[Sidenote: Peace of Nimwegen, 1678.]

[Sidenote: Louis' encroachments on German territory.]

When a general peace was concluded at Nimwegen, at the end of six years, the chief provisions were that Holland should be left intact, and that France should retain Franche-Comt, which had been conquered by Louis in person. This bit of the Burgundian heritage thus became at last a part of France, after France and Spain had quarreled over it for a century and a half. For the ten years following there was no open war, but Louis busied himself in the interval by instituting courts in the debatable region between France and Germany, to decide what neighboring districts belonged to the various territories and towns which had been ceded to France by the treaties of Westphalia and later ones. The vestiges of the old feudal entanglements gave ample scope for claims, which were renforced by Louis' troops. Louis, moreover, seized the important free city of Strasburg, and made many other less conspicuous but equally unwarranted additions to his territory. The emperor was unable to do more than protest against these outrageous encroachments, for he was fully occupied with the Turks, who had just laid siege to Vienna.[354]

[Sidenote: Situation of the Huguenots at the beginning of Louis XIV's reign.]

195. Louis XIV exhibited as woeful a want of statesmanship in the treatment of his Protestant subjects as in the prosecution of disastrous wars. The Huguenots, deprived of their former military and political power, had turned to manufacture, trade, and banking; "as rich as a Huguenot" had become a proverb in France. There were perhaps a million of them among fifteen million Frenchmen, and they undoubtedly formed by far the most thrifty and enterprising part of the nation. The Catholic clergy, however, did not cease to urge the complete suppression of heresy.

[Sidenote: Louis' policy of suppression.]

Louis XIV had scarcely taken the reins of government into his own hands before the perpetual nagging and injustice to which the Protestants had been subjected at all times took a more serious form. Upon one pretense or another their churches were demolished. Children were authorized to renounce Protestantism when they reached the age of seven. If they were induced by the offer of a toy or a sweetmeat to say, for example, the words "Ave Maria" (Hail, Mary), they might be taken from their parents to be brought up in a Catholic school. In this way Protestant families were pitilessly broken up. Rough and licentious dragoons were quartered upon the Huguenots with the hope that the insulting behavior of the soldiers might drive the heretics to accept the religion of the king.

[Sidenote: Revocation of the Edict of Nantes and its results.]

At last Louis was led by his officials to believe that practically all the Huguenots had been converted by these drastic measures. In 1685, therefore, he revoked the Edict of Nantes, and the Protestants thereby became outlaws and their ministers subject to the death penalty. Even liberal-minded Catholics, like the kindly writer of fables, La Fontaine, and the charming letter writer, Madame de Svign, hailed the restablishment of "religious unity" with delight. They believed that only an insignificant and seditious remnant still clung to the beliefs of Calvin. But there could have been no more serious mistake. Thousands of the Huguenots succeeded in eluding the vigilance of the royal officials and fled, some to England, some to Prussia, some to America, carrying with them their skill and industry to strengthen France's rivals. This was the last great and terrible example of that fierce religious intolerance which had produced the Albigensian Crusade, the Spanish Inquisition, and the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.[355]

[Sidenote: Louis' operations in the Rhenish Palatinate.]

Louis now set his heart upon conquering the Rhenish Palatinate, to which he easily discovered that he had a claim. The rumor of his intention and the indignation occasioned in Protestant countries by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, resulted in an alliance against the French king headed by William of Orange. Louis speedily justified the suspicions of Europe by a frightful devastation of the Palatinate, burning whole towns and destroying many castles, including the exceptionally beautiful one of the elector at Heidelberg. Ten years later, however, Louis agreed to a peace which put things back as they were before the struggle began. He was preparing for the final and most ambitious undertaking of his life, which precipitated the longest and bloodiest war of all his warlike reign.



[Sidenote: The question of the Spanish succession.]

196. The king of Spain, Charles II, was childless and brotherless, and Europe had long been discussing what would become of his vast realms when his sickly existence should come to an end. Louis had married one of his sisters, and the emperor, Leopold I, another, and these two ambitious rulers had been considering for some time how they might divide the Spanish possessions between the Bourbons and the Hapsburgs. But when Charles II died, in 1700, it was discovered that he had left a will in which he made Louis' younger grandson, Philip, the heir to his twenty-two crowns, but on the condition that France and Spain should never be united.

[Sidenote: Louis' grandson, Philip, becomes king of Spain.]

It was a weighty question whether Louis should permit his grandson to accept this hazardous honor. Should Philip become king of Spain, Louis and his family would control all of southwestern Europe from Holland to Sicily, as well as a great part of North and South America. This would mean the establishment of an empire more powerful than that of Charles V. It was clear that the disinherited emperor and the ever watchful William of Orange, now king of England, would never permit this unprecedented extension of French influence. They had already shown themselves ready to make great sacrifices in order to check far less serious aggressions on the part of the French king. Nevertheless, family pride and personal ambition led Louis criminally to risk the welfare of his country. He accepted the will and informed the Spanish ambassador at the French court that he might salute Philip V as his new king. The leading French newspaper of the time boldly proclaimed that the Pyrenees were no more.

[Sidenote: The War of the Spanish Succession.]

King William soon succeeded in forming a new Grand Alliance (1701) in which Louis' old enemies, England, Holland, and the emperor, were the most important members. William himself died just as hostilities were beginning, but the long War of the Spanish Succession was carried on vigorously by the great English general, the duke of Marlborough, and the Austrian commander, Eugene of Savoy. The conflict was even more general than the Thirty Years' War; even in America there was fighting between French and English colonists, which passes in American histories under the name of Queen Anne's War. All the more important battles went against the French, and after ten years of war, which was rapidly ruining the country by the destruction of its people and its wealth, Louis was willing to consider some compromise, and after long discussion a peace was arranged in 1713.

[Sidenote: The Treaty of Utrecht, 1713.]

The Treaty of Utrecht changed the map of Europe as no previous treaty had done, not even that of Westphalia. Each of the chief combatants got its share of the Spanish booty over which they had been fighting. The Bourbon Philip V was permitted to retain Spain and its colonies on condition that the Spanish and French crowns should never rest on the same head. To Austria fell the Spanish Netherlands, hereafter called the Austrian Netherlands, which continued to form a barrier between Holland and France. Holland received certain fortresses to make its position still more secure. The Spanish possessions in Italy, i.e., Naples and Milan, were also given to Austria, and in this way Austria got the hold on Italy which it retained until 1866. England acquired from France, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and the Hudson Bay region, and so began the expulsion of the French from North America. Besides these American provinces she received the island of Minorca with its fortress, and the rock and fortress of Gibraltar, which still gives her command of the narrow entrance to the Mediterranean.

[Sidenote: The development of international law.]

The period of Louis XIV is remarkable for the development of international law. The incessant wars, the great alliances embracing several powers, and the prolonged peace negotiations, such as those which preceded the treaties of Westphalia and Utrecht, made increasingly clear the need of well-defined rules governing independent states in their relations with one another both in peace and in war. It was of the utmost importance to determine, for instance, the rights of ambassadors and of the vessels of neutral powers not engaged in the war, and what should be considered fair conduct in warfare and in the treatment of prisoners.

[Sidenote: Grotius' War and Peace.]

The first great systematic treatise on international law was published by Grotius in 1625, when the horrors of the Thirty Years' War were impressing men's minds with the necessity of finding some other means than war of settling disputes between nations. Grotius' War and Peace was followed, in Louis XIV's time, by Pufendorf's On the Law of Nature and Nations (1672). While the rules laid down by these and later writers on international law have by no means put an end to war, they have prevented many conflicts by settling certain questions and by increasing the ways in which nations may come to an understanding with one another through their ambassadors without recourse to arms.

Louis XIV outlived his son and grandson, and left a sadly demoralized kingdom to his five-year-old great-grandson, Louis XV (1715-1774). The national treasury was depleted, the people were reduced in numbers and were in a miserable state, and the army, once the finest in Europe, was in no condition to gain further victories. Later we must study the conditions in France which led to the great Revolution. Now, however, we turn to the rise of two new European powers, Prussia and Russia, which began in the eighteenth century to play a prominent rle in European affairs.



CHAPTER XXXII

RISE OF RUSSIA AND PRUSSIA

197. We have had little occasion hitherto, in dealing with the history of western Europe, to speak of the Slavic peoples, to whom the Russians, Poles, Bohemians, and many other nations of eastern Europe belong. Together they form the most numerous race in Europe, but, as has been well said, "they occupy a greater place on the map than in history." In the eighteenth century, however, Russia began to take an increasingly important part in European affairs, and it is now a great force in the politics of the world. The realms of the Tsar which lie in Europe exceed in extent those of all the other rulers of the continent put together, and yet they are scarcely more than a quarter of his whole dominion, which embraces northern and central Asia, and forms together an empire occupying toward three times the area of the United States.

