III. THE GREAT NORTHERN WAR: THE FALL OP SWEDEN: GROWTH OF THE POWER OF RUSSIA…

III. THE GREAT NORTHERN WAR: THE FALL OP SWEDEN: GROWTH OF THE POWER OF RUSSIA

SWEDEN.--The eventful epoch in the history of Sweden, in this period, is the reign of Charles XII. (1697-1718). At his accession, when he was only sixteen years old, Sweden ruled the Baltic. Its army was strong and well disciplined. What is now St. Petersburg was a patch of swampy ground in Swedish territory, where a few fishermen lived in their huts. The youth of Charles was prophetic of his career. In doors, he read the exploits of Alexander the Great; out of doors, gymnastic sports and the hunting of the bear were his favorite diversions. He became an adventurous warrior after, the type of Alexander. His rashness and obstinacy occasioned at last the downfall of his country. Three great powers, Russia, Poland, and Denmark, with the support of Patkul, a disaffected Livonian subject of Sweden, joined in an attack on the youthful monarch (1699). Patkul, who was a patriot, unable to secure the rights of Livonia, and condemned as a rebel, had entered the service of the Elector Augustus of Saxony, who was king of Poland. There were territories belonging to Sweden which each of the confederates coveted. Frederick IV. of Denmark expected to incorporate Sweden itself in his dominions.

RUSSIA: PETER THE GREAT.--The first ruler of the house of Romanoff, which has raised Russia to its present rank, was Michael (1613-1645). Under Alexis, his son (1645-1676), important conquests were made from the Poles, and the Cossacks acknowledged the sovereignty of the Czar. The principal founder of Russian civilization was Peter the Great (1682-1725). Through the machinations of his half-sister Sophia, who contrived to get the armed aid of the streltzi,--the native militia,--he had to share the throne with a half-brother, Ivan, who was older than himself, and lived until 1696. Sophia pushed aside Peter's mother, and grasped the reins of power. Peter learned Latin, German, and Dutch, and acquired much knowledge of various sorts. As he grew older, his life was in danger; but at the age of seventeen, he was able to crush his enemies (1689). Sophia, who was at their head, he shut up in a monastery for the remainder of her days. From Lefort, a Swiss, and other foreigners, Peter derived information about foreign lands, and was led to visit them in order to instruct himself, and to introduce into his own country the arts and inventions of civilized peoples. He invited into Russia artisans, seamen, and officers from abroad. He traveled through _Germany _and _Holland _to England, and with his own hands worked at ship-building at the dock-yards of Zaandam (near Amsterdam) and Deptford. On his way to Venice, he was called home by a revolt of the streltzi, which he put down. He was unsparing in his vengeance, and, despite his veneer of culture, never got rid of his innate barbarism. _Azoff _he conquered, and it was ceded to him by the Turks in the Peace of Carlowitz (1699). Then his ambitious thoughts turned to the Baltic, for he was bent on making Russia a naval power. He formed a secret alliance with Denmark and Poland against Sweden.

CONDITION OF POLAND.--In 1697 _Frederick Augustus _II.,--Augustus the Strong,--Duke of Saxony, was elected king of Poland: he became a Roman Catholic that he might get the crown. But the Polish nobles took care to increase their power, which was already far too great to be compatible with unity or order. Under the anarchical but despotic nobility and higher clergy, stood the serfs, embracing nine-tenths of the whole population, who were without protection against the greed and tyranny of their lords.

EVENTS OF THE NORTHERN WAR.--The _Danes _first attacked the territory of Holstein Gottorp, whose duke had married the sister of Charles XII. William III. of England supported Sweden. The Anglo-Dutch fleet came to Charles's assistance. He landed his troops in Zealand. The Danes gave up their alliance, and sued for peace. Europe was now astonished to discover that the Swedish king was an antagonist to be feared. In the field he shared the hardships of the common soldier, and was as brave as a lion. _Charles _now attacked the Russian army before Narva, in Livonia. With the Swedish infantry he stormed the camp of the Russians, and routed their army, which was much larger in numbers than his own (1700). He then raised the siege of Riga, which the Poles and Saxons were besieging, having first defeated their troops on the Dwina. These brilliant successes might have enabled _Charles _to conclude peace on very advantageous terms. But he lacked moderation. He was as passionate in his public conduct as _Peter the Great _was in his private life. He was resolved to dethrone _Augustus _in Poland. After the battle of Clissau (1703), he occupied that country, and made the Diet give the crown to Stanislas Lesczinski, the Palatine of Posen. To prevent Russia and Saxony from uniting against the new king, Charles carried the war into Saxony, and forced Augustus, in the Peace of Altranstädt, to renounce his claim to the Polish crown, and to surrender Patkul, the rebel, who had become a subject of Russia, whom he put to death with circumstances of cruelty. In 1703 Peter laid the foundations of the new city of St. Petersburg. But, a few years later, Russia was invaded by Charles, who in 1708 almost captured the Czar at Grodno, defeated his army near Smolensk, and was expected to advance to Moscow. But the imprudent Swede turned southward into the district of the Ukraine, there to be joined by Mazeppa, the "hetman" of the Cossacks, who led them in revolt against Peter. Mazeppa was able, however, to bring him but few auxiliaries. The harshness of the winter, and other untoward events, weakened the Swedish force. The battle of Pultowa (1709) was a great victory for the Czar. Charles escaped with difficulty to Turkey. There he remained for three years, supported with his retinue, at Bender, by the Sultan. His object was to bring about a war between the Sultan and the Czar. He so far succeeded that Peter, when surrounded on the Pruth by Turkish troops, was rescued only by the courage and energy of Catherine, the mistress whom he afterwards married. Charles was finally obliged to leave Turkey, after being exposed to imminent peril in an attack by the janizaries, who seized his camp and took him captive. With a few attendants, riding by day and sleeping in a cart or carriage by night, he journeyed back to Sweden, and arrived at Stralsund (1714). The hostile allies, together with Hanover and Prussia, were once more in array against him. Baron van Görtz, a German, became his principal adviser. He negotiated a peace with Peter, of whom the other allies were beginning to be jealous. Charles's plan was to invade Norway, then to land in Scotland, and, with the help of Spain and of the Jacobites, to restore the Stuarts to the English throne. While besieging Friedrichshall, a fortress in Norway, he exposed himself near the trenches, and was killed by a bullet (1718). It was long a question whether the fatal shot was fired from the enemy or by an assassin. Not until 1859 was it settled, by an examination of the skull, that the gun was discharged from the fortress.

RESULTS OF THE WAR--One result of the Northern war was the execution of Görtz, to whom the Swedish aristocracy were inimical, and a reduction of the king's authority. Hanover received Bremen and Verden; Prussia, the largest part of Pomerania; Sweden gave up its freedom from custom duties in the Sound. Augustus was recognized as king of Poland. Russia, by the Peace of Nystadt (1721), obtained Livonia, Esthonia, Ingermannland, and a part of Carelia, but restored Finland. Sweden no longer had a place among the great powers. The place that Sweden had held was now taken by Russia.

CHANGES IN RUSSIA.--The Czar, Peter, took the title of emperor. He transferred the capital from Moscow to St. Petersburg. By constructing canals, roads, and harbors, he promoted trade and commerce. By fostering manufactures and the mechanic arts, and by opening the mines, he increased the wealth of the country. He altered the method of government, making the ukases, or edicts, emanate from the sole will of the emperor. He abolished the dignity of Patriarch, making the Holy Synod, of which the Czar is president, the supreme ecclesiastical authority. Peter made a second journey through Germany, Holland, and France (1716). His son Alexis, who allied himself with a reactionary party that aimed to reverse the Czar's policy, he finally caused to be tried for treason. He was condemned, but died either from the bodily torture inflicted on him to extort confession, or, as many have believed, by poison, or other means, used by the direction of his father. His friends, after being barbarously tortured, were put to death.

Great as was the work of Peter, "he brought Russia prematurely into the circle of European politics. The result has been to turn the rulers of Russia away from home affairs, and the regular development of internal institutions, to foreign politics and the creation of a great military power." In his last years, the frugality of his own way of living in his new capital was in striking contrast with the splendor with which his queen, Catherine, preferred to surround herself. He died at the age of fifty-three, in consequence of plunging into icy water to save a boat in distress.

The document called "The Testament of Peter the Great," which explains what has to be done in order that Russia may conquer all Europe, is not genuine. It is first heard of in 1812, in a book published by Lesur, probably by direction of Napoleon I. "Lesur's book," says Mr. E. Schuyler, "was merely a pamphlet to justify the invasion of Russia by Napoleon." (Schuyler's Life of Peter the Great, vol. ii, p. 512.)

CHAPTER IV. WAR OF THE AUSTRIAN SUCCESSION; GROWTH OP THE POWER OF PRUSSIA: THE DESTRUCTION OF POLAND.

THE PRAGMATIC SANCTION.--On the death of Augustus II., there were two competitors for the Polish crown,--his son, Augustus III. of Saxony, and Stanislaus Lesczinski whom France supported. After a contest, by the consent of the Emperor Charles VI., Lesczinski, whose daughter had married Louis XV., obtained the duchy of Lorraine, which thus became a possession of France (1735). In return, the emperor's son-in-law, Francis Stephen (afterwards Francis I.), was to have Tuscany; and France, in connection with the other powers, assented to the Pragmatic Sanction, according to which the hereditary possessions of Austria were to descend intact in the female line. It was expected that the empire would pass along with them.

PRUSSIA: FREDERICK WILLIAM I.--In 1611 the duchy of Prussia and the mark or electorate of Brandenburg were joined together. The duchy was then a fief of Poland. But under the Great Elector, Frederick William (1640-1688), this relation of the duchy to Poland ended. By him the military strength of the electorate was increased. Frederick, his son (1688-1713), with the emperor's license, took the title of King of Prussia (Frederick I.). He built up the city of Berlin, and encouraged art and learning. King Frederick William I. (1713-1740), unlike his predecessor, was exceedingly frugal in his court. He was upright and just in his principles, but extremely rough in his ways, and governed his own household, as well as his subjects generally, with a Spartan rigor. Individuals whom he met in the street, whose conduct or dress he thought unbecoming, he did not hesitate to scold, and he even used his cane to chastise them on the spot. He cared nothing for literature: artists and players were his abomination. He favored industry, and was a friend of the working-class. Every thing was done with despotic energy. He disciplined the military force of Prussia, and gathered at Potsdam a regiment of tall guards, made up of men of gigantic height, who were brought together from all quarters. He left to his son, Frederick II. (1740-1786), a strong army and a full treasury.

CHARACTER OF FREDERICK THE GREAT.--Young Frederick had no sympathy with his father's austere ways. The strict system of training arranged for him, in which he was cut off from Latin and from other studies for which he had a taste, his time all parceled out, and a succession of tasks rigorously ordained for him, he found a yoke too heavy to bear. Once he attempted to escape to the court of his uncle, George II. of England; but the scheme was discovered, and the incensed father was strongly inclined to execute the decree of a court-martial, which pronounced him worthy of death. Frederick, from the window of the place where he was confined, saw Katte, his favorite tutor, who had helped him in his attempt at flight, led to the scaffold, where he was hanged. In the later years of the old king, the relations of father and son were improved. The prince had for his abode the little town of Rheinsberg, where he could indulge, with a circle of congenial friends, in the studies and amusements to which he was partial. He grew up with a strong predilection for French literature, and for the French habits and fashions--free-thinking in religion included--which were now spreading over Europe. On his accession to the throne, Frederick broke up the Potsdam regiment of giants, and called back to Halle the philosopher Wolf, whom his father had banished. Frederick was visited by Voltaire, who at a later day took up his abode for a time with him in Berlin. But the king was fond of banter, and the foibles of each of these companions were a target for the unsparing wit of the other; so that eventually they parted company with mutual disgust. Later they resumed their correspondence, and never wholly lost their intellectual sympathy with each other. As a soldier, Frederick had not the military genius of the greatest captains. He applied superior talents to the discharge of the duties of a king, and to the business of war. He was cool, knew how to profit by his errors and to repair his losses, and to press forward in the darkest hour. Napoleon said of him that "he was great, especially at critical moments."

WAR OF THE AUSTRIAN SUCESSION---Charles VI. was succeeded, in 1740, by his daughter Maria Theresa, who united in her character many of the finest qualities of a woman and of a sovereign. Notwithstanding the pragmatic sanction by which all the Austrian lands were to be hers, different princes deemed the occasion favorable for seizing on the whole, or on portions, of her inheritance. Charles, elector of Bavaria, claimed to be the lawful heir, and was aided by France, which was afraid of losing Lorraine if _Maria Theresa's _ husband, Francis Stephen, should become emperor. Augustus III. of Poland was a participant in the plot. Frederick II. of Prussia claimed Silesia, and, after defeating the Austrians at Molwitz (1741), seized the greater part of that district. Soon after, the French and Bavarians overran Austria. The Bavarian elector was chosen emperor. Even the elector of Hanover (George II. of England) engaged not to assist the empress.

The claims to Austria were as follows:--

Augustus III., king of Saxony, and Charles Albert, elector of Bavaria, had married daughters of the Emperor Joseph I. (the brother and predecessor of Charles VI.). The wife of _Charles Albert _ was the younger daughter; but he appealed to an alleged provision in the will of the Emperor Ferdinand I., according to which the posterity of his daughter Anna (who married a Bavarian duke) was to inherit the duchy of Austria and Bohemia, in case his male descendants should die out. It was not to the male descendants, but to the legitimate descendants, however, that the will referred. The Bourbons in France and Spain seized the occasion to regain the possessions of Spain lost in the Peace of Utrecht (p. 466). Francis Stephen, the husband of Maria Theresa, it was feared, might seek to get back Lorraine from France (p. 474). Spain was anxious to recover Milan. Philip V. of Spain claimed the Austrian possessions on the basis of certain stipulations of Charles V. and Philip III. in the cession of them. To weaken the Austrian house in Germany, was an aim of France. The courts of France and Spain were ready, on all these grounds, to support Charles of Bavaria. They were ready, also, to support Frederick II. in legal claims which he set up to a portion of Silesia. The empress rejected the offer of Frederick to defend Austria if she would give up this territory.

SPIRIT OF THE EMPRESS: CESSION OF SILESIA.--Maria Theresa proved herself a Minerva. She threw herself for support on her Hungarian subjects, who responded with loyal enthusiasm to her appeal made at the Diet of Presburg. Her forces drove the Bavarian and French troops before them in Austria, entered Bavaria, and captured Munich. Reluctantly the queen, in the Peace of Breslau (1742), ceded Silesia to Frederick, in order to lessen the number of her antagonists. She was crowned (1743) in Prague, and at length gained an ally in George II. of England. The "Pragmatic Army," as it was called, defeated the French under Marshal Noailles at Dettingen. Sardinia and Saxony joined the Austrian alliance.

TO THE PEACE OF AIX-LA-CHAPELLE.--These events widened the dimensions of the contest. France declared war directly against England and Austria. Frederick II. of Prussia was now the ally of France, and began the second Silesian war. He took Prague, but, being deserted by the French, was driven back into Saxony. The son of Charles Albert of Bavaria, Maximilian Joseph, made peace with Austria,--the Peace of Füssen,--promising to give his vote to Francis, the husband of Maria Theresa, for the office of emperor. Francis (1745-1765) was crowned at Frankfort. Victories in Saxony on the side of Frederick led to the Treaty of Dresden, which left Silesia in his hands (1745). The most of the English army went back to England to fight the Pretender. The war went on in the Netherlands and in Italy, and between France and England; the English being victors on the sea under Anson (1747), while the French were generally successful on the land. The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748) provided for a reciprocal restoration of all conquests: Silesia was given to Prussia, and the Pragmatic Sanction was sustained in Austria.

ALLIANCE AGAINST FREDERICK.--Frederick the Great used the next eight years in doing what he could to encourage industry and to increase the prosperity and resources of Prussia, at the same time that he strengthened his military force. Prussia had evinced so much power in the late conflicts as to be an object of envy and apprehension. Maria Theresa was anxious to recover Silesia. Frederick had a foe in Elizabeth, empress of Russia, whose personal vices he made a subject of sarcastic remark, and who, besides, coveted Prussian provinces on the Baltic. An alliance was formed between Russia and Austria. This was joined by Saxony, and by France; since Louis XV. had become alarmed by the calculating selfishness of Frederick's policy, and was induced to depart from the French traditional policy, and to unite with Austria. The only ally of Frederick was _George II. _of England, which was then engaged in a contest with France respecting the American colonies (1756).

THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR.--Thus arose the Seven Years' War. Frederick, secretly informed of the plans of his enemies, anticipated their action by invading Saxony and capturing _Dresden _(1756). At Lobositz he defeated the Austrians: he soon took eighteen thousand Saxon troops. He had now to encounter the military strength of the various nations opposed to him. With the bulk of his forces he marched into Bohemia, and gained a great but costly victory at Prague (1757). For the next six months, successes and reverses alternated; but before the end of the year (1757) Frederick won two of his most famous triumphs,--one at Rossbach, over the French and the Imperialists; and the other over the Austrians, at Leuthen. Frederick was now admired as a hero in England, and was furnished by the elder William Pitt, who had succeeded Newcastle, with money and troops. In 1758 the Prussians vanquished the Russians at Zorndorf, but were, in turn, soon defeated by the Austrians at Hochkirch Of the numerous battles in this prolonged war, in which the military talents of Frederick were so strikingly shown, it is possible to refer only to a few of the most important. He was defeated by the united Austrians and Russians at Kunersdorf; and so completely that he was for the moment thrown into despair, and wrote to his minister Finkenstein, "All is lost." In 1760 Berlin was held for a few days by the Russians, but Frederick soon defeated the Austrians once more at Torgau. In 1761, however, his situation was in the highest degree perilous. His resources were apparently exhausted. Spain joined the ranks of his enemies. He faced them all with determined resolution, but he confessed in his private letters that his hopes were gone.

END OF THE WAR.--At this time there was a turn of events in his favor. In Russia, Peter III., who succeeded Elizabeth, was an admirer of Frederick,--so much so that he wore a Prussian uniform,--and hastened to conclude a peace and alliance with him (1762). Peter was soon dethroned and killed by Russian nobles; and his queen· and successor, Catherine II., recalled the troops sent to Frederick's aid. Nevertheless, they helped him to a victory over the Austrians, under the command of Daun, at Burkersdorf (1762). Austria, too, was exhausted and ready for peace. The negotiations between England and France, which ended in the Peace of Paris (1763), made it certain that the French armies would evacuate Germany. Prussia and Austria agreed to the Peace of Hubertsburg, by which Prussia retained Silesia, and promised her vote for the Archduke Joseph, son of Maria Theresa, as king of Rome and successor to the empire (1763).

POSITION OF PRUSSIA.--Joseph II. succeeded his father as emperor in 1765, and was associated by his mother, Maria Theresa, in the government of her hereditary dominions. From the conclusion of the Seven Years' War, Prussia took her place as one of the five great powers of Europe.

THE BRITISH INDIAN EMPIRE.--It was during this period that the empire of the British in India grew up out of the mercantile settlements of a trading corporation, the East India Company. The result was effected after a severe struggle with the French. After the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Mughal empire at Delhi declined. Insubordinate native princes admitted only a nominal control over them. The effect of successive Mahratta and Afghan invasions was such, that when England and France went to war in Europe, in 1745, India was broken up into different sovereignties, to say nothing of the great number of petty chieftains who were practically independent. Pondicherry was the chief French settlement. For a time it seemed that in the struggle for control France, under the masterly guidance of Dupleix, must triumph. In 1756 Calcutta was taken from the English by the Nabob of Bengal, and many Englishmen died in the close room of the military prison in which they were shut up,--"the Black Hole." In 1757 Clive defeated a great army of the natives, with whom were a few French, in the decisive battle of Plassey. He had previously shown his indomitable courage in the seizure of Arcot, and in its defense against a host of besiegers. The victory at Plassey secured the British supremacy, which gradually extended itself over the country. The various local sovereignties became like Roman provinces. On the death of Clive, Warren Hastings was made governor-general (1772). After his recall, he was impeached (1788), on charges of cruelty and oppression in India, and his trial by the House of Lords did not end until seven years after it began. He was then acquitted. Among the conductors of the impeachment on the part of the House of Commons, were the celebrated orators Edmund Burke and Richard Brinsley Sheridan. In 1784 the power of the East-India Company had been restricted by the establishment of the Board of Control. Up to that time the Indian Empire, made up of dependent and subject states, had been governed by the sole authority of the company.

CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA.--Catherine II. (1762-1796) in her private life was notoriously dissolute. If she did not connive at the assassination of her husband, Peter III., she heaped gifts upon his murderers. In her policy, she aimed to strengthen Russia, especially towards the sea. This occasioned successful conflicts with the Turks.

THE PARTITION OF POLAND.--At first inimical to Frederick the Great, Catherine afterwards made an alliance with him. She compelled the election of one of her lovers, Poniatowski, to the throne of Poland. Poland was mainly Catholic; and the Confederation of Bar (1768), made by the Poles to prevent the toleration of Greek Christians and Protestants, was defeated by a Russian army, and broken up. The Turks were worsted in the war which they made in defense of the confederacy. As one result, Russia gained a firm footing on the north coasts of the Black Sea (1774). The "free veto," oppression of the peasantry, their distress, and the general want of union and public spirit, had reduced Poland to a miserable condition. Catherine, however, favored no reforms there looking to an improvement in the constitution. She preferred to prolong the anarchy and confusion. She wished to make the death of Poland in part a suicide. At length she invited Prussia and Austria to take part with her in the first seizure and partition of Polish territory (1772). Each took certain provinces. In 1793 the second, and in 1795 the final partition of Poland, was made by its three neighbors. The capture of Warsaw, and the defeat of the national rising under Kosciusko, obliterated that ancient kingdom from the map of Europe. It should be said that a large part of the territory that Russia acquired had once been Russian, and was inhabited by Greek Christians. By the division of Poland, Russia was brought into close contact with the Western powers. The Crimea was incorporated with Russia in 1783. After a second war, provoked by her, with the Turks, who now had the Austrians to help them, the Russian boundaries through the Treaty of Jassy (1792) were carried to the Dniester.

CHAPTER V. CONTEST OF ENGLAND AND FRANCE IN AMERICA: WAR OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE: THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES.

In this period the United States of America achieved their independence, and began their existence as a distinct nation.

