more honest than intelligent, killed a Russian government spy who was
operating in Germany, the universities were placed under police-supervision and
professors were jailed or dismissed without any form of trial.
Russia, of course, was even more absurd in these anti-revolutionary activities.
Alexander had recovered from his attack of piety. He was gradually drifting
toward melancholia. He well knew his own limited abilities and understood how
at Vienna he had been the victim both of Metternich and the Krüdener woman.
More and more he turned his back upon the west and became a truly Russian
ruler whose interests lay in Constantinople, the old holy city that had been the
first teacher of the Slavs. The older he grew, the harder he worked and the less
he was able to accomplish. And while he sat in his study, his ministers turned the
whole of Russia into a land of military barracks.
It is not a pretty picture. Perhaps I might have shortened this description of the
Great Reaction. But it is just as well that you should have a thorough knowledge
of this era. It was not the first time that an attempt had been made to set the
clock of history back. The result was the usual one.
NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE

THE LOVE OF NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE, HOWEVER WAS TOO


STRONG TO BE DESTROYED IN THIS WAY. THE SOUTH
AMERICANS WERE THE FIRST TO REBEL AGAINST THE
REACTIONARY MEASURES OF THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA,
GREECE AND BELGIUM AND SPAIN AND A LARGE NUMBER OF
OTHER COUNTRIES OF THE EUROPEAN CONTINENT FOLLOWED
SUIT AND THE NINETEENTH CENTURY WAS FILLED WITH THE
RUMOUR OF MANY WARS OF INDEPENDENCE

IT will serve no good purpose to say “if only the Congress of Vienna had done
such and such a thing instead of taking such and such a course, the history of
Europe in the nineteenth century would have been different.” The Congress of
Vienna was a gathering of men who had just passed through a great revolution
and through twenty years of terrible and almost continuous warfare. They came
together for the purpose of giving Europe that “peace and stability” which they
thought that the people needed and wanted. They were what we call
reactionaries. They sincerely believed in the inability of the mass of the people
to rule themselves. They re-arranged the map of Europe in such a way as seemed
to promise the greatest possibility of a lasting success. They failed, but not
through any premeditated wickedness on their part. They were, for the greater
part, men of the old school who remembered the happier days of their quiet
youth and ardently wished a return of that blessed period. They failed to
recognise the strong hold which many of the revolutionary principles had gained
upon the people of the European continent. That was a misfortune but hardly a
sin. But one of the things which the French Revolution had taught not only
Europe but America as well, was the right of people to their own “nationality.”
Napoleon, who respected nothing and nobody, was utterly ruthless in his
dealing with national and patriotic aspirations. But the early revolutionary
generals had proclaimed the new doctrine that “nationality was not a matter of
political frontiers or round skulls and broad noses, but a matter of the heart and
soul.” While they were teaching the French children the greatness of the French
nation, they encouraged Spaniards and Hollanders and Italians to do the same
thing. Soon these people, who all shared Rousseau’s belief in the superior virtues
of Original Man, began to dig into their past and found, buried beneath the ruins
of the feudal system, the bones of the mighty races of which they supposed
themselves the feeble descendants.
The first half of the nineteenth century was the era of the great historical
discoveries. Everywhere historians were busy publishing mediæval charters and
early mediæval chronicles and in every country the result was a new pride in the
old fatherland. A great deal of this sentiment was based upon the wrong
interpretation of historical facts. But in practical politics, it does not matter what
is true, but everything depends upon what the people believe to be true. And in
most countries both the kings and their subjects firmly believed in the glory and
fame of their ancestors.
The Congress of Vienna was not inclined to be sentimental. Their
Excellencies divided the map of Europe according to the best interests of half a
dozen dynasties and put “national aspirations” upon the Index, or list of
forbidden books, together with all other dangerous “French doctrines.”
But history is no respecter of Congresses. For some reason or other (it may be
an historical law, which thus far has escaped the attention of the scholars)
“nations” seemed to be necessary for the orderly development of human society
and the attempt to stem this tide was quite as unsuccessful as the Metternichian
effort to prevent people from thinking.
Curiously enough the first trouble began in a very distant part of the world, in
South America. The Spanish colonies of that continent had been enjoying a
period of relative independence during the many years of the great Napoleonic
wars. They had even remained faithful to their king when he was taken prisoner
by the French Emperor and they had refused to recognise Joseph Bonaparte, who
had in the year 1808 been made King of Spain by order of his brother.
Indeed, the only part of America to get very much upset by the Revolution
was the island of Haiti, the Espagnola of Columbus’ first trip. Here in the year
1791 the French Convention, in a sudden outburst of love and human
brotherhood, had bestowed upon their black brethren all the privileges hitherto
enjoyed by their white masters. Just as suddenly they had repented of this step,
but the attempt to undo the original promise led to many years of terrible warfare
between General Leclerc, the brother-in-law of Napoleon, and Toussaint
l’Ouverture, the negro chieftain. In the year 1801, Toussaint was asked to visit
Leclerc and discuss terms of peace. He received the solemn promise that he
would not be molested. He trusted his white adversaries, was put on board a ship
and shortly afterwards died in a French prison. But the negroes gained their
independence all the same and founded a Republic. Incidentally they were of
great help to the first great South American patriot in his efforts to deliver his
native country from the Spanish yoke.
Simon Bolivar, a native of Caracas in Venezuela, born in the year 1783, had
been educated in Spain, had visited Paris where he had seen the Revolutionary
government at work, had lived for a while in the United States and had returned
to his native land where the widespread discontent against Spain, the mother
country, was beginning to take a definite form. In the year 1811, Venezuela
declared its independence and Bolivar became one of the revolutionary generals.
Within two months, the rebels were defeated and Bolivar fled.
For the next five years he was the leader of an apparently lost cause. He
sacrificed all his wealth and he would not have been able to begin his final and
successful expedition without the support of the President of Haiti. Thereafter
the revolt spread all over South America and soon it appeared that Spain was not
able to suppress the rebellion unaided. She asked for the support of the Holy
Alliance.
This step greatly worried England. The British shippers had succeeded the
Dutch as the Common Carriers of the world and they expected to reap heavy
profits from a declaration of independence on the part of all South America.
They had hopes that the United States of America would interfere but the Senate
had no such plans and in the House, too, there were many voices which declared
that Spain ought to be given a free hand.
Just then, there was a change of ministers in England. The Whigs went out
and the Tories came in. George Canning became secretary of State. He dropped a
hint that England would gladly back up the American government with all the
might of her fleet, if said government would declare its disapproval of the plans
of the Holy Alliance in regard to the rebellious colonies of the southern
continent. President Monroe thereupon, on the 2nd of December of the year
1823, addressed Congress and stated that: “America would consider any attempt
on the part of the allied powers to extend their system to any portion of this
western hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety,” and gave warning
that “the American government would consider such action on the part of the
Holy Alliance as a manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United
States.” Four weeks later, the text of the “Monroe Doctrine” was printed in the
English newspapers and the members of the Holy Alliance were forced to make
their choice.