[Sidenote: Movements of the Slavs during the period of the German invasions.]

The Slavs were settled along the Dnieper, Don, and Vistula long before the Christian era. After the East Goths had penetrated into the Roman empire, the Slavs followed their example and invaded, ravaged, and conquered the Balkan Peninsula, which they held for some time. When the German Lombards went south into Italy, about 569, the Slavs pressed behind them into Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola, where they still live within the bounds of the Austrian empire. Other Slavic hordes had driven the Germans across the Oder and upper Elbe. Later the German emperors, beginning with Charlemagne, began to push them back, but the Bohemians and Moravians still hold an advanced position on the borders of Bavaria and Saxony.

[Sidenote: Beginnings of Russia.]

In the ninth century some of the Northmen invaded the districts to the east of the Baltic, while their relatives were causing grievous trouble in France and England. It is generally supposed that one of their leaders, Rurik, was the first to consolidate the Slavic tribes about Novgorod into a sort of state in 862. Rurik's successor extended the bounds of the new empire so as to include the important town of Kiev on the Dnieper. The word Russia is probably derived from Rous, the name given by the neighboring Finns to the Norman adventurers. Before the end of the tenth century the Greek form of Christianity was introduced and the Russian ruler was baptized. The frequent intercourse with Constantinople might have led to rapid advance in civilization had it not been for a great disaster which put Russia back for centuries.

[Sidenote: The Tartar invasion of the thirteenth century.]

Russia is geographically nothing more than an extension of the vast plain of northern Asia, which the Russians were destined finally to conquer. It was therefore exposed to the great invasion of the Tartars or Mongols, who swept in from the east in the thirteenth century. The powerful Tartar ruler, Genghiz Khan (1162-1227), conquered northern China and central Asia, and the mounted hordes of his successors crossed into Europe and overran Russia, which had fallen apart into numerous principalities. The Russian princes became the dependents of the Great Khan, and had frequently to seek his far distant court, some three thousand miles away, where he freely disposed of both their crowns and their heads. The Tartars exacted tribute of the Russians, but left them undisturbed in their laws and religion.

[Sidenote: Influence of the Tartar occupation on manners and customs.]

[Sidenote: Ivan the Terrible assumes the title of Tsar.]

Of the Russian princes who went to prostrate themselves at the foot of the Great Khan's throne, none made a more favorable impression upon him than the prince of Moscow, in whose favor the Khan was wont to decide all cases of dispute between the prince and his rivals. When the Mongol power had begun to decline in strength and the princes of Moscow had grown stronger, they ventured to kill the Mongol ambassadors sent to demand tribute in 1480, and thus freed themselves from the Mongol yoke. But the Tartar occupation had left its mark, for the princes of Moscow imitated the Khans rather than the western rulers, of whom, in fact, they knew nothing. In 1547 Ivan the Terrible assumed the Asiatic title of Tsar,[356] which appeared to him more worthy than that of king or emperor. The costumes and etiquette of the court were also Asiatic. The Russian armor suggested that of the Chinese, and their headdress was a turban. It was the task of Peter the Great to Europeanize Russia.

[Sidenote: Peter the Great, 1672-1725.]

198. At the time of Peter's accession, Russia, which had grown greatly under Ivan the Terrible and other enterprising rulers, still had no outlet to the sea. In manners and customs the kingdom was Asiatic, and its government was that of a Tartar prince. Peter had no quarrel with the despotic power which fell to him and which the Russian monarchs still exercise, since there is no parliament or constitution in that country down to the present day. But he knew that Russia was very much behind the rest of Europe, and that his crudely equipped soldiers could never make head against the well armed and disciplined troops of the West. He had no seaport and no ships, without which Russia could never hope to take part in the world's affairs. His two great tasks were, therefore, to introduce western habits and to "make a window," as he expressed it, through which Russia might look abroad.

[Sidenote: Peter's travels in Europe.]

In 1697-1698 Peter himself visited Germany, Holland, and England with a view to investigating every art and science of the West, as well as the most approved methods of manufacture, from the making of a man-of-war to the etching of an engraving. Nothing escaped the keen eyes of this rude, half-savage northern giant. For a week he put on the wide breeches of a Dutch laborer and worked in the shipyard at Saardam near Amsterdam. In England, Holland, and Germany he engaged artisans, scientific men, architects, ship captains, and those versed in artillery and the training of troops, all of whom he took back with him to aid in the reform and development of Russia.

[Sidenote: Suppression of revolt against foreign ideas.]

He was called home by the revolt of the royal guard, who had allied themselves with the very large party of nobles and churchmen who were horrified at Peter's desertion of the habits and customs of his forefathers. They hated what they called "German ideas," such as short coats, tobacco smoking, and beardless faces. The clergy even suggested that Peter was perhaps Antichrist. Peter took a fearful revenge upon the rebels, and is said to have himself cut off the heads of many of them. Like the barbarian that he was at heart, he left their heads and bodies lying about all winter, unburied, in order to make the terrible results of revolt against his power quite plain to all.

[Sidenote: Peter's reform measures.]

Peter's reforms extended through his whole reign. He made his people give up their cherished oriental beards and long flowing garments. He forced the women of the better class, who had been kept in a sort of oriental harem, to come out and meet the men in social assemblies, such as were common in the West. He invited foreigners to settle in Russia, and insured them protection, privileges, and the free exercise of their religion. He sent young Russians abroad to study. He reorganized the government officials on the model of a western kingdom, and made over his army in the same way.

[Sidenote: Founding of a new capital, St. Petersburg.]

Finding that the old capital of Moscow clung persistently to its ancient habits, he prepared to found a new capital for his new Russia. He selected for this purpose a bit of territory on the Baltic which he had conquered from Sweden,—very marshy, it is true, but where he might hope to construct Russia's first real port. Here he built St. Petersburg at enormous expense and colonized it with Russians and foreigners. Russia was at last becoming a European power.



[Sidenote: The military prowess of Charles XII of Sweden.]

In his ambition to get to the sea, Peter naturally collided with Sweden, to which the provinces between Russia and the Baltic belonged. Never had Sweden, or any other country, had a more warlike king than the one with whom Peter had to contend, the youthful prodigy, Charles XII. When Charles came to the throne in 1697 he was only fifteen years old, and it seemed to the natural enemies of Sweden an auspicious time to profit by the supposed weakness of the boy ruler. So a union was formed between Denmark, Poland, and Russia, with the object of increasing their territories at Sweden's expense. But Charles turned out to be a second Alexander the Great in military prowess. He astonished Europe by promptly besieging Copenhagen and forcing the king of Denmark to sign a treaty of peace. He then turned like lightning against Peter, who was industriously besieging Narva, and with eight thousand Swedes wiped out an army of fifty thousand Russians (1700). Lastly he defeated the king of Poland.

[Sidenote: Defeat and death of Charles XII.]

Though Charles was a remarkable military leader, he was a foolish ruler. He undertook to wrest Poland from its king, to whom he attributed the formation of the league against him. He had a new king crowned at Warsaw, whom he at last succeeded in getting recognized. He then turned his attention to Peter, who had meanwhile been conquering the Baltic provinces. This time fortune turned against the Swedes. The long march to Moscow proved as fatal to them as to Napoleon a century later. Charles XII was totally defeated in the battle of Pultowa (1709). He fled to Turkey and spent some years there in vainly urging the Sultan to attack Peter. At last he returned to his own kingdom, which he had utterly neglected for years. He was killed in 1718 while besieging a town.

[Sidenote: Russia acquires the Baltic provinces and attempts to get a footing on the Black Sea.]

Soon after Charles' death a treaty was concluded between Sweden and Russia by which Russia gained Livonia, Esthonia, and the other Swedish provinces at the eastern end of the Baltic. Peter had made less successful attempts to get a footing on the Black Sea. He had first taken Azof, which he soon lost during the war with Sweden, and then several towns on the Caspian. It had become evident that if the Turks should be driven out of Europe, Russia would be a mighty rival of the western powers in the division of the spoils.[357]

For a generation after the death of Peter the Great, Russia fell into the hands of incompetent rulers. It only appears again as a European state when the great Catherine II came to the throne in 1762. From that time on, the western powers had always to consider the vast Slavic empire in all their great struggles. They had also to consider a new kingdom in northern Germany, which was just growing into a great power as Peter began his work. This was Prussia, whose beginnings we must now consider.

[Sidenote: Brandenburg and the Hohenzollerns.]

