Immense respect is enjoined for immemorial customs as being the root of all piety. The distinction between the three superior or "Twice Born" classes points to the conclusion that they were a conquering people and that the servile classes were the subdued Aborigines. It remains to be proved, however, that the conquerors were not indigenous. The system might have come into being as a natural growth, without the hypothesis of an external invasion.

The Bramins claim that they alone now have preserved their lineage in its purity. The Rajputs, however, claim to be pure Cshatriyas. In the main the Bramin rules of life have been greatly relaxed. The castes below the Cshatriyas have now become extremely mixed and extremely numerous; a servile caste no longer exists. A man who loses caste is excluded both from all the privileges of citizenship and all the amenities of private life. As a rule, however, the recovery of caste by expiation is an easy matter. The institution of Monastic Orders scarcely seems to be a thousand years old.

Menu's administrative regulations have similarly lost their uniformity. The township or village community, however, has survived. It is a self-governing unit with its own officials, for the most part hereditary. In large parts of India the land within the community is regarded as the property of a group of village landowners, who constitute the township, the rest of the inhabitants being their tenants. The tenants whether they hold from the landowners or from the Government are commonly called Ryots. An immense proportion of the produce, or its equivalent, has to be paid to the State. The Zenindars who bear a superficial likeness to English landlords were primarily the Government officials to whom these rents were farmed. Tenure by military service bearing some resemblance to the European feudal system is found in the Rajput States. The code of Menu is still the basis of the Hindu jurisprudence.

Religion has been greatly modified. Monotheism has been supplanted by a gross Polytheism, by the corruption of symbolism. At the head are the Triad Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the preserver, Siva the destroyer. Fourteen more principal deities may be enumerated. To them must be added their female Consorts. Many of the Gods are held to be incarnations of Vishnu or Siva. Further, there is a vast host of spirits and demons, good or evil. By far the most numerous sect is that of the followers of Devi the spouse of Siva. The religions of the Buddhists and the Jains though differing greatly from the Hindu seemed to have the same origin.

The five languages of Hindustan are of Sanscrit origin, belonging to the Indo-European family. Of the Deckan languages, two are mixed, while the other three have no connection with Sanscrit.

From Menu's code it is clear that there was an open trade between the different parts of India. References to the sea seemed to prove that a coasting trade existed. Maritime trade was probably in the hands of the Arabs. The people of the East Coast were more venturesome sailors than those of the West. The Hindus certainly made settlements in Java. There are ten nations in India which differ from each other as much as do the nations of Europe, and also resemble each other in much the same degree. The physical contrast between the Hindustanis and the Bengalis is complete; their languages are as near akin and as mutually unintelligible as English and German, yet in religion, in their notions on Government, in very much of their way of life, they are indistinguishable to the European.

Indian widows sometimes sacrifice themselves on the husband's funeral pile. Such a victim is called Sati. It is uncertain when the custom was first introduced, but, evidently it existed before the Christian era.

A curious feature is that as there are castes for all trades, so there are hereditary thief castes. Hired watchmen generally belong to these castes on a principle which is obvious. The mountaineers of Central India are a different race from the dwellers in the plain. They appear to have been aboriginal inhabitants before the Hindu invasion. The mountaineers of the Himalayas are in race more akin to the Chinese.

Established Hindu chronology is found in the line of Magadha. We can fix the King Ajata Satru, who ruled, in the time of Gotama, in the middle of the sixth century B.C. Some generations later comes Chandragupta—undoubtedly the Sandracottus of Diodorus. The early legend apparently begins to give place to real history with Rama, who certainly invaded the Deckan. He would seem to have been a king in Oudh. The next important event is the war of the Maha Bharata, probably in the fourteenth century B.C. Soon after the main seat of Government seems to have transferred to Delhi. The kingdom of Magadha next assumes a commanding position though its rulers long before Chandragupta were of low caste. Of these kings the greatest is Asoka, three generations after Chandragupta. There was certainly no lord paramount of India at the time of Alexander's invasion. Nothing points to any effective universal Hindu Empire, though such an empire is claimed for various kings at intervals until the beginning of the Mahometan invasions.

II.—The Mahometan Conquest

The wave of Mahometan conquest was, in course of time, to sweep into India. By the end of the seventh century the Arabs were forcing their way to Cabul 664 A.D. At the beginning of the next century Sindh was overrun and Multan was captured; nevertheless, no extended conquest was as yet attempted. After the reign of the Calif Harun al Raschid at Bagdad the Eastern rulers fell upon evil days. Towards the end of the tenth century a satrapy was established at Ghazni and in the year 1001 Mahmud of Ghazni, having declared his independence, began his series of invasions. On his fourth expedition Mahmud met with a determined resistance from a confederacy of Hindu princes. A desperate battle was fought and won by him near Peshawer. Mahmud made twelve expeditions into India altogether, on one of which he carried off the famous gates of Somnat; but he was content to leave subordinate governors in the Punjab and at Guzerat and never sought to organise an empire. During his life Mahmud was incomparably the greatest ruler in Asia.

After his death the rulers of Ghazni were unable to maintain a consistent supremacy. It was finally overthrown by Ala ud din of Ghor. His nephew, Shahab ud din, was the real founder of the Mahometan Empire in India. The princes of the house of Ghazni who had taken refuge in the Punjab and Guzarat were overthrown and thus the only Mahometan rivals were removed. On his first advance against the Rajput kingdom of Delhi, he was routed; but a second invasion was successful, and a third carried his arms to Behar and even Bengal.

On the death of Shahab ud din, his new and vast Indian dominion became independent under his general Kutb ud din, who had begun life as a slave. The dynasty was carried on by another slave Altamish. Very soon after this the Mongol Chief Chengiz Khan devastated half the world, but left India comparatively untouched. Altamish established the Mahometan rule of Delhi over all Hindustan. This series of rulers, known as the slave kings, was brought to an end after eighty-two years by the establishment of the Khilji dynasty in 1288 by the already aged Jelal ud din. His nephew and chief Captain Ala ud din opened a career of conquest, invading the Deckan even before he secured the throne for himself by assassinating his uncle. In fact, he extended his dominion over almost the whole of India in spite of frequent rebellions and sundry Mongol incursions all successfully repressed or dispersed. In 1321 the Khilji dynasty was overthrown by the House of Tughlak.

The second prince of this house, Mahomet Tughlak, was a very remarkable character. Possessed of extraordinary accomplishments, learned, temperate, and brave, he plunged upon wholly irrational and inpracticable schemes of conquest which were disastrous in themselves and also from the methods to which the monarch was driven to procure the means for his wild attempts. One portion after another of the vast empire broke into revolt and at the end of the century the dynasty was overturned and the empire shattered by the terrific invasion of Tamerlane the Tartar. It was not till the middle of the seventeenth century that the Lodi dynasty established itself at Delhi and ruled not without credit for nearly seventy years. The last ruler of this house was Ibrahim, a man who lacked the worthy qualities of his predecessors. And in 1526 Ibrahim fell before the conquering arms of the mighty Baber, the founder of the Mogul dynasty.

III.—Baber and Aber

Baber was a descendant of Tamerlane. He himself was a Turk, but his mother was a Mongol; hence the familiar title of the dynasty known as the Moguls. Succeeding to the throne of Ferghana at the age of twelve the great conqueror's youth was full of romantic vicissitudes, of sharp reverses and brilliant achievements. He was only four and twenty when he succeeded in making himself master of Cabul. He was forty-four, when with a force of twelve thousand men he shattered the huge armies of Ibrahim at Panipat and made himself master of Delhi. His conquests were conducted on what might almost be called principles of knight errantry. His greatest victories were won against overwhelming odds, at the head of followers who were resolved to conquer or die. And in three years he had conquered all Hindustan. His figure stands out with an extraordinary fascination, as an Oriental counterpart of the Western ideal of chivalry; and his autobiography is an absolutely unique record presenting the almost sole specimen of real history in Asia.

But Baber died before he could organise his empire and his son Humayun was unable to hold what had been won. An exceedingly able Mahometan Chief, Shir Khan, raised the standard of revolt, made himself master of Behar and Bengal, drove Humayun out of Hindustan, and established himself under the title of Shir Shah. His reign was one of conspicuous ability. It was not till he had been dead for many years that Humayun was able to recover his father's dominion. Indeed, he himself fell before victory was achieved. The restoration was effected in the name of his young son Akber, a boy of thirteen, by the able general and minister, Bairam Khan, at the victory of Panipat in 1556. The long reign of Akber initiates a new era.

Two hundred years before this time the Deckan had broken free from the Delhi dominion. But no unity and no supremacy was permanently established in the southern half of India where, on the whole, Mahometan dynasties now held the ascendancy. Rajputana on the other hand, which the Delhi monarchs had never succeeded in bringing into complete subjection, remained purely Hindu under the dominion of a variety of rajahs.

The victory of Panipat was decisive. Naturally enough, Bairam assumed complete control of the State. His rule was able, but harsh and arrogant. After three years the boy king of a sudden coup d'etat assumed the reins of Government. Perhaps it was fortunate for both that the fallen minister was assassinated by a personal enemy.

Of all the dynasties that had ruled in India that of Baber was the most insecure in its foundations. It was without any means of support throughout the great dominion which stretched from Cabul to Bengal. The boy of eighteen had a tremendous task before him. Perhaps it was this very weakness which suggested to Akber the idea of giving his power a new foundation by setting himself at the head of an Indian nation, and forming the inhabitants of his vast dominion, without distinction of race or religion, into a single community. Swift and sudden in action, the young monarch broke down one after another the attempts of subordinates to free themselves from his authority. By the time that he was twenty-five he had already crushed his adversaries by his vigour or attached them by his clemency. The next steps were the reduction of Rajputana, Ghuzerat and Bengal; and when this was accomplished Akber's sway extended over the whole of India north of the Deckan, to which was added Kashmir and what we now call Afghanistan. Akber had been on the throne for fifty years before he was able to intervene actively in the Deckan and to bring a great part of it under his sway.

