gfr LI BR ARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA . OIKT OF S 7 n/ns % /jcm/i/x/ Wcr /?^mW...OCT 2 8-- 1-892- - , 1 A ccessions No.. tf&X<3<* Shelf No. MODERN HISTORY, FROM THE FRENCH OF M, M I C H E L E T, WITH AN INTRODUCTION. BY A. POTTER, D.D. NEW-YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, 8 2 C L i F F-S T. 1846. [UJTI7ERSITrl ZP l-h' Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1843, by HARPER & BROTHERS, In the Clerk's Office of the Southern District of New- York. * OF THE . INTRODUCTION. THE last thirty years have witnessed re- markable improvements among the scholars of Germany and France, in their methods of historical research and in their style of histor- ical composition. In delineating the progress of events, the historian of these countries has become accustomed to embrace a much great- er variety of topics than formerly. He has learned, too, to scrutinize the authenticity of facts more carefully, and to draw some of his most important information from sources which were once regarded either as unworthy of his notice, or as foreign from his inquiries. He has also learned to deal with facts, as signifi- cant of great principles, and to fix their histor- ic value according as they represent more or less clearly and expressively the essential fea- tures of an age or the important revolutions of a system. In fine, these writers have been gradually imbodying in practice the fine idea Vlll INTRODUCTION. that history is only philosophy teaching by ex- ample ; and they have striven to make her les- sons alike clear and impressive. The subscri- ber is not insensible of the difficulty of all such attempts, nor of the fallacies which have been perpetrated under the imposing title of the Phi- losophy of History. Still, every effort to make history more full, accurate, and instructive, merits applause, and it is an effort in which the two great nations just mentioned have been eminently successful. The learned and inde- fatigable Germans took the lead in it, and they have been followed with yet greater brilliancy, and with hardly inferior industry, by several French historians. The names of Guizot, Ville- main, Mignet, Thiers, the two Thierrys, Sis- mondi, Barante, and Michelet, among the French, will at once occur to the student of history as justifying this remark. It has long been considered the reproach of English and American scholars, that so little has hitherto been accomplished towards diffusing the same spirit of research and the same just conceptions of historical study in two countries which, of all others, have the deepest interest in possess- ing them. INTRODUCTION. Jx To assist in some slight degree towards re- moving this reproach, and to introduce to the knowledge of the public generally an element- ary work conceived and executed after this new method, is the main object of the present translation. The author, M. Michelet, is one of the most learned, laborious, and elegant of that remarkable school, who have been enga- ged during the last twenty years, in France, in illustrating ancient and modern history. His intense devotion to his studies is said to have ruined his health, and will probably deprive the world of the full fruit of his researches.* With great philosophical sagacity, he combines what is so apt to be wanting in the German histo- rians a brilliant imagination, a clear and pic- turesque style, and great felicity of illustration. Universal histories, especially if in the form of abridgments, are usually meager and spiritless. The reader will find that Michelet, like his great predecessor Bossuet, is an exception. His summary is constantly relieved by reflec- tions full of weight and vivacity, and his gen- * His principal works are a History of France (unfinished) ; a History of ike Republic of Rome (a translation of which is now preparing) ; Me- moirs of Luther (compiled from his own writings) ; Selections from Vico (with notices of his Life and Writings) ; Chronological Tables, &c., &c. X INTRODUCTION. eralities are made significant and interesting by examples as vivid as they are novel. Another circumstance which gives interest to the work, while it calls, at the same time, for some caution in accepting its conclusions, is, that the author has been accustomed to sur- vey history from a point very different from that occupied by English and American histo- rians. He is a Frenchman, a monarchist, and a Roman Catholic ; and, though more than usu- ally free from prejudices, it is not to be expect- ed that he should escape them entirely. To those who are sincerely desirous to take an enlarged and philosophical view of events, it must sometimes be grateful to neutralize the force of their own prepossessions by the aid of tolerant and enlightened minds, who have been formed under different systems of religion and law. It is due to the author to add that he is no bigot. A Roman Catholic, he still acknowl- edges with gratitude the inestimable blessings conferred on the world by the Protestant Ref- ormation ; a monarchist, his sympathies are still with the people ; a Frenchman, and there- fore bound, as he supposes, in common with all Frenchmen, to regard " his glorious coun- INTRODUCTION. XI try as the pilot of the great vessel of human- ity,"* he has yet a heart and an understanding large enough to do justice, with few excep- tions, to virtue and greatness, wherever he finds them. It was the subscriber's intention to have ani- madverted in notes on some views of the au- thor's which he regards as erroneous. The unexpected bulk, however, to which the vol- ume has swelled prevents the execution of this design, and he therefore leaves this task to the discrimination of the reader or instructer. While this work will be useful to general readers, its more immediate object is to furnish a good text-book in modern history for schools and colleges.f In Guizot's History of Civili- zation in Europe we have philosophy without facts. In most abridgments used in seminaries of learning, we have facts without philosophy. This work seems to have struck the golden mean so essential in a good text-book, and the subscriber has only to regret that the circum- stances under which the translation was made, and the unavoidable interruptions to which he * See Preface to Michelet's Introduction d VHistoire Universelle. f It has been adopted as a text-book by the Royal Council of the Uni- Tersity of France, Xll INTRODUCTION. has been subjected, have prevented its attain- ing greater precision and spirit. He trusts it will not be found altogether unworthy of its original or of its object It was also proposed, in the first instance, to add questions for the assistance of instructers and pupils. The want of room prevents this ; but the subscriber may be allowed to remark, that if those questions had been prepared, they would not have superseded labour on the part either of teacher or scholar. Little faith is re- posed in methods of teaching which relieve either of these parties from the necessity for exertion. It should rather be our object to awaken and encourage such exertion, and hence these questions would have been so fra- med as to provide the pupil with subjects for examination beyond the limits of his text-book. This volume will be found to contain many allusions and hints which must prove, unless explained, quite unintelligible to young stu- dents, and many brief notices, also, of events and revolutions which deserve to be investi- gated. The editor would suggest, that the student may, in many instances, be left with great advantage to prosecute these investiga- INTRODUCTION. X1U tions, and work out the explanation of these hints for himself; proper books being pointed out, and the fruit of his inquiries being brought to the teacher for his examination and appro- val. Such a course would render the progress of a class through the book necessarily slow, but it would be a progress fraught with un- speakable advantages to the tastes and habits of the scholar. In conclusion, the subscriber has only to ex- press his hope that this work may contribute, in some degree, to diffuse among the young a taste for historical studies, and to promote in all its readers a generous and enlightened in- terest in the cause of freedom, humanity, and religion. A. POTTER. Union College, August, 1843. CONTENTS. AUTHOR'S PREFACE Page xxi INTRODUCTION xxiii PRINCIPAL CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERN HISTORY ... 25 FIRST PERIOD. FROM THE TAKING OF CONSTANTINOPLE BY THE TURKS TO THE REFORMATION OF LUTHER, 1453-1517 . . .37 CHAPTER I. Italy War of the Turks, 1453-1494. Splendour of Italy : Venice, Florence, Rome, by whom they were sur- rounded. The revolution of 1433, like that of 1521, commenced among the peasants of Dalecarlia ; Englebrecht was its Gustavus Vasa, and, like him, was supported by the Hanse Towns, whose mo- nopoly the King of Denmark (Eric, the Pomeranian nephew of Margaret of Waldemar) combated by favouring the Hollanders. The union was re-es- tablished for some time by Christophe the Bavarian, the king of bark, as the Swedes called him, from his having been obliged to subsist on the bark of a tree ; but after his death (1448) they expelled the Danes, and the Germans put themselves under the domin- ion of Charles Canutson, marshal of the kingdom, and refused to acknowledge the new king of Den- mark and Norway, Christian, the first of the house of Oldenburg (from whence came, by the branch of Holstein Gottorp, the last dynasty of Sweden, and the present imperial house of Russia). The MODERN HISTORY. 121 Danes, strengthened by the reunion of Sleswick and Hoistein (1459), twice re-established their authority over Sweden, with the aid of the Arch- bishop of Upsal (1457-1465), and were twice ex- pelled by the party of the nobility and the people. At the death of Charles Canutson in 1470, Swe- den appointed successively for administrators three lords of the name of Sture (Stenon, Swante, and Stenon). They were supported by the husband- men, whom they recalled to. the Senate. They fought with the Danes before Stockholm (1471), and took from them the famous banner of Dane- brog, which they regarded as the palladium of the monarchy. They founded the University of Upsa- la at the same time that the King of Denmark insti- tuted that of Copenhagen (1477-1478). In fine, if we except a short period, during which Sweden was obliged to acknowledge John II. successor to Christian I., they preserved its independence until 1520. L 122 SUMMARY OF CHAPTER IV. EAST AND NORTH SLAVONIC STATES AND TUR- KEY IN THE SECOND PART OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. Progress of the Turks, 1411-1582. Podiebrad, King of Bohemia; Mat- thias Corwin, King of Hungary, 1458. Wladislas, of Poland, reunites Hungary and Bohemia. Poland under the Jagelkms, 1386-1506. Contest of Russia with the Tartars, the Lithuanians, and the Livo- nians, 1462-1505. Slavonic States. The conquest of the Grecian Empire by the Ottoman Turks may be considered as the last invasion of the barbarians, and the ter- mination of the Middle Ages. It was a nation of Slavonic origin/situate|. on^the route of the bar- barians of Asia) who shut therrL out from Europe, or at least that arrested them by powerful diver- sions. Russia, which had already exhausted the fury of the Tartars in the fourteenth century, again becomes formidable to them under I wan III. (1462). A first league, composed of Hungarians, Wallachians, and Moldavians, is formed, like a re- serve of the Christian army, to protect Germany and Poland against the invasion of the Turks. Poland, with no enemies in her rear, has just sub- MODERN HISTORY. 123 dued Prussia, and penetrated to the Baltic (1454- 1466). Causes of the Progress of Turkey. I. The following causes explain the rapid progress of the Ottoman conquest during the fifteenth centu- ry : 1st, their fanatical and military spirit ; 2d. their disciplined troops, opposed to the feudal militia of the Europeans, and to the cavalry of the Persians and the Mamelukes ; the appointment of janizaries ; 3d, the particular situation of the enemies of the Turks ; in the East, the political and religious feuds of Persia, the feeble basis of the power of the .Mamelukes ; in the West, the discords of the Christian world : Hungary pro- tects it on the side of the land, and Venice on the side of the sea ; but both are weakened, one by the ambition of the house of Austria, the other by the jealousy of Italy and of all Europe ; the inefficient heroism of the knights of Rhodes arid of the princes of^Albanyi ftl # &sf\ \Q(. BajazetIL, 1481. In the first chapter we have seen Mohammed II. completing the conquest of the Grecian Empire, failing in his invasion of Hungary, but seizing the sovereignty of the sea, and making Christendom tremble. At the accession of Bajazet to the throne (1481), the scene changed, and ter- ror seized the sultan : his brother Zizim, who had disputed the throne with him, fled for refuge to 124 SUMMARY OF the knights of Rhodes, and became, in the hands of the King of France, and afterward of the pope, a pledge for the West. Bajazet paid considerable sums to Innocent VIII. and to Alexander VI., that they might retain his brother a prisoner. This unpopular prince, who had commenced his reign by beheading the Vizier Achmet (the idol of the jan- izaries, the old general of Mohammed II.), was in- fluenced, despite of himself, by the military ardour of the nation. The Turks first turned their arms against the Mamelukes and the Persians ; defeated by the Mamelukes at Issus, they prepared the de- struction of the conquerors by depopulating Cir- cassia, where the Mamelukes recruited. After the death of Zizim, having no longer a civil war to fear, they attacked the Venitians in Morea, and threatened Italy (1499-1503) ; but Hungary, Bohemia, and Poland put themselves in motion, and the accession of the Sophis renewed? and regulated the political rivalry of the Persians and Turks (1501). After this war, Bajazet disaf- fected the Turks by a peace of eight years ; he ,^ wished to abdicate in favour of his son Achmet, but was dethroned and put to death by his second son Selim. The accession of the new prince, the most cruel and martial of all the sultans, spread terror both over the West and the East (1512) ; no one knew on whom he would fall first, Persia, Egypt, or Italy. MODERN HISTORY. 125 Hungary and Bohemia. II. Europe would have had nothing to fear from the barbarians if Hungary, united to Bohemia in a permanent way, had held them in sufficient respect ; but the former attacked the latter in her independence and re- ligious creed. Thus weakened by each other, they were fluctuating in the fifteenth century between the two powers, Slavonic and German (Poland and Austria), which surrounded them. Reunited, from 1453 to 1458, under a German prince, again for some time separated and independent under national sovereigns (Bohemia until 1471, Hunga- ry to 1490), they were once more reunited under Polish princes until 1526, the period in which they became decidedly subject to the dominion of Austria. Podiebrad and Matthias 1458. After the reign of Wladislas of Austria, which was rendered illus- trious through the exploits of John Hunniade, George Podiebrad seized the crown of Bohemia, and Matthias Corvin,the son of Hunniade, was chosen King of Hungary (1458). These two princes suc- cessfully opposed the chimerical pretensions of the Emperor Frederic III. Podiebrad, in protecting the Hussites, incurred the enmity of the popes. Matthias gained a glorious victory over the Turks, and obtained the favour bf^Paul II., who offered him the crown of Podiebrad, his father-in-law. L 2 126 SUMMARY OF The latter objected to the alliance of Matthias with the King of Poland, by which he was made to acknowledge the oldest son of Wladislas for his successor. At the same time, Casimir, the brother of Wladislas, attempted to take the crown of Hun- gary from Mathias by force. Matthias, thus pressed on all sides, was obliged to renounce the conquest of Bohemia, and to content himself with the prov- inces of Moravia, Silesia, and Lusacia, which should return to Wladislas if he survived Mathias (1475-1478). The King of Hungary compensated himself at the expense of Austria. Under the pretence that Frederic III. had refused him his daughter, he twice invaded his dominions,. and kept possession of them. With this great prince the Christian world lost its principal defender, and Hungary her conquests and her political preponderance (1490). Civilization, which he had endeavoured to intro- duce in this kingdom, was delayed for several centuries. We have already mentioned (chapter i.) what he did^ for literature and for the arts. By his Decretum M&uje, he regulated military dis- cipline, abolished judicial combats, and forbade his subjects to appear armed at the fairs and in the market-places ; he ordered that punishment should no longer be extended to the relatives of a criminal, that their property should no longer be conn's- MODERN HISTORY. 127 cated, and that the king should not accept of mines of gold, of salt, ? 487, fol., Antwerp, 1581), and the letter of Louise de Savoy, written to the em- peror in favour of her son, and that of Francis I. to the different orders of the state, and the Act of Abdication, vol. xxii., p. 69, 71, and 84 of the Collection of Memoirs. MODERN HISTORY. 161 an army. He hoped only to draw from his pris- oner an advantageous treaty. Francis I. had ar- rived in Spain, judging from his own feelings that it would be sufficient for him to see his good brother in order to be sent back honourably to his kingdom. But he did not find it so. The emperor ill treated his prisoner to obtain from him a richer ransom. In the mean time, Europe evinced the highest in- terest in behalf of this soldier king* Erasmus, the subject of Charles V., dared to write to him in favour of his captive. The Spanish nobles de- manded that he might be a prisoner on parole, and offered themselves as his security. But it was only at the expiration of a year, when Charles V. feared that his prisoner might escape from him by death, and when Francis I. had abdicated in fa- vour of the dauphin, that he decided to release him, making him sign a most disgraceful treaty. The King of France renounced his pretensions to Italy promised to do justice to the claims of Bourbon to yield Burgundy to give his two sons as host- ages, and to ally himself by a double marriage with the family of Charles V. (1526). At this price Francis was free. But he did not leave that fatal prison as he had entered it ; he left behind that noble frankness of character, that * The expression of Montluc, speaking to Francis I. himself, vol. xxi., p.vi. O2 162 SUMMARY OF heroic confidence which, until then, had formed his glory. Even at Madrid he had secretly pro- tested against the treaty. Reinstated as king, it was not difficult for him to elude it. Henry VIII., alarmed at the victory of Charles V., had allied himself with France. The pope, Venice, Flor- ence, Genoa, even the Duke of Milan, who, since the battle of Pavia, had all been in the power of the imperial armies, now regarded the French only as liberators. Francis I. caused the States of Burgundy to proclaim that he had no authority to give up any part of France ; and when Charles V. claimed the performance of the treaty, accusing him of perfidy, he replied that he lied from his throat, and challenged him to meet him in the field, at the same time proffering to the emperor a choice of weapons. Taking of Rome, 1527. While Europe was expecting a terrible war, Francis I. thought only how to make a compromise with his allies, in order to alarm Charles V., and ameliorate the conditions of the treaty of Madrid. Italy remained a prey to the most hideous war which had ever dishonoured humanity ; it was less of a war than a long chastise- ment inflicted by a ferocious soldiery upon a dis- armed people. The badly-paid troops of Charles V. would neither obey him nor any other power ; they even ruled their generals. During ten entire MODERN HISTORY. 163 months Milan was abandoned to the barbarity of the Spaniards. As soon as it was known in Ger- many that Italy was thus delivered up to pillage, thirteen or fourteen thousand Gehnans passed the Alps, commanded by George Frondsberg, a furi- ous Lutheran, who wore a chain of gold on his neck, with which he said he designed to strangle the pope. Bourbon and Leyva led, or, rather, fol- lowed this army of brigands. It gathered, as they proceeded, a crowd of Italians, who practised the vices of the barbarians, though they could not imitate their valour. The army took the road through Ferrara and Bologna ; it was on the point of entering Tuscany, arid the Spaniards swore only by the glorious pillage of Florence. A more power- ful impulse, however, led the Germans, as it had for- merly their predecessors, the Goths, towards Rome. Clement VII., who had made a treaty with the Viceroy of Naples, seeing the army of Bourbon approach, seemed to blind himself, or, rather, ap- peared to be fascinated by the very greatness of the danger. He discharged his best troops at the approach of the Imperialists, believing, perhaps, that Rome disarmed would inspire them with some respect. On the morning of the 6th of May, Bourbon commenced the assault (1527). He wore a white uniform, that he might be more easily dis- tinguished by his own, and by the enemy's men. 164 SUMMARY OF In such an odious enterprise, success alone could restore his self-esteem. Perceiving that his Ger- man foot-soldiers but slowly aided him, he seized a ladder and mounted it, when a ball struck his loins ; he felt that the blow was fatal, and ordered his attendants to cover his body with his cloak, and thus to conceal his fall. His soldiers but too well avenged his death. From seven to eight thousand Romans were massacred the first day ; nothing was spared, neither convents nor churches; not even St. Peter's. The streets were strewed with relics, and with the ornaments of the altars, which the Germans threw away, after having stripped them of the gold and silver. The Span- iards, still more rapacious and cruel, renewed every day, during nearly a year, the most frightful atroci- ties of the victory ; everywhere was heard the cry of miserable beings whom they tortured even to death, to make them confess if they had concealed any money. Often they tied them in their houses, that they might find them again when they wished to renew their torture. Lautrec Doria. Great was the indignation of Europe when it heard of the pillage of Rome, and of the captivity of the pope. Charles V. ordered prayers for the deliverance of the pontiff, who was more a prisoner of the imperial army than of the em- peror. Francis I. believed this a favourable mo- MODERN HISTORY. 165 merit to introduce those troops into Italy, which some months sooner might have saved Rome and Milan. Lautrec marched towards Naples, while the imperial generals negotiated with their soldiers, to induce them to leave Rome ; but, as in the first wars, they gave them no money. The plague de- stroyed the French army. Yet nothing was lost as long as they preserved m '.ntercourse with France by sea. Francis I. most imprudently displeased the Genoese Doria, the first mariner of the age. It seems, said Montluc, that the sea dreads this man. They kept from him the ransom of the Prince of Orange ; they did not pay the mariners of his gal- leys, and they appointed to his prejudice an ad- miral of the Levant ; and what irritated him still more was, that Francis I. did not respect the privi- leges of Genoa, and wished to transport to Savona the commerce of that city. Instead of compen- sating him for these various grievances, the king gave orders to arrest him. Doria, whose engage ment with France had just expired, offered himself to the emperor on condition that his country should be independent, and again govern in Liguria. Charles V. offered to acknowledge him for Prince of Genoa, but Doria preferred to be the first citizen of a free city. Treaty of Cambray, 1529. In the mean time, the two nations desired peace. Charles V. was 166 SUMMARY OF Alarmed at the progress of the Reformation, and by the invasion of the terrible Solyman, who had just encamped before Vienna. Francis I., whose re- sources were exhausted, thougnt only how to restore his wasted kingdom at the expense of his allies. He wished to redeem his children, and to retain Burgundy. Even when at the point of sign- ing the treaty, he protested to his allies of Italy that he would not separate his interests from theirs. He refused permission to the Florentines to make a separate peace with the emperor, and he signed the treaty of Cambray, by which he abandoned them, the Venitians, and all his partisans, to the vengeance of Charles V. (1529). This wretched treaty forever banished the French power from Italy. From that time the principal theatre of war will be everywhere else : in Savoy, in Picardy, in the Netherlands, and in Lorraine. Charles V. in Africa, 1535. While the Chris- tian world hoped to enjoy some tranquillity, a plague, until then unknown, depopulated the shores of Italy and of Spain. Towards this period, the cor- sairs of Barbary began to make the treaty des llancs. The Turks first devastated the countries which they intended to invade ; it was thus that they made almost a desert of Southern Hungary, and of the western provinces of the ancient Grecian Empire. The Tartars and the infidels of the Barbary States MODERN HISTORY. 167 skirmishing troops of the Ottoman power, contrib- uted, the one in the East, the other in the South, to this system of depopulation. The knights of Rhodes, whom Charles V. had established on the island of Malta, were too weak to clear the sea of those innumerable vessels with which Barbarossa, the Dey of Tunis, and the Admiral of Solyman had covered it. Charles V. resolved to attack the pirate in his own retreat (1535). Five hundred vessels transported to Africa an aspy of thirty thousand men, composed in great part of veteran troops, who had been engaged in the wars of Italy. The pope and the King of Portugal had .enlarged this fleet. Doria had joined his galleys to it, and the emperor himself, with the elite of the Spanish nobility, embarked in it. Barbarossa had not forces enough to oppose the most formidable armament which the Christian world had sent against the infidels since the Crusades. Goletta was taken by assault, Tunis surrendered itself, and 20,000 Chris- tians delivered from slavery, and brought back to their country at the expense of the emperor, caused all Europe to bless the name of Charles V. Alliance of Francis I. with Solyman. The con- duct of Francis I. presents a painful contrast. He had just declared his alliance with Solyman, when he made a treaty with the Protestants of Germany, and with Henry VIII., who had repudi- 168 SUMMARY OF ated the aunt of Charles V., and had abandoned the Church. Neither of them afforded the aid which he had expected from them. Solyman had gone to lose his janizaries in the boundless plains of Asia. Henry VIII. was too much occupied with the religious revolution in his own kingdom, which proceeded with so much violence. The confeder- ates of Smalcalde had no confidence in a prince who caressed the Protestants at Dresden, and burned themin Paris. Francis I. was not deterred from renewing the war ; he invaded Savoy, and threatened Milan (1585). The Duke of Savoy, alarmed by the claims of the mother of the King of France (Louise of Savoy), had espoused the sister-in-law of Charles V. The Duke of Milan, accused by the emperor of making a treaty with the French, endeavoured to exculpate himself from the charge by having, on some trifling pretext, the ambassador of Francis I. beheaded. Charles V. announced in Rome, in the presence of the envoys from all the Christian world, that he was assured of victory, and declared that, " if he had not more resources than his rival, he would go that moment, with his arms tied, a cord around his neck, and throw himself at the feet of Francis and implore his pity." Before commencing the campaign, he shared between his officers the domains and the grand dignities of the crown of France. MODERN HISTORY. 169 Provincial Legions. In fact, all the world be- lieved that Francis I. was lost. They knew not what resources France had within itself. Since 1533, the king had decided to concentrate the military strength of France in the infantry, and in a national infantry. He remembered that the Swiss had caused the loss of the battle of Bicoque, and perhaps that of Pavia ; that the landknechts had been withdrawn by the emperor on the eve of the battle of Ravenna. But thus to give arms to the people was, they said, running a great risk.* In an ordinance on the privileges of the chase, passed in 1517, he had forbidden any subject car- rying arms under the severest penalty; yet now he decided to form seven provincial legions, each of 6000 men, and drawn from the frontier prov- inces. These troops were still undisciplined, when the armies of Charles V. entered at the same time into Provence, Champagne, and Pi- cardy. As Francis I. did not rely upon their val- our, he resolved to arrest the enemy by devasta- * At the first sound of war, King Francis organized the legionaries, which was a very good expedient, had it only been followed up ; for this is the true way to secure having always a good army on foot, as the Romans did, and to keep the people disciplined, although I know not if this be a benefit or an evil. The question is not a small one : Shall I prefer to trust myself to my countrymen, or strangers? (Montluc, vol. xr., p. 385). The Memoirs of Montluc and De Tdvanes show that some gentlemen were placed in each legion, and that the bravest were those containing the most. 170 SUMMARY OF ting the country. All of Provence from the Alps to Marseilles, and from the sea to Dauphiny, was laid waste with inflexible severity, by the Marshal Montmorency ; villages, farms, mills, were all burned, and not an appearance of cultivation re-j mained. The marshal, established in an impregna- ble camp between the Rhone and Durance, was quietly waiting for the destruction of the emperor's army, which was before Marseilles. Charles V. was compelled to retreat, and was obliged to con- sent to a truce, of which the pope was the medi- ator (truce of Nice, 1538). A month after, Charles and Francis met at Aigues-Mortes ; and these princes, who had treated each other so outrage- ously, one of whom accused the other of having poisoned the dauphin, now exchanged every as- surance of fraternal affection. Feebleness of Charles V. The only cause of the truce was the exhausted power of the two ri- vals. Charles V. endeavoured to gain the Cortes of Castile by authorizing a permanent deputation in imitation of that of Aragon, and by renewing the law which excluded strangers from offices of the government ; yet he was not able to obtain, money either in 1527, or in 1533, or in 1538. The city of Ghent had taken up arms rather than pay a new tax. The administration of Mexico was not yet organized ; Peru, as yet, belonged only to those MODERN HISTORY. 171 who had conquered it, and who desolated it by their civil wars. The emperor had been obliged to sell a great part of the royal domains ; he had contracted a debt of seven millions of ducats, and could find no bank which would loan at 13 or 14 per cent. This penury excited towards 1539 a revolt, which was almost universal in the armies of Charles V. They rebelled in Sicily, pillaged Lombardy, and threatened to deliver Goletta to Barbarossa. The means to pay the arrears due to the soldiers, and to disband the greater part of them, had to be found, and at any price. Feebleness of Francis I. The King of France was scarcely less embarrassed. Since the reign of Charles VIII.; the wealth of the nation had been rapidly developed through the effects of its internal tranquillity, but the expenses exceeded by far the resources. Charles VII. had 1700 armed men. Francis I. had 3000, without counting 6000 light-horsemen, and often twelve or fifteen thousand Swiss. Charles VII. levied less than two millions of taxes ; Louis XL five millions, and Francis I. near nine millions. Since 1484,* the kings had not assembled the States-General to supply these expenses. They had substituted for them the as- semblies of the notables (1526), and more fre- quently had raised money by ordinances, which * Once only at Tours in 1506, and then only to annul the treaty of Blois. 172 SUMMARY OF they made the Parliament of Paris register. Louis XII., the father of the people, first diminished the taxes, and farmed them out (1499) ; but towards the end of his reign he was obliged to increase the duties, to make loans, and to alienate the royal domains (1511-1514). Francis I. established new taxes (particularly in 1525), sold and multiplied judicial offices (1515, 1522, 1524), founded the first perpetual revenue upon the Hotel de Ville, transferred the royal domains (1532-1544), and instituted the Royal Lottery (1539). In this facility of ruining himself Francis I. had the advantage over Charles V. He availed him- self of it when the emperor had failed in his great expedition against Algiers (1541-1542). Two years before, Charles V., passing through France, when on his way to repress the revolt of Ghent, had amused the king with a promise to give to his second son, the Duke of Orleans, the investiture of Milan. The Duchess d'Etampes, whe governed the king, seeing his powers weakened, and fearing the enmity of Diana of Poictiers, the mistress of the dauphin, made great efforts to procure for the Duke of Orleans an independent establishment, where she might also find an asylum at the death of Francis I. Add to this principal cause of the war the assassination of two French envoys, who, crossing Italy to go to the court of Solyman, were MODERN HISTORY. 173 killed in Milan by the order of the imperial gov- ernor, who seized their despatches. Francis re- lied upon his alliance with the Turks, and upon his treaty with the Protestant princes of Germany, of Denmark, and of Sweden; he attached Will- iam, duke of Cleves, particularly to himself, by making him espouse his niece, Jeanne d'Albret, who afterward became the mother of Henry IV. ; he invaded, at almost the same time, Roussillon, Piedmont, Luxembourg, Brabant, and Flanders. Solyman joined his fleet to that of France ; they bombarded the castle of Nice in vain. But the odious spectacle of the crescent united to the fleurs de Us alienated all the Christian world from the King of France. Even those who, until now, had favoured him, became regardless of the inter- ests of Europe, in order to unite themselves with Charles V. The empire declared itself against the alliance with the Turks. The King of Eng- land, who had been reconciled to Charles since the death of Catharine of Aragon, joined the party against the King of France, who had given his daughter to the King of Scotland. Henry VIII. defeated James V. (1543); Charles V. overthrew the Duke of Cleves (1543) ; and having nothing more to fear in the rear, they both agreed to invade the dominions of Francis I. France alone, with all against her, displayed an unexpected vigour ; P2 174: SUMMARY OF she fought with five armies, and astonished the confederates by the brilliant victory at Cerisoles ; the infantry gained that battle, lost by the gen- darmerie. Charles V., badly supported by Henry VIII., and recalled by the progress of Solyman in Hungary, signed, at thirteen leagues from Paris, a treaty, by which Francis renounced his claims to Naples, Charles his to Burgundy. The Duke of Orleans was to take possession of Milan (1545). The King of France and Henry VIII. soon pro- claimed peace, and they both died in the same year (1549). The long contest between the two great powers of Europe is not yet terminated ; but, for the fu- ture, it is combined with religious interests, which we cannot comprehend without tracing the prog- ress of the Reformation in Germany. We will stop here, and take a retrospect of the past, and examine what has been the internal situation of Spain and of France during the rivalry of Francis I. and Charles V. Spain. In Spain, royalty was speedily verging towards that absolute power which it had attained in France. Charles V. imitated the example of his father, and made several laws without the sanction of the Cortes. In 1538, the nobles and the prelates of Castile, having rejected the general tax of the Sisa, which would have been raised upon MODERN HISTORY. 175 the sale of provisions by retail, the King of Spain ceased to convoke them, alleging that they had no right to vote taxes which they did not pay. The Cortes were composed of but thirty-six dep- uties, sent by eighteen cities, which alone were represented. The nobles repented too late of having joined the king, for the purpose of over- throwing the Communeros, in 1521. The power of the Spanish Inquisition increased more rapidly as Charles V. became more alarm- ed at the commotions in Germany, and more ap- prehensive for the political consequences of re- ligious innovations. The Inquisition was intro- duced into the Netherlands in 1522, and if the Neapolitans had not most obstinately resisted, it would have been established among them in 1546. After having withdrawn from the Inquisition the right of exercising the royal jurisdiction (in Spain 1535-1543, in Sicily 1535-1550), it was again given to them. Since 1539, the inquisitor-gen- eral, Tabera, had governed Spain in the absence of the emperor, in the name of the Infante, afterward Philip II. The reign of Francis I. was the most brilliant era in the history of royal power in France before the ministry of the Cardinal Richelieu. He com- menced by concentrating in his own hands the ec- clesiastical power by means of the Treaty of the 176 SUMMARY OF Concordat (1515), limited the ecclesiastical juris- diction (1559), organized a system of police, and silenced the Parliaments. The Parliament of Paris had been weakened under Charles VII. and Louis XL by the formation of the Parliaments of Greno- ble, Bordeaux, and Dijon (1451, 1462, 1477) ; under Louis XII. by the Parliaments of Rouen and Aix (1499, 1501). During the captivity of Francis I., the Parliament endeavoured to recover some impor- tance, and commenced a prosecution against the Chancellor Duprat. But the king, after his resto- ration, forbade them to interfere with political af- fairs, and again deprived them of their influence by increasing the offices under government, and authorizing them to be sold. Francis I. boasted that he had placed kings from henceforth beyond control. But the increas- ing agitation of men's minds which we remark un- der his reign, augured new troubles. That spirit of freedom which was now applying itself to re- ligion was one day to enter with redoubled vigour into political institutions. First, the reformers made remonstrances against the manners of the clergy ; the Colloqwa of Erasmus, of which there were 24,000 copies, were quickly exhausted. The Psalms, translated by Marot, were adapted to the airs of romance and sung by gentlemen and ladies at the court, while the ordinance which required MODERN HISTORY. 