THE ENGLISH COLONIES.--The English colonies south of Canada had become thirteen in number. In the southern part of what was called Carolina, Charleston was settled in 1680. More than a century before (1562), a band of Huguenots under Ribault had entered the harbor of Port Royal, and given this name to it, and had built a fort on the river May, which they called Charlesfort--the Carolina--in honor of King Charles IX. of France. In 1663 the territory thus called, south of Virginia, was granted to the Earl of Clarendon. In it were two distinct settlements in the northern part. The English philosopher John Locke drew up a constitution for Carolina, never accepted by the freemen. The rights of the proprietors were purchased by George II.; and the region was divided (1729) into two royal provinces, North and South Carolina, each province having a governor appointed by the king, and an assembly elected by the people. Besides the English, Huguenots and emigrants from the North of Ireland, as well as from Scotland, planted themselves in South Carolina. Georgia was settled by James Oglethorpe, who made his settlement at Savannah. He had a charter from George II., in whose honor the region was named (1732). Soon the "trustees" gave up their charter, and the government was shaped like that of the other colonies (1752). John Wesley, afterwards the founder of Methodism, sojourned for a time in Georgia. The settlement of New Jersey was first made by members of the Society of Friends, or Quakers, sent over by William Penn, the son of an English admiral, and familiar at court. The Quakers gave up the government to the crown, and from 1702 to 1738 it formed one province with New York. Pennsylvania was granted to Penn himself, by the king, in discharge of a claim against the crown. Penn procured also a title to Delaware. He sent out emigrants in 1681, and the next year came himself. By him Philadelphia was founded. He dealt kindly with all the settlers, and made a treaty of peace and amity with the Indians. The government organized by Penn was just and liberal. In 1703 the inhabitants of Delaware began to have a governing assembly of their own.

THE FRENCH COLONIES.--Among the French explorers in America, La Salle is one of the most famous. Having traversed the region of the upper lakes, he reached the Mississippi, and floated in his boats down to its mouth (1682). The region of the great river and of its tributaries, he named Louisiana, in honor of his king, Louis XIV. This name was applied to the whole region from the Alleghanies to the Rocky Mountains. On his return, La Salle built Fort St. Louis. Afterwards (1684) he took part in an expedition from France which had for its purpose the building of a fort at the mouth of the Mississippi, but which was so wrongly guided as to land on the coast of Texas. La Salle himself perished, while seeking to find his way to Canada. But a French settlement was made near the mouth of the river (1699), and a connection established by a series of forts with Canada.

On the principle that the country belonged to the explorer, Spain claimed all the southern part of North America from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The French claim stretched from the coast of Nova Scotia westward to the Great Lakes, and embraced the valley of the Mississippi to its mouth. England claimed the country from Labrador as far south as Florida, and westward to the Pacific. This region included within it the claims of the Dutch, founded on the discoveries of Henry Hudson.

War between England and France, whenever it occurred, was attended with conflicts between the English and the French settlements in America. The Indians were most of them on the side of the French. But the fierce Iroquois in central New York, who wished to monopolize the fur-trade, were hostile to them. A massacre perpetrated by these at La Chine, near Montreal (1689), provoked a murderous attack of French and Indians upon the settlement at Schenectady, the most northern post of the English. This was an incident of King William's War (1689). In Queen Anne's War (1702-1713) Deerfield in Massachusetts was captured and destroyed by French and Indians (1704). By an expedition fitted out in Massachusetts, and commanded by Sir William Phipps, Port Royal in Nova Scotia was captured (1710). The colonies incurred great expense in fitting out expeditions (1709 and 1711) against Canada, which were abandoned. The contest between France and England for supremacy in America was further continued in a series of conflicts lasting from 1744 for nearly twenty years. An early event of much consequence in the contest known as King George's War,--a part of the war of the Austrian succession (p. 476),--was the capture of Louisburg, an important fortified place on Cape Breton, by an expedition from Boston (1745). The colonists, who were with reason proud of their achievement, had the mortification to see this place restored to the French in the treaty of peace (1748). In these contests the French had the help of their Indian allies, who fell upon defenseless villages. The English were sometimes aided by the Iroquois. The English founded Halifax (1749).

THE "OLD FRENCH WAR" (1756-1763).--The "Old French and Indian War" in America was a part of the Seven Years' War in Europe. A British officer, Gen. Braddock, led a force which departed from Fort Cumberland in Maryland, against Fort Du Quesne at the junction of the Monongahela and Alleghany Rivers. Disregarding the advice of George Washington, who was on his staff, he allowed himself to be surprised by the Indians and the French, and was mortally wounded. The remains of his army were led by Washington, whose courage and presence of mind had been conspicuous, to Philadelphia (1755). Prior to the expedition, Washington had made a perilous journey as envoy, to demand of the French commander his reasons for invading the Ohio valley. The English held Nova Scotia, and expelled from their homes the French Acadians, seven thousand in number, in a way that involved severe hardships, including the separation of families (1755). They were carried off in ships, and scattered among the colonies along the Atlantic shore. The English also took the forts in Acadia. There were two battles near Lake George (1755), in the first of which the French were victors, but in the second they were routed. Montcalm, the French commander, captured the English fort near Oswego, from which an expedition was to have been sent against the French fort at Niagara (1756). In 1757 he took Fort William Henry on Lake George.

THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1758 AND 1759.--The English were dissatisfied at their want of success on the Continent and in America. But they had advantages for prosecuting the conflict. The French, who had been successful at the outset, had to bring their troops and supplies from Europe. They were, to be sure, disciplined troops; but the English had the substantial strength which was derived from the prosperous agriculture, and still more from the brave and self-respecting spirit, of their American colonies. The elder William Pitt, afterwards Earl of Chatham, again entered the cabinet, and began to manage the contest (1757). The French held posts at important points,--Fort Du Quesne, where Pittsburg now stands, for the defense of the West; Crown Point and Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain, guarding the approach to Canada; Niagara, near the Great Lakes and the region of the fur-trade; and Louisburg, on the coast of Nova Scotia, which protected the fisheries, and was a menace to New England. To seize these posts, and to break down the French power in America, was now the aim of the English. In 1758 an expedition of Gen. Abercrombie, at the head of sixteen thousand men, against Crown Point and Ticonderoga, was repulsed; Lord Howe was killed, and the army retreated. Louisburg, to the joy of the colonies, was captured anew by Lord Amherst (1758). Fort Du Quesne was taken (1758), and named Fort Pitt; Fort Frontenac on Lake Ontario was destroyed. The object of the campaign of 1759 was the conquest of Canada. Fort Niagara was captured by Sir William Johnston (1759). Ticonderoga and Crown Point were taken, and the French driven into Canada. Then came the great expedition under Major-Gen, Wolfe, a most worthy and high-spirited young officer, which left Louisburg for the capture of Quebec, "the Gibraltar of America." The attempt of Wolfe to storm the heights in front of the city, which were defended by the army of Montcalm, failed of success. From a point far up the river, he embarked a portion of his troops in the night, and, silently descending the stream, climbed the heights in the rear of the city, and intrenched himself on the "Plains of Abraham." In the battle which took place in the morning, both commanders, Wolfe and Montcalm, were mortally wounded. Wolfe lived just long enough to be assured of victory; Montcalm died the next day. Five days after the battle the town surrendered (1759).

An incident connected with Wolfe's approach by night to Quebec is thus given by Mr. Parkman: "For full two hours the procession of boats, borne on the current, steered silently down the St. Lawrence. The stars were visible, but the night was moonless and sufficiently dark. The general was in one of the foremost boats; and near him was a young midshipman, John Robison, afterwards professor of natural philosophy in the University of Edinburgh. He used to tell in his later life how Wolfe, with a low voice, repeated Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard to the officers about him. Among the rest, was the verse which his fate was soon to illustrate,--

'The paths of glory lead but to the grave.'

"'Gentlemen,' he said, as his recital ended, 'I would rather have written those lines than take Quebec.' None were there to tell him that the hero is greater than the poet." (Montcalm and Wolfe, p. 287.)

In the following year Montreal and all Canada were in the hands of the English. The English colonies were safe. It was decided that English, not French, should be spoken in aftertimes on the banks of the Ohio. In the Peace of Paris (1763), France kept Louisiana, but had already ceded it to Spain (1762).

CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC.--The Indians in the West were dissatisfied with the transference of Canada and the region of the Lakes to England. Pontiac, chief of the Ottawas, combined a large number of tribes, and kindled a war against the English, which spread from the Mississippi to Canada (1763). He captured eight forts, but failed to take Detroit and Fort Pitt. Three years passed before the Indians were completely beaten, and a treaty of peace concluded with their leader (1766).

STATE OF THE COLONIES: POPULATION.--At the close of the French war, the population of the thirteen colonies probably exceeded two millions, of whom not far from one fourth were negro slaves. The number of slaves in New England was small. They were proportionately much more numerous in New York, but they were found principally in the Southern colonies. Quakers were always averse to slavery. The slave-trade was still kept up. Newport in Rhode Island was one of the ports where slave-ships frequently discharged their cargoes.

GOVERNMENT.--The forms of government in the different colonies varied. All of them had their own legislative assemblies, and regarded them as essential to their freedom. Under Charles II., the charter which secured to Massachusetts its civil rights was annulled (1684). Under James II., the attempt was made to revoke all the New England charters. Sir Edmund Andros was appointed governor of New England, and by him the new system began to be enforced. The revolution of 1688 restored to the colonies their privileges; but Massachusetts (with which Plymouth was now united), under its new charter (1691), no longer elected its governor. Prior to the Revolution, there were three forms of government among the colonies. Proprietary governments (that is, government by owners or proprietors) still remained in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. In these the king appointed no officers except in the customs and admiralty courts. In Rhode Island and Connecticut, which like Massachusetts retained their charters, the governors were chosen by the people. New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, North and South Carolina, had royal or provincial governments: the governor and council were appointed by the king.

OCCUPATIONS.--The chief occupation of the colonists was agriculture. In the North, wheat and corn were raised. From Virginia and Maryland, great crops of tobacco were exported from the plantations, in English ships which came up the Potomac and the James. Rice was cultivated in the Carolinas. Indigo was also raised. Cotton was grown in the South. Labor in the fields in the Southern colonies was performed by the negroes. Building of ships was a profitable occupation on the coast of New England. The cod and other fisheries also gave employment to many, and proved a school for the training of seamen. The colonists were industrious and prosperous, but generally frugal and plain in their style of living.

EDUCATION AND RELIGION.--Common schools were early established by law in New England, and by the Dutch in New York. As Mr. Bancroft well observes, "He that will understand the political character of New England in the eighteenth century must study the constitution of its towns, its congregations, its schools, and its militia." Harvard College was founded in 1636; William and Mary, in 1693; Yale, in 1700. Eighteen years after the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, a printing-press was set up at Cambridge. In 1704 the first American newspaper, "The Boston News Letter," was established. In the Puritan colonies, the minds of the people were quickened intellectually as well as religiously, by the character of the pulpit discourses. Theology was an absorbing theme of inquiry and discussion. In the town-meetings, especially in the closing part of the colonial period, political affairs became a subject of earnest debate. In all the colonies, the representative assemblies furnished a practical training in political life. In the Eastern colonies, the people were mostly Congregationalists and Calvinists: Presbyterians were numerous in the Middle States. In Virginia the Episcopal Church was supported by legislative authority; and it was favored, though not established by law, in New York. In Pennsylvania, while there was freedom in religion, the Quakers "still swayed legislation and public opinion." Philadelphia, with its population of thirty thousand, was the largest city in America, and was held in high esteem for its intelligence and refinement.

COMPLAINTS OF THE COLONIES.--The colonists all acknowledged the authority of king and parliament, but they felt that they had brought with them across the ocean the rights of Englishmen. One thing that was more and more complained of was the laws compelling the colonies to trade with the "mother country" exclusively, and the enactments laying restraint on their manufactures. In the conflicts with the Indians from time to time, the necessity had arisen for leagues; and, more than once, congresses of delegates had met. One of these was held at Albany in 1754, where Benjamin Franklin was present. In the Old French War, there had been a call for concert of action, and a deepening of the sense of common interests and of being really one people.

NEW GROUNDS OF DISAFFECTION.--The colonies had taxed themselves in the French War; but the condition of the finances in England at the close of it inspired the wish there to enforce the laws of trade more rigidly in America, and to levy additional taxes upon the provinces. These English laws were so odious that they were often evaded. The writs of assistance in Massachusetts authorized custom-house officers to search houses for smuggled goods (1761). In the legal resistance to this measure, a sentence was uttered by a Boston patriot, James Otis, which became a watchword. "Taxation," he said, "without representation is tyranny." Taxation, it was contended, must be ordained by the local colonial assemblies in which the tax-payers are represented. But the Stamp Act (1765), requiring for legal and other documents the use of stamped paper, was a form of taxation. It excited indignation in all the colonies, especially in Virginia and in New England. In all the measures of resistance, Virginia and Massachusetts were foremost. Patrick Henry, an impassioned, patriotic orator, in the Virginia Legislature, was very bold in denouncing the obnoxious Act, and the alleged right to tax the colonies which it implied. This right was denied in a Congress where nine colonies were represented, which met in New York in 1765. They called for the repeal of the Stamp Act, and declared against the importation of English goods until the repeal should be granted. William Pitt, in the House of Commons, eulogized the spirit of the colonies. The Stamp Act was repealed. The discussions which it had provoked in America had awakened the whole people, and made them watchful against this sort of aggression. Political topics engrossed attention. When Parliament ordered that the colonies should support the troops quartered on them, and that the royal officers should have fixed salaries, to be obtained, not by the voluntary grants of colonial legislatures, but by the levy of new duties, there was a renewed outburst of disaffection, especially in New York and Boston (1768). By way of response to a petition that was sent to the king against these Acts of Parliament, four regiments of troops were sent to Boston. Their presence was a bitter grievance. In one case, there was bloodshed in a broil in the street between the populace and the soldiers, which was called "The Boston Massacre" (1770). An influential leader of the popular party in Boston was the stanch Puritan patriot, Samuel Adams.

PROGRESS OF THE CONTROVERSY.--After the other taxes were repealed, the tax on tea remained in force. A mob of young men, disguised as Indians, went on board three vessels in Boston Harbor, and threw overboard their freight of tea (1773). Before, there had been outbreakings of popular wrath against the stamp-officers. Their houses had been sometimes attacked: they had been burnt in effigy, and in some cases driven to resign. In general, however, the methods of resistance had been legal and orderly. When the news of the destruction of the tea reached England, Parliament retaliated by passing the Boston Port Bill (1774), which closed that port to the exportation or importation of goods, except food or fuel. The courts, moreover, were given the power to send persons charged with high crimes to England, or to another colony, for trial. To crown all, General Gage, the commander of the British troops, was made Governor of Massachusetts.

THE FIRST CONTINENTAL CONGRESS.--In order to produce concert of action, committees of correspondence between the several colonies were established. The First Continental Congress, composed of delegates from the colonies, was convened in Philadelphia (1774). The remedies to which they resorted were, addresses to the king and to the people of Great Britain; an appeal for support to Canada; and a resolve not to trade with Great Britain until there should be a redress of grievances.

CONCORD AND BUNKER HILL.--The Legislature in Massachusetts, which Gage would not recognize, formed itself into the "Provincial Congress." The first collision took place at Concord (April 19, 1775), where a detachment of British troops was sent to destroy the military stores gathered by this body. On Lexington Green, the British troops fired on the militia, and killed seven men. Arriving at Concord, they encountered resistance. There the first shot was fired by America in the momentous struggle,--"the shot heard round the world." A number were killed on both sides, and the attacking force was harassed all the way on its return to Boston. The people everywhere rose in arms. Men flocked from their farms and workshops to the camp which was formed near Boston. Israel Putnam, who had been an officer in the French War, left his plow in the field at his home in Connecticut, and rode to that place, a distance of sixty-eight miles, in one day. Stark from New Hampshire, and Greene from Rhode Island, soon arrived.

THE SECOND CONTINENTAL CONGRESS, in session at Philadelphia, assumed control of military operations in all the colonies. At the suggestion first made by John Adams of Massachusetts, Colonel George Washington of Virginia was unanimously appointed commander-in-chief. His mingled courage and prudence, his lofty and unselfish patriotism, his admirable sobriety of judgment, and his rare power of self-control, connected as it was with a not less rare power of command, and with a firmness which no disaster could shake, made him one of the noblest of men. Before he reached Cambridge, where he assumed command of the gathering forces (July 3, 1775), he received the news of the battle of Bunker Hill, in which the provincial soldiers, under Putnam and Prescott, made a stand against the "regulars," as the British troops were called, and retreated only on the third assault, and when their ammunition had given out. Dr. Joseph Warren, a leading Boston patriot, was slain in the battle. Before this time, Fort Ticonderoga had been captured by Ethan Allen, and cannon been sent from it to aid in the siege of Boston (1775). But an attack on Quebec by Arnold and Montgomery, who entered Canada by different routes, failed of its object. Before British reinforcements arrived, the American troops abandoned Canada. In the attack on Quebec, Montgomery fell, and Arnold was severely wounded (Dec. 31, 1775).

INDEPENDENCE.--Only a brief sketch can here be given of the seven years' struggle of the United Colonies. On the 4th of July, 1776, the Declaration of Independence, drawn up in the main by Thomas Jefferson, and of which John Adams was the most eloquent advocate on the floor of Congress, passed that body. It was signed by the President, John Hancock, and fifty-five members. The colonies easily converted themselves into States, nearly all of them framing new constitutions. Thirteen Articles of Confederation made them into a league, under the name of the United States of America, each State retaining its sovereignty (1777). Franklin, an old man, and respected in Europe as well as at home for his scientific attainments as well as for his sturdy sagacity, went to France as their envoy. Among the soldiers who came from Europe to join the Americans were La Fayette,--a young French nobleman, who was inspired with a zeal for liberty, and was not without a thirst for fame, which, however, he desired to merit,--and Steuben, an officer trained under Frederick the Great. In Parliament, the Whig orators spoke out manfully for the American cause. The king hired German troops for the subjugation of its defenders.

THE EVENTS OF THE WAR.--The maneuvers of Washington forced Gage to evacuate Boston. The American general then undertook the defense of New York. The British forces, to the number of thirty thousand, under Gen. Howe, and Admiral Howe his brother, were collected on Staten Island. The Americans were defeated in a battle on Long Island (Aug. 27, 1776), and could not hold the city. It remained in the hands of the British to the end of the war. Washington withdrew his troops to White Plains. Fort Washington and Fort Lee were lost. The American commander, followed by Lord Cornwallis, retreated slowly through New Jersey (1776). These were serious reverses. By bold and successful attacks at Trenton and Princeton, the depressed spirits of the army and the country were revived. In the spring of 1777 Howe sought to capture Philadelphia, and landed his forces at the head of Chesapeake Bay. The Americans were defeated at Brandywine (Sept. 10); and Philadelphia, which had been the seat of Congress, was, like New York, in the possession of the British. Their policy was to isolate New England. To this end, Gen. Burgoyne, with a large army of French and Indians, came down from the north of Lake Champlain. A detachment of his forces was defeated by Stark at Bennington. Burgoyne himself was obliged to surrender, with six thousand men, to Gates, at Saratoga (Oct. 17). This event made its due impression abroad. France recognized the independence of the United States, and entered into an alliance with them. This alliance was a turning-point in the struggle. Washington's army, ill-clad and ill-fed, suffered terribly in the winter of 1777-78 at Valley Forge; but he shared in their rough fare, and their discipline was much improved by the drill which they received there from Steuben. Sir Henry Clinton left Philadelphia in order that the British forces might be concentrated in New York. He was overtaken by Washington, and the battle of Monmouth took place, which was, on the whole, a success for the Americans. The design of the British to separate New England from the rest of the States had failed. Washington was again at White Plains. They now began operations in the Southern States. Among the occurrences in this period of the war were the massacre of the settlements in the valley of the Wyoming, in Pennsylvania, by the Indian auxiliaries of the British; the surrender of Savannah, and with it Georgia and Charleston, by the Americans; the gallant storming of Stony Point, on the Hudson, by Wayne (July 15, 1779), and a brilliant naval victory of Paul Jones in a desperate engagement with two British frigates near the north-eastern coast of England (Sept. 1779). The American "partisan leaders," Marion, Sumter, and Pickens, carried forward an irregular but harassing warfare in South Carolina. At Camden, Gates was defeated by Cornwallis; and Baron de Kalb, a brave French officer, of German extraction, in the American service, fell (Aug. 16, 1780). In this year (1780) Benedict Arnold's treason was detected; and Major André, a British officer through whom Arnold had made arrangements for giving up the fortress of West Point to the enemy, was taken captive, and executed as a spy. In the next year Gen. Nathanael Greene conducted military operations in Georgia and the Carolinas with much skill, and succeeded in pressing the army of Lord Cornwallis into the peninsula formed by the York and James Rivers in Virginia. Thither the French fleet sailed under Count De Grasse; and Washington, by forced marches, was enabled to join with the French in surrounding the British works at Yorktown. On the day when Clinton left New York, at the head of his forces, to unite with Cornwallis, that officer surrendered, with his entire army of seven thousand men, to Washington (1781). This blow was fatal to the British cause. The independence of the United States was recognized by Holland, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, and Russia (1782). The war had been prolonged by the personal obstinacy of George III., against the wishes of his minister, Lord North. The surrender of Cornwallis made it plain that further effort to conquer America was hopeless. Spain and Holland had joined hands with France, but Rodney had won a great naval victory over De Grasse (April 12, 1782). By the treaty of peace, signed at Paris and Versailles (1783), England recognized the independence of her former colonies.

AMERICA AT THE CLOSE OF THE WAR.--The Congress during the war had issued paper money to the amount of twenty millions of dollars. It had no power to lay taxes, or to compel the States to pay their several portions of the public indebtedness. The States themselves were poor, and largely in debt. They surrendered, however, their unoccupied public lands to the United States. In 1787 Congress made one territory of the district north-west of the Ohio River, which Virginia had ceded, and by an ordinance excluded slavery from it for ever.

THE CONSTITUTION.--The lack of one system of law for the different States in reference to duties on imports, and on various other matters of common concern, and disorders springing up in different places, inspired an anxious desire for a stronger central government. A convention, over which Washington presided, met in Philadelphia in 1787, and formed the new Constitution. Hamilton of New York and Madison of Virginia were leading members. There was much opposition to the new plan of government which they agreed upon, but it was finally adopted by all the States. It supplied the defects of the old confederation by uniting national with federal elements. To the Senate, made up of two delegates from each State, it added a House of Representatives, where the number of members from each State was made proportionate to the population. It put the general government, within the limit of its defined functions, into a direct relation to the citizens, and gave to it judicial and executive departments to carry out and enforce its legislation. It committed to the central authority the management of foreign affairs, and various other powers necessary for the preservation of peace and unity in the land, and for the securing of the common weal of the whole country. Washington was unanimously chosen as the first president of the Republic, and John Adams was chosen vice-president. The first Congress met in New York in April, 1789, although the day appointed was March 4.

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VI. LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND RELIGION

LITERATURE.

I. FRANCE.

POETRY AND THE DRAMA.--The literature of France in the age of Louis XIV. was classical in its spirit. The ancient Greek and Roman writers were admired and imitated. The Renaissance was now to run its course. The French Academy, founded by Richelieu, undertook to regulate and improve the French language. Measure, finish, elegance, were demanded by the reigning taste, in all literary productions. Corneille (1606-1684), the father of French tragedy, was the most virile of the French dramatists. Racine (1639-1699), who followed, if less grand, was more pathetic. We find, however, in writers of genius,--even in the great preachers, as Bourdaloue and Massillon, who formed a type of pulpit eloquence peculiar to France,--a tendency to what seems now a stilted style. The master in comedy was Molière (1622-1673), an actor, as well as an author of inimitable humor. One of the most popular of French authors has been La Fontaine (1621-1695), whose fables have charmed multitudes by their smooth versification, as well as by their contents. Boileau (1636-1711), the Horace of France, prescribed, as a lawgiver, rules upon the "Art of Poetry," and himself wrote satires and other poems of high merit.