But the great glory of Akber lies not in the conquests which made the Mogul Empire the greatest hitherto known in India, but in that empire's organisation and administration. Akber Mahometanism was of the most latitudinarian type. His toleration was complete. He had practically no regard for dogma, while deeply imbued with the spirit of religion. In accordance with his liberal principles Hinduism was no bar to the highest offices. In theory his philosophy was not new, though it was so in practical application.

None of his reforms are more notable than the revenue system carried out by his Hindu minister, Todar Mal, itself a development of a system initiated by Shir Shah. His empire was divided into fifteen provinces, each under a viceroy under the control of the king himself. Great as a warrior and great as an administrator Akber always enjoyed abundant leisure for study and amusement. He excelled in all exercises of strength and skill; his history is filled with instances of romantic courage, and he had a positive enjoyment of danger. Yet he had no fondness for war, which he neither sought nor continued without good reason.

IV.—The Mogul Empire

Akber died in 1605 and was succeeded by his son Selim, who took the title of Jehan Gir. The Deckan, hardly subdued, achieved something like independence under a great soldier and administrator of Abyssinian origin, named Malik Amber. In the sixth year of his reign Jehan Gir married the beautiful Nur Jehan, by whose influence the emperor's natural brutality was greatly modified in practice. His son, Prince Khurram, later known as Shah Jehan, distinguished himself in war with the Rajputs, displaying a character not unworthy of his grandfather. In 1616 the embassy of Sir Thomas Roe from James I visited the Court of the Great Mogul. Sir Thomas was received with great honour, and is full of admiration of Jehan Gir's splendour. It is clear, however, that the high standards set up by Akber were fast losing their efficacy.

Jehan Gir died in 1627 and was succeeded by Shah Jehan. Much of his reign was largely occupied with wars in the Deckan and beyond the northwest frontier on which the emperor's son Aurangzib was employed. Most of the Deckan was brought into subjection, but Candahar was finally lost. Shah Jehan was the most magnificent of all the Moguls. In spite of his wars, Hindustan itself enjoyed uninterrupted tranquillity, and on the whole, a good Government. It was he who constructed the fabulously magnificent peacock throne, built Delhi anew, and raised the most exquisite of all Indian buildings, the Taj Mahal or Pearl Mosque, at Agre. After a reign of thirty years he was deposed by his son Aurangzib, known also as Alam Gir.

Aurangzib had considerable difficulty in securing his position by the suppression of rivals; but our interest now centres in the Deckan, where the Maratta people were organised into a new power by the redoubtable Sivaji. Though some of the Marattas claim Rajput descent, they are of low caste. They have none of the pride or dignity of the Rajput, and they care nothing for the point of honour; but they are active, hardy, persevering, and cunning. Sivaji was the son of a distinguished soldier named Shahji, in the service of the King of Bijapur. By various artifices young Sivaji brought a large area under his control. Then he revolted against Bijapur, posing as a Hindu leader. He wrung for himself a sort of independence from Bijapur. His proceedings attracted the attention of Aurangzib, who, however, did not immediately realise how dangerous the Maratta was to become. Himself occupied in other parts of the empire, Aurangzib left lieutenants to deal with Sivaji; and since he never trusted a lieutenant, the forces at their disposal were insufficient or were divided under commanders who were engaged as much in thwarting each other as in endeavouring to crush the common foe. Hence the vigorous Sivaji was enabled persistently to consolidate his organisation.

At the same time Aurangzib was departing from the traditions of his house and acting as a bigoted champion of Islam; differentiating between his Mussulman subjects and the Hindus so as completely to destroy that national unity which it had been the aim of his predecessors to establish. The result was a Rajput revolt and the permanent alienation of the Rajputs from the Mogul Government.

In spite of these difficulties Aurangzib renewed operations against Sivaji, to which the Maratta retorted by raiding expeditions in Hindustan; whereby he hoped to impress on the Mogul the advisability of leaving him alone; his object being to organise a great dominion in the Deckan—a dominion largely based on his championship of Hinduism as against Mahometanism. When Sivaji died, in 1680, his son Sambaji proved a much less competent successor; but the Maratta power was already established. Aurangzib directed his arms not so much against the Marattas as to the overthrow of the great kingdoms of the Deckan. When he turned against the Marattas, they met his operations by the adoption of guerrilla tactics, to which the Maratta country was eminently adapted. Most of Aurangzib's last years were occupied in these campaigns. The now aged emperor's industry and determination were indefatigable, but he was hopelessly hampered by his constitutional inability to trust in the most loyal of his servants. He had deposed his own father and lived in dread that his son Moazzim would treat him in the same fashion. He died in 1707 in the eighty-ninth year of his life and the fiftieth of his reign. In the eyes of Mahometans this fanatical Mahometan was the greatest of his house. But his rule, in fact, initiated the disintegration of the Mogul Empire. He had failed to consolidate the Mogul supremacy in the Deckan, and he had revived the old religious antagonism between Mahometans and Hindus.

Prince Moazzim succeeded under the title of Bahadur Shah. Dissensions among the Marattas enabled him to leave the Deckan in comparative peace to the charge of Daud Khan. He hastened also to make peace with the Rajputs; but he was obliged to move against a new power which had arisen in the northwest, that of the Sikhs. Primarily a sort of reformed sect of the Hindus the Sikhs were converted by persecution into a sort of religious and military brotherhood under their Guru or prophet, Govind. They were too few to make head against the power of the empire, but they could only be scattered, not destroyed; and in later days were to assume a great prominence in Indian affairs. A detailed account of the incompetent successors of Bahadur Shah would be superfluous. The outstanding features of the period was the disintegration of the central Government and the development in the south of two powers; that of the Marattas and that of Asaf Jah, the successor of Daud Khan, and the first of the Nizams of the Deckan. The supremacy among the Marattas passed to the Peshwas, the Bramin Ministers of the successors of Sivaji, who established a dynasty very much like that of the Mayors of the Palace in the Frankish Kingdom of the Merovingians. But the final blow to the power of the Moguls was struck by the tremendous invasion of Nadir Shah the Persian, in 1739, when Delhi was sacked and its richest treasures carried away; though the Persian departed still leaving the emperor nominal Suzerian of India. Before twenty years were past the greatest of all revolutions in India affairs had taken place; and Robert Clive had made himself master of Bengal in the name of the British East India Company.

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VOLTAIRE

Russia Under Peter the Great

Francois Marie Arouet, known to the world by the assumed name of Voltaire (supposed to be an anagram of Arou[v]et l[e] j[eun]), was born in Paris on November 21, 1694. Before he was twenty-two, his caustic pen had got him into trouble. At thirty-one, when he was already famous for his drama, "OEdipe," as well as for audacious lampoons, he was obliged to retreat to England, where he remained some three years. Various publications during the years following his return placed him among the foremost French writers of the day. From 1750 to 1753 he was with Frederick the Great in Prussia. When the two quarrelled, Voltaire settled in Switzerland and in 1758 established himself at Ferney, about the time when he published "Candide." His "Siecle de Louis Quatorze" (see ante) had appeared some years earlier. In 1762 he began a series of attacks on the Church and Christianity; and he continued to reign, a sort of king of literature, till his death, in Paris on May 30, 1778. An admirable criticism of him is to be found in Morley's "Voltaire"; but the great biography is that of Desnoiresterres. His "Russia under Peter the Great" was written after Voltaire took up his residence at Ferney in 1758. This epitome is prepared from the French text.

I.—All the Russias

When, about the beginning of the present century, the Tsar Peter laid the foundations of Petersburg, or, rather, of his empire, no one foresaw his success. Anyone who then imagined that a Russian sovereign would be able to send victorious fleets to the Dardanelles, to subjugate the Crimea, to clear the Turks out of four great provinces, to dominate the Black Sea, to set up the most brilliant court in Europe, and to make all the arts flourish in the midst of war—anyone expressing such an idea would have passed for a mere dreamer. Peter the Great built the Russian Empire on a foundation firm and lasting.

That empire is the most extensive in our hemisphere. Poland, the Arctic Ocean, Sweden, and China lie on its boundaries. It is so vast that when it is mid-day at its western extremity it is nearly midnight at the eastern. It is larger than all the rest of Europe, than the Roman Empire, than the empire of Darius which Alexander conquered. But it will take centuries, and many more such Tsars as Peter, to render that territory populous, productive, and covered with cities, like the northern lands of Europe.

The province nearest to our own realms is Livonia, long a heathen region. Tsar Peter conquered it from the Swedes.

To the north is the province of Revel and Esthonia, also conquered from the Swedes by Peter. The Gulf of Finland borders Esthonia; and here at this junction of the Neva and Lake Ladoga is the city of Petersburg, the youngest and the fairest of the cities of the empire, built by Peter in spite of a mass of obstacles. Northward, again, is Archangel, which the English discovered in 1533, with the result that the commerce fell entirely into their hands and those of the Dutch. On the west of Archangel is Russian Lapland. Then, ascending the Dwina from the coast, we arrive at the territories of Moscow, long the centre of the empire. A century ago Moscow was without the ordinary amenities of civilisation, though it could display an Oriental profusion on state occasions.

West of Moscow is Smolensk, recovered from the Poles by Peter's father Alexis. Between Petersburg and Smolensk is Novgorod; south of Smolensk is Kiev or Little Russia; and Red Russia, or the Ukraine, watered by the Dnieper, the Borysthenes of the Greeks—the country of the Cossacks. Between the Dnieper and the Don northwards is Belgorod; then Nischgorod, then Astrakan, the march of Asia and Europe with Kazan, recovered from the Tartar empire of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane by Ivan Vasilovitch. Siberia is peopled by Samoeides and Ostiaks, and its southern regions by hordes of Tartars—like the Turks and Mongols, descendants of the ancient Scythians. At the limit of Siberia is Kamschatka.