177 the statutes, to be hereafter written in French, enabled all the world to know and to discuss political affairs (1538). The court of Margaret of Navarre, and that of the Duchess of Ferrara, Reno of France, were the rendezvous of all the partisans of the new opinions. The greatest levity of mind and the most profound fanaticism, Marot and Calvin, met each other at Nerac. Francis I. had at first seen these commotions without appre- hension. He had protected the first Protestants of France against the clergy (1523-1524). In 1534, when he wished to make a treaty with the Protestants of Germany, he requested Melancthon to present a conciliatory confession of faith. He favoured the revolution of Geneva, which became the focus of Calvinism (1535). Yet, since his re- turn from Madrid, he had become more severe to- wards the Protestants of France. In 1527 and in 1534 the fermentation caused by the new doctrines being manifested by outrages towards the images of saints, and by placards affixed to the Louvre, several Protestants were burned by a slow fire, in presence of the king and of all the court. In 1535 he ordered the suppression of the printing offices, under pain of death ; but upon the remonstrance of Parliament in the same year, he revoked that ordinance, in order to establish the censorship. The end of the reign of Francis 1. was marked 178 SUMMARY OF by a frightful event : the Vaudois, who were in- habitants of some of the inaccessible valleys of Provence and Dauphiny, had retained the doc- trines of Arius, and were about to adopt those of Calvin. The strength of their positions in the midst of the Alps caused some apprehension, and in 1540 the Parliament of Aix ordered that the two principal points of their union, Cabriere and Merindol, should be burned. After the retreat of Charles V. (1545), the decree was executed, not- withstanding the expostulations of Sadolet, bishop of Carpentras. The president D'Oppede, Guerin the advocate of the king, and Pauline, the old envoy of the king to the Turks, penetrated into the val- leys, and with barbarous cruelty exterminated all the inhabitants, and converted the whole country into a desert. This terrible catastrophe may be considered as one of the first causes of our civil wars MODERN HISTORY. 179 CHAPTER VII. LUTHER REFORMATION IN GERMANY WAR OF THE TURKS, 1517-1555. Luther attacks the Sale of Indulgences, 1517. He burns the Pope's Bull, 1520. Diet of Worms, 1521. Secularization of Prussia, 1525. War of the Peasants of Swabia, 1524-5. Anabaptists. Catholic League, 1524. Protestant League, 1526. War of the Turks ; So- lyman, 1521. Invasion of Hungary, 1526. Siege of Vienna, 1529. Diet of Spire, 1529. Confession of Augsburg, 1530. League of Smallkalde, 1531. Revolt of the Anabaptists of Westphalia, 1534. Troubles and internal Wars of Germany, 1534-46. Council of Trent, 1545. War of Charles V. against the Protestants ; Battle of Muhlberg, 1547. Revolt of Maurice of Saxony, 1551. Peace of Augsburg, 1555. Death of Charles V., 1558. ALL the governments of Europe had attained a monarchical unity, and the system of equilibrium (balance of power) was established among them, when the ancient religious unity of the West was broken by the Reformation. This event, the great- est of modern times, together with the French Revolution, separated one half of Europe from the Roman Church, and led to the greater part of the revolutions and wars which took place before the' treaty of Westphalia. Since the Reformation, we find Europe divided in a manner which coincides with the division of races. The Roman race have remained Catholics. Protestantism reigns over 180 SUMMARY OF those of the Germanic race, and the Greek Church among the Slavonic nations. Thejirst epoch of the Reformation presents Lu- ther and Zwingle in opposition, the second Calvin and Socinus. Luther and Calvin retained a part of the dogmas of the Church, and of its hierarchy. Zwingle and Socinus reduced religion by degrees to deism. The pontifical monarchy was over- thrown by the Lutheran aristocracy, and this is attacked by Calvinistic democracy. It was a ref- ormation within the Reformation. During both the first and second periods, some ancient anarchical sects, who were composed partly of prophetic vis- ionaries, arose, and gave to the Reformation the formidable aspect of a war against society ; these were the Anabaptists in the first period, the Inde- pendents and Levellers in the second. The principle of the Reformation was essentially active arid progressive. Divided even in its infan- cy, it spread itself over Europe under a hundred different forms. Repulsed in Italy, in Spain, in Portugal (1526), in Poland (1523), the privileges fallowed to the Calistins contributed to its establish- ment in Bohemia : in England the remembrance of WicklifFe was its support, and it proceeded adapting itself to every degree of civilization, and conforming to the wants of every country. Demo- cratic in Switzerland (1525), aristocratic in Den- MODERN HISTORY. 181 mark (1527), it associated itself with the royal power in Sweden (1529), and in the Empire with the cause of Germanic privileges. I. ORIGIN OF THE REFORMATION. Reformation, 1517 Leo. X. In the memora- ble year 1517, from which we generally date the commencement of the Reformation, neither Europe nor the pope, nor Luther himself, had dreamed of so great an event. The Christian princes had leagued themselves against the Turks. Leo X. had invaded the duchy of Urbino, and raised to the highest pinnacle the temporal power of the Holy See. Notwithstanding the embarrassment of his finances, which obliged him to make a sale of in- dulgences in Germany, and to create at one time thirty-one cardinals, yet he lavished with prodi- gality the treasures of the Church upon artists and men of letters. He sent even to Denmark and Sweden in search of monuments of the history of the North. He authorized the sale of Orlando Fu- rioso* by the pope's letter, and received an elo- quent epistle from Raphael upon the restoration of the antiquities of Rome. In the midst of these cares, he learned that a professor of the new Uni- versity of Wittemberg, named Martin Luther, al- ready known by having in the preceding year vea- * Published in 1516. 182 SUMMARY OF tured some bold opinions in matters of faith, had just attacked the sale of indulgences. Leo X., who himself corresponded with Erasmus, was not alarmed by these novelties ; he replied to the ac- cusers of Luther that he was a man of talents, and that the whole dispute was only a quarrel of monks.* Luther. The University of Wittemberg was founded by the Elector of Saxony, Frederic the Wise, and was one of the first in Germany where Platonism had triumphed over school divinity, and where literary instruction was associated with that of law, theology, and philosophy. Luther had at first studied law, afterward he became monk, and then, having taken the monastic habit in a fit of de- votion, he had resolved to seek philosophy from Plato, and religion in the Bible. But he was less distinguished by his extensive knowledge than by a vivid and passionate eloquence, and, by a facility then extraordinary, of discoursing upon philosoph- ical and religious subjects in his mother tongue ; it was this by which he carried away all the world. f This impetuous spirit, once let loose, went farther than he had intended.^ He attacked first the * Che fra Martino aveva lellissimo ingegno, e che coteste erano in- vidie fratesche. t Bossuet. t Luther, in his preface to the Captivity of Babylon, says, '* In spite of myself, I am forced to become wise, from day to day, since masters so renowned attack me, now together, then separately. I have written for MODERN HISTORY. 183 abuse, then the principle of indulgences, after- ward the intercession of saints, auricular confes- sion, purgatory, the celibacy of the priests, and transubstantiation ; finally, the authority of the Church, and the character of her visible head. He was entreated to retract by the legate Cajetan, but in vain ; he appealed from the legate to the pope, from the pope to a general council ; and when the pope had condemned him he dared to retaliate, and solemnly burned on the square of Wittemberg the bull of condemnation and the volumes of the canon law (15th of June, 1520). Zwingle. An act so daring seized all Europe with astonishment. The greater part of the sects and heretics had formed themselves in secret, and would have been happy to remain unknown. Zwingle himself, whose preaching at the same ten years on indulgences, but I now repent that I published this little volume. I was still wavering, from a superstitious respect for the tyr- anny of Rome ; I then believed that indulgences should not be con- demned ; but since, thanks to Sylvester and other defenders of indul- gences, I have learned that they are but an invention of the papal court to destroy faith in God, and get wealth from men. Finally came Eccius and Emser with their band, to teach me the supremacy and unlimited power of the pope. Not to show myself ungrateful towards such learned men, it becomes me to acknowledge that I have profited much by their writings. I denied that popery was of Divine right ; I admitted that it wag of human origin. After having heard and read the subtleties by which these poor people would raise their idol, I am convinced that the papacy is the kingdom of Babylon and the power of Nimrod, the strong huntsman." 184 SUMMARY OF period had withdrawn half the Swiss from the au- thority of the Holy See, did not announce himself with such boldness.* They imagined that some- thing very great must belong to him who had con- stituted himself the judge of the head of the Church. Luther pronounced his own boldness and his suc- cess a miracle. Causes which favoured the Reformation. In the mean time, it was easy to perceive how many fa- vourable circumstances encouraged the reformer. The pontifical monarchy, which alone had brought some harmony into the anarchical chaos of the Middle Ages, had successively been weakened by the progress of royal power and of civil order. The scandals with which a great proportion of * Zwingle, a cure of Zurich, commenced preaching in 1516 : the can- tons of Zurich, of Basle, of SchafFhausen, of Berne, and the allied cities of St. Gaul and of Muhlhausen, embraced his doctrine. Those of Lu- cerne, Uri, Schwitz, Unterwalden, Zug, Fribourg, Sololhurn, and Va- lais, remained faithful to the Catholic religion. Glari and Appenzel were divided. The inhabitants of the Catholic cantons, democratic in their form of government, and dwelling almost altogether without the cities, retained their ancient forms of worship, and received pensions from the pope and from the King of France. Francis I. in vain offered himself as mediator between the Swiss ; the Catholic cantons would not accept the proposed pacification ; those of Zurich and of Berne cut off their supplies. The Catholics invaded the territory of Zurich, and gained a battle over the Protestants, in which Zwingle was killed, fight- ing at the head of his flock (battle of Cappel, 1531). The Catholics, more barbarous, more valiant, and less rich, would have conquered, but they were not able to support the war for so long a time as the Protest- ant cantons. Sleidan. Muller, Univ. Hist., vol. ii., p. 159. MODERN HISTORY. 185 priests afflicted the Church, daily undermined an edifice already shaken by the spirit of doubt and of contradiction. Two circumstances contributed to complete her ruin. First, the invention of printing gave to the innovators of the sixteenth century the means of communicating and propa- gating their tenets, which were wanted by those of the Middle Ages, and which enabled them to re- sist a power as strongly organized as that of the Church. Afterward the financial embarrassment of many of the princes induced them to avail them- selves of a doctrine which placed the riches of the clergy at their disposal. Europe at that pe- riod presented a remarkable spectacle, in the dis- proportion between its wants and its resources, a result of the recent elevation of a central power in each state. The Church paid the balance.. Sev- eral Catholic sovereigns had already obtained per- mission from the Holy See to exercise a part of its privileges. The princes of the North of Ger- many, whose independence was threatened by the master of Peru and Mexico, found their Indies in the secularization of ecclesiastical wealth. Germany necessarily the Birthplace of the Refor- mation. The Reformation had already been at- tempted several times : in Italy by Arnold of Bres- cia, by Waldus in France, and by Wickliffe in Eng- land. But in Germany it was to have a firmer Q 2 186 SUxMMARY OF foundation. The German clergy were richer, and, consequently, more envied. The Episcopal sover- eignties of the Empire were given to the younger branches of noble families, who brought the vio- lent and scandalous manners of worldly men into the ecclesiastical ranks. But the greatest hatred was against the court of Rome, against the Italian clergy, whose fiscal genius had exhausted Ger- many. From the time of the Roman Empire, the constant opposition between the North and the South seemed as if personified in Germany and Italy. In the Middle Ages there was some order in the combat ; power and intellect, violence and politics, the feudal system and Catholic hierarchy, hereditary succession and elective government, were prizes in the contests of the Empire with the priesthood ; the critical spirit, at its revival, pre- faced an examination of opinions by an attack upon persons. In the fifteenth century, the Hussites forced some concessions by a war of thirty years. In the sixteenth, the connexion of the Italians with the Germans only served to augment their ancient antipathy. Led constantly into Italy by the wars, the men of the North wre scandalized .at the magnificence of the popes, and those pa- geantries with which worship delights to sur- round itself in Southern countries. The ignorance .of the Germans increased their displeasure ; they MODERN HISTORY. 187 regarded as profane all that they could not com- prehend, and when they repassed the Alps, they excited the horror of their barbarous fellow-citi- zens by describing to them the idolatrous feasts of the new Babylon. Diet of Worms, 1521 Luther at Wartburg. Luther knew well the state of their minds. When he was summoned by the new emperor to the Diet of Worms, he did not hesitate to go there. His friends reminded him of the fate of John Huss. " I am legally summoned to appear at Worms," he re- plied, " and should I see conspired against me as many devils as there are tiles on the roofs, 'I would go there in the name of the Lord." A great number of his partisans insisted upon attending him, and he entered the city escorted by a hundred armed knights. Having refused to retract, notwithstand- ing the public request and the private solicitations of the princes and electors, he was exiled from the Empire a few days after his departure. Charles V. also declared himself against the Reformation. He was King of Spain ; he needed the influence of the pope in his affairs in Italy ; finally, his title of Emperor, and of First Sovereign of Europe, constituted him the defender of the ancient faith. Similar motives influenced Francis I. ; the new heresy was condemned by the University of Paris. The young King of England, Henry VIII., who 188 SUMMARY OF made pretensions to theology, wrote a volume against Luther. But he found zealous defenders in the princes of Germany, especially in the Elector of Saxony, who seemed to have even put him forward. This prince had been the imperial vicar in the interregnum, and it was then that Luther had dared to burn the bull of the pope. After the Diet of Worms, the elector, thinking that affairs were not yet matured, resolved to preserve Luther from the effects of his own impetuosity. In returning from the Diet of Worms, when in the midst of the forest of Thuringen, Luther was carried off by some masked horseman, who concealed him in the castle of Wartburg. Shut up for nearly a year in this place of captivity, which, however, seemed to have governed all Germany, the Reformer com- menced his translation of the Bible into the Ger- man language, and inundated Europe with his writings. These theological pamphlets, printed as soon as written, penetrated into the most dis- tant provinces, and were read by families at their evening reunion ; and the invisible preacher was heard throughout all the Empire. Never had writer so entirely understood the feelings of the people. His fierce audacity, his satirical jesting, his apostrophes to the higher powers of the world, to the bishops, to the pope, to the King of England, whom he treated with a magnificent contempt of MODERN HISTORY. 189 them and of Satan, charmed and excited all Ger- many ; and the burlesque parts of these popular dramas only rendered their influence more sure. Erasmus, Melancthon, and the greater number of learned men, pardoned the proud boasting and vul- garity of Luther for the violence with which he attacked the scholastic divinity of the schools. The princes applauded a reformation which con- duced to their gain. Besides, Luther, while exci- ting the passions of the people, forbade the use of any other weapon than that of words. " It was the word," said he, " which, while I slept tranquilly and drank my beer with my dear Melancthon, has shaken popery more than prince or emperor ever did." Albert of Brandenbourgj 1525. But in vain did he flatter himself that he could restrain passions, once excited, within the boundaries of an abstract discussion ; men were not slow in deducing from his principles more rigorous consequences than he wished. The princes had taken possession of ecclesiastical property ; Albert of Brandenbourg, Grand-master of the Teutonic Order, secularized one state entirely ; he espoused the daughter of the new King of Denmark, and declared himself the hereditary Duke of Prussia, under the Lord- paramount of Poland. This was a terrible prece- dent in an empire full of ecclesiastical sovereigns, 190 SUMMARY OF who might be tempted to essay a similar usurpa- tion (1525). Effect of the Reformation upon the people, 1524 Anabaptists. Yet this was not the greatest dan- ger. The lower class of people and the peasants, who, for a long time, had been stupified under the - weight of feudal oppression, heard the learned and the princes speak of liberty and of enfranchise- ment, and they applied to themselves sentiments which were not uttered for them. The demand of the poor peasants of Swabia will ever remain, in its rustic simplicity, a monument of courageous moderation.* By degrees, the constant hatred of the poor against the rich was revived, blind and furious, as in the Jacquerie, but already assuming a systematic form, as in the time of the Levellers. It was complicated with all the first principles of religious democracy which had been suppressed in the Middle Ages. Lollards, Beghards, a crowd of prophetic visionaries, were roused. The rallying- word was the necessity of a second baptism ; the aim, a terrible war against established order, and every kind of order ; a war against property, it was robbery for the benefit of the poor ; a war against science, it destroyed the equality of na- ture, and tempted God, who had revealed all to his * Die 12 Artikel der Bauernschaft. See, at the end of Sartorius, Bauernkrieg, and in the German works of Luther, Wittemberg, 1569, Tol. ii., p. 64. MODERN HISTORY. 191 saints ; books and paintings were inventions of the devil. The fiery Carlostadt had already given the example, by rushing from church to church, breaking the images and destroying the altars. At Wittemberg the students burned their books before the eyes of Luther. The peasants of Thuringia, imitating those of Swabia, followed the enthusiast Muncer, overthrew Muhlhausen, called the work- men of the mines of Mansfeld to arms, and en- deavoured to join themselves to their brethren of Franconia (1524). On the Rhine, in Alsace and in Lorraine, in l Tyrol, Carinthia, and Styria, the people everywhere took arms. The magistrates of every place were deposed ; the lands of the no- bility were seized, and the people forced the nobles to exchange their titles and their clothes for com- mon names and apparel like their own. All the Catholic and Protestant princes armed themselves against them ; the heavy cavalry of the nobles crushed them in a moment, and they were treated like wild beasts. . II. FIRST STRUGGLE AGAINST THE REFORMA- / \f TION. / The secularization of Prussia, and especially the revolt of the Anabaptists, gave to the Reformation a most threatening political character. The two opinions became two parties (Catholic at Ratis- bon, 1524, and at Dessau; Protestant at Torgau, 192 SUMMARY OF 1526). The emperor watched for the proper mo- ment to overthrow one by the other, and, at the same time, to subject both Catholics and Protest- ants. He believed that the moment had arrived when the victory of Pavia made his rival a cap- tive. But in the year following a universal league in the West was formed against him. The pope and all Italy, Henry VIII., his ally, declared war against him. At the same time, the election of Ferdinand to the thrones of Bohemia and Hungary drew the house of Austria into the civil wars of that kingdom, arid (if we may thus speak) un- masked Germany, and placed her face to face with Solyman. Selim Solyman, 1521 Siege of Vienna, 1529. The progress of the Ottoman barbarism, which daily approached nearer, complicated the affairs of Europe in a most alarming manner. The Sultan Selim, that rapid conqueror, whose ferocity made the Turks themselves tremble, had just doubled the extent of the dominion of the Osmanlis. This tiger, by three bounds, had seized Egypt, Syria, and Arabia. The brilliant cavalry of the Mame- lukes had perished at the foot of his throne, in the great massacre at Cairo.* He had sworn to break the red heads ^ in order afterward to turn the strength * " Hi ! c'est Sultan Selim ! . . ." Allusion of an Arab poet to thi* massacre in Kautimir. t The Persians are so called by the Turks. MODERN HISTORY. 193 of the Mohammedan nations against the Christians. A cancer, of which he died, absolved him from keeping this oath. In the year 926 of the Hegira (1521), Sultan Selim passed to the Eternal King- dom, leaving the empire of the world to Solyman* Solyman the Magnificent girded on the sabre at Stamboul the same year that Charles V. receiv- ed the imperial crown at Aix-la-Chapelle. He commenced his reign by the conquest of Bel- grade and Rhodes, the two keys of Mohammed II. (1521-2). The conquest of Rhodes secured to the Turks the empire of the sea, in the eastern part of the Mediterranean. Belgrade opened Hun- gary to them. When they invaded this kingdom in 1526, the young king, Louis, could assemble only 25,000 men against 150,000. The Hunga- rians, who, according to the ancient custom, took ofT the spurs from him who bore the standard of the Virgin, were nevertheless defeated at Mo- haez. Louis and his general, Paul Tomorri, bishop of Colocza, were killed in the defeat, and a great many other bishops, who bore arms during the con- stant perils of Hungary, lost their lives. Two kings were elected at the same time, Ferdinand of Austria and John Zapoly, w^^Se of Transylva- nia. Zapoly, obtaining no assistance from Poland, applied to the Turks themselves. The ambassador * Epitaph of Selim. R 194 SUMMARY OP of Ferdinand, the gigantic Hobordanse, who was ' celebrated for having vanquished, in single com- bat, one of the most valiant pachas, had dared to brave the sultan ; and Solyman had sworn that, if he did not find Ferdinand at Buda, he would go to Vienna to seek him. In the month of September, 1529, the dark circle of an innumerable army en- closed the capital of Austria. Happily, a crowd of valiant men, Germans and Spaniards, were found there. Among them were Don Pedro de Navarre, and the Count of Salm, who, if we be- lieve the Germans, had taken Francis I. at Pavia. At the end of twenty days, and of twenty assaults, Solyman pronounced an anathema against the sul- tan who should again attack that fatal city. He departed in the night, destroying all bridges behind him, strangling his prisoners, and on the fifth day he had returned to Buda. He consoled his wounded pride by crowning Zapoly, that unfortunate prince, who, at the same time, beheld from the windows of the citadel of Pesth 10,000 Hungarian prison- ers, whom the Tartars of Solyman had surprised in celebrating the feast of Christmas, and whom they drove before them like flocks. What was Germany doing while the Turks were breaking through all the ancient barriers, and while Solyman was dispersing his Tartars beyond Vi- enna 1 She was disputing about tran substantiation MODERN HISTORY. 195 and about free-will. Her most illustrious warriors were seated in the diets, and were interrogating doctors. Such was the intrepid phlegm of that great nation such its confidence in its own strength and numbers. Confession of Augsburg, 1530 League of Smal- kalde, 1530. The war with the Turks and with the French, the taking of Rome, and the defence of Vienna, had so entirely occupied Charles V. and his brother, that the Protestants obtained toler- ation until the next council. But after the peace of Cambray, Charles V., seeing France exhausted, Italy in subjection, and Solyman repulsed, under- took to try the great cause of the Reformation. The two parties appeared at Augsburg. The dis- ciples of Luther, who were designated by the general name of Protestants, since they had pro- tested against the prohibition of innovation (Spire, 1529), wished to be distinguished from all the other enemies of Rome, whose excesses might bring reproach on their cause ; from the Zwinglian Republicans of Switzerland, who were odious to the princes and the nobility ; and, above all, from the Anabaptists, who were proscribed as the ene- mies of order and of society. Their confession, softened by the learned and peaceable Melancthon, who, with tears, addressed the two parties, was repulsed as heretical. They were commanded 196 SUMMARY OF to renounce their errors upon pain of being put under the ban of the Empire (Augsburg, 1530). Charles V. seemed even ready to employ violence, and for a moment the gates of Augsburg were closed. The diet was scarcely dissolved when the Protestant princes reassembled at Smalkalde, and there concluded a defensive league, by which they were to form one body (December 31, 1530), They protested against Ferdinand's assumption of the title of King of the Romans. The tSohtingenTs" were settled ; they applied to the Kings of France, of England, and of Denmark, to aid them, and they held themselves ready for a combat. Germany reunited by Solyman. The Turkg seem again to be charged with the reconciliation ot Germany. The emperor heard that Solyman had just entered Hungary at the head of 300,000 men, while the pirate Khair Eddyn Barbarossa, who was become Captain Pacha, had joined the kingdom of Tunis to Algiers, and was the terror of all the Mediterranean. Charles V. hastened to offer to the Protestants all that they had demanded : reli- gious toleration, the preservation of secularized property until the next council, and admission to the Imperial Chamber. Defeat of the Turks. During the negotiation, Solyman was arrested for a month before a small and miserable town by the Dalmatian Juritzi. He MODERN HISTORY. 197 endeavoured to gain time in going across the impas- sable roads of Styria, when the snow and ice al- ready covered the mountains, but the formidable appearance of the army of Charles V. decided his retreat. Germany, reunited by the promises of the emperor, had made the greatest efforts. An army, composed of Italian, Flemish, Burgundian, Bohemian, and Hungarian troops, joined them- selves to the imperial army, and brought a force of 90,000 foot-soldiers and 30,000 horsemen, of whom a great, number were covered with iron.* Never, since the time of Godfrey d'Bouillon, had there been an army more European. The light cavalry of the Turks was soon surrounded and cut in pieces. The sultan only regained courage by going out from those narrow passages through which the Murr and Drave flow, and entering the plain of Waradin. Anabaptists of Munster John of Leyden. Francis I. and Solyman now relieved each other in occupying Charles V. The sultan, after invading Persia, had gone to be crowned at Bagdad. The King of France attacked the emperor by making an assault upon his ally, Savoy. The decisive rupture between the Catholics and Protestants of Germany was delayed by this new war for twelve years, but the interval was not a period of peace. * P. Zove, an eyewitness. R2 198 SUMMARY OF First, the Anabaptists broke out anew in Minister, under a more frightful form, and from the same an- archical phrensy. proceeded a strange government, a monstrous union of democracy and tyranny. The Anabaptists of Munster followed exclusively the Old Testament ; they believed that, as Jesus Christ was of the race of David, his kingdom was to be of Jewish form. They acknowledged two prophets of God, David, and John of Leyden their chief, and two prophets of the devil the pope and Luther. John of Leyden was a journeyman tailor, a daring and ferocious man, whom they had made their king, and who was to spread the king- dom of Jesus Christ throughout the world. The princes were beforehand with him. Council of Trent, 1545. The Catholics and the Protestants, who, during a short period, had form- ed one common cause against the Anabaptists, were afterward only more at enmity. They con- stantly spoke of a General Council ; nobody de- sired it. The pope dreaded it ; the Protestants challenged it in advance. The council (reunited at Trent, 1545) might bind the unity of the Catho- lic hierarchy more closely, but it could not restore the unity of the Church. The weapons of war alone could decide it. The Protestants had already driven the Austrians from Wurtemberg ; they had dispossessed Henry of Brunswick, who took ad- MODERN HISTORY. 199 vantage of the judgments of the Imperial Chamber for his own profit. They incited the Archbishop of Cologne to imitate the example of Albert of Brandenburg, who had given them the majority in the Electoral Council. Battle ofMuhlberg, 1547. When the war with France was terminated, Charles V. and his brother made a treaty with the Turks, and united them- selves closely to the pope, in order to overthrow at the same time the religious and political liberties of Germany. The Lutherans, warned by the im- prudence of Paul III., who proclaimed the war as if it had been a crusade, rose, under the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse, to the num- ber of 80,000. Abandoned by France, England, and Denmark, who had excited them to the war, separated from the Swiss by their horror of the blasphemies of Zwingle, they were still strong enough if they had remained united. Charles V. diminished their numbers by taking from them, un- der the canons of Ingolstadt, Maurice, the young duke of Saxony, who had made a secret treaty with him, had betrayed the Protestant cause, and inva- ded the states of his father-in-law, the elector. Charles V. had now only to overthrow the isolated members of the league. Immediately after the death of Henry VIII. and Francis I. (21st January, 3lst March, 1547), which event had deprived the Prot- 200 SUMMARY OF estants of every hope of succour, he inarched against the Elector of Saxony, and defeated him at Muhlberg, 24th April. The two brothers abused the power which that victory had obtained for them. Charles V. condemned the elector to death by a court-martial of Spanish officers, over whom the Duke of Alba presided, and deprived him of the cession of his electorate, which he transferred to Maurice. He retained the Landgrave of Hesse a prisoner, whom he had deceived by a cowardly stratagem, and showed that his victory was neither for the Catholic faith nor for the Constitution of the Empire. Ferdinand imitated his brother. Since 1545 he had declared himself a feudatory of Solyman for the kingdom of Hungary, reserving all his forces for an attack upon Bohemia and Germany. He re- established the archbishopric of Prague, which had been so formidable to the ancient Hussites, and declared himself hereditary sovereign of Bohe- mia. In 1547 he endeavoured to raise an army without the authority of the States, in order to at- tack the Lutherans of Saxony, who were the allies of the Bohemians. That army was raised, but it was against the prince, who had violated his oaths. The Bohemians leagued themselves together for the defence of their constitution and of their lan- guage. The battle of Muhlberg delivered them to Ferdinand, who destroyed their privileges. MODERN HISTORY. 201 Martinuzzi. Hungary had not less to com- plain of. The fatal war of Ferdinand against Zapoly had rendered this kingdom accessible to the Turks. All the national party, all those who would have neither the Turks nor the Austrians for masters, ranged themselves around the Cardi- nal George Martiriuzzi (Uthysenitsch), who was tutor to the young son of Zapoly. This extraordi- nary man, who at twenty years of age still gain- ed his living by attending to the fires in the roy- al palace of Buda, had become the master of Tran- sylvania. The queen-mother calling the Turks to her aid, he treated with Ferdinand, who was at least a Christian ; he caused the cry of war to be raised everywhere,* assembled in a few days 70,000 men, and at the head of his heiduques he conquered the city of Lippe, which the Austrians could not retake under the infidels. This success and this popularity alarmed the brother of Charles V. Martinuzzi had authorized the Transylvanians to repress the licentiousness of the German sol- diers with arms. Ferdinand caused him to be as- sassinated, but this crime cost him Transylvania. The son of Zapoly was established there, and the * Beeket's History of Martinusius, p. 324. A man on horseback, com- pletely armed, and one on foot, holding a bloody sword, went through- out the country raising the cry of war, according to the ancient custom of Transylvania. 202 SUMMARY OF Austrians only preserved what they possessed of Hungary by paying tribute to the Ottoman Porte. Charles V. In the mean time, Charles V. op- pressed Germany and threatened Europe. On the one side, he excepted from the alliance which he proposed to the Swiss, Basle, Zurich, and Schaff- hausen, which he said belonged to the Empire ; on the other side, he pronounced the sentence of outlaw against Albert of Brandenburg, who had become a feudatory of the King of Poland : he even disaffected Ferdinand, and separated the interests of the two branches of the house of Austria by endeavouring to transfer the succession of the Em- pire from his brother to his son. He had intro- duced the Inquisition in the Netherlands. In Ger- many, he wished to impose on the Catholics and Protestants his Irihalt (Interim), a conciliatory ar- rangement, which united them in one point, their hatred for the emperor. The Interim has been compared to the Establishment of Henry VIII., and not without reason ; the emperor also assumed a privilege of the pope. When Maurice of Sax- ony, son-in-law of the landgrave, demanded the liberty of his father-in-law, which he had sworn to maintain, Charles V. declared to him that he ab- solved him from his oath. But his most unfeeling act of arrogance was leading in his train the Landgrave and the venera- MODERN HISTORY. 203 ble Elector of Saxony, as if to triumph in their per- sons over German liberty. Germany now, for the first time, saw strangers violate her territory in the name of the emperor : she was crossed in every sense by Italian mercenaries and by wild Span- iards, who laid Catholics and Protestants, friends and foes, equally under contribution. Maurice of Saxony Pacification of Augsburg, 1555. To overthrow this unjust power, which seemed immovable, the young Maurice of Saxony, the principal instrument of the victory of Charles V., alone was competent. Charles V. had caused the Electorate of Saxony, and the place of the chief of the Protestants of Germany, to be transferred to a more able prince. Maurice found himself the sport of the emperor, who retained his father-in- law a prisoner. A number of little books and sa- tirical prints, which circulated in Germany,* de- scribed him as an apostate, a traitor, and the scourge of his country. A profound dissimulation conceal- ed the projects of Maurice : first he must raise an army without alarming the emperor ; he en- gages to submit Magdeburg to the Interim, and to join the troops of the city to his own. At the same time, he made a secret treaty with the King of France. The emperor, having again refused liberty to the landgrave, received two manifestos * Id., i., xxiii. 204 SUMMARY OF at the same time, one from Maurice in the name of Germany, which represented it to be plunder- ed by the Spaniards, and outraged in the official history of Louis of A villa ;* the other was from the King of France, Henry II., who styled himself Protector of the Princes of the Empire, and who placed a cap of liberty between two swords at the head of his manifesto.t While the French invaded the three bishoprics, Maurice marched rapidly to- wards Innspruck (1552). The aged emperor, sick and without troops, departed in the night, during a heavy rain, and was carried towards the mountains of Carinthia ; and had not a Mutiny of his troops retarded Maurice, Charles V. w ould have fallen into the hands of his enemies. He v as obliged to yield. The emperor concluded the convention of Passau with the Protestants, and the bad success of the war, which he continued against France, changed this convention to a definite peace (Augsburg, 1555). The Protestants professed their religion freely, retained the ecclesiastical property which they possessed before 1552, and were permit- ted to enter the Imperial Chamber. Such was the first victory of religious liberty ; the critical spirit, having thus obtained a legal existence, fol- lowed from this time a determined course through obstacles which were not able to retard it. (See, * Id., i., xxir. t Id. ibid. MODERN HISTORY. 205 farther on, the germes of war comprised in that peace.) Abdication of Charles V. The emperor, aban- doned by fortune, " who does not love old^men^ 1 * t" \ resigned the Empire to his brother, his kingdom to his sons, and retired to end his days in the soli- tude of the monastery of St. Just. His own obse- quies, which he celebrated while living, were but a too faithful picture of that eclipsed glory which he had survived.! CHAPTER VIII. THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND AND THE NORTH OF EUROPE, 1521-1547. I. ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND, 1527-1547. Divorce of Henry VIII. England separates herself from the Roman Church, March 30th, 1534 Pilgrimage of Grace. Persecution of Catholics and Protestants, 1540. Attempts on Scotland, 1542. Sub- mission and Administrative Organization of Wales and Ireland. THE Germanic States of the North, England, Sweden, and Denmark, followed the example of Germany ; but in separating themselves from the Holy See, the last three states, influenced by the spirit of aristocracy, preserved in part the Catho- lic hierarchy. * Saying of Charles V. t A Spanish historian is said to have discovered proof, recently, that these alleged obsequies never took place, S 206 SUMMARY OF Henry VIII. The revolution effected by Henry VIII. ought not to be confounded with the true Ref- ormation of England. That revolution only caused England to separate from Rome, and to confiscate the power and property of the Church for the bene- fit of the kings. Made, without conscience or con- viction, by the king and the aristocracy, it was only the last term of that absolute power in which the English had indulged the crown, for half a century, in hatred of the anarchy of the Roses. The propa- gation of the ancient doctrines of Occam and Wickliffe rendered the higher classes indifferent to religious innovations. This official reform had nothing to do with that which operated at the same time among the lower orders of the people, through the spontaneous enthusiasm of the Lutherans, Cal- vinists, and Anabaptists, who came in crowds from Germany, the Netherlands, and Geneva. This Reformation soon predominated in Scotland, and finished by conquering the other in England. Anne Boleyn Schism, 1534. The cause of the aristocratic and royal Reformation of England was trifling ; it seemed to arise from the epheme- ral passion of Henry VIII. for Anne Boleyn, maid 1 of honour to the queen, Catharine of Aragon, aunt of Charles V. At the expiration of twenty years after marriage, he remembered that the queen had for some months been the wife of his brother. It was MODERN HISTORY. 