THE MONROE DOCTRINE

Metternich hesitated. Personally he would have been willing to risk the


displeasure of the United States (which had allowed both its army and navy to
fall into neglect since the end of the Anglo-American war of the year 1812.) But
Canning’s threatening attitude and trouble on the continent forced him to be
careful. The expedition never took place and South America and Mexico gained
their independence.
As for the troubles on the continent of Europe, they were coming fast and
furious. The Holy Alliance had sent French troops to Spain to act as guardians of
the peace in the year 1820. Austrian troops had been used for a similar purpose
in Italy when the “Carbonari” (the secret society of the Charcoal Burners) were
making propaganda for a united Italy and had caused a rebellion against the
unspeakable Ferdinand of Naples.
Bad news also came from Russia where the death of Alexander had been the
sign for a revolutionary outbreak in St. Petersburg, a short but bloody upheaval,
the so-called Dekaberist revolt (because it took place in December,) which ended
with the hanging of a large number of good patriots who had been disgusted by
the reaction of Alexander’s last years and had tried to give Russia a
constitutional form of government.
But worse was to follow. Metternich had tried to assure himself of the
continued support of the European courts by a series of conferences at Aix-la-
Chapelle, at Troppau, at Laibach, and finally at Verona. The delegates from the
different powers duly travelled to these agreeable watering places where the
Austrian prime minister used to spend his summers. They always promised to do
their best to suppress revolt but they were none too certain of their success. The
spirit of the people was beginning to be ugly and especially in France the
position of the king was by no means satisfactory.
The real trouble however began in the Balkans, the gate-way to western
Europe through which the invaders of that continent had passed since the
beginning of time. The first outbreak was in Moldavia, the ancient Roman
province of Dacia which had been cut off from the Empire in the third century.
Since then, it had been a lost land, a sort of Atlantis, where the people had
continued to speak the old Roman tongue and still called themselves Romans
and their country Roumania. Here in the year 1821, a young Greek, Prince
Alexander Ypsilanti, began a revolt against the Turks. He told his followers that
they could count upon the support of Russia. But Metternich’s fast couriers were
soon on their way to St. Petersburg and the Tsar, entirely persuaded by the
Austrian arguments in favor of “peace and stability,” refused to help. Ypsilanti
was forced to flee to Austria where he spent the next seven years in prison.
In the same year, 1821, trouble began in Greece. Since 1815 a secret society
of Greek patriots had been preparing the way for a revolt. Suddenly they hoisted
the flag of independence in the Morea (the ancient Peloponnesus) and drove the
Turkish garrisons away. The Turks answered in the usual fashion. They took the
Greek Patriarch of Constantinople, who was regarded as their Pope both by the
Greeks and by many Russians, and they hanged him on Easter Sunday of the
year 1821, together with a number of his bishops. The Greeks came back with a
massacre of all the Mohammedans in Tripolitsa, the capital of the Morea and the
Turks retaliated by an attack upon the island of Chios, where they murdered
25,000 Christians and sold 45,000 others as slaves into Asia and Egypt.
Then the Greeks appealed to the European courts, but Metternich told them in
so many words that they could “stew in their own grease,” (I am not trying to
make a pun, but I am quoting His Serene Highness who informed the Tsar that
this “fire of revolt ought to burn itself out beyond the pale of civilisation”) and
the frontiers were closed to those volunteers who wished to go to the rescue of
the patriotic Hellenes. Their cause seemed lost. At the request of Turkey, an
Egyptian army was landed in the Morea and soon the Turkish flag was again
flying from the Acropolis, the ancient stronghold of Athens. The Egyptian army
then pacified the country “à la Turque,” and Metternich followed the
proceedings with quiet interest, awaiting the day when this “attempt against the
peace of Europe” should be a thing of the past.
Once more it was England which upset his plans. The greatest glory of
England does not lie in her vast colonial possessions, in her wealth or her navy,
but in the quiet heroism and independence of her average citizen. The
Englishman obeys the law because he knows that respect for the rights of others
marks the difference between a dog-kennel and civilised society. But he does not
recognize the right of others to interfere with his freedom of thought. If his
country does something which he believes to be wrong, he gets up and says so
and the government which he attacks will respect him and will give him full
protection against the mob which to-day, as in the time of Socrates, often loves
to destroy those who surpass it in courage or intelligence. There never has been a
good cause, however unpopular or however distant, which has not counted a
number of Englishmen among its staunchest adherents. The mass of the English
people are not different from those in other lands. They stick to the business at
hand and have no time for unpractical “sporting ventures.” But they rather
admire their eccentric neighbour who drops everything to go and fight for some
obscure people in Asia or Africa and when he has been killed they give him a
fine public funeral and hold him up to their children as an example of valor and
chivalry.
Even the police spies of the Holy Alliance were powerless against this
national characteristic. In the year 1824, Lord Byron, a rich young Englishman
who wrote the poetry over which all Europe wept, hoisted the sails of his yacht
and started south to help the Greeks. Three months later the news spread through
Europe that their hero lay dead in Missolonghi, the last of the Greek strongholds.
His lonely death caught the imagination of the people. In all countries, societies
were formed to help the Greeks. Lafayette, the grand old man of the American
revolution, pleaded their cause in France. The king of Bavaria sent hundreds of
his officers. Money and supplies poured in upon the starving men of
Missolonghi.
In England, George Canning, who had defeated the plans of the Holy Alliance
in South America, was now prime minister. He saw his chance to checkmate
Metternich for a second time. The English and Russian fleets were already in the
Mediterranean. They were sent by governments which dared no longer suppress
the popular enthusiasm for the cause of the Greek patriots. The French navy
appeared because France, since the end of the Crusades, had assumed the rôle of
the defender of the Christian faith in Mohammedan lands. On October 20 of the
year 1827, the ships of the three nations attacked the Turkish fleet in the bay of
Navarino and destroyed it. Rarely has the news of a battle been received with
such general rejoicing. The people of western Europe and Russia who enjoyed
no freedom at home consoled themselves by fighting an imaginary war of liberty
on behalf of the oppressed Greeks. In the year 1829 they had their reward.
Greece became an independent nation and the policy of reaction and stability
suffered its second great defeat.
It would be absurd were I to try, in this short volume, to give you a detailed
account of the struggle for national independence in all other countries. There
are a large number of excellent books devoted to such subjects. I have described
the struggle for the independence of Greece because it was the first successful
attack upon the bulwark of reaction which the Congress of Vienna had erected to
“maintain the stability of Europe.” That mighty fortress of suppression still held
out and Metternich continued to be in command. But the end was near.
In France the Bourbons had established an almost unbearable rule of police
officials who were trying to undo the work of the French revolution, with an
absolute disregard of the regulations and laws of civilised warfare. When Louis
XVIII died in the year 1824, the people had enjoyed nine years of “peace” which
had proved even more unhappy than the ten years of war of the Empire. Louis
was succeeded by his brother, Charles X.
Louis had belonged to that famous Bourbon family which, although it never
learned anything, never forgot anything. The recollection of that morning in the
town of Hamm, when news had reached him of the decapitation of his brother,
remained a constant warning of what might happen to those kings who did not
read the signs of the times aright. Charles, on the other hand, who had managed
to run up private debts of fifty million francs before he was twenty years of age,
knew nothing, remembered nothing and firmly intended to learn nothing. As
soon as he had succeeded his brother, he established a government “by priests,
through priests and for priests,” and while the Duke of Wellington, who made
this remark, cannot be called a violent liberal, Charles ruled in such a way that
he disgusted even that trusted friend of law and order. When he tried to suppress
the newspapers which dared to criticise his government, and dismissed the
Parliament because it supported the Press, his days were numbered.
On the night of the 27th of July of the year 1830, a revolution took place in
Paris. On the 30th of the same month, the king fled to the coast and set sail for
England. In this way the “famous farce of fifteen years” came to an end and the
Bourbons were at last removed from the throne of France. They were too
hopelessly incompetent. France then might have returned to a Republican form
of government, but such a step would not have been tolerated by Metternich.
The situation was dangerous enough. The spark of rebellion had leaped
beyond the French frontier and had set fire to another powder house filled with
national grievances. The new kingdom of the Netherlands had not been a
success. The Belgian and the Dutch people had nothing in common and their
king, William of Orange (the descendant of an uncle of William the Silent),
while a hard worker and a good business man, was too much lacking in tact and
pliability to keep the peace among his uncongenial subjects. Besides, the horde
of priests which had descended upon France, had at once found its way into
Belgium and whatever Protestant William tried to do was howled down by large
crowds of excited citizens as a fresh attempt upon the “freedom of the Catholic
church.” On the 25th of August there was a popular outbreak against the Dutch
authorities in Brussels. Two months later, the Belgians declared themselves
independent and elected Leopold of Coburg, the uncle of Queen Victoria of
England, to the throne. That was an excellent solution of the difficulty. The two
countries, which never ought to have been united, parted their ways and
thereafter lived in peace and harmony and behaved like decent neighbours.
News in those days when there were only a few short railroads, travelled
slowly, but when the success of the French and the Belgian revolutionists
became known in Poland there was an immediate clash between the Poles and
their Russian rulers which led to a year of terrible warfare and ended with a
complete victory for the Russians who “established order along the banks of the
Vistula” in the well-known Russian fashion. Nicholas the First, who had
succeeded his brother Alexander in 1825, firmly believed in the Divine Right of
his own family, and the thousands of Polish refugees who had found shelter in
western Europe bore witness to the fact that the principles of the Holy Alliance
were still more than a hollow phrase in Holy Russia.
In Italy too there was a moment of unrest. Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma
and wife of the former Emperor Napoleon, whom she had deserted after the
defeat of Waterloo, was driven away from her country, and in the Papal state the
exasperated people tried to establish an independent Republic. But the armies of
Austria marched to Rome and soon everything was as of old. Metternich
continued to reside at the Ball Platz, the home of the foreign minister of the
Habsburg dynasty, the police spies returned to their job, and peace reigned
supreme. Eighteen more years were to pass before a second and more successful
attempt could be made to deliver Europe from the terrible inheritance of the
Vienna Congress.
Again it was France, the revolutionary weather-cock of Europe, which gave
the signal of revolt. Charles X had been succeeded by Louis Philippe, the son of
that famous Duke of Orleans who had turned Jacobin, had voted for the death of
his cousin the king, and had played a rôle during the early days of the revolution
under the name of “Philippe Egalité” or “Equality Philip.” Eventually he had
been killed when Robespierre tried to purge the nation of all “traitors,” (by
which name he indicated those people who did not share his own views) and his
son had been forced to run away from the revolutionary army. Young Louis
Philippe thereupon had wandered far and wide. He had taught school in
Switzerland and had spent a couple of years exploring the unknown “far west”
of America. After the fall of Napoleon he had returned to Paris. He was much
more intelligent than his Bourbon cousins. He was a simple man who went about
in the public parks with a red cotton umbrella under his arm, followed by a
brood of children like any good housefather. But France had outgrown the king
business and Louis did not know this until the morning of the 24th of February,
of the year 1848, when a crowd stormed the Tuileries and drove his Majesty
away and proclaimed the Republic.
When the news of this event reached Vienna, Metternich expressed the casual
opinion that this was only a repetition of the year 1793 and that the Allies would
once more be obliged to march upon Paris and make an end to this very
unseemly democratic row. But two weeks later his own Austrian capital was in
open revolt. Metternich escaped from the mob through the back door of his
palace, and the Emperor Ferdinand was forced to give his subjects a constitution
which embodied most of the revolutionary principles which his Prime Minister
had tried to suppress for the last thirty-three years.
This time all Europe felt the shock. Hungary declared itself independent, and
commenced a war against the Habsburgs under the leadership of Louis Kossuth.
The unequal struggle lasted more than a year. It was finally suppressed by the
armies of Tsar Nicholas who marched across the Carpathian mountains and
made Hungary once more safe for autocracy. The Habsburgs thereupon
established extraordinary court-martials and hanged the greater part of the
Hungarian patriots whom they had not been able to defeat in open battle.
As for Italy, the island of Sicily declared itself independent from Naples and
drove its Bourbon king away. In the Papal states the prime minister, Rossi, was
murdered and the Pope was forced to flee. He returned the next year at the head
of a French army which remained in Rome to protect His Holiness against his
subjects until the year 1870. Then it was called back to defend France against the
Prussians, and Rome became the capital of Italy. In the north, Milan and Venice
rose against their Austrian masters. They were supported by king Albert of
Sardinia, but a strong Austrian army under old Radetzky marched into the valley
of the Po, defeated the Sardinians near Custozza and Novara and forced Albert
to abdicate in favour of his son, Victor Emanuel, who a few years later was to be
the first king of a united Italy.
In Germany the unrest of the year 1848 took the form of a great national
demonstration in favour of political unity and a representative form of
government. In Bavaria, the king who had wasted his time and money upon an
Irish lady who posed as a Spanish dancer—(she was called Lola Montez and lies
buried in New York’s Potter’s Field)—was driven away by the enraged students
of the university. In Prussia, the king was forced to stand with uncovered head
before the coffins of those who had been killed during the street fighting and to
promise a constitutional form of government. And in March of the year 1849, a
German parliament, consisting of 550 delegates from all parts of the country
came together in Frankfort and proposed that king Frederick William of Prussia
should be the Emperor of a United Germany.
Then, however, the tide began to turn. Incompetent Ferdinand had abdicated
in favour of his nephew Francis Joseph. The well-drilled Austrian army had
remained faithful to their war-lord. The hangman was given plenty of work and
the Habsburgs, after the nature of that strangely cat-like family, once more
landed upon their feet and rapidly strengthened their position as the masters of
eastern and western Europe. They played the game of politics very adroitly and
used the jealousies of the other German states to prevent the elevation of the
Prussian king to the Imperial dignity. Their long training in the art of suffering
defeat had taught them the value of patience. They knew how to wait. They
bided their time and while the liberals, utterly untrained in practical politics,
talked and talked and talked and got intoxicated by their own fine speeches, the
Austrians quietly gathered their forces, dismissed the Parliament of Frankfort
and re-established the old and impossible German confederation which the
Congress of Vienna had wished upon an unsuspecting world.
But among the men who had attended this strange Parliament of unpractical
enthusiasts, there was a Prussian country squire by the name of Bismarck, who
had made good use of his eyes and ears. He had a deep contempt for oratory. He
knew (what every man of action has always known) that nothing is ever
accomplished by talk. In his own way he was a sincere patriot. He had been
trained in the old school of diplomacy and he could outlie his opponents just as
he could outwalk them and outdrink them and outride them.
Bismarck felt convinced that the loose confederation of little states must be
changed into a strong united country if it would hold its own against the other
European powers. Brought up amidst feudal ideas of loyalty, he decided that the
house of Hohenzollern, of which he was the most faithful servant, should rule
the new state, rather than the incompetent Habsburgs. For this purpose he must
first get rid of the Austrian influence, and he began to make the necessary
preparations for this painful operation.
Italy in the meantime had solved her own problem, and had rid herself of her
hated Austrian master. The unity of Italy was the work of three men, Cavour,
Mazzini and Garibaldi. Of these three, Cavour, the civil-engineer with the short-
sighted eyes and the steel-rimmed glasses, played the part of the careful political
pilot. Mazzini, who had spent most of his days in different European garrets,
hiding from the Austrian police, was the public agitator, while Garibaldi, with
his band of red-shirted rough-riders, appealed to the popular imagination.
Mazzini and Garibaldi were both believers in the Republican form of
government. Cavour, however, was a monarchist, and the others who recognised
his superior ability in such matters of practical statecraft, accepted his decision
and sacrificed their own ambitions for the greater good of their beloved
Fatherland.
Cavour felt towards the House of Sardinia as Bismarck did GIUSEPPE MAZZINI
towards the Hohenzollern family. With infinite care and great shrewdness he set
to work to jockey the Sardinian King into a position from which His Majesty
would be able to assume the leadership of the entire Italian people. The unsettled
political conditions in the rest of Europe greatly helped him in his plans and no
country contributed more to the independence of Italy than her old and trusted
(and often distrusted) neighbour, France.
In that turbulent country, in November of the year 1852, the Republic had
come to a sudden but not unexpected end. Napoleon III the son of Louis
Bonaparte the former King of Holland, and the small nephew of a great uncle,
had re-established an Empire and had made himself Emperor “by the Grace of
God and the Will of the People.”
This young man, who had been educated in Germany and who mixed his
French with harsh Teutonic gutturals (just as the first Napoleon had always
spoken the language of his adopted country with a strong Italian accent) was
trying very hard to use the Napoleonic tradition for his own benefit. But he had
many enemies and did not feel very certain of his hold upon his ready-made
throne. He had gained the friendship of Queen Victoria but this had not been a
difficult task, as the good Queen was not particularly brilliant and was very
susceptible to flattery. As for the other European sovereigns, they treated the
French Emperor with insulting haughtiness and sat up nights devising new ways
in which they could show their upstart “Good Brother” how sincerely they
despised him.
Napoleon was obliged to find a way in which he could break this opposition,
either through love or through fear. He well knew the fascination which the word
“glory” still held for his subjects. Since he was forced to gamble for his throne
he decided to play the game of Empire for high stakes. He used an attack of
Russia upon Turkey as an excuse for bringing about the Crimean war in which
England and France combined against the Tsar on behalf of the Sultan. It was a
very costly and exceedingly unprofitable enterprise. Neither France nor England
nor Russia reaped much glory.
But the Crimean war did one good thing. It gave Sardinia a chance to
volunteer on the winning side and when peace was declared it gave Cavour the
opportunity to lay claim to the gratitude of both England and France.
Having made use of the international situation to get Sardinia recognised as
one of the more important powers of Europe, the clever Italian then provoked a
war between Sardinia and Austria in June of the year 1859. He assured himself
of the support of Napoleon in exchange for the provinces of Savoy and the city
of Nice, which was really an Italian town. The Franco-Italian armies defeated the
Austrians at Magenta and Solferino, and the former Austrian provinces and
duchies were united into a single Italian kingdom. Florence became the capital
of this new Italy until the year 1870 when the French recalled their troops from
Rome to defend France against the Germans. As soon as they were gone, the
Italian troops entered the eternal city and the House of Sardinia took up its
residence in the old Palace of the Quirinal which an ancient Pope had built on
the ruins of the baths of the Emperor Constantine.
The Pope, however, moved across the river Tiber and hid behind the walls of
the Vatican, which had been the home of many of his predecessors since their
return from the exile of Avignon in the year 1377. He protested loudly against
this high-handed theft of his domains and addressed letters of appeal to those
faithful Catholics who were inclined to sympathise with him in his loss. Their
number, however, was small, and it has been steadily decreasing. For, once
delivered from the cares of state, the Pope was able to devote all his time to
questions of a spiritual nature. Standing high above the petty quarrels of the
European politicians, the Papacy assumed a new dignity which proved of great
benefit to the church and made it an international power for social and religious
progress which has shown a much more intelligent appreciation of modern
economic problems than most Protestant sects.
In this way, the attempt of the Congress of Vienna to settle the Italian question
by making the peninsula an Austrian province was at last undone.
The German problem however remained as yet unsolved. It proved the most
difficult of all. The failure of the revolution of the year 1848 had led to the
wholesale migration of the more energetic and liberal elements among the
German people. These young fellows had moved to the United States of
America, to Brazil, to the new colonies in Asia and America. Their work was
continued in Germany but by a different sort of men.
In the new Diet which met at Frankfort, after the collapse of the German
Parliament and the failure of the Liberals to establish a united country, the
Kingdom of Prussia was represented by that same Otto von Bismarck from
whom we parted a few pages ago. Bismarck by now had managed to gain the
complete confidence of the king of Prussia. That was all he asked for. The
opinion of the Prussian parliament or of the Prussian people interested him not at
all. With his own eyes he had seen the defeat of the Liberals. He knew that he
would not be able to get rid of Austria without a war and he began by
strengthening the Prussian army. The Landtag, exasperated at his high-handed
methods, refused to give him the necessary credits. Bismarck did not even bother
to discuss the matter. He went ahead and increased his army with the help of
funds which the Prussian house of Peers and the king placed at his disposal.
Then he looked for a national cause which could be used for the purpose of
creating a great wave of patriotism among all the German people.
In the north of Germany there were the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein
which ever since the middle ages had been a source of trouble. Both countries
were inhabited by a certain number of Danes and a certain number of Germans,
but although they were governed by the King of Denmark, they were not an
integral part of the Danish State and this led to endless difficulties. Heaven
forbid that I should revive this forgotten question which now seems settled by
the acts of the recent Congress of Versailles. But the Germans in Holstein were
very loud in their abuse of the Danes and the Danes in Schleswig made a great
ado of their Danishness, and all Europe was discussing the problem and German
Männerchors and Turnvereins listened to sentimental speeches about the “lost
brethren” and the different chancelleries were trying to discover what it was all
about, when Prussia mobilised her armies to “save the lost provinces.” As
Austria, the official head of the German Confederation, could not allow Prussia
to act alone in such an important matter, the Habsburg troops were mobilised too
and the combined armies of the two great powers crossed the Danish frontiers
and after a very brave resistance on the part of the Danes, occupied the two
duchies. The Danes appealed to Europe, but Europe was otherwise engaged and
the poor Danes were left to their fate.
Bismarck then prepared the scene for the second number upon his Imperial
programme. He used the division of the spoils to pick a quarrel with Austria. The
Habsburgs fell into the trap. The new Prussian army, the creation of Bismarck
and his faithful generals, invaded Bohemia and in less than six weeks, the last of
the Austrian troops had been destroyed at Königgrätz and Sadowa and the road
to Vienna lay open. But Bismarck did not want to go too far. He knew that he
would need a few friends in Europe. He offered the defeated Habsburgs very
decent terms of peace, provided they would resign their chairmanship of the
Confederation. He was less merciful to many of the smaller German states who
had taken the side of the Austrians, and annexed them to Prussia. The greater
part of the northern states then formed a new organisation, the so-called North
German Confederacy, and victorious Prussia assumed the unofficial leadership
of the German people.
Europe stood aghast at the rapidity with which the work of consolidation had
been done. England was quite indifferent but France showed signs of
disapproval. Napoleon’s hold upon the French people was steadily diminishing.
The Crimean war had been costly and had accomplished nothing.
A second adventure in the year 1863, when a French army had tried to force
an Austrian Grand-Duke by the name of Maximilian upon the Mexican people as
their Emperor, had come to a disastrous end as soon as the American Civil War
had been won by the North. For the Government at Washington had forced the
French to withdraw their troops and this had given the Mexicans a chance to
clear their country of the enemy and shoot the unwelcome Emperor.
It was necessary to give the Napoleonic throne a new coat of glory-paint.
Within a few years the North German Confederation would be a serious rival of
France. Napoleon decided that a war with Germany would be a good thing for
his dynasty. He looked for an excuse and Spain, the poor victim of endless
revolutions, gave him one.
Just then the Spanish throne happened to be vacant. It had been offered to the
Catholic branch of the house of Hohenzollern. The French government had
objected and the Hohenzollerns had politely refused to accept the crown. But
Napoleon, who was showing signs of illness, was very much under the influence
of his beautiful wife, Eugénie de Montijo, the daughter of a Spanish gentleman
and the grand-daughter of William Kirkpatrick, an American consul at Malaga,
where the grapes come from. Eugénie, although shrewd enough, was as badly
educated as most Spanish women of that day. She was at the mercy of her
spiritual advisers and these worthy gentlemen felt no love for the Protestant King
of Prussia. “Be bold,” was the advice of the Empress to her husband, but she
omitted to add the second half of that famous Persian proverb which admonishes
the hero to “be bold but not too bold.” Napoleon, convinced of the strength of
his army, addressed himself to the king of Prussia and insisted that the king give
him assurances that “he would never permit another candidature of a
Hohenzollern prince to the Spanish crown.” As the Hohenzollerns had just
declined the honour, the demand was superfluous, and Bismarck so informed the
French government. But Napoleon was not satisfied.
It was the year 1870 and King William was taking the waters at Ems. There
one day he was approached by the French minister who tried to re-open the
discussion. The king answered very pleasantly that it was a fine day and that the
Spanish question was now closed and that nothing more remained to be said
upon the subject. As a matter of routine, a report of this interview was
telegraphed to Bismarck, who handled all foreign affairs. Bismarck edited the
dispatch for the benefit of the Prussian and French press. Many people have
called him names for doing this. Bismarck however could plead the excuse that
the doctoring of official news, since time immemorial, had been one of the
privileges of all civilised governments. When the “edited” telegram was printed,
the good people in Berlin felt that their old and venerable king with his nice
white whiskers had been insulted by an arrogant little Frenchman and the equally
good people of Paris flew into a rage because their perfectly courteous minister
had been shown the door by a Royal Prussian flunkey.
And so they both went to war and in less than two months, Napoleon and the
greater part of his army were prisoners of the Germans. The Second Empire had
come to an end and the Third Republic was making ready to defend Paris against
the German invaders. Paris held out for five long months. Ten days before the
surrender of the city, in the nearby palace of Versailles, built by that same King
Louis XIV who had been such a dangerous enemy to the Germans, the King of
Prussia was publicly proclaimed German Emperor and a loud booming of guns
told the hungry Parisians that a new German Empire had taken the place of the
old harmless Confederation of Teutonic states and statelets.
In this rough way, the German question was finally settled. By the end of the
year 1871, fifty-six years after the memorable gathering at Vienna, the work of
the Congress had been entirely undone. Metternich and Alexander and
Talleyrand had tried to give the people of Europe a lasting peace. The methods
they had employed had caused endless wars and revolutions and the feeling of a
common brotherhood of the eighteenth century was followed by an era of
exaggerated nationalism which has not yet come to an end.
THE AGE OF THE ENGINE

BUT WHILE THE PEOPLE OF EUROPE WERE FIGHTING FOR THEIR


NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE, THE WORLD IN WHICH THEY LIVED
HAD BEEN ENTIRELY CHANGED BY A SERIES OF INVENTIONS,
WHICH HAD MADE THE CLUMSY OLD STEAM ENGINE OF THE
18TH CENTURY THE MOST FAITHFUL AND EFFICIENT SLAVE OF
MAN

THE greatest benefactor of the human race died more than half a million years
ago. He was a hairy creature with a low brow and sunken eyes, a heavy jaw and
strong tiger-like teeth. He would not have looked well in a gathering of modern
scientists, but they would have honoured him as their master. For he had used a
stone to break a nut and a stick to lift up a heavy boulder. He was the inventor of
the hammer and the lever, our first tools, and he did more than any human being
who came after him to give man his enormous advantage over the other animals
with whom he shares this planet.
Ever since, man has tried to make his life easier by the use of a greater
number of tools. The first wheel (a round disc made out of an old tree) created as
much stir in the communities of 100,000 B.C. as the flying machine did only a
few years ago.
In Washington, the story is told of a director of the Patent Office who in the
early thirties of the last century suggested that the Patent Office be abolished,
because “everything that possibly could be invented had been invented.” A
similar feeling must have spread through the prehistoric world when the first sail
was hoisted on a raft and the people were able to move from place to place
without rowing or punting or pulling from the shore.
Indeed one of the most interesting chapters of history is the effort of man to let
some one else or something else do his work for him, while he enjoyed his
leisure, sitting in the sun or painting pictures on rocks, or training young wolves
and little tigers to behave like peaceful domestic animals.
Of course in the very olden days, it was always possible to enslave a weaker
neighbour and force him to do the unpleasant tasks of life. One of the reasons
why the Greeks and Romans, who were quite as intelligent as we are, failed to
devise more interesting machinery, was to be found in the wide-spread existence
of slavery. Why should a great mathematician waste his time upon wires and
pulleys and cogs and fill the air with noise and smoke when he could go to the
marketplace and buy all the slaves he needed at a very small expense?
And during the middle-ages, although slavery had been abolished and only a
mild form of serfdom survived, the guilds discouraged the idea of using
machinery because they thought this would throw a large number of their
brethren out of work. Besides, the Middle-Ages were not at all interested in
producing large quantities of goods. Their tailors and butchers and carpenters
worked for the immediate needs of the small community in which they lived and
had no desire to compete with their neighbours, or to produce more than was
strictly necessary.
During the Renaissance, when the prejudices of the Church against scientific
investigations could no longer be enforced as rigidly as before, a large number of
men began to devote their lives to mathematics and astronomy and physics and
chemistry. Two years before the beginning of the Thirty Years War, John Napier,
a Scotchman, had published his little book which described the new invention of
logarithms. During the war itself, Gottfried Leibnitz of Leipzig had perfected the
system of infinitesimal calculus. Eight years before the peace of Westphalia,
Newton, the great English natural philosopher, was born, and in that same year
Galileo, the Italian astronomer, died. Meanwhile the Thirty Years War had
destroyed the prosperity of central Europe and there was a sudden but very
general interest in “alchemy,” the strange pseudo-science of the middle-ages by
which people hoped to turn base metals into gold. This proved to be impossible
but the alchemists in their laboratories stumbled upon many new ideas and
greatly helped the work of the chemists who were their successors.
The work of all these men provided the world with a solid scientific
foundation upon which it was possible to build even the most complicated of
engines, and a number of practical men made good use of it. The Middle-Ages
had used wood for the few bits of necessary machinery. But wood wore out
easily. Iron was a much better material, but iron was scarce except in England. In
England therefore most of the smelting was done. To smelt iron, huge fires were
needed. In the beginning, these fires had been made of wood, but gradually the
forests had been used up. Then “stone coal” (the petrified trees of prehistoric
times) was used. But coal as you know has to be dug out of the ground and it has
to be transported to the smelting ovens and the mines have to be kept dry from
the ever invading waters.
These were two problems which had to be solved at once. For the time being,
horses could still be used to haul the coal-wagons, but the pumping question
demanded the application of special machinery. Several inventors were busy
trying to solve the difficulty. They all knew that steam would have to be used in
their new engine. The idea of the steam engine was very old. Hero of
Alexandria, who lived in the first century before Christ, has described to us
several bits of machinery which were driven by steam. The people of the
Renaissance had played with the notion of steam-driven war chariots. The
Marquis of Worcester, a contemporary of Newton, in his book of inventions,
tells of a steam engine. A little later, in the year 1698, Thomas Savery of London
applied for a patent for a pumping engine. At the same time, a Hollander,
Christian Huygens, was trying to perfect an engine in which gun-powder was
used to cause regular explosions in much the same way as we use gasoline in our
motors.
THE MODERN CITY

All over Europe, people were busy with the idea. Denis Papin, a Frenchman,
friend and assistant of Huygens, was making experiments with steam engines in
several countries. He invented a little wagon that was driven by steam, and a
paddle-wheel boat. But when he tried to take a trip in his vessel, it was
confiscated by the authorities on a complaint of the boatmen’s union, who feared
that such a craft would deprive them of their livelihood. Papin finally died in
London in great poverty, having wasted all his money on his inventions. But at
the time of his death, another mechanical enthusiast, Thomas Newcomen, was
working on the problem of a new steam-pump. Fifty years later his engine was
improved upon by James Watt, a Glasgow instrument maker. In the year 1777,
he gave the world the first steam engine that proved of real practical value.
But during the centuries of experiments with a “heat-engine,” the political
world had greatly changed. The British people had succeeded the Dutch as the
common-carriers of the world’s trade. They had opened up new colonies. They
took the raw materials which the colonies produced to England, and there they
turned them into finished products, and then they exported the finished goods to
the four corners of the world. During the seventeenth century, the people of
Georgia and the Carolinas had begun to grow a new shrub which gave a strange
sort of woolly substance, the so-called “cotton wool.” After this had been
plucked, it was sent to England and there the people of Lancashire wove it into
cloth. This weaving was done by hand and in the homes of the workmen. Very
soon a number of improvements were made in the process of weaving. In the
year 1730, John Kay invented the “fly shuttle.” In 1770, James Hargreaves got a
patent on his “spinning jenny.” Eli Whitney, an American, invented the cotton-
gin, which separated the cotton from its seeds, a job which had previously been
done by hand at the rate of only a pound a day. Finally Richard Arkwright and
the Reverend Edmund Cartwright invented large weaving machines, which were
driven by water power. And then, in the eighties of the eighteenth century, just
when the Estates General of France had begun those famous meetings which
were to revolutionise the political system of Europe, the engines of Watt were
arranged in such a way that they could drive the weaving machines of
Arkwright, and this created an economic and social revolution which has
changed human relationship in almost every part of the world.
As soon as the stationary engine had proved a success, the inventors turned
their attention to the problem of propelling boats and carts with the help of a
mechanical contrivance. Watt himself designed plans for a “steam locomotive,”
but ere he had perfected his ideas, in the year 1804, a locomotive made by
Richard Trevithick carried a load of twenty tons at Pen-y-darran in the Wales
mining district.
At the same time an American jeweller and portrait-painter by the name of
Robert Fulton was in Paris, trying to convince Napoleon that with the use of his
submarine boat, the “Nautilus,” and his “steam-boat,” the French might be able
to destroy the naval supremacy of England.
Fulton’s idea of a steamboat was not original. He had undoubtedly copied it
from John Fitch, a mechanical genius of Connecticut whose cleverly constructed
steamer had first navigated the Delaware river as early as the year 1787. But
Napoleon and his scientific advisers did not believe in the practical possibility of
a self-propelled boat, and although the Scotch-built engine of the little craft
puffed merrily on the Seine, the great Emperor neglected to avail himself of this
formidable weapon which might have given him his revenge for Trafalgar.
As for Fulton, he returned to the United States and, being a practical man of
business, he organised a successful steamboat company together with Robert R.
Livingston, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, who was American
Minister to France when Fulton was in Paris, trying to sell his invention. The
first steamer of this new company, the “Clermont,” which was given a monopoly
of all the waters of New York State, equipped with an engine built by Boulton
and Watt of Birmingham in England, began a regular service between New York
and Albany in the year 1807.