PROSE LITERATURE.--Bossuet (1627-1704) was an eloquent preacher and historical writer, and an expert theological polemic of the liberal Catholic school. Of a very different tone is Rochefoucauld, whose Maxims, expressed in pithy language, seek to trace all virtuous action to self-seeking. The French fondness for epigram--for terse, paradoxical statement--is exemplified even in the best writers, as, for example, Blaise Pascal. La Bruyère (1645-1696), a genial philosopher, wrote in a most attractive style a work entitled The Characters of Our Age. The metaphysician Malebranche (1638-1715) taught that we know through our spiritual union with God, or that we see all things in God. A disciple of Des Cartes, he did not strictly follow his master. Fénelon (1651-1715), illustrious for his piety as well as for his versatile authorship, wrote on religious topics and on education. Of all his writings, his Telemachus, composed for the young Duke of Burgundy, his pupil, has been the most read. The letters of Madame de Sévigné, addressed to her daughter, and not meant for publication, present most graphic descriptions of the characters and occurrences of the day.

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.--When we cross the limit of the eighteenth century, we meet with growing signs of skepticism in religion, and of innovation in political thought. Criticism of the past, of traditional creeds and established institutions, is spreading. The Historical and Critical Dictionary of Bayle, a storehouse of chronicle and anecdote, is leavened with the spirit of doubt. Three great writers deserve special attention. Montesquieu (1689-1755) satirized all dogma in his Persian Letters. His celebrated work on the Spirit of Laws is just and humane in its tone, and full of original and inspiring views on history and government. He is one of the founders of modern political science. Voltaire (1694-1778), the most popular of all the writers of his age, was the incarnation of its critical and skeptical spirit, the highest example of its wit as of its levity, and of the artificial character of its literary ideals. He was play-writer, poet, historian, critic, and brilliant converser, all in one. In religion, a scoffer not only at superstition, but at all beliefs and rites which imply revelation, he still clung to the belief in a personal God. His creed was deism, Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) was, like Voltaire, a deist in his creed; but in religion, as in all his mental action, there was a vein of sentiment. By the fascination of his style, he was able, in his various writings, including his autobiographical Confessions, to interest profoundly multitudes of readers of both sexes, and even to move them to sympathy with himself in a career which deserves not less abhorrence than commiseration. He was, perhaps, the first author to evoke in others a genuine relish, which he felt himself, for the wild scenery of nature. In his Social Contract he maintained that government grows out of a contract of individuals with one another, all of whom in the state of nature are free and independent. He carried to a great extreme an idea which in England had been held by Hooker, and more explicitly expounded by Locke. His doctrine furnished a theory for the political revolution in France. The "Encyclopædists" went much beyond Voltaire and Rousseau. D'Alembert, Helvetius, Holbach, advocated atheism and materialism. Condillac (1715-1780) sought to reduce this species of infidelity to an exact philosophical system by tracing even conscience to sensation and self-interest. All religious sentiment was condemned as morbid illusion.

II. GERMANY.

In Germany, the great name in philosophy is that of Leibnitz (1646-1716), a rival of Newton in mathematics and natural science, and an eminent thinker in metaphysics, theology, and in jurisprudence. In intellect and in variety of attainments, he is almost the peer of Aristotle. Wolf (1679-1754) his disciple, systemized and modified his philosophical views. Klopstock (1724-1803), the author of Messiah, written somewhat after the manner of the Paradise Lost of Milton, excelled the other German poets of his day. Frederick the Great treated with disrespect the native literary products of his country. Yet a new era in German letters and criticism was opened by Lessing (1729-1781), a poet, and a critic of admirable insight, whose influence in this direction in Germany has been likened in its power to that of Luther in religion.

III. ITALY.

In the eighteenth century, there was a new revival of literature in Italy. Vico (1668-1744) almost made an epoch in the scientific treatment of history and mythology; in political economy and in archeology, there were numerous explorers; Florence became once more a seat of learning. Beccaria (1738-1794) by his writings introduced more humane views in criminal jurisprudence. Volta (1745-1827), an electrician, constructed the instrument called the voltaic pile. Metastasio (1698-1782) fostered the melodrama, or Italian opera, by his dramatic writings. Goldoni (1707-1793), a Venetian, was the most eminent writer of comedies. Tragedy reached its acme in the works of Alfieri (1749-1803), the founder of a new school.

IV. ENGLAND.

In England, after the Restoration, the influence of French standards in literature is obvious. The drama declined, partly from the earlier antagonism of the Puritans, and partly from the rage for indecency which infected the dramatic writers,--even those of much ability, as Congreve,--and defiled the stage. The Pilgrim's Progress of Bunyan (1628-88) is written in a plain, unaffected style, and is the most popular work of that age. In sharp contrast with Bunyan is Butler's Hudibras, a witty satire, in doggerel verse, upon Puritanism. The principal writer, prior to Queen Anne, is Dryden (1631-1700). We have passed now from the Romantic school of poetry, in which Shakspeare is the most exalted name, to the Classical school. In the age of Queen Anne, Pope (1688-1744), with his vigor, without elevation, of thought, his smooth versification and bright wit, is the principal figure. The same period produced the labored novels of Richardson (1689-1761), and the vigorous and lifelike fictions of Fielding (1707-1754), which are, unhappily, disfigured by coarse and licentious passages. In the early part of the century, Addison (1672-1719) and Steele (1672-1729) were the most distinguished essayists. In them, as in the novels of Defoe (1661-1731), the author of Robinson Crusoe, and in the prose writings of Swift (1667-1745), the richness and idiomatic force of the English tongue are seen; while in Samuel Johnson, the literary dictator in the latter part of the century, the author of the English Dictionary, of The Rambler, the Lives of the Poets, and Rasselas, we have a striking and contagious example of a stately, sounding, Latinized diction. In pleasing contrast, as regards style, which charms from its simplicity, are the writings of Goldsmith (1728-74). In poetry, Gray (1716-71), the author of the Elegy in a Country Churchyard, and Collins (1721-59), wrote little, but wrote well. The triumvirate of great English historians of the century are Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon. Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is a monument of masterly ability and of vast research; a work, however, marred by a want of naturalness in style, and, still more, by a lack of religious faith and reverence, and by impurity of tone and allusion. Hume's style is one of his chief claims to esteem as an historian; for he was indolent in his researches, and prejudiced in his views. He merited distinction chiefly as an economist and a metaphysician.

PHILOSOPHY.--In English philosophy, there are several writers of extraordinary talents and influence. John Locke (1632-1704), an upright man and a lover of freedom, wrote the celebrated Essay on the Understanding, besides other important works in political science and theology. He traced all our knowledge to two sources, sensation and reflection, ultimately to the first of these. Berkeley (1685-1753) advocated with rare genius an ideal theory of matter, and defended theism. Hume (1711-76) indirectly gave rise to much of the later philosophy, by his acute speculations in behalf of skepticism as to the reality of human knowledge and the foundation of accepted beliefs. Reid (1710-96) rescued philosophy from the attacks of Hume by the doctrine of "common sense," and thus founded the Scottish school of metaphysicians. Among the numerous authors who cultivated both philosophy and theology, particular distinction belongs to Dr. Samuel Clarke (1675-1729), and to Bishop Joseph Butler (1692-1752) who wrote briefly, but with marked power, on the nature of conscience, and on the Analogy between religion and what we know of the constitution and course of nature.

NEWTON: ADAM SMITH.--Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), the discoverer of the law of gravitation, made, through his Principia, one of the most important contributions ever made to the advancement of physical science. In 1776 Adam Smith, a Scotchman, who had previously written on metaphysics and politics, published his treatise on The Wealth of Nations, the first complete system of political economy. He showed that money is not wealth, but simply one product serving as a means of exchange. He made it clear, that, for one nation to gain in trade, it is not requisite that another should lose. Much light was thrown on political economy by essays of Hume.

V. AMERICA.

The most notable American writers before the War of Independence were Jonathan Edwards (1703-58), a great metaphysical genius, and the founder of a school in theology; and Benjamin Franklin (1706-90), whose writings, in excellent English, related mainly to ethical and economical topics. As the Revolution approached, there sprung up authors of ability on the political questions of the day. The Federalist, written after the war, by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, in favor of the proposed Constitution, is a work of high merit, as regards both matter and style.

NATURAL AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE.

The inductive method, or the "Baconian" method of observation and experiment, began to bear rich fruits. Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) not only discovered the law of gravitation: other discoveries by him in mechanics and optics were of great moment in the progress of those sciences. Fluxions, or the differential calculus, was discovered independently by both Newton and Leibnitz. Euler, a Swiss mathematician of the highest ability (1707-1783), contributed essentially to the advancement of mechanics. Napier invented logarithms, to shorten mathematical calculations. Huygens, a Dutch philosopher (1629-1695), invented the pendulum clock. Gregory (1638-1675) invented the reflecting telescope, Halley, an English astronomer (1656-1742), gave his name to a comet whose return he predicted. Guericke invented (1680), and Robert Boyle (1627-1691) perfected, the air-pump. Boyle was active in founding the Royal Society (1660). Volta, by the invention of the pile called by his name, and Franklin, signally advanced the study of electricity. In the history of zoölogy, Buffon is a great name, as is that of Lavoisier in chemistry. Linnaeus, a Swede, born in the same year with Buffon (1707), attained to the highest distinction by reducing botany to a system. The lives of the eminent astronomers Lagrange (1736-1813), Laplace (1749-1827), and Sir William Herschel (1738-1822), outlasted the eighteenth century.

The radical improvement of the steam-engine by James Watt, a Scotchman (1736-1819),--who obtained his first patent in 1769,--and the invention of the spinning-jenny by Richard Arkwright (1732-1792), are indicative of a new era of progress in the application of science to practical arts and uses.

RELIGION AND THEOLOGY.

ENGLISH DEISM.--The religious debates and the religious wars of the seventeenth century were followed by much indifference and disbelief in the eighteenth. Weariness with sectarian struggles, and revolt against the yoke of creeds, were pushed to the extreme of a denial of revealed religion,--finally, in France, to a denial of the truths of natural religion also. In England, there appeared a school of deistical writers, beginning earlier with Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1581-1648), and continued through Tindal, Morgan, Bolingbroke, Shaftesbury, Collins, and others. On the other side, Butler, Lardner (1684-1768), Bentley, the best of England's classical scholars and critics (1662-1742), and, later, Paley (1743-1805), were among the authors who defended the divine origin of Christianity on rational and historical grounds. Of these writers, Butler was the most profound, Lardner and Bentley the most learned, and Paley the most lucid.

THE "QUAKERS."--During this period, the Society of Friends, "Quakers," was founded in England by George Fox (1624-1691), who in 1647, impelled by what he considered a divine call, began the life of an itinerant preacher. He and his followers were subjected frequently to cruel persecution, both in England and America. In exceptional cases, they fell into extravagances of enthusiasm, interrupted public worship, walked in the streets clothed in sackcloth, or in some instances naked. They condemned war, practiced non-resistance, objected to oaths and to a paid ministry, and set an example of the utmost plainness and simplicity in speech and dress. Among their many converts were William Penn, and their able and learned theologian, Robert Barclay (1648-1690). The Friends, by their Christian forbearance and patience, their purity of conduct and their philanthropy, and their tranquil piety, gradually won the respect of the other religious bodies, who were at first offended by their novel tenets and manners, and by the occasional occurrence of revolting manifestations of a half-insane enthusiasm.

METHODISM.--Of the religious movements in Protestant countries, Methodism is the most noteworthy. This movement was originated by a little group of students at Oxford, of whom John Wesley, his brother Charles, and George Whitefield were the chief. Of these, John Wesley (1703-1791) united with intellectual ability and cultivation, and religious fervor, a remarkable organizing capacity. Whitefield was an orator in the pulpit, of unrivaled eloquence. He was a Calvinist in his theology, and separated from Wesley on account of Wesley's Arminian views. They were nicknamed "Methodists," from their strictness of life in the University, and their systematic ways. Wesley and his associates preached to the common people in England, including the poor colliers and miners, with untiring ardor and surprising effect. Their converts were very numerous, and were formed into societies under a definite polity and discipline. The Wesleyan movement was much opposed in the Church of England by those who stood in dread of enthusiasm. By ordaining lay preachers and superintendents for America, and by putting its chapels under the protection of the Toleration Act,--measures which Wesley deemed necessary,--Methodism became separate from the Anglican Established Church. As a distinct body, it gained a. multitude of adherents in England and America.

MORAVIANISM.--In 1722 a company of persecuted Moravian Christians was received by Count Zinzendorf (1700-1760) on his estate, situated on the borders of Bohemia. They founded a town called Herrnkut. Zinzendorf became their bishop. The new community was distinguished for sincere piety and for missionary zeal. They did not in the least antagonize the Lutheran churches, yet had an organization of their own. Some of them settled in America. The Moravians never became a very numerous body; but their influence in promoting spiritual religion and education, and in carrying Christianity to the heathen, has been more potent than that of many larger bodies of Christians. It was specially wholesome in Germany, at a time when, under the auspices of Frederick the Great, the French type of unbelief prevailed in the higher classes of society.

PIETISM.--Prior to Zinzendorf, Spener (1635-1705), a man of devout feeling, had given rise to the "Pietists," as the promoters of a warmer type of religious experience than was approved by the current opinion were derisively named.

SWEDENBORG.--Swedenborg (1688-1772), a Swedish noble, a mathematician and naturalist of large attainments, communicated, in copious writings, what he sincerely professed to consider special revelations made to him respecting God, the unseen world, and the sense of the Scriptures. His adherents are called "The New Church," or Swedenborgians.

THE JESUIT ORDER.--Under the influences that had sway in the eighteenth century, the authority of the popes sank in the Catholic countries. The spirit of innovation was rife. One of the remarkable incidents of the time, characteristic of its tendency, was the conflict of Portugal and the Bourbon courts of France and Spain, with the Society of Jesuits. The Jesuits had secretly established, unobserved, a state under their own exclusive control in Paraguay, a part of which, by a treaty of Portugal with Spain, fell to Portugal. Other charges, some relating to interference in political affairs, and some to other and different grounds of complaint, led to the expulsion of the order from all Portuguese territory (1757); and soon after, it was suppressed in France and in Spain, and in several of the Italian states. The Jesuit order was formally abolished by Pope Clement XIV. in 1773, to be again restored by papal authority in 1814.

ESSAYS AT POLITICAL REFORM.

RUSSIA: GERMANY.--The minds of men were unsettled, not only by the prevalent tone of literature and speculation, but by governmental changes and reforms. The disposition was to introduce French methods of administration. Catherine II. of Russia (1762-1796) tried the experiment of various judicial and educational reforms. Frederick the Great, with more wisdom and consistency, introduced many changes for the benefit of the industrial class. The most sweeping reforms were undertaken by the Emperor Joseph II. (1780-1790), after the death of his mother, Maria Theresa. His measures for the reduction of the power of the clergy and of the nobility, the closing of monasteries, and the weakening of the connection of the Austrian Church with Rome, were of a very radical character. He himself finally became convinced that they were too radical to be completely realized, in the existing state of opinion among his subjects. Two of his reforms--the abolition of serfdom, and the edict of religious toleration--remained in force. The other changes did not survive him. The attempts to impose his reforms in the Austrian Netherlands provoked an insurrection. _Leopold II. _(1790-1792), Joseph's successor, suppressed the Belgian revolt, but repealed the ordinances of his brother which had occasioned it.

TUSCANY.--In Tuscany, the brother of Joseph II., Leopold, prior to his becoming emperor, undertook likewise a great plan of ecclesiastical reform in the same line as that of Joseph (1786); but there the opposition of the bishops prevented him from practically carrying out his scheme.

PORTUGAL.--In Portugal, the house of Braganza had ascended the throne in 1640. Joseph Emanuel (1750-1777) left the management of the government to his minister, Pombal. His measures were contrived to weaken the power of the nobles and the clergy. By him the warfare against the Jesuits was carried forward. The fall of Pombal, which followed the death of the king, led to the abolition of all his reforms, which had the same fate as those undertaken later in Austria by Joseph II.

LITERATURE.--See the lists of works on pp. 16, 395, 450, and Adams's Manual of Historical Literature; SCHLOSSER'S _History of the Eighteenth Century_ (8 vols,); NOORDEN'S _Europaische Gesch. im 18tn. Jahr.: Der Spanische Erbfolgekrieg_ (2 vols.); Lord John Wakeman, European History, 1598-1715; Hassall, _European History_, 1715-1789; Perlcins, Regency and Louis XV, (3 vols.); St. Simon, _The Memoirs of the Reign of Louis XIV. and the Regency_ [an abridgment, 3 vols.]; Voltaire, _Age of Louis XIV_.; PHILIPPSON (in Oncken's Series), _Das Zeitalter Ludwigs d. Vierzehten_; A. de Broglie, _Louis XV: The King's Secret Correspondence with his Agents_, etc. (2 vols.); A. Thiers, _The Mississippi Bubble_; Morley's Life of Voltaire, and _Life of Rousseau_.

A. v, Arneth, Geschichte Maria Theresas (10 vols., 1863-79): DUNCKER, Aus der Zeit Friedrichs d. Grossen, etc.; RANKE, Memoirs of the House of Brandenburg, and History of Prussia during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (3 vols); CARLYLE'S History of Frederick the Second (6 vols.); Tuttle, History of Prussia (4 vols.); Von Raumer, Frederick the Second and his Times; A. de Broglie, Frederick the Great and Maria Theresa (2 vols.); ONCKEN, Das Zeitalter Friedrich d. Grossen (2 vols.).

The Diaries of PEPYS and EVELYN; R. Vaughan, Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell; MACAULAY'S History of England from the Accession of James II. (4 vols.); MAHON'S History of England (1701-13), also History of England (1713 to 1783) (7 vols.); BURTON, History of the Reign of Queen Anne; E.E.MORRIS, The Age of Anne; Alison, Military Life of the Duke of Marlborough; Life of Marlborough, by Gleig, by Coxe (3 vols.); LECKY'S History of England in the Eighteenth Century (2 vols.); Froude, The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century (2 vols.); Mahan, Influence of the Sea Power on History; Egerton, Short History of British Colonial Policy; Seeley, The Expansion of England; Payne, European Colonies; Lucas, Introduction to a Historical Geography of the British Colonies; H. Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of George II. (3 vols.), and of George III. (4 vols.); J. G. Phillimore, History of England during the Reign of George III.; J. Adolphus, History of England [1760 83] (3 vols.); Wraxall (1751-1831), Historical Memoirs of his own Time (4 vols.). and Posthumous Memoirs of his own Time, (3 vols.); May, Constitutional History of England [1760-1860] (2 vols.); STOUGHTON, History of Religion in England from the Opening of the Long Parliament to the End of the Eighteenth Century (6 vols.); TYERMAN'S Life of Wesley; SOUTHEY'S Life of Wesley; TYERMAN'S Life of Whitefield; TYLER'S History of American Literature; VAN LAUN, History of French Literature (3 vols.); MORLEY'S Series of English Men of Letters; TAINE'S History of English Literature.

Schuyler's Life of Peter the Great; Catherine II., Memoirs written by herself; RAM-BAUD'S History of Russia.

Histories of the United States by BANCROFT, HILDRETH, McMaster, Bryant and Howard, DOYLE, Wilson, Laboulaye, NEUMANN, Fiske, Schouler; Winsor, Narrative and Critical History of America (8 vols.); Hart, American History told by Contemporaries (4 vols.); Macdonald, Select Charters and _Select Documents_; Preston, Documents; Channing, _The United States of America_ (1765-1865); Higginson, _Larger History of the United States_; Goldwin Smith, The United States; LODGE'S Short History of the English Colonies in America; PARKMAN'S Series of Histories of the French in America; Frothingham, Rise of the Republic [to 1790]; Weeden, _Economic and Social History of New England_; Palfrey's _History of New England_; Sabine's American Loyalists; Bruce, _Economic History of Virginia_; Trevelyan, The American Revolution (1766-76); LOSSING, Field Book of the American Revolution; Fiske's Old Virginia and Dutch and Quaker Colonies; brief treatment of epochs by Fisher, Thwaites, Hart, Sloane, Walker.

Lives of Washington, by MARSHALL, SPARKS, IRVING, Weems; Lives of John Adams, by C. F. ADAMS, by MORSE; _Life of Franklin_, by himself (Bigelow's ed.), by SPARKS, by Parton; Lives of Jefferson, by RANDALL, Parton, Morse; Tudor's Life of James Otis; Life of Samuel Adams, by Wells, by Hosmer; Life of Hamilton, by MORSE; Life of Madison, by RIVES; W. Jay's Life of John Jay (2 vols.); H. Von Hoist, Constitutional and Political History of the United States [from 1759]; Sparks's American Biography (2 series, 25 vols.). WINSOR's _Reader's Handbook of the American Revolution_ (1761-83), a very useful work, gives the literature on the subject (1880); Bancroft, _History of the Formation of the Constitution of the United States_.

PERIOD IV. THE ERA OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. (1789-1815.)

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Introduction

CHARACTER OF THE REVOLUTION.--The French Revolution was a tremendous upheaval of society, which brought with it the abolition of feudalism and monarchy, and the securing of an equality of political rights. Its immediate result in France was the establishment of a democratic republic, followed by an empire resting on military power. Its conquests, and the predominance of France, provoked an uprising of the other European peoples in behalf of national independence. This overthrew the French empire, and produced a temporary restoration of the old dynasty. But the effect of the Revolution, in which the other civilized nations largely shared, was the substitution, in the room of the medieval state, of the modern state resting on a broader basis of equality as regards the rights and obligations of different classes. In the Western nations of the Continent, serfdom, and manifold abuses, civil and ecclesiastical, were abolished.

CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION.--First among the causes of the Revolution in France, was the hostility felt towards the privileged classes,--the king, the nobles, and the clergy,--on account of the disabilities and burdens which law and custom imposed on the classes beneath them. When Charles Vll. organized a standing army, and laid direct taxes to support it, the burghers and peasants rejoiced (p. 328). The monarchy was thus enabled to shield them, and subdue the great nobles. Louis XIV., as long as he was successful, was sustained by the pride and national spirit of the country. Yet his domination over the nobility and the Church left the higher orders in possession not only of the offices and honors which helped to fasten them submissively to the monarch, but also left them in the exercise of the numberless complicated privileges of local rule and taxation,--privileges which were the growth of ages, and which laid on the necks of the people a yoke too heavy to be borne.