199. The electorate of Brandenburg had figured on the map of Germany for centuries, and there was no particular reason to suppose that it was to become one day the dominant state in Germany. At the time of the Council of Constance the old line of electors had died out, and the impecunious Emperor Sigismund had sold it to a hitherto inconspicuous house, the Hohenzollerns, which is known to us now through such names as those of Frederick the Great, William I, the first German emperor, and his grandson, the present emperor. Beginning with a strip of territory extending some ninety or a hundred miles to the east and to the west of the little town of Berlin, the successive representatives of the line have gradually extended their boundaries until the present kingdom of Prussia embraces nearly two thirds of Germany. Of the earlier little annexations nothing need be said. While it has always been the pride of the Hohenzollern family that practically every one of its reigning members has added something to what his ancestors handed down to him, no great extension took place until just before the Thirty Years' War. About that time the elector of Brandenburg inherited Cleves, and thus got his first hold on the Rhine district.

[Sidenote: Prussia acquired by the elector of Brandenburg.]

[Sidenote: The elector of Brandenburg assumes the title of King of Prussia, 1701.]

What was quite as important, he won, far to the east, the duchy of Prussia, which was separated from Brandenburg by Polish territory. Prussia was originally the name of a region on the Baltic inhabited by heathen Slavs. These had been conquered in the thirteenth century by one of the orders of crusading knights, who, when the conquest of the Holy Land was abandoned, looked about for other occupation. The region filled up with German colonists, but it came under the sovereignty of the neighboring kingdom of Poland, whose king annexed the western half of the territory of the Teutonic Order, as the German knights were called.[358] In Luther's day the Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, who happened to be a relative of the electors of Brandenburg, concluded to abolish the order and become duke of Prussia. In good time his family died out, and the duchy fell to the electors of Brandenburg. When one of them was permitted by the emperor, in the year 1701, to assume the title of king, he chose to be called King of Prussia.[359]

[Sidenote: The Great Elector, 1640-1688.]

Brandenburg accepted the Protestant religion before Luther's death, but played a pitiful part in the Thirty Years' War. Its real greatness dates from the Great Elector (1640-1688). In the treaties of Westphalia he acquired a goodly strip on the Baltic, and he succeeded in creating an absolute monarchy on the model furnished by his contemporary, Louis XIV. He joined England and Holland in their alliances against Louis, and the army of Brandenburg began to be known and feared.

[Sidenote: Frederick William I, 1713-1740.]

While it was reserved for Frederick the Great to stir Europe to its depths and establish the right of the new kingdom of Prussia to be considered one of the great European powers, he owed to his father, Frederick William I, the resources which made his victories possible. Frederick William strengthened the government and collected an army nearly as large as that maintained by France or Austria. He had, moreover, by miserly thrift and entire indifference to the amenities and luxuries of life, treasured up a large sum of money. Consequently Frederick, upon his accession, had an admirable army ready for use and an ample supply of gold.[360]

[Sidenote: The Hapsburgs in Austria.]

200. Prussia's aspiration to become a great European power made it necessary for her to extend her territory. This inevitably brought her into rivalry with Austria. It will be remembered that Charles V, shortly after his accession, ceded to his brother, Ferdinand I, the German or Austrian possessions of the house of Hapsburg, while he himself retained the Spanish, Burgundian, and Italian dominions. Ferdinand, by a fortunate marriage with the heiress of the kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary, greatly augmented his territory. Hungary was, however, almost completely occupied by the Turks at that time, and till the end of the seventeenth century the energies of the Austrian rulers were largely absorbed in a long struggle against the Mohammedans.

[Sidenote: Conquests of the Turks in Europe.]

A Turkish tribe from western Asia had, at the opening of the fourteenth century, established themselves in western Asia Minor under their leader Othman (d. 1326). It was from him that they derived their name of Ottoman Turks, to distinguish them from the Seljuk Turks, with whom the crusaders had come into contact. The leaders of the Ottoman Turks showed great energy. They not only extended their Asiatic territory far toward the east, and later into Africa, but they gained a footing in Europe as early as 1353. They gradually conquered the Slavic peoples in Macedonia and occupied the territory about Constantinople, although it was a hundred years before they succeeded in capturing the ancient capital of the Eastern Empire.

[Sidenote: The defense of Europe against the Turks.]

This advance of the Turks naturally aroused grave apprehensions in the states of western Europe lest they too might be deprived of their independence. The brunt of the defense against the common foe devolved upon Venice and the German Hapsburgs, who carried on an almost continuous war with the Turks for nearly two centuries. As late as 1683 the Mohammedans collected a large force and besieged Vienna, which might very well have fallen into their hands had it not been for the timely assistance which the city received from the king of Poland. From this time on, the power of the Turks in Europe rapidly decreased, and the Hapsburgs were able to regain the whole territory of Hungary and Transylvania, their possession of which was formally recognized by the Sultan in 1699.

[Sidenote: The question of the Austrian succession.]

In 1740, a few months before the accession of Frederick II of Prussia, the emperor Charles VI, who was the last representative of the direct line of the Hapsburgs, died. Foreseeing the difficulties which would arise at his death in regard to the inheritance of his possessions, he had spent a great part of his life in trying to induce the European powers to promise that his daughter, Maria Theresa, should be recognized as his successor. England, Holland, and even Prussia were ready to bid Godspeed to the new archduchess of Austria and queen of Hungary and Bohemia, but France, Spain, and the neighboring Bavaria held back in the hope of gaining some portion of the scattered Austrian dominions for themselves. The duke of Bavaria insisted that he was the rightful heir and managed to have himself elected emperor under the title of Charles VII.

[Sidenote: Accession of Frederick II of Prussia, called 'the Great,' 1740-1786.]

[Sidenote: Frederick's attack upon Silesia.]

201. In his early years Frederick II grieved and disgusted his boorish but energetic old father by his dislike for military life and his interest in books and music. He was a particular admirer of the French and preferred their language to his own. No sooner had he become king, however, than he suddenly developed marvelous energy and skill in warlike enterprises. He realized that Prussia must widen its boundaries, and he saw no better way of accomplishing this than by robbing the seemingly defenseless Maria Theresa of Silesia, a strip of territory lying to the southeast of Brandenburg. He accordingly marched his army into the coveted district, and occupied the important city of Breslau without declaring war or offering any excuse except a vague claim to a portion of the land.

[Sidenote: The War of the Austrian Succession.]

France, stimulated by Frederick's example, joined with Bavaria in the attack upon Maria Theresa. It seemed for a time as if her struggle to maintain the integrity of her realm would be vain; but the loyalty of all the various peoples under her scepter was roused by her extraordinary courage and energy. The French were driven back, but Maria Theresa was forced to grant Silesia to Frederick in order to induce him to retire from the war. Finally, England and Holland joined in an alliance for maintaining the balance of power, for they had no desire to see France annex the Austrian Netherlands. On the death of the emperor Charles VII (1745), Maria Theresa's husband, Francis, duke of Lorraine, was chosen emperor. A few years later (1748) all the powers, tired of the war, laid down their arms and agreed to what is called in diplomacy the status quo ante bellum, which simply means that things were to be restored to the condition in which they had been before the opening of hostilities.

[Sidenote: Frederick promotes the material development of Prussia.]

[Sidenote: Frederick and Voltaire.]

Frederick was, however, permitted to keep Silesia, which increased his dominions by about one third of their former extent. He now turned his attention to making his subjects happier and more prosperous, by draining the swamps, promoting industry, and drawing up a new code of laws. He found time, also, to gratify his interest in men of letters, and invited Voltaire, the most distinguished writer of the eighteenth century, to make his home at Berlin. It will not seem strange to any one who knows anything of the character of these two men, that they quarreled after two or three years, and that Voltaire left the Prussian king with very bitter feelings.[361]

[Sidenote: The Seven Years' War.]

202. Maria Theresa was by no means reconciled to the loss of Silesia, and she began to lay her plans for expelling the perfidious Frederick and regaining her lost territory. This led to one of the most important wars in modern history, in which not only almost every European power joined, but which involved the whole world, from the Indian rajahs of Hindustan to the colonists of Virginia and New England. This Seven Years' War (1756-1763) will be considered in its broader aspects in the next chapter. We note here only the part played in it by the king of Prussia.

[Sidenote: The alliance against Prussia.]

Maria Theresa's ambassador at Paris was so skillful in his negotiations with the French court that in 1756 he induced it, in spite of its two hundred years of hostility to the house of Hapsburg, to enter into an alliance with Austria against Prussia. Russia, Sweden, and Saxony also agreed to join in a concerted attack on Prussia. Their armies, coming as they did from every point of the compass, threatened the complete annihilation of Austria's rival. It seemed as if the new kingdom of Prussia might disappear altogether from the map of Europe.

[Sidenote: Frederick's victorious defense.]

However, it was in this war that Frederick earned his title of "the Great" and showed himself the equal of the ablest generals the world has seen, from Alexander to Napoleon. Learning the object of the allies, he did not wait for them to declare war against him, but occupied Saxony at once and then moved on into Bohemia, where he nearly succeeded in taking the capital, Prague. Here he was forced to retire, but in 1757 he defeated the French and his German enemies in the most famous, perhaps, of his battles, at Rossbach. A month later he routed the Austrians at Leuthen, not far from Breslau. Thereupon the Swedes and Russians retired from the field and left Frederick for the moment master of the situation.

