Glass. Book GIFT OF HEIRS OF DR. LOUIS R. KLEMM Historical Course for Schools, EDITED BV Edward A. Freeman, D.C.L. i6mo, cloth. The object of this series is to put foith clear and correct views of history in simple language, and in the smallest space and cheapest form in which it could be done. It is hoped in time to take in short histories of all the chief countries of Europe and America, giving the results of the latest historical researches in as simple a form as may be. All the volumes are prepared under the supervision of Mr. Freeman. I.— GENERAL SKETCH OF HISTORY. By Edward A. Freeman $i-«5 II.— HISTORY OF ENGLAND. By Edith Thompson §t.oo III— HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. By Margaret Macarthcr. $1.00 IV.— HIS TOR Y OF ITAL Y. By the Rev. W. Hunt, M.A $ 1.00 V.— HISTORY OF GERMANY. By James Sime, {Shortly.) VI.— HISTORY OF FRANCE. By the Rev. J. R. Green, M.A. . . {In Preparation.) VII.— HISTORY OF GREECE. By J. Annan Bryce, B.A {In Preparation.) VIII.— HISTORY OF AMERICA. {In Preparation.) FREEMAN'S HISTORICAL COURSE FOR SCHOOLS GENERAL SKETCH OF HISTORY BY EDWARD A. FREEMAN, D.C.L. LATE FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, OXFORD. Edition Adapted for American Students. NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1874 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873^ By HENRY HOLT, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, is R. E!lejnm Bequest Feb. 1020 John F. Trow & Son, Printers, 905-213 East kth St., New York.'; PREFACE. The object of the present series is to put forth clear arid correct views of history in simple language, and in the smallest space and cheapest form in which it could be done. It is meant in the first place for schools; but it is often found that a book for schools proves useful for other readers as well, and it is hoped that this may be the case with the little books the first instalment of which is now given to the world. The present volume is meant to be introductory to the whole course. It is intended to give, as its name implies, a general sketch of the history of the civilized world, that is, of Europe and of the lands which have drawn their civilization from Europe. Its object is to trace out the general relations of different periods and different countries to one another, without going minutely into the affairs of any particular country, least of all into those of England. This is an object of the first importance, for, without clear notions of general history, the history of particular countries can never be rightly understood. This General Sketch will be followed PREFACE. by a series of special histories of particular countries, which will take for granted the main principles laid down in the General Sketch In this series it is hoped in time to take in short histories of all the chief countries of Europe and America, giving the results of the latest historical researches in as simple a form as may be. Those of England and Scotland will shortly follow the present introductory volume, and other authors are at work on other parts of the plan. The several members of the series will all be so far under the supervision of the Editor as to secure general ac- curacy of statement, and a general harmony of plan and sentiment. But each book will be the original work of its own author, and each author will be responsible for his own treatment of the smaller details. For his own share of the work the Editor has, besides the General Sketch, taken the histories of Rome and Switzer- land. The others will be put into the hands of various writers, on whose knowledge and skill he believes that he can rely. SOMERLEAZE, WELLS, August 23, 1872. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. FACI ORIGIN OF THE NATIONS .......... I CHAPTER II. GREECE AND THE GREEK COLONIES ....... 19 CHAPTER III. THE ROMAN COMMONWEALTH 48 CHAPTER IV. THE HEATHEN EMPIRE 80 CHAPTER V. EARLY CHRISTIAN EMPIRE ........ 94 CHAPTER VI. ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE EAST ....... 1 10 viii CONTENTS. CHAPTER VII. PAGB THE FRANKISH EMPIRE . 123 CHAPTER VIII. THE SAXON EMPERORS 137 CHAPTER IX. THE FRANCONIAN EMPERORS ......... 146 CHAPTER X. GENERAL VIEW OF THE MIDDLE AGES 159 CHAPTER XI. THE SWABIAN EMPERORS ........... 175 ,f CHAPTER XII. THE DECLINE OF THE EMPIRE ......... I99 CHAPTER XIII. THE GREATNESS OF SPAIN • • ....... 234 CONTENTS. «* CHAPTER XIV. PAG* THE GREATNESS OF FRANCE • • • • 28l CHAPTER XV. 1 THE RISE OF RUSSIA 3©2 CHAPTER XVI. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 325 CHAPTER XVII. THE REUNION OF GERMANY AND ITALY • • • • • 347 GENERAL SKETCH OF HISTORY CHAPTER I. ORIGIN OF THE NATIONS. Different nations of the world (i) — difference between East and West (2) — the Aryan nations (3) — connexion among their Ian* guages (3) — a?7iount of progress made by them before their disper- sion (4) — their advances in religion and government {§)—the Semitic nations (6) — their religious influence on the world (6) — the Turanian and other Non- Aryan nations (7) — their extent in Asia (7) — traces of them in Europe (7) — movements of the Aryans in Europe and Asia (8) — geographical shape of Europe (9) — the three great peninsulas (10) — advance of the successive Aryan swarms (11) — the Greeks and Italians (11, 12) — the Celts (12) — ■ the Teutons (13) — the Slaves and Lithuanians (14) — later Tura- nian settlements in Europe ; Hungarians and Turks (14) — dif- ferent degrees of importance among the Aryans of Europe (15) — Rome the central point of all European History (15) — Division of periods before and after the Roman Dominion (16). I. Different Aspects of History. — The history of the various nations of mankind may be looked at in many and very different ways ; and the importance of different parts of history varies widely according to the way in B 2 ORIGIN OF THE NATIONS. [chap. which they are looked at. One who wishes to trace out the history of religion, or of language, or of manners and customs, will often find as much that is useful for his purpose among savage nations, who have played no im- portant part in the world, as among the most famous and civilized people. But researches of this sort cannot be put together into a continuous tale ; they are not history strictly so called. By histo?y in . the highest sense we understand the history of those nations which have really influenced one another, so that their whole story, from the beginning to our own time, forms one tale, of which, if we wholly leave out any part, we cannot rightly undei stand what follows it. Such a history as this is found only in the history of the chief nations of Europe, and of those nations of Asia and Africa which have had most to do with them. 2. Difference between East and West. — But between the history of the East, as we may vaguely call it, that is chiefly the history of Asia and Africa, and the history of our own Western world in Europe and America, the gap is in many ways wide. To take one point of difference among many, the history of the East does not give the same political teaching as that of the West. It is in a much greater degree the history of a mere succession of empires and dynasties, and in a much less degree the history of the people. • We shall therefore do right if we deal with the history of the West as our main subject, and treat of the history of the East only so far as it bears on the history of the West. For history in the highest sense, for the history of man in his highest political character, for the highest developements of art, literature, and political freedom, we must look to that family of mankind to which we ourselves belong, and to that division of the world in which we ourselves dwell. The branch of history which is history in the highest and truest sense is the history of the Aryan nations of Europe, and of Lj EAST AND WEST. 3 those who have in later times gone forth from among them to carry the arts and languages of Europe into other con- tinents. The history of these nations forms Western or European history, the history of Europe and of European Colonies. But here too we shall find some periods and countries of higher interest and importance than others. Still the whole, from the earliest times to which we can trace it back, forms one connected story. No part is altogether void of interest in itself, none is altogether cut off from con- nexion with the general thread of continuous history. And with regard to particular times and places, this part of history reaches the highest degree of interest and importance that history can reach. It takes in the history of those times and places which most directly concern ourselves, and it takes in the history of those times and places which have had the deepest and most lasting influence on the world in general. It is then to the history of Europe, and of the Aryan nations in Europe and in European colonies elsewhere, that the present sketch, and the more detailed histories which are to follow it, will mainly be devoted. The history of other parts of the world, and of other families of the human race, will be dealt with only so far as those other nations and countries are brought into connexion with the long unbroken tale of European history. 3. The Aryan Nations.— Some readers may perhaps by this time have asked what is to be understood by a word which has been already used more than once, namely, the Aryan nations. That is the name which is now generally received to express that division of the human race to which we ourselves belong, and which, takes in nearly all the present nations of Europe and several of the chief nations of Asia. The evidence of language shows that there was a time, a time of course long before the beginning of recorded history, when the forefathers of all these nation* B 2 4 ORIGIN OF THE NA TIONS. [chap. were one people, speaking one language. Sanscrit, the ancient language of India, Persian, Greek, Latin, English, and other tongues, many of which we shall soon have occasion to speak" of, are really only dialects of one common speech. They show their common origin alike by their grammatical forms, such as the endings of nouns and verbs and the like, and by what is more easily understood by people in general, by their still having many of the commonest and most necessary words, those words without which no language can get on, essentially the same. ■Nrw^any of the nations which now speak these languages have for ages been so far parted from one another, that it is quite impossible that they can have borrowed these words, and still less these grammatical forms, from one another. We can thus see that all these nations are really kinsfolk, that they once were only one nation, the different branches of which parted off from one another at a time long before written history begins. 4. Early State of the Aryan Nations. — But what we know of the languages of the various Aryan nations tells us something more than this. By the nature of the words which are common to all or most of the kindred tongues we can see what steps the forefathers of these various nations had already taken in the way of social life and regular govern- ment in the days before they parted asunder. And we can see that those steps were no small steps. Before there were such nations as Hindoos and Greeks and Germans, while the common forefathers of all were still only one people, they had risen very far indeed above the state of mere savages. They had already learned to build houses, to plough the ground, and to grind their corn in a mill. This is shown by the words for ploughing, building, and grinding being still nearly the same in all the kindred languages. It is easy for any- one to see that our word mill is the same as the Latin mola, and that our old word to ear— that is, to plough— the ground, I.] THE EARLY ARYANS. 5 which is sometimes used in the Old Testament, is the same as the Latin arare, which has the same meaning. But no one ought to fancy that the English word is derived from the Latin, or that we learned the use of the thing from any people who spoke Latin, because the same words are found also in many other of the kindred languages, even those which are spoken in countries which are furthest removed from one another. We see then that words of this kind — and I have only chosen two out of many— ^are really fragments remaining from the old common language which was spoken by our common forefathers before they branched off and became different nations. It is therefore quite plain that the things themselves, the names of which have thus been kept in so many different languages for thousands of years, were already known to the Aryan people before they parted into different nations. And I need not say that people who build houses, plough the ground, and grind their corn, though they may still have very much to learn, are in a much higher state than the people in some parts of the world are in even now. 5. Early Aryan Religion and Government. — But lan- guage again tells us something more of the early Aryan people than ihe progress which they had made in the merely mechanical arts. We find that the names for various family relations, for the different degrees of kindred and affinity, father, mother, brother, sister, and the like, are the same in all or most of the kindred tongues. We see then that, before the separation, the family life, the groundwork of all society and government, was already well understood and fully established And we see too that regular govern- ment itself had already begun ; for words meaning king or ruler are the same in languages so far distant from one another as Sanscrit, Latin, and English. The Latin words rex, regere, regnum, are the same as the Old-English rica, rixian, rice x ORIGIN OF THE NA T/ONS. [CHAP. words which have dropped out of the language, but which still remain in the ending of such words as bishoprick, where the last syllable means government or possession. And we can also see that the Aryans before their dispersion had already something of a religion. For there is a common stock of words and tales common to most of the Aryan nations, many of which they cannot have borrowed from one another, and which point to an early reverence for the great powers of the natural world. Thus the same name for the sky, or for the great God of the sky, appears in very different languages, as Dyaus in Sanscrit, Zeus in Greek, and the Old- English God Tiiv, from whom we still call the third day of the week Tiwesdozg or Tuesday. And there are a number of stories about various Gods and heroes found among different Aryan nations, all of which seem to come from one common source. And we may go on and see that the first glimpses which we can get of the forms of government in the early days of the kindred nations show them to have been wonderfully like one another. Alike among the old Greeks, the old Italians, and the old Germans, there was nKing or chief with limited power, there was a smaller Council oi nobles or of old men, and a general Assembly of the whole people. Such was the old constitution of England, out of which its present constitution has grown step by step. But there is no reason to think that this was at all peculiar to England, or even peculiar to those nations who are most nearly akin to the English. There is every reason to believe that this form of government, in which every man had a place, though some had a g-seater place than others, was really one of the possessions which we have in common with the whole Aryan family. We see then that our common Aryan forefathers, in the times when they were still one people, times so long ago that we cannot hope to give them any certain date, had alieady made advances in civiliza- I.] THE SEMITIC NATIONS. tion which placed them far above mere savages. They already had the family life ; they already had the beginnings of religion and government ; and they already knew m st of those simple arts which are most needed for the comfort of human life. 6. The Semitic Nations.- Such then were the original Aryans — that one among the great families of mankind to which we ourselves belong, and that which has played the greatest part in the history of the world. Still the Aryan nations are only a small part among the nations of the earth. It is not needful for our purpose to speak at any length ot the nations which are not Aryan ; but a few words must be given to the two great families which have always pretty well divided Europe and Asia with the Aryans, and with whom the history of the Aryans is constantly coming in contact. Next in importance to the Aryans we must place those which are called the Semitic nations, among whom those with whom we have most concern are the Hebrews^ the Phoenicians, and the Arabs. And in one point we must set them even above the Aryans ; for the three religions which have taught men that there is but one God — the yewish, the Christian, and the Mahometan — have all come from among them. But those among the Semitic nations to whom this great truth was not known seem often to have fallen into lower forms of idolatry than the Aryans. Now the Semitic nations have, so to speak, kept much closer together than the Aryans have. They have always occupied a much smaller portion of the world than the Aryans, and they have kept much more in the same part of the world. Their chief seats have always been in south-western Asia ; and though they have spread themselves thence into distant parts of the world, in Asia, Africa, and even Europe, yet this has mainly been by settlements in comparatively late times, about whose history we know something. Their 8 ORIGIN OF THE NA TIONS. [CHAI. languages also have parted off much less, from one another than the Aryan languages have ; the Semitic nations have thus always kept up more of the character of one family thar the Aryans. 7. The Turanian Nations. — The rest of Asia, which is not occupied either by Aryan or by Semitic people, is occupied by various nations whose tongues differ far more widely from one another than the Aryan tongues do. Still there is reason to believe that many of them at least were originally one people, and at all events it is convenient for our purposes to class together all those nations of Europe and Asia which are neither Aryan nor Semitic. The people of the greater part of Asia are commonly known as the Turanian nations. In the old Persian stories Turan, the land of darkness, is opposed to Iran or Aria, the land of light ; and it is from this Iran, the old name of Persia, that it has been thought convenient to give the whole family the name of Aryans. And besides that large part of Asia which is still occupied by the Turanians, it is plain that in earlier times they occupied a large part of Europe also. But the Aryans have driven them out of nearly all Europe, except a few remnants in out-of-the-way corners, such as the Fins and Laps in the north. The Basques also on the borders of Spain and Gaul, whether akin to the Turanians or not, are at least neither Aryan nor Semitic, so that for our purposes they may all go together. Except these few remnants of the old races, all Europe has been Aryan since the beginning of written history, except when Semitic or Turanian invaders have come in later times. But in Asia the nations which are neither Aryan nor Semitic, the Chinese, Mongols, Turks, and others, still far outnumber the Aryan and Semitic nations put together. 8. The Aryan Dispersion. — We have seen that there was a time, long before the beginning of recorded history, when I.] THE ARYAN DISPERSION. the forefathers of the various Aryans dwelled together as one people, speaking one language. And the advances which the)' had made towards civilization show that they must have dwelled together for a long time, but a time whose lergth we cannot undertake to measure. Nor can we undertake to fix a date for the time of the great separation, when the families which had hitherto dwelled together parted off in different directions and became different nations speaking tongues which are easily seen to be near ak in to each other, but which gradually parted from one another so that different nations could no longer understand each other's speech. All that we can say is that these are facts which happened long before the beginnings of written history, but which are none the less certain because we learn them from another kind of proof. The various wandering- bands must have parted off at long intervals, one by one, and it often happened that a band split off into two or more bands in the course of its wanderings. And in most cases they did not enter upon uninhabited lands, but upon lands in which men of other races were already dwelling, among whom they appeared as conquerors, and whom, for the most part, they drove out of the best parts of the land into out- of-the-way corners. First of all, there are the two great divisions of the Eastern and the Western, the Asiatic and the European, Aryans, divisions which became altogether cut off from one another in geographical position and in habits and feelings. From the old mother-land one great troop pressed to the south-east and became the forefathers of the Persians and Hindoos, driving the older inhabi- tants of India down to the south, into the land which is properly distinguished from Hindostati by the name of the Deccan. The other great troop pressed westward, and, sending off one swarm after another, formed the various Aryan nations of Europe The order in which they io OR TGW OF THE NATIONS. [chap. came Cnn be known only by their geographical posi- tion. The first waves of the migration must be those whom we find furthest to the West and furthest to the South. But. in order fully to take in the force of the evidence furnished by the geographical position of the various Aryan nations in Europe, it is needful to say a few words as to the geographical aspect of the continent of Europe itself. 9. Geographical Shape of Europe, — A glance at the map will show that, of the three continents which form the Old World, Europe, Asia, and Africa, the first two are far more closely connected with one another than either of them is with the third. Africa is a vast peninsula — in our own day indeed it may be said to have become an island — united to the other two by a very narrow isthmus. But Europe and Asia form one continuous mass, and in some parts the boundary between the two is purely artificial. Some maps, for instance, make the Don the boundary ; others make it the Volga. The most northern and the most central parts of Europe and Asia form continuous geographical wholes ; it is only the southern parts of the two continents which are quite cut off from one another. And it is in these southern parts of each that the earliest recorded history, at all events the earliest recorded histoiy of the Aryan nations, begins. Cen- tral Europe and central Asia form one great solid mass of nearly unbroken territory. The southern parts of each con- tinent, the lands below these central masses, consist of a series of peninsulas, running, in the case of Europe, into the great inland sea called the Mediterranean — the sea which brings all three continents into connexion— in the case of Asia into the Ocean itself. Europe thus consists of a great central plain, cut off by a nearly unbroken mountain range from a system of islands and peninsulas to the south, which is again balanced to the north by a sort of secondary system L] GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. II of islands and peninsulas, the Baltic being a sort of northern Mediterranean. We might almost say the same of Asia, as the mouths of the great rivers *.vhich run to the north form several peninsulas and inland seas. But then this part of the world has always been, so to speak, frozen up, and it never has played, nor can play, any part in history. io. The three great European Peninsulas. — We thus see that the southern part of Europe consists mainly of three great peninsulas, those of Spain, Italy, and what we may roughly call Greece. Of these, the two eastern peninsulas are purely Mediterranean, while Spain, from its position at one end of the Old World, could not help having one side to the Ocean. So Northern Europe may be said to consist of the two Scandinavian peninsulas and of our own British islands, which in a certain way balance Spain, and which, in a general glance, seem peninsular rather than insular. Now of the three southern peninsulas, it will be seen at once that the eastern one has a character of its own. Though the nearest to Asia, it is in its geographical character the most thoroughly European. As Europe is, more than either of the other continents, a land of islands and peninsulas, so Greece and the countries near to it are, more than any other part of Europe, a land of islands and peninsulas. It is therefore hardly more than ue should expect when we find that the recorded history of Europe begins in this eastern peninsula, that is to say, in Greece ; that for several ages the history of Europe is little more than a history of this and the neighbouring peninsula, that is to say, of Greece and Italy ; that the third peninsula, that of Spain, first appears in European history as a kind of appendage to the other two ,• and that the historical importance of central and northern Europe belongs to a later date still. II. The Aryan Settlement of Europe. The Greeks and Italians. — This does not however necessarily prove that the 12 ORIGIN- OF THE NA TTONS. [chap. two peninsulas ,of Greece and Italy were positively the first parts of Europe which received Aryan inhabitants. There can he no doubt, from the close likeness of the Greek and Lathi languages, that the Aryan inhabitants of those two peninsulas branched off from the original stock as one swarm, and parted most probably at the head of the great Hadriatic Gulf. They thus became two nations, or rather two groups of many nations ; but the fact that the Greek and Latin languages agree so closely together shows that there was a time when the forefathers of the Greeks and the fore- fathers of the Italians had already parted off from the fore- fathers of the Hindoos and Germans, but had not yet parted off from one another. Now the time when they occupied these two peninsulas must have been long before the be- ginnings of recorded history, so that it is impossible to give any details of the way in which the land was conquered. Still it is not in the least likely that they found the land un- inhabited. They may have found earlier inhabitants who were not Aryans, as the Aryans certainly did in many other parts of Europe, or they may even have found Aryan settlers earlier than themselves. The exact relations between the Greeks and the other ancient nations of south-eastern Europe are in some respects very hard to make out, and the little that can be said about it in such a sketch as this had better be said when we come to speak of Greece somewhat more par- ticularly. But of the people whom the Italians found in the middle peninsula of the three, we must say something more. 12. The Italians and Celts. — In the case of the Italians, we know a little more of the nations, both Aryan and other- wise, whom they seem to have found in their peninsula. In some parts they most likely found a non-Aryan people, and it can hardly be doubted that, if they entered their peninsula by land from the head of the Hadriatic Gulf, they already found a Celtic people in the northern part of it. The Celts were r.] THE CELTS. 13 the first wave of the Aryan migration in central Europe, and we therefore find them the furthest to the west of any Aryan people. In historical times we find them in Gaul, in the British Islands, in parts of Spain and Italy, and in the bordei lands of Italy and Germany south of the Danube. Now it is not likely that they found any part of these lands quite uninhabited ; it is far more likely that they found an earlier people dwelling in them, whom they slew or drove out. In Spain indeed and in Southern Gaul we know that they did so, because, as has been already said, there is a small district on each side of the Pyrenees, where a non-Aryan tongue is still spoken by the Basques. These, we cannot doubt, are remnants of the earlier people who inhabited Spain and Southern Gaul, and most likely other parts of Western Europe, before either the Celts or Italians came. And we can hardly doubt that the Italians found people of this race, perhaps in their peninsula itself, and at any rate on its borders. But the Italians never settled far west of their own peninsula ; the first Aryans who pushed their way intc Western Europe as far as the Ocean were the Celts. But wc must now mark that, as the Aryans pressed upon and slew oi drove out the Turanians and other earlier settlers whom they found in the lands into which they came, so presently other Aryan swarms came pressing upon the first Aryans, and dispossessed or drove them out in like manner. Thus, in Western Europe, while the earlier inhabitants have been driven up by the Celts into very small corners indeed, the Celts themselves were in the end also driven up into corners, though not into quite such small corners. Thus, out of all the lands where the Celts once dwelled, their languages, of which the British or Welsh, the Breton, and the Irish tongues still survive, are now spoken only in certain parts of Gaul, Britain, and Ireland. This change is partly because, as we shall see as we go on, a large part of the 14 ORIGIN OF THE NATIONS. [chap. Celts were conquered by the Romans, and learned to speak £heir language. But it is also partly because ano'/jer wave of Aryan settlement presently came into Western Europe, pressed upon the Celts from the east, and drove them out of a great part of the land, just as they had driven the earlier people. And so in later times, other branches of the Aryan family have pressed backwards and forwards, and have conquered and displaced other Aryan nations, just as much as those that were not Aryan. But there can be no doubt that the Celts, whom we find the furthest to the west of any Aryan people, were the first Aryans who made theii >*ay into the western lands of Spain, Gaul, and Britain. 13. The Teutons or Dutch. — The second Aryan .swarm in Western Europe, that which came after the Cehs, is the one with whose history we are more concerned than with that ot any other ; for it is the branch of the Aryan family to which we ourselves belong. These are the Teutons, the forefathers of the Germans and the English, and of the Danes, Swedes, and Nor- wegians in Northern Europe. They do not appear in history till a much later time than the Celts, and then we find them lying immediately to the east of the Celts, chiefly in the land which is now called Germany. From this they spread them- selves into many of the countries of Europe ; but in most cases they got lost among the earlier inhabitants, and learned to speak their lar.g lge. The chief parts of Europe where Teutonic languages are now spoken are Germany, England, and Scandinavia. In the last-named country we cannot doubt that the present Teutonic inhabitants we*e the first Aryan settlers; for it is plan that they found a Turanian people there, some of whom still remain, by the name of Laps and Fins, in the extreme north of Sweden and Norway and on the eastern coast of the Baltic. But in most places the Teutons, as the second wave, came into lands where other Aryan settlers had been before them. Sometimes they I] THE TEUTONS AND SLAVES. 15 may have simply come in the wake of the Celts as they were pressing westward ; but sometimes they found the Celts in the land and drove them out, as was especially the case hi the British Isles. Of the first coming of the Teutons into Europe we can say nothing from written history, any more than of the first coming of the Celts. But many of their chief settlements, and among them their settlement in Britain, happened so late that we know a good deal about them. The true name of the Teutons is Theodisc or Dutch, from Theod, people, as one might say " the people," as op- posed to foreigners. The Germans still call themselves Deutschen in their own language, and not so long ago the word Dutch was still used in English in a sense at least as wide as this, and did not mean only the one people to whom alone we now commonly give the name. 14. The Slaves and Lithuanians. — The third wave of Aryan settlement in the central parts of Europe consisted ot the Slaves and Lithuanians, whom for our purpose we may put together. It must not be thought that the word Slave, as the name of a people, comes from slave in its common sense of bondman. It is just the other way, for the word slarue got the sense of bondman because of the great number of bondmen of Slavonic birth who were at one time spread over Europe. This third swarm forms the Aryan inhabitants of the central part of Eastern Europe, of Old Prussia and Lithuania, of Russia, Poland, Bohemia, of parts of Hungary, and of a large part of the countries which are subject to the Turks. They thus lie to the east of the Teutons, who in after-times turned about and greatly enlarged their borders at their cost. And it is also among these Slavonic people that we find the only instances in Europe of a Turanian people turning about and establishing themselves at the cost of Aryan nations. One of these is the Hungarians or Magyars, a people allied to the Fins who piessed in as conquerors, and 16 ORIGIN OF THE NA TIONS. [CHAP. founded a kingdom which still lasts, and where the old Turanian tongue is still spoken. The other case is that oi the Ottoitian Turks, who still bear rule over many of the Greeks, Slaves, and other Aryan and Christian people in south-eastern Europe. And as we go on, we shall find other cases in eastern Europe of Turanian nations invading or ruling over Aryans ; but it is only the Hungarians and the Ottoman Turks who founded kingdoms which have lasted to our own time. The last Aryan people to be mentioned in this survey of Europe are the Lithuanians, whose language and history is closely connected with that of the Slaves. They are the smallest, as the Slaves are the largest, of the great divisions of the Aryan settlers in Europe. But they are of great importance, because their language is in some sort the very oldest in Europe, that is, it is the one which has in many things undergone the least change from the common Aryan tongue from which all set out. But it is only in a very small part of Europe, on the south-east corner of the Baltic, that the Lithuanian tongue is still spoken. 15. Rome the Centre of European History. — Such is a very short sketch of the settlement of the chief Aryan nations in Europe. The history of these nations forms European history. But, even among these Aryan nations in Europe, some have played a much more important part than others. Thus the Lithuanians and Slaves have always lagged behind the other nations. Nor have the Celts played any great part in history, except when they have come under either Roman or Teutonic influences. The nations which have stood out the foremost among all have been the Greeks, the Romans, and the Teutoiis. And among these it is the Romans who form the centre of the whole story. Rome alone founded an universal Empire in which all earlier history loses itself, and out of which all later history grew. That Empire, at the time of itf I.] ROME THE COMMON CENTRE. 17 greatest extent, took in the whole of what was then the civil- ized world, that is to say, the countries round about the Muiiterra?iean Sea, alike in Europe, Asia, and Africa. The Roma;' Empire was formed by gradually bringing under its dominion all the countries within those bounds which had already begun to have any history, those which we may call the states of the Old World. And it was out of the breaking up of the great dominion of Rome that what we may call the states of the New World, the kingdoms and nations of modern Europe, gradually took their rise. Thus through the whole of our sketch we must be ever thinking cf Rome, ever looking to Rome, sometimes looking forward to it, sometimes looking back to it, but always having Rome in our mind as the centre of the whole story. In the former part of our sketch we have to deal with kingdoms and -nations which are one day to come under the power of Rome. In the latter part of our sketch we have to deal with kingdoms and nations, many of which actually formed part of the Roman dominion, and all of which have been brought, more or less fully, under Roman influences. In this way Rome will never pass out of our sight. 16. Division of Periods. — We may thus say that the history of the civilized part of the world falls into three parts. There is the history of the states which were in being before the Roman dominion began, and out of whose union the Roman dominion was formed. Then there is the history of the Roman dominion itself. Lastly, there is the history of the states which arose out of the break- ing up of the Roman dominion. But we shall have much more to say about the states which grew up out of the breaking up of the Roman dominion than about the states which were brought together to form it. There ire two reasons for this. History which we can fully just, history which was written down at or soon after the C 18 ORIGIN OF THE NA TIONS. [chap. i. time when things happened, begins only a few hundred years before the Roman power came to its full growth. But a far longer time has passed since the days when the Roman dominion began to break in pieces, Thus the portion of trustworthy history which comes after the days of the Roman dominion is much longer than the portion which comes before it. And in these later times we have to deal with many great and famous states, among which are those which have grown into the chief powers of Europe in our own day. But in the earlier time, the time before the Roman dominion, we know very little of most of the European nations : the history of most of them may be said to begin at the time when the Romans began to conquer them. Of most of them therefore the little that we have to say will be best said when we come to speak of the Roman conquests. But there is one European country which has a history of its own before its conquest by the Romans, and a history longer and nobler than that of the Romans themselves. This country is Greece. Of Greece then, and of Greece alone, we must give a separate sketch in the next chapter, before we begin to trace the steps by which Rome won her universal dominion. CHAPTER II. GREECE AND THE GREEK COLONIES. Connexion behveen the Greeks and Italians ( I ) — their relation to other neighbouring nations (i) — their early advances over their kindrea (i) — meaning of the name Hellas (2) — geographical character oj the country (2) — number of islands and peninsulas (2) — consequent number of small states (2) — early political superiority of Greece (3) — relations between the Greeks and Phoenicians (4) — extent of the Phoenician Colonies (4) — extent of the Greek Colonies (5) — dis- tinction between Greeks and Barbarians (6) — relations of the Greeks to the kindred nations (6)— relations cwiong the cities of Greece (7) — relations of the colonies to the mother cities (7) — early consti- tutions of the Greek cities ; likeness of those to other Aryan nations (8) — Kingship, Aristocracy, Democracy (8) — Tyranny (9) — Greek religion and mythology (10) — the Homeric poems (il) — • the Dorian migration (11) — the Mess enian wars (11) — reforms of Solon at Athens (11) — growth of the Persians (12) — their con- quests of Lydia and the Greek cities of Asia (12)— -first Persian invasion of Greece; Battle of Marathon (13) — second Persian invasion of Greece ; Battles of Salamis, Plataia, and My kali {l^) — greatness of Athens (14) — beginning of the Peloponnesian Wat (15) — Athenian expedition to Sicily (15) — Athens overcome by Sparta (15) — the dominion of Sparta {16)— the Peace of Antal- kidas (16) — rise of Thebes (17) — rise of Macedonia under Philip ; his supremacy in Greece (18) — conquests of Alexander the Great (19) — effects of his conquests ; spread of Greek civilizatiojt in Asia (20) — the Successors of Alexander in Asia and Egypt (21) — the later Kings of Macedonia and Epeiros (22) — character of the later history of Greece (23)— prevalence of Federal Gcn>ernments in later C2 «0 GREECE AND THE GREEK COLONIES, [chap. Greece; Leagues of Achaia, jEtolia, and elsewhere (24) — greatness of Sparta under Kleomenfc (25) — interference of Rome in Greek affairs (25)— Summary (26). I. The Greek People. — Whether the Greeks were the first Aryan people to settle in Europe or in Eastern Europe we cannot tell for certain. But we do know for certain that they were the first Aryan nation whose deeds were recorded in written history ; and there never was any nation whose deeds were more worthy to be recorded. For no nation evei did such great things, none ever made such great advances in every way, so wholly by its own power and with so little help from aray other people. Yet we must not look on the Greeks as a nation quite apart by themselves. We have already seen that the Greek people were part of a great Aryan settlement which occupied both the two eastern peninsulas, and that the forefathers of the Greeks and the forefathers of the Italians must have kept together for a good while after they had parted company from the other branches of the Aryan family. There is some reason to think that some of the other nations bordering near upon Greece, both in the eastern peninsula and in the western coast of Asia, in Illyria, Thrace, Phrygia, and Lydia, were not only Aryan, but were actually part of the same swarm as the Greeks and Italians However this may be, it seems quite certain that most of the nations lying near Greece, as in Epeiros and Macedonia, which lie to the north, in Sicily and Southern Italy, and in some parts of the opposite coasts of Asia, were very closely akin to the Greeks, and spoke languages which came much nearer to Greek even than the languages of the rest of Italy. The people of all these countries seem to have had a power beyond all other people of adopting the G)eek language and manners, and, so to speak, of making themselves Greeks. The Greeks seem, in fact, to have been one among several kindred nations which II.] GEOGRAPHY OF GREECE. 21 shot in advance of its kinsfolk, and which was therefore able in the end to become a sort of teacher to the others. And one thing which helped the Greeks in thus putting themselves in advance of all their kinsfolk and neighbours was the nature of the land in which they settled. 2. Geographical Character of Greece. — Anyone who turns to the map will see that the country which we call Greece, but which its own people have always called Hellas, is the southern part of the great eastern peninsula of Europe. But we must remember that, in the way of speaking of the Greeks themselves, the name Hellas did not mean merely the country which we now call Greece, but any country where Hellenes or Greeks lived. Thus there might be patches, so to speak, of Hellas anywhere ; and there were such patches of Hellas round a great part of the Mediterranean Sea wherever Greek settlers had planted colonies. But the first and truest Hellas, the mother-land of all Hellenes, was the land which we call Greece, with the islands round about it. There alone the whole land was Greek, and none but Hellenes lived in it. It is, above all the rest of Europe, a land of islands and peninsulas ; and that was, no doubt, one main reason why it was the first part of Europe to stand forth as great and free in the eyes of the whole world. For in early times the sea-coast is always the part of a land which is first civilized, because it is the part which can most easily 'have trade and other dealings with other parts of the world. Thus, as Greece was the first part of Europe to become civilized, so the coasts and islands of Greece were both sooner and more highly civilized than the other inland parts. Those inland parts are almost everywhere full of mountains and valleys, so that the different parts of the land, both on the sea-coast and in the inland parts, were very much cut off from one another. Each valley or island or little peninsula had its own town, with its own little territory, forming, whenever it could, a 22 GREECE AXD THE CREEK COLONIES, [chap. separate government independent of all others, and with the right of making war and peace, just as if it had been a great kingdom. 3. Character of Grecian History. — The geographical nature of the land in this way settled the history of the Greek people. It is only in much later times that a great kingdom or commonwealth can come to have the same political and intellectual life as a small state consisting of one city. In an early state of things the single city is always in advance of the great kingdom, not always in wealth or in mere bodily comforts, but always in political freedom and in real sharpness of wit. Thus the Greeks, with their many small states, were the first people from whom we can learn any lessons in the art of politics, the art of ruling and persuading men according to law. The little common- wealths of Greece were the first states at once free and civilized which the world ever saw. They were the first scates which gave birth to great statesmen, orators, and generals who did great deeds, and to great historians who set down those great deeds in writing. It was in the Greek commonwealths, in short, that the political and intellectual life of the world began. But, for the very reason that theii freedom came so early, they were not able to keep it so long as states in later times which have been equally free and of greater extent. 4. The Greeks and the Phoenicians. — Whether the Greeks found any earlier inhabitants in the land which they made their own is a point on which we cannot be quite certain, but it is more likely that they d:d than that they did not. But it is certain that, when they began to spread themselves from the mainland into the islands, they found in the islands powerful rivals already settled. These were the Phoenicians, as the Greeks called them, who were a Semitic people, and who played a great part in both Grecian and Roman history. II.] GREEKS AND PHCENICIANS. 23 Their real name among themselves was Canaanites, and they dwelled on the coast of Palestine, at the east end of the Mediterranean Sea, especially in the great cities of Sidon, Tyre, and Arados or Arvad. They were a more really civilized people, and made a nearer approach to free government, than any other people who were not Aryans. They were especially given to trade and to everything which had to do with a seafaring life. They had thus begun to spread their trade, and to found colonies, over a large part of the Mediterranean coast, before the Greeks became of any note in the world. They had even made their way beyond what the Greeks called the Pillars of Herakles, that is, beyond the Strait of Gibraltar, and had sailed from the Mediterranean Sea into the Ocean. They had there founded the city of Gades, which still keeps its name as Cadiz, and they founded other colonies, both in Spain and on the north- west coast of Africa, of which the most famous was Carthage. They had also settlements in the islands of the ^Egaean Sea, as well as in the greater islands of Cyprus and Sicily, and it was in these islands that they met the Greeks as enemies. But, even before the Greeks had begun to send out colonies, they had a good deal of trade with the Phoenicians. And as the Phoenicians were the more early civilized of the two nations, the Greeks seem to have learned several things of them, and above all the alphabet. The Greeks learned the letters which the Phoenicians used to write their own lan- guage, which was much the same as the Hebrew, and they adapted them, as well as they could, to the GLeek language. And from them the alphabet gradually made its way to the Italians, and from them to the other nations of Europe, with such changes as each nation found needful for its ov/n tongue. The Phoenicians did much in this way towards helping on the civilization of the Greeks : but there is no reason to believe that the Phoenicians, or any other people of Asia or 24 GREECE AND THE GREEK COLONIES. [ch*.p. Africa, founded any settlements in Greece itself after the Hellenes had once made the land their own. c. Foundation of the Greek Colonies. — From the main- land of Greece the Greek people gradually spread tnem- selves over most of the neighbouring islands, and over a large part of the Mediterranean coast, especially on the shores nearest to their own land. In fact, we may say that the Phoenicians and the Greeks between them planted colonies round the whole coast of the Mediterranean, save in two parts only. One of these was Egypt on the south; the other was Central and Northern Italy, where the native inhabitants were far too strong and brave to allow strangers to settle among them. The Greeks thus spread themselves over all the islands of the ^Egcean Sea, over the coasts ot Macedonia and Thrace to the north and of Asia Minor to the east, as well as in the islands to the west of Greece, Korkyra and the others which are known now as the Ionian Islands. A great part of this region became fully as Greek as Greece itself, only even here in some parts of the coast the Greek possessions were not quite unbroken, but were simply a city here and there, and nowhere, except in Greece itself, did the Greek colonists get very far from the sea. Other colonies were gradually planted in Cyprus, in Sicily and Southern Italy, and on the coast of Illyria on the eastern side of the Hadriatic. And there was one part of the Mediterranean coast which was occupied by Greek colonies where we should rather have looked for Phoenicians ; that is, in the lands west of Egypt, where several Greek cities arose, the chief of which was Kyrini. These were the only Greek settlements on the south coast of the Mediterranean. But some Greek colonies were planted as far east as the shores of the Euxine, and others as far west as the shores ot Gaul and Northern Spain. One Greek colony in these parts which should be specially remembered was Massalia t II.] GFEEKS AND BARBARIANS. 2j now Marseille. This was the only great Greek city in the western part of the Mediterranean, and it was the head of several smaller settlements on the coasts of Gaul and Spain. In the southern part of Spain, and in the greater part of northern Africa, the Greeks could not settle, because there the Phoenicians had settled before them. And no Greek sailors were ever bold enough to pass the Pillars of Hera- kles and to plant colonies on the shores of the Ocean. 6. Greeks and Barbarians.— We have thus seen the extent of country over which the Greek people spread themselves. There was their own old country and the islands nearest to it, where they alone occupied the whole land ; and there were also the more distant colonies, where Greek cities were planted here and there, on the coasts of lands which were occupied by men of other nations, or, as the Greeks called them, Barbarians. This word Barbarians, in its first use among the Greeks, simply meant that the people so called were people whose language the Greeks did nQt understand. They called them Barbarians, even though their blood and speech were nearly akin to their own, if only the difference was so great that their speech was not understood. It fol- lowed that in most parts of the world it was easy to tell who were Greeks and who were Barbarians, but that along the northern frontier of Greece the line was less strongly drawn than elsewhere. Along that border the ruder tribes of the Greek nation, the JEtolians, Akarnanians, and others, lived alongside of other tribes who were uot Greek, but who seem to have been closely allied to the Greeks. If you turn to the map, you will see along this northern border the lands of Macedonia., Epeiros, and Thessaly. Macedonia was ruled by Greek Kings, but it was never counted to be part of Greece till quite late times. Thessaly, on the other hand, was always reckoned as part of Greece, though the people who gave it its name seem not to have been of purely Greek 26 GREECE AND THE GREEK COLONIES, [chap. origin. In Epeiros again the same tribes are by some writers called Greeks and by others Barbarians, and it was only in quite late times that Epeiros, like Macedonia, was allowed to be a Greek country. So, among the colonies, though all were planted among people whom the Greeks looked on as Barbarians, yet it made a great practical difference whether the people among whom they were planted were originally akin to the Greeks or not. Thus, in many countries, as in, the lands round the ^Egsean and also in Italy and Sicily, the Greeks settled chiefly among people who were really very near to them in blood and speech, and who gradually adopted the Greek language and manners. Thus both Sicily and Southern Italy became quite Greek countries, though in Sicily the Greeks had to keep up a long struggle against the Phoenicians of Carthage, who also planted several colonies in that island. In Cyprus also the same struggle went on, and the island became partly Greek and partly Phoenician. But in those of the ^Egaean Islands where the Phoenicians had settled, the Greeks drove them out altogether. For there was no chance of the Phoenicians taking to Greek ways as the Italians and Sicilians did. 7. The Greek Commonwealths. — Greece itself, the land to the south of the doubtful lands like Macedonia and Epeiros, was the only land which was wholly and purely Greek, where there was no doubt as to the whole people being Greek, and where we find the oldest and most famous cities of the Greek name. Such, in the great peninsula called Peloponnesos, were Sparta and Argos, and, in early times, Mykene j Corinth too on the Isthmus, and beyond the Isthmus, Megara> Athens, Thebes, and, in very early times, Orchomenos. Each Greek city, whenever it was strong enough, formed an inde- pendent state with its own little territory ; but it often hap- pened that a stronger city brought a weaker one more or less under its power. And in some parts of Greece several II.] THE GREEK COMMONWEALTHS. 27 towns joined together in Leagues, each town managing its own affairs for itself, but the whole making war and peace as a single state. Thus in Peloponnesos, first Mykene, then Argos, and lastly Sparta, held the first place, each in turn contriving to get more or less power over a greater or smaller number of other cities. And it would almost seem that in very early times the Kings of Mykene had a certain power over all Peloponnesos and many of the islands. Still, even when a Greek city came more or less under the power of a stronger city, it did not wholly lose the character of a separate commonwealth. And when the cities of Old Greece began to send out colonies, those colonies became separate commonwealths also. Each colony came forth from some city in the mother country, and it often happened that a colony sent forth colonies of its own in turn. Each colony became an independent state, owing a certain respect to the mother city, but not being subject to it. And, as the colonies were commonly planted where there was a rich country or a posi- tion good for trade, many of them became very flourishing and powerful. In the seventh and sixth ctnturies before Christ, many of the colonial cities, as Miletos in Asia, Syba- ris in Italy, and Syracuse in Sicily, were among the most nourishing of all Greek cities, far more so than most of the cities in Greece itself. But the colonies were for the most part not so well able to keep their freedom as the cities in Greece were. 8. Forms of Government. — In the earliest days of Greece we find much the same form of government in the small Greek states which we find among all the Aryan nations of whose early condition we have any account. But both the Greeks and the Italians were unlike the Teutons and some of the other Aryan nations in one thing. That is because they were gathered together in cities from the very beginning, while some of the other nations were collections, not so much of 88 GREECE AND THE GREEK COLONIES, [chap. cities as of tribes. Still the early form of government was much the same in both cases. Each tribe or city had its own King or chief, whose office was mostly confined to one family, for the Kings were commonly held to be of the blood of the Gods. The King was the chief leader both in peace and war; but he could not do everything according to his own pleasure. For there was always a Council of elders or chief men, and also an Assembly of the whole people or at least of all those who were held to have the full rights of citizens. This kind of kingship lasted in Greece through the whole of fthe earliest times, through what are called the Heroic Ages, and in the neighbouring lands of Epeiros and Macedonia a kingship of much the same kind lasted on through nearly the whole of their history. But in Greece itself the kingly power was gradually abolished in most of the cities, and they be- came commonwealths. At first these commonwealths were aristocracies ; that is to say, only men of certain families were allowed to fill public offices and to take part in the assemblies by which the city was governed. These privi- leged families would in most cases be the descendants of the oldest inhabitants of the city, who did not choose to admit new-comers to the same full rights as themselves. Some of the Greek cities remained aristocracies till very late times ; but others soon became democracies ; that is to say, all citizens were allowed to hold offices and to attend the assemblies. But it must be remembered that everyone who lived in a Greek city was not therefore a citizen. For in most parts of Greece there were many slaves ; and if a man from one city went to live in another, even though the city in which he went to live was a democracy, neither he nor his chil- dren were made citizens as a matter of course. In a few cities the name King, in Greek Basileus, remained in use as the title of a magistrate, though one who no longer held the chief power And in Sparta they always went on having II.] FORMS OF GOVERNMENT. 29 Kings of the old royal house, two Kings at a time, who re- tained much power both in military and in religious matters, though they were no longer the chief rulers of the state. 9. The Tyrants. — All the three chief forms of government, Monarchy, Aristocracy, and Democracy, were held in Greece Co be lawful ; but there was another kind which was always deemed unlawful. This was Tyranny. It sometimes hap- pened, especially in cities where the nobles and the people were quarrelling as to whether the commonwealth should be aristocratic or democratic, that some man would snatch away the power from both and make himself Tyrant. That is to say, he would, perhaps with the good will of part of the people, seize the power, and much more than the power, ot the old Kings. The word Tyrant meant at first no more than that a man had got the power of a King in a city where there was no King by law. It did not necessarily mean that he used his power badly or cruelly, though, as most of the Tyrants did so, the word came to have a worse meaning than it had at first. The time when most of the Tyrants reigned in Greece was in the seventh and sixth centuries before Christ ; and the most famous of them were Peisistratos and his sons, who ruled at Athens in the sixth century. In the colonies, and especially in Sicily, Tyrants went on rising and falling during almost the whole time of Grecian history. But in old Greece we do not hear much of them after the sons ol Peisistratos were driven out, about the end of the sixth century, till quite the later times of Grecian history, when Tyrants again were common, but Tyrants of quite another kind. 10. The Greek Religion. — The religion of the Greeks was one of those forms of mythology which have been already spoken of as growing up among most of the Aryan nations. All the powers of nature and all the acts of man's life were believed to be under the care of different dekies, of different degrees of power. The head of all was Zeus the God of the 30 GREECE AND THE GREEK COLONIES, [chap. sky, and he is described as reigning on Mount Olympos in Thessaly, where the Gods were believed to dwell, with his Council and his general Assembly, much like an early Greek King on earth. The art and literature of the Greeks, and indeed their government and their whole life, were closely bound up with their religion. The poets had from the begin- ning many beautiful stories to tell about the Gods and about the Heroes, who were mostly said to be children of the Gods. And when the Greeks began to practise the arts, it was in honour of the Gods and Heroes that the noblest buildings and the most beautiful statues and pictures were made. II. The Early History of Greece. — Of the earliest times of Grecian history we have no accounts written down at the time ; we have to make out what we can from the tradi- tions preserved by later writers, and from the notices of the poets. For composition in verse always goes before com- position in prose, and the earliest Greek writings that we have are those of the poets. The poems which go by the name of Homer, the Iliad and Odyssey, give us a picture of the state of things in the earliest days of Greece, and allusions and expressions in them also help us to some particular facts. But scholars no longer believe that the story of the war of Troy is a true history, though the tale most likely arose out of the settlements of the Greeks on the north-west coast ot Asia. These settlements were among the earliest of the Greek colonies, the very earliest probably being the settle- ments in the southern islands of the yEgsean, which Homer himself seems to speak of. These were so early that it is vain to try to give them any exart date. Presently v/e get glimmerings, which seem to have been preserved partly by poets and partly by tradition, of a great movement by which the Dorians, a people of Northern Greece, came and con- quered the Achaians in Pelop07inesos and reigned in their chief cities, Argos, Sparta, Coimth, and others. The other II.] EARLY HISTORY OF GREECE. 31 chief division of the Greek nations was the Ionians, whose chief city was Athens, and who are said to have planted many colonies in Asia about the same time when the Dorians came into Peloponnesos. And, when we get down to times to which we can give something more like exact dates, we have remains of several poets which sometimes help us to particular facts. Thus we learn something of a war in which Sparta conquered her neighbours of Messene from the poems of the minstrel Tyrtaios, who made songs to encourage the Spartan warriors. This was in the seventh century before Christ ; and in the next century, Solon, the famous lawgiver of Athens, made laws for his own city, and first gave the mass of the people a share in the government, which was the beginning of the famous "democracy. Solon was also a poet, and we have some remains of his verses, which throw light on his political doings. So again, the poems of Theognis of Megara throw some light on the dis- putes between the nobles and the people in that city. But from fragments like these Ave can get no connected history, so that most of what we know of these days comes from later writers, who did not live near the time, and whose accounts therefore cannot be trusted in every detail. It is only when we come to the Persian Wars, in the beginning of the fifth century before Christ, that we begin to have really trustworthy accounts. For those times we have the his- tory of Herodotos, who, though he did not himself -live at the time, had seen and spoken with those who did. By this time the chief cities of Greece had settled down into their several forms of government, aristocratic or democratic. And most of the colonies had been founded, especially those in Italy and Sicily, which were at this time very nourishing, though many of them were under Tyrants. Greece had now pretty well put on the shape which she was to wear during the greatest times of her history, and she had now to bear 32 GREECE AND THE GREEK COLONIES, [chap. the trial of a great foreign invasion and to come out all the stronger for it. 12. The Persians. — The people of Persia, though they lived far away from the shores of the Mediterranean, in the further part of Asia beyond the great rivers Euphrates and Tigris, were much more nearly allied to the Greeks in blood and speech than most of the nations which lay between them. For they belonged to the Eastern branch of the Aryan family, who had remained so long separate from their kinsfolk in Europe, and who now met them as enemies. The Persians first began to be of importance in the sixth century before Christ, when, under their King Cyrus, they became a con- quering people. He took Babylon, which at that time was the great power of Asia, and also conquered the kingdom of Lydia in Asia Minor, a conquest which first brought the Persians across the Greeks, first in Asia and then in Europe. For the Greeks who were settled along the coast of Asia had been just before conquered by Croesus, King of Lydia, the first foreign prince who ever bore rule over any Greeks ; and now, as being part of the dominions of Crcesus, they were con- quered again by Cyrus. The Greek cities of Asia, which had, up to this time, been among the greatest cities of the Greek name, now lost their freedom and much of their greatness. And from this time various disputes arose between the Persian Kings and the Greeks in Europe. The Athenians had now driven out their Tyrants and had made their government more democratic. They were therefore full of life and energy, and they gave help to the Asiatic Greeks in an attempt to throw off the Persian yoke. Then the Persian King Darius wished to make the Athenians to take back Hippias, the son of Peisistratos, who had been their Tyrant. At last Darius made up his mind to punish the Athenians and to bring the other Greeks under his power ; and thus the wars between Greece and Persia began. II.] THE PERSIAN WARS. 33 13. The Persian Wars. — The first Persian expedition against Greece was sent by Darius in the year 490 B.C. A Persian fleet crossed the yEgaean, and landed an army in Attica. But, far smaller as their numbers were, the Athe- nians, under their general Miltiades, utterly defeated the invaders in the famous battle of Marathon. In this battle the Athenians had no help except a small force from their neighbours of Plataia, a small town on the Boeotian border, which was in close alliance with them. This was the first of all the victories of the West over the East, the first battle which showed how skill and discipline can prevail over mere numbers. As such, it is perhaps the most memorable battle in the history of the world. Ten years later, in 480 B.C., a much greater Persian expedition came under King Xerxes himself, the son of Darius. He came by land, and all the native kingdoms and Greek colonies on the north coast of the ^Egaean, and even a large part of Greece itself, submitted to him. Some Greek cities indeed, especially Thebes, fought for the Barbarians against their countrymen. But Athens, Sparta, and several other Greek cities withstood the power of Xerxes, and in the end drove his vast fleet and army back again in utter defeat. In this year 480 were fought the battle of Thermopylai, where the Spartan King Leo7iidas was killed, and the seafight of Salamis, won chiefly by the Athenian fleet under Themistokles. After this Xerxes went back ; but in the next year his general Mardonios was defeated by the Spartans and other Greeks in the battle of Plataia, and the same day the Persians were also defeated both by land and sea at Mykale, on the coast of Asia. These three battles, Salamis, Plataia, and Mykale, decided the war, and the Persians never again dared to invade Greece itself. But the war went on for several years longer before the Persians were driven out of various posts which they held north of the ^Egaean. Still they were at last wholly driven out of Europe, 34 GREECE AND THE GREEK COLONIES, [chap. and they were even obliged to withdraw for a time from the Greek cities of Asia. 14. The Growth of Athens.— At thebeginningofthe Persian Wars Sparta was generally looked up to as the chief state of Greece ; but, as Athens was much the stronger at sea, it was soon found that she was better able than Sparta to carry or* the war against the Persians, and to recover and protect the islands and cities on the coasts. Most of the cities therefore joined in a League, of which Athens was the head, and which was set in order by the Athenian Aristeides, surnamed the Just. But after a time Athens, instead of being merely the head, gradually became the mistress of these smaller states, and most of them became her subjects, paying tribute to her. Athens thus rose to a wonderful degree of power and splendour, beyond that of any of the other cities of Greece. The chief man at Athens at this time was PerikUs, the greatest states- man of Greece, perhaps of the world, under whose influence the Athenian government became a still more perfect demo- cracy. In his time Athens was adorned with the temples and other public buildings which the world has admired ever since. This was also the time of the great dramatic poets, Aeschylus, Sophokles, Euripides, and Aristophanh. ^schylus had fought in all the great battles with the Persians. Euripides and Aristophanes were younger men who lived on through the next period. Oratory, which was so needful in a democratic state, began to be cultivated as an art, and so were the different forms of philosophy ; in fact, there never was a time when the human mind was brought so near to its highest pitch as in these few years of the greatest power and splendour of Athens. 15. The Peloponnesian War. — But the great power of Athens raised the jealousy of many of the other Greek cities, and at last a war broke out between Athens and her allies on the one side, and Sparta and her allies on the other. IL] THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR. 35 This war, which began in the year 431 B.C. and lasted for twenty-nine years almost without stopping, was known as the Peloponnesian War, because it was waged by the Athenians against Sparta and her allies, among whom were the greater part of the cities of Peloponnesos, besides Thebes and some other cities in other parts of Greece. Of this war we know all the even's in great detail, because we have the history of it from writers who lived at the time. The history of the greater part of the war was written by Thucydides, who was not only living at the time, but himself held a high command in the Athenian army. And the history of the latter years of the war was written by Xenophon, another Athenian writer, who also lived at the time. This Avar might be looked on as a war between lonians and Dorians, between democracy and oligarchy, Athens being the chief of the Ionian and democratic states, and Sparta the chief of the Dorian and aristocratic states. But the two parties were never exactly divided either according to descent or according to forms of government. It is perhaps more important to re- mark that Sparta had many free and willing allies, while Athens had but few, so that she had to fight mainly with her own powers and those of the allies who were really her subjects. During the first ten years of the war, down to the year 421, the two parties contended with nearly equal success, the Athenians being much the stronger by sea, and the Spartans and their allies by land. A peace was then made, but it was not very well kept ; so that Thucydides says that the years of peace ought to be reckoned as a part of the war. Then, in 415, the Athenians sent a fleet to attack the city of Syracuse in Sicily. The Syracusans got help from Sparta, and so the war began again ; but, after two years of fighting and siege, the Athenians were altogether defeated before Syracuse. The allies of Athens now began to revolt, and the war during the later years was carried on almost D 2 36 GREECE AND THE GREEK COLONIES, [chap. wholly on tlie coasts of Asia. The Persians now began to take a share in it, because they were eager to drive away the Athenians from those coasts, and to get back the Greek cities in Asia. But they did more in the way of giving, and sometimes only promising, money to the Spartans than by actually fighting. Several battles, chiefly by sea, were fought in these wars with varying success ; and it is wonder- ful to see how Athens regained her strength after her loss before Syracuse. At last, in the year 405, the Athenians were defeated by the Spartan admiral Lysandros at Aigos- potamos in the Hellespont. Athens was now besieged, and in the next year she had to surrender. She now lost all her dominion and her great naval power, and was obliged to become a member of the Spartan alliance. Her democra- tical government was also taken away, and an oligarchy of thirty men was set up under the protection of Sparta. But in the next year, 403, the oligarchy was put down, and Athens, though she did not get back her power, at least got back her freedom. 16. The Dominion of Sparta. — At this time, at the end of the fifth century before Christ, Sparta was more than ever the greatest power of Greece. From this time Athens has no longer any claim to be looked on as politically the first power of Greece. But she still remained one of the greatest among the Grecian cities, and, as her political power grew less, she became more and more the acknowledged chief in all kinds of literature and philosophy. Her loss of any- thing like an equal power with Sparta led to great changes in the course of the next century. New powers began to come to the front. We shall, first of all, see the foremost place in Greece held for a while by Thebes, the chief city of Bceotia, which had always been reckoned one of the greater cities of Greece, but which during the Peloponnesian war had played only a secondary part as one of the allies of Sparta, i II.] SPARTA AND THEBES. 37 We shall next see the power over all Greece fall into the hands of a state which had hitherto not been reckoned to be Greek at all, through the victories of the great Macedonian Kings, Philip and Alexander. But for a while the Spartans \ had it all their own way. No state in Greece could stano. up against them ; the government of most of the cities passed into the hands of men who were ready to do whatever the Spartans told them, and in many of them there even were Spartan governors and garrisons. A few years after the end of the Peloponnesian war, the Spartans made war upon Persia, and their King Agesilaos waged several successful campaigns in Asia Minor. But by this time several of the Greek cities had got jealous and weary of the Spartan power, and the Persian King Artaxerxes, against whom the Spartans were fighting, was naturally glad to help them with both money and ships. So in the year 394 Agesilaos had to come back to withstand a confederacy formed against Sparta by Athens, Argos, Corinth, and Thebes. Several battles were fought ; and, though the Spartans commonly had the victory, yet it was shown that the Theban soldiers were able to do great things. In the former part of this war the Persian King sent his great Phoenician fleet to help the Athenians ; but afterwards he was persuaded to change sides, and in 387 a peace was made, called the Peace of Antalkidas, by which the Greek cities of Asia were given up to Persia, and those of Europe were declared to be every one independent. But in truth the power of Sparta now became greater than ever, and the Spartans domineered and inter- fered with the other cities even more than before. Among other things, they treacherously seized the Kadmeia or citadel of Thebes, and put a Spartan garrison in it. They also put down a confederacy which the people of Olynthos were making among the Greek cities on the coasts of Macedonia and Thrace, and thus took sway what might have been a 38 GREECE AND THE GREEK COLONIES, [chap. great check to the growing power of the Macedonian Kings. 17. The Rise of Thebes. — It was now that the power of Sparta was at its very highest that it was overthrown. The Thebans, who had shown in the former war that they were nearly as good soldiers as the Spartans themselves, now rose against them. In 379 the Spartans were driven out of Thebes ; a democratical government was set up, and Thebes, under two great citizens, Pelopidas and Epamei- nondas, became for a while the chief power of Greece. The Spartans were defeated in 371, the first time they had ever been defeated in a pitched battle, at Leuklra in Bceotia. After this Epameinondas invaded Pelooonnesos several times. He greatly weakened the power of Sparta by restor- ing the independence of Messini, which the Spartans had long ago conquered, and by persuading the Arkadians to join in a League and to found Megalopolis or the Great City, near the Spartan frontier. During the first part of this vvai the Athenians took part with Thebes, and in the later part with Sparta ; and in the course of it they won back a great deal of their power by sea, and again got many of the islands and maritime cities to become their allies. At last, in 362, Epameinondas was killed at Mantineia in a battle against the Spartans and Athenians, and after his death, as there was no one left in Thebes fit to take his place, the power of the city gradually died out. 18. The Rise of Macedonia. — We have already seen that, though the Macedonians were probably closely allied to the Greeks, and though the Macedonian Kings were acknow- ledged to be of Greek descent, yet Macedonia had hitherto not been reckoned as a Greek state. Its Kings had not taken much share in Greek affairs, but several of them had done much to strengthen their kingdom against the neighbouring Barbarians, and also to Dring in Greek art* II. J RISE OF MACEDONIA. 3$ and civilization among their own people. Just at this time there arose in Macedonia a King called Philip the son of Amyntas, who did much greater things than any of the Kings who had gone before him. His great object was, not exactly to conquer Greece or make it part of his own kingdom, but rather to get Macedonia acknowledged as a Greek state, and, as such, to win for it the same kind of supremacy over the other Greek states which had been held at different times by Mykene, Argos, Sparta, Athens, and Thebes. He artfully contrived to mix himself up with Grecian affairs, and to persuade many of the Grecian states to look upon him as their deliverer, and as the champion of the god Afiollon. The great temple of Delphi had been plundered by the Phokians, and Philip put himself forward as the avenger of this crime, and got himself acknowledged as a member of the Amphi- ktionic Council, the great religious assembly of Greece, which looked after the affairs of the Delphian Temple, This was much the same as formally acknowledging Macedonia to be a Greek state. Philip also conquered the Greek city of Oly?ithos in the neighbourhood of his own kingdom, and made the peninsula called Chalkidike, which runs out as it were with three fingers into the ALgsean, part of Macedonia. This he might perhaps not have been able to do, if the Spartans had not already destroyed the great Greek alliance which the Olynthians had begun to make in those parts. Philip was several times at war with Athens, and it was during these wars that the great orator Demosthenes made himself famous by the speeches which he made to stir up his countrymen to act vigorously. Philip's last war was against Athens and Thebes together, and in 338 he gained a victory over them at Chaironeia in Bceotia, from which the overthrow of Grecian freedom may be dated. After this, all the Greeks, except the Spartans, were partly persuaded, partly compelled, to hold a synod at Corinth, where Philip was elected captain-general of 40 GREECE AND THE GREEK COLONIES, [chap. all Greece, to make war on Persia and avenge the old inva- sions of Greece by Darius and Xerxes. But, while he was making ready for a great expedition into Asia, he was mur- dered in the year 336 by one of his own subjects. 