II. GERMANY: ITALY: SPAIN: THE SCANDINAVIAN COUNTRIES: POLAND AND RUSSIA: HUNGARY: OTTOMAN TURKS: THE GREEK EMPIRE…

II. GERMANY: ITALY: SPAIN: THE SCANDINAVIAN COUNTRIES: POLAND AND RUSSIA: HUNGARY: OTTOMAN TURKS: THE GREEK EMPIRE

I. GERMANY.

THE GREAT INTERREGNUM.--After the death of Frederick II. (1250), Germany and Italy, the two countries over which the imperial authority extended, were left free from its control. Italy was abandoned to itself, and thus to internal division. The case of Germany was analogous. During the "great interregnum," lasting for twenty-three years, the German cities, by their industry and trade, grew strong, as did the burghers in France, and in the towns in England, in this period. But in Germany the feudal control was less relaxed. This interval was a period of anarchy and trouble. William of Holland wore the title of emperor until 1256. Then the electors were bribed, and Alfonso X. of Castile, great-grandson of Frederick Barbarossa, and Richard, Earl of Cornwall, younger son of King John of England, were chosen by the several factions; but their power was nominal. The four electors on the Rhine, and the dukes and counts, divided among themselves the imperial domains. The dismemberment of the duchies of Swabia and Franconia (1268), and at an earlier day (1180) of Saxony, created a multitude of petty sovereignties. The great vassals of the empire, the kings of Denmark, of Poland, of Hungary, etc., broke away from its suzerainty. There was a reign of violence. The barons sallied out of their strongholds to rob merchants and travelers. The princes, and the nobles in immediate relation to the empire, governed, each in his own territory, as they pleased. New means of protection were created, as the League of the Rhine, comprising sixty cities and the three Rhenish archbishops, and having its own assemblies; and the Hanseatic League, which has been described (p. 303). Moreover, corporations of merchants and artisans were established in the cities. In the North, where the Crusades, and war with the Slaves, had thinned the population, colonies of Flemings, Hollanders, and Frisians came in to cultivate the soil. During the long-continued disturbances after the death of Frederick II., the desire of local independence undermined monarchy. The empire never regained the vigor of which it was robbed by the interregnum.

HOUSE OF HAPSBURG.--Rudolph, Count of Hapsburg (1273-1291), was elected emperor for the reason, that, while he was a brave man, he was not powerful enough to be feared by the aristocracy. He wisely made no attempt to govern in Italy. He was supported by the Church, to which he was submissive. He devoted himself to the task of putting down disorders in Germany. Against Ottocar II., king of Bohemia, who now held also Austria, Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola, and who refused to acknowledge Rudolph, the emperor twice made war successfully. In a fierce battle at the Marchfield, in 1278, Ottocar was slain. Austria, Styria, and Carniola fell into the hands of the emperor. They were given as fiefs to Rudolph's son Albert; and Carinthia to Albert's son-in-law, the Count of Tyrol. This was the foundation of the power of the house of Hapsburg. Rudolph strove with partial success to recover the crown lands, and did what he could to put a stop to private war and to robbery. Numerous strongholds of robbers he razed to the ground. His practical abandonment of Italy, his partial restoration of order in Germany, and his service to the house of Hapsburg, are the principal features of Rudolph's reign.

HENRY VII. (1308-1313): ITALY.--Adolphus of Nassau (1292-1298) was hired by Edward I. to declare war against France. His doings in Thuringia. which he tried to buy from the Landgrave Albert, led the electors to dethrone him, and to choose Albert I. (1298-1308), Duke of Austria, son of Rudolph. His nephew John, whom he tried to keep out of his inheritance, murdered him. Henry VII. (1308-1313), who was Count of Luxemburg, the next emperor, did little more than build up his family by marrying his son John to the granddaughter of King Ottocar. John was thus made king of Bohemia. In these times, when the emperors were weak, they were anxious to strengthen and enrich their own houses. Henry went to Italy to try his fortunes beyond the Alps. He was crowned in Pavia king of Italy, and in Rome emperor (1312). But the rival parties quickly rose up against him: he was excommunicated by Clement V., an ally of France, and died--it was charged, by poison mixed in the sacramental cup--in 1313. He was a man of pure and noble character, but the time had passed for Italy to be governed by a German sovereign.

CIVIL WAR: ELECTORS AT RENSE.--One party of the electors chose Frederick of Austria (1314-1330), and the other Louis of Bavaria (1314-1347). A terrible civil war, lasting for ten years, was the consequence. In a great battle near Mühldorf, the Austrians were defeated, and Frederick was captured. Louis had now to encounter the hostility of Pope John XXII. (at Avignon), who wished to give the imperial crown to Philip the Fair of France. Louis maintained that he received the throne, not from the popes, but from the electors. He was excommunicated by John, who refused to sanction the agreement of Louis and of Frederick, now set at liberty, to exercise a joint sovereignty. Louis was in Italy from 1327 to 1330, where he was crowned emperor by a pope of his own creation. All efforts of Louis to make peace with Pope John and his successor, Benedict XII., were foiled by the opposition of France. The strife which had been occasioned in Germany by this interference from abroad created such disaffection among the Germans, that the electors met at Rense, in 1338, and declared that the elected king of the Germans received his authority from the choice of the electoral princes exclusively, and was Roman emperor even without being crowned by a pope.

DEPOSITION OF LOUIS OF BAVARIA.--The imprudence of Louis in aggrandizing his family, and his assumption of an acknowledged papal right in dissolving the marriage of the heiress of Tyrol with a son of King John of Bohemia, turned the electors against him. In 1346 Pope Clement VI. declared him deposed. The electors chose in his place Charles, the Margrave of Moravia, the son of King John of Bohemia. Louis did not give up his title, but he died soon after.

CHARLES IV. (1347-1378).--Charles IV. visited Italy, and was crowned emperor (1355); but, according to a promise made to the Pope, he tarried in Rome only a part of one day. He was crowned king of Burgundy at Arles (1365). In Italy "he sold what was left of the rights of the empire, sometimes to cities, sometimes to tyrants." His principal care was for building up his own hereditary dominion, which he so enlarged that it extended, at his death, from the Baltic almost to the Danube. He fortified and adorned Prague, and established there, in 1348, the first German university.

THE GOLDEN BULL.--The great service of Charles IV. to Germany was in the grant of the charter called the Golden Bull (1356). This expressly conferred the right of electing the emperor on the SEVEN ELECTORS, who had, in fact, long exercised it. These were the archbishops of Mentz, of Trier, and of Cologne, and the four secular princes, the King of Bohemia, the Count Palatine of the Rhine, the Duke of Saxony, and the Margrave of Brandenburg. The electoral states were made indivisible and inalienable, and hereditary in the male line. The electors were to be sovereign within their respective territories, and their persons were declared sacred.

THE BLACK DEATH.--Germany, like the other countries, was terribly afflicted during the reign of Charles by the destructive pestilence that swept over the most of Europe (p. 319). One effect was an outbreaking of religious fervor. At this time the movement of the "Flagellants," which started in the thirteenth century, reached its height in Germany and elsewhere. They scourged and lacerated themselves for their sins, marching in processions, and inflicting their blows to the sound of music. Another result of the plague was a savage persecution of the Jews, who were falsely suspected of poisoning wells. Many thousands of them were tortured and killed.

ANARCHY IN GERMANY.--The son of Charles IV. (1378-1400), Wenceslaus, or Wenzel, was a coarse and cruel king. Under him the old disorders of the Interregnum sprang up anew. The towns had to defend themselves against the robber barons, and formed confederacies for this purpose. Private war raged all over Germany.

ACCESSION OF SIGISMUND.--Wenceslaus was deposed by the electors in 1400. But Rupert, the Count Palatine, his successor (1400-1410), was able to accomplish little, in consequence of the strife of parties. Sigismund (1410-1437), brother of Wenceslaus, margrave of Brandenburg, and, in right of his wife, king of Hungary, was chosen emperor, first by a part, and then by all, of the electors. The most important events of this period were the Council of Constance (1414-1418) and the war with the Hussites.

JOHN HUSS.--The principal end for which the Council of Constance was called was the healing of the schism in the Church,--in consequence of which there were three rival popes,--and the securing of ecclesiastical reforms. But at this council John Huss, an eminent Bohemian preacher, was tried for heresy. The doctrines of Wickliffe had penetrated into Bohemia; and a strong party, of which Huss was the principal leader, had sprung up in favor of innovations, doctrinal and practical, one of which was the giving of the cup in the sacrament to the laity. Huss made a great stir by his attack upon abuses in the Church. Under a safe-conduct from Sigismund, he journeyed to Constance. There he was tried, condemned as a heretic, and burnt at the stake (1415). Jerome of Prague, another reformer, was dealt with in the same way by the council (1416).

HUSSITE WAR.--The indignation of the followers of Huss was such that a great revolt broke out in Bohemia. The leader was a brave man, Ziska. The imperial troops, after the coronation of Sigismund as king of Bohemia, were defeated, and driven out. The Hussite soldiers ravaged the neighboring countries. The council of Basel (1431-1449) concluded a treaty with the more moderate portion of the Hussites, in which concessions were made to them. The Taborites, the more fanatical portion, were at length defeated and crushed.

SWITZERLAND.--Switzerland, originally a part of the kingdom of Arles, had been ceded, with this kingdom, to the German Empire in 1033. Within it, was established a lay and ecclesiastical feudalism. In the twelfth century the cities--Zürich, Basel, Berne, and Freiburg--began to be centers of trade, and gained municipal privileges. The three mountain cantons--Uri, Schweitz, and Unterwalden--cherished the spirit of freedom. The counts of Hapsburg, after the beginning of the thirteenth century, exercised a certain indefinite jurisdiction in the land. They endeavored to transform this into an actual sovereignty. Two of the cantons received charters placing them in an immediate relation to the empire. After the death of Rudolph I., the three cantons above named united in a league. Out of this the Swiss Confederacy gradually grew up. There were struggles to cast off foreign control; but the story of William Tell, and other legends of the sort, are certainly fabulous. Albert of Austria left to his successor in the duchy the task of subduing the rebellion. The Austrians were completely defeated at Morgarten, "the Marathon of Switzerland" (1315). The Swiss Confederacy was enlarged by the addition of Lucerne (1332), Zürich and Glarus (1351), Zug (1352), and of the city of Berne in 1353. The battle of Sempach (1386) brought another great defeat upon the Austrians. There, if we may believe an ancient song, a Swiss hero, Arnold of Winkelried, grasped as many of the spear-points as he could reach, as a sheaf in his arms, and devoted himself to death, opening thus a path in which his followers rushed to victory. Once more the Swiss triumphed at Näfels (1388). From that time they were left to the enjoyment of their freedom.

II. ITALY.

GUELFS AND GHIBELLINES: FREEDOM IN THE CITIES.--The inveterate foes of Italy were foreign interference and domestic faction. After the death of Frederick II., the war of the popes against his successors lasted for seventeen years. After the defeat of Manfred (1266), Conradin, the last of the Hohenstaufens, died on the scaffold at Naples. Charles of Anjou lost Sicily through the rebellion of the Sicilian Vespers (1282); and dominion in that island, separated from Naples, passed to the house of Aragon. The papal states, after the election of Rudolph of Hapsburg, became a distinct sovereignty of the pontiffs. The bitter strife of the Guelfs and Ghibellines went on in the Italian cities. The Genoese, who were Guelfic, defeated the Pisans in 1284; and "Pisa, which had ruined Amalfi, was now ruined by Genoa." Florence, which was Guelfic, grew in strength. Genoa and Venice became rivals in the contest for the control of the Mediterranean. In Florence, new factions, the Neri and Bianchi (Blacks and Whites), appeared; the Neri being violent Guelfs, and the Bianchi being at first moderate Guelfs and then Ghibellines. Pope Boniface VIII. invited into Italy Charles of Valois. He was admitted to Florence (1301), and gave the supremacy there to the Guelfic side. The coming of the Emperor Henry VII. into Italy (1310) was marked by a temporary, but the last, revival of imperial feeling. The connection of the popes with the French houses of Anjou and Valois led to the "Babylonian Exile" at Avignon, during which Italy was comparatively free, both from imperial and papal control. During the period of the civil wars, while there was nominally a conflict between the party of the pope and the party of the emperor, the Guelfs were devoted to the destruction of feudalism, and to the building-up of commerce and republican institutions; while the Ghibellines, dreading anarchy, resisted the incoming of the new order of things. It was in this period that Dante produced his immortal poem, which sprang out of the midst of the contest of Guelf and Ghibelline (p. 307). Dante was himself a Ghibelline and an imperialist. In the course of these conflicts, the plebeian class, before without power, is advanced. Older families of nobility die out, or are reduced in influence. New families rise to prominence and power. The burghers band together in arts or guilds; and out of these, in their corporate character, the governments of the cities are formed. "Ancients," and "priors," the heads of the "arts," supersede the consuls. The "podesta" is more and more limited to a judicial function. In some of the Guelf cities, there is "a gonfalonier of justice," to curb the nobility. In Florence, there were also twenty subordinate gonfaloniers.

The final triumph of Guelfs and of republicanism in Florence was in 1253. The body of the citizens established their sovereignty. When, in 1266, citizenship was confined to those who were enrolled in the guilds, the nobles, or Grandi, were wholly excluded from the government. This led them to drop their titles and dignities in order to enroll themselves in these industrial societies. The feuds of factions, especially of the "Whites" and "Blacks," sprang up next. In the latter part of the fourteenth century, strife arose between the "Lesser Arts," or craftsmen whose trades were subordinate to the "Greater Arts," and these last. The mob in Florence drove the "Signory," or chief magistrates, out of the public palace. This was the "Tumult of the Ciompi,"--Ciompi signifying wool-carders, who gave their name to the whole faction. Afterwards, of their own accord, they gave back the government to the priors of the Greater Arts. The effect of these disturbances was to reduce all classes to a level. The way was open for families, like the Albizzi and Medici, to build up a virtual control by wealth and personal qualities.

THE GENERALS IN THE CITIES.--In the cities, there were "captains of the people," who carried on war,--leaders of the Guelfs or Ghibellines, as either might be uppermost. They were persons who were skilled in arms: these were often nobles who had been merged in the body of citizens. In this way, there arose in the cities of Northern Italy ruling houses or dynasties; as the Della Scala in Verona, the Polenta at Ravenna, etc. In Tuscany, where the commercial power of Florence was so great, the communes as yet kept themselves free from hereditary rulers; yet, from time to time, their liberties were exposed to attack from successful generals.

THE TYRANTS.--At the beginning of the fourteenth century, as the fury of the civil wars declined, the cities were left more and more under the rule of masters called "tyrants." Tyranny, as of old, was a term for absolute authority, however it might be wielded. The visits of the emperors Henry VII., and Louis IV. of Bavaria, and of John of Bohemia, son of Henry VII., had no important political effect, except to bring increased power to the Ghibelline despots. Thus, after the interference of Louis IV. (1327), the Visconti established their power in Milan. But the changes in Italy after this epoch gave to the Ghibellines no permanent advantage over their adversaries. The leader of the Guelfs for a long time was Robert, king of Naples (1309-1343).

THE CLASSES OF DESPOTS.--The methods by which the Emperor Frederic II. governed in Italy, and which he had partly learned from the Saracens in Sicily, furnished an example which the Italian despots followed later. He was imitated in his system of taxation, in his creation of monopolies, in the luxury and magnificence of his court, and in his patronage of polite culture. His vicar in the North of Italy, Ezzelino da Romano (1194-1259), who was captain, in the Ghibelline interest, in Verona, Padua, and other cities, was guilty of massacres and all sorts of cruelties, the story of which exercised a horrible fascination over others who came after. At last he was 'hunted down' by Venice and a league of cities, and captured; but he refused to take food, tore his bandages from his wounds, and died under the ban of the Church. The despots of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries have been divided by Mr. Symonds into six classes. The first class had a certain hereditary right from the previous exercise of lordship, as the house of Este in Ferrara. The second class, as the Visconti family in Milan, had been vicars of the empire. The third class were captains, or podestas, chosen by the burghers to their office, but abusing it to enslave the cities. Most of the tyrants of Lombardy got their power in this way. The fourth class is made up of the Condottieri, like Francesco Sforza at Milan. The fifth class includes the nephews or sons of popes, and is of later origin, like the Borgia of Romagna. Their governments had less stability. The sixth class is that of eminent citizens, like the Medici at Florence and the Bentivogli of Bologna. These acquired undue authority by wealth, sometimes by personal qualities and noble descent. Among those who are called "despots" were individuals of worth, moderation, and culture. The records of many of them are filled with tragic scenes of violence and crime. To maintain their hated rule, they were impelled to the practice of barbarities hardly ever surpassed. (J. A. Symonds, Renaissance in Italy, vol. i. chap, ii.)

CONDOTTIERI.--With the end of the civil wars, there appear "the companies of adventure," or mercenary troops. The burghers, having put down the nobility and achieved their independence, lay aside their arms. They are busy in manufactures and trade. The despots and the republics prefer to hire foreign adventurers, the "free companies," who were a curse to Italy. Their occupation, which was a profitable one, was taken up by natives. These were the condottieri. Their leaders introduced cavalry and more skillful methods of fighting. But the battles were bloodless games of strategy, and military energy declined. At the same time intrigue and state-craft were the instruments of political aggrandizement. One of these new leaders was Sforza Attendolo, whose son became Duke of Milan.

FIVE STATES IN ITALY.--In the middle of the fifteenth century, we find, as the political result of the changes of the preceding century and a half, five principal communities in Italy. These powers are the kingdom of Naples, the duchy of Milan, the republic of Florence, the republic of Venice, and the principality of the Pope. A brief sketch will be given of each of these states down to 1447, when Nicholas V. reëstablished the papacy in its strength at Rome, after the exile at Avignon (1305), and the ecclesiastical convulsions that followed it.

LOWER ITALY.--Robert the Wise (of Anjou) (1309-1343), the successor of Charles II. of Naples and the champion of the Guelfs, could not extend his power over Sicily, where Frederick II. (1296-1337), the son of Peter of Aragon, reigned. Robert's granddaughter, Joan I., after a career of crime and misfortune, was strangled in prison by Charles Durazzo, the last male descendant of the house of Anjou in Lower Italy (1382), who seized on the government. Joan II., the last heir of Durazzo (1414-1435), first adopted Alfonso V. of Aragon, and then Louis III. of Anjou and his brother Rene. Alfonso, who inherited the crown of Sicily, united both kingdoms (1435), after a war with Rene and the Visconti of Milan. By this contest, Italy was divided into two parties, composed of the respective adherents of the houses of Anjou and Aragon, The rights of Rene were to revert later to the crown of France, and to serve as a ground for new wars. For twenty-three years Alfonso reigned wisely and prosperously in Southern Italy. He was a patron of letters, and promoted peace among the Italian states.

THE MILANESE: SFORZA.--Another great power was growing up in the North. The greatness of the Visconti family dates from John, Archbishop of Milan, who reigned there, and died in 1354. Gian Galeazzo Visconti became sole master of Milan in 1385, and extended his dominion over Lombardy. He bought of the Emperor Wenceslaus the ducal title. Twenty-six cities, with their territories, were subject to him. But at Galeazzo's death, his state fell to pieces. The condottieri, whom he had kept under, broke loose from control; and in 1450, one of them, Francesco Sforza, with the help of the Venetians, seized on the supreme power, which his family continued to hold for fifty years.

VENICE.--Venice, in the fourteenth century, was as strong as any Italian state. Its constitution was of gradual growth. The doge, elected by the people, divided power in 1032 with a senate; and in 1172 the Grand Council was organized. This council by degrees absorbed the powers of government, which thus became an aristocracy. In 1297 the Senate became hereditary in a few families. In 1311 the powerful Council of Ten was constituted. For a long period Venice was not ambitious of power in Italy, but was satisfied with her commerce with the East. Her contest with Genoa began in 1352, and lasted for thirty years. In the war of Chioggia,--so called from a town twenty-five miles south of Venice,--the Venetians were defeated by Luciano Doria in a sea-fight on the Adriatic. He blockaded Venice; but Doria, in turn, was blockaded in Chioggia by the Venetians, and forced to surrender. After reducing the naval power of Genoa, they added Verona, Vicenza, and Padua to their territories (1410). Under Francesco Foscari, who was doge from 1423 to 1457, Venice took an active part in Italian affairs.

FLORENCE: THE MEDICI.--In Florence, the Medici family gained an influence which gave them a practical control of the government. In 1378 Salvestro de Medici signalized himself by a successful resistance to an oligarchical faction composed partly of the old nobility. The brilliant period in the history of Florence begins with this triumph of the democracy. Pisa was bought from the Duke of Milan, and forced to submit to Florentine rule (1406). John de Medici, a very successful merchant, was twice chosen gonfalonier (1421). His son Cosmo I., who was born in 1389, was also a merchant, possessed of great wealth. He attained to the leading offices in the state, having overcome the Albizzi family, at whose instigation he was for a while banished. Cosmo ruled under the republican forms, but with not less authority on that account. He was distinguished for his patronage of art and letters. By his varied services to Florence, he earned the title of "Father of his Country," which was given him by a public decree.

THE ROMAN PRINCIPALITY: RIENZI.--After the popes took up their abode in Avignon, in the first half of the fourteenth century, Rome was distracted by the feuds of leading families who built for themselves strongholds in the city. In 1347 the Romans, fired by the enthusiast Rienzi, who sought to restore the old Roman liberty, undertook to set up a government after the ancient model. Rienzi was chosen tribune. He found much favor in other cities of Italy. But his head was turned by the seeming realization of his dreams. He was driven out of Italy by the cardinals and the nobles. He returned afterwards, sent by Pope Innocent VI., to aid in winning back Rome to subjection to the Holy See. But his power was gone. He disgusted the people with his pomps and shows, and, while trying to escape in disguise, was put to death (1354). Cardinal Albornoz succeeded in reuniting the dissevered parts of the papal kingdom. But in the period of the Schism (1378-1417), in the cities old dynasties were revived, and new ones arose; towns and territories were ceded to nobles as fiefs; and a degree of freedom almost amounting to independence was conceded to old republics, as Rome, Perugia, and Bologna. It was the work of Pope Nicholas V. and his successors (from 1477) to regain and cement anew the fragments of the papal principality.