1. THE LAND: THE PEASANTS.--Nearly two-thirds of the land in France was in the hands of the nobles and of the clergy. A great part of it was ill cultivated by its indolent owners. The nobles preferred the gayeties of Paris to a residence on their estates. There were many small land-owners, but many had individually too little land to furnish them with subsistence. The treatment of the peasant was often such that when he "looked upon the towers of his lord's castle, the dearest wish of his heart was to burn it down, with all its registers of debt." There was not a large middle class of land-owners, possessed of farms which, although small, were yet adequate to yield them a living. The clergy, besides having the whole management of education, held an immense amount of land, seigniorial control over thousands of peasants, and a vast income from tithes and other sources. In some provinces, there was a better state of things than in others; but, in general, the rich had the enjoyments, and the poor carried the burdens.

2. MONOPOLIES.--Manufactures and trade, although encouraged under Colbert, were fettered by oppressive monopolies and a strict organization of guilds.

3. CORRUPT GOVERNMENT.--The administration of government was both arbitrary and corrupt. Places in parliament and in the army, and most higher offices, were sold, but sold, as a rule, only to nobles. When parliament refused to register decrees of taxation, the king held "beds of justice,"--a method of passing laws against parliamentary protest (p. 299). Warrants of arrest and imprisonment--lettres de cachet--were issued by his sole authority.

4. LOSS OF RESPECT FOR ROYALTY.--Respect for the throne was lost. Under Louis XIV., the number of salable offices was incredibly multiplied. In his last days, "in many towns the trade in timber, wine, and spirits was taken out of private hands; nay, even the poor earnings of those who towed boats on the rivers, of porters and funeral mutes, were made a monopoly, and secured to certain families exclusively, in consideration of a large premium." "Famine prevailed in every province. The bark of trees was the daily food of hundreds of thousands." The debauchery of Louis XV., and his feeble foreign policy, tended to dissipate what reverence for royalty was left.

5. ABORTIVE ESSAYS AT REFORM.--The efforts at political and social reform in France and in other countries, emanating from sovereigns after the great wars, produced a restless feeling without effecting their purpose of social reorganization.

6. POLITICAL SPECULATION.--The current of thought was in a revolutionary direction. Traditional beliefs in religion were boldly questioned. Political speculation was rife. Montesquieu had drawn attention to the liberty secured by the English constitution. Voltaire had dwelt on human rights,--the rights of the individual. Rousseau had expatiated on the sovereign right of the majority.

7. EXAMPLE OF AMERICA.--Add to these agencies, the influence of the American Revolution, and of the American Declaration of Independence, with its proclamation of human rights, and of the foundation of government in contract and the consent of the people.

8. THE IMMEDIATE CAUSE.--The immediate cause of the Revolution was the immense public debt, and the virtual bankruptcy of the government.

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I. FROM THE ASSEMBLING OF THE STATES GENERAL TO THE EXECUTION OF LOUIS XVI. (1789-1793)

LOUIS XVI. (1774-92): THE QUEEN.--Louis XVI. differed from his two predecessors in being morally pure, and benevolent in his feelings; but he was of a dull mind, void of energy, and with an obstinacy of character that did not supply the place of an enlightened firmness. He had married (1770) Marie Antoinette, the daughter of the Empress Maria Theresa. The vivacious young queen, as well as the youthful king, at first charmed the people. But her disregard of court etiquette, and her gay, impulsive ways, provoked the dislike of many high in station, and exposed her to the natural but unmerited suspicion, on the part of the people, that she had faults worse than mere indiscretion. A great scandal connected with a diamond necklace, which an unprincipled woman, the Countess Lamotte, falsely asserted that the queen desired the Cardinal de Rohan to purchase for her, did much to make her the victim of gross defamation (1785). Her forbearance towards unworthy favorites, and her intermeddling in the affairs of government, in opposition to political reforms, gradually kindled against her wide-spread disrespect and aversion.

TO THE STATES GENERAL.--Helpless under the pressure of the heavy debt and the deficit in revenue, the king called to his side Turgot (1774) as controller-general of finance, a political economist and statesman of remarkable integrity and insight. He set to work to reduce the enormous and extravagant public expenditures, and to introduce reforms for the purpose of increasing the public income. He proposed to do away with internal duties on articles of commerce; to break up many guilds; to abolish the corvée, or the hard and hateful requirement upon the peasant to labor so many days on the land of the lord; and to introduce a greater amount of local self-government. These, and other wholesome reforms in the civil service and in the army, excited the violent opposition of the nobles and the clergy, and of the whole body of interested courtiers. The king weakly yielded; the great minister was dismissed; and France lost its golden opportunity to prevent infinitely greater calamities than any which the selfish opponents of change dreaded for themselves. Necker, a Genevan banker of far less financial ability, was now placed at the helm (1776-1781). His remedies were not radical; yet his movements in the direction of economy, and for giving publicity to the financial situation of the government, provoked such hatred in the classes affected that he had to withdraw. Calonne, a prodigal and incapable successor, in connection with the increased expenses of the government consequent on the American War, brought things to such a pass that the king called together (1787) an Assembly of Notables, not so much to get their advice as to obtain their support for a plan of reform not unlike that of Turgot. This necessary reform they selfishly refused to sanction. Calonne fled to London. Necker, to the joy of the people, who built on him vain hopes, was recalled (1788); and it was resolved to summon the States General, who had not met since 1614. To this measure the incompetence and selfishness of the ruling classes had inevitably led.

THE TRIUMPH OF THE THIRD ESTATE.--The States General met at Versailles, May 5, 1789. The clergy numbered three hundred, the nobles three hundred, and the third estate (tiers etat)--whose plain black dress was in contrast with the more showy costume of the higher orders--numbered six hundred. A pamphlet of Abbé Sieyés, in answer to the question, "What is the Third Estate?" declared that is the nation in its true sovereignty and supreme authority. A contest arose at once on the question, whether there should be three houses, or whether all the members should sit together. The Third Estate insisted on the latter plan. The Parisian astronomer, Bailly, was their president. Among the members were Sieyes, and Mirabeau, a man of great intellect and of commanding eloquence. They declared themselves to be the National Assembly; and they persisted, against the king's will, in sitting apart until, at his request, the other orders gave away and joined them. It was resolved not to adjourn until the nation should be put in possession of a constitution; meantime, however, that, so long as the body should not be dissolved, money should be raised by increase of taxation, and the interest be paid on the public debt. The attempts of Louis to dissolve the assembly were firmly resisted by the third estate, which was joined by Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun, Gregoire, afterwards Bishop of Blois, and, of the nobility, by the rich, ambitious, and unprincipled Duke of Orleans. The king again yielded, and advised the nobles and clergy to remain.

DESTRUCTION OF THE BASTILLE: EMIGRATION OF NOBLES.--The aristocratic party, on account of this victory of the third estate, and because they could not trust the guard of the king, procured the substitution for it of German and Swiss troops. The excitement caused by this proceeding, and the news of Necker's dismissal, led to a mob of the rough Parisian populace, who seized weapons from the workshops, and forced the surrender of the Bastille, the grim old prison where political offenders had been immured,--the visible monument of ages of royal tyranny,--which they razed to the ground. The heads of Delaunay the governor, and several of the garrison, were carried on pikes through the streets by the frenzied crowd. The mob wore cockades on their hats; these became the badges of the Revolution. This first outbreaking of mob violence had at once important effects. Necker was recalled. Lafayette was made commander of the militia of Paris, organized as a National Guard. The tricolor--red, white, and blue--was adopted for the flag. Bailly became mayor of Paris. The king came to Paris, and showed himself, with the national colors on his breast, to the people, at the Hotel de Ville, thereby giving a tacit sanction to what had been done. Then began the emigration of the nobles to foreign countries: the king's brother, the Prince of Condé, and others high in rank, left the country. The vices which the nobles had learned to practice at home were now to be exhibited abroad. The passions of the revolutionary party were to be inflamed by the suspicion of a complicity of the king and court with the plots of their absent supporters, who strove to enlist other nations in the work of trampling down liberty in France. The emigrants had some reason to fear. Municipal guards were formed in various towns by the party of progress. Soon there were risings of peasantry in several districts. Individuals in Paris--among them one of the ministers who succeeded Necker-were massacred. Nevertheless, the emigration was a grand error. The danger at the moment was not great; and, whatever the peril, the evils of desertion were far more to be deprecated.

THE NEW CONSTITUTION: ASSIGNATS.--The National Assembly, at the instigation of Lafayette, passed a Declaration of Rights, after the pattern of the American Declaration of Independence. On motion of his brother-in-law, the Vicomte de Noailles, the representatives of the nobles, in an outburst of enthusiastic self-renunciation, gave up their feudal rights and privileges. They liberated the peasants from their burdensome obligations: the clergy relinquished their tithes; the sale of offices and titles was abolished; equality of taxes was ordained; all citizens were made eligible to all stations, civil and military. The new constitution provided for one legislative chamber, to which should belong the right to initiate all enactments. The king's veto only suspended the adoption of a measure for two legislative terms. The assent of the chamber was necessary for the validity of all foreign treaties, and for declaring war or concluding peace. The State assumed the support of the clergy. It was a constitutional monarchy that was framed,--such a system as La Fayette and moderate republicans desired. The essence of republicanism was secured under old forms. Assignats, or notes, were issued as a currency, for which the public lands were to be the security,--a safeguard that was ineffective.

THE MOB AT VERSAILLES.--The delay of the king to proclaim the constitution, the call of a regiment of troops to Versailles, imprudent speeches and songs at a court banquet, stirred up the Parisian mob, who ascribed the scarcity of food to the absence of the king from Paris. A countless throng, made up largely of coarse women, went out to Versailles, intruded into the legislative chamber, and at night (Oct. 5) made their way into the palace, over the bodies of the guards. The royal family were rescued by La Fayette and the National Guard. The next day they were forced to go to Paris, attended by this wild and hungry retinue, and took up their abode in the Tuileries. To Paris, also, the National Assembly transferred itself. More and more, Paris gained control.

PROGRESS OF THE REVOLUTION.--The independence of the clergy, and the judicial authority of the parliaments, were now extinguished by the Assembly, The property of the Church was confiscated, as the salaries of the clergy were to be paid by the State; the cloisters and monastic orders were abolished; the clergy were to be chosen by the people; there was to be absolute religious freedom; there was a new organization of bishoprics; the press was to be free; France was divided, for purposes of government, into eighty-three departments; civil officers were to be chosen, directly or indirectly, by popular vote; hereditary nobility, with titles and coats-of-arms, was swept away. The equality of all citizens was ordained. There was to be uniformity in measures, weights, and coinage. A uniform judicial system was instituted, with jury trials in criminal cases.

THE CLERGY.--Thenceforward the clergy were divided into two classes,--those who took the required oath to the constitution (about one third of the whole number), and the "refractory" ones, who, in accordance with the Pope's will, refused it.

THE CLUBS: PARIS.--While these constitutional changes were taking place, the mass of the populace were becoming more and more excited by vehement orators, who discoursed of human rights, and by inflammatory journals. Clubs were organized for democratic agitation, which were named, from the places where they met, Jacobins and Cordeliers. The latter had for their head Danton, with his stentorian voice, and the brilliant young journalist Camille Desmoulins. The Jacobins aimed later at the destruction of the old institutions. The moderate monarchists, such as Bailly and La Fayette, then formed another club (the Feuillants). The municipality or commune of Paris was divided into forty-eight sections, each with an assembly which served as a theater for demagogical harangues.

FÊTE OF THE FEDERATION.--For a time the skies appeared bright. On the 14th of July, 1790, a great Federative Commemoration, or festival of civic fraternity, was held on the Champ de Mars in Paris. Talleyrand at the head of three hundred priests clad in white, with tri-color sashes, officiated at an altar in the midst of the arena. First, La Fayette as president of the National Guard, then the president of the Assembly, and last the king, took an oath before the half-million of spectators to uphold the constitution. Then the queen, partaking in the common enthusiasm, held up the dauphin in her arms, and pledged his future obedience to the oath. There was unbounded joy at what was supposed to be a new millennial era of political freedom and brotherhood. The grand festival awakened sympathy and hope in all the countries of Europe.

FLIGHT OF THE KING.--The hope of unity and political bliss, which exalted all minds to a high pitch of emotion, proved, before long, to be an illusive dream. The king was not ready to confirm the ordinance respecting priests, which made them civil officers; nor was he ready to declare the plotting emigrant nobles at Coblenz and Worms traitors. Mirabeau, who had enlisted in behalf of the king in a resistance to further measures for the reduction of regal authority, and in behalf of a constitutional monarchy, in which the legislative, judicial, and executive functions should be kept apart, suddenly died (April 2, 1791), at the age of forty-two. His death, caused partly by overwork of brain, and partly by dissolute habits, deprived the conservative republicans and the court of their ablest defender. No one like him was left to stem the current of revolutionary passion, which threatened to burst through all barriers. The Paris sections became more and more violent. They hindered a proposed journey of Louis to St. Cloud. This determined him, against the urgent wishes of the queen, to escape, with his family, to the army of the Marquis de Bouillé, at Montmédy. But the fugitives were stopped in their flight, at Varennes, and brought back in custody to Paris. This unwise and abortive proceeding of the king, coupled with his formal annulling of all that he had done in the two years previous, had for its natural consequence his suspension from office. An insurrection of the mob, to put an end to the monarchy, was suppressed by La Fayette. At the end of September, Louis swore to the revised constitution, and was restored to the throne. The Assembly then dissolved, to give place to another, which should complete the new political creation by needful legislation: hence it was called

THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY (Oct. 1791-Sept. 1792).--It was composed of seven hundred and forty-five members, mostly young men, among them a number of eloquent orators. One-half of the body were advocates. The National Assembly, by a kind of self-denying ordinance, had voted to exclude themselves from membership in the new body, which thus lacked the benefit of their knowledge and experience. In the Assembly, on the right, were the different classes of supporters of constitutional monarchy, the royalists, and the Feuillants (of the school of La Fayette). On the left, were the majority, which steadily increased in numbers, and embraced (1) the Girondists, or moderate republicans; (2) the Mountain,--so called from their higher seats in the hall,--comprising the most decided democrats or radicals. Here were the leaders of the Jacobins and Cordeliers. A few of the Girondists were for going beyond the constitution of 1791, in the direction of a republic after the model of the United States. They were enamored of the spirit of the ancient commonwealths. They were fond of recurring to the Roman orators and historians. Roland, Brissot, and Vergniaud were among their leaders.

THE PARISIAN POPULACE.--The populace of Paris made Pétion, a democrat, their mayor. In the Jacobin club were Robespierre; Marat, who denounced fiercely in his journal, "The Friend of the People," as aristocrats, all classes above the common level, whether by birth or property, and the former play-actor, D'Herbois. Danton, and Camille Desmoulins, who belonged to the Cordeliers, took part in its sessions. From this company, the Girondists separated after the fall of the king. The red Jacobin cap came into vogue as a badge of republicanism, and the Marseillaise as its favorite inspiring song. Declaimers and journals were in full blast, stirring up the fears and wrath of the people.

THE ASSEMBLY AND THE KING.--The Assembly passed penal acts against the recusant priests,--those who refused the oath; and against the emigrants, who were trying to stir up the powers of Europe against the French government in its new form. These enactments were met by the king with a veto.

WAR WITH AUSTRIA AND PRUSSIA.--The authors of the French Revolution have been so generally objects of execration, and so terrible crimes were actually perpetrated in the course of it, that it is only just to note the circumstances which explain the origin of these atrocities, and which enabled violent leaders and wild passions to usurp control. The efforts of the constitutionalists to save the throne were balked by the exiles and the foreign governments. Frederick William II. of Prussia (1786-1797), and Leopold II. the emperor (1790-1792), in the Declaration of Pilnitz (Aug. 27, 1791), called on the other European powers to join them in aiding Louis XVI. to establish a right sort of government. From Russia, Sweden, Spain, and even Switzerland, there were not wanting manifestations of hostility. The attitude of Austria had the effect to bring into power a Girondist ministry. They wanted war as the best means of attaining the objects which they had in view at home. On April 20, 1792, Louis was compelled to go to the Assembly, and propose a declaration of war against Austria. "The courts of Europe had heaped up the fuel: the Girondists applied the torch." They were not averse to a crusade in behalf of liberty.

THE CONDITION OF GERMANY.--Germany consisted of a multitude of states, of which Austria (which had large territories not German) and Prussia were the chief, and were in constant rivalry. The Holy Roman Empire kept up its name and forms. Besides smaller sovereignties, as Saxony and Bavaria, there were two hundred and fifty petty principalities, fifty imperial cities, and several hundred knights, each with an insignificant domain subject to him. The empire was one body only in theory. National feeling had died out. The Diet had little to do, and no efficiency. Austria, which held the imperial office, and included in its extensive dominions Milan and Southern Netherlands, had sunk into a "gloomy and soulless despotism." The reforms of Joseph II. produced a ferment; but after the death of Leopold II. (1790-1792), under Francis II., a sickly and selfish ruler, a reactionary policy, inspired by the dread of change, had full sway. Thugut, the minister of Francis, cared only for the acquisition of territory: the people were so many millions "to be taxed, to be drilled, to be kept down by the police." In Prussia, Frederick William II. (1786-1797) and his people had no feeling so strong as that of hostility to Austria, whose influence was predominant in the minor states. Prussia cared more for getting additional Polish territory than for helping the French emigrants. The Prussian people were separated by rigorous lines into three classes,--nobles, burghers, and peasants. The nobles were poor. The lawful occupations of each class were prescribed by law. "The mass of the peasantry, at least in the country east of the Elbe, were serfs attached to the soil." The offices in the army were confined to nobles, on whose absolute obedience the king could count. Blows were inflicted on the common soldier as if he were a slave. In some of the other Protestant states, the character of the government had improved. In the south and west, the serfs had been set free. In the ecclesiastical states, including the electorates of Mentz, Trèves, and Cologne, the prince-bishops and canons were nobles, who led a gay and luxurious life. Nowhere were poverty and wretchedness so general as in the lands of the knights. The political life of Germany, notwithstanding its abundant resources, mainly from the decay of public spirit and the want of political unity, had become stagnant and corrupt. Germany was almost incapable of vigorous, united action.

CONFLICT OF LOUIS AND THE ASSEMBLY.--There was no real union between Louis XVI. and the Assembly. Troops of the National Guard, to the number of twenty thousand, from the provinces were to encamp near Paris. This measure, as well as a decree for the banishment of the non-juring clergy, the king refused to sanction. The Girondist ministers laid down their office. A mob burst into the Tuileries: they put on the king's head a Jacobin cap, but he remained calm and steadfast in his refusal to assent to the decrees. La Fayette came to Paris from the Northern army, to restore order; but the queen treated him with habitual distrust, and he fell under suspicion with the radicals. He went back to the army without effecting any thing.

IMPRISONMENT OF THE KING.--Prussia had joined its rival, Austria. Ferdinand of Brunswick, an officer trained under Frederick the Great, commanded the Prussian forces. He issued (July 25) a threatening proclamation to the French people. There were three French armies in the field, under Rochambeau, La Fayette, and Luckner; but the fire of the Revolution had not yet entered into the veins of the soldiers. Military reverses heightened the revolutionary excitement in Paris. The municipal government was broken up by Danton and his associates, with the mob of poor and desperate partisans at their back; and its place was taken by commissioners from the sections. An armed throng again attacked the Tuileries. The king took refuge in the hall of the Assembly. The Swiss guards fought bravely against the assailants, when they received an order from him to cease firing. The result was that they were slaughtered without mercy. The uniform composure of the king in the most trying situations, and his conscientious feelings, were a poor substitute for intellectual force. The Assembly voted to suspend the exercise of his authority, to put him and his family under surveillance, to hand over the young prince to the custody of a person charged with his education, and to call a national convention to draw up a constitution. The royal family were given into the hands of the Paris commune, and lodged as prisoners, in apartments scantily furnished, in the castle called the Temple.

MASSACRES OF SEPTEMBER.--The blundering of the royalists, their intrigues, and the pressure of the coalition of foreign enemies, had thrown the power into the hands of the Jacobins. The city council, and Danton, the minister of justice, were really supreme, although the Girondists had a share in the new ministry. La Fayette was accused and proscribed, and fled from the country. He was captured by the Austrians, and kept in prison at Olmutz until 1797. The news of the advance of the allies led to the "massacres of September," when the prisons in Paris, which had been filled with priests and laymen arrested on charges of complicity with the enemies of liberty, were entered by ruffians acting under influence of Marat and the commune's "committee of surveillance," and, after "a burlesque trial" before an armed jury, were murdered. In Versailles, Lyons, Orleans, and other towns, there were like massacres. The victims of these massacres numbered about two thousand.

TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF THE KING.--The National Convention was made up entirely of republicans. The monarchy was abolished, and France was declared a republic. The Girondists had at first the preponderance in numbers; but the Jacobins, led by Robespierre, Danton, Marat, Couthon, Fouché, the Duke of Orleans (who called himself Philip Égalité), St. Just, Billaud-Varenne, Barère, were supported by the clubs and the city council, and by the savage populace of the sections,--the sans culottes. The guillotine--a machine for beheading, which Guillotin, a physician, did not invent, but recommended for use--was the instrument on which the fanatical revolutionists placed most of their reliance for the extirpation of "aristocracy." The energy of the Jacobins, aided by the general dread of a restoration of the royalists to power, and by the fury of the Paris populace, proved too strong for the more moderate party to withstand. The king, designated as Louis Capet, was arraigned before the assembly, tried, and condemned to death. There were seven hundred and twenty-one votes: his death was decreed by a small majority (Jan. 17, 1793). Through all the terrible scenes of the trial, the parting with his wife and children, and the execution (Jan. 21), Louis manifested a serene and Christian temper.

VICTORIES OF FRANCE.--Meantime, in France the war was felt, and justly, to be a war of self-defense. The enemies were a privileged class in alliance with foreign invaders. Volunteers flocked to the field. The troops under Dumouriez and others had been successful. At Valmy (Sept. 20, 1792) the allies, under Brunswick, were defeated. The victory of Dumouriez at Jemmappes was followed by the conquest of the Austrian Netherlands (Nov., 1792). Savoy and Nice were annexed to France. The Scheldt was declared free and open to commerce, and Antwerp was made an open port.

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II. FROM THE EXECUTION OF LOUIS XVI. TO THE FALL OF ROBESPIERRE (JAN. 21, 1793-JULY 27, 1794)

THE FIRST COALITION.-The execution of the king was the signal for the union of the European powers against France. The intention of the revolutionary party to propagate their system in other countries afforded one excuse for this interference. The Convention (Nov. 19, 1792) had offered their assistance to peoples wishing to throw off the existing governments. Another reason was the recent annexations, and the proceedings in respect to the free navigation of the Scheldt. The main ground and cement of the coalition was the dread which the governments felt of revolutionary movements among their own subjects, from their sympathy with the new institutions in France.

