Class Book fopyri^lit N" IP") 6 COPYRIGHT DEPOSITS / A GENEliAL HISTOMY OF THE WOULD BY VICTOR DURUY FORMERLY MINISTER OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION AND MEMBER OF THE ACADEMY TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH THOROUGHLY REVISED WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND A SUMMARY OF CONTEMPORANEOUS HISTORY (1848-1808) J5Y EDWIN A. GIlOSVENOFv PROFESSOR OF EUROPEAN HISTORY IN AMHERST COLLEGl NEW YORK: 46 East 14th Street THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY BOSTON: 100 Purchase Street ■' - f ■ !S> ^ n ; '^> 18516 COPYRIQUT, 1898, By THOMAS Y. CKOWELL & CO. Gov): NorfaJOoU 5P«33 J. S. Gushing & Co. Berwick & Smith Norwood Mas8. U.S.A. b'2>V^,% C^e5^Vb?\% INTRODUCTION y^«<< To write a general history of the world is an appalling undertaking. The fewer the pages allowed, the more in- tricate that undertaking becomes. Out of the overwhelming mass of past events, the writer must discern the all-impor- tant and imperishable in the life of each people, and then flash it upon the page in language concise as an epigram. Comprehensive learning, keen discernment, philosophic accuracy and stainless impartiality are absolute essentials. Another requisite is that divine gift, the faculty of terse and pleasing expression. Moreover, the writer must be a man living among men. No recluse is competent to write history in the highest and noblest sense. Events must be marshalled like an army. It is not enough to line them up, soulless and listless, as in the dull sequence of the encyclo- paedia. The heart of the true historian must pulsate to the heart-beats of mankind. All these requirements M. Duruy possessed in preeminent degree. Minister of Public Instruction (1863-1869), he revolutionized historical education in France. Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor (1867), Senator of the Em- pire (1869), Member of the Academy (1884), he attained the highest grades of civic and literary distinction. But as a historian he won his permanent renown. A tireless stu- dent and author, during his life of over eighty years he knew no such thing as rest. The mere enumeration of his works is bewildering. Among them are a sacred history, based upon the Bible, a history of the Komans in seven volumes, of the Greeks in three volumes, of France in two volumes, of the Middle Ages and of modern times. Of his publications more than two million copies have been sold in France. This general history, up to 1848, embodies the condensed results of M. Duruy's researches and reflections. Never- IV INTRODUCTION tlieless, for two reasons thorough revision has been neces- sary. At times M. Duruy dwells on events, connected with France, at greater length than is desirable for us. Fur- thermore, history, like science, is progressive and never standing still. Not rarely does she change her verdicts in consequence of later light. In her domain, however often travelled over, discoveries are constant. Therefore I have abridged, enlarged or modified as I deemed best. Some few chapters I have entirely recast, among them that on ^'.The Three Eastern Questions." But, except with a careful and a reverent hand, I have touched no word which the great master wrote. The work of M. Duruy ends with the year 1848. The last quarter of the book — that devoted to " Contemporary History " and covering the last fifty years — is wholly my own. To write the story of to-day has been difficult. It has been none the less arduous because a delightful task. For aid in its treatment I have been indebted to many friends, and specially to Professor H. B. Adams, LL.D. of Johns Hopkins University. I have sought to continue the same system which, in the earlier portion of the volume, the French author follows so successfully and well. I have endeavored to avoid the mistakes consequent upon nearness, wherein the recent is prone to fill the sky, and have striven to observe just proportion between related facts. But the eye of a hundred years hence will mark and gauge the closing events of this century with clearer and wiser vision than can we. EDWIN A. GROSYENOR. Amherst, Massachusetts, U.S.A. September 7, 1898. CONTENTS ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST PAG E I. The Beginning . 1 The Earth. Man. Race and Language. The Black and Yellow Races. The White Race. The Aryans and Semites. Earliest Centres of Civilization. Primitive Books. II. China and the Mongols . . . . . . 8 Great Antiquity of Chinese Civilization. Imperial Dynasties and Chinese Feudalism. The Great Wall and the Burning of the Books. Im- mense Extent of the Empire at the Beginning of our Era. Invasion of the Mongols in the Thirteenth Century. First Europeans in China. New Mongol Empire in Central Asia and India. China in Modern Times. Confucius and Chinese Society. III. India 16 Contrast between India and China. Primitive Populations. The Aryans. The Vedas. History of India. The Castes. Brahmans, Kshatriyas, and Sudras. Political Organization and Religion. Buddhism. IV. Egypt 24 First Inhabitants. First Dynasties. Invasion of the Hyksos or Shepherds. Decline of Egypt. Invasion of the Ethiopians. The Last Pharaohs. Egypt under the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, and the Arabs. Egyptian Religion, Government, and Art. VI CONTENTS V. The Assyrians ........ 32 The Tigris and the Euphrates. Babylon and Nineveh, Second Assyrian Empire. Last Assyrian Empire. Capture of Babylon by Cyrus. Government, Religion, and Arts of Assyria. VI. The Phcenicians 36 Phoenician Cities betv^een Lebanon and the Sea. Phoenician Commerce and Colonies. Conquerors of Phoenicia. Vn. The Hebrews . 38 Ancient Traditions. Religious and Civil Legislation. Moral Grandeur of Hebrew Legislation. Conquest of Palestine. The Judges. The Kings. The Schism and the Captivity. The Jews under the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans. VIII. The Medes and Persians ,45 Mazdeism. The Medes. The Persians under Cyrus. Conquest of Western Asia. The Persians under Cambyses and Darius. Government. HISTORY OF THE GREEKS I. Primitive Times ........ 51 Ancient Populations. Pelasgi and Hellenes. Heroic Times. The Trojan War. The Dorian Invasion. Greek Colonies and Institutions. II. Customs and Religion of the Greeks ... 55 Spirit of Liberty in Customs and Institutions. Religion. III. Lycurgus and Solon 60 Sparta before Lycurgus. Lycurgus. His Political Ideas. Civil Laws. The Messenian Wars. Athens until the Time of Solon. The Archonship. Solon. The Pisistratidse. Clisthenes. Themistocles. CONTENTS Vll IV. The Persian Wars (492-449) 65 Revolt of the Asiatic Greeks from the rersians. First Persian War. Marathon and Miltiades (490). Second Persian War. Salamis. Platsea. Continuance of the War by Athens. Last Victories of the Greeks. V. The Age of Pericles 68 The Athenian People. Pericles. Great Intellects at Athens. The Parthenon. VI. Rivalry of Sparta, Athens, and Thebes (431-359) . 70 Irritation of the Allies against Athens. The Peloponnesian AVar to the Peace of Nicias. The Sicilian Expedition. Alcibiades. The Battle of JKgos Potamos. Capture of Athens. Power of Sparta. Expedition of the Ten Thousand. Agesilaus. Treaty of Antalcidas. Struggle between Sparta and Thebes. Epaminondas. VII. Philip of Macedon and Demosthenes (359-336) . 75 Philip. Capture of Aniphipolis. Occupation of Thessaly. Demosthenes. Second Sacred War. Battle of Chseronea. VIII. Alexander (336-323) 78 Submission of Greece to Alexander (336-334). Expedition against Persia (334). Conquest of the Asiatic Coast and of Egypt. Conquest of Persia. Death of Darius. Murder of Clitus (334-327). Alexander beyond the Indus. His Return to Baby- lon, and Death (337-323). The Age of Alexander. IX. Conversion of Greece and of the Greek Kingdoms into Roman Provinces (323-146) ... 82 Dismemberment of Alexander's Empire. Kingdoms of Syria (201-64) and of Egypt (301-30). Kingdom of Macedon (301-146). Cynocephalse and Pydnn. Death of Demosthenes (322). The Achaean League (251-146). viii CONTENTS PAGE X. Summary of Greek History 86 Services rendered by the Greeks to General Civiliza- tion. Defects of the Political and Religious Spirit among the Greeks. HISTORY OF THE ROMANS I. Rome. The Ancient Roman Constitution (753-366) . 30 The Royal Period (753-510). The Republic. Consuls. Tribunes. The Decemvirate and the Twelve Tables. The Plebeians attain Admission to All Offices. II. The Conquest of Italy (343-265) .... 94 Capture of Rome by the Gauls (390). The Samnite Wars. Pyrrhus. The Gauls. III. The Punic Wars (264-146) 98 First Punic War (264-241). Conquest of Sicily. War of the Mercenaries against Carthage (241-238). Second Punic War (218-201). Third Punic War (149-146) . Destruction of Carthage. IV. Foreign Conquests of Rome (229-129) . . .103 Partial Conquest of ?Hvricum (229) and of Istria (217). The Conquerors of Asia Minor, Macedon, and Greece. Conquest of Spain (197-133). Viriathus. Numantia. V. First Civil Wars. The Gracchi. Marius. Sulla (133-79) 106 Results of Roman Conquests on Roman Manners and Constitution. The Gracchi (133-121). Marius. Conquest of Numidia (118-104). Invasion of the Cimbri and Teutones (113-102). Renewal of Civil Troubles. Saturninus (106-98). Sulla. The Italian Revolt (98-88). Proscriptions in Rome. Sulpicius and Cinna (88-84). Victory of Sulla. His Proscriptions and Dictatorship -. (84-79). The Popular Party ruined by the Defeat of Sertorius (72). CONTENTS IX VI. Fkom Sulla to C.^sar, Pompey, and Cicero (79-60) . 115 War against Mithridates under Sulla (90-84). War against Mithridates under LucuUus and Pompev (74-08). Revival of the Popular Party at Pome. The Gladia- tors (71). Alliance of Pompey with the Popular Party. War with the Pirates (07). Cicero. Conspiracy of Catiline (03). VII. Cesar (60-44) 121 Csesar, Leader of the Popular Party. His Consulship (00). The Gallic War. Victories over the Helvetii, Ario- vistus, and the Belgse (58-57). Submission of Armoricum and Aquitaine. Expedi- tions to Britain and beyond the Rhine (50-53). General Insurrection. Vercingetorix. Defeat of Crassus by the Parthians (53). Civil War between Caesar and Pompey (49-48). War at Alexandria. Csesar Dictator (48-44). VIII. The Second Triumvirate . . . . . . 127 Octavius. Second Triumvirate. Proscription. Battle of Philippi (42). Antony in the East. The Persian War. Treaty of Misenum (39). Wise Administration of Octavius. Expedition of An- tony against the Parthiaii^s. Actium. Death of Antony and Reduction of Egypt to a Province (30). IX. Augustus and the Julian Emperors (31 n.c. to 08 a.d.) 134 Constitution of the Imperial Power (.30-12). Administration of Augustus in the Provinces and at Rome. Foreign Policy. Defeat of Varus (9 a.d.). Tiberius (14-37). Caligula (37-41). Claudius (41-54). Nero (54-08). X. The Flavians (09-96) 144 Galba, Otho, and Vitellius (68-69). Vespasian (09-79). Titus (79-81). Domitian (81-96). X CONTENTS PAGE XI. The Antonines (96-192) 147 Nerva (96-98). Trajan (98-117). Hadrian (117-138). Antoninus (138-161). Marcus Aurelius (161-180). Commodus (180-192). XII. Military Anarchy (192-285) 152 Pertinax and Didius Julianus (192-193). Septimius Sever us (193-211). Caracalla (211-217). Macrinus (217). Heliogabalus (218-222). Alexander Severus (222-235). Six Emperors in Nine Years (235-244). Philip (244-249). Decius (249-251). The Thirty Tyrants (251-268). Claudius (268). Aurelian (270). Tacitus (275). Probus (275). Carus (282). XIII. Diocletian and Constantine (285-337). Christianity 159 Diocletian (285-305). The Tetrarchy. New Emperors and Civil Wars (303-323). Christianity. Reoi-ganization of the Imperial Administration. Last Years of Constantine. XIV. CoNSTANTius (337). Julian. Theodosius . . . 170 Constantius (337). , Julian (361). Jovian (363). Valentinian and Valens (364). Theodosius (378). End of the AVestern Empire (476). Summary. HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES I. The Barbarian World in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries ........ 177 Definition of the Middle Ages. The Northern Barbarians. Their Habits and Religion. Arrival of the Huns in Europe. Invasion of the Visigoths. Alaric. The Great Inva- sion of 406, Capture of Rome by Alaric (410). Kingdoms of the Visigoths, Suevi, a;id V^andals. Attila. CONTENTS xi PAGE II. Principal Barbarian Kingdoms. The Eastern Empire ......... 183 Barbarian Kingdoms of Gaul, Spain, and Africa. Saxon Kingdoms in England. Kingdom of the Ostrogoths in Italy. Theodoric (489-526). Revival of the Eastern Empire. Justinian (527-565). III. Clovis and the Merovingians (481-752) . . . 187 The Franks. Clovis. The Sons of Clovis (511-561). Fr(^d^gonde and Brunehaut. Clotaire II (584) and Dagobert (628). The Sluggard Kings. The Mayors of the Palace (638-687). - IV. Mohammed and the Arab Invasion .... 193 Arabia. Mohammed and the Koran. The Caliphate. The Sumiites and Shiites. Arab Conquests (637-661). The Ommiades. Division of the Caliphate. Arabic Civilization. V. The Empire of the Franks. Efforts to Introduce Unity in Church and State .... 200 Difference between the Arab and Germanic Invasions. Ecclesiastical Society. Charles Martel and Pepin the Short (715-768). Charlemagne, King of the Lombards and Patrician of Rome (774). Conquest of Germany (771-804). Spanish Expedition. Limits of the Empire. Charlemagne Emperor (800). Government. VI. The Last Carlovingians and the Northmen . . 209 Weakness of the Carlovingian Empire. Louis the Debonair. The Treaty of Verdun (843). Charles the Bald (840-877). Progress of Feudalism. Deposition of Charles the Fat. Seven Kingdoms. Eudes and the Last Carlovingians (887-987). VII. The Third Invasion 214 The New Invasion. The Northmen in France. xii CONTENTS The Northmen Danes in England. The Northmen in the Polar Regions and in Russia. The Saracens and the Hungarians. VIII. Feudalism . \ 219 Feudalism or the Heredity of Offices and Fiefs. Civilization from the Ninth to the Twelfth Century. IX. The German Empire. Struggle between the Papacy AND the Empire 227 Germany from 887 to 1056. The Monk Hildebrand. Gregory VII and Henry IV (1073-1085). Concordat of Worms (1122). The Hohenstaufens. X. Crusades in the East and in the West . . . 235 The First Crusade in the East (1096-1099). Second and Third Crusades (1147-1189). Fourth Crusade (1203). Latin Empire of Constan- tinople. Last Crusades (1229-1270). Saint Louis. Results of the Crusades in the East. Crusades of the West. XI. Society in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries 247 Progress of the Urban Population. Intellectual Progress. National Literatures. XII. Formation of the Kingdom of France (987-1328) . 251 First Capetians (987-1108). Louis the Fat (1108-1137). Louis VII (1137-1180). Philip Augustus (1180). Louis VIII (1223) and Saint Louis (1226). Victory of Taillebourg (1242). Moderation of Saint Louis. Philip III (1270) and Philip IV (1285). Quarrel between the King and the Pope. Condemnation of the Templars. Last Direct Capetians. The SaHc Law (1314-1328). XIII. Formation of the English Constitution . . . 258 Norman Invasion (1066). Force of Norman Royalty in England. William II (1087). Henry I (1100). Stephen (1135). Henry II (1154). CONTENTS Xlll Richard (1189). John Lackland (1199). Henry III (1210). First English Parliament (1258). Progressof English Institutions. XIV. First Period of the Hundred Years' War (1328- 1380) 264 Causes of the Hundred Years' War. Hostilities in Flanders and Britain (1337). Battle of Crecy (1316). John the Good. Battle of Poitiers (1356). Attempt at Reforms. The Jacquerie. Treaty of Br^tigny (1360). Charles V and Duguesclin. XV. Second Period of the Hundred Years' War (1380- 1453) 268 Charles VI. The Armagnacs and the Burgundians. John the Fearless. Insurrection in England. Wickliffe. Richard II (1380). Henry IV. Battle of Agincourt (1415). Treaty of Troyes (1420). Charles VII and Joan of Arc. Reforms and Success of Charles VII. X VI. Spain and Italy (1250-1453) 273 Domestic Troubles in Spain. The Kingdom of Naples under Charles of Anjou (1265). Italian Republics. Guelphs and Ghibellines. Return of the Papacy to Rome (1578). The Princi- palities. The Aragonese at Naples. Brilliancy of Letters and Arts. XV^IL Germany and the Scandinavian, Slavic, and Turk- ish States (1250-1453) 280 The Interregnum. The House of Hapsburg. Switzerland. Battle of Morgarten (1315). Powerlessness of the Emperors. Union of Calmar (1397). Strength of Poland. The Mongols in Russia. The Ottoman Turks at Constantinople (1453). XVIII. Summary op the Middle Ages 286 XIV CONTENTS HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES PAGE I. Progress of Royalty in France .... 289 Principal Divisions of Modern History. Louis XI (1461-1483). League of Public Welfare (1465). Interview of P^ronne (1468). Death of the Duke of Guyenne (1472). Mad Enterprises and Death of Charles the Bold (1477). Union of the Great Fiefs with the Crown. Administration of Louis XI. Charles VIII (1483). II. Progress of Royalty in England. War op the Roses 295 Henry VI. Richard of York, Protector (1454). Edward IV (1460). Richard III (1483). Henry VII (1485). III. Progress of Royalty in Spain 299 Abandonment of the Crusade against the Moors. Marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon with Isabella of Castile (1469). Conquest of Granada (1492). The Inquisition. The Power of Royalty. Progress of Royalty in Portugal. IV. Germany and Italy from 1453 to 1494 . . . 303 Frederick III (1440) and Maximilian (1493). Italy. Republics replaced by Principalities. V. The Ottoman Turks (1453-1520) 307 Strong Military Organization of the Ottomans. Mo- hammed II. Bayezid II (1481). Selim the Ferocious (1512). VI. Wars in Italy. Charles VIII and Louis XII . . 310 Consequences of the Political Revolution. The First European Wars. Expedition of Charles VIII into Italy (1494). Louis XII (1498). Conquest of Milan and Naples. League of Cambrai (1508). The Holy League (1511). Invasion of France (1513). Treaties of Peace (1514). CONTENTS XV PAGE VII. The Economical Revolution 314 Discovery of the Cape of Good Hope (1497). Colonial Empire of the Portuguese. Christopher Columbus. Colonial Empire of the Span- iards. Kesults. VIII. The Revolution in Arts and Letters, or the Renais- sance . . . . . . . . . 318 Invention of Printing. Renaissance of Letters. Renaissance of Arts, Renaissance in Science. IX. The Revolution in Creeds, or the Reformation . 