19. Alexander the Great. — Philip was succeeded by his son Alexander, known as Alexander the Great. He was presently acknowledged as the leader of Greece against the Persians, as his father had been. Thebes however, where Philip had put a Macedonian garrison, now revolted, but it was taken and destroyed by Alexander. In the next year, 334, Alexander set out on his great expedition, and he never returned to Macedonia and Greece. In the course of six years he completely subdued the Persian Empire, fighting three famous battles, at the river Granikos in Asia Minor in 334, at Zssos, near the borders of Cilicia and Syria, in 333, and at Arbela or Gaugamela in Assyria in 331. In these last . two battles the Persian King Darius was present, and was utterly defeated. Between the two last battles Alexander besieged and took Tyre, and received the submission of Egypt, where he founded the famous city which has ever since borne his name, Alexandria. Soon after the battle of Gaugamela Darius was murdered by some of his own officers, and Alexander now looked upon himself as King of Persia. He afterwards set out, half exploring, half conquering, as far as the river Hyphasis in northern India, beyond which his soldiers refused to follow him. At last he died at Babylon in 323, having made greater conquests than were ever made by any European prince before him or after him. And there was no conqueror whose conquests were more important, and in a certain sense more lasting ; for, though his great empire broke in pieces almost at once, yet the effects of his career have remained to all time. I 20. Effects of the Conquests of Alexander. — The con- quests of Alexander, though they were won so quickly, and M.] CONQUESTS OF ALEXANDER. 41 though a large part of them were soon lost again, made a great and lasting change throughout a large part of the world. Both he and those who came after him were great builders of cities in Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, and as far as their con- quests reached. In each of these cities was placed a Greek or Macedonian colony, and in the western part of Asia most of these cities lived and flourished, and some of them, like Alex- andria in Egypt and Antioch in Syria, soon took their place among the greatest cities in the world. The Greek language became the tongue of all government and literature through- out many countries where the people were not Greek by birth. It was thus at the very moment that Greece began to lose her political freedom that she made, as it were, an intellec- tual conquest of a large part of the world. And though, in the cities and lands which in this way became partially Hellenised, there was neither the political freedom nor the original genius of the great statesmen and writers of old Greece, yet mere learning and science flourished as they had never flourished before. The Greek tongue became the common speech of the civilized world, the speech which men of different nations used in speaking to one another, much as they use French now. The Greek colonies had done much to spread the Greek language and manners over a large part of the world. The Macedonian conquests now did still more ; but they did not, as the old colonies had done, carry also Greek freedom with them. 21. The Successors of Alexander. — The great empire of Alexander did not hold together even in name for more than a few years after his death. He left no one in the Macedo- nian royal family who was at all fit to take his place, and his dominions were gradually divided among his generals, who after a little while took the title of Kings. Thus arose the kingdom of the Ptolemies in Egypt, and that of the de- scendants of Seleukos in the East, which graduaLly shrank 42 GREECE AND THE GREEK COLONIES, [chap. up into the kingdom of Syria. In the countries beyond the Tigris the Macedonian power gradually died out ; but various states arose in Asia Minor, which were not strictly Greek, but which had a greater or less tinge of Greek culti- vation. Such were the kingdom of Pergamos and the League of the cities of Lykia. These arose in countries which had been fully subdued by Alexander, arid which won their independence only because the descendants of Seleukos could not keep their great dominions together. But Alex- ander's conquests had been made so fast that some parts even of Western Asia were not fully subdued. Thus out of the fragments of the Persian Empire several kingdoms arose, like those of Pontos and Bithynia, which were ruled by native Kings, but which also affected something of Greek civilization. And some real Greek states still contrived to keep their inde- pendence on or near the coast of Asia, as the city of Byzan- tion, {he island of Rhodes, and the city of Herakleia, which last was sometimes a commonwealth and sometimes under tyrants. Of many of these states we shall hear again as they came one by one under the power of Rome. But we are now more concerned with what happened in Macedonia and in Greece itself. 22. The later Macedonian Kings. — The death of Alexander was followed by a time of great confusion in Macedonia and Greece. Even while Alexander was away in Asia, the Spar- tans, under their king Agis, had tried to throw off the Mace- donian yoke, but in vain. After Alexander's death another attempt was made by several of the Greek states, especially the Athenians, who were again stirred up by Demosthenes, and the ^Etolians. These last were a people of western Greece, the least civilized of all the Greek states, but which now began to rise to great importance. This was called the Lamian War. In the end the Athenians had to yield, and they were obliged by the Macedonian general Antipatrot II.] LATER MACEDONIAN KINGS. 43 to change their constitution, making it much less democratical than before, and depriving many of the citizens of their votes. For many years there was the greatest confusion in Macedonia and Greece and all the neighbouring countries. And things were made worse by an attack from an enemy with whom the Greeks had never before had anything to do, Greece and Macedonia were invaded by the Gauls. By these we need not understand people from Gaul itself, but some of those Celtic tribes which were still in the east of Europe. After doing much mischief in those parts, the Gauls crossed over into Asia, and there founded a state of their own which was called Galatia, and, as they too began to learn some- thing of Greek civilization, Gallo-grcBcia. Meanwhile Kings were being constantly set up and overthrown in Macedonia, and each of them tried to get as much power and influ- ence as he could in Greece itself. At this time too Efiei- ros, a country which hitherto had been of very little im- portance, became a powerful state under its King Pyrrhos, who at one time obtained possession of Macedonia. He also waged wars in Italy and Sicily, which will be spoken of in the next chapter, and he had a great deal to do with the affairs of Peloponnesos, where he was at last killed in be- sieging Argos in 272. From this time things became rather more settled ; a second time of freedom, if not of great- ness, began in Greece, and a regular dynasty of Kings fixed itself in Macedonia. The old royal family was quite extinct, and the second set of Macedonian Kings were the descen- dants of Antigonos, one of the most famous of Alexander's generals. His son Demetrios, surnamed Poliorketes or the Besieger, got possession of the crown of Macedonia in 294. Both he and his son Antigonos Gonatas were driven out more than once, but in the end Antigonos contrived to keep the Macedonian crown, and to hand it on to his descendants, who held it till the Macedonian kingdom was conquered by Rome. 44 GREECE AND THE GREEK COLONIES, [chap. 23. The later History of Greece. — The last days of Gre- cian history, before the country came altogether under the power of the Romans, are distinguished in several ways from the times which went before them. The states which are most important in these times are not the same as those which were most important in the old days of the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars. First of all we must remember that Macedonia and Epeiros must now be reckoned as Greek states, and that a large part of Greece, especially in the north* was now always, till the Roman conquest of Macedonia, more or less subject to the Macedonian Kings, or at least under their influence. And, among the states of Greece itself, the division of power was very different from what it had been in earlier times. In the days which we have now come to neither Athens nor Thebes was of very great account, and, though Sparta was of great importance during part of the time, yet its greatness was only, as we may say, by fits and starts. We may say that the chief powers of Greece now were Macedonia, Achaia, JEtolia, and Sparta. Achaia and ^tolia are states of which but little is heard in Grecian history since the heroic times, and the strength which they had now chiefly came from a cause which must be explained a little more at length. 24. The Achaian and /Etolian Leagues. — What chiefly distinguishes this part of Grecian history from earlier times is that we have now but little to do with single cities, but with cities and tribes bound together so as to make states of much greater size. With the exception of Sparta, the Greek states which play the greatest part at this time were joined together in Leagues, so as to form what is called a Federal Government, such as there is now in Switzerland and in the United States of America. That is to say, several cities agreed together to give up part of the power which naturally belonged to each city separately to an Assembly or Council or IL] LATER HISTORY OF GREECE. 45 body of magistrates, in which all had a share. In a govern- ment of this kind the central power commonly deals with all matters which concern the League as a whole, while each city still acts much as it pleases in its own internal affairs. There had been several Leagues of this kind in Greece from the beginning, but they were chiefly among the smaller and less famous parts of the Greek nation, and they did not plav any great part in Grecian affairs. The only one which was of much note in earlier times was the League of Basotia, and that could hardly be called a League with any truth, for Thebes was so much stronger than the other Boeotian cities as to be practically mistress of all of them. But now the Federal states of Greece come to be of special importance, because it was found that, as long as the cities stood one by one, they had no chance of keeping their freedom against the Macedonian Kings, and that their only chance of doing so was by several cities acting together in matters of peace and war as if they were one city. The greatest of these Leagues was that of Achaia, which began with the ten small Achaian cities on the south side of the Corinthian Gulf. These cities had been joined together in a League in early times, but in the times of the Macedonian power they had gradually fallen asunder, and in the days of Antigonos Gonatas several of them were in the hands of Tyrants, who reigned under Macedonian protection. This was the case with many other cities of Greece also, and it was the great object of the League, as it grew and strength- ened, to set free these cities and to join them on to its own body. It was about the year 280 that the old Achaian towns began to draw together again, the chief leader in this work being Markos of Keryneia. About thirty years after, m 251, the League began to extend itself by admitting the city of S iky on as a member of its body. Sikyon had just been set free by Aratos, who now became the leading man in 46 GREECE AND THE GREEK COLONIES, [chap. the League, and, under his administration and that of Philo- poimen who followed him, the League took in one city after another, Corinth, Megalopolis, Argos, and others, at first only with their own good will, but afterwards sometimes by force. At last all the cities of Peloponnesos and some cities beyond the Isthmus became members of the League. The sEtolian League on the other side of the Corinthian Gulf did not bear so good a character as the Achaian, though its form of government was much the same. For the ^Etolians, though a brave people and always stout in defend- ing their own freedom, were ruder and fiercer than most of the Greeks, and were much given to plunder both by sea and land. The ^tolian League thus greatly extended itself, and became more powerful than that of Achaia, but its policy was not so just and honourable as that of Achaia commonly was. There were also smaller Leagues in Phokis and Akarnania. besides the League of Epeiros, which was now counted as a Greek land, and which had got rid of its Kings and had changed itself into a Federal commonwealth. Thus, except Sparta at one end and Macedonia at the other, by far the greater part of Greece was parted out among the dif- ferent Leagues. 25. The last Days of Independent Greece.— For a long time the great object of the Achaians was to set free the cities which were more or less under the Macedonian power. But at last they became jealous of Sparta, which was again becoming a great power, and in 227 a war broke out between Sparta and the League. Sparta had now a great King called Kleomenfc, who had upset the old oligarchy and had greatly increased the power both of the Kings and of the peo.ple. By so doing he put quite a new life into his country, and he pressed the Achaians so hard that at last, in 223, they asked help of Antigonos Doson, King of Macedonia, which they only got by giving up to him the citadel of Corinth. The Mace* II.] THE ACHAIAISf LEAGUE. 47 donians and Achaians together defeated Kleomenes, and Sparta's second time of greatness died with him. The next King of Macedonia, Philip, kept on the alliance with Achaia, and the Achaians and Macedonians fought together in a war with ^Etolia ; but, though the League gained in extent, it lost in real power and freedom by joining with a prince who was strong enough to be its master. Peace was made over all Greece in 216, but by this time the Romans had begun to meddle in Greek affairs, and from hence the history of Greece and Macedonia chiefly consists of the steps by which they were swallowed up in the Roman dominion. This last stage of their history will therefore best be told in our sketch of the history of Rome. 26. Summary. — The history of Greece which we have thus run through, though it is the history only of a small part of the world for a few hundred years, is worth fully as much study as any later and wider part of history. It is, as it were, the history of the world in a small space. There is no lesson to be taught by history in general which is not taught by the history of Greece. The Greeks too, we should never forget, were the first people to show the world what real freedom and real civilization were. And they brought, not only politics, but art and science and literature of every kind to a higher pitch than any other people ever did without borrowing of others. In all these ways Greece has influenced the world for ever. Still the influence of Greece upon later history has been to a great degree indirect. Greece influenced Rome, and Rome influenced the world. But with the history of Rome an unbroken chain of events begins which is going on still. We will now try and trace it from the beginning. CHAPTER III. THE ROMAN COMMONWEALTH. Ancient extent of Italy (i) — Gauls ; Venetians, and Ligunans within its modern boundary (i) — effect of the geography of the country on its history (i) — inhabitants of Italy; the Etruscans and the Greek colonists (2) — two chief branches of the Italian race, Oscans and latins (2, 3) — language, religion, and government ; tendency to the formation of leagues (4) — origin of Rome ; characteristics of its history (5) — the Roman Kings (6) — dynasty and expulsion of the Tarquinii (6) — the powers of the Kings transferred to the Consuls (7) — disputes between Patricians and Plebeians (7) — wars of Rome with her neighbours ; taking of Veil (8) — taking of Rome by the Gauls (8) — wars with the Samnites and Latins ; gradual conquest of Italy (9) — state of Italy under the Romans; distinction of Romans, Latins, and Italians (10) — war with Pyrrhos (11) — origin and history of Carthage (12) — First Punic War (13) — cession of Sicily ; nature of the Roman Provinces (14) — Second Punic War ; campaigns of Hannibal and Scipio (15) — Third Pttnic War ; destruction of Carthage (16)— -first dealings of the Romans with Greece (17) — First Macedonian War (17) — Second Macedonian War; alliance of Rome with JEtolia and Achaia (18) — campaign of Antiochos in Greece; Roman conquest of JEtolia (19) — Third Macedonian War ; dis?nemberment of the Macedonian Kingdom (20) — Fourth Macedonian War ; Macedonia becomes a Province (21) — war with Achaia ; destruction of Corinth (21) — the Mace- donian states in Asia ; revolt of the Parthians (22)— war with Antiochos; and extension of Roman influence in Asia {22)— forma- tion of the Province of Asia (22)— conquest of Cisalpine Gazil (23) — conquest of Spain (24) — inhabitants of Transalpine Gaul (25)— affairs of Massalia; formation of the Roman Province in Gaul "B\v. in.] GEOGRAPHY OF ITALY. 49 {25) — invasion of the Cimbri and Teutones ; their defeat by Marius (26) — Ro?ne dominant round the Mediterranean; her relations with Egypt (27) — internal disputes at Rome; her relations to her allies; murder of the Gracchi (27) — the Social War ; final conquest of the Samnites (28) — Civil War of Marius and Sulla Dictatorship of Sulla (28) — war with Mithridates ; campaigns of Sulla and Pompeius (29) — Roman conquest of Syria; dealings w>th Parthia (30) — disputes at Rome; rise of Ccesar (31) — Ccesar's con- quests in Gaul ; his campaigns in Germany and Britain (32)- - Civil War of Pompeius and Ccesar ; Dictatorship and death of Ccesar (33) — Second Civil War ; Battles of Philippi and Aktion ; Egypt becomes a province (34) — the younger Ccesar becomes Augustus ; beginning of the Roman Empire (35). I. The Geography of Italy. — We now come to the history of the second of the three great peninsulas, that of Italy. But we must remember that in early times the name of Italy did not take in so large a country as we now understand by that name, and that a great part of its inhabitants did not belong to the race whom we shall have to speak of as Ita- lians. The greater part of Northern Italy, all north of the Po and a good deal to the south of it, was counted as part of Gaul, and was inhabited by Celtic people akin to those on the other side of the Alps. Thus there was Cisalpine Gaul, Gaul on this side — that is the Italian side — of the Alps, as well as Tra?isalpine Gaul, or Gaul beyond the Alps. Milan, Verona, Bologna, and other famous Italian cities thus stand in what in early times was part of Gaul. And the country in the extreme north-west was held by the Ve7ietians, a people whose origin is not very clear. They gave their name to the province of Venetia; but it must be remembered that they had nothing to do with the city of Venice, which did not begin till many ages later. And the land between the Gulf of Genoa and the Po was held by the Ligurians, a people who were most likely not Aryans at all, but a remnant of the older inhabitants, like the Basques. And people akin to the 50 THE ROMAN COMMONWEALTH. [chap. Ligiirians seem also to have held the islands of Sardinia and Corsica, and part of Sicily. None of these lands were counted as part of Italy in the earliest times, so that the name of Italy belonged much more strictly to the peninsula than it does now. The name seems to have been first given to quite the southern part only, and to have gradually spread itself northwards. The map will at once show that the peninsula of Italy, though it is so long and narrow and has so great an extent of sea-coast, is not so broken up by bays and arms of the sea, nor has it so many islands round about it, as the other peninsula of Greece. And though some parts of Italy are mountainous, and though the great chain of the Apennines runs from one end of the peninsula to the other, yet the whole land is not cut up into little valleys in the way that the more part of Greece is. Two things came of this difference between Greece and Italy. First, the Italians never became a seafaring people in the same degree that the Greeks did, nor did they in the same way send out colonies to all parts of the world that they knew. Secondly, in Italy itself there never were so many great cities as there were in Greece, and the small Italian towns were less jealous of their separate independence, and more ready than the Greek cities to join together in leagues. 2. The Inhabitants of Italy. — Setting aside those coun- tries which were not then reckoned as part of Italy, we find at the beginning of history three chief nations dwelling in th^ peninsula. The part of Italy between the A rno and the Tiber was called Etruria, the land of the Rasena as they called themselves, otherwise called Tyrrhenians, Tuscans, and Etruscans. The exact origin of the Etruscans is a great puzzle, but most likely they were an Aryan people, though their tongue was quite different from that of any of the other nations of Italy. In early times they seem to have spread over a much larger country both northwards and III.] THE INHABITANTS OF ITALY. 51 southwards, but in trustworthy history they appear only in the lands already spoken of 011 the western coast, where they formed a confederation of twelve cities. They were great builders and skilful in many of the arts, and they were held to be specially wise in divination and all other matters belonging to the worship of the Gods. The Etruscans, like the Gauls and Ligurians, were settled in what we now call Italy before authentic history begins. At the other end, quite in the south, the Greeks planted many colonies, but these belong to a later time, when we may say that trustworthy history was beginning among the Greeks, though it had not yet begun among the Italians. The map will show that this part of Italy is much more like Greece, much more broken up by bays and peninsulas, than the rest of Italy. The Greeks were, as we have already seen, therefore able to found many colonies here, some of which flourished so greatly in early times that the country was known as Great Greece. But at the time when history begins, all Italy in the older sense (that is, not reckoning Liguria and Cisalpine Gaul), except Etruria, was inhabited by people whom we may specially call Italians. These, as we have already said, belonged to the same Aryan swarm as the Greeks, and their common forefathers must have stayed together after they had branched off from the forefathers of the Celts, Teutons, and others. The greater part of Italy was occupied by tribes sprung from this one swarm, some of whom however were more closely allied to the Greeks than others. But all may be looked on as coming nearer to the Greeks than to any other branch of the Aryan family. But, long before history begins, the Greeks and the Italians had parted off into distinct nations, and the Italians had also parted off into distinct nations among themselves. 3. The Latin and Oscan Races. — We thus see that, set- ting aside the Etruscans and the Greeks who settled in later times, all the other nations of ancient Italy were allied to one E 2 52 THE ROMAN COMMONWEALTH. [chap. another, and all were more remotely allied to the Greeks. But they had parted far more widely among themselves than the different tribes of the Greek nation ever did. The Italian nations fall naturally into two great classes, which we may call roughly the O scans, lying to the north-east, and the Latins, lying to the south-west. Of these the Latins were those who were more closely allied to the Greeks. The Siculi or Sikds especially, in Southern Italy and in Sicily, to which island they gave their name, and some other of the tribes in the south, seem to have been as near to the Greeks, and to have been as easily Hellenized, as their neighbours in Epeiros and on the coast of Asia. The Oscan tribes, Sabines, Umbrians, and others, were far more widely re moved from the Greeks, and presently the Oscan races began to press southward'at the expense both of the Latins and of the Greek colonies. It was these Oscans of the south, the Samui/es, Lucanians, and others, whose incursions gradually destroyed the greatness and freedom of th'e Greek colonies in Italy. 4. Language, Religion, and Government. — Our know- ledge of the ancient nations of Italy, besides the Romans, is very scanty, but it would seem that the differences between the Latin and Oscan races answered rather to the differences between the Greeks and their most nearly allied neighbours than to the differences of Dorians and Ionians among the Greeks themselves. Still we cannot doubt that they always had much in common in language, religion, and govern- ment. The old languages of Italy all gradually gave way to the Latin, and we have only a few fragments remaining of any of them. And of their religion, even of that of the Latins, we know very little, because, when the Greeks and Romans came to have dealings with one another, they began to call each other's Gods by the names of those among their own Gods which seemed most like them. Thus the Greek ZetU ill.] ORIGIN OF ROME. 53 7 and the Latin Jupiter got confounded, and the other Gods in the like sort. But one thing we can see, that none of the Italian nations had so many stories to tell about their Gods as the Greeks had. As for their government, we can see the same elements as among the Greeks and other Aryans, — the King or other chief, the nobles, and the ordinary freemen. In fact, owing, as we have already said, to the nature of the country, the common form of government in ancient Italy was much the same as that common in the ruder parts of Greece, several kindred districts or small towns joining together in a League. Of these Leagues the most famous in history was that of the Samnites, an inland people of the Oscan stock, and that of the thirty cities of the Latins on the west coast south of the Tiber. 5. The Origin of Rome. — But there was one Latin city which was destined to be mighty and famous above all, and to become the mistress of Latium, of Italy, and of the world. This was the town of Rome on the Tiber. There were all manner of traditions in ancient times, and all manner of conjectures have been made by ingenious men in later days, as to the origin of this greatest of all cities. Into these we cannot go now. The story most generally believed by the Romans themselves was that Rome was founded by Romulus, a son or descendant of y£ueas (in Greek Aineias), one of the Trojan heroes who was said to have escaped after the taking of Troy, and to have taken refuge in Italy. But Romulus or Romus is merely one of those names which were made up because people fancied that every city and nation must have taken its name from some man. The tales about the foundation of Rome and about its early Kings are mere legends which cannot be trusted. There can be little doubt that Rome was at first a city of the Latins, founded on the river Tiber as a Latin outpost to guard the march or border against the Etruscans on the other side of the river. And 54 THE ROMAN COMMONWEAL TH. [chap. there seems reason to believe that hard by the Latin town of Rome was the Sabine town of Curium, and that the two towns made a league, and that their people gradually became two tribes in one city, instead of two distinct cities. Even if this tale should not be true, it is at least very well made up. For it sets forth the way in which Rome became the greatest of all cities, namely by constantly granting its citizenship both to its allies and to its conquered enemies. Step by step, the people of Latium, of Italy, and of the whole civilized world, all became Romans. This is what really distinguishes the Roman history from all other history, and it is what made the power of Rome so great and lasting. 6. The Roman Kings. — There can be little doubt that Rome, like the Greek cities, was at first governed by Kings, who ruled by the help of a Senate and an Assembly of the People. But the Roman Kings, unlike those in Greece, were not hereditary, nor were they even chosen from any particular family. It is said, and it is not at all unlikely, that the old rule was to choose the King in turn from the Romans of Rome and from the Quirites of Curium. The legend giv°s us the names of seven Kings, and it is mo^t likely that the two or three last names on the list are those of real persons. These are the dynasty of the Tarquinii, about whom there have been many opinions, but who most likely were Etruscans, and who seem to have adorned Rome with buildings and works of Etruscan art. At all events they greatly extended the power of Rome, so that she became the greatest of all Latin cities. The last King, Lucius Tarquinius, called Superbus or the Proud, is said to have acted as a cruel tyrant, and to have had no regard for the laws of the Kings who had gone before him. He was accordingly driven out with his family, and the Romans determined to have no more Kings, and they ever after hated the very name of King. This is said to have happened B.C. 510, about the same time when the Tyrant III.] THE ROMAN KINGS. 55 Hippias son of Peisistratos was driven out of Athens. There can be no doubt that the driving out of the Kings of Rome is a real event, but, as we have no accounts of it written at the time or for ages after, we cannot be certain as to the details of the story or as to the exact time when it happened. 7. The Roman Commonwealth. — The Roman history is, for want of contemporary accounts, very uncertain for a long time after the driving out of the Kings. Much of what commonly passes for Roman history is really made up of legends, which are often most beautiful as legends, but which still are not history. Much of it also comes from what is worse than legends, namely, mere inventions in honour of Rome or of some particular Roman family. We must wait for two hundred years and more after the Kings before we come to history of which we can fully trust the details. Still we can make out something, both as to the internal constitution of Rome and as to the steps by which she made her way to the headship of Italy. The chief thing to be remembered is that Rome was a city bearing rule over other cities. The government of the Roman commonwealth was the government of a city ; and so it always remained, even after Rome had come to be the head of Italy and even of the world. When the Kings were driven out, the powers which had belonged to the Kings were entrusted to two magistrates, who were at first called Prcetors and afterwards Consuls, and who were chosen for one year only. The Senate and the Assembly of the People went on much as they had done under the Kings, but soon after the Kings were driven out there began to be great dissensions within the Roman Commonwealth. For there was a very old division of the Roman people into Patricians and Plebeians or Commons, of whom the Patricians for a long time kept all the chief powers of the state in their own hands. Most likely the Patricians were the descendants of the first citizens, and the Plebeians 56 THE ROMAN COMMONWEALTH. [chap, were the descendants of allies or subjects who had been after- wards admitted to the franchise. This division must have begun in the time of the Kings, as it began to be of great importance very soon after they were driven out. At first the Consuls and other magistrates were chosen from among the Patricians or old citizens only, though the Plebeians voted in choosing them. There were long disputes between the two orders, as the privileges of the Patricians were felt to be very oppressive, and gradually the Plebeians obtained the right to be chosen to the consulship and other high dignities. The first plebeian Consul was Lucius Sexiius in B.C. 366, about the time when Epameinondas was warring in Peloponnesos. After this the two orders were gradually reconciled, and many of the greatest men in the later history of Rome were Plebeians. 8. Wars of Rome with her Neighbours. — At the time when the kingly government of Rome came to an end, she was strong enough to make a treaty with Carthage, in which she contracts, not only on her own behalf, but also on that of all the Latin cities of the coast as her subjects or depen- dent allies. But she seems to have lost a good deal of her power after the Kings were driven out. Her chief enemies were the Etruscans on the one side of her, and the various Oscan nations, especially those called the sEquiaus and Volscians, on the other. With the Latin cities she was for a long time in close alliance, Rome, as a single city, being one party to the treaty, and the other Latin, cities, as a League, being the other party. About B.C. 396 Rome greatly extended her power by the conquest of Veii, the nearest oi the great Etruscan cities. This was taken by Marcus Furius Ca?nil!us, who was then Dictators that is, he was invested for six months only with greater powers than the Consuls them- selves, as was often done in times of special danger and diffi- culty. But soon after this the Roman power received a greaf UL) ITALIAN WARS OF ROME. 57 check, for in B.C. 390 the Romans were defeated at the river Aliia by the Gauls, who, it will be remembered, held most of the northern part of what is now called Italy. They were now pressing southward, and invaded Etruria. The city of ) Rome itself was taken, but the Gauls were soon either driven out or paid to go away, and it is wonderful how soon Rome got over this great blow. And from this time the Roman history becomes somewhat more trustworthy, for we at all events have the lists of the Consuls and other magistrates, even though there is still much falsehood and exaggeration in our accounts of their actions. The Romans had still to withstand several invasions of the Gauls, and they had many wars with their neighbours, in which, on the whole, they went on increasing their territory, and ever and anon admitting those whom they conquered to their own citizenship. 9. The Roman Conquest of Italy. — At last, about B.C. 343, there began a series of greater wars in Italy, in which the Romans may truly be said to have been fighting for the do- minion of the whole land. And in the space of about sixty years they gradually won it. The Sammies, an Oscan nation, were now the chief people in the South of Italy, a brave and stout people, quite able to contend with the Romans on equal terms. The first war with the Samnites did not last long, and it was followed in 340 by a war between Rome and her old allies the Latins. The Latins wished for a more com- plete union with Rome and for one of the Consuls to be always a Latin ; but to this the Romans would not agree. The end of the war was that the Latin League was broKen up and 'he cities were merged in the Roman state one by one. Then, in 326, began a second Samnite War which lasted eighteen years, and a third which lasted from 298 to 290. In these two latter wars the Samcites were helped by the Etruscans and Gauls, but all wen gradually subdued, 58 THE ROMAN COMMONWEALTH. [chap. and by the year 282 Rome was pretty well mistress of all Italy except some of the Greek cities in the South. 10. The Italian States under Rome. — The condition of the Italian states under the Roman dominion was very various, but we may say that the free people of Italy now formed three main classes, Romans, Latins, and Italians. Many of the allied and conquered states were altogether merged in Rome at a very early time, their people becoming Romans and forming tribes in the Roman Assembly. Rome in the end gradually admitted all the people of Italy to her own citizen- ship. But, till an Italian city which was subject to Rome received the Roman citizenship, its people had no voice at all in the general government, in choosing the magistrates, or in matters of peace and war. And, after such a city received the Roman citizenship, the only way in which its citizens could influence such matters was by themselves going to Rome and giving their votes in the Roman Assembly. This should be carefully borne in mind throughout, as it was the natural consequence of the Roman government always being the government of a city. Among the states whose people did not at once become Romans, some had the Latin franchise, as it was called, the franchise which was at first given to the cities of Latium and afterwards to others in different parts. This did not give full Roman citizenship, but it made it much easier to obtain it. Lastly, the Italians or Allies kept their own independent constitutions in all internal matters, but they had to follow the lead of Rome in all matters of peace and war. Thus it was that the Roman dominion in Italy was a dominion of a city over cities. 1 1. The War with Pyrrhos. — We now come to the beginning of the wars of Rome with the nations out of Italy, beginning with one in which they had to fight for their newly won dominion in Italy itself. Soon after the Roman power had reached into Southern Italy, the people of the Greek city of III. I WAR WITH PYRRHOS. 59 Taras or Tarentum contrived to offend the Romans, and they then asked Pyrrhos, King of Epeiros,to come and help them as the champion of a Greek city threatened by Barbarians. Pyrrhos came over in 281, and the Romans had now to try their strength against a way of fighting quite different from their own, and that under the most famous warrior of the age. Pyrrhos was joined by some of the lately conquered nations in Southern Italy, who were glad of a chance of throwing off the Roman yoke. He defeated the Romans in two battles, but with so much loss on his own side that he was glad to make a truce and to go over into Sicily, where some of the Greek cities had asked him to help them against the Cartha- ginians. In 276 he came back to Italy, but in the next year he was defeated at Beneventum and left Italy altogether,, In the next few years the small part of Italy which still held oat against Rome was subdued. 12. Carthage. — Rome was now mistress of Italy, and she soon began to be entangled in wars beyond its boundaries. The greatest power besides Rome in the western Mediterranean lands was the city of Carthage on the north coast of Africa. This, as we have already said, was a Phoenician city, one of the colonies of the older Phoenician cities of Tyre and Sidon. Carthage, like Rome, was a city bearing rule over other cities ; for she had gained a certain headship over the other Phoenician cities in Africa, much as Rome had over the Latin and other cities in Italy. And besides the kindred Phoenician cities, Carthage bore rule also over many of the native tribes whom the Phoenician settlers found in Africa. And, unlike Rome up to this time, she had, as trading cities and countries always strive to have, large dominions beyond the sea. Car- thage at this time bore rule over the islands of Sardinia and Corsica, and she had also large possessions in Sicily. But in Sicily a constant warfare was kept up between the Phoenician and the Greek settlements, in which the Tyrants who at dif- 6o THE ROMAN COMMONWEALTH. [chap. ferent times reigned in Syracuse specially distinguished them- selves. Such were Gelon, who reigned at the time of the Per- sian War, Dionysios, who reignecl at the time of the war be- tween Sparta and Thebes, and Agathokles, who lived in the time of Pyrrhos. As Tyrants in their own city, these men did many evil things ; still they deserve some honour as champions of the Greek nation against the Phoenicians. These wars also bring out another point of difference between Carthage and Rome. For, while the Romans waged their wars by the hands of their own citizens and allies, the wars of Carthage were mainly carried on by barbarian mercenaries, that is, soldiers serving simply for pay, whom they hired from Gaul, Spain, Africa, anywhere in short. A state which does this can never hold up for good against one which uses native armies ; and it is a sign of the great wealth and power of Carthage, helped still more by a few very great men who appeared among her citizens, that Carthage could hold up so long as she did. Carthage had indeed one other great advan- tage, namely that, as a trading city, she was very strong by sea, while the Romans had as yet had hardly anything to do with naval affairs. Thus Carthage and Rome were the two great states of the West, and it could hardly fail but that war should spring up between them about something. And it was the more likely, as the island of Sicily lay between them, where the Carthaginians had large possessions, and where the Greek cities were closely connected with the Greek subjects of Rome in Southern Italy. 13. The First Punic War. — A cause of quarrel was soon found in the disputes among the different towns in Sicily. Rome, as the head of Italy, undertook to ptotect the Mamer- tineSj a body of Campanian mercenaries who had seized the town of Messene on the strait. Their enemies were Hieron, King of Syracuse — for those who were formerly called Tyrants now called themselves Kings— and. Carthage. Thus arose the in.] THE PUNIC WARS. 6l first Punic War, so called from the Latin form of the name Phoenician. This war went on between Carthage and Rome for twenty-four years, beginning in B.C. 264, and Hieron had soon to change the Carthaginian alliance for the Roman. During so long a time the two great cities contended with very varied success, the war being chiefly carried on in and about Sicily, though at one time the Roman Consul Marcus Atilius Regains, who is one of the most famous heroes of Roman legend, carried the war into Africa. For a long time the Carthaginians had greatly the advantage at sea ; but gradually the Romans came to be their match at their own weapons, and at last a great naval victory was won by the Consul Caius Lut alius Calulus, which made the Carthaginians ask for peace. The First Punic War ended in B.C. 241. 14. Beginning of the Roman Provinces. — This victory over the Carthaginians was the beginning of a new state of things, and gave Rome quite a new class of subjects. For, when peace was made, Carthage had to give up her possessions in Sicily, and the island, except the part which belonged to Hieron, became a Roman province. This was the be- ginning of the Roman provinces, that is the dominions of Rome out of Italy. Their condition was much worse than that of the Italian allies, for the provinces were ruled by Roman governors, and had to pay tribute to Rome. The Provincials in fact were mere subjects, while the Italians, though dependent allies, were still Allies. Though they were bound to serve in the Roman armies and to follow Rome in all matters of war and peace, they still kept their old consti- tutions and no Roman governors were sent to rule them. 15. The Second Punic or Hannibalian War. — Twenty- three years passed between the end of the first Punic War and the beginning of the second. But in the meanwhile the Romans got possession rather unfairly, of the islands of 62 THE ROMAN COMMONWEALTH. .. [chap. Sardinia and Corsica, which Carthage had kept by the peace. On the other hand a Carthaginian dominion was growing up in Spain under Ha mi I car Bar kas, one of the greatest men that Carthage ever reared, his son-in-law Hasdrubal, and his son Hannibal, the greatest man of all, and probably the greatest general that the world ever saw. Another quarrel arose between Carthage and Rome, when Hannibal took the Spanish town of Sagnntnm, which the Romans claimed as an ally. War began in 218, and Hannibal carried it on by invading Italy by land. This was one of the most famous enterprises in all history. Never was Rome so near destruction as in the war with Hannibal. He crossed the Alps and defeated the Romans in four battles, the greatest of which was that of Cannce in B.C. 216. Many of the Italian allies revolted against Rome, and the war went on in Italy till B.C. 203. By that time the Romans had taken Syracuse, which, after Hieron's death, had forsaken their alliance, so that all Sicily was now a Roman province. They had also, while Hannibal was in Italy, conquered the Carthaginian possessions in Spain. Lastly, the Roman general who had been so successful in Spain, Publius Cornelius Scifiio, crossed over into Africa, so that Hannibal had to leave Italy and go back to defend Car- thage itself. He was defeated by Scipio in the battle of Zama in B.C. 202. Peace was now made, Carthage giving up all her possessions out of Africa, and binding herself not to make war without the consent of the Romans. That is to say, Carthage now became a dependent ally of Rome. The Semitic races could no longer dispute the dominion of the Mediterranean lands with the Aryans. 16. The Third Punic War.— The last war with Carthage began about fifty years after the second. The Carthaginians were always at variance with their neighbour Massinissa King of Mimidia, who had been an useful ally of Rome in the former war. The Romans constantly favoured Massi* III.] CONQUEST OF CARTHACE. 63 nissa, and in B.C 149 war broke out again between Rome and Carthage. Three years later Carthage was taken by the younger Scipio, Pub litis Cornelius Scipio ^Emilianus ; the city was destroyed ; part of its territory was given to Massi- nissa, and part became the Roman province of Africa This is an example of the way in which Rome advanced step by step. By the First Punic war Carthage lost territory, but it remained quite independent. The Second made it a dependent ally of Rome, but left it free in its internal government. The Third destroyed the city and made the country a province. It is perhaps hardly needful to say that Africa, as the name of a Roman province, does not -mean the whole continent, but only the immediate territory of Carthage. 17. The First Macedonian War. — We see the same way of advancing step by step in the next great conquest made by Rome, which was going on at the same time as the Punic Wars. This was the conquest of Macedonia rnd Greece. Many things were beginning to bring the Romans and the Greeks together, and, when any people began to have anything to do with Rome, however friendly their dealings might be at first, it always ended in the other nation being sooner or later swallowed up in the Roman dominion. The Romans already had Greek subjects in Italy and Sicily. They were now- beginning to know something of the language and literature of Greece, and to imitate them in writings of their own. For it is about this time that the Roman literature which we now have begins. The Romans now began to have dealings with the Greeks in Greece itself ; but their first dealings were quite friendly. A war broke out with Illyria in B.C. 229, which ended in the island of Korkyra and the cities of Apoilonia and Efiidamnos submitting to Rome. These were Greek cities on the Illyrian coast, and they welcomed the Romans as deliverers. But Rome had now got possession on the Greek side of the ALgve&n, and the conquest of those lands had 4* THE ROMAN COMMONWEALTH. [chap. really begun. In 215 Philip King of Macedonia made a league with Hannibal, and in 213 the First Macedonian War began, while the second Punic War was still going on. In this war Philip was helped by the Leagues of Achaia, Akamania, and Epeiros, while Rome found allies in the League of ALtolia, in Attalos King of Pergamos in Asia, and Nabis Tyrant of Sparta. Since the fall of Kleomenes Sparta had been in a state of great confusion, and she had had several wars with the Achaians, in which Philopoimen, the last great general of Greece, greatly distinguished him- self. Peace was at last made in 205, and some changes of frontier were made ; but the chief result of the war was that Rome had now begun steadily to interfere in Greek and Macedonian affairs. 18. The Second Macedonian War. — The first war with Macedonia did not affect the position of that kingdom, or of s»ny other of the Greek states, as independent powers. The Second Macedonian War, which began in B.C. 200, marks another stage in the progress of conquest. The Romans now stepped in to help the Athenians, who were their allies, and who had been attacked by Philip. The ^Etolians took the Roman side from the beginning, and the Achaians joined them in 198. In 197 the war was ended by the defeat of Philip at Kynoskephale in Thessaly, and the next year, 196, the Roman Consul Titus Quinctius Flamininus proclaimed the liberty of all those parts of Greece which had been under his power. Philip thus lost a large part of his territory, and had to become a dependent ally of Rome. And from this time we may count the Greek allies of Rome, though nomi- nally free, as practically dependent. 19. The Conquest of ^Etolia. — The ^Etolians now invited the Seleukid King Antiochos the Great to cross over from Asia and attack the Romans in Greece. He crossed over in 192, and several Greek states joined him, but the Achaians IN.] THE MACEDONIAN WARS. 65 held steadily to Rome. In 191 Antiochos was defeated at The?-mopylai by the Consul Manius Acilius Glabro, and his allies the y^tolians were presently, in 189, obliged to become a Roman dependency, being the first within the borders of Greece itself. Rome also took the islands of Zakynthcs and Kephallmia, and the Achaian League was extended over all Peloponnesos. Rome was now really mistress of Greece, and Grecian history from this time consists mainly of her dealings with the states which had become practically her subjects. 20. The Third Macedonian War. — The Third Macedonian War, waged with Perseus the son of Philip, began in 171. Most of the Greek states were now on the Macedonian side, as it had become plain that Rome was much more dangerous than Macedonia. But the Achaians remained allies of Rome, though they were from this time treated with great insolence. The war ended with the victory of Lucius sEmilius Paullus at Pydna in 168. The Macedonian kingdom was now cut up into four commonwealths, all dependencies of Rome. Epeiros was subdued and most of its cities destroyed. 21. Final Conquest of Macedonia and Greece. — TheEourth Macedonia?i War happened at exactly the same time as the Third Punic War, in 149. The Macedonians rose under one Audriskos, who called himself Philip, and gave himself out as the son of Perseus. He was successful for a time, but he was overthrown in 148, and Macedonia, after so many stages, at last became a Roman province. There were also many dis- putes between Rome and Achaia, which now grew into a war, and in 146 the Achaians were defeated by Lucius Mummius, and Corinth was destroyed in the same year as Carthage. The League was dissolved for a while, and the Achaian cities became formally dependent on Rome. But Athens and several other Greek cities and islands still remained nomi- nally independent. The history of these times was written by Poly bios, a leading man in the Achaian League, but who, F 66 THE ROMAN COMMONWEALTH. [chap. being a prisoner at Rome, formed a close friendship with the younger Scipio and other chief Romans. He was thus able to look with his own eyes at two different stages of the world's history in a way that perhaps no one else ever could. 22. The Romans in Asia. — Macedonia and Greece formed easy stepping-stones for the Romans to meddle in the affairs of Asia. By far the greatest of the Macedonian kingdoms in Asia was that of the descendants of Seleukos, which for a while took in all Alexander's conquests in Asia. But this great dominion was cut short in the East about B.C. 256 by the revolt of the Parthians in Northern Persia. They established a kingdom under the descendants of their first leader Ashk or Arsakes, which in after times was the chiel rival of Rome. The eastern provinces of the Seleukid Kings thus fell away one by one, but at the time of the Second Punic War they still reigned from the yEgaean to far beyond the Tigris, But it must be remembered that there were several states in Western Asia, both native and Macedonian, like the kingdoms of Pergamos and Bithynia, which did not form part of their dominion. All these states were more or less tinged with Greek culture. We have already seen how Antiochos, called the Great, had crossed over into Greece and had been there defeated by the Romans. The Romans of course then crossed into Asia, and Antiochos was defeated by Lucius Scipio at Magnisia in 189. Antiochos had now to give up all his dominions west of Mount Tauros, and the great dominion of the Seleukid Kings shrank up into a mere Kingdom of Syria. But their capital Antioch on the Orontes still remained one of the chief seats of Greek culture, and one of the greatest cities of the world. The Romans now became really masters of all Western Asia, though, after their manner, they did not as yet formally take any part of the land to themselves. What Antiochos gave up they divided among their allies, giving the largest share to Eumencs King of Per- III.] CONQUESTS IN ASIA. 67 g-amos. The kingdom of Eumenes thus became the greatest state in Western Asia, and his capital, like Antioch, became a great seat of Greek culture and learning. And a little later the cities of Lykia joined together in a free and most wisely .managed Confederation, much after the pattern of the Achaian League. But from this time Pergamos, Lykia, and all these Macedonian or Hellenized states looked up to Rome, just as the Greeks in Greece itself had already learned to do. At last in 133 Attalos, the last King of Pergamos, left his dominions to the Roman People, and the greater part of them were made into a Roman province, by the name of the Province oj Asia, the first province that Rome held beyond the ^Egsean. 23. The Romans in Western Europe. Conquest of Cis- alpine Gaul. — In all these wars with Carthage, Macedonia, and Syria Rome had to struggle with enemies who met her on something like equal terms. All were civilized states, and the Macedonian Kings, both in Macedonia and in Asia, had kept up the military discipline of Philip and Alexander. We must now see how Rome dealt with the people of the West, the forefathers of some of the chief nations of modern Europe, but who then were only brave barbarians. Her first conquest among these was naturally that of those lands within the Alps which are now reckoned part of Italy, but which were then known as Cisalpine Gaul. The Gauls, it will be remembered, had once taken Rome itself, and they had shown themselves dangerous enemies to Rome by helping the Sam- nites and Etruscans against her. It was no wonder then that the conquest of Cisalpine Gaul began almost as soon as the conquest of Italy was over. The lands south of the Po were won before the First Punic War, and in the time between the First and the Second Punic Wars the conquest went on, and several colonies were planted beyond the Po. The Gauls greatly helped Hannibal in his invasion of Italy, but they presently paid dearly for so doing. For, as soon as the F 2 68 THE ROMAN COMMONWEALTH. [chap. Second Punic War was over, the conquest of Cisalpine Gaul went on, and was ended by about 191. The land was now full of Roman and Latin colonies, and it soon became a Roman land and began to be reckoned part of Italy. Liguria and Venetia were conquered soon afterwards, so that the Roman power took in all within the Alps, all that we now call Italy. 24. The Conquest of Spain. — Meanwhile the third and most western of the three great peninsulas, that of Spain, was being added, like Greece and the neighbouring countries, to the Roman dominion. Spain was the only one of the great countries of Europe where the mass of the people were not of the Aryan stock. The greater part of the land was still held by the Ibej'ians, as a small part is even now by their descendants the Basques. But in the central part of the peninsula Celtic tribes had pressed in, and we have seen that there were some Phoenician colonies in the south and some Greek colonies on the east coast. In the time between the First and Second Punic Wars Hamilcar, Hasdrubal, and Hannibal had won all Spain as far as the Ebro for Carthage. But during the Second Punic War, between the years 211 and 206, the Carthaginian territories in Spain were all won for Rome by the Scipios. Rome thus became the chief power in Spain, even before the Second Punic War was over, and before she had conquered all Cisalpine Gaul. But Spain has always been a hard country to conquer, and the Romans had constant wars with the native tribes. Still we may look on the Roman dominion in Spain as finally established in B.C. 133, when the younger Sciftio took Numantia. This, it will be remembered, was in the same year as the bequest of Attalos which gave Rome her first Asiatic possession, and Numantia was taken by the same general who had taken Carthage. From this time all S ain was a Roman province, except some of the mountainous parts in the north, where native tribes still remained free. III.] CONQUESTS IN SPAIN AND GA UL. 69 25. Beginning of the Conquest of Transalpine Gaul. — ■ The conquests of Rome in Transalpine Gaul, Gaul beyond the Alps, began a little later. Gaul in the geographical sense, the land between the Rhine, the Alps, the Pyrenees, and the Ocean, was then, as now, peopled by different races, speaking different languages. In the south the old non-Aryan inhabitants still held their ground. The districts near the Alps were chiefly held by Ligurians, while Aquitaine, a name which then meant the land between the Pyrenees and the Garonne, was Iberian. In the centre the Aryan Celts had settled, but the next wave, the Teutons, were most likely already pressing upon them, though when our kinsfolk first crossed the Rhine it would be hard to say. The Mediter- ranean coast of Gaul was fringed by that group of Greek cities of which Massalia was the head. Massalia was a great trading city, and it became an ally, at first a really equal and independent ally, of Rome. This was in 218, at the beginning of the Second Punic War. The Romans had once or twice to cross the Alps to defend their Greek allies, and at last, in 125, a Roman pi'ovince was formed in Transalpine Gaul, in the land which has ever since kept the name of Pro- vence. At the same time the colony of Aquce Sextioz, now Aix, was founded. As usual, the Roman dominions advanced, and twenty years later the Roman province reached as far as Geneva to the north and Tolosa or Toulouse to the west. 26. The Cimbri and Teutones. — It is not unlikely that the Romans would now have gone on and conquered the whole of Gaul, if an event had not happened which put a stop for some time to their further progress in those parts. For about this time Gaul was invaded by a vast host of barbarians called Cimbri and Teutones, who came from the North, but about whom there has been much doubt whether they really were of Celtic or of what we call Teutonic race. They defeated several Roman commanders in Gaul, but in 102 the Teutotui 70 THE ROMAN COMMONWEALTH. [chap. were utterly defeated by the Consul Caius Marius near AqucB Sexticz, and in the next year the war was finished by the two Consuls Marius and Quintus Lutatius Catulus over- throwing the Cimbri also at Vercellce in Cisalpine Gaul. This was the same sort of danger from which Rome had been saved long before by Camillus, the danger of being overthrown, not by the chief of a civilized people like Pyrrhos or Hannibal, but by a people who were still altogether barbarous. If any men of our own race had a hand in this invasion, it gives it a special interest for us ; but, at all events, as saving Rome from this great danger, the defeat of the invaders was one of the greatest events in Roman history, and Caius Marius is one of Rome's most famous men. But, fully to understand the condition of Rome, and especially to under- stand the position of Marius, we must look back a little at the state of things in Italy while these great conquests were going on abroad. It will however be better to keep the details ot the internal affairs of Rome, as far as may be, for the special History of Rome, and to speak chiefly of those things which concern the relations of Rome to her allies and subjects. 27. Rome and her Allies. — We have thus seen that, in the space of about two hundred years, from the beginning of the Samnite Wars to the conquest of Numantia and the inheritance of the Province of Asia, Rome had come to be the mistress of all the lands round the Mediterranean Sea. The whole was not as yet fully annexed and made into provinces, but no power was left which had the least chance of holding out against Rome. The only great power with which Rome had had no war was tLe kingdom of Egypt. There the descendants of the first Ptolemy, all of whom bore his name, still reigned, and Egypt was the richest and most flourishing of the Macedonian kingdoms, and its capital Alexandria was the greatest seat of Greek learning- and science. But when the Romans began to be powerful in III.] ROME AND HER ALLIES. 71 Asia, even the Ptolemies, who often had wars with the Seleu- kids, began to look to Rome as a protector. It was this vast dominion, while it made Rome so great in the face of other nations, which led to the corruption of her constitution within, and at last to the utter loss of her freedom. The form of government which had done so well for a single city with a small territory did not do at all for the government of so large a portion of the world. Throughout the Roman dominions the Roman People was sovereign ; the Assembly of the People made laws and chose magistrates for Rome itself, and sent out generals and governors to conquer and rule in the subject lands. The provi7icials, and even the allies, had no voice in settling the affairs of the vast dominion oi which they had become a part, and they were often greatly oppressed by the Roman officers. Meanwhile in Rome itself the great offices had been gradually thrown open to the Plebeians as well as the Patricians, and hardly any legal distinction was left between the two orders. The constitution was therefore really democratic j for the sovereign power lay in the Assembly of the whole People, which made the laws and chose the magistrates. And in choosing the magistrates they also indirectly chose the Senate, as it was mainly made up of men who had held the different magistracies. Still the constitution had a great tendency to become practically aristocratic. For the men who had held great offices, whether patricians or plebeians, began to form a class by themselves, and their descendants, who were now called nobles, began to think that they only had a right to hold the offices which their forefathers had held. Then again the old citizens of Rome were largely cut off in the endless wars, and many freed- tnen — that is, men who had been slaves — and strangers got the citizenship, so that the character of the Roman People was greatly lowered. And, as every citizen who wished to Vote had to come to Rome in his own person, the Roman. 72 THE ROMAN COMMONWEALTH. [chap. Assembly had become far too large, and gradually turned into a mere mob. Then again many citizens were wretchedly poor, while rich men had made themselves great estates out of the land which rightly belonged to the commonwealth, Thus, instead of the old political strife between patricians and plebeians, there had come, what was a great deal worse, a social strife between the rich and the poor. While Rome had still powerful enemies to strive against, these evils did not make themselves so much felt ; but, when Rome had nothing more to fear, they began to be very glaring, and men had to seek for remedies for them. And, along with all this, the Italian states, which had not been raised to Roman citizenship but which had borne a great part in the wars of Rome, now demanded to be made Romans. The cause oi the poor against the rich was taken up by Tiberius Sempro- nius Gracchus, in the year 133 ; and the cause both of the poor and of the allies was taken up by his brother Caius in 123. But both of them were murdered by the oligarchs, who wished to keep all power and wealth in their own hands. 28. The Social War. — After the death of the Gracchi the ill will between the nobles and the people, and the further ill will between the Romans and the Italians, still went on. The next great leader of the popular party was Caius Marhis, of whom we have already heard as the conqueror of the Teutones. He was not of any high family, but was born at Arpinum, an old town of the Volscians, whose people did not obtain the full Roman citizenship till 188. His sympa- thies therefore lay with the people against the oligarchs, and still more with the Italians against either the nobles or the mob of Rome. He was an excellent soldier, and first began to distinguish himself in the war with Jugurtha, who had usurped the kingdom of Numidia, whose King Massinissa had been so useful to Rome in the Punic War. This war began in in, and in 106 Marius brought the war to an end III.] THE SOCIAL WAR. 73 and led J ugurtha in triumph. Very soon after came the inva- sion of the Cimbri and Teutones and Marius' great success against them. He was now the chief man in Rome and the leader of the popidar party. But the complaints of the Italians still went on, and in the year 90 most of them rose in arms. This was called the Social War, that is the war with the Socii or Allies of Rome. It was ended in the course of the next year by all the allies, except the Samnites and Lucanians in the south of Italy, submitting and being made Roman citizens. The Samnites, whom it had cost Rome so much trouble to conquer two hundred years before, still held out. Marius held a command in this war, and so did Lucius Cornelius Sulla, who had been his lieutenant in the war with Jugurtha ; but Marius did little or nothing, and went far to lose his old credit, while Sulla showed himself the rising man of Rome. Presently a Civil War, the first in Roman history, broke out between Marius and Sulla, in which the Social War, which had never quite come to an end, merged itself. At one stage of this war Sertorius, a Roman general on the Marian side, held Spain almost as a separate power, having a Senate of his own, which he said was the real Roman Senate. In 83 Sulla came back from his wars in the East, of which we shall speak directly, and the Samnites, who had never laid down their arms, joined with the Marian party, and began openly to declare that Rome must be destroyed. Rome had never been in such danger since quite the old times, and there can be no doubt that Sulla, who now savxl Rome and crushed the Samnites and the Marian party, fixed the future history of the world far more than Caesar or anyone else who came after him. Sulla now took to himself the supreme power at Rome, with the title of Perpetual Dictator. But, when he had quite rooted out the Marian party, and had passed a series of laws to confirm the dominion of the aristocracy, he gave up his 74 THE ROMAN COMMONWEALTH. [chap. power, and lived as a private man till he died soon after. Rome had now passed through her last trial within her own peninsula. The Samnites, who had withstood to the last, had been utterly cut off, and the other Italians had become Romans. 29. The Mithridatic War. — While Rome went through this great trial at home, she had to undergo another almost as great abroad. She had to wage a war greater than any that she had waged since the conquest of Carthage and Mace- donia. One of those states in Asia Minor which had arisen, as was before mentioned, out of the ruins of the old Persian Em- pire, was Pontos, the Kingdom of the Euxine Sea — Pontos in Greek meaning the Sea, and specially the Euxine Sea. Its Kings were of native blood, but, like all their neighbours, they made a certain pretence to Greek culture, and the acquisition of the province of Asia by ihe Romans made them neighbours of Rome. Pontos was now ruled by Mithridates the Sixth or the Great. A war with him broke out while the Social War was going on in Italy, and Mith- ridates succeeded in winning all Asia. He then ordered all the Romans and Italians who were settled in Asia to be massacred in one day, which the people everywhere did very willingly — they had made themselves so hateful. Then his generals, like Antiochos, crossed over into Greece, where many of the Greeks took his side. Sulla then, in 87, came into Greece, stormed Athens, won two great battles at Chai- roneia and Orchomenos in Bceotia, and then, being called home by the news of the successes of Marius, patched up a peace by which Mithridates gave up all his conquests.' Such a peace was not likely to last, and, as soon as he had a good opportunity, Mithridates began the war again. This was in 74, and the second war between him and the Romans, first under Lucius Licinius Lucullus and then under Cnczus Pompeius, called Magnus or the Great, lasted in.] MITHRIDATIC AND SYRIAN WARS. 75 ten years. It ended in the overthrow of the Pontic kingdom, which was split up in the usual way, and in the complete re-establishment of the Roman power in Asia. 30. The Conquest of Syria. — In the history of Rome one conquest always led to another, and, after the overthrow of Mithridates, the Roman arms were carried by Pompeius much further towards the East than they had ever gone before. Tigranes, King of Armenia, who had helped Mithridates, was utterly humbled ; Syria, the remains of the great Seleukid kingdom, was partly made a Roman province, partly divided among dependent princes. Pompeius also took Jerusalem in the year 63, and Palestine was henceforth under the Roman power, though it was often held by vassal Kings, like the Herods in the New Testament. The Roman power now reached from the Ocean to the Euphrates, and the Roman Commonwealth may now be looked on as having taken the place of Alexander and his successors in Asia, as the cham- pions of the West against the East. But each increase of dominion laid it open to fresh enemies. The Parthian Kings became formidable enemies, and indeed rivals, of Rome. We shall hear a great deal of the wars and other dealings between Rome and Parthia. But the first attempt of the Romans against Parthia, which was made by J\^arcus Lici- nius Crassus in the year 54, was utterly unsuccessful. Crassus was defeated and killed, and the more part of his army were made prisoners. 31. State of Things at Rome. — Meanwhile it was being shown more and more how unfit the government of the single city of Rome was to rule all Italy and the world. New discontents arose out of the admission of the Italians to the Roman citizenship, and the commonwealth was torn in pieces by the disputes of the leading men. We now come to the famous men of the last days of the Commonwealth, — Pcmpeius and Crassus, of whom we have already heard, 76 THE ROMAN COMMONWEALTH. [chap. Marcus Tullius Cicero the great orator, Marcus Porcius Cato, and the most famous of all, Caius Julius Ccesar. We shall say more of their doings at home in our special History of Rome. It may here be enough to say that, as far as natural gifts went, Caesar was perhaps the greatest man that ever lived, being great in all ways, equally as soldier, states- i man, and scholar. He was of an old patrician house, but he was connected with the family of Marius, and he took up the cause of the people not honestly, like the Gracchi, but to serve his own ends. The whole commonwealth was now utterly corrupt ; still Pompeius and Cicero, though there were plenty of faults on their side, did strive to defend the law and constitution such as it was, while the Roman people had sunk into a mere mob, which men like Caesar could use as they chose. 32. Caesar's Conquests in Gaul. — In the year 59 Cassar was Consul, and in the next year he went into Gaul, which had been given him as his province, and where he spent about seven years in conquering the whole of the country. Instead of a small part of southern Gaul, the Roman dominion now reached to the Rhine and the British Channel. In this war the Romans first began to have to do with people of our own race and with the land now called England. Our own ancestors, the English, were still in their old land by the Elbe, and Caesar never came near them. But there were several Teutonic tribes in north-eastern Gaul, and in the year 55 Caesar crossed into Germany itself, but he did not conquer any part of the land. In the same year 55, and again in 54, he crossed over into Britain, but he made no lasting conquest and left no Roman troops behind him. Britain was then inhabited by a Celtic people, the Britons, who gave their name to the island, and whom our forefathers, when they came into Britain long after, called the Welsh or strangers. Both the German and the British expeditions were made III.] CONQUESTS OF C^SAR. 77 rather to show the power of Rome than to make conquests which it would have been hard to keep. The Rhine thus became the boundary of the Roman province of Gaul ; that is to say, the Germans on the left bank of the Rhine became subjects of Rome, along with the Iberian and Celtic inhabi- tants of Gaul, while the Germans on the right bank remained free. This conquest of Gaul by Caesar is one of the most important events in the history of the world. It is in some sort the beginning of modern history, as it brought the old world of Southern Europe, of which Rome was the head, into contact with the lands and nations which were to play the greatest part in later times, with Gaul, Germany, and Britain. 33. The Civil War of Pompeius and Caesar. — Caesar had been all this time winning fame and power in Gaul, in order to make himself master of his country. Things got into great confusion while he was away, which was just what he wanted. At last, in the year 49, Caesar openly rebelled, and another Civil War now began, Pompeius commanding the armies which were faithful to the Commonwealth. But now that the Roman dominion took in so large a part of the world, a civil war between Romans was not necessarily fought in Italy. The power of Pompeius lay chiefly in the lands east of the Hadriatic ; so, while he was gathering his forces there, Caesar marched to Rome and got the People to make him first Dictator and then Consul for the year 48. Then he crossed over to Epeiros, and presently defeated the army of Pompeius and the Senate at Pharsalos in Thessaly. Pompeius was presently murdered in Egypt, and in about three years' time Caesar was able to overcome all who with- stood him in Africa, Spain, and elsewhere. The battle of Pharsalos is one of the most important battles in history, as it really ended the Roman Commonwealth, and began the- Roman Empire^ which we may almost say has gone on ever 78 THE ROMAN COMMONWEALTH. [chap. since. The forms of the Commonwealth lasted long after, but from this time the Roman world always had a master. Caesar was now master of the Roman dominions, and was made Dictator for life. He was also called Imperator (the word which is cut short into Emperor), a tide which in some sort belonged to every Roman general, but which Caesar was allowed to use in a special way. But he was not satisfied with being Dictator and Imperator ; he wished to be King and to wear a diadem. This was more than men could bear ; so many of the senators, among whom the chief were Cains Cassius and Marcus Junius Brutus, conspired and slew him in the senate-house (March 15th, B.C. 44). Caesar was a Tyrant; he had overthrown the freedom of his country md had seized a power beyond the laws. But it should not be forgotten that for the provinces it was a distinct gain to get one master instead of many. The real lesson to be learned from the overthrow of the Roman Commonwealth is that states which boast themselves of their own freedom should not hold other states in bondage. 34. The Second Civil War. — After the death of Caesar followed a time of great confusion, lasting for thirteen years. Brutus and Cassius, who had killed Caesar, stood up for the Commonwealth, and there was a war between them and Marcus Antonius, one of Caesar's officers, and Caesar's great-nephew, Caius Octavius. Caesar had adopted Octavius as his son ; so his name became Caius Julius Casar Octavianus. These two, along with Marcus dLmi~ lius Lepidus, formed what was called a Trhimvirate for settling the affairs of the Commonwealth. Meanwhile Brutus and Cassius, like Pompeius, had gone to the East, and in 42 was fought the battle of Philippi in Macedonia between them and the Triumvirs, in which the hopes of the party of the Commonwealth were crushed. Presently Antonius professed to make war upon the Parthians, but III.] BEGINNING OF THE EMPIRE. 79 he did nothing great, for he was utterly bewitched by Kleopatra, Queen of Egypt, the last of the dynasty of the Ptolemies. War presently followed between Caesar and Autonius, and Antonius and Kleopatra were altogether de- feated in a sea-fight at Aktion, near Ambrakia, on the west ceast of Greece (31). Antonius and Kleopatra presently killed themselves, and Egypt became a Roman province. All the lands round the Mediterranean had now come under the Roman dominion, though here and there there were prin- cipalities and commonwealths which had not been formally made into provinces. 35. The Beginning of the Empire. — There was now no one left to withstand Caesar, and the Senate and People gra- dually voted him one honour and office after another, which made him practically master of the state, though the outward forms of the Commonwealth went on as before. But he was never called King, or even Dictator, like his uncle, for that title had become almost as hateful as that of King. But the new title of Augustus was voted to him, and all who succeeded him in his power called themselves Ccesar and Augustus. But he is specially known as Augustus C one man gradually changed into an avowed monarchy. Then, when all the inhabitants of the Empire were alike Romans, the city of Rome became, as it were, lost in the Roman Empire, and other cities began to be seats of govern- ment. At the same time new enemies, namely our own kinsfolk, were beginning to threaten the Empire, and a new religion, that which we ourselves believe, was beginning to sup- plant the old religion of Rome. We have thus come to a time of very great and speedy change, and to the first beginnings of the state of things which still goes on in modern Europe. There is in some things a greater change between the first Emperors and the Emperors after Constantine than there was between the old Kings of Rome and the first Emperors. CHAPTER V. THE EARLY CHRISTIAN EMPIRE. "Bhtory of Constantine ; his changes in the government of the Em* pi re (i)—he fixes his capital at Constantinople or New Rome (l) — reigns of Constantius and Julian (i) — establishment of Chris- tianity ; disputes and Councils in the Church {2)— forms assumed by Christianity in different parts of the Empire (2) — revival of paganism under Julian ; its final extinction (2) — Teutonic settle- ments within the Empire (3) — moz>ements of the Goths ; defeat and death of Valens (4) — reigns of Theodosius and his sons {4)— Rome taken by Alaric {^—foundation of the Gothic kingdom in Spain (4) — invasion of Attila (5) — later Emperors in the West; the two Empires nominally reunited; rule of Odoacer in Italy {$) — settle- ments of the Burgundians and Franks in Gaul ; reign and con- quests of Chlodwig (6)— settlement of the Vandals in Africa (7) — reign of Theodoric in Italy (7) — intermixture of Romans and Teutons ; o?