LITERATURE AND ART.--In this period, in the midst of political agitation in Italy, there was a brilliant development in the departments of literature and art. The major part of Dante's life (1265-1321) falls within the thirteenth century. Petrarch (1304-1374), Boccaccio (1313-1375), a master in Italian prose, and Dante, are the founders of Italian literature. They are followed by an era of study and culture, rather than of original production. In the arts, Venice and Pisa first became eminent. The church of St. Mark was built at Venice, in the Byzantine style, in 1071. At about the same time the famous cathedral at Pisa was begun; which was followed, in the twelfth century, by the Baptistery and the Leaning Tower. The Campo Santo, or cemetery, was built in 1278. In the thirteenth century, when architectural industry was so active, numerous high brick towers were built in Florence for purposes of defense. Some of them remain "to recall the bloody feuds of the irreconcilable factions of the nobility. In these conflicts, the strife was carried on from tower to tower, from house to house: streets were barricaded with heavy chains, and homes made desolate with fire and sword." Churches and great public buildings were constructed in this period. At the end of the thirteenth century the church of Santa Croce was built at Florence; and in the century following, Brunelleschi, the reviver of classical art in Italy, placed the great cupola on the Cathedral. The Gothic cathedral of Milan, with its wilderness of statues, was begun in 1346. Cimabue, who died about 1302, and Giotto, who died about 1337, laid the foundations of the modern Italian schools of painting.

TRADE AND COMMERCE.--The seaports, Venice and Genoa, were centers of a flourishing commerce, extending to the far East and to the coasts of Spain and France. The interior cities--Milan with its two hundred thousand inhabitants, Verona, Florence--were centers of manufactures and of trade. The Italians were the first bankers in Europe. The bank of Venice was established in 1171, and the bank of Genoa, although it was projected earlier, was founded in 1407. The financial dealings of Italian merchants spread over all Europe.

MORALITY.--The one thing lacking in Italy was a broader spirit of patriotism and a higher tone of morality. Advance in civilization was attended with corruption of morals.

III. SPAIN AND PORTUGAL.

HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY.--Resistance to the Arabs in Spain began in the northern mountainous region of Cantabria and Asturia, which even the West Goths had not wholly subdued, although Asturia was called Gothia. Asturia, a Christian principality (732), expanded into the kingdom called Leon (916), of which Castile was an eastern county. East of Leon, there grew up the kingdom of Navarre, mostly on the southern, but partly on the northern side of the Pyrenees. On the death of Sancho the Great, it was broken up (1035). At about the same time the Ommiad caliphate was broken up into small kingdoms (1031). After the death of Sancho, or early in the eleventh century, we find in Northern Spain, beginning on the west and moving eastward, the kingdom of Leon, the beginnings of the kingdom of Castile, the reduced kingdom of Navarre, the beginnings of the kingdom of Aragon, and, between Aragon and the Mediterranean, Christian states which had been comprised in the Spanish March over which the Franks had ruled. The two states which were destined to attain to the chief importance were Castile and Aragon. Of these, Castile was eventually to be to Spain what France was to all Gaul. Ultimately the union of Castile and Aragon gave rise to the great Spanish monarchy of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The four kingdoms of Leon, Castile, Aragon, and Navarre, after the death of Sancho, as time went on, were joined and disjoined among themselves in many different ways. Castile and Leon were finally united in 1230. Portugal, lying on the ocean, was partly recovered from the Arabs towards the close of the eleventh century, and was a county of Leon and Castile until, in 1139, it became a kingdom. From this time Castile, Aragon, and Portugal were the three antagonists of Moslem rule. Each of these kingdoms advanced. Portugal spread especially along the Atlantic coast; Aragon, along the coast of the Mediterranean; Castile, the principal power, spread in the interior, and included by far the greater part of what is now Spain. In the latter part of the thirteenth century the Moslems were confined to the kingdom of Granada in the South, which was conquered by Castile and Aragon (1492), whose sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella, were united in marriage. Their kingdoms were united in 1516. In the latter part of the Middle Ages, Aragon, from its situation on the eastern coast, played an important part in the politics of Europe. Castile and Portugal led the way in maritime exploration.

THE MOORS.--It has been already related (p. 282), that, after the fall of the Ommiad caliphate, African Mohammedans came over to the help of their Spanish brethren. These Moors did not supplant the Arabic speech or culture. The two principal invasions of the Moors were the invasion by the Almoravides (1086-110), and that by the Almohades (1146).

ARAGON: NAVARRE.--The kingdoms of Aragon and Castile existed for centuries side by side. Aragon sought to extend its conquests along the eastern coast; Castile, to enlarge itself toward the south. James I., or James the Conqueror (1213-1276), joined the Moslem state of Valencia, by conquest, to his kingdom of Aragon, to which Catalonia had already been added. The union of these peoples developed a national character of a definite type. In its pride of birth and of blood, its tenacious clinging to traditional rights, and in its esteem of military prowess before intellectual culture, it resembled the old Spartan temper. Peter III.,(1276-1285), the son of James I., united with the three states Sicily, which, though it became a separate kingdom, gave to the house of Aragon its influence in Southern Italy. Nearly the whole of the fourteenth century was taken up by Aragon in the acquisition of Sardinia, which the Pope had ceded, and in the endless wars, connected with this matter, which it waged with the Genoese. In 1410 the ruling house of Barcelona became extinct. In the revolutions that followed, Navarre and Aragon were united under John II., second son of Ferdinand I., king of Aragon. John, by his marriage with Blanche of Navarre, shared her father's throne with her after his death. He was guilty of the crime of poisoning his own son Don Carlos, Prince of Vianne. John was the father of Ferdinand "the Catholic," under whose scepter the kingdoms of Aragon, Castile, and Navarre were brought together.

CASTILE.--Ferdinand III. (St. Ferdinand) (1214-1252), in warfare with the Moors extended the kingdom of Castile and Leon over Cordova, Seville, and Cadiz. His son Alfonso X., or Alfonso the Wise (1252-1284), cultivated astronomy and astrology, was fond of music and poetry, enlarged the University of Salamanca, gave a code of laws to his kingdom, and caused historical books to be written; but he wasted his treasures in pomp and luxury, and in ambitious designs upon the German imperial crown. He allowed the Merinides, new swarms of African Saracens, to spread in the South of Spain. Alfonso XI. (1312-1350), after a stormy contest with the nobles during his minority, distinguished himself by the victory of Tarifa over the Moors (1340), and the taking of the city of Algeciras (1344). His enemies respected him; and when he died of the plague, in his camp before Gibraltar, the king of Granada went into mourning (1350). The reign of Peter the Cruel (1350-1369) was filled up with perfidies and crimes. The league of the nobles against him only incited him to fresh barbarities. He committed the most atrocious murders, sometimes with his own hand. Protected by the Black Prince, he was at first victorious against Henry of Transtamare his rival; and Du Guesclin was defeated in the battle of Najara in 1367. Afterwards Peter was obliged to surrender, and was killed by the dagger of Henry in a personal encounter. The power of the nobility in Castile had so increased during the civil troubles that Henry III. (1390-1406) had to sell his cloak to procure for himself a dinner. Roused by this humiliation to assert his authority, he succeeded with the help of the Cortes in humbling the nobility; but John II. (1406-1454) was compelled by the most powerful lords, after a protracted contest, to strike off the head of an unworthy favorite, Alvaro de Luna, under whose despotic control he had placed the government (1454). There was a worse state of anarchy under Henry IV., John's successor (1454-1474).

CONSTITUTIONS OF ARAGON AND CASTILE.--The political institutions of Aragon and Castile are specially worthy of note. The kings of Aragon were very much restricted in their authority by the Cortes, or general assembly, composed of the higher and lower classes of nobles, the clergy, and the cities, which by their trade and manufactures had risen to wealth and power. With the Cortes was lodged the right to make laws and to lay taxes. At Saragassa in 1287, it was likewise ordained that they should enjoy certain important privileges. The concurrence of the estates was to be required in the choice of the king's counselors; and in case the king without the warrant of a judgment of the highest judicial officer, the justiciary, and of the estates, should adjudge to punishment any member of the body, they should have the right to elect another king. These "privileges" were lost under Peter IV. (1336-1387), but the old rights were confirmed. To the justiciary was given the power to determine all conflicts of the estates with the king or with one another. His influence increased as time went on. He was the first magistrate in the kingdom.

In Castile, as early as 1169 the deputies of the cities were admitted into the Cortes. We find the cities, at the end of the thirteenth century, forming a confederation, called a "fraternity," against the nobles. Their deputies at that time had more power in the assemblies than the nobles and clergy. But the power of the nobles increased, especially from the accession of Henry of Transtamare. In the overthrow of Alvaro de Luna, their triumph was complete: they proved themselves to be stronger than the king.

THE CASTILIANS.--The Spanish Mohammedans were superior in refinement to their Christian adversaries. The latter learned much from their enemies, without losing the patriotic and religious ardor which was fostered by the popular minstrelsy, and by the romantic exploits and encounters with the "infidels." The result was the peculiar spirit of Castilian chivalry. The early development of popular government in Castile increased the feeling of personal independence. Outside of Italy, no cities of Europe in the Middle Ages were so rich and flourishing as the cities of Castile, Materials of commerce were afforded by the famous breed of sheep, and by the products of the soil and of manufactures. The nobles gained great wealth, and had vast estates in the country. They held court as petty sovereigns: Alvaro de Luna had twenty thousand vassals. They were inured to war, they were haughty and overbearing, and complaints of their oppressions were frequent on the part of the lower orders. The Castilian ecclesiastics were often lax in their morals. The higher prelates were possessed of great riches and authority. In the beginning of the fifteenth century the people in Castile had more power, compared with the power of the sovereign, than in any other European country. But the representation of the commons was exclusively from the cities, and not, as in England, largely from the landed proprietors.

THE ARAGONESE.--The extraordinary authority exercised by the justiciary, or justice, of Aragon was perhaps the most remarkable feature of its constitution. Dwelling on the ocean, the Aragonese built up a naval power. Barcelona, after its union with Aragon, was the seat of a flourishing commerce, and framed the first written code of maritime law now extant. Its municipal officers were merchants and mechanics. Membership in the guilds was sought by nobles, as rendering them eligible to the magistracy. The burghers became proud and independent. The Catalans did not hesitate to assert their rights against encroachments of the kings. In 1430 the University of Barcelona was founded. "After the genuine race of troubadours had passed away," says Mr. Prescott, "the Provencal or Limousin verse was carried to its highest excellence by the poets of Valencia" (Prescott's History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, Introduction).

PORTUGAL: COMMERCE AND NAVIGATION.--About 1095 Alfonso VI., king of Castile and Leon, gave the territory between the Minho and the Douro to his son-in-law, Henry of Burgundy, who assumed the title of Count of Portugal. His son and successor, Alfonso I., who defeated the Moors at Ourique in 1139, was hailed as king by his army, and later was confirmed in the title by the Pope (1185). He was acknowledged as independent by the king of Castile. In a diet at Laimego, he gave an excellent constitution and body of laws to his people (1143). Soon after, he conquered Lisbon, and made it his capital. His son, Sancho I. (1185-1211), was distinguished both for his victories over the Moors and for his encouragement of tillage and of farm-laborers. Until we reach the fifteenth century, Portuguese history is occupied with wars with the Moors and the Castilians, contests of the kings with the nobles, and struggles between rival aspirants for the throne, and between the sovereigns on the one hand and the clergy and the popes on the other. Under Dionysius III. (1279-1325) there began a new era, in which the Portuguese became eminent for industry and learning, and in commerce and navigation. He founded the University of Lisbon. Alfonso IV. (1325-1357) continued on the same path. But he caused Ines de Castro, who had been secretly married to his son, to be murdered (1354); a crime which the son, Peter I. (1357-1367), after his accession, avenged by causing the hearts of the murderers to be torn out. John I. (1385-1433) repelled a great invasion of the Castilians, in a battle near Lisbon, and became at first regent and then king. He was the founder of a new family. By him Ceuta in Africa was captured from the Moors. Madeira was discovered (1419), and by the burning of the forests was prepared for the cultivation of sugar-cane and the vine. In 1432 the Portuguese occupied the Azores. A most active interest in voyages of discovery was taken by Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460), fourth son of King John I. and of Philippa, daughter of John of Gaunt.

IV. THE SCANDINAVIAN COUNTRIES.

THE BALTIC LANDS.--There are three divisions of Europe which neither Charlemagne's Empire nor the Eastern Empire included. The first is Spain, which had been comprised in the old Roman Empire. The second is Great Britain and the adjacent islands. Only a portion of Britain was held as a province by old Rome. The third is the two Scandinavian peninsulas,--Denmark, and Norway and Sweden, with the Slavonic lands to the east and south, which may be said to have had a common relation to the Baltic. The Scandinavians had their period of foreign conquest and settlement, but their settlements abroad remained in no connection with the countries whence they came. Sweden was cut off from the ocean. "The history of Sweden"--as Mr. Freeman, to whom we owe a lucid exposition of this subject, has pointed out--"mainly consists in the growth and the loss of her dominion in the Baltic lands out of her own peninsula. It is only in quite modern times that the union of the crowns, though not of the kingdoms, of Sweden and Norway, has created a power wholly peninsular and equally Baltic and oceanic." The Germans and Scandinavians spread their dominion over the Aryan and non-Aryan tribes on the south and east of the Baltic. Finland, inhabited by a Turanian or Scythic people whose language is akin to that of the Hungarians, was long under Swedish dominion. Now Finland and the east of the Baltic are in Russia, while the southern and south-eastern shore of the Baltic is German. Russia, in modern days, having no oceanic character like Great Britain and Spain, has expanded her dominion westward to the Baltic, but mainly to the east over Central Asia. She has built up a continental, instead of a maritime and colonial, empire.

CONVERSION OF SCANDINAVIA.--In the earlier part of the Middle Ages, the two Scandinavian peninsulas are known only through the piratical expeditions which they send forth upon the two adjacent seas. By the way of the North Sea, the Northmen reached France, England, Greenland, and America; by the way of the Baltic, Russia. The conversion of Denmark to Christianity was completed in the eleventh century, under Canute; that of Norway in the tenth, and of Sweden in the eleventh. After the foreign settlements were made, and with the introduction of the gospel, piracy ceased, and civilization began (p. 239).

DENMARK.--After Canute VI. (1182), Waldemar II., the Victorious, was the prominent personage in Danish history. He conquered Holstein and Pomerania,--in fact, every thing north of the Elbe and the Elde. In 1219 he overran Esthonia, in a crusade for the forcible conversion of the pagans, when the Danish standard, the Dannebrog,--a white cross on a blood-red field,--began to be used. On his return, he was treacherously captured, and with his son was kept in prison in Mecklenburg for three years, by Henry, Count of Schwerin. Waldemar was defeated in 1227, in the war undertaken to recover the conquests which he had given up as the price of his release. He was the author of a code of laws.

UNION OF CROWNS.--Waldemar III. (1340-1375) regained the conquests of Waldemar II. This brought on a general war, in which the Hanseatic League, as well as Sweden, were among his antagonists (1363). Denmark, having control of the entrance to the Baltic, and exacting tolls of vessels, was a second time involved in war with that great mercantile confederacy and its allies, and was worsted in the conflict (1372). Waldemar's second daughter, Margaret, married Hakon VI., King of Norway. Hakon's son Olaf was a child at his father's death, and the regency was held by his mother. Olaf (1376-1387) was elected by the Estates king of Denmark. His mother, now regent in both countries, became queen in both after Olaf's death. In 1388 Margaret accepted the crown of Sweden; the Swedes having revolted against the king, Albert, who was defeated and captured at Falkoeping (1389).

SWEDEN.--War existed for centuries between the Swedes and the Goths, the inhabitants of the southern part of the peninsula. Each race contended for supremacy. Political union began with Waldemar (1250-1275), son of Birger Jarl (Earl Birger). Stockholm was founded in 1255. Private wars and judicial combats were suppressed, commerce was encouraged, and the condition of women improved. Large duchies were established, afterwards a source of discord. Magnus I. (1279-1290) was surnamed Ladulas, or Barnlock, for protecting the granaries of the peasants from the rapacious nobles. His reign was succeeded by war between his sons. As the result of a popular revolt in 1319, Magnus Smek, an infant, became king, and during the regency succeeded, by right of his mother, to the crown of Norway, where he (1350) placed on the throne his son Hakon. But when Magnus attempted to rule without the senate, he was deposed, and Albert of Mecklenburg was elected king (1365). But the nobles were supreme: in 1388 they deposed Albert, and gave the crown to Margaret of Norway and Denmark. Albert was held a prisoner for six years, and then renounced his claim to the throne.

NORWAY.--Magnus III. (1095-1103), called from his Scottish dress Barefoot, united the Hebrides and Orcades into a kingdom for his son Sigurd, and invaded Iceland, where he died. Sigurd inherited the spirit of Harold Fairhair (860-about 933), through whom Norway had been made a united kingdom. He made a voyage to Jerusalem through the Mediterranean, and was a renowned crusader. After his death (1130), there were fierce contests for the throne, the more fierce as illegitimate sons had the same right in law as those born in wedlock. In 1152 a papal legate established a hierarchy in Norway, which interfered in the struggle. Conflicts arose between the clerical party and the national party, in which the latter at length gained the day. Under Hakon VI., Iceland was conquered (1260). Magnus VI. (1263-1280) brought in an era of quiet, without stifling popular freedom. The cities engaged actively in manufactures and commerce. Magnus strengthened and organized the military and naval force. By him the Hebrides were ceded to Scotland. Under Eric (1280-1299), called Priest-hater, there was a struggle to curb the power of the clergy and nobles, in which the king was aided by the peasants. He was worsted in the conflict with the Hanse towns, and compelled to join their League. The accession of Magnus Smek, the son of his daughter, to the throne of Norway (1319), led eventually to the Union of Calmar (1397), in which Sweden, Norway, and Denmark were brought together.

"The situation of Norway, during the Middle Ages, might be shortly described as an absolute monarchy resting almost directly on one of the most democratic states of society in Europe." The greater families, by the partition of their estates, became a part of the class of small land-owners. Between them and the king there was no intermediate class.

AFTER THE UNION OF CALMAR.--After the death of Margaret, who governed the united kingdoms after the union, Eric XIII. of Pomerania succeeded. The union was shaken by the revolt of Schleswig and of Holstein, and was dissolved on the death of Christopher of Bavaria (1448), who had been chosen king. The Swedes broke off, and made Charles Canutson king, under the name of Charles VIII. Denmark and Norway remained united; and under Christian I. of the house of Oldenburg, whom they made king, Schleswig and Holstein were again attached to Denmark (1459).

V. POLAND AND RUSSIA.

THE SLAVONIC TRIBES.--The settlement of the Hungarians (Magyars) in Europe had the effect to divide the Slavonic tribes into three general groups. The northern Slaves were separated from the Slaves south of the Danube,--the inhabitants of Servia, Croatia, Dalmatia, etc. The north-western Slaves bordered on the Western Empire. The states of Bohemia and Poland grew up among them. On the east of this group of Slaves were the Russians. Both Poland and Russia became independent kingdoms. In the course of history, a part of the north Slavonic lands, those which are represented by Mecklenburg, Pomerania, Brandenburg, and Saxony, were Germanized. Lands in the south-west, as Bohemia and Moravia, remained predominantly Slavonic in speech. A central region formed the kingdom of Poland. On the east were the Slavonic tribes which were the nucleus of modern Russia.

LITHUANIANS AND PRUSSIANS.--Both Poland and Russia were originally cut off from the Baltic by other races. Such were the non-Aryan Fins in Esthonia (Esthland) and Livonia (Livland). Such, also, were the Aryans of the Lettic branch, of whom the Lithuanians and the Prussians were the principal divisions. The Lithuanians formed at one time a strong state. The Prussians finally gave their name to the Teutonic kingdom in which they were absorbed.

THE POLES.--The Poles derive their name from a word meaning plains. They were inhabitants of the plains. They were the strongest of a group of tribes dwelling between the Oder and the Vistula, and holding the coast between their mouths. Between them and the sea, on the east of the Vistula, were the Prussians.

POLAND: ITS CONSTITUTION.--In the tenth century the Lechs, or Poles, on the Vistula, had acquired considerable power, and had a center at Gnesen, which remained the metropolis of Poland. There are legends of a first duke, Piast by name. A dynasty which bore his name continued in Poland until 1370; in Silesia, until 1675. Miecislas I. was converted to Christianity by his wife, a Bohemian princess. He did homage to the Emperor Otto I. (978). Boleslav I. (992) aspired to the regal dignity, and had himself crowned as king by his bishops. Gregory VII. excommunicated him, deprived him of the title of king, and laid Poland under an interdict. Boleslav III., the Victorious (1102-1138), subdued the Pomeranians, and compelled them to receive Christianity. He divided his kingdom among his four sons. Silesia became an independent duchy. A long crusade was carried on against the Prussians, a heathen people, who attacked the Poles, by the "Brethren of the soldiers of Christ," and the "Teutonic knights," two orders which were united (about 1226). The Teutonic knights at length became the enemies of the Poles. The savage Lithuanians assailed them on the north. From the anarchy that reigned, Poland was rescued by Casimir III., the Great (1333-1370), who defeated the Russians, and carried his eastern boundary as far as the Dnieper. Prior to this time, Poland was an important kingdom. Casimir framed a code of written laws for his people, and gave an impulse to commerce. But in order to secure the election of his nephew, Louis king of Hungary (1370-1382), he had to increase the powers and privileges of the nobles. The accession of Louis terminated the long rivalry of Poland and Hungary. He, like Casimir, died without children. The nobles made Jagellon, the Grand Duke of Lithuania, his successor (1386), who took the name of Vladislav II. Under a series of conquering princes, Lithuania had extended its dominion over the neighboring Russian lands, and become a strong state. Vladislav was chosen on the condition that he should espouse the daughter of the last king, and, with his nation, embrace Christianity. This event doubled the territory of Poland. The Teutonic Knights, who ruled from the Oder to the Gulf of Finland, were now overcome. The treaty of Thorn (1466) confined their dominion to Eastern Prussia. The misfortune of Poland was its political constitution. Although the monarchy was not yet completely elective, but hereditary in the house of Jagellon, the election of every king had to be sanctioned by the nobles. They alone took part in the diet, and held the offices and honors. There was no burgher class, no "third estate." Every man who owned and was able to equip a horse was counted as a noble. The burden of taxation fell on the peasants.