THE FIRST STEAMBOAT

As for poor John Fitch, the man who long before any one else had used the
“steam-boat” for commercial purposes, he came to a sad death. Broken in health
and empty of purse, he had come to the end of his resources when his fifth boat,
which was propelled by means of a screw-propeller, had been destroyed. His
neighbours jeered at him as they were to laugh a hundred years later when
Professor Langley constructed his funny flying machines. Fitch had hoped to
give his country an easy access to the broad rivers of the west and his
countrymen preferred to travel in flat-boats or go on foot. In the year 1798, in
utter despair and misery, Fitch killed himself by taking poison.
But twenty years later, the “Savannah,” a steamer of 1850 tons and making six
knots an hour, (the Mauretania goes just four times as fast,) crossed the ocean
from Savannah to Liverpool in the record time of twenty-five days. Then there
was an end to the derision of the multitude and in their enthusiasm the people
gave the credit for the invention to the wrong man.
THE ORIGIN OF THE STEAMBOAT

Six years later, George Stephenson, a Scotchman, who had been building
locomotives for the purpose of hauling coal from the mine-pit to smelting ovens
and cotton factories, built his famous “travelling engine” which reduced the
price of coal by almost seventy per cent and which made it possible to establish
the first regular passenger service between Manchester and Liverpool, when
people were whisked from city to city at the unheard-of speed of fifteen miles
per hour. A dozen years later, this speed had been increased to twenty miles per
hour. At the present time, any well-behaved flivver (the direct descendant of the
puny little motor-driven machines of Daimler and Levassor of the eighties of the
last century) can do better than these early “Puffing Billies.”

THE ORIGIN OF THE AUTOMOBILE

But while these practically-minded engineers were improving upon their


rattling “heat engines,” a group of “pure” scientists (men who devote fourteen
hours of each day to the study of those “theoretical” scientific phenomena
without which no mechanical progress would be possible) were following a new
scent which promised to lead them into the most secret and hidden domains of
Nature.
Two thousand years ago, a number of Greek and Roman philosophers (notably
Thales of Miletus and Pliny who was killed while trying to study the eruption of
Vesuvius of the year 79 when Pompeii and Herculaneum were buried beneath
the ashes) had noticed the strange antics of bits of straw and of feather which
were held near a piece of amber which was being rubbed with a bit of wool. The
schoolmen of the Middle Ages had not been interested in this mysterious
“electric” power. But immediately after the Renaissance, William Gilbert, the
private physician of Queen Elizabeth, wrote his famous treatise on the character
and behaviour of Magnets. During the Thirty Years War Otto von Guericke, the
burgomaster of Magdeburg and the inventor of the air-pump, constructed the
first electrical machine. During the next century a large number of scientists
devoted themselves to the study of electricity. Not less than three professors
invented the famous Leyden Jar in the year 1795. At the same time, Benjamin
Franklin, the most universal genius of America next to Benjamin Thomson (who
after his flight from New Hampshire on account of his pro-British sympathies
became known as Count Rumford) was devoting his attention to this subject. He
discovered that lightning and the electric spark were manifestations of the same
electric power and continued his electric studies until the end of his busy and
useful life. Then came Volta with his famous “electric pile” and Galvani and Day
and the Danish professor Hans Christian Oersted and Ampère and Arago and
Faraday, all of them diligent searchers after the true nature of the electric forces.
They freely gave their discoveries to the world and Samuel Morse (who like
Fulton began his career as an artist) thought that he could use this new electric
current to transmit messages from one city to another. He intended to use copper
wire and a little machine which he had invented. People laughed at him. Morse
therefore was obliged to finance his own experiments and soon he had spent all
his money and then he was very poor and people laughed even louder. He then
asked Congress to help him and a special Committee on Commerce promised
him their support. But the members of Congress were not at all interested and
Morse had to wait twelve years before he was given a small congressional
appropriation. He then built a “telegraph” between Baltimore and Washington.
In the year 1837 he had shown his first successful “telegraph” in one of the
lecture halls of New York University. Finally, on the 24th of May of the year
1844 the first long-distance message was sent from Washington to Baltimore and
to-day the whole world is covered with telegraph wires and we can send news
from Europe to Asia in a few seconds. Twenty-three years later Alexander
Graham Bell used the electric current for his telephone. And half a century
afterwards Marconi improved upon these ideas by inventing a system of sending
messages which did away entirely with the old-fashioned wires.
While Morse, the New Englander, was working on his “telegraph,” Michael
Faraday, the Yorkshire-man, had constructed the first “dynamo.” This tiny little
machine was completed in the year 1831 when Europe was still trembling as a
result of the great July revolutions which had so severely upset the plans of the
Congress of Vienna. The first dynamo grew and grew and grew and to-day it
provides us with heat and with light (you know the little incandescent bulbs
which Edison, building upon French and English experiments of the forties and
fifties, first made in 1878) and with power for all sorts of machines. If I am not
mistaken the electric-engine will soon entirely drive out the “heat engine” just as
in the olden days the more highly-organised prehistoric animals drove out their
less efficient neighbours.
Personally (but I know nothing about machinery) this will make me very
happy. For the electric engine which can be run by waterpower is a clean and
companionable servant of mankind but the “heat-engine,” the marvel of the
eighteenth century, is a noisy and dirty creature for ever filling the world with
ridiculous smoke-stacks and with dust and soot and asking that it be fed with
coal which has to be dug out of mines at great inconvenience and risk to
thousands of people.
And if I were a novelist and not a historian, who must stick to facts and may
not use his imagination, I would describe the happy day when the last steam
locomotive shall be taken to the Museum of Natural History to be placed next to
the skeleton of the Dinosaur and the Pterodactyl and the other extinct creatures
of a by-gone age.
THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION

BUT THE NEW ENGINES WERE VERY EXPENSIVE AND ONLY PEOPLE
OF WEALTH COULD AFFORD THEM. THE OLD CARPENTER OR
SHOEMAKER WHO HAD BEEN HIS OWN MASTER IN HIS LITTLE
WORKSHOP WAS OBLIGED TO HIRE HIMSELF OUT TO THE
OWNERS OF THE BIG MECHANICAL TOOLS, AND WHILE HE
MADE MORE MONEY THAN BEFORE, HE LOST HIS FORMER
INDEPENDENCE AND HE DID NOT LIKE THAT

IN the olden days the work of the world had been done by independent
workmen who sat in their own little workshops in the front of their houses, who
owned their tools, who boxed the ears of their own apprentices and who, within
the limits prescribed by their guilds, conducted their business as it pleased them.
They lived simple lives, and were obliged to work very long hours, but they
were their own masters. If they got up and saw that it was a fine day to go
fishing, they went fishing and there was no one to say “no.”
But the introduction of machinery changed this. A machine is really nothing
but a greatly enlarged tool. A railroad train which carries you at the speed of a
mile a minute is in reality a pair of very fast legs, and a steam hammer which
flattens heavy plates of iron is just a terrible big fist, made of steel.
But whereas we can all afford a pair of good legs and a good strong fist, a
railroad train and a steam hammer and a cotton factory are very expensive pieces
of machinery and they are not owned by a single man, but usually by a company
of people who all contribute a certain sum and then divide the profits of their
railroad or cotton mill according to the amount of money which they have
invested.

MAN POWER AND MACHINE POWER

Therefore, when machines had been improved until they were really
practicable and profitable, the builders of those large tools, the machine
manufacturers, began to look for customers who could afford to pay for them in
cash.
During the early middle ages, when land had been almost the only form of
wealth, the nobility were the only people who were considered wealthy. But as I
have told you in a previous chapter, the gold and silver which they possessed
was quite insignificant and they used the old system of barter, exchanging cows
for horses and eggs for honey. During the crusades, the burghers of the cities had
been able to gather riches from the reviving trade between the east and the west,
and they had been serious rivals of the lords and the knights.
The French revolution had entirely destroyed the wealth of the nobility and
had enormously increased that of the middle class or “bourgeoisie.” The years of
unrest which followed the Great Revolution had offered many middle-class
people a chance to get more than their share of this world’s goods. The estates of
the church had been confiscated by the French Convention and had been sold at
auction. There had been a terrific amount of graft. Land speculators had stolen
thousands of square miles of valuable land, and during the Napoleonic wars,
they had used their capital to “profiteer” in grain and gun-powder, and now they
possessed more wealth than they needed for the actual expenses of their
households and they could afford to build themselves factories and to hire men
and women to work the machines.
This caused a very abrupt change in the lives of hundreds of thousands of
people. Within a few years, many cities doubled the number of their inhabitants
and the old civic centre which had been the real “home” of the citizens was
surrounded with ugly and cheaply built suburbs where the workmen slept after
their eleven or twelve hours, or thirteen hours, spent in the factories and from
where they returned to the factory as soon as the whistle blew.
Far and wide through the countryside there was talk of the fabulous sums of
money that could be made in the towns. The peasant boy, accustomed to a life in
the open, went to the city. He rapidly lost his old health amidst the smoke and
dust and dirt of those early and badly ventilated workshops, and the end, very
often, was death in the poor-house or in the hospital.

THE FACTORY

Of course the change from the farm to the factory on the part of so many
people was not accomplished without a certain amount of opposition. Since one
engine could do as much work as a hundred men, the ninety-nine others who
were thrown out of employment did not like it. Frequently they attacked the
factory-buildings and set fire to the machines, but Insurance Companies had
been organised as early as the 17th century and as a rule the owners were well
protected against loss.
Soon, newer and better machines were installed, the factory was surrounded
with a high wall and then there was an end to the rioting. The ancient guilds
could not possibly survive in this new world of steam and iron. They went out of
existence and then the workmen tried to organise regular labour unions. But the
factory-owners, who through their wealth could exercise great influence upon
the politicians of the different countries, went to the Legislature and had laws
passed which forbade the forming of such trade unions because they interfered
with the “liberty of action” of the working man.
Please do not think that the good members of Parliament who passed these
laws were wicked tyrants. They were the true sons of the revolutionary period
when everybody talked of “liberty” and when people often killed their
neighbours because they were not quite as liberty-loving as they ought to have
been. Since “liberty” was the foremost virtue of man, it was not right that labour-
unions should dictate to their members the hours during which they could work
and the wages which they must demand. The workman must at all times, be
“free to sell his services in the open market,” and the employer must be equally
“free” to conduct his business as he saw fit. The days of the Mercantile System,
when the state had regulated the industrial life of the entire community, were
coming to an end. The new idea of “freedom” insisted that the state stand
entirely aside and let commerce take its course.
The last half of the 18th century had not merely been a time of intellectual and
political doubt, but the old economic ideas, too, had been replaced by new ones
which better suited the need of the hour. Several years before the French
revolution, Turgot, who had been one of the unsuccessful ministers of finance of
Louis XVI, had preached the novel doctrine of “economic liberty.” Turgot lived
in a country which had suffered from too much red-tape, too many regulations,
too many officials trying to enforce too many laws. “Remove this official
supervision,” he wrote, “let the people do as they please, and everything will be
all right.” Soon his famous advice of “laissez faire” became the battle-cry around
which the economists of that period rallied.
At the same time in England, Adam Smith was working on his mighty
volumes on the “Wealth of Nations,” which made another plea for “liberty” and
the “natural rights of trade.” Thirty years later, after the fall of Napoleon, when
the reactionary powers of Europe had gained their victory at Vienna, that same
freedom which was denied to the people in their political relations was forced
upon them in their industrial life.
The general use of machinery, as I have said at the beginning of this chapter,
proved to be of great advantage to the state. Wealth increased rapidly. The
machine made it possible for a single country, like England, to carry all the
burdens of the great Napoleonic wars. The capitalists (the people who provided
the money with which machines were bought) reaped enormous profits. They
became ambitious and began to take an interest in politics. They tried to compete
with the landed aristocracy which still exercised great influence upon the
government of most European countries.
In England, where the members of Parliament were still elected according to a
Royal Decree of the year 1265, and where a large number of recently created
industrial centres were without representation, they brought about the passing of
the Reform Bill of the year 1832, which changed the electoral system and gave
the class of the factory-owners more influence upon the legislative body. This
however caused great discontent among the millions of factory workers, who
were left without any voice in the government. They too began an agitation for
the right to vote. They put their demands down in a document which came to be
known as the “People’s Charter.” The debates about this charter grew more and
more violent. They had not yet come to an end when the revolutions of the year
1848 broke out. Frightened by the threat of a new outbreak of Jacobinism and
violence, the English government placed the Duke of Wellington, who was now
in his eightieth year, at the head of the army, and called for Volunteers. London
was placed in a state of siege and preparations were made to suppress the
coming revolution.
But the Chartist movement killed itself through bad leadership and no acts of
violence took place. The new class of wealthy factory owners, (I dislike the
word “bourgeoisie” which has been used to death by the apostles of a new social
order,) slowly increased its hold upon the government, and the conditions of
industrial life in the large cities continued to transform vast acres of pasture and
wheat-land into dreary slums, which guard the approach of every modern
European town.
EMANCIPATION

THE GENERAL INTRODUCTION OF MACHINERY DID NOT BRING


ABOUT THE ERA OF HAPPINESS AND PROSPERITY WHICH HAD
BEEN PREDICTED BY THE GENERATION WHICH SAW THE STAGE
COACH REPLACED BY THE RAILROAD. SEVERAL REMEDIES
WERE SUGGESTED BUT NONE OF THESE QUITE SOLVED THE
PROBLEM

