The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Story of Mankind, by Hendrik van Loon
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Title: The Story of Mankind
Author: Hendrik van Loon
Release Date: December, 1996 [Etext #754]
Posting Date: November 27, 2009
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF MANKIND ***
Produced by Charles Keller
THE STORY OF MANKIND
By Hendrik Van Loon, Ph.D.
Professor of the Social Sciences in Antioch College. Author of The Fall
of the Dutch Republic, The Rise of the Dutch Kingdom, The Golden Book of
the Dutch Navigators, A Short Story of Discovery, Ancient Man.
Frontispiece caption= THE SCENE OF OUR HISTORY IS LAID UPON A LITTLE
PLANET, LOST IN THE VASTNESS OF THE UNIVERSE.
To JIMMIE "What is the use of a book without pictures?" said Alice.
FOREWORD
For Hansje and Willem:
WHEN I was twelve or thirteen years old, an uncle of mine who gave me
my love for books and pictures promised to take me upon a memorable
expedition. I was to go with him to the top of the tower of Old Saint
Lawrence in Rotterdam.
And so, one fine day, a sexton with a key as large as that of Saint
Peter opened a mysterious door. "Ring the bell," he said, "when you come
back and want to get out," and with a great grinding of rusty old hinges
he separated us from the noise of the busy street and locked us into a
world of new and strange experiences.
For the first time in my life I was confronted by the phenomenon of
audible silence. When we had climbed the first flight of stairs, I added
another discovery to my limited knowledge of natural phenomena--that of
tangible darkness. A match showed us where the upward road continued.
We went to the next floor and then to the next and the next until I had
lost count and then there came still another floor, and suddenly we had
plenty of light. This floor was on an even height with the roof of the
church, and it was used as a storeroom. Covered with many inches of
dust, there lay the abandoned symbols of a venerable faith which had
been discarded by the good people of the city many years ago. That which
had meant life and death to our ancestors was here reduced to junk and
rubbish. The industrious rat had built his nest among the carved images
and the ever watchful spider had opened up shop between the outspread
arms of a kindly saint.
The next floor showed us from where we had derived our light. Enormous
open windows with heavy iron bars made the high and barren room the
roosting place of hundreds of pigeons. The wind blew through the iron
bars and the air was filled with a weird and pleasing music. It was
the noise of the town below us, but a noise which had been purified and
cleansed by the distance. The rumbling of heavy carts and the clinking
of horses' hoofs, the winding of cranes and pulleys, the hissing sound
of the patient steam which had been set to do the work of man in
a thousand different ways--they had all been blended into a softly
rustling whisper which provided a beautiful background for the trembling
cooing of the pigeons.
Here the stairs came to an end and the ladders began. And after the
first ladder (a slippery old thing which made one feel his way with a
cautious foot) there was a new and even greater wonder, the town-clock.
I saw the heart of time. I could hear the heavy pulsebeats of the rapid
seconds--one--two--three--up to sixty. Then a sudden quivering noise
when all the wheels seemed to stop and another minute had been chopped
off eternity. Without pause it began again--one--two--three--until at
last after a warning rumble and the scraping of many wheels a thunderous
voice, high above us, told the world that it was the hour of noon.
On the next floor were the bells. The nice little bells and their
terrible sisters. In the centre the big bell, which made me turn stiff
with fright when I heard it in the middle of the night telling a story
of fire or flood. In solitary grandeur it seemed to reflect upon those
six hundred years during which it had shared the joys and the sorrows of
the good people of Rotterdam. Around it, neatly arranged like the blue
jars in an old-fashioned apothecary shop, hung the little fellows, who
twice each week played a merry tune for the benefit of the country-folk
who had come to market to buy and sell and hear what the big world had
been doing. But in a corner--all alone and shunned by the others--a big
black bell, silent and stern, the bell of death.
Then darkness once more and other ladders, steeper and even more
dangerous than those we had climbed before, and suddenly the fresh air
of the wide heavens. We had reached the highest gallery. Above us the
sky. Below us the city--a little toy-town, where busy ants were hastily
crawling hither and thither, each one intent upon his or her particular
business, and beyond the jumble of stones, the wide greenness of the
open country.
It was my first glimpse of the big world.
Since then, whenever I have had the opportunity, I have gone to the top
of the tower and enjoyed myself. It was hard work, but it repaid in full
the mere physical exertion of climbing a few stairs.
Besides, I knew what my reward would be. I would see the land and the
sky, and I would listen to the stories of my kind friend the watchman,
who lived in a small shack, built in a sheltered corner of the gallery.
He looked after the clock and was a father to the bells, and he warned
of fires, but he enjoyed many free hours and then he smoked a pipe and
thought his own peaceful thoughts. He had gone to school almost fifty
years before and he had rarely read a book, but he had lived on the top
of his tower for so many years that he had absorbed the wisdom of that
wide world which surrounded him on all sides.
History he knew well, for it was a living thing with him. "There," he
would say, pointing to a bend of the river, "there, my boy, do you see
those trees? That is where the Prince of Orange cut the dikes to drown
the land and save Leyden." Or he would tell me the tale of the old
Meuse, until the broad river ceased to be a convenient harbour and
became a wonderful highroad, carrying the ships of De Ruyter and Tromp
upon that famous last voyage, when they gave their lives that the sea
might be free to all.
Then there were the little villages, clustering around the protecting
church which once, many years ago, had been the home of their Patron
Saints. In the distance we could see the leaning tower of Delft. Within
sight of its high arches, William the Silent had been murdered and there
Grotius had learned to construe his first Latin sentences. And still
further away, the long low body of the church of Gouda, the early home
of the man whose wit had proved mightier than the armies of many an
emperor, the charity-boy whom the world came to know as Erasmus.
Finally the silver line of the endless sea and as a contrast,
immediately below us, the patchwork of roofs and chimneys and houses
and gardens and hospitals and schools and railways, which we called our
home. But the tower showed us the old home in a new light. The confused
commotion of the streets and the market-place, of the factories and
the workshop, became the well-ordered expression of human energy
and purpose. Best of all, the wide view of the glorious past, which
surrounded us on all sides, gave us new courage to face the problems of
the future when we had gone back to our daily tasks.
History is the mighty Tower of Experience, which Time has built amidst
the endless fields of bygone ages. It is no easy task to reach the top
of this ancient structure and get the benefit of the full view. There is
no elevator, but young feet are strong and it can be done.
Here I give you the key that will open the door.
When you return, you too will understand the reason for my enthusiasm.
HENDRIK WILLEM VAN LOON.
CONTENTS
1. THE SETTING OF THE STAGE
2. OUR EARLIEST ANCESTORS
3. PREHISTORIC MAX BEGINS TO MAKE THINGS FOR HIMSELF
4. THE EGYPTIANS INVENT THE ART OF WRITING AND THE RECORD
OF HISTORY BEGINS
5. THE BEGINNING OF CIVILISATION IN THE VALLEY OF THE NILE
6. THE RISE AND FALL OF EGYPT
7. MESOPOTAMIA, THE SECOND CENTRE OF EASTERN CIVILISATION
8. THE SUMERIAN NAIL WRITERS, WHOSE CLAY TABLETS TELL US
THE STORY OF ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA, THE GREAT SEMITIC
MELTING-POT
9. THE STORY OF MOSES, THE LEADER OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE
10. THE PHOENICIANS, WHO GAVE US OUR ALPHABET
11. THE INDO-EUROPEAN PERSIANS CONQUER THE SEMITIC AND THE
EGYPTIAN WORLD
12. THE PEOPLE OF THE AEGEAN SEA CARRIED THE CIVILISATION
OF OLD ASIA INTO THE WILDERNESS OF EUROPE
13. MEANWHILE THE INDO-EUROPEAN TRIBE OF THE HELLENES WAS
TAKING POSSESSION OF GREECE
14. THE GREEK CITIES THAT WERE REALLY STATES
15. THE GREEKS WERE THE FIRST PEOPLE TO TRY THE DIFFICULT
EXPERIMENT OF SELF-GOVERNMENT
16. HOW THE GREEKS LIVED
17. THE ORIGINS OF THE THEATRE, THE FIRST FORM OF PUBLIC
AMUSEMENT
18. HOW THE GREEKS DEFENDED EUROPE AGAINST AN ASIATIC INVASION AND
DROVE THE PERSIANS BACK ACROSS THE AEGEAN SEA
19. HOW ATHENS AND SPARTA FOUGHT A LONG AND DISASTROUS WAR
FOR THE LEADERSHIP OF GREECE
20. ALEXANDER THE MACEDONIAN ESTABLISHES A GREEK WORLD
EMPIRE, AND WHAT BECAME OF THIS HIGH AMBITION
21. A SHORT SUMMARY OF CHAPTERS 1 TO 20
22. THE SEMITIC COLONY OF CARTHAGE ON THE NORTHERN COAST OF
AFRICA AND THE INDO-EUROPEAN CITY OF ROME ON THE WEST
COAST OF ITALY FOUGHT EACH OTHER FOR THE POSSESSION OF
THE WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN AND CARTHAGE WAS DESTROYED
23. HOW ROME HAPPENED
24. HOW THE REPUBLIC OF ROME, AFTER CENTURIES OF UNREST AND
REVOLUTION, BECAME AN EMPIRE
25. THE STORY OF JOSHUA OF NAZARETH, WHOM THE GREEKS CALLED
JESUS
26. THE TWILIGHT OF ROME
27. HOW ROME BECAME THE CENTRE OF THE CHRISTIAN WORLD
28. AHMED, THE CAMEL DRIVER, WHO BECAME THE PROPHET OF THE
ARABIAN DESERT, AND WHOSE FOLLOWERS ALMOST CONQUERED
THE ENTIRE KNOWN WORLD FOR THE GREATER GLORY OF
ALLAH, THE "ONLY TRUE GOD"
29. HOW CHARLEMAGNE, THE KING OF THE RANKS, CAME TO BEAR
THE TITLE OF EMPEROR AND TRIED TO REVIVE THE OLD IDEAL
OF WORLD-EMPIRE
30. WHY THE PEOPLE OF THE TENTH CENTURY PRAYED THE LORD
TO PROTECT THEM FROM THE FURY OF THE NORSEMEN
31. HOW CENTRAL EUROPE, ATTACKED FROM THREE SIDES, BECAME
AN ARMED CAMP AND WHY EUROPE WOULD HAVE PERISHED
WITHOUT THOSE PROFESSIONAL SOLDIERS AND ADMINISTRATORS
WHO WERE PART OF THE FEUDAL SYSTEM
32. CHIVALRY
33. THE STRANGE DOUBLE LOYALTY OF THE PEOPLE OF THE MIDDLE
AGES, AND HOW IT LED TO ENDLESS QUARRELS BETWEEN THE
POPES AND THE HOLY ROMAN EMPERORS
34. BUT ALL THESE DIFFERENT QUARRELS WERE FORGOTTEN WHEN
THE TURKS TOOK THE HOLY LAND, DESECRATED THE HOLY
PLACES AND INTERFERED SERIOUSLY WITH THE TRADE FROM
EAST TO WEST. EUROPE WENT CRUSADING
35. WHY THE PEOPLE OF THE MIDDLE AGES SAID THAT CITY AIR
IS FREE AIR
36. HOW THE PEOPLE OF THE CITIES ASSERTED THEIR RIGHT
TO BE HEARD IN THE ROYAL COUNCILS OF THEIR COUNTRY
37. WHAT THE PEOPLE OF THE MIDDLE AGES THOUGHT OF THE
WORLD IN WHICH THEY HAPPENED TO LIVE
38. HOW THE CRUSADES ONCE MORE MADE THE MEDITERRANEAN A
BUSY CENTRE OF TRADE AND HOW THE CITIES OF THE ITALIAN
PENINSULA BECAME THE GREAT DISTRIBUTING CENTRE FOR THE
COMMERCE WITH ASIA AND AFRICA
39. PEOPLE ONCE MORE DARED TO BE HAPPY JUST BECAUSE THEY
WERE ALIVE. THEY TRIED TO SAVE THE REMAINS OF THE
OLDER AND MORE AGREEABLE CIVILISATION OF ROME AND
GREECE AND THEY WERE 80 PROUD OF THEIR ACHIEVEMENTS
THAT THEY SPOKE OF A RENAISSANCE OR RE-BIRTH OF
CIVILISATION
40. THE PEOPLE BEGAN TO FEEL THE NEED OF GIVING EXPRESSION
TO THEIR NEWLY DISCOVERED JOY OF LIVING. THEY EXPRESSED
THEIR HAPPINESS IN POETRY AND IN SCULPTURE AND
IN ARCHITECTURE AND PAINTING, AND IN THE BOOKS THEY
PRINTED
41. BUT NOW THAT PEOPLE HAD BROKEN THROUGH THE BONDS OF
THEIR NARROW MEDIEVAL LIMITATIONS, THEY HAD TO HAVE
MORE ROOM FOR THEIR WANDERINGS. THE EUROPEAN WORLD
HAD GROWN TOO SMALL FOR THEIR AMBITIONS. IT WAS THE
TIME OF THE GREAT VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY
42. CONCERNING BUDDHA AND CONFUCIUS
43. THE PROGRESS OF THE HUMAN RACE IS BEST COMPARED TO A
GIGANTIC PENDULUM WHICH FOREVER SWINGS FORWARD AND
BACKWARD. THE RELIGIOUS INDIFFERENCE AND THE ARTISTIC
AND LITERARY ENTHUSIASM OF THE RENAISSANCE WERE FOLLOWED
BY THE ARTISTIC AND LITERARY INDIFFERENCE AND THE
RELIGIOUS ENTHUSIASM OF THE REFORMATION
44. THE AGE OF THE GREAT RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSIES
45. HOW THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS
AND THE LESS DIVINE BUT MORE REASONABLE RIGHT OF
PARLIAMENT ENDED DISASTROUSLY FOR KING CHARLES II
46. IN FRANCE, ON THE OTHER HAND, THE DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS
CONTINUED WITH GREATER POMP AND SPLENDOR THAN EVER
BEFORE AND THE AMBITION OF THE RULER WAS ONLY TEMPERED
BY THE NEWLY INVENTED LAW OF THE BALANCE OF POWER
47. THE STORY OF THE MYSTERIOUS MUSCOVITE EMPIRE WHICH SUDDENLY
BURST UPON THE GRAND POLITICAL STAGE OF EUROPE
48. RUSSIA AND SWEDEN FOUGHT MANY WARS TO DECIDE WHO
SHALL BE THE LEADING POWER OF NORTHEASTERN EUROPE
49. THE EXTRAORDINARY RISE OF A LITTLE STATE IN A DREARY PART
OF NORTHERN GERMANY, CALLED PRUSSIA
50. HOW THE NEWLY FOUNDED NATIONAL OR DYNASTIC STATES OF
EUROPE TRIED TO MAKE THEMSELVES RICH AND WHAT WAS
MEANT BY THE MERCANTILE SYSTEM
51. AT THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EUROPE HEARD
STRANGE REPORTS OF SOMETHING WHICH HAD HAPPENED IN
THE WILDERNESS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN CONTINENT. THE
DESCENDANTS OF THE MEN WHO HAD PUNISHED KING CHARLES
FOR HIS INSISTENCE UPON HIS DIVINE RIGHTS ADDED A
NEW CHAPTER TO THE OLD STORY OF THE STRUGGLE FOR SELF-GOVERNMENT
62. THE GREAT FRENCH REVOLUTION PROCLAIMS THE PRINCIPLES
OF LIBERTY, FRATERNITY AND EQUALITY UNTO All THE PEOPLE
OF THE EARTH
53. NAPOLEON
54. AS SOON AS NAPOLEON HAD BEEN SENT TO ST. HELENA, THE
RULERS WHO SO OFTEN HAD BEEN DEFEATED BY THE HATED
CORSICAN MET AT VIENNA AND TRIED TO UNDO THE MANY
CHANCES WHICH HAD BEEN BROUGHT ABOUT BY THE FRENCH
REVOLUTION
55. THEY TRIED TO ASSURE THE WORLD AN ERA OF UNDISTURBED
PEACE BY SUPPRESSING ALL NEW IDEAS. THEY MADE THE
POLICE-SPY THE HIGHEST FUNCTIONARY IN THE STATE AND
SOON THE PRISONS OF ALL COUNTRIES WERE FILLED WITH
THOSE WHO CLAIMED THAT PEOPLE HAVE THE RIGHT TO
GOVERN THEMSELVES AS THEY SEE FIT
56. THE LOVE OF NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE, HOWEVER, WAS TOO
STRONG TO BE DESTROYED IN THIS WAY. THE SOUTH AMERICANS
WERE THE FIRST TO REBEL AGAINST THE REACTIONARY
MEASURES OF THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA. GREECE AND BELGIUM
AND SPAIN AND A LARGE NUMBER OF OTHER COUNTRIES
OF THE EUROPEAN CONTINENT FOLLOWED SUIT AND THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY WAS FILLED WITH THE RUMOR OF MANY
WARS OF INDEPENDENCE
57. BUT WHITE THE PEOPLE OF EUROPE WERE FIGHTING FOR THEIR
NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE, THE WORLD IN WHICH THEY LIVED
HAD BEEN ENTIRELY CHANGED BY A SERIES OF INVENTIONS,
WHICH HAD MADE THE CLUMSY OLD STEAM-ENGINE OF THE
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY THE MOST FAITHFUL AND EFFICIENT
STAVE OF MAN
58. THE NEW ENGINES WERE VERY EXPENSIVE AND ONLY PEOPLE
OF WEALTH COULD AFFORD THEM. THE OLD CARPENTER OR
SHOEMAKER WHO HAD BEEN HIS OWN MASTER IN HIS LITTLE
WORKSHOP WAS OBLIGED TO HIRE HIMSELF OUT TO THE OWNERS
OF THE BIG MECHANICAL TOOLS, AND WHITE HE MADE
MORE MONEY THAN BEFORE, HE LOST HIS FORMER INDEPENDENCE
AND HE DID NOT LIKE THAT
59. THE GENERAL INTRODUCTION OF MACHINERY DID NOT BRING
ABOUT THE ERA OF HAPPINESS AND PROSPERITY WHICH HAD
BEEN PREDICTED BY THE GENERATION WHICH SAW THE STAGE
COACH REPLACED BY THE RAILROAD. SEVERAL REMEDIES
WERE SUGGESTED, BUT NONE OF THESE QUITE SOLVED THE
PROBLEM
60. BUT THE WORLD HAD UNDERGONE ANOTHER CHANGE WHICH WAS
OF GREATER IMPORTANCE THAN EITHER THE POLITICAL OR THE
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTIONS. AFTER GENERATIONS OF OPPRESSION
AND PERSECUTION, THE SCIENTIST HAD AT LAST GAINED
LIBERTY OF ACTION AND HE WAS NOW TRYING TO DISCOVER
THE FUNDAMENTAL LAWS WHICH GOVERN THE UNIVERSE
61. A CHAPTER OF ART
62. THE LAST FIFTY YEARS, INCLUDING SEVERAL EXPLANATIONS
AND A FEW APOLOGIES
63. THE GREAT WAR, WHICH WAS REALLY THE STRUGGLE FOR A
NEW AND BETTER WORLD
64.ANIMATED CHRONOLOGY
65.CONCERNING THE PICTURES
66.AN HISTORICAL READING LIST FOR CHILDREN
67.INDEX
THE STORY OF MANKIND
HIGH Up in the North in the land called Svithjod, there stands a rock.
It is a hundred miles high and a hundred miles wide. Once every thousand
years a little bird comes to this rock to sharpen its beak.
When the rock has thus been worn away, then a single day of eternity
will have gone by.
THE SETTING OF THE STAGE
WE live under the shadow of a gigantic question mark.
Who are we?
Where do we come from?
Whither are we bound?
Slowly, but with persistent courage, we have been pushing this question
mark further and further towards that distant line, beyond the horizon,
where we hope to find our answer.
We have not gone very far.
We still know very little but we have reached the point where (with a
fair degree of accuracy) we can guess at many things.
In this chapter I shall tell you how (according to our best belief) the
stage was set for the first appearance of man.
If we represent the time during which it has been possible for animal
life to exist upon our planet by a line of this length, then the tiny
line just below indicates the age during which man (or a creature more
or less resembling man) has lived upon this earth.
Man was the last to come but the first to use his brain for the purpose
of conquering the forces of nature. That is the reason why we are going
to study him, rather than cats or dogs or horses or any of the other
animals, who, all in their own way, have a very interesting historical
development behind them.
In the beginning, the planet upon which we live was (as far as we now
know) a large ball of flaming matter, a tiny cloud of smoke in the
endless ocean of space. Gradually, in the course of millions of years,
the surface burned itself out, and was covered with a thin layer of
rocks. Upon these lifeless rocks the rain descended in endless torrents,
wearing out the hard granite and carrying the dust to the valleys that
lay hidden between the high cliffs of the steaming earth.
Finally the hour came when the sun broke through the clouds and saw how
this little planet was covered with a few small puddles which were to
develop into the mighty oceans of the eastern and western hemispheres.
Then one day the great wonder happened. What had been dead, gave birth
to life.
The first living cell floated upon the waters of the sea.
For millions of years it drifted aimlessly with the currents. But during
all that time it was developing certain habits that it might survive
more easily upon the inhospitable earth. Some of these cells were
happiest in the dark depths of the lakes and the pools. They took root
in the slimy sediments which had been carried down from the tops of the
hills and they became plants. Others preferred to move about and they
grew strange jointed legs, like scorpions and began to crawl along
the bottom of the sea amidst the plants and the pale green things that
looked like jelly-fishes. Still others (covered with scales) depended
upon a swimming motion to go from place to place in their search for
food, and gradually they populated the ocean with myriads of fishes.
Meanwhile the plants had increased in number and they had to search for
new dwelling places. There was no more room for them at the bottom of
the sea. Reluctantly they left the water and made a new home in the
marshes and on the mud-banks that lay at the foot of the mountains.
Twice a day the tides of the ocean covered them with their brine. For
the rest of the time, the plants made the best of their uncomfortable
situation and tried to survive in the thin air which surrounded the
surface of the planet. After centuries of training, they learned how
to live as comfortably in the air as they had done in the water. They
increased in size and became shrubs and trees and at last they learned
how to grow lovely flowers which attracted the attention of the busy big
bumble-bees and the birds who carried the seeds far and wide until the
whole earth had become covered with green pastures, or lay dark under
the shadow of the big trees. But some of the fishes too had begun to
leave the sea, and they had learned how to breathe with lungs as well as
with gills. We call such creatures amphibious, which means that they
are able to live with equal ease on the land and in the water. The first
frog who crosses your path can tell you all about the pleasures of the
double existence of the amphibian.
Once outside of the water, these animals gradually adapted themselves
more and more to life on land. Some became reptiles (creatures who
crawl like lizards) and they shared the silence of the forests with
the insects. That they might move faster through the soft soil, they
improved upon their legs and their size increased until the world was
populated with gigantic forms (which the hand-books of biology list
under the names of Ichthyosaurus and Megalosaurus and Brontosaurus)
who grew to be thirty to forty feet long and who could have played with
elephants as a full grown cat plays with her kittens.
Some of the members of this reptilian family began to live in the tops
of the trees, which were then often more than a hundred feet high.
They no longer needed their legs for the purpose of walking, but it was
necessary for them to move quickly from branch to branch. And so they
changed a part of their skin into a sort of parachute, which stretched
between the sides of their bodies and the small toes of their fore-feet,
and gradually they covered this skinny parachute with feathers and
made their tails into a steering gear and flew from tree to tree and
developed into true birds.
Then a strange thing happened. All the gigantic reptiles died within a
short time. We do not know the reason. Perhaps it was due to a sudden
change in climate. Perhaps they had grown so large that they could
neither swim nor walk nor crawl, and they starved to death within sight
but not within reach of the big ferns and trees. Whatever the cause, the
million year old world-empire of the big reptiles was over.
The world now began to be occupied by very different creatures. They
were the descendants of the reptiles but they were quite unlike these
because they fed their young from the "mammae" or the breasts of the
mother. Wherefore modern science calls these animals "mammals." They
had shed the scales of the fish. They did not adopt the feathers of
the bird, but they covered their bodies with hair. The mammals however
developed other habits which gave their race a great advantage over the
other animals. The female of the species carried the eggs of the young
inside her body until they were hatched and while all other living
beings, up to that time, had left their children exposed to the dangers
of cold and heat, and the attacks of wild beasts, the mammals kept their
young with them for a long time and sheltered them while they were still
too weak to fight their enemies. In this way the young mammals were
given a much better chance to survive, because they learned many things
from their mothers, as you will know if you have ever watched a cat
teaching her kittens to take care of themselves and how to wash their
faces and how to catch mice.
But of these mammals I need not tell you much for you know them well.
They surround you on all sides. They are your daily companions in the
streets and in your home, and you can see your less familiar cousins
behind the bars of the zoological garden.
And now we come to the parting of the ways when man suddenly leaves the
endless procession of dumbly living and dying creatures and begins to
use his reason to shape the destiny of his race.
One mammal in particular seemed to surpass all others in its ability
to find food and shelter. It had learned to use its fore-feet for the
purpose of holding its prey, and by dint of practice it had developed a
hand-like claw. After innumerable attempts it had learned how to balance
the whole of the body upon the hind legs. (This is a difficult act,
which every child has to learn anew although the human race has been
doing it for over a million years.)
This creature, half ape and half monkey but superior to both, became
the most successful hunter and could make a living in every clime. For
greater safety, it usually moved about in groups. It learned how to make
strange grunts to warn its young of approaching danger and after many
hundreds of thousands of years it began to use these throaty noises for
the purpose of talking.
This creature, though you may hardly believe it, was your first
"man-like" ancestor.
OUR EARLIEST ANCESTORS
WE know very little about the first "true" men. We have never seen
their pictures. In the deepest layer of clay of an ancient soil we
have sometimes found pieces of their bones. These lay buried amidst the
broken skeletons of other animals that have long since disappeared from
the face of the earth. Anthropologists (learned scientists who devote
their lives to the study of man as a member of the animal kingdom) have
taken these bones and they have been able to reconstruct our earliest
ancestors with a fair degree of accuracy.
The great-great-grandfather of the human race was a very ugly and
unattractive mammal. He was quite small, much smaller than the people
of today. The heat of the sun and the biting wind of the cold winter had
coloured his skin a dark brown. His head and most of his body, his arms
and legs too, were covered with long, coarse hair. He had very thin but
strong fingers which made his hands look like those of a monkey. His
forehead was low and his jaw was like the jaw of a wild animal which
uses its teeth both as fork and knife. He wore no clothes. He had seen
no fire except the flames of the rumbling volcanoes which filled the
earth with their smoke and their lava.
He lived in the damp blackness of vast forests, as the pygmies of Africa
do to this very day. When he felt the pangs of hunger he ate raw leaves
and the roots of plants or he took the eggs away from an angry bird and
fed them to his own young. Once in a while, after a long and patient
chase, he would catch a sparrow or a small wild dog or perhaps a rabbit.
These he would eat raw for he had never discovered that food tasted
better when it was cooked.
During the hours of day, this primitive human being prowled about
looking for things to eat.
When night descended upon the earth, he hid his wife and his children
in a hollow tree or behind some heavy boulders, for he was surrounded on
all sides by ferocious animals and when it was dark these animals began
to prowl about, looking for something to eat for their mates and their
own young, and they liked the taste of human beings. It was a world
where you must either eat or be eaten, and life was very unhappy because
it was full of fear and misery.
In summer, man was exposed to the scorching rays of the sun, and during
the winter his children would freeze to death in his arms. When such a
creature hurt itself, (and hunting animals are forever breaking their
bones or spraining their ankles) he had no one to take care of him and
he must die a horrible death.
Like many of the animals who fill the Zoo with their strange noises,
early man liked to jabber. That is to say, he endlessly repeated the
same unintelligible gibberish because it pleased him to hear the sound
of his voice. In due time he learned that he could use this guttural
noise to warn his fellow beings whenever danger threatened and he gave
certain little shrieks which came to mean "there is a tiger!" or "here
come five elephants." Then the others grunted something back at him and
their growl meant, "I see them," or "let us run away and hide." And this
was probably the origin of all language.
But, as I have said before, of these beginnings we know so very little.
Early man had no tools and he built himself no houses. He lived and died
and left no trace of his existence except a few collar-bones and a few
pieces of his skull. These tell us that many thousands of years ago the
world was inhabited by certain mammals who were quite different from
all the other animals--who had probably developed from another unknown
ape-like animal which had learned to walk on its hind-legs and use
its fore-paws as hands--and who were most probably connected with the
creatures who happen to be our own immediate ancestors.
It is little enough we know and the rest is darkness.
PREHISTORIC MAN
PREHISTORIC MAN BEGINS TO MAKE THINGS FOR HIMSELF.
EARLY man did not know what time meant. He kept no records of birthdays
or wedding anniversaries or the hour of death. He had no idea of days or
weeks or even years. But in a general way he kept track of the seasons
for he had noticed that the cold winter was invariably followed by the
mild spring--that spring grew into the hot summer when fruits ripened
and the wild ears of corn were ready to be eaten and that summer ended
when sudden gusts of wind swept the leaves from the trees and a number
of animals were getting ready for the long hibernal sleep.
But now, something unusual and rather frightening had happened.
Something was the matter with the weather. The warm days of summer had
come very late. The fruits had not ripened. The tops of the mountains
which used to be covered with grass now lay deeply hidden underneath a
heavy burden of snow.
Then, one morning, a number of wild people, different from the other
creatures who lived in that neighbourhood, came wandering down from the
region of the high peaks. They looked lean and appeared to be starving.
They uttered sounds which no one could understand. They seemed to
say that they were hungry. There was not food enough for both the old
inhabitants and the newcomers. When they tried to stay more than a few
days there was a terrible battle with claw-like hands and feet and whole
families were killed. The others fled back to their mountain slopes and
died in the next blizzard.
But the people in the forest were greatly frightened. All the time the
days grew shorter and the nights grew colder than they ought to have
been.
Finally, in a gap between two high hills, there appeared a tiny speck
of greenish ice. Rapidly it increased in size. A gigantic glacier came
sliding downhill. Huge stones were being pushed into the valley. With
the noise of a dozen thunderstorms torrents of ice and mud and blocks of
granite suddenly tumbled among the people of the forest and killed them
while they slept. Century old trees were crushed into kindling wood. And
then it began to snow.
It snowed for months and months. All the plants died and the animals
fled in search of the southern sun. Man hoisted his young upon his
back and followed them. But he could not travel as fast as the wilder
creatures and he was forced to choose between quick thinking or quick
dying. He seems to have preferred the former for he has managed to
survive the terrible glacial periods which upon four different occasions
threatened to kill every human being on the face of the earth.
In the first place it was necessary that man clothe himself lest
he freeze to death. He learned how to dig holes and cover them with
branches and leaves and in these traps he caught bears and hyenas, which
he then killed with heavy stones and whose skins he used as coats for
himself and his family.
Next came the housing problem. This was simple. Many animals were in the
habit of sleeping in dark caves. Man now followed their example, drove
the animals out of their warm homes and claimed them for his own.
Even so, the climate was too severe for most people and the old and the
young died at a terrible rate. Then a genius bethought himself of
the use of fire. Once, while out hunting, he had been caught in a
forest-fire. He remembered that he had been almost roasted to death by
the flames. Thus far fire had been an enemy. Now it became a friend. A
dead tree was dragged into the cave and lighted by means of smouldering
branches from a burning wood. This turned the cave into a cozy little
room.
And then one evening a dead chicken fell into the fire. It was not
rescued until it had been well roasted. Man discovered that meat tasted
better when cooked and he then and there discarded one of the old habits
which he had shared with the other animals and began to prepare his
food.
In this way thousands of years passed. Only the people with the
cleverest brains survived. They had to struggle day and night against
cold and hunger. They were forced to invent tools. They learned how to
sharpen stones into axes and how to make hammers. They were obliged to
put up large stores of food for the endless days of the winter and they
found that clay could be made into bowls and jars and hardened in the
rays of the sun. And so the glacial period, which had threatened to
destroy the human race, became its greatest teacher because it forced
man to use his brain.
HIEROGLYPHICS
THE EGYPTIANS INVENT THE ART OF WRITING AND THE RECORD OF HISTORY BEGINS
THESE earliest ancestors of ours who lived in the great European
wilderness were rapidly learning many new things. It is safe to say that
in due course of time they would have given up the ways of savages and
would have developed a civilisation of their own. But suddenly there
came an end to their isolation. They were discovered.
A traveller from an unknown southland who had dared to cross the sea
and the high mountain passes had found his way to the wild people of the
European continent. He came from Africa. His home was in Egypt.
The valley of the Nile had developed a high stage of civilisation
thousands of years before the people of the west had dreamed of the
possibilities of a fork or a wheel or a house. And we shall therefore
leave our great-great-grandfathers in their caves, while we visit
the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean, where stood the
earliest school of the human race.
The Egyptians have taught us many things. They were excellent farmers.
They knew all about irrigation. They built temples which were afterwards
copied by the Greeks and which served as the earliest models for the
churches in which we worship nowadays. They had invented a calendar
which proved such a useful instrument for the purpose of measuring time
that it has survived with a few changes until today. But most important
of all, the Egyptians had learned how to preserve speech for the benefit
of future generations. They had invented the art of writing.
We are so accustomed to newspapers and books and magazines that we take
it for granted that the world has always been able to read and write.
As a matter of fact, writing, the most important of all inventions, is
quite new. Without written documents we would be like cats and dogs, who
can only teach their kittens and their puppies a few simple things and
who, because they cannot write, possess no way in which they can make
use of the experience of those generations of cats and dogs that have
gone before.
In the first century before our era, when the Romans came to Egypt, they
found the valley full of strange little pictures which seemed to have
something to do with the history of the country. But the Romans were not
interested in "anything foreign" and did not inquire into the origin of
these queer figures which covered the walls of the temples and the walls
of the palaces and endless reams of flat sheets made out of the papyrus
reed. The last of the Egyptian priests who had understood the holy art
of making such pictures had died several years before. Egypt deprived
of its independence had become a store-house filled with important
historical documents which no one could decipher and which were of no
earthly use to either man or beast.
Seventeen centuries went by and Egypt remained a land of mystery. But
in the year 1798 a French general by the name of Bonaparte happened to
visit eastern Africa to prepare for an attack upon the British Indian
Colonies. He did not get beyond the Nile, and his campaign was a
failure. But, quite accidentally, the famous French expedition solved
the problem of the ancient Egyptian picture-language.
One day a young French officer, much bored by the dreary life of his
little fortress on the Rosetta river (a mouth of the Nile) decided to
spend a few idle hours rummaging among the ruins of the Nile Delta. And
behold! he found a stone which greatly puzzled him. Like everything else
in Egypt it was covered with little figures. But this particular slab of
black basalt was different from anything that had ever been discovered.
It carried three inscriptions. One of these was in Greek. The Greek
language was known. "All that is necessary," so he reasoned, "is to
compare the Greek text with the Egyptian figures, and they will at once
tell their secrets."
The plan sounded simple enough but it took more than twenty years to
solve the riddle. In the year 1802 a French professor by the name of
Champollion began to compare the Greek and the Egyptian texts of
the famous Rosetta stone. In the year 1823 he announced that he had
discovered the meaning of fourteen little figures. A short time later
he died from overwork, but the main principles of Egyptian writing had
become known. Today the story of the valley of the Nile is better known
to us than the story of the Mississippi River. We possess a written
record which covers four thousand years of chronicled history.
As the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics (the word means "sacred writing")
have played such a very great role in history, (a few of them in
modified form have even found their way into our own alphabet,) you
ought to know something about the ingenious system which was used fifty
centuries ago to preserve the spoken word for the benefit of the coming
generations.
Of course, you know what a sign language is. Every Indian story of our
western plains has a chapter devoted to strange messages writter{sic}
in the form of little pictures which tell how many buffaloes were killed
and how many hunters there were in a certain party. As a rule it is not
difficult to understand the meaning of such messages.
Ancient Egyptian, however, was not a sign language. The clever people of
the Nile had passed beyond that stage long before. Their pictures meant
a great deal more than the object which they represented, as I shall try
to explain to you now.
Suppose that you were Champollion, and that you were examining a stack
of papyrus sheets, all covered with hieroglyphics. Suddenly you came
across a picture of a man with a saw. "Very well," you would say, "that
means of course that a farmer went out to cut down a tree." Then you
take another papyrus. It tells the story of a queen who had died at the
age of eighty-two. In the midst of a sentence appears the picture of the
man with the saw. Queens of eighty-two do not handle saws. The picture
therefore must mean something else. But what?
That is the riddle which the Frenchman finally solved. He discovered
that the Egyptians were the first to use what we now call "phonetic
writing"--a system of characters which reproduce the "sound" (or phone)
of the spoken word and which make it possible for us to translate all
our spoken words into a written form, with the help of only a few dots
and dashes and pothooks.
Let us return for a moment to the little fellow with the saw. The word
"saw" either means a certain tool which you will find in a carpenter's
shop, or it means the past tense of the verb "to see."
This is what had happened to the word during the course of centuries.
First of all it had meant only the particular tool which it represented.
Then that meaning had been lost and it had become the past participle
of a verb. After several hundred years, the Egyptians lost sight of
both these meanings and the picture {illust.} came to stand for a single
letter, the letter S. A short sentence will show you what I mean.
Here is a modern English sentence as it would have been written in
hieroglyphics. {illust.}
The {illust.} either means one of these two round objects in your head,
which allow you to see or it means "I," the person who is talking.
A {illust.} is either an insect which gathers honey, or it represents
the verb "to be" which means to exist. Again, it may be the first part
of a verb like "be-come" or "be-have." In this particular instance it
is followed by {illust.} which means a "leaf" or "leave" or "lieve" (the
sound of all three words is the same).
The "eye" you know all about.
Finally you get the picture of a {illust.}. It is a giraffe It is part
of the old sign-language out of which the hieroglyphics developed.
You can now read that sentence without much difficulty.
"I believe I saw a giraffe."
Having invented this system the Egyptians developed it during thousands
of years until they could write anything they wanted, and they used
these "canned words" to send messages to friends, to keep business
accounts and to keep a record of the history of their country, that
future generations might benefit by the mistakes of the past.
THE NILE VALLEY
THE BEGINNING OF CIVILISATION IN THE VALLEY OF THE NILE
THE history of man is the record of a hungry creature in search of food.
Wherever food was plentiful, thither man has travelled to make his home.
The fame of the Valley of the Nile must have spread at an early date.
From the interior of Africa and from the desert of Arabia and from the
western part of Asia people had flocked to Egypt to claim their share
of the rich farms. Together these invaders had formed a new race which
called itself "Remi" or "the Men" just as we sometimes call America
"God's own country." They had good reason to be grateful to a Fate which
had carried them to this narrow strip of land. In the summer of each
year the Nile turned the valley into a shallow lake and when the waters
receded all the grainfields and the pastures were covered with several
inches of the most fertile clay.
In Egypt a kindly river did the work of a million men and made it
possible to feed the teeming population of the first large cities of
which we have any record. It is true that all the arable land was not
in the valley. But a complicated system of small canals and well-sweeps
carried water from the river-level to the top of the highest banks
and an even more intricate system of irrigation trenches spread it
throughout the land.
While man of the prehistoric age had been obliged to spend sixteen hours
out of every twenty-four gathering food for himself and the members of
his tribe, the Egyptian peasant or the inhabitant of the Egyptian city
found himself possessed of a certain leisure. He used this spare time
to make himself many things that were merely ornamental and not in the
least bit useful.
More than that. One day he discovered that his brain was capable of
thinking all kinds of thoughts which had nothing to do with the problems
of eating and sleeping and finding a home for the children. The Egyptian
began to speculate upon many strange problems that confronted him.
Where did the stars come from? Who made the noise of the thunder which
frightened him so terribly? Who made the River Nile rise with such
regularity that it was possible to base the calendar upon the appearance
and the disappearance of the annual floods? Who was he, himself, a
strange little creature surrounded on all sides by death and sickness
and yet happy and full of laughter?
He asked these many questions and certain people obligingly stepped
forward to answer these inquiries to the best of their ability. The
Egyptians called them "priests" and they became the guardians of his
thoughts and gained great respect in the community. They were highly
learned men who were entrusted with the sacred task of keeping the
written records. They understood that it is not good for man to
think only of his immediate advantage in this world and they drew his
attention to the days of the future when his soul would dwell beyond the
mountains of the west and must give an account of his deeds to Osiris,
the mighty God who was the Ruler of the Living and the Dead and who
judged the acts of men according to their merits. Indeed, the priests
made so much of that future day in the realm of Isis and Osiris that
the Egyptians began to regard life merely as a short preparation for the
Hereafter and turned the teeming valley of the Nile into a land devoted
to the Dead.
In a strange way, the Egyptians had come to believe that no soul could
enter the realm of Osiris without the possession of the body which had
been its place of residence in this world. Therefore as soon as a man
was dead his relatives took his corpse and had it embalmed. For weeks
it was soaked in a solution of natron and then it was filled with pitch.
The Persian word for pitch was "Mumiai" and the embalmed body was called
a "Mummy." It was wrapped in yards and yards of specially prepared linen
and it was placed in a specially prepared coffin ready to be removed to
its final home. But an Egyptian grave was a real home where the body was
surrounded by pieces of furniture and musical instruments (to while away
the dreary hours of waiting) and by little statues of cooks and bakers
and barbers (that the occupant of this dark home might be decently
provided with food and need not go about unshaven).
Originally these graves had been dug into the rocks of the western
mountains but as the Egyptians moved northward they were obliged to
build their cemeteries in the desert. The desert however is full of
wild animals and equally wild robbers and they broke into the graves and
disturbed the mummy or stole the jewelry that had been buried with the
body. To prevent such unholy desecration the Egyptians used to build
small mounds of stones on top of the graves. These little mounds
gradually grew in size, because the rich people built higher mounds than
the poor and there was a good deal of competition to see who could make
the highest hill of stones. The record was made by King Khufu, whom the
Greeks called Cheops and who lived thirty centuries before our era. His
mound, which the Greeks called a pyramid (because the Egyptian word for
high was pir-em-us) was over five hundred feet high.
It covered more than thirteen acres of desert which is three times as
much space as that occupied by the church of St. Peter, the largest
edifice of the Christian world.
During twenty years, over a hundred thousand men were busy carrying the
necessary stones from the other side of the river--ferrying them across
the Nile (how they ever managed to do this, we do not understand),
dragging them in many instances a long distance across the desert and
finally hoisting them into their correct position. But so well did
the King's architects and engineers perform their task that the narrow
passage-way which leads to the royal tomb in the heart of the stone
monster has never yet been pushed out of shape by the weight of those
thousands of tons of stone which press upon it from all sides.
THE STORY OF EGYPT
THE RISE AND FALL OF EGYPT
THE river Nile was a kind friend but occasionally it was a hard
taskmaster. It taught the people who lived along its banks the noble art
of "team-work." They depended upon each other to build their irrigation
trenches and keep their dikes in repair. In this way they learned how
to get along with their neighbours and their mutual-benefit-association
quite easily developed into an organised state.
Then one man grew more powerful than most of his neighbours and he
became the leader of the community and their commander-in-chief when the
envious neighbours of western Asia invaded the prosperous valley. In
due course of time he became their King and ruled all the land from the
Mediterranean to the mountains of the west.
But these political adventures of the old Pharaohs (the word meant
"the Man who lived in the Big House") rarely interested the patient and
toiling peasant of the grain fields. Provided he was not obliged to pay
more taxes to his King than he thought just, he accepted the rule of
Pharaoh as he accepted the rule of Mighty Osiris.
It was different however when a foreign invader came and robbed him of
his possessions. After twenty centuries of independent life, a savage
Arab tribe of shepherds, called the Hyksos, attacked Egypt and for five
hundred years they were the masters of the valley of the Nile. They were
highly un-popular and great hate was also felt for the Hebrews who
came to the land of Goshen to find a shelter after their long wandering
through the desert and who helped the foreign usurper by acting as his
tax-gatherers and his civil servants.
But shortly after the year 1700 B.C. the people of Thebes began a
revolution and after a long struggle the Hyksos were driven out of the
country and Egypt was free once more.
A thousand years later, when Assyria conquered all of western Asia,
Egypt became part of the empire of Sardanapalus. In the seventh century
B.C. it became once more an independent state which obeyed the rule of a
king who lived in the city of Sais in the Delta of the Nile. But in the
year 525 B.C., Cambyses, the king of the Persians, took possession
of Egypt and in the fourth century B.C., when Persia was conquered by
Alexander the Great, Egypt too became a Macedonian province. It regained
a semblance of independence when one of Alexander's generals set himself
up as king of a new Egyptian state and founded the dynasty of the
Ptolemies, who resided in the newly built city of Alexandria.
Finally, in the year 89 B.C., the Romans came. The last Egyptian queen,
Cleopatra, tried her best to save the country. Her beauty and charm were
more dangerous to the Roman generals than half a dozen Egyptian army
corps. Twice she was successful in her attacks upon the hearts of her
Roman conquerors. But in the year 30 B.C., Augustus, the nephew and
heir of Caesar, landed in Alexandria. He did not share his late uncle's
admiration for the lovely princess. He destroyed her armies, but spared
her life that he might make her march in his triumph as part of the
spoils of war. When Cleopatra heard of this plan, she killed herself by
taking poison. And Egypt became a Roman province.
MESOPOTAMIA
MESOPOTAMIA--THE SECOND CENTRE OF EASTERN CIVILISATION
I AM going to take you to the top of the highest pyramid and I am going
to ask that you imagine yourself possessed of the eyes of a hawk. Way,
way off, in the distance, far beyond the yellow sands of the desert, you
will see something green and shimmering. It is a valley situated between
two rivers. It is the Paradise of the Old Testament. It is the land of
mystery and wonder which the Greeks called Mesopotamia--the "country
between the rivers."
The names of the two rivers are the Euphrates (which the Babylonians
called the Purattu) and the Tigris (which was known as the Diklat). They
begin their course amidst the snows of the mountains of Armenia where
Noah's Ark found a resting place and slowly they flow through the
southern plain until they reach the muddy banks of the Persian gulf.
They perform a very useful service. They turn the arid regions of
western Asia into a fertile garden.
The valley of the Nile had attracted people because it had offered them
food upon fairly easy terms. The "land between the rivers" was popular
for the same reason. It was a country full of promise and both the
inhabitants of the northern mountains and the tribes which roamed
through the southern deserts tried to claim this territory as their
own and most exclusive possession. The constant rivalry between the
mountaineers and the desert-nomads led to endless warfare. Only the
strongest and the bravest could hope to survive and that will explain
why Mesopotamia became the home of a very strong race of men who
were capable of creating a civilisation which was in every respect as
important as that of Egypt.
THE SUMERIANS
THE SUMERIAN NAIL WRITERS, WHOSE CLAY TABLETS TELL US THE STORY OF
ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA, THE GREAT SEMITIC MELTING-POT
THE fifteenth century was an age of great discoveries. Columbus tried
to find a way to the island of Kathay and stumbled upon a new and
unsuspected continent. An Austrian bishop equipped an expedition which
was to travel eastward and find the home of the Grand Duke of Muscovy,
a voyage which led to complete failure, for Moscow was not visited by
western men until a generation later. Meanwhile a certain Venetian
by the name of Barbero had explored the ruins of western Asia and had
brought back reports of a most curious language which he had found
carved in the rocks of the temples of Shiraz and engraved upon endless
pieces of baked clay.
But Europe was busy with many other things and it was not until the
end of the eighteenth century that the first "cuneiform inscriptions"
(so-called because the letters were wedge-shaped and wedge is called
"Cuneus" in Latin) were brought to Europe by a Danish surveyor, named
Niebuhr. Then it took thirty years before a patient German school-master
by the name of Grotefend had deciphered the first four letters, the
D, the A, the R and the SH, the name of the Persian King Darius.
And another twenty years had to go by until a British officer, Henry
Rawlinson, who found the famous inscription of Behistun, gave us a
workable key to the nail-writing of western Asia.
Compared to the problem of deciphering these nail-writings, the job of
Champollion had been an easy one. The Egyptians used pictures. But the
Sumerians, the earliest inhabitants of Mesopotamia, who had hit upon
the idea of scratching their words in tablets of clay, had discarded
pictures entirely and had evolved a system of V-shaped figures which
showed little connection with the pictures out of which they had been
developed. A few examples will show you what I mean. In the beginning a
star, when drawn with a nail into a brick looked as follows: {illust.}
This sign however was too cumbersome and after a short while when the
meaning of "heaven" was added to that of star the picture was simplified
in this way {illust.} which made it even more of a puzzle. In the same
way an ox changed from {illust} into {illust.} and a fish changed from
{illust.} into {illust.} The sun was originally a plain circle {illust.}
and became {illust.} If we were using the Sumerian script today we would
make an {illust.} look like {illust.}. This system of writing down our
ideas looks rather complicated but for more than thirty centuries it
was used by the Sumerians and the Babylonians and the Assyrians and the
Persians and all the different races which forced their way into the
fertile valley.
The story of Mesopotamia is one of endless warfare and conquest. First
the Sumerians came from the North. They were a white People who had
lived in the mountains. They had been accustomed to worship their Gods
on the tops of hills. After they had entered the plain they constructed
artificial little hills on top of which they built their altars. They
did not know how to build stairs and they therefore surrounded their
towers with sloping galleries. Our engineers have borrowed this idea, as
you may see in our big railroad stations where ascending galleries lead
from one floor to another. We may have borrowed other ideas from the
Sumerians but we do not know it. The Sumerians were entirely ab-sorbed
by those races that entered the fertile valley at a later date. Their
towers however still stand amidst the ruins of Mesopotamia. The Jews saw
them when they went into exile in the land of Babylon and they called
them towers of Babillli, or towers of Babel.
In the fortieth century before our era, the Sumerians had entered
Mesopotamia. They were soon afterwards over-powered by the Akkadians,
one of the many tribes from the desert of Arabia who speak a common
dialect and who are known as the "Semites," because in the olden days
people believed them to be the direct descendants of Shem, one of the
three sons of Noah. A thousand years later, the Akkadians were forced to
submit to the rule of the Amorites, another Semitic desert tribe whose
great King Hammurabi built himself a magnificent palace in the holy
city of Babylon and who gave his people a set of laws which made the
Babylonian state the best administered empire of the ancient world. Next
the Hittites, whom you will also meet in the Old Testament, over-ran the
Fertile Valley and destroyed whatever they could not carry away. They
in turn were vanquished by the followers of the great desert God, Ashur,
who called themselves Assyrians and who made the city of Nineveh the
center of a vast and terrible empire which conquered all of western Asia
and Egypt and gathered taxes from countless subject races until the end
of the seventh century before the birth of Christ when the Chaldeans,
also a Semitic tribe, re-established Babylon and made that city the most
important capital of that day. Nebuchadnezzar, the best known of their
Kings, encouraged the study of science, and our modern knowledge of
astronomy and mathematics is all based upon certain first principles
which were discovered by the Chaldeans. In the year 538 B.C. a crude
tribe of Persian shepherds invaded this old land and overthrew the
empire of the Chaldeans. Two hundred years later, they in turn were
overthrown by Alexander the Great, who turned the Fertile Valley, the
old melting-pot of so many Semitic races, into a Greek province. Next
came the Romans and after the Romans, the Turks, and Mesopotamia, the
second centre of the world's civilisation, became a vast wilderness
where huge mounds of earth told a story of ancient glory.
MOSES
THE STORY OF MOSES, THE LEADER OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE
SOME time during the twentieth century before our era, a small and
unimportant tribe of Semitic shepherds had left its old home, which was
situated in the land of Ur on the mouth of the Euphrates, and had tried
to find new pastures within the domain of the Kings of Babylonia. They
had been driven away by the royal soldiers and they had moved westward
looking for a little piece of unoccupied territory where they might set
up their tents.
This tribe of shepherds was known as the Hebrews or, as we call them,
the Jews. They had wandered far and wide, and after many years of dreary
peregrinations they had been given shelter in Egypt. For more than five
centuries they had dwelt among the Egyptians and when their adopted
country had been overrun by the Hyksos marauders (as I told you in
the story of Egypt) they had managed to make themselves useful to the
foreign invader and had been left in the undisturbed possession of their
grazing fields. But after a long war of independence the Egyptians had
driven the Hyksos out of the valley of the Nile and then the Jews had
come upon evil times for they had been degraded to the rank of common
slaves and they had been forced to work on the royal roads and on the
Pyramids. And as the frontiers were guarded by the Egyptian soldiers it
had been impossible for the Jews to escape.
After many years of suffering they were saved from their miserable
fate by a young Jew, called Moses, who for a long time had dwelt in the
desert and there had learned to appreciate the simple virtues of his
earliest ancestors, who had kept away from cities and city-life and had
refused to let themselves be corrupted by the ease and the luxury of a
foreign civilisation.
Moses decided to bring his people back to a love of the ways of the
patriarchs. He succeeded in evading the Egyptian troops that were sent
after him and led his fellow tribesmen into the heart of the plain at
the foot of Mount Sinai. During his long and lonely life in the desert,
he had learned to revere the strength of the great God of the Thunder
and the Storm, who ruled the high heavens and upon whom the shepherds
depended for life and light and breath. This God, one of the many
divinities who were widely worshipped in western Asia, was called
Jehovah, and through the teaching of Moses, he became the sole Master of
the Hebrew race.
One day, Moses disappeared from the camp of the Jews. It was whispered
that he had gone away carrying two tablets of rough-hewn stone. That
afternoon, the top of the mountain was lost to sight. The darkness of
a terrible storm hid it from the eye of man. But when Moses returned,
behold! there stood engraved upon the tablets the words which Jehovah
had spoken unto the people of Israel amidst the crash of his thunder and
the blinding flashes of his lightning. And from that moment, Jehovah was
recognised by all the Jews as the Highest Master of their Fate, the only
True God, who had taught them how to live holy lives when he bade them
to follow the wise lessons of his Ten Commandments.
They followed Moses when he bade them continue their journey through the
desert. They obeyed him when he told them what to eat and drink and what
to avoid that they might keep well in the hot climate. And finally after
many years of wandering they came to a land which seemed pleasant and
prosperous. It was called Palestine, which means the country of the
"Pilistu" the Philistines, a small tribe of Cretans who had settled
along the coast after they had been driven away from their own island.
Unfortunately, the mainland, Palestine, was already inhabited by another
Semitic race, called the Canaanites. But the Jews forced their way into
the valleys and built themselves cities and constructed a mighty temple
in a town which they named Jerusalem, the Home of Peace. As for Moses,
he was no longer the leader of his people. He had been allowed to see
the mountain ridges of Palestine from afar. Then he had closed his tired
eyes for all time. He had worked faithfully and hard to please Jehovah.
Not only had he guided his brethren out of foreign slavery into the free
and independent life of a new home but he had also made the Jews the
first of all nations to worship a single God.
THE PHOENICIANS
THE PHOENICIANS WHO GAVE US OUR ALPHABET
THE Phoenicians, who were the neighbours of the Jews, were a Semitic
tribe which at a very early age had settled along the shores of the
Mediterranean. They had built themselves two well-fortified towns, Tyre
and Sidon, and within a short time they had gained a monopoly of the
trade of the western seas. Their ships went regularly to Greece and
Italy and Spain and they even ventured beyond the straits of Gibraltar
to visit the Scilly islands where they could buy tin. Wherever they
went, they built themselves small trading stations, which they called
colonies. Many of these were the origin of modern cities, such as Cadiz
and Marseilles.
They bought and sold whatever promised to bring them a good profit.
They were not troubled by a conscience. If we are to believe all their
neighbours they did not know what the words honesty or integrity meant.
They regarded a well-filled treasure chest the highest ideal of all good
citizens. Indeed they were very unpleasant people and did not have a
single friend. Nevertheless they have rendered all coming generations
one service of the greatest possible value. They gave us our alphabet.
The Phoenicians had been familiar with the art of writing, invented by
the Sumerians. But they regarded these pothooks as a clumsy waste
of time. They were practical business men and could not spend hours
engraving two or three letters. They set to work and invented a new
system of writing which was greatly superior to the old one. They
borrowed a few pictures from the Egyptians and they simplified a number
of the wedge-shaped figures of the Sumerians. They sacrificed the pretty
looks of the older system for the advantage of speed and they reduced
the thousands of different images to a short and handy alphabet of
twenty-two letters.
In due course of time, this alphabet travelled across the AEgean Sea and
entered Greece. The Greeks added a few letters of their own and carried
the improved system to Italy. The Romans modified the figures somewhat
and in turn taught them to the wild barbarians of western Europe. Those
wild barbarians were our own ancestors, and that is the reason why this
book is written in characters that are of Phoenician origin and not
in the hieroglyphics of the Egyptians or in the nail-script of the
Sumerians.
THE INDO-EUROPEANS
THE INDO-EUROPEAN PERSIANS CONQUER THE SEMITIC AND THE EGYPTIAN WORLD
THE world of Egypt and Babylon and Assyria and Phoenicia had existed
almost thirty centuries and the venerable races of the Fertile Valley
were getting old and tired. Their doom was sealed when a new and
more energetic race appeared upon the horizon. We call this race the
Indo-European race, because it conquered not only Europe but also made
itself the ruling class in the country which is now known as British
India.
These Indo-Europeans were white men like the Semites but they spoke
a different language which is regarded as the common ancestor of all
European tongues with the exception of Hungarian and Finnish and the
Basque dialects of Northern Spain.
When we first hear of them, they had been living along the shores of the
Caspian Sea for many centuries. But one day they had packed their tents
and they had wandered forth in search of a new home. Some of them had
moved into the mountains of Central Asia and for many centuries they had
lived among the peaks which surround the plateau of Iran and that is why
we call them Aryans. Others had followed the setting sun and they had
taken possession of the plains of Europe as I shall tell you when I give
you the story of Greece and Rome.
For the moment we must follow the Aryans. Under the leadership of
Zarathustra (or Zoroaster) who was their great teacher many of them had
left their mountain homes to follow the swiftly flowing Indus river on
its way to the sea.
Others had preferred to stay among the hills of western Asia and there
they had founded the half-independent communities of the Medes and the
Persians, two peoples whose names we have copied from the old Greek
history-books. In the seventh century before the birth of Christ, the
Medes had established a kingdom of their own called Media, but this
perished when Cyrus, the chief of a clan known as the Anshan, made
himself king of all the Persian tribes and started upon a career of
conquest which soon made him and his children the undisputed masters of
the whole of western Asia and of Egypt.
Indeed, with such energy did these Indo-European Persians push their
triumphant campaigns in the west that they soon found themselves in
serious difficulties with certain other Indo-European tribes which
centuries before had moved into Europe and had taken possession of the
Greek peninsula and the islands of the AEgean Sea.
These difficulties led to the three famous wars between Greece and
Persia during which King Darius and King Xerxes of Persia invaded the
northern part of the peninsula. They ravaged the lands of the Greeks and
tried very hard to get a foothold upon the European continent.
But in this they did not succeed. The navy of Athens proved
unconquerable. By cutting off the lines of supplies of the Persian
armies, the Greek sailors invariably forced the Asiatic rulers to return
to their base.
It was the first encounter between Asia, the ancient teacher, and
Europe, the young and eager pupil. A great many of the other chapters
of this book will tell you how the struggle between east and west has
continued until this very day.
THE AEGEAN SEA
THE PEOPLE OF THE AEGEAN SEA CARRIED THE CIVILISATION OF OLD ASIA INTO
THE WILDERNESS OF EUROPE
WHEN Heinrich Schliemann was a little boy his father told him the story
of Troy. He liked that story better than anything else he had ever heard
and he made up his mind, that as soon as he was big enough to leave
home, he would travel to Greece and "find Troy." That he was the son of
a poor country parson in a Mecklenburg village did not bother him. He
knew that he would need money but he decided to gather a fortune first
and do the digging afterwards. As a matter of fact, he managed to get
a large fortune within a very short time, and as soon as he had enough
money to equip an expedition, he went to the northwest corner of Asia
Minor, where he supposed that Troy had been situated.
In that particular nook of old Asia Minor, stood a high mound covered
with grainfields. According to tradition it had been the home of Priamus
the king of Troy. Schliemann, whose enthusiasm was somewhat greater than
his knowledge, wasted no time in preliminary explorations. At once he
began to dig. And he dug with such zeal and such speed that his trench
went straight through the heart of the city for which he was looking
and carried him to the ruins of another buried town which was at least
a thousand years older than the Troy of which Homer had written. Then
something very interesting occurred. If Schliemann had found a few
polished stone hammers and perhaps a few pieces of crude pottery, no one
would have been surprised. Instead of discovering such objects, which
people had generally associated with the prehistoric men who had lived
in these regions before the coming of the Greeks, Schliemann found
beautiful statuettes and very costly jewelry and ornamented vases of a
pattern that was unknown to the Greeks. He ventured the suggestion that
fully ten centuries before the great Trojan war, the coast of the AEgean
had been inhabited by a mysterious race of men who in many ways had been
the superiors of the wild Greek tribes who had invaded their country and
had destroyed their civilisation or absorbed it until it had lost
all trace of originality. And this proved to be the case. In the late
seventies of the last century, Schliemann visited the ruins of Mycenae,
ruins which were so old that Roman guide-books marvelled at their
antiquity. There again, beneath the flat slabs of stone of a small round
enclosure, Schliemann stumbled upon a wonderful treasure-trove, which
had been left behind by those mysterious people who had covered the
Greek coast with their cities and who had built walls, so big and so
heavy and so strong, that the Greeks called them the work of the Titans,
those god-like giants who in very olden days had used to play ball with
mountain peaks.
A very careful study of these many relics has done away with some of the
romantic features of the story. The makers of these early works of
art and the builders of these strong fortresses were no sorcerers, but
simple sailors and traders. They had lived in Crete, and on the many
small islands of the AEgean Sea. They had been hardy mariners and they
had turned the AEgean into a center of commerce for the exchange of
goods between the highly civilised east and the slowly developing
wilderness of the European mainland.
For more than a thousand years they had maintained an island empire
which had developed a very high form of art. Indeed their most important
city, Cnossus, on the northern coast of Crete, had been entirely modern
in its insistence upon hygiene and comfort. The palace had been properly
drained and the houses had been provided with stoves and the Cnossians
had been the first people to make a daily use of the hitherto unknown
bathtub. The palace of their King had been famous for its winding
staircases and its large banqueting hall. The cellars underneath this
palace, where the wine and the grain and the olive-oil were stored, had
been so vast and had so greatly impressed the first Greek visitors, that
they had given rise to the story of the "labyrinth," the name which we
give to a structure with so many complicated passages that it is almost
impossible to find our way out, once the front door has closed upon our
frightened selves.
But what finally became of this great AEgean Empire and what caused its
sudden downfall, that I can not tell.
The Cretans were familiar with the art of writing, but no one has yet
been able to decipher their inscriptions. Their history therefore is
unknown to us. We have to reconstruct the record of their adventures
from the ruins which the AEgeans have left behind. These ruins make it
clear that the AEgean world was suddenly conquered by a less civilised
race which had recently come from the plains of northern Europe. Unless
we are very much mistaken, the savages who were responsible for the
destruction of the Cretan and the AEgean civilisation were none other
than certain tribes of wandering shepherds who had just taken possession
of the rocky peninsula between the Adriatic and the AEgean seas and who
are known to us as Greeks.
THE GREEKS
MEANWHILE THE INDO-EUROPEAN TRIBE OF THE HELLENES WAS TAKING POSSESSION
OF GREECE
THE Pyramids were a thousand years old and were beginning to show the
first signs of decay, and Hammurabi, the wise king of Babylon, had been
dead and buried several centuries, when a small tribe of shepherds left
their homes along the banks of the River Danube and wandered southward
in search of fresh pastures. They called themselves Hellenes, after
Hellen, the son of Deucalion and Pyrrha. According to the old myths
these were the only two human beings who had escaped the great flood,
which countless years before had destroyed all the people of the world,
when they had grown so wicked that they disgusted Zeus, the mighty God,
who lived on Mount Olympus.
Of these early Hellenes we know nothing. Thucydides, the historian of
the fall of Athens, describing his earliest ancestors, said that they
"did not amount to very much," and this was probably true. They were
very ill-mannered. They lived like pigs and threw the bodies of their
enemies to the wild dogs who guarded their sheep. They had very little
respect for other people's rights, and they killed the natives of the
Greek peninsula (who were called the Pelasgians) and stole their farms
and took their cattle and made their wives and daughters slaves and
wrote endless songs praising the courage of the clan of the Achaeans,
who had led the Hellenic advance-guard into the mountains of Thessaly
and the Peloponnesus.
But here and there, on the tops of high rocks, they saw the castles
of the AEgeans and those they did not attack for they feared the metal
swords and the spears of the AEgean soldiers and knew that they could
not hope to defeat them with their clumsy stone axes.
For many centuries they continued to wander from valley to valley and
from mountain side to mountain side Then the whole of the land had been
occupied and the migration had come to an end.
That moment was the beginning of Greek civilisation. The Greek farmer,
living within sight of the AEgean colonies, was finally driven by
curiosity to visit his haughty neighbours. He discovered that he could
learn many useful things from the men who dwelt behind the high stone
walls of Mycenae, and Tiryns.
He was a clever pupil. Within a short time he mastered the art of
handling those strange iron weapons which the AEgeans had brought
from Babylon and from Thebes. He came to understand the mysteries of
navigation. He began to build little boats for his own use.
And when he had learned everything the AEgeans could teach him he turned
upon his teachers and drove them back to their islands. Soon afterwards
he ventured forth upon the sea and conquered all the cities of the
AEgean. Finally in the fifteenth century before our era he plundered and
ravaged Cnossus and ten centuries after their first appearance upon the
scene the Hellenes were the undisputed rulers of Greece, of the
AEgean and of the coastal regions of Asia Minor. Troy, the last great
commercial stronghold of the older civilisation, was destroyed in the
eleventh century B.C. European history was to begin in all seriousness.
THE GREEK CITIES
THE GREEK CITIES THAT WERE REALLY STATES
WE modern people love the sound of the word "big." We pride ourselves
upon the fact that we belong to the "biggest" country in the world and
possess the "biggest" navy and grow the "biggest" oranges and potatoes,
and we love to live in cities of "millions" of inhabitants and when we
are dead we are buried in the "biggest cemetery of the whole state."
A citizen of ancient Greece, could he have heard us talk, would not have
known what we meant. "Moderation in all things" was the ideal of
his life and mere bulk did not impress him at all. And this love of
moderation was not merely a hollow phrase used upon special occasions:
it influenced the life of the Greeks from the day of their birth to the
hour of their death. It was part of their literature and it made them
build small but perfect temples. It found expression in the clothes
which the men wore and in the rings and the bracelets of their wives. It
followed the crowds that went to the theatre and made them hoot down any
playwright who dared to sin against the iron law of good taste or good
sense.
The Greeks even insisted upon this quality in their politicians and in
their most popular athletes. When a powerful runner came to Sparta and
boasted that he could stand longer on one foot than any other man in
Hellas the people drove him from the city because he prided himself
upon an accomplishment at which he could be beaten by any common goose.
"That is all very well," you will say, "and no doubt it is a great
virtue to care so much for moderation and perfection, but why should
the Greeks have been the only people to develop this quality in olden
times?" For an answer I shall point to the way in which the Greeks
lived.
The people of Egypt or Mesopotamia had been the "subjects" of a
mysterious Supreme Ruler who lived miles and miles away in a dark palace
and who was rarely seen by the masses of the population. The Greeks on
the other hand, were "free citizens" of a hundred independent little
"cities" the largest of which counted fewer inhabitants than a large
modern village. When a peasant who lived in Ur said that he was a
Babylonian he meant that he was one of millions of other people who paid
tribute to the king who at that particular moment happened to be master
of western Asia. But when a Greek said proudly that he was an Athenian
or a Theban he spoke of a small town, which was both his home and his
country and which recognised no master but the will of the people in the
market-place.
To the Greek, his fatherland was the place where he was born; where he
had spent his earliest years playing hide and seek amidst the forbidden
rocks of the Acropolis; where he had grown into manhood with a thousand
other boys and girls, whose nicknames were as familiar to him as those
of your own schoolmates. His Fatherland was the holy soil where his
father and mother lay buried. It was the small house within the high
city-walls where his wife and children lived in safety. It was a
complete world which covered no more than four or five acres of rocky
land. Don't you see how these surroundings must have influenced a man
in everything he did and said and thought? The people of Babylon and
Assyria and Egypt had been part of a vast mob. They had been lost in
the multitude. The Greek on the other hand had never lost touch with
his immediate surroundings. He never ceased to be part of a little
town where everybody knew every one else. He felt that his intelligent
neighbours were watching him. Whatever he did, whether he wrote plays
or made statues out of marble or composed songs, he remembered that his
efforts were going to be judged by all the free-born citizens of his
home-town who knew about such things. This knowledge forced him to
strive after perfection, and perfection, as he had been taught from
childhood, was not possible without moderation.
In this hard school, the Greeks learned to excel in many things. They
created new forms of government and new forms of literature and new
ideals in art which we have never been able to surpass. They performed
these miracles in little villages that covered less ground than four or
five modern city blocks.
And look, what finally happened!
In the fourth century before our era, Alexander of Macedonia conquered
the world. As soon as he had done with fighting, Alexander decided that
he must bestow the benefits of the true Greek genius upon all mankind.
He took it away from the little cities and the little villages and tried
to make it blossom and bear fruit amidst the vast royal residences of
his newly acquired Empire. But the Greeks, removed from the familiar
sight of their own temples, removed from the well-known sounds and
smells of their own crooked streets, at once lost the cheerful joy and
the marvellous sense of moderation which had inspired the work of
their hands and brains while they laboured for the glory of their old
city-states. They became cheap artisans, content with second-rate work.
The day the little city-states of old Hellas lost their independence and
were forced to become part of a big nation, the old Greek spirit died.
And it has been dead ever since.
GREEK SELF-GOVERNMENT
THE GREEKS WERE THE FIRST PEOPLE TO TRY THE DIFFICULT EXPERIMENT OF
SELF-GOVERNMENT
IN the beginning, all the Greeks had been equally rich and equally poor.
Every man had owned a certain number of cows and sheep. His mud-hut had
been his castle. He had been free to come and go as he wished. Whenever
it was necessary to discuss matters of public importance, all the
citizens had gathered in the market-place. One of the older men of the
village was elected chairman and it was his duty to see that everybody
had a chance to express his views. In case of war, a particularly
energetic and self-confident villager was chosen commander-in-chief, but
the same people who had voluntarily given this man the right to be
their leader, claimed an equal right to deprive him of his job, once the
danger had been averted.
But gradually the village had grown into a city. Some people had worked
hard and others had been lazy. A few had been unlucky and still others
had been just plain dishonest in dealing with their neighbours and had
gathered wealth. As a result, the city no longer consisted of a number
of men who were equally well-off. On the contrary it was inhabited by a
small class of very rich people and a large class of very poor ones.
There had been another change. The old commander-in-chief who had been
willingly recognised as "headman" or "King" because he knew how to lead
his men to victory, had disappeared from the scene. His place had been
taken by the nobles--a class of rich people who during the course of
time had got hold of an undue share of the farms and estates.
These nobles enjoyed many advantages over the common crowd of freemen.
They were able to buy the best weapons which were to be found on the
market of the eastern Mediterranean. They had much spare time in which
they could practise the art of fighting. They lived in strongly
built houses and they could hire soldiers to fight for them. They were
constantly quarrelling among each other to decide who should rule the
city. The victorious nobleman then assumed a sort of Kingship over all
his neighbours and governed the town until he in turn was killed or
driven away by still another ambitious nobleman.
Such a King, by the grace of his soldiers, was called a "Tyrant" and
during the seventh and sixth centuries before our era every Greek city
was for a time ruled by such Tyrants, many of whom, by the way, happened
to be exceedingly capa-ble men. But in the long run, this state of
affairs became unbearable. Then attempts were made to bring about
reforms and out of these reforms grew the first democratic government of
which the world has a record.
It was early in the seventh century that the people of Athens decided to
do some housecleaning and give the large number of freemen once more a
voice in the government as they were supposed to have had in the days
of their Achaean ancestors. They asked a man by the name of Draco to
provide them with a set of laws that would protect the poor against
the aggressions of the rich. Draco set to work. Unfortunately he was a
professional lawyer and very much out of touch with ordinary life. In
his eyes a crime was a crime and when he had finished his code, the
people of Athens discovered that these Draconian laws were so severe
that they could not possibly be put into effect. There would not have
been rope enough to hang all the criminals under their new system of
jurisprudence which made the stealing of an apple a capital offence.
The Athenians looked about for a more humane reformer. At last they
found some one who could do that sort of thing better than anybody else.
His name was Solon. He belonged to a noble family and he had travelled
all over the world and had studied the forms of government of many other
countries. After a careful study of the subject, Solon gave Athens a set
of laws which bore testimony to that wonderful principle of moderation
which was part of the Greek character. He tried to improve the condition
of the peasant without however destroying the prosperity of the nobles
who were (or rather who could be) of such great service to the state as
soldiers. To protect the poorer classes against abuse on the part of
the judges (who were always elected from the class of the nobles because
they received no salary) Solon made a provision whereby a citizen with a
grievance had the right to state his case before a jury of thirty of his
fellow Athenians.
Most important of all, Solon forced the average freeman to take a direct
and personal interest in the affairs of the city. No longer could he
stay at home and say "oh, I am too busy today" or "it is raining and I
had better stay indoors." He was expected to do his share; to be at the
meeting of the town council; and carry part of the responsibility for
the safety and the prosperity of the state.
This government by the "demos," the people, was often far from
successful. There was too much idle talk. There were too many hateful
and spiteful scenes between rivals for official honor. But it taught
the Greek people to be independent and to rely upon themselves for their
salvation and that was a very good thing.
GREEK LIFE
HOW THE GREEKS LIVED
BUT how, you will ask, did the ancient Greeks have time to look after
their families and their business if they were forever running to the
market-place to discuss affairs of state? In this chapter I shall tell
you.