Throughout this vast but thinly populated empire the manners and customs are Asiatic rather than European. As the Janissaries control the Turkish government, so the Strelitz Guards used to dispose of the throne. Christianity was not established till late in the tenth century, in the Greek form, and liberated from the control of the Greek Patriarch, a subject of the Grand Turk, in 1588.

Before Peter's day, Russia had neither the power, the cultivated territories, the subjects, nor the revenues which she now enjoys. She had no foothold in Livonia or Finland, little or no control over the Cossacks or in Astrakan. The White, Black, Baltic, and Caspian seas were of no use to a nation which had not even a name for a fleet. She had to place herself on a level with the cultivated nations, though she was without knowledge of the science of war by land or sea, and almost of the rudiments of manufacture and agriculture, to say nothing of the fine arts. Her sons were even forbidden to learn by travel; she seemed to have condemned herself to eternal ignorance. Then Peter was born, and Russia was created.

II.—At the School of Europe

It was owing to a series of dynastic revolutions and usurpations that young Michael Romanoff, Peter's grandfather, was chosen Tsar at the age of fifteen, in 1613. He was succeeded in 1645 by his son, Alexis Michaelovitch. Alexis, in his wars with Poland, recovered from her Smolensk, Kiev, and the Ukraine. He waged war with the Turk in aid of Poland, introduced manufactures, and codified the laws, proving himself a worthy sire for Peter the Great; but he died in 1677 too soon—he was but forty-six—to complete the work he had begun. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Feodor. There was a second, Ivan; and Peter, not five years old, the child of his second marriage. Dying five years later, Feodor named Peter his successor. An elder sister, Sophia, intrigued to place the incapable Ivan on the throne instead, as her own puppet, by the aid of the turbulent Strelitz Guard. After a series of murders, the Strelitz proclaimed Ivan and Peter joint sovereigns, associating Sophia with them as co-regent.

Sophia ruled with the aid of an able minister, Gallitzin. But she formed a conspiracy against Peter, who, however, made his escape, rallied his supporters, crushed the conspiracy, and secured his position as Autocrat of the Russias, being then in his seventeenth year (1689).

Peter not only set himself to repair his neglected education by the study of German and Dutch, and an instinctive horror of water by resolutely plunging himself into it; he developed an immediate interest in boats and shipping, and promptly set about organising a disciplined force, destined for use against the Strelitz. The nucleus was his personal regiment, called the Preobazinsky. He had already a corps of foreigners, under the command of a Scot named Gordon. Another foreigner, Le Fort, on whom he relied, raised and disciplined another corps, and was made admiral of the infant fleet which he began to construct on the Don for use against the Crim Tartars.

His first political measure was to effect a treaty with China, his next an expedition for the subjugation of the Tartars of Azov. Gordon and Le Fort, with their two corps and other forces, marched on Azov in 1695. Peter accompanied, but did not command, the army. Unsuccessful at first, his purpose was effected in 1696; Azov was conquered, and a fleet placed on its sea. He celebrated a triumph in Roman fashion at Moscow; and then, not content with despatching a number of young men to Italy and elsewhere to collect knowledge, he started on his travels himself.

As one of the suite of an embassy he passed through Livonia and Germany till he arrived at Amsterdam, where he worked as a hand at shipbuilding. He also studied surgery at this time, and incidentally paid a visit to William of Orange at The Hague. Early next year he visited England, formally, lodging at Deptford, and continuing his training in naval construction. Thence, and from Holland, he collected mathematicians, engineers, and skilled workmen. Finally, he returned to Russia by way of Vienna, to establish satisfactory relations with the emperor, his natural and necessary ally against the Turk.

Peter had made his arrangements for Russia during his absence. Gordon with his corps was at Moscow; the Strelitz were distributed in Astrakan and Azov, where some successful operations were carried out. Nevertheless, sedition raised its head. Insurrection was checked by Gordon, but disaffection remained. Reappearing unexpectedly, he punished the mutinous Strelitz mercilessly, and that body was entirely done away with. New regiments were created on the German model; and he then set about reorganising the finances, reforming the political position of the Church, destroying the power of the higher clergy, and generally introducing more enlightened customs from western Europe.

III.—War with Sweden

In 1699, the sultan was obliged to conclude a peace at Carlovitz, to the advantage of all the powers with whom he had been at war. This set Peter free on the side of Sweden. The youth of Charles XII. tempted Peter to the recovery of the Baltic provinces. He set about the siege of Riga and Narva. But Charles, in a series of marvellous operations, raised the siege of Riga, and dispersed or captured the very much greater force before Narva in November 1700.

The continued successes of Charles did not check Peter's determination to maintain Augustus of Saxony and Poland against him. It was during the subsequent operations against Charles's lieutenants in Livonia that Catherine—afterwards to become Peter's empress—was taken prisoner.

The Tsar continued to press forward his social reforms at Moscow, and his naval and military programmes. His fleet was growing on Lake Ladoga. In its neighbourhood was the important Swedish fortress of Niantz, which he captured in May 1703; after which he resolved to establish the town which became Petersburg, where the Neva flows into the Gulf of Finland; and designed the fortifications of Cronstadt, which were to render it impregnable. The next step was to take Narva, where he had before been foiled. The town fell on August 20, 1704; when Peter, by his personal exertions, checked the violence of his soldiery.

Menzikoff, a man of humble origin, was now made governor of Ingria. In June 1705, a formidable attempt of the Swedes to destroy the rapidly rising Petersburg and Cronstadt was completely repulsed. A Swedish victory, under Lewenhaupt, at Gemavers, in Courland, was neutralised by the capture of Mittau. But Poland was now torn from Augustus, and Charles's nominee, Stanislaus, was king. Denmark had been forced into neutrality; exaggerated reports of the defeat at Gemavers had once more stirred up the remnants of the old Strelitz. Nevertheless, Peter, before the end of the year, was as secure as ever.

In 1706, Augustus was reduced to a formal abdication and recognition of Stanislaus as King of Poland; and Patkul, a Livonian, Peter's ambassador at Dresden, was subsequently delivered to Charles and put to death, to the just wrath of Peter. In October, the Russians, under Menzikoff, won their first pitched battle against the Swedes, a success which did not save Patkul.

In February 1708, Charles himself was once more in Lithuania, at the head of an army. But his advance towards Moscow was disputed at well-selected points, and even his victory at Hollosin was a proof that the Russians had now learned how to fight.

When Charles reached the Dnieper, he unexpectedly marched to unite with Mazeppa in the Ukraine, instead of continuing his advance on Moscow. Menzikoff intercepted Lewenhaupt on the march with a great convoy to join Charles, and that general was only able to cut his way through with 5,000 of his force. Mazeppa's own movement was crushed, and he only joined Charles as a fugitive, not an ally. Charles's desperate operations need not be followed. It suffices to say that in May 1709, he had opened the siege of Pultawa, by the capture of which he counted that the road to Moscow would lie open to him.

Here the decisive battle was fought on July 12. The dogged patience with which Peter had turned every defeat into a lesson in the art of war met with its reward. The Swedish army was shattered; Charles, prostrated by a wound, was himself carried into safety across the Turkish frontier. Peter's victory was absolutely decisive and overwhelming; and what it meant was the civilising of a territory till then barbarian. Its effects in other European countries, including the recovery of the Polish crown by Augustus, are pointed out in the history of Charles XII. The year 1710 witnessed the capture of a series of Swedish provinces in the Baltic provinces; and the Swedish forces in Pomerania were neutralised.

IV.—The Expansion of Russia

Now the Sultan Ahmed III. declared war on Peter; not for the sake of his guest, Charles XII., but because of Peter's successes in Azov, his new port of Taganrog, and his ships on the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea. He outraged international law by throwing the Russian envoy and his suite into prison. Peter at once left his Swedish campaign to advance his armies against Turkey.

Before leaving Moscow he announced his marriage with the Livonian captive, Catherine, whom he had secretly made his wife in 1707. Apraksin was sent to take the supreme command by land and sea. Cantemir, the hospodar of Moldavia, promised support, for his own ends.

The Turkish vizier, Baltagi Mehemet, had already crossed the Danube, and was marching up the Pruth with 100,000 men. Peter's general Sheremetof was in danger of being completely hemmed in when Peter crossed the Dnieper, Catherine stoutly refusing to leave the army. No help came from Cantemir, and supplies were running short. The Tsar was too late to prevent the passage of the Pruth by the Turks, who were now on his lines of communication; and he found himself in a trap, without supplies, and under the Turkish guns. When he attempted to withdraw, the Turkish force attacked, but were brilliantly held at bay by the Russian rear-guard.

Nevertheless, the situation was desperate. It was Catherine who saved it. At her instigation, terms—accompanied by the usual gifts—were proposed to the vizier; and, for whatever reason, the vizier was satisfied to conclude a peace then and there. He was probably unconscious of the extremities to which Peter was reduced. Azov was to be retroceded, Taganrog, and other forts, dismantled; the Tsar was not to interfere in Poland, and Charles was to be allowed a free return to his own dominions. The hopes of Charles were destroyed, and he was reduced to intriguing at the Ottoman court.

Peter carried out some of the conditions of the Pruth treaty. The more important of them he successfully evaded for some time. The treaty, however, was confirmed six months later. But the Pruth affair was a more serious check to the Tsar than even Narva had been, for it forced him to renounce the dominion of the Black Sea. He turned his attention to Pomerania, though the injuries his health had suffered drove him to take the waters at Carlsbad.