[Sidenote: Frederick finally triumphs over Austria.]

England now engaged the French and left Frederick at liberty to deal with his other enemies. While he exhibited marvelous military skill, he was by no means able to gain all the battles in which he engaged. For a time, indeed, it looked as if he might after all be vanquished. But the accession of a new Tsar, who was an ardent admirer of Frederick, led Russia to conclude peace with Prussia, whereupon Maria Theresa reluctantly agreed to give up once more her struggle with her inveterate enemy.

[Sidenote: The kingdom of Poland and its defective constitution.]

Frederick was able during his reign greatly to strengthen his kingdom by adding to it the Polish regions which had hitherto divided his possessions in Brandenburg from those which lay across the Vistula. The kingdom of Poland, which in its declining years was to cause western Europe much trouble, was shut in between Russia, Austria, and Prussia. The Slavic population of this region had come under an able ruler about the year 1000, and the Polish kings had succeeded for a time in extending their power over a large portion of Russia, Moravia, and the Baltic regions. They had never been able, however, to establish a successful form of government. This was largely due to the fact that the kings were elected by the nobles, the crown not passing from father to son, as in the neighboring kingdoms. The elections were tumultuous affairs, and foreigners were frequently chosen. Moreover, each noble had the right to veto any law proposed in the diet, and consequently a single person might prevent the passage of even the most important measure. The anarchy which prevailed in Poland had become proverbial.

[Sidenote: The first partition of Poland, 1772.]

On the pretense that this disorderly country was a menace to their welfare, the neighboring powers, Russia, Austria, and Prussia, agreed to reduce the danger by each helping itself to a slice of the unfortunate kingdom. This amicable arrangement resulted in what is known as the first partition of Poland. It was succeeded by two others (1793 and 1795), by the last of which this ancient state was wiped from the map altogether.[362]

[Sidenote: Achievements of Frederick the Great.]

When Frederick died (1786) he left the state which had been intrusted to him by his father nearly doubled in size. He had rendered it illustrious by his military glory, and had vastly increased its resources by improving the condition of the people in the older portions of his territory and by establishing German colonies in the desolate regions of West Prussia, which he strove in this way to bind closely to the rest of the kingdom.

General Reading.—TUTTLE, History of Prussia (4 vols., Houghton, Mifflin & Co., $8.25). CARLYLE, Frederick the Great (3 vols., Chapman, $2.25). LONGMAN, F.W., Frederick the Great (Charles Scribner's Sons, $1.00). RAMBAUD, History of Russia (2 vols., Coryell & Co., $2.00). For Peter the Great and his Age, WALISZEWSKI, Life of Peter the Great (D. Appleton & Co., $2.00). For the Seven Years' War and France, PERKINS, France under Louis XV (2 vols., Houghton, Mifflin & Co., $4.00).



CHAPTER XXXIII

THE EXPANSION OF ENGLAND

203. In the last chapter we reviewed the progress of affairs in eastern Europe and noted the appearance of two new and important powers, Prussia and Russia, which, together with Austria, were engaged during the eighteenth century in extending their bounds at the expense of their weak neighbors, Poland and Turkey.

[Sidenote: In the eighteenth century England lays the foundation of her commercial greatness.]

In the west, England was rapidly becoming a dominant power. While she did not play a very important part in the wars on the continent, she was making herself mistress of the seas. At the close of the War of the Spanish Succession her navy was superior to that of any other European power, for both France and Holland had been greatly weakened by the long conflict. Fifty years after the Treaty of Utrecht, England had succeeded in driving the French from both North America and India and in laying the foundation of her vast colonial empire, which still gives her the commercial supremacy among the European countries.

[Sidenote: Questions settled by the accession of William and Mary.]

With the accession of William and Mary, England may be regarded as having practically settled the two great questions which had produced such serious dissensions during the previous fifty years. In the first place, the nation had clearly shown that it proposed to remain Protestant; and the relations between the Church of England and the dissenters were gradually being satisfactorily adjusted. In the second place, the powers of the king had been carefully defined, and from the opening of the eighteenth century to the present time no English monarch has ventured to veto an act of Parliament.[363]

[Sidenote: Queen Anne, 1702-1714.]

[Sidenote: The union of England and Scotland, 1707.]

William III was succeeded in 1702 by his sister-in-law, Anne, a younger daughter of James II. Far more important than the war which her generals carried on against Spain was the final union of England and Scotland. As we have seen, the difficulties between the two countries had led to much bloodshed and suffering ever since Edward I's futile attempt to conquer Scotland.[364] The two countries had, it is true, been under the same ruler since the accession of James I, but each had maintained its own independent parliament and system of government. Finally, in 1707, both nations agreed to unite their governments into one. Forty-five members of the British House of Commons were to be chosen thereafter in Scotland, and sixteen Scotch lords were to be added to the British House of Lords. In this way the whole island of Great Britain was placed under a single government, and the occasions for strife were thereby greatly reduced.

[Sidenote: Accession of George I (1714-1727), the first of the house of Hanover.]

Since none of Anne's children survived her, she was succeeded, according to an arrangement made before her accession, by the nearest Protestant heir. This was the son of James I's granddaughter Sophia. She had married the elector of Hanover[365]; consequently the new king of England, George I, was also elector of Hanover and a member of the Holy Roman Empire.

[Sidenote: The king ceases to attend the meetings of the cabinet, which comes to be regarded as the real governing body.]

The new king was a German who could not speak English and was forced to communicate with his ministers in bad Latin. The king's leading ministers had come to form a little body by themselves, called the cabinet. As George could not understand the discussions he did not attend the meetings of his ministers, and thereby set an example which has been followed by his successors. In this way the cabinet came to hold its meetings and transact its business independently of the king. Before long it became a recognized principle in England that it was the cabinet that really governed rather than the king; and that its members, whether the king liked them or not, might retain their offices so long as they continued to enjoy the confidence and support of Parliament.

James I (1603-1625) + + + Charles I Elizabeth, m. Frederick V, (1625-1649) Elector of the Palatinate (Winter King + + -+ of Bohemia) Charles II (1) Anne Hyde, m. James II, m. (2) Mary of Sophia, m. Ernest (1660-1685) (1685-1689) Modena Augustus, Elector of + -+ -+ Hanover William III, m. Mary Anne (1689-1702) (1689-1694) (1702-1714) George I (1714-1727) George II James (the (1727-1760) Old Pretender) Frederick, Prince of Wales Charles Edward (d. 1751) (the Young Pretender) George III (1760-1820)

[Sidenote: England and the 'balance of power.']

204. William of Orange had been a continental statesman before he became king of England, and his chief aim had always been to prevent France from becoming over-powerful. He had joined in the War of the Spanish Succession in order to maintain the "balance of power" between the various European countries.[366] During the eighteenth century England continued, for the same reason, to engage in the struggles between the continental powers, although she had no expectation of attempting to extend her sway across the Channel. The wars which she waged in order to increase her own power and territory were carried on in distant parts of the world, and more often on sea than on land.

[Sidenote: Peace under Walpole as prime minister, 1721-1742.]

For a quarter of a century after the Treaty of Utrecht, England enjoyed peace.[367] Under the influence of Walpole, who for twenty-one years was the head of the cabinet and the first to be called "prime minister," peace was maintained within and without. Not only did Walpole avoid going to war with other countries, but he was careful to prevent the ill-feeling at home from developing into civil strife. His principle was to "let sleeping dogs lie"; so he strove to conciliate the dissenters and to pacify the Jacobites,[368] as those were called who still desired to have the Stuarts return.

[Sidenote: England in the War of the Austrian Succession.]

[Sidenote: 'Prince Charlie,' the Young Pretender, in Scotland.]

When, in 1740, Frederick the Great and the French attacked Maria Theresa, England's sympathies were with the injured queen. As elector of Hanover, George II (who had succeeded his father in 1727), led an army of German troops against the French and defeated them on the river Main. Frederick then declared war on England; and France sent the grandson of James II,[369] the Young Pretender, as he was called, with a fleet to invade England. The attempt failed, for the fleet was dispersed by a storm. In 1745 the French defeated the English and Dutch forces in the Netherlands; this encouraged the Young Pretender to make another attempt to gain the English crown. He landed in Scotland, where he found support among the Highland chiefs, and even Edinburgh welcomed "Prince Charlie." He was able to collect an army of six thousand men, with which he marched into England. He was quickly forced back into Scotland, however, and after a disastrous defeat on Culloden Moor (1746) and many romantic adventures, he was glad to reach France once more in safety.