-igin of the Romance nations (8)— growth of the Ro- mance languages {^—distinctions of High and lo-iv Dutch (10) — the English conquest of Britain ; its differences from the other Teutonic settlements (11). I. Constantine and his Family. — The changes which were wrought by Constantine made him one of the most famous of all the Emperors. He was the son of Constantius, who had reigned under Diocletian and Maximian in Britain, Spain, and Gaul, and who, though not a Christian himself, had, out of justice and humanity, done what he could to protect the Christians. Constantine himself for a long time did the same. He protected the Christians, but he did not chap, v.] CONSTANTINE AND HIS FAMILY. 95 profess their religion till the last civil war in 323, which gave him possession of the whole Empire. He presently made a change which had a great effect upon the later history of the Empire. Rome, as we have seen, had ceased to be the usual dwelling-place of the Emperors, and they had been commonly living at Milan, Nikomedeia, and other places. Constantine now fixed the capital of the Empire in the old Greek city of Byzantion on the Bosporos, which he greatly enlarged and called New Rome, but which has ever since been better known as Constantinople or the City of Constantine. The chief power was thus placed in a city which was Chris Lian from what we may call its new birth, and which had none-of the heathen associations of the Old Rome. And, as Constan- tinople was in its origin a Greek city, it soon again became, though it was the capital of the Roman Empire, a city more Greek than Roman, and it gradually became the chief seat of Greek culture and learning rather than Antioch and Alexandria. Constantine too in his new capital was able to set more fully in order the despotic system of government which had been brought in by Diocletian. From this time, though the Senate and the Consuls still went on, we may look on the Empire as being an absolute monarchy in form as well as in fact. And moreover Constantine not only reigned longer than any Emperor since Augustus, but he established his power so firmly that the Empire lasted in his family as long as any of his family were left. But they were mostly cut off by their own kinsfolk. Constantine divided his dominions among his three sons, but at last, in 350, the Empire was united again in his son Cmstanthcs, who reigned at Constantinople till 361. There were several revolts and rival Emperors in his time, as well as many disputes in the Church, and unsuccessful wars with the Germans and Per- sians. But his cousin Julian, who was Ccesar under him in the West, drove the Germans out of Gaul, and thus mad* 96 7tTE EARLY CHRISTIAN EMPIRE, [chap. himself a great name. At last his soldiers proclaimed him Attgustus. t and as Constantius died soon after, Julian got possession of the whole Empire without much trouble. But his reign did not last long, as in 363 he died in war against the Persians, and the family of Constantine ended with him. 2. The Establishment of Christianity. — When Constantine embraced Christianity the long struggle between the Church and the power of heathen Rome came to an end. The Church conquered the Empire. Not only did the Empire become Christian, but Christianity became in a special way the religion of the Empire. Christianity has hardly any- where taken firm and lasting root, except in those countries which either formed part of the Roman Empire or learned their religion and civilization from it, and from this time the history of the Church and of the Empire go together. Con- stantine, as was often done at that time, put off his baptism till just before his death. Yet he acted throughout as the chief ruler of the Church ; and when Arms, a priest of Alexandria, put forth new doctrines as to the more myste- rious points of Christian belief, it was by his authority, as Emperor, that a Council of Bishops was gathered together at Nikaia in Bithynia in 325. This is commonly called the Council of Nice, and here the Nicene Creed was drawn up. This was the first of what are called the General Councils of the Church, several of which were held in this and the next century. For men were at this time constantly disputing about the deepest doctrines of the Christian religion, and each heresy, that- is, each new and strange kind of teaching, commonly called for a Council to settle the dispute. The truth is that the despotic system of the Empire had so thoroughly crushed men's minds in ail political matters that it was only on points of religion that there was any free play of thought at all. Moreover, while Christianity is essentially the religion of the Roman Empire, different forms of Chris* V.] ESTABLISHMENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 97 tianity took their firmest root in different parts of the Empire, according to the character and turn of mind of the people. Thus in the West, where Latin was spoken, men thought less about subtle points of doctrine ; but we shall see that, before long, Rome again became the ruling and Imperial city in ecclesiastical matters, as she had once been in temporal dominion. Meanwhile, in the Cra^-speaking provinces men's minds were more given to hard questions of doctrine. As the Greeks had in old times produced so many subtle philosophers, so they now produced equally subtle divines. And in the further East, in Syria and Egypt, in the lands which had never thoroughly become either Greek or Roman, men were constantly falling off into doctrines which both Greeks and Latins thought heretical. This was the only way that was left to them of asserting their national independence. Thus the whole Empire gradually embraced Christianity ; but Christianity took different shapes in different parts, arid there were long disputings on various points of doctrine, and ot course men did not become Christians of any kind all at once. Many still clave to the old heathen worship, espe- cially what we may call the two ends of mankind, that is to say, the philosophers who trusted in their own wisdom, and the rude peasantry in the country places. For Christianity was everywhere preached first in the towns ; hence it came that the word paganus, which at first simply meant a countryman, came to mean a pagan or heathen or worshipper of false Gods. Still, from the time that Constantine professed him- self a Christian, Christianity grew and paganism went back, though it cannot be doubted that the spread of Christianity was greatly hindered by the endless disputes in the Church. Constantius favoured the Aria?is, and, after his death, pagan- ism got a new start for a moment. For Julian, though he had been brought up as a Christian, and though in his own life he wa-- one of the best of all the Emperors, fell back again H 98 THE EARLY CHRISTIAN EMPIRE. [chap. to the worship of the old Gods. But all the Emperors aftei him were Christians, and, by the end of the fourth century aftei Christ, the Christians were, to say the least, the great majority in most parts of the Empire. Under the Emperors Gratian and Theodosius, who reigned between them from 367 to 395, the public profession of paganism was quite put an end to. 3. The Teutonic Invasions. — We have now come to the time when the nations of our own race began to make their way into the Empire. We have seen that the different German tribes had been most dangerous enemies of Rome ever since the time of Augustus, and that many of the most valiant Emperors had had much ado to defend the Empire against them. So it was still ; Constantine and Julian had to fight hard against the Germans, and so had Valentinian, the next Emperor but one after Julian. But in all these wars, though the Germans were constantly driven back, yet they grew stronger and stronger, while the Romans grew weaker and weaker. Some of the Germans made their way into the Empire in arms ; others took service in the Roman armies, and often received grants of land as their reward. In both ways they learned something of Roman civilization and Roman military discipline, without losing anything of their own strength and courage. Presently it became not uncommon for a Gothic or other Teutonic chief to be at once King of his own people and to bear some title as a Roman general or magistrate. In such cases he and his people served the Emperors or fought against them, pretty much as they thought good, or according as they were well or ill treated. And at the same time they learned some- thing of the religion of Rome, so that most of the Teutonic nations became Christians before they settled in the Empire or very soon after. But it was for the most part in its Arian form that they embraced Christianity. Thus we find Bar* barians, who for the most part however were Christians, V.] THE TEUTONIC INVASIONS. . 99 settled within the Empire, and before long they began tc occupy whole provinces. We have now come to the time when the Teutonic settlements and conquests become the most important facts in our history. It often happens that the migrations and victories of one nation are caused by some other nation pressing upon it. And so it happened now. The movement of the Teutonic nations into the Roman Empire which had already begun was greatly has- tened and strengthened by the pressure of Turanian tribes who were pushing their way from the East The chief of these were the Nuns, who had been themselves driven out of China in the extreme east of Asia, and who were now making their way into Europe. Though the Huns did not themselves enter the Empire till long afterwards, and though they never actually settled within it at any time, yet this migration of theirs had a most important effect on the state of the Empire, by the stir which it caused among the Teutonic nations. 4. The Goths. — The first Teutonic people whom the Huns met were the Goths, who had lately formed a great kingdom in the land north of the Danube, which' had been Trajan's province of Dacia, but from which the Romans had with- drawn under Aurelian. They were beginning to become Christians of the Arian sect under the teaching of a Bishop named Wulfila or Ulfilas, whose translation of the Scrip- tures into the Gothic tongue is the oldest Teutonic writing that we have. The Huns now came upon them like a storm ; some of the Goths submitted to the new invaders, while others were allowed to cross the Danube and settle within the Empire. This was in 376. The first Valentinian was now dead : the reigning Emperors were his brother Valem in the East and his sons Gratian and Valentinian in the West. The Goths were so ill-treated by the officers of Valens that they took to arms ; a battle was fought neai H 2 ioo THE EARL Y CHRISTIAN EMPIRE. [chap. Hadrianople in 378, in which Valens was killed. After this the Goths were neve* driven out of the Empire, though many of them took service in the Roman armies. This was a most wretched time for the Empire ; for, besides the movements of the Barbarians, various Emperors or Tyrants rose and fell in different Provinces, especially in Gaul and Britain. Things went on a little better during the reign of Theodosius, who is called the Great, and who reigned, first as a colleague of the sons of Valentinian, and afterwards alone, from 379 to 395. Theodosius is famous for the penance to which he submitted at the hands of Saint Ambrose, the Archbishop of Milan, who refused him admittance to the church till he had repented of a massacre which he had ordered among the turbulent people of Thessalonica. Theodosius was the last Emperor who reigned over the whole Empire before it was divided and dismembered ; as soon as he died it began to fall in pieces. He left two sons, of whom Honorius reigned in the West, and Arcadhcs in the East. The West-Goths, under their famous King Alaric, presently revolted, and, though they were kept in check for a while by the Roman general Stilicho, at last, in 410, they took and sacked Rome, which had never been taken by a foreign enemy since the time of Brennus the Gaul. Alaric died soon after, and the next Gothic King Athaulf made a treaty with the Empire and passed into Gaul and Spain. German tribes of all kinds were now pressing into Gaul, and from Gaul into Spain, and rival Emperors were rising and falling. Athaulf went in name as a Roman officer to restore the province of Spain to the Empire. In reality this was the beginning of an independent Gothic kingdom in Spain and Southern Gaul, and the way in which this kingdom began is a good example of the way in which the Roman Empire, its laws and titles, still exercised a powerful influence on the minds of those who were really its conquerors. V.] THE LA TER EMPERORS. ioi 5. End of the Emperors in Italy. — Meanwhile the Western Empire was being cut short in all quarters by the settlements of the Franks, Burgundians, Vandals, and other Teutonic tribes in the different provinces, settlements of which we shall speak of again presently, And while the Western provinces were thus falling off one by one, the East had much ado tc hold up against the attacks of the Persians. Presently the Romans of both Empires, and the Goths and other Teutons who had settled within the Empire, were all threatened by the Turanian hordes under the famous Attila, King of the Huns, He went on for a while ravaging and conquering far and wide y till at last he was defeated in the great battle of Chalons in 451 by the united powers of Romans, Goths, and Franks. This was one of the most important battles in the history of the world ; it was a struggle for life and death between the Aryan and Turanian races, and Christianity and civilization, and all that distinguishes Europe from Asia and Africa, were at stake. The names therefore of Aetius, the Roman general, and of the West-Gothic King Theodoric who died in the battle, are names which should always be held in honour. It is needless to go through the names of all the Emperors of this time : the only one in the West who is worth remembering on his own account is Majorian, a wise and brave man, who reigned from 457 to 461. At last, in 476, the succession of the Western Emperors came to an end, and the way in which it came to an end marks the way in which the names and titles ot Rome were kept on, while all power was passing into the hands of the Barbarians. The Roman Senate voted that one Emperor was enough, and that the Eastern Emperor Zeno should reign over the whole Empire. But at the same time Ze7io was made to entrust the government of Italy with the title of Patrician to Odoacer, the chief of a German people called the Heruli. Thus the Roman Empire went on at Constantinople or New Pome, while Italy and the Old Rome 102 THE EARL Y CHRISTIAN EMPIRE. [chap. itself passed into the power of the Barbarians. Still the Roman laws and names went on, and we may be sure that any man in Italy would have been much surprised if he had been told that the Roman Empire had come to an end. We shall presently see what important events came of this long keeping on of the old Roman names and feelings. 6. Settlements of the Burgundians and Franks. — It was through these settlements of the Teutonic tribes within the Roman Empire that several of the chief nations of modern Europe arose. We may perhaps call the Spanish kingdom of the West-Goths, of which we have already spoken and which began about 414, the first of the kingdoms of modern Europe, the first which arose out of the breaking up of the Roman Empire. For some while it was not merely a Spanish kingdom, for it took in all Aquitaine or Gaul south of the Loire, and the capital of the West-Gothic kings was at Toulotise. Meanwhile the Burgundians and Franks, whose names are so famous in later history, began to settle, at first under a nominal subjection to the Empire, in other parts of Gaul. The Burgundians settled in the south- eastern part of Gaul, where their name has lived on in several kingdoms and duchies. And, towards the end of the fifth century, the kingdom of the Franks took firm root in Gaul under their King Chlodwig or Clovis — the same name which was afterwards written Ludwig, Louis, and Lewis — who reigned from 481 to 511. He became a Chris- tian, and not only a Christian but a Catholic, which greatly favoured his conquests, as all the other Teutonic Kings were Arians. The dominions of the Franks now took in part of their old country in Germany and also their conquests in Gaul. And they have given their name to parts of both countries ; for part of Germany is still called Franken or Franconia, and part of Gaul is still called France. In Latin both names are the same, Francia. But the Franks gradually v.] REIGN OF THEODORIC. 103 spread their conquests over a much larger part both of Gaul and of Germany, bringing the different nations of both into more or less subjection to them. Thus they conquered the kingdom of the Bnrgundians and won Aqtiitaine from the West-Goths, leaving to them only a small part of Gaul on the coast of the Mediterranean. But it was only in Northern Gaul that the Franks really settled. It was out of these settlements of the West-Goths, Franks, and Bwgundians that all the modern states of Germany, Gaul, and Spain have arisen. 7. The Vandals and the East-Goths. — But there were other Teutonic settlements in the Empire which did not in this way give birth to modern states and nations, because the Emperors were, as we shall presently see, able to join them again to the Empire. Among these were what we may call the worst and the best of the Teutonic settlements, those namely of the Vandals in Africa and of the East-Goths in Italy. The Vandals were for some time settled in Spain, but in 429 they crossed over into Africa and founded a king- dom of which Carthage was the capital. The Vandals were Arians, and they cruelly persecuted the Catholic Romans whom they found in the country, and this seems to have been one reason among others why their kingdom did not last. The kingdom of the East-Goths in Italy was very different. Their King Theodoric entered Italy in 489 by a commission from the Emperor Zeno, overthrew Odoacer, and reigned himself from 493 to 526. But, though he reigned in Italy, he was never called King of Italy but only King of his own Goths. Though he was an Arian, he in no way persecuted the Catholics, and he let the Romans keep their own laws and all that they were used to. Every year he named one ot the Consuls, while the other was named by the Emperor at Constantinople. Italy under Theodoric was the most peace- ful and flourishing country in the world, more peaceful and 104 THE EARLY CHRISTIAN EMPIRE. [chap. flourishing than it had been for a long time before or than it has ever been since till quite lately. The dominions of Theodoric stretched far beyond Italy to the north, east, and west, and he ruled the West-Gothic kingdom in Gaul and Spain as guardian for his grandson. But this great dominion of the East-Goths did not last any more than that of the Vandals in Africa, and none of the modern states or nations of Europe can be said to spring from either of them. 8. Origin of the Romance Nations. — We thus see that new states arose out of the settlements of the Teutonic nations in the western provinces of the Empire. And we may say that not only new states arose but also new nations. For, out of the mixture of the Roman inhabitants and the Teutonic settlers, there arose a new state of things, which was neither Roman nor Teutonic, but a mixture of the two. The Goths and the other Teutons who settled in Italy, Spain, and Gaul were by no means mere destroyers who swept everything before them. They let the Romans keep their own laws and language and part of their lands. And in Spain and Gaul those nations, like the Goths and Burgun- dians, who had been converted by Arian Bishops gradu- ally came over to the Catholic faith. Moreover, as the Romans had all the learning and civilization on their side, the clergy were for a long time almost always Romans, and they kept the property and influence which they had before, and indeed added to it. Thus the two nations were gradually mixed together ; and the conquerors, as being the smaller in number, gradually came to adopt a great deal of the laws and manners and especially the language of the conquered. Thus there arose the modern Spanish and Italian nations, and the two nations in Gaul, the people of Provence and Aquitaine south of the Loire and the French to the north. But of the languages which were thus formed we must speak a little more fully. v.] ORIGIN OF THE ROMAN NATIONS. io$ 9. Origin of the Romance Languages. — By the time f the Teutonic settlements in Western Europe took place, Latin had become the common speech of Gaul and Spain no less than of Italy. The old languages which were spoken before the Romans came lived on only in a few out-of-the-way corners, like the country of the Basques. The language therefore which the Teutonic settlers found prevailing, and which they had to learn in order to get on with the people of the provinces, was Latin. That is to say, such Latin as was spoken at the time, which of course was not quite the same as the Latin of the great Roman writers of earlier times, and the language no doubt differed more or less in different provinces. And, as the Germans learned to speak Latin, the language naturally became still more corrupted, and a good many German words crept into it. Thus the common language of Italy, Gaul, and Spain became a sort of corrupt Latin, which men used in common speech; in writing they used fairly good Latin for ages after. No one thought of writing in the common speech, which began to be called Roman, in distinction from the Latin which men wrote. Thus, out of the various dialects of this Roman language, several of the chief languages of modern Europe very gradually arose. These are those which are called the Romance languages, those namely which have their origin in Latin. The chief of these are Italian and Spanish in their different dialects, Provencal in Southern, and French in Northern, Gaul. These languages had their beginning at the time of which we are now speaking, but it was not until long afterwards that men began to understand that quite new languages had really grown up. And, besides these four great Romance languages, a fifth, distinct from any of them, which is still specially called Romansch, is spoken in the eastern parts of Switzerland, in what was anciently the Roman province of Ratia. And, stranger still, in the pro- 106 THE EARLY CHRISTIAN EMPIRE. [chap. vince of Dacia, which the Romans held only from the time of Trajan to that of Aurelian, a Romance language is still spoken, and the people still call themselves Roumans. Of the fourth great Latin-speaking country, Africa, we have nothing to say in this way, for, as we go on, we shall see how in Africa everything Roman and everything Teutonic was utterly swept awav. 10. High and Low Dutch. — Such was the way in whicl» the Teutonic nations established themselves in the western provinces of the Continent. Meanwhile other Teutonic set- tlements of quite another kind, and made by another branch of the Teutonic race, were going on elsewhere. This is a good place to stop and explain that there are two great divisions of the Teutonic or Dutch people, the High and the Low. It must always be remembered that, though we now commonly use the word Dutch to mean only the people of Holland, yet the word is always used in German, and was formerly used in English, to mean the whole of the German people. And, as the Germans called their own speech Thiotisc or Dutch, mean- ing the language which could be understood, those people whose language could not be understood were called Welsh or strangers. The High-Dutch are those who live inland, in the south of Germany away from the sea, while the Low are those who live near the sea, by the mouths of the great rivers Rhine, Weser, and Elbe. Into the greater part of their country the Romans had never come since the days of Drusus and Germanicus, and for a long time they knew very little of the Romans, and the Romans knew very little of them. They had not served in the Roman armies, and they knew nothing about the Christian religion. They were therefore in quite a different state from the other tribes who had made their way into the continental provinces, and who knew something of the civilization and religion of Rome, even before they entered the Roman dominions. Of the V.] HIGH AND LOW DUTCH. 107 earlier Teutonic settlers the greater part belonged to the High-Dutch division, though the language of the Goths had much more in common with the Low. But, though the Low- Dutch and Gothic languages are thus closely connected, yet the settlements of the Goths have historically nothing to do with the settlements of the Low-Dutch. The Low-Dutch settlements which have had most effect on the history of the world, and in which we have the deepest interest, were made in quite another part of the Empire, and in quite another way. The settlements of the Goths and Franks were mainly made by land, while the great settlement of the Low-Dutch tribes was made by sea. 11. The English Conquest of Britain. — We have seen that in the island of Britain, of which the greater part became a Roman province in the time of Agricola, the Romans found a Celtic people, the Britons. But in the north of the island, and in the other great island of Ire- land, there was another Celtic people, the Scots or Irish. The Romans never even tried to conquer Ireland, and they never conquered the whole of Britain. The northern part of what is now called Scotland always remained free. In the rest of the island the Britons were conquered, and the land became a Roman province. But in the fourth century, when the power of Rome began to get weaker, the free Celts in the northern part of the island, the Picts and Scots, began to pour into the Roman province, and other enemies began to come against the land from the east by sea. These last were no other than our own forefathers. For we ourselves, the English people, belong to the Low-Dutch stock, who came into Britain from the old Low-Dutch lands by the Elbe and the Weser. It was in the latter part of the fourth century that these Low-Dutch tribes, and, first among them, the Saxons, began to make attacks on Britain by sea. The Saxons are also heard of as pressing into Gaul 108 THE EARL Y CHRISTIAN EMPIRE. [chap. by land, and they even made one or two small settlements there ; but their attacks on Britain by sea were those which led to the greatest results. For a while they were driven off by the Romans, but when the Roman power began altogether to give way in the reign of Honorius, the Roman troops were withdrawn from Britain, about the year 410, and the island was left to shift for itself. The Teutonic invasions now began again, and now it was that our forefathers began to settle in the land where the English now dwell. No doubt men of many different Low-Dutch tribes joined in these expeditions ; but there were three tribes which stood out above the others. These were the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes. The Celts, the Britons and Scots, have always called us Saxons ; but, as soon as the different Teutonic tribes in Britain began to join to- gether into one people, the name by which they called them- selves was Angles or English, and the land was called Anglia or England. Thus it was that this people, the English people, came from their old homes on the main- land, and won for themselves new homes in the isle of Britain. They knew nothing and cared nothing for the laws or language or arts of Rome. They did not, like the Goths and Franks, adopt the language and religion of the Romans ; they swept everything before them, and the Britons were either killed or made slaves, or took refuge in the western parts of the island. The Germans everywhere called the people of the Roman provinces, whose tongue they did not understand, Welsh, and that word in German is still ap- plied to the French and Italians. But in Britain of course the name meant the Britons ; they were, and are still, called the Welsh, and the part of the island which they still keep is called Wales. The first English kingdom founded in Britain was that of Kent, a kingdom of the Jutes, founded in 449, two years before Aetius and Theodoric overthrew v.] THE ENGLISH IN BRITAIN. 109 Attila at Chalons. Presently other kingdoms, Anglian and Saxon, were founded, and, in a little more than a hundred years, the greater part of that land which had been the Roman and Christian province of Britain had become the heathen land of the Angles and Saxons. Thus it was that the English people settled in the land which thus be- came England, settling in quite another way from that in which the other Teutonic nations had settled in the other parts of the Empire. Our forefathers kept their own lan- guage and their own religion. They did not become Chris- tians till about a hundred and fifty years after the English Conquest began, and then they were not converted by those whom they had conquered. And the tongue which they still speak, though, like other tongues, it has gone through many changes, is still in its main substance the old Teutonic speech of their ancestors. 12. Summary. — Thus, in the course of the fourth and fifth centuries, the Roman Empire gradually became Christian. The capital was moved to Constantinople, and, when the Empire was divided, Constantinople always remained the capital of the Eastern part. Meanwhile the Goths, Franks, and other Teutonic nations pressed into the Empire, and out of their settlements the Romance nations of modern Europe arose. The invasion of the Huns was driven back by the united powers of Romans and Teutons. The series of Emperors in the West came to an end, and the Empire was nominally reunited, Theodoric the Goth reigning in Italy. Meanwhile the Low-Dutch tribes, the Angles and Saxons, were settling in Britain, and making the beginning of the great English nation. CHAPTER VI. THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE EAST. Continuation of the Roman Empire at Constantinople (i) — condition of the Eastern Church (i) — reign of Justinian, his legislation and buildings (2) — exploits of Belisarius and Narses ; recovery of Africa and Italy (2) — Lombard conquest of Italy ; relations of Rome and Venice to the Empire (2) — wars with the Turks and Avars (3) — greatness of Persia under the two Chosroes ; Persian victories of Heraclius (3) — rise of the Saracens ; preaching of Mahomet; spread of his religion (4) — the first Caliphs; their wars with the Empire ; conquests of Syria and Egypt ; sieges of Constantinople (5) — Saracen conquests in Africa, Spain, and Southern Gaul (5) — Saracen conquest of Persia ; breaking up of the Saracenic dominion ; position of the later Caliphs (6) — the ■ Isaurian Emperors ; dispute about images ; decline of the Impe~ rial power in Italy (7) — advance of the Lombards in Italy (8) — the Merwings in Gaul ; they are succeeded by the Karlings (8) — Peppin invited into Italy ; he becomes Patrician of Rome (8) — Charles the Great conquers the Lombards; his election as Emperor (8, 9) — Summary (10) I. The Roman Emperors at Constantinople. — The suc- cession of Roman Emperors thus came to an end in the West, but the Empire still went on at Constantinople. The Emperors who reigned there still claimed to be sovereigns of fhe whole Empire, though they had no real power west of the Hadriatic. The parts of the Empire which were really under their dominion were chiefly those which either were originally Greek, or where the Greek language and civiliza- tion had been spread by the conquests of Alexander ; that is, CH. VI.] THE EMPERORS A T CONSTANTINOPLE. 1 1 1 those which I have before spoken of as the Greek and the Oriental provinces. Still it must be borne in mind that these Emperors were strictly Roman Emperors. The Imperial suc- cession went on without any break ; the laws and titles of Rome were kept up, and, though Greek was the language which was most spoken, yet Latin remained for a long time the official language, that which was used in drawing up laws and public documents of all kinds. There is no need to say much about the Emperors who reigned at Constanti- nople between the death of Theodosius the Great and the nominal reunion of the Empire in 476. Their time was mainly taken up with wars with the Persians, in which the Romans generally got the worst, with the invasion of Attila and his Huns, and with ecclesiastical disputes within the Empire. The. people of the Oriental provinces especially, who had never thoroughly become either Greek or Roman, were constantly putting forth or adopting doctrines which the Catholic Church, both of the Old and of the New Rome, looked on as heretical. Several Councils of the Church were held during this time, and this was the time of some of the most famous of the Greek Fathers, especially the great preacher Saint John Chrysostom, that is the Golden- month, who was Patriarch of Constantinople. The Patriarchs of Constantinople or New Rome were the chief Bishops in the East, but, as the Emperors were always at hand, they never won anything like the same power which the Bishops of the Old Rome won in the West. Thus, though the history of the Eastern Empire is largely a his- tory of ecclesiastical disputes, yet we never find there the same kind of disputes between Church and State, between the ecclesiastical and the temporal powers, which make up so large a part of Western history. 2. The Recovery of Italy and Africa. — As the claims of the Emperors who reigned at Constantinople to rule over all 112 THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE EAST. [chap. the dominions of their predecessors were never forgotten, so they were put forward whenever there was any chance of making them good. And soon after the Emperors came to an end in the West, the Emperors at Constantinople had several opportunities of meddling in Western affairs. The Franks were too powerful and too far off for the Emperors to have any chance against them ; so they were held to be friends of the Empire, and in 510 Chlodwig him- self was made Roman Consul for the year. With Italy the Emperors had much more to do. We have seen that both Odoacer and Theodoric entered Italy with a nominal com- mission from the Emperor Zeno, which at least kept up the memory of the claims of the Emperors to rule in Italy. As long as Theodoric lived there was no hope of anything more than this ; but after his death the power of the Goths in Italy declined. So did also that of the Vandals in Africa, and the reigning Emperor now began to think that it would be possible to make both countries again really, as well as nominally, parts of the Empire. This Emperor was Justinian, who reigned from 527 to 565, and was one of the most famous of all the Emperors. He was famous for his buildings, especially for the great church of Saint Sophia at Constantinople, and still more for putting the laws of Rome into the shape of a regular code. Thus was formed that complete system of Roman law, called the Civil Law y which has formed the groundwork of the law of the more part of Europe. Justinian was also famous for the great conquests made in his reign, though he had not much to do with making them himself. His general Belisarius was per- haps the greatest commander that ever lived, as he did the greatest things with the smallest means. He did something to check the Persians, who were now very powerful under a great King called Chosroes or Nushirvan. In 534 Belisarius put an end to the Vandal kingdom in Africa, and the next VI.] CONQUESTS OF JUSTINIAN. 113 year, being then Consul, he landed in Sicily, and a long war between the Romans and Goths went on under Belisarius and his successor Narsfc, till, in 553, the whole of Italy was recovered to the Empire. Meanwhile the southern part of Spain was also recovered from the West- Goths, so that Justinian reigned both in the Old and in the New Rome, and the Roman dominion again stretched from the Ocean to the Euphrates. It would have been far wiser if Justinian had left the West alone, and had given his mind to defending his Eastern dominions against the Persians and against the various enemies who were attacking the Empire from the north. But, as Roman Emperor, he could not withstand the temptation, and he most likely thought it his duty, to re- cover as many of the old provinces of the Empire as he could. But, after all, it was only for a very few years that the Emperors were able to keep the whole of Italy. Three years after Justinian's death, in 568, a Teutonic people called the Lombards began to pour into Italy, and they presently conquered the whole North and some parts of the South. Still a large part of Italy, including Rome and Ravenna, most part of the South, and the islands of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica, remained to the Empire. Venice also, a city which began to spring up in the fifth century, when men fled for fear of the Huns and sought shelter in the small islands of the Hadriatic, also kept up its connexion with the Empire, but its connexion gradually became one rather of alliance than of subjection. 3. Wars with the Persians. — We thus see that, at the end of the sixth century, the Empire, though so large a part of it had fallen away, still took in the greater part of the countries round the Mediterranean Sea, and still kept all the greatest cities of Europe, Asia, and Africa. But it was threatened on all sides, not only by the Lombards in the West but by the Slavonian and Turanian nations who were pressing I 114 THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE EAST. [chap. in from the North in the countries by the Danube, and still more by the Persians in the East. It was in the reign ot Justinian that we first began to hear of the Turks. That name does not mean those particular Turks who made their way into the Empire long afterwards, and who hold Constan- tinople still. The Turks with whom we have now to do belonged to other branches of the great Turkish race, which is perhaps the most widely spread of all the Turanian races of Asia, and of the different branches of which we shall often hear again. Another Turanian people, the Avars, also appear on the borders of the Empire at this time, and several Em- perors, especially Maurice, who reigned from 582 to 602, had much ado to defend their northern frontier against them. Meanwhile the Persians were at the height of their power, and under another Chosroes, a grandson of Chosroes called Nushirvan, they bade fair to subdue all the Eastern provinces of the Empire. Between the years 611 and 615, the Persian armies overran the whole of Syria, Egypt, and Asia, reaching to the Hellespont, and encamping at Chalkedon within sight of Constantinople. The Empire was then ruled by Heraclius, one of the greatest names in the whole list of Roman Emperors. He had been Exarch or Governor of Africa, and had risen to the throne by de- stroying Phokas, who had rebelled and murdered the Em- peror Maurice. For a while he seemed to do nothing to stop the Persian invasions, but at last he arose ; he restored the old discipline of the Roman armies, and in a series of great campaigns, from 620 to 628, he altogether broke the Persian power, and won back all that Chosroes had conquered. But, while the Romans and Persians were thus disputing for the dominion of Asia, the Empire was again cut short in the West, for the Gothic Kings now won back the Roman pro- vince in Spain; and it was presently cut short in the East in a far more terrible way. For a power was now arising VI.] RISE OF MAHOMET. 115 which was to overthrow the Persians and Goths altogether, and to strike a deadly blow at the power of Rome. 4. Rise of the Saracens. — We now come to the rise of a great Semitic power, the only Semitic power which has played any great part in history since the time of the great dominion of Carthage. For it must not be forgotten that the Persians, though so widely cut off from their Western brethren, were just as much Aryans as the Italians, Greeks, or Teutons. We also come to the rise of a new religion, the last of three great religions which have come out from among the Semitic nations, and all of which taught men that there is but one God, and bade them to keep from the worship of idols. First came Judaism, then Christianity, and now the religion of Mahomet. Mahomet was an Arab of Mecca, the holy city of Arabia, where he was born in 569. He gave himself out for a prophet, and taught that, though both the Jewish and the Christian religion were sent from God, yet he had himself received a revelation more perfect than either. In his own country there can be no doubt that Mahomet was a great reformer. He swept away the idolatry of the Arabs ; he greatly reformed their laws and manners, and gathered their scattered tribes into one nation. In his early days he had to bear much persecution ; but, as he grew powerful, he began to teach that his new religion was to be forced upon all men by the sword. So the Arabs, or Saracens as they are also called, as soon as they had embraced the faith of Mahomet, held it to be their duty to spread their faith everywhere, which in fact meant to conquer the whole world. They everywhere gave men the choice of three things, Koran, tribute, or sword j that is, they called on all men either to believe in Mahomet and to accept the Koran, a book which contained his revelations, to submit to the Saracens and pay tribute, or else to fight against them if they could. By these means the religion of Mahomet was spread over a large part of Asia I 2 u 6 THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE EAST. [chap. and Africa, and we shall see that it made its way into Europe also. As Christianity became the religion of the Empire and of the nations which learned their civilization from either the Old or the New Rome, so Mahometanism gradually became the religion of most of those nations beyond the Empire with which our history has much to do. We may call it the religion of the East, as far as we have to do with the East, just as Christianity is the religion of the West. It has spread at different times as far as from Spain to India. The people of all the countries conquered by the Saracens and other Mahometan powers had either to embrace the Ma- hometan religion or else to buy the right to practise their own, whether Christian or heathen, by the payment of tribute. 5. Wars of the Saracens and Romans. — As soon as all Arabia had been joined together under the authority of Mahomet, he and his followers began to spread their power over the neighbouring countries ; that is, of course, mainly over the dominions of Rome and Persia. Mahomet himself died in 632, before any serious attack was made upon either, and he was succeeded in his power by rulers called his Caliphs or Successors, the first of whom was his father-in-law Abu-Bekr. The Caliphs were at once spiritual and temporal rulers, much the same as if in Christendom the same man had been Pope and Emperor at once. Under the first two Caliphs Abu-Bekr and Omar, the Roman provinces of Syria and Egypt were conquered between the years 632 and 639. Now it should be remembered that these two were the provinces in which Greek and Roman civilization had never thoroughly taken root, where the mass of the people still kept their old languages, and where men were always falling away into forms of belief which were counted here- itcal according to the faith both of the Old and New Rome. In these provinces therefore men may well have deemed iiat they had little to lose by a change oi n^er?. It fol- VI. j CONQUESTS OF THE SARACENS. 117 lowed then that, though the Saracens had to fight several hard battles against the Roman armies in Syria, yet they met with no general resistance of the whole people, and in Egypt they met with no resistance at all. The great cities of Antioch and Alexandria, as well «as Jerusalem, were thus lost to the Empire. But in the lands on this side of Mount Tauros, where the influence of Greek culture and Roman law was more deep and abiding, the Saracens never gained any lasting footing. They often invaded the country, and twice, in 673 and 716, they besieged Constantinople itself, but they made no abiding conquests. In Africa too, -which had been far more thoroughly Romanized than Syria and Egypt, they met with a long resistance. Their invasions began in 647, but Carthage was not taken till 698, and the whole country was not fully subdued till 709. From no part of the Empire have all traces either of the Roman dominion or of the Teutonic settlement of the Vandals been so utterly swept away as from Africa. From Africa in 710 they crossed into Spain, and in about three years they subdued the whole land, except where the Christians still held out in the mountain fastnesses of the North. They con- quered also a small part of Gaul, namely the province ol Narbonne. But this was the end of their conquests in Western Europe. In 732 they were defeated in the great battle of Tours by the Frank Charles Martel, of whom we shall presently hear again. In 755 they were altogether driven out of Gaul, but it took more than seven hundred years more to drive them out of the whole of Spain. 6. The Saracen Conquests in the East. — The Saracens thus lopped off the Eastern and Southern provinces of the Empire, so that the Romans no longer held anything in Africa, nor anything in Asia beyond Mount Tauros. Mean- while they were pressing on with equal vigour against the Other great empire of Persia. In about nineteen year* n8 THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE EAST. [chap. from 632 to 651, the whole kingdom of Persia was con- quered, and the native dynasty of the Sassanides, which had reigned in Persia since the time of Artaxerxes, came to an end. Persia now gradually became a Mahometan country. The Saracens thence pressed northwards and eastwards into Sind, the most western part of India, and into the Turkish lands beyond the Oxus. For a short time the whole of this vast dominion held together, and a single Caliph was obeyed in Spain and in Sind. But, before long, disputes and civil wars arose among the Saracens themselves, as to the right succession of the Caliphate, and in 755 their empire was divided, and was never joined together again. One Caliph reigned in Spain, another at Damascus and afterwards at Bagdad, each giving himself out to be the true successor of Mahomet. Mean- while in the East the Turkish tribes were pressing into the Saracenic empire very much in the same way in which the Teutonic tribes had pressed into the Empire of Rome. The governors of the different provinces gradually made them- selves independent, and various dynasties, chiefly Turkish, arose, whose obedience to the Caliph at Bagdad became quite nominal. Various sects also arose among the Mahometans, just as they arose among the Christians, and each sect looked on the others as heretics. But those who gave themselves out as the orthodox followers of Mahomet always looked up to the Caliph at Bagdad. So the Caliphs may be looked on as keeping something like the power of a Pope after they had lost that of an Emperor. 7. The Loss of Italy. — The descendants of Heraclius went on reigning till about the end of the seventh century. Then came a time of confusion, till at last, in 718, the Empire fell to a valiant man named Leo, a native of Isauria, whose de- scendants reigned after him till the beginning of the ninth century. The second siege of Constantinople by the Saracens VI.] LOSS OF ITALY. 119 was then going on, and it was mainly owing to his valour and wisdom that the invaders were beaten back. This defeat of the Saracens by Leo is really one of the greatest events of the world's history ; for, if Constantinople had been taken by the Mahometans before the nations of Western Europe had at all grown up, if would seem as if the Christian religion and European civilization must have been swept away from the earth. But, if Leo thus secured the Empire towards the East, his conduct in religious matters did much to weaken its power in the West. Though Spain and Africa had been lost, the Emperors still kept Rome and all that part of Italy which was not conquered by the Lombards, as well as all the great islands of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica. The Italian possessions of the Empire were ruled by an Exarch or governor, who lived, not at Rome but at Ravenna. Thus, as neither the Emperor nor his deputy lived at Rome, the power of the Popes or Bishops of Rome grew greater and greater. At last, during the reign of Leo, another religious dispute broke out, about the worship or reverence paid to images and pictures in churches. This worship Leo held to be idolatrous, and so did his son Con- stantine, called Kopronymos, who succeeded him and reigned from 741 to 775, and who also was a valiant warrior against the Saracens. The party who thought with them were called Ico?wclasts or breakers of images, and there were constant disputes about this matter in the Eastern Church all through the eighth and part of the ninth centuries. But in Italy when the Emperors tried to put away the worship and even the use of images, men everywhere withstood them, the Popes Gregory the Second and Gregory the Third taking the lead against them. The result was that the Emperors lost all real power in Rome. But they kept Southern Italy for a long time afterwards, and even at Rome their authority was acknowledged in name down to the end of the eighth 120 THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE EAST, [chap, century. We must now see how even its formal acknow- ledgement came to an end. 8. The Franks in Italy. — Meanwhile the Lombards were extending their dominion in Italy. Under their Kings Liudprand and Astolf, they took Ravenna and more than once threatened Rome. There was no hope of any help coming from the Emperors at Constantinople ; so the Popes and the Roman people sought for help in quite a new quarter, namely at the hands of Pippin the King of the Franks. The Franks had now long been the ruling people of Germany and Gaul. The descendants of Chlodwig, the German King and Roman Consul, went on reigning, though their dominions were often divided into several small kingdoms, and in the south of Gaul, especially in Aquitaine, they had but little real power. These descendants of Chlod- wig, the Merwings or Merowingians as they were called, were one of the worst dynasties that ever reigned ; few parts of history are more full of crimes, public and private, than the accounts of the early Frankish Kings. Latterly they became weak as well as wicked, and all real power passed into the hands of the Karlings, who governed by the title of Mayors of the Palace. They came from the Eastern, the most German, part of the Frankish dominions, and their rise to power was almost like another German conquest of Gaul. One of these Mayors was Karl or Charles, called Martel or the Hammer, who won the great victory over the Saracens at Tours in 732, He was succeeded by his son Pippin, who in 753 was chosen King of the Franks, the Merowingian King Chilperic being deposed, for it was thought foolish that the title of King should belong to one man and the kingly power to another. Thus began the dynasty of the Kar lings, the sons of Charles, the second Frankish dynasty in Germany and Gaul. Of their doings in Germany and Gaul we shall speak presently; we have now to do with them in Italy. King vi.] THE FRANKS. 12 1 Pippin came at the prayer of Pope Steplwi the Third, and saved Rome from the Lombards and won back from them the Exarchate, that is the country about Ravenna, which they had conquered. He became the virtual sovereign of the city; * but, as it was still not thought right wholly to throw away the authority of the Emperors, he was called, not King or Emperor, but Patricia?i. That word had quite changed its meaning since it had meant the highest class of the Roman people ; it was now used rather vaguely, and it sometimes meant the governor of a province ; this last must have been the sense in which they used it now. Pippin's son, Karl or Charles the Great, altogether conquered the Lombard kingdom in 774. He then called himself King of the Franks and Lombards and Patrician of the Romans. As such, he was ruler of all Italy, except the part in the south which the Emperors still kept. The Franks were thus the head people in all Western Christendom. 9. Cnarles elected Emperor. — But a greater honour still was in store for the Franks and their King. In 792, the Emperor Constantine the Sixth, the grandson of Con- stantine Kopronymos, was deposed by his mother Eireni, who put out his eyes and reigned in his stead. This gave the Pope and the people of Rome a good excuse for throw- ing off the authority of the Emperors at Constantinople altogether. They now said that a woman could not be Caesar and Augustus, and that the Old Rome had as good a right to choose the Emperor as the New. So in the year 800 the Romans of the Old Rome chose their Patrician Charles to be Emperor, and he was crowned by Pope Leo as Charles A ugustus, E?nperor of the Romans. The Empire was now finally divided, and for many ages there was one Emperor reigning in the East and another in the West, each claiming to be the true Roman Emperor. The Eastern Emperors never got back Rome again, nor any part of Northern Italy, but they 122 THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE EAST. [ch. VI. kept their dominions in Southern Italy, where the Greek tongue was still not wholly forgotten, for more than two hundred years longer. 10. Summary. — Thus, through the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries, there was only one Emperor, who reigned at Constantinople. Under Justinian a very large part of the Empire was won back again from the Goths and Vandals. But, in the course of the sixth and seventh cen- turies, a great part of the recovered provinces, together with Syria and Egypt, were lost again. The Lombards established themselves in Italy, and the Saracens overthrew the kingdom of Persia, conquered the Eastern and African provinces of Rome, and established themselves in Spain. In the eighth century the dispute about images led to the gradual separa- tion of Rome and what was left to the Empire in Northern Italy, and in its last year Rome parted off altogether from the Eastern Empire, and chose the Frank Charles as separate Emperor of the West CHAPTER VII. THE FRANKISH EMPIRE. Division of the Empire; the Western Empire held by the Prankish Kings {l) — the Ommiad Caliphs ; accession of the Abbas sides (2) — division of the Caliphate ; relations between the two Caliphates and the two Empires (2) — conquests and losses of the Saracens (2) — reign of Charles the Great ; extent of his Empire (3) — division of the Prankish Kingdoms ; Kingdoms of Germany, Lotharingia, Karolingia, Burgundy, and Italy ; different meanings of the word Francia (4)— final division of the Empire ; end of the Karlingsin Germany (5) — Odo King of the West- Franks ; shift- ing of the Kingdom between Loon and Paris (6) — Duchies of France, Burgundy, and Aquitaine ; distinction between Northern and Southern Gaul (6) — Hugh Capet elected King; beginning of the modern Kingdom of France (6) — settlements of the English in Britain; their conversion to Christianity (7) — the Northmen; their invasions of Gaul and Britain (8). — supremacy of Wessex in Britain ; invasion and settlements of the Danes ; formation of the Kingdom of England (9) — settlements of the Northmen in Gaul ; settlement of Rolf at Rouen ; grozvth of the Duchy of A T or?nandy (10) — Summary (n). I. The Division of the Empire. — The Roman Empire was now finally divided, and it might seem to have altogether passed away from the true Romans. The Emperors of the West from this time were Germans/ they did not live much at Rome itself, and their native language was German, though Latin remained the language of law, government, and religion. In the Eastern Empire the tongue commonly spoken 124 THE FRANKISH EMPIRE. [chap. was Greek ; Latin had gone out of use even as an official language ; and, from the time of the loss of Rome and Ravenna, the Roman Empire of the East answered pretty well to those parts of Europe and Asia which had thoroughly accepted the Greek language and Greek civilization. Still each Empire gave itself out as the continuation of the old Empire, and die old Imperial titles went on. Only, while in the East the Emperor was a Roman Emperor and nothing else, in the West the Emperor was King of the Franks as well as Em- Oeror of the Romans. In truth, the choice of a German King to be Roman Emperor was the greatest of all changes, and it was really the beginning of quite a new state of things. But men at the time talked as if things had gone regularly on, and they spoke of Charles the Great as the lawful successor of Constantine the Sixth. From this time then the Western Empire, as long as it lasted, for about a thousand years after Charles's time, was always held by a Frankish or other German King. And in this way, through the union of the Roman and German crowns, a large territory was now held to belong to the Roman Empire which had never belonged to the Empire in old times. And, though the new line of Ger- man Emperors lived but little in their old capital of Rome, yet, for seven hundred years after the election of Charles, it was held that no King had a right to be called Emperor or Ca>sar till he had been crowned at Rome by the Pope. The Eastern Emperors meanwhile kept Constantinople, or the New Rome, as their capital, and they were crowned by the Patriarchs of Constantinople in the church of Saint Sophia. 2. Division of the Caliphate. — We mentioned in the last chapter that, about fifty years before the final division of the £mpire, the Mahometan power was divided in much the same «vay. The first four Caliphs, Abu-Bekr, Omar, Othman, and AH, were all among the immediate friends or kinsmen of Ma- homet. Then came the dynasty of the Ommiads, who reigned vii.] DIVISION OF THE CALIPHATE. 125 at Damascus. But in 750 they were overthrown by the de- scendants of Abbas, the uncle of Mahomet, who founded the dynasty of the Abbassides, by whom the seat of their dominion was after a while moved to Bagdad on the Tigris. But a prince of the Ommiad family, Abd-al-rahman by name, escaped to Spain, and was the founder of the dynasty of the Ommiad Caliphs of Cordova. Thus, at the beginning of the ninth cen- tury, there were two rival Empires among the Christians and two rival Caliphates among the Mahometans ; and, as might be expected, each of the Christian powers was at enmity with the Mahometan power which was its own neighbour and on good terms with the Mahometan power at a distance. The Caliphs of Cordova were the natural enemies of the Western Empire, and the Caliphs of Bagdad were the natural enemies of the Eastern Empire. But there was commonly peace and friendship between the Western Empire and the Eastern Caliphate and between the Eastern Empire and the Western Caliphate. And, just as the two Empires not only parted asunder from one another, but each split up into various kingdoms, so the two Caliphates gradually split up also. Many Mahometan powers arose, which professed at most a nominal allegiance to the Caliph either at Bagdad or at Cordova. And some of these powers went on conquering at the expense of the Christians. In the course of the ninth century independent Saracen powers arose in the great Medi- terranean islands of Sicily and Crete, which had up to that time belonged to the Eastern Empire. In Spain itself the Saracens never conquered quite the whole of the country, as the Christians always maintained their independence in the mountains of the North, whence they gradually won the whole peninsula back again. In the ninth century then the four great powers of the civilized world were the two Christian Empires and the two Mahometan Caliphates. The British Islands were independent of all, standing alone in being both Christian and 126 THE FRANKISH EMPIRE. [chap. independent. The other parts of Europe which acknowledged neither Emperor nor Caliph were still heathen and barbarous. 3. Charles the Great. — The first Frankish King who became Roman Emperor, the first man of Teutonic blood who was called Caesar and Augustus, was, as we have said, Charles the son of Pippin, called Karolus Magmis or Charles the Great. In after times he became a great subject of French romance, in which he is called by the French name of Charlemagne. Under him the power of the Franks rose to its highest pitch. Fra7icia, the land of the Franks, took in all Central Germany and Northern Gaul. Besides this, Charles estab- lished the Frankish dominion over Southern Gaul and Southern Germany, that is over Aquitaine and Bavaria, and 2.1 ?o over Armor ica, the north-western corner of Gaul. Here a great number of the Welsh from the Isle of Britain had settled when their country was conquered by the English. Thus the land was known as the Lesser Britain or Britanny, and the Celtic language, which had perhaps never quite died out, was kept up by their coming. Charles also sub- dued the German people to the north of his own Francia, that is our own kinsmen, the Saxons who had stayed behind in Germany and had not gone into Britain. They were still heathens, but he forced them to embrace Chris- tianity. He thus became master of all Germany and Gaul. And, as we have seen, as Emperor and King of the Lom- bards he held the greatest part of Italy, and he had also Spain as far as the Ebro. He had also much fighting with the nations to the east and north of Germany. To the north lay the Scandinavian nations, called the Northmen, of whom we shall have presently to speak more at large. Of these Charles had a good deal of fighting with the Danes, and he brought them into some degree of submission to the Empire. To the north-east of Germany beyond the Elbe lay the Slavonic nations who were spoken of in the first chapter, VII.] CHARLES THE GREAT. iz*j who grew up into the different nations of the Wends, the Poles, and the Czechs or Bohemians, all of whom had at different times to make submission to the Emperors, and a large part of whose country has long formed part of Germany. To the south-east were other Slavonic nations who had been allowed to settle on the frontiers of the Eastern Empire. Between these two branches of the Slaves, in a great part of modern Hungary, the Turanian people of the Avars had fixed themselves. With all these border nations the Emperor Charles had much fighting, and most of them were brought into more or less of submission. Under him then the Western Empire was at a greater height of power than it had ever been since the division after the death of Theodosius, and in all his vast dominions Charles did what he could to encou- rage learning and religion by promoting learned men, founding bishopricks and monasteries, and making laws for the govern- ment of his Empire. He first united Germany under one head, and he won the rank of Roman Emperor for the Ger- man King. Like Constantine and Theodosius, he thought of dividing the Empire among his sons, but, as all his sons, except Lewis, surnamed the Pious, died before him, the whole- Empire passed at his death in 814 to that one son Lewis. 4. The Frankish Kingdoms. — So great a dominion as had been brought together under Charles the Great needed a man like Charles himself to keep it together. The second Frankish Emperor Lewis was a good but weak man, and his sons were always rebelling against their father and quarrelling with one another. Several divisions of the Empire were made during his lifetime, and after his death his dominions were, after much fighting, divided in 843 among his sons Loihar, Lewis, and Charles. Lothar was Emperor, and, as such, he reigned in Italy, and he was meant to have at least a nominal supremacy over his brothers. For his own kingdom he took Italy and a long narrow strip of territory reaching from the 128 THE FRANKISH EMPIRE. [chap. Mediterranean to the Northern Ocean, and taking in what is now Provence at one end and Holland at the other. This country, from his name Lothar, was called Lotharingia, and part of it still keeps the name in the form of Lothringen or Lorraine. Part of his kingdom spoke German and part Romance. To the east of him his brother Lewis, who is called the German, reigned over a purely German kingdom, the lands between the Rhine and the Elbe. Charles reigned in Gaul to the west of Lothar. Charles's kingdoir was at first called Karolingia, just as Lothar's kingdom was called Lotharingia, only the one name has gone out of use, while the other has remained. But the different kingdoms which were now formed had no regular names. All the different Kings were Kings of the Franks, much as in earlier times there had been several Emperors at once. There now came a time of great confusion, during which the different kingdoms were split up and joined together again in various ways. But there was still always one King who was Emperor, though he soon lost all real power over the others. And all the Kings were of the house of the Karlings, save only in the Burgundian land between the Rhone, the Saone, and the Alps, where Kings of other houses reigned, and which was called the Kingdom of Burgundy or Aries At last, in 884, all the Frankish kingdoms except Burgundy were joined together under the Emperor Charles the Fat. But in 887 all his kingdoms agreed to depose him, and each kingdom chose a King of its own. And the kingdoms which were now formed began to answer more nearly to real divisions of nations and languages than had hitherto often been the case. Thus from this time the Eastern and Western Franks were never again united, and the word Francia now has two meanings. Eastern or Teutonic Fra?icia was the old Frankish land in Ger- many, forming part of the Eastern Kingdom. Western or Latin Francia was the land between the Loire and the VII.] THE FKANKISH KINGDOMS. 129 Seine, where men spoke Romance and not German, and which formed part of the Western Kingdom. Between them lay Lotharingia, the border land, taking in modern Belgium. This had no longer a King of its own, but it was often disputed between the Eastern and Western Kings, the Kings of Germany and Karolingia. In South-eastern Gaul the Burgundian Kingdom went on, sometimes forming one kingdom, sometimes two. And in Italy, during the first half of the tenth century, there were several rival Kings, some of whom got to be crowned Emperors. But they had no power out of Italy, and not much in it. And it must be re- membered that all this time Southern Italy still belonged to the Eastern Emperors, and that Sicily had been conquered by the Saracens. 5. The End of the Karlings in Germany. — After the division in 887 the Eastern or German Kingdom still stayed for a while in the family of Charles the Great For the East-Franks chose as their King Amu If, who was a Karling, though not by lawful descent. But the Western Franks in Karolingia chose Odo, Count of Paris, who had been very valiant in defending his city against an attack of the Northmen, of whom we shall hear presently. But King Arnulf was the head King, and King Odo of Paris did homage to him for his crown ; that is, he became his man, and promised to be faithful to him. Arnulf afterwards went to Rome and was crowned Emperor. But the German crown did not last long among the Karlings. The line of Arnulf died out in his son Lewis, called the Child, and then the Eastern Kingdom fell to men of other families, connected with the Karlings only in the female line or not at all. From this time the Kingdom of Germany went on as a separate kingdom, but we shall soon see that it had a great deal to do with the other kingdoms which arose out of the breaking up of the Frankish Empire. And it had much to do in other ways with the Slavonic and Turanian people to K. i 3 o THE FRANKISH EMPIRE. [chap. the East, and in the end it greatly extended itself at the cost of its Slavonic neighbours. 6. Beginning of the Kingdom of France.— After the election of Odo of Paris to the Western Kingdom, there followed about a hundred years of shifting to and fro between his new family and the old family of the Karlings. Some- times there was a King of one house and sometimes of the other. The Karlings still spoke German, and, when they held the kingdom, their capital was Laon, in its north- eastern corner. The family of Odo were called Dukes of the French, and they spoke Fre?tch, as we may now call the Romance speech of Northern Gaul, and their capital was Paris. Their Duchy, the Duchy of France — that is, Western or Latin Francia — was, even when its Dukes were not Kings, the most powerful state north of the Loire. But whichever family held the crown, the Kings had very little power south of the Loire. For in these times of confusion the Dukes and Counts, -who at first were only governors of -the different provinces, both in the Eastern and Western Kingdoms, had grown up into hereditary princes, paying a merely nominal homage to the King, whether he reigned at Laon or at Paris. The Princes north of the Loire, the Counts of Flanders, the Dukes of the Normans (of whom we shall say more presently), the native princes of Britanny, and the Dukes of Burgundy, were often at war with the Kings, and with one another. These Dukes of Burgundy held the northern part of Bur- gundy, that of which Dijon is the capital ; this did not form part of the Kingdom of Burgundy, but of the Western King- dom or Karolingia. South of the Loire, where men spoke, not French but Provencal, the Dukes of Aquitaine and Gas- cony, and the Counts of Toulouse and Barcelona, had hardly anything to do with the Kings at all. The most famous among the Karolingian Kings at Laon was Lewis the Fourth, called From-beyond-sea, because he had been brought ud bv vn.] BEGINNINGS OF FRANCE. 131 his uncle King ALthelstan in England. He had much striv* ing with Hugh the Great, Duke of the French, the nephew of King Odo, who refused the crown more than once, but who never had any scruple about rebelling against the King. But on the death of the last Karolingian King at Laon, Lewis the Fifth, Hugh Capet, the son of Hugh the Great, was chosen King in 987. This was the real beginning of the modern Kingdom of France. The Duke of the Frencn was now King of the French. Paris became the capital of the Kingdom, and, as the Kings of the French got hold of the lands of their vassals and neighbours, bit by bit, the name of France was gradually spread, as it is now, over the greater part of Gaul. 7. The English in Britain. — We have thus seen how the kingdoms and nations of Germany, Italy, Burgundy, and France were formed by the breaking up of the great Frankish Empire. Meanwhile the English nation was growing up in the Isle of Britain, which formed no part of the Empire, and which men often spoke of as a world of itself. We have already seen how the three Low-Dutch tribes, the Angles* Saxons, and Jutes, settled in Britain, how they drove the Britons or Welsh into the western part of the Island, and how, as they gradually became one people, the whole nation was called Angles or English. They formed a great number of principalities in Britain, among the chief of which were the .Kingdom of the Jutes in Ke?it, the oldest of all, the Kingdom of the West-Saxons, which began in what is now Hamp- shire and gradually spread over all South-western Britain, the Kingdom of the Mercians in the middle of England, and the Kingdom of the Northumbrians which, sometimes under one King, sometimes under two, stretched from the Humber to the Firth of Forth. The Kingdoms of the South-Saxons, East-Saxons, and East-Angles should also be noticed, but they were less powerful than the other K 2 X 3 2 THE PRANKISH EMPIRE. [chap. four. All these kingdoms had much fighting with one another, as well as with the Britons or Welsh to the west of them and with the other Celtic tribes of the Picts and Scots to the north beyond the Forth Sometimes one of their Kings gained a certain authority over the other kingdoms ; he was then called a Bretwalda or Wielder of Britain. As we have already said, the English remained heathens for about one hundred and fifty years after their first settlement in Britain. Then, in 597, Pope Gregory the Great sent over Augustine, who converted the Kentish King jEthelberht or Ethelbert, who was then Bret- walda ; so Kent was the first Christian kingdom among the English. Gradually all the English kingdoms were converted, some by missionaries from Kent or straight from Rome, some by the Scots, who were already Christians, but none, it would seem, by the Welsh. And presently the English began themselves to send missionaries to convert those of their kinsfolk in their old land who were still heathens. One of them, Winfrith or Boniface, in the time of Pippin, was called the Apostle of Germany. This was quite another way of being converted from that of the Goths and Franks who em- braced Christianity while they were pressing into the Empire. But, even after they became Christians, the English still went on making conquests from the Welsh, and also carrying on wars among themselves. During the seventh and eighth centuries the three great kingdoms of the West- Saxons, Mercians, and Northumbrians were ever striving for the mastery. Sometimes one had the upper hand and sometimes the other ; but at the beginning of the ninth century the different English kingdoms began to be more closely united together, and they had also a common enemy from without to withstand. 8. The Northmen. — We have already spoken of the Aryan people in Northern Europe, called the Northmen or Scandinavians These were a Teutonic people, whose VU.] THE ENGLISH AND NORTHMEN. 133 speech is more nearly akin to the Low-Dutch than to the High. They had settled in the great peninsula to the north- east of the Baltic, where they were gradually making their way against the Turanian inhabitants, the Fins and Laps, and they had also occupied the peninsula called the Cimbric Chersonesos or Jutland, which is divided from Saxony by the river Eider. In these peninsulas and the neighbouring islands they gradually formed three kingdoms, those of Nor- way, Sweden, and Denmark* The Danes in the southern peninsula had often to yield more or less of submission to Charles the Great and his successors. But the Northmen of the northern peninsula never submitted to the Empire, and indeed the Swedes had for a long time to come but little to do with the general affairs of Europe. They had enough to do in striving with their own Turanian neighbours, and in conquests toward the East, where they came to bear rule over the Slavonic land of Russia. But the Western Scandinavians, the Danes and the Norwegians who were more specially called Northmen, began, towards the end of the eighth century, to be fearful scourges both to Britain and to all the coasts of the Empire. Even while Charles the Great lived, they had begun to sail about and plunder in various parts ; and after he was dead, and when the Empire began to break in pieces, they were able to ravage almost wherever they pleased. After a while they began, not only to plunder, but to make settlements, both in Gaul and in Britain. They also settled in Iceland, in the Orkneys and in the other islands near Scotland, in the northern part of Scotland itself, and in the towns on the east coast of Ireland. But we have most to do with their settlements in England and in Northern Gaul For through their settlement in Gaul a new power in Europe arose, and, what we should hardly have looked for, their settlements in England had a great deal to da 134. THE FRANKISH EMPIRE. [chap. with the making of the different English kingdoms in Britain into one. 9. Formation of the Kingdom of England. — We have seen that, up to the end of the eighth century, the chief power among the English in Britain was always passing from one of the English kingdoms to another. But at the beginning of the ninth century it came permanently into the hands of Wessex. This was under Ecgberht or Egbert, who was King of the West-Saxons from 802 to 837. He was a friend of Charles the Great, with whom he had taken shelter when he was banished from his own country. It was no doubt the friendship and example of Charles which set him upon doing in Britain much the same as Charles had done in Germany. Ecgberht gradually brought all the other English kingdoms, and the Welsh both of Cornwall and of what we call Wales, into more or less of subjection to his own Kingdom of the West-Saxons. Other Kings went on reigning, but they were his men and he was their lord, like the Emperor among the Kings and princes on the mainland. Thus a great step was taken towards joining all the English in Britain into one kingdom. But the Scots beyond the Forth and the Northern Welsh in Cumberland and thereabouts remained independent, so that Ecgberht was still far from being master of the whole island, and presently the Danish invasion seemed likely to shatter the newly founded West-Saxon power altogether. King yElfred or Alfred, the grandson of Ecgberht and the most famous of ancient English Kings, who began to reign in 871 , had much fighting with the Danes. The northern part of England was conquered by them, and Danish Kings and Earls reigned at York. Presently they invaded Wessex, whence they were driven out by Alfred in 878. But he found it needful to make a treaty with the Danish King Guthrum, by which Guthrum was allowed to hold all the eastern part of England, on condition of becoming King Alfred's maa vil] BEGINNING OF NORMANDY. 135 and also becoming a Christian. For the Danes were still heathens, as the English were when they first came into Britain, and they seem to have taken special delight in de- stroying the churches and monasteries. The Kings who came after Alfred, his son Edward and his grandsons JEthelstan and Edmund, had much fighting with the Danes in Britain. But at last they were able to bring all the Teutonic people in Britain, both English and Danish, into one kingdom; so they were called Kings of the English and not merely Kings of the West-Saxons. And all the princes of the Welsh and of the Scots also became their men, so that they were Lords of all Britain. Sometimes, as being lords of the other world where the Roman Emperors had no power, they were called Em- perors of Britain, or in Greek Basileus, in imitation of the Emperors of the East. It was King Edward who first received the homage of all Britain in 924. But it was not till a long time after that the Danes in the North of England were thoroughly subdued. But these settlements of the Danes, by breaking up the other English kingdoms and by making Englishmen everywhere ready to join against the invaders, really did much to help the West- Saxon Kings in winning the lordship of the whole island. 10. Foundation of the Duchy of Normandy. — The Danes and other Northmen also made many invasions of Gaul through the whole latter half of the ninth century. They more than once sailed up the Seine and besieged Paris. There was one specially famous siege of Paris in 885, when Count Odo did great things in withstanding the Northmen, in reward of which he was before long, as we have seen, elected King. Soon after this the Northmen began to make settlements in Gaul as they did in Britain, and one of their settlements rose to great importance. Thte was the settlement made at Rouen by a chief named Rolf or in Latin Rollo. This was in 913, when Charles 136 THE FRANK1SH EMPIRE. |"chap. vil the Simple, who was King of the West-Franks — he was of the House of the Karlings and reigned at Laon — and Robert, Duke of the French, who was brother of King Odo and was afterwards King himself, granted the land at the mouth of the Seine to Rolf. For this he became King Charles' man, and he served his lord much more faithfully than ever the Dukes of the French did. Rolf was baptized, as Guthrum had been, and the Northmen who settled in Gaul gradually became Christians and learned to speak French. Their name was softened into Normans, and their land was called Normandy, and their prince the Duke 0/ the Normans. The Dukes of the Normans of the House of Rolf became the most powerful princes in Northern Gaul, and we shall presently hear of them in England. 