321 The Clergy in the Sixteenth Century. Luther (1517). The Lutheran Reformation in the Scandinavian States. The Reformation in Switzerland. Zwingii (1517), Calvin (153G). The Reformation in the Netherlands, France, Scot- land, and England. Character of the Three Reformed Churches. Consequences of the Reformation. X, The Catholic Restoration 329 Reforms at the Pontifical Court and in the Church. The Jesuits. Council of Trent (1545-1563). XL New Wars in Italy, Francis I, Charles V, and Souleiman I 332 Francis I, Victory of Marignano (1515). Power of Charles V, Pavia (1525). Treaties of Madrid (1526) and Cam- brai (1529). Alliances of Francis I, Successes of Souleiman I, New War between Charles V, and Francis I. Abdication of Charles V (1556). Continuation of the Struggle between the Houses of France and Austria (1558-1559), XIL The Religious Wars in Western Europe (1559-1598) 339 Philip 11. Character of this Period. France the Principal Battlefield of the Two Parties. The First War (1562-1563). Successes of Catholicism in the Netherlands and France (1564-1568). The Blood Tribunal (1567). xvi CONTENTS Dispersion of the Forces of Spain. Victory of Le- panto (1571). Catholic Conspiracies in England and in France. Progress of the Protestants (1573-1587). Defeat of Spain and of Ultramontanism (1588-1598). XIII. Results of the Religious Wars in Western Eu- rope 349 Decline and Ruin of Spain. Prosperity of England and Holland. Reorganization of France by Henry IV (1598-1610). XIV. The Religious Wars in Central Europe, or the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) . . . .353 Preliminaries of the Thirty Years' War (1555-1618). Palatine Period (1618-1625). Danish Period (1625-1629). Swedish Period (1630-1635). French Period (1635-1648). XV. Results of the Religious Wars in Central Europe 358 Peace of Westphalia (1648). Advantages won by the Protestants. Religious Inde- pendence of the German States. Political Independence of the German States. Acquisitions of Sweden and France. XVI. Richelieu and Mazarin. Completion op Monarch- ical France (1610-1661) 360 Minority of Louis XIII (1610-1617). Richelieu humiliates the Protestants and the High Nobility. Mazarin and the Fronde. Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659). XVII. England from 1603 to 1674 365 Europe in 1661. James I (1603-1625). Charles I (1625-1649). The Civil War (1642-1647). Execution of Charles I. The Commonwealth of England (1649-1660). Charles II (1660-1685). XVIII. Louis XIV from 1661 to 1685 372 Colbert. Louvois. CONTENTS XVll War with Flanders (1667). War with Holland (1672). Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685). XIX. The English Revolution (1688) ... . .377 Reawakening of Liberal Ideas in England (1673-1679). Catholic and Absolutist Reaction. James II (1685). Fall of James II (1688). Declaration of Rights. William III (1689). A New Political Right. XX. Coalitions against France (1688-1714) . . .380 Formation of the League of Augsburg (1686). War of the League of Augsburg (1689-1697). War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714). Treaties of Utrecht (1713) and Rastadt (1714). Louis XIV the Personification of Monarchy by Divine Right. XXI. Art, Literature, and Science in the Seventeenth Century 385 Letters and Arts in France. Letters and Arts in Other Countries. Science in the Seventeenth Century. XXII. Creation of Russia. Downfall of Sweden . . 389 The Northern States at the Beginning of the Eigh- teenth Century. Peter the Great (1682). XXIII. Creation of Prussia. Decline of France and Aus- tria 393 Regency of the Duke of Orleans. Ministries of Dubois, the Duke of Bourbon, and Fleury (1715- 1743). Formation of Prussia. Maria Theresa and Frederick II. The War of the Austrian Succession (1741-1748). The Seven Years' War (1756-1763). XXIV. Maritime and Colonial Power of England England from 1688 to 1763. The English East India Company, 399 XXV. Foundation of the United States of America Origin and Character of the English Colonies in America. The Revolutionary War (1775-1783). Washington. The Part of France in the War. 402 CONTENTS PAGB XXVI. Destruction of Poland. Decline of the Otto- mans. Greatness of Russia .... 405 Catherine II (1761) and Frederick II. First Parti- tion of Poland (1773). Treaties of Kainardji (1774) and Jassy (1792). Second and Third Partitions of Poland (1793-1795). Attempt at Dismembering Sweden. XXVII. Preliminaries of the French Revolution . Scientific and Geographical Discoveries. Letters in the Eighteenth Century. Disagreement between Ideas and Institutions. Reforms effected by Governments. Last Years of Louis XV (1763-1774). Louis XVI. 408 XXVm. The Revolution (1789-1792) 413 Divine Right and National Sovereignty. The Constituent Assembly until the Capture of the Bastile. The Days of October. The Emigrants. The Con- stitution of 1791. XXIX. Ineffectual Coalition of the Kings against the Revolution (1792-1802) 420 The Legislative Assembly (1791-1 '92). Effect outside of France produced by the Revolu- tion. The First Coalition (1791). The Commune of Paris. The Days of June 20 and August 10, 1792. The Massacres of September. Invasion of France. Defeat of the Prussians at Valmy, September 20, 1792. The Convention (1792-1795). Proclamation of the French Republic (September 21, 1792). Death of Louis XVI. The Reign of Terror. The Ninth of Thermidor, or July 27, 1794. Glorious Campaigns of 1793-1795. Campaigns of Bonaparte in Italy (1796-1797). The Egyptian Expedition (1798-1799). Second Coalition. Victory of Zurich. Internal Anarchy. The Eighteenth of Brumaire, or November 9, 1799. Another Constitution, The Consulate. Marengo. Peace of Lun^ville (1801) and of Amiens (1802). XXX. Greatness of France (1802-1811) . ., . . 437 The Consulate for Life, Bonaparte Hereditary Emperor (May 18, 1804). CONTENTS XIX Third Coalition. Austerlitz and the Treaty of Presburg (1805). The Confederation of the Rhine and the Vassal States of the Empire. Jena (1806) and Tilsit (1807). The Continental Blockade. Invasion of Spain (1807). Wagram (1809). XXXI. Victorious Coalition of Peoples and Kings AGAINST Napoleon (1811-1815) . . . .446 Popular Reaction against the Spirit of Conquest represented by Napoleon. Preparations for Insurrection in Germany. Progress of Liberal Ideas in Europe. Formation or Awakening of the Nations. Moscow (1812). Leipsic (1813). Campaign in France (1814). The First Restoration. The Hundred Days. Water- loo (1814-1815). XXXII. Reorganization op Europe at the Congress of Vienna. The Holy Alliance .... 455 The Congress of Vienna. The Holy Alliance (1815). XXXIII. Secret Societies and Revolutions (1815-1824) . 461 Character of the Period between 1815 and 1830. Efforts to preserve or Reestablish the Old Regime, Peculiar Situation of France from 1815 to 1819. Alliance of the Altar and the Throne. The Con- gregation. Liberalism in the Press, and Secret Societies. Plots (1816-1822). Assassinations (1819-1820). Revolutions (1820-1821). The Holy Alliance acts as the Police of Europe. Expedition of Italy (1821) and of Spain (1823). Charles X (1824). XXXIV. Progress of Liberal Ideas 480 The Romantic School. The Sciences. Formation in France of a Legal Opposition. Huskisson and Canning in England (1822). New Foreign Policy. Principle of Non-intervention. Independence of the Spanish Colonies (1824). Constitutional Empire of Brazil (1822). Liberal Revolution in Portugal (1826). Liberation of Greece (1827). Destruction of the Janissaries (1826). Success of the Russians (1828-1829). Summary. State of the World in 1828. zx CONTENTS XXXV. New and Impotent Efforts of the Ancient Regime against the Liberal Spirit . Dom Miguel in Portugal (1828). Don Carlos in Spain (1827). The Wellington Ministry (1828). The Diet of Frankfort. The Tsar Nicholas. The Polignac Ministry (1829). Capture of Al- giers (1830). The Revolution of 1830. 493 XXXVI. XXXVII. XXXVIII. Consequences of the Revolution or July in France. Struggle between the Liberal Conservatives and the Republicans (1830- 1840) ........ 498 Character of the Period comprised between 1830 and 1840. King Louis Philippe. The Latitte Ministry (1830). The Casimir-P^rier Ministry (1831). Success Abroad. Insurrections at Lyons and at Paris (1834). Attempt of Fieschi (1835). The Thiers Ministry (1836). The Mol6 Ministry (1836-1837). Ministry of Marshal Soult (1839). Consequences in Europe of the Revolution of July (1830-1840) 507 General State of Europe in 1830. England. Whig Ministry (1830). The Reform Bill (1831-1832). Belgian Revolution (August and September, 1830). Liberal Modifications in the Constitutions of Switzerland (1831), Denmark (1831), and Sweden. Revolutions in Spain (1833) and Portugal (1834). Treaty of the Quadruple Alliance (1834). Impotent Efforts of the Liberals in Germany and Italy (1831). Defeat of the Polish Insurrection (1831). The Three Eastern Questions (1832-1848) Interests of the European Powers in Asia. The First Eastern Question : Constantinople. Decline of Turkey. Power and Ambition of the Viceroy of Egypt. Conquest of Syria by Ibrahim Pasha (1832). Treaty of Hunkiar Iskelessi (1833). 518 CONTENTS XXI PAOS The Treaty of London (1840) and the Treaty of the Straits (1841). The Second Eastern Question : Central Asia. Progress of the Russians in Asia. Indirect Struggle between the English and the Russians in Central Asia. The Third Eastern Question : The Pacific Ocean. Isolation of China and Japan. Opium War (1840-1843). Treaty of France with China (1844). Russia and China. Summary of the Three Eastern Questions in 1848. XXXIX. Preliminaries of the Revolution of 1848 . . 532 Character of the Period comprised between 1840 and 1848. Progress of Socialistic Ideas. France from 1840 to 1846. England. Free Trade. The Income Tax and the New Colonial System (1841-1849). Establishment of the Constitutional System in Prussia (1847). Liberal Agitations in Austria and in Italy. XL. America from 1815 to 1848 544 American Progress. The Monroe Doctrine. Ad- vantage of Liberty . XLL The Revolution of 1848 547 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY I. The Revolution of 1848 in its Influence upon Europe 551 Contemporary History. Outbreak at Vienna and Fall of Metternich. Troubles in Bohemia. Revolt in Hungary. Commotions in Italy. Popular Demands in Prussia and in Other German States. The German National Assembly. XL The Second French Republic (1848-1852) . . 557 The Provisional Government. Barricades of June. General Discontent. Presidency of Louis Napoleon. The Coup d'Etat. xxii CONTENTS PAGE III. Triumph of Reaction in Europe (1848-1851) . . 561 Subjugation of Hungary. Return to Absolutism in Austria. Defeat and Abdication of Charles Albert. Conservatism of Pius IX. Dissolution of the General Assembly at Frankfort. IV. The Second French Empire (1852-1870) . . .567 The Plebiscites of 1851 and 1852. The Crimean War (1853-1856). War with Austria (1859). Material Progress (1852-1867). The Universal Exposition of 1867. Humiliations of the Empire. The Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871). Sedan. Fall of the Empire (September 4, 1870). Surrender of Metz (October 27, 1870). Siege and Surrender of Paris (January 28, 1871). Treaty of Frankfort. V. Germany (1848-1871) . 580 Rivalry of Prussia and Austria. Question of Schleswig-Holstein (1848-1855). King William I and Otto von Bismarck. Austro- Prussian Occupation of Schleswig-Holstein (1863-1864). Seven Weeks' War between Prussia and Austria. (1866). Sadowa (July 3, 1860). Hegemony of Prussia (1866-1871). Unification of Germany (1871). VI. The Third French Republic (1870-1898) . . .587 The Commune (March 18-May 28, 1871). M. Thiers, President of the Republic (1871-1873). Presidency of Marshal MacMahon (1873-1879). Presidency of M. Gr^vy (1879-1887). Presidency of M. Sadi Carnot (1887-1894). Presidency of M. Casimir-P^rier (1894). Presidency of M. Faure (1895- ). France in 1898. VII. The German Empire (1871-1898) . . . . .600 The Imperial Constitution. The Alliance of the Three Emperors (1871-1876). Organization of Alsace-Lorraine (1871). The Culturkampf (1873-1887). Economic Policy (1878-1890). CONTENTS XXIII The Triple Alliance (1879- ). Death of Emperor William I (March 9, 1888). Frederick I (1888). Reign of William II (1888- ). VIII. Italy 607 Condition of the Italian Peninsula in 1850. Count Cavour. Piedmont in the Crimean War (1855-1856). The War of 1859. Successful Revolutions. Victor Emmanuel and Gari- baldi (1859-1805). Alliance with Prussia against Austria (1866). Rome the Capital of Italy (1870). The Last Bays of Victor Emmanuel (1870-1878). The Reign of King Humbert (1878- ). Italia Irredenta. IX. Austria-Hungary ........ 616 Accession of Francis Joseph (1848). Austrian Absolutism (1850-1866). The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and Political Re- forms (1866). Acquisition of Bosnia and Herzegovina (1878). Austria-Hungary from 1878 to 1898. Political Problems of To-day. X. Russia .623 Nicholas I (1825-1855). The Crimean War (1853-1856). Alexander II (1855-1881). Revision of the Treaty of Paris (1871). The Russo-Turkish War (1877-1878). The Congress of Berlin (1878). The Nihilists. Reign of Alexander III (1881-1894). Nicholas II (1894- ). XL The Ottoman Empire 635 The Hatti Sherif of Ghul Khaneh (1839). Massacres in the Lebanon (1845). Question of the Holy Places. The Crimean War (1853-1856). The Hatti Humayoun (1856). Massacres at Djeddah (1858) and in Syria (1860). European Intervention. Sultan Abd-ul Aziz (1861-1876). XXIV CONTENTS The Insurrection of Crete (1866-1868). Opening of the Suez Canal (November 17, 1869). Foreign Loans and Bankruptcy. Death of Sultan Abd-ul Aziz (May 27, 1876). The Reign of Sultan Abd-ul Hamed II (1876- ). XII. The Balkan States 649 The Five States. Roumania. Montenegro. Servia. Bulgaria. Greece. XIII. The Smaller European States 662 Denmark. Sweden and Norway. Switzerland. Belgium. The Netherlands or Holland. The Five Smaller European States and the Five Balkan States. XIV. Spain and Portugal 669 Reign of Isabella II (1833-1868). Revolution (1868). Experiments at Government (1868-1875). Restoration of the Dynasty (1875). Reign of Al- phonso XII (1875-1885). Regency of Queen Maria Christina (1885- ). Cuba. War with the United States (1898). Portugal. Death of Dona Maria da Gloria (1853). Peaceful Development of Portugal. XV. Great Britain 678 The British Empire. Great Britain in 1848. Repeal of the Navigation Laws (1849). . The Great Exhibition (1851). The Part of Great Britain in the Crimean War (1853- 1856). Wars with Persia (1857) and China (1857-1860). The Indian Mutiny (1857-1858). Lord Palmerston Prime Minister (1859-1865). Lord Russell Prime Minister (October, 1865-July, 1866). The American Civil War (1861-1865). Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli Prime Ministers (July, 1866-November, 1868). CONTENTS XXV Second Reform Bill (1867). Mr. Gladstone Prime Minister (December, 1868-Feb- ruary, 1874). The Irish Question. The Alabama Claims. Second Prime Ministry of Mr. Disraeli (February, 1874-April, 1880). Second Prime Ministry of Mr. Gladstone (April, 1880- June, 1885). Occupation of Egypt (1882). General Gordon. Third Reform Bill (June, 1885). First Prime Ministry of Lord Salisbury (June, 1885- February, 1886). Third Prime Ministry of Mr. Gladstone (February, 1886-August, 1886). The Irish Home Rule Bill. Second Prime Ministry of Lord Salisbury (August, 1886-August, 1892). Fourth Prime Ministry of Mr. Gladstone (August, 1892-March, 1894). Lord Rosebery Prime Minis- ter (March, 1894- June, 1895). Third Prime Ministry of Lord Salisbury (June, 1895- ). Characteristics of the Reign of Queen Victoria. Mr. Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield) and Mr. Gladstone. XVI. Partition op Africa, Asia, and Oceania . . . 691 Seizure of Unoccupied Territory. Occupation of Africa. The Boer Republics. Occupation of Asia. The Route to India. Occupation of Oceania. Results of Territorial Expansion. XVII. The United States 700 American History. Treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo (1848). The Gadsden Purchase (1853). The Clayton-Bulwer Treaty (1850). Complications with Austria (1849-1854). The Ostend Manifesto (1854). Expedition of Commodore Perry to Japan (1852- 1854). The United States and China (1858- ). The Civil War (1861-1865). Question of the Northwestern Boundary (1872). The Newfoundland Fisheries. The Halifax Award (1877). The Centennial Exhibition (1876). The Presidential Election of 1876. XXVI CONTENTS Assassination of President Garfield (1881). Civil Service Reform Bill (1883). The Bering Sea Controversy over the Seal Fishery (1886- ). Trouble with Chili (1891-1892). The Columbian Exhibition (1893). The Venezuelan Message (December 17, 1895). Annexation of Hawaii (1898). The War with Spain (1898). INDEX 711 LIST OF MAPS The World as kxovvn to the Ancients Egypt Kingdom of David and Solomon Ancient Greece Athens ..... Empire of Alexander Italy divided by Augustus into Eleven Regions Ancient Rome The Roman Ejipire under Augustus The Countries where the Apostles preached The Roman Empire and the Barbarian World Europe at the Death of Justinian The Arabian Empire about 750 Empire of Charlejiagne .... Europe during the Crusades, 1095 to 1270 Italy in the Fifteenth Century . France under Louis XI .... Voyages and Discoveries Europe at the Treaty of Westphalia, in 1648 Central Europe, indicating Battlefields and Places, from 1792 to 1813 Europe in 1812 Europe at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 Europe in 1898 . Italy in 1859 The British Isles Asia . ... The United States Historic p „ ,...oo^w^ 9, ASIA oMJNOR^-Sa.nTS^ta < Sa?a/ ^"^^^r-f '^ '' ' '^.-^^ /Minor V* >^*^° ^*^g^ CVPR> °Paphos/<-,S Y R I A^^ Siiioo/*?^ Damascus roRTUNATAE 1./ ( CydamuBo i- - ^' \ - ^ -« -""^ - o '<^cH Arab r D T a no „ Ammonium Memphis^ B R T A OR O £ g ^ ^ Hermopolis AFRICA (AETHIOPES OF HANNO MELANO GAETULI _y PHAZANIA GARAMANTES oNigira Metropolis J \ G R i\ T A Garama ^ '^ T q '"ptoienmi3\_1;^^"^^;;""-^ ^Them, L I B Y^A \.S.Maco . . ^Bade Tliabudis \ j- ^ i -- s Primis ParvaWV* 'ptolemaiVr: ^'"' R i-^haPaUs 'Gira Metropolis,^; Si.bitu^^K^' >efe^ A E T H >, I O P ; I A (, I N T E R I O R J \ -O t-P'dires^ J L Aetliti Longitude 40 I , byT. V. C.ow«ll\Cu 100 no 12U THE WORLD AS KNOWN TO THE ANCIENTS CP -^W ^- I "^ ssedoii Serica A A#- V Thagora/"^ \ -OSolanal O i.yColiui., OUuuiii i Co., S V. ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST THE BEGINNING The Earth. — Every primitive religion has sought to explain God, the world, the creation of man, and the co- existence on earth of good and evil. Therefore all ancient peoples had or still preserve pious legends in harmony with their country and climate, their customs and social state; that is to say, with the conditions under which they lived, felt, thought, and believed. Of these early narratives the most simple and the grandest is Genesis, the sacred book of the Jews and Christians. Science, in its turn, seeks to fathom those mysteries, although the origin of things must forever elude it. It indeed renounces the task of solving questions which faith alone must decide. Yet, by a magnificent effort of exam- ination and comparison, it has succeeded in acquiring a mass of truths, the discovery of which would prove the greatness of man, were not his littleness demonstrated every moment by the infinity of time and space into which his gaze and thought plunge Avith an insatiable and too often powerless curiosity. Our solar system, with all the stars which compose it, is only a speck in immensity. According to the hypothesis of Laplace, which nothing so far has disproved, those stars themselves originally formed but a single whole. It was one of those prodigious nebulse, such as are still seen in the vastitude of the heavens, and are probably so many suns in process of formation. Our nebula became concentrated into a focus of heat and light, but as it followed its path through space, it now and again threw off masses of cosmic matter which formed the planets. The latter, as if demon- B 1 2 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST strating their origin, still revolve in the orbit of the sun from which they emanated. The globe which we inhabit is therefore a tiny fragment of the sun, which extinguished as it cooled and enveloped itself successively in a gaseous ocean, the atmosphere; then in a liquid ocean, the sea; and finally in a solid crust, the land, the highest points of which emerge above the waves. Animal life awoke first in the bosom of the waters, where it was represented in most ancient times, thousands of cen- turies ago, by species intermediate between the vegetable and animal, and analogous to corals and sponges. Then came molluscs, Crustacea, and the first fishes. At the same time the seaweeds had their birth in shallow waters. Meanwhile the air, saturated with carbonic acid and nitro- gen, developed upon the half-submerged land a mighty vegetation, wherein predominated those tree-ferns and calamites whose remains we find in mines of anthracite and bituminous coal. Thus in the animal and vegetable kingdoms the simplest organisms were produced. Time passed, many thousand centuries elapsed, but the work of creation went on. Ancient forms were changed or new forms were created. The organism became complicated; functions were multi- plied; life took possession of the earth, the sea, and the air, blossoming in greater variety of forms, and richer and more powerful in its means of action. At last man appeared, ' Thus, continual ascent toward a more perfect life seems to have been the law of the physical as it was, later on, of the intellectual world. During the geological period nature was modifying the organism, and hence the functions, and was developing instinct, that first gleam of intelligence. In the historical period, civilization modifies social order and develops human faculties. In the first case, progress is marked by change of form ; in the second, by change of ideas. Man. — At what epoch did man make his appearance upon the earth? Hardly more than half a century ago unlooked- for discoveries shattered all the old systems of chronology, and proved that man himself had part in the geological evolutions of our globe. Flints and bones shaped into axes, knives, needles, arrow heads, and spear heads; bones of huge animals cleft lengthwise, so that the marrow might THE BEGINNING 3 be extracted for nourishment; heaps of shells and debris of repasts; ashes, the evident remains of antediluvian hearths ; even pictures traced on shoulder bones and slate rocks, representing animals now extinct or seen only in places very distant from those they then inhabited; finally, human remains found unquestionably in the deposits of the quaternary epoch, and traces of human industry, which seem to be detected even in the tertiary strata, — prove that man lived at a time when our continents had neither the fauna, the flora, the climate, nor the shape which they have to-day. • . The most numerous discoveries have been made in France. But, on the slopes of Lebanon as in the caves of Perigord, in the valleys of the Himalayas as in those of the Pyrenees, on the banks of the Missouri as on those of the Somme, primitive man appears with the same arms, the same customs, the same savage and precarious life, which certain tribes of Africa, Australia, and the New World still preserve under our ver}^ eyes. The future king of creation was as yet only its most miserable product. Thus, science has moved back the birth of mankind toward an epoch when the measure of time is no longer furnished, as in our day, by a few generations of men, but where we must reckon by hundreds of centuries. This is the Stone Age. It is already possible for us to divide it into many periods, each showing progress over the one preceding. We begin with stones roughly fashioned into implements and weapons, and with caverns which serve for refuge ; we reach stones artistically worked and polished, pottery shaped by hand and even ornamented, and lake cities or habitations raised on piles ; at last we arrive at dolmens and menhirs, those so-called druidic monuments which were formerly recognized only in France and England, but which now are found almost everywhere. Thus the first man recedes and becomes lost in a vague and appalling antiquity. Do all men descend from a single pair? Yes, if we de- termine the unity of the species from the sole consideration that intermarriage of any two varieties of the human race may result in offspring. Nevertheless, physiology and linguistic science set forth very wide differences between the various branches of the human family. Bace and Language. — Intermarriage and the influence of habitation, that is, of soil and climate, have produced many 4 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST • varieties of race. These are generally grouped in three principal classes, the White, the Yellow, and the Black. To them may be added a number of intermediate shades arising from amalgamations that have taken place on the borders of the three dominant classes. If all spring from a common origin, they have none the less developed in dis- tinct regions: the White, or Caucasian, on the table-land of Iran, whence it reached India, Western Asia, and all Europe; the YelT jw, or Mongolian, in China, in Northern Asia, and thv, ^.tialay peninsula; the Black in Africa and Austrpjia,. This race is regarded by certain authors as descending from an earlier creation of mankind. The aborigines of America appear to have Mongolian blood. Languages are also classed in three great groups, the monosyllabic, the agglutinative, and the inflected. The first class possesses only roots, which are at once both nouns and verbs, and which the voice expresses by a single sound, but the meaning of which varies according to position in the sentence and the relation they sustain to other words. In the second class the root does not change, but is built upon by the juxtaposition of particles that are easily rec- ognized and answer all grammatical demands. In the third class the root undergoes modifications of form, sound, accent, and meaning. In this way the noun is made to express gender, number, and relation ; and the verb, tense, and mode. Hence the inflected languages are the most perfect medium for the expression and development of ideas. All the languages spoken on the globe, whether in former times or to-day, represent one of these j)hases. The white race, being the most developed, employs the third. The Turanian idioms (Tartar, Turkish, Finnish), those of the African tribes, and of the American Indians, belong to the second. The ancient Chinese stopped at the first phase. Their descendants advance slowly toward the second, retain- ing for their written language some fifty thousand ideo- graphic characters, each of which was, like the Egyptian hieroglyphics, originally the image of an object or the con- ventional representation of an idea. The Black and Yellow Races. — History preserves no narrative of the Black Race, whose existence, passed in the depths of Africa, has resembled rivers, the sources of which are unknown and the waters of which are lost in the THE BEGINNING 6 desert. We know little more about the American Indians or the islanders of Oceanica. Our science is small as yet, for it is young. In our own time it has created paleon- tology or the history of the earth, and comparative philology or the history of languages, races, and primitive ideas. Thus it has lifted one corner of the veil that conceals the creation of nature and the beginning of civilization. Hence, of the black and red races, the ancient masters of Africa, Oceanica, and the New World, there is nothing to inscribe in the book of history save their names. The Yellow Race, on the contrary, boasts the most ancient annals of the world, an original civilization, and empires which still exist. The Chinese and the Mongols are its best-known representatives. Attached to it are all the peoples of Indo-China and several among the most primitive populations of Hindustan. So, too, are the Thibetan, Turkish, and Tartar tribes, whose fixed or nomadic habita- tions extend from the west of China as far as the Caspian Sea; also the Huns, so terrible to Europe in the fifth cen- tury of our era, and probably the Hungarians or Magyars. The White Race : The Aryans and Semites. — The White Race, which has accomplished almost alone the work of civi- lization, is divided into two principal families : the Semites, in the southwest of Asia and Northern Africa; the Aryans or Indo-Europeans, in the rest of Western Asia and Europe. They appear to have had their cradle in the lands north- west of the Indus toward ancient Bactria, now the khanate of Balkh, in Turkestan. Thence powerful colonies set out which planted themselves at intervals from the banks of the Ganges to the uttermost parts of the West. The kinship of the Hindus, Medes, and Persians in the East; of the Pelasgi and Hellenes in Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy ; of the Celts, Germans, and Slavs north of the Black Sea, the Balkans, and the Alps, has been proved by their idioms, by grammatical analogies, and by word-roots. Thus Greek and Latin are sister tongues, closely allied to Sanskrit, the sacred language of the Indian Brahmans. Celtic, Ger- manic, and Slavic languages or dialects show likewise that they are vigorous offshoots of this great stock. Before their separation these tribes had already domesti- cated the sheep, goat, pig, and goose, and had subdued the ox and horse to the yoke. They had begun to till the earth, to work certain metals, and to construct fixed dwellings. 6 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST Marriage among them was a religious act. The family was the foundation of all public order. Associated families formed the tribe ; many tribes constituted the people, whose chief was the supreme judge during peace, and led the war- riors in battle. They had the vague consciousness of a First Cause, "of a God raised above other gods." But this doc- trine, too exalted for people in their infancy, was obscured and concealed by the deification of natural forces. As for the Semites, established between the Tigris, the Mediterranean, and the Eed Sea, they had, as far back as we can penetrate, one single system of languages, which leads us to attribute to them a single origin. Moreover, the Bible makes the Arabs, as well as the Jews, descend from Abraham. The Syrians and Phoenicians were of the same blood. Semitic colonies peopled Northern Africa as far as the Straits of Gibraltar. It was in the midst of this race, born in the desert where nature is simple and changeless, that in all its purity and splendor the dogma of one only God was to be preserved. Thus two great currents of white populations were formed, which, starting from the centre of Asia, flowed from east to west, over the western region of that conti- nent, the north of Africa, and the whole of Europe. Earliest Centres of Civilization. — These men of the ancient ages, the first-born of the world, continued for a long time savage and miserable before they constituted regular socie- ties. When, at last, they had found localities endowed with natural fertility, where the search for means of exist- ence did not absorb all the forces of the body and mind, association assumed regular forms. The elementary arts were invented, the first compacts made, and the great work of civilization was begun, which man will never complete, but which he will always carry farther. If we study the physical configuration of Asia, we shall readily understand why in that continent there were three centres of primitive civilization : China, India, and Assyria. Like waters which, held back for a time in elevated regions, flow toward lower levels and there form great streams, so men descend into the plain sheltered by mountains and ren- dered fertile by rivers. Such great natural basins, cradles, as it were, of flowers and fraits, prepared by the hand of God for infant races, were the valley of the Ganges, which the Himalayas surround with an impassable rampart, the THE BEGINNING 7 plain of the Tigris and the Euphrates, which the mountains of Medig,, Ararat, Taurus, and Lebanon encompass, and the fertile regions of the Kiang or Blue Kiver and of the Hoang-Ho or Yellow Eiver, bounded on the west by the Yung-Ling and In-Chan mountains. Egypt offers another example of such civilization blossoming out upon the banks of a great stream in a fertile land. Primitive Books. — If from these general facts which his- tory has recovered we wish to ]3ass to more precise details, we must scrutinize the books which go far back in the series of the centuries, and which narrate, without hesitation, the creation of heaven and earth, and of man and animals, the formation of the oldest societies, and the invention of the first arts. But the examination and comparison of cos- mogonies, of religions, and primitive legends, make us recognize everywhere the creative power of popular imagina- tion in the youth of the world. We see man in the state of childhood, with the rashness of ignorance, applying his curiosity to nature in its entirety. As the laws of the phys- ical world were then hidden from him, we see him trying to understand everything by conjecture. We see him, still like the child in his effort to explain all, transforming into living persons the effects derived from the First Cause, while the Supreme Legislator remains hidden behind the multiplicity of phenomena resulting from his laws. Even in these venerable books, the exhaustive study of lan- guages, following the order of their historical develop- ment, has enabled us to discern the interpolations of various later epochs. Therefore it has been necessary, sometimes, to separate what has been brought together, to bring together what has been separated, and to give a new meaning to expressions, images, and ideas that had been wrongly understood. All the sacred books of ancient peoples have been subjected to these sure processes of modern science. This mighty work of philological re- search, dating almost from our own day, has already shed upon the relation of peoples and the formation of their beliefs a light which, though vacillating on many points, tlie preceding centuries could not even suspect. ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 2200-247. J II CHINA AND THE MONGOLS Great Antiquity of Chinese Civilization. — To all ancient peoples their antiquity is a title of honor. Thus the Chinese inhabitants of the Celestial Empire, or, as they still call it, the Middle Kingdom, claim for themselves eighty or a hun- dred thousand years of existence prior to their half -authentic history. Even that goes back to the thirty-fifth century be- fore Christ, and about ten centuries later becomes sufficiently positive to present connected annals. We know not when or how that strange society was formed, which for at least four thousand years has retained the same character. Its practical mind was wholly occupied with the earth, which it conquered by agriculture and by industry, and but little concerned with heaven, which it left empty and deserted. On one side of the Himalayas, man, cradled with half -closed eyes on the bosom of an over-fertile nature, was intoxicated by the enervating breath of the mighty magician, and dreamed of countless benevolent or terrible divinities, who enjoined upon him contempt for life, and annihilation in Brahma. But on the other side of the moun- tains, a laborious, patient, active race drew from life all that it could give, and replaced the formidable systems of the Hindu gods by a merely human. system of morality. The Emperor Chun, who reigned in the twenty-third cen- tury before our era, had already established for his people the five immutable rules, or the five duties of a father and his children, of a king and his subjects, of the aged and the young, of married persons, and of friends. At that time the empire was divided into provinces, departments, districts, and cities, with a great number of tributary peoples and vassal princes, who often revolted. Imperial Dynasties and Chinese Feudalism. — Until about the year 2200, the emperors were elected. Beginning with that period heredity was established, but with the corrective that the grandees could still select the most capable from B.C. 2200-247.] CHINA AND THE MONGOLS 9 among the sons of the dead sovereign as his successor. The Emperor Yii began the Hia dynasty, which lasted four cen- turies, and ended as an abominable tyranny with frightful disorders. The founder of the second or Chang dynasty was a superior man, whose virtues were celebrated by Confucius. To appease the wrath of heaven during a famine, he made a public confession of his faults ; and afterwards, whenever a great calamity occurred, his successors followed his exam- ple. They and their people believed that heaven would certainly be moved by this voluntary expiation, and there was both grandeur and lofty morality in this belief. The last of the Chang resembled the last of the Hia. When one of his ministers remonstrated with him, he re- plied: "Thy discourse is that of a wise man. But it is said that the heart of a wise man is pierced with seven holes. I wish to make sure of it," and he ordered him to be disembowelled. Wou Wang, prince of Tchu, revolted against the tyrant, who was vanquished, and died like Sar- danapalus. He heaped together all his wealth in a palace, set fire, and flung himself into the flames (1122). Wou Wang reorganized the ancient Tribunal of History, whose members held oflice for life that they might be independent. The political wisdom of the Chinese was chiefly founded on respect for their ancestors and for the examples which these had left. Under this dynasty the feudal kingdoms in- creased to the number of one hundred and twenty -five, and China had a real feudal system, which favored its civiliza- tion. To this epoch must be referred the construction of an observatory, which still exists, as well as the sun-dial set up by the successor of Wou Wang. The Chinese were already acquainted with the compass and with the proj)er- ties of a right-angled triangle. The Great Wall and the Burning of the Books. Immense Extent of the Empire at the Beginning of our Era. — Never- theless, Chinese feudalism ended, like our own, by produ- cing a vast anarchy. The emperor was without power. One of his tributaries asserted his prerogative of offering the sacrifice to Heaven, and confined the last Tchu in a palace. A new dynasty, that of the Tsin, overthrew all the feudal lords, and restored the great empire, which took its name. Its most illustrious chief, Tsin-Chi-Hoang-Ti, accomplished this revolution (247 b.c). He opened roads, tunnelled mountains, and, in order to stop the incursions of 10 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 247-a.d. 1203. the nomad Tartars, constructed the Great Wall, twenty-five kilometres long; but he has a deplorable celebrity for hav- ing burned books and persecuted men of letters. That everything might date from his reign, he wished to efface the past. Fortunately he could not destroy all the books or kill all the learned men. Chinese society was disturbed for the moment by this violent reformer, but soon returned to its traditional life. The Tsin dynasty did not last long. It was replaced by that of the Han, who ruled from 202 b.c. to 226 A.D. Under them the literati regained their influ- ence, and China attained the apogee of her power. Her armies penetrated even to the Caspian Sea, almost within sight of the frontier of the Eoman Empire; and on the shores of the Eastern Sea kings and peoples obeyed her. Invasion of the Mongols in the Thirteenth Century. — But the two empires which shared between them the greater part of the then known world, secretly undermined by the vices fostered by too great success, tottered and fell under the repeated shocks of invasion. From the steppes, extend- ing from the Great Wall to the Caspian Sea, hordes set out at different periods and hurled themselves, right and left, upon the two societies where civilization had accumulated the wealth which these barbarians coveted. The result, for China, was its first dismemberment in two kingdoms, sepa- rated by the Blue River ; and in both many obscure dynasties followed one another. The two were reunited in 618, but the new empire did not possess sufficient strength to resist the continual incursions of the Mongols. These nomads inhabited the same places whence, in the fourth century, had begun the invasion of the Huns which resulted in hurling barbarian Europe upon Roman Europe. They were always easily set in motion. Horses, herds, houses, all moved, or were readily carried, for the houses were only chariots or cabins placed on wheels and drawn by oxen. Such was the itinerant dwelling of the Tartar. He himself lived on horseback, remaining there, in case of need, day and night, awake or asleep. Meat packed between his saddle and the back of his horse, and milk curdled and dried, furnished his food. He feared neither fatigue nor privations, yielded to his chief a passive obedience, but was proud of his race and ambitious for his horde. Temudjin, the chieftain of one of these Mongolian hordes, united them all under his authority, in 1203. He took the A.D. 1203-1644.] CHINA AND THE MONGOLS 11 name of Genghis Khan, or chief of chiefs, and promised this irresistible cavalry, ferocious and cunning as few people ever were, to lead them to the conquest of the world. He began by overwhelming the Tartars, his former masters, wrested from them northern China, which they had con- quered, and, leaving to his successors the task of subjugat- ing the provinces to the south of the Blue River and Corea, threw his armies upon Western Asia and Europe, where they marked their road across Persia, Russia, and Poland by bloody ruins. The hardy horsemen who had bathed their horses in the Eastern Ocean made them drink the waters of the Oder and the Morava at the foot of the Bohemian Mountains. Never had the sun shone upon such a wide dominion. It was necessarily brittle, yet the Russians were forced to endure it for two centuries, and were released from the Mongol yoke only by Ivan III., at the beginning of modern times. At the death of Genghis Khan (1227) his empire was divided into four states, — China, Turkestan, Persia, and Kaptchak, or southern Russia. His grandson, Kublai, who reigned over all China, Thibet, Pegu, and Cochin China, bore the title of grand khan, to which was attached an idea of superiority, so that, from Pekin to the banks of the Dnieper, everything seemed to obey him. But this suzer- ainty was not exercised long. Before the end of the* thir- teenth century, the separation between the four kingdoms was complete. First Europeans in China. — Kublai Khan, founder of the Yen dynasty (1279), adopted the customs of his new sub- jects, respected their traditions, encouraged letters and agriculture, but embraced Buddhism, a religion originating in India, and now claiming in China two hundred million adherents, or half the population. A Venetian, Marco Polo, lived seventeen years at his court, and we still possess the interesting account of his travels. A national revolution in 1368 expelled the foreigners, when the Chinese Ming dynasty replaced that of the Mongols. This family occu- pied the throne until 1644, or till long after the arrival of the first European colonists in China, since the Portuguese establishment at Macao dates from the year 1514. New Mongol Empire in Central Asia and India. — During this period are determined the destiny of the Ottoman Turks, a people originally from Turkestan, and hence re- 12 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [a.d. 1453-18C0 lated to the Mongols, and the career of Timur, surnamed Lenk, or the Lame, a descendant of Genghis Khan. The Turks took Constantinople in 1453. Timur, best known as Tamerlane, for the second time united the nomad Mongol- hordes. Between 1370 and 1405 this terrible rival of Attila conquered Turkestan, Persia, India, and Asia Minor, de- feated in the Kaptchak the Mongols of the Golden horde, though he did not destroy their kingdom, and at the famous battle of Angora vanquished the Turks, whose sultan he took prisoner. Gazing from one end of Asia to the other, Tamerlane saw no empire still standing except that of China. He was marching his innumerable hordes against it, when death at last arrested the tireless old man who lives in his- tory as the most terrible incarnation of the malignant spirit of conquest. His empire was divided, and disappeared with the exception of a magnificent fragment, the Empire of the Great Mogul, which arose in the peninsula of the Ganges, and which fell only at the close of the last century under the blows of the English. China in Modern Times. — In China the indigenous Ming dynasty reigned with honor, but, content with prosperity and peace, neglected the customs and institutions of war. Thus the Celestial Empire was once more invaded in 1644 by western nomads, the Mantchu Tartars. The Tsin dy- nasty, which they founded, still reigns at P'ekin. Yet such was the resistant and absorbent force of this great Chinese society that, far from yielding to foreign influences, it has always conquered its conquerors. The Mantchu emperors made no change in its customs, and restored its fortune by giving it the boundaries which it possesses to-day. It was these princes who in 1840 waged with the English the opium war, which ended by the opening of five ports to foreign commerce, and who carried on with the English and French the war of 1860, which resulted in the victory of Palikao and the capture of Pekin. So the yellow race has made a great noise in the world. Through the Huns, it brought about the fall of the Roman Empire; through the Mongols of Genghis Khan, it raised, in the thirteenth century, the vastest dominion of the uni- verse ; through those of Tamerlane, it overthrew and crushed the population of twenty kingdoms ; through the Turks, it held Christianity in check for centuries ; through the Chi- nese, it has constituted a great society which, for fifty cen- B.C. 550-470.] CHINA AND THE MONGOLS 13 turies and with imbroken continuity, has caused a large portion of the human race to enjoy the benefits of civilized life. Confucius and Chinese Society. — One man contributed, if not to establish, at least to maintain, the character which the Chinese constitution still preserves. This was Kung- fu-tsze, or Confucius. His books, serving as a gospel in the Middle Kingdom, must be learned by those who undergo the examinations required for obtaining literary rank and for admission to public functions. Confucius was not a legislator; he never had authority to publish laws, but he taught wisdom. "There is nothing so simple," he says, " as the moral code practised by our wise men of old ; it is summed up in the observance of the three fundamental laws which regulate the relations between the sovereign and his subjects, between father and children, and between husband and wife, and in the exercise of the five capital virtues. These are: humanity or universal charity toward all mem- bers of our own species without distinction; justice, which gives his due to each individual without partiality; con: formity to prescribed rites and established usages, so that those who make up society may live alike and share the same advantages as well as the same disadvantages; up- rightness, or that rectitude of mind and heart which causes one to seek the truth in everything, without deception of self or of others ; sincerity and good faith, or that frank- ness mingled with confidence, which excludes all pretence and disguise in conduct as well as in speech. These things are what have rendered our first teachers worthy of respect, and have immortalized their names after death. Let us take them for our models ; let us make every effort to imi- tate them." Elsewhere he sets forth the principles of religion and worship. "Heaven," he says, "is the universal principle, the fruitful source whence all things have flowed. Ances- tors who emerged therefrom have themselves been the source of succeeding generations. To give to Heaven proofs of one's gratitude is the first duty of man; to show himself grateful toward his ancestors is the second. For this reason Fou Hi established ceremonies in honor of Heaven and of ancestors." Thus religion and government rest upon filial piety. Heaven is honored as the author of beings, and the emperor, the son of Heaven, is the father of his nation. 14 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST Thanks to the strength of this sentiment, China has been enabled to pass through the numerous revolutions which the succession of its twenty-two native or foreign dynasties have brought upon it, while no essential change has been wrought in the internal system of government, under which the welfare of 400,000,000 men has been developed. Thus the Chinese have the right to say to us: "We envy you nothing ; we enjoy all the useful arts ; we cultivate wheat, vegetables, fruits. In addition to cotton, silk, and hemp, a great number of roots and barks furnish us with tissues and stuffs. Like you we understand mining, carpentry, joinery, the manufacture of pottery, porcelain, and paper. We excel as dyers, stone-cutters, and wheelwrights. Our roads and canals furrow the whole empire. Suspension bridges, as daring and lighter than yours, span our rivers or unite the summits of mountains." They might add, "We have a literature which goes back more than four thousand years, and a moral code as good as many another. Our sciences need no aid from those of Europe to compete with some of yours. Earlier than you we were acquainted with the mariner's compass, gunpowder, and printing, those great discoveries of which you make such boast. Now, if we have reached this point without foreign assistance, it is because, fixing our eyes on the past, we have not made over our institutions with every generation. Despite the changes of individuals on the throne of Pekin, and modifications of our frontiers, we have, through the confusion of conquests and invasions, preserved our social order and respected the state, because we respect the family." In that country there are neither nobility to guide and govern the people, nor slaves to corrupt it. The emperor, in homage to labor, himself at certain seasons opens the furrow with a plough. Intellect has forced a recognition of its rights, since office is bestowed with regard to neither birth nor fortune, but on account only of learning. Never- theless, there we see the vice and misery to which immense agglomerations of men or long-continued prosperity gives rise. Falsehood works its way into the institutions, which it distorts. Since, so to speak, this people has neither relig- ion, nor philosophy, nor art, and is ignorant of an ideal, it has remained on that midway mental level whence the fall to a still lower plane is easy. Absorbed by its needs and pleasures, it has not undergone those painful birth- CHINA AND THE MONGOLS 15 throes of ideas, on account of which other nations have suffered so much, but have gained thereby an imperishable name. China has given nothing to the world ; to the world she has been as though she existed not. Thus they have an airy architecture but no monuments. Their brick and wooden houses suggest the primitive tent. Their palaces are only piles of buildings constructed upon the tent type, sometimes not devoid of grace, but always devoid of grandeur. In painting and sculpture they imitate what they see, but they see the ugly and grotesque rather than the beautiful and true. Their imagination takes pleasure in strange forms, instead of idealizing natural forms. Their landscapes are without perspective and their paintings without moral life. Everywhere are vulgar scenes which represent neither a sentiment nor an idea, but only reveal the sensual appetites of this listless and yet active race. 16 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 1500-1000. Ill INDIA Contrast between India and China. — China and India adjoin each other. Nevertheless, between them intervenes more than the bulk of the Himalayas, "the Palace of Snow," as the Hindus call it. The two races are absolutely separate by natui-al character and disposition. On the one side a harsh, positive spirit, without horizon, has settled and prescribed the rules of a moral code ; on the other are a disordered imagination, a faith ardent but without works, a useless asceticism which kills the flesh, and unbridled passions which satiate it; in short, man lost in the bosom of nature, and aspiring only to lose himself in the bosom of divinity. On both sides, a regular, changeless machine is the idea of government. With the former, this machine is set in motion by the learned, Avho devote all their attention to the life of the body ; with the latter, it is set in motion by the priests, who issue their commands in the name of the gods. In the former case, any one can attain anything; in the latter, no one has the right or power to leave the caste in which he was born. Primitive Populations : the Aryans. The Vedas. — India, which consists of the two great valleys of the Indus and the Granges, Hindustan, and of a peninsula, the Deccan, was first peopled by a black race, of which the Gonds are the last remnants; then by the Turanian tribes, such as the Tamils and Telingas, a distant branch of the Mongolian race ; and lastly by men with brown and reddish skin, who appear to have been the base of population along the shores of the Indian Ocean, and with whom Herodotus was acquainted in Gedrosia, under the name of Ethiopians. It was the Aryans, however, who gave India its place in history. These Aryans formed part of a large group of white people permanently established in the valleys of the Hindu-koosh, the Indian Caucasus, possessing tlie same degree of civiliza- tion with similar languages, habits, and beliefs. When B.C. 1500-1000.] INDIA ' 17 long centuries had crowded into this narrow place a too numerous population, had accentuated tribal differences, and aroused political and religious quarrels, then from this table-land, in four directions and at different epochs, streams of men poured forth who inundated half of Asia, India, and the whole of Europe. The Celts, Pelasgi, laones, or loni- ans, flowed toward Asia Minor, Greece, Italy, and Gaul; the Iranians toward Media and Persia; the Germans and Slavs, from the Ural Mountains to the Ehine ; as for the Aryans, they turned to the southeast and crossed the Indus. They subjected the region of the Five Eivers, or Punjaub, after a prolonged struggle, the memory of which has been preserved in the Vedas, the first of their sacred books and among the most ancient monuments of our race. Fifteen centuries, perhaps, before Christ, the Aryans of the Punjaub conquered the fertile valley v/hich the Ganges overflows with periodical inundations like the Nile, and advanced as far as its mouths, which mingle with those of the Brahmapootra, a river equally mighty, whose source is found upon the northern slope of the Palace of Snow. Checked on the east by the mountains and the mass of Mongolian nations of Indo-China, the Aryans fell to fight- ing among themselves. The Mahabharata, the great Indian epic, still tells in 250,000 verses the story of the terrible war between the Kurus and the Pandavas, which ended only on the appearance of the hero