205. Soon after the close of the War of the Austrian Succession in 1748, England entered upon a series of wars which were destined profoundly to affect not only her position, but also the fate of distant portions of the globe. In order to follow these changes intelligently we must briefly review the steps by which the various European states had extended their sway over regions separated from them by the ocean.

[Sidenote: Colonial policy of Portugal, Spain, and Holland in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.]

The voyages which had brought America and India within the ken of Europe during the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries were, as we know, mainly undertaken by the Portuguese and Spaniards. Portugal was the first to realize the advantage of extending her commerce by establishing stations in India and on the Brazilian coast of South America; then Spain laid claim to Mexico, the West Indies, and a great part of South America. These two powers found their first rival in the Dutch; for when Philip II was able to add Portugal to the realms of the Spanish monarchs for a few decades (1580-1640), he immediately closed the port of Lisbon to the Dutch ships. Thereupon the United Provinces, whose merchants could no longer procure the spices which the Portuguese brought from the East, resolved to take possession of the source of supplies. They accordingly expelled the Portuguese from a number of their settlements in India and the Spice Islands and brought Java, Sumatra, and other tropical regions under Dutch control.[370]

[Sidenote: Settlements of the French and English in North America.]

In North America the chief rivals were England and France, both of which succeeded in establishing colonies in the early part of the seventeenth century. Englishmen successively settled at Jamestown in Virginia (1607), then in New England, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere. The colonies owed their growth to the influx of refugees,—Puritans, Catholics, and Quakers,—who exiled themselves in the hope of gaining the right freely to enjoy their particular forms of religion.[371]

Just as Jamestown was being founded by the English the French were making their first successful settlement in Nova Scotia and at Quebec. Although England made no attempt to oppose the French occupation of Canada, it progressed but slowly. In 1673 Marquette, a Jesuit missionary, and Joliet, a merchant, discovered the Mississippi River. La Salle sailed down the great stream and named the new country which he entered Louisiana, after his king. The city of New Orleans was founded near the mouth of the river in 1718, and the French established a chain of forts between it and Montreal.

England was able, however, by the Treaty of Utrecht, to establish herself in the northern regions, for France thereby ceded to her Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and the borders of Hudson Bay. While the number of English in North America at the beginning of the Seven Years' War is supposed to have been over a million, the French scarcely exceeded a twentieth of that number. Yet careful observers at the time were by no means sure that France was not destined to dominate the new country, rather than England.

[Sidenote: Extent of India.]

The rivalry of England and France was not confined to the wildernesses of North America, occupied by half a million of savage red men. At the opening of the eighteenth century both countries had gained a foothold on the borders of the vast Indian empire, inhabited by two hundred millions of people and the seat of an ancient and highly developed civilization. One may gain some idea of the extent of India by laying the map of Hindustan upon that of the United States. If the southernmost point, Cape Comorin, be placed over New Orleans, Calcutta will lie nearly over New York City and Bombay in the neighborhood of Des Moines, Iowa.

[Sidenote: The Mongolian emperors of Hindustan.]

A generation after Vasco da Gama landed in Calicut,[372] a Mongolian conqueror, Baber,[373] had established his empire in India. The dynasty of Mongolian rulers which he founded had been able to keep the whole country under its control for toward two centuries; then their empire had fallen apart in much the same way as that of Charlemagne had done. Like the counts and dukes of the Carolingian period, the emperor's officials, the subahdars and nawabs (nabobs), and the rajahs—i.e., Hindu princes temporarily subjugated by the Mongols—had gradually got the power in their respective districts into their own hands. Although the emperor, or Great Mogul, as the English called him, continued to maintain himself in his capital of Delhi, he could no longer be said to rule the country at the opening of the eighteenth century when the French and English were seriously beginning to turn their attention to his coasts.

[Sidenote: English and French settlements in India.]

In the time of Charles I (1639), a village had been purchased by the English East India Company on the southeastern coast of Hindustan, which grew into the important English station of Madras. About a generation later the district of Bengal was occupied and Calcutta founded. Bombay was already an English station. The Mongolian emperor of India at first scarcely deigned to notice the presence of a few foreigners on the fringe of his vast realms. But before the end of the seventeenth century hostilities began between the English East India Company and the native rulers which made it plain that the foreigners would be forced to defend themselves.

The English had not only to face the opposition of the natives, but that of a European power as well. France also had an East India Company, and Pondicherry, at the opening of the eighteenth century, was its chief center with a population of sixty thousand, of which two hundred only were Europeans. It soon became apparent that there was little danger from the Great Mogul; moreover, the Portuguese and Dutch were out of the race. So the native princes and the French and English were left to fight among themselves for the supremacy.

[Sidenote: England victorious in the struggle for supremacy in America.]

206. Just before the general clash of European rulers known as the Seven Years' War came in 1756, the French and English had begun their struggle for control in both America and India. In America the so-called French and Indian War began in 1754 between the English and French colonists. General Braddock was sent from England to capture Fort Duquesne, which the French had established to keep their rivals out of the Ohio valley. Braddock knew nothing of border warfare, and he was killed and his troops routed. Fortunately for England, France, as the ally of Austria, was soon engaged in a war with Prussia that prevented her from giving proper attention to her American possessions. A famous statesman, the elder Pitt, was now at the head of the English ministry. He was able not only to succor the hard-pressed king of Prussia with money and men, but also to support the militia of the thirteen American colonies. The French forts at Ticonderoga and Niagara were taken in 1759. Quebec was won in Wolfe's heroic attack, and the following year all Canada submitted to the English. England's supremacy on the sea was demonstrated by three admirals, each of whom destroyed a French fleet in the same year that Quebec was lost to France.

[Sidenote: Dupleix and Clive in India.]

In India conflicts between the French and the English had occurred during the War of the Austrian Succession. The governor of the French station of Pondicherry was Dupleix, a soldier of great energy, who proposed to drive out the English and firmly establish the power of France over Hindustan. His chances of success were greatly increased by the quarrels among the native rulers, some of whom belonged to the earlier Hindu inhabitants and some to the Mohammedan Mongolians who had conquered India in 1526. Dupleix had very few French soldiers, but he began the enlistment of the natives, a custom eagerly adopted by the English. These native soldiers, whom the English called Sepoys, were taught to fight in the manner of Europeans.[374]

[Sidenote: Clive defeats Dupleix.]

But the English colonists, in spite of the fact that they were mainly traders, discovered among the clerks in Madras a leader equal in military skill and energy to Dupleix himself. Robert Clive, who was but twenty-five years old at this time, organized a large force of Sepoys and gained a remarkable ascendency over them by his astonishing bravery. Dupleix paid no attention to the fact that peace had been declared in Europe at Aix-la-Chapelle, but continued to carry on his operations against the English. But Clive proved more than his equal and in two years had established English supremacy in the southeastern part of India.

[Sidenote: Clive renders English influence supreme in India.]

[Sidenote: The 'Black Hole' of Calcutta.]

[Sidenote: Battle of Plassey, 1757.]

At the moment that the Seven Years' War was beginning, bad news reached Clive from the English settlement of Calcutta, about a thousand miles to the northeast of Madras. The subahdar of Bengal had seized the property of some English merchants and imprisoned one hundred and forty-five Englishmen in a little room, where most of them died of suffocation before morning. Clive hastened to Bengal, and with a little army of nine hundred Europeans and fifteen hundred Sepoys he gained a great victory at Plassey over the subahdar's army of fifty thousand men. Clive then replaced the subahdar of Bengal by a man whom he believed to be friendly to the English. Before the Seven Years' War was over the English had won Pondicherry and deprived the French of all their former influence in the region of Madras.

[Sidenote: England's gains in the Seven Years' War.]

When the Seven Years' War was brought to an end in 1763 by the Treaty of Paris, it was clear that England had gained far more than any other power. She was to retain her two forts commanding the Mediterranean, Gibraltar, and Port Mahon on the island of Minorca; in America, France ceded to her the vast region of Canada and Nova Scotia, as well as several of the islands in the West Indies. The region beyond the Mississippi was ceded to Spain by France, who thus gave up all her claims to North America. In India, France, it is true, received back the towns which the English had taken from her, but she had permanently lost her influence over the native rulers, for Clive had made the English name greatly feared among them.

[Sidenote: Beginning of trouble with the American colonies.]

207. England, with the help of her colonists, had thus succeeded in driving the French from North America and in securing the continent, with the exception of Mexico, for the English race. She was not, however, long to enjoy her victory, for no sooner had the Peace of Paris been signed than she and her American colonies became involved in a dispute over taxation, which led to a new war and the creation of an independent English-speaking nation, the United States of America.

[Sidenote: The Stamp Act and its repeal.]