207 at the moment when the victory of Pavia, breaking the equilibrium of the West, had alarmed Henry VIII. at the success of the emperor, his ally ; he went over to Francis, and solicited his divorce from Clement VII. The pope, threatened by Charles V., sought every means to gain time ; and after having committed the judgment to the legates, he had the cause tried at Rome. The English were no longer pleased at the prospect of the divorce ; besides the interest which Catharine inspired, they feared that a rupture with Spain would arrest the com- merce of the Netherlands. They refused to resort to the markets of France, by which they might have replaced those of Flanders. In the mean time, some more daring counsellors, who had succeeded the cardinal legate,| WoJafi&fCromwell, the Minister of State, and Cranmer, doctor of Ox- ford^Jwhom Henry had made Archbishop of Can- terbury, destroyed his scruples, by purchasing for him the approbation of the principal universities of Europe. The king triumphed at last, and the clergy of the kingdom were accused for having ac- knowledged as legate the disgraced minister. The deputies of the clergy only obtained their pardon by a present to the king of 100,000 ij*a, pd by acknowledging him as the protector and supreme head of the Church of England. On the 30th of March, 1534, that declaration having passed both 208 SUMMARY OF chambers in a bill, was sanctioned by the king, and any appeal to Rome was prohibited. On the 23d of the same month, Clement VII. pronounced sen- tence against the divorce, after the almost unani- mous advice of his cardinals : thus England was separated from the Holy See. Prodigality of the King Pilgrimage of Grace. This change, which seemed to terminate the rev- olution, was only the commencement of it. At first the king declared all ecclesiastical power sus- pended ; the bishops, at the expiration of a month, must present a petition to resume the exercise of their authority. The monasteries werejuppressed, and their property, equivalent to 7,000,000 of francs, was united to the crown. But the king soon dis- sipated all. It is said that he gave a landed estate to one of his cooks who presented him with some delicate dish. The valuable furniture of the con- vents, with their maps and their libraries, were seized and scattered in all directions. The pious monks were indignant ; the poor no longer found their sustenance at the gates of the monasteries. The nobility and landholders imagined that if the convents ceased to exist, their property would not fall again to the crown, but would return to the rep- resentatives of the donors. The inhabitants of five counties of the north armed themselves, and marched towards London, to accomplish what they MODERN HISTORY. 209 called the Pilgrimage of Grace ; the other party ne- gotiated with them, and promised much, but when they had dispersed, they hung them by hundreds. Bill of the Six Articles. The Protestants, who at that time abounded in England, thought that they would be able to establish themselves there, aided by this revolution. Henry VIII. taught them how much they had deceived themselves. Nothing in the world would induce him to renounce his ti- tle of Defender of the Faith, which his book against Luther had procured. He maintained the ancient faith by his bill of the Six Articles, and persecuted both parties with impartial intolerance. In 1540, Protestants and Catholics were drawn on the same hurdle from the Tower to Smithfield ; the Protest- ants were burned as heretics, the Catholics hanged as traitors, for having denied the supremacy. Lambert. The king having in every point re- ^ placed the pope, solemnly established his reli- ' gious and political infallibility. He forced the Parliament to make a decree that his proclama- tion should have the same power as bills passed in ' both chambers. But, what was more terrible, he ; *jf Jbelieved in his own infallibility, and regarded as sacred every caprice of his passions. Of six wives which he had, two were driven away, two beheads 5; A *' " J ^ ; ed under the pretext of adultery : the lastjvithjj.^ ficulty escaped the same fate for having supported 82 210 SUMMARY OP the opinions of the Protestants. He exercised a cruel and meddling despotism in his family, and treated all the nation as if they were of his house- hold. He had a translation made of the Bible, and prohibited all others ; those of good condition alone were permitted to read it, and any other individual was liable to one month's imprisonment for every time he opened the Bible. He wrote or revised two books himself for the religious instruction of the people (the Institution and Erudition of the Christian). He disputed in person against the in- novators. A schoolmaster named Lambert, prose- cuted for having denied the real presence, Jmgg calle&by the archbishop to the head of the Church ; the king argued with him, and after a five hours' dispute, asked him if he would yield or die ; Lam- bert chose death, and was burned. A yet stranger scene was the sentence of St. Thomas of Canter- bury, who had died in 1170. He was cited to Westminster, as if alive, accused of treason, and at the expiration of the usual delay of thirty days, he was condemned for non-appearance. His relics were burned, and his wealth, (that is), the shrine and the offerings which decorated it, were confis- cated for the benefit of the king. Scotland. Henry VIII. would have extended his religious tyranny over Scotland, but the French party which governed there was attached to th MODERN HISTORY. 211 Catholic religion, and all the nation abhorred the English yoke. In speaking of the King of Eng- land, Sir George Douglas wrote, " There is not a child who would not throw stones at him ; the women would break their distaffs on him ; the people would sooner die than attempt-to, fxeveat UMUR ; the greater part of the nobility, and all the clergy, are against him." The young Queen of Scotland (Mary) remained under the care of James Hamilton, count of Arran, son of him of whom we have already spoken ; he was named governor by the Lords, although the will of the deceased king designed the Cardinal Beaton for regent ; and Scotland was comprised in the treaty concluded between England and France in 1546 (see chapter viii.). The King of England died one year after. Servility of the English Parliament. During the last year of his reign, Henry having expended the prodigious sums which he had drawn from the sup- pression of the monasteries, sought new resources in the servility of his parliament. He had disci- plined it at an early hour, and at the least resist- ance he reprimanded the varlets of the mob. Since 1543, he demanded an enormous subsidy. He had forced out new sums under every form duties, free gifts, loans, alteration of coin. Finally, the Parlia- ment, sanctioning the bankruptcy, left to him all 212 SUMMARY OF that he had borrowed since the thirty-first year of his reign. They maintained that before the twen- ty-sixth, the receipts of the Exchequer had sur- passed the sums of all the taxes imposed by his predecessors, and that before his death this sum was more than doubled. Wales and Ireland. It was under Henry VIII. that Wales was subjected to the regular forms of the English administration, and that Ireland knew some civil order. The innovations of Henry VIII. were not well received in this island, neither by the English colonists, nor by the native population. The government of the country was commonly intrusted to the Irish, to Kildare or Ossory (Os- mond), chiefs of the rival families of Fitzgerald and Butler. The young son of Kildare, believing his father to have been killed at London, presented himself to the council, and in his name declared war against Henry VIII., king of England. The wise counsels of the Archbishop of Armagh could not prevail over the chanting of an Irish bard, who, in the national tongue, excited the hero to avenge the blood of his father. His valour could do nothing against the English discipline : he stipulated for a full pardon for himself and his friends, and was be- headed at London. Thus tranquillity re-established itself. The Irish chiefs solicited for themselves the dignity of the peerage : O'Neal, the most cele- MODERN HISTORY. 213 brated of them all, will reappear later under the name of the Count of Tyrone. II. DENMARK, SWEDEN, AND NOR- WAY, 1513-60. Christian II. turns the Danish Nobility, Sweden, 1520, and the Hansa, 1517, against himself. Gustavus Vasa. Insurrection of Dalecarlia. Christian II. replaced in Sweden by Gustavus Vasa, 1523 ; in Den- mark and Norway by Frederic of Holsteiri, 1525. Independence of the Danish Church, 1527 ; of the Swedish Church, 1529. Death of Frederic I. ; Civil War, 1533. Christian III. abolishes the Catholic Worship, 1536, and incorporates Norway with Denmark, 1537. WHILE Protestant Germany sought in political liberty a guarantee for her religious independence, Denmark and Sweden confirmed their revolution by the adoption of the Reformation. Christian II. Christian II. had equally irritated the Danish nobility, against whom he protected the peasants ; Sweden, which he inundated with blood (1520) ; and the Hanseatic cities, to which he had closed the ports of Denmark by prohibi- tions (1517). He soon found himself punished both for the evil and the good which he had done. Governed by the German priest Slagheck, who was once a barber, and by the daughter of a Dutch tavern-keeper, he followed with little dexterity the path which led the princes of the South of Europe to absolute power. He wished to ruin the nobility of Denmark and conquer Sweden. He kept troops in pay in Germany, Poland, and Scotland ; he had 214 SUMMARY OF obtained 4000 men from Francis I. One battle ren dered him master of Sweden, which was already rent asunder by the quarrels of the young Stenoi Sture, administrator, and the Archbishop of Upsal Gustave Troll. He had all those bishops and sena- tors tried by an ecclesiastical court who had voted for the deposition of Troll, and on the same day they were beheaded and burned at Stockholm, in the midst of a mourning people. In all the prov- inces of Sweden through which Christian passed, gallows and scaffolds were erected. He abused the conquered, declared himself hereditary king, and proclaimed that he made no knights among the Swedes, because he owed Sweden to his own sword. Gustavus Vasa. In the mean time, the young Gustavus Vasa, the nephew of the former king, Charles Canutson, succeeded in escaping from the prison in which Christian retained him. The Lubeckians, who saw in the latter the brother-iii law of Charles V., sovereign of the Dutch, their enemies, and who knew that he had demanded their city of the emperor, obliged Gustavus Vasa to go to Sweden : discovered by the Danes, Gus- tavus escaped from retreat to retreat, and was one day wounded by the lances of those who sought him in a load of straw. They still show at Falhun, at Ornay, the retreats of their liber- MODERN HISTORY. 215 ator. He at last arrived at Dalecarlia, among that hardened and intrepid race of peasants by whom the revolutions of Sweden have always been com- menced. He mingled with the Dalecarlians of Copparberg (country of copper mines), adopted: their costume, and offered his services to one among them. At Christmas, 1521, seizing the opportunity of an assembly celebrating the feast, he addressed them on the great plain of Mora. They remarked, with joy, that the north wind had not ceased to blow while he spokd : two hundred of them followed him ; their example drew all the people after them; and, at the expiration of a few months, the Danes possessed in Sweden only Abo, Calmar, and Stockholm. Frederic of Holstein. Christian had chosen precisely this critical moment to attempt a revolu- tion in Denmark, which was sufficient to shake the strongest throne. He published two codes, which armed against him the two most powerful orders in the kingdom the clergy and the nobility. He suppressed the temporal jurisdiction of the bishops, prohibited the plundering of shipwrecked effects, took from the lords the right to sell their peasants^ and permitted the ill-treated peasant to quit the domain of his lord. The protection of the peas- ants, which had caused the popularity of the Stures in Sweden, ruined the King of Denmark. The 216 SUMMARY OF nobles and bishops called his uncle Frederic, duke of Holstein, to the throne. Thus Denmark and Sweden escaped from him at the same time. The Swedish Church. After having conquered Sweden from strangers, Gustavus freed it from the Swedish bishops. He took from the clergy their titles and jurisdiction ; encouraged the nobles to re- cover the ecclesiastical lands upon which they could have some claim ; finally, he took from the bishops the castles and strongholds which they had in their hands, and by the suppression of the appeals to Rome, the Swedish Church found her- self independent, without abandoning the hierarchy and the greater part of the Catholic ceremonies (1529). They increased the number of farms to 13,000, of which the king was master. Having thus humbled the head of the aristocracy in the episcopal power, he had easier work with the no- bility, and taxed unmolested the feudal lands, and declared the crown to be hereditary in the house of Vasa. States of Odensee, 1527. The bishops of Den- Jmark, although they had contributed to the rev- olution, were not happier than those of Sweden. It only benefited the nobles, who demanded from Frederic I. a right over the life and death of their peasants. The preaching of the Lutheran doctrine was ordered ; the States of Odensee MODERN HISTORY. 217 (1527) decreed liberty of conscience, abolished the celibacy of ecclesiastics, and broke all ties be- tween the Danish clergy and the Holy See. Captivity of Christian. The most distant coun- tries of the North, who were less accessible to the new opinions, did not yield to this religious revo- lution without resistance. The Dalecarlians were armed by the clergy against the king whom they had themselves chosen. The Norwegians and Islanders only saw in the introduction of the Prot- estant Creed a new tyranny of the Danes. Chris- tian II., who had* fled to the Netherlands, thought to profit by this disposition. This man, who had once chased a fugitive bishop with bulldogs, now joined his cause to that of the Catholic religion. With the aid of several princes of Germany,, of Charles V., and some Dutch merchants, he equipped a fleet, landed in Norway, and penetrated from thence into Sweden. The Hanseatics armed themselves against the Dutch, who led on Chris- tian. Beat, and obliged to shut himself up in Opslo, he gave himself up to the Danes, who promised him liberty, and kept him twenty-nine years in the dungeon at Scanderbourg, with no companion but a dwarf. Lubeck Christophe of Oldenburg. At the death of Frederic I. (1534), the bishops made an effort to prevent their impending ruin. They en- T 218 SUMMARY OF deavoured to place on the throne the youngest son of this prince, aged eight years, who was not yet in favour of Lutheran doctrines, as was his oldest (Christian III.) ; they were much influenced by the circumstance that this child was born in Denmark, and had spoken the language of the country from his infancy, while his brother was considered as a German. This attack of the bishops against the nobility, of the Catholic faith against the new doc- trines, of Danish patriotism against foreign influ- ence, encouraged the ambition of Lubeck. This republic had gained little by the ruin of Christian II. Frederic had formed companies, Gustavus favoured the English. The democratic adminis- tration, which had replaced at Lubeck the ancient oligarchy, was animated more by the spirit of con- quest than by that of commerce. The new men who conducted it, the burgomaster Wullenwever, and the commandant Meyer, a locksmith, enter- tained the project to renew in a kingdom the dem- ocratic revolution which they had made in a city, in order to conquer and divide Denmark. They intrusted the command of the revolutionary war to an illustrious adventurer, the Count Christophe of Oldenburg, who had signalized himself in the war against the Turks ; he had only his name and his sword, but he consoled himself for his poverty, it is said, by reading Homer in the original. He MODERN HISTORY. 219 entered Denmark, stirring up the inferior classes in the name of Christian II. : a magical name, which always rallied the Catholics and peasants. All was deception in this wicked war : the Demo- crats of Lubeck named Christian II. to the people, but thought only of themselves ; their general Christophe worked neither for Christian nor for Lu- beck, but for his own interests. The calamities of this war were such, that the War of the Count has remained a proverbial expression in Denmark. The general consternation turned all minds to Christian III. The Senate retired to Jutland, which alone remained to them, arid summoned him from Hoi- stein, to which he had withdrawn. Gustavus aided him. The young king himself besieged Lubeck, and forced it to call back its troops. The peasants, beaten everywhere, lost all hope of liberty. Chris- tian III. entered Copenhagen after a long siege. The Senate had the bishops arrested, deprived them of their property, and substituted for them superintendents, charged to preach the Evangelic Religion. Thus arose the absolute power of the nobility by the defeat of the clergy and peasants. Christian III. acknowledged the throne elective, and promised to consult the grand-master of the kingdom, the chancellor, and the marshal, who were to receive complaints against the king. The Danish nobility decided that Norway should be 220 SUMMARY OF only a province of the kingdom. Protestantism was established there. The powerful archbish- opric of Drontheim became a simple bishopric ; the ancient spirit of resistance ceased to manifest itself, if we except the troubles at Bergen, ex- cited by the tyranny of the Hanseatic factors, and the revolt of the peasants, who were forced to work in mines under the order of German mi- ners. Iceland. Poor Iceland, between its snows and volcanoes, endeavoured also to repulse the new faith which they wished to impose on it. The Icelanders had the same repugnance to a Danish government as the Danes had to German influence. The bishops Augment and Arneson resisted, at the head of their people, until the Danes had cut off the head of Arneson. Arneson was not es- teemed for the regularity of his conduct, but he was deplored as the man of the people and as a national poet: it was Arneson who, about 1528, introduced printing in this distant isle. Thus was the religious and political revolution of Denmark everywhere confirmed, notwithstand- ing a new attempt of Charles V. in favour of the elector palatine, husband of his niece, daughter of Christian II. Finally, the alliance of Christian III. with the Protestants of Germany and Francis I., decided the emperor to acknowledge him. He MODERN HISTORY. 221 obtained for his subjects of the Netherlands the liberty to navigate the Baltic Sea : this privilege was the last blow aimed at the Hanseatie League, and one from which it did not recover. CHAPTER IX. CALVIN REFORMATION IN FRANCE, ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, THE NETHERLANDS, TO ST. BAR- THOLOMEW, 1555-1572.* Calvin at Geneva, 1535. Calvinism passes into France, the Netherlands, England, and Scotland. Opposition of Philip II. His Marriage with Mary, Queen of England, 1555. Peace between the King of Spain and the King of France. Henry II., 1559. Institution of the Inqui- sition, 1561. Marriage of Mary Stuart with Francis II, 1560. Struggle between England and Scotland, 1559-1567. Accession of Charles IX., 1561. Massacre of Vassi ; Civil War, 1562. Peace of Amboise, 1563 ; of Longjumeau, 1568. Battles of Jarnac and Mont- contour, 1569. Prosecutions in the Netherlands. Council of Troubles, 1567. Revolt of the Moors of Spain, 1571. St. Bartholomew, 1572. PHILIP II., son and successor of Charles V., did not, like his father, unite the Empire with the crown of Spain ; but he became in good measure the sov- ereign of England by his marriage with Mary * To separate, in the 2d part of the sixteenth century, the history of Spain, the Netherlands, France, England, and Scotland, would be con- demning ourselves to continual repetition ; yet, to facilitate the instruc- tion, we will look back to chapter xii. of the Chronological Tables (part i., p. 515-520), which contains the programme of these different his- tories. We shall find there many facts or dates which, could not enter into a general view of this period. T 2 222 SUMMARY OF (1554), daughter of Henry VIII. The King of France had to encounter in him the master of Spain and the Netherlands, the ruler of Italy and England, and the possessor of the mines in America. He made his attack, however, on the first. The Gui- ses, a junior branch of the house of Lorraine, claim- ed, as heirs of Rene of Anjou, the kingdom of both Sicilies ; they found means to conduct an army to Italy. The track seemed to be beaten ; Brissac, master of Piedmont, had made a descent upon Milan ; the Gascon Montluc defended the city of Sienna obstinately. But no one in Italy believed in the lasting success of the French ; no Italian power declared itself for Guise. The Duke of Alba, who waited for him in the Abruzzo, exhaust- ed the ardour of the French. Guise himself de- manded his recall, and went to repair the defeat of St. Quentin (1557) by the taking of Calais. France, encouraged by this last victory, thought to find in him a saviour. The Constable of Mont- morency, then prisoner of the Spaniards, negotiated the peace of Cateau-Cambresis (1559). Of all his conquests, Henry II. only retained Calais (for eight years), the three bishoprics, and some places of Savoy. This went to destroy the hope of foreign ^conquests ; but the kingdom found itself closed against foreign invasions ; this treaty had secured to it the three gates of England. Germany, and Italy. MODERN HISTORY. 223 The reconciliation of the kings of France and Spain was but a league against the Reformation, which daily took a more alarming character. At its first outbreak it had done little more than de- stroy ; in its second stage it endeavoured to lay the foundation of a system. At its appearance it had leagued itself with the civil power ; the Lu- theran Reformation had been in several respects the work of princes, to whom it subjected the Church. The people waited for a reformation which should inure to them. It was given by John Calvin, a French Protestant exiled at .Ge- neva. The first reformation had conquered Ger- many in the north, the second subdued the Neth- erlands, England, and Scotland. Everywhere it encountered an obstinate adversary in the Spanish power, which it everywhere conquered. Calvin, 1535. When Calvin passed from Ne- rak to Geneva (1535), he found this city liberated from its bishop and from the dukes of Savoy, but kept in the greatest fermentation by the plots of the servile classes, and the continual indignities offer- ed by the gentry. Calvin became the apostle and legislator of it (1541-64), making himself judge be- tween the paganism of Zwingle and the popery of Luther. The Church was a democracy, and the State was absorbed in it. Calvinism, like the Cath- olic religion, had a territory independent of all 224 SUMMARY OF temporal power. The union of Berne and Fri- bourg permitted the reformer to preach behind the lances of the Swiss. Placed between Italy, Switz- erland, and France, Calvin shook all the West. He had neither the impetuosity, the simplicity, nor the facetiousness of Luther. His style was sad and stern, but powerful, concise, penetrating. More consistent in his writings than in his conduct, he began by asking toleration from Francis I.,* and finished by causing Servitus to be burned. Progress of his Doctrines. At once the Vaudois, and all the restless and ingenious population of the south of France, who had been the first to rebel against the yoke of the Middle Ages, rallied around the new doctrine. From Geneva and Na- varre, it had spread to the commercial city of Ro- chelle, and from thence to the then literary cities of the interior, Poictiers, Bruges, Orleans ; it penetrated into the Netherlands, and associated itself with the bands of Rederikers, who overran the country, preaching against abuses. From thence, passing over the sea, it came to disturb the victory of Henry VIII. over the pope, and seated itself on the throne of England with Edward VI. (1547). From England it was carried by Knox * Pracfatio ad Christianissimum regem qua hie ei liber pro confessions fidei offertur. This eloquent morsel opens his hook of Christian Educa- tion, published in 1536, which he has translated himself^ MODERN HISTORY. 225 into uncivilized Scotland, and only stopped at the entrance of the mountains, where the Highlanders preserved the faith of their ancestors with their ha- tred of the Saxon heretics. Assemblies of Paris, 1550. At first the assem- blies were secret : the first which met in France were held at Paris in the street of St. Jacques (towards 1550) ; they soon multiplied. Fires to burn heretics were useless. It was so delight- ful for the people to hear the Word of God in their own language. Many were attracted by cu- riosity, others by compassion ; some were tempt- ed by the danger even. In 1550 there was but one Reformed church in France ; in 1561 it had more than two thousand. Sometimes they assem- bled in the open fields to the number of eight or ten thousand persons ; the preacher mounted a cart or a pile of trees ; the people placed themselves be- fore the wind, to gather the words with more ease, and finally all united, men, women, and children, in singing psalms. Those who had arms watched around. Then came the colporteurs, who unpack- ed catechisms, small books and prints against the bishops and the pope.* * There was, for example, the Cardinal of Lorraine holding the young Francis II. in a bag, who endeavoured to force out his head to breathe from time to time. In the Netherlands they sold the Cardinal Gran- velle, prime minister of Philip, hatching eggs, from which bishops crept forth, while the devil touched the head of each, blessed him, and said, 226 SUMMARY OF They did not hold these assemblies a long time. Not less intolerant than their persecutors, they wished to exterminate what they called Idolatry. They commenced by overthrowing the altars, burning the paintings, and demolishing the church- es. In 1561 they called on the King of France to break down the images of Jesus Christ and the saints. Philip IL, 1556. Such were the adversaries that Philip II. undertook to combat and annihilate ; he everywhere met them in his path ; in England, to prevent him from marrying Elizabeth (1558) ; in France, to balance the power of the Guises, his allies (1561); in the Netherlands, supporting by their fanaticism the cause .of public liberty.* The cosmopolitan character of Charles V. had been succeeded by a prince all Castilian, who disdained all other language, who abhorred any creed foreign to his own, who wished everywhere to establish the regular forms of Spanish adminis- tration, legislation, and religion. First he con- strained himself to marry Mary, queen of Eng- land (1553), but he did not deceive the English. The glass of beer which he solemnly drank at his landing, the sermons of his confessor on toleration, gave him no popularity. They believed rather in Behold my much-beloved son. Mem. of Cond6, ii., 656 ; and Schiller, Hi$.t* of the Revolt of the Netherlands, b. iii., chap. i. * Everywhere since 1563 MODERN HISTORY. 227 the burning piles erected by his wife. After the death of Mary (1558) he no longer dissembled; he introduced Spanish troops into the Netherlands, maintained there the Inquisition, and at his depar- ture, in a measure declared war against the defend- ers of the liberties of the country in the person of the Prince of Orange.* Finally, he united him- self with Henry II. against domestic enemies, who threatened them both alike, by espousing his daughter, Elizabeth of France (peace of Cateau- Cambresis, 1559). Mournful circumstances sad- dene4 the festivities of this ominous peace. A tournament was given near the Bastile, where the Protestant Anne Dubourg awaited death. The king was wounded, and the marriage took place in the night at St. Paul's. Philip II. returned to his States never again to leave them, and in mem- ory of his victory of St. Quentin he built the mon- astery of the Escurial, and consecrated with it fifty millions of piasters. This gloomy edifice, all built of granite, is visible at the distance of seven leagues. No sculpture embellishes the walls ; the boldness of the arches constitutes the sole beauty. The buildings are arranged in the form of a grid- iron, t * The king, on embarking, said to the Prince of Orange, who cast the blame on the representatives, No, nolos etados, ma vos, vos, vos. Fan der Vyncht. t Instrument of martyrdom of St. Laurence ; the battle of St. Quentiu was gained by the Spaniards on the day of his feast. 228 SUMMARY OF Jesuits. At this period the minds of the people in Spain had reached the last degree of religious exaltation. The rapid progress of the heretics in all Europe, the victory which they had attained over Charles V. by the treaty of Augsburg, their vio- lence against the images, their outrages on the holy host, which the priests related to the frighten- ed Spaniards, had produced a redoubled fervour. Ignatius of Loyola, who was entirely devoted to the Holy See, founded the order of the Jesuits (1434-40). St. Theresa de Jesus reformed the Carmelites, and inflamed all their souls with the fire of a mystic love. The monks of the same name, of the mendicant order, soon followed in this ref- ormation. The constitution of the Inquisition was fixed in 1561. If we except the Moors, Spain was united as a single man in violent horror against the infidels and the heretics. Closely uni- ted to Portugal, which the Jesuits governed, dis- posing of the ancient bands of Charles V., and of the treasures of the two worlds, she undertook to subject Europe to her empire and to her faith. Elizabeth, 1559. The dispersed Protestants rallied themselves in the name of Queen Elizabeth, who offered them an asylum and protection. Ev- erywhere she encouraged their resistance against Philip II. and the Catholics. Absolute in their kingdoms, these two monarchs conducted with the MODERN HISTORY. 229 violence of two party chiefs. The scrupulous de- votion of Philip, and the chivalrous spirit of the court of Elizabeth, blended themselves with a system of intrigue and corruption ; but victory awaited Elizabeth ; the times were on her side. She ennobled despotism by the enthusiasm with which she inspired the nation. Those evea whom she persecuted were for her, in spite of everything. A Puritan, condemned to lose one hand, had it hardly cut off, when he took his hat with the other, and waving it in the air, cried Long live the queen ! It was thirty years before the two adversaries met in battle. The combat had taken place pre- viously in Scotland, France, and the Low Coun- tries. Mary Stuart. It did not continue long in Scot- land (1559-1567). The rival of Elizabeth, the fascinating Mary Stuart (widow of Francis II. at 18 years), saw herself a stranger in the midst of her subjects, who detested in her the Guises, her uncles, who were chiefs of the Catholic party in France. Her nobles, sustained by England, join- ed with Darnley, her husband, and stabbed an Italian musician, Rizzio, her favourite, before her eyes. Soon after, the house which Darnley in- habited, near Holyrood, blew up ; he was buried under its ruins, and Mary, carried away by the principal author of the crime, was married to him u 230 SUMMARY OF of choice or through constraint. The queen and the party of the lords accused each other. But the queen was weakest. She found no refuge but in the states of her deadly enemy, who retained her a prisoner, gave the guardianship of her young son to whom she pleased, reigned in her name in Scotland, and was enabled in future to wrestle with less disadvantage against Philip II. William of Orange. But it was principally in France and the Netherlands that Elizabeth and Philip carried on a secret war. The soul of the Protestant party in these two countries was the Prince of Orange, William the Taciturn, and his father-in-law, the Admiral Coligni, unfortunate generals, but profound politicians, of melancholy temperament, and in spite of the blood of Nassau and of Montmorency, animated by the democratic instinct of Calvinism. A colonel of the infantry under Henry II. , Coligni collected around him all the lesser nobility ; he gave to La Rochelle a Re- publican organization, whib the Prince of Orange encouraged the confederation of the Gueux, and laid the foundation of a more durable republic. Francis of Guise. The great Guise and his brother, the Cardinal of Lorraine,* governed France * See, in the Memoirs of Caspar de Tavennes, the comparison of the advantages which the rival houses of Guise and Montmorency had ob- tained from Henry II., part xxiii., page 410. MODERN HISTORY. 231 under Francis II., husband of their niece, Mary Stuart (1560). Guise had been the idol of the people since he took Calais in eight days from the English. But he had found France ruined. He found it necessary to recover the alienated do- mains, and to suppress the levy of 50,000 men, that is to say, to disarm government at the moment in which the revolution burst forth. Thousands of petitioners besieged Fontainebleau ; and the Cardi- nal of Lorraine, not knowing what to answer them, had a notice posted, that every one who did not leave the city within 24 hours should be hung. Conspiracy of Amboise, 1560. The Bourbons (Antoine, king of Navarre, and Louis, prince of Conde), who saw with regret the public affairs in the hands of the two youngest of the house of Lorraine, profited by the general discontent. They associated themselves with the Calvinists, with t Coligni, with the English, who came at night to negotiate with them at St. Denis. The Protest- ants marched in arms towards Amboise to seize the person of the king ; but they were betrayed to the Guises, and slain on their way. Some of the Protestants, who had been kept to be executed before the king and all the court, bathed their hands in the blood of their beheaded brethren, and raised them to Heaven against those who had be- trayed them. This horrible scene seemed to bring 232 SUMMARY OF misfortune on all who had witnessed it Francis II., Mary Stuart, the great Guise, and the Chan- cellor Olivier, Protestant at heart, who had con- demned them, and who died from remorse on that account. Charles IX. Hopital. At the accession of the young Charles (the ninth of his name, 1560), the po>ver belonged to his mother, Catharine of Medi- cis, if she had known how to keep it ; she caused it to be taken from the Guises, the chiefs of the Catholics, and the government stood isolated be- tween the two parties. She was not an Italian with the ancient politics of the Borgia, who could hold the balance between energetic men who de- spised her : she was not worthy of this period of deep convictions, and the period itself was not worthy of the Chancellor Hopital,* a noble pic- ture of calm wisdom, which is powerless in the midst of passion. Guise seized again, as chief of the party, the power which he had lost. The court furnished him with a pretext by softening the edicts against the Reformers, by those of St. Germain and of January, and by admitting their doctors to a solemn discussion in the conference of Poissi. At the same time that the Calvinists took up arms at Nismes, the Duke of Guise pass- * The Chancellor Hdpital, who had the lilies in his \iea,rt.L'Etotte, adv., 57. MODERN HISTORY. 233 ing through Vassi to Champagne, his men quar- relled with some Huguenots who were listening to preaching, and killed them (1562). The civil war commenced. C&sar, said the Prince of Conde, has passed the Rubicon. First Civil War, 1562-1563. At the approach of so terrible a conflict, both parties scrupled not to apply for the aid of foreigners. The old politi- cal barriers which separated the people fell before religious interest. The Protestants demanded aid from their brethren in Germany ; they gave up Havre to the English, while the Guises entered upon a vast plan, formed, they say, by the King of Spain, to crush Geneva and Navarre, the two seats of heresy ; to exterminate the Calvinists of France ; and, finally, to vanquish the Lutherans in the Em- pire. The parties assembled on all sides with a wild enthusiasm. In these first armies there was no gambling, no profane language, nor dissipation ; prayers were held in common morning and evening. But under this exterior of sanctity their hearts were not the less cruel. Montluc, the governor of Guienne, went through his province with hangmen. One could know, said he himself, where he had passed, for on the trees by the roadside they would find the signs. In Dauphiny there was a Protest- ant, the Baron of Adrets, who precipitated his pris- oners from the top of a tower on the point of pikes, U 2 234: SUMMARY OF Death of Francis of Guise, 1563. Guise was first conqueror at Dreux ; he took Conde, the gen- eral of the Protestants, prisoner, divided his bed with him, and slept profoundly at the side of his mortal enemy. Orleans, the principal place of the Protestants, was only saved by the assassination of the Duke of Guise, whom a Protestant wounded from behind by the discharge of a pistol (1563). Whatever his ambition and connexions with Philip II. may have been, posterity will pardon a man who said to his assassin, " Now I will show you hbw much sweeter that religion which I follow is than the one you profess : yours has counselled you to kill without hearing me, having received no ofTence from me ; and mine commands that I forgive you, fully convinced, as I am, that you wish- ed to kill me without cause." Treaty of Amboise, 1563 of Longjumeau, 1568 of St. Germain, 1570. The queen-mother, re- lieved of a master, made a treaty with the Protest- ants (at Amboise, 1563), and found herself obliged, by the indignation of the Catholics, to violate all the articles of the treaty by degrees. Conde and Coligni tried in vain to seize the young king ; de- feated at St. Denis, but always formidable, they im- posed on the court the peace of Longjumeau (1568), surnamed " Boiteuse et malassise," which confirm- ed that of Amboise. An attempt of the court to MODERN HISTORY. 