IN the year 1831, just before the passing of the first Reform Bill Jeremy
Bentham, the great English student of legislative methods and the most practical
political reformer of that day, wrote to a friend: “The way to be comfortable is to
make others comfortable. The way to make others comfortable is to appear to
love them. The way to appear to love them is to love them in reality.” Jeremy
was an honest man. He said what he believed to be true. His opinions were
shared by thousands of his countrymen. They felt responsible for the happiness
of their less fortunate neighbours and they tried their very best to help them. And
Heaven knows it was time that something be done!
The ideal of “economic freedom” (the “laissez faire” of Turgot) had been
necessary in the old society where mediæval restrictions lamed all industrial
effort. But this “liberty of action” which had been the highest law of the land had
led to a terrible, yea, a frightful condition. The hours in the factory were limited
only by the physical strength of the workers. As long as a woman could sit
before her loom, without fainting from fatigue, she was supposed to work.
Children of five and six were taken to the cotton mills, to save them from the
dangers of the street and a life of idleness. A law had been passed which forced
the children of paupers to go to work or be punished by being chained to their
machines. In return for their services they got enough bad food to keep them
alive and a sort of pigsty in which they could rest at night. Often they were so
tired that they fell asleep at their job. To keep them awake a foreman with a whip
made the rounds and beat them on the knuckles when it was necessary to bring
them back to their duties. Of course, under these circumstances thousands of
little children died. This was regrettable and the employers, who after all were
human beings and not without a heart, sincerely wished that they could abolish
“child labour.” But since man was “free” it followed that children were “free”
too. Besides, if Mr. Jones had tried to work his factory without the use of
children of five and six, his rival, Mr. Stone, would have hired an extra supply of
little boys and Jones would have been forced into bankruptcy. It was therefore
impossible for Jones to do without child labour until such time as an act of
Parliament should forbid it for all employers.
But as Parliament was no longer dominated by the old landed aristocracy
(which had despised the upstart factory-owners with their money bags and had
treated them with open contempt), but was under control of the representatives
from the industrial centres, and as long as the law did not allow workmen to
combine in labour-unions, very little was accomplished. Of course the intelligent
and decent people of that time were not blind to these terrible conditions. They
were just helpless. Machinery had conquered the world by surprise and it took a
great many years and the efforts of thousands of noble men and women to make
the machine what it ought to be, man’s servant, and not his master.
Curiously enough, the first attack upon the outrageous system of employment
which was then common in all parts of the world, was made on behalf of the
black slaves of Africa and America. Slavery had been introduced into the
American continent by the Spaniards. They had tried to use the Indians as
labourers in the fields and in the mines, but the Indians, when taken away from a
life in the open, had lain down and died and to save them from extinction a kind-
hearted priest had suggested that negroes be brought from Africa to do the work.
The negroes were strong and could stand rough treatment. Besides, association
with the white man would give them a chance to learn Christianity and in this
way, they would be able to save their souls, and so from every possible point of
view, it would be an excellent arrangement both for the kindly white man and for
his ignorant black brother. But with the introduction of machinery there had been
a greater demand for cotton and the negroes were forced to work harder than
ever before, and they too, like the Indians, began to die under the treatment
which they received at the hands of the overseers.
Stories of incredible cruelty constantly found their way to Europe and in all
countries men and women began to agitate for the abolition of slavery. In
England, William Wilberforce and Zachary Macaulay, (the father of the great
historian whose history of England you must read if you want to know how
wonderfully interesting a history-book can be,) organised a society for the
suppression of slavery. First of all they got a law passed which made “slave
trading” illegal. And after the year 1840 there was not a single slave in any of
the British colonies. The revolution of 1848 put an end to slavery in the French
possessions. The Portuguese passed a law in the year 1858 which promised all
slaves their liberty in twenty years from date. The Dutch abolished slavery in
1863 and in the same year Tsar Alexander II returned to his serfs that liberty
which had been taken away from them more than two centuries before.
In the United States of America the question led to grave difficulties and a
prolonged war. Although the Declaration of Independence had laid down the
principle that “all men were created equal,” an exception had been made for
those men and women whose skins were dark and who worked on the
plantations of the southern states. As time went on, the dislike of the people of
the North for the institution of slavery increased and they made no secret of their
feelings. The southerners however claimed that they could not grow their cotton
without slave-labour, and for almost fifty years a mighty debate raged in both the
Congress and the Senate.
The North remained obdurate and the South would not give in. When it
appeared impossible to reach a compromise, the southern states threatened to
leave the Union. It was a most dangerous point in the history of the Union. Many
things “might” have happened. That they did not happen was the work of a very
great and very good man.
On the sixth of November of the year 1860, Abraham Lincoln, an Illinois
lawyer, and a man who had made his own intellectual fortune, had been elected
president by the Republicans who were very strong in the anti-slavery states. He
knew the evils of human bondage at first hand and his shrewd common-sense
told him that there was no room on the northern continent for two rival nations.
When a number of southern states seceded and formed the “Confederate States
of America,” Lincoln accepted the challenge. The Northern states were called
upon for volunteers. Hundreds of thousands of young men responded with eager
enthusiasm and there followed four years of bitter civil war. The South, better
prepared and following the brilliant leadership of Lee and Jackson, repeatedly
defeated the armies of the North. Then the economic strength of New England
and the West began to tell. An unknown officer by the name of Grant arose from
obscurity and became the Charles Martel of the great slave war. Without
interruption he hammered his mighty blows upon the crumbling defences of the
South. Early in the year 1863, President Lincoln issued his “Emancipation
Proclamation” which set all slaves free. In April of the year 1865 Lee
surrendered the last of his brave armies at Appomattox. A few days later,
President Lincoln was murdered by a lunatic. But his work was done. With the
exception of Cuba which was still under Spanish domination, slavery had come
to an end in every part of the civilised world.
But while the black man was enjoying an increasing amount of liberty, the
“free” workmen of Europe did not fare quite so well. Indeed, it is a matter of
surprise to many contemporary writers and observers that the masses of
workmen (the so-called proletariat) did not die out from sheer misery. They lived
in dirty houses situated in miserable parts of the slums. They ate bad food. They
received just enough schooling to fit them for their tasks. In case of death or an
accident, their families were not provided for. But the brewery and distillery
interests, (who could exercise great influence upon the Legislature,) encouraged
them to forget their woes by offering them unlimited quantities of whisky and
gin at very cheap rates.
The enormous improvement which has taken place since the thirties and the
forties of the last century is not due to the efforts of a single man. The best brains
of two generations devoted themselves to the task of saving the world from the
disastrous results of the all-too-sudden introduction of machinery. They did not
try to destroy the capitalistic system. This would have been very foolish, for the
accumulated wealth of other people, when intelligently used, may be of very
great benefit to all mankind. But they tried to combat the notion that true
equality can exist between the man who has wealth and owns the factories and
can close their doors at will without the risk of going hungry, and the labourer
who must take whatever job is offered, at whatever wage he can get, or face the
risk of starvation for himself, his wife and his children.
They endeavoured to introduce a number of laws which regulated the relations
between the factory owners and the factory workers. In this, the reformers have
been increasingly successful in all countries. To-day, the majority of the
labourers are well protected; their hours are being reduced to the excellent
average of eight, and their children are sent to the schools instead of to the mine
pit and to the carding-room of the cotton mills.
But there were other men who also contemplated the sight of all the belching
smoke-stacks, who heard the rattle of the railroad trains, who saw the store-
houses filled with a surplus of all sorts of materials, and who wondered to what
ultimate goal this tremendous activity would lead in the years to come. They
remembered that the human race had lived for hundreds of thousands of years
without commercial and industrial competition. Could they change the existing
order of things and do away with a system of rivalry which so often sacrificed
human happiness to profits?
This idea—this vague hope for a better day—was not restricted to a single
country. In England, Robert Owen, the owner of many cotton mills, established a
so-called “socialistic community” which was a success. But when he died, the
prosperity of New Lanark came to an end and an attempt of Louis Blanc, a
French journalist, to establish “social workshops” all over France fared no better.
Indeed, the increasing number of socialistic writers soon began to see that little
individual communities which remained outside of the regular industrial life,
would never be able to accomplish anything at all. It was necessary to study the
fundamental principles underlying the whole industrial and capitalistic society
before useful remedies could be suggested.
The practical socialists like Robert Owen and Louis Blanc and François
Fournier were succeeded by theoretical students of socialism like Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels. Of these two, Marx is the best known. He was a very brilliant
Jew whose family had for a long time lived in Germany. He had heard of the
experiments of Owen and Blanc and he began to interest himself in questions of
labour and wages and unemployment. But his liberal views made him very
unpopular with the police authorities of Germany, and he was forced to flee to
Brussels and then to London, where he lived a poor and shabby life as the
correspondent of the New York Tribune.
No one, thus far, had paid much attention to his books on economic subjects.
But in the year 1864 he organised the first international association of working
men and three years later, in 1867, he published the first volume of his well-
known treatise called “Capital.” Marx believed that all history was a long
struggle between those who “have” and those who “don’t have.” The
introduction and general use of machinery had created a new class in society,
that of the capitalists who used their surplus wealth to buy the tools which were
then used by the labourers to produce still more wealth, which was again used to
build more factories and so on, until the end of time. Meanwhile, according to
Marx, the third estate (the bourgeoisie) was growing richer and richer and the
fourth estate (the proletariat) was growing poorer and poorer, and he predicted
that in the end, one man would possess all the wealth of the world while the
others would be his employees and dependent upon his good will.
To prevent such a state of affairs, Marx advised working men of all countries
to unite and to fight for a number of political and economic measures which he
had enumerated in a Manifesto in the year 1848, the year of the last great
European revolution.
These views of course were very unpopular with the governments of Europe,
many countries, especially Prussia, passed severe laws against the Socialists and
policemen were ordered to break up the Socialist meetings and to arrest the
speakers. But that sort of persecution never does any good. Martyrs are the best
possible advertisements for an unpopular cause. In Europe the number of
socialists steadily increased and it was soon clear that the Socialists did not
contemplate a violent revolution but were using their increasing power in the
different Parliaments to promote the interests of the labouring classes. Socialists
were even called upon to act as Cabinet Ministers, and they co-operated with
progressive Catholics and Protestants to undo the damage that had been caused
by the Industrial Revolution and to bring about a fairer division of the many
benefits which had followed the introduction of machinery and the increased
production of wealth.
THE AGE OF SCIENCE

BUT THE WORLD HAD UNDERGONE ANOTHER CHANGE WHICH WAS


OF GREATER IMPORTANCE THAN EITHER THE POLITICAL OR
THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTIONS. AFTER GENERATIONS OF
OPPRESSION AND PERSECUTION, THE SCIENTIST HAD AT LAST
GAINED LIBERTY OF ACTION AND HE WAS NOW TRYING TO
DISCOVER THE FUNDAMENTAL LAWS WHICH GOVERN THE
UNIVERSE

THE Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Chaldeans, the Greeks


THE PHILOSOPHER
and the Romans, had all contributed something to the first vague
notions of science and scientific investigation. But the great migrations of the
fourth century had destroyed the classical world of the Mediterranean, and the
Christian Church, which was more interested in the life of the soul than in the
life of the body, had regarded science as a manifestation of that human arrogance
which wanted to pry into divine affairs which belonged to the realm of Almighty
God, and which therefore was closely related to the seven deadly sins.
The Renaissance to a certain but limited extent had broken through this wall
of Mediæval prejudices. The Reformation however, which had overtaken the
Renaissance in the early 16th century, had been hostile to the ideals of the “new
civilisation,” and once more the men of science were threatened with severe
punishment, should they try to pass beyond the narrow limits of knowledge
which had been laid down in Holy Writ.
Our world is filled with the statues of great generals, atop of prancing horses,
leading their cheering soldiers to glorious victory. Here and there, a modest slab
of marble announces that a man of science has found his final resting place. A
thousand years from now we shall probably do these things differently, and the
children of that happy generation shall know of the splendid courage and the
almost inconceivable devotion to duty of the men who were the pioneers of that
abstract knowledge, which alone has made our modern world a practical
possibility.
Many of these scientific pioneers suffered poverty and contempt and
humiliation. They lived in garrets and died in dungeons. They dared not print
their names on the title-pages of their books and they dared not print their
conclusions in the land of their birth, but smuggled the manuscripts to some
secret printing shop in Amsterdam or Haarlem. They were exposed to the bitter
enmity of the Church, both Protestant and Catholic, and were the subjects of
endless sermons, inciting the parishioners to violence against the “heretics.”
Here and there they found an asylum. In Holland, where the spirit of tolerance
was strongest, the authorities, while regarding these scientific investigations with
little favour, yet refused to interfere with people’s freedom of thought. It became
a little asylum for intellectual liberty where French and English and German
philosophers and mathematicians and physicians could go to enjoy a short spell
of rest and get a breath of free air.
In another chapter I have told you how Roger Bacon, the great genius of the
thirteenth century, was prevented for years from writing a single word, lest he
get into new troubles with the authorities of the church. And five hundred years
later, the contributors to the great philosophic “Encyclopædia” were under the
constant supervision of the French gendarmerie. Half a century afterwards,
Darwin, who dared to question the story of the creation of man, as revealed in
the Bible, was denounced from every pulpit as an enemy of the human race.
Even to-day, the persecution of those who venture into the unknown realm of
science has not entirely come to an end. And while I am writing this Mr. Bryan
is addressing a vast multitude on the “Menace of Darwinism,” warning his
hearers against the errors of the great English naturalist.
All this, however, is a mere detail. The work that has to be done GALILEO
invariably gets done, and the ultimate profit of the discoveries and the
inventions goes to the mass of those same people who have always decried the
man of vision as an unpractical idealist.
The seventeenth century had still preferred to investigate the far off heavens
and to study the position of our planet in relation to the solar system. Even so,
the Church had disapproved of this unseemly curiosity, and Copernicus who first
of all had proved that the sun was the centre of the universe, did not publish his
work until the day of his death. Galileo spent the greater part of his life under the
supervision of the clerical authorities, but he continued to use his telescope and
provided Isaac Newton with a mass of practical observations, which greatly
helped the English mathematician when he discovered the existence of that
interesting habit of falling objects which came to be known as the Law of
Gravitation.
That, for the moment at least, exhausted the interest in the Heavens, and man
began to study the earth. The invention of a workable microscope, (a strange and
clumsy little thing,) by Anthony van Leeuwenhoek during the last half of the
17th century, gave man a chance to study the “microscopic” creatures who are
responsible for so many of his ailments. It laid the foundations of the science of
“bacteriology” which in the last forty years has delivered the world from a great
number of diseases by discovering the tiny organisms which cause the
complaint. It also allowed the geologists to make a more careful study of
different rocks and of the fossils (the petrified prehistoric plants) which they
found deep below the surface of the earth. These investigations convinced them
that the earth must be a great deal older than was stated in the book of Genesis
and in the year 1830, Sir Charles Lyell published his “Principles of Geology”
which denied the story of creation as related in the Bible and gave a far more
wonderful description of slow growth and gradual development.
At the same time, the Marquis de Laplace was working on a new theory of
creation, which made the earth a little blotch in the nebulous sea out of which the
planetary system had been formed and Bunsen and Kirchhoff, by the use of the
spectroscope, were investigating the chemical composition of the stars and of
our good neighbour, the sun, whose curious spots had first been noticed by
Galileo.
Meanwhile after a most bitter and relentless warfare with the clerical
authorities of Catholic and Protestant lands, the anatomists and physiologists had
at last obtained permission to dissect bodies and to substitute a positive
knowledge of our organs and their habits for the guesswork of the mediæval
quack.

THE DIRIGIBLE

Within a single generation (between 1810 and 1840) more progress was made
in every branch of science than in all the hundreds of thousands of years that had
passed since man first looked at the stars and wondered why they were there. It
must have been a very sad age for the people who had been educated under the
old system. And we can understand their feeling of hatred for such men as
Lamarck and Darwin, who did not exactly tell them that they were “descended
from monkeys,” (an accusation which our grandfathers seemed to regard as a
personal insult,) but who suggested that the proud human race had evolved from
a long series of ancestors who could trace the family-tree back to the little jelly-
fishes who were the first inhabitants of our planet.
The dignified world of the well-to-do middle class, which dominated the
nineteenth century, was willing to make use of the gas or the electric light, of all
the many practical applications of the great scientific discoveries, but the mere
investigator, the man of the “scientific theory” without whom no progress would
be possible, continued to be distrusted until very recently. Then, at last, his
services were recognised. To-day the rich people who in past ages donated their
wealth for the building of a cathedral, construct vast laboratories where silent
men do battle upon the hidden enemies of mankind and often sacrifice their lives
that coming generations may enjoy greater happiness and health.
Indeed it has come to pass that many of the ills of this world, which our
ancestors regarded as inevitable “acts of God,” have been exposed as
manifestations of our own ignorance and neglect. Every child nowadays knows
that he can keep from getting typhoid fever by a little care in the choice of his
drinking water. But it took years and years of hard work before the doctors could
convince the people of this fact. Few of us now fear the dentist chair. A study of
the microbes that live in our mouth has made it possible to keep our teeth from
decay. Must perchance a tooth be pulled, then we take a sniff of gas, and go our
way rejoicing. When the newspapers of the year 1846 brought the story of the
“painless operation” which had been performed in America with the help of
ether, the good people of Europe shook their heads. To them it seemed against
the will of God that man should escape the pain which was the share of all
mortals, and it took a long time before the practice of taking ether and
chloroform for operations became general.
But the battle of progress had been won. The breach in the old walls of
prejudice was growing larger and larger, and as time went by, the ancient stones
of ignorance came crumbling down. The eager crusaders of a new and happier
social order rushed forward. Suddenly they found themselves facing a new
obstacle. Out of the ruins of a long-gone past, another citadel of reaction had
been erected, and millions of men had to give their lives before this last bulwark
was destroyed.
ART