POLITICS IN ENGLAND.--The reason just mentioned was operative in Great Britain. The revolution of 1688 had given power to a group of Whig families and their retainers. To shake off this Whig control, which had long continued, was a constant aim of George III. In William Pitt, the younger, he found a minister capable, under the favoring circumstances, of achieving this result. He was made prime minister in 1783, when he was only twenty-five years old. The king, in 1788, had been attacked with insanity; and while he was thus afflicted, George, Prince of Wales, who was unpopular on account of his loose morals, ruled as regent. The regent affiliated with the Whigs, but Pitt retained his office. The leader of the liberal party was Charles James Fox, a man of noble talents and generous instincts, but notoriously irregular in his habits. The sympathy in England with the Revolution of 1789 was widely diffused. Edmund Burke, however, the great philosophical statesman, who had defended the cause of freedom in the American War, was alarmed by the events in France, and still more by the theories of human rights propounded by the enthusiastic friends of the Revolution. These ideas were set forth in England, in an offensive form, in the writings of Thomas Paine. Burke published, in 1790, his Reflections on the French Revolution, in which he attacked as visionary the political notions of the French school in regard to human rights, and denounced them for their dangerous tendency. He separated from his party, and publicly broke friendship with Fox. Pitt was personally averse to war with France, but was driven into it by the prevailing sentiment. The anti-revolutionary feeling excited by the news of the death of Louis moved England to an armed interference which involved the most important consequences to all Europe. A Tory minister, Pitt was supported in the long struggle in Europe by a majority of the Whigs. In the next twenty years, Great Britain, by her military strength on the land, and much more on the sea, and in particular by her wealth, freely poured out in subsidies to her allies on the Continent, was a powerful, as well as the most persevering, antagonist of France.

FALL OF THE GIRONDISTS.--The advance of the allied armies increased the violence and strengthened the hands of the Jacobins. Dumouriez lost a battle in Neerwinden (March 18, 1793), and fell back, through Belgium, to the French frontier. He was in sympathy with the Girondists, and complained of the doings of the Jacobins in Paris and in his army. Being called to account, he went over to the Austrians. This desertion weakened the Girondist party, and put new force into the party of Jacobins. At the same time, news came of a royalist revolt in the West, and of conflicts between the Jacobins and their adversaries in the cities of the South. Danton, who understood that "audacity" was the secret of success, procured the appointment by the convention of a Committee of Public Safety (April 6, 1793), which was to exercise the most frightful dictatorship known in history. A "committee of general security" was put in charge of the police of the whole country. The commune of Paris co-operated in the energetic efforts of the Jacobin leaders to collect recruits and to strengthen the military force. The three chiefs were Danton, Marat, and Robespierre. There was a mortal struggle between the advocates of order and the apostles of anarchy. The fate of the moderates and Girondists was sealed by a great insurrection in Paris, and an invasion of the Convention by an armed force. The violent party had at their back eighty thousand National Guards, who hemmed in the Convention. Twenty-nine Girondist leaders were placed under arrest. Their party fell. The boldest and most reckless faction, which had the Paris commune behind it, triumphed.

WAR OF LA VENDÉE.--Outside of Paris, in other parts of France, there were risings against the Jacobin rule. The most formidable of these was in the West, where the relation of the nobles to the peasants had been kindly, and where the common people looked on the violent proceedings at Paris with anger and disgust. Thus began the war of La Vendée, a terrible episode of civil strife, in which the people of that region were subdued, but not until after protracted conflict and immense slaughter.

THE JACOBIN REVOLUTION.--Danton and the other revolutionary leaders showed a tremendous energy in their attack on both domestic and foreign enemies. A levy was ordered of the whole male population capable of bearing arms. A maximum price was fixed by law for commodities, and also for wages. The government paid its dues in depreciated assignats at the face value. Its emissaries were in all parts of France, stirring up the people and forming revolutionary committees. Thus a system of revolutionary government was everywhere established. A new constitution, of an extreme democratic type, was offered to the acceptance of the people. This dominion of the Jacobins, it must be observed, was a second revolution. The Revolution of 1792 was as different from that of 1789 as was the proposed constitution of 1793 from that of 1791. The insurrections, except at Lyons and Toulon and in La Vendée, were soon quelled. The Jacobin rule was identified with the cause of patriotism in arms against foreign invasion, and with antipathy to the restoration of Bourbon royalty and misrule. In Paris, the revolutionary tribunal was filling the prisons with the suspected, and sending daily its wagon-loads of victims to the guillotine.

MILITARY SUCCESSES OF FRANCE.-The achievements of the great coalition were not at all in proportion to its apparent strength. It was weakened by mutual jealousies and inefficient commanders. In the South, the Spaniards and Piedmontese did not profit by their successes. In the North and North-east, the summer of 1793 was partly wasted by the English, Austrians, and Prussians, in long sieges and in dissensions among themselves. Meantime the French army was growing stronger, and more and more on fire with patriotic ardor. The Duke of York, an incapable general, was obliged to raise the siege of Dunkirk (Sept. 8, 1793). The forces of the coalition began to retire from ground that they had won. At Paris, Carnot's efficient management of military affairs gave France an advantage over her foes. The Prussians were inactive on the Rhine; and Jourdan, reinforced by a French detachment from that quarter, defeated the Austrians at Wattignies. By the movements of Hoche, the allies were driven out of Alsace. Lyons, after a stubborn defense, was captured and savagely punished, and the brave Vendeans were completely defeated by Kleber at Savenay. Near the end of the year, Toulon, then in revolt, was captured. At the siege, a young artillery officer, Napoleon Bonaparte, first distinguished himself by pointing out the proper spot for the planting of batteries that would drive away the English and Spanish fleets, and by carrying out his project.

BONAPARTE.--Napoleon was born on the island of Corsica, Aug. 15, 1769, two months after Corsica became subject to the French. His family, on both sides, were Italians. Napoleon himself never became so fully master of the French tongue that he did not betray in his speech his foreign extraction. He was educated at the military school of Brienne (1779-1784), and then went to the military school at Paris. His principal studies were mathematics and history. He quickly made manifest his military talents, and seems first to have aspired to gain distinction and power, in this line, in Corsica. His connection was at first with the Jacobins, although he afterwards denied it. He had imbibed the ideas of the Revolution, and saw that in the service of the leaders in the war there was opened to him a military career. He turned against his patriotic countryman, Paoli, when the latter sought to separate Corsica from France, at that time under the Jacobin rule.

THE REIGN OF TERROR.--The Reign of Terror had now established itself in France. The Committee of Public Safety wielded absolute power. Every man, woman, and child was called upon to take part in the defense of the country. The property of all the "emigrants" and prisoners of state was seized. Whoever was suspected of being hostile to the established tyranny was thrown into prison. Even to be lukewarm in adhesion to it, was a serious offense. Summary trials were followed by swift executions. The tenderness of youth and the venerableness of age were no protection. Day after day, the stream of human blood continued to flow. A new calendar was ordained: Sept. 22, 1792, was the beginning of the year one. There was a new division of months; in the room of the week, each tenth day was made a holiday. The commune of Paris, followed by other cities, began a crusade against Christianity. Fashions of dress, modes of speech, and manners were revolutionized. Every vestige of "aristocracy" was to be swept off the earth. There was a wild license given to divorce and to profligacy. Paris was like a camp where young soldiers were drilled, weapons were forged, and lint and bandages made ready for the wounded. There were seen, even in the hall of the Convention, throngs of coarse and fierce men, and of coarser and fiercer women, with their songs and wild outcries and gestures. The commune of Paris instituted a sacrilegious festival in the ancient cathedral of Notre Dame, where an actress was enthroned as "Goddess of Liberty." There were priests and bishops who abjured the Christian faith, and there were others who adhered to it at the peril of their lives. The prisons, which were packed with all classes, were theaters of strange and thrilling scenes. In many cases, death, made familiar, ceased to terrify. Crowds escorted the batch of victims carried on carts each day to the place of execution, and insulted them with their brutal shouts. The arrested Girondist deputies were executed. Some of the leaders of that party, including Roland, perished by suicide. Among the eminent persons sent to the guillotine were the eloquent Vergniaud, Brissot, Bailly, Malesherbes (the brave advocate who had defended Louis XVI.), and Madame Roland; also the infamous Duke of Orleans, who had intrigued to get himself raised to the throne. Marie Antoinette, her hair turned white in the tragic scenes through which she had passed, miserably clad, was dragged before the merciless tribunal. There she was insulted with foul accusations which nobody believed. After the mockery of a trial, she was carried like a common criminal, in a cart, with her arms bound, to the place of execution (Oct. 16). Her dignity and serenity, her pallid countenance, and the simple, pathetic words uttered by her at her arraignment, touched for the moment the hardened hearts of the imbruted spectators. Her sad fate has blinded many to the calamitous errors committed by her in the days of her power.

THE JACOBIN CHIEFS.--The Reign of Terror was not confined to Paris. The unexampled atrocities there were repeated in the other large towns with like circumstances of barbarity. A species of fanaticism ruled and raged in the land. The mania, if one may so call it, reached its height in such chiefs of the revolutionary party as Marat, Billaud, and Robespierre. In Marat especially, the mastery gained by one idea almost amounted to mental disorder. He demanded first five hundred heads, then (in Sept., 1793) forty thousand; then, six weeks later, two hundred and seventy thousand. It did seem to be a "homicidal mania." Marat was assassinated by a young maiden, Charlotte Corday, who devoted herself to the task of ridding the world of such a monster.

DEATH OF DANTON.--The Jacobin leaders found their ideal of virtue in the Spartan spirit. Infatuated by Rousseau's theory of the omnipotence of the state, in which the individual is merged and lost under the despotism of the majority, they looked on the massacre of countless persons, guilty of no crime, as a good deed. At length men began to grow weary of this frightful tyranny. The leaders became divided among themselves. Danton, though often the advocate of violent measures, was a statesman, and, to his credit be it said, halted at a point where the others advanced. He made an objection to the confounding of the innocent with the guilty. Hébert and the leaders of the commune, with their atheism, as dangerous political rivals, were offensive to Robespierre, who was a deist. He held a sort of middle position, had most power with the Jacobins, and was enabled to crush and destroy his associates. He was a dull man, of a quiet mien, often seen with a nosegay in his hand, and bloodthirsty according to a precise theory. His ascendency gave him the power, after scenes of tempestuous debate, to inflict first on Hébert, on Clootz, and his other confederates, and then on Danton and the Dantonist chiefs, the same death by the guillotine to which they had doomed so many. Robespierre abolished the worship of Reason, and caused the Convention to pass a resolution acknowledging the existence of a supreme Being, in whose honor fêtes were held. Christianity was denounced as a base superstition.

CRUELTIES IN THE PROVINCES.--When Robespierre was supreme, the Reign of Terror became still more terrible. In trials, the hearing of evidence and of argument were dispensed with. The prisons were crowded with "suspects." Alleged conspiracies in prisons were made a pretext for wholesale slaughter under the guillotine. Suicide and madness were of common occurrence. Even before Robespierre's predominance there had been in the provinces scenes of horror like those which occurred in the capital. The revolted cities, as Lyons and Toulon, were punished with savage ferocity. At Lyons, men, women, and children in masses were shot down with artillery. Those who were not killed with the shot were cut in pieces by the soldiery. At Nantes prisoners were bound together in pairs, and huddled together in barges, which were scuttled and set afloat down the Loire. For these atrocities the deputy Carrier was responsible.

FRENCH VICTORIES.--Yet, at this time, the arms of the republic, except on the sea, where the French fleet was badly beaten by the English, were mostly successful. The Duke of York was vanquished on the Belgian frontier, and the defeat of the allies at Fleurus (June 26, 1794) obliged them to evacuate Belgium.

THE BONAPARTES

Charles Bonaparte, m. Letitia Ramolino. | +--1, Joseph, King of Spain, d. 1844. | | | | +--Lucien, Cardinal. | | | | +--Zénaïde, | m. | +--Charles, d. 1857 | | +--3, Lucien, Prince of Canino, d .1840. | | | +--Lucien. | | | +--Pierre. | +--2, NAPOLEON I, 1804-1814, (deposed, d. 1821), m. | (1), Maria Louisa, daughter of Emperor Francis II. | | | +--Napoleon, Duke of Reichstadt (Napoleon II), d. 1832. | | (2), Josephine, m. General Beauharnais. | | | +--Eugene, Duke of Leuchtenberg, d. 1824. m. | | Augusta, daughter of Maximilian Joseph of Bavaria. | | | | | +--Josephine, m. Oscar I of Sweden. | | | +--Hortense, | m. +--4, Louis, King of Holland, d. 1846. | | | +--Napoleon Charles, d. 1807. | | | +--Napoleon Louis, d. 1831. | | | +--LOUIS NAPOLEON III, 1852-1870, d. 1873. m. | Eugenie, Countess of Teba | | | +--Napoleon, d. 1879. | +--5, Caroline, m. Joachim Murat, King of Naples, shot 1815. | +--6, Jerome, King of Westphalia, d. 1860, m. Catharine of Wurtemberg. | +--Napoleon. m. Clotilde, d. of Victor Emmanuel II of Italy | +--NAPOLEAN VICTOR JEROME FREDERIC.

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III. FROM THE FALL OF ROBESPIERRE TO THE EMPIRE OF NAPOLEON (1794-1804)

FALL OF ROBESPIERRE (9TH THERMIDOR).--A reaction set in against the cruelties of Jacobinism. Men--even the judges of the murderous tribunal--grew weary of bloodshed. The authority of Robespierre began to wane, even with his colleagues. The assembly at length turned against him. On July 27 (the 9th Thermidor, according to the new calendar) he was arrested. He was released, but was again seized, and, with St. Just, Couthon, and most of the leaders of the commune, was guillotined.

Bare statistics, accompanied by no thrilling descriptions, convey a strong impression of the atrocities of the Reign of Terror. According to M. Taine, "there were guillotined at Paris, between April 16, 1793, and the 9th Thermidor, 2,625 persons. The same process went forward all over France. In Arras, 299 men and 93 women; in Orange, 331 persons; in Nantes, 1,971; in Lyons, 1,684 (avowedly, but a correspondent of Robespierre estimates the total at 6,000); in the fusillades (deaths by shooting) of Toulon, more than 1,000; in the noyades (drownings) of Nantes, nearly 5,000 perished. In the eight departments of the West, it is reckoned that nearly half a million perished." The deaths from want, under the Jacobin government, M. Taine thinks, much exceeded a million. "France was on the brink of a great famine on the Asiatic scale."

REACTION: CONTROL OF THE MODERATES.--The Reign of Terror was brought to an end. The moderates controlled the Convention. The prison doors were opened, and the multitude of suspects were set free. The revolutionary tribunal was broken down. The commune of Paris was so shaped as to strip it of its most dangerous powers. The Jacobin and other incendiary clubs were suppressed. Religion was declared to be free, and the churches were opened to their congregations. The Girondist deputies who survived were invited back to their seats in the Convention. The National Guards were filled up from the middle class,--the bourgeoisie. Little mercy was shown to the Jacobins anywhere. The reaction was seen in the altered character of society and of manners. Those who had acquired wealth in the late time by the changes of property came to the front. The old fondness for dress and gayety reappeared. Paris was again alive with balls and other festive entertainments. The salons were crowded with elegant youth of the higher class (the jeunesse dorée). The party of Terror were cowed; but in consequence of the rise in the cost of provisions, and of the distress caused by it, and by the sudden abrogation of tyrannical laws settling the price of food and wages, there were two fierce outbreakings of the mob of Paris (April 1, May 20, 1795). These were quelled, and the power of the Jacobins was finally crushed. The moderates had now to guard against the increasing strength and rising hopes of the royalists.

CONQUEST OF HOLLAND: PRUSSIA.--The armies of France were everywhere successful. Through the victories of Jourdan and Pichegru, Holland was conquered, and converted into the Batavian Republic, and Dutch Flanders surrendered to France. The Low Countries were now a dependency of the French Republic (1794-1795). Hoche, an excellent general, partly by conciliation, reduced the West--the theater of the La Vendée revolt--to submission. The English and emigrants landed in Quiberon, on the coast of Brittany, but were defeated. The coalition was broken up, first by the withdrawal of Prussia, which ceded (April 5, 1795), and, in a secret article, ceded permanently, its territories on the left bank of the Rhine to the French, for a compensation to be obtained from secularized German states,--that is, states in which the old ecclesiastical rule should be abolished. A few months later (July, 1795), Spain concluded peace, ceding St. Domingo to the Republic. The soldiers of France were fast becoming trained, and their confidence rose with their increasing success. This success was due largely to the weak generalship of the allies. The French were commonly hard masters in the conquered places. On the other hand, however, they effected a welcome abolition of old feudal inequalities and abuses.

CONSTITUTION OF 1995.--Meanwhile, there was disaffection, especially in the cities, with the rule by the Convention. In the cities there was distress, except in the moneyed class. There was a yearning for a strong and stable government. The Convention framed and submitted to the nation a new constitution, the third in the order of political fabrics of this sort. There were to be seven hundred and fifty legislators, divided into two bodies,--the Council of Elders, or the Ancients, of two hundred and fifty, and the Council of Five Hundred. The executive power was given to a Directory of five persons. Two-thirds of the councils for the first term were to be taken from the Convention. The constitution, thus conservative and anti-Jacobin in its character, was well received. But there was dissatisfaction in the reactionary parties; and a great insurrection of the royalist middle class in Paris (Oct. 5, 1795, the 13th Vendémaire) was promptly put down by the resolute action of Bonaparte, to whom had been given the command of the troops of the city. It was the royalist and the anti-republican parties which now threatened the government. But a new authority, the will of the army, was beginning plainly to disclose itself. The dread of Jacobinism still existed. What the people more and more craved was internal tranquillity and order.

BONAPARTE IN ITALY: TO THE PEACE OF CAMPO FORMIO.--The assignats became worthless. This bankruptcy had one benefit: it relieved the state of its debt, and brought coin into circulation. A triple attack was planned by Carnot against Austria. In Germany, Jourdan and Moreau were driven back by the Archduke Charles of Austria. But a splendid success attended the arms of Bonaparte in the attack on the Austrian power in Italy. He had been lately married to Josephine Beauharnais, the widow of a French general guillotined in 1794, the only woman to whom he appears ever to have been warmly attached. There were two children by her former marriage,--Eugène (1781-1824), and Hortense (1783-1837) who married Louis Bonaparte. Starting from Nice, and following the coast, Bonaparte defeated the Austrians and Piedmontese separately, and forced the latter to conclude a distinct peace, which ceded Savoy and Nice to France. He exemplified in this campaign the characteristics which in after-years contributed essentially to his success as a general. He struck the enemy before they could combine their forces. He did not, after the old method, wait to capture all the fortresses in his path, but by swift marches made his attacks at unexpected places and times. He defeated the Austrians after a brief struggle at the bridge of Lodi on the Adda, captured Milan, overran Lombardy as far as Mantua, and forced the Pope, and Parma, Modena, and Naples, to purchase peace by giving up their treasures of art. Thus began the custom of despoiling conquered capitals, and other subjugated cities, of works of art, which went to adorn and enrich Paris,--a new custom among civilized Christian nations. Wurmser, the veteran Austrian general, was defeated in a series of engagements; and, after him, another great Austrian army, under Alvinzi, was vanquished at Arcola (Nov. 14-17, 1796) and at Rivoli (Jan. 14, 1797). Bonaparte now crossed the Alps to meet the Archduke Charles, who had cleared Germany of its invaders. The French general, although his own situation was not free from peril, was able to dictate the terms of peace. In the treaty of Campo Formio (Oct. 17, 1797), Austria ceded the Belgian provinces to France, recognized the Cisalpine Republic to be established by Bonaparte in North Italy, and secretly consented to the cession of the German provinces on the left bank of the Rhine. In return, he gave Venice to Austria, in disregard of the principles of international law, and perfidiously as regards that republic, which had made its peace with him, and become a democracy dependent on France. In this treaty with Austria, there was another secret stipulation that Prussia should not be indemnified in Germany for her losses on the west of the Rhine. Thus Napoleon used the selfishness of the allies to divide them from one another. At Tolentino in February the Pope had ceded for the Cispadane Republic the Romagna, Bologna, and Ferrara. A young man of twenty-seven, Bonaparte had given proof of his astonishing military genius by a series of victories over large armies and experienced generals; and he had evinced equally his skill, as well as his lack of principle, in the field of diplomacy. He had won admiration from his enemies by his evident freedom from the revolutionary fanaticism, and his contempt for declamation about "the rights of man." Returning to Paris, he was received with acclamation, but thought it politic to avoid publicity, and to live quietly in his modest dwelling.

COUP D'ÉTAT: 18 FRUCTIDOR (Sept. 4, 1797).--During Bonaparte's absence, the royalist and reactionary faction had gained ground in the governing bodies. Pichegru was plotting on that side. These schemes had been baffled with the timely assistance of a detachment of troops sent to Paris by Bonaparte under Augereau. On Sept. 4 (the 18th Fructidor), the palace of the Tuileries, where the councils met, was surrounded. The reactionary deputies were arrested; Pichegru and his fellow-conspirators were banished. This coup d'état sealed the triumph of the republicans, but it was effected through the army.

THE EGYPTIAN EXPEDITION.--The Directory were conscious of weakness, and looked with alarm and distrust on the young general, who was fast becoming the idol of the people, as well as of the army. They wished him to attempt a descent on England. He preferred, in the room of this impracticable venture, to conduct an expedition to Egypt, with the design of getting control, if possible, of the Eastern Mediterranean, and of striking at the possessions of Great Britain in India. To this scheme the Directory, quite willing to have him at a distance, readily consented. Hiding his plans until all was ready, he sailed from Toulon (May 19, 1798) with a strong fleet and army; on his way captured Malta through treachery of the knights, and landed safely in Egypt. With him were some of the best of the French generals, and a large company of scientific men. He defeated the Mamelukes in a great battle fought within sight of the Pyramids. But at Aboukir, in the Battle of the Nile, the French fleet was destroyed by the English naval force under Nelson. The French army was thus cut off from the means of return. Bonaparte invaded Syria, but was prevented by the English fleet from getting a foothold on the coast. He had to raise the siege of Acre, and returned to Egypt, where he vanquished the Turks at Aboukir.

REVERSES OF FRANCE IN ITALY.--Here Bonaparte received information which determined him to leave the army under the command of Kléber, and himself to return to France. The European powers had once more taken up arms. Among the causes of the renewal of the war were the formation by the French of the Roman Republic out of the dominion of the Pope, the establishment of the Helvetian Republic in Switzerland, and the change of Genoa by its own act into the Ligurian Republic. Prussia, since 1795, from selfish motives had cooperated with France, and stood aloof from the new--the second--coalition. Paul I., emperor of Russia, was active against the French Republic, and Pitt was its indefatigable enemy. The Czar had been made Grand Master of the Knights of Malta, and made much of this empty dignity. The victory of Nelson at Aboukir cemented the union of the hostile powers, with whom the Sultan was now joined. The management of the French armies by the government at Paris was unskillful. Naples, to be sure, was overcome, and transformed into the Parthenopæan Republic. The king of Sardinia was driven out of Piedmont. But Jourdan was defeated by the Archduke Charles, and retreated across the Rhine. The Austrians and the Russian army under Suvoroff, a veteran officer, were victorious south of the Alps (June, 1799); Moreau and Macdonald were defeated at Trebbia. The French were defeated again at Novi (Aug. 15), and lost almost all Italy. The king of Naples came back, and thousands of republicans there were cruelly put to death,--a proscription in which Nelson had a part. It was the victory of Masséna, over the Russians at Zurich, that saved France itself from invasion.