11. Summary. — Thus, in the course of the ninth and tenth centuries the great Frankish Empire broke in pieces ; the Kingdom of France arose in Gaul ; the Kingdom of England grew up in Britain ; the Danes and Northmen settled both in Britain and in Gaul, and their settlement in Gaul grew into the Duchy of Normandy. During this time the Romance languages had hardly begun to be written, but men were: finding out that they were distinct languages from Latin. Books on the Continent were still wholly written in Latin. Thus Eginhard, the secretary of Charles the Great, wrote the Life of his master, and there were other good writers of history in all the Frankish kingdoms. But in England the English Chronicle began to be put together in these times, so that the English have, what no other people in Western Christendom has, their own history written in their own tongue from the beginning. CHAPTER VIII. THE SAXON EMPERORS. Tne Kingdom of Germany ; dealings with the Magyars and Slaves (i) — the Saxon Kings ; victories of Henry the Fowler and Otto the Great over the Magyars (2) — Otto the Great, crowned Emperor ; relations between the Empire and the German Kingdom (2, 3) — the later Saxon Emperors (3) — disputes between the Eastern and Western Churches (4) — the Macedonian Emperors in the East ; their victories over the Saracens (4) — Slavonic settlements in the Eastern Empire ; wars with the Russians and Bulgarians (5) — greatness of England under Edgar (6) — Danish invasions of England ; reign of Cnut in England {6) — greatness of the Scan- dinavian nations ; great dominion of Cnut ; effects of the Scandi- navian settlements in Gaul and Russia (6, 7) — conversion of the Scandinavians and Russians to Christianity (7) — Summary (8). I. The German Kingdom. — The division of 887 separated for ever the Kingdoms of the East and West Franks, those which answer to Germany and France. But the Kingdoms of Italy and Btirgundy were, after a while, once more united with Germany. But this was not just yet. The Kings of the East-Franks, the Eastern Kings as they were called, were the head Kings, but as yet they only held their own land, the Teirtonic Kingdom or Germany. They had much ado to defend themselves against the inroads of the Danes, to defend and extend their border against the Slaves to the north-east, and to drive back some new and fearful enemies who had begun to show themselves to the south- 138 THE SAXON EMPERORS. [chap. east. These were the Magyars or Hungarians, of whom we have already spoken, who were pressing into Central Europe, and who, wherever they came, did as much mischiei by land as the Northmen did by sea. They were still heathens, but in the end, before the tenth century was out, they became Christians, and settled down into a regular and powerful Christian kingdom. They have held their place among the kingdoms of Europe ever since, and their land is still called the Kingdom of Hungary. But, before the Hun- garians had thus settled down among Christian nations, the German Kings had to fight many battles against them to keep them out of their own dominions. As a safeguard against the Hungarian invasions they founded a Mark or border-state under a chief called a Markgraf or Marquess; this was called the Eastern Mark, Ostmark or Oesterreich. This grew into the Duchy of Austria, the Dukes of which have, oddly enough, for a long time past been also Kings of Hungary. To the north of Hungary several Slavonic states grew up during this time into Christian dukedoms and kingdoms, especially those of Poland and Bohemia; but the Wends on the south of the Baltic remained heathens for a long time, and the Prussians to the east of them for a longer time still. Thus the Kingdom of Germany was the central state of Europe, and it had to do with all parts of Europe, East, West, North, and South. And it was soon to rise to greater things still. 2. The Saxon Kings. — The dynasty which had most to do with raising the German Kingdom to greatness was that of the Saxons, whose Duke, Henry the Fowler, was elected King in 918. »He did much to make his kingdom flourish- ing and powerful, and he had to wage many wars against the Magyars. He was succeeded in 936 by his son Otto, called the Great. He finally defeated the Magyars in a great battle in 954. He had also much to do with the Viii.] RESTORATION OF THE EMPIRE. 139 affairs of the Western Kingdom, and he often stepped in to help the Karolingian King Lewis, who was his brother- in-law, against his enemies in France and Normandy. But he is most famous for again uniting the Roman Empire to the German Kingdom. Since Arnulf no Emperor had been generally acknowledged, though some of the Kings of Italy had been crowned Emperors at Rome. In truth, Italy, during the whole half of the tenth century, was altogether torn in pieces by the struggles of rival Kings and wicked Popes. In 951 Otto was invited into Italy, and he made the King Berengar become his man. In 962 he was again called on by the Pope and the Italians to deliver them from Berengar altogether. So he entered Italy a second time, and was crowned Emperor at Rome, by the Pope John the Twelfth, one of the worst of all the Popes. 3. The Restoration of the Empire. — The coronation of Otto the Great as Emperor put the Western Empire on quite a new footing. Hitherto the Empire had had no special connexion with any one of the several kingdoms which had arisen out of the break-up of the dominion of Charles the Great. The Imperial crown had been sometimes held by one King, and sometimes by another, and very often there had been no Emperor at all. But now Germany had, under the Saxon Kings, become so much the greatest of all the Frankish kingdoms that it was able to join the Empire permanently to itself. The change was in truth a restora- tion of the Empire in a more regular shape after a time of confusion. From this time it was held that whoever was chosen King in Germany had a right to be crowned King of Italy at Milan, and to be crowned Emperor at Rome. There was not always an Emperor, because some of the German Kings never got to Rome to be crowned Emperors ; but there always was either an Emperor or a King who alone had the right to be crowned Emperor. 140 THE SAXON EMPERORS. [CHAP. Thus the Kingdom of Italy was again united with the King- dom of Germany. But both Burgundy and Karolingia or the Western Kingdom still remained cut off from the Empire, Burgundy for a while and Karolingia for ever. Still the Emperors kept a good deal of influence in Bur- gundy, and in the Western Kingdom too as long as any of the Karlings reigned at Laon. But when the Kingdom of France was finally established, when the "long line of Kings of the French of the blood of Hugh Capet began to reign at Paris, France left off having anything to do with the Empire at all. Otto the Great died in 972, and after him reigned his son Otto the Second till 983. He had wars with the Danes, whose King Harold, called Blaatand or Bluetooth, he forced to become a Christian, and also with the Eastern Emperors in Southern Italy. Then came Otto the Third from 983 to 1002. He was called the Wonder of the World. His great wish was to make Rome again the head of the world and to reign there again, like one of the old Emperors. But he died young, and his plans were all cut short. Then came Henry the Second, a descendant of Henry the Fowler but not of Otto the Great, who was the last Saxon Emperor. He died in 1024. 4. The Eastern Empire. — It is now time to say something of what had happened in the East since the election of Charles the Great in the West. The Eastern Empire, as I before said, was now chiefly confined to the Greek-speaking parts of Europe and Asia And, after the Eastern and Western Empires were separated, disputes gradually arose between the Eastern and Western Churches. They differed on some points both of doctrine and ceremony, but the real ground of quarrel was chiefly because the Eastern Church would never admit the claims of the Bishops of Rome. The Icono- clast controversy went on during a great part of the ninth century, but in the end the worshippers of images gained VIII.] THE EASTERN EMPERORS. 141 the day. After Eirene there were several Emperors of differ- ent families, some of whom were weak men, while others ruled well and fought manfully against the Saracens. At last, in the latter part of the ninth century, a dynasty arose under which the Eastern Empire won back a great deal of its former power. This was the Basilian or Macedonian dynasty, the first Emperor of which, Basil the First or the Macedonian, began to reign in 867. He was a law-giver, and under him the Byzantine dominions in Italy were greatly increased. But the time when the Eastern Empire reached its greatest amount of power after the final division was from 963 to 1025. Three Emperors, one after the other, Nikephoros Phokas, John Tzimiskes, and Basil the Second, won back many of the provinces' which had been lost. The Saracens, as we have already seen, were now cut up into many small states, and, though the Caliphs went on, they could no longer meet the Emperors on equal terms. Nikephoros won back Crete, and both he and John Tzimiskes, who murdered him and reigned in his "stead, waged wars in the East, won back Antioch and other cities which had been taken by the Saracens in their first conquests, and again carried the Roman frontier to the Euphrates. 5. The Slavonic Invasions. — We said at the beginning that the Slavonic nations were the last of the great Aryan swarms which had pressed into Europe, and that which had played the least part in the general affairs of- the world. As yet we have not heard much about them, except so far as the German Kings had greatly extended their dominion to the West at their expense. But we have now reached a very important period in their history, chiefly with regard to their dealings with the Eastern Empire. For a long time past various nations had been pressing into the northern parts of the Byzantine dominions, and the Emperors had constant I 4 2 THE SAXON EMPERORS. [CRAP. wars to wage against enemies on their northern as well as on their eastern frontier. Some of them settled within the Empire, while others simply invaded and ravaged its pro- vinces. Some of these invaders and settlers were Turanians, but many of them belonged to the race of the Slaves, who play a part in the history of the Eastern Empire something like that which the Teutonic people played in the West. That is to say, they were half conquerors, half disciples. Many of the north-western provinces of the Empire were settled by Slavonic tribes, who have grown into the people of Servia, Dalmatia, and the other lands now bordering on Hungary, Austria, and Turkey. They even made large settlements in Macedonia and Greece, but from some of these they were afterwards driven out. It is even said that the Macedonian Emperors themselves were really of Slavonic descent. The Russians, also a Slavonic people, though their princes were of Scandinavian descent, made several inroads into the Eastern Empire in the ninth and tenth centuries, and even attacked Constantinople by sea. But they were finally defeated by the Emperor John Tzimiskes in 973. Another great enemy was the Bulgarians, a people originally Turanian, but who learned to speak a Slavonic language, and who were so mixed up with their Slavonic neighbours and subjects that they may pass as one of the Slavonic nations. They founded a kingdom in the north-western part of the Empire, and they were for a long time a great thorn in the sides of the Emperors. With these Bulgarians the Emperors had many wars, till in the end their kingdom was altogether destroyed by Basil the Second, who was called the Slayer of the Bulgarians, when the Roman frontier was again carried to the Danube. All these invaders and settlers gradually became Christians, getting their Christianity from the Eastern Church, as the Teutons and Western Slaves got theirs from the Western Church. But the Popes and the vih. ] DANISH CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 143 Patriarchs of Constantinople had long disputes about the obedience of the Bulgarians. It was under Basil the Second, whose sister Theophano married the Western Emperor Otto the Second, that the separate Eastern Empire was at the greatest height of its power, but after his death it greatly fell back again. 6. England and the Danes. — England had a good deal to do with the Western Empire during the time of the Saxon Emperors. The daughters of Edward the Elder were married to the chief Princes of Europe, and one of them named Eadgyth or Edith was the first wife of Otto the Great. It marks the central position of the German Kingdom that its Kings made marriages with England at one end and with Constantinople at the other. Under Edgar, who reigned from 959 to 975, England was at the height of its power, but in the reign of his son JEthelred the inroads of the Danes and Northmen began again. At one time, in 994, England was attacked at once by Olaf King of the North- men and by Swegen or Sweyn King of the Danes. Olaf was persuaded to become a Christian and to make peace with England ; so he went home to Norway and began to bring in Christianity there. Swegen was the son of that King Harold who had been overcome by Otto the Second; he had been baptized in his childhood, but had fallen back into heathenism. The war with Swegen went on till at last, in 1013, ^Ethelred was driven out and Swegen was acknowledged King over all England. This was quite another kind of con- quest from mere plundering inroads, and even from settle- ments in parts of the country, like ihat of Guthrum or that of Rolf in Gaul. A King of all Denmark came against England to make himself King over all England also. Swegen died very soon and ^Ethelred did not live long after. The war then went on between Cnut or Canute the son of Swegen and Edmund the son of ^Ethelred. At last, in 144 THE SAXON EMPERORS. [CHAP, 1017, Cnut became King over all England ; he inherited the crown of his native country Denmark, and he also won Norway and part of Sweden. He was thus lord of all Northern Europe, and was by far the most powerful prince of his time. Though he came into England by force, he ruled well and won the love of the people ; but after his death in 1035 the bad government of his sons disgusted the English with the Danish rule, and in 1042 they again chose a native King in the person of Edward the son of vEthelred. 7. Greatness of the Scandinavians. — The time when Cnut reigned in England was the time when the Danes and Northmen were at the height of their power. De?imark, Norway, and Sweden were all powerful kingdoms ; England was under a Danish King, and princes of Scandinavian descent ruled both in Normandy and in Russia. But wherever the Northmen settled, though they always put a new life into the lands which they made their own, they showed a wonderful power of adapting themselves to the people among whom they settled, and of taking to their manners and language. Thus Cnut, when he reigned in England, became quite an Englishman, and the Northmen who settled in Gaul became quite French, and those who settled in Russia became quite Slavonic. In this way the original lands of the Northmen really lost in strength and importance, and became of less account in Europe than they otherwise might have been. For the best life of Scandinavia went away into other lands to give a new life to them. About the end of the tenth and beginning of the eleventh centuries, all the Northern nations, except the Prussians and Lithuanians, gradually became Christians. The Scandinavians, like the other Teutonic nations, got their Christianity from the West ; but the Rus- sians, like the Bulgarians and the other nations who had to do with the Eastern Empire, got their Christianity from axon dynasty, was, through his mother, a kinsman of Duke William, and it would seem that at one time of his life he made Duke William some kind of promise that, as he had no children, he should succeed him on the throne of England. But however this may be, when King Edward died in 1066, the English people, as there was no one in the royal family fit to reign, gave the crown to Earl Harold, who was then the greatest man in the country. Duke William however put forth his claim, and, though he found no one to help him in England, he made most people in other lands believe that he had the right on his side. Especially he per- suaded Hildebrand, who was not yet Pope, but who already had great influence at Rome, to take his part. So Pope Alexander the Second declared in his favour, and blessed his undertaking. This was the way in which the Popes ix.] THE NORMAN CONQUEST. 15 1 seized every opportunity to extend their power both within the Empire and in other parts of the world. William was thus able to invade England, not only at the head of his own Normans, but of men from all parts, who were taught to look on the enterprise as a holy war. England was just at this time attacked by Harold Hardrada, King of .the Northmen, so that our King Harold had to fight against two foes at once. He defeated Harold of Norway, but was himself defeated and slain by Duke William in the famous battle of Senlac or Hastings. Duke William was crowned King at Christmas 1066, but the English still withstood him in many places, and it took him about four years to get full possession of the whole country. He gradually found means to give all the greatest estates and highest offices in England to Normans and other strangers, and he handed on the English Crown to his descendants, by whom it has been held ever since. 4. Effects of the Norman Conquest of England. — The establishment of Duke William and his followers in Nor- mandy brought about some very great changes both in Eng- land and in the rest of Europe. The English were not killed or turned out, as they had themselves done by the Welsh, and they kept their own laws and language ; yet for a long time all the chief men in the land were of Norman or other foreign descent. But it is wonderful in how short a time the Normans in England became good Englishmen. This was partly perhaps because Normans and English were, after all, near kinsfolk, only the English had kept their own tongue, while the Normans had learned to speak French. French re- mained for a long time the fashionable language in England, and though, in the end, English became once more the speech of all men in the land, yet in the meanwhile it became greatly changed, and a great many French words crept in. Mauy new ideas came in with the Normans, which gradually made great 152 THE FRANCONIAN EMPERORS. [chap. changes in both laws and manners. The power of the Kings became much greater than it had been before, and William made the whole kingdom far more truly one than it had been up to his time. Since his days no one has ever thought of dividing it. The Norman Conquest also caused far more intercourse than there had been before between England and other nations. Learning flourished more, the art ot building greatly advanced, and many reforms were made in the Church ; but it must not be forgotten that England from this time was brought much more under the power ot the Popes. 5. Relations between England and France. — Before the Norman Conquest England and Fra7ice, meaning thereby the new Kingdom of Paris •, had hardly anything to do with one another. But France and Normandy were often enemies. Ever since Paris became the capital, the Kings of the French had felt themselves hemmed in by the Dukes at Rouen. And now that the same man was Duke of the Normans and King of the English, the Norman Dukes became still more powerful in Gaul, and were still more dangerous neighbours to their lords the Kings of the French. The King at Paris was in truth shut in on every side by his own vassals, the great Dukes and Counts, over whom he had no real authority. Just at the time when the Empire was strongest under Henry the Third, the Kingdom of France was weakest under Henry the First, the third of the Parisian Kings. From this time there was a distinct rivalry, which we shall constantly come across, between the Kings of the French and the Kings of the English, who were also Dukes of the Normans. This rivalry has gone on almost ever since, and we shall constantly meet with it in one shape or another, and this rivalry had the further effect of keeping up the old connexion between England and Germany, both of them being rivals of France. I have already mentioned IX.] ENGLAND AND FRANCE. 153 that Henry the First of England, the son of William and the third of the Norman Kings, gave his daughter in marriage to the Emperor Henry the Fifth. King Henry of England, who reigned from 1 100 to 1135, was born in England, and he married Edith or Matilda, the daughter of Malcolm King 1 of Scots. Her mother Margaret was the granddaughter of King Edmund Iro7iside, so that Henry's children had some English blood in them. In 11 54 Henry, the son of Henry the First's daughter the Empress Matilda by her second husband Geoffrey Count of Anjou, came to the Crown of England. The pedigree in this case should be carefully remembered, because with Henry the Second began the Angevin Kings of England, who were neither Norman nor English except in the female line. Henry presently married Eleanor tfce heiress of Aquitainej he thus was master of the more part of Northern and Western Gaul, holding of the King of the French far greater possessions than the King held himself. Here is quite a new state of things, in which the same man not only held both England and Normandy, but had by far the greatest power in all Gaul. We shall presently see what came of these changes. 6. Wars with the Mahometans in Spain. — The time of the Franconian Emperors is also memorable as the time when the great struggle between the Christian and Ma- hometan nations began to spread itself over a much wider field. All this while wars had been going on with the Saracens in all those parts of Europe and Western Asia where they had settled. The Christians of Spain, as I have already said, had always kept their independence in the mountainous lands in the north, and the conquests of Charles the Great had been a further check to the advance of the Saracens. As the Western Empire began to be divided, the Western Caliphate grew stronger. The time of the greatest power of the Mahometans in Spain was in the reign 154 THE FRANCONIAN EMPERORS. [chap. of Abd-al-rahman the Third, from 912 to 961. The Christian kingdoms however still maintained their independence, and in 1031 the Western Caliphate came to an end, and the Saracen dominion in Spain was cut up into several small states. The Christians were now able to advance, and in 1084 Alfonso the Sixth, who had united the two kingdoms Leon and Castile, won back the old capital of Toledo, and was near making himself master of the whole of Spain. The Mahometans in Spain had now to call in their fellow- believers -in Africa to their help. Thus arose the Moorish dynasty of the Ahnoravides in Southern Spain, which put a check for the while to the advance of the Christians. But in 1 1 18, Alfonso of Aragon recovered Zaragoza, that is CcEsar- Augusta, the chief city of eastern Spain, and from that time the kingdom of Aragon also began to grow in importance. 7. Foundation of the Kingdom of Sicily. — Meanwhile the Christians were also gaining ground on the Mahometans in the great islands of the Mediterranean. I have said how the Emperor Nikephoros won back Crete for the Eastern Empire, and in the beginning of the eleventh century Sar- dinia was won back by the people of the Tuscan common- wealth of Pisa. Soon afterwards, Norman adventurers began to press into the South, and to make conquests at the expense both of the Saracens and Eastern Emperors. Under the famous Robert Wiscard, they conquered nearly all the terri- tory which the Eastern Emperors still kept in Italy. They then crossed into Sicily in 1062, and founded a county which, in 1 1 30, under its third Count Roger the Second, became a kingdom. Thus began the Kingdom of Sicily, where at first French-speaking Kings reigned over Arabic-speaking Mahometans and Greek-speaking Christians. All three languages gradually died out, but for a time all nations and religions flourished under the Norman Kings. King Roger ix.] ADVANCE OF THE TURKS. 155 afterwards won the Norman possessions in Italy, and the little that was left to the Eastern Emperors. Thus the King- dom of Sicily took in both the island and all the southern part of the Italian peninsula. 8. The Eastern Empire. — We must now look to the affairs of the Eastern Empire in Asia, and the more so, because its affairs at this time led to the most famous of all the wars between Christians and Mahometans, namely to the Crusades or Holy Wars. These were the wars which the Christians waged to win back the Holy Land, and especially the tomb of our Lord at Jerusalem, from their Mahometan possessors. After the death of Basil the Second, the Eastern Empire, which, under the Macedonian Emperors, had again become so powerful both in Europe and Asia, began once more to fall back. As a new European enemy had arisen against it in the Normans of Sicily, so a new and terrible enemy arose against it in Asia. These were the Turks of the house of Seljuk. We may now look on the chief dominion of Asia as being finally handed over from the Saracens to the Turks. This change of power in Asia brought about two memorable results. First, it was the cause of the heaviest blow which the Eastern Empire had undergone since the time of the first Caliphs. Secondly, it was the cause of the Crusades which were waged by men from Western Europe. In the course of the tenth century, the Eastern Caliphate may be looked on as coming to an end as a political power. A third Caliphate arose in Egypt, and the Caliphs of Bagdad gradually fell under the control of their own mercenaries and ministers, much as the Merowingian Kings of the Franks had fallen under the control of the Austrasian Mayors. Meanwhile several Turkish dynasties arose in Persia., and the Mahometan conquest of hidia *began. At last, in 1055, the Caliph Al Kay em asked help of Togrel Beg, the chief of the Seljuk Turks, much as the Popes had invited 156 THE FRANCONIAN EMPERORS. [chap. Pippin and Charles the Great into Italy. The Caliphs were now left in free possession of Bagdad, but a great Turkish power now arose, which soon took in all Western Asia. War soon arose between this new power and the Eastern Roman Empire. In 1071, at the battle of Manzikert, the Turks, under their Sultan Alp Arslan, gained a great victory over the Romans, and the Emperor Romanos was taken prisoner, as Valerian had long ago been by Sapor. The result of this was that the Eastern Emperors lost, not only all that had been won back under the Macedonian Empeiors, but nearly all their possessions in Asia. The dominions of the Seljuk Turks now reached to the Hellespont. Palestine meanwhile was conquered and reconquered by the different Mahometan powers, and both the Eastern Christians and the pilgrims from Europe who went to pray at Jerusalem were far worse treated than they had been in the days of the first Saracens. Meanwhile a new dynasty arose in the Eastern Empire under Alexios Komninos, a wise prince, whose family kept the throne for about a hundred years, and produced some of the best rulers and bravest warriors among the Byzantine Emperors. Again, in 1092, the Seljuk power, like other Eastern states, was divided. One line of Sultans reigned in Asia Minor, having their capital at Nikaia, and, as they ruled over lands which had been won from the Empire, they called themselves Sultans of Rome. Thus everything favoured a common enterprise on the part of the Christians. The Mahometans were divided ; the Eastern Empire was recovering itself, and men in the West were stirred up by pilgrims who told of all that the Christians suffered in the East. Thus the nations of the West were moved to a great general enterprise to deliver their brethren and the Holy Places from the power of the infidels. 9. The Beginning of the Crusades. — The duty of going to deliver the Holy Places was first preached by Peter ^ a IX.] THE CRUSADES. 157 hermit of Amiens, though several Popes and Emperors, Gregory the Seventh among them, had already dreamed of such an undertaking. The cause was now zealously taken up by Pope Urban the Second, who in 1094 held a Council at Cle7-mo7it in Auvergne, at which the Holy War was decreed. This war was called a Crusade, because men put a cross or their shoulders to show that they were going to fight in a holy war. Neither the Emperor Henry nor any of the Kings of the West took any part in the Crusade, but many of the smaller princes and a vast number of private men set forth on the enterprise. Most of those who went on the First Crusade were French-speaking people, from which it has come that the Eastern nations have ever since called all the people of Western Europe Franks. The Crusaders passed through Asia Minor into Palestine, and at last, in 1099, they took Jerusalem. They founded several Christian principalities in Palestine and Syria, of which the head was the Kingdom of Jerusalem, of which Godfrey of Boulogne, Duke of Lower Lotharingia, — that is of Brabant in the modern kingdom of Belgium, — was the first King. The Crusaders kept Jeru- salem for somewhat less than a hundred years ; and, though the kingdom was constantly helped by new Crusaders from Europe, it had much ado to hold its ground against the various Mahometan powers. Meanwhile, as the power of the Turks had been so much weakened by the coming of the Crusaders, the Komnenian Emperors were able to win back a large part of Asia Minor, all the Euxine and yEgaean coasts, and the Sultans of Rome were driven back into the inland parts, and had their capital at Ikonion, instead of at Nikaia. The effects of the Crusades were very important in every way. Eastern and Western Christians were brought across one another and across the Mahometans ; and, though they commonly met one another as enemies, yet they came to know one another better, and to learn of each other. i8 THE FRANCONIAN EMPERORS. [ch. IX. Both the Saracens and the Romans of the East had much to teach the Western nations in many branches of art and learning. But still more important than this was the general stirring up of men's minds which followed on such great events. From the time of the Crusades a great revival of thought and learning of every kind began throughout Europe, io. Summary. — The time of the Franconian Emperors was thus a time of very important changes. The great struggle between the Popes and the Emperors began. The Turkish power began. The Crusades began. The Norman Conquest of England took place. The Christians began to gain ground again in Spain. It was the time when the chief states of modern Europe began to form themselves, and when the literature of the Romance languages began. It was also a time when we find many good historical writers in England, Germany, and Normandy. And it was a time of great splendour in building, especially in building churches. But they were still built in the round-arched or Romanesque style ; the use of the pointed arch, and what is commonly called the Gothic style, did not come in till near the end of the twelfth century. CHAPTER X. GENERAL VIEW OF THE MIDDLE AGES. The Middle Ages ; union of Roman and Teutonic elements (i) — tkt Church and the Empire ; how affected by the Teutonic settlements (2) — ideal powers of the Emperor and the Pope; the theory only imperfectly carried out (2) — changes following on the transfer oj the Empire to the German Kings (2) — study of the Roman Law (2) — the Western Empire becomes German and the Eastern Empire becomes Greek (3) — condition of the various countries of Europe ; extension of the German Kingdom to the East (3)— the old Teutonic constitution; three orders of men, nobles, freemen, and slaves (4) — mixture of Roman and Teutonic ideas (4) — origin of fief s ; Roman grants of land for military service ; Tetitonic custom of companion- ship to a personal Lord {^—distinction of allodial and feudal tenures; change of allodial holdings into feudal (5) — effects of the feudal tenures ; growth of the class of serfs (6) — introduction of representative assemblies ; growth of the p wer of the feudal princes (6) : — comparison of the political state of England, Germany, and France (7) — Kings commonly chosen out of a single family (8) — origin of the Electors of the Empire (8) — the Crown of France becomes strictly hereditary (8) — uncertainty of succession in the Eastern Empire (8) — spread of Christianity over nearly all Europe {O)) — division between the Eastern and the Western Churches (9)— growth of the power of the Popes ; tendency of the clergy to act as a distinct class (9) — temporal powers of the clergy; special great- ness of the German Prelates (10) — distinction between regular and secular clergy (11) — various orders of monks ; the military orders (il) — learning in the West chiefly in the hands of the clergy; contrast in the East (12) — Greek becomes the language of the Eastern Empire ; continued use of Latin in the West (12) — early i6o GENERA L VIE W OF THE MIDDLE A GES. [ch. Teutonic literature; growth of the Romance languages (12) — revival of learning in the twelfth century (12) — position of the towns in ancient Greece and Italy : their decline under the Teutonic invasions (13) — destruction of Roman towns in Britain (13) — growth of the towns in Germany; greatness of the Hanseatic League (13) — greatness of the cities in Italy (13) — Summary (14). 1. General Survey of Europe. — We have now reached a point in our history at which it will be well to stop and look at the general state of things among the European nations. The points which distinguish what are called the Middle Ages, alike from what we are used to in modern Europe and from the old days of heathen Greece and Rome, are now fully established. The settlement of the Teutonic nations within the Roman Empire had gradually brought about a state of things in which we may see both Roman and Teutonic elements, but in which the two had, as we may say, so joined together as to make a third thing different from either. 2. The Church and the Empire. — The two great powers in Western Europe were the Church and the Empire. Both of these went on through the settlements of the German na- tions, and both in a manner drew new powers from the change of things. Men believed more than ever that Rome was the lawful and natural centre of the world. For it was held that there were of divine right two Vicars of God upon earth, the Roman Emperor his Vicar in temporal things, and the Roman Bishop his Vicar in spiritual things. This belief did not interfere with the existence either of separate commonwealths and principalities or of national Churches. But it was held that the Roman Emperor, who was called Lord of the World, was of right the head of all temporal states, and that the Roman Bishop, the Pope, was of right the head of all Churches. Now this theory was never carried out, if only because so large a part of Christendom, all the Churches and nations of the East, refused to acknowledge either the X.] THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE 161 Emperor or the Bishop of the Old Rome. But it was much more nearly carried out in the case of the Roman Bishop than it was in the case of the Roman Emperor. For the Popes did really make themselves spiritual heads of the whole West, while the temporal headship of the Emperors was never acknowledged by a large part even of the West. But the continued belief which men still had in the Roman Empire as a living thing is not only most remarkable in itself, but it had a most important effect on the history of the world. Still it is plain that the Roman Empire could not really be the same thing as it had been before the Teutonic nations came into the Roman dominions. Even during the short time that the whole Empire of Charles the Great stayed together, it made a great difference that the Emperor was a German King, living for the most part in Germany, and not at Rome or anywhere in Italy. And afterwards the utter cutting off of France and Spain from the Empire did much to take away from its character as an universal monarchy, and to make the Emperors more like common Kings over a particular nation. They were still Kings of Italy and Burgundy as well as of Germany, but most things were now tending to make the Empire more and more German and less and less Roman. On the other hand, as this was the time of a great new birth of learning, men had begun, among other things, to study the Civil Law, the old Law of Rome, as it was put together by the Emperor Yustiman. This study naturally led men to a respect for Jie Imperial power, and thus helped to give the claims of che Emperors a new source of strength. We shall see pre- sently the effects of these different tendencies when we come to the history of the Emperors during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. 3. The Nations of Europe. — Nearly all the nations of Modern Europe had now come into being. We may even M 162 GENERAL VIE W OF THE MIDDLE A GES. [CH. say that the two Empires themselves had begun to answer to two of those nations. For the Eastern Empire had, through the conquests of the Turks, come to answer pretty nearly to those parts of Europe and of the coasts of Asia where Greek was the prevailing language. That is to say, the Roman Empire of the East might be said, speaking roughly, to have become a Greek state. And, speaking still more roughly, it might even be said that the Roman Empire of the West had become a German State. For Germany was now the heart and centre of the Empire, though the possession of the King- doms of Italy and Burgundy of course gave the Emperors many Romance-speaking subjects. Southern Italy, it will be remembered, now formed part of the Kingdom of Sicily. To the West of Germany and Burgundy, beyond the Rhone, the Saone, and the Maes, lay the Kingdom of France, the lands held by the King of the French and his vassals. In the Spanish peninsula the Christian states of Castile and Leon, Navarre, Aragon, and Portugal, were all growing up, and were gradually driving the Mahometans into the southern part called Andalusia. These countries had now so little to do with the Empire that more than one of the Kings of Castile took the title of Ejnperor, as being the chief princes in their own peninsula, just as the West-Saxon Kings had done the like, as being the chief princes in their own island. It was only towards the East, where Germany bordered on the Slavonic nations, that the Empire had much chance of extending itself. The Wends, the Slavonic people along the south coast of the Baltic, in Mecklenburg and Pomerania and the other lands beyond the Elbe, gradually became Christians and were joined on to Germany, and the Low-Dutch language gradually displaced the Slavonic. Bohemia became a dependent state, but it kept its own Dukes who afterwards became Kings. So in the other chief Slavonic country, that of Poland, the Dukes and Kings had sometimes to submit to the Emperors, j x.] THE NA TIONS OF EUROPE. 163 but in the end Poland gradually became quite independent, while Bohemia became more and more closely joined on to the Empire. We may say nearly the same of the Kingdom of the Magyars in Hungary. To the East of Poland and Hungary, Lithuania, where the people were still heathens, and Russia, where they belonged to the Eastern Church, had very little to do with Western Europe. In Northern Europe, De?imark, Sweden, and Norway were distinct king- doms. Sweden and Norway had, from their position, very- little to do wilh the rest of Europe, except so far as the Orkneys and the other islands off Scotland were still closely connected with Norway. But Denmark was a very impor- tant power, and its Kings made large conquests in various parts of the coasts of the Baltic. England, as we have said, had become thoroughly welded into one kingdom under the Norman Kings. Scotland was a distinct kingdom, but its Kings were held to be the men of the English Kings. And, during the time with which we are now concerned, came the beginnings of the English Conquest of Ireland. We thus see that most of the European states which still exist had already come into being. From this point therefore we may for the most part leave the internal affairs of each country to be dealt with in its own special History. But we must still go on with our sketch of those events which affected the his- tory of the nations in general, and this will be a good point to say something about the state of government, religion, and other matters during what are called the Middle Ages. 4. Changes in the Old Teutonic Constitution. — We saw at the very beginning of this book that all the Aryan nations set out, as far as we can see, with very much the same kind of government. There was a King or chief as the leader, there was a smaller Council of nobles or old men, and there was a general Assembly of the whole people. This was the form of government of the Teutonic nations at the M 2 164 GENERAL VIEW OF THE MIDDLE AGES. [ch. time when they began to settle within the Roman Empire. There were commonly three classes of men in the state, the nobles, the common/^OTfl^, and the slaves. And men be* came slaves in two ways, either by being made prisoners of war or by being condemned to slavery for some crime. And if was also usual, especially in war-time, for men to attach them- selves to the service of some particular leader, to become his companions or his men, who were bound to be faithful to him and who looked to share such rewards as he had to give them. This we may call the old Teutonic Constitution, being at first common to all the Teutonic nations. But our own fore- fathers, when they settled in Britain, swept away all Roman institutions more utterly than was done in any part of the mainland. Scandinavia too never came under the Roman power at all. It was therefore in Britain and Scandinavia that this old constitution lasted longest on a great scale. In those parts of the mainland which had always belonged to the Em- pire things went on somewhat differently. As we have already said, Roman and Teutonic institutions influenced one another. As the Roman Empire became something quite different when it began to be held by German Kings, so the Teutonic Con- stitution was greatly changed by the Roman laws and institu- tions which were already established. The cities, for instance, kept up something of their Roman constitutions; and as men learned something of the Roman Law, they began to attribute to the Teutonic Kings something of the great powers of the Roman Emperors. And of course they did this all the more after the Frankish Kings had actually become Roman Em- perors. And one institution arose out of the mixture of Roman and Teutonic ideas which has had a most important influence on the world ever since. 5. Origin of Fiefs. — It had been very common under the Roman government to grant lands on condition of military service. But such lands were held of the Roman Common- X.] FEUDAL TENURES. 165 wealth or of the Emperor as its head, and their holding did not create any particular personal relation between one man and another. But when this Roman custom was combined with the Teutonic custom of men following a chief as their I personal lord, a peculiar relation arose out of the union of the two. The lord granted lands to his man or vassal on condition of his being faithful to him and doing him service in war. The land so granted was called a feudum, fief, or fee j and land held in this way was said to be held by a feudal tenwe. Land which was a man's very own, which was not held of any lord but was subject only to the laws of the state, was called allodial. But it often happened that men whose estates were small found it convenient to turn their allodial holdings into feudal, and to agree to hold their land of some powerful lord, in order to get his protection. And the same thing was sometimes done on a great scale, as when a prince who was conquered, or who feared that he might be conquered, agreed to hold his dominions in fief of the Emperor rather than lose them altogether. 6. Effects of the Feudal Tenures. — The general intro- duction of these feudal or military tenures caused some im- portant changes both in political and in social matters. The change was made gradually, and it was slower in England than in most parts of the Continent; but its general effect was to raise those men who held their lands by these new tenures above all others, and to thrust the poorer freemen lower down. In many countries they gradually sank into the state of serfs or villains; that is, men who are not actually slaves to be bought and sold man by man, but who are bound to the land and pass with it. Meanwhile the class of actual slaves was dying out, and the serf class was increased both by the freemen who fell down to it, and by the slaves who were raised into it. Again the smaller free- men lost power in another way. The old Teutonic con- 1 66 GENERAL VIEW OF THE MIDDLE AGES. [ch. stitution, by which each freeman had a right to appear in the national Assembly, could no longer be fully carried out when the Franks or any other people had got possession of a large country. All men could not come in their own persons, and it was not for a long time, not till the twelfth or thirteenth century, that anyone thought of choosing a smaller number of men to speak and act on behalf of all, as is now done in the English Parliament, and in most of the countries of Europe and America. From all these causes working together two chief results happened. First, in most parts of Europe the old national Assemblies either quite died out, or were attended only by the chief men who could come in their own persons. Secondly, each province or district had a tendency to set up for itself. The Count or Duke, who was at first merely the governor of a province, often grew into an hereditary prince, acknowledging the Emperor or other King as the lord of whom he held his dominions in fief, but acting almost as an independent sovereign in the internal government of those dominions. 7. Comparison of Different Countries. — These tendencies were more or less at work in every part of Western Europe, but they were carried out more fully and more quickly in some countries than in others. Scandinavia and England up to the time of the Norman Conquest were less affected by them than other countries. In England the national Assemblies never died out, but, as the Kings of the West- Saxons grew into Kings of the English, the Assembly of Wessex became the national Assembly of all England. The coming in of the Normans greatly strengthened the power of the Crown, and thereby made the nation more thoroughly one. But, on the other hand, it greatly strengthened the feudal ideas, till it was thought that all land must be held of a lord, of the King of course in the first instance, as the supreme lord. In Germany also, the national Assemblies X.] ELECTION OF KINGS. 167 never died out : but the Bishops, Dukes, Counts, and other princes gradually became sovereigns within their own do- minions, and the Diet or Assembly of the Empire gradually became little more than a meeting of princes. In Italy things took a course so different from other countries that it will be well to speak of it by itself. France for a while fell asunder more completely than any other kingdom. The national Assemblies ceased altogether, and the Kings became mere nominal lords over the great princes who held fiefs of them. But this in the end led to a greater strengthening of the royal power in France than in any other kingdom. For the Kings of the French got step by step into their own hands nearly all the dominions of their vassals, as well as those of many of their neighbours who were not their vassals. Thus, for the very reason that the French Kings had once had much less power than either the Emperors or the English Kings, they came in the end to have much more power than either of them. 8. Ways of appointing Kings. — As for the way in which Kings were appointed, by the old Teutonic Constitution the Kings were chosen by the people, but for the most part out of one particular family. In England this way of choosing Kings lasted till the Norman Conquest, and died out only very gradually afterwards. The Frankish or German Kings, who by virtue of their election in Germany had a right to become Roman Emperors, were always elected. But in the twelfth century the right of election began gradually to be confined to a few of the chief princes of Germany, who were fixed at seven, and who bore the special title of Electors. But the Emperors, whenever they could, got their sons to be chosen Kings in their lifetime, as Henry the Third and Fourth both did. In this case, when the young King's father died, he went on reigning without any i7iterregnum, and in due time he was crowned Emperor. In France the Crown became more strictly hereditary than anywhere else, because, for more 168 GENERAL VIE W OF THE MIDDLE A GES. [ch. than three hundred years after the election of Hugh Capet, every King of the French left a son ready to succeed him, and who had sometimes been crowned in his father's lifetime. Thus in France the male line went on without any break, while, both in Germany and in England, the Crown passed several times from one family to another, though the several dynasties were commonly of some kin to one another through female descent. All that we have now been saying has to do only with Western Europe. In the East the system of fiefs was never introduced till the Latins began to make conquests at the expense of the Eastern Emperors. And in the East too the Empire went on as it had done from the time of the first Caesars, often staying in one family for several genera- tions, but being often seized on by any general or leading man who Avas strong enough. This was a state of things which had quite passed away in the West. In the Eastern Empire too the power of the Emperors remained quite despotic ; still their government never became quite like the despotisms of the East, as it was always tempered by some remembrance of the old laws and traditions of Rome. 9. State of Religion. — By this time by far the greater part of Europe was Christian. Poland and Hungary were converted about the end of the tenth century, and the Scan- dinavian countries, as we have already seen, about the same time. Only the Prussians and Lithuanians, and the Fins and Laps in the extreme North, remained heathen. In Spain the Saracens and Moors were of course Mahometans, and there were still Mahometans in Sicily under the Norman Kings. But, while nearly all Europe was thus Christian, the division between the two great branches of the Church had become wider than ever. After the eleventh century there seemed no hope of a reconciliation between the Churches of Old and New Rome. In the West the power of the Popes was steadily growing, and it was at its height from tho X.] STATE OF RELIGION. 169 eleventh century to the thirteenth, during which time several Popes followed the example of Gregory the Seventh, in taking upon themselves to depose the Emperors and other Kings, and to give away their dominions. And, while the power of the Popes was thus growing at the expense of civil rulers, it was growing no less fast at the expense of national Churches in each particular country. And, as the rule by which the clergy were forbidden to marry was spreading everywhere, they were becoming a class more and more separate from other men, and more and more obedient to the Popes. In all this there was much that we cannot help blaming, and the Popes and clergy often thought too much of the interests ot their own order, and not of the welfare of the Church in general ; still we must remember that the Popes and other clergy kept up religion and learning, and a general sense of right and wrong, in very rough and wild times. There was much to blame in their own conduct, but they were a great check on the evil passions of men ; and, whatever we say ot the Popes in particular, the general influence of the clergy was a powerful influence for good. 10. Position of the Clergy. — As the Popes were constantly taking to themselves power in temporal matters, so we find* in these times the clergy in general taking a part in temporal affairs which we should now think very strange. But this was by no means wholly the fault of the clergy ; as things were then, it could hardly be otherwise. The clergy had nearly all the knowledge of the time in their hands, so that it could not fail that they were largely employed in all matters, including many which did not exactly belong to their own duties. They acted as ministers of Kings and as lawyers, and many of them did not scruple to wear weapons and fight, though this was always held to be a wrong thing and against the laws of the Church. In all parts of Western Christendom the bishopricks and monasteries and other 1 70 GENERAL VIE W OF THE MIDDLE A GES. [ch. ecclesiastical bodies were richly endowed, and held great lands and lordships. In Germany especially most of the Bishops and Abbots were princes of the Empire, and the three Archbishops of Mainz, Kbln, and Trier (called in French Mayence, Cologne, and Treves) were among the Electors of the Emperor. In other countries they did not rise to such power as this, but they were always high in temporal power and formed important members of the Parliament or othei national Assembly. 11. The Monastic Orders. — The distinction between the regular and the secular clergy was now fully established. The regular clergy were those who went out of the world and lived together as mofiks in monasteries ; the seculars were those who lived in the world as parish priests or canons of cathedral and collegiate churches. There were many learned men in both classes ; but we have on the whole more histories and other books written by the regulars than by the seculars. The oldest monks in the West were the Bene- dictines, who followed the rule of Saint Benedict, the great founder of the monastic life in Italy in the sixth century. But, as the Benedictines grew rich and their discipline became less strict, other orders of monks arose, who professed to bring back an older and stricter discipline. Such were the Cistercians, an order of which many houses were founded in the twelfth century ; and in the thirteenth arose the different orders of Friars, as the Franciscans and Dominicans, called after their founders Saint Francis and Saint Dominic, who professed more complete poverty than the older orders, and gave them- selves much to preaching. All these different revivals, one after the other, did good at the time, both among the monks and among other men ; but each new order commonly came in the end to be rich and corrupt, like those which it had undertaken to reform, and so a new reformation was needed. But the strangest thing of all was that during the Crusade, X.] THE MONASTIC ORDERS. 171 there arose orders of monks who were also soldiers — men who took the vows of monks, but whose further business it was to fight against the enemies of Christianity. Two of these military orders, the Templars and the Hospitallers or Knights of Saint John, were the chief defence of the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem. Another order of this kind, called the Teutonic Knights, arose in Palestine towards the end of the twelfth century, and in the course of the thirteenth they undertook to convert or conquer the heathens on the coast of the Baltic, in Prussia and Livonia, where the order held principalities. Thus strangely were religious zeal and the love of fighting mixed up in these times. 12. Language and Learning. — In all this it must be remembered that we are speaking wholly of Western Christ- endom, and more especially when we speak of knowledge being in the hands of the clergy. In the Eastern Empire both the regular and secular clergy play a great part in his- tory, but they neither had all learning to themselves, nor did they fill temporal offices in the same way in which they did in the West. In the East, where the Empire had gone on uninterruptedly without any lasting barbarian conquests, learning had never died out among 'the laity. The Latin language \ now quite forgotten in the East. Greek was the one tongue which men both wrote and spoke, though of course they wrote much better Greek than they spoke. Many of the histories which were written at Constan- tinople at this time were written by laymen, often by Emperors and other men of high rank. But in the West there was nowhere any one language common to all classes of men. The use of Latin was everywhere kept up for all purposes of religion and learning. The Church service was still said in Latin, though Latin was now nowhere the common language of the people. For in Germany, England^ and Scandinavia men spoke their own Teutonic languages, 1 72 GENERAL VIE W OF THE MIDDLE A GES. [CH. and in Italy, Aquitaine, Spain, and France, men spoke the Romance tongues, which we must now look on as languages distinct from the Latin. It thus came about that very few books were written by laymen, and that very few books were anywhere written in the speech of the people. Still, more books were written in the speech of the people in the \ Teutonic than in the Romance countries, because no one could help knowing that High-Dutch, English, or Danish was qaite a different language from Latin ; while men for a long time looked on the vulgar tongue, as it was called, in the Romance countries, simply as bad Latin, which no one would think of writing. Thus we have many Old-English, and some High-Dutch, writings older than anything in any of the Romance tongues. In England they have what no other nation has, a History of its own people from the beginning written in their own language. In Scandinavia too men wrote their own legends and histories in their own. tongue. We begin to get French verse in the twelfth century, but it is not till the thirteenth century that we get any prose. It is somewhat later that we come to the first great work of Italian literature in the famous poem of Dante Alighieri. The first chief writers in both these languages were, as might be supposed, laymen. The twelfth century was a great new birth of learning and science everywhere, partly because men then began to have more dealings with the Greeks and Saracens. Still, even after this time, laymen in Northern Europe were, as a rule, not taught to read and write, though reading and writing gradually became more common, and it must always be remembered that, when a man could not write, it does not at all follow that he could not read. 13. Growth of the Towns. — Another thing must here be mentioned, which was of special importance at the time which we have just come to. This was the growing up of the towns into greater, in some parts into the very first, im« X.] GROWTH OF THE TOWNS. 173 portance. In the old state of things, Greek and Roman, the towns had, so to speak, been everything. Every freeman was a citizen of some town or other, and the Roman dominion was throughout a dominion of one city bearing rule over other cities. The Teutonic settlements everywhere drove the towns back ; none of the Teutonic nations were used to a town life. They looked upon the walls of a town as a prison. In Britain, our own forefathers, who knew nothing at all of Roman civilization, seem at first to have utterly destroyed the Roman towns, and it was not till some time after the first conquest that new English towns began to arise, very often on the old Roman sites. In the other provinces, the Goths, Franks, and other Teutonic settlers did not destroy the Roman towns, but they lost much of their importance and local freedom. But, as civilization began to grow again, new towns began to spring up, and the old towns to win back something of their old greatness. In Germany the Saxon Emperors were great founders of towns ; and, both there and in other parts of the Empire, the old and the new towns alike gradually won for themselves great privileges, which made them almost independent within their own walls. And, as the Imperial power declined and the Dukes and Counts grew into sovereign princes, so in the same way the free Imperial cities grew into sovereign commonwealths, acknowledging only the outward supremacy of the Emperor. And in many cases, like the towns of Old Greece and Italy, they joined to- gether in Leagues for mutual defence. Thus in Northern Ger- many, the Hanseatic League, the league of the great trading towns, became a great power in all the Northern seas, and often gave law to the Kings of Denmark and Sweden. But the part of the Empire where the towns rose to the highest pitch of greatness was Italy, especially the northern part. There, from the eleventh century onwards, the towns, as we may say, became everything, just as they had been in old 174 GENERAL VIEW OF THE MIDDLE AGES. [ch. x. Greece. Here nearly the whole country was parted out among the dominions of the different cities, and the whole land became again an assemblage of commonwealths, independent of any power but that of the Emperor. But though the freedom of the Italian towns became greater than that of the towns in Germany, it was not so lasting. In Germany a great many of the towns always kept their freedom ; and three of them, the Hanse Towns of Liibeck, Bremen, and Hamburg, are separate commonwealths even now. But in Italy most of the cities fell, just as those of old Greece did long before, into the hands either of native lords or Tyrants or into those of foreign princes. Thus it was that Italy became divided, or rather grouped together, into the various principalities which have lately been joined together again into the restored Kingdom of Italy. But a few commonwealths contrived to go on till the end of the last century, and one very small one, that of San Marino, remains still. 14. Summary. — These are some of the chief characteristics which we may look on as distinguishing the times known as the Middle Ages from times earlier and later. It is not easy to say when the Middle Ages begin and end, as the name is nothing more than a convenient way of speaking. But the tendencies of which we have been speaking were about their height in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, in the time of the Swabian Emperors. We have now, so to speak, got quite clear of the old Roman times, while we have not yet got into the times which are more like those in which we now live. In the course of the thirteenth century we shall come across great changes. CHAPTER XI. THE SWABIAN EMPERORS. The Hohenstaufen Kings and Emperors ; origin of the names Guelf and Ghibelin (i) — reign and crusade of Conrad (i) — reign of Frederick Barbarossa ; his dealings with the Italian cities, with the Popes, with Kings of Sicily, with the Eastern Empire (2) — reign of Henry the Sixth; his conqttest of Sicily (3) — double election of Philip and Otto ; reign of Frederick the Second ; his dealings with Sicily, Germany, Italy, and the Popes (4) — reign of Conrad the Fourth ; end of the Stvabian dynasty ; decline of the Imperial power (4) — relations betzveen England and France ; dominions of the Angevin Kings ; reign of Henry the Second (5) — rivalry of Philip Augustus and Pic hard Cceur -de-lion (5) — reign of John in England ; his forfeiture of Normandy (5) — victory of Philip at Bouvines ; Lewis of France in England (5) — reign of Lewis the Eighth (6) — reign of Saint Lewis : his dealings with Henry tht Third ; annexation of Toulouse (6) — effects of the reign of Saint Lewis ; advance of the French Kingdom (6) — growth of the Eng- lish Constittction ; union of Normans and English against foreigners (7) — reforms of Simon of Montfort ; nature of national assemblies in England and elsewhere (7) — the English conquest of Ireland (8)- state of the Kingdom of Jerusalei?i ; the Second Crusade; taking of Jerusalem by Saladin (9) — Crusade of the Emperor Frederick, and the Kings Philip and Richard (10) — ■ Frederick the Second wins back Jerusalem ; its final capture by the Chorasmians (10) — Crusades of Saint Lewis and of Edward the First ; final loss of the Holy Land (10) — revival of the Eastern Empire under the Komninian dynasty; its decline (11) — Fourth Crusade ; taking of Constantinople by the Franks and Venetians (II) — the Latin Empire of Constantinople ; Eastern dominion of 1 76 THE SWABIAN EMPERORS. [cHAr. Venice (12)— formation of various principalities in the East ; Emperors of Nikaia and Trebizond (12) — Constantinople re- covered by the Greeks ; dynasty of the Palaiologoi (12) — the. Albigenses ; Crusades waged against them ; suppression of their sect and of their national independence (13) — reign of Manfred in Sicily ; Crusades preached against him (14) — conquest of Sicily by Charles of Anjou ; execution of Conradin ; revolt of the island 0/ Sicily (14) — state of North-eastern Europe ; advance of Denmark east of the Baltic (15) — establishment of the Teutonic Knights in Prussia and Livonia (15) — new Mahometan dynasties in Spain ; victories of the Caliph Jacob (16) — advance of the Christian King- doms of Castile, Aragon, and Portugal ; the Moors confined to Granada (16) — rise of the Moguls; reigns of Jenghiz and his descendants (17) — invasion of Central Europe by Batou Khan; subjection of Russia (17) — overthrow of the Caliphate and of the Seljuk Turks (17) — Summary (18). I. Origin of the Guelfs and Ghibelins. — On the death of Henry the Fifth in 1125, Lothar, Duke of Saxony, was elected King, and in 1133 he was crowned Emperor. He submitted more readily to the Popes than most Emperors did, and Pope Innocent the Second even gave out that he became his man at his coronation. But on Lothar's death the Imperial Crown passed to one of the greatest families which ever held it, that of the Hohenstatifen or Dukes of Swabia. The first King of that house was Conrad the Third, who reigned as King from 1 138 to 11 52, but who was never crowned Emperor. He was the son of a daughter of the Emperor Henry the Fourth, so that the Swabian dynasty did in a manner continue that of Franconia. It might also be said to continue them in their policy ; for the Emperors of this family had fully as much to do in disputing with the Popes as the Franconian Emperors had done. This however did not begin in the time of King Conrad, who had hardly any- thing to do with Italian affairs. But it should be noticed that the two names of Guelf and Ghibelin, which presently XI.] GUELFS AND GHIBELINS. 177 became so famous in Italy, began during his reign in Ger- many. For Conrad had several wars with the Saxons and others who disliked his election, and in one of the sieges the war-cry of the rebels was Welf, after their leader, IVelf, brother of Duke Henry of Saxony, while the King's men shouted Waiblingen, the name of a village where their leader, Duke Frederick of Swabia, the King's brother, had been brought up. These names, written in an Italian fashion, became Guelfs and Ghibelins : the Guelfs meaning those who supported the Popes, and the Ghibelins those who supported the Emperors. King Conrad went on the second Crusade to the Holy Land, in which he did not gain much success ; and it is a thing to be noted that he made a league with Manuel, the Emperor of the East, against Roger King of Sicily, who was making himself dangerous to both Empires. 2. Reign of Frederick Barbarossa. — But the reign of Conrad was of little importance compared with that of his nephew and successor Frederick, who, from his red beard, is commonly known as Frederick Barbarossa. He was chosen King in 11 52 ; he was crowned Emperor in 1 155, and reigned till 1190. The greater part of his reign was taken up with the affairs and wars of Italy. The Italian cities, as has been already said, had grown up into nearly inde- pendent commonwealths. They often had wars with one another, and, just as in old Greece, the smaller cities often complained of the oppression of the greater. Thus the great city of Milan sought to bring Como, Lodi, and others of the smaller cities under its power, and the smaller cities in their turn prayed the Emperor to come to their help. Some of the cities, as Pavia, which had been the capital in the Lombard times, and the great seafaring common- wealth of Pisa, were always strong on the side of the Empe- rors. But, gradually, most of the cities of Northern Italy found that it was their interest to join together to defend N 178 THE SWABIAN EMPERORS. [cwap. their independence against the Imperial power. Thus was formed the Lombard League, with which Frederick had long wars, which will be best spoken of in the special History of Italy. But, besides the cities, the Western Emperors had other enemies to strive against in Italy. Popes and Em- perors never could agree ; disputes arose between Frederick and Pope Had7'ian the Fourth, who had crowned him. When Hadrian died in 1 1 59, a fiercer dispute broke out ; for the Popedom was claimed by two candidates, Victor and Alex- ander. The Emperor took the side of Victor ; therefore the cities which were against him naturally took the other side, and Frederick had to strive against all who followed Pope Alexander. The Kings of Sicily too, William the Good and William the Bad, were his enemies ; and the Emperor Manuel Komnenos, who dreamed of winning back Italy for the Eastern Empire, also gave help to the revolted cities. The end was that the Emperor had to make peace with both the Pope and the cities, and in it 83 the rights of the cities were acknowledged in a treaty or law of the Empire, passed at Constant or Constance in Swabia. In the last years of his reign, Frederick went on the third Crusade, and died on the way. 3. Union of Sicily with the Empire. — Frederick was suc- ceeded by his son Henry the Sixth, who had already been chosen King, and who in the next year, 1191, was crowned Emperor. The chief event of his reign was the conquest of the Kingdom of Sicily, which he claimed in right of his wife Constance, the daughter of the first King William. He died in 1197, leaving his son Frederick a young child, who had already been chosen King in Germany, and who suc- ceeded as hereditary King in Sicily. The Norman Kingdom of Sicily thus came to an end, except so far as it was con- tinued through Frederick, who was descended from the N 01 man Kings through his mother. XL] THE FREDERICKS. 179 4. Reign of Frederick the Second.— On the death of the Emperor Henry, the election of young Frederick seems to have been quite forgotten, and the crown was disputed between his uncle Philip of Swabia and Otto of Saxony. He was son of Henry the Lion, who had been Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, but who had lost the more part of his dominions in the time of Frederick Barbarossa. Otto's mother was Matilda, daughter of Henry the Second of England, a con- nexion of which we shall presently see what came. Both Kings were crowned, and, after the death of Philip, Otto was crowned Emperor in 1209. But presently young Frederick was again chosen, and in 1220 he was crowned Emperor, and reigned thirty years till his death in 1250. This Frederick the Second, who joined together so many crowns, was called the Wonder of the World. And he well deserved the name, for perhaps no King that ever reigned had greater natural gifts, and in thought and learning he was far above the age in which he lived. In his own kingdom of Sicily he could do pretty much as he pleased, and it nourished wonderfully in his time. But in Germany and Italy he had constantly to struggle against enemies of all kinds. In Germany he had to win the support of the Princes by granting them privileges which did much to undermine the royal power, and on the other hand he showed no favour to the rising power of the cities. In Italy he had endless strivings with one Pope after another, with Innocent the Third, Honorius the Third, Gregory the Ninth, and Innocent the Fourth; as well as with the Guelfic cities, which withstood him much as they had withstood his grandfather. He was more than once excommunicated by the Popes, and in 1245 Pope Innocent the Fourth held a Council at Lyons, in which he professed to depose the Emperor. More than one King was chosen in opposition to him in Germany, just as had been done in the time of Henry the Fourth, and there were civil wars all his N 2 l8o THE SWABIAN EMPERORS. [chap. time, both in Germany and in Italy, while a great part of the Kingdom of Burgundy was beginning to slip away from the Empire altogether. On Frederick's death, his son Conrad, who had been chosen King in Germany in 1237, and who of course succeeded his father in the hereditary Kingdom ol Sicily, was reckoned as King by the Ghibelins in Germany and Italy. But he died in 1254, and he was never crowned Emperor. With him ended the line of Swabia as Emperors and as Kings of Germany and Italy. Moreover, from the death of Frederick the Second, we may look on the power of the Empire, as the great leading state of Europe and the centre of all European history, as coming to an end. 5. England and France. — While the Swabian Emperors reigned in Germany and Italy, the Angevin Kings reigned in England. They began with Henry the Second, the grand- son of Henry the First through his daughter the Empress Matilda. Now came the time when England was part of the dominions of a prince whose greatest power lay on the Continent. The dominions which Henry held through his father, his mother, and his wife, took up nearly the whole of Western Gaul, and he held the mouths of the great rivers Seine, Loire, and Garonne. Thus it came that in England both the native English and the Norman settlers were brought under the rule of a King who was not really either Norman or English. Thus too it came that in France the King was more than ever shut up in his own dominions, when nearly the whole coast was held by a prince who was ; Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine and King of England all at once. Thus there began in England a more distinct rule of foreigners over all the natives of the land of whatever race, and in France the rivalry between the King and his great vassal is more marked than ever. In France King Lewis the. Sixth, who reigned from 1 108 to 1 137, had done something to strengthen the royal authority, and he had also favoured the XI.] ENGLAND AND FRANCE. i8« growth of the towns. His son Lewis the Seventh was often at variance with King Henry of England, but no very great changes happened while they lived. It was quite different in the time of their sons. Lewis died in 1 180, and was succeeded by his son Philip, nailed Philip Augustus; and Henry died in 1 1 89, and was succeeded by his son Richard, called Cceur de Lion or the Lion-Heart. These two Kings joined in a Crusade, of which we shall say more presently ; but enmity went on during the whole of their reigns, and things came to a head in the time of King John of England, who succeeded on the death of his brother Richard in 1 199. He was lawfully chosen King according to English law, and it does not stem that any party in England thought of raising anyone else to the crown. But a party in Richard's foreign dominions wished to have for their Duke young Arthur, the son of John's elder brother Geoffrey, whose mother was Constance, the heiress of Britanny. John got Arthur into his power, and he was commonly believed to have murdered him. This oi course raised great indignation everywhere, and Philip took advantage of it to cause a sentence to be passed by the peers of his kingdom, by which John was declared to have forfeited all the fiefs which he held of the Crown of France. By way of carrying out this sentence, Philip conquered, with very little trouble, all continental Normandy and the other possessions of John in Northern Gaul. But the Duchy of Aquitaine and the Norman Islands were still kept by the Kings of England. From this time England became the most important part of the King of England's domi- nions, and all the natives of England, whether of Old- English or of Norman descent, began to draw together as countrymen to withstand the strangers whom the Angevin Kings were constantly bringing into the land. Mean- while John contrived to quarrel both with Pope Innocent and with his own subjects: and in 12 14 Philip won the 182 THE SWABIAN EMPERORS. |CHAP. battle of B Olivines in Flanders over the English forces, to- gether with those of John's nephew the Emperor Otto. In this battle the French got the better of three Teutonic nations, Germans, English, and Flemings all together. In 1 216, the Barons of England who had revolted against John offered the crown to Lewis the eldest son of Philip of France. He came over into England ; but, as John died before long, the supporters of Lewis gradually left him, and Henry the Third, the young son of John, was acknowledged King. Two things strike us in this part of the story. On the one hand, it seems strange that the Normans in Normandy, who had had such long wars with the French, should have allowed themselves to be conquered by Philip almost with- out making any resistance. On the other hand, it seems strange that the Barons of England, whether we call them Normans or Englishmen, should have offered the crown ot England to the eldest son of the King of the French. The truth is that John was felt to be really neither a Norman Duke nor an English King, and men most likely thought that, if they were to have a foreign ruler, Philip and Lewis would be better than John. 6. Saint Lewis. — After the death of Philip, his son Lewis the Eighth, who had failed to get the Crown of England, reigned for a few years in France, from 1223 to 1226. Then came his son Lewis the Ninth, called Saint Lewis, and most rightly so called, for he was perhaps the best King that ever reigned, unless it were the English Alfred. The only evil was that his personal goodness helped greatly to increase the power of the Crown, and so in the end to make the Kings of France absolute rulers. And in the like sort it helped greatly to increase the power of France among other nations. While Saint Lewis reigned in France, Henry the Third reigned in England from 1216 to 1272. Henry made some attempts to get back his possessions in France ; but in 1259 XI. 3 SAINT LEWIS. 183 peace was made, by which Henry kept nothing except his possessions in the South. In Saint Lewis's time also, but while he was still young and under the rule of his mother Blanche of Castile, the dominions of the Counts of Toulouse were added to the royal possessions by a treaty made in 1229. Thus the Kings of the French, instead of being cooped up in Paris and Orleans, as they had been up to the time of Philip Augustus, had the more part of their kingdom in their own hands. Their dominions now reached to the Mediterranean Sea, and they had havens on all the three seas, the Mediterranean, the Ocean, and the Channel. And, though Provence and the other great fiefs of the King- dom of Burgundy were not joined to France for a long time to come, still from this time they began to have a connexion with France. The French Kings began to meddle with their affairs in a way which may be thought to have paved the way for their conquest at a later time. Generally, just as the German Kingdom was getting weaker, and was now in truth splitting to pieces, the French Kingdom was getting stronger *nd more united ; and from this time France was always reckoned amongst the foremost powers of Europe. 