A CHAPTER OF ART

WHEN a baby is perfectly healthy and has had enough to eat and has slept all it
wants, then it hums a little tune to show how happy it is. To grown-ups this
humming means nothing. It sounds like “goo-zum, goo-zum, goo-o-o-o-o,” but
to the baby it is perfect music. It is his first contribution to art.
As soon as he (or she) gets a little older and is able to sit up, the period of
mud-pie making begins. These mud-pies do not interest the outside world. There
are too many million babies, making too many million mud-pies at the same
time. But to the small infant they represent another expedition into the pleasant
realm of art. The baby is now a sculptor.
At the age of three or four, when the hands begin to obey the brain, the child
becomes a painter. His fond mother gives him a box of coloured chalks and
every loose bit of paper is rapidly covered with strange pothooks and scrawls
which represent houses and horses and terrible naval battles.
Soon however this happiness of just “making things” comes to an end. School
begins and the greater part of the day is filled up with work. The business of
living, or rather the business of “making a living,” becomes the most important
event in the life of every boy and girl. There is little time left for “art” between
learning the tables of multiplication and the past participles of the irregular
French verbs. And unless the desire for making certain things for the mere
pleasure of creating them without any hope of a practical return be very strong,
the child grows into manhood and forgets that the first five years of his life were
mainly devoted to art.
Nations are not different from children. As soon as the cave-man had escaped
the threatening dangers of the long and shivering ice-period, and had put his
house in order, he began to make certain things which he thought beautiful,
although they were of no earthly use to him in his fight with the wild animals of
the jungle. He covered the walls of his grotto with pictures of the elephants and
the deer which he hunted, and out of a piece of stone, he hacked the rough
figures of those women he thought most attractive.
As soon as the Egyptians and the Babylonians and the Persians and all the
other people of the east had founded their little countries along the Nile and the
Euphrates, they began to build magnificent palaces for their kings, invented
bright pieces of jewellery for their women and planted gardens which sang
happy songs of colour with their many bright flowers.
Our own ancestors, the wandering nomads from the distant Asiatic prairies,
enjoying a free and easy existence as fighters and hunters, composed songs
which celebrated the mighty deeds of their great leaders and invented a form of
poetry which has survived until our own day. A thousand years later, when they
had established themselves on the Greek mainland, and had built their “city-
states,” they expressed their joy (and their sorrows) in magnificent temples, in
statues, in comedies and in tragedies, and in every conceivable form of art.
The Romans, like their Carthaginian rivals, were too busy administering other
people and making money to have much love for “useless and unprofitable”
adventures of the spirit. They conquered the world and built roads and bridges
but they borrowed their art wholesale from the Greeks. They invented certain
practical forms of architecture which answered the demands of their day and
age. But their statues and their histories and their mosaics and their poems were
mere Latin imitations of Greek originals. Without that vague and hard-to-define
something which the world calls “personality,” there can be no art and the
Roman world distrusted that particular sort of personality. The Empire needed
efficient soldiers and tradesmen. The business of writing poetry or making
pictures was left to foreigners.
Then came the Dark Ages. The barbarian was the proverbial bull in the china-
shop of western Europe. He had no use for what he did not understand. Speaking
in terms of the year 1921, he liked the magazine covers of pretty ladies, but
threw the Rembrandt etchings which he had inherited into the ash-can. Soon he
came to learn better. Then he tried to undo the damage which he had created a
few years before. But the ash-cans were gone and so were the pictures.
But by this time, his own art, which he had brought with him from the east,
had developed into something very beautiful and he made up for his past neglect
and indifference by the so-called “art of the Middle Ages” which as far as
northern Europe is concerned was a product of the Germanic mind and had
borrowed but little from the Greeks and the Latins and nothing at all from the
older forms of art of Egypt and Assyria, not to speak of India and China, which
simply did not exist, as far as the people of that time were concerned. Indeed, so
little had the northern races been influenced by their southern neighbours that
their own architectural products were completely misunderstood by the people of
Italy and were treated by them with downright and unmitigated contempt.
You have all heard the word Gothic. You probably associate it with the picture
of a lovely old cathedral, lifting its slender spires towards high heaven. But what
does the word really mean?
It means something “uncouth” and “barbaric”—something which one might
expect from an “uncivilised Goth,” a rough backwoods-man who had no respect
for the established rules of classical art and who built his “modern horrors” to
please his own low tastes without a decent regard for the examples of the Forum
and the Acropolis.
And yet for several centuries this form of Gothic architecture was the highest
expression of the sincere feeling for art which inspired the whole northern
continent. From a previous chapter, you will remember how the people of the
late Middle Ages lived. Unless they were peasants and dwelt in villages, they
were citizens of a “city” or “civitas,” the old Latin name for a tribe. And indeed,
behind their high walls and their deep moats, these good burghers were true
tribesmen who shared the common dangers and enjoyed the common safety and
prosperity which they derived from their system of mutual protection.
In the old Greek and Roman cities the market-place, where the temple stood,
had been the centre of civic life. During the Middle Ages, the Church, the House
of God, became such a centre. We modern Protestant people, who go to our
church only once a week, and then for a few hours only, hardly know what a
mediæval church meant to the community. Then, before you were a week old,
you were taken to the Church to be baptised. As a child, you visited the Church
to learn the holy stories of the Scriptures. Later on you became a member of the
congregation, and if you were rich enough you built yourself a separate little
chapel sacred to the memory of the Patron Saint of your own family. As for the
sacred edifice, it was open at all hours of the day and many of the night. In a
certain sense it resembled a modern club, dedicated to all the inhabitants of the
town. In the church you very likely caught a first glimpse of the girl who was to
become your bride at a great ceremony before the High Altar. And finally, when
the end of the journey had come, you were buried beneath the stones of this
familiar building, that all your children and their grandchildren might pass over
your grave until the Day of Judgement.
Because the Church was not only the House of God but also the true centre of
all common life, the building had to be different from anything that had ever
been constructed by the hands of man. The temples of the Egyptians and the
Greeks and the Romans had been merely the shrine of a local divinity. As no
sermons were preached before the images of Osiris or Zeus or Jupiter, it was not
necessary that the interior offer space for a great multitude. All the religious
processions of the old Mediterranean peoples took place in the open. But in the
north, where the weather was usually bad, most functions were held under the
roof of the church.
During many centuries the architects struggled with this GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE
problem of constructing a building that was large enough.
The Roman tradition taught them how to build heavy stone walls with very small
windows lest the walls lose their strength. On the top of this they then placed a
heavy stone roof. But in the twelfth century, after the beginning of the Crusades,
when the architects had seen the pointed arches of the Mohammedan builders,
the western builders discovered a new style which gave them their first chance to
make the sort of building which those days of an intense religious life demanded.
And then they developed this strange style upon which the Italians bestowed the
contemptuous name of “Gothic” or barbaric. They achieved their purpose by
inventing a vaulted roof which was supported by “ribs.” But such a roof, if it
became too heavy, was apt to break the walls, just as a man of three hundred
pounds sitting down upon a child’s chair will force it to collapse. To overcome
this difficulty, certain French architects then began to re-enforce the walls with
“buttresses” which were merely heavy masses of stone against which the walls
could lean while they supported the roof. And to assure the further safety of the
roof they supported the ribs of the roof by so-called “flying buttresses,” a very
simple method of construction which you will understand at once when you look
at our picture.
This new method of construction allowed the introduction of enormous
windows. In the twelfth century, glass was still an expensive curiosity, and very
few private buildings possessed glass windows. Even the castles of the nobles
were without protection and this accounts for the eternal drafts and explains why
people of that day wore furs in-doors as well as out.
Fortunately, the art of making coloured glass, with which the ancient people of
the Mediterranean had been familiar, had not been entirely lost. There was a
revival of stained glass-making and soon the windows of the Gothic churches
told the stories of the Holy Book in little bits of brilliantly coloured window-
pane, which were caught in a long framework of lead.
Behold, therefore, the new and glorious house of God, filled with an eager
multitude, “living” its religion as no people have ever done either before or
since! Nothing is considered too good or too costly or too wondrous for this
House of God and Home of Man. The sculptors, who since the destruction of the
Roman Empire have been out of employment, haltingly return to their noble art.
Portals and pillars and buttresses and cornices are all covered with carven
images of Our Lord and the blessed Saints. The embroiderers too are set to work
to make tapestries for the walls. The jewellers offer their highest art that the
shrine of the altar may be worthy of complete adoration. Even the painter does
his best. Poor man, he is greatly handicapped by lack of a suitable medium.
And thereby hangs a story.
The Romans of the early Christian period had covered the floors and the walls
of their temples and houses with mosaics; pictures made of coloured bits of
glass. But this art had been exceedingly difficult. It gave the painter no chance to
express all he wanted to say, as all children know who have ever tried to make
figures out of coloured blocks of wood. The art of mosaic painting therefore died
out during the late Middle Ages except in Russia, where the Byzantine mosaic
painters had found a refuge after the fall of Constantinople and continued to
ornament the walls of the orthodox churches until the day of the Bolsheviki,
when there was an end to the building of churches.
Of course, the mediæval painter could mix his colours with the water of the
wet plaster which was put upon the walls of the churches. This method of
painting upon “fresh plaster” (which was generally called “fresco” or “fresh”
painting) was very popular for many centuries. To-day, it is as rare as the art of
painting miniatures in manuscripts and among the hundreds of artists of our
modern cities there is perhaps one who can handle this medium successfully. But
during the Middle Ages there was no other way and the artists were “fresco”
workers for lack of something better. The method however had certain great
disadvantages. Very often the plaster came off the walls after only a few years,
or dampness spoiled the pictures, just as dampness will spoil the pattern of our
wall paper. People tried every imaginable expedient to get away from this plaster
background. They tried to mix their colours with wine and vinegar and with
honey and with the sticky white of egg, but none of these methods were
satisfactory. For more than a thousand years these experiments continued. In
painting pictures upon the parchment leaves of manuscripts the mediæval artists
were very successful. But when it came to covering large spaces of wood or
stone with paint which would stick, they did not succeed very well.
At last, during the first half of the fifteenth century, the problem was solved in
the southern Netherlands by Jan and Hubert van Eyck. The famous Flemish
brothers mixed their paint with specially prepared oils and this allowed them to
use wood and canvas or stone or anything else as a background for their pictures.
But by this time the religious ardour of the early Middle Ages was a thing of
the past. The rich burghers of the cities were succeeding the bishops as patrons
of the arts. And as art invariably follows the full dinner-pail, the artists now
began to work for these worldly employers and painted pictures for kings, for
grand-dukes and for rich bankers. Within a very short time, the new method of
painting with oil spread through Europe and in every country there developed a
school of special painting which showed the characteristic tastes of the people
for whom these portraits and landscapes were made.
In Spain, for example, Velasquez painted court-dwarfs and the weavers of the
royal tapestry-factories, and all sorts of persons and subjects connected with the
king and his court. But in Holland, Rembrandt and Frans Hals and Vermeer
painted the barnyard of the merchant’s house, and they painted his rather dowdy
wife and his healthy but bumptious children and the ships which had brought
him his wealth. In Italy on the other hand, where the Pope remained the largest
patron of the arts, Michelangelo and Correggio continued to paint Madonnas and
Saints, while in England, where the aristocracy was very rich and powerful and
in France where the kings had become uppermost in the state, the artists painted
distinguished gentlemen who were members of the government, and very lovely
ladies who were friends of His Majesty.
The great change in painting, which came about with the neglect of the old
church and the rise of a new class in society, was reflected in all other forms of
art. The invention of printing had made it possible for authors to win fame and
reputation by writing books for the multitudes. In this way arose the profession
of the novelist and the illustrator. But the people who had money enough to buy
the new books were not the sort who liked to sit at home of nights, looking at the
ceiling or just sitting. They wanted to be amused. The few minstrels of the
Middle Ages were not sufficient to cover the demand for entertainment. For the
first time since the early Greek city-states of two thousand years before, the
professional playwright had a chance to ply his trade. The Middle Ages had
known the theatre merely as part of certain church celebrations. The tragedies of
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries had told the story of the suffering of our
Lord. But during the sixteenth century the worldly theatre made its
reappearance. It is true that, at first, the position of the professional playwright
and actor was not a very high one. William Shakespeare was regarded as a sort
of circus-fellow who amused his neighbours with his tragedies and comedies.
But when he died in the year 1616 he had begun to enjoy the respect of his
neighbours and actors were no longer subjects of police supervision.
William’s contemporary, Lope de Vega, the incredible Spaniard who wrote no
less than 1800 worldly and 400 religious plays, was a person of rank who
received the papal approval upon his work. A century later, Molière, the
Frenchman, was deemed worthy of the companionship of none less than King
Louis XIV.
Since then, the theatre has enjoyed an ever increasing affection on the part of
the people. To-day a “theatre” is part of every well-regulated city, and the “silent
drama” of the movies has penetrated to the tiniest of our prairie hamlets.
Another art, however, was to become the most popular of all. That was music.
Most of the old art-forms demanded a great deal of technical skill. It takes years
and years of practice before our clumsy hand is able to follow the commands of
the brain and reproduce our vision upon canvas or in marble. It takes a lifetime
to learn how to act or how to write a good novel. And it takes a great deal of
training on the part of the public to appreciate the best in painting and writing
and sculpture. But almost any one, not entirely tone-deaf, can follow a tune and
almost everybody can get enjoyment out of some sort of music. The Middle
Ages had heard a little music but it had been entirely the music of the church.
The holy chants were subject to very severe laws of rhythm and harmony and
soon these became monotonous. Besides, they could not well be sung in the
street or in the market-place.
The Renaissance changed this. Music once more came into its own as the best
friend of man, both in his happiness and in his sorrows.
The Egyptians and the Babylonians and the ancient Jews had all been great
lovers of music. They had even combined different instruments into regular
orchestras. But the Greeks had frowned upon this barbaric foreign noise. They
liked to hear a man recite the stately poetry of Homer and Pindar. They allowed
him to accompany himself upon the lyre (the poorest of all stringed instruments).
That was as far as any one could go without incurring the risk of popular
disapproval. The Romans on the other hand had loved orchestral music at their
dinners and parties and they had invented most of the instruments which (in very
modified form) we use to-day. The early church had despised this music which
smacked too much of the wicked pagan world which had just been destroyed. A
few songs rendered by the entire congregation were all the bishops of the third
and fourth centuries would tolerate. As the congregation was apt to sing
dreadfully out of key without the guidance of an instrument, the church had
afterwards allowed the use of an organ, an invention of the second century of our
era which consisted of a combination of the old pipes of Pan and a pair of
bellows.
Then came the great migrations. The last of the Roman THE TROUBADOUR
musicians were either killed or became tramp-fiddlers going
from city to city and playing in the street, and begging for pennies like the
harpist on a modern ferry-boat.
But the revival of a more worldly civilisation in the cities of the late Middle
Ages had created a new demand for musicians. Instruments like the horn, which
had been used only as signal-instruments for hunting and fighting, were
remodelled until they could reproduce sounds which were agreeable in the
dance-hall and in the banqueting room. A bow strung with horse-hair was used
to play the old-fashioned guitar and before the end of the Middle Ages this six-
stringed instrument (the most ancient of all string-instruments which dates back
to Egypt and Assyria) had grown into our modern four-stringed fiddle which
Stradivarius and the other Italian violin-makers of the eighteenth century brought
to the height of perfection.
And finally the modern piano was invented, the most wide-spread of all
musical instruments, which has followed man into the wilderness of the jungle
and the ice-fields of Greenland. The organ had been the first of all keyed
instruments but the performer always depended upon the co-operation of some
one who worked the bellows, a job which nowadays is done by electricity. The
musicians therefore looked for a handier and less circumstantial instrument to
assist them in training the pupils of the many church choirs. During the great
eleventh century, Guido, a Benedictine monk of the town of Arezzo (the
birthplace of the poet Petrarch) gave us our modern system of musical
annotation. Some time during that century, when there was a great deal of
popular interest in music, the first instrument with both keys and strings was
built. It must have sounded as tinkly as one of those tiny children’s pianos which
you can buy at every toy-shop. In the city of Vienna, the town where the
strolling musicians of the Middle Ages (who had been classed with jugglers and
card sharps) had formed the first separate Guild of Musicians in the year 1288,
the little monochord was developed into something which we can recognise as
the direct ancestor of our modern Steinway. From Austria the “clavichord” as it
was usually called in those days (because it had “claves” or keys) went to Italy.
There it was perfected into the “spinet” which was so called after the inventor,
Giovanni Spinetti of Venice. At last during the eighteenth century, some time
between 1709 and 1720, Bartolomeo Cristofori made a “clavier” which allowed
the performer to play both loudly and softly or as it was said in Italian, “piano”
and “forte.” This instrument with certain changes became our “pianoforte” or
piano.
Then for the first time the world possessed an easy and convenient instrument
which could be mastered in a couple of years and did not need the eternal tuning
of harps and fiddles and was much pleasanter to the ears than the mediæval
tubas, clarinets, trombones and oboes. Just as the phonograph has given millions
of modern people their first love of music so did the early “pianoforte” carry the
knowledge of music into much wider circles. Music became part of the
education of every well-bred man and woman. Princes and rich merchants
maintained private orchestras. The musician ceased to be a wandering “jongleur”
and became a highly valued member of the community. Music was added to the
dramatic performances of the theatre and out of this practice, grew our modern
Opera. Originally only a few very rich princes could afford the expenses of an
“opera troupe.” But as the taste for this sort of entertainment grew, many cities
built their own theatres where Italian and afterwards German operas were given
to the unlimited joy of the whole community with the exception of a few sects of
very strict Christians who still regarded music with deep suspicion as something
which was too lovely to be entirely good for the soul.
By the middle of the eighteenth century the musical life of Europe was in full
swing. Then there came forward a man who was greater than all others, a simple
organist of the Thomas Church of Leipzig, by the name of Johann Sebastian
Bach. In his compositions for every known instrument, from comic songs and
popular dances to the most stately of sacred hymns and oratorios, he laid the
foundation for all our modern music. When he died in the year 1750 he was
succeeded by Mozart, who created musical fabrics of sheer loveliness which
remind us of lace that has been woven out of harmony and rhythm. Then came
Ludwig von Beethoven, the most tragic of men, who gave us our modern
orchestra, yet heard none of his greatest compositions because he was deaf, as
the result of a cold contracted during his years of poverty.
Beethoven lived through the period of the great French Revolution. Full of
hope for a new and glorious day, he had dedicated one of his symphonies to
Napoleon. But he lived to regret the hour. When he died in the year 1827,
Napoleon was gone and the French Revolution was gone, but the steam engine
had come and was filling the world with a sound that had nothing in common
with the dreams of the Third Symphony.
Indeed, the new order of steam and iron and coal and large factories had little
use for art, for painting and sculpture and poetry and music. The old protectors
of the arts, the Church and the princes and the merchants of the Middle Ages and
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries no longer existed. The leaders of the
new industrial world were too busy and had too little education to bother about
etchings and sonatas and bits of carved ivory, not to speak of the men who
created those things, and who were of no practical use to the community in
which they lived. And the workmen in the factories listened to the drone of their
engines until they too had lost all taste for the melody of the flute or fiddle of
their peasant ancestry. The arts became the step-children of the new industrial
era. Art and Life became entirely separated. Whatever paintings had been left,
were dying a slow death in the museums. And music became a monopoly of a
few “virtuosi” who took the music away from the home and carried it to the
concert-hall.
But steadily, although slowly, the arts are coming back into their own. People
begin to understand that Rembrandt and Beethoven and Rodin are the true
prophets and leaders of their race and that a world without art and happiness
resembles a nursery without laughter.
COLONIAL EXPANSION AND WAR

A CHAPTER WHICH OUGHT TO GIVE YOU A GREAT DEAL OF


POLITICAL INFORMATION ABOUT THE LAST FIFTY YEARS, BUT
WHICH REALLY CONTAINS SEVERAL EXPLANATIONS AND A
FEW APOLOGIES

IF I had known how difficult it was to write a History of the World, I should
never have undertaken the task. Of course, any one possessed of enough industry
to lose himself for half a dozen years in the musty stacks of a library, can
compile a ponderous tome which gives an account of the events in every land
during every century. But that was not the purpose of the present book. The
publishers wanted to print a history that should have rhythm—a story which
galloped rather than walked. And now that I have almost finished I discover that
certain chapters gallop, that others wade slowly through the dreary sands of long
forgotten ages—that a few parts do not make any progress at all, while still
others indulge in a veritable jazz of action and romance. I did not like this and I
suggested that we destroy the whole manuscript and begin once more from the
beginning. This, however, the publishers would not allow.
As the next best solution of my difficulties, I took the typewritten pages to a
number of charitable friends and asked them to read what I had said, and give
me the benefit of their advice. The experience was rather disheartening. Each
and every man had his own prejudices and his own hobbies and preferences.
They all wanted to know why, where and how I dared to omit their pet nation,
their pet statesman, or even their most beloved criminal. With some of them,
Napoleon and Jenghiz Khan were candidates for high honours. I explained that I
had tried very hard to be fair to Napoleon, but that in my estimation he was
greatly inferior to such men as George Washington, Gustavus Wasa, Augustus,
Hammurabi or Lincoln, and a score of others all of whom were obliged to
content themselves with a few paragraphs, from sheer lack of space. As for
Jenghiz Khan, I only recognise his superior ability in the field of wholesale
murder and I did not intend to give him any more publicity than I could help.

THE PIONEER

“This is very well as far as it goes,” said the next critic, “but how about the
Puritans? We are celebrating the tercentenary of their arrival at Plymouth. They
ought to have more space.” My answer was that if I were writing a history of
America, the Puritans would get fully one half of the first twelve chapters; that
however this was a history of mankind and that the event on Plymouth rock was
not a matter of far-reaching international importance until many centuries later;
that the United States had been founded by thirteen colonies and not by a single
one; that the most prominent leaders of the first twenty years of our history had
been from Virginia, from Pennsylvania, and from the island of Nevis, rather than
from Massachusetts; and that therefore the Puritans ought to content themselves
with a page of print and a special map.
Next came the prehistoric specialist. Why in the name of the great
Tyrannosaur had I not devoted more space to the wonderful race of Cro-Magnon
men, who had developed such a high stage of civilisation 10,000 years ago?
Indeed, and why not? The reason is simple. I do not take as much stock in the
perfection of these early races as some of our most noted anthropologists seem
to do. Rousseau and the philosophers of the eighteenth century created the
“noble savage” who was supposed to have dwelt in a state of perfect happiness
during the beginning of time. Our modern scientists have discarded the “noble
savage,” so dearly beloved by our grandfathers, and they have replaced him by
the “splendid savage” of the French Valleys who 35,000 years ago made an end
to the universal rule of the low-browed and low-living brutes of the Neanderthal
and other Germanic neighbourhoods. They have shown us the elephants the Cro-
Magnon painted and the statues he carved and they have surrounded him with
much glory.
I do not mean to say that they are wrong. But I hold that we know by far too
little of this entire period to re-construct that early west-European society with
any degree (however humble) of accuracy. And I would rather not state certain
things than run the risk of stating certain things that were not so.
Then there were other critics, who accused me of direct unfairness. Why did I
leave out such countries as Ireland and Bulgaria and Siam while I dragged in
such other countries as Holland and Iceland and Switzerland? My answer was
that I did not drag in any countries. They pushed themselves in by main force of
circumstances, and I simply could not keep them out. And in order that my point
may be understood, let me state the basis upon which active membership to this
book of history was considered.
There was but one rule. “Did the country or the person in question produce a
new idea or perform an original act without which the history of the entire
human race would have been different?” It was not a question of personal taste.
It was a matter of cool, almost mathematical judgment. No race ever played a
more picturesque rôle in history than the Mongolians, and no race, from the
point of view of achievement or intelligent progress, was of less value to the rest
of mankind.
The career of Tiglath-Pileser, the Assyrian, is full of dramatic episodes. But as
far as we are concerned, he might just as well never have existed at all. In the
same way, the history of the Dutch Republic is not interesting because once upon
a time the sailors of de Ruyter went fishing in the river Thames, but rather
because of the fact that this small mud-bank along the shores of the North Sea
offered a hospitable asylum to all sorts of strange people who had all sorts of
queer ideas upon all sorts of very unpopular subjects.
It is quite true that Athens or Florence, during the hey-day of their glory, had
only one tenth of the population of Kansas City. But our present civilisation
would be very different had neither of these two little cities of the Mediterranean
basin existed. And the same (with due apologies to the good people of
Wyandotte County) can hardly be said of this busy metropolis on the Missouri
River.
And since I am being very personal, allow me to state one other fact.
When we visit a doctor, we find out before hand whether he is a surgeon or a
diagnostician or a homeopath or a faith healer, for we want to know from what
angle he will look at our complaint. We ought to be as careful in the choice of
our historians as we are in the selection of our physicians. We think, “Oh well,
history is history,” and let it go at that. But the writer who was educated in a
strictly Presbyterian household somewhere in the backwoods of Scotland will
look differently upon every question of human relationships from his neighbour
who as a child, was dragged to listen to the brilliant exhortations of Robert
Ingersoll, the enemy of all revealed Devils. In due course of time, both men may
forget their early training and never again visit either church or lecture hall. But
the influence of these impressionable years stays with them and they cannot
escape showing it in whatever they write or say or do.
In the preface to this book, I told you that I should not be an infallible guide
and now that we have almost reached the end, I repeat the warning. I was born
and educated in an atmosphere of the old-fashioned liberalism which had
followed the discoveries of Darwin and the other pioneers of the nineteenth
century. As a child, I happened to spend most of my waking hours with an uncle
who was a great collector of the books written by Montaigne, the great French
essayist of the sixteenth century. Because I was born in Rotterdam and educated
in the city of Gouda, I ran continually across Erasmus and for some unknown
reason this great exponent of tolerance took hold of my intolerant self. Later I
discovered Anatole France and my first experience with the English language
came about through an accidental encounter with Thackeray’s “Henry Esmond,”
a story which made more impression upon me than any other book in the English
language.
If I had been born in a pleasant middle western city I probably should have a
certain affection for the hymns which I had heard in my childhood. But my
earliest recollection of music goes back to the afternoon when my Mother took
me to hear nothing less than a Bach fugue. And the mathematical perfection of
the great Protestant master influenced me to such an extent that I cannot hear the
usual hymns of our prayer-meetings without a feeling of intense agony and
direct pain.
Again, if I had been born in Italy and had been warmed by the sunshine of the
happy valley of the Arno, I might love many colourful and sunny pictures which
now leave me indifferent because I got my first artistic impressions in a country
where the rare sun beats down upon the rain-soaked land with almost cruel
brutality and throws everything into violent contrasts of dark and light.
I state these few facts deliberately that you may know the personal bias of the
man who wrote this history and may understand his point-of-view. The
bibliography at the end of this book, which represents all sorts of opinions and
views, will allow you to compare my ideas with those of other people. And in
this way, you will be able to reach your own final conclusions with a greater
degree of fairness than would otherwise be possible.