His object was to drive the Swedes out of their German territories, and confine them to Scandinavia; and to this end he sought alliance with Hanover, Brandenburg, and Denmark. About this time he married his son Alexis (born to him by his first wife) to the sister of the German Emperor; and proceeded to ratify by formal solemnities his own espousal to Catherine.

Charles might have saved himself by coming out of Turkey, buying the support of Brandenburg by recognising her claim on Stettin, and accepting the sacrifice of his own claim to Poland, which Stanislaus was ready to make for his sake. He would not. Russians, Saxons, and Danes were now acting in concert against the Swedes in Pomerania. A Swedish victory over the Danes and Gadebesck and the burning of Altona were of no real avail. The victorious general not long after was forced to surrender with his whole army. Stettin capitulated on condition of being transferred to Prussia. Stralsund was being besieged by Russians and Saxons; Hanover was in possession of Bremen and Verden; and Peter was conquering Finland, when, at last, Charles suddenly reappeared at Stralsund, in November 1715. But the brilliant naval operation by which Peter captured the Isle of Aland had already secured Finland.

During the last three years a new figure had risen to prominence, the ingenious, ambitious and intriguing Baron Gortz, who was now to become the chief minister and guide of the Swedes. Under his influence, Charles's hostility was now turned in other directions than against Russia, and Peter was favourably inclined towards the opening of a new chapter in his relations with Sweden, since he had made himself master of Ingria, Finland, Livonia, Esthonia, and Carelia. The practical suspension of hostilities enabled Peter to start on a second European tour, while Charles, driven at last from Weimar and Stralsund—all that was left him south of the Baltic—was planning the invasion of Norway.

During this tour the Tsar passed three months in Holland, his old school in the art of naval construction; and while he was there intrigues were on foot which threatened to revolutionise Europe. Gortz had conceived the design of allying Russia and Sweden, restoring Stanislaus in Poland, recovering Bremen and Verden from Hanover, and finally of rejecting the Hanoverian Elector from his newly acquired sovereignty in Great Britain by restoring the Stuarts. Spain, now controlled by Alberoni, was to be the third power concerned in effecting this bouleversement, which involved the overthrow of the regency of Orleans in France.

The discovery of this plot, through the interception of some letters from Gortz, led to the arrest of Gortz in Holland, and of the Swedish ambassador, Gyllemborg, in London. Peter declined to commit himself. His reception when he went to Paris was eminently flattering; but an attempt to utilise it for a reunion of the Greek and Latin Churches was a complete failure. The Gortz plot had entirely collapsed before Peter returned to Russia.

V.—Peter the Great

Peter had been married in his youth to Eudoxia Feodorovna Lapoukin. With every national prejudice, she had stood persistently in the way of his reforms. In 1696 he had found it necessary to divorce her, and seclude her in a convent. Alexis, the son born of this marriage in 1690, inherited his mother's character, and fell under the influence of the most reactionary ecclesiastics. Politically and morally the young man was a reactionary. He was embittered, too, by his father's second marriage; and his own marriage, in 1711, was a hideous failure. His wife, ill-treated, deserted, and despised, died of wretchedness in 1715. She left a son.

Peter wrote to Alexis warning him to reform, since he would sooner transfer the succession to one worthy of it than to his own son if unworthy. Alexis replied by renouncing all claim to the succession. Renunciation, Peter answered, was useless. Alexis must either reform, or give the renunciation reality by becoming a monk. Alexis promised; but when Peter left Russia, he betook himself to his brother-in-law's court at Vienna, and then to Naples, which at the time belonged to Austria. Peter ordered him to return; if he did, he should not be punished; if not, the Tsar would assuredly find means.

Alexis obeyed, returned, threw himself at his father's feet. A reconciliation was reported. But next day Peter arraigned his son before a council, and struck him out of the succession in favour of Catherine's infant son Peter. Alexis was then subjected to a series of incredible interrogations as to what he would or would not have done under circumstances which had never arisen.

At the strange trial, prolonged over many months, the 144 judges unanimously pronounced sentence of death. Catherine herself is said by Peter to have pleaded for the stepson, whose accession would certainly have meant her own destruction. Nevertheless, the unhappy prince was executed. That Peter slew him with his own hand, and that Catherine poisoned him, are both fables. The real source of the tragedy is to be found in the monks who perverted the mind of the prince.

This same year, 1718, witnessed the greatest benefits to Peter's subjects—in general improvements, in the establishment and perfecting of manufactures, in the construction of canals, and in the development of commerce. An extensive commerce was established with China through Siberia, and with Persia through Astrakan. The new city of Petersburg replaced Archangel as the seat of maritime intercourse with Europe.

Peter was now the arbiter of Northern Europe. In May 1724, he had Catherine crowned and anointed as empress. But he was suffering from a mental disease, and of this he died, in Catherine's arms, in the following January, without having definitely nominated a successor. Whether or not it was his intention, it was upon his wife Catherine that the throne devolved.

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W.H. PRESCOTT

The Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella

William Hickling Prescott was born at Salem, Massachusetts, on May 4, 1796. His first great historical work, "The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella," published in 1838, was compiled under circumstances of extraordinary difficulty. During most of the time of its composition the author was deprived of sight, and was dependent on having all documents read to him. Before it was completed he recovered the use of his eyes, and was able to correct and verify. Nevertheless, the changes required were few. The "Conquest of Mexico" and "Conquest of Peru" (see ante) followed at intervals of five and four years, and ten years later the uncompleted "Philip II." He died in New York on January 28, 1859. The subjects of this work, Ferdinand and Isabella, were the monarchs who united the Spanish kingdoms into one nation, ended the Moorish dominion in Europe, and annexed the New World to Spain, which during the ensuing century threatened to dominate the states of Christendom.

I.—Castile and Aragon

After the great Saracen invasion, at the beginning of the eighth century, Spain was broken up into a number of small but independent states. At the close of the fifteenth century, these were blended into one great nation. Before this, the numbers had been reduced to four—Castile, Aragon, Navarre, and the Moorish kingdom of Granada.

The civil feuds of Castile in the fourteenth century were as fatal to the nobility as were the English Wars of the Roses. At the close, the power of the commons was at its zenith. In the long reign of John II., the king abandoned the government to the control of favourites. The constable, Alvaro de Luna, sought to appropriate taxing and legislative powers to the crown. Representation in the cortes was withdrawn from all but eighteen privileged cities. Politically disastrous, the reign was conspicuous for John's encouragement of literature, the general intellectual movement, and the birth of Isabella, three years before John's death.

The immediate heir to the throne was Isabella's elder half-brother Henry. Her mother was the Princess of Portugal, so that on both sides she was descended from John of Gaunt, the father of our Lancastrian line. Both her childhood and that of Ferdinand of Aragon, a year her junior, were passed amidst tumultuous scenes of civil war. Henry, good-natured, incompetent, and debauched, yielded himself to favourites, hence he was more than once almost rejected from his throne. Old King John II. of Aragon was similarly engaged in a long civil war, mainly owing to his tyrannous treatment of his eldest son, Carlos.

But by 1468 Isabella and Ferdinand were respectively recognised as the heirs of Castile and Aragon. In spite of her brother, Isabella made contract of marriage with the heir of Aragon, the instrument securing her own sovereign rights in Castile, though Henry thereupon nominated another successor in her place. The marriage was effected under romantic conditions in October 1469, one circumstance being that the bull of dispensation permitting the union of cousins within the forbidden degrees was a forgery, though the fact was unknown at the time to Isabella. The reason of the forgery was the hostility of the then pope; a dispensation was afterwards obtained from Sixtus IV. The death of Henry, in December 1474, placed Isabella and Ferdinand on the throne of Castile.

II.—Overthrow of the Moorish Dominion

Isabella's claim to Castile rested on her recognition by the Cortes; the rival claimant was a daughter of the deceased king, or at any rate, of his wife, a Portuguese princess. Alfonso of Portugal supported his niece Joanna's claim. In March 1476 Ferdinand won the decisive victory of Toro; but the war of the succession was not definitely terminated by treaty till 1479, some months after Ferdinand had succeeded John on the throne of Aragon.

Isabella was already engaged in reorganising the administration of Castile; first, in respect of justice, and codification of the law; secondly, by depressing the nobles. A sort of military police, known as the hermandad, was established. These reforms were carried out with excellent effect; instead of birth, merit became the primary qualification for honourable offices. Papal usurpations on ecclesiastical rights were resisted, trade was regulated, and the standard of coinage restored. The whole result was to strengthen the crown in a consolidated constitution.

Restrained by her natural benevolence and magnanimity, urged forward by her strong piety and the influence of the Dominican Torquemada, Isabella assented to the introduction of the Inquisition—aimed primarily at the Jews—with its corollary of the Auto da fe, of which the actual meaning is "Act of Faith." Probably 10,220 persons were burnt at the stake during the eighteen years of Torquemada's ministry.

Now, however, we come to the great war for the ejection of the Moorish rule in southern Spain. The Saracen power of Granada was magnificent; the population was industrious, sober, and had far exceeded the Christian powers in culture, in research, and in scientific and philosophical inquiry.

So soon as Ferdinand and Isabella had established their government in their joint dominion, they turned to the project of destroying the Saracen power and conquering its territory. But the attack came from Muley Abul Hacen, the ruler of Granada, in 1481. Zahara, on the frontier, was captured and its population carried into slavery. A Spanish force replied by surprising Alhama. The Moors besieged it in force; it was relieved, but the siege was renewed. In an unsuccessful attack on Loja, Ferdinand displayed extreme coolness and courage. A palace intrigue led to the expulsion from Granada of Abdul Hacen, in favour of his son, Abu Abdallah, or Boabdil. The war continued with numerous picturesque episodes. A rout of the Spaniards in the Axarquia was followed by the capture of Boabdil in a rout of the Moors; he was ransomed, accepting an ignominious treaty, while the war was maintained against Abdul Hacen.