In all matters of government, the Greek democracy recognised only one
class of citizens--the freemen. Every Greek city was composed of a small
number of free born citizens, a large number of slaves and a sprinkling
of foreigners.
At rare intervals (usually during a war, when men were needed for the
army) the Greeks showed themselves willing to confer the rights of
citizenship upon the "barbarians" as they called the foreigners. But
this was an exception. Citizenship was a matter of birth. You were an
Athenian because your father and your grandfather had been Athenians
before you. But however great your merits as a trader or a soldier, if
you were born of non-Athenian parents, you remained a "foreigner" until
the end of time.
The Greek city, therefore, whenever it was not ruled by a king or a
tyrant, was run by and for the freemen, and this would not have been
possible without a large army of slaves who outnumbered the free
citizens at the rate of six or five to one and who performed those tasks
to which we modern people must devote most of our time and energy if we
wish to provide for our families and pay the rent of our apartments.
The slaves did all the cooking and baking and candlestick making of the
entire city. They were the tailors and the carpenters and the jewelers
and the school-teachers and the bookkeepers and they tended the store
and looked after the factory while the master went to the public meeting
to discuss questions of war and peace or visited the theatre to see the
latest play of AEschylus or hear a discussion of the revolutionary
ideas of Euripides, who had dared to express certain doubts upon the
omnipotence of the great god Zeus.
Indeed, ancient Athens resembled a modern club. All the freeborn citizens
were hereditary members and all the slaves were hereditary servants, and
waited upon the needs of their masters, and it was very pleasant to be a
member of the organisation.
But when we talk about slaves, we do not mean the sort of people about
whom you have read in the pages of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." It is true that
the position of those slaves who tilled the fields was a very unpleasant
one, but the average freeman who had come down in the world and who had
been obliged to hire himself out as a farm hand led just as miserable
a life. In the cities, furthermore, many of the slaves were more
prosperous than the poorer classes of the freemen. For the Greeks, who
loved moderation in all things, did not like to treat their slaves after
the fashion which afterward was so common in Rome, where a slave had as
few rights as an engine in a modern factory and could be thrown to the
wild animals upon the smallest pretext.
The Greeks accepted slavery as a necessary institution, without which no
city could possibly become the home of a truly civilised people.
The slaves also took care of those tasks which nowadays are performed by
the business men and the professional men. As for those household duties
which take up so much of the time of your mother and which worry your
father when he comes home from his office, the Greeks, who understood
the value of leisure, had reduced such duties to the smallest possible
minimum by living amidst surroundings of extreme simplicity.
To begin with, their homes were very plain. Even the rich nobles spent
their lives in a sort of adobe barn, which lacked all the comforts which
a modern workman expects as his natural right. A Greek home consisted
of four walls and a roof. There was a door which led into the street but
there were no windows. The kitchen, the living rooms and the sleeping
quarters were built around an open courtyard in which there was a small
fountain, or a statue and a few plants to make it look bright. Within
this courtyard the family lived when it did not rain or when it was not
too cold. In one corner of the yard the cook (who was a slave) prepared
the meal and in another corner, the teacher (who was also a
slave) taught the children the alpha beta gamma and the tables of
multiplication and in still another corner the lady of the house, who
rarely left her domain (since it was not considered good form for a
married woman to be seen on the street too often) was repairing her
husband's coat with her seamstresses (who were slaves,) and in the
little office, right off the door, the master was inspecting the
accounts which the overseer of his farm (who was a slave) had just
brought to him.
When dinner was ready the family came together but the meal was a very
simple one and did not take much time. The Greeks seem to have regarded
eating as an unavoidable evil and not a pastime, which kills many dreary
hours and eventually kills many dreary people. They lived on bread and
on wine, with a little meat and some green vegetables. They drank water
only when nothing else was available because they did not think it very
healthy. They loved to call on each other for dinner, but our idea of a
festive meal, where everybody is supposed to eat much more than is good
for him, would have disgusted them. They came together at the table for
the purpose of a good talk and a good glass of wine and water, but as
they were moderate people they despised those who drank too much.
The same simplicity which prevailed in the dining room also dominated
their choice of clothes. They liked to be clean and well groomed, to
have their hair and beards neatly cut, to feel their bodies strong with
the exercise and the swimming of the gymnasium, but they never followed
the Asiatic fashion which prescribed loud colours and strange patterns.
They wore a long white coat and they managed to look as smart as a
modern Italian officer in his long blue cape.
They loved to see their wives wear ornaments but they thought it very
vulgar to display their wealth (or their wives) in public and whenever
the women left their home they were as inconspicuous as possible.
In short, the story of Greek life is a story not only of moderation but
also of simplicity. "Things," chairs and tables and books and houses and
carriages, are apt to take up a great deal of their owner's time. In the
end they invariably make him their slave and his hours are spent looking
after their wants, keeping them polished and brushed and painted. The
Greeks, before everything else, wanted to be "free," both in mind and
in body. That they might maintain their liberty, and be truly free in
spirit, they reduced their daily needs to the lowest possible point.
THE GREEK THEATRE
THE ORIGINS OF THE THEATRE, THE FIRST FORM OF PUBLIC AMUSEMENT
AT a very early stage of their history the Greeks had begun to collect
the poems, which had been written in honor of their brave ancestors who
had driven the Pelasgians out of Hellas and had destroyed the power of
Troy. These poems were recited in public and everybody came to listen to
them. But the theatre, the form of entertainment which has become almost
a necessary part of our own lives, did not grow out of these recited
heroic tales. It had such a curious origin that I must tell you
something about it in a separate chapter
The Greeks had always been fond of parades. Every year they held solemn
processions in honor of Dionysos the God of the wine. As everybody in
Greece drank wine (the Greeks thought water only useful for the purpose
of swimming and sailing) this particular Divinity was as popular as a
God of the Soda-Fountain would be in our own land.
And because the Wine-God was supposed to live in the vineyards, amidst a
merry mob of Satyrs (strange creatures who were half man and half goat),
the crowd that joined the procession used to wear goat-skins and to
hee-haw like real billy-goats. The Greek word for goat is "tragos" and
the Greek word for singer is "oidos." The singer who meh-mehed like a
goat therefore was called a "tragos-oidos" or goat singer, and it is
this strange name which developed into the modern word "Tragedy," which
means in the theatrical sense a piece with an unhappy ending, just as
Comedy (which really means the singing of something "comos" or gay) is
the name given to a play which ends happily.
But how, you will ask, did this noisy chorus of masqueraders, stamping
around like wild goats, ever develop into the noble tragedies which have
filled the theatres of the world for almost two thousand years?
The connecting link between the goat-singer and Hamlet is really very
simple as I shall show you in a moment.
The singing chorus was very amusing in the beginning and attracted large
crowds of spectators who stood along the side of the road and laughed.
But soon this business of tree-hawing grew tiresome and the Greeks
thought dullness an evil only comparable to ugliness or sickness. They
asked for something more entertaining. Then an inventive young poet
from the village of Icaria in Attica hit upon a new idea which proved a
tremendous success. He made one of the members of the goat-chorus step
forward and engage in conversation with the leader of the musicians who
marched at the head of the parade playing upon their pipes of Pan.
This individual was allowed to step out of line. He waved his arms and
gesticulated while he spoke (that is to say he "acted" while the others
merely stood by and sang) and he asked a lot of questions, which the
bandmaster answered according to the roll of papyrus upon which the poet
had written down these answers before the show began.
This rough and ready conversation--the dialogue--which told the story
of Dionysos or one of the other Gods, became at once popular with the
crowd. Henceforth every Dionysian procession had an "acted scene" and
very soon the "acting" was considered more important than the procession
and the meh-mehing.
AEschylus, the most successful of all "tragedians" who wrote no less
than eighty plays during his long life (from 526 to 455) made a
bold step forward when he introduced two "actors" instead of one. A
generation later Sophocles increased the number of actors to three. When
Euripides began to write his terrible tragedies in the middle of the
fifth century, B.C., he was allowed as many actors as he liked and
when Aristophanes wrote those famous comedies in which he poked fun
at everybody and everything, including the Gods of Mount Olympus, the
chorus had been reduced to the role of mere bystanders who were lined up
behind the principal performers and who sang "this is a terrible world"
while the hero in the foreground committed a crime against the will of
the Gods.
This new form of dramatic entertainment demanded a proper setting, and
soon every Greek city owned a theatre, cut out of the rock of a nearby
hill. The spectators sat upon wooden benches and faced a wide circle
(our present orchestra where you pay three dollars and thirty cents for
a seat). Upon this half-circle, which was the stage, the actors and the
chorus took their stand. Behind them there was a tent where they made
up with large clay masks which hid their faces and which showed the
spectators whether the actors were supposed to be happy and smiling or
unhappy and weeping. The Greek word for tent is "skene" and that is the
reason why we talk of the "scenery" of the stage.
When once the tragedy had become part of Greek life, the people took
it very seriously and never went to the theatre to give their minds a
vacation. A new play became as important an event as an election and
a successful playwright was received with greater honors than those
bestowed upon a general who had just returned from a famous victory.
THE PERSIAN WARS
HOW THE GREEKS DEFENDED EUROPE AGAINST ASIATIC INVASION AND DROVE THE
PERSIANS BACK ACROSS THE AEGEAN SEA
THE Greeks had learned the art of trading from the AEgeans who had
been the pupils of the Phoenicians. They had founded colonies after the
Phoenician pattern. They had even improved upon the Phoenician methods
by a more general use of money in dealing with foreign customers. In
the sixth century before our era they had established themselves firmly
along the coast of Asia Minor and they were taking away trade from the
Phoenicians at a fast rate. This the Phoenicians of course did not
like but they were not strong enough to risk a war with their Greek
competitors. They sat and waited nor did they wait in vain.
In a former chapter, I have told you how a humble tribe of Persian
shepherds had suddenly gone upon the warpath and had conquered the
greater part of western Asia. The Persians were too civilised to plunder
their new subjects. They contented themselves with a yearly tribute.
When they reached the coast of Asia Minor they insisted that the Greek
colonies of Lydia recognize the Persian Kings as their over-Lords and
pay them a stipulated tax. The Greek colonies objected. The Persians
insisted. Then the Greek colonies appealed to the home-country and the
stage was set for a quarrel.
For if the truth be told, the Persian Kings regarded the Greek
city-states as very dangerous political institutions and bad examples
for all other people who were supposed to be the patient slaves of the
mighty Persian Kings.
Of course, the Greeks enjoyed a certain degree of safety because their
country lay hidden beyond the deep waters of the AEgean. But here their
old enemies, the Phoenicians, stepped forward with offers of help and
advice to the Persians. If the Persian King would provide the soldiers,
the Phoenicians would guarantee to deliver the necessary ships to carry
them to Europe. It was the year 492 before the birth of Christ, and Asia
made ready to destroy the rising power of Europe.
As a final warning the King of Persia sent messengers to the Greeks
asking for "earth and water" as a token of their submission. The Greeks
promptly threw the messengers into the nearest well where they would
find both "earth and water" in large abundance and thereafter of course
peace was impossible.
But the Gods of High Olympus watched over their children and when the
Phoenician fleet carrying the Persian troops was near Mount Athos, the
Storm-God blew his cheeks until he almost burst the veins of his brow,
and the fleet was destroyed by a terrible hurricane and the Persians
were all drowned.
Two years later they returned. This time they sailed straight across
the AEgean Sea and landed near the village of Marathon. As soon as the
Athenians heard this they sent their army of ten thousand men to guard
the hills that surrounded the Marathonian plain. At the same time they
despatched a fast runner to Sparta to ask for help. But Sparta was
envious of the fame of Athens and refused to come to her assistance.
The other Greek cities followed her example with the exception of tiny
Plataea which sent a thousand men. On the twelfth of September of the
year 490, Miltiades, the Athenian commander, threw this little army
against the hordes of the Persians. The Greeks broke through the Persian
barrage of arrows and their spears caused terrible havoc among the
disorganised Asiatic troops who had never been called upon to resist
such an enemy.
That night the people of Athens watched the sky grow red with the flames
of burning ships. Anxiously they waited for news. At last a little
cloud of dust appeared upon the road that led to the North. It was
Pheidippides, the runner. He stumbled and gasped for his end was near.
Only a few days before had he returned from his errand to Sparta. He had
hastened to join Miltiades. That morning he had taken part in the attack
and later he had volunteered to carry the news of victory to his beloved
city. The people saw him fall and they rushed forward to support him.
"We have won," he whispered and then he died, a glorious death which
made him envied of all men.
As for the Persians, they tried, after this defeat, to land near Athens
but they found the coast guarded and disappeared, and once more the land
of Hellas was at peace.
Eight years they waited and during this time the Greeks were not idle.
They knew that a final attack was to be expected but they did not agree
upon the best way to avert the danger. Some people wanted to increase
the army. Others said that a strong fleet was necessary for success. The
two parties led by Aristides (for the army) and Themistocles (the leader
of the bigger-navy men) fought each other bitterly and nothing was done
until Aristides was exiled. Then Themistocles had his chance and he
built all the ships he could and turned the Piraeus into a strong naval
base.
In the year 481 B.C. a tremendous Persian army appeared in Thessaly, a
province of northern Greece. In this hour of danger, Sparta, the
great military city of Greece, was elected commander-in-chief. But the
Spartans cared little what happened to northern Greece provided their
own country was not invaded, They neglected to fortify the passes that
led into Greece.
A small detachment of Spartans under Leonidas had been told to guard
the narrow road between the high mountains and the sea which connected
Thessaly with the southern provinces. Leonidas obeyed his orders. He
fought and held the pass with unequalled bravery. But a traitor by the
name of Ephialtes who knew the little byways of Malis guided a regiment
of Persians through the hills and made it possible for them to attack
Leonidas in the rear. Near the Warm Wells--the Thermopylae--a terrible
battle was fought.
When night came Leonidas and his faithful soldiers lay dead under the
corpses of their enemies.
But the pass had been lost and the greater part of Greece fell into the
hands of the Persians. They marched upon Athens, threw the garrison from
the rocks of the Acropolis and burned the city. The people fled to the
Island of Salamis. All seemed lost. But on the 20th of September of the
year 480 Themistocles forced the Persian fleet to give battle within the
narrow straits which separated the Island of Salamis from the mainland
and within a few hours he destroyed three quarters of the Persian ships.
In this way the victory of Thermopylae came to naught. Xerxes was forced
to retire. The next year, so he decreed, would bring a final decision.
He took his troops to Thessaly and there he waited for spring.
But this time the Spartans understood the seriousness of the hour.
They left the safe shelter of the wall which they had built across the
isthmus of Corinth and under the leadership of Pausanias they marched
against Mardonius the Persian general. The united Greeks (some one
hundred thousand men from a dozen different cities) attacked the three
hundred thou-sand men of the enemy near Plataea. Once more the heavy
Greek infantry broke through the Persian barrage of arrows. The Persians
were defeated, as they had been at Marathon, and this time they left for
good. By a strange coincidence, the same day that the Greek armies won
their victory near Plataea, the Athenian ships destroyed the enemy's
fleet near Cape Mycale in Asia Minor.
Thus did the first encounter between Asia and Europe end. Athens had
covered herself with glory and Sparta had fought bravely and well. If
these two cities had been able to come to an agreement, if they had been
willing to forget their little jealousies, they might have become the
leaders of a strong and united Hellas.
But alas, they allowed the hour of victory and enthusiasm to slip by,
and the same opportunity never returned.
ATHENS vs. SPARTA
HOW ATHENS AND SPARTA FOUGHT A LONG AND DISASTROUS WAR FOR THE
LEADERSHIP OF GREECE
ATHENS and Sparta were both Greek cities and their people spoke a common
language. In every other respect they were different. Athens rose high
from the plain. It was a city exposed to the fresh breezes from the sea,
willing to look at the world with the eyes of a happy child. Sparta, on
the other hand, was built at the bottom of a deep valley, and used the
surrounding mountains as a barrier against foreign thought. Athens was a
city of busy trade. Sparta was an armed camp where people were soldiers
for the sake of being soldiers. The people of Athens loved to sit in the
sun and discuss poetry or listen to the wise words of a philosopher.
The Spartans, on the other hand, never wrote a single line that was
considered literature, but they knew how to fight, they liked to fight,
and they sacrificed all human emotions to their ideal of military
preparedness.
No wonder that these sombre Spartans viewed the success of Athens with
malicious hate. The energy which the defence of the common home had
developed in Athens was now used for purposes of a more peaceful nature.
The Acropolis was rebuilt and was made into a marble shrine to the
Goddess Athena. Pericles, the leader of the Athenian democracy, sent far
and wide to find famous sculptors and painters and scientists to make
the city more beautiful and the young Athenians more worthy of their
home. At the same time he kept a watchful eye on Sparta and built high
walls which connected Athens with the sea and made her the strongest
fortress of that day.
An insignificant quarrel between two little Greek cities led to the
final conflict. For thirty years the war between Athens and Sparta
continued. It ended in a terrible disaster for Athens.
During the third year of the war the plague had entered the city. More
than half of the people and Pericles, the great leader, had been killed.
The plague was followed by a period of bad and untrustworthy leadership.
A brilliant young fellow by the name of Alcibiades had gained the favor
of the popular assembly. He suggested a raid upon the Spartan colony of
Syracuse in Sicily. An expedition was equipped and everything was ready.
But Alcibiades got mixed up in a street brawl and was forced to flee.
The general who succeeded him was a bungler. First he lost his ships and
then he lost his army, and the few surviving Athenians were thrown into
the stone-quarries of Syracuse, where they died from hunger and thirst.
The expedition had killed all the young men of Athens. The city was
doomed. After a long siege the town surrendered in April of the year
404. The high walls were demolished. The navy was taken away by the
Spartans. Athens ceased to exist as the center of the great colonial
empire which it had conquered during the days of its prosperity. But
that wonderful desire to learn and to know and to investigate which
had distinguished her free citizens during the days of greatness and
prosperity did not perish with the walls and the ships. It continued to
live. It became even more brilliant.
Athens no longer shaped the destinies of the land of Greece. But now, as
the home of the first great university the city began to influence the
minds of intelligent people far beyond the narrow frontiers of Hellas.
ALEXANDER THE GREAT
ALEXANDER THE MACEDONIAN ESTABLISHES A GREEK WORLD-EMPIRE, AND WHAT
BECAME OF THIS HIGH AMBITION
WHEN the Achaeans had left their homes along the banks of the Danube to
look for pastures new, they had spent some time among the mountains of
Macedonia. Ever since, the Greeks had maintained certain more or
less formal relations with the people of this northern country. The
Macedonians from their side had kept themselves well informed about
conditions in Greece.
Now it happened, just when Sparta and Athens had finished their
disastrous war for the leadership of Hellas, that Macedonia was ruled
by an extraordinarily clever man by the name of Philip. He admired
the Greek spirit in letters and art but he despised the Greek lack of
self-control in political affairs. It irritated him to see a perfectly
good people waste its men and money upon fruitless quarrels. So he
settled the difficulty by making himself the master of all Greece and
then he asked his new subjects to join him on a voyage which he meant to
pay to Persia in return for the visit which Xerxes had paid the Greeks
one hundred and fifty years before.
Unfortunately Philip was murdered before he could start upon this
well-prepared expedition. The task of avenging the destruction of Athens
was left to Philip's son Alexander, the beloved pupil of Aristotle,
wisest of all Greek teachers.
Alexander bade farewell to Europe in the spring of the year 334 B.C.
Seven years later he reached India. In the meantime he had destroyed
Phoenicia, the old rival of the Greek merchants. He had conquered Egypt
and had been worshipped by the people of the Nile valley as the son
and heir of the Pharaohs. He had defeated the last Persian king--he had
overthrown the Persian empire he had given orders to rebuild Babylon--he
had led his troops into the heart of the Himalayan mountains and had
made the entire world a Macedonian province and dependency. Then he
stopped and announced even more ambitious plans.
The newly formed Empire must be brought under the influence of the Greek
mind. The people must be taught the Greek language--they must live in
cities built after a Greek model. The Alexandrian soldier now turned
school-master. The military camps of yesterday became the peaceful
centres of the newly imported Greek civilisation. Higher and higher
did the flood of Greek manners and Greek customs rise, when suddenly
Alexander was stricken with a fever and died in the old palace of King
Hammurabi of Babylon in the year 323.
Then the waters receded. But they left behind the fertile clay of a
higher civilisation and Alexander, with all his childish ambitions and
his silly vanities, had performed a most valuable service. His Empire
did not long survive him. A number of ambitious generals divided the
territory among themselves. But they too remained faithful to the dream
of a great world brotherhood of Greek and Asiatic ideas and knowledge.
They maintained their independence until the Romans added western
Asia and Egypt to their other domains. The strange inheritance of this
Hellenistic civilisation (part Greek, part Persian, part Egyptian
and Babylonian) fell to the Roman conquerors. During the following
centuries, it got such a firm hold upon the Roman world, that we feel
its influence in our own lives this very day.
A SUMMARY
A SHORT SUMMARY OF CHAPTERS 1 to 20
THUS far, from the top of our high tower we have been looking eastward.
But from this time on, the history of Egypt and Mesopotamia is going
to grow less interesting and I must take you to study the western
landscape.
Before we do this, let us stop a moment and make clear to ourselves what
we have seen.
First of all I showed you prehistoric man--a creature very simple in his
habits and very unattractive in his manners. I told you how he was
the most defenceless of the many animals that roamed through the early
wilderness of the five continents, but being possessed of a larger and
better brain, he managed to hold his own.
Then came the glaciers and the many centuries of cold weather, and life
on this planet became so difficult that man was obliged to think three
times as hard as ever before if he wished to survive. Since, however,
that "wish to survive" was (and is) the mainspring which keeps every
living being going full tilt to the last gasp of its breath, the brain
of glacial man was set to work in all earnestness. Not only did these
hardy people manage to exist through the long cold spells which killed
many ferocious animals, but when the earth became warm and comfortable
once more, prehistoric man had learned a number of things which gave
him such great advantages over his less intelligent neighbors that the
danger of extinction (a very serious one during the first half million
years of man's residence upon this planet) became a very remote one.
I told you how these earliest ancestors of ours were slowly plodding
along when suddenly (and for reasons that are not well understood) the
people who lived in the valley of the Nile rushed ahead and almost over
night, created the first centre of civilisation.
Then I showed you Mesopotamia, "the land between the rivers," which was
the second great school of the human race. And I made you a map of the
little island bridges of the AEgean Sea, which carried the knowledge and
the science of the old east to the young west, where lived the Greeks.
Next I told you of an Indo-European tribe, called the Hellenes, who
thousands of years before had left the heart of Asia and who had in
the eleventh century before our era pushed their way into the rocky
peninsula of Greece and who, since then, have been known to us as the
Greeks. And I told you the story of the little Greek cities that
were really states, where the civilisation of old Egypt and Asia was
transfigured (that is a big word, but you can "figure out" what it
means) into something quite new, something that was much nobler and
finer than anything that had gone before.
When you look at the map you will see how by this time civilisation has
described a semi-circle. It begins in Egypt, and by way of Mesopotamia
and the AEgean Islands it moves westward until it reaches the European
continent. The first four thousand years, Egyptians and Babylonians and
Phoenicians and a large number of Semitic tribes (please remember that
the Jews were but one of a large number of Semitic peoples) have carried
the torch that was to illuminate the world. They now hand it over to the
Indo-European Greeks, who become the teachers of another Indo-European
tribe, called the Romans. But meanwhile the Semites have pushed westward
along the northern coast of Africa and have made themselves the rulers
of the western half of the Mediterranean just when the eastern half has
become a Greek (or Indo-European) possession.
This, as you shall see in a moment, leads to a terrible conflict between
the two rival races, and out of their struggle arises the victorious
Roman Empire, which is to take this Egyptian-Mesopotamian-Greek
civilisation to the furthermost corners of the European continent, where
it serves as the foundation upon which our modern society is based.
I know all this sounds very complicated, but if you get hold of these
few principles, the rest of our history will become a great deal
simpler. The maps will make clear what the words fail to tell. And after
this short intermission, we go back to our story and give you an account
of the famous war between Carthage and Rome.
ROME AND CARTHAGE
THE SEMITIC COLONY OF CARTHAGE ON THE NORTHERN COAST OF AFRICA AND THE
INDO-EUROPEAN CITY OF ROME ON THE WEST COAST OF ITALY FOUGHT EACH
OTHER FOR THE POSSESSION OF THE WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN AND CARTHAGE WAS
DESTROYED
THE little Phoenician trading post of Kart-hadshat stood on a low hill
which overlooked the African Sea, a stretch of water ninety miles
wide which separates Africa from Europe. It was an ideal spot for a
commercial centre. Almost too ideal. It grew too fast and became too
rich. When in the sixth century before our era, Nebuchadnezzar of
Babylon destroyed Tyre, Carthage broke off all further relations with
the Mother Country and became an independent state--the great western
advance-post of the Semitic races.
Unfortunately the city had inherited many of the traits which for a
thousand years had been characteristic of the Phoenicians. It was a vast
business-house, protected by a strong navy, indifferent to most of the
finer aspects of life. The city and the surrounding country and the
distant colonies were all ruled by a small but exceedingly powerful
group of rich men, The Greek word for rich is "ploutos" and the Greeks
called such a government by "rich men" a "Plutocracy." Carthage was a
plutocracy and the real power of the state lay in the hands of a dozen
big ship-owners and mine-owners and merchants who met in the back
room of an office and regarded their common Fatherland as a business
enterprise which ought to yield them a decent profit. They were however
wide awake and full of energy and worked very hard.
As the years went by the influence of Carthage upon her neighbours
increased until the greater part of the African coast, Spain and certain
regions of France were Carthaginian possessions, and paid tribute, taxes
and dividends to the mighty city on the African Sea.
Of course, such a "plutocracy" was forever at the mercy of the crowd.
As long as there was plenty of work and wages were high, the majority of
the citizens were quite contented, allowed their "betters" to rule them
and asked no embarrassing questions. But when no ships left the harbor,
when no ore was brought to the smelting-ovens, when dockworkers and
stevedores were thrown out of employment, then there were grumblings and
there was a demand that the popular assembly be called together as in
the olden days when Carthage had been a self-governing republic.
To prevent such an occurrence the plutocracy was obliged to keep the
business of the town going at full speed. They had managed to do this
very successfully for almost five hun-dred years when they were greatly
disturbed by certain rumors which reached them from the western coast of
Italy. It was said that a little village on the banks of the Tiber had
suddenly risen to great power and was making itself the acknowledged
leader of all the Latin tribes who inhabited central Italy. It was also
said that this village, which by the way was called Rome, intended to
build ships and go after the commerce of Sicily and the southern coast
of France.
Carthage could not possibly tolerate such competition. The young rival
must be destroyed lest the Carthaginian rulers lose their prestige as
the absolute rulers of the western Mediterranean. The rumors were duly
investigated and in a general way these were the facts that came to
light.
The west coast of Italy had long been neglected by civilisation. Whereas
in Greece all the good harbours faced eastward and enjoyed a full view
of the busy islands of the AEgean, the west coast of Italy contemplated
nothing more exciting than the desolate waves of the Mediterranean. The
country was poor. It was therefore rarely visited by foreign merchants
and the natives were allowed to live in undisturbed possession of their
hills and their marshy plains.
The first serious invasion of this land came from the north. At an
unknown date certain Indo-European tribes had managed to find their way
through the passes of the Alps and had pushed southward until they
had filled the heel and the toe of the famous Italian boot with their
villages and their flocks. Of these early conquerors we know nothing.
No Homer sang their glory. Their own accounts of the foundation of Rome
(written eight hundred years later when the little city had become the
centre of an Empire) are fairy stories and do not belong in a history.
Romulus and Remus jumping across each other's walls (I always forget who
jumped across whose wall) make entertaining reading, but the foundation
of the City of Rome was a much more prosaic affair. Rome began as a
thousand American cities have done, by being a convenient place for
barter and horse-trading. It lay in the heart of the plains of central
Italy The Tiber provided direct access to the sea. The land-road from
north to south found here a convenient ford which could be used all the
year around. And seven little hills along the banks of the river offered
the inhabitants a safe shelter against their enemies who lived in the
mountains and those who lived beyond the horizon of the nearby sea.
The mountaineers were called the Sabines. They were a rough crowd with
an unholy desire for easy plunder. But they were very backward. They
used stone axes and wooden shields and were no match for the Romans
with their steel swords. The sea-people on the other hand were dangerous
foes. They were called the Etruscans and they were (and still are) one
of the great mysteries of history. Nobody knew (or knows) whence they
came; who they were; what had driven them away from their original
homes. We have found the remains of their cities and their cemeteries
and their waterworks all along the Italian coast. We are familiar with
their inscriptions. But as no one has ever been able to decipher the
Etruscan alphabet, these written messages are, so far, merely annoying
and not at all useful.
Our best guess is that the Etruscans came originally from Asia Minor and
that a great war or a pestilence in that country had forced them to
go away and seek a new home elsewhere. Whatever the reason for their
coming, the Etruscans played a great role in history. They carried the
pollen of the ancient civilisation from the east to the west and they
taught the Romans who, as we know, came from the north, the first
principles of architecture and street-building and fighting and art and
cookery and medicine and astronomy.
But just as the Greeks had not loved their AEgean teachers, in this same
way did the Romans hate their Etruscan masters. They got rid of them
as soon as they could and the opportunity offered itself when Greek
merchants discovered the commercial possibilities of Italy and when the
first Greek vessels reached Rome. The Greeks came to trade, but they
stayed to instruct. They found the tribes who inhabited the Roman
country-side (and who were called the Latins) quite willing to learn
such things as might be of practical use. At once they understood the
great benefit that could be derived from a written alphabet and
they copied that of the Greeks. They also understood the commercial
advantages of a well-regulated system of coins and measures and weights.
Eventually the Romans swallowed Greek civilisation hook, line and
sinker.
They even welcomed the Gods of the Greeks to their country. Zeus was
taken to Rome where he became known as Jupiter and the other divinities
followed him. The Roman Gods however never were quite like their
cheerful cousins who had accompanied the Greeks on their road through
life and through history. The Roman Gods were State Functionaries. Each
one managed his own department with great prudence and a deep sense
of justice, but in turn he was exact in demanding the obedience of his
worshippers. This obedience the Romans rendered with scrupulous care.
But they never established the cordial personal relations and that
charming friendship which had existed between the old Hellenes and the
mighty residents of the high Olympian peak.
The Romans did not imitate the Greek form of government, but being of
the same Indo-European stock as the people of Hellas, the early history
of Rome resembles that of Athens and the other Greek cities. They did
not find it difficult to get rid of their kings, the descendants of the
ancient tribal chieftains. But once the kings had been driven from the
city, the Romans were forced to bridle the power of the nobles, and it
took many centuries before they managed to establish a system which gave
every free citizen of Rome a chance to take a personal interest in the
affairs of his town.
Thereafter the Romans enjoyed one great advantage over the Greeks. They
managed the affairs of their country without making too many speeches.
They were less imaginative than the Greeks and they preferred an ounce
of action to a pound of words. They understood the tendency of the
multitude (the "plebe," as the assemblage of free citizens was called)
only too well to waste valuable time upon mere talk. They therefore
placed the actual business of running the city into the hands of two
"consuls" who were assisted by a council of Elders, called the Senate
(because the word "senex" means an old man). As a matter of custom and
practical advantage the senators were elected from the nobility. But
their power had been strictly defined.
Rome at one time had passed through the same sort of struggle between
the poor and the rich which had forced Athens to adopt the laws of Draco
and Solon. In Rome this conflict had occurred in the fifth century B.
C. As a result the freemen had obtained a written code of laws which
protected them against the despotism of the aristocratic judges by the
institution of the "Tribune." These Tribunes were city-magistrates,
elected by the freemen. They had the right to protect any citizen
against those actions of the government officials which were thought to
be unjust. A consul had the right to condemn a man to death, but if the
case had not been absolutely proved the Tribune could interfere and save
the poor fellow's life.
But when I use the word Rome, I seem to refer to a little city of a few
thousand inhabitants. And the real strength of Rome lay in the country
districts outside her walls. And it was in the government of these
outlying provinces that Rome at an early age showed her wonderful gift
as a colonising power.
In very early times Rome had been the only strongly fortified city in
central Italy, but it had always offered a hospitable refuge to
other Latin tribes who happened to be in danger of attack. The Latin
neighbours had recognised the advantages of a close union with such
a powerful friend and they had tried to find a basis for some sort of
defensive and offensive alliance. Other nations, Egyptians, Babylonians,
Phoenicians, even Greeks, would have insisted upon a treaty of
submission on the part of the "barbarians," The Romans did nothing of
the sort. They gave the "outsider" a chance to become partners in a
common "res publica"--or common-wealth.
"You want to join us," they said. "Very well, go ahead and join. We
shall treat you as if you were full-fledged citizens of Rome. In return
for this privilege we expect you to fight for our city, the mother of us
all, whenever it shall be necessary."
The "outsider" appreciated this generosity and he showed his gratitude
by his unswerving loyalty.
Whenever a Greek city had been attacked, the foreign residents had moved
out as quickly as they could. Why defend something which meant nothing
to them but a temporary boarding house in which they were tolerated as
long as they paid their bills? But when the enemy was before the gates
of Rome, all the Latins rushed to her defence. It was their Mother who
was in danger. It was their true "home" even if they lived a hundred
miles away and had never seen the walls of the sacred Hills.
No defeat and no disaster could change this sentiment. In the beginning
of the fourth century B.C. the wild Gauls forced their way into Italy.
They had defeated the Roman army near the River Allia and had marched
upon the city. They had taken Rome and then they expected that the
people would come and sue for peace. They waited, but nothing happened.
After a short time the Gauls found themselves surrounded by a hostile
population which made it impossible for them to obtain supplies. After
seven months, hunger forced them to withdraw. The policy of Rome to
treat the "foreigner" on equal terms had proved a great success and Rome
stood stronger than ever before.
This short account of the early history of Rome shows you the enormous
difference between the Roman ideal of a healthy state, and that of the
ancient world which was embodied in the town of Carthage. The Romans
counted upon the cheerful and hearty co-operation between a number of
"equal citizens." The Carthaginians, following the example of Egypt and
western Asia, insisted upon the unreasoning (and therefore unwilling)
obedience of "Subjects" and when these failed they hired professional
soldiers to do their fighting for them.
You will now understand why Carthage was bound to fear such a clever and
powerful enemy and why the plutocracy of Carthage was only too willing
to pick a quarrel that they might destroy the dangerous rival before it
was too late.
But the Carthaginians, being good business men, knew that it never
pays to rush matters. They proposed to the Romans that their respective
cities draw two circles on the map and that each town claim one of these
circles as her own "sphere of influence" and promise to keep out of the
other fellow's circle. The agreement was promptly made and was broken
just as promptly when both sides thought it wise to send their armies
to Sicily where a rich soil and a bad government invited foreign
interference.
The war which followed (the so-called first Punic War) lasted
twenty-four years. It was fought out on the high seas and in the
beginning it seemed that the experienced Carthaginian navy would defeat
the newly created Roman fleet. Following their ancient tactics, the
Carthaginian ships would either ram the enemy vessels or by a bold
attack from the side they would break their oars and would then kill the
sailors of the helpless vessel with their arrows and with fire balls.
But Roman engineers invented a new craft which carried a boarding bridge
across which the Roman infantrymen stormed the hostile ship. Then there
was a sudden end to Carthaginian victories. At the battle of Mylae their
fleet was badly defeated. Carthage was obliged to sue for peace, and
Sicily became part of the Roman domains.
Twenty-three years later new trouble arose. Rome (in quest of copper)
had taken the island of Sardinia. Carthage (in quest of silver)
thereupon occupied all of southern Spain. This made Carthage a direct
neighbour of the Romans. The latter did not like this at all and they
ordered their troops to cross the Pyrenees and watch the Carthaginian
army of occupation.
The stage was set for the second outbreak between the two rivals. Once
more a Greek colony was the pretext for a war. The Carthaginians were
besieging Saguntum on the east coast of Spain. The Saguntians appealed
to Rome and Rome, as usual, was willing to help. The Senate promised the
help of the Latin armies, but the preparation for this expedition took
some time, and meanwhile Saguntum had been taken and had been destroyed.
This had been done in direct opposition to the will of Rome. The Senate
decided upon war. One Roman army was to cross the African sea and make
a landing on Carthaginian soil. A second division was to keep the
Carthaginian armies occupied in Spain to prevent them from rushing
to the aid of the home town. It was an excellent plan and everybody
expected a great victory. But the Gods had decided otherwise.
It was the fall of the year 218 before the birth of Christ and the Roman
army which was to attack the Carthaginians in Spain had left Italy.
People were eagerly waiting for news of an easy and complete victory
when a terrible rumour began to spread through the plain of the Po.
Wild mountaineers, their lips trembling with fear, told of hundreds of
thousands of brown men accompanied by strange beasts "each one as big
as a house," who had suddenly emerged from the clouds of snow which
surrounded the old Graian pass through which Hercules, thousands of
years before, had driven the oxen of Geryon on his way from Spain to
Greece. Soon an endless stream of bedraggled refugees appeared before
the gates of Rome, with more complete details. Hannibal, the son of
Hamilcar, with fifty thousand soldiers, nine thousand horsemen and
thirty-seven fighting elephants, had crossed the Pyrenees. He had
defeated the Roman army of Scipio on the banks of the Rhone and he had
guided his army safely across the mountain passes of the Alps although
it was October and the roads were thickly covered with snow and ice.
Then he had joined forces with the Gauls and together they had defeated
a second Roman army just before they crossed the Trebia and laid siege
to Placentia, the northern terminus of the road which connected Rome
with the province of the Alpine districts.
The Senate, surprised but calm and energetic as usual, hushed up
the news of these many defeats and sent two fresh armies to stop the
invader. Hannibal managed to surprise these troops on a narrow road
along the shores of the Trasimene Lake and there he killed all the Roman
officers and most of their men. This time there was a panic among
the people of Rome, but the Senate kept its nerve. A third army was
organised and the command was given to Quintus Fabius Maximus with full
power to act "as was necessary to save the state."
Fabius knew that he must be very careful lest all be lost. His raw and
untrained men, the last available soldiers, were no match for Hannibal's
veterans. He refused to accept battle but forever he followed Hannibal,
destroyed everything eatable, destroyed the roads, attacked small
detachments and generally weakened the morale of the Carthaginian troops
by a most distressing and annoying form of guerilla warfare.
Such methods however did not satisfy the fearsome crowds who had found
safety behind the walls of Rome. They wanted "action." Something must be
done and must be done quickly. A popular hero by the name of Varro, the
sort of man who went about the city telling everybody how much better
he could do things than slow old Fabius, the "Delayer," was made
commander-in-chief by popular acclamation. At the battle of Cannae (216)
he suffered the most terrible defeat of Roman history. More than seventy
thousand men were killed. Hannibal was master of all Italy.
He marched from one end of the peninsula to the other, proclaiming
himself the "deliverer from the yoke of Rome" and asking the different
provinces to join him in warfare upon the mother city. Then once more
the wisdom of Rome bore noble fruit. With the exceptions of Capua and
Syracuse, all Roman cities remained loyal. Hannibal, the deliverer,
found himself opposed by the people whose friend he pretended to be.
He was far away from home and did not like the situation. He sent
messengers to Carthage to ask for fresh supplies and new men. Alas,
Carthage could not send him either.
The Romans with their boarding-bridges, were the masters of the sea.
Hannibal must help himself as best he could. He continued to defeat the
Roman armies that were sent out against him, but his own numbers
were decreasing rapidly and the Italian peasants held aloof from this
self-appointed "deliverer."
After many years of uninterrupted victories, Hannibal found himself
besieged in the country which he had just conquered. For a moment, the
luck seemed to turn. Hasdrubal, his brother, had defeated the Roman
armies in Spain. He had crossed the Alps to come to Hannibal's
assistance. He sent messengers to the south to tell of his arrival and
ask the other army to meet him in the plain of the Tiber. Unfortunately
the messengers fell into the hands of the Romans and Hannibal waited
in vain for further news until his brother's head, neatly packed in a
basket, came rolling into his camp and told him of the fate of the last
of the Carthaginian troops.
With Hasdrubal out of the way, young Publius Scipio easily reconquered
Spain and four years later the Romans were ready for a final attack upon
Carthage. Hannibal was called back. He crossed the African Sea and tried
to organise the defences of his home-city. In the year 202 at the battle
of Zama, the Carthaginians were defeated. Hannibal fled to Tyre. From
there he went to Asia Minor to stir up the Syrians and the Macedonians
against Rome. He accomplished very little but his activities among these
Asiatic powers gave the Romans an excuse to carry their warfare into the
territory of the east and annex the greater part of the AEgean world.
Driven from one city to another, a fugitive without a home, Hannibal at
last knew that the end of his ambitious dream had come. His beloved city
of Carthage had been ruined by the war. She had been forced to sign a
terrible peace. Her navy had been sunk. She had been forbidden to make
war without Roman permission. She had been condemned to pay the Romans
millions of dollars for endless years to come. Life offered no hope of
a better future. In the year 190 B.C. Hannibal took poison and killed
himself.
Forty years later, the Romans forced their last war upon Carthage. Three
long years the inhabitants of the old Phoenician colony held out against
the power of the new republic. Hunger forced them to surrender. The few
men and women who had survived the siege were sold as slaves. The city
was set on fire. For two whole weeks the store-houses and the pal-aces
and the great arsenal burned. Then a terrible curse was pronounced upon
the blackened ruins and the Roman legions returned to Italy to enjoy
their victory.
For the next thousand years, the Mediterranean remained a European sea.
But as soon as the Roman Empire had been destroyed, Asia made another
attempt to dominate this great inland sea, as you will learn when I tell
you about Mohammed.
THE RISE OF ROME
HOW ROME HAPPENED
THE Roman Empire was an accident. No one planned it. It "happened." No
famous general or statesman or cut-throat ever got up and said "Friends,
Romans, Citizens, we must found an Empire. Follow me and together we
shall conquer all the land from the Gates of Hercules to Mount Taurus."
Rome produced famous generals and equally distinguished statesmen and
cut-throats, and Roman armies fought all over the world. But the Roman
empire-making was done without a preconceived plan. The average
Roman was a very matter-of-fact citizen. He disliked theories about
government. When someone began to recite "eastward the course of Roman
Empire, etc., etc.," he hastily left the forum. He just continued to
take more and more land because circumstances forced him to do so. He
was not driven by ambition or by greed. Both by nature and inclination
he was a farmer and wanted to stay at home. But when he was attacked he
was obliged to defend himself and when the enemy happened to cross the
sea to ask for aid in a distant country then the patient Roman marched
many dreary miles to defeat this dangerous foe and when this had been
accomplished, he stayed behind to adminster{sic} his newly conquered
provinces lest they fall into the hands of wandering Barbarians and
become themselves a menace to Roman safety. It sounds rather complicated
and yet to the contemporaries it was so very simple, as you shall see in
a moment.
In the year 203 B.C. Scipio had crossed the African Sea and had carried
the war into Africa. Carthage had called Hannibal back. Badly supported
by his mercenaries, Hannibal had been defeated near Zama. The Romans had
asked for his surrender and Hannibal had fled to get aid from the kings
of Macedonia and Syria, as I told you in my last chapter.
The rulers of these two countries (remnants of the Empire of Alexander
the Great) just then were contemplating an expedition against Egypt.
They hoped to divide the rich Nile valley between themselves. The king
of Egypt had heard of this and he had asked Rome to come to his
support. The stage was set for a number of highly interesting plots and
counter-plots. But the Romans, with their lack of imagination, rang
the curtain down before the play had been fairly started. Their legions
completely defeated the heavy Greek phalanx which was still used by the
Macedonians as their battle formation. That happened in the year 197
B.C. at the battle in the plains of Cynoscephalae, or "Dogs' Heads," in
central Thessaly.
The Romans then marched southward to Attica and informed the Greeks that
they had come to "deliver the Hellenes from the Macedonian yoke." The
Greeks, having learned nothing in their years of semi-slavery, used
their new freedom in a most unfortunate way. All the little city-states
once more began to quarrel with each other as they had done in the good
old days. The Romans, who had little understanding and less love for
these silly bickerings of a race which they rather despised, showed
great forebearance. But tiring of these endless dissensions they lost
patience, invaded Greece, burned down Corinth (to "encourage the other
Greeks") and sent a Roman governor to Athens to rule this turbulent
province. In this way, Macedonia and Greece became buffer states which
protected Rome's eastern frontier.
Meanwhile right across the Hellespont lay the Kingdom of Syria, and
Antiochus III, who ruled that vast land, had shown great eagerness when
his distinguished guest, General Hannibal, explained to him how easy it
would be to invade Italy and sack the city of Rome.
Lucius Scipio, a brother of Scipio the African fighter who had defeated
Hannibal and his Carthaginians at Zama, was sent to Asia Minor. He
destroyed the armies of the Syrian king near Magnesia (in the year 190
B.C.) Shortly afterwards, Antiochus was lynched by his own people. Asia
Minor became a Roman protectorate and the small City-Republic of Rome
was mistress of most of the lands which bordered upon the Mediterranean.
THE ROMAN EMPIRE
HOW THE REPUBLIC OF ROME AFTER CENTURIES OF UNREST AND REVOLUTION BECAME
AN EMPIRE
WHEN the Roman armies returned from these many victorious campaigns,
they were received with great jubilation. Alas and alack! this sudden
glory did not make the country any happier. On the contrary. The endless
campaigns had ruined the farmers who had been obliged to do the hard
work of Empire making. It had placed too much power in the hands of the
successful generals (and their private friends) who had used the war as
an excuse for wholesale robbery.
The old Roman Republic had been proud of the simplicity which had
characterised the lives of her famous men. The new Republic felt ashamed
of the shabby coats and the high principles which had been fashionable
in the days of its grandfathers. It became a land of rich people ruled
by rich people for the benefit of rich people. As such it was doomed to
disastrous failure, as I shall now tell you.
Within less than a century and a half. Rome had become the mistress of
practically all the land around the Mediterranean. In those early days
of history a prisoner of war lost his freedom and became a slave. The
Roman regarded war as a very serious business and he showed no mercy to
a conquered foe. After the fall of Carthage, the Carthaginian women and
children were sold into bondage together with their own slaves. And a
like fate awaited the obstinate inhabitants of Greece and Macedonia and
Spain and Syria when they dared to revolt against the Roman power.
Two thousand years ago a slave was merely a piece of machinery. Nowadays
a rich man invests his money in factories. The rich people of Rome
(senators, generals and war-profiteers) invested theirs in land and in
slaves. The land they bought or took in the newly-acquired provinces.
The slaves they bought in open market wherever they happened to be
cheapest. During most of the third and second centuries before Christ
there was a plentiful supply, and as a result the landowners worked
their slaves until they dropped dead in their tracks, when they bought
new ones at the nearest bargain-counter of Corinthian or Carthaginian
captives.
And now behold the fate of the freeborn farmer!
He had done his duty toward Rome and he had fought her battles without
complaint. But when he came home after ten, fifteen or twenty years, his
lands were covered with weeds and his family had been ruined. But he was
a strong man and willing to begin life anew. He sowed and planted and
waited for the harvest. He carried his grain to the market together with
his cattle and his poultry, to find that the large landowners who worked
their estates with slaves could underbid him all along the line. For a
couple of years he tried to hold his own. Then he gave up in despair. He
left the country and he went to the nearest city. In the city he was as
hungry as he had been before on the land. But he shared his misery with
thousands of other disinherited beings. They crouched together in filthy
hovels in the suburbs of the large cities. They were apt to get sick and
die from terrible epidemics. They were all profoundly discontented. They
had fought for their country and this was their reward. They were always
willing to listen to those plausible spell-binders who gather around a
public grievance like so many hungry vultures, and soon they became a
grave menace to the safety of the state.
But the class of the newly-rich shrugged its shoulders. "We have our
army and our policemen," they argued, "they will keep the mob in order."
And they hid themselves behind the high walls of their pleasant villas
and cultivated their gardens and read the poems of a certain Homer which
a Greek slave had just translated into very pleasing Latin hexameters.
In a few families however the old tradition of unselfish service to the
Commonwealth continued. Cornelia, the daughter of Scipio Africanus,
had been married to a Roman by the name of Gracchus. She had two sons,
Tiberius and Gaius. When the boys grew up they entered politics and
tried to bring about certain much-needed reforms. A census had shown
that most of the land of the Italian peninsula was owned by two thousand
noble families. Tiberius Gracchus, having been elected a Tribune, tried
to help the freemen. He revived two ancient laws which restricted the
number of acres which a single owner might possess. In this way he hoped
to revive the valuable old class of small and independent freeholders.
The newly-rich called him a robber and an enemy of the state. There were
street riots. A party of thugs was hired to kill the popular Tribune.
Tiberius Gracchus was attacked when he entered the assembly and was
beaten to death. Ten years later his brother Gaius tried the experiment
of reforming a nation against the expressed wishes of a strong
privileged class. He passed a "poor law" which was meant to help the
destitute farmers. Eventually it made the greater part of the Roman
citizens into professional beggars.
He established colonies of destitute people in distant parts of the
empire, but these settlements failed to attract the right sort of
people. Before Gaius Gracchus could do more harm he too was murdered and
his followers were either killed or exiled. The first two reformers had
been gentlemen. The two who came after were of a very different stamp.
They were professional soldiers. One was called Marius. The name of the
other was Sulla. Both enjoyed a large personal following.
Sulla was the leader of the landowners. Marius, the victor in a great
battle at the foot of the Alps when the Teutons and the Cimbri had been
annihilated, was the popular hero of the disinherited freemen.
Now it happened in the year 88 B.C. that the Senate of Rome was greatly
disturbed by rumours that came from Asia. Mithridates, king of a country
along the shores of the Black Sea, and a Greek on his mother's side,
had seen the possibility of establishing a second Alexandrian Empire.
He began his campaign for world-domination with the murder of all Roman
citizens who happened to be in Asia Minor, men, women and children.
Such an act, of course, meant war. The Senate equipped an army to march
against the King of Pontus and punish him for his crime. But who was to
be commander-in-chief? "Sulla," said the Senate, "because he is Consul."
"Marius," said the mob, "because he has been Consul five times and
because he is the champion of our rights."
Possession is nine points of the law. Sulla happened to be in actual
command of the army. He went west to defeat Mithridates and Marius fled
to Africa. There he waited until he heard that Sulla had crossed into
Asia. He then returned to Italy, gathered a motley crew of malcontents,
marched on Rome and entered the city with his professional highwaymen,
spent five days and five nights, slaughtering the enemies of the
Senatorial party, got himself elected Consul and promptly died from the
excitement of the last fortnight.
There followed four years of disorder. Then Sulla, having defeated
Mithridates, announced that he was ready to return to Rome and settle
a few old scores of his own. He was as good as his word. For weeks his
soldiers were busy executing those of their fellow citizens who were
suspected of democratic sympathies. One day they got hold of a young
fellow who had been often seen in the company of Marius. They were going
to hang him when some one interfered. "The boy is too young," he said,
and they let him go. His name was Julius Caesar. You shall meet him
again on the next page.
As for Sulla, he became "Dictator," which meant sole and supreme ruler
of all the Roman possessions. He ruled Rome for four years, and he died
quietly in his bed, having spent the last year of his life tenderly
raising his cabbages, as was the custom of so many Romans who had spent
a lifetime killing their fellow-men.
But conditions did not grow better. On the contrary, they grew worse.
Another general, Gnaeus Pompeius, or Pompey, a close friend of Sulla,
went east to renew the war against the ever troublesome Mithridates. He
drove that energetic potentate into the mountains where Mithridates took
poison and killed himself, well knowing what fate awaited him as a
Roman captive. Next he re-established the authority of Rome over Syria,
destroyed Jerusalem, roamed through western Asia, trying to revive the
myth of Alexander the Great, and at last (in the year 62) returned to
Rome with a dozen ship-loads of defeated Kings and Princes and Generals,
all of whom were forced to march in the triumphal procession of this
enormously popular Roman who presented his city with the sum of forty
million dollars in plunder.
It was necessary that the government of Rome be placed in the hands of
a strong man. Only a few months before, the town had almost fallen
into the hands of a good-for-nothing young aristocrat by the name of
Catiline, who had gambled away his money and hoped to reimburse himself
for his losses by a little plundering. Cicero, a public-spirited lawyer,
had discovered the plot, had warned the Senate, and had forced Catiline
to flee. But there were other young men with similar ambitions and it
was no time for idle talk.
Pompey organised a triumvirate which was to take charge of affairs. He
became the leader of this Vigilante Committee. Gaius Julius Caesar, who
had made a reputation for himself as governor of Spain, was the second
in command. The third was an indifferent sort of person by the name of
Crassus. He had been elected because he was incredibly rich, having been
a successful contractor of war supplies. He soon went upon an expedition
against the Parthians and was killed.
As for Caesar, who was by far the ablest of the three, he decided that
he needed a little more military glory to become a popular hero. He
crossed the Alps and conquered that part of the world which is now
called France. Then he hammered a solid wooden bridge across the Rhine
and invaded the land of the wild Teutons. Finally he took ship and
visited England. Heaven knows where he might have ended if he had not
been forced to return to Italy. Pompey, so he was informed, had been
appointed dictator for life. This of course meant that Caesar was to
be placed on the list of the "retired officers," and the idea did not
appeal to him. He remembered that he had begun life as a follower of
Marius. He decided to teach the Senators and their "dictator" another
lesson. He crossed the Rubicon River which separated the province of
Cis-alpine Gaul from Italy. Everywhere he was received as the "friend of
the people." Without difficulty Caesar entered Rome and Pompey fled to
Greece Caesar followed him and defeated his followers near Pharsalus.
Pompey sailed across the Mediterranean and escaped to Egypt. When he
landed he was murdered by order of young king Ptolemy. A few days later
Caesar arrived. He found himself caught in a trap. Both the Egyptians
and the Roman garrison which had remained faithful to Pompey, attacked
his camp.
Fortune was with Caesar. He succeeded in setting fire to the Egyptian
fleet. Incidentally the sparks of the burning vessels fell on the
roof of the famous library of Alexandria (which was just off the water
front,) and destroyed it. Next he attacked the Egyptian army, drove
the soldiers into the Nile, drowned Ptolemy, and established a new
government under Cleopatra, the sister of the late king. Just then word
reached him that Pharnaces, the son and heir of Mithridates, had gone
on the war-path. Caesar marched northward, defeated Pharnaces in a war
which lasted five days, sent word of his victory to Rome in the famous
sentence "veni, vidi, vici," which is Latin for "I came, I saw, I
conquered," and returned to Egypt where he fell desperately in love with
Cleopatra, who followed him to Rome when he returned to take charge of
the government, in the year 46. He marched at the head of not less than
four different victory-parades, having won four different campaigns.
Then Caesar appeared in the Senate to report upon his adventures, and
the grateful Senate made him "dictator" for ten years. It was a fatal
step.
The new dictator made serious attempts to reform the Roman state.
He made it possible for freemen to become members of the Senate. He
conferred the rights of citizenship upon distant communities as had been
done in the early days of Roman history. He permitted "foreigners" to
exercise influence upon the government. He reformed the administration
of the distant provinces which certain aristocratic families had come to
regard as their private possessions. In short he did many things for
the good of the majority of the people but which made him thoroughly
unpopular with the most powerful men in the state. Half a hundred young
aristocrats formed a plot "to save the Republic." On the Ides of March
(the fifteenth of March according to that new calendar which Caesar had
brought with him from Egypt) Caesar was murdered when he entered the
Senate. Once more Rome was without a master.
There were two men who tried to continue the tradition of Caesar's
glory. One was Antony, his former secretary. The other was Octavian,
Caesar's grand-nephew and heir to his estate. Octavian remained in
Rome, but Antony went to Egypt to be near Cleopatra with whom he too had
fallen in love, as seems to have been the habit of Roman generals.
A war broke out between the two. In the battle of Actium, Octavian
defeated Antony. Antony killed himself and Cleopatra was left alone to
face the enemy. She tried very hard to make Octavian her third Roman
conquest. When she saw that she could make no impression upon this very
proud aristocrat, she killed herself, and Egypt became a Roman province.
As for Octavian, he was a very wise young man and he did not repeat the
mistake of his famous uncle. He knew how people will shy at words. He
was very modest in his demands when he returned to Rome. He did not want
to be a "dictator." He would be entirely satisfied with the title of
"the Honourable." But when the Senate, a few years later, addressed him
as Augustus--the Illustrious--he did not object and a few years later
the man in the street called him Caesar, or Kaiser, while the soldiers,
accustomed to regard Octavian as their Commander-in-chief referred to
him as the Chief, the Imperator or Emperor. The Republic had become an
Empire, but the average Roman was hardly aware of the fact.
In 14 A.D. his position as the Absolute Ruler of the Roman people had
become so well established that he was made an object of that divine
worship which hitherto had been reserved for the Gods. And his
successors were true "Emperors"--the absolute rulers of the greatest
empire the world had ever seen.
If the truth be told, the average citizen was sick and tired of anarchy
and disorder. He did not care who ruled him provided the new master gave
him a chance to live quietly and without the noise of eternal street
riots. Octavian assured his subjects forty years of peace. He had no
desire to extend the frontiers of his domains, In the year 9 A.D. he
had contem-plated an invasion of the northwestern wilderness which was
inhabited by the Teutons. But Varrus, his general, had been killed with
all his men in the Teutoburg Woods, and after that the Romans made no
further attempts to civilise these wild people.
They concentrated their efforts upon the gigantic problem of internal
reform. But it was too late to do much good. Two centuries of revolution
and foreign war had repeatedly killed the best men among the younger
generations. It had ruined the class of the free farmers. It had
introduced slave labor, against which no freeman could hope to compete.
It had turned the cities into beehives inhabited by pauperized
and unhealthy mobs of runaway peasants. It had created a large
bureaucracy--petty officials who were underpaid and who were forced to
take graft in order to buy bread and clothing for their families.
Worst of all, it had accustomed people to violence, to blood-shed, to a
barbarous pleasure in the pain and suffering of others.
Outwardly, the Roman state during the first century of our era was a
magnificent political structure, so large that Alexander's empire became
one of its minor provinces. Underneath this glory there lived millions
upon millions of poor and tired human beings, toiling like ants who have
built a nest underneath a heavy stone. They worked for the benefit of
some one else. They shared their food with the animals of the fields.
They lived in stables. They died without hope.
It was the seven hundred and fifty-third year since the founding of
Rome. Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus Augustus was living in the palace
of the Palatine Hill, busily engaged upon the task of ruling his empire.
In a little village of distant Syria, Mary, the wife of Joseph the
Carpenter, was tending her little boy, born in a stable of Bethlehem.
This is a strange world.
Before long, the palace and the stable were to meet in open combat.
And the stable was to emerge victorious.
JOSHUA OF NAZARETH
THE STORY OF JOSHUA OF NAZARETH, WHOM THE GREEKS CALLED JESUS
IN the autumn of the year of the city 783 (which would be 62 A.D., in
our way of counting time) AEsculapius Cultellus, a Roman physician,
wrote to his nephew who was with the army in Syria as follows:
My dear Nephew,
A few days ago I was called in to prescribe for a sick man named Paul.
He appeared to be a Roman citizen of Jewish parentage, well educated
and of agreeable manners. I had been told that he was here in connection
with a law-suit, an appeal from one of our provincial courts, Caesarea
or some such place in the eastern Mediterranean. He had been described
to me as a "wild and violent" fellow who had been making speeches
against the People and against the Law. I found him very intelligent and
of great honesty.
A friend of mine who used to be with the army in Asia Minor tells me
that he heard something about him in Ephesus where he was preaching
sermons about a strange new God. I asked my patient if this were true
and whether he had told the people to rebel against the will of our
beloved Emperor. Paul answered me that the Kingdom of which he had
spoken was not of this world and he added many strange utterances which
I did not understand, but which were probably due to his fever.
His personality made a great impression upon me and I was sorry to hear
that he was killed on the Ostian Road a few days ago. Therefore I am
writing this letter to you. When next you visit Jerusalem, I want you to
find out something about my friend Paul and the strange Jewish prophet,
who seems to have been his teacher. Our slaves are getting much excited
about this so-called Messiah, and a few of them, who openly talked of
the new kingdom (whatever that means) have been crucified. I would like
to know the truth about all these rumours and I am
Your devoted Uncle,
AESCULAPIUS CULTELLUS.
Six weeks later, Gladius Ensa, the nephew, a captain of the VII Gallic
Infantry, answered as follows:
My dear Uncle,
I received your letter and I have obeyed your instructions.
Two weeks ago our brigade was sent to Jerusalem. There have been several
revolutions during the last century and there is not much left of the
old city. We have been here now for a month and to-morrow we shall
continue our march to Petra, where there has been trouble with some of
the Arab tribes. I shall use this evening to answer your questions, but
pray do not expect a detailed report.
I have talked with most of the older men in this city but few have been
able to give me any definite information. A few days ago a pedler came
to the camp. I bought some of his olives and I asked him whether he had
ever heard of the famous Messiah who was killed when he was young. He
said that he remembered it very clearly, because his father had taken
him to Golgotha (a hill just outside the city) to see the execution,
and to show him what became of the enemies of the laws of the people of
Judaea. He gave me the address of one Joseph, who had been a personal
friend of the Messiah and told me that I had better go and see him if I
wanted to know more.
This morning I went to call on Joseph. He was quite an old man. He had
been a fisherman on one of the fresh-water lakes. His memory was
clear, and from him at last I got a fairly definite account of what had
happened during the troublesome days before I was born.
Tiberius, our great and glorious emperor, was on the throne, and an
officer of the name of Pontius Pilatus was governor of Judaea and
Samaria. Joseph knew little about this Pilatus. He seemed to have been
an honest enough official who left a decent reputation as procurator of
the province. In the year 755 or 756 (Joseph had forgotten when) Pilatus
was called to Jerusalem on account of a riot. A certain young man (the
son of a carpenter of Nazareth) was said to be planning a revolution
against the Roman government. Strangely enough our own intelligence
officers, who are usually well informed, appear to have heard nothing
about it, and when they investigated the matter they reported that
the carpenter was an excellent citizen and that there was no reason to
proceed against him. But the old-fashioned leaders of the Jewish
faith, according to Joseph, were much upset. They greatly disliked his
popularity with the masses of the poorer Hebrews. The "Nazarene" (so
they told Pilatus) had publicly claimed that a Greek or a Roman or even
a Philistine, who tried to live a decent and honourable life, was quite
as good as a Jew who spent his days studying the ancient laws of Moses.
Pilatus does not seem to have been impressed by this argument, but when
the crowds around the temple threatened to lynch Jesus, and kill all
his followers, he decided to take the carpenter into custody to save his
life.
He does not appear to have understood the real nature of the quarrel.
Whenever he asked the Jewish priests to explain their grievances, they
shouted "heresy" and "treason" and got terribly excited. Finally,
so Joseph told me, Pilatus sent for Joshua (that was the name of the
Nazarene, but the Greeks who live in this part of the world always refer
to him as Jesus) to examine him personally. He talked to him for several
hours. He asked him about the "dangerous doctrines" which he was said
to have preached on the shores of the sea of Galilee. But Jesus answered
that he never referred to politics. He was not so much interested in
the bodies of men as in Man's soul. He wanted all people to regard their
neighbours as their brothers and to love one single God, who was the
father of all living beings.
Pilatus, who seems to have been well versed in the doctrines of the
Stoics and the other Greek philosophers, does not appear to have
discovered anything seditious in the talk of Jesus. According to
my informant he made another attempt to save the life of the kindly
prophet. He kept putting the execution off. Meanwhile the Jewish people,
lashed into fury by their priests, got frantic with rage. There had
been many riots in Jerusalem before this and there were only a few Roman
soldiers within calling distance. Reports were being sent to the
Roman authorities in Caesarea that Pilatus had "fallen a victim to the
teachings of the Nazarene." Petitions were being circulated all through
the city to have Pilatus recalled, because he was an enemy of the
Emperor. You know that our governors have strict instructions to avoid
an open break with their foreign subjects. To save the country from
civil war, Pilatus finally sacrificed his prisoner, Joshua, who behaved
with great dignity and who forgave all those who hated him. He was
crucified amidst the howls and the laughter of the Jerusalem mob.
That is what Joseph told me, with tears running down his old cheeks. I
gave him a gold piece when I left him, but he refused it and asked me
to hand it to one poorer than himself. I also asked him a few questions
about your friend Paul. He had known him slightly. He seems to have been
a tent maker who gave up his profession that he might preach the words
of a loving and forgiving God, who was so very different from that
Jehovah of whom the Jewish priests are telling us all the time.
Afterwards, Paul appears to have travelled much in Asia Minor and in
Greece, telling the slaves that they were all children of one loving
Father and that happiness awaits all, both rich and poor, who have tried
to live honest lives and have done good to those who were suffering and
miserable.
I hope that I have answered your questions to your satisfaction. The
whole story seems very harmless to me as far as the safety of the state
is concerned. But then, we Romans never have been able to understand the
people of this province. I am sorry that they have killed your friend
Paul. I wish that I were at home again, and I am, as ever,
Your dutiful nephew,
GLADIUS ENSA.
THE FALL OF ROME
THE TWILIGHT OF ROME
THE text-books of ancient History give the date 476 as the year in which
Rome fell, because in that year the last emperor was driven off his
throne. But Rome, which was not built in a day, took a long time
falling. The process was so slow and so gradual that most Romans did not
realise how their old world was coming to an end. They complained about
the unrest of the times--they grumbled about the high prices of food and
about the low wages of the workmen--they cursed the profiteers who had a
monopoly of the grain and the wool and the gold coin. Occasionally they
rebelled against an unusually rapacious governor. But the majority of
the people during the first four centuries of our era ate and drank
(whatever their purse allowed them to buy) and hated or loved (according
to their nature) and went to the theatre (whenever there was a free
show of fighting gladiators) or starved in the slums of the big
cities, utterly ignorant of the fact that their empire had outlived its
usefulness and was doomed to perish.
How could they realise the threatened danger? Rome made a fine showing
of outward glory. Well-paved roads connected the different provinces,
the imperial police were active and showed little tenderness for
highwaymen. The frontier was closely guarded against the savage tribes
who seemed to be occupying the waste lands of northern Europe. The whole
world was paying tribute to the mighty city of Rome, and a score of
able men were working day and night to undo the mistakes of the past and
bring about a return to the happier conditions of the early Republic.
But the underlying causes of the decay of the State, of which I have
told you in a former chapter, had not been removed and reform therefore
was impossible.
Rome was, first and last and all the time, a city-state as Athens and
Corinth had been city-states in ancient Hellas. It had been able to
dominate the Italian peninsula. But Rome as the ruler of the entire
civilised world was a political impossibility and could not endure. Her
young men were killed in her endless wars. Her farmers were ruined by
long military service and by taxation. They either became professional
beggars or hired themselves out to rich landowners who gave them board
and lodging in exchange for their services and made them "serfs," those
unfortunate human beings who are neither slaves nor freemen, but who
have become part of the soil upon which they work, like so many cows,
and the trees.
The Empire, the State, had become everything. The common citizen had
dwindled down to less than nothing. As for the slaves, they had heard
the words that were spoken by Paul. They had accepted the message of the
humble carpenter of Nazareth. They did not rebel against their masters.
On the contrary, they had been taught to be meek and they obeyed their
superiors. But they had lost all interest in the affairs of this world
which had proved such a miserable place of abode. They were willing to
fight the good fight that they might enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.
But they were not willing to engage in warfare for the benefit of an
ambitious emperor who aspired to glory by way of a foreign campaign in
the land of the Parthians or the Numidians or the Scots.
And so conditions grew worse as the centuries went by. The first
Emperors had continued the tradition of "leadership" which had given the
old tribal chieftains such a hold upon their subjects. But the Emperors
of the second and third centuries were Barrack-Emperors, professional
soldiers, who existed by the grace of their body-guards, the so-called
Praetorians. They succeeded each other with terrifying rapidity,
murdering their way into the palace and being murdered out of it as soon
as their successors had become rich enough to bribe the guards into a
new rebellion.
Meanwhile the barbarians were hammering at the gates of the northern
frontier. As there were no longer any native Roman armies to stop their
progress, foreign mercenaries had to be hired to fight the invader. As
the foreign soldier happened to be of the same blood as his supposed
enemy, he was apt to be quite lenient when he engaged in battle.
Finally, by way of experiment, a few tribes were allowed to settle
within the confines of the Empire. Others followed. Soon these tribes
complained bitterly of the greedy Roman tax-gatherers, who took away
their last penny. When they got no redress they marched to Rome and
loudly demanded that they be heard.
This made Rome very uncomfortable as an Imperial residence. Constantine
(who ruled from 323 to 337) looked for a new capital. He chose
Byzantium, the gate-way for the commerce between Europe and Asia. The
city was renamed Constantinople, and the court moved eastward. When
Constantine died, his two sons, for the sake of a more efficient
administration, divided the Empire between them. The elder lived in
Rome and ruled in the west. The younger stayed in Constantinople and was
master of the east.
Then came the fourth century and the terrible visitation of the Huns,
those mysterious Asiatic horsemen who for more than two centuries
maintained themselves in Northern Europe and continued their career of
bloodshed until they were defeated near Chalons-sur-Marne in France in
the year 451. As soon as the Huns had reached the Danube they had begun
to press hard upon the Goths. The Goths, in order to save themselves,
were thereupon obliged to invade Rome. The Emperor Valens tried to stop
them, but was killed near Adrianople in the year 378. Twenty-two years
later, under their king, Alaric, these same West Goths marched westward
and attacked Rome. They did not plunder, and destroyed only a few
palaces. Next came the Vandals, and showed less respect for the
venerable traditions of the city. Then the Burgundians. Then the East
Goths. Then the Alemanni. Then the Franks. There was no end to the
invasions. Rome at last was at the mercy of every ambitious highway
robber who could gather a few followers.
In the year 402 the Emperor fled to Ravenna, which was a sea-port and
strongly fortified, and there, in the year 475, Odoacer, commander of a
regiment of the German mercenaries, who wanted the farms of Italy to
be divided among themselves, gently but effectively pushed Romulus
Augustulus, the last of the emperors who ruled the western division,
from his throne, and proclaimed himself Patriarch or ruler of Rome. The
eastern Emperor, who was very busy with his own affairs, recognised him,
and for ten years Odoacer ruled what was left of the western provinces.
A few years later, Theodoric, King of the East Goths, invaded the newly
formed Patriciat, took Ravenna, murdered Odoacer at his own dinner
table, and established a Gothic Kingdom amidst the ruins of the western
part of the Empire. This Patriciate state did not last long. In the
sixth century a motley crowd of Longobards and Saxons and Slavs and
Avars invaded Italy, destroyed the Gothic kingdom, and established a new
state of which Pavia became the capital.
Then at last the imperial city sank into a state of utter neglect and
despair. The ancient palaces had been plundered time and again. The
schools had been burned down. The teachers had been starved to death.
The rich people had been thrown out of their villas which were now
inhabited by evil-smelling and hairy barbarians. The roads had fallen
into decay. The old bridges were gone and commerce had come to a
standstill. Civilisation--the product of thousands of years of patient
labor on the part of Egyptians and Babylonians and Greeks and Romans,
which had lifted man high above the most daring dreams of his earliest
ancestors, threatened to perish from the western continent.
It is true that in the far east, Constantinople continued to be the
centre of an Empire for another thousand years. But it hardly counted
as a part of the European continent. Its interests lay in the east. It
began to forget its western origin. Gradually the Roman language was
given up for the Greek. The Roman alphabet was discarded and Roman
law was written in Greek characters and explained by Greek judges. The
Emperor became an Asiatic despot, worshipped as the god-like kings of
Thebes had been worshipped in the valley of the Nile, three thousand
years before. When missionaries of the Byzantine church looked for fresh
fields of activity, they went eastward and carried the civilisation of
Byzantium into the vast wilderness of Russia.
As for the west, it was left to the mercies of the Barbarians. For
twelve generations, murder, war, arson, plundering were the order of
the day. One thing--and one thing alone--saved Europe from complete
destruction, from a return to the days of cave-men and the hyena.
This was the church--the flock of humble men and women who for many
centuries had confessed themselves the followers of Jesus, the carpenter
of Nazareth, who had been killed that the mighty Roman Empire might be
saved the trouble of a street-riot in a little city somewhere along the
Syrian frontier.
RISE OF THE CHURCH
HOW ROME BECAME THE CENTRE OF THE CHRISTIAN WORLD
THE average intelligent Roman who lived under the Empire had taken very
little interest in the gods of his fathers. A few times a year he went
to the temple, but merely as a matter of custom. He looked on
patiently when the people celebrated a religious festival with a solemn
procession. But he regarded the worship of Jupiter and Minerva and
Neptune as something rather childish, a survival from the crude days
of the early republic and not a fit subject of study for a man who had
mastered the works of the Stoics and the Epicureans and the other great
philosophers of Athens.
This attitude made the Roman a very tolerant man. The government
insisted that all people, Romans, foreigners, Greeks, Babylonians, Jews,
should pay a certain outward respect to the image of the Emperor
which was supposed to stand in every temple, just as a picture of
the President of the United States is apt to hang in an American Post
Office. But this was a formality without any deeper meaning. Generally
speaking everybody could honour, revere and adore whatever gods he
pleased, and as a result, Rome was filled with all sorts of queer little
temples and synagogues, dedicated to the worship of Egyptian and African
and Asiatic divinities.
When the first disciples of Jesus reached Rome and began to preach their
new doctrine of a universal brotherhood of man, nobody objected. The man
in the street stopped and listened Rome, the capital of the world,
had always been full of wandering preachers, each proclaiming his
own "mystery." Most of the self-appointed priests appealed to the
senses--promised golden rewards and endless pleasure to the followers of
their own particular god. Soon the crowd in the street noticed that the
so-called Christians (the followers of the Christ or "anointed") spoke
a very different language. They did not appear to be impressed by great
riches or a noble position. They extolled the beauties of poverty and
humility and meekness. These were not exactly the virtues which had made
Rome the mistress of the world. It was rather interesting to listen to
a "mystery" which told people in the hey-day of their glory that their
worldly success could not possibly bring them lasting happiness.