THE CONQUEST OF THE WEST

After this short but necessary excursion, we return to the history of the last
fifty years. Many things happened during this period but very little occurred
which at the time seemed to be of paramount importance. The majority of the
greater powers ceased to be mere political agencies and became large business
enterprises. They built railroads. They founded and subsidized steam-ship lines
to all parts of the world. They connected their different possessions with
telegraph wires. And they steadily increased their holdings in other continents.
Every available bit of African or Asiatic territory was claimed by one of the rival
powers. France became a colonial nation with interests in Algiers and
Madagascar and Annam and Tonkin (in eastern Asia). Germany claimed parts of
southwest and east Africa, built settlements in Kameroon on the west coast of
Africa and in New Guinea and many of the islands of the Pacific, and used the
murder of a few missionaries as a welcome excuse to take the harbour of
Kiaochau on the Yellow Sea in China. Italy tried her luck in Abyssinia, was
disastrously defeated by the soldiers of the Negus, and consoled herself by
occupying the Turkish possessions in Tripoli in northern Africa. Russia, having
occupied all of Siberia, took Port Arthur away from China. Japan, having
defeated China in the war of 1895, occupied the island of Formosa and in the
year 1905 began to lay claim to the entire empire of Corea. In the year 1883
England, the largest colonial empire the world has ever seen, undertook to
“protect” Egypt. She performed this task most efficiently and to the great
material benefit of that much neglected country, which ever since the opening of
the Suez canal in 1868 had been threatened with a foreign invasion. During the
next thirty years she fought a number of colonial wars in different parts of the
world and in 1902 (after three years of bitter fighting) she conquered the
independent Boer republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State.
Meanwhile she had encouraged Cecil Rhodes to lay the foundations for a great
African state, which reached from the Cape almost to the mouth of the Nile, and
had faithfully picked up such islands or provinces as had been left without a
European owner.
The shrewd king of Belgium, by name Leopold, used the discoveries of Henry
Stanley to found the Congo Free State in the year 1885. Originally this gigantic
tropical empire was an “absolute monarchy.” But after many years of scandalous
mismanagement, it was annexed by the Belgian people who made it a colony (in
the year 1908) and abolished the terrible abuses which had been tolerated by this
very unscrupulous Majesty, who cared nothing for the fate of the natives as long
as he got his ivory and rubber.
As for the United States, they had so much land that they desired no further
territory. But the terrible misrule of Cuba, one of the last of the Spanish
possessions in the western hemisphere, practically forced the Washington
government to take action. After a short and rather uneventful war, the Spaniards
were driven out of Cuba and Puerto Rico and the Philippines, and the two latter
became colonies of the United States.
This economic development of the world was perfectly natural. The
increasing number of factories in England and France and Germany needed an
ever increasing amount of raw materials and the equally increasing number of
European workers needed an ever increasing amount of food. Everywhere the
cry was for more and for richer markets, for more easily accessible coal mines
and iron mines and rubber plantations and oil-wells, for greater supplies of
wheat and grain.
The purely political events of the European continent dwindled to mere
insignificance in the eyes of men who were making plans for steamboat lines on
Victoria Nyanza or for railroads through the interior of Shantung. They knew
that many European questions still remained to be settled, but they did not
bother, and through sheer indifference and carelessness they bestowed upon their
descendants a terrible inheritance of hate and misery. For untold centuries the
south-eastern corner of Europe had been the scene of rebellion and bloodshed.
During the seventies of the last century the people of Serbia and Bulgaria and
Montenegro and Roumania were once more trying to gain their freedom and the
Turks (with the support of many of the western powers), were trying to prevent
this.
After a period of particularly atrocious massacres in Bulgaria in the year 1876,
the Russian people lost all patience. The Government was forced to intervene
just as President McKinley was obliged to go to Cuba and stop the shooting-
squads of General Weyler in Havana. In April of the year 1877 the Russian
armies crossed the Danube, stormed the Shipka pass, and after the capture of
Plevna, marched southward until they reached the gates of Constantinople.
Turkey appealed for help to England. There were many English people who
denounced their government when it took the side of the Sultan. But Disraeli
(who had just made Queen Victoria Empress of India and who loved the
picturesque Turks while he hated the Russians who were brutally cruel to the
Jewish people within their frontiers) decided to interfere. Russia was forced to
conclude the peace of San Stefano (1878) and the question of the Balkans was
left to a Congress which convened at Berlin in June and July of the same year.
This famous conference was entirely dominated by the personality of Disraeli.
Even Bismarck feared the clever old man with his well-oiled curly hair and his
supreme arrogance, tempered by a cynical sense of humor and a marvellous gift
for flattery. At Berlin the British prime-minister carefully watched over the fate
of his friends the Turks. Montenegro, Serbia and Roumania were recognised as
independent kingdoms. The principality of Bulgaria was given a semi-
independent status under Prince Alexander of Battenberg, a nephew of Tsar
Alexander II. But none of those countries were given the chance to develop their
powers and their resources as they would have been able to do, had England
been less anxious about the fate of the Sultan, whose domains were necessary to
the safety of the British Empire as a bulwark against further Russian aggression.
To make matters worse, the congress allowed Austria to take Bosnia and
Herzegovina away from the Turks to be “administered” as part of the Habsburg
domains. It is true that Austria made an excellent job of it. The neglected
provinces were as well managed as the best of the British colonies, and that is
saying a great deal. But they were inhabited by many Serbians. In older days
they had been part of the great Serbian empire of Stephan Dushan, who early in
the fourteenth century had defended western Europe against the invasions of the
Turks and whose capital of Uskub had been a centre of civilisation one hundred
and fifty years before Columbus discovered the new lands of the west. The
Serbians remembered their ancient glory as who would not? They resented the
presence of the Austrians in two provinces, which, so they felt, were theirs by
every right of tradition.
And it was in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, that the archduke Ferdinand,
heir to the Austrian throne, was murdered on June 28 of the year 1914. The
assassin was a Serbian student who had acted from purely patriotic motives.
But the blame for this terrible catastrophe which was the immediate, though
not the only cause of the Great World War did not lie with the half-crazy Serbian
boy or his Austrian victim. It must be traced back to the days of the famous
Berlin Conference when Europe was too busy building a material civilisation to
care about the aspirations and the dreams of a forgotten race in a dreary corner of
the old Balkan peninsula.
A NEW WORLD

THE GREAT WAR WHICH WAS REALLY THE STRUGGLE FOR A NEW
AND BETTER WORLD

THE Marquis de Condorcet was one of the noblest characters among the small
group of honest enthusiasts who were responsible for the outbreak of the great
French Revolution. He had devoted his life to the cause of the poor and the
unfortunate. He had been one of the assistants of d’Alembert and Diderot when
they wrote their famous Encyclopédie. During the first years of the Revolution
he had been the leader of the Moderate wing of the Convention.
His tolerance, his kindliness, his stout common sense, had made him an object
of suspicion when the treason of the king and the court clique had given the
extreme radicals their chance to get hold of the government and kill their
opponents. Condorcet was declared “hors de loi,” or outlawed, an outcast who
was henceforth at the mercy of every true patriot. His friends offered to hide him
at their own peril. Condorcet refused to accept their sacrifice. He escaped and
tried to reach his home, where he might be safe. After three nights in the open,
torn and bleeding, he entered an inn and asked for some food. The suspicious
yokels searched him and in his pockets they found a copy of Horace, the Latin
poet. This showed that their prisoner was a man of gentle breeding and had no
business upon the highroads at a time when every educated person was regarded
as an enemy of the Revolutionary state. They took Condorcet and they bound
him and they gagged him and they threw him into the village lock-up, but in the
morning when the soldiers came to drag him back to Paris and cut his head off,
behold! he was dead.
This man who had given all and had received nothing had good reason to
despair of the human race. But he has written a few sentences which ring as true
to-day as they did one hundred and thirty years ago. I repeat them here for your
benefit.
“Nature has set no limits to our hopes,” he wrote, “and the picture of the
human race, now freed from its chains and marching with a firm tread on the
road of truth and virtue and happiness, offers to the philosopher a spectacle
which consoles him for the errors, for the crimes and the injustices which still
pollute and afflict this earth.”

WAR

The world has just passed through an agony of pain compared to which the
French Revolution was a mere incident. The shock has been so great that it has
killed the last spark of hope in the breasts of millions of men. They were
chanting a hymn of progress, and four years of slaughter followed their prayers
for peace. “Is it worth while,” so they ask, “to work and slave for the benefit of
creatures who have not yet passed beyond the stage of the earliest cave men?”
There is but one answer.
That answer is “Yes!”
The World War was a terrible calamity. But it did not mean the end of things.
On the contrary it brought about the coming of a new day.
It is easy to write a history of Greece and Rome or the Middle Ages. The
actors who played their parts upon that long-forgotten stage are all dead. We can
criticize them with a cool head. The audience that applauded their efforts has
dispersed. Our remarks cannot possibly hurt their feelings.
But it is very difficult to give a true account of contemporary events. The
problems that fill the minds of the people with whom we pass through life, are
our own problems, and they hurt us too much or they please us too well to be
described with that fairness which is necessary when we are writing history and
not blowing the trumpet of propaganda. All the same I shall endeavour to tell
you why I agree with poor Condorcet when he expressed his firm faith in a
better future.
Often before have I warned you against the false impression which is created
by the use of our so-called historical epochs which divide the story of man into
four parts, the ancient world, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the
Reformation, and Modern Time. The last of these terms is the most dangerous.
The word “modern” implies that we, the people of the twentieth century, are at
the top of human achievement. Fifty years ago the liberals of England who
followed the leadership of Gladstone felt that the problem of a truly
representative and democratic form of government had been solved forever by
the second great Reform Bill, which gave workmen an equal share in the
government with their employers. When Disraeli and his conservative friends
talked of a dangerous “leap in the dark” they answered “No.” They felt certain of
their cause and trusted that henceforth all classes of society would co-operate to
make the government of their common country a success. Since then many
things have happened, and the few liberals who are still alive begin to
understand that they were mistaken.
There is no definite answer to any historical problem.
Every generation must fight the good fight anew or perish as those sluggish
animals of the prehistoric world have perished.
If you once get hold of this great truth you will get a new and much broader
view of life. Then, go one step further and try to imagine yourself in the position
of your own great-great-grandchildren who will take your place in the year
10,000. They too will learn history. But what will they think of those short four
thousand years during which we have kept a written record of our actions and of
our thoughts? They will think of Napoleon as a contemporary of Tiglath Pileser,
the Assyrian conqueror. Perhaps they will confuse him with Jenghiz Khan or
Alexander the Macedonian. The great war which has just come to an end will
appear in the light of that long commercial conflict which settled the supremacy
of the Mediterranean when Rome and Carthage fought during one hundred and
twenty-eight years for the mastery of the sea. The Balkan troubles of the 19th
century (the struggle for freedom of Serbia and Greece and Bulgaria and
Montenegro) to them will seem a continuation of the disordered conditions
caused by the Great Migrations. They will look at pictures of the Rheims
cathedral which only yesterday was destroyed by German guns as we look upon
a photograph of the Acropolis ruined two hundred and fifty years ago during a
war between the Turks and the Venetians. They will regard the fear of death,
which is still common among many people, as a childish superstition which was
perhaps natural in a race of men who had burned witches as late as the year
1692. Even our hospitals and our laboratories and our operating rooms of which
we are so proud will look like slightly improved workshops of alchemists and
mediæval surgeons.
And the reason for all this is simple. We modern men and women are not
“modern” at all. On the contrary we still belong to the last generations of the
cave-dwellers. The foundation for a new era was laid but yesterday. The human
race was given its first chance to become truly civilised when it took courage to
question all things and made “knowledge and understanding” the foundation
upon which to create a more reasonable and sensible society of human beings.
The Great War was the “growing-pain” of this new world.
THE SPREAD OF THE IMPERIAL IDEA

For a long time to come people will write mighty books to prove that this or
that or the other person brought about the war. The Socialists will publish
volumes in which they will accuse the “capitalists” of having brought about the
war for “commercial gain.” The capitalists will answer that they lost infinitely
more through the war than they made—that their children were among the first
to go and fight and be killed—and they will show how in every country the
bankers tried their very best to avert the outbreak of hostilities. French historians
will go through the register of German sins from the days of Charlemagne until
the days of William of Hohenzollern and German historians will return the
compliment and will go through the list of French horrors from the days of
Charlemagne until the days of President Poincaré. And then they will establish
to their own satisfaction that the other fellow was guilty of “causing the war.”
Statesmen, dead and not yet dead, in all countries will take to their typewriters
and they will explain how they tried to avert hostilities and how their wicked
opponents forced them into it.
The historian, a hundred years hence, will not bother about these apologies
and vindications. He will understand the real nature of the underlying causes and
he will know that personal ambitions and personal wickedness and personal
greed had very little to do with the final outburst. The original mistake, which
was responsible for all this misery, was committed when our scientists began to
create a new world of steel and iron and chemistry and electricity and forgot that
the human mind is slower than the proverbial turtle, is lazier than the well-
known sloth, and marches from one hundred to three hundred years behind the
small group of courageous leaders.
A Zulu in a frock coat is still a Zulu. A dog trained to ride a bicycle and smoke
a pipe is still a dog. And a human being with the mind of a sixteenth century
tradesman driving a 1921 Rolls-Royce is still a human being with the mind of a
sixteenth century tradesman.
If you do not understand this at first, read it again. It will become clearer to
you in a moment and it will explain many things that have happened these last
six years.
Perhaps I may give you another, more familiar, example, to show you what I
mean. In the movie theatres, jokes and funny remarks are often thrown upon the
screen. Watch the audience the next time you have a chance. A few people seem
almost to inhale the words. It takes them but a second to read the lines. Others
are a bit slower. Still others take from twenty to thirty seconds. Finally those
men and women who do not read any more than they can help, get the point
when the brighter ones among the audience have already begun to decipher the
next cut-in. It is not different in human life, as I shall now show you.
In a former chapter I have told you how the idea of the Roman Empire
continued to live for a thousand years after the death of the last Roman Emperor.
It caused the establishment of a large number of “imitation empires.” It gave the
Bishops of Rome a chance to make themselves the head of the entire church,
because they represented the idea of Roman world-supremacy. It drove a number
of perfectly harmless barbarian chieftains into a career of crime and endless
warfare because they were for ever under the spell of this magic word “Rome.”
All these people, Popes, Emperors and plain fighting men were not very
different from you or me. But they lived in a world where the Roman tradition
was a vital issue—something living—something which was remembered clearly
both by the father and the son and the grandson. And so they struggled and
sacrificed themselves for a cause which to-day would not find a dozen recruits.
In still another chapter I have told you how the great religious wars took place
more than a century after the first open act of the Reformation and if you will
compare the chapter on the Thirty Years War with that on Inventions, you will
see that this ghastly butchery took place at a time when the first clumsy steam
engines were already puffing in the laboratories of a number of French and
German and English scientists. But the world at large took no interest in these
strange contraptions, and went on with a grand theological discussion which to-
day causes yawns, but no anger.
And so it goes. A thousand years from now, the historian will use the same
words about Europe of the out-going nineteenth century, and he will see how
men were engaged upon terrific nationalistic struggles while the laboratories all
around them were filled with serious folk who cared not one whit for politics as
long as they could force nature to surrender a few more of her million secrets.
You will gradually begin to understand what I am driving at. The engineer and
the scientist and the chemist, within a single generation, filled Europe and
America and Asia with their vast machines, with their telegraphs, their flying
machines, their coal-tar products. They created a new world in which time and
space were reduced to complete insignificance. They invented new products and
they made these so cheap that almost every one could buy them. I have told you
all this before but it certainly will bear repeating.
To keep the ever increasing number of factories going, the owners, who had
also become the rulers of the land, needed raw materials and coal. Especially
coal. Meanwhile the mass of the people were still thinking in terms of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and clinging to the old notions of the state as
a dynastic or political organisation. This clumsy mediæval institution was then
suddenly called upon to handle the highly modern problems of a mechanical and
industrial world. It did its best, according to the rules of the game which had
been laid down centuries before. The different states created enormous armies
and gigantic navies which were used for the purpose of acquiring new
possessions in distant lands. Wherever there was a tiny bit of land left, there
arose an English or a French or a German or a Russian colony. If the natives
objected, they were killed. In most cases they did not object, and were allowed
to live peacefully, provided they did not interfere with the diamond mines or the
coal mines or the oil mines or the gold mines or the rubber plantations, and they
derived many benefits from the foreign occupation.
Sometimes it happened that two states in search of raw materials wanted the
same piece of land at the same time. Then there was a war. This occurred fifteen
years ago when Russia and Japan fought for the possession of certain territories
which belonged to the Chinese people. Such conflicts, however, were the
exception. No one really desired to fight. Indeed, the idea of fighting with armies
and battleships and submarines began to seem absurd to the men of the early
20th century. They associated the idea of violence with the long-ago age of
unlimited monarchies and intriguing dynasties. Every day they read in their
papers of still further inventions, of groups of English and American and
German scientists who were working together in perfect friendship for the
purpose of an advance in medicine or in astronomy. They lived in a busy world
of trade and of commerce and factories. But only a few noticed that the
development of the state, (of the gigantic community of people who recognise
certain common ideals,) was lagging several hundred years behind. They tried to
warn the others. But the others were occupied with their own affairs.
I have used so many similes that I must apologise for bringing in one more.
The Ship of State (that old and trusted expression which is ever new and always
picturesque,) of the Egyptians and the Greeks and the Romans and the Venetians
and the merchant adventurers of the seventeenth century had been a sturdy craft,
constructed of well-seasoned wood, and commanded by officers who knew both
their crew and their vessel and who understood the limitations of the art of
navigating which had been handed down to them by their ancestors.
Then came the new age of iron and steel and machinery. First one part, then
another of the old ship of state was changed. Her dimensions were increased.
The sails were discarded for steam. Better living quarters were established, but
more people were forced to go down into the stoke-hole, and while the work was
safe and fairly remunerative, they did not like it as well as their old and more
dangerous job in the rigging. Finally, and almost imperceptibly, the old wooden
square-rigger had been transformed into a modern ocean liner. But the captain
and the mates remained the same. They were appointed or elected in the same
way as a hundred years before. They were taught the same system of navigation
which had served the mariners of the fifteenth century. In their cabins hung the
same charts and signal flags which had done service in the days of Louis XIV
and Frederick the Great. In short, they were (through no fault of their own)
completely incompetent.
The sea of international politics is not very broad. When those Imperial and
Colonial liners began to try and outrun each other, accidents were bound to
happen. They did happen. You can still see the wreckage if you venture to pass
through that part of the ocean.
And the moral of the story is a simple one. The world is in dreadful need of
men who will assume the new leadership—who will have the courage of their
own visions and who will recognise clearly that we are only at the beginning of
the voyage, and have to learn an entirely new system of seamanship.
They will have to serve for years as mere apprentices. They will have to fight
their way to the top against every possible form of opposition. When they reach
the bridge, mutiny of an envious crew may cause their death. But some day, a
man will arise who will bring the vessel safely to port, and he shall be the hero
of the ages.
AS IT EVER SHALL BE