235 seize the two chiefs led to a third war. All moder- ation left the councils of the king with the Chan- cellor Hopital. The Protestants took La Rochelle, instead of Orleans, for a place of arms ; they as- sessed themselves, in order to pay their German auxiliaries, whom the Duke of Deux-Ponts and the Prince of Orange led with them through all France. Notwithstanding their defeat at Zarnac and Mon- contour (1569), notwithstanding the death of Conde and the wounds of Coligni, the court was obliged to grant them a third peace (St. Germain, 1570). Their worship was to be free in two cities of a province ; they left to them for places of security, La Rochelle, Montauban, Cognac, and La Charite\ The young King of Navarre was to marry the sis- ter of Charles IX. (Margaret of Valois). They even led Coligni to hope that he should command the aid, which, they said, the king wished to send to the Protestants of the Netherlands. The Cath- olics shuddered at a treaty so humiliating after four victories ; the Protestants themselves, hardly real- izing it, only acquiesced on account of their weak- ness,* and the wisest among them expected from this hostile peace some dreadful calamity. Persecution in Flanders. The situation of the * The admiral says that he would wish rather to die than fall back into these confusions, and see so many evils happen before his eyeg. Lanoue t vol. ixxiv., p. 290. 236 SUMMARY OF Netherlands was not less frightful. Philip II. com- prehended neither the liberty or spirit of the North, nor the interests of commerce ; all his subjects, Bel- gians and Dutch, turned against him ; also the Cal- vinists, persecuted by the Inquisition ; and the no- bles, from henceforth without hope of re-establish- ing their fortunes, ruined in the service of Charles V. ; the monks, who feared the reform ordered by the Council of Trent, as well as the establishment of new bishoprics, to be endowed at their expense ; finally, the good citizens, who beheld the introduc- tion of Spanish troops, and the overthrow of the ancient liberties of the country, with indignation. At first the opposition of the Flemings obliged the king to recall his old minister, the Cardinal Gran- vella (1563) ; the greatest lords formed the con- federation of the Gueux, and hung wooden porren- gers around their necks, associating themselves thus with the lower classes (1566). The Calvin- ists raise their heads on all sides ; print more than five thousand works against the ancient worship ; and in the provinces of Brabant and Flanders alone they plunder and profane four hundred churches. This last excess filled up the measure of crime. The savage soul of Philip II. already conceived the most fatal plans ; he resolved to pursue and ex- terminate his terrible enemies, whom he met every- where, even in his family. He included in the MODERN HISTORY. 237 same hatred as well the legal opposition of the no- ble Flemings as the image-breaking fury of the Calvinists, and the obstinate attachment of the poor Moors to the religion, language, and customs of their fathers. But he would not act without the sanction of the Church ; he obtained from the In- quisition a secret condemnation of his rebels in the Netherlands ; he questioned even the most cele- brated doctors, among others, Oradug, professor of theology at the University of Alcala, upon the measures which he ought to take with regard to the Moors ; Oradug replied by the proverb, " Des ennemies toujours le moins" The king, confirmed in his plans of vengeance, swore to give an exam- ple in the persons of his enemies in a manner that should make the ears of Christendom tingle, though it placed all his estates in danger. He began by following, without distinction of per- son, and with an atrocious inflexibility, the bloody councils which he had caused to be given to the court of France by the Duke of Alba. His son, Don Carlos, spoke of going to place himself at the head of the rebels of the Netherlands ; Philip caused his death to be hastened by physicians (1568). He organized the Inquisition in America (1570) ; he disarmed all the Moors of Valencia in one day ; forbade the Moors of Grenada to wear the Arabian dress, or to speak their own language ; he 238 SUMMARY OF prohibited the use of the baths, of the Zembras, the Leilas, and even the green branches, with which these unfortunate beings covered their graves ; their children of more than five years must go to school to learn the Castilian religion and language (1563-68). In the mean time, the bloody Duke of Alba, at the head of an army fanatical as Spain, and profligate as Italy,* marched from Italy to Flanders. At the report of his coming, the Swiss armed themselves to cover Geneva. One hundred thousand persons, imitating the Prince of Orange, fled from the Netherlands.! The Duke of Alba established, at his arrival, the Council of Troubles, the Council of Blood, as the Belgians called it, and which he composed partly of Spaniards (1567). All those who refused to abjure heresy all who had been present at sermons, were they even Cath- olics all who had tolerated heretics, were equally put to death. The Gueux are prosecuted ; those even who had only solicited the recall of Gran- vella, were sought after and punished ; the Count Egmont, whose victories at St. Quentin and Grave- lines had conferred honour on the commencement of the reign of Philip II., the idol of the people, and one of the most loyal servants of the king, perished on the scaffold. The efforts of the Prot- * See the details in Meteren, book iii., page 52. t Nothing has been done since they permitted the Taciturn to escape, said Granvella. MODERN HISTORY. 239 estants of Germany and France, who raised an army for Louis, son of the Prince of Orange, were baffled by the Duke of Alba ; and, as a greater in- sult to his victims, he had a statue of bronze erected in the citadel of Antwerp, which trampled slaves under its feet, and threatened the city. There was the same barbarity, the same success in Spain ; Philip seized with joy the opportunity of the revolt of the Moors to overwhelm those un- fortunate people. At the moment that he turned his arms abroad, he would leave no resistance be- hind him ; the weight of the oppression gave some courage to the Moors ; a manufacturer of Carmine, of the family of Abencerrages, had secret com- munication with some others ; clouds of smoke arose from mountain to mountain ; the red colours were raised again ; the women even armed them- selves with long packing needles, to pierce the bellies of the horses ; the priests were killed every- where. But soon the veteran regiments of Spain arrived. The Moors received some feeble suc- cour from Algiers ; in vain they implored the aid of the Sultan Selim. Old men, children, suppliant women, were massacred without mercy. The king ordered that all over ten years who remained should become slaves (1571). St. Bartholomew, 1572. The feeble and des- picable government of France was unwilling to 240 SUMMARY OF be left behind. The exasperation of the Catholics had become extreme since they saw at the nuptials of the King of Navarre and Margaret of Valois, in Paris, those gloomy and severe men whom they had so often encountered on the field of battle, and whose presence they regarded as an insult. They counted their own number, and began to cast dark looks on their enemies. Without giving credit to the queen-mother or to her sons for a dissimulation so long continued, and a plan so well devised, we can imagine that the possibility of such an event had strengthened the inducements to the peace of St. Germain. Yet so daring a crime would not have been resolved on had they not feared for a moment the power of Coligni over the young Charles IX. His mother and brother, the Duke of Anjou, whom he began to threaten, recovered their influence over this feeble and capricious be- ing, through fear, which soon turned to rage, and which caused him to resolve upon the massacre of the Protestants as readily as he would before have ordered that of the principal Catholics. On the 24th of August, 1672, about two or three o'clock in the morning, the bell of St. Germain 1'Auxerrois sounded, and the young Henry of Guise, thinking to avenge the death of his father, commenced the massacre by cutting the throat of Coligni. There was heard nothing but the cry, " Kill ! kill /" The MODERN HISTORY. 241 greater part of the Protestants were surprised in their beds. A wounded gentleman was pursued, the halbert in his back, even to the chamber and bedside of the Queen of Navarre. A Catholic boasted that he bought from the murderers more than 30 Huguenots, to torture them at pleasure. Charles IX. had his brother-in-law and the Prince of Conde brought before him, and said to them, the Mass or Death f It is said that he fired from the window of the Louvre on the Protestants, who fled from the other side of the river. The next morning a hawthorn having reblossomed in the churchyard of the Innocents, fanaticism was reanimated by this pretended miracle, and the massacre recom- menced. The king, the queen-mother, and all the court went to Montfaucon to see what remained of the body of the admiral We must add Hopital to the victims of St. Bartholomew ; when he heard the odious news, he wished the gates of his house to be opened to the murderers who might come ; he survived it only six months, always repeating, " Excidat ilia dies cevo /" A circumstance as horrible as St. Bartholomew itself was the joy which it excited. They struck medals of it at Rome, and Philip II. congratulated the court of France. He thought Protestantism subdued. He associated St. Bartholomew, and the massacres ordered by the Duke of Alba, with the X 242 SUMMARY OF glorious event of the battle of Lepanto, in which the fleets of Spain, the pope, and Venice, com- manded by John of Austria, natural son of Charles V., had destroyed the Ottoman navy in the prece-i ding year. The Turks conquered by sea, the! Moors reduced, the heretics exterminated in France and in the Netherlands, seemed to prepare the way for the King of Spain towards that universal mon- archy to which his father had vainly aspired. CHAPTER X. FARTHER EVENTS TO THE DEATH OF HENRY IV., 1572-1610 GLANCE AT THE SITUATION OF THE BELLIGERANT POWERS AFTER THE RELI- GIOUS WARS. Death of Charles IX., 1574. Insurrection of the Netherlands, 1572. Union of Utrecht, 1579. Formation of the League in France, 1577. Power of the Guises. Battle of Contres, 1587. Barricades, States of Blois, 1588. Murder of Henry III., 1589. Accession of Henry IV. Death of Mary Stuart, 1587. Armament of Philip II., 1588. Gran- deur of Elizabeth. Death of Charles IX. King Charles, hearing on the evening of the same day, and all the next day the accounts of the murders and slaughters of old men, women, and children, drew aside Mr. Ambroise Pare, his first surgeon, to whom he was MODERN HISTORY. 243 much attached, although he was of the Protestant religion, and said to him, " Ambroise, I know not what has come over me these two or three days, but I find my mind and body in disorder : I see everything as if I had a fever ; every moment, as well waking as sleeping, the hideous and bloody faces of the killed appear before me ; I wish the weak and innocent had not been included." From that time he lingered on, and eighteen months after a bloody flux carried him off (1574.) Henry III. The crime had been useless. In several cities the governors refused to consummate it. The Calvinists throwing themselves into La Rochelle, Sancerre, and other places of the South, defended themselves there most desperately. The horror inspired by St. Bartholomew gave them auxiliaries, by creating among the Catholics a moderate party, which they called the Politi- cians. The new king, Henry III., who returned from Poland to succeed his brother, was known as one of the authors of the massacre. His own brother, the Duke of Alencon, fled from the court with the young King of Navarre, and thus united the Politicians and Calvinists. Philip loses half of the Netherlands. The tyr- anny of the Duke of Alba was not more successful in the Netherlands. As long as he contented himself with erecting scaffolds the people remain- 244 SUMMARY OF ed quiet ; they saw, without revolting, the most illustrious heads of the nobility fall. There was but one way to render the discontent common to Catholics and Protestants, to nobles and citizens, to Belgians and Dutchmen : it was to establish oppressive duties, and let the badly-paid soldiers plunder the inhabitants : the Duke of Alba did both. The duty of the tenth, levied upon pro- visions, made the agents of the Spanish reve- nue interpose in the smallest sales in the mar- kets and shops. The innumerable forfeits, the continued vexations, irritated all the population. While the shops were closed, and the Duke of Alba had the merchants who were guilty of having closed them hung, the gueux marins (it is thus that they called the fugitives, who lived by piracy), driven from the ports of England on the demand of Philip II., seized the fort of Brielle, in Holland (1572), and commenced the war in this country, intersected by so many branches of the sea, rivers, and canals. A number of cities drove away the Spaniards. Perhaps there yet remained some means of pacification, but the Duke of Alba taught the first cities which gave themselves up that they had neither clemency nor good faith to hope for. At Rotterdam, Malines, Zutphen, Naarden, the capitulations were violated, the inhabitants killed. Harlem, knowing what she had to expect, broke MODERN HISTORY. 245 the dams, and sent ten Spanish heads as payment of her tenth. After a memorable resistance, she obtained pardon, and the Duke of Alba confounded in a general massacre the sick and wounded. The Spanish soldiers felt themselves some remorse at this want of faith, and in atonement they conse- crated a part of the booty to build a house for the Jesuits in Brussels. Under the successors of the Duke of Alba, the licentiousness of the Spanish troops, who plun- dered Antwerp, forced the Walloon provinces to unite in the revolt with those of the North (1567) ; but this alliance could not last. The revolution was consolidated by being concentrated at the North in the union of Utrecht, the commencement of the Republic of the United Provinces (1579). The intolerance of the Protestants restored the southern provinces to the yoke of the King of Spain. The Dutch population, all Protestant, all German in character and language, entirely com- posed of citizens, and given to maritime trade, drew that which was analogous to itself from the south- ern provinces. The Spaniards could reconquer in Belgium the walls and the territory, but the most industrious part of the population escaped them. The insurgents had offered successively to sub- mit themselves to the German branch of the house of Austria, to France, and to England. The Arch- 246 SUMMARY OP duke Mathias offered them no succour. Don Juan, brother and general of Philip II., the Duke of An- jou, brother of Henry III., Leicester, favourite of Elizabeth, who wished successively to become sovereigns of the Netherlands, showed themselves equally treacherous (1577, 1582, 1587). Holland, regarded, by all to whom she addressed herself, as prey, decided finally, for want of a sovereign, to remain a republic. The genius of this rising state was the Prince of Orange, who, abandoning the southern provinces to the invincible Duke of Parma, contended against him by policy, until a fanatic, armed by Spain, had assassinated him (1584). The League, 1577. While Philip lost half of the Netherlands, he gained the kingdom of Portu- gal. The king, Don Sebastian, had thrown him- self on the coast of Africa with ten thousand men, in the vain hope of conquering it and penetrating to India. This hero, as he would have been in the time of the Crusades, was in the sixteenth cen- tury but an adventurer. His uncle, the Cardinal D. Henri, who succeeded him, having died soon after, Philip II. seized Portugal in spite of France, and of the Portuguese themselves (1580). Battle of Coutras, 1587. In France all was propitious to Philip, The fickleness of Henry III., that of the Duke of Alen9on, who placed him- MODERN HISTORY. 247 self at the head of the French Protestants, and afterward of those of the Netherlands, had decided the Catholic party to seek a chief out of the royal family. By the treaty of 1576, the king had granted the liberty of worship to the Calvinists throughout all the kingdom, excepting Paris : he gave them a divided chamber, whose members were one half Roman Catholics, and the other half Protestants, in every parliament ; and several cities for security (Angouleme, Niort, La Char- ite, Bourges, Saumur, and Mezieres), where they might hold armed garrisons, paid by the king. This treaty determined the formation of the League (1577). The associates swore to defend the reli- gion ; to bring the provinces lack to the same laws, exemptions, and liberties which they had at the time of Clovis ; to proceed against those who should in- jure the union, without respect of person ; finally, to render prompt obedience and faithful services to the chief who should be named. The king thought to become master of the association by declaring him- self its chief. He began to have a glimpse at the designs *of the Duke of Guise ; they had found in the papers of a lawyer who had died at Lyon, returning from Rome, a piece in which he said that the descendants of Hugh Capet had hitherto reigned illegally, and by a usurpation, cursed of God ; that the throne belonged to the princes of 248 SUMMARY OF Lorraine, the true posterity of Charlemagne. The death of the brother of the king encouraged these pretensions (1584.) Henry having no children, and the majority of the Catholics repudiating the heretic prince, to whom the crown would devolve, the Duke of Guise, and the King of Spain, broth- er-in-law of Henry III., united themselves to de- throne the king, leaving the spoils to be quarrelled for afterward. They had but too many means to make him odious. In the reverses of his army there seemed as much of treachery as of misfor- tune ; the feeble prince was at the same time beat- en by the Protestants and accused by the Catholics. The victory of Coutras, where the King of Na- varre made himself illustrious by his valour and his clemency towards the conquered (1587), exasper- ated the irritation of the Catholics to the highest degree. While the League organized itself in the capital, Henry III., divided between the claims of a monkish devotion and the excesses of a disgust- ing debauchery, ^ave to all Paris the spectacle of his scandalous prodigality and puerile tastes. He spent 1,200,000 francs at the marriage of* Joyeuse, his favourite, and had nothing to pay a messenger to carry a letter, on which depended the safety of the kingdom, to the Duke of Guise. He passed his time in arranging the collars of the queen and in curling his own hair. He had himself made MODERN HISTORY. 249 prior of a fraternity of white penitents. " At the beginning of November, the king made known through the churches of Paris, which were the ora- tories, otherwise called Paradises, that he daily went to, in order to bestow his alms and pray in great devotion, leaving off his ruffled shirts, of which he had formerly been so careful, to adopt the Italian fashion of wearing the collar turned over. He generally rode in his coach with the queen, his wife, through the streets and squares of Paris, carried small lapdogs, had grammar read to him, and learned to decline."* Thus the crisis became imminent in France and all the West (1585-1588) ; it seemed necessarily favourable to Spain ; the taking of Antwerp by the Prince of Parma, the most memorable achievement of arms in the sixteenth century, completed the reduction of Belgium (1585). The King of France had been obliged to place himself at the discretion of the Guises (the same year), and the League took for its home an immense city, where religious fanat- icism was re-enforced by democratic fanaticism (1588). But the King of Navarre resisted the reunited forces of the Catholics, even against all probability of success (1586-87). Elizabeth gave an army to the United Provinces (1585), money to the King of Navarre (1585); she frustrated all * L ? Etoile, part xlv., p. 133, 250 SUMMARY OF the conspiracies (1584-5-6), and struck Spain and the Guises in the person of Mary Stuart. Death of Mary Stuart. For a long time Eliza- beth had replied to the solicitation of her counsel- lors, Can I kill the bird which sought refuge in my losom 1 She had accepted embroidery and Paris- ian robes which her captive offered her. But the increasing provocations of the great European con- test, the fear which it constantly caused Elizabeth for her own life, and the mysterious power of the Jesuits, who from the Continent constantly disturbed England, brought the queen to the last extremity. Notwithstanding the mediation of the Kings of France and Scotland, Mary was condemned to death by a commission, as guilty of having con- spired with foreigners for the invasion of Eng- land and the death of Elizabeth. A saloon was hung with black in the castle of Fotheringay ; the Queen of Scotland appeared there in her richest garments ; she consoled her weeping domestics, protested her innocence, and pardoned her enemies. Elizabeth aggravated the horrors of this cruel de- cision by affected regrets and hypocritical denials (1587). Barricades^ 1588. The death of Mary Stuart was nowhere more resented than in France. But who should avenge it ? Her brother-in-law, Henry III., fell from the throne ; her cousin, Henry of MODERN HISTORY. 251 Guise, thought to ascend it. France was mad after this man, for to say in love with him would be too little. Since his success over the Germans, the allies of the King of Navarre, the people called him by no other name than the New Gideon, the, New Macabee ; the nobles called him Our Great; he had only to go to Paris to be master of it. The king forbids him ; he arrives, and all the city runs before him, crying, " Vive le Due de Guise ! Ho- sanna filio David /" He braves the king in the Louvre, at the head of 400 gentlemen. From that time the Lorraine party believed they had gained their cause : the king was to be thrown into a convent ; the Duchess of Montpensier, sister of the Duke of Guise, shows the scissors of gold with which she was to shear the Valois. The people everywhere raised barricades, disarmed the Swiss, whom the king had just called into Paris, and had them all massacred without the sanction of the Duke of Guise. A moment of ir- resolution caused the latter to loose all ; while he delayed attacking the Louvre, the aged Catharine de Medicis amused him with proposals, and the king, in the mean time, escaped to Chartres.i Guise tried in vain to reunite himself to the Par- liament. " 'Tis a great pity," said to him the pres- ident Achille, of Harlay, " when the valet chases the master; as for the rest, my soul is for God, 252 SUMMARY OF my heart for the king, my body in the hands of the wicked." States of Blois. The king, liberated, but aban- doned by all, was obliged to yield ; he approved of all that had been done, gave up a great number of cities to the duke, named him chief-general of the armies of the kingdom, and called the States- General to Blois. But the duke wished a higher title. He overwhelmed the king with so many outrages, that he wrung from the most timid of men a bold resolution that of assassinating him. Thursday, December 22, 1588, the Duke of Guise found a billet under his napkin, in which was written, " Take care ! they are about to play you a foul game." Having read it, he wrote be- low, " They will not dare'' and threw it under the table. " This is," said he, " the ninth warning to- day." Notwithstanding these warnings, he persist- ed in going to the council, and as he crossed the chamber where the forty-jive members had assem- bled, he was killed. Destruction of the Armada. During this tragedy, ' which favoured more than it thwarted the designs of Spain, Philip II. undertook the conquest of Eng- land, and the avenging of the death of Mary Stuart. On the 3d of June, 1588, the most formidable ar- mament which ever appalled the Christian world left the mouth of the Tagus : one hundred and MODERN HISTORY. 253 thirty-five vessels, of a size till then unheard of, eight thousand sailors, nineteen thousand soldiers, the flower of the Spanish nobility, and Lope de Vega with the fleet, to chant the victory. The Spaniards, intoxicated at the spectacle, honoured the fleet with the name of the Invincible Armada. She was to join the Prince of Parma at the Neth- erlands, and to guard the passage of thirty-two thousand veteran soldiers. The forest of Waes, in Flanders, was converted into transport ships. The alarm was extreme in England ; they showed at the church doors the instruments of torture which the inquisitors brought over in the Spanish fleet. The queen appeared on horseback before the army assembled at Tewksbury, and promised to die for her people. But the strength of England was in her navy. The greatest seamen of the age, Drake, Hawkins, Frobisher, served under Admiral Howard. The small English vessels harassed the Spanish fleet, already partly disabled by the elements; they beset her with their fire- ships ; the Prince of Parma could not leave the ports of Flanders, and the rest of this formidable fleet, driven by the tempest even to the coasts of Scotland and Ireland, went to conceal itself in the ports of Spain. The remainder of the life of Elizabeth was but one triumph ; she baffled the attempt of Philip II Y 254 SUMMARY OF on Ireland, and prosecuted her victory over all the seas. The enthusiasm of Europe, roused by soich success, assumed a form the most flattering to woman, that of ingenious flattery. The age of Elizabeth was forgotten (55 years). Henry IV. declared to the ambassador of England that he thought her handsomer than his Gabriele. Shaks- peare pronounced her the fair Vestal, seated upon the throne of the West; but no homage touched her more than that of the witty Sir Walter Raleigh, and the young and brilliant Earl of Essex ; the former had commenced his fortune by throwing his cloak under the feet of the queen, who was crossing a muddy place ; Essex had charmed her by his heroism. He fled from court in spite of her orders, to take part in the expedition of Cadiz ; he there jumped on shore the first one, and if they had confided in him, Cadiz might, perhaps, have remained in the hands of the English. His in- gratitude and tragical end saddened the last days of Elizabeth. II. TO THE DEATH OF HENRY IV. GLANCE AT THE SITUATION OF THE BELLIGERANT POWERS. Mayenne. Combat of Argues. Battle of Jori, 1590. State of Paris, 1593. Abjuration and Absolution of Henry IV., 1593-1595. Edict of Nantes. Peace of Vervins, 1598. Weakness of Spain ; Expulsion of the Moors from Valencia, 1609. Administration of Henry IV.* Afflu- ence of France. Assassination of Henry IV., 1610. Philip II., repulsed from Holland and England, MODERN HISTORY. 255 turned all his forces against France ; the Duke of Mayenne, brother of Guise, not less able, but less popular, could not counterbalance the gold and the intrigues of Spain. Assassination of Henry I//., 1589. As soon as the news of the death of Guise had arrived in Paris, the people dressed themselves in mourn- ing ; the preachers thundered ; they hung the churches in black ; they placed wax images of the king on the altar, and pierced them with needles. Mayenne was created chief of the League ; the States named forty persons to govern. Bussi Le Clerc, who from a master-at-arms and an attorney had become governor of the Bastile, sent half of the Parliament there. Henry III. had no resource but to throw himself into the arms of the King of Na- varre ; both came to besiege Paris. They en- camped at St. Cloud, when a young monk named Clement assassinated Henry III. by stabbing him in the lower part of his stomach. The Duchess of Montpensier, sister of the Duke of Guise, who awaited the news on the road, received it first, al- most frantic with joy. They offered in the church- es the image of Clement for the adoration of the people ; his mother, a poor country woman of Bur- gundy, having gone to Paris, the people came be- fore her, crying, " Happy the womb that has borne thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked /" (1589). 256 SUMMARY OF Henry IV. Argues Ivri. Henry IV., aban- doned by the greater part of the Catholics, was soon closely pressed by Mayenne, who confidently expected to lead him, bound hand and foot, to the Parisians. Already they let out the windows to see him pass. But Mayenne had to deal with an adversary who slept not, and who wore out, as the Prince of Parma said, more boots than slippers. He waited for Mayenne near Arques, in Norman- dy, and fought with three thousand men against thirty thousand. Henry, supported by a crowd of gentlemen, now took his turn to attack Paris and pillage the Faubourg St. Germain. The following year (1590) there was another victory at Ivri on the Eure, where he beat Ma- yenne and the Spaniards. We have the words which he addressed to his troops before the battle : " If you will run the hazard for me y my companions, I will also for you. I will conquer and die with you . . .guard well your ranks, I beg of you, and if you lose your colours or standard, lose not sight of my white feather ; you will always Jind it in the path of honour and victory" From Ivri he came to blockade the capital ; this unfortunate city, a prey to the fury of the Seize* and the tyranny of the Spanish soldiers, was reduced to the last extremity * A fanatical league formed at Paris, called the League of the Six* teen. MODERN HISTORF. 257 of hunger : they made bread even of the bones of the dead; mothers devoured their children. The Parisians, oppressed by their defenders, only found pity from the prince who besieged them. He al- lowed a great number of useless mouths to pass out. Shall I, whose duty it is to feed them, be their destroyer 1 Paris must not be a graveyard ; I will not reign over the dead. And again he said, / re- semble the true mother of Solomon; I would rather not have Paris than to have it torn in pieces. Paris was delivered only by the arrival of the Duke of Parma, who, by his skilful manoeuvres, forced Henry to raise the siege, and afterward returned to the Netherlands. Abjuration of Henry IV., 1594. In the mean time the party of the League was daily growing weaker. The bond of their party was hatred to- wards the king. It had prepared its own dissolu- tion by assassinating Henry III. A war at the time divided the principal factions : that of the Guises, upheld especially by the nobility and Par- liament ; and that of Spain, sustained by obscure demagogues. The second concentrated in the large cities, and, without military spirit, distinguish- ed itself by the persecution of the magistrates (1589-91). Mayenne repressed it (1591), but only at the expense to the League of its demo- cratic energy. In the meaa time, the Guises, 258 SUMMARY OF twice beaten, twice blockaded in Paris, could not sustain themselves without the support of those same Spaniards whose agents they had proscribed. Divisions broke out in the States of Paris (1593) ; Mayenne caused the pretensions of Philip II. to miscarry, but without gain to himself. The League, which was in -effect dissolved from that moment, lost every pretext for its continuance, by the abjuration, and, above all, by the absolution of Henry IV. (1593-95), and it lost its principal point of support by the entrance of the king into the capital (1594). He pardoned every one, and the very evening of his entrance visited Madame de Montpensier. From that time the League was nothing but a burlesque, and the Satire Menippee gave it the finishing stroke. Henry gained his kingdom, piece by piece, from the hands of the no- bles, who had divided it among themselves. Peace of Vermns, 1598. In 1595 the civil war made room for a foreign war. The king turned the military ardour of the nation against the Span- iards. In the memorable year 1588 Philip II. at last yielded ; all his projects had failed, his treas- ures were exhausted, his navy nearly ruined. He renounced his pretensions to France (May 2), and transferred the Netherlands to his daughter (May 6). Elizabeth and the United Provinces were alarmed at the peace of Vervins, and made a clo- MODERN HISTORY. 259 ser alliance with each other ; Henry IV. had seen that nothing more was to be feared from Philip II. (who died September 13). The King of France terminated its internal troubles at the same time with the foreign war, by yielding religious tolera- tion and political guarantees to the Protestants (Edict of Nantes, April). Weakness of Spain. The situation of the bel- ligerant powers, after these long wars, presented a striking contrast. It is the master of both ladies who is ruined. The weakness of Spain only in- creased under the reign of Cardinal Lerma and the Duke of Olivarez, favourite of Philip III. and of Philip IV. Spain, not producing enough to buy the metals of America, they cease to enrich her. Of all that is imported in America, a twentieth or more is manufactured in Spain. At Seville, the sixteen hundred looms which worked on wool and silk in 1536, were reduced to four hundred to- wards 1621. In one year alone (1509) Spain drove out a million of industrious subjects (the Moors of Valencia), and was forced to grant a truce of twelve years to the United Provinces. On the contrary, France, England, and the Uni- ted Provinces made ;rapid improvement in popula- tion, wealth, and greatness. Prosperity of England, the Netherlands, arid, France. Since 1595, Philip II., by closing the 260 SUMMARY OF port of Lisbon against the Dutch, had forced them to seek the commodities of the East in the Indies, and there to found an empire on the ruins of that of the Portuguese. The Republic was troubled within by the quarrels of the Stadtholder and the Syndic (Maurice of Orange and Barneveldt), by the contest between the military power and civil liber- ty, between the war party and the peace party (Gomarus and Arminius), but the want of national defence assured the victory to the former of these two parties. It cost the life of the venerable Bar- neveldt, who was beheaded at seventy years of age (1619). At the expiration of the twelve years' truce there was no more civil war, but a regular war, a scien- tific war, a school for all the soldiers of Europe. The military skill of the general of the Spaniards, the celebrated Spinola, was balanced by that of Prince Frederic Henry, brother and successor of Maurice. In the mean time, France, under Henry IV., had emerged from her ruins. Notwithstanding the weak points of this great king, and the faults which an attentive examination may discover in his reign, he merited not the less the title to which he aspi- red, that of restorer of France. All his cares were bent upon regulating and making the kingdom which he had conquered flourish : useless troops MODERN HISTORY. 261 were discharged ; order in the finances succeeded to the most shameful peculations and robbery ; he paid, by degrees, all the debts of the crown, with- out pressing the people. The peasants even now repeat that he wished them to have a fowl in their pots every Sunday: a trifling expression, but a pa- ternal sentiment. It was an astonishing circum- stance, that, notwithstanding the exhausted state of the kingdom, and the practice of peculation, he had, in less than fifteen years, diminished the bur- den of taxes four millions ; that all other duties were reduced to one half; that he paid one hun- dred millions of debts. He purchased domains to the amount of more than fifty millions ; ull the pub- lic places were repaired, the magazines and the arsenals filled, the great roads maintained. Eter- nal praise is due for all this to Sully and to the king, who dared to choose a soldier to re-establish the finances of the State, and who earnestly co- operated with his minister. Administration. Justice was reformed, and, what was much more difficult, both religions lived in peace, at least to appearance. Agriculture was encouraged. " Tillage and pasturage" said Sully, " are the two breasts which have nourished France, the true mines and treasures of Peru. 11 Commerce and the arts, less patronised by Sully, were still held in honour. Fabrics of gold and silver enrich- 262 SUMMARY OF ed Lyons arid France. Henry established facto- ries of tapestry, both of wool, and of silk worked with gold. They began to make small glass mir- rors, after the fashion of Venice. To him, too, we owe silkworms, and the plantations of mulberry- trees, in spite of the opposition of Sully. Henry had the canal of Briare cut, by which the Seine was joined to the Loire. Paris was enlarged and embellished ; he built the Place Royal ; he re- stored all the bridges. The Faubourg St. Ger- main belonged not to the city ; it was not paved ; the king charged himself with all. He had that beautiful bridge built on which the people still be- hold with emotion his statue. St. Germain, Mou- ceaux, Fontainebleau, and especially the Louvre, were enlarged, and almost entirely rebuilt. He gave lodgings in the Louvre, under that long gallery which is his work, to all kinds of artists, whom he often encouraged by kind attentions, as well as by rewards. He was, finally, the true founder of the Royal Library. When Don Pedro, of Toledo, was sent as ambassador by Philip III. to Henry, he no more recognised a city, which he had once seen so unfortunate and languishing. " It is because then the father of the family was not here" said Henry to him ; " now that he takes care of his children, they prosper" Voltaire. Projects of the King. France had become the MODERN HISTORY, 263 arbiter of Europe. Owing to her powerful medi- ation, the pope and Venice had been reconciled (1607) ; Spain and the United Provinces had at last ended their long conflict (1609-1621) ; Hen- ry IV. went to humble the house of Austria ; if we believe his minister, he designed to establish a perpetual peace, and to substitute law in place of that state of nature which still obtained among the members of the great European family. All was ready : a numerous army, provisions of all kinds, the most formidable artillery of the world, and for- ty-two millions in the vaults of the Bastile. A blow from a dagger saved Austria. The people suspect- ed the emperor, the King of Spain, the Queen of France, the Duke of Epernon, the Jesuits. All prof- ited by the crime, but the fanaticism which pur- sued during all his reign a prince who was always suspected of being a Protestant at heart, and who wished to make his religion triumph in Europe, is sufficient to explain it. The blow had been at- tempted seventeen times before Ravaillac. His Death (1610).-" Friday, the 14th of May, 1610, a solemn and fatal day for France, the king, at 6 o'clock A.M., heard mass at the Feuillants ; on returning he retired to his cabinet, where the Duke of Vendome, his natural son, whom he loved much, came to tell him that La Brosse, who professed as- trology, had said to him that the constellation under 264 SUMMARY OF which his majesty had been born threatened him with great danger this very day ; therefore he advised him to take care of himself. To this the king replied, laughing, to M. de Vendome, ' La Brosse is an old rogue, who desires to have your money, and you are a young fool to believe him. Our days are numbered by God.' The duke then told the queen of the same prediction, who begged the king not to leave the Louvre for the rest of the day ; to her he made the same reply. After din- ner the king laid down on his bed to sleep, but not being able to do so, he arose sad, disquieted, and thoughtful, and, after walking in his chamber for some time, he threw himself again on the bed. But still not being able to sleep, he arose and ask- ed one of his life-guards what time it was. He re- plied that it was four o'clock, and said, ' Sir, I see your majesty sad and pensive ; it would be better to take a little air ; this would revive you.' ' That's well said : have my carriage prepared : I will go to the arsenal, to the Duke of Sully, who is indispo- sed, and who takes a bath to-day.' " The carriage being ready, he left the Louvre, accompanied by the Duke of Montbazon, the Duke of Epernon, the Marshal of Lavardin, Roquelaure, La Force, Mirabeau, and Liancourt, who was the first equerry. At the same time he charged M. de Vitry, captain of his guards, to go to the palace and hasten the preparations for the entrance of the MODERN HISTORY. 