NATURAL FEATURES OF RUSSIA.--Russia in Europe comprises at present more than half the territory of that entire continent. Yet it has but a small share of seaboard, and of this a large part is frozen in winter. The surface of Russia is of a piece with the boundless plateaus of Northern and Central Asia. It has been defined as the "Europe of plains, in opposition to the Europe of mountains." The mountains of Russia are chiefly on its boundaries. It is a country subject to extremes of heat and cold. From the scarcity of stone, all buildings were formerly of wood, and hence its towns were all combustible. The rivers of Russia have been of immense importance in its history. "The whole history of this country is the history of its three great rivers, and is divided into three periods,--that of the Dnieper with Kiev, that of the Volga with Moscow, and that of the Neva with Novgorod in the eighth century, and St. Petersburg in the eighteenth."

RUSSIANS AND POLES.--The Russian Slaves in the ninth century occupied but a small part of what is now Russia. There was probably little difference then between them and the Poles; but the one people were molded by the Greek Church and Greek civilization, the other by the Latin Church and by the collective influences of Western Europe.

RUSSIAN HISTORY.--The Northmen under Rurik had founded their dominion in Russia. Novgorod was their center. Thence they pushed their conquests to the south. Their descendants made Kiev, on the Dnieper, their capital. In Russia, as elsewhere, the Scandinavians quickly blended with their native subjects. Under Vladimir I. (980-1015), who was converted to Greek Christianity, with his people, and Iaroslaf I. (1019-1051), they attained to considerable power; but the custom of the sovereigns to divide their dominions among their sons, broke up their territory into a multitude of petty principalities. The result was a monotonous series of fierce contests, without any substantial result. In the midst of the bloody and profitless civil wars occurred the great invasion of the Mongols, who destroyed the principality of Kiev, and made that of Vladimir tributary. For two centuries the Russians continued under the yoke of the "Golden Horde," which the Mongols established on the Volga. They were obliged to pay tribute, and the Russian princes at their accession had to swear fealty to the khan on the banks of the river Amoor. At the time of the Mongol conquest, Novgorod was the center of Russian dominion. Towards the end of the thirteenth century, Moscow became a new center of Russian power. From Moscow comes the name Muscovy. "Muscovy was to Russia what France in the older sense was to the whole land which came to bear that name." In the fourteenth century, while Lithuania and Poland were absorbing by conquest the territories of earlier or Western Russia, the Duchy of Moscow was building up a new Russia in the East, out of which grew the Russia of to-day. Ivan I., regarded as the founder of the Russian monarchy, made Moscow his capital in 1328. Most of the other princes were subject to him. Demetrius (or Dimtri) I. gained two great victories over the Mongol horde (1378 and 1380); but in 1382 they burned Moscow, and slew twenty-four thousand of its inhabitants. It was not until the reign of Ivan III., Ivan the Great (1462-1505), that Novgorod submitted to Moscow, and Russia was wholly delivered from the control and influence of the Mongols.

VI. HUNGARY.

THE ARPAD DYNASTY.--The chiefs of the Turanian Magyars, about 889, elected Arpad as successor of the leader under whom they had crossed the Carpathian Mountains. They overran Hungary and Transylvania, and terrified Europe by their invasions (p. 249). After their defeats by the emperors Henry I. and Otto the Great (p. 261), they confined themselves to their own country. The first king, Stephen,--St. Stephen,--was crowned, with the consent of Pope Sylvester II., in the year 1000. He divided the land into counties, organized the Church, and founded convents and schools. He conferred on the bishops high offices. He established a national council, composed of the lords temporal and spiritual, and of the knights, out of which sprung the diets. Ladislaus I. conquered Croatia (1089), and a part of the "Red Russian" land of Galicia (1093). Coloman, "the Learned," a brave and able man, annexed Dalmatia, which he wrested from the Venetians (1102). In the reign of Andrew II. (1205-1235), the "Golden Bull" was extorted by the nobles, which conferred on them extraordinary rights and privileges, including exemption from arrest prior to trial and conviction, and the control of the diet over appointments to office. It even authorized armed resistance on their part to tyrannical measures of the king,--a right that was not abrogated until 1687. Hungary was devastated by the great Tartar invasion (1241-42) (p. 283). The kings of Hungary supported the cause of Rudolph of Austria against Ottocar of Bohemia (p. 332).

INVASIONS OF THE TURKS.--The last king of the Arpad dynasty died in 1301. There was a division of parties in the choice of a successor. Pope Boniface VIII. and the clergy supported the claims of Count Charles Robert of Anjou, who was related to the former reigning family. Under the son of Charles Robert, Louis, who also succeeded Casimir III. as king of Poland (1370), Hungary became a very powerful state. Galicia was regained, Moldavia and Bulgaria were conquered. After the death of Louis, his daughter Maria reigned from 1386 conjointly with Sigismund, afterwards emperor, and king of Bohemia. He established his supremacy over Bosnia. From this time the invasions of the Turks begin. There had been a party in favor of raising to the throne Vladislaus, king of Poland; and after the death of Sigismund's successor, Albert II. of Austria (1437), and the death of the queen, he gained the crown (1442). He was slain at Varna, in the great battle in which the Hungarians were vanquished by the Turks (1444). John Hunyady, who had several times defeated the Turks, and who escaped on the field of Varna, was made for the time "governor;" but on the release of the son of Albert, Ladislaus Posthumus, who had been kept from the throne by the Emperor Frederick III., he was recognized as king (1452). Hun-yady was made general-in-chief. Frederick had also retained in his hands the crown, which had been intrusted to his care, and which Hungarians have always regarded with extreme veneration. A little later, great advantages were gained over the Turks, to be lost again in the sixteenth century.

VII. THE OTTOMAN TURKS.

OSMAN: MURAD I.--Towards the end of the thirteenth century, the Osman (or Ottoman) Turks, warlike nomad hordes, in order to escape from the Mongols, moved from the region east of the Caspian Sea, and conquered in Asia Minor the remnant of the kingdom of the Seljukians (p. 270). Impelled by fanaticism and the desire of booty, Ottoman (or Osman), their leader, advanced into Bithynia, and took Pruse, or Broussa, one of the most important cities of Asia Minor. The Greeks, with their Catalonian auxiliaries, were not able to dislodge him from his new possession. The Byzantine court was disabled from making an energetic effort for this end, by the partisan rancor, and mingled lethargy and cruelty, which characterized the old age of the Greek Empire. Nicomedia, Nicoea, and Ilium were conquered by the Sultan (or Padishah). Murad I. (1361-1389) founded the corps of janizaries, composed of select Christian youth chosen from the captives for their beauty and vigor. These became the most effective soldiers,--sometimes dangerous, however, to the sultans themselves. Adrianople was taken by Murad, and made the seat of his authority. The Christian principalities of Thrace, and the ancient but depopulated cities founded by the Greeks and Romans, were overrun. The Servians and Bulgarians made a stand against the fierce Ottoman warriors, but were beaten in the battle of Kosovo, where _Murad_was slain.

BAJAZET.--Bajazet, the son and successor of Murad, outdid his predecessor in his martial prowess. He conquered Macedonia and Thessaly, and Greece to the southern end of Peloponnesus. The Emperor Sigismund and John of Burgundy, with one hundred thousand men, were utterly defeated in the sanguinary battle of Nicopolis (1396). Sigismund escaped by sea; the French counts and knights had to be redeemed from captivity with a large ransom; and ten thousand prisoners of lower rank were slaughtered by Bajazet. Bosnia was now in the hands of the victor. Constantinople had to pay tribute, and seemed likely to become his prey, when a temporary respite was obtained for it by the coming of a host even more powerful than that of Bajazet.

MONGOLIAN INVASION.--Timur, or Tamerlane, a descendant of _Genghis Khan _(p. 283), revived the fallen Tartar kingdom. At the head of his wandering Tartars, which grew into an army, he left Samarcand, where he had caused himself to be proclaimed sovereign, and, in a rapid career of conquest, made himself master of the countries from the Wall of China to the Mediterranean, and from the boundaries of Egypt to Moscow. Everywhere his path was marked with blood and with the ruins of the places which he destroyed. At Ispahan, in Persia, seventy thousand persons were killed. At Delhi, one hundred thousand captives were slain, that his relative, the "Great Mogul," might reign in security. It was his delight to pile up at the gates of cities pyramids of twenty or thirty thousand heads. Later (1401), at Bagdad, he erected such a pyramid of ninety thousand heads. He gained a great victory over the "Golden Horde" in Russia (p. 283), conquered the unsubdued parts of Persia, entered Bagdad, Bassorah, and Mosul, vanquished the khan of Kaptchak, and penetrated Russia in his devastating progress, as far as Moscow (1396). Then followed the conquest of Hindustan.

TAMERLANE AND BAJAZET.--The two powerful monarchs, Tamerlane and Bajazet, now measured their strength in combat with one another. Trembling ambassadors of the Greek emperor, and of certain Seljukian princes, had waited on Tamerlane in Gengia at the foot of the Caucasus. On the 16th of June, 1402, the two armies--four hundred thousand Turks, and eight hundred thousand Mongols, if one may credit the reports--met at Ancyra. The Ottomans were defeated, and Bajazet was taken prisoner. Led into the presence of Tamerlane, he found the Mongol quietly playing chess with his son. Asia Minor submitted to the conqueror, who penetrated as far as Smyrna. An old man, he was looking towards China as another field for invasion, when he died (1405). Bajazet died soon after his defeat.

TURKISH CONQUESTS: THE GREEKS AND LATINS.--The grandson of Bajazet, Murad II. (1421-1451), took up anew his projects of conquest. The empire of Tamerlane quickly fell to pieces. His course had been like that of a hurricane, terrible in its work of destruction, but soon at an end. The Byzantine dominion was soon confined to Constantinople and small districts adjacent. On all sides the Ottoman power was supreme. The Greek emperor, John VII. (Palaeologus), now endeavored, in imitation of previous attempts, to bring about a union of the Greek and Latin churches, and thus remove a principal obstacle to the obtaining of military help from the West. He went to Italy, attended by the patriarch and many bishops. After long debates and conferences on the abstruse points of doctrinal difference, a verbal agreement was reached between the two parties (1439). But the result was received with so much disfavor and indignation in Constantinople, that the effort to bring the sundered churches together came to naught. The Pope, however, stirred up the Christian princes to engage in war against the Turk. The defeat of Vladislav, king of Hungary, and of Hunyady, at Varna (1444), caused by the rash onset of the king upon the janizaries, was succeeded by another Turkish victory at Kosovo, four years later.

FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE.--Murad II. was succeeded by his ambitious and unmerciful son, Mohammed II. (1451-1481), who determined that Constantinople should be his capital. The city had seven thousand defenders, comprising two thousand Genoese and Venetians, who were commanded by an able man, the Genoese Justiniani. The Emperor Constantine XII. worshiped according to the Roman rites; while his court observed the Greek forms, and spurned a union with the hated Latin Christians, whose help the emperor was to the end anxious to obtain. The city was stoutly defended for fifty-three days; and when it could be held no longer against the furious assault of the Turks, the gallant Constantine, casting aside his golden armor, fell, bravely fighting with the defenders on the ramparts (May 29, 1453). Constantinople became the capital of the Turks. The crescent supplanted the cross, and the Church of St. Sophia was turned into a mosque.

TURKISH GOVERNMENT.--The Sultan, or padischah, among the Turks is absolute master, and proprietor of the soil. There is no order of nobles, and there are no higher classes except the priests (imams) and the religious orders (dervishes). In the seraglio of the Sultan, with its palaces and gardens, the harem is separated from the other apartments. The grand vizier presides over the council of ministers (divan). The provinces are governed by pashas with large powers. Beneath them is a gradation of inferior rulers in the subdivisions of the provinces. The mufti with his subordinate associates is a high authority on questions of religion and law.

TURKISH LITERATURE.--The literature of the Ottoman Turks is in merit below the literature of other Mohammedan peoples. It lacks originality, being based on Persian and partly on Arabic models.

CHANGES IN THE MIDDLE AGES.--We have seen great changes gradually taking place in the Middle Ages. One is the centralizing of political authority by the subjection of the local rulers, or lords, to the will of the king. Another is the enfranchisement of the serfs, and the growing power and self-respect of a middle class. The invention of gunpowder took away the superiority of the mail-clad and mounted warrior. The peasant on the battle-field was a match for the knight.

CLERGYY AND LAITY.--There was a change from the time when the clergy were the sole possessors of knowledge, and the exclusive guides of opinion. In the lay part of society, there was an awaking of intellectual activity and a spirit of self-assertion.

A brief sketch of important ecclesiastical changes, some of which have been adverted to, will be here in place.

POPES IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY.--From Gregory VII. to Boniface VIII., or from near the end of the eleventh to the beginning of the fourteenth century, the highest authority was claimed and exercised by the popes. Frederick Barbarossa, the greatest of the German emperors, held the stirrup of Hadrian IV., and humbled himself before Alexander III. Innocent III. compared the authority of popes, in contrast with that of kings, to the sun in relation to the moon. He excommunicated Philip Augustus of France, John of England, and other monarchs. He claimed the right to refuse to crown the emperor if he should judge him not worthy of the imperial office. The papacy continued to exert these lofty prerogatives until Boniface VIII. He asserted that "the two swords," the symbols of both secular and spiritual rule, were given to St. Peter and to his successors: the temporal authority must therefore be subject to the spiritual. The body of canon law was framed in accordance with these views. It embraced the right of the Pope to depose kings and princes. To the sovereign pontiff was accorded the right to dispense from Church laws. With the growth of ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the different countries, the Pope, as the supreme tribunal in all matters affecting the clergy and covered by the canon law, gained a vast increase of judicial prerogatives.

THE BABYLONIAN EXILE: THE GREAT SCHISM.--During the residence of the popes at Avignon, there was great complaint on account of the dependence of the papacy on France, as well as on account of the heavy taxes levied for the support of the pontifical court, and of the immorality which at times prevailed in it. Gregory XI., to the joy of all good men, returned to Rome (1376). But at his death, two years later, a majority of the cardinals elected an Italian, Urban VI., in his place. The adherents of the French party made a protest, and chose the Cardinal of Geneva, under the name of Clement VII. England, Germany, Hungary, Bohemia, Holland, and almost all Italy, acknowledged Urban. France, Spain, Scotland, Savoy, and Lorraine obeyed Clement. This great schism of the West created sorrow and alarm among well-disposed Christian people. It tended strongly to diminish the reverence felt for the papal office, and to weaken its influence.

THE REFORMING COUNCILS.--The first important effort to terminate the division was made by the University of Paris. Its rector, Nicolas de Clemangis, was prominent in the movement. Gerson and other eminent scholars and ecclesiastics took part in it. Three great councils were held; the first at Pisa (1409), the second at Constance (1414), and the third at Basle (1431). At these assemblies, the French theologians proceeded upon the "Gallican theory" of the constitution of the Church, according to which supreme authority was held to reside in a general council,--not in the Pope, but in the collective episcopate. At the Council of Constance, where it is a significant fact that the votes were taken by nations, there were gathered not only a throng of prelates and inferior clergy, but also the Emperor Sigismund, and a multitude of princes, nobles, and spectators of every rank. "The whole world," it was said, "was there." Three popes, each of whom claimed to be legitimate, were deposed; and under the auspices of the council, which affirmed its own sovereign authority, another pope, Martin V., was elected in the room of them. The results of the two councils of Pisa and Constance, as regards the reformation of the Church "in head and members," disappointed the hopes of those who were disaffected with the existing state of things. The Council of Basle exhibited the same spirit as that of Constance, and passed various measures in the interest of national churches, for the restriction of papal prerogatives, and for practical reforms. The council, however, broke into two parts; and the hopes connected with it were likewise, to a great extent, frustrated. In 1438 the French synod of Bourges issued "the Pragmatic Sanction," containing a strong assertion of the rights and immunities of national churches,--a document which gave occasion to much controversy down to its repeal under King Francis I.

Had it been practicable for good men in the fifteenth century to unite in wholesome measures for promoting the purity and unity of the Church, the religious revolutions of the sixteenth might have been postponed, if not avoided.

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III. THE COUNTRIES OF EASTERN ASIA

I. CHINA.

THE TANG DYNASTY (618-907).--The confusion in China, after the establishment of the three kingdoms, was brought to an end by the Sui dynasty, which, however, was of short duration. Between the Hans and the new epoch beginning with the T'angs, diplomatic intercourse was begun with Japan; Christianity was introduced by the Nestorians; a new impulse was given to the spread of Buddhism; the first traces of the art of printing are found; and the Yang-tse and the Yellow Rivers were connected by a canal.

EVENTS IN THIS PERIOD.--Under the T'angs, the empire was united, peaceful, and prosperous. One of the most remarkable occurrences was the usurpation (649) and successful reign of a woman, the Empress Wu. Her policy was wise, and her generals were victorious. The Emperor Hiuen Tsung had a long reign (713-756), and was an ardent patron of literature, but in his later years fell into immoral ways, as was seen in the character of the poems written under his patronage. Under this dynasty, there were productions in poetry of an excellence never surpassed in China. Buddhism, although resisted by the Confucianists and Taouists, gained ground. A bone of Buddha was brought into China with great pomp and ceremony. Early in the reign of the T'angs, Mohammedanism first appeared in China. In the transition period before the accession of the next dynasty (900-960), the art of printing came more into use. The practice of cramping women's feet is said by some to have originated at this time.

THE SUNG DYNASTY (960-1280).--In the early part of this era, China was prosperous. But the Tartars began their invasions; and it was finally agreed that one of their tribes, which had helped to drive out another, should retain its conquests in the North. These Tartar conquerors, the Kins, were invaded by the Mongol Tartars under Genghis Khan (1213). After a long struggle, both the Kins and the Sungs were conquered by the Mongols, and the empire of Kublai Khan (1259-1294), the ruler of nearly all Asia except Hindustan and Arabia, was established. Under the Sungs, a system of military drill for all the citizens was ordained. Literature flourished; Buddhism and Taouism concluded to live in peace with one another; and the system of competitive examinations and literary degrees was more fully developed. After the complete conquest of China, the dominion of Kublai Khan lasted for about a century. The celebrated Venetian traveler, Marco Polo, visited his court. In this period, mathematics was more studied, and romances were first written. Three out of the "Four Wonderful Books," which are leading novels, were then composed. The Grand Canal was finished by Kublai Khan, and thus Peking was connected with Southern China. His great naval expedition against Japan failed.

THE MING DYNASTY (1368-1650).--Hung-wu, the son of a Chinese laborer, shook off the Mongol yoke, and founded a new dynasty with its capital at Nanking; whence it was afterwards transferred by the third emperor, Yung-lo (1403-1425), to Peking. He conquered and annexed Cochin China and Tonquin, and even portions of Tartary. The Tartars continued their attack; and in 1450 Ching-tung, the emperor, was taken prisoner, and held until he was released in consequence of a Chinese victory.

II. JAPAN.

CHANGES IN GOVERNMENT.--In the seventh century A.D., there began changes in Japan which resulted in a dual government, and eventually in a feudal system which continued until recent times. The Mikados retired from personal contact with their subjects; and the power by degrees fell into the hands of the families related to the Mikado, and combined into clans. Military control was exercised by the generals (Shoguns), and towards the end of the eighth century devolved on the two rival clans of Gen and Hei, or Taira and Minamoto. About the same time (770-780) the agricultural class became distinct from the military, and were compelled to labor hard for their support. One family, the Fujiwara, by degrees absorbed the civil offices. They gradually sank into luxury. From the middle to the end of the twelfth century, there was terrible civil war between the Taira clan and the Minamoto clan, in which the former were destroyed. The military power passed from one family to another; but a main fact is that the Shoguns acquired such a control as the "mayors of the palace" had possessed among the Franks. The Mikados lost all real power, and the Shoguns or Tycoons had the actual government in their hands. In recent times (1868) a revolution occurred which restored to the Mikado the power which had belonged to him in the ancient times, before the changes just related took place.

CIVIL WAR: FEUDALISM.--The final struggle of the two clans, the Hei or Taira, and the Gen or Minamoto, was in the naval battle of Dannoura, in 1185, which was followed by the extermination of the Taira. Yoritomo, the victor, was known as the Shogun after 1192. The supremacy of his clan gave way in 1219 to that of their adherents, the Hôjô family, who ruled the Shogun and the emperor both. The invasion of the Mongol Tartars failed, their great fleet being destroyed by a typhoon (1281). The Hôjô rule terminated, after a period of anarchy and civil war, in 1333. The "war of the chrysanthemums"--so called from the imperial emblem, the chrysanthemum--was between two rival Mikados, one in the North, and the other in the South (1336-1392). There ensued a period of confusion and internal war, lasting for nearly two centuries. Gradually there was developed a system of feudalism, in which the daimios, or lords of larger or smaller principalities, owned a dependence, either close or more loose, on the Shogun. But feudalism was not fully established until the days of the Tokugama dynasty, early in the seventeenth century.