Besides, the preachers of the Christian mystery told dreadful stories
of the fate that awaited those who refused to listen to the words of
the true God. It was never wise to take chances. Of course the old Roman
gods still existed, but were they strong enough to protect their friends
against the powers of this new deity who had been brought to Europe from
distant Asia? People began to have doubts. They returned to listen to
further explanations of the new creed. After a while they began to meet
the men and women who preached the words of Jesus. They found them very
different from the average Roman priests. They were all dreadfully
poor. They were kind to slaves and to animals. They did not try to gain
riches, but gave away whatever they had. The example of their unselfish
lives forced many Romans to forsake the old religion. They joined the
small communities of Christians who met in the back rooms of private
houses or somewhere in an open field, and the temples were deserted.
This went on year after year and the number of Christians continued to
increase. Presbyters or priests (the original Greek meant "elder") were
elected to guard the interests of the small churches. A bishop was made
the head of all the communities within a single province. Peter, who had
fol-lowed Paul to Rome, was the first Bishop of Rome. In due time his
successors (who were addressed as Father or Papa) came to be known as
Popes.
The church became a powerful institution within the Empire. The
Christian doctrines appealed to those who despaired of this world. They
also attracted many strong men who found it impossible to make a career
under the Imperial government, but who could exercise their gifts of
leadership among the humble followers of the Nazarene teacher. At last
the state was obliged to take notice. The Roman Empire (I have said this
before) was tolerant through indifference. It allowed everybody to
seek salvation after his or her own fashion. But it insisted that the
different sects keep the peace among themselves and obey the wise rule
of "live and let live."
The Christian communities however, refused to practice any sort of
tolerance. They publicly declared that their God, and their God alone,
was the true ruler of Heaven and Earth, and that all other gods
were imposters. This seemed unfair to the other sects and the police
discouraged such utterances. The Christians persisted.
Soon there were further difficulties. The Christians refused to go
through the formalities of paying homage to the emperor. They refused
to appear when they were called upon to join the army. The Roman
magistrates threatened to punish them. The Christians answered that this
miserable world was only the ante-room to a very pleasant Heaven and
that they were more than willing to suffer death for their principles.
The Romans, puzzled by such conduct, sometimes killed the offenders, but
more often they did not. There was a certain amount of lynching during
the earliest years of the church, but this was the work of that part
of the mob which accused their meek Christian neighbours of every
conceivable crime, (such as slaughtering and eating babies, bringing
about sickness and pestilence, betraying the country in times of danger)
because it was a harmless sport and devoid of danger, as the Christians
refused to fight back.
Meanwhile, Rome continued to be invaded by the Barbarians and when her
armies failed, Christian missionaries went forth to preach their gospel
of peace to the wild Teutons. They were strong men without fear of
death. They spoke a language which left no doubt as to the future of
unrepentant sinners. The Teutons were deeply impressed. They still had a
deep respect for the wisdom of the ancient city of Rome. Those men were
Romans. They probably spoke the truth. Soon the Christian missionary
became a power in the savage regions of the Teutons and the Franks. Half
a dozen missionaries were as valuable as a whole regiment of soldiers.
The Emperors began to understand that the Christian might be of great
use to them. In some of the provinces they were given equal rights with
those who remained faithful to the old gods. The great change however
came during the last half of the fourth century.
Constantine, sometimes (Heaven knows why) called Constantine the Great,
was emperor. He was a terrible ruffian, but people of tender qualities
could hardly hope to survive in that hard-fighting age. During a long
and checkered career, Constantine had experienced many ups and downs.
Once, when almost defeated by his enemies, he thought that he would try
the power of this new Asiatic deity of whom everybody was talking. He
promised that he too would become a Christian if he were successful in
the coming battle. He won the victory and thereafter he was convinced of
the power of the Christian God and allowed himself to be baptised.
From that moment on, the Christian church was officially recognised and
this greatly strengthened the position of the new faith.
But the Christians still formed a very small minority of all the people,
(not more than five or six percent,) and in order to win, they were
forced to refuse all compromise. The old gods must be destroyed. For a
short spell the emperor Julian, a lover of Greek wisdom, managed to save
the pagan Gods from further destruction. But Julian died of his wounds
during a campaign in Persia and his successor Jovian re-established the
church in all its glory. One after the other the doors of the ancient
temples were then closed. Then came the emperor Justinian (who built the
church of Saint Sophia in Constantinople), who discontinued the school
of philosophy at Athens which had been founded by Plato.
That was the end of the old Greek world, in which man had been allowed
to think his own thoughts and dream his own dreams according to his
desires. The somewhat vague rules of conduct of the philosophers had
proved a poor compass by which to steer the ship of life after a deluge
of savagery and ignorance had swept away the established order of
things. There was need of something more positive and more definite.
This the Church provided.
During an age when nothing was certain, the church stood like a rock and
never receded from those principles which it held to be true and sacred.
This steadfast courage gained the admiration of the multitudes and
carried the church of Rome safely through the difficulties which
destroyed the Roman state.
There was however, a certain element of luck in the final success of
the Christian faith. After the disappearance of Theodoric's Roman-Gothic
kingdom, in the fifth century, Italy was comparatively free from foreign
invasion. The Lombards and Saxons and Slavs who succeeded the Goths were
weak and backward tribes. Under those circumstances it was possible for
the bishops of Rome to maintain the independence of their city. Soon the
remnants of the empire, scattered throughout the peninsula, recognised
the Dukes of Rome (or bishops) as their political and spiritual rulers.
The stage was set for the appearance of a strong man. He came in the
year 590 and his name was Gregory. He belonged to the ruling classes of
ancient Rome, and he had been "prefect" or mayor of the city. Then he
had become a monk and a bishop and finally, and much against his will,
(for he wanted to be a missionary and preach Christianity to the heathen
of England,) he had been dragged to the Church of Saint Peter to be made
Pope. He ruled only fourteen years but when he died the Christian world
of western Europe had officially recognised the bishops of Rome, the
Popes, as the head of the entire church.
This power, however, did not extend to the east. In Constantinople the
Emperors continued the old custom which had recognised the successors of
Augustus and Tiberius both as head of the government and as High Priest
of the Established Religion. In the year 1453 the eastern Roman Empire
was conquered by the Turks. Constantinople was taken, and Constantine
Paleologue, the last Roman Emperor, was killed on the steps of the
Church of the Holy Sophia.
A few years before, Zoe, the daughter of his brother Thomas, had married
Ivan III of Russia. In this way did the grand-dukes of Moscow fall heir
to the traditions of Constantinople. The double-eagle of old Byzantium
(reminiscent of the days when Rome had been divided into an eastern and
a western part) became the coat of arms of modern Russia. The Tsar who
had been merely the first of the Russian nobles, assumed the aloofness
and the dignity of a Roman emperor before whom all subjects, both high
and low, were inconsiderable slaves.
The court was refashioned after the oriental pattern which the eastern
Emperors had imported from Asia and from Egypt and which (so they
flattered themselves) resembled the court of Alexander the Great. This
strange inheritance which the dying Byzantine Empire bequeathed to an
unsuspecting world continued to live with great vigour for six more
centuries, amidst the vast plains of Russia. The last man to wear
the crown with the double eagle of Constantinople, Tsar Nicholas, was
murdered only the other day, so to speak. His body was thrown into a
well. His son and his daughters were all killed. All his ancient rights
and prerogatives were abolished, and the church was reduced to the
position which it had held in Rome before the days of Constantine.
The eastern church however fared very differently, as we shall see
in the next chapter when the whole Christian world is going to be
threatened with destruction by the rival creed of an Arab camel-driver.
MOHAMMED
AHMED, THE CAMEL-DRIVER, WHO BECAME THE PROPHET OF THE ARABIAN DESERT
AND WHOSE FOLLOWERS ALMOST CONQUERED THE ENTIRE KNOWN WORLD FOR THE
GREATER GLORY OF ALLAH, THE ONLY TRUE GOD
SINCE the days of Carthage and Hannibal we have said nothing of the
Semitic people. You will remember how they filled all the chapters
devoted to the story of the Ancient World. The Babylonians, the
Assyrians, the Phoenicians, the Jews, the Arameans, the Chaldeans, all
of them Semites, had been the rulers of western Asia for thirty or forty
centuries. They had been conquered by the Indo-European Persians who had
come from the east and by the Indo-European Greeks who had come from the
west. A hundred years after the death of Alexander the Great, Carthage,
a colony of Semitic Phoenicians, had fought the Indo-European Romans
for the mastery of the Mediterranean. Carthage had been defeated and
destroyed and for eight hundred years the Romans had been masters of the
world. In the seventh century, however, another Semitic tribe appeared
upon the scene and challenged the power of the west. They were the
Arabs, peaceful shepherds who had roamed through the desert since the
beginning of time without showing any signs of imperial ambitions.
Then they listened to Mohammed, mounted their horses and in less than
a century they had pushed to the heart of Europe and proclaimed the
glories of Allah, "the only God," and Mohammed, "the prophet of the only
God," to the frightened peasants of France.
The story of Ahmed, the son of Abdallah and Aminah (usually known as
Mohammed, or "he who will be praised,"); reads like a chapter in the
"Thousand and One Nights." He was a camel-driver, born in Mecca.
He seems to have been an epileptic and he suffered from spells of
unconsciousness when he dreamed strange dreams and heard the voice of
the angel Gabriel, whose words were afterwards written down in a book
called the Koran. His work as a caravan leader carried him all over
Arabia and he was constantly falling in with Jewish merchants and with
Christian traders, and he came to see that the worship of a single God
was a very excellent thing. His own people, the Arabs, still revered
queer stones and trunks of trees as their ancestors had done, tens of
thousands of years before. In Mecca, their holy city, stood a little
square building, the Kaaba, full of idols and strange odds and ends of
Hoo-doo worship.
Mohammed decided to be the Moses of the Arab people. He could not well
be a prophet and a camel-driver at the same time. So he made himself
independent by marrying his employer, the rich widow Chadija. Then he
told his neighbours in Mecca that he was the long-expected prophet sent
by Allah to save the world. The neighbours laughed most heartily and
when Mohammed continued to annoy them with his speeches they decided to
kill him. They regarded him as a lunatic and a public bore who deserved
no mercy. Mohammed heard of the plot and in the dark of night he fled to
Medina together with Abu Bekr, his trusted pupil. This happened in the
year 622. It is the most important date in Mohammedan history and is
known as the Hegira--the year of the Great Flight.
In Medina, Mohammed, who was a stranger, found it easier to proclaim
himself a prophet than in his home city, where every one had known him
as a simple camel-driver. Soon he was surrounded by an increasing number
of followers, or Moslems, who accepted the Islam, "the submission to the
will of God," which Mohammed praised as the highest of all virtues.
For seven years he preached to the people of Medina. Then he believed
himself strong enough to begin a campaign against his former neighbours
who had dared to sneer at him and his Holy Mission in his old
camel-driving days. At the head of an army of Medinese he marched across
the desert. His followers took Mecca without great difficulty, and
having slaughtered a number of the inhabitants, they found it quite easy
to convince the others that Mohammed was really a great prophet.
From that time on until the year of his death, Mohammed was fortunate in
everything he undertook.
There are two reasons for the success of Islam. In the first place,
the creed which Mohammed taught to his followers was very simple. The
disciples were told that they must love Allah, the Ruler of the World,
the Merciful and Compassionate. They must honour and obey their parents.
They were warned against dishonesty in dealing with their neighbours
and were admonished to be humble and charitable, to the poor and to the
sick. Finally they were ordered to abstain from strong drink and to be
very frugal in what they ate. That was all. There were no priests, who
acted as shepherds of their flocks and asked that they be supported at
the common expense. The Mohammedan churches or mosques were merely large
stone halls without benches or pictures, where the faithful could gather
(if they felt so inclined) to read and discuss chapters from the Koran,
the Holy Book. But the average Mohammedan carried his religion with him
and never felt himself hemmed in by the restrictions and regulations
of an established church. Five times a day he turned his face towards
Mecca, the Holy City, and said a simple prayer. For the rest of the time
he let Allah rule the world as he saw fit and accepted whatever fate
brought him with patient resignation.
Of course such an attitude towards life did not encourage the Faithful
to go forth and invent electrical machinery or bother about railroads
and steamship lines. But it gave every Mohammedan a certain amount of
contentment. It bade him be at peace with himself and with the world in
which he lived and that was a very good thing.
The second reason which explains the success of the Moslems in their
warfare upon the Christians, had to do with the conduct of those
Mohammedan soldiers who went forth to do battle for the true faith.
The Prophet promised that those who fell, facing the enemy, would go
directly to Heaven. This made sudden death in the field preferable to
a long but dreary existence upon this earth. It gave the Mohammedans an
enormous advantage over the Crusaders who were in constant dread of a
dark hereafter, and who stuck to the good things of this world as long
as they possibly could. Incidentally it explains why even to-day Moslem
soldiers will charge into the fire of European machine guns quite
indifferent to the fate that awaits them and why they are such dangerous
and persistent enemies.
Having put his religious house in order, Mohammed now began to enjoy
his power as the undisputed ruler of a large number of Arab tribes. But
success has been the undoing of a large number of men who were great in
the days of adversity. He tried to gain the good will of the rich people
by a number of regulations which could appeal to those of wealth.
He allowed the Faithful to have four wives. As one wife was a costly
investment in those olden days when brides were bought directly from
the parents, four wives became a positive luxury except to those who
possessed camels and dromedaries and date orchards beyond the dreams of
avarice. A religion which at first had been meant for the hardy hunters
of the high skied desert was gradually transformed to suit the needs
of the smug merchants who lived in the bazaars of the cities. It was a
regrettable change from the original program and it did very little good
to the cause of Mohammedanism. As for the prophet himself, he went on
preaching the truth of Allah and proclaiming new rules of conduct until
he died, quite suddenly, of a fever on June the seventh of the year 632.
His successor as Caliph (or leader) of the Moslems was his
father-in-law, Abu-Bekr, who had shared the early dangers of the
prophet's life. Two years later, Abu-Bekr died and Omar ibn Al-Khattab
followed him. In less than ten years he conquered Egypt, Persia,
Phoenicia, Syria and Palestine and made Damascus the capital of the
first Mohammedan world empire.
Omar was succeeded by Ali, the husband of Mohammed's daughter, Fatima,
but a quarrel broke out upon a point of Moslem doctrine and Ali was
murdered. After his death, the caliphate was made hereditary and the
leaders of the faithful who had begun their career as the spiritual head
of a religious sect became the rulers of a vast empire. They built a
new city on the shores of the Euphrates, near the ruins of Babylon and
called it Bagdad, and organising the Arab horsemen into regiments of
cavalry, they set forth to bring the happiness of their Moslem faith to
all unbelievers. In the year 700 A.D. a Mohammedan general by the name
of Tarik crossed the old gates of Hercules and reached the high rock on
the European side which he called the Gibel-al-tarik, the Hill of Tarik
or Gibraltar.
Eleven years later in the battle of Xeres de la Frontera, he defeated
the king of the Visigoths and then the Moslem army moved northward
and following the route of Hannibal, they crossed the passes of the
Pyrenees. They defeated the Duke of Aquitania, who tried to halt them
near Bordeaux, and marched upon Paris. But in the year 732 (one hundred
years after the death of the prophet,) they were beaten in a battle
between Tours and Poitiers. On that day, Charles Martel (Charles with
the Hammer) the Frankish chieftain, saved Europe from a Mohammedan
con-quest. He drove the Moslems out of France, but they maintained
themselves in Spain where Abd-ar-Rahman founded the Caliphate of
Cordova, which became the greatest centre of science and art of
mediaeval Europe.
This Moorish kingdom, so-called because the people came from Mauretania
in Morocco, lasted seven centuries. It was only after the capture of
Granada, the last Moslem stronghold, in the year 1492, that Columbus
received the royal grant which allowed him to go upon a voyage of
discovery. The Mohammedans soon regained their strength in the new
conquests which they made in Asia and Africa and to-day there are as
many followers of Mohammed as there are of Christ.
CHARLEMAGNE
HOW CHARLEMAGNE, THE KING OF THE FRANKS, CAME TO BEAR THE TITLE OF
EMPEROR AND TRIED TO REVIVE THE OLD IDEAL OF WORLD-EMPIRE
THE battle of Poitiers had saved Europe from the Mohammedans. But the
enemy within--the hopeless disorder which had followed the disappearance
of the Roman police officer--that enemy remained. It is true that the
new converts of the Christian faith in Northern Europe felt a deep
respect for the mighty Bishop of Rome. But that poor bishop did not feel
any too safe when he looked toward the distant mountains. Heaven knew
what fresh hordes of barbarians were ready to cross the Alps and begin a
new attack on Rome. It was necessary--very necessary--for the spiritual
head of the world to find an ally with a strong sword and a powerful
fist who was willing to defend His Holiness in case of danger.
And so the Popes, who were not only very holy but also very practical,
cast about for a friend, and presently they made overtures to the most
promising of the Germanic tribes who had occupied north-western Europe
after the fall of Rome. They were called the Franks. One of their
earliest kings, called Merovech, had helped the Romans in the battle of
the Catalaunian fields in the year 451 when they defeated the Huns.
His descendants, the Merovingians, had continued to take little bits of
imperial territory until the year 486 when king Clovis (the old French
word for "Louis") felt himself strong enough to beat the Romans in the
open. But his descendants were weak men who left the affairs of state to
their Prime minister, the "Major Domus" or Master of the Palace.
Pepin the Short, the son of the famous Charles Martel, who succeeded his
father as Master of the Palace, hardly knew how to handle the situation.
His royal master was a devout theologian, without any interest in
politics. Pepin asked the Pope for advice. The Pope who was a practical
person answered that the "power in the state belonged to him who was
actually possessed of it." Pepin took the hint. He persuaded Childeric,
the last of the Merovingians to become a monk and then made himself king
with the approval of the other Germanic chieftains. But this did
not satisfy the shrewd Pepin. He wanted to be something more than a
barbarian chieftain. He staged an elaborate ceremony at which Boniface,
the great missionary of the European northwest, anointed him and made
him a "King by the grace of God." It was easy to slip those words, "Del
gratia," into the coronation service. It took almost fifteen hundred
years to get them out again.
Pepin was sincerely grateful for this kindness on the part of the
church. He made two expeditions to Italy to defend the Pope against
his enemies. He took Ravenna and several other cities away from the
Longobards and presented them to His Holiness, who incorporated
these new domains into the so-called Papal State, which remained an
independent country until half a century ago.
After Pepin's death, the relations between Rome and Aix-la-Chapelle or
Nymwegen or Ingelheim, (the Frankish Kings did not have one official
residence, but travelled from place to place with all their ministers
and court officers,) became more and more cordial. Finally the Pope and
the King took a step which was to influence the history of Europe in a
most profound way.
Charles, commonly known as Carolus Magnus or Charlemagne, succeeded
Pepin in the year 768. He had conquered the land of the Saxons in
eastern Germany and had built towns and monasteries all over the
greater part of northern Europe. At the request of certain enemies
of Abd-ar-Rahman, he had invaded Spain to fight the Moors. But in the
Pyrenees he had been attacked by the wild Basques and had been forced
to retire. It was upon this occasion that Roland, the great Margrave of
Breton, showed what a Frankish chieftain of those early days meant when
he promised to be faithful to his King, and gave his life and that of
his trusted followers to safeguard the retreat of the royal army.
During the last ten years of the eighth century, however, Charles was
obliged to devote himself exclusively to affairs of the South. The Pope,
Leo III, had been attacked by a band of Roman rowdies and had been left
for dead in the street. Some kind people had bandaged his wounds and had
helped him to escape to the camp of Charles, where he asked for help. An
army of Franks soon restored quiet and carried Leo back to the Lateran
Palace which ever since the days of Constantine, had been the home of
the Pope. That was in December of the year 799. On Christmas day of the
next year, Charlemagne, who was staying in Rome, attended the service
in the ancient church of St. Peter. When he arose from prayer, the
Pope placed a crown upon his head, called him Emperor of the Romans and
hailed him once more with the title of "Augustus" which had not been
heard for hundreds of years.
Once more Northern Europe was part of a Roman Empire, but the dignity
was held by a German chieftain who could read just a little and never
learned to write. But he could fight and for a short while there was
order and even the rival emperor in Constantinople sent a letter of
approval to his "dear Brother."
Unfortunately this splendid old man died in the year 814. His sons
and his grandsons at once began to fight for the largest share of the
imperial inheritance. Twice the Carolingian lands were divided, by
the treaties of Verdun in the year 843 and by the treaty of
Mersen-on-the-Meuse in the year 870. The latter treaty divided the
entire Frankish Kingdom into two parts. Charles the Bold received the
western half. It contained the old Roman province called Gaul where the
language of the people had become thoroughly romanized. The Franks soon
learned to speak this language and this accounts for the strange fact
that a purely Germanic land like France should speak a Latin tongue.
The other grandson got the eastern part, the land which the Romans had
called Germania. Those inhospitable regions had never been part of
the old Empire. Augustus had tried to conquer this "far east," but his
legions had been annihilated in the Teutoburg Wood in the year 9 and the
people had never been influenced by the higher Roman civilisation. They
spoke the popular Germanic tongue. The Teuton word for "people" was
"thiot." The Christian missionaries therefore called the German language
the "lingua theotisca" or the "lingua teutisca," the "popular dialect"
and this word "teutisca" was changed into "Deutsch" which accounts for
the name "Deutschland."
As for the famous Imperial Crown, it very soon slipped off the heads of
the Carolingian successors and rolled back onto the Italian plain, where
it became a sort of plaything of a number of little potentates who stole
the crown from each other amidst much bloodshed and wore it (with or
without the permission of the Pope) until it was the turn of some more
ambitious neighbour. The Pope, once more sorely beset by his enemies,
sent north for help. He did not appeal to the ruler of the west-Frankish
kingdom, this time. His messengers crossed the Alps and addressed
themselves to Otto, a Saxon Prince who was recognised as the greatest
chieftain of the different Germanic tribes.
Otto, who shared his people's affection for the blue skies and the gay
and beautiful people of the Italian peninsula, hastened to the rescue.
In return for his services, the Pope, Leo VIII, made Otto "Emperor,"
and the eastern half of Charles' old kingdom was henceforth known as the
"Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation."
This strange political creation managed to live to the ripe old age
of eight hundred and thirty-nine years. In the year 1801, (during the
presidency of Thomas Jefferson,) it was most unceremoniously relegated
to the historical scrapheap. The brutal fellow who destroyed the old
Germanic Empire was the son of a Corsican notary-public who had made a
brilliant career in the service of the French Republic. He was ruler of
Europe by the grace of his famous Guard Regiments, but he desired to be
something more. He sent to Rome for the Pope and the Pope came and stood
by while General Napoleon placed the imperial crown upon his own head
and proclaimed himself heir to the tradition of Charlemagne. For history
is like life. The more things change, the more they remain the same.
THE NORSEMEN
WHY THE PEOPLE OF THE TENTH CENTURY PRAYED THE LORD TO PROTECT THEM FROM
THE FURY OF THE NORSEMEN
IN the third and fourth centuries, the Germanic tribes of central Europe
had broken through the defences of the Empire that they might plunder
Rome and live on the fat of the land. In the eighth century it became
the turn of the Germans to be the "plundered-ones." They did not
like this at all, even if their enemies were their first cousins, the
Norsemen, who lived in Denmark and Sweden and Norway.
What forced these hardy sailors to turn pirate we do not know, but
once they had discovered the advantages and pleasures of a buccaneering
career there was no one who could stop them. They would suddenly descend
upon a peaceful Frankish or Frisian village, situated on the mouth of
a river. They would kill all the men and steal all the women. Then they
would sail away in their fast-sailing ships and when the soldiers of
the king or emperor arrived upon the scene, the robbers were gone and
nothing remained but a few smouldering ruins.
During the days of disorder which followed the death of Charlemagne, the
Northmen developed great activity. Their fleets made raids upon every
country and their sailors established small independent kingdoms along
the coast of Holland and France and England and Germany, and they even
found their way into Italy. The Northmen were very intelligent They
soon learned to speak the language of their subjects and gave up the
uncivilised ways of the early Vikings (or Sea-Kings) who had been very
picturesque but also very unwashed and terribly cruel.
Early in the tenth century a Viking by the name of Rollo had repeatedly
attacked the coast of France. The king of France, too weak to resist
these northern robbers, tried to bribe them into "being good." He
offered them the province of Normandy, if they would promise to stop
bothering the rest of his domains. Rollo accepted this bargain and
became "Duke of Normandy."
But the passion of conquest was strong in the blood of his children.
Across the channel, only a few hours away from the European mainland,
they could see the white cliffs and the green fields of England. Poor
England had passed through difficult days. For two hundred years it had
been a Roman colony. After the Romans left, it had been conquered by the
Angles and the Saxons, two German tribes from Schleswig. Next the
Danes had taken the greater part of the country and had established the
kingdom of Cnut. The Danes had been driven away and now (it was early in
the eleventh century) another Saxon king, Edward the Confessor, was
on the throne. But Edward was not expected to live long and he had no
children. The circumstances favoured the ambitious dukes of Normandy.
In 1066 Edward died. Immediately William of Normandy crossed the
channel, defeated and killed Harold of Wessex (who had taken the crown)
at the battle of Hastings, and proclaimed himself king of England.
In another chapter I have told you how in the year 800 a German
chieftain had become a Roman Emperor. Now in the year 1066 the grandson
of a Norse pirate was recognised as King of England.
Why should we ever read fairy stories, when the truth of history is so
much more interesting and entertaining?
FEUDALISM
HOW CENTRAL EUROPE, ATTACKED FROM THREE SIDES, BECAME AN ARMED CAMP AND
WHY EUROPE WOULD HAVE PERISHED WITHOUT THOSE PROFESSIONAL SOLDIERS AND
ADMINISTRATORS WHO WERE PART OF THE FEUDAL SYSTEM
THE following, then, is the state of Europe in the year one thousand,
when most people were so unhappy that they welcomed the prophecy
foretelling the approaching end of the world and rushed to the
monasteries, that the Day of Judgement might find them engaged upon
devout duties.
At an unknown date, the Germanic tribes had left their old home in Asia
and had moved westward into Europe. By sheer pressure of numbers they
had forced their way into the Roman Empire. They had destroyed the great
western empire, but the eastern part, being off the main route of
the great migrations, had managed to survive and feebly continued the
traditions of Rome's ancient glory.
During the days of disorder which had followed, (the true "dark ages" of
history, the sixth and seventh centuries of our era,) the German tribes
had been persuaded to accept the Christian religion and had recognised
the Bishop of Rome as the Pope or spiritual head of the world. In the
ninth century, the organising genius of Charlemagne had revived the
Roman Empire and had united the greater part of western Europe into a
single state. During the tenth century this empire had gone to pieces.
The western part had become a separate kingdom, France. The eastern half
was known as the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation, and the rulers
of this federation of states then pretended that they were the direct
heirs of Caesar and Augustus.
Unfortunately the power of the kings of France did not stretch beyond
the moat of their royal residence, while the Holy Roman Emperor was
openly defied by his powerful subjects whenever it suited their fancy or
their profit.
To increase the misery of the masses of the people, the triangle of
western Europe (look at page 128, please) was for ever exposed to
attacks from three sides. On the south lived the ever dangerous
Mohammedans. The western coast was ravaged by the Northmen. The eastern
frontier (defenceless except for the short stretch of the Carpathian
mountains) was at the mercy of hordes of Huns, Hungarians, Slavs and
Tartars.
The peace of Rome was a thing of the remote past, a dream of the "Good
Old Days" that were gone for ever. It was a question of "fight or die,"
and quite naturally people preferred to fight. Forced by circumstances,
Europe became an armed camp and there was a demand for strong
leadership. Both King and Emperor were far away. The frontiersmen (and
most of Europe in the year 1000 was "frontier") must help themselves.
They willingly submitted to the representatives of the king who were
sent to administer the outlying districts, PROVIDED THEY COULD PROTECT
THEM AGAINST THEIR ENEMIES.
Soon central Europe was dotted with small principalities, each one ruled
by a duke or a count or a baron or a bishop, as the case might be, and
organised as a fighting unit. These dukes and counts and barons had
sworn to be faithful to the king who had given them their "feudum"
(hence our word "feudal,") in return for their loyal services and a
certain amount of taxes. But travel in those days was slow and the
means of communication were exceedingly poor. The royal or imperial
administrators therefore enjoyed great independence, and within the
boundaries of their own province they assumed most of the rights which
in truth belonged to the king.
But you would make a mistake if you supposed that the people of the
eleventh century objected to this form of government. They supported
Feudalism because it was a very practical and necessary institution.
Their Lord and Master usually lived in a big stone house erected on the
top of a steep rock or built between deep moats, but within sight of his
subjects. In case of danger the subjects found shelter behind the walls
of the baronial stronghold. That is why they tried to live as near the
castle as possible and it accounts for the many European cities which
began their career around a feudal fortress.
But the knight of the early middle ages was much more than a
professional soldier. He was the civil servant of that day. He was the
judge of his community and he was the chief of police. He caught the
highwaymen and protected the wandering pedlars who were the merchants of
the eleventh century. He looked after the dikes so that the countryside
should not be flooded (just as the first noblemen had done in the valley
of the Nile four thousand years before). He encouraged the Troubadours
who wandered from place to place telling the stories of the ancient
heroes who had fought in the great wars of the migrations. Besides, he
protected the churches and the monasteries within his territory, and
although he could neither read nor write, (it was considered unmanly to
know such things,) he employed a number of priests who kept his accounts
and who registered the marriages and the births and the deaths which
occurred within the baronial or ducal domains.
In the fifteenth century the kings once more became strong enough to
exercise those powers which belonged to them because they were "anointed
of God." Then the feudal knights lost their former independence. Reduced
to the rank of country squires, they no longer filled a need and soon
they became a nuisance. But Europe would have perished without the
"feudal system" of the dark ages. There were many bad knights as there
are many bad people to-day. But generally speaking, the rough-fisted
barons of the twelfth and thirteenth century were hard-working
administrators who rendered a most useful service to the cause of
progress. During that era the noble torch of learning and art which had
illuminated the world of the Egyptians and the Greeks and the Romans was
burning very low. Without the knights and their good friends, the monks,
civilisation would have been extinguished entirely, and the human race
would have been forced to begin once more where the cave-man had left
off.
CHIVALRY
CHIVALRY
IT was quite natural that the professional fighting-men of the Middle
Ages should try to establish some sort of organisation for their
mutual benefit and protection. Out of this need for close organisation,
Knighthood or Chivalry was born.
We know very little about the origins of Knighthood. But as the system
developed, it gave the world something which it needed very badly--a
definite rule of conduct which softened the barbarous customs of that
day and made life more livable than it had been during the five hundred
years of the Dark Ages. It was not an easy task to civilise the rough
frontiersmen who had spent most of their time fighting Mohammedans and
Huns and Norsemen. Often they were guilty of backsliding, and having
vowed all sorts of oaths about mercy and charity in the morning, they
would murder all their prisoners before evening. But progress is
ever the result of slow and ceaseless labour, and finally the most
unscrupulous of knights was forced to obey the rules of his "class" or
suffer the consequences.
These rules were different in the various parts of Europe, but they all
made much of "service" and "loyalty to duty." The Middle Ages regarded
service as something very noble and beautiful. It was no disgrace to be
a servant, provided you were a good servant and did not slacken on the
job. As for loyalty, at a time when life depended upon the faithful
per-formance of many unpleasant duties, it was the chief virtue of the
fighting man.
A young knight therefore was asked to swear that he would be faithful as
a servant to God and as a servant to his King. Furthermore, he promised
to be generous to those whose need was greater than his own. He pledged
his word that he would be humble in his personal behaviour and would
never boast of his own accomplishments and that he would be a friend of
all those who suffered, (with the exception of the Mohammedans, whom he
was expected to kill on sight).
Around these vows, which were merely the Ten Commandments expressed
in terms which the people of the Middle Ages could understand, there
developed a complicated system of manners and outward behaviour. The
knights tried to model their own lives after the example of those heroes
of Arthur's Round Table and Charlemagne's court of whom the Troubadours
had told them and of whom you may read in many delightful books which
are enumerated at the end of this volume. They hoped that they might
prove as brave as Lancelot and as faithful as Roland. They carried
themselves with dignity and they spoke careful and gracious words that
they might be known as True Knights, however humble the cut of their
coat or the size of their purse.
In this way the order of Knighthood became a school of those good
manners which are the oil of the social machinery. Chivalry came to mean
courtesy and the feudal castle showed the rest of the world what clothes
to wear, how to eat, how to ask a lady for a dance and the thousand
and one little things of every-day behaviour which help to make life
interesting and agreeable.
Like all human institutions, Knighthood was doomed to perish as soon as
it had outlived its usefulness.
The crusades, about which one of the next chapters tells, were followed
by a great revival of trade. Cities grew overnight. The townspeople
became rich, hired good school teachers and soon were the equals of
the knights. The invention of gun-powder deprived the heavily armed
"Chevalier" of his former advantage and the use of mercenaries made it
impossible to conduct a battle with the delicate niceties of a chess
tournament. The knight became superfluous. Soon he became a ridiculous
figure, with his devotion to ideals that had no longer any practical
value. It was said that the noble Don Quixote de la Mancha had been the
last of the true knights. After his death, his trusted sword and his
armour were sold to pay his debts.
But somehow or other that sword seems to have fallen into the hands of a
number of men. Washington carried it during the hopeless days of Valley
Forge. It was the only defence of Gordon, when he had refused to desert
the people who had been entrusted to his care, and stayed to meet his
death in the besieged fortress of Khartoum.
And I am not quite sure but that it proved of invaluable strength in
winning the Great War.
POPE vs. EMPEROR
THE STRANGE DOUBLE LOYALTY OF THE PEOPLE OF THE MIDDLE AGES AND HOW IT
LED TO ENDLESS QUARRELS BETWEEN THE POPES AND THE HOLY ROMAN EMPERORS
IT is very difficult to understand the people of by-gone ages. Your own
grandfather, whom you see every day, is a mysterious being who lives in
a different world of ideas and clothes and manners. I am now telling you
the story of some of your grandfathers who are twenty-five generations
removed, and I do not expect you to catch the meaning of what I write
without re-reading this chapter a number of times.
The average man of the Middle Ages lived a very simple and uneventful
life. Even if he was a free citizen, able to come and go at will, he
rarely left his own neighbourhood. There were no printed books and only
a few manuscripts. Here and there, a small band of industrious monks
taught reading and writing and some arithmetic. But science and history
and geography lay buried beneath the ruins of Greece and Rome.
Whatever people knew about the past they had learned by listening to
stories and legends. Such information, which goes from father to son, is
often slightly incorrect in details, but it will preserve the main
facts of history with astonishing accuracy. After more than two thousand
years, the mothers of India still frighten their naughty children by
telling them that "Iskander will get them," and Iskander is none other
than Alexander the Great, who visited India in the year 330 before the
birth of Christ, but whose story has lived through all these ages.
The people of the early Middle Ages never saw a textbook of Roman
history. They were ignorant of many things which every school-boy to-day
knows before he has entered the third grade. But the Roman Empire, which
is merely a name to you, was to them something very much alive. They
felt it. They willingly recognised the Pope as their spiritual
leader because he lived in Rome and represented the idea of the Roman
super-power. And they were profoundly grateful when Charlemagne, and
afterwards Otto the Great, revived the idea of a world-empire and
created the Holy Roman Empire, that the world might again be as it
always had been.
But the fact that there were two different heirs to the Roman tradition
placed the faithful burghers of the Middle Ages in a difficult position.
The theory behind the mediaeval political system was both sound and
simple. While the worldly master (the emperor) looked after the physical
well-being of his subjects, the spiritual master (the Pope) guarded
their souls.
In practice, however, the system worked very badly. The Emperor
invariably tried to interfere with the affairs of the church and the
Pope retaliated and told the Emperor how he should rule his domains.
Then they told each other to mind their own business in very
unceremonious language and the inevitable end was war.
Under those circumstances, what were the people to do, A good Christian
obeyed both the Pope and his King. But the Pope and the Emperor were
enemies. Which side should a dutiful subject and an equally dutiful
Christian take?
It was never easy to give the correct answer. When the Emperor happened
to be a man of energy and was sufficiently well provided with money to
organise an army, he was very apt to cross the Alps and march on Rome,
besiege the Pope in his own palace if need be, and force His Holiness to
obey the imperial instructions or suffer the consequences.
But more frequently the Pope was the stronger. Then the Emperor or the
King together with all his subjects was excommunicated. This meant that
all churches were closed, that no one could be baptised, that no dying
man could be given absolution--in short, that half of the functions of
mediaeval government came to an end.
More than that, the people were absolved from their oath of loyalty to
their sovereign and were urged to rebel against their master. But if
they followed this advice of the distant Pope and were caught, they were
hanged by their near-by Lege Lord and that too was very unpleasant.
Indeed, the poor fellows were in a difficult position and none fared
worse than those who lived during the latter half of the eleventh
century, when the Emperor Henry IV of Germany and Pope Gregory VII
fought a two-round battle which decided nothing and upset the peace of
Europe for almost fifty years.
In the middle of the eleventh century there had been a strong movement
for reform in the church. The election of the Popes, thus far, had
been a most irregular affair. It was to the advantage of the Holy Roman
Emperors to have a well-disposed priest elected to the Holy See. They
frequently came to Rome at the time of election and used their influence
for the benefit of one of their friends.
In the year 1059 this had been changed. By a decree of Pope Nicholas
II the principal priests and deacons of the churches in and around
Rome were organised into the so-called College of Cardinals, and this
gathering of prominent churchmen (the word "Cardinal" meant principal)
was given the exclusive power of electing the future Popes.
In the year 1073 the College of Cardinals elected a priest by the name
of Hildebrand, the son of very simple parents in Tuscany, as Pope, and
he took the name of Gregory VII. His energy was unbounded. His belief in
the supreme powers of his Holy Office was built upon a granite rock of
conviction and courage. In the mind of Gregory, the Pope was not only
the absolute head of the Christian church, but also the highest Court of
Appeal in all worldly matters. The Pope who had elevated simple German
princes to the dignity of Emperor could depose them at will. He could
veto any law passed by duke or king or emperor, but whosoever should
question a papal decree, let him beware, for the punishment would be
swift and merciless.
Gregory sent ambassadors to all the European courts to inform the
potentates of Europe of his new laws and asked them to take due notice
of their contents. William the Conqueror promised to be good, but Henry
IV, who since the age of six had been fighting with his subjects, had no
intention of submitting to the Papal will. He called together a college
of German bishops, accused Gregory of every crime under the sun and then
had him deposed by the council of Worms.
The Pope answered with excommunication and a demand that the German
princes rid themselves of their unworthy ruler. The German princes, only
too happy to be rid of Henry, asked the Pope to come to Augsburg and
help them elect a new Emperor.
Gregory left Rome and travelled northward. Henry, who was no fool,
appreciated the danger of his position. At all costs he must make peace
with the Pope, and he must do it at once. In the midst of winter he
crossed the Alps and hastened to Canossa where the Pope had stopped for
a short rest. Three long days, from the 25th to the 28th of January of
the year 1077, Henry, dressed as a penitent pilgrim (but with a warm
sweater underneath his monkish garb), waited outside the gates of the
castle of Canossa. Then he was allowed to enter and was pardoned for
his sins. But the repentance did not last long. As soon as Henry
had returned to Germany, he behaved exactly as before. Again he was
excommunicated. For the second time a council of German bishops deposed
Gregory, but this time, when Henry crossed the Alps he was at the head
of a large army, besieged Rome and forced Gregory to retire to Salerno,
where he died in exile. This first violent outbreak decided nothing. As
soon as Henry was back in Germany, the struggle between Pope and Emperor
was continued.
The Hohenstaufen family which got hold of the Imperial German Throne
shortly afterwards, were even more independent than their predecessors.
Gregory had claimed that the Popes were superior to all kings because
they (the Popes) at the Day of Judgement would be responsible for the
behaviour of all the sheep of their flock, and in the eyes of God, a
king was one of that faithful herd.
Frederick of Hohenstaufen, commonly known as Barbarossa or Red Beard,
set up the counter-claim that the Empire had been bestowed upon his
predecessor "by God himself" and as the Empire included Italy and Rome,
he began a campaign which was to add these "lost provinces" to the
northern country. Barbarossa was accidentally drowned in Asia Minor
during the second Crusade, but his son Frederick II, a brilliant
young man who in his youth had been exposed to the civilisation of
the Mohammedans of Sicily, continued the war. The Popes accused him of
heresy. It is true that Frederick seems to have felt a deep and serious
contempt for the rough Christian world of the North, for the boorish
German Knights and the intriguing Italian priests. But he held his
tongue, went on a Crusade and took Jerusalem from the infidel and was
duly crowned as King of the Holy City. Even this act did not placate
the Popes. They deposed Frederick and gave his Italian possessions to
Charles of Anjou, the brother of that King Louis of France who became
famous as Saint Louis. This led to more warfare. Conrad V, the son
of Conrad IV, and the last of the Hohenstaufens, tried to regain the
kingdom, and was defeated and decapitated at Naples. But twenty years
later, the French who had made themselves thoroughly unpopular in Sicily
were all murdered during the so-called Sicilian Vespers, and so it went.
The quarrel between the Popes and the Emperors was never settled, but
after a while the two enemies learned to leave each other alone.
In the year 1278, Rudolph of Hapsburg was elected Emperor. He did not
take the trouble to go to Rome to be crowned. The Popes did not object
and in turn they kept away from Germany. This meant peace but two
entire centuries which might have been used for the purpose of internal
organisation had been wasted in useless warfare.
It is an ill wind however that bloweth no good to some one. The little
cities of Italy, by a process of careful balancing, had managed to
increase their power and their independence at the expense of both
Emperors and Popes. When the rush for the Holy Land began, they were
able to handle the transportation problem of the thousands of eager
pilgrims who were clamoring for passage, and at the end of the Crusades
they had built themselves such strong defences of brick and of gold that
they could defy Pope and Emperor with equal indifference.
Church and State fought each other and a third party--the mediaeval
city--ran away with the spoils.
THE CRUSADES
BUT ALL THESE DIFFERENT QUARRELS WERE FORGOTTEN WHEN THE TURKS TOOK THE
HOLY LAND, DESECRATED THE HOLY PLACES AND INTERFERED SERIOUSLY WITH THE
TRADE FROM EAST TO WEST. EUROPE WENT CRUSADING
DURING three centuries there had been peace between Christians and
Moslems except in Spain and in the eastern Roman Empire, the two states
defending the gateways of Europe. The Mohammedans having conquered Syria
in the seventh century were in possession of the Holy Land. But
they regarded Jesus as a great prophet (though not quite as great as
Mohammed), and they did not interfere with the pilgrims who wished
to pray in the church which Saint Helena, the mother of the Emperor
Constantine, had built on the spot of the Holy Grave. But early in the
eleventh century, a Tartar tribe from the wilds of Asia, called the
Seljuks or Turks, became masters of the Mohammedan state in western Asia
and then the period of tolerance came to an end. The Turks took all of
Asia Minor away from the eastern Roman Emperors and they made an end to
the trade between east and west.
Alexis, the Emperor, who rarely saw anything of his Christian neighbours
of the west, appealed for help and pointed to the danger which
threatened Europe should the Turks take Constantinople.
The Italian cities which had established colonies along the coast
of Asia Minor and Palestine, in fear for their possessions, reported
terrible stories of Turkish atrocities and Christian suffering. All
Europe got excited.
Pope Urban II, a Frenchman from Reims, who had been educated at the same
famous cloister of Cluny which had trained Gregory VII, thought that
the time had come for action. The general state of Europe was far from
satisfactory. The primitive agricultural methods of that day (unchanged
since Roman times) caused a constant scarcity of food. There was
unemployment and hunger and these are apt to lead to discontent and
riots. Western Asia in older days had fed millions. It was an excellent
field for the purpose of immigration.
Therefore at the council of Clermont in France in the year 1095 the Pope
arose, described the terrible horrors which the infidels had inflicted
upon the Holy Land, gave a glowing description of this country which
ever since the days of Moses had been overflowing with milk and honey,
and exhorted the knights of France and the people of Europe in general
to leave wife and child and deliver Palestine from the Turks.
A wave of religious hysteria swept across the continent. All reason
stopped. Men would drop their hammer and saw, walk out of their shop and
take the nearest road to the east to go and kill Turks. Children would
leave their homes to "go to Palestine" and bring the terrible Turks
to their knees by the mere appeal of their youthful zeal and Christian
piety. Fully ninety percent of those enthusiasts never got within sight
of the Holy Land. They had no money. They were forced to beg or steal to
keep alive. They became a danger to the safety of the highroads and they
were killed by the angry country people.
The first Crusade, a wild mob of honest Christians, defaulting
bankrupts, penniless noblemen and fugitives from justice, following the
lead of half-crazy Peter the Hermit and Walter-without-a-Cent, began
their campaign against the Infidels by murdering all the Jews whom
they met by the way. They got as far as Hungary and then they were all
killed.
This experience taught the Church a lesson. Enthusiasm alone would not
set the Holy Land free. Organisation was as necessary as good-will and
courage. A year was spent in training and equipping an army of 200,000
men. They were placed under command of Godfrey of Bouillon, Robert, duke
of Normandy, Robert, count of Flanders, and a number of other noblemen,
all experienced in the art of war.
In the year 1096 this second crusade started upon its long voyage. At
Constantinople the knights did homage to the Emperor. (For as I have
told you, traditions die hard, and a Roman Emperor, however poor and
powerless, was still held in great respect). Then they crossed into
Asia, killed all the Moslems who fell into their hands, stormed
Jerusalem, massacred the Mohammedan population, and marched to the Holy
Sepulchre to give praise and thanks amidst tears of piety and gratitude.
But soon the Turks were strengthened by the arrival of fresh troops.
Then they retook Jerusalem and in turn killed the faithful followers of
the Cross.
During the next two centuries, seven other crusades took place.
Gradually the Crusaders learned the technique of the trip. The land
voyage was too tedious and too dangerous. They preferred to cross the
Alps and go to Genoa or Venice where they took ship for the east.
The Genoese and the Venetians made this trans-Mediterranean passenger
service a very profitable business. They charged exorbitant rates, and
when the Crusaders (most of whom had very little money) could not pay
the price, these Italian "profiteers" kindly allowed them to "work their
way across." In return for a fare from Venice to Acre, the Crusader
undertook to do a stated amount of fighting for the owners of his
vessel. In this way Venice greatly increased her territory along the
coast of the Adriatic and in Greece, where Athens became a Venetian
colony, and in the islands of Cyprus and Crete and Rhodes.
All this, however, helped little in settling the question of the Holy
Land. After the first enthusiasm had worn off, a short crusading trip
became part of the liberal education of every well-bred young man, and
there never was any lack of candidates for service in Palestine. But the
old zeal was gone. The Crusaders, who had begun their warfare with deep
hatred for the Mohammedans and great love for the Christian people of
the eastern Roman Empire and Armenia, suffered a complete change of
heart. They came to despise the Greeks of Byzantium, who cheated them
and frequently betrayed the cause of the Cross, and the Armenians and
all the other Levantine races, and they began to appreciate the virtues
of their enemies who proved to be generous and fair opponents.
Of course, it would never do to say this openly. But when the Crusader
returned home, he was likely to imitate the manners which he had learned
from his heathenish foe, compared to whom the average western knight was
still a good deal of a country bumpkin. He also brought with him several
new food-stuffs, such as peaches and spinach which he planted in his
garden and grew for his own benefit. He gave up the barbarous custom of
wearing a load of heavy armour and appeared in the flowing robes of
silk or cotton which were the traditional habit of the followers of
the Prophet and were originally worn by the Turks. Indeed the Crusades,
which had begun as a punitive expedition against the Heathen, became
a course of general instruction in civilisation for millions of young
Europeans.
From a military and political point of view the Crusades were a failure.
Jerusalem and a number of cities were taken and lost. A dozen little
kingdoms were established in Syria and Palestine and Asia Minor, but
they were re-conquered by the Turks and after the year 1244 (when
Jerusalem became definitely Turkish) the status of the Holy Land was the
same as it had been before 1095.
But Europe had undergone a great change. The people of the west had been
allowed a glimpse of the light and the sunshine and the beauty of the
east. Their dreary castles no longer satisfied them. They wanted a
broader life. Neither Church nor State could give this to them.
They found it in the cities.
THE MEDIAEVAL CITY
WHY THE PEOPLE OF THE MIDDLE AGES SAID THAT "CITY AIR IS FREE AIR"
THE early part of the Middle Ages had been an era of pioneering and of
settlement. A new people, who thus far had lived outside the wild range
of forest, mountains and marshes which protected the north-eastern
frontier of the Roman Empire, had forced its way into the plains of
western Europe and had taken possession of most of the land. They were
restless, as all pioneers have been since the beginning of time. They
liked to be "on the go." They cut down the forests and they cut each
other's throats with equal energy. Few of them wanted to live in cities.
They insisted upon being "free," they loved to feel the fresh air of
the hillsides fill their lungs while they drove their herds across the
wind-swept pastures. When they no longer liked their old homes, they
pulled up stakes and went away in search of fresh adventures.
The weaker ones died. The hardy fighters and the courageous women who
had followed their men into the wilderness survived. In this way they
developed a strong race of men. They cared little for the graces of
life. They were too busy to play the fiddle or write pieces of poetry.
They had little love for discussions. The priest, "the learned man" of
the village (and before the middle of the thirteenth century, a layman
who could read and write was regarded as a "sissy") was supposed to
settle all questions which had no direct practical value. Meanwhile the
German chieftain, the Frankish Baron, the Northman Duke (or whatever
their names and titles) occupied their share of the territory which
once had been part of the great Roman Empire and among the ruins of past
glory, they built a world of their own which pleased them mightily and
which they considered quite perfect.
They managed the affairs of their castle and the surrounding country to
the best of their ability. They were as faithful to the commandments of
the Church as any weak mortal could hope to be. They were sufficiently
loyal to their king or emperor to keep on good terms with those distant
but always dangerous potentates. In short, they tried to do right and
to be fair to their neighbours without being exactly unfair to their own
interests.
It was not an ideal world in which they found themselves. The greater
part of the people were serfs or "villains," farm-hands who were as much
a part of the soil upon which they lived as the cows and sheep whose
stables they shared. Their fate was not particularly happy nor was it
particularly unhappy. But what was one to do? The good Lord who ruled
the world of the Middle Ages had undoubtedly ordered everything for the
best. If He, in his wisdom, had decided that there must be both knights
and serfs, it was not the duty of these faithful sons of the church to
question the arrangement. The serfs therefore did not complain but when
they were too hard driven, they would die off like cattle which are not
fed and stabled in the right way, and then something would be hastily
done to better their condition. But if the progress of the world had
been left to the serf and his feudal master, we would still be living
after the fashion of the twelfth century, saying "abracadabra" when we
tried to stop a tooth-ache, and feeling a deep contempt and hatred for
the dentist who offered to help us with his "science," which most likely
was of Mohammedan or heathenish origin and therefore both wicked and
useless.
When you grow up you will discover that many people do not believe in
"progress" and they will prove to you by the terrible deeds of some of
our own contemporaries that "the world does not change." But I hope
that you will not pay much attention to such talk. You see, it took
our ancestors almost a million years to learn how to walk on their
hind legs. Other centuries had to go by before their animal-like
grunts developed into an understandable language. Writing--the art of
preserving our ideas for the benefit of future generations, without
which no progress is possible was invented only four thousand years ago.
The idea of turning the forces of nature into the obedient servants of
man was quite new in the days of your own grandfather. It seems to me,
therefore, that we are making progress at an unheard-of rate of speed.
Perhaps we have paid a little too much attention to the mere physical
comforts of life. That will change in due course of time and we shall
then attack the problems which are not related to health and to wages
and plumbing and machinery in general.
But please do not be too sentimental about the "good old days." Many
people who only see the beautiful churches and the great works of art
which the Middle Ages have left behind grow quite eloquent when they
compare our own ugly civilisation with its hurry and its noise and the
evil smells of backfiring motor trucks with the cities of a thousand
years ago. But these mediaeval churches were invariably surrounded by
miserable hovels compared to which a modern tenement house stands
forth as a luxurious palace. It is true that the noble Lancelot and the
equally noble Parsifal, the pure young hero who went in search of the
Holy Grail, were not bothered by the odor of gasoline. But there were
other smells of the barnyard variety--odors of decaying refuse which
had been thrown into the street--of pig-sties surrounding the Bishop's
palace--of unwashed people who had inherited their coats and hats from
their grandfathers and who had never learned the blessing of soap. I
do not want to paint too unpleasant a picture. But when you read in the
ancient chronicles that the King of France, looking out of the windows
of his palace, fainted at the stench caused by the pigs rooting in the
streets of Paris, when an ancient manuscript recounts a few details of
an epidemic of the plague or of small-pox, then you begin to under-stand
that "progress" is something more than a catchword used by modern
advertising men.
No, the progress of the last six hundred years would not have been
possible without the existence of cities. I shall, therefore, have to
make this chapter a little longer than many of the others. It is
too important to be reduced to three or four pages, devoted to mere
political events.
The ancient world of Egypt and Babylonia and Assyria had been a world
of cities. Greece had been a country of City-States. The history of
Phoenicia was the history of two cities called Sidon and Tyre. The Roman
Empire was the "hinterland" of a single town. Writing, art, science,
astronomy, architecture, literature, the theatre--the list is
endless--have all been products of the city.
For almost four thousand years the wooden bee-hive which we call a town
had been the workshop of the world. Then came the great migrations. The
Roman Empire was destroyed. The cities were burned down and Europe once
more became a land of pastures and little agricultural villages. During
the Dark Ages the fields of civilisation had lain fallow.
The Crusades had prepared the soil for a new crop. It was time for the
harvest, but the fruit was plucked by the burghers of the free cities.
I have told you the story of the castles and the monasteries, with their
heavy stone enclosures--the homes of the knights and the monks, who
guarded men's bodies and their souls. You have seen how a few artisans
(butchers and bakers and an occasional candle-stick maker) came to
live near the castle to tend to the wants of their masters and to find
protection in case of danger. Sometimes the feudal lord allowed these
people to surround their houses with a stockade. But they were dependent
for their living upon the good-will of the mighty Seigneur of the
castle. When he went about they knelt before him and kissed his hand.
Then came the Crusades and many things changed. The migrations had
driven people from the north-east to the west. The Crusades made
millions of people travel from the west to the highly civilised regions
of the south-east. They discovered that the world was not bounded by the
four walls of their little settlement. They came to appreciate better
clothes, more comfortable houses, new dishes, products of the mysterious
Orient. After their return to their old homes, they insisted that they
be supplied with those articles. The peddler with his pack upon his
back--the only merchant of the Dark Ages--added these goods to his old
merchandise, bought a cart, hired a few ex-crusaders to protect him
against the crime wave which followed this great international war,
and went forth to do business upon a more modern and larger scale. His
career was not an easy one. Every time he entered the domains of another
Lord he had to pay tolls and taxes. But the business was profitable all
the same and the peddler continued to make his rounds.
Soon certain energetic merchants discovered that the goods which they
had always imported from afar could be made at home. They turned part
of their homes into a workgshop.{sic} They ceased to be merchants and
became manufacturers. They sold their products not only to the lord of
the castle and to the abbot in his monastery, but they exported them to
nearby towns. The lord and the abbot paid them with products of their
farms, eggs and wines, and with honey, which in those early days was
used as sugar. But the citizens of distant towns were obliged to pay in
cash and the manufacturer and the merchant began to own little pieces of
gold, which entirely changed their position in the society of the early
Middle Ages.
It is difficult for you to imagine a world without money. In a modern
city one cannot possible live without money. All day long you carry a
pocket full of small discs of metal to "pay your way." You need a nickel
for the street-car, a dollar for a dinner, three cents for an evening
paper. But many people of the early Middle Ages never saw a piece of
coined money from the time they were born to the day of their death. The
gold and silver of Greece and Rome lay buried beneath the ruins of their
cities. The world of the migrations, which had succeeded the Empire, was
an agricultural world. Every farmer raised enough grain and enough sheep
and enough cows for his own use.
The mediaeval knight was a country squire and was rarely forced to pay
for materials in money. His estates produced everything that he and his
family ate and drank and wore on their backs. The bricks for his house
were made along the banks of the nearest river. Wood for the rafters of
the hall was cut from the baronial forest. The few articles that had to
come from abroad were paid for in goods--in honey--in eggs--in fagots.
But the Crusades upset the routine of the old agricultural life in a
very drastic fashion. Suppose that the Duke of Hildesheim was going to
the Holy Land. He must travel thousands of miles and he must pay his
passage and his hotel-bills. At home he could pay with products of his
farm. But he could not well take a hundred dozen eggs and a cart-load
of hams with him to satisfy the greed of the shipping agent of Venice or
the inn-keeper of the Brenner Pass. These gentlemen insisted upon cash.
His Lordship therefore was obliged to take a small quantity of gold with
him upon his voyage. Where could he find this gold? He could borrow it
from the Lombards, the descendants of the old Longobards, who had turned
professional money-lenders, who seated behind their exchange-table
(commonly known as "banco" or bank) were glad to let his Grace have a
few hundred gold pieces in exchange for a mortgage upon his estates,
that they might be repaid in case His Lordship should die at the hands
of the Turks.
That was dangerous business for the borrower. In the end, the Lombards
invariably owned the estates and the Knight became a bankrupt, who
hired himself out as a fighting man to a more powerful and more careful
neighbour.
His Grace could also go to that part of the town where the Jews were
forced to live. There he could borrow money at a rate of fifty or sixty
percent. interest. That, too, was bad business. But was there a way out?
Some of the people of the little city which surrounded the castle were
said to have money. They had known the young lord all his life. His
father and their fathers had been good friends. They would not be
unreasonable in their demands. Very well. His Lordship's clerk, a
monk who could write and keep accounts, sent a note to the best known
merchants and asked for a small loan. The townspeople met in the
work-room of the jeweller who made chalices for the nearby churches and
discussed this demand. They could not well refuse. It would serve no
purpose to ask for "interest." In the first place, it was against the
religious principles of most people to take interest and in the second
place, it would never be paid except in agricultural products and of
these the people had enough and to spare.
"But," suggested the tailor who spent his days quietly sitting upon his
table and who was somewhat of a philosopher, "suppose that we ask some
favour in return for our money. We are all fond of fishing. But his
Lordship won't let us fish in his brook. Suppose that we let him have
a hundred ducats and that he give us in return a written guarantee
allowing us to fish all we want in all of his rivers. Then he gets the
hundred which he needs, but we get the fish and it will be good business
all around."
The day his Lordship accepted this proposition (it seemed such an easy
way of getting a hundred gold pieces) he signed the death-warrant of his
own power. His clerk drew up the agreement. His Lordship made his mark
(for he could not sign his name) and departed for the East. Two years
later he came back, dead broke. The townspeople were fishing in the
castle pond. The sight of this silent row of anglers annoyed his
Lordship. He told his equerry to go and chase the crowd away. They went,
but that night a delegation of merchants visited the castle. They were
very polite. They congratulated his Lordship upon his safe return. They
were sorry his Lordship had been annoyed by the fishermen, but as his
Lordship might perhaps remember he had given them permission to do so
himself, and the tailor produced the Charter which had been kept in the
safe of the jeweller ever since the master had gone to the Holy Land.
His Lordship was much annoyed. But once more he was in dire need of some
money. In Italy he had signed his name to certain documents which were
now in the possession of Salvestro dei Medici, the well-known banker.
These documents were "promissory notes" and they were due two months
from date. Their total amount came to three hundred and forty pounds,
Flemish gold. Under these circumstances, the noble knight could not well
show the rage which filled his heart and his proud soul. Instead, he
suggested another little loan. The merchants retired to discuss the
matter.
After three days they came back and said "yes." They were only too happy
to be able to help their master in his difficulties, but in return
for the 345 golden pounds would he give them another written promise
(another charter) that they, the townspeople, might establish a council
of their own to be elected by all the merchants and free citizens of the
city, said council to manage civic affairs without interference from the
side of the castle?
His Lordship was confoundedly angry. But again, he needed the money. He
said yes, and signed the charter. Next week, he repented. He called
his soldiers and went to the house of the jeweller and asked for the
documents which his crafty subjects had cajoled out of him under the
pressure of circumstances. He took them away and burned them. The
townspeople stood by and said nothing. But when next his Lordship needed
money to pay for the dowry of his daughter, he was unable to get a
single penny. After that little affair at the jeweller's his credit was
not considered good. He was forced to eat humble-pie and offer to make
certain reparations. Before his Lordship got the first installment of
the stipulated sum, the townspeople were once more in possession of all
their old charters and a brand new one which permitted them to build
a "city-hall" and a strong tower where all the charters might be kept
protected against fire and theft, which really meant protected against
future violence on the part of the Lord and his armed followers.
This, in a very general way, is what happened during the centuries which
followed the Crusades. It was a slow process, this gradual shifting
of power from the castle to the city. There was some fighting. A few
tailors and jewellers were killed and a few castles went up in smoke.
But such occurrences were not common. Almost imperceptibly the towns
grew richer and the feudal lords grew poorer. To maintain themselves
they were for ever forced to exchange charters of civic liberty in
return for ready cash. The cities grew. They offered an asylum to
run-away serfs who gained their liberty after they had lived a number
of years behind the city walls. They came to be the home of the more
energetic elements of the surrounding country districts. They were proud
of their new importance and expressed their power in the churches and
public buildings which they erected around the old market place, where
centuries before the barter of eggs and sheep and honey and salt had
taken place. They wanted their children to have a better chance in life
than they had enjoyed themselves. They hired monks to come to their
city and be school teachers. When they heard of a man who could paint
pictures upon boards of wood, they offered him a pension if he would
come and cover the walls of their chapels and their town hall with
scenes from the Holy Scriptures.
Meanwhile his Lordship, in the dreary and drafty halls of his castle,
saw all this up-start splendour and regretted the day when first he had
signed away a single one of his sovereign rights and prerogatives. But
he was helpless. The townspeople with their well-filled strong-boxes
snapped their fingers at him. They were free men, fully prepared to hold
what they had gained by the sweat of their brow and after a struggle
which had lasted for more than ten generations.
MEDIAEVAL SELF-GOVERNMENT
HOW THE PEOPLE OF THE CITIES ASSERTED THEIR RIGHT TO BE HEARD IN THE
ROYAL COUNCILS OF THEIR COUNTRY
As long as people were "nomads," wandering tribes of shepherds, all men
had been equal and had been responsible for the welfare and safety of
the entire community.
But after they had settled down and some had become rich and others had
grown poor, the government was apt to fall into the hands of those
who were not obliged to work for their living and who could devote
themselves to politics.
I have told you how this had happened in Egypt and in Mesopotamia and in
Greece and in Rome. It occurred among the Germanic population of western
Europe as soon as order had been restored. The western European world
was ruled in the first place by an emperor who was elected by the seven
or eight most important kings of the vast Roman Empire of the German
nation and who enjoyed a great deal of imaginary and very little actual
power. It was ruled by a number of kings who sat upon shaky thrones. The
every-day government was in the hands of thousands of feudal princelets.
Their subjects were peasants or serfs. There were few cities. There was
hardly any middle class. But during the thirteenth century (after an
absence of almost a thousand years) the middle class--the merchant
class--once more appeared upon the historical stage and its rise
in power, as we saw in the last chapter, had meant a decrease in the
influence of the castle folk.
Thus far, the king, in ruling his domains, had only paid attention to
the wishes of his noblemen and his bishops. But the new world of trade
and commerce which grew out of the Crusades forced him to recognise
the middle class or suffer from an ever-increasing emptiness of his
exchequer. Their majesties (if they had followed their hidden wishes)
would have as lief consulted their cows and their pigs as the good
burghers of their cities. But they could not help themselves. They
swallowed the bitter pill because it was gilded, but not without a
struggle.
In England, during the absence of Richard the Lion Hearted (who had gone
to the Holy Land, but who was spending the greater part of his crusading
voyage in an Austrian jail) the government of the country had been
placed in the hands of John, a brother of Richard, who was his inferior
in the art of war, but his equal as a bad administrator. John had begun
his career as a regent by losing Normandy and the greater part of the
French possessions. Next, he had managed to get into a quarrel with
Pope Innocent III, the famous enemy of the Hohenstaufens. The Pope had
excommunicated John (as Gregory VII had excommunicated the Emperor Henry
IV two centuries before). In the year 1213 John had been obliged to make
an ignominious peace just as Henry IV had been obliged to do in the year
1077.
Undismayed by his lack of success, John continued to abuse his royal
power until his disgruntled vassals made a prisoner of their anointed
ruler and forced him to promise that he would be good and would never
again interfere with the ancient rights of his subjects. All this
happened on a little island in the Thames, near the village of
Runnymede, on the 15th of June of the year 1215. The document to which
John signed his name was called the Big Charter--the Magna Carta. It
contained very little that was new. It re-stated in short and direct
sentences the ancient duties of the king and enumerated the privileges
of his vassals. It paid little attention to the rights (if any) of
the vast majority of the people, the peasants, but it offered certain
securities to the rising class of the merchants. It was a charter of
great importance because it defined the powers of the king with more
precision than had ever been done before. But it was still a purely
mediaeval document. It did not refer to common human beings, unless they
happened to be the property of the vassal, which must be safe-guarded
against royal tyranny just as the Baronial woods and cows were protected
against an excess of zeal on the part of the royal foresters.
A few years later, however, we begin to hear a very different note in
the councils of His Majesty.
John, who was bad, both by birth and inclination, solemnly had promised
to obey the great charter and then had broken every one of its many
stipulations. Fortunately, he soon died and was succeeded by his son
Henry III, who was forced to recognise the charter anew. Meanwhile,
Uncle Richard, the Crusader, had cost the country a great deal of money
and the king was obliged to ask for a few loans that he might pay his
obligations to the Jewish money-lenders. The large land-owners and the
bishops who acted as councillors to the king could not provide him with
the necessary gold and silver. The king then gave orders that a few
representatives of the cities be called upon to attend the sessions of
his Great Council. They made their first appearance in the year 1265.
They were supposed to act only as financial experts who were not
supposed to take a part in the general discussion of matters of state,
but to give advice exclusively upon the question of taxation.
Gradually, however, these representatives of the "commons" were
consulted upon many of the problems and the meeting of noblemen, bishops
and city delegates developed into a regular Parliament, a place "ou l'on
parfait," which means in English where people talked, before important
affairs of state were decided upon.
But the institution of such a general advisory-board with certain
executive powers was not an English invention, as seems to ke the
general belief, and government by a "king and his parliament" was by no
means restricted to the British Isles. You will find it in every part of
Europe. In some countries, like France, the rapid increase of the Royal
power after the Middle Ages reduced the influence of the "parliament"
to nothing. In the year 1302 representatives of the cities had been
admitted to the meeting of the French Parliament, but five centuries had
to pass before this "Parliament" was strong enough to assert the rights
of the middle class, the so-called Third Estate, and break the power
of the king. Then they made up for lost time and during the French
Revolution, abolished the king, the clergy and the nobles and made the
representatives of the common people the rulers of the land. In Spain
the "cortex" (the king's council) had been opened to the commoners as
early as the first half of the twelfth century. In the Germain Empire,
a number of important cities had obtained the rank of "imperial cities"
whose representatives must be heard in the imperial diet.
In Sweden, representatives of the people attended the sessions of the
Riksdag at the first meeting of the year 1359. In Denmark the Daneholf,
the ancient national assembly, was re-established in 1314, and, although
the nobles often regained control of the country at the expense of
the king and the people, the representatives of the cities were never
completely deprived of their power.
In the Scandinavian country, the story of representative government is
particularly interesting. In Iceland, the "Althing," the assembly of all
free landowners, who managed the affairs of the island, began to hold
regular meetings in the ninth century and continued to do so for more
than a thousand years.
In Switzerland, the freemen of the different cantons defended their
assemblies against the attempts of a number of feudal neighbours with
great success.
Finally, in the Low Countries, in Holland, the councils of the different
duchies and counties were attended by representatives of the third
estate as early as the thirteenth century.
In the sixteenth century a number of these small provinces rebelled
against their king, abjured his majesty in a solemn meeting of the
"Estates General," removed the clergy from the discussions, broke
the power of the nobles and assumed full executive authority over the
newly-established Republic of the United Seven Netherlands. For two
centuries, the representatives of the town-councils ruled the country
without a king, without bishops and without noblemen. The city had
become supreme and the good burghers had become the rulers of the land.
THE MEDIAEVAL WORLD
WHAT THE PEOPLE OF THE MIDDLE AGES THOUGHT OF THE WORLD IN WHICH THEY
HAPPENED TO LIVE
DATES are a very useful invention. We could not do without them but
unless we are very careful, they will play tricks with us. They are
apt to make history too precise. For example, when I talk of the
point-of-view of mediaeval man, I do not mean that on the 31st of
December of the year 476, suddenly all the people of Europe said, "Ah,
now the Roman Empire has come to an end and we are living in the Middle
Ages. How interesting!"
You could have found men at the Frankish court of Charlemagne who were
Romans in their habits, in their manners, in their out-look upon life.
On the other hand, when you grow up you will discover that some of the
people in this world have never passed beyond the stage of the cave-man.
All times and all ages overlap, and the ideas of succeeding generations
play tag with each other. But it is possible to study the minds of a
good many true representatives of the Middle Ages and then give you an
idea of the average man's attitude toward life and the many difficult
problems of living.
First of all, remember that the people of the Middle Ages never thought
of themselves as free-born citizens, who could come and go at will and
shape their fate according to their ability or energy or luck. On the
contrary, they all considered themselves part of the general scheme of
things, which included emperors and serfs, popes and heretics, heroes
and swashbucklers, rich men, poor men, beggar men and thieves. They
accepted this divine ordinance and asked no questions. In this, of
course, they differed radically from modern people who accept nothing
and who are forever trying to improve their own financial and political
situation.
To the man and woman of the thirteenth century, the world
hereafter--a Heaven of wonderful delights and a Hell of brimstone and
suffering--meant something more than empty words or vague theological
phrases. It was an actual fact and the mediaeval burghers and knights
spent the greater part of their time preparing for it. We modern people
regard a noble death after a well-spent life with the quiet calm of the
ancient Greeks and Romans. After three score years of work and effort,
we go to sleep with the feeling that all will be well.
But during the Middle Ages, the King of Terrors with his grinning skull
and his rattling bones was man's steady companion. He woke his victims
up with terrible tunes on his scratchy fiddle he sat down with them at
dinner--he smiled at them from behind trees and shrubs when they took
a girl out for a walk. If you had heard nothing but hair-raising yarns
about cemeteries and coffins and fearful diseases when you were very
young, instead of listening to the fairy stories of Anderson and Grimm,
you, too, would have lived all your days in a dread of the final hour
and the gruesome day of Judgment. That is exactly what happened to the
children of the Middle Ages. They moved in a world of devils and spooks
and only a few occasional angels. Sometimes, their fear of the future
filled their souls with humility and piety, but often it influenced them
the other way and made them cruel and sentimental. They would first of
all murder all the women and children of a captured city and then they
would devoutly march to a holy spot and with their hands gory with
the blood of innocent victims, they would pray that a merciful heaven
forgive them their sins. Yea, they would do more than pray, they would
weep bitter tears and would confess themselves the most wicked of
sinners. But the next day, they would once more butcher a camp of
Saracen enemies without a spark of mercy in their hearts.
Of course, the Crusaders were Knights and obeyed a somewhat different
code of manners from the common men. But in such respects the common man
was just the same as his master. He, too, resembled a shy horse, easily
frightened by a shadow or a silly piece of paper, capable of excellent
and faithful service but liable to run away and do terrible damage when
his feverish imagination saw a ghost.
In judging these good people, however, it is wise to remember the
terrible disadvantages under which they lived. They were really
barbarians who posed as civilised people. Charlemagne and Otto the Great
were called "Roman Emperors," but they had as little resemblance to a
real Roman Emperor (say Augustus or Marcus Aurelius) as "King" Wumba
Wumba of the upper Congo has to the highly educated rulers of Sweden or
Denmark. They were savages who lived amidst glorious ruins but who
did not share the benefits of the civilisation which their fathers and
grandfathers had destroyed. They knew nothing. They were ignorant of
almost every fact which a boy of twelve knows to-day. They were obliged
to go to one single book for all their information. That was the Bible.
But those parts of the Bible which have influenced the history of the
human race for the better are those chapters of the New Testament which
teach us the great moral lessons of love, charity and forgiveness. As
a handbook of astronomy, zoology, botany, geometry and all the other
sciences, the venerable book is not entirely reliable. In the twelfth
century, a second book was added to the mediaeval library, the great
encyclopaedia of useful knowledge, compiled by Aristotle, the Greek
philosopher of the fourth century before Christ. Why the Christian
church should have been willing to accord such high honors to the
teacher of Alexander the Great, whereas they condemned all other Greek
philosophers on account of their heathenish doctrines, I really do
not know. But next to the Bible, Aristotle was recognized as the only
reliable teacher whose works could be safely placed into the hands of
true Christians.
His works had reached Europe in a somewhat roundabout way. They had gone
from Greece to Alexandria. They had then been translated from the Greek
into the Arabic language by the Mohammedans who conquered Egypt in the
seventh century. They had followed the Moslem armies into Spain and the
philosophy of the great Stagirite (Aristotle was a native of Stagira in
Macedonia) was taught in the Moorish universities of Cordova. The Arabic
text was then translated into Latin by the Christian students who had
crossed the Pyrenees to get a liberal education and this much travelled
version of the famous books was at last taught at the different schools
of northwestern Europe. It was not very clear, but that made it all the
more interesting.