265 queen, and he ordered his guards to remain at the Louvre. Thus the king was only followed by a small number of gentlemen on horseback and some footmen. The carriage was, unluckily, open on all sides, as it was fine weather, and the king wished to see the preparations which were making in the city. His carriage passing from the street St. Honore into that of Ferronnerie, found on the one side a cart laden with wine, on the other a wagon with hay, which caused a confusion ; he was obliged to stop. The street is very narrow, caused by the shops which are built against the wall of the graveyard of St. Innocents'. " In this embarrassment, the greater number of the footmen went into the graveyard, to run more at their ease, and to go before the carriage of the king at the head of the street. Of the only two valets who had followed the carriage, one advan- ced to remove this obstacle, and the other stoop- ed to tie his garter, when a wretch, a demon from the infernal regions, named Francis Ravaillac, a native of Angouleme, who had time, during the em- barrassment, to see on which side the king was seated, stepped on the wheel of the carriage, and, with a knife sharpened on both edges, struck him a blow between the second and third ribs, a little below the heart, which made the king exclaim, * I am wounded !' But the wretch, without being Z 266 SUMMARY OF frightened, repeated the blow, and struck him a second time in the heart with such force that the king could only heave a heavy sigh, and die. This second blow was followed by a third, so much was the parricide exasperated towards his king ; but it only touched the sleeve of the Duke of Mont- bazon. " Amazing thing ! none of the gentlemen who were in the carriage saw the king struck ; and if this monster of the infernal regions had thrown away his sword, no one would have known from whence the blow came ; but he remained there, as if to show himself, and to glory in being the great- est of assassins."* CHAPTER XL REVOLUTION OF ENGLAND, 1603-1 649.J James I., 1603. Charles I., 1625. War against France, 1627. The King tries to govern without a Parliament, 1630-1638. Trial of Hamp- den, 1636. Covenant of Scotland, 1638. Long Parliament, 1640. Commencement of the Civil War, 1642. Covenant of England and Scotland, 1643. Success of the Parliament. The Power passes to the Independents. Cromwell. The King gives himself up to the Scots, who betray him, 1645. Revolution and Predominance of the Army. Trial and Execution of Charles I. Overthrow of the Mon- archy, 1649. James I., 1603. When James I. succeeded * L'Etoile, part xlviii., p. 447-450. t If this chapter presents any interest, we are indebted for it to the MODERN HISTORY. 267 Elizabeth, the long reign of this princess had somewhat wearied the enthusiasm and submissive spirit of the nation. The character of the new prince was not calculated to change this disposition. England beheld with evil eye a Scottish king, sur- rounded by Scotchmen, belonging, on the side of his mother, to the house of Guise, more versed in theology than in politics,* arid who turned pale at the sight of a sword. He displeased the English in everything, as well by his imprudent procla- mations in favour of the Divine right of kings, as by his project to unite England and Scotland, and his toleration towards the Catholics, who con- spired against him (Gunpowder Plot, 1605). On the other hand, the Scotch saw with no greater satisfaction his attempts to subject them to the Eng- lish Church. James, entirely devoted to his fa- vourites, made himself, by his prodigality, depend- ant on the Parliament, at the same time that he irri- tated it by the contrast between his pretensions and his weakness. It had been the glory of Elizabeth to elevate the nation in its own eyes ; the misfortune of the Stu- arts was to humble it. James abandoned the title works of Messrs. Guizot and Villemain, from which we have made ex- tracts, and have often copied. We have also drawn some precious in- formation from the works of M. Mazure, although the object of his work is generally foreign to that of this chapter. History of the Revolution, 1688. * Henry IV. called him Maltre Jacques. 268 SUMMARY OF of adversary of Spain and chief of the Protestants in Europe. He did not declare war against Spain till 1625, and then in spite of himself. He had his son married to a Catholic princess (Henrietta of France). Charles /., 1625. At the accession of Charles I. (1625), the king and people knew not them- selves to what degree they were already estranged from each other. While the monarchical power triumphed on the Continent, the English Commons had acquired an importance inconsistent with the ancient system of government. Under the Tudors, the humiliation of the aristocracy, the division of es- tates, the sale of the ecclesiastical property, had both enriched the people and given them confidence in their own strength. They sought political guaran- tees. The institutions which might have afforded these guarantees existed already ; they had been respected by the Tudors, who made an instrument of them. But a motive as powerful as religious interest was necessary to give life to those institu- tions. The Presbyterian reformation, an enemy to the Anglical reformation, found the throne stand- ing between herself and episcopacy. The throne was attacked. Petition of Right. The first Parliament sought to obtain, by the delay of subsidies, the redress of public grievances (1625). The second accused MODERN HISTORY. 269 the Duke of Buckingham (the favourite of the king) as their author (1626). During these two assemblies, the unfortunate wars of Spain and France took from the government what popularity it yet possessed. The second war had been under- taken to aid the Protestants, and to deliver La Ro- chelle (the misfortune of Buckingham at the Isle of Rhe, 1627). The third Parliament, waiving all minor contests, demanded, in the Petition of Right, an explicit sanction of those public liberties which were to be acknowledged sixty years after in the Declaration or Bill of Rights. Charles, seeing all his demands rejected, made peace with France and Spain, and tried to govern without calling the Par- liament (1630-1638). Strafford and Laud. He anticipated no farther resistance. His only difficulty was to reconcile both parties who disputed for the ascendency, the queen and the ministers, the court and the council. The Earl of Strafford and Archbishop Laud, who wished to govern, at least in the general interest of the king, were precipitated into very many vio- lent and vexatious measures. The monopoly of the greater part of provisions was sold, illegal du- ties were sustained by servile judges, and by tribu- nals of exception. Unheard-of fines were the pun- ishment of most offences. The government, badly supported by the proud aristocracy, had recourse Z 2 270 SUMMARY OF to the English clergy, who usurped, by degrees, the civil power. The Nonconformists were perse- cuted. A great number of men, who could no longer support so odious a government, went to America. At the moment when an order of the council for- bade the emigrations, eight vessels, ready to depart, lay at anchor in the Thames ; in one of them Pym, Hampden, and Cromwell were already embarked. Trial of Hampden Long Parliament (1640). The public indignation burst forth on the occasion of the trial of Hampden. This gentleman prefer- red being imprisoned to paying an illegal tax of twenty shillings. One month after his condemna- tion, the Bishop of Edinburgh having tried to in- troduce the new English liturgy, a frightful tumult broke out in the Cathedral ; the bishop was insult- ed, arid the magistrates were chased by the popu- lace. The Scotch engaged by oath in a covenant, by which they bound themselves to defend the sovereign, the religion, the laws, and the liberties of the country against all danger. Messengers, who repaired from village to village, carried it to the most remote parts of the country, as the fiery cross was carried into the mountains, to call to war the vassals of a lord. The Covenanters received arms and money from the Cardinal Richelieu, and the English army having refused to fight against their brothers, the king was obliged to place him MODERN HISTORY. 271 self at the discretion of a fifth Parliament (Long Parliament, 1640). Civil War (1642). This new assembly, having so much to revenge, implacably prosecuted all those who were styled delinquents, Strafford especially, who had irritated the nation, less by actual crimes, than by the violence of an imperious temper. Strafford himself entreated the king to sign the bill of his condemnation, and Charles had the deplorable weakness to consent. The Parliament took possession of the government, directed the employment of the subsidies, reformed the decis- ions of the tribunals, and disarmed the royal author- ity by proclaiming itself indissoluble. The dread- ful massacre of the Protestants of Ireland gave to Parliament an opportunity to seize the military power ; the Irish Catholics had risen against the English who were established among them, and everywhere attacked their tyrants, mocking the queen, and displaying a false commission of the king. Charles, driven to extremity by a threaten- ing remonstrance, went in person to the House to arrest five of the members. He failed in this great stroke of policy, and left London to commence the civil war (January llth, 1642). The Parliament party had the advantage of en- thusiasm and of numbers : it had the capital, the great cities, the ports, the fleet. The king had the 272 SUMMARY OF majority of the nobility, more skilled in arms than the Parliamentary troops. In the counties of the north and west the Royalists ruled, the Parliament in those of the east, in the middle and southeast, the most populous and richest. These latter coun- ties, joining each other, formed a circle around London. Edge Hill Newbury, 1643. Marston Moor. The king soon marched towards the capital, but the indecisive battle of Edge Hill saved the adhe- rents of the Parliament. They had time to orga- nize themselves. Colonel Cromwell formed in the counties of the east volunteer squadrons, who op- posed religious enthusiasm to the sentiments of honour which animated the cavaliers. The Par- liament was again successful at Newbury, and uni- ted itself with Scotland by a solemn covenant (1643). The good understanding of the king with the High- landers of the north and the Irish Catholics accel- erated this unexpected union of two people who, until then, were enemies. It is said that a great number of Irish papists, called by the king, were mixed with the troops from their island ; and that even women, armed with long knives, and in a savage dress, had been seen within their ranks. This Parliament would not receive the letters of that which the king had convoked at Oxford, and pushed on the war with new vigour. Enthusiasm MODERN HISTORY. 273 had carried some families so far as to deprive them- selves of one repast a week, to offer its value to the Parliament ; an ordinance converted this offer- ing into an obligatory tax for all the inhabitants of London and the adjacent parts. The nephew of the king, Prince Rupert, was defeated at Marston Moor, after a bloody battle, by the invincible stub- bornness of the saints of the Parliamentary army, the cavaliers of Cromwell, who received on the field of battle the surname of Ironsides. They would have been able to send to the Parliament more than one hundred standards of the enemy, if, in their enthusiasm, they had not torn them in pieces to ornament their caps and their arms with them. The king lost York and all the north. The queen saved herself in France (1664). Second Battle of Newlury. This disaster seem- ed, for an instant, repaired. The king had obliged the Earl of Essex, general of the Parliament, to capitulate in the county of Cornwall. The Irish bands had landed in Scotland, and Montrose, one of the bravest cavaliers, having appeared suddenly in their camp in the dress of a Highlander, had gained two battles, raised the clans of the north, and spread terror even to the gates of Edinburgh. Already the king marched towards London ; the people closed their shops, fasted and prayed, when they heard that he had been defeated at Newbury 274 SUMMARY OF (for the second time). The Parliamentary troops had performed wonders ; at sight of the cannons, which they had but lately lost in the county of Cornwall, they threw themselves upon the royal batteries, seized their own pieces, and carried them away, embracing them with joy. Act of Renunciation. At this time a misunder- standing broke out among the conquerors. The power escaped from the Presbyterians to pass to the Independents. This latter party was a mix- ture of enthusiasts, philosophers, and libertines ; but it drew its unity from one principle, the right to freedom of conscience. Notwithstanding their crimes and their reveries, this principle ought to have given them victory over adversaries less en- ergetic and less consistent. While the Presbyte- rians believed that they were preparing peace by vain negotiations with the king, the Independents placed themselves at the head of the war. Crom- well declares that those in power prolonged it de- signedly, and the Parliament, through disinterested motives, or through fear of losing its popularity, decided* that every one should renounce Ms own advancement, and that the members of the Parlia- ment should no more hold any civil or military of- fice. Naseby The King given up to the English. * By what was called the Self-denying Ordinance. MODERN HISTORY. 275 Cromwell found means, by new success, to exempt himself from the common rule, and the Independ- ents overthrew the royal army at Naseby, near Northampton. The papers of the king, found after the victory, and publicly read at London, proved that, notwithstanding his protestations, repeated a thousand times, he had called for the aid of for- eigners, especially of the Irish Catholics. In the mean time, Montrose, abandoned by the Highland- ers, who went to hide their booty at home, had been surprised and defeated. Prince Rupert, known until then by his impetuous courage, had given up Bristol at the first summons. The king wandered for a long time from city to city, from castle to castle, constantly changing his disguise ; he stopped at Harrow-on-the-Hill, hesitating to en- ter the capital, which he saw at a distance. Fi- nally, he retired, from fatigue more than choice, to the camp of the Scotch, where the resident minis- ter of France had given him hope of finding an asylum, and where he soon perceived that he was a prisoner. His hosts spared not their outrages to- wards him. A Scotch clergyman, preaching be- fore him at Newcastle, gave out to the congrega- tion the 52d Psalm, which commences, " Why boastest thou thyself, thou tyrant, that thou canst do mischief?" The king, suddenly rising, sung, " Be merciful unto me, God, for man goeth 276 SUMMARY OF about to devour me ; he is daily fighting and troub- ling me. Mine enemies are daily on hand to swal- low me up ; for they be many that fight against me ;" and, from a sudden transport, the whole con- gregation joined him. But the Scotch, despairing of making him accept the covenant, gave him up to tire English, who offered to pay the expenses of the war. The unfortunate prince was but an instrument for which" the Independents and Presbyterians dis- puted until they destroyed it. The misunderstand- ing was at its height between the army and Parlia- ment. They took the king from the place where the commissioners of the latter guarded him, and, without receiving the orders of the chief general, Fairfax, Cromwell had him led to the army. Cromwell. In the mean time a reaction in fa- vour of the king took place. Bands of citizens and apprentices, half-pay officers, and marines forced the gates of Westminster, and constrained the chamber to vote for the return of the king. But sixty members fled to the army, which march- ed towards London. Its entrance into the capital was the triumph of the Independents. Cromwell, seeing the Presbyterians eclipsed, fearing for his own party, hesitated for a moment if he should not work for the re-establishment of the king. But, knowing well that he could not in any way se- MODERN HISTORY. 277 cure this prince's confidence, he began to aim higher, and thought of withdrawing the king from the army, as he had taken him from the Parlia- ment. Charles, alarmed by menacing intelligence, escaped, and went to the Isle of Wight, where he found himself in the power of Cromwell. The Levellers. The ruin of the king was the seal of reconciliation between Cromwell and the Republicans. He had been obliged to repress the anarchical faction of the Levellers in the army ; he had seized one of them in the midst of a regi- ment, and had him condemned and executed on the spot, in the presence of the army ; but he was careful not to be always at variance with a party so energetic. Condemnation of the King, 1649. He regained them by beating the Scotch, whose army came to second the reaction in favour of the king. The Parliament of England, alarmed by a victory so prompt, which must turn to the profit of the Inde- pendents, hastened to negotiate anew with the king. While Charles was disputing with the deputies of Parliament, and repulsing with probity the means of escape which his servants prepa- red for him, the army removed him from the Isle of Wight, and purged the Parliament. Colonel Pride, with the list of the proscribed members in his hand, occupied the gate of the Commons at the AA 278 SUMMARY OF head of two regiments, and repulsed with violence and insult those who persisted in claiming their rights. From the time that the party of the Inde- pendents had gained the ascendency the enthusi- asm of the fanatics was at its height. The king was put on trial before a commission over which John Bradshaw, a cousin of Milton, presided. Notwithstanding the opposition of most of the mem- bers, and, among the rest, of the young and virtuous Sidney ; notwithstanding the challenge of Charles, who maintained that the Commons could not exer- cise a parliamentary authority without the concur- rence of the king and lords ; notwithstanding the mediation of the Scotch commissioners, and the ambassadors of the States-General of the Nether- lands, the king was condemned to death. At the moment when the judge pronounced the name of Charles Stuart, Ir ought to answer a charge of treason, and other great crimes presented against him in the name of the people of England " Not by one half of the people" cried a voice. " Where are the people 1 where is its consent ? Ol- iver Cromwell is a traitor /" The whole assembly quickly rose, all eyes turn- ed towards the gallery : " Down with the women /" cried Colonel Axtel : " Soldiers, fire upon them /" They recognised Lady Fairfax. After the sentence, they refused to hear the MODERN HISTORY. 279 king. They dragged him out amid the insults of the soldiers, and cries of "Justice! Execu- tion /" When it was necessary to sign the order for his death, they had great trouble to assemble the commissioners. Cromwell, almost the only one gay, bustling, bold, gave way to the most vio- lent fits of his accustomed buffoonery ; after hav- ing signed as the third, he daubed the ink in the face of Henry Martyn, who was seated near him, and who instantly returned it. Colonel Ingoldsby, his cousin, whose name was among the judges, but who had not set in the court during the trial, by accident entered the hall. " This time," cried Cromwell, " he will not escape us ;" and seizing Ingoldsby with loud bursts of laughter, aided by- some members who were there, he placed the pen between his fingers, and, guiding his hand, forced him to sign. Finally, they collected fifty-nine signa- tures, several names scratched in such a manner, either designedly, or from agitation of mind, that it was hardly possible to decipher them.** Execution of Charles I., 1648.- The scaffold was erected against a window of Whitehall. The king, after having blessed his children, went there, his head raised, with firm step, walking before his soldiers, who escorted him. Many people soaked their handkerchiefs in his blood. Cromwell wished * Guizot. 280 SUMMARY OF to see the body, already placed in the coffin ; he looked at it attentively, and raising its head with his hands, as if to assure himself that it was well severed from the body, said, " There was a body well built, and that promised a long life." The House of Lords was abolished the year after. A great seal was engraved, with this motto : The first year of liberty restored by the blessing of God, 1648.* CHAPTER XII. THE THIRTY YEARS* WAR, 1618-48. Maximilian II., 1564-1576. Rodolph II., 1576-1612. Mathias Emperor, 1612-1619. Insurrection of Bohemia. Commencement of the Thirty Years' War. Palatine Period, 1619-1623: Ferdinand II. War against the Protestants, Bohemia, the Palatinate. Triumph of Ferdi- nand. Danish Period, 1625-1629: League of the States of Lower Saxony. Success of Tilly and Waldstein. Intercession of Denmark and Sweden. Swedish Period, 1630-1635. : Gustavus Adolphus in- vades the Empire. Battle of Leipzig, 1631. Invasion of Bavaria. Battle of Lutzen ; Death of Gustavus Adolphus, 1632. Assassina- tion of Waldstein, 1634. Peace of Prague, 1635. French Period, 1635-1648 : Ministry of Richelieu, &c., &e. Battle of the Dunes, 1640. Battle of Leipzig, 1642 ; of Friburg, Norlingen, Sens, 1644, 1645, 1648, &c., &c. Treaty of Westphalia, 1648. THE Thirty Years' War is the last conflict sus- tained by the Reformation. This war, indetermi- nate in its march and its object, is composed of * Old style. This date corresponds to February 9, 1649, MODERN HISTORY. 281 four distinct wars, wherein the Elector of Palatine, Denmark, Sweden, and France, successively play the principal part. It becomes more and more complicated, until it embraces all Europe. Sev- eral causes prolong it indefinitely : first, the close union of both branches of the house of Austria and the Catholic party; the opposite party is not homogeneous ; second, the inaction of England, the tardy mediation of France, the weakness of Denmark and Sweden. The armies which carried on the Thirty Years' War were no longer feudal militia ; they were stand- ing armies, but armies which the sovereigns could not maintain (see, above, the armies of Charles V., in the wars of Italy). They lived at the ex- pense of the country, and ruined it. The ruined peasant became a soldier, and sold himself to the first comer. The war prolonging itself, thus form- ed armies without a country, an immense military force, which floats in Germany, and encourages the most gigantic projects of princes, and of pri- vate individuals even. Germany again becomes the centre of European politics. The first contest of the Reformation with the house of Austria was renewed, after sixty years' interruption ; all the powers took part in it. Results. Europe seems as if it must be over- thrown, and yet we perceive but one important A A2 282 SUMMARY OP change ; France had succeeded to the supremacy of the house of Austria. The influence of the Reformation will no longer be sensible, and the treaty of Westphalia commences a new world. Maximilian II. Rudolph II. Whether from fear of the Turks, or from the personal moderation of the princes, the German branch of the house of Austria, in the second part of the sixteenth centu- ry, followed a policy entirely opposite to that of Philip II. The tolerant policy of Ferdinand I. and Maximilian II. favoured the progress of Prot- estantism in Austria, Bohemia, and Hungary ; they even suspected Maximilian to be Protestant at heart (1555-1576). The feeble Rudolph II., who succeeded him, had neither his moderation nor his ability. While he shut himself up with Tycho Brahe, to study astrology and alchymy, the Protestants of Hungary, Bohemia, and Austria made one common cause. The Archduke Mathi- as, brother of Rudolph, favoured them, and forced the emperor to yield Austria and Hungary to him (1607-1609). Succession of Juliers. The Empire was not less agitated than the hereditary states of the house of Austria. Aix-la-Chapelle and Donawerth, where the Protestants had made themselves masters, were put under the ban of the Empire. The archbish- op, Elector of Cologne, who wished to secularize MODERN HISTORY. 283 his states, was deposed. The reopening of the succession of Cleves and Juliers again complica- ted the situation of Germany. Protestant and Catholic princes, the Elector of Brandenburgh, the Duke of Deux-Ponts, and others, claimed it equal- ly. The Empire divided itself into two leagues. Henry IV., who favoured the Protestants, intended to enter Germany, and to avail himself of this state of things to humble the house of Austria, when he was assassinated (1610). Instead of being defer- red, the Thirty Years' War only became more terri- ble. Mathias, Emperor Battle of Prague, 1621. Mathias, after having forced Rudolph to yield Bohemia to him, succeeded him in the Empire (1612-19), and also in all the embarrassments of his position. The Spaniards and Dutch invaded the dukedoms of Cleves and Juliers. The Bo- hemians, conducted by the Count of Turn, rose for the defence of their religion. Turn, at the head of a part of the States, repaired to the council- room, and precipitated the four gouverneurs into the ditches of the castle of Prague (1618). The Bohemians pretended it to be an ancient custom of their country to throw double-dealing ministers out of the window. They levied troops, and, not wish- ing to acknowledge as successor to Mathias a pupil of the Jesuits, Ferdinand II., they gave the 284 SUMMARY OF crown to Frederic V., elector of Palatine, son-in- law of the King of England, and nephew of the Stadtholder of Holland. Palatine Period of the Thirty Years 9 War, 1619-23. At the same time, the Hungarians elected the Waiwode of Transylvania, Betlem Ga- bor, for king. Ferdinand, who was besieged for a short time by the Bohemians in Vienna, was supported by the Duke of Bavaria, by the Catholic league of Germany, and by the Spaniards. Fred- eric, who was a Calvinist, was. abandoned by the Lutheran union. James I., his father-in-law, was satisfied with negotiating for him. Attacked in the capital of Bohemia itself, he lost the battle of Prague by his negligence or his cowardice. He dined tranquilly at the castle, while his subjects died for him in the field (1621). Notwithstanding the valour of Mansfield, and other partisans who ravaged Germany in his name, still he was driven from the Palatinate ; the Protestant union was dis- solved, and the electoral dignity transferred to the Duke of Bavaria. Waldstein Danish Period, 1625-1629. The States of Lower Saxony, threatened by an ap- proaching restitution of ecclesiastical property, called the princes of the North, who were united to them by community of religious interest, to the aid of Germany. The young King of Sweden, MODERN HISTORY. 285 Gustavus Adolphus, was at that time occupied in a glorious war against Poland, the ally of Austria. The King of Denmark, Christian IV., undertook their defence. At the approach of this new war, Ferdinand would not depend on the Catholic league, of which the Duke of Bavaria was the chief, and of which the celebrated Tilly commanded the troops. The Count of Waldstein,* officer of the emperor, offered to form him an army, provided he was permitted to enrol fifty thousand men. He kept his word. All the adventurers who wished to live by pillage surrounded him, and he made laws equally for the friends and the enemies of the emperor. Christian IV. was defeated at Lutter. Waldstein reduced Pomerania, and received from the emperor the estates of the two. Dukes of Meck- lenburg, and the title of General of the Baltic. But for the succour which the Swedes threw into the place, he would have taken the powerful city of Stralsund (1628). All the North trembled. The emperor, in order to divide his enemies, granted to Denmark a humiliating peace (1629). He ordered a restitution to the Protestants of all the property secularized since 1555. Then the army of Wald- stein fell back upon Germany, and overran it at pleasure ; several states were exhausted by enor- mous contributions. So great was the distress of * He signed Juwsejf Walfotein, not WaUensttin, 286 SUMMARY OF the inhabitants, that 'some of them dug up corpses to satisfy their hunger, and the dead were found with their mouths still filled with raw herbs. Gustavus Adolphus, 1630 Battle of Leipzig, 1631 Swedish Period, 1630-1636. Deliver- ance came from Sweden and France. Cardinal Richelieu disengaged the Swedes by procuring for them a truce with Poland. He disarmed the em- peror by persuading him that he could not have his son elected king of the Romans unless he sacri- ficed Waldstein to the resentment of Germany, and, while he thus deprived himself of his best general, Gustavus Adolphus entered the Empire (1630). Ferdinand was but little alarmed at first ; he said that this king of snow would melt away on. approaching the South. They knew not yet what these men of iron were ; this army, heroic and pious in comparison with the mercenary troops of Ger- many. A short time after the arrival of Gustavus Adolphus, Torquato Conti, general of the emperor, demanded a truce, in consequence of the severe cold ; Gustavus replied that the Swedes knew not winter. The genius of the conqueror disconcerted the German routine by an impetuous tactics, which sacrificed everything to the rapidity of its move- ments, and which lavished men to shorten the war. To make himself master of the strongholds by fol- lowing the course of the rivers, to secure Sweden MODERN HISTORY. 287 by closing the Baltic against the Imperials, to de- prive them of all their allies, to hem in Austria before attacking it, such was the plan of Gustavus. If he had marched straight to Vienna, he would only have appeared in Germany as a foreign con-^ queror ; by driving off the Imperials from the Northern and Western States, which they were destroying, he presented himself as the champion of the Empire against the emperor. Tilly, who had first opposed him, arrested not the torrent ; he only drew the hatred of Europe on the Imperial troops by the destruction of Magdebourg. " Saxony and Brandenburgh, which wished to remain neu- tral, were drawn into an alliance with Gustavus by the rapidity of his success. He defeated Tilly in the bloody battle of Leipzig (1631). While the Saxons prepared themselves to attack Bohemia, he beat the Duke of Lorraine, penetrated into Al- sace, and subjected the Electorates of Treves, Ma- yence, and the Rhine, to which Richelieu would have extended the rights of neutrality ; but Gusta- vus wanted either friends or enemies. Finally, Ba- varia is invaded at the same time as Bohemia, Tilly dies in defending the Lech, and Austria is opened' on all sides. It was now absolutely necessary that Ferdinand should have recourse to that proud Waldstein whom he had driven away. For a long time he saw the 288 SUMMARY OF emperor and the Catholics, as it were, at his feet ; he was, he said, too happy in his retreat. They could only conquer this philosophical moderation by giving him in the Empire a power nearly equal to that of the emperor. Lutzen, 1632. At this price he saved Bohemia, and marched on Nuremberg, to arrest the arms of Gustavus. There was great astonishment in Eu- rope when they saw the two invincible men for three months encamped face to face without taking advantage of an opportunity so long expected. Waldsteih at last put himself in motion, and was met by the King of Sweden near Lutzen. Gusta- vus made an attack, wishing to defend the Elector of Saxony. After several charges, the king, de- ceived by the darkness of a fog, threw himself be- fore the enemy's ranks, and fell, struck by two bullets. The Duke of Saxe Lauenburg, who after- ward went over to the Imperial party, was behind him at the fatal moment, and was accused of his death. They sent the buff-skin coat which the Swedish hero wore to Vienna (1632). All ; ? Europe mourned Gustavus. But why ? He may have died most opportunely for his glory. He had saved Germany, and had not had time to oppress it. He had not restored the Palatinate to the dis- possessed elector; he had destined Mayence for his Chancellor Oxenstiern; he had showed his MODERN HISTORY. 289 disposition to reside at Augsburg, which would have become the seat of a new empire. Assassination of Waldstein. While the able Oxenstiern continued the war, and had himself declared chief, at Heilbron, of the League of the Circles of Franconia, Swabia, and Rhine, Waldstein remained in Bohemia in a state of formidable in- action. It was for him that Gustavus seemed to have laboured in destroying throughout all Germany the Imperial party. He had served him both by his victories and by his death. " Germany" said Waldstein, " cannot contain two men like us" After the death of Gustavus he was alone. Shut up in his palace at Prague, with a royal train of attend- ants, and surrounded by a crowd of adventurers who had attached themselves to his fortune, he there watched for the proper opportunity. This terrible man, who was seldom seen, who never laughed, and who only spoke to his soldiers to make their fortune or to pronounce their death, was the hope of Europe. The King of France called him his cousin, and Richelieu offered his in- terest to make him King of Bohemia. It was time that the emperor made a decision ; he took the decision of Henry III. in respect to the Duke of Guise. Waldstein was assassinated at Egra ; and Ferdinand, remembering the services he had B B 290 SUMMARY OF formerly rendered to him, had 3000 masses said for the peace of his soul (1634). In the mean time, the Elector of Saxony had made his peace with the emperor. The Swedes were not strong enough to remain alone in Ger- many. It was necessary that France, in her turn, should descend to the field of battle. Richelieu, 1635 French Period, 1635-1648. Richelieu, who then governed France, found it given up to Spanish influence, and harassed by the princes and the nobles, by the mother of the king, and by the Protestants (government of Mary of Medicis, 1610-17, and of the favourite De Luynes, 1617-21). This great minister, employed against the last the system of Henry IV., with this advantage, that he was not obliged by any former engagement, or by any motives of gratitude, to have that respect for them which might be in- imical to his own interests. He had taken La Rochelle from them by constructing a dam of 800 toises in the sea (as Alexander formerly did at the siege of Tyre) ; had conquered, disarmed, and by a magnanimous policy appeased them (1627-28). He turned himself against the grandees, had the mother and brother of the king driven from France, and caused a Marillac and a Montmorency to per- ish on the scaffold (1630-32). He had prisons in his house at Ruel ; he had his enemies condemned MODERN HISTORY. 291 there, that he might safely deride or defy the judges- Nothing remained for him but to give some dignity to these odious victories over his internal enemies by conquests abroad (1635). Bernard of Weimar. First, he bought over Ber- nard of Weimar (the best disciple of Gustavus Adol- phus), with his army. He united himself with the Dutch to divide the Spanish Netherlands, while at the other end of France he retook Roussillon ; the alliance with the Duke of Savoy secured to him the passages of Italy. Having commenced from the side of the Netherlands, France gained in Italy more glory than real advantage. But the Dutch, her allies, destroyed the Spanish navy in the battle of the Dunes (1639). Bernard of Weimar took the four forest towns,* and also Friburg and Brisach, under the walls of which he obtained four victories. He forgot that France had already purchased his conquests from him. He was going to make him- self independent, when he died, as opportunely for Richelieu as the death of Waldstein was for Ferdinand. Success of the French. Everything became fa- vourable to the French from the moment that the rebellion of Catalonia and of Portugal forced Spain into a defensive war (1640). The house of Bra- * Rhinfeld, Valdshut, Sechingen, Lauffenburg, called forest because near the Black Forest. 292 SUMMARY OF ganza ascended the throne of Portugal with the applause of Europe. The French victors in Italy took, in the Low Countries, Arras and Thionville. The great Conde gained the battle of Rocroi five days after the accession of Louis XIV. : a happy omen for this great reign, which encouraged France after the death of Richelieu and Louis XIII. Battle of Leipzig, 1642. The war had now changed its character for the second time. To the fanaticism of Tilly, and of his master Ferdinand II., to the revolutionary genius of the Waldsteins and the Weimars, had succeeded able tacticians, a Piccolomini, a Merci, generals of the emperor, Banner, Torstenson, and Wrangel, pupils of Gus- tavus. War being a profitable trade for so many people, peace became more and more difficult. France, entirely occupied with protecting her con- quests of Lorraine and Alsace, refused to join the Swedes to overthrow the house of Austria. Tor- stenson thought for a moment that he could con- quer without the aid of the French. This para- lytic general, who astonished Europe by the rapid- ity of his manoeuvres, had renewed the glory of Gustavus Adolphus at Leipzig (1642). He had given a blow to the Danes, the secret friends of the emperor ; the alliance with Transylvania per- mitted him, finally, to penetrate Austria (1645). The defection of Transylvania, and the death of Torstenson, saved the emperor. MODERN HISTORY. 293 Ferdinand III., 1637 Conde Treaty of West- phalia, 1648. In the mean time, negotiations had been opened since 1636 ; the accession of Ferdi- nand III. to the Empire seemed necessarily to fa- vour them (1637). Although the mediation of the pope, of Venice, and of the kings of Denmark, Po- land, and England, had been rejected, the prelimina- ries of peace were signed in 1642. The death of Richelieu revived the hopes of the house of Austria, and retarded the peace. The victories of Conde at Friburg, at Nordlingen, and at Sens (1644-45-48), that of Turenne and the Swedes at Sommers- hausen, and, finally, the taking of Little Prague by Wrangel (1648), were necessary to decide the emperor to sign the treaty of Westphalia. The war continued only between Spain, France, and Portugal. Principal articles : 1st. The peace of Augsburg (1555) is confirmed and extended to the Calvinists. 