III. INDIA.

MOHAMMEDAN STATES.--During the Middle Ages, India was invaded by a succession of Mohammedan conquerors. The first invasions were in the seventh and the early part of the eighth centuries. A temporary lodgment was effected in the province of Sind, on the north-west, in 711; but the Moslems were driven out by the Hindus in 750. The next invader was the Afghan sultan, Mahmud of Ghazim, a Turk, who is said to have led his armies seventeen times into India. From his time the Punjab, except for a brief interval, has been a Mohammedan province. The last of his line of rulers, Bahram, was conquered by the Afghan Allah-ud-din of Ghor (1152). Bahram's son fled to Lahore, but the Ghoride dynasty soon absorbed his dominion. One of the Ghoride rulers, Mohammed Ghori, the Shahab-ud-din of the Mohammedan writers, spread his dominion so that it reached from the Indus to the Brahmaputra. After his death, Kutab-ud-din, who had been a Turkish slave, became the founder of the "slave" dynasty (1206-1290), whose capital was Delhi. Allah-ud-din, by whom he was assassinated (1294), had a brilliant reign of twenty years, and conquered Deccan and Guzerat. Of the Togluk dynasty, which gained the throne in 1321, Mohammed Togluk (1325-1351) is said to have had the "reputation of one of the most accomplished princes and most furious tyrants that ever adorned or disgraced human nature." Desiring to remove the seat of empire to the Deccan, he compelled the inhabitants of Delhi to leave their old home, and to make the journey of seven hundred miles.

TAMERLANE.--Revolts in India made the triumph of Timour (Tamerlane) easy (1398). The Mongol leader sacked Delhi, and made a full display of his unrivaled ferocity. A half century of anarchy followed this invasion.

LITERATURE.--On Mediaeval History: The General Subject. (See list of works on Universal History, p. 16.) GIBBON'S Decline and Fall, etc.; "THE STUDENTS' GIBBON" (Smith, 1 vol.); FREEMAN, General Sketch of European History, and Historical Geography of Europe; DURUY, Histoire du Moyen Age, etc. (11th edition, 1882); Hallam. View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages; Lavisse et Rambaud, Histoire Generale (vols. i.-iii.); Cunningham, Western Civilization (vol. ii); Lavisse, Political History of Europe; Dunham, History of Europe during the Middle Ages (4 vols.); BRYCE, The Holy Roman Empire; Putz and Arnold, Mediaeval History; E. A. FREEMAN, Historical Essays (series 1 and 3).

Works on Church History. The Church Histories of GIESELER, NEANDER; MILMAN, History of Latin Christianity; ALZOG [a Roman Catholic], Manual, etc. (3 vols. 1874-78); Hardwick (vol. i., Middle Ages); Students' History of the Church; STANLEY'S Eastern Church; Fisher, History of the Christian Church.

On Portions of the Mediaeval Period. Froissart, Chronicles, etc.; CURTEIS, History of the Roman Empire [395-800]; R. W. CHURCH, The Beginning of the Middle Ages; A. Thierry, Histoire d'Attila, etc., St. Jerome, etc., _St. Jean Chrysostome_, etc.; Church, Life of Anselm; MORISON, Life and Times of St. Bernard; Gfrörer, _Pabst Gregorius VII. u. sein Zeitalter_ (1859); Bury, _The Later Roman Empire_ (2 vols.); Oman, The Dark Ages (476-918); TOUT, The Empire and the Papacy (918-1272); Emerton, _Mediaeval Europe_ (800-1300); Pears, The Fall of Constantinople; Sergeant, The Franks; MULLINGER, _The Schools of Charles the Great, and the Restoration of Education in the 9th Century_ (1877); MONTALEMBERT, The Monks of the West (7 vols.); Sartorius, Gesch. des hanseatischen Bundes (3 vols.); Mombert, Charlemagne; Sabatier, Life of Francis of Assisi; Hasse, Leben Anselm; West, Alcuin; Hodgkin, Theodoric the Goth.

General Character of the Period. ROBERTSON, A View of the Progress of Society in Europe from the Subversion of the Roman Empire, etc. (Introduction to the History of Charles V.); Kingsley, C., The Roman and the Teuton: a Series of Lectures, etc.; SULLIVAN, Historical Causes and Effects; from the Fall of the Roman Empire A.D. 476 to 1517; Ozanam, A. F., History of Civilization in the Fifth Century; LAURENT, Études, etc. (vol vii.); Sir James Stephen, Ecclesiastical Essays; Adams, Civilization during the Middle Ages. Scott's novels,--Ivanhoe, The Talisman, Anne of Geierstein: they are historically much less correct pictures than his romances which relate to Scotland.

Particular Aspects of the Period. SAVIGNY, _Gesch. d. römischen Rechts im Mittelalter_ (7 vols.); Sismondi, _Literature in the South of Europe_; Hallam, _Introduction to the Study of Literature_, etc.; Geffchen, Church and State (2 vols.); GUIZOT, _History of the Origin of Representative Government in Europe_; Hecker, Epidemics of the Middle Ages; J. E. THOROLD ROGERS, _A History of Agriculture and Prices in England_ [1259-1793] (4 vols., 1866); Amos, _Roman Civil Law_; Jenks, Law and Politics in the Middle Ages; Gross, The Guild Merchant; Oman, Art of War; VIOLLET-LE-DUC, Annals of a Fortress; H. C. Lea, _History of Sacerdotal Celibacy, History of the Inquisition_ (3 vols.), and Superstition and Force; LACROIX, _Works on the Middle Ages_, richly illustrated (5 vols., London, 1880); Gautier, Chivalry; Cornish, Chivalry; BULFINCH, _Age of Chivalry, or Legends of King Arthur; Legends of Charlemagne, or Romance of the Middle Ages_ (2 vols.); COX AND JONES, _Popular Romances of the Middle Ages_; NASSE, _On the Agricultural Community of the Middle Ages_ (1871); Roth, Gesch. d. Beneficialwesens, etc.; Secretan, _Essai sur la Feodalité_; Smith, T., English Guilds (1870); WILDA, _Das Gildenwesen im Mittelalter_ (1831); Seignobos, _The Feudal Regime_.

Works on the Crusades. G. W. COX, The Crusades (1878); also, art. Crusades in the Encycl. Brit.; Michaud, History of the Crusades (3 vols.); VON SYBEL, The History and Literature of the Crusades; Mills, A History of the Crusades, etc. (2 vols.); Heeren, in Vermischte historische Schriften (3 vols.); Procter's History of the Crusades; Gray's Children's Crusade; Archer and Kingsford, The Crusades.

For works on Mohammedanism and the Arabic kingdom, see p. 232.

The works here mentioned respecting the several countries either relate to their entire history, or to their history prior to the close of the Middle Ages.

I. ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND.--GREEN'S _History of the English People_ (4 vols.), and Short History of England (1 vol.); the "STUDENTS' HUME"; the histories of BRIGHT, Knight, LINGARD, Hume, GUIZOT, Traill, Social England (6 vols., two editions); GAIRDNER, Outline, etc.; Turner's _History of the Anglo-Saxons_; Palgrave's _Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth_; Palgrave's _History of Normandy and of England_; FREEMAN'S History of the Norman Conquest (6 vols.), and History of William Rufus; Green, _The Making of England_, and The Conquest of England; Ramsay, Foundations of England, Angevin Empire, Lancaster and York; STUBBS, The Early Plantagenets; LONGMAN'S _History of Edward III_.; Cunningham, _Growth of English Industry and Commerce_; Cheyney, _Industrial and Social History of England_; Seebohm, English Village Community; _Life of Wickliffe_, by LECHLER, by LOSERTH, by WILSON, by Trevelyan.

Kemble's The Saxons in England; STUBBS'S _Constitutional History of England in its Origin and Development_ (3 vols.); STUBBS'S Select Charters; CREASY'S _Rise and Progress of the English Constitution_; THOMPSON'S _Essay on Magna Charta_; Bisset, _History of the Struggle for Parliamentary Government in England_ (1877); TASWELL-LANGMEAD'S _English Constitutional History_, etc.; FREEMAN'S _Growth of the English Constitution_, etc.; Bagehot, The English Constitution; Macy, The English Constitution.

SCOTLAND.--P. H. Brown, History of Scotland (2 vols.); Miss Macarthur, History of Scotland (1 vol.); E. M. Robertson, Scotland under her Early Kings (2 vols.).

IRELAND.--C. G. Walpole, The Kingdom of Ireland; Morris, Ireland.

II. FRANCE.--General histories by Crowe (5 vols.); DURUY (2 vols.); GUIZOT (to 1789, 5 vols.; 1789-1848, 3 vols.); and Outlines of the History of France (1 vol.); Bonnechose (to 1848); JERVIS (Hassall edition); MARTIN (17 vols.); KITCHIN, LACOMBE, MICHELET (17 vols.); Lavisse, Histoire de France; Adams, Growth of the French Nation; Grant, The French Monarchy; Wallon's St. Louis et son Temps (2 vols.); Sismondi, The French under the Carlovingians (1 vol.), France under the Feudal System (1 vol.); BARANTE'S Histoire des Ducs de Bourgogne de la Maison de Valois, 1364-1477; WALLON'S Jeanne d'Arc (2 vols.); Lowell's Joan of Arc; Jameson's Life and Times of Du Guesclin.

COULANGES' Histoire des Institutions politiques de l'Ancienne France (1877); Viollet, Institutions politiques de la France (3 vols.); Luchaire, Manuel des Institutions Françaises; Esmein, Histoire du Droit Français; GUIZOT'S History of Civilization in France (3 vols.), and Essai sur l'Histoire de France; THIERRY'S The Formation and Progress of the Third Estate in France; Sir James Stephens's Lectures on the History of France.

III. GERMANY.--Henderson, A Short History of Germany (2 vols.); Histories by C. T. LEWIS (founded on D. Müller), Kohlrausch; Kaufman, Deutsche Geschichte; Lamprecht, Deutsche Geschichte (6 vols.); Schröder, Lehrbuch der d. Rechtsgeschichte; Richter, Annalen.

GEISEBRECHT'S Geschichte d. deutschen Kaiserzeit (4 vols.); VON RAUMER'S Geschichte der Hohenstaufen und ihrer Zeit (6 vols.).

Coxe's History of the House of Austria; KRONES'S Handbuch d. Geschichte Osterreichs (3 vols.); Marlath's Geschichte Osterreichs.

ARNOLD, Ansiedelungun und Wanderungen deutscher Stämme (1875); also, Deutsche Urzeit (1879); Ozanam, Les Germains avant le Christianisme (1872); SOHM, Die altdeutsche Reichs und Gerichtsverfassung; MAURER'S histories of German local institutions (the Marks, the Villages, the Cities); WAITZ, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte (8 vols.), Wirth, Die Geschichte der Deutschen (1853); SUGENHEIM, Geschichte d. deutschen Volkes und seiner Kultur, etc.

IV. ITALY.--Cantu, Histoire des Italiens (12 vols., 1859); HUNT'S History of Italy (in Freeman's Series); Butt's History of Italy (2 vols.); LEO'S _Geschichte von Italien_ (5 vols.); SISMONDI'S _Histoire des Republiques Italiennes du Moyen Age_ (10 vols.); SPALDING'S _Italy and the Italians_; Boscoe and Morell, _Compendium of Italian History_.

Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders (2 vols.); TESTA, History of the War of Frederic I. against the Communes of Lombardy; HEYD, Geschichte des Levantehandels im Mittelalter (2 vols.); C. HEGEL, Gesckichte der Städteverfassung von Italien, etc.

Daru, Histoire de la Republique de Venise (9 vols.); BROWN, Venice: an Historical Sketch; Ranke, _Zur Venitianer Geschichte_; Machiavelli's History of Florence; Napier's Florentine History (6 vols.); PERRENS, _Histoire de Florence_ (4 vols.); REUMONT'S Lorenzo the Magnificent (2 vols.); Roscoe's Life of Lorenzo de' Medici; TROLLOPE'S History of Florence; Campbell's Life of Petrarch; GREGOROVIUS' History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages (8 v., from fifth to sixteenth century); Gallenga, _History of Piedmont_ (3 vols.); Amari, _History of the War of the Sicilian Vespers_ (3 vols.); Malleson, Studies from Genoese History (1 vol.); Oliphant, Makers of Florence, etc.; SYMONDS, Sketches and Studies in Southern Europe; TAINE, _Florence and Venice_, and Rome and Naples; Freeman, _Historical and Architectural Studies_ (chiefly Italian, 1 vol.).

V. RUSSIA.--Bell's History of Russia (3 vols.); Howorth's History of the Mongols; KARAMSIN, _Histoire de l'Empire de Russie_ (11 vols.); Histories of Russia, by Kelly, Lamartine, Levesque; RAMBAUD, History of Russia (2 vols., 1879); RALSTON, Early Russian History.

VI. POLAND.--Histories of Poland, by DUNHAM (12mo), Fletcher, JOACHIM (2 vols.), RÖPELL AND CARO.

VII. SPAIN AND PORTUGAL.--Lembke und Schäfer, _Geschichte von Spanien_ (3 vols.); MARIANA, The General History of Spain; DUNHAM, History of Spain and Portugal; CRAWFORD, _Portugal, Old and New_; Burke, History of Spain (2 vols.); Stevens's Portugal; TICKNOR'S History of Spanish Literature (3 vols.); Prescott's _History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella_ (introductory chapter).

VIII. SWITZERLAND.--History of Switzerland, in LARDNER'S CYCLOPEDIA (1832); Histories of Switzerland, by MORIN (5 vols.); J. Müller; Zschokke; Rochholz, Tell und Gessler in Sage und Geschichte (1877).

IX. SCANDINAVIA.--DUNHAM'S _History of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway_ (3 vols.); Dahlmann's _Geschichte von Danemark bis zur Reformation_ (with Norway and Iceland, 3 vols.); Histories of Sweden, by Fryxell, GEIJER AND CARLSON (5 vols.); Laing's _History of Norway_; MALLET'S Northern Antiquities; MAURER'S History of Iceland; RINK'S Danish Greenland; Sinding's Scandinavia; WHEATON'S History of the Northmen; Worsaac's Danes and Northmen in Great Britain.

X. OTTOMAN TURKS.--HAMMER-PURGSTALL'S Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches (10 vols.); CREASY'S History of the Ottoman Turks; FREEMAN, The Ottoman Power in Europe (1877); ZINKEISEN, Geschichte d. osmanisch. Reiches in Europa (7 vols.).

XI. CHINA, JAPAN, AND INDIA.--(See lists on pp. 25, 32.) Dickson, Japan, etc. (vol. i., 1869); Griffis, _The Micado's Empire_ (1876).

XII. BIBLIOGRAPHIES.--In addition to Adams, Manual; Sonnenschein, The Best Books and A Reader's Guide; Gross, Sources and Literature of English History (to 1485); Gardiner and Mullinger, English History for Students; Monod, Bibliographie de l'Histoire de France; Dahlmann-Waitz, Quellenkunde, der Deutschen Geschichte; lists in Lavisse et Rambaud, Histoire Générale.

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III. MODERN HISTORY

FROM THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE (1453) TO THE PRESENT TIME.

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Introduction

Modern history as a whole, in contrast with mediæval, is marked by several plainly defined characteristics. They are such as appear, however, in a less developed form, in the latter part of the Middle Ages.

1. In the recent centuries, there has been an increased tendency to consolidate smaller states into larger kingdoms.

2. There has been a gradual secularizing of politics. Governments have more and more cast off ecclesiastical control.

3. As another side of this last movement, political unity in Europe has superseded ecclesiastical unity. The bond of union among nations, in the room of being membership in one great ecclesiastical commonwealth, became political: it came to be membership in a loosely defined confederacy of nations, held together by treaties or by a tacit agreement in certain accepted rules of public law and outlines of policy.

4. In this system, one main principle is the balance of power. This means that any one state may be prevented from enlarging its bounds to such an extent as to endanger its neighbors. We have seen the action of such a principle among the ancient states of Greece. Even in the Middle Ages, as regards Italy, the popes endeavored to keep up an equilibrium. They supported the Norman kingdom in Southern Italy, or the Lombard leagues in the North, as a counterpoise to the German emperors. In the sixteenth century, there were formed combinations to check the power of Charles V., king of Spain and emperor of Germany, and afterwards to restrain his successor on the Spanish throne, Philip II. In the seventeenth century, there were like combinations against Louis XIV. of France, and, over a century later, against the first Napoleon.

5. The vast influence and control of Europe, by discovery, colonization, and commerce, in other quarters of the globe, is a striking feature of modern times.

6. With the increase of commerce and the growing power of the middle classes, there has arisen the "industrial age." Interests connected with production and trade, and with the material side of civilization, have come into great prominence.

7. Both the pursuits of men, and culture, have become far more diversified than was the case in the Middle Ages.

8. The influence of Christianity in its ethical relations--as an instrument of political and social reform, and a motive to philanthropy--has become more active and conspicuous.

PERIOD I. FROM THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE TO THE REFORMATION (1453-1517):

THE CONSOLIDATION OF MONARCHY: INVENTION AND DISCOVERY: THE RENAISSANCE.

CHARACTER OF THIS PERIOD.--In this period monarchy, especially in France, England, and Spain, acquires new strength and extension. The period includes the reigns of three kings who did much to help forward this change: Louis XI. of France, Henry VII. of England, and Ferdinand the Catholic of Spain. The Italian wars begin with the French invasion of Italy: the rivalship of the kingdoms, and the struggles pertaining to the balance of power, are thus initiated. In this period fall new inventions which have altered the character of civilization, and great geographical discoveries, of which the discovery of the New World is the chief. It is the epoch, moreover, of the Renaissance, or the re-awakening of learning and art. There is a new era in culture. All these movements and changes foretoken greater revolutions in the age that was to follow.

CHAPTER I. FRANCE: ENGLAND: SPAIN: GERMANY: ITALY: THE OTTOMAN TURKS: RUSSIA: THE INVASIONS OF ITALY.

I. FRANCE.

CHARLES VII. AND THE NOBLES.--The result of the hundred-years' war was the acquisition of Aquitaine by the French crown. Aquitaine was incorporated in France. Southern Gaul and Northern Gaul were now one. During the last years of Charles VII., his kingdom was comparatively peaceful. Its prosperity revived. A new sort of feudalism had sprung up in the room of the old noblesse, whose power had been crushed. The new nobility was made up of relatives of the royal family, as the Dukes of Burgundy, Berry, Bourbon, and the house of Anjou. On the east of France was Burgundy, which had expanded into a great European power. "The duchy of Burgundy, with the county of Charolois, and the counties of Flanders and Artois, were joined under a common ruler with endless imperial fiefs in the Low Countries, and with the imperial county of Burgundy." The Burgundian boundary was on the south of the Somme, and little more than fifty miles north of Paris. The Burgundian dukes were constantly striving to bring it still nearer. On the east and south, the house of Anjou held the duchy of Bar and Provence, besides other possessions. On the south, too, was the province of Dauphiny; and on the west the strong, half-independent duchy of Brétagne, or Brittany. Charles had a standing quarrel with his son Louis, who early showed his power to inspire dread, but gave no signs of the policy which he triumphantly pursued, after he became king, of putting down feudal insubordination. His young wife Margaret, daughter of James I. of Scotland, was twelve years old when he, a boy of thirteen, was married to her. He aroused such terror and aversion in her mind that she died at twenty-one of a broken heart. Louis--to whom, much to his disgust, Dauphiny instead of Normandy was given to rule--abetted the great lords in their resistance to his father's authority; and, when threatened with coercion, fled to Brussels, to the court of his father's cousin, Philip of Burgundy, where he was kindly entertained. Charles VII., who knew the traits of his son, said, "As for my cousin of Burgundy, he harbors a fox that will one day eat up his chickens." Even then the relations of Louis and Charles, Count of Charolois, the heir of Burgundy, were cool and unsympathetic. The king occupied Dauphiny, and in 1457 it was fully incorporated in France. The rulers of France and Burgundy, taken up with their own schemes of territorial gain, turned a deaf ear to the calls of Pope Pius II. for a crusade against the Turks. It has been said that most of the kings of the house of Valois were either bad or mad. The indolent and heartless Charles VII. would seem to have been both. In his last days he suspected that the Dauphin's plots were aided by persons about himself, and that his food was poisoned. He refused to eat, and died in 1461.

CHARACTER OF LOUIS XI.--Louis XI. (1461-1483) showed himself a master of "statecraft," or the cunning, diplomatic management which pursued its ends stealthily, held no engagements sacred, and was deterred by no scruples of conscience from whatever perfidy was thought requisite to attain the objects in view. Louis was one of the earliest examples of the kingcraft which in the succeeding age was deemed a gift to be coveted by princes. It was an art in which the Italians were masters; and its secrets were set forth, somewhat later than the time of Louis, in "The Prince" of Machiavelli, a work in which that eminent statesman and historian describes the means by which despots may entrap and crush their enemies. Whether he meant to afford aid to tyrants, or aid to their subjects through an exposure of the tricks of their rulers, the "Machiavellian" spirit designates the policy of intrigue that prevailed all through the sixteenth century, and infected even some of the best of the public men of that age. Louis was mean-looking, shabby in his dress, with a cunning aspect; in his whole deportment and character, in sharp contrast with the chivalrous princes, Philip and Charles of Burgundy. If he was vindictive, he was perhaps not more cruel than others; but he was ungenial, regarding men as his tools. He took pleasure in the society of his provosts or hangmen,--Tristan l'Hermite and Olivier le Daim. He often ordered men to execution without so much as the form of a trial. There was in him a vein of superstition. He was punctilious in his devotions. He would not swear a false oath over the cross of St. Loup of Angers, because he thought that death would be the penalty. He did not quail before an enemy in battle; yet such was his alarm at the prospect of death, that he collected about him relics and charms, magicians and hermits, to help him prolong his days.

STRIFE WITH THE NOBLES.--The first years of Louis's reign (1461-1467) were passed in a struggle with the great lords whom he was determined to subdue. At the beginning his measures for this end were imprudent. They combined against him in the League of the Public Weal in 1464. Their force was so great that he stood in imminent peril. He counted on the support of Paris, and was trying to reach that city when the hostile armies encountered one another at Montlhéry (1465). It was an absurd battle, where at night both parties thought themselves beaten. The king secured his place of refuge. He deemed it prudent to make peace on the terms demanded by the Count of Charolois, and the other nobles. This treaty of Conflans (1465) he caused the Parliament of Paris to refuse to ratify or register. He had trusted to his ability to regain what he might surrender. The strife between the Duke of Brittany and the king's brother Charles, now made Duke of Normandy, enabled Louis soon to recover Normandy.