With the help of the Bible and Aristotle, the most brilliant men of the
Middle Ages now set to work to explain all things between Heaven and
Earth in their relation to the expressed will of God. These brilliant
men, the so-called Scholasts or Schoolmen, were really very intelligent,
but they had obtained their information exclusively from books, and
never from actual observation. If they wanted to lecture on the sturgeon
or on caterpillars, they read the Old and New Testaments and Aristotle,
and told their students everything these good books had to say upon
the subject of caterpillars and sturgeons. They did not go out to the
nearest river to catch a sturgeon. They did not leave their libraries
and repair to the backyard to catch a few caterpillars and look at these
animals and study them in their native haunts. Even such famous scholars
as Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas did not inquire whether the
sturgeons in the land of Palestine and the caterpillars of Macedonia
might not have been different from the sturgeons and the caterpillars of
western Europe.
When occasionally an exceptionally curious person like Roger Bacon
appeared in the council of the learned and began to experiment with
magnifying glasses and funny little telescopes and actually dragged the
sturgen and the caterpillar into the lecturing room and proved that they
were different from the creatures described by the Old Testament and by
Aristotle, the Schoolmen shook their dignified heads. Bacon was going
too far. When he dared to suggest that an hour of actual observation
was worth more than ten years with Aristotle and that the works of that
famous Greek might as well have remained untranslated for all the good
they had ever done, the scholasts went to the police and said, "This man
is a danger to the safety of the state. He wants us to study Greek that
we may read Aristotle in the original. Why should he not be contented
with our Latin-Arabic translation which has satisfied our faithful
people for so many hundred years? Why is he so curious about the insides
of fishes and the insides of insects? He is probably a wicked magician
trying to upset the established order of things by his Black Magic." And
so well did they plead their cause that the frightened guardians of the
peace forbade Bacon to write a single word for more than ten years. When
he resumed his studies he had learned a lesson. He wrote his books in
a queer cipher which made it impossible for his contemporaries to read
them, a trick which became common as the Church became more desperate in
its attempts to prevent people from asking questions which would lead to
doubts and infidelity.
This, however, was not done out of any wicked desire to keep people
ignorant. The feeling which prompted the heretic hunters of that day
was really a very kindly one. They firmly believed--nay, they knew--that
this life was but the preparation for our real existence in the
next world. They felt convinced that too much knowledge made people
uncomfortable, filled their minds with dangerous opinions and led to
doubt and hence to perdition. A mediaeval Schoolman who saw one of
his pupils stray away from the revealed authority of the Bible and
Aristotle, that he might study things for himself, felt as uncomfortable
as a loving mother who sees her young child approach a hot stove. She
knows that he will burn his little fingers if he is allowed to touch it
and she tries to keep him back, if necessary she will use force. But she
really loves the child and if he will only obey her, she will be as good
to him as she possibly can be. In the same way the mediaeval guardians
of people's souls, while they were strict in all matters pertaining to
the Faith, slaved day and night to render the greatest possible service
to the members of their flock. They held out a helping hand whenever
they could and the society of that day shows the influence of thousands
of good men and pious women who tried to make the fate of the average
mortal as bearable as possible.
A serf was a serf and his position would never change. But the Good Lord
of the Middle Ages who allowed the serf to remain a slave all his life
had bestowed an immortal soul upon this humble creature and therefore
he must be protected in his rights, that he might live and die as a good
Christian. When he grew too old or too weak to work he must be
taken care of by the feudal master for whom he had worked. The serf,
therefore, who led a monotonous and dreary life, was never haunted by
fear of to-morrow. He knew that he was "safe"--that he could not be
thrown out of employment, that he would always have a roof over his head
(a leaky roof, perhaps, but roof all the same), and that he would always
have something to eat.
This feeling of "stability" and of "safety" was found in all classes of
society. In the towns the merchants and the artisans established guilds
which assured every member of a steady income. It did not encourage the
ambitious to do better than their neighbours. Too often the guilds
gave protection to the "slacker" who managed to "get by." But they
established a general feeling of content and assurance among the
labouring classes which no longer exists in our day of general
competition. The Middle Ages were familiar with the dangers of what we
modern people call "corners," when a single rich man gets hold of all
the available grain or soap or pickled herring, and then forces the
world to buy from him at his own price. The authorities, therefore,
discouraged wholesale trading and regulated the price at which merchants
were allowed to sell their goods.
The Middle Ages disliked competition. Why compete and fill the world
with hurry and rivalry and a multitude of pushing men, when the Day of
Judgement was near at hand, when riches would count for nothing and
when the good serf would enter the golden gates of Heaven while the bad
knight was sent to do penance in the deepest pit of Inferno?
In short, the people of the Middle Ages were asked to surrender part
of their liberty of thought and action, that they might enjoy greater
safety from poverty of the body and poverty of the soul.
And with a very few exceptions, they did not object. They firmly
believed that they were mere visitors upon this planet--that they were
here to be prepared for a greater and more important life. Deliberately
they turned their backs upon a world which was filled with suffering and
wickedness and injustice. They pulled down the blinds that the rays
of the sun might not distract their attention from that chapter in the
Apocalypse which told them of that heavenly light which was to illumine
their happiness in all eternity. They tried to close their eyes to most
of the joys of the world in which they lived that they might enjoy those
which awaited them in the near future. They accepted life as a necessary
evil and welcomed death as the beginning of a glorious day.
The Greeks and the Romans had never bothered about the future but had
tried to establish their Paradise right here upon this earth. They had
succeeded in making life extremely pleasant for those of their fellow
men who did not happen to be slaves. Then came the other extreme of the
Middle Ages, when man built himself a Paradise beyond the highest clouds
and turned this world into a vale of tears for high and low, for rich
and poor, for the intelligent and the dumb. It was time for the pendulum
to swing back in the other direction, as I shall tell you in my next
chapter.
MEDIAEVAL TRADE
HOW THE CRUSADES ONCE MORE MADE THE MEDITERRANEAN A BUSY CENTRE OF
TRADE AND HOW THE CITIES OF THE ITALIAN PENINSULA BECAME THE GREAT
DISTRIBUTING CENTRE FOR THE COMMERCE WITH ASIA AND AFRICA
THERE were three good reasons why the Italian cities should have been
the first to regain a position of great importance during the late
Middle Ages. The Italian peninsula had been settled by Rome at a very
early date. There had been more roads and more towns and more schools
than anywhere else in Europe.
The barbarians had burned as lustily in Italy as elsewhere, but there
had been so much to destroy that more had been able to survive. In
the second place, the Pope lived in Italy and as the head of a vast
political machine, which owned land and serfs and buildings and forests
and rivers and conducted courts of law, he was in constant receipt of
a great deal of money. The Papal authorities had to be paid in gold and
silver as did the merchants and ship-owners of Venice and Genoa. The
cows and the eggs and the horses and all the other agricultural products
of the north and the west must be changed into actual cash before the
debt could be paid in the distant city of Rome.
This made Italy the one country where there was a comparative abundance
of gold and silver. Finally, during the Crusades, the Italian cities had
become the point of embarkation for the Crusaders and had profiteered to
an almost unbelievable extent.
And after the Crusades had come to an end, these same Italian cities
remained the distributing centres for those Oriental goods upon which
the people of Europe had come to depend during the time they had spent
in the near east.
Of these towns, few were as famous as Venice. Venice was a republic
built upon a mud bank. Thither people from the mainland had fled during
the invasions of the barbarians in the fourth century. Surrounded on all
sides by the sea they had engaged in the business of salt-making. Salt
had been very scarce during the Middle Ages, and the price had been
high. For hundreds of years Venice had enjoyed a monopoly of this
indispensable table commodity (I say indispensable, because people, like
sheep, fall ill unless they get a certain amount of salt in their food).
The people had used this monopoly to increase the power of their city.
At times they had even dared to defy the power of the Popes. The town
had grown rich and had begun to build ships, which engaged in trade
with the Orient. During the Crusades, these ships were used to carry
passengers to the Holy Land, and when the passengers could not pay for
their tickets in cash, they were obliged to help the Venetians who were
for ever increasing their colonies in the AEgean Sea, in Asia Minor and
in Egypt.
By the end of the fourteenth century, the population had grown to two
hundred thousand, which made Venice the biggest city of the Middle Ages.
The people were without influence upon the government which was the
private affair of a small number of rich merchant families. They elected
a senate and a Doge (or Duke), but the actual rulers of the city were
the members of the famous Council of Ten,--who maintained themselves
with the help of a highly organised system of secret service men and
professional murderers, who kept watch upon all citizens and quietly
removed those who might be dangerous to the safety of their high-handed
and unscrupulous Committee of Public Safety.
The other extreme of government, a democracy of very turbulent habits,
was to be found in Florence. This city controlled the main road from
northern Europe to Rome and used the money which it had derived from
this fortunate economic position to engage in manufacturing. The
Florentines tried to follow the example of Athens. Noblemen, priests and
members of the guilds all took part in the discussions of civic affairs.
This led to great civic upheaval. People were forever being divided
into political parties and these parties fought each other with intense
bitterness and exiled their enemies and confiscated their possessions
as soon as they had gained a victory in the council. After several
centuries of this rule by organised mobs, the inevitable happened. A
powerful family made itself master of the city and governed the town and
the surrounding country after the fashion of the old Greek "tyrants."
They were called the Medici. The earliest Medici had been physicians
(medicus is Latin for physician, hence their name), but later they had
turned banker. Their banks and their pawnshops were to be found in all
the more important centres of trade. Even today our American pawn-shops
display the three golden balls which were part of the coat of arms
of the mighty house of the Medici, who became rulers of Florence and
married their daughters to the kings of France and were buried in graves
worthy of a Roman Caesar.
Then there was Genoa, the great rival of Venice, where the merchants
specialised in trade with Tunis in Africa and the grain depots of the
Black Sea. Then there were more than two hundred other cities, some
large and some small, each a perfect commercial unit, all of them
fighting their neighbours and rivals with the undying hatred of
neighbours who are depriving each other of their profits.
Once the products of the Orient and Africa had been brought to these
distributing centres, they must be prepared for the voyage to the west
and the north.
Genoa carried her goods by water to Marseilles, from where they were
reshipped to the cities along the Rhone, which in turn served as the
market places of northern and western France.
Venice used the land route to northern Europe. This ancient road led
across the Brenner pass, the old gateway for the barbarians who had
invaded Italy. Past Innsbruck, the merchandise was carried to Basel.
From there it drifted down the Rhine to the North Sea and England, or it
was taken to Augsburg where the Fugger family (who were both bankers
and manufacturers and who prospered greatly by "shaving" the coins with
which they paid their workmen), looked after the further distribution to
Nuremberg and Leipzig and the cities of the Baltic and to Wisby (on the
Island of Gotland) which looked after the needs of the Northern Baltic
and dealt directly with the Republic of Novgorod, the old commercial
centre of Russia which was destroyed by Ivan the Terrible in the middle
of the sixteenth century.
The little cities on the coast of north-western Europe had an
interesting story of their own. The mediaeval world ate a great deal of
fish. There were many fast days and then people were not permitted to
eat meat. For those who lived away from the coast and from the rivers,
this meant a diet of eggs or nothing at all. But early in the thirteenth
century a Dutch fisherman had discovered a way of curing herring, so
that it could be transported to distant points. The herring fisheries of
the North Sea then became of great importance. But some time during the
thirteenth century, this useful little fish (for reasons of its own)
moved from the North Sea to the Baltic and the cities of that inland
sea began to make money. All the world now sailed to the Baltic to catch
herring and as that fish could only be caught during a few months
each year (the rest of the time it spends in deep water, raising large
families of little herrings) the ships would have been idle during the
rest of the time unless they had found another occupation. They were
then used to carry the wheat of northern and central Russia to southern
and western Europe. On the return voyage they brought spices and silks
and carpets and Oriental rugs from Venice and Genoa to Bruges and
Hamburg and Bremen.
Out of such simple beginnings there developed an important system of
international trade which reached from the manufacturing cities of
Bruges and Ghent (where the almighty guilds fought pitched battles with
the kings of France and England and established a labour tyranny which
completely ruined both the employers and the workmen) to the Republic
of Novgorod in northern Russia, which was a mighty city until Tsar Ivan,
who distrusted all merchants, took the town and killed sixty thousand
people in less than a month's time and reduced the survivors to beggary.
That they might protect themselves against pirates and excessive
tolls and annoying legislation, the merchants of the north founded a
protective league which was called the "Hansa." The Hansa, which had
its headquarters in Lubeck, was a voluntary association of more than
one hundred cities. The association maintained a navy of its own which
patrolled the seas and fought and defeated the Kings of England and
Denmark when they dared to interfere with the rights and the privileges
of the mighty Hanseatic merchants.
I wish that I had more space to tell you some of the wonderful stories
of this strange commerce which was carried on across the high mountains
and across the deep seas amidst such dangers that every voyage became a
glorious adventure. But it would take several volumes and it cannot be
done here.
Besides, I hope that I have told you enough about the Middle Ages to
make you curious to read more in the excellent books of which I shall
give you a list at the end of this volume.
The Middle Ages, as I have tried to show you, had been a period of very
slow progress. The people who were in power believed that "progress"
was a very undesirable invention of the Evil One and ought to be
discouraged, and as they hap-pened to occupy the seats of the mighty, it
was easy to enforce their will upon the patient serfs and the illiterate
knights. Here and there a few brave souls sometimes ventured forth
into the forbidden region of science, but they fared badly and were
considered lucky when they escaped with their lives and a jail sentence
of twenty years.
In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the flood of international
commerce swept over western Europe as the Nile had swept across
the valley of ancient Egypt. It left behind a fertile sediment of
prosperity. Prosperity meant leisure hours and these leisure hours gave
both men and women a chance to buy manuscripts and take an interest in
literature and art and music.
Then once more was the world filled with that divine curiosity which has
elevated man from the ranks of those other mammals who are his distant
cousins but who have remained dumb, and the cities, of whose growth and
development I have told you in my last chapter, offered a safe shelter
to these brave pioneers who dared to leave the very narrow domain of the
established order of things.
They set to work. They opened the windows of their cloistered and
studious cells. A flood of sunlight entered the dusty rooms and
showed them the cobwebs which had gathered during the long period of
semi-darkness.
They began to clean house. Next they cleaned their gardens.
Then they went out into the open fields, outside the crumbling town
walls, and said, "This is a good world. We are glad that we live in it."
At that moment, the Middle Ages came to an end and a new world began.
THE RENAISSANCE
PEOPLE ONCE MORE DARED TO BE HAPPY JUST BECAUSE THEY WERE ALIVE. THEY
TRIED TO SAVE THE REMAINS OF THE OLDER AND MORE AGREEABLE CIVILISATION
OF ROME AND GREECE AND THEY WERE SO PROUD OF THEIR ACHIEVEMENTS THAT
THEY SPOKE OF A RENAISSANCE OR RE-BIRTH OF CIVILISATION
THE Renaissance was not a political or religious movement. It was a
state of mind.
The men of the Renaissance continued to be the obedient sons of the
mother church. They were subjects of kings and emperors and dukes and
murmured not.
But their outlook upon life was changed. They began to wear different
clothes--to speak a different language--to live different lives in
different houses.
They no longer concentrated all their thoughts and their efforts
upon the blessed existence that awaited them in Heaven. They tried to
establish their Paradise upon this planet, and, truth to tell, they
succeeded in a remarkable degree.
I have quite often warned you against the danger that lies in historical
dates. People take them too literally. They think of the Middle Ages as
a period of darkness and ignorance. "Click," says the clock, and the
Renaissance begins and cities and palaces are flooded with the bright
sunlight of an eager intellectual curiosity.
As a matter of fact, it is quite impossible to draw such sharp lines.
The thirteenth century belonged most decidedly to the Middle Ages. All
historians agree upon that. But was it a time of darkness and stagnation
merely? By no means. People were tremendously alive. Great states were
being founded. Large centres of commerce were being developed. High
above the turretted towers of the castle and the peaked roof of the
town-hall, rose the slender spire of the newly built Gothic cathedral.
Everywhere the world was in motion. The high and mighty gentlemen of the
city-hall, who had just become conscious of their own strength (by way
of their recently acquired riches) were struggling for more power with
their feudal masters. The members of the guilds who had just become
aware of the important fact that "numbers count" were fighting the high
and mighty gentlemen of the city-hall. The king and his shrewd advisers
went fishing in these troubled waters and caught many a shining bass
of profit which they proceeded to cook and eat before the noses of the
surprised and disappointed councillors and guild brethren.
To enliven the scenery during the long hours of evening when the badly
lighted streets did not invite further political and economic dispute,
the Troubadours and Minnesingers told their stories and sang their songs
of romance and adventure and heroism and loyalty to all fair women.
Meanwhile youth, impatient of the slowness of progress, flocked to the
universities, and thereby hangs a story.
The Middle Ages were "internationally minded." That sounds difficult,
but wait until I explain it to you. We modern people are "nationally
minded." We are Americans or Englishmen or Frenchmen or Italians and
speak English or French or Italian and go to English and French and
Italian universities, unless we want to specialise in some particular
branch of learning which is only taught elsewhere, and then we learn
another language and go to Munich or Madrid or Moscow. But the people
of the thirteenth or fourteenth century rarely talked of themselves
as Englishmen or Frenchmen or Italians. They said, "I am a citizen of
Sheffield or Bordeaux or Genoa." Because they all belonged to one and
the same church they felt a certain bond of brotherhood. And as all
educated men could speak Latin, they possessed an international language
which removed the stupid language barriers which have grown up in
modern Europe and which place the small nations at such an enormous
disadvantage. Just as an example, take the case of Erasmus, the great
preacher of tolerance and laughter, who wrote his books in the sixteenth
century. He was the native of a small Dutch village. He wrote in Latin
and all the world was his audience. If he were alive to-day, he would
write in Dutch. Then only five or six million people would be able
to read him. To be understood by the rest of Europe and America, his
publishers would be obliged to translate his books into twenty different
languages. That would cost a lot of money and most likely the publishers
would never take the trouble or the risk.
Six hundred years ago that could not happen. The greater part of the
people were still very ignorant and could not read or write at all. But
those who had mastered the difficult art of handling the goose-quill
belonged to an international republic of letters which spread across
the entire continent and which knew of no boundaries and respected
no limitations of language or nationality. The universities were the
strongholds of this republic. Unlike modern fortifications, they did not
follow the frontier. They were to be found wherever a teacher and a few
pupils happened to find themselves together. There again the Middle Ages
and the Renaissance differed from our own time. Nowadays, when a new
university is built, the process (almost invariably) is as follows: Some
rich man wants to do something for the community in which he lives or a
particular religious sect wants to build a school to keep its faithful
children under decent supervision, or a state needs doc-tors and lawyers
and teachers. The university begins as a large sum of money which is
deposited in a bank. This money is then used to construct buildings and
laboratories and dormitories. Finally professional teachers are hired,
entrance examinations are held and the university is on the way.
But in the Middle Ages things were done differently. A wise man said to
himself, "I have discovered a great truth. I must impart my knowledge
to others." And he began to preach his wisdom wherever and whenever he
could get a few people to listen to him, like a modern soap-box orator.
If he was an interesting speaker, the crowd came and stayed. If he was
dull, they shrugged their shoulders and continued their way.
By and by certain young men began to come regularly to hear the words
of wisdom of this great teacher. They brought copybooks with them and a
little bottle of ink and a goose quill and wrote down what seemed to be
important. One day it rained. The teacher and his pupils retired to an
empty basement or the room of the "Professor." The learned man sat in
his chair and the boys sat on the floor. That was the beginning of the
University, the "universitas," a corporation of professors and students
during the Middle Ages, when the "teacher" counted for everything and
the building in which he taught counted for very little.
As an example, let me tell you of something that happened in the ninth
century. In the town of Salerno near Naples there were a number of
excellent physicians. They attracted people desirous of learning the
medical profession and for almost a thousand years (until 1817) there
was a university of Salerno which taught the wisdom of Hippocrates, the
great Greek doctor who had practiced his art in ancient Hellas in the
fifth century before the birth of Christ.
Then there was Abelard, the young priest from Brittany, who early in
the twelfth century began to lecture on theology and logic in Paris.
Thousands of eager young men flocked to the French city to hear him.
Other priests who disagreed with him stepped forward to explain their
point of view. Paris was soon filled with a clamouring multitude of
Englishmen and Germans and Italians and students from Sweden and Hungary
and around the old cathedral which stood on a little island in the Seine
there grew the famous University of Paris. In Bologna in Italy, a monk
by the name of Gratian had compiled a text-book for those whose business
it was to know the laws of the church. Young priests and many laymen
then came from all over Europe to hear Gratian explain his ideas. To
protect themselves against the landlords and the innkeepers and the
boarding-house ladies of the city, they formed a corporation (or
University) and behold the beginning of the university of Bologna.
Next there was a quarrel in the University of Paris. We do not know
what caused it, but a number of disgruntled teachers together with
their pupils crossed the channel and found a hospitable home in a
little village on the Thames called Oxford, and in this way the famous
University of Oxford came into being. In the same way, in the year 1222,
there had been a split in the University of Bologna. The discontented
teachers (again followed by their pupils) had moved to Padua and their
proud city thenceforward boasted of a university of its own. And so
it went from Valladolid in Spain to Cracow in distant Poland and from
Poitiers in France to Rostock in Germany.
It is quite true that much of the teaching done by these early
professors would sound absurd to our ears, trained to listen to
logarithms and geometrical theorems. The point however, which I want to
make is this--the Middle Ages and especially the thirteenth century
were not a time when the world stood entirely still. Among the younger
generation, there was life, there was enthusiasm, and there was a
restless if somewhat bashful asking of questions. And out of this
turmoil grew the Renaissance.
But just before the curtain went down upon the last scene of the
Mediaeval world, a solitary figure crossed the stage, of whom you ought
to know more than his mere name. This man was called Dante. He was the
son of a Florentine lawyer who belonged to the Alighieri family and he
saw the light of day in the year 1265. He grew up in the city of his
ancestors while Giotto was painting his stories of the life of St.
Francis of Assisi upon the walls of the Church of the Holy Cross, but
often when he went to school, his frightened eyes would see the puddles
of blood which told of the terrible and endless warfare that raged
forever between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, the followers of the
Pope and the adherents of the Emperors.
When he grew up, he became a Guelph, because his father had been
one before him, just as an American boy might become a Democrat or a
Republican, simply because his father had happened to be a Democrat or
a Republican. But after a few years, Dante saw that Italy, unless united
under a single head, threatened to perish as a victim of the disordered
jealousies of a thousand little cities. Then he became a Ghilbeiline.
He looked for help beyond the Alps. He hoped that a mighty emperor
might come and re-establish unity and order. Alas! he hoped in vain. The
Ghibellines were driven out of Florence in the year 1802. From that time
on until the day of his death amidst the dreary ruins of Ravenna, in the
year 1321, Dante was a homeless wanderer, eating the bread of charity at
the table of rich patrons whose names would have sunk into the deepest
pit of oblivion but for this single fact, that they had been kind to a
poet in his misery. During the many years of exile, Dante felt compelled
to justify himself and his actions when he had been a political leader
in his home-town, and when he had spent his days walking along the
banks of the Arno that he might catch a glimpse of the lovely Beatrice
Portinari, who died the wife of another man, a dozen years before the
Ghibelline disaster.
He had failed in the ambitions of his career. He had faithfully served
the town of is birth and before a corrupt court he had been accused
of stealing the public funds and had been condemned to be burned alive
should he venture back within the realm of the city of Florence. To
clear himself before his own conscience and before his contemporaries,
Dante then created an Imaginary World and with great detail he described
the circumstances which had led to his defeat and depicted the hopeless
condition of greed and lust and hatred which had turned his fair and
beloved Italy into a battlefield for the pitiless mercenaries of wicked
and selfish tyrants.
He tells us how on the Thursday before Easter of the year 1300 he had
lost his way in a dense forest and how he found his path barred by a
leopard and a lion and a wolf. He gave himself up for lost when a white
figure appeared amidst the trees. It was Virgil, the Roman poet and
philosopher, sent upon his errand of mercy by the Blessed Virgin and by
Beatrice, who from high Heaven watched over the fate of her true lover.
Virgil then takes Dante through Purgatory and through Hell. Deeper and
deeper the path leads them until they reach the lowest pit where Lucifer
himself stands frozen into the eternal ice surrounded by the most
terrible of sinners, traitors and liars and those who have achieved fame
and success by lies and by deceit. But before the two wanderers have
reached this terrible spot, Dante has met all those who in some way or
other have played a role in the history of his beloved city. Emperors
and Popes, dashing knights and whining usurers, they are all there,
doomed to eternal punishment or awaiting the day of deliverance, when
they shall leave Purgatory for Heaven.
It is a curious story. It is a handbook of everything the people of the
thirteenth century did and felt and feared and prayed for. Through it
all moves the figure of the lonely Florentine exile, forever followed by
the shadow of his own despair.
And behold! when the gates of death were closing upon the sad poet of
the Middle Ages, the portals of life swung open to the child who was to
be the first of the men of the Renaissance. That was Francesco Petrarca,
the son of the notary public of the little town of Arezzo.
Francesco's father had belonged to the same political party as Dante. He
too had been exiled and thus it happened that Petrarca (or Petrarch, as
we call him) was born away from Florence. At the age of fifteen he was
sent to Montpellier in France that he might become a lawyer like his
father. But the boy did not want to be a jurist. He hated the law. He
wanted to be a scholar and a poet--and because he wanted to be a scholar
and a poet beyond everything else, he became one, as people of a
strong will are apt to do. He made long voyages, copying manuscripts in
Flanders and in the cloisters along the Rhine and in Paris and Liege
and finally in Rome. Then he went to live in a lonely valley of the wild
mountains of Vaucluse, and there he studied and wrote and soon he
had become so famous for his verse and for his learning that both the
University of Paris and the king of Naples invited him to come and teach
their students and subjects. On the way to his new job, he was obliged
to pass through Rome. The people had heard of his fame as an editor
of half-forgotten Roman authors. They decided to honour him and in the
ancient forum of the Imperial City, Petrarch was crowned with the laurel
wreath of the Poet.
From that moment on, his life was an endless career of honour and
appreciation. He wrote the things which people wanted most to hear. They
were tired of theological disputations. Poor Dante could wander through
hell as much as he wanted. But Petrarch wrote of love and of nature and
the sun and never mentioned those gloomy things which seemed to have
been the stock in trade of the last generation. And when Petrarch came
to a city, all the people flocked out to meet him and he was received
like a conquering hero. If he happened to bring his young friend
Boccaccio, the story teller, with him, so much the better. They were
both men of their time, full of curiosity, willing to read everything
once, digging in forgotten and musty libraries that they might find
still another manuscript of Virgil or Ovid or Lucrece or any of the
other old Latin poets. They were good Christians. Of course they were!
Everyone was. But no need of going around with a long face and wearing
a dirty coat just because some day or other you were going to die. Life
was good. People were meant to be happy. You desired proof of this? Very
well. Take a spade and dig into the soil. What did you find? Beautiful
old statues. Beautiful old vases. Ruins of ancient buildings. All these
things were made by the people of the greatest empire that ever existed.
They ruled all the world for a thousand years. They were strong and
rich and handsome (just look at that bust of the Emperor Augustus!). Of
course, they were not Christians and they would never be able to enter
Heaven. At best they would spend their days in purgatory, where Dante
had just paid them a visit.
But who cared? To have lived in a world like that of ancient Rome was
heaven enough for any mortal being. And anyway, we live but once. Let us
be happy and cheerful for the mere joy of existence.
Such, in short, was the spirit that had begun to fill the narrow and
crooked streets of the many little Italian cities.
You know what we mean by the "bicycle craze" or the "automobile craze."
Some one invents a bicycle. People who for hundreds of thousands of
years have moved slowly and painfully from one place to another go
"crazy" over the prospect of rolling rapidly and easily over hill and
dale. Then a clever mechanic makes the first automobile. No longer is
it necessary to pedal and pedal and pedal. You just sit and let
little drops of gasoline do the work for you. Then everybody wants
an automobile. Everybody talks about Rolls-Royces and Flivvers and
carburetors and mileage and oil. Explorers penetrate into the hearts of
unknown countries that they may find new supplies of gas. Forests arise
in Sumatra and in the Congo to supply us with rubber. Rubber and oil
become so valuable that people fight wars for their possession. The
whole world is "automobile mad" and little children can say "car" before
they learn to whisper "papa" and "mamma."
In the fourteenth century, the Italian people went crazy about the newly
discovered beauties of the buried world of Rome. Soon their enthusiasm
was shared by all the people of western Europe. The finding of an
unknown manuscript became the excuse for a civic holiday. The man who
wrote a grammar became as popular as the fellow who nowadays invents a
new spark-plug. The humanist, the scholar who devoted his time and his
energies to a study of "homo" or mankind (instead of wasting his hours
upon fruitless theological investigations), that man was regarded with
greater honour and a deeper respect than was ever bestowed upon a hero
who had just conquered all the Cannibal Islands.
In the midst of this intellectual upheaval, an event occurred which
greatly favoured the study of the ancient philosophers and authors. The
Turks were renewing their attacks upon Europe. Constantinople, capital
of the last remnant of the original Roman Empire, was hard pressed. In
the year 1393 the Emperor, Manuel Paleologue, sent Emmanuel Chrysoloras
to western Europe to explain the desperate state of old Byzantium and to
ask for aid. This aid never came. The Roman Catholic world was more
than willing to see the Greek Catholic world go to the punishment that
awaited such wicked heretics. But however indifferent western Europe
might be to the fate of the Byzantines, they were greatly interested in
the ancient Greeks whose colonists had founded the city on the Bosphorus
ten centuries after the Trojan war. They wanted to learn Greek that they
might read Aristotle and Homer and Plato. They wanted to learn it
very badly, but they had no books and no grammars and no teachers. The
magistrates of Florence heard of the visit of Chrysoloras. The people of
their city were "crazy to learn Greek." Would he please come and teach
them? He would, and behold! the first professor of Greek teaching alpha,
beta, gamma to hundreds of eager young men, begging their way to the
city of the Arno, living in stables and in dingy attics that they night
learn how to decline the verb [gr paidenw paideneis paidenei] and enter
into the companionship of Sophocles and Homer.
Meanwhile in the universities, the old schoolmen, teaching their ancient
theology and their antiquated logic; explaining the hidden mysteries
of the old Testament and discussing the strange science of their
Greek-Arabic-Spanish-Latin edition of Aristotle, looked on in dismay and
horror. Next, they turned angry. This thing was going too far. The young
men were deserting the lecture halls of the established universities to
go and listen to some wild-eyed "humanist" with his newfangled notions
about a "reborn civilization."
They went to the authorities. They complained. But one cannot force an
unwilling horse to drink and one cannot make unwilling ears listen to
something which does not really interest them. The schoolmen were
losing ground rapidly. Here and there they scored a short victory. They
combined forces with those fanatics who hated to see other people enjoy
a happiness which was foreign to their own souls. In Florence, the
centre of the Great Rebirth, a terrible fight was fought between the
old order and the new. A Dominican monk, sour of face and bitter in his
hatred of beauty, was the leader of the mediaeval rear-guard. He fought
a valiant battle. Day after day he thundered his warnings of God's holy
wrath through the wide halls of Santa Maria del Fiore. "Repent," he
cried, "repent of your godlessness, of your joy in things that are not
holy!" He began to hear voices and to see flaming swords that flashed
through the sky. He preached to the little children that they might not
fall into the errors of these ways which were leading their fathers to
perdition. He organised companies of boy-scouts, devoted to the service
of the great God whose prophet he claimed to be. In a sudden moment of
frenzy, the frightened people promised to do penance for their wicked
love of beauty and pleasure. They carried their books and their statues
and their paintings to the market place and celebrated a wild "carnival
of the vanities" with holy singing and most unholy dancing, while
Savonarola applied his torch to the accumulated treasures.
But when the ashes cooled down, the people began to realise what they
had lost. This terrible fanatic had made them destroy that which they
had come to love above all things. They turned against him, Savonarola
was thrown into jail. He was tortured. But he refused to repent for
anything he had done. He was an honest man. He had tried to live a holy
life. He had willingly destroyed those who deliberately refused to share
his own point of view. It had been his duty to eradicate evil wherever
he found it. A love of heathenish books and heathenish beauty in the
eyes of this faithful son of the Church, had been an evil. But he stood
alone. He had fought the battle of a time that was dead and gone. The
Pope in Rome never moved a finger to save him. On the contrary, he
approved of his "faithful Florentines" when they dragged Savonarola to
the gallows, hanged him and burned his body amidst the cheerful howling
and yelling of the mob.
It was a sad ending, but quite inevitable. Savonarola would have been
a great man in the eleventh century. In the fifteenth century he was
merely the leader of a lost cause. For better or worse, the Middle
Ages had come to an end when the Pope had turned humanist and when the
Vatican became the most important museum of Roman and Greek antiquities.
THE AGE OF EXPRESSION
THE PEOPLE BEGAN TO FEEL THE NEED OF GIVING EXPRESSION TO THEIR NEWLY
DISCOVERED JOY OF LIVING. THEY EXPRESSED THEIR HAPPINESS IN POETRY AND
IN SCULPTURE AND IN ARCHITECTURE AND IN PAINTING AND IN THE BOOKS THEY
PRINTED
IN the year 1471 there died a pious old man who had spent seventy-two
of his ninety-one years behind the sheltering walls of the cloister of
Mount St. Agnes near the good town of Zwolle, the old Dutch Hanseatic
city on the river Ysel. He was known as Brother Thomas and because he
had been born in the village of Kempen, he was called Thomas a Kempis.
At the age of twelve he had been sent to Deventer, where Gerhard Groot,
a brilliant graduate of the universities of Paris, Cologne and Prague,
and famous as a wandering preacher, had founded the Society of the
Brothers of the Common Life. The good brothers were humble laymen who
tried to live the simple life of the early Apostles of Christ while
working at their regular jobs as carpenters and house-painters and stone
masons. They maintained an excellent school, that deserving boys of poor
parents might be taught the wisdom of the Fathers of the church. At this
school, little Thomas had learned how to conjugate Latin verbs and how
to copy manuscripts. Then he had taken his vows, had put his little
bundle of books upon his back, had wandered to Zwolle and with a sigh
of relief he had closed the door upon a turbulent world which did not
attract him.
Thomas lived in an age of turmoil, pestilence and sudden death. In
central Europe, in Bohemia, the devoted disciples of Johannus Huss,
the friend and follower of John Wycliffe, the English reformer, were
avenging with a terrible warfare the death of their beloved leader who
had been burned at the stake by order of that same Council of Constance,
which had promised him a safe-conduct if he would come to Switzerland
and explain his doctrines to the Pope, the Emperor, twenty-three
cardinals, thirty-three archbishops and bishops, one hundred and fifty
abbots and more than a hundred princes and dukes who had gathered
together to reform their church.
In the west, France had been fighting for a hundred years that she might
drive the English from her territories and just then was saved from
utter defeat by the fortunate appearance of Joan of Arc. And no sooner
had this struggle come to an end than France and Burgundy were at each
other's throats, engaged upon a struggle of life and death for the
supremacy of western Europe.
In the south, a Pope at Rome was calling the curses of Heaven down
upon a second Pope who resided at Avignon, in southern France, and who
retaliated in kind. In the far east the Turks were destroying the last
remnants of the Roman Empire and the Russians had started upon a final
crusade to crush the power of their Tartar masters.
But of all this, Brother Thomas in his quiet cell never heard. He had
his manuscripts and his own thoughts and he was contented. He poured his
love of God into a little volume. He called it the Imitation of Christ.
It has since been translated into more languages than any other book
save the Bible. It has been read by quite as many people as ever studied
the Holy Scriptures. It has influenced the lives of countless millions.
And it was the work of a man whose highest ideal of existence was
expressed in the simple wish that "he might quietly spend his days
sitting in a little corner with a little book."
Good Brother Thomas represented the purest ideals of the Middle Ages.
Surrounded on all sides by the forces of the victorious Renaissance,
with the humanists loudly proclaiming the coming of modern times,
the Middle Ages gathered strength for a last sally. Monasteries
were reformed. Monks gave up the habits of riches and vice. Simple,
straightforward and honest men, by the example of their blameless
and devout lives, tried to bring the people back to the ways of
righteousness and humble resignation to the will of God. But all to no
avail. The new world rushed past these good people. The days of quiet
meditation were gone. The great era of "expression" had begun.
Here and now let me say that I am sorry that I must use so many "big
words." I wish that I could write this history in words of one syllable.
But it cannot be done. You cannot write a text-book of geometry
without reference to a hypotenuse and triangles and a rectangular
parallelopiped. You simply have to learn what those words mean or do
without mathematics. In history (and in all life) you will eventually
be obliged to learn the meaning of many strange words of Latin and Greek
origin. Why not do it now?
When I say that the Renaissance was an era of expression, I mean this:
People were no longer contented to be the audience and sit still while
the emperor and the pope told them what to do and what to think. They
wanted to be actors upon the stage of life. They insisted upon giving
"expression" to their own individual ideas. If a man happened to be
interested in statesmanship like the Florentine historian, Niccolo
Macchiavelli, then he "expressed" himself in his books which revealed
his own idea of a successful state and an efficient ruler. If on the
other hand he had a liking for painting, he "expressed" his love for
beautiful lines and lovely colours in the pictures which have made the
names of Giotto, Fra Angelico, Rafael and a thousand others household
words wherever people have learned to care for those things which
express a true and lasting beauty.
If this love for colour and line happened to be combined with an
interest in mechanics and hydraulics, the result was a Leonardo da
Vinci, who painted his pictures, experimented with his balloons and
flying machines, drained the marshes of the Lombardian plains and
"expressed" his joy and interest in all things between Heaven and Earth
in prose, in painting, in sculpture and in curiously conceived engines.
When a man of gigantic strength, like Michael Angelo, found the brush
and the palette too soft for his strong hands, he turned to sculpture
and to architecture, and hacked the most terrific creatures out of heavy
blocks of marble and drew the plans for the church of St. Peter, the
most concrete "expression" of the glories of the triumphant church. And
so it went.
All Italy (and very soon all of Europe) was filled with men and women
who lived that they might add their mite to the sum total of our
accumulated treasures of knowledge and beauty and wisdom. In Germany,
in the city of Mainz, Johann zum Gansefleisch, commonly known as Johann
Gutenberg, had just invented a new method of copying books. He had
studied the old woodcuts and had perfected a system by which individual
letters of soft lead could be placed in such a way that they formed
words and whole pages. It is true, he soon lost all his money in a
law-suit which had to do with the original invention of the press. He
died in poverty, but the "expression" of his particular inventive genius
lived after him.
Soon Aldus in Venice and Etienne in Paris and Plantin in Antwerp and
Froben in Basel were flooding the world with carefully edited editions
of the classics printed in the Gothic letters of the Gutenberg Bible,
or printed in the Italian type which we use in this book, or printed in
Greek letters, or in Hebrew.
Then the whole world became the eager audience of those who had
something to say. The day when learning had been a monopoly of a
privileged few came to an end. And the last excuse for ignorance was
removed from this world, when Elzevier of Haarlem began to print his
cheap and popular editions. Then Aristotle and Plato, Virgil and
Horace and Pliny, all the goodly company of the ancient authors and
philosophers and scientists, offered to become man's faithful friend in
exchange for a few paltry pennies. Humanism had made all men free and
equal before the printed word.
THE GREAT DISCOVERIES
BUT NOW THAT PEOPLE HAD BROKEN THROUGH THE BONDS OF THEIR NARROW
MEDIAEVAL LIMITATIONS, THEY HAD TO HAVE MORE ROOM FOR THEIR WANDERINGS.
THE EUROPEAN WORLD HAD GROWN TOO SMALL FOR THEIR AMBITIONS. IT WAS THE
TIME OF THE GREAT VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY
THE Crusades had been a lesson in the liberal art of travelling. But
very few people had ever ventured beyond the well-known beaten track
which led from Venice to Jaffe. In the thirteenth century the Polo
brothers, merchants of Venice, had wandered across the great Mongolian
desert and after climbing mountains as high as the moon, they had found
their way to the court of the great Khan of Cathay, the mighty emperor
of China. The son of one of the Polos, by the name of Marco, had written
a book about their adventures, which covered a period of more than
twenty years. The astonished world had gaped at his descriptions of the
golden towers of the strange island of Zipangu, which was his Italian
way of spelling Japan. Many people had wanted to go east, that they
might find this gold-land and grow rich. But the trip was too far and
too dangerous and so they stayed at home.
Of course, there was always the possibility of making the voyage by sea.
But the sea was very unpopular in the Middle Ages and for many very good
reasons. In the first place, ships were very small. The vessels on which
Magellan made his famous trip around the world, which lasted many years,
were not as large as a modern ferryboat. They carried from twenty to
fifty men, who lived in dingy quarters (too low to allow any of them
to stand up straight) and the sailors were obliged to eat poorly cooked
food as the kitchen arrangements were very bad and no fire could be made
whenever the weather was the least bit rough. The mediaeval world knew
how to pickle herring and how to dry fish. But there were no canned
goods and fresh vegetables were never seen on the bill of fare as soon
as the coast had been left behind. Water was carried in small barrels.
It soon became stale and then tasted of rotten wood and iron rust and
was full of slimy growing things. As the people of the Middle Ages knew
nothing about microbes (Roger Bacon, the learned monk of the thirteenth
century seems to have suspected their existence, but he wisely kept his
discovery to himself) they often drank unclean water and sometimes the
whole crew died of typhoid fever. Indeed the mortality on board the
ships of the earliest navigators was terrible. Of the two hundred
sailors who in the year 1519 left Seville to accompany Magellan on his
famous voyage around the world, only eighteen returned. As late as the
seventeenth century when there was a brisk trade between western Europe
and the Indies, a mortality of 40 percent was nothing unusual for a trip
from Amsterdam to Batavia and back. The greater part of these victims
died of scurvy, a disease which is caused by lack of fresh vegetables
and which affects the gums and poisons the blood until the patient dies
of sheer exhaustion.
Under those circumstances you will understand that the sea did not
attract the best elements of the population. Famous discoverers like
Magellan and Columbus and Vasco da Gama travelled at the head of crews
that were almost entirely composed of ex-jailbirds, future murderers and
pickpockets out of a Job.
These navigators certainly deserve our admiration for the courage and
the pluck with which they accomplished their hopeless tasks in the face
of difficulties of which the people of our own comfortable world can
have no conception. Their ships were leaky. The rigging was clumsy.
Since the middle of the thirteenth century they had possessed some sort
of a compass (which had come to Europe from China by way of Arabia and
the Crusades) but they had very bad and incorrect maps. They set their
course by God and by guess. If luck was with them they returned after
one or two or three years. In the other case, their bleeched bones
remained behind on some lonely beach. But they were true pioneers. They
gambled with luck. Life to them was a glorious adventure. And all the
suffering, the thirst and the hunger and the pain were forgotten when
their eyes beheld the dim outlines of a new coast or the placid waters
of an ocean that had lain forgotten since the beginning of time.
Again I wish that I could make this book a thousand pages long. The
subject of the early discoveries is so fascinating. But history, to
give you a true idea of past times, should be like those etchings
which Rembrandt used to make. It should cast a vivid light on certain
important causes, on those which are best and greatest. All the rest
should be left in the shadow or should be indicated by a few lines. And
in this chapter I can only give you a short list of the most important
discoveries.
Keep in mind that all during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the
navigators were trying to accomplish just ONE THING--they wanted to
find a comfortable and safe road to the empire of Cathay (China), to the
island of Zipangu (Japan) and to those mysterious islands, where grew
the spices which the mediaeval world had come to like since the days
of the Crusades, and which people needed in those days before the
introduction of cold storage, when meat and fish spoiled very quickly
and could only be eaten after a liberal sprinkling of pepper or nutmeg.
The Venetians and the Genoese had been the great navigators of the
Mediterranean, but the honour for exploring the coast of the Atlantic
goes to the Portuguese. Spain and Portugal were full of that patriotic
energy which their age-old struggle against the Moorish invaders had
developed. Such energy, once it exists, can easily be forced into new
channels. In the thirteenth century, King Alphonso III had conquered the
kingdom of Algarve in the southwestern corner of the Spanish peninsula
and had added it to his dominions. In the next century, the Portuguese
had turned the tables on the Mohammedans, had crossed the straits of
Gibraltar and had taken possession of Ceuta, opposite the Arabic city
of Ta'Rifa (a word which in Arabic means "inventory" and which by way
of the Spanish language has come down to us as "tariff,") and Tangiers,
which became the capital of an African addition to Algarve.
They were ready to begin their career as explorers.
In the year 1415, Prince Henry, known as Henry the Navigator, the son
of John I of Portugal and Philippa, the daughter of John of Gaunt (about
whom you can read in Richard II, a play by William Shakespeare) began to
make preparations for the systematic exploration of northwestern
Africa. Before this, that hot and sandy coast had been visited by the
Phoenicians and by the Norsemen, who remembered it as the home of the
hairy "wild man" whom we have come to know as the gorilla. One
after another, Prince Henry and his captains discovered the Canary
Islands--re-discovered the island of Madeira which a century before had
been visited by a Genoese ship, carefully charted the Azores which had
been vaguely known to both the Portuguese and the Spaniards, and caught
a glimpse of the mouth of the Senegal River on the west coast of Africa,
which they supposed to be the western mouth of the Nile. At last, by the
middle of the Fifteenth Century, they saw Cape Verde, or the Green Cape,
and the Cape Verde Islands, which lie almost halfway between the coast
of Africa and Brazil.
But Henry did not restrict himself in his investigations to the waters
of the Ocean. He was Grand Master of the Order of Christ. This was a
Portuguese continuation of the crusading order of the Templars which had
been abolished by Pope Clement V in the year 1312 at the request of King
Philip the Fair of France, who had improved the occasion by burning his
own Templars at the stake and stealing all their possessions. Prince
Henry used the revenues of the domains of his religious order to equip
several expeditions which explored the hinterland of the Sahara and of
the coast of Guinea.
But he was still very much a son of the Middle Ages and spent a great
deal of time and wasted a lot of money upon a search for the mysterious
"Presser John," the mythical Christian Priest who was said to be the
Emperor of a vast empire "situated somewhere in the east." The story of
this strange potentate had first been told in Europe in the middle of
the twelfth century. For three hundred years people had tried to find
"Presser John" and his descendants Henry took part in the search. Thirty
years after his death, the riddle was solved.
In the year 1486 Bartholomew Diaz, trying to find the land of Prester
John by sea, had reached the southernmost point of Africa. At first
he called it the Storm Cape, on account of the strong winds which had
prevented him from continuing his voyage toward the east, but the Lisbon
pilots who understood the importance of this discovery in their quest
for the India water route, changed the name into that of the Cape of
Good Hope.
One year later, Pedro de Covilham, provided with letters of credit on
the house of Medici, started upon a similar mission by land. He crossed
the Mediterranean and after leaving Egypt, he travelled southward.
He reached Aden, and from there, travelling through the waters of the
Persian Gulf which few white men had seen since the days of Alexander
the Great, eighteen centuries before, he visited Goa and Calicut on the
coast of India where he got a great deal of news about the island of the
Moon (Madagascar) which was supposed to lie halfway between Africa and
India. Then he returned, paid a secret visit to Mecca and to Medina,
crossed the Red Sea once more and in the year 1490 he discovered the
realm of Prester John, who was no one less than the Black Negus (or
King) of Abyssinia, whose ancestors had adopted Christianity in the
fourth century, seven hundred years before the Christian missionaries
had found their way to Scandinavia.
These many voyages had convinced the Portuguese geographers and
cartographers that while the voyage to the Indies by an eastern
sea-route was possible, it was by no means easy. Then there arose a
great debate. Some people wanted to continue the explorations east of
the Cape of Good Hope. Others said, "No, we must sail west across the
Atlantic and then we shall reach Cathay."
Let us state right here that most intelligent people of that day were
firmly convinced that the earth was not as flat as a pancake but was
round. The Ptolemean system of the universe, invented and duly described
by Claudius Ptolemy, the great Egyptian geographer, who had lived in the
second century of our era, which had served the simple needs of the men
of the Middle Ages, had long been discarded by the scientists of the
Renaissance. They had accepted the doctrine of the Polish mathematician,
Nicolaus Copernicus, whose studies had convinced him that the earth
was one of a number of round planets which turned around the sun, a
discovery which he did not venture to publish for thirty-six years
(it was printed in 1548, the year of his death) from fear of the Holy
Inquisition, a Papal court which had been established in the thirteenth
century when the heresies of the Albigenses and the Waldenses in France
and in Italy (very mild heresies of devoutly pious people who did
not believe in private property and preferred to live in Christ-like
poverty) had for a moment threatened the absolute power of the bishops
of Rome. But the belief in the roundness of the earth was common
among the nautical experts and, as I said, they were now debating the
respective advantages of the eastern and the western routes.
Among the advocates of the western route was a Genoese mariner by the
name of Cristoforo Colombo. He was the son of a wool merchant. He seems
to have been a student at the University of Pavia where he specialised
in mathematics and geometry. Then he took up his father's trade but
soon we find him in Chios in the eastern Mediterranean travelling on
business. Thereafter we hear of voyages to England but whether he went
north in search of wool or as the captain of a ship we do not know. In
February of the year 1477, Colombo (if we are to believe his own words)
visited Iceland, but very likely he only got as far as the Faroe Islands
which are cold enough in February to be mistaken for Iceland by any
one. Here Colombo met the descendants of those brave Norsemen who in the
tenth century had settled in Greenland and who had visited America in
the eleventh century, when Leif's vessel had been blown to the coast of
Vineland, or Labrador.
What had become of those far western colonies no one knew. The American
colony of Thorfinn Karlsefne, the husband of the widow of Leif's brother
Thorstein, founded in the year 1003, had been discontinued three years
later on account of the hostility of the Esquimaux. As for Greenland,
not a word had been heard from the settlers since the year 1440. Very
likely the Greenlanders had all died of the Black Death, which had just
killed half the people of Norway. However that might be, the tradition
of a "vast land in the distant west" still survived among the people of
the Faroe and Iceland, and Colombo must have heard of it. He gathered
further information among the fishermen of the northern Scottish islands
and then went to Portugal where he married the daughter of one of the
captains who had served under Prince Henry the Navigator.
From that moment on (the year 1478) he devoted himself to the quest of
the western route to the Indies. He sent his plans for such a voyage to
the courts of Portugal and Spain. The Portuguese, who felt certain that
they possessed a monopoly of the eastern route, would not listen to
his plans. In Spain, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, whose
marriage in 1469 had made Spain into a single kingdom, were busy driving
the Moors from their last stronghold, Granada. They had no money for
risky expeditions. They needed every peseta for their soldiers.
Few people were ever forced to fight as desperately for their ideas as
this brave Italian. But the story of Colombo (or Colon or Columbus, as
we call him,) is too well known to bear repeating. The Moors surrendered
Granada on the second of January of the year 1492. In the month of April
of the same year, Columbus signed a contract with the King and Queen
of Spain. On Friday, the 3rd of August, he left Palos with three little
ships and a crew of 88 men, many of whom were criminals who had been
offered indemnity of punishment if they joined the expedition. At
two o'clock in the morning of Friday, the 12th of October, Columbus
discovered land. On the fourth of January of the year 1493, Columbus
waved farewell to the 44 men of the little fortress of La Navidad (none
of whom was ever again seen alive) and returned homeward. By the middle
of February he reached the Azores where the Portuguese threatened
to throw him into gaol. On the fifteenth of March, 1493, the admiral
reached Palos and together with his Indians (for he was convinced that
he had discovered some outlying islands of the Indies and called the
natives red Indians) he hastened to Barcelona to tell his faithful
patrons that he had been successful and that the road to the gold and
the silver of Cathay and Zipangu was at the disposal of their most
Catholic Majesties.
Alas, Columbus never knew the truth. Towards the end of his life, on his
fourth voyage, when he had touched the mainland of South America, he may
have suspected that all was not well with his discovery. But he died
in the firm belief that there was no solid continent between Europe and
Asia and that he had found the direct route to China.
Meanwhile, the Portuguese, sticking to their eastern route, had been
more fortunate. In the year 1498, Vasco da Gama had been able to reach
the coast of Malabar and return safely to Lisbon with a cargo of spice.
In the year 1502 he had repeated the visit. But along the western route,
the work of exploration had been most disappointing. In 1497 and 1498
John and Sebastian Cabot had tried to find a passage to Japan but they
had seen nothing but the snowbound coasts and the rocks of Newfoundland,
which had first been sighted by the Northmen, five centuries before.
Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine who became the Pilot Major of Spain, and
who gave his name to our continent, had explored the coast of Brazil,
but had found not a trace of the Indies.
In the year 1513, seven years after the death of Columbus, the truth at
last began to dawn upon the geographers of Europe. Vasco Nunez de
Balboa had crossed the Isthmus of Panama, had climbed the famous peak in
Darien, and had looked down upon a vast expanse of water which seemed to
suggest the existence of another ocean.
Finally in the year 1519 a fleet of five small Spanish ships under
command of the Portuguese navigator, Ferdinand de Magellan, sailed
westward (and not eastward since that route, was absolutely in the hands
of the Portuguese who allowed no competition) in search of the Spice
Islands. Magellan crossed the Atlantic between Africa and Brazil and
sailed southward. He reached a narrow channel between the southernmost
point of Patagonia, the "land of the people with the big feet," and
the Fire Island (so named on account of a fire, the only sign of the
existence of natives, which the sailors watched one night). For almost
five weeks the ships of Magellan were at the mercy of the terrible
storms and blizzards which swept through the straits. A mutiny broke
out among the sailors. Magellan suppressed it with terrible severity
and sent two of his men on shore where they were left to repent of their
sins at leisure. At last the storms quieted down, the channel broadened,
and Magellan entered a new ocean. Its waves were quiet and placid. He
called it the Peaceful Sea, the Mare Pacifico. Then he continued in a
western direction. He sailed for ninety-eight days without seeing land.
His people almost perished from hunger and thirst and ate the rats that
infested the ships, and when these were all gone they chewed pieces of
sail to still their gnawing hunger.
In March of the year 1521 they saw land. Magellan called it the land of
the Ladrones (which means robbers) because the natives stole everything
they could lay hands on. Then further westward to the Spice Islands!
Again land was sighted. A group of lonely islands. Magellan called them
the Philippines, after Philip, the son of his master Charles V, the
Philip II of unpleasant historical memory. At first Magellan was well
received, but when he used the guns of his ships to make Christian
converts he was killed by the aborigines, together with a number of his
captains and sailors. The survivors burned one of the three remaining
ships and continued their voyage. They found the Moluccas, the famous
Spice Islands; they sighted Borneo and reached Tidor. There, one of
the two ships, too leaky to be of further use, remained behind with
her crew. The "Vittoria," under Sebastian del Cano, crossed the Indian
Ocean, missed seeing the northern coast of Australia (which was not
discovered until the first half of the seventeenth century when ships of
the Dutch East India Company explored this flat and inhospitable land),
and after great hardships reached Spain.
This was the most notable of all voyages. It had taken three years. It
had been accomplished at a great cost both of men and money. But it had
established the fact that the earth was round and that the new lands
discovered by Columbus were not a part of the Indies but a separate
continent. From that time on, Spain and Portugal devoted all their
energies to the development of their Indian and American trade. To
prevent an armed conflict between the rivals, Pope Alexander VI (the
only avowed heathen who was ever elected to this most holy office)
had obligingly divided the world into two equal parts by a line
of demarcation which followed the 50th degree of longitude west of
Greenwich, the so-called division of Tordesillas of 1494. The Portuguese
were to establish their colonies to the east of this line, the Spaniards
were to have theirs to the west. This accounts for the fact that the
entire American continent with the exception of Brazil became Spanish
and that all of the Indies and most of Africa became Portuguese until
the English and the Dutch colonists (who had no respect for Papal
decisions) took these possessions away in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries.
When news of the discovery of Columbus reached the Rialto of Venice, the
Wall street of the Middle Ages, there was a terrible panic. Stocks and
bonds went down 40 and 50 percent. After a short while, when it appeared
that Columbus had failed to find the road to Cathay, the Venetian
merchants recovered from their fright. But the voyages of da Gama and
Magellan proved the practical possibilities of an eastern water-route
to the Indies. Then the rulers of Genoa and Venice, the two great
commercial centres of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, began to be
sorry that they had refused to listen to Columbus. But it was too late.
Their Mediterranean became an inland sea. The overland trade to the
Indies and China dwindled to insignificant proportions. The old days of
Italian glory were gone. The Atlantic became the new centre of commerce
and therefore the centre of civilisation. It has remained so ever since.
See how strangely civilisation has progressed since those early days,
fifty centuries before, when the inhabitants of the Valley of the Nile
began to keep a written record of history, From the river Nile, it went
to Mesopotamia, the land between the rivers. Then came the turn of Crete
and Greece and Rome. An inland sea became the centre of trade and the
cities along the Mediterranean were the home of art and science and
philosophy and learning. In the sixteenth century it moved westward once
more and made the countries that border upon the Atlantic become the
masters of the earth.
There are those who say that the world war and the suicide of the great
European nations has greatly diminished the importance of the Atlantic
Ocean. They expect to see civilisation cross the American continent and
find a new home in the Pacific. But I doubt this.
The westward trip was accompanied by a steady increase in the size
of ships and a broadening of the knowledge of the navigators. The
flat-bottomed vessels of the Nile and the Euphrates were replaced by
the sailing vessels of the Phoenicians, the AEgeans, the Greeks, the
Carthaginians and the Romans. These in turn were discarded for the
square rigged vessels of the Portuguese and the Spaniards. And the
latter were driven from the ocean by the full-rigged craft of the
English and the Dutch.
At present, however, civilisation no longer depends upon ships. Aircraft
has taken and will continue to take the place of the sailing vessel
and the steamer. The next centre of civilisation will depend upon the
development of aircraft and water power. And the sea once more shall be
the undisturbed home of the little fishes, who once upon a time shared
their deep residence with the earliest ancestors of the human race.
BUDDHA AND CONFUCIUS
CONCERNING BUDDHA AND CONFUCIUS
THE discoveries of the Portuguese and the Spaniards had brought the
Christians of western Europe into close contact with the people of India
and of China. They knew of course that Christianity was not the only
religion on this earth. There were the Mohammedans and the heathenish
tribes of northern Africa who worshipped sticks and stones and dead
trees. But in India and in China the Christian conquerors found new
millions who had never heard of Christ and who did not want to hear of
Him, because they thought their own religion, which was thousands of
years old, much better than that of the West. As this is a story of
mankind and not an exclusive history of the people of Europe and
our western hemisphere, you ought to know something of two men whose
teaching and whose example continue to influence the actions and the
thoughts of the majority of our fellow-travellers on this earth.
In India, Buddha was recognised as the great religious teacher. His
history is an interesting one. He was born in the Sixth Century before
the birth of Christ, within sight of the mighty Himalaya Mountains,
where four hundred years before Zarathustra (or Zoroaster), the first of
the great leaders of the Aryan race (the name which the Eastern branch
of the Indo-European race had given to itself), had taught his people
to regard life as a continuous struggle between Ahriman, and Ormuzd, the
Gods of Evil and Good. Buddha's father was Suddhodana, a mighty chief
among the tribe of the Sakiyas. His mother, Maha Maya, was the daughter
of a neighbouring king. She had been married when she was a very young
girl. But many moons had passed beyond the distant ridge of hills and
still her husband was without an heir who should rule his lands after
him. At last, when she was fifty years old, her day came and she went
forth that she might be among her own people when her baby should come
into this world.
It was a long trip to the land of the Koliyans, where Maha Maya had
spent her earliest years. One night she was resting among the cool trees
of the garden of Lumbini. There her son was born. He was given the name
of Siddhartha, but we know him as Buddha, which means the Enlightened
One.
In due time, Siddhartha grew up to be a handsome young prince and when
he was nineteen years old, he was married to his cousin Yasodhara.
During the next ten years he lived far away from all pain and all
suffering, behind the protecting walls of the royal palace, awaiting the
day when he should succeed his father as King of the Sakiyas.
But it happened that when he was thirty years old, he drove outside of
the palace gates and saw a man who was old and worn out with labour
and whose weak limbs could hardly carry the burden of life. Siddhartha
pointed him out to his coachman, Channa, but Channa answered that there
were lots of poor people in this world and that one more or less did not
matter. The young prince was very sad but he did not say anything and
went back to live with his wife and his father and his mother and tried
to be happy. A little while later he left the palace a second time.
His carriage met a man who suffered from a terrible disease. Siddhartha
asked Channa what had been the cause of this man's suffering, but the
coachman answered that there were many sick people in this world and
that such things could not be helped and did not matter very much. The
young prince was very sad when he heard this but again he returned to
his people.
A few weeks passed. One evening Siddhartha ordered his carriage in order
to go to the river and bathe. Suddenly his horses were frightened by the
sight of a dead man whose rotting body lay sprawling in the ditch beside
the road. The young prince, who had never been allowed to see such
things, was frightened, but Channa told him not to mind such trifles.
The world was full of dead people. It was the rule of life that all
things must come to an end. Nothing was eternal. The grave awaited us
all and there was no escape.
That evening, when Siddhartha returned to his home, he was received with
music. While he was away his wife had given birth to a son. The people
were delighted because now they knew that there was an heir to the
throne and they celebrated the event by the beating of many drums.
Siddhartha, however, did not share their joy. The curtain of life had
been lifted and he had learned the horror of man's existence. The sight
of death and suffering followed him like a terrible dream.
That night the moon was shining brightly. Siddhartha woke up and began
to think of many things. Never again could he be happy until he should
have found a solution to the riddle of existence. He decided to find
it far away from all those whom he loved. Softly he went into the room
where Yasodhara was sleeping with her baby. Then he called for his
faithful Channa and told him to follow.
Together the two men went into the darkness of the night, one to find
rest for his soul, the other to be a faithful servant unto a beloved
master.
The people of India among whom Siddhartha wandered for many years were
just then in a state of change. Their ancestors, the native Indians,
had been conquered without great difficulty by the war-like Aryans
(our distant cousins) and thereafter the Aryans had been the rulers
and masters of tens of millions of docile little brown men. To maintain
themselves in the seat of the mighty, they had divided the population
into different classes and gradually a system of "caste" of the most
rigid sort had been enforced upon the natives. The descendants of the
Indo-European conquerors belonged to the highest "caste," the class of
warriors and nobles. Next came the caste of the priests. Below these
followed the peasants and the business men. The ancient natives,
however, who were called Pariahs, formed a class of despised and
miserable slaves and never could hope to be anything else.
Even the religion of the people was a matter of caste. The old
Indo-Europeans, during their thousands of years of wandering, had met
with many strange adventures. These had been collected in a book called
the Veda. The language of this book was called Sanskrit, and it was
closely related to the different languages of the European continent, to
Greek and Latin and Russian and German and two-score others. The three
highest castes were allowed to read these holy scriptures. The Pariah,
however, the despised member of the lowest caste, was not permitted to
know its contents. Woe to the man of noble or priestly caste who should
teach a Pariah to study the sacred volume!
The majority of the Indian people, therefore, lived in misery. Since
this planet offered them very little joy, salvation from suffering
must be found elsewhere. They tried to derive a little consolation from
meditation upon the bliss of their future existence.
Brahma, the all-creator who was regarded by the Indian people as the
supreme ruler of life and death, was worshipped as the highest ideal of
perfection. To become like Brahma, to lose all desires for riches and
power, was recognised as the most exalted purpose of existence. Holy
thoughts were regarded as more important than holy deeds, and many
people went into the desert and lived upon the leaves of trees and
starved their bodies that they might feed their souls with the glorious
contemplation of the splendours of Brahma, the Wise, the Good and the
Merciful.
Siddhartha, who had often observed these solitary wanderers who were
seeking the truth far away from the turmoil of the cities and the
villages, decided to follow their example. He cut his hair. He took his
pearls and his rubies and sent them back to his family with a message
of farewell, which the ever faithful Channa carried. Without a single
follower, the young prince then moved into the wilderness.
Soon the fame of his holy conduct spread among the mountains. Five young
men came to him and asked that they might be allowed to listen to his
words of wisdom. He agreed to be their master if they would follow him.
They consented, and he took them into the hills and for six years
he taught them all he knew amidst the lonely peaks of the Vindhya
Mountains. But at the end of this period of study, he felt that he was
still far from perfection. The world that he had left continued to
tempt him. He now asked that his pupils leave him and then he fasted for
forty-nine days and nights, sitting upon the roots of an old tree. At
last he received his reward. In the dusk of the fiftieth evening,
Brahma revealed himself to his faithful servant. From that moment on,
Siddhartha was called Buddha and he was revered as the Enlightened One
who had come to save men from their unhappy mortal fate.
The last forty-five years of his life, Buddha spent within the valley of
the Ganges River, teaching his simple lesson of submission and meekness
unto all men. In the year 488 before our era, he died, full of years and
beloved by millions of people. He had not preached his doctrines for the
benefit of a single class. Even the lowest Pariah might call himself his
disciple.
This, however, did not please the nobles and the priests and the
merchants who did their best to destroy a creed which recognised the
equality of all living creatures and offered men the hope of a second
life (a reincarnation) under happier circumstances. As soon as they
could, they encouraged the people of India to return to the ancient
doctrines of the Brahmin creed with its fasting and its tortures of the
sinful body. But Buddhism could not be destroyed. Slowly the disciples
of the Enlightened One wandered across the valleys of the Himalayas, and
moved into China. They crossed the Yellow Sea and preached the wisdom
of their master unto the people of Japan, and they faithfully obeyed the
will of their great master, who had forbidden them to use force. To-day
more people recognise Buddha as their teacher than ever before and their
number surpasses that of the combined followers of Christ and Mohammed.
As for Confucius, the wise old man of the Chinese, his story is a simple
one. He was born in the year 550 B.C. He led a quiet, dignified and
uneventful life at a time when China was without a strong central
government and when the Chinese people were at the mercy of bandits and
robber-barons who went from city to city, pillaging and stealing and
murdering and turning the busy plains of northern and central China into
a wilderness of starving people.
Confucius, who loved his people, tried to save them. He did not have
much faith in the use of violence. He was a very peaceful person. He
did not think that he could make people over by giving them a lot of new
laws. He knew that the only possible salvation would come from a change
of heart, and he set out upon the seemingly hopeless task of changing
the character of his millions of fellow men who inhabited the wide
plains of eastern Asia. The Chinese had never been much interested in
religion as we understand that word. They believed in devils and spooks
as most primitive people do. But they had no prophets and recognised no
"revealed truth." Confucius is almost the only one among the great moral
leaders who did not see visions, who did not proclaim himself as the
messenger of a divine power; who did not, at some time or another, claim
that he was inspired by voices from above.
He was just a very sensible and kindly man, rather given to lonely
wanderings and melancholy tunes upon his faithful flute. He asked for no
recognition. He did not demand that any one should follow him or worship
him. He reminds us of the ancient Greek philosophers, especially those
of the Stoic School, men who believed in right living and righteous
thinking without the hope of a reward but simply for the peace of the
soul that comes with a good conscience.
Confucius was a very tolerant man. He went out of his way to visit
Lao-Tse, the other great Chinese leader and the founder of a philosophic
system called "Taoism," which was merely an early Chinese version of the
Golden Rule.
Confucius bore no hatred to any one. He taught the virtue of supreme
self-possession. A person of real worth, according to the teaching of
Confucius, did not allow himself to be ruffled by anger and suffered
whatever fate brought him with the resignation of those sages who
understand that everything which happens, in one way or another, is
meant for the best.
At first he had only a few students. Gradually the number increased.
Before his death, in the year 478 B.C., several of the kings and the
princes of China confessed themselves his disciples. When Christ was
born in Bethlehem, the philosophy of Confucius had already become a part
of the mental make-up of most Chinamen. It has continued to influence
their lives ever since. Not however in its pure, original form. Most
religions change as time goes on. Christ preached humility and meekness
and absence from worldly ambitions, but fifteen centuries after
Golgotha, the head of the Christian church was spending millions upon
the erection of a building that bore little relation to the lonely
stable of Bethlehem.
Lao-Tse taught the Golden Rule, and in less than three centuries the
ignorant masses had made him into a real and very cruel God and had
buried his wise commandments under a rubbish-heap of superstition which
made the lives of the average Chinese one long series of frights and
fears and horrors.
Confucius had shown his students the beauties of honouring their Father
and their Mother. They soon began to be more interested in the memory of
their departed parents than in the happiness of their children and their
grandchildren. Deliberately they turned their backs upon the future and
tried to peer into the vast darkness of the past. The worship of the
ancestors became a positive religious system. Rather than disturb a
cemetery situated upon the sunny and fertile side of a mountain, they
would plant their rice and wheat upon the barren rocks of the other
slope where nothing could possibly grow. And they preferred hunger and
famine to the desecration of the ancestral grave.
At the same time the wise words of Confucius never quite lost their hold
upon the increasing millions of eastern Asia. Confucianism, with its
profound sayings and shrewd observations, added a touch of common-sense
philosophy to the soul of every Chinaman and influenced his entire life,
whether he was a simple laundry man in a steaming basement or the ruler
of vast provinces who dwelt behind the high walls of a secluded palace.
In the sixteenth century the enthusiastic but rather uncivilised
Christians of the western world came face to face with the older creeds
of the East. The early Spaniards and Portuguese looked upon the peaceful
statues of Buddha and contemplated the venerable pictures of Confucius
and did not in the least know what to make of those worthy prophets
with their far-away smile. They came to the easy conclusion that these
strange divinities were just plain devils who represented something
idolatrous and heretical and did not deserve the respect of the true
sons of the Church. Whenever the spirit of Buddha or Confucius seemed to
interfere with the trade in spices and silks, the Europeans attacked the
"evil influence" with bullets and grape-shot. That system had certain
very definite disadvantages. It has left us an unpleasant heritage of
ill-will which promises little good for the immediate future.
THE REFORMATION
THE PROGRESS OF THE HUMAN RACE IS BEST COMPARED TO A GIGANTIC PENDULUM
WHICH FOREVER SWINGS FORWARD AND BACKWARD. THE RELIGIOUS INDIFFERENCE
AND THE ARTISTIC AND LITERARY ENTHUSIASM OF THE RENAISSANCE WERE
FOLLOWED BY THE ARTISTIC AND LITERARY INDIFFERENCE AND THE RELIGIOUS
ENTHUSIASM OF THE REFORMATION
OF course you have heard of the Reformation. You think of a small but
courageous group of pilgrims who crossed the ocean to have "freedom of
religious worship." Vaguely in the course of time (and more especially
in our Protestant countries) the Reformation has come to stand for the
idea of "liberty of thought." Martin Luther is represented as the leader
of the vanguard of progress. But when history is something more than a
series of flattering speeches addressed to our own glorious ancestors,
when to use the words of the German historian Ranke, we try to discover
what "actually happened," then much of the past is seen in a very
different light.
Few things in human life are either entirely good or entirely bad.
Few things are either black or white. It is the duty of the honest
chronicler to give a true account of all the good and bad sides of every
historical event. It is very difficult to do this because we all have
our personal likes and dislikes. But we ought to try and be as fair as
we can be, and must not allow our prejudices to influence us too much.
Take my own case as an example. I grew up in the very Protestant centre
of a very Protestant country. I never saw any Catholics until I was
about twelve years old. Then I felt very uncomfortable when I met them.
I was a little bit afraid. I knew the story of the many thousand people
who had been burned and hanged and quartered by the Spanish Inquisition
when the Duke of Alba tried to cure the Dutch people of their Lutheran
and Calvinistic heresies. All that was very real to me. It seemed to
have happened only the day before. It might occur again. There might
be another Saint Bartholomew's night, and poor little me would be
slaughtered in my nightie and my body would be thrown out of the window,
as had happened to the noble Admiral de Coligny.
Much later I went to live for a number of years in a Catholic country.
I found the people much pleasanter and much more tolerant and quite as
intelligent as my former countrymen. To my great surprise, I began to
discover that there was a Catholic side to the Reformation, quite as
much as a Protestant.
Of course the good people of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
who actually lived through the Reformation, did not see things that
way. They were always right and their enemy was always wrong. It was
a question of hang or be hanged, and both sides preferred to do the
hanging. Which was no more than human and for which they deserve no
blame.
When we look at the world as it appeared in the year 1500, an easy date
to remember, and the year in which the Emperor Charles V was born, this
is what we see. The feudal disorder of the Middle Ages has given way
before the order of a number of highly centralised kingdoms. The most
powerful of all sovereigns is the great Charles, then a baby in a
cradle. He is the grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella and of Maximilian
of Habsburg, the last of the mediaeval knights, and of his wife Mary,
the daughter of Charles the Bold, the ambitious Burgundian duke who had
made successful war upon France but had been killed by the independent
Swiss peasants. The child Charles, therefore, has fallen heir to the
greater part of the map, to all the lands of his parents, grandparents,
uncles, cousins and aunts in Germany, in Austria, in Holland, in
Belgium, in Italy, and in Spain, together with all their colonies in
Asia, Africa and America. By a strange irony of fate, he has been born
in Ghent, in that same castle of the counts of Flanders, which the
Germans used as a prison during their recent occupation of Belgium, and
although a Spanish king and a German emperor, he receives the training
of a Fleming.
As his father is dead (poisoned, so people say, but this is never
proved), and his mother has lost her mind (she is travelling through her
domains with the coffin containing the body of her departed husband),
the child is left to the strict discipline of his Aunt Margaret. Forced
to rule Germans and Italians and Spaniards and a hundred strange races,
Charles grows up a Fleming, a faithful son of the Catholic Church, but
quite averse to religious intolerance. He is rather lazy, both as a boy
and as a man. But fate condemns him to rule the world when the world is
in a turmoil of religious fervour. Forever he is speeding from Madrid to
Innsbruck and from Bruges to Vienna. He loves peace and quiet and he is
always at war. At the age of fifty-five, we see him turn his back upon
the human race in utter disgust at so much hate and so much stupidity.
Three years later he dies, a very tired and disappointed man.