7. The Internal Affairs of England. — The internal and constitutional affairs of England will be spoken of more at large in the special History of England. But a few words must be given to them, as they are closely connected with the general course of European affairs. The thirteenth century was a time of great changes, a time, so to speak, of begin- nings and endings, throughout the world. As both Empires practically came to an end, as the Kingdom of France, in anything like its later extent and importance, may be said to have begun, so now the Constitution of England began to put on the shape which it has kept ever since. Under John and Henry the Third we see how the fondness of the Angevin Kings for foreigners of all kinds drove the natives 184 THE SWAB IAN EMPERORS. [.-hap. of England, whether of English or Norman derc^nt, to join together against the strangers. The whole nation joined together to force King John in 12 15 to grant the Great Charter, by which all the old rights and good laws which he had broken were confirmed. This Great Charter the Kings who followed had to confirm over and over again, because they were always trying to break it ; and it has been the groundwork of English freedom ever since. So aj*ain, in the time of Henry the Third, when the King's misgovern- ment and his favour to foreigners again drove the Barons and the whole people to rise against him, though the Popes again took the side of the King and excommunicated all who rose against him, we again find the whole English nation, nobles, clergy, and people, acting firmly together. In this war against Henry the Third the great leader was Simon of Mo7itfort, the son of another Simon of whom we shall hear presently. He was, oddly enough, a Frenchman by birth, but he inherited the Earldom of Leicester through his mother; and, when he came to England, he threw in his lot with his new country, and did in everything as a good Englishman. It was by him that the Great Council of the Nation, which was now called by the French name of Parliament, was made to take the form which it has borne ever since. Some kind of National Assembly was found in nearly every part of Western Europe. But in most countries the Assembly consisted of Estates ; that is, repre- sentatives of the different classes of freemen in the nation. These, in most countries, were counted as three, Nobles, Clergy, and Commons, the Commons generally being only the citizens of the towns. This sort of constitution was set up in France by Philip the Fair, the grandson of Saint Lewis. The States came together in each country to grant money to the King, and to demand such changes in the laws or other reforms as might be needed. But XI.] SIMON OF MONTFORT. 1S5 in France the States never met regularly, but only when it suited the King's purposes, or when he could not help calling them together. In England, on the other hand, the Parlia- ments went on far more regularly, so that England was never left without a national Assembly of some kind from the ) very beginning of things till now. And in England the Parliament took the particular form of an assembly with Two Houses. The Earls, Bishops, and other great men, grew into the House of Lords, and the House of Commons was gradually formed out of the representatives of the people in general. First of all, the freeholders of each county were called on to send some of the knights of that county to represent them, and at last, when Earl Simon held a Par- liament in 1265, he called on the cities and boroughs to send each two of their citizens or burgesses. Earl Simon was killed that same year in the battle of Evesham, but the system of representation which he had brought in was before long firmly established under King Edward the First. 8. The Conquest of Ireland. — Duringthis time many things happened between the English Kings and their vassals the Kings of Scots and Princes of Wales, which will be better told in the History of England. But it must be mentioned here that it was in the reign of Henry the Second that the English dominion in Ireland began. At the very beginning of his reign, in 1 155, King Henry got a Bull from Pope Hadrian the Fourth, who was an Englishman and the only Englishman that ever was Pope, giving him leave to conquer Ireland : mus had the Popes taken upon themselves to dispose of kingdoms. But it was not till 1170 that some nobles and other private adventurers went over into Ireland under pre- tence of helping a banished Irish king called Dermot. Two years afterwards King Henry went over himself to receive the homage of the whole country. From that time the Kings of England always claimed to be Lords of Ireland, and the 1 86 THE SWAB IAN EMPERORS. [chap. city of Dublin and a greater or less part of the island was always under the English power ; but it was not for many ages that they really got possession of all Ireland, and cruel wars long went on between the English settlers and the native Irish. 9. The Loss of Jerusalem. — A large part of the history of this time might come under the general head of Crusades. The first Crusades or Holy Wars had been undertaken to win back the Holy Sepulchre from the infidels; but after a while both the name and the thing began to be greatly abused, and Crusades were preached against almost anyone with whom the Popes were at enmity. The First Crusade, as we have already seen, led to the establishment of the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1099. The chief strength of the kingdom lay in the two orders of military monks, the Templars and the Hospitallers or Knights of Saint John, and many warriors from all parts of Christen- dom went to serve for a while in the Holy Land as a good work. Still the Kings of Jerusalem had much ado to keep their little kingdom from the attacks of the neighbouring Mahometan powers, and several new Crusades had to be made to help them, some of which were led by the greatest princes in Europe. Thus in 1147 the Second Crusade was preached by Saint Bernard, one of the holiest men of the time, and who is called the last of the Fathers of the Church. Conrad King of the Romans and Lewis the Seventh, King of the French, both went on this Crusade, but they were not able to do any great things. And there soon arose a power in Egypt which became more dangerous to the Christians of the East than any of the other Ma- hometan powers that were there. We have seen there had been for some time a separate line of Caliphs in Egypt ; these were called the Fatimites, as professing to be the descendants of Fatima, the daughter of Mahomet. But in 11 71 their XL] THE CRUSADES. 187 power was put down by Joseph surnamed Saladin, who brought back Egypt under the spiritual power of the Caliph of Bagdad, much as if the Eastern Church had been brought under the power of the Bishops of Rome. Saladin became the greatest Mahometan chief of his time, and in 1 187 he took Jerusalem and drove the Christians out of the greater part of the kingdom. Thus far all the Crusades since the First had been waged for the purpose of defending the Christian possession of Jerusalem. We have now again to come to Crusades which were waged, as the First had been, to win back the Holy City from the Infidels, as well as to save the small fragment of the kingdom which was left. 10. The Later Crusades in Palestine. — The loss of Jeru- salem roused the spirit of all Western Christendom. King Henry of England took the cross, but he died two years later, without ever setting out for the Holy Land. But in 1 189 the Emperor Frederick set out by land, but was drowned on the way ; and in 1 1 90 Philip King of the French and his great vassal Richard, the new King of the English, went to the Holy Land by sea. King Richard did many great exploits; but the princes quarrelled among themselves, so that Jerusalem was not won back: but some parts ot Palestine were still left to the Christians, and they were allowed to make pilgrimages to Jerusalem. Of the Third Crusade we shall have to speak by itself, as it did nothing for the Holy Land at all. But in 1228 the Emperor Frederick the Second, who claimed to be King of Jerusalem in right of his wife, notwithstanding the opposition ot Pope Gregory the JVinth, really went to the Holy Land, and won Jerusalem by a treaty with the Egyptian Sultan Kavi£l, and was crowned King there. He was the last Christian King who really reigned at Jerusalem. For in 1244 the Holy City was again lost by the Christians, being taken by the Mahometan Chorasmians, and it has never been 1 88 THE SWAB FAN EMPERORS. [chap. won back again. The Popes, instead of helping the Emperor to win back his kingdom, were always excommunicating and preaching Crusades against him. The Christians however still kept some small parts of the kingdom, and in 1248 Saint Lewis, the King of the French, set out on a Crusade ; but, instead of going straight to Palestine, he first attacked Egypt-, a s being the best way of winning the Holy Land. But he was taken prisoner in Egypt ; and though he did after- wards reach Palestine, yet he could not win back Jerusalem. At last he came back to France in 1254, having done little or nothing for the common cause, but having shown his own courage and goodness in a wonderful way. In 1270 he set out on another Crusade ; but this time he began by besieging Tunis, and died there. In 1270 Edward the son of King Henry of England, afterwards the great King Edward the First, went on another Crusade, and did something to stop the final overthrow of the Christians in Palestine, though even he could not win back Jerusalem. At last, in 1291, Acre, the last town which the Christians held in the Holy Land, was taken by the Mahometans, and the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem came altogether to an end. But the Emperors always called themselves Kings of Jeru- salem as well as of Germany, and the same vain title has been borne and disputed about by several other European sovereigns. n. The Latin Conquest of Constantinople. — No one perhaps would have expected that the Eastern Empire, the great bulwark of Christendom against the Saracens and Turks, and which the first Crusaders had professed to go forth to defend, would be actually overthrown by a cru- sading army. We have seen that the Komnenian Emperors, following in the wake of the first Crusaders, were able to win back a large part of the Byzantine dominions in Asia. The two Emperors who reigned after Alexios, John and Manuel t XL] LATIN CONQUEST OF CONSTANTINOPLE. l8g were both great warriors. John, who reigned from 1 1 1 8 to 1 143, did much really to restore the strength of the Empire ; but Manuel, who reigned from 1 153 to 1 180, was lather a bold knight-errant than either a good ruler or a great general. He had to contend with many enemies both in Europe and in Asia. In his time Greece was several times ravaged by the fleets of the Kings of Sicily ; he had to wage wars with Hungary, and at last he was defeated in a great battle against the Turks in 1176. After his time the Eastern Empire again began to decline; there were many internal revolutions ; Emperors were set up and put down ; the Bulgarians revolted, and a separate Emperor set himself up in the isle of Cyprus. At last, in 1201, several Western princes, among the chief of whom were Baldwin Count of Flanders and Boniface Marquess of Montferrat in Italy, were setting out on a Crusade, and they came to Venice to ask for ships to take them to the Holy Land. Venice, it will be remembered, had never been part of the Western Empire, but had always kept on its nominal allegiance to the Emperors of the East, till it had gradually become quite in- dependent, as it was now. The three Italian cities, Venice, Genoa, and Pisa, were now the greatest naval powers in Europe. The Doge or Duke of Venice, Henry Dandolo, agreed to let the Crusaders have ships and to go with them himself ; only the Crusaders were to conquer for the Venetians the town of Zara in Dalmatia to which they laid claim. Pope Innocent protested against this as being no part of the business of a Crusade. Yet they not only took Zara, but agreed to help Alexios Angelos, the son of an Emperor of the East who had been deposed, in getting back the Empire. This they actually did in 1203. But, a? the Romans or Greeks (whichever we are to call them) of Con- stantinople presently revolted, and slew the Emperors who had been put in by the Crusaders, the Crusaders in ITQ4 190 THE SWABIAN EMPERORS. [chap. again took the city ; and the Roman Empire of the East may now be said to have come to an end. 12. The Later Greek Empire. — When the Crusaders had taken Constantinople, they went on to deal with the whole Eastern Empire as their own. They set up Count Baldwin as Emperor of Constantinople, and they divided among themselves as much of the Empire as they could get. This was the beginning of what was called the Lathi Empire of Constantinople : the word Latin being now often used, as opposed to Greek, to express all those who admitted the supremacy of the Roman Church and who used Latin as their religious and official language. Among the Latin powers which now won settlements in the East, the Venetians especially got possession of many of the islands and important points of the coast, which was the beginning of their great Eastern dominion. Some of the Venetian and other Latin possessions were never won back by the Greeks, but on the other hand the Latins were far from conquering the whole Empire. The Greeks main- tained their independence in Epeiros and at Nikaia and Trapezous or Trebizond in Asia ; in both these latter cities Greek princes reigned with the title of Emperor. Thus the Eastern Empire was cut up into a crowd of small princi- palities, Greek and Frank (the meaning of this last word in the East has already been explained), Despots of Epeiros, Dukes of Athens, Princes of Achaia, and what not ; the Latin Emperors at Constantinople being supposed to be lords over all the Frank settlers. But, as the Emperors who reigned at Nikaia, Theodore Laskares and John Vatatzes, were very wise and good princes, the Empire of Nikaia, which professed to be the true continuation of the Roman Empire at Con- stantinople, grew and flourished ; and in 1261 the Emperor Michael Palaiologos won back Constantinople, and the Empire of the East in some sort began again. But it never XI.] THE LATER GREEK EMPIRE. 191 won back its old power, for, besides the provinces which were held by the Mahometans and the new dominions of the Venetians, some of the Greek and Frank princes still went on reigning, and were independent of the Greek Em- peror at Constantinople. The Empire of Trebizond especially outlived the restored Empire of Constantinople. In truth this restored Empire of Constantinople was little more than the most powerful of several Greek states which went on from this time till they were all swallowed up by the Turks. But it must be remembered that the Emperors of Constantinople still called themselves Emperors of the Romans, and professed to continue the old Roman succes- sion. From this time the Eastern Empire became more strictly hereditary than it had been of old, and the crown remained with very little interruption in the family of Palaiologos, till the Empire was finally destroyed by the Ottoman Turks. 13. Crusades against the Albigenses. — We have just seen how a Crusade, which was meant to be a war for the defence of Christendom against the unbelievers, could be turned into an attack made by one set of Christians against another. But when the Fourth Crusade was turned about into an attack on Zara and Constantinople, Pope Innocent at least did what he could to hinder such a falling away from the original design of a Crusade. But presently Innocent himself caused a Crusade to be preached, no longer against Mahometans, but against Christians who were looked on as heretics. In the South of Gaul, both in those parts which were fiefs of the King of the French and in those which were held of the Emperors as Kings of Burgundy, many men had fallen away into doctrines which both the Eastern and the Western Church condemned. Those who held these doctrines were commonly called Albigenses, from the city of Albi. The chief princes in those parts were the Counts of Toulouse and 192 THE SWABIAN EMPERORS. [chap. the Counts of Provence : each of them held fiefs both of the Emperor and of the King of the French ; but the County of Toulouse itself was a fief of France, while the County of Provence was of course a fief of the Empire The Counts of Provence at this time were of the house of the Kings of A. tagun. In 1208 a Crusade was preached against Raymond Lour J of Toulouse, which was carried on at first by Simon of Montfort t the father of the Simon who was so famous in English history, and afterwards by Lewis the Eighth, King of the French. Simon even defeated Peter King of Anron in a great battle, and obtained possession of Toulouse. It looked at one time as if the house of Montfort_ were going to be established as sovereigns in the South of Gaul; but the end of the matter was that the heresy of the Albigenses was put down by cruel persecutions, and that in 1229 the county of Toulouse was, as we have seen, incorporated with the Kingdom of France. 14. Crusades against Sicily. — In this way the Crusades, which had first been preached only against the infidels, next began to be preached against heretics. The next stage was to preach them against any one who was an enemy of the Pope. Thus Crusades were preached against the Emperor Frederick, and after his death they were preached against his son Manfred King of Sicily, who began to reign in 1258. Manfred was a wise and brave King, and he greatly helped the Ghibelins in other parts of Italy; things almost looked as if a Kingdom of all Italy. was about to arise in the House of Swabia. But the Popes were of course the enemies of Manfred. Even while King Conr-ad was alive. Pope Innocent the Fourth had in 1253 professed to give the crown of Sicily to Edmund son of Henry the Third of England. But nothing came of that : so in 1262 Pope Urban the Fourth offered the crown to Charles Count of Anjou, the brother of Saint Lewis, who was also Count of Provence in right XL ] CR USA DES IN SICIL Y AND PR USSIA. 1 93 of his wife. Charles got together an army of French Cru- saders, and in 1266 he overthrew and slew Manfred in battle. He then took the kingdom himself; and when, two years afterwards, young Conradin, the nephew of Manfred, tried to win back the crown, he was defeated in battle, and was be- headed by order of Charles. Charles was thus King' of Sicily, both of the island and of the mainland ; but in 1282 the island of Sicily revolted against the oppression of him and his Frenchmen, and the Sicilians chose as their King Peter King of Aragon, who had married the daughter of Manfred A long war followed ; the end of which was that Charles's descendants kept the kingdom on the mainland, which was commonly called the Kingdom of Naples, while the island of Sicily became a separate kingdom in the House of Aragon : but in both kingdoms the Kings called themselves Kings of Sicily, so that when the island and the mainland were joined again long afterwards, the kingdom was called the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. 15. Crusades in the North of Europe. — Besides the real Crusades against the Mahometans and what we may call the mock Crusades against heretics and ether enemies of the Popes, there were also, as we have already seen, Cru- sades against the heathens in the North of Europe. The countries on the east side of the Baltic, P?'ussia, Lithuania, Livonia, and Esthonia, were still idolatrous. Pola7id had become Christian at the end of the tenth century, and the Polish Dukes and Kings had much trouble with their heathen neighbours. Both Poland and Lithuania were much smaller states now than they became afterwards. Russia at this time was a much greater state, and came much further to the west, than it did again till quite late times, for the Poles and Lithuanians made large conquests at the expense of Russia. Both Russia and Poland were at this time often divided between several princes ; and one or two of the great o 194 THE SWAM AN EMPERORS. [chap. cities, especially the famous Novgorod in the north, were able to make themselves into republics. But both Poland and Russia were almost wholly cut off from the sea by their heathen neighbours, and at one time it seemed as if the chief power in those parts was likely to fall into the hands of Denmark, as several of the Danish Kings, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, made large conquests on the southern and eastern shores of the Baltic. But in the reign of Frederick the Second great changes were made in those parts by the establishment of the Teutonic Knights. They were first in- vited by some of the Polish princes to help them against the heathen Prussians. Under their Grand Master Hermann of Salza, they were commissioned by the Emperor Frederick and by Pope Gregory the Ninth, who preached a Crusade against the Prussians, to settle themselves in those parts about 1230. They presently conquered Prussia and Eastern Pomerania; and in 1237 another order, called the Knights of the Sword, who were established in Livonia, were joined with the Teu- tonic Knights. The territories of the Order now quite cut ofl Poland, Lithuania, and Russia from the Baltic, and hindered any further advance of Denmark in those parts. The wars of the Knights in those lands were looked on as holy wars, and many men came from other parts of Europe to join them in fighting against the heathens, just as they had done against the Saracens in the East. But the government of an order can never be a really good government, and the Knights often showed themselves quite as dangerous neighbours to the Poles, whom they had first come to help, as to the Prussians and other heathens whom they had come to fight against. 16. Advance of the Christians in Spain. — While Crusades against heathens and Mahometans were thus going on in the North and East, the whole history of Spain might be called one long Crusade on the part of the Christians who were winning back the land, step by step, from the Saracens XI. ] THE KINGD OMS OF SPAIN. 1 95 and Moors. The advance of the Christians was still checked by the foundation of new Mahometan dynasties, which passed over from Africa into Spain. As the Almoravides passed over in the eleventh century, so the A Imokades, who were much like a kind of Mahometan Crusaders, passed over in the twelfth. Alfonso the Eighth, who, as being the chief prince in Spain, called himself Emperor, withstood them for a while ; but, after his death in 1 159, Castile and Leon were again divided, and the Almohades were able again largely to extend the Mahometan territories. In 1195 Jacob, the Caliph of the Almohades, at the head of a kind of general Mahometan Crusade, won the great battle of Alar cos over Alfonso of Castile, the grandson of the Emperor Alfonso ; and as the different Spanish Kings were constantly quarrelling between themselves, it almost seemed as if the Mahometans were going again to get the upper hand. But when the great Caliph Jacob was dead, and the Christians began to join together again, the Almohade prince Mahomet was utterly defeated in 1 2 1 2 at the battle of Tolosa^ and from that time the Mahometan power in Spain steadily went down. Ferdi?iand the Third, called Saint Ferdinand, who reigned over Castile from 12 17 to 1252 and who in 1230 finally united the Kingdoms of Castile and Leon, won back a large territory, including the great cities of Seville and Cordova. The Kings of Portugal and Aragon also were pressing their conquests in the West and East of the peninsula. The most famous of the Kings of Aragon was James the Conqueror, who reigned from 1213 to 1276. At last nothing was left of the Mahometan power in Spain save only the Kingdom of Granada in the South, which began in 1237, and which, having a good barrier of mountains, lasted much longer than any one would have looked for. From this time there were five kingdoms in Spain, Castile, Aragon,Portu- gal, Navarre, and Granada. Of these Castile was the greatest and Navarre the smallest : but, as both Castile and PortugaJ O 2 196 THE SWABIAN EMPERORS. [chap. were chiefly employed with their wars with the Mahometans, Aragon was the Spanish kingdom which had most to do with the general affairs of Europe, as we have seen when speak- ing of the history of Sicily and Southern Gaul. 17. The Invasions of the Moguls. — While Christians and Mahometans were thus fighting in various parts of Europe and Asia, a new power, a Turanian power, which was neither Christian nor Mahometan, threatened to overwhelm both alike. These were the Moguls, commonly known in Europe as Tartars, who in the thirteenth century burst forth from the unknown lands of Asia, beyond either the Saracens or the Turks, much as Attila and his Huns had burst forth eight hundred years before. They began to rise to power under Temujin or Jengliiz Khan, who reigned from 1206 to 1227. During the whole of the century he and his descendants went on conquering and destroying through the greater part of Europe and Asia. In some parts they only ravaged, and ravaged more cruelly than either the Saracens or the Turks had ever done; in others they founded lasting dynasties. In religion they seem to have been a kind of Deists, acknowledging one God, but not accepting either the Christian or the Mahometan law. But all religions, Christian, Mahometan, and heathen, were freely tolerated among them, and in the end most of them became Ma- hometans. In Europe Batou Khan pressed all through Russia, Poland, and Hungary, as far as the borders of Ger- many. The furthest point which they reached to the west was Lignitz in Silesia, the border province of Poland and Bohemia, which had been Polish, but which now was Bohe- mian. They there, in 1241, gained a battle over the Teutonic Knights and all the princes of those parts. All Europe was naturally frightened at such an invasion, and the Emperor Frederick tried to stir up all the other Kings to a Crusade against these enemies, who were worse than XL] THE MOGUL INVASIONS. 197 Saracens or Prussians. But the Moguls pressed no further westwards ; they ravaged Hungary and the countries tc the north of it, but the only lasting dynasty which they set up in Europe was at Kasan on the Volga, whence they 1 held Russia in their dependence. Thus Russia, which had at one time seemed likely to become an important power in Europe, was altogether thrust back for a long time. The Lithuania7is conquered all the western provinces, even the old capital of Kiev, and the Russian Dukes, first of Vladimir and then of Moscow, were looked on as mere subjects of the Mogul Khans. In Asia, besides conquests in China and other parts which do not concern us, the Moguls over- threw most of the existing powers, and founded a lasting dynasty in Persia. The Chorasmians, from the lands east of the Caspian, flying before them, overthrew, as we have seen, the restored Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem. In 1258 Holagou, another grandson of Jenghiz, took Bagdad, and put an end to the Abbasside Caliphate, though a line professing to be the descendants of the Abbasside Caliphs went on in Egypt, but without any temporal power. The power of the Seljuk Turks was also quite broken up, and the Greek Emperors at Nikaia were greatly frightened, though in the end the invasion of the Moguls helped the Eastern Empire to last a little longer by destroying the power of the Seljuks. But it was only for a little while, because the overthrow of the Seljuk Turks made a way for the growth of the far more famous Turkish power of the Ottomans, whose beginning came a little later than the time which we have now reached. 18. Summary. — Thus we see that the time of the Swabian Emperors was a time of still greater changes than that of the Franconian Emperors. In their time much was done towards bringing the various powers of Europe into something like the state in which they are now. The power of the Empire came pretty well to an end, and Germany and Italy began 198 THE SWABIAN EMPERORS. [ch. xi. to be collections of separate states, independent or nearly so, as they have been ever since till quite lately. The Eastern Empire was broken up ; the greatness of Venice began ; the Caliphate perished, and the Crusades came to an end. But, while Christendom lost in the East, it gained in the West by the great advances of the Christians in Spain. Castile now takes the first place in the Spanish penin- sula. In the like sort Fra?ice is now fully established as the leading power of Gaul. In England Normans and English are fully reconciled ; the Angevin Kings, by the loss of the more part of their foreign dominions, are driven to become national sovereigns, and that parliamentary constitution is established which has lasted ever since. The north of Eu- rope was further from putting on its present form than the west; but the establishment of the Teutonic Order, the. check given to the power of Denmark, the extension of Lithuania, and the subjection of Russia to the Moguls are all events which had an important effect on later times. This was also a time of great intellectual progress Universities began to arise, among which Paris and Oxford were two of the most famous north of the Alps. In England were Latin historians and other writers, such as William of Malmesbury , John oj Salisbury, and Matthew Paris, and the great Friar Roger Bacon, who forestalled many of the inventions of later times. In France prose writing began with Villehardouin, who wrote an account of the taking of Constantinople. Italian litera- ture began under Frederick the Second, and in Germany this was the time of the Minne singers or love-poets. The pointed or Gothic style of architecture also began to come into use in the last years of the twelfth century, and flourished greatly in the thirteenth. Altogether this was, both in Europe and Asia, a time when old systems were falling and new ones were rising, and in most parts we may see the beginnings of the state of things which we see now. CHAPTER XII. THE DECLINE OF THE EMPIRE. Decay of the Empire ; the great Interregnum (i) — double election of Richird and Alfonso (1) — election of Rudolf ; his grant of Austria to his son (2) — reigns of Adolf and Albert (2) — reign of Henry the Seventh ; his career in Italy (2) — history of John of Bohemia (2) — reigns of Charles the Fourth, Wenceslaus, and Siegmund{2) — reigns of Albert the Second and Frederick the Third {2) — new position of the Empire; its connexion with the Hoicse of Austria (2)— papacy of Gregory the Tenth ; of Boniface the Eighth (3) — the Avignon Popes; suppression of the Templars (3) — the Great Schism (3) — the reforming Councils, Pisa, Constanz, and Basel (4) — Councils of Ferrara and Florence ; reconciliation with the Eastern Church (4) — intellectual pre-eminence of Italy (5) — study of the Ro?nan law ; revival of classical learning (5) — invention of printing and gun- powder (5) — growth of the tyrants in Italy ; the Visconti at Milan (6) — constitutions of Venice, Genoa, and Florence (6) — revolution of Rienzi at Rome (7) — return of the Popes ; their temporal power (7) — the Two Sicilies ; rivalry of the Houses of Anjou and Aragon (8) ■ — dealings of England with Wales and Scotland (9) — the Hundred Years' war between France and England {10) — claim of Edward the Third to the crown of France ; victories of the English ( 10) — Peace of Bretigny ; independence and loss of Aquitaine (10) — wars of Hmry the Fifth ; Treaty of Troyes (10) — exploits of Joan of Arc ; French conquest of Aquitaine (10) — growth of France ; annexa- tions in the Kingdom of Burgundy ; defeat of the French at Courtray (11) — beginning of the Swiss League ; the three Forest Cantons ; battle of Morga?'ten (12) — the eight Cantons ; battle of Sempach (12) — relations of the League to the Empire, France, and Austria (12) — beginning of the Valois Dukes of Burgundy ; acquj' loo THE DECLINE OF THE EMPIRE. [chap. sition of Flanders (13) — reigns of John the Fearless and Philip the Good ; advance of the Burgundian power within the Empire (13) — reign of Charles the Bold ; his rivalry with Lewis the Eleventh {ig) — his schemes and conquests ; his war with the Confederates; battles of Grandson, Morat, and Nancy (13)— effects of the Bur- gundian War on the Confederates (13) — the Greek Empire of Con- stantinople ; its advance attd decline (14)— rise of the Ottomzn Turks ; their conquests in Asia (14) — their advance in Europe ; institution of the Janissaries (14) — rise of Timour ; he defeats Bajazet at Angora (15) — reign of Mahomet the Second ; fall of Constantinople (16) — conquest of Greece and Trebizond ; taking of Otranto ; death of Mahomet (16) — civil war in Castile ; battle of Najara (17) — wars of Aragon with Provence and France (17) — maritime discoveries and conquests of the Portu- guese (17) — union of Castile and Aragon ; conquest of Granada; beginning of the greatness of Spain (17) — state of the Scandi- navian Kingdoms ; Union of Calmar (18) — the House of Olden- burg in Denmark; affairs of Sleswick and Holstein (18) — conversion of Lithuania ; its union with Poland ; partition of Prussia (19) — deliverance of Russia from the Moguls (19) — the Angevin Kings in Hungary ; reign of Siegmund , his defeat at Nikopolis (20) — exploits of Huniades ; defeat of Wladislaus at Varna (20) — reign of Matthias Corvinus ; designs of Austria on Hungary (20) — growth of Universities (21) — writers of history and poetry (21)-- -final triumph of the English language (21) — theology and philosophy (21) — levelling doctrines taught ; condition of the villains (21) — use of infantry in war (21) — state of architec- ture (21) — Summary {12.). I. The Great Interregnum. — After the death of Frederick the Second the power and dignity of the Western Empire greatly declined. Italy now began quite to fall away. Many of the Kings who were chosen in Germany never went to Rome to be crowned Emperors at all, and those who did so, though their passing through the country always made some changes at the time, could not keep any lasting hold on the Kalian Kingdom. The Kingdom of Burgundy quite broke Xii.] THE GREAT INTERREGNUM. 201 in pieces ; some of its princes and commonwealths still kept on their nominal connexion with the Empire, but others passed, one by one, by one means or another, under the power of France Thus began that growth of France at the cost of the Kingdoms belonging to the Empire, of which we had a sort of foreshadowing in the battle of Bou vines, and which has gone on ever since till it was stopped only yesterday. In fact, after the death of Frederick the Second, his successors, though they were still called Kings and Emperors of the Romans, were really very little more than Kings of Germany, and even in Germany their power was always growing less and less. The time from the death of Conrad in 1254 to the year 1273 is commonly called the Great Interregnum, because, though more than one King was chosen during that time, there was no King really acknowledged by all Germany, much less by other parts of the Empire. In 1256 some of the Electors chose Richard Earl of Cornwall, brother of King Henry the Third of England, and others chose Alfonso King of Castile. Alfonso never came to Germany at all. Richard came and was crowned King, but he never was crowned Emperor, and he kept very little power in Germany, and spent most of his time in England, where we often hear of him in English history. He died in 1 27 1 , the year before his brother King Henry} This long Interregnum was of course a time of great confusion in Germany. The Empire quite lost its hold over the neighbouring countries, and the princes in Germany itself of course greatly enlarged their own powers while there was no King to keep them in check. In short, every sort of lawlessness and wickedness was rife through the whole land. At last men felt that an end must be put to such a state of things, and at last in 1273 a King dwelling in the land was once more chosen. 2. Kings of the Houses of Habsburg and Liizelburg. — The King who was now chosen was not one of the great 202 THE DECLINE OF THE EMPIRE. [chap. Princes of the Empire ; he was Rudolf Count of Habs- burg, a. castle in Aargau in the south of Swabia. He reigned till 1292, and was a brave and wise man, who did much to restore peace and to subdue Oitocar King of Bohemia and other enemies, but he never was crowned Emperor. He was the founder of the House of Habsburg or of Austria, from which so many Kings and Emperors were afterwards chosen. For the old Margraves and Dukes of Austria had come to an end, and the Duchy was granted by Rudolf to his son Albert, from whom the later Dukes, Kings, and Emperors of the Austrian House all sprang. Neither Rudolf nor either of the two next Kings, Adolf 'of Nassau and Rudolfs son Albert, was ever crowned Emperor. Albert was the first Austrian King, and there were no more for some time to come, for, when he was murdered in 1308, the Electors chose Henry Count of Luzelburg or Luxemburg, who reigned as Henry the Seventh. In his time it seemed as if the Empire were going to win back again all its old power. For he went into Italy and was crowned King at Milan and Emperor at Rome in 1312, but in the next year, he died, by poison as was thought, and his great schemes died with him. He was however able to provide for his own family as Rudolf had done, for he contrived to get the Kingdom of Bohemia for his son John, by marrying him to the daughter of the last King Wenceslaus. This King John figures a good deal in the history of the time, but not so much either in his own kingdom or in Germany as in going about as a kind of knight-errant in Italy and France. At last he died in the battle of C?ecy between the French and the English, of which we shall speak presently. He was never Emperor or King of the Romans himself, but several of his descendants were, as we shall soon see. On the death of Henry the Seventh, there was a double election be- tween Lewis Duke of Bavaria and Frederick Duke of Austria^ Xii.] THE LUZELBURG EMPERORS. 203 the son of King Albert. But Lewis reigned in the end, and in 1328 he was crowned Emperor. He had great quarrels with Pope John the Twenty- second, and each professed to depose the other, just as Gregory the Seventh and Henry the Fourth had done. He was again declared deposed in 1346 by Pope Clement the Sixth, and then John of Bohemia persuaded the Electors to declare the Empire vacant and to elect his son Charles, who reigned as Charles the Fourth. He was crowned Emperor in 1325, and, what one would hardly have expected, he was crowned King of Burgundy at Aries in 1365. Charles made a good King in his own Kingdom of Bohemia, but he sadly lowered the Empire both in Ger- many and in Italy. He is chiefly remembered for granting a. charter known as the Golden Bull, by which the way of choosing the Emperor was finally settled, but by which the powers of the Empire were still further lessened in favour of the princes. Then followed several Kings who were never crowned Emperors, and on whom we need not dwell long. One of them, Wenceslaus, son of the Emperor Charles, so far from taking heed to Italy, took none to Germany, and kept always in Bohemia. At last, in 1410, his brother Siegmund was chosen King, and he was crowned Emperor in 1433. He was already Margrave of P*- in the Netherlands with the Duchy and County of Bur-^ gundy. But he also dreamed of getting Provence^ and ot xii.] THE DUCHY OF BURGUNDY. 223 making himself King of all the lands which had ever formed part of any of the old Burgundian and Lotharingian King- doms. In this way he got into disputes with the cities on the Rhine, with Duke Siegmund of Austria, and lastly with the Confederates, the King of France of course taking care to stir up all his enemies against him. A war now followed between Duke Charles and the Confederates, which was carried on in the dominions of the Duke of Savoy north of the Lake of Geneva. Charles was overthrown in two great battles at Granson and Murten or Morat in 1476. At last he was defeated and killed in 1477 in a third battle at Nancy, whither the Confederates had gone to help Rene Duke of Lorraine to win back his Duchy from Charles. This war had two great results. The great power of the Dukes of Burgundy was broken up. Charles' daughter Mary kept his dominions in the Low Countries and (after a while) the County of Bur- gundy. But the Duchy of Burgundy was joined to the Crown of France, and the scheme of a great power lying between Germany and France came to an end. On the other hand, the great victories of the Confederates raised their reputation to the highest pitch. They now began to take a part in general European affairs, and to count as a distinct power. They also now began to win dominions in the Romance- speaking lands to the west and south of them. But their suc- cesses did much to corrupt them ; the Swiss, as they now began to be called, were such good soldiers that all the princes of Europe, especially the Kings of France, were glad to have them in their armies, and thus began the practice of serving for hire, which was the disgrace of the Swiss League till quite lately. 14. The Eastern Empire. Rise of the Ottomans. — While the Western Empire was quite changing its character, sinking into a German Kingdom or rather into a Confederation of German States, the Eastern Empire, which had now become 224 THE DECLINE OF THE EMPIRE. [chap. practically Greek, came to an end altogether. After the Greeks had won back Constantinople from the Latins in J 260, their Empire, under the last dynasty of the Palaio- logoi, was but a shadow of the old Empire. Yet, as had so often happened before, there was for a while a time of revival, and the Emperors of Constantinople, Emperors of the Romans as they still called themselves, were able to join oij to their dominions many of the little states, both Greek and Frank, which had sprung up at the time of the Latin Conquest. During these last days of the Eastern Empire there was more intercourse than before between the Greeks and the Western nations, especially the Venetians and Genoese. And, whenever the Greeks were in any trouble, their Emperors always made a show of putting an end to the division between the Eastern and Western Churches. But schemes of this sort never really took root, as the Greeks were fully determined never to admit the authority of the Pope. These applications for Western help were commonly made when the Eastern Emperors were hard pressed by an enemy which seemed likely to swallow up, not only the Eastern Empire but all Christendom. These were the Otto- man Tzirks, so called from their early leader Othman. They arose in the middle of the thirteenth century, being first- heard of about 1240. This branch of the Turks produced a succession of greater rulers than any other Eastern dynasty, and their power has lasted till our own time. They gradually swaJlowed up the provinces of the Empire in Asia, and most of the other powers, Christian and Mahometan, in those parts, and Turkish pirates began to ravage the coasts of Europe. About 1343 they got a firmer footing in Europe during some of the dissensions within the Empire, and they were never again driven out. In 1361 their Sultan Morad or Amurath took Hadrianople, which became the Otto- man capital. What remained of the Eastern Empire was XII.] THE OTTOMAN TURKS. 225 now altogether hemmed in ; all was lost, except Constanti- nople itself and a small territory round it, and some outlying possessions, chiefly in Peloponnesos. Meanwhile the Turks were spreading themselves to the north, and were over coming the Slavonic lands which had learned their Chris tianity from the Eastern Empire, Servia, Bulgaria, and other states in those parts. This brought them into contact with Hungary, and thus led to wars of which we shall speak presently. The successes of the Turks were largely owing to their taking a tribute of children from their Christian sub- jects, the strongest and bravest of whom were brought up as soldiers, and formed a well-disciplined body of infantry which overcame all enemies. These were called Janissai'ies or New Soldiers. During the reign of Bajazet, surnamed the Thunderbolt, who reigned from 1389 to 1402, things seemed as if the Eastern Empire and all the Christian states of South-eastern Europe were about to be destroyed at once. But they gained a respite in a strange way from the appear- ance of a new Mahometan power in Asia. 1 5. Rise of Timour. — The great Mogul Empire which had been founded by Jenghiz had long ago fallen to pieces ; but dynasties rising out of it reigned for a long time in Persia, and for a still longer time held Russia in bondage. In the latter half of the fourteenth century a prince called Ti7nour arose in Central Asia, whose descendants are commonly spoken of as* the Moguls, but who seems in truth to have been Turkish rather than Mongolian. He was a Mahometan of the Shiah sect, those who hold the divine right of Ali the son-in-law of Mahomet, and who look, not only on all the Ommiad and Abbasside Caliphs, but on the three first Caliphs, Abo u Bekr, Omar, and Othman, as usurpers. They had always existed as a religious sect, but most of the great Mahometan nations were Sonnites or orthodox Mahometans, who look on all the first four Caliphs as lawful successors of Q 126 THE DECLINE OF THE EMPIRE. [chap. Mahomet. Timour therefore made religious zeal an excuse for attacking the whole world, whether Christians, heathens, or such Mahometans as he looked on as heretics. At last he came into Western Asia to attack the Ottoman Sultan Bajazet, whom in his letters he addressed as the Ccesar oj Rome. Bajazet was utterly defeated and taken prisoner in the battle of Angora in 1402, and Timour never crossed into Europe. He died in 1405, and his great dominion, like other great dominions of the kind, broke in pieces. 16. The Fall of Constantinople. — The little that was left of the Eastern Empire got a breathing space through the overthrow of Bajazet by Timour. A civil war arose among his sons, and the Ottoman monarchy was not again united till 142 1 under Sultan Amurath the Second. He besieged Constantinople in 1422, but the Empire still dragged on a feeble existence till the accession of his son Mahomet the Second, called the Conqueror, in 145 1. All the Ottoman Sultans hitherto had been great warriors, and, according to the Eastern standard, wise rulers. Mahomet was perhaps the greatest of them all. He presently besieged Constantinople: the last Emperor of the East, Constantine Palaiologos, made another of those reconciliations with the Western Church of which we have already heard, but he gained no real help from the West except a few volunteers who came chiefly from Venice and Genoa. The great siege of Con- stantinople began, one of the first great sieges in which cannon, which had been gradually coming into use in war for about a hundred years, played a great part. The Emperor did all that man could do in such a strait, but at last, on May the 29th, 1453, Constantinople was taken by storm. Constantine died sword in hand, and the Roman Etnfiire of the East came to an end. Constantinople now became the capital of the Ottoman Empire, and Justinian's great church of Saint Sophia became a Mahometan mosque. In a few XII.] FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 227 years Mahomet conquered Peloponnesos and the greater part of Greece, and in 1461 he conquered the Greek Empire of Trebizond, which thus outlived that of Constantinople. He had thus got possession of nearly the whole mainland which had belonged to the Eastern Empire at any time since the first Saracen conquest. But the Venetians still kept several points of the mainland, besides Crete and Corfu and some smaller islands. Some of the other islands were still kept by Latin princes, and Rhodes was held by the Knights of Saint John. Cyprus too remained a Latin king- dom, though before long the Venetians gained that also. Mahomet went on to plan the invasion of Western Europe, and the Turks actually took Otranto in Southern Italy; but the West was delivered by the death of Mahomet in 1481, for his successor Bajazet the Second was not a conqueror like his father. 17. The Spanish Kingdoms. — The two ends of Europe, in the Scandinavian and the Spanish peninsulas, played a less important part in general history during this time than they did either before or after. Their history is chiefly confined to dealings within their own bounds. In Spain the Saracens or Moors were now shut up in the one kingdom of Granada, and, though there were often wars between them and their neighbours of Castile, yet the Spanish history of this time is much more taken up with wars and disputes among the several Christian kingdoms. The history of Castile is con- nected with that of England, because the Black Prince, Edward, Prince of VV 'ales ajid Aquitaine, was persuaded in 1366 to lead an army into Spain to restore King Pedro or Peter, surnamed the Cruel, who had been driven out by his brother Henry of T?-astamara. In this war Edward won his third great battle of Najara or Navarete, and restored Peter, who was however before long killed ty Henry. Aragon again was closely connected with the Two Sicilies. The Q2 228 THE DECLINE OF THE EMPIRE. [chap island kingdom was united to Aragon in 1409, and Alfonso the Fifth, who was King from 1416 to 1458, was, during part of that time, in possession of Naples. But, as he was succeeded in Naples by his natural son Ferdinand and iu Aragon by his brother John, the two kingdoms were again separated for a while, and Naples was all the while disputed by the Angevin princes. At one time, in 1467, the war was carried into Spain by John, Duke of Calabria, son of Rene, Count of Pro- vence and Duke of Anjou, who called himself Ki?ig of Sicily. This John came to help the Catalans who were in revolt against John of Aragon. John had also wars with Lewis of France for the possession of the border County of Poussillon, which changed hands several times between the two Crowns. Portugal meanwhile was doing great things. Under John the Great, who reigned from 1385 to 1433, tne Portuguese began to take revenge for the long possession of Spain by the Saracens of Africa by conquests in Africa itself. And at the same time, under the Infant or prince Don Henry, they began a course of navigation and discovery along the western coast of Africa and among the islands of the Atlantic, which went on during the whole of the fifteenth century. At last the great discovery of the Cape of Good Hope in i486 opened for Portugal a yet wider dominion in India and other parts of the East. In this work of exploring, conquering, and colonizing distant parts of the world, other nations soon fol- lowed, but it was the Portuguese who first showed the way. Meanwhile a great change took place in the Spanish penin- sula, which led to great changes in Europe generally. This came about through the marriage in 147 1 of Isabella Queen of Castile with Ferdinand the Infant of Aragon, who soon •after succeeded to the Aragonese crown. The Crowns of Aragon and Castile were ever afterwards, except for a very short time, held together. In 1481 the Catholic Kings, as Ferdinand and Isabella were called, began a war with XH.J SPAIN AND SCANDINAVIA. 229 Granada, whose King had invaded the Castilian territory In 1492 they took Granada itself and united the kingdom to Castile.- The Mahometan dominion in Spain, which had lasted through so many ages, was now at an end, and the recovery of Granada might almost seem to make up in Christendom for the loss of Constantinople at the other end of Europe. Spain, as the united dominions of Ferdinand and Isabella were commonly called, soon became the greatest power in Europe. 18. Northern Europe. — In the Scandinavian peninsulas, the power of Denmark gradually sank in the course of the thirteenth century. Towards the end of the fourteenth, in 1397, the three kingdoms were united by the famous Union of Calmar, under Margaret Qiceen of Norway and daughter of Waldemar the Third King of Denmark. This union, with some interruptions, went on through the fifteenth century. In 1448, under Christian the First, the House of Oldenburg began to reign, which has gone on in Denmark till our own time, and which held Norway also within the present century. During all this time the Northern kingdoms had many wars with the League of the Hanse Towns, and the shifting relations began between the Kings of Denmark and the Duchies of Sleswick and Holstein which have gone on till our own days. Sleswick, the land north of the Eyder. was the southern part of Denmark, which had become a separate Duchy, but which was not a fief of the Empire. Its people were partly Danish and partly Low-Dutch. Holstein on the other hand, that part of Saxony which lay between the Elbe and the Eyder, always was a fief of the Empire, and its people were wholly Low-Dutch. 19. Russia and Poland. — Great changes took place in the lands to the east of the Baltic during this period. The Lithuanians, the last Aryan people in Europe to accept Christianity, were converted towards the end of the four- 230 THE DECLINE OF THE EMPIRE. [chap. teenth century. Their Duke Jagellon married Hedwig Qusen of Poland in 1386, and was baptized and brought abjut the conversion of his people. He was the founder of the dynasty of Kings of Poland of the house of Jagellon. The union of Poland and Lithuania under one sovereign formed one of the greatest states in Europe. The dominions of the Jagellons stretched far to the east and south, taking in a large part of Russia and reaching to the new conquests of the Ottoman Turks. And in 1466 Casimir the Fourth finally got the better of the Teutonic Knights, annexing the western part of Prussia to Poland, and so cutting Prussia off from Germany. Russia meanwhile, while cut short by the Poles and Lithuanians to the west, was held in bondage by the Moguls to the east. But, after Moscow became the capital in 1328, Russia began to recover itself somewhat, and at last, in 1477, Ivan Vasilovitz completely freed the country from the Mogul supremacy. Still Russia was altogether hemmed in, and it had no means of taking any part in European affairs for some time to come. 20. Hungary and the Turks. — Meanwhile Hungaiy shifted about from one dynasty to another. Towards the end of the thirteenth century the Hungarian crown passed by marriage into a branch of the Angevin house of Sicily. The greatest King of this line was Lewis, who reigned from 1342 to 1382, and who was also King of Poland. He was the father of Hedwig who married Jagellon. Her sister Mary married Siegmund, who was afterwards Emperor, and who also became King ot Hungary. In his time the Turks became dangerous to Hun- gary, and both Hungary and Poland soon became special bul- warks of Christendom by land, as the commonwealth of Venice was by sea. In 1396 King Siegmund and a large body of Western allies were overthrown by Sultan Bajazet at Niko- polis. In the next century a famous captain, John Huniades, Waiwodc or prince of Transsilvania, greatly distinguished XII.] POLAND AND HUNGARY. 231 himself against the Turks; but in 1444 Wladislaus the son of Jagellon, who was King both of Hungary and Poland, after driving back Sultan Amurath for a while, was defeated and slain by him at Varna. After this John Huniades was regent, and in 1456 he drove back Sultan Mahomet from Belgrade. His son Matthias Corvinus was King from 1458 to 1490. He did much to civilize his kingdom, and valiantly kept oft the Turks, while on the other side he won great victories over the House of Austria, who were striving to get the kingdom of Hungary in their own hands. 21. Language, Science, and Art. — The progress of learn- ing has been already spoken of with regard to Italy, as it was there that it had most effect on the political history of the country. But men's minds were at work in other parts of the world also. Men were eager after knowledge in many ways. Many of the Universities in different countries were now of great importance, and in England Colleges began to be founded in them. History was in most countries still written in Latin. In the thirteenth century we find some good writers of history in England, especially Matthew Paris, who spoke out boldly against both the Pope and the King. But in England the writing of history went down a good deal in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. There was, on the other hand, a series of historical writers in French from the thirteenth century onwards, and in the fourteenth and fifteenth we learn much about the different stages of the Hundred Years' War from the French-speaking writers Froissart and Monstrelet. In England in the four- teenth century English had again quite driven French out ot use, except for legal and formal purposes. And v/e have now such poets as Geoffrey Chaucer, whose works did much to- wards fixing the standard of English language. There were many divines and thinkers in various ways, some of whom, as we have already seen, began, especially in England and in 232 THE DECLINE OF THE EMPIRE. [chap. Bohemia, to teach doctrines different from those which were commonly received in the Church. And the general stirring of men's minds led some into speculations about the natural equality of mankind which led to revolts of the peasants both in France and England in the course of the fourteenth century. The people called Lollards in England, the followers of Wickliffe, often mixed up the religious and the social movement together. But in England villain- age was on the whole dying out, while in many other countries it was getting harder and harder. In war, up to the invention of gunpowder, the knights and gentlemen who fought on horseback still despised all othei troops, though the $cots, the Swiss, the Flemings at Courtray, and the English archers at Crecy, all showed what a good infantry could do. These centuries also, the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth, were the ages when architecture reached its height in Europe, and when the finest churches and castles were built. But it was only towards the end of this period, as times grew quieter and law grew stronger, that we find many great houses strictly so called, except within the walls of the cities. 22. Summary. — During this time then the Empire of the West dwindled into insignificance, and the Empire of the East was destroyed altogether. A great Mahometan power was settled in the East of Europe, while the last Mahometan kingdom was overthrown in the West. Spain became a great power. In Italy learning revived, but the freedom of the cities was in most cases destroyed, and the corruptions of the Popedom grew greater and greater. England and France waged a long war, in which France was nearly conquered, but she gained in the end, and won a large increase of territory both from England and from other powers. The Swiss League and the Duchy of Burgundy became important powers, but the advance of the latter was cut short. The three XII.] SUMMARY. 233 Scandinavian kingdoms were united, though not very firmly. f Pcland became a great power, and Russia laid the founda- tion of her greatness by throwing off the yoke of the Moguls. The defence of Christendom against the Turks, though end- lessly talked about by Popes and Emperors, really fell ii> the main on Poland, Hungary, and Venice. CHAPTER XIII. THE GREATNESS OF SPAIN. Characteristics of modern Europe ; formation of the existing powers and nations (i) — progress of arts and inventions ; falling back oj political freedom (i) — increase of the royal power ; introduction oj standing armies (i) — all Western Europe now Christian (2) — chief causes of the Reformation of religion ; practical abuses ; the power of the Popes : disputes on points of theology (2) — different forms taken by the Reformation in different countries ; the Reformation, as a rule, accepted by the Teutonic nations and refused by the Ro- mance (3) — no real toleration on either side (3) — names given to the different parties (3) — grenvth of the power of Spain ; acquisi- tion of various kingdoms by conquest and marriage (4) — succession of Charles the First of Spain ; his election as the Emperor Charles the Fifth ; the Austrian Kings in Spain (4) — reign of Philip the Second ; annexation of Portugal (5) — reigns of Philip the Third and Fourth ; wars with France and loss of territory ; persecution and expulsion of the Moriscos (5) — rivalry of France and Spain in Italy (6) — conquest of Naples by Charles the Eighth (6) — con- quest of Milan by Lewis the Twelfth, and of Naples by Ferdi- nand (7)— League of ' Cambray against Venice; the Holy League ; restoration of the Medici at Florence (7) — rivalry of Charles and Francis; battle of Marignano ; captivity of Francis at Pavia (8) — sack of Rome ; peace between Charles and Francis ; coronation of Charles (8) — dominion of Charles throughout Italy ; subjugation of Florence (9) — wars of Venice with the Turks ; loss of Cyprus ; battle of Lepanto (9) — the Popes ; their purely worldly policy at the beginning of the period (10) — improvement under the later Popes ; Council of Trent ; foundation of the Jesuits (10) — reign oj CHAP, xin.] THE GREATNESS OF SPAIN. 235 Maximilian (11) — the Emperors after Charles the Fifth ; the Em- pire becomes purely German (11) — beginning of the Reformation in Germany ; preaching of Luther (12) — religious wars and persecu- tions ; invasion of the Turks (12)— growth of France ; annexation of Britanny (13) — reign of Francis the First ; Henry of England takes Boulogne (13) — reign of Henry the Second; seizure of the Three Bishopricks ; Peace of Cdteau-Cambresis (13) — the Reforma- tion in France ; teaching of Calvin (14) — persecutions and civil wars in F?-ance ; reign of Henry the Fourth ( 14) — revolt of the Netherlands against Spain; William the Silent (15)— -formation of the Republic of the United Provinces (16)— growth of the Szoiss Confederation ; the Refor??iation under Zwingli and Farel ( 1 7) — conquests of Bern from Savoy ; Savoy loses in Burgundy and gains in Italy (17) — civil wars in England ; reign of Henry the Eighth (17) — the Reformation in England; Henry throws off the Papal power; religious changes under Edward (18)— restoration of the Pope 's power under Mary ; final settlement under Elizabeth (18) — ■ relations between England and Scotland ; reign of Mary in Scot- land (19) — war between Elizabeth and Philip (19) — union of Eng- land and Scotland undtr James ; civil wars of England (19) — filial separation of Denmark and Sweden under Gustavus Vasa (20) — the Reformation in Denmark and Sweden ; advance of Sweden under Gustavus Adolphus (20) — greatness of Poland ; humiliation of the Teutonic Order ; foundation of the Dway of Prussia; its union with Brandenburg (21) — disputes about Livonia {21) — growth of Russia ; accession of the house of Ro- manoff ; the Polish crown becomes purely elective (21) — beginning af the modern kingdom of Persia (22) — reigns oj Selim the Iitflexi- ble and Suleiman the Lawgiver ; Turkish conquests in Hungary (22) — conquest of Cyprus and battle of Lepanto (22) — disputes in Bohemia; the Elector Palatine chosen King; beginning of the Thirty Years' War (23) — career of Gustavus Adolphus (23) — in- terference atid advance of France (23) — peace of Westphalia; degradation of the Empire,; acquisitions of Sweden and France (24) — continued war between France and Spain ; Peace of the Pyrenees (24) — European colonies and settlements; different kinds of settlements (25) — Portuguese settlements in Aftica and India (25) — discovery of America (26)— Spanish settlements in »36 THE GREATNESS OF SPAIN. [chap. America (27) — French, English, and Dutch settlements in America (28) — progress of learning, art, and science ; use of the national languages (29) — Summary (30). I. Characteristics of Modern Europe. — "We are now gradually passing into a new state of things. Nearly all the nations and powers of Europe which now remain have been already formed ; the independent states are fewer and larger than before, and things are beginning to be in many ways more like what they are now than they have been hitherto. The great advance of learning and science in the fifteenth century altogether changed the face of the world, and three great inventions, printing, gunpowder, and the mariner's compass, were now fully in use and gave a wholly new character to all matters both of war and peace. The general stirring of men's minds, and the spirit of thought and enter- prise which began to be abroad, took various forms. It led to the great changes of religion which are spoken of as the Reformation, and it led to the discovery of new lands beyond the sea, and to the establishment of colonies by the chief European nations in distant parts of the world. In all matters of intellectual progress, and in all the arts of ordinary- life, the time to which we have now come is a time of won- derful advance. But, for a long time after the beginning of what we may call modern history, political freedom did not go forward, but rather fell back. It was a time of much deeper and more far-seeing policy than earlier times, and it was a time when governments grew stronger, when laws could be more regularly carried out, and when much of the turbu- lence and disorder of earlier times came to an end. But it was also a time when, in most parts of Europe, Kings con- trived to get all power into their own hands ; it was a time of wars which Kings waged for their own purposes, and in which the nations which they governed had very little interest. To XIII.] CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERN EUROPE. 237 wage these wars they had to keep standing armies, that is, armies of soldiers who are constantly under arms and who con- stantly receive pay. A standing army need not be an army of mere mercenaries, like those which served in Italy for any prince or commonwealth that would hire them. Still it is something very different from the state of things when a lord calls on his vassals, or when a commonwealth calls on its citizens, to fight when they are wanted to fight and then to go home again. A standing army makes the government which employs it far stronger ; and it was by means of these standing armies that the Kings in most parts of Europe were able to overthrow those free institutions of earlier times which many countries have only quite lately won back again. But the main outward difference between these times and the times that went before them is that the old ideas of the Church and the Empire now passed away for ever. The Eastern Empire was gone ; the Western Empire survived in name only. The Emperors were often very powerful princes, but it was not by reason of their being Emperors that they are so. We have now to deal very largely, not so much with nations, or even with particular states, as with collections of states and nations in the hands of particular families. And we now come to that great revolution in religion by which the Churches of Western Europe have ever since been still more widely divided among themselves than in former times the whole Western Church was from the Eastern. The Eastern Church meanwhile remained for a long time as it were hidden, most of the nations which belonged to it being in bondage to the Turks. It is only in later times that the Eastern Church has again become politically important as being the religion of the great Empire of Russia. 2. Causes of the Reformation. — At the beginning of the sixteenth century we may say that the whole of Western Europe was in communion with the Western Church. 238 THE GREATNESS OF SPAIN. [chap. And, though all men did not think alike as to the exact authority of the Pope or Bishop of -Rome, yet all looked on him as being at least the head Bishop of the whole Church. There was no nation in the West which was not Christian. The Lithuanians had been converted, and the Moors in Spain had been conquered. If there were any heathens left anywhere, it would be a few Laps in the extreme North. Nor was there any Christian nation in the West which refused submission to the See of Rome. The Albigenses had been put down long ago, and the revolt of the followers of J0I171 /fuss in Bohemia had, after much hard fighting, been put down also. There had all along been religious discontents among pa-ticular men, and both in England and elsewhere many men had been burned as heretics. Still no whole nation had as yet set up any new ecclesiastical system for itself. Rut early in the sixteenth century there began to be a much greater stir about religious matters in most parts of Western Europe. This was partly owing to the general stir in men's minds caused by the revival of learning, and partly to the exceeding wickedness of the Popes of those times. There were three things at which men were specially offended. First, there were many practical abuses in the Church which could have been done away with without either casting off the authority of the Pope or making any changes in doctrine. Many of these things the Councils of the fifteenth century, at Constanz, Basel, and elsewhere, honestly tried to mend ; but the Popes always stood in the way. The Popes themselves in after days tried to mend many things, but not till it was too late. Then the authority of the Popes was itself felt to be a great grievance, partly because it was often so badly used, but also because, even when it was well used, it interfered with the rights both of civil governors and of national Churches. The truth XIII.] CAUSES OF THE REFORMATION. 239 is that the power of the Bishops of Rome had grown up from the same causes as the power of the Emperors of Rome , that is, because Rome was the head city of the world. And now men were beginning to be discontented with the power of the Popes from the same causes which had made the power of the Emperors die away. That is to say, Christen- dom was split up into separate nations and kingdoms, and Rome no longer kept its place as the centre of all. But, as the power of the Popes was held to be a matter of religious belief, it was not so easy to get rid of it as it was to get rid of the power of the Emperors. And besides all this, many men held that not a few of the doctrines which were believed and of the ceremonies which were practised in the Church were wrong in themselves, and had no ground in Scrip- ture or in the practice of the first Christians. Disputes arose about the Mass or sacrament of the Lord's Supper, about the use of images and the practice of praying to saints, about the state of men after death, about the ne- cessity of confessing sins to a priest, about the laws which forbade the clergy to marry, and about the practice ot saying the Church service in Latin now that Latin was nowhere the tongue commonly understood. Some of these disputes were about points which the Popes might have yielded without giving up their general system, and which indeed they have sometimes yielded in distant parts of the world. But others were about points of doctrine strictly so called, which those who held them to be true could not give up so easily. Thus the early part of the sixteenth century was a time, above all others, of religious controversies, and these controversies led to the most important events, both religious and political. 3. The Reformation in different Countries. — The end of all these disputes was that a large part of Western Europe gradually became separated from the communion of the Sec 240 THE GREATNESS OF SPAIN. [chap. of Rome. This gradual change is commonly called the Re* formation. And, as in old times Christianity took different forms in the Latin, the Greek, and the Eastern provinces ot the Empire, so nearly the same thing happened now. Allowing for a good many exceptions, it may be said that the Teutonic nations accepted the new teaching, while the Romance nations' clave to the See of Rome. And there were great differences in the way in which the Reformation arose and was carried out in different countries. In some countries the change arose among the people and was rather forced upon the governments, while in others it was chiefly the work of Kings and rulers. And change went much further in some countries than in others. In some countries quite new forms of worship and Church government were set up, while in others men cast off the authority of the Pope and changed what they thought wrong in doctrine and practice, but let the general order of the Church go on much as it did before. Thus, in Great Britain, of all the countries which made any Reformation at all, England changed the least and Scotland the most. And in Ireland the great mass of the people have always withstood all change, partly no doubt because their English rulers tried to force it upon them. And, though the stirring of men's minds, and the habit of thinking for themselves which led to the Reformatior., did in the end lead men in most countries to see thai they ought not to persecute each other for differences in religion, yet they did not find this out for a long time. For a long time men on both sides held it to be a crime to allow any kind of worship except that which they themselves thought right. Thus the Reformation gave rise to civil wars wherever the two parties were nearly equally balanced, and to persecutions wherever one side was much stronger than the other. Those who clave to the old teaching thought it their duty to hinder the spread of the new, and those XIII.] GROWTH OF SPAIN. 24I who adopted the new teaching thought it their duty to hinder the practice of the old. It was only in a few cases, where neither side was strong enough to do much mischiet to the other, that the old and the new worship went on for any time side by side. Those who accepted the Reforma- tion were commonly called Protesta?it or Reformed, two names which at first had different meanings, but which are now commonly used without much distinction. Those who clave to the Popes called themselves Catholics, as claiming to be the whole and only true Church. The other side called them in contempt Papists and Romanists. Perhaps it is safest to use the name Roman Catholics, a name which is not very consistent with itself, but which avoids disputes either way, and which in England is the name known to the law. 4. Growth of the power of Spain in Europe. Charles the Fifth. — From the latter part of the fifteenth century onwards the power of Spain grew fast, and during the greater part ot the sixteenth century we may fairly call it the greatest power in Europe. The marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella had united Aragon and Castile j they had conquered Granada, and, after Isabella's death in 1504, Ferdinand, in 15 12, conquered nearly all the Kingdom of Navarre, that is all south of the Pyrenees. The whole peninsula, except Portugal, was thus joined together. Ferdinand also held Sardinia and the island of Sicily, and in 1501, by wars which we must speak of presently, he also got possession of the continental king- dom of Naples. Isabella was succeeded in Castile by her daughter Joanna, who had married Philip of Austria. He was the son of Mary of Burgundy, the daughter of Charles th? Bold, and of Maximilian the son of the Emperor Frederick, who was chosen King of the Romans in his father's lifetime. Each chain in this pedigree ought to be remembered, because each marriage brought with it some fresh dominion, and so helped to build up the great fabric of the Spanish power* R 242 THE GREATNESS OF SPAIN. [chap. Mary, after her father's death, kept the Low Countries and the Cotmty of Burgundy, while Lewis of France seized the Duchy. Her son Philip was thus sovereign of the Low Countries. By his marriage with Joanna came the strange union of those distant provinces with the kingdoms of Castile and Aragoa Thus Charles, the son of Philip and Joanna, succeeded to all the possessions of the Houses of Castile, Aragon, and Bur- gundy. In 1 516 he succeeded one grandfather Ferdinand in his Spanish dominions, and in 15 19, on the death of his other grandfather Maximilian, he was elected to the Empire. In Spain he was Charles the First, but, as he was the fifth Emperor of the name, he is always spoken of in history as Charles the Fifth. Thus the Emperor was again the greatest prince in Europe, but this was not because he was Emperor, but because of his dominions in Spain and the Netherlands. Charles could hardly be said to belong to any nation in particular, but he came in the male line of the House of Austria, and the Kings of Spain of his dynasty are called the Austrian J^in^s. He also obtained possession of the County of Burgundy and of the Duchy of Milan, and all these dominions he gave up to his son Philip in 1555. 5. Successors of Charles the Fifth. — After Charles the Fifth came three Kings of Spain called Philip. Philip the Second reigned from 1556 to 1598. He was a most bigoted Catholic, yet almost the first act of his reign was a war with the Pope Paul the Fourth in his character as a tempora'i prince. In Philip's time began the war in the Netherlands by which the northern provinces threw off the Spanish yoke, of which we shall speak more presently. It was he also who sent the famous Armada against England in 1588, and he also interfered largely in the affairs of France. On the other hand, in 1571 his fleet, in alliance with that of the Commonwealth of Venice, won the sea-fight of Lepatito— the ancient Naupaktos in the Corinthian Gulf— Xiii.] CHARLES THE FIFTH. 243 over the Turks. This was the first great check which their power met with. In 1 580 he got possession of the Kingdom of Portugal, so that the whole Spanish peninsula was for a while joined together under one ruler. As long as Philip lived, Spain outwardly kept its place as the leading power of Europe ; but under the two following Kings, Philip the Third, who reigned from 159S to 1621, and Philip the Fourth, from 1621 to 1665, the Spanish power greatly decayed. The war in the Nether- lands went on till the independence of the seven northern provinces was acknowledged, and in 1639 the Portuguese threw off the Spanish yoke, and set up the dynasty of Bra- ganza, which has reigned in Portugal till our own times. In the reign of Philip the Fourth there was a long war with France, which was ended in 1659 by giving up Roussillon and part of Ai'tois to France. The Spanish dominions were thus lessened in various places, though Spain -still kept her distant possessions of the Two Sicilies, Milan, the County ot Burgundy, and the Southern Netherlands. In its internal government, Spain was during, all this time, the most despotic and intolerant country in Europe. The old liberties of Castile were overthrown by Charles the Fifth, and those of Aragon by Philip the Second. Nowhere were Jews and heretics of all kinds more cruelly persecuted, so that. in Spain the Refor- mation made no progress. The Moors too, who at the con- quest of Granada had been promised the free exercise of their religion, were shamefully oppressed. A revolt under Philip the Second was put down with great cruelty, and at last, under Philip the Third, the remnant of them, called M'oriscos, was driven out of the country. This was a great loss to Spain, as the Moors were a sharp-witted and hard-working people, and the provinces where they lived were '.he most flourishing parts of the peninsula. 