CHARLES THE BOLD, AND LOUIS.--The death of Philip made his son, Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. Charles was in the prime of life, of a chivalrous temper, courteous and polished, fond of reading and music, as well as of knightly sports, and with his head full of dreams of ambition. With certain noble qualities, his pride was excessive, his temper not only hot but obstinate, and, as he grew older, he became more overbearing and cruel. He was the most powerful prince in Europe. The most of his lands were German. In the early part of his reign he pursued the same scheme as that which was at the root of the League of the Public Weal. He aimed to hem in Louis, and to build up his own power in the direction of France. He allied himself, in 1466, with the House of York, then uppermost in England. An English force was sent to Calais in 1467. Threatened by this coalition of adversaries, Louis hastened to attack Brittany, and forced its duke to conclude a separate peace. Trusting too much to his powers of negotiation, and yielding to the treacherous advice of Cardinal Balue, one of his chief counselors, the king determined to go in person to confer with Charles of Burgundy. He soon learned that his safe-conduct was of little value. At Peronne, he found himself in the midst of enemies, and in reality a prisoner. While there, Liège was in revolt, as Charles ascertained, at the king's instigation. The wrathful duke could be appeased only by agreeing to every thing that he required. Louis had to undergo the humiliation of attending Charles and his army, and of basely taking part in the vengeance inflicted on the city which he had himself stirred up to revolt. He was glad to escape with his life. After his return, he ordered Balue to be put in an iron cage, where he was kept for ten years,--a mode of punishment of Balue's own invention. Louis repudiated the treaty of Peronne, under the advice of a body of Notables, all of whom he had nominated and summoned. A new league was organized against him; but the king by his wariness, and by his promptitude in attacking Brittany, gained advantages, so that a truce was concluded with the Burgundian duke in 1472. Philip de Commines, at that time a companion and counselor of Charles, left his service for that of Louis. To his Memoirs we owe most instructive and interesting details respecting these princes, and the manners and occurrences of the time.

CHARLES THE BOLD, AND THE SWISS.--From this time Charles turned his attention eastward, and devoted himself to building up a great principality on the Rhine, which might open the way for his succession to the empire. It seemed to be his plan to bring together the old kingdom of Lotharingia and that of the Burgundies. He found no sympathy in his schemes from the emperor Frederick III. The great barrier in Charles's way was the freedom-loving spirit of the inhabitants of the Swiss mountains. Availing himself of a plausible pretext, he endeavored to get possession of Cologne by first laying siege to Neuss, which lies below it. Wasting his strength in the unsuccessful attempt to capture this place, he failed to make a junction of his forces with the English troops who landed in France under his ally, King Edward IV. The English king was persuaded to make a truce with France by the wily Louis, who was constantly on the watch for any mistakes or mishaps of his impetuous Burgundian adversary. The cruelty of Charles to the Swiss inhabitants of Granson, who had surrendered, brought upon him an attack of their exasperated countrymen near that place (1476). The Burgundians were routed; and the duke's camp, with all its treasures, including his sword, the plate of his chapel, and precious stones of inestimable value, fell into the hands of the hardy mountaineers, who knew nothing of the worth of these things. The next year the Duke once more flung his reckless valor against the strength of the Swiss infantry, and barely escaped from an utter defeat at Morat. Made desperate by misfortune, he risked another battle near Nanci, in 1477, at the head of an inferior force, composed partly of treacherous mercenaries, and was vanquished and slain. He had intended to make Nanci his capital; but his body was found near by in a swamp, stripped of its clothing, frozen, and covered with wounds.

EXTENSION OF FRANCE.--Louis XI could hardly stifle expressions of joy at the news of the death of his hated and formidable rival. While Charles had been busy in Germany, Louis had taken the opportunity to put down, one by one, the great nobles who had shown themselves ill-affected. He secured to France Roussillon and the northern slopes of the Pyrenees. It was now his purpose to lay hold of as many as possible of the possessions of the late duke. Mary, the daughter of Charles the Bold, the heiress of Burgundy, gave her hand in marriage to Maximilian of Austria, an event which carried after it the most important consequences. The result of the conflicts of Louis and Maximilian was the Peace of Arras (1482), which left in the hands of France the towns on the Somme, and the great Burgundian duchy. For a time Maximilian, as holder of the French fiefs of Flanders and Artois, was a vassal of the French king. On the death of King René, in 1480, and the extinction of the house of Anjou, Louis annexed the three great districts of Anjou, Maine, and Provence, the last of which was a fief of the empire.

LAST DAYS OF LOUIS XI.--In his last days, old King Louis, in wretched health, tortured with the fear of death, and in constant dread of plots to destroy him, shut himself up in the castle of Plessis-les-Tours, which he strongly fortified, and manned with guards who were instructed to shoot all who approached without leave. He kept up his activity in management, and in truth devised schemes for the advantage of his realm. His selfish and malignant temper brought to him one unexpected joy from the sudden death of Mary of Burgundy (1482), from which, however, France did not reap the advantages which he expected. He died in 1483, at the age of sixty-one. He, more than any other, was the founder of the French monarchy in the later form. He centralized the administration of the government. He fought against feudalism, old and new. He strengthened, however, local authority where it did not interfere with the power of the king. In matters of internal government he was often just and wise.

CHARLES VIII. (1483-1496): ANNE OF BEAUJEU.--Charles VIII. at the death of his father was only fourteen years old. But in his older sister, Anne of Beaujeu, the wife of Peter of Bourbon, he had an energetic guide who for ten years virtually managed public affairs. She proved too strong for the opposition of the royal princes, of the nobility, and of the States General. The nobles turned for support to Richard III. of England. Anne strengthened with men and money Henry of Richmond, the rival and conqueror of Richard. The Duke of Brittany, with his allies, the Duke of Orleans, the Prince of Orange, and others, was defeated in a hardly contested battle in 1488, which was followed by a treaty advantageous to France. The crowning achievement of Anne of Beaujeu was the marriage of Anne of Brittany to Charles VIII. This was accomplished although she had already been married by proxy to Maximilian, while Charles was pledged to marry Margaret, the emperor's daughter. If Anne of Brittany should outlive Charles, she engaged to marry his successor. This second marriage actually took place: she became the wife of Louis XII. Brittany was thus incorporated in France. The Italian expeditions, the great events in the reign of Charles VIII., will be related hereafter.

II. ENGLAND.

WAR OF THE ROSES: THE HOUSE OF YORK.--The crown in England had come to be considered as the property of a family, to which the legitimate heir had a sacred claim. The Wars of the Roses (1455-1485) grew out of family rivalries. It was a fight among nobles. But other reasons were not without influence. The party of York (whose badge was the white rose) was the popular party, which had its strength in Kent and in the trading cities. It went for reform of government. The party of Lancaster (whose badge was the red rose) was the more conservative party, having its strength among the barons of the North. Richard, Duke of York, thought that he had a better claim to the English crown than Henry VI., because his ancestor, Lionel, was an older son of Edward III. than John of Gaunt, the ancestor of Henry. The king was insane at times, and Richard was made Protector or Regent of Parliament. But Henry, becoming better, drove him from his presence. He organized an insurrection, but was defeated in a battle at Wakefield by the troops of the strong-hearted queen. He was crowned with a wreath of grass, and then beheaded. His brave son, Rutland, was killed as he fled. But Richard's eldest son, Edward--Edward IV. (1461-1483)--supported by the powerful Earl of Warwick, "the king-maker," defeated the queen at Towton, took possession of the throne, and imprisoned Henry VI., who had fallen into imbecility. Edward was popular because he kept order. But the favors which he lavished on the Woodvilles, relatives of his Lancastrian wife Elizabeth, enabled the opposing party, to which Warwick deserted, to get the upper hand (1470); and Edward fled to Holland. But he soon returned, and won the battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury (1471). Henry VI. was secretly murdered in the Tower. The house of York was now in the ascendant. A quarrel between the king and his ambitious brother Clarence, who had married Warwick's daughter, led to the trial and condemnation of Clarence, who was put to death in the Tower. It was during the reign of Edward IV. that Caxton set up the first printing-press in England. After Edward his brother reigned, Richard III. (1483-1485), a brave but merciless man, who made his way to the throne by the death of the two young princes Edward and Richard, whose murder in the Tower he is with good reason supposed to have procured. He had pretended that Edward IV. had never been lawfully married to their mother. Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, descended by his mother from John of Gaunt, aided by France, landed in Wales, and won a victory at Bosworth over the adherents of the white rose,--a victory which gave him a kingdom and a crown. Thus the house of Lancaster in the person of Henry VII. (1485-1509), gained the throne. He married Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of Edward IV., and so the two hostile houses were united. He was the first of the TUDOR kings.

CHARACTER OF THE CIVIL WARS.--The Wars of the Roses are, in certain respects, peculiar. They extended over a long period, but did not include more than three years of actual fighting. The battles were fierce, and the combatants unsparing in the treatment of their foes. Yet the population of the country did not diminish. Business and the administration of justice went on as usual. Trade began to be held in high esteem, and traders to amass wealth. The number of journeymen and day-laborers increased, and there was a disposition to break through the guild laws.

EFFECTS OF THE CIVIL WARS.--The most striking result of the civil wars was the strengthening of the power of the king. Not more than thirty of the old nobles survived. Laws were made forbidding the nobles to keep armed "retainers;" and against "maintenance," or the custom of nobles to promise to support, in their quarrels or law-cases, men who adhered to them. The court of the Star Chamber was set up to prevent these abuses. It was turned into an instrument of tyranny in the hands of the kings. Henry VII. extorted from the rich, "benevolences," or gifts solicited by the king, which the law authorized him to collect as a tax. He contrived to get money in such ways, and thus to carry forward the government without Parliament, which met only once during the last thirteen years of his reign. Royal power, in relation to the nobles, was further exalted by the introduction of cannon into warfare, which only the king possessed. Two pretenders to the throne, Lambert Simnel (1487), and Perkin Warbeck (1492), were raised up; but the efforts made to dethrone Henry proved abortive. He kept watch over his enemies at home and abroad, and punished all resistance to his authority. Circumstances enabled the founder of the Tudor line to exalt the power of the king over the heads of both the nobles and the commons.

III. SPAIN.

FERDINAND OF ARAGON (1479-15l6).--The union of Aragon and Castile, by the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella (1474-1504), was nominal, as each sovereign reigned independently in his own dominion. But both sovereigns were bent on the same end,--that of subjecting the powerful grandees and feudal lords to their authority. In this policy they found efficient helpers in the shrewd and loyal counselor Mendoza, Cardinal and Archbishop of Toledo, and in Ximenes, who combined the qualities of a prelate of strict orthodoxy with those of a profound and energetic statesman. To bring both nobles and clergy into subservience to the crown, was their great aim; and for this end the sagacious Ferdinand procured from the Pope the privilege of filling the bishoprics and the grand masterships of the military orders. He deprived the nobles of their judicial functions, which he committed to impartial and severe tribunals of his own creation. He re-organized and strengthened the Holy Hermanadad, or militia of the cities, and thus had at his service against the grandees a standing military force. He used the nobles and the cities to keep one another in check. Over both stood the Inquisition,--a tribunal established against the Moors and the Jews who had made an outward profession of Christianity, but which under Torquemada, who had been confessor of the queen, became a terror to all Spain. The king had the power to name the Grand Inquisitor and all the judges; and he thus acquired in this institution not only a fearful weapon against heretics of every description, but also a political instrument for the subjugation of the nobles and the clergy. By this alliance of the throne and the altar, the despotic power of Ferdinand had the firmest prop.

CONQUEST OF GRANADA.--After a ten-years' bloody war, the Moorish kingdom of Granada was conquered. The capital, with the famous castle of Alhambra, was captured (1492). The dethroned Moorish king, Boabdil, robbed of his possessions, sailed to Africa, where he fell in battle. By the terms of their surrender, the Moors were to have the free exercise of their religion. But the promise was not kept. Choice was given to the Moslems to become Christians, or to emigrate. Many left to wage war elsewhere against their Spanish persecutors, either as corsairs in Africa, or as bands of robbers in Sierra Nevada. The professed converts were goaded by cruel treatment into repeated insurrections. It was a fierce war of races and religions. The frightful sufferings of the Moors, under the pressure of this double fanaticism, form a long and gloomy chapter of Spanish history. The dismal tale continues until the cruel expulsion from the kingdom of nearly a million of this unhappy people by Philip III., in 1609.

FERDINAND, REGENT OF CASTILE.--Most of the children of Ferdinand and Isabella died young. Their daughter Joanna married Philip of Burgundy, son of Maximilian and Mary; but he died in 1506, at the age of twenty-eight. They had been recognized as the rulers of Castile. But the mind of Joanna, who had always been eccentric, became disordered, so that the government devolved on Ferdinand, her father. He placed her in the castle at Tordesillas, where the remainder of her life, which continued forty-seven years longer, was spent. Ferdinand was, in form, constituted by the Cortes (1510), regent of the kingdom in the name of his daughter, and as guardian of her son (Charles). Ferdinand administered the government with wisdom and moderation. As there were no children by his second marriage with Germaine de Foix, niece of Louis XII. of France, the succession of Joanna's son remained secure. Ferdinand availed himself of the disturbances in France to annex to Castile the portion of Navarre lying on the south of the Pyrenees.

IV. GERMANY AND THE EMPIRE.

FREDERICK III. (1440-1493).--While England, France, and Spain were organizing monarchy, Italy and Germany kept up the anarchical condition of the Middle Ages. Hence these countries, first Italy and then Germany, became enticing fields of conquest for other nations. Frederick III. was the last emperor crowned at Rome (1452), and only one other emperor after him was crowned by the Pope. Frederick reigned longer than any other German king before or after him. He lacked energy, neglected the empire, and busied himself in enlarging his Austrian domains, which he erected into an archduchy (1453). When he sought to interfere with the German princes, they set him at defiance. He did little more than remain an indolent spectator of the conflict in which the Swiss overthrew Charles the Bold. The great danger to Europe was now from the Turks. Christendom was defended by the Poles and the Hungarians. Frederick left the Hungarians, under the gallant John Hunyady, without his help, to drive them, in 1456, from Belgrade. He tried to obtain the Bohemian and Hungarian crowns; but Podiebrad, a Utraquist nobleman, was made king of Bohemia, and Matthias Corvinus succeeded Hunyady, his father, on the throne of Hungary. By the death of Albert, the brother of Frederick, to whom the emperor had been compelled to give up Vienna, he became master of all the Austrian lands except Tyrol. He was bent on getting the Hungarian crown; but Vienna was taken by Matthias, in 1485, and the emperor had to fly for his life. A great confederation, composed of princes, nobles, and cities, was made in Swabia, for repressing private war, and did much good in South Germany. The western part of Prussia was taken from the Teutonic Knights by the Peace of Thorn, in 1466, and annexed to Poland by Casimir IV.

Maximilian I. (1493-15l9).--Maximilian I. was a restless prince, eager for adventure. Although not crowned, he was authorized by Pope Julius II. to style himself "Emperor Elect." In his reign, efforts, only in part successful, were made to secure peace and order in Germany. At the Diet of Worms in 1495, a perpetual public peace, or prohibition of private feuds, was proclaimed; and a court called the Imperial Chamber, the judges of which, except the president, were appointed by the states, was constituted to adjust controversies among them. The benefits of this arrangement were partly defeated by the Aulic Council, an Austrian tribunal established by Maximilian for his own domains, but which interfered in matters properly belonging to the Chamber. Germany was also divided into circles, or districts, for governmental purposes. In 1499 Maximilian endeavored, without success, to coerce the Swiss League into submission to the Imperial Chamber, and to punish it for helping the French in their Italian invasion. Although he was brave, cultured, and eloquent, he lacked perseverance, and not a few of his numerous projects failed. The most fortunate event in his life, as regards the aggrandizement of his house, was his marriage to Mary of Burgundy (1477). His grandson Ferdinand married the sister of Louis II., the last king of Bohemia of the Polish line, who was also king of Hungary; and by the election of Ferdinand to be his successor (1526), both these countries were added to the vast possessions of the Austrian family. To Maximilian's doings in Italy, we shall soon refer.

GERMAN CITIES.--From the middle of the thirteenth century there was a rapid growth of German cities, and an advance of the trading-classes. The cities gained a large measure of self-government, and were prosperous little republics. They were centers of commerce and wealth, and often exercised power much beyond their own precincts, which were well defended by ditches, walls, and towers. The old Gothic town-halls in Aix, Nuremburg, Cologne, etc., are monuments of municipal thrift and dignity. Their churches and convents grew rich, and schools with numerous pupils were connected with them. Dwellings became more comfortable and attractive. All branches of art and manufacture flourished. The city nobles and the guilds had their banquets. In the church festivals all the people took part. The German cities, such as Mayence, Worms, Strasburg, Lübeck, Augsburg, excited the admiration even of Italian visitors.

THE MEDICI.

Giovanni d' Medici, d. 1429. | +--COSMO ("Father of his Country"), d. 1464. | | | +--PIERO, d. 1469. | | | +--LORENZO (the Magnificent), d. 1492. | | | | | +--Maddelena. | | | | | +--PIERO d. 1503 | | | | | | | +--LORENZO II, Duke of Urbino, d. 1510. | | | | | | | +--Catharine, m. Henry II of France. | | | | | | | +--ALESSANDRO, First Duke of Florence, 1531-1537. | | | | | +--GIOVANNI (Pope Leo X), d. 1521. | | | | | +--GIULIANO, Duke of Nemours, d. 1516. | | | | | +--Ippolito (Cardinal), d. 1535. | | | +--GIULIANO, killed by Pozzi 1478. | | | +--Giulio (Pope Clement VII), d. 1534. | +--LORENZO, d. 1440. | +--Piero Francesco, d. 1474. | +--Giuliano, d. 1498. | +--Giovanni (the Invincible), d. 1526. | +--COSIMO I, First Grand Duke of Tuscany, 1537-1574. | +--FRANCESCO, 1574-1587, m. Joanna, | daughter of Emperor Ferdinand I. | | | +--Mary m. Henry IV of France. | +--FERDINAND I, 1587-1600, m. Christina, daughter of Charles II of Lorraine. | +--COSIMO II, 1609-1621, m. Mary Magdalen, sister of Emperor Ferdinand II. | +--FERDINAND II, 1621-1670. | +--COSIMO III, 1670-1723. | +--JOHN GASTON, 1723-1737.

V. ITALY.

CONDITION OF ITALY.--Italy, at the epoch of the French invasions, was the most prosperous as well as the most enlightened and civilized country in Europe. Its opulent and splendid cities were the admiration of all visitors from the less favored countries of the North. But national unity was wanting. The country was made up of discordant states. Venice was ambitious of conquest; and the pontiffs in this period, to the grief of all true friends of religion, were absorbed in Italian politics, being eager to carve out principalities for their relatives. Italy was exposed to two perils. On the one hand, it was menaced by the Ottoman Turks; not to speak of the kings of France and Spain, who were rival aspirants for control in the Italian peninsula. On the other hand, voyages of discovery were threatening to open new highways of commerce to supersede the old routes of traffic through its maritime cities.

MILAN.--The fall of Constantinople produced a momentary union in Italy. At Lodi, in 1454, the principal states took an oath of perpetual concord,--Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan; Cosmo de Medici, to whom Florence had given the name of "Father of his Country;" Alfonso V. the Magnanimous, king of Naples and Sicily; the Popes Calixtus III. and Pius II. (1458-1464). But conflicts soon arose among them. An abortive attempt was made by John of Calabria to deprive Ferdinand of Naples of his inheritance (1462). In 1478 there was a coalition against Florence; in 1482, a coalition against Venice. The Turks made the best use of these quarrels, and captured Otranto (1480), killing or enslaving twelve thousand Christians. The idea of the ancients that tyrannicide is a virtue, whether the master be good or bad, was caught up, and gave rise to conspiracies. At Milan, in 1476, the cruel Duke Galeazzo Maria was assassinated by three young men, near the Church of St. Stephen. Giovanni Galeazzo, his son, a minor, married a daughter of the king of Naples. But his uncle, Ludovico il Moro, had seized on power, and ruled in the name of Giovanni (1480). He imprisoned Giovanni and his young wife; and being threatened by the king of Naples, who had for an ally Peter de Medici, he formed an alliance with the Pope and the Venetians; and, not confiding in them, he invited Charles VIII. of France to invade the kingdom of Naples. Genoa fell under the yoke of Ludovico, who was invested with it by Charles VIII. as a fief of France.

VENICE.--Venice, which up to the fall of Constantinople had been the strongest of the Italian states, forgot its duties and its dangers in relation to the Turks, in order to aggrandize itself in Italy. It could not avoid war with them, which broke out in 1464. The Turks took Negropont and Scutari, passed the Piave, and the fires kindled by their troops could be seen from Venice. The city made a shameful treaty with them, paying them a large sum (1479). But four years after, it conquered Cyprus, which it did not scruple to demand the privilege of holding as a fief of the Sultan of Egypt. The great power of Venice at this time was a cause of alarm to all the other states; but their first combination against it in 1482, in defense of the Duke of Ferrara, was of no effect. In 1454 the government of Venice was placed practically in the hands of three "inquisitors", who exercised despotic power under the old forms, and, by such means as secret trials and executions, maintained internal order and quiet at the cost of liberty. Its soldiers were condottieri, under foreign leaders, whom it watched with the utmost jealousy.