OVERTHROW OF THE DIRECTORY: 18TH BRUMAIRE.--These reverses added to the unpopularity of the Directory. The discontent of the Jacobins with their government had given rise to strong measures of repression. On the other hand, the wealthy class were disgusted at the renewal of the war. A rising was threatened in La Vendee. The feeling was widely diffused, that there was need of a strong man at the helm to save the ship of state from another terrible shipwreck. At this juncture Napoleon appeared in Paris, and was greeted with enthusiasm. Sieyès and one other director, with a majority of the Ancients, agreed to another coup d'état which should make Bonaparte the first magistrate. The garrison of Paris was ready to lend its aid. The resistance of the Council of five Hundred at St. Cloud was baffled by Lucien Bonaparte, Napoleon's brother, their president, and by the use of military force. Thus there was accomplished the revolution of the 18th Brumaire (Nov. 9, 1799).

THE CONSULATE.--In the provisional government set up by the remnant of the council, Napoleon only gradually assumed the chief rôle. He was later enabled to take and to hold supreme power, because of the mutual fear of royalists and republicans, their common dread of Jacobinism, and a prevailing conviction that safety must be sought in the sway of an individual, representing neither extreme, and strong enough to hold all in check. Yet the event evinced the supremacy now gained by the military power. Napoleon immediately made excellent financial reforms, and repealed or softened the laws against the "emigrants" and the priests. By such mild and conservative measures, the prosperity of France began to be renewed. The constitution of the year VIII., as planned by Sieyès and modified by Bonaparte, kept up the semblance, without much of the reality, of democracy. The checks on the power of the First Consul were more nominal than real. The mass of the people had power only to vote for lists of citizens, out of whom all the higher officers were to be selected by successive steps. All legislation was initiated by the Council of State; the Tribunate of a hundred members could discuss proposals made thus, but could not act; the Legislative Chamber of three hundred could vote, but not discuss; and the Senate of eighty was chosen for life, with little to do. This constitution of 1799, in opposition to the communal system of 1789 and 1791, established a centralized administration which destroyed local liberty and self-government. France no longer represented in other countries the cause of liberty. In this character its armies had been hailed in Italy, where a yearning for national unity was awakened. Equality, not liberty, was all that the cause of France now represented.

Napoleon could not have expected that his overtures of peace would be accepted by Austria. The rough, impolitic response made by England, helped him by rousing resentment in France.

MARENGO: PEACE OF LUNGVILLE.--If Sieyès and others expected that Napoleon would merely direct military operations from Paris, they were soon undeceived. Masséna was at the head of the army in Italy, and found it most difficult to hold Genoa against the Austrians. Moreau was at the head of the army in Germany. Apart from other reasons for taking the field in person, it would not have been safe for the new ruler of France to allow himself to be eclipsed in military fame by Moreau. Napoleon, as usual veiling his purpose, gradually collected a large army, and between May 16 and 19, 1800, led his troops, and dragged his cannon, over the Great St. Bernard Pass into Italy, threw himself in the rear of Melas, the Austrian general, and entered Milan. He appears, however, to have used less than his usual caution, probably from fear that Melas might escape; so that he was attacked at Marengo (June 14), by that general, at a moment when the French forces were not sufficiently concentrated. What threatened to be a disastrous defeat for the French, however, was turned into a signal victory by the timely arrival of Desaix; and the name of Marengo rang through Europe. In December, Moreau won the great victory of Hohenlinden over the Archduke John. In February, 1801, the peace of Lunéville was concluded. France kept its "natural boundaries," Belgium and the west of the Rhine. The Italian republics, except Rome and Naples, were restored. Tuscany was to be given to a prince of Spain, a country now dependent on France. The German princes who lost territory were to be indemnified by "secularizing" German ecclesiastical states, and vied with one another in imploring favors of the conqueror.

THE NORTHERN ALLIANCE: THE PEACE OF AMIENS.--England now stood alone against France. Her navies were supreme, and had captured most of the Dutch as well as French colonies. The French army in Egypt had been driven to capitulate on the condition that it should be transported in English vessels to France. Russia, Sweden, and Denmark made (1800) a defensive alliance of armed neutrality on the sea, to maintain the right of neutrals to trade with belligerents, and the doctrine that the neutral ship protects its freight (not being munitions of war) against seizure. England succeeded in ruining this alliance. Pitt now retired from office. He had accomplished the legislative union of England and Ireland, by which the separate Irish Parliament had ceased to exist (1800). But he had encouraged the Irish Catholics to expect that they would be delivered from the restrictions which excluded them from the House of Commons and from many other offices. When the king refused to consent to the fulfillment of these expectations, Pitt resigned (1801). Addington became prime minister. England was tired of the war. Peace was concluded at Amiens (March, 1802). France was to retain all her conquests on the Continent. England surrendered to France and her allies all conquests except Trinidad and Ceylon. Malta was to be given back by England to the Knights of Malta. A third great civil triumph of Napoleon, added to Luneville and Amiens, was the Concordat with the Pope.

REFORMS OF NAPOLEON.--Napoleon now was free to give his attention to internal reforms in France. He called into his counsels the ablest men in all departments of knowledge. In the reconstruction of political and social order, his own clear perceptions and energy were everywhere seen. He brought back from the old institutions whatever was good and valuable which the tempest of revolution had swept away. He reformed the judicial system. He caused to be framed the famous Code which bears his name, and which still forms the basis of law in several European countries. He reduced the power of the communes, and centralized the administration of government by the system of prefects and sub-prefects. Through the Concordat, he renewed the connection of the Catholic Church of France with Rome, reserving, however, to the executive the nomination of archbishops and bishops, whom the government was to support, and guarding, in the spirit of the Gallican theory, the supremacy of the civil authority. Full toleration was secured for non-Catholics. Napoleon personally participated in the religious ceremonies which attended the formal restoration of the old system of worship where "the Goddess of Reason" had been enthroned during the Terror. The ultimate effect of the Concordat was to build up the ultramontane, or papal, theory and sway within the church of France. Education was organized by the establishment of the university, the comprehensive name for the entire educational system of the country. All branches of technical instruction were carefully fostered. The devotees of science were encouraged with an enlightened sympathy and liberal aid. A better organization and discipline were brought into the army.

CHARACTER OF THE CHANGES.--The changes made by Napoleon, while they secured the equality of all Frenchmen before the law, did nothing to rescue civil liberty, such as the republicans had aimed to secure. They were all in the direction of monarchy. Distinctions, like the Legion of Honor, were invented; titles were instituted; a new aristocracy, made up of relics of the old noblesse and of fresh recruits, was created; Napoleon was declared to be consul for life, and the mechanism of the government was converted into a practical dictatorship. Unsparing in his treatment of Jacobins, he aimed still to moderate the passions of party. His activity was seen in an excellent system of public works, such as canals and noble highways, in new towns, and in magnificent buildings which he erected in Paris. At the same time, he went as far as it was safe to go in bringing in monarchical manners and luxuries. He himself adopted a regal way of living. He had no faith in democracy, and spoke with unaffected scorn of "ideology," or the theoretical statesmanship which based itself on ideas of "human rights" in the matter of exercising government. The press was placed under stringent police regulation. Napoleon's family began to contend, with "Corsican shamelessness," for high honors. A feud soon came to exist between them and the Beauharnais,--the family of Josephine. Was the principle of heredity to come back?

RENEWED WAR WITH ENGLAND.--In 1803 the war was renewed with England. That Napoleon was resolved to dictate in European affairs, as he was practical dictator in the French Republic, was plain. He controlled the republics dependent on France. He annexed Piedmont. He made the Spanish Bourbons do his bidding. He intervened in Germany; among other things, offending Austria by enlarging the bounds of Prussia. He exercised over the minor German states the influence of which Austria had been robbed. He complained of the strictures of the English press, and of the asylum granted in England to conspirators against his rule. He was angry that Malta was not given up, which England refused to do on account of an aggrandizement of France not consistent with the Peace of Amiens. There were provocations on both sides, and war was inevitable.

PLAN OF INVADING ENGLAND.--Napoleon seized Hanover. He talked of making a descent on England. He gathered a vast army near Boulogne, and constructed an immense flotilla for the transportation of it across the Channel. His design was to decoy away the British fleet, and then to concentrate enough ships of his own in the Channel to protect the passage of his forces.

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IV. FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE EMPIBE TO THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN (1804-1812)

THE EMPIRE (1804).--Various attempts had been made against Napoleon's life. An "infernal machine" was exploded near his carriage. On that occasion, only the swift driving of the coachman saved him from death (1800). There were now royalist plots against his life, of which Count d'Artois was cognizant. Pichegru was an accomplice; and Moreau, although not favoring the restoration of the Bourbons, was not entirely innocent. The former died in prison; Moreau escaped to America. Napoleon, exasperated by these plots, caused the Duke d'Enghien, a young prince of the Condé branch of the Bourbons, to be seized on German territory,--in Baden,--and dragged away into France, where, at Vincennes, after a hurried military examination, he was shot, and buried in a grave that had been dug for him before the sentence was pronounced. Of this act of Napoleon, it was said by Fouché, "It was worse than a crime: it was a blunder." The young prince was really innocent. He was a victim of the natural, but violent, wrath of Napoleon, who wanted to strike a blow that his enemies would feel. The event opened the way for him--as it was perhaps intended that it should--to the object of his ambition, the imperial title and throne. He was authorized to adopt a successor. This, the different parties felt, would make his government stable and secure. He was proclaimed emperor, the election being ratified by popular vote. The crown was to be handed down in his family. In imitation of Charlemagne, whom he affected to consider a Frenchman and a predecessor, he was crowned, with splendid pomp, by Pope Pius VII. (Dec. 2, 1804), in Notre Dame. He took the crown from the Pope's hands, and placed it on his own head.

THE NEW ROYALTY.--The emperor surrounded himself with the insignia and ceremonies of royalty. The members of his family became princes and princesses. A new nobility, with the various ancient titles, was called into being. He made his generals--eighteen in number, most of whom had sprung from the ranks--marshals. He first diminished the number of the Tribunate, then (1807) abolished it. The republic of 1789 had now passed into an absolute military monarchy.

THIRD COALITION AGAINST FRANCE (1805).--Napoleon turned the Italian Republic into a vassal monarchy, with himself for its ruler (1805). He incorporated Genoa with France. His step-son, Eugène Beauharnais, he made viceroy of Italy. Pitt had come back to office. Events since the death of the Duke d'Enghien made it possible for him to create the third coalition of England (in union with Austria, Russia, and Sweden) for restoring the balance of power in Europe. Paul I. of Russia had been won over from the previous coalition by the adroit efforts of Napoleon, and by the Czar's hostility to England on account of Malta (1800), he being grand master of the knights. His ordinary state of mind bordered on derangement, so that he was not fit to reign. Refusing to abdicate, he was assassinated by nobles (1801), and his son Alexander I. (1801-24) succeeded him. Russia was now reconciled to England, and the Northern Neutrality Convention against her maritime oppression was dissolved.

POSITION OF PRUSSIA.--The king of Prussia, Frederick William III. (1797-1840), and the ministers whom he trusted, refused to listen to his spirited queen, Louisa, and the more earnest, patriotic party, by which he was urged to unite with the coalition. He clung to his policy of neutrality, and was to be bribed by the gift of Hanover. The attitude of Prussia, which had been governed by selfish considerations, was long the pivot on which the success of Napoleon's aggressions hung.

FAILURE OF VILLENEUVE.--If Napoleon ever seriously projected an invasion of England he abandoned the scheme before 1805, although he retained an army at Boulogne to alarm the English. Villeneuve, whose fleet was to command the Channel, had escaped from Nelson and was on his way back from the West Indies. The admiralty were warned of his movement by a vessel of light draught which Nelson, when he could not find his foe, dispatched to inform them of the danger. Villeneuve, after an indecisive action against the force sent to meet him under Sir Robert Calder, put first into the harbor of Ferrol, and then repaired to Cadiz. Nelson came back with his fleet to the Channel.

ULM AND TRAFALGAR.--The allies marked out four lines of invasion. The second and principal advance was to be up the valley of the Danube, and to be pursued by the Russians and Austrians. Napoleon did not wait for them to unite. He now made use of the army collected for the proposed invasion of England. He suddenly broke up his camp at Boulogne, and swiftly led his splendid and thoroughly drilled army across the Rhine, to the rear of the Austrian forces, of which Mack was the commander. Other detachments from Hanover and Holland came down the Main to take part in the movement. The Austrians were surrounded in Ulm, and gave themselves up, thirty thousand in number, as prisoners of war (Oct. 17, 1805). The strategy was like that pursued in the campaign of Marengo: the result was even more astonishing. It was not long, however, before news came to him of a great disaster to the French on the sea. Four days after the surrender at Ulm, Nelson achieved a grand victory off Cape Trafalgar, over the French and Spanish fleets. Before Villeneuve decided to leave the shelter of Cadiz, he had been obliged to weaken himself by sending away a number of his ships. The watchword sent from the flag-ship just before the encounter--"England expects every man to do his duty"--called forth shouts of enthusiasm from the decks of the British fleet. Two-thirds of the French ships were captured or ruined. Nelson himself was struck by a bullet, and died the same night. His private life was not free from grave faults, but he was the greatest naval hero England has ever produced.

AUSTERLITZ: CONFEDERATION OF THE RHINE.--On the land, the career of Napoleon was triumphant. The "Grand Army," with its system of corps and reserves, marched on Vienna, which was occupied on the 13th of November. The Russians were still to be encountered. The army of Alexander was a very powerful one; but he made, instead of awaiting, the attack, and, on the 2d of December, was utterly defeated on the memorable field of Austerlitz. The Peace of Pressburg followed (Dec. 26, 1805). Austria gave up Venice, which was annexed to the new Italian kingdom, of which Napoleon was the head. The Tyrol went to Bavaria, whose elector was recognized as a king, as was also the elector of Würtemberg. Soon after, the Bourbons were dethroned at Naples, and Napoleon's brother Joseph took that kingdom. Bavaria, Baden, Würtemberg, and other smaller states were united into a Confederation of the Rhine (1806), with Napoleon for its protector. The Holy Roman Empire from that time had no longer even the shadow of a reality. Francis I. was simply emperor of Austria, and Austria was greatly reduced in power.

FALL OF PRUSSIA.--Prussia now stood by herself. Out of alarm at the progress of the French arms, and anger because French troops had been led across her territory without her consent, she had preferred to join the coalition. Austerlitz moved her to retrace her steps. She received Hanover as the price of a renewed alliance. England now declared war against Prussia. But Fox, who was an advocate of peace, had come into power in England (Jan. 23, 1806); and Prussia discovered that Napoleon, who was friendly to him, was negotiating for the surrender of Hanover to that country. This crowning indignity moved Prussia, at this inopportune moment, to take up arms against him. Prussia had no ally but Russia. The Prussian army was full of pride and hope; but its organization and method of warfare were after the old, traditional fashion which had come down from the days of Frederick the Great, and its commander, the Duke of Brunswick, though brave, was superannuated. In the two battles of Jena and Auersfadt, fought on the same day (Oct. 14, 1806), the Prussian forces were routed, and either captured or dispersed. A fortnight later (Oct. 27), Napoleon was in Berlin. Fortress after fortress was surrendered, and corps after corps captured by his troops. The royal family, including the Queen Louisa, were treated personally with harshness and disdain. The Prussian monarchy, to all appearance, was in ruins. Its museums and picture-galleries were robbed of their treasures, which went away as trophies to Paris. The Saxon Elector, made a king, joined the Rhenish Confederacy.

Fox died on Sept. 13, 1806. In 1807 (March 31), the Duke of Portland became prime minister; the rival and rising statesmen, Castlereagh and Canning, being both in the cabinet.

TO THE PEACE OF TILSIT.--It remained for the conqueror to deal with Russia. He had intended to prosecute a winter campaign in Poland, but the severity of the winter and the lack of supplies obliged him to fall back from Pultusk to the Vistula. The Russians now took the initiative. A terrible battle at Eylau (Feb. 7 and 8, 1807) was indecisive. Napoleon drew additional troops from all parts of his empire to supply the losses of the grand army. Benningsen, the Russian general, was incautious, and at Friedland (June 14) was routed. Dantzic and the still unconquered provinces of Prussia fell into the hands of the French. This series of wonderful successes made the revolution in the art of war, which Napoleon had introduced, obvious to the dullest eyes. His peculiar method of rapid movement, and subsistence on the country, and the obstacles to its uniform success, were likewise evident. The Emperor Alexander and Napoleon met on the Niemen. Alexander was won by Napoleon's gracious and friendly demeanor. At Tilsit, on the North-Prussian frontier, peace was concluded (July 7 and 9, 1807). Prussia fared the hardest. She lost half of her territory. She had to close her ports and lands to British trade, to limit her army to forty-two thousand men, and to consent to the erection of a duchy of Warsaw out of her Polish territory. Out of the Elbe provinces, a kingdom of Westphalia was constructed, of which Jerome Bonaparte received the crown. Russia also recognized Louis Bonaparte, another brother of Napoleon, as king of Holland. Alexander promised to go to war with England in case England rejected the offer of peace which he was to make as mediator. Alexander and Napoleon were to be fast friends and allies. Russia was to expand on the north and east, but not to have Constantinople. Napoleon had no better apology for the dismemberment of Prussia than a reference to the intemperate manifesto of the Duke of Brunswick in 1792, on the occasion of the first invasion of France. His real object was thoroughly to divide and disable Germany, and to take away the last obstacle to his complete control within its borders.

POWER OF NAPOLEON.--No ruler since Charlemagne had held such power as was now wielded by Napoleon. "Sovereign of France from the Scheldt to the Pyrenees, and of Italy from the Alps to the Tiber," he had given the throne of Holland to his brother Louis, that of Naples to Joseph, and made Jerome king of Westphalia. Spain was content to do his will, and Germany was under his feet. He was the leader of mighty armies, with no military rival to endanger his supremacy over them. His conquests, it was impossible to deny, carried with them the abolition of numerous time-worn abuses, and the introduction of important material improvements. France was in many respects prosperous under the despotism established over it.

ELEMENTS OF WEAKNESS.--But there were certain elements of weakness which Napoleon did not sufficiently discern. The feeling of nationality and patriotism in the subject countries was certain to awake with a strength which he did not at all anticipate. Old Rome had extinguished this feeling in most of her provinces, but there were countries whose spirit even Rome could not break. Napoleon undertook a task to which no man was equal. Meantime, he was exhausting the military resources of France. If its male population continued to be willing to follow him to the slaughter, where were the men to be found to fill the places of the multitudes that fell? The time must come when the hunger of the French for military glory would be sated, and dazzling victories would cease to hide the fearful cost at which they were purchased.

THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM.--The Treaty of Tilsit was followed by acts on the part of Napoleon which show the presumptuous confidence and arrogant spirit of domination, which, however natural on the pinnacle of might to which he had raised himself, proved disastrous, and, in the end, fatal. One of these acts was the "Continental System," ordained in the Berlin and Milan Decrees.

A Prussian decree (1806), Prussia being then a vassal of Napoleon, undertook to close the ports and rivers of the North Sea to English shipping. In retaliation, there was issued a British "Order in Council," declaring the coast from the Elbe to Brest in a state of blockade; the portion from Ostend to the Seine being declared to be under a rigorous blockade. This led to the Berlin Decree of Napoleon (Nov. 21, 1806). Then second "Orders in Council" (Nov. 11, 1807), prohibiting trade with France, her allies and colonies, as if they were blockaded, called out the Milan Decree of Napoleon (Dec. 17, 1807).

The continental system thus originated undertook to cut off trade between the entire Continent and England, by ordering all the merchandise of England and her colonies to be seized and confiscated, wherever it might be found,--even ships which touched at English ports. The design was to inflict injury on England. It had this effect, but it had the same effect on France, and still more in the other countries which profited by English trade. Wide-spread disaffection at the attempts to enforce this system was the inevitable consequence. Moreover, one result of it was to stimulate Napoleon to further conquests to keep up and to extend his commercial policy. Another motive was added to his growing and insatiable ambition for universal dominion.

INVASION OF SPAIN: WAGRAM.--Russia had declared war against Great Britain, according to the promise of Alexander at Tilsit. The British seized the Danish fleet in the harbor of Copenhagen, to prevent it from falling into the hands of Russia and France (Sept., 1807). Napoleon made this act a partial excuse for invading the Spanish peninsula, under the pretense of guarding the coasts against the English. His army entered Lisbon, and he declared that the house of Braganza had ceased to reign. His forces advanced into Spain beyond Madrid. Dissensions between Charles IV. and his son Ferdinand enabled Napoleon to get himself chosen as arbiter; and having enticed the two contestants to Bayonne, he set them both aside, and gave the crown of Spain to his brother Joseph,--Murat, who had married Napoleon's sister Caroline, taking the throne of Naples. This high-handed proceeding roused the Spanish people to revolt. The officers of Napoleon were several times defeated. A British force under Wellington--then Sir Arthur Wellesley--appeared in Portugal to lend help to the national movement. A French fleet in Cadiz was destroyed. Napoleon invaded Spain with an overwhelming force, and established his brother at Madrid (Dec. 2, 1808). But the people still kept up a harassing guerilla war. From Spain Napoleon was called away by the rising of Austria, which the events in Spain had once more moved to begin hostilities. Within a month from the beginning of the campaign, he again entered Vienna as a victor (May 11, 1809). He suffered a reverse at Aspern; but in the desperate battle of Wagram, in which not far from three hundred thousand men took part, he was triumphant. Austria purchased peace by further cessions of territory, and by joining the Continental System. The brave Tyrolese kept up the struggle with an heroic spirit; but at last Hofer, their leader, was captured and shot at Mantua (1810).

PIUS VII.--As Pius VII. refused to close his ports against England, and to ally himself with France, Napoleon proclaimed (May, 1809) that the Papal States were annexed to his empire. The Pope, who had steadfastly resisted his attempts at coercion, excommunicated him. The pontiff was arrested, and conveyed to Savona, and afterwards to France.

SWEDEN: BERNADOTTE.--Another ally in upholding the "Continental System" against England, Napoleon gained in Sweden, where one of his marshals, Bernadotte, had been chosen Crown Prince.

Under Adolf Frederic (1751-1771), a council of nobles usurped many of the functions of the king. A combined Russian and French party in Sweden was against him. His son, Gustavus III. (1771-1792), being supported by France, invaded Russian Finland, and, by the help of the Estates, reduced the power of the nobles, giving, however, to the Estates in the new constitution, the right to veto a project for offensive war. He was murdered in 1792. His son Gustavus IV., who became of age in 1808, was a bitter opponent of Napoleon, whom he considered to be the beast of the Apocalypse (Rev. xiii. 1). After the Peace of Tilsit, he made war on Russia, and on Denmark, from which he sought to wrest Norway. The nobles and the army rose against him, and obliged him to abdicate (1809). His uncle, Charles XIII., became king. Finland was surrendered to Russia. The king having no children, Bernadotte (1764-1844), a French marshal, made by Napoleon Prince of Pontecorno, but who often showed himself independent in his relations to him, was elected Crown Prince of Sweden (1810). Sweden joined the Continental System.