In the summer of 1487, Malaja fell, after a siege in which signal heroism was displayed by the Moorish defenders. Since they had refused the first offers, they now had to surrender at discretion. The entire population, male and female, were made slaves. The capture of Baza, in December, after a long and stubborn resistance, was followed by the surrender of Almeria and the whole province appertaining to it.

It was not till 1491 that Granada itself was besieged; at the close of the year it surrendered, on liberal terms. The treaty promised the Moors liberty to exercise their own religion, customs, and laws, as subjects of the Spanish monarchy. The Mohammedan power in Western Europe was extinguished.

Already Christopher Columbus had been unsuccessfully seeking support for his great enterprise. At last, in 1492, Isabella was won over. In August, the expedition sailed—a few months after the cruel edict for the expulsion of the Jews. In the spring of 1493 came news of his discovery. In May the bull of Alexander VI. divided the New World and all new lands between Spain and Portugal.

III.—The Italian Wars

In the foreign policy, the relations with Europe, which now becomes prominent, Ferdinand is the moving figure, as Isabella had been within Spain. In Spain, Portugal, France, and England, the monarchy had now dominated the old feudalism. Consolidated states had emerged. Italy was a congeries of principalities and republics. In 1494 Charles VIII. of France crossed the Alps to assert his title to Naples, where a branch of the royal family of Aragon ruled. His successor raised up against him the League of Venice, of which Ferdinand was a member. Charles withdrew, leaving a viceroy, in 1495. Ferdinand forthwith invaded Calabria.

The Spanish commander was Gonsalvo de Cordova; who, after a reverse in his first conflict, for which he was not responsible, never lost a battle. He had learnt his art in the Moorish war, and the French were demoralised by his novel tactics. In a year he had earned the title of "The Great Captain." Calabria submitted in the summer of 1496. The French being expelled from Naples, a truce was signed early in 1498, which ripened into a definitive treaty.

On the death of Cardinal Mendoza, for twenty years the monarchs' chief minister, his place was taken by Ximenes, whose character presented a rare combination of talent and virtue; who proceeded to energetic and much-needed reforms in church discipline.

Not with the same approbation can we view the zeal with which he devoted himself to the extermination of heresy. The conversion of the Moors to Christianity under the regime of the virtuous Archbishop of Granada was not rapid enough. Ximenes, in 1500, began with great success a propaganda fortified by liberal presents. Next he made a holocaust of Arabian MSS. The alarm and excitement caused by measures in clear violation of treaty produced insurrection; which was calmed down, but was followed by the virtually compulsory conversion of some fifty thousand Moors.

This stirred to revolt the Moors of the Alpuxarras hill-country; crushed with no little difficulty, but great severity, the insurrection broke out anew on the west of Granada. This time the struggle was savage. When it was ended the rebels were allowed the alternative of baptism or exile.

Columbus had returned to the New World in 1493 with great powers; but administrative skill was not his strong point, and the first batch of colonists were without discipline. He returned and went out again, this time with a number of convicts. Matters became worse. A very incompetent special commissioner, Bobadilla, was sent with extraordinary powers to set matters right, and he sent Columbus home in chains, to the indignation of the king and queen. The management of affairs was then entrusted to Ovando, Columbus following later. It must be observed that the economic results of the great discovery were not immediately remarkable; but the moral effect on Europe at large was incalculable.

On succeeding to the French throne, Louis XII. was prompt to revive the French claims in Italy (1498); but he agreed with Ferdinand on a partition of the kingdom of Naples, a remarkable project of robbery. The Great Captain was despatched to Sicily, and was soon engaged in conquering Calabria. It was not long, however, before France and Aragon were quarrelling over the division of the spoil. In July 1502 war was declared between them in Italy. The war was varied by set combats in the lists between champions of the opposed nations.

In 1503 a treaty was negotiated by Ferdinand's son-in-law, the Archduke Philip. Gonsalvo, however, not recognising instructions received from Philip, gave battle to the French at Cerignola, and won a brilliant victory. A few days earlier another victory had been won by a second column; and Gonsalvo marched on Naples, which welcomed him. The two French fortresses commanding it were reduced. Since Ferdinand refused to ratify Philip's treaty, a French force entered Roussillon; but retired on Ferdinand's approach. The practical effect of the invasion was a demonstration of the new unity of the Spanish kingdom.

In Italy, Louis threw fresh energy into the war; and Gonsalvo found his own forces greatly out-numbered. In the late autumn there was a sharp but indecisive contest at the Garigliano Bridge. Gonsalvo held to his position, despite the destitution of his troops, until he received reinforcements. Then, on December 28, he suddenly and unexpectedly crossed the river; the French retired rapidly, gallantly covered by the rear-guard, hotly attacked by the Spanish advance guard. The retreat being checked at a bridge, the Spanish rear was enabled to come up, and the French were driven in route. Gaeta surrendered on January 4; no further resistance was offered. South Italy was in the hands of Gonsalvo.

IV.—After Isabella

Throughout 1503 and 1504 Queen Isabella's strength was failing. In November 1504 she died, leaving the succession to the Castilian crown to her daughter Joanna, and naming Ferdinand regent. Magnanimity, unselfishness, openness, piety had been her most marked moral traits; justice, loyalty, practical good sense her political characteristics—a most rare and virtuous lady.

Her death gives a new complexion to our history. Joanna was proclaimed Queen of Castile; Ferdinand was governor of that kingdom in her name, but his regency was not accepted without demur. To secure his brief authority he made alliance with Louis, including a marriage contract with Louis' niece, Germaine de Ford. Six weeks after the wedding, the Archduke Philip landed in Spain. Ferdinand's action had ruined his popularity, and he saw security only in a compact assuring Philip the complete sovereignty—Joanna being insane.

Philip's rule was very unpopular and very brief. A sudden illness, in which for once poison was not suspected of playing a part, carried him off. Ferdinand, absent at the time in Italy, was restored to the regency of Castile, which he held undisputed—except for futile claims of the Emperor Maximilian—for the rest of his life.

The years of Ferdinand's sole rule displayed his worst characteristics, which had been restrained during his noble consort's life. He was involved in the utterly unscrupulous and immoral wars issuing out of the League of Cambray for the partition of Venice. The suspicion and ingratitude with which he treated Gonsalvo de Cordova drove the Great Captain into a privacy not less honourable than his glorious public career. Within a twelvemonth of Gonsalvo's death, Ferdinand followed him to the grave in January 1516—lamented in Aragon, but not in Castile.

During the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, the overgrown powers and factious spirit of the nobility had been restrained. That genuine piety of the queen which had won for the monarchs the title of "The Catholic" had not prevented them from firmly resisting the encroachments of ecclesiastical authority. The condition of the commons had been greatly advanced, but political power had been concentrated in the crown, and the crowns of Castile and Aragon were permanently united on the accession of Charles—afterwards Charles V.—to both the thrones.

Under these great rulers we have beheld Spain emerging from chaos into a new existence; unfolding, under the influence of institutions adapted to her genius, energies of which she was before unconscious; enlarging her resources from all the springs of domestic industry and commercial enterprise; and insensibly losing the ferocious habits of the feudal age in the requirements of an intellectual and moral culture. We have seen her descend into the arena with the other nations of Europe, and in a very few years achieve the most important acquisitions of territory both in that quarter and in Africa; and finally crowning the whole by the discovery and occupation of a boundless empire beyond the waters.

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VOLTAIRE

History of Charles XII

Voltaire's "History of Charles XII." was his earliest notable essay in history, written during his sojourn in England in 1726-9, when he was acquiring the materials for his "Letters on the English," eleven years after the death of the Swedish monarch. The prince who "left a name at which the world grew pale, to point a moral and adorn a tale," was killed by a cannon-ball when thirty-six years old, after a career extraordinarily brilliant, extraordinarily disastrous, and in result extraordinarily ineffective. A tremendous contrast to the career, equally unique, of his great antagonist, Peter the Great of Russia, whose history Voltaire wrote thirty years later (see ante). Naturally the two works in a marked degree illustrate each other. In both cases Voltaire claims to have had first-hand information from the principal actors in the drama.

I.—The Meteor Blazes

The house of Vasa was established on the throne of Sweden in the first half of the sixteenth century. In the seventeenth century, Christina, daughter of the great Gustavus Adolphus, abdicated in favour of her cousin, who ascended the throne as Charles X. He and his vigorous son, Charles XI., established a powerful absolute monarchy. To the latter was born, on June 27, 1682, the infant who became Charles XII.—perhaps the most extraordinary man who ever lived, who in his own person united all the great qualities of his ancestors, whose one defect and one misfortune was that he possessed all those qualities in excess.

In childhood he developed exceptional physical powers, and remarkable linguistic facility. He succeeded to the throne at the age of fifteen, in 1697. Within the year he declared himself of age, and asserted his position as king; and the neighbouring powers at once resolved to take advantage of the Swedish monarch's youth—the kings Christian of Denmark, Augustus of Saxony and Poland, and the very remarkable Tsar Peter the Great of Russia. Among them, the three proposed to appropriate all the then Swedish territories on the Russian and Polish side of the Gulf of Finland and the Baltic.

Danes and Saxons, joined by the forces of other German principalities, were already attacking Holstein, whose duke was Charles's cousin; the Saxons, too, were pouring into Livonia. On May 8, 1700, Charles sailed from Stockholm with 8,000 men to the succour of Holstein, which he effected with complete and immediate success by swooping on Copenhagen. On August 6, Denmark concluded a treaty, withdrawing her claims in Holstein and paying the duke an indemnity. Three months later, the Tsar, who was besieging Narva, in Ingria, with 80,000 Muscovites, learnt that Charles had landed, and was advancing with 20,000 Swedes. Another 30,000 were being hurried up by the Tsar when Charles, with only 8,000 men, came in contact with 25,000 Russians at Revel. In two days he had swept them before him, and with his 8,000 men fell upon the Russian force of ten times that number in its entrenchments at Narva. Prodigies of valour were performed, the Muscovites were totally routed. Peter, with 40,000 reinforcements, had no inclination to renew battle, but he very promptly made up his mind that his armies must be taught how to fight. They should learn from the victorious Swedes how to conquer the Swedes.