FLORENCE.--Cosmo de Medici had continued to be a man of the people. But the members of his family who followed him, while they copied his munificence and public spirit, behaved more as princes. Against Peter I. plots were formed by the nobles, but were baffled (1465). Jerome Riario, a nephew of Pope Sixtus IV., strove with papal help to conquer for himself a principality in the Romagna. The Florentines protested against it as a breach of the treaty of Lodi. Hence Riario took part in the conspiracy of the Pazzi against the lives of Lorenzo and Julian, sons of Cosmo. They were attacked in the cathedral of Florence by the assassins, during the celebration of mass; Julian was killed, but Lorenzo escaped. The Archbishop of Pisa, one of the accomplices, was hung from his palace window in his pontifical robes. The Pope excommunicated the Medici, and all the Italian states plunged into war. The capture of Otranto at this time by the Turks frightened the princes. Lorenzo de Medici repaired in person to Naples to negotiate with Ferdinand, the Pope's ally, and peace was concluded. Lorenzo earned the name of "The Magnificent" by his lavish patronage of literature and art.

SAVONAROLA.--Against the rule of Lorenzo, one voice was raised, that of the Dominican monk Jerome Savonarola, a preacher of fervid eloquence, who aimed in his harangues, not only to move individuals to repentance, but to bring about a thorough amendment of public morals, and a political reform in the direction of liberty. In his discourses, however, he lashed the ecclesiastical corruptions of the time, not sparing those highest in power. There were two parties, that of the young nobles,--the arribiati, or "enraged;" and that of the people,--the frateschi, or friends of the monks. Savonarola proclaimed that a great punishment was impending over Italy. He predicted the invasion from north of the Alps.

FLORENCE IN THE AGE OF LORENZO.--Florence in the time of Lorenzo presented striking points of resemblance to Athens in its most flourishing days. In some respects, the two communities were quite unlike. Florence was not a conquering power, and had no extensive dominion. Civil and military life were distinct from one another: the Italian had come to rely more upon diplomacy than upon arms, and his wealth and mercantile connections made him anxious to avoid war. In Florence, moreover, trade and the mechanic arts were in high repute; industry was widely diffused, and was held in honor. But in equality and pride of citizenship, in versatility of talent and intellectual activity, in artistic genius and in appreciation of the products of art, in refinement of manners, cheerfulness of temper, and a joyous social life, the Florentines in the fifteenth century compare well with the Athenians in the age of Pericles. In Florence, the burgess or citizen had attained to the standing to which in other countries he only aspired. Nobility of blood was counted as of some worth; but where there was not wealth or intellect with it, it was held in comparatively low esteem. Prosperous merchants, men of genius and education, and skillful artisans were on a level with the best. Men of noble extraction engaged in business. The commonwealth conferred knighthood on the deserving, according to the practice of sovereign princes. Persons of the highest social standing did not disdain to labor in their shops and counting-houses. Frugal in their domestic life, the Florentines strove to maintain habits of frugality by strict sumptuary laws. Limits were set to indulgence in finery, food, etc. The population of Florence somewhat exceeded one hundred thousand. In the neighborhood of the city, there was a multitude of attractive, richly furnished villas and country-houses. Among the industries in which the busy population was engaged in 1472, a chronicler enumerates eighty-three rich and splendid warehouses of the silk-merchants' guild, thirty-three great banks, and forty-four goldsmiths' and jewellers' shops. The houses of the rich were furnished with elegance, and decorated with beautiful works of art. There was a great contrast between the simplicity of ordinary domestic life, especially as regards provisions for the table, and the splendor displayed on public occasions, or when guests were to be hospitably entertained. The effect of literary culture was seen in the tone of conversation. It is remarkable that the great sculptors were all goldsmiths, and came out of the workshop. A new generation of painters had a like practical training. In those days, there was a union of manual skill with imagination. The art of the goldsmith preceded and outstripped all the others. In such a society, there was naturally a great relish for public festivals, both sacred and secular. Everywhere in Italy the Mysteries, or religious plays, exhibiting events of scriptural history, were in vogue; brilliant pantomimes were enjoyed, and the festivities of the yearly carnival were keenly relished. In the government of Florence, the liberty of the citizens was mainly confined to the choosing of their magistrates. Once in office, they ruled with arbitrary power. There was no liberty of the press, nor was there freedom of discussion in the public councils. It was a community where, with all its cultivation and elegance, morality was at a low ebb. Lorenzo himself, although "he had all the qualities of poet and statesman, connoisseur and patron of learning, citizen and prince," nevertheless "could not keep himself from the epicureanism of the time," and was infected with its weaknesses and vices. "These joyous and refined civilizations," writes M. Taine, "based on a worship of pleasure and intellectuality,--Greece of the fourth century, Provence of the twelfth, and Italy of the sixteenth,--were not enduring. Man in these lacks some checks. After sudden outbursts of genius and creativeness, he wanders away in the direction of license and egotism; the degenerate artist and thinker makes room for the sophist and the dilettant."

THE POPES.--The Popes, Nicholas V. (1447-1455), a protector of scholars and a cultivated man, and Pius II. (1458-1464),

THE OTTOMAN SULTANS.

OTHMAN, 1307-1325. | +--ORCHAN, 1325-1359. | | | +--AMURATH I, 1359-1389. | | | +--BAJEZET I, 1389-1402. | | | +--Soliman, 1402-1410. | | | +--Musa, 1410-1413. | | | +--Issa. | | | +--MOHAMMED I, 1413-1421. | | | +--AMURATH II, 1421-1451. | | | +--MOHAMMED II, 1451-1481. | | | +--BAJEZET II, 1481-1512. | | | | | +--SELIM I, 1512-1520. | | | | | +--SOLIMAN I, 1520-1566. | | | | | +--SELIM II, 1566-1574. | | | | | +--AMURATH III, 1574-1595. | | | | | +--MOHAMMED III, 1595-1603. | | | | | +--ACHMET I, 1603-1617. | | | | | | | +--OTHMAN II, 1618-1622. | | | | | | | +--AMURATH IV, 1623-1640. | | | | | | | +--IBRAHIM, 1640-1649, deposed. | | | | | | | +--MOHAMMED IV, | | | | 1649-1687, deposed. | | | | | | | | | +--MUSTAPHA II, | | | | | 1695-1703, deposed. | | | | | | | | | | | +--MAHMOUD I, | | | | | | 1730-1754. | | | | | | | | | | | +--OTHMAN III, | | | | | 1754-1757. | | | | | | | | | +--ACHMET III, | | | | 1703-1730, deposed. | | | | | | | | | +--MUSTAPHA III, | | | | | 1757-1774. | | | | | | | | | | | +--SELIM III, | | | | | 1789-1807, | | | | | deposed. | | | | | | | | | +--ABUL HAMID I, | | | | 1774-1789. | | | | | | | | | +--MUSTAPHA IV, | | | | | 1807-1808, | | | | | deposed. | | | | | | | | | +--MAHMOUD II, | | | | 1808-1839. | | | | | | | | | +--ABDUL MEDJID, | | | | | 1839-1861. | | | | | | | | | | | +--MURAD V | | | | | | (June 4, | | | | | | 1876- | | | | | | Aug. 31, | | | | | | 1876). | | | | | | | | | | | +--ABDUL | | | | | HAMID II | | | | | (Aug. 31, | | | | | 1876--). | | | | | | | | | +--ABDUL AZIZ, | | | | 1861-1876. | | | | | | | +--SOLIMAN II, | | | | 1687-1691. | | | | | | | +--ACHMET II, | | | 1691-1695. | | | | | +--MUSTAPHA I, | | 1617-1618, 1622-1623. | +--Djem. | +--Alaeddin.

[Mainly from George's Genealogical Tables.]

zealously but in vain exhorted to crusades against the Turk. Paul II. (1464-1471) pursued the same course; but after him, for a half-century, there ensued the deplorable era when the pontiffs were more busied with other interests than with those pertaining to the weal of Christianity. The pontificates of Sixtus IV. (1471-1484), Innocent VIII. (1484-1492), and especially of Alexander VI. (1492-1503), the second pope of the Borgia family, present a lamentable picture of worldly schemes and of "nepotism," as the projects for the temporal advancement of their relatives were termed. The Roman principality was the prey of petty tyrants, and the theater of wars, and of assassinations perpetrated by the knife or with poison. Alexander VI. succeeded in subduing or destroying all these petty lords. He was seconded in these endeavors by his son Cæsar Borgia, brave, accomplished, and fascinating, but a monster of treachery and cruelty. No deed was savage or base enough to cost him any remorse. Hardly had he acquired the Romagna, when Pope Alexander died. Although his death was due to Roman fever, legend speedily ascribed it to poison. His son was betrayed, was imprisoned for a time by Ferdinand the Catholic, and, while he was in the service of the King of Navarre, was slain before the castle of Viana.

NAPLES.--In Naples, Ferdinand I., who was established on his throne by the defeat of his competitors in 1462, provoked a revolt of his barons by his tyranny, invited them to a festival to celebrate a reconciliation with them, and caused them to be seized at the table, and then to be put to death. He treated the people with equal injustice and cruelty. He allowed the Turks to take Otranto (1480), and the Venetians to take Gallipoli and Policastro (1484).

WEAKNESS OF ITALY.--Italy, at the close of the fifteenth century, with all its proficiency in art and letters, and its superiority in the comforts and elegances of life, was a prey to anarchy. This was especially true after the death of Lorenzo de Medici. Diplomacy had become a school of fraud. Battles had come to be, in general, bloodless; but either perfidy, or prison and the dagger, were the familiar instruments of warfare. The country from its beauty, its wealth, and its factious state, was an alluring prize to foreign invaders.

VI. THE OTTOMAN TURKS.

THEIR CONQUESTS.--The empire of Mohammed II. (1451-1481) extended from the walls of Belgrade, on the Danube, to the middle of Asia Minor. To the east was the Seljukian principality of Caramania in the center of Asia Minor, and, when that was finally overthrown (1486), Persia, whose hostility was inflamed by differences of sect. The conquest of the Greek Empire was achieved by Mohammed. Matthias Corvinus (1458-1493), the successor of Hunyady, was the greatest of the kings of Hungary, and defended the line of the Danube against the Turkish assaults. For twenty-three years Scanderbeg, the intrepid Prince of Albania, repulsed all the attacks of the Moslems. It was not until ten years after his death (1467) that his principal stronghold was surrendered to the invaders. The attacks on the Venetians have already been mentioned, as well as the capture of Otranto. Bajazet II. was more inclined to study than to war: his brother Djem, who tried to supplant him, passed as a prisoner into the hands of Pope Alexander VI. An annual tribute was paid by the Sultan for keeping him from coming back to Turkey; and when, at last, he was released, rumor declared that he had been poisoned. Selim I. (1512-1520) entered anew on the path of conquest. He defeated the Persians, and made the Tigris his eastern boundary. He annexed to his empire Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt. The Sultan now became the commander of the faithful, the inheritor of the prophetic as well as military leadership. The conquest of Alexandria by Selim (1517) inflicted a mortal blow on the commerce of Venice, by intercepting its communication with the Orient. The despotic domination of Selim stretched from the Danube to the Euphrates, and from the Adriatic to the cataracts of the Nile. Such was the empire which the Ottoman conqueror handed down to his son, Soliman I. the Magnificent (1520-1566). Mohammed II. and Selim were the two conquerors by whom the Ottoman Empire was built up. Each of them combined with an iron will and revolting cruelty a taste for science and poetry, and the genius of a ruler. They take rank among the most eminent tyrants in Asiatic history. While they were spreading their dominion far and wide, the popes and the sovereigns of the West did nothing more effectual than to debate upon the means of confronting so great a danger.

RUSSIA.

IVAN III, Vassilievitch, 1462-1505, m. Sophia, daughter of Thomas Palaeologus, brother of Emperor Constantine XIII. | +--BASIL IV, 1505-1533. | +--IVAN IV,[1] 1533-1584, | m. | +--Anastasia | | | | HOUSE OF ROMANOFF | | | +--Nicetas. | | | +--Mary [4] (Marta the Nun), m. | Theodore (Philaret the Metropolitan). | | | +--MICHAEL, 1613-1645. | | | +--ALEXIS, 1645-1676. | | | +--THEODORE, 1676-1682. | | | +--IVAN V, 1682-1689, resigned; d. 1696. | | | | | +--ANNA, 1730-1740. | | | | | +--Catharine m. Charles Leopold, | | Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin | | | | | +--Anna, m. Antony Ulric, son of | | Ferdinand Albert II, | | of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel. | | | | | +--IVAN VI, 1740-1741, deposed. | | | +--PETER I (the Great) 1689-1725, m. | (1), Eudocia; | | | +--Alexis, executed 1718. m. | Charlotte, d. of Lewis Rudolph, | Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel | | | +--PETER II, 1727-1730. | | (2), CATHARINE I, 1725-1727. | | | +--Anna, d. 1738, m. | | Charles Frederick of Holstein-Gottorp. | | | | | +--PETER III, January-July, 1762 | | (deposed, and died soon after) m. | | CATHERINE II of Anhalt, 1762-1796. | | | | | +--PAUL, 1796-1801. | | | | | +--ALEXANDER I, 1801-1825. | | | | | +--NICHOLAS, 1825-1855, m. | | Charlotte, daughter of Frederick | | William III of Prussia. | | | | | +--ALEXANDER II, 1855-1881, m. | | Mary of Hesse Darmstadt. | | | | | +--ALEXANDER III, 1881- m. | | Mary (Dagmar), daughter | | of Christian IX of Denmark | | | +--ELIZABETH, 1741-1762. | +--THEODORE, 1584-1598. m. +--Irene,[2] | +--BORIS, Godounof, [3] 1598-1605.

1 First Czar. 2 Declined the crown on Theodore's death, which was seized by her brother. 3 Succeeded by an imposter pretending to be Demetrius, son of Ivan IV, who reigned for one year; then Basil V, 1606-1610; then chaos until 1613. 4 Said to be a descendent of the old royal house.

[Mainly from George's Genealogical Tables.]

VII. RUSSIA.

RUSSIA: IVAN III.--For two centuries Russia paid tribute to the Tartar conquerors in the South, the "Golden Horde" (p. 283). The liberator of his people from this yoke was Ivan III.,--Ivan the Great,--(1462-1505). In the period when the nations of the West were becoming organized, Russia escaped from its servitude, and made some beginnings of intellectual progress. Ivan was a cold and calculating man, who preferred to negotiate rather than to fight; but he inflicted savage punishments, and even "his glance caused women to faint." He was able to subdue the rich trading-city of Novgorod (1478), which had been connected with the Hanseatic League, and where a party endeavored to bring to pass a union with Poland. He conquered unknown frozen districts in the North, and smaller princedoms, including Tver, in the interior. The empire of the Horde was so broken up that Ivan achieved an almost bloodless triumph, which made Russia free. In wars with Lithuania, Western Russia was reconquered up to the Soja. Ivan married Sophia Palæologus, a niece of the last Christian emperor of the East. She taught him "to penetrate the secret of autocracy." Numerous Greek emigrants of different arts and professions came to Moscow. Ivan took for the new arms of Russia the two-headed eagle of the Byzantine Cæsars, and thenceforward Russia looked on herself as the heir of the Eastern Empire. The Russian metropolitan, called afterwards Patriarch, was now elected by Russian bishops. Moscow became "the metropolis of orthodoxy," and as such the protector of Greek Christians in the East. Ivan laid out in the city the fortified inclosure styled the Kremlin. He brought into the country German and Italian mechanics. It was he who founded the greatness of Russia. Vassali Ivanovitch (1505-1533), his son, continued the struggle with Lithuania, and acquired Smolensk (1514). He exchanged embassies with most of the sovereigns of the West.

IVAN IV. (1533-1584).--Ivan IV., Ivan the Terrible, first took the title of Czar, since attached to "the Autocrat of all the Russias." It was the name that was given, in the Slavonian books which he read, to the ancient kings and emperors of the East and of Rome. Moscow was now to be a third Rome, the successor of Constantinople. Ivan conquered the Tartar principalities of Kazan and Astrakhan in the South, and extended his dominion to the Caucasus. The Volga, through its entire course, was now a Russian river. He brought German mechanics into Russia, established printing-presses, and made a commercial treaty with Queen Elizabeth, whom he invited to an alliance against Poland and Sweden. It was in this reign (1581-1582) that a brigand chief, Irmak by name (a Cossack, in the service of the Czar), crossed the Urals with a few hundred followers, and made the conquest of the vast region of Siberia, then under the dominion of the Tartars. Ivan sent thither bishops and priests. He had to cede Livonia to the Swedes, who, with their allies were too strong to be overcome. In Russia, he put down the aristocracy, and crushed all resistance to his personal rule. Whatever tyranny and cruelty this result cost, it prevented Russia from becoming an anarchic kingdom like Poland. Ivan, by forming the national guard of streltsi or strelitz, laid the foundation of a standing army. In his personal conduct, brutal and sensual practices alternated with exercises of piety. In a fit of wrath, he struck his son Ivan a fatal blow, and in consequence was overwhelmed with sorrow. After a short reign of his second son, Feodor (1584-1598), who was weak in mind and body, the throne was usurped by one of the aristocracy, the able and ambitious regent, Boris Godounof (1598-1605).

THE COSSACKS.--These were brought into subjection by Ivan IV. and his successors. They were robber hordes of mixed origin, partly Tartar and partly Russian. Their abodes were near the rapids of the Dnieper, and on the Don, and at the foot of the Caucasus. They were fierce warriors, and did a great service to Russia in subduing the wild nomad tribes on the north and east of the regions where the Cossacks dwelt.

TIMES OF TROUBLE.--After the death of Boris Godounof, two pretenders, one after the other, each assuming to be Demetrius, the younger son of Ivan,--a son who had been put to death,-- seized on power. This was rendered possible by the mutual strife of Russian factions, and by the help afforded to the impostors by the Poles. Sigismund III., king of Poland, openly espoused the cause of the second Demetrius. Moscow was forced to surrender (1610); and the czar whom the nobles had enthroned, Basil V., died in a Polish prison. These events gave rise to a lasting enmity between the two Slavonic nations. In 1611 the Poles were driven out by a national rising, which led to the elevation to the throne of Michael Romanoff (1613-1645), the founder of the present dynasty of czars. Peace was concluded with Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, and with the Poles. Commercial treaties were made with foreign nations. In Russia there was a great increase of internal prosperity.

SERFDOM IN RUSSIA.--The lower classes in Russia consisted of three divisions: 1. Slaves, captives taken in war, who were bought and sold. 2. The inscribed peasants, who were attached to the soil and became serfs. They belonged to the commune, or village, which held the land, and as a unit paid to the lord his dues. They made up the bulk of the rural population. The peasant was an arbitrary master, a little czar in his own family. 3. The free laborers, who could change their masters, but who soon fell into the rank of serfs. While the higher classes in Russia advanced, the condition of the rustics for several centuries continued to grow worse.

RUSSIAN SOCIETY.--The great nobles kept in their castles a host of servants. These were slaves, subject to the caprices of their master. Russian women were kept in seclusion. There was an Asiatic stamp imprinted on civil and social life. "Thanks to the general ignorance, there was no intellectual life in Russia: thanks to the seclusion of women, there was no society." By degrees intercourse with Western Europe was destined to soften, in some particulars, the harsh outlines of this picture.

VIII. FRENCH INVASIONS OF ITALY.

EFFECT OF ABSOLUTE MONARCHY.--The establishment of absolute monarchy in Western Europe placed the resources of the nations at the service of their respective kings. The desire of national aggrandizement led to great European wars, which took the place of the feudal conflicts of a former day. These wars began with the invasion of Italy by Charles VIII., king of France.

MOTIVES OF THE INVASION.--To this unwise enterprise Charles VIII. was impelled by a romantic dream of conquest, which was not to be limited to the Italian peninsula. He intended to attack the Turks afterward, and to establish once more, under his protection, a Latin kingdom at Jerusalem. His counselors could not dissuade him from the hazardous undertaking. In order to set his hands free, he made treaties that were disadvantageous to France with Henry VII., Maximilian, and Ferdinand the Catholic. He was invited to cross the Alps by Ludovico il Moro (p. 374), by the Neapolitan barons, by all the enemies of Pope Alexander VI. The special ground of the invasion was the claim of the French king, through the house of Anjou, to the throne of Naples. In 1494 Charles crossed the Alps with a large army, and, with the support of Ludovico, advanced from Milan, through Florence and Rome to Naples. When he was crowned he wore the imperial insignia as if pretending to the Empire of the East also. The rapid progress of the French power alarmed the Pope and the other princes, including Ludovico himself, who was afraid that the king might cast a covetous eye on his own principality. A formidable league was formed against Charles, including, besides the Italian princes, Ferdinand, Maximilian, and Henry VII. of England. It was the first European combination against France. Charles left eleven thousand men under Gilbert de Montpensier, at Naples; and after being exposed to much peril, although he won a victory at Fornovo (1495), he made his way back to France. Ferdinand II., aided by Spanish troops, expelled the French from Naples; and the remnant of their garrisons, after the death of Montpensier, was led back to France. The conquests of Charles were lost as speedily as they were gained. His great expedition proved a failure.

DEATH OF SAVONAROLA.--Civil strife continued in the Italian states. Savonarola had been excommunicated by Alexander VI. The combination of parties against him was too strong to be overcome by his supporters, and he was put to death in 1498.

LOUIS XII. (1498-1515): HIS FIRST ITALIAN WAR.--On the death of Charles VIII., who left no male children, the crown reverted to his nearest relative, Louis of Orleans. He entered once more on the aggressive enterprise begun by his predecessor. He laid claim not only to the rights of Charles VIII. at Naples, but also claimed Milan through his grandmother Valentine Visconti. In alliance with Venice, and with Florence to which he promised Pisa, then in revolt against the detested Florentine supremacy, and with the support of Cæsar Borgia, he entered Italy, and defeated Ludovico il Moro at Novara (1500). Ludovico had before been driven out of Milan by the French, but had regained the city. He was imprisoned in France; and on his release twelve years afterward, he died from joy. Louis bargained with Ferdinand the Catholic to divide with him the Neapolitan kingdom. Ferdinand, the king of Naples, was thus dethroned. But Ferdinand of Spain was as treacherous in his dealing with Louis as he had been in relation to his Neapolitan namesake; and the kingdom fell into the hands of Gonsalvo de Cordova, the Spanish general.