Krishna, the incarna- tion of the god Vishnu. Delhi is the theatre of the principal events in the Maha- bharata, whose heroes do not quit the valley of the Ganges. This Indian Iliad presents singular affinities with the Greek Iliad, in certain parts surpasses the latter in beauty, and is, like it, the work of centuries. Together with the Vedas it throws light upon the origin of many beliefs and symbols spread among the ancient populations of Greece, Italy, and Northern Europe. The Eamatana, another epic poem, re- lates to the conquest by the Aryans of the peninsula of Hindustan and of the great island of Ceylon, whither Rama, " of the divine bow," carried the Vedic religion. This time a single author, Valmik, narrates in 48,000 verses the ex- ploits of the hero. The brilliancy and grandeur of his pict- ures and the touching grace of his poetry place him by the side of Virgil and Homer. History of India. — Unfortunately, this poetic and relig- 18 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 509-a.d. 1498. ious race possesses no other history than that of its gods. The conquest by Darius of the countries on the right of the Indus gave Herodotus no information concerning the India of the Ganges. On the left bank Alexander found the two Porus and many kings and independent peoples. He wished to go to Patna, the capital of the great Prasian Empire, at the junction of the Jamna and the Ganges. A revolt among his soldiers stopped him on the banks of the Hyphases. An Indian of humble origin, named Tchandragoupta, ex- pelled the governors whom the Macedonian hero left in the Punjaub. He overthrew the empire of the Prasians, and received the ambassadors of Seleucus Nicator. The Greek kings of Bactriana held a part of the valley of the Indus, wliere we still find their medals. Later on, regular commer- cial relations were established between Egypt and the Indian peninsula, where Roman merchants founded count- ing-houses. Every year they carried thither more than four million dollars in cash to purchase silks, pearls, per- fumes, ivory, and spices. Thus, at the expense of the rest of the world, began that flow of precious metals to India whereby such enormous wealth has been accumulated in the hands of its princes. Such treasures tempted the Mussulmans of Persia. Early in the eleventh century, a Turkish chieftain, Mahmoud the Gaznevid, carried into the midst of those inoffensive popu- lations his iconoclastic rage, his cupidity, and his religion. The latter was adopted by a large number of the Hindus. The Turks were followed by the Mongols, whose chief reigned at Delhi until the last century under the name of Great Mogul. The discovery of the Caj^e of Good Hope and the arrival, in 1498, of Vasco da Gama at Calicut, placed India for the first time in direct relations with Europe. After the merchants of Lisbon came those of Amsterdam, France, and England. The English ended by seizing every- thing, and now reign from the Himalayas to Ceylon over 200,000,000 subjects. The Castes : Brahmans, Kshatriyas, and Sudras. — Thus, nearly ten centuries ago, this intelligent and gentle race lost its independence, but it preserved its social organiza- tion, religion, and literature. The great god Brahma, say the sacred books, divided the people into four castes : the Brahmans, or priests, who sprang from his head; the Kshatriyas, or warriors, who came from his arms; the Vai- B.C. 1200-900.] INDIA 19 syas, or laborers and merchants, who issued from his belly and thighs; and the Sudras, or artisans, who came from his feet. The first three, or "the regenerated," who represent the Aryan conquerors, are the ruling castes. Marriage is prohibited between them and the lowest caste, which also includes the descendants of the aborigines, or the vanquished first inhabitants. The children born of forbidden unions, and all violators of religious laws are the parias or impure. They cannot inhabit the cities, bathe in the Ganges, or read the Yedas. To touch them occasions defilement. The Brahmans alone had the right to read and expound the Holy Scriptures or the revealed book. As all science and all wisdom were contained therein, they were both priests, physicians,* judges, and poets. Interpreters of the will of heaven, they reigned by virtue of religious terror. Thus they were able to surround the rajahs or kings, chosen from the warrior caste, with the thousand prescriptions of a ceremonial which the laws of Manu have preserved for us. Not without terrible struggles did the Kshatriyas submit to this sacerdotal supremacy. Legends have preserved the memory of their resistance. The final triumph of the priests does not appear to have been complete until after the ninth century before Christ. India then received the organization, which in its principal features it still retains, and which we find in the book of the laws of Manu. The last compilation of these laws, certainly prior to the Buddh- ist reform in the sixth century before Christ, carries back this religious, political, and civil code to a far distant antiquity. Political Organizations and Religion. — The laws of Manu remind one of the Pentateuch of Moses. They undertake to set forth as by divine revelation the origin of the world ; the institution of priests; certain precepts for the indi- vidual, the family, and the town ; 'the duties of the prince and of the castes ; the civil and military organization, and penal and religious laws. Everything is summed up in two rules : for society, the subordination of castes ; for the indi- vidual, physical and moral purity. The Vedic gods are preserved therein, but are subordinated to Brahmi, the being absolute and eternal, impersonal and sexless, whence, nevertheless, emanates Brahma, the active principle of the universe, which in turn produces Paramatma, the soul of 20 AKCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 900-600. the world. He, uniting with Manas, or the intellectual principle, gives origin to all beings, who deviate less from Brahma, their supreme source, in proportion as they possess more wisdom. Thus heaven and earth, with all the powers and beings therein, are the product of a series of successive emana- tions. In this immense chain, each being has the rank which his intellectual or moral value has assigned him. Thus, below the absolute Being appears the Indian Tri- murti : Brahma, who creates the worlds ; Vishnu, who regu- lates them ; and Siva, who destroys in order to regenerate them; then the Devas or gods, symbolical representations of the forces of nature ; then man ; still lower, the inferior creatures, real or imaginary, such as the Nagas and the Raxasas, with changing forms. By means of learning and of^the rigorous observance of religious practices, especially by austerities which subdue the flesh, and ecstasy which annihilates personality and empties the individual soul into the soul of the world, man may equal the gods, command nature, and deserve at death annihilation in the bosom of Brahma. They whose asceticism and piety have not sufficed to secure such supernatural power and such annihilation in God are recompensed for their vulgar merits, after Yama, the god of death, has touched them, by entrance into the Svarga, and into the seven and twenty places of delight. The guilty are hurled into Naraka, which is divided into twenty-one parts, according to the diversity of tortures undergone there. But the effect of good, as of bad works, is worn out by time. Heaven and hell cast back into life the souls which they have received. These souls reenter existence in differ- ent conditions, which are always determined, nevertheless, by the law of rise and descent in the scale of being according to their merit and demerit. This is metempsychosis, a doc- trine which subjected to successive transmigrations all or- ganized nature from the plant up to man. At the time iixed for the completion of a cycle everything was engulfed in Brahma, but speedily another creation emerged from him, and a new cycle began. The soul of the righteous alone was exempt from these painful rebirths, since his perfec- tions had won for him the privilege of absorption into the eternal essence. This was the reward awaited by the priests who had traversed a series of previous existences in such a B.C. 600-530.] INDIA 21 manner as to deserve a final rebirth in the superior caste, whence they were to pass into the bosom of Brahma. This original conception of the transmigration of the soul, at once profound and simple, forced a vast system of expia- tion and reward, wherein evil and misery were explained by sin, and good fortune and power by virtue. Unfortunately this doctrine rendered legitimate a hierarchy of beings. It ratified the unalterable distinction of castes, and the con- tempt of the high for the low. It confirmed the constitu- tion of a theocracy which, the better to defend its power, made purity consist, not in real virtue, but in the observance of innumerable rites, the performance of which the priest superintended and regulated. Buddhism. — This theocracy, the most powerful which the world has ever known, was shaken in the sixth century before our era by the preaching of Gautama, surnamed Buddha, or the Wise. His father was the rajah of a country near Nepaul. He was born in a royal palace, but at the age of twenty-nine abandoned his family, wealth, and rank to seek truth in the desert. Seven years later he returned from his wanderings. To mixed crowds, regardless of indi- vidual position or origin, he began to preach, but only by parables. He moved his hearers profoundly. This popular teaching was in itself a revolt against the Brahmans, who forbade teaching of doctrines to the Sudras. Although it was presented only as a reformation, the new doctrine went much farther. Gautama was destroying Brahmanism by substituting the equality of all men before the moral law for the principle of caste, and by substituting virtues which consist in the practice of the good, for the spurious virtues exacted by a ritual. The promises of salvation, of union with the divine essence, made to the Brahman alone, he replaced by the recognized capacity of all men by their merits to win Nirvana, or deliverance. In short, he broke up priestly heredity by calling to the priesthood the poor and the beggars who devoted themselves to a religious life. Buddha established for men six perfections : knowledge, which must, above all, apply itself to distinguishing be- tween the true and the false; energy, which makes us war against our chief enemies, the pleasures of sense; purity, which demonstrates victory; patience in enduring imaginary ills ; charity, the bond of society ; alms, the necessary con- sequence of charity. " I am come, " he said, " to give to the 22 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 530-150. ignorant wisdom, and wisdom is knowledge, virtue, alms. The perfect man is nothing unless he comforts the afflicted and succors the miserable. My doctrine is a doctrine of pity. The prosperous find it difficult, and pride themselves on their birth ; but the way of salvation is open to all those who annihilate their passions as an elephant overturns a hut of reeds." These words, this so pure moral code, were astounding novelties. " This law of grace," opposed to a law of terror, made rapid progress among the lower castes, and even among the Kshatriyas, who had to endure the haughty domination of the Brahmans. Thus, despite the hatred of the priests against the reformer, Gautama was able to continue his apostolic work in peace until the age of eighty, without ever appealing to force, because he respected established order, and taught that men should render to princes that which was their due. When he died, his disciples collected his discourses, and convoked the first Buddhist council. Five hundred monks were present. After seven months of discussion they formulated their religious ceremonies and doctrine, which were stated with precision in a second council held in the fifth century, and in a third council about one hundred and fifty years before Christ. The ritual is extremely simple. The temple contains the image of Gautama, who is honored and respected as the wisest of men, but who receives no adoration. There are no sacrifices or superstitious practices ; at least there were none at the time when Buddhism had not yet been corrupted by the idolatrous traditions of the peoples among whom it spread and degenerated. In matter of dogma there was no separation from the ancient church. It even added to the Vedic divinities new but purer gods. It preserved the theory of rebirths, which, according to the Brahmanic doc- trine, were for the mass of the faithful only periodical returns to misery and despair; but it gave to all men the means of escaping from these evils by the individual's own merit without the providential intervention of the gods. The Western religions submit human personality during life to the action of Providence, and eternally preserve that personality after death by the resurrection of the body. In the pantheistic religions of the East, on the contrary, since all beings are of the same substance, they end by absorp- tion into the bosom of the absolute Being, which is the B.r.l50-A.D.800.] INDIA 23 metaphysical bond of the universe. Buddhism did, it is true, recognize man's power to accomplish his own sal- vation; but the soul, for it, as for Brahmanism, was a temporary emanation from the infinite substance. Conse- quently, it solved the problem of the future life by the return of this particle of light to its home, by the absorp- tion of the part in the great Whole. The Hindu has at once less and more ambition than the Jew, the Mussulman, and the Christian. The latter hope to live again after death, and behold God face to face ; the former consents to lose all individual existence on condition of becoming God himself. We lay emphasis upon this moral history of India, be- cause, in the first place, its political history is not known ; and because, in the second, that country has been the main reservoir of philosophical and religious ideas, which, start- ing thence, have taken their course in different directions. The Brahmans, like the priests of Egypt, could well say to the Greeks: "You are children." Who would affirm that no echo of those great collisions of ideas of which India was the theatre, of those philosophical and religious controver- sies, of that peculiar organization of Buddhist churches which were animated by an ardent proselyting spirit, did not reach the commercial cities of the Asiatic coast, where Hellenic civilization had its awakening, and even as far as that great city of Alexandria whither the Ptolemies caused the books of the nations to be brought and translated? Against Buddhism the most terrible persecution finally arose. "Let the Buddhists be exterminated," cried the Brahmans, "from the bridge of Rama (Ceylon) to the snow- whitened Himalayas! Whoever spares the child or the old man, shall himself be put to death." Persecution was suc- cessful in India, which returned to the Brahmans; but Buddhism spread into Thibet, which is its stronghold to-day, and into Mongolia, China, Indo-China, and Ceylon. In those countries it still numbers multitudes of believers, very few of whom, it is true, know and practise the pure doctrine of Gautama. From this brief history it is evident that, if India has acted little, she has thought much. Let us add that the country is covered with imposing monuments of great ele- gance, of which we as yet are acquainted only with a small part. In thought, poetry, and art, India has developed three of the glories of Greece. 24 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 5000. IV EGYPT First Inhabitants. — Herodotus said of a part of Egypt, "It is a gift of the Nile." The same might be said of the whole country, for without the periodical inundations of that river the desert would cover everything which was not hidden under the water. This country is certainly not the one where the first civilized society was formed. Nevertheless, its history, explicit as to a very great number of facts and persons, covers seventy centuries. Before the Persians conquered it (527 B.C.), it had already been ruled by twenty-six dynasties. The names and acts of many of its sovereigns are carved on the monuments with which they covered Egypt. To the fourth king of the first dynasty we may attribute the step pyramid of Saccara, whose worn and crumbling stones seem to support with difficulty the weight of the centuries accumulated upon its head. The first inhabitants of Egypt did not come from the south, descending the Nile, as was long supposed, but from the north, via the Isthmus of Suez. They belong to the race personified in Genesis under the name of Ham, and called by the Arabs " the Red " from the color of their com- plexion. This race appears to have formed, under the name of Cushites, the basis of the population all along the shore of the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf, and the Red Sea. These Cushites founded small states, which doubtless existed for long centuries before a powerful chief, Menes, subdued the whole valley from the sea to the cataracts of Syene, and founded, at least five thousand years before our era, the first royal race. To account for this unknown period and for the revolution in which it ended, it was said that at first the gods had reigned, then the demi-gods, that is, the priests, their representatives, and that the latter had been forced to yield their power to a warrior chieftain. First Dynasties (5000 years b.c). — 'Little is known of the first three dynasties, whose sway, eight centuries in Cop>righi, 1S3S, l,y T. Y. CtowM A Co n. Oli.i.an &Cq.. N. Y. B.C. 5000-2200.] EGYPT 25 duration, reached the peninsula of Sinai, where on a rock the name of one of their princes has been found, who worked the copper mines in the peninsula. Under the fourth we behold all the marvels of a civilization then un- paralleled. Art then reached such development as the most brilliant periods will hardly surpass. What space of time must have elapsed between the day when the first man was cast naked upon the earth with the instincts of a wild animal, and that day six thousand years ago, which saw the admirable statue of Chephren come forth from the hands of an Egyptian Phidias, the pyramids of Gizeh rise, and a great monarchical society formed with a strong political and religious organization? The paintings or the