With the spring, Charles fell upon the Saxon forces in Livonia, before a fresh league between Augustus and Peter had had time to develop advantageously. After one decisive victory, the Duchy of Courland made submission, and he marched into Lithuania. In Poland, neither the war nor the rule of Augustus was popular, and in the divided state of the country Charles advanced triumphantly. A Polish diet was summoned, and Charles awaited events; he was at war, he said, not with Poland, but with Augustus. He had, in fact, resolved to dethrone the King of Poland by the instrumentality of the Poles themselves—a process made the easier by the normal antagonism between the diet and the king, an elective, not a hereditary ruler.

Augustus endeavoured, quite fruitlessly, to negotiate with Charles on his own account, while the diet was much more zealous to curtail his powers than to resist the Swedish monarch, and was determined that, at any price, the Saxon troops should leave Poland. Intrigues were going on on all sides. Presently Charles set his forces in motion. When Augustus learned that there was to be no peace till Poland had a new king, he resolved to fight. Charles's star did not desert him. He won a complete victory. Pressing in pursuit of Augustus, he captured Cracow, but his advance was delayed for some weeks by a broken leg; and in the interval there was a considerable rally to the support of Augustus. But the moment Charles could again move, he routed the enemy at Pultusk. The terror of his invincibility was universal. Success followed upon success. The anti-Saxon party in the diet succeeded in declaring the throne vacant. Charles might certainly have claimed the crown for himself, but chose instead to maintain the title of the Sobieski princes. The kidnapping of James Sobieski, however, caused Charles to insist on the election of Stanislaus Lekzinsky.

II.—From Triumph to Disaster

Charles left Warsaw to complete the subjugation of Poland, leaving the new king in the capital. Stanislaus and his court were put to sudden flight by the appearance of Augustus with 20,000 men. Warsaw fell at once; but when Charles turned on the Saxon army, only the wonderful skill of Schulembourg saved it from destruction. Augustus withdrew to Saxony, and began repairing the fortifications of Dresden.

By this time, wherever the Swedes appeared, they were confident of victory if they were but twenty to a hundred. Charles had made nothing for himself out of his victories, but all his enemies were scattered—except Peter, who had been sedulously training his people in the military arts. On August 21, 1704, Peter captured Narva. Now he made a new alliance with Augustus. Seventy thousand Russians were soon ravaging Polish territory. Within two months, Charles and Stanislaus had cut them up in detail, or driven them over the border. Schulembourg crossed the Oder, but his battalions were shattered at Frawenstad by Reuschild. On September 1, 1706, Charles himself was invading Saxony.

The invading troops were held under an iron discipline; no violence was permitted. In effect, Augustus had lost both his kingdom and his electorate. His prayers for peace were met by the demand for formal and permanent resignation of the Polish crown, repudiation of the treaties with Russia, restoration of the Sobieskies, and the surrender of Patkul, a Livonian "rebel" who was now Tsar Peter's plenipotentiary at Dresden. Augustus accepted, at Altranstad, the terms offered by Charles. Patkul was broken on the wheel; Peter determined on vengeance; again the Russians overran Lithuania, but retired before Stanislaus.

In September 1707, Charles left Saxony at the head of 43,000 men, enriched with the spoils of Poland and Saxony. Another 20,000 met him in Poland; 15,000 more were ready in Finland. He had no doubts of his power to dethrone the Tsar. In January 1708 he was on the march for Grodow. Peter retreated before him, and in June was entrenched beyond the Beresina. Driven thence by a flank movement, the Russians engaged Charles at Hollosin, where he gained one of his most brilliant victories. Retreat and pursuit continued towards Moscow.

Charles now pushed on towards the Ukraine, where he was secretly in treaty with the governor, Mazeppa. But when he reached the Ukraine, Mazeppa joined him not as an ally, but as a fugitive. Meanwhile, Lewenhaupt, marching to effect a junction with him, was intercepted by Peter with thrice his force, and finally cut his way through to Charles with only 5,000 men.

So severe was the winter that both Peter and Charles, contrary to their custom, agreed to a suspension of arms. Isolated as he was, towards the end of May, Charles laid siege to Pultawa, the capture of which would have opened the way to Moscow. Thither Peter marched against him, while Charles himself was unable to move owing to a serious wound in the foot, endured with heroic fortitude. On July 8, the decisive battle was fought. The victory lay with the Russians, and Charles was forced to fly for his life. His best officers were prisoners. A column under Lewenhaupt succeeded in joining the king, now prostrated by his wound and by fever. At the Dnieper, Charles was carried over in a boat; the force, overtaken by the Russians, was compelled to capitulate. Peter treated the captured Swedish generals with distinction. Charles himself escaped to Bender, in Turkey.

Virtually a captive in the Turkish dominions, Charles conceived the project of persuading the sultan to attack Russia. At the outset, the grand vizier, Chourlouly Ali, favoured his ideas; but Peter, by lavish and judicious bribery, soon won him over. The grand vizier, however, was overthrown by a palace intrigue, and was replaced by an incorruptible successor, Numa Chourgourly, who was equally determined to treat the fugitive king in becoming fashion and to decline to make war on the Tsar.

Meanwhile, Charles's enemies were taking advantage of his enforced absence. Peter again overran Livonia. Augustus repudiated the treaty of Altranstad, and recovered the Polish crown. The King of Denmark repudiated the treaty of Travendal, and invaded Sweden, but his troops were totally routed by the raw levies of the Swedish militia at Helsimburg.

The Vizier Chourgourly, being too honourable for his post, was displaced by Baltaji Mehemet, who took up the schemes of Charles. War was declared against Russia. The Prince of Moldavia, Cantemir, supported Peter. The Turks seemed doomed to destruction; but first the advancing Tsar found himself deserted by the Moldavians, and allowed himself to be hemmed in by greatly superior forces on the Pruth. With Peter himself and his army entirely at his mercy, Baltaji Mehemet—to the furious indignation of Charles—was content to extort a treaty advantageous to Turkey but useless to the Swede; and Peter was allowed to retire with the honours of war.

III.—The Meteor Quenched

The great desire of the Porte was, in fact, to get rid of its inconvenient guest; to dispatch him to his own dominions in safety with an escort to defend him, but no army for aggression. Charles conceived that the sultan was pledged to give him an army. The downfall of the vizier—owing to the sultan's wrath on learning that Peter was not carrying out the pledges of the Pruth treaty—did not help matters; for the favourite, Ali Cournourgi, now intended Russia to aid his own ambitions, and the favourite controlled the new vizier. Within six months of Pruth, war had been declared and a fresh peace again patched up, Peter promising to withdraw all his forces from Poland, and the Turks to eject Charles.

But Charles was determined not to budge. He demanded as a preliminary half a million to pay his debts. A larger sum was provided; still he would not move. The sultan felt that he had now discharged all that the laws of hospitality could possibly demand. Threats only made the king more obstinate. His supplies were cut off and his guards withdrawn, except his own 300 Swedes; whereupon Charles fortified the house he had built himself. All efforts to bring him to reason were of no avail. A force of Janissaries was despatched to cut the Swedes to pieces; but the men listened to Baron Grothusen's appeal for a delay of three days, and flatly refused to attack. But when they sent Charles a deputation of veterans, he refused to see them, and sent them an insulting message. They returned to their quarters, now resolved to obey the pasha.

The 300 Swedes could do nothing but surrender; yet Charles, with twenty companions, held his house, defended it with a valour and temporary success which were almost miraculous, and were only overwhelmed by numbers when they sallied forth and charged the Turkish army with swords and pistols. Once captured, the king displayed a calm as imperturbable as his rage before had been tempestuous.

Charles was now conveyed to the neighbourhood of Adrianople, where he was joined by another royal prisoner—Stanislaus, who had attempted to enter Turkey in disguise in order to see him, but had been discovered and arrested. Charles was allowed to remain at Demotica. Here he abode for ten months, feigning illness; both he and his little court being obliged to live frugally and practically without attendants, the chancellor, Mullern, being the cook of the establishment.

The hopes which Charles obstinately clung to, of Turkish support, were finally destroyed when Cournourgi at last became grand vizier. His sister Ulrica warned him that the council of regency at Stockholm would make peace with Russia and Denmark. At length he demanded to be allowed to depart. In October 1714 he set out in disguise for the frontier, and having reached Stralsund on November 21, not having rested in a bed for sixteen days, on the same day he was already issuing from Stralsund instructions for the vigorous prosecution of the war in every direction. But meanwhile the northern powers, without exception, had been making partition of all the cis-Baltic territories of the Swedish crown. Tsar Peter, master of the Baltic, held that ascendancy which had once belonged to Charles. But the hopes of Sweden revived with the knowledge that the king had reappeared at Stralsund.

Even Charles could not make head against the hosts of his foes. Misfortune pursued him now, as successes had once crowded upon him. Before long he was himself practically cooped up in Stralsund, while the enemies' ships controlled the Baltic. In October, Stralsund was resolutely besieged. His attempt to hold the commanding island of Rugen failed after a desperate battle. The besiegers forced their way into Stralsund itself. Exactly two months after the trenches had been opened against Stralsund, Charles slipped out to sea—the ice in the harbour had first to be broken up—ran the gauntlet of the enemy's forts and fleets, and reached the Swedish coast at Carlscrona.