2d. The sovereignty of the different States of Germany within their own territory is sanctioned, also their right to the general diets of the Empire ; those rights are warranted internally, by the position of the Imperial Chamber and Aulic Council, to which an equal number of Protestants and Catholics were hereafter to be admitted ; exter- nally, by the mediation of France and Sweden. .3d. Indemnities awarded to several states, and, to secure them, a great amount of ecclesiastical prop- B *2 294 SUMMARY OF erty is secularized. France obtains Alsace, the three bishoprics, Philipsburg, and Pignerol, the keys of Germany and Piedmont : Sweden, a part of Pomerania, Bremen, Yerden, Wismar, &e., three votes at the diets of the Empire, and five millions of German dollars : The Elector of Brandenburg, Magdebourg, Halberstadt, &c., &c. : Saxony, Meck- lenburg, and Hesse Cassel, are also indemnified. 4th. The son of Frederic V. recovers the Lower Palatinate of the Rhine (the Upper Palatinate re- mains in the hands of Bavaria) ; an eighth electo- ral dignity is created in his favour. 5th. The United Provinces, are acknowledged as independ- ent of Spain ; the United Provinces and Swiss Cantons, independent of the German Empire. CHAPTER XIII. THE EAST AND NORTH IN THE FIFTEENTH CEN- TURY. I. TURKEY, HUNGARY, 1566-1648. Solyman the Magnificent. The reign of Soly- man the Magnificent had been the summit of Otto- man grandeur. Under him the Turks were equal- ly formidable by land and by sea ; they were ad- mitted into the system of Europe by their alliance witk France against the house of Austria. Soly- MODERN HISTORY. 295 man endeavoured to give fixed laws to his people, collected the maxims and ordinances of his prede- cessors, supplied those which were lost, and set- tled the civil hierarchy. He embellished Con- stantinople by rebuilding the ancient aqueduct, of which the water is divided among eight hundred fountains ; he founded the Mosque Souleimanieh, to which four colleges are attached, a house of refuge for the poor, an hospital for the sick, and a library of two thousand manuscripts. The Turk- ish language ennobles itself by a mixture of Ara- bian and Persian ; Solyman himself made verses in these languages. In his old age the sultan was entirely governed by Rouschen (Roxalana), whom he had married, and who caused him to put his children by a former marriage to death. The em- pire, exhausted by so many wars, seemed to grow old with him under the influence of the government of a seraglio. Solyman prepared its ruin by taking the command of the armies from the members of the imperial family. Lepanto, 1571. Under his indolent successor, Selim II. (1566-1574), the Turks took Cyprus from the Venitians, who received but little assistance from Spain ; but they were defeated in the Gulf of Lepanto by the combined fleets of Philip II. , Ven- ice, and the pope, under the orders of Don Juan of Austria. Since this check, the Turks allow that 296 SUMMARY OF God, who has given them the empire of the land, has left the dominion of the sea to infidels. Under Amurat III., Mohammed III., and Achmet I. (1574-1617), the Turks sustained, with various success, long wars against the Persians and the Hungarians. The janizaries, who by their revolts had troubled the reigns of these princes, put to death their successors, Mustapha and Othman (1617-1623). The Empire rose under Amurat IV., the Intrepid, who employed the turbulent spir- it of the janizaries abroad, took Bagdad, and in- terposed in the troubles of India. Under the imbe- cile Ibrahim (1645-49), the Turks, always fol- lowing the impulse given to them by Amurat, took Candia from the Venitians. Hungary. This kingdom had been divided be- tween the house of Austria and the Turks since 1562. From this division rose a continual war. The jurisdiction of Transylvania was another cause of war between Austria and the Porte. In the in- terior, Hungary was not more tranquil. The Aus- trian princes, hoping to increase their power by leading Hungary back to religious uniformity, per- secuted the Protestants and violated the privileges of the nation. The Hungarians rose under Rudolph II., Ferdinand II., and Ferdinand III. ; the princes of Transylvania, Etienne Botschkai', Betlem Gabor, George Regotzi, placed themselves successively at MODERN HISTORY. 297 the head of the malecontents. By the pacifications of Vienna (1622) and of Lintz (1645) ; by the de- crees of the diets of Oldenburg (1622) and Pres- burg (1647), the kings of Hungary were forced to consent to the public exercise of the Protestant religion, and to respect the national privileges. II. POLAND, PRUSSIA, RUSSIA, 1505- 1648. Poland triumphed over the Teutonic Order, a German power, which, though feebly sustained by the Empire, had pushed itself beyond Germany into the heart of the Sclavonic States. In recom- pense for this, however, she neglected to protect the Bohemians and Hungarians in their revolts against Austria. The two great nations of Sclavonic origin had frequent communication with each other, but little intercourse with the Scandinavian States, till the revolutions of Livonia engaged them in a common war, towards the middle of the 16th century. Li- vonia then became for the North of Europe what Milan had been for the South. Prussia, 1525 State of Poland and Prussia in the first half of the 16th Century Accession of Wa- sili IV. (Iwanowitch), 1505, and of Sigismond /., 1506. The feeble Wasili had the imprudence to break with the Tartars of the Crimea, whose ser- 298 SUMMARY OF vices had been so useful to Iwan III. ; he comple- ted the subjection of Plescof, took Smolensk from the Lithuanians, but was defeated by them in the same year (1514). He united himself to the Teu- tonic Order against the Poles, but was not able to save Prussia from submitting to Poland. The grand- master, Albert of Brandenburg, embraced Lutheranism ( 1525), secularized Teutonic Prussia, and received it in fief from Sigismond I. Iwan IV., 1533-1584. 1533, Accession of Iwan IV. (Wasiliewitch) in Russia; 1548, of S/gismond II. , called Augustus, in Poland. During the mi- nority of Iwan IV., the power passed from the hands of the Regent Helerie to several princes, who supplanted each other. 1547, under the influ- ence of the Empress Anastasia, Iwan IV. restrained at first the violence of his character. He comple- ted the humbling of the Tartars by the definitive reunion of Kasan, and by the conquest of Astra- kan (1552-1554). Livonia, 1558-83 War of Livonia. The or- der of the knights of Porte- Glaive, conqueror of the Russians (1502), had been independent of the Teutonic Order since 1521. But towards this epoch all the powers of the North preferred their claims on Livonia. Iwan IV. having invaded it in 1558, the grand-master, Gotthar Kettler, pre- ferred to reunite it to Poland by the treaty of Wilna MODERN HISTORY. 299 (1561), creating himself Duke of Courland. The King of Denmark, Frederic II.. master of the island of GEsel, and of certain districts, and the King of Sweden, Eric XIV., having been called to aid the city of Revel, and the nobility of Esthonia, took part in the war, which was prosecuted by land and by sea. The Czar encountered two obstacles in his plans of conquest : the jealousy of the Russians against the strangers, whom he preferred before them, and the fear which his cruelty had impressed upon the Livonians. He crushed all his subjects who were able to resist him, whether in the trading class or among the nobility (1570), and finally invaded Livonia in the name of a brother of the King of Denmark (1575). But Poland and Sweden united themselves against the Czar, who made peace with Poland by giving up Livonia to her, and con- cluded a truce with Sweden, which remained in possession of Carelia (1582-83). He died in 1584. [Code of Iwan IV. , 1550, presenting a system- atized view of all the ancient laws Gratuitous jus- tice All landholders subjected to military service Establishment of a regular pay of the soldiers Institution of the permanent militia of the guards Commerce with Tartary, Turkey, and Lithuania. The wars of Livonia and Lithuania closing the Baltic to the Russians, they had no longer commu- 300 SUMMARY OF nications with the rest of Europe, except by wind- ing round Sweden through the seas of the North. 1555, the Englishman, Chanceller, sent by Queen Mary to find a northern passage to the Indies, landed at the place where, afterward, Archangel was found- ed ; there was regular commerce between Russia and England until the civil wars of Russia (1605). 1577-81, discovery of Siberia.] Successions of Poland, 1572 ; of Russia, 1593. The dynasty of the Jagellons was extinguished in 1572, by the death of Sigismond Augustus ; that of Rurick in 1598, by the death of Czar Fedor /., son and successor of I wan IV. From these two events resulted directly, or indirectly, two long and bloody wars, which again set up as prizes all the northern dominions ; one War had the succes- sion of Sweden for its object, the other the succes- sion of Russia. The first war, which lasted sixty- seven years (1593-1660), was twice interrupted: first by the second war (1609-1619), and afterward by the Thirty Years' War (1629-1655). False Demetrius. The throne of Poland be- came purely elective 1573-1575. Henry of Valois appeared in this kingdom only to sign the first Pacta Conventa, 1570-1587. The accession of Ethienne Batthon, prince of Transylvania, delayed the moment when Poland was to lose her pre- ponderance. He limited the power of his subjects MODERN HISTORY. 301 (Dantzic, Riga, 1578-1586); he humbled Russia and Denmark (1582-85). 1587, Sigismond III., son of John III., king of Sweden, elected King of Poland, found himself, at his accession to the throne of his father, in a difficult position. Sweden was Protestant ; Poland Catholic ; they both claim- ed Livonia. The uncle of Sigismond (Charles IX.), chief of the Lutheran party in Sweden, pre- vailed over him, both by policy (1593) and by arms (1598). Thence a war between the two nations, which was interrupted only at the moment that they took Russia for a field of battle. The usurpation of Borris-Godunow, and the impostures of several false Demetrii, who called themselves heirs of the throne of Moscow, made the Poles and Swedes hope either to dismember Russia, or to give her one of their princes as master. Their hopes were defeated. A Russian (1613-1645), Michael Fedrowitc.li, founded the house of Roma- now. 1616-1618, Russia gave up to Sweden In- gria and Russian Carelia ; to Poland the territories of Smqlensko, Tschernigow, and Nowgorod-Ser- verskoi, and she lost all communication with the Baltic. 1620-1629, the war recommenced be- tween Poland and Sweden, and was continued to the period in which Gustavus Adolphus engaged in the Thirty Years' War (1629. Treaty of six years, renewed in 1635 for twenty-six). Cc 302 SUMMARY OF Sigismond III. and his successor, Wladislas VII. (1632-1648), sustained long wars against the Turks, the Russians, and the Cossacks of the Ukraine. Poland yielded to Sweden the part of predomi- nant power in the North, but she retained her su- periority over Russia, whose development had been retarded by her civil wars. Prussia, 1563. Joachim II., elector of Bran- denburg, obtained from the King of Poland the investiture of the fief of Prussia. 1618, at the death of the Duke Albert-Frederic (son of Albert of Brandenburg), the Elector John Sigismond, his son-in-law, succeeded him. 1614-1666, the elec- toral branch also received a part of the succession of Juliers, in virtue of the claims of Anne, daughter of the Duke of Prussia, Albert-Frederic, and wife of the Elector of Brandenburg, John Sigismond. The son of the latter, Frederic William, founded the grandeur of Prussia. III. DENMARK AND SWEDEN. In the 16th century these two states were the prey of internal troubles, and sustained long wars. The resources of the two nations, however, were developed, and they became prepared for the Thirty Years' War. The conduct of Sweden at that time MODERN HISTORY. 303 was a prelude to the heroic part which she was to play throughout all the 18th century. Peace of Stettin, 1570. The weakness of Den- mark and the internal troubles of Sweden termi- nated (by the peace of Stettin, 1570) a long quar- rel, which had existed between these kingdoms since the rupture of the Union of Calmar. Den- mark was from that time tranquil, under the long reigns of Frederic II. (1559-1588) and of Chris- tiern IV., down to the period when the latter, rather an able minister than a great general, compromised the repose of Denmark by attacking Gustavus Adolphus (1611-1613), and by taking part in the Thirty Years' War (1625). The unworthy son of Gustavus Vasa, Eric XIV. (1560-1568), had been dispossessed by his brother, John lit. (1568-1592), who undertook to re-estab- lish the Catholic religion in Sweden. The son of John Sigismond, king of Sweden and Poland, was supplanted by his uncle, Charles IX. (1604), father of Gustavus Adolphus. See, above, the article Po- 304 SUMMARY OF CHAPTER XIV. DISCOVERIES AND COLONIES OF THE MODERNS- DISCOVERIES AND ESTABLISHMENTS OF THE POR- TUGUESE IN BOTH INDIES, 14121582. I. DISCOVERIES AND COLONIES OF THE MODERNS. Principal Motives which have determined the Mod- erns to seek new Countries, and to establish themselves there. 1st. Martial and adventurous spirit, desire to gain by conquest and pillage. 2d. Commercial spirit, desire to acquire by the legitimate method of exchange. 3d. Religious spirit, desire either to convert the idolatrous nations to the Christian faith, or to escape themselves religious persecution. We owe the foundation of the principal modern colonies to the five most western nations who have held, successively, the empire of the seas : to the Portuguese and Spaniards (15th and 16th centu- ries) ; to the Dutch and French (17th century) ; finally, to the English (17th and 18th centuries). The Spanish colonies had, at first, the exploring of the mines for their principal object ; the aim of the Portuguese was commerce, and the raising of tributes imposed upon the conquered. The Dutch colonies were essentially commercial; those of the English were both commercial and agricultural. MODERN HISTORY. 305 The principal difference between the ancient and modern colonies is, that the ancient only re- mained united to their mother-country by a sort of filial bond. The moderns are regarded as the property of their parent country, which interdicts to them all commerce with strangers. Direct Results of the Discoveries and Establish- merits of the Moderns. Commerce changed both its form and route. For land commerce, maritime was generally substituted ; the commerce of the world passed from the countries situated on the Mediterranean to the Western countries. The indi- rect results are innumerable ; the one most remark- able is the development of the maritime powers. Principal Routes of the Commerce of the East during the Middle Ages. In the first half of the Mid- dle Ages, the Greeks carried on the commerce with India through Egypt, then through the Black and Caspian Seas ; in the second, the Italians carried it on through Syria and the Gulf of Persia ; finally, through Egypt. Crusades. Voyages of Rubruquis, Marco Paolo, and John Mandeville, from the llth to the 14th century. At the commencement of the 14th century the Spaniards discovered the Canaries. II. DISCOVERIES AND ESTABLISHMENTS OF THE PORTUGUESE. The Infant Don Henry. It belonged to the most C c2 ;TY)) 306 SUMMARY OF western nation of Europe to commence a train of discoveries, which have spread European civi- lization over all the world. The Portuguese, re- strained by the power of Spain, and always at war with the Moors, from whom they had con- quered their country, had to turn their ambition towards the coast of Africa. After a crusade of several centuries, the ideas of the conquerors were enlarged ; they conceived the project of seeking new infidel nations, in order to subject and convert them. A thousand old narratives excited their curiosity, their valour, and their avarice ; they wished to see those mysterious countries where nature had created monsters, or where she had strewed gold on the surface of the ground. The Infant Don Henry, third son of John I., seconded the ardour of the nation. He spent his life at Segres, near the Cape of St. Vincent ; there, with his eyes fixed on the seas of the South, he gave instructions to the pilots who first visited those un- known climes. Cape Non, the fatal limit of an- cient navigators, had already been passed ; they had discovered Madeira (1412-13) ; they passed even Cape Boyador and Cape Verde ; they discov- ered the Azores (1448) ; they had gone, too, beyond that formidable line where they believed that the air burned like fire. When they had pushed be- yond Senegal, they saw, with astonishment, that MODERN HISTORY. 307 the men, who were of a lead colour north of this river, were entirely black at the south. On arri- ving at Congo, they saw a new heaven and new stars (1484). But what encouraged the spirit of discovery more powerfully, was the gold which they had found in Guinea. Cape of Good Hope, 1486. They now began to pay more respect to the reports of the ancient Phoenicians, who pretended to have made the cir- cuit of Africa, and they hoped that, by following the same route, they would be able to reach the East Indies. While the king, John II., sent two gentlemen by land to the Indies (Covillam and Payva), Barthelemy Diaz touched at the promon- tory which terminates Africa in the South, and named it Cape of Tempest ; but the king, who from that time was sure of finding the route to the Indies, called it the Cape of Good Hope (1486). It was then that the discovery of the New World astonished the Portuguese, and redoubled their emu- lation. Two nations, however, were ready to dis- pute the empire of the sea ; they had recourse to the pope ; Alexander VI. divided the two new worlds : all which was east of the Azores was to belong to Portugal ; all west was given to Spain. They traced a line on the globe, which marked the limits of these reciprocal rights, and which they called the line of demarcation. New discoveries soon disturbed this line. 308 SUMMARY OF Vasco de Gama, 1497-1498. At last the King of Portugal, Emmanuel the Fortunate, gave the command of a fleet to the famous Vasco de Gama (1497-1498). He received from the king the jour- nal of the voyage of Covillam ; he took out ten men condemned to death, whose lives he might risk if needful, and who by their courage might merit pardon. He spent one night in prayers in the Chapel of the Virgin, and received the sacra- ment on the eve of his departure. The people, in tears, conducted him to the shore. A magnificent convent has been founded on the spot from which Gama departed. The fleet approached the terrible cape, when the crew, terrified by this stormy sea, and dreading a famine, rose against Gama. Nothing could stop him ; he put the ringleader in irons, and taking the helm himself, he doubled the extremity of Africa. Greater dangers awaited him on the east- ern coast, which, as yet, no European vessel had visited. The Moors, who traded with Africa and India, laid snares for these new-comers, who ap- peared to share the treasures with them. But the artillery terrified them, and Gama, traversing the gulf of seven hundred leagues which separated Africa from India, landed at Calicut, thirteen months after his departure from Lisbon. Upon landing on this unknown shore, Vasco MODERN HISTORY. 309 forbade his men to follow him, or to come to his help, if they heard that he was in danger ; and notwithstanding the plots of the Moors, he caused Zamorin to accept the alliance of Portugal. Alvares Cabral. A new expedition soon fol- lowed the first, under the orders of Alvares Cabral ; the admiral received from the hands of the king a hat blessed by the pope. After having passed the Cape Verde Islands, he took to the wide sea, moved far towards the west, where he saw a new country, rich and fertile, where everlasting spring reigned : this was Brazil, the country, of all the American Continent, nearest to Africa. There are but thirty degrees of longitude from this country to Mount Atlas : this was the land which they ought to have discovered first (1500). Albuquerque, 1505-1515. The address of Ca- bral, Gama, and Almeida, first viceroy of the In- dies, frustrated the efforts of the Moors, divided the natives of the country, and armed Cochin against Calicut and Cananor. Quiloa and Sofala, in Africa, received the laws of Europe. But the principal founder of the Empire of the Portuguese in the Indies was the valiant Albuquerque ; he took, at the entrance of the Gulf of Persia, Or- mus, the most brilliant and polished city of Asia (1507). The King of Persia, to whom she had belonged, demanded a tribute from the Portuguese ; 310 SUMMARY OF Albuquerque showed to the ambassador his cannons and balls : " There," said he, " is the coin with which the King of Portugal pays tribute." The Venitians. In the mean time, Venice saw the sources of her riches drained ; the route from Alexandria began to be neglected. The Sultan of Egypt perceived that there were no more duties upon provisions from the East; the Venitians leagued with him, and sent to Alexandria frames of wood, which were transported to Suez, and of which they made ships (1508). She had at first the advantage over the Portuguese, but she was afterward defeated, as were also the other armaments which continued to descend the Red Sea. To prevent new attacks, Albuquerque pro- posed to the King of Abyssinia to alter the course of the Nile, which would have changed Egypt into a desert. He made Goa the chief of the Portuguese es- tablishments in India (1510). The occupation of Malacca and Ceylon rendered the Portuguese masters of the vast sea which terminates the Gulf of Bengal at the north (1511-1518). The con- queror died at Goa, poor and disgraced, and with him departed all the justice and all the humanity of the conquerors. Long after his death, the In- dians went to the grave of the great Albuquerque to demand justice from him for the grievances caused by his successors. MODERN HISTORY. 311 Empire of the Portuguese. The Portuguese having introduced themselves to China and Japan (1517-42), possessed for some time all the mari- time commerce of Asia. Their sway extended over the coasts of Guinea, of Melinde, of Mozam- bique, and of Sofala ; over those of both Indies, over the Malaccas, Ceylon, and the Sonda Islands. But they had little more in this vast extent of country than a chain of factories and forts. The decay of their colonies was accelerated by several causes : first, the distance of their conquests ; second, the feeble population of Portugal little calculated to extend their establishments ; their national pride prevented an amalgamation of the conquerors with the conquered; third, the love of plunder, which was soon substituted for the spirit of commerce ; fourth, the disorder of the ad- ministration ; fifth, the monopoly of the crown ; sixth, and finally, the Portuguese, who were satis- fied with transporting the merchandise to Lisbon, and did not distribute it in Europe, must sooner or later be supplanted by more industrious rivals. John of Castro. The downfall of their Empire was retarded by two heroes, John of Castro (1543- 48) and Ataide (1568-72). John of Castro had to fight the Indians and the Turks united. The King of Camboja had received from the great Solyman engineers, founders, and all the imple- 312 SUMMARY OF ments for a European war. Castro, neverthe- less, delivered the citadel of Dm, and triumphed ?t Goa, after the manner of the generals of an- juity. He wanted funds to repair the fortifica- ons of Diu ; he made a loan in his own name rom the inhabitants of Goa, giving them his whis- kers for security. He expired in the arms of St. Francis Xavier, in 1548. Only three reals were found in the house of this man, who had the man- agement of the treasury of the ladies. Atdide. The government of Ataide was the epoch of a universal rising of the Indies against the Portuguese ; he faced every opponent, beat the army of the King of Camboja, composed of a hun- dred thousand men, defeated Zamorin, and made him swear to have no more vessels of war. Even when he was again pressed in Goa, he refused to give up the most remote possessions, and made ves- sels depart for Lisbon with the yearly tribute of the Indies. After his death everything rapidly declined. The division of India into three governments again weakened the Portuguese power. At the death of Sebastian, and his successor, the Cardinal Henri (1581), Portuguese India followed the fate of Por- tugal, and passed into the unskilful hands of the Spaniards (1582), until the period that the Dutch came to divest them of this vast empire. MODERN HISTORY. 313 CHAPTER XV. DISCOVERY OF AMERICA CONQUESTS AND ESTAB- LISHMENTS OF THE SPANIARDS IN THE 15TH AND 16TH CENTURIES. " ONE of the most wonderful facts in regard to our globe was, that one half of its inhabitants had always been ignorant of the other half; all which had before appeared grand sinks into insig- nificance when compared with this species of new creation. " Christopher Columbus. Columbus, struck with the enterprises of the Portuguese, conceived that one might do something even greater, and from only attentively observing a map of the globe, he judg- ed that there must be another world, and that he would find it by steering continually towards the west. His courage was equal to the force of his genius, and only the greater, that he had had to com- bat the prejudices of all the princes. Genoa, his na- tive city, treated him as a visionary, and thus lost the only opportunity which could be offered for its aggrandizement. Henry' VII., king of England, more eager for money than capable of hazarding it in so noble an enterprise, would not listen to the brother D D 314 SUMMARY OF of Columbus ; lie was himself refused by John II., of Portugal, whose views were entirely turned to- wards the coast of Africa. He could not address himself to France, where the navy was always neglected, and where affairs were more than ever, in confusion, under the minority of Charles VIII / The Emperor Maximilian had neither ports for a fleet, nor money to equip it. Venice might have undertaken it, but, whether the aversion of the Gen- oese for the Venitians did not permit Columbus to address the rival of his country, or that Venice could imagine no grandeur beyond her commerce with Alexandria and the Levant, Columbus had no hope left but in the court of Spain. It was, however, only after eight years of solicitation that the court of Isabella accepted the advantages which the citizen of Genoa desired to bring her. The court of Spain was poor ; the Prior Perez, and two merchants, named Pinzone, advanced 17,000 duc- ats for the expenses of the fleet. Columbus had a patent from the court, and finally departed from the port of Palos, in Andalusia, with three small ves- sels, and the empty title of admiral. "Discovery of America, 1492 Second Voyage, 1493. Thirty-three days from the Canary Islands, where he took in water, he discovered the first island of America (October 12th, 1492), and during this short passage he suffered more from the mur- MODERN HISTORY. 315 murs of his crew than he had endured from the re- buffs of the princes of Europe. This island, situ- ated about a thousand leagues from the Canaries, was named St. Salvador. He soon after discover- ed the other Bahama Islands, Cuba, and Hispanio- la, which latter is now called St. Domingo. Great was the surprise of Ferdinand and Isabella when they beheld Columbus, at the end of seven months, returning with Americans of Hispaniola, with cu riosities of the country, and, above all, with gold, which he presented to them. The king and queen made him sit down, wearing his hat, as a grandee of Spain, and they conferred on him the title of the First Admiral and Viceroy of the New World. He was everywhere regarded as a peculiar being, sent from heaven. It was the same with all who had embarked under his orders. He again depart- ed with a fleet of seventeen vessels (1493), and discovered the Antilles and Jamaica. The doubts and fears which his enterprise had excited were changed into admiration after the success of his first voyage, but that admiration became an envi- ous jealousy in the course of his second. " He was an admiral and a viceroy, and he might also add to these titles that of benefactor of Ferdinand and Isabella ; and yet, judges sent in his own. vessels to watch over his conduct, brought 316 SUMMARY OF him back a prisoner to Spain; the people, who heard that Columbus had arrived, ran to meet him, as the tutelary genius of their country. They led Columbus from the vessel he appeared before them but it was with irons on his hands and on his feet. " Third Voyage, 1498. This cruel treatment was inflicted by order of Fonseca, bishop of Burgos, and superintendent of the armament. The ingrat- itude was as great as the services were memora- ble. Isabella was scandalized at it : she^ repaired this insult as well as she was able ; but they re- tained Columbus four years, either from fear that he might appropriate to himself that which he had discovered, or that they only wished to obtain time to inform themselves of his conduct. Finally, they sent him back to the New World (1498). It was on this third voyage that he perceived the conti- nent at ten degrees from the equator, and that he saw the coast where they have since built Cartha- gena. " America Vespucci. The ashes of Columbus are no longer interested in the fame which he enjoyed during his life, of having doubled the works of creation. Yet men love to render justice to the dead, whether it is that they flatter themselves with the hope that thereby it will be the better rendered to the living, or that they naturally love the truth. MODERN HISTORY. 317 Americo Vespucci, a merchant of Florence, has enjoyed the glory of giving his name to the new half of the globe, in which he did not possess an inch of ground ; he pretended to have first discov- ered America. Were it true that he had made that discovery, the glory of it would not be his ; it appertains incontestably to him who had the genius and the courage to undertake the first voyage." Voltaire. The Spaniards at the Antilles Las Casas. While daring navigators pursued the work of Co- lumbus, and the Portuguese and English discov- er North America, and while Balboa perceives from the heights of Panama the Southern Ocean (1513), the blind cupidity of the Spanish colonists depopulate the Antilles. These first conquerors of the New World were the refuse of the Old. Adventurers, impatient to return to their own coun- try, could not await the slow returns from agricul- ture or from industry. They knew no other riches than gold. This error cost America ten millions 'of men. The feeble and effeminate race which in- habited the country soon succumbed under their excessive and unhealthy labours. The population of Hispaniola was reduced, in 1507, from a million of people to sixty thousand. Notwithstanding the benevolent orders of Isabella, notwithstanding the efforts of Ximenes, and the pathetic remonstrances D D2 318 SUMMARY OF of the Dominican monks, the depopulation spread itself between the tropics. No voice was raised in favour of the Americans more courageously, nor with more firmness, than the voice of the celebra- ted Bartholomew de Las Casas, bishop of Chiapa, the protector of the Indians. Twice he went to Eu- rope to plead their cause solemnly before Charles V. It is heart-breaking to read in his Destruction de las Indias of the barbarous treatment which those unfortunate beings suffered. Ferdinand Cortez. We hardly know whether to admire the bravery of the conquerors of Ameri- ca or to detest their ferocity. They had in four expeditions discovered the coasts of Florida, Yu- catan, and Mexico, when Ferdinand Cortez left the island of Cuba for new expeditions on the Continent (1519). " This simple lieutenant of the governor of a newly-discovered island, followed by less than six hundred persons, having only eigh- teen horses and a few pieces of cannon, went to subjugate the most powerful nation of America. At first he was happy enough to find a Spaniard who had been for nine years prisoner at Yucatan, on the road to Mexico ; he served him as inter- preter. Cortez advanced along the Gulf of Mexi- co, sometimes caressing the natives of the coun- try, sometimes making war upon them. He found cultivated cities where the arts were honoured. MODERN HISTORY. 319 The powerful republic of Tlascala, wltfch flourished under an aristocratic government, opposed his pas- sage ; but the sight of the horses, and the sound of a single cannon, put these badly-armed multi- tudes to flight. He made a peace as advantageous as he desired ; six thousand of his new allies of Tlascala accompanied him on his way to Mex- ico. He entered that empire without resistance, in spite of the fortifications of its sovereign ; this sovereign commanded thirty vassals, each of whom could appear at the head of one hundred thousand men, armed with arrows and sharp stones, which served them instead of iron. " Mexico. The city of Mexico, built in the mid- dle of a great lake, was the finest monument of American industry ; immense causeways crossed the lake, and it was covered with little barges, made from the trunks of trees. In the city were spacious and commodious houses, constructed of stone ; mar- kets ; shops which shone with works of gold and sil- ver, engraved and carved ; varnished earthenware ; stuffs of cotton and feathers, which formed designs, made brilliant by the most vivid colours. Near the great market was a palace, where summary justice was administered to the tradesmen. Several pala- ces of the emperor, Montezuma, increased the mag- nificence of the city ; one of them was surrounded by gardens, where they cultivated only medical 320 SUMMARY OF plants ; superintendents distributed them gratui- tously to the sick ; they gave an account to the king of the success attending their use, and the physicians kept a register thereof, in their manner, without knowing how to write. The other spe- cies of magnificence only indicated the progress of the arts ; this last shows the progress of mor- als. If human nature did not unite good and evil, one would not be able to comprehend how this morality could be reconciled with human sac- rifices, the blood of which flowed before the idol Visiliputsli, who was regarded as the god of the armies. The ambassadors of Montezuma said to Cortez (if we may believe the latter) that their master had sacrificed in his wars near twenty thou- sand enemies each year in the great temple of Mexico. This is, perhaps, an exaggeration; the reporter may have wished to excuse in this way the cruel injustice of the conqueror of Montezuma ; but afterward, when the Spaniards entered the temple, they found among its ornaments human sculls suspended as trophies. Their police, in every other respect, was humane and wise : the education of youth formed one of the great objects of the government. There were public schools established for both sexes. We still admire the an- cient Egyptians for having known the year to con- tain about three hundred and sixty-five days. The MODERN HISTORY. 321 Mexicans had carried their astronomy as far. War was among them reduced to an art ; it was this which had given them such superiority over their neighbours. Great order in their finances main- tained the grandeur of an empire, which was re- garded by its neighbours with fear and envy. " Reception of the Spaniards. But those warlike animals on which the principal Spaniards were mounted, that artificial thunder which was formed in their hands, those wooden castles which had brought them over the ocean, the iron with which they were covered, and their marches, reckoned by their victories, all were so many subjects for admi- ration, and added to that weakness of human na- ture which is so attracted by novelty, they caused Cortez to be received in the city of Mexico by Montezuma as his master, and by the inhabitants as their god. They threw themselves on their knees in the street when a Spanish servant pass- ed. It is related that a cacique of the district through which a Spanish captain passed offered him slaves and game. ' If thou art God,' says he, * there are men, eat them ; if thou art man, there are provisions, which these slaves shall prepare for thee.' " Montezuma. By degrees, the court of Monte- zuma, growing familiar with their guests, ventured to treat them as men. A part of the Spaniards were 322 SUMMARY OF at Vera Cruz, on their road to Mexico ; a general of the emperor, who had secret orders, attacked them, and although his troops were conquered, there were three or four Spaniards among the kill- ed ; the head of one of them was even carried to Montezuma. Cortez then performed the most da- ring, as well as the most guilty act of his life : he went to the palace, followed by fifty Spaniards, led the emperor prisoner to the Spanish quarters, for- ced him to give up those who had attacked his men at Vera Cruz, and had irons placed on the hands and feet of the emperor himself, as a general would punish a common soldier; finally, he compel- led him publicly to acknowledge himself vassal of Charles V. Montezuma and the principal men of his empire gave, as a tribute incident to this hom- age, six hundred thousand marks of pure gold, with an incredible quantity of jewels and works of gold, and of whatever was most rare in the fab- rics of several centuries. Cortez destined one fifth for his master, took one fifth for himself, and dis- tributed the rest among his soldiers. " We may count it among the greatest of prodigies, that while the conquerors of this New World were at war among themselves, their conquests did not suffer. Never was truth less like truth ; while Cortez was on the point of subjecting the Empire of Mexico with 500 men who remained to him, the MODERN HISTORY. 323 Governor of Cuba, Velasquez, more offended at the glory of Cortez, his lieutenant, than at his dis- obedience, sent nearly all his troops, which con- sisted of eight hundred foot-soldiers, eighty horse- men, well mounted, and two small pieces of can- non, to reduce Cortez, to take him prisoner, and to follow out the course of his victories. Cortez, having on the one side to fight a thousand Span- iards, and on the other to hold the Continent in submission, left eighty men to be responsible to him for all Mexico, and marched, followed by the rest, against his compatriots ; he defeated a part of them, and gained over the rest. In short, this army, which came to destroy him, ranged itself under his banner, and he returned to Mexico with it. " The emperor was constantly in prison in his capital, guarded by eighty soldiers ; he who com- manded them, on a true or false report that the Mexicans were conspiring to deliver their master, had seized the opportunity of a feast, when two thousand of the first lords were completely intoxi- cated by their strong liquors ; he fell on them with fifty soldiers, killed them and their suite without re- / sistance, and robbed them of all the gold ornaments* and jewels with which they had decorated them- selves for this feast. This enormity, which all the people attributed, with reason, to the fury of ava- rice, exasperated these men, heretofore too patient ; 324 SUMMARY OF and when Cortez arrived, he found 200,000 Ameri- cans in arms against eighty Spaniards, who were oc- cupied with defending themselves and guarding the king. They besieged Cortez, to deliver their king ; they precipitated themselves in crowds on the can- nons and muskets. The Spaniards were fatigued with firing on them, and the Americans followed each other in crowds, without being discouraged. Cortez was obliged to leave the city, where he would have been starved ; but the Mexicans had broken all the causeways ; the Spaniards made bridges with the bodies of their enemies ; in their bloody retreat, they lost all the treasures which they had seized for Charles V. and themselves ; victorious in the bloody battle of Otumba, Cortez undertook to lay siege to that immense city. He caused more vessels to be built by his soldiers and by the Tlascalians, whom he had with him, that he might re-enter Mexico by the lake itself, which seemed to forbid his entrance. The Mexicans feared not a naval battle ; four or five thousand canoes, each one laden with two men, covered the lake, and came to attack the nine vessels of Cortez, on which he had about 300 men. These nine brigan- tines, which had cannons, soon overthrew the fleet of the enemy. Cortez, with the rest of his troops, fought on the causeways. Seven or eight cap- tured Spaniards were sacrificed in the temple of MODERN HISTORY. 