inscriptions of temples and tombs recall to us its industry, its commerce, its agriculture, and all the bloom of its vigor- ous youth. So early did Egypt enjoy all the art and science which it ever possessed, and subsequent centuries found themselves able to teach it little. The most celebrated members of the sixth dynasty are a conqueror, Apapu, and a queen, Nitocris. Manetho calls the latter "the rosy-cheeked Beauty," and says that in order to avenge her brother, she invited the persons guilty of his murder to a banquet in a subterranean chamber, into which the waters of the Nile were suddenly admitted. From the sixth to the eleventh dynasty, monuments are rare, and consequently history is silent. Great calamities must have befallen the country during this period. When the light reappears, we find royalty banished to the The- baid, whence it emerged in triumph with the kings of the twelfth dynasty, who restored to Egypt its natural bounda- ries, and began the great struggle against the Ethiopians. One of the family constructed an artificial reservoir, cover- ing sixty -three square miles, and called Lake Moeris, to regulate the overflow on the left bank of the Nile. Invasion of the Hyksos or Shepherds (2200 b.c). — A horde of shepherds, without doubt crowded westward by some great movement of humanity in Assyria, penetrated into the valley of the Nile by the Isthmus of Suez and sub- jugated the Delta and Middle Egypt. Their kings, who formed the seventeenth or Hyksos dynasty, established themselves at Memphis, and fortified the town of Avaris or Plusium at the entrance of the Delta in order to prevent other nomads from following in their footsteps. Appar- 26 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 1750-1288. ently it was one of these kings whom Joseph served, as minister. After having reigned for live hundred years, the Hyksos were at last defeated by the kings of Thebes, and gradually forced back to the very walls of Pelusium. Ahmes I. succeeded in driving them thence, and the greater part of the nation quitted Egypt. Nevertheless to this day, in the vicinity of Lake Menzaleh, men of robust limbs and angular features are to be found, who may be descendants of the Shepherds. Prosperity of Egypt from the Eighteenth to the Thirteenth Century. — The expulsion of the Hyksos was followed by prosperity that lasted for more than five hundred years. Thanks to the protecting deserts and its strong political organization, Egypt again developed a brilliant civilization which the greatest men of Greece came to study. This epoch begins with the princes of the eighteenth dynasty (1703- 1462): Ahmes the Liberator; Thothmes I., who commem- orated his victories by columns on the banks of the Euphrates and Nile ; the regent Hatasu, whose exploits the temple of Deir-el-Bahari at Thebes hands down; Thothmes III., the conqueror of western Asia and of the Soudan, " who set the frontiers of Egypt wherever he pleased," as says the author of a heroic song carved on a pillar in the Museum of Boulaq; Amenophis III., the Memnon of the Greeks, the King of the Speaking Statue, which at sunrise saluted Aurora, his divine mother. In the tomb of the mother of Ahmes a veritable treasure of precious stones of the rarest workman- ship has been found. This good fortune continued under the princes of the nineteenth dynasty (1462-1288), several of whom rendered the name Rameses glorious. Seti I., after having carried his arms as far as Armenia, built the pillared hall of Karnak, a masterpiece of Egyptian architecture. He even opened from the Nile to the Red Sea a canal, vestiges of which can still be discerned, and on the arid road to the gold mines of Gebel Atoky he dug a well, which must be called artesian, since the water spouted from it. His successor, Rameses II., is the Sesostris to whom the Greeks have ascribed all the conquests of those ancient kings. He was indeed a warlike prince. Columns found near Beirout, and a whole poem carved on a wall of Karnak, still attest his achievements. He was above all a great builder. He erected the two temples of Ipsamboul, the Ramesseum of Thebes, and the B.C. 1288-655.] EGYPT 27 obelisks of Luxor, one of which, a granite monolith seventy- seven feet high, covered with inscriptions in his honor, is the central monument of the Place cle la Concorde in Paris. He compelled his captives to work on these monuments. The Israelites, scattered in great numbers over Lower Egypt, were treated as slaves. They were forced to labor in the quarries, to make bricks, and construct embankments to protect the cities from inundation. The oppression of their taskmasters fired the slaves with resolution. Under Meneptah the Hebrews departed from Egypt. The tomb of this Pharaoh is still to be seen in the valley of Bab-el-Moluk. Decline of Egypt. Invasion of the Ethiopians. — The twentieth dynasty (1288-1110) begins with a great king, E-ameses III., who represented on the magnificent temple of Medinet Abu at Thebes his exploits in Syria and the Soudan. After him came the decline. Egypt had become enfeebled in attempting to expand. Instead of remaining upon the banks of her sacred river, wherein was her strength, and in the midst of the deserts which gave her security, she sought to subdue Asia and the country of the Cushites and Libyans, and even the great island of Cyprus. She desired to control the sea. When indolent kings suc- ceeded the glorious Pharaohs, priestly intrigue seated the high priest of Amnion upon the throne of Thebes, while another dynasty, the twenty-first, reigned at Tanis in the Delta. Thus divided, Egypt submitted to the influence of neighboring peoples instead of imposing her own. Her kings assumed Assyrian names, gave princesses of their blood to Solomon's harem, and surrounded themselves with a Libyan guard, which portioned out the country among its chiefs. The Cushites or Ethiopians took advantage of these discords to seize Upper Egypt. Sabaco, their prince, even captured King Bocchoris and burned him alive. " The vile race of Cushites," as the twenty-fifth dynasty, reigned for fifty years over all the land of the Pharaohs (715-655). Among their kings are Sebichus or Sua, whom Uzziah invoked against Shalmaneser, and Tharaka, who helped Hezekiah against Sennacherib. According to Manetho, a revolution drove the third successor of Sabaco back to Ethiopia. The leaders of this movement were natives of Sais and founded the twenty-sixth dynasty. The Last Pharaohs. — Herodotus thus narrates the expul- sion of the Ethiopians : " The last of the Ethiopian kings 28 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 700-a.d. 381. was terrified by a dream, and fled to his native states, leav- ing the government of the country to the priest Sethos. At his death the warriors seized the supreme power and intrusted it to twelve of their number. Psammeticus, one of the twelve, overthrew his colleagues by means of Carian and Ionian pirates. Realizing the military superiority of the G-reeks, he invited them in great numbers to the coun- try, and thereby angered the native army, part of which emigrated to Ethiopia. Aided by the newcomers, he tried to recover Syria, and for twenty-eight years besieged Azoth, which he finally captured." Necho, his successor, attempted to complete Seti's canal and unite the Red Sea and Mediter- ranean. He caused the Phoenicians to circumnavigate Africa, and defeated Josiah, king of Judah, at Mageddo. Master of Palestine, he pushed on to the Euphrates, but was defeated by the Babylonians and lost all his conquests. The second of his successors, Apries, likewise failed in his attempts against the Cyrenians. His soldiers, believing themselves betraj^ed, installed in his place Amasis, one of their own number, under whom Egypt emitted a final gleam of brilliancy. Twenty thousand cities are then said to have covered the borders of the Nile. This prince gave the city of Naucratis to the Greeks, and entered into close relations with the Median, Lydian, and Babylonian kings, who were themselves menaced by a fresh invasion of the barbarous Persian mountaineers. He could not avert their ruin, and beheld the successive fall of Astyages, Croesus, and Bal- thasar. The same fate awaited his own son, Psammeticus III., who, after a reign of six months, was overthrown by the Persian Cambyses (527). Egypt under the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, and the Arabs. — Since that day Egypt has never been independent, though often rebelling against the yoke of foreigners. An unruly province of Persia, she was conquered by Alexander, who founded the famous city which bears his name (331). The dynasty of the Ptolemies reigned gloriously for a cen- tury, and ingloriously twice as long. The Romans took their place after the death of Cleopatra (30 b.c). In 381 A.D. an edict of Theodosius suppressed the religion of the Pharaohs. The temples were mutilated, the statues of the gods destroyed, and of one of the richest civilizations of the world nothing was left except the ruins, which at the present day we piously preserve. A.D. 640-1880.] EGYPT 29 Egypt, thus violently forced into Christianity, remained nominally Christian for two centuries and a half without finding j)eace. The Arabs brought Islam (640). It took definite root, and under the Fatimite caliphs the land en- joyed a brief splendor. Cairo, a city which they founded, still contains the largest Mussulman school in the world. Thrice has France touched the land, always leaving glorious recollections of herself: in the thirteenth century with Saint Louis ; in the eighteenth with Bonaparte ; in the nineteenth with Frenchmen who conquered Egypt by their science and opened to the commerce of the globe the Isthmus of Suez, thus grandly realizing the dream of a Pharaoh who had been dead thirty-five centuries ! Egyptian Religion, Government, and Art. — Two religions existed side by side, the one held by the people and the other by the priests. The former was coarse and material. It regarded certain animals, the ichneumon, ibis, crocodile, hippopotamus, cat, bull, and many more, as divine beings. It was the old African fetichism, though elevated by theo- gonic ideas, as is shown by those gods with the head of a dog or falcon, and by the worship of the bull Apis, " en- gendered by a flash of lightning." The latter religion sought to account for the mysterious phenomena of nature, and explained the good and evil encountered everywhere by the opposition of two principles as Osiris, the representative of all beneficent influences, and Typhon, the god of night and of evil days. It even seems at first to have taught belief in one God without beginning or end. The care taken by the Egyptians to preserve the bodies of the dead proves that they hoped for a future life. The inscriptions even speak of numerous rebirths, which recall the metemp- sychosis of the Hindus. But this idea of the absolute and eternal Being was veiled from the eyes of the people and the priests by the conception of a divine trinity, — Osiris or the sun, the principle of all life. Is is or nature, and Horus, their divine child. After once abandoning pure monotheism, the Egyptians glided rapidly down the descent of polytheism. The representations on their monuments and in their religious rites of a host of secondary divinities made them forget the chief god, of whose attributes the others had at first been merely symbols. The government was a monarchy, all the stronger because 30 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST I ; ^ ' its kings, according to common belief, were participants of divinity. All were " Sons of the Sun," and in that capacity were chiefs of religion as well as of society. Society had neither a sacerdotal nor aristocratic caste, nor a popular body which might form a counterpoise to the king. This state of affairs ended in the establishment of a certain number of classes, which were non-hereditary, but in which the son habitually remained in the father's state of life. Herodotus enumerated seven of these classes : priests, warriors, laborers, herdsmen, merchants, mariners, and, after Psammeticus, interpreters. There were, no doubt, many others. "Egypt," says Bossuet, "was the source of all good police regulation." We read in Diodorus that perjury was punished with death ; that he who did not succor a man engaged in combat with an assassin, suffered the same penalty ; that the slanderer was punished. Every Egyptian was obliged to deposit with a magistrate a docu- ment setting forth his means of livelihood, and a severe penalty discouraged false statements. The tongue of the spy, who betrayed state secrets to enemies, and both hands of counterfeiters, were cut off. In no case was accumulated interest allowed to exceed the capital; the property of the debtor, not his person, constituted the security for his debt. An Egyptian could borrow, giving his father's mummy as surety, and he who did not pay his debt was deprived of burial with his family. The Egyptians successfully cultivated many industrial arts, as well as mechanics, geometry, and astronomy. They invented hieroglyphic writing, whose characters, at first simple figurative representations of objects or symbols of certain ideas, were completed by phonetic signs, which like our letters and syllables stood only for sounds. In painting they employed vivid colors, which time has not effaced. Some of their finest statues might rival those of Greece, did not a certain stiffness indicate a conventional art wherein liberty was lacking; but their architecture is unrivalled in its grand impressiveness. In proof are the temples of Thebes; the hall of Karnak, where the vault is supported by 140 colossal columns, many of which are seventy feet high and eleven feet in diameter; and the pyramids, one of which, 481 feet in height, is the most tremendous pile of stone ever heaped up by man. Further demonstration is furnished by the obelisks, the rock tombs, EGYPT 31 the labyrinth, the enormous Sphinx, which measures twenty- six feet from the chin to the crown of the head, the dikes, the highways, the canals to contain or guide the waters of the Nile, and Lake Moeris. No people in ancient times moved so much earth and granite. 32 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 1200-'o06. THE ASSYRIANS The Tigris and the Euphrates. Babylon and Nineveh. — Erom the mountain^ of Armenia descend two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, whose sources lie near each other, and which, after uniting their waters, fall into the Persian Gulf. These two rivers embrace in their course a vast tract of country, mountainous on the north and flat and sandy in the centre and south, to which the general name of Mesopotamia is applied. Its first inhabitants were : in Chaldsea, or the southern part, those Cushites with whom we are already acquainted ; toward the mountains, Turanian tribes, which perhaps made the great Hyksos invasion along the banks of the Nile ; in the centre, Semitic peoples of a white race whose origin is unknown, but who are famous in history as the Assyrians, Hebrews, Arabs, and Phoenicians. In this country rose two splendid cities, Babylon on the Euphrates and Nineveh on the Tigris, each in turn the capital of the Assyrian Empire. Nothing in antiquity is so celebrated as Babylon, whose walls measured a circuit of twenty leagues, and rose three or four hundred feet high. The Chaldsean priests ascribed to it an antiquity of four hundred thousand years, but Genesis fixes its foundation within the historical period, where also it places the origin of the Hebrews. It ascribes the building of Babylon to Nimrod, the mighty hunter. His descendants reigned there until the time of the great Iranian migration, which bore one body of Aryans toward the Indus, and another to the middle of Persia. Those who took the latter direction arrived at Babylon, but did not rule there long, and Assyria reverted to her first masters. The Pharaohs of the eigh- teenth dynasty held her in subjection for more than two centuries, and Arab chiefs, as their vassals, reigned on the banks of the Euphrates. When the decline of Egypt began with the twentieth dynasty, the Assyrian princes freed B.C. 1200-606.] THE ASSYRIANS 33 themselves, and became conquerors in turn. All the coun- try between the Euphrates and the Lebanon recognized their sway. On the east of the Tigris, Media became their vassal province. If we are to believe the Chaldsean priest Berosis, they penetrated to Bactriana and India. The monuments begin to give us certain information only with the ferocious Assurnazirpal and his son, Shalmaneser, whose war against the Hebrews and whose victory over Hosea, king of Israel, is recorded in the Bible. A successor of these princes had for his queen Semiramis, who was left at his death sole mistress of the empire. She enlarged Babylon, constructed quays and hanging gardens, and surrounded the city with a wall forty-two miles long and broad enough for six chariots to pass abreast on top. Sardanapalus was the last sovereign of the first Assyrian Empire. His excesses and effeminate life encouraged the Chaldaean Phul and the Median Arbaces to rebel. Not dis- couraged b}" four successive defeats, they succeeded finally in imprisoning the king in Nineveh. Rather than sur- render, Sardanapalus caused a funeral pyre to be prepared, and flung himself into it with his wives and treasures. Nineveh was destroyed (789). Second Assyrian Empire. — The Medes had regained their independence, and the Babylonians ruled over Assyria. His victory rendered Phul, their leader, sufficiently strong to resume the wars of the Ninevite kings against the nations west of the Euphrates, and to compel Menahem, king of Judah, to pay tribute. At his death, the Assyrians rebelled under Tiglathpileser, a descendant of their ancient kings, who conquered Babylon and set up a second Assyrian Empire (744 B.C.). The distant expeditions of this prince from Palestine to the Indus, the victory of Sargon at Kapha over the Ethiopian, Sabaco, the successes of Sennacherib, who rebuilt Nineveh (707), of Esarhaddon (681), who con- quered Egypt, and of a new Sardanapalus, who subdued Asia Minor, show the might of the new empire. But it fell, like the first, before a coalition of the Babylonians and Medes. Sarac, its last king, following the example of Sardanapalus, threw himself and his treasures upon a funeral pile, and the victors, entering Nineveh, utterly destroyed the detested city (606). Wiped from the face of the earth for twenty-four centuries, no one knew even the site of its famous temples, when suddenly it reappeaVed in the world. 