So much for Charles the Emperor. How about the Church, the second great
power in the world? The Church has changed greatly since the early days
of the Middle Ages, when it started out to conquer the heathen and show
them the advantages of a pious and righteous life. In the first place,
the Church has grown too rich. The Pope is no longer the shepherd of
a flock of humble Christians. He lives in a vast palace and surrounds
himself with artists and musicians and famous literary men. His churches
and chapels are covered with new pictures in which the saints look more
like Greek Gods than is strictly necessary. He divides his time unevenly
between affairs of state and art. The affairs of state take ten percent
of his time. The other ninety percent goes to an active interest in
Roman statues, recently discovered Greek vases, plans for a new summer
home, the rehearsal of a new play. The Archbishops and the Cardinals
follow the example of their Pope. The Bishops try to imitate the
Archbishops. The village priests, however, have remained faithful to
their duties. They keep themselves aloof from the wicked world and
the heathenish love of beauty and pleasure. They stay away from the
monasteries where the monks seem to have forgotten their ancient vows of
simplicity and poverty and live as happily as they dare without causing
too much of a public scandal.
Finally, there are the common people. They are much better off than they
have ever been before. They are more prosperous, they live in better
houses, their children go to better schools, their cities are more
beautiful than before, their firearms have made them the equal of their
old enemies, the robber-barons, who for centuries have levied such heavy
taxes upon their trade. So much for the chief actors in the Reformation.
Now let us see what the Renaissance has done to Europe, and then you
will understand how the revival of learning and art was bound to be
followed by a revival of religious interests. The Renaissance began in
Italy. From there it spread to France. It was not quite successful in
Spain, where five hundred years of warfare with the Moors had made the
people very narrow minded and very fanatical in all religious matters.
The circle had grown wider and wider, but once the Alps had been
crossed, the Renaissance had suffered a change.
The people of northern Europe, living in a very different climate,
had an outlook upon life which contrasted strangely with that of their
southern neighbours. The Italians lived out in the open, under a sunny
sky. It was easy for them to laugh and to sing and to be happy. The
Germans, the Dutch, the English, the Swedes, spent most of their time
indoors, listening to the rain beating on the closed windows of their
comfortable little houses. They did not laugh quite so much. They took
everything more seriously. They were forever conscious of their immortal
souls and they did not like to be funny about matters which they
considered holy and sacred. The "humanistic" part of the Renaissance,
the books, the studies of ancient authors, the grammar and the
text-books, interested them greatly. But the general return to the
old pagan civilisation of Greece and Rome, which was one of the chief
results of the Renaissance in Italy, filled their hearts with horror.
But the Papacy and the College of Cardinals was almost entirely composed
of Italians and they had turned the Church into a pleasant club where
people discussed art and music and the theatre, but rarely mentioned
religion. Hence the split between the serious north and the more
civilised but easy-going and indifferent south was growing wider and
wider all the time and nobody seemed to be aware of the danger that
threatened the Church.
There were a few minor reasons which will explain why the Reformation
took place in Germany rather than in Sweden or England. The Germans bore
an ancient grudge against Rome. The endless quarrels between Emperor and
Pope had caused much mutual bitterness. In the other European countries
where the government rested in the hands of a strong king, the ruler
had often been able to protect his subjects against the greed of the
priests. In Germany, where a shadowy emperor ruled a turbulent crowd of
little princelings, the good burghers were more directly at the mercy
of their bishops and prelates. These dignitaries were trying to collect
large sums of money for the benefit of those enormous churches which
were a hobby of the Popes of the Renaissance. The Germans felt that they
were being mulcted and quite naturally they did not like it.
And then there is the rarely mentioned fact that Germany was the home
of the printing press. In northern Europe books were cheap and the
Bible was no longer a mysterious manu-script owned and explained by
the priest. It was a household book of many families where Latin was
understood by the father and by the children. Whole families began to
read it, which was against the law of the Church. They discovered
that the priests were telling them many things which, according to the
original text of the Holy Scriptures, were somewhat different. This
caused doubt. People began to ask questions. And questions, when they
cannot be answered, often cause a great deal of trouble.
The attack began when the humanists of the North opened fire upon the
monks. In their heart of hearts they still had too much respect and
reverence for the Pope to direct their sallies against his Most Holy
Person. But the lazy, ignorant monks, living behind the sheltering walls
of their rich monasteries, offered rare sport.
The leader in this warfare, curiously enough, was a very faithful son
of the church Gerard Gerardzoon, or Desiderius Erasmus, as he is usually
called, was a poor boy, born in Rotterdam in Holland, and educated
at the same Latin school of Deventer from which Thomas a Kempis had
graduated. He had become a priest and for a time he had lived in a
monastery. He had travelled a great deal and knew whereof he wrote, When
he began his career as a public pamphleteer (he would have been called
an editorial writer in our day) the world was greatly amused at an
anonymous series of letters which had just appeared under the title of
"Letters of Obscure Men." In these letters, the general stupidity and
arrogance of the monks of the late Middle Ages was exposed in a strange
German-Latin doggerel which reminds one of our modern limericks. Erasmus
himself was a very learned and serious scholar, who knew both Latin and
Greek and gave us the first reliable version of the New Testament,
which he translated into Latin together with a corrected edition of the
original Greek text. But he believed with Sallust, the Roman poet, that
nothing prevents us from "stating the truth with a smile upon our lips."
In the year 1500, while visiting Sir Thomas More in Eng-land, he took
a few weeks off and wrote a funny little book, called the "Praise of
Folly," in which he attacked the monks and their credulous followers
with that most dangerous of all weapons, humor. The booklet was the best
seller of the sixteenth century. It was translated into almost every
language and it made people pay attention to those other books of
Erasmus in which he advocated reform of the many abuses of the church
and appealed to his fellow humanists to help him in his task of bringing
about a great rebirth of the Christian faith.
But nothing came of these excellent plans. Erasmus was too reasonable
and too tolerant to please most of the enemies of the church. They were
waiting for a leader of a more robust nature.
He came, and his name was Martin Luther.
Luther was a North-German peasant with a first-class brain and possessed
of great personal courage. He was a university man, a master of arts of
the University of Erfurt; afterwards he joined a Dominican monastery.
Then he became a college professor at the theological school of
Wittenberg and began to explain the scriptures to the indifferent
ploughboys of his Saxon home. He had a lot of spare time and this he
used to study the original texts of the Old and New Testaments. Soon
he began to see the great difference which existed between the words of
Christ and those that were preached by the Popes and the Bishops. In the
year 1511, he visited Rome on official business. Alexander VI, of the
family of Borgia, who had enriched himself for the benefit of his
son and daughter, was dead. But his successor, Julius II, a man of
irreproachable personal character, was spending most of his time
fighting and building and did not impress this serious minded German
theologian with his piety. Luther returned to Wittenberg a much
disappointed man. But worse was to follow.
The gigantic church of St. Peter which Pope Julius had wished upon his
innocent successors, although only half begun, was already in need of
repair. Alexander VI had spent every penny of the Papal treasury. Leo X,
who succeeded Julius in the year 1513, was on the verge of bankruptcy.
He reverted to an old method of raising ready cash. He began to sell
"indulgences." An indulgence was a piece of parchment which in return
for a certain sum of money, promised a sinner a decrease of the time
which he would have to spend in purgatory. It was a perfectly correct
thing according to the creed of the late Middle Ages. Since the church
had the power to forgive the sins of those who truly repented before
they died, the church also had the right to shorten, through its
intercession with the Saints, the time during which the soul must be
purified in the shadowy realms of Purgatory.
It was unfortunate that these Indulgences must be sold for money. But
they offered an easy form of revenue and besides, those who were too
poor to pay, received theirs for nothing.
Now it happened in the year 1517 that the exclusive territory for the
sale of indulgences in Saxony was given to a Dominican monk by the name
of Johan Tetzel. Brother Johan was a hustling salesman. To tell the
truth he was a little too eager. His business methods outraged the pious
people of the little duchy. And Luther, who was an honest fellow, got so
angry that he did a rash thing. On the 31st of October of the year 1517,
he went to the court church and upon the doors thereof he posted a sheet
of paper with ninety-five statements (or theses), attacking the sale of
indulgences. These statements had been written in Latin. Luther had no
intention of starting a riot. He was not a revolutionist. He objected to
the institution of the Indulgences and he wanted his fellow professors
to know what he thought about them. But this was still a private affair
of the clerical and professorial world and there was no appeal to the
prejudices of the community of laymen.
Unfortunately, at that moment when the whole world had begun to take an
interest in the religious affairs of the day it was utterly impossible
to discuss anything, without at once creating a serious mental
disturbance. In less than two months, all Europe was discussing the
ninety-five theses of the Saxon monk. Every one must take sides.
Every obscure little theologian must print his own opinion. The papal
authorities began to be alarmed. They ordered the Wittenberg professor
to proceed to Rome and give an account of his action. Luther wisely
remembered what had happened to Huss. He stayed in Germany and he was
punished with excommunication. Luther burned the papal bull in the
presence of an admiring multitude and from that moment, peace between
himself and the Pope was no longer possible.
Without any desire on his part, Luther had become the leader of a vast
army of discontented Christians. German patriots like Ulrich von Hutten,
rushed to his defence. The students of Wittenberg and Erfurt and Leipzig
offered to defend him should the authorities try to imprison him. The
Elector of Saxony reassured the eager young men. No harm would befall
Luther as long as he stayed on Saxon ground.
All this happened in the year 1520. Charles V was twenty years old and
as the ruler of half the world, was forced to remain on pleasant terms
with the Pope. He sent out calls for a Diet or general assembly in the
good city of Worms on the Rhine and commanded Luther to be present and
give an account of his extraordinary behaviour. Luther, who now was the
national hero of the Germans, went. He refused to take back a single
word of what he had ever written or said. His conscience was controlled
only by the word of God. He would live and die for his conscience
The Diet of Worms, after due deliberation, declared Luther an outlaw
before God and man, and forbade all Germans to give him shelter or food
or drink, or to read a single word of the books which the dastardly
heretic had written. But the great reformer was in no danger. By the
majority of the Germans of the north the edict was denounced as a most
unjust and outrageous document. For greater safety, Luther was hidden in
the Wartburg, a castle belonging to the Elector of Saxony, and there
he defied all papal authority by translating the entire Bible into the
German language, that all the people might read and know the word of God
for themselves.
By this time, the Reformation was no longer a spiritual and religious
affair. Those who hated the beauty of the modern church building used
this period of unrest to attack and destroy what they did not like
because they did not understand it. Impoverished knights tried to make
up for past losses by grabbing the territory which belonged to the
monasteries. Discontented princes made use of the absence of the Emperor
to increase their own power. The starving peasants, following the
leadership of half-crazy agitators, made the best of the opportunity
and attacked the castles of their masters and plundered and murdered and
burned with the zeal of the old Crusaders.
A veritable reign of disorder broke loose throughout the Empire. Some
princes became Protestants (as the "protesting" adherents of Luther were
called) and persecuted their Catholic subjects. Others remained Catholic
and hanged their Protestant subjects. The Diet of Speyer of the year
1526 tried to settle this difficult question of allegiance by ordering
that "the subjects should all be of the same religious denomination as
their princes." This turned Germany into a checkerboard of a thousand
hostile little duchies and principalities and created a situation which
prevented the normal political growth for hundreds of years.
In February of the year 1546 Luther died and was put to rest in the
same church where twenty-nine years before he had proclaimed his famous
objections to the sale of Indulgences. In less than thirty years, the
indifferent, joking and laughing world of the Renaissance had been
transformed into the arguing, quarrelling, back-biting, debating-society
of the Reformation. The universal spiritual empire of the Popes came
to a sudden end and the whole Western Europe was turned into a
battle-field, where Protestants and Catholics killed each other for
the greater glory of certain theological doctrines which are
as incomprehensible to the present generation as the mysterious
inscriptions of the ancient Etruscans.
RELIGIOUS WARFARE
THE AGE OF THE GREAT RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSIES
THE sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the age of religious
controversy.
If you will notice you will find that almost everybody around you is
forever "talking economics" and discussing wages and hours of labor and
strikes in their relation to the life of the community, for that is the
main topic of interest of our own time.
The poor little children of the year 1600 or 1650 fared worse. They
never heard anything but "religion." Their heads were filled with
"predestination," "transubstantition," "free will," and a hundred other
queer words, expressing obscure points of "the true faith," whether
Catholic or Protestant. According to the desire of their parents they
were baptised Catholics or Lutherans or Calvinists or Zwinglians or
Anabaptists. They learned their theology from the Augsburg catechism,
composed by Luther, or from the "institutes of Christianity," written
by Calvin, or they mumbled the Thirty-Nine Articles of Faith which were
printed in the English Book of Common Prayer, and they were told that
these alone represented the "True Faith."
They heard of the wholesale theft of church property perpetrated by King
Henry VIII, the much-married monarch of England, who made himself the
supreme head of the English church, and assumed the old papal rights of
appointing bishops and priests. They had a nightmare whenever some one
mentioned the Holy Inquisition, with its dungeons and its many torture
chambers, and they were treated to equally horrible stories of how a mob
of outraged Dutch Protestants had got hold of a dozen defenceless old
priests and hanged them for the sheer pleasure of killing those who
professed a different faith. It was unfortunate that the two contending
parties were so equally matched. Otherwise the struggle would have come
to a quick solution. Now it dragged on for eight generations, and it
grew so complicated that I can only tell you the most important details,
and must ask you to get the rest from one of the many histories of the
Reformation.
The great reform movement of the Protestants had been followed by a
thoroughgoing reform within the bosom of the Church. Those popes who
had been merely amateur humanists and dealers in Roman and Greek
antiquities, disappeared from the scene and their place was taken by
serious men who spent twenty hours a day administering those holy duties
which had been placed in their hands.
The long and rather disgraceful happiness of the monasteries came to an
end. Monks and nuns were forced to be up at sunrise, to study the Church
Fathers, to tend the sick and console the dying. The Holy Inquisition
watched day and night that no dangerous doctrines should be spread by
way of the printing press. Here it is customary to mention poor Galileo,
who was locked up because he had been a little too indiscreet in
explaining the heavens with his funny little telescope and had muttered
certain opinions about the behaviour of the planets which were entirely
opposed to the official views of the church. But in all fairness to the
Pope, the clergy and the Inquisition, it ought to be stated that the
Protestants were quite as much the enemies of science and medicine as
the Catholics and with equal manifestations of ignorance and intolerance
regarded the men who investigated things for themselves as the most
dangerous enemies of mankind.
And Calvin, the great French reformer and the tyrant (both political and
spiritual) of Geneva, not only assisted the French authorities when they
tried to hang Michael Servetus (the Spanish theologian and physician
who had become famous as the assistant of Vesalius, the first great
anatomist), but when Servetus had managed to escape from his French jail
and had fled to Geneva, Calvin threw this brilliant man into prison
and after a prolonged trial, allowed him to be burned at the stake on
account of his heresies, totally indifferent to his fame as a scientist.
And so it went. We have few reliable statistics upon the subject, but on
the whole, the Protestants tired of this game long before the Catholics,
and the greater part of honest men and women who were burned and hanged
and decapitated on account of their religious beliefs fell as victims of
the very energetic but also very drastic church of Rome.
For tolerance (and please remember this when you grow older), is of very
recent origin and even the people of our own so-called "modern world"
are apt to be tolerant only upon such matters as do not interest them
very much. They are tolerant towards a native of Africa, and do not care
whether he becomes a Buddhist or a Mohammedan, because neither Buddhism
nor Mohammedanism means anything to them. But when they hear that their
neighbour who was a Republican and believed in a high protective tariff,
has joined the Socialist party and now wants to repeal all tariff laws,
their tolerance ceases and they use almost the same words as those
employed by a kindly Catholic (or Protestant) of the seventeenth
century, who was informed that his best friend whom he had always
respected and loved had fallen a victim to the terrible heresies of the
Protestant (or Catholic) church.
"Heresy" until a very short time ago was regarded as a disease. Nowadays
when we see a man neglecting the personal cleanliness of his body and
his home and exposing himself and his children to the dangers of typhoid
fever or another preventable disease, we send for the board-of-health
and the health officer calls upon the police to aid him in removing this
person who is a danger to the safety of the entire community. In the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a heretic, a man or a woman who
openly doubted the fundamental principles upon which his Protestant
or Catholic religion had been founded, was considered a more terrible
menace than a typhoid carrier. Typhoid fever might (very likely would)
destroy the body. But heresy, according to them, would positively
destroy the immortal soul. It was therefore the duty of all good
and logical citizens to warn the police against the enemies of the
established order of things and those who failed to do so were as
culpable as a modern man who does not telephone to the nearest doctor
when he discovers that his fellow-tenants are suffering from cholera or
small-pox.
In the years to come you will hear a great deal about preventive
medicine. Preventive medicine simply means that our doctors do not wait
until their patients are sick, then step forward and cure them. On the
contrary, they study the patient and the conditions under which he lives
when he (the patient) is perfectly well and they remove every possible
cause of illness by cleaning up rubbish, by teaching him what to eat and
what to avoid, and by giving him a few simple ideas of personal hygiene.
They go even further than that, and these good doctors enter the
schools and teach the children how to use tooth-brushes and how to avoid
catching colds.
The sixteenth century which regarded (as I have tried to show you)
bodily illness as much less important than sickness which threatened the
soul, organised a system of spiritual preventive medicine. As soon as
a child was old enough to spell his first words, he was educated in
the true (and the "only true") principles of the Faith. Indirectly this
proved to be a good thing for the general progress of the people of
Europe. The Protestant lands were soon dotted with schools. They used a
great deal of very valuable time to explain the Catechism, but they gave
instruction in other things besides theology. They encouraged reading
and they were responsible for the great prosperity of the printing
trade.
But the Catholics did not lag behind. They too devoted much time and
thought to education. The Church, in this matter, found an invaluable
friend and ally in the newly-founded order of the Society of Jesus. The
founder of this remarkable organisation was a Spanish soldier who
after a life of unholy adventures had been converted and thereupon felt
himself bound to serve the church just as many former sinners, who have
been shown the errors of their way by the Salvation Army, devote the
remaining years of their lives to the task of aiding and consoling those
who are less fortunate.
The name of this Spaniard was Ignatius de Loyola. He was born in the
year before the discovery of America. He had been wounded and lamed for
life and while he was in the hospital he had seen a vision of the Holy
Virgin and her Son, who bade him give up the wickedness of his former
life. He decided to go to the Holy Land and finish the task of the
Crusades. But a visit to Jerusalem had shown him the impossibility of
the task and he returned west to help in the warfare upon the heresies
of the Lutherans.
In the year 1534 he was studying in Paris at the Sorbonne. Together with
seven other students he founded a fraternity. The eight men promised
each other that they would lead holy lives, that they would not strive
after riches but after righteousness, and would devote themselves, body
and soul, to the service of the Church. A few years later this small
fraternity had grown into a regular organisation and was recognised by
Pope Paul III as the Society of Jesus.
Loyola had been a military man. He believed in discipline, and absolute
obedience to the orders of the superior dignitaries became one of the
main causes for the enormous success of the Jesuits. They specialised
in education. They gave their teachers a most thorough-going education
before they allowed them to talk to a single pupil. They lived with
their students and they entered into their games. They watched them with
tender care. And as a result they raised a new generation of faithful
Catholics who took their religious duties as seriously as the people of
the early Middle Ages.
The shrewd Jesuits, however, did not waste all their efforts upon the
education of the poor. They entered the palaces of the mighty and became
the private tutors of future emperors and kings. And what this meant you
will see for yourself when I tell you about the Thirty Years War. But
before this terrible and final outbreak of religious fanaticism, a great
many other things had happened.
Charles V was dead. Germany and Austria had been left to his brother
Ferdinand. All his other possessions, Spain and the Netherlands and the
Indies and America had gone to his son Philip. Philip was the son of
Charles and a Portuguese princess who had been first cousin to her own
husband. The children that are born of such a union are apt to be
rather queer. The son of Philip, the unfortunate Don Carlos, (murdered
afterwards with his own father's consent,) was crazy. Philip was not
quite crazy, but his zeal for the Church bordered closely upon religious
insanity. He believed that Heaven had appointed him as one of the
saviours of mankind. Therefore, whosoever was obstinate and refused to
share his Majesty's views, proclaimed himself an enemy of the human race
and must be exterminated lest his example corrupt the souls of his pious
neighbours.
Spain, of course, was a very rich country. All the gold and silver of
the new world flowed into the Castilian and Aragonian treasuries. But
Spain suffered from a curious economic disease. Her peasants were
hard working men and even harder working women. But the better classes
maintained a supreme contempt for any form of labour, outside of
employment in the army or navy or the civil service. As for the Moors,
who had been very industrious artisans, they had been driven out of
the country long before. As a result, Spain, the treasure chest of the
world, remained a poor country because all her money had to be sent
abroad in exchange for the wheat and the other necessities of life which
the Spaniards neglected to raise for themselves.
Philip, ruler of the most powerful nation of the sixteenth century,
depended for his revenue upon the taxes which were gathered in the busy
commercial bee-hive of the Netherlands. But these Flemings and Dutchmen
were devoted followers of the doctrines of Luther and Calvin and they
had cleansed their churches of all images and holy paintings and they
had informed the Pope that they no longer regarded him as their shepherd
but intended to follow the dictates of their consciences and the
commands of their newly translated Bible.
This placed the king in a very difficult position. He could not possibly
tolerate the heresies of his Dutch subjects, but he needed their money.
If he allowed them to be Protestants and took no measures to save
their souls he was deficient in his duty toward God. If he sent the
Inquisition to the Netherlands and burned his subjects at the stake, he
would lose the greater part of his income.
Being a man of uncertain will-power he hesitated a long time. He tried
kindness and sternness and promises and threats. The Hollanders remained
obstinate, and continued to sing psalms and listen to the sermons of
their Lutheran and Calvinist preachers. Philip in his despair sent his
"man of iron," the Duke of Alba, to bring these hardened sinners to
terms. Alba began by decapitating those leaders who had not wisely left
the country before his arrival. In the year 1572 (the same year that the
French Protestant leaders were all killed during the terrible night of
Saint Bartholomew), he attacked a number of Dutch cities and massacred
the inhabitants as an example for the others. The next year he laid
siege to the town of Leyden, the manufacturing center of Holland.
Meanwhile, the seven small provinces of the northern Netherlands had
formed a defensive union, the so-called union of Utrecht, and had
recognised William of Orange, a German prince who had been the private
secretary of the Emperor Charles V, as the leader of their army and as
commander of their freebooting sailors, who were known as the Beggars
of the Sea. William, to save Leyden, cut the dykes, created a shallow
inland sea, and delivered the town with the help of a strangely equipped
navy consisting of scows and flat-bottomed barges which were rowed and
pushed and pulled through the mud until they reached the city walls.
It was the first time that an army of the invincible Spanish king had
suffered such a humiliating defeat. It surprised the world just as the
Japanese victory of Mukden, in the Russian-Japanese war, surprised our
own generation. The Protestant powers took fresh courage and Philip
devised new means for the purpose of conquering his rebellious subjects.
He hired a poor half-witted fanatic to go and murder William of Orange.
But the sight of their dead leader did not bring the Seven Provinces to
their knees. On the contrary it made them furiously angry. In the year
1581, the Estates General (the meeting of the representatives of the
Seven Provinces) came together at the Hague and most solemnly abjured
their "wicked king Philip" and themselves assumed the burden of
sovereignty which thus far had been invested in their "King by the Grace
of God."
This is a very important event in the history of the great struggle for
political liberty. It was a step which reached much further than the
uprising of the nobles which ended with the signing of the Magna Carta.
These good burghers said "Between a king and his subjects there is a
silent understanding that both sides shall perform certain services and
shall recognise certain definite duties. If either party fails to
live up to this contract, the other has the right to consider it
terminated." The American subjects of King George III in the year 1776
came to a similar conclusion. But they had three thousand miles of ocean
between themselves and their ruler and the Estates General took their
decision (which meant a slow death in case of defeat) within hearing of
the Spanish guns and although in constant fear of an avenging Spanish
fleet.
The stories about a mysterious Spanish fleet that was to conquer both
Holland and England, when Protestant Queen Elizabeth had succeeded
Catholic "Bloody Mary" was an old one. For years the sailors of the
waterfront had talked about it. In the eighties of the sixteenth
century, the rumour took a definite shape. According to pilots who had
been in Lisbon, all the Spanish and Portuguese wharves were building
ships. And in the southern Netherlands (in Belgium) the Duke of Parma
was collecting a large expeditionary force to be carried from Ostend to
London and Amsterdam as soon as the fleet should arrive.
In the year 1586 the Great Armada set sail for the north. But the
harbours of the Flemish coast were blockaded by a Dutch fleet and the
Channel was guarded by the English, and the Spaniards, accustomed to the
quieter seas of the south, did not know how to navigate in this squally
and bleak northern climate. What happened to the Armada once it was
attacked by ships and by storms I need not tell you. A few ships, by
sailing around Ireland, escaped to tell the terrible story of defeat.
The others perished and lie at the bottom of the North Sea.
Turn about is fair play. The British nod the Dutch Protestants now
carried the war into the territory of the enemy. Before the end of the
century, Houtman, with the help of a booklet written by Linschoten
(a Hollander who had been in the Portuguese service), had at last
discovered the route to the Indies. As a result the great Dutch East
India Company was founded and a systematic war upon the Portuguese and
Spanish colonies in Asia and Africa was begun in all seriousness.
It was during this early era of colonial conquest that a curious lawsuit
was fought out in the Dutch courts. Early in the seventeenth century a
Dutch Captain by the name of van Heemskerk, a man who had made himself
famous as the head of an expedition which had tried to discover the
North Eastern Passage to the Indies and who had spent a winter on the
frozen shores of the island of Nova Zembla, had captured a Portuguese
ship in the straits of Malacca. You will remember that the Pope had
divided the world into two equal shares, one of which had been given
to the Spaniards and the other to the Portuguese. The Portuguese quite
naturally regarded the water which surrounded their Indian islands as
part of their own property and since, for the moment, they were not at
war with the United Seven Netherlands, they claimed that the captain
of a private Dutch trading company had no right to enter their private
domain and steal their ships. And they brought suit. The directors of
the Dutch East India Company hired a bright young lawyer, by the name of
De Groot or Grotius, to defend their case. He made the astonishing plea
that the ocean is free to all comers. Once outside the distance which a
cannon ball fired from the land can reach, the sea is or (according to
Grotius) ought to be, a free and open highway to all the ships of all
nations. It was the first time that this startling doctrine had been
publicly pronounced in a court of law. It was opposed by all the other
seafaring people. To counteract the effect of Grotius' famous plea for
the "Mare Liberum," or "Open Sea," John Selden, the Englishman, wrote
his famous treatise upon the "Mare Clausum" or "Closed Sea" which
treated of the natural right of a sovereign to regard the seas which
surrounded his country as belonging to his territory. I mention this
here because the question had not yet been decided and during the last
war caused all sorts of difficulties and complications.
To return to the warfare between Spaniard and Hollander and Englishman,
before twenty years were over the most valuable colonies of the Indies
and the Cape of Good Hope and Ceylon and those along the coast of China
and even Japan were in Protestant hands. In 1621 a West Indian Company
was founded which conquered Brazil and in North America built a fortress
called Nieuw Amsterdam at the mouth of the river which Henry Hudson had
discovered in the year 1609
These new colonies enriched both England and the Dutch Republic to such
an extent that they could hire foreign soldiers to do their fighting on
land while they devoted themselves to commerce and trade. To them the
Protestant revolt meant independence and prosperity. But in many other
parts of Europe it meant a succession of horrors compared to which the
last war was a mild excursion of kindly Sunday-school boys.
The Thirty Years War which broke out in the year 1618 and which ended
with the famous treaty of Westphalia in 1648 was the perfectly natural
result of a century of ever increasing religious hatred. It was, as
I have said, a terrible war. Everybody fought everybody else and the
struggle ended only when all parties had been thoroughly exhausted and
could fight no longer.
In less than a generation it turned many parts of central Europe into a
wilderness, where the hungry peasants fought for the carcass of a dead
horse with the even hungrier wolf. Five-sixths of all the German towns
and villages were destroyed. The Palatinate, in western Germany, was
plundered twenty-eight times. And a population of eighteen million
people was reduced to four million.
The hostilities began almost as soon as Ferdinand II of the House of
Habsburg had been elected Emperor. He was the product of a most careful
Jesuit training and was a most obedient and devout son of the Church.
The vow which he had made as a young man, that he would eradicate all
sects and all heresies from his domains, Ferdinand kept to the best
of his ability. Two days before his election, his chief opponent,
Frederick, the Protestant Elector of the Palatinate and a son-in-law of
James I of England, had been made King of Bohemia, in direct violation
of Ferdinand's wishes.
At once the Habsburg armies marched into Bohemia. The young king looked
in vain for assistance against this formidable enemy. The Dutch Republic
was willing to help, but, engaged in a desperate war of its own with
the Spanish branch of the Habsburgs, it could do little. The Stuarts in
England were more interested in strengthening their own absolute power
at home than spending money and men upon a forlorn adventure in far away
Bohemia. After a struggle of a few months, the Elector of the Palatinate
was driven away and his domains were given to the Catholic house of
Bavaria. This was the beginning of the great war.
Then the Habsburg armies, under Tilly and Wallenstein, fought their way
through the Protestant part of Germany until they had reached the
shores of the Baltic. A Catholic neighbour meant serious danger to the
Protestant king of Denmark. Christian IV tried to defend himself by
attacking his enemies before they had become too strong for him. The
Danish armies marched into Germany but were defeated. Wallenstein
followed up his victory with such energy and violence that Denmark was
forced to sue for peace. Only one town of the Baltic then remained in
the hands of the Protestants. That was Stralsund.
There, in the early summer of the year 1630, landed King Gustavus
Adolphus of the house of Vasa, king of Sweden, and famous as the man who
had defended his country against the Russians. A Protestant prince of
unlimited ambition, desirous of making Sweden the centre of a great
Northern Empire, Gustavus Adolphus was welcomed by the Protestant
princes of Europe as the saviour of the Lutheran cause. He defeated
Tilly, who had just successfully butchered the Protestant inhabitants of
Magdeburg. Then his troops began their great march through the heart
of Germany in an attempt to reach the Habsburg possessions in Italy.
Threatened in the rear by the Catholics, Gustavus suddenly veered
around and defeated the main Habsburg army in the battle of Lutzen.
Unfortunately the Swedish king was killed when he strayed away from his
troops. But the Habsburg power had been broken.
Ferdinand, who was a suspicious sort of person, at once began to
distrust his own servants. Wallenstein, his commander-in-chief, was
murdered at his instigation. When the Catholic Bourbons, who ruled
France and hated their Habsburg rivals, heard of this, they joined the
Protestant Swedes. The armies of Louis XIII invaded the eastern part
of Germany, and Turenne and Conde added their fame to that of Baner
and Weimar, the Swedish generals, by murdering, pillaging and burning
Habsburg property. This brought great fame and riches to the Swedes
and caused the Danes to become envious. The Protestant Danes thereupon
declared war upon the Protestant Swedes who were the allies of the
Catholic French, whose political leader, the Cardinal de Richelieu, had
just deprived the Huguenots (or French Protestants) of those rights of
public worship which the Edict of Nantes of the year 1598 had guaranteed
them.
The war, after the habit of such encounters, did not decide anything,
when it came to an end with the treaty of Westphalia in 1648. The
Catholic powers remained Catholic and the Protestant powers stayed
faithful to the doctrines of Luther and Calvin and Zwingli. The Swiss
and Dutch Protestants were recognised as independent republics. France
kept the cities of Metz and Toul and Verdun and a part of the Alsace.
The Holy Roman Empire continued to exist as a sort of scare-crow state,
without men, without money, without hope and without courage.
The only good the Thirty Years War accomplished was a negative one. It
discouraged both Catholics and Protestants from ever trying it again.
Henceforth they left each other in peace. This however did not mean
that religious feeling and theological hatred had been removed from this
earth. On the contrary. The quarrels between Catholic and Protestant
came to an end, but the disputes between the different Protestant sects
continued as bitterly as ever before. In Holland a difference of
opinion as to the true nature of predestination (a very obscure point of
theology, but exceedingly important the eyes of your great-grandfather)
caused a quarrel which ended with the decapitation of John of
Oldenbarneveldt, the Dutch statesman, who had been responsible for
the success of the Republic during the first twenty years of its
independence, and who was the great organising genius of her Indian
trading company. In England, the feud led to civil war.
But before I tell you of this outbreak which led to the first execution
by process-of-law of a European king, I ought to say something about the
previous history of England. In this book I am trying to give you only
those events of the past which can throw a light upon the conditions of
the present world. If I do not mention certain countries, the cause is
not to be found in any secret dislike on my part. I wish that I could
tell you what happened to Norway and Switzerland and Serbia and China.
But these lands exercised no great influence upon the development of
Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I therefore pass
them by with a polite and very respectful bow. England however is in
a different position. What the people of that small island have done
during the last five hundred years has shaped the course of history in
every corner of the world. Without a proper knowledge of the background
of English history, you cannot understand what you read in the
newspapers. And it is therefore necessary that you know how England
happened to develop a parliamentary form of government while the rest of
the European continent was still ruled by absolute monarchs.
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION
HOW THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE "DIVINE RIGHT" OF KINGS AND THE LESS DIVINE
BUT MORE REASONABLE "RIGHT OF PARLIAMENT" ENDED DISASTROUSLY FOR KING
CHARLES II
CAESAR, the earliest explorer of north-western Europe, had crossed
the Channel in the year 55 B.C. and had conquered England. During four
centuries the country then remained a Roman province. But when the
Barbarians began to threaten Rome, the garrisons were called back from
the frontier that they might defend the home country and Britannia was
left without a government and without protection.
As soon as this became known among the hungry Saxon tribes of northern
Germany, they sailed across the North Sea and made themselves at home in
the prosperous island. They founded a number of independent Anglo-Saxon
kingdoms (so called after the original Angles or English and the Saxon
invaders) but these small states were for ever quarrelling with each
other and no King was strong enough to establish himself as the head
of a united country. For more than five hundred years, Mercia and
Northumbria and Wessex and Sussex and Kent and East Anglia, or whatever
their names, were exposed to attacks from various Scandinavian pirates.
Finally in the eleventh century, England, together with Norway and
northern Germany became part of the large Danish Empire of Canute the
Great and the last vestiges of independence disappeared.
The Danes, in the course of time, were driven away but no sooner was
England free, than it was conquered for the fourth time. The new enemies
were the descendants of another tribe of Norsemen who early in the
tenth century had invaded France and had founded the Duchy of Normandy.
William, Duke of Normandy, who for a long time had looked across the
water with an envious eye, crossed the Channel in October of the year
1066. At the battle of Hastings, on October the fourteenth of that
year, he destroyed the weak forces of Harold of Wessex, the last of
the Anglo-Saxon Kings and established himself as King of England. But
neither William nor his successors of the House of Anjou and Plantagenet
regarded England as their true home. To them the island was merely
a part of their great inheritance on the continent--a sort of colony
inhabited by rather backward people upon whom they forced their own
language and civilisation. Gradually however the "colony" of England
gained upon the "Mother country" of Normandy. At the same time the
Kings of France were trying desperately to get rid of the powerful
Norman-English neighbours who were in truth no more than disobedient
servants of the French crown. After a century of war fare the French
people, under the leadership of a young girl by the name of Joan of Arc,
drove the "foreigners" from their soil. Joan herself, taken a prisoner
at the battle of Compiegne in the year 1430 and sold by her Burgundian
captors to the English soldiers, was burned as a witch. But the English
never gained foothold upon the continent and their Kings were at last
able to devote all their time to their British possessions. As the
feudal nobility of the island had been engaged in one of those strange
feuds which were as common in the middle ages as measles and small-pox,
and as the greater part of the old landed proprietors had been killed
during these so-called Wars of the Roses, it was quite easy for the
Kings to increase their royal power. And by the end of the fifteenth
century, England was a strongly centralised country, ruled by Henry VII
of the House of Tudor, whose famous Court of Justice, the "Star Chamber"
of terrible memory, suppressed all attempts on the part of the surviving
nobles to regain their old influence upon the government of the country
with the utmost severity.
In the year 1509 Henry VII was succeeded by his son Henry VIII, and from
that moment on the history of England gained a new importance for the
country ceased to be a mediaeval island and became a modern state.
Henry had no deep interest in religion. He gladly used a private
disagreement with the Pope about one of his many divorces to declare
himself independent of Rome and make the church of England the first of
those "nationalistic churches" in which the worldly ruler also acts as
the spiritual head of his subjects. This peaceful reformation of 1034
not only gave the house of Tudor the support of the English clergy, who
for a long time had been exposed to the violent attacks of many Lutheran
propagandists, but it also increased the Royal power through the
confiscation of the former possessions of the monasteries. At the same
time it made Henry popular with the merchants and tradespeople, who as
the proud and prosperous inhabitants of an island which was separated
from the rest of Europe by a wide and deep channel, had a great dislike
for everything "foreign" and did not want an Italian bishop to rule
their honest British souls.
In 1517 Henry died. He left the throne to his small son, aged ten. The
guardians of the child, favoring the modern Lutheran doctrines, did
their best to help the cause of Protestantism. But the boy died before
he was sixteen, and was succeeded by his sister Mary, the wife of Philip
II of Spain, who burned the bishops of the new "national church" and in
other ways followed the example of her royal Spanish husband
Fortunately she died, in the year 1558, and was succeeded by Elizabeth,
the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, the second of his six wives,
whom he had decapitated when she no longer pleased him. Elizabeth, who
had spent some time in prison, and who had been released only at
the request of the Holy Roman Emperor, was a most cordial enemy of
everything Catholic and Spanish. She shared her father's indifference
in the matter of religion but she inherited his ability as a very shrewd
judge of character, and spent the forty-five years of her reign in
strengthening the power of the dynasty and in increasing the revenue and
possessions of her merry islands. In this she was most ably assisted by
a number of men who gathered around her throne and made the Elizabethan
age a period of such importance that you ought to study it in detail in
one of the special books of which I shall tell you in the bibliography
at the end of this volume.
Elizabeth, however, did not feel entirely safe upon her throne. She had
a rival and a very dangerous one. Mary, of the house of Stuart, daughter
of a French duchess and a Scottish father, widow of king Francis II of
France and daughter-in-law of Catherine of Medici (who had organised the
murders of Saint Bartholomew's night), was the mother of a little boy
who was afterwards to become the first Stuart king of England. She was
an ardent Catholic and a willing friend to those who were the enemies
of Elizabeth. Her own lack of political ability and the violent
methods which she employed to punish her Calvinistic subjects, caused
a revolution in Scotland and forced Mary to take refuge on English
territory. For eighteen years she remained in England, plotting forever
and a day against the woman who had given her shelter and who was at
last obliged to follow the advice of her trusted councilors "to cutte
off the Scottish Queen's heade."
The head was duly "cutte off" in the year 1587 and caused a war with
Spain. But the combined navies of England and Holland defeated Philip's
Invincible Armada, as we have already seen, and the blow which had been
meant to destroy the power of the two great anti-Catholic leaders was
turned into a profitable business adventure.
For now at last, after many years of hesitation, the English as well as
the Dutch thought it their good right to invade the Indies and America
and avenge the ills which their Protestant brethren had suffered at
the hands of the Spaniards. The English had been among the earliest
successors of Columbus. British ships, commanded by the Venetian pilot
Giovanni Caboto (or Cabot), had been the first to discover and explore
the northern American continent in 1496. Labrador and Newfoundland were
of little importance as a possible colony. But the banks of Newfoundland
offered a rich reward to the English fishing fleet. A year later, in
1497, the same Cabot had explored the coast of Florida.
Then had come the busy years of Henry VII and Henry VIII when there had
been no money for foreign explorations. But under Elizabeth, with the
country at peace and Mary Stuart in prison, the sailors could leave
their harbour without fear for the fate of those whom they left behind.
While Elizabeth was still a child, Willoughby had ventured to sail past
the North Cape and one of his captains, Richard Chancellor, pushing
further eastward in his quest of a possible road to the Indies, had
reached Archangel, Russia, where he had established diplomatic and
commercial relations with the mysterious rulers of this distant
Muscovite Empire. During the first years of Elizabeth's rule this voyage
had been followed up by many others. Merchant adventurers, working
for the benefit of a "joint stock Company" had laid the foundations of
trading companies which in later centuries were to become colonies. Half
pirate, half diplomat, willing to stake everything on a single lucky
voyage, smugglers of everything that could be loaded into the hold of
a vessel, dealers in men and merchandise with equal indifference to
everything except their profit, the sailors of Elizabeth had carried the
English flag and the fame of their Virgin Queen to the four corners of
the Seven Seas. Meanwhile William Shakespeare kept her Majesty amused at
home, and the best brains and the best wit of England co-operated with
the queen in her attempt to change the feudal inheritance of Henry VIII
into a modern national state.
In the year 1603 the old lady died at the age of seventy. Her cousin,
the great-grandson of her own grandfather Henry VII and son of Mary
Stuart, her rival and enemy, succeeded her as James I. By the Grace of
God, he found himself the ruler of a country which had escaped the fate
of its continental rivals. While the European Protestants and Catholics
were killing each other in a hopeless attempt to break the power
of their adversaries and establish the exclusive rule of their own
particular creed, England was at peace and "reformed" at leisure without
going to the extremes of either Luther or Loyola. It gave the island
kingdom an enormous advantage in the coming struggle for colonial
possessions. It assured England a leadership in international affairs
which that country has maintained until the present day. Not even the
disastrous adventure with the Stuarts was able to stop this normal
development.
The Stuarts, who succeeded the Tudors, were "foreigners" in England.
They do not seem to have appreciated or understood this fact. The native
house of Tudor could steal a horse, but the "foreign" Stuarts were not
allowed to look at the bridle without causing great popular disapproval.
Old Queen Bess had ruled her domains very much as she pleased. In
general however, she had always followed a policy which meant money in
the pocket of the honest (and otherwise) British merchants. Hence
the Queen had been always assured of the wholehearted support of her
grateful people. And small liberties taken with some of the rights
and prerogatives of Parliament were gladly overlooked for the ulterior
benefits which were derived from her Majesty's strong and successful
foreign policies.
Outwardly King James continued the same policy. But he lacked that
personal enthusiasm which had been so very typical of his great
predecessor. Foreign commerce continued to be encouraged. The Catholics
were not granted any liberties. But when Spain smiled pleasantly upon
England in an effort to establish peaceful relations, James was seen to
smile back. The majority of the English people did not like this, but
James was their King and they kept quiet.
Soon there were other causes of friction. King James and his son,
Charles I, who succeeded him in the year 1625 both firmly believed in
the principle of their "divine right" to administer their realm as they
thought fit without consulting the wishes of their subjects. The idea
was not new. The Popes, who in more than one way had been the successors
of the Roman Emperors (or rather of the Roman Imperial ideal of a
single and undivided state covering the entire known world), had
always regarded themselves and had been publicly recognised as the
"Vice-Regents of Christ upon Earth." No one questioned the right of God
to rule the world as He saw fit. As a natural result, few ventured to
doubt the right of the divine "Vice-Regent" to do the same thing and
to demand the obedience of the masses because he was the direct
representative of the Absolute Ruler of the Universe and responsible
only to Almighty God.
When the Lutheran Reformation proved successful, those rights which
formerly had been invested in the Papacy were taken over by the many
European sovereigns who became Protestants. As head of their own
national or dynastic churches they insisted upon being "Christ's
Vice-Regents" within the limit of their own territory. The people
did not question the right of their rulers to take such a step.
They accepted it, just as we in our own day accept the idea of a
representative system which to us seems the only reasonable and
just form of government. It is unfair therefore to state that either
Lutheranism or Calvinism caused the particular feeling of irritation
which greeted King-James's oft and loudly repeated assertion of his
"Divine Right." There must have been other grounds for the genuine
English disbelief in the Divine Right of Kings.
The first positive denial of the "Divine Right" of sovereigns had been
heard in the Netherlands when the Estates General abjured their lawful
sovereign King Philip II of Spain, in the year 1581. "The King," so they
said, "has broken his contract and the King therefore is dismissed like
any other unfaithful servant." Since then, this particular idea of a
king's responsibilities towards his subjects had spread among many of
the nations who inhabited the shores of the North Sea. They were in a
very favourable position. They were rich. The poor people in the heart
of central Europe, at the mercy of their Ruler's body-guard, could not
afford to discuss a problem which would at once land them in the deepest
dungeon of the nearest castle. But the merchants of Holland and England
who possessed the capital necessary for the maintenance of great armies
and navies, who knew how to handle the almighty weapon called "credit,"
had no such fear. They were willing to pit the "Divine Right" of their
own good money against the "Divine Right" of any Habsburg or Bourbon
or Stuart. They knew that their guilders and shillings could beat the
clumsy feudal armies which were the only weapons of the King. They dared
to act, where others were condemned to suffer in silence or run the risk
of the scaffold.
When the Stuarts began to annoy the people of England with their
claim that they had a right to do what they pleased and never mind the
responsibility, the English middle classes used the House of Commons as
their first line of defence against this abuse of the Royal Power. The
Crown refused to give in and the King sent Parliament about its own
business. Eleven long years, Charles I ruled alone. He levied taxes
which most people regarded as illegal and he managed his British kingdom
as if it had been his own country estate. He had capable assistants and
we must say that he had the courage of his convictions.
Unfortunately, instead of assuring himself of the support of his
faithful Scottish subjects, Charles became involved in a quarrel with
the Scotch Presbyterians. Much against his will, but forced by his need
for ready cash, Charles was at last obliged to call Parliament together
once more. It met in April of 1640 and showed an ugly temper. It was
dissolved a few weeks later. A new Parliament convened in November. This
one was even less pliable than the first one. The members understood
that the question of "Government by Divine Right" or "Government by
Parliament" must be fought out for good and all. They attacked the
King in his chief councillors and executed half a dozen of them. They
announced that they would not allow themselves to be dissolved without
their own approval. Finally on December 1, 1641, they presented to the
King a "Grand Remonstrance" which gave a detailed account of the many
grievances of the people against their Ruler.
Charles, hoping to derive some support for his own policy in the country
districts, left London in January of 1642. Each side organised an army
and prepared for open warfare between the absolute power of the crown
and the absolute power of Parliament. During this struggle, the most
powerful religious element of England, called the Puritans, (they were
Anglicans who had tried to purify their doctrines to the most absolute
limits), came quickly to the front. The regiments of "Godly men,"
commanded by Oliver Cromwell, with their iron discipline and their
profound confidence in the holiness of their aims, soon became the model
for the entire army of the opposition. Twice Charles was defeated. After
the battle of Naseby, in 1645, he fled to Scotland. The Scotch sold him
to the English.
There followed a period of intrigue and an uprising of the Scotch
Presbyterians against the English Puritan. In August of the year 1648
after the three-days' battle of Preston Pans, Cromwell made an end to
this second civil war, and took Edinburgh. Meanwhile his soldiers, tired
of further talk and wasted hours of religious debate, had decided to act
on their own initiative. They removed from Parliament all those who did
not agree with their own Puritan views. Thereupon the "Rump," which was
what was left of the old Parliament, accused the King of high treason.
The House of Lords refused to sit as a tribunal. A special tribunal was
appointed and it condemned the King to death. On the 30th of January of
the year 1649, King Charles walked quietly out of a window of White Hall
onto the scaffold. That day, the Sovereign People, acting through their
chosen representatives, for the first time executed a ruler who had
failed to understand his own position in the modern state.
The period which followed the death of Charles is usually called after
Oliver Cromwell. At first the unofficial Dictator of England, he was
officially made Lord Protector in the year 1653. He ruled five years. He
used this period to continue the policies of Elizabeth. Spain once more
became the arch enemy of England and war upon the Spaniard was made a
national and sacred issue.
The commerce of England and the interests of the traders were placed
before everything else, and the Protestant creed of the strictest nature
was rigourously maintained. In maintaining England's position abroad,
Cromwell was successful. As a social reformer, however, he failed very
badly. The world is made up of a number of people and they rarely think
alike. In the long run, this seems a very wise provision. A government
of and by and for one single part of the entire community cannot
possibly survive. The Puritans had been a great force for good when they
tried to correct the abuse of the royal power. As the absolute Rulers of
England they became intolerable.
When Cromwell died in 1658, it was an easy matter for the Stuarts to
return to their old kingdom. Indeed, they were welcomed as "deliverers"
by the people who had found the yoke of the meek Puritans quite as hard
to bear as that of autocratic King Charles. Provided the Stuarts were
willing to forget about the Divine Right of their late and lamented
father and were willing to recognise the superiority of Parliament, the
people promised that they would be loyal and faithful subjects.
Two generations tried to make a success of this new arrangement. But the
Stuarts apparently had not learned their lesson and were unable to drop
their bad habits. Charles II, who came back in the year 1660, was an
amiable but worthless person. His indolence and his constitutional
insistence upon following the easiest course, together with his
conspicuous success as a liar, prevented an open outbreak between
himself and his people. By the act of Uniformity in 1662 he broke the
power of the Puritan clergy by banishing all dissenting clergymen from
their parishes. By the so-called Conventicle Act of 1664 he tried to
prevent the Dissenters from attending religious meetings by a threat of
deportation to the West Indies. This looked too much like the good old
days of Divine Right. People began to show the old and well-known
signs of impatience, and Parliament suddenly experienced difficulty in
providing the King with funds.
Since he could not get money from an unwilling Parliament, Charles
borrowed it secretly from his neighbour and cousin King Louis of France.
He betrayed his Protestant allies in return for 200,000 pounds per year,
and laughed at the poor simpletons of Parliament.
Economic independence suddenly gave the King great faith in his own
strength. He had spent many years of exile among his Catholic relations
and he had a secret liking for their religion. Perhaps he could bring
England back to Rome! He passed a Declaration of Indulgence which
suspended the old laws against the Catholics and Dissenters. This
happened just when Charles' younger brother James was said to have
become a Catholic. All this looked suspicious to the man in the street
People began to fear some terrible Popish plot. A new spirit of unrest
entered the land. Most of the people wanted to prevent another outbreak
of civil war. To them Royal Oppression and a Catholic King--yea, even
Divine Right,--were preferable to a new struggle between members of the
same race. Others however were less lenient. They were the much-feared
Dissenters, who invariably had the courage of their convictions. They
were led by several great noblemen who did not want to see a return of
the old days of absolute royal power.
For almost ten years, these two great parties, the Whigs (the middle
class element, called by this derisive name be-cause in the year 1640 a
lot of Scottish Whiggamores or horse-drovers headed by the Presbyterian
clergy, had marched to Edinburgh to oppose the King) and the Tories (an
epithet originally used against the Royalist Irish adherents but now
applied to the supporters of the King) opposed each other, but neither
wished to bring about a crisis. They allowed Charles to die peacefully
in his bed and permitted the Catholic James II to succeed his brother
in 1685. But when James, after threatening the country with the terrible
foreign invention of a "standing army" (which was to be commanded by
Catholic Frenchmen), issued a second Declaration of Indulgence in 1688,
and ordered it to be read in all Anglican churches, he went just a
trifle beyond that line of sensible demarcation which can only be
transgressed by the most popular of rulers under very exceptional
circumstances. Seven bishops refused to comply with the Royal Command.
They were accused of "seditious libel." They were brought before a
court. The jury which pronounced the verdict of "not guilty" reaped a
rich harvest of popular approval.
At this unfortunate moment, James (who in a second marriage had taken to
wife Maria of the Catholic house of Modena-Este) became the father of a
son. This meant that the throne was to go to a Catholic boy rather than
to his older sisters, Mary and Anne, who were Protestants. The man in
the street again grew suspicious. Maria of Modena was too old to have
children! It was all part of a plot! A strange baby had been brought
into the palace by some Jesuit priest that England might have a Catholic
monarch. And so on. It looked as if another civil war would break out.
Then seven well-known men, both Whigs and Tories, wrote a letter asking
the husband of James's oldest daughter Mary, William III the Stadtholder
or head of the Dutch Republic, to come to England and deliver the
country from its lawful but entirely undesirable sovereign.
On the fifth of November of the year 1688, William landed at Torbay. As
he did not wish to make a martyr out of his father-in-law, he helped him
to escape safely to France. On the 22nd of January of 1689 he summoned
Parliament. On the 13th of February of the same year he and his wife
Mary were proclaimed joint sovereigns of England and the country was
saved for the Protestant cause.
Parliament, having undertaken to be something more than a mere advisory
body to the King, made the best of its opportunities. The old Petition
of Rights of the year 1628 was fished out of a forgotten nook of the
archives. A second and more drastic Bill of Rights demanded that the
sovereign of England should belong to the Anglican church. Furthermore
it stated that the king had no right to suspend the laws or permit
certain privileged citizens to disobey certain laws. It stipulated that
"without consent of Parliament no taxes could be levied and no army
could be maintained." Thus in the year 1689 did England acquire an
amount of liberty unknown in any other country of Europe.
But it is not only on account of this great liberal measure that the
rule of William in England is still remembered. During his lifetime,
government by a "responsible" ministry first developed. No king of
course can rule alone. He needs a few trusted advisors. The Tudors had
their Great Council which was composed of Nobles and Clergy. This body
grew too large. It was restricted to the small "Privy Council." In the
course of time it became the custom of these councillors to meet the
king in a cabinet in the palace. Hence they were called the "Cabinet
Council." After a short while they were known as the "Cabinet."
William, like most English sovereigns before him, had chosen his
advisors from among all parties. But with the increased strength of
Parliament, he had found it impossible to direct the politics of the
country with the help of the Tories while the Whigs had a majority in
the house of Commons. Therefore the Tories had been dismissed and the
Cabinet Council had been composed entirely of Whigs. A few years later
when the Whigs lost their power in the House of Commons, the king, for
the sake of convenience, was obliged to look for his support among the
leading Tories. Until his death in 1702, William was too busy fighting
Louis of France to bother much about the government of England.
Practically all important affairs had been left to his Cabinet Council.
When William's sister-in-law, Anne, succeeded him in 1702 this condition
of affairs continued. When she died in 1714 (and unfortunately not a
single one of her seventeen children survived her) the throne went to
George I of the House of Hanover, the son of Sophie, grand-daughter of
James I.
This somewhat rustic monarch, who never learned a word of English,
was entirely lost in the complicated mazes of England's political
arrangements. He left everything to his Cabinet Council and kept away
from their meetings, which bored him as he did not understand a single
sentence. In this way the Cabinet got into the habit of ruling England
and Scotland (whose Parliament had been joined to that of England in
1707) without bothering the King, who was apt to spend a great deal of
his time on the continent.
During the reign of George I and George II, a succession of great Whigs
(of whom one, Sir Robert Walpole, held office for twenty-one years)
formed the Cabinet Council of the King. Their leader was finally
recognised as the official leader not only of the actual Cabinet but
also of the majority party in power in Parliament. The attempts of
George III to take matters into his own hands and not to leave the
actual business of government to his Cabinet were so disastrous that
they were never repeated. And from the earliest years of the eighteenth
century on, England enjoyed representative government, with a
responsible ministry which conducted the affairs of the land.
To be quite true, this government did not represent all classes of
society. Less than one man in a dozen had the right to vote. But it was
the foundation for the modern representative form of government. In
a quiet and orderly fashion it took the power away from the King
and placed it in the hands of an ever increasing number of popular
representatives. It did not bring the millenium to England, but it saved
that country from most of the revolutionary outbreaks which proved so
disastrous to the European continent in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries.
THE BALANCE OF POWER
IN FRANCE ON THE OTHER HAND THE "DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS" CONTINUED WITH
GREATER POMP AND SPLENDOUR THAN EVER BEFORE AND THE AMBITION OF THE
RULER WAS ONLY TEMPERED BY THE NEWLY INVENTED LAW OF THE "BALANCE OF
POWER"
As a contrast to the previous chapter, let me tell you what happened in
France during the years when the English people were fighting for their
liberty. The happy combination of the right man in the right country at
the right moment is very rare in History. Louis XIV was a realisation of
this ideal, as far as France was concerned, but the rest of Europe would
have been happier without him.
The country over which the young king was called to rule was the most
populous and the most brilliant nation of that day. Louis came to the
throne when Mazarin and Richelieu, the two great Cardinals, had just
hammered the ancient French Kingdom into the most strongly centralised
state of the seventeenth century. He was himself a man of extraordinary
ability. We, the people of the twentieth century, are still surrounded
by the memories of the glorious age of the Sun King. Our social life
is based upon the perfection of manners and the elegance of expression
attained at the court of Louis. In international and diplomatic
relations, French is still the official language of diplomacy and
international gatherings because two centuries ago it reached a polished
elegance and a purity of expression which no other tongue had as yet
been able to equal. The theatre of King Louis still teaches us lessons
which we are only too slow in learning. During his reign the French
Academy (an invention of Richelieu) came to occupy a position in
the world of letters which other countries have flattered by their
imitation. We might continue this list for many pages. It is no matter
of mere chance that our modern bill-of-fare is printed in French. The
very difficult art of decent cooking, one of the highest expressions of
civilisation, was first practiced for the benefit of the great Monarch.
The age of Louis XIV was a time of splendour and grace which can still
teach us a lot.
Unfortunately this brilliant picture has another side which was far less
encouraging. Glory abroad too often means misery at home, and France
was no exception to this rule Louis XIV succeeded his father in the year
1643. He died in the year 1715. That means that the government of France
was in the hands of one single man for seventy-two years, almost two
whole generations.
It will be well to get a firm grasp of this idea, "one single man."
Louis was the first of a long list of monarchs who in many countries
established that particular form of highly efficient autocracy which we
call "enlightened despotism." He did not like kings who merely played
at being rulers and turned official affairs into a pleasant picnic. The
Kings of that enlightened age worked harder than any of their subjects.
They got up earlier and went to bed later than anybody else, and felt
their "divine responsibility" quite as strongly as their "divine right"
which allowed them to rule without consulting their subjects.
Of course, the king could not attend to everything in person. He was
obliged to surround himself with a few helpers and councillors. One
or two generals, some experts upon foreign politics, a few clever
financiers and economists would do for this purpose. But these
dignitaries could act only through their Sovereign. They had no
individual existence. To the mass of the people, the Sovereign actually
represented in his own sacred person the government of their country.
The glory of the common fatherland became the glory of a single dynasty.
It meant the exact opposite of our own American ideal. France was ruled
of and by and for the House of Bourbon.
The disadvantages of such a system are clear. The King grew to be
everything. Everybody else grew to be nothing at all. The old and
useful nobility was gradually forced to give up its former shares in
the government of the provinces. A little Royal bureaucrat, his fingers
splashed with ink, sitting behind the greenish windows of a government
building in faraway Paris, now performed the task which a hundred years
before had been the duty of the feudal Lord. The feudal Lord, deprived
of all work, moved to Paris to amuse himself as best he could at
the court. Soon his estates began to suffer from that very dangerous
economic sickness, known as "Absentee Landlordism." Within a single
generation, the industrious and useful feudal administrators had become
the well-mannered but quite useless loafers of the court of Versailles.
Louis was ten years old when the peace of Westphalia was concluded and
the House of Habsburg, as a result of the Thirty Years War, lost its
predominant position in Europe. It was inevitable that a man with his
ambition should use so favourable a moment to gain for his own dynasty
the honours which had formerly been held by the Habsburgs. In the year
1660 Louis had married Maria Theresa, daughter of the King of Spain.
Soon afterward, his father-in-law, Philip IV, one of the half-witted
Spanish Habsburgs, died. At once Louis claimed the Spanish Netherlands
(Belgium) as part of his wife's dowry. Such an acquisition would have
been disastrous to the peace of Europe, and would have threatened the
safety of the Protestant states. Under the leadership of Jan de Witt,
Raadpensionaris or Foreign Minister of the United Seven Netherlands,
the first great international alliance, the Triple Alliance of Sweden,
England and Holland, of the year 1661, was concluded. It did not last
long. With money and fair promises Louis bought up both King Charles and
the Swedish Estates. Holland was betrayed by her allies and was left
to her own fate. In the year 1672 the French invaded the low countries.
They marched to the heart of the country. For a second time the dikes
were opened and the Royal Sun of France set amidst the mud of the Dutch
marshes. The peace of Nimwegen which was concluded in 1678 settled
nothing but merely anticipated another war.
A second war of aggression from 1689 to 1697, ending with the Peace
of Ryswick, also failed to give Louis that position in the affairs
of Europe to which he aspired. His old enemy, Jan de Witt, had been
murdered by the Dutch rabble, but his successor, William III (whom you
met in the last chapter), had checkmated all efforts of Louis to make
France the ruler of Europe.
The great war for the Spanish succession, begun in the year 1701,
immediately after the death of Charles II, the last of the Spanish
Habsburgs, and ended in 1713 by the Peace of Utrecht, remained equally
undecided, but it had ruined the treasury of Louis. On land the French
king had been victorious, but the navies of England and Holland had
spoiled all hope for an ultimate French victory; besides the long
struggle had given birth to a new and fundamental principle of
international politics, which thereafter made it impossible for one
single nation to rule the whole of Europe or the whole of the world for
any length of time.
That was the so-called "balance of power." It was not a written law but
for three centuries it has been obeyed as closely as are the laws of
nature. The people who originated the idea maintained that Europe, in
its nationalistic stage of development, could only survive when there
should be an absolute balance of the many conflicting interests of the
entire continent. No single power or single dynasty must ever be allowed
to dominate the others. During the Thirty Years War, the Habsburgs had
been the victims of the application of this law. They, however, had been
unconscious victims. The issues during that struggle were so clouded in
a haze of religious strife that we do not get a very clear view of the
main tendencies of that great conflict. But from that time on, we begin
to see how cold, economic considerations and calculations prevail in all
matters of international importance. We discover the development of a
new type of statesman, the statesman with the personal feelings of the
slide-rule and the cash-register. Jan de Witt was the first successful
exponent of this new school of politics. William III was the first
great pupil. And Louis XIV with all his fame and glory, was the first
conscious victim. There have been many others since.
THE RISE OF RUSSIA
THE STORY OF THE MYSTERIOUS MOSCOVITE EMPIRE WHICH SUDDENLY BURST UPON
THE GRAND POLITICAL STAGE OF EUROPE
IN the year 1492, as you know, Columbus discovered America. Early in
the year, a Tyrolese by the name of Schnups, travelling as the head of a
scientific expedition for the Archbishop of Tyrol, and provided with
the best letters of introduction and excellent credit tried to reach
the mythical town of Moscow. He did not succeed. When he reached the
frontiers of this vast Moscovite state which was vaguely supposed to
exist in the extreme Eastern part of Europe, he was firmly turned back.
No foreigners were wanted. And Schnups went to visit the heathen Turk in
Constantinople, in order that he might have something to report to his
clerical master when he came back from his explorations.
Sixty-one years later, Richard Chancellor, trying to discover the
North-eastern passage to the Indies, and blown by an ill wind into
the White Sea, reached the mouth of the Dwina and found the Moscovite
village of Kholmogory, a few hours from the spot where in 1584 the town
of Archangel was founded. This time the foreign visitors were requested
to come to Moscow and show themselves to the Grand Duke. They went and
returned to England with the first commercial treaty ever concluded
between Russia and the western world. Other nations soon followed and
something became known of this mysterious land.
Geographically, Russia is a vast plain. The Ural mountains are low
and form no barrier against invaders. The rivers are broad but often
shallow. It was an ideal territory for nomads.
While the Roman Empire was founded, grew in power and disappeared again,
Slavic tribes, who had long since left their homes in Central Asia,
wandered aimlessly through the forests and plains of the region between
the Dniester and Dnieper rivers. The Greeks had sometimes met these
Slavs and a few travellers of the third and fourth centuries mention
them. Otherwise they were as little known as were the Nevada Indians in
the year 1800.
Unfortunately for the peace of these primitive peoples, a very
convenient trade-route ran through their country. This was the main road
from northern Europe to Constantinople. It followed the coast of the
Baltic until the Neva was reached. Then it crossed Lake Ladoga and went
southward along the Volkhov river. Then through Lake Ilmen and up the
small Lovat river. Then there was a short portage until the Dnieper was
reached. Then down the Dnieper into the Black Sea.
The Norsemen knew of this road at a very early date. In the ninth
century they began to settle in northern Russia, just as other Norsemen
were laying the foundation for independent states in Germany and France.
But in the year 862, three Norsemen, brothers, crossed the Baltic and
founded three small dynasties. Of the three brothers, only one, Rurik,
lived for a number of years. He took possession of the territory of his
brothers, and twenty years after the arrival of this first Norseman, a
Slavic state had been established with Kiev as its capital.
From Kiev to the Black Sea is a short distance. Soon the existence of an
organised Slavic State became known in Constantinople. This meant a new
field for the zealous missionaries of the Christian faith. Byzantine
monks followed the Dnieper on their way northward and soon reached the
heart of Russia. They found the people worshipping strange gods who were
supposed to dwell in woods and rivers and in mountain caves. They taught
them the story of Jesus. There was no competition from the side of Roman
missionaries. These good men were too busy educating the heathen Teutons
to bother about the distant Slavs. Hence Russia received its religion
and its alphabet and its first ideas of art and architecture from the
Byzantine monks and as the Byzantine empire (a relic of the eastern
Roman empire) had become very oriental and had lost many of its European
traits, the Russians suffered in consequence.
Politically speaking these new states of the great Russian plains
did not fare well. It was the Norse habit to divide every inheritance
equally among all the sons. No sooner had a small state been founded
but it was broken up among eight or nine heirs who in turn left their
territory to an ever increasing number of descendants. It was inevitable
that these small competing states should quarrel among themselves.
Anarchy was the order of the day. And when the red glow of the eastern
horizon told the people of the threatened invasion of a savage Asiatic
tribe, the little states were too weak and too divided to render any
sort of defence against this terrible enemy.
It was in the year 1224 that the first great Tartar invasion took place
and that the hordes of Jenghiz Khan, the conqueror of China, Bokhara,
Tashkent and Turkestan made their first appearance in the west. The
Slavic armies were beaten near the Kalka river and Russia was at
the mercy of the Mongolians. Just as suddenly as they had come they
disappeared. Thirteen years later, in 1237, however, they returned.
In less than five years they conquered every part of the vast Russian
plains. Until the year 1380 when Dmitry Donskoi, Grand Duke of Moscow,
beat them on the plains of Kulikovo, the Tartars were the masters of the
Russian people.
All in all, it took the Russians two centuries to deliver themselves
from this yoke. For a yoke it was and a most offensive and objectionable
one. It turned the Slavic peasants into miserable slaves. No Russian
could hope to survive un-less he was willing to creep before a dirty
little yellow man who sat in a tent somewhere in the heart of the
steppes of southern Russia and spat at him. It deprived the mass of the
people of all feeling of honour and independence. It made hunger and
misery and maltreatment and personal abuse the normal state of human
existence. Until at last the average Russian, were he peasant or
nobleman, went about his business like a neglected dog who has been
beaten so often that his spirit has been broken and he dare not wag his
tail without permission.
There was no escape. The horsemen of the Tartar Khan were fast and
merciless. The endless prairie did not give a man a chance to cross into
the safe territory of his neighbour. He must keep quiet and bear what
his yellow master decided to inflict upon him or run the risk of death.
Of course, Europe might have interfered. But Europe was engaged upon
business of its own, fighting the quarrels between the Pope and the
emperor or suppressing this or that or the other heresy. And so Europe
left the Slav to his fate, and forced him to work out his own salvation.
The final saviour of Russia was one of the many small states, founded
by the early Norse rulers. It was situated in the heart of the Russian
plain. Its capital, Moscow, was upon a steep hill on the banks of the
Moskwa river. This little principality, by dint of pleasing the Tartar
(when it was necessary to please), and opposing him (when it was safe to
do so), had, during the middle of the fourteenth century made itself the
leader of a new national life. It must be remembered that the Tartars
were wholly deficient in constructive political ability. They could only
destroy. Their chief aim in conquering new territories was to obtain
revenue. To get this revenue in the form of taxes, it was necessary to
allow certain remnants of the old political organization to continue.
Hence there were many little towns, surviving by the grace of the Great
Khan, that they might act as tax-gatherers and rob their neighbours for
the benefit of the Tartar treasury.
The state of Moscow, growing fat at the expense of the surrounding
territory, finally became strong enough to risk open rebellion against
its masters, the Tartars. It was successful and its fame as the leader
in the cause of Russian independence made Moscow the natural centre for
all those who still believed in a better future for the Slavic race. In
the year 1458, Constantinople was taken by the Turks. Ten years later,
under the rule of Ivan III, Moscow informed the western world that the
Slavic state laid claim to the worldly and spiritual inheritance of the
lost Byzantine Empire, and such traditions of the Roman empire as had
survived in Constantinople. A generation afterwards, under Ivan the
Terrible, the grand dukes of Moscow were strong enough to adopt the
title of Caesar, or Tsar, and to demand recognition by the western
powers of Europe.
In the year 1598, with Feodor the First, the old Muscovite dynasty,
descendants of the original Norseman Rurik, came to an end. For the next
seven years, a Tartar half-breed, by the name of Boris Godunow, reigned
as Tsar. It was during this period that the future destiny of the large
masses of the Russian people was decided. This Empire was rich in land
but very poor in money. There was no trade and there were no factories.
Its few cities were dirty villages. It was composed of a strong central
government and a vast number of illiterate peasants. This government,
a mixture of Slavic, Norse, Byzantine and Tartar influences, recognised
nothing beyond the interest of the state. To defend this state, it
needed an army. To gather the taxes, which were necessary to pay the
soldiers, it needed civil servants. To pay these many officials it
needed land. In the vast wilderness on the east and west there was a
sufficient supply of this commodity. But land without a few labourers
to till the fields and tend the cattle, has no value. Therefore the old
nomadic peasants were robbed of one privilege after the other, until
finally, during the first year of the sixteenth century, they were
formally made a part of the soil upon which they lived. The Russian
peasants ceased to be free men. They became serfs or slaves and they
remained serfs until the year 1861, when their fate had become so
terrible that they were beginning to die out.
In the seventeenth century, this new state with its growing territory
which was spreading quickly into Siberia, had become a force with which
the rest of Europe was obliged to reckon. In 1618, after the death of
Boris Godunow, the Russian nobles had elected one of their own number
to be Tsar. He was Michael, the son of Feodor, of the Moscow family of
Romanow who lived in a little house just outside the Kremlin.
In the year 1672 his great-grandson, Peter, the son of another Feodor,
was born. When the child was ten years old, his step-sister Sophia took
possession of the Russian throne. The little boy was allowed to spend
his days in the suburbs of the national capital, where the foreigners
lived. Surrounded by Scotch barkeepers, Dutch traders, Swiss
apothecaries, Italian barbers, French dancing teachers and German
school-masters, the young prince obtained a first but rather
extraordinary impression of that far-away and mysterious Europe where
things were done differently.
When he was seventeen years old, he suddenly pushed Sister Sophia
from the throne. Peter himself became the ruler of Russia. He was not
contented with being the Tsar of a semi-barbarous and half-Asiatic
people. He must be the sovereign head of a civilised nation. To change
Russia overnight from a Byzantine-Tartar state into a European empire
was no small undertaking. It needed strong hands and a capable head.
Peter possessed both. In the year 1698, the great operation of grafting
Modern Europe upon Ancient Russia was performed. The patient did not
die. But he never got over the shock, as the events of the last five
years have shown very plainly.
RUSSIA vs. SWEDEN
RUSSIA AND SWEDEN FIGHT MANY WARS TO DECIDE WHO SHALL BE THE LEADING
POWER OF NORTH-EASTERN EUROPE
IN the year 1698, Tsar Peter set forth upon his first voyage to western
Europe. He travelled by way of Berlin and went to Holland and to
England. As a child he had almost been drowned sailing a homemade boat
in the duck pond of his father's country home. This passion for water
remained with him to the end of his life. In a practical way it showed
itself in his wish to give his land-locked domains access to the open
sea.
While the unpopular and harsh young ruler was away from home, the
friends of the old Russian ways in Moscow set to work to undo all
his reforms. A sudden rebellion among his life-guards, the Streltsi
regiment, forced Peter to hasten home by the fast mail. He appointed
himself executioner-in-chief and the Streltsi were hanged and quartered
and killed to the last man. Sister Sophia, who had been the head of the
rebellion, was locked up in a cloister and the rule of Peter be-gan in
earnest. This scene was repeated in the year 1716 when Peter had gone
on his second western trip. That time the reactionaries followed the
leadership of Peter's half-witted son, Alexis. Again the Tsar returned
in great haste. Alexis was beaten to death in his prison cell and the
friends of the old fashioned Byzantine ways marched thousands of dreary
miles to their final destination in the Siberian lead mines. After that,
no further outbreaks of popular discontent took place. Until the time of
his death, Peter could reform in peace.
It is not easy to give you a list of his reforms in chronological order.
The Tsar worked with furious haste. He followed no system. He issued
his decrees with such rapidity that it is difficult to keep count.
Peter seemed to feel that everything that had ever happened before was
entirely wrong. The whole of Russia therefore must be changed within the
shortest possible time. When he died he left behind a well-trained army
of 200,000 men and a navy of fifty ships. The old system of government
had been abolished over night. The Duma, or convention of Nobles, had
been dismissed and in its stead, the Tsar had surrounded himself with an
advisory board of state officials, called the Senate.
Russia was divided into eight large "governments" or provinces. Roads
were constructed. Towns were built. Industries were created wherever it
pleased the Tsar, without any regard for the presence of raw material.
Canals were dug and mines were opened in the mountains of the east. In
this land of illiterates, schools were founded and establishments
of higher learning, together with Universities and hospitals and
professional schools. Dutch naval engineers and tradesmen and artisans
from all over the world were encouraged to move to Russia. Printing
shops were established, but all books must be first read by the imperial
censors. The duties of each class of society were carefully written
down in a new law and the entire system of civil and criminal laws was
gathered into a series of printed volumes. The old Russian costumes
were abolished by Imperial decree, and policemen, armed with scissors,
watching all the country roads, changed the long-haired Russian mou-jiks
suddenly into a pleasing imitation of smooth-shaven west. Europeans.
In religious matters, the Tsar tolerated no division of power. There
must be no chance of a rivalry between an Emperor and a Pope as had
happened in Europe. In the year 1721, Peter made himself head of the
Russian Church. The Patriarchate of Moscow was abolished and the Holy
Synod made its appearance as the highest source of authority in all
matters of the Established Church.