NAPOLEON'S DIVORCE AND MARRIAGE.--Napoleon, who was childless, in the hope of founding a dynasty on a sure basis procured a divorce from Josephine, and married Maria Louisa, the daughter of Francis I. of Austria. To the son who was born of this marriage he gave the sounding title of King of Rome, the old designation of the emperors-elect before their coronation.

TORRES VEDRAS.--The first successful stand against the military supremacy of Bonaparte was made in Spain. Wellington divined the secret of the French victories, and devised the means of effectual resistance. In Portugal, between the Tagus and the sea he fortified the position called Torres Vedras, which could be defended against superior forces. This he held against all the efforts of Masséna to conquer and dislodge him. Deprived of the means of subsistence, the French suffered great losses and privations, and were obliged to retreat (May, 1811). Their method depended for success on the attaining of the desired result in a short time by swift operations.

REACTION AGAINST NAPOLEON.--The campaign of Wellington produced a strong moral effect in other parts of Europe. While France was beginning to show signs of weariness with the endless war, and with the despotic government under which it was kept up, in Germany a new spirit of patriotism was stirring in the hearts of the people. Under Stein, a great and patriotic minister, the Prussian system of civil administration was reorganized on a sound basis. The army was likewise reconstructed on the basis of universal military service. Serfdom was abolished and the old caste system, with its restrictions on land-holding, abandoned. A new Germany was slowly waking to life, and collecting its energies for the combat for freedom. The "Continental System" caused increasing irritation. Louis Bonaparte abdicated his throne in Holland, rather than enforce its odious requirements (July, 1810). The quarrel of Napoleon with the Pope, and the indignities suffered by the pontiff, who lived for three years upon alms, added to the discontent which the emperor's commercial policy provoked, even in France.

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V. FROM THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN (1812) TO THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA (1814-15)

THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN--The circumstances narrated above did not prevent Napoleon from the fatal mistake of invading Russia. The czar would not enforce the commercial restrictions. Napoleon refused to promise not to restore the kingdom of Poland. There were various other causes of mutual jealousy and coolness. Sweden, under Bernadotte, which had been forced to declare war against England (1810), now joined Russia. Austria and Prussia, in their state of practical vassalage, had to furnish military help to Napoleon. In June, 1812, when he crossed the Niemen, he had brought together a force of five hundred and fifty thousand men. He had reinforcements from Poland, and might have had more had he not, from deference to Austria and Prussia, refused to restore the Polish kingdom. The Russians retreated as he advanced. Barclay, the Russian general, declined a battle, and destroyed whatever places could afford an advantage to the invader. At length, Kutusoff took the command, and was compelled by the Russian feeling, against his will, to give battle. At Borodino, where there was immense slaughter on both sides, the Russians retired, but without disorder. When the French arrived at Moscow, they found an empty town, which was set on fire by accident or by Russians. The Czar refused to treat for peace. There was no alternative but to retreat (Oct. 19, 1812). The sufferings of the soldiers from cold and famine were terrible. The Russians availed themselves of every opportunity to harass the retreating force. When it reached the ruins of Smolensk, only forty thousand were left of more than a hundred thousand that had left Moscow. The army continued to dwindle. At Smorgoni, Napoleon left Murat in command, and hastened in disguise to Paris. The expedition cost the lives of not less than three hundred thousand men. This gigantic failure was due to the foiling by the Russians of Napoleon's habitual plan of forcing decisive battles by movements so rapid that his troops could subsist upon the country which they overran, and to the unexpected destruction of Moscow.

THE GERMAN WAR OF LIBERATION: LEIPSIC.--In Germany, there now began the great War of Liberation. York--the commander of the Prussian contingent reluctantly furnished to Napoleon--went over to the Russians (Dec. 1812). During the first three months of 1813, all North Germany rose in arms. Heart-stirring appeals were issued by Frederick William III. to his people. He called for the formation of volunteer corps, and all young men capable of bearing arms responded with alacrity to the summons. Russia and Prussia formed a defensive alliance. Sweden made a treaty with England, and agreed to assist the allies. Napoleon's wonted success attended him at first in the encounter with the Russian and Prussian forces. He gained a victory at Lützen (May 2), and another at Bautzen (May 20, 21). Austria sought to mediate, but Napoleon unwisely preferred war. Austria now, disregarding the family tie with Napoleon, was drawn by the current of German patriotism, as well as by self-interest, into the alliance against him. His imperious and arrogant domination was felt to be insupportable. But the circumstance that determined the course of Austria was the victory gained by Wellington at Vittoria, in Spain, over the French under Jourdan (June 21). The news of it turned the scale in the Austrian councils. The odds against Napoleon were now fearful, especially as his own army was largely composed of recruits who were hardly above the age of boys. He won one more triumph at Dresden (Aug. 27), but this was his last victory on German soil. The allies avoided the errors which he had taught them to avoid, and succeeded in bringing their forces together, and in compelling Napoleon to fight at Leipsic. The allied armies numbered three hundred thousand, while the French force did not exceed a hundred and eighty thousand. The "battle of the nations" lasted for three days (Oct. 16, 18, 19), although the fighting was chiefly on the first and third. On the last day it continued for nine hours. The Saxon contingent abandoned the French on the field, and went over to the allies. The defeat of the French, as night approached, became a rout. Napoleon, with the remnant of his army, was driven to the Rhine. The battle of Leipsic was really the decisive contest in the wars of Europe against Napoleon. From the defeat there, it was impossible for him to recover.

FALL OF NAPOLEON: ELBA.--The members of the Confederacy of the Rhine joined the allies. Holland rose in revolt, and drove out the French officials. Even France was exhausted and full of discontent. Meantime Wellington defeated Soult in the Pyrenees, and invaded France from that side. Napoleon was bent on resistance, and by his superior skill succeeded in ousting the brave Prussian soldier, but inexpert strategist, Blücher, as well as the Austrian general Schwartzenberg (Jan. and Feb. 1814). But the preponderance of numbers on the side of the allies was too great. Their bold decision to march on Paris secured their triumph. The city surrendered (March 30). Napoleon had lost his hold on the ruling bodies. The senate, through the influence of the astute Talleyrand, once his minister, declared that he and his family had forfeited the throne. At Fontainebleau, he signed his abdication in favor of his son (April 6), but this condition was rejected. The small island of Elba was given to him by the allies as a sovereign principality. After a pathetic farewell to his veteran Guard, he betook himself to his small dominion. Louis XVIII., the brother of Louis XVI., was placed on the throne of France. France, by the Peace of Paris (May 30), was left with its ancient boundaries as they were before the Revolution slightly increased.

THE CHARTER.--According to a promise which the king had given, he (June 4, 1814) promulgated a constitutional CHARTER, a name borrowed from the Middle Ages when charters were granted to vassals. There was to be a legislature, with a house of peers or lords appointed by the king, and a chamber of deputies chosen by limited suffrage; the electors to be owners of property to a certain amount, and to be thirty years old. The king was to have the initiative in legislation. The Roman Catholic religion was declared to be the religion of the state, but liberty was given to dissenters. The right to make peace and war was given to the king, and also the right to issue ordinances necessary for the execution of the laws and the safety of the state. This last provision opened a door for arbitrary government, and paved the way for the downfall of the dynasty. The points of resemblance in the constitution to the English system were adapted to provoke a constant contrast with it, in respect to the degree of liberty actually secured and exercised by the people. The charter was dated from the nineteenth year of Louis XVIII., as if there had been no Republic or Empire.

PIUS VII.--Pope Pius VII., who, after 1809, was a virtual prisoner at Savona, refused to comply with Napoleon's demands. He could not be moved to invest the bishops whom the emperor had appointed. This was a principal point in the dispute. Napoleon called a national council of French bishops (1811). In 1812 the Pope was taken to Fontainebleau, and treated by him with harshness. When the pontiff refused to give a full and final sanction to the proposed agreement, until he should be free to confer with his cardinals, he was treated with still greater severity. The fall of Napoleon set him free, and he entered Rome, May 24, 1814.

CONGRESS OF VIENNA.--In September, 1814, the congress of Vienna met to readjust the map of Europe after the whirlwind of change and revolution. There were present the emperors of Russia and Austria, the kings of Prussia, Denmark, Bavaria, and Würtemberg, and a great number of German princes. Castlereagh, and later Wellington, represented England, and Talleyrand was one of the representatives of France. The conferences were far from being harmonious. In particular, the claims of Russia upon Poland, and the claims of Prussia on Germany, threatened another war. While the debates, alternating with gay festivities, were still proceeding, the participants were startled by the news of the reappearance of Napoleon in France.

RETURN OF NAPOLEON FROM ELBA.--The new Bourbon rule was unpopular with the French. It was felt to be the effect and sign of national humiliation. The offensive conduct of the returned emigrant nobility, and measures looking towards a restoration of bygone abuses in government, fomented the disaffection. Napoleon, while apparently busy in laying out roads and canals, and regulating the affairs of his little kingdom, which was only sixty miles in circumference, kept himself well informed as to the state of public opinion in France. With a few hundred men of the Imperial Guard, he landed at Cannes (March I, 1815), and was joined by one regiment after another which were sent out to crush him. Ney, one of the best of his marshals, was carried away by the common feeling, and went over to the side of his old commander. Louis XVIII. fled from Paris; and, on March 20, Napoleon was again installed in the Tuileries.

WATERLOO.--Napoleon offered to the country a more liberal constitution, but the Bourbons were more hated than he was trusted. He professed to the great powers his desire for peace, but they did not listen to these assurances. Each agreed to furnish an army of one hundred and eighty thousand men to serve against him. He put forth prodigious exertions to gather a force with which to meet the host of his enemies; and although he could appeal to no warm national feeling, such as had called into being the armies of the Revolution, he succeeded in bringing together a force of over one hundred thousand men. He decided not to wait for the attack, but to assail the two armies of Blücher and Wellington in Belgium. His plan was to attack them separately. Blücher so far fell into the trap, that, in his eagerness to meet the detested foe, he offered battle to Napoleon at Ligny (June 16), and, after a desperate contest, was forced to retire from the field. On the same day, Wellington so far checked Ney in his attack at Quatre Bras, that he could not strike the Prussians on the flank, as Napoleon had designed. Napoleon thought that the Prussians would not be able, after their defeat, at once to aid Wellington. He sent Grouchy, however, with thirty-four thousand men, to observe them and inflict on them a final blow. On the forenoon of June 18, he himself attacked the British forces at Waterloo. The French got possession of La Haye Sainte, a farmhouse in front of Wellington's center, the scene of a bloody contest; but all their charges on Wellington's main line were met and repelled by the immovable squares of the British infantry. In the afternoon Napoleon's right began to be assailed by the Prussians; and finding, at seven o'clock, that they were coming in great force, he ordered a charge of the Imperial Guard on Wellington's forces. After a fierce struggle, the Guard was compelled to recoil and retire. The Prussians, piercing the right flank of the French army, turned its defeat into a rout. Grouchy was at Wavre, fighting the Prussian corps of Thielmann, which he seems to have mistaken for the entire Prussian army.

ABDICATION OF NAPOLEON: ST. HELENA.--On the 22nd of June Napoleon again abdicated in favor of his son. Carnot was for a dictatorship. The French Assembly, with La Fayette at its head, insisted on the abdication. On July 7 Blücher and Wellington entered Paris. Napoleon fled to Rochefort, and, finding himself unable to escape to America, surrendered to the British admiral, and was taken on board the war-ship Bellerophon. Louis XVIII. was brought back to Paris. Napoleon, by the agreement of the allies, was conveyed to the island of St. Helena, where he remained, a fretful captive, until his death (May 5, 1821). Ney escaped, but was captured, condemned, and shot (Dec. 7, 1815). France engaged to pay a war indemnity of seven hundred million francs. Its boundaries were fixed as at 1790.

CHARACTER OF NAPOLEON.--Respecting certain traits of Napoleon, there is no dispute. His military genius all allow, although his daring was sometimes over-daring; and there are critics who profess to discern, after the beginning of the Russian campaign, and especially in the last contest in Belgium, signs of a decline in his almost superhuman vigilance and energy. Yet all must admit "that transcendent geometrical faculty," as Sainte-Beuve calls it, "which characterized Napoleon, and which that powerful genius applied to war with the same ease and the same aptitude that Monge [a great French mathematician] applied it to other subjects." No general ever had greater power to fascinate soldiers, and secure their devotion to him. One reason was, that he recognized and rewarded merit wherever he saw it. His intellectual movements were as much swifter than the ordinary as his marches were more rapid than those to which armies had been accustomed. For civil organization and administration he had rare talents, and in many directions enlightened views. Europe owes much to his innovations in this sphere. He was not incapable of warm personal attachments; as was manifested, for example, in his grief over Duroc, the favorite general, who fell at Bautzen. But an insatiable appetite for war, and, still more, a conviction, which he sometimes confessed, that he could retain and fortify his authority only by dazzling France, and continuing to astonish mankind by brilliant achievements, drove him forward on a path of aggression and bloodshed. He had an unpitying nature: he was careless of human suffering. Early in his career, in Italy, he ordered a needless and useless attack on the outposts of the enemy, "to treat a lady to a sight of real war." He did not shrink from ordering two thousand prisoners at Jaffa to be shot. He shocked all Germany by causing Palm, a bookseller of Nuremberg, to be shot for refusing to tell the name of the author of a publication offensive to him. He frequently displayed a petty rancor,--as, for example, in leaving a legacy in his will to the man who was accused of an attempt to assassinate the Duke of Wellington. His violence of temper, as in the murder of the Duke d'Enghien, hurried him into acts that were not less impolitic than criminal. His tyrannical will would brook no contradiction, even in matters o£ trifling importance. He broke away from engagements when he thought it advantageous to do so. It is not an injustice to say, that he was habitually untruthful: his bulletins were disfigured by flagrant falsehoods, as well as gross exaggerations. In a letter to Talleyrand from Italy (Oct. 17, 1797) he says, "This is history: what I say in my proclamations and speeches is a romance." With his wonderful intellectual powers, inexhaustible energy, and amazing achievements, he never quite loses the characteristic spirit of an adventurer. He is haunted by a secret consciousness that this character belongs to him.

The judgment Of an adversary must be taken with allowance; but Wellington spoke at least without passion when he said, "Bonaparte's whole life--civil, political, and military--was a fraud. There was not a transaction, great or small, in which lying and fraud were not introduced." His "foreign policy was force and menace, aided by fraud and corruption."--Croker's Correspondence, etc., vol. ii. p. 86.

THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA.--The Congress of Vienna was dissolved in June, 1815. Its Acts were finally signed by the five great powers,--Austria, France, Great Britain, Prussia, and Russia,--and by Spain, Portugal, and Sweden. The Austrian and Prussian monarchies were restored. Austria received back Venice with Milan,--forming the subject Lombardo-Venetian kingdom,--besides receiving the Illyrian provinces and the Tyrol. The old possessions of Prussia were restored. She received the Rhenish provinces, a part of the duchy of Warsaw (Posen), and a great part of Saxony, besides other important additions. Holland and Belgium were formed into the one kingdom of the Netherlands, which had also a part of Luxemburg, and was ruled by the stadt-holder William I. The German Confederacy was instituted, with thirty-nine sovereign states, including the four free cities,--Austria being the presiding state. The greater part of the duchy of Warsaw fell to Russia, under the name of the Kingdom of Poland. Sweden retained Norway, which, however, kept its own free constitution; and Denmark acquired Lauenburg. England had vastly enlarged her colonial possessions. The present Swiss Confederation, consisting of twenty-two cantons, was established; three new cantons having been added to the former nineteen. The old dynasties were restored in Spain, in Tuscany, Modena, and the Papal States, in Naples, and in Sardinia. To Sardinia, Genoa, against its will, was annexed.

CHRONOLOGICAL STATEMENT.--The First Coalition was formed in 1793, when all Europe, except Sweden, Denmark, Tuscany, Switzerland, Venice, and Genoa, and Turkey, joined against France. In 1792 France had been at war with Austria and Prussia. In 1795 the coalition was broken: Prussia and Spain made peace with France. In 1797 Austria also concluded peace with France (the Peace of Campo'Formio). In 1798 the Second Coalition was formed, in which Turkey was included. Prussia and Spain were not parties to it. The Peace of Amiens, made with England (1802), ended the contest following it. The Third Coalition was formed in 1805, by England, Russia, Austria, and Sweden. Peace was concluded between Austria and France (Dec. 26, 1805). War followed in 1806-7, between France on one side, and Prussia and Russia on the other. These allies, with England, made a Fourth Coalition. In 1807 France and Russia were allies. The rupture between Austria and France in 1809 gave rise to what is often called the Fifth Coalition. In 1813 the Sixth Coalition, made up, after the accession of Austria, of all the principal powers, was in arms against France. On March 25, 1815, after Napoleon's return from Elba, the powers again declared war against him. As there was a fresh treaty, this may be called a Seventh Coalition.

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VI. AMERICAN HISTORY IN THIS PERIOD (1789-1815)

THE TWO PARTIES.--The cabinet of Washington consisted of four members. The secretary of the treasury was Alexander Hamilton of New York. The secretary of state was Thomas Jefferson of Virginia. The seat of government was placed at Philadelphia; but in 1800 it was removed to the District of Columbia, which was ceded for the purpose by Virginia and Maryland. Almost from the beginning, there were two political parties. The Federalists were made up of those who had been most in favor of the new Constitution, and desired to build up a strong central government. Accordingly they advocated a liberal construction of the Constitution as regards the extent of federal authority. They cherished the traditional spirit of the English laws and English political institutions. Washington and John Adams belonged to this class, and Hamilton was their most active leader. The Anti-Federalists, of whom Jefferson was the chief, were for a careful guarding of the rights of the States, and a strict interpretation of the powers allotted to the General Government. They had more sympathy with the political ideas at that time fast coming into vogue in France. They had a warm faith in the capacity of the mass of the people for self-government and for suffrage. They were called Republicans, and were sometimes styled Democrats.

HAMILTON'S MEASURES: THE CONFLICT OF PARTIES.--Hamilton proposed and carried highly important measures for the restoration of public credit and for the revival of industry and commerce. Under his leadership, the debts of the old confederacy, and the debts of the separate States which they had incurred in the common defense, were assumed. To provide revenue, a protective tariff and a system of internal taxation were ordained. A national bank was incorporated (1791), and a mint was established at Philadelphia. These measures had a great effect at home, and made a strong impression favorable to the new government abroad; but they were opposed by the Anti-Federalists as an unwarrantable assumption of power by the General Government. The excise on domestic spirits provoked an insurrection, called "the Whisky Rebellion," in Western Pennsylvania, which was put down by the militia. As the French Revolution advanced from step to step, the division of parties in America became more marked, and their mutual hostility more intense. At first all were in sympathy with France. La Fayette sent the key of the fallen Bastille as a gift to Washington. But the Federalists were determined to maintain a strict neutrality in the conflict between France and England. As the Revolution proceeded, a strong antipathy was awakened in America to the radical theories, as well as to the bloody deeds, of its promoters. This was enhanced by the strenuous efforts of the French Republic, aided by the Anti-Federalists, to induce the United States to take an active part in the war, on the side of France. Genet, the French minister, undertook to fit out privateers in Charleston. Washington issued a proclamation of neutrality (1793), which was followed by a Neutrality Act of Congress (1794). When Genet had the effrontery to appeal from the President to the people, at the demand of Washington he was recalled.

JAY'S TREATY.--The contest of parties reached its climax in connection with Jay's Treaty with Great Britain (1794),--a treaty negotiated by John Jay, chief justice, whom Washington had sent as envoy to London. There were mutual grounds of complaint between the two countries. The British had not surrendered the Western military posts, and were in the habit of "impressing seamen." 'This last practice was founded on the claim that a British subject can never become the subject of another country, and that, moreover, his military service may be always called for by his sovereign. When almost all Europe was at war, the carrying trade naturally fell, to a large extent, into American hands; hence, it was alleged, many English sailors deserted to get employment in American ships. The British claimed and exercised the right to visit foreign vessels, and to take from their decks the sailors who were asserted to be British subjects. The English, on their part, complained that the treaty stipulations as to debts due in America to British subjects had not been observed. Jay's Treaty provided for the giving-up of the Western posts, according to the previous stipulation; but said nothing respecting the right of impressment, which the British at that time would never have consented to relinquish. It was alleged, also, that in other features the treaty favored England unwarrantably, and unfairly in relation to France. It encountered violent opposition from the Republicans; but it was approved by Washington, and the legislative measures for carrying it out were passed in the House of Representatives by a slender majority, obtained through the eloquence of Fisher Ames, a member from Massachusetts.

NEW STATES: INVENTIONS.--According to the census of 1790, there were somewhat less than four millions of people in the United States. Virginia was the most populous State; next to Virginia stood Pennsylvania, then North Carolina, and, fourth in order, Massachusetts. A little more than one-fifth of the population were negro slaves. Vermont, the territory of which had been claimed by both New York and New Hampshire, was the first new State admitted to the Union (1791). A genius for mechanical invention early manifested itself in the country. Eli Whitney invented the cotton-gin (1792), for separating the seed from the fiber of the cotton-plant,--a machine which indirectly lent a powerful impulse to the production of cotton. In 1788 John Fitch was running a steamboat on the Delaware River; but the construction of a steamboat with side-paddles was due to the inventive talent of Robert Fulton (1807). Emigration from the Atlantic border to the West took three principal routes,--one from New England and New York, through the valley of the Mohawk; the second, through the passes of the Alleghanies; and the third, across the Blue Ridge to the rivers flowing from the south into the Ohio. In 1792 Kentucky, settled mainly by emigrants over the last-mentioned path, was made a State. The next State to be admitted was Tennessee (1796). The new settlers carried into the West the spirit and institutions of the several communities which they had left. South of the Ohio, negro slavery was introduced. A treaty with Spain (in 1795) secured the free navigation of the Mississippi.

WASHINGTON'S RETIREMENT AND DEATH.--Washington himself was not exempt from bitter partisan attack in public prints. On his retirement from office, he prepared, with the assistance of Hamilton, a Farewell Address to the people, in which he exhorted them to maintain the Union as the only safeguard of liberty, and warned them against "entangling alliances" with European powers. The deep and universal sorrow which was felt when he died (1799) was a tribute as exalted as any nation ever paid to a fallen hero and benefactor.