34 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 588-330. with its arts, its language, its customs, its civilization, all rescued from oblivion and attested by its numerous bas- reliefs and sculptures, which the Frenchman Botta dis- covered in 1844 at Mosoul, and which can now be wondered at in the Louvre. Last Assyrian Empire. Capture of Babylon by Cyrus. — Babylon replaced Nineveh. IsTebuchadnezzar, its king, won a glorious victory over the Egyptian Isecho at Circesium. He destroyed Jerusalem (588), took Tyre after a siege of thirteen years, traversed Egypt as a conqueror, and adorned Babylon with magnificent monuments. His four successors reigned shamefully. Cyrus, king of the Persians, besieged Babylon and entered it by the bed of the Euphrates, which he had diverted from its channel (538). Instead of destroy- ing the city, he made it one of his capitals. So did Alex- ander. The construction of Seleucia caused its abandonment by the Greek kings. To-day nothing is to be seen on the spot which it occupied except a heap of ruins, upon which the Arab rarely plants his tent, and which furnish a lair for the beasts of the desert. When the Parthians, and afterwards the Persians, raised the great Oriental Empire which the Romans were unable to overthrow, Ctesiphon was their royal residence. Each new sovereign authority gave birth to a new capital. Under the Arabian caliphs Bagdad was the queen of the Orient. It is still one of the great cities of the heir of the caliphs, the sultan of Con- stantinople. Government, Religion, and Arts of Assyria. — The king of Nineveh or of Babylon was the absolute master of the life and possessions of his subjects. Such is the law of oriental monarchies. At least, on the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates, the king was not considered a deity, as on the banks of the Nile. Neither were there any castes, nor even a hierarchy of classes. Assyrian society was that sort of promiscuous mass which is not displeasing to despotism, because it permits the prince to raise or degrade whomso- ever he sees fit. At the base of the religion of these peoples, the idea of a single God can be descried; but there also this idea was concealed by a throng of secondary divinities, who are always the personification of some force of nature. In those immense plains of Chaldsea, where the horizon ex- tends so far, under that cloudless sky, and during those B.C. 900-588.] THE ASSYRIANS 35 nights which the Orient makes so beautiful, because the stars shine there with a brilliancy unknown to us, the dominating worship was Sabianism, or the adoration of the stars. The sun, Baal, was the great god of the Assyr- ians, and in the celestial bodies they located spirits which exercised upon man and upon his destiny a powerful influ- ence. Thus their priests had a great reputation as astrono- mers. To them we owe the zodiac, the division of the circle into 360 degrees, and that of the degree into sixty minutes, the calculation of lunar eclipses, the so-called table of Pythagoras, and a system of measures, weights, and money which served nearly all the commerce of the ancient world, since it was employed by the Phoenicians and the ancient Greeks. To them also we owe astrology, whereby they developed a lucrative trade through the sale of talismans or consecrated signs, supposed to give their possessors magical powers. The common people found the objects of their adoration nearer at hand. They had fish gods, like Oannes and Derceto, or bird gods, like the doves which typified Semiramis. The worship of Mylitta, the goddess of generation and fecundity, gave rise to abominable disorders by sanctifying the grossest sensual appetites. The inhabitants, by their industry, their skilful agricul- ture, and their commerce, which two magnificent rivers favored, accumulated prodigious riches in this empire, so long the rival of the empire of the Pharaohs. The carpets of Babylon, its textile fabrics, its enamelled potteries, its amulets and canes, and its thousand objects of the gold- smith's art, were in great demand, even in the Koman Empire. The Assyrian sculptures reveal a degree of skill hardly suspected. Herodotus, visiting Egypt in the time of its full splendor, believed that the Greeks had derived their art and gods from the banks of the Nile. We now know that in the depths of Asia the origin of their religious ideas must be sought. Probably through Cilicia and Asia Minor Assyrian art reached the Greek Asiatic colonies, and from them awoke the genius of artists in the mother coun- try. More than one sculpture at Athens recalls forms on the monuments of Khorsabad. The figures of Selinus, and even in a certain degree the marbles of Egina, seem to have been touched by the Ninevites. 36 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 1500. VI THE PHCENICIANS Phoenician Cities between Lebanon and the Sea. — Be- tween the Euphrates and the western sea stretch the desert, which belonged to the Semitic nomads, and the Lebanon, the fertile valleys of which became the habitation of numer- ous Canaanitish tribes who originally occupied the shores of the Persian Gulf. The Phoenicians, near kinsmen of the Hebrews, the most famous of all these tribes, established themselves in the country of the Jordan, and on the farther side of the mountain chain on the narrow strip of coast which is bathed by the Mediterranean. The conquests of Joshua gave the valley of the Jordan to the Hebrews. Hemmed in between the mountains, whose venerable forests furnished the timber for the construction of ships, and the sea, which formed numerous harbors and invited to naviga- tion and commerce, the Phoenicians became skilful mariners, both from necessity and natural situation. Their shipe ploughed the Mediterranean. Population increased with general prosperity, and cities multiplied. Soon, both for the interests of commerce and to relieve the congestion of population, it became necessary to plant colonies at a dis- tance. The most widely known of Phoenician cities were Sidon, whose glassware and purple were celebrated; Tyre, which held the highest rank; Aradus, Byblos, and Berytus. We learn from Holy Writ what luxury and effeminacy and what an impure and often sanguinary religion reigned in Phoenicia. Mothers burned their children alive in honor of Baal-Moloch, and the utmost license was approved by their chief goddess, Astarte. Phoenician Commerce and Colonies. — But the Phoenicians offset their vices by industry and commerce, and above all by those colonies which so contributed to the expansion and progress of civilization. They established themselves in the ^gean islands long before the Greeks ; founded count- ing-houses in Africa, Spain, Gaul, and Sicily; and profited B.C. 1500-332.] THE PHOENICIANS " 37 by the commerce of Arabia, India, and Ethiopia. In the fifth century they still possessed in Sicily the three cities of Motya, Seliniis and Panormus. In Gaul the traces of their settlement vanished early, but they covered the whole south of Spain, then so rich in silver mines, with their colonies. On the African coast rose Leptis, Adrumetum, Utica, and Carthage, the new Tyre, which became the most powerful maritime state of antiquity, and forced the neigh- boring Phoenician colonies to acknowledge its supremacy. While Carthage thus monopolized the commerce of the western Mediterranean, the Phoenicians of the mother country shared with the Greeks that of the eastern Mediter- ranean, and endeavored to form closer relations with the countries washed by the Indian Ocean. They forced the Jews to cede to them two ports on the Red Sea, Eliath and Eziongeber, whence their fleets sailed to seek ivory and gold dust in the land of Ophir, incense and spices in Arabia Felix, the most beautiful pearls then known in the Persian Gulf, and in India a thousand precious wares. For them numerous caravans traversed Babylonia, Arabia, Persia, Bactriana, and Thibet, whence they brought back the silk of China, which sold for its weight in gold, the furs of Tartary, and the precious stones of India. They added to this commerce the products of their national industry in glass, purple, and a thousand articles of attire. Conquerors of Phoenicia. — This prosperity of Phoenicia excited the cupidity of invaders. She was conquered by the Pharaohs of the eighteenth dynasty. The Assyrians many times appeared under the walls of Tyre, which was taken by Sennacherib, almost ruined by Nebuchadnezzar, and destroyed by Alexander. Phoenicia found herself al- most lost in the vast empires of the Persians, the Seleucidse, and the Romans; but, placed between two great centres of civilization, Egypt and Assyria, she took from them and carried to the West whatever they had best developed. She diffused something of the art, the industry, the science, of those two nations. Above all she took from Babylon a metric system, the necessary agent of commerce, and from Memphis the idea and form of alphabetical writing, which so many peoples have copied and modified, and which has been the indispensable instrument of intellectual progress. 38 * ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 1490. VII THE HEBRE"WS Ancient Traditions. — At the head of their race, the He- brews place Abraham, who came from Chaldaea, perhaps two thousand years before Christ, and settled in the land of Canaan ; Isaac, son of the patriarch ; and Jacob, the father of twelve sons, whose posterity formed the twelve tribes of Israel. The touching story is well known of Joseph, one of the twelve, whom his brethren sold to Egyptian mer- chants. By dint of wisdom and tact the Hebrew slave at- tained the highest honors, became the minister of a Pharaoh, and called to him his family, whom he established in the land of Goshen between the Nile and the Red Sea. In this fertile district the Hebrews multiplied without mixing with the Egyptians, who eventually looked upon this foreign race with distrust, and treated hem like the captives brought back by the Pharaohs from their distant conquests. They tried to compel them to abandon pastoral life and to shut themselves up in cities. They forced them to build the cities of Rameses, Pithon, and On; they made them work on the canals and on the constructions of every sort with which Egypt was being covered. The Israelite traditions assert that, in order to diminish their numbers, which increased in spite of every hardship, the Pharaohs commanded that all male infants should be killed at birth. An Israelitish woman of the tribe of Levi, after having hidden her child for three months, exposed it on the Nile in a basket of bulrushes at the spot where the daughter of Pharaoh was in the habit of bathing. The princess heard the cries of the infant and took pity on it. He was called Moses, or the " drawn out," because he had been drawn from the waters. He was reared by his adopted mother in the royal palace, and instructed in all the learning of the Egyp- tian priests. However, his own mother had revealed to him his origin, and one day he killed an Egyptian whom he saw beating a Hebrew. Forced to flight by this murder, a by Coll.,,,. oi,„:,i„m;u.. n. v. B.C. 1490.] THE HEBREWS 39 he escaped to Jetliro, in the extreme south of Arabia Petraea, where he found again the ancient belief of his fathers, pure and simple manners, and the patriarchal life of Abraham and Jacob. He returned to Egypt, resolved to deliver his people "from the house of bondage," and led the Hebrews back to the desert with their herds. Religious and Civil Legislation. — They wandered long in the solitudes of Arabia, where the majesty of the one God everywhere is revealed. Mount Sinai was consecrated by the promulgation of the civil and religious lav/, and Moses tried to chain his people to the precious dogma of the one- ness of God by numerous ordinances which imparted to the Hebrew laws an incomparable superiority over every system of legislation. Instead of the distinction of castes, which moreover cannot be enforced in the desert, the Hebrews had the equality of citizens before God, before the law, and, in a certain measure, before fortune. In the sabbatical year, and at the jubilee which occurred, the one at the end of every seven years, the other at the end of forty-nine years, the slave was emancipated, debt was outlawed, and alienated property was restored to its former owner. The leaders of the Jews sprang from the people. If their priest- hood became hereditary, inasmuch as always restricted to the tribe of Levi, the priests possessed only the inheritance of poverty. In the ancient world society reposed on slavery, but the Jews had servants rather than slaves. Elsewhere the legislator disregarded the poor and repelled the stranger. Here the law distinguished in favor of the poor. It pro- hibited usury, enjoined alms, prescribed charity, even toward animals, and was kindly to the stranger. Thus everything which the ancient world degraded and rejected, the Mosaic law exalted. In this society, the stranger was no longer an enemy, the slave was still a man, and woman took her seat worthily beside the head of the family, enjoying the same respect. Moral Grandeur of Hebrew Legislation. — In the Deca- logue, or summary of the entire moral code, human and divine, in ten commandments, we read : " Thou shalt have none other gods before me." "Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long." "Thou shalt not steal." " Thou shalt not kill." " Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor." "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house . . . nor anything that is thy neighbor's." 40 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 1097. In the law we find these beautiful and touching precepts : "Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do ev-il." " Ye shall not afflict any widow, or fatherless child. If thou afflict them in any wise, and they cry at all under me, I will surely hear their cry." " Thou shalt not oppress a stranger : for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt." "Six years thou shalt sow thy land, and shalt gather in the fruits thereof: but the seventh year thou shalt let it rest and lie still; that the poor of thy people may eat : and what they leave the beasts of the field shall eat." "When ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field . . . neither* shalt thou gather every grape of thy vineyards ; thou shalt leave them for the poor and stranger." " The wages of him that is hired shall not abide with thee all night until the morning." "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." "Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honor the face of the old man." "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn." "Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk." Conquest of Palestine. The Judgfes. The Kings (1097 b.c). — Moses wished his people to return to the land which Abraham had chosen wherein to pitch his tent. Joshua, his successor, crossed the Jordan, destroyed Jericho, and divided the land of Canaan among the twelve tribes of Israel. At his death the political bond broke which held the tribes together, and the government of the elders was too feeble to complete the conquest of the country or to repulse the attacks of neighboring kings. Hence ensued periods of servitude, from which the Hebrews were rescued by strong and brave men, who after the victory remained their judges, thus erecting in the midst of this patriarchal re- public a sort of temporary monarchy. These heroes of Israel were Othniel; Ehud, who fought with both hands; Shamgar; the prophetess Deborah; Gideon, Avho scattered a whole army with three hundred men; Jephthah, who immolated his daughter in order to fulfil a rash vow; Sam- son, celebrated for his prodigious strength ; the high priest Eli, under whom the Philistines captured the Ark of the Covenant, wherein was kept the book of the law; and, lastly, Samuel, who, despite his wise and just administra- tion, was forced by the Hebrews to give them a king. B.C. 1019.] THE HEBREWS 41 He chose Saul, a valiant man of the tribe of Benjamin, who seemed simple-minded and docile. He poured the holy oil of consecration on the head of the new prince, and de- posited in the Ark a book wherein he had written down the rights and duties of the kingly office (1097 b.c). At first Saul justified the prophet's choice by his moderation and victories. But rendered proud by success, he abandoned his rustic habits, surrounded himself by a body-guard of three thousand men, and shook off the yoke of the high priest. Samuel secretly anointed David, a Hebrew shep- herd, and introduced him into the ]3alace, that some day he might install him in the place of the unruly prince. The young shield-bearer of the king attracted the attention of all Israel by slaying the Philistine Goliath. Saul, consumed by jealousy, made several attempts to slay him with his. javelin. When he himself fell in 1058 in a battle against the Philistines, the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, and a few years later the other ten tribes, recognized David as king of Israel. For the time being no danger threatened from Egypt and Assyria. The little Hebrew state was able to develop and extend without encountering too formidable adversaries. Palestine, which had so often been the road of the con- querors, became a conqueror in her turn. The capture of Sion or Jerusalem, the destruction of the Philistines and the Moabites, numerous successes over all other neighbor- ing peoples, territorial extension of the kingdom as far as the Euphrates on the north and as far as the Red Sea on the south, set forth in David the victorious prince. His regu- lations for worship, for the public administration, for jus- tice, for the establishment of a numerous army, one-tenth of which was always under arms, and, lastly, tlie materials which he collected for the building of the temple, and the treaties of commerce concluded with Tyre, bear witness to his solicitude during peace. But a crime, the murder of Uriah, and the revolt of his son Absalom, saddened his last years. The Church still sings his sublime psalms. Solomon, a peaceful prince, fond of splendor and civiliza- tion, governed from the recesses of his palace like the other kings of the East. At his accession (1019) he consolidated his power by bloody acts, reduced the high