Charles now subjected his people to a merciless taxation in order to raise troops and a navy. Suddenly, at the moment when all the powers at once seemed on the point of descending on Sweden, Charles flung himself upon Norway, at that time subject to Denmark. This was in accordance with a vast design proposed by his minister, Gortz, in which Charles was to be leagued with his old enemy Peter, and with Spain, primarily against England, Hanover, and Augustus of Poland and Saxony. Gortz's designs became known to the regent Orleans; he was arrested in Holland, but promptly released.

Gortz, released, continued to work out his intriguing policy with increased determination. Affairs seemed to be progressing favourably. Charles, who had been obliged to fall back from Norway, again invaded that country, and laid siege to Fredericshall. Here he was inspecting a part of the siege works, when his career was brought to a sudden close by a cannon shot. So finished, at thirty-six, the one king who never displayed a single weakness, but in whom the heroic virtues were so exaggerated as to be no less dangerous than the vices with which they are contrasted.

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HENRY MILMAN, D.D.

History of Latin Christianity

The "History of Latin Christianity, to the Pontificate of Nicholas V.," which is here presented, was published in 1854-56. It covers the religious or ecclesiastical history of Western Europe from the fall of paganism to the pontificate of Nicholas V., a period of eleven centuries, corresponding practically with what are commonly called the Middle Ages, and is written from the point of view of a large-minded Anglican who is not seeking to maintain any thesis, but simply to set forth a veracious account of an important phase of history. (Milman, see vol. xi, p. 68.)

I.—Development of the Church of Rome

For ten centuries after the extinction of paganism, Latin Christianity was the religion of Western Europe. It became gradually a monarchy, with all the power of a concentrated dominion. The clergy formed a second universal magistracy, exercising always equal, asserting, and for a long time possessing, superior power to the civil government. Western monasticism rent from the world the most powerful minds, and having trained them by its stern discipline, sent them back to rule the world. Its characteristic was adherence to legal form; strong assertion of, and severe subordination to, authority. It maintained its dominion unshaken till, at the Reformation, Teutonic Christianity asserted its independence.

The Church of Rome was at first, so to speak, a Greek religious colony; its language, organisation, scriptures, liturgy, were Greek. It was from Africa, Tertullian, and Cyprian that Latin Christianity arose. As the Church of the capital—before Constantinople—the Roman Church necessarily acquired predominance; but no pope appears among the distinguished "Fathers" of the Church until Leo.

The division between Greek and Latin Christianity developed with the division between the Eastern and the Western Empire; Rome gained an increased authority by her resolute support of Athanasius in the Arian controversy.

The first period closes with Pope Damasus and his two successors. The Christian bishop has become important enough for his election to count in profane history. Paganism is writhing in death pangs; Christianity is growing haughty and wanton in its triumph.

Innocent I., at the opening of the fifth century, seems the first pope who grasped the conception of Rome's universal ecclesiastical dominion. The capture of Rome by Alaric ended the city's claims to temporal supremacy; it confirmed the spiritual ascendancy of her bishop throughout the West.

To this period, the time of Augustine and the Pelagian controversy, belongs the establishment in Western Christendom of the doctrine of predestination, and that of the inherent evil of matter which is at the root of asceticism and monasticism. It was a few years later that the Nestorian controversy had the effect of giving fixity to that conception of the "Mother of God" which is held by Roman Catholics.

The pontificate of Leo is an epoch in the history of Christianity. He had utter faith in himself and in his office, and asserted his authority uncompromisingly. The Metropolitan of Constantinople was becoming a helpless instrument in the hands of the Byzantine emperor; the Bishop of Rome was becoming an independent potentate. He took an authoritative and decisive part in the controversy formally ended at the Council of Chalcedon; it was he who stayed the advance of Attila. Leo and his predecessor, Innocent, laid the foundations of the spiritual monarchy of the West.

In the latter half of the fifth century, the disintegration of the Western Empire by the hosts of Teutonic invaders was being completed. These races assimilated certain aspects of Christian morals and assumed Christianity without assimilating the intellectual subtleties of the Eastern Church, and for the most part in consequence adopted the Arian form. But when the Frankish horde descended, Clovis accepted the orthodox theology, thereby in effect giving it permanence and obliterating Arianism in the West. Theodoric, the Gothic king of Italy, in nominal subjection to the emperor, was the last effective upholder of toleration for his own Arian creed. Almost simultaneous with his death was the accession of Justinian to the empire. The re-establishment of effective imperial sway in Italy reduced the papacy to a subordinate position. The recovery was the work of Gregory I., the Great; but papal opposition to Gothic or Lombard dominion in Italy destroyed the prospect of political unification for the peninsula.

Western monasticism had been greatly extended and organised by Benedict of Nursia and his rule—comprised in silence, humility, and obedience. Monasticism became possessed of the papal chair in the person of Gregory the Great. Of noble descent and of great wealth, which he devoted to religious uses as soon as he became master of it, he had also the characteristics which were held to denote the highest holiness. In austerity, devotion, and imaginative superstition, he, whose known virtue and capacity caused him to be forced into the papal chair, remained a monk to the end of his days.

But he became at once an exceedingly vigorous man of affairs. He reorganised the Roman liturgy; he converted the Lombards and Saxons. And he proved himself virtual sovereign of Rome. His administration was admirable. He exercised his disciplinary authority without fear or favour. And his rule marks the epoch at which all that we regard as specially characteristic of mediaeval Christianity—its ethics, its asceticism, its sacerdotalism, and its superstitions—had reached its lasting shape.

Gregory the Great had not long passed away when there arose in the East that new religion which was to shake the world, and to bring East and West once more into a prolonged conflict. Mohammedanism, born in Arabia, hurled itself first against Asia, then swept North Africa. By the end of the seventh century it was threatening the Byzantine Empire on one side of Europe, and the Gothic dominion in Spain on the other. On the other hand, in the same period, Latin Christianity had decisively taken possession of England, driving back that Celtic or Irish Christianity which had been beforehand with it in making entry to the North. Similarly, it was the Irish missionaries who began the conversion of the outer Teutonic barbarians; but the work was carried out by the Saxon Winfrid (Boniface) of the Latin Church.

The popes, however, during this century between Gregory I. and Gregory II. again sank into a position of subordination to the imperial power. Under the second Gregory, the papacy reasserted itself in resistance to the Emperor Leo the Isaurian, the "Iconoclast," the "Image-breaker," who strove to impose on Christendom his own zeal against images. To Leo, images meant image-worship. To his opponents, images were useful symbols. Rome defied the emperor's attempt to claim spiritual dictatorship. East and West were rent in twain at the moment when Islam was assaulting both West and East. Leo rolled back the advancing torrent before Constantinople, as Charles Martel rolled it back almost simultaneously in the great battle of Tours; but the Empire and the West, Byzantium and Rome, never presented a united front to the Moslem.

The Iconoclastic controversy threw Italy against its will into the hands of the image-worshipping Lombards; and hate of Lombard ascendancy turned the eyes of Gregory's successors to the Franks, to Charles Martel; to Pepin, who obtained from Pope Stephen sanction for his seizure of the Frankish crown, and in return repressed the Lombards; and finally to Charles the Great, otherwise Charlemagne, who on the last Christmas Day of the eighth century was crowned (Western) emperor and successor of the Caesars.

II.—The Western Empire and Theocracy

Charlemagne, the first emperor of the restored or Holy Roman Empire, by his conquests brought into a single dominion practically all Western Europe from the Elbe and the Danube to the Ebro. He stood the champion and the head of Western Christendom, palpably the master, and not even in theory the subordinate, of the Pontiff from whom he received the imperial crown. But he established ecclesiastics as a territorial nobility, counteracting the feudal nobility; and when the mighty emperor was gone, and the unity of what was nominally one empire passed away, this ecclesiastical nobility became an instrument for the elevation of the spiritual above the temporal head of Christendom. The change was already taking place under his son Louis the Pious, whose character facilitated it.

The disintegration of the empire was followed by a hideous degradation of the papacy. But the Saxon line of emperors, the Ottos, sprung from Henry the Fowler, once more revived the empire; the third of them established a worthy pope in Silvester II. But both emperor and pope died just after the eleventh century opened. Elections of popes and anti-popes continued to be accompanied by the gravest scandals, until the Emperor Henry III. (Franconian dynasty) set a succession of Germans on the papal throne.

The high character of the pontificate was revived in the persons of Leo IX. and Victor II. (Gebhard of Eichstadt); many abuses were put down or at least checked with a firm hand. But Henry's death weakened the empire, and Stephen IX. added to the rigid enforcement of orthodoxy more peremptory claims for the supremacy of the Holy See. His successor, Nicholas II., strengthened the position as against the empire by securing the support of the fleshly arm—the Normans. His election was an assertion of the right of the cardinals to make their own choice. Alexander II. was chosen in disregard of the Germans and the empire, and the Germans chose an anti-pope. At the back of the Italian papal party was the great Hildebrand. In 1073 Hildebrand himself ascended the papal throne as Gregory VII. With Hildebrand, the great struggle for supremacy between the empire and the papacy was decisively opened.

Gregory's aim was to establish a theocracy through an organised dominant priesthood separated from the world, but no less powerful than the secular forces; with the pope, God's mouthpiece, and vice-regent, at its head. The temporal powers were to be instruments in his hand, subject to his supreme authority. Clerical celibacy acquired a political value; the clergy would concentrate on the glory of the Church those ambitions which made laymen seek to aggrandise their families.

The collision between Rome and the emperor came quickly. The victory at the outset fell to the pope, and Henry IV. was compelled to humble himself and entreat pardon as a penitent at Canossa. Superficially, the tables were turned later; when Gregory died, Henry was ostensibly victor.