325 Mexico. But, finally, after new combats, they took the new emperor. It was Gatimozin, so famous for the words which he pronounced when a receiver of the treasures of the King of Spain had him placed on burning charcoal, to know in what part of the lake he had thrown his riches ; his grand priest, condemned to the same punish- ment, uttered cries : Gatimozin said to him, * And I, am I on a bed of roses V " Taking of Mexico, 1521. Cortez was absolute master of the city of Mexico (1521), with which all the rest of the Empire fell under the Spanish dominion, as also Castille d'Or, Darien, and all the neighbouring countries. What was the reward of the wonderful services of Cortez ? That of Co- lumbus he was persecuted. Notwithstanding the titles with which he was decorated in his native country, he was little respected there ; he could hardly obtain an audience of Charles V. One day he pushed through the crowd which surrounded the coach of the emperor, and stepped on the step of the door. Charles asked who this man was. 1 It is he,' replied Cortez, ' who has given you more kingdoms than your ancestors have left you cities.' " Peru. In the mean time, the Spaniards sought for new countries to conquer and depopulate. Ma- gelhaens (Magellan) had gone round South Ameri- EE 326 SUMMARY OP ca, traversed the Pacific Ocean, and was the first to circumnavigate the globe. But the greatest Ameri- can nation, next to Mexico, yet remained to be dis- covered. One day, when the Spaniards weighed some pieces of gold, an Indian, turning the scales upside down, said to them that at six days' journey towards the south they would find a country where gold was so common that they used it for the most common purposes. Two adventurers, Pizarro and Almagro, a foundling and a swineherd, who had become soldiers, undertook the discovery and the conquest of these vast countries, which the Span- iards have distinguished by the name of Peru. " From the country of Cusco and the neighbour- hood of the tropic of Capricorn, to the height of the Isle of Pearls, a simple king stretched his ab- solute dominion over a space of nearly thirty de- grees ; he was of a race of conquerors which they called Incas. The first of these Incas, who had subjected the country and imposed laws upon it, passed as the son of the sun. The Peruvians transmitted important facts to posterity by knotted cords. They had obelisks, regular dials to mark the points of equinoxes and solstices. Their year had 365 days. They had raised prodigies of architec- ture, and cut statues with a surprising skill. This was the best governed and most industrious na- tion of the New World. MODERN HISTORY. 327 " The Inca Huescar,* father of Atabalipa, the last Inca, under whom this vast empire was destroyed, had increased and embellished it much. This in- ca, who conquered all the country of Quito, had made, by the hands of his soldiers and conquered people, a grand road of five hundred leagues, from Cusco to Quito, over valleys filled up, precipices and mountains levelled. Relays of men, establish- ed every half league, carried the orders of the mon- arch over all his vast empire. Such was its police ; and if one would judge of its magnificence, it is suf- ficient to say that the king was carried in his jour- neys on a throne of solid gold, which was found to weigh twenty-five thousand ducats, and that the lit- ter, composed of bars of gold, on which was the throne, was borne by the highest personages of the kingdom. " Pizarro, 1552. Pizarro attacked this empire with two hundred and fifty foot-soldiers, sixty horse- men, and twelve small cannon. He arrived through the South Sea on the heights of Quito, beyond the equator. Atabalipa, son of Huana, reigned at that time (1532) ; he was at Quito with about forty thousand soldiers, armed with arrows and pikes of gold and silver. Pizarro, like Cortez, commenced by offering the friendship of Charles V. to the Inca. When the army of the Inca and * More properly Huana. Huascar was the brother of Atabalipa. Bee Robertson's America. Tr. 328 SUMMARY OF the feeble Castilian troops were in presence of each other, the Spaniards were willing to give the colour of religion to their cause. A monk, named Val- verde, advances with an interpreter towards the Inca, a Bible in his hand, and says to him that he must believe all this book says. The Inca, ap- proaching it with his ear, and hearing nothing, threw it on the ground, and the combat commenced. " The cannon, the horses, and arms of iron had the same effect on the Peruvians as on the Mexi- cans ; they took but little pains to kill them ; and Atabalipa, dragged from his throne of gold by the conquerors, was loaded with irons. To procure a speedy liberation, he obliged himself to give as much gold as one of the saloons of his palace could contain as high as his hand, which he raised above his head. Each Spanish cavalier had 240 marks in pure gold ; each foot-soldier 160. They divided about ten times as much silver in the same proportion. The officers had immense riches ; and they sent to Charles V. 30,000 marks of silver, 3000 of unwrought gold, and 20,000 marks of heavy silver, with 2000 of gold coin of the coun- try. The unfortunate Atabalipa was, nevertheless, put to death. " Diego of Almagro marched to Cusco, making a road through multitudes of human beings. He penetrated into Chili. Everywhere they took pos- session in the name of Charles V. Soon after, MODERN HISTORY. 329 discord embroiled the conquerors of Peru, as it had divided Velasquez and Ferdinand Cortez in Northern America. " Civil Wars. Almagro and the brothers of Pi- zarro commenced the civil war in Cusco itself, the capital of the Incas ; all the recruits which they had received from Europe divided themselves, and they fought for the chief whom they chose. They had a bloody battle under the walls of Cusco with- out the Peruvians venturing to profit by the weak- ness of their common enemy. Finally, Almagro was made prisoner, and his rival had him behead- ed ; but soon after he himself was killed by the friends of Almagro. " Already the Spanish government had been or- ganized in all the New World ; the great provinces had their governors ; tribunals, called Audiences, were established ; archbishops, bishops, tribunals of inquisition, all the ecclesiastical hierarchy, exer- cised their duties as at Madrid, when the captains who had conquered Peru for the emperor, Charles V., wished to take it for themselves. A son of Almagro had himself acknowledged governor of Peru ; but the other Spaniards, choosing to obey masters who resided in Europe in preference to their companion, who had become a sovereign, had him put to death by the hand of a hangman." Voltaire. EE2 330 SUMMARY OF A new civil war was stifled in the same man- ner. Charles V., finally yielding to the remon- strances of Las Casas, had to guaranty personal liberty to the Indians, by determining the tributes and services to which they should be subjected (1542). The Spanish colonies took up arms and declared themselves for the chief Gonzalo Pizarro. But the name of the king was so respected that it was sufficient to restore order to send an old man, an inquisitor (Pedro de la Gasca). He gathered round him the greater part of the Spaniards ; he gained over some, overthrew the others, and se- cured to Spain the possession of Peru (1546). Spanish Empire in America Outline of the Spanish Empire in America. If we except Mexi- co and Peru, Spain, in reality, only possessed the coasts. The people of the interior could be sub- jected only as they were converted by missions, and attached to the soil by civilization. Discoveries and Different Establishments, 1540. Expedition of Gonzalo Pizarro to discover the land east of the Andes ; Orellana traverses South America by a voyage of 2000 leagues. Establish- ments : 1527, the province of Venezuela ; 1535, Buenos Ayres ; 1536, province of Grenada ; 1540, St. Jago ; 1550, Conception ; 1555, Carthagena and Porto-Bello ; 1567, Caraccas. MODERN HISTORY. 331 Administration. Political government : in Spain, Council of the Indies and Court of Commerce and Justice ; in America, two viceroys, audiences, municipalities. Caciques and protectors of the In- dians. Ecclesiastical government (entirely depend- ant on the king) : archbishops, bishops, cures, or teachers, missionaries, monks $ Inquisition estab- lished in 1570 by Philip II. Commercial Administration Monopoly. Privi- leged ports in America, Vera Cruz, Carthagena, and Porto-Bello ; in Europe, Seville (later, Cadiz) ; fleet and galleons. Agriculture and manufactures are neglected in Spain and in America, for the exploring of the mines ; slow increase of the colonies, and ruin of the metropolis before 1600. But in the course of the sixteenth century, the enormous quantity of precious metals which Spain must draw from America contributes to make her the preponderating power of Europe. CHAPTER XVI. LITERATURE ARTS AND SCIENCES IN THE SIX- TEENTH CENTURY LEO X. AND FRANCIS I. THE fifteenth century had been an age of learn- ing; enthusiasm for antiquity had caused the path so happily opened by Dante, Boccacio, and Pe- 332 SUMMARY OP trarch to be abandoned. In the sixteenth century modern genius is brilliant with a new effulgence, never to be extinguished. The march of mind at this epoch presents two very distinct movements : the first, favoured by the influence of Leo X. and Francis L, belongs to Italy and France ; the second is European. The former, characterized by the progress of literature and arts, is arrested in France by civil wars, and retarded in Italy by foreign wars : in Italy the genius of literature is extinguished under the yoke of the Spaniards ; but the impulse given to the arts prolongs itself to the middle of the following cen- tury. The second movement is the development of a daring spirit of doubt and of examination. In the seventeenth century it was partly arrested by a return to religious creeds, partly turned towards the natural sciences, but it will reappear in the eighteenth. I. LITERATURE AND ARTS. Independently of the general causes which have produced the regeneration of literature, such as the progress of security and wealth, the discovery of the monuments of antiquity, &c., &c., several par- ticular causes have given it a new energy with the Italians of the sixteenth century : 1st. Books have become plenty, thanks to the progress of printing; 2d. The Italian nation, being no more MODERN HISTORY. 333 able to control her destiny, seeks consolation in intellectual and literary enjoyments ; a number of princes, and especially the Medici, encourage scholars and artists ; illustrious writers profit less by this patronage. Italy Poetry. Poetry, which, with the arts, forms the principal glory of Italy in the sixteenth century, unites taste and genius in the first part of this period. The epic muse raises two immortal monuments. Comedy and tragedy present some essays, in truth, not above mediocrity. The most opposite styles of satire and pastoral poetry are cultivated. It is especially in the latter that we remark the rapid decay of taste. Boi'ardo died in 1490 Trissino died in 1550 Machiavel " 1529 Tasso " 1596 Ariosto " 1533 Guarini " 1619 Prose. Eloquence, the slow product of litera- ture, has not time to form itself. But several his- torians approach the style of antiquity. Machiavel died in 1529 Paul Jove died in 1562 Fr. Guicciardini " 1540 Baronius " 1607 Bembo " 1547 Learning. The ancient languages are cultiva- ted much more than in the preceding age, but this glory is eclipsed by many others. Pontanus died in 1503 Sadolet died in 1547 Aldus Manucius " 1516 Fracastor John Second " 1523 J. C. Scaliger Sannazar " 1530 Vida A. J. Lascaris " 1535 P. Manutius Bembo " 1547 Aldus Manutius 1553 1558 1563 1574 1597 334 SUMMARY OF lin 1511 Primatice died in 1564 1514 Palladio 1568 1520 Titian 1576 1518 Veronese 1588 1534 Tintoret 1594 1534 Augustm Carrache 1601 1546 Caravage 1609 1564 Hannibal Carrache 1609 1564 Louis Carrache 1619 Arts. Superiority in the arts in Italy is the characteristic trait of the sixteenth century. The ancients remain without rivals in sculpture ; but the moderns equal them in architecture, and in painting they perhaps surpass them. The Roman school excels in perfection of design, the Veni- tian in beauty of colouring. Giorgione did Bramante Leonardo de Vinci Raphael Corregio Parmesair Jules Remain Michael Angelo John Udino France. France followed Italy at a distance. The historian Comines died in 1509. Francis I. founds the College of France and the royal print- ing-press. He encourages the poet Marot (1544), and the brothers Du Bellay (1543, 1560), negoti- ators and historians. His sister, Margaret of Na- varre ( 1 549), cultivates literature herself. Francis I. distinguishes Titian, draws Primatice and Leo- nardo de Vinci into France. He builds Fontaine- bleau, St. Germain, Chambord, and commences the Louvre. Under him flourished John Cousin (1589), designer and painter ; Germain Pilon, Philibert de 1'Orme, John Goujon (1572), sculp- tors and architects ; the scholars, William Bu- MODERN HISTORY. 335 daeus (1540), Turnebe (1563), Muret (1585), Henry Stephens (1598), a celebrated printer; finally, the celebrated lawyers Dumoulin (1566) and Cujacius (1590). After the reign of Francis I., the poet Ronsard (1585) enjoyed a brief repu- tation ; but Montaigne (1592), Amyot (1593), and the Satire Menippee, gave a new character to the French language. Germany, Spain, &c., &c. The other countries are not so rich in eminent talents. Yet Ger- many boasts her Luther, the shoemaker poet, Hans Sachs, and the painters Albert Durer and Lucas Cranach. Portugal and Spain have their illus- trious writers Camoens, Lope de Vega, and Cer- vantes ; the Netherlands and Scotland their men of letters and their historians Justus Lipsius (1616) and Buchanan (1582). Among the forty-three universities founded in the sixteenth century, four- teen were established by the kings of Spain alone, ten of them by Charles V. II. PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE. Philosophy. Philosophy, in the preceding cen- tury, was cultivated only by the learned. It was limited to attacking the school divinity, and oppo- sing Platonism to it. By degrees, impelled by a more rapid movement, it extends its examination to every subject. But the human mind then sought after knowledge at hazard ; there was no method, 336 SUMMARY OF and too little observation. Many learned men were discouraged, and became the most daring skeptics. Erasmus died in 1533 Montaigne died in 1592 Viv6s " 1540 G.Bruno " 1600 Rabelais " 1553 Charron " 1603 Cardan " 1576 Bcehmen " 1624 Telesio " 1588 Campanella " 1639 Politics. The theory of politics began with Machiavel ; but at the commencement of the six- teenth century, the Italians had not made progress enough in this science to perceive that it accorded with morality. Machiavel died in 1529 Bodin died in 1596 Thomas More " 1533 Natural Sciences. The natural sciences leave chimerical systems to enter upon the path of ob- servation and experience. Paracelsus died in 1541 Gesner died in 1565 Copernicus " 1543 Pare " 1592 Fallopius " 1562 Vieta " 1603 Vesalius " 1564 VanHelmont " 1644 CHAPTER XVII. TROUBLES AT THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE REIfrN OF LOUIS XIII. RICHELIEU, 1610-1643. THE general characteristic of the seventeenth century is the progress both of royalty and of the Tiers-Etat.* The progress of royalty was only * . e. } Third Estate, or Common*. MODERN HISTORY. 337 suspended twice, i. e. 9 by the minorities of Louis XIII. and Louis XIV. The Tiers-Etat is arrested only towards the end of the reign of Louis XIV. At this period, the king, having for a long time had nothing to fear from the nobility, gave up the ad- ministration to them. Hitherto all the ministers, Concini, Luynes, Richelieu, Mazarin, Colbert, Louvois, had risen from the plebeians, or, at the most, from the lowest nobility. Some of the ad- mirals and superior officers of the armies of Louis XIV. belonged to the lowest ranks of the people. In the first part of this century political ac- tion was, as it were, negative. It endeavoured to overthrow the great obstacles to monarchical centralization, the nobles and the Protestants. In the second half, there was under Colbert an effort at legislative organization ; and, above all, at an administrative one ; productive industry was more esteemed. France acts powerfully within and without ; she produces, she wages wars. But production keeps not pace with consumption. France exhausts herself to complete her territory, by means of necessary and glorious conquests. The course of her internal prosperity is also re- tarded by the extent of her wars and conquest?:, and by an aristocratical reaction. The nobility seize the monarchical power, place themselves everywhere between the king and the people, FF 338 SUMMARY OF and communicate to royalty their own decrepi- tude. Louis XIII. Mary of Medici Regent Concini. Henry IV. found great difficulty in supporting himself between the Protestants and Catholics. This indecision could not continue after his death ; one side had to be chosen, and it was the Protest- ant side. The great war of Germany, which had commenced, offered to the King of France the noble post of chief of the European opposition against the house of Austria ; the post which, twenty years later, Gustavus Adolphus took. The king was dead; Louis XIII. an infant, Mary of Medici, the regent, and Concini, her minister, both Italians, could not perpetuate Henry IV. This child, this woman, could not mount on horseback to make war on Austria. Not being able to fight Austria, it was necessary to have her for a friend. As they could not lead the nobles and the Protestants in Germany on a Protestant cru- sade, they must, if possible, gain over the nobles and weaken the Protestants. This policy of Con- cini, which has been so much blamed by historians, received its justification from the best judge on this subject, from Richelieu himself, in one of his writings. The nobles, from whom Henry IV. had not been able to take their strongholds, a Conde, an Epernon, a Bouillon, a Longueville, found them- MODERN HISTORY. 339 selves all armed at his death ; they exacted money, and it was necessary, in order to avoid a civil war, to deliver the treasury of Henry IV. to them (twelve millions, and not thirty, according to Richelieu). Then they demanded the States-General (1614). These states doing nothing, did not answer the expectation of the nobles ; they showed themselves devoted to the crown ; the Tiers-Etat claimed a declaration of independence from the crown in regard to the pope. The nobles not being able to draw anything from the States, had recourse to force, and united themselves with the Protestants (1615) ; a strange alliance of the ancient feudal party with the religious Reformation of the six- teenth century. Concini, tired of a middle course, had the Prince of Conde, chief of the coalition, arrested ; this bold proceeding announced the era of new politics ; the young Richelieu had appear- ed (1616). De Luynes, 1617. An intrigue of the court overthrew Concini for the benefit of the young Luynes, a favourite domestic of the little king, who persuaded him to liberate himself from his minister and from his mother (1617). Concini was assassinated ; his widow, Leonora Galigai', was executed as a sorceress. Their true crimes were robbery and venality. Luynes did little ex- cept to continue the ministry of Concini. He had 340 SUMMARY OF one enemy more, the mother of the king, who twice excited fears of a civil war. The Protest- ants took daily a more threatening attitude. They demanded, arms in hand, the fulfilment of that dangerous Edict of Nantes, which allowed a repub- lic to exist within the kingdom. Luynes drove them to extremities by reuniting Berne to the crown, and declaring that in that province ec- clesiastical property should be made over to the Catholics. This was precisely what the emperor wished to do in Germany, and it was the principal cause of the Thirty Years' War. Richelieu, at a later period, avoided this mistake. He did not trouble the Protestants about their usurped prop- erty ; he only interested himself about their strong- holds. Their assembly of La Rochelle (1621) published a declaration of independence, divided the 700 Reformed Churches of France into eight circles, regulated the raising of money and men, and, in one word, organized the Protestant Repub- lic. They offered to Lesdigui&res 100,000 crowns a month if he would place himself at the head of their army and organize it. But the old soldier would not, at the age of eighty, leave his little kingdom of Dauphiny to accept the command of this undisciplined party. Luynes, who had taken the command of the armies and the title of Con- stable, miscarried disgracefully before Montauban, MODERN HISTORY. 341 where he had conducted the king. He died in this campaign (1621). Richelieu War against the Pope and the Prot- estants Intrigues of Gaston. It was only two years afterward that the queen-mother introduced her creature, Richelieu, into the council (1624). The king had an antipathy for this man, in whom he seemed to foresee a master. The first thought of Richelieu was to neutralize the power of Eng- land, the sole ally of the Protestants of France. This was done in two ways : first, he supported Holland ; he lent her money to obtain vessels ; and, secondly, the marriage of the King of Eng- land with the beautiful Henrietta of France, daugh- ter of Henry IV., increased the natural indecis- ion of Charles I., and the distrust of the English towards his government. The cardinal thus be- gan by an alliance with the English and the her- etic Dutch, and by a war against the pope ; we may judge from this what freedom of mind he brought into politics. The pope, given up to the Spaniards, held for them the small Swiss can- tori Valteline, thus guarding that entrance of the Alps, by which their Italian possessions communi- cated with Austria. Richelieu hired some Swiss troops, sent them against those of the pope, and gave Valteline to the Grisons, not without having assured himself by a decision at Sarbonne that he F r2 342 SUMMARY OF could do it conscientiously. After having defeat- ed the pope, he defeated in the following year the Protestants (1525), who had again taken up arms ; he defeated and he managed, but he was not able to destroy them. He was shackled in the execution of his grand projects by the most contemptible in- trigues. Women excited the young; the domes- tics of Gaston, duke of Orleans, spurred his sloth- ful ambition. They wished to give him a support from abroad, by making him marry a foreign prin- cess. Richelieu endeavoured first to gain them over. He gave a marshal's staff to Ornano, gov- ernor of Gaston. This imboldened them, and they plotted his death. Richelieu caused, more- over, their principal accomplice, the young Chalais, to join him, but obtained nothing. Then changing his policy, he gave Chalais up to a committee of the Parliament of Bretagne, and had him beheaded (1626). Gaston, while they took off the head of his friend, married, without saying a word, Made- moiselle de Montpensier. D'Ornano was shut up in the Bastile, and died there soon after, doubtless from poison. The favourites of Gaston were con- demned to die at the Bastile (Puylaurens, in 1635). Such were the politics of the time ; as such, we read them in the Machiavel of the seventeenth century, Gabriel Naude, librarian of Mazarin. The motto of these politics, as Naude gives it, is this : MODERN HISTORY. 343 Solus populi suprema lex esto. For the rest, they were consistent in the choice of means. It is the same atrocious doctrine which inspired our terror- ists of '93. It seems to have left Richelieu neither doubts nor remorse. As he expired, the priest asked him if he pardoned his enemies. " I have never had any," replied he, " other than those of the state." He had uttered at another time these words, which make us tremble : " I dare undertake no- thing without having well thought of it ; but when I once form my resolution, I proceed straight towards my end : I overthrow all cut down all ; and, final. ly, I cover all with my red robe." Taking of La Rochelle. In reality, he marched straight onward with a terrible inflexibility. He suppressed the office of Constable ; that of Admiral of France he took for himself, under the title of Gen- eral Superintendent of the Marine. This title would seem to announce him as destroyer of La Rochelle. Under the pretext of economy, he ordered the re- duction of pensions and the demolition of fortresses. The fortress of Protestantism, La Rochelle, was finally attacked. A coxcomb, who governed the King of England, the handsome Buckingham, had solemnly declared himself in love with the great Queen of France ; they closed against him all en- trance to the kingdom, and he caused war to be declared against France. The English promised 344 SUMMARY OF succour to La Rochelle ; it revolted, and fell under the grasp of Richelieu (1627-28). Buckingham came with several thousand men, to be beaten on the isle of Rhe. Charles I. had afterward many other affairs on hand. With the famous Petition of Right (1628) commenced the revolution of England, to which Richelieu was anything but a stranger. In the mean time, La Rochelle, aban- doned by the English, saw herself cut off from the sea by a prodigious dam of 1500 toises: we may still distinguish the remains of it at low water. The work took more than a year : the sea carried off the dam more than once. Richelieu did not let go his booty. French Amsterdam, of which Co- ligny had thought to make himself a second Will- iam of Orange, was seized in her waters, and made inland ; separated from her proper element, she could but languish. Protestantism was killed by the same blow, at least as a political party. The war still continued in the South. The famous Duke of Rohan put an end to it by an agreement for 100,000 crowns. War of Italy, 1629-30. After having divided the Protestant party in France, Richelieu beat the Catholic party in Europe ; he forced the Spaniards into their Italy, where they had reigned since Charles V. By a short war he cut the knot of dif- ficulty in the succession of Mantua and Montser- MODERN HISTORY. 345 rat ; they were small possessions, but great milita- ry posts. The last duke had bequeathed them to a French prince, the Duke of Nevers. The Sa- voyards, fortified in the Pass of Suza, thought themselves impregnable, and Richelieu himself thought so. The king took this terrible obstacle in person ; the Duke of Nevers was confirmed in his authority ; France had an advance station in Italy, and the Duke of Savoy knew that the French passed near whenever they wished (1630). Day of Dupes. During this great war, the moth- er of the king, the courtiers, the ministers even, made a silent and cowardly attack upon Richelieu. They thought to have dethroned him. He saw Louis again, spoke to him a quarter of an hour, and found himself once more sovereign. This day was called the Day of the Dupes. It was a comedy. Richelieu prepared to depart in the morning, and his enemies did the same at night. But the piece had its tragical side. The cardinal had the two Marillacs, the marshal and the superintendent, both creatures of his who had turned against him, ar- rested. Without speaking of the crime of extor- tion and peculation, so common at this period, they were guilty of having endeavoured to cause the failure of the war of Italy, by retaining the sums which were appropriated for it. The head of one of them was taken off. What was most odious in 346 SUMMARY OF this act was, that the criminal was tried by a com- mittee of his personal enemies, in a private house, even in the palace of Richelieu, at Ruel. Revolt of Gaston Montmorency Decapitated. The queen-mother, a more embarrassing enemy, had been arrested and intimidated. She had de- cided to make her escape, with her son Gaston, to Brussels. Gaston, aided by the Duke of Lor- raine, whose daughter was his second wife, as- sembled some undisciplined troops, and entered France. He had been invited by the nobles, by Montmorency among others, to be Governor of Languedoc. The nobles wished this time to play quit or double. To join with Montmorency, it was necessary to traverse the kingdom. The badly-paid soldiers of Gaston recompensed them- selves with their own hands on the road. Every- where the cities closed their gates against these brigands. The junction took place at Castelnau- dari, and nevertheless they were beaten (1632). Gaston threw away his arms, and again made peace, delivering up his friends ; he took an ex- press oath to love the ministers of the king, the car- dinal in particular. Montmorency, wounded and taken, was cruelly beheaded at Toulouse. Men deplored this last representative of the chivalrous and feudal world. Already his father, the Duke , of Bouteville, father of the celebrated Luxemburg, MODERN HISTORY. 347 had been beheaded in 1627 for having fought a duel. When such heads fell, the nobles began to comprehend that they must no more trifle with the government and the law. Thirty Years' War. The Thirty Years' War was then at its height. Richelieu could not inter- fere with it directly, as long as he had the nobles upon his hands. The emperor had at that time de- feated the Protestant party; the Palatine was ruined (1623) ; the King of Denmark left the par- ty (1629). The Catholic armies had the greatest generals at their head the tactician Tilly, and that demon of war, Waldstein. To lift up the Protestants, to rouse unwieldy Germany, required a movement from abroad. Richelieu searched the North, even beyond Denmark, and from Sweden he drew Gustavus Adolphus. He first relieved him from the war with Poland; he gave him money, procured him an alliance with the United Provinces and with the King of England. At the same time, he had the address to determine the emperor to disarm himself. The Swede, a poor prince, who had more to gain than to lose, rushed at once into Germany, fell upon it like a thunder- bolt, confounded the famous tacticians, and beat them with ease, while they were studying how to avert his blows. He took from them with one stroke the whole of the Rhine, the whole of the 348 SUMMARY OF west of Germany. Richelieu had not foreseen that he would proceed so swiftly. Happily, Gustavus perished at Lutzen ; happy alike for his enemies, for his allies, and for his own glory. He died honest and unconquered (1632). French Period, 1635-48. Richelieu continued his aid to the Swedes, closed France on the side of Germany by confiscating Lorraine, and declared war upon the Spaniards (1635). He thought the house of Austria sufficiently checked to enable him to make division of its spoils. He had bought over to his interest the best pupil of Gustavus Adolphus, Bernard of Saxe Weimar. But this war was difficult at first. The Imperialists enter- ed by Burgundy, and the Spaniards by Picardy. They were not more than thirty leagues from Paris. All was confusion ; the minister himself seemed to have lost his reason. The Spaniards were driven back (1636). Bernard of Weimar gained his glorious battles of Rhinfeld and Brisach for the benefit of France ; Brisach and Friburg, those impregnable places were also taken. The temptation became strong for Bernard ; he wished with the money of France to form himself a small sovereignty on the Rhine ; his master, the great Gustavus, had not had time ; Bernard had as little. He died at thirty-six years, most opportunely for France and Richelieu (1639). MODERN HISTORY. 349 Catalonia and Portugal, 1640 Cinq Mars. In the following year (1640) the cardinal found means to simplify the war. It was creating one in Spain among her own subjects, and more than one. The East and West, Catalonia and Portugal, took fire all at once. The Catalonians placed them- selves under the protection of France. Spain wished to follow the example of Richelieu, to pro- cure for her benefit an internal war in France. She made a treaty with Gaston, and with the no- bles. The Count of Soissons, who moved before he was ordered, was obliged to save himself among the Spaniards, and was killed in fighting for them near Sedan (1641). The faction was not discour- aged ; a new plot was contrived in concert with Spain. The young Cinq Mars, master of the horse, and favourite of Louis XIII., engaged in it with an imprudence which lost Calais. The pru- dent De Thou, son of the historian, knew of the affair, but kept it secret. The king himself was not ignorant that they plotted the ruin of the min- ister. Richelieu, who at that time was very sick, seemed lost beyond help. Yet, having succeeded in procuring a copy of their treaty with the foreign- er, he had still time to prosecute his enemies be- fore his death. He caused the head of Cinq Mars and of De Thou to be cut off; the Duke of Bouillon, who had already been denounced, purchased his Go 350 SUMMARY OF MODERN HISTORY. life by giving up his city of Sedan, the focus of all these intrigues. On the other side of France, Rich- elieu at the same time took Perpignan from the Spaniards. These two places were a legacy from the cardinal to France, which they covered on the , North and South. This great man died in the same year (1642). THIRD PERIOD. 1648-1789. PART I 164 1715. CHAPTER XVIIi. TROUBLES UNDER MAZARIN COMMENCEMENT OF COLBERT'S ADMINISTRATION LOUIS xiv., 1643- 1661. Louis XIV., 1643 Mazarin.The death of Richelieu was a deliverance for all the world. Men breathed freely. The people gave vent to their joy in songs. The king sung them himself, all dying as he was. His widow, Anne of Austria, was regentess in the name of the new King Louis XIV., who was then six years of age. France, after Richelieu and Louis XIII., as after Henry IV., found herself under the feeble sway of a wom- an who knew not how to resist her enemies or retain her own power. A contemporary writer says, that then there were not more than three little words in the French language " The queen is so good." The Concini of this new Mary of Medicis was an Italian of much talent, the Cardinal Maza- rin. His administration was as deplorable at home as it was glorious abroad ; it was disturbed by the 354 SUMMARY OF ridiculous revolution of the Fronde, and made il- lustrious by the two treaties of Westphalia and the Pyrenees ; the first remained the diplomatic chart of Europe until the French Revolution. The good, the bad, were equally an inheritance from Riche- lieu ; he had taxed to excess every energy of government ; it naturally relaxed under Mazarin. Richelieu having daily to engage in some deadly combat, had lived, as it regarded finances, on ty- rannical expedients. He had consumed both pres- ent and future means by destroying credit. Ma- zarin, finding affairs in this condition, increased the disorder, letting the people take, and taking him- self. He left at his death two hundred millions worth of property. He had always too much sense not to feel the value of order in the finances. On his deathbed he said to Louis XIV., he thought he had acquitted himself of all wrong towards his master by giving him Colbert. A part of this em- bezzled money was used honourably. He sent Ga- briel Naude all over Europe to purchase valuable books at any price ; thus he formed his admirable Bibliotheque Mazarine, and he opened it to the public. This was the first public library in Paris. At the same time he gave to Des Cartes, who had retired to Holland, a pension of one thousand crowns, which was regularly paid to him. Rocroi, 1643. The new reign was commenced MODERN HISTORY. 355 by victories . The French infantry for the first time took rank in the world by the battle of Rocroi (1643). This event was a very different affair from a battle ; it was a great social fact. Cavalry form the aristocratic arm of a nation infantry the plebeian. The appearance of infantry is the ap- pearance of the people. Whenever a national sen- timent springs up, infantry appears. As is the people, so are the infantry. During the century and a half that Spain had been a nation, the Span- ish foot-soldier reigned on the field of battle, fear- less under its fire; respecting himself, though in rags, and causing everywhere the Senor Soldade to be respected ; for the rest, gloomy, avaricious, and covetous, badly paid, yet patiently waiting the pillage of some good city in Germany or Flanders. They had in the time of Charles V. sworn " by the sacking of Florence ;" they had plundered Rome, then Antwerp, then innumerable cities of the Neth- erlands. Among the Spaniards there were men of all nations, especially Italians. National character disappeared. Their esprit de corps, and the an- cient honour of the army, still sustained them when they were carried by land to the battle of Rocroi. The soldier who took their place was the French soldier, the ideal of the soldier, impetuosity dis- ciplined. Though far, as yet, from comprehending the true nature of patriotism, this soldier had still a 356 SUMMARY OF warm affection for the land of his birth. It was a merry population of the sons of labourers, whose grandfathers had fought in the last religious wars. These wars of partisans, and these skirmishes at pistol-shot distance, made a whole nation of sol- diers ; there were traditions of honour and bravery in their families. The grandchildren enrolled, and, conducted by a young man of twenty years, the great Conde, forced the Spanish lines at Rocroi, and routed the ancient bands as gayly as their de- scendants, under the command of another young man, broke the bridges of Arcola and Lodi. Since the time of Gustavus Adolphus, war had breathed a more liberal spirit. Armies trusted less to materiel, more to moral force. Tactics, if I may so speak, had become spiritualized. Since they had felt this inspiration, men could march without ^ counting the enemy. They required a daring spirit at their head ; a young man, confident of success. Conde, at Friburg, threw his staff into the ranks of the enemy ; all the French ran to bring it back. Treaty of Westphalia, 1648. Victory engenders victory. The lines of Rocroi forced, the barrier of Spanish and German honour was also forced for- ever. The following year (1644), the skilful and aged Mercy suffered the lines of Thionville to be carried ; Conde took Philipsburg and Mayence, the central position on the Rhine. Mercy was MODERN HISTORY. 357 beaten again, and completely routed at Noolingen (1645). In 1646 Conde took Dunkirk, the key of Flanders and of the Straits. Finally, on the 20th of August. 