It seemed right to England that the colonies should help pay the expenses of the late war, which were very heavy, and also support a small standing army of English soldiers. Parliament therefore passed the Stamp Act in 1765, which required the colonists to pay for stamps to be used on legal documents. The Americans declared that Parliament had no right to tax them, since they were not represented in that body. The opposition to the stamp tax was so great that Parliament repealed the act, but with the explicit assertion that it nevertheless had the right to tax the colonies as well as to make laws for them.

[Sidenote: Opposition to 'taxation without representation.']

The effort to make the Americans pay a very moderate import duty on tea produced further trouble in 1773. The young men of Boston seditiously boarded a tea ship in the harbor and threw the cargo into the water. Burke, perhaps the most able member of the House of Commons, urged the ministry to leave the Americans to tax themselves, but George III (1760-1820) and Parliament as a whole could not forgive the colonists their opposition. They believed that the trouble was largely confined to New England and could be easily overcome. In 1774 acts were passed prohibiting the landing and shipping of goods at Boston, and the colony of Massachusetts was deprived of its former right to choose its judges and the members of the upper house of its legislature. These appointments were now placed in the hands of the king.

[Sidenote: The Continental Congress.]

[Sidenote: Outbreak of war.]

[Sidenote: Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776.]

Such measures, instead of bringing Massachusetts to terms, so roused the apprehension of the rest of the colonists that a congress was summoned, and met at Philadelphia. This decided that all trade with Great Britain should cease until the grievances of the colonies had been redressed. The following year the Americans made a brave stand against British troops at Lexington and in the battle of Bunker Hill. The new Congress decided to prepare for war and raised an army which was put under the command of George Washington, a Virginia planter who had gained some distinction in the late French and Indian War. Up to this time the colonies had not intended to secede from the mother country, but the proposed compromises came to nothing, and in July, 1776, Congress declared that "these United States are, and of right ought to be, free and independent."

[Sidenote: The United States seeks and receives aid from France.]

This occurrence naturally excited great interest in France. The outcome of the Seven Years' War had been most lamentable for that country, and any trouble which came to her old enemy England could not but be a source of congratulation to the French. The United States regarded France as her natural ally and immediately sent Benjamin Franklin to Versailles with the hope of obtaining the aid of the new French king, Louis XVI. The king's ministers were doubtful whether the colonies could long maintain their resistance against the overwhelming strength of the mother country. It was only after the Americans had defeated Burgoyne at Saratoga in 1777, that France concluded a treaty with the United States in which the independence of the new republic was recognized. This was tantamount to declaring war upon England. The enthusiasm for the Americans was so great in France that a number of the younger nobles, the most conspicuous of whom was Lafayette, crossed the Atlantic to fight in the American army.[375]

[Sidenote: Close of the war, 1783.]

[Sidenote: England acknowledges the independence of the United States.]

In spite of the skill and heroic self-sacrifice of Washington, the Americans lost more battles than they gained. It is extremely doubtful if they would have succeeded in bringing the war to a favorable close, by forcing the English general, Cornwallis, to capitulate at Yorktown (1781), had it not been for the aid of the French fleet. Before the war was terminated by the Peace of Paris (1783), Spain had joined in the hostilities, and the Spanish and French fleets laid siege to Gibraltar. Their floating batteries were finally destroyed by the red-hot shot of the British, and the enemies of England gave up further attempts to dislodge her from this important station. The chief result of the war was the recognition by England of the United States, whose territory was to extend to the Mississippi River. To the west of the Mississippi, the vast territory of Louisiana still remained in the hands of Spain.

[Sidenote: Results in Europe of wars between Treaty of Utrecht and Peace of Paris.]

208. The results of the European wars during the sixty years which elapsed between the Treaty of Utrecht and the Peace of Paris may be summarized as follows. In the northeast two new powers, Russia and Prussia, had come into the European family of nations. Prussia had greatly extended her territory by gaining Silesia and West Poland. She and Austria were, in the nineteenth century, to engage in a struggle for supremacy in Germany, which was to result in substituting the present German empire under the headship of the Hohenzollerns for the Holy Roman Empire, of which the house of Hapsburg had so long been the nominal chief.

[Sidenote: Origin of the 'eastern question.']

The power of the Sultan was declining so rapidly that Austria and Russia were already considering the seizure of his European possessions. This presented a new problem to the European powers, which came to be known in the nineteenth century as the "eastern question." Were Austria and Russia permitted to aggrandize themselves by adding the Turkish territory to their possessions, it would gravely disturb the balance of power which England had so much at heart. So it came about that, from this time on, Turkey was admitted in a way to the family of western European nations, for it soon appeared that some of the states of western Europe were willing to form alliances with the Sultan, and even aid him directly in defending himself against his neighbors.

[Sidenote: England's colonial possessions.]

England had lost her American colonies, and by her perverse policy had led to the creation of a sister state speaking her own language and destined to occupy the central part of the North American continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific. She still retained Canada, however, and in the nineteenth century added a new continent in the southern hemisphere, Australia, to her vast colonial empire. In India she had no further rivals among European nations, and gradually extended her influence over the whole region south of the Himalayas. In 1877 Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India as the successor of the Grand Mogul.

[Sidenote: France under Louis XV, 1715-1774.]

As for France, she had played a rather pitiful rle during the long reign of Louis XIV's great grandson, Louis XV (1715-1774). She had, however, been able to increase her territory by the addition of Lorraine (1766) and, in 1768, of the island of Corsica. A year later a child was born in the Corsican town of Ajaccio, who one day, by his genius, was to make France the center for a time of an empire rivaling that of Charlemagne in extent. When the nineteenth century opened France was no longer a monarchy, but a republic; and her armies were to occupy in turn every European capital, from Madrid to Moscow. In order to understand the marvelous transformations produced by the French Revolution and the wars of Napoleon, we must consider somewhat carefully the conditions in France which led to a great reform of her institutions in 1789, and to the founding of a republic four years later.

General Reading.—For the French in America, PARKMAN, The Pioneers of France in the New World (Little, Brown & Co., $2.00), also A Half Century of Conflict (same publisher, 2 vols., $6.00). For India, MALLESON, Clive (Oxford, University Press, 60 cents), and Macaulay's Essay on Clive. For the growth of the British Empire, H. DE B. GIBBINS, History of Commerce in Europe (The Macmillan Company, 90 cents), and SEELEY, The Expansion of England (Little, Brown & Co., $1.75).



CHAPTER XXXIV

THE EVE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

209. When we meet the words "French Revolution," they are pretty sure to call up before our mind's eye the guillotine and its hundreds of victims, the storming of the Bastile, the Paris mob shouting the Marseillaise hymn as they parade the streets with heads of unfortunate "aristocrats" on their pikes. Every one knows something of this terrible episode in French history. Indeed, it has made so deep an impression on posterity that we sometimes forget that the Reign of Terror was not the French Revolution. Mere disorder and bloodshed never helped mankind along; and the Revolution must assuredly have produced some great and lasting alteration in France and in Europe to deserve to be ranked—as it properly is—with the Renaissance and the Protestant Revolt, as one of the three most momentous changes of the last six hundred years. The Reign of Terror was, in fact, only a sequel to the real Revolution.

[Sidenote: The Ancien Rgime.]

The French Revolution, in the truest sense of the term, was a great and permanent reform, which did away with many absurd and vexatious laws and customs, and with abuses of which the whole nation was heartily tired, from the king down to the humblest peasant. Whenever a Frenchman, in the eighteenth century, seriously considered the condition of his country, most of the institutions in the midst of which he lived appeared to him to be abuses, contrary to reason and humanity. These vicious institutions,—relics of bygone times and outlived conditions,—which the Revolution destroyed forever, are known by the general name Ancien Rgime, that is, "the old system." Whole volumes have been written about the causes of the French Revolution. The real cause is, however, easily stated; the old system was bad, and almost every one, both high and low, had come to realize that it was bad, and consequently the French did away with it and substituted a modern and more rational order for the long-standing disorder.

[Sidenote: France not a well-organized state in the eighteenth century.]

Of the evils which the Revolution abolished, none was more important than the confusion due to the fact that France was not in the eighteenth century a well-organized, homogeneous state whose citizens all enjoyed the same rights and privileges. A long line of kings had patched it together, adding bit by bit as they could. By conquest and bargain, by marrying heiresses, and through the extinction of the feudal dynasties, the original restricted domains of Hugh Capet about Paris and Orleans had been gradually increased by his descendants until, when Louis XVI came to the throne in 1774, he found himself ruler of practically the whole territory which makes up France to-day.

Some of the districts which the kings of France brought under their sway, like Languedoc, Provence, Brittany, and Navarre, were considerable states in themselves, each with its own laws, customs, and system of government. When these provinces had come, at different times, into the possession of the king of France, he had not changed their laws so as to make them correspond with those of his other domains. He was satisfied if his new provinces paid their due share of the taxes and treated his officials with respect. In some cases the provinces retained their local assemblies, and controlled, to a certain extent, their own affairs. The provinces into which France was divided before the Revolution were not, therefore, merely artificial divisions created for the purposes of administrative convenience, like the modern French departments,[376] but represented real historical differences.