THE SECOND ITALIAN WAR OF LOUIS.--Anxious for revenge, Louis sent two armies over the Pyrenees, which failed of success, and a third army into Italy under La Trémoille, which was defeated by Gonsalvo, notwithstanding the gallantry of Bayard, the pattern of chivalry, the French knight "without fear and without reproach."

THE THIRD ITALIAN WAR OF LOUIS.--The third Italian war of Louis began in 1507, and lasted eight years. It includes the history of the League of Cambray, and also of the anti-French League subsequently formed. France was barely saved from great calamities in consequence of foolish treaties, three in number, made at Blois in 1504. The party of the queen, Anne of Brittany, secured the betrothal of Claude, the child of Louis XII., to Charles of Austria, afterwards Charles V., the son of Philip, with the promise of Burgundy and Brittany as her dowry. The arrangement was repudiated by the estates of France (1506). Claude was betrothed to Francis of Angoulême, the king's nearest male relative, and the heir of the French crown. On the marriage of Ferdinand to Germaine of Foix, Louis agreed to give up his claims on Naples. The sufferings of Italy had redounded to the advantage of Venice. Among her other gains, she had annexed certain towns in the Romagna which fell into anarchy at the expulsion of Cæsar Borgia. The energetic Pope, Julius II., organized a combination, the celebrated League of Cambray (1508), between himself, the Emperor Maximilian, the kings of France and of Aragon: its object was the humbling of Venice, and the division of her mainland possessions among the partners in the League.

ENGLAND.--THE TUDORS AND STUARTS.

HENRY VII, 1485-1509, m. Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV. | +--Margaret, m. James IV of Scotland. | | | +--James V. | | | +--Mary, Queen of Scots. | | | +--JAMES I, 1603-1625, m. | Anne, daughter of Frederick II of Denmark. | | | +--3, CHARLES I, 1625-1649, m. | | Henrietta Maria, daughter of Henry IV of France. | | | | | +--CHARLES II, 1660-1685, m. | | | Catharine, daughter of John IV of Portugal. | | | | | +--Mary, m. William II, Prince of Orange. | | | | | | | +--WILLIAM III, 1688-1702. | | | m. | | | +--MARY, d. 1694 | | | | | | +--JAMES II, 1685-1688 (deposed, d. 1701), | | m. Anne Hyde, daughter of Earl of Clarendon. | | | | | +--ANNE, 1702-1714, m. | | George, son of Frederick III of Denmark. | | | +--2, Elizabeth, m. Frederick V, Elector Palatine. | | | +--Sophia, m. Ernest Augustus, | Elector of Hanover. | | | +--GEORGE I, succeeded 1714. | +--HENRY VIII, 1509-1547, m., | 1. Catharine, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella; | 2, Anne Boleyn; | 3. Jane Seymour; | 4. Anne, sister of William, Duke of Cleves; | 5. Catharine Howard; | 6. Catharine Parr. | | | +--3, EDWARD VI, 1547-1553. | | | +--1, MARY, 1553-1558, m. Philip II of Spain. | | | +--2, ELIZABETH, 1558-1603. | +--Mary, m. 1, Louis XII of France; 2, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. | +--Frances, m. Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk. | +--Jane (m. Guilford Dudley), executed 1554.

A fine army of Louis, composed of French, Lombards, and Swiss, crossed the Adda, and routed the Venetians, who abandoned all their towns outside of Venice. Each of the other confederate powers now seized the places which it desired. France, mistress of Milan, was at the height of her power. The Venetians, however, retook Padua from the emperor. The Pope made peace with them, and, fired with the spirit of Italian patriotism, organized a new league for the expulsion of the French--"the barbarians," as he called them--from the country. Old man as he was, he took the field himself in the dead of winter. He was defeated, and went to Rome. Louis convoked a council at Pisa, which was to depose Julius. A Holy League was formed between the Pope, Venice, Ferdinand of Aragon, and Henry VIII. of England. The arms of the French under Gaston of Foix, the young duke of Nemours, were for a while successful. Ravenna was in their hands. But Gaston fell at the moment of victory. The Swiss came down, and established Maximilian Sforza at Milan. Leo X., of the house of Medici, and hostile to France, was chosen Pope (1513). The French troops were defeated by the Swiss near Novara, and driven beyond the Alps. France was attacked on the north by the English, with Maximilian, who had joined the League in 1513: and Bayard was taken captive. James IV. of Scotland, who had made a diversion in favor of France, was beaten and slain at Flodden Field (1513). The eastern borders of France were attacked by the Swiss Leagues, who, aided by Austrians, penetrated as far as Dijon. They were bought off by La Trémoille the French commander, by a large payment of money, and by still more lavish promises. France concluded peace with the Pope, the emperor, and the king of Aragon (1514), and in the next year with Henry VIII., whose sister, Mary, Louis XII. married, a few months after the death of Anne of Brittany. He abandoned his pretensions to the Milanese, in favor of his younger daughter Renée, the wife of Hercules II., the duke of Ferrara. Louis died (1515), shortly after his marriage. The policy of the belligerent pontiff, Julius II., had triumphed. The French were expelled from Italy, but the Spaniards were left all the stronger.

The events just narrated bring us into the midst of the struggles and ambitions of ruling houses, diplomatic intercourse among states, and international wars. These are distinguishing features of modern times.

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II. INVENTION AND DISCOVERY: THE RENAISSANCE

We have glanced at the new life of Europe in its political manifestations. We have now to view this new life in other relations: we have to inquire how it acted as a stimulus to intellectual effort in different directions.

The term Renaissance is frequently applied at present not only to the "new birth" of art and letters, but to all the characteristics, taken together, of the period of transition from the Middle Ages to modern life. The transformation in the structure and policy of states, the passion for discovery, the dawn of a more scientific method of observing man and nature, the movement towards more freedom of intellect and of conscience, are part and parcel of one comprehensive change,--a change which even now has not reached its goal. It was not so much "the arts and the inventions, the knowledge and the books, which suddenly became vital at the time of the Renaissance," that created the new epoch: it was "the intellectual energy, the spontaneous outburst of intelligence, which enabled mankind at that moment to make use of them."

INVENTIONS: GUNPOWDER.--In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, there were brought into practical use several inventions most important in their results to civilization. Of these the principal were gunpowder, the mariner's compass, and printing by movable types. Gunpowder was not first made by Schwartz, a monk of Freiburg, as has often been asserted. We have notices, more or less obscure, of the use of an explosive material resembling it, among the Chinese, among the Indians in the East as early as Alexander the Great, and among the Arabs. It was first brought into use in firearms in the middle of the fourteenth century. The effect was to make infantry an effective force, and to equalize combatants, since a peasant could handle a gun as well as a knight. Another consequence has been to mitigate the brutalizing influence of war on the soldiery, by making it less a hand-to-hand encounter, an encounter with swords and spears, attended with bloodshed, and kindling personal animosity; and by rendering it possible to hold in custody large numbers of captives, whose lives, therefore, can be spared.

THE COMPASS.--The properties of the magnetic needle were not first applied to navigation, as has been thought, by Flavio Gioja, but long before his time, as early as the twelfth century, the compass came into general use. Navigation was no longer confined to the Mediterranean and to maritime coasts. The sailor could push out into the ocean without losing himself on its boundless waste.

PRINTING.--Printing, which had been done to some extent by wooden blocks, was probably first done with movable types (about 1450) by John Gutenberg, who was born at Meniz, but who lived long at Strasburg. He was furnished with capital by an associate, Faust, and worked in company with a skillful copyist of manuscripts, Schöffer. Gutenberg brought the art to such perfection, that in 1456 a complete Latin Bible was printed. Within a short time, printing-presses were set up in all the principal cities of Germany and Italy. As an essential concomitant, linen and cotton paper came into vogue in the room of the costly parchment. Books were no longer confined to the rich. Despite the censorship of the press, thought traveled from city to city and from land to land. It was a sign of a new era, that Maximilian in Germany and Louis XI. in France founded a postal system.

NEW ROUTE TO INDIA.--The discovery by the Portuguese of the islands of Porto Santo and Madeira (1419-1420), of the Canary Islands and of the Azores, was followed by their discovery of the coast of Upper Guinea, with its gold-dust, ivory, and gums (1445). The Pope, to whom was accorded the right to dispose of the heathen and of newly discovered lands, granted to the Portuguese the possession of these regions, and of whatever discoveries they should make as far as India. From Lower Guinea (Congo), Bartholomew Diaz reached the southern point of Africa (1486), which King John II. named the Cape of Good Hope. Then, under Emanuel the Great (1495-1521), Vasco da Gama found the way to East India, round the Cape, by sailing over the Indian Ocean to the coast of Malabar, and into the harbor of Calicut (1498). The Portuguese encountered the resistance of the Mohammedans to their settlement; but by their valor and persistency, especially by the agency of their leaders Almeida and the brave Albuquerque, their trading-posts were established on the coast.

DISCOVERY OF AMERICA.--The grand achievement in maritime exploration in this age was the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, a native of Genoa. The conviction that India could be reached by sailing in a westerly direction took possession of his mind. Having sought in vain for the patronage of John II. of Portugal, and having sent his brother Bartholomew to apply for aid from Henry VII. of England, he was at length furnished with three ships by Queen Isabella of Castile, to whom Granada had just submitted (1492). Columbus was to have the station of grand admiral and viceroy over the lands to be discovered, with a tenth part of the incomes to be drawn from them, and the rank of a nobleman for himself and his posterity. The story of an open mutiny on his vessels does not rest on sufficient proof: that there were alarm and discontent among the sailors, may well be believed. On the 11th of October, Columbus thought that he discovered a light in the distance. At two o'clock in the morning of Oct. 12, a sailor on the Pinta espied the dim outline of the beach, and shouted, "Land, land!" It was an island called Guanahani, named by Columbus, in honor of Jesus, San Salvador. Its beauty and productiveness excited admiration; but neither here nor on the large islands of Cuba (or Juana) and Hayti (Hispaniola), which were discovered soon after, were there found the gold and precious stones which the navigators and their patrons at home so eagerly desired. Columbus built a fort on the island of Hispaniola, and founded a colony. The name of West Indies was applied to the new lands. Columbus lived and died in the belief that the region which he discovered belonged to India. Of an intermediate continent, and of an ocean beyond it, he did not dream. The Pope granted to Ferdinand and Isabella all the newly discovered regions of America, from a line stretching one hundred leagues west of the Azores. Afterwards Ferdinand allowed to the king of Portugal that the line should run three hundred and seventy, instead of one hundred, leagues west of these islands. In two subsequent voyages (1493-1496, 1498-1500), Columbus discovered Jamaica and the Little Antilles, the Caribbean Islands, and finally the mainland at the mouths of the Orinoco (1498). In 1497 John Cabot, a Venetian captain living in England, while in quest of a north-west passage to India, touched at Cape Breton, and followed the coast of North America southward for a distance of nine hundred miles. Shortly after, Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine, employed first by Spain and then by Portugal, explored in several voyages the coast of South America. The circumstance that his full descriptions were published (1504) caused the name of America, first at the suggestion of the printer, to be attached to the new world.

LATER VOYAGES OF COLUMBUS.--On his return from his first voyage, Columbus was received with distinguished honors by the Spanish sovereigns. But he suffered from plots caused by envy, both on the islands and at court. Once he was sent home in fetters by Bobadilla, a commissioner appointed by Ferdinand. He was exonerated from blame, but the promises which had been made to him were not fulfilled. A fourth voyage was not attended by the success in discovery which he had hoped for, and the last two years of his life were weary and sad. Isabella had died; and in 1506 the great explorer, who with all his other virtues combined a sincere piety, followed her to the tomb.

THE PACIFIC.--The spirit of adventure, the hunger for wealth and especially for the precious metals, and zeal for the conversion of the heathen, were the motives which combined in different proportions to set on foot exploring and conquering expeditions to the unknown regions of the West. The exploration of the North-American coast, begun by John Cabot (perhaps also by his son), and the Portuguese Cortereal (1501), continued from Labrador to Florida. In 1513 Balboa, a Spaniard at Darien, fought his way to a height on the Isthmus of Panama, whence he descried the Pacific Ocean. Descending to the shore, and riding into the water up to his thighs, in the name of the king he took possession of the sea. In 1520 Magellan, a Portuguese captain, sailed round the southern cape of America, and over the ocean to which he gave the name of Pacific. He made his way to the East Indies, but was killed on one of the Philippine Islands, leaving it to his companions to finish the voyage around the globe. A little later the Spaniards added first Mexico, and then Peru, to their dominions.

CONQUEST OF MEXICO.--The Spanish conqueror of Mexico, the land of the Aztecs, was Hernando Cortes (1485-1547). The principal king in that country was Montezuma, whose empire was extensive, with numerous cities, and with no inconsiderable advancement in arts and industry. From Santiago, in 1519, Cortes conducted an expedition composed of seven hundred Spaniards, founded Vera Cruz, where he left a small garrison, subdued the tribe of Tlascalans who joined him, and was received by Montezuma into the city of Mexico. Cortes made him a prisoner in his own palace, and seized his capital. The firearms and the horses of the Spaniards struck the natives with dismay. Nevertheless, they made a stout resistance. To add to the difficulties of the shrewd and valiant leader, a Spanish force was sent from the West Indies, under Narvaez, to supplant him. This force he defeated, and captured their chief. In 1520 Cortes gained over the Mexicans, at Otumba, a victory which was decisive in its consequences. The city of Mexico was recaptured (1521); for Montezuma had been slain by his own people, and the Spaniards driven out. Guatimozin, the new king, was taken prisoner and put to death, and the country was subdued. Cortes put an end to the horrid religious rites of the Mexicans, which included human sacrifices. Becoming an object of jealousy and dread at home, he was recalled (1528). Afterwards he visited the peninsula of California, and ruled for a time in Mexico, but with diminished authority.

CONQUEST OF PERU.--The conquest of Peru was effected by Francisco Pizarro, and Almagro, both illiterate adventurers, equally daring with Cortes, but more cruel and unscrupulous. The Peruvians were of a mild character, prosperous, and not uncivilized, and without the savage religious system of the Mexicans. They had their walled cities and their spacious temples. The empire of the Incas, as the rulers were called, was distracted by a civil war between two brothers, who shared the kingdom. Pizarro captured one of them, Atahualpa, and basely put him to death after he had provided the ransom agreed upon, amounting to more than $17,500,000 in gold (1533). Pizarro founded Lima, near the sea-coast (1535). Almagro and Pizarro fell out with each other, and the former was defeated and beheaded. The land and its inhabitants were allotted among the conquerors as the spoils of victory. The horrible oppression of the people excited insurrections. At length Charles V. sent out Pedro de la Gasca as viceroy (1541), at a time when Gonzalo Pizarro, the last of the family, held sway. Gonzalo perished on the gallows. Gasca reduced the government to an orderly system.

THE AMAZON.--Orellena, an officer of Pizarro, in 1541 first descended the river Amazon to the Atlantic. His fabulous descriptions of an imaginary El Dorado, whose capital with its dazzling treasures he pretended to have seen, inflamed other explorers, and prompted to new enterprises. The cupidity of the Spaniards, and their eagerness for knightly warfare, made the New World, with its floral beauty and mineral riches, a most enticing field for adventure. To devout missionaries, to the monastic orders especially, the new regions were not less inviting. They followed in the wake of the Spanish conquerors and viceroys.

REVIVAL OF LEARNING.--The stirring period of invention and of maritime discovery was also the period of "the revival of learning." Italy was the main center and source of this intellectual movement, which gradually spread over the other countries of Western Europe. There was a thirst for a wider range of study and of culture than the predominantly theological writings and training of the Middle Ages afforded. The minds of men turned for stimulus and nutriment to the ancient classical authors. Petrarch, the Italian poet (1304-1374), did much to foster this new spirit. In the fifteenth century the more active intercourse with the Greek Church, and the efforts at union with it, helped to bring into Italy learned Greeks, like Chrysoloras and Bessarion, and numerous manuscripts of Greek authors. The fall of Constantinople increased this influx of Greek learning. The new studies were fostered by the Italian princes, who vied with one another in their zeal for collecting the precious literary treasures of antiquity, and in the liberal patronage of the students of classical literature. The manuscripts of the Latin writers, preserved in the monasteries of the West, were likewise eagerly sought for. The most eminent of the patrons of learning were the Medici of Florence. Cosmo founded a library and a Platonic academy. All the writings of Plato were translated by one of that philosopher's admiring disciples, Marsilius Ficinus. Dictionaries and grammars, versions and commentaries, for instruction in classical learning, were multiplied. These, with the ancient poets, philosophers, and orators themselves, were diffused far and wide by means of the new art of printing, and from presses, of which the Aldine--that of Aldus Minutius--at Venice was the most famous. "By the side of the Church, which had hitherto held the countries of the West together (though it was unable to do so much longer) there arose a new spiritual influence, which, spreading itself abroad from Italy, became the breath of life for all the more instructed minds in Europe."

CONTEST OF THE NEW AND THE OLD CULTURE.--In Germany, the new learning gained a firm foothold. But there, as elsewhere, the Humanists, as its devotees were called, had a battle to fight with the votaries of the mediæval type of culture, who, largely on theological grounds, objected to the new culture, and were stigmatized as "obscurantists." In Italy, the study of the ancient heathen writers had engendered, or at least been accompanied by, much religious skepticism and indifference. This, however, was not the case in Germany. But the champions of the scholastic method and system, in which logic and divinity, as handled by the schoolmen, were the principal thing, were strenuously averse to the linguistic and literary studies which threatened to supplant them. The advocates of the new studies derided the lack of learning, the barbarous style, and fine-spun distinctions of the schoolmen, who had once been the intellectual masters. The disciples of Aristotle and of the schoolmen still had a strong hold in Paris, Cologne, and other universities. But certain universities, like Tübingen and Heidelberg, let in the humanistic studies. In 1502 Frederick, the elector of Saxony, founded a university at Wittenberg, in which from the outset they were prominent. In England, the cause of learning found ardent encouragement, and had able representatives in such men as Colet, dean of St. Paul's, who founded St. Paul's School at his own expense; and in Thomas More, the author of Utopia, afterwards lord chancelor under Henry VIII.

REUCHLIN: ULRICH VON HUTTEN.--A leader of humanism in Germany was John Reuchlin (1455-1522), an erudite scholar, who studied Greek at Paris and Basel, mingled with Politian, Pica de Mirandola, and other famous scholars at Florence, and wrote a Hebrew as well as a Greek grammar. This distinguished humanist became involved in a controversy with the Dominicans of Cologne, who wished to burn all the Hebrew literature except the Old Testament. The Humanists all rallied in support of their chief, to whom heresy was imputed, and their success in this wide-spread conflict helped forward their cause. Ulrich von Hutten, one of the young knights who belonged to the literary school, and others of the same class, made effective use, against their illiterate antagonists, of the weapons of satire and ridicule.

ERASMUS.--The prince of the Humanists was Desiderius Erasmus (1467-1536). No literary man has ever enjoyed a wider fame during his own lifetime. He was not less resplendent for his wit than for his learning. Latin was then the vehicle of intercourse among the educated. In that tongue the books of Erasmus were written, and they were eagerly read in all the civilized countries. He studied theology in Paris; lived for a number of years in England, where, in company with More and Colet, he fostered the new studies; and finally took up his abode at Basel. In early youth, against his will, he had been for a while an inmate of a cloister. The idleness, ignorance, self-indulgence, and artificial austerities, which frequently belonged to the degenerate monasticism of the day, furnished him with engaging themes of satire. But in his Praise of Folly, and in his Colloquies, the two most diverting of his productions, he lashes the foibles and sins of many other classes, among whom kings and popes are not spared. By such works as his editions of the Church Fathers, and his edition of the Greek Testament, as well as by his multifarious correspondence, he exerted a powerful influence in behalf of culture. If he incurred the hostility of the conservative Churchmen, he still adhered to the Roman communion, and won unbounded applause from the advocates of liberal studies and of practical religious reforms.

LITERATURE IN ITALY.--The first effect of the revival of letters in Italy was to check original production in literature. The charm of the ancient authors who were brought out of their tombs, the belles-lettres studies, and the criticism awakened by them, naturally had this effect for a time. Italy had two great authors in the vernacular, the poet Ariosto (1474-1533), and Machiavelli: it had, besides, one famous historian, Guicciardini (1482-1540).

RENAISSANCE OF ART.--This period was not simply an era of grand exploration and discovery, and of the new birth of letters: it was the brilliant dawn of a new era in art. Sculpture and painting broke loose from their subordination to Church architecture. Painting, especially, attained to a far richer development.

ARCHITECTURE AND SCULPTURE.--In architecture and sculpture, the influence of the antique styles was potent. Under the auspices of Brunelleschi (1377-1446), the Pitti Palace and other edifices of a like kind had been erected at Florence. At Rome, Bramante (who died in 1515), and, in particular, Michael Angelo (1475-1564), who was a master in the three arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture, and a poet as well, were most influential. The great Florentine artist Ghiberti (1378-1455), in the bronze gates of the Baptistery, exhibited the perfection of bas-relief. The highest power of Michael Angelo, as a sculptor, is seen in his statue of Moses at Rome, and in the sepulchers of Julian and Lorenzo de Medici at Florence. A student of his works, Cellini (1500-1571) is one of the men of genius of that day, who, like his master, was eminently successful in different branches of art. In the same period, there were sculptors of high talent in Germany, especially at Nuremberg, where Adam Kraft (1429-1507), and Peter Vischer (1435-1529), whose skill is seen in the bronze tomb of Sebaldus, in the church of that saint, are the most eminent. After the death of Michael Angelo, in Italy there was a decline in the style of sculpture, which became less noble and more affected.