“The more I think of the problems of our lives, the more I am persuaded that we
ought to choose Irony and Pity for our assessors and judges as the ancient
Egyptians called upon the Goddess Isis and the Goddess Nephtys on behalf of
their dead.
“Irony and Pity are both of good counsel; the first with her smiles makes life
agreeable; the other sanctifies it with her tears.
“The Irony which I invoke is no cruel Deity. She mocks neither love nor beauty.
She is gentle and kindly disposed. Her mirth disarms and it is she who teaches us
to laugh at rogues and fools, whom but for her we might be so weak as to
despise and hate.”
And with these wise words of a very great Frenchman I bid you farewell.
8 Barrow Street, New York.
Saturday, June 26, xxi.
AN ANIMATED CHRONOLOGY

500,000 B.C.—A.D. 1922


CONCERNING THE PICTURES

CONCERNING THE PICTURES OF THIS BOOK AND A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE
BIBLIOGRAPHY.

The day of the historical textbook without illustrations has gone. Pictures and photographs of famous
personages and equally famous occurrences cover the pages of Breasted and Robinson and Beard. In this
volume the photographs have been omitted to make room for a series of home-made drawings which
represent ideas rather than events.
While the author lays no claim to great artistic excellence (being possessed of a decided leaning towards
drawing as a child, he was taught to play the violin as a matter of discipline,) he prefers to make his own
maps and sketches because he knows exactly what he wants to say and cannot possibly explain this
meaning to his more proficient brethren in the field of art. Besides, the pictures were all drawn for children
and their ideas of art are very different from those of their parents.
To all teachers the author would give this advice—let your boys and girls draw their history after their
own desire just as often as you have a chance. You can show a class a photograph of a Greek temple or a
mediæval castle and the class will dutifully say, “Yes, Ma’am,” and proceed to forget all about it. But make
the Greek temple or the Roman castle the centre of an event, tell the boys to make their own picture of “the
building of a temple,” or “the storming of the castle,” and they will stay after school-hours to finish the job.
Most children, before they are taught how to draw from plaster casts, can draw after a fashion, and often
they can draw remarkably well. The product of their pencil may look a bit prehistoric. It may even resemble
the work of certain native tribes from the upper Congo. But the child is quite frequently prehistoric or
upper-Congoish in his or her own tastes, and expresses these primitive instincts with a most astonishing
accuracy.
The main thing in teaching history, is that the pupil shall remember certain events “in their proper
sequence.” The experiments of many years in the Children’s School of New York has convinced the author
that few children will ever forget what they have drawn, while very few will ever remember what they have
merely read.
It is the same with the maps. Give the child an ordinary conventional map with dots and lines and green
seas and tell him to revaluate that geographic scene in his or her own terms. The mountains will be a bit out
of gear and the cities will look astonishingly mediæval. The outlines will be often very imperfect, but the
general effect will be quite as truthful as that of our conventional maps, which ever since the days of good
Gerardus Mercator have told a strangely erroneous story. Most important of all, it will give the child a
feeling of intimacy with historical and geographic facts which cannot be obtained in any other way.
Neither the publishers nor the author claim that “The Story of Mankind” is the last word to be said upon
the subject of history for children. It is an appetizer. The book tries to present the subject in such a fashion
that the average child shall get a taste for History and shall ask for more.
To facilitate the work of both parents and teachers, the publishers have asked Miss Leonore St. John
Power (who knows more upon this particular subject than any one else they could discover) to compile a
list of readable and instructive books.
The list was made and was duly printed.
The parents who live near our big cities will experience no difficulty in ordering these volumes from their
booksellers. Those who for the sake of fresh air and quiet, dwell in more remote spots, may not find it
convenient to go to a book-store. In that case, Boni and Liveright will be happy to act as middle-man and
obtain the books that are desired. They want it to be distinctly understood that they have not gone into the
retail book business, but they are quite willing to do their share towards a better and more general historical
education, and all orders will receive their immediate attention.
AN HISTORICAL READING LIST FOR CHILDREN

“Don’t stop (I say) to explain that Hebe was (for once) the legitimate daughter of Zeus and, as such, had
the privilege to draw wine for the Gods. Don’t even stop, just yet, to explain who the Gods were. Don’t
discourse on amber, otherwise ambergris; don’t explain that ‘gris’ in this connection doesn’t mean ‘grease’;
don’t trace it through the Arabic into Noah’s Ark; don’t prove its electrical properties by tearing up paper
into little bits and attracting them with the mouth-piece of your pipe rubbed on your sleeve. Don’t insist
philologically that when every shepherd ‘tells his tale’ he is not relating an anecdote but simply keeping
‘tally’ of his flock. Just go on reading, as well as you can, and be sure that when the children get the thrill of
the story, for which you wait, they will be asking more questions, and pertinent ones, than you are able to
answer.”—(“On the Art of Reading for Children,” by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch.)

The Days Before History

“How the Present Came From the Past,” by Margaret E. Wells, Volume I.
How earliest man learned to make tools and build homes, and the stories he told about the fire-makers,
the sun and the frost. A simple, illustrated account of these things for children.
“The Story of Ab,” by Stanley Waterloo.
A romantic tale of the time of the cave-man. (A much simplified edition of this for little children is “Ab,
the Cave Man” adapted by William Lewis Nida.)
“Industrial and Social History Series,” by Katharine E. Dopp.
“The Tree Dwellers—The Age of Fear”
“The Early Cave-Men—The Age of Combat”
“The Later Cave-Men—The Age of the Chase”
“The Early Sea People—First Steps in the Conquest of the Waters”
“The Tent-Dwellers—The Early Fishing Men”
Very simple stories of the way in which man learned how to make pottery, how to weave and spin, and
how to conquer land and sea.
“Ancient Man,” written and drawn and done into colour by Hendrik Willem van Loon.
The beginning of civilisations pictured and written in a new and fascinating fashion, with story maps
showing exactly what happened in all parts of the world. A book for children of all ages.

The Dawn of History

“The Civilisation of the Ancient Egyptians,” by A. Bothwell Gosse.


“No country possesses so many wonders, and has such a number of works which defy description.” An
excellent, profusely illustrated account of the domestic life, amusements, art, religion and occupations of
these wonderful people.
“How the Present Came From the Past,” by Margaret E. Wells, Volume II.
What the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Assyrians and the Persians contributed to civilisation. This is
brief and simple and may be used as a first book on the subject.
“Stories of Egyptian Gods and Heroes,” by F. H. Brooksbank.
The beliefs of the Egyptians, the legend of Isis and Osiris, the builders of the Pyramids and the Temples,
the Riddle of the Sphinx, all add to the fascination of this romantic picture of Egypt.
“Wonder Tales of the Ancient World,” by Rev. James Baikie.
Tales of the Wizards, Tales of Travel and Adventure, and Legends of the Gods all gathered from ancient
Egyptian literature.
“Ancient Assyria,” by Rev. James Baikie.
Which tells of a city 2800 years ago with a street lined with beautiful enamelled reliefs, and with libraries
of clay.
“The Bible for Young People,” arranged from the King James version, with twenty-four full page
illustrations from old masters.
“Old, Old Tales From the Old, Old Book,” by Nora Archibald Smith.
“Written in the East these characters live forever in the West—they pervade the world.” A good rendering
of the Old Testament.
“The Jewish Fairy Book,” translated and adapted by Gerald Friedlander.
Stories of great nobility and beauty from the Talmud and the old Jewish chap-books.
“Eastern Stories and Legends,” by Marie L. Shedlock.
“The soldiers of Alexander who had settled in the East, wandering merchants of many nations and
climes, crusading knights and hermits brought these Buddha Stories from the East to the West.”

Stories of Greece and Rome

“The Story of the Golden Age,” by James Baldwin.


Some of the most beautiful of the old Greek myths woven into the story of the Odyssey make this book a
good introduction to the glories of the Golden Age.
“A Wonder Book and Tanglewood Tales,” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, with pictures by Maxfield Parrish.
“The Adventures of Odysseus and the Tale of Troy,” by Padraic Colum, presented by Willy Pogany.
An attractive, poetically rendered account of “the world’s greatest story.”
“The Story of Rome,” by Mary Macgregor, with twenty plates in colour.
Attractively illustrated and simply presented story of Rome from the earliest times to the death of
Augustus.
“Plutarch’s Lives for Boys and Girls,” retold by W. H. Weston.
“The Lays of Ancient Rome,” by Lord Macaulay.
“The early history of Rome is indeed far more poetical than anything else in Latin Literature.”
“Children of the Dawn,” by Elsie Finnemore Buckley.
Old Greek tales of love, adventure, heroism, skill, achievement, or defeat exceptionally well told.
Especially recommended for girls.
“The Heroes; or, Greek Fairy Tales for My Children,” by Charles Kingsley.
“The Story of Greece,” by Mary Macgregor, with nineteen plates in colour by Walter Crane.
Attractively illustrated and simply presented—a good book to begin on.

Christianity

“The Story of Jesus,” pictures from paintings by Giotto, Fra Angelico, Duccio, Ghirlandais, and Barnja-da-
Siena. Descriptive text from the New Testament, selected and arranged by Ethel Natalie Dana.
A beautiful book and a beautiful way to present the Christ Story.
“A Child’s Book of Saints,” by William Canton.
Sympathetically told and charmingly written stories of men and women whose faith brought about
strange miracles, and whose goodness to man and beast set the world wondering.
“The Seven Champions of Christendom,” edited by F. J. H. Darton.
How the knights of old—St. George of England, St. Denis of France, St. James of Spain, and others—
fought with enchanters and evil spirits to preserve the Kingdom of God. Fine old romances interestingly
told for children.
“Stories From the Christian East,” by Stephen Gaselee.
Unusual stories which have been translated from the Coptic, the Greek, the Latin and the Ethiopic.
“Jerusalem and the Crusades,” by Estelle Blyth, with eight plates in colour.
Historical stories telling how children and priests, hermits and knights all strove to keep the Cross in the
East.

Stories of Legend and Chivalry

“Stories of Norse Heroes From the Eddas and Sagas,” retold by E. M. Wilmot-Buxton.
These are tales which the Northmen tell concerning the wisdom of All-Father Odin, and how all things
began and how they ended. A good book for all children, and for story-tellers.
“The Story of Siegfried,” by James Baldwin.
A good introduction to this Northern hero whose strange and daring deeds fill the pages of the old sagas.
“The Story of King Arthur and His Knights,” written and illustrated by Howard Pyle.
This, and the companion volumes, “The Story of the Champions of the Round Table,” “The Story of Sir
Launcelot and His Companions,” “The Story of the Grail and the Passing of Arthur,” form an incomparable
collection for children.
“The Boy’s King Arthur,” edited by Sidney Lanier, illustrated by N. C. Wyeth.
A very good rendering of Malory’s King Arthur, made especially attractive by the coloured illustrations.
“Irish Fairy Tales,” by James Stephens, illustrated by Arthur Rackham.
Beautifully pictured and poetically told legends of Ireland’s epic hero Fionn. A book for the boy or girl
who loves the old romances, and a book for story-telling or reading aloud.
“Stories of Charlemagne and the Twelve Peers of France,” by A. J. Church.
Stories from the old French and English chronicles showing the romantic glamour surrounding the great
Charlemagne and his crusading knights.
“The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood,” written and illustrated by Howard Pyle.
Both in picture and in story this book holds first place in the hearts of children.
“A Book of Ballad Stories,” by Mary Macleod.
Good prose versions of some of the famous old ballads sung by the minstrels of England and Scotland.
“The Story of Roland,” by James Baldwin.
“There is, in short, no country in Europe, and no language, in which the exploits of Charlemagne and
Roland have not at some time been recounted and sung.” This book will serve as a good introduction to a
fine heroic character.
“The Boy’s Froissart,” being Sir John Froissart’s Chronicles of Adventure, Battle, and Custom in England,
France, Spain.
“Froissart sets the boy’s mind upon manhood and the man’s mind upon boyhood.” An invaluable
background for the future study of history.
“The Boy’s Percy,” being old ballads of War, Adventure and Love from Percy’s Reliques of Ancient
English Poetry, edited by Sidney Lanier.
“He who walks in the way these following ballads point, will be manful in necessary fight, loyal in love,
generous to the poor, tender in the household, prudent in living, merry upon occasion, and honest in all
things.”
“Tales of the Canterbury Pilgrims,” retold from Chaucer and others by E. J. H. Darton.
“Sometimes a pilgrimage seemed nothing but an excuse for a lively and pleasant holiday, and the
travellers often made themselves very merry on the road, with their jests and songs, and their flutes and
fiddles and bagpipes.” A good prose version much enjoyed by boys and girls.
“Joan of Arc,” written and illustrated by M. Boutet de Monvel.
A very fine interpretation of the life of this great heroine. A book to be owned by every boy and girl.
“When Knights Were Bold,” by Eva March Tappan.
Telling of the training of a knight, of the daily life in a castle, of pilgrimages and crusades, of merchant
guilds, of schools and literature, in short, a full picture of life in the days of chivalry. A good book to
supplement the romantic stories of the time.

Adventurers in New Worlds

“A Book of Discovery,” by M. B. Synge, fully illustrated from authentic sources and with maps.
A thoroughly fascinating book about the world’s exploration from the earliest times to the discovery of
the South Pole. A book to be owned by older boys and girls who like true tales of adventure.
“A Short History of Discovery From the Earliest Times to the Founding of the Colonies on the American
Continent,” written and done into colour by Hendrik Willem van Loon.
“Dear Children: History is the most fascinating and entertaining and instructive of arts.” A book to
delight children of all ages.
“The Story of Marco Polo,” by Noah Brooks.
“Olaf the Glorious,” by Robert Leighton.
An historical story of the Viking age.
“The Conquerors of Mexico,” retold from Prescott’s “Conquest of Mexico,” by Henry Gilbert.
“The Conquerors of Peru,” retold from Prescott’s “Conquest of Peru,” by Henry Gilbert.
“Vikings of the Pacific,” by A. C. Laut.
Adventures of Bering the Dane; the outlaw hunters of Russia; Benyowsky, the Polish pirate; Cook and
Vancouver; Drake, and other soldiers of fortune on the West Coast of America.
“The Argonauts of Faith,” by Basil Mathews.
The Adventures of the “Mayflower” Pilgrims.
“Pathfinders of the West,” by A. C. Laut.
The thrilling story of the adventures of the men who discovered the great Northwest.
“Beyond the Old Frontier,” by George Bird Grinnell.
Adventures of Indian Fighters, Hunters, and Fur-Traders on the Pacific Coast.
“A History of Travel in America,” by Seymour Dunbar, illustrated from old woodcuts and engravings. 4
volumes.
An interesting book for children who wish to understand the problems and difficulties their grandfathers
had in the conquest of the West. This is a standard book upon the subject of early travel, but is so readable
as to be of interest to older children.
“The Golden Book of the Dutch Navigators,” by Hendrik Willem van Loon. Fully illustrated from old
prints.

The World’s Progress in Invention—Art—Music.

“Gabriel and the Hour Book,” by Evaleen Stein.


How a boy learned from the monks how to grind and mix the colours for illuminating the beautiful hand-
printed books of the time and how he himself made books that are now treasured in the museums of France
and England.
“Historic Inventions,” by Rupert S. Holland.
Stories of the invention of printing, the steam-engine, the spinning-jenny, the safety-lamp, the sewing
machine, electric light, and other wonders of mechanism.
“A History of Everyday Things in England,” written and illustrated by Marjorie and C. V. B. Quennell. 2
Volumes.
A most fascinating book, profusely illustrated in black and white and in colour, giving a vivid picture of
life in England from 1066-1799. It tells of wars and of home-life, of amusements and occupations, of art
and literature, of science and invention. A book to be owned by every boy and girl.
“First Steps in the Enjoyment of Pictures,” by Maude I. G. Oliver.
A book designed to help children in their appreciation of art by giving them technical knowledge of the
media, the draughtsmanship, the composition and the technique of well-known American pictures.
“Knights of Art,” by Amy Steedman.
Stories of Italian Painters. Attractively illustrated in colour from old masters.
“Masters of Music,” by Anna Alice Chapin.
“Story Lives of Men of Science,” by F. J. Rowbotham.
“All About Treasures of the Earth,” by Frederick A. Talbot.
A book that tells many interesting things about coal, salt, iron, rare metals and precious stones.
“The Boys’ Book of New Inventions,” by Harry E. Maule.
An account of the machines and mechanical processes that are making the history of our time more
dramatic than that of any other age since the world began.
“Masters of Space,” by Walter Kellogg Towers.
Stories of the wonders of telegraphing through the air and beneath the sea with signals, and of speaking
across continents.
“All About Railways,” by F. S. Hartnell.
“The Man-of-War, What She Has Done and What She Is Doing,” by Commander E. Hamilton Currey.
True stories about galleys and pirate ships, about the Spanish Main and famous frigates, and about slave-
hunting expeditions in the days of old.

The Democracy of To-Day.

“The Land of Fair Play,” by Geoffrey Parsons.