6. French Invasion of Italy. — D.iring the first half of the sixteenth cental y, no part of Europe is brought more con- *. z 244 THE GREATNESS OF SPAIN. [chap. stantly before our notice than Italy. But this is not now a sign of the greatness of Italy, but of its decay. Italy had now become the battle-field on which most of the princes of Europe fought out their quarrels. During all this time there was a long rivalry between France and Spain, which was in some sort a continuation of the dispute between the Houses of Anjou and Aragon for the kingdom j3f Sicily, as that was a ! continuation of the older dispute between Gnelfs and Ghibelins. But now that the two sides were represented by the great king- doms of France and Spain, the quarrel was carried out on a much greater scale, and, between the two, Italy was torn to pieces and utterly trampled under foot. What the Italians called the invasion of the Barbarians began in 1494, when Charles the Eighth of France took it into his head that he had a right to the Kingdom of Naples. In two years he marched all through Italy, conquered the kingdom with very little trouble, and, as soon as his back was turned, lost it again. Great confusion was caused throughout Italy by Charles' march, and one result of it was that the Florentines were able to get rid of the Medici, and Pisa was able to throw off the yoke of Florence, and remained independent till 1509. Presently, when the next King of France, Lewis the Twelfth, lagain set up a claim to the Kingdom of Naples and also to the Duchy of Milan, Ferdinand did not scruple to make a treaty by which Naples was to be divided between the two Kings of France and Aragon. Lewis won the Duchy of Milan in 1499, but, before the division of Naples was fully carried out, he and Ferdinand quarrelled over their spoil; and the end of it was, that in 1504 Ferdinand got posses- sion of the whole kingdom, and was thus King of the Two Sicilies. In these wars the Spanish infantry won a renown which they long kept. 7. The League of Cambray. — Spain had thus gained a footing on the mainland of Italy, and Ferdinand now went xiii.] THE WARS OF ITALY. 245 oe. to meddle still more with its affairs. In 1508 he and Lewis of France, the reigning Pope Julius the Second, and the Emperor- elect Maximilian, all joined together in a league, called the League of Cambray, to despoil the com- monwealth of Venice. For each of these princes pretended that part of its territories rightly belonged to himself. Venice now seemed on the point of ruin, when again the spoilers quarrelled among themselves, but this time it did not happen as it had done in the case of Naples. For Venice got back nearly all that she had lost, though the commonwealth was never again so powerful after this war as she had been before. The cause of the division among the enemies of Venice was that Pope Julius, when he had got all that he himself wanted from the republic, made what he called the Holy League to drive the Barbarians out of Italy. To this end he joined with Ferdinand against Lewis. In 15 12 the French defeated the Spaniards in a great battle at Ravenna, but Pope Julius leagued himself with the Swiss, and by their means the French were altogether driven out of Italy. Florence had all along been in alliance with France, and, now that the French were driven out, the commonwealth was obliged ' to receive the Medici again. Milan also went back to its own Dukes of the House of Sforza. Lewis and Ferdinand both died before long, Lewis in 1515, and Ferdinand in 15 16. 8. Wars of Charles and Francis in Italy. — Lewis and Fer- dinand were succeeded by two young Kings whose rivalry led to more wars. Lewis was succeeded in France by Francis the First, and Ferdinand, as we have seen, by his grandson Charles. Both Charles and Francis sought for the Empire on the death of Charles' other grandfather Maximilian in 1 5 19, when Charles was elected, Thus the rivalry between France and Spain was yet further heightened by the personal rivalry between the two Kings. Francis had by far the most 246 THE GREATNESS OF SPAIN. [chap. compact and united kingdom, but Chartes united the power ot Spain, the wealth of the Netherlands, and the dignity of the Empire. But before Charles succeeded, Francis had begun his reign by another invasion of Italy. He had tirst to overcome an army of Swiss in the battle of Marignano in 1515, and he presently won back the Duchy of Milan. Then in 1 52 1 Pope Leo the Tenth, who was of the House of the Medici, joined with the Emperor, and another war began, which may be said to have gone on till 1530. The armies of the rival princes fought at both ends of Italy, both in the Duchy of Milan and in the Kingdom of Naples. In 1525 Francis himself was taken prisoner at the battle of Pavia, and was only released after consenting to a treaty (which he did not keep), by which he yielded many things to the Emperor. Amongst other things, those parts of the Netherlands which were held in fief of the Crown oi France, namely the Counties of Flanders and Artois, were set free from all homage, just as the Duchy of Aquitaine had been by the Peace of Bretigny. In all these wars the princes and commonwealths of Italy, the Popes among them, were dealt with as something quite secondary. The Duke oj Milan was set up and put down again, as happened to suit the Emperor who professed to be his protector; and in 1527, when Clement the Seventh, who was also of the House oi the Medici, was Pope, Rome itself was taken and sacked by ♦he Imperial troops, and suffered far more from them than she had ever suffered in old times from the Goths or even from the Vandals. The Florentines took advantage of the taking of Rome again to get rid of the Medici. But at last in 1529, the Pope, the Emperor, and the King of France' all came to terms. Francis betrayed all his allies, while Charles stuck by his. In 1530, Charles was crowned King of Italy and Emperor, but instead of takmg the two crowns, one at Milan and the other at Rome, he took both crowns together XIII.] CHARLES AND FAANCIS. 247 at Bologna. All Italy was now completely under his power. Charles was more powerful than any Emperor since Charles the Great, and it might have seemed that the. old days of the Empire were come again. But after the time of Charles his power in Italy passed, not to the next Emperor, but to his son who reigned in Spain, so that it was plain where his real strength lay. 9. The States of Italy. — The end of these wars thus was that the power of the Emperor, or rather of the King of Spain, was established throughout Italy. Charles was himself King of the Two Sicilies, and, on the death of the last Duke of Milan, he granted the Duchy to his son Philip, so that the Kings of Spain ruled at both ends of Italy. The other states of Italy too were really under his power, much as, in the old days of Rome, the kingdoms and commonwealths of Greece and Asia had been before they were actually made into provinces. But there was one Italian state which at least did not yield without a struggle. This was the commonwealth of Floretice, which the Pope and the Emperor agreed should be obliged again to take back the Medici, but it did not do so till after a long and terrible siege. Then princes of the house of the Medici began to reign as Dukes of Florence, and in 1557 Duke Cosmo added to his do- minions the territory of the commonwealth of Sienna. Some time after this he got from the Pope and the Emperor the title of Grand Duke of Tuscany, and the memory of the old republic was quite wiped out. Of the other commonwealths Venice, Genoa, and Lucca, besides the little San Marino, still went on. But their governments were aristocratic, and the only one of them which played any great part in European affairs was Venice, which was still the bulwark of Christendom by sea, as Poland and Hungary were by land. But, in the course of the sixteenth century, the Turks won from the Venetians many of their possessions both in the 248 THE GREA TNESS OF SPAIN. [chap. islands and on the few points which they held on the main- land of Peloponnesos. And, notwithstanding their share in the great victory of Lepanto, they had in 1570 to give up the island of Cyprus, which the Turks had conquered, but they still kept Crete and Corfu and some of the smaller islands. 10. The Popes. — The Popes must, especially in these times, be looked at in two lights, as Italian princes and as the heads of those of the Western Churches which still clave to them. In their temporal character the Popes were much mixed up in the wars of Italy, and they had the great advantage of being able to call on men to support their political schemes under pretence of helping the cause of the Church. During the sixteenth, century the Popes greatly extended their temporal dominion, joining on to it many principalities and cities, which, as they gave out, were held in fief of them ; so that, it their holders rebelled or if their families became extinct, they would fall to the Pope as superior lord. In this way the Popes came to be, even as temporal princes, the greatest power in Italy after the Kings of Spain. At the latter end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteentn centuries, the corruption of the court of Rome, and the personal wicked- ness of the Popes, was at its height. Some of them were men of most scandalous lives, as was Alexander the Sixth of the Spanish family of Borgia, who was Pope when Charles the Eighth came into Italy. And even those who were not so bad as this were thoroughly worldly men, thinking more of increasing their dominions and exalting their own kinsfolk than of doing their duty as the chief Bishops of the Church. Such was Julius the Second, the great fighting Pope, and Leo the Tenth and Clement the Seventh, the two Popes of the house of Medici. Between them came Hadrian the Sixth, a native of the Netherlands, an honest man and anxious to reform practical abuses, but who had no kind of love for Italian ways, or for the revival of ancient Xiii.] THE POPES. 249 learning, of which Leo the Tenth was a great promoter. Hadrian however reigned only a very little time. It was in the time of Leo the Tenth that the Reformation began to be preached by Martin Luther in Germany, but the Popes 1 for some time took but little heed of what, was going on. But towards the middle of the century things began to change. The Reformation, as a system of doctrine, made but little progress in Italy, and it never became the religion of any Italian state. But there were many men, even high in the Roman Church, who would have gladly yielded to the Re- formers on some points, and there were still more who, without wishing to change any of the received doctrines, were eager to reform practical abuses and get rid of scandals. In this way there came to be a marked change between the Popes at the beginning of the century and those towards its end. These later Popes were often fierce bigots, ready to persecute and to approve of crimes done in the cause of the Church ; but they were almost always men of good lives in their own persons, and eager to do what they thought their duty. One famous Pope at this time was Sixtus the Fifth, who reigned from 1585 to 1590; he was wonderfully active in bringing his temporal dominions into good order. ' In 1545 a General Council came together at Trent, which went on, with some stoppages, till 1 563. This Council reformed many practical abuses, but it fixed the Roman Catholic doctrines and practices in a much more rigid shape than they had ever been put forth before. Its decrees were not received by the Churches which accepted the Reformation, and therefore the holding of the Council only made the breach wider and more hopeless. During this time too new religious orders were formed for the special purpose of advancing the doctrines of the Church and converting heretics and heathens. The chief of these was the famous Society of Jesus, or Order of the Jesuits, founded by the Spaniard Ignatius Loyola. This order was for a long 250 THE GREATNESS OF SPAIN: [chap. time the chief support of the Papal dominion ; and the Jesuits won back a large part of Europe to the communion of Rome, but in most countries, Roman Catholic as well as Protestant, they contrived to make themselves obnoxious to the civil power. ii. The Emperors. — Frederick the Third was the last Emperor who was regularly crowned at Rome. His son Maximilian, who married Mary of Burgundy, was never crowned either at Milan or at Rome, but he took the new title of Emperor-elect instead of merely King of the Romans. No later Emperor except Charles the Fifth was crowned in Italy at all, and Charles, as we have seen, was not crowned at Rome. Maximilian also took the title, which had never before been formally used, of King of Gerinany, and all the Kings' after him were called in formal language Kings of Germany, and Emperors-elect. And they were commonly spoken of as Emperors, which before was never done unless they had been crowned at Rome. Maximilian was always trying to do greater things than he was able to do, but, as King of Germany, he certainly did something to restore the royal power, and much more to bring the country into greater peace and order. In his time Germany was divided into Circles, and a supreme court called the Imperial Chamber was set up, changes which did not do all that they were wished to do, but still did something. Then came the reign of Charles the Fifth, and the great power of the Emperor, though not of the Empire, in Italy and the world generally. After Charles's abdication, his brother Ferdinand, who was already King of the Romans, succeeded. In his time and in that of his successors Maximilian the Seconu, Rudolf the Second, and Matthias, we may say that the Empire was purely German and had nothing to do with the affairs of Italy or of the world in general. In the next reign, that of Ferdinand the Second, things began to change somewhat. MIL] MAR TIN L UTHER. 25 1 12. The Reformation in Germany. — In the reign of Charles the Fifth came the beginning of the Reformation Nowhere was reformation more needed than in Germany, where the Bishops and Abbots had grown into powerful temporal princes, and quite neglected their spiritual duties. Towards the end of Maximilian's reign attempts began to be made in the Diet for the reformation of practical abuses, and about the same time the famous Martin Luther began to attack, first the practical abuses, and then the established doctrines, of the Church. This he began to do in 1 5 17, and he was greatly followed by many people, though little notice was at first taken of him in high places. Luther was protected by his own sovereign Frederick Elector of Saxony; and, when in 1520 a bull — that is, a writing with the Pope's seal — was put forth against him by Pope Leo the Tenth, Luther ventured to burn it. By this time Charles the Fifth had been elected Emperor, and in 1521 Luther was condemned in a Diet of the Empire at Worms. But Luther was still protected by the Electors of Saxony, and gradually many of the princes and cities of Germany, especially in the north, embraced his doctrines. Germany was further disturbed by a revolt of the peasants in various parts, the only effect of which was to make their bondage harder than it had been before. There were also revolts of the Anabaptists, fanatics who not only preached wild doctrines in religion, but tried to upset all government and society. Against all movements of this kind, Luther set himself quite as strongly as the Catholics did. His own reformation meanwhile went on. At the Diet of Speyer in 1529 the Emperor and a majority of the Diet passed a decree against all ecclesiastical changes. Against this the princes who followed Luther protested, and thus arose the name of Protestants, a name which originally meant the German followers of Luther as distinguished, not only from the Romao 852 THE GREA TNESS OF SPAIN. [chap. Catholics, but from the other Reformers who did not agree with Luther in all points. In 1530 the Lutherans or Protestants drew up a statement of their doctrines, which was called the Confession of Augsburg; in the next year the Protestant princes and cities joined together in a confederacy for mutual defence, which was called the Smalcaldic League. But, when some of them tried to get help from France, Luther protested against such treason, and a kind of reconciliation was patched up with the Emperor. There was no time when Germany more needed to be at peace, for, besides France on the one hand, the Turks were threatening on the other, and Sultan Suleiman or Solomon in 1529 actually besieged Vienna, and ravaged the country as far as Rege-nsburg. or Ratisbon. In 1546 Luther died, and in the same year a war broke out between the Emperor and the Catholics on one side and the Protestant princes on the other, which went, on with some stoppages till in 1555, by the Peac£ qf Augsburg, the two religions were put on terms of equality throughout the Empire. But this was no real toleration ; it simply meant that the Government of each German state might set up which religion it pleased, Catholic or Protestant ; nothing was done for those persons in any state who might be of a different religion from the Government. Thus, for instance, in Austria, where a large part of the people had become Protestants, the Catholic religion was brought back chiefly by fhe help of the Jesuits. And in the same way Protes- tants of one sect did not scruple to persecute Protestants of another ; for in some parts of Germany men had fol- lowed the doctrines of the French reformer Calvin, and they and the Lutherans drove one another out. During Ferdi- nand's time and that of the following Emperors, religious disputes went on, till, in the reign of Ferdinand the Second, cam*? the beginning of a more fearful religious war than had ever happened before between Christian and Christian. Xiii.] FRANCIS THE FIRST. 253 13. The Advance of France. — The power of France was meanwhile advancing, and the jealousy between the French Kings and the House of Austria, both in Spain and in the Netherlands, was getting stronger and stronger. The Kings of France were getting more and more absolute in their own dominions, and they were still increasing their dominions at the expense of their neighbours. In their Italian wars they failed ; for they were never able to keep either the Duchy of Milan or the Kingdom of Naples. But the only great fief of the Crown of France which still kept its own princes was now added to the royal dominions. This was the Duchy of Britanny, which passed to an heiress, Anne, who married two Kings of France in succession, Charles the Eighth and Lewis the Twelfth. From this time Britanny has been reckoned part of France, but to this day a large part of the people do not speak French, but still use their old Celtic tongue, akin to the Welsh of Britain. Lewis the Twelfth, though he did so much harm in Italy, made a good King in his own kingdom, and was called the Father of the People. The next King, Francis the First, was thoroughly bad in every way, except that he was a promoter of art and learning. All these Kings were of the House of Valois, but as neither Charles the Eighth nor Lewis the Twelfth left any children, the Crown did not again pass from father to son till the death of Francis in 1547, when it passed to his son Henry the Second'. There were some wars between France and England at this time, but they were of small moment compared with those either earlier or later. At one time, in 1544, Henry the Eighth of England took Boulogne, but in 1557 the French got back Calais, which the English had kept ever since the time of Edward the Third. But these wars with England were nothing compared with the long wars which Francis and his son Henry waged with the Emperor Charles and his son Philip. These may be said to hav# 254 THE GREATNESS OF SPAIN. [chap. gone on from 1520 to 1558. For, though peace was made several times, it never was well kept or lasted long. The French Kings, v$iile cruelly persecuting the Protestants in their own kingdom, did not scruple to help the Protestants in Germany in their wars with the Emperor, nor were they ashamed to encourage the Turks, the common enemies ot Christendom, to attack the Empire and its allies by land and sea. In 1537 Francis got hold of the greater part of the dominions of Charles Duke of Savoy, but this conquest ♦vas not kept very long. Thus far the French Kings had mainly sought after Italian dominion ; they now began more directly to attack the Empire on the side of Germany. In 1552 Henry the Second got hold of three Bishopricks of the Empire, Metz, Tout, and Verdun, which, though they lay apart from the Kingdom of France and were surrounded by the Duchy of Lorraine, were kept by France ever after, till Metz was won back in our own times. Indeed from this time, though Lorraine remained a fief of the Empire, yet it began to come very much under the power of France, and the family of Guise, who were of the ducal House of Lor- raine, began to play a great part in French affairs. After Charles had abdicated, the war still went on, though of course it was now a war between France and Spain, and no longer between France and the Empire. At last the French under- went two great defeats at St. Quentin and Gravelines, on the borders of France and the Netherlands, so the Peace of Cdteau-Cambresis was made in 1558, and the advance of the French power was stopped for a time. 14. The Civil Wars of France. — From the Peace of Cateau-Cambresis till the end of the sixteenth century, the history of France is mainly taken up with the religious wars between the Catholics and Protestants within the country. These lasted, with stoppages now and then, from 1562 to 1595. The French Protestants were not Lutherans, but XIII.] CIVIL WARS IN FRANCE. 255 followers of John Chauvin, or Calvin, a Frenchman by birth, who settled at Geneva. His teaching went further away from that of the Roman Church than Luther's did. It was followed by all who accepted the Reformation in the Romance-speaking countries, and also in part of Ger- many. The name Protestant therefore did not properly belong to the Calvinists in France, who called themselves the Reformed, and who were commonly known as Huguenots. They were cruelly persecuted under Francis and Henry the Second. After Henry three of his sons reigned in order, Francis the Second from 1559 to 1560, Charles the Nintk from 1560 to 1574, and Henry the Third from 1574 to 1589. The mother of these three Kings, Catharine of Medici, of the House of Florence, had great power, which she used very badly, during the reigns of all her sons. The religious wars began in 1562, and in the latter part of them the chief part on the Reformed side was taken by Henry of Bourbon, King of Nava?-re. He was the next heir to the Crown of France after the sons of Henry the Second, though the kindred between them in the male line was very remote, as they were descended from different sons of Saint Lewis. Henry had inherited from his mother the title of King of Navarre, and with it the possession of that small part of the kingdom which lay north of the Pyrenees, and which had been kept by its own Kings when all the rest had been con- quered by Ferdinand of Aragon. He had also large fiefs in the South of France, which was the part where the Huguenots were the strongest, like the Albigenses in the old times. The two parties were always going to War, and always making peace again ; but, when peace was made, it never gave any real toleration. The Reformed religion was allowed to be practised in particular towns and places, but men were not allowed to follow what religion they pleased everywhere. Philip of Spain meddled as much as he could, of course helping 256 THE GREATNESS OF SPAIN. [chap. the Catholics. The most famous event of these times was the massacre of the Huguenots at Paris on Saint BarthohDmew's Day, 1572, which was called the Massacre of Saint Bartholo- mew. At last, when Henry the Third died in 1589, the Crown came of right to Henry o.f Navarre, but he found that, as long as he remained a Huguenot, Paris and the greater part of the kingdom would not acknowledge him. So in 1593 he turned Catholic, and then he soon obtained posses- sion of the whole land. Instead of the old title of King oj the French (in Latin Rex Fraucorum), he called himself King of France and Navarre. Henry was murdered in 16 10, and was succeeded by his young son, Lewis the Thirteenth, who reigned till 1643, an d under whose famous minister Cardinal Richelieu, the House of Bourbon began to take the first place in Europe instead of the House of Austria. 15. The Revolt of the Netherlands. — Meanwhile a deadly blow was dealt to the power of Spain in her distant posses- sions, and a new commonwealth arose in Europe. It will be remembered that the Netherlands had been brought together under the Dukes of Burgundy, and they had now passed to Philip of Spain as their successor. They were a most important part of his dominions, for nowhere else in Europe were there so many great and rich cities near together ; but the bad government of Philip, especially his religious persecutions, and above all the cruelties of his Lieutenant the Duke of Alva, led to a revolt. This began in 1568, and the war went on till 1609. The great leader of the revolt was William Prince of Orange, called the Silent. His principality of Orange was one of the small fiefs of the Kingdom of Burgundy which had not been swallowed up by France, though it was now almost wholly surrounded by French territory. In this he was something like Henry of Bourbon, with his little kingdom of Navarre, for the Prince of Orange had private estates in the Nether- XIII.] REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS. 257 lands which were really worth much more than his princi- pality. His wisdom and endurance led to the deliverance of all the northern part of the Netherlands from the Spanish yoke. At the beginning of the revolt the Southern provinces were the most zealous; but after a while, as their people were mainly Catholics, they fell back under the power of Spain, and they remained a dependency of one power after another, till such parts of them as escaped being swallowed up by France became the present Kingdom of Belgium. 16. The United Provinces.— Meanwhile the Northern pro- vinces, Holland, Zealand, and others, where the people were mostly of the Reformed religion, stuck by the Prince of Orange, and called in help from England, France, and the German branch of the House of Austria. But none of these foreign helpers did them much real good ; so at last they formed them- selvesj in 1581, into the Federal Commonwealth of the Seven United Provinces. In 1584 the Prince was murdered ; for Philip, who stuck at no crime in what he thought the cause either of the Crown or of the Church, had offered rewards to any one who would murder him. After William's death the war was continued by his son Maurice, and it went on after Philip's death till peace was made in 1609. The peace was in name only a truce for twelve yea-rs, because Spain was too proud to acknowledge the independence of her revolted subjects, but the war now really came to an end, and the United Provinces, answering nearly to the present Kingdom of the Netherlands, were firmly established as an independent power. This was one of the most famous wars in all history, for never did so small a power so long and so successfully withstand a great one. Some of the greatest generals of the age were brought against the Provinces. There was the Duke of Alva first, and then Don John of Austria, Philip's half-brother, who had won the battle of Lepanto, his nephew the famous Alexander Duke of Parma, and lastly the Marquess Spinola, whose S 258 THE GREATNESS OF SPAIN. [chap. great exploit was the siege of Ostend, in the latter years of the war. The Dutch, as the people of Holland and the other United Provinces are now commonly called in a special way, did everything for themselves ; for they, got hardly any real help from those who professed to be their allies in England and France. Thus a new state and a new commonwealth was formed in Europe. In strictness the Provinces were still members of the Empire, but their allegiance was quite nomi- nal, and in 1648 their absolute independence of the Empire was formally acknowledged. Owing chiefly to the daring and activity of their people in all things to do with trade and the sea, the United Provinces, small as their territory was, reckoned during the whole of the seventeenth century as one of the chief powers of Europe. They came afterwards to defy France, as they had before defied Spain, and things so turned about that, before the end of the century, they were helping Spain against France. 1 7. Switzerland and Savoy. — Meanwhile the older Federal commonwealth which had grown up at the other end of the Empire was playing an important part in European affairs. From the middle of the fourteenth century till after the war with Burgundy, the Confederates had made many conquests and alliances, but they did not admit any new Canton into their own body. But in the latter years of the fifteenth and the be- ginning of the sixteenth century five new Cantons were made, Freiburg, Solothurn, Basel, Schaffhausen, and Appcnzell. These made up the Thirteen Cantons, which lasted till the end of the eighteenth century. All these were purely German, but now begins the connexion of the League with the Romance lands. About the end of the fifteenth century the Confederates won a small territory in Italy, and we have seen that they played a great part in the wars of that country. And, ever since the Burgundian War, they had been making their way to the West, in the lands of the now pretty well forgotten XIII.] SWITZERLAND AND SAVOY. 25Q Kingdom of Burgundy. The history of the Dukes of Savoy now becomes of great importance. For, whereas they had lands both in Burgundy and in Italy, they have almost ever since been losing their lands north of the Alps and winning new lands to the south. At last, in our own day, they have lost all their old Burgundian dominions, but have become Kings of all Italy. But at this time it seemed as if the power of Savoy was going to be wiped out altogether. We must remember that the territories both of the Confederates and of the Dukes of Savoy were still parts of the Empire, though their real connexion with it was very slight. As in Germany, religious and political affairs had much to do with one an- other ; but Switzerland had its own Reformation distinct from that of Germany. The new doctrines were first preached at Ziirich in 15 19, by Ulrich Zwingli, whose teaching in many things went further away from the received faith than that of Luther. He also did good by speaking against the custom of men hiring themselves out as mercenary soldiers. Ziirich, Bern, and several other Cantons accepted his teaching, while others remained Catholic and some were divided. A civil war followed, and Zwingli was killed in battle in 1531. Meanwhile the Reformation was preached by William Farel in the lands bordering on the Confederates to the west, and especially in the free city of Geneva. That city was hemmed round by the dominions of the Dukes of Savoy, who were always wishing to get hold of it. Now that Geneva had embraced /the. Reformed religion, there was a further pretext for attacking it, and in 1534 Duke Charles of Savoy besieged the city. But Geneva was in alliance with Bern and with some others among the Confederates ; so a Bernese army marched to deliver Geneva, and at the same time took the opportunity of conquering a large part of the dominions of Savoy on both sides of the Lake of Geneva. Other parts were seized by the Canton of Freiburg, though it remained S 2 26o THE GREATNESS OF SPAIN. [chap. Catholic, and by the little Confederation of Wallis or Valais, which was in alliance with the Swiss. Bern not long after also annexed the Bishoprick of Lausanne — the Bishop of Lausanne, like other Bishops of the Empire, being a temporal prince— but in 1564 she restored to Savoy her conquests south of the Lake. The result of all this was that the Confede- rates, themselves a purely German body, became the head of a large number of Romance-speaking subjects and allies, who in later times have been made Cantons alongside of the original German States. Gtneva from this time remained a free city, though the Dukes of Savoy still sometimes tried to seize upon it. And presently the great French Reformer, John Calvin, came there, and became the real ruler of the city, which thus grew into a kind of centre for men of all lands who followed his doctrines. After this time the affairs of the Confederates had but little to do with the general state of things in Europe, but it should be noticed that in 1648 they were, like the United Provinces, acknowledged to be quite independent of the Empire. As for Savoy, almost as soon as Bern had con- quered the northern districts, the whole of the Duke's dominions were overrun by France, but they v/ere gradually won back by the next Duke Emmanuel Filibert. From this time the Dukes of Savoy began to look more to their Italian than to their Burgundian dominions. Thus a dispute with France about the marquisate of Saluzzo was ended by the Duke Charles Emmanuel, who reigned from 1580 to 1630, keeping Saluzzo and giving up the district of Bresse to France. These are but small districts, but they show the way in which France was winning the old Burgundian lands bit by bit, while Savoy was losing territory north of the Alps and gaining it in Italy. 18. The Reformation in England. — The affairs of the countries of which we have thus far spoken were all Xlii. ] THE RE FORMA TION IN ENGLAND. 26 1 closely connected with one another. England meanwhile was constantly mixed up with the general course of affairs, but she did not engage in any such great wars on the Continent as she did in either earlier or later times. After the ending of the great war wiih France, England was torn in pieces by the Civil Wars between the different claimants of the Crown of the Houses of York and Lan- caster, and there was no King whose title was altogether un- disputed till the accession of Henry the Eighth in 1 509. He was always mixed up with foreign affairs ; and when the Empire was vacant, in 15 19, he had some notion of getting chosen himself, and there was talk more than once of his famous minister, Cardinal Wolsey, being chosen Pope. But in truth nothing very great was done by England on the Continent at this time, except that, as we have seen, the English conquered, and for a short time kept Boulogne. The Reformation in England is commonly said to have begun under Henry the Eighth, but in truth Henry changed very little either in doctrine or in ceremony. What was done in his time was to restore and enlarge the authority which the old Kings had in ecclesiastical matters, and to declare that the Pope had no jurisdiction in England. All through his time men who taught the Reformed doctrines were burned as here- tics. It was only when Henry's son, Edward the Sixth, suc- ceeded, in 1547, that any strictly religious changes were made. Then, in 1553, came Henry's daughter Mary. She was, through her mother Katharine of Aragon, a cousin of the Emperor Charles, and she married his son Philip, afterwards Philip the Second of Spain. Thus England was in close alliance with Spain and at enmity with France. Now it was that England lost Calais, and so had no longer any posses- sions on the continent. Mary also undid all that had been done by her father and brother ; not only were the old doc- trines and ceremonies restored, but the authority of the Pope 263 THE GREATNESS OF SPAIN. [chap. was set up again. Under her sister Elizabeth, who began to reign in 1558, the English Reformation was finally settled. The Pope's authority was again thrown off, such changes as were thought needful were made in doctrine and worship, but the general system and government of the Church went on. But the reign of Philip and Mary, under which many men were burned for their religion, had thoroughly set English- men against anything that had to do with either Spain or the Pope, and many men in England wished that change had gone further in religious matters than it had gone. 19. England and Scotland.- -Meanwhile the relations be- tween England and the neighbouring Kingdom of Scotland were very important. The old wars often began again, and, when James the Fifth of Scotland died in 1541, leaving only a young daughter called Mary, there was talk of joining the two kingdoms by marrying her to Henry the Eighth's son Edward, afterwards Edward the Sixth. But all that came of this was further wars, and the throwing of Scotland still more thoroughly on the side of France. Queen Mary was brought up in France and she married the Dauphin Francis, who was afterwards King for a little while. She was thus Queen of Scotland and Queen Consort of France, and she claimed to be Queen of England also, because, according to the extreme views of the Papal power, she had a better right to the English Crown than Elizabeth. After the death of Francis she went back to Scotland, but about this time the greater part of the people of Scotland embraced the Reformation in a very ex- treme form, while Mary stuck to the old religion. She was afterwards driven out of her kingdom for her personal crimes, and took refuge in England, where she was kept in ward for many years. She thus naturally got to be looked on as a Catholic saint and confessor, and she became a centre of conspiracies against Elizabeth at home and abroad. At last, in 1587, she was beheaded for her share in a plot against xrn ] ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 263 Elizabeth's life. The indignation of the Catholic party every- where was great, and now the quarrel between England and Spain broke out on a great scale. Elizabeth and Philip had for many years been doing each other harm in a small way, but now in 1588 Philip sent his great Armada against England, which did nothing. Elizabeth now came to be looked on as the head of the Reformed party throughout Europe, and she gave some help at different times to the Reformers both in France and in the Netherlands. The war between England and Spain went on during all Elizabeth's reign ; but when, on her death in 1603, the Crowns of England and Scotland were united under Mary's son James, Sixth of Scotland and First of England, the policy of England altogether changed. For James truckled to Spain, and England for a long time lost the position which she had before held in Europe. The reign of his successor Charles the First was mainly taken up with internal affairs, and the latter years of it with the great Civil War. which led to the King's beheading in 1649. All this time is one of the most important of English history, both in England and Scotland, but it is mainly taken up with the internal affairs of the two countries, which have comparatively little to do with the general course of things in Europe. But the union of England and Scotland under one King had this effect, that Scotland was no longer the enemy of England, nor could it any longer be an ally of France in wars between France and England. 20. Northern Europe. — It was in the beginning of the six- teenth century that the attempt to join together the Scan- dinavian kingdoms of Denmai'k, Norway, and Sweden, which had never been carried out for any long time together, came wholly to an end. Christian the Second, called Christian the Cruel, who became King of Denmark and Norway in 1 5 1 3, became King of Sweden also in 1520 ; but his oppression pro- voked revolts in all his dominions. In 1523 he was driven 264 THE GREATNESS OF SPAIN. [chap. out of both Denmark and Sweden. The Swedes chose as their King the famous Gustavus Vasa, who had been their leader in driving out Christian. He brought in the doctrines of Luther, but less change was made in the order and govern- ment of the Church in Sweden than anywhere else except in England. Under Gustavus Sweden began to rise to a much higher position in Europe than it had ever held before. He died in 1560, and the Kings who followed him were of no great account till the famous Gustavus Adolphus, who began to reign in 161 1. Of him we shall hear more in the history of the great wars in Germany. On his death in 1632 came his daughter Christina, in whose time a part of Norway, the province of Jamteland with other districts, and the isle of Gotland, were won from Denmark. All this while Denmark and Norway remained under the same King. Under Frederick the First, who reigned from 1523 to 1533, the Lutheran religion was established in Denmark ; but after his death there were disputes about the succession to the Crown, and wars with the city of Liibeck. Under F?-ederick the Second, who reigned from 1559 t0 1 5%%> the free people of Ditmarsen, who had all this time kept on their old freedom at that end of Germany just as the Forest Cantons did at the other end, and who had more than once defeated the Counts of Holstein and Kings of Denmark, were at last conquered. His son Christian the Fourth reigned from 1588 to 1648, and we shall hear of him again. 21. Russia and Poland. — In Poland and Lithuania the descendants of J age lion went on reigning till nearly the end of the sixteenth century. Under them Poland was at the height of its power, and it formed one of the greatest states of Europe. Its territory now stretched far to the east, and took in large countries which had once been part of Russia, and which have since become part of Russia agaia xni.] RUSSIA AND POLAND. 265 But in the course of the sixteenth century, when the Rus- sian power began to rise again, parts of these territories were won back again, and from that time the Polish frontier has commonly gone back. But before this, as we have seen, the Teutonic Order was greatly humbled in 1466, when the Knights had to cede the western part of Prtissia to Poland, and to hold the eastern part as a fief of the Polish Crown. This led to a further change in 1525. The Grand-Master Albert of Brandenburg had become a Lutheran. By a treaty with Sigismund the First of Poland, the Teutonic order was abolished as a sovereign power, and Albert became hereditary Duke of Prussia, holding his duchy, which took in East Prussia only, as a fief of Poland. After a few generations the Duchy of Prussia and the Mark or Electorate of Brandenburg were, in 161 1, joined together. Thus began the power of the House of Brande7iburg or Prussia, which has gone on so greatly grow- ing to our own times. In 1657, under Frederick William the First, who was called the Great Elector, the Duchy of Prussia became independent of the Crown of Poland, just as the Duchy of Aquitaine three hundred years before became independent of the Crown of France. In 1701, to go on some way beyond our present time, the great Elector's son Frederick took the title of King of Prussia instead of Duke. Thus the Electors of Brandenburg, besides their possessions in Germany, held the Duchy or Kingdom of Prussia, which was cut off from their Electorate by that part of Prussia which had been ceded to Poland. The other possessions of the Order to the North were treated in nearly the same way. In 1561 the Grand-Master of Livonia, Gotthard Kettler, who had also turned Lutheran, gave up all the dominions of the order to Poland, except Ctcrland, which was made into a Duchy for himself, just like Prussia for Albert. But in the one case, out of the treaty with Albert, 266 THE GREATNESS OF SPAIN. [chap. arcse one of the great states of Europe, while out of the treaty with Kettler nothing came but long wars between Sweden and Poland for the lands east of the Baltic, till in the end they were all swallowed up by Russia. But long before this Russia was making great advances. John or Ivan the Fourth, known as Ivan the Terrible, reigned from 1533 to 1584, and his doings towards his own subjects were among the strangest in history. But, besides wars with Sweden and Poland waged with various success, he altogether overthrew the power of the Moguls or Tartars of Kasan, who had once held Russia in bondage ; he took Astrakhan also, and so extended the Russian dominions to the Caspian Sea. He was the first of the Russian princes who took the title of Czar. Some say that this name is simply a Slavonic word meaning King, while according to others it is the Russian form of Cazsar; anyhow it is certain that the sovereigns of Russia, who have latterly been called Emperors, have always wished, as the most powerful princes belonging to the Eastern Church, to be looked on as successors of the Eastern Emperors. Russia was now a powerful state, but it was cut off from the Baltic by the Poles and Swedes, and from the Black Sea by the Tartars of Crim or the Crimea, so that Russia had no havens except on the Caspian and the White Sea. It was by the White Sea, from the port of Archangel, that Russia now began to have trade with England and the other nations of the West. In 1589 the old line of Ruric came to an end, and great confusions followed, among which the Poles were able in 1605 to place a pretender, who professed to be the true heir, on the Russian throne. But in 161 3 the Russians chose Michael Romanoff, from whom the present royal family springs in the female line, and Russia began to flourish again, though it had to wage wars with Sweden and Poland with various success to the end of the century. In 1573 the Poles made their crown purely elective, instead xiii.] RUSSIA AND POLAND. 2 e 7 of choosing, as before, from the royal family. Sometimes they chose a native Pole, sometimes a foreign prince; but from this time all power came into the hands of the nobles, to the damage both of the King and of the people, and Poland began to go down both at home and abroad. 22. Turkey and Hungary.— Under Bajazet the Second, the successor of Mahomet the Conqueror, the Ottoman power did not advance, but in some parts rather fell hack. In his time a new Mahometan enemy rose to the east of him. This was the modern kingdom of Persia, which rose again, very much as Persia had risen again under Artaxerxes in the third century, by the preaching of a national religion. Only this time it was not the preaching of the old Persian religion, but that of the Shiah sect of Mahomet- anism. The Turks and Persians were thus not only political enemies, but looked on each other as heretics. The new dynasty, which began with Shah Ismael in 1501, was known as that of the Sophis. Endless wars now followed between the Turks and the Persians ; meanwhile Selim the Inflexible, who reigned from 1512 to 1520, added Syria and Egypt to the Ottoman Empire, and obtained a surrender of the Caliphate from the nominal Abbasside Caliph at Cairo. Then came Suleiman— that is, Solomon— the Lawgiver, who reigned from 1520 to 1566, and was one of the greatest of the Sultans. It was in his time that Francis of France made ahiance with the Turks against the Empire. Under him the Ottomans made great conquests. In 1521 he took Belgrade; in 1522 the Knights of Saint John were driven out of the island of Rhodes, after which the Emperor Charles gave them the isle of Alalia, whijh they successfully de- fended against the Turks in a great siege in 1565. But meanwhile Suleiman conquered a large part of Hungary. In 1526 Lewis the Second, King of Hungary, was killed at the 268 THE GREATNESS OF SPAIN. [chap. battle of Mohacs, after which the crown passed in the end, though not without a good deal of opposition, to Lewis's brother-in-law, Ferdinand Archduke of Austria, who was afterwards Emperor. But the greater part of the country fell into the hands of the Turks, and Buda became the seat of a Turkish Pasha. The Hungarian Crown has ever j since been held by the Archdukes of Austria. It was in the course of these Hungarian wars that Suleiman made his way into Germany, and besieged Vienna. He had also wars with the Empire in other parts, as along the coast of Africa, where the Emperor at one time took Tunis. And in 1543 the Turkish fleet was actually brought by the Most Christian King into the waters of Italy and Provence, where Nizza or Nice was in vain besieged by the Maho- metans. Suleiman was the last of the great line of Sultans who had raised the Ottomans to such power. After his death, though the Turks still made some conquests, they no longer threatened the whole world as they had done before. In the reign of the next Sultan, Selim, the Turks gained the island of Cyprus and lost the battle of Lepanto j and from this time they had constant wars with the Persians to the east, and with the Poles and with the Emperors, in their character of Kings of Hungary, to the north. 23. The Thirty Years' War. — We now come to the great war which took up all the later years of this period, which had Germany for its centre, but in which most of the nations of Europe had more or less share. This is called the Thirty Years' War. It began in Bohejnia, where the intolerance of the King, the Emperor Ferdinand the Second, provoked a revolt. In 161 9, just about the time that Ferdinand was crowned Em- peror, he was deposed in Bohemia, and the Elector Palatine Frederick, a Protestant Prince, was elected in his place. It w-as like the old wars of the Hussites beginning again. The next year Frederick was driven out of Bohemia, and he pre- xin.] THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR. 269 sently lost his own dominions as well. Meanwhile, at the other end of Ferdinand's dominions, the Protestants of Hungary revolted, and for a while turned him out of that kingdom also. But the great scene of the war was Ger- many, where it was first of all carried on between the Catholic and Protestant princes within the country; but gradually, as the Emperor, with his famous generals Tilly and Walle?isteiji, seemed likely to swallow up all Germany, other powers began to step in. The first was Christian the Fourth King of De?wiark, who was himself a Prince of the Empire for his German dominions. In 1625 he became the chief of the Protestant League, but he was soon driven out and obliged to make peace. Presently, in 1630, a greater power stepped in from the North. This was the famous Gustavus Adolphus King of Sweden, who became for two years the head of the Protestants, and carried on war with wonderful success for a short time till he was killed in the battle at Liitzen in 1632. In this war Gustavus showed himself one of the greatest leaders that ever com- manded an army. By this time other nations were beginning to take part in the war. E?igland never formally joined in it,. but there was, as was natural, a strong feeling in Eng- land on behalf of the Protestant cause, all the more so as Frederick's wife Elizabeth was a daughter of James the First, and many Englishmen and Scotsmen served in the Swedish army. France too, under Cardinal Richelieu, began to meddle, first making a treaty with Gustavus and helping him with money, and afterwards, in 1635, joining openly in the war. Richelieu, just like Francis the First, though he oppressed the Protestants in France, did not scruple to make a league with the Protestants in Germany and with the Protestant powers of Sweden and Holland, in a war which had begun as a war for religious liberty in Bohemia and Germany. From this it now changed into a war for the aggrandizement 270 THE GREATNESS OF SPAIN. [chaj\ of France, all the more so as most of the Protestant States of Germany made p. ace with the Emperor in 163^. Meanwhile the Emperor Ferdinand died in 1637, and was succeeded by his s ai Ferdinand the Third- The war went on for a while in most parts of Europe with various success, the chief leader in Germany on the Protestant side being Duke Bcmliard of Weimar. In 1642 the great minister of France, Cardinal Ri< helieu, died, and Irs power passed to another Cardinal, Mazarin. In 1643 Lewis the Thirteenth died, and then began the long rtign of Lewis the Fourteenth, who was only five years old when he came to the crown. Thus the latter part of the war went on under a different Emperor and different sovereigns both of France and of Sweden from those under whom it had begun. In this latter part of the war the French arms, under their great leaders Turenne and the P}'ince of Conde } began to be decidedly successful. At last, after long nego- tiations, peace was made in 1648. 24. The Peace of Westphalia. — The peace which was now ma«de, which is known as the Peace of Westphalia, made some important changes in Europe. In Germany the two religions were put quite on a level, but the country had been utterly ruined by the long war, and whatever traces were left either of authority in the Empire or of freedom in the people quite died out. From this time Germany long remained a mere lax confederation of petty despotisms and oligarchies, with hardly any national feeling. Its boundaries too were cut short in various ways. The independence of the two free Confederations at the two ends of the Empire, those of Switzerland and the United Provinces, which had long been practi ally cut off from the Empire, was now formally acknowledged. And, what was far more import; nt, the two foreign kingdoms which had had the chief sbau' in the war, France and Sweden, obtaintd possessions within he xiii.] rEACE OF WESTPHALIA. 2.^1 Empire, and moreover, as guarantors or sureties of the peace, they obtained a general right of meddling in its affairs. Sweden received territories in northern Germany, both on the Baltic and on the Ocean, part of Pomeranza,' the city of IVismar, and the Bishopricks of Verden and Bremen. The free Hanseatic city of Bremen remained independent, as well as Liibeck and Hamburg; but these were now the only remnants of the famous Hanseatic League which had once been so great. But for these possessions the Kings of Swt den became Princes of the Empire, like the Kings of Denmark and Hungary, the Elector of Brandenburg, and any other princes who had dominions both in the Empire and out of it. But the territories which were given to France were cut off from the Empire altogether. The right of France to the Three Lotharingian Bishopricks, which had been seized nearly a hundred years before, was now formally acknowledged, and, besides this, the possessions and righ s of the House of Austria in Elsass, the German land between the Rhine and the Vosges, called in Fraiu e Alsace, were given to France. The free city of Strassburg and other places in Elsass still remained independent, but the whole of South Germany now lay open to France. This was the greatest advance that France had yet made at the expense of the Empire. Within Germany itself the Elector of Bran- denburg also received a large increase of tt. rritory. The war in Germany was now over, but the war between France and Spain still went on, till 1659. Then France gained Boussi/ion, and a few places in Lorraine and the Netherlands, and Dun- kirk was given to England, much as England had at other times held Calais and Boulogne and afterwards Gibraltar. In the next year Lewis the Fourteenth seized the little principality of Orange, but this was afterwards given back. 25. European Settlements in the East. —We have now come to the time when European History spreads itself ST* THE GREA TNESS OF SPAIN. [chap. beyond Europe itself and those parts of Asia and Africa which had immediate dealings with Europe. In the last years of the fifteenth century new worlds were opened, both in the East and in the West, and gradually all those European nations which had any power by sea began to trade, to conquer, and to make settlements, in parts of the world ! which before were never heard of. In this way England, France, Spain, Portugal, and Holland have all, like the old Greek commonwealths, planted colonies in various parts of the world. But there has been difference between the ways of colonizing in the two times. An old Greek colony was an independent state from the beginning, owing a certain respect to the mother city, but in no ways subject to it ; but the colonies planted by European kingdoms have been looked on as parts of the dominions of the mother country and have been held as dependent provinces. The colonists therefore, when they have got strong enough, have commonly thrown off the yoke of the mother country, and have made themselves into independent states. Then again we may make some distinctions among the different kinds of colonies. In some places the European settlers have gradually killed or driven out the native inhabitants, much as the English did with the Welsh when they first came into Britain. This has been the case with most of the colonies of England. The English settlers have often been largely mixed with settlers of other European nations, and even with slaves from other lands, but they have hardly mixed at all with the natives. In other cases, as has happened in most of the colonies of Spain, the Europeans and the natives have mixed a great deal, and things have been somewhat as they were in the time of the conquests of Rome ; that is to say, large bodies of men speak Spanish who are not Spaniards by blood. Then there is a third class of European possessions in distant lands, where Europeans bear rule scm.] EUROPEAN COLONIES. 273 over the natives, but neither drive them out nor mix with them, and indeed cannot be strictly said to settle or colonize at all. Such is the great dominion of England in India, which is something quite different from her colonies in A?nerica, Africa, and Australia. Possessions of both sorts began in the times with which we have now to do. The colonies strictly so called were chiefly planted in America, while dominions of the other kind were chiefly gained in the distant parts of Asia and Africa. The first European state which began this course of distant dominion was Portugal j of this we have seen the beginning in the time of Don Henry. Before the end of the fifteenth century Portugal had made a great number of settlements along the west coast of Africa as far south as the Equator. Then, when Vasco de Gama found out the passage to India round the Cape of Good Hope, the Portuguese carried on their dis- coveries and settlements along the eastern coast of Africa, along the coast of the Persian Gulf, and on into Southern India and into the peninsulas and islands beyond India. This quite changed the course of trade with India and the far East generally. Hitherto trade had gone by way of Alexandria and Venice ; now it went by the longer but easier way round the Cape. Throughout the sixteenth century the Portu- guese had a far greater Eastern dominion than any other European power ; indeed they could hardly be said to have any European rivals in Asia at all. The Spaniards held only the Philippine Islands, and the settlements of the English and Dutch and other nations did not begin till the seventeenth century. Russia indeed, after she had overthrown the Tartar dominion, went on to win a vast territory in Northern Asia, the great land of Siberia. But this was not gained by sea ; it was the mere exten- sion of European Russia by land to the east, and the cold and profitless country of Siberia could never be compared T 274 THE GREATNESS OF SPAIN. [chap. with the rich possessions of other European nations in Asia and Africa. 26. Discovery of America. — But the land of European colonization, as distinguished from mere dominion, the land m which European settlers have grown up into independent nations, was the New World, America. It was in the last years of the fifteenth century that this New World began to be opened to the men of the old. It has been thought that the old Northmen who settled in Iceland touched on some parts of the coasts of North America, and it is quite certain that they made a settlement in Greenland, which lasted till the fourteenth century. But, if they ever found out any of the lands in which the gieat Spanish and English colonies were afterwards planted, they certainly made no settlements in them of their own. The New World was first found out in 1492 by Christopher Columbus, a Genoese in the service of Ferdinand and Isabella, who was not seeking a world to the west, but, now that the earth was known to be round, was trying to find a westward road to India. Thence the lands which he first discovered came to be called the West Indies. These were the islands in the Guif of Mexico, and one of the first of those on which he landed he called Hispaniola, or New Spain. It is also called Saint Domuigo or Hayti. But Columbus did not land on the continent till 1498, and before that time Sebas- tian Cabot, a Venetian in the service of Henry the Seventh of England, had made his way to the mainland of North America much further to the north. Thus America was discovered by citizens of the maritime commonwealths of Italy, but acting, not in the service of their own cities, whose fleets never got beyond the Mediterranean, but of the Kings who commanded the Ocean. This marks how the course of trade and of dominion was now changing. And the new continent took its name of America from a third Italian, Xili.J DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 275 Amerigo Vespucci, who at one time was thought to have reached the mainland before Columbus. He too was in the service of Spain : thus it was that, though Italy had no part in the discovery of America, yet Italians had the chief part in it. 27. The Spanish Colonies. — Thus the New World was found out, and all Europeans then held that they had a per- fect right to seize upon any countries beyond the bounds of Christendom, and to do pretty much as they pleased with the people. The Spaniards in this way conquered the rich countries of Mexico and Peru, where they found gold, much as in old times the Phoenicians had found gold in Spain itself. Those countries had reached a high degree of civilization and regular government without any dealings with the civilized nations of Europe or Asia. And they were without many things, such as iron, horses, and the use of alphabetic writing, without which no Christian or Mahometan country would have thought it possible to get on. They were of course heathens, and the idolatry of the Mexicans was of a specially horrible and bloody kind. The Spaniards dealt with the natives in a way not unlike that in which the first Saracens had dealt with Christians and heathens, mixing up the notions of conquest and conversion in a strange way. But it is certain that no Mahometans ever treated their Chris- tian subjects so badly as the Spaniards did the natives in America. At last, when it was found that they could not do the hard work of the mines, negro slaves from Africa were brought in to work in their place. The Portuguese in their African settlements had made many negro slaves, and thus the slavery of the black man in the New World began, which went on for a long time in all the European colonies, and which still goes on in Brazil and the Spanish Islands. And thus too began, what was yet worse than slavery itself, the trade in slaves, the stealing and bringing them over from T 2 I 276 THE GREATNESS OF SPAIN. [chap. Africa, which is now forbidden by all civilized nations. The great Spanish dominion in America now began. Mexico was conquered by Hernando Cortes between 15 19 and 1521, and Peru by Francisco Pizarro between 1532 and 1536. And, shameful as was the greediness and cruelty shown by the Spaniards, there was something very wonderful in the overthrow of such great powers by such small bodies of men. But a wide difference must be made between the conquest of Mexico and that of Peru. For Cortez, though he did several very cruel deeds, really tried to convert and civilize the countries which he conquered, while Pizarro seems to have had no objects of this kind. Thus began the great Spanish dominion in America, which has grown up into several in- dependent nations speaking the Spanish tongue. 28. French, English, and other Colonies. — The next people after the Spaniards who began to settle in North America were the French, and the next were the English, and the settlements of both nations had a good deal to do with the religious dissensions at home. The first attempt at a French settlement was ma-de by Huguenots in 1562, in the land to which they gave the name of Carolina, but it was not till 1607 that any lasting French settlements were made in America. From that time the French gradually occupied, or laid claim to, a vast territory in North America, taking in a great deal of the western part of the present United States and of the lands to the north of them. These were called Canada and Louisiana, but in a much wider sense I than those names bear now. These settlements of the French in North America have all passed either to Eng- land or to the United States, but some of their settle- ments in the West Indus and their small possessions in South America at Cayenne remain French still. The English sailors, Gilbert, D?-ake, and others, kept making discoveries and waging war with the Spaniards during the XiH.] COLONIES IN AMERICA. 277 whole reign of Elizabeth, and in 1585 Sir Walter Raleigh tried to begin the colony of Virginia, but it was not really settled till 1606. This was the beginning of the English colonies in North America, which have grown up into the United States. New England was next colonized, and afterwards Maryland : both of these were largely peopled by those men in England who were dissatisfied with the state of religion, and who were often persecuted for not conforming to the law in such matters. For no one as yet thought of allow- ing perfect freedom to all religions ; each country, Catholic or Protestant or whatever it was, punished with penalties, greater or less, all those who did not conform to the established religion. So men tried to get more freedom by settling in distant lands. Thus the French Huguenots tried to settle in America, and thus, amongst the English colonies, New England was largely peopled by Puritans, that is, zealous Protestants who thought that reform in the Church of England had not gone far enough ; and Maryland was largely settled by Roman Catholics, who followed the Pope and the Council of Trent, and held that the Church of England had gone wrong by having any Reformation at all. The English colonies in America were all held to be parts of the English dominions ; but most of them had free constitutions, and they were able to do much as they pleased in their own local affairs. Meanwhile the Dutch, who, having freed themselves from Spain, were fast driving the Portuguese out of the commerce of the East Indies, settled in North America also, and founded a colony called New Netherlana between Maryland and New England. In South America, besides the French, the English and Dutch had some small possessions. But the great South American power besides Spain was Portugal. For the Portuguese founded the great colony of Brazil, after some opposition from the English, Dutch, and French. The Portuguese began to settle in 278 THE GREA T.YESS OF SPAIN. [chap those parts about 1531, and after 1660 they had Brazil wholly to themselves. 29. Learning, Art, and Science. — All this time the mind of man was making great progress in all parts. The revival of learning in the fifteenth century did something to check original genius in Italy ,Yor all men took once more to writing in Latin. But in the sixteenth century there were again great Italian writers both in prose and verse, and the time from the later part of the fifteenth century till that of the sixteenth was the great time of Italian painting. Learning also spread through all parts of the West, and there were great scholars in most countries, in none more than in the U?iited Provi?ices after they had won their freedom. There too men began to give special heed to the Law of Nations, that is to the rules by which different countries hold themselves to be bound in their dealings with one another. In this time also men began to have truer notions on matters of physical science ; to learn, for instance, that the earth goes round the sun, instead of the sun going round the earth. In religious matters too the endless controversies, both between the Roman Catholics and the Protestants and between the different classes of Protest- ants, brought out a great number of learned and zealous theological writers on all sides. Nor was this only a time of learning, but also of original genius, for, besides Italy, it was the age < >f the greatest poets of England, Spain, and Portugal. France perhaps lagged a little behind in poetry, but she had miny good writers in prose. Generally throughout Europe, men were taking to their own languages for poetry and history, though some great histories were still written in Latin, and Latin was still the common language of learning: and science. Men also began to learn more of each other's languages, a-nd the Italian language especially was much admired and studied in other countiies. In Germany the standard of the language was fixed by Luther's translation Xiii.] LEARNING AND LITERATURE. 279 of the Bible, which had this effect, that the High-Dutch in which he wrote it became the received language of Ger- many, while the Low-Dutch, though the natural tongue of so large a part of the country, came to be looked down on as a mere vulgar dialect. But, after the wretched times of the Thirty Years' War, both learning and native literature sadly went down. Altogether, the time from the latter years of the fifteenth century to the middle of the seventeenth was one of the most fertile times, both in great scholars and in great writers in their own tongues, but it would be endless to try to set their names down here. It will be better done in the histories of their particular countries. 30.. Summary. — In this period we see \heE7npire practically come to an end. In strictness there was no Emperor after Charles the Fifth, and the Imperial title no longer carried with it any authority in Italy, and not much in Germany. > t had become little more than a title of honour in one branch of the House of Austria, while the greatest power in Europe had really passed away to the other branch of the House of Austria which held Spain and its dependent slates. At the beginning of the period Spain was decidedly in the first place, but, before the end of it, the Spanish power greatly lessened, and France, by the result of the Thirty Years' War, became the leading power instead of Spain. Italy sank; into a mere dependency of Spain, except so far as Venice still fought the battles of Christendom against the Tuiks. Germany, after taking the lead in the Refoi'mation^ was utterly ruined and divided by the Thirty Years' War. Switzerland held a high position at the beginning of the period, and the dominion of its Cantons in the Romance lands began. But before the end of the period the reputation of the Confederates greatly sunk through the. practice of mer- cenary service. Hungary had sunk, partly into a Turkish province, partly into a possession of the House of Austria. 280 THE GREA TNESS OF SPAIN. [ch. xiil On the other hand, several old powers greatly advanced and some new ones came into being. England and Scotland, though not yet united into one kingdom, became one power as regards other nations. Sweden suddenly grew into a first- class power. Poland both gained and lost, but Russia, her neighbour to the East, grew in a manner which, in her own part of the world, might almost be set against the growth of Spain in the West. But she was not as yet of any importance in European affairs generally. The power of the Turks rose to its height, but it met with its first great check and began to go down. Savoy, losing territory to the north of the Alps, gained territory to the south, and thus had its course marked out for it as an Italian power. The revolt of the Netherlands against Spain gave birth to the new com- monwealth of the United Provinces, which at once rose to the rank of a great power. The treaty of Poland with the Teutonic Knights gave birth to the new power of Prussia, though Prussia did not become great till the United Pro- vinces had begun to go down again. And, besides these shiftings of territory and risings and fallings of various powers, we have in this period the Reformation a»d all its results, and we have the great stirring of men's miuds which partly caused it and partly followed it. And we have the discovery of New Worlds both in the East and in tin? West, and the conquests and settlements of all the se*£aring powers of Europe in those distant lands. CHAPTER XIV. THE GREATNESS OF FRANCE. Gt owth of the power of France ; accession of Lewis the Fourteenth; his character and absolute dominion (i) — his aggressions on Spain and the United Provinces ; league against France ; defence of the United Provinces by William of Orange (i ) — Peace of Nimwegen ; acquisitions of France ( l ) — Lewis at the height of his power ; seizure of Strassburg (2) — devastation of the Palatinate; second league against Lewis; Peace of Ryswick (2) — schemes for the partition of the Spanish dominions ; War of the Spanish Suc- cession (3) — Lewis' persecution of the Protestants ; losses of France by his reign (3) — England under the Parliament and the Pro- tectorate ; her greatness tinder Cromwell ; wars with the United Provinces (4) — degradation of England under Charles and James the Second ; wars with the United Provinces ; election of William of Orange (4) — different effects of the Revolution in England, Scotland, and Lreland ; union of the Kingdoms of England and Scotland (5) — share of Great Britain in' the wars with France ; accession of the Hanoverian dynasty (5) — reign of the Emperor Leopold ; growth of Brandenburg under the Great Elector ; Prussia becomes a kingdom (6) — affairs of Hungary ; siege of Vienna by the Turks ; the Hungarian Crown becomes hereditary ; Peace of Carlowit-z ; reigns of Joseph the First and Charles the Sixth; advance of the Austrian poioer ; Peace of Passarowitz (6) — decay of the Spanish power (7) — affairs of Ltaly ; advance of Savoy (8) — wars of Venice with the Turks ; war of Candia ; conquest and loss of Peloponnesos (9) — great position of the United- Provinces ; changes in their form of government ; Stadholdership of William the Third (10) — greatest extent of the power of Sweden ; Denmark and Sweden become absolute monarchies (ll)— 282 THE GREA TNESS OF FRANCE. [chap. exploits of Charles the Twelfth (i i) — loss of territory and lessening of the royal power in Sweden; comparison of Sweden and Savoy (l l) — decline of Poland ; reigns of John Sobieski; and Augustus the Strong (12) — decli7ie of the power of the Turks ; the tribute of children no longer levied ; advance of the subject nations (13) — English and Dutch settlements in India ; beginning of the East India Company (14) — the Mogul Emperors (14) — English settle- ments in Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta (14) — English settle- ments in North America; annexatioiis of the Swedish and Dutch colonies (15) — French colonization in Louisiana (15) — Summary (16). I. Conquests of Lewis the Fourteenth. — We have now come to the time when France takes the same place among the nations of Europe which had for a while been held by Spain, and becomes in the like sort the object of fear to most other nations. We have seen that the power of France was con- firmed, as against the Empire, by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, and, as against Spain, by the Peace of the Pyrenees in 1659. Thus the House of Bourbon had humbled both branches of the House of Austria. The reigning King was now Lewis the Fourteenth, who came to the crown as a child in 1643, and reigned seventy-two years, till 171 5. The earlier part of his reign was a time of great confusion and rebellion, but from the time of his taking the government on himself, on the death of Cardinal Mazarin in 1661, till the end of his long reign, no King of any country ever kept things more wholly in his own hands. He Was served by very able ministers and generals, but his own will gave the law to France, and thereby to a great part of Europe. His common saying was, "I am the State;" and he made himself so : for, besides greatly advancing the power of France in Europe, he greatly advanced the royal authority in France. The States-General were never summoned; he humbled the Parliament of Paris, the chief court of law, which XIV.] LEWIS THE FOURTEENTH. 283 had hitherto put some check on the King's will ; in short he made France still more thoroughly an absolute monarchy than it was before. He married Maria Theresa, an Infanta or Princess of Spain, and at the marriage all rights to any part of the Spanish dominions which might thus pass to him- self or his children were solemnly given up. Notwithstand- ing this, when Philip the Fourth of Spain died, in 1665, Lewis gave out that by an old law of the Netherla?ids certain parts of those provinces ought to pass to his Queen rather than to the next King, Charles the Second. This frightened the United Provinces, who feared that the claim would extend to them. Presently, in 1667, he invaded the Netherlands, and in the next year he, for the first time, conquered the County of Burgundy, now called Franche Cotnte, which still belonged to Spain, and the Imperial city of Besancon, which had now become a part of the County. These last conquests he gave up the same year by a treaty at Aachen, but he kept his conquests in the Netherlands. Next, in 1672, he attacked the United Provinces, and, to their great shame, he had both England and several German princes on his side. But after a while the English Parliament compelled the King, Charles the Second, to make peace. The war now became general ; the Emperor Leopold and King Charles of Spain made a league with the United Provinces, so strangely had things turned about since they first threw off the Spanish yoke. The Empire as a body was neutral, but some of the Ger- man Princes, among them the G?'eat Elector of Brandenburg, Frederick William, joined the league against France; so did Denmai'k, while Sweden took the French side, so that there was a kind of separate war going on in the North. It was in this war that William Prince of Orange, the descendant of William the Silent, and who was afterwards King of England, first made himself famous. At last peace was made at Nimwegen in 1678 and 1679, ?,y which France kept 284 THE GREATNESS OF FRANCE, [chap. most of her new conquests in the Spanish Netherlands, with the County of Burgundy and the city of Besancon, and some Imperial towns in Elsass which had not been given up by the Peace of Westphalia. In all this war Lewis had been spreading his influence far and wide, and making alliances everywhere. Just as other Kings of France had done, though he was a cruel persecutor of the Protestants in France, he helped the Hungarian Protestants against their King the Emperor, and even allied himself with the Turks, as Francis the First had done. 2. Lewis the Fourteenth and William of Orange. — Lewis was now at the height of his power, and his flatterers called him Lewis the Great. But, even after these great successes, he never could keep quiet ; he went on annexing small places in Elsass, and at last, in 1681, he seized on the free Imperial city of Strassburg in time of peace. Then he began to meddle in Italy, and, among other things, he picked a quarrel with the commonwealth of Genoa, bombarded the city, and made the Doge come and ask humbly for peace. More smaller wars with Spain followed, and in 1688 Lewis seized Avignon, which belonged to the Pope, and directly afterwards he began a new war, because he could not get a candidate*of his own chosen to the Archbishoprick of Koln. But by this time one very important change had taken place. James the Second j of England, who, like his brother Charles, had been in the j pay of Lewis, had been driven out, and his nephew and son- \ in-law William Prince of Orange, the Stadholder of the United Provinces, had been chosen King of England in his stead. England was now therefore against France, and King William was the very soul of the general league called the Grand Alliance, which was now made to keep Lewis from bringing all Europe under his yoke. But William found it hard to manage many of his allies, as both Spain and the German princes were often anxious to throw the burthen of XIV.] WILLIAM OF ORANGE. 