[Sidenote: Various systems of law.]

While in a considerable portion of southern France the Roman law still prevailed, in the central parts and in the west and north there were no less than two hundred and eighty-five different local codes of law in force; so that one who moved from his own to a neighboring town might find a wholly unfamiliar legal system.



[Sidenote: Interior customs lines.]

Neither was France commercially a single state. The chief customs duties were not collected upon goods as they entered French territory from a foreign country; for the customs lines lay within France itself, so that the central provinces about Paris were cut off from the outlying ones as from a foreign land.[377] A merchant of Bordeaux sending goods to Paris would have to see that the duties were paid on them as they passed the customs line, and, conversely, a merchant of Paris would have to pay a like duty on commodities sent to places without the line.

[Sidenote: Inequalities of taxation illustrated by the salt tax.]

The monstrous inequalities in levying one of the oldest and heaviest of the taxes, i.e., the salt tax, still better illustrates the strange disorder that existed in France in the eighteenth century. The government raised this tax by monopolizing the sale of salt and then charging a high price for it. There would have been nothing remarkable in this had the same price been charged everywhere, but as it was, the people in one town might be forced to pay thirty times as much as their neighbors in an adjacent district. The accompanying map shows how France was arbitrarily divided. To take a single example: at Dijon, a certain amount of salt cost seven francs; a few miles to the east, on entering Franche-Comt, one had to pay, for the same amount, twenty-five francs; to the north, in Burgundy, fifty-eight francs; to the south, in the region of the little salt tax, twenty-eight francs; while still farther off, in Gex, there was no tax whatever. The government had to go to great expense to guard the boundary lines between the various districts, for there was every inducement to smugglers to carry salt from those parts of the country where it was cheap into the land of the great salt tax.

[Sidenote: The privileged classes.]

210. Besides these unfortunate local differences, there were class differences which caused great discontent. All Frenchmen did not enjoy the same rights as citizens. Two small but very important classes, the nobility and the clergy, were treated differently by the state from the rest of the people. They did not have to pay one of the heaviest of the taxes, the notorious taille, and on one ground or another they escaped other burdens which the rest of the citizens bore. For instance, they were not required to serve in the militia or help build the roads.

]

[Sidenote: The Church.]

We have seen how great and powerful the medival Church was. In France, as in other Catholic countries of Europe, it still retained in the eighteenth century a considerable part of the power that it had possessed in the thirteenth, and it still performed important public functions. It took charge of education and of the relief of the sick and the poor. It was very wealthy and is supposed to have owned one fifth of all the land in France. The clergy still claimed, as Boniface VIII had done, that their property, being dedicated to God, was not subject to taxation. They consented, however, to help the king from time to time by a "free gift," as they called it. The church still collected the tithes from the people, and its vast possessions made it very independent. Those who did not call themselves Roman Catholics were excluded from some of the most important rights of citizenship. Since the revocation of the Edict of Nantes no Protestant could be legally married or have the births of his children registered, or make a legal will.

[Sidenote: The clergy.]

A great part of the enormous income of the church went into the pockets of the higher clergy, the bishops, archbishops, and abbots. These were appointed by the king,[379] often from among his courtiers, and they paid but little attention to their duties as officers of the church and were generally nothing but "great lords with a hundred thousand francs income." While they amused themselves at Versailles, the real work was performed—and well performed—by the lower clergy, who often received scarcely enough to keep soul and body together. We shall see that, when the Revolution began, the parish priests sided with the people instead of with their ecclesiastical superiors.[380]

[Sidenote: The privileges of the nobility.]

The privileges of the nobles, like those of the clergy, had originated in the medival conditions described in an earlier chapter.[381] A detailed study of their rights would reveal many survivals of the conditions which prevailed in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when the great majority of the people were serfs living upon the manors. While serfdom had largely disappeared in France long before the eighteenth century, and the peasants were generally free men who owned or rented their land, the lords still enjoyed the right to collect a variety of time-honored dues from the inhabitants living within the limits of the former manors.

The privileges and dues enjoyed by the nobles varied greatly in different parts of France. It was quite common for the noble landowner to have a right to a certain portion of the peasants' crops; occasionally he could collect a toll on sheep and cattle driven past his house. In some cases the lord maintained, as he had done in the Middle Ages, the only mill, wine press, or oven within a certain district, and could require every one to make use of these and pay him a share of the product. Even when a peasant owned his land, the neighboring lord usually had the right to exact one fifth of its value every time it was sold. The nobles, too, enjoyed the aristocratic privilege of the hunt. The game which they preserved for their amusement often did great damage to the crops of the peasants, who were forbidden to interfere with hares, deer, pigeons, etc.

All these privileges were vestiges of the powers which the nobles had enjoyed when they ruled their estates as feudal lords. Louis XIV had, as we know, induced them to leave their domains and gather round him at Versailles, where all who could afford it lived for at least part of the year. The higher offices in the army were reserved for the nobles, as well as the easiest and most lucrative places in the church and about the king's person.[382]

[Sidenote: The third estate.]

211. Everybody who did not belong to either the clergy or nobility was regarded as being of the third estate. The third estate was therefore nothing more than the nation at large, which was made up in 1789 of about twenty-five million souls. The privileged classes can scarcely have counted altogether more than two hundred and seventy thousand individuals. A great part of the third estate lived in the country and tilled the soil. Most historians have been inclined to make out their condition as very bad indeed. They were certainly oppressed by an abominable system of taxation and were irritated by the dues which they had to pay to the lords. They also suffered frequently from local famines. Yet there is no doubt that the evils of their situation have been greatly exaggerated. When Thomas Jefferson traveled through France in 1787 he reports that the country people appeared to be comfortable and that they had plenty to eat. Arthur Young, a famous English traveler who has left us an admirable account of his journeys in France during the years 1787-1789, found much prosperity and contentment, although he gives, too, some forlorn pictures of destitution.

[Sidenote: Favorable situation of the peasant in France compared with other countries.]

[Sidenote: Rapid increase of population in the eighteenth century.]

The latter have often been unduly emphasized by historical writers; for it has commonly been thought that the Revolution was to be explained by the misery and despair of the people who could tolerate the old system no longer. If, however, instead of comparing the situation of the French peasant under the old rgime with that of an English or American farmer to-day, we contrast his position with that of his fellow-peasant in Prussia, Austria, or Italy, it will be clear that in France the agricultural classes were really much better off than elsewhere on the continent. In Prussia, for example, the peasants were still serfs: they had to work three whole days in each week for their lord; they could not marry or dispose of their land without his permission. Moreover, the fact that the population of France had steadily increased from seventeen million after the close of the wars of Louis XIV to about twenty-five million at the opening of the Revolution, indicates that the general condition of the people was improving rather than growing worse.

[Sidenote: Popular discontent, not the exceptionally miserable condition of the French people, accounts for the Revolution.]

The real reason why France was the first among the European countries to carry out a great reform and do away with the irritating survivals of feudalism was not that the nation was miserable and oppressed above all others, but that it was sufficiently free and enlightened to realize the evils and absurdities of the old rgime. Mere oppression and misery does not account for a revolution, there must also be active discontent; and of that there was a great abundance in France, as we shall see. The French peasant no longer looked up to his lord as his ruler and protector, but viewed him as a sort of legalized robber who demanded a share of his precious harvest, whose officers awaited the farmer at the crossing of the river to claim a toll, who would not let him sell his produce when he wished, or permit him to protect his fields from the ravages of the pigeons which it pleased the lord to keep.[383]

[Sidenote: France still a despotism in the eighteenth century.]

212. In the eighteenth century France was still the despotism that Louis XIV had made it.[384] Louis XVI once described it very well in the following words: "The sovereign authority resides exclusively in my person. To me solely belongs the power of making the laws, and without dependence or coperation. The entire public order emanates from me, and I am its supreme protector. My people are one with me. The rights and interests of the nation are necessarily identical with mine and rest solely in my hands." In short, the king still ruled "by the grace of God," as Louis XIV had done. He needed to render account to no man for his governmental acts; he was responsible to God alone. The following illustrations will make clear the dangerous extent of the king's power.

[Sidenote: The king's control of the government funds.]

In the first place, it was he who levied each year the heaviest of the taxes, the hated taille, from which the privileged classes were exempted. This tax brought in about one sixth of the whole revenue of the state. The amount collected was kept secret, and no report was made to the nation of what was done with it or with any other part of the king's income. Indeed, no distinction was made between the king's private funds and the state treasury, whereas in England the monarch was given a stated allowance. The king of France could issue as many drafts payable to bearer as he wished; the royal officials must pay all such orders and ask no questions. Louis XV is said to have spent no less than seventy million dollars in this fashion in a single year.