PAINTING IN ITALY.--The ancients had less influence on the schools of painting than on sculpture. In painting, as we have seen, Giotto (1266-1337), a contemporary of the poet Dante, and Cimabue (who died about 1302), had led the way. The art of perspective was mastered; and real life, more or less idealized, was the subject of delineation. In Italy, there arose various distinct styles or schools. The Florentine school reached its height of attainment in the majestic works of Michael Angelo, the frescos of the Sistine Chapel at Rome. The Roman school is best seen in the stanzas of the Vatican, by Raphael (1483-1520), and in the ideal harmony and beauty of his Madonnas. Prior to Michael Angelo and Raphael, there was the symbolic religious art of the Umbrian painters. Of these, the chief was Fra Angelico (1387-1455), the devout monk who transferred to the canvas the tenderness and fervor of his own gentle spirit. The Venetian school, with its richness of color, has left splendid examples of its power in the portraits of Titian (1477-1576), the works of Paul Veronese (who died in 1588), and the more passionate products of the pencil of Tintoretto (who died in 1594). The Lombard school has for its representatives the older contemporary of Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), who combines perfection of outward form with deep spirituality, and by whom The Last Supper was painted on the wall of the cloister at Milan; and Correggio (1494-1534), whose play of tender sensibility, and skill in the contrasts of light and shade in color, are exhibited in The Night, or Worship of the Magi (at Dresden), and in his frescos at Parma. The school of Bologna, founded by the three Caracci, numbers in its ranks Guido Rent (1575-1642), gifted with imagination and sensibility, and Salvator Rosa (1615-1673), who depicted the more wild and somber aspects of nature and of life.

MICHAEL ANGELO AND RAPHAEL.--The two foremost names in the history of Italian art are Michael Angelo and Raphael. "If there is one man who is a more striking representative of the Renaissance than any of his contemporaries, it is Michael Angelo. In him character is on a par with genius. His life of almost a century, and marvelously active, is spotless. As an artist, we can not believe that he can be surpassed. He unites in his wondrous individuality the two master faculties, which are, so to speak, the poles of human nature, whose combination in the same individual creates the sovereign greatness of the Tuscan school,--invention and judgment,--a vast and fiery imagination, directed by a method precise, firm, and safe." Raphael lacks the grandeur and the many-sided capacity of the great master by whom he was much influenced. Raphael "had a nature which converted every thing to beauty." He produced in a short life an astonishing number of works of unequal merit; but to all of them he imparted a peculiar charm, derived from "an instinct for beauty, which was his true genius."

PAINTING IN THE NETHERLANDS.--In the Netherlands, a school of painting arose under the brothers Van Eyck (1366-1426, 1386-1440). One of them, John, was the first artist to paint in oil. At a later day, a class of painters, of whom Rubens (1577-1640) is the most distinguished, followed more the track of the ancients and of the Italian school. These belonged to Flanders and Brabant; while in Holland a school sprang up of a more original and independent cast, in which genius of the highest order was manifested in the person of Rembrandt (1607-1669), its most eminent master.

PAINTING IN GERMANY AND FRANCE.--In Germany, a school marked by peculiarities of its own was represented by Hans Holbein (who died in 1543), and by Albert Dürer the Nuremberg artist (1471-1528). In Spain, Murillo (1617-1682) combined inspiration with technical skill, and stands on a level with the renowned Italians. Velasquez (1599-1660), an artist of extraordinary power, is most distinguished for his portraits. The French artists mostly followed the Italian styles. Claude Lorraine (1600-1682) was the painter of landscapes that are luminous in sunlight and atmosphere. In England, the humorous Hogarth (1697-1764) was much later.

MUSIC.--Music shared in the prosperity of the sister arts. The interest awakened in its improvement paved the way in Italy for Palestrina (1514-1594), whose genius and labors constitute an epoch. In Germany, Luther became one of the most efficient promoters of musical culture in connection with public worship. The great German composers, Bach (1685-1750) and Händel (1685-1759), belong to a subsequent period: they are, however, in some degree the fruit of seed sown earlier.

LITERATURE.--For works on general history, see p. 16. For general histories of particular countries, see p. 359.

On Modern Times. Dyer's History of Modern Europe; Duruy's History of Modern Times [1453-1789]; Lavisse et Rambaud, Histoire Générale, Vol. IV.; _The Cambridge Modern History_, Vol. I.: The Renaissance; Heeren, _Political System of Europe_; Historical Treatises (1 vol.); Heeren u. Ukert, Geschichte der europäisch. Staaten (76 vols. 1829 75); T. ARNOLD'S Lectures on Modern History; Michelet's Modern History (1 vol.), Yonge's _Three Centuries of Modern History_.

On the Age of the Renaissance. Symonds's Renaissance in Italy (5 vols.); BURCKHARDT'S _The Civilization of the Period of the Renaissance in Italy_ (2 vols.); REUMONT'S _Lorenzo de' Medici_ (2 vols); Roscoe's Life of Lorenzo de' Medici; VILLARI'S Machiavelli and his Times; Machiavelli, _History of Florence_; Oliphant, _Makers of Florence: Dante', Giotto, Savonarola, and their city_ (1 vol.); Voigt, _Die Wiederbelebung des classischen alterthums_ (1859); Lanzi, History of Painting (3 vols.); Vasari, _Lives of Painters, Sculptors, and Architects_; Crowe and Cavalcasselle, _History of Painting in North Italy_ [1300-1500] (2 vols., 1871); Crowe, Handbook of Painting: the German, Flemish and Dutch Schools (2 parts, 1874); Eastlake, _Handbook of Painting, the Italian Schools_ (based on Kugler, 2 parts, 1874); Crowe and Cavalcasselle, Life of Titian (2 vols.); _Illustrated Biographies of the Great Artists_ (14 vols.); Mrs. Jameson, Lives of Italian Painters; Grimm, _Life of Michael Angelo_ (2 vols.); Crowe and Cavalcasselle, _Life and Works of Raphael_; Fergusson, _History of Modern Styles of Architecture_; RUGE'S _Geschichte d. Zeitalters d. Entdeckungen_ (1 vol. in Oncken's Series); GEIGER'S Renaissance und Humanismus in Italien und Deutschland (1 vol. in Oncken's Series); Lives of Erasmus, by Le Clerc, Jortin, Knight, Burigny (2 vols.), Froude, Emerton, Drummond (2 vols.); Lives of Columbus, by Irving, Major (1847), Harrisse (1884), Markham (1892), Winsor; PRESCOTT'S _History of Ferdinand and Isabella, History of the Conquest of Mexico_, and _History of the Conquest of Peru_; Robertson, History of America; Beazly, Dawn of Modern Geography (2 vols.); Fiske, _Discovery of America_ (2 vols.); Payne, America (2 vols.); Scebohm's Oxford Reformers; Robinson and Rolfe, Petrarch; Creighton, History of the Papacy during the Reformation (Vols. I.-IV.); Pastor, _History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages_ (3 vols.); Janssen, _History of the German People at the Close of the Middle Ages_ (8 vols.); Whitcomb, Source Books of the Italian and German Renaissance; Grant, The French Monarchy (2 vols.); Johnson, _European History in the Sixteenth Century_.

PERIOD II. THE ERA OF THE REFORMATION. (1517-1648)

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Introduction

The general stir in men's minds, as indicated in the revival of learning and in remarkable inventions and discoveries, was equally manifest in great debates and changes in religion. One important element and fruit of the Renaissance is here seen. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the nations of Western Europe were all united in one Church, of which the Pope was the acknowledged head. There were differences as to the extent of his proper authority; sects had sprung up at different times; and there had arisen leaders, like Wickliffe and Huss, at war with the prevailing system. Ecclesiastical sedition, however, had been mostly quelled. Yet there existed a great amount of outspoken and latent discontent. First, complaints were loud against maladministration in Church affairs. There were extortions and other abuses that excited disaffection. Secondly, the authority exercised by the Pope was charged with being inconsistent with the rights of civil rulers and of national churches. Thirdly, disputes sprang up, both in regard to various practices deemed objectionable, like prayers for the dead, and the invocation of saints, and also concerning important doctrines, like the doctrine of the mass or the Lord's Supper, and the part that belongs to faith in the Christian method of salvation. Out of this ferment arose what is called the Protestant Reformation. The Teutonic nations generally broke off from the Church of Rome, and renounced their allegiance to the Pope. The Latin or Romanic nations, for the most part, still adhered to him. As the common idea was that there should be uniformity of belief and worship in a state, civil wars arose on the question which form of belief should dominate. Germany was desolated for thirty years by a terrible struggle. Yet, in all the conflicts between kingdoms and states in this period, it was plain that political motives, or the desire of national aggrandizement, were commonly strong enough to override religious differences.

When there was some great interest of a political or dynastic sort at stake, those that differed in religion most widely would frequently assist one another. It is in this period that we see Spain, under Charles V. and Philip II., reach the acme of its power, and then sink into comparative weakness.

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I. THE REFORMATION IN GERMANY, TO THE TREATY OF NUREMBERG (1517-1532)

BEGINNING OF THE REFORMATION.--The Reformation began in Germany, where there was a great deal of discontent with the way in which the Church was governed and managed, and on account of the large amounts of money carried out of the country on various grounds for ecclesiastical uses at Rome. The leader of the movement, Martin Luther, was the son of a poor miner, and was born at Eisleben in 1483. He was an Augustinian monk, and had been made professor of theology, and preacher at Wittenberg, by the Elector of Saxony, Frederick the Wise (1508). Luther was a man of extraordinary intellectual powers, and a hard student, of a genial and joyous nature, yet not without a deep vein of reflection, tending even to melancholy. He had a strong will, and was vigorous and vehement in controversy. He had been afflicted with profound religious anxieties; but in the study of St. Paul and St. Augustine, and after much inward wrestling, he emerged from them into a state of mental peace. The immediate occasion of disturbance, the spark that kindled the flame, was the sale of indulgences in Saxony by a Dominican monk named Tetzel. Indulgences were the remission, total or partial, of penances, and, in theory, always presupposed repentance; but, as the business was managed in Germany at that time, it amounted in the popular apprehension to a sale of absolution from guilt, or to the ransom of deceased friends from purgatory for money. These gross abuses were painful to sincere friends of religion. In 1517 Luther posted on the door of the church at Wittenberg his celebrated ninety-five theses. It was customary in those days for public debates to take place in universities, where, as in jousts and tournaments among knights, scholars offered to defend propositions in theology and philosophy against all comers. Such were the "theses" of Luther on indulgences. The public mind was in such a state that a great commotion was kindled by them. Conflict spread; and the name of Luther became famous as a stanch antagonist of ecclesiastical abuses, and a fearless champion of reform. The Elector, a religious man, calm and cautious in his temper, was friendly to Luther, often sought to curb him, but stretched over him the shield of his protection.

LUTHER AND LEO X.--Pope Leo X; was of the house of Medici, the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent. He had been made nominally a cardinal at the age of thirteen, and had advanced to the highest station in the Church. He was much absorbed in matters pertaining to learning and art, and in political affairs, and at first looked upon this Saxon disturbance as a mere squabble of monks. He attempted ineffectually to bring Luther to submission and quietness, first through his legate Cajetan, a scholarly Italian, who met him at Augsburg (1518), and then by a second messenger, Miltitz (1519), a Saxon by birth. A turning-point in Luther's course was a public disputation at Leipsic, before Duke George; for ducal Saxony was hostile to him. With Luther, on that occasion, was Philip Melanchthon, the young professor of Greek at Wittenberg, who was a great scholar, and a man of mild and amiable spirit. He became a very effective and noted auxiliary of the reformer, and acquired the honorary title of "preceptor of Germany." In the Leipsic debate, when Luther was opposed by the Catholic champion Eck, and by others, his own views in opposition to the papacy became more distinct and decided. He soon disputed the right of the Pope to make laws, to canonize, etc., denied the doctrine of purgatory, and avowed his sympathy with Huss. He issued a stirring Address to the Christian Nobles of the German Nation. In 1520 he was excommunicated by the Pope, but the elector paid no regard to the papal bull. Luther himself went so far as publicly to burn it at the gates of the town, in the presence of an assembly of students and others gathered to witness the scene. Both parties had now taken the extreme step: there was now open war between them. Jurists, who were aggrieved by the interference of ecclesiastical with civil courts, supported Luther. So the Humanists who had defended Reuch-lin, among whom were the youthful literary class of which Ulrich von Hutten was one, became his allies. Many among the inferior clergy and the monastic orders sympathized with him.

CONDITION OF GERMANY.--It was now for the Empire to decide between Luther and the Pope. The efforts to create a better political system under Maximilian had proved in the main abortive. There was strife between the princes and the knights, as well as between princes and bishops. The cities complained bitterly of oppressive taxation and of lawless depredations. There was widespread disaffection, threatening open revolt, among the peasants. Maximilian had been thwarted politically by the popes. At first he was glad to hear of Luther's rebellion. He said to Frederick the Wise, "Let the Wittenberg monk be taken good care of: we may some day want him." In the latter part of his reign his interests drew him nearer to Rome.

ELECTION OF CHARLES V.--On the death of Maximilian (1519), as the Elector Frederick would not take the imperial crown, there were two rival candidates,--Francis I., the king of France, and Charles I., of Spain, the grandson of Maximilian. Francis was a gallant and showy personage, but it was feared that he would be despotic; and the electors made choice of Charles. The extent of Charles's hereditary dominions in Germany, and the greatness of his power, would make him, it was thought, the best defender of the empire against the Turks. The electors, at his choice, bound him in a "capitulation" to respect the authority of the Diet, and not to bring foreign troops into the country. Charles was the inheritor of Austria and the Low Countries, the crowns of Castile and Aragon, of Navarre, of Naples and Sicily, together with the territories of Spain in the New World; and now he was at the head of the Holy Roman Empire. The concentration of so much power in a single hand could not but provoke alarm in all other potentates. The great rival of Charles was Francis I., and the main prize in the contest was dominion in Italy. Charles was a sagacious prince; from his Spanish education, strongly attached to the Roman-Catholic system, and, in virtue of the imperial office, the protector of the Church. Yet with him political considerations, during most of his life, were uppermost. He made the mistake of not appreciating the strength that lay in the convictions at the root of the Protestant movement. He over-estimated the power of political combinations.

DIET OF WORMS.--Charles V. first came into Germany in 1521, and met the Diet of the empire at Worms. There Luther appeared under the protection of a safe-conduct. He manifested his wonted courage; and in the presence of the emperor, and of the august assembly, he refused to retract his opinions, planting himself on the authority of the Scriptures, and declining to submit to the verdicts of Pope or council. After he had left Worms, a sentence of outlawry was passed against him. Charles at that moment was bent on the re-conquest of Milan, which the French had taken; and the Pope was friendly to his undertaking, although Leo X. had been opposed to Charles's election.

FRANCIS I.--Francis I. (1515-1547) aimed to complete the work begun by his predecessors, and to make the French monarchy absolute. By a concordat with the Pope (1516), the choice of bishops and abbots was given into the king's hand, while the Pope was to receive the annates, or the first year's revenue of all such benefices. Francis continued the practice of selling judicial places begun under Louis XII.. He was bent on maintaining the unity of France, and, as a condition, the Catholic system. But he was always ready to help the Protestants in Germany when he could thereby weaken Charles. For the same end, he was even ready to join hands with the Turk.

RIVALRY OF CHARLES AND FRANCIS.--Charles claimed the old imperial territories of Milan and Genoa. He claimed, also, a portion of Southern France,--the duchy of Burgundy, which he did not allow that Louis XI. had the right to confiscate. Francis claimed Naples in virtue of the rights of the house of Anjou; also Spanish Navarre, which Ferdinand of Aragon had seized, and the suzerainty of Flanders and Artois. He had gained a brilliant victory over the Swiss at the battle of Marignano, in 1515, and reconquered Milan. He concluded a treaty of peace with the Swiss,--the treaty of Freiburg (1516), which gave to the king, in return for a yearly pension, the liberty to levy troops in Switzerland. This treaty continued until the French Revolution.

FIRST WAR OF CHARLES AND FRANCIS (1521-1526).--Hostilities between Francis and Charles commenced in Italy in 1521. The French were driven from Milan in 1522, which was again placed in the hands of Francesco Sforza; and the emperor was soon master of all Northern Italy. England and the Pope sided with Charles; and on the death of Leo X., a former tutor of the emperor was made his successor, under the name Adrian VI. (1522). The most eminent and the richest man in France, next to the king, Charles of Bourbon, constable of the kingdom, joined the enemies of Francis. He complained of grievances consequent on the enmity of Louisa of Savoy, the mother of the king, and attempted, with the aid of the emperor and Henry VIII., to create a kingdom for himself in South-eastern France. But the national spirit in France was too strong for such a scheme of dismemberment and foreign conquest to succeed, and all that Charles gained in the end was one brave general. In the winter of 1524-25 Francis crossed the Alps at the head of a brilliant army, and recaptured Milan; but he was defeated and taken prisoner at Pavia, and the French army was almost destroyed. Charles was able to dictate terms to his captive. It was stipulated in the Peace of Madrid (1526), that Francis should renounce all claim to Milan, Genoa, and Naples, and to the suzerainty of Flanders and Artois, cede the duchy of Burgundy, and deliver his sons as hostages, terms which could not be fulfilled.

LUTHER AT THE WARTBURG.--We have now to glance at the events in Germany during the absence of Charles V. Luther, although under the ban of the empire, was in no immediate peril while he staid in Saxony. The elector, however, thought it prudent to place him in the castle of the Wartburg, where he could have a safe and quiet asylum. There he began his translation of the Bible, which, apart from its religious influence, from the vigor and racy quality of its style made an epoch in the literary history of the German people. It was a work of great labor. "The language used by Luther in both the Old and New Testaments did not exist before in so pure, powerful, and genuine a form." While Luther was engaged in this work, a radical movement broke out at Wittenberg, of which Carlstadt, one of his supporters, was the principal leader. He was for carrying changes in worship to such an extreme, and for introducing them so abruptly, that the greatest disorder was threatened. Against the wish of the elector, Luther left his retreat, and by his discourses and personal presence quieted the disturbance.

PROGRESS AND REACTION.--No attempt was made to carry out the Worms decree. The reason was that the influential classes were so much in sympathy with Luther's cause. The Imperial Chamber, which ruled in the emperor's absence, would do nothing against him. Its committee refused to carry out the decree; and a list of "one hundred grievances" was sent to Pope Adrian VI., of which the German nation had reason to complain (1523). Events, however, soon occurred that were unfavorable in their effect on the Lutheran movement. The knights banded together in large numbers, under Franz van Sickingen, and tried by force of arms to reduce the power of the princes. Luther showed no favor to their plans and doings; but, as their leaders had applauded him, a reaction against innovations, including changes in doctrine, was the natural consequence. Pope Adrian VI. was earnestly desirous of practical reforms; but his successor, Clement VII. (1523-1534), was of the house of Medici, and a man of the world, like Leo X. An alliance was made by the Catholic princes and bishops of South Germany at Ratisbon in 1524, to do away with certain abuses, but to prevent the spread of the new doctrine.

THE PEASANTS' WAR.--In 1524 a great revolt of the peasants broke out, and the next year it became general. They were groaning under intolerable burdens of taxation, and other forms of oppression. They demanded liberty in church affairs, and for the preaching of the new doctrine, and release from feudal tyranny. Luther felt and said that they were wronged grievously; but when they took up arms, he, and with him the great middle class which he led, took sides strongly against them. The revolt was put down, and its authors inhumanly punished. For a time the peasants had wonderful success. Napoleon wondered that Charles V. did not seize the occasion to make Germany a united empire. Then seemed to be a time when the princes could have been stripped of their power. One of the foremost leaders of the rebellion was Thomas Münzer. On the defeat of the peasants, he was captured and beheaded.

SECOND WAR BETWEEN CHARLES AND FRANCIS (1527-1529).--In the Peace of Madrid, Charles and Francis had agreed to proceed against the Turks and against the heretics. But, after the release of Francis, he repudiated the concessions before mentioned (p. 400), which were made, he alleged, under coercion; and with Clement VII. he formed a conspiracy against the emperor. The Diet of Spires, in 1526, decided to leave each of the component parts of the empire, until the meeting of a general council, to decide for itself as to the course to be taken in the matter of religion and in respect to the edict of Worms. In 1527 a German army, largely composed of Lutherans, led by Constable Bourbon and George Frundsberg, stormed and captured Rome. The Pope made an alliance with Henry VIII. A French army under Lautrec appeared at Naples, but it was so weakened by a fearful pestilence that it was easily destroyed. The Pope concluded peace with Charles in 1529. The emperor promised to exterminate heresy. In the Peace of Cambray, Francis renounced his claims on Italy, Flanders, and Artois: Charles engaged for the present not to press his claims upon Burgundy, and set free the French princes.

TO THE PEACE OF NUREMBERG (1532).--The Diet of Spires in 1529 reversed the policy of tacit toleration. It passed an edict forbidding the progress of the Reformation in the states which had not accepted it, and allowing in the reformed states full liberty of worship to the adherents of the old confession. The protest by the Lutheran princes and cities, against the decree of the Diet, gave the name of Protestants to their party. The successful defense of Vienna against an immense army of the Turks under Soliman delivered Charles for the moment from anxiety in that quarter. A theological controversy between the Lutheran and the Swiss reformers, on the Lord's Supper, made a division of feeling between them. A conference of the two parties at Marburg, in which Luther and Melanchthon met Zwingli and his associates, brought no agreement. Every thing was propitious for an effort at coercion; and this was resolved upon at the Diet of Augsburg in 1530, where the emperor was present in person, and where Melanchthon presented the celebrated Protestant Confession of Faith. The threats against the Protestant princes induced them to form the League of Smalcald for mutual defense. But it was found impracticable to carry out the measures of repression against the Lutherans. Bavaria was jealous of the house of Hapsburg, and opposed to the plan of the emperor to make his brother, Ferdinand of Austria, his successor. The Turks under Soliman were threatening. France and Denmark were ready to help the Protestants. Accordingly the Peace of Nuremberg was concluded in 1532, in which religious affairs were to be left as they were, and both parties were to combine against the common enemy of Christendom.

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