285 the war on England and the United Provinces, and towards the end of the war Lewis contrived to detach the Duke of Savoy from the Alliance. This war went on almost every- where at once. The thing by which it is best remembered is the cruel ravaging of the dominions of the Elector Palatine by Lewis's orders at the beginning of the war. Many battles were fought and towns taken on both sides, especially in the Netherlands ; and at last peace was made at Ryswick, by which most of the conquests on both sides were restored. France especially gave up the places which had been seized in Germany, except the great city of Strass- burg, which she was allowed to keep. 3. War of the Spanish Succession. — Another war began in 1700, on the death of Charles the Second of Spain. This is called the War of the Spanish Succession. As Charles had no children, there was a great question as to who should succeed to his dominions, and several treaties had been made between England and the United Provinces, France, and the Empire, to hinder the whole of the Spanish dominions from being any longer united. By the last treaty they were to be divided among the several claimants, and the Crown of Spain itself was to pass to the Archduke Charles of Austria y the son of the Emperor Leopold. But, when King Charles of Spain died, it was found that he had left the whole of his dominions to Philip of Anjou, the grandson of the King of France. Philip the Fifth therefore succeeded to the Crown of Spain. But war broke out in 1701 : the Emperor, England, the United Provinces, Brandenfairg or Prussia (whichever we are now to call it), and afterwards Savoy, all took part in it. The war went on in all parts with various success till 1 71 3 and 1 7 14, when it was ended by the Treaties of Utrecht and Rastadt. This was the war in which the Duke of Marlborough carried on his great campaigns in the Nether- lands, and in which England got possession of Gibraltar. 286 THE GREA TNESS OF FRANCE. [ciL\r By these treaties the great Spanish monarchy was divided, in a way of which we shall say more when we come to the several countries which were concerned in the division. But Philip kept Spain and the Indies, that is the distant possessions of Spain in America and elsewhere, so that Lewis succeeded so far that he had established his grandson on the throne of Spain. But in this last war he had made no such conquests for his own kingdom as he had made in his earlier wars. And these constant wars, and his despotic government at home, had greatly weakened and impoverished his kingdom. It was weakened above all by Lewis's persecutions of the Protestants. In 1685 he revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had been granted in their favour by Henry the Fourth. A most cruel persecution followed, chiefly in the South, where the Protestants were most numerous. This was a great blow for France, as crowds of skilful and industrious men left the country, and carried their skill to England and elsewhere. But as far as mere military glory went, there had as yet been no time when France had had so large a share of it as during the reign of Lewis the Fourteenth. 4. England. — It marks the great position which France held during this time, that, in telling the history of France, we have to tell so large a part of all the countries at least in the West of Europe. But this was a most important time, both in England and in other countries. From the execution of Charles the First in i'649 to the Restoration of his son Charles the Second in 1660, England was a commonwealth. During the first years after the King's death, the Long Parliament, which had overthrown him, kept the government in its own hands. But in 1653 the great general of the Parliament, Oliver Cromwell, took on himself the chief power by the title of Lord Protector, for, like Caesar at Rome, he did not dare to call himself King, He kept his power till his death in 1658, XIV.] THE ENGLISH COMMONWEALTH. 287 and then came a time of confusion till the Restoration of Charles the Second. Under the government of the Parlia- ment and of the Protector England rose again to the place, or more than the place, in Europe which she had held under Elizabeth, and which she had lost under the first two Stewart Kings. Scotland, where Charles the Second had been acknowledged King after his father's death, was now united with England. Ireland was conquered as it had never been conquered before. A war was waged with the United Provinces, in which the great admirals of the two commonwealths, Blake on the English side, and De Ruyter and Van Tromp on the Dutch, won victories over each other. The Island of Jamaica in the West Indies was won from Spain; the Protector interfered to protect the Protestants in Savoy, who were persecuted by their Duke, and he made advantageous treaties with most of the powers of Europe. All this was changed after Charles the Second came to the Crown, for he had no care for the honour of the nation, and he actually was in the pay of Lewis of France, the secret object of their schemes being to set up absolute power a> d the Roman Catholic religion in England. Charles first maie men angry in 1663 by selling Dunkirk to the French Kii-g. Then followed a war with the United Provinces from 1664 to 1667, just at the time when the Plague of London happered in 1665, and the Great Fire in 1666. In this war the Du:ch fleet sailed up the Thames, a thing which no enemy's fleet had done since the old times of the Danes. In this war Lewis professed to be on the side of the Dutch, but intrigues were going on between him and Charles. Though in 1668 a Ttiple Alliance was concluded between England, Sweden, and the United Provinces, to check the advance of France, yet, v^hen Lewis invaded Holland in 1672, Charles joined him and another naval war between England and the United Pro- vinces followed. Peace .iowever was made the next year,' 288 THE GREA TNESS OF FRANCE. [chap. and after a while Mary, the niece of Charles and daughter of James Duke of York, was married to her cousin William, Prince of Orange. In 1685 James came to the throne. He had openly become a Roman Catholic, and his illegal doings in favour of those of his own religion at last obliged him to leave the country, and William and Mary were chosen King and Queen. 5. Great Britain. — The effects of the Revolution which placed William and Mary on the throne were different in the three Kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland. In England the old laws and liberties were restored after a time of misgovernment. In Scotland, which at the restoration of Charles the Second had again become a separate kingdom, the Stewart Kings had tried in vain to force the rites and government of the English Church on a people who preferred a system departing further from that of Rome. William and Mary were therefore gladly chosen in Scotland, and the Presbyterian Church was finally established. But in Ireland, where the mass of the people were Roman Catholics, the cause of James was maintained for a while. But in the end Ireland was more thoroughly conquered than ever, and the native Roman Catholic inhabitants were ground down for a long while under the dominion of the Protestant English. Thus the Scots gained their liberty and the establishment of their own religion by the same revolution which enslaved Ire- land. In 1707, in the reign of Queen Anne, who succeeded William, England and Scotland were joined together into one kingdom, with one Parliament, called the Kingdom of Great Britain, Ireland remaining a separate and dependent king- dom. Meanwhile, after the election of "William and Mary, now that the same man was King of England and Stad- holder of the United Provinces, England took a leading part, us we have already said, in the last two v/ars against Lewis, By the Treaty of Utrecht, England, or we should now rathet xiv.] AFFAIRS OF GREAT BRITAIN. 289 say Great Britain, gained the fortress of Gibraltar, which she has kept ever since, and the island of Minorca, This was the English share in the partition of the Spanish monarchy, f and it was their first possession in the Mediterranean. Tan- gier had been an English possession during the reign of Charles the Second, but Tangier lies outside the Strait. In all these ways England became more mixed up with con- tinental affairs than she had been before, and this was still more the case when, just before the death of Lewis the Fourteenth, the Crown of Great Britain passed to a foreign prince who was actually a reigning sovereign, which William was not, except in his little principality of Orange. This was George Elector of Hanover, a descendant of James the First in the female line, who, as neither William nor Anne left any children, was chosen by Parliament to succeed, as being the next Protestant heir. Thus England had again, after so many years, a King who could not speak English. 6. Germany and Hungary. — We have seen how utterly the power of the Emperors came to an end by the Peace of Westphalia ; and the next Emperor, Leopold, who succeeded Ferdinand the Third in 1658 and reigned till 1705, was not a man likely to set it up again. The German princes now did much as they pleased, and many of them did not scruple to become the allies of Lewis. In fact, in a great part of Germany the King of France was much more the real head than the Emperor. The most famous German prince of this time was the Great Elector of Brande?ibwg, Frederick William, who has been already spoken of as xaking a part in the war against Lewis. It was under him that the House of Hohenzollem, as the family of the Electors of Brandenburg and Kings of Pricssia is called, began to rise to greatness. He inherited and gained several fresh territories in Germany, and, as we have seen, he made his Duchy of Prussia independent of Poland. U 29 o THE GREATNESS OF FRANCE. [chap. His son Frederick, the first King of Prussia, took a share against France in the War of the Spanish Succession ; he also inherited a possession at a great distance, namely the Principality of Neufchdtel in the old Kingdom of Bur- gundy. This small state was in close alliance with the Canton of Bern, and it has since become a part of Switzer- land. The next King, Frederick William the Second, who succeeded in 17 13, received some further additions to his ter- ritories in Western Germany by the Peace of Utrecht. Thus Prussia, as it must now be called rather than Brandenburg, was advancing step by step to the position of a great power in Europe. The Emperor Leopold meanwhile, besides the wars with France, had much to do in his kingdom of Hun- gary, both with the wars against the Turks and with the revolts of the Hungarians themselves, who were stirred up by his cruel persecutions of the Protestants. The Protestants did not scruple to join with the Turks, and we can hardly wonder at them ; for the Christian subjects of a Mahometan power, though they are dealt with as an inferior people, are not denied the free exercise of their religion. In 1683 the Turks besieged Vienna, which was delivered by John Sobieski, King of Poland, and Charles Duke of Lorraine. After this the war went on, and the Turks were gradually driven out of the part of Hungary which they held, and peace was made at Carlowitz in 1699. In the midst of all this the Crown of Hungary, which, though it had been so long in the Austrian family, was still by law elective, was made hereditary in 1687.. Leopold then gave up the kingdom to his son Joseph, who in 1690 was chosen King of the Romans, and succeeded his father in 1705. He took a leading part in all the affairs of Europe during his time. The "war with France went on, and so did the civil wars in Hungary, till 171 1, after which we hear of no more revolts for a long while. In that year Joseph died, and was succeeded by Charles the Sixth. He it XIV.] AUSTRIA AND TURKEY. 291 was whom the Allies had wished to make King of Spain, and now the fear of uniting Spain with the dominions of the House of Austria helped to incline the Allies to peace. By the terms of peace the House of Austria got, as its share of Spanish dominions, all that remained of the Spanish Netherlands, the Kingdoms of Naples and Sardinia, and the Duchy of Milan, except some parts which were given to the Duke of Savoy. In 171 5 another war began with the Turks, which was ended in 1718 by the Peace of Passarowitz, by which more territory was won from the Turks, including Bel- grade the capital of Servia. Thus the House of Austria at this time gained a great increase of territory, but it was all to the advantage of the House of Austria, not at all to that of what was still called the Roman Empire. 7. The Spanish Peninsula. — The history of Spain during this time, as far as it concerns us, has pretty well been to]d already. The power which had been so great under Charles the Fifth and Philip the Second had now sunk to nothing, and Spain was disputed about by other powers without asking the consent of its own people. But of the competitors for the Spanish Crown the Spaniards certainly preferred the French candidate to the Austrian, except in Catalonia, , where the people took the other side. They had been deceived by the French in earlier wars. Portugal during this time has hardly any general history. At first it took the* side of the French, and afterwards that of the allies. And s we must not forget that, besides the loss of its possessions in different parts of Europe, Spain itself suffered dismember- ment. For, as we have seen, England got, not only the island of Minorca, but also the fortress of Gibi-altar on the mainland of Spain itself. 8. Advance of Savoy. — Italy also has very little history during these times. From this time onwards we shall find both Itaty and the Netherlands used as a kind of battle-field U2 292 THE GREATNESS OF FRANCE. [chap. for the wars of other nations. We have seen how, by the Treaty of Utrecht, several parts of Italy were again made to change masters, and how, for the first time since Charles the Fifth, the Emperor, though we can no longer say the Empire, again became an important power in Italy. But there are two independent states in Italy, of whose history some account mast be given. The House of Savoy was steadily making its way. From the beginning of the seventeenth century the Dukes of Savoy had sought to add to their dominions the possessions of the commonwealth of Genoa, and also what- ever they might be able to win in Lomba?'dy, which wa? then divided between the commonwealth of Venice and the Kings of Spain as Dukes of Milan. Genoa they were n^t to win for a long time, but, by taking a part dexterously, and not very scrupulously, in every war, they always contrived to gain something by each treaty of peace. Thus Duke Victor Amadeus the Second took a part in both the wars of tie Allies against France. He gained in some campaigns and lost in others ; he changed sides more than once, but he gained an increase of territory both by the Peace of Ryswick and by the Peace of Utrecht. His gains by this last peace were very great, including a part of the Duchy of Milan, and, more than this, he became a King. The Dukes of Savoy had for a long time claimed to be Kings of Cyprus and Jerusalem, but these were mere nominal kingdoms, while now Victor Amadeus became real King of the Island of Sicily , while the kingdom on the mainland went to the Emperor. The Two Sicilies were thus again divided, as they had been in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The Dukes of Savoy in all this show a marked contrast to the other princes of Italy, and the corruption which had spread itself over most parts of Italy under the Spanish domination had hardly touched their dominions. Thev were thus able to do great things, and, though theii Xiv.] THE ITALIAN STA TES. 293 policy as yet was purely selfish, they were really laying the foundation of the power which in our own time has grown into the restored Kingdom of Italy. 9. Wars of Venice. — The other Italian state of which qome account must be given during this time was the com- monwealth of Venice, which was still nobly playing its part as the champion of Christendom against the Turks. Cyprus had been lost, but the Venetians still kept Crete. But in 1645 the Turks attacked the island, and a war in its defence went on for twenty-four years. This war, as the greater part of it was taken up by the siege of the town of Candia, was commonly called the War of Candia. The Venetians were helped, just as in the old times of the Crusades, by volunteers and others from various parts of Europe, France, Spain, England, and Savoy ; but at last, in 1669, Candia could no longer hold out, and the whole island passed to the Turks. In 1684 the Venetians joined the Emperor Leopold and the Poles in their war with the Turks, and presently Francesco Morosini^ who had commanded at Candia, conquered the whole of Peloponnesos, and was afterwards elected Doge. It was in this war that the Parthenon, the great temple at Athens, which had become a church under the Eastern Emperors and a powder-magazine under the Turks, was finally broken down when Morosini was besieging Athens. Peloponnesos was confirmed to Venice in the Peace of Carlowitz in 1699, but it was won back by the Turks in 171 5, as well as whatever Venice still kept in the East, except the Ionian Islands and one or two points on the west coast. In 17 16 the Turks in vain tried to take Corfu, but in 17 18 the Emperor Charles forsook Venice just when there was a chance of winning back Peloponnesos. With the Peace of Passarowitz in that year the history of the wars of Venice in the East, which had gone on ever since the taking of Constantinople in 1 204, came to an end. 294 THE GEE A TNESS OF FRANCE. [chap. io. The United Provinces. — During all this time the seven United Provinces, as what we have already said will show, held a much higher position in Europe and the world in general than could have been looked for from the extent of their territories. And they did this notwithstanding an awkward constitution in which each of the states of which the Confederation was made up kept nearly all the rights of sovereignty. In Holland, which was the leading province of the seven, there was a chief magistrate called a Stadholder, who often held the same office in other provinces also. This office had passed on for some generations, almost as if it had been hereditary, in the family of the Princes of Orange. But, when William the Second died in 1650, his son William the Third was not yet born, and the office was formally abolished in 1667. At this time the States were chiefly led by a famous statesman of Holland, John de Witt, but in 1672 there was a revolution ; De Witt and his brother were murdered, and the Prince was appointed Stadholder. It was he who carried on the great defence of the Provinces against France, but after his death the office of Stadholder was again abolished for a long while. II. The Northern Kingdoms.— Sweden, like the United Provinces, held during all this time a greater position in Europe than it was really able to keep. Queen Christina abdicated in 1654 ; the wars went on during the time of the next King, Charles the Tenth, and in 1660 Charles the Eleventh concluded the Treaties of Oliva and Copenhageii, by which Sweden gained almost all Livonia from Poland, and obtained from Denmai'k all that part of Denmark which lay within the northern peninsula, so that Denmark now kept only Jutland and the islands. Sweden now had greater ter- ritories than it had at any time before or since, and in this King's reign, in 1682, the royal power was made absolute by law. The same had been done in Denmark ir 1660, in the XIV.] CHARLES THE TWELFTH. 295 reign of Frederick the Third. Then, in 1697, came the famous Charles the Twelfth. He was presently attacked by Denmark, Poland, and Russia all at once. He first beat the Danes, and then the Russians in the famous battle of Narva j then he passed on into Poland, where he deposed one King and set up another ; then he passed on into Russia, where at last he was defeated at Pultowa, and had to take shelter in the Turkish dominions at Bender. There he stayed in a sort of captivity for a while, but in 17 14 he made his way almost alone to Stralsjtnd in his Pomeranian dominions, where he was besieged by the forces of Denmark, Prussia, and Saxony. In 17 18 he was killed in attacking Frederickshall in Norway. His sister Ulrica, succeeded him. Absolute monarchy was now again abolished, and the royal powers were made very small. In 1720 and 1721 peace was made by Sweden with her various enemies, and the Swedish dominions were cut short in all parts. Livonia ,'i and the neighbouring countries were given up to Russia, whose territories now reached to the Baltic. Bremen and Verden were given up to Hanover, and part of Swedish Pome- rania to Prussia. So of the fruits of the German victories of Gustavus Adolphus nothing was left except part of Pomerania and the town of Wismarj but the Scandinavian territories which had been won from Denmark in the last century were still kept. Charles the Twelfth had won victories which as- tonished the whole world, but he taxed the resources of his kingdom beyond its strength, and Sweden since his time has never been what it was during the whole of the seventeenth century. But, on the other hand, Sweden now reached to the extreme south of her own peninsula, and was no longer cut off by Denmark from the Western seas. In fact Sweden has to some extent, like Savoy, been gaining territory at one end and losing it at the other, though the gains have been greatei in the case of Savoy and the losses in the case of Sweden, 12. Russia and Poland. — We need say but little about 296 THE GREATNESS OF FRANCE. [chap, the history of Russia in this chapter, because its wonderful advances towards the end of this time will come better as a connected story in the next chapter. Poland meanwhile had, as we have seen, to give up her new territory of Livonia to Sweden, and presently, in 1672, she had to give up the border province of Podolia to the Turks, and to submit to pay a tribute. But in 1674 the Poles chose as their King their own famous general, John Sobieski, the same who delivered Vienna in 1683. Both before and after he became King, he won several victories over the Turks, and got back part of the lost territories, and for a time joined to Poland Moldavia and Wallachia, the two Danubian principalities of which there has been much talk of late years. These conquests were not long kept. Sobieski died in 1696, and the Poles did not choose a new King for more than a year. Then they chose Frederick Augustus, Elector of Saxony, who turned Catholic to receive the Crown, since which time the Electors and Kings of Saxony have been Catholics, while their people have remained Protestant. This King is called Augustus the Strong. He won back the strong town of Kaminiec from the Turks, but, having joined the league against Charles the Twelfth of Sweden, he was utterly overthrown in 1702. Charles called on the Poles to depose Augustus and choose a new King ; so in 1704 they chose one of their own nobles, Stanislaus Leszczynski. But he reigned no longer than Charles could help him, and, after Charles' defeat at Pultowa and after a civil war in Poland, Augustus was brought back. Poland was now falling very fast from the high place which it had once held in Europe. 13. The Turks. — The chief events in the history of the Turks have already been told when we spoke of their wars with Venice and in Hungary. Though they conquered Crete and recovered Peloponnesos, yet on the whole the power of the Ottomans was going down. Some of the Sultans, like Mahomet the Fourth, in whose time Vienna was besieged, xiv.] POLAND AND TURKEY. 297 were men of spirit, and Mahomet sometimes commanded his own armies, but some were very weak men indeed, and none were like the great series of Sultans who had founded the Ottoman dominion. One great reason for the decline of th* Ottoman power was that the tribute of children was no longer regularly levied on the subject nations. The Janissaries had become a kind of hereditary caste, and their old spirit was quite gone. In former times all the best servants of the Sultans, both in war and peace, had come from among the tribute children. Now that the tribute was no longer levied, the Sultans had no longer the same succession of able and faithful servants, and the subject nations were no longer de- prived of the men who were most fitted to be their leaders. As long as the tribute was levied, we may say that the subject nations could not revolt. As it was, we do not hear of any revolts for some time to come, but the subject nations now began to gain strength and their masters became weaker. 14. European Settlements in India. — The English do- minion in India began during this time. The great sailors of Elizabeth's time had made their way into the Indian seas as well as into those of the West, and a systematic trade with India, carried on, as was usual in those days, by a Company^ began in the times of James the First. The English men chants had at first to withstand the opposition of the Dutch in the islands, and of the Portuguese on the mainland. The Dutch had got possession of the Islands called the Spice Islands, which form part of the great group of islands which lie beyond the two peninsulas of India, and in 1623 great indignation was caused by what was called the Massacre of Amboyna, when several Englishmen were put to death by a sentence of the Dutch Court in the island. With India itself the English began to trade in a regular manner about 1613, then they received a charter from the reigning Emperor Jehangir. The great power in India was now the Mogul Empire^ ruled by Mahometan princes, sprung from Baber t 298 THE GREATNESS OF FRANCE. [chap. a descendant of Thnour, who established himself in India in 1526. His grandson Akbar, in whose time the Mogul dominion was spread over the greater part of India, was the greatest and best of all Mahometan rulers. But in truth he gave up Mahometanism, and set up a new religion of his own. Jehangir was his son. The first settlements in India were of course merely factories for trade, but in those distant seas it was needful for merchants to fortify their factories, and to have ships able to withstand an enemy. Commercial enterprises thus gradually changed into political and mili- tary enterprises, and the Company, which was at first merely a company of traders, came to have its dominions and armies like a sovereign prince or commonwealth, and in the end to have rule over nearly all India. These times however are yet to come ; but the story of the English power in India is something like the history of Rome ; wherever the English merchants settled and fortified their factories, their dominion really began. Their first settlement was at Suratj one which became of more importance began at Madras in 1640 ; and in 1662 the King of England, as distinguished from the trading Company, first became possessed of a dominion in India. This was Bombay, which was given to England by Portugal on the marriage of Charles the Second' to the Portuguese Infanta Katharine. But this new do- minion was before long granted by the King to the Company. In 1698 began the English settlement at Calcutta, and these fhree, Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta, remained the chief seats of the British dominion in India. During all this time there were many disputes between different sets of merchants about the right of trading with India, till at last, in 1708, the East India Company was put on the footing which it kept long after, and under which it gradually obtained either sovereignty or commanding influence in most parts of India. By this time the Mogul Empire was much weaker than it had been at the time when the English first settled. Shah Jehau, the xiv.] THE ENGLISH IN INDIA. 299 son of Jehangir, who reigned from 1627 to 1658, was a great prince, but under his son Aurungzebe, who reigned from 1658 - to 1707, being thus nearly contemporary with Lewis the Fourteenth, the Empire, though outwardly at its highest pitch of splendour, was really falling to pieces. For Aurungzebe was a bigoted Mahometan, and his intolerance led to a re- volt of the Mahrattas, a Hindoo people who founded a great dominion in Central India. And presently the rulers of the different provinces under the Mogul Emperors began to grow into independent princes, keeping up only a nominal submis- sion to the Great Mogul, as he was called. This is the same thing as we have seen so often in other parts of the world, in the Caliphate and in the Empire and in the Kingdom of France. By these means the progress of the English in India was much helped. But we must remember that all this time there was no sign at all that the English were likely to come to the head power in India. There were as yet nothing but one set of traders and settlers among others, Portuguese, Dutch, French, and Danish. Some of these settlements of other nations remain still, though the English have so greatly outstripped them. But with the islands — except Ceylon, which lies close to the peninsula, as Sicily does to Italy — the English have had but little to do. They have always chiefly belonged to the Dutch and Spaniards. 15. European Colonization in America.— During all this time colonization was going on briskly. The two great maritime and commercial powers, England and the United Provinces, now took the lead in it. It was now that Eng- land was rising to her great position by sea, and her new power led both to the foundation of new colonies and to the conquest of the colonies of other European nations. The Spaniards and Portuguese kept their great possessions in America, though the Spanish power had utterly gone -fown in the New World as well as in the Old. The Dutch 300 THE GREA TNESS OF FRANCE. [chap. colony of J\jw Netherland was flourishing, though the Dutch and English often had quarrels. In 1638 the Swedes also, now that Sweden had become a great power, set up a colony on Delaware Bay, but in 1655 this colony was con- quered by the Dutch, and was joined to their own New Netherland. But New Netherland itself did not last very long, for it was conquered during the first war between the Dutch and the English in Charles the Second's time, and several English colonies were made out of parts of it. The chief town, New Amsterdam, changed its name to New York, in honour of the King's brother, James Duke of York. Other colonies were planted during Charles the Second's time, as Carolina and New Jersey, and especially Penn- sylvania, which was planted by the famous Quaker William Perm, who made laws for his colony, and established greater toleration in religion than was to be found anywhere else. Meanwhile the French claimed to hold all the vast regions to the north and west of the English colonies, and, whenever there was war between France and England in Europe, there was also war between the French and English colonies in America. By the Peace of Utrecht in 17 13 the French colony of Acadie was given up to Great Britain, and became the colony of Nova Scotia. But, on the other hand, the French were really colonizing at the mouth of the Mis- sissippi, in their province of Louisiana, and in 1718 they founded the city of New Orleans. The last of the English colonies in these parts was Georgia, which was founded in 1723. That made up the number of the thirteen colonies in North America, which still remain as the thirteen oldest states of the American Union. 16. Summary. — Thus, during this period, France gained a great increase of territory, and more than once she caused great alliances to be formed to withstand her. The great Spanish monarchy was divided, all its outlying possessions XIV.] COLONIES IN AMERICA. 301 in Europe being separated from Spain. Eitgla?id and Scot- land were more firmly joined together, and began to take a leading part in all continental affairs, and Great Britain for the first time won a footing in the Mediterranean. In Germany the Emperors became mere Austrian princes ; but, as Austrian princes, they gained a great increase of power, both in Italy, from which they had so long been shut out, and in South-Eastern Europe as Kings of Hungary. In Northern Germany also we see the beginning of a great and more strictly German power in the growth of Branden- burg or Prussia. In Italy, Savoy advanced, and Venice still maintained a gallant, though on the whole a losing, fight against the Turks. In Northern Europe Sweden had, by the end of the period, quite lost the great position which it held at the beginning, though it had gained some territory at the expense of Denmark. Poland was fast sinking, while the greatness of Russia was beginning. The power of the Ttirks was now much less to be feared, and, if they gained territory from Venice, they lost their possessions in Hungary and the neighbouring lands. In India the Dutch drove the Portuguese from the Islands, and the English settlements in India itself began. Colonization went on steadily in North America, and the English colonies were decidedly get- ting the upper hand. In the way of learning and litera- ture, the United Provirices still produced great scholars and political writers ; but for literature in their own tongues Eng- land and ■ Fr an ce certainly stood at the head. Many of the most famous writers of both those languages, and also some of the chief philosophers, belong to this time. Spain ar,d Italy had greatly sunk ; and Germa?iy had not thoroughly recovered from the Thirty Years' War, though it is impossible not to mention the great scholar and philosopher Leibnitz. Generally, French influence had too much power in Germany just now for anything very original to be done. CHAPTER XV. THE RISE OF RUSSIA. ' \arader of the period (i) — rivalry of Austria and Prussia (2) — revival of the power of Spain ; reign of the Emperor Charles the. Sixth ; exchange of the Kingdoms of Sardinia and Sicily (2) — War of the Polish Election (2) — the Pragmatic Sanction (2) — War af the Austrian Succession ; Prussian conquest of Silesia ; election 0} Charles the Seventh (3) — Maria Theresa: her husband Francis elected Emperor (3) — Frederick the Great ; the Seven Years' War (3) — reign of Joseph the Second (3) — the Hanoverian Kings in Eng- land ; attempt of the Pretender ; dealings with France, Spain, and Sweden (4) — War with Spain ; share of England in continental wars ; administration of Pitt (4) — revolt oj the American colo- nies ; war with France and Spain (4) — independence of Ireland (4) — reign of lewis the Fifteenth ; annexation of Corsica and Lor- raine (5) — improved state of things in Spain; the Family Com- ■pact ; administration of Pombal in Portugal (6) — changes in Italy ; advance of Savoy ; revolution in Genoa and Corsica {7) — the Popes (7) — Peign of Peter the Great in Russia ; his conquests from Sweden and other pozvers ; rise of Russia (8) — reigjis of women in Russia ; Catharine the Second ; conquest oj Crim Tartary (8) — affairs of Poland ; the three partitions (8) — loss of pcnver and terri- tory by Sweden ; state of Denmark and the Duchies (9) — affairs of the Netherlands ; the Stadholders in the United Provinces made hereditary ; revolts in the Austrian Netherlands (10) — success of the Turks against Austria (11) — their wars with Russia; successive losses of territory ; dealings of Russia with the Christian nations (11) — growth of the English pozuer in India; career of Clive ; re- lation of England to the native states ; trial of Warren Hastings (12) — the English Colonies in America ; conquest of Canada {13) CH. xv.] THE RISE OF RUSSIA. 303 — revolt of the colonies ; foundation of the United States (13)— tzssion of Florida (13) — Summary (14). 1. Character of the Period. — The greatest change which took place in Europe during the time to which we have now come was undoubtedly the growth of the great power of Russia. No other state in Europe changed in anything like the same degree till quite the last years of the eighteenth century. Still Russia did not come to at all the same kind of rank which had been held by France, and, before that, by Spain. Nor did Russia rise to its greatness by displacing France in the way in which France rose by displacing Spain. Therefore, though this chapter is called after the greatest event of the period, still Russia will not be the centre of our story in the same way that the Empire was for so long, and afterwards Spain and France. In fact during this time there is not any one power in Europe which stands out in any marked way above all others. There are several great powers which are much more nearly on a level than before, and among them one very important one is growing up in the form of Prussia. A great part indeed of this period is taken up by rivalries between France and England, and between Prussia and Austria. It is not always easy to remember which side each power took in the many wars of this time, but one rule is a pretty safe one, that England and France will not often be found on the same side. In short, no power in Europe holds a higher place at that time than England. Without exercising any general dominion or making any general conquests, England had a hand in nearly everything that went on. But we must, in this chapter, make the Imperial House of Austria the centre of our story, as hardly any- thing happened during this whole time in which that House had not a direct share. 2. The Reign of Charles the Sixth. — The greater part 304 THE RISE OF RUSSIA. [chap, of the German history of this period is taken up with the rivalry between the House of Austria, the family of the Kings of Hungary and Archdukes of Austria, out of whom the Emperors were now chosen almost as a matter of course, and the House of Hohenzollern, the House of the Kings of Prussia and Electors of Brandenburg, who had begun to rise into greatness under the Great Elector. But this did not begin till some time later on, not till after the death of the Emperor Charles the Sixth. The first disturbance came — what we should hardly have expected — from Spain. The new French King of Spain, Philip the Fifth, under his minister Cardinal Alberoiii, tried to get back the lands which Spain had lost, especially the Kingdom of Sardinia, which had passed to the Emperor, and that of Sicily, which had passed to the Duke of Savoy. The Spaniards actually conquered Sardinia, and went some way towards conquering Sicily. But France, England, and the United Provinces presently joined the Emperor in the Quadruple Alliance against Spain, and the end of it was that Spain had to give up her projects, and the Emperor and the King of Sicily exchanged their two Italian kingdoms. Thus the Emperor Charles the Sixth became King of the Two Sicilies, like Frederick the Second, and the Dukes of Savoy became Kings of Sardinia, the title by which they were known till the present King became King of Italy. This was in 1720, and in the same year the Emperor made what is called a Pragmatic Sanction, which was guaranteed by the chief powers of Europe, and by which all his> hereditary dominions, Hungary, Sicily, Austria, and the rest, were to pass to his heirs female in case he left no son. Presently this Emperor got entangled in a series of unsuccessful wars. On the death of Augustus the Strong, in 1733, there was a double election to the Crown of "Poland between Frederick Augustus Elector of Saxony, the son of the late King, and Stanislaus, who had before been made King by Charles the XV.] CHARLES THE SIXTH 305 Twelfth. The Emperor and Russia supported Augustus, but, as Lewis the Fifteenth had married the daughter of Stanislaus,' he took upon him to make war on the Emperor, and he was joined by Charles Emmanuel the Third, King of Sardinia, and by Philip of Spain, or rather by his wife Elizabeth of Parma, both of whom had designs on the Austrian posses- sions in Italy. Thus a war took place in which the two Bour- bon Kings were joined against the Emperor, and in which for once England took no part. The end of this war, called the War of the Polish Election, was that the House of Austria lost the greater part of its Italian dominions. There was, as usual, a good deal of shifting among the smaller Duchies, but the important changes were that the Two Sicilies were given to a younger son of the King of Spain— making a third Bourbon kingdom in Europe— and part of the Duchy of Milan was given to the King of Sardinia, whose frontier thus ad- vanced a little as usual. And not only the House of Austria but the Empire lost also, for it was settled that the Duchy of Lorrai?ie, a fief of the Empire, should pass to Stanislaus— who gave up his claim to the Crown of Poland— for life, and should be joined to France at his death. Thus France again advanced at the expense of Germany. The Dukc of Lorraine, Francis, who had married Maria Theresa, the daughter of the Emperor Charles, got the succession to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, where the line of the Medici was dying out, instead of his own Duchy of Lorraine. 3. The Wars of Austria and Prussia.— It was in this way settled that the hereditary dominions of the House of Austria should pass to the House of Lorraine*, as represent- ing the House of Habsburg in the female line. And it was no doubt expected that the Empire and the Kingdom of Germany would pass quietly along with the hereditary states. And all this did happen in the end, but not till after much disputing and fighting. When the Emperor Charles died in X 306 THE RISE OF RUSSIA. [chap. 1740, all his hereditary dominions, the Kingdoms of Hun- gary and Bohe?nia, the Archduchy of Aicstria, and the rest, passed, according to the Pragmatic Sanction, to his daughter Maria Theresa, who was of course called by her highest title, that of Queen of Hungary. The Empire of course was at the disposal of the Electors, and there was an interregnum of two years. But, notwithstanding the Pragmatic Sanction, various princes began to lay claim to the whole, or to particular parts, of the dominions of the House of Austria. Above all, Charles Elector of Bavaria gave himself out as the rightful heir, and his claim was supported by France. Meanwhile Frederick the Second of Prussia, commonly called Frederick the Great, who had just succeeded his father Frederick William and had inherited from him a well-disciplined army, put forth a claim to the greater part of the Duchy of Silesia, and presently took possession of it by force. The next year the French and Bavarians overran Austria ; and in 1742 the Elector of Bavaria was elected Emperor as Charles the Seventh. Maria Theresa had now to take refuge in Hungary, where, notwith- standing all that the Hungarians had suffered from her prede- cessors, she f /imd great zeal in her cause. Presently England and Sardinia came to her help, and the war went on in Germany till 1745, when Charles the Seventh died, and Maria Theresa's husband Francis was elected Emperor. From this time she was called the Emp7'ess-Queen, being Queen of Hun- gary in her own right and Empress as wife of the Emperor Francis. The war went on between the Empress-Queen, England, and the United Provinces on one side, and France and Spain on the other, till 1748, when Silesia was formally given up to the King of Prussia. It was under Frederick the Great that Prussia, the growth of which had begun under the Great Elector, rose to be one of the chief powers of Europe. He was a philosopher and writer, and, when he was not at war, XV.] THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR. 307 he did much to make things better within his kingdom. But there was a good deal more fighting to come before the end of his reign, for in 1756 another war broke out between him and the Empress-Queen. This was called the Seven Years' War. Now things turned about, for not only Russia, Poland, and Sweden, but even France, was on the Austrian side, and Frederick was surrounded by enemies and left alone on the continent England however joined him, and in 1762 Peter the Third of Russia, who was a great admirer of Frederick, changed sides. The way in which Frederick bore up for so long against so many enemies was one of the greatest triumphs of military skill on record. There was another small war in Germany in 1777 about the succession of Bavaria, between Frederick and the Emperor Joseph the Second. Joseph had been elected King of the Romans in 1764, and he succeeded his father in 1765, being also made by his mother fellow- sovereign of her hereditary dominions. In 1780 Maria Theresa died, and Joseph reigned alone. Joseph had great schemes of reform in all his dominions, but he was too fond of putting everything to rights according to his own notions, without regard to the old laws of his different kingdoms, so that in the end he did moi e harm than good. In this way he tried to sweep away all the old insti- tutions of Hungary, but just before his death in 1790 he restored them. He was succeeded by his brother, Leopold the Second, and he in 1792 by the last Emperor, Francis the Second. By this time quite a new state of things was beginning throughout Europe. 4. Great Britain. — During a great part of this time during which Great Britain was so much mixed up with the affairs of the continent, she had herself a foreign King. George the First could not even speak English, and he thought much more of his Electorate than of his Kingdom. The same may be said of George the Second also, though he had got so fai X 2 3o8 THE RISE OF RUSSIA. [chap. as to speak English. Thus England got mixed up in several wars vvith which she had not much to do. At the beginning of George the First's reign, Lewis the Fourteenth, just before his death, abetted the attempt made in 17 15 by the son of James the Second, who called himself James the Third, to win the Crowns of England and Scotland, for of course he did not acknowledge the Union of the two kingdoms. This at- tempt failed, and England was on good terms, and even in alliance, with the Duke of Orleans, who was Regent for the young King Lewis the Fifteenth. This was the time when England joined with France and the Emperor Charles to withstand Spain. This time England really was threatened, for Spain now took up the cause of the Pretender, as did Charles of Sweden, who was angry because the King of Great Britain had got his possessions in north-western Germany. In George the Second's reign there was another war with Spain, which began in 1739, an d which was forced on the King and his Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, by the general wish of the people, who were stirred up by tales of wrongs done to Englishmen by the Spaniards in America. But little came of this war, except some additions to geographical knowledge in the shape of the famous voyages of Lord Anson. Then, from 1741 to 1748, England plunged into a war on the continent about a matter with which she had nothing to do at all, namely the war of the Austria?t Succes- sion, in which, as we have seen, England took the side of the Queen of Hungary, and France that of the King of Prussia ,and the Emperor Charles the Seventh. Nothing came of this war either, as the English and French gave back their conquests to each other at the end of it; but it should be remembered that in 1745 the son of the Old Pretender, Charles Edward, with French help, made an attempt to gain the British Crowns for his father. Scotland he actually did hold for a while, and he kept court at Edinburgh, but this XV.] WARS OF ENGLAND. 309 rebellion was quelled, like the earlier one, at the Battle of Culloden. Then a war with France arose out of the quarrels between the colonists of the two nations in America, and this war got mixed up with the Seven Years' War in Germany. The war, as far as England was concerned, was chiefly waged by sea and in America ; and under the ad- ministration of Mr. Pitt, afterwards Earl of Chatham, many victories and conquests were made, especially in the year l 7S9' The war went on into the reign of George the Third, which began in 1760, and it was ended in 1763 by the Peace of Paris, by which England got back much that had been lost by the war, and greatly enlarged her American posses- sions. But presently, in the reign of George the Third, the greater part of those possessions were lost altogether. An attempt to impose taxes on the colonists led to resistance. The thirteen colonies, from New England to Georgia, re- volted, and in 1776 they declared themselves independent, and thus made the beginning of the great Federal Republic of the United States. The French stepped in during the war to help the colonists, and they were presently joined by Spain and the United Provinces ; and, when peace was made in 1783, Great Britain had to acknowledge the inde- pendence of the States and to give back Minorca to Spain. But Gibraltar, her other Spanish possession, was kept, and its defence during this war against the forces of France and Spain is one of the exploits of which Englishmen are most proud. In 1782 Ireland, which had hitherto been a kingdom dependent on Great Britain, became independent, the two kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland now having the same King but distinct and independent Parliaments. It was also during this time that the English power vastly extended itself in India, but that will be better spoken of in a separate section. During all these wars Great Britain commonly confined herself to her position as an insular power. She 3 io THE RISE OF RUSSIA. [chap. made no attempt at winning continental dominion, as she had done in the times of the old wars with France. Her only outlying possessions in Europe were Gibraltar and Minorca ; on the other hand, though foreign powers gave help to pretenders to the British Crown, there was no serious attempt on the part of any enemy to get possession of any part of the British Islands. The true object of these wars was dominion in distant parts of the world, and the great gains and losses of England and France were not made in Europe, but in America and India. It marks quite a new state of things that this should be so. Europe had now ceased to be the only world of European nations. The great maritime powers held dominions in the East and West greater than they possessed at home ; and the colonies which England lost have grown into a great English-speaking nation in the New World. 5. France. — The long reign of Lewis the Fourteenth was followed by the reign, nearly as long, of his great-grandson Lewis the Fifteenth, who also came to the crown in his childhood, and reigned till 1774. Lewis the Fourteenth, with all that is to be said against him both as a man and as a King, was at least a ruler with a strong will, who had objects, and who largely carried those objects out. But Lewis the Fifteenth, though not without capacity, seems to have wil- fully given himself up to vice and idleness and the dominion of unworthy favourites. Yet France, as we have already seen, kept up her position as a great power throughout his reign, and she even gained some increase of territory. We have already seen how France took a leading part in all the chief wars of this time— how she was commonly opposed to Austria, except in the first war with Spain and in the Seven ~H ears' War — how, except in the first war with Spain, she was always opposed to England, and how her wars with England were mainly carried on by sea, and among the colonial posses* xv.] LORRAINE AND CORSICA. 311 sions of the two countries. In Europe France extended herself in two places during this time, namely in Lorraine i where the Duchy, which had been given to King Stanislaus for life and which had greatly nourished under him, was joined to France at his death in 1766. And, as by this time nearly the whole of Elsass had been annexed bit by bit, the lands which France had taken from the Empire since the first seizure of the Three Bishopricks now formed a large and compact territory. The other gain of France at this time was in quite another part of Europe, namely the Italian island of Corsica. This had been for a long time subject to the commonwealth of Genoa. But the Genoese government was oppressive, and the Corsicans revolted more than once. Their chief leaders were the two Paoli, father and son, of whom the second is much the better known. The Genoese called in the French to help them, and at last, in 1768, they gave up their ri^rus to France, and the French presently con- quered the island. These annexations happened during the reign of Lewis the Fifteenth, during which time the internal state of the kingdom was getting worse and worse. His grandson Lewis the Sixteenth tried to make things better a? well as he could ; but he was quite unfit for such a task, and he had in the end to suffer for the misgovernment of his forefathers, and for the despotism under which they had brought their own kingdom and so many lands which they had added to it. 6. Spain. — We have already seen that Spain during this time, perhaps because her dominions were now so much smaller, showed much more of life than she had shown during the latter part of the sixteenth century. This was shown both in a marked improvement in her government at home and in a vast advance in her European position. If her attempts to win back her lost territory failed, she was able to set up Spanish princes on more than one throne .in Italy. 312 THE RISE OF RUSSIA. [chap. In the time of Alberoni we have seen that France and Eng- land were united against Spain ; in the later wars it was the other way, and France and Spain were commonly joined to- gether against England and the allies of England on the continent. And in 1761, the two Bourbon kingdoms were still more closely united by what was called the Family Compact. Presently they both set upon Portugal, as being an ally of England. The reigning King of Portugal was Joseph, who had an able minister called the Marquess of Pombal. By the brave resistance of the Portuguese and the help of the English, the French and Spanish invaders were driven back. During this period the Jesuits were driven out both of Spain and Portugal, having been found, as they were in most countries, to be dangtrous to the civil power. 7. Italy. — During this period Italy again gained some sort of show of independence as compared with its state in the seventeenth century. It still formed a collection of distinct principalities and commonwealths, of which the common- wealths were oligarchies and the principalities despotisms, and most of the princes were members of foreign royal families. Little room was thus left for any real national feel- ing. Still the whole country was not so utterly under the power of one foreign King as it had been in the days of the Spanish dominion. On the other hand, the common- wealth of Venice, which had done such great things in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, seemed . to lose all strength and life after the loss of Peloponnesos. For a moment indeed after the Peace of Utrecht, and still more after the exchange of Sicily and Sardinia, it might seem that Italy was as completely held down by the German branch of the House of Austria as it had before been by the Spanish branch. Among the other states there were constant changes during the several wars, but things were at last settled by the Peace of 1748. One Bourbon prince from Spain, Charles % XV.] CHANGES IN ITALY. 313 who afterwards succeeded to the Crown of Spain, was settled in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, another became Duke of Parma and Piacenza, and the Emperor Francis was Grand Duke of Tuscany, where he was succeeded in 1765 by his son \ Leopold, who afterwards was Emperor. Leopold did a vast deal for his Duchy and was as good a prince as a despotic prince can be. But the only really national princes in Italy were those of the House of Savoy, who were now Kings of Sardinia, Victor A madeus the Second and Charles Emmanuel the Third. They took a part in every war, and were not very scrupulous about changing sides, but they always gained something in the end. This time, by the Peace of 1748, they gained another part of the Duchy of Milan, the rest being left to the House of Austria. In all these changes the people were handed over from one master to another without their wishes being thought of at all. The only parts of Italy where any life remained among the people at this time were Genoa and Corsica. In the war of the Austrian Succession Genoa took the side of France, so in 1746 it was occupied by the Austrians. But the people, without anv help from the oligarchical government, rose up and drove the Austrians out, a revolution which had a good deal c£ effect on the course of the Avar in those parts. And we have seen that, as the people of Genoa rose against the yoke of Austria, so the people of Corsica rose against the yoke of Genoa, till they were handed over to France. The Popes of this time, csDeciall v Penedict the Fourteenth and Clement the Fourteenth, were* mostly very good men, but they had ceased to be of any im- portance as temporal princes, and the best of them were unable to make any thorough reform in their own dominions. Clement the Fourteenth, who is perhaps better known by his family name of Ganganelli, altogether out down Che Order of the Jesuits in 1773, but it was afterwards set up a^ain. 8. Russia and Poland. — We now corat to what is really 3U THE RISE OF RUSSIA. [chap. the greatest event during this time, namely the wonderful rise of Russia. For this we must go some way back into our former period, so as to tell the story straight on. Russia was already a powerful state in its own part of the world, but it was quite cut off from any dealings with Europe in general till the reign of Peter the Great. He began to reign together with his brother Ivan in 1682, and alone in 1689. During their joint reign Poland finally gave up to Russia a great deal of the Russian territory which she had formerly held. Presently Peter began to turn his mind to naval affairs. He improved his one haven of Archangel, and presently, in 1696, he conquered Azofixom the Turks, so that he now had a haven on the Black Sea. Then he twice travelled in various coun- tries, especially Holland and England, to learn such things as might be useful for his own people. Between his two journeys came his war with Charles the Twelfth of Sweden, which in the end turned to the greatest advantage of Russia. For Peter got Livonia and the other possessions of Sweden east of the Baltic, and so he had a footing on a third sea. Within this newly-gained territory he founded his newly- made capital of Saint Petersburg, which thus supplanted Moscow, as Moscow had supplanted the earlier capitals. Later in his reign he extended his borders on the other Russian sea, the Caspian Sea, at the expense of Persia. He took the title of Emperor of all the Russias, which amounted to a claim over the Russian provinces held by Poland. In the internal state of the country he made many changes, bringing the clergy under the control of the civil power, and making improvements in many ways, though it must be re- membered that improvements of this kind, when made by the single will of a despot, do in fact only make his despotism stronger. Still Peter is entitled to the honour of having raised his country from a very low position in Europe to a very great one. His policy was carried on by his widow Catharine, XV.] CATHARINE THE SECOND. 315 who succeeded him in 1725, the Crown of Russia passing, like the old Roman Empire, sometimes by will and some' times by revolution, without any very certain rule of suc- cession. During the greater part of the eighteenth century the throne was filled by women, Anne the niece of Peter, Elisabeth his daughter, and lastly Catharine the Second, who succeeded in 1762 by the murder of her husband Peter the Third, and reigned till 1796. With some checks, Azof for instance being twice or thrice lost and won again in the wars with the Turks, Russia, notwithstanding its internal revolu- tions, went on advancing in the face of other nations. Under Catharine the Second the great conquest of Crim Tartaiy was made. Russia now got rid of the last trace of the old Tartar dominion, and she again had free access to the Euxine, as when Russian fleets threatened Constantinople in the ninth and tenth centuries. Eut the chief advance towards Western Europe was made by the share of Russia in the successive par- titions of Poland. The internal government of that country was so bad, both the King and the people being subject to a tumultuous nobility, that the state grew weaker and weaker. The last two Kings, Augustus Elector of Saxony, son of Augustus the Strong, and Stanislaus Poniatowski, a native Pole, were forced on the country by Russia, and attempts at internal reform, as being likely to make the kingdom stronger, were always checked. At last, in 1772, the Empress Catharine of Russia, Frederick the Great of Prussia, and the Empress- Queen, as Queen of Hungary — though the last very un- willingly — joined together to partition Poland, each taking certain provinces. In 1793 another partition was made by Russia and Prussia only, and in 1795 Poland was destroyed altogether as an independent nation and its remaining terri- tory was divided between its three neighbours. But it must be remembered that what was then understood by Poland took in both the old Kingdom of Poland the Duchy of Lit/iuania, 316 THE RISE OF RUSSIA. [chap. and the Russian provinces held by Poland. Russia got back most of her old territory, and she took also the greater part of Lithuania. Prussia took- West Prussia, the greater part of old Poland, and a small part of Lithuania. Austria or Hungary (whichever we are to call it) took the rest of old Polatid, and, oddly enough, some territory which had once been Russian. In the Russian provinces the mass of the people were still Russian, and they had often suffered per- secution from Poland for cleaving to the Eastern Church. This however does not justify the breach of the law of nations, and the other two powers, which divided Poland itself, had not even thus much of excuse to make. By this partition, Russia, which had hitherto stood on the confines of Europe, was brought as it were into the middle of the continent and into the thick of European affairs. 9. Northern Europe. — During this time the Scandinavian Kingdoms, especially Sweden, were of much less account than they had been in the period before it. Neither of them now took much share in the general affairs of Europe. Sweden had had more than one war with Russia, and in 1743 she had to give up the district called Carelia on the Gulf of Finland, and this time without gaining any territory to the west. The history of the country is mainly remarkable for its internal revolutions. After the changes of 1720 the government became almost wholly aristocratic ; but in 1772 the royal power, with the good will of the mass of the people, was set up again. In Denrnark meanwhile the government remained an absolute monarchy, but the country was on the whole well governed and prosperous, and its naval power especially was greatly increased. During this time too the ever, shifting Duchies of Sleswick and Holstein were at last wholly united with the Danish Crown, Holstein being held as a fief of the Empire, while Sleswick was not. xo. The Netherlands. — During this time those provinces XV.] THE NETHERLANDS. 317 of the Netherlands which had belonged to Spain were held by the House of Austria, while the Seven United Provinces remained independent ; but, like Sweden, their importance in Europe in the eighteenth century was very much less than it had been in the seventeenth. In the War of the Aus- trian Succession the United Provinces supported the Queen of Hungary, and the Austrian provinces were overrun by thf French. But when, in 1747, the Dutch territory also was invaded, a change in the internal constitution followed, by which the Prince of Orange, William the Fourth, was made hereditary Stadholder. During the war between England and France which arose out of the revolt of the American colonies, there was a short war between England and the United Provinces, but both the grounds of quarrel and the terms of peace had almost wholly to do with the colonial possessions of the two countries. Presently there were disturbances in the country and dissatisfaction with the Stadholder, William the Fifth, which gave both the King of Prussia and the Emperor Joseph the Second excuses for interfering. By the end of this time, about 1790, the United Provinces had sunk into utter insignificance, being almost wholly under the control of Prussia. In the Austrian Netlierlands also the changes made by Joseph the Second led to revolts. 1 1. The Turks.— The power of the Turks during this time had altogether ceased to be dreaded by Christian nations. The advances of Russia during this time form the greater part of the European history of Turkey, but it was not till the reign of Catharine the Second that the advantage set steadily in on the Russian side, and in the early part of the period Turkey was decidedly successful on the side of Austria. During the reign of Mahmoud the First, who reigned from 1730 to 1754, in a war which began in 1737, the Turks, by the Peace of Belgrade in 1739, recovered from Austria the city of Belgrade, and all that had been 318 THE RISE OF RUSSIA. [chap. given up by the Peace of Passarowitz. And by this treaty Russia was not to keep any fleet in the Black Sea. But in the war between Catharine the Second and Mustafiha the Third) which began in 1769, the advantages were wholly on the Russian side. The loss of territory by Turkey during the reign of Catharine was great. By the Peace of Kainardji, in 1774, tne Sultans gave up their supeno/ity over the Tartar Khans of the Crimea. The Khan was then recognized as an independent power, but the country was soon afterwards con- quered by Russia. By the next war, which was ended by the Treaty of J assy in 1792, the Turkish frontier fell back to the Dniester. But almost more important than these losses of territory was the system of interference in the internal con- cerns of the Sultan's dominions which went on from this time on the part of Russia. As the Turkish government grew weaker, and as the tribute of children was no longer levied, the Christian nations, Greeks, Slavonians, and others, which were under the Turkish yoke ; began to revolt whenever they had a chance. In so doing they were of course always en- couraged by Russia, though they seldom really gained any- thing by Russian meddling in their affairs. Still this tendency of the Chr'.stian nations to revolt, and the encouragement given to *hese revolts by Russia, all mark the beginning of a new st^te of things in Eastern Europe, and one which is going on p^ill. It should specially be noticed that by the Treaty of Kainardji Russia obtained certain rights of interference in the Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wa/iachia, which were under the superiority of the Sultans, without forming part of their immediate dominions. In these wars, Russia, which sixty years before had had no European haven except on the White Sea, was able to send fleets into the Mediterranean. She was now fully established, not only as one of the chief powers of Europe, but as the ruling power in the south-east as well as in iJae north-east. The Eastern XV.] THE ENGLISH IN INDIA. 319 Church, which had been so long kept down under Maho- metan bondage, now again begins to be of importance, as being the religion both of the greater part of the Chris- tian subjects of the Turks, and also of Russia which pro- fessed to be their defender. 12. The English power in India. — It was in the course of this period that the great English dominion in India gre%> up out of what were at first the mere mercantile settlements of the East India Company. But this was not till after a hard struggle with the French, who at one time seemed likely to gain the greatest power in the peninsula. In 1746, during the war of the Austrian Succession in Europe, Labourdonnais, the French governor of the Mauritius, seized Madras, which was kept till the end of the war. But meanwhile Dupleix* the governor of Pondicherry, the chief French settlement in India, formed great schemes of French dominion in the East, and wars went on between the French and the English in India, under cover of supporting different native princes. These wars did not even stop when France and England were at peace, in the time between the two wars of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years' War. In 1756 the English settlement at Calcutta was taken by Suraj-ad-dowla, the Nabob of Bengal, one of the princes who owed a nominal vassalage to the Great Mogul. Now it was that many Englishmen died in what was called the Black Hole. But now came the great advance of the English power under Clive and the battle of Plassy in 1757, in which the Nabob, with a vast native army and with a small body of French auxiliaries, was utterly overthrown by Clive's little army of English and of natives under English discipline. ■ This battle laid the real foundation of the English dominion in India. But the war with France still went on in Southern India with varying success till the Peace of 1763, when Pon- dicherry, which had been taken by the English, was restored 320 THE RISE OF RUSSIA. [chap. to the French. Since then it has been commonly taken and given back whenever there has been any war between Eng- land and France. But neither the French power in India nor that of any other European nation has, since the days of Clive, been able to stand up against that of England. Since that time the English dealings with India have been much like those of ancient Rome in the Mediterranean lands. One state after another has first become dependent and then has been incorporated, just as when a kingdom or common- wealth was made a Roman province. It must be remem- bered that all this time the English dominion in India was not in the hands of the English Government, but still in those of the Company. It was only in 1784 that the affairs of India were brought at all into the hands of the Home Government by the institution of the Board of Control, a body acting in the King's name, to control in certain cases the management of affairs by the Company. After Clive, the most famous name in the history of British India was that of the Governor-General Warren Hastings, who was impeached and tried before the House of Lords on various charges of oppression and misgovernment, and was acquitted after a trial which lasted many years. 13. The Independence of the United States. — Georgia was the last English colony that was founded in North America during this time. The English colonies lay wholly along the east coast ; the French possessions in Canada and Louisiana hemmed them in to the north and west, and the Spanish colony of Florida to the south. The colonies of the different European nations took a large share in the several wars of the century. In 1759 Canada was con- quered by the English troops, British and colonial ; this war was memorable for the victory and death of General Wolfe at Quebec. A large French-speaking population in Canada was thus handed over to English rule, and the French settle- xv.] INDEPENDENCE OF THE UNITED STA TES. 321 ments now no longer stood in the way of the growth of the English colonies to the west. By the same treaty of 1763 Florida was given up by Spain to England, and Louisiana was divided between England and Spain, the Mississippi being the boundary. The French were thus quite shut out of North America. Then came the attempt on the part of Great Britain to tax the colonies, their revolt, and the assistance given them by France, and afterwards by Spain. When the colonies in 1776 declared themselves independent, each colony formed an independent State, joined together only by a very lax Confederation. But when the war was over, a closer union was found necessary, and in 1789 the constitution of the United States of America, as a perfectly organized Federal commonwealth, remarkably like the constitution of the Achaian League in old times, was fully established. Each State kept its independence in its own affairs, but the Union formed one nation in all dealings with other powers. The first President of the new commonwealth was George Washington, who had been the great leader of the colonists during the war. This constitution was gradu- ally accepted by all the States. By the treaty of 1783 Florida was given back to Spain, and the late British conquest of Canada, with the colonies of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland, remained part of the British dominions. The States were thus hemmed in to the north, and for a while to the south also ; but they had free power of growth to the west, where new settlements were quickly founded and were admitted into the Union as independent States on the same terms as the first thirteen. 14. Summary. — The greatest events during this period are thus to be found in the furthest parts of the civilized world. The rise of Russia in Eastern Europe, the foundation of the English dominion in India, and the establishment of the United States in America, are the three greatest events of Y 322 THE RISE OF RUSSIA. [chap. the time. They are more than mere common conquests or acquisitions of territory. Each one of them is the real beginning of a new state of things. The English now fairly took their place as the leading people of the earth in colonization and distant dominion. The British Empire in India is the greatest example of distant dominion, as dis- tinguished from proper colonization, on the part of any Euro- pean power ; and the establishment of the United States as an independent power has given to a people of English birth and speech the means of growing to far greater extent and power than they could have done if they had remained de- pendent on the mother country. Geographical knowledge was also greatly increased by the more thorough survey of the islands of the Eastern Ocean, including the vast island, or rather continent, of Australia, which, just at the end of the period with which we are now dealing, opened another field for English colonization. France was now altogether driven out of the world of distant dominion, and the other colonizing powers, Spain, Portugal, and Holland, could at most keep what they had got. None of the changes which happened in Western Europe at this time were at all on the same scale as these, for the gains and losses of the maritime powers had been made much less in Europe than in their distant possessions. In Europe, the three Western powers, England, France, and Spain, kept nearly the same position at the end of the period which they had held at the beginning. The U~7iited Provinces and the Scandinavian kingdoms had fallen from their momentary greatness, and Italy hardly existed, except as the battle-field for other powers, and as a land in which the younger branches of ruling families might be provided for. But the House of Savoy was still pushing its way, and it gained some increase of territory by nearly every fresh treaty of peace. But in Eastern Europe the ad- vance of Russia t at once against Sweden, Poland, and Turkey, XV.] SUMMARY. 323 the way in which, from having been cooped up inland, she made her way into both the Baltic and the Mediterranean, and became a great and even threatening power, formed the greatest European change of the time. Russia, after having been thrown back for so many ages, had at last won the place which she had tried to win when she attacked Con- stantinople in the old times. Her advance is also remarkable as bringing into prominence a race and a religion which had long been kept in the background. The Slavonic nations with whom we have hitherto had most to do, the Poles, Bo- hemians, and others, belonged to the Western Church, and were more or less closely connected with the Western Empire. But with the rise of Russia, a Slavonic country which got its Christianity and civilization wholly from Constantinople, both the Slavonic race and the Eastern Church again rise into special importance. And so in some sort does the Eastern Empire also, by means of the influence which the Russian princes, as the most powerful princes of the Eastern Church, were able to exercise on those nations of their own Church, both Greek and Slavonic, which were still in bondage to the Turk^. The advance of Prussia during the same time was very important, but it was not so important as this. The change was not so sudden, and it was not so great in itself. A new German power came to the front in Germany, and it has gradually grown to be the head of Germany, much in the same way as Wessex grew in England, Castile in Spain, and France in Gaul. But its rise did not, like the rise of Russia, bring a race and a religion from the background to the front. The partition of Poland, in which Russia and Prussia had the chief share, stands pretty well by itself in history ; disputed and tributary dominions have often been divided between several claimants, but there is no other case of a great and independent country being cut up in this way among its neighbours. These political changes and the Y2 324 THE RISE OF RUSSIA. [ch. xv. rise of these new powers were very great events in themselves, and they were also closely connected with the stir in men's minds which went on during this time. During the eighteenth century men were speculating on religion, government, and society in a more daring way than they had ever speculated on so great a scale before. French and French-speaking writers, Voltaire, Rousseau, and others, were leading on men's minds towards that general crash of existing things, good and bad together, which marks the next period in so large a pait of Europe. And rulers like the Emperor Joseph, Frederick of Prussia, and Catharine of Russia helped to the same end. For, though they ruled as absolute princes, yet the great changes which they made, both good and bad, tended to un- settle men's minds, and to make them more ready to break with the past altogether. This whole period then was one of very great importance, but it was mainly in the way of preparation for what was coming. It was a time of great advance in both physical and moral science, and one of great mechanical discovery. But in most branches of art, learning, and original composition the eighteenth century was below either the times before or the times after it. It seemed as if the world needed to be stirred up by some such general crash as was now near at hand. CHAPTER XVI. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. Character of the time (i) — reign of lezvis the Sixteenth ; the States* General of 1789 ; they beco7ne the National Assembly (2) — Consti- tution of 1 790 ; abolition of monarchy ; National Convention ; execution of the King (2) — Reign of Terror; Robespierre; estab- lishment of the Directory (2)— foreign wars of the Republic ; rise of Napoleon Buonaparte (2) — annexations in Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands ; "wars in Switzerland and Egypt (2) — Buonaparte seizes the chief power as Consul ; character of his rule ; treaties of Luneville and Amiens (2, 3) — Buonaparte calls himself Emperor of the French and King of Italy (3) — conquests of Buonaparte ; his dependent Kings (3) — he invades Russia; liberation of Ger- many (3)— fall of Buonaparte ; his return from Elba; battle of Waterloo ; his final overthrow (3) — effects of the French Revolution in Germany ; abolition of the Empire ; title of Emperor of Austria; the new Kings ; the Confederation of the Rhine (4) — Buonaparte 's victories over Frussia and Azistria ; greatest extent of Buonaparte's dominion in Germany {^—formation of the Ger- man Confederation {$) — changes in Italy ; its resettlement at the Peace (6) — dealings of Buonaparte with Spain ; Joseph Buonaparte made King ; campaigns of the Duke of Wellington ; return of Fei'dinand the Seventh (7) — King John of Portugal goes to Brazil ; liberation of Portugal (7) — changes in the Netherlands ; union of the whole Netherlands into one Kingdom (8) — the French in Switzerland ; the Helvetic Republic ; the Act of Mediation; for- mation of the Swiss Confederation (9) — share of England in the general War ; bombardment of Copenhagen (10) — rebellion in Ireland ; Union of Great Britain and Ireland (10) — war with the United States ; settlement at the Peace (10) — Russian conquest of 326 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. [chap. Finland ; election of Bernadotte in Sweden ; union of Szueden and Norwiv (n) — affairs of Denmark (n) — reigns of Paul and Alexander in Russia (12) — Peace of Tilsit ; wars with Sweden, Turkey, and Persia (12) — French invasion of Russia ; Kingdom of Poland united with Russia (12) — decay of the Turkish Empire ; independence of Servia, Egypt, and other provinces ; Turkish wars with France and Rtissia ; accession of Mahmoud (13) — English conquests in India ; colonization of Australia (14) — revolutions of Hayti (14) — growth of the United States ; purchase of Louisiana ; abolition of slavery in the Northern Stales (15) — Summary (16). 1. Character of the Time. — We have now come, we may almost say, to our own times, to times which old people still living can remember. And these times are times so full of matter that it would be vain to try to do more here than to point out the general effect which the events which then hap- pened had on the relations of the states of Europe to one another. It was a time which saw such an upsetting of the existing state of things everywhere as had never happened before in so short a space of time. The centre of every- thing during this time is France j and in France at this time men did what had never been done before ; that is, they went on the fixed principle of changing everything, whether it were good or bad, wherever their power reached, both in their own country and elsewhere. There was a general change of everything, often out of a mere love of change, and there was in particular a silly way of imitating old Greek and Roman names and ways, even when they were nothing to the purpose. But in this general crash the evi] of the older times was largely swept away as well as the good, and means were at least given for a better state of things to begin in our own time. 2. The French Republic. — The events of the French Revolution must be told in the special History of France. It is enough to say here that Leivis the Sixteenth, the grandson 327 xvi.] THE FRENCH REPUBLIC. of Lewis the Fifteenth, who succeeded him in 1774, had to pay the penalty of the misgovernment of so many Kings who had gone before him, and above all of the last two. Now that there was such a spirit of thought and speculation about in the world, men could no longer bear the abuses of the old French system of government, the absolute power of the King and the monstrous privileges of the nobles and clergy. The finances of the country too were in utter disorder, and generally there was need of reform in everything. Lewis the Sixteenth, an honest and well-intentioned man, but not strong enough for the place in which he found himself, tried hard to make things better, though perhaps not always in the wisest way. At last, in 1789, the States-General were called to- gether, which had not met since 16 14. They were presently changed into a National Assembly, which made the greatest changes in everything, abolishing all the old privileges, and giving all things as it were a fresh start. Among other things they wiped out the old provinces, so many of which had once been independent states, and divided the whole country into departments, called in a new-fashioned way after rivers and mountains. The small part of Elsass which remained independent, and the territories of Venaissin and Avignon in the old Kingdom of Burgundy, which belonged to the Popes, were now finally swallowed up b> France. Then came a time of great confusion and rapid changes. In 1790 a new constitution was made, by which the King's power was made very small indeed, but the old title of King of the French was revived. In 1792 monarchy was abolished, and France became a Republic under the National Convention; in the next year the King was beheaded, and now religion and everything else was swept away. Now came the Reign of Terror j one party after another as it rose to power put its enemies to death. Among the men who had the chief hand in this general destruction was the famous 328 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. [chap. Robespierre. He was a native of Arras in Artois, but, owing to the conquests of Lewis the Fourteenth in the Netherlands, his country was now French. But before long a time of rather more quiet began under the Directory. Meanwhile France was at war with many of the powers of Europe ; for Kings began to be afraid of the example of France spreading. In 1790 war began with the Emperor and the King of Prussia, and, directly after the King's execution in 1793, war was declared against England also. Thus began the long Wars of the French Revolution, in which almost every part of Europe took a part at one time or another, and which went on, with some stoppages, till 181 5. The first part of the war may be looked on as lasting till 1797. It went on in the Austrian Netherlands, along the Rhine, and in Italy, and it was in the Italian part of the war that Napoleon Buonaparte began to make himself famous. He too, like Robespierre, was a Frenchman only through the annexations of France, being an Italian of Corsica who had to learn the French language. His victories in Italy forced the Emperor Francis to give up the Austrian Netherlands to France, and Piedmont and Savoy were also annexed. This was the way in which things went on during the whole time ; sometimes territories were actually added to France ; sometimes they were made into separate states, nominal republics, which were altogether dependent on France. But for the old republics of Europe, whether aristocratic or democratic, no more respect was shown than for Popes or Kings. As the Emperor had given up so large a territory to France, to get something in exchange, he joined the French in destroying the ancient commonwealth of Venice, and they divided its dominions between them. France was wishing to get a power in the east of Europe, and therefore took the Ionia7i Islands as part of her share. Then, in 1798, Buonaparte planned an expedition to Egypt, and, to get money, the Directory attacked Switzerland, be- xvi.] RISE OF BUONAPARTE. 329 cause Bern was known to have a large treasure. Presently, in 1799, another war began against the Emperor, who was helped by Russia; this war chiefly went on in Switzerland. At home the Directory greatly mismanaged things, and, when Buonaparte came back the same year, he was easily able to upset it and to take all power into his own hands. An old Greek would have said that he made himself Tyrant; but, after the fashion of calling everything by Roman names, he first called himself Consul and then Emperor j he had a Senate and what not, being in truth a still more absolute ruler than ever Lewis the Fourteenth had been. 3. Napoleon Buonaparte. — Buonaparte was now master of France, and he came nearer to being m .3ter of Europe than any other one man had done before. For fifteen years the whole continent was in confusion, Kings and kingdoms being set up and put down again pretty much as it pleased him. But in France itself, though his rule was altogether despotic, and though in the end he made himself hateful by draining all the resources of the country for his endless wars, there can be no doubt that the land gained by having a time of quiet after the disorders of the Revolution. He restored the Christian religion, and, like Justinian, put out a code of laws for his dominions. During the time when he called himself Consul, peace was made with the Empire at Luneville in 1801, and with England at Amiens in 1802. By the former peace all Germany left of the Rhine was given up to France. The Rhine was in the Roman times the boundary between independent Germany and the Roman province of Gaul; but the modern kingdom of France had never come anywhere near the Rhine till the annexations began in Elsass. But now France got the Rhine frontier from Basel to its mouth, or we might say, from its source to its mouth ; for Switzerland was now merely a French dependency. In 1804 Buonaparte called himself 33Q THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. [chap. Emperor of the French, and he crowned himself at Paris, sending for the Pope to anoint him. In this his object was to give himself out as the successor of Charles the Great, not merely as the successor of any of the local Kings of France. For it was of course part of his plan that men should look, as Frenchmen commonly do, on the great German Emperor as a Frenchman. It shows how tho- roughly the old notion of the Empire had died out, when such a pretence could have any effect on men's minds. Since Buonaparte's time the title of Emperor, which once meant so much, has ceased to have any particular meaning. Everybody that chooses now calls himself an Emperor ; the title has even been borne by several adventurers in Mexico and the West Indies. But, besides calling him- self Emperor of the French, Buonaparte made part of Northern Italy into a Kingdom, and called himself King of Italy in imitation of the old Emperors. No King of Italy had been crowned since the Emperor Charles the Fifth was crowned at Bologna, but now Buonaparte was crowned again the next year at Milan as King of Italy. Before he had taken up these titles, he was again at war with England, and he planned an invasion of the island, which he never carried out. For the power of France by sea was broken by the great naval battle of Trafalgar against the English ; from this time Buonaparte did much as he pleased by land, but the smallest arm of the sea stopped him everywhere. Meanwhile his great land campaigns spread with little stoppage over the years from 1805 to 1809. He now brought the greater part of Western Europe more or less under his power. He set up his brothers and other de- pendents as Kings of Spain, Naples, Holland, and else- where, and he moved them from one kingdom to another, or joined their dominions on to France, just as he thought good. He cut short the dominions both of Prussia and xvi.] OVERTHROW OF BUONAPARTE. 331 Austria, and made himself really master of the rest of Germany, joining what he pleased to France, and calling nimself Protector of the rest. In 181 1 his power stood at its height. What he called the French Empire took in France with all its old conquests, Germany west of the Rhine, the Netherlands and the United Provinces, and North-west Germany also, so that the French frontier took in Hamburg and Lubeck, and reached to the Baltic. At the other end it took in all Western Italy, including Rome ; the remainder belonged to the Kingdom of Italy, of which Buonaparte called himself King. Beyond the Ha- driatic a large territory, made up of the former possessions of Austria and Venice and the Republic of Ragusa, was also part of the French Empire. The Kingdom of Naples was held by his brother-in-law Murat, but Sicily and Sar- dinia were still held by their own Kings, because they were islands, and the British fleet could help them. Demtiark was his all)', and Spain was under his brother. But presently de- liverance began to come from two quarters. In 1812 Buona- pai te thought good to invade Russia, but the climate fought against him as well as the people, and he had to come back the next year, for the first time, utterly discomfited. The next year, 1813, Germany began to rise against him, rather by a common impulse of the people than by any act of the govern- ments. But Austria, Prussia, Sweden, and most of the smaller German states, gradually joined against him. Germany was now set free in the great battle of Leipzig. Meanwhile, ever since 1808, when Joseph Buonaparte had been sent to be King of Spain, the British troops had been engaged in the deliverance of the peninsular kingdoms. Now it was that the Duke of Wellington won his great victories over several of Buonaparte's best generals. In 18 14 the Allies entered France on both sides, the English from the south, the other powers from the east Several battles were fought at both 332 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. [chap. ends of the country. At last Paris was taken, Buonaparte abdicated, and he was allowed to hold the little island oiElba, keeping the title of Emperor. The French people were now quite weary of him, and they gladly welcomed the restora- tion of the old royal family in the person of the last King's brother, who called himself Lewis the Eighteenth. But in the next year, 1815, Buonaparte came back ; he was received by the army, and reigned again for a few months, till the Allies again gathered their forces, and he was over- thrown for ever by the English and Prussians at Waterloo. He now abdicated again, but this time he was not trusted to remain anywhere in Europe, but was kept in ward for the rest of his days in the island of Saint Hele7ia, a British possession in the Atlantic between Africa and America. The wars of the French Revolution were now over. By a series of treaties made at Paris and Vienna, the boundaries of the different states of Europe were settled afresh, and France had to give up the conquests which she had made during the republic and in the time of Buonaparte. The boundaries of the restored kingdom did not greatly differ from what they had been before the wars of the Revolution began. 4. The Fall of the Empire. — The part of Europe which, next to France itself, was most affected by the French Revolu- tion was Germany. The changes in Italy were in themselves equally great, but Italy had already been partitioned out over and over again, while Germany had never before fallen under a foreign dominion. It was during this time that the old state of things, and the old ideas which had lasted so long, came finally to an end. The Roman Empire and the Kingdo?7i of Germany were now abolished even in name. First of all, as we have seen, the Austrian Netherlands, which were now pretty well separated from the Empire, and all Germany west of the Rhine, including the three great Archbishop- ricks of Mainz, Koln, and Trier, and the «»ld royal city of XVI.] THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE. 333 Aachen, were all added to France. Meanwhile the princes who lost their dominions by the Peace of Luneville were allowed to make up for it at the cost of the bishopricks and free cities east of the Rhine, and a new electorate of Hcssen-Cassel was made, whose Elector, as it turned out, never had any one to elect. In 1804, as soon as Buonaparte began to call himself Emperor of the French, Francis the Second, being Emperor-elect of the Romans and King of Germany, began to call himself Hereditary Emperor of Austria, whatever that meant. And in 1805, after the war had begun again and after the Austrians and Russians had lost the great battle of Austerliiz, the Emperor made a treaty with Buonaparte at Pressburg, which is drawn up between the Emperor of Germany and Austria and the Emperor of the French and King of Italy. It was time that the Empire should come to an end when its chief had in this way forgotten who he was. And so it happened within two years. Many of the German princes had by this time joined Buonaparte. They declared themselves indepen- dent of the Empire, and they began to call themselves by higher titles, King of Bavaria, Kitig of Wurttembcrg, and so forth. They then made themselves into the Confedera- tion of the Rhine, which was put under the protection of Buonaparte, and they added to their dominions such of the remaining free cities and smaller principalities as they thought good. This was in 1806, and in the same year the Emperor Francis formally resigned the Empire altogether, and no Roman Emperor has since been chosen Thus the old Kingdom of Germany, which had gone on ever since the division of the dominions of Charles the Great, and the Roman Empire, which had gone on in one shape or another ever since Augustus Caesar, came at last to an end. The Kingdom of Burgundy was now wholly forgotten, and all of it was now either annexed to France or, being part of 334 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. [chap. Switzerland, was quite under French influence. As for the third kingdom, that of Italy, we have seen that Buonaparte called himself by its name, though by the Treaty of Press- burg he promised that France and Italy should not be joined again after his time. Thus all traces of the old state of things passed away. But the former Emperor Francis still went on calling himself Emperor of Austria, and his suc- cessors in the Kingdom of Hungary, the Archduchy of Austria, and his other hereditary dominions, have gone on doing so ever since. 5. The Settlement of Germany. — The union of the Ger- man States, which had been so lax ever since the Peace of Westphalia, now quite passed away. Buonaparte had now to deal with the separate states which had not submitted to him. Prussia had made a separate peace long before, and now, in 1 806, the King Frederick William the Third made a league with France by which he obtained the Electorate of Hanover y which belonged to the King of Great Britain. But the yoke of the French alliance was too hard to bear, and war broke out between France and Prussia, in which Prussia was sup- ported by Saxony. Now came the great battle of Jena, in which the Prussians and their allies were utterly defeated. Saxony now gave way, and the Elector was made King and joined the Confederation of the Rhine. In the next year Prussia was cut short at the Peace of Tilsit; her western dominions and some- other districts were made into a Kingdom of Westphalia, 01 which Buonaparte made his brother Jerome King, while the Polish possessions of Prussia, except West Prussia, were made into a Grand Duchy of Warsaw, which was given to the new King of Saxony. Austria meanwhile, having again ventured on war in 1809, was overthrown at Wagram, and had to yield her south-western dominions to France and Bavaria, being thus quite cut off from Italy and the Hadriatic. Lastly, North- XYI.] THE GERMAN CONFEDERA TION 335 western Germany, including the free cities of Liibeck, Bremen, and Hamburg, was altogether joined on to France. To crown all, the German states were made to send men to help in Buonaparte's attack on Russia. Then, in 181 3, came the uprising of the German people, which the German governments had to join one after another. And lastly, in 1 81 5, at the Congress of Vienna the state of Germany was finally settled as it stayed till a few years back. There was no longer an Emperor or a King of Germany, but the German princes and free cities, of which last four only, Liibeck, Bremen, Hamburg, and Frankfurt, were left, formed themselves by a lax Federal tie into the German Confedera- tion. Many of the small States were swallowed up, and the boundaries of all were settled afresh. And it should be marked that several of the chief princes who were members of the Confederation joined it for parts of their dominions, but not for all. Francis of Austria, who had been Emperor, and his successors, were to be Presidents of the Confedera- tion; they joined it for the Kingdom of Bohemia, the Arch- duchy of Austria, the County of Tyrol, &c, but not for the Kingdom of Hungary or their other dominions out of Germany. So the greater part of the Prussian dominions were within the Confederation, but the Kingdom of Prussia itself, that is East Prussia and the Polish provinces, lay out of it. So too the Kings of Great Britain, Denmark, and the Netherlands — a new kingdom to be presently spoken of — were mem- bers of the Confederation for Hanover (which was now called a kingdom), Holstein and Lauenburg, and Liizelburg severally. The German princes whom Buonaparte had set up as Kings, those of Bavaria, Wiirttemberg, and Saxony, kept their titles ; but as the King of Saxony had stuck to Buonaparte as long as he could, a large part of his kingdom was added to Prussia. All the princes promised free consti- tutions to their people, but most of them forgot to give them. 336 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. [chap, 6. Italy. — Italy was as much tossed to and fro during these times as Germany. It is hardly worth while to mention all the little commonwealths and principalities which were set up and put down. The first conquests from Austria and Venice were made into the Cisalpine Republic, which was afterwards changed into Buonaparte's Kingdom of Italy. A large part, at last taking in Rome itself, was, after many shiftings, a Ligurian Republic, a Kingdom of Etruria, and what not, joined on to France, and the Pope, Pius the Seventh, was got into Buonaparte's power. In the South, first Buonaparte's brother Joseph and then his brother-in- law Murat held the Ki7igdom of Naples. When things were settled in 1815, the princes who had lost their dominions came back again. The King of the Two Sicilies, who had all along kept the island, got back the continental kingdom also. So the King of Sardinia got back Piedmont and Savoy, and the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and the lesser principalities were set up agajn, and the Pope again held Rome and his old temporal dominions. But the common- wealths were not set up again. Lucca became a Duchy ; Genoa was joined on to Piedmont, and the Duchy of Milan and the Venetian dominions, which had changed their names so often, were made into the Kingdom of Lombardy ana Venice, and joined on to Austria. Only little San Marino kept its freedom. Thus Germany and Italy both remained disunited, cut up among a number of absolute princes. But there was this difference between them : the German princes were Germans, and the country had a certain unity, however lax, in the Confederation. But Italy was altogether cut up. A large part was held by Austria and by the Pope, and the other Kings and Dukes were not real Italian princes, but all looked to Austria as their chief. Piedmont indeed was held by a native prince, but its government still was despotic. This was the third time — under Charles the Fifth, under XVI.] ITALY, SPAIN, ETC. 337 Charles the Sixth, and again under Francis the Second — that the House of Austria had the chief power in the Italian peninsula. 7. Spain and Portugal. — Under Charles the Third, who had been King of the Two Sicilies, Spain went on greatly recovering itself, as it had done before under Philip the Fifth. In the reign of Charles the Fourth, under the administration of Godoy, when the French Revolution began, Spain at first acted against France ; but afterwards, in 1796, she joined France against England and Portugal, as she did again when war broke forth once more in 1 803. Buonaparte presently began to meddle in Spanish affairs, and he caused the King to abdicate in 1807. He then moved his brother Joseph from Naples to Spain, but the patriotic Spaniards proclaimed Ferdinand the Seventh, the son of the late King, though he was actually in Buonaparte's hands. Then came the great struggle in which the French were finally driven out of the Peninsula by the English victories. In 18 14 the lawful King Ferdinand came back, but he overthrew the free constitution which had been made during his captivity, and reigned as an absolute monarch. Meanwhile Poi'tugal, the old ally of England, was overrun by the French, and John the Sixth, the King or rather Regent for his mother Maria, left Portugal for the great Portuguese colony of Brazil, where he went on reign- ing, and did not return to Portugal till after the peace. The Portuguese at home meanwhile shared in the war of inde- pendence along with the English and Spaniards. 8. The Netherlands. — The Austrian Netherlands, as we have seen, were conquered and joined to France, with which they remained united till the Peace. The Seven United Provinces were in 1795 turned into a dependent common- wealth called the Bat avian Republic, which in 1806 Mas turned into a kingdom for Buonaparte's brother Lewis. But in 1 8 10 Buonaparte took his brother away, and joined z 338 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. [chap. Holland and the other provinces to France. At the Peace the whole Netherlands, except the districts which had been conquered by Lewis the Fourteenth, which France was allowed to keep, were formed into a Kingdom of the Netherlands, under William Prince of Orange, who also held the Grand Duchy of Luzelburg or Luxemburg within the German Confederation. 9. Switzerland. — The old state of things in Switze?'land^ the Confederation of the Thirteen Cantons surrounded by their allied and subject states, went on till 1798, when the French came to seize the treasure at Bern. This had the good effect of releasing the Romance-speaking people of Vaud from the yoke of Bern, but the French went on to invade the democratic cantons also. They now set up what they called the Helvetic Republic, which took in the old cantons and most of their allies and subjects. But they were no longer to be a Federal state in which each member is independent in its internal affairs ; the Helvetic Republic was a single commonwealth in which the cantons were no more than departments. Geneva and some other of the allied districts were added to France, some now, and some afterwards in Buonaparte's time. But, as the new Republic did not suit the Swiss people, who were used to a Federal constitution, Buonaparte in 1803, by the Act oj Mediation, gave them a better constitution, in which the old cantons and several new ones were joined together as separate states, but on equal terms, without the old distinc- tions of confederates, allies, and subjects. Now for the first time there were independent Romance-speaking cantons as distinguished from allies and subjects. Buonaparte kept Switzerland altogether dependent on France, but on the whole he treated it somewhat better than he did other countries. At the peace, Geneva and the other districts which had been joined on to France were set free, and the Siviss Con* xvi.] GREAT BRITAIN. 339 federation of twenty-two cantons was formed, though with very lax union among themselves. The neutrality of the Confederation was acknowledged, as was also that of the northern part of Savoy, which had once belonged to Bern. This, with the rest of Savoy, went back to the King of Sardinia, and it was not to be given away to any power except Switzerland. 10. Great Britain and Ireland. — The external history of this nation chiefly consists of the long war with France, with the short stoppage after the Peace of Afniens. England was the one enemy whom Buonaparte could never cajole or win over, as, at one time or another, he did all the powers of the Continent. She was the object of his special hatred, and he did all that he could to ruin her trade, by forbidding, when he was at the height of his power after the Peace of Tilsit, all dealings between England and any continental state. But England kept her power by sea, and, except the great campaigns of the Duke of Wellington in Spain and Portugal, it was by sea that the English share in the war was carried on. The great victories of Nelson, at the mouth of the Nile in 1798 and at T?'afalgar in 1805, altogether broke the naval power of France, and of Spain, which at Trafalgar was joined with France. Equally successful, but less righteous, were the two attacks on Denmark in 1801 and 1806, in which latter Copenhagen was bombarded. Meanwhile there was a rebellion in Ireland in 1798, the suppression of which was followed by the union of the Kingdom and Parliament of Ireland With that of Great Britain in 1800, when the title of King of France, which had been borne ever since the time of Edward the Third, was at last dropped. Towards the end of the great war with France there was unhappily a war with the United States- from 181 3 to 181 5. By the final Peace England, as usual, kept large distant conquests, but she gained no territory in Europe, except the island of Malta, Z 2 340 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. [chap. which, up to the French Revolution, had belonged to the Knights of Saint John, and that of the Frisian island of Heligoland, a possession of Demnark. The Ionian Islands also, part of the old Venetian dominion in Greece, were made into a Republic, under a protectorate on the part of England which did not differ much from actual sovereignty. n. The Scandinavian Kingdoms. — At the beginning of the French Revolution the reigning King of Sweden, Gusta- vus the Third, was engaged in a war with Russia, which led to no change on either side. He also increased the royal power, but he was murdered in 1792. The next King, Gusta- mis the Fourth, was more zealous than anybody else against Buonaparte and the French, but he had no means of doing any great things, and he contrived to offend all other powers and his own subjects as well. Russia now conquered all Finland, and in 1809 the King was deposed and the free con- stitution was restored, without either the despotism or the oligarchy which had of late prevailed by turns. As the new King, Charles the Thirteenth, had no children, the Swedes chose Bernadotte, one of Buonaparte's generals, to be Crown Prince and to succeed to the kingdom at his death. In 18 13 Bernadotte joined in the war of liberation in Germany, and led the Swedish troops against his old master. As Sweden had taken the part of the Allies, while Denmark had been on the side of France, it was settled at the peace that Nor- way, which had all this time been joined to Denmark, should be joined to Sweden, to make up for the loss of Finland, } which was kept by Russia. But the Norwegians withstood I this arrangement; they chose a Danish prince for their King, and they made themselves the freest constitution of any state in the world that has a King at all. They were so far conquered that they had to accept the union with Sweden, but they were joined only as a perfectly indepen- dent kingdom, keeping its new constitution. Meanwhil* xvi.] RUSSIA AND POLAND. 341 Denmark still remained an absolute monarchy. When the Empire came to an end, Denmark incorporated its German duchy of Holstein with the kingdom. At the Peace Den- mark obtained the small piece of Pomcrania which was held by Sweden ; but this was presently given up to Prussia in exchange for the Duchy of Laue?iburg, and the King of Denmark became a member of the German Confederation for the Duchies of Holstein and Lauenburg. 12. Russia and Poland. — After the death of Catharine the Second in 1796, her son Paul succeeded. In his time the Russian armies acted with those of Austria in the cam- paigns of Italy and Switzerland, but Paul soon afterwards made a separate peace with Buonaparte. Paul seems to have been quite mad, and he was murdered in 1801. His son Alexander remained at peace with France till 1805, when he again joined with Austria, but, after the overthrow of both Austria and Prussia, he made peace with Buonaparte at Tilsit, and a small part of the Lithuanian possessions of Prussia was added to Russia. Alexander and Buonaparte seemed to have pretty well agreed to divide Europe between them, as if they were to be the Eastern and Westcr?i Emperors. Russia and France remained at peace for six years, during which time Finland was conquered from Sweden and a war was waged with the Turks, in which the Russian frontier was advanced to the Danube, much as, long before, the French frontier had reached the Rhine. By another war which went on at the same time with Persia, Russia gained a large territory in the land between the Euxine and Caspian Seas. At last, in 1812, came the French inva- sion of Russia, which led to the fall of Buonaparte, and Russia took a leading part in the last wars in which he was overthrown. At the general Peace the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, which Buonaparte had formed out of the Polish provinces of Prussia, and to which the Polish territory 342 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. [chap. gained by Austria at the last partition had been added, was taken away from the King of Saxony. The Grand Dtuhy of Posen was given back to Prussia. The rest was made into a Kingdom of Poland, with a constitution of its own, which was united with Russia as a separate state, like Sweden and Norway, or like Great Britain and Ireland just before the union. The city of Cracow, the old capital of Poland, which stood at the meeting of the dominions of the three powers, Russia, Prussia, and Austria, was made into a separate commonwealth, under the protec- tion of all of them. The new Kingdom of Poland did not differ very much in extent from the old kingdom before its union with Lithuania and its conquests from Prussia. It did not take in all that had belonged to the old Poland, but it took in some other lands which had not been part of it. 13. The Turks. — Sultan Selim the Third came to the throne in 1789, while Turkey was engaged in the war with Russia and Austria which was ended by the Peace of Jassy. He had to struggle against enemies on every side. The Turkish power had now got very weak, and many of the subject nations, Christian and Mahometan, were seeking for independence. Many of the distant Pashas in .Europe and Asia seemed likely to set up for themselves, just as happened at the breaking up of the Caliphate and of the Mogul Empire. Especially the Christians of Servia revolted in 1806 under Czemi George (that is, Black George). Servia was conquered again in 18 13, but in 181 5 it again revolted under Milosh Obrenowitz, and it was after a while acknowledged as a separate, though in some degree dependent, state, as it still remains. And in Czemagora or Monte7iegro, the srnall moun- tain land on the borders of the old Turkish and Venetian possessions, the Christians had never submitted, and they kept up a constant warfare with the Turks. So did the Christian Suliots in Epeiros and their Mahometan neighbour xvi.] RUSSIA AND TURKEY. 343 AH Pasha of Joannina ; and the Ma?nelukes in Egypt were practically independent. In the midst of all this came the successive French and Russian wars, and it was of course the interest of Russia to stir up discontent everywhere among the subject nations, and especially to put herself forward as the protector of all who belonged to the Eastern Church. In the war with France both Russia and England naturally took the Turkish side, and it was by English help that the French were driven out of Syria and Egypt. In the war with Russia, equally naturally as things stood then, England was on the Russian and France on the Turkish side. But Selim, who was a reformer, was deposed in 1807 and pre- sently murdered, and then came Mahmoud the Second, whose reign lasted till 1839, taking in great events which will come in the next chapter. 14. British Possessions abroad. — It was during this time that the English dominion was practically spread over nearly all India. During the administrations of the Marquess Com- wallis and the Marquess Wellesley as Governors-General, the greater part of the country was either annexed to the English dominions or brought wholly under British influence. In the course of the war large conquests were also made among the French, Dutch, and Spanish possessions, and by these means England acquired Ceylon, the great colony of the Cape of Good Hope, the Mauritius or Isle of France, several of the West India islands, and a small territory in South America. Colonization was also beginning in Austra~ lia and in the neighbouring island of Tasmania or Van Diemerts Land. Meanwhile we may mention, though it did not happen in any British colony, that in the island of Saint Domingo, Hispaniola, or Hayti, which, at the beginning of the Revolution, was held partly by France and partly by Spain, the negroes in both parts set up for themselves. A number of revolutions followed in imitation of those in 344 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. [chap. Europe ; sometimes republics were set up, while sometimes a successful negro called himself Emperor in Hayti, just as Buonaparte did in France. 15. The United States. — The new Constitution of the United States came into force in the same year that the French Revolution began, and for about sixty years a remark- able succession of able rulers filled the office of President. The republic grew and prospered, and a great number of new States arose, especially in the lands to the West. But one territory was added in a different way. Spain had now given up her possessions in Louisiana to France, and in 1803 the whole of the French possessions in North America were bought by the United States. The States thus gained, not only the territory which forms the present State of Louisiana, but a claim to all the lands beyond the Missis- sippi lying south of the British and north of the Spanish settlements. Out of this territory a great number of new States have gradually been made. During this time too negro slavery was done away with in the Northern States of the Union, but not in the Southern. Out of this dif- ference mainly came the disputes between the Northern and Southern States which have been so important in late years. 16. Summary. — Thus, in the space of about five-and-twenty years, Europe was more changed than it had ever been before in the same space of time. The great wonder of these times was that, in France itself and in all the countries which were brought altogether under French influence, old ideas and old institutions were utterly swept away in a way that never happened at any other time. It followed of course that much that was good and much that was bad perished together. France itself since the Revolution has never had a govern- ment of any kind that could last for any time. But, on the other hand, none of the ever-shifting French governments xvi.] SUMMARY. 345 have brought in anything like the abuses and oppressions of * the old monarchy. So in other countries, where the old governments went on or where the kings ciini b^ck again at the general peace, though the restored princes often forgot their promises and went on reigning as despots, yet men in general had learned lessons which they never forgot, and which bore fruit afterwards. Even where there was no great political change, there was a wide social change ; and we may say generally that, since the French Revolution, there has been no part of Europe where the people have been so utterly down-trodden as they were in many parts before. Thus serfage, answering to villainage in the old times in England, has been abolished wherever it still went on, though in Russia this has been only done quite lately by the present Emperor. And, though no man ever did more than both Buonaparte himself and the Allies who overthrew him in parting out nations to this and that ruler without asking their leave, yet during all this time ideas were grow- ing up which have taught men that such things should not be done. So again, though the union both of Germany and of Italy was not to happen at once, yet the wars of Buona- parte led men in both countries in different ways to feel more strongly than they had ever felt before that all Ger- mans and all Italians were really countrymen, and that they ought to be more closely joined together. As for particular changes, France came out at the end of the war with nearly the same boundaries and under the same dynasty which she had at the beginning, but with her internal state utterly changed. England had raised her own position in Europe to the highest pitch ; her European territory had been in- creased only by a small island or two, but she had vastly increased her colonial dominions. Germany had changed in everything ; the Empire was gone, and, after the time of confusion, a lax Confederation had at last arisen, in which 346 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. [ch. xvi, it could not fail that the two great states of Austria and Prussia would strive for the mastery. Italy was still cut up into a crowd of small states ; Austria held a large part of Northern Italy, and had a commanding influence every- where. Spain had got back her old dynasty. Portugal might be said to have become a dependency of Brazil^ instead of Brazil being a dependency of Portugal; this is the only case of a state of the Old World being governed from the New. Switzerland had got rid of the old distinc- tions, and a Confederation on equal terms had been made. The whole of the Netherlands, less happily, were joined into a single kingdom. Sweden finally withdrew from the lands east and south of the Baltic, but the whole of the greater Scandinavian peninsula came under one ruler, though its two parts remained distinct kingdoms, Norway keeping her new and very free constitution. Russia had grown at all points, and Poland had been restored in a kind of way, though not a way at all likely to last. In the New World the great English-speaking commonwealth was fast advanc- ing. And this time, as commonly happens in times of great general stir, was a time of great inventions and of great writers in various ways. Germany above all now thoroughly awoke, and both her learned men and her original writers begaa to take the place which they have ever since kept CHAPTER XVII. THE REUNION OF GERMANY AND ITALY. Character of the present time ; stronger feeling of nationality ; change in the nature of wars ( I ) — revolutions in France ; reign of Lewis the Eighteenth ; illegal acts and deposition of Charles the Tenth ; Revolution of July (2) — reign of Louis-Philippe ; attempts of Louis-Napoleon Buonaparte (2) — Revolution of February ; Louis- Philippe driven out; the second Republic ; administration of Cavaignac (2) — Louis- Napoleon Buonaparte chosen President ; he seizes absolute power and calls himself Emperor (2) — his wars with Russia and Austria ; Savoy and Nizza taken from Ltaly (3) — he attacks Prussia ; Prussia supported by all Germany ; victories of tke Germans ; Buonaparte taken prisoner ; Paris taken ; Elsass recovered by Germany (3) — the third Republic ; the Commune of Paris ; administration of M. Thiers (3) — steps towards the union of Germany ; the Zollverein— revolutions of \%\% (4) — war between Prussia and Austria ; formation of the North-German Confedera' tion ; Austria shut out of Ger?nany (4) — union of Germany against France; the southern stales join the Confederation ; King William chosen Emperor (4) — disturbances in Ltaly ; dominion of Austria ; reign of Charles-Albert in Sardinia (5) — reign of Pius the Ninth; revolutions and wars of 1 848 ; the new republic suppressed {$) — constitutional reign of Victor- Emmanuel in Sardinia ; his second •war with Austria; help given by France ; French attempts to divide Italy (5, 6) — the Ltalian States join Sardinia ; exploits of Gari- baldi ; Victor- Emmanuel chosen King of Italy ; the Pope kept at Rome by the French (6) — Ltaly joins Prussia against Austria; re- covery of Venice (6) — recovery of Rome (6) — reign of Ferdinand tht Fifth of Hungary ; revolutions in Hungary and Austria ; Hu>igary conquered by Russian help (7) — reforms after the war with Prussia, 348 REUNION OF GERMANY AND ITALY. [chap. Francis Joseph King of Hungary (7) — weakness of the Turks ; Greek War of Independence ; battle of Navarino ; kingdom oj Greece (8) — wars between Turkey and Russia ; independence oj Egypt (9) — Crimean War ; affairs of the Danubian Principalities (9) — union of Russia and Poland ; revolts of the Poles under Nicholas and Alexander the Second ; serfage abolished ; suppres- sion of the republic of Cracow (10) — reign of Ferdinand the Seventh in Spain; revolts on behalf of the Constitution ; intervention of France (11) — civil war on the, death of Ferdinand ; reign and de- position of Isabel ; election of Amadeus of Italy (11) — revolutions and civil wars of Portugal ; reign of Donna Maria (11) — separa- tion of Belgium and the Netherlands ; affairs of Luxeyjiburg (12) — changes of government in the Swiss Cantons ; war of the Catholic and Protestant Cantons ; establishment of the Federal Constitution (13) — Denmark becomes a constitutional state ; dispnites between Denmark and the Duchies ; Sleswick and Holstein joined to Prussia (14) — affairs of Sweden and Norzvay ; reforms in Sweden (15) — affairs of Great Britain; less interference in continental affairs than before ; extension and increased independence of the British Colonies; abolition of slavery (16) — wars and mutiny in India ; the govcrm?ient transferred front the Company to the Croivn (16)— firm union of all Great Britain; troubles in Ireland ; measures for its benefit (16) — revolt of the Spanish colonies in America; revolutions of Mexico (17) — separation of Brazil from Portugal (18)— advance of the United States ; secession and re- conquest of the Sotithern States ; abolition of slavery (19) — Sum- mary (20). I. Character of the Time. — We have now come altogether to our own times, and there is so much to tell that we must try to cut our tale very short indeed. A long time of peace has been followed by a time full of wars. And there is much to mark in these latest wars. Military science has greatly advanced, and the means of getting about have been greatly improved. It has therefore followed that wars have been, on the one hand, carried on with much greater armies, but that, on the other hand, they have been brought to an end in a XVII.] CHARACTER OF THE TIME. 349 much shorter time than formerly. There has been no Thirty Years' War, not even a Seven Years' War, in our time. There has also been a much stronger feeling of nationality than there ever was before. Some nonsense has been talked about this matter, because it is not always easy to say what makes a nation. For, though language proves more than any other one test, it will not always do by itself. Thus in Switzer- land four languages are spoken : yet the Swiss certainly make one nation. But, when men thoroughly feel them- selves to be one nation, when they wish to come together as such and to get rid of the dominion of foreigners, it is clearly right that they should be able to do so. Now this is what men have been striving to do in different parts of Europe in our own time more than they ever did before : and this feeling has been shown above all things in the steps that have been taken for the joining together of the great nations of Germany and Italy, which had been so long split up into a number of small states. This change is the greatest event of our times ; but it will perhaps be better understood if we first run through the changes that have happened in France, as they have had so much to do with the history of the other countries, but we must tell the tale in as few words as may be. 2. Revolutions in France. — After the final overthrow of Buonaparte, Lewis the Eighteenth came back again, and reigned as a constitutional King, but many of those who came with him would gladly have had the old state of things back again, when the King ruled as he pleased, and when the nobles and clergy were set up above the rest of the nation. Of this sort was his brother, the next King Charles the Tenth, who was the last who was crowned at Rheiins, and the last who called himself King of France. For when, in 1830, he put out some ordinances which were wholly against the law, the people of Paris rose, and King Charles was 350 REUNION OF GERMANY AND ITALY, [chap. driven out in the Revolution of July. We may mark in all these changes how the one city of Paris always acts, and how the rest of France accepts what it does. This time, when the King was driven out, his cousin Louis-Philippe Duke of Orleans was made King, with the old title of King of the French^ and with a freer constitution. France was not engaged in any great wars during the time of these three Kings ; only in Africa the piratical power of Algiers was put down, and all that part of the coast of Africa became a French dominion. After some revolts at Lyons and Paris early in his reign, Louis-Philippe reigned quietly till 1848; only twice in his reign Louis-Napoleon Buonaparte, a nephew of the first Buonaparte, tried to make a disturbance. The first time he was allowed to go free ; the second time he was imprisoned, but he escaped. But in 1848 the King's govern- ment had become unpopular, and in February of that year he was driven out, as Charles the Tenth had been. This time a Republic was set up, and in June there was a second revolt in Paris of the more extreme republicans, which was put down by General Cavaignac. But when the President of the Republic was to be chosen, Louis-Napoleo7i Buonaparte, who had been allowed to come back, was chosen by many votes over Cavaignac. He was chosen President for four years, and he swore to be faithful to the Republic. But at the end of the third year, in December 185 1, with the help of the army, he seized upon the government, as his uncle had done, calling himself President for ten years with nearly absolute power. The National Assembly, which passed a vote to depose him, was dissolved by force ; many men were killed, and others were sent to the unhealthy colony of Cayenne, while most of the chief men of the country were imprisoned for a while. A year after, in December 1852, he called him- self Emperor, as his uncle had done before him. 3. The Wars of France. — When Louis-Napoleon Buona xvii.] WARS AND REVOLUTIONS OF FRANCE. 351 parte took the title of Emperor, he gave out that the Empire should be peace, but there have been wars in Europe ever since, in which France has taken the chief part. In 1854, when a quarrel again arose between Russia and Turkey, France and England both joined in the war against Russia and shared in the victories over the Russians in the Crimea. In 1859, when there was a dispute between Austria and Sar- dinia, France made war upon Austria, and it was given out that France would free Italy from the Alps to the Hadriatic. But when the French armies reached the strong fortress of Verona, all that was done was to make a peace with Austria, by which Italy was freed only as far as the Mincio. At the same time the two provinces of Nizza and Savoy, the remaining Burgundian possessions of the King of Sardinia, were given to France. This new possession took in the districts whose neutrality had been guaranteed, and which, according to old treaties, if they ever passed from Sardinia, were to pass to Switzerland. Lastly, in 1870 France declared war upon Prussia, the reason given being that there had been talk of giving the Crown of Spain to a distant kins- man of the King of Prussia. But Prussia was supported by all Germany. The French crossed the German frontier, but they were driven out in a few days, and then the German armies entered France, and won a series of victories. Buonaparte himself became a prisoner. Meanwhile he was declared deposed, and a Republic was again set up in Paris. Paris was besieged, and surrendered to the Ger- mans, and a treaty was made by which, besides the pay- ment of a large sum of money, nearly all Elsass, together with that part of Lorraine where German is spoken and also the strong fortress of Metz, were given back to Ger- many. Thus Strassbtirg and the other German places which had been gradually taken by France have become German again, and the French frontier, which first reached 352 REUNION OF GERMANY AND ITALY. [chap the Rhine in 1648, is now kept quite away from it. Soon after the peace with Germany, Paris was held by the Com- munists or extreme Republicans, and the city had again to be besieged and taken by the Government of the new Republic under the President M. Thiers, who was at one time chief minister under King Louis-Philippe. 4. The Union of Germany. — The German princes who were set up again at the Peace, mostly forgot their promises of setting up constitutional governments ; still the national spirit largely tended towards progress and union. And one great step towards it was taken as Prussia gradually, from 18 18 onwards, became the centre of a commercial union among the German states, the members of which agreed to levy no duties on merchandise passing from one state to another, but to levy them only at the common frontier. This union, called the Zollverein, was gradually joined by most of the German states. In 1848 there were revolutions over the most part of Europe, and among them in Prussia, Austria, and most of the German states ; an attempt was made at the same time to join Germany together under an Emperor and a common Parliament, instead of the lax Confederation which had gone on since 1815. But, before long, things came back much as they were before, till in 1866 a war broke out between Prussia and Austria, in which the German states took different sides. Prussia got the better in so short a time that it has been called the Seven Weeks' War. By the peace which was now made Austria was shut out from Germany altogether, the Kingdom of Hanover and some smaller states "were annexed to Prussia, and the Northern states were formed into the North-German Confederation, ander the presidency of Prussia, with a common constitu- tion and Assembly. When France made war on Prussia in 1870, the Southern states took part in the war as well as the Northern. They soon joined the Confederation, xvii.] UNION OF GERMANY. 353 Bavaria, the largest of them, keeping some special privileges to herself. Thus all Germany, except Austria, Tyrol, and the other German dominions of the House of Austria, was joined together much more closely than it had been ever since the Thirty Years' War, or indeed since the great Interregnum. And while the German siege of Paris was going on, King William of Prussia, being in the great hall of Lewis the Fourteenth at Versailles, received the title of German Emperor from the princes and free cities of Germany. And presently the German lands held by France were, as we have seen, joined again to the new Empire. Of course, in the old use of words, this was a restoration, not of the Empire, but of the Kingdom of Germany; for in old times, as we know by this time, the title of Emperor could be held only by one who was, or claimed to be, sovereign. of either the Old or the New Rome. But now that several of the German princes are called Kings, it would have been hard to find a better title than Emperor for the chief of a Confederation which has Kings among its members. 5. The Revolutions of Italy. — Italy can hardly be said to have had any history from 18 15 to 1848. There were many conspiracies, and some insurrections, in different parts of Italy, especially in 1831. But the Austrian power was strong enough, not only to hold the Austrian possessions of Lombardy and Venice, but to keep the smaller princes on their thrones. Meanwhile the movement for the liberation and union of Italy was growing up in its north-western corner. In 1831 a new branch of the house of Savoy, that of Carignano, succeeded to the Sardinian crown in the person of Charles Albert. In the early part of his reign he ruled harshly, but he was an enemy of Austria. Then, in 1846, the present Pope, Pius the Ninth, was chosen, and for a while it seemed as if he were going to do great things for Italian freedom ; so much so that his dominions A A 354 REUNION OF GERMANY AND ITALY. [chap. were partly occupied by Austria in 1847. In the course, of 1847 and 1848, most of the Italian princes gave their people constitutions. Milan and Venice rose against Austria, and now the King of Sardinia entered the Austrian dominions in Italy at the head of an allied army from various parts of the peninsula. But he was finally defeated at Novara in 1849, and he abdicated, and was succeeded by his son Victor Emmanuel the Second. Meanwhile Venice, which had again become a republic, was recovered by Austria. Rome, whence the Pope had fled and where a republic had been set up, was overcome by troops sent by the new republic of France, and the constitutions in the other Italian states were withdrawn. Thus after 1849 Italy was left in much the same case as she had been in before the insurrections. The Pope was maintained in his dominions by French help, Austria had recovered her possessions, but Sardinia still remained a con- stitutional and advancing state, for King Victor Emmanuel steadily kept his word to his people. 6. The Union of Italy. — And now, after ten years, came the beginnings of the great movement which has at last made Italy one. In 1859 there came the war between Sar- dinia and Austria, in which France took a part : by the peace Austria gave up Lombardy, but kept Venetia. France now tried to make what was called an Italian Confederation, but, as Austria was to have been a member of it, it could have been no real Confederation at all, and the Italians settled the matter themselves by most of them willingly join- ing themselves to the kingdom of Victor Emmanuel. Now it was that Garibaldi, who had before defended Rome against the French, wonderfully delivered the Two Sicilies, and joined them also to the kingdom of Victor Emmanuel. The King of Sardinia thus had possession of all Italy, except the part held by Austria, and Rome, where the French still kept the Pope in possession. In 1861 Victor Emmanuel was made xvii.] UNION OF ITALY. 355 Kingofltalyhy the Italian Parliament, and in 1865 the capital was removed to Florence, till Rome could be had. The king- dom had hardly been established in 186 1 when Count C avour who had had the chief hand in bringing about the new state of things, died. When the war broke out in 1866 be- tween Prussia and Austria, Italy joined Prussia, and Austria gave up Venice and Verona, keeping however, not only the old Venetian possessions in Dalmatia, but /stria, Aquileia, and T?-ent, Italian-speaking places which formed part of the ancient Kingdom of Italy. Lastly, when the war between France and Germany caused the French troops to be with- drawn from Rome, Rome was at last joined on to the Italian kingdom, and it now of course is the capital of Italy. The Pope's spiritual position remains unchanged, though he is no longer a temporal prince. 7. Hungary and Austria. — Francis the First of Hungary, who till 1806 had been the Emperor Francis the Second, went on reigning in Hungary, Austria, and his other states till 1836. Then came Ferdinand the Fifth. In 1847 and 1848 there were revolutions in Austria and Hungary as well as else- where. The Hungarians stood up for their ancient constitu- tion with certain reforms, and, when Ferdinand abdicated, they refused to acknowledge Francis Joseph, who succeeded him in Austria, because the abdication was not lawful accord- ing to the laws of Hungary. Afterwards they set up a republic under the famous Kossuth. But unluckily feuds had arisen between the Magyars and the other races in Hungary, and this greatly helped the reconquest of the country by Austria, which however was not done without the help of Russia. Hungary now remained crushed till after the war between Austria and Prussia. Then the government was put on a better and more lawful footing ; Austria and Hungary became two distinct states under a common sovereign, and Francis Joseph was lawfully crowned King of Hungary in 1867, A A 2 356 REUNION OF GERMANY AND ITALY, [chap. Since then Hungary and Austria have agreed well together ; but difficulties have arisen through the other states, Bohemia and the rest, asking for more or less distinct governments. The Austrian Empire ; as it is called, is in fact a mere joining together of various nations without any natural connexion ; but this is the general character of South-Eastern Europe, and Hungary seems marked out to be the leading state among the Christian nations in those parts. 8. The Deliverance of Greece. — We have seen that the Ottoman power had been growing weaker and weaker, while the subject Christian races were growing stronger. Servia had won her freedom, and Montenegro had never lost hers. In 1 82 1 the Greeks revolted. The War of Independence began, strangely enough, in the Danubian Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, but presently the Greeks re- volted in all parts of the Ottoman dominions where they were strong enough. In some parts they were put down with cruel massacres, but in the greater part of Old Greece the inhabitants, Greek and Albanian, with some little help from the other subject races and much more from volunteers from Western Europe, were able to hold their ground against the Turks. But in 1826 Sultan Mah- moud called in the help of the Pasha of Egypt, Mahomet AH, who had a better disciplined army than his own. His son Ibrahim — that is Abraham — brought the Greeks almost to destruction, and Peloponnesos might have been altogether wasted, had not the three powers, England, France, and Russia, stepped in and crushed the Ottoman fleet at Nava- rino, the old Pylos, in 1827. The French troops afterwards drove the Egyptians out of Peloponnesos. The end of this -was the establishment of the Kingdom of Greece. It has had two Kings, Otho of Bavaria who was turned out in 1862, and George of Denma7'k, and, since that time, the kingdom has been increased by England, in 1864, giving up the pro- xra.] GREECE AND TURKEY. 357 tectorate of the Ionian Islands, which became part of the Kingdom of Greece. But the new state has not been so prosperous or well governed as it was once hoped that it might have been. It has been cooped up within a bad frontier, and moreover the Greeks have had their heads too full of the memories of the old times, and they have been too fond of copying the institutions of Western countries which are not suited to them. 9. Turkey and Russia. — Meanwhile great changes went on in the Ottoman dominions themselves, and the Turks had several wars with Russia and other powers. In 1826, Sultan Mahmoud destroyed the Janissaries, who had now be- come a turbulent and useless body. In 1 828 a war with Russia followed. The next year the Russians got as far as Hadrian- oftle, and a treaty was made by which Russia gained some advantages at the mouth of the Danube and made some stipu- lations on behalf of the Christians in Turkey. Then followed wars with Mahomet A li, the Pasha of Egypt, in which several of the European powers took part, and which were ended in 1 841 by Egypt becoming a nearly independent state, though under the superiority of the Porte. Lastly came the war with Russia in 1854, in which France, England, and Sardinia afterwards joined on the Turkish side. It ended in 1856 by Russia agreeing to certain terms which lessened her power in the Euxine and giving up a small territory, which kept her away from the Danube, much as France has since been kept away from the Rhine. Meanwhile, as Greece has been altogether cut off from the Ottoman do- minions, and as Servia and Egypt had been made practically independent, so also the Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, dependent states whose position was very ano- malous, and which formed a constant excuse for disputes between Russia and Turkey, have been formed into a .separate principality, whose connexion with Turkey is p 353 REUNION OF GERMANY AND ITALY. [chap. nominal. But the Roumans, like the Greeks, have been too fond of imitating Western forms of government for which they are not fit. 10. Russia and Poland. — We have seen that, by the Peace of 1815, Poland, in the latest sense of the word, became a separate constitutional kingdom, to be held by the Russian Emperor. Such a state of things may last between two con- stitutional kingdoms like Sweden and Norway, where, though Sweden is the greater, it is not so very much greater; but it could not last between a huge despotic Empire and a small constitutional Kingdom. Disputes therefore naturally arose, especially after the accession of Nicholas in 1825 ; the consti- tution was not carried out; so in 1831 the Poles revolted, declared the throne vacant, and held out for several months against the Russian power. But they were crushed and very harshly treated, and the Polish constitution was taken away. The wars between Russia and Turkey have been already spoken of ; during the great war with France and England, Nicholas died, and was succeeded by the present Emperor Alexander the Second. In his time the serfs have been set free, but in 1863 another Polish revolt was put down as harshly as the other, and the Polish kingdom has been quite swept away. In 1846 too the commonwealth of Cracow, which had been set up at the Peace as a sort of representative of old Poland, was added to the Austria7i dominions. 11. Spain and Portugal. — In Spain Ferdinand the Seventh came back and refused to abide by the constitution which had been set up during the- war with Buonaparte. Several risings on its behalf took place, and, in 1820, it was re- stored. A civil war followed, and in 1822 French troops entered Spain to restore the King's authority. This was lone, but not till after much fighting, and the French did not leave Spain for seven years. In 1833 Ferdinand died. The Spanish law as to the succession of females had been XVII.] SPAIN AND PORTUGAL. 359 altered backwards and forwards several times, so on Ferdi- nand's death there was a civil war between the partisans of his daughter Isabel and those of his brother Charles or Don Carlos. The Carlist party was strong only in the northern, the Basque, provinces, but the war went on a long time, and was not fully put an end to till 1840. Spain was now ruled as a constitutional state, but it has been constantly disturbed by insurrections of the army, and at last the mis- government and bad life of the Queen caused her to be deposed in 1868, like Mary Stewart in Scotland. Spain now remained for some time without a King or a settled govern- ment of any kind ; several candidates for the crown were proposed, and some wished for a commonwealth. At last, in 1870, a son of the King of Italy, Amadeus Duke o/Aosta, was chosen King. Owing to all these confusions, the posi- tion of Spain has been much lower in Europe than it was of old, besides the loss of its American possessions. In Por- ticgal meanwhile a constitution was proclaimed in 1820, at the same time as in Spain, the King, John the Sixth, being in Brazil. From this till 1832 there was a time of great con- fusion and civil war between the absolute party under Don Miguel or Michael, the King's younger son, and the consti- tutional party under his eldest son Don Pedro or Peter, who succeeded in 1826 and who presently abdicated in favour of his daughter Maria. In 1 828 Don Miguel assumed the crown, but he was at last driven out, and the Queen was acknow- ledged. The strangest thing of all was that Pedro, after giving up the crown himself, acted as Regent for his young daughter. Since then there have been some disputes and risings in Portugal, but there has been no revolution or serious change. 12. The Netherlands.— By the Peace of 1815 all the provinces of the NetJierlands had been made into one king- dom, but the Northern and Southern provinces, differing in 360 REUNION OF GERMANY AND ITAL Y. [chap religion and other things, did not well agree together ; so in 1830 the Southern provinces revolted. Then the Kingdom was divided : the Northern part, which had been the United Provinces ; went on as the Kingdom of the Netherlands in the House of Orange; while the formerly Spanish, and after- wards Austrian, Netherlands became the Kingdom of Bel gium under the House of Coburg, the first King being Leopold, who had been husband of the Princess Charlotte of England. This arrangement has gone on since, only there have been disputes about the Duchy of Luzelburg or LuxembtMg, which was held by the King of the Netherlands as a member of the German Confederation, and which since the fall of the Confederation has been declared neutral. 13. Switzerland. — Switzerland has remained a Federal state ever since the Peace in 181 5, and since that time it has not been engaged in war with any other state. But there have been great changes in its own constitution, and at one time there was even a civil war. About 1 83 1 there were disputes in most of the Cantons, which ended in their governments being made much more popular, but nothing was done to the Federal Constitution. In 1847 a war broke out between the Catholic and Protestant Cantons, in which the Protes- tants had the better. It was now seen that the t'e between the Cantons needed to be made much stronger, and in 1848 a new Federal Constitution was made, in many things very like that of the United States, only, instead of a single Presi dent, there is a Council of Seven, with much smaller powers. An attempt to change this constitution, by taking away powei from the several Cantons and giving it to the Federal body, was made in 1872, but it was not carried by the vote o\ che people. 14. Denmark and the Duchies. — Denmark remained an absolute monarchy till the accession of Frederick the Seventh in 1848, who at once gave his people a constitution xvii.] SWITZERLAND, DENMARK, ETC. 361 Since then there have been endless disputes about the two Duchies held by the Danish Kings, Holstein undoubtedly- being part of Germany, while Sleswick was not a member of the German Confederation and its people were partly ) German and partly Danish. A war went on from 1848 to J851, but this time Denmark kept both Duchies. But in 1864, under the present King Christian the Ninth, disputes arose again ; a war followed, and the Duchies were given up by Denmark to Prussia and Austria, and again in 1866 by Austria to Prussia alone. The northern or Danish part of Sleswick was to have been given back to Denmark, but this has not yet been done. 15. Sweden and Norway. — At last we come to those coun- tries in which during all these years there has been no revolution or great disturbance. One is Great Britain; the other is the two Scandinavian kingdoms of Sweden and Norway. Bernadotte, who had been already chosen Crown Prince of Sweden, succeeded to both kingdoms as Charles the Fourteenth, and the two crowns have since stayed in his family. On the whole the two kingdoms have gone on well side by side ; having the same King, but*ea;h keeping its own constitution. A disposition has sometimes been shown to encroach on the independence of Norway, but the North- men have always been able to hold their own. During the reign of the present King improvements have been made in the Swedish constitution also, and greater liberty has been given to people of other religions than the Lutheran. 16. Great Britain and Ireland. — No time has been more important in English history than this last of which we are now speaking, but its events have been mainly of a kind, which will be best treated in a separate History of England. It has been a time of great advance at home in every way, both politically and socially, and it has also been a time of great inventions and great progress of men's minds. 362 REUNION OF GERMANY AND ITALY, [chap. England has also had something to do in some way or another with most of the affairs of the continent of Europe, but she has been engaged in only one great war, namely that with Russia, from 1854 to 1856, nor has she gained or lost any European territory, unless we reckon it a loss that she has withdrawn from the protectorate of the Ionian Islands. But this time has been a time of great changes and great advance in the British possessions in dis- tant countries. The trade in negro slaves was finally for- bidden in 1807, and slavery itself was abolished throughout the British dominions in 1833. The colonial dominions of England have vastly extended themselves, especially in Australia and North America. And most of them have received constitutions which have made them altogether independent in their internal affairs. In Canada alone has there been any serious disturbance. There was a rebel- lion in 1837 among the French Canadians, but the colony has since been made almost independent, and it is now highly prosperous. In India there have been waged several wars, and several provinces have been annexed. Here the British dominion was altogether shaken for a time by the Mutiny of the native soldiers in 1858. After its suppression, the government of India was taken from the Company and given to the Crown, and the phantom of the Great Mogul came at last to an end, as the last nominal Emperor had been concerned in the mutiny. There have also been wars with China, Persia, and Abyssinia, and generally England has come more and more to the position of an insular power, withdrawing from any great interference with the affairs of the continent of Europe, but keeping up trade and coloniza- tion in all parts of the world, and being therefore ever and anon engaged in distant wars. The whole island of Great Britain has long been firmly joined together, not- withstanding the differences of race and speech in different xvii.] GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. 363 parts which have still not wholly died out. But the re- membrance of ancient misgovernment has constantly kept up the spirit of disaffection in Ireland, which has broken out into more than one conspiracy and rising, though none on any great scale. Every care has been taken b> a succession of measures to do justice to Ireland, by the admission of the Roman Catholics to equal rights with Pro- testants, by the disestablishment of the dominant Protestant Church, and by laws for the benefit of the occupiers of land. But it would seem that the memory of old wrongs is even now stronger than the feeling of recent benefits. 17. The Spanish Colonies in America. — If this period has been one of great change in the Old world, it has been one of equal change in the New. The example of the British colonies, which had given birth to the great commonwealth of the United States, has been followed by the Spanish Colonies also. But it must be remembered that there is this great difference between the Spanish and the English colonies, that, though in the United States the people are not of purely English blood, yet the mixture has been with other European nations or with slaves brought from Africa, and not at all with the natives of America. But in the Spanish settlements the Europeans and the natives have been largely mixed, and in truth the native blood prevails. When the national government in Spain was upset by Buonaparte, the Spanish colonies began to set up for them- selves in 1 8 10. Mexico was recovered, but it revolted again in 1820. A certain Iturbide called himself Emperor for a while, as people did in other places, but after a while a Federal Commonwealth was established. But the country has never been quiet for a long time, and it has lost the great province of Texas to the United States. In 1862 a quarrel arose with England, France, and Spain; from this England and Spain soon withdrew, but France went en 364 REUNION OF GERMANY AND ITALY. [chap. and in 1863 the Austrian Archduke Maximilian was set up under French influence as yet another Emperor; but he was not acknowledged by the whole country, and in 1867 he was overthrown and shot by the native President Juarez. Chili also separated from the Spanish dominion in 18 10, and Peru in 1820, and now Spain has no dominions on the con- tinent of America, and in the Spanish island of Cuba there have been endless disturbances. 18. Brazil. — The great Portuguese settlement in South America has had a somewhat different history from either the English or the Spanish colonies. It separated from the mother-country, but it is the only state in the New World which, instead of becoming a republic, has remained under a prince of the old royal family. King John the Sixth, as we have seen, reigned in Brazil when he had to leave Portugal, and he called himself King of Brazil as well as of Portugal. In 1822 Brazil was declared independent with a free constitution, under Don Pedro as Emperor. The crowns of Brazil and Portugal have since remained distinct, as on Pedro's abdication he was succeeded by his daughter Maria in Portugal, and by his son Pedro in Brazil. Brazil has had fewer disturbances, and has been more prosperous, than any other South American state. 19. The United States. — But neither in the Old nor the New World has this period made more important changes than it has in the commonwealth of the United States. Many new States have been founded towards the West, and the great dominion of Texas, which had been part of Mexico, first became a separate commonwealth, and was afterwards joined on to the Union. But the greatest event in the history of America has been the war which began in 1861 between the Northern and Southern States. There were many causes of difference between them, the chief being the allowance of slavery in the XVII.] NORTH AND SOUTH AMERICA. 365 South, which had long died out in the North. On the election of Abraham Lincoln as President, in i860, South. Carolina seceded from the Union, and the rest of the Southern States presently followed her. They called them- selves the Confederate States, and set up a Federal consti- tution, nearly the same as that of the United States, under Jefferson Davis as President. Then followed the war which lasted till 1865, when the Confederate States had to submit. Just about the same time President Lincoln, having just been chosen President a second time, was murdered. The result of the war has been the reconstitution of the Union, and the final getting rid of slavery throughout all parts of the North American continent. In Brazil and in the Spanish and Dutch colonies it still goes on, but in Brazil it will come to an end before many years. 20. Summary. — Thus, in our own days, France has again, for the third time, tried to get the chief power in Europe, and a third time she has been beaten back, and has been driven to give up part of her former conquests. The rest of Europe has been completely changed by the union of Italy into one kingdom, and by the union, though less close, of nearly all Germany under the leadership of Prussia. Austria has withdrawn from both German and Italian affairs, and has become a state joined with Hungary, something in the same way as Sweden and Norway. The last traces of Polish independence have been trampled out, and Denmark has been cut short by the complete loss of the Duchies. Two new kingdoms have arisen, namely Belgium and Greece, of which the former has prospered much more than the latter. The whole East of Europe has during the whole time been more or less unsettled, as it doubtless always will be, as long as a Mahometan power rules over Christians. On the whole Europe has greatly gained in freedom and good government since the end of the wars of the French Revolution, But on 366 REUNION OF GERMANY AND ITALY, [ch. xvh. the other hand, the keeping up of vast standing armies by nearly all the governments of the Continent makes peace at all times uncertain, and the tendency of later times has been to lessen the importance of the smaller states and to group Europe under a few great powers. Still, both in Great Britain and in most other parts of Europe, men may be very glad that they live in our own day and not in any of the times which have gone before us. TH2 END. Henry Holt & Co.'s Series OF "STANDARD Educational Works. A full descriptive Catalogue will be mailed free to any one referring to this notice. FRENCH. The prices are for cloth lettered, unless otherwise expressed. JEsop. Fables, in French. With a Dictionary. i8mo . . $0.75 Bibliotheque d'instruction Recreative. 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