Since, however, these many reforms could not be success-ful while the
old Russian elements had a rallying point in the town of Moscow, Peter
decided to move his government to a new capital. Amidst the unhealthy
marshes of the Baltic Sea the Tsar built this new city. He began to
reclaim the land in the year 1703. Forty thousand peasants worked for
years to lay the foundations for this Imperial city. The Swedes attacked
Peter and tried to destroy his town and illness and misery killed tens
of thousands of the peasants. But the work was continued, winter and
summer, and the ready-made town soon began to grow. In the year 1712, it
was officially de-clared to be the "Imperial Residence." A dozen years
later it had 75,000 inhabitants. Twice a year the whole city was flooded
by the Neva. But the terrific will-power of the Tsar created dykes and
canals and the floods ceased to do harm. When Peter died in 1725 he was
the owner of the largest city in northern Europe.
Of course, this sudden growth of so dangerous a rival had been a source
of great worry to all the neighbours. From his side, Peter had watched
with interest the many adventures of his Baltic rival, the kingdom
of Sweden. In the year 1654, Christina, the only daughter of Gustavus
Adolphus, the hero of the Thirty Years War, had renounced the throne
and had gone to Rome to end her days as a devout Catholic. A Protestant
nephew of Gustavus Adolphus had succeeded the last Queen of the House of
Vasa. Under Charles X and Charles XI, the new dynasty had brought
Sweden to its highest point of development. But in 1697, Charles XI died
suddenly and was succeeded by a boy of fifteen, Charles XII.
This was the moment for which many of the northern states had waited.
During the great religious wars of the seventeenth century, Sweden had
grown at the expense of her neighbours. The time had come, so the owners
thought, to balance the account. At once war broke out between Russia,
Poland, Denmark and Saxony on the one side, and Sweden on the other. The
raw and untrained armies of Peter were disastrously beaten by Charles in
the famous battle of Narva in November of the year 1700. Then Charles,
one of the most interesting military geniuses of that century, turned
against his other enemies and for nine years he hacked and burned his
way through the villages and cities of Poland, Saxony, Denmark and
the Baltic provinces, while Peter drilled and trained his soldiers in
distant Russia.
As a result, in the year 1709, in the battle of Poltawa, the Moscovites
destroyed the exhausted armies of Sweden. Charles continued to be a
highly picturesque figure, a wonderful hero of romance, but in his vain
attempt to have his revenge, he ruined his own country. In the year
1718, he was accidentally killed or assassinated (we do not know which)
and when peace was made in 1721, in the town of Nystadt, Sweden had lost
all of her former Baltic possessions except Finland. The new Russian
state, created by Peter, had become the leading power of northern
Europe. But already a new rival was on the way. The Prussian state was
taking shape.
THE RISE OF PRUSSIA
THE EXTRAORDINARY RISE OF A LITTLE STATE IN A DREARY PART OF NORTHERN
GERMANY, CALLED PRUSSIA
THE history of Prussia is the history of a frontier district. In
the ninth century, Charlemagne had transferred the old centre of
civilisation from the Mediterranean to the wild regions of northwestern
Europe. His Frankish soldiers had pushed the frontier of Europe further
and further towards the east. They had conquered many lands from the
heathenish Slavs and Lithuanians who were living in the plain between
the Baltic Sea and the Carpathian Mountains, and the Franks administered
those outlying districts just as the United States used to administer
her territories before they achieved the dignity of statehood.
The frontier state of Brandenburg had been originally founded by
Charlemagne to defend his eastern possessions against raids of the wild
Saxon tribes. The Wends, a Slavic tribe which inhabited that region,
were subjugated during the tenth century and their market-place, by the
name of Brennabor, became the centre of and gave its name to the new
province of Brandenburg.
During the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,
a succession of noble families exercised the functions of imperial
governor in this frontier state. Finally in the fifteenth century,
the House of Hohenzollern made its appear-ance, and as Electors of
Brandenburg, commenced to change a sandy and forlorn frontier territory
into one of the most efficient empires of the modern world.
These Hohenzollerns, who have just been removed from the historical
stage by the combined forces of Europe and America, came originally
from southern Germany. They were of very humble origin. In the twelfth
century a certain Frederick of Hohenzollern had made a lucky marriage
and had been appointed keeper of the castle of Nuremberg. His
descendants had used every chance and every opportunity to improve their
power and after several centuries of watchful grabbing, they had been
appointed to the dignity of Elector, the name given to those sovereign
princes who were supposed to elect the Emperors of the old German
Empire. During the Reformation, they had taken the side of the
Protestants and the early seventeenth century found them among the most
powerful of the north German princes.
During the Thirty Years War, both Protestants and Catholics had
plundered Brandenburg and Prussia with equal zeal. But under Frederick
William, the Great Elector, the damage was quickly repaired and by a
wise and careful use of all the economic and intellectual forces of the
country, a state was founded in which there was practically no waste.
Modern Prussia, a state in which the individual and his wishes and
aspirations have been entirely absorbed by the interests of the
community as a whole this Prussia dates back to the father of Frederick
the Great. Frederick William I was a hard working, parsimonious Prussian
sergeant, with a great love for bar-room stories and strong Dutch
tobacco, an intense dislike of all frills and feathers, (especially if
they were of French origin,) and possessed of but one idea. That idea
was Duty. Severe with himself, he tolerated no weakness in his subjects,
whether they be generals or common soldiers. The relation between
himself and his son Frederick was never cordial, to say the least. The
boorish manners of the father offended the finer spirit of the son.
The son's love for French manners, literature, philosophy and music was
rejected by the father as a manifestation of sissy-ness. There followed
a terrible outbreak between these two strange temperaments. Frederick
tried to escape to England. He was caught and court-martialed and forced
to witness the decapitation of his best friend who had tried to help
him. Thereupon as part of his punishment, the young prince was sent to
a little fortress somewhere in the provinces to be taught the details of
his future business of being a king. It proved a blessing in disguise.
When Frederick came to the throne in 1740, he knew how his country was
managed from the birth certificate of a pauper's son to the minutest
detail of a complicated annual Budget.
As an author, especially in his book called the "Anti-Macchiavelli,"
Frederick had expressed his contempt for the political creed of the
ancient Florentine historian, who had advised his princely pupils to lie
and cheat whenever it was necessary to do so for the benefit of their
country. The ideal ruler in Frederick's volume was the first servant of
his people, the enlightened despot after the example of Louis XIV. In
practice, however, Frederick, while working for his people twenty hours
a day, tolerated no one to be near him as a counsellor. His ministers
were superior clerks. Prussia was his private possession, to be treated
according to his own wishes. And nothing was allowed to interfere with
the interest of the state.
In the year 1740 the Emperor Charles VI, of Austria, died. He had tried
to make the position of his only daughter, Maria Theresa, secure
through a solemn treaty, written black on white, upon a large piece
of parchment. But no sooner had the old emperor been deposited in the
ancestral crypt of the Habsburg family, than the armies of Frederick
were marching towards the Austrian frontier to occupy that part of
Silesia for which (together with almost everything else in central
Europe) Prussia clamored, on account of some ancient and very doubtful
rights of claim. In a number of wars, Frederick conquered all of
Silesia, and although he was often very near defeat, he maintained
himself in his newly acquired territories against all Austrian
counter-attacks.
Europe took due notice of this sudden appearance of a very powerful new
state. In the eighteenth century, the Germans were a people who had been
ruined by the great religious wars and who were not held in high esteem
by any one. Frederick, by an effort as sudden and quite as terrific as
that of Peter of Russia, changed this attitude of contempt into one of
fear. The internal affairs of Prussia were arranged so skillfully that
the subjects had less reason for complaint than elsewhere. The treasury
showed an annual surplus instead of a deficit. Torture was abolished.
The judiciary system was improved. Good roads and good schools and good
universities, together with a scrupulously honest administration, made
the people feel that whatever services were demanded of them, they (to
speak the vernacular) got their money's worth.
After having been for several centuries the battle field of the French
and the Austrians and the Swedes and the Danes and the Poles, Germany,
encouraged by the example of Prussia, began to regain self-confidence.
And this was the work of the little old man, with his hook-nose and his
old uniforms covered with snuff, who said very funny but very unpleasant
things about his neighbours, and who played the scandalous game of
eighteenth century diplomacy without any regard for the truth, provided
he could gain something by his lies. This in spite of his book,
"Anti-Macchiavelli." In the year 1786 the end came. His friends were
all gone. Children he had never had. He died alone, tended by a single
servant and his faithful dogs, whom he loved better than human beings
because, as he said, they were never ungrateful and remained true to
their friends.
THE MERCANTILE SYSTEM
HOW THE NEWLY FOUNDED NATIONAL OR DYNASTIC STATES OF EUROPE TRIED TO
MAKE THEMSELVES RICH AND WHAT WAS MEANT BY THE MERCANTILE SYSTEM
WE have seen how, during the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries,
the states of our modern world began to take shape. Their origins
were different in almost every case. Some had been the result of the
deliberate effort of a single king. Others had happened by chance. Still
others had been the result of favourable natural geographic boundaries.
But once they had been founded, they had all of them tried to strengthen
their internal administration and to exert the greatest possible
influence upon foreign affairs. All this of course had cost a great deal
of money. The mediaeval state with its lack of centralised power did not
depend upon a rich treasury. The king got his revenues from the crown
domains and his civil service paid for itself. The modern centralised
state was a more complicated affair. The old knights disappeared and
hired government officials or bureaucrats took their place. Army, navy,
and internal administration demanded millions. The question then became
where was this money to be found?
Gold and silver had been a rare commodity in the middle ages. The
average man, as I have told you, never saw a gold piece as long as
he lived. Only the inhabitants of the large cities were familiar with
silver coin. The discovery of America and the exploitation of the
Peruvian mines changed all this. The centre of trade was transferred
from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic seaboard. The old "commercial
cities" of Italy lost their financial importance. New "commercial
nations" took their place and gold and silver were no longer a
curiosity.
Through Spain and Portugal and Holland and England, precious metals
began to find their way to Europe The sixteenth century had its own
writers on the subject of political economy and they evolved a theory of
national wealth which seemed to them entirely sound and of the greatest
possible benefit to their respective countries. They reasoned that both
gold and silver were actual wealth. Therefore they believed that the
country with the largest supply of actual cash in the vaults of its
treasury and its banks was at the same time the richest country. And
since money meant armies, it followed that the richest country was also
the most powerful and could rule the rest of the world.
We call this system the "mercantile system," and it was accepted with
the same unquestioning faith with which the early Christians believed
in Miracles and many of the present-day American business men believe in
the Tariff. In practice, the Mercantile system worked out as follows:
To get the largest surplus of precious metals a country must have a
favourable balance of export trade. If you can export more to your
neighbour than he exports to your own country, he will owe you money
and will be obliged to send you some of his gold. Hence you gain and he
loses. As a result of this creed, the economic program of almost every
seventeenth century state was as follows:
1. Try to get possession of as many precious metals as you can.
2. Encourage foreign trade in preference to domestic trade.
3. Encourage those industries which change raw materials into exportable
finished products.
4. Encourage a large population, for you will need workmen for your
factories and an agricultural community does not raise enough workmen.
5. Let the State watch this process and interfere whenever it is
necessary to do so.
Instead of regarding International Trade as something akin to a force of
nature which would always obey certain natural laws regardless of man's
interference, the people of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
tried to regulate their commerce by the help of official decrees and
royal laws and financial help on the part of the government.
In the sixteenth century Charles V adopted this Mercantile System
(which was then something entirely new) and introduced it into his many
possessions. Elizabeth of England flattered him by her imitation. The
Bourbons, especially King Louis XIV, were fanatical adherents of this
doctrine and Colbert, his great minister of finance, became the prophet
of Mercantilism to whom all Europe looked for guidance.
The entire foreign policy of Cromwell was a practical application of
the Mercantile System. It was invariably directed against the rich rival
Republic of Holland. For the Dutch shippers, as the common-carriers of
the merchandise of Europe, had certain leanings towards free-trade and
therefore had to be destroyed at all cost.
It will be easily understood how such a system must affect the colonies.
A colony under the Mercantile System became merely a reservoir of gold
and silver and spices, which was to be tapped for the benefit of the
home country. The Asiatic, American and African supply of precious
metals and the raw materials of these tropical countries became a
monopoly of the state which happened to own that particular colony.
No outsider was ever allowed within the precincts and no native was
permitted to trade with a merchant whose ship flew a foreign flag.
Undoubtedly the Mercantile System encouraged the development of
young industries in certain countries where there never had been any
manufacturing before. It built roads and dug canals and made for better
means of transportation. It demanded greater skill among the workmen and
gave the merchant a better social position, while it weakened the power
of the landed aristocracy.
On the other hand, it caused very great misery. It made the natives in
the colonies the victims of a most shameless exploitation. It exposed
the citizens of the home country to an even more terrible fate. It
helped in a great measure to turn every land into an armed camp and
divided the world into little bits of territory, each working for its
own direct benefit, while striving at all times to destroy the power of
its neighbours and get hold of their treasures. It laid so much stress
upon the importance of owning wealth that "being rich" came to be
regarded as the sole virtue of the average citizen. Economic systems
come and go like the fashions in surgery and in the clothes of women,
and during the nineteenth century the Mercantile System was discarded in
favor of a system of free and open competition. At least, so I have been
told.
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
AT THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EUROPE HEARD STRANGE REPORTS OF
SOMETHING WHICH HAD HAPPENED IN THE WILDERNESS; OF THE NORTH AMERICAN
CONTINENT. THE DESCENDANTS OF THE MEN WHO HAD PUNISHED KING CHARLES FOR
HIS INSISTENCE UPON HIS "DIVINE RIGHTS" ADDED A NEW CHAPTER TO THE OLD
STORY OF THE STRUGGLE FOR SELF-GOVERNMENT
FOR the sake of convenience, we ought to go back a few centuries and
repeat the early history of the great struggle for colonial possessions.
As soon as a number of European nations had been created upon the new
basis of national or dynastic interests, that is to say, during and
immediately after the Thirty Years War, their rulers, backed up by the
capital of their merchants and the ships of their trading companies,
continued the fight for more territory in Asia, Africa and America.
The Spaniards and the Portuguese had been exploring the Indian Sea
and the Pacific Ocean for more than a century ere Holland and England
appeared upon the stage. This proved an advantage to the latter. The
first rough work had already been done. What is more, the earliest
navigators had so often made themselves unpopular with the Asiatic and
American and African natives that both the English and the Dutch were
welcomed as friends and deliverers. We cannot claim any superior virtues
for either of these two races. But they were merchants before everything
else. They never allowed religious considerations to interfere with
their practical common sense. During their first relations with weaker
races, all European nations have behaved with shocking brutality. The
English and the Dutch, however, knew better where to draw the dine.
Provided they got their spices and their gold and silver and their
taxes, they were willing to let the native live as it best pleased him.
It was not very difficult for them therefore to establish themselves
in the richest parts of the world. But as soon as this had been
accomplished, they began to fight each other for still further
possessions. Strangely enough, the colonial wars were never settled in
the colonies themselves. They were decided three thousand miles away
by the navies of the contending countries. It is one of the most
interesting principles of ancient and modern warfare (one of the few
reliable laws of history) that "the nation which commands the sea is
also the nation which commands the land." So far this law has never
failed to work, but the modern airplane may have changed it. In the
eighteenth century, however, there were no flying machines and it was
the British navy which gained for England her vast American and Indian
and African colonies.
The series of naval wars between England and Holland in the seventeenth
century does not interest us here. It ended as all such encounters
between hopelessly ill-matched powers will end. But the warfare between
England and France (her other rival) is of greater importance to us, for
while the superior British fleet in the end defeated the French navy,
a great deal of the preliminary fighting was done on our own American
continent. In this vast country, both France and England claimed
everything which had been discovered and a lot more which the eye of no
white man had ever seen. In 1497 Cabot had landed in the northern part
of America and twenty-seven years later, Giovanni Verrazano had visited
these coasts. Cabot had flown the English flag. Verrazano had sailed
under the French flag. Hence both England and France proclaimed
themselves the owners of the entire continent.
During the seventeenth century, some ten small English colonies had been
founded between Maine and the Carolinas. They were usually a haven
of refuge for some particular sect of English dissenters, such as the
Puritans, who in the year 1620 went to New England, or the Quakers, who
settled in Pennsylvania in 1681. They were small frontier communities,
nestling close to the shores of the ocean, where people had gathered to
make a new home and begin life among happier surroundings, far away from
royal supervision and interference.
The French colonies, on the other hand, always remained a possession of
the crown. No Huguenots or Protestants were allowed in these colonies
for fear that they might contaminate the Indians with their dangerous
Protestant doctrines and would perhaps interfere with the missionary
work of the Jesuit fathers. The English colonies, therefore, had been
founded upon a much healthier basis than their French neighbours and
rivals. They were an expression of the commercial energy of the English
middle classes, while the French settlements were inhabited by people
who had crossed the ocean as servants of the king and who expected to
return to Paris at the first possible chance.
Politically, however, the position of the English colonies was far from
satisfactory. The French had discovered the mouth of the Saint Lawrence
in the sixteenth century. From the region of the Great Lakes they had
worked their way southward, had descended the Mississippi and had built
several fortifications along the Gulf of Mexico. After a century
of exploration, a line of sixty French forts cut off the English
settlements along the Atlantic seaboard from the interior.
The English land grants, made to the different colonial companies had
given them "all land from sea to sea." This sounded well on paper,
but in practice, British territory ended where the line of French
fortifications began. To break through this barrier was possible but it
took both men and money and caused a series of horrible border wars in
which both sides murdered their white neighbours, with the help of the
Indian tribes.
As long as the Stuarts had ruled England there had been no danger of
war with France. The Stuarts needed the Bourbons in their attempt to
establish an autocratic form of government and to break the power of
Parliament. But in 1689 the last of the Stuarts had disappeared from
British soil and Dutch William, the great enemy of Louis XIV succeeded
him. From that time on, until the Treaty of Paris of 1763, France and
England fought for the possession of India and North America.
During these wars, as I have said before, the English navies invariably
beat the French. Cut off from her colonies, France lost most of her
possessions, and when peace was declared, the entire North American
continent had fallen into British hands and the great work of
exploration of Cartier, Champlain, La Salle, Marquette and a score of
others was lost to France.
Only a very small part of this vast domain was inhabited. From
Massachusetts in the north, where the Pilgrims (a sect of Puritans who
were very intolerant and who therefore had found no happiness either in
Anglican England or Calvinist Holland) had landed in the year 1620, to
the Carolinas and Virginia (the tobacco-raising provinces which had
been founded entirely for the sake of profit), stretched a thin line of
sparsely populated territory. But the men who lived in this new land of
fresh air and high skies were very different from their brethren of
the mother country. In the wilderness they had learned independence and
self-reliance. They were the sons of hardy and energetic ancestors. Lazy
and timourous people did not cross the ocean in those days. The American
colonists hated the restraint and the lack of breathing space which had
made their lives in the old country so very unhappy. They meant to be
their own masters. This the ruling classes of England did not seem to
understand. The government annoyed the colonists and the colonists, who
hated to be bothered in this way, began to annoy the British government.
Bad feeling caused more bad feeling. It is not necessary to repeat here
in detail what actually happened and what might have been avoided if the
British king had been more intelligent than George III or less given to
drowsiness and indifference than his minister, Lord North. The British
colonists, when they understood that peaceful arguments would not settle
the difficulties, took to arms. From being loyal subjects, they turned
rebels, who exposed themselves to the punishment of death when they were
captured by the German soldiers, whom George hired to do his fighting
after the pleasant custom of that day, when Teutonic princes sold whole
regiments to the highest bidder.
The war between England and her American colonies lasted seven years.
During most of that time, the final success of the rebels seemed very
doubtful. A great number of the people, especially in the cities, had
remained loyal to their king. They were in favour of a compromise,
and would have been willing to sue for peace. But the great figure of
Washington stood guard over the cause of the colonists.
Ably assisted by a handful of brave men, he used his steadfast but badly
equipped armies to weaken the forces of the king. Time and again when
defeat seemed unavoidable, his strategy turned the tide of battle. Often
his men were ill-fed. During the winter they lacked shoes and coats
and were forced to live in unhealthy dug-outs. But their trust in their
great leader was absolute and they stuck it out until the final hour of
victory.
But more interesting than the campaigns of Washington or the diplomatic
triumphs of Benjamin Franklin who was in Europe getting money from the
French government and the Amsterdam bankers, was an event which occurred
early in the revolution. The representatives of the different colonies
had gathered in Philadelphia to discuss matters of common importance. It
was the first year of the Revolution. Most of the big towns of the
sea coast were still in the hands of the British. Reinforcements
from England were arriving by the ship load. Only men who were deeply
convinced of the righteousness of their cause would have found the
courage to take the momentous decision of the months of June and July of
the year 1776.
In June, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia proposed a motion to the
Continental Congress that "these united colonies are, and of right ought
to be, free and independent states, that they are absolved from all
allegiance to the British crown, and that all political connection
between them and the state of Great Britain is and ought to be, totally
dissolved."
The motion was seconded by John Adams of Massachusetts. It was carried
on July the second and on July fourth, it was followed by an official
Declaration of Independence, which was the work of Thomas Jefferson, a
serious and exceedingly capable student of both politics and government
and destined to be one of the most famous of out American presidents.
When news of this event reached Europe, and was followed by the final
victory of the colonists and the adoption of the famous Constitution of
the year 1787 (the first of all written constitutions) it caused great
interest. The dynastic system of the highly centralised states which had
been developed after the great religious wars of the seventeenth century
had reached the height of its power. Everywhere the palace of the king
had grown to enormous proportions, while the cities of the royal realm
were being surrounded by rapidly growing acres of slums. The inhabitants
of those slums were showing signs of restlessness. They were quite
helpless. But the higher classes, the nobles and the professional men,
they too were beginning to have certain doubts about the economic and
political conditions under which they lived. The success of the American
colonists showed them that many things were possible which had been held
impossible only a short time before.
According to the poet, the shot which opened the battle of Lexington was
"heard around the world." That was a bit of an exaggeration. The Chinese
and the Japanese and the Russians (not to speak of the Australians, who
had just been re-discovered by Captain Cook, whom they killed for his
trouble,) never heard of it at all. But it carried across the Atlantic
Ocean. It landed in the powder house of European discontent and in
France it caused an explosion which rocked the entire continent from
Petrograd to Madrid and buried the representatives of the old statecraft
and the old diplomacy under several tons of democratic bricks.
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
THE GREAT FRENCH REVOLUTION PROCLAIMS THE PRINCIPLES OF LIBERTY,
FRATERNITY AND EQUALITY UNTO ALL THE PEOPLE OF THE EARTH
BEFORE we talk about a revolution it is just as well that we explain
just what this word means. In the terms of a great Russian writer (and
Russians ought to know what they are talking about in this field) a
revolution is "a swift overthrow, in a few years, of institutions
which have taken centuries to root in the soil, and seem so fixed and
immovable that even the most ardent reformers hardly dare to attack them
in their writings. It is the fall, the crumbling away in a brief
period, of all that up to that time has composed the essence of social,
religious, political and economic life in a nation."
Such a revolution took place in France in the eighteenth century when
the old civilisation of the country had grown stale. The king in the
days of Louis XIV had become EVERYTHING and was the state. The Nobility,
formerly the civil servant of the federal state, found itself without
any duties and became a social ornament of the royal court.
This French state of the eighteenth century, however, cost incredible
sums of money. This money had to be produced in the form of taxes.
Unfortunately the kings of France had not been strong enough to force
the nobility and the clergy to pay their share of these taxes. Hence
the taxes were paid entirely by the agricultural population. But the
peasants living in dreary hovels, no longer in intimate contact with
their former landlords, but victims of cruel and incompetent land
agents, were going from bad to worse. Why should they work and exert
themselves? Increased returns upon their land merely meant more taxes
and nothing for themselves and therefore they neglected their fields as
much as they dared.
Hence we have a king who wanders in empty splendour through the vast
halls of his palaces, habitually followed by hungry office seekers, all
of whom live upon the revenue obtained from peasants who are no better
than the beasts of the fields. It is not a pleasant picture, but it
is not exaggerated. There was, however, another side to the so-called
"Ancien Regime" which we must keep in mind.
A wealthy middle class, closely connected with the nobility (by the
usual process of the rich banker's daughter marrying the poor baron's
son) and a court composed of all the most entertaining people of
France, had brought the polite art of graceful living to its highest
development. As the best brains of the country were not allowed to
occupy themselves with questions of political economics, they spent
their idle hours upon the discussion of abstract ideas.
As fashions in modes of thought and personal behaviour are quite as
likely to run to extremes as fashion in dress, it was natural that the
most artificial society of that day should take a tremendous interest
in what they considered "the simple life." The king and the queen, the
absolute and unquestioned proprietors of this country galled France,
together with all its colonies and dependencies, went to live in funny
little country houses all dressed up as milk-maids and stable-boys and
played at being shepherds in a happy vale of ancient Hellas. Around
them, their courtiers danced attendance, their court-musicians composed
lovely minuets, their court barbers devised more and more elaborate and
costly headgear, until from sheer boredom and lack of real jobs, this
whole artificial world of Versailles (the great show place which Louis
XIV had built far away from his noisy and restless city) talked of
nothing but those subjects which were furthest removed from their own
lives, just as a man who is starving will talk of nothing except food.
When Voltaire, the courageous old philosopher, playwright, historian and
novelist, and the great enemy of all religious and political tyranny,
began to throw his bombs of criticism at everything connected with the
Established Order of Things, the whole French world applauded him and
his theatrical pieces played to standing room only. When Jean
Jacques Rousseau waxed sentimental about primitive man and gave his
contemporaries delightful descriptions of the happiness of the original
inhabitants of this planet, (about whom he knew as little as he
did about the children, upon whose education he was the recognised
authority,) all France read his "Social Contract" and this society in
which the king and the state were one, wept bitter tears when they
heard Rousseau's appeal for a return to the blessed days when the real
sovereignty had lain in the hands of the people and when the king had
been merely the servant of his people.
When Montesquieu published his "Persian Letters" in which two
distinguished Persian travellers turn the whole existing society of
France topsy-turvy and poke fun at everything from the king down to
the lowest of his six hundred pastry cooks, the book immediately went
through four editions and assured the writer thousands of readers for
his famous discussion of the "Spirit of the Laws" in which the noble
Baron compared the excellent English system with the backward system of
France and advocated instead of an absolute monarchy the establishment
of a state in which the Executive, the Legislative and the Judicial
powers should be in separate hands and should work independently of each
other. When Lebreton, the Parisian book-seller, announced that Messieurs
Diderot, d'Alembert, Turgot and a score of other distinguished writers
were going to publish an Encyclopaedia which was to contain "all the new
ideas and the new science and the new knowledge," the response from
the side of the public was most satisfactory, and when after twenty-two
years the last of the twenty-eight volumes had been finished, the
somewhat belated interference of the police could not repress the
enthusiasm with which French society received this most important but
very dangerous contribution to the discussions of the day.
Here, let me give you a little warning. When you read a novel about
the French revolution or see a play or a movie, you will easily get the
impression that the Revolution was the work of the rabble from the
Paris slums. It was nothing of the kind. The mob appears often upon the
revolutionary stage, but invariably at the instigation and under the
leadership of those middle-class professional men who used the hungry
multitude as an efficient ally in their warfare upon the king and
his court. But the fundamental ideas which caused the revolution were
invented by a few brilliant minds, and they were at first introduced
into the charming drawing-rooms of the "Ancien Regime" to provide
amiable diversion for the much-bored ladies and gentlemen of his
Majesty's court. These pleasant but careless people played with the
dangerous fireworks of social criticism until the sparks fell through
the cracks of the floor, which was old and rotten just like the rest of
the building. Those sparks unfortunately landed in the basement where
age-old rubbish lay in great confusion. Then there was a cry of fire.
But the owner of the house who was interested in everything except the
management of his property, did not know how to put the small blaze
out. The flame spread rapidly and the entire edifice was consumed by the
conflagration, which we call the Great French Revolution.
For the sake of convenience, we can divide the French Revolution into
two parts. From 1789 to 1791 there was a more or less orderly attempt to
introduce a constitutional monarchy. This failed, partly through lack
of good faith and stupidity on the part of the monarch himself, partly
through circumstances over which nobody had any control.
From 1792 to 1799 there was a Republic and a first effort to establish
a democratic form of government. But the actual outbreak of violence had
been preceded by many years of unrest and many sincere but ineffectual
attempts at reform.
When France had a debt of 4000 million francs and the treasury was
always empty and there was not a single thing upon which new taxes could
be levied, even good King Louis (who was an expert locksmith and a great
hunter but a very poor statesman) felt vaguely that something ought to
be done. Therefore he called for Turgot, to be his Minister of Finance.
Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de l'Aulne, a man in the early
sixties, a splendid representative of the fast disappearing class of
landed gentry, had been a successful governor of a province and was
an amateur political economist of great ability. He did his best.
Unfortunately, he could not perform miracles. As it was impossible to
squeeze more taxes out of the ragged peasants, it was necessary to get
the necessary funds from the nobility and clergy who had never paid a
centime. This made Turgot the best hated man at the court of Versailles.
Furthermore he was obliged to face the enmity of Marie Antoinette, the
queen, who was against everybody who dared to mention the word "economy"
within her hearing. Soon Turgot was called an "unpractical visionary"
and a "theoretical-professor" and then of course his position became
untenable. In the year 1776 he was forced to resign.
After the "professor" there came a man of Practical Business Sense. He
was an industrious Swiss by the name of Necker who had made himself rich
as a grain speculator and the partner in an international banking house.
His ambitious wife had pushed him into the government service that she
might establish a position for her daughter who afterwards as the
wife of the Swedish minister in Paris, Baron de Stael, became a famous
literary figure of the early nineteenth century.
Necker set to work with a fine display of zeal just as Turgot had done.
In 1781 he published a careful review of the French finances. The king
understood nothing of this "Compte Rendu." He had just sent troops to
America to help the colonists against their common enemies, the English.
This expedition proved to be unexpectedly expensive and Necker was
asked to find the necessary funds. When instead of producing revenue, he
published more figures and made statistics and began to use the dreary
warning about "necessary economies" his days were numbered. In the year
1781 he was dismissed as an incompetent servant.
After the Professor and the Practical Business Man came the delightful
type of financier who will guarantee everybody 100 per cent. per month
on their money if only they will trust his own infallible system.
He was Charles Alexandre de Calonne, a pushing official, who had made
his career both by his industry and his complete lack of honesty and
scruples. He found the country heavily indebted, but he was a clever
man, willing to oblige everybody, and he invented a quick remedy. He
paid the old debts by contracting new ones. This method is not new. The
result since time immemorial has been disastrous. In less than three
years more than 800,000,000 francs had been added to the French debt by
this charming Minister of Finance who never worried and smilingly signed
his name to every demand that was made by His Majesty and by his lovely
Queen, who had learned the habit of spending during the days of her
youth in Vienna.
At last even the Parliament of Paris (a high court of justice and not
a legislative body) although by no means lacking in loyalty to their
sovereign, decided that something must be done. Calonne wanted to borrow
another 80,000,000 francs. It had been a bad year for the crops and
the misery and hunger in the country districts were terrible. Unless
something sensible were done, France would go bankrupt. The King as
always was unaware of the seriousness of the situation. Would it not be
a good idea to consult the representatives of the people? Since 1614
no Estates General had been called together. In view of the threatening
panic there was a demand that the Estates be convened. Louis XVI
however, who never could take a decision, refused to go as far as that.
To pacify the popular clamour he called together a meeting of the
Notables in the year 1787. This merely meant a gathering of the best
families who discussed what could and should be done, without touching
their feudal and clerical privilege of tax-exemption. It is unreasonable
to expect that a certain class of society shall commit political and
economic suicide for the benefit of another group of fellow-citizens.
The 127 Notables obstinately refused to surrender a single one of their
ancient rights. The crowd in the street, being now exceedingly hungry,
demanded that Necker, in whom they had confidence, be reappointed. The
Notables said "No." The crowd in the street began to smash windows and
do other unseemly things. The Notables fled. Calonne was dismissed.
A new colourless Minister of Finance, the Cardinal Lomenie de Brienne,
was appointed and Louis, driven by the violent threats of his starving
subjects, agreed to call together the old Estates General as "soon as
practicable." This vague promise of course satisfied no one.
No such severe winter had been experienced for almost a century. The
crops had been either destroyed by floods or had been frozen to death in
the fields. All the olive trees of the Provence had been killed. Private
charity tried to do some-thing but could accomplish little for eighteen
million starving people. Everywhere bread riots occurred. A generation
before these would have been put down by the army. But the work of
the new philosophical school had begun to bear fruit. People began to
understand that a shotgun is no effective remedy for a hungry stomach
and even the soldiers (who came from among the people) were no longer
to be depended upon. It was absolutely necessary that the king should
do something definite to regain the popular goodwill, but again he
hesitated.
Here and there in the provinces, little independent Republics were
established by followers of the new school. The cry of "no taxation
without representation" (the slogan of the American rebels a quarter of
a century before) was heard among the faithful middle classes. France
was threatened with general anarchy. To appease the people and to
increase the royal popularity, the government unexpectedly suspended the
former very strict form of censorship of books. At once a flood of
ink descended upon France. Everybody, high or low, criticised and was
criticised. More than 2000 pamphlets were published. Lomenie de Brienne
was swept away by a storm of abuse. Necker was hastily called back to
placate, as best he could, the nation-wide unrest. Immediately the stock
market went up thirty per cent. And by common consent, people suspended
judgment for a little while longer. In May of 1789 the Estates General
were to assemble and then the wisdom of the entire nation would speedily
solve the difficult problem of recreating the kingdom of France into a
healthy and happy state.
This prevailing idea, that the combined wisdom of the people would be
able to solve all difficulties, proved disastrous. It lamed all personal
effort during many important months. Instead of keeping the government
in his own hands at this critical moment, Necker allowed everything to
drift. Hence there was a new outbreak of the acrimonious debate upon the
best ways to reform the old kingdom. Everywhere the power of the police
weakened. The people of the Paris suburbs, under the leadership of
professional agitators, gradually began to discover their strength, and
commenced to play the role which was to be theirs all through the years
of the great unrest, when they acted as the brute force which was used
by the actual leaders of the Revolution to secure those things which
could not be obtained in a legitimate fashion.
As a sop to the peasants and the middle class, Necker de-cided that they
should be allowed a double representation in the Estates General. Upon
this subject, the Abbe Sieyes then wrote a famous pamphlet, "To what
does the Third Estate Amount?" in which he came to the conclusion that
the Third Estate (a name given to the middle class) ought to amount to
everything, that it had not amounted to anything in the past, and that
it now desired to amount to something. He expressed the sentiment of the
great majority of the people who had the best interests of the country
at heart.
Finally the elections took place under the worst conditions imaginable.
When they were over, 308 clergymen, 285 noblemen and 621 representatives
of the Third Estate packed their trunks to go to Versailles. The Third
Estate was obliged to carry additional luggage. This consisted of
voluminous reports called "cahiers" in which the many complaints and
grievances of their constituents had been written down. The stage was
set for the great final act that was to save France.
The Estates General came together on May 5th, 1789. The king was in a
bad humour. The Clergy and the Nobility let it be known that they were
unwilling to give up a single one of their privileges. The king ordered
the three groups of representatives to meet in different rooms and
discuss their grievances separately. The Third Estate refused to obey
the royal command. They took a solemn oath to that effect in a squash
court (hastily put in order for the purpose of this illegal meeting) on
the 20th of June, 1789. They insisted that all three Estates, Nobility,
Clergy and Third Estate, should meet together and so informed His
Majesty. The king gave in.
As the "National Assembly," the Estates General began to discuss
the state of the French kingdom. The King got angry. Then again he
hesitated. He said that he would never surrender his absolute power.
Then he went hunting, forgot all about the cares of the state and when
he returned from the chase he gave in. For it was the royal habit to
do the right thing at the wrong time in the wrong way. When the people
clamoured for A, the king scolded them and gave them nothing. Then, when
the Palace was surrounded by a howling multitude of poor people, the
king surrendered and gave his subjects what they had asked for. By this
time, however, the people wanted A plus B. The comedy was repeated. When
the king signed his name to the Royal Decree which granted his beloved
subjects A and B they were threatening to kill the entire royal family
unless they received A plus B plus C. And so on, through the whole
alphabet and up to the scaffold.
Unfortunately the king was always just one letter behind. He never
understood this. Even when he laid his head under the guillotine, he
felt that he was a much-abused man who had received a most unwarrantable
treatment at the hands of people whom he had loved to the best of his
limited ability.
Historical "ifs," as I have often warned you, are never of any value. It
is very easy for us to say that the monarchy might have been saved "if"
Louis had been a man of greater energy and less kindness of heart. But
the king was not alone. Even "if" he had possessed the ruthless strength
of Napoleon, his career during these difficult days might have been
easily ruined by his wife who was the daughter of Maria Theresa of
Austria and who possessed all the characteristic virtues and vices of a
young girl who had been brought up at the most autocratic and mediaeval
court of that age.
She decided that some action must be taken and planned a
counter-revolution. Necker was suddenly dismissed and loyal troops
were called to Paris. The people, when they heard of this, stormed the
fortress of the Bastille prison, and on the fourteenth of July of
the year 1789, they destroyed this familiar but much-hated symbol of
Autocratic Power which had long since ceased to be a political prison
and was now used as the city lock-up for pickpockets and second-story
men. Many of the nobles took the hint and left the country. But the king
as usual did nothing. He had been hunting on the day of the fall of the
Bastille and he had shot several deer and felt very much pleased.
The National Assembly now set to work and on the 4th of August, with
the noise of the Parisian multitude in their ears, they abolished all
privileges. This was followed on the 27th of August by the "Declaration
of the Rights of Man," the famous preamble to the first French
constitution. So far so good, but the court had apparently not yet
learned its lesson. There was a wide-spread suspicion that the king was
again trying to interfere with these reforms and as a result, on the 5th
of October, there was a second riot in Paris. It spread to Versailles
and the people were not pacified until they had brought the king back to
his palace in Paris. They did not trust him in Versailles. They liked to
have him where they could watch him and control his correspondence with
his relatives in Vienna and Madrid and the other courts of Europe.
In the Assembly meanwhile, Mirabeau, a nobleman who had become leader of
the Third Estate, was beginning to put order into chaos. But before he
could save the position of the king he died, on the 2nd of April of the
year 1791. The king, who now began to fear for his own life, tried to
escape on the 21st of June. He was recognised from his picture on
a coin, was stopped near the village of Varennes by members of the
National Guard, and was brought back to Paris.
In September of 1791, the first constitution of France was accepted, and
the members of the National Assembly went home. On the first of October
of 1791, the legislative assembly came together to continue the work of
the National Assembly. In this new gathering of popular representatives
there were many extremely revolutionary elements. The boldest among
these were known as the Jacobins, after the old Jacobin cloister in
which they held their political meetings. These young men (most of them
belonging to the professional classes) made very violent speeches and
when the newspapers carried these orations to Berlin and Vienna, the
King of Prussia and the Emperor decided that they must do something
to save their good brother and sister. They were very busy just then
dividing the kingdom of Poland, where rival political factions had
caused such a state of disorder that the country was at the mercy of
anybody who wanted to take a couple of provinces. But they managed to
send an army to invade France and deliver the king.
Then a terrible panic of fear swept throughout the land of France. All
the pent-up hatred of years of hunger and suffering came to a horrible
climax. The mob of Paris stormed the palace of the Tuilleries. The
faithful Swiss bodyguards tried to defend their master, but Louis,
unable to make up his mind, gave order to "cease firing" just when the
crowd was retiring. The people, drunk with blood and noise and cheap
wine, murdered the Swiss to the last man, then invaded the palace, and
went after Louis who had escaped into the meeting hall of the Assembly,
where he was immediately suspended of his office, and from where he was
taken as a prisoner to the old castle of the Temple.
But the armies of Austria and Prussia continued their advance and the
panic changed into hysteria and turned men and women into wild beasts.
In the first week of September of the year 1792, the crowd broke
into the jails and murdered all the prisoners. The government did not
interfere. The Jacobins, headed by Danton, knew that this crisis meant
either the success or the failure of the revolution, and that only
the most brutal audacity could save them. The Legislative Assembly was
closed and on the 21st of September of the year 1792, a new National
Convention came together. It was a body composed almost entirely of
extreme revolutionists. The king was formally accused of high treason
and was brought before the Convention. He was found guilty and by a
vote of 361 to 360 (the extra vote being that of his cousin the Duke of
Orleans) he was condemned to death. On the 21st of January of the year
1793, he quietly and with much dignity suffered himself to be taken to
the scaffold. He had never understood what all the shooting and the fuss
had been about. And he had been too proud to ask questions.
Then the Jacobins turned against the more moderate element in the
convention, the Girondists, called after their southern district, the
Gironde. A special revolutionary tribunal was instituted and twenty-one
of the leading Girondists were condemned to death. The others committed
suicide. They were capable and honest men but too philosophical and too
moderate to survive during these frightful years.
In October of the year 1793 the Constitution was suspended by the
Jacobins "until peace should have been declared." All power was placed
in the hands of a small committee of Public Safety, with Danton
and Robespierre as its leaders. The Christian religion and the old
chronology were abolished. The "Age of Reason" (of which Thomas Paine
had written so eloquently during the American Revolution) had come and
with it the "Terror" which for more than a year killed good and bad and
indifferent people at the rate of seventy or eighty a day.
The autocratic rule of the King had been destroyed. It was succeeded
by the tyranny of a few people who had such a passionate love for
democratic virtue that they felt compelled to kill all those who
disagreed with them. France was turned into a slaughter house. Everybody
suspected everybody else. No one felt safe. Out of sheer fear, a
few members of the old Convention, who knew that they were the next
candidates for the scaffold, finally turned against Robespierre, who
had already decapitated most of his former colleagues. Robespierre,
"the only true and pure Democrat," tried to kill himself but failed His
shattered jaw was hastily bandaged and he was dragged to the guillotine.
On the 27th of July, of the year 1794 (the 9th Thermidor of the year
II, according to the strange chronology of the revolution), the reign of
Terror came to an end, and all Paris danced with joy.
The dangerous position of France, however, made it necessary that the
government remain in the hands of a few strong men, until the many
enemies of the revolution should have been driven from the soil of the
French fatherland. While the half-clad and half-starved revolutionary
armies fought their desperate battles of the Rhine and Italy and
Belgium and Egypt, and defeated every one of the enemies of the Great
Revolution, five Directors were appointed, and they ruled France for
four years. Then the power was vested in the hands of a successful
general by the name of Napoleon Bonaparte, who became "First Consul"
of France in the year 1799. And during the next fifteen years, the
old European continent became the laboratory of a number of political
experiments, the like of which the world had never seen before.
NAPOLEON
NAPOLEON
NAPOLEON was born in the year 1769, the third son of Carlo Maria
Buonaparte, an honest notary public of the city of Ajaccio in the island
of Corsica, and his good wife, Letizia Ramolino. He therefore was not
a Frenchman, but an Italian whose native island (an old Greek,
Carthaginian and Roman colony in the Mediterranean Sea) had for years
been struggling to regain its independence, first of all from the
Genoese, and after the middle of the eighteenth century from the French,
who had kindly offered to help the Corsicans in their struggle for
freedom and had then occupied the island for their own benefit.
During the first twenty years of his life, young Napoleon was a
professional Corsican patriot--a Corsican Sinn Feiner, who hoped to
deliver his beloved country from the yoke of the bitterly hated French
enemy. But the French revolution had unexpectedly recognised the
claims of the Corsicans and gradually Napoleon, who had received a good
training at the military school of Brienne, drifted into the service of
his adopted country. Although he never learned to spell French correctly
or to speak it without a broad Italian accent, he became a Frenchman.
In due time he came to stand as the highest expression of all French
virtues. At present he is regarded as the symbol of the Gallic genius.
Napoleon was what is called a fast worker. His career does not cover
more than twenty years. In that short span of time he fought more wars
and gained more victories and marched more miles and conquered more
square kilometers and killed more people and brought about more reforms
and generally upset Europe to a greater extent than anybody (including
Alexander the Great and Jenghis Khan) had ever managed to do.
He was a little fellow and during the first years of his life his health
was not very good. He never impressed anybody by his good looks and he
remained to the end of his days very clumsy whenever he was obliged
to appear at a social function. He did not enjoy a single advantage of
breeding or birth or riches. For the greater part of his youth he was
desperately poor and often he had to go without a meal or was obliged to
make a few extra pennies in curious ways.
He gave little promise as a literary genius. When he competed for a
prize offered by the Academy of Lyons, his essay was found to be next to
the last and he was number 15 out of 16 candidates. But he overcame all
these difficulties through his absolute and unshakable belief in his own
destiny, and in his own glorious future. Ambition was the main-spring
of his life. The thought of self, the worship of that capital letter "N"
with which he signed all his letters, and which recurred forever in the
ornaments of his hastily constructed palaces, the absolute will to make
the name Napoleon the most important thing in the world next to the name
of God, these desires carried Napoleon to a pinnacle of fame which no
other man has ever reached.
When he was a half-pay lieutenant, young Bonaparte was very fond of the
"Lives of Famous Men" which Plutarch, the Roman historian, had written.
But he never tried to live up to the high standard of character set by
these heroes of the older days. Napoleon seems to have been devoid of
all those considerate and thoughtful sentiments which make men different
from the animals. It will be very difficult to decide with any degree of
accuracy whether he ever loved anyone besides himself. He kept a civil
tongue to his mother, but Letizia had the air and manners of a great
lady and after the fashion of Italian mothers, she knew how to rule her
brood of children and command their respect. For a few years he was fond
of Josephine, his pretty Creole wife, who was the daughter of a French
officer of Martinique and the widow of the Vicomte de Beauharnais,
who had been executed by Robespierre when he lost a battle against the
Prussians. But the Emperor divorced her when she failed to give him a
son and heir and married the daughter of the Austrian Emperor, because
it seemed good policy.
During the siege of Toulon, where he gained great fame as commander of
a battery, Napoleon studied Macchiavelli with industrious care. He
followed the advice of the Florentine statesman and never kept his word
when it was to his advantage to break it. The word "gratitude" did not
occur in his personal dictionary. Neither, to be quite fair, did he
expect it from others. He was totally indifferent to human suffering. He
executed prisoners of war (in Egypt in 1798) who had been promised their
lives, and he quietly allowed his wounded in Syria to be chloroformed
when he found it impossible to transport them to his ships. He
ordered the Duke of Enghien to be condemned to death by a prejudiced
court-martial and to be shot contrary to all law on the sole ground that
the "Bourbons needed a warning." He decreed that those German officers
who were made prisoner while fighting for their country's independence
should be shot against the nearest wall, and when Andreas Hofer, the
Tyrolese hero, fell into his hands after a most heroic resistance, he
was executed like a common traitor.
In short, when we study the character of the Emperor, we begin to
understand those anxious British mothers who used to drive their
children to bed with the threat that "Bonaparte, who ate little boys
and girls for breakfast, would come and get them if they were not very
good." And yet, having said these many unpleasant things about this
strange tyrant, who looked after every other department of his army with
the utmost care, but neglected the medical service, and who ruined his
uniforms with Eau de Cologne because he could not stand the smell of
his poor sweating soldiers; having said all these unpleasant things
and being fully prepared to add many more, I must confess to a certain
lurking feeling of doubt.
Here I am sitting at a comfortable table loaded heavily with books, with
one eye on my typewriter and the other on Licorice the cat, who has a
great fondness for carbon paper, and I am telling you that the Emperor
Napoleon was a most contemptible person. But should I happen to look
out of the window, down upon Seventh Avenue, and should the endless
procession of trucks and carts come to a sudden halt, and should I hear
the sound of the heavy drums and see the little man on his white horse
in his old and much-worn green uniform, then I don't know, but I am
afraid that I would leave my books and the kitten and my home and
everything else to follow him wherever he cared to lead. My own
grandfather did this and Heaven knows he was not born to be a hero.
Millions of other people's grandfathers did it. They received no reward,
but they expected none. They cheerfully gave legs and arms and lives
to serve this foreigner, who took them a thousand miles away from their
homes and marched them into a barrage of Russian or English or Spanish
or Italian or Austrian cannon and stared quietly into space while they
were rolling in the agony of death.
If you ask me for an explanation, I must answer that I have none. I can
only guess at one of the reasons. Napoleon was the greatest of actors
and the whole European continent was his stage. At all times and under
all circumstances he knew the precise attitude that would impress the
spectators most and he understood what words would make the deepest
impression. Whether he spoke in the Egyptian desert, before the backdrop
of the Sphinx and the pyramids, or addressed his shivering men on the
dew-soaked plains of Italy, made no difference. At all times he was
master of the situation. Even at the end, an exile on a little rock
in the middle of the Atlantic, a sick man at the mercy of a dull and
intolerable British governor, he held the centre of the stage.
After the defeat of Waterloo, no one outside of a few trusted friends
ever saw the great Emperor. The people of Europe knew that he was living
on the island of St. Helena--they knew that a British garrison guarded
him day and night--they knew that the British fleet guarded the garrison
which guarded the Emperor on his farm at Longwood. But he was never out
of the mind of either friend or enemy. When illness and despair had at
last taken him away, his silent eyes continued to haunt the world. Even
to-day he is as much of a force in the life of France as a hundred years
ago when people fainted at the mere sight of this sallow-faced man who
stabled his horses in the holiest temples of the Russian Kremlin, and
who treated the Pope and the mighty ones of this earth as if they were
his lackeys.
To give you a mere outline of his life would demand couple of volumes.
To tell you of his great political reform of the French state, of his
new codes of laws which were adopted in most European countries, of his
activities in every field of public activity, would take thousands of
pages. But I can explain in a few words why he was so successful during
the first part of his career and why he failed during the last ten
years. From the year 1789 until the year 1804, Napoleon was the great
leader of the French revolution. He was not merely fighting for the
glory of his own name. He defeated Austria and Italy and England and
Russia because he, himself, and his soldiers were the apostles of the
new creed of "Liberty, Fraternity and Equality" and were the enemies of
the courts while they were the friends of the people.
But in the year 1804, Napoleon made himself Hereditary Emperor of the
French and sent for Pope Pius VII to come and crown him, even as Leo
III, in the year 800 had crowned that other great King of the Franks,
Charlemagne, whose example was constantly before Napoleon's eyes.
Once upon the throne, the old revolutionary chieftain became an
unsuccessful imitation of a Habsburg monarch. He forgot his spiritual
Mother, the Political Club of the Jacobins. He ceased to be the defender
of the oppressed. He became the chief of all the oppressors and kept his
shooting squads ready to execute those who dared to oppose his imperial
will. No one had shed a tear when in the year 1806 the sad remains of
the Holy Roman Empire were carted to the historical dustbin and when the
last relic of ancient Roman glory was destroyed by the grandson of an
Italian peasant. But when the Napoleonic armies had invaded Spain,
had forced the Spaniards to recognise a king whom they detested, had
massacred the poor Madrilenes who remained faithful to their old rulers,
then public opinion turned against the former hero of Marengo and
Austerlitz and a hundred other revolutionary battles. Then and only
then, when Napoleon was no longer the hero of the revolution but the
personification of all the bad traits of the Old Regime, was it possible
for England to give direction to the fast-spreading sentiment of hatred
which was turning all honest men into enemies of the French Emperor.
The English people from the very beginning had felt deeply disgusted
when their newspapers told them the gruesome details of the Terror. They
had staged their own great revolution (during the reign of Charles I)
a century before. It had been a very simple affair compared to the
upheaval of Paris. In the eyes of the average Englishman a Jacobin was
a monster to be shot at sight and Napoleon was the Chief Devil. The
British fleet had blockaded France ever since the year 1798. It had
spoiled Napoleon's plan to invade India by way of Egypt and had forced
him to beat an ignominious retreat, after his victories along the banks
of the Nile. And finally, in the year 1805, England got the chance it
had waited for so long.
Near Cape Trafalgar on the southwestern coast of Spain, Nelson
annihilated the Napoleonic fleet, beyond a possible chance of recovery.
From that moment on, the Emperor was landlocked. Even so, he would have
been able to maintain himself as the recognised ruler of the continent
had he understood the signs of the times and accepted the honourable
peace which the powers offered him. But Napoleon had been blinded by the
blaze of his own glory. He would recognise no equals. He could tolerate
no rivals. And his hatred turned against Russia, the mysterious land of
the endless plains with its inexhaustible supply of cannon-fodder.
As long as Russia was ruled by Paul I, the half-witted son of Catherine
the Great, Napoleon had known how to deal with the situation. But Paul
grew more and more irresponsible until his exasperated subjects were
obliged to murder him (lest they all be sent to the Siberian lead-mines)
and the son of Paul, the Emperor Alexander, did not share his father's
affection for the usurper whom he regarded as the enemy of mankind, the
eternal disturber of the peace. He was a pious man who believed that he
had been chosen by God to deliver the world from the Corsican curse.
He joined Prussia and England and Austria and he was defeated. He tried
five times and five times he failed. In the year 1812 he once more
taunted Napoleon until the French Emperor, in a blind rage, vowed that
he would dictate peace in Moscow. Then, from far and wide, from Spain
and Germany and Holland and Italy and Portugal, unwilling regiments were
driven northward, that the wounded pride of the great Emperor might be
duly avenged. The rest of the story is common knowledge. After a march
of two months, Napoleon reached the Russian capital and established his
headquarters in the holy Kremlin. On the night of September 15 of the
year 1812, Moscow caught fire. The town burned four days. When the
evening of the fifth day came, Napoleon gave the order for the retreat.
Two weeks later it began to snow. The army trudged through mud and sleet
until November the 26th when the river Berezina was reached. Then the
Russian attacks began in all seriousness. The Cossacks swarmed around
the "Grande Armee" which was no longer an army but a mob. In the middle
of December the first of the survivors began to be seen in the German
cities of the East.
Then there were many rumours of an impending revolt. "The time
has come," the people of Europe said, "to free ourselves from this
insufferable yoke." And they began to look for old shotguns which had
escaped the eye of the ever-present French spies. But ere they knew
what had happened, Napoleon was back with a new army. He had left his
defeated soldiers and in his little sleigh had rushed ahead to Paris,
making a final appeal for more troops that he might defend the sacred
soil of France against foreign invasion.
Children of sixteen and seventeen followed him when he moved eastward to
meet the allied powers. On October 16, 18, and 19 of the year 1813, the
terrible battle of Leipzig took place where for three days boys in green
and boys in blue fought each other until the Elbe ran red with blood.
On the afternoon of the 17th of October, the massed reserves of Russian
infantry broke through the French lines and Napoleon fled.
Back to Paris he went. He abdicated in favour of his small son, but the
allied powers insisted that Louis XVIII, the brother of the late king
Louis XVI, should occupy the French throne, and surrounded by Cossacks
and Uhlans, the dull-eyed Bourbon prince made his triumphal entry into
Paris.
As for Napoleon he was made the sovereign ruler of the little island
of Elba in the Mediterranean where he organised his stable boys into a
miniature army and fought battles on a chess board.
But no sooner had he left France than the people began to realise what
they had lost. The last twenty years, however costly, had been a period
of great glory. Paris had been the capital of the world. The fat Bourbon
king who had learned nothing and had forgotten nothing during the days
of his exile disgusted everybody by his indolence.
On the first of March of the year 1815, when the representatives of the
allies were ready to begin the work of unscrambling the map of Europe,
Napoleon suddenly landed near Cannes. In less than a week the French
army had deserted the Bourbons and had rushed southward to offer their
swords and bayonets to the "little Corporal." Napoleon marched straight
to Paris where he arrived on the twentieth of March. This time he was
more cautious. He offered peace, but the allies insisted upon war. The
whole of Europe arose against the "perfidious Corsican." Rapidly the
Emperor marched northward that he might crush his enemies before they
should be able to unite their forces. But Napoleon was no longer his old
self. He felt sick. He got tired easily. He slept when he ought to have
been up directing the attack of his advance-guard. Besides, he missed
many of his faithful old generals. They were dead.
Early in June his armies entered Belgium. On the 16th of that month he
defeated the Prussians under Blucher. But a subordinate commander failed
to destroy the retreating army as he had been ordered to do.
Two days later, Napoleon met Wellington near Waterloo. It was the 18th
of June, a Sunday. At two o'clock of the afternoon, the battle seemed
won for the French. At three a speck of dust appeared upon the eastern
horizon. Napoleon believed that this meant the approach of his own
cavalry who would now turn the English defeat into a rout. At four
o'clock he knew better. Cursing and swearing, old Blucher drove his
deathly tired troops into the heart of the fray. The shock broke the
ranks of the guards. Napoleon had no further reserves. He told his men
to save themselves as best they could, and he fled.
For a second time, he abdicated in favor of his son. Just one hundred
days after his escape from Elba, he was making for the coast. He
intended to go to America. In the year 1803, for a mere song, he had
sold the French colony of Louisiana (which was in great danger of
being captured by the English) to the young American Republic. "The
Americans," so he said, "will be grateful and will give me a little bit
of land and a house where I may spend the last days of my life in peace
and quiet." But the English fleet was watching all French harbours.
Caught between the armies of the Allies and the ships of the British,
Napoleon had no choice. The Prussians intended to shoot him. The
English might be more generous. At Rochefort he waited in the hope that
something might turn up. One month after Waterloo, he received
orders from the new French government to leave French soil inside of
twenty-four hours. Always the tragedian, he wrote a letter to the
Prince Regent of England (George IV, the king, was in an insane asylum)
informing His Royal Highness of his intention to "throw himself upon the
mercy of his enemies and like Themistocles, to look for a welcome at the
fireside of his foes..."
On the 15th of July he went on board the "Bellerophon," and surrendered
his sword to Admiral Hotham. At Plymouth he was transferred to the
"Northumberland" which carried him to St. Helena. There he spent
the last seven years of his life. He tried to write his memoirs, he
quarrelled with his keepers and he dreamed of past times. Curiously
enough he returned (at least in his imagination) to his original point
of departure. He remembered the days when he had fought the battles of
the Revolution. He tried to convince himself that he had always been
the true friend of those great principles of "Liberty, Fraternity and
Equality" which the ragged soldiers of the convention had carried to
the ends of the earth. He liked to dwell upon his career as
Commander-in-Chief and Consul. He rarely spoke of the Empire. Sometimes
he thought of his son, the Duke of Reichstadt, the little eagle, who
lived in Vienna, where he was treated as a "poor relation" by his young
Habsburg cousins, whose fathers had trembled at the very mention of the
name of Him. When the end came, he was leading his troops to victory. He
ordered Ney to attack with the guards. Then he died.
But if you want an explanation of this strange career, if you really
wish to know how one man could possibly rule so many people for so many
years by the sheer force of his will, do not read the books that have
been written about him. Their authors either hated the Emperor or
loved him. You will learn many facts, but it is more important to "feel
history" than to know it. Don't read, but wait until you have a chance
to hear a good artist sing the song called "The Two Grenadiers." The
words were written by Heine, the great German poet who lived through the
Napoleonic era. The music was composed by Schumann, a German who saw
the Emperor, the enemy of his country, whenever he came to visit his
imperial father-in-law. The song therefore is the work of two men who
had every reason to hate the tyrant.
Go and hear it. Then you will understand what a thousand volumes could
not possibly tell you.
THE HOLY ALLIANCE
AS SOON AS NAPOLEON HAD BEEN SENT TO ST. HELENA THE RULERS WHO SO OFTEN
HAD BEEN DEFEATED BY THE HATED "CORSICAN" MET AT VIENNA AND TRIED
TO UNDO THE MANY CHANGES THAT HAD BEEN BROUGHT ABOUT BY THE FRENCH
REVOLUTION
THE Imperial Highnesses, the Royal Highnesses, their Graces the Dukes,
the Ministers Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, together with the plain
Excellencies and their army of secretaries, servants and hangers-on,
whose labours had been so rudely interrupted by the sudden return of the
terrible Corsican (now sweltering under the hot sun of St. Helena) went
back to their jobs. The victory was duly celebrated with dinners, garden
parties and balls at which the new and very shocking "waltz" was danced
to the great scandal of the ladies and gentlemen who remembered the
minuet of the old Regime.
For almost a generation they had lived in retirement. At last the danger
was over. They were very eloquent upon the subject of the terrible
hardships which they had suffered. And they expected to be recompensed
for every penny they had lost at the hands of the unspeakable Jacobins
who had dared to kill their anointed king, who had abolished wigs and
who had discarded the short trousers of the court of Versailles for the
ragged pantaloons of the Parisian slums.
You may think it absurd that I should mention such a detail. But, if
you please, the Congress of Vienna was one long succession of such
absurdities and for many months the question of "short trousers vs. long
trousers" interested the delegates more than the future settlement of
the Saxon or Spanish problems. His Majesty the King of Prussia went so
far as to order a pair of short ones, that he might give public evidence
of his contempt for everything revolutionary.
Another German potentate, not to be outdone in this noble hatred for the
revolution, decreed that all taxes which his subjects had paid to the
French usurper should be paid a second time to the legitimate ruler
who had loved his people from afar while they were at the mercy of the
Corsican ogre. And so on. From one blunder to another, until one gasps
and exclaims "but why in the name of High Heaven did not the people
object?" Why not indeed? Because the people were utterly exhausted, were
desperate, did not care what happened or how or where or by whom they
were ruled, provided there was peace. They were sick and tired of war
and revolution and reform.
In the eighties of the previous century they had all danced around the
tree of liberty. Princes had embraced their cooks and Duchesses had
danced the Carmagnole with their lackeys in the honest belief that
the Millennium of Equality and Fraternity had at last dawned upon this
wicked world. Instead of the Millennium they had been visited by the
Revolutionary commissary who had lodged a dozen dirty soldiers in their
parlor and had stolen the family plate when he returned to Paris to
report to his government upon the enthusiasm with which the "liberated
country" had received the Constitution, which the French people had
presented to their good neighbours.
When they had heard how the last outbreak of revolutionary disorder
in Paris had been suppressed by a young officer, called Bonaparte, or
Buonaparte, who had turned his guns upon the mob, they gave a sigh of
relief. A little less liberty, fraternity and equality seemed a very
desirable thing. But ere long, the young officer called Buonaparte or
Bonaparte became one of the three consuls of the French Republic, then
sole consul and finally Emperor. As he was much more efficient than any
ruler that had ever been seen before, his hand pressed heavily upon his
poor subjects. He showed them no mercy. He impressed their sons into
his armies, he married their daughters to his generals and he took their
pictures and their statues to enrich his own museums. He turned
the whole of Europe into an armed camp and killed almost an entire
generation of men.
Now he was gone, and the people (except a few professional military men)
had but one wish. They wanted to be let alone. For awhile they had been
allowed to rule themselves, to vote for mayors and aldermen and
judges. The system had been a terrible failure. The new rulers had been
inexperienced and extravagant. From sheer despair the people turned to
the representative men of the old Regime. "You rule us," they said, "as
you used to do. Tell us what we owe you for taxes and leave us alone. We
are busy repairing the damage of the age of liberty."
The men who stage-managed the famous congress certainly did their best
to satisfy this longing for rest and quiet. The Holy Alliance, the main
result of the Congress, made the policeman the most important dignitary
of the State and held out the most terrible punishment to those who
dared criticise a single official act.
Europe had peace, but it was the peace of the cemetery.
The three most important men at Vienna were the Emperor Alexander of
Russia, Metternich, who represented the interests of the Austrian house
of Habsburg, and Talleyrand, the erstwhile bishop of Autun, who had
managed to live through the different changes in the French government
by the sheer force of his cunning and his intelligence and who now
travelled to the Austrian capital to save for his country whatever
could be saved from the Napoleonic ruin. Like the gay young man of the
limerick, who never knew when he was slighted, this unbidden guest came
to the party and ate just as heartily as if he had been really
invited. Indeed, before long, he was sitting at the head of the
table entertaining everybody with his amusing stories and gaining the
company's good will by the charm of his manner.
Before he had been in Vienna twenty-four hours he knew that the allies
were divided into two hostile camps. On the one side were Russia, who
wanted to take Poland, and Prussia, who wanted to annex Saxony; and on
the other side were Austria and England, who were trying to prevent this
grab because it was against their own interest that either Prussia or
Russia should be able to dominate Europe. Talleyrand played the two
sides against each other with great skill and it was due to his efforts
that the French people were not made to suffer for the ten years
of oppression which Europe had endured at the hands of the Imperial
officials. He argued that the French people had been given no choice in
the matter. Napoleon had forced them to act at his bidding. But Napoleon
was gone and Louis XVIII was on the throne. "Give him a chance,"
Talleyrand pleaded. And the Allies, glad to see a legitimate king
upon the throne of a revolutionary country, obligingly yielded and the
Bourbons were given their chance, of which they made such use that they
were driven out after fifteen years.
The second man of the triumvirate of Vienna was Metternich, the Austrian
prime minister, the leader of the foreign policy of the house of
Habsburg. Wenzel Lothar, Prince of Metternich-Winneburg, was exactly
what the name suggests. He was a Grand Seigneur, a very handsome
gentleman with very fine manners, immensely rich, and very able, but the
product of a society which lived a thousand miles away from the sweating
multitudes who worked and slaved in the cities and on the farms. As a
young man, Metternich had been studying at the University of Strassburg
when the French Revolution broke out. Strassburg, the city which gave
birth to the Marseillaise, had been a centre of Jacobin activities.
Metternich remembered that his pleasant social life had been sadly
interrupted, that a lot of incompetent citizens had suddenly been called
forth to perform tasks for which they were not fit, that the mob had
celebrated the dawn of the new liberty by the murder of perfectly
innocent persons. He had failed to see the honest enthusiasm of the
masses, the ray of hope in the eyes of women and children who carried
bread and water to the ragged troops of the Convention, marching through
the city on their way to the front and a glorious death for the French
Fatherland.
The whole thing had filled the young Austrian with disgust. It was
uncivilised. If there were any fighting to be done it must be done by
dashing young men in lovely uniforms, charging across the green
fields on well-groomed horses. But to turn an entire country into an
evil-smelling armed camp where tramps were overnight promoted to be
generals, that was both wicked and senseless. "See what came of all your
fine ideas," he would say to the French diplomats whom he met at a quiet
little dinner given by one of the innumerable Austrian grand-dukes. "You
wanted liberty, equality and fraternity and you got Napoleon. How much
better it would have been if you had been contented with the existing
order of things." And he would explain his system of "stability." He
would advocate a return to the normalcy of the good old days before
the war, when everybody was happy and nobody talked nonsense about
"everybody being as good as everybody else." In this attitude he was
entirely sincere and as he was an able man of great strength of will
and a tremendous power of persuasion, he was one of the most dangerous
enemies of the Revolutionary ideas. He did not die until the year 1859,
and he therefore lived long enough to see the complete failure of all
his policies when they were swept aside by the revolution of the year
1848. He then found himself the most hated man of Europe and more than
once ran the risk of being lynched by angry crowds of outraged citizens.
But until the very last, he remained steadfast in his belief that he had
done the right thing.
He had always been convinced that people preferred peace to liberty and
he had tried to give them what was best for them. And in all fairness,
it ought to be said that his efforts to establish universal peace were
fairly successful. The great powers did not fly at each other's throat
for almost forty years, indeed not until the Crimean war between Russia
and England, France and Italy and Turkey, in the year 1854. That means a
record for the European continent.
The third hero of this waltzing congress was the Emperor Alexander.
He had been brought up at the court of his grand-mother, the famous
Catherine the Great. Between the lessons of this shrewd old woman, who
taught him to regard the glory of Russia as the most important thing in
life, and those of his private tutor, a Swiss admirer of Voltaire and
Rousseau, who filled his mind with a general love of humanity, the boy
grew up to be a strange mixture of a selfish tyrant and a sentimental
revolutionist. He had suffered great indignities during the life of
his crazy father, Paul I. He had been obliged to wit-ness the wholesale
slaughter of the Napoleonic battle-fields. Then the tide had turned. His
armies had won the day for the Allies. Russia had become the saviour of
Europe and the Tsar of this mighty people was acclaimed as a half-god
who would cure the world of its many ills.
But Alexander was not very clever. He did not know men and women as
Talleyrand and Metternich knew them. He did not understand the
strange game of diplomacy. He was vain (who would not be under the
circumstances?) and loved to hear the applause of the multitude and soon
he had become the main "attraction" of the Congress while Metternich and
Talleyrand and Castlereagh (the very able British representative) sat
around a table and drank a bottle of Tokay and decided what was actually
going to be done. They needed Russia and therefore they were very polite
to Alexander, but the less he had personally to do with the actual work
of the Congress, the better they were pleased. They even encouraged his
plans for a Holy Alliance that he might be fully occupied while they
were engaged upon the work at hand.
Alexander was a sociable person who liked to go to parties and meet
people. Upon such occasions he was happy and gay but there was a very
different element in his character. He tried to forget something which
he could not forget. On the night of the 23rd of March of the year 1801
he had been sitting in a room of the St. Michael Palace in Petersburg,
waiting for the news of his father's abdication. But Paul had refused
to sign the document which the drunken officers had placed before him
on the table, and in their rage they had put a scarf around his neck
and had strangled him to death. Then they had gone downstairs to tell
Alexander that he was Emperor of all the Russian lands.
The memory of this terrible night stayed with the Tsar who was a very
sensitive person. He had been educated in the school of the great French
philosophers who did not believe in God but in Human Reason. But Reason
alone could not satisfy the Emperor in his predicament. He began to hear
voices and see things. He tried to find a way by which he could square
himself with his conscience. He became very pious and began to take
an interest in mysticism, that strange love of the mysterious and the
unknown which is as old as the temples of Thebes and Babylon.
The tremendous emotion of the great revolutionary era had influenced the
character of the people of that day in a strange way. Men and women who
had lived through twenty years of anxiety and fear were no longer quite
normal. They jumped whenever the door-bell rang. It might mean the news
of the "death on the field of honour" of an only son. The phrases about
"brotherly love" and "liberty" of the Revolution were hollow words in
the ears of sorely stricken peasants. They clung to anything that might
give them a new hold on the terrible problems of life. In their grief
and misery they were easily imposed upon by a large number of imposters
who posed as prophets and preached a strange new doctrine which they dug
out of the more obscure passages of the Book of Revelations.
In the year 1814, Alexander, who had already consulted a large number
of wonder-doctors, heard of a new seeress who was foretelling the coming
doom of the world and was exhorting people to repent ere it be too late.
The Baroness von Krudener, the lady in question, was a Russian woman of
uncertain age and similar reputation who had been the wife of a Russian
diplomat in the days of the Emperor Paul. She had squandered her
husband's money and had disgraced him by her strange love affairs. She
had lived a very dissolute life until her nerves had given way and for a
while she was not in her right mind. Then she had been converted by
the sight of the sudden death of a friend. Thereafter she despised all
gaiety. She confessed her former sins to her shoemaker, a pious Moravian
brother, a follower of the old reformer John Huss, who had been burned
for his heresies by the Council of Constance in the year 1415.
The next ten years the Baroness spent in Germany making a specialty
of the "conversion" of kings and princes. To convince Alexander, the
Saviour of Europe, of the error of his ways was the greatest ambition
of her life. And as Alexander, in his misery, was willing to listen
to anybody who brought him a ray of hope, the interview was easily
arranged. On the evening of the fourth of June of the year 1815, she was
admitted to the tent of the Emperor. She found him reading his Bible.
We do not know what she said to Alexander, but when she left him three
hours later, he was bathed in tears, and vowed that "at last his
soul had found peace." From that day on the Baroness was his faithful
companion and his spiritual adviser. She followed him to Paris and then
to Vienna and the time which Alexander did not spend dancing he spent at
the Krudener prayer-meetings.
You may ask why I tell you this story in such great detail? Are not the
social changes of the nineteenth century of greater importance than the
career of an ill-balanced woman who had better be forgotten? Of course
they are, but there exist any number of books which will tell you of
these other things with great accuracy and in great detail. I want you
to learn something more from this history than a mere succession of
facts. I want you to approach all historical events in a frame of mind
that will take nothing for granted. Don't be satisfied with the mere
statement that "such and such a thing happened then and there." Try
to discover the hidden motives behind every action and then you will
understand the world around you much better and you will have a greater
chance to help others, which (when all is said and done) is the only
truly satisfactory way of living.
I do not want you to think of the Holy Alliance as a piece of paper
which was signed in the year 1815 and lies dead and forgotten somewhere
in the archives of state. It may be forgotten but it is by no means
dead. The Holy Alliance was directly responsible for the promulgation
of the Monroe Doctrine, and the Monroe Doctrine of America for the
Americans has a very distinct bearing upon your own life. That is the
reason why I want you to know exactly how this document happened to come
into existence and what the real motives were underlying this outward
manifestation of piety and Christian devotion to duty.
The Holy Alliance was the joint labour of an unfortunate man who had
suffered a terrible mental shock and who was trying to pacify his
much-disturbed soul, and of an ambitious woman who after a wasted life
had lost her beauty and her attraction and who satisfied her vanity and
her desire for notoriety by assuming the role of self-appointed Messiah
of a new and strange creed. I am not giving away any secrets when I tell
you these details. Such sober minded people as Castlereagh, Metternich
and Talleyrand fully understood the limited abilities of the sentimental
Baroness. It would have been easy for Metternich to send her back to her
German estates. A few lines to the almighty commander of the imperial
police and the thing was done.
But France and England and Austria depended upon the good-will of
Russia. They could not afford to offend Alexander. And they tolerated
the silly old Baroness because they had to. And while they regarded the
Holy Alliance as utter rubbish and not worth the paper upon which it was
written, they listened patiently to the Tsar when he read them the first
rough draft of this attempt to create the Brotherhood of Men upon a
basis of the Holy Scriptures. For this is what the Holy Alliance tried
to do, and the signers of the document solemnly declared that they would
"in the administration of their respective states and in their political
relations with every other government take for their sole guide
the precepts of that Holy Religion, namely the precepts of Justice,
Christian Charity and Peace, which far from being applicable only to
private concerns must have an immediate influence on the councils of
princes, and must guide all their steps as being the only means of
consolidating human institutions and remedying their imperfections."