“This book aims to make clear the great, unseen services that America renders each of us, and the active
devotion each of us must yield in return for America to endure.” An excellent book on our government for
boys and girls.
“The American Idea as Expounded by American Statesmen,” compiled by Joseph B. Gilder.
A good collection, including The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution of the United States, the
Monroe Doctrine, and the famous speeches of Washington, Lincoln, Webster and Roosevelt.
“The Making of an American,” by Jacob A. Riis.
The true story of a Danish boy who became one of America’s finest citizens.
“The Promised Land,” by Mary Antin.
A true story about a little immigrant. “Before we came, the New World knew not the Old; but since we
have begun to come, the Young World has taken the Old by the hand, and the two are learning to march side
by side, seeking a common destiny.”

Illustrated Histories in French.

(The colourful and graphic pictures make these histories beloved by all children whether they read the text
or not.)
“Voyages et Glorieuses Découvertes des Grands Navigateurs et Explorateurs Français, illustré par Edy
Segrand.”
“Collection d’Albums Historiques.”
Louis XI, texte de Georges Montorgueil, aquarelles de Job.
François I, texte de G. Gustave Toudouze, aquarelles de Job.
Henri IV, texte de Georges Montorgueil, aquarelles de H. Vogel.
Richelieu, texte de Th. Cahu, aquarelles de Maurice Leloir.
Le Roy Soleil, texte de Gustave Toudouze, aquarelles de Maurice Leloir.
Bonaparte, texte de Georges Montorgueil, aquarelles de Job.
“Fabliaux et Contes du Moyen-Age”; illustrations de A. Robida.
INDEX

ABCDEFGH I J KLM
NOPQRSTUVWXY Z

A
Abelard, 210
Abu-Bekr, 142
Achaeans, 55
Acropolis, 78, 81
Aegean Sea, 48-53
Africa, 452, 453
Age of Discovery, 224-240
Age of Expression, 219-223
Age of Reason, 346
Akkadians, 35
Alaric, 127
Alba, Duke of, 269
Albert of Sardinia, 393
alchemy, 404
Alcibiades, 82
Alemanni, 127
Alexander VI (Pope), 238
Alexander the Great, 28, 37, 83, 84
Alexander I, 355, 363-372, 386
Ali, 142
American Revolution, 323-333
Amerigo Vespucci, 236
Amorites, 35
Anne, 294
Antiochus III, 107-108
Antony, 117
Aquinas, Thomas, 194
architecture, 437, 438
Aristides, 77
Aristotle, 83, 193-195, 216
Arkwright, Richard, 406
art, 433-445
Assyrians, 28, 36
Athens, 81, 82
Augustus, 118

B
Bach, 444
Bacon, Roger, 194, 226, 429
Bagdad, 142
Balance of Power, 296-300
Balboa, 236
Balkan States, 376, 386, 453, 454
Barbarossa, 166
Barrack Emperors, 125
Beethoven, 445
Belgium, 374
Bell, Alexander Graham, 411
Bentham, Jeremy, 420
Bismarck, 394-400
Blanc, Louis, 425
Blücher, 357
Boccaccio, 214
Boer War, 452
Bolivar, Simon, 383
Bologna, University of, 210
Bonaparte, Joseph, 383
Bonaparte (See Napoleon)
Boris Godunow, 306
Brandenburg, 312
Brazil, 375
de Brienne, 340-341
Buddha, 241-246
Bulgaria, 453, 454
Bunsen, 430
Burgundians, 127
Byron, 388
Byzantine Empire, 216
conquered by Turks, 137
Byzantium, 126

C
Cabot, John, 236, 284, 326
Caesar, Julius, 112-115
de Calonne, 339-340
Calvin, 262, 264
Canning, George, 384, 388
Capo d’Istria, 376
Carbonari, 386
Carthage, 88-104
government of, 88-90
Cartwright, Edmund, 406
Castlereagh, 368-372
Catiline, 113
Cavour, 394
Chaldeans, 37
Champollion, 19
Chancellor, Richard, 285, 301
Charlemagne, 144-149, 193
crowned, 146
his Empire divided, 146-148
Charles I (England), 287-290
Charles II (England), 290-292
Charles V, 252, 253, 259, 267, 269, 320
Charles X (France), 389
Charles XII (Sweden), 311
Charles XXII (Sweden), 374
Charles the Bold, 148
Charles Martel, 143
Chartist Movement, 418
Cheops, 26
chivalry, 159-161
Christian IV (Denmark), 274-276
Chrysoloras, 216
Cicero, 113
Civil War (U. S. A.), 423
Cleopatra, 28, 115
Clovis, 145
Cnossos, 51-53
Colbert, 320
College of Cardinals, 164
Colonial Expansion, 451-453
Columbus, 226, 232-235
Committee of Public Safety, 346
Confucius, 247-250
Congo, 452
Congress of Vienna, 361-382
Conrad V, 167
Constantine, 126, 127, 135
Constantinople, 127, 129, 137, 216
Copernicus, 231
Correggio, 440
cotton, 405, 406
Council of Ten (Venice), 200
de Covilham, Pedro, 231
Crete, 51-52
Crimean War, 396
Cromwell, Oliver, 289-290, 320
Crusades, 166-173
First, 169
Second, 170
Cuba, 453
cuneiform inscriptions, 32
Cyrus, 45
Czartoryski, Adam, 374

D
da Gama, Vasco, 226, 236
Danish Parliament, 189
Dante, 211-213
Danton, 346
Declaration of Independence, 331
Declaration of Rights of Man, 334
Denmark, 374
Deutschland, 148
Diaz, Bartholomew, 230
discovery of America, 235-238
Disraeli, 454
Divine Right of Kings, 287-289
Draco, 64
Dutch East India Company, 238-272
Dutch Republic becomes Kingdom, 373
Dutch Republic formed, 190
Dutch West India Company, 273
Dynamoes, 411

E
Edict of Nantes, 277
Egypt, 17-28
Captured by Alexander the Great, 27
Captured by Assyrians, 27
Captured by Hyksos, 27
Captured by Rome, 28
Electricity, 410-411
Elizabeth (England), 271, 283, 285, 320
Emancipation Proclamation, 423
England, conquests of, 154
English Cabinet, 293
English Colonies, 326-329
English Revolution, 279-295
Encyclopaedia (French), 336, 429
Engels, Friedrich, 425
Enghien, Duc d’, 351
Erasmus, 208, 256, 257
Eriksen, Leif, 232
Estates General (Holland), 189, 190, 270
Etruscans, 93
Eugénie, Empress, 399
van Eyck, Jan, 439

F
factories, 413-419
Faraday, Michael, 411
Ferdinand and Isabella, 235
Ferdinand II (Austria), 274
Ferdinand VII (Spain),375
Feudalism, 155-158
fire, first use of, 14-15
Fitch, John, 406, 407
Florence, 201, 396
Fra Angelico, 222
French Colonies, 327-329
French Parliament, 188
French Revolution, 334-348, 415
Francis Joseph, 393
Franco-Prussian War, 400-401
Franklin, Benjamin, 330, 410
Franks, 127, 144
Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, 166
Frederick II of Prussia, 314-316
Frederick William I, 314
Frederick William IV, 393
freedom of the sea, 272
Fulton, Robert, 406

G
Galileo, 404
Garibaldi, 394
Genoa, 201
George I, 294
George II, 294
George III, 294, 330
German Empire, 400-401
Germany after Congress of Vienna, 376-379
Ghent, 203
Gibel-al-tarik, 142
Giotto, 222
Girondists, 346
Glacial Age, 13, 14
Godfrey of Bouillon, 170
Goths, 127
Gracchi, 111
Grand Remonstrance, 289
Grant, 423
Gratian, 210
Greece, 54-84, 376, 387, 388
Greek art rediscovered, 214, 215
“ cities as states, 58-61
“ government, 62-65
“ home-life, 66-70
“ language in Middle-Ages, 216
Greeks conquer Aegeans, 56, 57
Greek slaves, 67-68
“ theatre, 71-73
Gregory (Pope), 136
Gregory VII, 164-166
Grotius, 272
Guelphs and Ghibellines, 211
von Guericke, Otto, 410
Gustavus Adolphus, 276
Gutenberg, 223

H
Haiti, 383
Hals, Franz, 440
Hammurabi, 35
Hannibal, 100-107
Hanseatic League, 203
Hargreaves, James, 405
Hasdrubal, 102, 103
Hastings, Battle of, 154
van Heemskerk, 272
Hegira, 140
Hellenes, 55
Henry IV (Germany), 164-166
Henry VII (England), 282
Henry VIII (England), 262, 282
Henry the Navigator, 228-230
heresy, 265
herring fisheries, 203
hieroglyphics, 19-21
Hittites, 36
Hohenstaufen family, 166
Hohenzollern, rise of, 313-314
Holy Alliance,360-372, 384-386
Holy Roman Empire founded, 148
Henry Hudson, 273
Hundred Years’ War, 281, 282
Huns, 127
Huss, John, 220, 369
Huygens, 405
Hyksos, 27

I
Icelandic Parliament, 189
Indo-Europeans, 44-47
Indulgences, 258
Inquisition, 263, 264
Isis, 24
Italy united, 394
Ivan the Terrible, 202-203, 306

J
Jacobins, 345, 346, 353
James I, 286
James II, 292
Japan, 452
Jefferson, Thomas, 331
Jenghiz Khan, 304
Jerusalem, 41
captured by Crusaders, 170
captured by Turks, 173
Jesuits, 266-267, 379
Jesus Christ, 118-123
Jews, 38-41
Joan of Arc, 220, 281
John (England), 186, 187
Josephine, Empress, 351
Justinian, 136

K
Karageorgevich dynasty, 376
Kay, John, 405
à Kempis, Thomas, 219, 221
Kirchhoff, 430
Knighthood, 159-161
Königgrätz, battle of, 398
Kossuth, 392
Von Krüdener, Baroness, 369-371

L
labor reforms, 420-426
Lafayette, 388
Lao-Tse, 247, 248
de Laplace, Marquis, 430
Lee, Richard Henry, 331
Lee, Robert, General, 423
van Leeuwenhoek, 430
Leibnitz, 404
Leipzig, battle of, 356
Leonidas, 78
Leopold I (Belgium), 391
Leopold II (Belgium), 452
Lincoln, Abraham, 423
Locomotives, 408, 409
Louis XIII, 276
Louis XIV, 296-299, 320, 334-335
Louis XVI, 338-346
Louis XVIII, 356, 365, 389
Louis Philippe, 391-392
Louisiana Purchase, 358
Loyola, 266
Luther, Martin, 251, 257-260
Lyell, Sir Charles, 430
M
Macchiavelli, 222
Magellan, 225, 226, 236, 237
Magenta, battle of, 396
Magna Carta, 186-187
Mammals, 7
Man, first appearance, 10
Marathon, 76-77
Marco Polo, 224
Maria Theresa, 315
Marie Louise, 391
Marius, 111-112
Mary, Queen, 283
Mary, Queen of Scots, 283
Marx, Karl, 425-426
Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico, 399
Mazzini, 394
Medes, 45
Mediaeval cities, 174-183
“ “ obtain charters, 180-183
“ self-government, 184-190
“ trade, 198-205
“ world, 191-197
Medici, 201
de Medici, Catherine, 283
Mercantile System, 317-322
Merovingian kings, 144-145
Mesopotamia, 29-37
Metternich, 363-372, 386, 389, 390-392
Mexico, 399
Michelangelo, 440
Microscope, 430
Middle Ages, 191-197
Miltiades, 76
Mirabeau, 345
Mohammed, 138-143
Mohammedans conquer Mesopotamia and Spain, 142
Monroe Doctrine, 384
Montesquieu, 336
Montez, Lola, 393
Morse, Samuel, 410
Moscow, 305-306
“ burned by Napoleon, 356
Moses, 38-41
Mozart, 444
Mummy, 24
Music, 441-445
Mycenae, 50

N
Napier, John, 403
Napoleon, 149, 348-363, 374-375, 395-396
Napoleon III, 400
National Assembly, 343-345
Necker, 338, 341-344
Nelson, 354
Netherlands, war with Spain, 268-271
Newcomen, Thomas, 405
Newton, Isaac, 404, 429
Nicholas I (Russia), 391
Nieuw Amsterdam, 273
Nile Valley, 17, 22, 26, 27
Nimwegen, peace of, 299
Norman conquest of England, 280
Normandy, 151
Norse discoverers, 232-233
Norsemen, 150-154
North German Confederacy, 399
Norway, 374
Novgorod, 202-203

O
Obrenovitch dynasty, 376
Octavian, 117
Odoacer, 127
Oldenbarneveldt, John of, 278
Osiris, 24
Otto the Great, 148, 163, 193
Owen, Robert, 425
Oxford University, 210

P
Pacific Ocean, discovery of, 236
Paine, Thomas, 346
painting, 439-440
Palestine, 41
Papin, 405
Paris, University of, 210
Paul, 119-123
Paul I (Russia), 355, 367, 368
Peloponnesian war, 81-82
Pepin, 145
Pericles, 81-82
Persia, 45, 47
Persian wars with Greece, 74-80
Peter the Great, 307-311
Peter the Hermit, 169
Petrarca, 213-214
Piano, 443-444
Pilgrims, 329
Pius VII, 353
Plataea, battle of, 80
Pharnaces, 115
Pharaoh, 27
Philip II (Spain), 283, 288, 267-270
Philip of Macedon, 83
Philippe Egalité, 392
Philippine Islands, 237
Phoenicians, 42-43
Phoenician alphabet, 43
Poitiers, battle of, 142, 144
Poland, 374
Pompey, 113, 114
Pontius Pilate, 121-123
Pope, 123-137
Pope vs. Emperor, 162-167
Portugal, 375
Prester, John, 229-231
Priests, first mention of, 24
Printing, 223
Protestants and Catholics, 262-278
Prussia, 313-316
Ptolemean system of the universe, 231
Ptolemy, 28
Punic Wars—
1st war, 97-98
2nd war, 98-103
3d war, 103-104
Puritans, 289, 326-327
Pyramids, 25-26

Q
Quintus Fabius Maximus, 100-102

R
Rafael, 222
Ravenna, 127, 211
Reformation, 251-278
Reform Bill, 418
Reichstadt, Duke of, 360
Religion, origin of, 23-24
Rembrandt, 440
Renaissance, 206-223
Richard the Lion Hearted, 186, 187
Richelieu, 276
Robespierre, 346, 347
Roland, 146
Rollo, 151
Roman Church, 131-137, 253-255
“ “ in England, 279
“ conquest of England, 279
“ Empire, 117-130
“ Slaves, 109-110
Rome, 88-130
conquers Greece, 106-107
conquers Syria, 107-108
earliest history, 91-96
fall of, 124-130
Romulus Augustulus, 127
Rosetta Stone, 18-19
Roumania, 387
Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 336
Rudolph of Hapsburg, 167
Rumford, Count, 410
Rump Parliament, 289
Runnymede, 186
Rurik, 302
Russia, 301-312, 380
Russo-Japanese War, 464
Ryswick, Peace of, 299

S
Sabines, 93
St. Helena, 359
Salamis, 79
Salerno, University of, 210
Sarajevo, 455
Savonarola, 217
Schliemann, Heinrich, 48-50
Scientific Progress, 427-432
Scipio, Lucius, 108
Scipio, Publius, 103, 106
Serbia, 454
Serfs, 306
Shakespeare, 286, 441
Sicily, 393
Slavery abolished, 422
Socialism, 425-426
Solferino, battle of, 396
Solon, 64
Spain, 375
Spanish Armada, 271, 284
Spanish Succession, war of, 299-300
Sparta, 77-82
Star Chamber, 282
Steamboat, 406-408
Steam Engine, 404-405
Stephenson, George, 408
Stuarts, 286-292
Sulla, 111-113
Sumerians, 32-37
Sweden, 311, 374
Swedish Parliament, 188
Swiss Assemblies, 189

T
Talleyrand, 363-365, 368, 371, 373
Taoism, 247
Ta’ Rifa, 228
Tartar Invasion, 304-306
Telegraph, 410-411
Telephone, 411
Ten Commandments, 40
Teutoburg Woods, 118
Theatre, 71-73, 441
Thebes, 28
Themistocles, 77
Theodoric, 127
Thermopylae, 78
Third Estate, 342-345
Thirty Years’ War, 273-278
Tilly, 274-276
Tory, 292-293
Toussaint l’Ouverture, 383
Trafalgar, 354
Triple Alliance of 1664, 298
Troy, 48-49
Turgot, 388, 417

U
Universities, origin of, 208-211

V
Vandals, 127
Varro, 102
Varus, 118
Vatican, 396
de Vega, Lope, 441
Velasquez, 440
Venezuela, 383-384
Venice, 172, 198-202
Vermeer, 440
Verrazano, 326
Victor Emanuel, 393
Vikings, 151
da Vinci, Leonardo, 222
Voltaire, 336

W
Wallenstein, 274-276
Washington, George, 330
Waterloo, battle of, 357-358
Watt, James, 405
Wellington, Duke of, 357
Westphalia, treaty of, 273, 277
Whigs, 291-293
Whitney, Eli, 405
William I (Germany), 400
William III (England), 292-295, 299
William the Conqueror, 154
William of Orange (the Silent), 269-270
William of Orange, 390
Wilberforce, William, 422
de Witt, Jan, 298-299
Worms, Diet of, 259
writing, invention of, 18-21
Wycliffe, John, 220

X
Xerxes, 79

Y
Ypsilanti, Prince Alexander, 387

Z
Zarathustra, 45
Transcriber’s note

The illustrations have been moved slightly for reader convenience.


Illustrations containing hand-written text have been linked to larger versions, the
links may not work in every device. An alphabetic jump table has been added to
the index.
Errors in punctuation have been corrected silently. Also the following
corrections were made, on page
106 “adminster” changed to “administer” (he stayed behind to administer his
newly conquered provinces)
248 “cemetary” changed to “cemetery” (disturb a cemetery situated)
262 “transubstantition” changed to “transubstantiation” (Their heads were filled
with “predestination,” “transubstantiation,”)
295 “millenium” changed to “millennium” (It did not bring the millennium to
England)
374 “Napolean” changed to “Napoleon” (as one of Napoleon’s adjutants)
374 “Hollstein” changed to “Holstein” (the last of the rulers of the house of
Holstein-Gottorp had died)
482 “mechancial” changed to “mechanical” (mechanical processes that are
making)
484 “544” changed to “454” (Bulgaria, 453, 454)
486 “Grachi” changed to “Gracchi” (Gracchi, 111)
487 “Ninwegen” changed to “Nimwegen” (Nimwegen, peace of, 299)
488 “Pharoah” changed to “Pharaoh” (Pharaoh, 27)
488 “Platea” changed to “Plataea” (Plataea, 383-384)
488 “Ptolomean” and “Ptolomy” changed to “Ptolemean” and “Ptolemy”
(Ptolemean system of the universe, 231) (Ptolemy, 28)
489 “Varrus” changed to “Varus” (Varus, 118)
489 “Venizuela” changed to “Venezuela” (Venezuela, 383-384).
Otherwise the original was preserved, including inconsistencies in spelling
and hyphenation and possible misspelling of foreign words. The index has not
been checked for errors in alphabetization or page numbers. Additional: “Ball
Platz” on page 391 schould probably be “Ballhausplatz”, this has not been
changed.

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