priesthood to de- pendence upon the king, so as to emancipate the sovereign from all equal opposing authority, and built with magnifi- 42 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 978-586. cence the temple at Jerusalem. He proved his wisdom by a famous decision, founded Palmyra in the heart of the desert, created a navy, and made alliances with Tyre and Egypt. His fame spread abroad, and the Queen of Sheba came to visit the great king of the East. But notwith- standing outward splendor, the provinces were being im- poverished, and Solomon himself destroyed the foundation of his power by introducing idolatry into his palace. The Idumseans and' Syrians revolted. His subjects rose in re- bellion because of the growing burdei] of taxation, and he died in the midst of public misery (978). The Schism and the Captivity. — His son, Eehoboam, re- fused to lessen the exactions of the royal treasury, and ten tribes seceded. Benjamin and Judah alone remained faith- ful to the house of David. From that time on there existed two nations, two kingdoms, Israel and Judah : Israel more populous, more extensive; Judah richer and more respected. Every year all Jews were bound to bring their offerings to the temple at Jerusalem. To prevent his new subjects from going to settle in the kingdom of Judah, which possessed the national sanctuary, Jeroboam erected two altars, one at Bethel and one at Dan. Hither his people came to sacrifice. This violation of the religious law prepared Israel for the introduction of idolatry, the establishment of which was also favored by the constant relations of its kings with the Syrians. Judah showed more respect to the Mosaic law. But there also idolatry made its way, and for its expulsion prophets were needed, fired by the double inspiration of religion and patriotism. Elijah, Elisha, Amos, Micah, Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah, by turns threatened and roused the Jews from despair by the promise of a glorious future. The separation of the Hebrew people into two kingdoms ruined its power. After the schism it possessed only Pales- tine. Surrounded by enemies, the Hebrews engaged also in bloody civil wars, and after deplorable anarchy succumbed under the attacks of the Babylonians. The kingdom of Israel fell in 721, when King Hoshea, captured in Samaria, was carried by Sargon to Nineveh. Judah fell in 586, when Zedekiah, captured by Nebuchadnezzar, was dragged to Babylon, loaded with chains, and had his eyes put out after he had seen all his sons and the leaders of his people slain before his face. The Jews under the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans. B.C. 60G-A.D. 10.] THE HEBREWS 43 — The captivity, which dates from the first capture of Jerusalem (606 b.c.) lasted for seventy years, until tlie edict of Cyrus, who in ^oQ permitted the Hebrews to rebuild their Temple. Zerubbabel was accompanied by forty-two thousand Jews in his return to the ruins of the holy city. The work of construction, stopped under Cambyses through the jealousy of the Samaritans, was continued with ardor under Darius, who is, perha^DS, the Ahasuerus of Scripture. In 516 the Temple was finished. Under Artaxerxes Longi- manus, Esdras conducted to Jerusalem another great com- pany of Jews, and brought the people back to the faithful observance of the Mosaic commands. About the same time Nehemiah again raised the walls of the city of David. Thus the nation had recovered its law, its Temple, its capital, and all the energy of its religious patriotism. Unfortunately, many persons, whom Esdras and Nehemiah expelled for lawlessness, took refuge with the Samaritans, and built upon Mount Gerizim a temple to rival that at Jerusalem. Judaea was generally quiet under the Persians. After the siege of Tyre Alexander came to Jerusalem to offer sacrifice in the Temple, and exempted the country from taxation during the sabbatical year. After his death the Jews remained for nearly a century subject to the kings of Egypt. Ptolemy II. Philadelphus even placed their sacred books in the famous library of Alexandria, having caused them to be translated by learned men, Avhose work has re- mained famous as the Septuagint Version. Ptolemy Philo- pator persecuted them ; so they passed gladly, though with no greater security, under the rule of the kings of Syria. Seleucus IV. sent his minister, Heliodorus, to strip the Temple of its riches, and Antigonus IV. placed upon the very altar the statue of Jupiter Olympius. This attempt to install Greek polytheism in the sanctuary of the only God brought about a formidable insurrection. After being delivered by the heroic family of the Maccabees, the Jews endured the most cruel vicissitudes during two centuries, sometimes free under their own kings, sometimes subject to the Romans, often disturbed b}^ the quarrels of the Pharisees and Sadducees, the two rival political and religious sects. In the time of Augustus they formed, under the cruel Herod, a flourishing state, whose existence Rome respected for several years. Then it was that Jesus was born, and four years before the death of Tiberius began 44 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [a.d. 70. to preach his holy doctrine. The Jews, who had become Koman subjects, revolted during the last days of Nero. Thirteen hundred thousand men perished in that supreme struggle for fatherland and religion. Jerusalem was re- duced to ruins, the Temple was destroyed, and the disper- sion began (70 a.d.). The Jews, a stiff-necked people, as their prophets de- clared, did nothing for art, science, or industry, but their moral laws were the most elevated and their religious doc- trine the purest the world has seen. At the cost of cruel sufferings they preserved the priceless doctrine of divine unity. Their ancient law, transformed by Jesus, has be- come the law of charity and fraternal love which should govern mankind. B.C. 1500.1 THE MEDES AND PERSIANS 45 VIII THE MEDES AND PERSIANS Mazdeism. — We have seen that Bactriana and Sogdiana were the cradle of numerous white tribes which, under the name of Aryans, emigrated to the southeast toward the Indus, and under that of Iranians went toward Media and Persia. Perhaps a religious schism caused the separation of this great race. At all events, the Medes and Persians carried to their new country a doctrine which differed pro- foundly from that afterwards prevalent upon the banks of the Ganges. They recognized as their legislator Zoroaster, who seems to have lived fifteen centuries before Christ, and whose teachings are contained in the Avesta, or sacred book of the Persians. This doctrine, which is called Mazdeism, or universal knowledge, is the purest and mildest with which polytheis- tic antiquity was acquainted. Zervane Akerene, the first principle, eternal, infinite, immutable, immobile, created Ormazd, the lord of knowledge or wisdom, the source of light and of life like his emblem the sun, the author of all good, all justice, and Ahriman, his euemy, the principle of physical and moral evil. Each of them commands a hie- rarchy of celestial and infernal spirits who labor to extend the empire of their chief: the former by disseminating light, life, purity, happiness; the latter by multiplying malevolent animals and pernicious influences. But a day w^ill come when Ahriman, finally vanquished, will recog- nize his defeat, and reascend to Ormazd to enjoy with him a life of blessedness, together with all the wicked who have been enticed by him into evil and whom suffering shall have purified. Thus the goodness of Ormazd is eternal and boundless; the wickedness of Ahriman is limited to the time of ordeals, which prepare for and justify redemption. The compassion of God, therefore, exceeds his justice, and the hell of the Persians was only a purgatory. Man, created with a free and immortal soul, is the prize 46 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 1500. for which the two warring principles contend. As the devas of Ahriman ceaselessly urge him to evil, Zoroaster has given him the law of Ormazd to preserve him for the good. This law is humane and mild. It recognizes the rights of life while proclaiming those of heaven. It de- mands faith, but also works, as labor, alms, and moral and physical purity. It rejects barren asceticism and permits interest in earthly things, so that man, satisfying the legiti- mate demands of his nature without excess, has the greater merit in resisting natural temptations. "If a man eat," says the revealed book, " he will listen better to the sacred word; if he do not eat, he will have no strength for pure works." Work is a holy thing: "Plough and sow. He who soweth with purity fulhlleth the whole law. He who giveth good grain to the earth is as great as if he had offered ten thousand sacrifices." The believer must pay the same care to the earth which nourishes him and to the animals which serve him. Common affection results from com- munity of labor. Finally, marriage is a sacred bond, and numerous children are a blessing. Worship required prayers and an offering, consisting of animal's flesh, of the sap of certain plants, and of sacred cakes, which after the sacrifice are consumed by the priest and attendants. The sacred fire, the vase of elevation, the vestments of the celebrant, all the utensils of sacrifice, are provided for by the priests, who are the interpreters of the religious law, which they expound to the faithful. Prayer is frequent. There is a prayer for every act in life. Thereby the living are saved and the punishment of the dead diminished and their deliverance secured. Prayer must be made to Ormazd and to the celestial spirits, the izeds, who wage incessant war with the devas of Ahriman. One must "pray to the sun, the brilliant and vigorous courser which never dies," the sun which purifies the earth and the waters, and bestows abundance. "If it did not rise, the devas would destroy everything upon the earth, and there would be no celestial izeds." One must pray by day and also by night, for at night Ahriman keeps watch, and he is all-powerful. " Rise then at midnight, wash thy hands, fetch wood and feed the fire which must always shine as symbol of the presence of Ormazd at each hearth." Prayer is sometimes a confession, but made to God and not to man. " Before thee, Father ! I confess the sins which B.C. 800-595.] THE MEDES AND PERSIANS 47 I have committed in thought, in word, and in action. God have pity on my body and on my soul, in tliis workl and in the next." Unfortunately, man too often ignores his creed to obey his passions. The followers of this joure doctrine have inflicted on the world as many evils as have done adherents of other religions. Nevertheless, they never seem to have become as brutal and depraved as the peoples who sought their gods in physical ideas of fecundity and generation, or in the phenomena of active and passive nature. We know nothing of the children of this race who re- mained on the banks of the Oxus in Sogdiana and Bactriana. Thanks to the narratives of the Greeks and the cuneiform inscriptions, we are better acquainted with the Medes. Through the Persians the connection was formed between Asia and Europe which since their wars with the Greeks has not been broken. The Medes. — Nevertheless, our details as to Media are very late. They begin only in the eighth century before our era, when Arbaces, who governed that country for the Assyrian kings, revolted successfully against Sardanapalus (789). From the long anarchy following their emancipa- tion, the Medes were rescued by Dejoces. He proclaimed himself king (710), built Ecbatana, and reigned fifty-three years in profound peace. His son, Phraortes (657), ren- dered the Persians tributary, but was slain by a king of Nineveh. Cyaxares, son of Phraortes, avenged him by attacking that city, which Avas rescued by an invasion of the Scythians. These barbarians ravaged Western Asia for twenty-eight years. The Median king rid himself of their chiefs by causing their throats to be cut at a banquet, over- threw Nineveh in 606, and subdued Asia Minor as far as the Halys. An eclipse of the sun, predicted by Thales, pre- vented a battle which he was on the point of engaging in with the Lydians (602). Under Astyages, his successor (595), this great dominion of the Medes crumbled away. This prince had given his daughter Mandana to a Persian chieftain, Cambyses, and from this marriage Cyrus was born. A dream caused Astyages, says Herodotus, to fear that his grandson would some day dethrone him, so he ordered Harpagus to put him to death. A herdsman saved the child and brought him up in secret. Later on, his grandson was acknowledged 48 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 595-522. by Astyages. Angry with Harpagus, Astyages put Har- pagus' own son to death, and had a portion of the body served to the father at a banquet. Tlie courtier controlled himself, but waited for revenge. The Persians under Cyrus. Conquest of Western Asia. — The Persians, poor and warlike mountaineers, wished for independence. Cyrus, on reaching manhood, offered to be their chief, and led them against the Medes, whom Astyages had placed under the orders of Harpagus. The treachery of that general assured the defeat of his troops. In a second battle Astyages himself was taken prisoner, and the dominion of Asia passed from the Medes to the Persians (559). The conqueror, profiting by the ardor of his fol- lowers, overran the countries in the vicinity of the Caucasus, and attacked the Lydians, who ruled between the Halys and the ^gean Sea. Their king, Croesus, after defeat in the plains of Thymbria, shut himself in Sardis, where he was taken alive. Babylon fell eight years later (538). The Greek colonies in Asia Minor, together with Phoenicia and Palestine, were added to the new empire. The Scythians were devastating its northern provinces. Cyrus attacked them on the banks of the Araxus, gained one victory, but perished in a second battle (529). Nevertheless, the enemy were not strong enough to invade Persia in their turn, and Cambyses was able to continue in another direction the conquests of his father. The Persians under Cambyses and Darius. — Cambyses undertook to subdue Africa, beginning with Egypt, the last great monarchy which Cyrus had left standing. It fell in a single battle (527). The conqueror then wished to attack Carthage, but for such an expedition a fleet was necessary, which the Phoenicians refused to furnish. An army, sent against the oasis of Ammon, perished in the desert; another, led against the Ethiopians, suffered from famine, and re- turned in disgrace. Cambyses revenged himself for these reverses by cruelties of which the priests of Egypt and his own family were the victims. He put both his brother and sister to death. Eecalled to Asia by a revolution, he acci- dentally injured himself while mounting his horse, and died of the wound (522). The rebellion which had broken out was a reaction of the Medes against tlie Persians. A magian, Smerdis, passed himself off as the brother of Cambyses, whom he resembled, B.C. 522-509.] THE MEDES AND PERSIANS 49 and was the principal conspirator. Seven Persian noble- men replied to this attempt by another conspiracy, stabbed the magian, and proclaimed as king one of their own num- ber, Darius, the son of Hystaspes. The usurpation of the magian had shaken the whole empire. A cuneiform inscrip- tion recently deciphered proves that Darius was obliged to put down successive rebellions in all the eastern provinces. Of all these insurrections we know in some detail only that of Babylon, which Herodotus has narrated. It is rendered famous by the self-sacrifice of Zo^Dyrus. He mutilated him- self to induce the Babylonians to admit him to their city as a victim who sought only revenge, but who afterward betrayed them (517). To assure the collection of the taxes and the support of his regular troops, Darius divided into twenty satrapies the immense country comprised between the Mediterranean, the Ked Sea, and the deserts of Africa, Arabia, and India. To occupy the warlike spirit of the Persians he resumed the expedition begun by Cyrus against the Scythians, but attacked them in Europe rather than in Asia. He crossed the Bosphorus, passed over the Danube on a bridge of boats which the Asiatic or Thracian Greeks had con- structed and guarded, and pushed on far in vain pursuit of the Scythians. As the time fixed for his returning to the Danube had elapsed, the Athenian, Miltiades, proposed to destroy the bridge, and thus leave the Persian army to perish. Histiseus, tyrant of Miletus, opposed this plan, representing to the chiefs, all of whom were tyrants of Greek cities, that they would be overthrown if they no longer had the support of the foreigner. Thus Darius was saved. On his return the king left 80,000 men to complete the conquest of Thrace and to undertake the con- quest of Macedon. He despatched two other expeditions to the extremities of the empire (509). The first subdued Barca in Cyrenaica, and the second overran other lands bathed on the west by the Indus. The Persian Empire was then at the apogee of its great- ness. Prom the Indus to the Mediterranean, from the Danube and Araxes to the Indian Ocean, all owned the sway of the great king, and he was about to throw a mill- ion men upon Greece. But the Greco-Persian wars will show what feebleness existed under this outward show of strength. 50 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 509. Government. — The government was despotic, tempered, perhaps, in the case of the Medes, by the authority of the magi, but without other check in the Persian Empire than the exaggerated power of the satraps, whose number Darius had imprudently reduced to twenty. Moreover, the central power did not assume the responsibility of administration. Provided the provinces paid their taxes in money or kind and furnished the contingents exacted, they preserved their independence. The great Asiatic courts have always loved effeminacy and luxury. The Persians became corrupt, like their predecessors, in spite of the superiority of their relig- ion, which taught that life should be a continual struggle against evil. They erected few monum'ents. But the ancients vaunted the magnificence of Ecbatana, the seven- walled city, and modern travellers have been able to admire the imposing ruins of Persepolis, which the Arabs call Tchil-Minar, or the Forty Columns. 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