But Gregory's successor, Urban, as resolute and more subtle, retrieved what had only been a check. The Crusades, essentially of ecclesiastical inspiration, were given their great impulse by him; they were a movement of Christendom against the Paynim, of the Church against Islam; they centred in the pope, not the emperor, and they made the pope, not the emperor, conspicuously the head of Christendom.

The twelfth century was the age of the Crusades, of Anselm and Abelard, of Bernard of Clairvaux, and Arnold of Brescia. It saw the settlement of the question of investitures, and in England the struggle between Henry II. and Becket, in which the murder of the archbishop gave him the victory. It saw a new enthusiasm of monasticism, not originated by, but centring in, the person of Bernard, a more conspicuous and a more authoritative figure than any pope of the time. To him was due the suppression of the intellectual movement from within against the authority of the Church, connected with Abelard's name.

Arnold of Brescia's movement was orthodox, but, would have transformed the Church from a monarchial into a republican organisation, and demanded that the clergy should devote themselves to apostolical and pastoral functions with corresponding habits of life. He was a forerunner of the school of reformers which culminated in Zwingli.

In the middle of the century the one English pope, Hadrian IV., was a courageous and capable occupant of the papal throne, and upheld its dignity against Frederick Barbarossa; though he could not maintain the claim that the empire was held as a fief of the papacy. But the strife between the spiritual and temporal powers issued on his death in a double election, and an imperial anti-pope divided the allegiance of Christendom with Alexander III. It was not till after Frederick had been well beaten by the Lombard League at Legnano that emperor and pope were reconciled, and the reconciliation was the pope's victory.

III.—Triumph and Decline of the Papacy

Innocent III., mightiest of all popes, was elected in 1198. He made the papacy what it remained for a hundred years, the greatest power in Christendom. The future Emperor Frederick II. was a child entrusted to Innocent's guardianship. The pope began by making himself virtually sovereign of Italy and Sicily, overthrowing the German baronage therein. A contest for the imperial throne enabled the pope to assume the right of arbitration. Germany repudiated his right. Innocent was saved from the menace of defeat by the assassination of the opposition emperor. But the successful Otho proved at once a danger.

Germany called young Frederick to the throne, and now Innocent sided with Germany; but he did not live to see the death of Otho and the establishment of the Hohenstaufen. More decisive was his intervention elsewhere. Both France and England were laid under interdicts on account of the misdoings of Philip Augustus and John; both kings were forced to submission. John received back his kingdom as a papal fief. But Langton, whom Innocent had made archbishop, guided the barons in their continued resistance to the king, whose submission made him Rome's most cherished son. England and the English clergy held to their independence. Pedro of Aragon voluntarily received his crown from the pope. In every one of the lesser kingdoms of Europe, Innocent asserted his authority.

Innocent's efforts for a fresh crusade begot not the overthrow of the Saracen, but the substitution of a Latin kingdom under the Roman obedience for the Greek empire of Byzantium. In effect it gave Venice her Mediterranean supremacy. The great pope was not more zealous against Islam than against the heterogeneous sects which were revolting against sacerdotalism; whereof the horrors of the crusade against the Albigenses are the painful witness.

Not the least momentous event in the rule of this mightiest of the popes was his authorisation of the two orders of mendicant friars, the disciples of St. Dominic, and of St. Francis of Assisi, with their vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, and their principle of human brotherhood. And in both cases Innocent's consent was given with reluctance.

It may be said that Frederick II. was at war with the papacy until his death in the reign of Innocent III.'s fourth successor, Innocent IV. With Honorius the emperor's relations were at first friendly; both were honestly anxious to take a crusade in hand. The two were brought no further than the verge of a serious breach about Frederick's exercise of authority over rebellious ecclesiastics. But Gregory IX., though an octogenarian, was recognised as of transcendent ability and indomitable resolution; and his will clashed with that of the young emperor, a brilliant prince, born some centuries too early.

Frederick was pledged to a crusade; Gregory demanded that the expedition should sail. Frederick was quite warranted in saying that it was not ready; and through no fault of his. Gregory excommunicated him, and demanded his submission before the sentence should be removed. Frederick did not submit, but when he sailed it was without the papal support. Frederick endeavoured to proceed by treaty; it was a shock to Moslems and to Christendom alike. The horrified Gregory summoned every disaffected feudatory of the empire in effect to disown the emperor. But Frederick's arms seemed more likely to prosper. Christendom turned against the pope in the quarrel. Christendom would not go crusading against an emperor who had restored the kingdom of Jerusalem. The two came to terms. Gregory turned his attention to becoming the Justinian of the Church.

But a rebellion against Frederick took shape practically as a renewal of the papal-imperial contest. Gregory prepared a league; then once more he launched his ban. Europe was amazed by a sort of war of proclamations. Nothing perhaps served the pope better now than the agency of the mendicant orders. The military triumph of Frederick, however, seemed already assured when Gregory died. Two years later, Innocent IV. was pope. After hollow overtures, Innocent fled to Lyons, and there launched invectives against Frederick and appeals to Christendom.

Frederick, by attaching, not the papacy but the clergy, alienated much support. Misfortunes gathered around him. His death ensured Innocent's supremacy. Soon the only legitimate heir of the Hohenstaufen was an infant, Conradin; and Conradin's future depended on his able but illegitimate uncle, Manfred. But Innocent did not live long to enjoy his victory; his arrogance and rapacity brought no honour to the papacy. English Grostete of Lincoln, on whom fell Stephen Langton's mantle, is the noblest ecclesiastical figure of the time.

For some years the imperial throne remained vacant; the matter of first importance to the pontiffs—Alexander, Urban, Clement—was that Conradin, as he grew to manhood, should not be elected. Manfred became king of South Italy, with Sicily; but with no legal title. Urban, a Frenchman, agreed with Charles of Anjou, brother of St. Louis, that he should have the crown, on terms. Manfred fell in battle against him at Beneventum, and with him all real chance of a Hohenstaufen recovery. Not three years after, young Conradin, in a desperate venture after his legitimate rights, was captured and put to death by Charles of Anjou.

A temporary pacification of Western Christendom was the work of Gregory X.; his aim was a great crusade. At last an emperor was elected, Rudolph of Hapsburg. But Gregory died. Popes followed each other and died in swift succession. Presently, on the abdication of the hermit Celestine, Boniface VIII. was chosen pope. His bull, "Clericis laicos," forbidding taxation of the clergy by the temporal authority, brought him into direct hostility with Philip the Fair of France, and though the quarrel was temporarily adjusted, the strife soon broke out again. The bulls, "Unam Sanctam" and "Ausculta fili," were answered by a formal arraignment of Boniface in the States-General of France, followed by the seizure of the pope's own person by Philip's Italian partisans.

IV.—Captivity, Seclusion, and Revival

The successor of Boniface was Benedict IX. He acted with dignity and restraint, but he lived only two years. After long delays, the cardinals elected the Archbishop of Bordeaux, a subject of the King of England. But before he became Clement V. he had made his pact with the King of France. He was crowned, not in Italy, but at Lyons, and took up his residence at Avignon, a papal fief in Provence, on the French borders. For seventy years the popes at Avignon were practically the servants of the King of France.

At the very outset, Clement was compelled to lend his countenance to the suppression of the Knights Templars by the temporal power. Philip forced the pope and the Consistory to listen to an appalling and incredible arraignment of the dead Boniface; then he was rewarded for abandoning the persecution of his enemy's memory by abject adulation: the pope had been spared from publicly condemning his predecessor.

John XXII. was not, in the same sense, a tool of the last monarchs of the old House of Capet, of which, during his rule, a younger branch succeeded in the person of Philip of Valois. John was at constant feud with the Emperor Louis of Bavaria, and also, within the ecclesiastical pale, with the Franciscan Order. Louis of Bavaria died during the pontificate of Clement VI., and Charles of Bohemia, already emperor in the eyes of the pope, was accepted by Germany. He virtually abdicated the imperial claim to rule in Italy; but by his "Golden Bull" he terminated the old source of quarrel, the question of the authority by which emperors were elected. The "Babylonish captivity" ended when Gregory XI. left Avignon to die in Italy; it was to be replaced by the Great Schism.

For thirty-eight years rival popes, French and Italian, claimed the supremacy of the Church. The schism was ended by the Council of Constance; Latin Christianity may be said to have reached its culminating point under Nicholas V., during whose pontificate the Turks captured Constantinople.

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LEOPOLD VON RANKE

History of the Popes

Leopold von Ranke was born at Wiehe, on December 21, 1795, and died on May 23, 1886. He became Professor of History at Berlin at the age of twenty-nine; and his life was passed in researches, the fruits of which he gave to the world in an invaluable series of historical works. The earlier of these were concerned mainly with the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—in English history generally called the Tudor and Stuart periods—based on examinations of the archives of Vienna and Rome, Venice and Florence, as well as of Berlin. In later years, when he had passed seventy, he travelled more freely outside of his special period. The "History of the Popes in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries" here presented was published in 1834-7. The English translation by Sarah Austin (1845) was the subject of review in one of Macaulay's famous essays. It is mainly concerned with the period, not of the Reformation itself, but of the century and a quarter following—roughly from 1535 to 1760, the period during which the religious antagonisms born of the Reformation were primary factors in all European complications.

I.—The Papacy at the Reformation

The papacy was intimately allied with the Roman Empire, with the empire of Charlemagne, and with the German or Holy Roman Empire revived by Otto. In this last the ecclesiastical element was of paramount importance, but the emperor was the supreme authority. From that authority Gregory VII. resolved to free the pontificate, through the claim that no appointment by a layman to ecclesiastical office was valid; while the pope stood forth as universal bishop, a crowned high-priest. To this supremacy the French first offered effectual resistance, issuing in the captivity of Avignon. Germany followed suit, and the schism of the church was closed by the secular princes at Constance and Basle. The papacy was restored in form, but not to its old supremacy.