[Sidenote: Lettres de cachet.]

But the king not only controlled his subjects' purses; he had a terrible authority over their persons as well. He could issue orders for the arrest and arbitrary imprisonment of any one he pleased. Without trial or formality of any sort, a person might be cast into a dungeon for an indefinite period, until the king happened to remember him again or was reminded of him by the poor man's friends. These notorious orders of arrest were called lettres de cachet, i.e., sealed letters. They were not difficult to obtain for any one who had influence with the king or his favorites, and they furnished a particularly easy and efficacious way of disposing of an enemy. These arbitrary orders lead one to appreciate the importance of the provision of Magna Carta which establishes that "no freeman shall be taken or imprisoned except by the lawful sentence of his peers and in accordance with the law of the land." Some of the most distinguished men of the time were shut up by the king's order, often on account of books or pamphlets written by them which displeased the king or those about him. The distinguished statesman, Mirabeau, was imprisoned several times through lettres de cachet obtained by his father as a means of checking his reckless dissipation.[385]

[Sidenote: Limitations placed upon the power of the French king.]

213. Yet, notwithstanding the seemingly unlimited powers of the French king, and in spite of the fact that France had no written constitution and no legislative body to which the nation sent representatives, the monarch was by no means absolutely free to do just as he pleased. He had not the time nor inclination to carry on personally the government of twenty-five million subjects, and he necessarily and willingly left much of the work to his ministers and the numerous public officials, who were bound to obey the laws and regulations established for their control and guidance.

[Sidenote: The parlements and their protests.]

Next to the king's council the most important governmental bodies were the higher courts of law, the parlements. These resembled the English Parliament in almost nothing but name. The French parlements—of which the most important one was at Paris and a dozen more were scattered about the provinces—did not, however, confine themselves strictly to the business of trying lawsuits. They claimed, and quite properly, that when the king decided to make a new law he must send it to them to be registered, else they would have no means of knowing just what the law was of which they were to be the guardians. Now, although they acknowledged that the right to make the laws belonged to the monarch, they nevertheless often sent a "protest" to the king instead of registering a law of which they disapproved. They would urge that the ministers had abused His Majesty's confidence. They would see, too, that their protest was printed and sold on the streets at a penny or two a copy, so that people should get the idea that the parlement was defending the nation against the oppressive measures of the king's ministers.

When the king received one of these protests two alternatives were open to him. He might recall the distasteful decree altogether or modify it so as to suit the court; or he could summon the parlement before him and in a solemn session (called a lit de justice) command it with his own mouth to register the law in its books. The parlement would then reluctantly obey, but as the Revolution approached it began to claim that a decree registered against its will was not valid.

[Sidenote: The parlements help to prepare the way for the Revolution.]

Struggles between the parlements and the ministers were very frequent in the eighteenth century. They prepared the way for the Revolution, first, by bringing important questions to the attention of the people; for there were no newspapers and no parliamentary or congressional debates to enable the public to understand the policy of the government. Secondly, the parlements not only frankly criticised the proposed measures of the king and his ministers, but they familiarized the nation with the idea that the king was not really at liberty to alter what they called "the fundamental laws" of the state. By this they meant that there was an unwritten constitution, of which they were the guardians and which limited the king's power. In this way they promoted the growing discontent with a government which was carried on in secret, and which left the nation at the mercy of the men in whom the king might for the moment repose confidence.

[Sidenote: Public opinion.]

It is a great mistake to suppose that public opinion did not exercise a powerful check upon the king, even under the autocratic old rgime. It was, as one of Louis XVI's ministers declared, "an invisible power which, without treasury, guards, or an army, ruled Paris and the court,—yes, the very palace of the king." The latter half of the eighteenth century was a period of outspoken and acrid criticism of the whole existing social and governmental system. Reformers, among whom many of the king's ministers were counted, loudly and eloquently discussed the numerous abuses and the vicious character of the government, which gradually came to seem just as bad to the people of that day as it would to us now.

[Sidenote: Discussion of public questions.]

Although there were no daily newspapers to discuss public questions, large numbers of pamphlets were written and circulated by individuals whenever there was an important crisis, and they answered much the same purpose as the editorials in a modern newspaper. These pamphlets and the books of the time sometimes treated the government, the clergy, or the Catholic religion, with such open contempt, that the king, the clergy, or the courts felt it necessary to prevent their circulation. The parlement of Paris now and then ordered some offensive writing to be burned by the common hangman. Several distinguished writers were even imprisoned for expressing themselves too freely, and some booksellers and printers banished. But the attempted suppression of free discussion seemed an outrage to the more thoughtful among the public, and rather promoted than prevented the consideration of the weaknesses of the church and of the king's government.



[Sidenote: Voltaire, 1694-1778.]

214. By far the most conspicuous and important reformer of the eighteenth century was Voltaire (1694-1778), who was born twenty years before Louis XIV died, and yet lived to see Louis XVI mount the throne. "When the right sense of historical proportion is more fully developed in men's minds, the name of Voltaire will stand out like the names of the great decisive movements in the European advance, like the Revival of Learning or the Reformation. The existence, character, and career of this extraordinary person constituted in themselves a new and prodigious era" (Morley). To understand Voltaire and the secret of his fame would be to understand France before the Revolution. His mission was to exalt and popularize reason; and since a great part of the institutions of his day were not based upon reason, but upon mere tradition, and were utterly opposed to common sense, "the touch of reason was fatal to the whole structure, which instantly began to crumble."

[Sidenote: Voltaire's wide influence and popularity.]

Voltaire had little respect for the past which had bequeathed to France her disorderly government and, above all, her church. His keen eye was continually discovering some new absurdity in the existing order, which, with incomparable wit and literary skill, he would expose to his eager readers. He was interested in almost everything; he wrote histories, dramas, philosophic treatises, romances, epics, and innumerable letters to his innumerable admirers. He was a sort of intellectual arbiter of Europe, such as Petrarch and Erasmus had been. The vast range of his writings enabled him to bring his bold questionings to the attention of all sorts and conditions of men,—not only to the general reader, but even to the careless playgoer.

[Sidenote: Voltaire's attack upon the church.]

While Voltaire was successfully inculcating free criticism in general, he led in a relentless attack upon the most venerable, probably the most powerful, institution in France, the Roman Catholic church. The absolute power of the king did not greatly trouble him, but the church, with, as he deemed, its deep-seated opposition to a free exercise of reason and its hostility to reform, seemed to him fatally to block all human progress. He was wont to close his letters with the exhortation, "Crush the infamous thing." The church, as it fully realized, had never encountered a more deadly enemy. Not only was Voltaire supremely skillful in his varied methods of attack, but there were thousands of both the thoughtful and the thoughtless ready to applaud him; for many had reached the same conclusions, although they might not be able to express their thoughts so persuasively as he. Voltaire repudiated the beliefs of the Protestant churches as well as of the Roman church. He was, however, no atheist, as his enemies—and they have been many and bitter—have so often asserted. He believed in God, and at his country home near Geneva he dedicated a temple to Him. Like many of his contemporaries he was a deist, and held that God had revealed Himself in nature and in our hearts, not in Bible or church.

Were there space at command a great many good things and plenty of bad ones might be told of this extraordinary man. He was often superficial in his judgments, and sometimes jumped to unwarranted conclusions. He saw only the evil in the church, and seemed incapable of understanding all that it had done for mankind during the bygone ages. He maliciously attributed to evil motives teachings which were accepted by the best and loftiest of men. He bitterly ridiculed even the holiest and purest aspirations, along with the alleged deceptions of the Jesuits and the quarrels of the theologians. He could, however, fight bravely against wrong and oppression.[386] The abuses against which he fought were in large part abolished by the Revolution. It is extremely unfair to notice only his mistakes and exaggerations, as many writers, both Catholic and Protestant, have done, for he certainly did more than any one else to prepare the way for the great and permanent reform of the church, as a political and social institution, in 1789-1790.

[Sidenote: Rousseau, 1712-1778.]

Next to Voltaire the writer who did most to cultivate discontent was Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). His famous little treatise, The Social Contract, takes up the great question, By what right does one man rule over others? The book opens with the words: "Man is born free and yet is now everywhere in chains. One man believes himself the master of others and yet is after all more of a slave than they. How did this change come about? I do not know. What can render it legitimate? I believe that I can answer that question." It is, Rousseau declares, the will of the people that renders government legitimate. The real sovereign is the people. Although they may appoint a single person, a king, to manage the government for them, they should make the laws, since it is they who must obey them. We shall find that the first French constitution accepts Rousseau's doctrine and defines law as "the expression of the general will,"—not the will of a king reigning by the grace of God.