They then proceeded to promise each other that they would remain united
"by the bonds of a true and indissoluble fraternity, and considering
each other as fellow-countrymen, they would on all occasions and in all
places lend each other aid and assistance." And more words to the same
effect.
Eventually the Holy Alliance was signed by the Emperor of Austria,
who did not understand a word of it. It was signed by the Bourbons who
needed the friendship of Napoleon's old enemies. It was signed by
the King of Prussia, who hoped to gain Alexander for his plans for a
"greater Prussia," and by all the little nations of Europe who were at
the mercy of Russia. England never signed, because Castlereagh thought
the whole thing buncombe. The Pope did not sign because he resented this
interference in his business by a Greek-Orthodox and a Protestant. And
the Sultan did not sign because he never heard of it.
The general mass of the European people, however, soon were forced to
take notice. Behind the hollow phrases of the Holy Alliance stood the
armies of the Quintuple Alliance which Metternich had created among the
great powers. These armies meant business. They let it be known that the
peace of Europe must not be disturbed by the so-called liberals who were
in reality nothing but disguised Jacobins, and hoped for a return of the
revolutionary days. The enthusiasm for the great wars of liberation of
the years 1812, 1818, 1814 and 1815 had begun to wear off. It had
been followed by a sincere belief in the coming of a happier day. The
soldiers who had borne the brunt of the battle wanted peace and they
said so.
But they did not want the sort of peace which the Holy Alliance and the
Council of the European powers had now bestowed upon them. They cried
that they had been betrayed. But they were careful lest they be heard
by a secret-police spy. The reaction was victorious. It was a reaction
caused by men who sincerely believed that their methods were necessary
for the good of humanity. But it was just as hard to bear as if their
intentions had been less kind. And it caused a great deal of unnecessary
suffering and greatly retarded the orderly progress of political
development.
THE GREAT REACTION
THEY TRIED TO ASSURE THE WORLD AN ERA OF UNDISTURBED PEACE BY
SUPPRESSING ALL NEW IDEAS. THEY MADE THE POLICE-SPY THE HIGHEST
FUNCTIONARY IN THE STATE AND SOON THE PRISONS OF ALL COUNTRIES WERE
FILLED WITH THOSE WHO CLAIMED THAT PEOPLE HAVE THE RIGHT TO GOVERN
THEMSELVES AS THEY SEE FIT
To undo the damage done by the great Napoleonic flood was almost
impossible. Age-old fences had been washed away. The palaces of two
score dynasties had been damaged to such an extent that they had to
be condemned as uninhabitable. Other royal residences had been greatly
enlarged at the expense of less fortunate neighbours. Strange odds and
ends of revolutionary doctrine had been left behind by the receding
waters and could not be dislodged without danger to the entire
community. But the political engineers of the Congress did the best they
could and this is what they accomplished.
France had disturbed the peace of the world for so many years that
people had come to fear that country almost instinctively. The Bourbons,
through the mouth of Talleyrand, had promised to be good, but the
Hundred Days had taught Europe what to expect should Napoleon manage
to escape for a second time. The Dutch Republic, therefore, was changed
into a Kingdom, and Belgium (which had not joined the Dutch struggle for
independence in the sixteenth century and since then had been part of
the Habsburg domains, firs t under Spanish rule and thereafter under
Austrian rule) was made part of this new kingdom of the Netherlands.
Nobody wanted this union either in the Protestant North or in the
Catholic South, but no questions were asked. It seemed good for the
peace of Europe and that was the main consideration.
Poland had hoped for great things because a Pole, Prince Adam
Czartoryski, was one of the most intimate friends of Tsar Alexander
and had been his constant advisor during the war and at the Congress
of Vienna. But Poland was made a semi-independent part of Russia with
Alexander as her king. This solution pleased no one and caused much
bitter feeling and three revolutions.
Denmark, which had remained a faithful ally of Napoleon until the end,
was severely punished. Seven years before, an English fleet had sailed
down the Kattegat and without a declaration of war or any warning had
bombarded Copenhagen and had taken away the Danish fleet, lest it be of
value to Napoleon. The Congress of Vienna went one step further. It took
Norway (which since the union of Calmar of the year 1397 had been united
with Denmark) away from Denmark and gave it to Charles XIV of Sweden as
a reward for his betrayal of Napoleon, who had set him up in the king
business. This Swedish king, curiously enough, was a former French
general by the name of Bernadotte, who had come to Sweden as one of
Napolean's{sic} adjutants, and had been invited to the throne of
that good country when the last of the rulers of the house of
Hollstein-Gottorp had died without leaving either son or daughter. From
1815 until 1844 he ruled his adopted country (the language of which he
never learned) width great ability. He was a clever man and enjoyed the
respect of both his Swedish and his Norwegian subjects, but he did
not succeed in joining two countries which nature and history had put
asunder. The dual Scandinavian state was never a success and in 1905,
Norway, in a most peaceful and orderly manner, set up as an independent
kingdom and the Swedes bade her "good speed" and very wisely let her go
her own way.
The Italians, who since the days of the Renaissance had been at the
mercy of a long series of invaders, also had put great hopes in General
Bonaparte. The Emperor Napoleon, however, had grievously disappointed
them. Instead of the United Italy which the people wanted, they had been
divided into a number of little principalities, duchies, republics and
the Papal State, which (next to Naples) was the worst governed and
most miserable region of the entire peninsula. The Congress of
Vienna abolished a few of the Napoleonic republics and in their place
resurrected several old principalities which were given to deserving
members, both male and female, of the Habsburg family.
The poor Spaniards, who had started the great nationalistic revolt
against Napoleon, and who had sacrificed the best blood of the country
for their king, were punished severely when the Congress allowed His
Majesty to return to his domains. This vicious creature, known as
Ferdinand VII, had spent the last four years of his life as a prisoner
of Napoleon. He had improved his days by knitting garments for the
statues of his favourite patron saints. He celebrated his return by
re-introducing the Inquisition and the torture-chamber, both of which
had been abolished by the Revolution. He was a disgusting person,
despised as much by his subjects as by his four wives, but the Holy
Alliance maintained him upon his legitimate throne and all efforts
of the decent Spaniards to get rid of this curse and make Spain a
constitutional kingdom ended in bloodshed and executions.
Portugal had been without a king since the year 1807 when the royal
family had fled to the colonies in Brazil. The country had been used as
a base of supply for the armies of Wellington during the Peninsula war,
which lasted from 1808 until 1814. After 1815 Portugal continued to be
a sort of British province until the house of Braganza returned to the
throne, leaving one of its members behind in Rio de Janeiro as Emperor
of Brazil, the only American Empire which lasted for more than a few
years, and which came to an end in 1889 when the country became a
republic.
In the east, nothing was done to improve the terrible conditions of both
the Slavs and the Greeks who were still subjects of the Sultan. In
the year 1804 Black George, a Servian swineherd, (the founder of the
Karageorgevich dynasty) had started a revolt against the Turks, but he
had been defeated by his enemies and had been murdered by one of his
supposed friends, the rival Servian leader, called Milosh Obrenovich,
(who became the founder of the Obrenovich dynasty) and the Turks had
continued to be the undisputed masters of the Balkans.
The Greeks, who since the loss of their independence, two thousand years
before, had been subjects of the Macedonians, the Romans, the Venetians
and the Turks, had hoped that their countryman, Capo d'Istria, a native
of Corfu and together with Czartoryski, the most intimate personal
friends of Alexander, would do something for them. But the Congress of
Vienna was not interested in Greeks, but was very much interested in
keeping all "legitimate" monarchs, Christian, Moslem and otherwise, upon
their respective thrones. Therefore nothing was done.
The last, but perhaps the greatest blunder of the Congress was the
treatment of Germany. The Reformation and the Thirty Years War had not
only destroyed the prosperity of the country, but had turned it into a
hopeless political rubbish heap, consisting of a couple of kingdoms,
a few grand-duchies, a large number of duchies and hundreds of
margravates, principalities, baronies, electorates, free cities and free
villages, ruled by the strangest assortment of potentates that was ever
seen off the comic opera stage. Frederick the Great had changed this
when he created a strong Prussia, but this state had not survived him by
many years.
Napoleon had blue-penciled the demand for independence of most of these
little countries, and only fifty-two out of a total of more than three
hundred had survived the year 1806. During the years of the great
struggle for independence, many a young soldier had dreamed of a new
Fatherland that should be strong and united. But there can be no union
without a strong leadership, and who was to be this leader?
There were five kingdoms in the German speaking lands. The rulers of
two of these, Austria and Prussia, were kings by the Grace of God. The
rulers of three others, Bavaria, Saxony and Wurtemberg, were kings by
the Grace of Napoleon, and as they had been the faithful henchmen of the
Emperor, their patriotic credit with the other Germans was therefore not
very good.
The Congress had established a new German Confederation, a league of
thirty-eight sovereign states, under the chairmanship of the King of
Austria, who was now known as the Emperor of Austria. It was the sort of
make-shift arrangement which satisfied no one. It is true that a German
Diet, which met in the old coronation city of Frankfort, had been
created to discuss matters of "common policy and importance." But in
this Diet, thirty-eight delegates represented thirty-eight different
interests and as no decision could be taken without a unanimous vote
(a parliamentary rule which had in previous centuries ruined the mighty
kingdom of Poland), the famous German Confederation became very soon
the laughing stock of Europe and the politics of the old Empire began to
resemble those of our Central American neighbours in the forties and the
fifties of the last century.
It was terribly humiliating to the people who had sacrificed everything
for a national ideal. But the Congress was not interested in the private
feelings of "subjects," and the debate was closed.
Did anybody object? Most assuredly. As soon as the first feeling of
hatred against Napoleon had quieted down--as soon as the enthusiasm
of the great war had subsided--as soon as the people came to a full
realisation of the crime that had been committed in the name of "peace
and stability" they began to murmur. They even made threats of open
revolt. But what could they do? They were powerless. They were at the
mercy of the most pitiless and efficient police system the world had
ever seen.
The members of the Congress of Vienna honestly and sincerely believed
that "the Revolutionary Principle had led to the criminal usurpation
of the throne by the former emperor Napoleon." They felt that they were
called upon to eradicate the adherents of the so-called "French ideas"
just as Philip II had only followed the voice of his conscience when he
burned Protestants or hanged Moors. In the beginning of the sixteenth
century a man who did not believe in the divine right of the Pope to
rule his subjects as he saw fit was a "heretic" and it was the duty
of all loyal citizens to kill him. In the beginning of the nineteenth
century, on the continent of Europe, a man who did not believe in the
divine right of his king to rule him as he or his Prime Minister saw
fit, was a "heretic," and it was the duty of all loyal citizens to
denounce him to the nearest policeman and see that he got punished.
But the rulers of the year 1815 had learned efficiency in the school of
Napoleon and they performed their task much better than it had been done
in the year 1517. The period between the year 1815 and the year 1860 was
the great era of the political spy. Spies were everywhere. They lived in
palaces and they were to be found in the lowest gin-shops. They peeped
through the key-holes of the ministerial cabinet and they listened to
the conversations of the people who were taking the air on the benches
of the Municipal Park. They guarded the frontier so that no one might
leave without a duly viseed passport and they inspected all packages,
that no books with dangerous "French ideas" should enter the realm of
their Royal masters. They sat among the students in the lecture hall and
woe to the Professor who uttered a word against the existing order of
things. They followed the little boys and girls on their way to church
lest they play hookey.
In many of these tasks they were assisted by the clergy. The church had
suffered greatly during the days of the revolution. The church property
had been confiscated. Several priests had been killed and the generation
that had learned its cathechism from Voltaire and Rousseau and the
other French philosophers had danced around the Altar of Reason when the
Committee of Public Safety had abolished the worship of God in October
of the year 1793. The priests had followed the "emigres" into their long
exile. Now they returned in the wake of the allied armies and they set
to work with a vengeance.
Even the Jesuits came back in 1814 and resumed their former labours of
educating the young. Their order had been a little too successful in its
fight against the enemies of the church. It had established "provinces"
in every part of the world, to teach the natives the blessings of
Christianity, but soon it had developed into a regular trading company
which was for ever interfering with the civil authorities. During
the reign of the Marquis de Pombal, the great reforming minister of
Portugal, they had been driven out of the Portuguese lands and in the
year 1773 at the request of most of the Catholic powers of Europe, the
order had been suppressed by Pope Clement XIV. Now they were back on
the job, and preached the principles of "obedience" and "love for the
legitimate dynasty" to children whose parents had hired shopwindows that
they might laugh at Marie Antoinette driving to the scaffold which was
to end her misery.
But in the Protestant countries like Prussia, things were not a whit
better. The great patriotic leaders of the year 1812, the poets and the
writers who had preached a holy war upon the usurper, were now branded
as dangerous "demagogues." Their houses were searched. Their letters
were read. They were obliged to report to the police at regular
intervals and give an account of themselves. The Prussian drill master
was let loose in all his fury upon the younger generation. When a party
of students celebrated the tercentenary of the Reformation with noisy
but harmless festivities on the old Wartburg, the Prussian bureaucrats
had visions of an imminent revolution. When a theological student,
more honest than intelligent, killed a Russian government spy who
was operating in Germany, the universities were placed under
police-supervision and professors were jailed or dismissed without any
form of trial.
Russia, of course, was even more absurd in these anti-revolutionary
activities. Alexander had recovered from his attack of piety. He was
gradually drifting toward melancholia. He well knew his own limited
abilities and understood how at Vienna he had been the victim both of
Metternich and the Krudener woman. More and more he turned his back
upon the west and became a truly Russian ruler whose interests lay in
Constantinople, the old holy city that had been the first teacher of the
Slavs. The older he grew, the harder he worked and the less he was able
to accomplish. And while he sat in his study, his ministers turned the
whole of Russia into a land of military barracks.
It is not a pretty picture. Perhaps I might have shortened this
description of the Great Reaction. But it is just as well that you
should have a thorough knowledge of this era. It was not the first time
that an attempt had been made to set the clock of history back. The
result was the usual one.
NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE
THE LOVE OF NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE, HOWEVER WAS TOO STRONG TO BE
DESTROYED IN THIS WAY. THE SOUTH AMERICANS WERE THE FIRST TO REBEL
AGAINST THE REACTIONARY MEASURES OF THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA, GREECE AND
BELGIUM AND SPAIN AND A LARGE NUMBER OF OTHER COUNTRIES OF THE EUROPEAN
CONTINENT FOLLOWED SUIT AND THE NINETEENTH CENTURY WAS FILLED WITH THE
RUMOUR OF MANY WARS OF INDEPENDENCE
IT will serve no good purpose to say "if only the Congress of Vienna had
done such and such a thing instead of taking such and such a course, the
history of Europe in the nineteenth century would have been different."
The Congress of Vienna was a gathering of men who had just passed
through a great revolution and through twenty years of terrible and
almost continuous warfare. They came together for the purpose of giving
Europe that "peace and stability" which they thought that the people
needed and wanted. They were what we call reactionaries. They sincerely
believed in the inability of the mass of the people to rule themselves.
They re-arranged the map of Europe in such a way as seemed to promise
the greatest possibility of a lasting success. They failed, but not
through any premeditated wickedness on their part. They were, for the
greater part, men of the old school who remembered the happier days of
their quiet youth and ardently wished a return of that blessed period.
They failed to recognise the strong hold which many of the revolutionary
principles had gained upon the people of the European continent. That
was a misfortune but hardly a sin. But one of the things which the
French Revolution had taught not only Europe but America as well, was
the right of people to their own "nationality."
Napoleon, who respected nothing and nobody, was utterly ruthless in
his dealing with national and patriotic aspirations. But the early
revolutionary generals had proclaimed the new doctrine that "nationality
was not a matter of political frontiers or round skulls and broad noses,
but a matter of the heart and soul." While they were teaching the French
children the greatness of the French nation, they encouraged Spaniards
and Hollanders and Italians to do the same thing. Soon these people, who
all shared Rousseau's belief in the superior virtues of Original Man,
began to dig into their past and found, buried beneath the ruins of
the feudal system, the bones of the mighty races of which they supposed
themselves the feeble descendants.
The first half of the nineteenth century was the era of the great
historical discoveries. Everywhere historians were busy publishing
mediaeval charters and early mediaeval chronicles and in every country
the result was a new pride in the old fatherland. A great deal of this
sentiment was based upon the wrong interpretation of historical
facts. But in practical politics, it does not matter what is true, but
everything depends upon what the people believe to be true. And in most
countries both the kings and their subjects firmly believed in the glory
and fame of their ancestors.
The Congress of Vienna was not inclined to be sentimental. Their
Excellencies divided the map of Europe according to the best interests
of half a dozen dynasties and put "national aspirations" upon the Index,
or list of forbidden books, together with all other dangerous "French
doctrines."
But history is no respecter of Congresses. For some reason or other (it
may be an historical law, which thus far has escaped the attention
of the scholars) "nations" seemed to be necessary for the orderly
development of human society and the attempt to stem this tide was
quite as unsuccessful as the Metternichian effort to prevent people from
thinking.
Curiously enough the first trouble began in a very distant part of the
world, in South America. The Spanish colonies of that continent had been
enjoying a period of relative independence during the many years of the
great Napoleonic wars. They had even remained faithful to their king
when he was taken prisoner by the French Emperor and they had refused to
recognise Joseph Bonaparte, who had in the year 1808 been made King of
Spain by order of his brother.
Indeed, the only part of America to get very much upset by the
Revolution was the island of Haiti, the Espagnola of Columbus' first
trip. Here in the year 1791 the French Convention, in a sudden outburst
of love and human brotherhood, had bestowed upon their black brethren
all the privileges hitherto enjoyed by their white masters. Just as
suddenly they had repented of this step, but the attempt to undo the
original promise led to many years of terrible warfare between General
Leclerc, the brother-in-law of Napoleon, and Toussaint l'Ouverture, the
negro chieftain. In the year 1801, Toussaint was asked to visit Leclerc
and discuss terms of peace. He received the solemn promise that he would
not be molested. He trusted his white adversaries, was put on board a
ship and shortly afterwards died in a French prison. But the negroes
gained their independence all the same and founded a Republic.
Incidentally they were of great help to the first great South American
patriot in his efforts to deliver his native country from the Spanish
yoke.
Simon Bolivar, a native of Caracas in Venezuela, born in the year 1783,
had been educated in Spain, had visited Paris where he had seen the
Revolutionary government at work, had lived for a while in the United
States and had returned to his native land where the widespread
discontent against Spain, the mother country, was beginning to take a
definite form. In the year 1811, Venezuela declared its independence and
Bolivar became one of the revolutionary generals. Within two months, the
rebels were defeated and Bolivar fled.
For the next five years he was the leader of an apparently lost cause.
He sacrificed all his wealth and he would not have been able to begin
his final and successful expedition without the support of the President
of Haiti. Thereafter the revolt spread all over South America and soon
it appeared that Spain was not able to suppress the rebellion unaided.
She asked for the support of the Holy Alliance.
This step greatly worried England. The British shippers had succeeded
the Dutch as the Common Carriers of the world and they expected to reap
heavy profits from a declaration of independence on the part of all
South America. They had hopes that the United States of America would
interfere but the Senate had no such plans and in the House, too, there
were many voices which declared that Spain ought to be given a free
hand.
Just then, there was a change of ministers in England. The Whigs went
out and the Tories came in. George Canning became secretary of State. He
dropped a hint that England would gladly back up the American government
with all the might of her fleet, if said government would declare
its disapproval of the plans of the Holy Alliance in regard to the
rebellious colonies of the southern continent. President Monroe
thereupon, on the 2nd of December of the year 1823, addressed Congress
and stated that: "America would consider any attempt on the part of
the allied powers to extend their system to any portion of this western
hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety," and gave warning that
"the American government would consider such action on the part of the
Holy Alliance as a manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the
United States." Four weeks later, the text of the "Monroe Doctrine" was
printed in the English newspapers and the members of the Holy Alliance
were forced to make their choice.
Metternich hesitated. Personally he would have been willing to risk the
displeasure of the United States (which had allowed both its army and
navy to fall into neglect since the end of the Anglo-American war of
the year 1812.) But Canning's threatening attitude and trouble on the
continent forced him to be careful. The expedition never took place and
South America and Mexico gained their independence.
As for the troubles on the continent of Europe, they were coming fast
and furious. The Holy Alliance had sent French troops to Spain to act as
guardians of the peace in the year 1820. Austrian troops had been used
for a similar purpose in Italy when the "Carbonari" (the secret society
of the Charcoal Burners) were making propaganda for a united Italy and
had caused a rebellion against the unspeakable Ferdinand of Naples.
Bad news also came from Russia where the death of Alexander had been the
sign for a revolutionary outbreak in St. Petersburg, a short but bloody
upheaval, the so-called Dekaberist revolt (because it took place in
December,) which ended with the hanging of a large number of good
patriots who had been disgusted by the reaction of Alexander's last
years and had tried to give Russia a constitutional form of government.
But worse was to follow. Metternich had tried to assure himself of the
continued support of the European courts by a series of conferences
at Aix-la-Chapelle at Troppau at Laibach and finally at Verona. The
delegates from the different powers duly travelled to these agreeable
watering places where the Austrian prime minister used to spend his
summers. They always promised to do their best to suppress revolt but
they were none too certain of their success. The spirit of the people
was beginning to be ugly and especially in France the position of the
king was by no means satisfactory.
The real trouble however began in the Balkans, the gateway to western
Europe through which the invaders of that continent had passed since the
beginning of time. The first outbreak was in Moldavia, the ancient Roman
province of Dacia which had been cut off from the Empire in the third
century. Since then, it had been a lost land, a sort of Atlantis, where
the people had continued to speak the old Roman tongue and still called
themselves Romans and their country Roumania. Here in the year 1821,
a young Greek, Prince Alexander Ypsilanti, began a revolt against the
Turks. He told his followers that they could count upon the support
of Russia. But Metternich's fast couriers were soon on their way to St
Petersburg and the Tsar, entirely persuaded by the Austrian arguments in
favor of "peace and stability," refused to help. Ypsilanti was forced to
flee to Austria where he spent the next seven years in prison.
In the same year, 1821, trouble began in Greece. Since 1815 a secret
society of Greek patriots had been preparing the way for a revolt.
Suddenly they hoisted the flag of independence in the Morea (the ancient
Peloponnesus) and drove the Turkish garrisons away. The Turks answered
in the usual fashion. They took the Greek Patriarch of Constantinople,
who was regarded as their Pope both by the Greeks and by many Russians,
and they hanged him on Easter Sunday of the year 1821, together with a
number of his bishops. The Greeks came back with a massacre of all
the Mohammedans in Tripolitsa, the capital of the Morea and the Turks
retaliated by an attack upon the island of Chios, where they murdered
25,000 Christians and sold 45,000 others as slaves into Asia and Egypt.
Then the Greeks appealed to the European courts, but Metternich told
them in so many words that they could "stew in their own grease," (I
am not trying to make a pun, but I am quoting His Serene Highness who
informed the Tsar that this "fire of revolt ought to burn itself out
beyond the pale of civilisation" and the frontiers were closed to those
volunteers who wished to go to the rescue of the patriotic Hellenes.
Their cause seemed lost. At the request of Turkey, an Egyptian army was
landed in the Morea and soon the Turkish flag was again flying from
the Acropolis, the ancient stronghold of Athens. The Egyptian army
then pacified the country "a la Turque," and Metternich followed the
proceedings with quiet interest, awaiting the day when this "attempt
against the peace of Europe" should be a thing of the past.
Once more it was England which upset his plans. The greatest glory of
England does not lie in her vast colonial possessions, in her wealth
or her navy, but in the quiet heroism and independence of her average
citizen. The Englishman obeys the law because he knows that respect
for the rights of others marks the difference between a dog-kennel and
civilised society. But he does not recognize the right of others to
interfere with his freedom of thought. If his country does something
which he believes to be wrong, he gets up and says so and the government
which he attacks will respect him and will give him full protection
against the mob which to-day, as in the time of Socrates, often loves to
destroy those who surpass it in courage or intelligence. There never has
been a good cause, however unpopular or however distant, which has not
counted a number of Englishmen among its staunchest adherents. The mass
of the English people are not different from those in other lands. They
stick to the business at hand and have no time for unpractical "sporting
ventures." But they rather admire their eccentric neighbour who drops
everything to go and fight for some obscure people in Asia or Africa and
when he has been killed they give him a fine public funeral and hold him
up to their children as an example of valor and chivalry.
Even the police spies of the Holy Alliance were powerless against this
national characteristic. In the year 1824, Lord Byron, a rich young
Englishman who wrote the poetry over which all Europe wept, hoisted the
sails of his yacht and started south to help the Greeks. Three months
later the news spread through Europe that their hero lay dead in
Missolonghi, the last of the Greek strongholds. His lonely death caught
the imagination of the people. In all countries, societies were formed
to help the Greeks. Lafayette, the grand old man of the American
revolution, pleaded their cause in France. The king of Bavaria sent
hundreds of his officers. Money and supplies poured in upon the starving
men of Missolonghi.
In England, George Canning, who had defeated the plans of the Holy
Alliance in South America, was now prime minis-ter. He saw his chance to
checkmate Metternich for a second time. The English and Russian fleets
were already in the Mediterranean. They were sent by governments which
dared no longer suppress the popular enthusiasm for the cause of the
Greek patriots. The French navy appeared because France, since the end
of the Crusades, had assumed the role of the defender of the Christian
faith in Mohammedan lands. On October 20 of the year 1827, the ships of
the three nations attacked the Turkish fleet in the bay of Navarino and
destroyed it. Rarely has the news of a battle been received with such
general rejoicing. The people of western Europe and Russia who enjoyed
no freedom at home consoled themselves by fighting an imaginary war of
liberty on behalf of the oppressed Greeks. In the year 1829 they had
their reward. Greece became an independent nation and the policy of
reaction and stability suffered its second great defeat.
It would be absurd were I to try, in this short volume, to give you a
detailed account of the struggle for national independence in all other
countries. There are a large number of excellent books devoted to such
subjects. I have described the struggle for the independence of Greece
because it was the first successful attack upon the bulwark of reaction
which the Congress of Vienna had erected to "maintain the stability
of Europe." That mighty fortress of suppression still held out and
Metternich continued to be in command. But the end was near.
In France the Bourbons had established an almost unbearable rule
of police officials who were trying to undo the work of the French
revolution, with an absolute disregard of the regulations and laws of
civilised warfare. When Louis XVIII died in the year 1824, the people
had enjoyed nine years of "peace" which had proved even more unhappy
than the ten years of war of the Empire. Louis was succeeded by his
brother, Charles X.
Louis had belonged to that famous Bourbon family which, although it
never learned anything, never forgot anything. The recollection of
that morning in the town of Hamm, when news had reached him of the
decapitation of his brother, remained a constant warning of what might
happen to those kings who did not read the signs of the times aright.
Charles, on the other hand, who had managed to run up private debts of
fifty million francs before he was twenty years of age, knew nothing,
remembered nothing and firmly intended to learn nothing. As soon as
he had succeeded his brother, he established a government "by priests,
through priests and for priests," and while the Duke of Wellington, who
made this remark, cannot be called a violent liberal, Charles ruled in
such a way that he disgusted even that trusted friend of law and order.
When he tried to suppress the newspapers which dared to criticise his
government, and dismissed the Parliament because it supported the Press,
his days were numbered.
On the night of the 27th of July of the year 1830, a revolution took
place in Paris. On the 30th of the same month, the king fled to the
coast and set sail for England. In this way the "famous farce of fifteen
years" came to an end and the Bourbons were at last removed from the
throne of France. They were too hopelessly incompetent. France then
might have returned to a Republican form of government, but such a step
would not have been tolerated by Metternich.
The situation was dangerous enough. The spark of rebellion had leaped
beyond the French frontier and had set fire to another powder house
filled with national grievances. The new kingdom of the Netherlands
had not been a success. The Belgian and the Dutch people had nothing in
common and their king, William of Orange (the descendant of an uncle of
William the Silent), while a hard worker and a good business man, was
too much lacking in tact and pliability to keep the peace among his
uncongenial subjects. Besides, the horde of priests which had descended
upon France, had at once found its way into Belgium and whatever
Protestant William tried to do was howled down by large crowds of
excited citizens as a fresh attempt upon the "freedom of the Catholic
church." On the 25th of August there was a popular outbreak against the
Dutch authorities in Brussels. Two months later, the Belgians declared
themselves independent and elected Leopold of Coburg, the uncle of Queen
Victoria of England, to the throne. That was an excellent solution
of the difficulty. The two countries, which never ought to have been
united, parted their ways and thereafter lived in peace and harmony and
behaved like decent neighbours.
News in those days when there were only a few short railroads,
travelled slowly, but when the success of the French and the Belgian
revolutionists became known in Poland there was an immediate clash
between the Poles and their Russian rulers which led to a year of
terrible warfare and ended with a complete victory for the Russians who
"established order along the banks of the Vistula" in the well-known
Russian fashion Nicholas the first, who had succeeded his brother
Alexander in 1825, firmly believed in the Divine Right of his own
family, and the thousands of Polish refugees who had found shelter in
western Europe bore witness to the fact that the principles of the Holy
Alliance were still more than a hollow phrase in Holy Russia.
In Italy too there was a moment of unrest. Marie Louise Duchess of Parma
and wife of the former Emperor Napoleon, whom she had deserted after the
defeat of Waterloo, was driven away from her country, and in the Papal
state the exasperated people tried to establish an independent Republic.
But the armies of Austria marched to Rome and soon every thing was as of
old. Metternich continued to reside at the Ball Platz, the home of the
foreign minister of the Habsburg dynasty, the police spies returned to
their job, and peace reigned supreme. Eighteen more years were to pass
before a second and more successful attempt could be made to deliver
Europe from the terrible inheritance of the Vienna Congress.
Again it was France, the revolutionary weather-cock of Europe, which
gave the signal of revolt. Charles X had been succeeded by Louis
Philippe, the son of that famous Duke of Orleans who had turned Jacobin,
had voted for the death of his cousin the king, and had played a role
during the early days of the revolution under the name of "Philippe
Egalite" or "Equality Philip." Eventually he had been killed when
Robespierre tried to purge the nation of all "traitors," (by which name
he indicated those people who did not share his own views) and his son
had been forced to run away from the revolutionary army. Young Louis
Philippe thereupon had wandered far and wide. He had taught school in
Switzerland and had spent a couple of years exploring the unknown "far
west" of America. After the fall of Napoleon he had returned to Paris.
He was much more intelligent than his Bourbon cousins. He was a simple
man who went about in the public parks with a red cotton umbrella under
his arm, followed by a brood of children like any good housefather. But
France had outgrown the king business and Louis did not know this until
the morning of the 24th of February, of the year 1848, when a crowd
stormed the Tuilleries and drove his Majesty away and proclaimed the
Republic.
When the news of this event reached Vienna, Metternich expressed the
casual opinion that this was only a repetition of the year 1793 and that
the Allies would once more be obliged to march upon Paris and make an
end to this very unseemly democratic row. But two weeks later his own
Austrian capital was in open revolt. Metternich escaped from the mob
through the back door of his palace, and the Emperor Ferdinand was
forced to give his subjects a constitution which embodied most of the
revolutionary principles which his Prime Minister had tried to suppress
for the last thirty-three years.
This time all Europe felt the shock. Hungary declared itself
independent, and commenced a war against the Habsburgs under the
leadership of Louis Kossuth. The unequal struggle lasted more than
a year. It was finally suppressed by the armies of Tsar Nicholas who
marched across the Carpathian mountains and made Hungary once more
safe for autocracy. The Habsburgs thereupon established extraordinary
court-martials and hanged the greater part of the Hungarian patriots
whom they had not been able to defeat in open battle.
As for Italy, the island of Sicily declared itself independent from
Naples and drove its Bourbon king away. In the Papal states the prime
minister, Rossi, was murdered and the Pope was forced to flee. He
returned the next year at the head of a French army which remained in
Rome to protect His Holiness against his subjects until the year 1870.
Then it was called back to defend France against the Prussians, and Rome
became the capital of Italy. In the north, Milan and Venice rose against
their Austrian masters. They were supported by king Albert of Sardinia,
but a strong Austrian army under old Radetzky marched into the valley
of the Po, defeated the Sardinians near Custozza and Novara and forced
Albert to abdicate in favour of his son, Victor Emanuel, who a few years
later was to be the first king of a united Italy.
In Germany the unrest of the year 1848 took the form of a great national
demonstration in favour of political unity and a representative form of
government. In Bavaria, the king who had wasted his time and money upon
an Irish lady who posed as a Spanish dancer--(she was called Lola Montez
and lies buried in New York's Potter's Field)--was driven away by the
enraged students of the university. In Prussia, the king was forced
to stand with uncovered head before the coffins of those who had been
killed during the street fighting and to promise a constitutional form
of government. And in March of the year 1849, a German parliament,
consisting of 550 delegates from all parts of the country came together
in Frankfort and proposed that king Frederick William of Prussia should
be the Emperor of a United Germany.
Then, however, the tide began to turn. Incompetent Ferdinand had
abdicated in favour of his nephew Francis Joseph. The well-drilled
Austrian army had remained faithful to their war-lord. The hangman
was given plenty of work and the Habsburgs, after the nature of that
strangely cat-like family, once more landed upon their feet and rapidly
strengthened their position as the masters of eastern and western
Europe. They played the game of politics very adroitly and used the
jealousies of the other German states to prevent the elevation of the
Prussian king to the Imperial dignity. Their long train-ing in the art
of suffering defeat had taught them the value of patience. They knew how
to wait. They bided their time and while the liberals, utterly untrained
in practical politics, talked and talked and talked and got intoxicated
by their own fine speeches, the Austrians quietly gathered their forces,
dismissed the Parliament of Frankfort and re-established the old and
impossible German confederation which the Congress of Vienna had wished
upon an unsuspecting world.
But among the men who had attended this strange Parliament of
unpractical enthusiasts, there was a Prussian country squire by the name
of Bismarck, who had made good use of his eyes and ears. He had a deep
contempt for oratory. He knew (what every man of action has always
known) that nothing is ever accomplished by talk. In his own way he was
a sincere patriot. He had been trained in the old school of diplomacy
and he could outlie his opponents just as he could outwalk them and
outdrink them and outride them.
Bismarck felt convinced that the loose confederation of little states
must be changed into a strong united country if it would hold its own
against the other European powers. Brought up amidst feudal ideas of
loyalty, he decided that the house of Hohenzollern, of which he was
the most faithful servant, should rule the new state, rather than the
incompetent Habsburgs. For this purpose he must first get rid of the
Austrian influence, and he began to make the necessary preparations for
this painful operation.
Italy in the meantime had solved her own problem, and had rid herself of
her hated Austrian master. The unity of Italy was the work of three
men, Cavour, Mazzini and Garibaldi. Of these three, Cavour, the
civil-engineer with the short-sighted eyes and the steel-rimmed glasses,
played the part of the careful political pilot. Mazzini, who had spent
most of his days in different European garrets, hiding from the Austrian
police, was the public agitator, while Garibaldi, with his band of
red-shirted rough-riders, appealed to the popular imagination.
Mazzini and Garibaldi were both believers in the Republican form of
government. Cavour, however, was a monarchist, and the others who
recognised his superior ability in such matters of practical statecraft,
accepted his decision and sacrificed their own ambitions for the greater
good of their beloved Fatherland.
Cavour felt towards the House of Sardinia as Bismarck did towards the
Hohenzollern family. With infinite care and great shrewdness he set to
work to jockey the Sardinian King into a position from which His Majesty
would be able to assume the leadership of the entire Italian people. The
unsettled political conditions in the rest of Europe greatly helped
him in his plans and no country contributed more to the independence of
Italy than her old and trusted (and often distrusted) neighbour, France.
In that turbulent country, in November of the year 1852, the Republic
had come to a sudden but not unexpected end. Napoleon III the son of
Louis Bonaparte the former King of Holland, and the small nephew of a
great uncle, had re-established an Empire and had made himself Emperor
"by the Grace of God and the Will of the People."
This young man, who had been educated in Germany and who mixed his
French with harsh Teutonic gutturals (just as the first Napoleon had
always spoken the language of his adopted country with a strong Italian
accent) was trying very hard to use the Napoleonic tradition for his own
benefit. But he had many enemies and did not feel very certain of his
hold upon his ready-made throne. He had gained the friendship of Queen
Victoria but this had not been a difficult task, as the good Queen was
not particularly brilliant and was very susceptible to flattery. As
for the other European sovereigns, they treated the French Emperor with
insulting haughtiness and sat up nights devising new ways in which they
could show their upstart "Good Brother" how sincerely they despised him.
Napoleon was obliged to find a way in which he could break this
opposition, either through love or through fear. He well knew the
fascination which the word "glory" still held for his subjects. Since
he was forced to gamble for his throne he decided to play the game of
Empire for high stakes. He used an attack of Russia upon Turkey as an
excuse for bringing about the Crimean war in which England and France
combined against the Tsar on behalf of the Sultan. It was a very costly
and exceedingly unprofitable enterprise. Neither France nor England nor
Russia reaped much glory.
But the Crimean war did one good thing. It gave Sardinia a chance to
volunteer on the winning side and when peace was declared it gave
Cavour the opportunity to lay claim to the gratitude of both England and
France.
Having made use of the international situation to get Sardinia
recognised as one of the more important powers of Europe, the clever
Italian then provoked a war between Sardinia and Austria in June of the
year 1859. He assured himself of the support of Napoleon in exchange for
the provinces of Savoy and the city of Nice, which was really an Italian
town. The Franco-Italian armies defeated the Austrians at Magenta and
Solferino, and the former Austrian provinces and duchies were united
into a single Italian kingdom. Florence became the capital of this new
Italy until the year 1870 when the French recalled their troops from
Home to defend France against the Germans. As soon as they were gone,
the Italian troops entered the eternal city and the House of Sardinia
took up its residence in the old Palace of the Quirinal which an ancient
Pope had built on the ruins of the baths of the Emperor Constantine.
The Pope, however, moved across the river Tiber and hid behind the walls
of the Vatican, which had been the home of many of his predecessors
since their return from the exile of Avignon in the year 1377. He
protested loudly against this high-handed theft of his domains and
addressed letters of appeal to those faithful Catholics who were
inclined to sympathise with him in his loss. Their number, however, was
small, and it has been steadily decreasing. For, once delivered from the
cares of state, the Pope was able to devote all his time to questions
of a spiritual nature. Standing high above the petty quarrels of the
European politicians, the Papacy assumed a new dignity which proved
of great benefit to the church and made it an international power for
social and religious progress which has shown a much more intelligent
appreciation of modern economic problems than most Protestant sects.
In this way, the attempt of the Congress of Vienna to settle the Italian
question by making the peninsula an Austrian province was at last
undone.
The German problem however remained as yet unsolved. It proved the most
difficult of all. The failure of the revolution of the year 1848 had led
to the wholesale migration of the more energetic and liberal elements
among the German people. These young fellows had moved to the United
States of America, to Brazil, to the new colonies in Asia and America.
Their work was continued in Germany but by a different sort of men.
In the new Diet which met at Frankfort, after the collapse of the
German Parliament and the failure of the Liberals to establish a united
country, the Kingdom of Prussia was represented by that same Otto
von Bismarck from whom we parted a few pages ago. Bismarck by now had
managed to gain the complete confidence of the king of Prussia. That
was all he asked for. The opinion of the Prussian parliament or of the
Prussian people interested him not at all. With his own eyes he had seen
the defeat of the Liberals. He knew that he would not be able to get
rid of Austria without a war and he began by strengthening the Prussian
army. The Landtag, exasperated at his high-handed methods, refused to
give him the necessary credits. Bismarck did not even bother to discuss
the matter. He went ahead and increased his army with the help of funds
which the Prussian house of Peers and the king placed at his disposal.
Then he looked for a national cause which could be used for the purpose
of creating a great wave of patriotism among all the German people.
In the north of Germany there were the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein
which ever since the middle ages had been a source of trouble. Both
countries were inhabited by a certain number of Danes and a certain
number of Germans, but although they were governed by the King of
Denmark, they were not an integral part of the Danish State and this
led to endless difficulties. Heaven forbid that I should revive this
forgotten question which now seems settled by the acts of the recent
Congress of Versailles. But the Germans in Holstein were very loud in
their abuse of the Danes and the Danes in Schleswig made a great ado of
their Danishness, and all Europe was discussing the problem and German
Mannerchors and Turnvereins listened to sentimental speeches about the
"lost brethren" and the different chancelleries were trying to discover
what it was all about, when Prussia mobilised her armies to "save
the lost provinces." As Austria, the official head of the German
Confederation, could not allow Prussia to act alone in such an important
matter, the Habsburg troops were mobilised too and the combined armies
of the two great powers crossed the Danish frontiers and after a very
brave resistance on the part of the Danes, occupied the two duchies. The
Danes appealed to Europe, but Europe was otherwise engaged and the poor
Danes were left to their fate.
Bismarck then prepared the scene for the second number upon his Imperial
programme. He used the division of the spoils to pick a quarrel with
Austria. The Habsburgs fell into the trap. The new Prussian army, the
creation of Bismarck and his faithful generals, invaded Bohemia and in
less than six weeks, the last of the Austrian troops had been destroyed
at Koniggratz and Sadowa and the road to Vienna lay open. But Bismarck
did not want to go too far. He knew that he would need a few friends in
Europe. He offered the defeated Habsburgs very decent terms of peace,
provided they would resign their chairmanship of the Confederation. He
was less merciful to many of the smaller German states who had taken the
side of the Austrians, and annexed them to Prussia. The greater part of
the northern states then formed a new organisation, the so-called
North German Confederacy, and victorious Prussia assumed the unofficial
leadership of the German people.
Europe stood aghast at the rapidity with which the work of consolidation
had been done. England was quite indifferent but France showed signs
of disapproval. Napoleon's hold upon the French people was steadily
diminishing. The Crimean war had been costly and had accomplished
nothing.
A second adventure in the year 1863, when a French army had tried to
force an Austrian Grand-Duke by the name of Maximilian upon the Mexican
people as their Emperor, had come to a disastrous end as soon as the
American Civil War had been won by the North. For the Government at
Washington had forced the French to withdraw their troops and this had
given the Mexicans a chance to clear their country of the enemy and
shoot the unwelcome Emperor.
It was necessary to give the Napoleonic throne a new coat of
glory-paint. Within a few years the North German Confederation would
be a serious rival of France. Napoleon decided that a war with Germany
would be a good thing for his dynasty. He looked for an excuse and
Spain, the poor victim of endless revolutions, gave him one.
Just then the Spanish throne happened to be vacant. It had been
offered to the Catholic branch of the house of Hohenzollern. The French
government had objected and the Hohenzollerns had politely refused to
accept the crown. But Napoleon, who was showing signs of illness, was
very much under the influence of his beautiful wife, Eugenie de Montijo,
the daughter of a Spanish gentleman and the grand-daughter of William
Kirkpatrick, an American consul at Malaga, where the grapes come from.
Eugenie, although shrewd enough, was as badly educated as most Spanish
women of that day. She was at the mercy of her spiritual advisers and
these worthy gentlemen felt no love for the Protestant King of Prussia.
"Be bold," was the advice of the Empress to her husband, but she omitted
to add the second half of that famous Persian proverb which admonishes
the hero to "be bold but not too bold." Napoleon, convinced of the
strength of his army, addressed himself to the king of Prussia and
insisted that the king give him assurances that "he would never permit
another candidature of a Hohenzollern prince to the Spanish crown."
As the Hohenzollerns had just declined the honour, the demand was
superfluous, and Bismarck so informed the French government. But
Napoleon was not satisfied.
It was the year 1870 and King William was taking the waters at Ems.
There one day he was approached by the French minister who tried to
re-open the discussion. The king answered very pleasantly that it was a
fine day and that the Spanish question was now closed and that nothing
more remained to be said upon the subject. As a matter of routine, a
report of this interview was telegraphed to Bismarck, who handled all
foreign affairs. Bismarck edited the dispatch for the benefit of the
Prussian and French press. Many people have called him names for doing
this. Bismarck however could plead the excuse that the doctoring of
official news, since time immemorial, had been one of the privileges of
all civilised governments. When the "edited" telegram was printed, the
good people in Berlin felt that their old and venerable king with his
nice white whiskers had been insulted by an arrogant little Frenchman
and the equally good people of Paris flew into a rage because their
perfectly courteous minister had been shown the door by a Royal Prussian
flunkey.
And so they both went to war and in less than two months, Napoleon and
the greater part of his army were prisoners of the Germans. The Second
Empire had come to an end and the Third Republic was making ready to
defend Paris against the German invaders. Paris held out for five long
months. Ten days before the surrender of the city, in the nearby palace
of Versailles, built by that same King Louis XIV who had been such
a dangerous enemy to the Germans, the King of Prussia was publicly
proclaimed German Emperor and a loud booming of guns told the hungry
Parisians that a new German Empire had taken the place of the old
harmless Confederation of Teutonic states and stateless.
In this rough way, the German question was finally settled. By the
end of the year 1871, fifty-six years after the memorable gathering at
Vienna, the work of the Congress had been entirely undone. Metternich
and Alexander and Talleyrand had tried to give the people of Europe a
lasting peace. The methods they had employed had caused endless wars and
revolutions and the feeling of a common brotherhood of the eighteenth
century was followed by an era of exaggerated nationalism which has not
yet come to an end.
THE AGE OF THE ENGINE
BUT WHILE THE PEOPLE OF EUROPE WERE FIGHTING FOR THEIR NATIONAL
INDEPENDENCE, THE WORLD IN WHICH THEY LIVED HAD BEEN ENTIRELY CHANGED
BY A SERIES OF INVENTIONS, WHICH HAD MADE THE CLUMSY OLD STEAM ENGINE OF
THE 18TH CENTURY THE MOST FAITHFUL AND EFFICIENT SLAVE OF MAN
THE greatest benefactor of the human race died more than half a million
years ago. He was a hairy creature with a low brow and sunken eyes, a
heavy jaw and strong tiger-like teeth. He would not have looked well in
a gathering of modern scientists, but they would have honoured him as
their master. For he had used a stone to break a nut and a stick to lift
up a heavy boulder. He was the inventor of the hammer and the lever, our
first tools, and he did more than any human being who came after him
to give man his enormous advantage over the other animals with whom he
shares this planet.
Ever since, man has tried to make his life easier by the use of a
greater number of tools. The first wheel (a round disc made out of an
old tree) created as much stir in the communities of 100,000 B.C. as the
flying machine did only a few years ago.
In Washington, the story is told of a director of the Patent Office
who in the early thirties of the last century suggested that the Patent
Office be abolished, because "everything that possibly could be invented
had been invented." A similar feeling must have spread through the
prehistoric world when the first sail was hoisted on a raft and the
people were able to move from place to place without rowing or punting
or pulling from the shore.
Indeed one of the most interesting chapters of history is the effort of
man to let some one else or something else do his work for him, while he
enjoyed his leisure, sitting in the sun or painting pictures on rocks,
or training young wolves and little tigers to behave like peaceful
domestic animals.
Of course in the very olden days; it was always possible to enslave a
weaker neighbour and force him to do the unpleasant tasks of life. One
of the reasons why the Greeks and Romans, who were quite as intelligent
as we are, failed to devise more interesting machinery, was to be
found in the wide-spread existence of slavery. Why should a great
mathematician waste his time upon wires and pulleys and cogs and fill
the air with noise and smoke when he could go to the marketplace and buy
all the slaves he needed at a very small expense?
And during the middle-ages, although slavery had been abolished and
only a mild form of serfdom survived, the guilds discouraged the idea of
using machinery because they thought this would throw a large number
of their brethren out of work. Besides, the Middle-Ages were not at all
interested in producing large quantities of goods. Their tailors and
butchers and carpenters worked for the immediate needs of the small
community in which they lived and had no desire to compete with their
neighbours, or to produce more than was strictly necessary.
During the Renaissance, when the prejudices of the Church against
scientific investigations could no longer be enforced as rigidly as
before, a large number of men began to devote their lives to mathematics
and astronomy and physics and chemistry. Two years before the beginning
of the Thirty Years War, John Napier, a Scotchman, had published his
little book which described the new invention of logarithms. During the
war it-self, Gottfried Leibnitz of Leipzig had perfected the system
of infinitesimal calculus. Eight years before the peace of Westphalia,
Newton, the great English natural philosopher, was born, and in that
same year Galileo, the Italian astronomer, died. Meanwhile the Thirty
Years War had destroyed the prosperity of central Europe and there was
a sudden but very general interest in "alchemy," the strange
pseudo-science of the middle-ages by which people hoped to turn base
metals into gold. This proved to be impossible but the alchemists in
their laboratories stumbled upon many new ideas and greatly helped the
work of the chemists who were their successors.
The work of all these men provided the world with a solid scientific
foundation upon which it was possible to build even the most complicated
of engines, and a number of practical men made good use of it. The
Middle-Ages had used wood for the few bits of necessary machinery.
But wood wore out easily. Iron was a much better material but iron was
scarce except in England. In England therefore most of the smelting was
done. To smelt iron, huge fires were needed. In the beginning, these
fires had been made of wood, but gradually the forests had been used up.
Then "stone coal" (the petrified trees of prehistoric times) was used.
But coal as you know has to be dug out of the ground and it has to be
transported to the smelting ovens and the mines have to be kept dry from
the ever invading waters.
These were two problems which had to be solved at once. For the time
being, horses could still be used to haul the coal-wagons, but the
pumping question demanded the application of special machinery. Several
inventors were busy trying to solve the difficulty. They all knew that
steam would have to be used in their new engine. The idea of the steam
engine was very old. Hero of Alexandria, who lived in the first century
before Christ, has described to us several bits of machinery which
were driven by steam. The people of the Renaissance had played with
the notion of steam-driven war chariots. The Marquis of Worcester, a
contemporary of Newton, in his book of inventions, tells of a steam
engine. A little later, in the year 1698, Thomas Savery of London
applied for a patent for a pumping engine. At the same time, a
Hollander, Christian Huygens, was trying to perfect an engine in which
gun-powder was used to cause regular explosions in much the same way as
we use gasoline in our motors.
All over Europe, people were busy with the idea. Denis Papin, a
Frenchman, friend and assistant of Huygens, was making experiments with
steam engines in several countries. He invented a little wagon that was
driven by steam, and a paddle-wheel boat. But when he tried to take a
trip in his vessel, it was confiscated by the authorities on a complaint
of the boatmen's union, who feared that such a craft would deprive them
of their livelihood. Papin finally died in London in great poverty,
having wasted all his money on his inventions. But at the time of his
death, another mechanical enthusiast, Thomas Newcomen, was working
on the problem of a new steam-pump. Fifty years later his engine was
improved upon by James Watt, a Glasgow instrument maker. In the year
1777, he gave the world the first steam engine that proved of real
practical value.
But during the centuries of experiments with a "heat-engine," the
political world had greatly changed. The British people had succeeded
the Dutch as the common-carriers of the world's trade. They had opened
up new colonies. They took the raw materials which the colonies produced
to England, and there they turned them into finished products, and
then they exported the finished goods to the four corners of the world.
During the seventeenth century, the people of Georgia and the Carolinas
had begun to grow a new shrub which gave a strange sort of woolly
substance, the so-called "cotton wool." After this had been plucked, it
was sent to England and there the people of Lancastershire wove it into
cloth. This weaving was done by hand and in the homes of the workmen.
Very soon a number of improvements were made in the process of weaving.
In the year 1730, John Kay invented the "fly shuttle." In 1770, James
Hargreaves got a patent on his "spinning jenny." Eli Whitney, an
American, invented the cotton-gin, which separated the cotton from its
seeds, a job which had previously been done by hand at the rate of
only a pound a day. Finally Richard Arkwright and the Reverend Edmund
Cartwright invented large weaving machines, which were driven by water
power. And then, in the eighties of the eighteenth century, just when
the Estates General of France had begun those famous meetings which were
to revolutionise the political system of Europe, the engines of Watt
were arranged in such a way that they could drive the weaving machines
of Arkwright, and this created an economic and social revolution which
has changed human relationship in almost every part of the world.
As soon as the stationary engine had proved a success, the inventors
turned their attention to the problem of propelling boats and carts with
the help of a mechanical contrivance. Watt himself designed plans for
a "steam locomotive," but ere he had perfected his ideas, in the year
1804, a locomotive made by Richard Trevithick carried a load of twenty
tons at Pen-y-darran in the Wales mining district.
At the same time an American jeweller and portrait-painter by the name
of Robert Fulton was in Paris, trying to convince Napoleon that with
the use of his submarine boat, the "Nautilus," and his "steam-boat," the
French might be able to destroy the naval supremacy of England.
Fulton's idea of a steamboat was not original. He had undoubtedly copied
it from John Fitch, a mechanical genius of Connecticut whose cleverly
constructed steamer had first navigated the Delaware river as early as
the year 1787. But Napoleon and his scientific advisers did not believe
in the practical possibility of a self-propelled boat, and although the
Scotch-built engine of the little craft puffed merrily on the Seine, the
great Emperor neglected to avail himself of this formidable weapon which
might have given him his revenge for Trafalgar.
As for Fulton, he returned to the United States and, being a practical
man of business, he organised a successful steamboat company together
with Robert R. Livingston, a signer of the Declaration of Independence,
who was American Minister to France when Fulton was in Paris, trying
to sell his invention. The first steamer of this new company, the
"Clermont," which was given a monopoly of all the waters of New York
State, equipped with an engine built by Boulton and Watt of Birmingham
in England, began a regular service between New York and Albany in the
year 1807.
As for poor John Fitch, the man who long before any one else had used
the "steam-boat" for commercial purposes, he came to a sad death. Broken
in health and empty of purse, he had come to the end of his resources
when his fifth boat, which was propelled by means of a screw-propeller,
had been destroyed. His neighbours jeered at him as they were to laugh a
hundred years later when Professor Langley constructed his funny flying
machines. Fitch had hoped to give his country an easy access to the
broad rivers of the west and his countrymen preferred to travel in
flat-boats or go on foot. In the year 1798, in utter despair and misery,
Fitch killed himself by taking poison.
But twenty years later, the "Savannah," a steamer of 1850 tons and
making six knots an hour, (the Mauretania goes just four times as fast,)
crossed the ocean from Savannah to Liverpool in the record time of
twenty-five days. Then there was an end to the derision of the multitude
and in their enthusiasm the people gave the credit for the invention to
the wrong man.
Six years later, George Stephenson, a Scotchman, who had been building
locomotives for the purpose of hauling coal from the mine-pit to
smelting ovens and cotton factories, built his famous "travelling
engine" which reduced the price of coal by almost seventy per cent and
which made it possible to establish the first regular passenger service
between Manchester and Liverpool, when people were whisked from city to
city at the unheard-of speed of fifteen miles per hour. A dozen years
later, this speed had been increased to twenty miles per hour. At the
present time, any well-behaved flivver (the direct descendant of
the puny little motor-driven machines of Daimler and Levassor of the
eighties of the last century) can do better than these early "Puffing
Billies."
But while these practically-minded engineers were improving upon their
rattling "heat engines," a group of "pure" scientists (men who
devote fourteen hours of each day to the study of those "theoretical"
scientific phenomena without which no mechanical progress would be
possible) were following a new scent which promised to lead them into
the most secret and hidden domains of Nature.
Two thousand years ago, a number of Greek and Roman philosophers
(notably Thales of Miletus and Pliny who was killed while trying
to study the eruption of Vesuvius of the year 79 when Pompeii and
Herculaneum were buried beneath the ashes) had noticed the strange
antics of bits of straw and of feather which were held near a piece of
amber which was being rubbed with a bit of wool. The schoolmen of the
Middle Ages had not been interested in this mysterious "electric" power.
But immediately after the Renaissance, William Gilbert, the private
physician of Queen Elizabeth, wrote his famous treatise on the character
and behaviour of Magnets. During the Thirty Years War Otto von
Guericke, the burgomaster of Magdeburg and the inventor of the air-pump,
constructed the first electrical machine. During the next century
a large number of scientists devoted themselves to the study of
electricity. Not less than three professors invented the famous Leyden
Jar in the year 1795. At the same time, Benjamin Franklin, the most
universal genius of America next to Benjamin Thomson (who after his
flight from New Hampshire on account of his pro-British sympathies
became known as Count Rumford) was devoting his attention to this
subject. He discovered that lightning and the electric spark were
manifestations of the same electric power and continued his electric
studies until the end of his busy and useful life. Then came Volta with
his famous "electric pile" and Galvani and Day and the Danish professor
Hans Christian Oersted and Ampere and Arago and Faraday, all of them
diligent searchers after the true nature of the electric forces.
They freely gave their discoveries to the world and Samuel Morse (who
like Fulton began his career as an artist) thought that he could use
this new electric current to transmit messages from one city to another.
He intended to use copper wire and a little machine which he had
invented. People laughed at him. Morse therefore was obliged to finance
his own experiments and soon he had spent all his money and then he was
very poor and people laughed even louder. He then asked Congress to help
him and a special Committee on Commerce promised him their support. But
the members of Congress were not at all interested and Morse had to wait
twelve years before he was given a small congressional appropriation. He
then built a "telegraph" between Baltimore and Washington. In the year
1887 he had shown his first successful "telegraph" in one of the lecture
halls of New York University. Finally, on the 24th of May of the
year 1844 the first long-distance message was sent from Washington to
Baltimore and to-day the whole world is covered with telegraph wires
and we can send news from Europe to Asia in a few seconds. Twenty-three
years later Alexander Graham Bell used the electric current for his
telephone. And half a century afterwards Marconi improved upon these
ideas by inventing a system of sending messages which did away entirely
with the old-fashioned wires.
While Morse, the New Englander, was working on his "telegraph," Michael
Faraday, the Yorkshire-man, had constructed the first "dynamo." This
tiny little machine was completed in the year 1881 when Europe was
still trembling as a result of the great July revolutions which had so
severely upset the plans of the Congress of Vienna. The first dynamo
grew and grew and grew and to-day it provides us with heat and with
light (you know the little incandescent bulbs which Edison, building
upon French and English experiments of the forties and fifties, first
made in 1878) and with power for all sorts of machines. If I am not
mistaken the electric-engine will soon entirely drive out the "heat
engine" just as in the olden days the more highly-organised prehistoric
animals drove out their less efficient neighbours.
Personally (but I know nothing about machinery) this will make me very
happy. For the electric engine which can be run by waterpower is a clean
and companionable servant of mankind but the "heat-engine," the marvel
of the eighteenth century, is a noisy and dirty creature for ever
filling the world with ridiculous smoke-stacks and with dust and soot
and asking that it be fed with coal which has to be dug out of mines at
great inconvenience and risk to thousands of people.
And if I were a novelist and not a historian, who must stick to facts
and may not use his imagination, I would describe the happy day when the
last steam locomotive shall be taken to the Museum of Natural History to
be placed next to the skeleton of the Dynosaur and the Pteredactyl and
the other extinct creatures of a by-gone age.
THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION
BUT THE NEW ENGINES WERE VERY EXPENSIVE AND ONLY PEOPLE OF WEALTH COULD
AFFORD THEM. THE OLD CARPENTER OR SHOEMAKER WHO HAD BEEN HIS OWN MASTER
IN HIS LITTLE WORKSHOP WAS OBLIGED TO HIRE HIMSELF OUT TO THE OWNERS OF
THE BIG MECHANICAL TOOLS, AND WHILE HE MADE MORE MONEY THAN BEFORE, HE
LOST HIS FORMER INDEPENDENCE AND HE DID NOT LIKE THAT
IN the olden days the work of the world had been done by independent
workmen who sat in their own little workshops in the front of their
houses, who owned their tools, who boxed the ears of their own
apprentices and who, within the limits prescribed by their guilds,
conducted their business as it pleased them. They lived simple lives,
and were obliged to work very long hours, but they were their own
masters. If they got up and saw that it was a fine day to go fishing,
they went fishing and there was no one to say "no."
But the introduction of machinery changed this. A machine is really
nothing but a greatly enlarged tool. A railroad train which carries you
at the speed of a mile a minute is in reality a pair of very fast
legs, and a steam hammer which flattens heavy plates of iron is just a
terrible big fist, made of steel.
But whereas we can all afford a pair of good legs and a good strong
fist, a railroad train and a steam hammer and a cotton factory are very
expensive pieces of machinery and they are not owned by a single man,
but usually by a company of people who all contribute a certain sum and
then divide the profits of their railroad or cotton mill according to
the amount of money which they have invested.
Therefore, when machines had been improved until they were really
practicable and profitable, the builders of those large tools, the
machine manufacturers, began to look for customers who could afford to
pay for them in cash.
During the early middle ages, when land had been almost the only form of
wealth, the nobility were the only people who were considered wealthy.
But as I have told you in a previous chapter, the gold and silver which
they possessed was quite insignificant and they used the old system
of barter, exchanging cows for horses and eggs for honey. During the
crusades, the burghers of the cities had been able to gather riches
from the reviving trade between the east and the west, and they had been
serious rivals of the lords and the knights.
The French revolution had entirely destroyed the wealth of the nobility
and had enormously increased that of the middle class or "bourgeoisie."
The years of unrest which followed the Great Revolution had offered
many middle-class people a chance to get more than their share of this
world's goods. The estates of the church had been confiscated by
the French Convention and had been sold at auction. There had been
a terrific amount of graft. Land speculators had stolen thousands of
square miles of valuable land, and during the Napoleonic wars, they had
used their capital to "profiteer" in grain and gun-powder, and now they
possessed more wealth than they needed for the actual expenses of their
households, and they could afford to build themselves factories and to
hire men and women to work the machines.
This caused a very abrupt change in the lives of hundreds of thousands
of people. Within a few years, many cities doubled the number of their
inhabitants and the old civic centre which had been the real "home" of
the citizens was surrounded with ugly and cheaply built suburbs where
the workmen slept after their eleven or twelve hours, or thirteen hours,
spent in the factories and from where they returned to the factory as
soon as the whistle blew.
Far and wide through the countryside there was talk of the fabulous sums
of money that could be made in the towns. The peasant boy, accustomed
to a life in the open, went to the city. He rapidly lost his old health
amidst the smoke and dust and dirt of those early and badly ventilated
workshops, and the end, very often, was death in the poor-house or in
the hospital.
Of course the change from the farm to the factory on the part of so
many people was not accomplished without a certain amount of opposition.
Since one engine could do as much work as a hundred men, the ninety-nine
others who were thrown out of employment did not like it. Frequently
they attacked the factory-buildings and set fire to the machines, but
Insurance Companies had been organised as early as the 17th century and
as a rule the owners were well protected against loss.
Soon, newer and better machines were installed, the factory was
surrounded with a high wall and then there was an end to the rioting.
The ancient guilds could not possibly survive in this new world of
steam and iron. They went out of existence and then the workmen tried
to organise regular labour unions. But the factory-owners, who through
their wealth could exercise great influence upon the politicians of the
different countries, went to the Legislature and had laws passed which
forbade the forming of such trade unions because they interfered with
the "liberty of action" of the working man.
Please do not think that the good members of Parliament who passed these
laws were wicked tyrants. They were the true sons of the revolutionary
period when everybody talked of "liberty" and when people often killed
their neighbours because they were not quite as liberty-loving as they
ought to have been. Since "liberty" was the foremost virtue of man, it
was not right that labour-unions should dictate to their members the
hours during which they could work and the wages which they must demand.
The workman must at all times, be "free to sell his services in the open
market," and the employer must be equally "free" to conduct his business
as he saw fit. The days of the Mercantile System, when the state had
regulated the industrial life of the entire community, were coming to
an end. The new idea of "freedom" insisted that the state stand entirely
aside and let commerce take its course.
The last half of the 18th century had not merely been a time of
intellectual and political doubt, but the old economic ideas, too, had
been replaced by new ones which better suited the need of the hour.
Several years before the French revolution, Turgot, who had been one
of the unsuccessful ministers of finance of Louis XVI, had preached the
novel doctrine of "economic liberty." Turgot lived in a country which
had suffered from too much red-tape, too many regulations, too many
officials trying to enforce too many laws. "Remove this official
supervision," he wrote, "let the people do as they please, and
everything will be all right." Soon his famous advice of "laissez
faire" became the battle-cry around which the economists of that period
rallied.
At the same time in England, Adam Smith was working on his mighty
volumes on the "Wealth of Nations," which made another plea for
"liberty" and the "natural rights of trade." Thirty years later, after
the fall of Napoleon, when the reactionary powers of Europe had gained
their victory at Vienna, that same freedom which was denied to the
people in their political relations was forced upon them in their
industrial life.
The general use of machinery, as I have said at the beginning of this
chapter, proved to be of great advantage to the state. Wealth increased
rapidly. The machine made it possible for a single country, like
England, to carry all the burdens of the great Napoleonic wars. The
capitalists (the people who provided the money with which machines were
bought) reaped enormous profits. They became ambitious and began to
take an interest in politics. They tried to compete with the landed
aristocracy which still exercised great influence upon the government of
most European countries.
In England, where the members of Parliament were still elected according
to a Royal Decree of the year 1265, and where a large number of recently
created industrial centres were without representation, they brought
about the passing of the Reform Bill of the year 1882, which changed the
electoral system and gave the class of the factory-owners more influence
upon the legislative body. This however caused great discontent among
the millions of factory workers, who were left without any voice in the
government. They too began an agitation for the right to vote. They put
their demands down in a document which came to be known as the "People's
Charter." The debates about this charter grew more and more violent.
They had not yet come to an end when the revolutions of the year 1848
broke out. Frightened by the threat of a new outbreak or Jacobinism and
violence, the English government placed the Duke of Wellington, who
was now in his eightieth year, at the head of the army, and called for
Volunteers. London was placed in a state of siege and preparations were
made to suppress the coming revolution.
But the Chartist movement killed itself through bad leadership and no
acts of violence took place. The new class of wealthy factory owners,
(I dislike the word "bourgeoisie" which has been used to death by the
apostles of a new social order,) slowly increased its hold upon the
government, and the conditions of industrial life in the large cities
continued to transform vast acres of pasture and wheat-land into dreary
slums, which guard the approach of every modern European town.
EMANCIPATION
THE GENERAL INTRODUCTION OF MACHINERY DID NOT BRING ABOUT THE ERA OF
HAPPINESS AND PROSPERITY WHICH HAD BEEN PREDICTED BY THE GENERATION
WHICH SAW THE STAGE COACH REPLACED BY THE RAILROAD. SEVERAL REMEDIES
WERE SUGGESTED BUT NONE OF THESE QUITE SOLVED THE PROBLEM
IN the year 1831, just before the passing of the first Reform Bill
Jeremy Bentham, the great English student of legislative methods and the
most practical political reformer of that day, wrote to a friend: "The
way to be comfortable is to make others comfortable. The way to make
others comfortable is to appear to love them. The way to appear to love
them is to love them in reality." Jeremy was an honest man. He said what
he believed to be true. His opinions were shared by thousands of his
countrymen. They felt responsible for the happiness of their less
fortunate neighbours and they tried their very best to help them. And
Heaven knows it was time that something be done!
The ideal of "economic freedom" (the "laissez faire" of Turgot) had
been necessary in the old society where mediaeval restrictions lamed
all industrial effort. But this "liberty of action" which had been
the highest law of the land had led to a terrible, yea, a frightful
condition. The hours in the fac-tory were limited only by the physical
strength of the workers. As long as a woman could sit before her loom,
without fainting from fatigue, she was supposed to work. Children of
five and six were taken to the cotton mills, to save them from the
dangers of the street and a life of idleness. A law had been passed
which forced the children of paupers to go to work or be punished by
being chained to their machines. In return for their services they got
enough bad food to keep them alive and a sort of pigsty in which they
could rest at night. Often they were so tired that they fell asleep at
their job. To keep them awake a foreman with a whip made the rounds and
beat them on the knuckles when it was necessary to bring them back to
their duties. Of course, under these circumstances thousands of little
children died. This was regrettable and the employers, who after all
were human beings and not without a heart, sincerely wished that they
could abolish "child labour." But since man was "free" it followed that
children were "free" too. Besides, if Mr. Jones had tried to work his
factory without the use of children of five and six, his rival, Mr.
Stone, would have hired an extra supply of little boys and Jones would
have been forced into bankruptcy. It was therefore impossible for Jones
to do without child labour until such time as an act of Parliament
should forbid it for all employers.
But as Parliament was no longer dominated by the old landed aristocracy
(which had despised the upstart factory-owners with their money bags
and had treated them with open contempt), but was under control of the
representatives from the industrial centres, and as long as the law
did not allow workmen to combine in labour-unions, very little was
accomplished. Of course the intelligent and decent people of that time
were not blind to these terrible conditions. They were just helpless.
Machinery had conquered the world by surprise and it took a great many
years and the efforts of thousands of noble men and women to make the
machine what it ought to be, man's servant, and not his master.
Curiously enough, the first attack upon the outrageous system of
employment which was then common in all parts of the world, was made
on behalf of the black slaves of Africa and America. Slavery had been
introduced into the American continent by the Spaniards. They had tried
to use the Indians as labourers in the fields and in the mines, but the
Indians, when taken away from a life in the open, had lain down and died
and to save them from extinction a kind-hearted priest had suggested
that negroes be brought from Africa to do the work. The negroes were
strong and could stand rough treatment. Besides, association with the
white man would give them a chance to learn Christianity and in this
way, they would be able to save their souls, and so from every possible
point of view, it would be an excellent arrangement both for the kindly
white man and for his ignorant black brother. But with the introduction
of machinery there had been a greater demand for cotton and the negroes
were forced to work harder than ever before, and they too, like the
Indians, began to die under the treatment which they received at the
hands of the overseers.
Stories of incredible cruelty constantly found their way to Europe and
in all countries men and women began to agitate for the abolition of
slavery. In England, William Wilberforce and Zachary Macaulay, (the
father of the great historian whose history of England you must read
if you want to know how wonderfully interesting a history-book can be,)
organised a society for the suppression of slavery. First of all they
got a law passed which made "slave trading" illegal. And after the year
1840 there was not a single slave in any of the British colonies. The
revolution of 1848 put an end to slavery in the French possessions. The
Portuguese passed a law in the year 1858 which promised all slaves their
liberty in twenty years from date. The Dutch abolished slavery in
1863 and in the same year Tsar Alexander II returned to his serfs that
liberty which had been taken away from them more than two centuries
before.
In the United States of America the question led to grave difficulties
and a prolonged war. Although the Declaration of Independence had
laid down the principle that "all men were created free and equal," an
exception had been made for those men and women whose skins were dark
and who worked on the plantations of the southern states. As time
went on, the dislike of the people of the North for the institution
of slavery increased and they made no secret of their feelings. The
southerners however claimed that they could not grow their cotton
without slave-labour, and for almost fifty years a mighty debate raged
in both the Congress and the Senate.
The North remained obdurate and the South would not give in. When
it appeared impossible to reach a compromise, the southern states
threatened to leave the Union. It was a most dangerous point in the
history of the Union. Many things "might" have happened. That they did
not happen was the work of a very great and very good man.
On the sixth of November of the year 1860, Abraham Lincoln, an Illinois
lawyer, and a man who had made his own intellectual fortune, had
been elected president by the Republicans who were very strong in the
anti-slavery states. He knew the evils of human bondage at first hand
and his shrewd common-sense told him that there was no room on the
northern continent for two rival nations. When a number of southern
states seceded and formed the "Confederate States of America," Lincoln
accepted the challenge. The Northern states were called upon for
volunteers. Hundreds of thousands of young men responded with eager
enthusiasm and there followed four years of bitter civil war. The
South, better prepared and following the brilliant leadership of Lee and
Jackson, repeatedly defeated the armies of the North. Then the economic
strength of New England and the West began to tell. An unknown officer
by the name of Grant arose from obscurity and became the Charles Martel
of the great slave war. Without interruption he hammered his mighty
blows upon the crumbling defences of the South. Early in the year 1863,
President Lincoln issued his "Emancipation Proclamation" which set all
slaves free. In April of the year 1865 Lee surrendered the last of his
brave armies at Appomattox. A few days later, President Lincoln was
murdered by a lunatic. But his work was done. With the exception of Cuba
which was still under Spanish domination, slavery had come to an end in
every part of the civilised world.
But while the black man was enjoying an increasing amount of liberty,
the "free" workmen of Europe did not fare quite so well. Indeed, it is
a matter of surprise to many contemporary writers and observers that the
masses of workmen (the so-called proletariat) did not die out from sheer
misery. They lived in dirty houses situated in miserable parts of the
slums. They ate bad food. They received just enough schooling to fit
them for their tasks. In case of death or an accident, their families
were not provided for. But the brewery and distillery interests, (who
could exercise great influence upon the Legislature,) encouraged them
to forget their woes by offering them unlimited quantities of whisky and
gin at very cheap rates.
The enormous improvement which has taken place since the thirties and
the forties of the last century is not due to the efforts of a single
man. The best brains of two generations devoted themselves to the task
of saving the world from the disastrous results of the all-too-sudden
introduction of machinery. They did not try to destroy the capitalistic
system. This would have been very foolish, for the accumulated wealth of
other people, when intelligently used, may be of very great benefit to
all mankind. But they tried to combat the notion that true equality
can exist between the man who has wealth and owns the factories and
can close their doors at will without the risk of going hungry, and the
labourer who must take whatever job is offered, at whatever wage he
can get, or face the risk of starvation for himself, his wife and his
children.
They endeavoured to introduce a number of laws which regulated the
relations between the factory owners and the factory workers. In this,
the reformers have been increasingly successful in all countries.
To-day, the majority of the labourers are well protected; their hours
are being reduced to the excellent average of eight, and their
children are sent to the schools instead of to the mine pit and to the
carding-room of the cotton mills.
But there were other men who also contemplated the sight of all the
belching smoke-stacks, who heard the rattle of the railroad trains, who
saw the store-houses filled with a surplus of all sorts of materials,
and who wondered to what ultimate goal this tremendous activity would
lead in the years to come. They remembered that the human race had lived
for hundreds of thousands of years without commercial and industrial
competition. Could they change the existing order of things and do away
with a system of rivalry which so often sacrificed human happiness to
profits?