1648, he gained in Artois the battle of Lens. On the 24th of October the peace of West- phalia was signed. Conde had simplified the ne- gotiations. Conde. These five years of unheard-of success were fatal to the good sense of Conde. He did not think of the people who had gained his victories ; he took them to himself, and all the world, it is true, thought with him. This is what made him enjoy ia the Fronde the part of bully, and hero of the theatre : soon deceived, disappointed, powerless, and ridicu- lous, he became angry with himself and with every- body, and joined the enemy ; but he failed, for he no longer commanded the French. The Fronde. The very year of this glorious treaty of Westphalia, which terminated the Euro- pean war, and gave Alsace to France, the most ridiculous of revolutions broke out. The Fronde (this war of children, suitably named after a game of children) was doubtless ridiculous in its issue, but much more in its principle ; it was, at bottom, a re- volt of the lawyers against the law. The Parlia- ment armed itself against the royal authority from which it was derived. It took to itself the power of the States-General, and pretended to be the dele- 358 SUMMARY OF gate of a nation, who knew nothing of it. It was at this time that the Parliament of England, the true Parliament, in the political sense of the term, had decapitated its king (1649). On the other hand, the populace of Naples made for themselves a king of a fisherman (Masaniello, 1648). The Parlia- ment of France, composed of lawyers, who pur- chased their places, did not make war on the dy- nasty, nor on royalty, but on royal power alone. From their conduct for two centuries, nothing like this could have been foreseen. In the religious wars, they had shown much timidity and docility. Favourable for the most part to new ideas, they had yet registered the decree of St. Bartholomew. Under Richelieu this same docility continued ; the Parliament had furnished him with commissions for his sanguinary courts, and yet had not been the less ill treated, violated, and interdicted (Paris, 1635 ; Rouen, 1640). They were much humbled. But when they again raised their heads, and felt that those heads were still on their shoulders, and saw their master dead, they thought themselves valiant, and spoke boldly. It was a pleasant es- cape of scholars from between two severe masters ; from Richelieu and Louis XIV., from violence and power. Mole Retz. In this tragi-comedy the most amusing actors after the French Mars, as they MODERN HISTORY. 359 f called Conde, were the opposite chiefs of the two parties of Parliament the immovable President Mole, a simple bar of iron, who yielded to no man, nor to any opinion : and on the other side mobility itself, personified in the coadjutor, the famous Car-^ dinal Retz. This petulant young man had com- menced by writing, at the age of seventeen, a history of the conspiracy of Fiesco ; then, to join practice with theory, he had entered into a con- spiracy against Richelieu. His happiness was to liear himself called the young Catiline. When he entered the Parisian Senate, he let a dagger fall from his pocket. Knowing that Caesar had debts, he contracted debts. Like Caesar, he has left com- mentaries. He only wanted a Pharsalia. The extreme misery of the people would scarce- ly admit of new taxes. Mazarin lived upon casual expedients and oppressions. His superintendent of finance, Emeri, another Italian, having, in com- pensation for a heavy tax, withdrawn four years' payment from the Royal Companies, exempted the Parliament. The Parliament would not be exempted alone, and refused to register the edict. It declared its union with the Royal Companies,! inviting the other Parliaments to accede (May 13, June 15, 1648). Mazarin thought he struck a great blow by having four counsellors arrested while they were carrying the standards taken at 360 SUMMARY OF the battle of Lens to the Church of Notre Dame, and were chanting the Te Deum. This was the commencement of the insurrection. Of the four prisoners, the one most dear to the people was an imbecile old counsellor, who pleased them by his simplicity and his fine white hair. His name was Broussel. A mob collected before his door ; an old servant harangued them. By degrees the noise increased, and soon the cry of " Liberty and Brous- sel !" was heard from a hundred thousand lips. The Court at St. Germain. The princes, the nobles, the Parliament, and the lower classes were all at first against Mazarin. The queen was obli- ged to leave Paris with her infant son. They slept at St. Germain upon straw. It was a miser- able time for kings. The Queen of England, who was a refugee at Paris, remained in bed during the winter for the want of wood. In the mean time the Parliament raised troops, the lawyers mounted their horses, and each carriage-gate furnished one armed footman. The Viscount Turenne, who was of the intriguing house of Bouillon, thought the time had arrived for recovering Sedan, and made himself for a moment general of the Fronde. Tu- renne was of a cold and grave disposition, yet in joining that party he also made court to Madame de Longueville. Every general, every chief of a par- ty, every true hero of romance or of history, must MODERN HISTORY. 361 at that time necessarily have a lady of his thoughts, and be in love. Arrest of the Princes, 1650 Treaty of the Py- renees, 1659. The Spaniards, who entered France in order to profit by this crisis (1649), reconciled for the moment both parties through fear. Conde, who until then had remained faithful to the court, felt that they could not do without him, and became an insupportable necessity. It was then that they created for him and the young men around him the title of petits maitres. He bargained with both par- ties at the same time ; it was necessary to have him arrested (1650). This was a pretext for Turenne, who was about to join the Spaniards, and who de- clared that he contended for his deliverance. The party of the princes and of the Frondeurs, finding themselves united and supported by Spain, Maza- rin had to yield. He retired to let the storm pass by ; the following year he returned, gained over Turenne, and vainly endeavoured to bring the king back to Paris (battle of Porte Saint Antoine, 1652). One year more, and, the weakness of the parties having become complete, the Parisians themselves forced the king to return (1653). The Frondeurs crowded the antechambers of Mazarin. Conde and the Spaniards were defeated by the royal army, at that time commanded by Turenne. Mazarin without scruple united himself with the II H 362 SUMMARY OF Republic of England, with Cromwell, and crush- ed the Spaniards. Turenne gained the battle of the Dunes (1658), which gave Dunkirk to the English, and to France the peace of the Py- renees (1659). The treaty of Westphalia had guarantied to France her barriers of Artois, Al- sace, and Roussillon ; that of the Pyrenees gave her Gravelines, Landrecy, Thionville, Montmedy. The young King of France married the Infanta of Spain, with a dowry of 500,000 crowns, which was not paid. The infanta renounced all right of succession to the kingdom of Spain. Mazarin did not dispute this : he foresaw what these renuncia- tions would be worth (1659). There was at this time the most complete tri- umph of royalty, and the most perfect harmony between the people and one man, ever known. Richelieu had defeated the nobles and the Protest- ants ; the Fronde had ruined the Parliament by forcing it to acknowledge them. There remained in France but one people and one king. The former lived in the latter; it could no longer be said to live by means of its own vital powers alone. When Louis XIV. said, " The kingdom is mine," it was neither bombast nor boasting, but the simple an- nouncement of a fact. Louis XIV. The young Louis was the man to act this magnificent part. His cold and solemn MODERN HISTORY. 363 figure hovered for fifty years over France with the same majesty. In the first thirty he sat eight hours daily in the councils, connecting business and pleasure hearing, consulting, but judging for himself. His ministers changed and died, but he was always the same ; he went through duties, ceremonies, feasts of royalty, with the regular- ity of the sun, which he had chosen for his em- blem. Colbert. One of the glories of Louis XIV. was to have retained for twenty-two years as minister one of those men who have done the most for the glory of France : I mean Colbert. He was the grandson of a linendraper of Rheims, of the sign of the Long-vetu ; his mind was not brilliant, but solid, active, and indefatigable. He reorganized the affairs of the interior, of commerce, of the finances those even of the navy, which he placed in the hands of his son ; he only wanted the offices of minister of war and of justice to be king of France. The war was conducted (since 1666) by Louvois, a violent and fierce administrator, whose influence balanced that of Colbert. Louis XIV. seemed to be placed between them, as be- tween his good and evil genius. Both were at all times necessary ; they formed the equilibrium of this great reign. When Colbert entered upon affairs, in 1661, the 364 SUMMARY OF duties \vere eighty-four millions, and of these the king touched hardly thirty-two. In 1670, in spite of wars, he had raised the revenue to one hundred and sixteen millions. His first financial operation, the reduction of interest, gave a heavy blow to credit. His industrial regulations were singularly vexatious and tyrannical. But he regarded com- merce with the most enlightened views. He ap- pointed consulting committees of merchants, estab- lished free entrepots, made public roads, and gave security to commerce at sea by destroying pirates. At the same time he carried a bold hand into polit- ical administration. He repressed the exemptions from duties which the ecclesiastics, the nobles, and citizens of the free cities extended to their tenants, by representing them as mere servants. He revoked, in 1664, all the letters of nobility is- sued since 1630. He declared all the account- ing offices to be fortuitous, in order to suppress them by degrees. Colbert is reproached with having encouraged commerce more than agricul- ture ; yet he forbade seizure, for payment of debts, of the bedding, clothes, fiorses, oxen, or utensils ol husbandmen, and of more than the fifth of their cattle. He kept grain at low prices, by prohibit- ing its exportation. We must consider, too, that, the greatest part of the country being still in the hands of the princes and nobles, encouragement MODERN HISTORY. 365 given to agriculture would have been less profit- able to the people than to the aristocracy. On the contrary, commerce was in the hands of the mid- dling class, which began to rise. This man, who came from a counting-room, had a feeling for the true grandeur of France. He forgot his economy when disbursements would bring glory to his country. *' It is necessary," he wrote to Louis XIV., "to save five sous on un- necessary things, and to throw away millions when your glory is in question. A useless repast of three thousand livres gives me incredible pain; but when millions of gold for Poland are required, I would sell all my property, would pawn my wife and my children, and would go on foot all my life- time to procure it." The principal monuments of Louis XIV., his noblest establishments, the obser- vatory, library, and academies, belong in a great measure to Colbert. He caused pensions to be given to the scientific men and artists of France, and even of foreign countries. " There was not," says a contemporary writer, " a learned man, however distant from France, who did not receive some mark of his respect." " Although the king is not your sovereign," he wrote to the Dutchman, Isaac Vossius, "he wishes, nevertheless, to be your benefactor." Whatever reproaches may be uttered against H H2 366 SUMMARY OF Louis XIV., such letters offer at least some palli- ation ; and to them we must add the Hotel des Invalides, the city of Dunkirk, the canal between the two seas, and, above all, Versailles. This wonderful monument, to which no other country can furnish a parallel, is the emblem of the great- ness of France centralized for the first time in the seventeenth century. Those wonderful masses of verdure, and that hierarchy of bronze, of marble, of fountains, and cascades, rising one above another on the royal mount, from the monsters and tritons which howl below, to those beautiful ancient stat- ues which crown the platform with the serene likeness of the gods ; there is through all a glori- ous picture of the monarchy itself. These wa- ters, which rise and descend with so much grace and majesty, seem to represent the vast social cir- .culation which then for the first time took place : power and wealth ascending from the people to the king, to be returned in the shape of glory, or- der, and security. The mother of Apollo, the charming Latona, in whom the unity of the garden .seems to centre, silences the insolent clamours of .the group which surrounds her ; from men they become croaking frogs. Is mit this the regency .triumphing over the Fronde ? MODERN HISTORY. 367 CHAPTER XIX. CONTINUATION OF THE REIGN OF LOUIS XIV., 1661-1715. FRANCE, standing alone and invincible, while the greater part of the states of Europe were prostrate, now claimed, and obtained the suprem- acy. The pope having permitted the ambassador of France to be insulted in an outrageous manner, and his hotel to be violated, Louis XIV. demanded the most humiliating amends. The pope was obliged to drive his own brother from his domin- ions, and to erect a pyramid to perpetuate his hu- miliation (1664). At the same time that he treat- ed the spiritual chief of the Christian world so se- verely, Louis XIV. defended the interests of Christendom upon the sea and upon land ; he freed the sea from the pirates of Barbary (1664). To the Emperor Leopold, engaged in a war against the Turks, he sent troops, who played the most brill- iant part at the battle of St. Gothard. Spain. Against whom will France go to display the power which she has just announced ? There are but two nations in the West, England being paralyzed by the return of the Stuarts. There is 36S SUMMARY OF Spain and Holland, the conquered and the conquer- or. Spain is still that prodigious vessel, the prow of which was in the Indian seas, and the stern in the Atlantic Ocean ; but the vessel has been dismasted, disabled, and cast ashore in the tempest of Prot- estantism. A gale of wind has carried away her long-boat Holland. A second has taken Portugal from her, and laid bare her planks ; a third has de- tached the East Indies. What remains is vast and imposing, but inert and immovable, yet awaiting ruin with dignity. Holland. On the other hand was Holland, that hardy, avaricious, and reserved nation, which did so many great things without greatness. First, they lived in spite of the ocean ; this was the first miracle : then they salted their herrings and cheese, and changed their infected tuns to tons of gold ; next, they made this gold fruitful by means of a bank their gold pieces bore young. In the mid- dle of the seventeenth century they had gathered at pleasure the spoils of Spain, had taken the sea from her, and the Indies besides. The Spanish Netherlands were held in a state of siege by virtue of a treaty. Spain had consented to the closing of the Sheldt and the ruin of Antwerp (1648). The Belgians were prohibited from selling the prod- uce of their soil. Holland was already a vampire couched on Belgium, sucking her life, and growing fat upon her leanness. MODERN HISTORY. 369 Conquest of Flanders. Such was the situation of the West when France attained the summit of her power. The land yet belonged to Spain, the sea to Holland. The office of France in the sev- enteenth century was the dismembering of the one and the weakening of the other ; the first was easier than the last. France had armies, but as yet no vessels. She commenced with Spain. First, France united herself, to appearance, with Holland against Spain and England, who dispu- ted for the dominion of the seas. France promis- ed aid to the Dutch, but she permitted the three powers to dash their vessels against each other, and to destroy their navies in the most obstinate naval battles which as yet had ever been fought. Philip IV. being dead (1667), Louis XIV., quo- ting the civil law of the Netherlands, pretended that his wife, who was the eldest daughter of the deceased, ought to succeed him in preference to the younger son. It is true she had renounced the succession, but the promised dowry had not been paid. The French army entered Flanders in all the pomp of the new reign. Turenne at the head, then the king, the ministers, the ladies in the golden carriages of the court ; then Vauban, who, as they advanced, established himself in the different places and fortified them. Flanders was taken in two months, and has been kept. The same win- 370 SUMMARY OF ter, when they thought the war suspended (Janua- ry, 1668), the troops marched through Champagne to Burgundy, and fell on Franche-Comte. Spain had expected nothing of the kind. The authori- ties of the country had been purchased beforehand. All was finished in seventeen days. The exas- perated court of Spain wrote to the governor, " that the King of France should have sent his lackeys to take possession of the province, instead of com- ing to it himself." Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1668. These rapid successes reconciled Spain and Holland. The latter did not care to have the great king for a neighbour. We find the Hollanders interesting themselves for Spain, defending her, and uniting themselves with England and Sweden in her be- half; the Hollanders had the address to make England demand that union. Three Protestant states are thus armed to defend Catholic Spain against Catholic France. This singular event shows how far we already are from the sixteenth century, and from religious wars (triple alliance of the Hague, 1668). Louis XIV. was content with French Flanders, and gave up Franche-Comte. Holland had protected Spain, and compelled France to draw back. A citizen, a sheriff of Am- sterdam, declared to the king, in the midst of ail his glory, that he should go no farther. Insolent MODERN HISTORY. 371 medals were struck. The sheriff of Amsterdam was represented with a sun and this device : " In conspectu meo stetit sol." From that time the contest in Europe was between France and Holland. France could not advance one step without meeting Holland. At first the king purchased with ready money the alliance of Eng- land and Sweden. Charles II., who had already betrayed England by selling Mardick and Dun- kirk to France, once more sold the interests of his country. They promised to the nation some of the Dutch islands ; to the king, money for his feasts and his mistresses. The young and seductive Duchess of Orleans, sister-in-law to Louis XIV., sister of Charles II., negotiated, when on a triumphant jour- ney, the shame of her brother. It was she who died so young and so deeply mourned, for whom Corneille and Racine each composed a Berenice, and BossuetAe celebrated funeral discourse. Creation of a Navy. In the mean time, the army of Louis XIV. had been increased to eighty thou- sand men. It received through Louvois the most formidable organization. For the first time, the bayonet, so terrible a weapon in French hands, was placed on the top of the musket. The indefatigable genius of Colbert created a navy. France, so lately obliged to borrow vessels from Holland, had in 1672 one hundred ; five navy arsenals were built Brest, 372 SUMMARY OF Rochefort, Toulon, Dunkirk, Havre. Dunkirk is, unhappily, ruined ; but Toulon and Brest, with their vast constructions, their mountains removed to make room for vessels, still attest the Herculean efforts which France then made, and the mem- orable defiance which she gave to Holland re- specting the dominion of the seas. Holland held the sea, and thought to hold all. The party of the sea governed ; the De Witts in council, and Ruyter in the fleets ; the De Witts were states- men, geometers, pilots, and sworn enemies of the land party, of the house of Orange, of the stadt- holdership. They seemed to forget that Holland be- longed to the Continent ; they only saw in it an island. The fortresses fell to ruins ; Holland had twenty-five thousand bad soldiers, and this, too, when the French frontier had been advanced, and almost touched theirs. Conquest of Holland, 1672. Suddenly one hun- dred thousand men moved from Flanders towards Holland (-1672). " This was," says Temple, " as a peal of thunder in a clear sky." They left Mas- tricht behind them, without amusing themselves with taking it ; they seized Gueldren, Utrecht, Up- per Yssel ; they were four leagues from Amster- dam. Nothing could save Holland. Her allies of Spain and Brandenburg, the only ones she had, could not wrest this prize from Louis XIV. It MODERN HISTORY. 373 was the conqueror alone who could save her, by his mistakes, and he did it. Conde and Turenne wished to dismantle all the forts ; Louvois preferred that garrisons should be stationed there, that is, that they should disperse the army. The king sided with Louvois. They relied on walls ; they thought to take Holland by merely placing their hands on the stones, but Holland escaped. At first the am- phibious republic wished to throw herself on the water and embark for Batavia with her gold. The war abating, she hoped once more to resist by land : the people threw themselves furiously on the chiefs of the sea party, the De Witts ; they were cut in pieces : Ruyter looked for the same fate. All the forces of the Republic were intrusted to the young William of Orange. William of Orange. This general of twenty- two years, who, as his first trial, undertook, almost without arms, to confront the greatest king of the earth, had in his feeble and almost dying frame the calm and inflexible obstinacy of his grandfather, the Taciturn, the adversary of Philip II. He was a man of bronze a stranger to every feeling of nature and humanity. Raised by the party of De Witt, he was their ruin ; a Stuart by the family of his mother, he overthrew the Stuarts ; the son-in- law of James II., he dethroned him ; and England, which he had taken from his family, he lefi, to I i 374 SUMMARY OF those whom he hated, to the princes of the house of Hanover. He had but one passion, but it was atrocious the hatred of France. It is said that at the peace of Nimeguen, when he endeavoured to surprise Luxemburg, he already had a knowl- edge of the treaty ; but he still thirsted for French blood. It is remarkable that this great and in- trepid general almost always waged war while re- tiring before his foe ; but his admirable retreats were worth victories. Europe leagued against Louis XIV., 1674. At first, in order to defend Holland, William drown- ed it : he opened the sluices, while Ruyter made sure of the sea by defeating the French and the English, and came to moor his triumphant fleet in the inundated plain of Amsterdam. Then William armed against France both Spain and Austria. He detached England from Louis XIV. ; Charles II. was forced by his Parliament to sign the peace. The Catholic neighbours of Holland, the Bishop of Munster, the Elector of Cologne, then Branden- burg, then Denmark, then the Empire, all Europe, declared themselves against Louis XIV. (1674). It was now necessary to abandon the towns of Holland, and retreat. The French repaid them- selves, as usual, at the expense of Spain. Louis XIV. seized Franche-Comte, which has been re- tained by France. In the Netherlands, Conde, MODERN HISTORY. 375 with an inferior force, gave battle to the prince in that furious contest at Senef. Conde conquer- ed, but it was a victory for the Prince of Orange to have stood his ground before Conde at an equal loss. Upon the Rhine, Turenne, who, like Bo- naparte, increased in boldness as he increased in years, kept all the Empire in awe. Twice he saved Alsace, twice he penetrated Germany. It was then that the Palatinate was burned by the order of Louvois. The Palatine was secretly al- lied with the emperor, and it was proposed to leave only a desert to the Imperials. Death of Turenne, 1675. Turenne, re-entering Germany, was about to strike a decisive blow, when he was killed at Saltzbach (1675). Conde, being sick, withdrew the same year. Duquesne, 1677. We -see that at this period the destiny of France depended not on one man. The allies, though they believed France disarmed by the retreat of the two great generals, could not break the frontier of the Rhine, and lost in the Nether- lands, Conde, Boudrain, Aire, Valenciennes, Cam- bray, Ghent, Ypres. Duquesne, who was sent to the succour of Messina, which had revolted against Spain, engaged Ruyter in a terrible naval battle in sight of Mount ^Etna. The allies alone lost there twelve ships, six galleys, seven thousand men, seven hundred pieces of cannon, and, what was 376 SUMMARY OF worth more than all, Ruyter. Duquesne destroy- ed their fleet in a second battle (1677). Peace of Nimeguen, 1678. The allies now wished peace ; France and Holland were equally exhausted. Colbert asked leave to retire from the ministry if the war was continued. Still this peace of Nimeguen was advantageous for France. She retained Franche-Comte and twelve places of the Netherlands ; she had Friburg for Philipsburg. Denmark and Brandenburg gave up what they had taken from Sweden, the ally of France. Hol- land alone lost nothing, and the great European question remained unsettled (1678). This is the zenith of the reign of Louis XIV. Europe had been armed against him, and he had resisted ; he was still increasing in power. He assumed to himself the title of Great. The Duke of Feuillade went farther. He kept a burning lamp before his statue, as before an altar. We seem to be reading the history of the Roman emperors. Literature. The brilliant literature of this epoch is but one hymn to royalty. The voice which rose highest was that of Bossuet; it was as Bossuet himself represented in his " Discourse on Univer- sal History ;" the kings of Egypt were praised by the priests in the temples, in presence of the gods. The first period of the great reign, that of Des Car- tes, of Port Royal, of Pascal, and Corneille, did not MODERN HISTORY. 377 present such unanimity : literature at that period was animated by a spirit ruder and more free. At the period at which we have now arrived, Moliere had just died (1673), Racine had put forth his Phaedra (1677), La Fontaine published the last six books of his Fables (1678), Madame de Sevigne wrote her Letters, Bossuet meditated on the knowl- edge of God and of himself, and prepared the Dis- course on Universal History (1681). The Abbe Fenelon, still young, a simple director of a convent for young ladies, lived under the patronage of Bos- suet, who regarded him as his disciple. Bossuet leads the triumphal choir of the great century, in full assurance of the past and of the future, be- tween eclipsed Jansenism and impending Quietism, between the gloomy Pascal and the mystical Fen- elon. In the mean time, Cartesianism is pushed to its most formidable consequences. Malebranche makes human intelligence an emanation from God ; and in Protestant Holland, struggling with Catho- lic France, the fathomless gulf of Spinoza is about to open itself, to swallow up at once Catholicism and Protestantism, liberty, morals, God, and the world. Chamber of Reunion. In the mean time, Louis XIV. reigns in Europe. The sign of royalty is jurisdiction. He wishes the powers of Europe to acknowledge the decision of his Parliaments. I i 2 378 SUMMARY OF The Chambers of Reunion interpret the treaty of Nimegueri, and reunite the dependences t which had been yielded to him. One of the dependan- ces was nothing less than Strasbourg (1681). They hesitate to obey ; he bombards Luxemburg (1684). He bombards Algiers- (168 3), Tripoli (1685). He bombards Genoa ;--?he would have crushed it in its marble palaces, Jiad not the doge come to Versailles to ask pardon,-; .(168 4). He bought Casal, the gate of Italy ; he built Huningen, the gate of Switzerland. He interposed in the af- fairs of the Empire ; he wished to make an elector of Cologne (1689). He reclaimed, in the name of his sister-in-law, the Duchess of Orleans, a part of the Palatinate, invoking in this affair, as in that of Flanders, the civil law against the feudal law. The decisions of the law were supported by force, Europe was disarmed, and Louis XIV. remained armed ; he increased his navy to 230 vessels ; to- wards the end of his reign his armies amounted to 450,000 men. Declaration of the Clergy, 1682. At the same time the monarchy attained its greatest degree of centralization. The two chief obstacles were crushed : the pontifical power and the Protestant opposition. Since 1673 an edict had declared all the bishoprics of the kingdom subject to the throne. In 1682 an assembly of thirty-five bishops, of which MODERN HISTORY. 379 Bossuet was the soul, decided " that the pope had authority only over spiritual things , that in such things even the general councils were superior to him, and that his decisions were only infallible after the Church had accepted them." The pope from that time refused and even by means of these humilia- tions, the drama of the age makes rapid strides to- wards its development. Who had been conquered in this and the preceding war ? France 1 No, but the nobility, who alone furnished the officers, the generals. The enemies of France could not ques- tion French bravery after Chevert and D'Assas. Had one not seen, in the combat of the exiles, French soldiers climbing the Alps under showers of grapeshot with which the cannons were loaded, and leaping on the cannons of the enemy even through the embrasures, while the pieces recoiled ? As;to the generals, the only ones that we can ven- ture to name at this epoch are Saxe and Broglie, who were foreigners. He who appropriated to him- self the glory of Fontenoi, the great general of the century, according to the saying of women and of courtiers, the conqueror of Mahon, the old Alcibia- des of the old Voltaire, Richelieu, had shown suffi- ciently, during the five campaigns of the last war, MODERN HISTORY. 427 what one ought to think of a reputation so skilful- ly got up. These campaigns were at least lucra- tive ; he brought back enough from them to build on the boulevards of Paris the elegant pavilion of Hanover. J. J. Rousseau. Towards the end of this ig- noble war of seven years, in which the aristocracy had fallen so low, the great plebeian mind burst forth. It was as if France had cried to Europe, " It is not Iwho am conquered !" In 1750, the son of a watchmaker of Geneva, John Jacques Rous- seau, a vagrant, scribe, and footman by turns, had cursed all science in his hatred of a spurious philos- ophy, and of the caste of literary men ; then he cursed all inequality in his hatred of a degenerated nobility (1754). This rage for levelling streamed in torrents through the letters of his New Heloise (1759). Naturalism is expounded in his Emily, Deism in the profession of the faith of the Savoy- ard Vicar (1762). In the Social Contract, finally, appeared the three maxims of the Revolution, traced by a fiery hand. The Revolution advanced so irresistibly, that the king, who foresaw it with terror, worked for it in spite of himself, and opened its path. In 1763 he founded for it his temple, the Pantheon, which was to receive Rousseau and Voltaire. In 1764 he ex- ( pelled the Jesuits ; in 1771 he abolished the Parlia- 428 SUMMARY OF ment. A tractable instrument of necessity, he overthrew with an indifferent hand whatever yet re- mained standing of the ruins of the Middle Ages. Abolition of the Jesuits, 1764. The society of the Jesuits, which was believed to be so deeply rooted, was annihilated without a blow through all Europe. The Templars had perished in like manner in the fourteenth century, when the system to which they belonged had lasted its time. The Jesuits were given up to the parliaments, their deadly enemies. But, at the same time that the stones of Port Roy- al had fallen on the heads of the Jesuits, the down- fall of the latter was fatal to the parliaments. These corporations, encouraged by their increasing popularity and by their recent victory, would move along the old paths. The imperfect balance of the old monarchy encountered the elastic opposition of the parliaments, who remonstrated, adjourned, and ended by respectfully yielding. Some courageous and decided men, among others Breton la Chalo- tais, undertook to lead them farther. In the trial of the Duke of Aiguillon they stood firm ; they were broken up (1771). It was not to the judges of Lally, of Galas, of Sirven, of Labarre, that it be- longed to achieve the Revolution, still less to the coterie that overthrew them. The spirited Abbe Terray, and the jovial Chancellor Maupeou, allies of the Duke of Aiguillon and Madame du Barray, were MODERN HISTORY. 429 not honest enough to have the privilege of doing good. Terray, who had charge of the finances, rem- edied the disorder a little, but did it through bank- ruptcy. Maupeou abolished the venality of offices., and dispensed justice gratuitously, but no one would believe that it was gratuitous in the hands of the creatures of Maupeou. All the world ridiculed their reforms ; no one more than themselves. Irrepres- sible laughter burst forth at the appearance of the Memoirs of Beaumarchais. Louis XV. read them, as did everybody, and was much amused with them. This egotistical monarch perceived the growing danger of the crown more clearly than any one, but he judged with reason, that, after all, it would outlast him (died in 1774). Louis XVI. , 1774.: His unfortunate successor, Louis XVI., inherited all this danger. Many peo- ple had conceived sad forebodings on the occasion of his marriage fetes, when several hundred per- sons were suffocated. Yet the accession of the honest young king, seating himself with his grace- ful queen on the throne, now happily purged of Lou- is XV., had excited in the country immense hope. For a society jaded and worn out, this was an epoch of happiness and genuine emotion. It cried, admired itself and its tears, and believed itself a-gain young. The fashionable style was the idyl ; at first, the insipidity of Florian, the innocence of 430 SUMMARY OF Gesner, then the immortal eclogue of Paul and Virginia. The queen built herself a hamlet, and bought a farm in Trianon. The philosophers con- ducted the plough by writing. " Choiseul is hus- bandman, and Voltaire is farmer." All the world interested itself for the people, loved the people, wrote for the people. Benevolence was fashion- able ; they gave small alms and great feasts. While the higher circles enjoyed this sentiment- al comedy, that great movement of the world con- tinued, which was about to sweep away every- thing in a moment. The true confidant of the public, the confidant of Beaumarchais, grew daily more bitter; he changed from comedy to satire, from satire to the tragical drama. Royalty, Par- liament, nobility, all staggered with weakness ; the world was as if intoxicated. Philosophy even sickened under the poison of Rousseau and Gil- bert. Men believed no more in religion or irre- ligion ; they wished to believe, however ; strong minds went incognito to seek for creeds in the phantasmagoria of Cagliostro, and in the trough of Mesmer. In the mean time, the everlasting dia- logue of rational skepticism resounded through France ; the evident dogmatism of Kant responded to the nihilism of Hume, and over all rose the great poetical voice of Goethe, harmonious, immoral, and indifferent. France, in commotion and precccu- MODERN HISTORY. 431 pied, heard nothing of all this. Germany pursued . the scientific epic poem ; France worked out the social drama. Turgot Necker. What gives a comic air to the gloom of these last days of the old society, is the contrast between great promises and complete inefficiency. Inefficiency is a common trait of all the ministers of that time. All promise, and can do nothing. M. de Choiseul would defend Po- land, humble England, exalt France by a European war, when he could not defray the expenses of the day ; if he had wished to execute his projects, the Parliament, who sustained him, would have abandoned him. Maupeou and Terray dissolved the Parliament, and could find nothing to replace it ; they wished to reform the finances, and they had to rely on none but the robbers of the public treasury. Under Louis XVI., the great, the hon- est, the sanguine Turgot (1774-1776), proposes the true remedy economy, and the abolition of privileges. To whom does he propose them ? To the privileged party, who overthrow him. In the mean time, necessity obliged them to call to their aid an able banker, an eloquent foreigner, al second Law, but more honest. Neckar promises wonders : he encourages everybody, he announces no sweeping reform, he proceeds gently. He in- spires confidence, he has recourse to credit, he 432 SUMMARY OF finds money, he borrows. Confidence and a good administration would augment commerce com- merce would create resources. Short loans were made on the strength of casual, slow, and distant resources. Neckar finished by relinquishing his own plans and returning to the means proposed by Turgot economy, and equality of taxes. The ac- count which he rendered was an expressive ac- knowledgment of his weakness (1781). War of America, 1778-84. Neckar, we must confess, had had a double conflict to sustain. He had, besides the expenses of the interior, to defray those of the war which France carried on in favour of youthful America (1778-84-). France contrib- uted at that time to raise against England an Eng- lish rival. Although the latter has shown that she does not care to remember the aid, never was money better employed. The country could not pay too much for the last naval victories of France and the Creation of Cherbourg. There was then a rare season of confidence and enthusiasm. France envied America her Franklin ; the young French nobility embarked in the crusade for liberty. Notables, 1787. -The king, who had vainly tried the patriotic ministers, Turgot and Neckar, was how influenced by the queen and the court, and chose courtiers as ministers. One could not find a minister more agreeable than M. de Calonne, a MODERN HISTORY. 433 guide more ready to encourage his master to plunge gayly into ruin. When he had exhausted the credit which the wise conduct of Neckar had cre- ated, he knew not what to do, and assembled the Notables (1787). He had to confess that the loans had been raised within a few years to 1646 millions of francs, and that an annual deficit ex- isted of 140 millions. The Notables, who them- selves belonged to the privileged classes, gave ad- vice and accusations in place of money. Brienne, raised by them to the place of Calonne, had re- course to duties ; the Parliament refused to regis- ter them, and demanded the States-General, that is to say, their own ruin and that of the ancient monarchy. States-General, 1789. The philosophers had been overthrown with Turgot, the bankers with Neckar, the courtiers with Calonne and Brienne. The privileged would not pay, and the people could not any longer. The States-General, as an emi- nent historian said, only decreed a revolution, which had already taken place (opening of the States- General, May 5th, 1789.) THE END. '' a, / THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY WILL INCREASE TO 5O CENTS ON THE FOURTH DAY AND TO $1.OO ON THE SEVENTH DAY OVERDUE. MAY 1 i48 D t= -j, , 58 S RF' I D ,,-,-- ^ 4 *fc CIA JAM i -z 77 MAR H 7^3^ ?>. 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