ADAMS: RUPTURE OF THE FEDERAL PARTY.--John Adams, a Federalist, succeeded Washington as president; and Jefferson became vice-president (1797). The French had seized a large number of American vessels, on the pretense that they were affording aid to England. In order, if possible, to prevent war, the President sent out a special mission to France; but the commissioners--Pinckney, Gerry, and Marshall--were told by the Directory that they must pay money as a bribe before they could be received, and were finally ordered to quit the country (1797). The phrase of Pinckney, "Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute," expressed the universal feeling. The report of the insulted envoys roused the indignation of the American people, and moved Congress to prepare for war. Washington was made general of all the forces to be raised, and he appointed Hamilton to be second in command. Hostilities had really commenced; the Federalists were eager for a declaration of war; but President Adams, without the knowledge of his cabinet, suddenly nominated to the senate another ambassador to France. He had previously become assured that such a messenger would be well received. Napoleon having come into power, a treaty was concluded with him (1800). The course of the President, however, gave mortal offense to the adherents of Hamilton, and fatally divided the Federal party. Hamilton and his supporters became wholly alienated from Adams, so that the triumph of the Republicans was rendered certain.

"RESOLUTIONS OF '98."--The violence of the attacks upon the administration, which were made partly by foreign emissaries, had caused the Federalists (1798) to pass the alien and sedition laws. The first authorized the President to order out of the country aliens who were conspiring against its peace. Its operation was limited to two years. The second punished seditious libels upon the government with fine and imprisonment. These acts provoked a storm of opposition. Under the auspices of Jefferson, and of Madison, who was now one of his supporters, the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798-99 were passed by the Legislatures of those States. These resolves affirmed the right of a State to judge of the constitutionality and validity of an Act of Congress. They were interpreted as an assertion of the extreme doctrine of State rights.

PURCHASE OF LOUISIANA.--In 1800 Jefferson was elected to the presidency, and Aaron Burr, a scheming politician of the Republican school, was made vice-president.

At that time, and until the amendment of the Constitution (1804), the electors voted for two persons, without designating either for the presidency or the vice-presidency. The candidate having the highest number of votes became president. As Jefferson and Burr had an equal number, the choice between them for the highest office was made by the House of Representatives.

The obnoxious laws of the preceding administration disappeared with it. One of the most important events under Jefferson's administration was the purchase of Louisiana from France, which had acquired it from Spain. Napoleon knew that he could not keep it from falling into the hands of England, and readily sold it for fifteen millions of dollars. Thereby the territory of the United States was doubled in its extent. The whole region between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains, with New Orleans, was added to the country, together with whatever claim France had to West Florida, Texas, and the district west of the Rocky Mountains. Ohio, composed of the south-eastern portion of the northwest territory, was admitted to the Union in 1803.

In the first fifteen years after the government was organized, there are four things that affected powerfully the character and career of the United States. The first was the influence of Washington in inspiring attachment to the Union. The second was the genius of Hamilton in creating an efficient administration of the new civil polity. The third was the democratic political tendency fostered by Jefferson. The fourth was the vast expansion of the national territory by the Louisiana Purchase, insuring the extension of the Union, and preventing the rise of rival political communities in its neighborhood.

WAR WITH THE ALGERINES.--The pirates of Algiers, Morocco, and the other Barbary States, demanded tribute of American vessels on the Mediterranean. The first exploits of the navy of the United States were in combats with these marauders (1801-5). Decatur performed the exploit of burning in the harbor of Tripoli the American ship Philadelphia, which the Tripolitans had captured (1804). Derne was captured, and Tripoli bombarded. Finally a treaty put an end to the exaction of tribute (1805).

An event that deeply moved the whole country was the killing of Hamilton by Burr in a duel (1804). Burr was afterwards charged with an intention to form a new government on the south-western borders of the United States. He was tried for treason (1807), and not convicted, although many have believed him to be guilty.

CAUSES OF THE WAR OF 18l2-15.--The great European wars brought the United States into serious difficulties, principally in regard to questions relating to commerce. Attempts were made by the European nations to establish blockades by mere enactment, without actual and sufficient occupation of the ports which were declared to be closed. The tendency of the British Orders in council, and of Napoleon's Berlin and Milan Decrees (p. 528), was "to grind to pieces the few remaining neutral powers." These were in effect cut off from trade with both Continental and English ports by the ordinances of one or the other of the two belligerents, the penalty being the confiscation of the vessels employed in such traffic. Such were the restrictions upon neutrals, that a great number of American ships were seized and confiscated by English and French cruisers. In addition to these grievances, the Leander, a British ship, exercised the pretended right of impressment by firing on an American trading-sloop (1806); and in like manner another British vessel, the Leopard, fired on the frigate Chesapeake, which was not prepared for resistance, and took four men from its crew (June 22, 1807). In retaliation, Jefferson ordered all British ships of war to leave the coast of the United States. Then followed the Embargo, embracing a succession of enactments of Congress, which forbade American vessels to leave the harbors of the United States for Europe, and forbade European vessels to land cargoes in American ports. The result of this measure was to smite American commerce with an utter paralysis. The ships rotted at the wharves. The unpopularity of the Embargo, especially in the Eastern commercial States, was such that in Jefferson's second term it was repealed. It was followed (1809) by the Non-Intercourse Act, prohibiting commerce with France and England. The British Orders in Council were then, in a measure, relaxed, as was the practical enforcement against our vessels of the Berlin Decree. In 1812, the French rescinded their obnoxious decrees; and the English immediately took the same step, but not soon enough to prevent a war with the United States.

EVENTS OF THE WAR IN 1812 AND 1813.-James Madison, a wise and moderate statesman of the Republican party, became president in 1809. He was personally averse to engaging in war with Great Britain; but the exasperation of a large part of the country, and the pressure of the younger leaders of his party,--Calhoun, Clay, and Lowndes,--moved him to a reluctant consent. The war, which was declared in 1812, was bitterly opposed in the New-England States, where the strength of the Federalists chiefly lay. By them the real motive of it was considered to be partiality for France. The treasury was nearly empty; there were but few ships of war, and only a small land force of about ten thousand men, made up in part of raw recruits. Before this time, the North-western Indians, under Tecumseh, whom the British were suspected of inciting to war, had been defeated at Tippecanoe (1811), by William Henry Harrison, governor of Indiana. The war with England opened inauspiciously with the surrender of Detroit by Gen. William Hull to Gen. Brock (Aug. 16, 1812), and an unsuccessful attempt to invade Canada at Queenstown. On the sea, however, the Americans had successes which filled them with pride and exultation. Captain Isaac Hull, of the frigate è_Constitution_, captured the British frigate Guerrière, and brought his prisoners to Boston. Decatur, captain of the United States, brought the Macedonian as a prize into the harbor of New York. The Constitution destroyed the Java; but the Chesapeake, whose captain was killed, surrendered to the Shannon. Privateers were fitted out, which captured several hundreds of British ships and several thousands of prisoners. In 1813 Perry defeated the English fleet on Lake Erie. His victory gave the Americans the command of Lake Erie and Lake Michigan. Harrison defeated the British and Indians,--who had been driven to abandon Michigan,--near the River Thames in Canada. Except on the Lakes the navy was successful only in single ship actions. The Americans had taken possession of Mobile, which they as well as the Spanish claimed; but the Creek Indians were incited by the Spaniards to engage in hostilities. Forces from Tennessee, under Andrew Jackson, and troops from Georgia and Mississippi, fought the Creeks with success.

THE WAR IN 1814-15.--In 1814 a third attempt of the Americans under Gen. Brown, to invade Canada, produced no decisive result. There was hard fighting. The British were routed at Chippewa; and they were repulsed at Lundy's Lane, opposite Niagara Falls, by Lieut. (afterwards General) Winfield Scott. Napoleon had now been defeated; and the English sent twelve thousand troops, who had served under Wellington in Spain, to Canada, to invade the United States from the north, while another army was to make an invasion by way of New Orleans. A fleet under Admiral Cockburn sailed up the Potomac, and burned the Capitol and other public buildings at Washington (Aug. 24, 1814). An attack was made on Baltimore by a British fleet, but was bravely repelled. The defeat of the British fleet near Plattsburg, on Lake Champlain, by Commodore Macdonough (Sept. 11, 1814), resulted in the retreat of the British army, which was besieging that place, to Canada. New Orleans was defended by General Jackson. The British under Pakenham and Gibbs attacked his works, but were defeated and withdrew (Jan. 8, 1815). The town was protected from the approach of the English fleet by the fort. Before the battle, peace had been concluded, but the news had not reached this country.

THE HARTFORD CONVENTION.--The antagonism to the war in the New England States found expression in the call of a convention at Hartford, where their delegates met (Dec. 15, 1814). These States complained, that while their commerce and fisheries were ruined, there was no protection afforded to their sea-coast. Stonington in Connecticut had been bombarded, and Castine in Maine had been captured. They denied, also, that the General Government had the power over the State militia which it claimed. For these and other grievances, they sought for a remedy "not repugnant to their obligations as members of the Union." They declared that measures of the General Government which are palpable violations of the Constitution are void, and that the States injuriously affected might severally protect their citizens from the operation of them, by such means as the several States should judge it wise to adopt; but they disavowed the right or intent to break up the Union. The effect of the convention was to bring great popular discredit on the Federalists, and to seal their doom as a distinct party.

TREATY OF PEACE: ALGIERS.--In the Treaty of Ghent (Dec. 24, 1814), provisions were made for defining boundaries as settled by previous treaties, and an engagement was made on both sides to suppress the slave-trade; but no mention was made of maritime rights and the impressment of seamen. This last practice was, however, discontinued, although it was never renounced. The war left the disputes that caused it just where they were. Many then and since have regarded it as really undertaken by the dominant party in the United States, in order to help one of the belligerents in the great struggle then going forward between England and France. Whether this view be just, or not, it is certain that the war imparted to Americans the consciousness of power and nationality. The connection between America and Great Britain was broken off at the Revolution, because, as Turgot once said, colonies are like fruits which only stay on the tree until they are ripe. But the conflict was not over at the conclusion of the Peace of 1783. Bancroft has called the war of 1812-15 "the second war of independence." Nothing lent it this character so much as the naval victories won by the United States, which gave them a standing among the nations. In 1815 a squadron under Decatur was sent to Algiers, and the Barbary States were compelled to give up by treaties all their demands.

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VII. LITERATURE, ART, AND SCIENCE (1789-1815)

NEW SPIRIT IN LITERATURE.--In the latter part of the eighteenth and the early part of the nineteenth centuries, literature broke away from the artificial rules and the one-sided intellectual tone of the "classical" school,--that school which had prevailed through the influence of the French writers of the age of Louis XIV. The new era was marked by more spontaneity, and a return to nature, and by a more free rein given to imagination and feeling. "Romanticism," a general designation of the results of this new movement as contrasted with the "classical" period, sometimes ran out into extravagances of sentiment, and an exaggerated relish for the mediaeval spirit.

WRITERS IN ITALY AND IN FRANCE.--In Italy, there were few writers of distinction. Monti (1754-1828) was a poet full of harmony and elegance, a follower, but with unequal steps, of Alfieri. Another of the same school is the patriotic poet, Ugo Foscolo (1778-1827), a master of his native tongue. The poems of Pindemonte (1753-1828) are graceful and pathetic. Leopardi (1798-1837) mingles sublimity with pathos. Of the Italian historians of this period, Botta (1766-1837), who published a history of the American Revolution, and histories of Italy, is a clear writer, with a talent for vivid description. In France, Chateaubriand (1768-1848), who figured both in political life and as a prolific and brilliant author, by his Genius of Christianity and many other productions gained great celebrity,--more, however, by charms of style and sentiment, than by weight of matter. Madame de Staël (1766-1817) was the daughter of Necker. Between her and Napoleon there was a mutual hostility. She wrote Corinne, Delphine,--"in which she idealizes herself,"--a work on Germany, and various other productions. She was versatile, vigorous in thought, and humane in her temper and spirit. In philosophy, a believing and spiritual school, in opposition to materialism, was founded by Maine de Biran (1766-1824), Royer-Collard (1763-1846), and Benjamin Constant. De Maistre (1754-1821) wrote ably on the side of authority and of the Catholic Church.

ENGLISH POETRY.--Literature in England, especially in the department of poetry, casting off the trammels of the classical school, in which Dryden and Pope were foremost, entered on a new and splendid era. Whether it dwelt on external nature or human passions and experiences, it appealed to sensibility. It was no more exclusively, or in the main, an address to the understanding. Cowper (1731-1800) set the example of genuine naturalness, and of interest in nature and in every-day life. Robert Burns, a Scottish peasant (1759-1796), by his wonderful union of tenderness, passion, and humor, with poetic fancy and simplicity of diction, was more than the poet of a single nation. Wordsworth (1770-1850) blended in his poems a delight in rural and mountain scenery, with a deep vein of pensive thought and sentiment. If he wrote dull pages, even the severest critics allow that in The Excursion there are most beautiful "oases in the desert;" while in such poems as the Ode on the Power of Sound, the Intimations of Immortality from the Recollections of Childhood, and Laodamia, there are passages not excelled since Milton. A more sustained fervor of feeling and imagination belonged to Byron (1788-1824), who, notwithstanding his morbid egotism and offenses against morality, combined passion with beauty, and was never dull. Walter Scott (1771-1832) exhibited in his narrative poems the spirit of the romantic school, with none of its sentimentality or extravagance. Coleridge (1772-1834), the author of Christabel and The Ancient Mariner, was a highly original poet, as well as a philosopher. Southey (1774-1843), with less genius, was a man of letters, prolific both in verse and in prose. Shelley and Keats had a much higher gift of imagination. Campbell, Rogers, and Moore are names of distinction, although less illustrious than those of Wordsworth and Coleridge, Scott and Byron. Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864), a poet and the author of Imaginary Conversations, and other prose writings, was master of a style of extraordinary power and purity.

ENGLISH PROSE WRITERS.--In novel-writing, Miss Austen, Miss Porter, and Miss Edgeworth preceded Walter Scott. Waverley, the first in the series of Scott's novels, appeared anonymously in 1814. In 1802 the Edinburgh Review, the first of the noted critical quarterlies, began its existence, under the editorship of Francis Jeffrey, and numbered among its writers Brougham, Sydney Smith, and Sir James Mackintosh. In 1809 the Quarterly Review, the organ of the Tories as the Edinburgh Review represented the Whigs, began, with Gifford for its editor. Among the essayists of that time, in a lighter vein, were John Wilson ("Christopher North"), poet and critic in one; and the genial humorist, the friend of Wordsworth and Coleridge, Charles Lamb. John Foster (1770-1843) was an original essayist on grave themes. In philosophy, Dugald Stewart (1753-1828), a clear and fluent expositor, and Thomas Brown (1778-1821), kept up the reputation of the Scottish school founded by Reid. Burke, Alison, and Jeffrey wrote on beauty, and on the taste for the beautiful. Mackintosh, a statesman of liberal opinions, wrote on ethics. Coleridge, inspired by the German thinkers Kant and Schelling, through his philosophical fragments and theological essays did much to create a new current in English philosophical and religious thought. Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) was less eminent as a metaphysician than as a contributor, through his writings, to legislative reform.

AMERICAN WRITERS.--In America, the political writings of Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, Jay, Madison, Marshall, and Ames, have a permanent value. Their letters and the letters of Washington are written in clear and manly English. Lindley Murray (1745-1826) published (1795) an English Grammar, which superseded all others. In theology, there were a number of vigorous thinkers and writers, such as the younger President Edwards, Samuel Hopkins, Bellamy, Emmons, J. M. Mason, and Dwight. Dwight's System of Theology was much read in England and Scotland. Belles-lettres literature in America was in its infancy. There was a triad of poets,--Trumbull, a humorous writer (1750-1831), Joel Barlow (1755-1812), and Dwight (1752-1817); all of them survivors of the school of Pope. Their patriotic feeling was their chief merit, but Barlow and Dwight each wrote one excellent hymn.

GERMAN AUTHORS.--One of the most versatile and stimulating of German writers was Herder (1744-1803). Full of imagination and spirit, he made his quickening influence felt as a theologian, critic, philosopher, and philologist. His name is in some measure eclipsed by the fame of his two great associates at Weimar, Goethe (1749-1832) and Schiller (1759-1805). By the universality of his genius, which was equally exalted in the sphere of criticism and of original production, Goethe is, by common consent, the foremost of German authors. His dramas, especially Tasso, Egmont, and Faust, and his pastoral epic, Hermann and Dorothea, are the most celebrated of his poems; but many of his minor pieces are marked by exquisite harmony and beauty. Schiller, with less repose and a less profound artistic feeling, yet from his humane impulses and fire of emotion stands closer to the popular heart. Körner (1791-1813), and Arndt (1769-1860), the author of the song, "Where is the German's Fatherland," were patriotic lyrists of high merit. Uhland (1787-1862) is a ballad-writer, not surpassed in this species of composition by any of his contemporaries. The "Romantic School," with its predilection for the Middle Ages, included Novalis, Tieck, and also the two brothers Schlegel, who were critics rather than poets. One of the most unique and original of the German writers was Jean Paul Richter (1763-1825), essentially a philosopher and moralist, yet with a pervading element of humor and pathos.

GERMAN PHILOSOPHY.--In philosophy, the first name in the order of time and of merit is that of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). The Critique of Pure Reason is the most important of his productions. He showed, against Hume, that the ideas of cause, substance, self, etc., are not products of imagination, or due to a mere custom of thought, but are from within, and are necessary and universal. In the Critique of the Practical Reason he found the real basis of faith in God, free-will, and immortality, in our moral nature. On all the topics which he treated, he was both earnest and profound. On the basis of a portion of his teaching, subsequent speculative philosophers reared a system of idealism and pantheism. Of these, the most celebrated are Fichte (1762-1814), who held that the world external to the mind has no existence; Schelling (1775-1854), who taught that nature and mind are at bottom one and the same substance, in different manifestations; and Hegel (1770-1831), who resolved all being into a realm of ideas, a self-existent and self-developing thought-world.

Among the numerous writers in other departments in this period, the brothers Alexander von Humboldt and William von Humboldt were eminent,--the former in natural science and as an explorer; the latter in political sciences, criticism and philology.

PAINTING AND SCULPTURE.--In Italy, a great sculptor--the greatest since Michael Angelo--appeared in the person of Canova (1757-1822); who, however, was equaled by an Englishman, John Flaxman (1755-1826). An eminent follower of Canova was Thorwaldsen (1770-1844), a Dane. Dannecker, a German sculptor (1758-1844), excelled in portrait statues. Another German sculptor, the founder of a school, was Rauch (1774-1857), whose statues are faithful, yet idealized, likenesses. A famous French painter in this period was David, whose pictures, in the classic style, lack force and warmth. Many of his scholars attained to high proficiency in the art. Horace Vernet (1789-1863) and Paul Delaroche (1797-1856) chose their subjects from modern European history. The modern German school of painting was founded by Overbeck, Von Schadow, and Cornelius. The greatest English painter after Hogarth was Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), whose portraits have seldom, if ever, been surpassed. Almost or quite on a level with him was Gainsborough (1727-1788). Benjamin West (1738-1820) was by birth an American, as was Copley, an artist of superior talents (1739-1815). Lawrence (1769-1830) was a British painter whose portraits have a high historical value. The greatest of the English landscape painters was Turner (1775-1851).

John Trumbull (1756-1843), an American, painted spirited battle-pieces, and miniature portraits of decided artistic merit. Washington Allston (1779-1843), another American painter, produced works admired for their warmth of color, and for the refined feeling expressed in them.

MUSIC.--The great German musicians Haydn and Mozart were followed by an equal or greater genius in music, Beethoven (1770-1827). At the head of the school of German song-writers is Schubert (1797-1828). One of the most popular of the German composers was Weber (1786-1826).

PHYSICAL AND NATURAL SCIENCE.--The most brilliant discoveries in astronomy were made by the French philosopher Laplace, whose Mécanique Céleste made an epoch in that science. Dr. Thomas Young (1773-1829) did much to explain the true theory of the tides, and to confirm the undulatory theory of light. Others eminent in the progress of optics are Fresnel (1788-1827), Biot, Arago,--all French physicists,--and Sir David Brewster. Lavoisier (1743-1794) infused a new spirit into chemical science. Priestley (1733-1804) discovered oxygen and other gases. Dalton (1766-1844) is the author of the atomic theory of the composition of matter. Sir Humphry Davy added to chemical knowledge, and, simultaneously with George Stephenson, invented the safety-lamp for miners. Berzelius (1779-1848), a Swedish chemist, and Gay-Lussac (1778-1850), a Frenchman, are great names in the history of this science. Galvani, the discoverer of animal electricity, and Volta, the inventor of the galvanic pile, stimulated others to fruitful experiments in this branch of study. Lamarck (1744-1829) was one of the first of the modern advocates of the origin of species by development. Cuvier (1769-1832), the greatest naturalist of modern times, made most important observations in comparative anatomy, and "established many of the positive laws of geology and paleontology." Geology first assumed the place of a science through the labors of Werner (1750-1817), a German mineralogist. There were two classes of geologists,--the Neptunians, or Wernerians, who ascribed rocks to aqueous deposition exclusively; and the Vulcanians, or Huttonists,--adherents of the view of Dr. Hutton (1726-1797) of Edinburgh,--who attributed many of them to the action of fire. The Geological Society of London was founded in 1807. Among discoveries of practical utility in science, the discovery of vaccination for the prevention of small-pox, by Jenner (1749-1823), an English physician, is one of the most remarkable.

LITERATURE: See the lists on pp. 16, 359, 497; also President A. D. White's list, with critical notes, attached to Morris's _The French Revolution and First Empire_ (in "Epochs of history"), and Adams's Manual: the Histories of Alison (Tory), Louis Blanc, Carlyle, Jomini, Fyffe, Stephens, Mahan, Chuquet. Aulard, Lavisse et Rambaud, Histoire Gènèrale VIII., IX. Michelet (7 vols.), Mignet, Morris, Von Sybel (4 vols.), Thiers, Taine, L. Haüsser; Madame de Rémusat's Memoirs; Metternich's Memoirs (5 vols.), Joyneville, Life and Times of Alexander I. (3 vols.); Seeley, Life of Stein; Lowell, Eve of the French Revolution; on Napoleon, Rose, Lanfrey, Sloane.

De Tocqueville's L'Ancien Règime et la Révolution; P. Janet's Philosophie de la Révolution Française; Quinet, _La Rèvolution_; The Essays on the Revolution, by Burke, Mackintosh, Croker; Macaulay's Essays on Mirabeau and Barère; Lamartine's _The Girondists_; A. Young's Travels in France in 1787-88-89 (London, 1794); Oncken, _Das Zeitalter der Revolution des Kaiserreiches_ (2 vols.); Sorel, _L'Europe et la Rèvolution Française_ (5 vols.); Debidour, _Rapports de l'Église et de l'Etat en France_; Vandal, _Napoléon et Alexandre 1st_. Treitschke _Deutsche Geschichte im neunzehnten Fahrhundert_ (4 vols.).

Taine, History of English Literature; Mrs. Oliphant, Literary History of England in the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries; Allibone, Dictionary of British and American Authors; Wendell, A Literary History of America.

PERIOD V. FROM THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA (1815) TO THE PRESENT TIME.

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