This idea--this vague hope for a better day--was not restricted to a
single country. In England, Robert Owen, the owner of many cotton mills,
established a so-called "socialistic community" which was a success. But
when he died, the prosperity of New Lanark came to an end and an attempt
of Louis Blanc, a French journalist, to establish "social workshops"
all over France fared no better. Indeed, the increasing number of
socialistic writers soon began to see that little individual communities
which remained outside of the regular industrial life, would never
be able to accomplish anything at all. It was necessary to study the
fundamental principles underlying the whole industrial and capitalistic
society before useful remedies could be suggested.
The practical socialists like Robert Owen and Louis Blanc and Francois
Fournier were succeeded by theoretical students of socialism like Karl
Marx and Friedrich Engels. Of these two, Marx is the best known. He was
a very brilliant Jew whose family had for a long time lived in Germany.
He had heard of the experiments of Owen and Blanc and he began to
interest himself in questions of labour and wages and unemployment. But
his liberal views made him very unpopular with the police authorities of
Germany, and he was forced to flee to Brussels and then to London, where
he lived a poor and shabby life as the correspondent of the New York
Tribune.
No one, thus far, had paid much attention to his books on economic
subjects. But in the year 1864 he organised the first international
association of working men and three years later in 1867, he published
the first volume of his well-known treatise called "Capital." Marx
believed that all history was a long struggle between those who
"have" and those who "don't have." The introduction and general use of
machinery had created a new class in society, that of the capitalists
who used their surplus wealth to buy the tools which were then used
by the labourers to produce still more wealth, which was again used
to build more factories and so on, until the end of time. Meanwhile,
according to Marx, the third estate (the bourgeoisie) was growing richer
and richer and the fourth estate (the proletariat) was growing poorer
and poorer, and he predicted that in the end, one man would possess
all the wealth of the world while the others would be his employees and
dependent upon his good will.
To prevent such a state of affairs, Marx advised working men of all
countries to unite and to fight for a number of political and economic
measures which he had enumerated in a Manifesto in the year 1848, the
year of the last great European revolution.
These views of course were very unpopular with the governments of
Europe, many countries, especially Prussia, passed severe laws against
the Socialists and policemen were ordered to break up the Socialist
meetings and to arrest the speakers. But that sort of persecution never
does any good. Martyrs are the best possible advertisements for an
unpopular cause. In Europe the number of socialists steadily increased
and it was soon clear that the Socialists did not contemplate a violent
revolution but were using their increasing power in the different
Parliaments to promote the interests of the labouring classes.
Socialists were even called upon to act as Cabinet Ministers, and they
co-operated with progressive Catholics and Protestants to undo the
damage that had been caused by the Industrial Revolution and to bring
about a fairer division of the many benefits which had followed the
introduction of machinery and the increased production of wealth.
THE AGE OF SCIENCE
BUT THE WORLD HAD UNDERGONE ANOTHER CHANGE WHICH WAS OF GREATER
IMPORTANCE THAN EITHER THE POLITICAL OR THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTIONS.
AFTER GENERATIONS OF OPPRESSION AND PERSECUTION, THE SCIENTIST HAD AT
LAST GAINED LIBERTY OF ACTION AND HE WAS NOW TRYING TO DISCOVER THE
FUNDAMENTAL LAWS WHICH GOVERN THE UNIVERSE
THE Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Chaldeans, the Greeks and the
Romans, had all contributed something to the first vague notions of
science and scientific investigation. But the great migrations of the
fourth century had destroyed the classical world of the Mediterranean,
and the Christian Church, which was more interested in the life of
the soul than in the life of the body, had regarded science as a
manifestation of that human arrogance which wanted to pry into divine
affairs which belonged to the realm of Almighty God, and which therefore
was closely related to the seven deadly sins.
The Renaissance to a certain but limited extent had broken through
this wall of Mediaeval prejudices. The Reformation, however, which had
overtaken the Renaissance in the early 16th century, had been hostile to
the ideals of the "new civilisation," and once more the men of science
were threatened with severe punishment, should they try to pass beyond
the narrow limits of knowledge which had been laid down in Holy Writ.
Our world is filled with the statues of great generals, atop of prancing
horses, leading their cheering soldiers to glorious victory. Here and
there, a modest slab of marble announces that a man of science has found
his final resting place. A thousand years from now we shall probably
do these things differently, and the children of that happy generation
shall know of the splendid courage and the almost inconceivable devotion
to duty of the men who were the pioneers of that abstract knowledge,
which alone has made our modern world a practical possibility.
Many of these scientific pioneers suffered poverty and contempt and
humiliation. They lived in garrets and died in dungeons. They dared not
print their names on the title-pages of their books and they dared not
print their conclusions in the land of their birth, but smuggled the
manuscripts to some secret printing shop in Amsterdam or Haarlem. They
were exposed to the bitter enmity of the Church, both Protestant
and Catholic, and were the subjects of endless sermons, inciting the
parishioners to violence against the "heretics."
Here and there they found an asylum. In Holland, where the spirit
of tolerance was strongest, the authorities, while regarding these
scientific investigations with little favour, yet refused to interfere
with people's freedom of thought. It became a little asylum for
intellectual liberty where French and English and German philosophers
and mathematicians and physicians could go to enjoy a short spell of
rest and get a breath of free air.
In another chapter I have told you how Roger Bacon, the great genius of
the thirteenth century, was prevented for years from writing a single
word, lest he get into new troubles with the authorities of the church.
And five hundred years later, the contributors to the great philosophic
"Encyclopaedia" were under the constant supervision of the French
gendarmerie. Half a century afterwards, Darwin, who dared to question
the story of the creation of man, as revealed in the Bible, was
denounced from every pulpit as an enemy of the human race.
Even to-day, the persecution of those who venture into the unknown realm
of science has not entirely come to an end. And while I am writing this
Mr. Bryan is addressing a vast multitude on the "Menace of Darwinism,"
warning his hearers against the errors of the great English naturalist.
All this, however, is a mere detail. The work that has to be done
invariably gets done, and the ultimate profit of the discoveries and the
inventions goes to the mass of those same people who have always decried
the man of vision as an unpractical idealist.
The seventeenth century had still preferred to investigate the far off
heavens and to study the position of our planet in relation to the solar
system. Even so, the Church had disapproved of this unseemly curiosity,
and Copernicus who first of all had proved that the sun was the centre
of the universe, did not publish his work until the day of his death.
Galileo spent the greater part of his life under the supervision of the
clerical authorities, but he continued to use his telescope and provided
Isaac Newton with a mass of practical observations, which greatly helped
the English mathematician when he dis-covered the existence of that
interesting habit of falling objects which came to be known as the Law
of Gravitation.
That, for the moment at least, exhausted the interest in the Heavens,
and man began to study the earth. The invention of a workable
microscope, (a strange and clumsy little thing,) by Anthony van
Leeuwenhoek during the last half of the 17th century, gave man a chance
to study the "microscopic" creatures who are responsible for so many of
his ailments. It laid the foundations of the science of "bacteriology"
which in the last forty years has delivered the world from a great
number of diseases by discovering the tiny organisms which cause the
complaint. It also allowed the geologists to make a more careful study
of different rocks and of the fossils (the petrified prehistoric
plants) which they found deep below the surface of the earth. These
investigations convinced them that the earth must be a great deal older
than was stated in the book of Genesis and in the year 1830, Sir Charles
Lyell published his "Principles of Geology" which denied the story
of creation as related in the Bible and gave a far more wonderful
description of slow growth and gradual development.
At the same time, the Marquis de Laplace was working on a new theory of
creation, which made the earth a little blotch in the nebulous sea out
of which the planetary system had been formed and Bunsen and Kirchhoff,
by the use of the spectroscope, were investigating the chemical
composition of the stars and of our good neighbour, the sun, whose
curious spots had first been noticed by Galileo.
Meanwhile after a most bitter and relentless warfare with the clerical
authorities of Catholic and Protestant lands, the anatomists and
physiologists had at last obtained permission to dissect bodies and to
substitute a positive knowledge of our organs and their habits for the
guesswork of the mediaeval quack.
Within a single generation (between 1810 and 1840) more progress was
made in every branch of science than in all the hundreds of thousands of
years that had passed since man first looked at the stars and wondered
why they were there. It must have been a very sad age for the people
who had been educated under the old system. And we can understand
their feeling of hatred for such men as Lamarck and Darwin, who did
not exactly tell them that they were "descended from monkeys," (an
accusation which our grandfathers seemed to regard as a personal
insult,) but who suggested that the proud human race had evolved from
a long series of ancestors who could trace the family-tree back to the
little jelly-fishes who were the first inhabitants of our planet.
The dignified world of the well-to-do middle class, which dominated the
nineteenth century, was willing to make use of the gas or the electric
light, of all the many practical applications of the great scientific
discoveries, but the mere investigator, the man of the "scientific
theory" without whom no progress would be possible, continued to
be distrusted until very recently. Then, at last, his services were
recognised. Today the rich people who in past ages donated their wealth
for the building of a cathedral, construct vast laboratories where
silent men do battle upon the hidden enemies of mankind and often
sacrifice their lives that coming generations may enjoy greater
happiness and health.
Indeed it has come to pass that many of the ills of this world, which
our ancestors regarded as inevitable "acts of God," have been exposed
as manifestations of our own ignorance and neglect. Every child nowadays
knows that he can keep from getting typhoid fever by a little care in
the choice of his drinking water. But it took years and years of hard
work before the doctors could convince the people of this fact. Few of
us now fear the dentist chair. A study of the microbes that live in our
mouth has made it possible to keep our teeth from decay. Must perchance
a tooth be pulled, then we take a sniff of gas, and go our way
rejoicing. When the newspapers of the year 1846 brought the story of the
"painless operation" which had been performed in America with the help
of ether, the good people of Europe shook their heads. To them it seemed
against the will of God that man should escape the pain which was the
share of all mortals, and it took a long time before the practice of
taking ether and chloroform for operations became general.
But the battle of progress had been won. The breach in the old walls
of prejudice was growing larger and larger, and as time went by, the
ancient stones of ignorance came crumbling down. The eager crusaders
of a new and happier social order rushed forward. Suddenly they found
themselves facing a new obstacle. Out of the ruins of a long-gone past,
another citadel of reaction had been erected, and millions of men had to
give their lives before this last bulwark was destroyed.
ART
A CHAPTER OF ART
WHEN a baby is perfectly healthy and has had enough to eat and has slept
all it wants, then it hums a little tune to show how happy it is. To
grown-ups this humming means nothing. It sounds like "goo-zum, goo-zum,
goo-o-o-o-o," but to the baby it is perfect music. It is his first
contribution to art.
As soon as he (or she) gets a little older and is able to sit up, the
period of mud-pie making begins. These mud-pies do not interest the
outside world. There are too many million babies, making too many
million mud-pies at the same time. But to the small infant they
represent another expedition into the pleasant realm of art. The baby is
now a sculptor.
At the age of three or four, when the hands begin to obey the brain,
the child becomes a painter. His fond mother gives him a box of coloured
chalks and every loose bit of paper is rapidly covered with strange
pothooks and scrawls which represent houses and horses and terrible
naval battles.
Soon however this happiness of just "making things" comes to an end.
School begins and the greater part of the day is filled up with work.
The business of living, or rather the business of "making a living,"
becomes the most important event in the life of every boy and girl.
There is little time left for "art" between learning the tables of
multiplication and the past participles of the irregular French verbs.
And unless the desire for making certain things for the mere pleasure of
creating them without any hope of a practical return be very strong, the
child grows into manhood and forgets that the first five years of his
life were mainly devoted to art.
Nations are not different from children. As soon as the cave-man had
escaped the threatening dangers of the long and shivering ice-period,
and had put his house in order, he began to make certain things which
he thought beautiful, although they were of no earthly use to him in his
fight with the wild animals of the jungle. He covered the walls of his
grotto with pictures of the elephants and the deer which he hunted, and
out of a piece of stone, he hacked the rough figures of those women he
thought most attractive.
As soon as the Egyptians and the Babylonians and the Persians and all
the other people of the east had founded their little countries along
the Nile and the Euphrates, they began to build magnificent palaces for
their kings, invented bright pieces of jewellery for their women and
planted gardens which sang happy songs of colour with their many bright
flowers.
Our own ancestors, the wandering nomads from the distant Asiatic
prairies, enjoying a free and easy existence as fighters and hunters,
composed songs which celebrated the mighty deeds of their great leaders
and invented a form of poetry which has survived until our own day. A
thousand years later, when they had established themselves on the Greek
mainland, and had built their "city-states," they expressed their joy
(and their sorrows) in magnificent temples, in statues, in comedies and
in tragedies, and in every conceivable form of art.
The Romans, like their Carthaginian rivals, were too busy administering
other people and making money to have much love for "useless and
unprofitable" adventures of the spirit. They conquered the world and
built roads and bridges but they borrowed their art wholesale from the
Greeks. They invented certain practical forms of architecture which
answered the demands of their day and age. But their statues and their
histories and their mosaics and their poems were mere Latin imitations
of Greek originals. Without that vague and hard-to-define something
which the world calls "personality," there can be no art and the Roman
world distrusted that particular sort of personality. The Empire needed
efficient soldiers and tradesmen. The business of writing poetry or
making pictures was left to foreigners.
Then came the Dark Ages. The barbarian was the proverbial bull in
the china-shop of western Europe. He had no use for what he did not
understand. Speaking in terms of the year 1921, he liked the magazine
covers of pretty ladies, but threw the Rembrandt etchings which he had
inherited into the ash-can. Soon he came to learn better. Then he tried
to undo the damage which he had created a few years before. But the
ash-cans were gone and so were the pictures.
But by this time, his own art, which he had brought with him from the
east, had developed into something very beautiful and he made up for his
past neglect and indifference by the so-called "art of the Middle
Ages" which as far as northern Europe is concerned was a product of the
Germanic mind and had borrowed but little from the Greeks and the Latins
and nothing at all from the older forms of art of Egypt and Assyria, not
to speak of India and China, which simply did not exist, as far as the
people of that time were concerned. Indeed, so little had the northern
races been influenced by their southern neighbours that their own
architectural products were completely misunderstood by the people of
Italy and were treated by them with downright and unmitigated contempt.
You have all heard the word Gothic. You probably associate it with the
picture of a lovely old cathedral, lifting its slender spires towards
high heaven. But what does the word really mean?
It means something "uncouth" and "barbaric"--something which one might
expect from an "uncivilised Goth," a rough backwoods-man who had no
respect for the established rules of classical art and who built his
"modern horrors" to please his own low tastes without a decent regard
for the examples of the Forum and the Acropolis.
And yet for several centuries this form of Gothic architecture was the
highest expression of the sincere feeling for art which inspired the
whole northern continent. From a previous chapter, you will remember how
the people of the late Middle Ages lived. Unless they were peasants and
dwelt in villages, they were citizens of a "city" or "civitas," the old
Latin name for a tribe. And indeed, behind their high walls and their
deep moats, these good burghers were true tribesmen who shared the
common dangers and enjoyed the common safety and prosperity which they
derived from their system of mutual protection.
In the old Greek and Roman cities the market-place, where the temple
stood, had been the centre of civic life. During the Middle Ages, the
Church, the House of God, became such a centre. We modern Protestant
people, who go to our church only once a week, and then for a few hours
only, hardly know what a mediaeval church meant to the community. Then,
before you were a week old, you were taken to the Church to be baptised.
As a child, you visited the Church to learn the holy stories of the
Scriptures. Later on you became a member of the congregation, and if you
were rich enough you built yourself a separate little chapel sacred to
the memory of the Patron Saint of your own family. As for the sacred
edifice, it was open at all hours of the day and many of the night. In
a certain sense it resembled a modern club, dedicated to all the
inhabitants of the town. In the church you very likely caught a first
glimpse of the girl who was to become your bride at a great ceremony
before the High Altar. And finally, when the end of the journey had
come, you were buried beneath the stones of this familiar building, that
all your children and their grandchildren might pass over your grave
until the Day of Judgement.
Because the Church was not only the House of God but also the true
centre of all common life, the building had to be different from
anything that had ever been constructed by the hands of man. The temples
of the Egyptians and the Greeks and the Romans had been merely the
shrine of a local divinity. As no sermons were preached before the
images of Osiris or Zeus or Jupiter, it was not necessary that
the interior offer space for a great multitude. All the religious
processions of the old Mediterranean peoples took place in the open.
But in the north, where the weather was usually bad, most functions were
held under the roof of the church.
During many centuries the architects struggled with this problem of
constructing a building that was large enough. The Roman tradition
taught them how to build heavy stone walls with very small windows lest
the walls lose their strength. On the top of this they then placed a
heavy stone roof. But in the twelfth century, after the beginning of
the Crusades, when the architects had seen the pointed arches of the
Mohammedan builders, the western builders discovered a new style which
gave them their first chance to make the sort of building which those
days of an intense religious life demanded. And then they developed this
strange style upon which the Italians bestowed the contemptuous name of
"Gothic" or barbaric. They achieved their purpose by inventing a vaulted
roof which was supported by "ribs." But such a roof, if it became too
heavy, was apt to break the walls, just as a man of three hundred pounds
sitting down upon a child's chair will force it to collapse. To overcome
this difficulty, certain French architects then began to re-enforce the
walls with "buttresses" which were merely heavy masses of stone against
which the walls could lean while they supported the roof. And to assure
the further safety of the roof they supported the ribs of the roof by
so-called "flying buttresses," a very simple method of construction
which you will understand at once when you look at our picture.
This new method of construction allowed the introduction of enormous
windows. In the twelfth century, glass was still an expensive curiosity,
and very few private buildings possessed glass windows. Even the castles
of the nobles were without protection and this accounts for the eternal
drafts and explains why people of that day wore furs in-doors as well as
out.
Fortunately, the art of making coloured glass, with which the ancient
people of the Mediterranean had been familiar, had not been entirely
lost. There was a revival of stained glass-making and soon the windows
of the Gothic churches told the stories of the Holy Book in little
bits of brilliantly coloured window-pane, which were caught in a long
framework of lead.
Behold, therefore, the new and glorious house of God, filled with an
eager multitude, "living" its religion as no people have ever done
either before or since! Nothing is considered too good or too costly or
too wondrous for this House of God and Home of Man. The sculptors, who
since the destruction of the Roman Empire have been out of employment,
haltingly return to their noble art. Portals and pillars and buttresses
and cornices are all covered with carven images of Our Lord and the
blessed Saints. The embroiderers too are set to work to make tapestries
for the walls. The jewellers offer their highest art that the shrine of
the altar may be worthy of complete adoration. Even the painter does his
best. Poor man, he is greatly handicapped by lack of a suitable medium.
And thereby hangs a story.
The Romans of the early Christian period had covered the floors and
the walls of their temples and houses with mosaics; pictures made of
coloured bits of glass. But this art had been exceedingly difficult.
It gave the painter no chance to express all he wanted to say, as all
children know who have ever tried to make figures out of coloured blocks
of wood. The art of mosaic painting therefore died out during the late
Middle Ages except in Russia, where the Byzantine mosaic painters
had found a refuge after the fall of Constantinople and continued
to ornament the walls of the orthodox churches until the day of the
Bolsheviki, when there was an end to the building of churches.
Of course, the mediaeval painter could mix his colours with the water
of the wet plaster which was put upon the walls of the churches. This
method of painting upon "fresh plaster" (which was generally called
"fresco" or "fresh" painting) was very popular for many centuries.
To-day, it is as rare as the art of painting miniatures in manuscripts
and among the hundreds of artists of our modern cities there is perhaps
one who can handle this medium successfully. But during the Middle Ages
there was no other way and the artists were "fresco" workers for lack
of something better. The method however had certain great disadvantages.
Very often the plaster came off the walls after only a few years, or
dampness spoiled the pictures, just as dampness will spoil the pattern
of our wall paper. People tried every imaginable expedient to get away
from this plaster background. They tried to mix their colours with wine
and vinegar and with honey and with the sticky white of egg, but none
of these methods were satisfactory. For more than a thousand years these
experiments continued. In painting pictures upon the parchment leaves of
manuscripts the mediaeval artists were very successful. But when it came
to covering large spaces of wood or stone with paint which would stick,
they did not succeed very well.
At last, during the first half of the fifteenth century, the problem
was solved in the southern Netherlands by Jan and Hubert van Eyck. The
famous Flemish brothers mixed their paint with specially prepared oils
and this allowed them to use wood and canvas or stone or anything else
as a background for their pictures.
But by this time the religious ardour of the early Middle Ages was a
thing of the past. The rich burghers of the cities were succeeding the
bishops as patrons of the arts. And as art invariably follows the full
dinner-pail, the artists now began to work for these worldly employers
and painted pictures for kings, for grand-dukes and for rich bankers.
Within a very short time, the new method of painting with oil spread
through Europe and in every country there developed a school of special
painting which showed the characteristic tastes of the people for whom
these portraits and landscapes were made.
In Spain, for example, Velasquez painted court-dwarfs and the weavers
of the royal tapestry-factories, and all sorts of persons and subjects
connected with the king and his court. But in Holland, Rembrandt and
Frans Hals and Vermeer painted the barnyard of the merchant's house,
and they painted his rather dowdy wife and his healthy but bumptious
children and the ships which had brought him his wealth. In Italy on
the other hand, where the Pope remained the largest patron of the arts,
Michelangelo and Correggio continued to paint Madonnas and Saints, while
in England, where the aristocracy was very rich and powerful and in
France where the kings had become uppermost in the state, the artists
painted distinguished gentlemen who were members of the government, and
very lovely ladies who were friends of His Majesty.
The great change in painting, which came about with the neglect of the
old church and the rise of a new class in society, was reflected in all
other forms of art. The invention of printing had made it possible for
authors to win fame and reputation by writing books for the multitudes.
In this way arose the profession of the novelist and the illustrator.
But the people who had money enough to buy the new books were not the
sort who liked to sit at home of nights, looking at the ceiling or just
sitting. They wanted to be amused. The few minstrels of the Middle Ages
were not sufficient to cover the demand for entertainment. For the first
time since the early Greek city-states of two thousand years before, the
professional playwright had a chance to ply his trade. The Middle Ages
had known the theatre merely as part of certain church celebrations. The
tragedies of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries had told the story
of the suffering of our Lord. But during the sixteenth century the
worldly theatre made its reappearance. It is true that, at first, the
position of the professional playwright and actor was not a very high
one. William Shakespeare was regarded as a sort of circus-fellow who
amused his neighbours with his tragedies and comedies. But when he died
in the year 1616 he had begun to enjoy the respect of his neighbours and
actors were no longer subjects of police supervision.
William's contemporary, Lope de Vega, the incredible Spaniard who wrote
no less than 1800 worldly and 400 religious plays, was a person of rank
who received the papal approval upon his work. A century later, Moliere,
the Frenchman, was deemed worthy of the companionship of none less than
King Louis XIV.
Since then, the theatre has enjoyed an ever increasing affection on the
part of the people. To-day a "theatre" is part of every well-regulated
city, and the "silent drama" of the movies has penetrated to the tiniest
of our prairie hamlets.
Another art, however, was to become the most popular of all. That was
music. Most of the old art-forms demanded a great deal of technical
skill. It takes years and years of practice before our clumsy hand is
able to follow the commands of the brain and reproduce our vision upon
canvas or in marble. It takes a life-time to learn how to act or how to
write a good novel. And it takes a great deal of training on the part of
the public to appreciate the best in painting and writing and sculpture.
But almost any one, not entirely tone-deaf, can follow a tune and almost
everybody can get enjoyment out of some sort of music. The Middle Ages
had heard a little music but it had been entirely the music of the
church. The holy chants were subject to very severe laws of rhythm and
harmony and soon these became monotonous. Besides, they could not well
be sung in the street or in the market-place.
The Renaissance changed this. Music once more came into its own as the
best friend of man, both in his happiness and in his sorrows.
The Egyptians and the Babylonians and the ancient Jews had all been
great lovers of music. They had even combined different instruments
into regular orchestras. But the Greeks had frowned upon this barbaric
foreign noise. They liked to hear a man recite the stately poetry of
Homer and Pindar. They allowed him to accompany himself upon the lyre
(the poorest of all stringed instruments). That was as far as any one
could go without incurring the risk of popular disapproval. The Romans
on the other hand had loved orchestral music at their dinners and
parties and they had invented most of the instruments which (in VERY
modified form) we use to-day. The early church had despised this music
which smacked too much of the wicked pagan world which had just been
destroyed. A few songs rendered by the entire congregation were all
the bishops of the third and fourth centuries would tolerate. As the
congregation was apt to sing dreadfully out of key without the guidance
of an instrument, the church had afterwards allowed the use of an organ,
an invention of the second century of our era which consisted of a
combination of the old pipes of Pan and a pair of bellows.
Then came the great migrations. The last of the Roman musicians were
either killed or became tramp-fiddlers going from city to city and
playing in the street, and begging for pennies like the harpist on a
modern ferry-boat.
But the revival of a more worldly civilisation in the cities of the late
Middle Ages had created a new demand for musicians. Instruments like
the horn, which had been used only as signal-instruments for hunting and
fighting, were remodelled until they could reproduce sounds which were
agreeable in the dance-hall and in the banqueting room. A bow strung
with horse-hair was used to play the old-fashioned guitar and before the
end of the Middle Ages this six-stringed instrument (the most ancient of
all string-instruments which dates back to Egypt and Assyria) had grown
into our modern four-stringed fiddle which Stradivarius and the other
Italian violin-makers of the eighteenth century brought to the height of
perfection.
And finally the modern piano was invented, the most wide-spread of all
musical instruments, which has followed man into the wilderness of the
jungle and the ice-fields of Greenland. The organ had been the first
of all keyed instruments but the performer always depended upon the
co-operation of some one who worked the bellows, a job which nowadays
is done by electricity. The musicians therefore looked for a handier and
less circumstantial instrument to assist them in training the pupils
of the many church choirs. During the great eleventh century, Guido,
a Benedictine monk of the town of Arezzo (the birthplace of the poet
Petrarch) gave us our modern system of musical annotation. Some time
during that century, when there was a great deal of popular interest
in music, the first instrument with both keys and strings was built. It
must have sounded as tinkly as one of those tiny children's pianos which
you can buy at every toy-shop. In the city of Vienna, the town where
the strolling musicians of the Middle Ages (who had been classed
with jugglers and card sharps) had formed the first separate Guild of
Musicians in the year 1288, the little monochord was developed into
something which we can recognise as the direct ancestor of our modern
Steinway. From Austria the "clavichord" as it was usually called in
those days (because it had "craves" or keys) went to Italy. There it
was perfected into the "spinet" which was so called after the inventor,
Giovanni Spinetti of Venice. At last during the eighteenth century, some
time between 1709 and 1720, Bartolomeo Cristofori made a "clavier" which
allowed the performer to play both loudly and softly or as it was said
in Italian, "piano" and "forte." This instrument with certain changes
became our "pianoforte" or piano.
Then for the first time the world possessed an easy and convenient
instrument which could be mastered in a couple of years and did not need
the eternal tuning of harps and fiddles and was much pleasanter to the
ears than the mediaeval tubas, clarinets, trombones and oboes. Just as
the phonograph has given millions of modern people their first love of
music so did the early "pianoforte" carry the knowledge of music
into much wider circles. Music became part of the education of every
well-bred man and woman. Princes and rich merchants maintained private
orchestras. The musician ceased to be a wandering "jongleur" and became
a highly valued member of the community. Music was added to the dramatic
performances of the theatre and out of this practice, grew our modern
Opera. Originally only a few very rich princes could afford the expenses
of an "opera troupe." But as the taste for this sort of entertainment
grew, many cities built their own theatres where Italian and afterwards
German operas were given to the unlimited joy of the whole community
with the exception of a few sects of very strict Christians who still
regarded music with deep suspicion as something which was too lovely to
be entirely good for the soul.
By the middle of the eighteenth century the musical life of Europe was
in full swing. Then there came forward a man who was greater than all
others, a simple organist of the Thomas Church of Leipzig, by the
name of Johann Sebastian Bach. In his compositions for every known
instrument, from comic songs and popular dances to the most stately of
sacred hymns and oratorios, he laid the foundation for all our modern
music. When he died in the year 1750 he was succeeded by Mozart, who
created musical fabrics of sheer loveliness which remind us of lace
that has been woven out of harmony and rhythm. Then came Ludwig van
Beethoven, the most tragic of men, who gave us our modern orchestra,
yet heard none of his greatest compositions because he was deaf, as the
result of a cold contracted during his years of poverty.
Beethoven lived through the period of the great French Revolution.
Full of hope for a new and glorious day, he had dedicated one of his
symphonies to Napoleon. But he lived to regret the hour. When he died in
the year 1827, Napoleon was gone and the French Revolution was gone, but
the steam engine had come and was filling the world with a sound that
had nothing in common with the dreams of the Third Symphony.
Indeed, the new order of steam and iron and coal and large factories had
little use for art, for painting and sculpture and poetry and music. The
old protectors of the arts, the Church and the princes and the merchants
of the Middle Ages and the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries no
longer existed. The leaders of the new industrial world were too busy
and had too little education to bother about etchings and sonatas and
bits of carved ivory, not to speak of the men who created those things,
and who were of no practical use to the community in which they lived.
And the workmen in the factories listened to the drone of their engines
until they too had lost all taste for the melody of the flute or fiddle
of their peasant ancestry. The arts became the step-children of the
new industrial era. Art and Life became entirely separated. Whatever
paintings had been left, were dying a slow death in the museums. And
music became a monopoly of a few "virtuosi" who took the music away from
the home and carried it to the concert-hall.
But steadily, although slowly, the arts are coming back into their own.
People begin to understand that Rembrandt and Beethoven and Rodin are
the true prophets and leaders of their race and that a world without art
and happiness resembles a nursery without laughter.
COLONIAL EXPANSION AND WAR
A CHAPTER WHICH OUGHT TO GIVE YOU A GREAT DEAL OF POLITICAL INFORMATION
ABOUT THE LAST FIFTY YEARS, BUT WHICH REALLY CONTAINS SEVERAL
EXPLANATIONS AND A FEW APOLOGIES
IF I had known how difficult it was to write a History of the World, I
should never have undertaken the task. Of course, any one possessed
of enough industry to lose himself for half a dozen years in the musty
stacks of a library, can compile a ponderous tome which gives an account
of the events in every land during every century. But that was not the
purpose of the present book. The publishers wanted to print a history
that should have rhythm--a story which galloped rather than walked. And
now that I have almost finished I discover that certain chapters gallop,
that others wade slowly through the dreary sands of long forgotten
ages--that a few parts do not make any progress at all, while still
others indulge in a veritable jazz of action and romance. I did not like
this and I suggested that we destroy the whole manuscript and begin once
more from the beginning. This, however, the publishers would not allow.
As the next best solution of my difficulties, I took the type-written
pages to a number of charitable friends and asked them to read what I
had said, and give me the benefit of their advice. The experience was
rather disheartening. Each and every man had his own prejudices and his
own hobbies and preferences. They all wanted to know why, where and how
I dared to omit their pet nation, their pet statesman, or even their
most beloved criminal. With some of them, Napoleon and Jenghiz Khan were
candidates for high honours. I explained that I had tried very hard to
be fair to Napoleon, but that in my estimation he was greatly inferior
to such men as George Washington, Gustavus Wasa, Augustus, Hammurabi
or Lincoln, and a score of others all of whom were obliged to content
themselves with a few paragraphs, from sheer lack of space. As for
Jenghiz Khan, I only recognise his superior ability in the field of
wholesale murder and I did not intend to give him any more publicity
than I could help.
"This is very well as far as it goes," said the next critic, "but how
about the Puritans? We are celebrating the tercentenary of their arrival
at Plymouth. They ought to have more space." My answer was that if I
were writing a history of America, the Puritans would get fully one half
of the first twelve chapters; that however this was a history of mankind
and that the event on Plymouth rock was not a matter of far-reaching
international importance until many centuries later; that the United
States had been founded by thirteen colonies and not by a single one;
that the most prominent leaders of the first twenty years of our history
had been from Virginia, from Pennsylvania, and from the island of Nevis,
rather than from Massachusetts; and that therefore the Puritans ought to
content themselves with a page of print and a special map.
Next came the prehistoric specialist. Why in the name of the great
Tyrannosaur had I not devoted more space to the wonderful race of
Cro-Magnon men, who had developed such a high stage of civilisation
10,000 years ago?
Indeed, and why not? The reason is simple. I do not take as much
stock in the perfection of these early races as some of our most
noted anthropologists seem to do. Rousseau and the philosophers of the
eighteenth century created the "noble savage" who was supposed to have
dwelt in a state of perfect happiness during the beginning of time. Our
modern scientists have discarded the "noble savage," so dearly beloved
by our grandfathers, and they have replaced him by the "splendid savage"
of the French Valleys who 35,000 years ago made an end to the universal
rule of the low-browed and low-living brutes of the Neanderthal and
other Germanic neighbourhoods. They have shown us the elephants the
Cro-Magnon painted and the statues he carved and they have surrounded
him with much glory.
I do not mean to say that they are wrong. But I hold that we know by
far too little of this entire period to re-construct that early
west-European society with any degree (however humble) of accuracy. And
I would rather not state certain things than run the risk of stating
certain things that were not so.
Then there were other critics, who accused me of direct unfairness. Why
did I leave out such countries as Ireland and Bulgaria and Siam while I
dragged in such other countries as Holland and Iceland and Switzerland?
My answer was that I did not drag in any countries. They pushed
themselves in by main force of circumstances, and I simply could not
keep them out. And in order that my point may be understood, let me
state the basis upon which active membership to this book of history was
considered.
There was but one rule. "Did the country or the person in question
produce a new idea or perform an original act without which the history
of the entire human race would have been different?" It was not a
question of personal taste. It was a matter of cool, almost mathematical
judgment. No race ever played a more picturesque role in history than
the Mongolians, and no race, from the point of view of achievement or
intelligent progress, was of less value to the rest of mankind.
The career of Tiglath-Pileser, the Assyrian, is full of dramatic
episodes. But as far as we are concerned, he might just as well never
have existed at all. In the same way, the history of the Dutch Republic
is not interesting because once upon a time the sailors of de Ruyter
went fishing in the river Thames, but rather because of the fact
that this small mud-bank along the shores of the North Sea offered a
hospitable asylum to all sorts of strange people who had all sorts of
queer ideas upon all sorts of very unpopular subjects.
It is quite true that Athens or Florence, during the hey-day of their
glory, had only one tenth of the population of Kansas City. But our
present civilisation would be very different had neither of these two
little cities of the Mediterranean basin existed. And the same (with due
apologies to the good people of Wyandotte County) can hardly be said of
this busy metropolis on the Missouri River.
And since I am being very personal, allow me to state one other fact.
When we visit a doctor, we find out before hand whether he is a surgeon
or a diagnostician or a homeopath or a faith healer, for we want to know
from what angle he will look at our complaint. We ought to be as careful
in the choice of our historians as we are in the selection of our
physicians. We think, "Oh well, history is history," and let it go
at that. But the writer who was educated in a strictly Presbyterian
household somewhere in the backwoods of Scotland will look differently
upon every question of human relationships from his neighbour who as
a child, was dragged to listen to the brilliant exhortations of Robert
Ingersoll, the enemy of all revealed Devils. In due course of time, both
men may forget their early training and never again visit either church
or lecture hall. But the influence of these impressionable years stays
with them and they cannot escape showing it in whatever they write or
say or do.
In the preface to this book, I told you that I should not be an
infallible guide and now that we have almost reached the end, I
repeat the warning. I was born and educated in an atmosphere of the
old-fashioned liberalism which had followed the discoveries of Darwin
and the other pioneers of the nineteenth century. As a child, I happened
to spend most of my waking hours with an uncle who was a great collector
of the books written by Montaigne, the great French essayist of the
sixteenth century. Because I was born in Rotterdam and educated in the
city of Gouda, I ran continually across Erasmus and for some unknown
reason this great exponent of tolerance took hold of my intolerant
self. Later I discovered Anatole France and my first experience with
the English language came about through an accidental encounter with
Thackeray's "Henry Esmond," a story which made more impression upon me
than any other book in the English language.
If I had been born in a pleasant middle western city I probably
should have a certain affection for the hymns which I had heard in
my childhood. But my earliest recollection of music goes back to the
afternoon when my Mother took me to hear nothing less than a Bach
fugue. And the mathematical perfection of the great Protestant master
influenced me to such an extent that I cannot hear the usual hymns of
our prayer-meetings without a feeling of intense agony and direct pain.
Again, if I had been born in Italy and had been warmed by the sunshine
of the happy valley of the Arno, I might love many colourful and sunny
pictures which now leave me indifferent because I got my first artistic
impressions in a country where the rare sun beats down upon the
rain-soaked land with almost cruel brutality and throws everything into
violent contrasts of dark and light.
I state these few facts deliberately that you may know the personal bias
of the man who wrote this history and may understand his point-of-view.
The bibliography at the end of this book, which represents all sorts
of opinions and views, will allow you to compare my ideas with those of
other people. And in this way, you will be able to reach your own final
conclusions with a greater degree of fairness than would otherwise be
possible.
After this short but necessary excursion, we return to the history of
the last fifty years. Many things happened during this period but very
little occurred which at the time seemed to be of paramount importance.
The majority of the greater powers ceased to be mere political agencies
and became large business enterprises. They built railroads. They
founded and subsidized steam-ship lines to all parts of the world. They
connected their different possessions with telegraph wires. And they
steadily increased their holdings in other continents. Every available
bit of African or Asiatic territory was claimed by one of the rival
powers. France became a colonial nation with interests in Algiers and
Madagascar and Annam and Tonkin (in eastern Asia). Germany claimed parts
of southwest and east Africa, built settlements in Kameroon on the
west coast of Africa and in New Guinea and many of the islands of the
Pacific, and used the murder of a few missionaries as a welcome excuse
to take the harbour of Kisochau on the Yellow Sea in China. Italy tried
her luck in Abyssinia, was disastrously defeated by the soldiers of
the Negus, and consoled herself by occupying the Turkish possessions in
Tripoli in northern Africa. Russia, having occupied all of Siberia, took
Port Arthur away from China. Japan, having defeated China in the war of
1895, occupied the island of Formosa and in the year 1905 began to
lay claim to the entire empire of Corea. In the year 1883 England, the
largest colonial empire the world has ever seen, undertook to "protect"
Egypt. She performed this task most efficiently and to the great
material benefit of that much neglected country, which ever since the
opening of the Suez canal in 1868 had been threatened with a foreign
invasion. During the next thirty years she fought a number of colonial
wars in different parts of the world and in 1902 (after three years of
bitter fighting) she conquered the independent Boer republics of the
Transvaal and the Orange Free State. Meanwhile she had encouraged Cecil
Rhodes to lay the foundations for a great African state, which reached
from the Cape almost to the mouth of the Nile, and had faithfully picked
up such islands or provinces as had been left without a European owner.
The shrewd king of Belgium, by name Leopold, used the discoveries of
Henry Stanley to found the Congo Free State in the year 1885. Originally
this gigantic tropical empire was an "absolute monarchy." But after many
years of scandalous mismanagement, it was annexed by the Belgian people
who made it a colony (in the year 1908) and abolished the terrible
abuses which had been tolerated by this very unscrupulous Majesty, who
cared nothing for the fate of the natives as long as he got his ivory
and rubber.
As for the United States, they had so much land that they desired no
further territory. But the terrible misrule of Cuba, one of the last of
the Spanish possessions in the western hemisphere, practically forced
the Washington government to take action. After a short and rather
uneventful war, the Spaniards were driven out of Cuba and Puerto Rico
and the Philippines, and the two latter became colonies of the United
States.
This economic development of the world was perfectly natural. The
increasing number of factories in England and France and Germany needed
an ever increasing amount of raw materials and the equally increasing
number of European workers needed an ever increasing amount of food.
Everywhere the cry was for more and for richer markets, for more
easily accessible coal mines and iron mines and rubber plantations and
oil-wells, for greater supplies of wheat and grain.
The purely political events of the European continent dwindled to mere
insignificance in the eyes of men who were making plans for steamboat
lines on Victoria Nyanza or for railroads through the interior of
Shantung. They knew that many European questions still remained to be
settled, but they did not bother, and through sheer indifference and
carelessness they bestowed upon their descendants a terrible inheritance
of hate and misery. For untold centuries the south-eastern corner
of Europe had been the scene of rebellion and bloodshed. During the
seventies of the last century the people of Serbia and Bulgaria and
Montenegro and Roumania were once more trying to gain their freedom and
the Turks (with the support of many of the western powers), were trying
to prevent this.
After a period of particularly atrocious massacres in Bulgaria in the
year 1876, the Russian people lost all patience. The Government was
forced to intervene just as President McKinley was obliged to go to Cuba
and stop the shooting-squads of General Weyler in Havana. In April of
the year 1877 the Russian armies crossed the Danube, stormed the Shipka
pass, and after the capture of Plevna, marched southward until they
reached the gates of Constantinople. Turkey appealed for help to
England. There were many English people who denounced their government
when it took the side of the Sultan. But Disraeli (who had just made
Queen Victoria Empress of India and who loved the picturesque Turks
while he hated the Russians who were brutally cruel to the Jewish people
within their frontiers) decided to interfere. Russia was forced to
conclude the peace of San Stefano (1878) and the question of the Balkans
was left to a Congress which convened at Berlin in June and July of the
same year.
This famous conference was entirely dominated by the personality of
Disraeli. Even Bismarck feared the clever old man with his well-oiled
curly hair and his supreme arrogance, tempered by a cynical sense
of humor and a marvellous gift for flattery. At Berlin the British
prime-minister carefully watched over the fate of his friends the Turks.
Montenegro, Serbia and Roumania were recognised as independent kingdoms.
The principality of Bulgaria was given a semi-independent status under
Prince Alexander of Battenberg, a nephew of Tsar Alexander II. But none
of those countries were given the chance to develop their powers and
their resources as they would have been able to do, had England been
less anxious about the fate of the Sultan, whose domains were necessary
to the safety of the British Empire as a bulwark against further Russian
aggression.
To make matters worse, the congress allowed Austria to take Bosnia and
Herzegovina away from the Turks to be "administered" as part of the
Habsburg domains. It is true that Austria made an excellent job of it.
The neglected provinces were as well managed as the best of the British
colonies, and that is saying a great deal. But they were inhabited by
many Serbians. In older days they had been part of the great Serbian
empire of Stephan Dushan, who early in the fourteenth century had
defended western Europe against the invasions of the Turks and whose
capital of Uskub had been a centre of civilisation one hundred and fifty
years before Columbus discovered the new lands of the west. The Serbians
remembered their ancient glory as who would not? They resented the
presence of the Austrians in two provinces, which, so they felt, were
theirs by every right of tradition.
And it was in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, that the archduke
Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, was murdered on June 28 of the
year 1914. The assassin was a Serbian student who had acted from purely
patriotic motives.
But the blame for this terrible catastrophe which was the immediate,
though not the only cause of the Great World War did not lie with the
half-crazy Serbian boy or his Austrian victim. It must be traced back
to the days of the famous Berlin Conference when Europe was too busy
building a material civilisation to care about the aspirations and
the dreams of a forgotten race in a dreary corner of the old Balkan
peninsula.
A NEW WORLD
THE GREAT WAR WHICH WAS REALLY THE STRUGGLE FOR A NEW AND BETTER WORLD
THE Marquis de Condorcet was one of the noblest characters among the
small group of honest enthusiasts who were responsible for the outbreak
of the great French Revolution. He had devoted his life to the cause
of the poor and the unfortunate. He had been one of the assistants of
d'Alembert and Diderot when they wrote their famous Encyclopedie. During
the first years of the Revolution he had been the leader of the Moderate
wing of the Convention.
His tolerance, his kindliness, his stout common sense, had made him an
object of suspicion when the treason of the king and the court
clique had given the extreme radicals their chance to get hold of the
government and kill their opponents. Condorcet was declared "hors de
loi," or outlawed, an outcast who was henceforth at the mercy of every
true patriot. His friends offered to hide him at their own peril.
Condorcet refused to accept their sacrifice. He escaped and tried to
reach his home, where he might be safe. After three nights in the
open, torn and bleeding, he entered an inn and asked for some food. The
suspicious yokels searched him and in his pockets they found a copy of
Horace, the Latin poet. This showed that their prisoner was a man of
gentle breeding and had no business upon the highroads at a time when
every educated person was regarded as an enemy of the Revolutionary
state. They took Condorcet and they bound him and they gagged him and
they threw him into the village lock-up, but in the morning when the
soldiers came to drag him back to Paris and cut his head off, behold! he
was dead.
This man who had given all and had received nothing had good reason to
despair of the human race. But he has written a few sentences which ring
as true to-day as they did one hundred and thirty years ago. I repeat
them here for your benefit.
"Nature has set no limits to our hopes," he wrote, "and the picture of
the human race, now freed from its chains and marching with a firm tread
on the road of truth and virtue and happiness, offers to the philosopher
a spectacle which consoles him for the errors, for the crimes and the
injustices which still pollute and afflict this earth."
The world has just passed through an agony of pain compared to which the
French Revolution was a mere incident. The shock has been so great that
it has killed the last spark of hope in the breasts of millions of
men. They were chanting a hymn of progress, and four years of slaughter
followed their prayers for peace. "Is it worth while," so they ask,
"to work and slave for the benefit of creatures who have not yet passed
beyond the stage of the earliest cave men?"
There is but one answer.
That answer is "Yes!"
The World War was a terrible calamity. But it did not mean the end of
things. On the contrary it brought about the coming of a new day.
It is easy to write a history of Greece and Rome or the Middle Ages.
The actors who played their parts upon that long-forgotten stage are
all dead. We can criticize them with a cool head. The audience that
applauded their efforts has dispersed. Our remarks cannot possibly hurt
their feelings.
But it is very difficult to give a true account of contemporary events.
The problems that fill the minds of the people with whom we pass through
life, are our own problems, and they hurt us too much or they please us
too well to be described with that fairness which is necessary when we
are writing history and not blowing the trumpet of propaganda. All the
same I shall endeavour to tell you why I agree with poor Condorcet when
he expressed his firm faith in a better future.
Often before have I warned you against the false impression which is
created by the use of our so-called historical epochs which divide the
story of man into four parts, the ancient world, the Middle Ages, the
Renaissance and the Reformation, and Modern Time. The last of these
terms is the most dangerous. The word "modern" implies that we, the
people of the twentieth century, are at the top of human achievement.
Fifty years ago the liberals of England who followed the leadership of
Gladstone felt that the problem of a truly representative and democratic
form of government had been solved forever by the second great Reform
Bill, which gave workmen an equal share in the government with their
employers. When Disraeli and his conservative friends talked of a
dangerous "leap in the dark" they answered "No." They felt certain of
their cause and trusted that henceforth all classes of society would
co-operate to make the government of their common country a success.
Since then many things have happened, and the few liberals who are still
alive begin to understand that they were mistaken.
There is no definite answer to any historical problem.
Every generation must fight the good fight anew or perish as those
sluggish animals of the prehistoric world have perished.
If you once get hold of this great truth you will get a new and much
broader view of life. Then, go one step further and try to imagine
yourself in the position of your own great-great-grandchildren who will
take your place in the year 10,000. They too will learn history. But
what will they think of those short four thousand years during which we
have kept a written record of our actions and of our thoughts? They will
think of Napoleon as a contemporary of Tiglath Pileser, the Assyrian
conqueror. Perhaps they will confuse him with Jenghiz Khan or Alexander
the Macedonian. The great war which has just come to an end will
appear in the light of that long commercial conflict which settled the
supremacy of the Mediterranean when Rome and Carthage fought during one
hundred and twenty-eight years for the mastery of the sea. The Balkan
troubles of the 19th century (the struggle for freedom of Serbia and
Greece and Bulgaria and Montenegro) to them will seem a continuation of
the disordered conditions caused by the Great Migrations. They will look
at pictures of the Rheims cathedral which only yesterday was destroyed
by German guns as we look upon a photograph of the Acropolis ruined
two hundred and fifty years ago during a war between the Turks and the
Venetians. They will regard the fear of death, which is still common
among many people, as a childish superstition which was perhaps natural
in a race of men who had burned witches as late as the year 1692. Even
our hospitals and our laboratories and our operating rooms of which we
are so proud will look like slightly improved workshops of alchemists
and mediaeval surgeons.
And the reason for all this is simple. We modern men and women are not
"modern" at all. On the contrary we still belong to the last generations
of the cave-dwellers. The foundation for a new era was laid but
yesterday. The human race was given its first chance to become
truly civilised when it took courage to question all things and made
"knowledge and understanding" the foundation upon which to create a more
reasonable and sensible society of human beings. The Great War was the
"growing-pain" of this new world.
For a long time to come people will write mighty books to prove that
this or that or the other person brought about the war. The Socialists
will publish volumes in which they will accuse the "capitalists" of
having brought about the war for "commercial gain." The capitalists
will answer that they lost infinitely more through the war than they
made--that their children were among the first to go and fight and be
killed--and they will show how in every country the bankers tried their
very best to avert the outbreak of hostilities. French historians will
go through the register of German sins from the days of Charlemagne
until the days of William of Hohenzollern and German historians will
return the compliment and will go through the list of French horrors
from the days of Charlemagne until the days of President Poincare. And
then they will establish to their own satisfaction that the other fellow
was guilty of "causing the war." Statesmen, dead and not yet dead, in
all countries will take to their typewriters and they will explain how
they tried to avert hostilities and how their wicked opponents forced
them into it.
The historian, a hundred years hence, will not bother about these
apologies and vindications. He will understand the real nature of the
underlying causes and he will know that personal ambitions and personal
wickedness and personal greed had very little to do with the final
outburst. The original mistake, which was responsible for all this
misery, was committed when our scientists began to create a new world of
steel and iron and chemistry and electricity and forgot that the human
mind is slower than the proverbial turtle, is lazier than the well-known
sloth, and marches from one hundred to three hundred years behind the
small group of courageous leaders.
A Zulu in a frock coat is still a Zulu. A dog trained to ride a bicycle
and smoke a pipe is still a dog. And a human being with the mind of a
sixteenth century tradesman driving a 1921 Rolls-Royce is still a human
being with the mind of a sixteenth century tradesman.
If you do not understand this at first, read it again. It will become
clearer to you in a moment and it will explain many things that have
happened these last six years.
Perhaps I may give you another, more familiar, example, to show you what
I mean. In the movie theatres, jokes and funny remarks are often thrown
upon the screen. Watch the audience the next time you have a chance. A
few people seem almost to inhale the words. It takes them but a second
to read the lines. Others are a bit slower. Still others take from
twenty to thirty seconds. Finally those men and women who do not read
any more than they can help, get the point when the brighter ones among
the audience have already begun to decipher the next cut-in. It is not
different in human life, as I shall now show you.
In a former chapter I have told you how the idea of the Roman Empire
continued to live for a thousand years after the death of the last Roman
Emperor. It caused the establishment of a large number of "imitation
empires." It gave the Bishops of Rome a chance to make themselves the
head of the entire church, because they represented the idea of Roman
world-supremacy. It drove a number of perfectly harmless barbarian
chieftains into a career of crime and endless warfare because they were
for ever under the spell of this magic word "Rome." All these people,
Popes, Emperors and plain fighting men were not very different from you
or me. But they lived in a world where the Roman tradition was a vital
issue something living--something which was remembered clearly both
by the father and the son and the grandson. And so they struggled and
sacrificed themselves for a cause which to-day would not find a dozen
recruits.
In still another chapter I have told you how the great religious
wars took place more than a century after the first open act of the
Reformation and if you will compare the chapter on the Thirty Years War
with that on Inventions, you will see that this ghastly butchery took
place at a time when the first clumsy steam engines were already
puffing in the laboratories of a number of French and German and English
scientists. But the world at large took no interest in these strange
contraptions, and went on with a grand theological discussion which
to-day causes yawns, but no anger.
And so it goes. A thousand years from now, the historian will use the
same words about Europe of the out-going nineteenth century, and he
will see how men were engaged upon terrific nationalistic struggles
while the laboratories all around them were filled with serious folk who
cared not one whit for politics as long as they could force nature to
surrender a few more of her million secrets.
You will gradually begin to understand what I am driving at. The
engineer and the scientist and the chemist, within a single generation,
filled Europe and America and Asia with their vast machines, with their
telegraphs, their flying machines, their coal-tar products. They
created a new world in which time and space were reduced to complete
insignificance. They invented new products and they made these so cheap
that almost every one could buy them. I have told you all this before
but it certainly will bear repeating.
To keep the ever increasing number of factories going, the owners, who
had also become the rulers of the land, needed raw materials and coal.
Especially coal. Meanwhile the mass of the people were still thinking in
terms of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and clinging to the
old notions of the state as a dynastic or political organisation. This
clumsy mediaeval institution was then suddenly called upon to handle the
highly modern problems of a mechanical and industrial world. It did
its best, according to the rules of the game which had been laid down
centuries before. The different states created enormous armies and
gigantic navies which were used for the purpose of acquiring new
possessions in distant lands. Whereever{sic} there was a tiny bit of
land left, there arose an English or a French or a German or a Russian
colony. If the natives objected, they were killed. In most cases they
did not object, and were allowed to live peacefully, provided they did
not interfere with the diamond mines or the coal mines or the oil mines
or the gold mines or the rubber plantations, and they derived many
benefits from the foreign occupation.
Sometimes it happened that two states in search of raw materials wanted
the same piece of land at the same time. Then there was a war. This
occurred fifteen years ago when Russia and Japan fought for the
possession of certain terri-tories which belonged to the Chinese people.
Such conflicts, however, were the exception. No one really desired to
fight. Indeed, the idea of fighting with armies and battleships and
submarines began to seem absurd to the men of the early 20th century.
They associated the idea of violence with the long-ago age of unlimited
monarchies and intriguing dynasties. Every day they read in their papers
of still further inventions, of groups of English and American and
German scientists who were working together in perfect friendship for
the purpose of an advance in medicine or in astronomy. They lived in
a busy world of trade and of commerce and factories. But only a few
noticed that the development of the state, (of the gigantic community of
people who recognise certain common ideals,) was lagging several
hundred years behind. They tried to warn the others. But the others were
occupied with their own affairs.
I have used so many similes that I must apologise for bringing in one
more. The Ship of State (that old and trusted expression which is ever
new and always picturesque,) of the Egyptians and the Greeks and the
Romans and the Venetians and the merchant adventurers of the seventeenth
century had been a sturdy craft, constructed of well-seasoned wood, and
commanded by officers who knew both their crew and their vessel and
who understood the limitations of the art of navigating which had been
handed down to them by their ancestors.
Then came the new age of iron and steel and machinery. First one part,
then another of the old ship of state was changed. Her dimensions were
increased. The sails were discarded for steam. Better living quarters
were established, but more people were forced to go down into the
stoke-hole, and while the work was safe and fairly remunerative, they
did not like it as well as their old and more dangerous job in the
rigging. Finally, and almost imperceptibly, the old wooden square-rigger
had been transformed into a modern ocean liner. But the captain and the
mates remained the same. They were appointed or elected in the same
way as a hundred years before. They were taught the same system of
navigation which had served the mariners of the fifteenth century.
In their cabins hung the same charts and signal flags which had done
service in the days of Louis XIV and Frederick the Great. In short, they
were (through no fault of their own) completely incompetent.
The sea of international politics is not very broad. When those Imperial
and Colonial liners began to try and outrun each other, accidents were
bound to happen. They did happen. You can still see the wreckage if you
venture to pass through that part of the ocean.
And the moral of the story is a simple one. The world is in dreadful
need of men who will assume the new leadership--who will have the
courage of their own visions and who will recognise clearly that we are
only at the beginning of the voyage, and have to learn an entirely new
system of seamanship.
They will have to serve for years as mere apprentices. They will have
to fight their way to the top against every possible form of opposition.
When they reach the bridge, mutiny of an envious crew may cause their
death. But some day, a man will arise who will bring the vessel safely
to port, and he shall be the hero of the ages.
AS IT EVER SHALL BE
"The more I think of the problems of our lives, the more I am persuaded
that we ought to choose Irony and Pity for our "assessors and judges"
as the ancient Egyptians called upon "the Goddess Isis and the Goddess
Nephtys" on behalf of their dead. "Irony and Pity" are both of good
counsel; the first with her "smiles" makes life agreeable; the other
sanctifies it with her tears." "The Irony which I invoke is no cruel
Deity. She mocks neither love nor beauty. She is gentle and kindly
disposed. Her mirth disarms and it is she who teaches us to laugh at
rogues and fools, whom but for her we might be so weak as to despise
and hate."
And with these wise words of a very great Frenchman I bid you farewell.
8 Barrow Street, New York. Saturday, June 26, xxi.
AN ANIMATED CHRONOLOGY, 500,000 B.C.--A.D. 1922
THE END
CONCERNING THE PICTURES
CONCERNING THE PICTURES OF THIS BOOK AND A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
The day of the historical textbook without illustrations has gone.
Pictures and photographs of famous personages and equally famous
occurrences cover the pages of Breasted and Robinson and Beard. In this
volume the photographs have been omitted to make room for a series of
home-made drawings which represent ideas rather than events.
While the author lays no claim to great artistic excellence (being
possessed of a decided leaning towards drawing as a child, he was taught
to play the violin as a matter of discipline,) he prefers to make his
own maps and sketches because he knows exactly what he wants to say and
cannot possibly explain this meaning to his more proficient brethren in
the field of art. Besides, the pictures were all drawn for children and
their ideas of art are very different from those of their parents.
To all teachers the author would give this advice--let your boys and
girls draw their history after their own desire just as often as you
have a chance. You can show a class a photograph of a Greek temple or
a mediaeval castle and the class will dutifully say, "Yes, Ma'am," and
proceed to forget all about it. But make the Greek temple or the Roman
castle the centre of an event, tell the boys to make their own picture
of "the building of a temple," or "the storming of the castle," and they
will stay after school-hours to finish the job. Most children, before
they are taught how to draw from plaster casts, can draw after a
fashion, and often they can draw remarkably well. The product of their
pencil may look a bit prehistoric. It may even resemble the work of
certain native tribes from the upper Congo. But the child is quite
frequently prehistoric or upper-Congoish in his or her own tastes, and
expresses these primitive instincts with a most astonishing accuracy.
The main thing in teaching history, is that the pupil shall remember
certain events "in their proper sequence." The experiments of many years
in the Children's School of New York has convinced the author that few
children will ever forget what they have drawn, while very few will ever
remember what they have merely read.
It is the same with the maps. Give the child an ordinary conventional
map with dots and lines and green seas and tell him to revaluate that
geographic scene in his or her own terms. The mountains will be a
bit out of gear and the cities will look astonishingly mediaeval. The
outlines will be often very imperfect, but the general effect will be
quite as truthful as that of our conventional maps, which ever since the
days of good Gerardus Mercator have told a strangely erroneous story.
Most important of all, it will give the child a feeling of intimacy with
historical and geographic facts which cannot be obtained in any other
way.
Neither the publishers nor the author claim that "The Story of Mankind"
is the last word to be said upon the subject of history for children. It
is an appetizer. The book tries to present the subject in such a fashion
that the average child shall get a taste for History and shall ask for
more.
To facilitate the work of both parents and teachers, the publishers have
asked Miss Leonore St. John Power (who knows more upon this particular
subject than any one else they could discover) to compile a list of
readable and instructive books.
The list was made and was duly printed.
The parents who live near our big cities will experience no difficulty
in ordering these volumes from their booksellers. Those who for the
sake of fresh air and quiet, dwell in more remote spots, may not find it
convenient to go to a book-store. In that case, Boni and Liveright will
be happy to act as middle-man and obtain the books that are desired.
They want it to be distinctly understood that they have not gone into
the retail book business, but they are quite willing to do their share
towards a better and more general historical education, and all orders
will receive their immediate attention.
AN HISTORICAL READING LIST FOR CHILDREN
"Don't stop (I say) to explain that Hebe was (for once) the legitimate
daughter of Zeus and, as such, had the privilege to draw wine for the
Gods. Don't even stop, just yet, to explain who the Gods were. Don't
discourse on amber, otherwise ambergris; don't explain that 'gris'
in this connection doesn't mean 'grease'; don't trace it through
the Arabic into Noah's Ark; don't prove its electrical properties
by tearing up paper into little bits and attracting them with
the mouth-piece of your pipe rubbed on your sleeve. Don't insist
philologically that when every shepherd 'tells his tale' he is not
relating an anecdote but simply keeping 'tally' of his flock. Just go
on reading, as well as you can, and be sure that when the children get
the thrill of the story, for which you wait, they will be asking more
questions, and pertinent ones, than you are able to answer."--("On the
Art of Reading for Children," by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch.)
The Days Before History
"How the Present Came From the Past," by Margaret E. Wells, Volume I.
How earliest man learned to make tools and build homes, and the
stories he told about the fire-makers, the sun and the frost. A simple,
illustrated account of these things for children. "The Story of Ab," by
Stanley Waterloo.
A romantic tale of the time of the cave-man. (A much simplified edition
of this for little children is "Ab, the Cave Man" adapted by William
Lewis Nida.) "Industrial and Social History Series," by Katharine E.
Dopp.
"The Tree Dwellers--The Age of Fear"
"The Early Cave-Men--The Age of Combat"
"The Later Cave-Men--The Age of the Chase"
"The Early Sea People--First Steps in the Conquest of the Waters"
"The Tent-Dwellers--The Early Fishing Men"
Very simple stories of the way in which man learned how to make pottery,
how to weave and spin, and how to conquer land and sea.
"Ancient Man," written and drawn and done into colour by Hendrik
Willem van Loon.
The beginning of civilisations pictured and written in a new and
fascinating fashion, with story maps showing exactly what happened in
all parts of the world. A book for children of all ages.
The Dawn of History
"The Civilisation of the Ancient Egyptians," by A. Bothwell Gosse.
"No country possesses so many wonders, and has such a number of works
which defy description." An excellent, profusely illustrated account of
the domestic life, amusements, art, religion and occupations of these
wonderful people. "How the Present Came From the Past," by Margaret E.
Wells, Volume II.
What the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Assyrians and the Persians
contributed to civilisation. This is brief and simple and may be used as
a first book on the subject.
"Stories of Egyptian Gods and Heroes," by F. H. Brooksbank.
The beliefs of the Egyptians, the legend of Isis and Osiris, the
builders of the Pyramids and the Temples, the Riddle of the Sphinx, all
add to the fascination of this romantic picture of Egypt.
"Wonder Tales of the Ancient World," by Rev. James Baikie.
Tales of the Wizards, Tales of Travel and Adventure, and Legends of the
Gods all gathered from ancient Egyptian literature.
"Ancient Assyria," by Rev. James Baikie.
Which tells of a city 2800 years ago with a street lined with beautiful
enamelled reliefs, and with libraries of clay.
"The Bible for Young People," arranged from the King James version, with
twenty-four full page illustrations from old masters.
"Old, Old Tales From the Old, Old Book," by Nora Archibald Smith.
"Written in the East these characters live forever in the West--they
pervade the world." A good rendering of the Old Testament. "The Jewish
Fairy Book," translated and adapted by Gerald Friedlander.
Stories of great nobility and beauty from the Talmud and the old Jewish
chap-books. "Eastern Stories and Legends," by Marie L. Shedlock.
"The soldiers of Alexander who had settled in the East, wandering
merchants of many nations and climes, crusading knights and hermits
brought these Buddha Stories from the East to the West."
Stories of Greece and Rome "The Story of the Golden Age," by James
Baldwin.
Some of the most beautiful of the old Greek myths woven into the story
of the Odyssey make this book a good introduction to the glories of
the Golden Age. "A Wonder Book and Tanglewood Tales," by Nathaniel
Hawthorne, with pictures by Maxfield Parrish.
"The Adventures of Odysseus and the Tale of Troy," by Padraic Colum,
presented by Willy Pogany.
An attractive, poetically rendered account of "the world's greatest
story."
"The Story of Rome," by Mary Macgregor, with twenty plates in colour.
Attractively illustrated and simply presented story of Rome from the
earliest times to the death of Augustus.
"Plutarch's Lives for Boys and Girls," retold by W. H. Weston. "The Lays
of Ancient Rome," by Lord Macaulay.
"The early history of Rome is indeed far more poetical than anything
else in Latin Literature."
"Children of the Dawn," by Elsie Finnemore Buckley.
Old Greek tales of love, adventure, heroism, skill, achievement, or
defeat exceptionally well told. Especially recommended for girls.
"The Heroes; or, Greek Fairy Tales for My Children," by Charles
Kingsley.
"The Story of Greece," by Mary Macgregor, with nineteen plates in colour
by Walter Crane.
Attractively illustrated and simply presented--a good book to begin on.
Christianity
"The Story of Jesus," pictures from paintings by Giotto, Fra Angelico,
Duccio, Ghirlandais, and Barnja-da-Siena. Descriptive text from the New
Testament, selected and arranged by Ethel Natalie Dana.
A beautiful book and a beautiful way to present the Christ Story. "A
Child's Book of Saints," by William Canton.
Sympathetically told and charmingly written stories of men and women
whose faith brought about strange miracles, and whose goodness to man
and beast set the world wondering. "The Seven Champions of Christendom,"
edited by F. J. H. Darton.
How the knights of old--St. George of England, St. Denis of France, St.
James of Spain, and others--fought with enchanters and evil spirits to
preserve the Kingdom of God. Fine old romances interestingly told for
children. "Stories From the Christian East," by Stephen Gaselee.
Unusual stories which have been translated from the Coptic, the Greek,
the Latin and the Ethiopic. "Jerusalem and the Crusades," by Estelle
Blyth, with eight plates in colour.
Historical stories telling how children and priests, hermits and knights
all strove to keep the Cross in the East.
Stories of Legend and Chivalry
"Stories of Norse Heroes From the Eddas and Sagas," retold by E. M.
Wilmot-Buxton.
These are tales which the Northmen tell concerning the wisdom of
All-Father Odin, and how all things began and how they ended. A good
book for all children, and for story-tellers. "The Story of Siegfried,"
by James Baldwin.
A good introduction to this Northern hero whose strange and daring
deeds fill the pages of the old sagas. "The Story of King Arthur and His
Knights," written and illustrated by Howard Pyle.
This, and the companion volumes, "The Story of the Champions of the
Round Table," "The Story of Sir Launcelot and His Companions," "The
Story of the Grail and the Passing of Arthur," form an incomparable
collection for children. "The Boy's King Arthur," edited by Sidney
Lanier, illustrated by N. C. Wyeth.
A very good rendering of Malory's King Arthur, made especially
attractive by the coloured illustrations. "Irish Fairy Tales," by James
Stephens, illustrated by Arthur Rackham.
Beautifully pictured and poetically told legends of Ireland's epic hero
Fionn. A book for the boy or girl who loves the old romances, and a
book for story-telling or reading aloud. "Stories of Charlemagne and the
Twelve Peers of France," by A. J. Church.
Stories from the old French and English chronicles showing the romantic
glamour surrounding the great Charlemagne and his crusading knights.
"The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood," written and illustrated by Howard
Pyle.
Both in picture and in story this book holds first place in the hearts
of children. "A Book of Ballad Stories," by Mary Macleod.
Good prose versions of some of the famous old ballads sung by the
minstrels of England and Scotland. "The Story of Roland," by James
Baldwin.
"There is, in short, no country in Europe, and no language, in which the
exploits of Charlemagne and Roland have not at some time been recounted
and sung." This book will serve as a good introduction to a fine heroic
character. "The Boy's Froissart," being Sir John Froissart's Chronicles
of Adventure, Battle, and Custom in England, France, Spain.
"Froissart sets the boy's mind upon manhood and the man's mind upon
boyhood." An invaluable background for the future study of history. "The
Boy's Percy," being old ballads of War, Adventure and Love from Percy's
Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, edited by Sidney Lanier.
"He who walks in the way these following ballads point, will be manful
in necessary fight, loyal in love, generous to the poor, tender in the
household, prudent in living, merry upon occasion, and honest in all
things." "Tales of the Canterbury Pilgrims," retold from Chaucer and
others by E. J H. Darton.
"Sometimes a pilgrimage seemed nothing but an excuse for a lively and
pleasant holiday, and the travellers often made themselves very merry on
the road, with their jests and songs, and their flutes and fiddles and
bagpipes." A good prose version much enjoyed by boys and girls. "Joan of
Arc," written and illustrated by M. Boutet de Monvel.
A very fine interpretation of the life of this great heroine. A book to
be owned by every boy and girl. "When Knights Were Bold," by Eva March
Tappan.
Telling of the training of a knight, of the daily life in a castle, of
pilgrimages and crusades, of merchant guilds, of schools and literature,
in short, a full picture of life in the days of chivalry. A good book to
supplement the romantic stories of the time.
Adventurers in New Worlds
"A Book of Discovery," by M. B. Synge, fully illustrated from authentic
sources and with maps.
A thoroughly fascinating book about the world's exploration from the
earliest times to the discovery of the South Pole. A book to be owned by
older boys and girls who like true tales of adventure. "A Short History
of Discovery From the Earliest Times to the Founding of the Colonies on
the American Continent," written and done into colour by Hendrik Willem
van Loon.
"Dear Children: History is the most fascinating and entertaining and
instructive of arts." A book to delight children of all ages. "The Story
of Marco Polo," by Noah Brooks. "Olaf the Glorious," by Robert Leighton.
An historical story of the Viking age. "The Conquerors of Mexico,"
retold from Prescott's "Conquest of Mexico," by Henry Gilbert. "The
Conquerors of Peru," retold from Prescott's "Conquest of Peru," by Henry
Gilbert. "Vikings of the Pacific," by A. C. Laut.
Adventures of Bering the Dane; the outlaw hunters of Russia; Benyowsky,
the Polish pirate; Cook and Vancouver; Drake, and other soldiers of
fortune on the West Coast of America. "The Argonauts of Faith," by Basil
Mathews.
The Adventures of the "Mayflower" Pilgrims. "Pathfinders of the West,"
by A. C. Laut.
The thrilling story of the adventures of the men who discovered the
great Northwest.
"Beyond the Old Frontier," by George Bird Grinnell.
Adventures of Indian Fighters, Hunters, and Fur-Traders on the Pacific
Coast. "A History of Travel in America," by Seymour Dunbar, illustrated
from old woodcuts and engravings. 4 volumes.
An interesting book for children who wish to understand the problems and
difficulties their grandfathers had in the conquest of the West. This is
a standard book upon the subject of early travel, but is so readable as
to be of interest to older children.
"The Golden Book of the Dutch Navigators," by Hendrik Willem van Loon.
Fully illustrated from old prints.
The World's Progress in Invention--Art--Music.
"Gabriel and the Hour Book," by Evaleen Stein.
How a boy learned from the monks how to grind and mix the colours for
illuminating the beautiful hand-printed books of the time and how he
himself made books that are now treasured in the museums of France and
England. "Historic Inventions," by Rupert S. Holland.
Stories of the invention of printing, the steam-engine, the
spinning-jenny, the safety-lamp, the sewing machine, electric light, and
other wonders of mechanism. "A History of Everyday Things in England,"
written and illustrated by Marjorie and C. V. B. Quennell. 2 Volumes.
A most fascinating book, profusely illustrated in black and white and
in colour, giving a vivid picture of life in England from 1066-1799. It
tells of wars and of home-life, of amusements and occupations, of art
and literature, of science and invention. A book to be owned by every
boy and girl. "First Steps in the Enjoyment of Pictures," by Maude I. G.
Oliver.
A book designed to help children in their appreciation of art by
giving them technical knowledge of the media, the draughtsmanship, the
composition and the technique of well-known American pictures. "Knights
of Art," by Amy Steedman.
Stories of Italian Painters. Attractively illustrated in colour from old
masters. "Masters of Music," by Anna Alice Chapin. "Story Lives of Men
of Science," by F. J. Rowbotham. "All About Treasures of the Earth," by
Frederick A. Talbot.
A book that tells many interesting things about coal, salt, iron, rare
metals and precious stones. "The Boys' Book of New Inventions," by Harry
E. Maule.
An account of the machines and mechancial{sic} processes that are making
the history of our time more dramatic than that of any other age since
the world began. "Masters of Space," by Walter Kellogg Towers.
Stories of the wonders of telegraphing through the air and beneath
the sea with signals, and of speaking across continents. "All About
Railways," by F. S. Hartnell. "The Man-of-War, What She Has Done and
What She Is Doing," by Commander E. Hamilton Currey.
True stories about galleys and pirate ships, about the Spanish Main and
famous frigates, and about slave-hunting expeditions in the days of old.
The Democracy of To-Day.
"The Land of Fair Play," by Geoffrey Parsons.
"This book aims to make clear the great, unseen services that America
renders each of us, and the active devotion each of us must yield in
return for America to endure." An excellent book on our government for
boys and girls. "The American Idea as Expounded by American Statesmen,"
compiled by Joseph B. Gilder.
A good collection, including The Declaration of Independence, The
Constitution of the United States, the Monroe Doctrine, and the famous
speeches of Washington, Lincoln, Webster and Roosevelt. "The Making of
an American," by Jacob A. Riis.
The true story of a Danish boy who became one of America's finest
citizens. "The Promised Land," by Mary Antin.
A true story about a little immigrant. "Before we came, the New World
knew not the Old; but since we have begun to come, the Young World has
taken the Old by the hand, and the two are learning to march side by
side, seeking a common destiny."
Illustrated Histories in French.
(The colourful and graphic pictures make these histories beloved by
all children whether they read the text or not.) "Voyages et Glorieuses
Decouvertes des Grands Navigateurs et Explorateurs Francais, illustre
par Edy Segrand." "Collection d'Albums Historiques." Louis XI, texte de
Georges Montorgueil, aquarelles de Job. Francois I, texte de G. Gustave
Toudouze, aquarelles de Job. Henri IV, texte de Georges Montorgueil,
aquarelles de H. Yogel. Richelieu, texte de Th. Cahu, aquarelles de
Maurice Leloir. Le Roy Soleil, texte de Gustave Toudouze, aquarelles de
Mauriae Leloir. Bonaparte, texte de Georges Montorgueil, aquarelles de
Job. "Fabliaux et Contes du Moyen-Age"; illustrations de A. Robida
INDEX {Not included}
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